- AKA
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So, I randomly started curating a Lovecraftian / Cosmic Horror film list. I sourced a number of different lists from around the internets (Reddit, IMDB, Lovecraftzine, Rossatron, etc.), and and grabbed some other Cosmic Horror films to help fill it in to be around 30 films total. Then I looked through trailers and reviews for all of them to help split out the ones that'd be a little more rough viewing from the ones that'd be properly good. Sorted out the ones I'd seen already from the ones and dove into watching the ones I needed to see or needed a refresher on. After seeing some of them, it became clear that a lot of them helped me to appreciate other films in proximity to them more than I had before, so I set about creating a full viewing order. In doing so, I ended up adding some films and removing others, aaaaaand I just finished watching the last one I hadn't seen before tonight, so I figured that I'd share it. There're only 3-4 that're rather difficult ta track down as they don't seem to exist digitally anywhere legit, and the physical copies were hard to get.
Here's the link to a spreadsheet of them all, that also includes some quick notes on where to stream/rent/purchase them legit.
(If you have the desire to go all-out and check these out as I laid them out – all together it's a total of 60 hours and 24 mins).
I'd recommend doing so knowing as little about them as you do already. Just going into each film and letting the connections between them all form themselves for you however you happen to see them, is a big part of why I laid them out the way I did. The order is designed to help foster connections and callbacks between films regardless of whether or not they're actually connected to one another, and treating them all like a series of thematically linked titles has made me appreciate some of the films a lot more than I did just seeing them on their own.
The only thing I'd recommend is making sure that you have a way to watch them easily, especially for the ones that mostly don't have a non-physical film viewing option.
If you do this, it'd be cool to see how any of the rest of you feel about the films when seeing them, especially in this order.
That being said, while I could just shared that link – as usual I wanted to do a little more for the OP & add in a little bit of backing for my, "why this film where" reasoning of the particular order I've picked for anyone who IS curious about my thought processes with all of it. Please note that doing so WILL reveal details about the films, so if you'd rather just dive in an experience it for yourself, please feel free to do that.
If not, here're the details on each choice, which makes this a more classic, "X's well-beyond tl;dr as fuck" post:
So yeah! There's all that.
Hopefully some of you enjoy the read, others enjoy actually trying it out, and maybe some of you'll enjoy both.
X
Here's the link to a spreadsheet of them all, that also includes some quick notes on where to stream/rent/purchase them legit.
(If you have the desire to go all-out and check these out as I laid them out – all together it's a total of 60 hours and 24 mins).
I'd recommend doing so knowing as little about them as you do already. Just going into each film and letting the connections between them all form themselves for you however you happen to see them, is a big part of why I laid them out the way I did. The order is designed to help foster connections and callbacks between films regardless of whether or not they're actually connected to one another, and treating them all like a series of thematically linked titles has made me appreciate some of the films a lot more than I did just seeing them on their own.
The only thing I'd recommend is making sure that you have a way to watch them easily, especially for the ones that mostly don't have a non-physical film viewing option.
If you do this, it'd be cool to see how any of the rest of you feel about the films when seeing them, especially in this order.
That being said, while I could just shared that link – as usual I wanted to do a little more for the OP & add in a little bit of backing for my, "why this film where" reasoning of the particular order I've picked for anyone who IS curious about my thought processes with all of it. Please note that doing so WILL reveal details about the films, so if you'd rather just dive in an experience it for yourself, please feel free to do that.
If not, here're the details on each choice, which makes this a more classic, "X's well-beyond tl;dr as fuck" post:
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You get to start off with something that starts to define what the standard horror genre is, and then use the meta awareness of the audience for some solid subversion of expectations. We get the terrifying cult of people actively working against other people as victims, and the slow reveal of the structure of the Elder Gods being contained by specific rules of human suffering, only to be finally unleashed.
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Now we just dive into Shadow Over Innsmouth. You have overthrowing religions by a cult of humans working against other humans, and being blessed by Elder Gods, full-blown fish people, sex cults, and creepy destiny and horror in a proper Lovecraft-based film to get into the full-blown Lovecraft.
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Another Lovecraft property filmed to look a bit like it was made in the 1930s. You have invisible beings making pacts with humans, experimentation on other humans by cults in league with them, promises to travel the stars, and the skeptic eventually being driven into a state of madness that's a bit meta in the reverse of Cabin in the Woods, while ending with the cult and a high priest attempting to open up a portal.
