Analog horror has grown to be a significant trend on YouTube. Its aesthetic is rooted in the chromatically aberrated look of newscasts, television programmes, and VHS cassettes from the 1980s and 1990s. Some of these series, which are an outgrowth of the creepypastas and ARGs that have dominated the internet for well over a decade, exhibit real artistic potential deserving of a Sundance debut.
These videos describe tales of cosmic horror and animals from awful parallel dimensions, and they’re great for individuals who find modern Hollywood horror to be clichéd. Horror from YouTube’s early days generally involves cursed internet URLs or haunting Nintendo 64 game cartridges.
YouTuber Gooseworx, who is best known for their colourful, stylish animations, shocked their fans in 2018 with a strange video named “The Blue Channel,” which appeared to be a static-laced clip of a television showing only the colour blue. But in 2021, when the video “Blue Channel: Thalasin” was released, things really started to become weird.
The video, which is a parody of an old paid programming advert isement, is about the fictitious medication Thalasin, which is believed to allow users to instantly elicit specific feelings. However, when the segment shifts to a medicine designed to “extend the emotional palette,” things go from bizarre to horrifying.
Cornerfolk
Cornerfolk is a single-episode analogue horror film about a man who thinks unusual creatures are exploiting his house as a type of portal between universes. He asserts that they are the only species capable of travelling across dimensions, but as his infatuation worsens, he makes an attempt to accompany them to their “corner world.”
Cornerfolk isn’t really scary, but it’s a terrific illustration of how inventive and adaptable the genre can be. Cornerfolk is hardly more than a slideshow, but it has enough creativity to hold viewers’ attention even when the main topic is something as uninteresting as the corners of someone’s home.
ECKVA
ECKVA is a jumbled collection of recordings made by someone going by the name of S. H. Hawkins, and is thought to be a sequel to Marble Hornets, an internet ARG series that debuted in 2009. These video clips are reported to have come from the defunct ECKVA television studio, which is both scary and mysterious.
ECKVA is largely ambiguous and challenging to understand, as is the case with the majority of analogue horror series. The show’s distinctive presentation is its main selling point; episodes occasionally deviate from the standard hazy faux-VHS style to feature high-definition discovered footage or animated clips.
Gemini Home Entertainment
Gemini Home Entertainment will launch in the latter part of 2019. Gemini Home Entertainment offers a horrifying tale of parasitic human-like animals, extraterrestrial invasions, and cosmic horrors well beyond human comprehension. It is almost as notorious as Local 58, the show that is frequently credited with starting the analogue horror craze.
Gemini Home Entertainment, which is presented as a collection of VHS tapes, is uncannily accurate, and woe betide anyone who would be duped into believing they are actual movies. If you like this style of low-fi horror, you must see the series, which ended in 2021.
Local 58
Kris Straub, a cartoonist, developed the nine-part surreal horror series Local 58, the first of which was published in October 2017. As a collection of broadcast hijackings, it provides a highly hazy and perplexing story, the majority of which imply that something horrible is happening on the moon.
Although the genuine story could never be expressed so succinctly, certain instances suggest that a terrible lunar force may conceivably destroy the United States. It’s the ideal show for lore hunters who enjoy building their own hypotheses by breaking down each frame of a piece of media.
Petscop
Although it shares many of the traits of the genre and contributed to the rise in popularity of the new generation of retro-inspired online short films, Petscop isn’t a blatant example of analogue horror. Petscop is a compilation of twenty-four videos that pretends to be a let’s play of an upcoming PlayStation game. It gradually combines horror and nostalgia in a way that sticks in the minds of people who have pleasant memories of ’90s gaming.
Let’s play with the idea that the series is more than just a parody, of course. Some see it as a sort of allegory for the hotly debated method of rebirthing treatment because it has strong elements of abuse, neglect, and vengeance.
The Backrooms
The Backrooms, which gained popularity in 2019, is a piece of internet lore about an other world with bizarre architecture that is horrifying due to its uncanny nature. Although it was once just a creepypasta, the idea turned out to be a gold mine for amateur YouTube filmmakers.
There are other accounts that have posted what they claim to be recovered film from The Backrooms, but none are as well-known as the series created by YouTuber Kane Pixels. It’s arguably more dramatic than the majority of the horror films released by major studios today since it’s so extraordinarily well done and inventive.
The Mandela Catalogue
The Mandela Catalogue is a series of eleven videos divided into two seasons that tells a tale about how fear can be used to manipulate people. Later episodes investigate television and media, suggesting that they may also be useful instruments for instilling fear in a population. The initial episodes appear to focus on religion and how religious organisations might use fear to manipulate people.
Of course, this is only conjecture; the story is far too murky to draw any firm conclusions. Having said that, The Mandela Catalogue literally and figuratively warps and distorts familiar faces and situations into something very horrific.
The Walton Files
The Walton Files, a YouTube series by Martin Walls, has received praise as one of the internet’s finest examples of analogue horror since its April 2020 release. It’s one of the longest-running programmes in the category, offering well over an hour of content, and it confuses and horrifies viewers with a bizarre, jumbled story about a restaurant company with some sinister, unsettling secrets.
The Walton Files makes use of a lot of the themes and ideas made popular by the Five Nights At Freddy’s video game franchise, but Martin Walls’ movies arguably take a more sinister turn and employ a far more subtle approach.
This House Has People In It
This House Has People In It, a strange short film that was released in 2016 as part of a collection of experimental horror movies made in part by Adult Swim, follows a sequence of strange events that take place at what should be a typical birthday party in a suburban home. Although the most of the craziness is hidden in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Easter eggs, even less jaded audiences will find the movie to be absolutely disturbing.
The film, which purports to be footage from a home security system, invites viewers to the AB Surveillance Solutions website, which connects them to a larger ARG. This House Has People In It undoubtedly contributed to the development of later popular YouTube series, despite not being frequently referred to as an analogue horror piece.
