It’s hard to imagine a better pairing of a filmmaker and source material than Guillermo del Toro and H.P. Lovecraft, and while his take on At the Mountains of Madness might be gone, the filmmaker is still interested in adapting other works from the author.

During a Reddit AMA in support of the 20th-anniversary release of Pan’s Labyrinth, one user asked del Toro if there were other Lovecraft stories he’d like to adapt into a movie. Interesting, del Toro not only named some stories he’d like to adapt, but also confirmed that Lovecraft stories were better suited to 30- or 60-minute adaptations.

The filmmaker detailed:

“Most of his stories, by virtue of their length, are better adapted to one-hour television programs or 30-minute television programs. I would love to adapt The Thing On the Threshold, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, or The Outsider, which is a horror story that is point of view until the final image.”

Del Toro continued, “Those are the ones that scared me the most or disturbed me the most. At The Mountains is the only one, I think, that is a full feature.”

“But I think it’s hard to adapt Lovecraft, because he uses adjectives that are very open,” del Toro adds. “So you’ve got to co-direct, so to speak, every image. And when you make them into film, they become very precise. To me, the best adaptation of Lovecraft is Ridley Scott’s Alien, which is basically Mountains of Madness. Second-best adaptation for me is The Thing. I know it’s not Lovecraft, but it’s very Lovecraftian in its makeup effects language. I love In the Mouth of Madness. I love Stuart Gordon’s Dagon. I love The Resurrected by Dan O’Bannon. It’s full of craziness. There are a few movies that have been done in the right way.”

It’s hard to argue with del Toro’s point about just how challenging it is to adapt Lovecraft, with the most well-known straightforward adaptation of his work being Re-Animator. With Lovecraft’s penchant for exploring cosmic terror that is difficult enough to grasp in literature, trying to translate those ideas into more accessible movies is a feat few filmmakers even attempt.

With the filmmaker having delivered Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities to Netflix in 2022, an anthology series that featured a variety of stories and filmmakers (including Lovecraft!), we can’t help but hope for a world in which he develops a similar series focused entirely on Lovecraft’s works. However, with del Toro becoming only more popular and busier with each passing year, it’s hard to imagine him having the time to spend on such a project.

Up next, look for Pan’s Labyrinth back in theaters – in 4K and 3D – beginning October 9.

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The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallis.

Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.

The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.

Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.

The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.

“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”

Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.

Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.

Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.

Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.

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Variety notes in their report that the film will mark Alex de la Iglesia’s animation debut.

Ages of Madness: The Howling of the Jinn is said to be “the first major adult 3D animation production to fully adapt the complex universe of H.P. Lovecraft for the big screen.”

Variety details, “It weaves what is described as several ‘tragically intertwined stories’ linked by one of Lovecraft’s masterpieces, his imagining of a legendary forbidden book, the Necronomicon, whose reading sparks madness or ghastly death.”

“Lovecraft consistently refers to the book in his stories, claiming it contains an account of the Old Ones who ruled before humankind and will rule after it. He hardly reproduces the book’s contents, however, making it all the more sinister,” Variety’s report explains.

In the upcoming animated movie from Alex de la Iglesia, ” the book will travel through time across four historical and geographical settings as distant as they are grim.

“Feeding on humanity’s thirst for forbidden knowledge, the Necronomicon unleashes madness and the chilling certainty that we are nothing more than dust of the Ancient Ones.”

“I have always been fascinated by the Lovecraftian universe, and being able to bring that cosmic horror to the screen alongside Álex de la Iglesia is a dream come true,” 3Doubles Producciones’ Darío Sánchez said. “I am convinced that this is a turning point for our sector: adult animation is booming, and this project will put the Spanish industry on the global map.”

Head over to Variety to learn more about the animated project.

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In The Necromancer’s Tale, players assume the role of a minor noble in the 18th Century, drawn into the dark necromantic arts as you seek knowledge and revenge. With a narrative heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, great power awaits as you master forbidden rituals and command an army of the undead, along with the weird, the morbid, and a gradual descent into madness. Before you lies a great spellbook, filled with powerful rites of death and reanimation. Can you decipher the pages and master its arcane rituals without losing your mind or being strung up by the townsfolk?

Unlike conventional RPGs, necromancy is not just a skill—it’s an immersive journey into secrecy, manipulation, and moral decay. Inspired by titles like Disco Elysium and Pillars of Eternity, this dark origin story is touted as the first of its kind to explore what it truly means to become a necromancer, unravelling mysteries of death and power in a richly layered narrative spanning over 400,000 words, and 180+ NPCs. The game’s branching dialogue and faction-based trust system mean that every choice matters.

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Scrawled onto the parapets that neighbour my intended port of call, like the inscription Dante saw engraved atop the gates of hell, is this ominous message.

I infer that it must have been left by some conscientious citizen who has long since departed from this accursed place. Whether in the metaphysical sense or because they just slipped aboard a passing boat. Either way, one thing’s for sure: they have departed. 

As I prepare to berth at the makeshift jetty before me, it becomes increasingly clear that the islet to which I am drawn hasn’t played host to a living soul for quite some time. Sure, there are plenty of people scattered around. But none of them are breathing… 

Taking stock of just how many corpses line the path up from the pier and towards my destination, I have to concede that the author of that foreboding missive may well have had a point. Docking here does seem like a bad plan!

Still, I have no choice but to press on, for I must reach that abandoned church which looms menacingly up ahead. As my port draws inexorably closer, I try to think of an alternative route. A diversion that will, yes, eat up valuable seconds when I have not one left to spare, but also grant me passage through the district without having to set foot on this godforsaken inlet.

It’s not just the graffiti that’s got me on edge, you see. Everything in the vicinity seems to be screaming “turn back”. Additional portents corroborate the one I first saw upon approach (with these supplementary writings warning of “Murderers” and “Lunatics”, while urging me to “Stay Away”), carrion birds orbit the church steeple, and my boat’s flywheel has begun sputtering erratically as if it is actively resisting going any further.   

In spite of these ill omens and going against every self-preservation instinct in my bones, I eventually make landfall on the small island. Hitching my dinghy to the port, I then begin the short pilgrimage towards that desecrated seat of authority, which currently stands between me and a terrible destiny.

Along the way, I glimpse signs of profane influence infecting the place of worship. The floor is teeming with Slither — that damned worm-like pestilence that has all but consumed my city — while insectoid monstrosities from some blasphemous realm wait in the wings, occasionally darting from hollowed out tombs to snatch bodies or to spring an ambush.  

It feels like an age before I reach the church door, but when I finally do, it comes as an indescribable relief. I’ve never been much of a religious man — having devoted much of my formative years to lying, cheating, and the pursuit of occult artefacts — but, right now, I can understand the appeal. Basking in the warm glow of the vestibule, shielded from the horrors of the outside world by beautiful stained glass, this feels like a true safe haven. It’s almost enough to make an old swindler convert! 

Emphasis on the word “almost”.  While the church does provide sanctuary from the Slither and the various other abominations that have infested Arkham, it’s clear that even it has not been able to fully escape perversion. Epistolary accounts scatter the aisles, telling of how the parishioners here turned away from the Lord a long time ago, in favour of a new, pernicious faith in dark things that slumber beneath the waves. They write of antediluvian beings from the abyssal depths of the ocean, of bizarre rituals committed in their name, and of some ancient trident that can bend the very elements to its will.

As I study these clues, the voice of local broadcaster, Mushroom Jack, echoes through the building. Gibbering from the comfort of his radio station, he’s relating a tale he once heard about a man who ventured into the church undercroft only to come up against a wall of flesh that was stretched tight, and a malevolent eye that seemed to instil madness in anyone who dared meet its gaze. Guess that’s where I’m heading. 

I have no idea what I’ve walked into here, or how any of these puzzle pieces fit together. But it’s my job to find out what it all means and what to do about that formless thing that’s apparently taken root in the crypt. After all, she’s depending on me.

Who Doesn’t Love a Good Underdog Story? 

Please forgive that feeble attempt at mimicking the prose of H.P. Lovecraft, but there’s a reason we took that tack when introducing our preview. It seemed like the most evocative way of conveying what The Sinking City 2 is going for.

Indeed, Frogwares’ long-awaited sequel might not feature any such narration from its protagonist. But, if it did, it would sound just like an authentic excerpt from Lovecraft’s oeuvre, complete with the same grim fatalism, the same loquacious phrasing, and the same curious blend of gothic and cosmic horror. Because this is a game that has a keen understanding of what’s made the controversial author’s output, and the shared universe it inhabits, endure in the zeitgeist for well over a century. 

The same was true of its underrated 2019 predecessor, to be fair. If you’re wondering why it’s taken so long for the developers to return to this material that they so obviously love, well, you can blame a protracted legal battle for that, as well as the devastating impact of the war in Ukraine. All things considered, it’s kind of a miracle that we’re getting any follow-up at all, never mind one that appears to be in such promising shape. Of course, an outpouring of support from the community (via Kickstarter) has helped to grease the proverbial wheels somewhat.

Nevertheless, credit where it’s due, Frogwares has made the best of a rough situation here and used the fallow period between The Sinking City and The Sinking City 2 to their advantage. You can tell they’ve thought ambitiously about how they can make their sequel a real quantum leap and not just an iterative upgrade. 

Moving from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, it certainly looks like a game that’s benefited from seven years of technological advancements (especially when it comes to the enhanced lighting and water effects). But it’s crucially way more refined from a mechanical perspective, too. 

With the best will in the world, the original game was a textbook case of Eurojank. For all of the creative ideas, intriguing world-building, and experimental design choices, it was hardly the smoothest of experiences when you actually sat down to try and play it. There were glitches abound, the combat was floaty as hell, and the whole experience could generously be described as “rough around the edges”.  

Its successor, on the other hand, is significantly more polished. Part of that’s because the team has evidently learned lessons from their first go-around and wisely heeded audience feedback. To be blunt, though, the main reason that The Sinking City 2 feels so much tighter than its predecessor is that Frogwares has closely emulated a franchise that can seemingly do no wrong at present. 

Namely, they’ve had a go at making their own AA version of Resident Evil. Hey, if you’re gonna steal, you might as well steal from the best in the business!

Enter the Survival Horror

As we learned during our hands-on preview, it doesn’t take long for you to pick up on the Resi influence here. Whereas The Sinking City was an unusual hybrid of open-world detective sim and (rather clunky) monster-shooting action, this is primarily a linear survival-horror title that has a few investigative garnishes. 

You do have access to a Charlie Kelly-style conspiracy board — from which you can string together clues and draw conclusions about the case at hand — yet it’s an optional system that we barely got to utilise during our vertical slice. There are also occasional mysteries to sleuth out, but these are secondary objectives that you can choose to disregard altogether if you’re so inclined.

Superseding the detective role-playing (which has been Frogwares’ bread and butter for decades, perfected through their many Sherlock Holmes adaptations) is all that Resident Evil stuff. Specifically, modern Resident Evil.

The resemblance goes much deeper than just the over-the-shoulder perspective and the interconnected level design, and trickles down into the minutiae. For example, you’ve got: single-use keys that can unlock containers of your choosing (ala Resident Evil Requiem’s lockpicks); a crafting system that sees the same ingredients being used to produce both health items and ammunition; safe rooms that provide an analogue method of recording progress and a magical inventory box; a map that uses color-coding to indicate which rooms have been searched; and a reward-system that allocates points for the completion of challenging feats. Hell, they even lift that one scene from the Resident Evil 2 remake, wherein you have to nervously slide open refrigerated drawers in a morgue. 

To reiterate, it’s not necessarily a crazy idea to copy Resident Evil’s homework, and Frogwares does a stellar job of it when you consider their working with crowdfunding resources. Still, it’s pretty incontestable that that’s what’s happening here.

New City, New Flood, New Dangers

Where The Sinking City 2 is trying to carve out an identity of its own is less on the gameplay side of things, and more so with its enthralling world-building and narrative conceit. 

Framed as part of the public domain “Cthulhu Mythos” (which studios are getting a lot of mileage out of lately), it’s set in an alternate United States, where all of Lovecraft’s demented imaginings are an accepted part of everyday American life. The existence of Shoggoths is no secret here, Deep One sightings are commonplace, and Innsmouthers are a recognised — albeit prejudiced against — societal group.  

If you played the original game, you’ll already be acquainted with this high-concept premise. What you won’t be quite so familiar with, however, is the submerged municipality after which the sequel is titled. You see, this ain’t the same “Sinking City” we explored before. Last time around, we navigated the waterlogged ruins of Oakmont, Massachusetts, but now the action has been relocated to the waterlogged ruins of Arkham, Massachusetts. I mean, look on the bright side, at least the eldritch horrors have yet to cross any state lines!

The backstory for this fresh setting is that, at some point in the 1920s, Arkham was hit with two simultaneous, and possibly related, calamities. First, a devastating flood of unknown origins swept through the metropolis, drowning its streets, its public spaces, and its residences, until only those who had managed to stake out higher ground could even think about staying put. 

The initial emergency response made sense on paper, with authorities erecting barricades and building floodgates, yet it did little to quell the rising tides. Before long, Arkham was twisted into a kind of neo-Venice, traversable only by boat or by bridges that were cobbled together from salvaged materials. 

Things went from bad to worse when deadly vermin began to emerge from the dark waters. Known as “the Slither”, this parasitic scourge (which, funnily enough, looks just like those alien slugs from the James Gunn movie of the same name) spread at an alarming rate and sought refuge in the corpses that were starting to pile up in the streets-turned-canals. It soon became apparent to the Arkhamites that these worms were capable of more than just proliferating disease as well, with them having the ability to reanimate and then puppeteer the dead as grim marionettes. 

Between this Slither plague and the other unholy abominations that came with the flood, the restoration of Arkham was written off as a lost cause. An evacuation was promptly mandated, and the once-great city was left to rot. The handful of people who remained behind gradually succumbed to corruption themselves, and it’s now purely the domain of stark raving lunatics and mad occult worshipers.

And you, of course! 

On that note, The Sinking City 2 isn’t just thrusting you into a brand-new setting, but also into the shoes of a brand-new protagonist. Which is somewhat inevitable, given that the previous game’s lead, Charles Reed, was left to an uncertain fate that hinged entirely upon your choices 

In Reed’s stead, you’ll now be controlling raffish adventurer Calvin Rafferty. He’s basically a Nathan Drake type; only, rather than hunting for cities of gold or legendary pirate booty, he’s more interested in blasphemous artifacts like the Necronomicon and the idols of Cthulhu.

A pre-flood flashback tells us everything we need to know about Calvin. We’re introduced to him as he swaggers into a restaurant, brazenly swipes two flutes of champagne from a waiter’s tray, and then plops himself down at a table across from a young lady who’s been waiting patiently for him to swan along. Boasting to (who we soon learn is his long-term girlfriend and partner in crime), Faye, Calvin crows about how he managed to avoid getting in any trouble whilst acquiring his latest occult prize. That is just before a bunch of armed men burst into the room to prove him wrong on that count.

Anyway, as you can tell, he is a classic rogue who doesn’t take anything seriously and is motivated primarily by a thirst for thrills, fortune, and glory. Yet the stakes are raised when we subsequently flash forward to the events of the main story and find him in much gloomier circumstances. 

Here, we join a very different (and more focused) Calvin, who is now on a quest to save his beloved from the forces of darkness. You see, at some point, he and Faye recklessly performed a botched ritual together that left her in a coma, and him utterly distraught. Now, he’s searching for a way to revive her by any means necessary.

Dark Academia Courtesy of Miskatonic University

With this narrative context established, we’re dropped into our first proper gameplay sequence. Relatively early in the campaign, it has us combing the Miskatonic University library (an important place in the Lovecraftian canon) in search of a forbidden tome that will outline the steps Calvin must follow to bring Faye back to the land of the living.

We hope that we’ll be able to find the relevant piece of literature, but the odds are frankly stacked against us. After all, the place is in complete disarray; with flooding having ruined many of the volumes and the shelves having been toppled over by God only knows what. Expecting that the sanctity of the Dewey Decimal system has been preserved here seems like it might be asking a bit too much. Still, we must persevere for her sake and so begin sloshing our way through the ankle-deep waters that have seeped into every nook and cranny of the building. 

It’s here that we get our first taste of that Resident Evil flavouring that’s been so liberally sprinkled throughout The Sinking City 2. Because this library annex is, for all intents and purposes, a miniaturised Raccoon City Police Department, complete with locked doors, interconnected shortcuts, and areas that are gated off by lite puzzles. 

For an idea of the kind of thing you can expect, there’s one part where we have to reorganise bookcases using a series of cranks, so that we can create an uninterrupted path through the upper level of the building. Not only does this open up new rooms that have yet to be explored, but it also gives us a convenient way to loop around to the central staircase. 

Said shortcut then comes in quite handy when we later need to backtrack down to the ground floor, having acquired a chemical agent that can be used to dissolve the lock on a crate we passed by earlier. It’s all very tightly structured like that.

While not as intricate as one of the larger-scale environments you might find in Resi, the library is still a nifty bit of level design. Negotiating these kinds of areas is always satisfying for fans of the survival horror genre, as you get to figure out how neatly everything fits together and pick the space clean of its valuable contents (the endorphin rush of watching the map turn that pleasing blue hue when you’re done never diminishes). 

Speaking of the library’s contents, we do eventually find that arcane book we’ve been on the hunt for. Alas, it turns out that its pages are filled with indecipherable glyphs that we have no way of interpreting. 

Yet, just when it seems like we’ve hit a dead end, we bump into a scholar who offers welcome assistance. He’s a bit of an eccentric, mind you, having gouged out his own fucking eyes and inserted Slither worms into the empty sockets. We’d roundly condemn his actions, by the way, were it not for the fact that these new oculars are what enable him to read the eldritch text in our possession. And we desperately need to know what it says.

Before he performs any such translation services, though, he wants us to bring him something first and dispatches us to the Devil’s Reef Hotel, where the “guest of honor” apparently awaits collection. Whatever the hell that means!

Look, we’ve got to do what the guy asks. He’s the only one who can give us the answers we seek. 

