I’ve always said that King was much more a master craftsman of the short story format than the long form novel. His short stories are amazing, especially The Jaunt. Other such as Mrs. Todd’s Short Cut, The Boogeyman, Dolan’s Cadillac etc This was a great clip!
@@ghouliganytif you're interested in other King stories exploring cosmic horror, "From a Buick 8", "1408", "The Langoliers" or "It" work too. Although with It, it takes long to realize the cosmic horror implications. 1408 has a movie adaptation which is quite good but it falls more on "haunted house" vibes. Nontheless, still worth a watch as well as a read for the story it's based on. Langoliers also has a movie adaption where the big reveal may not have aged well due to CGI but the plot takes a simple concept explored multiple times in different media which I won't say to not spoil things and gives it a never thought twist. From a Buick 8 is straight up cosmic horror with the way the story develops. It's a true "fear of the unknown".
@@christophfaulkner7295TBH, I read many kings novels when I was a teen, and I loved tommyknockers so so much! IT was good too, but looonnnggg. Yeah so I hate watching horror but Christopher pike, Anne rice and king was what i religiously read. Weird. I think reading is a lot less scary. Until UA-cam vids came along….lol
I can’t remember the name of the story I read recently by him but it’s in his “If It Bleeds” book. For whatever reason it stuck with me more than anything else he’s done, but it’s a story about a kid introducing an old magnate to smart phones. Ultimately it’s a story about the implications of intention and its ripples. It’s also the reason I’ll never have a bridge named after me.
It might sound silly but I think the game "the Stanley Parable" offers something like that(although a bit more humours). There the "Narrator" gives Stanley a skip button that moves him forward in time. But it goes wrong. While the first push is a mere minute the next one is an hour, then a day, and it continues like that exponentially. The last time you hear how much time have passed it was several years because afterwards the Narrator goes mad. If you keep pushing you see the room around you crumble, be overgrown with vegetation, loose that vegetation and eventually all that is left is a desolate wasteland. You left with no idea how much time have been skippes
@@viktorgruvegard1343lol yeah, that entire section is so eerie too, the ambience of the pipes starting to leak leading to the roof collapsing, and then after the presumed apocalypse happens, you can hear these weird sounds coming from outside the room, creepy stuff
The Empty Man was one that I really enjoyed. My wife and I watched it a few years ago and to this day if we're drinking a soda or beer that comes in a glass bottle, we'll blow across it and give the other a look to see the reaction.
Tell him thank you for making an amazing movie, me and my friends watched a while ago, and the puzzlement of the movie left me in awe!! It really was good cosmic horror!
My first experience with Prince of Darkness at 3am with a high fever as a kid, i woke up to that first dream sequence. It scared the hell out of me, but it made me seek out that movie the following weekend. It's still my favorite Carpenter movie. Great video.
I was blessed to see this at the theater when it was released. Super underrated. It honestly blew me away because I'd never seen a movie depict science and religion wrapped in cosmic horror the way Carpenter did. Still in my top 3 favorite Carpenter movies. Better than Halloween by far, imo.
Jeanjacket does not suck people into an endless void; the specific scene you show is just a stylisation to represent a wider shot of an internal view. JJ is very much a living organism and speculated to be something which ordinarily lives very, VERY high up in the atmosphere. It has an "ordinary" digestive tract, which is what the tourists are held in. In fact, at the start of the movie we hear the missing hikers screaming, very faintly, when JJ is nearby. Its prey is held inside of it before being crushed and digested, not pulled into some endless void.
JJ is an atmospheric beast, it's a very old concept ( around the 18th century at least) that eventually became a kind of cryptid, but it was something even Carl Sagan wrote about, the thing is that hypothetically such things *could* exist, but contrary to what so many people think, JJ is *not* an alien. It's absolutely a native species that normally don't come down this low to the surface which is why people aren't being eaten all the time by these things
@@dustydesertdisciple6290he's hit or miss. When he hits....he HITS(Pet Semetary, The Shining, Dark Tower, etc) when he misses, his stories come off as if he let one of his kids(when they were still kids)ghostwrite for him as a training exercise to become writers themselves but chose to put his name on it for marketing. That's been my headcanon for decades...
Steven king is one level higher than R.L. Stein, For me its a ladder. R.L. Stein and his childrens horror Then Steven King and his young adult horror Then H.P. Lovecraft and his masterpieces of horror. No there will never be another lovecraft. Hes like the tesla of horror fiction. He died in a very similar way too...
I think checking out the artwork of Wayne Barlowe would be a sick video since he made an entire book of alien creatures as well as his own depiction of hell and demons that is truly alien. He even worked on avatar, Harry Potter, and hellboy
Event Horizon had the best cosmic horror part I’ve seen in film. It’s the only part I really remember; when they’re able to see what happened to the previous crew and how it was just a hedonistic display of insane torture in an alternate hellscape reality.
@@JasonTodd971 probably because they were forced to remove a bunch of stuff from the final cut and the original film for it was damaged so they can't add it back in now
I think it might be a famous story and I'm stupid for not remembering it, but I read a story about a human spaceship that travels to a distant planet through FTL or hyperspace. The astronauts have to shut the windows because looking out into hyperspace is somehow disturbing and drives them slowly mad. When they get to their destination, it's a planet with monochrome landmasses, that on closer inspection turn out to be completely covered in human bodies. The astronauts suspect that humanity is actually the food source for an alien species, and decide to go back home (with the windows still blocked).
Nope is such a great movie! I think the way the creature eats and honestly a lot of the creature is based on the way rays eat. Watch a ray eat a crab, then watch that scene again. Mind blown!
DUDE the intro to the Empty Man is PERFECTION. Don't love the rest of the movie....but the opening is nearly the best horror opening I've seen. God damn
What i loved about Nope is the screaming in the wind thats almost discernible but it blends with the wind so well that it gets you on edge but you don't quite know why until you give it a 2nd watch and with headphones. What a creative horror film. Jordan Peele is a master of his craft.
Saw it in the theatre and was blown away. The idea of all these people basically being consumed inside this thing while it flies around is so disturbing. Such a cool film, plus creepy monke was creepy.
Master of his craft is a massive stretch. His movies are good but there's absolutely nothing special about them, Nope is no different, good but not great
Nope was so good and the Cosmic Horror Elements in it are fantastic. Just seeing the ship and trying to understand it is so insanely lovecraftian. I know a lot of people didn't like the way it looked but I genuinely loved it so much, it was such a fucking trip and great way to show an entity that doesn't fully follow the physics that we understand.
@@jesusramirezromo2037 dude... you don't think an alien that's shaped like a UFO, unfurling out into a blanket monster that esoterically eats people by changing the color of its square, ISN'T cosmic horror?!? First off... Jordan Peele is a massive Lovecraft fan, and literally produced a show called Lovecraft country. Second off, the design inspiration once JJ is fully unfurled, that Peele took from Cthulu and the Elder thing, are absolutely elements of CH. I'm not claiming the movie in its entirety is a quintessential example of it, but there is undoubtedly elements of cosmic horror in the film. JJ behaves like a normal animal, but stretches our concept of what can even be considered life by the end of the film.
I was gonna comment "you know, no one ever talks about Twin Peaks when mentioning cosmic horror in media and that's a crime", but then I see that you did on the first video, so that rocks.
