The impact of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing on cinematic horror is indelible. But only a handful of direct adaptations of the writer’s work come to mind. Lovecraft’s dense prose, his descriptions of gradual, incremental transformations and his first-person, sanity-losing perspectives — not to mention his “Great Old Ones,” eldritch monsters in the Cthululu mythos — have such a stark and lasting impact on the reader’s psyche that his voice pervaded through successive generations of writers and filmmakers, even if attempting to commit his voice to the screen takes much of the heft away from his "unimaginable" fears.
This is probably why Lovecraft’s relationship with film and TV lies more with reimaginings and homages: Hellraiser, The Mist, and Lovecraft Country all feel unique to their respective writer’s voice, born out of an intimate understanding of why Lovecraft’s horror scares us. (See also John Carpenter’s compromised but exhilarating In the Mouth of Madness.) Films like Re-Animator, From Beyond, and The Resurrected are more official, but they belong to a pulpy, surreal and more than a little goofy tradition of SFX-heavy B-movies that disappeared after the ‘80s. Recent indie projects like Colour Out of Space and Suitable Flesh feel indebted to in their attempts to bring back Lovecraft in the modern age.
