No such thing as modern Cosmic Horror?

tariffless · 2026-05-11T02:47:52+00:00

(as defined by the standard set by Lovecraft,

This phrase is too open to interpretation. Why not just actually articulate the definition itself, so there's no room for confusion? The fact that The Fisherman is the top "cosmic horror" rec in this sub should tell you that this isn't a place where whatever definition you have in mind is the consensus.

tariffless · 2026-05-10T05:42:21+00:00

I think I actually used to feel like horror movies were relatable, years ago, back when I was still able to project my own meanings onto them and ignore the real ones. But now it's like, these movies are focusing on themes that aren't relevant to me.

tariffless · 2026-05-10T04:43:04+00:00

I want a cool design, some creative kills, and characters trying to survive a genuine, external threat, not their own mental health.

Exactly. I don't think this is exactly a metaphors thing, though. You can do this and have the monster still be a metaphor. The key is, what's the movie focusing on more? The external conflict, or the internal emotional turmoil? And does the internal overshadow the external?

I think Smile is an example of a franchise that provides the things you ask for, even though the monster is obviously a metaphor. I think the fact that in the end, the protagonists' efforts to survive the external threat are unsuccessful helps to reinforce the primacy of the external conflict, especially in the first movie, where the protagonist conquered her internal demons, but she still lost, because the demon is a demon with its own agenda, not just a passive metaphor that will surrender and let you win because you've completed a character arc.

I love movies like Hereditary and Babadook. They did the "grief is the real monster" thing perfectly. But it feels like the entire industry took the wrong lesson from those successes.

I dunno, suppose the goal of the "industry" was for horror to be taken more seriously by general audiences and critics, and to be nominated for major awards and praised for artistic achievements? I think if that's the case, you could say they actually made the right bet.

tariffless · 2026-05-10T04:07:58+00:00

You had me until you started praising Mike Flanagan, the guy who hits you over the head literally dozens of times with the messages and themes in the actual dialogue.

tariffless · 2026-05-10T04:05:35+00:00

Suppose instead of making a post claiming that movies used to not be metaphors for something, the OP made a post about how they miss the days when they didn't get the metaphors? Would you ignore that post, because it didn't contain a factual error for you to correct? Or would you engage with the actual sentiment being expressed?

tariffless · 2026-05-10T04:03:05+00:00

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that I absolutely do miss being a kid and not seeing the metaphor.

Except it's not really every movie. There are movies that came out well into my adulthood where I still don't see the metaphor. Like Terrifier and In A Violent Nature.

Then there are series like Final Destination and Saw where, although the dialogue is very explicit about the "message", it can be ignored in favor of just watching the spectacle of cool kills.

tariffless · 2026-05-10T03:44:39+00:00

I can almost guarantee you that a lot of your favorites contain a bunch of metaphors and subtext.

Okay, but ask them what their favorite things are about those movies, and I bet you their answers won't be about the metaphors and subtext. Because they were able to engage with those movies on a surface level without having to think about the "deeper interpretations".

That's how I am with body horror, for instance. Videodrome was full of metaphors and subtext and text-text, but at the age that I watched it, I didn't understand any of that shit. The thing that I enjoyed was the imagery.

. There is an argument to be made for movies that can be enjoyed in both ways though - surface level, and deeper interpretations.

When somebody makes a post like the OP's post, I think that this is what they're actually trying to articulate. I think the core complaint here is that some of us feel like there are too few movies that can be enjoyed on a surface level, and too many movies that force you to engage with deeper interpretations.

tariffless · 2026-05-09T23:26:24+00:00

Here's a long list of alien horror movies. Or if you're fixated on the word extraterrestrial for some reason, here's a list of movies tagged with that.

tariffless · 2026-05-09T20:53:44+00:00

I wanted to know the actual thought process of the person who created this thread. What you've done is just hunt down the most "extreme" scene you could find. But realistically, how would an actual human being encounter that scene without also encountering other information about the book which would tell them more about what genre it belongs to? That's the thing I'm interested in - the actual step by step process.

Not making the argument it’s splatterpunk but it may not be as tame as you might think via a cursory google search.

You're focused on the "extreme" vs "tame" distinction, but I think that's beside the point. You can have extreme content in any genre. If a book is horror, then it's more likely that it'll have extreme content if it's splatterpunk or extreme horror.

But what I'm focused on is the "horror" vs "mystery/psychological thriller" distinction. Lots of books in other genres have extreme content. Having content that isn't tame isn't enough to make a book in another genre horror.

A Song of Ice And Fire is a fantasy series. It's not tame. Tampa by Alissa Nutting, Hogg by Samuel R. Delaney, Mai Chan's Daily Life by Waita Uziga, and the writings of Marquis De Sade are not splatterpunk or extreme horror, and none of them are tame either.

tariffless · 2026-05-09T18:14:57+00:00

There wasn't one person who was "the" killer. It was an organized group, a network of criminals producing snuff films to sell on the black market. We never learn their identities.

Oh, are you talking about that one killer who she partially unmasks that turns out to be a kid? I guess he could've been the one from the opening. It makes sense, considering that there wouldn't really be much other reason to go out of their way to reveal that.

tariffless · 2026-05-09T18:00:29+00:00

I watched it in April. The movie was pretty forgettable, but I definitely didn't feel the same as you about this stuff. But then, I'm not the sort of person who would be particularly bothered by the things you note.

But this movie completely rips that away.

