The Lovecraft of Archive 81: Explained

For those who frequent online groups dedicated to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, the Lovecraftian undertones of the Netflix show Archive 81 are a topic of some delight, despite the decided lack of tentacled monstrosities in the show. As it is in literature, the idea of the “implied reader” and of the “ideal audience” is of particular importance when dealing with television content. In this case, the “ideal audience” (for more on this concept, see Wolfgang Iser The Implied Reader) of this show is one who can understand the layers of allusions woven into the narrative, the numerous allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy, or the myth of Orpheus and Euridice, are solid examples. This creates a second layer of mystery to the show, not only challenging the watcher to become immersed in the mystery unfolding on the screen, but to find the allusions which enrich the storyline.  

While an in-depth analysis of Lovecraftian elements in Archive 81 is beyond the scope of this discussion here are the elements of Lovecraft to look out for Archive 81.      

The Storyline of Archive 81

Presumably, if you are reading this article, you have some familiarity with the plot of Archive 81. A brief synopsis is, nevertheless, helpful, for context. The story follows Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie), a video archivist in New York city, who is hired to restore footage shot by a doctoral candidate Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi) at the Visser apartment building in the late 90’s. As he continues to restore and watch the footage, Dan is drawn deeper into the mysteries that surround the building and Melody herself.

As Dan watches more and more of the footage he restores, and supplemental footage he gets from other sources, he becomes more immersed in the mystery. This type of narrative vehicle, the “found footage” is one that has a venerable history in horror fiction, already Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein are progenitors of this type of narrative, as epistolary novels. An interesting aspect of the “found footage” style in Archive 81 is that the audience is not directly watching the footage, but is experiencing it through the eyes of Dan Turner, this corresponds more closely with the narrative format seen in Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, which claims to have been found “among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston.”

The Call of Cthulhu follows Fracis Wayland Thurston as he delves further and further into the papers and research of his late uncle, professor George Gammell Angell. Stylistically, then, Archive 81 recalls The Call of Cthulhu, as we experience the “footage” of an academic researcher into a realm which quickly morphs from the academic to the supernatural. In both narratives as well, the driving force that spurs both Dan Turner and Wayland Thurston to take part in the investigation is a familial connection, for Dan Turner, it is the presence of his father on one of the tapes, for Wayland Thurston, his great-uncle’s research. 

The Dreams of Elder Gods in Archive 81

A common feature of Lovecraft’s writing is the dream. In The Call of Cthulhu, for example, Angell writes in his notes about a particularly “psychically hypersensitive” individual named Wilcox, who sees visions of R’lyeh in his dreams:

“Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars.” In the novel, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, one of the main novels in Lovecraft’s “dream cycle” the hero, Radolph Carter goes on a quest within his dream to find “the marvellous [sic.] city.”

In the short novel Nyarlathotep the narrator descends into what can only described as a dreamlike state of madness, although not explicitly stated is that it is part of a dream:

“screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.”

Nyarlathotep

It is through dreams that Lovecraft’s characters often come to know the true horror of the universe, in the same way that Lovecraft himself often drew inspiration for his writing from his own tortured dreams. Dreams become a driving force in Archive 81 as well, and it is through dreams that Dan Turner and Melody Pendras begin to communicate with one another, dream communication which we see manifest itself as actual communication when elements of the dream begin to be seen in the footage.   

The Cult and the Monster

Perhaps one of the most famous among Lovecraft’s monsters is Cthulhu, whose idol is among the papers found by Wayland Thurston:  

“a queer clay bas-relief…a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing…above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive.” 

Call of Cthulhu

A similarly grotesque statue is the focus of worship of a secretive cult in Archive 81, this cult is working towards bringing a demonic being named Kaelego into this world from the “otherworld.” This cult grooms a sacrifice, who will “hold a new world inside me” as Jess (Arianna Neal), the intended sacrificial victim of the cult in Melody Pendras’ footage, puts it.  

A few peculiarities of the cult, beyond there being a cult dedicated to the worship and bringing forth of a superhuman entity, are of special interest as connections to Lovecraft. Professor Angell’s papers come to Wayland Thurston posthumously, the official cause of death “some obscure lesion of the heart, induced by the brisk ascent of so steep a hill by so elderly a man” witnesses, however, said that he had been “jostled” and fell to his death, murdered, as Wayland Thurston believes, by the Cthulhu cult, as they murder those outside of the cult who venture too close to discovering their secret.

The Kaelego cult too does not shy away from murder, as the death of Father Russo (Martin Sola), a local priest who is looking into the mysteries of the Visser building, attests. The worship of the Kaelego involves an eerily mysterious, wordless, humming chant, which causes an almost physical response, particularly from Melody Pendras, this seems to correspond well to the inhuman sounds experienced by Wilcox in his dreams: “from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, ‘Cthulhu fhtagn.’” 

Kaelego and The Ferryman in Archive 81

In Episode 07 The Ferryman we see a flashback to the Vos family mansion, over which the Visser apartments are built, in 1924 as they attempt the ritual to bring Kaelego into this world. The house is covered in the same mold that we have seen throughout the series, both in the Visser and in the compound Dan Turner is working on the tapes. The year chosen for this flashback is an interesting one, as 1924 is the year Lovecraft’s work, The Shunned House, was published.

Of Kaelego himself, an interdimensional being, associated with the comet Charon, and his connection with the various Lovecraftian entities which are described by the Cthulhu cultists as having: “lived ages before any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky” there exists an entire corpus of Lovecraftian verse, which talks about horrors from the stars, so in his poem Astrophobos:

“In the midnight heavens burning/Thro’ etherial deeps afar,/Once I watch’d with restless yearning/An alluring, aureate star;/Ev’ry eye aloft returning,/Gleaming nigh the Arctic car … Thus I mus’d , when o’er the vision/Crept a red delirious change;/Hope dissolving to derision,/Beauty to distortion strange;/Hymnic chords in weird collision,/Spectral sights in endless range.” 

This is but a taste of the intertextual bounty, both of Lovecraftian and other allusions, which are layered throughout Archive 81, enjoy unraveling more mysteries. Archive 81 is now streaming on Netflix.