10 Confusing Horror Movies You Need To Watch Twice To Understand
7. In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)
Sam Neill returns to this list with a dynamic turn in John Carpenter’s forward-thinking slice of self-referential insanity, In the Mouth of Madness, which is commonly considered the filmmaker’s last great endeavor.
It's also seen as the final installment – after 1982’s The Thing and 1987’s Prince of Darkness – of Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy. Therefore, the sheer grisliness and weirdness of its plot (in which an insurance investigator searches for missing horror writer Sutter Cane by inexplicably entering the evil town from Cane’s books) should come as no surprise.
As protagonist John Trent, Neill encounters plenty of macabre sights and sounds that fall in line not only with Carpenter’s previous projects but with the extreme body horror and bewildering storylines of David Cronenberg and David Lynch, too. That said, what makes In the Mouth of Madness truly rewatchable is how it scatters many meta observations and callbacks into its downward spiral of lucidity and logic.
Primarily, Sutter Cane (and his imaginary universe) pay homage to beloved Stephen King novels like Cujo and Children of the Corn. By the end, the movie even offers a few delightfully sly winks at itself before instigating a finale whose implications baffle nearly every first-time viewer.