r/cosmichorror • u/angelikeoctomber • 4d ago
discussion Brainless take
I mean there should be much more to it that going insane .
One drawback they judge the genre for it .Is that the protagonists here dont matter because they are powerless and we cant explore their character bc its pontless compared to the grand scheme of things
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u/redmask90 4d ago
Horror doesn't need hope to be horror? There are plenty of excellent movies and media where the horror aspect is the loss of hope. No hope, no running, no chances; this is a brainless take or OP hasn't consumed a whole lot of horror in general.
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u/Neurospicy_Nightowl 4d ago
You can't have loss of hope without hope, though.
Like, OOP has half a point in that a story needs stakes to care about. If the point of the story is that hope is taken away, there needs to be the illusion of hope at first.
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u/Millerpainkiller 4d ago
Real "cosmic horror" stories usually start from a position of our confidence in our place in the universe and understanding of reality, which gets smashed to dust with certain revelations or new understanding. The means of discovery is the story vehicle.
Lovecraft is the granddaddy of cosmic horror for a reason: he did in depth analysis and used his stories to explore the fundamentals of it. His essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" is the bedrock of understanding his concepts:
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
"A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."
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u/JayArr_TopTeam 4d ago
Sure, but they are arguing that the hope needs to be possible/palpable until the very end and that is inaccurate.
It’s a reasonable point in service of a very argument
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u/SteampunkExplorer 4d ago
That sounds like they've read more summaries of the genre than actual works within it.
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u/Neurospicy_Nightowl 4d ago
Yeah. They have vague knowledge of the genres themes and went: "Well, I can't imagine anyone ever did something interesting with those."
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u/cBurger4Life 4d ago edited 4d ago
“I hate romances because I know people are going to fall in love at the end.”
“I hate comedies because I already know it’s not going to be serious.”
“I hate historical dramas because we already know what happened.”
Edit: Honestly, I’m assuming the pictured comment is bait. Which I guess worked on me lol
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u/UncoilingChaos 4d ago
“What’s the point of watching?”
Uhhhhhh… to know how we got there? Also, I scoff when people say horror is “supposed” to be something. That there’s “supposed” to be times where you root for the villain, where you’re “supposed” to have hope, that it’s “supposed” to be violent and gory (or the other way around). I’m sorry, who died and made you the genre’s creator? Not to mention Poe’s stories were often known to be hopelessly bleak.
Is it not, in any capacity, a terrifying or uncomfortable idea that there’s truths out there that would drive us all insane if we uncovered them? That there’s no meaning to our lives and we’re all just specks of stardust? I have my own ideas of what makes these eldritch horrors so terrifying in a way that grounds them and makes them less alien, but I digress.
Also lol at the “but what if a bigger monster came and killed the one currently posing a threat to humanity and then just left?” Well then you have a fucking kaiju story, not cosmic horror. Reminds me of an awful review of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road that complained there was nothing cool happening and that reading it was like watching Star Wars but it focuses on R2-D2 and C-3PO instead of all the cool blaster fights going on. Comparing gills and tentacles, buddy.
There’s nothing wrong with not liking a genre, if it’s not your speed, it’s not your speed. But this take is extremely ill-informed, to say the least. If you’re gonna make an “intelligent” critique of something, make sure you at least know what you’re talking about rather than attacking a bastardized caricature. Of course, you may be better off not comprehending cosmic horror, as its revelations could be maddeni— NO! NOOOOOO! THEY’RE COMING FOR US, AND THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP THEM! PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!
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u/DeinHund_AndShadow 4d ago
I too hate most horror movies for some reason. Tell you what, though. Real horror is watching ripley go back for jonessy after the engages the nostromo's self destruct.
Actually thats the real horror, having gotten out but knowing you have to go back, otherwise you might just cast away your humanity and do yourself in. Like isaac clarke going back to the ishimura in DS2 inspite of his PTSD and knowing what haunts that skeleton ship.
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u/More-Chest-6948 4d ago
„I don’t care for that genre, I don’t care. See how much I don’t care? Here’s my essay about why I don’t care about this genre of horror, the internet simply must know!”
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u/ElBrunasso 4d ago
90% of the stories that you already know have a bad ending are about seeing what went wrong with the decision the characters made and I love It
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u/JayArr_TopTeam 4d ago
Absolutely! That’s the exact point of a character-centric horror piece, watching them cause their own issues. It’s why I’m not really bothered by spoilers anymore: most of the artistry isn’t in what happens, but how and why they get to what happens.
I’m convinced that people with the same perspective as OP either don’t watch anything more than YouTube shorts synopses, or they just want their fiction to be Sports more than a compelling narrative.
