Sunshine is (almost) Cosmic Horror 

Should I cover Cosmic Horror in the future as well? Annihilation could be interesting. 👽 *edit* Said Annihilation video is NOW OUT! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YyIMaf4BLzU.html

Lovecraft is known for his horror stories, but if his entire collection is read it becomes clear that his focus was more about "the incomprehensible" than the "horrifying". In many cases his stories depict dream like locations and journeys through such dreams. In this context the Sunshine ending on a positive note, would not disqualify it from being Lovecraftian. Lovrcraft have many stories that are simply about something incomprehensibly beautiful.

I've always seen it as a movie about how different people respond to the unknown. Some people see horror. Other people see beauty. Some people see how small humans are. Some people see our place in the universe and see worth.

I just realized that this movie had 2 Oscar winners, two MCU actors and a John Wick actor, whoever casted this film had foresight

The sun as cosmic horror is also in the game "Sunless Sea" or "Sunless Skies" if you're interested in them :)

I remember somewhere seeing a fact that if sound could travel through space, the Sun would be the loudest thing on our entire planet. The Sun is 93 million miles away from earth. If that isn’t cosmic, I don’t know what is.

I heard an essayist talk about, "Chernobyl," as cosmic horror, and that's been itching around in my mind for a while now

The nightmare of falling into the sun is one I've had myself. It's haunting.

The idea of sentient stars is widely explored in one of the atmosphere-heaviest games Sunless Skies (sequel to Sunless Sea). To the point that some people have managed to "dethrone" those stars or create artificial ones (which are fundamentally flawed). If you are fond of reading and experiencing and understanding wild concepts, such as crystallized time that people mine to prolong their life or sunshine that is stored in a box and used as a commodity, i can't recommend those games enough

Sunshine is a movie about "What would you do when nihilism is forced upon you, because the situation is so dire your own life truly does not matter anymore? Do you stop caring about anything, because there is no externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference? Or do you start caring about everything, because the absence of an externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference means that you have complete freedom to define your own framework of what qualifies as a meaningful difference?" I like it for that reason.

"KANEDA! WHAT DO YOU SEE?!" This line was unexpected and made me like the movie so much more

I always felt the act of Capa deciding to break from the original mission to retrieve the second bomb was an act of hubris... much like the mythical Icarus daring to fly close to the Sun. Had I been a member of the crew, I would have sided with Mace. Once a plan is broken, a new host of unforseen possibilities are opened and the odds of success become uncertain.

I really don't think interpreting Sunshine as cosmic horror is as much of a reach you portray it as towards at the end of the video. This is a great video, and it made the feelings I had when watching this movie more than a decade ago feel more concrete and justified. I'd even say this might be the movie that got me into cosmic horror for the first time, from pure science-fiction

Sunshine has the longest, intensiv, slowest action scene i know of. The one where he tips over in the protection suit and stands up again. This scene and the shot from inside the helmet and the brilliant acting just stays in my head :) The hole scene fells like its 5 minutes long!

Of Course Oppenheimer has designed a nuke. Of course the Fire Lord Ozai is obssessed with the Sun.

Sunshine & NOPE have something in common: Spectacle The longer you look at it, the more caught up get into.

I enjoyed your analysis of Sunshine. Annihilation should get the same treatment. I love both. Subscribed!

Kappa is birthing a god. The way he talks about how beautiful it will be supports this, it is akin to how parents in waiting are often talking about birth. He isn't afraid because this is, in a way, his child and the ending is beautiful because it is intended to portrait something beautiful - a new being coming into existence, the creation of life. Sunshine is more than just a story about cosmic horror and the dispair, madness and ruin it brings - this has been done to hell and back - it's a story about the cycle of life on a cosmic scale and how even beings as insignificant as humans can create something that is far greater than they can ever hope to comprehend. This also poses the question of "when does life begin" - if you take the stance that life begins at POTENTIAL then that dream these two have may actually not be their own dream but the dream of the sun embryo they carry with them (who's parents they are in a way), or maybe even the sun embryo trying to communicate with them.

Sunshine is one of my most favorite along with Event Horizon.

