In short: The Last Case of August T. Harrison (2015)

Venice, California. When his son Jason (Eric Gorlow) asks retired private detective August T. Harrison (Jerry Lacy, who apparently in younger years played another private detective on supernatural soap “Dark Shadows”, among other roles) to help out an acquaintance of his with an investigation, the old gent soon finds himself confronted with rather more cosmic mysteries than he could have expected.

That acquaintance, Eleanora Williams (Maggie Wagner), asks August to find a former associate of hers named Drake Johnson (Max Landwirth) who has disappeared; or rather, she wants August to find some film footage Drake apparently absconded with. At first, the elderly detective’s investigation seems to lead nowhere, but eventually, he’ll learn a bit more about the true nature of the universe than can strictly be good for anyone, and will have to try and prevent the end of the world as we know it. He might even meet one Howard Phillips Lovecraft (Nathan Wilson), deceased yet rather sprightly.

Lovecraftian microbudget horror is something of a sub-genre all of its own. As it goes with microbudget horror, a lot of the films in the sub-genre aren’t terribly good, but then, that’s inevitable with any kind of human expression, and most certainly with the sort of things made by semi-professionals and amateurs in their spare time. Just look at the blog you’re reading! In the last few years, I’ve increasingly avoided writing about the examples of the style I’ve seen and didn’t like; it’s generally neither fun nor useful for anyone to get grumpy about other people’s labours of love, and if I feel the need to get cranky about movies, there’s crap not made by human beings like the Tom Cruise Mummy to maul.

However, Ansel Faraj’s The Last Case of August T. Harrison isn’t one of those Lovecraftian microbudget films that make appreciating them difficult. Sure, it does bear the marks of its budget. It is sometimes rough around the edges of framing and staging, but for every awkward moment, there are two that are clever, atmospheric or simply effective. The acting feels generally more natural than it does in many a microbudget film, with dialogue (and dialogue direction) that flows nicely where you’d usually expect a stop and start affair full of awkward pauses and strange performance decisions. As a whole, Faraj’s script is one of the film’s greatest virtues. It is well paced, well plotted, clever in its allusions to Lovecraft without making them overbearing, and full of neat little ideas the film then goes on to execute well.

I also found the way August’s private troubles and the cosmic ones intersected very effective. Entwining the emotional and human side with the cosmic actually is something a lot of cosmic horror in the movies struggles more than a little with, either by laying it on too thick or by ignoring human affairs completely, so the thoughtful approach here is appreciated.


And of course, there’s the fine core performance by Jerry Lacy that provides the film with grounding as well as an emotional core.