Judging by the low reviews that most movies based on Lovecraft's writing achieve -- on this site and elsewhere -- it must be very difficult to make a movie that works. On the whole, I don't think that Lovecraft's stories lend themselves well to visual presentation -- they rely for their effect on their (often rather overblown) descriptions of characters' mental states and experiences. Such things are notoriously difficult to translate into film.Whisperer in the Darkness does not really try to replicate the emotional tenseness and claustrophobia of the stories. It isn't particularly scary, or even disturbing. It is, however, amusing and engaging, and tells a Lovecraft story with reasonable fidelity. Mostly, I think, it works because it's presentation -- 1930s writing and acting, but made with modern cinematography -- is so unusual.The movie is made by the same folks who gave us the "Scary Solstice" album, containing such Christmas favourites as "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Mi-Go." So we know that the movie isn't going to be too self-important or pompous. I get the impression that it was made by people who love Lovecraft's work, but aren't in awe of it.I suspect that Lovecraft would have hated this movie -- he seems to have been a relentlessly gloomy, self-interested man, with no sense of humour whatsoever. The idea that anybody would make a light-hearted, gently mocking adaptation of his stories would have appalled him. Still, his loss is our gain, I think.To appreciate this movie I suspect that the viewer needs to be a fan of Lovecraft's work, but not an acolyte, if you see what I mean. An interest in early 20th-century science-fiction/horror cinema certainly helps as well.

I am an avid fan of the writings of Lovecraft, well, and anything Lovecraftian in general, and happened to come across "The Whisperer in Darkness" by sheer luck. I didn't have my hopes up, because most previous movies based on Lovecraft stories had been off key or had too much focus on special effects and putting the ominous dread of the core of the story in the background.However, as with the 2005 version of "The Call of Cthulhu", I was more than genuinely surprised in a good way with the 2011 film version of "The Whisperer in Darkness". This was right on the spot in every aspect; focusing on the storytelling, the build up of the cosmic dread and the despair of the protagonist.The actors in the movie were doing good jobs bringing the story to life through their characters. And director Sean Branney really capture the essence of the timeless writing of Lovecraft.However, personally, I am not overly keen on movies in black and white, as colors add so much more flavor to the movie experience. But keeping it in black and white works well enough for the movie, given the thematic setting of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos and universe."The Whisperer in Darkness" is a MUST watch for any fan of Lovecraft. And I rate it a solid seven out of ten stars. If the movie had been in color, the rating would have been eight. Visuals are important in the movie media.

This movie is very good. The atmosphere of dreadness keeps rising throughout the movie, acting is coherent with the chosen aesthetics, the movie flows very nicely and adaptation of the story is interesting and builds up good suspense. It is well done.OK, I just felt like writing this because of those unfair reviews trying to nitpick and don't doing justice to the work and love put on this movie. They seem to judge this movie like it was a big budget modern Hollywood movie. The same goes to the comments about "The Call of Cthulhu" (2005). Both movies are successful attempts to make adaptations as they would be made when Lovecraft was alive just adjusting their pace to modern audiences.

One cannot help but give full marks to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for their efforts to bring H. P. Lovecraft's eerie stories to the screen in a manner in keeping with the texture and mood of the original material. Although there have been other attempts to film Lovecraft stories, most have generally been unsatisfying failures due to misguided attempts to modernize or glamorize them. Not so with HPLHS, who have gone out their way to keep faithful to the period and locales in which the tales were set, even going so far as give the film the feel of an early-1930s black-and-white movie. Even their logo is an homage to the the old Universal Studios logo of the early 1930s (the studio which produced such classic horror movies as Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy), replacing the familiar airplane-circling-the-earth with a dirigible.The plot involves Albert Wilmarth, a college anthropology professor specializing in folklore, who becomes intrigued by a series of unusual newspaper stories reported from a rural part of Vermont after a period of particularly heavy rains. It seems that bodies have been observed washing down from the mountains in the swollen rivers, bodies which are, reportedly, neither human nor animal. The bodies apparently also recall, among the older inhabitants, old tales of strange beings that live in remote parts of the hills, beings that are neither human nor animal, and possibly not even of terrestrial origin. Wilmarth begins his investigation into these stories on the basis that they are nothing more than mere interesting folklore, but soon finds himself dealing with something far more sinister. Admittedly, the producers of the movie added some material and characters not present in the original story. In fact, the short story actually ends at a point only about one hour into the film. However, the original version was, after all, only a short story, and I suppose the makers felt that they had to add some material to the plot in order to expand the short story into a full-length movie. nevertheless, the movie still does a far better job of evoking the feel of H.P. Lovecraft's writing than any other movie versions of his works, with the only possible exception being the resent silent film version of The Call of Cathulhu, which was made by the same producers.One addition to the film is a debate staged between the protagonist, Professor Wilmarth, and Charles Fort. While that was not a part of H.P. Lovecraft's original story, it is interesting period touch because Charles Fort was actually a real person, a celebrated and controversial author of the early 1900s who was known to contemporaries as "The Mad Genius of the Bronx". Fort, who died in 1932, wrote about what are now called paranormal phenomena before that term was even invented, and is credited, among other things, with coining the word "teleportation".