My first reaction to this film when I saw it years ago was to make a comparison to being a variation on 'Event Horizon', a favorite among cosmic horror fans: you've got a small space-crew intercepting the Ghost Ship of an earlier expedition into the Unknown years after its mysterious disappearance, only to find the Ghost Ship's crew weirdly annihilated by their contact with the unknown, while the newer crew begin experiencing hallucinatory mental effects, and the third act breaks down a bit into a comparatively unsatisfying slasher setup as a representative of the Unknown begins killing off the new crew one-by-one.... There's difference enough that the two movies stand on their own individual merit, but enough similarity to make contrast-and-comparison interesting - substituting a dying sun promising to take everyone to a heaven of cosmic horror, for a malfunctioning warp drive promising to take everyone to hell of cosmic horror, weirdly kind of works for me. But, at the same time, the shift in genre from "Haunted House in Space" to "Slasher Movie in Space" never really sold me in either case (it works well enough in 'Alien', another scifi/horror favorite among cosmic horror enthusiasts, but 'Alien' was a somewhat different animal from 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon'!) The endings for both 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon' might, I suspect, have benefited from a bit more inspiration from the comparatively restrained menaces from the '60s film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting' or Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Shining' or the '80s 'Poltergeist', than from, say, William Castle's 'House on Haunted Hill' or 'Thirteen Ghosts' (which, beneath their haunted house trappings, ended up - spoilers - shifting their menace from the haunting, to killers....) I think that, at the end of the day, 'Event Horizon' sticks with me longer than 'Sunshine', and I mostly prefer the first two thirds of 'Event Horizon' to the first two thirds of 'Sunshine', but 'Sunshine' is certainly worth checking out for fans of this sort of thing. I think it's absolutely fair to consider it a variation on Cosmic Horror, even if the final act and conclusion arguably muddle away from that foundation a bit!

As a huge fan of this movie (this and Annihilation are tied for my favorite movies ever) I feel like the movie makes more sense from the perspective of sublime cosmic awe, rather than horror. Or rather a mix of the two? Like you said the directors did fight over what the symbolism in the movie actually pushed for. I think the reason Capa ends up having the most "synergy" with the sun out of the entire cast is because he has a hearty respect for the sun, he remains grounded, but he's not afraid. He explicitly says he's not afraid of whats to come when he's testing the bomb with Cassie, while she expresses fear. And I think Kaneda's death also heavily pushes for this theme. That scene for me (along with the final scene before Capa dies) encompasses the movie's spiritual/existential themes in it's most potent form. Don't have the energy to articulate beyond that, but it was a treat to come across a video on this gem when this movie has been out of circulation for quite some time.

When I had visited Niagara Falls many years ago, I had nightmares from the height, magnificence, and power from the falls. It's funny cause it's just a lot of water falling, but knowing the awe of the falls makes for a new and unreal experience. Amazing what we consider to be greater than us

If I remember correctly, the decision to warp the picture whenever Pinbacker was onscreen was ultimately due to Danny Boyle hating the final result of the makeup effects. Personally I think the makeup looks great, but it was clear the results were not what Boyle had in mind, and seeing the pages of the screenplay, it's clear he wanted to execute something radically different.

Beyond a good analysis, the video reminded me how packed with talent this cast was. Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong, Benedict Wong, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada. Insane that they were in that point of their career that you could get them all together without ballooning the budget out of proportion.

Maybe, maybe, when kappa finally experience the real power of the sun, the sun is thanking him with that feeling of heat, allowing him to see what the human eye can’t see and allows him one last breathe in the verge of the new dawn of humanity and the sun

This is one of my favorite movies and you've definitely made me see it in a different way and love it even more. I'm shocked to see a video essay on it that came out only 5 days ago. Thanks for this!

Sunshine is my favorite scifi movie and these Lovecraftian elements you describe are one of the reasons

I love this movie. Yeah, it ends more hopefully than any cosmic horror, but all things concidered- the hopeless ending of these fictions was reserved for the crew of the ship, not the whole humanity. Icarus 2 fed the god, but this was a one way trip. As much as most people ragg that Cosmic Horror supposed to be hopeless, it does not need to be at least in my opinion. Dread can be built in many ways- like the fact that you are not alone in a universe, that there are gods, that life is stranger than you would believe etc. Horror can come from more than just loosing hope, it can come from standard fear that there is something where you expected to be nothing, the dread that a fundament on which you stood moved to remind you that universe lives in far more ways than one.

It's interesting that Alex Garland wrote Sunshine and later wrote and directed Annihilation. Also, his film 'Men' is also very cosmic horror-ish. He likes to play around these themes of huge, unknown forces impacting humans, same with AI in Ex Machina and many-worlds in DEVS.

