I
have been watching scary movies recently and something odd has jumped out at
me: many films lately have references to the Mythos contained within them for
no readily obvious reason. It’s started to make me wonder.
I
have a feeling that this is predicated upon a two-pronged phenomenon. Firstly,
Lovecraft has become “cool”. I mean, sure, he’s been trendy for a while now,
but recently his work has moved upwards into a stratospheric level. He’s become
a household word. Secondly, his stuff exists more-or-less in a public domain
limbo: everyone uses his material without having to reference the fact too
hard. This is in keeping with HPL’s own thoughts on the matter – he and his
Circle friends took each other’s concepts and messed about with them all the
time, without fear of it being called out as plagiarism. It was “open source”
material within their set, before such a concept existed. Later members of
Lovecraft’s extended circle of correspondents – like Ramsey Campbell and Brian
Lumley – are more controlling of their works and concepts these days, but in
Lovecraft’s lifetime it was open slather. My sense is that copyright issues and
IP concerns will soon be tightening up about Mythos material…
In
the meantime, many producers of film and televisual horror material seem to be
using Mythos imagery to shortcut notions of what it means to be ‘scary’ into
their works. In the first season of “True Detective” for example, the
villain at the heart of the first season mystery was referenced as the “King in
Yellow”, a term that has all kinds of implications for Mythos fans. It turned
out that the villain had nothing to do with Chambers, or with Lovecraft, but the
term was deliberately used as a flag to get imaginations and fan expectations
running wild before dragging them to bitter disappointment. Later on, in James
Wan’s “Aquaman” film, there was the blatant insertion of a paperback
copy of “The Dunwich Horror”, lying unregarded on a coffee-table, just to
set a certain tone. Previous to that, Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”
featured a character that looked very much like it was based upon Campbell’s
Great Old One Y’golonac, and I wondered at the time if there had been any legal
discussions concerning the portrayal.
It's
common knowledge that movie production houses are less than keen to risk money
on untried material. They will bank cash only on stuff that’s been done before,
on copycat material that their spies have told them that rival companies are
investing in, or on ideas that have already been enthusiastically embraced by the
viewership. Paradoxically, what the audiences want however, is stuff that’s actually
new and interesting – we want our expectations challenged; we are keen to
have accepted notions subverted. And yet, the money won’t support it – they’ll
give us another version of “Dune” instead, but with better effects
technology, for what that’s worth. I have a sense that slapping a Mythos
rationale onto a horror flick that has nothing – ostensibly – to do with
Lovecraft’s oeuvre, has become seen as a ‘safe bet’ option and one worth
financing, regardless of the fact that the best cosmic horror films of the last
few decades – “Primer”; “Pi”; “Spring”; “The Endless”; “Synchronic” - have had nothing at all to do with Cthulhu and
Co. As it is, I fully expect season two of “Wednesday” to feature a
Mythos trope of some kind…
The
two recent filmic versions I’ve seen that caught my attention were “Underwater”
by director William Eubank starring Kristen Stewart and “The Empty Man”
by David Prior. They’ve debuted more-or-less in that order, so let’s deal
chronologically:
“Underwater” is a futuristic, ostensibly science
fiction, thriller set onboard a mining facility seven miles below the ocean in
the Mariana Trench. An explosion destroys part of the base, and what’s left
seems likely to follow suit, taking all the survivors with it. A plucky band struggles
to avoid a grisly fate by donning deep-sea diving apparatus and walking across
the ocean floor to a neighbouring structure that has escape pods as a feature.
Many things go wrong, and someone has to stay behind to ensure the survival of
the rest of the group: this doomed saviour witnesses the entity behind all of
the chaos which is revealed to be…Cthulhu! Fhtagn! The creature design
is a bit wonky and idiosyncratic but, if you needed any other confirmation that
this is indeed the Big C., we are treated to HPL’s own design for his cosmic
critter jumbled together with some maps (marked with suspicious pentagrams) in
a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot while Kristen Stewart is rummaging in an
abandoned locker for supplies.
This
film is basically a re-make of “Alien”, with a few of the crowd-pleasing
elements of “Aliens” folded in, so there’s really nothing new happening
in this movie – Stewart is so obviously channelling Lt. Ripley from the first
frame that it’s almost painful to watch. Perhaps the director and writers
thought that injecting Cthulhu into the narrative would make it somehow
‘fresh’? I don’t think that it had the effect they were after – for my money it
bent a straightforward sci-fi thriller right out of shape and ground the entire
story to a halt, in much the same way that “Event Horizon” became a
disappointing supernatural horror flick after establishing itself as a science
fiction action film. I know it’s called ‘cosmic horror’, but that doesn’t mean
it’s supposed to be set in space (or beneath the sea, which amounts to much the
same thing).
Prior’s
“The Empty Man” is a more subtle beast. Right at the end, our
protagonist is confronted by an entity existing ‘beyond the veil’ which has
been trying to cross over into our dimension. The visuals of this tense moment
are sketchy and quickly glossed over but the image of the alien creature is, to
all intents and purposes, a dead ringer for Nyarlathotep in its form as the
Bloody Tentacle, or Bloody Tongue. As with “Underwater” there is little
or no preamble to this revelation; it just gets unveiled in a ‘ta-dah!’ moment.
I’m
not sure why these filmmakers think this kind of thing is a good idea. In these
types of movies, the excitement of the situation and the slow unfolding of the
narrative are what keep the viewers engrossed; dumping these icons in at the
last minute undermines all of the creative activity that precedes them. Sure,
an uninformed newb will see the Bloody Tentacle in all its glory and go “Woah!