@@theanonymspysandwichI feel like The Return was way less rooted in cosmic horror. It took something vague and rooted in the psychology of people dealing with intense traumatic experiences and changed it into an urban fantasy where groups of objectively good and evil supernatural entities treated the earth as a battleground for a proxy war amongst several dozen people. I just feel like that's pretty much just Christian theology with the serial numbers filed off.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 I never felt any cosmic horror or dread tbh. The first seasons could have been spirits from native folklore medling, while in the 2017 series the theme of parallel universes gets explored but never gets defining up until the end. Most of it just feels like it's the universes trying to correcting themselves by getting rid of the "invaders" from the other universes
Great video. Some people think that Jean Jacket is a designed based on Evangelion. Specifically the 10th angel Sahaquiel. Haven't looked into it too much, but kinda cool if true.
I see the Nope segment sligntly differently. Jupe attempts and forces himself to believe he has tamed Jeanjacket because of the trauma and complete loss of control and understanding from being forced to witness his best friend and co-actor, a chimpanzee tearing his fake family apart and reminding everyone on set that it was still an animal, uncontrollable and wild. Jupe now is a rancher to believe he has control over his own life and co-actors in performative ranching.
I see it even more differently. I believe Jupe is actually the chimpanzee and Jeanjacket sees him as the most common form of nutrition, but Jupe is oblivious to the fact that he is not human. Which is why in the scenes where he talks to others, they seem to be talking to something that doesn’t actually 100% understand them. Like talking to a pet.
A point about The Empty Man that I came to realize was that, The Empty Man himself is not the mysterious entity that the film may lead you to believe. The Empty Man is actually James, as one of the fanatics that James interrogates even refers to the entity as "The Other" saying, "he needs an Empty Man to be a bridge to the rest of the world". At least, this is what I interpreted after numerous watches. Great video btw!
Honestly what got me into cosmic horror was one particular moment on a video game called Mass Effect. You go the whole game trying to learn about these things called "The Reapers" And finally there's a mission where you encounter one, It turns out the Reapers are a sentient race of machines that have always been, They have no beginning, They are infinite, They are something so far beyond our comprehension that we cannot possibly fathom how they even exist. This broke my mind as a kid playing this game, As far as everything I've known, Everything has an origin & Is created by something, Especially a machine. So playing Mass Effect and learning that this Reaper thing is basically eternal really messed with my head, The reaper simply states there is a realm of existence so far beyond our understanding that we cannot even imagine it. To this day I don't think any other video game has given me chills the way that conversation in ME1 did.
Unfortunately ME3 so of ruins this by explaining their origins It was just some alien race that created the Reapers for slave labour and they had the typical Skynet rebellion
@@Darkfire7881 That's not what happened, the Reapers were still doing what they were created for, they were meant to preserve life. I can't quite remember how they reached the conclusion that they need to wipe out all intelligent life in order to preserve life but they did reach that conclusion and that's their interpretation of the task they were given. Either way, it's still far more fascinating than the cliché you suggested. You're right that it kind of ruins the mystery by explaining the origins though, but the Leviathan DLC was awesome as far as I'm concerned, I loved the explanation because it's really interesting. Also just the presentation and introduction of the Leviathan is one of the most memorable moments of any game I've ever played. The build up, and then diving deep into an uncharted ocean planet, and the way the Leviathan reveals itself. It's just brilliant and I can still remember it as vividly as when I first played the game over a decade ago.
@@highestsettingsI believe the logic is that they preserve life by converting species into new Reapers. Each species, with all its knowledge and culture and history, is forever preserved within the chassis of its counterpart Reaper. Thus, one might say the Reapers are preserving knowledge and information with each harvest, and they then allow new life to rise up and flourish. In theory, if they didn't do that, one species/entity (an AI perhaps) would utterly dominate and perpetuate a state of stagnation... from a certain point of view, anyway.
RUDIMENTARY CREATURES OF BLOOD AND FLESH. YOU TOUCH MY MIND, FUMBLING IN IGNORANCE, INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. THERE IS A REALM OF EXISTENCE SO FAR BEYOND YOUR OWN YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE IT. I AM BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION. I AM SOVEREIGN. ORGANIC LIFE IS NOTHING BUT A GENETIC MUTATION, AN ACCIDENT. YOUR LIVES ARE MEASURED IN YEARS AND DECADES. YOU WITHER, AND DIE. WE ARE ETERNAL. THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION AND EXISTENCE. BEFORE US, YOU ARE NOTHING. YOUR EXTINCTION IS INEVITABLE. WE ARE THE END OF EVERYTHING. WE IMPOSE ORDER ON THE CHAOS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. YOU EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOW IT, AND YOU WILL END BECAUSE WE DEMAND IT. MY KIND TRANSCENDS YOUR VERY UNDERSTANDING. WE ARE EACH A NATION - INDEPENDENT, FREE OF ALL WEAKNESS. YOU CANNOT EVEN GRASP THE NATURE OF OUR EXISTENCE. WE HAVE NO BEGINNING. WE HAVE NO END. WE ARE INFINITE. MILLIONS OF YEARS AFTER YOUR CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN ERADICATED AND FORGOTTEN, WE WILL ENDURE. WE ARE LEGION. THE TIME OF OUR RETURN IS COMING. OUR NUMBERS WILL DARKEN THE SKY OF EVERY WORLD. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR DOOM. I AM THE VANGUARD OF YOUR DESTRUCTION. THIS EXCHANGE IS OVER.
Very apt description, as it defintely falls squarely into King’s “I’ve walked too far into a river of blood to go back now,” motif. There’s no going back when you dance with the devil…or Wendigo, as it were.
Your opinion of Stephen King is not unique. He has a great imagination in terms of scenarios and world-building, but his characters are caricatures who speak and think in tropes and his stories often have unsatisfying or anticlimactic endings.
Yeah I always have been frustrated at people who call him the "king" of horror. Sorta like if people were to say Burger King was the "king" of all burgers. Like... seriously? You're really gonna be THAT hung up on the name? You TRULY can't think of a SINGLE better example?? 😬🤣
For at.least a suggestion of cosmic horror, see "X: the Man with the X-Ray Eyes" (1963). Ray Milland's description of what he is seeing before he tears out his eyes, is chilling.
I loved the beginning, but the other parts disappointed me. Why did the writers have to make it into a teen horror urban legend movie. I believed they should’ve kept it in the forest or at least tied the plot to the characters at the beginning. Gives the story some immediacy, some emotional depth. You had this cosmic horror creature, but the writers reduced it to, basically, a troll/candyman under the bridge.
You should check out the short film by the same director. It's called AM1200. Great Cosmic Horror. I believe The Empty Man was interfared with by a studio that didn't truly understand or appreciate what was bring created.
I would say that was a solid theory. The cult though they were Zen-Like they were extremely Nihilistic. In some westernized New Age and Neo- Buddhism circles they call it " Going Empty". Transcending the self realizing that you are an actor played a role assigned to you and under the pen of an unseen author. This was the point of The Tulpa and the strange skeleton at the begining which was a similar experiment. That it proves how easy it is. That it is our true nature. That there is no reality aside from that which we have been presented with. That it was about " Getting The Joke " of sentient Existence. Which Nylarhothep tends to do, just for kicks. We're a ball of plasticine in the hands of a endlessly creative bur bored malevolent and spiteful child that needs to make its own fun since there is none to be really had in between his job of relaying messages which he only does as a kid rides his bike to deliver the newspapers not indifferent to the contents or how it effects those who read them.
@ during the scene where he’s stumbles upon the gathering in the woods? I think? They are chanting. And they say the name Nyarlathotep if I’m not mistaken. I had to play it back and really listen.
Yes. Heard that too (the cultists chanting Nyarlathotep). It’s been a while since I saw it, but at one point there is also a thing that looks a lot like depictions of Nyarlathotep. Also, it's on Hulu if not on DVD.
