How to make a proper Lovecraftian/cosmic horror movie

Let's hear it.

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Better question: how do you portray the unimaginable, the incomprehensible on film?

first step would be resurrecting jodorowsky

Don't ever show it
Have an effect of reality breaking down coming down the hall towards a character with horrible noises then cut away as it reaches them, never actually show the object of horror

By alluding to it. As soon as you've shown a single tentacle, you've basically shat the bed.

Not sure it's possible.

I think the only successful movies that come closest to Lovecraft are The Thing and Europa Report, but even those don't capture that cosmic horror feeling

this is how you do it:

>movie trailer
>WHAT IF CTHULU WASN'T JUST A STORY
>ear shattering fart noise
>full frontal shot of Cthulu rising from the sea with water streaming off of its body
>black screen
>coming 2018

>movie
>opening shot is Cthulu rising out of the water
>movie is 2 hours and 45 minutes of Cthulu destroying a city
>ending is Cthulu standing over the leveled city roaring at the sky

Pretty much what I was going to say.

Or, at the very end when its starting to look like the Machinist and he's actually just insane, he wanders his way into some horrible, cthulu cavern and something spooky happens like his body disintegrates into space dust

Could work if the camera is from a character's perspective. When he eventually sees the incomprehensible he just loses his mind and runs away or kills himself. Then you just make the whole thing happen at night in a foggy forest somewhere to be as vague as possible.

Google "AM1200". The full movie (it's 40 min) is on Vimeo. It's Lovecraft-inspired and really well done.

youtube.com/watch?v=y7jp1CT1h6c
This but with Hollywood quality effects.

>people legit saying to not show the creature
That's virtually impossible to do, you can't build up to nothing or to a character getting killed by a POV shot. You will eventually have to pay it off.
Unless you're adapting something that's not monster related like Color out of Space, but even then that has the hurdle of making up a new color.

So it's either:
>Change the design to something alien but not Lovecraftian. People are too used to the tentacles and shit.
>Bite the bullet and have the tentacles, leaving for the director's talent to make it scary.
>Don't sell the story as Lovecraftian and have it as a surprise. Make it your standard spooky "oh hell what is going on in this place?" story and boom, cosmic horror in the end.

Why do artists always depict cthullu with wings? I dont remember that from the story

Disagree. You could even make it so that the guy has convinced other people of his problem, but the movie sets it up so the audience still thinks hes a retard.

then at the end of the movie, the character is in another room or something, then screams coupled with horrible noises. When the rest go to investigate, his body is mangled and you hear something scurrying away/flapping its wings

>do true detective
>add tentacles at the end
>let Rusty go full crazy

>Change the design to something alien but not Lovecraftian
the Alien series has already done this

>cthulhu spends 30 minutes destroying the statue of liberty and all american landmarks
>"MR PRESIDENT NEW YORK JUST GOT BLOWN OFF THE MAP"
>rest of the movie is a patriotic war film
>cthulhu is destroyed by american pride after the president gives an inspirational speech

this is a good idea.

do pretty much the same show, but have the yellow king be actually something supernatural (maybe leave the question of its existence open ended at the end).

I'm spitballing here, but:

>Cults worshipping conflicting Old Ones have infiltrated every level of society in a war as old as time
>"Bad" Cult (BC) finds some artifact that lets them communicate directly with their god and gain more power
>BC worshippers slowly start gaining societal power and going nuts which manifests as weird society-changing shit like bringing back public executions and other violent/sexual/taboo shit
>"Good" Cult (GC) has infiltrators in BC who try to figure out what's going on and send their BEST GUY
>BEST GUY starts investigating, leading him to darker and darker places (literally and figuratively) where we learn about the cult war and meet interesting characters
>Meanwhile society is breaking down, BC is hunting down opposition (GC and other dissidents) and the sky keeps getting darker
>BEST GUY (and plucky female sidekick???) thwart BC by killing main BC antagonist and figuring out how to use the artifact to call the GC god into existence from the depths of the ocean
>Shot of BEST GUY where the camera stays on him but rises up high into the sky and you see a large shadow loom over the land behind him, Cthulhu has risen
>Cut to black
>Open up on society again, you get the sense that the "Bad" Cult got got but things under the power of the "Good" Cult are even worse because Cthulhu was a bigger threat to humanity

Can someone explain 'Lovecraftian' to a brainlet?
A lot of people use it to just mean 'giant monsters' but I also see terms like 'cosmic horror' and 'the unknown' thrown around. What does that even mean?
Like True Detective is described as Lovecraftian for example, what makes a detective show where they solve a murder Lovecraftian (aside form Yellow King and Carcosa references, Im talking about the themes/content)?

