H.P. Lovecraft's Monster Portal (2022) User Reviews

Yup, as bad as you would expect it to be...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 20 January 2023]

Right, well I stumbled upon the 2022 horror movie titled "Monster Portal", and seeing that the movie brandished H. P. Lovecraft's name on the cover, and having rather interesting cover, I must admit that I was intrigued.

Did I harbor much of any expectations to the movie? No, not really, because I had never heard about is before watching it.

And what a dumpster fire this was. First of all, this movie has nothing to do with H. P. Lovecraft, aside from the fact that writers Matthew B. C., Scott Jeffrey and Mario von Czapiewski opted to put Cthulhu into their movie. Yeah, this story has never even been anywhere near being spawned by the great H. P. Lovecraft himself. And just because you opt to put something that Lovecraft created into a movie doesn't really give you the right to put "H. P. Lovecraft's" as part of your movie title. But hey, anything to lure in the audience, right?

The storyline in "Monster Portal" was not a great one, not even by a longshot. It was sluggish and slow paced, with nothing overly exciting to offer the audience that manages to endure the staggering 80 minutes of nonsense that "Monster Portal" turned out to be.

The special effects and CGI in the movie were so-so. Some of the CGI was actually fair enough, while some was just taken straight out of a 1990s computer game. And how wonderfully clever to make the scenes so dark that you can hardly see any of the special effects when they were actually on the screen. Yeah, this formula doesn't really work, and if anything it just makes attempts of horror turn into a parody.

The acting performances in "Monster Portal" were fair enough, I will say that much. I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie, and that is normally something I enjoy when I watch a movie. But the actors and actresses literally had nothing worthwhile to work with here.

I got suckered in by the "H. P. Lovecraft's" part of the title and ten tentacles and faceless creature on the cover. Make sure you don't do the same mistake, because "Monster Portal" is not worth the effort. And seeing a CGI rendering of Cthulhu's head shrouded in 90% darkness hardly constitutes a movie as being Lovecraftian.

My rating of "Monster Portal" lands on a two out of ten stars.

Disappointing...

[imseeg · 4/10 · 28 September 2022]

This review focusses on the movie that is directed by Matthew B. C and it is quite a disappointment. It's much worse than a disappointment, it's amateur hour.

The bad: this is NOT a horror movie at all, because it is not in even the slightest way horrifying. It is laughably amateurish though, because of the silly attempts at making something scary and failing at it miserably.

Below average actors, below average photography and sound. It's not even worth being called a movie.

Better watch ANY other REAL horror movie and there are many old horror classics out there to be admired!

(((Beware: the title of this movie has changed recently, before it was titled as "The Offering", which is quite confusing because there are 2 similarly titled movies)))

Redo Please

[RedQueenIMDB · 4/10 · 25 July 2023]

Good reviews on this one (for a change). Yes, it's a total snoozefest for 45 minutes. The only it has going for it in that time is a super creepy old lady. Then it switches from a grieving daughter returning to her family home yawn into a demonic cult story involving mindbending concepts. It does finally take on some atmospheric flavor at that point, as well as a horror story. And it's pretty good from that point forward. It's just brief, & hard to forgive the first 45 minutes. Script still wasn't great, but I liked the effects. I wish the whole movie had been that last 25 minutes & they had done more with that instead of rushing it.

Snoozefest deluxe

[Atomicgeezer · 1/10 · 6 April 2022]

How did this ultra-dull movie get financed? How did the director manage to make one hour and eighteen minutes seem to drag on...and on...and on? Did the several actors appearing in this stupid "Lovecraftian" tale drink codine cough syrup before every take? Everything moves in slow motion, the cult members are wearing cheap hooded taffeta costumes from Party City, and there are about 20 seconds of creature effects which you can see in the trailer. Avoid, this stinks like Cthulhu farts. One star, which is being generous.

Boring

[draftdubya · 1/10 · 1 March 2022]

This movie is slower than watching oil paint dry. The sound is off. The actors seem like they didn't even want to be there. This goes by 2 other names which you just know it gonna suck.

holy wow this sucked

[joebot69 · 1/10 · 2 November 2022]

Okay so i really only watched about 5 minutes of this whole thing. I just skimmed through everything because i thought it would be tons of monsters everywhere (hence monster portal alt title). Boy was i wrong. So they showed the monster a bit in the beginning and then there was like real life simulator for another hour. Only in the end did it get even remotely interesting. The main monster lady got naked and had sex with a monster. Thats it pretty much. Quite literally. Then some bozo killed himself and the title showed.

Theres nothing more i can say. At all. Like i guess the cthulhu cgi wasnt the worst because it was so dark i couldnt even see it. Anyways i got to see boobs so that was cool. Deserves one star solely off that.