The Lovecraftian Game is Afoot

That’s pretty much where you came in, as we then proceed to head over to that weird church with the sea god zealots and the wall of flesh stretched thin in its basement. To clarify, we’re not just here to see the sights. Rather, it’s a necessary pit-stop on our journey, because a sluice is blocking passage to the Devil’s Reef Hotel, and the parishioners of this church are the ones who used to control it. You know, back when they were alive. 

Unfortunately, raising the gate isn’t going to be as easy as just hitting a big red button. The operating mechanism has been chained up with a combination lock, and we’ve got to work out the code if we want to get out of Dodge. 

Which brings us to The Sinking City 2’s detective gameplay. The original title was quite involved when it came to these mechanics, with cases that unfolded across a sprawling open world. Among other things, you needed to question NPCs, reconstruct the events of crime scenes in chronological order, and visit the city hall to cross-reference archival data. 

By comparison, investigations in the linear sequel are significantly pared back or, dare we say it, dumbed down. Relevant clues are localised to the immediate vicinity of the puzzle (in this case, the church and its grounds) and most of them appear to take the form of written notes. You can lump findings together in a mind palace to better organise your thoughts. Yet, other than that, it’s a surprisingly straightforward approach for a developer who built their entire brand on Sherlock Holmes mysteries. 

Cracking the gate conundrum doesn’t take much lateral thinking, anyway. Although it is admittedly possible that the riddles will get more sophisticated as the game goes on. You never know, maybe the developers just wanted to show us a quick and easy one for the purposes of our demo slice. 

Reassuringly, there is a more complex puzzle that you can choose to solve in the church if you want to 100% everything. We won’t spoil the specifics, but it involves a starfish key, a stone trident, a rotating monolith, a codex of symbols, and a ceremonial dagger. 

To reiterate, you don’t have to tackle this extra challenge. However, doing so will unlock additional context that’s well worth seeing. In fact, based on our limited experience so far, we’d recommend engaging with The Sinking City 2’s optional brainteasers whenever you can. They grant access to cool secret areas like this, can uncover fascinating lore, will bring you face-to-face with new horrors (remember that eyeball in the crypt?), and might even yield tangible gameplay rewards.

Fill ‘Em With Lead and Upgraded Combat

Another incentive for solving all of the puzzles is that — again, like in some modern Resident Evil titles — you might happen upon an attachment for your favourite weapon. When we opened that aforementioned crate in the library, for example, we were rewarded with a compensator that could be affixed to our handgun to reduce its recoil and improve its accuracy. 

Yet apart from a few Slither-possessed corpses and a handful of spindly insectoids (picture a cross between Xenomorph facehuggers and the demodogs from “Stranger Things”), there wasn’t actually a whole lot for us to shoot at in the first chunk of our preview. To get a better sense of the combat, we had to skip ahead to a more action-packed chapter.

Taking place much further along in the story, and further along into the ritual to save Faye, this portion trapped us in a deserted hospital where all manner of strange procedures were being performed on the patients. It’s a bigger environment than either the library or the church, roughly comparable in size to Brookhaven from Silent Hill 2. There’s a tantalising number of locked doors and a gnarly puzzle that requires us to use surgically removed faces in order to bypass anachronistic biometric technology.

We only get to skim the surface of that stuff, however, as our exploration is cut short after about 30 minutes. That’s okay, though, because this part of the demo is really just an excuse to test out The Sinking City 2’s new and (vastly) improved combat. 

As we said before, the original game was bursting with charm and creativity, but it didn’t nail everything that it set out to achieve. Enemy encounters, in particular, were awkward, stilted, unresponsive, and frustrating. They were something you tolerated, so that you get to the next stretch of detective work (like eating your vegetables prior to dessert).

The upgrade that has occurred in the sequel is undeniable, and combat is now a legitimately enjoyable proposition. Creatures no longer soak up damage without visibly registering the impact of a shot, and will react appropriately depending on where you’ve hit them. Meanwhile, each weapon has a weighty kick to it, whether it’s the forceful blast of the shotgun or the jerky rat-a-tat-tat-tat of a Tommy gun.

It all just feels way more gratifying. At one point, there’s a scripted set-piece wherein waves of Slither-zombies start swarming in through the doors and smashing down windows, before eventually tackling us over a ledge amidst showers of falling debris, and it’s a thousand times more cinematic than anything we got in the original game. 

It’s not just a question of presentation, though. There’s a far greater emphasis on battle tactics as well. On that note, Calvin plays very similarly to Leon Kennedy (that’s rookie RE2 Leon, not the roundhouse-kicking super-agent of RE4 and Requiem), which means you’ve got to think strategically about where you position yourself in the room and what the most economical way of bringing down a given threat is. Maybe you’ll take opportunistic potshots at a distance to whittle down the enemy hordes, or perhaps you’ll try to lure them all into a corridor to blast them all away with a well-judged shotgun blast.

You’ll need to adapt for each opponent too, as they all have their own idiosyncratic movement styles, different behavioural patterns, and unique attacks. Those little facehugger things, for instance, will skuttle underneath furniture and into hidden crevices to make you waste precious bullets, while spitter-type mutants will bombard you from afar with projectile acid. Even the garden-variety zombies have a little twist here, courtesy of their pulsating weak spots that shift around from limb to limb whenever you try to get a bead on them. 

In short, the combat is a dramatic improvement over what came before. Our only reservation, at this moment in time, is that this slickness might have come at a cost of Frogwares’ signature detective mechanics, which seemed a tad underutilised in our brief time with the game. 

Granted, there’s only so much you can glean from a 90-minute demo, but we just hope that there will be more meaty puzzles and investigations to balance out the gunfights. After all, that’s what gave the first one its personality.   

Nevertheless, this remains an encouraging first impression of The Sinking City 2, and we can’t wait to wade into the murky waterways of Arkham when it releases in the Summer. After everything these developers have been through, we’re rooting for them to pull it off. 

The Sinking City 2 is currently in development for release later this summer on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

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As a roguelike with no substantial metaprogression, it made pushing through each loop extremely challenging, especially when runs could run for several hours. It felt far too time-consuming to push through early biomes to get a shot at a later level, needing to spend over two hours to get another chance to learn a boss’s pattern. The arcade-y shooter gameplay was perfect, but the loop didn’t fully work for me, pushing me away from a game I loved.

Saros, Housemarque’s follow-up to Returnal, bears a lot of resemblance to its predecessor gameplay-wise, but it stands on its own narratively. It also learns a lot of lessons from Returnal, keeping the roguelike structure but making helpful concessions to make it more accessible, without sanding off any of the edges on its tough-as-nails, bullet-hell-like gameplay.

It’s definitely still not a game for everyone; the challenge level is a lot higher than your standard AAA first-party Sony game, but those who are looking for a game to test their shooter mettle will be in for a treat.

The Mystery of Carcosa and the Cosmic King in Yellow Influence

At the beginning of the game, you’re given vague notions of what’s been going on. You play Arjun Devraj, the Enforcer of Echelon IV, a ship sent to the planet of Carcosa by the Soltari corporation to follow up on the three previous colony ships that they have lost contact with. Instead of finding the colonists, they find a shifting world overrun with dangerous creatures.

On top of that, there’s something strange calling to them in the back of their mind. The air of mystery is apparent right from the beginning, with Devraj inexplicably returning from the dead, and the only way to solve it is to venture out into the hostile environment for clues to what happened and what is happening.

While Returnal, which had only one character, was a very isolating game, Saros has a whole cast that you chat with in your base. They all have different roles in the Soltari mission, a mission that’s meant to help the corporation extract a valuable energy resource called Lucenite from Carcosa. The nuanced performances from each of the voice actors help bring these characters to life as their sanity slowly unravels bit by bit. Rahul Kohli, of “Midnight Mass” and other Mike Flanagan works, is the standout as Arjun, creating a complex character with hidden motivations that are slowly revealed.

You may recognize the name Carcosa, which is associated with the Robert W. Chambers’ book of short stories titled The King in Yellow. He originally borrowed the name from an Ambrose Bierce short story called An Inhabitant of Carcosa, but the name and the titular King in Yellow went on to be referenced by H.P. Lovecraft and incorporated into the larger Cthulhu Mythos that many authors have added to since. Allusions to the King in Yellow and Carcosa have popped up in TV shows like “True Detective” season 1 and video games like Signalis.

Cthulhu has definitely hit a cultural saturation point in the past several years, so I’m glad to see something fresh have a chance to shine, even if it’s fairly functionally similar. The importance of the color yellow gives Saros an interesting visual motif to set itself apart, so the Carcosa name is definitely more than just an Easter Egg-style allusion to the work.

As I mentioned before, there’s a roguelike core to the structure of Saros, but it’s more flexible with that definition than its predecessor. There are several interlinked biomes that you’ll explore, but instead of having to start over at square one each time you die, you can pick which of the discovered areas you’d like to start in. It immediately makes the game feel more accessible, keeping your run time for a single section down to about thirty minutes, a reasonable length compared to the multiple hours you need to play continuously in Returnal.

Saros’ Roguelike Progression Feels More Rewarding

During each of your runs, you’ll start out at a base level and acquire various power-ups as you progress. Oftentimes, you’ll be given options of which to choose, allowing you to build a playstyle in your run that is catered to your needs. As you progress further in the game, the options expand, particularly for your weapons, to ensure that the game doesn’t feel stale as you run through it over and over again. I did find that later weapons were a bit more complicated in ways that I didn’t find interesting, which led to me falling back on the weapons I’d been using since the beginning rather than taking the time to learn something new, but I appreciated that fresh options were being presented.

Even though they provide you with a nice power curve throughout, the power-ups themselves aren’t always the most interesting. If there wasn’t a choice, I was often picking them up without reading them, since I likely wouldn’t be changing my tactics all that much in play. The most substantial choice you make is when presented with a new weapon. In addition to your weapon type, which ranges from pistols to rifles to crossbows, they also have a power level, so choosing between a gun you’re familiar with and a gun with a higher level is going to come up a lot.

I was a huge fan of the Horde Shotgun, and it seemed like when I had one, I would rarely run across a stronger one, meaning I either had to stick with a numerically weaker weapon or switch to one I didn’t care for as much. While I understand this is meant to be a meaningful choice, I wish they had found different ways to allow you to upgrade your weapon instead of just swapping it out. For me, the weapon felt like something I would like to pick at the start of the run, like in Hades, then upgrade with different modifiers as I go, rather than constantly changing to new weapons as they are presented to me. I can’t tell if this is a problem with the game or a problem with how I played it, but it’s something I think Housemarque could rethink in future titles.

In addition to your advancement during a run, you can now upgrade yourself at your home base after you die. Using Lucenite collected from defeated enemies, you’ll enhance three core stats, as well as purchase various modifiers that will make you more capable over time. While many debate whether this should be allowed in a roguelike, I think it’s a welcome addition that gives you a meaningful power curve that isn’t as dependent on what randomly shows up for you mid-run. Not only does it give you more agency for your improvements, but it also gives you a satisfying feeling as you get better in both stats and skills.

Saros Features Some of the Best Shooter Combat on PS5

None of this would mean anything if the combat wasn’t up to snuff, but I’m happy to report that Saros has a game feel unmatched by other shooters. You feel like a nimble dealer of death, fighting overwhelming odds with a combination of quick, precise movement and rock solid shooting mechanics. Each of the weapons has an alternate fire, which can be activated by pressing the left trigger down halfway.

It can take a bit to get used to, but since this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive, it takes full advantage of the adaptive resistance to let you know where that alt-fire point is. Saros also perfectly uses the haptics of the Dualsense to emphasize every shotgun blast and explosion to make you feel the chaos that you’re embroiled in.

Aside from just feeling great, there are some nuances to action that elevate it above your standard shooter fare. As enemies bear down on you, the screen will fill up with their multicolored projectiles, and those colors aren’t just for visual spectacle. Devraj has access to a shield that can be brought up for a limited time, and that shield can be used to absorb blue projectiles, which charges your power meter that can be used by a special weapon that’s activated by fully pulling the left trigger. The extremely responsive dodge already gives you tools to deal with the bullet hell patterns created by your opponents, but having to make the split-second decision of “dodge or shield” makes for compelling moment-to-moment gameplay.

Other projectiles will be yellow, which will give you corruption, even if you block them with your shield. This lowers your maximum health, but it can be cleared when you use your power weapon. Now you have a rhythm of “get corruption, absorb blue projectiles, clear corruption,” on top of the already challenging task of just surviving. In addition, there are red projectiles, which cannot be dodged or shielded. You will eventually be given the ability to parry them back at enemies, but Saros wisely waits to introduce that mechanic and others until later in the game, so as not to overwhelm you.

With the amount of visual information on screen and the speed at which you react to it, it seems like it should be impossible to play, but Saros is the ultimate flowstate game, allowing you to truly be in the zone when you finally find your rhythm. At times it felt like I was completely in sync with the game, reacting to things without having to think about it. Much like Cypher talking about how he sees the Matrix, I don’t see blue, yellow, or red projectiles; I just see block, dodge, and parry. It all felt like natural reflexes by the end, allowing me to get fully lost in the gorgeous spectacle of visual effects that flooded the screen without stumbling over the gameplay.

The enemies behind these projectile patterns are also a feast for the eyes, each with their own distinct look to set them apart. With the speed of the game, you need to be able to scan the arena quickly to prioritize targets, and strong visual design allows you to do that with ease. There are some issues with them standing out from the environment on occasion, but several UI elements keep them from getting lost. You can really see the cosmic horror influence in their aesthetic, combining weird tentacle monsters with strange Geiger-esque machinery, making for some nightmarish creatures for you to blast your way through.

Exploration, Platforming, and Risk-Reward Choices

Biomes are randomized, mixing combat arenas and platforming challenges that will test your reflexes. For being procedurally generated, I was always astonished by how these levels felt so perfectly paced, knowing exactly when to give you high-intensity encounters and when to give your trigger finger a bit of a break with exploration that requires you to navigate between patterns of beams and orbs while making precise jumps to proceed. By doing a quick scan of the environment, your path forward is clearly labelled, as are any side paths for you to explore, preventing you from ever losing forward momentum on your run.

There’s definitely a risk-reward calculus you need to do when considering these side paths, as the amount of health you could lose might not be worth what you find, and this choice always felt meaningful to make.

One thing I love about the spaces you explore is the sense of visual wonder. Not only are they beautifully rendered combinations of natural, architectural, and mechanical settings, but the sense of scale in them is awe-inspiring. On top of that, there are tons of visual effects that add to the splendor, with ashes floating through the air and tentacles reaching out from the walls. This makes so much of the traversal feel truly exciting, as you scale colossal structures with daring leaps. Eventually, you get a grappling hook that allows you to travel even faster, zipping across these massive arenas quicker than ever before.

The visual motif of the eclipse is one that’s important to the overall narrative of Saros, but there’s also a mechanical level to it. There will be specific altars that you come across that will allow you to activate an eclipse, which changes the world before you in meaningful ways. Not only are the visuals warped to be darker and more twisted, but the enemies become harder, more frequently using the corrupting yellow projectiles to up the challenge. This won’t always be required, though oftentimes there will be a gate that won’t open unless it’s activated, so to reward you for bringing the eclipse, you’ll be given more Lucenite. It’s yet another way to push your luck that is just as likely to end up hurting or harming you.

Even with the change in structure from Returnal, Saros definitely still challenges with its relentless bullet hell gameplay. In order to help mitigate this, you eventually unlock Carcosan Modifiers, options that allow you to very specifically adjust the difficulty of the game. Rather than have just Easy-Medium-Hard, you can go in and tweak specific things like damage received or damage dealt, among many other things. You can also tweak things in the opposite direction if you’d like to push yourself for a more difficult time.

Each of these adjustments has a positive or negative value, and you need to keep within a certain range to be able to lock in the changes, preventing you from completely nerfing the game. I played around with this in the later areas when things got really tough, and even with adjustments, I don’t feel like I ever got to the point where the challenge level was completely trivialized. To me, this is the best type of difficulty system, allowing you to change things that specifically trip you up or to challenge yourself in ways you think you can deal with.

A Brutal but Rewarding Cosmic Horror Shooter

From what I remember, there were reports shortly after the release of Returnal that showed only 21% of people had completed the final boss, which is a fairly low number for a game of its size. I’m very happy these difficulty options were added to Saros, as the narrative is worth digging into. In addition to text and audio logs you find while exploring, there are some really clever dreamlike flashback sequences later in the game that help fill in the backstory, adding interesting twists to the surface narrative that recontextualize earlier ideas.

The more I learned about what happened to Echelon I-III and Devraj himself, the more drive I had to push forward and see it through to the end. There’s even a neat series of little quests after the final boss that allow you to see the true ending of the game, bringing it to a satisfying narrative and emotional conclusion. With their background in arcade-like shooters like Resogun, I’m massively impressed with the storytelling skill on display here from Housemarque, both from a writing and presentation standpoint.

With so many AAA games trying to make themselves appeal to the widest possible audience by smoothing out the rough edges, I’m glad to see Sony allow Housemarque to make a game that challenges players in ways we rarely see in games of this scale. Saros is a brutal world that doesn’t hold your hand, forcing you to die over and over as you hone your reflexes.

Blazing through beautiful landscapes under fire from a staggering amount of projectiles makes for one of the most thrilling and satisfying gameplay experiences I’ve had in a long time, and the surreal cosmic horror story of greed and corruption is icing on the cake. Saros is the total package, combining gorgeous visuals, perfectly tuned combat, and compelling narrative into one of the best games of the year.

Saros is now available on the PlayStation 5.

The post ‘Saros’ Blends Cosmic Horror With Tough But Addictive Gameplay [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Speaking with ScreenRant, Wan confirmed the film is still in development and is one “I’ve been wanting to do for a while.”

The master of horror noted that the project is facing a major hurdle: Lovecraftian films “are not cheap movies” and are “very hard to try and get them off the ground.”

Nevertheless, Wan concluded by assuring, “I’m just going to keep chipping away at it.”

First published in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales, The Call of Cthulhu is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world.

Consisting of three interconnected parts, the story is presented as notes belonging to Francis Thurston, a Boston resident investigating the ancient deity Cthulhu.

