MC
Marco Castellini
•John Trent (Sam Neil) is an insurance investigator specializing in fraud who is tasked with finding Sutter Cane, a best-selling horror writer who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The investigation leads him to an unknown town, Hobb's End, not even marked on road maps, which seems like a copy of a country described in a chilling story by the writer. With his arrival in the sinister town, Trent begins a journey into horror, between reality and madness... After leaving an indelible mark among slasher films with "Halloween" and among fantasy horror with "The Thing", John Carpenter dives back into pure horror with a great film that manages to blend metaphysics and literature (H.P. Lovecraft), suspense and splatter with a skillful balance. An absolutely original subject and plot, "chilling" scenes that manage to be horrifying but never exaggerated, in a perfect mix of terror and horror, and a dark and - in some ways - grotesque ending, are the key elements of this splendid horror movie. A highly original film, built on the tension of the illogical and the paranormal (the old man on the bicycle, the hotel owner, the desecrated church...) and on the black unease that Carpenter's music and the film's visionary photography manage to insinuate into the viewer. Apocalyptic, but not without irony, rich in directorial, scenographic, and sound inventions (musical score, as usual, curated by the director), skillful in suggesting horror without showing it too much. A journey into a delirious nightmare, a one-way ticket to a world of terror, in short, a "mandatory vision" for all genre lovers!
