The 10 Best Cosmic Horror Films of the 21st Century
Looking for a film to render you a gibbering puddle banging madly on the walls of the local sanatorium? You’ve come to the right place. While cosmic horror has historically been a genre that thrives within the pages of a book, written in madman scrawl, the 21st century has imagined new eldritch terrors for the silver screen! And by “silver screen” I mean the sucking void of night above, bathed in a silver glow by the cold stars wheeling overhead, at the center of which lies a nuclear chaos, slumbering dreamlessly to the mad piping of daemon flutes. You know, standard cosmic stuff. If you’re looking for cut and dry cosmic horror, check out the 10 best cosmic horror films of the 21st century.
The Night House
Directed by David Bruckner, The Night House is the not the kind of place you want to reserve for your Airbnb. The story begins with Beth, whose husband recently killed himself – leaving her nothing but a note that said “nothing is after you, you’re safe now.” After experiencing a series of freaky supernatural experiences, Beth begins to suspect she’s anything but. After learning that her deceased beaux was involved in the occult, Beth begins to suspect that she’s being watched by an otherworldly presence summoned by her dead lover. If you’re afraid of the gnawing void that yawns open for our souls at the moment of death, maybe skip this one. Beth is being pursued by that void, an abyss that seeks to swallow her up. Nietzsche would have a field day with this one.
Coherence
While James Ward Byrkit’s Coherence is light on elder gods, it’s heavy on cosmic dread. The film is set in a single location, copy pasted ad infinitum – you’ll get what I mean in a sec. After a passing comet interrupts a dinner party between a group of friends, they discover that their reality has lost all form of *title drop* coherence. After venturing outside, they realize that their house has been replicated infinitely, every other house down on the street is a copy – with copies of them inside. As the dinner party guests contemplate how to face off against their doppelgängers, paranoia and panic begin to set in. How do you know who’s the real version and who is the fake? Maybe our protagonists were copies themselves all along! The cosmic implications certainly ruined dinner, to say the least.
The Void
Written and directed by Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, The Void is classic Lovecraftian horror – tentacles and all. After Deputy Sheriff Daniel Carter finds a wounded man on the side of the road, he drives the guy to a local hospital – no good deed goes unpunished. The staff and patients are soon set upon by robed cultists that have surrounded the place, dyed-in-the-wool elder god worshippers looking to bring about a dark ritual. As corpses start reanimating, Daniel and a few remaining survivors attempt to escape the facility – coming to terms with the fragile nature of reality in the process. A void is opening in the fabric of our dimension, where elder things beyond comprehension have waited since the beginning of time. Their discovery will bring madness, but that’s just a hazard of the cosmic cultist job, right?
The Mist
Adapted from a Stephen King story of the same name, Frank Darabont’s The Mist is the story of a father and son who become trapped in their small town grocery store after a mist settles upon the town. The impenetrable miasma would be bad enough without the alien monstrosities hidden within, but their existence makes dad’s day go from bad to cosmically horrible. As the creatures attempt to breach the store, a religious fervor begins to take hold of the terrified occupants. Not the “be kind to your neighbor” sort of fervor, but the “sacrifice the sinners to appease the gods” kind. The father and son battle monsters from without and within, hoping to make it to safety through the fog. Considering this film’s reputation for being a brutal downer, I’m not so sure that’s gonna happen.
The Color Out of Space
Adapted from an H.P. Lovecraft tale of the same name, Richard Stanley’s The Colour Out of Space is a cosmic horror film held up by Nicholas Cage’s equally colorful acting. After a meteorite falls in a rural strip of Massachusetts, a local farmer named Nathan and his family become infected by the weird space-color leaking out of it. Their crops begin dying, then their electronics, and then their bodies begin to go too. As the Color mutates the family into something beyond recognition, Nathan attempts to hold his loved ones together – sometimes literally. It’s a campy, creepy cosmic/body horror genre bender. Is it a great film? Not exactly. Is it a perfect excuse to call your friends over to gasp, laugh and throw pop corn at the screen? Absolutely.
