HP Lovecraft’s Witch House – Review

HP Lovecraft’s Witch House – Review
82 Minutes, Not Rated
Written by Bob Easley and Ken Wallace
Directed by Bob Easley

Synopsis:

Graduate student Alice Gilman is running from an abusive past. She seeks refuge in the infamous Hannah house; a historic home with an ominous past. Determined to prove the possibility of alternate dimensions, she unknowingly unlocks a gateway to unimaginable horror.
Facing a series of bizarre and violent events, Alice is plagued by nightmarish dreams of these evil entities. Trapped between the 4th dimension and reality, the diabolical truth is revealed as Alice fights for her sanity and her very soul. Based on the H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Dreams in the Witch House, Witch House blurs the boundaries between reality, dreams…and the beyond.

I think we can all agree that, whatever personal failings Lovecraft may have had, he could certainly write some creepy stuff. Generally speaking, though, his work has proved to have an uneven track record in the quality of its adaptation to film.

Which brings us to Witch House.

Opening with a gruesome scene involving an eyeball, and following that up with our protagonist, Alice, reading a Lovecraft short story.

Look, bottom line is that this script is pretty thin. What might work on the page doesn’t necessarily translate to film, so we are treated to vaguely sinister images (often too dark to properly process), vague titillating shots of the occultly-obligatory naked women around a fire, vaguely explained character background and development, and an oh-so-telegraphed climax.

That’s a lot of vague…

Basically, it’s around 98% of the supernatural horror tropes you know, padded with warbled video and ham-fisted expository dialogue that, while ostensibly explaining what’s going on, simultaneously seems out of place within the story itself.

It’s maddening, and not in that Lovecraftian way.

Honestly, I don’t want to cast too much blame on the cast, because Lovecraft is so damned difficult to adapt well, but Witch House feels too much like something the filmmakers wanted to make, and so they did, without any real consideration of if it was going to work.

I’m not a fan of OVER-planning, but there has to be some sort of plan to compare your output to, just to keep yourself honest. This one feels…not that way.

As a result, the script doesn’t give the actors much to work with, and their performances reflect that.

I think HP Lovecraft’s Witch House is a miss, like so many other attempted adaptations of the author’s work.

HP Lovecraft’s Witch House is currently available on digital and DVD and stars Portia Chellelyn, Julia Anne Prescott, Andrea Collins, Erin Trimble, Solon Tsangaras, John Johnson, Shonda Laverty, Bill Levin, and Joe Padgett.

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