You just can’t keep the wanderlust down sometimes. It seems my heart has grown fond of travel yet again, so we’re off to fair España today to tackle 2010’s The Valdemar Legacy.
Now, before we even begin to get our hands dirty on this one, we’ve got to deal with the title and the filmmakers’ stated inspirations. Now, I know it’s not on the poster above, but the French- and English-language editions note that the story is inspired by (or based on or set in the universe of, depending on the poster’s choice of words) the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Hell, that’s the main reason I even took a gamble on it in the first place, as I’m a sucker for Lovecraft’s style and subject matter – his racism and shit politics notwithstanding. Thing is, I can’t find any substantive link to Lovecraft, save possibly the vague notion of cosmic forces working their works around us, unbeknownst to us, that sort of thing. The Valdemar name, as far as I can tell, comes rather from a Poe story about a mesmerist messing about with a man, hypnotizing him just as he is about to die, forcing him into a terrible state as he views the beyond from its own threshold. Granted, one could easily see Lovecraft taking some inspiration from this story (as well as much of Poe’s work besides), but this doesn’t make a film bearing the Valdemar name and nothing of the plot a Lovecraft-related work.
The story itself is indeed nothing like the aforementioned story. Y’see, there’s this massive Victorian-style mansion that needs to be cataloged for the purposes of taxation. Stick with me here, I know assessments aren’t the most thrilling subjects ever, but we’re getting beyond that soon. The first agent sent out do just this seems to have disappeared, with his coworkers assuming he’s absconded with some pricey items to sell. So another agent is sent out, but she too doesn’t last long, forced to flee the property on her first day there after being pursued by a mummy-like creature stalking the attic. The uzh. An investigation into the situation is launched, revealing that a crazy séance once took place at the mansion, one involving Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, and Lizzie Borden, among others. You can imagine that some strange energy lingers there, right? There is no full revelation, though, as this film is the first half of a two-part tale.
Sorry to say, though, kids, I’m not going into that sequel, ’cause this one just did not grab me in the slightest. (I have heard, though, that Lovecraft hisself makes an appearance in the sequel, so there’s that.) There’s an attempt to create some atmosphere in the house, one swirling with darkness and mystery, but the pacing is too quick for anything to catch hold, and the writing isn’t anything special enough to serve as a buttress. Arnau Bataller’s score comes off as a retread of Danny Elfman, specifically oscillating between the mania of Men in Black and the moodiness of bits of Edward Scissorhands, ultimately sounding too active and darkly whimsical to mesh well with DP David Azcano’s shadow-heavy cinematography. Basically, things are thrown together and at us too quickly and just mismatched enough to make the resulting combination dull and confused. There’s never a feel of either Lovecraft or Poe, just your average throw-away ghost story you won’t remember a year from now.
I don’t mean to be so down on this film, but it just did nothing for me. Perhaps you might take more away from it than I did, and if anything about it sounds interesting, feel free to give it a go, but I’m not gonna push you toward it at all.
Allusions of Grandeur 