That’s a cool looking beastie!”; however, those versed in Mythos lore will all
go “Oh, okay: it’s just Nyarlathotep. All is revealed.” In one fell swoop, the
boundless possibilities of the enigma get wiped off the board to be replaced
with a limited subset of expectations.
And
sure, some of those expectations are quite bad. Much fan material established
on the notion of Nyarlathotep winnows down to “he just makes people go mad!”
and all narrative through-flow stops the moment that this happens. The entity
is so much more complex than this, but this short-sighted view of the Outer God
kills off many stories before they get a chance to go anywhere interesting (I
direct you Joseph Pulver’s woefully-edited compilation volume Ripples from
Carcosa as evidence). Fear thrives on a lack of information; the unknown
scares us while the familiar does not. A familiar monster is just that – as
soon as we know that “it’s vampires!”, the mystery vanishes like a popped
balloon: we all just break out the stakes and garlic and get busy.
And
it’s not new: Stephen King learned the problem of the familiar trope while
writing ‘Salem’s Lot – sure, there are some genuinely scary moments in
that book, but essentially, once we know it’s vampires, the cat leaves the bag
and we’re all soon just getting down to the business of leech extermination.
“The
Empty Man” is based upon
material that’s so much more interesting than these surface notions of the Big
N. and its so-called modus operandi. Tulpas and their manufacture by organised
cults attempting to contact the Beyond are a great idea, and this movie shows
that there’s a lot of creative room to move and to delight an audience; but
plonking a Mythos mainstay in the middle of it all – without any foreshadowing,
or any clues – just cuts it off at the knees. I wonder if the writer and
director actually wanted Nyarlathotep to be the cause of the mayhem? Or
was it just some art director who saw the Chaosium image and thought “That’s
cool – let’s rip it for the film!”? And was the director a bit miffed when he
found out? Or did everyone involved just think nobody would be paying
attention? Well, hate to break it to you, they were.
Working
with books, you see a distinct difference between generations of readers and
sometimes it can be painful to navigate. Oftentimes I get a young person coming
in who is going off about how cool some new writer is and how they’re doing
stuff no-one has done before. I immediately say “Michael Moorcock” because if
it’s ‘new’ in sci-fi or fantasy, odds are, he’s already taken a stab at it.
Most often I’m met with bewilderment and the response, “who dat?”. (I roll my
eyes quite a lot.)
And
yet, this lack of knowledge seems to be what filmmakers are banking on. “We’ll
just bung a shoggoth in there,” they’ll say; “no-one over thirty will be coming
to see this flick, so they won’t spot it for what it is.” It’s a shallow and
patronising attitude. And it’s lazy.
Of
course, if the intention all along was to have Nyarlathotep as the villain of
this piece, and to create a Mythos-based work of cinema, then that’s perfectly
fine. I would suggest though, that the writers needed to seed their story with more references to the Outer God in the preceding material before the big
reveal – intention only looks like what it is if it’s worked for; otherwise, it’s
all just arbitrary.
As
it is, this film has many issues, before you even get to the neat-and-tidy red
bow of a Mythos connexion trying (desperately) to pull it all together. The
pre-credit sequence is a standalone (and later abandoned) twenty minutes that
feels like it’s the (much better) short film that springboarded the idea of the
later movie, bolted whole and unmodulated onto the piece; the urban legend
notions of blowing bottles on benighted bridges (a la “Candyman”
and its successors, but possibly a ham-fisted nod towards the idiot pipers
surrounding the throne of Azathoth), is dropped almost as soon as it’s
mentioned and then thrown out with the trash; the investigation is plodding and
dull; the revelation of what the cultists are up to and the source of the
mystery is a densely-packed somnolent monologue that will punish anyone falling
asleep during its delivery; and the reintegration of the opening material is
sloppy and unhandily managed. A lot of breathless commentary is available
online to the effect that re-watching the film after having the secret revealed
is worthwhile for deeper understanding – I’m sorry, I’m a firm believer that
reading the last page before starting the text is cheating. And anyway, life’s
too short for do-overs, and a movie should show you what it’s all about
without requiring that the viewer do subsequent homework. (Correct me if I’m
wrong, but if people start clamouring online to have someone explain a
movie to them, doesn’t it mean that the film has failed – explicitly – to do
its job?)
(Also,
for anyone who might have missed it, the main character’s surname – Lasombra – is
Spanish for “the shadow”. This is appropriate, given how things transpire, but
did anyone else realise that it’s the name of a vampire clan from the “Vampire:
the Masquerade” roleplaying game? Given that they chose to use an image of
Nyarlathotep that is heavily-promoted by Chaosium in its gaming products, the film’s
art department and writing staff are obviously well-versed in gaming tropes and
material, so how did they miss this? Personally, I heard the name, and my first
thought was “no – they wouldn’t dare…!”; I’m fairly certain I wasn’t alone in
thinking this way. Was it accidental? If so, don’t movie production houses have
people who check this stuff so that unintended connexions which derail or
confuse the plot are prevented from happening? Which (again) raises the
question: was it deliberate? And to what purpose?)
What
I’m wending my tortuous way towards is that, if you’re going to make a Mythos
movie, commit to it. Don’t be coy and hide clues where no-one will see them
without sifting the footage frame-by-frame (like I did). Don’t have some Lovecraftian
mainstay leap out of a box at the end without any kind of preamble or context.
As Yoda said, “do, or do not; there is no try.” If you’re making a film that
directly references the Cthulhu Mythos and the writing of the Lovecraft
circles, scatter some Elder Signs around the place; put some of the background
cast in “Miskatonic U.” t-shirts; let there be at least some possibility
that the viewers will be able to connect the dots and lock into what the movie
is all about.
Otherwise,
do your own thing; make your own movie from your own
ideas. Stop bothering Cthulhu and let him sleep…
