I think werewolves are basically about something we would see as the raw instinctic animalistic side of us and the fear of not being able to control it. Although it's a bit stupid, it's not like other animals that are literally only animalistic all just run around in rabid mode and maul everything. Edgy dudes love to talk about some animalistic, wild side deep in us, but when I look at like wild wolves or lions, they mostly just lay around and chill.
Vampires have always been coded as sexual predators, but Twilight tried to make it cool, sexy, and romantic without toning down the predatory stuff at all, and I hate it for that
Don’t forget the other problematic stuff like it telling girls they have to have a boyfriend and when he dumbs you, blow off your whole family and friends, change everything about yourself, lead on another guy to cure your loneliness, and try to off yourself so you can see images of the guy who left you. Twilight is a prime example of everything wrong with romance, especially young adult romance.
There have always been cool, dark and sexy vampire stories. People just hated twilight because it was badly written by a Mormon lol, but it was still entertaining for many young girls
I think the reason zombies stay so popular is because they are the only supernatural entity that the average nerd could outrun and so it appeals to them.
@@ethanhaynes7406 yeah but their sexuality was mostly Christian anti homophobic and vampires where “seducing” women and raping them. It was seeing as a bad thing. At least those where the messages.
Funny how you are making the same mistake Ben did all those years ago in Night of the Living Dead "I'm telling you man, those things have no strength" "And I'm telling you those things turned over our car" "He'll any good five men can do that" " Yeah and there won't be five or even ten, there's gonna be twenty, thirty, a hundred of those things, and as soon as they know we're here this place will be crawling with them"
Vaush's problem with vampires seems to be that they're primarily a vehicle for sexy dangerous stories for women rather than class villains. They've become, essentially, the darker badboy version of Prince Charming rescuing women from a mediocre life to be elevated into the elite. So most stories about vampires that get traction are likely to follow this trend.
Put that way, I guess vampire stories are like the female version of "no war movie is an anti-war movie". It's basically impossible to make a war movie so horrible that some dudes won't go "fuck yeah! War is hell," and not in a sombre, "never again" way either. (Likewise, movies like Wolf of Wall Street may be commentaries on the emptiness of such a lifestyle, but you'll always get a bunch of 20-something dudes who think "that's AWESOME".) I guess it's also impossible to present "rich, out of touch, decadent members of the elite" in a way that some women won't think "that's fukn HAWT".
@@ProfDCoy "Saving Private Ryan" might be a good example of that. It's probably exceedingly rare for anyone to watch it and come away thinking that war is cool, but the fact that it does such a good job driving home how miserable the war was lead to a newfound sympathy for WW2 veterans, as well as the relatively recent idea of World War 2 as "the good war".
@One Nine Three yeah basically, though I'd caveat that WW2 was about as close as we'll ever get to "a good war", but 1) the reasons for why some countries ended up on the Allies side are a bit murkier and weren't as much about punching fascists as we'd wish; and 2) the Allies still did war crimes and other dark shit during that time, no doubt. But that's a side topic and I still generally agree!
@@Anthropomorphic I wouldn't really call it an anti war movie. Sure it says that war ain't fun, but the whole premise of the movie is the heroic search for the last remaining offspring, so the mother has at least one son coming back home. Not to mention the last battle, where he refuses to leave his comrades then winning over much stronger German forces. Focusing on values like heroism, valour, glory, etc. does not an anti war movie make. That's why it's so hard to make one.
I have never thought of zombies as fear of crowds or of others in a reactionary way, I always saw it as the terrifying extreme of humanity endurance and the general notion of the plague and virus
Some people thought Night of the Living Dead was an allegory for the group think of communism, really it was about the breakdown inside the house between the feuding humans, rather than the zombies outside You can extrapolate anything really
i left a big comment somewhere but my two cents is that zombies are kinda reactionary by default, they ask every member of society (i.e, the masses) to identify not with the horde of zombies (i.e, the masses) but with the survivors, the few. in that way, reading from a marxist perspective especially, zombie media is often a direct parallel to the well-known “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” archetype that keeps the proletariat running on the wealth treadmill infinitely in an attempt to become the bourgeois who are, definitionally, the few and not the many. zombie media in its many forms asks every member of the proletariat to not identify with the proletariat but with the bourgeois, as it would be dangerous and deadly to identify with the masses (because you would be a zombie).
@@geedee1264 Yeah I think it is mainly about how the humans fail to successfully adapt to their new reality. Romero mentioned it a few times when asked about his zombie films.
I like jojo vampires because they're so different. Basically the whole this is that vampirism gives you way more control over your body. The freezing comes from lowering body temperature enough to where all the heat of someone else's body gets sucked into yours, and the laser eyes are from pressurizing your eye fluid. Pillarmen have even more control, being able to crush their bones at will to reshape themselves and move their veins like limbs. It's neat stuff
People forget the modern zombie genre stems from political commentary. Romero's movies all have a central political commentary surrounding them, from the original Night of the Living Dead covering racism; to Dawn of the Dead covering consumerism; to Day of the Dead covering communication, transparency, and its necessity for civilization. The entire genre literally stems from Romero's political commentary, which in general is very left leaning.
Apparently Romero didn't intend for Night of the Living Dead to be a commentary on racism. He has talked about it a few times in interviews. It wasn’t intentional and he was very honest about it. He was just out to make a horror movie. The black character wasn't actually written as a black guy. The actor who played the character (Duane Jones) got the role because he was the best actor who auditioned for it. I imagine the whole thing became political and was perceived that way, but that apparently wasn't really the director's intention. You are right about the other films though. I think the main central theme that runs throughout the films is about the humans failing to successfully adapt to their new reality. Romero has mentioned this before in interviews. Dawn and Day also definitely have that intentional political commentary as well though.
Castlevania will always have a special place in my heart for not only giving us the first great video game adaptation, but also making vampires cool again
I've never played the games personally, but I heard the show took a lot of creative liberties in the way certain characters / things were written. I wish more studios would take that route as opposed to shoehorning in a plot that was made to work as a video game in the first place.
Actually most cases of vampire hysteria in real life tended to revolve around dead peasants, probably because, well... it wasn't easy to break into a nobleman's tomb or crypt or whatever
Mummies deserve more exposure. The reason they appear dull is because not a lot of media bothers with them. There's the few movies made of them, and that's it. But those ones are actually good. Showing that not only aren't they just bandaged zombies, one can actually be very charismatic and cunning. And because you open up a whole world of possibility through magic and ritual, creativity should be the only limiting factor. Unlike vampires, who've actually suffered from attempts to make them cool, mummies never suffered that sort of decay. Vampires are out-of-touch aristocrats, who choose not to engage with the 'lower beings' because sympathy for your food is a bad survival strategy. Mummies are out of touch because they're displaced from their own society, and do not understand the values of today. You can more easily sympathize with circumstances out of the monster's control, while recognizing that ancient Egyptian values, coming from a rigid classist civilization that practices slavery and where priests wield considerable power over citizens, would cause a mummy to act is some truly repugnant manner based on their original place within it.
On lovecraftian horror, darkest dungeon one and two do it sort of well. It's not exactly scary, but it has all the atmosphere you'd expect and it's narration is godly. For literature, there was a chinese translated webnovel that had some surprisingly good and scary cosmic horror scenes.
My favorite modern take of Vampires is in Midnight Mass by Mike Flannigan. Like how they actually reference the Alukah from Jewish mythos. It’s SO goddamn good.
