threat fundamentally comes from more than the character going from safe place to new threatening place. reminds me of another Lovecraftian film called Dagon where there's almost a resonance, this kind of primal frequency that we don't understand doing it's business on us.
Twin Peaks has a similar thing - in things like how we suddenly land on characters like they were waiting for a cue. like if we hadn't arrived they would just be vessels glitching in silence. maybe…