This isn’t the first time budgetary concerns have prevented a hotly anticipated Lovecraft passion project, as Guillermo del Toro was unable to get his long-gestating At the Mountains of Madness adaptation off the ground.

The post James Wan’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ Adaptation Faces Budgetary Hurdle: “I’m Just Going to Keep Chipping Away at It” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Flesh, sight, and sanity are pushed beyond the point of no return in the trailer below.

In the film, a withdrawn oculist uncovers a blasphemous truth: the human eye is not merely an organ of sight, but a threshold to an ancient, inhuman presence.

Drawn into the orbit of a clandestine satanic cult, his radical experiments spiral into acts of ritualistic mutilation. As vision is weaponized and perception collapses, reality itself fractures — unleashing horrors that should never be seen.

Paolo Mazzini, Diamara Ferrero, Riccardo Livermore, Eugenio Gradabosco, and Diego Casale star.

“Lenskeeper is conceived as a sensory assault rather than a conventional narrative,” says writer-director Luca Canale B. “Vision becomes a threshold, a gateway to the unknown.”

EuroObscura will introduce the project to international buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin next month.

The post ‘Lenskeeper’ Trailer – Lovecraft Meets Fulci Meets Barker in Cosmic Horror Film appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft‘s “At the Mountains of Madness”, Dread Meridian has players scavenging the frozen wasteland of Oglanbyen as Daniella, a researcher who ventures to the remote arctic island in a desperate search for her missing twin sister, Isabella. Players will scavenge for resources, solve cryptic puzzles and come face to face with unimaginable creatures while unravelling the mystery of Isabella’s disappearance. It’ll be up to players to choose how to best utilize their limited resources and customizable weapons to battle the island’s hostile monsters with intense VR combat and tactical decisions. When ammo is low, players can pull out their trusty knife and fight to their last breath.

PVP multiplayer for up to four players in VR will also be available at launch. Players will go through matches in teams of two, switching between humans and monsters, as they work together to take down the opposing team. Players can take the skills they’ve learned through the single-player campaign into multiplayer, and discover a whole new way to play Dread Meridian as they put themselves in the role of the game’s grueling monsters.

The post Survival Horror VR Game ‘Dread Meridian’ Out Today on Meta, Steam VR [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The kicker? The 36-minute short film is presented as found footage.

Sanity and reality itself are tested during the interrogation of a murderer with ties to an ancient cult in the trailer below.

Tracking a kidnapper and murderer from France to Louisiana, a young woman and her adopted brother team up with local police and set out into the swamps north of New Orleans. Here the group uncovers much more than they expected, barely succeeding in capturing the fugitive before being forced to flee.

The only surviving record of the event, Dreams of a Dead God is the recovered film recording of the rushed interrogation that occurred shortly after.

“Inspired by the authors appearing in Weird Tales magazine such as Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Bloch, Dreams of a Dead God represents my own contribution to the cosmic horror mythos,” said writer-director Jim Weter.

Cameron Crawford, Chris Steinmetz, Larshay Watson, Ryan Gilliam, and Jerry Kimble star.

Dreams of a Dead God will have its world premiere at the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival in Lafayette, LA, on January 24.

The post ‘Dreams of a Dead God’ Trailer – H.P. Lovecraft Goes Found Footage in Cosmic Horror Short appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We know that art has a way of imitating life, but what happens when life imitates art? The line between fiction and reality is often closer than we’d like to admit, particularly when we’re talking about the horror genre.

In 2020, many readers noticed disturbing similarities between Stephen King’s 1990 apocalyptic novel The Stand and the unprecedented spread of COVID-19, not to mention connections between recent political developments and his 1979 supernatural thriller The Dead Zone. You see, it’s one thing when life imitates the art of benign genres like romance, comedy, or action-adventure, and quite another when replicating stories from the world of horror. John Carpenter explores the line between terrifying fiction and reality in his mind-bending 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness. Third in the director’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” the story follows a world-famous horror author with fiction so believable it drives his readers to the brink of insanity.

The film opens with a treat for any bibliophile: an extended view of the printing process that brings a hard-bound horror novel to life. Reminiscent of the iconic crayon factory montage featured on Sesame Street, we watch in close-up as pages stream through an industrial printing press along with a glossy dust jacket. Set to an original score heavily influenced by Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” this opening presents the horror novel as a dangerous item set to be unleashed upon an unprepared world. Next, we meet an insurance investigator named John Trent (Sam Neill) as he’s dragged into the padded cell of a mental institution. Telling his story to a visiting doctor, Trent — now covered in protective black crosses scrawled in black crayon — tells us that his trouble began when he was assigned to locate the bestselling author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow).

While presented with this unusual case, Trent is nearly killed by an ax-toting madman with malformed pupils who asks, “Do you read Sutter Cane?” before attempting to chop the investigator to bits. No fan of genre fiction, Trent picks up the novels of his latest target at a bookstore wrecked by an angry mob. It seems hordes of violent readers have been terrorizing sellers across the city when they cannot meet Cane’s presale demands. Though his latest novel, In the Mouth of Madness, is just weeks from a scheduled release, the reclusive author has disappeared and failed to deliver the final chapters. Trent is contracted by Arcane Publishing to either locate the mysterious novelist and return his missing manuscript or uncover the circumstances of his demise.

After piecing together images from paperback art, Trent creates a map to Hobb’s End, the fictional setting for several of Cane’s most disturbing stories. He’s accompanied on this strange journey by literary agent Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), one of two people on Earth who’ve read portions of the upcoming novel. As they search for the elusive and ultimately fictional town, Styles questions Trent’s reliance on absolute truth. After all, “reality is just what we tell each other it is. Sane and insane could easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority.” Her statements will prove eerily prophetic. While navigating through seemingly endless fields of corn, Styles finds herself driving through a midnight storm that leads to an elongated covered bridge. Flashing with supernatural light, this bridge hides a portal between worlds, and Styles exits in the picturesque hamlet of Hobb’s End, somehow bathed in bright daylight.

Located in rural New Hampshire, Hobb’s End pulls the audience into an area scholars now refer to as Lovecraft Country. The famous horror fantasy novelist H.P. Lovecraft wrote many stories featuring fictional New England villages hiding dangerous secrets from beyond the stars. Exploring themes of cosmicism, a philosophy positioning humans as an inconsequential piece of a vast universe, Lovecraft’s 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness introduces a race of ancient gods known as Elder Things who colonized Earth eons before the dawn of man. Alongside nods to Arkham, a town featured in Lovecraft’s work and the name of his posthumous publishing house, Cane’s other novels also mirror the author’s famous catalogue. For example, Cane’s The Thing in the Basement nods to Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep, and Cane’s The Hobb’s End Horror is a parallel to Lovecraft’s classic The Dunwich Horror.

Recognizing elements of Cane’s disturbing work, Styles begins to suspect that they are now living in the pages of the author’s latest story. She will eventually locate the writer in a blood-soaked sanctuary within the town’s sinister Black Church, where he’s diligently typing the story’s final chapters. As he works, a barricaded door pulses under the force of otherworldly monsters. Cane’s novel describes these beings as” a murderous race of creatures whose vile existence contaminated time itself.” Styles learns that they have been telling Cane a story about the grisly end of humanity, and his powerful prose is making it real, one reader at a time. He forces Styles to read his dreadful conclusion, and she is forever altered by the knowledge of the horrors to come. Cane claims that reading these pages “starts the change” and “helps you see” the looming threat of these ancient monsters, priming humanity to be wiped out. From this moment on, she will serve the story itself, sacrificing herself to guide Trent in his role as the bearer of Cane’s apocalyptic tome.

Though initially skeptical, Trent can no longer deny strange occurrences plaguing Hobb’s End. The children have transformed into violent miscreants, and the horrified investigator watches as a grieving father dies by suicide after claiming, “I have to, he wrote me this way.” Trent finally confronts Cane in his sanctuary, turned writer’s studio, where he sees the fearsome creatures with his own eyes. Warning, “I can’t hold them back any longer,” Cane begins tearing himself apart to reveal a life-sized hole in a novel’s page. Styles narrates this moment, reading from the manuscript’s final chapters. We watch in horror as “Trent stood at the edge of the rip, stared into the illimitable gulf of the unknown, the Stygian world yawning blackly beyond. Trent’s eyes refused to close. He did not shriek, but the hideous, unholy abominations shrieked for him, as in the same second, he saw them spill and tumble upward out of an enormous carrion black pit choked with the gleaming white bones of countless unhallowed centuries.” It’s a thrilling moment for genre readers as we see Cane’s powerful fiction dictate reality.

Trent is chased back through an exit portal into the sunny reality of a country road. But every attempt to destroy Cane’s manuscript proves unsuccessful, and the sinister author seems to haunt his every thought. Losing track of linear time, Trent learns that his own face graces the new novel’s cover and Styles is nothing more than a figment of Cane’s imagination. In the Mouth of Madness has been on shelves for weeks, and a film adaptation will hit theaters soon. Outside the safety of Arcane Publishing, waves of random violence sweep the nation as readers devour the latest Cane horror. While admittedly extreme, this fervor for new horror releases mirrors the real-life popularity of Stephen King.

Though the Master of Horror is known for relatable characters and more grounded stories, he has written his share of horror fantasy, most notably his sprawling The Dark Tower series. Told over the course of eight novels and a handful of short stories, the saga follows a gunslinger known as Roland Deschain on an interdimensional quest to save the Dark Tower, the nexus of all known realities. Published over the course of 22 years, readers salivated for more entries in this hybrid series, particularly when a cliffhanger ending to the 1991 entry The Waste Lands was left unresolved for six interminable years. In an introduction to his 1996 novel The Green Mile, King muses about the power fiction holds over the reader, remembering a fan letter he once received.” One of these contained a Polaroid of a teddy bear in chains, with a message cut out of newspaper headlines and magazine covers: RELEASE THE NEXT DARK TOWER BOOK AT ONCE OR THE BEAR DIES, it said. I put it up in my office to remind myself both of my responsibility and of how wonderful it is to have people actually care—a little—about the creatures of one’s imagination.”

Caught in the grips of Cane’s own literary force, Trent’s life spirals out of control. As he hides within the confines of his padded cell, he listens as the world descends into violence before gingerly tiptoeing out the door. The film adaptation has indeed unleashed irreversible chaos, and humanity teeters on the brink of collapse. Trent emerges from the asylum to radio reports of widespread attacks and survivors transforming into tentacled monsters. Seemingly the only sane man left on earth, he wanders into a deserted movie theater and sits down to enjoy In the Mouth of Madness with John Trent. Watching his own story play out onscreen, Trent laughs at his naivete and insistence on objective reality.

While fantastical, Carpenter’s film undoubtedly rings true to readers of horror fare. We may know the book we’re reading is fictional, but that feels less true when we turn out the lights. How many times have we put down a particularly terrifying novel and suspiciously eyed the closet door? We tell ourselves it’s just a story, but we nonetheless turn the lights back on and cautiously investigate that suspicious noise. Though rational thoughts try to prevail, somewhere deep down, we fear the monster may have found a way to creep off the page.

In the empty theater, Trent throws back his head and laughs, knowing that the line between fantasy and fiction has been irrevocably erased, no doubt remembering Styles’ ominous words. Before arriving in Hobb’s End, Styles explains, “what scares me about Cane’s work is what might happen if reality shared his point of view.” Carpenter’s film asks us to consider this harrowing possibility and the transformative nature of collective belief.

Each time we sit down with a horror novel, are we merely indulging in a harmless story or contributing to a movement that could change the world?

Follow along all week long as we salute John Carpenter.

The post John Carpenter’s ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ is a Love Letter to Fans of Horror Fiction appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

If there’s one publisher that’s been championing the horror genre from the very beginning, it has to be Dark Horse Comics.

Dark Horse rose to prominence thanks to a memorable run of licensed titles (including Aliens vs Predator and even the Terminator franchise), but the publisher has since made a name for itself by releasing creator-owned classics like Hellboy that blend horror and fantasy for a more mature audience.

This year continued the company’s winning streak, with Dark Horse releasing enough original horror media to make the ghost of EC Comics blush. However, with so many spooky comics to choose from (and with options ranging from disturbing H.P. Lovecraft adaptations to dark fables and even true-crime biographies), it’s only natural that some readers might end up unsure of what to get for themselves -or a friend- this holiday season.

Here’s a handy guide meant to help discerning horror fans decide which publications to dig into according to their taste in horror movies!

So strap in as we match you with a great comic book based on your favorite scary movies, and don’t forget to comment below with your own horror comic recommendations if you’ve read something particularly scary this year.

For even more, explore the vault of Dark Horse horror for cosmic terror, supernatural chills, and more reads that will keep you up at night. Build your horror library here. 

Love these horror movies? Here’s what you should read to pair with them.

6. If You Love Dagon (2000)… 

You Should Read:H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, and Arkham Horror: The Terror at the End of Time

The works of H.P. Lovecraft are notoriously difficult to translate to the big screen, so fans like myself tend to rejoice whenever a film gets most of one of the author’s stories right. That’s why Dagon has such a cult following, and if you love Stuart Gordon’s pulpy yet faithful Lovecraft adaptation, then I’m fairly certain that you’ll also enjoy the Trade Paperback release of Gou Tanabe’s tributes to the Cthulhu Mythos – as well as Cullen Bunn’s Arkham Horror tie-in comic that brings the infamous board game to life via an original miniseries!

While Tanabe’s adaptations of The Shadow Out of Time and The Colour Out of Space will appeal more to diehard Lovecraft fans who want to see the original stories faithfully retold in a brand-new medium, Arkham Horror: The Terror at the End of Time skillfully taps into the action-packed side of pulpy terror usually reserved for weird fiction magazines and tabletop role-playing games.

5. If You Love Good Boy (2025)… 

You Should Read: Beasts of Burden Omnibus

Ben Leonberg terrified animal lovers earlier this year with the release of his dog-focused ghost story Good Boy, but if you’re still in the mood for more spooky fables about canine protagonists fighting the forces of evil while showing off how adorable they are, then I’d recommend the omnibus Evan Dorkin’s Eisner Award-winning Beasts of Burden.

A deceptively charming mix of urban fantasy and horror that follows a group of dogs (and one unlucky cat) living in the suburbs of Burden Hills, this comic series sees our animal protagonists dealing with tragic ghost stories, eldritch rituals, and more – all the while providing readers with a fresh (and furry) perspective on familiar genre tropes.

Just be warned that pet owners will likely shed a tear or two before the end of the book!

4. If You Love Crimson Peak (2015)…

You Should Read: Séance in the Asylum and Our Brilliant Ruin: Horror at Crane Mansion

Original tales of Gothic Horror are hard to come by in the world of film these days, but since comic books don’t have to deal with expensive sets and costumes, there are actually quite a few modern graphic novels following in the tradition of Poe and Jackson. And if you like the moody terrors of period pieces like Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Dark Horse has got you covered with comics like Séance in the Asylum and Our Brilliant Ruin: Horror at Crane Mansion.

Clay McLeod Chapman’s Séance is a classic tale of spiritualism gone wrong, where a medium attempts to use her preternatural gifts to conduct therapy on victims of the American Civil War. On the other hand, Cullen Bunn’s Horror at Crane Mansion is an Edwardian parable taking place in the Our Brilliant Ruin tabletop RPG setting, with this class-conscious horror story following a private investigator who gets caught up in a supernatural conspiracy while working on a seemingly routine case.

If you ask me, both of these titles are worth reading due to their impeccable worldbuilding and excellent use of atmosphere!

3. If You Love Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)… 

You Should Read: Dr. Werthless

We’ve previously featured Joe Berlinger’s true crime opus on our list highlighting six spooky documentaries for horror fans, but The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is far from the only true story out there that’s liable to give you nightmares. In fact, the latest collaboration between true crime author Harold Schechter and celebrated comic-book artist Eric Powell (the same duo behind the excellent Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?) will likely haunt comics fans for years to come.

Chronicling the life and controversies of Dr. Fredric Wertham, a radical psychiatrist who specialized in the humane treatment of violent offenders (including real-life bogeymen like Albert Fish) and later became known for sparking an irrational witch-hunt which forever changed the comic-book industry, Dr. Werthless unearths the complex history of a man who genuinely thought he was helping the nation’s youth but didn’t think twice about taking advantage of vulnerable patients in order to make a name for himself.

Just be warned that this book deals with extremely sensitive subject matter!

2. If You Love The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)… 

You Should Read: Let This One Be a Devil Volume 1 and Rat God

Monster movies are fun, but monster movies where the creature is more of an eldritch presence than a mere beast are absolutely terrifying. That’s why I love Charles B. Pierce’s “docudrama” about the Sasquatch-inspired “Fouke Monster”. And if you’re also a fan of stories about mythical cryptids and how they affect the community surrounding them, you should definitely check out Volume 1 of Let This One Be a Devil – James Tynion IV and Steve Foxe’s chilling retelling of the legend of the Jersey Devil.

On that note, while it’s more inspired by Native American folklore than cryptozoology, I’d also recommend Richard Corben’s gorgeous Lovecraftian pastiche Rat God to folks who enjoy monster stories where the characters and setting are just as important as the creature driving the narrative (especially if you were a fan of V/H/S/94’s Raatma segment).

1. If You Love Trick ‘r Treat (2008)… 

You Should Read: Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown

I’ve always loved interconnected anthologies that feel more like a pre-planned work of fiction than a patchwork of unrelated short films, so it’s only natural that I’m a huge fan of Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat. And fortunately for my fellow anthology enthusiasts, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has returned to the world of short-form horror yarns with his new book Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown.

A retro collection of original folklore that feels like it was ripped straight from the history books of some alternate dimension, Bowling with Corpses will appeal to anyone who’s ever wished that the Brothers Grimm were still alive and writing. It’s also further proof that Mignola is a master of his craft, regardless of whether or not he’s working with established characters like Hellboy or creating brand-new worlds full of magic and mystery.

