Cosmic Horror: Innately Kneecapped?

[Stuart Dren]

How many interesting permutations really exist based on horror of the unknowable?

I remember a story by Lovecraft, the one where the members of a family all die when they reach a particular age due to a "curse." I can't recall its name, but the mechanics of the mystery were entirely revealed to the reader. It was satisfying, however arguably not on brand if you ask someone to describe a Lovecraftian story.

I'm thinking of how cosmic horror is portrayed today. Visual media will probably feature tentacles. Two Canadian movies come to mind (which admittedly were great):

The Void (Attack on Precinct 13 + The Thing + Lovecraft I guess)
Black Mountain Side

The US movie Underwater also comes to mind.

What they have in common—aside from wriggling bits—is

Spoiler: sort of spoiler

a vague and vast cosmic reveal. The bottom of the mystery is: you cannot begin to comprehend etc. etc.

I think horror has to have some kind of unknown, but cosmic horror seems to have a tiresome kind of unknown, the kind of unknown that conveniently doesn't require that any storying-telling debt incurred (inexplainable events which pique the reader's morbid interest) be paid back (a story-cohesive explanation). Even if the audience likes that sort of thing, just how many times in a row can they like that sort of thing?

Or perhaps cosmic horror is the crooked-man sibling of magical realism, where the events serve the theme before serving any kind of rationality. Maybe that's the only way to repeatedly appreciate it. Maybe I only feel betrayed when the themes weren't executed well enough to justify those unpaid debts.

Nick Cutter's The Deep, a few hundred pages of wandering about the sea floor while gooey-spookies happen is at least solely focused on cruelty. His Little Heaven is so steeped in other rich themes that it's hard to be disappointed by what is still a cosmic reveal (yet a more unique one).

What are your thoughts?

 

[Seven Crowns]

I didn't like "Underwater" that much. It was a beat-for-beat "Aliens" ripoff. I mean, it was cool seeing that Cthulhu thing at the end, just the visual of it. That was about it. My favorite cosmic horror movie of recent times was "The Color Out of Space." That was so well done. Oh, I did like "The Void." The ending was excellent. Kind of an "Event Horizon" finish, in a way.

For me, as someone who likes cosmic horror a bunch, it's not so important that the horror is unexplained. Some of it is explained in great detail (The Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, etc.). What I think is most important about cosmic horror is that an outside force treats humanity as inconsequential. The horror really can't be defeated, or even resisted. It's so far beyond us that we can never hope to defeat it. We'd be like a gnat attacking an elephant. I say this, but then you get a Dunwich Horror where Dr. Armitage fights the evil head on. For the most part, your only real option is to try and escape.

I guess that because the horror shatters the physical rules of this universe, it almost has to be unknown, or we'd have an explanation for it already and not be amazed by it. I do get what you're saying. Perhaps writers are too caught up in the superficial qualities of cosmic horror and then they just make up conveniences and borrow tropes from others. There's a lot of that.

Vandemeer's "Annihilation" straddled the line of unknowable/undefeatable very well, both as a book and as a movie. The horror was in your helplessness before an outside corrupting force. That force didn't even really seem hostile. It was just unearthly.

My favorite cosmic horror book of recent times is still "House of Leaves." And I hope and pray that no movie is ever made of it. Whatever is produced would fail. It's just hard to predict how completely it would ruin the story. Stay away from it, Hollywood.

(Maybe if some genius like Villeneuve got ahold of it, someone who has a history of staying true to story . . . maybe I'd feel differently.)

 

[Sandor]

I've seen some good cosmic horror and some not as good cosmic horror. I think there's a balance to be had between no description and some description. I think it tends to work better when diluted with other stuff, like Folk Horror, Body Horror, Gothic Horror, etc. It's an an interesting thought to think of it as "kneecapped" and I don't think your wrong. Thanks for making me thing Stuart.

 

[DLC]

My fav Lovecraft story is The Picture in the House. Not sure where that would fit, it seems more plain 'horror'. The last two lines seem either 'God saved me with a thunderbolt', or, as I read it - death saves him from madness.