"God's not supposed to be a hack horror writer."
I was in need of comfort after the endurance test of Wolf Creek 2, so I turned to an old favorite. It’s unfortunately John Carpenter’s last moment of greatness, but it’s one hell of a way to close things out. ...Madness might not be his most taught or suspenseful film (that would be The Thing), but it’s certainly his smartest. I somehow neglected to notice this on every single prior viewing, but Carpenter didn’t write it himself, which I found surprising since it’s full of his dry, gallows humor and much of the metaphysical dialogue of which he’s so fond. (During one of the overcooked discussions between our hero and his companion on the nature of reality, I turned to my girlfriend and asked, “Is this a deleted scene from True Detective?”) At any rate, ...Madness takes such delirious delight in toying with, subverting, and pointing out the horror tropes it gleefully trucks in that it carries you over its flaws, such as Carpenter’s rather out-of-place soundtrack and the fact that in the end, it doesn’t really say all that much. (An indictment of the power of pop culture? A warning not to take the horror genre so seriously? A condemnation of the genre's tendency to fall back on familiar structures? I dunno.) I first watched this film as I was deep in the throes of a teenage Stephen King adoration, and just on the cusp of a Lovecraft obsession, which was perfect timing - the film’s antagonist is an amalgamation of the two of them, with all their flaws and strengths. Oh, and I’d like to start a petition that Sam Neil should be in a larger number of horror films. His presence isn’t guaranteed to make for a great movie (Daybreakers isn’t anyone’s favorite anything), but he is never less than fully engaged and really seems to believe in what he’s doing.
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