So glad to find somebody else saying themes first, monsters second. People don't get it that all the fantasy elements in cosmic horror are merely the surface story. The horror itself is philosophical. If I may add a point to your great video essay, all immortal stories are like that. From Odyssey to Game of Thrones, themes first is the key to immortality.
And that applies to writing in general, not just horror. It’s just like what LocalScriptWriter always says when writing characters: “Purpose first, personality second.”
1. Rejection of anthropocentrism! 2. Unknown or unknowable information. 3. Human insanity or psychological frailty. 4. Powerful but indifferent/evil supernatural entities.
Minor correction because people get this wrong all the time. Seeing the monster in Bird Box doesn't automatically kill you. It makes you have this uncontrollable urge to kill yourself. In a few people that it doesn't give that urge to it makes them want to kill anyone who's still alive. That's much more terrifying.
I'm a sucker for cosmic horror. Some people say serial killers and stuff that could happen in real life is scarier, but I love the existential dread of a good Lovecraftian story.
1. Rejection of anthropocentrism! 2. Unknown or unknowable information. 3. Human insanity or psychological frailty. 4. Powerful but indifferent/evil supernatural entities.
the Doctor Who episode Midnight is a great example of cosmic horror as it captures a great sense of claustrophobia onboard the shuttle and the fact that doctor does not know what the unseen threat is really amps up the fear factor
The video game Bloodborne is an excellent example of the Forbidden Knowledge trope of cosmic horror. A church creates cures from the blood of cosmic entities that they have little knowledge of. Although the cures work, they slowly begin to mutate those who received them and the whole city begins to fall apart into madness as the townsfolk start attacking one another and become monsters themselves whether they realize or not.
Another example is that when you start a New Game +, your Insight from the first playthrough carries over, meaning new enemies that weren’t there the first time are now present, and creatures you thought didn’t manifest until later in the game are revealed to have always been there, invisible to your blissfully ignorant mind.
I'd say that Stephen King's IT definitely counts as cosmic horror, considering what Pennywise really is (in the book at least, not the movies, neither of which quite nail it) and that's probably my favorite. I reread that book about once every 5-6 years and having first read it when I was 10 (the approximate age the characters are in the 1958 sequences) and again when I was 40 (around their age in 1985) definitely gave me new appreciation for a lot of the themes in the book. The Thing is one of my absolute favorite movies. It's a masterclass in atmosphere and mood, the story is tight, the acting sublime, and the effects nearly flawless. I watch it at least once every October, sometimes more. The Mist is another good novella by King, and the film proves what I've long maintained (that Frank Darabont should be the only person allowed to adapt King's work into film). The new ending the film has surpasses the original story in my opinion.
Yeah, it's been forever since I read IT, but I think it fits the bill, especially considering Pennywise's cosmic origin. I love both endings of The Mist. The movie version unquestionably has more impact, but there's something chilling about the "What do we possibly do now?" note that the novella ends on.
Wouldn't call It cosmic horror. The creature itself, yes, but the story is more a classic horrorstory. The feel, the theme, the plot. It answers way more questions than it leaves unanswered. You can easily escape by just leaving town, it has a very happy ending... And like often the true horror comes with the people, It doesn't really do much compared to what people do to eachother.
Thank you for choosing The Thing as an example for writing advice! As you may have suspected from my avatar, I'm quite the fan. It's my all-time favorite movie of any genre, period. I saw it in a drive-in, sitting on the roof of our station wagon along with my sister (ages 6 and 8, respectively), listening to our parents argue from down below (my dad told my mother it was a Disney movie like ET, just so he could see it in theaters, LOL).
Not seen the mist yet (tried to avoid the spoilers) but Carpenter's version of the Thing was always amazing due to the creativeness of the creature and just how unique the atmosphere and setting was.
"The Empty Man" is fantastic is fantastic. I think it was mismarketed as the trailer makes the impression that this is a teen slasher but actually it is a cosmic horror gem.
My favorite cosmic horror story is "In the mouth of maddness" (SPOILERS) one of my favorite stories to talk about because there is just so much to unpack. The very end John Trent goes into a theater and sits down to watch...the movie we just watched that shows everything that has happened to him throughout the movie. It is also spliced in a certen way where in the movie he is witching he screams "THIS IS NOT REALITY! NOT REALITY! this is reality." As the character who is a big skeptic has watched reality completely warp around him while watching a movie about his own disent into maddness.
