Movie Quiz: In the Mouth of Madness: 10 Questions | Movies

Answer: a crayon

Trent is locked up kicking and screaming, insisting that he is not insane. When psychiatrist Dr. Wrenn is sent into his cell to interview him (to find out if he is "one of them"; more on that later), the head of the asylum informs him that Trent made one request; a single black crayon. Upon entering Trent's cell, Wrenn finds the the walls, the floor, even Trent himself, covered in black crosses and other scrawlings. By this point, Trent has become quite subdued (no drugs required), and has reconsidered his desire to be let out of the asylum. He then proceeds to tell Dr. Wrenn how he wound up in the nuthouse, which is the jump-off point for the main story.

After watching the whole movie, it is clear that Trent came to the realization that he would be much safer in his cell than outside when the end of mankind came.

Answer: a publicity stunt

Prior to the events in this movie, Trent worked as an investigator, hired to uncover fraudulent insurance claims. One such job is to investigate a major publishing company, which is filing a claim based on the disappearance of its best author, the ultra-bestselling horror writer Sutter Cane. Upon speaking with the head of the company and getting their story, Trent is convinced that Cane's disappearance is staged, and that the whole claim is nothing but a publicity stunt to ramp up sales. One strange fact: Trent has been attacked at a diner the day before by an axe-wielding lunatic who asks him if he read Sutter Cane (and is shot dead by a cop just as he is about to bury his axe into Trent).

As it turns out, that lunatic is Cane's agent. This is the first bit of evidence that this may not be the hoax it seems like.

Answer: a map

Trent takes home a few Cane books to familiarize himself with Cane's work, and perhaps uncover some clues as to where the missing writer could be. At this point he is still highly skeptical of the publisher's story, and feels he can catch them in a lie.

At one point, he notices a pattern on the covers of all the books (wavy red lines snaking across the artwork), and takes a pair of scissors to them. After cutting out several sections, he pieces them together to form... a map. The pieces fit together to form a perfect replica of New Hampshire, with the red lines looking like highways, and a red dot marking where Hobb's End should be located. Trent still feels it is a hoax ("Makes a great contest: find the town, win a Sutter Cane lunchbox..."), but the publisher insists it is not. Thus Trent sets out for New Hampshire to find Hobb's End, accompanied by Cane's editor, Linda Styles.

Answer: a painting come to life

When Trent and Styles enter the hotel and talk to the lady at the main desk (Mrs. Pickman), Styles tells Trent that there is a painting behind them (without looking, in order to prove she recognizes the hotel from Cane's book "The Hobb's End Horror") of a couple walking in a field.

As Trent is talking to Mrs. Pickman, Styles looks at the painting a second time, and is slightly shaken when she notices the couple (who are initially facing towards them) are now facing the other way. Moments later (as Trent is still busy chatting with Mrs. Pickman), Styles turns to the painting again, and nearly loses her balance when the woman in the painting turns her head and looks directly at her.

This is one of the early signs that all is not well in this little town.

Answer: losing me

Styles ventures out to the Black Church (an abandoned Byzantine church with a dark history, where Cane is now known to be putting the final touches on his latest work) and makes her way inside. There she finds Cane typing away. He recognizes her immediately, and tells he she can edit this book "from the inside, looking out".

He grabs her head and forces her to look upon the newly finished manuscript, after which we see her bleeding from her eyes. Back at the hotel, Trent is about to leave his room when she stumbles in, falling over him with a look of sheer terror, telling him hysterically not to read the book.

She repeatedly exclaims "I'm losing me!", which would seem to mean she's in the process of going crazy from the book. Moments later, we can see she is completely lost, as Trent sees her behind a glass door with slimy, squirming tentacles poking out from under the door: she has become one of Cane's monstrosities.

This point is further illustrated when she comes out from behind the door grinning (temporarily looking like her old self again) and throws Trent through the door of the room. From this point on, Trent is on his own.

Answer: they bleed from their eyes

As is eventually revealed, Cane's work is not the product of his own imagination, but a sort of inspiration he gets from evil, otherworldly monsters which he calls "The Old Ones". These monsters used to inhabit the earth long before humanity, and are trying to come back and reclaim the earth. The more people believe in Cane's work, the more they lose touch with reality, the easier for the "Old Ones" to return. It is not explained whether they possess people who've read the book, or if people just turn into more of them, but whatever the mechanics, basically whoever reads Cane's latest book eventually turns into one of these monstrosities. The first warning sign is their eyes; their irises and pupils look like they've burst inside the eyeballs, and they seem to cry blood.

