Lovecraft Country is shocking, incisive, fun and thrilling

Lovecraft Country ties together horror, drama, and history in a way that’s impossible to watch and be bored. Our advance look at HBO’s new series:

Lovecraft Country is an upcoming HBO series from producer and writer Misha Green, best known as the creator of the WGN America series Underground. It’s also executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, and it feels like it. It has all the gloss and polish you’d expect from an HBO production from Abrams, and it’s very much in the tradition of Peele’s movies like Get Out and Us, films that used the horror genre to explore the Black American experience, and became big hits while they were at it.

I hope Lovecraft Country becomes a hit, too, because it deserves it. I was able to watch the first five episodes courtesy of HBO, and I can say right off the bat that the show is good, maybe even great. It explores horrifyingly serious issues of racial injustice, and marries those concerns to a fairly familiar horror adventure story with its own mythology and lore. Come for the monsters, stay for the brutal depiction of America’s racial conflicts, or vice versa. Either way, it’s a good watch.

The plot: We begin by meeting Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors), a Korean War vet and science fiction fan who’s headed home to Chicago after hearing that his father has gone missing. We meet his family, including his bookworm Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), his aunt Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis) and young cousin Diana (Jada Harris). Then there’s Letitia Dandridge (Jurnee Smollett), someone Atticus knew in childhood but hasn’t seen for years, and her hard-working sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku).

Together, Atticus, George and Letitia go on a roadtrip to track down Atticus’ father, and the rest I’ll let you discover. What I will say is that the journey doesn’t go in the direction you think it might.

Or at least, it didn’t go how I thought it would. One of the early pleasures of Lovecraft Country is the way it keeps you guessing. There are big moments you’d figure a show might save for a season finale that happen very early on. The show resists getting pinned down to any one format. It’s a serialized show, yes, but it’s not like Game of Thrones, where it’s more or less useless to watch any episode in isolation because it’s so tied to the story around it. Some of the best Lovecraft Country episodes pretty much stand on their own as discrete adventures, although the show never loses the greater thread.

Lovecraft Country wastes no time throwing us into the deep end with some pretty horrific scenes. That means monsters, but it also means a hard look at the more mundane horrors of 1950s-era racism, which is rendered starkly and without apology and hesitation. Whenever the characters leave their own neighborhoods, they are watched, and know things could turn from uncomfortable to ugly at any moment. Police of any kind, anywhere, are a constant threat.

When the monsters show up, it’s actually kind of a relief. The racial violence — both physical and emotional — is so potently depicted that the familiar confines of a horror movie feel like a refuge. You can kill a slobbering hell-beast, or run from it, but there’s no clear solution to the angst of waking up every day somewhere you know you’re not wanted.

The show blends these two kinds of horror more and more as it goes, and finds some pretty ingenious ways to explore social questions through magic and metaphor. The cast is always up to it. Majors is solid in a role that often requires him to be the steady-handed one, although he does get opportunities to show a darker side. As Letitia, Smollett comes close to stealing the show. Among her family, Leti is considered a bit of a screw-up; she’s impulsive and often leads with her anger, which can get her in trouble. She’s an exciting character, and Smollett plays her with abundant conviction and fire; there’s one scene in the third episode that…well, you’ll see.

The show takes its time laying out the dynamics between these characters, but it isn’t slowly paced. Horror fans will get plenty of spectacle. This show has a lot of impressive special effects work, and it’s not just saved for the premiere and maybe the finale; it’s everywhere. Scene after scene is full of visual creativity, a lot of it pretty gruesome. HBO has a reputation for not shying away from bracing material, but there are scenes here that will make even longtime subscribers cover their mouths. Believe me, you’ll know it when you see it.

Lovecraft Country does body horror, it does monster movie, at one point there’s an Indiana Jones-style treasure hunt with an action-adventure feel to it. There’s a lot of variety, I never knew what the next episode would serve up.

Lovecraft Country premieres on HBO on Sunday, August 16. See you there.

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