Matt Fulton | Writer + Filmmaker

Cosmic Horror in Contemporary Films

The horror genre in film has naturally evolved into a few comfortable “fiefdoms,” each with their distinct tropes and threats and villains and protagonists. Psychological horror relies on the internalized fears and wavering sanities of its characters to build tension and unease. Science- fiction horror prays upon mankind’s anxieties in the face of technological advancements and features vicious experiments and strange alien creatures. Slasher films speak to the innate evil and inhumanity brewing within a single person’s mind, often giving audiences a crazed serial killer who, over the course of a franchise, comes to resemble an unstoppable force of nature. Gothic horror classically represents some of the genre’s earliest villains and brought to the screen walking nightmares like ghosts and vampires and demons. However, sitting outside these familiar categories—its writhing tentacles permeating them all—is a more niche subgenre known as Lovecraftian or “cosmic” horror, derived from or inspired by the extensive mythos and unique philosophical worldview of writer H. P. Lovecraft. Although Lovecraft died while popular cinema was still in its infancy, his strange body of work has inspired generations of filmmakers and infected audiences with an unknowable sense of dread in a way that defies the conventional boundaries of the genre. While his own bibliography has rarely been adapted to the screen, Lovecraft’s influence can be felt in numerous types of horror films, namely each of the subgenre’s mentioned above. This paper will examine three works produced in the last five years: the films Bird Box, Annihilation, and the first season of HBO’s anthology crime series, True Detective. Each work will be analyzed for how Lovecraftian horror tropes have been applied to their distinct subgenres with an eye to what makes them so effective.

Before we dive into the analysis, we must first establish a solid understanding of the common tropes and conventions of cosmic horror, explaining how Lovecraft’s mythos is so much deeper than a giant, squid-faced monster rising from the ocean. When one thinks of Lovecraftian horror, most think of Cthulhu, the aforementioned squid-faced monster who’s recently had a resurgence in pop culture, or a number of other bizarrely named creatures like Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth, all of which are members of an expansive pantheon of beings Lovecraft created called “the Great Old Ones,” or entities that exist beyond the bounds of human understanding. Many of Lovecraft’s stories begin with the discovery of some ancient, forbidden knowledge, the unearthing of which reveals a force of nature unfathomably more powerful than ourselves, upending all the previously held truths of humanity’s superiority and destiny. This inspires a palpable feeling of impending and inescapable doom in Lovecraftian protagonists as they realize how insignificant they truly are. Like a man standing in a field and shouting at an approaching tornado, his characters rarely overcome these monsters and fail to affect them in any meaningful way; many are driven mad just at the sight of them. They are unknown and unknowable by our feeble minds. We cannot possibly begin to comprehend what these monsters are, or what they want, or why they are here. This particular type of horror is rooted in Lovecraft’s literary philosophy of “cosmicism.” While often confused with nihilism, it is better described as determinism imbued with strands of atheism. It highlights the insignificance of humanity and its plans for existence and contends that good and evil do not exist, that these are human constructs applied subjectively by man as petty tools for praise or demonization. Cosmicism argues that we are owed nothing, entitled to nothing, and our fates are tied to no greater design than the naturally unfolding chaos of our reality. Drawn from this philosophy, Lovecraftian monsters are not scary because they render us dead, they’re scary because they render us small and absent in the face of an uncaring universe. There is no malevolence in their nature, they just are. A shark or a lion does not care how good of a person you are, nor is it sent by fate to punish you; it doesn’t hold a grudge when it decides to eat you; it does this because that is its nature and it knows nothing else. Lovecraftian monsters are constructed from the same cloth, praying upon deep-seated human anxieties which have been plied by nearly all filmmakers in the horror genre: Fear of the unknown. Fear of the other. Fear of futility. Fear that no amount of inner strength or courage can possibly save you against such a threat. I can think of no more frightening type of horror than one with an antagonist who does not care that it is an antagonist, who likely does not even know what the term “antagonist” means, and who, in dispensing our doom, show us the same absent-minded regard as we might show a bug before we crushed it beneath our heel.

