Pulp noir meets Lovecraftian horror in a series perfectly suited to the madness of the year 2020.
With its spherical mix of paranormal and social threats, “Lovecraft Country” uses horror to comment on American race relations. It rejuvenates the genre by not only blackening its heroes, but by putting the story in the racially segregated Jim Crow era of the 1950s, and putting America’s racist history at the center. Within that setting, the series continually shifted in episodic fashion, beginning with a road trip, then a ghost story, an Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunt buried under a museum, and more, each seemed manic and, at times, nowhere absurd. It is a series perfectly suited to the madness that has been the year 2020.
The opening center of “Lovecraft Country” is a real nightmare, as series main character Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors), is haunted by ghosts from his past as a soldier in the Korean war graves. It’s a fantasy sequence full of flying cakes, octopuses with dragon-like wings, reddish alien life forms radiating down from spaceships, and Jackie Robinson on bat, except that he swings at indescribable monsters that exaggerate green slime. It is a chaotic mess that makes very little sense on its surface, but so is the nature of dreams.
By the end of the first episode, audiences will have witnessed flesh-eating, forest-dwelling monsters, multi-eyed monsters, racist rats, and white supremacists casting magic spells, including one who believes he is a direct descendant is of Adam.
That sets the tone for the rest of a peculiar series radiant with ideas (though perhaps too much for his own good) – including an apparent assumption that whiteness itself is a superpower, at least from the perspective of Black people in a country with racism woven into his whole fabric.
From showrunner and executive producer Misha Green, the 10-episode series follows the aforementioned Tic – a veteran of the Black Korean War and science fiction buff. He travels with his difficult childhood friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett), and peace-uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) – who publishes a guide for Black travelers – on a road trip from Chicago in the 1950s to the United States. looking for his missing curmudgeon from a father, Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams).
Tic receives a letter from Montrose, indicating the discovery of a secret birthright that exists in a foreign city called Ardham. And their mission becomes a series of bizarre chimerical adventures that pollute the trio in ancient rituals, magical texts, changing universes, secret societies, and transmogrifying drinks, while fighting to overcome the horrors of racism, as well as grotesque monsters who can be ripped from any HP Lovecraft yarn.
The title refers to the author of the early 20th century, best known for horror stories filled with the same fear and apprehension of phenomena beyond human comprehension, contemplation of the place of humanity in a large, busy universe, and fusion of horror and science fiction that “Lovecraft inspired Land.” But Lovecraft I am known for his virulent racism and bigotry. His contempt for Black people ran deep. In his 1912 poem, “On the Creation of Niggers”, the gods, after having just created Man and Beast, designed Black humans as a semi-human form that enclosed the space between.
In Matt Ruff’s 2016 short story on which the HBO series is based, Lovecraft’s legacy is undermined by centering Black heroes and making the story a parable about dismantling a culture of white supremacy.
So far (HBO has made the first five episodes of a season 10 episode available to the press), there is enough agreement with Ruff’s novel to suggest that Green’s series will follow his bow, although there are enough differences to to indicate that it just might not. But, like the book, the series is ultimately a ‘question’ story.
As the bookish Tic says early in the first episode, “I love that the heroes go on adventures in other worlds, defeat unbelievable opportunities, defeat the monster, save the day.” It’s a bit too nosy, but Tic gets to be the hero of his own story, by going on other worldwide adventures, defeating sides, and defeating monsters, both of the eldritch and human kind, and sometimes a combination of both, during a time when “Driving While Black” was an even more dangerous statement than now.
“Lovecraft Country” is difficult to categorize. It’s ambitious, graphic, flamboyant, odd, and confusing. It is a divisive mix of genres, social criticism wrapped within macabre images. It runs with ideas about race, class and gender, as well as dizzying symbolism, and is clearly dedicated to its own pulpy vision – to a guilt. To name plot specifications, the series would be spoiled, blindly experienced.
Each hour could stand on its own. Episodic threats are sent out, never to be heard from again. It is possible that this seemingly individual thread will come together in the second half of the season.
Jurnee Smollett in “Lovecraft Country”
Elizabeth Morris / HBO
Although there is an overwhelming creeping cosmic threat that the main characters of the series are likely to have to face in the end, it is not entirely clear what or who that threat is. Greens and business are choked with information, posting seemingly important pieces of the story, including one that seems to be found in South Korea, which has yet to be fully accounted for.
The recurring menaces of the series have so far been members of a cunning clan of Aryan cultists (Tony Goldwyn, Abbey Lee, and Jordan Patrick Smith), who are a generally flimsy, and at times cartoonish, hero. Although their presence hints at something like someone much bigger and more dangerous on the horizon.
The main attractions of the series include the genre-busting soundtrack, which includes a mix of era-specific music, contemporary hip-hop and R&B, spoken-word poetry, and monologues, creating a unique soundscape, and the show not from the takes time. Audiences will get their completion of music from the likes of Cardi B, Etta James, Nina Simone, and Marilyn Manson, to name a few. There is also an excerpt from James Baldwin’s 1965 debate with conservative pundit William F. Buckley, about the inaccessibility of the American dream for Black people, as well as the poem “Whitey on the Moon” by Gil Scott-Heron , which speaks to the poverty experienced by Americans as the country invested billions in the 1969 Apollo Moon landings.
The set pieces are also a drawing, including some wonderful period work, and creating a corner of Chicago in the mid-fifties that lives and feels welcome; it’s obvious that HBO was not stinking on the staging.
But ‘real stars’ of the series are the performances of their two athletic leads: Majors, who, like Tic, has muscle and charisma to spare, and Smollett, like Leticia, who is pure dynamite. They are fun to look at, and their on-screen chemistry is palpable. They complement each other. And despite the dark themes of the series, the pair exchange enough sharp dialogue and good humor to form the clouds for too long. Meanwhile, the formidable Wunmi Mosaku as Ruby, Leticia’s no-nonsense sister with an exaggerated arc of her own, is powerful and believable.
Finally, “Lovecraft Country” is a family drama about hope and freedom that stretches over time, wrapped in cosmic horror tropes, and it is in the more earthy vignettes that the series is most effective. Although the stories have real moments of supernatural apprehension, the most striking is a sense of solidarity, ethics, and not rendering in the face of great evil.
Executive-produced by Green, along with JJ Abrams and Jordan Peele, “Lovecraft Country” is a chimerical portrait of racism in America, and it could not come at a more temporary moment because the nation is dealing with a hot bill. The rules of the world that Green has created remain confusing. There’s still plenty to see, but patience will be needed to see where it all leads in the end.
Quality: B +
“Lovecraft Country” debuts Sunday, August 16 at 9pm ET / PT on HBO, and will be available for streaming on HBO Max.
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