Director John Carpenter turns gothic and modernist at the same time in this scary if overloaded paranoid story (1994) by Michael De Luca, about an insurance adjuster (Sam Neill), hired to track down a best-selling horror author, who finds himself trapped inside the occult fantasy world of the writer (Jürgen Prochnow). Carpenter establishes an unnerving atmosphere through elliptical suggestions and various shock cuts, conjuring up a semimythological world inspired by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Even if the old-fashioned horror thrills don’t always mesh with the self-referential modernist conceits, he keeps things moving and provocative throughout. With Julie Carmen and Charlton Heston.