Dive deeper into the vault of Dark Horse horror for cosmic terror, supernatural chills, and more reads that will keep you up at night. Build your horror library here: https://www.darkhorse.com/search/horror/

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I believe this is also the case with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. While cosmic horror as a concept can be effectively applied to nearly any time or place, the irrational fear of foreign cultures and incomprehensible alien beings was much more poignant before ideas like extraterrestrial invaders and alternate dimensions escaped the confines of pulpy magazines and entered mainstream culture. That’s why it’s so difficult to adapt Lovecraft’s stories to a modern setting, as both society and media have evolved to the point where it’s hard to imagine someone going mad just because they learned that they’re related to fish people – and that’s not even mentioning the inherent issues with translating the author’s vague monsters to a visual medium.

Does this mean that it’s impossible to properly adapt Lovecraft to the big screen? Of course not! There are several great cinematic incarnations of the Cthulhu Mythos, and this year happens to mark the 20^th anniversary of one of the very best. Naturally, I’m referring to what is undoubtedly the most faithful adaptation of the Providencean writer’s work, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s faux-silent film The Call of Cthulhu.

Originally founded in 1986 by a group of friends united by a combined love of theater and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (with their interest in the Mythos having been sparked by Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu role-playing game), the HPLHS was no stranger to adapting the author’s work into other mediums. In fact, their first adaptation was a shot-on-VHS rendition of The Statement of Randolph Carter produced all the way back in 1988.

Of course, as the Society grew, so did their artistic ambitions. After a series of comedic musical productions, the group eventually decided that it was time to invest in a more serious adaptation of a Lovecraft yarn. So began a grueling eighteen-month-long journey as Andrew Leman and his fellow Society members decided to bring 1933’s The Call of Cthulhu to life as it might have been adapted to the big screen soon after publication of the original story.

With help from their talented editor and cinematographer David Robertson, the team developed what they would later refer to as the “Mythoscope” process – a technique through which the digital shoot would be converted into a realistic facsimile of vintage film stock, complete with lighting and composition that would have been popular during the 1930s. This process involved a mix of both painstakingly crafted sets and cleverly disguised locations, with the globe-trotting adventure actually being shot almost entirely within California on a shoestring budget.

This is especially remarkable when you consider that almost all of the effects were achieved in-camera. The sunken city of R’lyeh was actually built at three different scales in order to allow for more creative use of non-Euclidean geometry while also facilitating the stop-motion sequence towards the end of the picture, and that’s not even mentioning all of the eerie artwork that had to be hand-painted/sculpted before shooting. Of course, the stop-motion monster effects are probably the most famous element of this adaptation, with the flick’s Harryhausen/Richard O’Brien-inspired take on Cthulhu having become more famous than the movie itself.

In the finished film, which follows the 1928 story so closely that it even incorporates the original text into its intertitles, we accompany a series of nested vignettes about a mysterious cult and their eldritch God. These sequences are connected by an overarching narrative concerning a distraught protagonist going through the files that drove his deceased uncle mad. Naturally, this curious nephew soon begins to lose his own grip on reality as he slowly pieces together a cosmic puzzle and realizes that there are things man was not meant to know.

Right off the bat, the movie’s dedication to retro authenticity is remarkable, with very few details giving away the illusion. As a filmmaker myself with experience in replicating old-timey aesthetics, I’m aware of how hard it is to convincingly simulate aging film stock and early 20^th century lighting/lenses without the aid of a sizable budget like in the case of David Fincher’s Mank. However, I’m pleased to say that Andrew Leman and his team managed to push their limited resources to the very limit here – to the point where I honestly think that the film might have fooled casual audiences if it benefited from a wider release.

This visual fidelity extends to The Call of Cthulhu’s aforementioned effects, with the final act featuring gorgeous lo-fi puppetry that -ironically enough- is actually a little too advanced for the era that the film is attempting to emulate. The climactic encounter with Cthulhu may not seem particularly scary for modern audiences, but the janky movements of the Great Old One’s tentacles add so much texture and charm to the experience that I think the movie is already worth watching for this sequence alone.

Of course, The Call of Cthulhu is faithful to its origins to a fault, with the adaptation becoming so lost in the original work’s convoluted web of stories within stories that it may be difficult for uninitiated viewers to follow what’s going on. This is exacerbated by the fact that Lovecraft’s prose valued depth over clarity – meaning that some of the intertitles are way longer and more complex than they needed to be.

And yet, some of the nuance present in the source material was inevitability lost in translation due to the very nature of film as a visual medium. Cthulhu is a lot scarier as a barely comprehensible description of an octopus-dragon carving than as a literal monster, so the adaptation unfortunately lacks some of the monstrous impact of Lovecraft’s original work.

I was never really bothered by this, as Leman’s team seemed to view the project as more of an experiment in simulating a film that might have been made rather than actually making a thrilling picture for current audiences. From the period-accurate orchestral score (courtesy of an incredibly talented ensemble of five composers) to lighting and set design that wouldn’t feel out of place in a legitimate example of German Expressionism, there’s a lot to love about this little passion project if you’re into film history.

Personally, I enjoy the movie in much the same way as I appreciate 2018’s faux cursed film Antrum – a similar exercise where filmmakers wished to pay homage to a bygone era of genre filmmaking. And much like Antrum, the obscure nature of Leman’s film also lends it an air of “lost media,” as one could easily imagine that this cursed silent picture was struck from history books due to the subversive nature of Lovecraft’s writing.

In the end, whether or not you enjoy HPLHS’s Call of Cthulhu mostly depends on your tolerance for aesthetic gimmicks and your opinion of the original short story. As a huge fan of the Cthulhu Mythos and a defender of creative teams willing to commit to a bit, it stands to reason that I adore this 47-minute experiment, though your own mileage may vary. However, whether or not you like the movie, I think it’s safe to say that this is the most faithful Lovecraft adaptation ever made, and it’s just as impressive now as it was back in 2005.

The post ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ – Looking Back on the Faux Silent Film 20 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The new adaptation is said to be the first in a series of “elevated genre pics”  developed and financed by Woodlake Entertainment.

Herbert West: Reanimator centers on “the brilliant but mercurial physician West, whose rabid obsession and pursuit of life extension succeeds to a horrifying effect.”

The news arrives as the short story’s first feature adaptation, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, turns 40 this year. This loose retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West-Reanimator goes for the jugular in terms of gore and laughs thanks to director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, and actor Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West. 

Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. 

“We are very excited for Woodlake and the amazing team assembled to reinvent this classic horror literature into a contemporary frightening feature film,” said producer Jeffrey Lewis, owner of Woodlake. It sounds as though this new adaptation will adhere to the source material and opt for a more serious approach over Gordon’s splatstick humor.

Simon and Metcalfe may be best known for The Haunting in Connecticut, which grossed $78.8 million worldwide and received a sequel, but the scribes also penned ’90s cult horror movie Bones. Simon also wrote Books of Blood and “Salem.”

Keith Previte also produces. John Simmons and Roger Lewis will executive produce with Andrew Trapani. 

Stay tuned for more.

The post New Adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ in the Works appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“To fans of cosmic horror, survival games, and those who just love trains, we’re happy to shout ‘ALL ABOARD!’” said Digital Vortex CEO and Co-Founder Alex Izotov. “This is an adventure we’ve been working on for a long time, and your feedback will be instrumental in shaping RailGods of Hysterra into its final form.”

While it’s not clear yet how long RailGods of Hysterra will remain in the service, the teams did reveal new additions for the Early Access release:

• Improved Ranged Combat – Enhanced targeting, projectile mechanics, and responsiveness.

• Inventory Filters and Optimization – Streamlined item management for a better user experience.

• Polished Combat Feedback – More impactful hit reactions, animations, and combat feel.

• Madness Level Gameplay – Expanded mechanics tied to the Madness system, adding new strategic elements.

• Connected Chests – Improved resource management by linking storage across carriages.

• Corrupted RailGod Gameplay – New mechanics and interactions with a corrupted version of the RailGod.

RailGods of Hysterra sees players enter a ruined world of ghoulish horrors wrought by the Great Old Ones. As a Dreamer, awoken from the Dreamlands and inseparably bound to your RailGod (a roaming fortress composed of steel and flesh forged through arcane and obscure rituals), you must survive in a reality twisted by madness.

Venture forth alone or with up to four friends into a world of waking nightmares, where the Old Gods of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos emerged victorious, twisting the earth and its inhabitants into unspeakable horrors. Defy their might by forging a bond with a powerful RailGod, an ancient abomination from beyond the stars fused with a mighty locomotive.

Board the train and expand it with custom cars for storage, loot, and workbenches. Navigate shifting hellscapes armed with axes, firearms, and spells, battling eldritch horrors and fanatical cultists — or capture them to feed the wheeled monstrosity. Seek the RailGod’s pounding heart to purge the creeping madness and unlock devastating GodKeeper abilities.

Resist mental torment while foraging for new materials and clues, then return to the RailGod to purge the mind of unearthly visions, develop new skills, and gear up for the next adventure. While the journey is long, this rolling base of operations is never far away – but remember, it always needs to feed… and it has a taste for flesh.

The post ‘RailGods of Hysterra’ Pulls Into Early Access on April 23 [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

January featured plenty of highs and lows on Horror Queers. We started with the brilliant sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (listen) and the silly subversiveness of German film Killer Condom (listen). Then we descended into trash for two weeks with The Covenant (listen) and The Roommate (listen).

Thankfully we wrapped the month on a high with Stuart Gordon‘s playful, gory and mean-spirited adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft‘s Re-Animator (1985).

Featuring a career defining performance by Jeffrey Combs, the film follows eccentric burgeoning scientist Herbert West (Combs) as he befriends/seduces aspiring doctor Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), much to the chagrin of Dan’s girlfriend, Megan (Barbara Crampton) and her secret admirer, creepy Dr. Hill (David Gale).

As the experiments – and the corpses – begin to pile up, it’s unclear who the real villain is. Will Herbert successfully test his serum? Will Dan live to become a doctor? Or will the decapitated head/body of Dr. Hill and his undead army rule the hospital? It’s chaos!

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 267: Re-Animator (1985)

It’s time to revisit H.P. Lovecraft with a dip into horror comedy/exploitation territory and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985). C/W: sexual assault and the cat dies (again and again)

We’re praising Jeffrey Combs’ perfect performance, the tricky tonal balance (including the Dr. Hill/Megan assault), and the gory practical FX in this mad doctor film.

Plus: a queer reading of Herbert and Dan, multiple editions, naked fight scenes, and why the film deserves to be seen with a crowd.

Cross out Re-Animator!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re headed back to the 40s to discuss an early adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s iconic The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1945)!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for 286 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal S01E02, sharks on an underwater plane movie No Way Up, Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh and an audio commentary on Heathers (1988) to coincide with our episode on Lisa Frankenstein.

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Breaking Glass Pictures will summon The Old Ones on VOD March 19, 2024.

You can watch the official trailer for The Old Ones below, which previews an impressive array of old school practical effects that should make this low budget effort a fun watch.

In the film…

“In 1930, sea captain Russel Marsh saw the light, and for 93 years his body was not his own. Inhabited by a Great Old One, he committed unspeakable acts in the name of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Now free, he is in search of a way to go back in time to reverse the horrors wrought upon the world. But the cult has other plans, and will stop at nothing to destroy him.”

Robert Miano, Benjamin Philip, Kelli Maroney, Timothy Muskatell, Jerry Irons, Cyril O’Reilly, Brandon Kirk, Jon Budinoff, Kurt Bonzell, Elli Rahn and Silvia Spross star.

The post ‘The Old Ones’ Trailer – Low Budget Lovecraft Movie Goes Heavy on the Practical Effects appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Suitable Flesh is bringing Lovecraftian madness to theaters and VOD on October 27, 2023, and the film will later be hitting Shudder for exclusive streaming in January 2024.

Meagan wrote in her Tribeca review, “The spirit of Stuart Gordon is alive and well in Suitable Flesh. Lynch captures the humorous, oft-sexy tone of Gordon’s ‘80s/’90s Lovecraftian horror output while putting his own stamp on it through keen instincts and modern storytelling.”

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Screenplay by Dennis Paoli, the screenwriter of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one is something special for fans.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.” Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

[Related] Joe Lynch on Honoring Stuart Gordon and Playing in the Lovecraft Universe

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In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.”

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). The script was written by Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

In my 4-star review for Suitable Flesh out of Tribeca, I praised how well director Joe Lynch captures the essense of Stuart Gordon while putting his own stamp on Lovecraft: “Lynch pays tribute to a horror master through meticulous detail while avoiding a complete retread, ensuring Suitable Flesh may feel familiar, but it’s also unafraid to take unexpected detours or eschew outdated tropes. Lynch’s reverence for Gordon never exceeds his voice, blazing a thrilling path forward for a newer generation carrying the torch of horror masters. It results in a strange, beguiling horror effort that feels retro and new, capturing the essence of both Gordon and Lynch all at once.”

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ Teaser Offers a Taste of Joe Lynch’s Lovecraftian Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

While you wait, check out a gallery of first-look images below, which bring Barbara Crampton back into a world she’s well acquainted with by now: the world of H.P. Lovecraft!

“The cast of Suitable Flesh led by Heather Graham brings layered, complex performances to this new take on Lovecraft,” said RLJE Films’ Chief Acquisitions Officer, Mark Ward. “We are thrilled to premiere this film at Tribeca especially with longtime collaborators, actor/producer Barbara Crampton and director Joe Lynch.”

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Screenplay by Dennis Paoli, the screenwriter of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one should be something very special.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.” Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ – Exclusive Images Preview Barbara Crampton’s Return to H.P. Lovecraft Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Suitable Flesh is coming to theaters and VOD later this year, Deadline notes. The film’s debut on Shudder will follow. Stay tuned for more, including dates and the official trailer.

“The cast of Suitable Flesh led by Heather Graham brings layered, complex performances to this new take on Lovecraft,” said RLJE Films’ Chief Acquisitions Officer, Mark Ward. “We are thrilled to premiere this film at Tribeca especially with longtime collaborators, actor/producer Barbara Crampton and director Joe Lynch.”

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). The script was written by Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one should be something very special.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.” Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

The post Joe Lynch’s H.P. Lovecraft Movie ‘Suitable Flesh’ Releasing Later This Year from RLJE Films and Shudder appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Speaking of which, the official “Escape from Tribeca” preview trailer shared by the festival today gives us our first look at Barbara Crampton and Graham Skipper in Suitable Flesh.

Check it out below and expect more soon.

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). The script was written by Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one should be something very special.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.” Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

Check this trailer out and see if you can spot @GrahamSkipper and me in a moment from @TheJoeLynch SUITABLE FLESH – highlighting @Tribeca Escape From Tribeca program https://t.co/iTn4ioSE9P

— Barbara Crampton (@barbaracrampton) May 17, 2023

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ – First Look at Barbara Crampton in Lovecraft-Based Horror Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The would-be H.P. Lovecraft adaptation essentially tells of a disastrous Antarctic expedition that encounters unspeakable horrors after discovering ancient ruins.

Several studios ultimately ended up passing on the big-budget project, spelling the end of del Toro’s Lovecraftian dreams. But we’re still asking ourselves… what could have been?

We may never know, but Guillermo del Toro has at least taken to his just-launched Instagram account this week to share some never-before-seen test footage from the project!

Del Toro captions the footage, “All CGI test for a rig – ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] for At the Mountains of Madness (a decade ago) never-before-seen.”

The footage runs 25-seconds long and shows an explorer in the mountains (of madness) being attacked by a tentacled beast, and it can certainly be described as “Lovecraftian.” The monster splits open and reveals a humanoid form within, before unleashing its long tentacles and swallowing up the doomed explorer. It’s a small but delicious taste of GDT going full HPL.

At the Mountains of Madness may be no closer to reality but Guillermo del Toro has brushed up against H.P. Lovecraft in his new Netflix series “Cabinet of Curiosities,” which features two Lovecraft adaptations. A few of the other episodes are of the Lovecraftian variety as well, particularly the Panos Cosmatos-directed “The Viewing,” which will totally melt your mind.

In his most recent comments about the At the Mountains of Madness project, del Toro had noted that his vision has evolved over the years, and a new script would have to be written.

 

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A post shared by Guillermo del Toro (@gdtreal)

The post ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ – Guillermo del Toro Shares Never-Seen CGI Test for Unmade Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

They say no human can gaze at Cthulhu without going mad. The only form suitable to avoid insanity is by planting and growing your very own Cthulhu Chia Pet!

Now available from Amazon, the handmade pottery planter comes with 1 packet of Chia® seeds good for 3 plantings, convenient plastic drip tray and planting & care instructions. In just 1-2 weeks your Cthulhu Chia Pet will achieve maximum growth as it takes over your puny existence. Chia Planters can be washed and replanted indefinitely.

Grab your own Cthulhu Chia Pet for $22.99 on Amazon now.

Cthulhu is a cosmic entity created by H.P. Lovecraft. The Great Old One has appeared in several horror movies over the years. Most recently, Kristen Stewart battled Cthulhu in Underwater.

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That’s why it’s no surprise that popular culture’s favorite giant ape has seen so many different incarnations over the years, from Dino De Laurentis’ ecological parable in 1976 to Legendary’s Vietnam-inspired Kong: Skull Island. While there’s some merit to all of these different versions of the story, my personal favorite will always be Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. I’m clearly not the only fan of the film, as it was a massive box-office hit despite its absurdly inflated budget, but one thing that caught many filmgoers by surprise was the movie’s surprisingly brazen horror elements.

While some amount of scares were to be expected due to Jackson’s unwavering love of the horror genre (after all, even the Lord of the Rings films boasted a handful of unexpectedly schlocky genre moments), 2005’s King Kong took things up a notch when compared to the original. Despite a PG-13 rating, the movie contained plenty of grisly violence and a generally darker tone than its source material, with Jackson going so far as to include several nods to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in this dark monster flick.

Featuring everything from giant demonic bats to Andy Serkis being eaten live by giant leeches, it’s pretty obvious that this blockbuster was made by a horror filmmaker, with the film even including a reference to the infamous Sumatran Rat Monkey from Dead-Alive/Braindead. However, what I’d like to discuss is how the film subtly dabbles in Cosmic Horror, with this gigantic love-letter to classic cinema also serving as a rare example of big-budget movies doing right by H.P. Lovecraft.

