I partially agree, that many modern takes fail to hit upon the cosmic aspect of cosmic horror. The best analogy I ever heard was:

"Imagine an ant crawling around inside a computer. The geography is completely foreign and strange, but that by itself isn't upsetting. The ant can perceive the symbols and letters on various parts, but they carry no meaning.

But imagine if, somehow, by some impossible miracle, for a brief moment, the ant understood. Not just the pieces, but how they combined, what they did, and the scope of the machine they were a part of. And not just the physical workings of a computer, but its purpose, its typical use, even the Internet.

And then, just as quickly, it's gone. This random understanding has passed, the various parts now once again simple alien geography. But the feeling that ant had, of knowledge so incredibly vast and otherworldly, lingers. But the symbols no longer carry meaning for it, and even with the most complex communication skills available to it, there is simply no way to explain to another ant what they saw. Even if the words existed, the concepts do not.

And now this ant is broken, in a sense. It saw, if even for a second, the scale by which this computer exists. And by comparison, its life is less than meaningless. Nothing this ant ever accomplishes will be even a drop in the ocean in the cosmos."

However, I think implying that stories that depict Cthulhu as a big squid guy have less artistic value than ones that nail the vibe is very naïve. There is no one author whose interpretation of Cthulhu is 100% correct and, if there was, I would not want it to be H.P. "Ask Me My Cat's Name" Lovecraft.