The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
Directed by Henry Saine
Reviewed by Brian M. Sammons
Did you ever wonder what it would be like if Kevin Smith of Clerks fame directed a Lovecraft movie? Yeah, me neither. But someone did, because essentially that’s what The Last Lovecraft is. To be fair, director Henry Saine and writer/co-star Devin McGinn don’t completely ape Smith’s style, but The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu does have about as much of Kevin Smith’s influence in it as it does H.P. Lovecraft’s. If you like that silly, rather adolescent type of humor—that kind of sophomoric silliness always tickles my inner fourteen-year-old—then you’ll get the most out of this film.
The story begins with a secret organization finding the titular relic. Knowing that the cult of Cthulhu will stop at nothing to get this doodad—for it can bring Big Daddy C up from the depths—they have to give it to a special protector. Who? Well, the last descendant of one Howard Phillips Lovecraft, naturally. Unfortunately, the last of Lovecraft’s line is the typical clueless underachiever with the prerequisite smartass buddy. Luckily the friend knows not only a thing or two about H.P. Lovecraft but also a gamer geek (the stereotypes are pretty prevalent here) who happens to know even more about the world that Lovecraft described.
Notice that I didn’t say “the world that Lovecraft created”? In this movie the nameless horrors that HPL wrote about are real. Lovecraft was just someone who learned what Man Was Not Meant to Know™ and he wanted to warn others by masking the blasphemous truth as fiction. Since some people really hate that often-used idea, I thought I would mention it.
In any event, the trio of misfits must find an old sea captain named Olaf who has faced the horrors of Deep Ones firsthand. And by firsthand I mean, as he puts it, “fish rape.” As the heroes travel across the desert (if you were the recipient of unwanted fishman advances, you’d stay as far away from water as you could, too) they must evade the cult of Cthulhu. Naturally, if they avoided such dangers completely it would be one boring movie, so along the way they run into wacky cultists, Deep Ones and their leader Starspawn, which really doesn’t look or act like you would expect in such a monster. Perhaps my biggest “fanboy” gripe was that this big baddie looked more like a reject from Buffy the Vampire Slayer than a cosmic-born horror. But that is a minor quibble at best.
The Last Lovecraft is essentially a road-trip buddy movie with comedic elements. There is nothing even remotely scary about it. If you’re looking for Lovecraftian terror, look somewhere else.
That said, The Last Lovecraft is surprisingly faithful to the Cthulhu Mythos. One of the highlights of this film is a very fun animated short on the history of Cthulhu and the Elder Things. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Great Cthulhu use a triceratops skull to smash shoggoths to death. Sure, there are a few minor changes to and omissions from Lovecraft’s canon, but only ultrapurists will get their tentacles in a twist over such things.
At just 78 minutes the movie is a fast ride, and it ends rather too abruptly. While I think the climax could have been handled a bit better, you should take that as a compliment rather than a condemnation. It means that I wanted to see more of our heroes in action, which is a good and rare thing. If you’re looking for some laughs mixed in with your Lovecraft, this might be the flick for you. It gets 7 phobias.