Introduction

This article contains spoilers.

This review is but a casual, informal, subjective, unorthodox composition based on my personal opinions, beliefs, interpretations, impressions, and mercurial views. My intention with this critique is to facilitate new, innovative, artistic conversations.

In what hereinafter is to come, I will not be reviewing solely one piece; I will be reviewing two: H. P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness and the HPLHS motion picture adaptation of it. The Whisperer in Darkness (2011) is a movie starring Matt Foyer; produced by Andrew Leman, Sean Branney, and David Robertson; directed by Sean Branney; and presented and/or distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

The general aim of this article will be to compare those two pieces, especially by looking at how they both employ themes of deception, obsession, and forbidden knowledge (or knowledge accompanied by falsehood and/or menace).

Before truly beginning, I should like to digress by stating that this article relies and/or focuses heavily on an idea of mine, a sort of translation, or my preferred look at the text of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness. See, I like to think that the major events of the novella’s narrative were all a trick. There’s sufficient evidence throughout the plot that points toward the validity of that claim, an assertion which implies that the main character (Mr. Wilmarth) is being scammed or deceived, that he is the victim of a joke, a confidence game, a hoax. Keeping that point of view in mind while analyzing the text, a kind of isolationist, nigh-agoraphobic warning is illuminated upon throughout the story, a cautionary attitude, suggestive of social anxiety disorder, a sort of manifestation of the possible dangers of human interdependence, human curiosity, and conversation itself. Whispering throughout the story are what might be described as fears of words, sounds, ideas, senses, and the human receptiveness to the ideas of others. I think that is an interesting topic, and I also believe, generally speaking, just because someone tells you to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. I think that, if you do something someone tells you to do, only you are responsible for your actions, no one else; however, there may be exceptions, as life and humans are complicated and imperfect. Furthermore, that notion is also interesting to me because I see the mind, the will, thus human identity itself, as something that is so utterly fragile and protean; it can in a trice become possessed by any number of factors, variables, strong emotions, hyperactivity, forgetfulness, fixation, paranoia, and any number of mental illnesses (e.g., fugue, paranoid schizophrenia) that might generate or transform into false perceptions, false memories, hallucinations, and ultra-acute dreams that could trigger or reinforce the dominance and patterns of intrusive thoughts or monomaniacal delusions. I bring up all that because such mysteries and concepts are parts of the reason why I find The Whisperer in Darkness so fascinating. After all, could it not be that, every so often, the lunacy of one (or a group) infects someone else by means of mechanisms unexpected or unfathomable? And are such things not worth deciphering? The truth about free will is a mystery, a paradox, one that is oft explored in Lovecraftian fiction. Individuals often deceive themselves and tilt at windmills, in real life and occasionally in Lovecraft’s works. Lovecraft’s writings, within a certain context, are collectively a reminder of how, at times, lies may become everything, and thoughts and dreams may feel truer than what’s real.

Part One—The Whisperer in Darkness, by H. P. Lovecraft!

The greatest strength of Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness is its ability to symbolize, represent, or encapsulate certain kinds of byzantine patterns or experiences of idées fixes, folie à deux, gaslighting, brainwashing, and the manipulation of academic and societal perspectives. Such a sardonic quality of the novella story is so deeply connected to the story’s anima, and so present, that it even manifests, albeit watered down, in the HPLHS movie version of it. 

The technical and artistic strengths of Lovecraft’s novella The Whisperer in Darkness are connected to a vague kind of nihilistic obscurity and a cynical look at humanity’s eagerness to mask truth. In terms of horror or beauty, there is very little to be found in it, but the novella makes up for that dearth by building up a weird mood of ambiguity and derangement. The story of the novella seems to act like an ironic imitation, or a parody, of humanity’s unwillingness to evolve away from a comforting but degenerative status quo.

It is my opinion that this novella is at the weaker end of Lovecraft’s better writings. That said, what I do appreciate about it is how it effectuates an expression of paranoia throughout its narrative, the events of which perpetuating vagueness and an impression of unreliability. Quite entertainingly, all over the mood of the story, there buzzes tones of insanity and anxiety; the resulting ambiguity augments the literary caliber of said text.

While I am pleased that there is a section of the story which mentions Sodoma, Leonardo, and Renaissance arcades, I definitely don’t appreciate the derogatory usage of the term “Italian primitives” in that same segment. Considering how that section subtly associates Sodoma, Leonardo, and the Renaissance with primitivism, the position of that disrespectful term (“Italian primitives”) closely beside the names Sodoma and Leonardo and the term “Renaissance arcades” falsely relates Italian Renaissance art and Italian artists, in particular Sodoma and Leonardo, with lowness and inferiority; thus, that whole section of the story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

There’s more about the things in the story that tells me there really were no aliens, no brain-sustaining machines, and no extraterrestrial travel in the novella. Perhaps a bunch of characters got together for a lark to manipulate someone they heard about in the news, or to con an entire gullible (possibly superstitious) community? I also like to imagine that Wilmarth, the narrator, is a victim of his own delusions, obsessions; he could have become so focused on folklore that it could have taken over his attention and reasoning. The narrator is unreliable, he admits to never actually seeing anything monstrously alien, admits to not being sure about what was real or not, but also confesses to believing in the presence of monstrous forces despite what anyone might say to the contrary.