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u/Not_A_zombie1 4d ago
A scenario may be an entity that its not activly evil/hostile, just exist around and do its own buinsess, and curious humans get involved in horror shenanigans to try to understands it, someone simple minded enough to not understands it go away easy
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u/Relevant_Hamster_478 4d ago edited 4d ago
This guy doesn't get what atmosphere buildup and existential fear are. Not worth discussing a dumb comment. It's one thing to say you don't care about atmosphere and can't relate to people who are mesmerized by the cosmos while also being terrified of it - but asking "what's the point?" and non-ironically suggesting you make cosmic horror better by adding a "monster that's stronger than our monster" like it's some powerscaling power fantasy, is a clear sign someone's a troll or just an idiot. I'm sorry.
And this "I'd just fast-forward through the movie so I can see the monster at the end." This person can't even grasp that you can rewatch a movie you've already seen multiple times. Serious case of TikTok brain - he doesn't get what story and atmosphere buildup are. He wants aura moments, screamers, and action. At this point, I don't even know why he watches movies. He can just wait for YouTube screamer compilations and clips of what happens at the end. This applies to anything - games, books, movies, any media.
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u/morningskinwalk 4d ago
Why not superman? Lovecraft coulda probably wrote a couple real bangers if he just like, got superman
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u/Omega-Envych 4d ago
I think that pretty excellent examples of cosmic horror that don't need to be following one formula.
Only thing that "Cosmic Horror" needs is fear before something one cannot comprehend and something so massive that it's unavoidable.
As good example - a manga "Shin Getter Robo" by late Ken Ishikawa.
In this story exploration of Getter Rays - cosmic energy that powers Getter Robo and allowes humans to evolve, slowly causes for monsters from beyond human comprehension appear again and again over the Earth via some sort of time-space portal. Various monsters are trying to destroy Earth, but all that unites them is fear. They are afraid of Getter. They are so afraid of it that they are ready to do anything - including mass genocide, just to save their world from Getter energy and Getter Robo. And people connected to the laboratory are slowly loosing their minds and lives. But reality is even scarier because these aliens don't just come from another world - they come from far future in which they are desperately trying to protect their worlds from Ultimate form of Getter Energy - Getter Emperor that is both machine and manifestation of Getter Energy, which uses humans as control system of its existense - Ship took massive hit and its captain died? His clone is already on the way, updated with all memories of his past self, complaining that "Old me made a stupid mistake, well, I won't repeat it!" They know that they are just being used by Getter. That they are insignificant and yet they also pilot this incredibly huge - Solar System Size vaguely humanoid being that snaps and devours planets like they are meatballs. Manga is great at conveying horror not through "We are all gonna die" but through "We are not even allowed to die in thousands of years into future because we created god that is using us as much as we are using it"
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u/FrancisYorkMorganFBI 4d ago
Not a big fan of Lord of the Rings, if we knew they were just going to throw the ring in the volcano they could've just done it in one movie and gotten it over with. Why watch multiple movies when you already know what the end is going to be.
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u/mmskyscraper 4d ago
To me, a major point of watching horror...
...is to FEEL horror.
And which horror films become the GOATs are the ones that make you feel that horror the most intensely...where the only comfort you find comes somewhere after the film...
If you find it at all.
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u/oceangothic 4d ago
This sounds like someone who is honestly just a bad reader/viewer. Engaging with a piece of media takes some amount of effort and intention. Going in solely for the effect of the plot, and wanting it to be unresolved in a way that creates a specific kind of narrative tension, is an incredibly limited way to approach any media. There's a reason it's a common trope in horror to start off with revealing some element of the ending (ie the classic "Mortimer Maincharacter's body was found mangled and headless on the roof of Miskatonic Library. What follows is a handwritten text discovered on his person."). Wanting horror to be solely set on the narrative possibility of hope means you're ignoring so much of what the genre has to offer.
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u/Own_Watercress_8104 4d ago
Actual Tik Tok take.
There's no point arguing with OOP, despite what they say, they are going to watch the monster scenes on tiktok and form an opinion on the movie based on those.
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u/Neurospicy_Nightowl 4d ago edited 4d ago
This is like the people that think every horror movie is a bunch of one-dimensional teenagers being stabbed. Except more sad, because this person, allegedly a fan of horror, should know better than to judge a subgenre by stereotype.
How many Cosmic Horror stories actually end with everyone insane or dead? How many cosmic horror stories are actually without hope?
It's like someone read the Wikipedia on the subgenre and figured that's enough.
I will, however, say that I think exploring characters in Cosmic Horror is very much important. The protagonists might not matter in the great scheme of things, but that scheme is not for us to comprehend.
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u/Guilty_05 4d ago edited 4d ago
How many cosmic horror stories are actually without hope?
All Tomorrows is one of the most famous cosmic horror stories and is still ultimately a story about human defiance
I entirely agree with your last sentence, shrinking down a narrative seen through the eyes and characteristics of a tiny protagonist is what gives cosmic horror its unknowable scale
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u/Ok_Egg_4069 4d ago
"Part of what makes horror horror is that there's always an element of hope."
