With having seen the film mentioned on IMDbs Horror board a number of time,I decided the it was time that I finally took a look at the movie. Disappointingly finding the DVD of the title to be deleted,I was happy to discover that the flick had recently been put online,which led to me preparing to at last hear the sound of Cthulhu.The plot:Gathering up his late uncles belongings as he takes care of his estate,a man finds a large box locked shut.Breaking the box open,the nephew finds disturbing newspaper clippings that his uncle has left behind.Decades earlier:Uncovering details of an occult praying for a strange creature called the Cthulhu to rise from the dead,the man/uncle starts searching round for clues about where the ritual is taking place.Gathering a crew to take him to a remote island,the man soon begins to regret ever having heard the name "Cthulhu."View on the film:Filmed over 2 years with a $50,000 budget from The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society,director Andrew Leman makes sure that every penny can be seen on the screen.Filmed in crisp black and white,Leman and cinematographer/editor David Robertson make the title look like a long lost German Expressionism artifact,thanks to a rich depth of field placing the unfolding newspaper story with a razor sharp edge.Harking back to the earliest days of cinema,Leman brings Cthulhu to life with excellent stop-motion animation,as the jerky animation movements give Cthulhu a stop/start spider-like creepiness.Bringing Lovecraft's tale to life,the screenplay Sean Branney perfectly uses a minimum of dialogue to build a striking sense of the fear that Cthulhu is held in.Building an investigating path with the dual nephew/uncle investigations,Branney peels away any hope that the characters have of finding an answer in "reality",as the deep-fried memories of victims cast a chilling shadow across the screen,as Cthulhu rises from the abyss.

H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, his stories always carried a strange allure of the unknown, and were always scary for our fear of it. Though his stories adapted into the visual medium have always been a hit or miss affair (though same can be said for a lot of other writers.) However this short film I'll admit in my book is no doubt one of the best and most faithful.The film is made in the silent film style which surprisingly fits like a glove and from a historical standpoint makes sense since the 1920's were the time when H.P.'s stories came out. I'll admit it is really surreal that I even watched this film, it really looks, sounds, and feels like a lost silent horror film.This was done on a low budget but it was used well and right. I really like the production design, most of them were stage/studio props and pieces but they were constructed well. The design of the Cyclopean civilization didn't disappoint me, some of the design obviously borrows from the German expressionist horror film "The Cabnet of Dr. Calagari". And I feel it fits just right because it really gave the Cyclopean civilization a mysterious, disorienting, ominous quality; as if the civilization was something constructed and derived from dreams or nightmares. Even liked the cinematography, not just in the use of once again black and white but that they added a granny quality to the film to make it really look and feel like something from a by gone era. Music is on cue and I think is great and memorable, really liked those tunes that evoked dread.But I really like the story structure which was slightly true to it's predecessor, where the whole thing is basically told in a sort of journalistic style from the perspective of one to several people, which gave it the mystery sensibility and a participatory sense where in a way we're the real investigators trying to put it all together.It's true we don't really see Cthulhu till about the end of the film, but Cthulhu's presence is felt throughout the whole build up of the film. You really have this sense of doom and dread not just that what we're immersed in isn't just going to lead to something bad but possibly this monster is already watching and waiting and as we discover those that investigate too deeply are doomed.If your a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's works then this is a call worth answering if you dare.Rating: 4 stars

Cthulhu was probably H.P. Lovecraft's most famous creation, and it's finally a movie. And a good one at that. "The Call of Cthulhu" is done like a 1920s German expressionist movie, as the characters pass through settings whose perspective looks out of shape, not to mention that it's silent. Of course, the best part is when the titular character appears: the movie might have a smaller than average budget, but they manage to make Cthulhu into one bad dude.I once read a compilation of Lovecraft's stories, and they ARE pretty horrific. To be certain, Stephen King called Lovecraft the greatest horror author of all time. The decision to give the movie a 1920s look actually strengthened it in my opinion. Too much of what passes for horror these days is just CGI and people shouting inane lines.In conclusion, this is certainly one to check out. It's not absolutely frightening in the vein of "The Shining", but it's still pretty interesting. "The Artist" (which I still haven't seen as yet) seems to have renewed interest in silent movies, and this is one that's worth seeing. You just never know when you might find some Cthulhu worshipers...

The Call of Cthulhu gets extra points for passion and guts; the idea of filming Lovecraft's story - a notoriously unfilmable one - as a 20's silent horror film is clever and appealing, and it's obvious that the filmmakers have a lot of love and passion for Lovecraft's work and for German Impressionist cinema. In fact, as was noted before, it's probably the most loyal adaptation of Lovecraft made yet. But loyal and gutsy doesn't automatically equal good. The attempt to replicate the atmosphere of a silent-era film works only partially (the set designs are terrific, but the camera-work and acting didn't convince me), the fact that Lovecraft doesn't work as a movie hadn't changed, and ultimately it's mostly just a good film school project, rather than a good film, and one that will only hold interest for Lovecraft and German Expressionism enthusiasts.