What cosmic horror means to you depends on a fair few things. For me, it’s when the whole universe feels like it’s working actively against you. As if things are set in motion beyond comprehension that ride the grain of reality. You’re the knot in the wood, the one place where the chisel can’t carve smoothly. M. R. James didn’t trade in typical cosmic horror but the multitude of works that spin off his wind-that-cuts-as-it-blows-by aesthetic mean the archetypes he helped to embed in the ghost story are now imbedded within cosmic horror. A Warning to the Curious has the most of these signifiers and LGC spins them into a singularly creepy piece.
Most works budgeted under television constraints look very akin to that aforementioned moniker. It’s tricky to hide the sometimes less than credible acting and the hastily photographed shots. LGC is the only person who uses these limitations in his favour. His style- the static shots that awake to swing to another point of interest, characters walking into established frames and wandering aimlessly back out of them, the action caught by intimacy over scale- is born from TV impediments. It’s remarkable what he creates from barely anything, the power he wrings from the most parched of cloths.
A Warning to the Curious, beyond all the masterful themes and honest-to-goodness ghostliness of it all, is a complete and utter technical marvel. One of the most fastidiously curated and idiosyncratically milled works ever. It’s completely spellbinding watching the atmosphere chiselled from hunks of shot-blocking marble. I’ve mentioned it before but take the scenes from when Ager invades Paxton’s room up to the subsequent day, post-restoration of the crown. There are moments so utterly perfect that they can bring you tears: Paxton’s body illuminated by torchlight, hunched over as if purged of life; the slow circular pan across the trees, Ager stood behind one, infernal amongst the darkness; the mistaken coat writhing to reveal Ager inspecting his wears, lit impossibly by sunken moonlight behind the knoll.
It’s all so fucking special. It’s genuinely electric stuff; each moment painstakingly shaved from the block of cosmic horror wood. Paxton’s our knot, Paxton’s the thing that brings the evil machinations of the universe into the world and also the one who continues its legacy.
It’s so obviously five stars. If The Signalman is LGC’s emotional masterpiece then this is his technical one. Masterful.
(It was Christmas Eve and I was very drunk writing this in my notes. I’m keeping it as is, for posterity)
What cosmic horror means to you depends on a fair few things. For me, it’s when the whole universe feels like it’s working actively against you. As if things are set in motion beyond comprehension that ride the grain of reality. You’re the knot in the wood, the one place where the chisel can’t carve smoothly. M. R. James didn’t trade in typical cosmic horror but the multitude of works that spin off his wind-that-cuts-as-it-blows-by aesthetic mean the archetypes he helped to embed in the ghost story are now imbedded within cosmic horror. A Warning to the Curious has the most of these signifiers and LGC spins them into a singularly creepy piece.
Most works budgeted under television constraints look very akin to that aforementioned moniker. It’s tricky to hide the sometimes less than credible acting and the hastily photographed shots. LGC is the only person who uses these limitations in his favour. His style- the static shots that awake to swing to another point of interest, characters walking into established frames and wandering aimlessly back out of them, the action caught by intimacy over scale- is born from TV impediments. It’s remarkable what he creates from barely anything, the power he wrings from the most parched of cloths.
A Warning to the Curious, beyond all the masterful themes and honest-to-goodness ghostliness of it all, is a complete and utter technical marvel. One of the most fastidiously curated and idiosyncratically milled works ever. It’s completely spellbinding watching the atmosphere chiselled from hunks of shot-blocking marble. I’ve mentioned it before but take the scenes from when Ager invades Paxton’s room up to the subsequent day, post-restoration of the crown. There are moments so utterly perfect that they can bring you tears: Paxton’s body illuminated by torchlight, hunched over as if purged of life; the slow circular pan across the trees, Ager stood behind one, infernal amongst the darkness; the mistaken coat writhing to reveal Ager inspecting his wears, lit impossibly by sunken moonlight behind the knoll.
It’s all so fucking special. It’s genuinely electric stuff; each moment painstakingly shaved from the block of cosmic horror wood. Paxton’s our knot, Paxton’s the thing that brings the evil machinations of the universe into the world and also the one who continues its legacy.
It’s so obviously five stars. If The Signalman is LGC’s emotional masterpiece then this is his technical one. Masterful.
(It was Christmas Eve and I was very drunk writing this in my notes. I’m keeping it as is, for posterity)