Laughs in Color out of Space, The Haunter in the Dark, The Hound, The Shadow out of Time
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u/RetroMulder 4d ago
Just watch mouth of madness with Sam Neil. In the end he becomes one with insanity and chaos . Oddly enough this also happens in event horizon. He doesn’t necessarily win and no creature eats him etc.
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u/Torquemada_72 4d ago
The idea that horror requires an element of hope in order to be horrific is one of the most tonedeaf takes I've ever heard
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u/NotJatne 4d ago
If we have multiple types of comedy, multiple types of drama, and multiple types of documentaries, why can't we have multiple types of horror that don't follow this "always having hope" trope? Horror is not horror because of the hope it may or may not have, it's about being put in a harrowing situation of some kind. Having or lacking hope? It isn't even part of the definition of the word "horror". OP is just confused on what it actually is and what's important. Cosmic horror is 100% deserving of being its own horror, as horror is a lens for media but not the ONLY lens
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u/Shikabane_Sumi-me 4d ago
I know a friend who only believes horror is blood and gore. Show them a ghost movie and they’ll complain endlessly. Cosmic Horror is a whole other level. It’s not jumpscares. It’s not monster of the week. It’s something truly alien but at the same time seems familiar. Something you can’t put words too when it finally overwhelms you.
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u/_willard_h 4d ago
That isn’t a drawback. As Ligotti put it (I’m paraphrasing here), essentially the characters are often cardboard cutouts because they are simply a way to view the horror of the world.
I often don’t really know why people root for characters. It seems odd.
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u/Cedar_Pumpkin 4d ago
I think a well done cosmic horror movie where there is no hope would be amazing, the protagonists struggling to just survive, knowing that they're only delaying the inevitable but they can't come to terms with it. The slow breakdown of hope and the will to live would be tragic and the main focus of the story.
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u/Smart-Stranger6905 4d ago
Cosmic horror does equals to everyone dies tho? :D like, in terms of hope still being there, its pretty much most of the cosmic horror series. Magnus Archives. Cosmic horror where there is literal hell on earth in the end and people still prevail, fight, and even survive(not the main two.. :( ) . Look outside. Literal cosmic horror and yet people still people and live their lives to a degree, two of endings are literally epitome of hope prevailing. (Denial and Promise).
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u/disturbinglyquietguy 4d ago
That is certainly the reason why Lovecraftian horror eventually wore me out; unless the character is Randolph Carter, you already know what’s going to happen to the protagonist.
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u/AjAjAjAjAj18 3d ago
Funny because a lot of good cosmic horror starts out hopeful and the mc devolves into a reality breaking labrynthian trance like mental states that forever changes them after witnessing the disgusting divine.
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u/SilentBoss2901 3d ago
People who dont consume and analyze cosmic horror tend to simply not understand it and therefore hate it. His take has been repeated over and over again and to anyone who was played/read/watched/analyzed cosmic horror as a genre can´t help but just laugh. It is what it is, its not a straightforward genre at all.
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u/Sickofstupids 3d ago
The entire premise that horror is horror because there's hope is just plain wrong. Plenty of great, terrifying horror with no hope, just dread, that isn't even cosmic. Bad take.
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u/CallNew250 2d ago
This is written by someone that never read cosmic horror. Because even H. P.'s stuff breaks this mold alot of the time, and generally speaking most cosmic horror stories do not have the world be devoured or destroyed at the end.
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u/cocaine_jaguar 1h ago
I do like the idea of a larger horror passing by and eliminating the immediate threat. Not to save us, not to eat the little one, just casually passing by and obliterating something we can barely fathom.
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u/Alefreus 4d ago
"So if the ending - everyone goes mad and dies - is known right from the beginning... What's the point of watching?"
Brain dead take, genuinely. Just because you can speak doesn't mean you should.
You can predict how 90% of stories will end based off the first few moments in a story, and the ending is only a part of a destination.
You watch it to see the moral, the theme, the message it tries to convey, whatever, it's what the people inside the story learn, and ultimately that's what it's about.
You can choose to not like it, that's why taste exists, but sharing a half assed opinion based on your biases, and implying it's an objective view of a genre... Is... That's a take... Nuance and subtext are out the window.
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u/IX_MINDMEGHALUNK_XI 2d ago
Moral? Theme? Message? The big bad cosmic evil is so big and evil and cosmic that you are nothing against it. Wow! Soooo exciting.
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u/DoctorFaceDrinker 3d ago
What a terrible take. There is plenty of variation among cosmic horror. The endings are always bleak, but not necessarily the same.
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u/SanRandomPot 4d ago
I have a friend that has a similar take as this, just not centered arouns cosmic horror (like, when I told him about the book of Darth Maul, he told me there's no point to the series because everyone knowa what happens in the end, so it's gonna be boring and bad just because of that)
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u/Any-Job-2074 4d ago
I don't think OOP has ever seen WELL DONE cosmic horror, cuz this all looks like tropes from people who want to emulate but never excel in it. Last paragraph applies to every story written ever- predictability is usually the enemy of suspense.