>The future is over

Ah, I love a movie that leaves me conflicted like this. Conflicted because it is so fantastically well done, but uses the one subgenre of horror that I absolutely despise to get there. At a slender 82 minutes, I implore you to give this one a go yourself first, before anything I write below gives away any of the surprise and intrigue that come with a blind viewing.

Stylistically, History of the Occult is an absolute force considering the microbudget and limited scope. The dense, layered political intrigue of its plot is nothing short of fantastic, and how it's able to weave this level of narrative with such a brief runtime should be held as an example to those demanding close to three hours for their features. The way it anchors all this in a parallel with real life events in Argentina during the 70's and 80's is masterful, and allowed me to fly down a rabbit hole of history that I was unaware of as the credits rolled. The finale to this movie will stick with me for a long time, the unique uses of the medium to convey the underlying narrative is just so good, I can't sing its praises high enough.

As someone with an aversion to Lovecraftian horror however, History of the Occult unfortunately utilises everyone's favourite "weird science" writers formula to orchestrate this conspiracy-laden plot. My stomach will always drop when we start talking about pocket dimensions, all-powerful space alien Gods, and appeasing said Gods with human sacrifice and blood. Like popping a water balloon, it always deflates the intrigue and waters everything down to the same basic formula; While it's interesting as a high concept, it'll never be gripping or satiating to me on a storytelling front. An all powerful, omnipotent God that we can't understand or control is never fear inducing, it's just boring and trite.

So again, very conflicted on this one. I love everything it does and how it does it, but I just can't subscribe to Lovecraft or his overused formula. It's more than palatable here due to just how good the rest of the movie is, but I can’t deny that it weighs heavy on my overall view of the movie. I think I’ll score it higher due to how much I like everything else; I’ll pigeon-hole all of Howard Phillip’s influence, just this once.