This movie is really odd. I will say right off that most people probably won’t like it.
This is yet another in the apparently long string of oddly charming, super-low-budget H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. This one, despite being an American production of an American author’s story, feels very British, in the way a great deal of it, most of it even, is people sitting in ordinary rooms having mannered conversations, played almost like a very talky, British drama. It’s also updated to modern times, but played as an odd hybrid of Victorian-seeming dialog and modern tropes, but again, the whole thing is so mannered, it’s only a little strange.
It does eventually go more places than that, but it takes a loooooooong time before it does. But, when it does, it’s, well, oddly charming. It has occasional video effects of the kind many low-budget films try, thinking they’ll look cool, but in this case, they do look cool. Some striking occasionally images and cinematography throughout. The kind of “artsy” odd cuts that so often don’t work, but, again, here, somehow they kind of do.
Looking it up after watching, it’s very widely panned, which I do understand. Definitely too slow and tough to digest, most people will probably think it’s just bad. But to me, it’s one of those movies that’s kind of its own thing, and consistently so, from start to finish… or at least from the very late point it finally proceeds beyond people just sitting in rooms talking, to the finish. And it low-key worked for me because of it. I kind of liked it, in a strange way. I might watch it again sometime.