How like cosmic horror to be one of the fastest-growing movie subgenres of the 21st century. Make way, slasher, paranormal, and even zombie niche categories, as this epic and unfathomable force moves in to take its share of cinema. Cosmic horror’s rise in popular consciousness was maybe best confirmed by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Although director Sam Raimi wrapped his MCU entry in many horror subgenres, it’s telling that the only thematic horror through-line running from the opening to end credits is cosmic.
Cosmic horror is sometimes called Lovecraftian horror after its most famous pioneer, American author H.P. Lovecraft. The influential but controversial author passed easy-to-say words like “Necronomicon” into popular culture. You’ll increasingly find the spaghetti-mouthed, humanoid dragon beasts of his fiction there, too. They cut to the incomprehensibly huge heart of cosmic horror.
The subgenre deals with the impossible weight of existence in an unknowable universe. In cosmic horror, knowledge can unleash terrible forces. Let’s just say that opening gateways to other dimensions is usually a bad idea. Ignorance is bliss for us mortals, especially when it comes to the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft’s fiction. If the sight of those ancient all-powerful beings like Cthulhu, the manifestation of the incomprehensible, doesn’t drive you mad, a sudden all-consuming sense of your own insignificance might.
Cosmic horror is distinctly and irresistibly vague, although some elements have become focal points. The Necronomicon was famously lifted from Lovecraft’s work for Raimi’s The Evil Dead, and variants of that book of the dead include Marvel’s Darkhold.
Despite its name, cosmic horror doesn’t demand we set forth into the great unknown of space. Often, the best horror arrives not when we head into the universe, but when the universe comes calling for us. Filmmakers are increasingly using the technology at their fingertips to explore the enormous themes of this vast canvas. Here is our pick of the greatest cosmic horror movies you can catch today. (But watch out, as some eldritch spoilers may ensue!)
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
At the hellbound heart of Hellraiser is a warning that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. The fourth movie may have headed to space, but it was the second that showed the franchise’s dimensional clash.
Clive Barker’s brilliant concept, first unleashed in a novella, fused Catholic dogma with Faustian pacts, sadomasochism, and Lovecraft. Hellbound introduced the Hell of Leviathan, the cenobites, and a new menace. The highly quotable Channard is pure cosmic horror, hugely powerful, suspended from an impossible umbilical, and working for purposes beyond comprehension.
Annihilation (2018)
In Alex Garland’s memorable sci-fi fable, cosmic horror came to Earth when a speck of the great unknown planted a seed on our planet. Annihilation is a mesmerizing adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel, packed with Lovecraftian Color Out of Space. It’s notable for sending a team of women into the unknown — attracting a starry cast led by Natalie Portman.
The unknown permeates the movie, even when the female explorers enter the quarantined “Shimmer,” a growing patch where an alien presence is mutating animals and plants. It’s bright, vivid, and a bold way to explore the cosmic from the all-too-relatable human emotion of grief.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
For all of the influence of Cthulhu, the Lovecraft short story that bore its name was considered unfilmable for a long time. Like many of the writer’s most famous works, the non-linear text and reliance on creeping suggestions were challenging to film.
This adaptation, the first to make it to celluloid, neatly solved the problem by blending modern and vintage techniques to adapt it as a 20s-style silent movie, the period of the original story’s publication. Its authenticity was confirmed when the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society became its distributor.
The Evil Dead II (1987)
It may be one of the legendary video nasty cabin-in-the-woods movies, but it’s also slapstick cosmic horror. Fans may be split on whether the dark humor makes it more faithful to the genre or not, but it certainly captures a distinct madness.
There’s no doubt The Evil Dead movies are steeped in cosmic horror, from the Necronomicon that unleashes hell, to the mortals it pushes to extremes. The film’s Deadite possession is supernaturally enhanced, but the sense of an overriding force is unmistakable, even if Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams somehow weathers everything it throws at him.
The Color Out of Space (2019)
Richard Stanley chose H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Color Out of Space for his return to directing after a two-decade break. Nicolas Cage is, unsurprisingly, made for cosmic horror, and here played the head of a family visited by cosmic horror in the form of a meteor crashing on their farm. The groundwater turning a striking color is just the start of the nightmare.
The Color Out of Space captures and modernizes the Lovecraftian sense of madness and features one of the hallmarks of great cosmic horror: Harrowing unpredictability. Stanley has expressed hopes that this is the start of a Lovecraft trilogy, eyeing The Dunwich Horror as the next entry. However, the future of those plans remains in doubt after production company SpectreVision parted ways with Stanley in 2021.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Cosmic horror has rapidly grown in popularity in the 21st century, but ignoring John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy wouldn’t be right. The final part pulled together a what’s what of Lovecraftian elements, deriving its name from the writer’s novella At the Mountains of Madness.
Carpenter’s tribute to Lovecraft checks the boxes with interdimensional elder gods and alternate realities. Sam Neill plays the insurance investigator attempting to track down missing horror author Sutter Cane — a Lovecraft analog — only for fact and fiction to blur around him. The film’s links to Stephen King — notably its New Hampshire setting — were more apparent on release. Still, it remains an excellent study of the clash between mundanity and surreality in our more Lovecraft-aware times.
