![]() The filmmakers decided that this would be unsatisfying in translation to cinema and so invented a third act of their own. ![]() ![]() Lovecraft's stories frequently end just as their protagonists make some startling, mind-blowing discovery, leaving what happens next entirely to the reader. The second issue with many Lovecraft stories is that they quite often present only the first two acts of what would seem to be a three-act drama. Indeed, this approach facilitated the story. It's a perfectly reasonable approach and one that (largely) didn't bother me, because it didn't affect the flow of the story itself. The movie deals with this by introducing several new characters, as well as beefing up the role of Akeley's son, George (who's only mentioned offhandedly in the short story), so as to make them rather than letters the conduits through which much of the exposition is conveyed. Like many Lovecraft stories, "The Whisperer in Darkness" has two "problems." The first is that much of its "action" takes place in the form of letters between Wilmarth and Akeley. Intrigued by the sudden change, Wilmarth heads to Vermont and there, bit by bit, learns the truth. He urges Wilmarth to visit him and to bring with him all their correspondence, especially the phonograph recording he sent to him. Later, Akeley seems to change his mind, claiming that his initial fears had been unjustified. Wilmarth, a skeptic, dismisses Akeley's claims out of hand at first, only to second guess himself after more letters arrive from Akeley, some of them providing proof, such as a phonograph recording of the aliens speaking. Akeley explains that the remote hills of Vermont are home to an extraterrestrial race with sinister intentions and that it is they who are behind the recent oddities. These events come to Wilmarth's attention in part because of letters he receives from a man living in Vermont, Henry Akeley. The story concerns the investigations of a Miskatonic University professor named Albert Wilmarth into strange events occurring in backwoods Vermont. The Whisperer in Darkness is a 104-minute long adaptation of Lovecraft's 1931 short story of the same name. Of the two adaptations, I think the 2005 silent film version of The Call of Cthulhu is the greater success, both in terms of fidelity to its literary source and in finding a medium almost perfectly suited to it, but The Whisperer in Darkness is nevertheless noteworthy, if only as a reminder that, in the 21st century, dedicated fans now have the tools to do what Hollywood has either forgotten or, more likely, no longer cares to do: understand classic literature as more than just an IP mine for the creation of its next soulless blockbuster. Lovecraft Historical Society have succeeded not once but twice in adapting a Lovecraft story to film. I can't count how often I've heard it claimed, generally by people only passingly familiar with his work, that Lovecraft is "unfilmable." Despite that, the good folks at the H.P. Its competition in this area is both small and not especially praiseworthy, but I mean this most sincerely as a compliment. Even with all of its divergences from its source text - some forgivable, some not - The Whisperer in Darkness is still one of the best movies directly based on an H.P.
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