Cosmic horror is not simply relegated to the colossal, tentacled monsters of Lovecraft’s mythos. Rather, it is derived from the nature of the threat and the type of fear it instills in its victims. While outside the contemporary range of this paper, John Carpenter’s 1982 science- fiction/body-horror classic, The Thing, is an excellent early example of cosmic horror on the screen. Its plot focuses on a group of researchers in Antarctica who confront a parasitic alien lifeform who assumes the form of other organisms, like the researchers themselves. What this alien is, what it wants, why it’s in Antarctica is irrelevant to the story. The answers to these questions are unknowable, and indeed they don’t even matter; the plot is about how these researchers attempt to survive. This is the nature of cosmic horror nicely distilled, and the modern films we’ll examine all largely follow these rules.

Our first film, Bird Box, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Sandra Bullock, was adapted from Josh Malerman’s novel of the same name and was released by Netflix in 2018. Bird Box, while certainly watchable, is objectively not a great movie—this paper is not about to sing its praises in that regard—but it does offer one of the most faithful and direct recent examples of cosmic horror. As for a subgenre, it’s not a stretch to say this movie is psychological horror as much of its fear is derived from the crumbling mental states of its character. The threat, the “monster,” of Bird Box are unseen supernatural entities that induce mass suicides across the world on an apocalyptic scale. They apparently manifest themselves as a hallucination representing the worst fear of anyone who looks upon them, causing this person to immediately commit suicide—slashing their own throat, bashing their head against a wall, or calmly sitting down inside a burning car are a few methods we see in the film. No characters ever explicitly describe how these entities look, and the audience is never offered a glimpse more than shadows on a wall or the rustle of trees as they pass by. The nature of these beings, what they want and why there are here, are never explained; as is true for Lovecraftian monsters, the answers to these questions are beyond the point. The characters cannot comprehend why they’re here. It does not matter. The only issue is how the characters, led by Malorie (Sandra Bullock), fight a futile battle to escape the monsters’ gaze and survive. These entities are clearly inspired by the Cthulhu mythos in how merely the sight of them inspires such madness in people that it draws them to suicide. This is purely Lovecraftian in nature and it’s no accident that one character who has seen them and survived (driven insane in the process) draws pictures of what he claims are the monsters, and all they all look suspiciously like Cthulhu.

Alex Garland’s Annihilation represents a brilliant example of a Lovecraftian monster rooted within the science-fiction horror subgenre. It is loosely based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, which itself features similarities with a 1927 short story written by Lovecraft titled “The Colour Out of Space.” Garland’s film, VanderMeer’s novel, and Lovecraft’s short story all focus on an alien entity that arrives on Earth and begins mutating plant and animal life. Annihilation’s plot follows an all-female group of scientists, led by US Army biologist Lena (Natalie Portman), who embark on an expedition into a quarantined zone in the Florida panhandle called “the Shimmer,” which began to develop three years earlier after a meteor landed in a lighthouse at the center of this area. Since then, the Shimmer has been begun to expand, bordered by a wall of strange iridescent light that resembles an oil slick on water. No radio signals are able to enter or escape from the Shimmer and no animals or humans that go in ever come out. As the expedition unfolds, the members of Lena’s team are one-by-one overcome by a key tenant of cosmic horror: the realization of new and startling information that is far too great for the human mind to comprehend. They, and all those who entered the Shimmer previously, have gradually become infatuated with this place and begin to change of a genetic level, their bodies morphing into bizarre plant and animal hybrids. This bizarre alien entity lurking at the center of the Shimmer, as Lena comes to confront, is undoing everything mankind knows on Earth and, not destroying it, but creating something new; its motivations are never explained. The alien itself is a shapeshifter, assuming the form of Lena’s husband, who’s long since disappeared into the Shimmer, and eventually comes to mimic Lena herself in this strange dance between the two at the base of the lighthouse. The Shimmer represents a common trope of cosmic horror known as an “Eldritch Location,” or a place that defies the earthly laws of physics and geography and forever alters the nature of the world as we understand it.