Excellent essay! Viable reading for cosmic horror and the points you make as connections between the movie and the genre are feasible and sturdy. Enjoyed the video! For the record, I think the distortion effect on Brecker is kind of dope…

excellent video essay. this is one of my favorite scifi movies. I always interpreted the ending as accention. he for lack of a better word becomes the sun. burning away his humanity but becoming the light for the world

i love this!! makes the third act so much better and more acceptable. instead of a thoughtful scifi suddenly turning into a slasher, it's a cosmic horror movie that slow burned its way to the terror portion of the story. explains the weird distortions that make the final fight almost unwatchable, as well as the overall surreal look of that flight. also makes the ending make a lot more thematic sense - instead of kapa beating the boogeyman and saving the sun, it's kapa defeating the prime acolyte of an unknowable god, and then meeting that god.

My immigrant family didnt own a tv until 2011. We did however have a projector my dad got at the local Goodwill. One of the first movies we rented from Blockbuster/red box was this one. We had it playing on the wall of our living room. We laid blankets on the floor and watched this and a barbie animated movie for my little sister back to back with the barbie one first and this last. My dad was visibly bored watching barbie, but was engaged when this was playing. When the part of the film were there are frames of the Crew Christmas pics spliced into the movie, my dad was got sad/frustrated thinking that someone taped over the DVD. My brothers kept trying to pause it right on the pics to see what they were. We probably spent an hour pausing and my dad cursing that his 1 day off is ruined (he worked 6 days a week and literally only ever wanted to snack and watch movies on his projector on his days off). Anyway, i was like 8, didnt really understand this movie back then, but ive watched it multiple times in my adulthood just to remember that day.

This has the quality of someone with hundreds of thousands of subscribers! Great content

I can't believe I missed this one. Now i know what I'm watching tonight!❤thanks❤

The sun being this unknowing “antagonist,” and having horrible effects on people makes me think of the horror stories of SCP’s “When Day Breaks.” Where the sun essentially turns against humanity and every anomalous entity of Earth. Turning everything to a blob of flesh that acts as a hivemind and wants to spread itself to everything that hasn’t been absorbed.

It took me a sec to click the notification, but I remembered I love your analysis content.

This is exactly why mr burns was ahead of time with the sun locker thing

Such an underrated film. I remember being so disturbed while watching it

Thank you for talking about this film.

Sunshine is one of those movies I always forget about and take a minute to remember by name but always ends up with me talking about how good that movie is

In our hubris, we believe the small lump of matter between our ears is singular in its capacity to articulate existence despite constant evidence to the contrary all around us.

Ngl, you might wanna check out Pandorum. It doesn’t have a truly Lovecraftian entity, but it also has this deep level of hopelessness and insignificance. Also, for another incident of Lovecraft characters defeating entities would be that time when the military wiped out a deep one colony using a sub.

A friend of my parents got this movie on dvd when she was babysitting me. I was ten or so. This movie terrified the fuck out of me, but I couldn’t really say why. Now after you brought it up, I think it might have been my first exposure to the idea of cosmic horror. And I couldn’t really comprehend why it felt so scary and uncomfortable. Now as an adult, I love cosmic horror.

I watched this movie in the beach with my parents when I was 11, it has been iching my mind since then while I tried to make sense of it, thanks for the explanation it makes way more sence in the cosmic horror cathegory

Cosmic Horror is the feeling people get when trying to explain what Cosmic Horror is to other people.

This was an amazing read/watch. Never thought of the movie as anything but sci-fi but i do agree that it does benefit so much more (in my opinion at least) when being viewed as from cosmic horror angle. The one thing that amazes me is how almost every time, in the face of overwhelming power/uncertainty, when their beliefs and fundamental understanding shattered, driven into fear and insanity so much so that they view the unknown as godly beings, in this case, the sun. The fear of the unknown.

Good video covering one of the best films of all time. In truth, the core takeaway is that a film's themes can embody multiple things at once. Sunshine isn't wholly cosmic horror, but for sure is inspired by it and wears many of its facets proudly. So, even if it's only "kinda cosmic", that's good enough for me.

As another finn I really feel that joke. Nice video, I believe you're gonna go far

I saw this! Thanks for the reminder!

Cosmic horror or not this movie has always been on the top of my favorite movie lists ever since I watched it. Whenever the samey question comes up in conversation about which are your top whatever movies, I mention this one and very rarely anyone knows about it at all.

One thing I like to look for are horror movies or stories that also include a sense of wonder or awe. Cosmic Horror or Fantasy Horror seems to be the best genres for this.

Lol a tad bit ignorant to say "we know almost everything about the sun" because it's like saying I know almost everything about a place I've never been, just observed from a distance. I doubt that I would know more about another country than the country & its residents itself. The wisest know that the more you know the less you know. Nonetheless, me nitpicking can't ever take away from such a well presented video breakdown. You have now added another movie to my list of movies to watch, much appreciated. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos

I knew this was a true hidden gem after watching it as a kid, that soundtrack, and everything around the movie wrapped around my mind like thw burning light of the sun.

