Dagon

Dagon

2001

Director- Stuart Gordon

Cast-   Ezra Godden, Macarena Gómez, Raquel Meroño, Francisco Rabal, Birgit Bofarull, Brendan Price, Ferran Lahoz

From Spain

            

      Paul (Ezra Godden) is a tightly wound nerd on vacation with his girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Meroño) and their friends Howard and Vicki. They are out sailing and get caught in a storm. The ship hits a rock and Vicki gets pinned. Paul and Barbara go ashore looking for help. What they find is an insane town of murderous freaks.

            

     The seaside town of Imboca was once a fishing village. Generations ago, a mysterious sea captain appeared one day and promised the people riches in exchange for the worship of a strange god, Dagon. The fisherman summoned Dagon and soon gold, in the form of alien idols, began to wash ashore. The townsfolk became rich, murdered the local Catholic priest and converted the church to the worship of Dagon.

            

      But their faith came at a price. With each generation the townspeople mutated and degenerated, become fishlike; webbed fingers, bulging eyes, gills. Now they stay hidden, coming out only to waylay travelers. They skin their victims and wear the faces so that they can still pretend to be human.

            

     

    Paul has had dreams and visions of an exotic, beautiful girl (Macarena Gómez who also starred in the horror-comedy Witching and Bitching). He meets the girl in this town. She is indeed beautiful, but also touched by the town’s curse.  She is a member of the town’s aristocratic family but also the High Priestess of their church. Just as Paul has dreamed of her, she has dreamed of him, and wants him as her lover.

            

     Paul tries to save his friends and avoid this seemingly preordained fate, but there is little that he can do. It has all been written in the stars.

            

     Stuart Gordon always had a fascination with HP Lovecraft. His most famous work, and the one that people will still be watching a hundred years from now is Re-Animator. He also directed its spiritual sequel, the Lovecraft inspired From Beyond. Both are fun, and Re-Animator is a landmark film, but Dagon, I think, is his crowning achievement in terms of artistry.

           

     H.P. Lovecraft is very hard to adapt to film, but Dagon does a better job than any other movie I’ve seen (Color out of Space comes close but still not as good as Dagon).  Despite the title, the movie is not based on the Lovecraft story of the same name. Rather, it is an adaptation of the story The Shadow over Innsmouth ( Imboca, the name of town in the movie is a bit of a pun, “boca” being Spanish for “mouth”). It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation, capturing the important parts of the story. But more than accuracy, it captures the feel of Lovecraft; the doubting of one’s sanity, the paranoid conspiracy, the ancient, alien gods.

            

    

    The acting is solid. Ezra Godden turns in a convincing performance as the story’s protagonist. I think it’s especially good when you realize how early in his career it was. Francisco Rabal almost steals the show as Ezekiel, the one normal human left in the town. Francisco had an acting career that spanned 60 years and his talent was obvious here.

            

     The make-up and effects were very good as well (there was only one instance of that terrible looking turn of the century CGI). The make-up is subtle at the beginning of the film, with the townsfolk only looking a little fishy. But as the story progresses and their secret becomes known, we see progressively more horrible forms.

           

     Dagon is a fast paced, intense movie that progresses quickly and doesn’t leave many opportunities to come up for air. The production values are far above what one would expect for this type of movie. Watch Dagon if you are a Lovecraft fan and want to see a pretty faithful (and entertaining) adaptation.