Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Best movie of this year hands down!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

You know what's not a good thing in a movie? When you have a cave with big, massive rocks, and an actor bumps into said rock, and the rock moves, because it's a prop rock and weighs nothing. This is the kind of thing that really annoys me. How hard is it to re-shoot that short little scene? Or to make the rock heavier, or to bolt it to the floor. Come on! Anyway, I can let this kind of thing pass, if the movie is good. But if the movie is mediocre, well, it sure as hell is ain't not gon' help!Alright. This is a chaotic, slightly confusing mess of a movie. Three parts, by three different directors. I found the last one to be the best one. And of course the wraparound starring Jeffrey Combs. He was basically the main reason why I checked this out, I god damn love Jeffrey Combs.The stories are, well, alright. I won't say more about each one than the first one I didn't care much for. The second one had a slightly interesting story, and some decent makeup/effects. The last one had some cool imagery. The movie is pretty wild, and has it's really disgusting moments. A certain "melting-scene" was a highlight for me. Jeffrey Combs, and parts of the last segment keeps this from a really low score for me.

I've seen a couple of Lovecraft based movies, and, oddly, all of them were pretty good. I appreciate when a film crew manages to capture the spirit of the book being covered. And from that viewpoint, an HPL movie would hardly show any gore or monsters at all, but, instead, build our expectations through time. The plot would be intense, although not necessarily very dynamic. The final moment of the movie would unveil a grim truth, probably rendering the protagonists insane. So, having set the (in my humble opinion) optimal lovecraftian movie criteria, let's watch Necronomicon! 90% of the movie's budget was probably spent on monster fx - a waste of resources! The acting is not very bright, the characters barely believable. As for the stories, they're a desecration of all things Lovecraft. Unconnected scenes. Almost completely unrelated to any book, and devoid of sense, they made me cover my eyes in shame. Someone here's written in a comment that this movie is for Lovecraft fans only. Boy, were they wrong! If you're a Lovecraft fan, stay away from this movie! Run, like it's the Dunwich horror!. Else, if you're a classical gore flick fan, go ahead, you might like this mindless collage of scenes painted red.

I really enjoyed this movie. Great stories done rather well.I just watched this movie today after trying to get my hands on it for several years, so here is my fresh dead review.This is truly a brave attempt at translating HP Lovecraft's works into film, a truly difficult and daunting task to do with any skill. Attempts to illustrate the alluded-to but barely observed horror of most of the genre tend to fail because the substance is not generally visual. It is a state of mind. But I was pleasantly surprised by this movie and I will explain why.The house we begin at where the Necronomicon is rediscovered is atmospheric and the directing is also rather visceral and refreshing. The camera work is very creative and flexible utilizing many different styles, a lot of askew profile shots or detached views from above, even the use of black and white to denote a tragic flashback is skillfully used here.The music is also quite nice. The casting equally talented. The story of a man whose family is taken from him, he turns from God, and a strange demonic creature comes to him, bringing strange solace in the form of the ancient book: The Necronomicon, where the man discovers a ritual to bring his family back from the dead. The man utters archaic iambic pentameter, tossing his own blood upon the pentagram. "That which is not dead can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die, In his lair Cthulhu waits dreaming."And though his family does return, they return in a monkey's paw sort of damnation and terror, but why? Why the extent of this just to say, "Gotcha!" in a truly horrifying manner? To extinguish the light, any semblance of hope, or effort. Indeed we are speaking of the Necronomicon, a cursed book brought to man by the truly damned.The third story has music I know I have heard somewhere before, somewhere not too long ago I might add, but I just can't place it! Maybe on an episode of Dexter? Some of the lines are so cheesy but entertaining, like this little jewel."I just came by to watch you practice your flute playing, only you're going to practice on my instrument."Also unlike most horror these days, it is not hidden it is not behind a screen it is not off camera, it is close up, visceral. You really feel it the way horror is meant to be felt.

H.P. Lovecraft's gloomy short stories about obsession and the supernatural monsters that lurk all around us unnoticed by society at large naturally lend themselves to a multi-storied omnibus fright film format. Well, this trio of truly terrifying tales does the master full justice, combining both supremely sepulchral midnight-in-the-graveyard moodiness and jump-out-at-you startling straightforward shocks with often genuinely frightening results.First yarn, "The Drowned" - Wealthy Bruce Payne inherits a crumbling old seaside hotel that unbeknown to Payne has a foul carnivorous demon residing in the murky basement. Directed with exceptional style and grace by Chistopher Gans, this particularly chilling humdinger is highlighted by Richard Lynch's touching turn as a bitter man who renounces his faith in God after losing his wife and child in a shipwreck and direct-to-video erotic thriller perennial Maria Ford's strikingly eerie, ethereal and even strangely sexy cameo as Payne's dead girlfriend who's resurrected as a ghostly, pallid, mossy-haired zombie.Second vignette, "The Cold" - Sweet young runaway Bess Myer rents a room at a shabby apartment with a lonely, reclusive scientist (movingly played by David Warner) residing on the weirdly freezing top floor. When Myer befriends the sad, fragile Warner she learns that he has discovered the secret of immortality, which not surprisingly comes at an especially terrible price: Warner can only remain alive by constant fresh injections of human spinal fluid! Director Shusuke Kaneko manages to milk considerable poignancy from this haunting parable about the horrible price one must pay for cheating fate, coaxing fine supporting performances from Millie Perkins as Warner's protective landlady, Gary Graham as Myers' abusive, incestuous brute stepbrother, and Dennis Christopher as a foolishly snoopy newspaper reporter.Third and most gruesome anecdote, "Whispers" - Gung-ho female cop Signy Coleman and her more sensible partner Obba Babatunde stumble across the dark, dank and forbidding underground lair of these ancient subterranean monsters with a voracious appetite for bone marrow. Director Brian Yunza eschews the spooky atmospherics of the previous segments for a graphically visceral approach that's crudely effective in a gory, mondo disgusto, gross you out hideous sort of way. "Return of the Living Dead" 's Don Calfa and Judith Drake are wonderfully quirky as the nutty old couple guardians of the savage flesh-eating flying beasts who need new victims to keep their race thriving for all eternity.All these stories in and of themselves certainly smoke, as does the thankfully solid wraparound narrative starring Lovecraft movie vet Jeffrey ("Re-Animator," "From Beyond") Combs, who's perfectly cast as the author himself who visits a secret library to check out the legendary tome of evil "Necronomicon" and almost gets killed in the process. Barely recognizable under heavy make-up which makes him resemble a gaunt Bruce Campbell, Combs simply shines in a role he was seemingly destined to portray. Moreover, the uniformly superb special effects by such dependable artists as Tom Savini, Todd Masters and Screaming Mad George are as ghastly and grotesque as they ought to be, the splatter is likewise properly revolting and plentiful, the tone suitably creepy throughout, and, most importantly, the individual stories ultimately cohere into a provocative and penetrating meditation on man's tenuous hold on reality, exposing a scary netherworld that if intruded upon by us stupidly inquisitive mortals can prove to be quite deadly and dangerous. A superior horror anthology.