Cthulhu Cthursday: Tori Spelling’s Cthulhu (Review)

Imagine for a moment what a movie featuring our favorite eldritch Old One should be. A great, green cephalapodian beast, atop a throne hewn from basalt, surrounded by followers twitching and dancing in paroxysms of manic glee born from mind-rending horror. Obviously, they have been promised quick deaths. Victims are ripped from the stones to which they’ve been shackled, their pleading unacknowledged as they are devoured whole. The sanity of those still alive unravels itself into the endless dark as they weep in fear and expectation. A great carnage seeps across the land.

For two hours.

An adequate film adaptation, if not wholly true to Lovecraft’s original story.

What we’ve been given instead is a second-rate simulacra of The Shadow Over Innsmouth (in which our aforementioned Old One only cadges brief mention), a story of which Lovecraft himself was critical. It would appear his fears have been realized in celluloid form. Cthulhu: The Movie falls exceedingly short of delivering the shock and horror one might expect from a Lovecraftian tale, not to mention the stilted dialogue, non-linear editing, and costuming that turns shoggoths into a preschooler’s pipe cleaner homage to albino tumbleweeds.

In addition to the overall poor performance of the film, Grant Cogswell (the screenwriter for this tentacular abortion) attempts to add the subtle subtext, which I wish I could claim was tongue-in-cheek, that being gay is like returning to an abhorred tiny hometown, from which one has escaped, to discover the residents are part of a fish cult trying to raise their ancestors (or Cthulhu, or both, a point not made clear throughout the film). Now I don’t necessarily disagree, there are probably parallels, such as waking in the night to discover the fabulously coifed boy you thought you brought home is in actuality a fish faced hobo of the laminal variety. I can’t help but feel there are better venues for this kind of comparison, maybe Jaws 5 or another remake of The Poseidon Adventure as directed by M. Night Shyamalan and written by a gaggle of crack addled chimpanzees.

Tori Spelling straddles a conflicted homosexual in Cthulhu: The Movie. In true Lovecraftian fashion, her inhuman, sanity-fracturing visage is obscured from the camera. Note the young man’s missing lower half: it has been swallowed by Ms. Spelling’s tentacled uterus, an unholy Cthulhoid maw.

Adding insult to injury, Tori Spelling plays central to this horrific analogy of fish-people and fellatio, disappointing us all by not sprouting tentacles from her face and belching out long forgotten syllables to the delight of movie-goers. That’s right, Tori Spelling is, in fact, not Cthulhu. She plays as a two-bit temptress, a cult-whore attempting to wheedle and cajole the protagonist into a tryst from which tadpole offspring will be produced, allowing their scaly ancestors to return from the sea. When her infamous rhinoplasty and bottle-blonde locks fail to entice, our hero is drugged and raped, something he seemingly all but forgets while focused on the wooing of his adolescent man-crush.

However, all of this I could have forgiven. Sinking deeper into my terminally squeaky seat, mechanically jamming handfuls of soggy popcorn into my greasy mouth as I stared transfixed at the screen, I could’ve been a fat and happy little moviegoer, content in my buttery world, had the writer and director not used the movie as a political propaganda device. Supposedly the film makers had an agenda, a message deeper than the aforementioned gay subtext: a small town cult trying to arouse a cephallic god. Apparently, they wanted you to see the light of being an eco-friendly liberal through a film vaguely hinting at mass carnage and fish people raised from the sea…also, George Bush is a stupid octopus head. A message I thankfully missed until it was brought up during the brief Q&A session following the film, during which the director launched into a tyrannical screed regarding the evils of the AAA organization and our current political climate. The two somehow being inextricably linked.

Far be it from me to dissuade someone from a round of Bush-bashing or discussion on what it means to be gay in today’s society, but a movie about a bloodthirsty godlet spawned from the stars is not the place for it. The place for it is the corporate coffee chain a block from the theater, where you and your self-righteous friends can discuss the political and social merits (or lack thereof) of the film.

Cthulhu: The Movie is anything but. Part gay love story, part Tori Spelling rape scene, part Anti-Bush propaganda, all garbage, and sadly, not in a way many of us enjoy. The creators of the film themselves have professed their previous lack of respect for the horror genre, something evident throughout the film by the complete and total mishandling of what is otherwise a great story. This movie ended up being a horror film, but only through the dumbing down of a classic tale to fit the narrow perspectives of people that agree a reinterpretation of Lovecraft is an appropriate shell for a propaganda machine.

About The Author: Qais ‘Ernest’ Fulton is the result of a piss and vinegar experiment gone horribly awry. An aspiring artist and writer from Seattle, he spends his time scribbling furiously in a notebook, occasionally stopping to shriek at the miscreants and water-headed ne’erdowells of his fair city. He is often found lending his services to local sky-pirates. His website is inqaisofemergency.com