Thirteen years ago, Philip Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor) and three other members of a cult killed their leader, Nix (Daniel von Bargen), and buried him with a mask to contain his powers. In the present, Swan is a Las Vegas illusionist, hiding his real magic. But he is scared. Swan’s wife, Dorothea (Famke Janssen), hires detective Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula), who is all too familiar with the occult, to keep Swan safe. During the first performance of a new and dangerous illusion, Swan is killed. Harry decides to stay and find out who was after Swan, what the violent cultist Butterfield (Barry Del Sherman) is after, and how this is tied to a dead cult leader.
Author Clive Barker is an artistic genius. That doesn’t mean all his work is worth reading. Quite the opposite. Much is horrible. Barker never writes anything that is just mediocre. He succeeds or fails big. I’ve read a lot of genre stories over the years, and discovering Barker was a revelation. I found true marvels in his words. But those words have not always translated well to the screen. A few have been modern classics (Hellraiser, Candyman) while others were a mess. After several of his stories were mishandled, Barker wanted to once again direct his work. So, he made Lord of Illusions and it ended up…well… You know that middle area I said Barker doesn’t end up in? Well, we’re there now. The low end of the middle anyway.
So, what went wrong, and why did it go wrong in such a minimal way? Where are the grand mistakes?
This is a competently made film, with decent camera work, fine lighting, fitting music, and above average acting. The special effects fall down once with a CGI flaming paper monster, but are OK elsewhere. There is nothing there to complain about. Instead, there is a fundamental failure in style and script. Barker has pieces of two types of movies: a slick, enjoyable, supernatural Film Noir and an edgy, creepy, splatter show that could push the boundaries of horror filmmaking. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to see these two things can’t work together. What we end up with is a Noir that’s too brightly filmed, too simple, and lacks clever dialog and charm (In case you didn’t know Noirs were charming, read my Introduction to Film Noir.) and a slightly gritty, bloody horror film that is held in safe, well-traveled territory.
Harry and Dorothea are deep into the old-style Noir side of the picture. The Harry character could have been set down in a ’40s detective flick and been right at home. Scott Bakula is too light, too good-under-it-all for the hardcore, troubled personality he should portray, but that just means it’s more The Big Sleep in style than The Maltese Falcon. Dorothea is elegant and sophisticated with a touch of danger and a few secrets. Famke Janssen, stunningly beautiful as always, is a perfect Dorothea. Put these two in a 1935 period piece, add a murder and a few mysteries to solve, a Freemason type secret society, and even bring along Valentin (Joel Swetow), the overly protective butler, and you’ve got a fun way to spend an hour and a half. Harry and Dorothea could verbally spar over dinner, and later both happen to end up at a nightclub where they dance a romantic foxtrot. It almost writes itself, which is good as it is hard to imagine Clive Barker writing it.
But what you can’t do with these characters is toss them into a modern day gore-fest. They are stylized characters that belong to a time that only existed in the movies sixty years ago.
Nix, and even more so, Butterfield and the other cultists, are more in keeping with Barker’s twisted style of horror. These guys need to be involved in things much sicker, much more extreme, than anything in Lord of Illusions. Butterfield, and his even more psychotic friend, are the stuff of nightmares. I can’t say where they should have ended up, but not in something so common.
When the film ends, very little has happened, both within Harry’s world, and to me. I feel nothing for these folks. The ending makes it all seem very unimportant (no spoilers here, except to say that it was far too simple). It’s easy to spot what was good, but easier not to care. I’ve seen Lord of Illusions on the big screen, and more times than I can count on the small, and I never mind it being on, and never look for it when it isn’t.