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Film: In the Mouth of Madness

Getting lost in a good book takes on a twisted meaning here.

A reality is just what we tell each other it is.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

John Trent (Sam Neill), insurance fraud investigator, has just been placed in an insane asylum. Months earlier, he was hired to find bestselling horror writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Cane has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but his publishers think it might just be a stunt to drum up support for his next book, In the Mouth of Madness.

When Trent finds that the covers of Cane's books seem to become a map to the supposedly fictional town of Hobb's End, he and Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), who works for the publisher, decide to go there and find Cane. What they find, however, is something much worse.

The third instalment of John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" (preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness), In the Mouth of Madness explores reality, fiction, and the thin, horrific line that separates the two.

This film gives examples of:

A God Am I: In this case, he may very well be.
Apocalypse How: A particularly weird variant of a Class 3, possibly on its way to a Class 6.
Arc Words: "Do you read Sutter Cane?"
Axe Crazy: Literally, Sutter's agent in the beginning. Later on, literally everyone.
Bedlam House
Bigger Than Jesus: Sutter Cane repeatedly claims more people believe in his novels than believe in the Bible.
Bizarrchitecture: The church. On the outside it's spooky enough, what with its rural New England location, but inside it turns into a full blown Eldritch Location.
Body Horror: Mrs. Pickman and Linda Styles.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Did I ever tell you my favorite color is blue?"
- Fridge Brilliance: Every character's eyes are blue in closeup, whether the actor or actress actually has blue eyes.
Brown Note: The whole premise.
Catapult Nightmare
Clingy Macguffin: Once Trent has the manuscript, he can't get rid of it.
Creepy Basement
Creepy Child: The children of Hobb's End.
Deadpan Snarker: Trent, at least before the façade starts to slip.
Downer Ending: The film ends with the apocalypse, as the entire world is attacked by Lovecraftian horrors and a large chunk of the population falls into insanity. Of course, if reality is relative anyway, then does this ending even matter/happen?
Dramatic Thunder
Dream Within a Dream
Driven to Madness
Driven to Suicide: "I have to, he wrote me this way."
Eldritch Abomination
Eldritch Location: Hobb's End for starters, but especially the interior of the church.
Endless Corridor
Evil Eye
Fictional Document
The Film of the Book: A plot point.
Fingore
Genre Savvy: Having read Cane's books, the characters know what to expect. Whether they choose to believe that the books correspond to reality is another matter.
Go Mad from the Revelation
Going In Circles: Trent tries to drive out of town repeatedly but ends up right where he he started.
Groin Attack: "I'm sorry about the balls!"
Hell Hotel
How We Got Here
I Am A Humanitarian
I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Hobb is an old English word for Devil.
Jump Scare: Used extensively.
Kick the Dog: Our introduction to the terrifying children of Hobb's End shows them running after a dog. The next time we see them, the dog has had one of its legs ripped off and is limping around forlornly.
Kill It With Fire: Doesn't work. Since at that point, burning the book is like trying to burn the entire world.
Laughing Mad
Lovecraft Country: Hobb's End.
- The film is inspired by, contains Shout Out after Shout Out to Lovecraft. Hell, a nightmare sequence even has a Continuity Cameo from Cthulhu.
Mad Eye
Madness Montage
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Have Sutter Cane's books triggered a mass delusion that's causing more and more people to think they're being taken over by monstrous demons? Or are monstrous demons really taking over people who have read Sutter Cane? Characters who haven't read his latest book think the former, those who have read it think the latter, and at one point Linda says it won't really matter either way once the believers outnumber the skeptics.
Mind Screw: What's the difference between fiction and reality? According to this movie, nothing, up to and including the movie itself.
Monochromatic Eyes: Cane's eyes during the mock-confessional.
Name of Cain
Nightmare Dreams
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sutter Caine is basically Stephen King.
No Fourth Wall: An in universe example that breaks through two fourth walls. At the end, Trent views the film you are watching, only disjointed and cut up.
Nothing Is Scarier: The Old Ones' arrival is heralded by a yawning void... of blackness. Linda reads out what the protagonist is seeing.
One-Scene Wonder: Jürgen Prochnow and Charlton Heston, both of whom have only a few minutes of screen time. David Warner and John Glover may also qualify.
One-Woman Wail
Only Sane Man: John's insistence through almost the entire film. He gives up the pretense at the end. Although he really is the only sane man, because that's how Cane wrote him.
- Lampshaded by Cane: "Always looking for the con... even now you're trying to rationalize."
Phlegmings
The Plague / The Virus: People beginning their slide into madness show plague-like symptoms of open sores and wonky eyes. At first it turns out Cane is behind it all, but then it's revealed that the Old Ones were directing everything Cane has done.
Police Brutality: "Do you want some too, buddy?"
Pretty in Mink: A guy burned down a warehouse of fur coats to collect the insurance. He was caught when it turned out he kept the coats safe, and gave some to his wife, and his mistress.
Reality Warper: Sutter Cane.
Recurring Dreams: Trent begins to suffer from these. Turned out Cane was just writing a little Foreshadowing into proceedings.
Red Right Hand
Ret Gone: The eventual fate of Linda Styles.
Rewriting Reality
Room Full of Crazy: Notably, Trent starts out the movie having made his own filled with drawn crosses with just a single black crayon. It's even lampshaded by Dr. Wren who thinks that Trent isn't as mad as people think.
"The crosses are a nice touch. They'd almost have to keep you in here after seeing these, wouldn't they?"
Rule of Scary: A rare in-universe example; Hobb's End runs on this because it's the product of Sutter Cane's imagination.
Shout Out: Lots to H.P. Lovecraft, including several names, like Mrs. Pickman. And the title is reminiscent of both Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness, and the town of Innsmouth, mentioned in several of his stories. Sutter Crane is basically an Expy for Stephen King.
- Hobb's End is also a reference to the Quatermass films.
- Sapirstein is the name of the Satanist doctor in Rosemary's Baby.
Spooky Painting
Stepford Smiler: Mr. Saperstein
Surreal Horror
Tears of Blood: On those who read Cane's latest book.
This Is Reality: Trent insists on this and states it word for word.
"This is reality!" *knocks on wood*
Through the Eyes of Madness: Former Trope Namer.
Title Drop
Torches and Pitchforks
Touched by Vorlons: Or Eldritch Abomination, in this case.
Town with a Dark Secret: The secret being that the town only exists in Sutter Cane's mind.
Treasure Map: Trent "discovers" the secret location of (the supposedly fictional) Hobb's End by piecing together a jigsaw map made from secret shapes hidden in the cover art of Cane's novels.
Unreliable Narrator: What's real and what's all in Trent's head? Is the entire world the product of an Unreliable Narrator?
Window Pain
Your Cheating Heart

Ils

Horror Films

The Incredible Melting Man

In The Bleak Midwinter

Films of the 1990s

Jade

alternative title(s): In The Mouth Of Madness

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