Lovecraft is not really scary.

[Mr Somewhere]

If you're taking Lovecraft on face value, then you're missing the point. Lovecraft's stories are simply about the fragility of human existence, the idea that around the corner something larger than you, something older and higher up the chain is waiting for you. Life is fragile, you are doomed, everything is for nought. That's Lovecraft. Cuts pretty close to the truth, that's the unsettling part.

 

[370999]

The fear in Lovecraft is a fear of the unknown. Of a universe that is so vast that humans can't even comprehend a fraction of it. We are so small and weak, whose to say there aren't things out there that are to us as we are to ants. Massive entities of such incredible age and harboring such unknowable malice for lesser existence that their mere EXISTENCE threatens our species as a whole. That if one of them were to turn an errant eye, on accident, and spy us across the vastness of the cosmos then our fates would be sealed before we could even cry for help. And no power, religion or science, can hope to stay this inevitability. Our only respite is that these beings either haven't noticed us yet, or are having too much fun molding and shaping our fragile lives.

It's the fear of the deep ocean, of great terrors so close and yet hidden from our plain sight. It's a fear of your your fellow man, of the hidden urges and desires held in their heart and your own. It's the fear of knowledge, of the insatiable thirst for understanding that leads to these truths, and the inevitable refuge in insanity that must follow.

Yeah, if you are just focusing on his monsters you have no imagination.

I think that one of the reasons Lovecraft's brand of horror is less "scary" today is that, sans monsters, the whole "we are tiny monkeys living on a tiny rock floating through a universe we do not (and probably cannot) understand" thing is something that we have basically come to terms with over the last century.

That's not to say that I don't think Lovecraft is worth a read - his stories are absolutely fascinating in terms of how influential they were over the SF and horror genres. IMO if you can get past the racism there's some really good writing there.

I would say that if you were racist you would find them even scarier.

I never really found them scary, maybe occasionally unsettling but as others have pointed out they were from a different time.

Think Orson Wells and War of the Worlds and compare it to stuff that goes on now.