Zombies are more of the fear of humanity collapsing rather than crowds. The biggest part of all zombie stories was the main character having to rely only on themselfs and their survival group. The biggest point of zombie stories for me was always: there are no authorities, law, electricity, food in stores etc. Just you going through woods trying to find last remainings of civilization like empty houses to sleep in
Too many horror and especially cosmic horror games don't understand that as soon as you see the monster, most of the fear is gone. People are generally more scared of their own imagination than the actual thing itself
This isn't entirely true imo. I agree you can't have a scary monster without well-written suspense, but monsters that lose their entire fear factor once seen are inherently badly written and/or designed to begin with unless that is their whole point. There can be a lot of payoff from seeing a really bizarre, horrifying creature if it's visually and thematically disturbing enough (I think Jean Jacket from Nope is a good example of this).
I think it can be done. Junji Ito's works convey cosmic horror in a visual medium that unnerves you even if you do see the monster(s). It's just that most games just depict them as tentacle-fish monsters that die by damaging them like any other enemy mob.
How about Cyber/biopunk style corpo billionaire vampire. That seems like an unused futuristic kind of vampire that would be cool to see in scifi media.
Monogatari did a pretty good job with vampires, as a rare force of nature who are out of touch with society because of conditions out of their control. It makes for a really good tool to drag the story various ways, and keeping the story interesting even if they were broken OP.
Honestly I think Mummies could conceptually be similar to the Vampire in the sense of being a monstrous caricature of the ruling class. After all, the people who were mummified in Egypt were people like Pharaohs and Priests. I could imagine it being a sort of vengeful spirit that’s just pissed that it no longer has that sort of systemic power and that it’s Earthly possessions are being taken from them. Like it’s clearly someone who, at their time, was someone of great importance. But now no one remembers their name, their tomb has been plundered and defaced, and it’s just this lost spirit that can’t return to their afterlife.
Vampires in both the Witcher books and the games will always be up there with the best depictions for me. The backstory is different with them basically being a race of beings from another dimention that got stranded with the Witcher world, and in their world everything living had very high iron levels, so through evolution everything in there likes blood. Everything from that world got trapped in the Witcher world, so their equivalent of just animals that can be blood drinking mindless monsters or blood drinking low level humanoids with various powers. And also super strong, super fast, un-killable, regenerating, sharp claw having, technologically advanced, immortal, telepathic, human-like, Truekin Vampire Gods who dont even need to drink blood to survive, who see humans as insects and the only reason they dont just massacre humans and all other races is because there aint that many of them, and if they went to war with the other races it'd be like the biggest swarm of insects buzzing around them until eventually (eventually....)they managed to smack all of them down, which would be too much of a bother and take ages.
I love how there are lesser vampires which are basically feral monsters and higher vampires which are more akin to the classic type of vampire. The bruxa is the perfect hybrid of those concepts to me.
I liked the way they had a vampiric hierarchy as well, with lower level vampires being subservient to the True Vampires when psychically commanded. It reminded me of Blood+ a lot which is a very underrated vampire story.
Dark Corners of the Earth had problems but it also had some great moments. The hotel section where the player has to go from room to room and keep pursuers at bay was harrowing and a direct conversion of a scene from Lovecraft's short story; The Shadow over Innsmouth.
I think Dark Corners of the Earth exemplifies everything in Lovecraft universe material pretty well, from horrors of Ancient madness to dudes going ham with guns at it.
Lovecraftian imagery should always have a vaguely dreamlike feel. Like, instead of using CGI, filmmakers should use animation and weird FX to suggest that these things MIGHT be hallucinations, but you're not entirely sure. The unreliable narrator can be done well in film.
Surprised to see nobody mention 30 days of night. Those vampires are genuinely scary and not cartoonish like they are most of the time. Also a great and underrated movie.
I really like Vampire the masquerade. It mixes the old school vampires that are much older and have a superiority complex from being nobler/purer of blood with newer vampiers that are more modern/human, sired to serve.
Yes I agree that VTM vampires are pretty cool. Vaush put it in the 'hip new vamp' category but said he liked it despite that, though I don't think that is really accurate since (as you correctly point out) the whole "dude got embraced during the crusades and is really out of touch with modern society now" thing that he mentioned is a pretty big theme there. Maybe Bloodlines was his only experience with the setting? If I remember right the oldest vamp character in Bloodlines was somewhat young by the standards of that universe and had the aesthetic of your typical modern businessman so I guess that particular theme didn't shine through as strongly there as it does in the RPG.
@@devinnie7572 Most of the VTM stuff people are exposed to is set in America, almost all the vampires there are going to be on the hip new vamp side of things. I'm pretty sure the oldest vampire in that game is Strauss, the Tremere Regent, and even that guy is only around 500, having been around since atleast 1489. That makes him one of the older vampires in the new world, but the old world has Methuselahs like Mithras running around, people who were embraced 1000 years BC, so over 3000. Vampires that old rarely decide to leave their well established domains unless forced to, so they're all across the atlantic.
@@Fusseliko I forgot about Strauss since I hadn't played in so long. I was thinking of LaCroix in my comment (embraced during the Napoleonic wars iirc so very young). The New World vs Old World dynamic is a good point and something I hadn't considered. Maybe we need to get a Storyteller willing to set a game somewhere in Europe and somehow convince Vaush to join us.
At the earliest stage, I don't think vampires were really depicted as "out of touch". Dracula arguably is, but the stories that inspired it didn't really do that. I'd also say that the club-going socialite thing is not only not new, but actually pretty much the oldest literary vampire there is. The first work of vampire fiction usually considered to be 'The Vampyre', and was essentially a roast of Lord Byron written by a personal friend of his. Incidentally, that's another thing that often gets overlooked: from what I've read, the early aristocratic vampires are usually not depicted as feeding on the lower classes, but rather on other members of the upper class.
Once a local commentator said something along the lines of "anyone who looks at the old ones becomes mad, wets themselves and dies - not necessarily in that order" and I think it sums up well why Cthulhu stuff has so much trouble working in games or movies. If you show that kind of horror and it has no effect on you IRL that instantly breaks the magic. (It's not a visual-only problem either, memetics in SCP face the same challenge but at least they can do redaction to get around it.) So the only thing that can be done is to throw cultists and explicitly non-cosmic-horror lesser monsters at the player until the very end.
Vampire the Masqurade ttrpg has a clan for every trope of vampire. Its how VtM explains all these different conflicting stories. Rich out of touch vanpires? Ventrue Monsters in the sewers? Nosferatu Sex hungry artsy bi vamps? Troueadour
Considering that he is just stating his opinion I always found these comments to be very weird. Vaush wants his media to be thematically and aesthetically consistent and has a few things he focuses more on than other people. I really don't get why that gets people riled up.
@@nicolaim4275 it's because a lot of people can't dislike things they enjoy (for example - I LOVE bad movies. They're still bad). And also a lot of people want their icons to enjoy things they enjoy. And they just call him killjoy for analyzing media he watches.
2:44 As if Dracula from Castlevania couldn't return from being erased from existence, create portals, freeze things, teleport, use telekinesis, and warp reality.