A personal favorite example of cosmic horror is the first season of HBO’s True Detective, directed by Cary Fukunaga, written and executive produced by Nic Pizzolatto, and starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. As the plot follows a years-long hunt for a serial killer hidden in the swamps of Louisiana, it’s not inappropriate to categorize True Detective as part of the slasher subgenre with strong gothic undertones. While difficult to portray a serial killer as a “force of nature,” Pizzolatto’s writing does just this in how it builds a kind of mythology around the series’ central antagonist, “the man with the scars,” Errol Childress (Glenn Fleshler). True Detective is unique in how its blend of cosmic horror draws not just from Lovecraft but also from writers like Robert W. Chambers and Thomas Ligotti, both of whom are purveyors of “weird fiction,” a niche subset of macabre and foreboding stories similar in nature to Lovecraft’s. During the investigation by McConaughey’s Rustin Cohle and Harrelson’s Martin Hart, come across people related to this still-unknown killer who all speak of a “Yellow King” and his legendary city of Carcosa, which also appears in Lovecraft’s works. It is said that the mere sight of the city sparks madness is anyone who looks upon it. This mythology enveloping the killer is a direct reference to Chambers’ The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories published in 1895, all of which mention a mysterious play ripping through Europe that causes its readers to go insane upon learning “irresistible” truths. Later in the season, Cohle and Hart unearth evidence of a cult centered on child molestation and the worship of this “Yellow King” in Carcosa, which is implied to be the serial killer Errol Childress. True Detective’s first season is so effective as a narrative because it focuses on fear at its core and brushes the edge of the supernatural, something unheard of for a television police procedural. It is this season’s focus on fear—an unknowable, foreboding, and seemingly unstoppable monster hidden in the bayou— that anchors the story firmly in cosmic horror.

Despite its effectiveness as a narrative device, cosmic horror has been notoriously difficult to adapt on screen; there is a reason why so few people know what cosmic horror is. A visual medium like film requires a filmmaker to eventually show the monster in some form. But how do you give form to something formless? How can our art departments possibly design an entity that is supposed to spark madness in anyone that looks upon it? How do you describe what is inherently indescribable? Once something is presented on-screen, it is no longer unknowable; we’re looking at it, right there in high definition, and it’s looking back at us. There is no clear answer to how a filmmaker overcomes this challenge. It requires talent. It requires nuance. It requires balance. It also requires luck. Nonetheless, cosmic horror remains effective because it reminds us how small we truly are, filling our characters and audiences with an uncanny sense of dread. It lies deep within the abstract of the human psyche. In his 1926 short story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” Lovecraft wrote: “We live on a placid isle of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” Cosmic horror brutally shatters this ignorance, forces us to take that voyage. It shows us something beyond ourselves and beyond our comprehension: it reveals that there is so much more, and then denies us the chance to grasp it; if we try nonetheless, there is a terrible cost to suffer, often our very sanity. Offering us something greater than grotesque monsters and special effects-driven violence, cosmic horror—as pioneered by Lovecraft and Chambers, and advanced by scores of writers and filmmakers since—presents us with the true psychological depth that horror can and should reach. It calls our attention to the limits and the innate frailness of our own humanity. It is the essence of fear.

Works Cited

Bier, Susanne, director. Bird Box. Netflix, 2018.

Chambers, Robert W. The King in Yellow. Pushkin Press, 2018.

Garland, Alex, director. Annihilation. Paramount Pictures, 2018.

Houellebecq, Michel. H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Gollancz, 2008.

Lovecraft, H. P. Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Chartwell Classics, 2016.

Pizzolatto, Nic. True Detective, Season 1, HBO, 2014.

Copyright © 2019 Matthew Fulton. All rights reserved.