My Hallowe’en movie, Dagon (or, more precisely, H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon), was great. Seriously, it was surprisingly good. By which I mean that by any normal standards it would be a bit crap - questionable acting, average writing being the worst of it’s sins - but by low budget, independent sfx fuelled, blood, gore and gratuitous nudity standards, it’s pretty good.

It might be that it would appeal to fans of H.P.Lovecraft more than anyone else. As mentioned before, it’s a retelling of the classic Lovecraft story, The Shadow Over Innsmouth although it updates it to the 21st century and relocates the action from New England to Spain. Briefly: a young man and his girlfriend get shipwrecked off the Spanish coast and find themselves in the old town of Imboca (lit. In mouth. Innsmouth, geddit?) They find the inhabitants to be… a little odd.

I expected the film to be more serious than it was but it was quite humourous at times in an Evil Dead sort of way. To be honest, if this had been made 10-15 years earlier, I could easily have imagined Bruce Campbell in the lead role. That being said, the film does lack the extreme outlandishness of the Evil Dead films (and certainly misses the dynamism of Sam Raimi’s direction too) but nevertheless, there are some moments which do tickle. Of course, these are juxtaposed by the rest of the film which is quite creepy and, at times, pretty gross.

Once the action starts, it rarely lets up. With the exception of one lengthy exposition scene (all told in flashback) it’s pretty much a chase film all the way through. There may well have been room to split the exposition into smaller parts and let the hero find out more for himself than having it all expalined to him but then again, it’s pretty much in keeping with the original story and anyone who’s read it will recognise most of the characters, locations and setups. The chase itself is one of those never ending nightmares where there’s never any escape around any corner. The tension is slowly ramped up leading to a couple of very gory scenes and a satisfying climax that certainly delivers on what has gone before.

One thing that the film does have in its favour is some pretty reasonable direction and cinematography. The action is well shot and the village of Imboca is beautiful in a grim, rain-soaked, shrouded in sea-mist kind of way. The CGI effects are a bit obvious but, fortunately, are used sparingly and don’t really interfere.

All in all, this is a film for genre lovers and Lovecraft fans only. What it lacks in substance it more than makes up for in entertainment value and is one of the better films of it’s kind that I’ve seen recently.