I honestly don't like this way of thinking where we have to be super strict on the portrayal of fictional races or creatures or whatever. I feel like we can get more creative if we keep only a small number of strict rules. If Dwarves, for example, are small, humanoid creatures that live underground, there's a lot more flexibility to change things up. But no, every dwarf has to be a race of short humans with beards who live in stone buildings and love mining, trading, fighting and alcoholism, hence why 99.9% of dwarves in popular media are just Gimlis
Sure when people talk about "lovecraftian" they usually think of the goofy fish men and the squid face but lovecraft wrote weird fiction! He wasn't limited to just uncanny valley fish guys, and yeah the existential horror was a big part but from what I know about pathlogic I'd absolutely consider it in that same category of weird fiction - I certainly wouldn't disqualify it because lovecraft was "western" or whatever. I'd definitely consider junji ito's work lovecraftian! I also disagree about the "shambler" - what, it looks organic? Yeah lovecraft wrote about all kinds of squishy things, not everything was a weird color out of space that made people go mad you know. The real issue is the most well known lovecraftian things have become pop culture, and a memed cthulhu kind of weakens the horror
The Vampire the Masquerade vampires are pretty cool in that they take this metaphor of the elites and adapt it to the modern world quite well in the Camerilla
Lots of social commentary in that setting in regards to the huge power gap between the entrenched elites with their more powerful blood and centuries of accruing wealth vs. younger vampires not able to get anywhere because everything that was already claimed before they were born will never become available for new ownership (because, you know, immortality) plus their 'embrace' typically starting them off as indentured servants to their sires... if they are lucky.
Well if he only played Bloodlines the oldest vamp he would've met is Strauss IIRC, who is around 500-600 since he was embraced before 1489. That's old for new world standards, but all the really old vamps like Mithras, who was embraced in 1258BC are over in the old world, running well established domains they never leave unless they're forced to. The reason the Americas are such a battleground with the Sabbat, Camarilla, Anarch Free State and even the Kuei-Jin making claims is because all the vamps there are relatively young. They haven't gotten complacent with the centuries yet.
Oh, and another thing: a monster's metaphor isn't necessarily what makes it scary. A movie might use zombies to make a statement about malls, and the zombies might be scary, but the zombies wouldn't necessarily be scary because we're *actually* scared of malls. The scary part would probably be the more literal fear of getting killed by zombies.
I have to say though, modern zombie media is less about fear of the crowd and more about fear of one another. Like blah blah humans were the real baddies all along shit. Like, zombies are just the confines keeping the characters on the defensive, but the real threat often comes from other people, and can often portray how infighting can completely destroy everything good.
A good example of cosmic horror outside of writing is Twin Peaks I think. It’s not exactly Lovecraftian but it deals with nihilism and bizarre beings beyond our comprehension in a really compelling way, even if it isn’t trying to evoke the feeling of Lovecraft
I honestly look at 30 days of night vampires as being kind of different from normal vampires. I feel like they represent almost a force of nature as opposed to class or foreigners or anything that vampires normally represent. They barely feel like they were ever human.
_Vampire Hunter D._ The vampires quietly waited until mankind destroyed itself in the late 21st century, then used the knowledge they accumulated through centuries of immortality to rebuild the world, with the surviving humans treated as cattle. Over several millennia vampires used science and magic to transform the world into a paradise reflecting their darkest fantasies, building gothic citadels and releasing genetically engineered monsters into the wilds.
I always thought that the Kaaba in Mecca has some lovecraftian potential. A black meteorite that gets worshipped daily by thousands of people. Sadly, that could also have some lovecraftian potential, as in xenophobia.
Netflix has three original short films called "Dracula". Basically a retelling of the original Stoker novel. The first two are so good. Last one we don't talk about.
You know what did a good a good job of being cosmic horror while also being a visual medium? Annihilation (2018) the ending was such a memorable mindfuck to look at I loved it
I think the main point of Lovecraft is that his monsters are scary not for what they are, but for what they are not, as they aren't anything we are familiar with or can come to terms with, they are not you. That's why creating extremely compex and deep lore for Lovecraft doesn't work, cuz you only need to know enough to make you scared. If you know too much you become familiar with it and then it stops being scary.
Vampires: Fear of out of touch creepy rich people, and Eastern Europeans I guess. Werewolves: Basically a period for men. The beast hiding in every man, and within us. Witches: Fear of old women (Prob lesbians). Zombies: Fear of the dead, and consumerism and masses. Having to kill your family and shit. Mummies: Fear of the dead and of other "creepy" cultures. Frankenstein's Monster: Fear of the dead, and science going to far. Ghosts: Fear of the dead that you prrsonally know and of scary Victorian people. Demons and religion and shit. Etc....
Trrruuu I studied Dracula in English class at university and the main themes were tradition/superstition/magic (vampires) vs. science/modernity/progress (the good guys).
An old favorite Lovecraft depiction of mine was the movie Dagon from 2001. It's a little on the low budget side but I think they made the most of it with effectively depicting the creepy fish people. Loved the atmosphere of that film.
I hate the trope of "vampire who's desperately clinging to their humanity and is fighting to resist the bloodlust". It's a good idea if done right (like Seras Victoria from Hellsing) but most of the time I see it it's just this angsty tweenage bullshit. "Oh I'm such a sad boi! I'm such a vile monster! Stay away, I don't want to hurt you!" The way they're portrayed in a lot of stuff I've seen comes off more whiny and emo then tragic and conflicted. A piece of eldritch horror I really like are the Eldrazi from Magic: the Gathering. Though not from a horror franchise, I feel like the Eldrazi perfectly captures the otherworldlyness of Lovecraftian entities. This massive army of monstrosities with forms beyond any kind of recognition but with bits and pieces of familiar human anatomy. The way their very presence warps life, land and reality itself. These beings whose thoughts and methods are completely beyond our capacity to comprehend, but they clearly are acting with some kind of intelligence and purpose.
I think an example of this that is really great is Blood+. The vampires are very powerful, wealthy and influential and straight up based on the Rotschild family. I also enjoyed the way the story actually explained vampirism without necessarily involving anything supernatural.
Perfect moment to check ou Re:Dracula if you want to experience the original novel as a podcast in actual time with amazing sound design !!! It’s great, I much recommend
The best video game adaptation of Lovecraft is Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (haven't played the remake yet, most likely continues holding the title). The key element to why it works is that it keeps everything supernatural just around the corner and plausibly deniable (because Sherlock obviously does not believe in impossible things, only improbable things). Sherlock isn't solving a monster mystery, he is solving a case of kidnappings and murders, and cultists who may just be following figments of their imagination are plenty capable of doing those. But that old well that the Swiss doctor has hidden under the asylum and keeps throwing human meat into, something has still eaten some of the meat.
Mummies do need to reworked to be cool in modern media. Like The Mummy (1999?) was really cool but it’s hard to make anything consistent from that style. It just comes off as evil sorcerer type shit which is kinda vague and basic. Vampire and zombies you know exactly what they do, maybe some changes here and there, but the basics are the same. Mummies mostly only have aesthetic.
Blame Anne Rice. She wrote the Interview with a Vampire trilogy, which I thought was really good. However, it kinda pushed vampires to the forefront of pop culture, which led to the shit that we now have
Fantastic dark fantasy series heavily featuring vampires (despite not ever actually calling them vampires in book i dont think): Saga of The Noble Dead It's set in its own dark fantasy world with humans, elves, half elves, 'undeads' (which are sort of between zombie and vampire but definitely leans way toward vampire, except for the ferals... anyway), and more, and has a really interesting and gripping plot that spans over many books and many in-world cities, countries, and territories. It's also got both steady, reliable romance between characters *and* angsty sort-of romance between different characters that's happening alongside the big plot developments which I love. There's a big through-line of mystery in the whole series, and in a lot of the individual books as the main characters discover that 'undeads' are actually real, end up hunting the ones plaguing their town, and get sucked deeper into the plot discovering more and more about them and what impact that knowledge has on them It's really, really difficult to explain most of what is awesome about it without spoiling the hell out of it, but trust me. If you like fantasy and you like vampires, you'll like the Noble Dead Saga
Personally, the best recent media in Lovecraftian thematic was darkest dungeon because it shows you the monsters you can defeat but teases you with the unknown of the darkest dungeon itself with availability of it on the quest menu selection. Unfortunately it was a letdown after you go there for the first time. Hamlet changes after the visits are cool too.
