“But I will not fear even though the earth trembles, and mountains tip into the midst of the sea” (Psalm 46.2).
In the Mouth of Madness is a 1994 horror film written by Michael De Luca and directed by John Carpenter. It’s the story of John Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, who takes the job of finding the missing bestselling author Sutter Cane. It was released in the U.S. in February of 1995 (it had been released in December of the prior year in Italy), and did not do well at the box office. It is, full disclosure, my favorite horror film.
The story falls into the category of cosmic horror, which could be summarized as a story where the entire fabric of reality is under siege or overturned. One character sums this up early on the film, telling Trent that reality is “just what we tell each other it is.” Normality and madness could be flipped, and suddenly everything you knew would be forever and indistinguishably changed.
This is what a lot of scary stories play with: the idea of a unknown and unbelievable reality invading our own. The quiet rooms of our cozy homes are suddenly filled with moans and the clanking of chains. Our place on the great chain of being is thrown into question with the appearance of some creature who is stronger, more ferocious than we are. The friend, parent, spouse, or even the child we thought we knew so well is revealed to be someone (or something) else.
John Trent, as the film takes shape, has to deal with the suggestion that the fictional town and characters from Sutter Cane’s novels are real, and they are surrounding him. Is this, perhaps, a ruse, an elaborate con put together to outwit someone who makes his living uncovering deceptions, or is it all real? Have the publishers put together a stage and actors to convince him of the impossible? Or, as one of the townspeople suggests, is reality not what it used to be?
From the first time I saw the movie some thirty years ago, this idea of a malleable reality, that everything could just change before us into the unimaginable was what pulled me into its tale. It plays into one of my own fears: that everything can change in a moment. Tornados spawn in storms that build amidst calm days, leaving people without homes or shelter as night falls. Corruption and abuse in businesses alongside blindness or permissibility in government can cause decades of savings to disappear in hours.
It is one of the realities of this world Scripture tells us of, again and again. Adam and Eve find themselves expelled from a world without effort or toil into one where they eat only by the sweat of their brow. Saul goes from anointed and favored king to watching some young nobody acquire influence and adoration that used to be his. And, there’s the realization, on a sunny spring morning that the dead don’t always stay dead.
This theme has been swimming in my head of late as I read headlines in the morning and look on sidewalks and street corners for the camouflage of the National Guard who have recently arrived. Reality appears to no longer be what it used to be. Scenes from stories, all of them dark, have begun to play out in the news. And even though a part of me, like John Trent, wants to yell that this is not reality, I know that it very much is. But, along with him, I’ve no idea what to do about it.
Cosmic horror such as In the Mouth of Madness, doesn’t always resolve into a happy ending. The malleable reality these stories unveil does usurp what its protagonists have always known. But, there are times the terrible, indescribable horrors that invade our world are turned back, returned to some stygian darkness where they are walled in once again. Though, even in those tales, reality has changed; because, we’ve learned such awful things are possible.
Scripture, being quite cosmic, doesn’t shy away from scary tales like those in film or those we find in the day’s news. It shows us that things can change, and change suddenly. The Temple that is the center of faith today can, tomorrow, be reduced to dust by Babylon. Whirlwinds can push down walls, robbing us of loved ones.
But it also shows us that childless couples can find themselves to be parents, that shepherd boys can be kings, and a poor carpenter’s kid tell us how we can truly, for the good of all change the world.
And that our reality, even when it seems invulnerable and inevitable, can change.
Changeless yet Ever-Changing One, be with us in these strange, troubling times. Give us courage when it is needed, action when it is essential, and knowledge, always, that all of our times are in your loving hand so we might remember that with hope things can always change.