For those who don’t know, Cosmic Horror (also known as “Lovecraftian Horror”) is a storytelling style popularized by the weird fiction of American author H.P. Lovecraft. These disturbing tales tend to focus on the sickening dread that comes with realizing humankind’s apparent insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, usually focusing on protagonists who discover something that drives them to re-evaluate their place in the world. So how does this relate to a movie about a great-depression-era film crew fighting off dinosaurs as they attempt to capture a giant gorilla? Well, fans of Cosmic Horror fiction will likely recognize some familiar themes and motifs in King Kong if they just take a closer look.

The original film’s premise already hinged on a primitive tribe offering up sacrifices to an “Elder God”, with the natives attempting to appease Kong with “brides”, not unlike the way that the Esoteric Order of Dagon offered up women to their fish god in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Unwilling sacrifice for the greater good is already Cosmic Horror 101, but Jackson’s take on the story made it even scarier by depicting the drawn-out ritual through which Kong is summoned, as well as his complete indifference to his worshippers – which is yet another similarity to the Elder Gods.

And while we’re on the subject of the tribespeople of Skull Island, one of the most interesting aspects of the remake is how it justifies the primitivism of the 1933 version of the islanders by making them a group of desperate survivors this time around. If you pay attention to the implied worldbuilding (or read/watch some of the film’s excellent supplemental material), it becomes clear that the natives here are not the same people who built the imposing stone fortresses and intricate statues scattered across Skull Island. These cult-like remnants are actually what’s left of the original inhabitants after some unnamable apocalypse drove their ancestors back towards the sea, with the giant walls surrounding their fishing village – and Kong himself – serving as the last line of defense for a once-thriving civilization that’s now on the brink of extinction.

This fascination with long-lost civilizations and how they hint at the inevitable downfall of our species is yet another popular Cosmic Horror trope, and while the film mostly keeps these apocalyptic themes in the background, it still gives King Kong an eerie anthropological edge usually only seen in Lovecraft yarns like The Shadow Out of Time.

While it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that Jack Black’s increasingly psychotic portrayal of the Orson-Welles-inspired Carl Denham is a classic example of a Lovecraftian protagonist losing his mind after encountering eldritch horrors, certain details like the character quoting faux Arabian proverbs and acquiring eerie maps of cursed places are definite staples of Lovecraft’s Necronomicon-based yarns. The director’s depiction as an over-ambitious artist that goes too far in search of glory is even similar to characters like Richard Pickman (from Pickman’s Model), adding to the overall Cosmic Horror feel of the flick even if that’s not the point of the story.

Lastly, the film features plenty of prehistoric monsters engaging in terrifying battles as human beings become caught in the titanic crossfire, with most of these giant creatures regarding our main characters as little more than an edible nuisance. In some ways, the film feels like a big-budget adaptation of a pulpy Call of Cthulhu RPG adventure, complete with intrepid 1930s heroes embarking on a perilous quest and facing all manner of creatures that should not exist only to learn that their superior firepower is no match for an uncaring universe. Again, these ideas are mostly relegated to the background, but they still make the experience more interesting.

Many of these elements were already present in the original film, and while it’s not out of the question that Merian C. Cooper and his writers may have read a Lovecraft yarn or two when coming up with the 1933 classic, I’ll admit that horror was never meant to be the focus here. After all, the premise owes a lot more to the paleontological thrills of novels (and subsequent films) like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and real-world horrors like the then-recent discovery of the Komodo Dragon than to any form of Cosmic Horror. Jackson simply decided to take the scary elements more seriously in his remake, capitalizing on the fear of human beings reconciling with their own insignificance in a hostile world and most likely stumbling onto elements of Cosmic terror in the process.

Many of these supposed references can be explained away as either complete coincidences or surface-level similarities due to the story’s 1930s setting, but I’d argue that the film’s tie-in videogame suggests that Jackson knew what he was doing when he added some of these elements to the story. Developed by Ubisoft, King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie is a fully-fledged survival horror experience curated by Jackson himself, featuring even more elements of Cosmic Horror (from unkillable boss monsters to more detailed looks at Skull Island’s insane past and ecosystem) and a generally creepier mood – allegedly more in line with the director’s original intent for the blockbuster movie. It’s entirely possible that Jackson originally set out to create a legitimate horror film and merely settled for an action-adventure when he realized the kind of budget he would need to tell this story.

Whether or not these elements of Cosmic Horror were a happy accident, I honestly believe that King Kong contains some of the most faithful recreations of an H.P. Lovecraft story ever put to film, which is another reason why I often revisit this three-hour epic. It may not be a traditional horror flick, but I’d still love to see its pulpy thrills and eerie atmosphere (intentionally) recreated in future scary movies. Maybe in something like that At The Mountains of Madness adaptation that has been stuck in development hell since the early 2000s…

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Deadline reports today that principal photography has wrapped on the movie, which also stars Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) and Judah Lewis (The Babysitter).

Coolest of all, the film is directed by Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2, Mayhem, “Creepshow”)! But this news gets even better, as two more Lovecraft veterans are also on board.

Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator) executive produced, with Crampton also producing. And the film’s script was written by Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one could be something very special!

The site details, “the film is an erotic body-swapping horror, in which a psychiatrist played by Graham becomes obsessed with a young client with multiple personalities.”

Bruce Davison (X-Men) and Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do!) also star.

Lynch said in a statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

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Is horror writer Sutter Cane a harmless pop phenomenon or is he a deadly mad prophet of the printed page? The Losers will find out on today’s episode which sees them heading to the remote (and seemingly fictional) town of Hobb’s End. It’s here they each rent out a room at Mrs. Pickman’s hotel and re-assemble at the local pub to discuss.

Grab a pint and join Losers Michael Roffman, Dan Caffrey, Ayisha Gatson, and Mel Kassel as they revisit John Carpenter‘s 1994 meta horror gem In the Mouth of Madness. Together, they do various Sam Neill impersonations, wrestle with Lovecraft, debate the film’s second act, and search for Stephen King in the land of Sutter Kane.

Stream the episode below and return next week when the Losers throw on some shades, put the top down, and head out to Hollywood King to catch up on all those King-related headlines. For further adventures, join the Losers’ Club over long days and pleasant nights via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

You can also unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive content in The Barrens (Patreon).

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The post Stephen King Is All Over John Carpenter’s ’In the Mouth of Madness’ [The Losers’ Club Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Naturally, it’s set in a small seaside town with a monstrous secret…

“A married couple rents a beachside cottage only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and strange occurrences. They soon discover themselves in the grips of a mysterious cult and their ancient sea god.”

Chad Ferrin (Parasites, Someone’s Knocking at the Door) wrote and directed this one.

Watch the official trailer down below…

The post ‘H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones’ Gives Birth to a Monstrous Sea God This June [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Variety reports that Jonathan Majors, fresh off playing Atticus Freeman in Misha Green’s HBO series, is currently in talks to star in Gordon Hemingway & the Realm of Cthulhu.

If he signs on, Majors will be playing the title character. Gordon Hemingway, that is.

Gordon Hemingway & the Realm of Cthulhu is “set in East Africa in 1928 and centers on Gordon Hemingway, a roguish Black American gunslinger, who teams up with the elite warrior Princess Zenebe of Ethiopia to rescue the country’s kidnapped regent from an ancient evil.”

Hank Woon wrote the original screenplay.

In addition to Spike Lee, Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin are also producing.

The post Jonathan Majors in Talks to Star in Spike Lee-Produced ‘The Realm of Cthulhu’ for Netflix appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The comic from Cullen Bunn and artist Blacky Shepherd connects the maniacal Herbert West from Re-Animator to the wider Cthulhu mythology of H.P. Lovecraft!

The story serves as a direct sequel to Lovecraft’s original Reanimator short story.

“Though he’s presumed dead at the end of Lovecraft’s original tale, nothing can keep the mad scientist Herbert West down. He’s back and with his reanimation serum stolen, he must travel to the infamous town of Innsmouth, home to degenerate townsfolk and dark gods alike. This story is full of monsters, scares, and surprises for both longtime Lovecraft disciples and new readers. It will kill off all expectations for what readers think they know about Herbert West, only to reanimate them with something new and terrifying.”

“There have been so many incarnations of Herbert West, but we’ve been given the opportunity to take the character back to formula, if you’ll pardon the pun,” said Cullen Bunn. “This story finds West in the 1920s, not long after the conclusion of the original short story. From there, we were able to go in some sinister new directions I think readers will love.”

Artist Blacky Shepherd added, “As a lifelong fan of the visceral horror that you get with Reanimator, and the cosmic dread of the rest of the Lovecraft mythos, the chance to stitch the two together, as written by one of the Modern Masters of the Macabre was too exciting. This story gives me everything I love in a horror story and dials it up to 13!”

“Fans can get this 48-page prestige format title with their choice of three cardstock covers. Two are by Shepherd, with one featuring Vampirella and Lady Demon. Comics horror icon Francesco Francavilla is tapped for another, and his is available as a high-quality print. A special combo package is the only way to get a fourth cover by Shepherd, and at an incredible price. Dynamite is also making available CGC graded copies of the comic.”

“Add-ons and special items that will be exclusively offered on the Indiegogo include a genius custom reanimation formula syringe-looking pen. Perfect for writing your own spooky stories. An exclusive 1.5 inch enamel pin featuring that iconic neon fluid-filled syringe is also available. Plus signatures, sketch covers, and remarks from Blacky, sketch artist Joe DelBeato, or even Cullen himself – is he secretly an artistic prodigy? Fans can add graphic novels to their haul featuring Dynamite’s previous tales of the Reanimator, including his last self-titled miniseries and the aforementioned last collaboration of Cullen and Blacky featuring Vampirella and a unique black, white, blood, and yellow serum color palette.”

“The book has been completely written, penciled, and inked, and is in the process of being colored and lettered now. With the help of fans, Dynamite will be able to bring this project to their collections. And with enough support, perhaps there could be more stories to come? As you can never count Herbert West out and down for the count, when he’s got that formula.”

Head over to Indiegogo to learn more and pre-order the comic today!

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RLJE Films will bring Castle Freak to On Demand and Digital HD December 4.

Kathy Charles wrote the remake, directed by Tate Steinsiek.

“After she’s permanently blinded in a tragic car accident, Rebecca’s receives some bizarre news: her long-lost-mother has recently passed away, leaving her their family’s ancestral castle. Traveling to the estate with a group of friends, Rebecca hopes it will be an opportunity for her to reconnect with a past she never knew—and a mother who seemingly left her behind. When mysterious happenings begin to occur and her friends begin to die, Rebecca must unravel her family’s mysterious history before she too falls prey to the Castle Freak.”

You can check out the official trailer below, which presents what looks to be a mostly faithful remake of Gordon’s film that brings some more Lovecraftian mythology into the fold.

Clair Catherine, Jake Horowitz, Chris Galust and Emily Sweet star.

Original Castle Freak star Barbara Crampton produced the new movie.

The post The Barbara Crampton-Produced Remake of ‘Castle Freak’ Releases at Home in December [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Asylum Press has just announced the release of Beyond Lovecraft: An Anthology of Fiction Inspired by H.P.Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, by writer/artist Frank Forte.

This collection of terrifying tales takes us to the edge of the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft and beyond.

Beyond Lovecraft features:

• “The Experiment” tells the tale of a Cold War military medical examiner who receives the task of doing an autopsy on a victim of a biogenetic weapon.
• “Asphinxiation” is the horrid story of an archaeologist who travels to Egypt and discovers something terrifying inside the mysterious Sphinx.
• “The House At The End of the Street” recalls the ghastly account of a man trying desperately to overcome his childhood fears.
• “Dead Thing” is a grim reminder to stay away from carcasses you may find in the deep dark woods.
• “The Connection” takes us inside the mind of a mad doctor who thinks he has just created man’s next evolutionary phase.
• “Incident at the Haxford Inn” recounts a gruesome tale of a curious reporter who dares to investigate a haunted hotel.

And many more horrifying stories can be found in its pages. The book is available now.

The post New Anthology Book ‘Beyond Lovecraft’ Features Stories Inspired by Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

H.P. Lovecraft‘s works tapped into the fear of the unknowable, of horrors vast and incomprehensible. His brand of cosmic horror made humans look so frail and obsolete by comparison. In a present where the future seems so unknowable and dangerous, it makes perfect sense that filmmakers would tap into those fears, now more than ever.

Still, Lovecraft’s influence on the genre has long been seen and felt. These ten movies movies draw from the author’s work, either directly or indirectly, using it as inspiration to deliver memorable tales of terror…

Re-Animator

When you think of Lovecraftian horror, it’s near impossible for Stuart Gordon’s seminal horror comedy not to pop in mind. In a loose adaptation of “Herbert West-Reanimator,” Jeffrey Combs steals the entire film as the eccentric medical student with a reanimating reagent that unleashes complete chaos at Miskatonic University. Gordon adds his voice to the Lovecraft story, turning Herbert West’s tale into a full-on splatstick horror-comedy that paints the walls red.

Castle Freak

Drawing from the short story “The Outsider,” Castle Freak marks the third Lovecraftian partnership between director Stuart Gordon and actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. The second being From Beyond. Castle Freak is arguably the most mature of the three. Combs plays John Reilly, a man looking to make amends with his wife Susan (Crampton) after a devastating accident left their son dead and teen daughter blind. After inheriting a castle, they travel there to stay until the estate can be liquidated. Of course, they’re unaware a deranged, disfigured beast inhabits it. Castle Freak is dark and disturbing, but with heartfelt themes of love and redemption.

The Resurrected

From The Return of the Living Dead and Alien’s Dan O’Bannon comes an adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Charles Dexter Ward (Chris Sarandon) has been behaving so strangely, holed up in his carriage house performing chemical experiments, that his wife hires a private investigator to uncover what he’s up to and why he abandoned her. The more they discover about Charles’s family history and his experiments, the more disturbing things get. The Resurrected is a fairly faithful adaptation of its source material, just set in a modern period. That means it can be a little slow to build, but it explodes in a delightful creature heavy final act.

Necronomicon

Jeffrey Combs, resembling Bruce Campbell with his prosthetic chin, plays H.P. Lovecraft in this anthology’s wraparound story that sees the prolific horror writer copying stories from the Necronomicon in the middle of an old library guarded by monks. He lets loose a trio of Lovecraftian tales of horror and gore, each progressively weirder than the preceding segment. The segments are based on “The Rats in the Walls,” “Cool Air,” and the novella The Whisperer in the Darkness. With Brian Yuzna as the producer and director for half of the film, expect things to get goopy and gory.

Annihilation

Annihilation might be based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer, but there’s a whole lot of “The Colour Out of Space” in its DNA. It follows an expedition into a mysterious zone where the rules of nature no longer apply, told by the expedition’s sole survivor. That zone is dubbed “the Shimmer” for its iridescent color. As the group gets further into the site and encounters disturbing sights, they realize the Shimmer is changing flora and fauna. Its origins of the extraterrestrial variety crash-landed on Earth. Just like the Lovecraft story. Of course, the narrative diverges from there, but it’s still a tense slice of sci-fi cinema. 

Banshee Chapter

After her friend’s sudden disappearance, journalist Anne Roland (Katia Winter) discovers the strange and horrifying links between her friend, a government conspiracy involving a research drug, and an eerie radio broadcast of otherworldly origin. Drawing inspiration from actual government hallucinogenic drug experiments and H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond,” Blair Erickson’s feature debut is as creepy as mysterious and engaging. Look for The Silence of the Lambs‘s Ted Levine to steal every scene he’s in, but more than that, be ready for some great scares. Where From Beyond went for practical effects-driven spectacle, Banshee Chapter opts for a quiet, menacing atmosphere. It’s effectively creepy.

Dark Waters

After her father’s death, Elizabeth travels to a remote island to discover why her father funded the convent there. She finds it inhabited exclusively by nuns who perform bizarre rituals in the catacombs underneath the convent. The nuns harbor many dark secrets, including something inhuman lurking below. Directed by Mariano Baino, Dark Waters favors mood and style over a fully coherent narrative, making it feel like an Italian horror by way of Lovecraft. It’s ambiguous, atmospheric, and gorgeous. 

The Beyond

One of Lucio Fulci’s most beloved horror films, and the second entry in his unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy, The Beyond is also the director’s most influential. Set in Louisiana, a young woman inherits a hotel and discovers it was built over one of the gates to Hell. Bleak, surreal, and dreamlike in its storytelling, The Beyond toes the line between beauty and horror. Essentially, The Beyond is what happens when you cross Fulci with H.P. Lovecraft. The hotel is a gateway, essentially a portal to another world full of horrors. The Book of Eibon could easily be a stand-in for the Necronomicon. The foreboding tone of it all is Fulci channeling one of his favorite authors.

The Mist

Frank Darabont’s bleak 2007 horror film may have been an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella, but both channeled Lovecraft for this gnarly tale. A severe storm seems to trigger a strange, thick mist that crosses over a lake and town and envelopes it. And that fog brings all sorts of bloodthirsty and deadly creatures, trapping survivors inside a supermarket to fight for their lives. The monsters themselves, especially the massive ones, feel right out of a Lovecraft story; but so do the characters. Faced with unknowable horrors lurking in the mist, some of the supermarket inhabitants turn to religious fanaticism. Some are driven insane. Many of them die in grotesque ways. Above all, The Mist offers a grim feeling of hopelessness.

In the Mouth of Madness

Do you read Sutter Cane? Of course you do. Written by Michael De Luca and directed by John Carpenter, this descent into madness isn’t directly lifted from any of Lovecraft’s works. Its influences are plain as day, though, with references and themes woven into every fiber of the film. Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator hired to look for a missing bestselling author whose books affect his fans in brutal ways. Of course, the further into the investigation John gets, the more surreal and dangerous things become. Hobb’s End is an insidious little town full of insanity, creatures, and death. In the Mouth of Madness closes out Carpenter’s apocalypse trilogy, each film equipped with a bit of Lovecraft.

