A New Film Seeks to Explore the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft
June 10, 2014 by dracs
Where do your dreams take you at night? Perhaps, as you drift off into sleep, you might find yourself in the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft, a realm where the human mind is left to expand and the rules of causality no longer rule. A realm that is now being turned into a film, with your help on IndieGoGo.
The Dream Cycle is a term used to describe a number of Lovecraft's stories, each dealing, in some way, with a dreaming realm, shaped by the sleeping minds of humanity.
The Dreamlands is based particularly around the short stories “Celephaïs”, “The White Ship”, “The Strange High House in the Mist” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, as well as others from the cycle, to produce a new dark fantasy tale, which remains true to Lovecraft's writings.
The film will tell the story of Roland, a young orphan who is led by an old man into a strange new world, the world of dreams. The old man is revealed to be the king of this world and wishes for Roland to be his successor in shaping this sleeping landscape. However, Roland must struggle with his own, dark secrets, and must whether to keep building The Dreamlands, or destroy the creations of those who came before.
The film is being made by German film maker Huan Vu, whose previous work includes the 2007 Warhammer 40,000 fan film Damnatus, and Die Farbe, an award winning adaptation of Lovecraft's story "The Colour Out of Space", which was described by renowned Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi as "without question the best Lovecraftian film ever made".
While there is no word yet on a final release date, it has been stated that the makers hope for the film to be appearing between 2016 - 2017.
All in all I am really excited about this project. The guys behind it certainly seem to have the skills to make it work (in Lovecraft circles, getting the nod of approval from S. T. Joshi pretty much shows that you know your Lovecraft), while the glimpses of the surreal world they're creating that we have seen so far strongly remind me of the film Mirror Mask, definitely a good sign.
Are you going to help build The Dreamlands on IndieGoGo?
Strange, I never noticed that there hasn’t been a film of HP Lovecraft stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_(2007_film)
Thanks for the info
the Reanimator films are loosely based on the character Herbert West
http://www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/moviestv/based.aspx
Die Farbe was dark and creepy so it’ll be interesting to see where he goes with The Dreamlands
I hope it’s more faithfull to Lovecraft than Die Farbe, I didnt like that one because they dumped the extraterrestial alien elements and replaced it with christian based daemonic horror which is very Unlovecraftian IMO. I have yet to ever see a truly good HP Lovecraft film though – so far the best two arent even based on his stuff but convey the cosmic horror far better than any of the actual adaptations I have seen (Carpenters The Thing and Alien)
John Carpenter also did “In the Mouth of Madness”, which is well worth checking out if Lovecraft is your thing.
I’ll definitely be checking this out and if you guy’s haven’t seen Dagon yet – watch it! There’s also a silent movie in the style of the 20’s of Call of Cthulhu that I recommend as well. Cthulhu Fh’tagn! Also I think there was a short of the Music of Erich Zann which I haven’t seen yet. I always feel that Lovecraft’s material is very tricky to bring across in film, as a lot of it is psychological. One of the best pieces of Lovecraft media is the Dark Corners of the Earth game, even if it went nuts towards… Read more »
This could be interesting, but the trailer really didn’t spark my interest.
Distribution issues could also spell doom for this. I’d love to see Damnatus but I’ve never managed to buy it… (no I won’t watch a pirated copy off Youtube).