Moving Pictures: Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014)
Putting the ‘Ho’ in Horror, Unsuccessfully
Note: I couldn’t finish this one. I skipped along from where I stopped to the end to make sure I wasn’t getting the wrong idea, but no. The story is bad, the direction is bad, the acting is bad (some of the actors seem to have no idea how to act), the whole mise-en-scène is atrocious, especially the physical effects (well, there is a sinister use of pacifiers that is mildly interesting). There are spots of good editing. The poster isn’t actually bad.
Not to be confused (though I wouldn’t blame you if you did, based on titles) with the 7min “Callgirl of Cthulhu”, also 2014. That one is at least supposedly funny.
This is a low-budget, independent film. There was a Kickstarter campaign for it that allegedly raised $27,750: I find it hard to believe that “so much” money was spent on making the film. I would like to believe that a good horror story can be produced on a low budget, but I think that a lot more has to be left to the imagination in that case. A cheap horror comedy can probably also be made at a low cost: cheap acting and effects can be fun if the story makes you laugh. There is nothing at all in this film that is fun, though.
I could forgive this film for being worthless, however, if it wasn’t for the cheap and misguided references to H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Names of characters and places are ripped from Lovecraft’s stories, and the story believes itself to be somehow inspired by the story “Call of Cthulhu”.
The original short story is a tale of cosmic horror, where our civilised and ordered world is just a thin layer of paint on the chaotic madness of the true world beyond it. Somewhere within this other world sleeps the dead, giant god-thing Cthulhu, and while he is worshipped by evil madmen, it is cosmic conditions (“the stars aren’t right”) that determine if Cthulhu stays in his death-sleep or is active tearing the world of sanity apart. Humans can’t affect this or “summon” him. The “Call” isn’t to wake Cthulhu but rather the call that he, even in his death-sleep, continually projects onto humanity, giving some horrible visions and driving others crazy.
In this film, Cthulhu is apparently something you can summon by repeating a simple phrase, whereupon the most fake-looking portal I have ever seen opens and some rubber tentacles or giant earthworms start poking through to rape, maim, and kill.
Then there is the “Call Girl” angle. The all-important grotesqueness aspect of Lovecraft’s writing never, to my knowledge, manifested as sexual deviance or even explicit fornication. Lovecraft had many other avenues to explore. In this film, the grotesqueness revolves entirely around sex work, with a few dips into violence (there is a supposedly heartfelt sex scene which is juxtaposed with simultaneous killing: both of the scenes are strangely rote and affectless).
The eponymous call girl is one of the few near-sympathetic characters, until she dives into a kink-shaming tirade (she later goes on a demonic rampage against those who dared enlist her services in kinky ways). There are a lot of sex-worker characters, and all of them come to a sticky end. There is sex-shaming, death-by-sex, and sex-related body horror.
“But you could have anyone you want,” protests the protagonist, missing every point about sex work there is. He, in contrast to the harlots around him, is virginal. That is, he only has sex by his own hand, while visiting live sex show sites in the internet.
This film is just a puritanism-inspired sleaze-fest lightly seasoned with Lovecraft references. Bleh.
