True cosmic horror is lying awake at night, staring up at the countless stars and wondering...what the hell happened to the ceiling?

This video explains alot about the world's shortest horror story: " The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..." - Fredric Brown.

My favourite explanation of cosmic horror is the example with the ant: An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness. Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does. It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then… It’s an ant again. Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters. This is madness.

When the Backrooms was a relatively new concept, it was the most interesting Cosmic horror experience I have ever had. Now it's ruined, not because there's a lot more content, but because people try and put meaning and scientific explanation where it doesn't belong.

The closest we ever get of a good cosmic horror movie is Cats (2019). And that's saying something.

My grandmother once told me this: "Be careful when you pray, baby. God is not the only one that can hear you."

The problem is that Hollywood usually does not understand psychological horror, and Cosmic Horror is at its core a form of psychological horror. It bases itself on the fear of the unknown we all share and of existential draed.

Cosmic horror in a single sentence is such: "A man stares up into the stars, and the stars stared back."

You’re not scared of being alone in the dark. You’re afraid that you aren’t alone.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -HP Lovecraft

I think junji Ito captures the visual aspect of cosmic horror extremely well through his manga and various illustrations, by first taking that which is deeply familiar, and then twisting and warping it into something completely unrecognizable, unexplainable, and sudden

One of the main forms of media that got me into cosmic horror was FromSoftware's Bloodborne. While a bit easier to comprehend than the cosmic horrors explained, the characters and their attempts to understand the creatures are what are most interesting to me.

How to beat Cosmic Horror: Get a kid with a watch that can transform into at least 10 different aliens.

Cosmic horror is finally receiving our first clear message from alien life that clearly states, *"Do be quiet. They'll hear you."*

I found that the soundtrack definitely enhanced the visuals in Annihilation to get the cosmic horror across. The discordant sounds at the end when she comes face to face with the being really gets the existential dread across.

Nothing is more scary than a story that your mind can create, I sometimes lay in my bed and I just imagine these horrific scenarios in which I am powerless, I get so into the story that I get scared so much that my heart rate gets faster, that is true horror only understandable by the creator.

There is a reason why jump scares are "scares", and not horror. It's moment of fear, not a lasting terror.

The KZfaq Algorithm did you a solid my dude.

This reminds me of the original script for Mass Effect (so it goes). Originally the Reapers were not the primary antagonists but were created as a means to combat Dark Energy that was devouring the universe. The mortal Leviathans couldn't live long enough to solve it, so they made the Reapers in the hope they'd harvest enough knowledge to stop it. Likewise, Dead Space's Brethren Moons acted as a barrier to a greater cosmic horror.

My favourite Lovecraft story is "At The Mountains of Madness". It's quite unlike most of his other work in that it's refreshingly devoid of xenophobia, with the human narrator coming to feel a kinship with the aliens he finds frozen in Antarctica, and the records of their struggles to survive. But that in turn amplifies the horror--these creatures, though mortal, were far more advanced than humans. They created an interstellar empire, they reshaped the world and its creatures to their whims and endured for millions of years...but in the end, it didn't matter. Relentless time and entropy wore them away to a handful of blighted survivors trying to survive in a strange age. But there's one final malicious joke being played on these creatures--the only other creature to survive from their age is a malicious slave-turned-predator that had waited for millions of years for a last chance at revenge. The universe isn't just apathetic towards these creatures and their aspirations, it actively hates them.

"...Countless stars..." *looks up into night sky* one plane and lots of light pollution.

Saw something like "Fear is knowing you're in a monster-filled forest. Terror is seeing one run at you. Horror is realizing your feet are glued to the ground" and I think that applies pretty well here. Jumpscares and stuff would fit under the spike of terror, where true horror is more a constant realization that there's nothing you can do about the terror.

