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Dagon (2001) - A Film So Damp YOU Will Want a Towel Handy

 


When I was younger, I spent a lot of my time perusing lists of “cult films” to check out, paying special attention to anything horror-related which is my happy place as anybody who has read most of the entries in this blog could probably guess. This is how I first became acquainted with Stuart Gordon and his Lovecraft adaptations with Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, Re-Animator and From Beyond, which instantly became all time favorite films of mine upon the very first viewing. For many years I was just happy with those two films, but in recent years every now and then I’ve been known to throw on one of the lower-budget productions Gordon has done which have always been entirely competently made even if there are highs and lows, but this is my first time watching this much later entry into his Lovecraft cycle.

There are some signs that this didn’t have quite the backing his earlier Lovecraft films did. The lead actor doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, and he never quite sells having charisma early in the film or being horrified by unspeakable terrors in the middle or being a badass survivor towards the end. He’s just kind of a flat, generic actor of which you can find in any lower budget horror film over the decades although that can sometimes have its benefits to making his fight scenes seem more realistic and purposefully clumsy. The use of CGI is just straight horrible even for the early 2000s, most of the “underwater” scenes utilize it and they look barely better than a PS2 cutscene of the era and its heavy use in the early parts of the film can legitimately be an obstacle to getting into the film along with the not particularly well written or engaging dialogue between the lead and his girlfriend in the opening 20 minutes. Which doesn’t necessarily abate, you will not find many clever lines although that fact is smartly obscured by the fact that English isn’t the first language for many actors, quite a lot of lines are in Spanish or fish-people language, and most of the exposition is dropped in purposefully broken English.

One thing you cannot say though is that Stuart Gordon doesn’t know how to direct and design a damn effective horror film. The endless and oppressive rain, the sets that even indoors all give the appearance of being moldy and damp and either disused or used too much, the claustrophobic trap design of the town. The camera is fluid through endless medium-slow pursuit throughout much of the film and shows that Gordon remained a pro at doing what he does best. The makeup and prosthetic work on all the residents of the town is fantastic even if mostly shown at a glance more often than not, and really provide the otherworldly air to the whole proceeding and make it feel like a genuinely scary and alien situation for anybody which is only heightened by relocating the film from New England to Spain to which they establish the lead character has only the slightest of links. They pick and choose when to utilize gore in the film so it isn’t super frequent, but it is exceptionally effective when they do including one very explicit scene that seems to go on for 5 squeamish minutes (saying this as a good thing) when in reality it is a fraction of that. I also thought that Raquel Meroño was a perfectly solid scream queen who really could have used with more screen time throughout the course of the film.

Even when we are talking straight-to-VHS territory (shoutout to the super underrated Castle Freak he did with Full Moon Features in the mid 90s), Stuart Gordon almost always turns in a film that hits all the fundamentals of solid directing and makes the best use of what limited resources he has available to him. I remember RedLetterMedia once called a film by him that snuck onto their roster which I believe was the okay Robot Jox as being “too good to be on Best of the Worst”. This is one of those cases. He seems to put every cent into effectively building the most bleak, decayed, disgusting, moist environment which he possibly can and it works entirely. You cannot help but start to feel more and more vicariously uncomfortable the longer you watch, physically as well as in terms of creep factor. Also we cannot forget how furious noted racist HP Lovecraft would likely be if he knew he’d been adapted by primarily Spanish speaking actors, so that is of course an attribute as well.

It probably won’t blow you away or change your perception of on-screen horror like early Gordon films did me as a teenanger/young adult, but what do I love to promote more than a solid, engaging B-film?

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