You can't, Lovecraftian horror only works in short story format.

>madness
>the great unknown
>insignificance of mankind
>giant alien beins
>more madness
>desolation
>undescribable terror
>infinity
>cults
>madness

just finished it. pretty good shit.

like other people said about making a lovecraft movie, i don't think they should have shown what was in the pit. they should have just showed him throwing the stuff down there and maybe have some weird eating noises or something.

This is the only way to make a good lovecraft movie

anthology series maybe?

By a voice over, which describes everything, and movement in the shadows you never really get to see clearly.

Near the end of "In the Mouth of Madness" was nearly like that when he looked into the abyss. Other than that, the closest thing I've found to be truly Lovecraftian was in the video game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth". Keeping your character sane in it was a big task. I'm not really sure movies can do that, due to the lack of impressiveness and empathy with the 1st person character the game has. I'd like to be proven wrong though.

Lovecraft doesn't even mean indescribable horror because he describes all his monsters in great detail.

I think the closest you can get in film is "Lovecraftian elements" or "vaguely Lovecraftian". You can't really pin down the true essence of his writing in film. That's not to say that the results are bad, though. Some of my favourite horror movies are the ridiculous Lovecraft adaptations like From Beyond, and the Lovecraft-inspired In the Mouth of Madness.

How do we make the audience go mad when they see what's on the screen? Nerve gas?

youtube.com/watch?v=y7jp1CT1h6c

Best short I know.

Get Sam Neill to play the main character

...

You'd need to make a movie really long so that they are really tired and more susceptible to that sort of thing.

twin peaks: return gave me some good lovecrafty-vibes that I've never got from lovecraft adaptions

wheeeeee unspeakable eldritch horror XD

I have an idea for a cinematographic suicide of the protagonist.
He becomes crazy by what he saw - of course we don't see anyhting -, then begins running away from of the [mansion], in full speed. He's running towards the cliff, always sprinting. The camera is backing away. Wider and wider shot.
> There's not stupid stopping at the edge of cliff, no close-up of his ravaged face, nothing of that meme bullshit.
He's running, running, and he jumps into the sea, and the movie ends.

meh

that's just false, unless you're speaking of not-great-old-ones ancient races

fucking matt & trey went completely senile

Thanks for linking.

What's the first screenshot from?

"I used to make the cartoons ya know"

play bloodborne, no western shit will ever come close to being as good.

That's usually what happened to the previous guy before the main character arrives.

youtube.com/watch?v=Tezqe4pVm3o
I saw this interview the other day and made this
>all that forced laughter

This looks neat

youtube.com/watch?v=3tENZajVJoI

>What's the first screenshot from?
Possession

The Shadow over Innsmouth but with elements of Dark Corners of the Earth.

There's fishmen shoggoths and the mountains of madness ancient ones you refer to that are all described in detail.

thank

In script-form it could read something like this
>The cigarette drops from his mouth as his face is petrified in a expression of true shock and fear fear. Off-screen, Barkers screams progressively get more frantic, eventually dipping into almost unhuman

Let Carpenter and Sam Neill loose

Just finished this, very good.

>ITT: Kids who will be drafted for wars in Korea & Iran

Yeah sure. Keep wasting your time with fantasies about a big monster who'll come and kill your mommy.

Better start learning Arabic or Manadarin. You'll need that in the combat zones...

>wars in Korea & Iran

Fuck that noise I will play no part in being a globalist pawn.

there is a description of a small clay sculpture worshipped by some cult

>The crouching image with its cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings, and hieroglyphed pedestal

>calling people kid
>thinking there will be a draft
Stop trolling, you're like 16 years old obviously.

Too cliche. Sounds more like an 80s action thriller than a lovecraftian descent into madness

Honestly the new AHS has a decent idea although shit execution;.

You could just as well make a long thriller/psychological horror like Rosmary's Baby about a family or person being hunted and paranoid.

And at the VERY end only then have a bit of lovecraft stuff. Anyways, murderous cults are a big part of his work.

Like most people said. Build tension. Create atmosphere. Hint at larger terrors. Leave some things unexplored. Don't treat your audience like they're stupid.

I second the AM1200 short. I think the monster reveal shot at the end is perfect because while it's shocking and revealing, you're only getting some hint at the horror.

Another good one is called Borderlands. I think they called it "Final Prayer" or some shit in the US release. Good setup, good development, good conclusion, very lovecraftian. Also I think the found footage format lends itself well to Lovecraftian stories. A lot of weird fiction is in an epistolary format, which is sort of like the found footage of literature.

he's still alive dumbfuck

This video always spooks me
youtube.com/watch?v=UVEU6n2eKtg

I think just because he doesn't ever go investigate. He hears a weird fucking noise while giving a tour of mine, and just goes "I have no idea what the fuck that is, but I'm leaving now".

