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Analog horror is a subgenre of horror fiction and an offshoot of the found footage film genre, [1] [2] [3] said to have originated online during the late 2000s and early 2010s with web series such as No Through Road , Local 58 , Gemini Home Entertainment , and Marble Hornets. [3] [2] [4] [5]
Analog horror is commonly characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television and analog recordings. [2] [6] [7] This is done to match the setting, as analog horror works are typically set somewhere between the 1960s and 1990s, or work with elements from that time period. [2] [6] Analog horror is often noted to use visual and audio distortion, as well as glitch-like effects that emphasize and replicate the technological limits the subgenre works with. [8] [9] The name "analog horror" comes from the genre's aesthetic incorporation of elements related to analog electronics, such as analog television and VHS (Video Home System), the latter being an analog method of recording video and audio. [2] [6]
The genre is also known to show manipulated pre-existing media from the time period it is trying to imitate, as seen in series like The Mandela Catalogue. [2] [10] Oftentimes, analog horror works use their formats supposed limitations to their advantage. The effects and graphics of analog horror often intend to let viewers wonder, and subsequently fear, what they are witnessing. [2] Works such as The Backrooms utilize the limitations of the equipment they're replicating to disguise the use of Blender and Adobe After Effects, making the series appear more visually realistic. [11]
Analog horror may also be influenced by found footage horror films, such as The Ring (1998) and The Blair Witch Project (1999). [2] [12] David Lynch's Inland Empire heavily influenced both No Through Road and Petscop , [13] [14] the former of which is a short film from which analog horror originates, and the latter of which is a web series rooted in analog horror. [15]
Analog horror could be regarded as a form or descendant of creepypasta legends. [16] Many creepypastas anticipated analog horror's themes and presentation: Ben Drowned and NES Godzilla Creepypasta , among others, featured manipulated or contrived footage of "haunted" media, and Candle Cove , a creepypasta from 2009, focused on a mysterious television broadcast. [17]
Some commentators have drawn parallels between analog horror and 20th-century radio and television programs that presented fictional stories in the style of "live news broadcasts," such as Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the shot-on-video TV movies Special Bulletin (1983), Ghostwatch (1992) and Without Warning (1994). [18] [19]
The subgenre is typically cited as originating between the late 2000s and the mid-2010s Internet (mainly with YouTube) videos, [4] [2] specifically from Steven Chamberlain's No Through Road in January 2009, [3] and gaining substantial popularity with the release of Kris Straub's Local 58 in October 2015, from which series' slogan ("ANALOG HORROR AT 476 MHz") the genre received its name. [2] [4] The series, which quickly became successful, would later inspire works such as The Mandela Catalogue and The Walten Files. [2] [5] Another YouTube channel, Kraina Grzybów TV, anticipated many main themes of the genre, as in December 2013 it began publishing videos stylized as a TV program from the 1990s that contained disturbing and surreal imagery.
Some analog horror series have been adapted into different forms of media. In 2020, Netflix announced that it would adapt the analog horror podcast Archive 81 into a series of the same name. [7] [20] Despite its positive reception, the show was canceled after airing only one season. [21] [22]
Marble Hornets had a film set in the same setting release in 2015, which was negatively received. [23] [24] A film adaptation for The Backrooms was announced to be in production in 2023, with Kane Parsons set to direct it. [25]
No Through Road is a YouTube series created by then-seventeen-year-old Steven Chamberlain of Hertfordshire, England, in 2009. Set within the real-world private "no through road" at the entrance of Broomhall Farm, it follows four teenagers driving home at night as they find themselves trapped in a space and time loop, eternally passing the same two road signs marking an intersection between Benington and Watton between miles of liminal space countryside, while threatened by a figure who can manipulate the loop back to an archway at the road's entrance. [26] Other plot aspects include all footage of the events being stolen from MI6 and uploaded online to YouTube. [3]
Composed of four shorts, [27] No Through Road has attained a cult following, [13] and is considered a foundational work of the analog horror genre. [3] [28] [29]
Kris Straub's Local 58 is a series of YouTube videos presented as authentic videotaped footage of a television station that has been continuously hijacked over several decades. While there is no main plot in this series, episodes include messages related to looking at the Moon or the night sky, as well as the in-universe Thought Research Initiative (TRI). [12] Local 58's first video "Weather Service" was published in 2015 as a stand-alone short [30] and then added to the dedicated YouTube channel when it was established in 2017.