I wonder whether Lovecraft intentionally wrote that novella as a satire of his own writings? After all, the story almost does come across like a satire of the cosmic horror genre and the kinds of characters about whom Lovecraft could have written. Does it not seem so characteristically Lovecraft, a scholarly and/or literary type who looks reasonable and rational but slowly descends into a life of conspiracy theories and paranoia?  

The face and hands (humanoid mask and gloves?) which Wilmarth finds at the end of the novella do not necessarily have to indicate that an alien was wearing a human disguise; it could have easily just have been another human wearing a costume to impersonate Akeley. It could have been a fraud the entire time. An impersonation of Akeley, some phony letters, a fake ritual on the recording—all parts of a big lie.

The novella gives readers a surprisingly large amount of information about its fictional aliens, legends, myths, and extraterrestrial beings; I think the story does this (especially at the beginning and end) in order to replicate the way theoretically someone might be fed and hypnotized by the deceptive, alluring hoax of superstition and folklore, their brain filled with tantalizing thoughts and ideas that spellbind and enchant and cover up a dreary existence of meaninglessness. Normally, I would think that the trove of information about the alien beings and the lore around them would be revealed only at the end, given with dark revelations, but those gifts are presented at the beginning, which leads me to suspect their trustworthiness. All that folklore and occult info handed out near the beginning of the story possibly may serve to imitate the inherited or infecting insanity that forms a mad bedrock of reasoning, cognition, and faith. That false enlightenment and the deceptive rumors will paint the rest of the story in ways similar to conditioning, indoctrination, and/or brainwashing, influencing the way readers interpret everything presented in the story, with the readers’ manipulated imaginations filling in holes with parts from all those tales, legends, and such with which they were fed from the story’s beginning.

As a brief aside—I should like to point out that, in The Whisperer in Darkness (novella), the scene of the main character’s final night escape displays a liminal quality of unreality, of nightmare, a quality similar to the sense of nightmarishness hanging over the events surrounding the moorland-departure scene of the finale in “The Presentiment” by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam; furthermore, both works breathe themes and/or symbols of darkness, doom, dream, illusion, neurosis, sleep, and weirdness.

For me, the story makes more sense, and feels more vibrant, when I look at it as if it were the product of combining mad dreams, delusions, obsessions, nightmares, and the imagination of a fictional man who fell victim to a hoax founded on legends (Lovecraftian legends). Otherwise, if I were to look at the story and say that its aliens and weird machines were all meant to be considered as real beings within the context and imaginary reality in the story’s fictitious world, then the story would become too obvious, and all of its characters too foolish.

Everything the main character experienced can be rationally, materialistically explained with mundane answers. The otherworldly conversation he heard at night? Merely a dream, or perhaps another part of the trick. Those who had enough money and intel on the legends and myths everyone was already talking about, they maybe wanted to give the highbrows and the rubes alike a terrible scare. Or, was Akeley one of those who might have started the debating (possibly with some fake alien corpses)? Maybe it could have always been his plan to make people think aliens were real? What if Wilmarth is the one who is dishonest with the readers?

Now, before I begin to wrap up part one, I would like to touch on some ideas I have about what I consider to be another significant aspect of the story: a cynical posture (integrating nihilism and/or pessimism) which especially mocks human delusion and fallacies, human fallibility, and the existence of humanity in general. By being aware of the cynicism this story directs towards society and human nature, it becomes easier to perceive how the story might be attempting to communicate a lack of faith in humanity. For example, the titular whisperer of the novella may not be simply a character only; it, its actions, its environment—they all may as well be in part symbols of a gnawing parasitic component of the human experience, related to humanity’s innate predisposition for or vulnerability to irrational mania, conspiracy theories, mass hysteria, divisive gossip, biased skepticism, fanatical worship of celebrity or academic opinion, subliminal mass subversion, and so forth. Different kinds of cynicism and shadowiness were central to the materialist will of Lovecraft’s oeuvre. H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, "Nyarlathotep," "The Festival," "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Haunter of the Dark," At the Mountains of Madness, "The Thing on the Doorstep," and "The Colour Out of Space,” as well as having attitudes of paranoia and psychosis, they include techniques or themes that also appear in The Whisperer in Darkness (e.g., unreliable narrators, distrust of scientific or celebrity opinion, and humanity’s existence being one of doomed ignorance and meaninglessness).