I remember that one time when I was young and learning about 8 planets and stars in class. I sleep at night and I had thoughts about entire universe. It made feel uneasy and I can't really explain why it scary. As I grow older I started realizing why its scary and that's because I felt our existence as human being are small compared to the large universe, something we can not understand and the fear of discovering something that is far beyond our perception. This is what cosmic horror is like and its more scarier than supernatural, sci-fi and natural earth disasters.

Agreed. My #1 complaint about horror movies is that try to show you the most scary monster the creators can think up. That will never be as creepy as what is lurking in the shadows of your own imagination.

Cosmic horror is just more fascinating than scary to me

Sometimes i look into the night sky hoping there is a cute alien bae staring back

Cosmic horror is truly some of the most terrifying horror in the genre, if done correctly. It teaches you that horror doesn't need jump scares to be scary. It's fueled by that dread, and if done right, can be scarier than anything in the genre. H.P Lovecraft was a genius in creating the idea of constant dread over jump scares. The man is a pioneer of what makes horror, well, horror. Hollywood never gets it quite right, and it's why the indie scene continuously feels so better. @Moon Prod does this extremely well. He creates that perfect sense of dread, with a mix of anxiety. The idea that these beings are things we shouldnt understand, and he's just 16 or so and has had it mastered. I just hope triple A film studios in Hollywood will get Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror right at some point. It would change the game.

A show that gave me the described sense of “cosmic horror” was True Detective. The nihilism of Rustin captured a threadbare tightrope balance of character that questioned what matters and if self destruction is a valid path. I think something of cosmic horror lies in that.

How the hell did KZfaq find out what I wanted

I love the idea that Lovecraft developed: The idea that something is so unnatural, hideous, and terrifying that a human mind can’t even perceive it. Something that couldn’t possibly be described because it is so far removed from anything the human mind could even imagine, that you can’t even describe it because there are no words for it or things to compare it to in our world. Now that is some scary shit

Weirdly my favourite example of cosmic horror is the episode 'Midnight' from Doctor Who. It is just characters in a shuttle, confronting an invisible entity that shouldn't exist, that is never explained.

I think one of the scariest things I've seen in pop culture was actually from a video game called Metro 2033. In it there is a scene where hands are clumped together trying to grab you. They only want to grab you because they are scared and alone, and will be forever. The concept of forever is I think scary for most people. Forever is never good.

I don't remember who said it, but I find myself going back to this quote whenever Cosmic Horror is mentioned. "Typical Horror is meant to leave you afraid of the dark, or afraid of your nightmares to come. Cosmic Horror is meant to leave you afraid of your own mind, and your continued existence."

Ironically, Cthulhu, the most famous of Lovecraft's monsters, is one of the few that have a definable shape. Most of them are literally indescribable.

one of the greatest examples of this is the lore of Destiny 2 the video game, in which an early lore tab describes what a character named Callus saw looking into the void at the end of the universe "At the edge of the universe, I stared into the infinite deep. It stared back" and it irked players as an unknowable force for a long time until 4 years and many dlcs later the character was shown in a trailer and with a face the character suddenly wasn't horrifying at all, it was just like any of the other bad guys you beat as the main character.

Annihilation is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I claimed it was part of an extremely rare genre, but I didn't know it really existed. Thank you so much for this video!

I distinctly remember reading "the color from outer space" and not finding it all that scary at all, until i finished the story and started to think about it. And thats when i realised. Cosmic horror doesn't invoke the primal fear we have of darkness and scary skellies etc. It invokes fear when you start to try and grasp the concept of the implications its making.

This is some quality 3am content

4:05 this moment in Annihilation was perfect in every way, loved the soundtrack so much

4 Years later and I still love rewatching this video. On a sidenote Screened / Mr. Velasquez - have you ever considered doing audiobook readings? I loved your reading of the unnamable - and I think your voice would go well with an Audiobook of Lovecraft's work. Thank you!

I think Interstellar could have been a cosmic horror movie, if it had ended when the main character was trapped in the other dimension, watching his daughter repeating the loop and unable to stop her.

