The line between homage and parody is straddled in this love letter that aims to do to Lovecraftian horror what Shaun of the Dead did to Romero zombies, though while Edgar Wright balanced the comedy with authentic zombie movie moments, director Henry Saine co-opts B-movie gore that doesn't call upon the atmosphere of Lovecraft stories at all.
We get a pretty snappy bro comedy complete with a Zach Galifianakis stand-in for the most part (the back cover pitches this as "The Hangover meets Evil Dead"), about the last descendant of Lovecraft and his comic book-obsessed slacker friends being tasked by a Miskatonic University professor to defend a relic that would open the sunken city of R'lyeh—Lovecraft fans know why that's bad—against Cult of Cthulhu members, but the story, action and especially scares rely too much on tired horror-comedy practices, especially considering the rich mythology it's supposedly mining from. Gay jokes and awkward geek gags can only cover that up for so long.
Despite all the Mountains of Madness and Yog-Shogoth name drops, it feels more like they needed generic monsters to fight against and just decide to use Lovecraft's instead of inventing their own.
DVD Bonus Features
A pencil test of an animated exposition sequence recapping Old Ones mythology (interpreted here as Cthulhu wrestling a T-Rex) comes with an audio commentary by Saine that confirms that he didn't know anything about Lovecraft before taking on the project.
"The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu" is on sale February 15, 2011 and is not rated. Comedy, Horror. Directed by Henry Saine. Written by Devin McGinn. Starring Kyle Davis, Devin Mcginn, Matt Bauer, Sujata Day, Marty Fortney.
