film

The boundaries between sanity and madness and fact and fiction are thoroughly and intriguingly explored in this John Carpenter horror, which flew under the radar on its release in 1994 but has since been reappraised as a cult classic, rich in ambitious themes, bleak humour and unsettling atmosphere. The story follows an insurance investigator, John Trent (played with elan by Jurassic Park's Sam Neill), who has been hired to track down Sutter Cane, a missing bestselling author.

As part of the investigation, Trent travels to the town of Hobb's End, an eerie and supposedly fictional place that seems to have manifested from Cane's novels, which are said to have a disturbing influence on his readers. A meta horror that explores the nature of fandom and posits the idea that mass belief can alter reality, In the Mouth of Madness is an inventive curio anchored by Neill's excellent central performance.