I remember on my channel guide on DirecTV, the summary of Prince of Darkness was something like “a priest travels to a church to investigate a can of liquid Satan” lol
Prince Of Darkness has a couple of nightmare sequences. The mirror sequence at the end in particular. Also, although not entirely successful, the ending of the film THEY is also the stuff of nightmares.
I just paused this and finally got around to watching The Empty Man (because I'd seen so many recommendations for it but kept putting off watching it) and was really impressed. It managed to do that fragmentary putting-all-the-pieces-together narrative style of Lovecraft (plus a few Jamesian moments) really, really well, and without giving anything away, wraps it all up in a way that's simultaneously satisfying and indefinable.
the thing , prince of darkness and in the mouth of madness are what some call carpenters apocalypse trilogy ! all three are perfect examples of cosmic horror !
The Jaunt is so incredibly fucked. I’ve never been so horrified by such a small amount of text. I smoked way too much weed years back, and absolutely randomly The Jaunt popped into my head, and it mentally fucked me so badly that I’m not sure I’ve ever been 100% the same. Stephen King is fucked up, in the exact ways he has intended.
The works of horror/fantasy author Clive Barker touch on cosmic horror themes with multiple alternate dimensions/realities than our own suggested, the "hell" of Hellraiser where the Cenobites reside for example (it's suggested it's not really hell but something inbetween). As far as films made from his works I suggest: Hellraiser 1&2 Lord of Illusion Nightbreed
I'm the opposite, I somehow dislike the choice of the highlight of the movie which is the character's past. This somewhat diminished my anticipation of horror manifestation. Because I don't relate nor attached to any of the characters, somehow it was like forcefully insert something like drama in supposedly cosmic horror setting. I feel like I'm watching a weird scenery, and then out of nowhere the main character's past (was it about cheating?) It was a weird.. experience of cosmic horror, a new one. Other than what I mentioned above, I like the movie's other aspect. The clone scene especially, it was like a symbolism of self confrontation, my favorite part, in fact. It cements the good part of the movie of the characterization of the main character.
The movie was terrible, it try so hard to make things scary but ended up focusing too hard on all the wrong parts. It's like when an SCP writer think they can write a Hollywood movie.
Related to The Jaunt, there is a similar story in the game Limbus Company, about an express train that seemingly has no downsides. The game itself also relates a lot to existential horror overall, but is a gatcha anime game, which might not be everyone's thing. In order to not spoil the train story in here, I'll recomment the youtube video "Love Town Is An Existential Nightmare" by Frey Cheqama that goes through it.
This is a great little doc! So many like it on UA-cam, but this one is read well, by a real person, is consistent in message, and is effective in generating interest in the movies in question (although I find the Mist pretty overwrought)
I love the thoughtful analysis of these topics on your channel. The Lovecraftian Ghouls and their societies and their interactions with ours never get enough love and this channel’s name suggests he may have a similar opinion.
The Jaunt always makes me think of the William Gibson short story Hinterlands from Burning Chrome. "A short story in which the dread induced by human contact with an unilluminated, indescribable, almost entirely unknown, but certainly extraterrestrial world system gives rise to a new human religion, something like a cargo cult."
My first encounter with a cosmic horror was the Flood in Halo. On the surface, to my kid brain, it was just space zombies. Then as the game and story progress it becomes a cosmic threat that wants to consume everything living. A combined consciousness of all it has assimilated, directed at the singular goal of domination. And the most terrifying thing about it, the only way to kill it is to starve it.
They lady played Kelly in Prince of Darkness (the bloody lady who tries to pull Satan through) gives a super underrated performance. After she turns, and has all the make up on, shes truly unrecognizable except for her blonde hair which is a wild juxtaposition.
the novel “the stars my destination” from the 50’s introduced me to “jaunting”. one of the 1st sci fi novels i listened to as an adult (dyslexia discouraged me from reading growing up) and turned me into a sci fi lover.
You absolute _legend_ for putting THE JAUNT at the top: That's easily the most fridge-dread thing I've ever read; I still think about that poor woman lost in there forever...
I don't know if you read the comments or not, but I just finished reading IT for the first time and that novel is cosmic horror. So you should definitely read it!!
The Empty Man isn’t just cosmic horror, it is an addition to Lovecraft’s mythos. The entity is Nyarlethotep. You can even hear the mass of people by the campfire chant out his name: ny-ar-lethotep, ny-ar-lethotep. As for the bottle and summoning “the empty man”? They are summoning Nyarlethotep. In lovecraft mythos, Nyarlethotep comes in many forms, one of them being a tall, dark hooded figure shrouded in shadow, and his presence is often accompanied by a maddening sound of flutes e.i., the empty bottle they blow into
Best Cosmic Horror I've seen lately was from Guillermo del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities" - The Viewing Very reminiscent of a John Carpenter 1980's film.
You should check out Banshee Chapter and AM1200. Underappreciated, but some of the best cosmic horror movies ever made. Banshee Chapter in particular is a masterpiece. AM1200 isn't on quite the same cinematic level as Banshee Chapter, but once you start thinking about the implications of what happens in that movie even being possible, it makes for some of the creepiest cosmic horror I've ever encountered. AM1200 is actually by the same director as The Empty Man. Oh, another little known gem is The Screwfly Solution (2006). Be warned, all three are very scary and super dark, even by the standards of the movies mentioned here.
1:19 I saw this movie as a kid, but could never remember it’s name up until now… only that it was fraught with complexity and some esoteric horror I could not comprehend
The Mist is even screwier when you consider almost everything the crazy lady said came true to some effect. For example, she said they needed to sacrifice the boy and what happens after he's killed at the end? The mist rolls away. It's not just that there's a crazy cult, but that the cult, in their madness, is more in tune with what's happening than the rational protagonists.
Loved this video & so many of these movies on the list! The tourist scene in ‘Nope’ is excellent, but it really made me think of a scene in a movie called ‘The Borderlands’ here in the UK, that just does it better imo (Highly recommend it if you’ve not seen it)
Read a short story a while back that must have been inspired by The Jaunt. Instead of being stuck there seemingly forever before eventually being released, teleportation does not move the body from one place to another. It relocates the body to a pocket dimension, and creates a new body from background energy in the desired location. No one knows this, as the new copy only has the old ones memories up until the teleport. The story follows a traveler, or rather one copy after another, as they appear upon a ever growing pile of their own corpses, the horror each one experiences upon realizing the truth, and their attempts to somehow, by some miracle, warn their current self to stop this horrible cycle, and never let another soul teleport again.
One of the movies that really got me when I was younger was Event Horizon, every time they would jump across space it would rip a hole straight to hell. It was so unsettling watching people lose their minds to basically demons.
You should also read King's short story Jerusalem's Lot, which is a prequel to Salem's Lot. Around 50 pages and very, very Lovecraftian. I read it at 16 before ever reading any Lovecraft and it just blew my mind, couldn't sleep for two days after that. Also, Uzumaki by Junji Ito is an incredible feat of cosmic horror storytelling.
No, your opinion of King is not unique. I also find him wordy, tedious, and in the end, not able to create anything that suspends my disbelief sufficiently. I can't become immersed in any of his work. At the end of every one I've read, I've thought, "You should pay me to read this, not the other way around." At least some directors have been able to create films based on the works, but I don't credit King for anything more than the bones of the stories, not the resulting films.
Cosmic Horror is also about events at the scale of which that humans cannot comprehend. One of the best recent Cosmic Horrors if the HBO series Chernobyl, which I think deserves a mention!
That's a dramatisation of a real life event caused by negligence and beurocratic ignorance. There's nothing cosmic about it. The people in charge didn't want to spend the money to perform proper maintenance and framed their corner cutting as "efficiency" when reporting back to the government, who were ignorant of what that actually meant and rewarded them instead of firing them and replacing them with people who took the dangers seriously.