I think the key factor is DEFINITELY not to explain too much about the threat the protagonists encounter (the protagonists can even defeat them in the story in a way, but it must not be done in an easy way), or else it just loses the flavor completely and utterly to the point it doesn't "deserve" to be called cosmic horror anymore.
It's just so sad that most people just want results and sometimes all they want is the results, so the narrative, the story, all the good stuff just have to make way of it, and even sad thing is that those people didn't really care about the results as well, they see it, they happy, and they just leave, left all those who cared about the things that can only hold up together by mystery in pain...@@WriterBrandonMcNulty
My favourite cosmic horror is actually the console game Eternal Darkness (Sanity's Requiem). It's pretty old now but the way it introduces the cosmic horror slowly through Alex's experience in her uncle's old mansion, going through the generations of forbidden knowledge... the creepy visuals, the expanding concepts... ah man, it's amazing. Heavily Lovecraftian in a good way.
If anyone plays the GameCube game due to this recommendation, in the beginning of the game you have to make s choice. Choose green for the best experience.
Phenomenal game, although I never finished it because I got stuck around midway through (it might've been after one of the Spanish Inquisition sections). I really need to give EDSR another shot one of these days
your writing advice videos were really helpful for my writing! But one subject that I'm really interested in knowing more is ensemble casts, being casts with more than two protagonists.
I just love The thing on the doorstep by Lovecraft. Would recommend to read a few of the other books first thou, knowing a little bit about the mythos, the different dimensions, times and stuff makes it even better. That stuff gets only hinted in this story. It focuses more on the characters and their situation. It just begins with the greatest hook I ever came across, in the very first paragraph. In my opinion, on of the best beginnings ever. " It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer."
I love both versions of Body Snatchers. The 50s version holds up remarkably well. I watched it for the first time in the 2010s and couldn't believe how gripping it was.
Brandon, once again your insights are so on-point and concise it blows me away. Cosmic Horror is not even a sub-genre I like all that much, but now I understand and appreciate it a lot more thanks to your analysis and advice.
_The Dunwich Horror_ is my favourite. It's the first Lovecraft story I read and was like "yeah, this really is kinda creepy" _At The Mountains of Madness_ is pretty cool too
ALL of Lovecraft's stories are oldies, if not all of them are classics. The Dream quest of Unknown Kadath is certainly an oldie and it should be a classic but it's still too obscure.
2. lovecraftian horror can end in a somewhat positive way where there the protags win against the entity, banish it, but it is clear that ii is only a temporary victory, and that at some point the horror will return. While horror is about returning the world to the status quo, cosmic horror is about the world being irredeemable, impossible to repair, broken in some fundamental way. Any solutions are bandaids on a bloody stump where once the arm was.
My favorite Cosmic Horror story is Roadside Picnic. Its not so strictly horror, but I feel like it captures the feeling of human irrelevance better than anything else I've read.
My favorite cosmic horror stories are my own. I love my writing. I’m a huge fan of the novel 14 by Peter Clines. Its sequels are quite good, too. My go-to Lovecraft works include f "The Colour Out of Space", "Shadow over Innsmouth" and "At the Mountains of Madness" and the vignette "Dagon". Movies include the 1959s'original THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, THE MIST, EUROPA REPORT, the HPLHS version of "Call of Cthulhu". I also love IT by Stephen King and his short story "Crouch End", and the "John Dies at the End" series by Wong.
I really liked John Langan's The Fisherman, I think it toes the line between neutral and negative, where the protagonist survives, and humanity maybe doomed but its left as an unknown.
I’ve been a longtime admirer of H.P. Lovecraft, and his work inspired me to write within the genre. I’m beginning to outline the plot of a book I’ve been putting off for years, done in epistolary form (which is similar to Lovecraft’s form) through the use of journal entries and letters.
Honorable Mention: the movie "Event Horizon". Really ticks all the boxes. I would love to see some kind of director's cut made, but sadly, the material has been lost, so it won't happen. I feel the movie does a lot of things right and has great potential, but the released version lacks emotional punch somehow. Mabye it's the lack of a protagonist with motivations to relate to.
