The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthuhlu (2009): Review/Lookback

Our intention with these articles was to share some really low quality finds with you. But with our last two reviews the movies turned out to be ok. If this keeps up we are going to have to rename this series “from the treasure box of Netflix.” The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu was pretty good. Of course the author of this article may be biased since he absolutely adores H.P. Lovecraft. And it is an excuse for him to make all kinds of literary allusions throughout the article. We’ll try to keep him in line though.

The film opens with a great scene of a sea monster attack, at sea. We get to see a great and incredibly fake looking entrail removal. We are then transported to Miskatonic University where we find out that the Cult of Cthulu has found half of the Cthulu relic which will reawaken our favorite pulpy and tentacled Elder God. The only person who can save the world is the last living descendent of H.P. Lovecraft himself.

Unfortunately the last living descendent turns out to be a totally average guy named Jeff. Jeff hates adventure. And apparently fun as well. He initially refuses the call to adventure (in fact, he has never heard of H.P. Lovecraft). It isn’t until the house is attacked by fish monsters (who look like something out of a 1950s science fiction film) and meet the dreaded Starspawn that he decides that this whole Cthulu thing might be real. He takes his roommate Charlie (a hardcore comic book geek) and his former classmate Paul (a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan) and heads out to save the world. They end up at the desert looking for a man named Captain Olaf. They think he may be able to tell them what to do as he survived an attack by the killer fish people. All along the way the Cult of Cthulu attempts to thwart their world saving mission. It finally ends in a showdown between the killer fish people and Starspawn vs our band of misfit heroes. Starspawn is able to piece together the relic and everyone except Jeff is immediately thrown into excruciating pain. But since he has the Lovecraft gene (which repels the effect of Cthulu) he is able to blow up Starspawn and save the world from the terrible things that lay below the Earth.

So how was it? We’ll start with the negative. The costumes were awful. H.P. Lovecraft had an incredibly macabre imagination. He helped craft what is considered modern horror. So these creatures really should have been scarier. They did look like something that came out of the film The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). Which is unacceptable for a film made in the past ten years. We’ve seen things at Halloween that were scarier. It makes us thankful they didn’t show Cthulu because we are sure we would have been disappointed. The only other part of this film that frustrated us was Kyle Davis’ role as Jeff. Jeff is supposed to be related to H.P. frickin’ Lovecraft. We were waiting for him to come into his own, but he never really does. And he’s surrounded by these amazingly geeky guys and Captain Olaf who discusses how the killer fish people tried to mate with him. Even the creepy Cult of Cthulu people overshadow our main character.

Besides these two things, the film was very fun. Barak Hardley did an incredible job playing our Lovecraft obsessed Geek Paul. He single handedly made the film funny. He also played a Geek very well (and trust us, it takes one to know one). We also really adored Gregg Lawrence in his role as Captain Olaf. He was absurd and bizarre. And it was beautiful.

Should you see this movie? If you adore H.P. Lovecraft as much as we do, yes! But only when the stars are right… 

Den of Geek Rating: 3 Out of 5 Stars