The Whisperer in Darkness
The Whisperer in Darkness
| 15 March 2012 (USA)
The Whisperer in Darkness Trailers

Folklore professor Albert Wilmarth investigates legends of strange creatures in the most remote hills of Vermont. His enquiry reveals a terrifying glimpse of the truth that lurks behind the legends.

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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Stevecorp

Don't listen to the negative reviews

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Konterr

Brilliant and touching

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Lachlan Coulson

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

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millsge

When I was 10 to 14, I stayed up as late as my mother let me to watch "Friday Night Creature Features." I began doing this during the summer after my father died. I guess I found some sort of solace in these films where nasty things happened to good people. I projected myself onto the characters and I projected my father (who died of oral tongue cancer) onto the creatures as well. I loved "The Wolfman" and "The Mummy." I liked some Frankenstein films and others like "The Thing" and "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." They were not monsters, until the world took them from where they should have been and put them where the should not have been. This movie took me back to those days, in a good way, and provided me with a hint of the catharsis I was looking for when I was young.

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robertguttman

One cannot help but give full marks to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for their efforts to bring H. P. Lovecraft's eerie stories to the screen in a manner in keeping with the texture and mood of the original material. Although there have been other attempts to film Lovecraft stories, most have generally been unsatisfying failures due to misguided attempts to modernize or glamorize them. Not so with HPLHS, who have gone out their way to keep faithful to the period and locales in which the tales were set, even going so far as give the film the feel of an early-1930s black-and-white movie. Even their logo is an homage to the the old Universal Studios logo of the early 1930s (the studio which produced such classic horror movies as Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy), replacing the familiar airplane-circling-the-earth with a dirigible.The plot involves Albert Wilmarth, a college anthropology professor specializing in folklore, who becomes intrigued by a series of unusual newspaper stories reported from a rural part of Vermont after a period of particularly heavy rains. It seems that bodies have been observed washing down from the mountains in the swollen rivers, bodies which are, reportedly, neither human nor animal. The bodies apparently also recall, among the older inhabitants, old tales of strange beings that live in remote parts of the hills, beings that are neither human nor animal, and possibly not even of terrestrial origin. Wilmarth begins his investigation into these stories on the basis that they are nothing more than mere interesting folklore, but soon finds himself dealing with something far more sinister. Admittedly, the producers of the movie added some material and characters not present in the original story. In fact, the short story actually ends at a point only about one hour into the film. However, the original version was, after all, only a short story, and I suppose the makers felt that they had to add some material to the plot in order to expand the short story into a full-length movie. nevertheless, the movie still does a far better job of evoking the feel of H.P. Lovecraft's writing than any other movie versions of his works, with the only possible exception being the resent silent film version of The Call of Cathulhu, which was made by the same producers.One addition to the film is a debate staged between the protagonist, Professor Wilmarth, and Charles Fort. While that was not a part of H.P. Lovecraft's original story, it is interesting period touch because Charles Fort was actually a real person, a celebrated and controversial author of the early 1900s who was known to contemporaries as "The Mad Genius of the Bronx". Fort, who died in 1932, wrote about what are now called paranormal phenomena before that term was even invented, and is credited, among other things, with coining the word "teleportation".

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Sandy Petersen

I'm Sandy Petersen, and some people know me as a game designer (I wrote the original game Call of Cthulhu, for instance). I helped fund The Whisperer in Darkness, though I had no creative input (and expected none). The movie is, in my obviously prejudiced opinion, a masterwork of taking an unfilmable Lovecraft story, and getting it not only on film, but in such a way to make it accessible to those who have not yet read the tale. I don't understand the reviewer who says it seems like a mishmash of Lovecraft - has he even read the original tale? This movie was taken straight from it. Some characters are added to dramatize events which, in the story, are in the form of posted letters, but that certainly doesn't hurt the film. Yes there is a lot of dialog, but the camera is not static - things move, shadows lurk, and the dialog itself is terrifically ominous. It does not follow the near-standard Hollywood 3-act-play sequence, to its everlasting credit. Instead the sinister elements keep building steadily until they reach a climax and even feature an artsy epilogic montage. Just as with the story, the evidence before Albert Wilmarth (the main character) keeps growing until he can no longer deny his eyes. Even the revelation of the alien horrors is done bit by bit. First we see a footprint, then a blurred photo, then a shadow on a wall, then on a curtain, then a single leg, then a brief shot of one walking offscreen behind some humans. Ultimately we see them fully and they are worth the wait. But it's not just the aliens - every element of the story grows in this manner. As you learn the alien plan bit by bit, the horror and tension mounts. Every death in the movie was unexpected to me. As a long-term expert in horror films, I'm used to being able to peg who lives and who dies often in the opening credits, so this was a nice surprise. The movie has subtlety and class. One good example is the scene with the young girl, Hannah. Albert Wilmarth is hiding out with her in a barn, trying to avoid detection. He converses with her, and tells her of his own daughter, who died of influenza years ago. The scene is touching, but just before it degenerates into bathos, he offers to sing Hannah a song which he once sang to his own child, and Hannah shakes her head, and says, "No". Just in the nick of time! I saw an early version of the film, and this scene with the child is what convinced me to invest my money in this movie. The whole thing is very professional. It is not an action film, though it contains action. It is a cerebral horror film. There are no "boo" moments, and every moment segues logically into every other. It is a tightly knit coherent hole.

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amonovalentradical

What got me to buy tickets to this film, other than my love of HPL, was the fact that I believed it would be true to the source material and be a gripping, creepy scary film. I don't mind if things are changed, but just stay true to what HPL was actually about — horror. This film is not horror by any means — it seems the writers/director took a bunch of great pieces of Lovecraft stories, smashed them together, and then tried to throw in jokes. If you don't know who H.P. Lovecraft is and like black and white campy movies, then go see this by all means, you might like it if you don't mind sitting through about 75 minutes of straight dialog. If you like HPL and are interested in seeing a faithful adaptation of his work or are trying to go see something scary, absolutely don't see this. I only gave it 2 stars — one because it had H.P. Lovecraft's name in the title and the other because they added an extended sequence featuring Charles Fort, which I thought was a great touch even though it was literally completely unnecessary.

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