Lovecraft Thread

>be me
>have dream of a beautiful woman who is the daughter of some malevolent force
>she loves me and wants to protect me
>we descend a massive open cavern to have an audience with her father
>wake up
>alone
I still think about that dream and hope that she's out there somewhere, searching and waiting for me in the same way that I'm searching and waiting for her

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>The Void is basically a remake of Prince of Darkness but it wasn't bad either.
sorry, The Void was fucking awful.

>Lovecraft Essentials.jpg
>first example is Solaris
>close tab

Why are you telling us this?

watch Dagon

What about Fulci’s The Beyond?

Is there anything more reddit than Lovecraft

>tfw met him in alice springs out of all places for a movie he was shooting

he had a full beard and looked fucked drinking in the shittiest pub in the middle of fucking nowhere, you wouldn't have recognized him but because the population is non-existence there and there's a huge divide between white people and abo locals, you just know who is who.

I would argue that In the Mouth of Madness is the best lovecraftian film to date. Other films have done a good job of it but Carpenter stands alone in perfectly capturing the magic of cosmic horror on screen.

I disagree. It’s an indie film that was funded on a crowd-sourcing site. It’s not an amazing film, but it’s a rough gem for fans of Lovecraft and cosmic horror.

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There's exactly two good adaptations: the 2005 Call of Cthulhu black and white movie and the 90s The Resurrected, more for keeping true to the core of the story than anything. The only good original cosmic horror/weird fiction movie is The Mothman Prophecies.

Stuart Gordon is a fucking shit tier hack, The Void was fucking modern "Lovecraftian" meme trash. The Endless and Black Mountain Side had nothing Lovecraftian about them.

In the Mouth of Madness is a fun movie, but references and tropes don't a Lovecraftian horror make. It's fanboyism, but could be much more tasteless.

That infographic a fucking joke.

Yeah, you

>wilmarth shooting down mi-go in a bi-plane is faithful to the story
You're joking, right?

I don't know, I haven't seen half the shit on there. I just reposted it because it was what someone else said and I found out about Altered States through it. Which is pretty Lovecraftian

There's nothing cosmic horror or Lovecraftian about it. Muh cults and muh mad scientist and muh spooky dimension doesn't make something Lovecraftian.

i have a physical copy of this but i never watched it, i'll have to get on it

dagon is b grade as fuck but its entertaining

Whoever made that graphic, at best, watched a YouTube video essay on Lovecraft. Lovecraftian is a pretty specific genre.

In your eyes, what would it take for a movie to be a “good” lovecraftian film? I’m interested in hearing your take

>i have a physical copy of this but i never watched it, i'll have to get on it
It's not worth it. The HPLHS should be ashamed of it, to be honest.

The Resurrected was great but it fell apart in the third act. The underground scenes were poorly paced and went on too long, and I don't know if it was the version I watched but those scenes were so dark I couldn't tell what was going on. Great build up but very disappointing payoff.

John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns haasn't been mention and it has a lovecraftian feel to it.

i have to join in here, the endless is one of the worst fucking movies i have ever seen, and everyone was losing their minds over it in the same way they did with the babadook, i really dont understand how people can like things that are objectively trash, are they just pretending? are they brainlets?

>Muh cults and muh mad scientist and muh spooky dimension doesn't make something Lovecraftian

It's Lovecraftian in that the movie's plot is about a who is limited by the smallness of man (ie our short lives and our quick deaths) and tries to go beyond it, to draw on the knowledge of the cosmos, with bad results.

That's Lovecraftian

>a cult leader uses arcane knowledge to blur the line between life in death under the tutelage of entities beyond our comprehension, summoning otherworldly creatures and twisting our reality
How is that not lovecraftian? That’s literally mixing the plots of Dunwhich horror, the Reanimator and Call of Cthulhu

Watch Dagon

Faithful, not really. But it was interesting and weird. Finding and stopping the cult while giving nods to other Lovecraft stories is the okay part they added. Like I said, the ending, should have been more ambiguous.

The hammy characters and 1930s faux special effects are what give it charm.

No mention of The Ninth Gate? Fucking pathetic.

