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
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■ 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
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.
thats one of the best explanations I've read so far
I've always wondered why we're so resistant to drawing back the curtains on UFO secrecy. While maybe it's classified human technology or maybe nothing at all, I think this comment shows why it just might be for the best to not explore the subject too much if they are in fact ET.
fr
@@pumitriii6160 its not the same. We can grasp the concept of extraterrestrial life to some degree. If "they" land, have a somewhat physical form and speak, sure, it would seriously shatter one or two worldviews. But overall? We would see them either as threat, business-parters or as exploitable. Not as cosmic horror. Cosmic horror would be... Stars start disappearing and noone knows why or change position. Aliens start communicating to every person at the same time telepathically. Even if its just a simple "we come in peace". I guess there are many more example. But generally speaking everything that is outside our understanding.
Wow...
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.
I thought the worlds shortest horror story was "the sun set slowly in the east"
What if that was a very smart birb, which wanted some seed and knocked with its beak? )))
"It time Snu-Snu."
Oh lord, you're right
It is one of the thousands of women still alive
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.
Like what
that's what im sayin
and memes...you know, forced jokes
i understand what you mean. i used to be obsessed with the idea of it at a younger age, it was eerie and didn’t **truly** try to be outright scary like other pieces of media. but like with slenderman, people have added far too much information, explanations, gadgets and trivial info about it - to the point where it loses its original thing. the thing that made it so intriguing in the first place.
true
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.
No movie, sadly has ever actually made me feel existential dread. People talk about it all the time but it is not something I have ever actually felt.
@@mr.dirtydan3338 you are lucky then. Existential horror is the worst. Its unbearable
@@madelynhernandez7453 by worst I'm guessing you mean best
@@mr.dirtydan3338watch black mirror
@@mr.dirtydan3338have you tried three body problem and annihilation?
True cosmic horror is lying awake at night, staring up at the countless stars and wondering...what the hell happened to the ceiling?
And you live in an apartment building, and not exactly in the top floor.
hol up
true cosmic horror is when you're just about to fall asleep and then you suddenly realize that you forget to work on your assignment which is due tomorrow
Underrated af.
True cosmic horror is realizing the only reason you haven't freed yourself from this prison and returned to the other place is not because of selfish attachment. It's the realization you're holding on to this endless cycle of death, rebirth, suffering, and hopelessness, just for faint glimmers of hope, joy, and hapiness, because deep down inside you know what's waiting for us in the next place. You know because you've already been there at least once and you don't wanna go back even if it means suffering indefinitely in this place.
Cosmic horror is finally receiving our first clear message from alien life that clearly states, *"Do be quiet. They'll hear you."*
no then the sudden realization that all our other messages sent in every direction could have been received by them
*"We recieved your first EM transmission in space. Based!"*
that is genius. gave me chills
One of the explanations for the Fermi Paradox says something just like that. It's called the Dark Forest Theory and says that the reason why we haven't met aliens yet might be because every civilization acts as an armed hunter in a dark forest trying not to reveal his presence to the other ones because if he does, the only safe thing for him to do would be to kill whoever he encounters, just by the fear of being killed himself.
Is that from a story on Creepypasta?
Cosmic horror in a single sentence is such: "A man stares up into the stars, and the stars stared back."
And the abyss gazed back…
@@bigtongo7633 I put my spin on the original quote, sheesh.
what if "A man stares up into the stars, but the stars never existed"? This is probably terrible but i like the sound of it
@@ethancook5390 that's kinda true tbh, considering light takes a long time to travel, those stars might be already dead when the light arrived
@@aeho7496 And the stars weren’t just dead, but they had been killed.
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
the end of uzumaki is cosmic horror in maximum expression
The manga with the cave holes designated for every person has one of the most terrifying page turns I have ever seen. Staring down into your own abyss with your perfect shape in a natural environment like a mountain… chilling. Once you turn that page you will never forget what full page panel you see on the othet side…
@@Riseaxthe sound effect of "DRR DRR DRR" will forever give me the goosebumps thanks to that story 😬
Hellstar Remina still one of my favorite cosmic horror
Indeed, maybe if you can’t illustrate the unknowable, the next closest thing is to warp knowable objects in a way that you have to imagine what made it that way.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -HP Lovecraft
The amygdala is responsible for fear. The amygdala is the reptilian part of the brain, making fear a primitive emotion all humans experience
Jim Wiklund I definitely fear the unknown future of life.
@@heavenseeker2320 All fear comes from the unknown, if you know what is gonna happen. Thats why people dive with sharks and have no fear about it, bc they know what to do in the situation
Humans fear what they don't understand
If you're a huge HP Lovecraft Fan, there's few more satisfying, beautiful, brilliant or terrifying reads you could do than Alan Moore's The Courtyard, The Neonomicon and finally the Providence series (in that order).
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.
Cant fuking believe no one replied to this comment bcz this is brilliantly put into words🙌
I think otherwise. While fear is only an emotion, terror and horror can be used to term concepts. Terror is the thought that a monster _can_ run at you. This means, the feeling of terror is felt not when you see a monster, but when you realize your hopeless situation and what may happen. Most of the fear felt during terror is from your imagination. Horror, on the other hand, is what you describe as terror. You are actively seeing the monster.
So basically you are correct but the terms should be switched.
no
@@ctrl_x1770 Horror is a shitty ass with no tp.
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.
our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
yeah agreed. the lore is easy to understands yet amazing creature and arts as well . very appreciates more persons said cosmic horror not lovercraftian anymore these days caused yes even the lovecraft is popularized this genre, but this is kinda genre is not his "only" genre
@@k.m.m.a81 may the good blood guide your way
Grant us eyes, grant us eyes
Same
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.
Yeah I completely agree. I feel like few people noticed how much it influenced the scene, and I've heard people say that scene should've been silent, but I think that bringing back that strange synthy theme was really what drove the true horror in the scene
@@maxgoldhirsch2043 To be honest I only remember annihilaion becuase of this beautiful score, one of the best ones ever in horror if not the best
@@nathangaspacio6128 I'm glad I'm not the only one to think this!
How to beat Cosmic Horror: Get a kid with a watch that can transform into at least 10 different aliens.