There's an episode of love death and robots that does Lovecraft right. The charcters do see Cthulhu, and the breif moments in his presence broke their minds. Its all leadup no explanation and definitely no victory.
Vampire is very residentsleeper for me, the one time i like it is when i read a manga about vampire BL where vampire is a second class citizen and hiding from humans and they suck blood from packs, new vampire trying to adjust vampire life and social life. They live longer than humans so a smidge of tragedy for human/vampire pair
I know Vaush is referring to the depiction of vampires on screen, but my favorite modern take in print is Jim Butcher's in the Harry Dresden novels: Red Court (Dracula style), Black Court (Nosferatu style), and White Court (afaik, Butcher's very own psychic vampires). Team Thomas 💯!
This is interesting! I always felt zombies were a very versatile Avenue for a current social fear. The way they come about mainly. Depending what “kind” it is, is has very different applications to our fear. Sickness being most of them. There’s often however a large emphasis in many on how the government leads to the big failures, with their mishandlings and often times direct links. In fact, I think “apocalyptic media” is an interesting way to get a feel for what people are currently scared of. Our media is a lens. They very have a message even if we don’t really notice it. There’s also commonly camaraderie, initial feelings of distrust, and the token still human people eaters (every time). But ultimately the goal always comes down in the shadows to a failure of government and people being turned against each other, and being lost. Zombies are totally overdone, but I think it’s due to a pretty consistently felt idea that our government absolutely would just let us die of zombies came about. Especially with what happened in 2020.
Honestly i loke how in Virse of Strahd, it kindof takes the whole sexy brooding vampire trope, and actually makes it dangerous. See in the module, you can romance the tutular Strahd if you choose... but its a trap. I will try to avoid spoilers for the module as best as i can, but your chances of replacing a certain NPC as his No.1 is next to 0, and the reward for choosing him/betraying your party for him is likely going to lead to your character's very grisly death if you fail to be useful/entertaining to him. In other words, hes basically the more common logical conclusion to what happens when you pursue an obvious violent narcissist, which vampires are often dipicted as
here to plug my favourite lesser known vampire movie: a girl walks home alone at night. it's about a wholly unrepentant vampire who has this very sweet romance with a guy with family and money troubles. he has to decide whether to accept her as the killer she is, or to leave her as lonely as she was before. it's v pretentious (filmed in black and white in 2014, pretty much only diagetic sound and music) but it's literally the height of romance to me. also elijah wood is executive producer if that's anything.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire hunter "Modernized" vampires well by making them confederate plantation owners rather than European nobility and IIRC this was an explicit "Modernization" by the young radical faction. I think if you want modern vampires you need to do it similarly. "We can't just sit around in castes all day we have to become fascists bro" or some shit, the access to a wide pool of serfs or slaves necessary for a vampiric upper class needs to modernize with the times but should be used to highlight a violently predatory relationship by pointing out how that social dynamic is something a bunch of literal blood sucking parasites would dream up. It might be that modern vampires are terrible because we don't have quite the same relationship with capitalist owners for all its faults. It comes across as crass to suggest the borgeousie are vampires in a way that just outright fits for aristocrats and slave planters.
Watch Near Dark! The vampires in Near Dark are pathetic drifters who are incapable of living a meaningful life, so they just roam around, killing people to perpetuate their empty eternal existence
I know it's not a movie, but the vampires in the Witcher 3 were incredible. Regis and Detlaff were the first and nearly the only time I ever considered the concept of a vampire to be interesting or badass.
Vaush's opinions on vampires is so weird sense the concept of vampires originates from way back to Mesopotamia and even in the European of idea of vampires, it wasn't their wealth that made them undesirable, it was how they hedonistically indulged in their wealth. Not to mention the abilities and weaknesses of vampires very greatly depending on what the original author wanted the vampires to do and be even back in older times. All in all, I just don't like his very narrow-minded view on vampires as a concept and how he has like these very concrete ideas on what a vampire NEEDS to be despite the fact that vampires have always been very fluid in their existence in media sense the beginning.
I think visual Lovecraftian media could really do a lot with abstract imagery. This way a proficient enough filmmaker could make a kickass Lovecraftian horror/suspense movie with a shoestring budget and next to no CGI. With the right set up, soundtrack and just series of images intersliced with the protagonist of the film expressing strong discomfort; I think you can make the viewers skin crawl. I'm thinking of the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey meets David Lynch meets Robert Eggers. Honestly, just a Lovecraftian film by Robert Eggers would be more than enough.
![ALLY - OH MY! [ REACTION ] 'Amarin Nitibhon' #ALLY_OHMY #ALLY #allynitibhon #แอลลี่](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nX9qpHjVfbQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Zombies: fear of the crowd
Vampires: fear of the elites
Werewolves: idk foreigners or something
fear of human psychosis. where the person goes full feral when angered. or just pre-modern understanding of Rabies.
Fear of STDs
Fear of that one guy that’s gets way to drunk and tries to fight everyone.
Fear of hairy people
I think werewolves are basically about something we would see as the raw instinctic animalistic side of us and the fear of not being able to control it.
Although it's a bit stupid, it's not like other animals that are literally only animalistic all just run around in rabid mode and maul everything. Edgy dudes love to talk about some animalistic, wild side deep in us, but when I look at like wild wolves or lions, they mostly just lay around and chill.
yeah that's the whole point vampires are supposed to suck
Ba-dum tss
This is the comment
no, they scrape and lick!
Someone had to point that out ig
"Being a vampire sucks"-Harmony Kendall
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Vampires have always been coded as sexual predators, but Twilight tried to make it cool, sexy, and romantic without toning down the predatory stuff at all, and I hate it for that
This is why I like 30 Days of Night
And now remember that this is a fantasy of a middle aged woman. Let us not pretend that "Bella Swan" is not a stand in for her.
Don’t forget the other problematic stuff like it telling girls they have to have a boyfriend and when he dumbs you, blow off your whole family and friends, change everything about yourself, lead on another guy to cure your loneliness, and try to off yourself so you can see images of the guy who left you. Twilight is a prime example of everything wrong with romance, especially young adult romance.
There have always been cool, dark and sexy vampire stories. People just hated twilight because it was badly written by a Mormon lol, but it was still entertaining for many young girls
its an MCR fanfiction. stephanie meyer is just a weird mormon with weird kinks
I think the reason zombies stay so popular is because they are the only supernatural entity that the average nerd could outrun and so it appeals to them.
Pretty much. Zombies are popular to men. And vampires to women cause now vampires are sexy.
@@damiantirado9616 vampires have always had an air of sexuality long before twighlight
@@ethanhaynes7406 yeah but their sexuality was mostly Christian anti homophobic and vampires where “seducing” women and raping them. It was seeing as a bad thing. At least those where the messages.
Funny how you are making the same mistake Ben did all those years ago in Night of the Living Dead
"I'm telling you man, those things have no strength"
"And I'm telling you those things turned over our car"
"He'll any good five men can do that"
" Yeah and there won't be five or even ten, there's gonna be twenty, thirty, a hundred of those things, and as soon as they know we're here this place will be crawling with them"
honestly, I doubt the average nerd could outrun a mob of zombies for long
Vaush's problem with vampires seems to be that they're primarily a vehicle for sexy dangerous stories for women rather than class villains. They've become, essentially, the darker badboy version of Prince Charming rescuing women from a mediocre life to be elevated into the elite. So most stories about vampires that get traction are likely to follow this trend.
