DVDumpster: Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom
By: Nik S
The story starts with Howard and his mother talking about going to visit his father in an insane asylum. His mother, Sarah Lovecraft, talks to the head doctor Herbert West (a reference to "Herbert West--Reanimator") who tells her that it may not be a good idea for Winfield, Howard's father, to be seeing anyone in his condition. The mother is able to convince Dr. West that her son, on his birthday, should be able to see his own father. They're taken back and see a man huddled in the corner talking nonsense about King Alhazred, strange symbols, and the Necronomicon which he begs Howard to destroy.
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Back in college, I can say that I had gotten out of my Edgar Allen Poe phase of literature horror, but I felt like I needed something to fill the gap. At this point, I hadn't really made any new friends so I decided to look into tabletop games to possibly find some fellow nerds to get acquainted with. I stumbled upon a game called Call of Cthulhu, and doing some research on it I found out that it was inspired by the works of an author known as H.P. Lovecraft. Of course, I had to look into him and fell in love with his work. As an adult, it's easy to see how his works have influenced films through the years focusing on a character's sanity. The one question is how do you introduce the works of Lovecraft to a younger audience? Apparently, a computer-animated kid's movie based on a graphic novel.
The movie Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom is based on a graphic novel of the same name. It's actually a trilogy of graphic novels all inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's works. They all follow a young Howard Lovecraft along with his eldritch friend Spot who go on adventures to save R'lyeh and various other kingdoms. The rights to make it into a film were picked up by Sean Patrick O'Reilly who wrote, directed, and produced it. The studio behind the animation is Arcana Studio, which has a blazing blue logo at the start of the film. O'Reilly decided to go with a different look for the movie to be bright and vibrant, whereas the graphic novel uses dark colors to create an eerie mood. Also, the design of the characters have drastically changed; where the graphic novel makes its characters look normal and something you might actually find on a H.P. Lovecraft cover for some of his short stories, but the movie has this weird look of a mix between Psychonauts and Scary Godmother. Now as for the story, I'm not sure how well the movie stays true to the graphic novel.
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| I feel ya, Howard. |
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| No, not that Necronomicon. Though it would have been more interesting. |
He hands Howard a small coin with a star symbol on it and tells him that it will protect him from evil. I guess you can say that his dad gave him a birthday present? How sweet. Of course, Sarah takes Howard back home and decides to talk with him to see if he's alright. She decides to hand him his father's old journal to maybe help him come to terms with his father's madness and to see the kind of man he used to be.
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| This is the Necronomicon. Not as cool, I know. |
As Howard reads through his father's journal he sees strange symbols, drawings, and ramblings from his dad about another world. He reads about a place called R'lyeh where an ancient god lies dormant, sleeping, one day to awaken and destroy the world as we know it. Howard notices some strange words at the bottom of the page and reads them aloud, as any young child would do to try and phonetically guess what they're reading. Turns out it's a spell that opens a glowing portal on his bedroom floor and sucks him through. He has a "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment when he awakens on his bed in the middle of an icy landscape.
As he explores the unfamiliar area, he runs across a giant beast with wings, a cuttlefish-like head, a dragon-like complexion, and a humanoid figure. He immediately treats it as an angry dog, rather than being horrified by the sight of a freakish abomination.
There's a chance scene that ensues, but the creature falls into a pit and hangs onto the ledge. It begs Howard to save it, but of course, Howard is skeptical. After getting a guarantee that it won't attack him, he grabs one of the creature's tentacles and wraps it around an ice stalagmite. The creature is able to jump out of the pit and declares that Howard is now its master and reveals its name to be Thu Thu Hmong. Howard thinks that the name is way too hard to say or remember and instead calls it Spot because Thu Thu is covered in little white spots.
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| Where in the book he calls him Spot because he always wanted a dog. |
Spot ends up taking Howard to some "friends", which happen to be some weird octopus creatures with human features. I think they're supposed to be Deep Ones, but those are more like fish people.