And his name is Ben 10! *Theme song plays*
FRISHR Why ben 10?
PeterJames Gabinete because Alien X
Is that a joke about the antagonist in that show (I forget his name) looking like cthulhu (Im probably spelling that wrong)
Board _ vilgax was his name and I don’t think that’s what he was referencing
There is a reason why jump scares are "scares", and not horror. It's moment of fear, not a lasting terror.
Agreed. Which is why I found it laughable when an article from Forbes recently claimed scientists proclaimed “Sinister” to be the scariest film of all time judging by the heart rate spikes from the audience due to jump scares. I seen Sinister on opening night & even though it had heart pulsing moments, they end shortly after & I forgot about the film within 5 minutes of leaving the theater. It didn’t make me stay up late or stick with me. Hereditary was a better example of a scary film
@@ReelNinja1 I was very dissapointed with Sinister, didn't find it scary at all. Hereditary on the other hand traumatized me lol
Wait a minute
@@Liam-hm4de There is an imposter among us...
Astute. Chapeau.
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.
I kinda like how it ended up the leviathans stating "its time for the reapers to pay their tibute of blood" gives me chills like the reapers as terrifying and powerful as they are aren't the only ones
Nothing is more scary than a story that your mind can create, I sometimes lay in my bed and I just imagine these horrific scenarios in which I am powerless, I get so into the story that I get scared so much that my heart rate gets faster, that is true horror only understandable by the creator.
Do you mind to give us an example of those scenarios?
"...Countless stars..." *looks up into night sky* one plane and lots of light pollution.
My life in São Paulo ;_;
It makes me sad. I always look for just one star.
Move to the South. I live here and shit, the stars and moon light the sky up themselves.
country niggas be like 🕺🕺🕺
Big Woke don’t say the n word man
The closest we ever get of a good cosmic horror movie is Cats (2019). And that's saying something.
Yeah because if you watch it you go crazy
LMAO someone give this person a medal
Well the Color Out of Space is coming out soon and hopefully that’ll be good. 🤷
Well, it was about a werecat death cult, so not that far off.
Modern day King in Yellow i swear to fucking god
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.
I feel ya. The idea of cosmic scale natural disasters used to freak me out as a kid, even though I was absolutely fascinated with science as a subject. Like, just the idea of black holes upset me because I couldn't help but imagine our sun suddenly collapsing in on itself and drawing us inward into its crushing gravity. I think the last thing to freak me out was an article discussing the collision of two galaxies, and I couldn't even conceive what that would be like. Is it something so fast that the relativistic speeds of two stars colliding would create cosmic phenomena beyond our comprehension?
@@Intrafacial86 when i was in middle school, i had the same thing happen to me, also there was CERN and their experiments and i read somewhere that they might end up creating a black hole anyways, ever since then i feel that revelations like these are just ungraspable for human brain and it's better not to think about it if you want to avoid living on the verge of a panic attack. unfortunately you can not unthink that once you've tried to comprehend it
8 planets… good I am old…
My favourite Lovecraft story is "At The Mountains of Madness". It's quite unlike most of his other work in that it's refreshingly devoid of xenophobia, with the human narrator coming to feel a kinship with the aliens he finds frozen in Antarctica, and the records of their struggles to survive. But that in turn amplifies the horror--these creatures, though mortal, were far more advanced than humans. They created an interstellar empire, they reshaped the world and its creatures to their whims and endured for millions of years...but in the end, it didn't matter. Relentless time and entropy wore them away to a handful of blighted survivors trying to survive in a strange age. But there's one final malicious joke being played on these creatures--the only other creature to survive from their age is a malicious slave-turned-predator that had waited for millions of years for a last chance at revenge. The universe isn't just apathetic towards these creatures and their aspirations, it actively hates them.
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."
Well said Except i would say it like this Normal horror made you afraid of Earth and whats on it Cosmic horror made you afraid of whats to come Out there! Or... *Points to head* In here
@@azmanabdula Honestly, the original quote is much better. It seems poetic, instead of putting it in a very watered down version that instills no emotion whatsoever.
I looked up the whole quote to see who made it but then i got, "100 best horror movies"
Cosmic horror is on the go Movies like it or pet semetery are getting more famous
@@mns5855 Poetry is subjective
Cosmic horror is just more fascinating than scary to me
I know right!
It is both to me.
Yep
Username checks out
Right it’s so interesting I don’t get why people are scared by the infinite unknown It just means more to discover and explore
Weirdly my favourite example of cosmic horror is the episode 'Midnight' from Doctor Who. It is just characters in a shuttle, confronting an invisible entity that shouldn't exist, that is never explained.
Indeed, and it's also unsettling because we're used to the idea of the Doctor as someone who can reason with anything, or at least intimidate or understand it. Even uncommunicative, implacably hostile beings like the Weeping Angels can be UNDERSTOOD. They have rules they must operate by. Indeed, the Doctor is kind of an anti-cosmic horror character, because he can tame these incomprehensible forces and think on their level while still being reasonably human himself. But then the thing in "Midnight" is not just immune to talking, it uses talking to attack, and the Doctor himself is caught completely off-guard, with no way to deal with it. It's essentially immune to the premise of the show up until this point!
I never realized that the episode was cosmic horror, but that makes so much sense now as to why I enjoy it so much, cosmic horror is my favorite!
@paulgibbon5991 from a certain view point, the Doctor can be seen as a cosmic horror. One could kill his companions but he'll find a special kind of hell for you in retaliation.
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.
My grandmother once told me this: "Be careful when you pray, baby. God is not the only one that can hear you."
I woulda been traumatized
That's awesome and terrifying
May I use this line for a book? it's terrifying
Damn. As a person who loves horror and never gets scared by one-sentenced scary stories, this one sent chills. Especially since I'm quite religious and pray everyday.
How does one pray carefully?
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
the art of the outlandish
That's the feel I got from Annihilation- the book series, and the reason why I loved it. It was the concept that whatever it was was completely beyond human comprehension, that any form of communication would be Area X (the shimmer in the movie) at its most basic level. Here's the exact quote: "And even in that hurting somehow Control knew that pain was incidental, not the Crawler's intent, but nothing about language, about communication, could bridge the divide between humans and Area X. That anything approaching a similarity would be some subset of Area X functioning at its most primitive levels. A blade of grass. A blue heron. A velvet ant."