It's not really something you could do very easily. Lovecraft's writing comes from a pretty hyperspecific set of circumstances that make his versions of some pre-existing ideas feel so interesting. Ideas of lineage, fragile identity, the evils of the past, ancient things being inherently alien to us, human limitation, ignorance and the physical limits of the mind, our transient nature, strict materialism, antiquarianism, adherence to a very particular aesthetic of building pure atmosphere over plot and character, all filtered through a New England puritan-tinged pulp horror lens, there's really a lot stuff going on that just isn't feasibly to pull off in a commercial movie unless it was privately funded by someone exceedingly wealthy. It would be a movie with a lot out of focus most of the time, extended periods of brooding and paranoia, nothing much really happening until one point. It's the reason Mountains of Madness is a bad story to adapt, because it's so ponderous and lacks any action until the absolute end.

If you want a good cosmic horror movie, watch The Mothman Prophecies. It's an atmosphere laden movie about a glimpse into something far beyond our understanding and how normal people try to deal with it. No concrete answers are ever given, things are heavily implied and there's an omnipresence of something very alien.

Lovecraft is cosmic horror, but the broader scope of cosmic horror, or weird fiction, needn't deal with HPL's very specific concerns.

>The Endless has nothing Lovecraftian about it

If Lovecraft is "about" the fact there are potentially phenomena in the universe that are beyond human measurement and comprehension, it may have a will of some kind but one that is unknowable and unattainable to us, and that trying to grapple with these phenomena are destructive to the puny human brains involved, then yes, I would say The Endless has Lovecraftian elements. It doesn't have the oogly boogly tentacle rape monster but its around similar themes.

And I didn't say it was a great movie. I said was okay

completely forgettable movie and performance by johnny depp and directed by a pedophile.

That's why, the only good part was the end

The Resurrected is a very cheesy movie, but it feels genuine, and keeps to the core story it adapts very well. It's changes are clearly budgetary in nature, and I can understand that although if you can't adapt it right, you shouldn't do it. Chris Sarandon is probably the best part of it.

I wouldn't call Cigarette Burns Lovecraftian, but it's still a really good little film. I like the idea of cursed movies and creepy elite collectors dealing in weird underground movies. There's two other movies somewhat like it called Mortal Remains and Fury of the Demon, but they weren't very good.

So it takes some very surface level themes and slaps it together neat the end and calls it Lovecraftian? What else does it deal with that actually constitutes making something Lovecraftian and not merely pulp horror? Because I watched the movie and it was pretty lame pulp horror with a thin veneer of vaguely cosmic horror related ideas. Not to mention looking barely above a student film in terms of production values.

>Ideas of lineage...New England puritan-tinged pulp horror lens

What the fuck are you even talking about man? Are you saying a story can't be "Lovecraftian" if it's not racist. Or isn't written specifically from the perspective of a 1920's New Englander?

Whether you like it or not, "Lovecraftian" is more or less synonymous with weird fiction and cosmic horror. Nobody's going to start a thread about Lord Dunsany, or Clark Ashton Smith, or MR James, or Tanith Lee, or Brian McNaughton. As much as I love some of these writers nobody knows who the fuck they are, especially on Yea Forums. When people say "Lovecraftian", they're asking for cosmic horror recs, more or less

Not Lovecraftian, it's supernatural horror. It's a great movie, but not Lovecraft.

Lovecraft is about way more 'ooh spooky science thing'. It has elements of cosmic horror, but it does not have the necessary mixture of elements and themes that make something Lovecraftian.

Please PLEASE go some Lovecraft stories, because all those things I mentioned are in there and go way beyond 'lol niggers'.

>Nobody's going to start a thread about Lord Dunsany, or Clark Ashton Smith, or MR James, or Tanith Lee, or Brian McNaughton
Maybe somebody should, user. I'd send an M.R. James thread to bump.

I’ve gotta check those dubs because of where we are, but that’s an incredibly satisfying answer. However, it also raises another question in my mind: if we go by your definition, is anything other than Lovecraft himself truly lovecraftian? Personally I’ve always considered stories that adapted or used his themes to be so, but most if not all forego the “pulp” angle, and, for example, the theme of lineage is used so sparsely in any supposedly “lovecraftian” work that I can’t think of any movie or story (outside of HP) that uses it.

