Dagon
Dagon is yet another movie based on an H.P. Lovecraft from director Stuart Gordon. You may remember Gordon’s previous Lovecraft inspired work, Re-Animator, if not, stop reading this review and go watch it. Dagon is based on the Lovecraft short story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which is by far my favorite short story from the horror master. Unlike Gordon’ previous experimentation with Lovecraft which was more of a bizarre ode to an inspirational master, Dagon is much more of a straightforward envisioning of the Lovecraft universe. Anyone that watches the movie will be impresses with how well Gordon and his crew have interpreted the story and managed to turn it into a full length movie.
For those that aren’t familiar with the story, Dagon is about a group of Americans that have a boat accident causing them to take cover in the small town Spanish port town of Imboca. Once in Imboca, weird shit starts happening and you soon find out that the citizens of the town aren’t what they appear to be. The story then spirals out of control with all sorts of bizarre imagery and cool special effects in typical Gordon style.
Stuart Gordon does a fantastic job on this film with a fairly small budget. The film feels much larger than the budget would have you guess and the only time you can tell it wasn’t made with a shitload of money is when the CGI stuff starts happening. Gordon does a fantastic job of capturing the desolate and aged look of a village that is basically rotting away. The atmosphere of Imboca is pretty creepy and it doesn’t look like any place that I would want to spend time in. Gordon is a master of horror for a reason, and that reason is because despite all the lack of funding he consistently puts out quality movies full of violence and boobies.
The acting in the movie is shit. None of the characters are particularly good. Ezra Godden stinks it up as the main character Paul. Godden’s uncharismatic performance is only augmented by the poor depth of his character. The rest of the characters aren’t any better, and I still don’t know why those two couples were kicking on a boat together. Many of the citizens of Imboca are poorly acted as well, and half the time you can’t tell what they are saying because their voices are so distorted. I really hate having to go back and watch a scene twice because people use garbled voice effects.
The special effects are, by far, the coolest part of the movie. The prosthetics that the special effects team use are mostly of high quality and really make you believe that there is something fishy with the citizens of Imboca. Also, the violence is done in a rather satisfying manner. As I mentioned before, much of the CGI is cheap garbage, and I would have rather seen the awesome Lovecraftian technique of not describing anything and just leaving the horror up to the viewer’s imagination when they couldn’t afford to execute something in the real world. I’m thinking of a rather large creature that shows up at the end of the movie.
Dagon is a fun and tense movie that doesn’t wimp out on the gore just because it is full of tension. For anyone that’s ever read a Lovecraft story and liked it, this movie is perfect. It’s just too bad the film was produced in Spain and released straight to DVD with terrible cover art and a poor description, otherwise I probably would have bought this a long time ago. The box does no justice to how fun this movie really is.
Final Synopsis: This is a quality interpretation of a Lovecraft story. For horror fans it’s a must see. Fans of Stuart Gordon should definitely check out this flick as well. I liked it enough that the next time I see it, I’ll probably pick it up. It’s at least worth a rent for most people.
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