If you're a huge HP Lovecraft Fan, there's few more satisfying, beautiful, brilliant or terrifying reads you could do than Alan Moore's The Courtyard, The Neonomicon and finally the Providence series (in that order).
@@AllOneVoice thank you, good sir.
you should try some lsd
Cosmic horror is truly some of the most terrifying horror in the genre, if done correctly. It teaches you that horror doesn't need jump scares to be scary. It's fueled by that dread, and if done right, can be scarier than anything in the genre. H.P Lovecraft was a genius in creating the idea of constant dread over jump scares. The man is a pioneer of what makes horror, well, horror. Hollywood never gets it quite right, and it's why the indie scene continuously feels so better. @Moon Prod does this extremely well. He creates that perfect sense of dread, with a mix of anxiety. The idea that these beings are things we shouldnt understand, and he's just 16 or so and has had it mastered. I just hope triple A film studios in Hollywood will get Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror right at some point. It would change the game.
A show that gave me the described sense of “cosmic horror” was True Detective. The nihilism of Rustin captured a threadbare tightrope balance of character that questioned what matters and if self destruction is a valid path. I think something of cosmic horror lies in that.
That's because it's based on Robert William Chambers' the King in Yellow, which Lovecraft drew inspiration from. The full audio book of the King in Yellow is here on KZhead, it's awesome and I recommend giving it a listen. If you really want to deep dive check out the works of Ambrose Bierce too, he pretty much started it all. Bierce influenced Chambers, Chambers influenced Lovecraft, and Lovecraft.... well we all know who Lovecraft is. The crazy thing about Bierce is he became obsessed with portals to other world, so much so that he traveled the world looking for them and ultimately vanished in South America. If you're a fan of the twilight zone there are two episodes the were NOT written and directed by Sterling; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Chickamauga. Both are stories by Ambrose Bierce.
@@ghost_the_system so cool to see the literary genealogy. Any Bierce stories/books you recommend?
Archive 81 was excellent also.
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.
He have a defined shape? I thought it was exactly the opposite. Didn't read the story, tough.
@@Herbert2892 there is a vague description, but the actual form is more the product of a thousand representations eventually taking inspiration from each other until they converge into what we now accept as Cthulhu's image, because it's imbedded into pop culture's collective consciousness. But Lovecraft didn't draw him. He mentioned wings and tentacles, and shapes so primitive looking that no human culture could've drawn.
@@davidls187 A friend of mine who loves the author told me once that Cthulhu has no definite form because he is the sum of all demons capable of haunting a man's soul. I think this interpretation is a lot cooler than the idea of him being just a flesh and bone beast...
@@Herbert2892 well your friend seems eloquent but his description isn't too accurate. His form is represented in sculptures and bas-reliefs, either inspired by the nightmares put into the hearts of men by Cthulhu's spawn or the the ones found in the city of R'lyeh, often described as having wrong, incomprehensible geometry. Remember those are interpretations.People who have seen him have all gone violently insane and died soon after. I recommend you give The Call of Cthulhu a chance. It's only a 1 hour read and it's really worth it.
@@davidls187 but lovecraft did draw cthulhu, well technically. he drew a sculpture of cthulhu that was made by a character in the book. although its also kind of implied that "a dragon body and cuttlefish head" is just kind of analogy, like those are the closest things that it resembles that we can understand
You’re not scared of being alone in the dark. You’re afraid that you aren’t alone.
Well yeah, this is actually an ancient instinct, just think how easy our ancestors could be jumped by lions or tigers or wolves or other animals in the middle of the night, this is specially true with felines because they can see clearly in the dark while you can't and they use this to attack you silently and kill you in a instant So we evolved a fear to the darkness because of what could be hiding in it, usually predators, of course we have long surpassed all of our natural predators, so we have to come up with something that can still challenge us
No one evolved
@@carso1500 that's why we build guns with flashlight
@@carso1500 Our ancestors and predecessors possessed better night vision that we did.
@@carso1500 Does that mean that over millions of years, humans will stop fearing the dark since there isn't a need to anymore?
I think one of the scariest things I've seen in pop culture was actually from a video game called Metro 2033. In it there is a scene where hands are clumped together trying to grab you. They only want to grab you because they are scared and alone, and will be forever. The concept of forever is I think scary for most people. Forever is never good.
Correction: (yes i am being that guy) the scene you are talking about is actually in metro last light, not 2033
one of the greatest examples of this is the lore of Destiny 2 the video game, in which an early lore tab describes what a character named Callus saw looking into the void at the end of the universe "At the edge of the universe, I stared into the infinite deep. It stared back" and it irked players as an unknowable force for a long time until 4 years and many dlcs later the character was shown in a trailer and with a face the character suddenly wasn't horrifying at all, it was just like any of the other bad guys you beat as the main character.
I think Interstellar could have been a cosmic horror movie, if it had ended when the main character was trapped in the other dimension, watching his daughter repeating the loop and unable to stop her.
interstellar loop*😂
If the movie ends there, then we never get to know whether some thing lives inside this other dimension or not. Are you saying that in cosmic horror, there must be a higher intelligence that humans cannot interact with and the audience is aware of its existence?
yeah, except it ended on the stupid notion that love is the strongest force in the universe because people dont forget it, by that same stupid logic it could be argued that hate is the most powerful force in the universe, which actually could've made for interesting, lovecraftian style story
@@DisentDesign I thought Interstellar was retarded because the benevolent beings that got him out of the loop are future humans. Not as dumb as that Chinese globalist propaganda Amy Adams film that has the Reapers from Mass Effect as good guys.
@@Sorakeyblademaster37 If that's what you took away from arrival, you are missing the backbone of the film
The KZhead Algorithm did you a solid my dude.
Yes
It did US a solid, amazing content! subscribed.
@@PhotonPnk "It did US a solid." *Communism intensifies*
KZhead algorithm is cosmic horror. We cannot understand it.
It was a couple of months late.
