As the real world has veered further and further into existential abyss, I’ve found myself consuming more and more cosmic horror. But when you get through Stuart Gordon’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, what other movies give audiences a glimpse into the unfeeling, unaware malevolence of other dimensions, galaxies, or deep within the Earth? As part of this year’s Nerdoween, I’m going to shout out some of my favorite cosmic horror movies, with only a few tentacles.
Annihilation (2018)
If it’s a day ending in “Y,” it must be me talking up Alex Garland’s Annihilation. Nominally an adaptation of Jeff van der Meer’s novel, this movie is my go-to recommendation for good studio cosmic horror. An object falls from space and unleashes an ever-growing “shimmer” which distorts everything within it, both physical and conceptual. A team of women go into the shimmer to find the source, leading to revelations both awe-inspiring and horrifying. Garland shows audiences some of the scariest and strangest images and sounds in modern movies.
You can buy Annihilation here.
The Block Island Sound (2020)
This was one I caught during lockdown, and it does what I love in cosmic horror. While the Lovecraftian side of things often deals with massive tentacled behemoths or psychopathic cults, the McManus brothers’ The Block Island Sound makes humans the focus of an unknowable alien science experiment. A particular sound influences the behavior of a fisherman and the fish in a New England village. As the mystery grows, the fisherman’s children struggle to understand what is happening and what is doing it to them. This movie offers very few answers, but the questions are satisfying in and of themselves.
Buy The Block Island Sound here.
The Borderlands (2013)
Here’s one of a couple of found-footage/faux documentary cosmic horror movies on this list. This one seems like it’ll be a typical demonic possession or haunting-style horror. Not so! A videographer and a priest seek to debunk claims of spiritual activity in an ancient English church. They quickly discover something much more ancient influences the townsfolk. This movie deals a lot with faith and the faithful with some thought-provoking conversations. It also ends with one of the most disturbing realizations I’ve seen in a found-footage movie. Let’s just say it points to something far larger than merely ghosts. Fans of author Adam Nevill’s mix of folk horror and the eldritch will enjoy this movie, also known as Final Prayer in the U.S.
Own Final Prayer and grab your copy today.
Cure (1997)
For a while, I felt like one of only a few people who’d seen Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s metaphysical police procedural, which he made just before his J-Horror masterpiece, Pulse. Then Criterion put it out and suddenly it’s everyone’s favorite. Yes, give me a medal or a box of cookies. Anyway, people like it because it’s great. Kurosawa’s movies always have a feeling of apocalyptic dread about them. This one, though never dealing with anything tangible, feels like society breaking down and the veil between realms collapsing.
A troubled police detective investigates a series of bizarre murders where the perpetrators have no memory of committing the crimes. The one thing they have in common is meeting a strange drifter who seems to have preternatural powers of persuasion. I kind of think all of Kurosawa’s movies count as cosmic horror, but this one does it the most subtly (until maybe 2024’s Chime).
Buy Cure here and discover the horrors for yourself!
The Empty Man (2020)
Having already seen the Slender Man ripoff The Bye Bye Man, I assumed, as most people did, that The Empty Man was yet another attempt to ape the internet’s favorite creepypasta. Not so, though the paltry marketing didn’t help. The slow burn movie is actually several layers of mystery before we really find out what’s at play here. After an opening 20 minutes that at first feels unrelated (but is VERY IMPORTANT), we follow a retired police detective-turned-private security guy with a painful past as he searches for the missing daughter of his former mistress. She and her friends evidently summoned an urban legend called the Empty Man and are dying one by one.
But that’s merely on the surface. The investigation soon sends our hero to a shady, cult-like new age group who worships the Empty Man, who may or may not exist and may or may not actually commune with some kind of ancient cosmic deity. This film from writer-director David Prior will keep you guessing all the way until the end and its devastating payoff.
Stream The Empty Man on Hulu.
Glorious (2022)
Who says all cosmic horror has to be dour? This movie, from director Dr. Rebekah McKendry, is a comedic blast. A doofus named Wes (Ryan Kwanten) ends up at a rest stop on a long road trip and strikes up a strange conversation with the guy in the next stall. Quickly we learn this is not merely a guy, but an otherworldly eldritch entity (voiced perfectly by J.K. Simmons). This entity’s destiny is to destroy the world, but he doesn’t want to. So he’s chosen Wes to help him, which requires the use of a glory hole in the bathroom stall. It’s both as silly and far less silly than you’d expect.
Buy Glorious here.
Spring (2014)
Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson nowadays direct a lot of Marvel Studios TV series, but they got that gig by making a series of very high-concept low-budget indies. Most of them are in some fashion cosmic horror, but I think (arguably, along with The Endless) the best of them is Spring. It follows a young man after the death of his mother who goes to Italy to clear his head. He meets a sexy young woman and eventually the two hook up. The trouble is, she’s actually a millennia-old sea creature who resurfaces every 20th spring to mate with a human man to impregnate her with a new version of herself. It’s very weird.
While The Endless is perhaps more typically cosmic, Spring brings its eldritch entity into a very human realm and really goes for it with the body horror. It’s a romance, ultimately, but one that’s kinda gross. In addition, the Italian vistas are just *pizza chef* which always helps vibes.
Rent Spring on Amazon.
Strange Harvest (2024)
This faux documentary follows the format of a true crime, serial killer story as perfectly as any you’d find on Netflix. It follows a pair of detectives who, many years earlier, got on the trail of a masked murderer called Mr. Shiny whose crimes all have a distinctly occult presentation. The murder scenes are particularly grisly and the Mr. Shiny mask sure is upsetting. But the movie takes its time before getting to the real meat. Mr. Shiny is murdering people in an effort to summon a leech-like cosmic being from outer space.
Despite the sillier premise, the movie handles everything incredibly seriously and is, dare I say, almost believable. While it’s not as deeply affecting or effective as something like Lake Mungo (the GOAT), the methodical way Strange Harvest unfolds really does pack a wallop by the end.
Rent Strange Harvest on Amazon.
Sunshine (2007)
And we end where we began, in the realm of Alex Garland. He wrote the screenplay to this Danny Boyle sci-fi movie about a second team of astronauts sent to both reignite the failing sun and find out what happened to the previous team of astronauts. This movie presents the sun itself as giving off some kind of mind-altering power, which ends up causing madness in several members of the crew. This is maybe the most pure version of “cosmic horror,” i.e. the horror of the cosmos. Without any tentacle monsters or elder gods, Sunshine makes celestial bodies themselves terrifying and unknowable. Plus, it has maybe the scariest Mark Strong performance of all time.
Stream Sunshine on Amazon.
And One to Grow On…The Void (2016)
The Canadian movie The Void is one of my all-time fave cosmic horror movies. My dear friend and colleague Tai Gooden wrote a whole piece about why it’s good. Go check that out!
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The post 10 Great Cosmic Horror Movies to Check Out appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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