H. P. Lovecraft’s the Old Ones (2024)

H. P. Lovecraft’s the Old Ones Review

Chad Ferrin gave us The Deep Ones four years ago; it’s basically The Shadow Over Innsmouth by way of Humanoids From the Deep. Now he’s back with H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones.

After the opening credits, which are animated and feature chanting cultists tossing a body into the ocean, we meet Gideon (Benjamin Philip) and his father Dan (Scott Vogel, Attack in LA, It’s Always Smoggy in L.A.). They’re on a fishing trip, but instead of fish, the boy has caught a dead body that isn’t as dead as they think.

The man is Captain Russel Marsh (Robert Miano, Scalper, Donnie Brasco), who remembers being stabbed to death and thrown overboard. Furthermore, he claims to have been captain of The Chase, a 38 footer that went down in 1930 when he saw an otherworldly light and became possessed by The Old Ones.

Of course they don’t believe him until a monster attacks and kills Dan. This leaves Gideon little choice but to help Marsh try to bend time and undo his past actions so that Dan won’t be attacked in the first place. But like any ancient deities worth their salt, The Old Ones have lots of disciples walking around out among humanity. And they will stop at nothing to keep them from changing history.

Ferrin doesn’t stick any closer to Lovecraft’s works this time than he did before even though he puts Lovecraft’s name on it. H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones takes ideas and themes or at least names from many of his stories and mixes them together.

For example: Crawford Tillinghast (Elli Rahn, Fight of the Living Dead, Antidote) and the Resonator from From Beyond are key to his plan for traveling through time; however he has to make a deal with Nyarlathotep (Rico E. Anderson, It’s the Masque of the Polychrome Death, Eddie Poe!, The 5th Passenger) in order to find him. Randolph Carter (Timothy Muskatell, Deadgirl, Dead by Dawn) is another name that will be familiar to Lovecraft fans.

And Ferrin has populated H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones with quite a few monsters for such a low-budget movie fishmen and ghasts that are just actors in masks, plus a tentacled Shoggoth that attacks Marsh in a bathroom stall. Joe Castro’s effects (The Beast Comes at Midnight, Hunting for Herschell) lean toward practical, with some CGI mixed in mostly during the climax. On the other hand, the distorted voice used for the possessed guy gets old real quick.

You should still be able to enjoy The Old Ones even if you haven’t seen The Deep Ones, there’s only one brief reference to specific events of that film (how Marsh ended up in the ocean), and besides him only one other character makes a very quick appearance early on: Ambrose Zadok (Kelli Maroney, Night of the Comet, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet). That said you should see it if you haven’t because it’s a lot of fun.

It isn’t as entertaining as that movie, but H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones is still a good movie in its own way. It treats the topic more earnestly, although not too seriously, and infuses it with quite a bit of black comedy to boot which is probably the right approach to Lovecraft’s writing given its origins.

Ferrin, who is currently finishing Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, appears to be creating something unique around cosmic fears inspired by Lovecraft. I wonder what he has in mind.

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