Apocalypse Trilogy Now
Revisiting John Carpenter’s thematic trilogy
Spooky season is in full swing, so let’s keep things extra spooky with the Master of Horror himself: John Carpenter. The man has become almost synonymous with Halloween ever since he directed, well, Halloween. Hell, the theme song he composed for the film is basically to Halloween as “Jingle Bells” is to Christmas.
Halloween is such a beloved and influential classic that it can overshadow some of Carpenter’s other great films. Three of those films in particular have become known as his “Apocalypse Trilogy.” These are three films that are not actually directly connected to each other by story, but they all touch upon the same themes. Those movies are The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), and In the Mouth of Madness (1994). All three of these films see Carpenter try his hand at cosmic horror and take a very nihilistic view of the world. I will be getting into spoilers here, so please watch these movies if you haven’t already seen them.
The Thing (1982)
Halloween is Carpenter’s most beloved and successful film, but an argument could be made that The Thing is his best film. It’s often referred to as a remake of The Thing from Another World (1951), but it’s probably more accurate to call it a more faithful adaptation of the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. The premise of the film is brilliant. It’s about an American research team in Antarctica (composed entirely of men) who come into contact with an extraterrestrial organism that had been buried in the ice for potentially thousands of years. This organism is essentially a parasite that can assimilate any life form it comes in contact with, and it can then create a perfect replica of that organism with all of its traits in order to blend in among the population and continue assimilating and replicating the other organisms around it. This leads to an overwhelming feeling of paranoia as the men of the research station don’t know who among them might have already been assimilated and replaced. To make matters worse, they come to the realization that if this organism is able to escape Antarctica and reach human civilization, it would be next to impossible to prevent it from assimilating and replacing all life on Earth. One might say that the film has apocalyptic stakes!
The horror of The Thing comes from the sense of hopelessness in the face of this truly alien force. It isn’t cosmic horror in the way that Lovecraft created alien gods so powerful that they are almost indifferent to humanity. Instead it creates an extraterrestrial enemy that is so truly alien in its motivations and behavior that we are completely unequipped to deal with it. Whenever we get a look at it, it becomes this amalgamation of different species it has assimilated from all across the universe (the practical creature effects from Rob Bottin are still the best I have ever seen). The only hope humanity (and all life on Earth for that matter) is simply to keep it quarantined in Antarctica where it can’t spread. The conclusion of the film really drives home the point of how screwed we are. It sees our two surviving characters sitting outside in the ruins of what used to be their research outpost resigned to the fact that they will freeze to death while also still being paranoid that one of them might have been assimilated by the organism. If one of them has become replaced, then the organism will simply sit there and wait for a rescue party to arrive so that it can hitch a ride back to civilization and doom the planet. Bleak stuff!
Prince of Darkness (1987)
The second chapter in this thematic trilogy might be Carpenter’s most underrated film. The Thing had been the most expensive horror film Carpenter had ever made with a budget of $15 million, but it flopped at the box office and brought in under $20 million. Because of that, future horror films from Carpenter received significantly smaller budgets with no major studio backing. That includes Prince of Darkness which had a tiny $3 million budget. Fortunately, Carpenter is a master of maximizing his budgets.
This film shares some similarities with The Thing while still going in its own direction. The most obvious similarities are its characters and setting. While The Thing followed a team of researchers holed up at an outpost in Antarctica, Prince of Darkness follows a team of researchers holed up inside of a monastery in Los Angeles. While the characters in The Thing have come in contact with a strange extraterrestrial organism, the characters in Prince of Darkness have come in contact with a strange canister containing a mysterious green liquid. What is this mysterious green liquid? It’s Satan. Duh! It turns out that Satan is the son of a being called the Anti-God that is trapped in a dimension of anti-matter, and Satan is trying to open up a gateway to that dimension in order to let the Anti-God into our world. Also, Jesus was an extraterrestrial that tried to warn us about these entities. Have I mentioned that this movie is totally bonkers? It’s so good.
While the team of researchers (mostly quantum physicists) tries to prevent the Anti-God from entering our world, Satan begins growing in strength and possesses and influences those around him to do his bidding. This includes a character played by Alice Cooper who kills someone as an Alice Cooper song is playing. That isn’t necessarily important to the overall theme of the film, but I needed you to know it anyway. Also, all of the characters in the monastery are having a shared nightmare of a shadowy figure emerging from the monastery that looks like it was shot on grainy VHS tapes. Those shared dreams are actually messages sent from the future as a warning about what will happen if the Anti-God enters our universe through the monastery. I would like to reiterate that this film is bonkers.
What makes this film part of the thematic “Apocalypse Trilogy” is its bleak and nihilistic nature. Much like how the characters in The Thing are willing to sacrifice themselves in the hopes of saving the world, so too are the characters in this film willing to sacrifice themselves to prevent the coming of the Anti-God. Much as the ambiguous ending of The Thing indicates our protagonists may fail to prevent the apocalypse, our protagonists in Prince of Darkness have a similarly ambiguous fate. While Satan is stopped thanks to the heroics of a character named Catherine (played by Lisa Blount), new shared dreams from the future indicate that this only delayed the inevitable as Catherine is now shown to be the avatar of the Anti-God exiting the monastery into our world.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
The final film in this thematic trilogy is often regarded today as Carpenter’s last great horror film, and I tend to agree. The title is a pretty obvious homage to Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, and the film’s protagonist (played by the great Sam Neill) feels like a composite of various protagonists from Lovecraft’s work. This film isn’t strictly an homage to Lovecraft. The film’s mysterious antagonist is clearly patterned after Stephen King.
I know I described the previous film as bonkers, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the insanity that is this movie. The premise is that bestselling horror author Sutter Cane (the Stephen King analogue played by Jürgen Prochnow) has disappeared, and the publisher of his latest novel has hired an insurance investigator (Neill) to find him. His investigation leads him to a town in New Hampshire called Hobb’s End. That happens to be the setting of Cane’s novels that was thought to be fictional (à la Derry, Maine for Stephen King). Once he gets there, things really go off the rails. The film becomes a series of surreal and hallucinatory events as Neill’s investigator descends into madness. This ultimately culminates in the reveal that Sutter Cane’s newest novel is playing out in real life. The things Cane has written are coming true in the real world. This is especially troubling because this particular novel concludes with the end of the world. Not great! As if that wasn’t bad enough, Cane reveals that the number of diehard fans of his that believe in his writing have grown so large that they are actually making them come true. It’s causing the veil between reality and fiction to dissolve, and it’s allowing for the return of ancient evil gods called Old Ones. I told you that this was Lovecraft coded.
While the previous two films were ambiguous about whether or not the apocalypse had been averted, In the Mouth of Madness is much more clear. Neill’s investigator is dumped in a mental asylum for his deranged ramblings, and then he gets to witness the apocalypse actually take place. The film ends with him traveling to a theater to watch the movie we are currently watching, and he descends into hysterical laughter as the world ends. How’s that for nihilism?
If it isn’t obvious by now, I am a huge fan of this little trilogy. I think it’s a great example of Carpenter operating at the peak of his powers and demonstrating just why he’s considered by so many to be the greatest horror director. It’s also a fascinating look at how Carpenter can take similar themes and craft completely different stories and aesthetics that are still terrifying and entertaining to watch. If you’ve ever wanted to branch out from Halloween to see Carpenter’s other horror films, his “Apocalypse Trilogy” is a great place to start.