So they're like Andrew Tate
Put that way, I guess vampire stories are like the female version of "no war movie is an anti-war movie". It's basically impossible to make a war movie so horrible that some dudes won't go "fuck yeah! War is hell," and not in a sombre, "never again" way either. (Likewise, movies like Wolf of Wall Street may be commentaries on the emptiness of such a lifestyle, but you'll always get a bunch of 20-something dudes who think "that's AWESOME".)
I guess it's also impossible to present "rich, out of touch, decadent members of the elite" in a way that some women won't think "that's fukn HAWT".
@@ProfDCoy "Saving Private Ryan" might be a good example of that. It's probably exceedingly rare for anyone to watch it and come away thinking that war is cool, but the fact that it does such a good job driving home how miserable the war was lead to a newfound sympathy for WW2 veterans, as well as the relatively recent idea of World War 2 as "the good war".
@One Nine Three yeah basically, though I'd caveat that WW2 was about as close as we'll ever get to "a good war", but
1) the reasons for why some countries ended up on the Allies side are a bit murkier and weren't as much about punching fascists as we'd wish; and
2) the Allies still did war crimes and other dark shit during that time, no doubt.
But that's a side topic and I still generally agree!
@@Anthropomorphic I wouldn't really call it an anti war movie. Sure it says that war ain't fun, but the whole premise of the movie is the heroic search for the last remaining offspring, so the mother has at least one son coming back home. Not to mention the last battle, where he refuses to leave his comrades then winning over much stronger German forces.
Focusing on values like heroism, valour, glory, etc. does not an anti war movie make. That's why it's so hard to make one.
I have never thought of zombies as fear of crowds or of others in a reactionary way, I always saw it as the terrifying extreme of humanity endurance and the general notion of the plague and virus
Some people thought Night of the Living Dead was an allegory for the group think of communism, really it was about the breakdown inside the house between the feuding humans, rather than the zombies outside
You can extrapolate anything really
You'll notice the trend of "humans are their own downfall" and factionalism has carried on in most modern zombie media
i left a big comment somewhere but my two cents is that zombies are kinda reactionary by default, they ask every member of society (i.e, the masses) to identify not with the horde of zombies (i.e, the masses) but with the survivors, the few. in that way, reading from a marxist perspective especially, zombie media is often a direct parallel to the well-known “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” archetype that keeps the proletariat running on the wealth treadmill infinitely in an attempt to become the bourgeois who are, definitionally, the few and not the many. zombie media in its many forms asks every member of the proletariat to not identify with the proletariat but with the bourgeois, as it would be dangerous and deadly to identify with the masses (because you would be a zombie).
@@geedee1264 Yeah I think it is mainly about how the humans fail to successfully adapt to their new reality. Romero mentioned it a few times when asked about his zombie films.
@rearrangeyourguts I agree.
I like jojo vampires because they're so different. Basically the whole this is that vampirism gives you way more control over your body. The freezing comes from lowering body temperature enough to where all the heat of someone else's body gets sucked into yours, and the laser eyes are from pressurizing your eye fluid.
Pillarmen have even more control, being able to crush their bones at will to reshape themselves and move their veins like limbs. It's neat stuff
People forget the modern zombie genre stems from political commentary. Romero's movies all have a central political commentary surrounding them, from the original Night of the Living Dead covering racism; to Dawn of the Dead covering consumerism; to Day of the Dead covering communication, transparency, and its necessity for civilization.
The entire genre literally stems from Romero's political commentary, which in general is very left leaning.
Apparently Romero didn't intend for Night of the Living Dead to be a commentary on racism. He has talked about it a few times in interviews. It wasn’t intentional and he was very honest about it. He was just out to make a horror movie. The black character wasn't actually written as a black guy. The actor who played the character (Duane Jones) got the role because he was the best actor who auditioned for it. I imagine the whole thing became political and was perceived that way, but that apparently wasn't really the director's intention.
You are right about the other films though. I think the main central theme that runs throughout the films is about the humans failing to successfully adapt to their new reality. Romero has mentioned this before in interviews. Dawn and Day also definitely have that intentional political commentary as well though.
Castlevania will always have a special place in my heart for not only giving us the first great video game adaptation, but also making vampires cool again
Facts!
I've never played the games personally, but I heard the show took a lot of creative liberties in the way certain characters / things were written. I wish more studios would take that route as opposed to shoehorning in a plot that was made to work as a video game in the first place.
@@tl566 Dracula from the Castlevania Netflix anime is the single greatest vampire depiction of all time.
“What is a man but a petty little pile of secrets! But enough talk…have at you!”
Actually most cases of vampire hysteria in real life tended to revolve around dead peasants, probably because, well... it wasn't easy to break into a nobleman's tomb or crypt or whatever
Mummies deserve more exposure. The reason they appear dull is because not a lot of media bothers with them. There's the few movies made of them, and that's it. But those ones are actually good. Showing that not only aren't they just bandaged zombies, one can actually be very charismatic and cunning. And because you open up a whole world of possibility through magic and ritual, creativity should be the only limiting factor. Unlike vampires, who've actually suffered from attempts to make them cool, mummies never suffered that sort of decay. Vampires are out-of-touch aristocrats, who choose not to engage with the 'lower beings' because sympathy for your food is a bad survival strategy. Mummies are out of touch because they're displaced from their own society, and do not understand the values of today. You can more easily sympathize with circumstances out of the monster's control, while recognizing that ancient Egyptian values, coming from a rigid classist civilization that practices slavery and where priests wield considerable power over citizens, would cause a mummy to act is some truly repugnant manner based on their original place within it.
have you seen Bubba Hotep
On lovecraftian horror, darkest dungeon one and two do it sort of well.
It's not exactly scary, but it has all the atmosphere you'd expect and it's narration is godly.
For literature, there was a chinese translated webnovel that had some surprisingly good and scary cosmic horror scenes.
My favorite modern take of Vampires is in Midnight Mass by Mike Flannigan. Like how they actually reference the Alukah from Jewish mythos. It’s SO goddamn good.
But what if zombies were sexy? The other side but problematic
Kinda like that film where the zombies are still somewhat sentient? And by connecting back to humanity, they return to being human? Somehow?
Bob's Burgers.
Warm bodies?
Ever heard of an anime called Zombieland Saga?
Zombies are more of the fear of humanity collapsing rather than crowds. The biggest part of all zombie stories was the main character having to rely only on themselfs and their survival group. The biggest point of zombie stories for me was always: there are no authorities, law, electricity, food in stores etc. Just you going through woods trying to find last remainings of civilization like empty houses to sleep in
Too many horror and especially cosmic horror games don't understand that as soon as you see the monster, most of the fear is gone. People are generally more scared of their own imagination than the actual thing itself
This isn't entirely true imo. I agree you can't have a scary monster without well-written suspense, but monsters that lose their entire fear factor once seen are inherently badly written and/or designed to begin with unless that is their whole point. There can be a lot of payoff from seeing a really bizarre, horrifying creature if it's visually and thematically disturbing enough (I think Jean Jacket from Nope is a good example of this).
I think it can be done. Junji Ito's works convey cosmic horror in a visual medium that unnerves you even if you do see the monster(s).
It's just that most games just depict them as tentacle-fish monsters that die by damaging them like any other enemy mob.
How about Cyber/biopunk style corpo billionaire vampire. That seems like an unused futuristic kind of vampire that would be cool to see in scifi media.
