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THE SHUNNED HOUSE
Produced by Valerio Zuccon
Edited, Photographed, and Directed by Ivan Zuccon
Written by Enrico Saletti and Ivan ZucconAlex - Giuseppe Lorusso
Rita - Federica QuaglieriI'm sure I'll incur the wrath of horror fans everywhere when I say this, but the writings of H.P. Lovecraft bore me silly. His wishy-washy protagonists could do themselves a world of good by going down to the corner backbone store and picking one up. The handful of short stories I suffered through were enough to turn me off for good, and for that reason I'm utterly amazed at the sheer number of people turning his work into movies.
When the subject of HPL comes up, as it always does during any horror discussion, people always try to sell me on what Lovecraft did right, atmosphere. My good friend Matt McGarrity likes to refer to HPL as a "dread writer", and not a "horror writer." More so than in cinema, atmosphere goes a long way in literature. If a horror novelist can't work his way under the audience's skin then he has no business in the game.
When it comes to Lovecraft adaptations, fan-films such as FROM BEYOND or RETURN TO INNSMOUTH, work much better than bigger-budgeted productions like LURKING FEAR or the brilliant RE-ANIMATOR in terms of getting the atmosphere to resemble what HPL wrote. That doesn't make them eerie or frightening, just closer representations of the source material. In fact, those short fan-efforts work so well that I've gone out in search of the original stories for comparison.
I like the fan-films better.
Ivan Zuccon's THE SHUNNED HOUSE is a combination of three Lovecraft stories: The Shunned House, The Music of Erich Zann, and Dreams in the Witch House. Not having read the source material, it's hard to comment on the film's faithfulness. If this movie is any indication, the short stories aren't worth seeking out. I'm sure Lovecraft's writing is just as hollow as the movie.
That being said, let me state what I did enjoy about THE SHUNNED HOUSE. The camera work is fantastic, it possesses some of the most beautiful and expressionistic shots I've seen achieved on video. Every composition has a purpose and there's barely a wasted frame. Zuccon, doing double duty as director and director of photography, knows how make the mundane eerie to the extreme. Whether it be a boy's ball bouncing down the stairs or a husband and wife getting out of a car, Zuccon fills his frame with all the "dread" that my friend Matt McGarrity claims to be in Lovecraft's writing. In a sense, Zuccon outdoes the master.
On the other hand, Zuccon has crafted a movie that nearly incomprehensible to follow without a single character worth caring about. It's the difference between polished gold and polished brass, one is worth its weight and the other isn't.
Zuccon uses the title house as the linking device for various moments in time. Each story takes place in a different room. The movie jumps back and forth through time without so much as a slamming door to indicate the shift. It's easy to see why other audiences are having such a rough time following the film. With a director as visually accomplished as Zuccon, one would think he'd come up with a way to visually convey the time shifts. That's in no way dumbing-down the project for the audience, but giving them the needed information necessary to make the connections.
The characters brood around as if they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders but they reveal little of their pain, and ultimately come across lacking depth since the audience only sees two dimensional caricatures. Not one character posses an arc, or even a defining characteristic outside of their sadness. Their pain is shared by all to the point where it's a universal commodity.
It's clear Zuccon has a fondness for Lovecraft's work. Even if he weren't bragging on the Mobius forums about being the only faithful Lovecraft movie made, one can see the effort he took to do Lovecraft's work justice. The problem is that he was too faithful and forgot to give his movie a soul, and that's where his movie fails.
www.braindamagefilms.com
The Shunned House