Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Directed by Vincent Shade

The Letter sumptuously recreates the era of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1930’s New England. This languidly paced mystery feels like a Call of Cthulhu adventure, set in an elaborate mansion, and stocked with scheming characters with old grudges. This little indie film has big aspirations and ambitions but could have used a little streamlining. Prepare yourselves for lots of exposition and dark musings in period dialogue, while appreciating the fine details and rich textures.

It is rare to see an independent feature film loaded with lavishly appointed sets and historically accurate props. This is usually the domain of big budget studio productions, but Vincent Shade and his team have crafted a rich tapestry of Lovecraft-era period piece lore. The movie strived for period authenticity from the well-appointed general store to the creepy old mansion to the antique vehicles. Appropriately, this film had its world premiere at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

The story begins with a MacGuffin, a letter written to a store clerk, summoning him to attend to his ailing uncle, whom he was previously unaware of. The letter is of little consequence other than to launch a series of interlocked mysteries that are shrouded in old grievances, dark secrets, and cryptic rituals.

The Cast of The Letter:

Shane Simmons plays Jonathan Ackley (Barksdale), a bookish and earnest shopkeeper’s apprentice, who travels to Dunwich to attend to his ailing uncle, whom he has never met.
John Judd plays Lord Winston Barksdale IV, a wealthy and elderly man desperate to find a missing daughter.
Dennis William Grimes plays Howard Phillips Downty, Barksdale’s beleaguered butler and the sole remaining employee of Lord Barksdale.
James Farruggio plays Richard Armitage, Barksdale’s former business partner and now rival. Armitage is now a mob boss who unofficially runs the dread town of Dunwich.
KJ James plays Father Maurice, who knows most of Dunwich’s dark past and is the beacon of hope in town.
Nina O’Keefe plays Lady Alice Barksdale, Winston’s embattled wife, who has suffered much and has been subject to untold strange rituals.

Dennis William Grimes and Shane Simmons in *The Letter* (2024)

A Short Summary of The Letter:

Jonathan Ackley, summoned to a gloomy mansion by his mysterious Uncle, Lord Barksdale realizes that the invitation was a ruse. His uncle is not ailing, physically, but may have been driven mad by the loss of his daughter, Emily. Barksdale cannot pursue his hunches because he has been exiled from Dunwich by his former partner and now arch-rival Richard Armitage. Barksdale suspects Armitage has been holding her. Since Jonathan is a new face in town, Barksdale suspects the estranged Jonathan can slip into town and find her.

Of course, much scheming has been festering in the background, both within Barksdale’s mansion and within Dunwich. Jonathan has been given blasphemous tomes to assist with Emily’s potential whereabouts. Indeed, that should have been a red flag. When Jonathan is awakened by Lady Barksdale having seizures, he realizes that something is seriously amiss within the old house. Are the tomes and the seizures connected? Wait and see!

Jonathan’s investigations in Dunwich prove that he is way over his head. He is assaulted by Armitage and his thugs as soon as he arrives in town. Father Maurice, a local black minister rescues Jonathan from being carved up by Armitage’s goons. Maurice has been witness to the depravities that have cursed the town. He knows of Emily’s fate. As it turns out, nobody abducted Emily. She’s not even missing… but she is gone. A dark ritual summoned a shoggoth to bring Emily back: an amorphous chaotic being of pure evil intent. When things like this are beckoned from evil tomes, they do not behave as expected. It works its tendrils through the entire community on both sides of the political divide.

Jonathan must overcome his natural cowardice to set things right or die trying. A heavily armed mob and an amorphous chaos monster? No problem!

Evaluation:

Appropriate to the source material, the plot of this film is very dense and cryptic. The web woven between all the participants is often hard to untangle. There is a ton of exposition, and every player has multiple motives both in the open and under the surface. The benefit of a Lovecraft period piece film is that it transports you to another time. The downside is that, like many of Lovecraft’s stories, it gets confusing.

Again, this feels like a Call of Cthulhu (or Mansions of Madness, if the Arkham Horror board game is more your speed) game brought to life.

A Call of Cthulhu game often plays like this:

A mysterious invitation arrives.
The benefactor is untrustworthy and devious.
The community is a suspicious lot, or worse.
The great evil is pervasive and clouds all actions in the town.
Fight or flight time! SANITY CHECK!
Showdown to decide the fate of the town.

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