Movies Cosmic Horror Done Right

[Laskar]

Cosmic horror is a genre that is incredibly hard to pull off in film for two reasons. If you don't care to watch the short video above, the two reasons are that cosmic horror is a very complex genre, both visually and thematically. Crack open any of HP Lovecraft's short stories and look for the description of the monster. Now take up pen and paper and draw what he just described.

You can't. Often, what's described is too vague or simply impossible to visually depict, and what is coming through those flowery descriptions are the characters own reactions to their exposure to the unknown.

The same goes for the themes of cosmic horror. The genre is all about people experiencing the vastness and possibly malevolence of the universe, and going insane from the revelation. Easy to do in text, where there's no rule that says you can't write page after page of introspection. That's different from a movie, which is about what people say and do, and less about what they think.

Still, some movies pull it off. And this trailer right here doesn't do a shabby job:

 

[Doomsought]

You can't. Often, what's described is too vague or simply impossible to visually depict, and what is coming through those flowery descriptions are the characters own reactions to their exposure to the unknown.

This is really the key to doing cosmic horror in film. You don't show the monster, you show the people responding to the monster. It is very contrary to modern film-making culture where people want to just regurgitate as much budget as possible into special effect.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I know lots of people see In the Mouth of Madness from John Carpenter as being a definitive Lovecraft film and while it's pretty good (I don't even know if I'd call it great... though I admire them doing something different) in regards to being good cosmic horror... I would not say so.

Obviously that honor would go to (this sounds almost generic at this rate) Event Horizon. But us nerds (especially 40K ones) have been gushing about that movie for ages that I don't feel like babbling about it even more... though I'm not sure there has been any thick praiseworthy posts of Event Horizon on The Sietch yet.

Still, some movies pull it off. And this trailer right here doesn't do a shabby job:

That was pretty nice... and following that filmmaker Mears rabbithole led me to his The Sky short film as well... which was longer, thicker and comparable in quality.

 

[ATP]

This is really the key to doing cosmic horror in film. You don't show the monster, you show the people responding to the monster. It is very contrary to modern film-making culture where people want to just regurgitate as much budget as possible into special effect.

Just like in all good horrors.I once read,that in first movie about woman changing into panther, scene in which she after turning into it harassed her love rival was made so,that her rival look afraid in basen,we hear roaring of panther - but there were no actual panther initially.

 

[Bassoe]

People are misunderstanding lovecraftian "Insanity".

If you so much as saw a witch display actual magical power, even something as simple as causing candles to whiff out or a door to slam shut with her mind, you'd probably seem a bit insane because your entire perception of how the world worked up until this point would have been shattered.

Other people would CALL you insane because you'd start telling them about things that aren't real. You've seen beyond the veil. You know that black cats are used by witches to spy on people, know, it's a fact that you have discovered for the truth. You kill the neighbor's cat. For your actions, you are put in an insane asylum while you scream about the witches flying through the night sky over your jail cell.

That's lovecraftian 'insanity', the point is, it isn't actually insanity, it's a perfectly logical judgment, taking into account facts that the people calling it insane don't possess.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I don't believe that's actually the case. From The Call of Cthulhu:

...great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously.

That's not a person reacting logically to seeing something abnormal and telling people about it. Briden already knew Cthulhu was there, he and Johansen had been running from it for several minutes by that point but gazing at it caused him to go mad and laugh till he died.