Summary

• Lovecraftian horror has become a separate subgenre due to the enduring popularity of H. P. Lovecraft's work and its influence on pop culture.
• Live-action adaptations of Lovecraft's stories have struggled to accurately portray his complex descriptions of the unknown.
• Successful Lovecraftian films focus on thematic aspects rather than recreating visual elements, emphasizing the consequences of forbidden knowledge and the powerlessness of humans in the face of cosmic forces. James Wan's adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu should follow this approach.

While it is great news that James Wan is adapting an HP Lovecraft story, the film already seems to be facing a major cosmic horror challenge. HP Lovecraft's literary corpus, which revolves around themes of cosmicism and the fragility of human supremacy, hardly gained attention or acclaim when he was alive. However, nearly a century after his demise, Lovecraftian horror has become so deeply ingrained in pop culture that it is often considered a separate horror subgenre. HP Lovecraft's posthumous rise to fame and the enduring popularity of his work speak volumes about the power of storytelling.

Over the years, not only authors but even filmmakers have drawn inspiration from Lovecraft's work. Many have also tried to traverse his ideas into the audiovisual storytelling medium. James Wan will now do the same by adapting one of the most iconic tales written by HP Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu. Given how the HP Lovecraft tale has been Wan's dream project, and he has been working on it behind the scenes for nearly half a decade, it is hard not to be excited about how it will turn out. At the same time, owing to the nature of Lovecraftian stories, the adaptation also raises some concerns.

It Is Nearly Impossible To Accurately Adapt HP Lovecraft's The Call Of Cthulhu

HP Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space, the central color is ambiguously described as having "shining bands unlike any known colors of the normal spectrum," but the movie adaptation had to settle for a purplish hue.

Similarly, in The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft describes The Thing as something that "cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order." The detailed enigma with which HP Lovecraft presents the central being in The Call of Cthulhu triggers a reader's imagination, inviting them to experience "the fear of the unknown" without completely understanding it. A movie adaptation, in contrast, would find it challenging to create a similar impact because the audiovisual medium has to be more explicit and less abstract.

James Wan's Call Of Cthulhu Must Learn From Other Successful Lovecraftian Movies

Despite its inability to portray the true nature of the central color in the original Lovecraft story, 2019's The Color Out of Space perfectly captures the themes of insanity, hopelessness, and cosmic dread prevalent in the author's works. It also modernizes the original story without diminishing the essence of its Lovecraftian horror. A few other movies, like Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's The Endless, Alex Garland's Annihilation, and John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness, have also been able to effectively traverse Lovecraftian terrors to the big screen without accurately adapting any of the author's stories.

These rare few HP Lovecraft-inspired films prove that the author's works can work in the audiovisual medium if the emphasis is less on recreating the visual elements from the original stories and more on the thematic aspects that focus on everything from ancient cosmic entities to cults and rituals. Therefore, instead of chasing jumpscares and spectacle, James Wan's The Call of Cthulhu should likely center its attention on the dire consequences humans face when they access forbidden knowledge and the sense of powerlessness that dawns on them when they are in the face of potent cosmic forces. Whether Wan's The Call of Cthulhu will rank among the better Lovecraftian films is yet to be seen, but hopefully, it will not recreate the mistakes made by previous direct adaptations of the author's works.