Necronomicon

Right, well I have to admit that when I stumbled upon the 2023 horror movie titled "Necronomicon" and seeing that the movie had Lysette Anthony on the cast list, then of course I had to sit down and watch the movie. No doubt about that.

However, this movie is one of the worst Lovecraftian-inspired movies that I have stumbled upon. First of all, the movie starts off with more than 10 minutes of forcing the audience to sit through tedious monologue delivered by a man fully stripped of emotion, while he is driving recklessly through the streets while chased by the police. There was zero understanding of how laws of physics works in that long, long car chase scene, and it looked like discarded footage from a 1990s computer game. It was abysmal to watch.

Not even with the likes of Lysette Anthony and Bai Ling on the cast list did the movie stand a snowballs chance in Hell. The actors and actresses in the movie literally had nothing to work with in terms of script, dialogue or character gallery.

Then there was the prolonged dialogue, which was very repetitive, and the fact that someone pronounces the word "Necronomicon" as "Necromonicon" was just laughable.

The storyline in "Necronomicon" was rubbish, as were the majority of the acting performances and the delivery of the infantile dialogue. It felt like nothing more than an amateurish attempt at making a movie.

Do yourself a favor and stay well clear of "Necronomicon", especially if you enjoy the written works of Lovecraft.

My rating of "Necronomicon", from director Richard Driscoll, lands on a one out of ten stars. This was an abysmal affront to the legacy of H. P. Lovecraft.

This popped up on in my suggested movies feed and I immediately dismissed it as direct-to-video trash. But upon further inspection, it has real actors in it...surely it can't be that bad. Bai Ling, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Sizemore...actual actors! Maybe this is a diamond in the rough? Yeah, nope.

It opens with a monologue that makes Ben Stein's voice seem enthusiastic and emotive. The rambling dialog is over what appears to be a video made in a video game engine--mostly an inexplicable car chase that makes the Fast & Furious franchise seem tame. Oh...and a random helicopter shooting into traffic. Who knows at this point? There are some "hell" scenes that look like they're pulled from Doom. That's kind of neat.

Somehow it tries to tie Lovecraft and Alistair Crowley together in some nonsensical plot about the creation of the Necronomicon. Any video not pulled from a game engine is wildly overexposed and accompanied by dialog more painful than the droning "music," if you can call it that.

It's only redeeming quality is that it's about 75 minutes long. Honestly, I'd rather have a root canal than watch this again.

As a card carrying member of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, I will start by saying this is a hard pass. The makers of this film clearly have ZERO knowledge of the source material. Numerous characters in the film mispronounce the name of the Necromonicon... The titular tome... Multiple times. Also, aside from a character at the beginning of the film seemingly reading off the biography of H. P. Lovecraft from Wikipedia, there is virtually no mention of Lovecraft or Lovecraftian themes, tropes, etc. As a matter of fact, it's almost like the writers of the film wanted to make a film about Aleister Crowley instead but wanted to use the Lovecraft name to snag unsuspecting viewers like me. I can safely say, Aleister Crowley had nothing to do with Lovecraft's fictional Necromonicon, as it was written by the mad Arab Al Alhazzared. Also, the film is all wrapped up in Christian demonography which has zero to do with the elder beings and old gods of the actual Lovecraftian Necromonicon.

All of that aside, even as an enthusiast of schlocky B movies, I found this film to be horribly written, terribly paced, it had awful washed out audio throughout. The entire first twelve minutes is a weird Sin City-esque CGI car chase, complete with awful rear projection behind the driver who delivers a Frank Miller style monologue the entire time. There's also an awkward sex scene shoehorned in where you get to see Bai Ling's nipples if you're patient enough to get a half hour in. A lot of the "bigger name" actors don't even appear in the film and are simply dubbed into conversations with the main character.

If I could give this film a zero out of ten I would.

I only watched this movie because the other reviewers regarded it so poorly. Surely, it couldn't be that bad? They were not wrong. Everything they wrote is accurate. I made it 6 minutes in before I started fast forwarding through the rest. While it never really got any better, I did notice some naked ladies about half way through it. So, it does have that going for it. I really can't think of any other reason to watch this movie. It is not satisfying on any real level. That being said, I am sure the people that made this movie had a fun time and learned a great deal in the process. Now, I need to type 11 more characters.

I can see why this director has a total of 4 movies to his name, at least up until this one.

Other than the name, which the lead actor can't seem to pronounce correctly; there is so much not related to the H. P. Lovecraft or the Necronomicon. Not to mention the fact that I can't recall the last time a police helicopter fires heavy weapons in the middle of a city, taking out everyone but the bad guy. Who admittedly claims to not be driving his car, but still appears to be driving the car.

Aleister Crowley was not interested in the book, It's not bound in human skin and has nothing to do with Hell or demons. But then again as bad as this "movie" is I'm not surprised they just slapped the name on it just to get people to watch it. When characters can't say the name correctly, sorta points to the fact that the Director didn't know how to or just didn't care and was trying to churn out another movie.

I know less than nothing about making, directing movies but I know enough that when I hire someone and they say the name of what my movie is about, I would make the do it again; until they got it right.

Is it Necronomicon, Necromonicon, Necromomicron. When all else fails, lets just add boobs and ass, that'll make the movie so much better.