Well.. its a bit ..boring for some. I think they took the slow burn way too far.. that comss from someone who absolutely LOVED that film. But many disliked it .. for a reason.
I think "At The Mountains Of Madness" is particularly powerful because it gives us both a glimpse of Lovecrafts horror while at the same time showing what could have been, a future of Lovecraft tales that could have been novel length. Alas, it was not to be, but thankfully, he was not the type to exclude those who would take his work further. And so today, we dont only have H.P. Lovecrafts work, but those who were not only in close contact with him but were deeply affected by the man himself and the continuation of his work. Its a love affair of respect from pulp writers who were well ahead of their time.
You might be interested in the novels "Remembrance of Earth's past" by Liu Cixin, better known as 3 body problem. The final book especially, (Death's End) gets into some incredibly mindbending sci fi that really gave me that feeling you describe in this video. The unknowable enormity and alien nature of the universe is explored quite well and makes you question everything
I had to watch The Empty Man a couple times to appreciate it, its dialogue gets really corny at times but the concept is unique and I really liked the monster design they went with personally, as trying to depict, as they say it in the film and I quote " endless black chaos" would be hard to do effectively but I thought what they went with was pretty solid in terms of the cosmic horror aspect of it all. Also the opening sequence was pretty cool.
"What I find especially effective is house the evil force treats humans as nothing more but tools for it's purposes" Sounds like you've never had a shitty boss before mate.
I watched Underwater and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The hopeless atmosphere is really well done. I almost don't even want to say more about it, because even saying it's cosmic horror could be considered a spoiler.
One of the cool things about Nope is this subtle framing that might imply that animals have an innate fear of the Creature - as if it's ancestral memory, implying the Creature has been around for millenia. That's definitely open to interpretation, and I think it's meant to raise questions, not answer them. Things like the horse's anxiety of rounded silver shape that makes it panic; it has the same sillohuette as the Creature in the reflection of it's eye. Or the popping balloon sound making the chimpanzee go into a frenzy, sounding like the Creature later in the movie. The chimpanzee signs "what was that noise?" when he starts to calm down.
A really terrifying portrayal of cosmic horror is this movie Final Prayer (Borderlands) kinda reminiscent of the being from Nope. This next one, and hear me out… is Smile 2. I’ve been arguing with my friends for a while about this one 😂 the 1st Smile is not (technically) but the 2nd absolutely is, it checks all the boxes. There’s even a scene where one of the character essentially explains the pattern. If you wanna read some dope books that are cosmic horror, check out stuff by Nick Cutter. Especially his novel The Deep it’s pure nightmare fuel. Another great author is Laird Barron, one story in particular Procession of the Black Sloth is kinda a mix of cosmic horror and depictions of Buddhist hell. I figured you might enjoy cause you like the topic of hell and the afterlife too. Also Revival by Stephen King is terrifying. I’ll shut up now. Thank you for making these videos 🙏🏽
The Empty Man didn't confuse me because I was familiar with Tibetan Buddhism and the concept of a tulpa, but the detective himself being one was a hell of a twist.
I loved the beginning and middle of empty man. But it just felt so convoluted.. I’m surprised to see it even mentioned.. maybe I will try to watch it again from ur perspective of it being cosmic horror.
I remember reading 'Dreamcatcher' and being so bored at times. Ive read a few other books by King and he's not my favorite writer. He has good ideas and the characters can be ones to invest in but the stories do lack something for me too. Its not an opinion im glad to have but at least its better to know youre not alone..... Except, seemingly ironcally to this video; does it seem always better to not find out whether youre alone or not. Very apt. ❤
You got great taste!👌🏼
Since you liked "The Jaunt" may i suggest something similar from Stephen King?
Revival
The Man in the Black Suit
The Boogeyman
Thank you so much! I will start with the short stories!
I’ve always said that King was much more a master craftsman of the short story format than the long form novel. His short stories are amazing, especially The Jaunt. Other such as Mrs. Todd’s Short Cut, The Boogeyman, Dolan’s Cadillac etc
This was a great clip!
@@ghouliganytif you're interested in other King stories exploring cosmic horror, "From a Buick 8", "1408", "The Langoliers" or "It" work too. Although with It, it takes long to realize the cosmic horror implications.
1408 has a movie adaptation which is quite good but it falls more on "haunted house" vibes. Nontheless, still worth a watch as well as a read for the story it's based on.
Langoliers also has a movie adaption where the big reveal may not have aged well due to CGI but the plot takes a simple concept explored multiple times in different media which I won't say to not spoil things and gives it a never thought twist.
From a Buick 8 is straight up cosmic horror with the way the story develops. It's a true "fear of the unknown".
@@christophfaulkner7295TBH, I read many kings novels when I was a teen, and I loved tommyknockers so so much! IT was good too, but looonnnggg.
Yeah so I hate watching horror but Christopher pike, Anne rice and king was what i religiously read. Weird.
I think reading is a lot less scary.
Until UA-cam vids came along….lol
I can’t remember the name of the story I read recently by him but it’s in his “If It Bleeds” book. For whatever reason it stuck with me more than anything else he’s done, but it’s a story about a kid introducing an old magnate to smart phones. Ultimately it’s a story about the implications of intention and its ripples. It’s also the reason I’ll never have a bridge named after me.
An anti-Jaunt scenario would also be horrifying. Blinking your eyes in the real world and being instantly transported billions of years in the future.
It might sound silly but I think the game "the Stanley Parable" offers something like that(although a bit more humours). There the "Narrator" gives Stanley a skip button that moves him forward in time. But it goes wrong. While the first push is a mere minute the next one is an hour, then a day, and it continues like that exponentially. The last time you hear how much time have passed it was several years because afterwards the Narrator goes mad. If you keep pushing you see the room around you crumble, be overgrown with vegetation, loose that vegetation and eventually all that is left is a desolate wasteland. You left with no idea how much time have been skippes
@@viktorgruvegard1343lol yeah, that entire section is so eerie too, the ambience of the pipes starting to leak leading to the roof collapsing, and then after the presumed apocalypse happens, you can hear these weird sounds coming from outside the room, creepy stuff
Might make a good comedy... Five Blinks and Its Over!
@@viktorgruvegard1343almost like the plot of click haha
Thats like sleeping but upgraded
The Jaunt lives rent-free in my head. Absolutely terrifying.
It stays with you longer than you think.
its really not that scary lil bro 😂
After watching Emesis Blue, I can not get it out of my mind.
@@ir0316 Unsuccessfully trying to lil bro someone on a yt comment section over their opinion lmao.
It will stay with you longer than you think. Longer than you think.
I was so glad to see The Empty Man talked about. My dad directed and wrote and was never really discovered so I’m very happy to see it in this.
The Empty Man was one that I really enjoyed. My wife and I watched it a few years ago and to this day if we're drinking a soda or beer that comes in a glass bottle, we'll blow across it and give the other a look to see the reaction.
Tell him thank you for making an amazing movie, me and my friends watched a while ago, and the puzzlement of the movie left me in awe!! It really was good cosmic horror!
Dude! That is awesome!! What gave him the inspiration to write and direct the Empty Man?
That is awesome!
Tell your dad he is cool and his work is very much appreciated.
"Longer than you think, dad, longer than you think"
The line “It’s forever in there” will live in my head forever, ironically
“It’s longer than you think”
“Lonnnng Jaunt.” Absolutely blood chilling lol
man, that line has haunted me since I read it when I was like 11 years old.
That line is the definition of iykyk...