Annihilation
In a rare case of the movie adaption being better than the book, Alex Garland’s Annihilation one ups author Jeff VanderMeer in cosmic dread. The film follows an all female team of scientists and scholars to investigate The Shimmer, an environmental anomaly that’s slowly spreading across an undisclosed stretch of wilderness. As the team braves the eerie landscape, they begin to discover that The Shimmer is capable of rewriting the genes of anything that crosses its glittery border. Animals fuse to plants, which fuse to fungi, which fuse to human beings, creating an orgy of body horror with cosmic origins. As the plot thickens like a bowl of oatmeal, the gang discover that something extraterrestrial is behind the anomaly – an alien intelligence that is watching, learning, changing, growing. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but when an uncanny valley human/alien hybrid tries to morph itself into you, you’ll feel anything but charmed.
The Endless
Directed, produced by, and starring Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, The Endless is one of the most underrated cosmic horror films around. The plot revolves around brothers Justin and Aaron Smith, who are contacted by a group called Camp Arcadia – which was either a kindly commune or a Jonestown death cult depending on which brother you ask. While they belonged to the group as children, the pair are shocked to discover that some of its members are still alive, and want to reconnect. As the brothers return to Camp Arcadia, they discover that the commune is still dedicated to drinking the proverbial Kool Aid. Impossible physics equations, astrological anomalies, and finally freaky time loops convince the brothers that Camp Arcadia is not the kind of place you send your kids for sleepaway, but a place you run from and never look back.
Glorious
Perhaps the only cosmic horror/comedy film in existence, Rebekah McKendry’s Glorious is the story Wes – a man driving across the country to get some distance on his recent breakup with his ex Brenda. He’s going nowhere fast. After stumbling into a truck stop bathroom after an all night bender, Wes strikes up a conversion with a voice in the stall next to him – which turns out to belong to the elder god Ghatanothoa. The cosmic entity tells Wes that whatever he does, he should NOT try to look through the glory hole in the bathroom stall wall to sneak a peak, as gazing upon Ghatanothoa’s true form with annihilate Wes utterly. Annihilation is what Ghatanothoa was created for, after all, it’s a primordial being made to destroy the universe by its father – but has hidden itself in a truck stop bathroom to avoid being used as a weapon of cosmic destruction. To stave off the death of reality, Ghatanothoa wants Wes to stick something else through the glory hole – “satisfying” it and rendering its destructive power inert. Would you bang an elder god to save everyone you love? Cosmic questions abound.
Black Mountain Side
Perhaps the most underrated cosmic horror movie ever, Nick Szostakiwskyj’s Black Mountain Side is the story of a group of archeologists who journey up into the Arctic, and discover the 14,000 year old remnants of an undiscovered civilization. It’s literally just H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness on the opposite pole! As the group untangles the mysteries of the past, the present becomes more and more confusing. Their guides abandon them, their equipment goes haywire, and they begin to feel an unseen presence watching them from wilderness edge. This film is for fans of The Thing, The Terror and anyone who enjoys watching humans brave the bitter cold to muck about with things they don’t understand.
The Empty Man
While it was critically panned upon first release, David Prior’s The Empty Man has become a cosmic horror cult classic. The film is about ex-cop James Lasombra reeling from the death of his wife and child, whose day of grieving goes from bad to worse with the arrival of The Pontifex Institute. The Institute believe in tulpas, which are essentially beings willed into existence by the conscious thought of humans. As people across the town begin to murder one another citing the influence of “The Empty Man,” James begins to wonder if there’s more to this tulpa business than he previously thought. The Pontifex Institute might be onto something, and it’s James’ job to get them off of it. After James gets hit with one of the best plot twists in cosmic horror history, he’s gonna find that job very difficult indeed.
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