This Cosmic Horror Movie Borrows From Lovecraft and David Lynch

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been specializing in exciting sci-fi horror, starting with their first film, 2012’s Resolution. They have since directed five films together, have a segment in the found footage V/H/S franchise, and even directed episodes in the hit Marvel series Moon Knight and Loki. They are now attached to the highly anticipated series, Daredevil: Born Again. While they may be successful in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, before that they made their names with some truly horrifying films that brought many so-called “unfilmable” ideas to the screen. Inspired by the cosmic horror that was popularized by fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft and paired with some nightmarish and unexplained imagery that channels David Lynch, the duo gave us 2017’s The Endless.

The Endless

As kids, they escaped a UFO death cult. Now, two adult brothers seek answers after an old videotape surfaces and brings them back to where they began.

Release Date

April 6, 2018

Runtime

111 Minutes

Writers

Justin Benson

What Is ‘The Endless’ About?

The film follows two brothers, Aaron and Justin (played by the co-directors) who are still assimilating to everyday life after escaping a so-called UFO Death Cult a decade earlier. One day, they find a package at their door containing a mysterious video message from the cult. Aaron, the younger brother, wants to return to the commune and is adamant that the group is not the evil cult his brother keeps telling him about. Justin agrees to go just for one day to finally gain closure from their tumultuous childhoods, hoping that Aaron can finally move on. When Aaron and Justin arrive at the commune they grew up in, they find that all the people they remember from childhood look like they haven’t aged a day. The group brushes it off as a product of fresh food and air. While Justin isn’t convinced, Aaron doesn’t seem to even notice this oddity, a sign of his warped childhood memory. As they spend more time with the group, they begin to realize that there is a lot more going on than they originally thought, as more unexplained events unfold throughout their stay.

‘The Endless’ Does Lovecraft Horror Right

While The Endless is not directly based on one of Lovecraft’s stories, it’s clearly inspired by his work. Lovecraft was the leading voice in cosmic horror, and he is a large part of the reason we have films like The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and The Mist, and shows like Lovecraft Country and Stranger Things. His name may have become synonymous with behemoth monsters, tentacles, and creatures that defy description, but the true horror of his work thrives in the sheer insignificance of humanity in the face of the unimaginably vast universe.

Benson and Moorhead implement this directly into the cult’s religion of this strange entity that seems to be tied to this land. We never fully see it, only the implications of its form. In one scene, we see an interpretation of the creature through drawings of one of the residents. When Justin jumps into the lake, he resurfaces visibly disturbed and urgently demands Aaron to row them back to land immediately. As the boat heads in, we see strange, incomprehensible shadows in the lake. During the rope activity that the group does, the inky night sky seems like the entire entity itself looming over them. Even in the film’s bombastic climax, the swirl of colors doesn’t expose the form of the entity and instead just shows the destruction it causes. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, nor does it need impressive visual effects to get the point across. Less is more in this situation, and we don’t need to see the entity to fear it. Hiding the monster leads our imagination to worse places, scaring us more than any visual could.

‘The Endless’ Also Has a David Lynch Feel

While Lovecraft is a huge inspiration for this film, there is also a strong Lynchian feel to The Endless. David Lynch, known for his interpretive filmmaking and continued refusal to explain any of his films or television shows, is one of the best working horror directors out there. While some of his movies are more traditional, others aren’t as easy to fully understand. Inland Empire, a story of an actress who adopts the persona of a character she is portraying, is so surreal and shocking that it serves as a complex and mind-boggling experience even after the and Eraserhead. Lynch thrives on disorienting the audience through the characters’ experiences.

While Benson and Moorhead provide a much more coherent plot and leave less unanswered for us in The Endless, there is a lot of nightmarish imagery and disorientation that feel inspired by what Lynch has become known for in his career. The directing pair crafts horrific scenes surrounding the time loops the two brothers find. Trapped in an endless repetition, the people who are caught in the lure of this entity are unable to escape their hellish existence. It’s soon discovered by the brothers that the time loops are all different lengths and sizes. Some, like the cult itself, have been going on for 10 years. Others are horrifically short, exemplified by one man’s tiny loop in a tent that only lasts a few short seconds, trapping him in a never-ending escape attempt that Aaron stumbles upon. The loop is just short enough that he could never reach the opening of the tent, unable to even take matters into his own hands and end the loop himself.

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When Justin runs into Carl’s (James Jordan) loop, he follows him to his shack, and in the middle of talking to him, finds that he has taken his own life. In shock, he’s startled to find that Carl appeared behind him again while still staring at the hanging body in front of him. Carl explains that ending it himself before the loop resets is a better alternative to whatever the entity might do to him. The time loops aren’t where the surrealist inspirations stop. The quiet scenes crawl under your skin more than the big ones, like Aaron looking up at the sky as a picture unexpectedly falls to his feet, and the picture is of himself looking up at the sky just seconds before. Lynch also loves to recontextualize scenes in his films, and The Endless pulls a similar bait-and-switch when we find out that Justin had lied about the cult to make sure Aaron would never want to return. Even though the viewer has seen these inexplicable events take place by the time this argument happens, there is a question about what that means for everyone involved, making the film all the more disorienting as to what the truth really is.

A lot of Lynch’s films have a similar theme of being stuck. While it’s usually more metaphorical, like the actress getting stuck in a role in Inland Empire or the fear of fatherhood in Eraserhead, many of his characters are unable to break out of a horrific cycle. That is directly applicable to many of the characters in The Endless. Not just literally, like the residents of the commune and the few others around them being stuck in a time loop, but Justin and Aaron too. While Aaron is the one still clearly stuck in the past, Justin is too. Aaron holds resentment because Justin took him out of the commune for his own good, only for them to struggle in real life. Justin still agrees to take his brother back to the cult because he doesn’t want to lose him, and we find out he is just as trapped as his brother. Of course, the difference between Benson and Moorhead and David Lynch is that nearly all of Lynch’s films end horrifically. Benson and Moorhead alternatively give the brothers a happier ending, finally escaping the clutches of the entity and the cult.

‘The Endless’ Is (Kinda) a Sequel to Benson and Moorhead’s ‘Resolution’

Another shocking element that the film brings is only if you have seen Benson and Moorhead’s debut film: Resolution. The 2012 film is about a man imprisoning his addict friend in a cabin in an attempt to force him into sobriety, but as the days drag on, they start experiencing strange events that might just prevent them from leaving. Michael (Peter Cilella) and Chris (Vinny Curran), the two friends from Resolution, show up in an important scene in The Endless. The fate of the two of them is to be trapped in a time loop just like the other groups, still hoping to escape themselves one day. Resolution is well worth a watch before or after The Endless. While it may not be as flashy or big as The Endless, there are moments in Resolution that are even more chilling and horrifying, including its ending. The scariest part can be the implication of something, rather than showing it outright. That’s something we’ve all learned from Lovecraft.

The Endless and its predecessor are not the only projects in Benson and Moorhead’s filmography that have a distinctly Lovecraftian feel. Spring, a horrific yet enticing monster-romance, is yet again very inspired by Lovecraft. Synchronic‘s drug-induced disorientation is right up the same alley, and even Marvel’s Moon Knight implements some of these same themes as different personalities take over Jake Lockley (Oscar Issac). Benson and Moorhead are fantastic directors who continue to push boundaries in their work, bringing big ideas to the screen effortlessly, oftentimes on a small budget.

The Endless is currently streaming on Peacock in the U.S.

Watch on Peacock