Spoiler warning: This article discusses plot points from Color Out of Space, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 3, and Underwater.
Cosmic horror and Lovecraftian horror tend to be used interchangeably, though there are distinctions between them; H.P. Lovecraft is, after all, credited as the originator of the genre. His works tapped into the fear of the unknowable, of horrors vast and incomprehensible. Stories like At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and “The Call of Chthulu” created expansive mythologies surrounding massive god-like entities from other worlds. Entities so monstrous, tentacled, and horrible that humans often find themselves driven mad merely looking at them. It’s not just the imposing entities that make these stories so chilling, but that in the face of these cosmic terrors, humankind is rendered irrelevant. Horrors like these ancient alien beings tend to make humans appear quite small, fragile, and extraneous by comparison. On an existential level, that’s inherently terrifying.
At present, it feels like the world is in constant turmoil. When viewing the current state of affairs, at least through the pessimistic filter of the news cycle, the future looks grim. In that context, the present marks a perfect time for Lovecraftian and cosmic horror to make a comeback in a significant way. Judging by the genre releases this year so far, Lovecraftian horror and its ancient Elder Things seem to be doing just that.
January 10 saw the theatrical release of Underwater, a deep-sea creature feature set at a mining station over the Mariana Trench. A massive earthquake decimates the station, forcing mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) and a handful of wayward survivors to trek one mile across the ocean floor to another drilling station for evacuation. Aside from the survival element caused by the earthquake’s devastation and its ripple effects, these humans are stalked and hunted by something not very human. The thrilling third act reveals this creature isn’t alone either; there are hundreds of them for the remaining survivors to move through if they hope to survive. When they think they’re in the clear, a behemoth emerges. More specifically, Cthulhu itself. A jaw-dropping reminder of how minuscule and powerless humanity is next to an awakened alien Elder God.
Later in the month brought the latest season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and the spirited teen witch’s life became infinitely more complicated with the release. Picking up from where Part 2 ends, Sabrina is determined to retrieve her lover from Hell after he sacrificed himself to become a contained vessel for Lucifer. In her quest, she winds up taking up the mantle Queen of Hell, which comes with its own set of deadly politics. As for her coven, Lucifer is pretty pissed about being abandoned and retracts his supernatural gifts, which begins at the worst possible moment when adversarial Pagan witches arrive.
Throughout, there’s a subplot involving the exiled Father Blackwood and his desire to get revenge upon the Spellman family. He seeks out a lake creature, at Loch Ness, of course, who hands him an egg. He begins performing a ritual to summon the Deep One. Before he’s captured and brought back into the central plot, he warns his captors that the Eldritch Terrors would be returning to reclaim the Earth. By season’s end, the egg sets up the big bad for the next season; Blackwood successfully uses the egg to unleash the Eldritch Terrors and ominously warns that it’s the beginning of the end. Sabrina might have appeased the denizens of Hell, for now at least, but Elder Gods and the cosmic horror they bring somehow make Hell seem like child’s play.
The most overt Lovecraftian horror release goes to Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space, which is an adaptation of Lovecraft’s famous short story. The plot sees the Gardner family altered, changed, and torn apart by a meteorite that crashes in their yard. It emits an indescribable color that distorts everything around it, flora and fauna alike. There are no Elder Things here, just cosmic horror that embeds itself deep into the land and catastrophically transforms everything it touches. Still, eagle-eyed viewers will notice that there are Lovecraft Easter eggs throughout that hint at a much larger universe. Stanley and SpectreVision aim to tackle Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” next, which centers around a family that’s bred with inter-dimensional beings. It also features a barn-sized creature.
Horror tends to reflect our personal and societal fears, so it makes sense that Lovecraftian and cosmic horror is resurfacing in a big way. Nearly everywhere you turn, the world and its future seem submerged in uncertainty. The precise type of thing that fuels cosmic horror. The bleakness of it feels wholly relevant, too. Two months into 2020 and three horror releases have already fully embraced Lovecraftian horror. The latter of which provides teases to a more considerable emphasis on Elder Things. A trend indicative that more are coming.