THE ENDLESS ★★★

(M) 111 minutes

It's an ominous sign of the times that H.P. Lovecraft's vision of cosmic evil, expressed in a series of pulp tales in the 1920s and '30s, continues to fascinate so many.

The latest example is The Endless, a low-budget horror-thriller from the team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, which kicks off with a Lovecraft quote and revels in the paranoia that has become almost the default tone of American entertainment.

These guys, now in their mid-thirties, are very much hands-on filmmakers. Benson writes the scripts, Moorhead is the cinematographer, and both appeared briefly in their 2012 debut feature Resolution, playing the roles of "Justin" and "Aaron", members of a mysterious rural cult.