Cane's agent looks like this in the early scene when he attacks Trent. It is later explained that, as Cane's agent, he received and read the first few chapters of Cane's latest manuscript. After reading the book and seeing what was in store for the world, he set out to kill Trent, who according to the book would be the one to bring the manuscript back to be publisher and trigger the end of humanity.

Answer: He kills a Sutter Cane reader

Early in the movie, Dr. Wrenn asks the head of the asylum if Trent is "one of them", meaning one of the "infected" responsible for the rash of mass killings that has broken out. By the end of the movie, we can see that the "epidemic" in question is due to Cane's final book reaching store shelves, but no one other than Trent knows this. Trent knows what will happen to anyone who reads the new book, so he sets out on his own with an axe (sound familiar?) to dispatch people before they can turn. His first target (and ultimately his only target) is a young man reading the book outside a crowded bookstore...

Trent: "Like the book?"
Reader: "I love it."
Trent: "Good... (raising the axe above his head) then this shouldn't come as a surprise..."

Answer: him

As it turns out, Trent is not quite real... his actions and misadventures are written into "In The Mouth Of Madness" by Cane. Stay with me here... The more people believe in Cane's twisted works, the more real the latter become, effectively blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

The town of Hobb's End is indeed fictional, but Trent and Styles find it anyway, quite simply because it becomes real (it can't be reached by just anyone, no roads lead to it, but those who have a part to play in Cane's story can wind up there (quite supernaturally). Anyway, by the end of the story, we find out that Cane's latest manuscript has been delivered to the publisher (despite Trent's best efforts to destroy it) and has hit store shelves worldwide to drive people mad.

The book is so huge that it is also made into a movie (illiteracy will not save you...). There is a hint at the beginning, when Dr. Wrenn visits Trent's cell, that the "oubtreak" has already begun ("Do you think he's *one of them*?") When Trent walks into the freshly deserted theatre, he has a seat and proceeds to watch precisely what we, the actual viewer, have been watching the whole time... he is watching a movie about HIMSELF, starring himself. With this, he finally does go genuinely mad, and the movie ends on a shot of him half crying, half laughing like a madman.

Answer: False

When Trent's cell door is mysteriously opened (after hearing the asylum staff get brutally murdered), he walks out to find the asylum halls empty, with evidence of the gruesome deaths of everyone inside. He makes his way outside and finds a similar scene in the world at large; no signs of life, countless signs of death and mayhem. Basically, Cane's book has reached the masses, driving everyone insane and turning them into inhuman monstrosities.

The latter have obviously killed off any remaining humans; the end of humanity is well under way. Trent, of course, has made a point of never, ever setting his eyes on the book, thus sparing himself from turning as well. It would seem that Trent is the only one left, as he is the only person to be seen from that point on, but he is not alone.

In the background we can hear a news reporter describing the carnage unfolding all over the world, warning those few left uninfected to seek shelter and trust no one, not even family. It's a very, very, unsettling ending to say the least.

Answer: The Color in the Dark

We can see several of Cane's book titles when Trent is browsing through them at the book store, and also when he lays several of them out on his coffee table just prior to deciphering the map hidden in the cover art. Among them we can see "The Feeding", "The Color out of Time" and "The Whisperer in the Dark". "The Color in the Dark" is a title I made up.

Two of them ("The Color out of Time" and "The Whisperer in the Dark"), are obvious tributes to Lovecraft's "The Color out of Space", "The Shadow out of Time" and "The Whisperer in Darkness". Other references include Mrs. Pickman (the innskeeper in Hobb's End), probably a reference to Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model". Even the title of the movie seems like it is derived from Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".

Actually, in terms of style, this movie borrows heavily from H.P. Lovecraft. The usual formula for his stories involves evil, otherworldly creatures with nightmarish features (slimy, twisted, tentacled, creepy/crawly, generally indescribable) that lived here long, long ago, and are threatening to return and wreak all kinds of atrocities."The Old Ones" is a term Lovecraft constantly uses to describe his fictional beasties. This is often referred to as the "Cthulu mythos", since "The Call Of Cthulu" is his most recognizable work, and a prime example of this writing style. Generally, his fiction is set in dark, unsettling little imaginary towns, where there is always something terribly wrong going on. Anyone familiar with Lovecraft's work would definitely recognize his influence on this film.