HBO's 'Lovecraft Country' takes horror to a new level

Mythical beasts, ghosts and aliens menace the heroes in "Lovecraft Country," HBO's new series set in Jim Crow America.

But the greatest threat is all too human.

"The white racist is much more terrifying than a shoggoth or a cthulhu," said series star Jonathan Majors, referring to the creatures that pop up in H.P. Lovecraft's pulp-fiction stories. "It's quite different when a monster is disguised in the same body as you and the only thing that's different is the skin color, right? You're completely confused in many ways and that confusion leads to distress, and that distress gets your adrenaline up. Then, all of a sudden, you're in a horror film."

In the drama, which premieres Sunday, Majors' character Atticus Freeman takes a road trip from Chicago to Massachusetts in search of his missing father. Along for the ride is his bookworm uncle (Guthrie Theater vet Courtney B. Vance) and Letitia Dandridge (Jurnee Smollett), a free-spirited friend from childhood.

It doesn't take long before their journey is interrupted by white-supremacist cops who wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet through their heads for the simple "crime" of being in their county after dark.

"With a monster, you just kind of outrun it," said Smollett, who recently played Black Canary in "Birds of Prey." "But the kind of spiritual warfare our characters are engaged with is in bringing down the racism that you don't really know where it's coming from. And that is sometimes even more of a threat because it's unexpected and it affects your livelihood, your pursuit of happiness, your pursuit of joy."

Don't mistake "Country" for just a dissertation on civil rights. Showrunner Misha Green, who adapted the scripts from Matt Ruff's novel, delivers her message with steamy sex scenes and an eclectic soundtrack that includes Shirley Caesar's "Tear Your Kingdom Down," Marilyn Manson's "Killing Strangers" and Pat Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti."

If one episode seems to mimic a haunted-house movie, the next is an adventure straight out of the Indiana Jones playbook.

"As you would read the scripts, you'd get submerged into one genre," Majors said. "Then you'd read the next one and you'd be like, 'Oh, no, no. This is the dope one.' "

The ambitious approach didn't come cheap. Green, who utilized more than 160 sets during the eight-month shoot, estimates that one episode of "Lovecraft" cost as much as five hours of "Underground," her WGN series about slavery in the 1850s.

The results can be hard to watch. Scenes in which a Black soul singer transforms into a white department store manager are as graphic and gruesome as anything you've stomached on "The Walking Dead."

But nothing is more unsettling than watching a racist police officer pull over our protagonists in the first episode, approaching their car like a wolf making his way toward trapped sheep.