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| Does everyone just look tired in this movie? |
This is where two of my biggest gripes of the entire film take place that is extremely annoying in children's film. So after Howard is allowed into the Deep One's home (I never bothered to remember any of their names) and is greeted by two of the most annoying characters. So it's a pair of twin girl Deep Ones that I think even the eldest sibling doesn't care for their names because she just keeps referring to them as "twins". They're voiced by actual children, which can be done well, but here they're done so poorly and have poor direction. In all fairness, it's probably very hard to get children to voice act and have them express specific emotions. They're supposed to be a comic relief, but they just come off as annoying and loud. I know, as a twenty-something I'm far from being the target audience, but I'm sure even children have to be annoyed by these two as they offer nothing of interest.
My second gripe is having way too much exposition instead of getting to the point. Sometimes in movies, it's alright to talk about something rather than show it, but it's almost a sin to drag it on for well over two minutes. So the eldest Deep One talks with Howard about his appearance and she mentions seeing someone like him before. It was another young boy who also had a similar last name and was very adventurous. It probably took you less than a minute to read those two sentences and realize that it was Howard's father that they're talking about, but they just egg it on like they expect children to not be as smart to get what they're talking about. Howard even has to exclaim "that's my father!" just on the off chance, someone in the audience didn't already piece it together. This isn't the only time it happens either, as this entire movie uses long, drawn-out conversations to help fill in the time requirements.
So after all the needless talking, dinner is ready and everyone has to clean up. Howard makes a pun about tentacles that doesn't go over well, and the Deep Ones have the same expression as the audience does. So to get on the stools at the table, the twins do random acrobatics like leapfrog and backflips, and the eldest spins the plates onto the table. This is all because... kid's movie? There's no rhyme or reason, things just happen in this scene because they hope to get kids to laugh. The twins talk about how they only cleaned one tentacle because they might need to use the other one for surprise attacks. So after dinner Howard talks a little more to the eldest sibling, nothing too important, and Howard falls asleep right on the floor. No guest bed, pillow, blanket, or anything, just floor. While on the floor, Howard has a dream about the Necronomicon floating in front of a castle and being attacked by tentacles.
The next morning Howard and Spot take off towards the castle that appeared in his dreams, but not before a SNOWBALL FIGHT! Because, again, this is a kid's movie. Howard and Spot have some fun and throw snowballs at each other and build snowmen. There's even a very outdated Matrix reference where Howard dodges a bunch of snowballs. This whole entire segment is just filler and does nothing for the plot. This scene, however, did make me notice that everything in this film is overly textured.
I also noticed that all the trees are copy and pasted. There were three tree models, which were either an asset they borrowed or made themselves (it's really hard to tell) and scattered them throughout. The trees don't even look like they belong together; some trees look like they came straight out of Whoville and others just seem like they're from Minecraft being all block shaped. There's even a tree that just floats in midair! How did no one in post notice that?
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| Apologies for the glare, screen capture stopped working. |
Spot takes Howard to the place he envisioned in his dream right before they are surrounded by goblins (or govlins as the end credits call them) in armor wielding spears. The one thing that makes these things so unnerving isn't their looks, it's that they don't make noise. Every time they're hit, pushed, or even look like they want to let out a painful scream their mouths just move and no sound comes out. The two get overpowered and wake up dangling above a boiling cauldron. Spot is able to get them down, fights off the govlins (again) until they're met with Nyarlathotep (from the story of the same name) voiced by the amazingly talented Doug Bradley the dude who plays Pinhead. You'll notice a reoccurring theme of this movie having some surprisingly good actors voicing characters but totally waste their massive potential.
So Nyarlathotep takes Howard to meet the current ruler of R'lyeh: Algid Bunk. Algid comes off as nice and caring, though her lair doesn't really imply that at all. She informs Howard that he is the one prophesied to save R'lyeh from the eternal winter. She explains the area's history about how it was once a beautiful place until a king started to dabble in some dark magic. He summoned a god called Cthulhu which went rampant in his kingdom. In a desperate act to stop Cthulhu, the king froze him into an icy slumber, but at the same time froze his entire kingdom. In order to break the curse upon the land, Howard needs to find the third part of the Necronomicon which is held by Shoggoth (from the stories "At the Mountains of Madness" and "Fungi from Yuggoth").
