Trapped in Eternal Recurrence: Carnival of Souls and The Endless Unravel Existence
Two low-budget visions from different eras converge in a nightmarish hall of mirrors, where time folds upon itself and reality unravels thread by thread.
In the vast tapestry of horror cinema, few films capture the chilling vertigo of existential entrapment as profoundly as Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless (2017). These works, born from shoestring budgets and fervent creativity, probe the same abyssal questions: What if existence is a loop from which escape proves impossible? What lurks beyond the veil of perception? This comparative analysis uncovers their shared obsessions with cycles, isolation, and the cosmic unknown, revealing how they redefine horror’s philosophical core.
- Both films masterfully employ cyclical narratives to evoke inescapable dread, mirroring personal traumas with larger cosmic forces.
- Through innovative sound design and stark visuals, they transform mundane settings into portals of terror, proving budget constraints fuel ingenuity.
- Their legacies endure, influencing modern horror while challenging viewers to confront the fragility of free will and reality itself.
Shadows from the Midway: Origins in Indie Ambition
Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls emerged from the sunbaked flatlands of Kansas, a product of the industrial filmmaker’s singular detour into genre territory. Shot in just twelve days on a mere $33,000 budget, primarily sourced from the coffers of the Centron Corporation, the film follows Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), a church organist who survives a drag race plunge off a bridge, only to be haunted by spectral ghouls drawn from an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Harvey, a maestro of educational shorts, infused this narrative with an otherworldly detachment, transforming Salt Lake City’s grand organ lofts and the skeletal Saltair Resort into liminal spaces where the living and the dead bleed together. The film’s grainy black-and-white cinematography, courtesy of Maurice Prather, amplifies its dreamlike unreality, as if the reel itself is fraying at the edges.
Decades later, The Endless channels a similar DIY ethos, crafted by lifelong collaborators Benson and Moorhead with a micro-budget under $1 million. The story centres on brothers Justin and Aaron (played by the directors themselves), who receive a cryptic VHS tape luring them back to Camp Arcadia, the site of their childhood cult escape. There, they encounter time loops, ascending UFO lights, and entities that manipulate reality. Filmed across California’s remote deserts using guerrilla techniques, the movie expands the duo’s earlier micro-horrors like Resolution (2012), weaving a tapestry of analogue glitches and found-footage aesthetics. Both films reject polished production values, instead leveraging their rawness to heighten authenticity; the creak of an empty carnival organ in Harvey’s work parallels the static hiss of VHS tapes in Benson and Moorhead’s, signalling intrusions from elsewhere.
This parallel genesis underscores a key horror truth: limitation breeds liberation. Harvey repurposed corporate equipment for his phantasmagoria, while Benson and Moorhead crowd-funded their vision, distributing via niche platforms like Netflix. Yet both achieve a hypnotic pull, drawing audiences into worlds where everyday objects—a car crash, a videotape—become harbingers of doom. Their origins reflect broader indie horror waves: Harvey’s amid 1960s drive-in culture, the brothers’ in the post-Blair Witch digital era. This shared bootstrapped spirit ensures their terrors feel immediate, unfiltered by studio gloss.
Cycles of the Soul: Narrative Loops Entwined
At the heart of both films lies the cycle, a motif that binds personal repetition to universal recurrence. In Carnival of Souls, Mary relives her crash in dissociated visions, her daily routines fracturing as ghouls—pale, silent figures led by a top-hatted pallbearer—invade mirrors and empty streets. Her futile attempts to integrate into society, boarding a bus or rebuffing suitors, loop back to isolation, culminating in a revelation: her world is a purgatorial echo, the carnival a gateway to oblivion. Harvey structures this as a descent, each repetition stripping agency until Mary’s final, resigned dance amid the ghouls seals her fate.
The Endless literalises this through overt time loops, where characters relive days or mere minutes under the gaze of an immense, unseen entity. Justin and Aaron’s return to the camp triggers vignettes of doomed cultists—hikers vanishing into lights, a man eternally fishing—each a micro-cycle within the brothers’ macro-struggle. A pivotal scene, the timed explosion of a cabin, resets only for the brothers to intervene differently, echoing Nietzsche’s eternal return yet infusing it with Lovecraftian indifference. Benson and Moorhead layer interpersonal cycles too: the brothers’ codependent bond mirrors the camp’s gravitational pull, their escape attempts collapsing into recursion.
