When I think about Banshee Chapter, I keep finding myself saying “almost” or “nearly” or “not quite” over and over.
It is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond.
Well, almost.
The original version of the script started life as a first draft of Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark, but obviously that didn’t quite happen.
Nor did Christopher Nolan actually direct the film even though he was attached to it for a while and chose to do Interstellar instead.
While this is a story about a lone reporter chasing an unexpectedly huge and disturbing story, it isn’t actually found footage, even though the director, Blair Erickson, shot most of the film in a style which looks like found footage, with lots of grain, color distortion and variable film quality.
But what Banshee Chapter does actually do is that it takes us on a strange trip through some very paranoid territory, packed with references to MK Ultra, mind control, designer drugs, the CIA, NSA, Numbers Stations, and super-secret, illicit — and very unethical — human experimentation.
Anne Roland — a journalist working for an online magazine — wants to know what happened to her old college friend James Hirsch, who vanished after he tried a drug developed for use in the MK Ultra experiments. She’s not sure whether she was in love with James or not, but is determined to discover what happened to him.
However, no one is willing to talk to her, including many of her old contacts. She does find a clue in James’ things which leads her to Thomas Blackburn, a legendary gonzo journalist obsessed with drugs, booze and guns who has isolated himself in a remote villa.
If you hadn’t noticed, he bears a striking resemblance to Hunter S. Thompson. He is also played with a lot of vigor by Ted Levine.
The underlying idea here is a somewhat clever one, although it is used mostly to give us a few weird glimpses of shadowy figures. However, it is never developed much beyond that basic idea, other than an even more bizarre discovery later on at an abandoned MK Ultra research center.
The ties to the original story are minimal at best, and we never get a glimpse of Lovecraft’s world beyond our world with all its horrific creatures.
Well, other than a few mysterious shapes in the darkness. But they have a more mundane explanation when we finally get to that point.
Mostly.
I’ll confess that I liked this one, even though I don’t think it’s that much of a Lovecraftian film (even when you consider how far so many of them have been from the source material). It’s a creepy little effort which builds nicely to a big finale and (of course) a final hook.
But it never achieves greatness, and is ultimately a somewhat minor film, one which could have done so much more with its ideas.
Particularly if it had leaned more heavily into Lovecraft’s beyond…
rivets on the poster 