I remember when it first came out...
Everyone was all hush hush about it and didn't want to spoil the movie. I'm sure more people would watch this if it was known this is about Lovecraft's mythos.
shareHow does this movie relate to Lovecraft? I’m familiar with the name (Lovecraft) but not the work, and genuinely curious.
shareAside from ripping off the term "Ancient Ones" and general concept of rituals pertaining to such, this has nothing to do with Lovecraft's works or mythos in any direct, genuine way. Let alone that it could scarcely be further in tone from H.P.L.
(Speaking as a huge Lovecraft fan: I really hated Cabin in the Woods.)
Zephyr_cape, in your opinion, what would be a movie with true Lovecraft themes/tone?
shareWith Cabin I think it's reaching to find a connection to Lovecraft and what it's trying to do is really something else.
Meanwhile, I personally don't think anyone who's tried has ever made a film that accurately captures the essence of H.P.'s writing and I'm pretty sure I've seen all or close to all of the attempts out there, including many independent and amateur short films.
For my money the closest it gets is either From Beyond, which I do like quite a bit, or In the Mouth of Madness, which is just ok for me – but I still find both miss in conveying the HPL vibe by a mile in their own respective ways. I really like the Re-Animator flicks, but they're not good Lovecraft adaptations at all. The 2005 Call of Cthulhu isn't terrible but it's presented through too cutesy a faux-antique lens to put you actually within that world. A major problem is that Lovecraft writes about metaphysical subjects that are beyond imagination, so being too tangible in depicting these things ruins them. His writing style is also ostensibly difficult to capture, being sort of detached/analytical/literarily cold while describing wildly fantastical things, and suffused with a kind of timeless antiquarianism. That's another issue – most of these films are too modernized and specific, trashily made (bad cgi, ott ultraviolence, etc.), and injected with comedy and camp, (HPL can be pulpy, but the way in which has not been touched – certainly Cabin in the Woods is full-on modern sarcasm/irony in contrast, and Re-Animator is more silly,) to feel true. HPL was a hardcore antiquarian and absolutely loathed all things remotely modern. In fact his whole oeuvre is completely based on extreme loathing of modernity and society and seeking escape from it in the far flung corners of imagination, while critiquing its futility and distastefulness. So from a form/content perspective it would make sense that shooting digital, using cgi in any capacity, writing in modern specificity, casting stars etc. will immediately put you off the mark.
I think it's possible to make a great and faithful adaptation of his work, but it remains to be done. It will have to be approached very subtly and cleverly by someone highly visionary, not tied down to the profiteering whims of a studio/suits, well versed in abstraction, and who knows the source material inside and out. It's hard to imagine the result would be anything commercially viable, but it's sort of exciting to imagine the possibilities.
Thanks for your response! Very enlightening. I see Lovecraft’s name mentioned often on horror movie boards and sci-fi boards, seems that he is an inspiration to many artists, and has many fans.
Also I really dig “The Mouth of Madness” (so trippy) and didn’t realize it had Lovecraft influence.
Where should I start when it comes to reading Lovecraft’s stories?
Sure! Yup, he's sure been widely influential. It's interesting that no one has quite nailed adapting anything! (Imho, but I suspect HPL would also agree.)
For someone new to his writings I'd suggest "The Music of Erich Zann". It's super short and a good toe dip into his realm:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lovecraft/hp/zann/
Beyond that, in a nutshell I'd say his work breaks roughly into a few categories:
• Lord Dunsany worship/astral phantasmagoric fantasies like "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"
• Metaphysical horror, ie "Dreams in the Witch House", "Dagon", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"
• Suspense stories, ie "The Shadow Out of Time"
• Lore tales, like "At the Mountains of Madness"
• Weird tales/pulp satire, like "Herbert West–Reanimator".
I got into him initially by picking up a few volumes of collected tales, which are usually a mixture of the above, and skimming around, picking my next story by whichever initial or random passage grabbed my curiosity.