Spot tries to talk Howard out of getting the third part of the book but to no avail. So they go to the cave where Shoggoth is but Spot can't fit through the entrance, so Howard must go in alone. He falls down a slide-like spiral and starts screaming. However, since this is a kid's movie, Howard starts hootin' and hollerin' his way down like it's an amusement park ride. Because, you know, one might as well have fun on their way down to their mortal doom. Howard finds the book and meets Shoggoth face to... er... giant toothy face.
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| I really hope he washed that tentacle. Unless that's his surprise attack tentacle, then by all means. |
The two exchange words about the power of the book. Shoggoth explains that Thu Thu, I mean, Spot is actually the slumbering Cthulhu. Shoggoth goes on about the Great Old Ones and the other Elder Gods before he eventually decides to eat Howard. Spot breaks in through the entrance after hearing Howard's screams but gets eaten by Shoggoth. Howard is able to rescue Spot using his father's coin that wields "the Elder Sign", melting Shoggoth. Spot explains that the symbol holds a lot of power and should be used cautiously. The duo returns back to Algid and hands her the Necronomicon, so the day is saved... or not, as it turns out Algid is actually King Alhazred (from the story "History of the Necronomicon").
The first thing Alhazred decides to do is to fully awaken Thu Thu so that he becomes Cthulhu. While doing this, it apparently summons a bunch of shadowy demons (they're actually Night-gaunts from the poem "Night-guant"). She decides that she will rule all three kingdoms with the power of Cthulhu by her side. Spot begins to have glowing sigils appear on his shoulders and attacks Howard. Right then the Deep One siblings burst through the door to save the day. How did they know to come in and aid Howard? No one knows!
The Deep One children do some ninja flips and smack a few govlins around. The eldest one is able to grab the Necronomicon from Alhazred and hands it to Howard saying that he'll know how to use it. Because a young ten-year-old boy will probably know how to read another world's language. Oh, and by the way if you're curious how Howard can speak to Spot, the Deep Ones, and all the other creatures it's because there's some telepathy link to where Howard is just hearing English even though they're speaking a different language. They explained that briefly during the dinner scene, and it was a clever idea, but they way they explained it was not.
Anyways, Howard tries to read from the book and is able to turn the almost Cthulhu Spot back into the nice Thu Thu Hmong (which turn his sigils blue). He's also able to zap the Night-guants with the power of the book, not before summoning a tall penguin (another reference to "At the Mountains of Madness") when trying to open a portal back to his house. Alhazred scurries off while basically saying that they were meddling kids and that this isn't over (the usual bad gay banter). Howard is able to open a portal back to his home, gives everyone a hug goodbye and leaves. Also, the Deep One sibling who "doesn't talk much" says one line saying that he'll miss Howard a character he had very limited interactions with.
The ending just wraps things up for the story, where Howard hands the third Necronomicon to his dad so that he can start his road to recovery. Then before the credits roll it tells us that Howard has another adventure in the Undersea Kingdom next. Then after the credits, we are shown two govlins snowboarding and doing tricks. Again it's just for children entertainment, but it's so out of place it just forces you to shake your head. Maybe that'll be the next DVDumpster, we'll have to just wait and see. Overall the movie wasn't horrible, but I can't say that it was entertaining either. Maybe if you're babysitting your nieces and nephews who are around four or five they might enjoy this, but adult fans of Lovecraft might want to turn a blind eye to this. The animation can range from alright to not great, everything is overly textured, and the designs of the characters don't seem to mesh well with the world they're in. It might have worked better as an animated piece to go with the original's dark artwork, but as a computer-animated film it just didn't work all too well.
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