In the Mouth of Madness
I am a huge fan of horror movies, but its often difficult to find the ones that are of real quality and not just a popcorn flick. I definitely found what I was looking for in In the Mouth of Madness though. It starts out immediately letting you know that it was an occult horror movie that was going to twist around reality and leave you wanting more. I wish more occult horror movies were of this quality because I would never need to watch anything else.
The movie starts out in an insane asylum where our hero is proclaiming his sanity to anyone who will listen through the small window of his metal door. In addition to this movie keeping you on the edge of your seat due to the mind screwing style of horror movie, it also adds the perfect amount of comedy to relieve the edge of seat stress that can build up in these movies. The comedy wont distract you from the type of movie you're watching though and its not the ironic kind that you see in slasher flicks either. This is truly well done.
After starting out, our friendly crazy guy has a visitor which starts the real movie as a flash back. The horror movie atmosphere is lifted at this point as we go on jobs with our hero John Trent (played by Sam Neil). John is an insurance investigator who is charged with tracking down a missing author when his publisher files a huge claim with the insurance company. The author is due to release a book anytime, but has gone missing and this puts the publisher in a pretty tough spot. John is under the belief that this is a hoax as part of a publicity stunt and doesn't expect to have a very hard time proving that.
As the investigation starts the real horror movie begins. Weird events begin to happen that all seem to be connected with the disappearance. I'm not going into detail into anything that will ruin the plot from this point on because of all the pleasant morbid surprises in store for you. As far as horror movies go I would definitely say that this is one of the best occult horror movies I've ever seen. Its not the nonstop death of a slasher film, rather its in the style of lovecraft in a modern day like John Carpenter seem very up to the challenge of taking.