John Carpenter
Il seme della follia

The best film I've ever seen?

Possible.

Also because, to clarify a prior concept, I prefer to award the prize to titles (cinematographic, as well as musical and literary) that are less talked about than the average. Now, Carpenter is certainly not an emerging author, but neither is he celebrated in a mainstream manner like other illustrious colleagues such as Cronenberg, Craven, Cameron.

Instead, I am more inclined to consider "In the Mouth of Madness" the best film of this crazy anarchist with a knack for anti-clericalism: and the phrase that Sutter Cane whispers from the confessional to our friend John Trent/Sam Neill: "Traditional religions have never been able to provide an explanation for horror..." would have been enough to propel the film into the Olympus of my must-sees. But there's much more. Half metaliterature and half metacinema, the descent into madness of a cynical and rational freelance insurance investigator, the reality that crumbles like paper, an hallucinatory and absolutely unexpected end of the world.

This is what awaits our protagonist, light years away from the characters usually portrayed by Neill, in an attempt to discover what happened to the dark yet immensely popular horror novelist Sutter Cane, on behalf of his publishing house (headed by a convincing Charlton Heston), eager to serve the fans his latest but incomplete masterpiece, "In the Mouth of Madness". Now, these fans must have overdosed on the previous volumes, given the growing psychological instability of some of them... Among whom we find a friendly brute who tries to chop Trent with an axe before being shot down by a couple of "bobbies": he is Cane's agent.

Our protagonist, intrigued by the matter, decides to follow the traces of the "scribbler" to Hobb's End, a mysterious small town in the American countryside where Cane set his last published work. In the company of Styles, a publishing company official, he gradually discovers various pleasant similarities between the sensory appearance and the narrative text that his partner carries like it's a map, which I will not recount for obvious reasons. Instead, it becomes reasonable that Trent's firm opinion "We're not living in a Sutter Cane novel!" starts to crumble along with his sanity until... Until the ghostly apparition of Cane reveals to him that the last manuscript is ready. The one that will mark the "Change." And final in the sense of "last", not "latest". But guess who has to "bring it into the world"? Exactly, our Trent. Who, even attempting to get rid of it in every way, realizes that as a character in a book (whoops! I just spoiled the ending!) he has very little freedom to act. That's why, in turn, devastated and driven mad, he awaits in a bookstore and massacres the first fanboy he encounters. "Cane's books literally drive people insane" is not a metaphor at all.

We return to the initial scene, when a schizophrenic Trent was locked in an asylum (for the aforementioned murder) and started to recount his tale. Suddenly, noises and desperate screams are heard in the psychiatric hospital, and the stage is set for the film's final act: through his words, Cane has the power to transform human beings into monsters (honestly with features a bit b-movie-like!), and given his immense popularity, the whole planet is infected. Escaped from the cell, Trent discovers the city deserted and destroyed. "And who doesn't read the book?" you'll ask as he did. "They'll watch the movie..!" Cane had replied. And here is the protagonist entering a cinema that is screening it, with his own name in the cast. And the poster at the entrance is the same as the film that this review is about (what a mess!!!) with directing by John Carpenter! The last trembling scenes are nothing more than a metafilmic flashback of what the poor viewer has seen so far (both he and we!), with Trent bursting into a laugh that calling hysterical is politically correct. And in the very last frames, one gets the impression that even he starts to transform...

I recognize that I may have muddled a bit in this review, and I apologize to the film's supporters. There are a thousand other important details that should be mentioned, but I hope I've mentioned enough key points to satisfy those who have already seen and appreciated this brilliant film and those who have not yet.

I leave it to the judgment of posterity!