My first experience with Prince of Darkness at 3am with a high fever as a kid, i woke up to that first dream sequence. It scared the hell out of me, but it made me seek out that movie the following weekend. It's still my favorite Carpenter movie. Great video.
I was blessed to see this at the theater when it was released. Super underrated. It honestly blew me away because I'd never seen a movie depict science and religion wrapped in cosmic horror the way Carpenter did. Still in my top 3 favorite Carpenter movies. Better than Halloween by far, imo.
Jeanjacket does not suck people into an endless void; the specific scene you show is just a stylisation to represent a wider shot of an internal view. JJ is very much a living organism and speculated to be something which ordinarily lives very, VERY high up in the atmosphere. It has an "ordinary" digestive tract, which is what the tourists are held in.
In fact, at the start of the movie we hear the missing hikers screaming, very faintly, when JJ is nearby. Its prey is held inside of it before being crushed and digested, not pulled into some endless void.
Almost.
J.J. 's species is native to _the gas giants._
yeah, He obviously meant it as a figure of speach
JJ is an atmospheric beast, it's a very old concept ( around the 18th century at least) that eventually became a kind of cryptid, but it was something even Carl Sagan wrote about, the thing is that hypothetically such things *could* exist, but contrary to what so many people think, JJ is *not* an alien. It's absolutely a native species that normally don't come down this low to the surface which is why people aren't being eaten all the time by these things
That Steven King is bad at endings is nowhere near a unique opinion lol.
He’s Shakespeare compared to someone like Grisham.
Even Stephen King admits that he's not great at ending his stories iirc he's even had a line in a movie adaptation of one of his books that says it
I dont think hes sooo great like everybody does.
@@dustydesertdisciple6290he's hit or miss. When he hits....he HITS(Pet Semetary, The Shining, Dark Tower, etc) when he misses, his stories come off as if he let one of his kids(when they were still kids)ghostwrite for him as a training exercise to become writers themselves but chose to put his name on it for marketing. That's been my headcanon for decades...
Steven king is one level higher than R.L. Stein,
For me its a ladder.
R.L. Stein and his childrens horror
Then Steven King and his young adult horror
Then H.P. Lovecraft and his masterpieces of horror. No there will never be another lovecraft. Hes like the tesla of horror fiction. He died in a very similar way too...
The Christmas like piano music is an interesting juxtaposition with the subject material, which I appreciate
I watched The Mist in the theater and was (and still am) completely devastated by the ending!
I think checking out the artwork of Wayne Barlowe would be a sick video since he made an entire book of alien creatures as well as his own depiction of hell and demons that is truly alien. He even worked on avatar, Harry Potter, and hellboy
This 100%. Barlowe's art and worldbulding are insane.
I'm about to start reading God's Demon!
Event Horizon had the best cosmic horror part I’ve seen in film. It’s the only part I really remember; when they’re able to see what happened to the previous crew and how it was just a hedonistic display of insane torture in an alternate hellscape reality.
Great movie, I only recently learned the author was inspired by the warp in Warhammer 40k.
I don’t get the hype
I thought it was massively disappointing
@ There’s a reason I only remember that scene lol
@@JasonTodd971 probably because they were forced to remove a bunch of stuff from the final cut and the original film for it was damaged so they can't add it back in now
@@CrunchyRhombusother way around ..
The Jaunt:
"It's eternity in there."
Now I wonder if that was an inspiration for the "respawn" machine
Emesis Blue Moment
@@N1GHTSTRIKER-45 never understood the hype around it. I watched it but thats not really a masterpiece everyone claims it to be
I think it might be a famous story and I'm stupid for not remembering it, but I read a story about a human spaceship that travels to a distant planet through FTL or hyperspace. The astronauts have to shut the windows because looking out into hyperspace is somehow disturbing and drives them slowly mad. When they get to their destination, it's a planet with monochrome landmasses, that on closer inspection turn out to be completely covered in human bodies. The astronauts suspect that humanity is actually the food source for an alien species, and decide to go back home (with the windows still blocked).
@@klon97 🧢
Nope is such a great movie! I think the way the creature eats and honestly a lot of the creature is based on the way rays eat. Watch a ray eat a crab, then watch that scene again. Mind blown!
DUDE the intro to the Empty Man is PERFECTION. Don't love the rest of the movie....but the opening is nearly the best horror opening I've seen. God damn
What i loved about Nope is the screaming in the wind thats almost discernible but it blends with the wind so well that it gets you on edge but you don't quite know why until you give it a 2nd watch and with headphones. What a creative horror film. Jordan Peele is a master of his craft.
You can always hear the screams, what are you talking about?
Dude is a racist
Saw it in the theatre and was blown away. The idea of all these people basically being consumed inside this thing while it flies around is so disturbing. Such a cool film, plus creepy monke was creepy.
No, no he is not
Master of his craft is a massive stretch. His movies are good but there's absolutely nothing special about them, Nope is no different, good but not great
Nope was so good and the Cosmic Horror Elements in it are fantastic. Just seeing the ship and trying to understand it is so insanely lovecraftian. I know a lot of people didn't like the way it looked but I genuinely loved it so much, it was such a fucking trip and great way to show an entity that doesn't fully follow the physics that we understand.
Nope was bad
@JSawmill63 sad for you...
But it's not cosmic horror, the whole point is that it's just a normal animal, who behaves as any animal would
@@NefariousTV :’/ I’m not tarded I swear
@@jesusramirezromo2037 dude... you don't think an alien that's shaped like a UFO, unfurling out into a blanket monster that esoterically eats people by changing the color of its square, ISN'T cosmic horror?!? First off... Jordan Peele is a massive Lovecraft fan, and literally produced a show called Lovecraft country. Second off, the design inspiration once JJ is fully unfurled, that Peele took from Cthulu and the Elder thing, are absolutely elements of CH. I'm not claiming the movie in its entirety is a quintessential example of it, but there is undoubtedly elements of cosmic horror in the film. JJ behaves like a normal animal, but stretches our concept of what can even be considered life by the end of the film.
I was gonna comment "you know, no one ever talks about Twin Peaks when mentioning cosmic horror in media and that's a crime", but then I see that you did on the first video, so that rocks.
it really only ramped up in the 2017 series to be fair
@@theanonymspysandwich It was absolutely present in the first two seasons.
@@princeblackelf4265 BOB 😖
@@theanonymspysandwichI feel like The Return was way less rooted in cosmic horror. It took something vague and rooted in the psychology of people dealing with intense traumatic experiences and changed it into an urban fantasy where groups of objectively good and evil supernatural entities treated the earth as a battleground for a proxy war amongst several dozen people. I just feel like that's pretty much just Christian theology with the serial numbers filed off.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 I never felt any cosmic horror or dread tbh. The first seasons could have been spirits from native folklore medling, while in the 2017 series the theme of parallel universes gets explored but never gets defining up until the end. Most of it just feels like it's the universes trying to correcting themselves by getting rid of the "invaders" from the other universes
Great video. Some people think that Jean Jacket is a designed based on Evangelion. Specifically the 10th angel Sahaquiel. Haven't looked into it too much, but kinda cool if true.
Yep the same sub-specied as Ezekiel's Vision of Wheels upon wheels. Kind of like an ethereal manta ray or jelly fish
The director already confirmed it
@@anonfinally1692 Oh nice. The video I saw it in just mentioned Jordan Peele was an Eva fan.
I wasn't watching the video, just listening, but from his description alone, that's what I was picturing.
You should defintly watch movie Event Horizon. My favorite depiction of unknown and unimaginable
Okay so I have watched cosmic horror
I see the Nope segment sligntly differently. Jupe attempts and forces himself to believe he has tamed Jeanjacket because of the trauma and complete loss of control and understanding from being forced to witness his best friend and co-actor, a chimpanzee tearing his fake family apart and reminding everyone on set that it was still an animal, uncontrollable and wild. Jupe now is a rancher to believe he has control over his own life and co-actors in performative ranching.