Annihilation is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I claimed it was part of an extremely rare genre, but I didn't know it really existed. Thank you so much for this video!
Something I always think about is that when we imagine something huge, we see it moving slowly in our perspective. Do the ants and small insects see us moving slowly, or super fast just as we see ourselves? Because imagining something that's big and can also move super fast would be sooooo scary.
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.
Shadey Mcbones exactly. Lovecraft never scared me while reading it. It was the feelings, ideas, and concepts that it invoked, and the whole process of coming to grasps with what the story was trying to convey. That’s what makes it scary.
the first lovecraft story i read was "beyond the wall of sleep" and initially it wasn't scary at all. just confusing. the more i thought about it the more terrifying the concept of a reality so foreign and unknowable to us that we as a collective species had written it off as such a benign concept of dreams became. the imagery and descriptions used are all peaceful and largely of some kind of mystical sense (shimmering islands of light, dancing flashing things, balls of light) but the fact that no rational explanation or narrative could be derived from the sleeping man's descriptions because for us there simply wasn't any explanation was chilling. it really drove home for the first time why the concept of "unknowable" is scary. With most scary things we assume that we just don't understand it "yet" rather than with lovecraft where we will not ever be permitted to understand it. it will always be foreign no matter how long or hard you look at it.
Thats the meteor one right? The horror kind of just sits with you on that one. So far its my favorite lovecraft story by far We live in a time where man has walked on the moon and we have hundreds of satellites in space, so we dont have the horror of space anymore. Imagine just how creepy that story wouldve been in the 30s to people that didnt know what crept behind the stars in the black night sky
It's veeeeeery psychological.
@@Sykroid Good point. If you watch some of the space-themed episodes of the early Twilight Zone you can see that that horror lingered on into the 1960s, just enough to work.
Sometimes i look into the night sky hoping there is a cute alien bae staring back
That's 'Lamu the invader girl' 😄
Maybe there is an alien staring back, but it may not be very cute 😬
The Memer a person can only imagine huh, guess we’ll never know if the alien is cute or not.
gamora
@@thememer8855 ay bruh as long as they're THICC it's all good lmao
4 Years later and I still love rewatching this video. On a sidenote Screened / Mr. Velasquez - have you ever considered doing audiobook readings? I loved your reading of the unnamable - and I think your voice would go well with an Audiobook of Lovecraft's work. Thank you!
4:05 this moment in Annihilation was perfect in every way, loved the soundtrack so much
“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.” ― Ernest Hemingway
Wich u cant do with cosmic horror^^
hm... good advice. I wonder if I can use it in philosophy writing too
Hmm
Just drop the audience into the world. They don’t had to know the hows and whys, just that it simply is.
Death stranding
I love the ways in which you show movie examples without actually showing them. It simultaneously totally wrecks my nerves.
I am drawing cosmic horror in my art class and most of it is different yet similar creatures, something which I have never drawn in full, this video has made quite a help in drawing the shape or showing the effects of this creature
How the hell did KZhead find out what I wanted
The algorithm is getting stronger, soon it will start making videos specially for us
The eldritch abomination thing that is called, Google; see's all, hears all, knows all! We cannot live without it---for we are already absorbed in its collective consciousness.
Sorry for the off-topic but why to heck is this profile picture e v e r y w h e r e???
@@peeblekitty5780 OH YEA YEA
@@landsquid1617 Yeah what the hell... the guy above you and the guy above him have the same profile picture, Even Jablinski has it, who is this guy?
This is some quality 3am content
3 am here
3 am here bby
Is 3:19am for me... Shit.
3:54 ayeeeee
ma boi :) lol 3:14
This was a solid breakdown, should be shown in High School/College English courses. I feel as if new readers and thinkers of our upcoming generations can have another way to capture the relationship between emotion and content with videos like this.
Beautiful video, great script, and all those clips were the cherry on top! I think I gotta catch up on Lovecraftian films since a lot of those clips were new to me. I will never forget first being visited by the feeling of cosmic horror and dread when I was about 10, and it has never left since. It would consume all my thoughts to the point of anxiety disorders and I started missing school unfortunately, but what a fascinating emotion for the human brain to try to grasp and usually fail.
Years ago I was aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean. It was late, a little after midnight, and I decided to go out on the balcony. The moon was full and yellow, and every star in the sky could be seen. The water itself was eerily placid, no waves, no foam, nothing to disturb the surface except a light breeze and the bow of our own ship. Beyond it there was nothing but an eternal mirror, stretching into the horizon, reflecting the entire night sky back into the ether. Most eerie of all was how quiet it was. All at once I felt a revelation come upon me that I had no idea what was beneath me, and no idea what was above me - all that I knew was that I was horribly unequipped to face either of them. No land in sight. No civilizations for perhaps hundreds of miles in every direction. We were alone, arrogantly treading the line between two cosmically horrific worlds, vulnerable and helpless, blind and deaf. It was a beautiful moment, and I basked in it for as long as I could. Edit: Holy cannoli, folks. I wasn’t expecting a response of this magnitude, but thank you so much for your awesome comments and encouragement! To answer some questions, Yes this was describing a real moment. It was aboard a cruise ship along the Pacific coast of Mexico, lasted all of 30 seconds, and, as you can see, it caused me some serious reflection. Haha Yes, I’d like to write a book, but I’ve never considered horror or fiction, since I’m most adept at describing my own personal experiences. Spinning fictional yarns was never my forte, but thanks so much for your support anyway! If I ever do publish a book, this thread will be the first to know. Thanks again! You are, all of you, beautiful people. ❤️
I thought I was reading a story 😅
Bruh you should write a novel. 10/10 comment
Underrated comment
wow that sounds terrifying but very cool at the same time also your description was amazing are you a writer by any chance?
this dude can write, i pictured this super well just due to his wording
There’s an episode in the Netflix series “Love, Death and Robots” that centers around a crew of a freighter in space that accidentally jump millions of light years into the absolute unknown and the horrific realization of where they went actually made me jump out of my seat.
i loved that series
If it's the episode I'm thinking of, it's was disturbing as fuck and I loved it 😂
beyond the aquila rift or something? :D Its my favourite of them all.