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It’s one hell of an adventurous concept that, when combined with the classic vector graphics, makes for a refreshingly original experience. Solo developer, Mike Schmidt, ought to be commended for his ambition, especially since he tackled the project all on his own. To tell us more about he pulled off this miraculous feat, Mike took time out of his busy schedule (he’s still refining the game in early access) and answered some of our burning questions. Among other things, we talk about his history with Escher’s work, the old-school aesthetic, and the intricate design behind the geographically impossible levels. 

BD: To start off, could you explain where the idea for Paradox Vector came from?

MS: It is a combination of several ideas I’ve had floating around for some time. First, the style of vector graphics has been on my mind since the 1980s. I guess 3D graphics kind of took up where vectors left off, but there was always something about those stark outlines that I felt was unique and deserved more attention. 

The idea of a game with impossible geometry is also something I’ve thought about for a while. Ever since I was introduced to M. C. Escher, and later played Realm of Impossibility as a kid, those weird angles have been a great source of inspiration to me. Later titles like Monument Valley and Antichamber further convinced me that I should work on something similar of my own.

BD: It’s impressive that you’ve been able to develop this highly ambitious project as a solo effort. How did you approach such a massive undertaking?

MS: It would have been very intimidating, [were it not for the fact that] I recently developed another game called Star Explorers. It was a procedurally generated, space exploration title – one that I had been working on since 2013 – and it provided the catalyst for what would eventually become Paradox Vector. 

BD: How so? 

MS: The 3D mapping system was made using the same line draw commands. Once I had that working in Star Explorers, I realized it would be pretty easy to make a whole game based on the graphic style.  

Another factor that helped me as a [lone developer], was my general approach to art. I paint, I write, and over the last 20 years I’ve been making games. All these things take time to accomplish and if you are expecting instant results you will likely be disappointed […]  Some of my paintings have taken months or even years to complete. The secret is to try to get little bits done every day, and to resist the urge to “finish” something before it’s actually done or just rush. I can’t say I have been perfect at this, but I think I have improved over time.

BD: On that note, what was the most challenging thing that you had to tackle on your own?

MS: I guess it would be working out the impossible geometry of the levels. Moving the player through the complex virtual space was one thing, but the real challenge was making it feel seamless and erasing all the subtle clues that [reveal] how it is accomplished. Even now I am still finding little hints that threaten to expose the illusion, and I will continue to squish them out of existence.

BD: Could you talk a little about how you planned out the Metroidvania aspects of the game? For example, how do you keep track of where the various keys need to be placed or structure the rate at which players obtain certain items?

MS: Originally, Paradox Vector was going to be more linear in its design. The earliest builds did not feature the outdoor hubs that connect all the dungeons together and [upon completion] each level simply teleported you to the next one.

However, that felt very unsatisfying to me as a player. I wanted to know where I was and where I was supposed to be going. I also wanted to add little secrets that would allow you to unlock areas you’ve already seen but could not visit. So, I started with nine rough dungeons and arranged them in a way that made sense in the outer world.

Right now, the game has three main environments: the citadel; the caves; and the factory.  The citadel is where most of the upgrading takes place [and] the caves basically serve as a transition between the citadel and the factory. As for the final area, that tests you in new ways and allows you enjoy the full arsenal of weapons and items that you’ve [accumulated].

This was an [alternative] to the typical Metroidvania, where upgrading happens throughout. If I am nearing the end of a game, and I acquire an item that suddenly unlocks a bunch of areas, it almost feels silly to go all the way back to the beginning just to explore these hidden paths. So, I felt it was important to have a kind of cutoff point, where the player is fully equipped and can explore without all the usual back-and-forth. I also never liked the idea of getting a super powerful weapon right near the end of a game. I want the player to enjoy all their equipment and skills for the entire duration of that third act.  

BD: You mentioned earlier that you were inspired by the art of M.C Escher. How were you first introduced to his works?

MS: My mother introduced me to his art at a very young age, through the book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstadter.  She was taking a college course at the time that involved this literature, and I would flip through it just to look at the pictures. 

The images Escher came up with were so compelling to me. I would marvel at how a stairway could keep going up in a circle, or how a waterfall could flow downwards and around strange corners to feed itself. They are obviously illusions, and you can see how he did it right on the paper, but those impossible structures made me ponder whether it could happen in real life.  

BD: And were there any specific images that you drew from or wanted to incorporate into the game? Any favourite Escher pieces?

MS: Waterfall was always one of my favorites.  Another one was the triangle made of three right angles that often appeared in Escher’s work. I believe the concept for that was actually designed by an artist named Oscar Reutersvärd, and was then later popularized by Lionel and Roger Penrose. 

Finally, his image Relativity was a big influence on some of my dungeons. A room with three different centers of gravity offered a unique challenge. You have to play through quite a few levels to find the one that was inspired by this piece, but it is definitely included in Paradox Vector. I should also mention that a similar illusion was replicated in the 2006 game Prey, and later in the game Dusk (which is another incredible retro shooter that inspired me).  

BD: What is the average process like for creating these mind-bending environments?

MS: I wanted each one to be as different as possible. They tend to use similar techniques to achieve their various illusions, but I always tried to find new ways to present [them] to the player. Some are glaringly obvious, whilst others require a little exploration to really notice.  

Basically, each level has one or two geometric illusions that the player is required to pass through. They are crucially not puzzles and Paradox Vector itself is not a puzzle game either.  Rather, I call it an ‘’action game set in a puzzling environment’’. In terms of designing them, the first few were easy, being based on Escher’s art pretty directly.  Later ones required a bit more thought, however.

BD: Is a lot of playtesting required to ensure that players are able to figure the dungeons out and that they won’t get too lost? As the lone developer, you presumably know them inside out, but how can you be sure the layouts will make sense to everyone else?

MS: This is the benefit of having Steam Early Access. It gives a solo developer a [source of] good feedback from players who are not going to beat around the bush. If they don’t like something, or can’t figure it out, they will tell you. [For example] a few of the first streamers got stuck in similar areas, so I knew I had to make those more intuitive to explore. 

BD: Speaking of which, were there any design tricks that you utilized to signpost people around? 

MS: One [way] is to cut off access to other areas until a certain feature is implemented. For instance, in a certain dungeon the player is forced to use a time-bomb to blow up a wall and progress to the next area.  Having a cracked wall [texture] is a time-honored development clue as to which surfaces are actually removable, so I used that. I also made sure the player could not go too far between [encountering] the wall in question and finding the time bombs needed to destroy it.

Another thing that I picked up from Quake and Quake II is that you need to make secret areas visible from other parts of the map. That way players will be aware of their [presence] and will be actively encouraged to look out for ways of reaching them.  Finally, there are actual maps for each dungeon and the outdoor areas as well, [which] should help players keep their bearings.

BD: Aside from the Escher influence, another thing that makes the game stand out from the crowd is the aesthetic. Why did you choose to use vector graphics?

MS: Vector graphics, in my mind, were unfinished business. We saw games in the early 1980s developing along two very distinct graphic styles. Pac Man and Donkey Kong established the now-ubiquitous “raster” graphics that every computer and console uses by default. However, there were also games like Battlezone, Tailgunner and the original Star Wars that used an entirely different technology to render images on screen.

At some point things changed and all the games started to look more like Donkey Kong than Battlezone. Bright colors filled the monitors and the minimalist line art that had previously fascinated me went away […] Yet the idea remained in my subconscious: ‘’What would have happened if those vector games won the war against raster graphics? What if, in some alternate universe, game companies had decided to invest heavily in that alternate technology and it became the default look?’’

With all the pixel art games that have come out in the last decade or so, I had this idea to explore a different kind of retro style […] I felt like, as an indie developer, it was my job to explore new territory. Once I realized how easy it could be to draw 3D lines in my mapping system it was just a matter of time before I had an idea for a vector based game.

[Mine] is certainly not the first game to try [resurrecting] vector graphics, but none of the others have really taken hold. One significant attempt I encountered was called Vectropolis, and there was a near-successful Kickstarter for that. Unfortunately, they did not meet their funding goal and, as far as I know, the game was never finished.  Still, they raised enough money to demonstrate that there was quite a bit of interest in a vector-based game. Being a solo developer, I knew I could do my project without needing a huge budget and that set me on track to finish Paradox Vector.

BD: The score is very memorable as well. Is it original and if so, how did it come about?

MS: When I was developing Star Explorers, I took a detour for about six months. I was trying to produce interesting looking nebulae [and] I got really inspired by some of the procedural shapes that were being generated. To explore this further, I created a different script and started a new game that was initially called ‘’Trees in Space’’ (because that’s what those shapes looked like) and was later renamed “Anomalies.” 

Anomalies was pure experimentation and, compared to the task of having to design a procedural galaxy and planet, was such a freeing project to work on. So, I paused development on Star Explorers, and just let myself enjoy the unfettered art of Anomalies. 

Eventually, the ‘’space trees’’ began to move, change colors and produce noises.  At first these were totally random and strange, but I decided to [delve deeper] into how frequencies could work together. It was some of the most intense math I’ve ever done, and I don’t even think I could explain it to you now that it’s finished, but I was able to get the anomalies to play notes that matched some typical musical scales. I then started recording the “songs” made by various anomalies and now I have a whole catalog of albums on Bandcamp as a result. 

The music algorithm was then modified and actually found its way back into Star Explorers.
Anyway, some of those songs, where they are actually generated in real-time as you play, have been recorded and used in Paradox Vector. 

BD: The storytelling is largely confined to cryptic in-game documents. Was that a conscious decision to keep the momentum going throughout and or was it motivated by more practical considerations?

MS: I am one of those people who hates cutscenes in videogames. Honestly, if I wanted to watch a movie, I would just turn on Netflix and if I wanted a story, I would just open up a book. I don’t really like spending a lot of time without control over my character. So, for me, having a few short text messages is more than enough to get across a [narrative]. Of course, producing storytelling devices would also take up precious development time, and relying on brief snippets of text would allow me to focus more on the gameplay instead.

Remember, I come from a generation that was fascinated by a little block that you could move across the screen with your joystick. So, in my controversial opinion, it is the graphics, the sounds, and the interactions that make games what they are. Everything else is fluff.

BD: Finally, what element of the game are you most proud of?

MS: That’s a tough one. I think it’s the careful balance between combat and exploration. Some games are so action heavy that they can wear you out and overwhelm your senses. You may end up running backward and shooting all the time – a pet peeve of mine – and often it’s so obvious where you need to go that there is virtually no sense of mystery or discovery. 

On the other hand, games without combat can get boring for me, even when there are interesting puzzles. The lack of conflict eventually makes me feel like I have [no incentive] to play. In Doom there are demons taking over earth if I don’t wipe them out. I can’t just stop; I have to fight them!  But a puzzle game generally does not offer these kinds of high-stake situations. 

Having high energy combat, with more careful exploration is a balance that was part of the best Metroidvania games. Also, probably my favorite game of all time, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, has relativity long, quiet periods of exploration, punctuated with brief moments of intense combat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did not directly inspire Paradox Vector, but I assume its influence was as strong as anything I thought of consciously.

Paradox Vector is available now on Steam Early Access.

The post [Interview] Schmidt Workshops Discuss ‘Paradox Vector’s Impossible Geography, Old-School Visuals, and Cosmic Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

First revealed earlier this year, the latest footage for the game reiterates a 2020 release date, but doesn’t have an exact day pinned down. Still, it’s looking good and gore-soaked.

A self-professed isometric Soulslike is inspired by the works of Lovecraft, and is filled with gruesome beasties to slay. Its visual style somewhat betrays just how violent and visceral it can be.

Expect to master your fighting abilities, go toe-to-tentacle with hulking malevolent deities, and die a lot when Morbid does eventually slither onto PS4, Xbox One, and PC later this year.

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H.P. Lovecraft unleashed cosmic horrors, elder things, and countless indescribable beasties on the world, but the author developed a reputation for his xenophobic and blatantly racist written works, as well. Author Matt Ruff addressed both sides of Lovecraft – the good and the bad- in his novel Lovecraft Country. He created a pulpy horror world where Lovecraft’s creatures exist during the era of Jim Crow laws. The collision of interdimensional magic with a dark period in American history created a richly textured, complex world with equally complex characters that made for a compelling story through terrors real and imagined. Naturally, it made good fodder for adaptation. Developed by Misha Green and produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, HBO’s Lovecraft Country explores every bit of the heartbreak, triumphs, and gruesome horrors of the novel in exquisite detail.

The series opens with a thrilling scene on a battlefield. Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors) makes his way through human and tentacled foe alike, while U.F.O.’s fly overhead. It’s a colorful sci-fi spectacle right out of Atticus’s favorite pulp novels, culminating in a showdown between a giant monstrosity and baseball player Jackie Robinson. It’s all a dream. Atticus wakes with a start on the back of his segregated bus. The contrast is clear; his imagined horrors provide escapism to the real horrors of a Black man traveling across the country in 1950s America.

Atticus, a military veteran, is heading home to Chicago to find his father, Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams), after receiving a distressing letter. Monstrose is long gone when he arrives, though. George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance) leaves wife Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis) and daughter behind to join nephew Atticus in the search. Childhood friend Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollet) also tags along on their road trip, intending to depart for her destination somewhere along the way. Driving from Chicago to Massachusetts proves perilous thanks to hostile police and citizens eager to abide by the Jim Crow laws that would allow them to do the group harm. That’s before they encounter Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee) and Samuel Braithwhite (Tony Goldwyn), a daughter-father team full of otherworldly secrets and dangerous magic.

As fans of Ruff’s novel already know, Lovecraft Country is an anthology of sorts. Each main character gets their own story and brush with horror, in very different ways. Of the first five episodes reviewed, they follow the source material in order, but Green expands on them and makes this story her own. Green fine tunes what worked so well about the novel but raises the horrors and stakes to an acute level that packs a visceral punch. She’s not afraid to kill or torture her darlings, adding a whole new emotional heft to the narrative.

The production design is nothing short of spectacular. The 1950s setting is fully immersive, as are all the sprawling estates, adventure-filled cave systems, and beyond. The creature designs and special effects make for an instant draw for the horror fan- there’s an insane number of ghoulish monsters packed in, from Lovecraftian beasts to horrifically disfigured ghosts, and so much more. While many of the monsters encountered are of the human variety, they tend to work well as isolating elements; our protagonists have nowhere to go, and no one is willing to help them. Imminent threats exist at every turn.

That the characters are what makes this show something remarkable speaks volumes of the writers and the cast involved. The trials and tribulations they endure make them instantly endearing, but every single one is a fully realized character with their own distinct set of issues and flaws. Majors imbues Atticus with the plucky heroism befitting his pulp fiction, but with the lingering trauma of war and estrangement with his father that leaves him haunted. Smollett threatens to run away with the series as Letitia, bringing a fiery ferocity that masks her insecurities. Williams wears Montrose’s inner turmoil on his sleeves, lashing out at family one minute and embracing who he is with unbridled freedom the next- and it’ll leave you breathless. Lovecraft Country goes big an epic adventure and supernatural terrors, but it’s the small character moments that matter most. Green and her actors create so much depth and characterization from subtle details and physical expression.

If there’s a flaw, the anthology-nature of the novel-turned-series makes flow a little strange at times. As the episodes change, the narrative often shifts to a different character in Atticus’s family and their confrontations with evil. In turn, that tends to cause tonal shifts that different flavors of horror tend to bring. Timelines aren’t always immediately apparent, either. In such a densely packed universe, this unique anthology-like format can waver in its pacing.

Still, it’s a relatively small thing compared to the soaring highs introduced so far. Lovecraft Country kicks off with a bang and keeps the onslaught of horror coming. The creature work is thrilling, the 1950s setting offers a smart way to reconcile both aspects of Lovecraft, and the gore is aplenty. It’s a highly stylized series full of ambition, handled with confident vision. There’s an insane amount of symbolism, depth, and subtext to parcel out, adding layers to a pulp monster fest, but its brilliant character work grounds it. It’s the best of both worlds; horror taken seriously and approached with intelligence, but without forgoing the fun supernatural elements and man-eating creatures that keep us gleefully hooked. 

Lovecraft Country premieres on HBO on August 16, 2020.

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published on August 7, 2020.

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The dozens of easter eggs span a wide variety of some of the most prevalent names in horror gaming, such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame. Some of these references are vital gameplay elements that are hard to miss, while others are more of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort. In most instances, the references are fun and remain relevant to the world of Song of Horror, and some stand out more than others…

Opening Sequence (Alone In The Dark)

As episode 1 begins, the opening image of the character standing outside of the Husher Mansion may seem familiar if you’re a fan of Alone In The Dark. The scene has a striking resemblance to the cover of the original Alone In The Dark from 1992, featuring a man peering into a spooky-looking mansion at an identical angle to the way the characters are in Song of Horror.

Alina’s Walkie-Talkie (Silent Hill)

Each character in Song of Horror begins each episode with a character-exclusive item in their inventory; these items can have both active and passive effects that help the player. In episode 1, Alina begins with a walkie-talkie with the description, “It doesn’t work very well. It picks up a lot of weird interference.” The walkie-talkie’s passive effect picks up interference whenever the player is near The Presence, in reference to radios in Silent Hill: reoccurring items in each game that alerts the player whenever they are approaching a monster.

Type-90 Match Box (Fatal Frame)

A key item in episode 1 is the matchbox, necessary to ignite the fireplace which is used to complete one of the final puzzles of the episode. When examining the matchbox, the front is labeled, “Type-90”, which is in reference to the film used by the Camera Obscura in Fatal Frame.

Cursed Doll (Clock Tower: The Struggle Within)

At the end of episode 1, players must burn a dirty doll in the fireplace in order to prevent The Presence from attacking them as they try to rescue Daniel. This is in reference to the first episode of Clock Tower: The Struggle Within (which is titled, “Yellow Cursed Doll”), in which Alyssa must burn a cursed statue in order to rid her niece of a dark entity controlling her.

Himuro Piano (Fatal Frame)

As players explore the Husher mansion, they may encounter a piano in the room with the fireplace. If the piano is examined with enough light, the name “HIMURO” can be seen on it. This is in reference to the famous Himuro Mansion, which is the setting of the first entry of the Fatal Frame series.

