Analog Horror

Analog horror is commonly characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, little to no traditional jump-scares, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television and analog recordings. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Analog horror may also be influenced by found footage horror films, such as The Ring (1998) and The Blair Witch Project (1999). David Lynch's Inland Empire heavily influenced both No Through Road and Petscop, 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.

Analog horror could be regarded as a form or descendant of creepypasta legends. 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.

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).

The subgenre is typically cited as originating between the late 2000s and the mid-2010s Internet (mainly with YouTube) videos, specifically from Steven Chamberlain's No Through Road in January 2009, 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. The series, which quickly became successful, would later inspire works such as The Mandela Catalogue and The Walten Files. 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. Despite its positive reception, the show was canceled after airing only one season.

Marble Hornets had a film set in the same setting release in 2015, which was negatively received. A film adaptation for The Backrooms was announced to be in production in 2023, with Kane Parsons set to direct it.

No Through Road

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. Other plot aspects include all footage of the events being stolen from MI6 and uploaded online to YouTube.

Composed of four shorts, No Through Road has attained a cult following, and is considered a foundational work of the analog horror genre.

Local 58

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 up at the Moon or the night sky, as well as the in-universe Thought Research Initiative (TRI). Local 58's first video "Weather Service" was published in 2015 as a stand-alone short 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. Additionally, the series is responsible for naming the genre through its slogan, "ANALOG HORROR AT 476 MHz".

CH/SS

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. 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.

Archive 81

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. 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. 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. The podcast was adapted into a Netflix Original series, having released in 2016. The Netflix series was cancelled after one season.

Marble Hornets

Marble Hornets is an alternate reality game YouTube series created in 2009, based on the Slender Man creepypasta. 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. 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. 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. The film was negatively received.

Gemini Home Entertainment

Gemini Home Entertainment is a horror anthology series by Remy Abode that was initially released in 2019. 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” .

The Walten Files

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", created by Chilean internet personality Martin Walls. 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. 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.

The Mandela Catalogue

The Mandela Catalogue is a YouTube series created by twenty-year-old Alex Kister of Hubertus, Wisconsin in 2021. It is set in the fictional Mandela County, Wisconsin in the 1990s and 2000s, which is threatened by the presence of "alternates", doppelgängers who coerce their victims to kill themselves and can manipulate audiovisual media. Other plot aspects include Lucifer disguising himself as the biblical archangel Gabriel, shown through altered footage of episodes from The Beginners Bible. Composed of fourteen shorts, The Mandela Catalogue became popular online through analysis and reaction videos.

The Smile Tapes

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.

The Monument Mythos

The Monument Mythos is a YouTube webseries set in different alternate history versions of the United States. 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. Lovecraftian motifs are also present. Three seasons were produced, each consisting of 11 episodes. The series ran from August 26, 2020, to April 30, 2023. The storyline had been written in its entirety before the series' release, but the author began making changes to it starting with May 2021. The series' production included original music and voice acting.

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"." 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. 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"). According to the author in 2022, a community of followers was gathering in the series' Discord server, where various thematic events were organized.

Midwest Angelica

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.

Backrooms

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. It is based on the creepypasta of the same name, using the software Blender and Adobe After Effects, 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. This was later expanded into a series of sixteen shorts, following the employees of a company investigating the Backrooms. Parsons received a Creator Honors for the series at the 2022 Streamy Awards from The Game Theorists.

After receiving positive reviews from critics, 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.

Skinamarink

Written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball, Skinamarink is a supernatural horror film that first debuted at the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• Vaporwave
• Lost media
• Collage television

Works cited