Beyond the Aquila Rift's big reveal was beyond disturbing and I totally understand the protagonist's decision to live out the rest of his short, malnourished life in blissful spider-thing-fucking ignorance.
That's the one! Such a brilliant concept. And yes, that reveal... *shudder*
This was such a spot on incredibly articulated description of why good cosmic horror is so rare. That balance 👌🏼 The lovecraft , void and iohn carpenter references were spot on. Really enjoyed this👏🙌💀
Great video, great calm style, great take , subscribed
To me, cosmic horror can be summed up in the quote/ “There are two options: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
@American Patriot yeah to me honestly being completely alone is the scariest... Some might say the opposite but both ? Idk
@American Patriot imagine, of all of the galaxies we are just alone, living in this whole universe.
@American Patriot If something is out there its terrifying. And due to human nature and the need to connect finding out we are alone in the universe is the same as finding out that when we die out, nothing will know that we were there
Ye it's crazy
nah if aliens as smart as advanced as us exist (which they do) then they'd have had to be civil and intelligent enough not to torn eachother apart and attack everything to be able to make progress, so they wouldnt just attack another planet for no reason like wild animals
Try this Go stargazing at night, as you look up into the expense of sky don't think of it as looking up (because that is just a concept you can't possibly be on top of the planet) instead think of yourself as on the bottom of the planet looking down into a yawning abyss. It will give you a feeling of cosmic anxiety
This made me think of a time in high school when my girlfriend at the time and I went out to look at the stars together. Of course supposed to be this nice romantic thing, but laying there, for the briefest moment, I had that feeling and nearly jumped of fright, fearing I would fall into that star filled void.
yall should watch the animated movie "patema inverted" its basically this
whoah. You just blew my mind...
@@michaellee7308 i always have this feeling whenever I lie down and look into the sky... Like what if somehow I'd fall into that great void of space... The thought of it gives me goosebumps
Wow
This video gives me so good chills! Its one I come back so often!
I came up with my own kind of creature to play with in my writing. When I picture it, you rarely see most of its body. For the most part, you see a shrouded face which turns out to be your face, but the voice that talks back isn't exactly your voice. Something is off about it. You occasionally see something out of the corner of your eye, but it's too quick and it's gone.
Lovecraftian Horror (Fear of something beyond our understanding, glimpse of the ugly truth constantly suppressed by denial) - Avant-Garde/Lynchian Horror (Fear of something understandable but incongruous) - Elevated Horror (Psychological terror brought upon by understanding the full extent of reality) - Hitchcockian Horror (Fear caused by mystery and tension, a knot in the stomach) - Supernatural Horror (Fear of the bizarre, until further research establishes supernaturalism) Even with all these genres, my social anxiety's the scariest thing.
Hahaha last part was real
People who try to frightening me: "booo im a demon from another universe of pain boooo you see me in the mirror but you dont notice me boooo im terrifying boooo" People who try to frighten you: "Hi im Greg, wanna hang out?"
@@ahabduennschitz7670 I’d honestly be terrified if a random man whom I’ve never met just came up to me and told me his name, asking to hangout. I’d probably be so confused as to what his intentions may be due to the “don’t talk to strangers” talk.
@@Yoyozlitt20 I imagine it would play out like that first scene with Mystery Man from Lost Highway.
@person person I believe that's called "open mystery" or "howcatchem".
"I missed the part where that's my problem." Best cosmic horror ever.
which one os that
@@scodiscodi8775 lol it's Tobey Maguire as spider-man. It's a meme
i figured lol
Give me rent.
@@redyosh9811 I'll give you your rent when you FIX THIS DAMN DOOR
I subscribed. You got me. These are the basic reasons I still listen to so much metal music…(but even that has begun to stay surface level, for similar reasons). Awesome video!
I was introduced to this genre by short film called THE SKY by Matt Sears, and the Midnight Episode of Doctor Who. Also, I found the Angelarium, a series that is a complete reversal of cosmic horror -- not knowing means peace.
H.P. Lovecraft works can't be translated to visual media because the readers imagination is what defines the horror. That was his brilliance, he described the horror abstractly but paradoxically tangible.
Travis Hammer assuming you can actually read it
it can, look up deep dream.
@@AltimeFAILS is that inspired by Lovecraft or an adaptation of his work? There's plenty of movies that are thematically inspired by his work. In the mouth of Madness and Jacobs Ladder are good examples.
The only way you'd do it is if you NEVER showed what he was talking about
Although I agree, I believe the videogame Bloodborne did this very well
What scares me is higher dimensional threats. Not exactly a ghost or something similar but basically like humans to ants. Ants live in their own world. They encounter other small beings. Build homes and search for food. Until a human comes along, then they realize they are tiny and helpless. And cannot communicate with us. Even if they could, our language is too complex for them. To something out there we are the ants, just waiting to be picked to realise we are not able to understand this threat. It would be so complex, probably enough to ruin our reality. It would collapse. Then what?
I think that is what the Cthulu Mythos is essentially about..
@@yevrahhipstar3902 it would be out of our own reality, on a higher dimension, probably wouldn't be able to see it
😨
For historic reasons there are 5 ant species that kill humans
thats kinda what arrival is about. the heptopods show up. cant communicate. theyre massive compared to us and their language is more advanced than ours
The Void nailed the visual effects of what I would want a Lovecraftian horror movie to show. I would love it if the film industry went deeper into Lovecraftian-style world-building. The Void is probably my favorite horror movie of all time.
The editing in this video is really nice, especially at the end there,
Maybe it's just me but the best bit of cosmic horror I've ever seen was most likely accidental. It's the end scene from Men in Black, with the alien playing marbles with galaxies. I think, whilst it's relatively harmless, it perfectly encapsulated the feeling of insignificance Cosmic Horror wants to achieve, the thought of feeling so small and helpless to grand cosmic deities. That still freaks me out to this day
Oh goodness, the ending scene truly freaked me out as a kid. Back then, I always thought we're inside of something or we're being monitored.
@@dereenaldoambun9158 Turn out the thought that NO ONE ever monitoring us far more dread...since we are insignificant.
Because you are White?