Thanks!
shareWhat did you think of "Dagon"? My dad is a big Lovecraft fan, and he showed me that film once. It certainly wasn't the best film in the world, but I found it to be really unique and original. It was to me, at least. Though, I suppose that's more of a credit to HPL than to the filmmakers. I've yet to read any of his work. Assuming you didn't care for "Dagon", where did it suffer in comparison to the book?
shareIt's worth a check out – it's sure awesome that someone tried to make it, but I don't think it's a good movie, nor one of Stuart Gordon's best Lovecraft films, and also misses the mark on feeling like Lovecraft by far for a lot of the reasons in the above ramble. It's too modern in form and specificity, uses loads of SyFy original movie-tier cgi, visceral depiction instead of distant suggesting, too much literally happens, etc. – if you check out a couple of his short stories you'll immediately get how wildly different the tone is. The overall feeling I get from the movie is grodiness, rather than the unearthly dread/wonder of what's on the page. I sure won't be forgetting the [spoiler]face-removal scene[/spoiler] any time soon though. Also of note, the film Dagon is more an adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" than "Dagon", though Dagon the entity is suggested in several of HP's stories.
shareAlso of note, the film Dagon is more an adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" than "Dagon", though Dagon the entity is suggested in several of HP's stories.
Wow, I had no idea. Like I said, I haven't read any of them yet. I'm glad you told me before I did. I was just about to ask what you might suggest starting with, and then I saw your reply above to tph. I'll make "The Music of Erich Zann" the next thing I read. share
Zephyr_cape, in your opinion, what would be a movie with true Lovecraft themes/tone?
Give 'Cast A Deadly Spell' a view.
share
I've been a fan of HPL and Call of Cthulhu (the game) for over 30 years. I'd say this movie definitely had an HPL/CofC vibe to it, but, clearly, not on the finer points. So did Hell Boy.
shareI can sort of buy this having something in common with the experience of playing CofC (I assume you mean the tabletop rpg?) because there's the element of people (you and your friends as players) controlling the events of a microcosm, but CofC is of course not a Lovecraft work, and fun as it is to play, it does not capture the vibe of HPL's writings and I can't imagine him not rolling his eyes over it.
Sorry but with all due respect to anyone who likes to file this flick and other vaguely HPL influenced things under their idea of Lovecraftianism, but seeing as there are people here unfamiliar with Lovecraft wanting to know if this is actually about or reflective about his work in some way, I can't get behind the claim that it remotely is. To understand Cabin in the Woods that way is to totally miss what the movie is trying to do. Still in response to the OP's assertion that this movie is "about Lovecraft's mythos", no, it absolutely is not in any way shape or form.
The extent to which CitW has anything to do with Lovecraft is (SPOILERS):
• They appropriated the concept from The Call of Cthulhu of a cult that worships terrible ancient gods, though the rules and logistics surrounding these gods are not the same, let alone any specifics. A major factor to note is that in CitW, the concept of the Ancient Ones is used as a satirical representation of the audience/horror fandom. The whole message of this movie is of blood sacrifices being made to appease audiences, where we are the elder gods looking down into movie microcosms, enjoying the deaths of characters, and the laboratory people are the filmmakers. So the one very generalized element borrowed from Lovecraft, (which is not even totally a unique concept to his work,) is used only as a satirical mechanism. HPL never wrote anything meta in this way.
• That's it.
As I posted earlier, the vibe of this movie throughout could not be less Lovecraftian. The tone from front to back is tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy/parody of tropes that come from the Friday the 13th movies, with characters that are outright caricatures of their dumb, horny, smart talking, essentially disposable bimbos, stoners, et al, The Evil Dead, and so on, delivered in a near over the top 2000s and onward insufferable trying to be good so hard it's bad acting style. There is way more reference to 80s and onward/modern horror films here, and always in send-up mode, than the tiny disrespectful crumb borrowed and twisted to other ends from the early 1900s antiquarian horror literature of HPL.
Cabin in the Woods is as Lovecraftian in feel as the Saw movies are E. A. Poe-esque, i.e. not one bit. I find it totally baffling that anyone who knows Lovecraft would consider this to capture anything about his work. I strongly disagree that a writer's style and signature ambiance, especially a writer famous for his unique style, and whose works would not function in any other rendering, qualifies as among the finer points of what it is to reflect their work.
I can see you feel strongly about this. In your first email, you were correct about CofC the tabletop RPG, which I have played and ran since 1986. And of course, CofC, is based, or at least inspired, by the writings of HPL.
Thus, when I watch a movie that has a Cthulhu Mythos (as it is called) "vibe", I'm viewing it in the lens of it being capable of adapting to form a "CofC adventure" (and I have done this for the 1982 version of The Thing and, more loosely, The Price of Darkness, and even more loosely, Lord of Illusions, including being ran at GenCon). So that's my context. As far as HPL rolling his eyes over people playing games that were clearly inspired by his writing decades after his death, I'd like to think he'd be pleased at some level.
BTW, I read a fair amount of HPL in high school and college, but as a write-editor, I personally found his work a little plodding and verbose for my tastes, but I recognize the creativity and genius.