I'm imagining them injecting illicit blood like drugs
That’s sort of around? At least in TTRPGs- There’s Shadowrun, Starfinder, & World of Future Darkness.
Ooo yeah, like that movie Ultraviolet, only ya know, good.
Monogatari did a pretty good job with vampires, as a rare force of nature who are out of touch with society because of conditions out of their control. It makes for a really good tool to drag the story various ways, and keeping the story interesting even if they were broken OP.
Bloodborne did an amazing job depicting cosmic horror
Why is it that Twilight had to come out when it did? Why couldnt BUFFY be the most recent teenage drama about vampires?
buffy ran so that twilight could walk
@@Romanticoutlaw Right into a brick wall...
Interview with a Vampire or 30 Days of night I feel are probably the best of Vampires
This is so true
*The first 3 books in the vampire chronicles at least
@@Charolette21 agreed The Vampire Lestat was amazing
@@ProHero86 And was the beginning of the “Lestat can do everything because fuck you, that’s why” trope
Honestly I think Mummies could conceptually be similar to the Vampire in the sense of being a monstrous caricature of the ruling class. After all, the people who were mummified in Egypt were people like Pharaohs and Priests. I could imagine it being a sort of vengeful spirit that’s just pissed that it no longer has that sort of systemic power and that it’s Earthly possessions are being taken from them. Like it’s clearly someone who, at their time, was someone of great importance. But now no one remembers their name, their tomb has been plundered and defaced, and it’s just this lost spirit that can’t return to their afterlife.
Vampires in both the Witcher books and the games will always be up there with the best depictions for me. The backstory is different with them basically being a race of beings from another dimention that got stranded with the Witcher world, and in their world everything living had very high iron levels, so through evolution everything in there likes blood. Everything from that world got trapped in the Witcher world, so their equivalent of just animals that can be blood drinking mindless monsters or blood drinking low level humanoids with various powers.
And also super strong, super fast, un-killable, regenerating, sharp claw having, technologically advanced, immortal, telepathic, human-like, Truekin Vampire Gods who dont even need to drink blood to survive, who see humans as insects and the only reason they dont just massacre humans and all other races is because there aint that many of them, and if they went to war with the other races it'd be like the biggest swarm of insects buzzing around them until eventually (eventually....)they managed to smack all of them down, which would be too much of a bother and take ages.
I love how there are lesser vampires which are basically feral monsters and higher vampires which are more akin to the classic type of vampire. The bruxa is the perfect hybrid of those concepts to me.
I liked the way they had a vampiric hierarchy as well, with lower level vampires being subservient to the True Vampires when psychically commanded. It reminded me of Blood+ a lot which is a very underrated vampire story.
Dark Corners of the Earth had problems but it also had some great moments.
The hotel section where the player has to go from room to room and keep pursuers at bay was harrowing and a direct conversion of a scene from Lovecraft's short story; The Shadow over Innsmouth.
Oh that game came so close to being great. The opening hours are still fantastic, but yeah, it’s pretty downhill after the first chapter
I think Dark Corners of the Earth exemplifies everything in Lovecraft universe material pretty well, from horrors of Ancient madness to dudes going ham with guns at it.
Lovecraftian imagery should always have a vaguely dreamlike feel. Like, instead of using CGI, filmmakers should use animation and weird FX to suggest that these things MIGHT be hallucinations, but you're not entirely sure. The unreliable narrator can be done well in film.
Gankutsuou (The Count of Monte Cristo) is a really good anime. Its a very Shakespeare-esque story with a Castlevania-Dracula-esque vampire.
VtMB is such an awesome game.
10:52 and later in the game, *YOU KILL HIM WITH A NAVAL GUN EMPLACEMENT*
Surprised to see nobody mention 30 days of night. Those vampires are genuinely scary and not cartoonish like they are most of the time. Also a great and underrated movie.
I really like Vampire the masquerade. It mixes the old school vampires that are much older and have a superiority complex from being nobler/purer of blood with newer vampiers that are more modern/human, sired to serve.
Yes I agree that VTM vampires are pretty cool. Vaush put it in the 'hip new vamp' category but said he liked it despite that, though I don't think that is really accurate since (as you correctly point out) the whole "dude got embraced during the crusades and is really out of touch with modern society now" thing that he mentioned is a pretty big theme there.
Maybe Bloodlines was his only experience with the setting? If I remember right the oldest vamp character in Bloodlines was somewhat young by the standards of that universe and had the aesthetic of your typical modern businessman so I guess that particular theme didn't shine through as strongly there as it does in the RPG.
@@devinnie7572 Most of the VTM stuff people are exposed to is set in America, almost all the vampires there are going to be on the hip new vamp side of things. I'm pretty sure the oldest vampire in that game is Strauss, the Tremere Regent, and even that guy is only around 500, having been around since atleast 1489. That makes him one of the older vampires in the new world, but the old world has Methuselahs like Mithras running around, people who were embraced 1000 years BC, so over 3000. Vampires that old rarely decide to leave their well established domains unless forced to, so they're all across the atlantic.
@@Fusseliko I forgot about Strauss since I hadn't played in so long. I was thinking of LaCroix in my comment (embraced during the Napoleonic wars iirc so very young).
The New World vs Old World dynamic is a good point and something I hadn't considered. Maybe we need to get a Storyteller willing to set a game somewhere in Europe and somehow convince Vaush to join us.
At the earliest stage, I don't think vampires were really depicted as "out of touch". Dracula arguably is, but the stories that inspired it didn't really do that. I'd also say that the club-going socialite thing is not only not new, but actually pretty much the oldest literary vampire there is. The first work of vampire fiction usually considered to be 'The Vampyre', and was essentially a roast of Lord Byron written by a personal friend of his. Incidentally, that's another thing that often gets overlooked: from what I've read, the early aristocratic vampires are usually not depicted as feeding on the lower classes, but rather on other members of the upper class.
the world of darkness
Once a local commentator said something along the lines of "anyone who looks at the old ones becomes mad, wets themselves and dies - not necessarily in that order" and I think it sums up well why Cthulhu stuff has so much trouble working in games or movies. If you show that kind of horror and it has no effect on you IRL that instantly breaks the magic. (It's not a visual-only problem either, memetics in SCP face the same challenge but at least they can do redaction to get around it.) So the only thing that can be done is to throw cultists and explicitly non-cosmic-horror lesser monsters at the player until the very end.
Vampire the Masqurade ttrpg has a clan for every trope of vampire. Its how VtM explains all these different conflicting stories.
Rich out of touch vanpires? Ventrue
Monsters in the sewers? Nosferatu
Sex hungry artsy bi vamps? Troueadour
It’s actually so crazy I can’t a single media take this guy has. I think it’s just the delivery at this point.
Considering that he is just stating his opinion I always found these comments to be very weird. Vaush wants his media to be thematically and aesthetically consistent and has a few things he focuses more on than other people. I really don't get why that gets people riled up.
@@nicolaim4275 it's because a lot of people can't dislike things they enjoy (for example - I LOVE bad movies. They're still bad). And also a lot of people want their icons to enjoy things they enjoy. And they just call him killjoy for analyzing media he watches.
2:44 As if Dracula from Castlevania couldn't return from being erased from existence, create portals, freeze things, teleport, use telekinesis, and warp reality.
Underated vampire is aliyah, in queen of the damned
Best music video ever
I honestly don't like this way of thinking where we have to be super strict on the portrayal of fictional races or creatures or whatever. I feel like we can get more creative if we keep only a small number of strict rules. If Dwarves, for example, are small, humanoid creatures that live underground, there's a lot more flexibility to change things up. But no, every dwarf has to be a race of short humans with beards who live in stone buildings and love mining, trading, fighting and alcoholism, hence why 99.9% of dwarves in popular media are just Gimlis
The fact that the "Cosmic Shambler" isn't a monster with skin like the cosmos is very upsetting.
