I was reading Fall of Delta Green last week and it struck me how much iconic American horror is about trying to preserve the appearance of normalcy. Our bleakest and most nihilistic art is about dying for the American Dream while knowing full well that it's hollow. Lovecraft believes that people ought to be sheltered from the mind-breaking knowledge of the outer darkness. English grimdark is different: it's about blowing up a horrible world to epic proportions, exaggerating all the misery and brutality of our own world, and then taking it seriously enough that it becomes something other than satire. There's no beautiful dream to protect, no glimmering surface. There's no credible ideology of Mega-City One or the Imperium of Man that makes them look like something worth loving; they're just marginally better than the alternatives.
Americans are considering disillusionment. The English seem to be past that.
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