A review of "H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb"

Confessions of a Film Junkie: A Review of “HP Lovecraft’s The Tomb”

By: Brian Cotnoir

     Ho. Ly. Crap.  I...I’m almost a loss for words on this one folks.  I mean...how the hell did this...this film is just so...awful!  And what’s worse is that it claims to be an adaptation of one of the great works of H.P. Lovecraft, but in all actuality it has nothing to do with Lovecraft, it has nothing to do with anything, it’s just so awful, and I hate it! I Hate It! I HATE IT! All right, let’s not waste anymore time, let’s take a look at “H.P. Lovecraft’s The Tomb”.              

So the film opens with some guy in a cloak, wearing one of those cheap white face masks that you buy at a Halloween supply store, riding a horse, as he drops a girl, Tara, in an abandoned warehouse...this is the point where you should give up all hope on this film, the picture quality is so crappy, and the opening credits look like something you’d see in a High School News production, but I digress.  Let’s get back to this blasphemous atrocity of a film.  So Tara comes across a man named Billy and the two of them soon discover that they are pawns under a mysterious puppet master killer who we later find out is named Richard Leland Morris (but sometimes goes by the alias “Charles Dexter Ward...you get it?!?!) and he is keeping the people there because they had all wronged him at some point in his life.  So the Puppet Master, instructs the people that they are “playing a game”, where there will only be one winner who gets to go free...and you know what I can’t continue on any more from here, because from this point on the film is just trying to rip-off “Saw”, and I don’t want to waste anymore time describing this plot to this abomination.                                     

Who did the Costumes for your film, IParty???

     So if sh!tting all over Lovecraft’s name isn’t bad enough this film also has to drag the “Saw” series into it as well.  Why?  “Saw” is already made and released by a better studio that makes more money than you will ever see, so why do you think that you can make your own much better version of the film?  It’s so very clear that they’re trying to rip “Saw” that you could probably make a drinking game out of all the “Saw” references in this film.  The film does mention Lovecraft, and by that I mean they say his name a few times, but it has absolutely zero connection to his original short story, which is really dumb.  That’s like making a Harry Potter film and changing the plot to make it more like “Citizen Kane”!  Some of you may remember from my “Re-Animator” review how I talk about how, so many films adapted from the works of Lovecraft stray away from his original stories and are typically poorly adapted, and this is probably the worst offender I’ve seen yet.  There is literally nothing that this film shares or copies from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Tomb”,  The only thing this film does to H.P. Lovecraft is desecrate his name and work, and I’m sure somewhere in the 9^th Dimension he is cursing this film.  Oh not to mention it has such a dumbest ending I’ve ever seen in a film.  Who the hell just gives person they just spent hours torturing a Porsche convertible and a suitcase full of cash?!  Oh and that “surprise twist ending” was even dumber than the original ending.                                              

His vengeance will be agonizing!

I’m shocked, at how bad this film is.  It is easily one of the Worst Films I have had the displeasure of watching on Netflix.  I’ll be honest the whole time I was watching this film, I convinced that this film had to be made by a group of High School students or entry level Film School students as part of a class project, but I was absolutely appalled to find out that this film was made by an actual studio because of how poorly it was done.  The acting is deplorable, the picture quality is sh!t, the audio is even worst—I had to watch the whole film with subtitles on because of how badly the sound was—and the “tomb” is clearly an abandoned warehouse with Halloween decorations hanging off of storage shelves.  Everything about this film looks so fake.                      

      I honestly cannot find one kind thing to say about this film.  It is an embarrassment, I don’t even think it deserves to be called a “film” or a “movie”, I think it should be called what it really is a God Awful Mess that should not be viewed by anyone.  Even a person who is clinically brain dead can realize that this film is total rubbish and offer absolutely zero entertainment.  “H.P. Lovecraft’s The Tomb” is easily one of the Worst Films ever made, and I think the films writer/director Ulli Lommel should be ashamed of releasing such a terrible film to the general public and the Netflix audience.