In the Mouth of Madness(1995)

This movie is directed by John Carpenter who also directed Halloween and The Fog which I have reviewed here. It stars Sam Neill and Charlton Heston. John Trent(Neill) is a private detective who deals with a lot of insurance fraud. He has been dragged to a mental institution and he is shouting and violent. He is visited by Dr. Wrenn(David Warner) who asks him why he is there. Trent tells him the whole story. It begins with John being attacked by some madman with an axe who asks him if he reads Sutter Cane. He is shot by the cops and John is shaken by this. John is offered a case by Arkane Publishing to find Sutter Cane(Jurgen Prochnow) who has disappeared. Sutter Cane is a hugely popular horror novel writer and he has gone missing. The director of the company,Jackson Harglow(Heston) sends John to find him, along with Linda Styles(Julie Carmen) who works for Arkane Publishing.John begins to read Cane's novels and he begins to realise that they are having bad effects on the readers. He begins to think that Hobb's End, a fictional town in Sutter Cane's novel, is real and he sets out to find it with Linda. This is when the weird things begin to happen to them. They hit some old guy who is cycling a bike, but he gets up and walks away. They eventually come to the town of Hobb's End. They check into a hotel run by Mrs. Pick(Frances Bay) who is in Cane's novel. The town seems to be identical to the one in Cane's book. There is a black church which is said to be evil. The townspeople want Cane to come out of the church and face them, but he sets dogs on them, so they run off. John wants to leave but Linda takes the car keys and she wanders into the church where she meets Sutter Cane. His new book is called "In the Mouth of Madness" and it is going to be his masterpiece. Linda begins to turn into something not human and John is horrified.He tries to escape the town as the town folk come after him,but they have also transformed into mutants. He can't get out of Hobb's End. He crashes his car after swerving to avoid hitting Linda. He wakes up in the church with Sutter Cane who tells him that he is going to take over the world with his new book. He is going to be a god and people will worship him. He will have his army of terrible creatures who will take over. He tells John that he is just a part of the book and that he has created him. John can't believe it. He tells John to bring the book back to the people and begin to destruction of mankind. John doesn't want to, but he has no choice. The book has been published already and John becomes nuts as he kills people with an axe because they have read the book. The doctor thinks that he is hallucinating and leaves him. John wakes to find his cell door taken off and he wanders around the hospital to see that everyone has gone. He enters a cinema where the movie version of "In The Mouth of Madness" is being shown and he sees himself on screen. He begins to laugh and then to sob with the horror of what is happening to the world...

I liked this movie but I didn't love it. I am going to give it a 7/10.