Event Horizon (1997)
An underrated movie by Paul W.S. Anderson, who is more famous for his distinctive brand of comic and video game franchises, like the Resident Evil saga. Event Horizon drew heavily on Lovecraft and Dante to conjure a memorable Hell in space. As Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill lock horns in orbit around Neptune, they’re ably supported by a charismatic supporting cast.
Event Horizon is surprisingly effective at summoning fear from the inexplicable forces at work — beyond the control of the titular ship’s crew and humanity itself. There are no easy answers, but that makes it all the more unsettling.
The Prince of Darkness (1987)
The middle part of Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy may be one of the director’s less subtle movies, which is saying something. The premise almost answers itself. What do you get when a group of quantum physics students helps a Catholic priest unlock the mystery of an ancient cylinder of liquid?
The film never kicks into the promised apocalyptic aftermath, but the glimpses of an inevitable future when Earth falls to the Prince of Darkness are chilling. This is Satan in liquid form, drained through a sieve of Lovecraft.
The Void (2016)
A lot is going on in Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s The Void. It takes a while to warm up as a rag-tag group is holed up in a hospital surrounded by ominous hooded figures. Still, once it kicks into gear, it lives up to the filmmakers’ intention to do something different with Lovecraftian horror. A sure sign of cosmic horror’s rising popularity was the $82,510 raised solely for creature effects. Talk about unstoppable forces.
The production company, formerly known as Astron-6, left its background in pastiche behind to commit to this cosmic horror. The glimmers that remain help reinforce one of the best recent Lovecraft-inspired films.
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s work draws heavily on Lovecraft, cementing his position as one of the most important adapters of Earthbound cosmic horror. Legendarily, The Thing is a remake, but Carpenter’s modernization of the source novella, Who Goes There?, is sublime: the escalation in the isolation of Antarctica; the famously ambiguous ending about the monster’s identity; the timeless — and utterly repulsive — practical, pre-digital physical effects. But of the beloved film’s shortcomings, which may enhance The Thing’s odd brand of claustrophobia, is its failure of representation. When no females appear during its run-time, the Bechdel Test flatlines.
For many years, The Thing was the ambassador for cosmic horror. For a shapeless form, the Thing is unequivocally alien, yet its origins are dismissed. It’s the archetype of the “enemy within” trope and launched a thousand imitators as diverse as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. But as a lean slice of cosmic horror, it’s undoubtedly one of Carpenter’s most consummate films.
Nope (2022)
Jordan Peele has a penchant for tackling different areas of horror, and gives his different take on UFOs in his 3rd feature film, Nope. Like his films before, Peele takes what appears to be a fundamental concept in the genre and turns it on its head. The Haywood Hollywood horse trainers struggle to make ends meet after their father, Otis, (Keith David) dies from a seeming freak accident. His children Emerald (Keke Palmer) and OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) come to find out that what is causing the strange happenings on the farm is not of this earth, but some extraterrestrial event.
However, the entity they dub “Jean Jacket” isn’t exactly what it seems. (Warning: mild spoilers ahead.) In typical Peele fashion, what seems to be one thing is something else entirely when OJ and Em learn what Jean Jacket is. The conflict in Nope is only as strong as the dynamic between the two siblings. Their bond strengthens throughout the film, and becomes their main weapon in the battle against Jean Jacket, and why they triumph where others have failed. Full of social commentary, like any good horror venture, Peele makes the UFO concept his own.
The Endless (2017)
Filmmaking partners Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead team up again in their 2017 venture, where they act as well as direct. Sharing the first names of their characters, the filmmakers star as brothers who, after receiving a tape, revisit the UFO cult they had escaped from years earlier. What starts as a bid for closure turns into something wholly unexpected.
After arriving, Justin and Aaron are thrown for a loop to see that the people they knew in their childhood haven’t aged at all. It is a short jump to get to the realization that time works differently here. Characters are trapped in time loops, a confusing phenomenon that reaches its climax when the brothers find it is the result of some mysterious entity. The only solution is to escape the compound before Aaron and Justin are trapped in the loop, just like everyone else. An inventive take on the horror of an unnamed villain, The Endless uses the independent film genre to great effect.
No One Will Save You (2023)
In just over 90 minutes, Hulu’s No One Will Save You wastes no time getting to the point. Town outcast Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever), lives a generally reclusive life after causing the death of her best friend. Try as she might, Brynn can’t get a second chance and should probably just move to a different town. But this is all made irrelevant when aliens invade Brynn’s home.
There is no question this is a UFO film, as the aliens take on the classic gray look they are most known for in pop culture. But Brynn refuses to be done in by these home invaders, and bests them at every turn. No One Will Save You is economical with its dialogue, portraying all the events with only as many as two spoken lines throughout the entire film. The visuals tell this story expertly, portraying Brynn’s inner pain with such clarity it is impossible to not feel for her. Her fight against the aliens is the prime objective of the film, but its focus on trauma and the delightful ending twist make the film one you cannot miss.