@@dereenaldoambun9158we are still monitored
@@toastytoast9800 You're crazy bro we are not monitoring you.
I feel that the reason Junji Ito often strikes me as the best in cosmic horror is because he shows the horror coming from within: For instance, the most terrifying aspect of Amigara fault is that the holes themselves are unexplained but it is the people's own inexorable fascination and attraction to them that cause their demise. The holes can't do anything, they don't move, they're totally inert. Why would you go into them more than any other hole in the ground? Yet that's the terror, the mere thought that your mind COULD make you go in there, your own deadly curiosity, a terminal need to know and witness the unknown at all costs. You can't fight or resist the effects of a cosmic power when obeying it is ingrained within your own DNA. Your very purpose is to be undone by it.
Hellstar remina is one of my favorites by him as well
I thought this said Jumanji
Its like he is HP Lovecraft but he is Japanese
Junji Ito has quite a few stories that have that sense of not being able to resist, like Army of One and Splatter Film. But as for the cosmic horror of an unknown power, Uzumaki is amazing.
Man, I would love to read junji ito for the story but his art style is so disgusting to me
I just watched the thing for the first time. It’s still so good nowadays because you can’t really guess the ending like most movies now.
Well put and well done.
The Thing's effects are still really cool today. Who ever did them should feel proud.
Those 1980s practical effects are better than most modern CGI effects and modern practical effects
Rob Bottin is the man.
Arthas Menethil tangible effects will always age better than CGI, just because they’re tangible :o)
I think in modern age we can make the CGI almost unnoticeable. But we need practical effects. I think the best rule is: if you need your characters to interact with something, use practical effects so it wouldn't look off, and if you want to make something that can't be replicated in real life, use CGI. That way you can make realistic scenes, but also keep the budget for the CGI so it could look even better. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom movie did that and the effects are great!
Yeah right, go tell this to a Marvel fanboy
Why did anybody not mention that this review is the masterpiece itself?
True!
Someone finally said it.
@Daniel okay, Daniel
Well said. If I ever saw this comment on r/lovecraft I would give it an upvote and reddit gold. Well said sir!
Yeah!
This is why I think it's such a potent genre, with small stabs at it in things like "beyond the Aquila rift" in love death and robots it does such a good job of showcasing a being that is extremely hard to understand and showing it in a way that leaves you with a sense of foreboding that's just perfect, the thing shown here is so good because it makes you ask questions about yourself in an introspective way that no other genre can
This is one of the best videos about Cosmic Horror. Congrats.
I just wanna see, in my lifetime, a cthulhu movie. With the people behind it that understand the source material, pick the right actors and deliver the Great dreamer in all of his glory.
To be honest, i always thought The call of Cthulhu is overrated. Lovecraft wrote so much better stories.
@Elliot Rodger Hah, almost forgot about those episodes.
I think the entire Cthulhu universe is too abstract and dreamy to be made into a movie franchise. I think no matter what Hollywood would make these creatures into, it would appear wrong to the fans.
Have you ever seen waking life? It's a movie that was filmed, then had cell shading done over it - it allows for a lot of stylistic flair for mood/atmosphere, such as a character talking about tigers and the wall behind her melting into tiger stripes. I always thought something like that would be interesting for a cthulu movie. It looks fairly consistent with reality but can easily bleed into horrific and uncanny imagery. A similar example to above is a character getting more distraught/paranoid as they talk and the wall pattern buzzing into blinking eyes.
Janusha it could be made into games though
I always loved this quote: 'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' --Arthur C. Clarke
Personally I would hope we are alone in the universe. You can't get hurt by what isnt there.
Holy crap. That actually kinda creeped me out a bit.
it would be unrealistic if we are the only ones in existing
@@blakebridges1030 Actually you _can_ get hurt by what isn't there, but it's mental rather than physical damage. Not sure what's worse.
@@Ryu99420 I wouldn't call it unrealistic, but improbable to a ridiculous degree.
Excellent analysis
Awesome analysis.
When I describe cosmic horror to people, I tell them to think of a horror movie about stepping on a bug from the bug's perspective. A being so ungodly powerful and that is impossible to understand its reasons for its actions. Then if imagine our planet, our species or existence itself, was the bug to a being that we could never comprehend. To me, that is a core idea of what cosmic horror is: the complete and utter apathy.
very simple and succinct way of describing it. nice.
Your comment reminded me of this scene from season 1 of Babylon 5: kzhead.info/sun/lMySfr2Pa2pqiZs/bejne.html Though, admittedly, G'Kar's response is probably more optimistic than you'd get from cosmic horror.
So Thanos? Or better yet, Dormmamu? And, conveying "impossible to understand" reasons is super hard. You can either end up with a villain people will criticize was "poorly written" because its motive wasn't clear, or people will simply make up their own motives. Is something attacking us? It must hate us or it wants something we possess.
ziglaus Dormamu in the comics is actually a fairly fleshed out character with relatable motives. However, they could have taken a more cosmic horror route if they'd really wanted to, wouldn't be the first time they'd changed a major character. They sort of did hit on it with Ego from Guaradians of the Galaxy 2, but because he wasn't unstoppable it never reached point. Ironically, Thanos is probably the closest thing to existential horror in the MCU, because he not only proved he was almost impossible for any of the heroes to defeat, he won and killed half of the entire universe for near incomprehensible reasons.
Both Thanos and Dormammu have nothing to do with space horror. They are antagonists, even formidable ones at that, but they can be opposed and fought against - effectively or not. It's a nice coincidence that you brought up Marvel's villains. In original Avengers Loki brings up the idea of a bug vs shoe scenario. When he arrives on earth he says to Fury "an ant has no quarrel with a boot" (though obviously Loki isn't an example of cosmic horror either). Shoe isn't the bug's antagonist, there is no rivalry between them. The reason behind the foot's movement is incomprehensible for the insect and entirely beyond its control. There are hardly any examples of this motive in superhero universes, since they mostly revolve around battles of ideas. Usually the villain's goal simply conflicts the safety of humanity/universe (Thanos's utilitarianism, Dormammu's lust of conquest etc.). When you write a cosmic horror you don't show a motive behind it at all. That would completely spoil it. You show how characters react to something completely beyond their grasp - a measurable against immeasurable.
