Pickman’s Model (2022)

Adapting Lovecraft can be a tricky task. Making unknowable terrors in a visual medium does take some of the mystery out. Plus with this being a short story, it is clear that the creative team had to add some extra content to get this to a reasonable length. But overall Pickman’s Model is a well done adaptation. It has been some time since reading the short, but I was surprised how quickly the story came flooding back to me once it started. Ultimately the hardest thing to deal with was the insane accent that Crispin Glover and Ben Barnes were doing. Where the hell were they supposed to be from? But the creature effects were very creepy and there is some unexpected gore in this one (you might lose your appetite by the end though). There is a particular special effect in one of the dream sequences that was both impressive and truly disgusting. The way that Keith Thomas goes about shooting the paintings helped to make them feel like they were truly alive. Each time it focuses on one, you can feel that these paintings have some eerie otherworldly presence attached to them. Glover is a total weirdo but I do enjoy his performances, and he pulls off playing a brooding artist one minute and an awkward lonely weirdo the next. He does feel like he belongs in this world of cosmic horrors. It doesn’t always feel like Pickman’s Model earns its runtime (being one of the longer in the series), but the way the ending ramped up was worth it in the end. 3.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Tori Potenza

Pretty much all I remember from this one is Crispin Glover’s you-gotta-be-kidding-me unplaceable accent. During the episode, my mind drifted off to another haunted art story, M. R. James’ “The Mezzotint”: A museum curator receives a rather ordinary engraving depicting a manor-house surrounded by trees, with a great lawn in the foreground. “Very nearly the exact duplicate of it may be seen in a good many old inn parlours, or in the passage of undisturbed country mansions at the present moment.” Barf! Here’s the kicker: “It was a rather indifferent mezzotint, and an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst form of engraving known.” That’s cold. James, though, is messing with us. If indifferent means neither good nor bad; mediocre, it also suggests, etymologically (via Old French and Latin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary), not making any difference. Unremarkable, sure, but also unchanging. As it turns out, the curator, curious about the source location (a torn label on the back of the image proves inconclusive), shows this remarkably unremarkable curio to a few buddies, and each person who sees it likes it a bit more. Pretty soon, it’s kind of good, notable at first for a figure entering the frame in the foreground. Next time our tiresome curator looks, the figure is in the middle of the lawn, beastly on all fours. Only, of course, nothing happens if you keep staring at it. You have to put it down for awhile or maybe even lock it away in a drawer and hang out in your rooms taking tea and talking golf (James’ narrator truly hates golf and misses no opportunity to cast shade at “golfing persons”). When you come back to it you’ll notice the creature is gone but a window is open. Oh, shit. Anyway I won’t wreck the story for you. 2 out of 5 sacs of blood for Pickman’s Model; 4 out of 5 sacs of blood for “The Mezzotint.”

Pickman’s Model

“The Mezzotint”

—J †Johnson