Lovecraftian Horror (Fear of something beyond our understanding, glimpse of the ugly truth constantly suppressed by denial) - Avant-Garde/Lynchian Horror (Fear of something understandable but incongruous) - Elevated Horror (Psychological terror brought upon by understanding the full extent of reality) - Hitchcockian Horror (Fear caused by mystery and tension, a knot in the stomach) - Supernatural Horror (Fear of the bizarre, until further research establishes supernaturalism) Even with all these genres, my social anxiety's the scariest thing.

This was a solid breakdown, should be shown in High School/College English courses. I feel as if new readers and thinkers of our upcoming generations can have another way to capture the relationship between emotion and content with videos like this.

Something I always think about is that when we imagine something huge, we see it moving slowly in our perspective. Do the ants and small insects see us moving slowly, or super fast just as we see ourselves? Because imagining something that's big and can also move super fast would be sooooo scary.

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.” ― Ernest Hemingway

I am drawing cosmic horror in my art class and most of it is different yet similar creatures, something which I have never drawn in full, this video has made quite a help in drawing the shape or showing the effects of this creature

Beautiful video, great script, and all those clips were the cherry on top! I think I gotta catch up on Lovecraftian films since a lot of those clips were new to me. I will never forget first being visited by the feeling of cosmic horror and dread when I was about 10, and it has never left since. It would consume all my thoughts to the point of anxiety disorders and I started missing school unfortunately, but what a fascinating emotion for the human brain to try to grasp and usually fail.

Try this Go stargazing at night, as you look up into the expense of sky don't think of it as looking up (because that is just a concept you can't possibly be on top of the planet) instead think of yourself as on the bottom of the planet looking down into a yawning abyss. It will give you a feeling of cosmic anxiety

There’s an episode in the Netflix series “Love, Death and Robots” that centers around a crew of a freighter in space that accidentally jump millions of light years into the absolute unknown and the horrific realization of where they went actually made me jump out of my seat.

I love the ways in which you show movie examples without actually showing them. It simultaneously totally wrecks my nerves.

This was such a spot on incredibly articulated description of why good cosmic horror is so rare. That balance 👌🏼 The lovecraft , void and iohn carpenter references were spot on. Really enjoyed this👏🙌💀

"I missed the part where that's my problem." Best cosmic horror ever.

To me, cosmic horror can be summed up in the quote/ “There are two options: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

I hope the Three-body problem series truly displays the scale of cosmic horror that the books depicted.

This video gives me so good chills! Its one I come back so often!

What scares me is higher dimensional threats. Not exactly a ghost or something similar but basically like humans to ants. Ants live in their own world. They encounter other small beings. Build homes and search for food. Until a human comes along, then they realize they are tiny and helpless. And cannot communicate with us. Even if they could, our language is too complex for them. To something out there we are the ants, just waiting to be picked to realise we are not able to understand this threat. It would be so complex, probably enough to ruin our reality. It would collapse. Then what?

The Thing's effects are still really cool today. Who ever did them should feel proud.

The lighthouse is the perfect lovecraftian film, showing a descent into insanity and barely showing anything, if at all, of the light

Insanely great hard-hitting quote: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Years ago I was aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean. It was late, a little after midnight, and I decided to go out on the balcony. The moon was full and yellow, and every star in the sky could be seen. The water itself was eerily placid, no waves, no foam, nothing to disturb the surface except a light breeze and the bow of our own ship. Beyond it there was nothing but an eternal mirror, stretching into the horizon, reflecting the entire night sky back into the ether. Most eerie of all was how quiet it was. All at once I felt a revelation come upon me that I had no idea what was beneath me, and no idea what was above me - all that I knew was that I was horribly unequipped to face either of them. No land in sight. No civilizations for perhaps hundreds of miles in every direction. We were alone, arrogantly treading the line between two cosmically horrific worlds, vulnerable and helpless, blind and deaf. It was a beautiful moment, and I basked in it for as long as I could. Edit: Holy cannoli, folks. I wasn’t expecting a response of this magnitude, but thank you so much for your awesome comments and encouragement! To answer some questions, Yes this was describing a real moment. It was aboard a cruise ship along the Pacific coast of Mexico, lasted all of 30 seconds, and, as you can see, it caused me some serious reflection. Haha Yes, I’d like to write a book, but I’ve never considered horror or fiction, since I’m most adept at describing my own personal experiences. Spinning fictional yarns was never my forte, but thanks so much for your support anyway! If I ever do publish a book, this thread will be the first to know. Thanks again! You are, all of you, beautiful people. ❤️