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We have occult science with Rasputin as a high priest opening a portal to pull out a Hell beast, two forms of immortality, and resurrection. Then we have the icon of Satan and Fish person working against an endlessly multiplying ancient tentacled evil unleashed from an artifact. Then we're ultimately shown that our hero will eventually bring destruction to the whole world, even as he temporarily saves everyone from the immediate incursion of giant tentacled many-eyed Elder Gods, and the birth and destruction of one more tentacled beast.
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A number of scientists analyzing a strange Christian artifact suggesting that (like Hellboy) Satan was just the minor creation of a greater, darker evil that Christianity stopped taking seriously to focus on using their religion as a way to control the masses. The evil force influences everything around it to create a cult of creatures and people, trapping them in a building. It possesses the scientists, and slowly murders them, eventually manifesting through one of them and attempting to open a portal and release the full evil from beyond.
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A character named Red has his goth/metal girlfriend (thanks Hellboy) abducted and burned to death in front of him by a crazy, twisted Christian cult where their leader is occasionally conversing to an entity behind a mirror (Prince of Darkness). He goes into a rage-induced, drug-fueled rampage to murder everyone responsible as a visual reference to the Reaper. Additionally, there's a level of not being sure if some of the supernatural things taking place are actually supernatural, a drug-fueled hallucination, or both. Especially the end ties in very strongly with The Void.
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Crazy murder cult of unknown origins trapping people in a hospital. Even more than in Prince of Darkness, Horrors begin to be formed inside the hospital, and their escape (and even advancing forward) is twisted by extradimensional manipulation. As things get worse, as we encounter more cult behaviour driven by a doctor obsessed with defeating death, and opening a portal to the beyond, showing more portal connections to other worlds.
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Investigation story focused on a man's obsession with raising the dead and cheating death, specifically with a focus on the more supernatural side of things, and addressing the hunger of the dead.
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Jeffrey Combs obsessed with defeating death from a more scientist perspective involving injecting a chemical directly into the brain in a proper Lovecraft story, and the crazed dead when they do return.
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More Jeffrey Combs in a Lovecraft story focused on the things existing in extradimensional space and the intersection of their triggering of violent and sexual urges, mutation of the pineal gland in the brain, and otherworldly body horror.
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The only jump-scare film. It's delivered as found-footage, directly references Lovecraft writing From Beyond, while dealing with the effects of being vulnerable to extradimensional beings delivered by a chemical derived from EXTRACTING a chemical from the brain's pineal gland during KM Ultra.
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Jeffrey Combs playing H.P. Lovecraft to connect to his stories being otherworldly truths. Also involves three stories of: a giant tentacled Elder God transforming and taking the forms of the dead to lure more victims, obsession with immortality by taking the lives of other humans, but being left with vulnerabilities to heat and light, and finally a murder spree that's caused by bat-like creatures feeding off of humans, and utilizing them as vessels for reproduction.
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A space mission that discovers a giant Lovecraftian-beast-looking ship hiding in Halley's Comet. It contains the elements from Necronomicon: It's full of Bat creatures, who are immortal, and took the form of humans, in order to drain their lifeforce. They wreak destruction across London, leaving nuking the city as a potential fate option. Eventually the craft absorbs the souls and departs back into space, leaving the destruction behind.
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Unknown massive Lovecraftian horror arises from the ocean, and we witness it all in brief glimpses via found footage of low-level destruction in the city of New York, rather than London, where the nuke being dropped does end up being the option taken, and we end on an object falling from the sky and landing in the ocean.
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Alien life discovered from Mars soil. It is revived (Re-Animator is referenced), it rapidly grows, and then devours its way through the crew as it escapes, being shown to be immune to fire, and having a shifting form of tentacles, but slowly manifesting a more distinct form. Eventually it manages to make its way to Earth in the same way that we see at the end of Cloverfield.
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A story framed around the investigation of trying to find a man's father who's gone missing. It reveals a story of a meteor that fell to Earth, unable to be analyzed by scientists. It eventually consumed the land and everything around it with a strange colour, tainting and killing the family who lived there by infecting the water, and then departed back into space for some. The man finds his father, and we're left knowing that the whole area is going to be flooded by a dam, inevitably spreading this destruction once again.
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A woman's husband goes missing, and we learn that he went missing while investigating an area of reality that's been distorted after a meteor fall and continues spreading, warping and twisting biology and time just like a prism does with light. Heavily dream like and ends with whatever this is spreading.
