I don't watch many movies but I should watch these

I used to watch, like, a lot of movies. For a good six years or so, I watched movies somewhat compulsively (there was one summer when I watched 2-4 films every night--I had a short commute and most of my friends were out of town, so I had a lot of time on my hands). In college I managed to get film classes to count toward my (non-film) major, so I took a lot of those, too. But the last four years or so, I've really slowed down on my film consumption--not for any reason aside from a lack of time. Because of that, I'm constantly finding that there's a lot of very cool stuff that I haven't heard of but I really should watch.

I recently watched an excellent video essay by That Dang Dad called "Fighting Cosmic Horror with Charts and Graphs" (also available in essay-essay form), which added some more movies to my to-watch list. (As a sidenote, That Dang Dad has released some of the most interesting and thought provoking video essays that I've seen in the last year. His essay "Non-Places, Junkspaces, and Dark Souls" has lived rent-free in my head since I saw it last December.)

Anyway, his cosmic horror essay is about the work of indie filmmakers Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, who I somehow have never heard of despite their work sounding like a pretty exact match for a lot of my interests. That Dang Dad describes their films thusly: "Regular people come into contact with unexplainable phenomena hinting at worlds beyond our own, strange spaces between spaces, tips of icebergs we can’t even begin to imagine. And again and again, the characters who encounter these cosmic oddities decide to study them, map them, figure them out." The films in question here are Resolution (2012), The Endless (2017), Synchronic (2019), and Something in the Dirt (2022).

In the essay, he compares their work to Lovecraft, but also goes through the ways in which they differ from Lovecraft's work and offer hope and love. Which sounds amazing.

Anyway, these movies sound so cool that I figured that anyone who reads this would likely also be interested in 'em. (And if you like video essays, check out That Dang Dad!) I'm also writing this down for myself so I don't forget to check these out. Oh, by the way, if you've seen any of these Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson films, I'd love to know which one you think I should start with!