At feature length, Strange Aeons: The Thing on the Doorstep is based on H.P. Lovecraft‘s well-known — but not always well-liked — 1937 story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” I was looking forward to seeing this adaptation … but that’s because I had it confused with “The Outsider,” for some reason.
Once that misunderstanding was cleared up, it was obvious that director Eric Morgret’s film follows the original plot pretty closely, even retaining the occasionally odd character names — Asenath, anyone? — despite being set in the present day. Its hero is bearded, mild-mannered college professor Dan Upton (J.D. Lloyd), whose graduate assistant Edward Derby (Erick Robertson) falls under the spell of the mysterious and beautiful Asenath (Angela M. Grillo).
And no wonder: He has magical sex with her, during which she implants all sorts of weird-ass thoughts and tentacled visions directly into his brain. That kind of thing tends to set a girl apart from the rest of the pack, especially when she does so while naked.
Seriously, though, this relationship marks changes in Derby’s personality, thus driving a wedge in his friendship with the professor, thus creating a bizarre love triangle that can’t end well. At all. (And you know that even without the appearance of that infernal Necronomicon.)
While Doorstep has no shortage of freaky-deaky imagery, it also sports a few sound issues and performances that bend toward the amateur level. Its main problem, however, is even with the benefit of variances from Lovecraft’s source material, simply not enough ideas are present to sustain it for an hour and a half.
It might help if its characters seemed more real. For instance, when someone shambles into your house on a dark and stormy night, saying nothing, their head tucked down and hidden under a hat, hell, yes, something is wrong! Be. Fucking. Scared! —Rod Lott