On August 16th, 2020, the premiere of Misha Green’s episodic drama Lovecraft Country on HBO shocked audiences with its supernatural saga packed full of terrifying beasts, the ghosts of mutilated human subjects, dancing topsy-turvy dolls with vampire teeth, human metamorphosis, a Korean nine-tailed fox spirit, and more.
At its core, Lovecraft Country is the story of Atticus “Tic” Freeman, a young black man returning home to Chicago from the Korean War after receiving word from his uncle George that his father has gone missing. Tic’s uncle is famously known for his “Safe Negro Travel” guidebooks. Arriving at his uncle’s bookstore, Tic shows him a mysterious letter he received from his father claiming that there is a legacy and birthright, which has been kept a secret from him, through his mother’s ancestry. Based on the books by Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country intertwines the themes of the notoriously racist author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s science fiction novels with Jim Crow America. This throws the Freeman family into a fight against racism, wizardry, and generational trauma.
Tic discovers he is a member of a bloodline connected to The Order of the Ancient Dawn, a group of white men who conveniently wear black instead of white hoods. The connection to the Klu Klux Klan is uncanny—the only real difference being the KKK’s founding “grand wizard” only believed they were descendants of magicians, whereas The Order of Ancient Dawn in Lovecraft Country possesses that power in addition to whiteness. When Atticus makes this connection himself, after being held hostage by The Order with his uncle and friend Leti, Christina Braithwhite, daughter of the cult’s leader and principal villain of this story, is quick to defend her family’s intentions. She attempts to assure him by saying, “not all us white folks are out to get you” and that The Order “would never fraternize with the Klan” because “they’re too poor.” Here, we the viewers, are informed that The Order is an elite group of white supremacists—one seeking to open the Garden of Eden and return to “paradise” where man was immortal. After a failed attempt by her father, Christina makes it her mission to complete the spell of immortality for herself, as it has been denied to her because she is a woman...but this ceremony cannot be fulfilled without Atticus’ blood.
The threat of the ceremony affects everyone in Tic’s life. The past and the present cannot be divorced from each other in Lovecraft Country as the characters realize to save themselves they must travel back in time to the Tulsa Massacre, to retrieve a spell book of life, transformation, and genesis. History never stops informing how we live now, and the show reminds us of this.
The small details initially ground Lovecraft. Views from segregated diner food windows, sounds of furiously barking german shepherds, images of local whites mimicking chimpanzees, and the ultimate threat of a sundown town make the first episode so historically tangible in its portrayal of the racial landscape in the 1950s. It was then the hideous monsters in the forest, the castle in the fictitious Arkham County, the way the Braithwhites were “expecting” Tic, his uncle, and Leti, hints of magic, and Tic’s suspicion that something wasn’t quite right that drew me in. Then the castle comes tumbling down, episode three starts, and the trouble begins. Unfortunately, the plot of this epic series becomes exceptionally convoluted by its chaos. The following episodes are overwhelmingly layered with plot lines which lead to plot holes. I often found myself furrowing my brow, cocking my head to the side, or squinting my eyes at the screen as I tried to make sense of everything.
Outside of the plot, I find the most concerning aspect of Lovecraft Country to be the violence. Sequences of violence inflicted on Black characters are serialized. The suffering seems relentless and we, the audience, are rarely given time to breathe. Naturally, the horror of this brutality starts to lose its meaning as it is exhausted in each episode. Christina’s spell for immortality literally relies on the sacrifice of Black life.
The special effects are impressively clear, crisp, and realistic. Rarely any of the bloody horror in a scene is concealed, therefore the pain and agony is felt through the screen. I found the most disturbing sequences involved Ruby’s “metamorphosis.” Feeling defeated by how life is treating her and her dreams, William, a bleach blonde, blue-eyed “friend” of Christina approaches her one night at a bar in her vulnerable state with an opportunity to change her life: a potion with the power to temporarily transform her into Hillary, a white woman. Each time the potion wears off, her bones break. Hillary’s white skin oozes off like bloodied molten lava, and Ruby emerges, Black again. I was all together fascinated and terrified the first time I saw this mutation, but after seeing it again and again, the gore began to feel gratuitous.
Out of all the characters and their storylines, Ruby’s felt like it held the most depth. It was eerie to watch her play the role of a white woman, lost and unsure of what she wants. She explores and attempts to experience the freedoms afforded to her by this disguise in increments until the spell fades. But it is the writers who make her endure bodily trauma for her only to come to the realization that she’s more comfortable living in her own skin—quite an extreme metaphor. Was all of it really necessary?
Additionally, Ruby develops a sexual relationship with William. Often in the midst of making love, Ruby transforms back into herself, making it all a very unsexy and gruesome affair. It isn’t until one night, when she learns that he has been Christina all of this time. William is actually dead, and Christina has been using the potion to disguise herself as a man to infiltrate The Order. But even after this discovery, the two women continue to mutate into their “other selves” and have sex. Inevitably, even in their own skin, a sexual tension begs to linger between them. They keep coming back to each other and the potential for a queer relationship begins to build. It’s exciting and all very complicated as Ruby is the older sister of Leti, and Leti has fallen in love with Atticus who Christina must sacrifice.
We watch as Ruby struggles with loyalty to her family and an unspoken complex compassion for Christina. By the end of the series, the outcome is upsetting. We learn that Christina kills Ruby after catching her trying to help Leti and now is using the potion to disguise as Ruby and deceive Leti during the spell ceremony. Wait a second...were we just queer baited? Or is this another example of queerness, blackness, and tragedy all intersecting? We are given another chance to look into the LGBTQ+ community of the 1950s through Tic’s closeted father, Montrose, but instead this part of his identity ends up feeling more like a device used to illustrate how “woke” the TV series is. Moments like these, temporary spotlights on important subjects, don’t feel nurtured enough to form a palpable story.
To recount all of the twists and turns and the many worlds Lovecraft Country travels through, would just take too much time. I think that to really understand the series, you can’t just watch it once. It’s a two or three times kind of commitment. But I must admit that it is an exciting and thrilling ride. Lovecraft Country achieves an adventurous spirit and a well crafted science-fiction aesthetic. And how often do we get to see Black people on screen in science-fiction films and tv series? Every scene feels like flipping the pages of a comic book—it’s colorful, bright, and action-packed; full of villains, monsters, hidden treasures, and plenty of jump scares. The writers, producers, and directors sought a very difficult task to produce a piece that attempts to talk about everything. Audience reviews on the show appear to be fairly split: people either seemed to love it, or were overwhelmingly disappointed. Lovecraft Country is like a tornado, and all I wanted was for the cyclone to slow down a bit. If the show is given the chance to produce a second season, I hope the focus shifts more towards the value of Black stories and the beauty of Black imagination rather than Black trauma in this mystical time-warped realm that’s not so different from the world we live in today.
Julliette Holliday (she/her) is an actor, dancer, director, and playwright originally from Columbus, Ohio. She completed her final year at Sarah Lawrence College with concentrations in theatre and history. Julliette has a passion for producing performance pieces through an experimental and explorative lens with a focus on devising and movement. She has also studied at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center during the spring of 2020. Follow Julliette on Instagram: @jullietteh.