The structure of the Icarus from a side view is very reminiscent of an eye and its optic nerve coming from back of it

Never seen any of the movies you highlighted as being up against Sunshine. But I _love_ Sunshine. Extremely underrated.

I've been meaning to rewatch this for a long time, loved it the first time around. Thanks for the excuse and reminder! Hyvin muuten äännät, murretta ei paljoa huomaa ellei yritä kovasti..en edes tajunnut mistä olet ennenkun mainitsit kaamoksen.

Beautifully Written! I love this movie!

I actually love just how close it gets to making the sun supernatural. It's so interesting.

I loved sunshine. It's a rare movie I felt the intent of and thus felt an emotional impact but never fully understood. To me it felt oddly profound in a deeply incomprehensible way. Which I found really appropriate.

Great essay, deep analysis of epic movie next pls

watched this film quite some time ago and rewatched it for the first time this year, back when I first watched it I didn't know what cosmic horror is but this time I knew and I did kinda get a cosmic horror vibe from it

I would say that Sunshine is the uplifting science fiction story of the _Icarus II_ crashing into the cosmic horror story of the _Icarus I_ and coming out scarred but victorious.

love the use of the Signalis OST so so good

I always thought the ending of this film was a weird left turn, but maybe your cosmic horror interpretation explains it: Maybe the final ecstasy Capa experiences is his perspective after being fully indoctrinated. Maybe that is how Pinbacker also perceives the universe. Maybe that ecstasy is his motivation to bring everyone else to "heaven".

I used to really love this movie around its release but always felt something off about its tone. An inconsistency. As a Lovecraft fan myself I agree with much of your analysis and saw many of the same parallels, particularly the indoctrination angle. I never really could sell myself on it entirely though, mostly due to the ending. I concluded it was simply Lovecraft inspired. The Sun is indeed an unknowable God or godlike entity. I think it (the film) is even more consistent in that regard than Lovecraft himself was as though Lovecraft's quote you site is apt, it often seems his writings result in the cosmic entity having a decidedly negative will towards or effect on human kind. We are supposed to be insignifigant in Lovecraft's work, yet I can't help feeling like we are despised by his cosmic deities. I think in this film its a little more neutral. A little more like a classical God. It's weighing humanity and those that fall to indoctrination succumb to that lust to know the power of God, they succumb to evil, to sin. They are unworthy of God's light. Capa through sheer will, sacrifice and selflessness proves himself "worthy" and is rewarded with the privilege of glimpsing the true face of God. By Capa's act, and his sacrifice, God graces humanity with a second chance. Cheesy, no doubt, but it was my analysis at the time.

This video reminded me a lot of the Fallen London series, does a really good job at portraying celestial bodies with cosmic horror. Especially with The Dawn Machine, Clockwork Sun, and other judgements. The incomprehensibility of them from the human perspective is super interesting. If you liked the idea of a cosmic horror sun you should check out the series!

I was pretty cosmically horrified tbh

I remember watching this movie in the cinema when it came out. There was nobody in the cinema but myself, my friends, and 3 girls sitting far away from us. When everything started going a bit wild in the third act, one of the girls got a phonecall, she answered, her voice was trembling with fear and she said... 'Yeah... we decided to watch sunshine because it had a pretty name... its not what we thought im absolutely terrified" Haha, always remember that when thinking about this movie, i really enjoyed it and how wild it got!

It's all about the eternal question, "Is humanity worth saving?" The Captain of the first ship is the nihilist view of the value of humanity. His mission is understandable, even noble, through his eyes.

Dying sun was a horror entity fixed sun was beatific that’s how it worked in my head anyway it was a cosmic/lovcrafitan movie just with a positive twist

Amazing movie! One of my all-time faves!

Icarus is a poor choice for the name of a ship whose job is to fly close to the sun. That would be like an arctic expedition naming it's boat the Titanic.

Woah. I didn't know people still talked about this movie.

I saw this in the theater and loved it. It was filmed beautifully. Yeah it was flawed but it was so visually fun I couldn't believe the camera shots. And yeah... The Sun is a God. A God of our forefathers. It brings a smile and awe at the same time. Not too many things in life can.

This cast is just *chefs kiss*

I love me some cosmic horror. Sunshine, cosmic horror or not, is a good ass movie. Great analysis!