I see it even more differently. I believe Jupe is actually the chimpanzee and Jeanjacket sees him as the most common form of nutrition, but Jupe is oblivious to the fact that he is not human. Which is why in the scenes where he talks to others, they seem to be talking to something that doesn’t actually 100% understand them. Like talking to a pet.
A point about The Empty Man that I came to realize was that, The Empty Man himself is not the mysterious entity that the film may lead you to believe. The Empty Man is actually James, as one of the fanatics that James interrogates even refers to the entity as "The Other" saying, "he needs an Empty Man to be a bridge to the rest of the world". At least, this is what I interpreted after numerous watches. Great video btw!
Honestly what got me into cosmic horror was one particular moment on a video game called Mass Effect. You go the whole game trying to learn about these things called "The Reapers" And finally there's a mission where you encounter one, It turns out the Reapers are a sentient race of machines that have always been, They have no beginning, They are infinite, They are something so far beyond our comprehension that we cannot possibly fathom how they even exist. This broke my mind as a kid playing this game, As far as everything I've known, Everything has an origin & Is created by something, Especially a machine. So playing Mass Effect and learning that this Reaper thing is basically eternal really messed with my head, The reaper simply states there is a realm of existence so far beyond our understanding that we cannot even imagine it. To this day I don't think any other video game has given me chills the way that conversation in ME1 did.
Unfortunately ME3 so of ruins this by explaining their origins
It was just some alien race that created the Reapers for slave labour and they had the typical Skynet rebellion
@@Darkfire7881 sounds like At the Mountains of Madness, the Shoggooths were created as slave labor and then rebelled and destroyed their masters
@@Darkfire7881 That's not what happened, the Reapers were still doing what they were created for, they were meant to preserve life. I can't quite remember how they reached the conclusion that they need to wipe out all intelligent life in order to preserve life but they did reach that conclusion and that's their interpretation of the task they were given. Either way, it's still far more fascinating than the cliché you suggested.
You're right that it kind of ruins the mystery by explaining the origins though, but the Leviathan DLC was awesome as far as I'm concerned, I loved the explanation because it's really interesting. Also just the presentation and introduction of the Leviathan is one of the most memorable moments of any game I've ever played. The build up, and then diving deep into an uncharted ocean planet, and the way the Leviathan reveals itself. It's just brilliant and I can still remember it as vividly as when I first played the game over a decade ago.
@@highestsettingsI believe the logic is that they preserve life by converting species into new Reapers. Each species, with all its knowledge and culture and history, is forever preserved within the chassis of its counterpart Reaper. Thus, one might say the Reapers are preserving knowledge and information with each harvest, and they then allow new life to rise up and flourish. In theory, if they didn't do that, one species/entity (an AI perhaps) would utterly dominate and perpetuate a state of stagnation... from a certain point of view, anyway.
RUDIMENTARY CREATURES OF BLOOD AND FLESH. YOU TOUCH MY MIND, FUMBLING IN IGNORANCE, INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. THERE IS A REALM OF EXISTENCE SO FAR BEYOND YOUR OWN YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE IT. I AM BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION. I AM SOVEREIGN. ORGANIC LIFE IS NOTHING BUT A GENETIC MUTATION, AN ACCIDENT. YOUR LIVES ARE MEASURED IN YEARS AND DECADES. YOU WITHER, AND DIE. WE ARE ETERNAL. THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION AND EXISTENCE. BEFORE US, YOU ARE NOTHING. YOUR EXTINCTION IS INEVITABLE. WE ARE THE END OF EVERYTHING. WE IMPOSE ORDER ON THE CHAOS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. YOU EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOW IT, AND YOU WILL END BECAUSE WE DEMAND IT. MY KIND TRANSCENDS YOUR VERY UNDERSTANDING. WE ARE EACH A NATION - INDEPENDENT, FREE OF ALL WEAKNESS. YOU CANNOT EVEN GRASP THE NATURE OF OUR EXISTENCE. WE HAVE NO BEGINNING. WE HAVE NO END. WE ARE INFINITE. MILLIONS OF YEARS AFTER YOUR CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN ERADICATED AND FORGOTTEN, WE WILL ENDURE. WE ARE LEGION. THE TIME OF OUR RETURN IS COMING. OUR NUMBERS WILL DARKEN THE SKY OF EVERY WORLD. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR DOOM. I AM THE VANGUARD OF YOUR DESTRUCTION. THIS EXCHANGE IS OVER.
Pet Cemetery is not a very central example of King's brand of horror, as it's more of a long dreadful sinking into a pit.
Very apt description, as it defintely falls squarely into King’s “I’ve walked too far into a river of blood to go back now,” motif. There’s no going back when you dance with the devil…or Wendigo, as it were.
I used to be unable to sleep because of Zelda. Now she makes me laugh because she looks like a Crack head cross dresser
I literally just watched the Prince of Darkness earlier tonight perfect timing!!
I think Annihilation is a movie worth mentioning here. Specially for the final sequence
It was mediocre. Basically a more pretentious version of The Colour Out of Space. It had its moments, but otherwise a forgettable movie.
I loved the books, they gave me chills, the movie was very dull in comparison
It was Stalker but with women
It could have been better
It's cancer.
A mindless, pointless destruction through alteration.
And it's in the form of an expanding bubble humanity can't pop.
Your opinion of Stephen King is not unique. He has a great imagination in terms of scenarios and world-building, but his characters are caricatures who speak and think in tropes and his stories often have unsatisfying or anticlimactic endings.
Yeah I always have been frustrated at people who call him the "king" of horror.
Sorta like if people were to say Burger King was the "king" of all burgers.
Like... seriously? You're really gonna be THAT hung up on the name? You TRULY can't think of a SINGLE better example??
😬🤣
@Kellethorn
Stephen King is basically the Nirvana of horror. He's great, but he overshadows a lot of great talent
He's also a political nutter. Can't stop talking about politics. He's terminally online nowadays
Thank you for mentioning The Jaunt. That story has been in the corner of my mind ever since I read it.
For at.least a suggestion of cosmic horror, see "X: the Man with the X-Ray Eyes" (1963). Ray Milland's description of what he is seeing before he tears out his eyes, is chilling.
The Empty Man is one of my all time favorite movies. I love it!
The most underrated movie ever and so misunderstood.
one of the all times greatest, but hasnt caught on yet. It will, in time.
same. I made a metal song inspired by it, and using clips from it. such a splendid movie, very underrated
I loved the beginning, but the other parts disappointed me. Why did the writers have to make it into a teen horror urban legend movie. I believed they should’ve kept it in the forest or at least tied the plot to the characters at the beginning. Gives the story some immediacy, some emotional depth. You had this cosmic horror creature, but the writers reduced it to, basically, a troll/candyman under the bridge.
You should check out the short film by the same director. It's called AM1200. Great Cosmic Horror. I believe The Empty Man was interfared with by a studio that didn't truly understand or appreciate what was bring created.
It’s been a long time, but I believe the cultists in The Empty Man are trying to summon Nyarlathotep, iirc. Really wish they would release it on DVD.
I would say that was a solid theory. The cult though they were Zen-Like they were extremely Nihilistic. In some westernized New Age and Neo- Buddhism circles they call it " Going Empty". Transcending the self realizing that you are an actor played a role assigned to you and under the pen of an unseen author. This was the point of The Tulpa and the strange skeleton at the begining which was a similar experiment. That it proves how easy it is. That it is our true nature. That there is no reality aside from that which we have been presented with. That it was about " Getting The Joke " of sentient Existence. Which Nylarhothep tends to do, just for kicks. We're a ball of plasticine in the hands of a endlessly creative bur bored malevolent and spiteful child that needs to make its own fun since there is none to be really had in between his job of relaying messages which he only does as a kid rides his bike to deliver the newspapers not indifferent to the contents or how it effects those who read them.
