The Deep Ones -- An Insult to the Genre

Name: The Deep Ones

Directed By: Chad Ferrin 

Subgenre: Lovecraftian Thriller

Series: Spooktober 2021 entry #12; Trash Panda Files #6 review #105

Review: I've got a thing for H.P. Lovecraft. Well, not the man himself, given the racism and all that, but his ideas. I could speak at length about Lovecraft's piecemeal mythos--on how the mythopoeic pantheon is fundamentally atheistic and the existentially dreadful nihilism that follows from that gnosis--but no one really wants to hear all that pretentious crap, at least not on my blog. Lovecraft's ideas, specifically on entities that are so cosmically advanced that their mere existence in our 3D space has a habit of breaking our feeble minds, are so fundamentally different than the moral fears of demons and devils, the terror of mundane slashers and stalkers, and the gothic horror of ghosts, ghouls, and other things that go bump in the night; the horror that Lovecraft so masterfully captured stems from the fear of the unknown, in particular what lurks at the boundaries of human comprehension--and to showcase how painfully limited those perceptual boundaries lie compared to the true, horrifying depths of reality. Lovecraft wrote on things we would perceive as monsters, sure, but they're an entirely different breed of things that, combined with the cosmic horror and existential dread mentioned above, his ideas have rightfully carved a particular niche in the greater horror genre. And those that followed in Lovecraft's wake have sought to emulate him in one of two ways: either capturing his intended spirit of human insignificance in the face of the dreadful things beyond our waking perception, or to focus on squiggly tentacle-monsters. Chad Ferrin's H.P. Lovecraft's The Deep Ones is a dreadfully bland example of the latter. The film follows a couple as they go on vacation to a beachside AirBnB. They're immediately accosted by the overly friendly (read: sinister) neighbors who reel them into a cult of the Deep Ones. Or is it the cult of Dagon? The film waffles between the two similar but different Lovecraftian entities. That's my main gripe with it: Ferrin doesn't respect the source material. Lovecraft wrote fairly extensively on the relationship between the aquatic horror worshipped as a god, Father Dagon, who is likely a massively overgrown Deep One rather than being their progenitor; the Deep Ones, in this case, are aquatic humanoid creatures that lurk underwater. Think Creature From the Black Lagoon, but loads of them. Deep Ones can, and do, interbreed with humans, and their offspring originally appear as humans but gradually take on a bit of a fish-froggy appearance. Most of what we know about Dagon and the Deep Ones can be traced back to Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth short story, which has been retold a few different times. In that short story, an outsider comes to the dilapidated town of Innsmouth, learns about the interbreeding between humans and the Deep Ones, tries to flee, but is blocked by the insular townsfolk showcasing their famous "Innsmouth Look."

Ferrin's The Deep Ones is another retelling of that short story with all of the above elements, but the film has so much padding that entirely mutes any tension that could be built up. The insular townsfolk, here, are just people who wear masks for some reason, and not even cool masks but those semi-translucent ones that look like cheap Purge knockoffs. There are a few blink-and-you-miss-it shots of Innsmouth look, but they're not pivotal to the plot or even used in environmental storytelling: they're just throwaway gross-out shots without the gross. Dagon also makes a brief appearance and...it is bad. Just really, painfully bad. He's even shorter than some of the surrounding cultists, looks like a slightly more spindly Abe Sapien from the Hellboy franchise but in a dramatically terrible rubber suit, and he shows up just to get laid. And that's another thing that's weirdly prevalent in terrible Lovecraft knock-offs: the injection of hypersexuality. Now I'm not about to rail against nudity or sexuality by any means, but Lovecraft was fairly notoriously Puritanical in his writings (and that's the diplomatic way of phrasing that). Female characters hardly existed in his tales at all, let alone running around nude--and that happens several times in Ferrin's film: women running around nude for no discernible reason beyond the desire to sex things up a bit. Which, yeah that's neat and all, but it just cheapens the film. That's perfectly encapsulated in the film's post-credits scene where we find a random guy watching a woman undressing on a security camera; the man watches on while tenderizing himself, gets caught by his father, who then notices what he was watching and opts to do the same thing. It's completely disconnected from the plot but highlights what I feel is the real goal of these no-budget horror movies: for their directors to get some attractive women nude. Beyond the boobs, Ferrin resorts to cheaply-looking rubber tentacles to represent some sort of unnamed entity, possibly Cthulhu. And if those weren't annoying enough, the whole movie is too damn dark! I seriously don't think any lighting was used on set: there are entire scenes shot in complete darkness, and it's not an intentional stylistic choice. Just...the movie is a mess. Don't bother with it, especially if you're a fan of Lovecraft's stuff. If you're wanting to watch something with Innsmouth look and some Deep Ones, check out Stuart Gordon's Dagon or even The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu if you're wanting something more intentionally campy and comedic.

And for this crime against the genre, Chad Ferrin has, henceforth, been excommunicated from the Council of the Chads.

Overall Score: 1 out of 5 Chads cancelling reservations for that beachside AirBnB. Did The Deep Ones scare you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

IMDB: Here

How to Watch: The Deep Ones is available on these platforms.

Official Trailer