I loved the King in Yellow. It's a precursor to Lovecraft and contains more of the type of cosmic horror in the category of forbidden knowledge and cults. There a four short stories only connected by a strange play called the King in Yellow which seems to instill madness in whoever reads it.
Uzumaki is probably the most effective cosmic horror story I've read, for the simple reason that, by the last few chapters, it really didn't matter what the protagonists did; they were screwed either way. You spiral down with them because you just want some semblance of an answern
I love cosmic horror (usually through writing, not so much in media since they usually don't do it so well.) But Carpenter's The Thing is awesome. After all that tension and suspicion, they leave you with the idea that... "Well... humanity just might be completely fucked. Sleep tight."
I saw when this was posted but had to wait to watch this because I was watching Kurt on TV. It was Bone Tomahawk so I broke my own "don't watch on TV what you have on DVD" rule but it beats repeats of Would I Lie To You from 6 years ago.
Thank you for the video, i very much appreciate the tips, im attempting to write a story about the moon and twisting, leaving this idea that it has a strangle hold on hummanity because we need it to survive My biggest hurdle is connecting character to story, and the isolation bit will help with it
My favorite cosmic horror story comes from a man who was a known friend of H. P. Lovecraft, but wasn't typically a cosmic horror writer: The Tower of the Elephant, by Robert E. Howard. Yes, my favorite cosmic horror story is a Conan adventure, and I'm not going to say why because I don't want to spoil it.
The Thing (or perhaps Alien) is my favorite cosmic horror story, because the best part about this movie is none of the characters, including the titular monster, are stupid. The Mist is an intense movie, not because of the monsters crawling around the titular mist as they actually behave like animals despite how they kill the humans, but it's because of the survivors turning against one another from religious extremism, establishing that humans are the real monsters. Color Out of Space is really scary. I haven't seen Bird Box, The Empty Man and Uzumaki.
That tone of existential dread, insignificance, and ambiguity is absolutely essential to cosmic horror. You can have a powerful alien monster, heroes way out of their depth, an isolated setting, and a downer ending, but without that tone, you don't have cosmic horror. Imagine a story with those elements, but the monster's motives are well-explained, the heroes are able to challenge the threat, and the ending is hopeful.
DISCLAIMER - UNSPONSORED 0:25 - 1. Spoilers 0:32 - 2. What is Cosmic Horror? 1:26 - 3.a. Key Elements of Cosmic Horror - Themes of Existential Dread and Human Insignificance 2:12 - 3.b. Key Elements of Cosmic Horror - Cosmic Horror Creatures/Entities 3:10 - 3.c.Key Elements of Cosmic Horror - Forbidden Knowledge and Cults 3:38 - 3.d.Key Elements of Cosmic Horror - Isolated Settings 4:02 - 3.e.Key Elements of Cosmic Horror - Psychological Breakdowns 4:46 - 4.a. Tips for Writing Cosmic Horror - Focus on Theme first and Monster Second 5:27 - 4.b. Tips for Writing Cosmic Horror - Avoid Happy/Positive Endings 5:46 - 4.c. Tips for Writing Cosmic Horror - Leave Unanswered Questions 6:01 - 4.d. Tips for Writing Cosmic Horror - Find Creative Ways to Describe the Indescribable 6:42 - 5. What's your Favorite Cosmic Story 6:48 - Support Mr. Brandon McNulty
One of the most masterful examples in this genre that hits all the points perfectly is the original Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. It has it all perfectly couched in a 25 minute TV episode.