Maybe it's just me but the best bit of cosmic horror I've ever seen was most likely accidental. It's the end scene from Men in Black, with the alien playing marbles with galaxies. I think, whilst it's relatively harmless, it perfectly encapsulated the feeling of insignificance Cosmic Horror wants to achieve, the thought of feeling so small and helpless to grand cosmic deities. That still freaks me out to this day

I was introduced to this genre by short film called THE SKY by Matt Sears, and the Midnight Episode of Doctor Who. Also, I found the Angelarium, a series that is a complete reversal of cosmic horror -- not knowing means peace.

This is one of the best videos about Cosmic Horror. Congrats.

H.P. Lovecraft works can't be translated to visual media because the readers imagination is what defines the horror. That was his brilliance, he described the horror abstractly but paradoxically tangible.

Why did anybody not mention that this review is the masterpiece itself?

Agree with you. Especially the mist. The ending played on the best parts of the stories ending. Excellent

The Void nailed the visual effects of what I would want a Lovecraftian horror movie to show. I would love it if the film industry went deeper into Lovecraftian-style world-building. The Void is probably my favorite horror movie of all time.

I feel that the reason Junji Ito often strikes me as the best in cosmic horror is because he shows the horror coming from within: For instance, the most terrifying aspect of Amigara fault is that the holes themselves are unexplained but it is the people's own inexorable fascination and attraction to them that cause their demise. The holes can't do anything, they don't move, they're totally inert. Why would you go into them more than any other hole in the ground? Yet that's the terror, the mere thought that your mind COULD make you go in there, your own deadly curiosity, a terminal need to know and witness the unknown at all costs. You can't fight or resist the effects of a cosmic power when obeying it is ingrained within your own DNA. Your very purpose is to be undone by it.

I like to think that cosmic horror is like a black hole. We've tried to explain it, draw it, but in the end we just dont understand it completely. In the end its still an unknown.

I subscribed. You got me. These are the basic reasons I still listen to so much metal music…(but even that has begun to stay surface level, for similar reasons). Awesome video!

Great video, great calm style, great take , subscribed

I always loved this quote: 'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' --Arthur C. Clarke

A good way to show cosmic horror would be to not show what's causing the horror. There's an scp story (i can't remember the name) and its about some guy going through a cave to a dimensional universe thats exactly the same but every living thing is dead with no reason. The first dead body he sees his him by the entrance of the cave with a gun in his hand and a gunshot wound to the head. As he explored more he notices that all the other dead bodys have no wounds or stench to them like his own body. All the last known signs of human contact through radios and media date back two days from his original dimension. The guy goes back through the cave to his dimension to find it exactly the same At first he thinks he's not able to escape the dimension but he soon realises that he is in fact back in his dimension because the dates and time of all known human contact are two days ahead of the dead dimension indicating he is back in his very own dimension. Everything is dead like the other dimension and yet still there is no clue to how everything died. The main character comes to the conclusion that something sinister was in that cave. He feels it was death, not like comical old death with the scythe but more like an omnipotent being. He realises whatever it was it needed help to jump from one dimension to the next. He realises he himself is death and if anyone else waked through it they themselves would be death. He lays down by the entrance and records himself stating what he has discovered so if he or anyone else from another dimension sees him theyll know not to return to their dimension. After this he picks up a gun he found earlier and kills himself by the entrance of the cave. I think this story could easily be implemented into a movie and there would be no need to show a scary monster or anything like that. It could just be an easy journey of the man in this story trying to make sense of things.

this video is probably one of the best videos ive ever seen.

