Has anyone ever successfully captured the essence of Lovecraftian horror on the silver screen? Has anyone come close?

Has anyone ever successfully captured the essence of Lovecraftian horror on the silver screen? Has anyone come close?

His work is proving quite difficult to translate into the medium of film. How do you feel?

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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is good but its a game. And its more lovecraftian in its themes than visually

That's not relevant to this board but thanks for the contribution. I'll recommend it to my little brother.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure and Kairo
The Blair Witch Project
Alien
Carpenter's Trilogy Of Apocalypse

Those are probably the most akin to the Lovecraftian atmosphere I could think of.

His work was hard to translate INTO THE MEDIUM OF WRITING.
I personally think most of his stories are badly told and badly written (not all of them). He just had amazing ideas.

Even though I'm a pleb I think Lars Von Trier would be the man for the job.
He's good at shocking imagery and mood, and in my book if you manage to convey Cosmic Horror as a feeling you will have managed to convey Lovecraft.

>Lars Von Trier
I'm listening.
>if you manage to convey Cosmic Horror as a feeling you will have managed to convey Lovecraft
I'm sold.

Any other directors you'd recommend? I have explored much of his work but I'd imagine Cronenberg or even Jodorowsky perhaps would at least make/have made a worthwhile interpretation, although I'm less convinced about the latter.

Ignore anyone who claims In the Mouth of Madness hit a home run.

It wasn't even close to the subtle and impending dread that Lovecraftian/cosmic horror is supposed to evoke.

True Detective Season 1 came kind of close, but then it pussied out and became just a generic crime drama with Lovecraftian references tacked on for window dressing.

Very few movies capture the feel, but there are a few. They're not strictly Lovecraftian though.

>Very few movies capture the feel, but there are a few. They're not strictly Lovecraftian though.
Name names, as is the point of this thread.

>in my book if you manage to convey Cosmic Horror as a feeling you will have managed to convey Lovecraft.

This. The feeling is absolutely essential.

Basically anything that makes the protagonist feel small and insignificant, or that the walls are closing in even as the universe seems vast and uncaring and that morality is so subjective as to basically be irrelevant.

It's the feeling that things are so strange and there are things beyond our own understanding that are causing great misfortune for us more as an incidental consequence than as the actual goal.

This is the best Lovecraft kino I've ever seen. Enjoy.

youtube.com/watch?v=y7jp1CT1h6c

That's pretty difficult to convey without making an art film.

Time to just accept we'll see few Lovecraftian films because it's normie repellent. Well, in the mainstream at least. I'm sure third-year uni students will keep us well stocked with utter trash for years to come.

vidya Lovecraft > film Lovecraft

Bloodborne especially gives me such an overwhelmingly uneasy feeling. The type of fear most people associate with his work.

...

>The Blair Witch Project
What?

Lars von trier is my top 5 worst directors of all time. After Antichrist I just can't fuck him

how come?

I can't finish his movies. It's a chore trying to get through them

And I'm the type of guy that likes long epics every once in a while

I've always though The Thing was pretty Lovecraftian, if at a small scale.

Do you find them tiring? Obnoxious? Irritating?

Come on user, at least explain yourself.

You're more likely to find "glimmers" of it in specific scenes than in the entirety of movies.

Like that scene in 10 Cloverfield Lane when MEW sees a spacecraft for the first time and realizes the world actually has been invaded by aliens, or in the Dawn of the Dead remake at the end when the characters are desperately trying to find a place that isn't zombie infested and realize they're basically fucked.

Or in The Road as the characters rummage through a dying world, basically just running out the clock as the human species goes completely extinct. Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episodes occasionally hit the mark. Or The Mist when the dad is about to kill himself. I would say that right before the soldiers show up and save him, the movie was touching on a lot of Lovecraftian notes.

But for me, bad endings are kind of a must. Or not necessarily "bad" but definitely not any ending that uplifts you or makes you feel like the main characters are going to make it out okay. The Aliens movies occasionally captured some of the feel, but only barely.

Also themes involving something ancient awakening that will forever change or transform the world in a way that humans as they exist now just can't cope or adapt, or even really comprehend.

