It
is like At the Mountains of Madness for
the era of climate change. H.P. Lovecraft is indeed the loving and sinister inspiration
for this tale of primeval arctic horror, but it has an international flavor the
scribe from Providence would have had a hard time relating to. The Arctic Ocean
is a cold, dark place that was better shunned by mankind in Antti Laakso &
Joonas Allonen’s short film, Sound from
the Deep (trailer
here), which screens during the 2018 Philip K.Dick Film Festival.
Mikael
Aalto is a Finnish grad student, who joined a joint Scandinavia-Russian
petroleum prospecting vessel as a research fellow, under the tutelage of his
mentor, Prof. Norberg. Their mission was to search for oil and natural gas
deposits in the regions of the ocean recently opened to navigation due to polar
melting. Unfortunately, they have nothing to show for their efforts until Aalto
picks up a strange noise on his instruments. Norberg convinces the captain to
take a detour to investigate, arguing it must be a large pocket of natural gas.
However, Aalto and Sofia, the Russian sonar specialist, are not so sure.
At
a tight and tense twenty-nine minutes, Sound
might just be the purest and most effective Lovecraft homage yet. It is
also massively impressive from a simple logistical perspective. Laakso and
Allonen have a legit looking Arctic cutter that they put through some very
stormy seas. They have scenes that are more cinematic than anything in The Perfect Storm. Yes, there is also
something Elder God-ish, but they vary it slightly from strict Lovecraftian
mythos.
Sound is so impeccably Lovecraftian,
it starts with Aalto telling his cautionary story, mindful that his listener most
likely assumes he is mad. Ojala Eero is perfect as the accursed survivor, cover
the spectrum from an awkwardly cerebral rational positivist to the profoundly shaken
doomsayer. Nastasia Trizna is also scary convincing portraying Sofia’s mental
deterioration.