Wrong movie...

[fedor8 · 12 April 2023]

This is the 2nd time I downloaded the wrong movie because the titles (and the year) were the same, or in this case similar. I got this under the name "The Offering", a 2022 movie that I thought I was getting. Instead, I got this cheap B-movie. It did say "Monster Portal" at the beginning but I thought nothing of it, I proceeded.

Mind you, it's not terrible in the first half. There's some nonsense, such as Nick hitting on Rich's girlfriend in a swimming pool - while Rich is sitting nearby, which is utter baloney, and it made little sense that Rich was the one to notice the many dead bunnies - yet he thought his girlfriend was being paranoid, which is illogical. But otherwise it was OK. I was especially pleasantly surprised by the female cast, i.e. Both young actresses being very pretty, which is a rarity.

However, the last third became muddled, amateur, and then downright random. The whole supernatural section made little sense. Who overtook the brunette's body? Was her father aware that things would play out this way? Why did brunette-as-demon have sex with a monster from the Other Side? Couldn't they have done it on the Other Side? Why did Rich run away, then stop trying to run away, then again try to escape? What kind of wishi-washiness is this... What the hell happened at the end? Did Cthulhu and his pals win?

The script is a mess in the last third, and that section was made even worse by the shoddy direction, slow pace and a real fail in the music department. The soundtrack is almost non-existent, lame, and so are the sound effects. The B-movie roots were showing themselves in their full "glory" in the final third. Extremely cheap.

The old woman was rather effective though. As a character she had interesting things to say, and that actress did a good job.

Warning: does not contain many monsters

[bowmanblue · 5/10 · 24 April 2024]

Hey, I've got nothing against horror 'B-movies' - in fact, they make up a significant proportion of my DVD collection. You don't have to have major actors, great special effects, or even a particularly original story to make a movie enjoyable - as long as it entertains then it usually fits the bill. However...

If you make a film with the word 'monster' in the title, it does tend to set an audience's expectations. If you sat down to watch 'Snakes on a Plane' you'd probably not be expecting Shakespeare, but you'd be looking for something that's just a bit of harmless fun. If you got one sickly-looking adder ten minutes before then end, then you might feel just a little bit 'short-changed' from what the title promised.

'Monster Portal' is an adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story, which is fair enough, but it does relay on giant creatures as part of its central theme. Sadly, the movie doesn't have the budget to really pull it off. Yes, there are a couple of monsters sprinkled here and there, but not only is it not enough to justify the title, but they're rendered about as well as your average Playstation 2 cut scene.

Now, I'm happy enough to ignore the special effects if the story is overall engaging and fun (or in a horror movie's case 'scary' would suffice), but here the acting is bad. Yes, I've seen enough horror movies to know I'm never going to get 'Oscar-worthy' performances, but in this case it basically feels like the actors are reading their lines off a cue card which is just out of shot. I guess I shouldn't really put all the blame on the actors, this script is pretty basic and they're probably doing their best with the awfully generic lines they're given, plus you'd think the director might be able to coax something out of one or two of them.

It's not the main characters who are the (total) problem. They don't turn in very good performances, but I can just about excuse them. It's more the secondary cast-members who might as well be your average passers by who were roped in to read a line or two here and there.

As I say, B-movies can be fun, but this one just tries to bite off way more than it's capable of. With a higher budget, better actors and script it might have worked, but, ultimately, it couldn't make anything of its lofty goals.

Worst adaption of a Lovecraft story EVER!!!!!!!!

[jmcwdehaas · 1/10 · 29 August 2023]

This poor attempt of adapting a Lovecraft story is a slap in the face of H. P. himself. The acting, camerawork, sound, lighting are so bad that you think you are watching a first graders school project. There is literally not ONE jumpscare moment at all and the plot is thinner than paper. The fx (if you can call it that) are so amateuristic that nobody beliefs this stuf. The actors involved should rethink their career paths because none of them are convincing. How is it possible that people get money to make this kind of rubbisch. Was this funded or some daddy project anyway it is, as I said, a discrace to the works of H. P. Lovecraft!

Pathetic

[jenbyron-00561 · 1/10 · 21 September 2023]

This was so boring and poorly done. I could look past the low budget special effects, but there wasn't one thing good about this film. I love Lovecraftian works, but this wasn't even that. You get like maybe 20ish minutes of the film where it trys, but it doesn't try that hard. The only half way decent moment in the film is when the main character opens the door and you can see tentacles. Otherwise this was really bad. If I wanted to watch monster porn I would look else where. This film is more of a punishment to the viewer as the actors are pathetic and so was the directing. For the love of all things Lovecraftian, can't we get a decent film?