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Surreal and almost dream-like about odd human experimentation, eventually revealing that the strange facility is much much larger and full of more horrors. There was travel through a pitch black liquid portal, that dissolved him into a strange extradimensional beyond (mirrored in the Mandy hallucination scene), leaving him left pale white, bald, and with jet black eyes. Eventually he confronts and hunts her down to kill her, and is killed with her telekinesis.
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Investigation of a strange gothic world, where clocks stop at midnight and everyone falls asleep except for one person possessing psychic powers. There's a hive of pale, bald, beings with large facial iconography who are manifested as energy being possessing the dead and performing experiments by continually looping reality, and manipulating memory to hunt for the key to the human soul.
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Pale, black-eyed Ancient ones consume a black liquid that rots them away to seed life on Earth. Eventually our scientists seek them out. The android runs things during travel, watching the humans' dreams. The find the world and discover a building with large facial iconography, and a strange black liquid that infects and alters or destroys that which it touches. The android is ostracized by the humans, and begins experimenting on them with that liquid to learn the answers they're looking for for his own ends, using the woman as a breeding vessel. Eventually everyone dies to prevent the Ancient ones from destroying Earth, leaving a Lovecraftian horror to spawn a new horror from the Ancient one, as the Christian tells the android he doesn't have a soul, they leave for the Ancient One's Homeworld.
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Another craft lured to a world where there seems to've once been life but it's all gone. Then they get attacked by creatures, and eventually saved by our android. Over time, we see that he's consumed by hatred and madness, and he's been crafting a perfect being from the Ancient One's resources after murdering them all, so that he can be a god to a race he feels is truly deserving. Ends showing that he's achieved a new step to achieve those ends.
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We continue the story but in an older film. Space Truckers seem to stumble onto this Lovecraftian horror tailored to destroy them. Panic, isolation, and questionable decisions eventually reveal that the AI and one of the crew was an android who were intending to utilize the crew as expendable tools in order to secure and bring back to Xenomorph lifeform. There is finally a victory of some kind, but out heroine is left floating helpless and asleep in space alone.
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Another older film about a strange creature from space. This one crashes in an isolated area in the arctic, but this one was thousands of years old, and survived in hibernation in the ice until it was uncovered. It's encountered by a group of researchers in the arctic, and they eventually discover a camp who already encountered and was decimated by it. The thing is capable of mimicry and body horror of a different kind. Mistrust and terror rises, and leaving everything in a situation where the fate of the two remaining, and humanity itself is questionable.
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A group of researchers trapped in the frozen north uncover an ancient native american artifact, and get trapped by a blizzard storm. The Native American workers all leave and walk away from their reservation into nowhere. Some of them contract a black vomiting illness. Self-mutilation madness spreads as some of them hear voices urging them to kill one another or themselves, and they stop being able to sleep. Isolation and desperation rise, and an ancient, otherdimensional being seems to reveal itself before everything is ended – the artifact left exposed for others to find.
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A group of Australian Aboriginals convicted of murder, and as their lawyer attempts to learn what really happened and how, he becomes wrapped into a mystery of artifacts, and other-dimensional travel and visions of the future in dreams. It ends with him in panic, seemingly witnessing the oncoming potential cataclysmic destruction, although like the film before – it may all just be him experiencing madness.
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A group of Australian girls in the 1900 goes out on a picnic to a an old volcanic rock structure with one of their teachers who's instructing them on the history. Several of their watches stop exactly at noon, and four of the girls wander off. One of them runs screaming, and the other three have disappeared, as well as their teacher. The more everyone tries to discover what happened, the more strange the clues are, with premonitions, madness, visions, and ultimately all unsettling and unexplained.
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A woman's husband has been missing for 7 years. Her sister (former drug addict-turned Christian) comes to visit her, to help her move and file the paperwork to declare her husband dead in absentia. The wife eventually starts seeing visions of him, and the sister encounters a strange person who isn't there moments later. Things start appearing at and around the house after she leaves him food, eventually revealing the husband the day his death certificate arrives – and he claims he's been trapped. The place used to be a number of things – all of which had a history of disappearances, and eventually this thing takes more and more things, all equally situationally explainable by the police as non-supernatural, leaving the mystery larger and still indecipherable as normal disappearance, or the torturous manipulations of an ancient being.
