My Horrific Philosophy
How 20th-Century Science Made Everything—Even Our Monster Movies—Much, Much Scarier
Fourteen years ago, way before I’d penned my first horror-movie script, I found myself studying the philosophy of science at Rutgers. It was something I pursued because it combined the two most unmarketable majors available in college: philosophy and quantum mechanics.
The first horror I read was that of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s work is known for its wild imagination, elaborate word choice, loathsome creatures, and insane narrators. What drew me to it most, however, was that its horror felt so quintessentially 20th-century in nature.
In Lovecraft’s short story “From Beyond,” first published …