@ during the scene where he’s stumbles upon the gathering in the woods? I think? They are chanting. And they say the name Nyarlathotep if I’m not mistaken. I had to play it back and really listen.
whats a DVD?
@@throwawaypt2throwawaypt2-xp8nx direct visual departmentalization
Yes. Heard that too (the cultists chanting Nyarlathotep). It’s been a while since I saw it, but at one point there is also a thing that looks a lot like depictions of Nyarlathotep.
Also, it's on Hulu if not on DVD.
I remember on my channel guide on DirecTV, the summary of Prince of Darkness was something like “a priest travels to a church to investigate a can of liquid Satan” lol
I love cosmic horror, and I think I'm going to enjoy this channel!!
Prince Of Darkness has a couple of nightmare sequences.
The mirror sequence at the end in particular.
Also, although not entirely successful, the ending of the film THEY is also the stuff of nightmares.
Dope video man, cosmic horror is dreadfully great
I just paused this and finally got around to watching The Empty Man (because I'd seen so many recommendations for it but kept putting off watching it) and was really impressed. It managed to do that fragmentary putting-all-the-pieces-together narrative style of Lovecraft (plus a few Jamesian moments) really, really well, and without giving anything away, wraps it all up in a way that's simultaneously satisfying and indefinable.
the thing , prince of darkness and in the mouth of madness are what some call carpenters apocalypse trilogy ! all three are perfect examples of cosmic horror !
This was really good. Great Job.
My roomie and I found this church one day, and it is terribly creepy even at high noon.
The Jaunt is so incredibly fucked. I’ve never been so horrified by such a small amount of text. I smoked way too much weed years back, and absolutely randomly The Jaunt popped into my head, and it mentally fucked me so badly that I’m not sure I’ve ever been 100% the same. Stephen King is fucked up, in the exact ways he has intended.
Stephen King was a massive weed smoker and c user too.
Great analysis of some absolute classics!
I just read The Jaunt at this video’s recommendation, and now I can’t sleep.
Utterly terrifying and a brilliant read.
The works of horror/fantasy author Clive Barker touch on cosmic horror themes with multiple alternate dimensions/realities than our own suggested, the "hell" of Hellraiser where the Cenobites reside for example (it's suggested it's not really hell but something inbetween). As far as films made from his works I suggest:
Hellraiser 1&2
Lord of Illusion
Nightbreed
Annihilation is one of the scariest movies i've ever seen, at least from the Cosmic Horror aspect.
The book is even scarier. You get to witness everything through the main character. You become the main character.
I'm the opposite, I somehow dislike the choice of the highlight of the movie which is the character's past.
This somewhat diminished my anticipation of horror manifestation. Because I don't relate nor attached to any of the characters, somehow it was like forcefully insert something like drama in supposedly cosmic horror setting.
I feel like I'm watching a weird scenery, and then out of nowhere the main character's past (was it about cheating?)
It was a weird.. experience of cosmic horror, a new one. Other than what I mentioned above, I like the movie's other aspect.
The clone scene especially, it was like a symbolism of self confrontation, my favorite part, in fact. It cements the good part of the movie of the characterization of the main character.
It sucked...
The movie was terrible, it try so hard to make things scary but ended up focusing too hard on all the wrong parts. It's like when an SCP writer think they can write a Hollywood movie.
That movie was not scary at all
Related to The Jaunt, there is a similar story in the game Limbus Company, about an express train that seemingly has no downsides. The game itself also relates a lot to existential horror overall, but is a gatcha anime game, which might not be everyone's thing.
In order to not spoil the train story in here, I'll recomment the youtube video "Love Town Is An Existential Nightmare" by Frey Cheqama that goes through it.
This is a great little doc! So many like it on UA-cam, but this one is read well, by a real person, is consistent in message, and is effective in generating interest in the movies in question (although I find the Mist pretty overwrought)
I love the thoughtful analysis of these topics on your channel. The Lovecraftian Ghouls and their societies and their interactions with ours never get enough love and this channel’s name suggests he may have a similar opinion.
criminally underrated channel, keep it up bro 🔥
The Jaunt always makes me think of the William Gibson short story Hinterlands from Burning Chrome.
"A short story in which the dread induced by human contact with an unilluminated, indescribable, almost entirely unknown, but certainly extraterrestrial world system gives rise to a new human religion, something like a cargo cult."
"Flies in an airport"
My first encounter with a cosmic horror was the Flood in Halo. On the surface, to my kid brain, it was just space zombies. Then as the game and story progress it becomes a cosmic threat that wants to consume everything living. A combined consciousness of all it has assimilated, directed at the singular goal of domination. And the most terrifying thing about it, the only way to kill it is to starve it.
They lady played Kelly in Prince of Darkness (the bloody lady who tries to pull Satan through) gives a super underrated performance. After she turns, and has all the make up on, shes truly unrecognizable except for her blonde hair which is a wild juxtaposition.
Decades later and I still remember the ending of "Prince Of Darkness" - absolutely terrifying.
prince of darkness is my favorite carpenter movie and i love the thing and big trouble!
the novel “the stars my destination” from the 50’s introduced me to “jaunting”. one of the 1st sci fi novels i listened to as an adult (dyslexia discouraged me from reading growing up) and turned me into a sci fi lover.
You're hitting your stride.
Keep it up. You earned a sub
You’ve always made quality vids man, glad to see you getting the views you deserve
You absolute _legend_ for putting THE JAUNT at the top: That's easily the most fridge-dread thing I've ever read; I still think about that poor woman lost in there forever...
I don't know if you read the comments or not, but I just finished reading IT for the first time and that novel is cosmic horror. So you should definitely read it!!
You got me with this, subscribing 😎
The Empty Man isn’t just cosmic horror, it is an addition to Lovecraft’s mythos. The entity is Nyarlethotep. You can even hear the mass of people by the campfire chant out his name: ny-ar-lethotep, ny-ar-lethotep.
As for the bottle and summoning “the empty man”? They are summoning Nyarlethotep. In lovecraft mythos, Nyarlethotep comes in many forms, one of them being a tall, dark hooded figure shrouded in shadow, and his presence is often accompanied by a maddening sound of flutes e.i., the empty bottle they blow into
Best Cosmic Horror I've seen lately was from Guillermo del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities" - The Viewing
Very reminiscent of a John Carpenter 1980's film.
The Jaunt: "It's longer than you think, dad!! It's longer than you think!" Chilled my spine....
Yes thank you! I’ve always felt Prince of Darkness was very scary! And the dream sequence was the scariest part of the movie!
Dead Space is by far the scariest and darkest cosmic horror franchise to ever exist and it's not even a movie.
I agree dead space is absolutely one of most horrific realities to ever be in
You should check out Banshee Chapter and AM1200. Underappreciated, but some of the best cosmic horror movies ever made.
Banshee Chapter in particular is a masterpiece.
AM1200 isn't on quite the same cinematic level as Banshee Chapter, but once you start thinking about the implications of what happens in that movie even being possible, it makes for some of the creepiest cosmic horror I've ever encountered. AM1200 is actually by the same director as The Empty Man.
Oh, another little known gem is The Screwfly Solution (2006).
Be warned, all three are very scary and super dark, even by the standards of the movies mentioned here.
