There are roughly eighteen thousand, nine-hundred and fifty two listicles on the internet declaring unambiguously to be the definitive listicle of COSMIC HORROR MOVIES. I don’t wanna post any of 'em. I wanna talk about mine. And yours. If you find this concept valid and worthwhile, that is. I wanna know what you all consider “cosmic horror.” I wanna know what falls under the banner. Because Lovecraft wrote about a number of subjects, not just colossal and incomprehensible alien entities. He also wrote about incomprehensible shadow entities. And undead things. And dreamscapes. And nightmarish revelation. The connective tissue is there on the sidebar. “Violation of the order of nature, preferably indescribable.” To paraphrase. So what is it to you, dear audience? [he inquired, whether the audience be dear to him or not]
On my mother’s grave, these I declare the finest examples of the indescribable put to visual media - in no hierarchical order. Exhaustive? No. Personal? Absolutely. Check them against your own, and despair. Or discuss.
- The Void. Every list must begin with The Void, for some reason. I mean, it’s just got everything. It’s the poster child for the genre.
- Re-Animator. Campy. Fun. Jeffrey Combs. Delightful.
- The Endless. Modern low-budget done absolutely right. If you don’t have money for wild otherworldly effects, tell the human side. It’s the Lovecraft way.
- The Color Out of Space. Nic. Cage.
- Alien. Geiger, O’Bannon, Ridley Scott come together to create a cinematic titan.
- The Thing. Carpenter’s flop is a staggering masterpiece of paranoia and human vs otherworldly nature.
- The Lighthouse. A tale of madness and isolation. An ethereal nightmare. Two powerhouse performances.
- Annihilation. An adaptation that communicates the abstract into the (vaguely) narrative. Ponder the foundations of your existence.
- The Evil Dead. You read from the book, didn’t you?
- Event Horizon. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.” Well, fuck. We’re leaving.
- The Blob. It’s a creature from space that absorbs everything. And it looks awesome.
- The Mist. Yes we’ve seen monsters encroach upon our fragile world from another dimension, yes we’ve seen a group of ordinary people turn on each other during times of crisis, but have we seen it directed by Frank Darabont and adapted from a novella by Stephen King? I think not.
- Hellraiser. “We have such sights to show you.” Shivers.
- From Beyond. Another fun Stuart Gordon/Jeffrey Combs/Barbara Crampton collab. This one has BDSM and a skeletonized Ken Foree.
- Messiah of Evil. Creepy, slow-burn 70s horror-thriller with some very unique and interesting characters. This thing is all atmosphere.
Have you seen Aterrados? It’s 100% on my list; one of the rare movies I immediately wanted to rewatch (The Void being another). The description mentions “paranormal”, but for once that’s not code for “hey guys, it’s ghosts”.
Also, as much as I love Alien, what about it reads as cosmic horror to you? For me, cosmic horror has a tinge of the fantastical or otherworldly, even when there’s science involved, and I don’t get that from Alien. Admittedly, I’m not super up on the lore of the series (haven’t read the comics or seen Alien: Covenant), so maybe I’m missing something.
I have not seen that film, but I love foreign films that take on traditionally “American movie” tropes. I’ll see if I can find it.
Far as Alien goes, it’s a straightforward horror movie with a sci-fi twist. But the themes in the film center around bodily invasion, unknowable otherworldly intelligences, and the desperate unpreparedness of mankind for the vast depths of space and time.
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” ― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
The rest of the franchise all but jettisons this mysteriousness in favor of harder sci-fi and/or action. Singled out, Alien speaks to me as cosmic horror.
That explanation makes sense, thanks!
My personal pick:
-Black Mountain Side (2014). A group of archeologists in the rural Canadian wilderness discover a mysterious structure beneath the earth, but their discovery sparks increasingly haunting visions of terror in this thriller.
-The Endless (2017) Two brothers receive a cryptic video message inspiring them to revisit the UFO death cult they escaped a decade earlier.
-The Outwaters (2022) [SPLATTER ALLERT] Found footage from memory cards belonging to a group of friends who venture into the Mojave Desert to shoot a music video
-Glorious (2022) [Horror semi-commedy] A heartbroken man who encounters a strange, all-knowing entity in a rest stop bathroom stall.
-[ Bonus] The Call of Cthulhu (2005). Independent silent film adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft short story “The Call of Cthulhu”, produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman and distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
Black Mountain Side looks like something I need to check out. I’m sure I’ve scrolled by it but I’ll track it down.
I really enjoyed The Outwaters, but felt the low budget ($15,000) kept it from being great. I don’t think the majority people with like it due to the slow pacing and frustrating editing, but if you’re ok with that it helps amp up the atmosphere and the feeling of it being a found footage film.