>No mention of Prince of Darkness yet
Fuck plebs

>Also I think the found footage format lends itself well to Lovecraftian stories. A lot of weird fiction is in an epistolary format, which is sort of like the found footage of literature.

Unironically this.

Also, I think that going full Cthulhu or Mountains of Madness is way too ambitious and impossible to do. But there's a shitload of other great Lovecraft stories that get across the themes and horrors just as well. Think of The Dunwich Horror made in the style of The VVitch.

I feel like a found footage Mountains of Madness would be a great way to go if you wanted to adapt one of his more ambitious story. Just rework it so that instead of a reaccount of the events that took place, they had recorded it all with go-pros. Maybe make it in the style of a documentary or report, in which there's voice-over and everything

Whisperer in the Darkness would be great for adapting into a movie.

But I think most of HPL's stories are pretty shit. It's the tone that you want from weird fiction, not the stories themselves.

there's a whisperer in darkness movie by the HPL historical society

Yeah, that would work.

Footage from some guy's go pro as he's just doing his work. Then he hears a commotion and has to run outside into a blizzard to pull a pack of hysterical huskies off the corpse of the alien they're ripping apart.

Footage from inside the cabin of a noisy, rattling, shaky airplane. And somebody starts shouting, and the camera goes up to one of the few small windows to look out, and through the blowing wind and snow the viewer himself can see the strange carved formations in the mountains.

Footage from inside a long dark tunnel. Can make out very little except the ground and the guy in front of you. Then there are some whispered warnings, and the guy wearing the camera forces himself against the wall. Everything's quiet. Then you hear shuffling. Camera wearer starts shaking but stays quiet. Suddenly there are horrible animalistic cries. Then something huge moves past the camera and you can't tell what it is, but as the camera wearer turns his head you get an awkward but clear view of a giant deformed penguin.

Yeah but it's shit. They try to hard for both camp and too literal an adaptation.

>movie trailer
>WHAT IF CTHULU WASN'T JUST A STORY
>ear shattering fart noise
>full frontal shot of Cthulu rising from the sea with water streaming off of its body
>black screen
>coming 2018

>movie
>opening shot is Cthulu rising out of the water
>movie is 2 hours and 45 minutes of Cthulu destroying a city
>ending is Cthulu standing over the leveled city roaring at the sky

bloodborne has monsters, but it is definitely NOT lovecraftian in that you can kill all the monsters.

In lovecraft, the monsters are cosmic horrors, closer to gods. You can't fight them. As soon as you add a healthbar to them it ruins the horror aspect of lovecraft.

a survival horror game would be better for lovecraft. Their making a new call of Cthulhu game. I hope they don't fuck it up

Gonna check this out

>I reposted the pasta again
>Am I part of the club now?

Donald Trump is in the movie playing himself.

read guillermo del toros script for At the Mountains of madness. He kind of had the same idea.
too bad it got shitcanned

Exactly. It wouldn't even be that expensive, at least compared to the average capeshit flick that studios like to release these days. The stuff with the shoggoth would pretty much be Cloverfield I antactica, and everything leading up to it should have a Blair witch style, building up lore, setup, etc.

just watched it. solid short film.

i think they showed too much at the end tho. should have left it a little more mysterious

Protip I am literally the guy who created it. It's the only thing I've ever done that caught on in a small way around here. I actually posted my own pasta not even knowing someone had already posted it.
You can ask me anything.

>You can ask me anything.

SSN pls?

What doth life

CTHULHU VS GODZILLA WHEN

Last I heard it was a romantic thriller staring Tom Cruise.

So much of Lovecraft is based around what you CAN'T see, or what you could never comprehend if you did. Something about "oldest fear is fear of the unknown" or whatnot.

That being said, I think the best medium for Lovecraft would have to be through audio dramas, or podcasts or something. Of course, the closest attempt at this so far has been...left-leaning, to say the least.

Mantain the mistery until the very end, create a sense of dread, and make a crescendo where a feel of impending doom is become every minute more real. The movie must have a general ominous feeling too.

>mistery
m8....

