I saw the first two episodes of
Lovecraft Country since HBO apparently fobbed it off on Tubi for free streaming now. I am a fan of Cosmic Horror so despite my many millions of reservations, I decided to give this show a watch.
Right off the bat... it's not terrible. It's competently made.
But it's still shite because the name of the show is
Lovecraft Country when it could be called "Contemporary Modern Fantasy That Takes Place During Civil Rights Era Road Trip Series" which in all honestly, would've been legit as a concept, even as a woke/liberal concept and totally workable.
The fearsome SHOGGOTHS showed up in the very first episode.
They're like doggos with four legs and they like to burrow and are afraid of lights, including flashlights and headlights. And if you get bit by them, you turn into a Shoggoth-Doggo, just as Lovecraft intended. There's a cult as well called the 'Sons of Adam' which is your basic All White Supremicist Old Boys Club that does spooky ritual cult shit. They seem like a bunch of Rich Patricians and they lord over a town of country bumpkins but IIRC, the show takes place in Massachusetts (ie Lovecraft Country) but everyone in New England behaves like its the Antebellum South. Like they even have people who are descendants of slaveholders and in one town, they sat down in some diner and immediately a group of armed White people tried to kill them, police were about to extrajudicially execute them for violating a sundown law etc etc.
Anyways the Lovecraft here is just window dressing. It easily could've been a non-Lovecraft Modern Fantasy show and probably be better for it. You could even mention shit like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton S,ith (who was referenced in the show) and whatnot.
The show sometimes feels cheap... and it never has a cosmic/eldritch horror feel. I wouldn't even say it has a horror feel. The night time scenes are well lit, the monsters aren't scary, the magic use is like out of Dungeons and Dragons and it has the same atmospheric feel of the (decent)
ReAnimator films but instead of being somewhat camp in tone, this TV show is legitimately trying to make me feel some sort of horror and drama for the experiences these people are going through? And it don't.
It fails to correlate the themes of bigotry and racism and whatnot in a Lovecraftian setting as well. There are a few moments where I almost think this film has something, but the writing is too immature and impatient to let the story simmer and develop. Which is weird, because the second episode especially felt slow as fuck. I felt like I had just watched a movie or three or four episodes but literally was only two one hour episodes in. A lot of this show was boring and dragged.
Also it had Korean Ninja Chicks... well one Korean Ninja Chick.
Watchable? Yes.
Entertaining? I guess?
Lovecraftian? Fuck no.
Watched the almost three hour long
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever movie after this and somehow despite all of the bloat in that film, it felt shorter than
Lovecraft Country's second episode.