Cover Art

Credits

Director: Stuart Gordon Starring: Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, Raquel Merono and Macarena Gomez Screenplay: Dennis Paoli from H.P.Lovecraft's Shadow over Innsmouth Music: Carles Cases AKA: Dagon - La secta del mar, Dagon: Sect of the Sea

Adapted from H.P.Lovecraft's Shadow over Innsmouth, this tells of a young man, Paul (Ezra Godden) and his lover, Barbara (Raquel Merono), being forced from their boat by a violent storm. They find themselves then stranded in an old fishing village where nothing is quite what it seems. After wandering around a bit they soon find themselves hotly pursued and lose each other. Paul bumps into some old guy who relates the tale of how the village abandoned the Christian God in favour of a more sinister deity called Dagon. This Dagon promised them riches and so they took to worshipping him, and did indeed become rich. At a price. As generations progressed, the townspeople started mutating into…erm…fish. So Paul has lost his girl in a town full of fish-people who are intent on killing him and doing God-knows-what to her. Off he then goes in search of Barbara with the intention of finding her and rescuing her if need be, then getting the hell outta Dodge. However, things are never as simple as that and the ending is happily unpredictable.

Hmmm….fish-people. Not sure about that…

Anyway, it's certainly a polished piece of filmmaking and Gordon handles directorial duties fairly competently. The film does flounder at times and the story itself is a bit muddled in places. Overall though it's not a bad effort and has some startling sequences, but it never seems to quite gel into a cohesive whole. It's more of a film of 'moments' and 'set-pieces' rather than a consistent thread of storytelling. The other complaint I have is the abundance of Spanish actors who can barely speak English. Not bad in itself I suppose, and I'm sure they're all fine actors, but the old guy who recounts his tale is practically unintelligible. I had to use the English subtitling option just to make head or tail of what he was he was saying. But it's a minor quibble.