Alternately called cosmic horror or Lovecraftian horror, this brand of story is focused on unknowable and ancient terrors. While the genre’s most iconic monster, Cthulhu, slumbers in a lost underwater city, cosmic horror just as often directly lives up to its name and comes from the cold of space or is lurking in isolated areas like Antarctica. The genre has few real heroes, mostly focusing on people who are already deeply flawed or struggling before they confront these horrors. While they may be killed, the protagonists are just as likely to be rendered insane or somehow fundamentally transformed into something as equally unknowable and terrible as the unspeakable creatures they have encountered.
But how did cosmic horror seep into the mainstream of movies, TV, and games? Let’s trace that history from D&D to True Detective to Nicolas Cage and beyond…
Forbidden Knowledge, From Pulp Magazines to Dungeons & Dragons
Lovecraft died in poverty at the age of 46, most of his work only ever seeing publication in pulp magazines. His stories also remain controversial today because so many of them are rooted in racism and antisemitism. But despite this, he’s had an outsized cultural influence because of the other authors he directly worked with and inspired, and the fact that his works fell into the public domain and therefore could be freely borrowed and adapted.
Lovecraft corresponded with multiple other pulp writers on a shared universe called the Cthulhu Mythos, creating a pantheon of horrific entities known as the Great Old Ones and secret-filled locations such as the New England town of Arkham. The best known of these collaborators was Robert E. Howard, who incorporated many of the elements of cosmic horror into his Conan the Barbarian stories to found the sword & sorcery genre.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Lovecraft%20corresponded%20with%20multiple%20other%20pulp%20writers%20on%20a%20shared%20universe%20called%20the%20Cthulhu%20Mythos%2C%20creating%20a%20pantheon%20of%20horrific%20entities%20known%20as%20the%20Great%20Old%20Ones.”]
Both authors were hugely influential on the creators of Dungeons & Dragons. While J.R.R. Tolkien brought the game the idea of elves, wizards, and halflings teaming up in an epic quest to save the world, Howard provided the groundwork for parties of mercenary adventurers looting forgotten dungeons. Lovecraft, meanwhile, inspired aberrations, the entire group of monsters typically identified by an overabundance of eyes, mouths, or tentacles.
As fearsome as D&D creatures like beholders or illithid may be, the game has never been a really good fit for cosmic horror. It’s hard to have something be unkillable and unknowable in a game that is designed around everything having a hit point total that a savvy, high-level, and appropriately geared character can reduce to zero. But other games would make better use out of the concepts.
Madness Spreads Through Call of Cthulhu, Arkham Horror, and The Thing
The ’80s marked an enormous surge in the popularity of cosmic horror, starting with the Cthulhu Mythos being included in the 1980 publication of the D&D supplement Deities & Demigods and the release of the first edition of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu tabletop game. Unlike D&D, that game expected player characters to die or go mad in their quest to investigate dark cults and forbidden lore, with sanity becoming a statistic in the game that was all too easy to lose.
Chaosium also published an Arkham Horror board game in 1987 where players worked together as investigators trying to stop horrors from overwhelming the titular town. The game, which also used sanity as a limited resource, was eventually sold to Fantasy Flight Games where it remains a top title that has spawned numerous spinoffs, including the globe-trotting Eldritch Horror and the fast-paced game Elder Sign.
While there had been some direct adaptations of Lovecraft’s work to television and film before the ’80s, that decade marked the release of two of the most influential films to integrate aspects of the Mythos or cosmic horror. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and its sequels featured the Necronomicon, a book of dark magic Lovecraft invented for one of his short stories, while John Carpenter’s The Thing, the beginning of the filmmaker’s Apocalypse Trilogy, was an adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 cosmic horror story Who Goes There? Those films became cult hits, and combined with the cosmic horror-themed board games to inspire a new generation of stories.
Cosmic Horror Infects Gaming
Cosmic horror stories often feature a corrupting influence that infects the minds of those who encounter it. In reality, Dungeons & Dragons acted as a vector for the creatures and concepts of cosmic horror to reach a wide variety of other games.
