20 of the Best Lovecraftian Horror Movies
It’s sort of odd to think that when I first began reading the cosmic horror fiction of author H.P. Lovecraft in the early 2000s, the man was still considered a fairly obscure figure in American pop culture, if not literary history. Horror fiction devotees could have told you about Lovecraft’s pantheon of elder gods and otherworldly beings at that point, but the average cinemagoer had little to no familiarity at the time with any of them, Cthulhu or otherwise. Some 20 years ago, the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft were still the stuff of deep nerd cliché, a sort of “secret handshake” among horror geeks and 1980s horror film buffs.
A few decades later, awareness of the author’s life and his most famous creations has been utterly transformed, and the average person walking down the street now has a good chance of recognizing the name “Lovecraft,” or even that of Cthulhu. This should perhaps not be a big surprise—after all, this same period has seen the average person go from being dimly aware of only a handful of Marvel superheroes, to likely being able to recite the names and powers of dozens of them, and our biggest Hollywood blockbusters revolve entirely around geek material that was once the stereotypical stuff of poor losers being walloped by cinematic bullies. That which was once the warren of outcast nerds has been almost completely absorbed into the mainstream, and this includes the more obscure corners of the horror universe. Perhaps in that sense, it was inevitable that entire episodes of South Park would eventually revolve around Lovecraft jokes, and that plush Cthulhu dolls would proliferate online.
If there’s one place that Lovecraft and his cosmic horror ideals have always been at home, though, it’s been in cinema. Since the Stuart Gordon-driven heyday of bizarre Lovecraft adaptations in the 1980s, to modern indie horror, the author’s themes of cosmic terror and man’s insignificance in the universe have persevered and become reference points for the genre as a whole. Along the way, “Lovecraftian” has become one of the genre’s most oft-cited (and frankly overused) adjectives, implying as little as “contains tentacle monsters” to some, while hinting at profound cosmic truths to others. In our eyes, “Lovecraftian” horror films are all about peeling back the veil that separates reality from the realms of madness, and watching characters deal with the resulting shock to their central nervous system.
Here, then, is a celebration of 20 of the best “Lovecraftian” horror films to be found out there. Some are literal adaptations of Lovecraft stories, or loosely inspired substitutes. Others are clear tributes to the man, and his impact on American weird fiction. Still others simply evoke the ideas of cosmic horror with which Lovecraft is so closely and permanently affiliated. All make for great watching, especially in the Halloween horror season.
Lovecraftian horror honorable mentions: AM1200, Chilean Gothic, Dreams in the Witch-House, Cool Air, Bride of Re-Animator, The Unnameable, The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter, Pickman’s Muse, Cthulhu (2007), Black Site, Cast a Deadly Spell
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