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 Dagon Review by Ray Garton
Written by:
Starring: Paul and Barbara are sailing with friends off the coast of Spain when a bad storm comes up and crashes their boat against some rocks. One of their friends is injured and pinned down inside the boat, so Paul and Barbara agree to take the raft to the small fishing village near by and get help. The raft springs a leak before they’re even halfway there, and they barely make it to shore. Once they get there, a priest comes out on the dock to meet them. The priest talks to a couple fisherman on a boat at the dock and tells Paul and Barbara that the fishermen will take Paul out to the crashed boat, but Barbara must stay behind and talk to the police. Only after Paul has taken off with the fishermen does Barbara notice that the priest has webbed fingers. When Paul reaches the boat, his two friends are gone, and all that’s left behind is a lot of blood. He goes back to shore, but instead of finding Barbara, he finds that the strange, shuffling residents of the village of Imboca are after him. He meets an old drunk named Ezequiel who tells him about the village’s history, and how the people there came to worship a monstrous sea god called Dagon. Director Stuart Gordon has mined the work of H.P. Lovecraft before, with great results. In 1985, he teamed with screenwriter Dennis Paoli and Brian Yuzna to make Re-Animator, a film that took movie gore to new heights (or depths, depending on your point of view). The following year, they teamed up again on From Beyond. Each movie had a gruesome sense of humor and some good scares. In Dagon, the attempts at humor aren’t quite as successful. But the movie is very true to Lovecraft’s stories "Dagon" and "Shadow Over Innsmouth." Lovecraft hasn’t fared well at the movies over the years, mostly because in Lovecraft’s fiction, the frights come more from what’s not seen than what is seen. His writing is heavily dependent on mood and atmosphere rather than plot, and it doesn’t always adapt well to the screen. But here, Lovecraft has been captured on film fairly successfully. The village of Imboca is a fitting substitute for Innsmouth. It’s grim and claustrophobic, dark and brooding. We get glimpses of people shuffling around in the shadows. Windows and doors are boarded up. It’s a dead place, but there is life there in the dark. The movie’s greatest setback is the wide-eyed, goofball performance by Ezra Godden. Gordon has him behaving like a low-rent Jerry Lewis at times. It’s an attempt at humor that just doesn’t work. If anything, it dampens the effect of the rest of the movie. But it doesn’t ruin it altogether. Another problem is Francisco Rabal’s almost impenetrable accent. It’s so thick that it’s very difficult to understand what he’s saying most of the time. It’s thick enough to warrant subtitles, but none are provided. But in spite of these faults, Dagon is a chilling little horror film with atmosphere to spare. The residents are creepy, but the village itself is a character, with its narrow alleys and cobbled streets. Paul is haunted by terrifying dreams – the dream sequences are memorable – in which he is approached by a beautiful woman who is ... well, not entirely a woman. When he finds that woman in Imboca, he realizes there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Gordon draws us into this nightmare with style. The residents’ pursuit of Paul is relentless and frightening. Gordon’s non-Lovecraft projects have not been so successful. Here’s hoping he continues to mine Lovecraft’s work in the future – he’s good at it.
[Out of a possible four Bloodshot Eyeballs.]
Dagon
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2001
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