Category:Film:SurrealHorror

Eldritch Location: The Motion Picture - starring Eerie Scenery, as itself!

In general, what these films tend to share in common (besides tending toward being "indie art horror" vanity projects written by their directors) is one or more broken or frail characters who end up stepping into a bizarre landscape, where sinister, unexplainable (and usually unexplained) things begin happening. Is it a real location, tainted by some unexplained supernatural or Mythos weirdness, or a scientific experiment gone wrong? Is it a hallucinatory reflection of the characters' shattered minds? Is it a strange Dream World? Is it just a case of True Art Is Incomprehensible, or Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory? Don't expect any easy answers....

Though they are almost never based on any Lovecraft stories, and almost never contain any of the usual trappings of a stereotypical Lovecraft story (eldritch tomes, weird monsters, gruesome and shocking Gothic secrets, rituals and chants invoking weird alien gods with unpronounceable names), some viewers get a "Lovecraftian" vibe off of films like these, as almost any list of "Lovecraftian" films, allowed enough reader suggestions, will eventually include a handful of them.

Analysis: I'd suspect that many of these sorts of films ape Stanley Kubrick's style as seen in The Shining or 2001: A Space Odyssey, with The Shining perhaps being the earliest example. At least a handful seem to have been period war films, perhaps playing follow-the-leader for each other. I have some difficulty in making a connection between many of these films and Lovecraft, but if you accept the most stereotypical (though not necessarily faithful) "Lovecraftian" plot to be "reclusive and curious main character finds a creepy book, reads it, goes mad from the revelation, and gets his face eaten by a Cthulhu", then many of these "Eldritch Location" films follow a similar (and thus "Lovecraftian") format, except that a weird setting is substituted for the book ("reclusive and curious main characters find themselves in a creepy landscape or building, explore it, go mad from the revelation, and get their faces eaten by something off-camera....")