Why Cosmic Horror is Hard To Make

In this video we take a look at why Cosmic Horror (or Lovecraftian Horror) is so hard to adapt onto the screen because of its visual complexity and abstraction.

Video essay made by Moises & Sergio Velasquez

■ Gear:

■ T-shirts:

■ Socials:

■ Music:

■ Movie Clips From:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Debatably has Lovecraftian elements)
Alien
Annihilation
Bird Box
Cloverfield Paradox
In the Mouth of Madness
The Endless
The Mist
The Thing
The Unnamable
The Void

#Cosmichorror #Movies #Lovecraft

[ericad]

True cosmic horror is lying awake at night, staring up at the countless stars and wondering...what the hell happened to the ceiling?

[toluoyefisayo]

This video explains alot about the world's shortest horror story: " The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..." - Fredric Brown.

[chr]

My favourite explanation of cosmic horror is the example with the ant:

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.
Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.
It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…
It’s an ant again.
Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness.

[normified]

When the Backrooms was a relatively new concept, it was the most interesting Cosmic horror experience I have ever had.
Now it's ruined, not because there's a lot more content, but because people try and put meaning and scientific explanation where it doesn't belong.

[skink]

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -HP Lovecraft

[presto-pesto]

Saw something like "Fear is knowing you're in a monster-filled forest. Terror is seeing one run at you. Horror is realizing your feet are glued to the ground" and I think that applies pretty well here. Jumpscares and stuff would fit under the spike of terror, where true horror is more a constant realization that there's nothing you can do about the terror.

[Entropyko]

The problem is that Hollywood usually does not understand psychological horror, and Cosmic Horror is at its core a form of psychological horror. It bases itself on the fear of the unknown we all share and of existential draed.

[Abraxas]

Cosmic horror in a single sentence is such: "A man stares up into the stars, and the stars stared back."

[ezekielbrockmann]

Cosmic horror is finally receiving our first clear message from alien life that clearly states,
*"Do be quiet. They'll hear you."*

[shadeymcbones]

I distinctly remember reading "the color from outer space" and not finding it all that scary at all, until i finished the story and started to think about it. And thats when i realised. Cosmic horror doesn't invoke the primal fear we have of darkness and scary skellies etc.

It invokes fear when you start to try and grasp the concept of the implications its making.

[zamboozle]

I think junji Ito captures the visual aspect of cosmic horror extremely well through his manga and various illustrations, by first taking that which is deeply familiar, and then twisting and warping it into something completely unrecognizable, unexplainable, and sudden

[Bella_Blood]

One of the main forms of media that got me into cosmic horror was FromSoftware's Bloodborne. While a bit easier to comprehend than the cosmic horrors explained, the characters and their attempts to understand the creatures are what are most interesting to me.

[RedwoodTheElf]

Ironically, Cthulhu, the most famous of Lovecraft's monsters, is one of the few that have a definable shape. Most of them are literally indescribable.

[VoermanIdiot]

I don't remember who said it, but I find myself going back to this quote whenever Cosmic Horror is mentioned.
"Typical Horror is meant to leave you afraid of the dark, or afraid of your nightmares to come.
Cosmic Horror is meant to leave you afraid of your own mind, and your continued existence."

[breem]

I found that the soundtrack definitely enhanced the visuals in Annihilation to get the cosmic horror across. The discordant sounds at the end when she comes face to face with the being really gets the existential dread across.

[blacktigerpaw]

This reminds me of the original script for Mass Effect (so it goes). Originally the Reapers were not the primary antagonists but were created as a means to combat Dark Energy that was devouring the universe. The mortal Leviathans couldn't live long enough to solve it, so they made the Reapers in the hope they'd harvest enough knowledge to stop it.

Likewise, Dead Space's Brethren Moons acted as a barrier to a greater cosmic horror.

[OldManDoom]

I love the idea that Lovecraft developed: The idea that something is so unnatural, hideous, and terrifying that a human mind can’t even perceive it. Something that couldn’t possibly be described because it is so far removed from anything the human mind could even imagine, that you can’t even describe it because there are no words for it or things to compare it to in our world. Now that is some scary shit

[didijunior]

The closest we ever get of a good cosmic horror movie is Cats (2019). And that's saying something.

[BoiFluffyFurry]

I remember that one time when I was young and learning about 8 planets and stars in class. I sleep at night and I had thoughts about entire universe. It made feel uneasy and I can't really explain why it scary. As I grow older I started realizing why its scary and that's because I felt our existence as human being are small compared to the large universe, something we can not understand and the fear of discovering something that is far beyond our perception. This is what cosmic horror is like and its more scarier than supernatural, sci-fi and natural earth disasters.

[darkwoods]

Agreed. My #1 complaint about horror movies is that try to show you the most scary monster the creators can think up. That will never be as creepy as what is lurking in the shadows of your own imagination.