Unspeakable – Beyond the Wall of Sleep is a film based on the writings and philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. I didn’t know when I started to watch it, but the title pretty much gives it away. I was a fool not to realize it even before I saw it.
It centers on this patient in an asylum who has been there for 25 years. Initially convicted for a horrible crime and later diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Or whatever they call it in Unspeakable – Beyond the Wall of Sleep. They try to wrap it around some fancy diagnosis and try not to mention it in the most obvious of terms.
I don’t think it’s very clear if Doctor Ambrose London, portrayed by Edward Furlong, is really there to research the personality disorder or if he’s there to study dreams. As he’s a oneirologist, I would guess the latter, but I think it’s vague at best. But then again, everything about Unspeakable – Beyond the Wall of Sleep is vague. There’s no real purpose to the film besides trying to gross out the viewers, I think.
Well, that didn’t work for me, but I guess if you’re squeamish and have a problem with monster genitalia, you might have a problem with it. To me, it’s just silly and, quite frankly, something that makes me fall asleep out of boredom. It’s so uninteresting that I lose focus on multiple occasions. I think all the philosophy and subtlety that might be in the original short story are lost.
What’s left behind in Unspeakable – Beyond the Wall of Sleep is a series of very odd, bizarre, and surreal imagery. There are monsters, maybe aliens. Some are made of light, I think, and some manifest themselves in sexual desires. The men are easy to spot as they have monster penises. They even have teeth. The women becomes a somewhat more subtle matter, but only because it’s harder to visualize something equivalent in the female anatomy.
The story was horrible, the acting terrible, and although the effects are practical, they’re made without finesse and taste. It’s just dumb and silly. Although I didn’t completely hate the movie. I sure would never see it again. But as a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, I must admit there was something there that appealed to me, but I couldn’t say what, since everything about Unspeakable – Beyond the Wall of Sleep was a disappointment.