Local 58 is frequently credited with creating and/or popularizing analog horror. [4] [31] [32] [30] Additionally, the series is responsible for naming the genre through its slogan, "ANALOG HORROR AT 476 MHz". [12]
CH/SS is a YouTube series that was first released in 2016. It was created by an individual known as Turkey Lenin III, a Singaporean user who was 15 at the time of its first upload. [32] The series starts as various uploads from and about a mental health program sponsored by the United States government. As it progresses, details and mysteries are slowly revealed, alongside additional content provided through MediaFire download links and an accompanying Twitter account. [32]
Archive 81 is a horror podcast released in 2016, made by Dan Powell and Marc Sollinger. The podcast is centered around an archivist named Dan, who recently began a job from the Housing Historical Committee of New York State, who is told by his boss to constantly record his life. [33] Dan records himself as he listens to and organizes a number of interview tapes, recorded by Melody Pendras and detailing her conversations with residents of an apartment complex. [33] [34] It's revealed that these recordings of Dan doing his job are tapes that his friend Mark is now listening to, as Dan has gone missing and Mark seeks to find out what happened to him. [33] [35] The podcast was adapted into a Netflix Original series, having released in 2016. [36] The Netflix series was cancelled after one season. [37]
Marble Hornets is an alternate reality game YouTube series created in 2009, based on the Slender Man creepypasta. [38] Made by Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage, the series follows Jay Merrick (Wagner) as he attempts to find out what happened to his friend Alex Kralie (DeLage) during the production of Alex's student film, Marble Hornets. [38] [39] Jay watches tapes from the films production, and uploads them to YouTube as various entries showing that Alex was being stalked by an elusive entity known as "The Operator." Aspects of the series that put it in the analog horror subgenre include its use of video tapes, as well as the implementation of a second channel for the series titled "totheark," where cryptic codes and messages are embedded into unconventional video editing. [40] Marble Hornets had a spinoff film released in 2015 called Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, with reviewers remarking that the series did not translate well onto the big screen, from both a storytelling and technical standpoint. [41] [23] [42] The film was negatively received. [24]
Gemini Home Entertainment is a horror anthology series by Remy Abode that was initially released in 2019. [12] It centers around the eponymous Gemini Home Entertainment, a fictional distributor of VHS tapes that detail numerous anomalous incidents taking place around the world, including the appearances of various dangerous alien creatures in the United States and an ongoing assault on the Solar System by "The Iris", a sentient rogue planet which sent the entities to Earth as part of its efforts to subjugate the planet and humanity. The creature of the "Woodcrawler" in the series is heavily inspired by the Native American mythologies of skinwalkers and the wendigo, with its fellow entities like “gardeners”,”fake humans”,”root” and “wretch” . [43]
The Walten Files is an animated YouTube series, partially inspired by the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise and the Five Nights at Freddy's analog series known as the "FNaF VHS Tapes", [44] created by Chilean internet personality Martin Walls. [45] It is presented as found footage from the fictional restaurant Bon's Burgers, which featured animatronic entertainment, and produced by the fictitious Bunny Smiles Incorporated. [12] The story focuses on the backstory of the restaurant and its founders, Jack Walten and Felix Kranken, alongside the many mysteries behind its enigmatic closure and the former's disappearance. [5]
The Mandela Catalogue is a YouTube series created by twenty-year-old Alex Kister [45] of Hubertus, Wisconsin in 2021. It is set in the fictional Mandela County, Wisconsin in the 1990s, [46] which is threatened by the presence of "alternates", doppelgängers who coerce their victims to kill themselves and can manipulate audiovisual media. [31] Other plot aspects include Lucifer disguising himself as the biblical archangel Gabriel, shown through altered footage of episodes from The Beginners Bible. [47] [10] Composed of fourteen shorts, [48] The Mandela Catalogue became popular online through analysis and reaction videos. [49]
The Smile Tapes (stylized as The SMILE Tapes) is an analog horror series created by Patorikku in 2021. The story is set in the mid-1990s in the United States and revolves around a fictitious new drug in circulation on the black market called "SMILE". Usage of the drug induces violent behavior in its users and causes them to laugh and smile uncontrollably. As the series progresses, SMILE is revealed to actually be the spores of an extraterrestrial fungus-like organism native to the asteroid belt. The series was inspired by the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis , a fungus species known for infecting and altering the behavior of ants. [2] [12]