Your bar for what counts for Lovecraftian or Lovecraft adjacent is ridiculously high and includes elements of Lovecraft modern readers downplay, ignore, laugh at or ignore like his over-the-top racism, his inability to write action and his purple prose.

What's enduring about Lovecraft is the ideas that man is insignificant and small in a wide universe where things beyond our comprehension and measurement exist. To reduce that down to "spooky science" is reductionist and being intentionally facile. Nobody cares when talking about something being "Lovecraftian" if the author is a New England old timey racist.

And to act like Lovecraft is somehow "beyond pulp" is ridiculous. The man published entirely in pulp magazines! He is pulp! His stories are about fucking fish people and aliens! It's not fucking Tolstoy!

How deep do themes have to go to be genuine? The Void might not be an excellent film, and it doesn’t pull from the deepest well of Lovecraft’s themes, but it certainly is a cosmic horror film and some of his themes and motifs are present. It might be surface-level and banal but it still is lovecraftian.

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is he a cranky bastard? He's always struck me as a cranky bastard.

Damn shame what they did to the end of that film. Until about half way though it’s provably the best lovecraft ever made, then it fucks it all up. What a shame

>It's not really something you could do very easily. Lovecraft's writing comes from a pretty hyperspecific set of circumstances that make his versions of some pre-existing ideas feel so interesting. Ideas of lineage, fragile identity, the evils of the past, ancient things being inherently alien to us, human limitation, ignorance and the physical limits of the mind, our transient nature, strict materialism, antiquarianism, adherence to a very particular aesthetic of building pure atmosphere over plot and character, all filtered through a New England puritan-tinged pulp horror lens

>Ideas of lineage yada yada New England yada yada

Lovecraft's...erhm "unique" cultural baggage that no filmmaker in modern times will be able to or even want to replicate.

>human limitation, ignorance and the physical limits of the mind, our transient nature

so, cosmic horror themes. Things the Endless and The Void touch on (I'm not debating execution here)

>the evils of the past, ancient things being inherently alien to us, antiquarianism

what about, pray tell, say "From Beyond" is about ancient history? If you want to say, "It's not Lovecraftian if it cosmic horror with ancient twist", okay, but that doesn't even make sense for some of his best stories.

>adherence to a very particular aesthetic of building pure atmosphere over plot and character

an inability to write action is an aesthetic failing, not something to emulate, least of all in a movie.

>strict materialism
I studied philosophy and I'm not sure what the fuck you even mean by this. Is "From Beyond" about strict materialism? What about the Dream Cycle stories? "The Cats of Ulthar"?

>fragile identity
If by "fragile identity" you mean, "horrified at man's insignificance, more often than not", then yes

>How deep do themes have to go to be genuine? The Void might not be an excellent film, and it doesn’t pull from the deepest well of Lovecraft’s themes, but it certainly is a cosmic horror film and some of his themes and motifs are present

I pretty much agree with all this. I'm not sure there's any movie period, that's as powerful as say, "Nyarlathotep", but that doesn't mean we can't say "Yes, Lovecraft and these moviemakers were mining similar territory for themes and motifs"

Die Farbe, despite average performances at best, is a decent ad atmospheric stab at adapting colour out of space.

Last I checked the film can be downloaded here:
rarelust.com/the-colour-out-of-space-2010/

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Also, there is an adaptation of Pickman's model called Chielean gothic...it is....alright...

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Me again, some people like to call this short lovecraft inspired.

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Additionally while Nyalathotep isn't in it, Gordon's adaptation of witch house is not all that terrible.

I don't hate the Gordon films, if I take them as their own thing, same with That film the Curse with Rod Steiger, they can be enjoyed if you can separate the source material from them.

If you could see any of Lovecraft's stories get adapted with a high budget that won't get wasted, which one?

At the Mountains of Madness. I don’t want a movie though, I want an HBO GoT/WestWorld/True Detective-tier masterpiece of a show

>indescribably horrific bump

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