A good way to show cosmic horror would be to not show what's causing the horror. There's an scp story (i can't remember the name) and its about some guy going through a cave to a dimensional universe thats exactly the same but every living thing is dead with no reason. The first dead body he sees his him by the entrance of the cave with a gun in his hand and a gunshot wound to the head. As he explored more he notices that all the other dead bodys have no wounds or stench to them like his own body. All the last known signs of human contact through radios and media date back two days from his original dimension. The guy goes back through the cave to his dimension to find it exactly the same At first he thinks he's not able to escape the dimension but he soon realises that he is in fact back in his dimension because the dates and time of all known human contact are two days ahead of the dead dimension indicating he is back in his very own dimension. Everything is dead like the other dimension and yet still there is no clue to how everything died. The main character comes to the conclusion that something sinister was in that cave. He feels it was death, not like comical old death with the scythe but more like an omnipotent being. He realises whatever it was it needed help to jump from one dimension to the next. He realises he himself is death and if anyone else waked through it they themselves would be death. He lays down by the entrance and records himself stating what he has discovered so if he or anyone else from another dimension sees him theyll know not to return to their dimension. After this he picks up a gun he found earlier and kills himself by the entrance of the cave. I think this story could easily be implemented into a movie and there would be no need to show a scary monster or anything like that. It could just be an easy journey of the man in this story trying to make sense of things.
You don't know the name?
That story sounds so awesome
id love to read more of this
@@klab9024 Found it. SCP-2935 O'Death. One of the best dreadful ones.
@@Death_Korps_Officer thanks!
this video is probably one of the best videos ive ever seen.
Existential dread is one of the hardest things to explain At one moment your in your shower panicking as the thought of life where we come from and what will happen after we die overcomes you then the next your thinking about kung fu panda 2 and how hard the last scene goes
"Staring at the countless stars..." (weeps in countable suburban stars)
🤣🤣🤣
* cries in between 0 and 20 (in a very good night) visible stars of a big and foggy city *
Its a really good night if I can see like 3 of them ;_;
I can relate
Man, I love annihilation. The bear scene is one of the creepiest things ive seen in the past few years
Really fills you with dread!
The screams!
Amazing film
I don't get people who call it boring. It was the first adult movie I've seen America make in a long time.
Yeah, that part was pretty messed up. The plants that grew in the shape of people was a little disturbing too. I need to watch that movie again...
Oh my gosh, Annihilation was absolutely amazing! So well done! Easily one of my favorite movies.
Thanks for the amazing video
I like to think that cosmic horror is like a black hole. We've tried to explain it, draw it, but in the end we just dont understand it completely. In the end its still an unknown.
Black holes are the ultimate cosmic horror for me since they are exactly what the definition of cosmic horror dictates: Incrompehensible, impossible to explain as they are the embodiement of human knowledge and understanding. The last time I felt the existential dread that stems from cosmic horror was while using space engine and taking a closer look at a black hole. The closer I inched to it's event horizon, the more the universe around it got distorted, like a corruption taking over everything we know to be true, while the void grew and threatened to swallow me hole with no chance of ever escaping it's grasp again. Black holes scare me beyond comprehension and I think that's reasonable.
@@Stusel and some make bullshit theories that with light speed you can go through a black hole.
@@Dylanfrias24 ok mr party pooper
@@Stusel Man, i totally feel just like you. I remember seeing videos of the game Elite:dangerous where people would approach black holes, it gave me so much anxiety it was even hard to look lol.
"Don't show the creatures and let people's imagination do the work" This made me think about "The Blair Witch" (1999) wich is still criticized because the main antagonist (the witch) never is showed, even until the end. And I always think that it is perfect because when you think about a witch, you have the image of an ugly old woman. But the movie doesn't give you any hint of how the witch looks, there is even a scene where the main characters starts running in the forest during night and Heather Donahue (the woman) scream "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!". That scene is just too perfect because the actors where supposed to look at one specific point where one of the directors was dressed as a witch, but the actors were so scared that they couldn't stop running. I know it's not THAT kind of cosmic horror but I think it is a perfect example of how create a "monster" without showing it.
Yes, I have watched that movie recently. Honestly I didn't sleep that night. Fun Fact is I didn't witness any ghost or witches in that movie
Wait what do you mean they were too scared? They weren’t ACTUALLY getting hunted down were they? Lol
@@justinchalifoux4424 yes actually, they were. during the production of TBWP the directors only gave the actors very miniscule and vague detail. what you saw on the screen was their genuine reactions to the tricks the directors and crew were playing on them
woegarden that’s fuxking sick man. If every horror movie had that level of passion in it, my life would be made
Agreed! In my opinion, its way creepier if they either don't show the monster or make it very brief. Sometimes, I'm watching a movie and its super suspenseful and eerie with only very brief scenes of the ghost or whatever. Often so brief you might not spot it if you didn't look hard but then at the end the ghost runs around all over the place and you see it really well and by the time the film is over I'm like "hm, wasn't scary" and sleep soundly. People are scared of the unknown, I think directors should utilize that more to make horror that sticks with you and keeps people up at night. By the way, check out the shudder original film Z. It was pretty creepy
Agree with you. Especially the mist. The ending played on the best parts of the stories ending. Excellent
The color out of space with Nicolas Cage was a good somewhat recent adaptation of HP Lovecraft.
"...if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche
Ahhh good old Nietzsche
wow, so original...
@@DisentDesign he's the one who said it first, so i guess it is.
megumin
Wink at the abyss
This is probably the reason why Nightmares are more terrifying than horror films anyway, and why "nightmare fuel" is basically the highest praise you can give to something trying to scare you. By the end of a nightmare, you've forgotten the contents, but you remember the contents made you so terrified that it stuck in your head.
