i must be around the 10x mark on this film.
a few things that i noticed on this viewing:
the script is really quite shockingly lazy in parts. he really needed a writing partner to do another few passes with him. some of the metaphysical stuff, especially early on, barely holds together—but it holds together enough, so it’s fine. the exposition of how the dreams come from the future felt rock solid. the most egregious evidence of laziness in the script has to do with all the characters and relationships. always the most bothersome to me is the sexual relationship between the two “leads,” which is deeply unearned and chauvinistic. i think he worked backwards from the moment around the climax of the film, where he knew that movies ought to have a sexual/romantic beat—so he just did the absolute minimum to establish a sexual relationship in the first act. it doesn’t work, it’s deeply lazy.
this level of laziness is evident in certain pointless action sequences. there’s one moment, late in the film, when mustache guy jumps out the window only to climb back up 10 seconds later. a completely pointless sequence that only lasts a minute or two, but carpenter, savvy and workmanlike filmmaker as he is, is intelligent enough to know that you need to insert little bits of action to keep the film afloat. there are a few other examples of random 5–10 second cuts to utterly pointless bits of movement, interspersed throughout the main narrative, just in order to keep things buoyant. charitably, i would say that to some extent this is a function of the budget and confined location, but they ultimately come across as laziness, or lack of care.
the script does have a very interesting and unique structure that contributes to the film’s overall atmosphere. the ebbs and flows, valleys and peaks typical of film writing come at odd points. given that the credits are still rolling 15 minutes in, the first kill always seems to happen really quickly.
my favourite feature of this film is the continuous build to the climactic hallway sequence. all of the foreboding, the despair that sets in (“no-one out there can help us”), all the scary monsters, all contribute to what i think is the single most effective cinematic representation of lovecraftian cosmic horror. when the female lead runs into the hallway, there’s a shambling zombie behind her; her begrudging love interest is getting his ass kicked by an insane cackling giant of a man who has returned from the dead after cutting his own throat in front of her; in the room, she sees a priest pinned against the wall, helpless—and then, a monstrous figure of a woman, skin melted off, reaching through a wall-size mirror into another dimension where some unfathomable elder god extends its reach back into this world. the camera cuts to all of these things, but returns to her multiple times. she is frozen in fright, unable to comprehend, absolutely overwhelmed by all of these converging horrors. the single best moment in carpenter’s filmography—one of the best moments in horror—and the reason this film is my favourite of his, despite having so many flaws. this moment would not hit as hard if the credits didn’t unspool over 15 minutes; if the baseline in the score weren’t so thick; if the characters weren’t academics, who we know have an intimate knowledge of the divide between faith and Enlightenment they are working across, and all it entails. the atmosphere and slow build of the entire movie is in service of this short sequence. marvelous!