Originally written for Pi’s Crescendo (2020), the official student magazine of Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune.
It all began with the First World War… Seeing horrors everywhere in the real world, people eventually got desensitised to the fantastical folklore and superstitious entities. When H.P. Lovecraft began writing in 1917, little did he know that he would create a revolutionary horror subgenre, one that resonated with the rapid scientific progress of his era and would shake the world for decades to come.
Very soon, his name became an adjective to refer to the particular form of terror he invoked: Lovecraftian Horror! Also called Cosmic Horror, the genre basically revolves around the fear of the unknown.
H.P. Lovecraft (Circa- Jan, 1935)
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
– Howard Philips Lovecraft
Imagine a scenario wherein you are hunting in an unexplored, remote forest; you are dizzy, but you keep walking further, only to realise that you have suddenly encountered a weird-looking, gigantic and gloomy cave. You stand there, terror-struck, as the dark entrance stares back at you. A moment later, you hear a low, blood-curdling growl, the one no human has ever heard before! “Darn! What in the world can make such a terrific sound!?”, you think. Whatever it is, it can’t be anything from this Earth; simply no chance! Being in the midst of the mysterious forest, you are equipped with all the ‘Hunting 101’ gear and the survival kit, yet you feel there is no choice but to flee for your safety.
So, you must be wondering: Just who or what kind of creature was inside that terrific cave? But let’s get to the real question:
Why did you run?
Or more precisely…
What made you run?!
Was it the ‘creature’ that made you run? NO, I strongly disagree! Believe it or not, it was your fault. Again, I may sound like a blame-artist, but that’s the truth, cause, frankly speaking, given the scenario, I would’ve reacted the same way. Had you known it was a mere lion, you would have shot it for sure. But what made you react in a different way in the latter scenario? The real answer is, it’s because we are afraid of the unknown. But looking again at the lion scenario, we are familiar with the existence of such a carnivore, and it wasn’t as unusual as an unknown creature letting out horrifying growls.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Call of the Cthulhu (Courtesy: Pixabay)
Unlike those tentacles, ghastly jump-scares, and weird makeup in the slasher genre, Lovecraft makes you dwell deeper into the depths of your mind and makes you wonder about your role in this grand scheme of things. Brace yourself for some existential crisis, and finally, you are going to realise how insignificant you are in the big wide universe! His stories take place in the same fictional continuity, known as the Cthulhu Mythos, and is filled with monstrous deities, often larger than planets, whose true motives, nature and shape remain vague or unknown. These entities are unfathomable forces that can’t be verbally described and hence, even the mere thought of illustrating them in an improper way or using bad VFX, may ruin the effect! That’s the sole reason why they’re very few purely Lovecraftian flicks. If something is difficult to describe verbally, it’s harder to recreate such an entity for the big screen!
Forget unfathomable monsters, but his writings possess the ability to invoke terror using concepts from mathematics and geometrical patterns. In the Cthulhu Mythos, the sunken city of R’lyeh is characterised by its unnatural non-Euclidean geometry! It is heavily implied this is achieved as a side effect of not following the natural laws of this universe rather than simply using an alternate geometric model, as the sheer innate wrongness of it is said to be capable of driving those who look upon it insane. If you are into Doctor Who, you must be familiar that the Doctor’s TARDIS (time-machine/spaceship which looks like a police-box) is apparently smaller on the outside but bigger on the inside and well, that’s just a brief look into the world of non-Euclidean geometry!
TARDIS: It’s bigger on the inside!
Let’s have a look at Netflix’s Bird Box, based upon Josh Malerman’s book with the same name:
Courtesy: Bird Box/Netflix
Love it or hate it, but this film is the perfect example of a Lovecraftian horror film done right! To get the gist, Bird Box is all about monsters with an unknown origin and form, which when looked at, can make people go insane and lead them to commit suicide! The clever thing about this film is the fact that they never reveal how the monsters look and it is totally left to the viewer’s imagination. As weird as it may sound, Malerman revealed in one of his interviews that these monsters were inspired by the mathematical concept of infinity! To quote his words:
“A man would go mad, lose his mind, if he were to attempt to fathom infinity… I really started thinking about and it became, like, a monstrous concept to me.”
- Josh Malerman (Author: Bird Box)
So, is the personified form of ‘infinity’ the real threat in Bird Box? Something like an unexplained force, which is beyond our comprehension, enough to make us lose our sanity and leave death as the only cure? You guessed it: the real identity of those creatures will never be made clear since giving them a shape, form, or an origin will strip away all the feelings of terror associated with them! Such cosmic entities render humans into mere playthings, and the very thought of it is extremely frightening!
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind!”
– Howard Philips Lovecraft
When faced with a threat of the unknown kind, the only thing you can do is wonder:
WHAT WAS IN THE CAVE?
If you are interested in watching a great Lovecraftian Horror film, check out: Tumbbad.
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