Toilet Trouble (Silent Hill)

There are two instances in Song of Horror that require players to interact with toilets in order to move forward: one that takes place in episode 1, and another that takes place in episode 4. This is in reference to the reoccurring toilet events in the Silent Hill series, such as James in Silent Hill 2 who reaches his hand into a toilet, and Heather in Silent Hill 3 who doesn’t, but tells the player how disgusting it is and questions who would.

Shotgun In Farber & Son’s (Resident Evil)

If Daniel is selected, players can be treated to a subtle nod to the original Resident Evil in episode 2. While examining the antiques of Farber & Son’s, if Daniel examines the shotgun on the wall towards the back of the shop, he will reveal himself as a Resident Evil fan by saying, “If I take it…will the ceiling start to fall over my head?” – referencing the trap that Jill Valentine triggers in the Spencer Mansion that almost made her a Jill sandwich.

Toluca Lake Magnet (Silent Hill)

As players investigate the courtyard in episode 2, they come across an ornament with a magnet that must be used in order to obtain a key. While examining the magnet, Silent Hill fans will recognize the name “Toluca Lake” on the front and a foggy image that is in reference to the Toluca Lake of Silent Hill.

Crimson Butterfly Poster (Fatal Frame)

When investigating Julia’s room in episode 1, players may notice a collection of posters in the corner of the room. It’s a bit hard to see as it needs the flashlight to be shined on it and to look closely, but a poster featuring red butterflies with the word “CRIMSON” can be seen in reference to Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly, the third entry in the series.

Walter Sullivan (Silent Hill)

Towards the conclusion of episode 2, players must use a wrench and slip into a locked tool shed in the courtyard in order to obtain a square torch needed to solve the final puzzle of the episode. When looking around the shed, players can find a utility jacket donning a badge that has Walter Sullivan on it—the main antagonist of Silent Hill 4: The Room. 

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The works of H.P. Lovecraft have inspired a number of films for nearly sixty years. Surprisingly, it took until 1993 for someone to look at the many short stories of the prolific author and decide to make an outright anthology film.

Necronomicon brought together the talents of Brian Yuzna (Society), Shûsuke Kaneko (Death Note), and Christophe Gans (Silent Hill) in order to adapt three of Lovecraft’s short stories. Though, the level of direct adaptation varies from story to story. It’s probably more accurate to call these tales “inspired by” efforts rather than outright translations from page to screen.

But, the inspirations we get are right in line with the kind of Lovecraftian fare horror fans have come to love. The wraparound tale cast genre stalwart Jeffrey Combs as a fictionalized version of Lovecraft. He visits a monastery where he is able to read the Necronomicon, an ancient book that contains a number of dark and disturbing tales. This wraparound is solid but is more functional than fantastic. Thankfully, the way it ends features some delightful creature effects and leaves the whole endeavor on a high note.

The first segment, “The Drowned”, combines elements of “The Rats in the Walls” and Lovecraft’s nautical horror stories, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “Dagon.” Gans is the director here and sets the exact right mood for the rest of the movie. We get a number of wild creature effects that include a demon priest from the sea, octopus-faced zombies with glowing green eyes, and a Cyclopean tentacle monster that is one of the best on-screen realizations of a giant Lovecraft monster. All around, the practical effects work in the movie is top-notch, and “The Drowned” is no exception. Gans also establishes the right balance of grim and gonzo that typifies the best parts of Necronomicon. It’s likely that this first entry is the best of the bunch.

However, the second story, “The Cold”, approaches everything with a slightly more classical and nuanced delivery. Kaneko plays the story out at a measured pace. In this way, it mimics the source material, “Cool Air”, with its deliberate mystery. And the central performance from the ever-excellent David Warner is elegant and entrancing. As the middle story, it feels the longest but it pays off with some extraordinarily goopy special effects work in the end. If you’re a fan of melt movies, you’ll enjoy how this one turns out.

The final story, “Whispers”, is directed by Brian Yuzna and is both the nuttiest and the least interesting. Taking vague inspiration from “The Whisperer in Darkness”, it follows a police officer in pursuit of a serial killer. When her partner is captured, she follows the perpetrator into a warehouse where she comes across an oddball couple that takes her down into the bowels of the warehouse. What she finds there is an ancient temple and a race of extraterrestrial bat creatures that are just wild in design and execution. The motivating story isn’t especially well-handled but the monster effects in this one need to be seen. 

Frankly, it’s the combined strong direction and the focus on big effects gags that makes Necronomicon a must-see movie. Anthologies are always going to have ups and downs, but Necronomicon balances that by putting good actors, great effects, and stellar direction into every entry. I wish we had more Lovecraft anthology films like this. As it stands, this is one of the better movies to be inspired by Lovecraft’s writings. It’s a gem of a flick that carries the same kind of fun energy you get from Shudder’s Creepshow.

If you’ve enjoyed that so far, you have got to track Necronomicon down. You won’t regret it.

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Lovecraftian nightmares become reality in the terrifying new adventure for the Sixth Doctor, Constance and Flip, due for release in June 2020.

Landing in New England in the 1930s, the time-travelling trio must grapple with the realization that brilliance as an author doesn’t always mean brilliance as a person.

When a Somnifax invasion threatens to make their host’s nightmares a reality, troubled pulp horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft (Alan Marriott) poses a problem. Aside from the threat of unleashing tentacled titan Cthulhu into the real world, the TARDIS team will also have to deal with the author’s troubling sociopolitical ideologies.

Colin Baker, Miranda Raison and Lisa Greenwood star in The Lovecraft Invasion, a brand new full-cast audio drama written by Robert Valentine and directed by Scott Handcock.

Doctor Who: The Lovecraft Invasion is now available to pre-order as a collector’s edition CD or digital download from just £12.99 at www.bigfinish.com.

Here’s the full plot synopsis:

The Doctor, Constance and Flip join forces with 51st century bounty hunter, Calypso Jonze, to hunt down the Somnifax: a weaponized mind-parasite capable of turning its host’s nightmares into physical reality. Chasing it through the time vortex to Providence, Rhode Island in 1937, they arrive too late to stop it from latching onto a local author of weird fiction… Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

With time running out before Lovecraft’s monstrous pantheon breaks free and destroys the world, the Doctor must enter Lovecraft’s mind to fight the psychic invader from within. Can he and Flip overcome the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos? And will Constance and Calypso survive babysitting the infamously xenophobic Old Gentleman of Providence himself?

Writer, Rob Valentine said: “The Lovecraft Invasion is my way of combining two of my favorite things – Doctor Who and the works of H. P. Lovecraft – whilst simultaneously attempting to grapple with the problem of loving Lovecraft’s stories but not his racism. As the Doctor, Constance and Flip struggle to separate the author from his work, hopefully so will the listener.

“It was a mash-up I’d wanted to do for a long time, and quite honestly I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been done already. The heading of my original treatment was, ‘Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Cthulhu Mythos’, and that’s probably as good a description of it as any.”

Big Finish listeners can save money by getting a subscription to Doctor Who: The Monthly Adventures. Subscribers get 30% off the price, free specially recorded Short Trips stories, PDFs of the scripts, and extended downloadable extras. Subscription lengths are available for either 6 or 12 releases and can be retrospective.

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Now available on Digital and Blu-ray, director William Eubank’s Underwater has come home this week with over an hour of special bonus features, including three 20-minute featurettes, 15-minutes of deleted/extended scenes, an alternate ending (with optional commentary; both exclusive to the film’s Digital release) and a feature film commentary track.

It’s a robust package that dives relatively deep into the production, highlighting just how much work (and money) 20th Century Fox and the filmmakers put into bringing the aquatic horror tale to the big screen earlier this year. And at a time when home video bonus features are being scaled back, it’s damn sure nice to see a little bit of effort put into the release.

Here are just 10 fascinating things I learned from the commentary and various featurettes…

1) Kristen Stewart Insisted on Her Character Dying

Underwater‘s final act sees Kristen Stewart’s Norah sacrificing herself to blow up the film’s big monster, though she mostly has little say in the matter due to the only remaining escape pod being damaged. In the alternate ending, however, Norah is able to get that last pod working and escape before it’s too late. In the optional commentary track for the alternate ending, Eubank notes that though Stewart was game for filming a version of the ending wherein her character survives, she ultimately felt that Norah needed to give her life to the cause.

2) The Suits Worn By the Actors Weighed 100 Pounds

The “Production” featurette included with Underwater‘s home video release spends some time highlighting the incredibly impressive underwater suits worn by the characters, which weighed a whopping 100-pounds each. As you might imagine, this made it hard for the actors to move around; as Jessica Henwick notes, the suits weighed almost as much as she does. “I directed part of the day in one of them, and I just had sweat dripping down my face,” Eubank recalls. “This is the hardest shoot I will ever do in my life,” Henwick says during an on-set interview.

The suits, described in one of the featurettes as being “wearable submarines,” were such a crucial part of the film that Eubank viewed them as cast members in and of themselves.

3) The Underwater Scenes Were Filmed With No Water At All 

The plus side to those bulky, cumbersome suits? They slowed down the actors and helped to sell the illusion that the characters were moving through water, when oftentimes they were not. For the portions of the film where the characters are walking along the ocean floor, they were actually walking on a sand-covered set. All of the surrounding water was then added into the mix in post-production. The stunt coordinator was tasked with further slowing down the movements of the actors to replicate the look and feel of their characters moving underwater.

Stewart explains, “What they did was put us on wires, in the suits, so we could kind of walk with an implied buoyancy. We had this suspended walk. With a particular frame-rate, they were able to make it look like we were genuinely submerged.” The combination of the suits, wires and frame-rate adjustments allowed for smooth, slowed down movements.

4) Green Screen? More Like Black Screen

You might be surprised by how much of Underwater was executed practically on set. “Unlike doing a lot of green screen work, we did a lot of this kind of black screen,” star John Gallagher Jr. notes in the “Production” featurette. “The set was kind of plunged into darkness, with specific lighting. For the most part you’re just out there on a dark stage. And I actually kind of enjoyed those days, because you don’t really know what you’re looking at and what’s happening and instead of staring down a big bright green screen, you’re just looking out into darkness.”

Rather than creating a deep sea world in post-production, it was largely created live on set. With the exception, of course, of the water, which was digitally inserted into the film.

5) There’s an Alternate Version of the Movie With a Real Bunny

A 3-minute bonus feature titled “Real Bunny Montage” is presented with zero explanation, and it reveals that the stuffed bunny T.J. Miller’s character is carrying throughout the movie was sometimes replaced by a very real bunny instead. I asked Eubank about this, and he explained to me that he did it on purpose, “so T.J. would think we were going to use the real bunny, and he treated the stuffed bunny like he thought it was the real bunny.” He added, “We would only do like a take with the real bunny. And then have the stuffed bunny the rest of the time.”

In other words, the movie was shot with a real bunny and a stuffed stand-in, and the only footage that was actually used was the footage with the fake bunny. But if you look closely towards the end of the film, as Smith is being closed into his escape pod, you can see that the stuffed bunny he’s handed by Norah becomes, just for a moment, a living, breathing bunny!

6) Underwater is a Monster Movie Homage to Alice in Wonderland

Why is there even a bunny at all in the movie, you ask? Well, there’s actually a reason for that. As William Eubank explains in the commentary track, he envisioned Norah’s story as a sort of monster movie take on Alice in Wonderland, with Norah/Alice traveling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. There are several nods to this allusion throughout the film, the first of which is a Queen of Hearts card that appears on the “Lavatory” sign in the opening scene.

“There’s a lot of cool nods to Alice in Wonderland,” Eubank explains. Another nod can be found on Paul’s (T.J. Miller) chest; he’s sporting a rather large tattoo of the iconic Cheshire Cat.

7) The Film’s Monsters Are Called “Clingers” and the “Behemoth”

None of the characters actually give names to the monsters in the film, but the bonus features let us know that the filmmakers named them “Clingers” and “Behemoth.” The “Clingers” are the tall, lanky, humanoid creatures that the characters are dealing with throughout much of the film, and it’s in the final act that we meet the Kaiju-sized “Behemoth.”

And speaking of those underwater terrors…

8) The Creatures Were Originally Much Different Looking 

There’s a bunch of early creature concept art that’s shown off in the bonus features for Underwater, revealing that the “Clingers” originally looked like giant squid and the “Behemoth” was an almost crab-like Kaiju (above). But the decision was ultimately made to redesign the creatures and make them more humanoid. As for the “Behemoth,” well, he became Cthulhu.

The change from earthbound, squid-like creatures to otherworldly, Lovecraftian monsters also forced the one practical creature to be changed in post-production. The first monster we get a good glimpse of in Underwater is essentially a baby version of one of the Clingers, and a practical monster was created for this scene by KNB EFX. But that the practical baby ultimately had to be changed with digital modifications when the larger Clingers were redesigned. The end product is a mix of KNB’s monster and the digital version created by Image Engine.

One of the deleted scenes presents that footage with the original practical creature. And one of the original squid creatures was actually left in the final film. Keep your eyes peeled!

9) The Movie Was Filmed Inside an Abandoned Lowe’s

“We needed to find a location that could support multiple stages, and we ended up down in New Orleans,” Eubank explains in the “Design” featurette. More specifically, Underwater was primarily filmed in Chalmette, inside an abandoned Lowe’s that had been converted into a sound stage. Yes, much of what you see in Underwater was filmed inside Lowe’s!

Eubank explains that the store had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina several years prior, “so it was totally empty and just this massive, massive space.” The various rooms in the underwater station were constructed within that abandoned building, as were the various water tanks that were needed whenever the actors were truly walking around in water.

10) Cthulhu’s Arrival Was Teased With Easter Egg Mythology-Building

Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed an Easter egg appearance from Cthulhu before he actually appeared in the final act, mentioned by Eubank in the commentary track.

When Norah is looking through Lucien’s locker after his death, she finds drawings that reveal a bit of the film’s unexplored mythology. One of those drawings, quite clearly, is Cthulhu.

“Some major nods there, to people who want to get into that. A whole nother mythos revealed right there,” Eubank teases in the commentary track at the 1:05:50 mark.

The post Alice in Wonderland Meets H.P. Lovecraft: 10 Fun Things We Learned from the ‘Underwater’ Bonus Features appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

There’s a distinct point in the game where the story starts to take a turn. In the beginning, it seems to be about a simple plague that turns villagers into violent creatures. You hunt them through the streets and into the woods until you stumble upon Byrgenwerth. Here you find even stranger creatures: a giant centipede-scorpion hybrid, a human-fly with a bulbous head covered in eyes and students seemingly melting into a puddle of goo. 

The most jarring part of Byrgenwerth is the boss fight with Rom, The Vacuous Spider. After exploring the school and finding the head scholar immobile on a balcony, you dive off and transport into a brightly-lit lake that goes on forever. It’s a stunning image that contrasts harshly with the dimly-lit city and night-drenched forest you’ve been traversing thus far. When Rom shows up, she’s almost sad. Her giant body rolls around trying to attack while summoning meteors from the heavens and sending smaller spiderlings after you. It’s not the most fun boss fight in the game, but it is the first one that gives you the sense that there is something grander, more cosmic going on in Yharnam than you’re led to believe. 

The phrase “eyes on the inside” becomes an important one to understanding the story of Bloodborne. In the fiction, it’s a colloquial way of talking about the game mechanic of insight (in-sight, get it?) and refers to being able to understand the incomprehensible nature of the universe. Much like in the work of Lovecraft, there is always something lurking just beyond our perception that would drive a normal person mad to discover. This knowledge is being researched by several parties throughout the game, all who have conflicting ideas about how to elevate mankind to their next stage of existence. 

Eyes are an important symbol with a lot of the enemies and can help say a lot about the creature’s relationship with arcane knowledge. For example, the Witch of Hemwick takes the eye metaphor literally, removing eyes with a hooked tool, theoretically in an attempt to gain knowledge. Similarly, the description of the Accursed Brew item mentions the practice of forcibly searching the inside of a skull for eyes.  

The Insight stat itself doesn’t seem to have any impact on the game early on. Some actions use it as a currency, but there are other more subtle things that it does as it goes up. The lanterns held by the Church Servants are revealed to be covered with glowing eyes, Mad Ones spawn in specific locations, and the giant Amygdalas show up hanging from the buildings in Yharnham. While it’s not called a “Sanity Meter” like in so many other games, it manages to capture the concept in a more Lovecraftian manner than other games. 

One especially Lovecraftian enemy in the game is the Winter Lantern, which will cause your Frenzy Meter, another variant on sanity, to raise just by looking at it. So many Lovecraft protagonists end up losing their minds just by gazing upon some inhuman horror, making this the perfect type of monster for the theme. The more Insight your character has, the quicker a Winter Lantern will raise your Frenzy, reinforcing an idea of the genre: knowledge of the forbidden is dangerous. 

My favorite part about Bloodborne is that while it explores all of these very Lovecraft-influenced ideas, it does so without using the mythology. Sure, there are lots of tentacled creatures or the occasional fish-man, but it never uses Cthulhu proper, despite the fact that it’s public domain and could have been used. In creating its own mythology, it’s able to explore the ideas of cosmic horror in its own ways that don’t come with the baggage of Lovecraft, making it so much more unique. 

By not telling us about the cosmic horror story from the get-go, it gave players the experience of a Lovecraft protagonist’s, slowly unraveling mysteries around them while losing more of their mind in the process. This melds perfectly with the storytelling of the Souls games, forcing you to actively hunt down and piece together the information yourself. It’s the perfect combination of theme and genre, and while I don’t think I’d ever need to see an explicit sequel, I would love to see From Software do something similar again. 

The post How ‘Bloodborne’ Does Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror Right appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Moons Of Madness plays in the vein of walking-simulator adventures (think Layers Of Fear). You take control of Shane Newehart, an engineer stationed on Mars who must confront the horrors taking place on the planet. Little by little, Shane comes across new monstrosities that threaten the lives of him and his colleagues. As he digs deeper into the cosmic forces at play, he discovers a threat far beyond his mortal understanding.

In general, environment design isn’t half bad either. Though some parts Shane explores are a little plain, the growing evil cosmic presence helps to spice things up. There are numerous Lovecraftian visual traits throughout the game; gigantic tentacle arms, Cthulhu-looking creatures, and an evil occult book are all here. To go along with its literary influence, the game also involves a psychological aspect to its story. At times, these qualities make for solid components to the experience. Some cool environment designs bring life to the game’s setting, offering some stark and chilling atmosphere. 