I wonder if The Eternal Cylinder (video game) counts as cosmic horror. (Spoiler for the game below) It's hard to describe the game in detail due to it's dreamyness, but I'll try. I definietly recommend playing the game. Sorry for my bad English in advance. It deals with a cosmic entity, The Eternal Cylinder. A sentient mobile megastructure of unknown origin, which seeks destruction to end all difference within the universe, which in it's mind would end all suffering aswell. It rolls across inhabited planets and flattens them out like a steamroller, destroying all life in the process. Even though the game does make the player peek inside the Cylinder's mind a couple of times, there's still a lot of mistery surrounding it. The main characters are not human. They are sentient creatures called "Trebhum" (in both plural and singular). They are native to the planet the game takes place on. They look like earless bipedal elepjant spheres, but the game does point out that they are similar to humans in some ways. Specifically by not being the strongest, nor the fastest, nor having sharp teeth, but by being clever, resourceful, and very, very, stubborn. The Cylinder also has these so called "Servants", which are minions fabricated from remnants of things it absorbed on a previous world, which during the time the game takes place, was Earth. This results in the servants being horribly twisted steampunk-cyborg somethings. The chief servant, the Mathematician has an especially threathening presence As for the ending, it is happy, but it's also open-ended. It ends with the remnants of Human souls taking control of the Mathematician, re-absorbing it into the Cylinder, which creates an explosion which disables the Cylinder... For now. As it is implied that the Cylinder is unstoppable, and that it will one day re-awaken, and continue its destruction. The Trebhum might have won a battle, but they did not win the war. The main theme of the story is not really insignificance however. It's clear that it's more about the power of the diverse many over the encompassing one.
Haven't heard of this game till now. I'll have to keep it on my radar. Usually the first cosmic horror game people mention is Dead Space, which is another good one
I love the original Hellboy movie. At the end when Ilsa does her, "...a paradise for you, and her..." speech was amazing. The tonal quality of the words weren't a plea or a negotiation.And if you look back to the beginning of the movie you'll realize something pretty different from other movies. The villains didn't lie. Everything they said was matter of fact. There wasn't any grandiose yelling. This made the movie much more enjoyable in my opinion.
The movie, End Of Evangelion is a really good example of cosmic horror. It focuses on themes of free will and the slow decay of our desire to no longer exist. It sucks because you have to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion first, but trust me dude, it’s worth it.
All of these five themes work perfectly fine with the actual dangers of inanimate space (asteroids, solar storms, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, black holes / quasars etc.). None of these are sentient. The Lovecraftian trope of eldritch tentacle monsters undermines the real-world applicability of these themes. The reality that space is largely uninhabited, precisely because it’s so deadly, is much scarier.
I loved the cosmic horror shorts in the last season of Love, Death & Robots - Bad Travelling, Swarm and In Vaulted Halls Entombed. Now the writers have to think of something wild that doesn't involve an overpowering being which treats humans like ventriloquist dummies. Might the theme be about a dread of overwhelming societal and/or AI control?
Thanks for the tips, I really would love to write some short stories and experiment a bit :P I love the Hanging Balloons story from Junji Ito. Also, saw a Dr Who comment, so may as well mention Weeping Angels, love the idea behind them ^^ Edit: As for unexplained and creepy set up, Army of One, also from Ito, is a masterpiece in my opinion.
Shadow Overland Innsmouth and True Detective are truly great. Someone has got to mention the roleplaying games Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green. The Call of Cthulhu RPG by Sandy Peterson has played a role in keeping Lovecraft and cosmic horror alive in American culture.
The Birds strikes me as cosmic horror, the only thing is that birds are eminently describable. But there’s the powerlessness, the uncertain ending, the inexplicability of the events, the isolation of bodega bay, and the dread of knowing humanity’s precarious relationship with nature can be tipped without warning
Somehow I can't add the video's to my playlists anymore. Which is a pity, being a cosmic horror writer/dungeon master this is a classic for the playlist.
To answer the "question of the day" I have two. Underwater and Glorious. Underwater is about a group of scientists who are mining at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Things go south, and the ending is insane! Glorious is about a man who encounters a being ina bathroom stall. The beingbis voiced by J.K. Simmons and couldnt be a better fit! Spoiling the two--dont read if you want to watch. Underwater did a fantastic job of showing thr big bad on screen. The writer confirmed it was Cthulu, but real fans will argue its not. Regardless, it was a good modern attempt at putting Cthulu on screen. In Glorious its revealed that the being is a son of an "Old One" and requires something of the human. Its a fantastic film, and JK kills the role! Anyway. Highly recommended the two, thank you for the video!
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer is my favorite by far. (I love the Southern Reach Trilogy, but even on its own, Annihilation is excellent. The movie is okay, too. It's good, it's just... weird to see a movie that includes zero of the best parts of the novel it claims to adapt.)