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A man is contacted by his friend, and goes off to try to get his friend to stop doing Meth. He maintains communication with his wife periodically, but paints the picture as better than it is. They're warned away by the native American, but stay regardless. Eventually he becomes obsessed with these clues he's finding on film of all these horrible deaths, and investigating him leads to more, eventually revealing that his friend never contacted him, and they're seeing footage of themselves sent to them now. They use the footage to try and avoid their fate, but keep getting looped back when they avoid death, finally facing it, only to reveal that the camera perspective itself was an entity, intent on seeing them tortured, being a meta version of the film's storyteller as the entity itself.
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Two cult survivors return to the cult after receiving a message that they want to see them one last time. They experience some strange things, with reflections in reality, and seemingly odd influence of an otherworldly entity. One brother wants to stay and the other wants to leave as they come at odds with one another. Eventually they discover that they're going to be trapped here and die, but that there are some ways to escape those boundaries until they're caught in the loop for good. It's then revealed that this is another "instance" connected to the previous film, and they have to escape this horrifying manipulation.
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A final mission to reverse a decaying chain reaction in the sun after the first failed. The mission goes slowly awry, as members of the crew seem to suffer from madness. Eventually meeting a scarred, burned man who wished to be the last human alive with god, fully consumed by a cosmic madness, completing their mission and dying in the process.
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A ship with an experimental singularity-based engine reappears after 7 years. The engine's inventor (Sam Neill), and a crew go to investigate. They're faced with otherworldly horrors of visions of their loved ones mutilated or killed (him seeing his wife kill herself). Over time it drives the crew utterly insane with visions of mutilation and death, with Sam Neill's character becoming the mutilated avatar of the entity itself.
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A relationship between a man (played by Sam Neill) and his wife in divided Germany slowly dissolves, as he learns that she's been seeing someone else, with them becoming more unhinged over time. He then meets the teacher at his son's school, who looks exactly like his wife, with lighter hair and green eyes. He has discussions on what he believes god truly is a disease with the man who was seeing his wife. discovers she isn't staying where she's been saying, and that her madness is also the result of mental & sexual contact with some strange tentacled entity. Madness, and murder escalate, until he leaves his son with the teacher, and goes off to help his wife with murder, acting regardless of the safety to himself. Eventually discovering that this entity has copied him, he and his wife are killed, with his mimic returning to the teacher who looks like his wife, who is likely already another one of these entities.
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A famous Stephen-King-like author's works have been known to drive some people crazy, and his latest book hasn't been released because he's gone missing. A fraud investigator (Sam Neill) investigates a his disappearance for the publisher, reading the books to profile him, and becoming obsessed, eventually finding himself trapped in town a reality from the books. More and more, it seems like the author is guided by the machinations of otherworldly tentacled, lovecraftian horrors, and he eventually find that he is actually just a character in the book, going utterly mad as the world it overrun by those horrors.
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The Stephen King story about the town haunted by the fear-feeding, madness-and-amnesia-causing, shape-shifting-horror from beyond, who causes death and destruction, specifically focused towards children.
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This is a placeholder for all of the more cult, magic, and lovecraftian horror bits. It comes out next year, but you could always watch the original Tim Curry version to get the whole thing.
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The breach connected to Stephen King-like films and rifts and everything goes from a normal fog to something much MUCH worse. It's got it all: perverted Christianity leading to cult-like behaviour, tentacled beasts, and other alien horrors, panic and outright madness in a trapped location. It all escalates the sense of ever-growing helplessness, abject terror, physical and emotional pain, all poignantly capped by unfathomable regret and mind-destroying horror.
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Essentially a retelling of the original Godzilla with more modern focus as well as lovecraftian horror – emerging in a burst of steam and looking like a giant tentacle making a nice allusion to the mist, and looking at what the governmental side of this kind of crisis looks like. The overall unstoppable horror of the creature, and the global sociopolitical situation that it creates – not to mention that horror of an ending.
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This starts out with the bang, fire, and sky-launching Cherenkov radiation harkening directly to Godzilla, but then just gets more and more horrifying looking at the reality of death and destruction that we face in the real world against horrors that we can't see, can't stop, and can't fight. Pulls on all the context of Godzilla as a horror and just amplifies it by giving it the realistic context that lets the existential dread just settle in even more.
So yeah! There's all that.
Hopefully some of you enjoy the read, others enjoy actually trying it out, and maybe some of you'll enjoy both.
X
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