“The endless “is a great example of Eldridge Lovecraft horror

I watched Sunshine at the theatre back when it first came out, and it definitely left me feeling this cosmic horror dread. The thing that always frustrated me about it, though, is just how conventional the third act is. I feel like it doesn't deliver on the uniqueness of the word setup at all. To me, it would be much more interesting if Pinbacker himself had become a cosmic entity of sorts (which I think was already the general idea). Instead of having this superhuman strength, I would make him completely disabled; inexplicably alive inside a body that shouldn't be. Just talking to him, however, would be enough to make the crew members kill themselves, kill each other, and sabotage the ship, preferably all in sun-related ways. At this point, it wouldn't even matter if he's a real person or not; just the idea of him would be enough to cause their minds to unravel. Then, the final struggle of the protagonist wouldn't be about defeating Pinbacker, but about resisting the death drive long enough to complete his mission. If we want to sink into existential dread, we could allow him to complete his mission, only to reveal that it was all futile. This little man-made artifact was never going to be powerful enough to restart the sun. Then again, I don't think cosmic horror needs to be bleak and hopeless 100% of the time. Even Lovecraft himself allowed humanity to win a few times, even if just for a little while.

One of the most underrated films of all time!

Sunshine has been one of my favourite movies since I first saw it randomly on TV back in ~2008. I immediately saw it as (almost) cosmic horror and I've sung its praises as such ever since (usually on reddit whenever the "what movie falls apart at the end" question gets posted because Sunshine is /always/ one of the top answers). I do manage to convince some people, but others object so hard to the idea that Sunshine can be viewed as lovecraftian and honestly I feel that taking the film at face value as "hard scifi" is a disservice to the film. I never make excuses for the sudden shift in tone, but I do hope more people are willing to view it with a different lens that it's a little more suitable.

Holy shit it's the movie that I have never seen that perfectly encapsulates a metaphor I use very often, "You can't pay the sun any amount to NOT explode"

Unlike most at the time, I loved the 3rd act slasher ending. The sun was always the antagonist in its own way and pinbacker is the convert

Very cool idea

Subscribed due to the use of Signalis ost XD

What’s strange to me is as a child I remember sometimes staring into the sun and other bright lights until my eyes would water yet I’m pretty sure now at 21 I still have great eye sight I mean I can read the bottom of the eye test

I also think theres something to be thought about with the idea of pinbecker eminating distortion and the idea that when radioactive material is filmed, it distorts camera and film. Maybe pinbecker was emanating an extreme amount of radiation

IMO, a genre doesn't have to be defined by how it plays out. Like just cause it ends differently, doesn't mean it's not cosmic horror. If anything, I like the change of pace that humanity does succeed and the whole bit of "Hey, you have a cosmic horror story? Well the humans have to lose, or at least win in a way that doesn't matter" feels tired. If anything, Sunshine breaking the continuity is also a good thing since if it followed to closely it'd be too predictable which is a problem in horror movies.

If I had a nickel for every sci-fi movie that is basically cosmic horror, has a very odd third act, and a naked man fight seen at the end then I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

There are some elements of Event Horizon here. I'm going to go look for this movie!

I always rated the story as just "a guy goes crazy in space" but you're absolutely right, upon reflection it follows the cosmic horror formula.

One of my all time favourite movies, criminally underrated original score too. If you guys wanna get emotional just search up kaneda's death on the ost. super intense

Yay!!! It's coffee time for the month! 😀

Why do you think it is Evil? why do you think it has to be ugly? why do you think it has to be supernatural? Any Hard sci fi that properly explores the scale of the cosmos and our place in it will inspire horror for those proud and fascination for those humble.

Me: Ooh a video essay on an obscure film about it almost being cosmic horror. Also me: (See Die Toteninsel Emptiness) IS THAT A SIGNALIS REFERENCE?!??!?!?

No need to apologise for the Lava Lamp background, as an aging hippy I rather enjoyed it!

Such a good movie mega underrated, such good horror vibes

You know the world is sick when in order to understand the symbolic meaning of the sun they resort to hidrogen insted of Plotinus, Dante and Plato. The sun represents that that can not be seen directly, that that can never be attained, the absolute necessity to which we all belong but cannot withstand. All is explained by the sun and we all are owed to the sun.

How I felt during the total solar eclipse, aw

I watched the incredible power of the sun during the eclipse this year. I was in the path of totality and it didn’t get dark until the sun was completely covered up, and even then it wasn’t as dark as it would be at night. I also suffer the power of the sun when I stand outside for more than ten minutes lol. I can feel my skin burning slowly, it’s pretty wild.