I definitely think that the guys over at Just Roll With It did an incredible job creating an audio-only cosmic horror with their patreon exclusive miniseries Blood In The Bayou. The story being showed woth the use of Call Of Cthulu (a TTRPG system made for cosmic horror) definitely makes the powerlessness easy to write, since you don't have to actually write much (in the system the player characters are weak and defenseless by design), but Charlie Slimecicle is still extremely good at creating a haunting image of the monsters with deceptively simple words. (Everyone who enjoys a good cosmic horror story set in an 80's small town should go and pledge 5 dollars to JRWI and have a listen to Blood In The Bayou, it's roughly 10 hours long in total but definitely worth tge money as an experience)
I was involved in a mutual relationship, and remained good friends with the guy. We are still good friends. We still hang out, I am also friends with his girlfriend, its all good. We did make the right decision. However.... I won't say it didn't hurt, because it always does. We had to face that whatever we imagined our story's ending would be would be different. And we needed time apart in order for our roles to be reshaped. The friendship we have now was worth the pain, but in no way was it easy.
One thing cosmic horror seems to have in common with traditional horror is the dwindling number of survivors/death and a sweet and innocent character that makes it close to or near the end. The monster possession seems to have a similar feel to zombie. I would almost count Hell Raiser, A Quiet Place and Candy Man as a close but different genre to Cosmic Horror. My question here is, what do these fall under/do they have names? Are there good anime examples out there since I think it's possible with a lot of them and they too also seem to fit a genre. I also tend to think of some other close seconds like the Blob or mindvat experiment type ideas played with in some Trek/Twilight Zone episodes. All these lean on the mindscrew shock or dream nightmare element outside of gore horror.
this maybe a really odd book take but I consider the Ghost of Christmas Past from a Christmas Carol to be an example of cosmic horror with its unusual appearance.
Cosmic horror is a great genre, I have always loved the idea of how it has humans not being able to handle the existence of aliens being way more intelligent then you because you are nothing compared to them. Humans are just bugs crawling and causing cancer on this Earth. We are destroying ourselves in the process, but aliens can quickly get rid of humans in the books, (And possibly in real life) causing them to go mad, tragic endings in sci fi stories will always work. Humans could never beat them, and I like that about the cosmic horror genre!
It is higher order of abstraction in the mind that begins with a sense of existential insignificance. It is born not from the knowledge there is an unknown, or unknown to be pointed at. Nor is it anxiety with respect to the uncertainty thereof. It is meta-awareness of the chasm between that which is possible to be known and that which we are aware may be beyond comprehension. It is a deeply cognitive response to this gulf, presenting as an uncontrolled descent towards oblivion of coherent self, with increasing awareness that within cannot possibly be reconciled with the scale of without. We are blown apart through meta-consciousness and assign prospective malevolence to the this boundless measurement, coupled with awe of the inexplicably sublime, because we can register no greater threat to our selfhood. That, is existential dread/horror. It is not the monster itself nor the unknown it signifies. In literature, the encounter with the monster or vista is merely the artifice by which our comprehension recognizes it’s own limitation, and the harm that may come from beyond way of abject indifference. The monster is beyond malice and our search for self-serving, coherent identity-preserving, rhetorical meaning… beyond ethos, logos, pathos… we are the deer staring at the light of realization that the monster signifies futility, and we are inexorably guided to join oblivion in nihilism.
Ok, so I'm a 12 year old who wants to pursue in later life as a writer. The problem I'm facing is that whenever I write something and then read another book I have a big realisation that I suck and I cannot write. I think that writing isn't meant for children and I really doubt myself. Can anyone give me any tips or anything that can help me
I have a request not related to this video. My friend and I were talking about writing in third person and the character having a first person thought. Do you italize the thought? And why you would or wouldn't. Thank you!
would halloween 1978 be considered a cosmic horror? Especially in the first movie which does have a very cosmic horror feeling to it. There is no explanation or reason for michael (at the time) and loomis describes him as pure evil which is also leaves his character extremely ambiguous. I feel like michael is an otherworldly force so would that make him a cosmic horror antagonist? edit: The film also has a mysterious and chilling ending where michael dissapears after taking 6 bullets which further builds mystique around his character his unexplainable powers. I feel like the only thing the film lacks is a character breaking down mentally but i guess that could be laurie considering the current canon.
