Review: Lord of Illusions

Apparently, author/artist/occasional director Clive Barker awoke one gloomy morning and thought, “You know what Hellraiser was missing? A hardboiled film noir detective!” Despite the inherent absurdity of that premise, his creative instincts were absolutely correct, because that germ of an idea eventually inspired the deliriously entertaining and delightfully unconventional Lord of Illusions.

The movie’s protagonist, Harry D’Amour, is the quintessential Old Hollywood gumshoe: he spends his days wallowing in misery, chugging lukewarm beer, and gazing mournfully at the rain-drenched streets through the window of his filthy office, clad in nothing but a shoulder holster and a pair of unwashed slacks. He’s haunted by a traumatic past that he refuses to discuss; he prefers to let his pistol do the talking—even when he’s confronting supernatural threats. Scott Bakula is perfectly cast in the role, playing the character as a relatively mundane archetype that inadvertently wandered into a comparatively fantastical genre. Ordinarily, such a “fish out of water” scenario would put our hapless hero at a tremendous disadvantage—with tragic consequences (e.g., City of the Living Dead). Barker, however, embraces the opposite extreme: amidst the grotesque body horror and impending cosmic cataclysms, Harry remains utterly unflappable, consistently responding to every paranormal entity he encounters—including masochistic cultists, incomprehensible demons, and undead sorcerers—with his fists and not only miraculously surviving, but outright prevailing.

This pervasive tonal dissonance elevates the otherwise familiar narrative, sacrificing suspense for the sheer satisfaction of seeing the self-proclaimed omnipotent god of nihilism, genocide, and decay get decked by a hungover private eye wearing a rented tuxedo. Lord of Illusions isn’t the scariest work in Barker’s (sadly limited) cinematic oeuvre, but it’s certainly the most relentlessly enjoyable. It crafts a world in which tangible, objective evil lurks in the shadows of society and the subconscious, but humanity nevertheless has nothing to fear: the forces of darkness are no match for the power of love, optimism, and a solid right hook.