The Monument Mythos is a YouTube webseries set in different alternate history versions of the United States. [50] [51] The premises include James Dean serving as President and Martin Luther King Jr. avoiding his assassination. The episodes are in the found footage and mockumentary format and revolve around American national monuments being depicted in relation to unusual incidents, involving fictional conspiracy theory narratives, such as disappearances of immigrants near the Statue of Liberty and a mysterious infection affecting individuals near Mount Rushmore. [50] [45] [52] [53] Lovecraftian motifs are also present. [50] [54] Three seasons were produced, each consisting of 11 episodes. [50] The series ran from August 26, 2020, [video 1] to April 30, 2023. [video 2] The storyline had been written in its entirety before the series' release, but the author began making changes to it starting with May 2021. [52] The series' production included original music [52] and voice acting. [55]
Nestor Kok of F Newsmagazine described the series in positive terms in 2022, writing: "There is nary an analog horror series, let alone a YouTube web series of any genre, that comes close to matching the scope and ambition of "The Monument Mythos"." [52] According to Joe Hoeffner of Collider in 2023, the series was among the most popular entries into the genre, alongside Local 58, Gemini Home Entertainment, and The Mandela Catalogue, all of which have "increasingly elaborate backstories and mythologies, usually parceled out one cryptic piece at a time"; however, he singled out The Monument Mythos as being particularly engaging for its narrative puzzles. At the same time he commented that the approach risks becoming clichéd. [56] Tilly Lawton of Pocket Tactics classified the series as a type of an alternate reality game, albeit one with a "[narrative] that [doesn't] alter regardless of player participation" (using the novel term "unfiction"). [57] According to the author in 2022, a community of followers was gathering in the series' Discord server, where various thematic events were organized. [58]
Midwest Angelica is a YouTube horror series published in 2022 by the channel MidwestAngelica. The story takes place in 1999 when a government organization called H.O.M.E (Heavenly Operation Material Examination) discover a malicious extra-terrestrial being, codenamed "AZ-001", which flies into the Earth's atmosphere. [59] [45]
In January 2022, a short horror film titled The Backrooms (Found Footage) was uploaded to YouTube by then-sixteen-year-old Kane Parsons of Northern California, known online as Kane Pixels. [45] It is based on the creepypasta of the same name, using the software Blender and Adobe After Effects, [5] [7] [60] [61] and is presented as a VHS tape recorded by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and is pursued by a monster. [25] [62] This was later expanded into a series of sixteen shorts, following the employees of a company investigating the Backrooms. [63] Parsons received a Creator Honors for the series at the 2022 Streamy Awards from The Game Theorists. [64]
After receiving positive reviews from critics, [65] [66] [67] on February 6, 2023, A24 announced that they were working on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos, with Parsons set to direct. Roberto Patino is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan, Michael Clear from Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce. [25] [63] [68] [69]
Written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball, Skinamarink is a supernatural horror film that first debuted at the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival. [70] It utilizes experimental techniques to tell the story of two young children, Kevin and Kaylee, as the pair witness the doors and windows of their house disappear. [71] Their parents are missing as well, and the film focuses on the pair struggling to understand the nature of the supernatural entity that has come into their home. [70] [72] Using a crowdfunded budget of $15,000, the film conveys its themes of horror with "unconventional viewpoints and angles" to best simulate the experience of its child protagonists. [70] With the budget in mind, the movie creators were able to utilize what they had on hand for lighting and filming at Ball's childhood home, with a majority of the movie being lit by a CRT television. [72] In terms of embodying analog horror traits, the visuals and sound design of the film simulate the quality of VHS tapes. Skinamarink also uses an array of toys from the '90s, the aforementioned CRT television, and older cartoons to work within the analog horror subgenre. [8] [72]
Kristofer Straub is an American web cartoonist, performer, and content creator. His key web comic projects include Checkerboard Nightmare, Starslip, Chainsawsuit, Broodhollow, and F Chords. Other notable projects include the creepypasta "Candle Cove" as well as collaborations with Scott Kurtz ("Blamimations"), Paul Verhoeven, and Penny Arcade.
Found footage is a cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time, off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.
Slender: The Eight Pages, originally titled Slender, is a short first-person survival horror game based on the Slender Man, an infamous creepypasta. It was developed by independent developer Mark J. Hadley using the game engine Unity and was first released in June 2012 by his one-man studio Parsec Productions.
The Slender Man is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit.
