Thursday, April 19, 2012

LOVECRAFTeZINE inteviews the director of ABSENTIA

 

...I’m a huge Lovecraft fan. I’ve been wearing out the spine of my “Complete Works” for a long time now. His work is certainly a major influence on this film, and a lot of my other work as well.

It’s tough to explain too much without getting into spoilers, but I have always been haunted by his stories of extradimensional entities, particularly the concepts explored in “From Beyond” and “The Shunned House.” His depiction of the vast expanses of existence beyond the veil of our perception have influenced an awful lot of my writing. ABSENTIA deals with a lot of those ideas, through an admittedly minimalist lens.

There is that great plot element in “The Music of Erich Zann” that connects a nightmarish other realm with the disappearance of an entire street, and I’ve always found that so haunting. We obviously couldn’t take it anywhere near as far as that story does, but the idea of people going missing near the mouth of some inexplicable other realm is undoubtedly a major inspiration for ABSENTIA.

The people who come in contact with that place that connects that realm and ours are in great danger, both of losing their lives, and their minds.

I’m fascinated as well by his concept of the “Old Ones,” of ancient forces so alien to our experience that comprehending them is nearly impossible on our limited terms. I always imagined that the creature at work in ABSENTIA is a small inhabitant of something much bigger; just a cockroach in one of the cracks of a truly Lovecraftian realm that only barely overlaps our reality. They’re just little pests in that realm, but utterly horrifying and inexplicable by our standards...

 

To read the rest of the inteview visit LOVECRAFTeZine.

 

And trust me ABSENTIA is a terrific film.

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