The Call of Cthulhu is a 2005 independent silent film adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman and distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It is the first film adaptation of the famous Lovecraft story, and uses Mythoscope, a blend of vintage and modern filming techniques intended to produce the look of a 1920s-era film. The film is the length of a featurette. The original story had long been considered unfilmable, but the conceit of making it a silent film and the enthusiasm that the creators had for their project earned it good reviews and several awards. Plot The film begins with a dying professor who leaves his great-nephew a collection of documents pertaining to the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew (Matt Foyer) begins to learn why the study of the cult so fascinated his grandfather. Bit-by-bit he begins piecing together the dread implications of his grandfather's inquiries, and soon he takes on investigating the Cthulhu cult as a crusade of his own. Sailors aboard the Emma encounter the Alert abandoned at sea. The nephew notes that Inspector Legrasse, who had directed the raid on cultists in backwoods Louisiana, died before the nephew's investigation began. As he pieces together the dreadful and disturbing reality of the situation, his own sanity begins to crumble. In the end, he passes the torch to his psychiatrist, who in turn hears Cthulhu's call. Cast Matt Foyer as Francis Wayland Thurston John Bolen as The Listener Ralph Lucas as Professor Angell Chad Fifer as Henry Wilcox David Mersault as Inspector Legrasse Barry Lynch as Professor Webb Release The Call of Cthulhu was selected to appear at numerous film festivals, including the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival and North America's largest, the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival, where it sold out both screenings thanks in part to a glowing review from The Stranger, a local paper. Reception Despite the long-standing conventional wisdom that the story was inherently "unfilmable", The Call of Cthulhu garnered mostly positive reception from critics. It holds 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 7.1/10 based on 6 reviews. Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews rated the film a grade B, writing, "[a] haunting labor of love tribute", praising the film's style, and score. Paul di Filippo of Science Fiction Weekly called it "the best HPL