Sure when people talk about "lovecraftian" they usually think of the goofy fish men and the squid face
but lovecraft wrote weird fiction! He wasn't limited to just uncanny valley fish guys, and yeah the existential horror was a big part but from what I know about pathlogic I'd absolutely consider it in that same category of weird fiction - I certainly wouldn't disqualify it because lovecraft was "western" or whatever. I'd definitely consider junji ito's work lovecraftian!
I also disagree about the "shambler" - what, it looks organic? Yeah lovecraft wrote about all kinds of squishy things, not everything was a weird color out of space that made people go mad you know. The real issue is the most well known lovecraftian things have become pop culture, and a memed cthulhu kind of weakens the horror
The Vampire the Masquerade vampires are pretty cool in that they take this metaphor of the elites and adapt it to the modern world quite well in the Camerilla
Lots of social commentary in that setting in regards to the huge power gap between the entrenched elites with their more powerful blood and centuries of accruing wealth vs. younger vampires not able to get anywhere because everything that was already claimed before they were born will never become available for new ownership (because, you know, immortality) plus their 'embrace' typically starting them off as indentured servants to their sires... if they are lucky.
Well if he only played Bloodlines the oldest vamp he would've met is Strauss IIRC, who is around 500-600 since he was embraced before 1489. That's old for new world standards, but all the really old vamps like Mithras, who was embraced in 1258BC are over in the old world, running well established domains they never leave unless they're forced to. The reason the Americas are such a battleground with the Sabbat, Camarilla, Anarch Free State and even the Kuei-Jin making claims is because all the vamps there are relatively young. They haven't gotten complacent with the centuries yet.
Oh, and another thing: a monster's metaphor isn't necessarily what makes it scary. A movie might use zombies to make a statement about malls, and the zombies might be scary, but the zombies wouldn't necessarily be scary because we're *actually* scared of malls. The scary part would probably be the more literal fear of getting killed by zombies.
I have to say though, modern zombie media is less about fear of the crowd and more about fear of one another. Like blah blah humans were the real baddies all along shit. Like, zombies are just the confines keeping the characters on the defensive, but the real threat often comes from other people, and can often portray how infighting can completely destroy everything good.
A good example of cosmic horror outside of writing is Twin Peaks I think. It’s not exactly Lovecraftian but it deals with nihilism and bizarre beings beyond our comprehension in a really compelling way, even if it isn’t trying to evoke the feeling of Lovecraft
It’s also I think effective in how it knows what not to show or explain to the audience
30 Days of Night is pretty sick. No sexy vampires at all, just hungry foreign monsters.
I honestly look at 30 days of night vampires as being kind of different from normal vampires. I feel like they represent almost a force of nature as opposed to class or foreigners or anything that vampires normally represent. They barely feel like they were ever human.
_Vampire Hunter D._ The vampires quietly waited until mankind destroyed itself in the late 21st century, then used the knowledge they accumulated through centuries of immortality to rebuild the world, with the surviving humans treated as cattle. Over several millennia vampires used science and magic to transform the world into a paradise reflecting their darkest fantasies, building gothic citadels and releasing genetically engineered monsters into the wilds.
I always thought that the Kaaba in Mecca has some lovecraftian potential. A black meteorite that gets worshipped daily by thousands of people. Sadly, that could also have some lovecraftian potential, as in xenophobia.
Netflix has three original short films called "Dracula". Basically a retelling of the original Stoker novel. The first two are so good. Last one we don't talk about.
You know what did a good a good job of being cosmic horror while also being a visual medium? Annihilation (2018)
the ending was such a memorable mindfuck to look at I loved it
Vampire media became more romanticized after Dairy of a Vampire… also Hotel Transylvania and Renfield is a thing rn
I think the main point of Lovecraft is that his monsters are scary not for what they are, but for what they are not, as they aren't anything we are familiar with or can come to terms with, they are not you. That's why creating extremely compex and deep lore for Lovecraft doesn't work, cuz you only need to know enough to make you scared. If you know too much you become familiar with it and then it stops being scary.
Vampires: Fear of out of touch creepy rich people, and Eastern Europeans I guess.
Werewolves: Basically a period for men. The beast hiding in every man, and within us.
Witches: Fear of old women (Prob lesbians).
Zombies: Fear of the dead, and consumerism and masses. Having to kill your family and shit.
Mummies: Fear of the dead and of other "creepy" cultures.
Frankenstein's Monster: Fear of the dead, and science going to far.
Ghosts: Fear of the dead that you prrsonally know and of scary Victorian people. Demons and religion and shit.
Etc....
Trrruuu I studied Dracula in English class at university and the main themes were tradition/superstition/magic (vampires) vs. science/modernity/progress (the good guys).
the grandfather vampires from King's Dark Tower and their fleas which transmit their infection are neat
An old favorite Lovecraft depiction of mine was the movie Dagon from 2001. It's a little on the low budget side but I think they made the most of it with effectively depicting the creepy fish people. Loved the atmosphere of that film.
I hate the trope of "vampire who's desperately clinging to their humanity and is fighting to resist the bloodlust". It's a good idea if done right (like Seras Victoria from Hellsing) but most of the time I see it it's just this angsty tweenage bullshit. "Oh I'm such a sad boi! I'm such a vile monster! Stay away, I don't want to hurt you!" The way they're portrayed in a lot of stuff I've seen comes off more whiny and emo then tragic and conflicted.
A piece of eldritch horror I really like are the Eldrazi from Magic: the Gathering. Though not from a horror franchise, I feel like the Eldrazi perfectly captures the otherworldlyness of Lovecraftian entities. This massive army of monstrosities with forms beyond any kind of recognition but with bits and pieces of familiar human anatomy. The way their very presence warps life, land and reality itself. These beings whose thoughts and methods are completely beyond our capacity to comprehend, but they clearly are acting with some kind of intelligence and purpose.
I think an example of this that is really great is Blood+. The vampires are very powerful, wealthy and influential and straight up based on the Rotschild family. I also enjoyed the way the story actually explained vampirism without necessarily involving anything supernatural.
Perfect moment to check ou Re:Dracula if you want to experience the original novel as a podcast in actual time with amazing sound design !!! It’s great, I much recommend
Whole idea behind Dark Worlds Vampite the Masquerade is exactly what Vaush is describing, the TTRPG is amazing
The best video game adaptation of Lovecraft is Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (haven't played the remake yet, most likely continues holding the title). The key element to why it works is that it keeps everything supernatural just around the corner and plausibly deniable (because Sherlock obviously does not believe in impossible things, only improbable things). Sherlock isn't solving a monster mystery, he is solving a case of kidnappings and murders, and cultists who may just be following figments of their imagination are plenty capable of doing those. But that old well that the Swiss doctor has hidden under the asylum and keeps throwing human meat into, something has still eaten some of the meat.
Vaush *"I've said this before but"* Vidya
Mummies do need to reworked to be cool in modern media. Like The Mummy (1999?) was really cool but it’s hard to make anything consistent from that style. It just comes off as evil sorcerer type shit which is kinda vague and basic. Vampire and zombies you know exactly what they do, maybe some changes here and there, but the basics are the same. Mummies mostly only have aesthetic.
Notable exception: What We Do in The Shadows (film and series).
