Lovecraftian Horror Done Right – newsdubai

Welcome to The Queue – your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from around the web. Today we watch a video essay looking at the 2016 horror film ‘The Void’.

Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of excellent cosmic horror movies. What is rarer are faithful adaptations of the work of HP Lovecraft, the American author best known for his tales of Eldrich gods too great and terrible for human consciousness to describe (but they definitely had tentacles, we know that much).

Although related, Lovecraftian horror and cosmic horror are not always the same. Unlike the latter, the former is more interested in the flesh than the stars. Other details define Lovecraft’s particular type of terror: partial, epistolary accounts of half-glimpsed monstrosities, non-Euclidean geometry, forbidden knowledge, and inhuman influences on the trajectory of humanity.

Lovecraftian horror is specific, and in that specificity it is definitely not for everyone. Even after you get over the tentacles. One of the primary barriers to entry is that Lovecraftian horror has no interest in explaining its insanity to you. Being confused is part of the experience. Both you and the characters can shout for answers, but you won’t get any. And that can (rightly!) be a bit of a dealbreaker for people.

This is just the opinion of a very sick woman, but the 2016 Canadian crowd-sourced horror film The void is one of the greatest Lovecraft movies ever made. Created by Astron-6 (the crazies behind Manborg, the Editor, and Psycho Goreman), The void brings us in the media into the end game of a mysterious cult. They have set up shop in the basement of a country hospital. And whatever they’re doing down there is turning people into screaming lumps of pained flesh. The criticism that The void‘s horrors feel random and lack of context are both (1) valid; (2) kind of the whole point. It’s a Lovecraftian horror show told from the victim’s incomplete and often confusing perspective, and that’s exactly what makes it one of the closest movies ever came to capturing what the old HP sauce laid down.

Is that a policeman? Yes, such a one. Leaving things incomplete and half-assed was kind of Lovecraft’s whole deal. But why not decide for yourself with today’s video essay:

Watch “Why is THE VOID So Weird & Messed Up?!”:

Who made this?

This video about 80s nostalgia of The void is made of Ryan Hollinger, a Northern Irish video essayist who specializes in horror films. Hollinger’s analysis usually takes the form of a personal retrospective. Indulging in a healthy dose of nostalgia, Hollinger’s videos are infectiously endearing, entertaining and informative. You can also check out Hollinger’s podcast, The Carryout, on SoundCloud here. And you can subscribe to Hollinger’s YouTube account here.

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Related Topics: Horror, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Film School Rejects. She currently runs three columns on FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also the curator of One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can be found screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter here: @TheWorstNun. (She her).