1:19 I saw this movie as a kid, but could never remember it’s name up until now… only that it was fraught with complexity and some esoteric horror I could not comprehend
Fantastic video. Spot on explanation. New sub
The Mist is even screwier when you consider almost everything the crazy lady said came true to some effect. For example, she said they needed to sacrifice the boy and what happens after he's killed at the end? The mist rolls away. It's not just that there's a crazy cult, but that the cult, in their madness, is more in tune with what's happening than the rational protagonists.
Yeah idk about that she was just a religious nut job and showed how stupid scared people are that is a reach to say she prophesied anything
The thing about it, theres ALOT of theories, some have backing, some dont.
But one of my favorites is - What they fear, is what comes true.
Kind of missed the point, The cult believed what it wanted, it was all coincidence so they belived as real
@@jesusramirezromo2037But cruel, animal, moronic religion _is more succesful_ than rationality.
Nice addition using prince of darkness, seems a lot of people skip this movie, but its one of my favorite carpenter movie
> yo kids, you will experience unimaginable horrors if you remain awake through the jaunt
> i dont believe you
Lmaooo
The Dad said nothing and that's the point 😭
If you liked the Jaunt, i also recommend the "Love Town" part of the Project Moon Universe. You can find videos talking about it on UA-cam.
Loved this video & so many of these movies on the list!
The tourist scene in ‘Nope’ is excellent, but it really made me think of a scene in a movie called ‘The Borderlands’ here in the UK, that just does it better imo (Highly recommend it if you’ve not seen it)
Read a short story a while back that must have been inspired by The Jaunt. Instead of being stuck there seemingly forever before eventually being released, teleportation does not move the body from one place to another. It relocates the body to a pocket dimension, and creates a new body from background energy in the desired location.
No one knows this, as the new copy only has the old ones memories up until the teleport. The story follows a traveler, or rather one copy after another, as they appear upon a ever growing pile of their own corpses, the horror each one experiences upon realizing the truth, and their attempts to somehow, by some miracle, warn their current self to stop this horrible cycle, and never let another soul teleport again.
Really enjoyed your recaps
One of the movies that really got me when I was younger was Event Horizon, every time they would jump across space it would rip a hole straight to hell. It was so unsettling watching people lose their minds to basically demons.
Fantastic List - Instant Subscribe.
You should also read King's short story Jerusalem's Lot, which is a prequel to Salem's Lot. Around 50 pages and very, very Lovecraftian. I read it at 16 before ever reading any Lovecraft and it just blew my mind, couldn't sleep for two days after that.
Also, Uzumaki by Junji Ito is an incredible feat of cosmic horror storytelling.
Lustmord's sound design in The Empty man was what made it so good for me. His track in that opening scene was bone chilling.
Great to see some love for The Empty Man! Would also put Annihilation in there as well
we read The Jaunt in my high school english class and it has been my favorite stephen king work ever since
3:39 Alex Jones lol
No, your opinion of King is not unique. I also find him wordy, tedious, and in the end, not able to create anything that suspends my disbelief sufficiently. I can't become immersed in any of his work. At the end of every one I've read, I've thought, "You should pay me to read this, not the other way around." At least some directors have been able to create films based on the works, but I don't credit King for anything more than the bones of the stories, not the resulting films.
Nope - to the best of my knowledge - is purely allegorical, which greatly reduces its effect as cosmic horror
"It Stares Back" is an amazing cosmic horror short film.
Hell yeah The Jaunt is such a great story! I recommend everyone find and read it, the mouse experiments are great
The Jaunt is one of stephen king's most effective stories. It was amazing the first time I read it.
Cosmic Horror is also about events at the scale of which that humans cannot comprehend. One of the best recent Cosmic Horrors if the HBO series Chernobyl, which I think deserves a mention!
That's a dramatisation of a real life event caused by negligence and beurocratic ignorance. There's nothing cosmic about it. The people in charge didn't want to spend the money to perform proper maintenance and framed their corner cutting as "efficiency" when reporting back to the government, who were ignorant of what that actually meant and rewarded them instead of firing them and replacing them with people who took the dangers seriously.
Dude, no Annihilation?
Well.. its a bit ..boring for some. I think they took the slow burn way too far.. that comss from someone who absolutely LOVED that film. But many disliked it .. for a reason.
I think "At The Mountains Of Madness" is particularly powerful because it gives us both a glimpse of Lovecrafts horror while at the same time showing what could have been, a future of Lovecraft tales that could have been novel length. Alas, it was not to be, but thankfully, he was not the type to exclude those who would take his work further. And so today, we dont only have H.P. Lovecrafts work, but those who were not only in close contact with him but were deeply affected by the man himself and the continuation of his work. Its a love affair of respect from pulp writers who were well ahead of their time.
You might be interested in the novels "Remembrance of Earth's past" by Liu Cixin, better known as 3 body problem. The final book especially, (Death's End) gets into some incredibly mindbending sci fi that really gave me that feeling you describe in this video. The unknowable enormity and alien nature of the universe is explored quite well and makes you question everything
I had to watch The Empty Man a couple times to appreciate it, its dialogue gets really corny at times but the concept is unique and I really liked the monster design they went with personally, as trying to depict, as they say it in the film and I quote " endless black chaos" would be hard to do effectively but I thought what they went with was pretty solid in terms of the cosmic horror aspect of it all. Also the opening sequence was pretty cool.
"What I find especially effective is house the evil force treats humans as nothing more but tools for it's purposes"
Sounds like you've never had a shitty boss before mate.
earned a sub with this one
I watched Underwater and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The hopeless atmosphere is really well done. I almost don't even want to say more about it, because even saying it's cosmic horror could be considered a spoiler.
One of the cool things about Nope is this subtle framing that might imply that animals have an innate fear of the Creature - as if it's ancestral memory, implying the Creature has been around for millenia. That's definitely open to interpretation, and I think it's meant to raise questions, not answer them. Things like the horse's anxiety of rounded silver shape that makes it panic; it has the same sillohuette as the Creature in the reflection of it's eye. Or the popping balloon sound making the chimpanzee go into a frenzy, sounding like the Creature later in the movie. The chimpanzee signs "what was that noise?" when he starts to calm down.
Really excellent analysis
A really terrifying portrayal of cosmic horror is this movie Final Prayer (Borderlands) kinda reminiscent of the being from Nope. This next one, and hear me out… is Smile 2. I’ve been arguing with my friends for a while about this one 😂 the 1st Smile is not (technically) but the 2nd absolutely is, it checks all the boxes. There’s even a scene where one of the character essentially explains the pattern.
If you wanna read some dope books that are cosmic horror, check out stuff by Nick Cutter. Especially his novel The Deep it’s pure nightmare fuel. Another great author is Laird Barron, one story in particular Procession of the Black Sloth is kinda a mix of cosmic horror and depictions of Buddhist hell. I figured you might enjoy cause you like the topic of hell and the afterlife too. Also Revival by Stephen King is terrifying. I’ll shut up now. Thank you for making these videos 🙏🏽
The Empty Man didn't confuse me because I was familiar with Tibetan Buddhism and the concept of a tulpa, but the detective himself being one was a hell of a twist.
I loved the beginning and middle of empty man. But it just felt so convoluted.. I’m surprised to see it even mentioned.. maybe I will try to watch it again from ur perspective of it being cosmic horror.
I remember reading 'Dreamcatcher' and being so bored at times.
Ive read a few other books by King and he's not my favorite writer. He has good ideas and the characters can be ones to invest in but the stories do lack something for me too.
Its not an opinion im glad to have but at least its better to know youre not alone.....
Except, seemingly ironcally to this video; does it seem always better to not find out whether youre alone or not.
Very apt. ❤