Ben Drowned is a three-part multimedia alternate reality game (ARG) web serial and web series created by Alexander D. Hall under the pen name Jadusable. Originating as a creepypasta based on the 2000 action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and published by Hall from 2010 to 2020 with a hiatus in-between, the series is known for creating many of the common tropes and themes of creepypasta that are used nowadays and for subverting themes from The Legend of Zelda series. The series concluded on October 31, 2020.
A creepypasta is a horror-related legend which has been shared around the Internet. The term creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories that are intended to frighten readers. The subjects of creepypasta vary widely and can include topics such as ghosts, cryptids, murder, suicide, zombies, aliens, rituals to summon entities, haunted television shows, and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to extended multi-part series that can span multiple media types, some lasting for years.
Marble Hornets is an alternate reality game YouTube web series inspired by the Slender Man online mythos. The first video was posted on YouTube on June 20, 2009, following a post that its creator, Troy Wagner, created on the Something Awful forum the previous day. It was the first web series to be created around the character, with the first episode premiering exactly 10 days after the appearance of the original images of Slender Man on the Something Awful forums, and the first Marble Hornets affiliated post being 9 days after the character's creation.
The SCP Foundation is a fictional organization that features in stories created by the SCP Wiki, a wiki-based collaborative writing project.
Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story is a 2015 American found footage supernatural horror film directed by James Moran and starring Chris Marquette, Jake McDorman, Doug Jones, Alexandra Breckenridge and Alexandra Holden. In some countries it was retitled as Marble Hornets: The Operator. The film was released on video on demand on April 7, 2015, and opened in select theaters on May 15, 2015.
Beware the Slenderman is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky about the Slender Man stabbing. It premiered at South by Southwest in March 2016 and was broadcast on HBO on January 23, 2017.
Petscop is a YouTube horror web series by Tony Domenico, made to resemble a YouTube Let's Play series. The videos follow "Paul", the protagonist, exploring and documenting a supposedly "long-lost PlayStation video game" titled Petscop. The 24-episode series ran from March 12, 2017, to September 2, 2019. The series received widespread coverage for its storytelling, authenticity, surrealism, and its active community of viewers.
The Russian Sleep Experiment is a creepypasta which tells the tale of 5 test subjects being exposed to an experimental sleep-inhibiting stimulant in a Soviet-era scientific experiment, and has become the basis of an urban legend. Many news organizations, including Snopes, News.com.au, and LiveAbout, trace the story's origins to a website, now known as the Creepypasta Wiki, being posted on August 10, 2010, by a user named OrangeSoda, whose real name is unknown.
Local 58 is a horror web series created by cartoonist Kris Straub. The series is a spin-off of Straub's Candle Cove creepypasta. Currently hosted on the YouTube channel LOCAL58TV, each video in the series is presented as footage of a fictional public access television channel located in Mason County, West Virginia named Local 58, with the call sign WCLV-TV, created in the late 1930s, which is continuously hijacked over a period of decades with a series of ominous and surreal broadcasts.
The Backrooms are a fictional concept first mentioned on a 2019 4chan thread. One of the best known examples of the liminal space aesthetic, the Backrooms are commonly depicted as an extradimensional space containing impossibly large expanses of empty rooms accessed by "no-clipping out of reality" in certain areas.
Gemini Home Entertainment is a horror anthology web series created by Remy Abode and periodically released on a YouTube channel of the same name. It is regarded as a foundational analog horror series. The main series, also known as the Full Boxset, is ongoing. Further videos have also been released since as part of the spin-off series Library.
Skinamarink is a 2022 Canadian experimental supernatural horror film written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature-length directorial debut. The film follows a young brother and sister who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing.
The Mandela Catalogue is an analog horror web series created by American YouTuber Alex Kister in 2021. It is set in the fictional Mandela County, Wisconsin, which is invaded by "alternates", otherworldly beings that use various forms of psychological torture on their victims with the ultimate goal of assuming their identity as "doppelgängers". The series became popular online through analysis of its story and reaction videos from internet users.
Backrooms is a web series created by American YouTuber Kane Parsons. It is loosely based on the Backrooms urban legend. The series debuted in 2022 with the short film "The Backrooms " which has over 57 million views as of March 2024. Parsons would expand his series to include fourteen more short films. The series is slated for a film adaptation with Parsons set to direct, alongside A24 producing.
" No Through Road " has amassed over two million views, spawned three sequels, and is considered a foundational work for both analog horror enthusiasts and indie found footage buffs.
