In the Mouth of Madness 4K 1994

When I started watching this film, I was already familiar with the style of my now favorite director, so it came as no surprise, despite what was written on the disc cover: “mystical thriller.” I would classify it more as horror, but with a strong dose of “Carpenter style.”

The plot is quite simple: there was a citizen, an insurance agent, who was asked to find the missing author of the world's best-selling books, after which some people felt uneasy. Everything would have been fine, but his latest hit, a priceless work that drove people crazy after reading it, disappeared along with the writer. Our hero sets off on a search and ends up in the city described in the book... The whole story begins almost at the end, when the hero, Sam Neill, is put in a mental hospital and a private investigator comes to him, wanting to know his story.

It's an amazing film with a great atmosphere that you rarely see in movies these days—an atmosphere of hopelessness, claustrophobia, and fear. It reminded me of the atmosphere in the movie 1408.

As in all of Carpenter's other films, the cinematography in this film is outstanding and cannot go unnoticed. The shots of the city and the exit from the mental hospital alone are worth mentioning. It seems that if it weren't for the beauty on screen, the film would have completely lost its mystery, but as a true master, the director uses everything in moderation, without adding anything superfluous to the picture. The film seems to flow precisely along its plot, without deviating, as is often the case, to secondary storylines. Strangely enough, there are not as many special effects as one might expect, but this is still a horror film, not a carnival.
I would like to pay special attention to the ending: I don't know about others, but it made a tremendous impression on me. Until the end of the film, I was confused about what was going on, but at the end I was stunned—the finale leaves room for real flights of fancy. I was very pleased that, unlike most other films in this genre, the film has a very interesting and important message that leaves no one indifferent.