A great movie that didn't get the viewership it deserved

So this one is going to be about one of my very favorite movies. It is one of the first horror movies I ever watched from start to finish, although many would argue it isn't really a horror movie. It has a good cast, great script, and the special effects were pretty good for the time. The movie is called Lord Of Illusions written and directed by Clive Barker and starring Scott Bakula and Famke Janssen. If you haven't ever heard of this movie before, I'm honestly not at all surprised. It gets ignored by many people as either being nothing special, or for Barkers other bigger name films.

Clive Barker took one of his characters from one of his short stories in the book The Books Of Blood named Harry D'Amour. The character is a deeply troubled man who constantly comes to the very edge of what is referred to in the movie as "the darkness" but never quite crosses over into it. He is the main character and is a private detective that gets pulled into a string of events that started years before he became involved as we find out in the first 20 minutes of the film. The main antagonist of the movie is a man named Nix who has long since crossed through the barrier between illusion and true magic. He is first seen juggling an actual ball of fire from hand to hand and speaking about what the fire has said to him. He sounds crazy as a loon right away, and that part of him doesn't really change. He is running a Manson like cult in the desert and has recently kidnapped a young girl. A man who was his former protege named Swann has taken a group of people who all escaped this cult to come back and rescue this girl and to effectively bind and bury, literally, Nix. Nix tells Swann that he has so much to show him, and shares some of his power with Swann, stating that Swann is the only one worthy of his true wisdom. As Nix is distracted giving Swann some of his power, the girl shoots him in the back, and this gives Swann and his allies their chance to bind Nix. After this is done the characters seperate and we flash forward about 13 years later. This is when we first meet Harry D'Amour, our main protagonist of the story.

Harry, as I said, is deeply troubled, and has just come off of a case where a young boy was possessed by, as Harry puts it, "Oh you know, the usual." He gets put on a case by a friend of his in California to catch a guy trying to scam an insurance company out of their money. He goes out there, and inadvertently gets mixed up in something he doesn't fully understand. Now this is where I am going to end the plot synopsis, so as to not create any spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen this underrated gem of a film.

Now as for the visuals and overall story and directing. I put all of these in with one another because Clive Barker did write and direct this film, and he always makes a point of being very hands on with how the visual effects come out. First of all, the story, just fantastic. Exactly what you would expect from a man who makes his main living off of writing horror novels. It is a clean, distinct, no nonsense script that doesn't play around with a lot of useless words or events. Each event and each line is in turn meant to either enhance the tone of the film, or is there to help move the plot forward. The direction is fantastic as well. Barker really shows off how he can make certain his actors give him all that they can and make you believe that they are their particular characters. He also does something most horror movie filmmakers could learn from. He uses color to help enhance the film. See many horror filmmakers do the opposite of this, they would prefer to use the lack of color and light to set tone or to frighten you. But the thing with this film is that color is very important to how you see things. The main actress of the film is never seen in anything but bright scenes in order to help you understand that she is the light of the film. Whereas Swann is usually her stark contrast and is always shown in darker scenes with slightly less color or with reds and browns in order to show he is a man tormented by his past. While Harry is in between you see him in both settings and see him fitting well with them both. Almost like he straddles the two worlds and is a bridge for them. Than there are the actual special effects of the film. They aren't Earth shattering by todays standards, but they are quite good for when the movie came out. I can't really go into detail about them without giving away certain parts of the movie, but they are quite good.

So if you're looking for a good popcorn flick, a good horror movie, or just a good detective sort of movie and don't mind a little blood (it is, afterall, a Clive Barker movie, you know there is going to be some blood and a bit of gore), than you can't go wrong with Lord Of Illusions. Just make sure you're watching the directors cut. This way you can see the movie the way Barker meant it to be seen. Enjoy kiddies.