Oh my gosh, Annihilation was absolutely amazing! So well done! Easily one of my favorite movies.

"Staring at the countless stars..." (weeps in countable suburban stars)

Someone else said this and I think it really makes sense: Modern audiences are just too optimistic for cosmic horror to be effective. Modern fiction is saturated with stories of humanity either learning to peacefully co-exist with aliens or defeating the ones we can't. When you think about what people have lived through since Lovecraft's time - the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis - you realise that people have been living in a cosmic horror story for the past four generations. And they have actually grown used to that horror. People already know they don't matter, that their lives are controlled by things that at best don't give a toss about them, and that the world could end at any moment, that they could all perish horribly and have all the things they have done and all the things they have ever known and loved rendered into dust, and they have lived with that knowledge for seventy years now. The human race had to change mindset dramatically to keep us going in a world that would have driven Lovecraft himself to madness, in fact we may all be mad already. I think John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the best modern cosmic horror works because it attacks peoples' individuality rather than their sense of their place in the universe.

This is why I think it's such a potent genre, with small stabs at it in things like "beyond the Aquila rift" in love death and robots it does such a good job of showcasing a being that is extremely hard to understand and showing it in a way that leaves you with a sense of foreboding that's just perfect, the thing shown here is so good because it makes you ask questions about yourself in an introspective way that no other genre can

Existential dread is one of the hardest things to explain At one moment your in your shower panicking as the thought of life where we come from and what will happen after we die overcomes you then the next your thinking about kung fu panda 2 and how hard the last scene goes

KZfaq Algorithm's been recommending some good channels recently.

When I describe cosmic horror to people, I tell them to think of a horror movie about stepping on a bug from the bug's perspective. A being so ungodly powerful and that is impossible to understand its reasons for its actions. Then if imagine our planet, our species or existence itself, was the bug to a being that we could never comprehend. To me, that is a core idea of what cosmic horror is: the complete and utter apathy.

The editing in this video is really nice, especially at the end there,

You mostly convinced me that Cosmic Horror is a genre that shines in a book.

"...if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche

I just wanna see, in my lifetime, a cthulhu movie. With the people behind it that understand the source material, pick the right actors and deliver the Great dreamer in all of his glory.

I came up with my own kind of creature to play with in my writing. When I picture it, you rarely see most of its body. For the most part, you see a shrouded face which turns out to be your face, but the voice that talks back isn't exactly your voice. Something is off about it. You occasionally see something out of the corner of your eye, but it's too quick and it's gone.

The color out of space with Nicolas Cage was a good somewhat recent adaptation of HP Lovecraft.

How is it that KZfaq found something I wasn't thinking about watching, but would be extremely interested in?

"we don't experience cosmic horror as often..." bruh speak for yourself I've had existential dread since I was *9*

I just watched the thing for the first time. It’s still so good nowadays because you can’t really guess the ending like most movies now.

Gotta say, I've never felt small looking at the vastness of space or time. The infinite and eternity have always been comforting to me. it's always felt like home.

Man, I love annihilation. The bear scene is one of the creepiest things ive seen in the past few years

That image from Annihilation though. Jesus the visuals were amazing in that movie.

Well put and well done.

Thanks for the amazing video

Dead space is a good example of something if done right on the big screen, being downright terrifying while also being interesting.

Maybe in the future, when VR movies are a thing, cosmic horror might be easier to make. Cuz it's all about immersing the viewer into a vague vastness; it's about letting the viewers directly experience the abstract, rather than having the abstract explained to them with limiting words.

love this, it made me think more about why anything happens

Excellent analysis

I feel like The Lighthouse was a near perfect modern day take on cosmic horror, and was just a flat out good movie in general.