Okay so I swear I saw an episode of a show called Movie Magic when I was a kid. The show featured In The Mouth Of Madness and showed some behind the scenes creation of a vision where a man sees a vision of a writhing ball of human beings like pic related. It wasn't in the movie, and I'm wondering if anyone knows what movie it might have been. I've tried tracking down that specific episode but I've had no luck. Stan Winston may or may not have been mentioned in relation to the effect. Was it a deleted scene maybe?

i liked that one, but its more of a b movie.

Interesting. I'm yet to see 10CL (cheers for the spoiler) but I'm keen to get around to it.
I agree with the rest of what you think, though. You know your stuff.

Couldn't tell you.

>Wil Wheaton

dont be like that, its one of the best lovecraft adaptions there is.
granted, most of the rest are shit.

I'll most likely give it a shot.

There's a Call of Cthulhu movie that was made in 2005, but made to resemble an early 1900s movie. It's black and white, silent, and has simple effects. I think it's free on Youtube, or at least it was.

alien! This!

Was it called Dagon? I remember seeing a really fucking terrible but awesome Dagon movie around 2005ish where the main character basically did the opposite of what people do in horror movies. At one point he somehow ripped a hubcap off a car and used it to slice off the top of one of the fish people's heads like something out of mortal kombat. It also had really terrible CGI and that's about all I remember.

is it any good?

high quality post, thanks for contributing

No, just Call of Cthulhu
It's alright. I didn't actually realize it was a recent movie while I was watching it. It manages to be a bit spooky and even has some impossible geometry.

Coolio. I'll check it.

Look for movies that are weird and unsettling, even frightening but aren't necessarily about "good vs evil."

any recs?

The squid legged woman in Dagon has the most amazing eyes I have ever seen.

Fire in the Sky maybe.

Under the Skin is probably another.

>Under the Skin
I just ordered that on amazon. Bit more inclined to watch it now.

I found them overly pretentious. I think his self indulgence ruins his movies. I sit there the whole time thinking come one get on with it. Or other times just going why Lars why did you even bother. It's just his style IMO. Other directors that experiment I can stomach and enjoy I just can't with Lars

>Ctrl+F
>Boku No WoodsCabin
>0 results
I'm disappointed.

Fair enough. Different strokes for different folks.

fuck yeah

1/6

wat a fuccn qt

does she do violent things to young boys?

2/6

3/6

This comic is so fucking good. It's absurdly good. It has all of the charm and none of the cringeworthy attempts at lovecraftian themes.

This comic is not chasing the Lovecraft. It is inhabiting it.

Society

4/6

That's pretty much spot on
it's just so goddamn good, what i love about this comic is that it gives me so many different feelings, it's just that good.

mass audiences aren't open to story lines where humanity and all it's efforts lose and ultimately come to mean nothing

del taco gets kind of close though

5/6

>I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
that's harlan ellison tho

and the end. 6/6
Anyone here got anything similar? in form of comics and shit? Since i've read this one i've been craving for more.

Who wrote and drew this, mate ?

I don't really have anything that comes close to this work of genius. But there was an internet cartoon that served as my gateway to weird stuff when I was 13. It's called "Pustota" and it's in youtube.

It's a liiiitle bit similar to that comic.

this guy right here plasticbrickautomaton.com/?id=71

don't know if he have anyting similar

>>True Detective Season 1 came kind of close, but then it pussied out and became just a generic crime drama with Lovecraftian references tacked on for window dressing

but that's what made it most effectively lovecraftian. Would have been a complete shitfest if they went full on with it.

Will check it out user, thanks very very much for the recommendation.

>it's a game
fucking hell dude

thanks !

>its a game

It was a book first, you fucking Sup Forumsedditor

True Detective could easily have been if they went the supernatural route.

And the game was made as an expansion of that very story by the author who wrote it, dumbass.

>When, long ago, the gods created Earth
>In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
>The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
>Yet were they too remote from humankind.
>To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
>Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
>A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
>Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

What did he mean by this?

Hellboy 1's Ogru Jahad scenes as well as the Wyrm that was in Rasputin are both pretty cosmic horror.

