I think Lovecraftian storytelling elements can strengthen any story.

On the Lovecraft subreddit, I recently came across some recommendations for old school movies that have a Lovecraftian feel to them. Specifically, the list included notables of horror like John Carpenter's The Thing. But it also included a film I hadn't seen (and was interested in watching) called The Abominable Snowman. Starring Peter Cushing (as a young man), this 1950's black and white science fiction film entertained me. But I'm not necessarily saying it would entertain you, so there is no recommendation to watch it forthcoming. However, I definitely see the Lovecraftian elements in play, and I can understand why the people on the Lovecraft subreddit listed it as a film that used horror elements of which Lovecraft was famous.

In The Abominable Snowman you don't really get a view of the monster. This is (I think) key because the special effects of the time were so bad that showing something like that would make the monster "silly." So, kinda like in the movie Jaws where the shark remains mostly unseen for the majority of the film, you instead get this feeling of "something sinister is out there." Other Lovecraftian elements that sprinkle into the narrative of The Abominable Snowman remind me of the short story The Call of Cthulhu. 

In that short story, there's this mysterious statue of Cthulhu that gets described in loving detail, and it makes the reader question the minds of whomever made the thing in the first place. Who could have possibly made this statue and why? Those are important elements in a Lovecraft-type story. In The Abominable Snowman the setting is in some Tibetan town high in the Himalayan mountains. In this town, the people are all superstitious, and the head of the village is an old monk who serves as both a wise person and as a spiritual leader of his people. An expedition into the mountains comes back with a strange silver canister with writing all over it. Inside the cannister is a single artifact: a claw/nail from the finger of some creature. When the old monk is questioned, he says that the cannister is a precious religious artifact that was stolen, and as for the claw? That was a thing carved by monks a long time ago...carved from bone. It obviously doesn't belong to anything real.

But then (of course) you suspect that the guy is not telling the entire story. And that right there is Lovecraft in a nutshell. Exploiting what is unknown so that the mind starts to fill in the details is a kind of horror writing that I never was able to master. But I can appreciate it a lot when I see it. That (I think) has been the terrible tragedy of the Alien universe films: they try to explain too much. But with regard to Alien, I get it. I'm a fan of the films, and I had lots of questions. So the writers made films to answer the questions. But when we all got the answers, not everyone liked what we discovered. And now that Alien has gotten so infused into the cultural zeitgeist that it may be getting a Lego set soon... it's probably safe to say that it has gotten away from its Lovecraftian roots. But maybe I'm wrong. Afterall, I know that there are stuffed Cthulhu's that you can buy online, and every presidential election year the meme "Cthulhu for president! Why vote for the lesser evil!" makes its circulation.

It was a real shock for me then to discover that J.R.R. Tolkien is highly regarded as one of the most outstanding Lovecraftian writers of all time. I came across this tidbit in perusing the Rings of Power reddit. One person laid out examples of Lovecraftian horror all throughout Tolkien's stories. There's the nameless evils in the dark places of the world, and the eldritch terror of Sauron and Melkor. In particular, the drums in the deep section of Moria is packed full of Lovecraftian horror, and the ringwraiths (the Nazgul) are embodiments of that kind of inexplicable evil that really isn't explained all too well. They are just there, they are evil, and they are intelligent. The development of all of those nameless things by people playing in Tolkien's sandbox (much to the chagrin of uber fans of his) has been at a steep cost: knowing all the answers doesn't necessarily make for a better story. I (for one) always wanted to know the connection the elves seem to have with actual light, because I could never quite get there on my own, and I don't think Tolkien really knew either (in clinical detail). With the help of the other writers just literally spelling it out to me, e.g., without light elves fade and so does their kingdom and their immortality...I could finally see why light was so important. But now I do, so I'm happy. But others are actually mad about it, and they think that the writers for Rings of Power have shat all over Tolkien's legacy.

If I were writing a story now (presently I'm not), I think that there would be a question in my mind: To Lovecraft or not to Lovecraft? I believe that the answer to that should always be "to Lovecraft" simply because withholding information and creating unresolved questions is a great way to build tension in a story, and it's a great way to enlist a reader's imagination. Given just those two things it honestly doesn't seem to have a downside.

Lovecraft Country is trying to tell a story about racism and a story about Lovecraftian monsters.

I watched the first episode of Lovecraft Country on HBO this Sunday. I want to say that I enjoyed it. But I also want to say that I was a bit naïve at how bad the racism is/was in this country. I had never heard of "Sundown Counties" or "Sundown Towns" and the concept behind this kind of thing--where you could be lynched if you allowed the sun to set on you in a particular place--is terrifying. The monsters then unleashed by H.P. Lovecraft's ancient imagination onto the evil white men at the end of the show, really don't hold much of a candle to the systemic evil of a country and its people who are bent on oppressing and punishing those different from them.

I was also impressed with the debut of the shoggoths. These are monsters with a lot of eyes that looked similar to Sammael in the Hellboy movie made by Guillermo del Toro many years ago. Of course, Sammael (and much of the stuff in Hellboy) is Lovecraft-inspired. In many ways, "The Great Old Ones" seem to be fertile ground for the exploration of evils that go beyond run of the mill vampires, werewolves, and mummies to something that inspires true awe and horror. And what I mean by "impressed" is simply that they looked good on screen. However, things tend to look good in certain light. The shoggoths benefit from being seen only in darkness, so the computer generated flaws of the creature are more effectively hidden. This is why the first Pacific Rim movie looked much better than the second (the fights between the robots and the kaiju happened at night and usually with water hiding the flaws in the C.G.I.). 

I know nothing about the story of Lovecraft Country other than what I've seen in the first episode of the show. But it does have me intrigued to read the book, as there may be other details within this H.P. Lovecraft-inspired tale that are missed in the television adaptation. Aside from in visions, I wonder if there is some greater Cthulhu-inspired plot, and if it will lead to some of the stranger locations mentioned in Lovecraft lore. A trip to the shores of R'Lyeh might be fascinating (for example).

The thing that Lovecraft Country makes me leery of is the fact that they are telling two stories. The story of the black people dealing with the systemic racism in the country in the 1930's feels like it is honestly enough for a show. It is compelling, and it is interesting. It is the story of a man who is putting together a guide book for his customers so that they can journey safely in counties and regions where danger to a person because of their skin color is very real. That would be enough for me to watch. But then they are adding in all of the Cthulhu stuff, which could also be its own separate story. So I have to ask, are they going to tell a story about racism? Or are they going to tell a story about Lovecraftian monsters? And why must it be both? Why can't it be one or the other? If you go to heavy on one, you lose the other. But a balance that strikes somewhere in the middle will probably not serve either plot well.

Since there haven't ever been any good Lovecraft stories that have been made into film, I wonder why we are getting sprinkles of Lovecraft here and there over the years on top of other topics and stories that people want to tell. I wonder why there never has been a really high budget attempt to tell one of the Lovecraftian stories, like "The Mountains of Madness," or "The Call of Cthulhu." It all seems very strange to me, and maybe it has to do with the fact that H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, and no one wants to touch any of his actual works, while borrowing heavily from them as they are considered "Open Domain." I'm not privy to those kinds of conversations, but I think it has something to do with funding for these kinds of things. Ah well, if Lovecraft Country is the best we are going to get, I suppose it will have to do.