Adapting Lovecraft into film is often a hard task.
Many of his writings often leave many things to imagination, a quality often used to appeal our instinctive fear to the unknown. (And a key element of their timeless darkness)
"The Music of Erich Zann" is one of these Lovecraft stories that leave a lot to the imagination, being complete unrelated to any of his mythos deities, being an stand-alone horror story dealing with some unspecified, unknown force.
It has a certain gothic eeriness that made it closer to Poe than the rest of his ouvre, but still a pretty excellent anyway.
This short stop-motion animation does a more or less faithful adaptation of that tale, albeit taking a couple of liberties with the source material: For starters, instead of playing the viol, Erich Zann plays the piano. And instead of taking place for several weeks, the whole story takes place in one night.
Despite the somewhat unpolished look of the characters (I must say I found the appearence of the character playing the role of the narrator in original text kinda goofy) the sceneries were pretty well constructed, with a nice, dark atmosphere and build-up.
The ending was somewhat underwhelming compared with the original text. (Like I said, the vague, chaotic horrors described by Lovecraft are often hard to translate into film) Still, it was a decent effort, interesting to watch.
6.5/10.
Many of his writings often leave many things to imagination, a quality often used to appeal our instinctive fear to the unknown. (And a key element of their timeless darkness)
"The Music of Erich Zann" is one of these Lovecraft stories that leave a lot to the imagination, being complete unrelated to any of his mythos deities, being an stand-alone horror story dealing with some unspecified, unknown force.
It has a certain gothic eeriness that made it closer to Poe than the rest of his ouvre, but still a pretty excellent anyway.
This short stop-motion animation does a more or less faithful adaptation of that tale, albeit taking a couple of liberties with the source material: For starters, instead of playing the viol, Erich Zann plays the piano. And instead of taking place for several weeks, the whole story takes place in one night.
Despite the somewhat unpolished look of the characters (I must say I found the appearence of the character playing the role of the narrator in original text kinda goofy) the sceneries were pretty well constructed, with a nice, dark atmosphere and build-up.
The ending was somewhat underwhelming compared with the original text. (Like I said, the vague, chaotic horrors described by Lovecraft are often hard to translate into film) Still, it was a decent effort, interesting to watch.
6.5/10.