These structures invite comparison to genre forebears like Groundhog Day, but stripped of comedy, they evoke dread. Mary’s organ playing recurs as a dirge, much as Aaron’s naive optimism loops into peril. Both films posit cycles not as puzzles to solve but prisons to endure, questioning whether awareness alters destiny. Mary’s boarding-house landlady dismisses her visions as hysteria; the camp’s Hal (Keith Poulson) offers cryptic warnings. In each, protagonists grasp partial truths too late, their arcs curving inexorably back to origin points.
The elegance lies in restraint: no exposition dumps, only accumulative unease. Harvey’s repetitive motifs—Mary’s blank stares, ghoul close-ups—build subliminally, while The Endless deploys diagrams and tapes for overt exposition, yet both culminate in ambiguous release. Do the brothers truly escape, or merely extend the loop? Mary’s ‘victory’ reveals itself hollow. This narrative symmetry cements their kinship, transforming plot into philosophical trap.
Sonic Spectres: Sound as Existential Void
Sound design elevates both to auditory horror pinnacles. Carnival of Souls pioneered sparse, industrial scores: the titular organ theme, performed by John Seely live in echoing halls, swells into dissonance, its carnival waltz motif warping Mary’s reality. Silence dominates elsewhere—footsteps echo hollowly, ghouls glide mutely—creating a vacuum that amplifies dread. Harvey recorded natural ambiences like wind through Saltair’s ruins, blending them with Gene Kirkwood’s atonal cues to evoke spiritual desolation.
The Endless inherits this minimalism, augmenting it with lo-fi electronics. Wind howls across the desert, interrupted by low-frequency rumbles presaging loops. Benson and Moorhead layer diegetic tapes—cult sermons, static bursts—with subtle synth washes by Heather Courtman, mirroring the film’s analogue obsessions. A recurring motif, the brothers’ walkie-talkie chatter, distorts into otherworldly voices, akin to Mary’s hallucinatory whispers.
This auditory kinship weaponises absence: prolonged silences in Harvey force viewers to confront Mary’s alienation; The Endless‘s dead air before anomalies builds temporal anxiety. Both eschew jump scares for immersion, sound bridging psychological and cosmic scales. Influences abound—from The Twilight Zone‘s eerie twangs to modern ambient horror—yet their innovations persist, proving sound’s power in evoking the infinite.
Visual Phantoms: Frames of Fractured Reality
Cinematography in these films crafts visual cycles through composition and light. John Clifford’s work on Carnival of Souls employs high-contrast black-and-white, isolating Mary in vast frames: she wanders empty highways, dwarfed by pavilions, her form blurred in ghoul pursuits. Dutch angles and extreme close-ups on pallid faces distort perception, while the organ loft’s gothic arches frame her as trapped performer.
David Rivalsky and the brothers’ handheld lensing in The Endless evokes found-footage vertigo, wide desert shots contrasting claustrophobic interiors. Time-lapse clouds and orbiting drones simulate entity viewpoints, looping skies mirroring narrative traps. Colour palettes desaturate into twilight hues, ghoulish figures (camp denizens in flux) echoing Harvey’s shades.
Mise-en-scène reinforces themes: Mary’s sparse apartment parallels the brothers’ trailer, both waystations in limbo. Mirrors recur as portals—Mary’s bathroom haunt, Aaron’s reflective escapes—symbolising self-confrontation. Low-budget effects shine: Harvey’s ghouls via greasepaint and slow motion; The Endless‘s anomalies through practical illusions like suspended wires for levitations.
Effects of the Abyss: Practical Illusions and Cosmic Scale
Special effects, though rudimentary, amplify existential weight. Carnival of Souls relies on theatrical makeup—ghouls’ ashen faces, hollow eyes—and simple matte paintings for the pavilion’s decay. Mary’s ‘disappearance’ in crowds uses clever editing and doubles, her final waltz a choreography of the damned without CGI artifice. These choices ground the supernatural in tactile reality, making the uncanny pierce deeper.
The Endless advances this with practical ingenuity: time-loop resets via hidden cuts and pyrotechnics, the massive entity implied through shadows and lights rather than shown. Levitating actors on wires, duplicated figures via doubles, and desert mirages craft a universe of subtle manipulations. Benson and Moorhead’s VFX supervisor, Brandon Cox, blended digital cleanup sparingly, preserving analogue grit.