The Old Gods, ancient and unfathomable beings of immense power with way too many eyes and tentacles, were imprisoned in the World of Warcraft setting of Azeroth… and players have been fighting their influence since 2006. Their threat was a major plot point in the recent expansion Battle for Azeroth, which culminated in a fight with the Cthulhu-like entity N’Zoth.
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-best-horror-tv-shows-on-netflix-right-now&captions=true”]
When Wizards of the Coast purchased Dungeons & Dragons, the game’s developers ramped up the role of cosmic horror in the game with 4th Edition, which let players pledge themselves to alien beings of the Far Realms as Star Pact warlocks. The genre then came to Wizards’ collectible card game Magic: The Gathering in 2010 with the release of Rise of the Eldrazi, which introduced the titular group of imprisoned horrifying beings capable of corrupting and devouring entire worlds.
Dungeons & Dragons spinoff and rival Paizo integrated the Mythos even more tightly into Pathfinder. While they didn’t have the rights to illithids and beholders, the Mythos was fair game so they packed Bestiaries with Elder Things, Gugs, and Great Old Ones.
Meanwhile, cosmic horror was also creeping into comic book series like Joe Hill’s Locke & Key and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, as well as making its way back to screens through the first Hellboy film. But while the genre was reaching ubiquity within geek culture, it wouldn’t achieve crossover success until 2014.
True Detective Crack the Seals
As superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and video games moved from the fringes of pop culture to near dominance, it’s probably inevitable that cosmic horror would move with it. But the first title to really achieve that crossover wasn’t an adaptation but a strange anthology mystery show: HBO’s True Detective.
Noir and cosmic horror both often tell nihilistic stories of people in over their heads searching for answers that don’t leave them better off, so the two genres are a natural pairing. Matthew McConaughey’s eccentric homicide detective Rustin Cohle perfectly straddled both worlds with his strange rants about time being a flat circle.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/10/true-detective-why-the-ending-worked-ign-conversation”]
The series drew direct influence from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, which predates Lovecraft but was integrated into the Mythos. While the show never really delivered on the promise of its mysterious Yellow King, the ideas captured the minds of fans who took to the internet with elaborate theories about his identity and the true meaning behind every cryptic clue. Future seasons of True Detective left the cosmic horror behind, but other writers and directors surely took note of the interest these elements had sparked, leading to a fresh wave of big-budget projects.
The Stars Align for Cosmic Horror’s Dominance
The tendrils of cosmic horror can be found just about everywhere today. A star-studded cast including Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac investigated the impact of an alien influence in the horrifyingly beautiful 2018 film Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel of the same name. The plot is somewhat similar to the Lovecraft short story The Colour Out of Space, which recently received a direct adaptation starring Nicolas Cage that featured grotesque monsters and Cage convincingly succumbing to madness. Director and co-writer Richard Stanley said he hopes to make it the first in a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations.
HBO tried again this year with Lovecraft County, an adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel that confronts and subverts Lovecraft’s racism by making the protagonists African Americans dealing with monsters and the horrors of segregation. Even Stephen Colbert showed off his knowledge of the Mythos during a Late Show monologue spurred by learning that Cthulhu received some write-in votes during the 2020 presidential election.
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=lovecraft-country-season-1-photos&captions=true”]
Meanwhile the genre continues to be ubiquitous in gaming with the releases of Darkest Dungeon, Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City, Moons of Madness, and most recently Baldur’s Gate III, which really leans into D&D’s cosmic horror elements by focusing the plot on an illithid invasion. Sabrina may be ending, but Netflix has renewed its adaptation of Locke & Key. And Sam Raimi seems likely to get another chance to show off his love for Lovecraft on the big screen by directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Cosmic horror’s staying power comes from its ability to be spliced into just about anything. It can stand alone as stories of normal people confronted with strange forces and terrible truths who are doomed to fall into madness and despair, but it can also provide terrible antagonists for fantasy or science-fiction heroes. Its themes of isolation, corruption, and the dangers of exploration remain relevant so long as humans are lonely, distrustful, and curious. Now that it’s been firmly planted in our cultural consciousness, its influence may prove just as long lived and powerful as a Great Old One.
What are your favorite cosmic horror stories? Let’s discuss in the comments!
