H.P. LOVECRAFT'S THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME (2012)
SE
Directed by Richard Svenssonand and Daniel Lenneér

CAST:
John Hutch - Narrator
Ake Rosen- Nathaniel Peaslee

PLOT:
      Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee fears he is losing his mind when he unaccountably sees strange vistas of other worlds and of the Yithian library city.

REVIEW:
     While I get short films sent to me from directors, a lot of times I have to actively search for films that I want to review, or to find something that catches my attention. The only problem with this is once I find something sometimes it bites me in the ass and turns out to be terrible, just take the last review I did for example. Yet with short films, they have a limited time to get the story across as fast and concise as possible. So with that in mind what did I make of this short.

      There's something special when a film takes source material and doesn't change to much of it. This is specially true with this short film. There is a simplicity to the film as everything is narrated so nothing is truly lost in giving lines to other actors. The narration by John Hutch is spot on and has just enough helplessness to it that you feel for the lead character Nathaniel Peaslee. As the story goes on Hutch's narration becomes more desperate in just the right places, but never goes completely overboard with it. The actor who portrays Peaslee on screen is Ake Rosen does a fairly decent job of trying to show the emotions of a man who for all intents and purposes lost his mind only to regain it and and to find out that he lost everything. The one thing that bothered me more than anything about Rosen's acting is some of his walking scenes as you can tell it's almost pantomimed and seems out of place. Except  for this Rosen does just fine in his role.

     The two directors, Richard Svenssonand and David Lenneer, actually do a decent job of bringing a more otherworldly tale to film, though it is not without its flaws. While Svenssonand's direction of the live action parts are not bad for the most parts, except for some of the walking scenes as I mentioned earlier. Lenneer animated sequences are the real downfall of this though. The claymation style Yith thankfully have very fluid animation and always in constant motion. The S'gg'ha is designed well also, with a look that sticks out from the rest of the creatures. The rest of Lenneer's work unfortunately doesn't hold up as well with the life and death fight between the Yithians and polypous creatures being the worst of the animated sequences as it seems as if the polypous creatures are in a constant fart attack and the electrical energy weapons of the Yith just seems as if  they didn't truly know what to do with the weapons as well as the entire scene. Even with all the flaws, The Shadow Out Of Time is a decent mythos film that keeps your attention through all the trouble with it, as well as stays true to the source material.

BEST LINE:
     From the short story:
     "Assuming that I was sane and awake, my experience on that night was such as has befallen no man before. It was, moreover, a frightful confirmation of all I had sought to dismiss as myth and dream."

FUN FACTS:
     Richard Svenssonand directed the live action parts of the film.

     Daniel Lenneér directed the animated sequences in the film.