>tfw I was unable to eat anything but rice gruel for two months as a child because of that shit.

>le video games are for children meme
Fairly epic.

The Final Destination series is pretty Lovecraftian
>protagonist has terrifying premonitions of impending doom
>no physical villian to fight back against, just the hand of fate/wrath of god
>constant atmosphere of tension, dread and terror instead of outright horror
>absolutely no possibility of a happy ending, eventually you're going to die horribly

That one music video, you know the one I'm talking about

youtube.com/watch?v=6QFwo57WKwg

It's alright, but really the "time travel" and discovery of the interdimensional world were the most Lovecraftian elements. Transformation is there but it still feels a bit too Kafka-esque. I'm just nitpicking I guess, the dread is sort of missing but it's fine.

...

I've seen this guy's stuff over many years yet I still don't know his name

What's intriguing is that the guy does humor. He's got a webpage full of humor webcomics and then out of nowhere he draws this one.

It's not the ultimate lovecraftian representation but for a webcomic found on a random place of the internet? It's pretty good. The city of bones thing didn't really click with me that much though. I loved the stone pillars in the white fog

Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave.

Thanks. I'm not sure this is it, it was a ball of people floating in the air. It was indoors--dark--i remember the man standing to the right of the frame with his back facing the camera, and the ball of people was floating in the top left of the frame, and moving towards the man slowly. The shot was only like 5 seconds maybe.

>floating in the air
OK then no idea.

...

Now that I'm thinking about it I might have seen that Movie Magic thing. Are you sure it wasn't just a behinds the scenes shot of the group of monsters coming down the hall?

It's not a meme you fucking moron

Yeah its also hard because I was a kid at the time. I'm almost positive In the Mouth of Madness was featured in that episode I saw. I can't seem to track down any of the episodes beyond season 1 and its really going to bug me since the movie could be anything, maybe even not a movie.

There were monsters coming down a hall in the movie, but I strongly remember the image of that ball of people floating in the air. The monsters in the hall was dimly lit and green, the scene im thinking of was dark with soft orange/white or both lighting. Maybe red, idk I was a kid. It looked like a smaller version of the Legion or Granfalloon from Castlevania games.

Better watch it at 1.5x speed, holy fuck what a slow movie

Here's a shitty drawing of what I remember. It may be wrong or have details wrong. Big ball of people sort of melted together and writhing around and screaming, maybe slightly see-through or spectral. Some kind of dark interior space with nice wooden walls maybe, and the man standing on the right with the ball moving toward him.

The Relic maybe?

Lair of the White Wyrm, if you can get past the 80s camp. Plus young Hugh Grant was breddi gud for funsies.

Sorry user. Can think of some similar things but nothing exactly like that right now. Good luck.

John Carpenter.

I liked their "crystal" prison, too. I always sort of imagined it as being more "pinched" space than a physical object.

It is. Video games are not just for children.

It will probably turn out to be something stupid like one of the freddy sequels. Oh well.

A videogame did it successfully, it's not a movie but it's worth playing.

check this out senpai

youtube.com/watch?v=6QFwo57WKwg

Fuck off, Reddit.

>literally been on 4chins for 13 years.
>get called reddit

NEVER CHANGE

Bloodborne does Lovecraft, sometimes pretty well, but it doesn't really do horror. Being a dude with a gun and a sword that can't die and can basically kill old ones isn't that scary. And although the bosses are cool since it's a game the bosses are just a set of mechanics, not some obscene unspeakable and incomprehensible horror from beyond time.

Bloodborne.

Leave Cthulhukino to Haiyore! Nyaruko-san. Spooky as heck, just the way Lovecraft would have wanted.

>on Sup Forums for 13 years

Where did it go so wrong

Eternal Darkness on Gamecube is pure Lovecraft.

>Cosmic horror
A lot of Lovecraft's work didn't employ this at all.

It's weird that he's such a celebrated author, yet gets pigeonholed by seemingly his most loyal fans.

kek

Best Lovecraftian movie here.

You're right, they're also for manchildren.

I feel like you're right. It can't be done.