Both eschew spectacle for suggestion, effects serving cycles: ghoul repetitions visualise entrapment, loop vignettes compress eternity. Their influence ripples to Hereditary and Midsommar, proving restraint conjures vastness. Production tales abound—Harvey’s crew battling Kansas winds, the brothers enduring rattlesnake-infested shoots—highlighting commitment to vision.
Thematic Mirrors: Isolation, Trauma, and the Void
Thematically, both dissect isolation as existential precondition. Mary’s post-crash detachment—repelling John (Sidney Berger), ignoring faith—mirrors the brothers’ fractured fraternalism, Aaron’s cult nostalgia clashing with Justin’s pragmatism. Trauma cycles perpetuate: Mary’s repressed accident, the brothers’ escapist return.
Cosmic indifference reigns, evoking Lovecraft: unknowable forces—pavilion master, sky entity—exert will without motive. Gender dynamics subtly emerge; Mary’s autonomy erodes in male gazes, while The Endless subverts via brotherly bonds. Religion twists: Mary’s organ mocks sanctity, the camp’s ‘ascension’ parodies salvation.
Class undertones linger—Mary’s boarding-house drudgery, the cult’s rural decay—tying personal stasis to societal fringes. Both films probe free will’s illusion, cycles as metaphors for addiction, regret, mortality. Their psychological depth elevates pulp origins, inviting endless reinterpretation.
Echoes Through Time: Legacy and Influence
Carnival of Souls languished until 1989’s VHS revival, inspiring David Lynch’s surrealism and The X-Files. Remade in 1998, its DNA permeates Lost Highway. The Endless, lauded at Sitges, spawned Synchronic (2019), cementing Benson-Moorhead’s ‘head-trip’ canon alongside Resolution.
Together, they bridge horror eras, from grindhouse to A24-adjacent. Festivals revive Carnival; podcasts dissect The Endless. Their endurance lies in universality: cycles reflect modern anxieties—anxiety loops, algorithmic repetition—making dread timeless.
Director in the Spotlight: Herk Harvey
Herk Harvey, born November 3, 1924, in Denver, Colorado, forged a prolific career in industrial and educational filmmaking before his horror foray. Raised amid the Great Depression, he served in the Navy during World War II, honing photography skills that propelled him to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1947. There, he co-founded Centron Corporation with Mike McLeroy, producing over 400 shorts on topics from dental hygiene to driver safety. Harvey directed, produced, and often starred, his affable everyman persona masking a flair for the dramatic.
His feature pivot, Carnival of Souls, stemmed from a Saltair Resort visit, its eerie decay sparking otherworldly visions. Self-distributed to drive-ins, it grossed modestly but gained cult status. Harvey returned to shorts, helming What About Children? (1956) and Why Vandalism? (1955), blending moral tales with subtle unease. Influences included German Expressionism and Val Lewton’s suggestion-based horrors, evident in his shadowy aesthetics.
Retiring in 1986, Harvey mentored Kansas filmmakers until his death on November 3, 1996. Filmography highlights: The Living Corpse (1958, adaptation of Tolstoy); Chain Gang (1959, prison drama short); Operation: Second Chance (1963, parolee story); Why Be a Juvenile Delinquent? (1966); Careless with Fire (1975); and dozens more like Shake Hands with Danger (1979), safety classics with ironic prescience. His legacy endures in indie horror’s DIY ethos.
Actor in the Spotlight: Justin Benson
Justin Benson, born 1983 in Portland, Oregon, embodies the modern horror auteur-performer. Raised in a creative family, he studied film at Western Oregon University, self-releasing micro-budget experiments before partnering with Aaron Moorhead. Their synergy birthed the ‘Infinite Larpers’ collective, blending sci-fi and horror with philosophical heft.
Benson’s breakout came co-directing and starring in Resolution (2012), playing a detoxing man ensnared in loops. He reprised intensity as Justin in The Endless (2017), navigating cults and entities with raw vulnerability. Notable roles include Spring (2014, romantic body horror), Synchronic (2019, time-bending paramedic), and Something in the Dirt (2022, paranoia thriller). His directorial credits expand the shared universe: Resolution, The Endless, Synchronic.
Awards include Fantasia’s Best Director for Spring; he champions practical effects and narrative innovation. Filmography: V/H/S: Viral segment (2014); Approaching the Unknown (2016, astronaut drama); Moon Knight TV (2022, Marvel); Archive 81 (2022, Netflix series). Upcoming: Universal Language (2024). Benson’s trajectory marks horror’s evolution toward ambitious, introspective cinema.
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