Been meaning to check that out. How exactly is it left-leaning

>The movie starts with a completely black screen, save for a very distant orb that's slowly approaching the camera
>There is no music, no sound, just a distant orb
>Around an hour in the viewer realizes that the orb is actually the planet Earth and it isn't approaching us, it's
"we" who are approaching it
>As the camera breaks Earth's atmosphere hundreds of News report/sermon sound clips are played simultaneously, combining into a incomprehensible, ear-piercing cacophony
>The camera impacts the ground the sounds cease immediately and all is black darkness once more, save for a very distant orb in the distance

bleh i couldnt get through the first ep.

wasn't scary. felt like it was for kids or something

This did a pretty good job.
youtu.be/r5nLtfsW224

You really have to leave it as vague as possible in a film. Nothing is more horrifying than what you imagine MIGHT be out there.

I seriously really don't know dude. I think we should walk hand in hand into extinction so no one ever has to do this again.

>tips rust cohle

Pretty fucking simple

Never show the Old Ones, always only show the effect they have on reality.

>people having faith in found footage format

Thank god, for years every fucking person out there was shitting on FF at every opportunity no matter what they saw or how good it was. I thought i was practically the only one who liked it.

They are usually not great, only a few truely stand out. He also sunk waayy into his comfortable formula too quickly and hardly ever deviated

Techniques to visualize the incomprehensible:
1. Night sky full of stars - Black mass eclipses the stars, darkening an already dark world.
2. Mass of clouds shroud interdimensional beast, black and swirling, undulating as though a heart beats within, only ONE curl of lighting sparks through the storm, illuminating briefly something immense and terrifying.
3. A character sees the thing. His mind incapable of witnessing such other worldly horror, breaks. The monster itself is not seen, but the world peels away and the character sees the world like a scorched wasteland with watercolor sky. He looks up to see the sun eclipsed by a writhing mass of shadowy tendrils. We never see this place again, but the maddened character is dragged along by the main character as a gibbering madman, constantly alluding to what lies beyond.

i always thought The Rats in The Walls could actually make a good movie
it doesn't have horrors from beyond human imaginations, wouldn't require a huge budget to do properly (mostly you would need a castle and a few set looking like interwar britain and a humongous cave), minimal SFX (mostly the rats which could be done by a mix of practical - individual rats or CGI - swarms).
It's long and complex enough to be a feature film and the subject is rather intriguing, engrossing and depressing at the same time
it's also some of my favorite short stories. i remember john carpenter mentioning how good it is. i might appeal to a wider audience than some of his other stories

Hmm???

You can't
It relies on not seeing the monster.
The best way to do it would be how the aliens were presented in xcom EW
>all theses weird aliens invading
>later it turns the aliens are mind controlled slaves by race of ancient one seeking the perfect race, though the reasons why are unclear

>WHAT IF CTHULHU WASNT JUST A STORY?
>shows Cthulhu rising from the ocean
>zooms in on nearby beach to Adam Sandler and Kevin Hart
>HOLY SH-
>Kevin James drops his ice cream cone
>Cthulhu roars
>Hart turns around and yells "BEACH TRIP IS OVER, EVERYBODY BACK TO THE FORD ESCAPE™!"
>Rob Schneider who has too much sunblock on his nose is looking at a hot model and not paying attention while the other guys shove passed him and leave him on the beach

hey buddy your pasta is kino, I post it all the time

...

I had this lovecraftian idea going around
>Town by the sea
>Something really strange is going on
>No deaths have been reported in years
>Obviously suspicious, investigator gets dispatched
>Town is highly religious, almost cult like
>They are vaguely Christian, very big on baptizing everyone even going as far as wanting to baptize strangers
>Very pushy about it
>All sorts of suspicious shit, like showers spray sea water instead of the normal water
>Water fountains are sea water
>At night the townsfolk get too forceful, investigator starts a shootout to escape
>Very dark, it's hard to see
>None of them are going down holy shit
>Gets grabbed, screen goes black
End part one
>The first investigator has gone missing
>Another one is sent
>Faced with the same cultish behavior
>Starts snooping around for where the previous investigator has last been seen
>Second investigator finds the first one
>First is seems a bit depressed but otherwise normal
>Second asks First why he stopped investigating, First says because there's no point he already solved it
>Second asks what's going on, is the cult just hiding all the murder
>First says "No it's far worse than that: no one is dying"
>Second obviously doesn't believe First
>First says "I'll prove it" and shoots himself in the head. Instead of blood it's water that sprays out.
>First explains that they literally can't die but they can't leave either otherwise its sphere of influence spreads
>First shows how him touching the water turns it all salty
>Second decides he's seen enough and tries to leave
>Townsfolk try to stop him
>Second gets injured and is bleeding out. He's dying.
>Townsfolk are scared for him, beg him to accept the baptism. They seem to know something about what happens after death.
>He finally accepts it
I don't know where I was going with this or what the point was. Just an idea I had. Please rate.