As far as gameplay is concerned, players utilize Shane to explore locales and interact with puzzles. And throughout one’s playthrough, you’ll come across a good variety of puzzles. One task may have you manipulating security cameras and another may have you sneaking past robots. Some puzzle types appear more than others, but there’s enough change to keep your mind busy. Puzzle difficulty ranges as well, with some requiring little to no thought, and some providing more of a challenge. 

All this said, however, the positives of Moons Of Madness do not ease the pain of its issues.

One big area where Moons Of Madness shows struggle is in its writing. For starters, the game’s characters are dull. Given that Shane spends so much of the game by himself, communication comes through in the form of radio chatter. Efforts are made to provide a mix of dialogue that is comical, suspenseful, and emotional, but most of it comes across corny. 

When it comes to the game’s narrative, credit is due regarding the Lovecraftian, cosmic horror angle. Though a little generic and vague at times, there are some interesting ideas the narrative explores. That said, and without giving away spoilers, the psychological approach feels empty. One can see that the writers were going for an intriguing angle, but the writing never fully commits, and only treads the emotional potential. 

On top of all of this, the overall presentation of horror throughout Moons Of Madness is weak. Along with the mediocre elements of psychological horror, the game throws a few jump scares at you, as well as moments of “tension.” I use quotations because when there is a moment that a monster is chasing you, it’s quite easy to avoid any real threat to your life. Managing other threats, such as violent plants and tentacles, proves to be even easier. Unlike the gripping tension and unnerving gameplay of titles like Outlast, Moons Of Madness is more passive in its gameplay.

You would think that the mix of cosmic horror and Lovecraft would come together to create this brutal air of despair, with monsters and mystery that work to crawl under your skin. Instead though, Moons Of Madness just wants to show interesting visuals, but not have them be all that interesting to engage with. With all the cool concepts that are present, it’s weird for them to feel so dull.

While the world design and puzzle engagement are serviceable, Moons Of Madness disappointments. Given what the game is pulling from for inspiration, it’s a shame to see a story and characters without substance. Moons Of Madness may get you to lose your mind out of boredom before any alien entity can get near.

Moons of Madness review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Moons of Madness is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Moons Of Madness’ Falls Short Of Capturing The Dark Delights Of Cosmic Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The team tells us, “The story is a mix of dark fantasy and horror that deals with familiar Lovecraft themes: desperation, isolation, obsession, dreams, cosmic horror, and, of course, madness. The story is seven pages, and we estimate that our film will be somewhere between twenty and thirty minutes.”

Celephaïs tells the story of a boy who has the most wonderful dream when he is seven, and then spends sixty-six miserable years desperately trying to find it again, to escape his mundane and depressing life.

Here’s the full press release we were sent by Dream Apex:

“We have been as faithful as we can be to the source material, using as much as possible to tell the story in a way that makes sense on film. Although much of the short story can be adapted at little to no cost, the biggest challenge is the fantastical elements that are far too expensive for an independent film, such as flying boats, camels, and a pink marble city floating in the sky. So we have modified these to fit the constraints of our budget, while still maintaining their essence. We have also included tons of Easter eggs for Lovecraft fans.

“We live and work in New England, and we feel passionate about shooting here and bringing places that have never been filmed to the screen. It is our home, but, more importantly, it provides us locations that look and feel like they were taken directly from his work, and which are nearly impossible to replicate elsewhere. We can practically walk out our doors and find perfect, creepy spots in which to shoot, such as eerie seaside towns, rocky coasts, and even medieval castles.

“Our special effects, by Jeff O’Brien and Nicholas Flanagan (Shuttle, Drive-In Horrorshow, God of Vampires) are all practical, including latex gore, puppetry, and camera tricks. With the exception of compositing our effects using a computer, there is nothing in this film that couldn’t have been done one hundred years ago. This approach was born out of our lack of budget, but has become our strength as production has continued. And we are children of seventies, eighties, and nineties horror, so we feel right at home making our film this way.

“The schedule has been intense and grueling. We wrote the first word of the screenplay in late August, produced major parts of the film (including casting and location scouting) in a short amount of time, and were able to roll camera eight weeks later. The film consists of over twenty scenes, in different locations, so we have had almost no time from finishing one shoot and producing the next. It’s been an insane process, but I suppose it’s appropriate to have a little bit of insanity when tackling Lovecraft’s work. As with all films in production now, we have been delayed by COVID-19, but we are about two thirds the way through filming, and we hope to have a finished, mixed cut sometime this summer (although that may change).

“We are incredibly excited to tackle this story. We are huge Lovecraft fans, and it has been an honor to try and bring his world to life, filming it in the creepy corner of our country that he called home. Since the scope of this project is quite ambitious, we have relied heavily on support from the local film community, and we are overjoyed at how everyone’s collective efforts are paying off. Celephaïs is a celebration of the talent, passion, and dedication of New England filmmakers. We can’t wait to share it with all of you.

“Celephaïs is directed by Michael Neel (writer/director of Drive-In Horrorshow, director/head animator of Infinite Santa 8000, and director/animator of Jasper Tales) and produced by Joe Lemieux (writer/producer of The Stoop, artist for Infinite Santa 8000 and Jasper Tales, and writer/director of Veil of Blood), from a screenplay written by both. The film stars Chuck Schwager, Silvia Graziano, Jasper Neel, Judith Kalaora, Christopher Bricklemyer and Cieara Donati.”

You can check out some early promotional artwork for the film below!

The post Dream Apex Pictures Adapting Lovecraft Story ‘Celephaïs’ With All-Practical Approach [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

There are places in this world that seem to exist out of time. Hidden and forgotten countries of wilderness governed by a carnal will so far removed from human relevance that it scarcely seems natural to us. It’s in those places where magic can believably reside, where the strange and unknown can blossom and where imagination ceases to remain fantasy.

Color Out of Space (2019) materializes in such a spot, rooting itself amongst trees which pepper its opening moments, appearing as ancient, interweaving monoliths, almost alien in the foggy dim light. Then a voice resounds, ushering the film forward with the words of H.P. Lovecraft, embedding a sense of preternatural power in the foundation of the narrative before it even begins.

Residing on the vast expanse of country estate are the Gardners. A somewhat stereotypical American unit, they have shed city life in lieu of a quiet existence on an inherited farm. They are imperfect and struggling, but cohesive. Still, it’s a bond predicated on the status quo, their life having recently been upended by Theresa Gardner’s (Joely Richardson) struggle with cancer and the family’s subsequent relocation. The world is uncertain, they are very much on their own and, as a result, their actions have become progressively more and more dictated by their steadily increasing self-doubt.

The titular color strikes at the heart of these insecurities. A neon purple ring in the sky, a shade unlike any other, forms as Theresa and her husband Nathan (Nicolas Cage) make love for the first time since Theresa’s mastectomy six months prior. Their daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) lies in bed, listening to music, trying to drown out the harsh reality of her mother’s illness and her new rural life as the color invades her space. Their eldest son Benny (Brendan Meyer) stares vacantly at his computer screen and their youngest Jack (Julian Hilliard) cowers in the hall, screaming for his parents as the sight and sound of wildly chromatic particles rush through his body.

The aftermath of the color’s arrival serves as proxy for the emotional dissonance that typically accompanies a shocking trauma. Nathan folds in on himself and pours a bourbon. Theresa resents it, embracing Jack, petrified and wordless, attune to the protective nature of her motherhood above all else. Benny is frightened and Lavinia just wants it to stop. The family drama exhibited here could just as well be about the life disruption caused by Theresa’s diagnosis as it is the arrival of a potentially malicious, otherworldly entity.

Richard Stanley directs with a keen eye and a striking vision. The film is a stunning display of luminosity, the interplay between light and shadow a masterclass on how to make a visual motif into a discernible character with clear motivation. The color interacts with each person on its own terms, dividing them and mining their uncertainties until all that remains is the core of what it is they were always afraid of becoming.

Nicholas Cage is the standout, early on establishing his tumultuous relationship with his “intellectually abusive” father, from whom he inherited the farm. As the color wears him down, physically and emotionally, he gives in to his father’s nasally, exaggerated persona. He adopts the intonation that he used in the film’s opening moments in jest, gradually unhinging himself until he is nothing but a heightened clone of his deceased dad.

And, yet, for all his admittedly hilarious outbursts about Alpacas and his drama-obsessed daughter, there are equally manic eruptions that have the opposite effect of a laugh. Screaming and hammering the dashboard of his battery-drained car and shouting at his wife about the sickening pervasiveness of “Cancer smell” are but a few examples of the other side of that coin. Levity exists in life (Nathan’s embarrassing stint on the local news makes him feel more like a real dad than almost anything else in the film), and its existence here is key to the viability of the fantastical narrative.

Each character is treated to their own descent into madness, shepherded by the burgeoning size and malleability of the all-encompassing color. As their minds slip and their psyches begin to skip, in understanding and in time, nature itself flourishes, imbued with the spirited complexion of the color— not stained but in a sort of blush. Whether it be the small flowers sprouting exponentially or the vivid insects the color births, there’s undeniable beauty present in the change.

But, much like Nathan’s transformation, there is absurdity to evolution. Awe can accompany more than beauty, after all, and the final stage of change often requires an avenue that borders on the grotesque. Emotional regression in the face of a tragedy can have detrimental side effects to any relationship. Even if their bodies weren’t transforming, Nathan’s reliance on bourbon, Theresa’s self-disgust and Lavinia’s dedication to spells and rituals treading toward self-harm could make quick work of eradicating the family unit.

The film actualizes the swirling emotions of grief, repression and pain with the culmination of the color’s efforts. Mutations, surrealistic and perverted visions of characters and animals, take the forefront. Living beings interacting directly with the raw, undiluted force of the color. Much of these abominations are brought to life with a combination of stunning practical effects and CGI overlay, lending a weight and physicality that solidifies the terrifying implications and impact of these creatures in the film’s final act.

When all is said and done, the film finds itself again contemplating the immenseness of that which people do not, will not and cannot understand. The voice that shepherds the film at the end is again the same as it was at the start, that of hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight), a young outsider who throughout the film attempts to approach the oddities he encounters scientifically. However, in the end, science as we know it is a human construct. In this case, an ineffective serum against a virus from parts unknown.

Color Out of Space is bombastic, innovative science fiction. A vision of wonder and horror so arresting, from its dazzling color palette to its pulsating soundscape, that the experience of watching it feels more akin to the experience of feeling it. Grounding its characters in real, relatable emotion and mental turmoil, the outlandish events brought about by the interloping being from the stars are made all the more substantial and affecting when viewed through the prism of Richard Stanley’s extraordinary vision.

There are places on this Earth that are foreign to us. Strange, miraculous points of bewilderment and reverence. And if such places can exist where we live, breathe and die, imagine what lies beyond the realms where we can travel. For, when our existence is confined to the muzzled darkness in our own heads, the shine from the sun can be blinding.

Much like an emissary of light from some distant sphere, grief and wonderment can bring equal levels of shock to the system. The undiscovered country isn’t always out there, after all, sometimes it’s a feeling. A thought. A flash.

A color. As numbing and frenzied as H.P. Lovecraft suggested.

The post Richard Stanley’s ‘Color Out of Space’ Offers Wonder, Horror and a Peek into the Iridescent Unknown appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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. 

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Speaking with Rue Morgue ahead of the release of the Nicolas Cage-starring Color Out of Space, Stanley noted just last week that filming on The Dunwich Horror will “hopefully” begin later this year. Furthermore, he confirms that each of his planned Lovecraft adaptations will exist within the same world that kicks off with this year’s Color Out of Space.

“I’m pleased to say that SpectreVision has basically greenlit two more Lovecraft adaptations, and I’m currently prepping my new adaptation of The Dunwich Horror,” he told the site. “It will be set in the same milieu as Color Out of Space, in a near-future, disaster-struck Arkham County. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that before the cameras this winter.”

Stanley added, “With Dunwich Horror, we’ll go on campus and get back to Miskatonic University for the first time since Re-Animator. We’ll also get to deal with the Necronomicon, the black book at the core of the mythos. So I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on this.”

Lovecraft’s short story The Dunwich Horror was published in 1929. It centers on a mysterious monster locked in a farmhouse. It grows and grows, and ultimately breaks free.

The post Richard Stanley’s ‘Dunwich Horror’ Will Expand His Lovecraft Universe and Feature the Necronomicon appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Color Out of Space will be released on all three formats on February 25th!

In Color Out of Space, written by Richard Stanley and Scarlett Amaris:

After a meteorite lands in the front yard of their farm, Nathan Gardner (Cage) and his family find themselves battling a mutant extraterrestrial organism as it infects their minds and bodies, transforming their quiet rural life into a technicolor nightmare.

The cast also includes Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight with Q’Orianka Kilcher and Tommy Chong.

The post Richard Stanley’s Lovecraft Film ‘Color Out of Space’ Coming to 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray in February appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Inspired by Hans Rodionoff’s graphic novel Lovecraft, the project comes from “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

The site details, “I’m told the movie asks a horrifying question: what if H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t making it up? What if the monsters he created are real? Also, the movie will be set in 1920 within the Cthulhu mythos.”

Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (The Invitation) are writing the script, with Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) executive producing.

The post “Game of Thrones” Creators Bringing H.P. Lovecraft’s Monsters to Life for Warner Bros. appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The duo teased their early plans in a chat with Coming Soon this week, telling the site that they’re working with Richard Stanley to “build out a Lovecraft universe.”

Coming Soon adds that SpectreVision plans on adapting Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, and that if there’s enough interest, they’d like to make “at least three” Lovecraft films.

“Lovecraft is possibly the most adapted horror author ever,” Noah told the site. “But there’s really never been a totally faithful adaptation of any of his works.”

Head over to Coming Soon to read the full chat with Wood and Noah.

The post SpectreVision Looking to Make More H.P. Lovecraft Films, Including ‘The Dunwich Horror’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

At first, I was charmed with Stygian. The cartoon-style graphics are easy on the eye and becoming of the setting, the attention to detail has not been lost here. Character selection is very straightforward, (as to be expected with a Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing game), there are character presets or for the more experienced you can start from scratch, delicately assigning those precious skill points exactly where you feel you need them. Which is where the hand-holding ends.

If you’ve read any Lovecraft, or played any other alternate universe style title (Sunless Seas being a recent notable example of the latter) then the setting will be enveloping and mysterious yet eerily familiar. The developers have put a lot of love and thought into crafting both story and characters; each one has their own very unique lexicon, for example, which makes them somewhat memorable. And your choices matter. I like choices.

Navigating the world is very easy, left click, go or interact, right-click for more actions. Couldn’t be simpler. It feels nice at first, even if you’re new to Lovecraft the music and atmosphere are intriguing enough to make you forget that in 3 hours you will be bored as hell watching your party meander slowly around. The various locations here are all fairly reminiscent, Arkham, Miskatonic University, etc etc, and they all look good. I’m a huge fan of the art style they’ve used; it lends itself to the weary, run-down aesthetic very well and is a good medium for bringing to life some of the more obscure and unbelievable characters that we find in Lovecraft.

The turn-based combat is where I feel Stygian particularly lets itself down. Instead of being a welcome or exciting break from a very text-heavy game it becomes an absolute chore, with the necessity to drive story progression the only reason to endure it. Turn-based combat has a very split camp, there are those that love it and those that abhor it. I’m a fan of it when done well (XCOM, anybody?) but I can’t quite put my finger on why it doesn’t work in Stygian. It feels, slow, dull and under-explained. I’m sure most have played turn-based combat games before, but there’s always a newcomer and Stygian won’t help you there, with only one page of a tutorial shortly after starting the game.

For example, during combat, there are several shielded spots you can move a character to, in order (I am assuming based on experience in similar games) to reduce incoming damage or increase the chance of an enemy’s shot missing you. Which is it? I have no idea as these spots seemingly did nothing except make my characters unable to find an ice cube in an igloo when it was their turn to rain down hell. Well, the looming madness certainly ran through me and I became a bit disenfranchised, to say the least.

Having said that, and despite the skill tree, it’s quite apparent that the combat isn’t the main focus of the game. Mostly you will be navigating various quests and dialogue options with NPC’s whilst balancing your party. The character design is good, the conversation options far from dull and this is certainly a game where you can fully absorb yourself in your role without feeling that you are only choosing basic dialogue options, ‘this line’s for the baddy, this one’s for the goody’ etc.

As the game and story unfold, your characters can receive various buffs and afflictions. Darkest Dungeon players will be familiar with this, although Stygian is nowhere near as unforgiving. This adds a nice element to the already well crafted role-playing elements; I particularly liked when my main character was afflicted with a ‘verbal diarrhea’ curse that caused some dialogue options to be replaced with, well, an insane load of gumph. Other afflictions cause problems in combat; some with game skills such as stealth, intelligence, etc. Nicely, the characters also have a belief system which adds another element to the game, certain dialogue interactions are rewarded with more experience points when playing your character out, for example, a materialistic character will receive bonuses for correctly cheating an NPC out of money.

Each character has certain skills to develop. There’s the occult skills, the subterfuge skills, all pertaining to relevant story arcs, items, and trainable skill bonuses. There’s a lot here for character building and general RPG fans which is mainly what I have scored the game as.

I spent a good few hours in Stygian, enjoying what it had to offer. However, progress is slow, and this isn’t a criticism; a rushed role-playing game would feel incredibly incomplete, but my own patience only affords so much time watching people walk back and forth across a screen before my interest wanes. This is a game made for Lovecraft fans or those looking to itch the RPG gap that games such as Pillars of Eternity have left.

Stygian is a good role-playing game, particularly if you’re the type who can really get into your character. There’s plenty to read and lots of information to take in, this isn’t a game that will please the adrenaline junkies, but if atmosphere and a feeling of reward through solving mysteries sound good then this is one to pick up.

Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones review code provided by the publisher.

Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is out now on PC.

The post [Review] Turn-Based RPG ‘Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones’ is Full of Repetitive Cosmic Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.