Blame Anne Rice. She wrote the Interview with a Vampire trilogy, which I thought was really good. However, it kinda pushed vampires to the forefront of pop culture, which led to the shit that we now have
Fantastic dark fantasy series heavily featuring vampires (despite not ever actually calling them vampires in book i dont think): Saga of The Noble Dead
It's set in its own dark fantasy world with humans, elves, half elves, 'undeads' (which are sort of between zombie and vampire but definitely leans way toward vampire, except for the ferals... anyway), and more, and has a really interesting and gripping plot that spans over many books and many in-world cities, countries, and territories. It's also got both steady, reliable romance between characters *and* angsty sort-of romance between different characters that's happening alongside the big plot developments which I love. There's a big through-line of mystery in the whole series, and in a lot of the individual books as the main characters discover that 'undeads' are actually real, end up hunting the ones plaguing their town, and get sucked deeper into the plot discovering more and more about them and what impact that knowledge has on them
It's really, really difficult to explain most of what is awesome about it without spoiling the hell out of it, but trust me. If you like fantasy and you like vampires, you'll like the Noble Dead Saga
Personally, the best recent media in Lovecraftian thematic was darkest dungeon because it shows you the monsters you can defeat but teases you with the unknown of the darkest dungeon itself with availability of it on the quest menu selection. Unfortunately it was a letdown after you go there for the first time. Hamlet changes after the visits are cool too.
the strain is a good vampire show. i also heard the comic american vampire is good too
There's an episode of love death and robots that does Lovecraft right. The charcters do see Cthulhu, and the breif moments in his presence broke their minds. Its all leadup no explanation and definitely no victory.
Not going to lie, Renfield went a weird direction - but it was pretty cool how they depicted Dracula.
Vampire is very residentsleeper for me, the one time i like it is when i read a manga about vampire BL where vampire is a second class citizen and hiding from humans and they suck blood from packs, new vampire trying to adjust vampire life and social life. They live longer than humans so a smidge of tragedy for human/vampire pair
In World of Warcraft, they have Old Gods which are basically Lovecraftian inspired badass villains. :)
I know Vaush is referring to the depiction of vampires on screen, but my favorite modern take in print is Jim Butcher's in the Harry Dresden novels: Red Court (Dracula style), Black Court (Nosferatu style), and White Court (afaik, Butcher's very own psychic vampires).
Team Thomas 💯!
This is interesting! I always felt zombies were a very versatile Avenue for a current social fear. The way they come about mainly. Depending what “kind” it is, is has very different applications to our fear. Sickness being most of them. There’s often however a large emphasis in many on how the government leads to the big failures, with their mishandlings and often times direct links. In fact, I think “apocalyptic media” is an interesting way to get a feel for what people are currently scared of. Our media is a lens. They very have a message even if we don’t really notice it. There’s also commonly camaraderie, initial feelings of distrust, and the token still human people eaters (every time). But ultimately the goal always comes down in the shadows to a failure of government and people being turned against each other, and being lost. Zombies are totally overdone, but I think it’s due to a pretty consistently felt idea that our government absolutely would just let us die of zombies came about. Especially with what happened in 2020.
always loved the Redd Foxx sounding Dracula from Grim Adventures
Space Runaway Ideon is a Lovecraftian mecha anime from the early 80's.
Type-Moon is moving back to vampires and they're awesome.
The problem with cosmic horror is the more you show the less effective it is. That's why it doesn't work as well in visual media.
There was a show called Moonlight where the French revolution was carried out because the ruling class/royals were actually all vampires
dracula will always be king because he is whatever the current culture needs him to be
Honestly i loke how in Virse of Strahd, it kindof takes the whole sexy brooding vampire trope, and actually makes it dangerous. See in the module, you can romance the tutular Strahd if you choose... but its a trap. I will try to avoid spoilers for the module as best as i can, but your chances of replacing a certain NPC as his No.1 is next to 0, and the reward for choosing him/betraying your party for him is likely going to lead to your character's very grisly death if you fail to be useful/entertaining to him. In other words, hes basically the more common logical conclusion to what happens when you pursue an obvious violent narcissist, which vampires are often dipicted as
I saw the old salems lot miniseries and it was shocking how creepy the classic vampires still managed to be.
What we do in the shadows is so good.
The last season was horrible but the rest is 🔥
@@vrdynasty3896 ok, yea. I agree with you on that.
Vaush nailed it with "lovecraftian is oversaturated memetically." It's played out.
The Lost Boys is the best "hip vampire" movie there is.
I agree. I absolutely love that film. The soundtrack is amazing too.
Interested to see Robert Eggers' take on Nosferatu whenever that comes out
here to plug my favourite lesser known vampire movie: a girl walks home alone at night. it's about a wholly unrepentant vampire who has this very sweet romance with a guy with family and money troubles. he has to decide whether to accept her as the killer she is, or to leave her as lonely as she was before. it's v pretentious (filmed in black and white in 2014, pretty much only diagetic sound and music) but it's literally the height of romance to me. also elijah wood is executive producer if that's anything.
What we do in the shadows is one of the best shows on TV right now.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire hunter "Modernized" vampires well by making them confederate plantation owners rather than European nobility and IIRC this was an explicit "Modernization" by the young radical faction.
I think if you want modern vampires you need to do it similarly. "We can't just sit around in castes all day we have to become fascists bro" or some shit, the access to a wide pool of serfs or slaves necessary for a vampiric upper class needs to modernize with the times but should be used to highlight a violently predatory relationship by pointing out how that social dynamic is something a bunch of literal blood sucking parasites would dream up. It might be that modern vampires are terrible because we don't have quite the same relationship with capitalist owners for all its faults. It comes across as crass to suggest the borgeousie are vampires in a way that just outright fits for aristocrats and slave planters.
The entire aesthetic of Darkest Dungeon is top notch.
Watch Near Dark! The vampires in Near Dark are pathetic drifters who are incapable of living a meaningful life, so they just roam around, killing people to perpetuate their empty eternal existence
I know it's not a movie, but the vampires in the Witcher 3 were incredible. Regis and Detlaff were the first and nearly the only time I ever considered the concept of a vampire to be interesting or badass.
Vaush's opinions on vampires is so weird sense the concept of vampires originates from way back to Mesopotamia and even in the European of idea of vampires, it wasn't their wealth that made them undesirable, it was how they hedonistically indulged in their wealth. Not to mention the abilities and weaknesses of vampires very greatly depending on what the original author wanted the vampires to do and be even back in older times. All in all, I just don't like his very narrow-minded view on vampires as a concept and how he has like these very concrete ideas on what a vampire NEEDS to be despite the fact that vampires have always been very fluid in their existence in media sense the beginning.
I think visual Lovecraftian media could really do a lot with abstract imagery. This way a proficient enough filmmaker could make a kickass Lovecraftian horror/suspense movie with a shoestring budget and next to no CGI. With the right set up, soundtrack and just series of images intersliced with the protagonist of the film expressing strong discomfort; I think you can make the viewers skin crawl.
I'm thinking of the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey meets David Lynch meets Robert Eggers. Honestly, just a Lovecraftian film by Robert Eggers would be more than enough.
Annihilation from 2018 with natalie portman. That's some excellent cosmic horror. edit: the books were killer too!
Nah that Vampire The Masquerade is dogshit, its literally want you want. Old out of touch vampires pitting their lessers against eachother
In the Mouth of Madness is still one of the best cthulhu mythos inspired movies
Dresden Files went ham and decided to have 3 main kind of vampires, and they're all extremely evil.
Interview with Vampire was that I guess.
a good look at "modern" vampire's Near Dark (1987)
Buffy was good vampire media.