The worst nightmares are the onces in which there is no obvious fear, nothing chasing you, nothing to picture. I have a recurring nightmare that I can never remember. All I remember is a hall like the fibonacci sequence and an indescribable feeling of scale and distance that I only feel when watching fractal zooms
I remember when I was little I'd often have these really long dreams that spanned across several different familiar and unfamiliar settings, with various real people and made up people. They'd be these weird but fun adventures, and all these wildly different settings would inexplicably merge into one another throughout the dream. I don't remember the "main" parts of these dreams well at all, just vague snapshots of them, but I vividly remember that these dreams always ended in the same utterly terrifying way. I'd somehow end up in an empty place, usually a bedroom in a house, and suddenly collapse and not be able to move my body. I'd struggle to move, but feel like my body was encased in solid concrete. At this point, I'd realise I'm dreaming - I could feel that my eyes where shut, but they felt like they where sealed shut with glue, and the dream would continue. Then something - I have no idea what it was - would appear and approach me, while I struggled helplessly on the floor in a state of sheer terror, unable to even attempt to escape. Then I'd finally force my eyes open and wake up, but would usually get sleep paralysis and not be able to move _in real life_ for several seconds, with the sense that this thing was still there in my room, just out of my field of view. Probably the most horrifying nightmares I've ever had, yet I never saw this thing, I could just sense that it was there. It seemed to be the same thing that appeared in several dreams on several different occasions.
I have never found my nightmares to be scary. While reading up about this I found that there was a study which proclaimed that people who are hardcore gamers tend to be this way. They look at their dreams as another virtual reality. Another "level" that has to be conquered.
@@majinraptor Dude. I'm a hardcore gamer. And that sounds like some straight up "look at me, I'm so special" shit right there. Gaming is fun. Don't sully it with this "we're special" bullshit.
majinraptor Gamers rise up, amirite??? We’re a minority oppressed by the government and mainstream media, but we’re clearly the superior race 😎😎😎😎
HP Lovecraft had some of the most far out crazy stories that I've read or seen in movies and games. He really knew how to stir the imagination. He lets our own minds freak us out.
Insanely great hard-hitting quote: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. 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. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
I wonder what Lovecraft would have said if he'd have known what we do now about radioactivity... That's the closest thing to cosmic horror on this planet: a natural force that changes the very matter around it, it's dangerous just by existing, it can be lethal when dispersed or when concentrated, we can extract power from it, it opens our eyes to many things otherwise unseen, it can render cities to ash, it can close whole regions from us for generations, it can turn people and animals into writhing monstrosities begging for an end and the only way to resolve its problems it is to seal it away for eons, hoping it will lie dormant and its prison unchanging for the millennia it's meant to hold its contents...
Yes radiation is it's own cosmic horror
On top of that, radiation cannot itself be seen or heard or touched. We can only see its effects on the world and on ourselves.
My face when you just made me realize HBO's "Chernobyl" is actually a cosmic horror story/ biopic.
Twin Peaks Season 3 Episode 8: watch it, trust me it has the best half hour I have ever seen on TV
Try Chernobyl. It's horrifying...
I once heard the three rules for creating a true monster: 1- *it cant be seen* : having a form makes it recognizable. 2- *it cant talk* : if you can talk to it, you can try understand it. 3- *it cant be beaten* : if you can kill it, fear goes away. The Thing follows these rules....
Making the monster unbeatable is a great way to ruin all tension
@@cyllxx9112 it is not. If you know you can beat something, it suddenly give you hope, and hope destroys crippling fear. When the the ''fight'' instinct is out of question....all there is left is run...
@@emerosky9899 it is best to leave whether it is beatable unknown but if I know that the protagonists can't win I get bored immediately
@@cyllxx9112 i was speaking about ourselves. First hand encounter. Seeing everything through a glass window takes the experience and feelings away. Ive seen so much zombies that they bore me to death now.
@@emerosky9899 Giving a character hope and then crushing it is a much better way to scare them than to try never giving hope to begin with.
You mostly convinced me that Cosmic Horror is a genre that shines in a book.
I love that you put the extract of SpaceOdyssey when he time/space travels because that scenes horrifies me to no end, and no one ever understands why.
A reason why I liked the movie Cloverfield so much is how insignificantly meaningless were the characters to the threat/monster itself. We were seeing the story of civilians just trying to survive, they didn't plan on eliminating the threat or be necessarily a hero, they were just trying to escape and get to a safe place. While the monster just keeps on strolling destroying they have no say on what it does.
That's more of a kaiju movie though
Monday Green Yes and no. We now know that they are some sort of alien so in a way it’s cosmic horror. Since the one at the end of the Cloverfield Paradox is higher than the clouds, humanity is definitely insignificant in comparison
@@AuzzieArtyst I was referring to just the first movie, which the original comment was also referring to I think
I hate that movie just because all the actions and decision the people make are so fucking dumb and lack any kind of logical approach to everyday problems, it makes me mad just thinking about how badly (imo) that movie was written.
Shout out to Mike Falzone and Steve Zaragoza for their podcast Cloverfeels which brought to light the genius of that universe and made me a super fan of the films for life
KZhead Algorithm's been recommending some good channels recently.
Yeah. I'm currently binge watching thru these channel
Same
Bro foreal!
Totally agree! I'd just discovered this
that's nice, it keeps recommending me shit i've watched already
Great Video!
An episode from Love Death+Robots (I believe episode 7 season 1) Beyond the Aquila rift, definitely gave me existential dread and shivers for a month.
I feel like The Lighthouse was a near perfect modern day take on cosmic horror, and was just a flat out good movie in general.
Agreed! The fact it was mostly focused on the dire atmosphere and the descend into madness makes it one of the closest things I've watched whose experience feels similar to reading Lovecraft. The fact the language is often very literary helps too.
Absolutely! One of the best "lovecraftian" movies ever.
The strange thing about the Lighthouse is that it just as well could he cosmic horror as nonfiction, as every strange concept could either be explained by the supernatural, or just human madness and unreliable narration
@@swiftlymurmurs1825 This is is true and a very interesting point! I do interpret the film as having no real monsters or supernatural events at all, and everything weird being just in their heads. So probably we cannot call it cosmic horror, technically, but a thriller. Yet the feeling of the film hits closer to the one in cosmic horror literature than most movies that are actually made to be cosmic horror do. Which is ironic but still amazing.
Just watched it. The symbolism is fucking insane; another stellar film by Robert Eggers.