When seriously taking into account my interpretation about how there are no aliens in the novella The Whisperer in Darkness, it may be understandable how the novella also acts as an expression, or fear, of what could happen if fiction is taken too seriously. In the story, like in many of Lovecraft’s writings, there exist nihilistic warnings against inquiry, curiosity, groupthink, superstition, and any search for truth whatsoever; any fabrication, scilicet religion and folklore, the story portrays as being a pathway to danger. But what’s more, there also exists an illustration of the madness or uncertainty that could issue forth when someone takes what someone else says too seriously (or out of context even), or when someone wants to look for meaning (or create meaning) where there is none.

Finally, to conclude this segment of the analysis, I should like to pose two significant questions, followed by my answer related to them: first, what if what the story wants us to behold is the unfurling of a maelstrom wherein two men, causing themselves to follow imaginary clues which they want to believe exist, throw each other into an abyss of obsession? Second, is the novella mocking the need for meaning and understanding? To answer those questions, I say, when discussing the story, one could argue that ignorance, or rejecting otherness, becomes symbolic for a desire to return to intrauterine oblivion; furthermore, it could be supposed that the story conveys an antipathy for enlightenment and liminality; even so, there exists a bit of duality about the story and its subtext, for in them there is a fear of truth alongside a cry for answers and revelation, something that wants to draw readers into investigating and awareness yet also attempts to frustrate any clarification.

Part Two—The Whisperer in Darkness, presented by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society!

First and foremost, I would like to mention that cynical traces, like those in Lovecraft’s novella The Whisperer in Darkness, do appear with nihilist and transgressive behaviors, or tropes if you like, of weird fiction in the HPLHS movie adaptation The Whisperer in Darkness; however, that HPLHS version is an inferior product weakened by an unmerited addition of incongruous, unjustified elements of adventure, action, melodrama, and sentimentalism unwholesomely divergent and different from the élan vital, so to speak, of the original novella. Granted, this movie’s storyline, like Lovecraft’s novella, embodies themes of conspiracies, deception, mysteries, misinformation, superstition, and skepticism; be that as it may, with all its deviations and distracting variations, in all seriousness, it is not a faithful adaptation. To its credit, some of the movie’s scenes display fine shadow work; however, its storyline has too much filler, its gore is meagre, its tone and mood as a whole are inconsistent and lukewarm throughout, and the movie in whole feels jejune and exceedingly protracted.

Another significant attribute about that HPLHS motion picture is that it conspicuously portrays the alien monsters of its story as undeniably otherworldly creatures that have actuality within the context of the movie’s fictional narrative, and on top of that, those aliens have interactions with other characters (human or otherwise) inhabiting likewise said fictional narrative. In relation to that, a further point to consider is how, within the setting of the movie’s storyline, the titular whisperer character offers bona fide otherworldly knowledge whilst functioning as merely a disguised antagonist in such a way that considerably overshadows its own symbolism regarding madness and undermines its symbolic potentiality; however, the whisperer can be associated with deception, as the whisperer also emits the impression of a tempter or a false seducer who, with deceitful cajoling, pretexts, and/or false promises, maybe intends to corrupt the fascinated academic and possibly use him to corrupt others.

One final note: although the adaptation imparts hints of thought-provoking concepts (e.g., religion, science, and superstition being unreliable; cult of personality; cult of celebrity; mass conformity; classist skepticism; mass delusion; academia, celebrities, and con artists directing societal narratives; pop-pseudoscience; sensationalism; manipulation of info via what amount to contests of popularity; and xenophobia), the movie fails to comprehensively flesh out or thoroughly explore those concepts.

Conclusion

H. P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness, is better for readers who might be looking for a weird story that, despite having dull-witted characters and dull settings, performs best when it is evoking or hinting at relevant questions, attitudes, and ideas related to existentialism, nihilism, and human obsession.

As for the HPLHS version, it should have been faithful to Lovecraft’s novella, and it should have had a much shorter run-time. The movie is tainted by lightheartedness, ugliness, and provincialism, and it lacks the pleasantly grim mood of the novella. Nevertheless, it does have moments of strength when it is playing faithful to the air of mistrust of human rationality or academic credibility, which also exists in the novella. The movie’s main character becoming a sort of brain-slave to the alien creatures is a bittersweet touch, because it differs from the novella’s ending, but it does connect to the themes of nihilism and mental manipulation in the novella. Though I personally don’t wholeheartedly recommend the HPLHS adaptation, it has some satisfactory moments that deserve appreciation.

In conclusion, Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness is grim and moody yet tainted by insensitivity, narrow-mindedness, and an absence of true beauty; nevertheless, that novella is mostly satisfying, it is moderately artistic, and it shows a certain sophistication which the HPLHS movie version lacks; furthermore, it is my opinion that, whilst in both versions knowledge is linked with deception and/or danger, the original (i.e., Lovecraft’s novella The Whisperer in Darkness) wields themes of deception and forbidden knowledge in a superior manner.  

Matthew Pungitore’s short story “Wychyrst Tower” appeared in Cirsova Magazine (Winter 2021).

He has written various articles for the DMR Books blog. In the past, he has done volunteer work for the Hingham Historical Society. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer. Matthew graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University.

If you’re curious, visit his BookBaby author-page.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com