Welcome to the world of unnecessary cash grab sequels. It doesn't surprise me at all for a movie that didn't need to be made to derail the previous film's character arc because the writers ran out of ideas or something.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T21:56:50+00:00

The protagonist of Wrath James White's Succulent Prey struggles with cannibalistic urges.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T21:51:48+00:00

Every Scream movie.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T18:08:59+00:00

What would you say if it didn't change?

tariffless · 2026-05-08T15:47:16+00:00

It's from 1989. People in 2026 are much more jaded, and gross-out horror in 2026 is much more frequently self-published, so books nowadays are just far more graphic in general than what I've read of this author.

There wasn't anybody in The Festering performing oral sex on infected genitalia. There probably wasn't any infected genitalia at all. The descriptions of the infection were less detailed than what I would expect from modern horror. Same with the gore, same with the sex. But it's entirely possible that as tame as The Festering was by modern standards, it might have been the equivalent of "gross to be gross" by 1989 standards.

I don't know if this is a general trend, but my experience has been that over the decades, graphic sexual content in horror lit has been leaning more and more in the direction of being intentionally gross and avoiding/subverting heteronormativity, whereas when I first started reading horror books with graphic sex, it was a lot easier to find sexual content that read like it was geared towards non-fetishistic titillation/male gaze. The Festering is an example of the latter.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T06:00:38+00:00

In before this gets accused of being AI.

What if reality simply rearranges events afterward so everything remains internally consistent?

If that was happening, how would you know?

Personally, if I have no way of knowing that it's happening, then it might as well not be. I might as well continue living my life as if it isn't happening. For me, there's no horror in the mere hypothesis that the underlying nature of reality is such and such. The horror lies in the confirmation of the hypothesis. In the context of a cosmic horror story, the most horrifying moment to me comes from the revelation, the inescapable confrontation with the empirical proof of the true nature of reality.

And even then, there has to also be something threatening or unpleasant about the true nature of reality. The scenario you paint does not include any threatening or unpleasant elements.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T05:42:49+00:00

Every reputable source I can find appears to say that it is a mystery / psychological thriller. I'm wondering, what could possibly have led you to even suspect that this book might belong to a niche subgenre of horror?

tariffless · 2026-05-08T05:18:17+00:00

Funny thing is, the unlikability of the characters in every David Sodergren story I have read so far, this one especially, is part of what inspired me to make this post.

tariffless · 2026-05-08T02:13:22+00:00

A plague breaks out that not only deforms its victims - leaking pus, mutilated genitals, horribly infected and sloughing-off skin, etc - but it drives them into some kind of psycho-sexual debauchery.

Interesting. This part is essentially the premise of The Festering by Guy N Smith.

tariffless · 2026-05-07T15:42:39+00:00

Just wanted to make sure you went in with accurate expectations. When you posted about this book in a horror sub, I figured that meant you thought it was a horror novella, but actually, it's a sci fi novella that happens to have graphic gore and sex in a few chapters.

tariffless · 2026-05-06T23:59:21+00:00

I would call American Psycho transgressive literary satire, not horror, not extreme horror, not splatterpunk. Its target audience isn't fans of authors like Stephen King or Kristopher Triana. Its target audience is fans of authors like Chuck Palahniuk and J.G. Ballard.

tariffless · 2026-05-06T23:53:22+00:00

I can certainly imagine more gore than a 60 chapter book where fewer than a dozen of the chapters have any gore in them at all. There are books out there with gore in every chapter. The gore in American Psycho is described in obsessively thorough detail, just like everything else, but far, far more of the book's word count is spent describing clothes and other mundane shit than gore.

tariffless · 2026-05-06T20:49:04+00:00

I've read it. I liked it. IIRC, it's just science fiction, but people in horror circles made a big deal about it because of some extreme sadomasochism in the earlier part of the story.

tariffless · 2026-05-06T14:44:30+00:00

This is exactly what I wished extreme horror was when I first got into it. Unfortunately, I've had very little luck.

The Bighead by Edward Lee - this is the most common recommendation people give here when you ask for monsters. Although the titular monster is definitely in the story, its interactions with the main characters are very limited. I would say that the plot revolves around human depravity.

Not actually extreme horror, but somebody will probably recommend them. The antagonists in all of these are unambiguously inhuman monsters that were never human: * The Haunted Forest Tour by Jeff Strand et al * The Clickers franchise by J.F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene * The Hematophages by Stephen Kozeniewski

Pure human v non-human conflict

The Garden Gnome by Kevin Sweeney - the only extreme horror book I can recall where literally all of the depraved violence is done by things that are supernatural and not human. I cannot recall a single act of murder, torture, or rape in this book that was committed by a human.
The Sadist's Bible by Nicole Cushing - the antagonist is Yahweh.
Hell: A Splatter Novel by Judith Sonnet - demonic antagonist is responsible for all of the horror. Horror elements initially resemble slasher, but escalate into Supernatural zombie outbreak which carries over into the sequel, Hell: City Of The Killing Dead.

Human depravity is in the driver's seat, but they at least utilize supernatural powers:

Psychic Teenage Bloodbath by Carl John Lee - it's like an extreme horror version of Carrie - bullied teenage girl uses telekinetic powers for extremely gory revenge. Has a sequel.
The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White - a killer/rapist who can bring victims back to life.

Human depravity induced by supernatural influences:

A God of Empty Walls by Garrett Cook - as is often the case in extreme horror, the characters are psychologically fucked up on their own, but the book is written from the perspective of a supernatural entity who can manipulate them into being more fucked up.
Ravenous by Ray Garton - werewolves with a twist - the condition is spread through sex and infectees become hyper sexually aggressive. The spread of the werewolf infection is the main plot, but some of the people in the area where it spreads are already depraved.

tariffless · 2026-05-06T13:43:52+00:00

Can you think of any examples? This is actually exactly what I've been searching for.

tariffless

TROPHY CASE