THE DEEP ONES (2020), THE OLD ONES (2024)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological,metaphysical*

Rough paraphrase from lead female "Alexandria" in THE DEEP ONES: "I think this whole Solar Beach community is a little Stepford-like..."

Well, ONES is a pretty rotten take on H.P. Lovecraft's concept of an aquatic, subhuman race from THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH. But at least writer-director Chad Ferrin was halfway honest in admitting that his main purpose in adapting HPL was to emulate the much cheaper models of horror-cinema like STEPFORD WIVES. However, the more applicable example here would have been ROSEMARY'S BABY, given that DEEP is all about the members of a demon-worshiping cult seeking to co-opt the baby in Alexandria's womb and use it somehow for the evil purposes of their lord, this time called Cthulhu rather than Satan.

However, Ferrin is certainly not equal to emulating the better aspects of more mundane horror like the two 1970s movies named, any more than he is at adapting H.P. Lovecraft. Scenes of extremely banal dialogue are counterpointed by occasional creepy scenes of the weird, only-apparently-human denizens of Solar Beach. Production values are at least competent, nothing more. But the arc of the two main characters, the pregnant woman and her husband, is utterly without suspense and the doleful ending is all but preordained. 

  Ferrin, not content with having pissed on HPL once, returned in 2024 to the same well, though at least this time he didn't seem to be taking a jejune Lifetime Movie approach to the material. A father and son on a fishing-expedition come across a man floating in a river and pull him out. The man, name of Russell Marsh (a reference to the Marsh family of INNSMOUTH), claims that he was born in 1865 and that he was thrown into the water near the Solar Beach colony, thus allowing Ferrin to work his DEEP ONES continuity into this film. One of the Deep Ones springs out of the river and kills the father. Marsh kills the monster and talks the son, name of Gideon, into joining him in a road trip. Marsh tells Gideon that he knows of a special machine, a "resonator," that can allow them to travel back in time and undo the death of Gideon's father.

In many of the ensuing scenes, Ferrin's method reminded me of a lot of the films of Ted V. Mikels, in which actors spout reams of time-killing dialogue. In OLD ONES, at least, Ferrin does come up with better dialogue than Mikels usually did, and better than anything in DEEP ONES. Given the extremely low budgets of these Ferrin works, the director isn't able to produce effects worthy of the HPL corpus of concepts. Still, since HPL was an important figure in the world of crossover-fiction, OLD ONES does provide a crossover between the Deep Ones of Innsmouth, the demon-messenger Nyarlathotep, and mad scientist Crawford Tillinghast from the short  story FROM BEYOND. (I don't count a minor character with the name "Randolph Carter" as a crossover-icon, since the one in Ferrin bears no resemblance to the one in the HPL universe.)

I can't say OLD ONES grabbed me, even though I recognize that it's much more ambitious than DEEP ONES. Both are far from the worst horror movies ever made, or the worst HPL adaptations. But I can't imagine anyone watching them more than once.