Episode 59: Analog Horror

Hello, Internet, and welcome to Nobodies, the horror content podcast where we clean up the ugly things so you don't have to. Our bi-weekly show features two hosts and rotating guest content experts tackling the nitty-gritty complex horror topics with the hope of... making the genre more approachable for frequent flyers and newbies alike.

The goal of this show is to highlight diverse voices and perspectives in horror. This is your reminder that there may be discourse on this show that will challenge the way you look at the genre. So let's get ready to get ugly. I'm the ghost with the blog, Lonely, and I'm joined by my co-host in Partnering Crime. I am... I... Hold on. I have to giggle. I'm projectile varmint, also known as Suzanne. I remember learning that on horror movie weekly that you weren't, uh,

What are the other options? Susan. Who is a Susan? I feel like Susan is the Karen of the, like, 80s. I've never met anyone named Susan who goes by Susie. That's so interesting. They've always just been Susans. But, you know, I was talking to somebody else earlier today. I was talking to our good pal Jake from my wedding that you walked down the aisle with. I did. Bless your heart. He was trying to remember your podcasting name and he's on the.

cord mic and he goes, you know, you know, Susie, she's a weasel or something. A weasel? Didn't he have an FCD? Oh, wait, no, I didn't get that. No. No, I didn't get the one with the STD. Yes, folks. I mean, there's only so many groomsmen, so I don't want to expose anybody, but there was no STDs by the time December rolled around. It was a terrible one, though, at least. Yeah, he's a sworn virgin now, bless his heart. But there are no Susans or STDs, only Susannes in this episode. And more.

We're about to embark on a fun adventure this evening. I don't think Susie's very pleased with me on this watch list, but I think our guests might be, at least partially. Tonight's guest is an infamous fan favorite and one of our dearest internet friends. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, my favorite Southern gentleman has been posting reviews on Instagram since 2020 and hosting the Halloween Babies.

podcast since 2023. Born on Halloween, he's a lifelong horror fan and has worked on a handful of independent films as a makeup effects artist. He's also a multi-instrumentalist and enjoys filming and scoring horror videos for his YouTube channel. He is our go-to commenter on the obscure and weird limits of the genre. Welcome back, the man, the myth, the legend. hello ladies and hello listeners and uh i have my pet monkey with me so i'll i'll try to keep him in control

Oh, oh man. Oh man. I don't know. This is, this is really starting off. We're getting off kilter immediately, but it's only going to get weirder because Susie, what are we talking about this evening?

Well, we're going to have so much fun tonight. Let me just tell you, because tonight we are talking about one of the newest subgenres in horror that was born out of the social media generation. analog horror so according to studio binder analog horror is a sub-genre of horror that draws heavily on the style and aesthetics of vintage analog media so thinking vhs and cassettes this type

of horror establishes an eerie atmosphere through grainy footage, distorted audio, and archaic technology. So it's heavily influenced by the found footage genre, particularly in its attempts at pseudo realism. fiction and reality. So you'd think that I would be a huge fan of this subgenre but it also has this narrative style that relies heavily on subtext and environmental storytelling and the storylines are kind of fragmented.

And they're relying more on the audience to infer the meanings and sometimes danger within the plot. So a lot of these movies really don't have much of a plot. Or if it does, you only get a little piece of it at a time.

The sights and sounds of analog horror are what really leave an impact on the audience. This subgenre is known for featuring glitched and distorted visuals that rely on the uncanny valley. And the uncanny valley is a psychological experience. of an event or a thing that is unsettling in a way that feels oddly familiar rather than mysterious so i mean all of this description lonely i should love analog horror you should

But something tells me we will hear differently shortly. But more on the Uncanny Valley. Believe it or not, I did a science fair project in eighth grade on the Uncanny Valley. Kind of an expert, if I do say so myself. But what was the science experiment? Did you have some like dolls that look like real babies?

close close so what i did was basically i like printed out like pictures of things on the uncanny valley so like one was a a creepy animatronic and one was like a zombie and like a baby doll and then i had people rank how uncomfortable the photos and made them on a scale of one to ten and obviously it created the the bell curve of the images mimicked the uncanny valley curve almost exactly so i got a first place ribbon but you know

But more on what I'm talking about, this valley. What the hell am I talking about? As Susie mentioned, the uncanny valley is the phenomenon that reflects that the human brain reacts negatively to things that appear to be human but aren't quite human. This was initially used to describe anthropomorphic robots and the way that people felt uncomfortable around robots that were hard to distinguish between actual people. So thinking of like hyper-realistic nursing mannequins or that sort of thing.

Some theories offer different explanations on why we have this response to the uncanny, but one interesting theory is that there may have been a predator at one time in human history that resembled humans, but were not quite human. And then we are still afraid of things that look slightly human through evolution.

In addition to the use of uncanny images, analog also relies on a mix of nostalgia and liminal space, often called hijacked nostalgia. So more definitions for you. What are liminal spaces? These are empty, abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, surreal. These spaces often seem absent of other living things and people and imply that you are alone, which gives.

same feeling as the uncanny valley but broadly liminality refers to this idea of passing between states like past or present And for many, the images of liminal spaces in analog horror make them remember things from their childhood, like amusement parks, the lens of a camcorder, PSAs, and nursery rhymes. And at one point in most analog horror, all of these images begin to be manipulated or twisted. And that gives us that sense of betrayal or fear.

But before Liminal Spaces became like this hip thing with Gen Z on 4chan, they were also used by directors like Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch in The Shining and Twin Peaks. So thinking about those large shots, what did we just... watch susie for the freaking iceberg what was that one lost highway lost highway so thinking about like that house that's a great example of liminal space and lost highway and though the culture surrounding analog horror lives and breathes primarily on the internet

The recent 2023 feature-length film, Skinner Rink, catapulted analog horror into the public eye. And as we know, even on our nobodies, family, Skinner Rink remains insanely divisive. And that speaks to the mixed feelings of the song. genre at large. This is what you're getting at, Susie. And many people consider analog media to be bare bones, trite, and pedantic. So, we're just going to rip the band-aid off.

Where are our thoughts on analog horror? Before we even talk about the films we watched, do we think analog horror is effective or ineffective?

as a subgenre and why and Billy you can start us off because clearly Susie's already charged on the issue um yeah so my thoughts on it are um so through the introduction into uh its introduction into horror it allows for a different color palette of unsettling images and sounds that ignite something in our subconscious and being a artist i find a slight connection to art brute

uh with analog horror and art roots a term coined by the french painter jean dubuffet in the 40s and it's raw art or outsider art And it particularly referred to art by naive or primitive or even crudely created by artists outside the academic tradition of fine art.

Art Brute was a little more for like the art of the insane, but I kind of tagged this more on the art of the uninformed, not saying that these creators are uninformed, but they're working in a territory that is like breaching new ground.

I think when you create something new, you have to take the good with the bad. And in the early stages, you're going to get a lot of bad. But all it takes is one inspired individual with the wherewithal to curate those elements and to change the horror cinema landscape.

I like what you said there about people being like this idea of like being uninformed in quotes, because in a way, the production of analog horror is also incredibly accessible. We're not making blockbusters in analog right now. Even Skimmering is.

like what we would call a stereotypical blockbuster. It's pretty much a micro budget film. So when we look at a lot of the examples of analog, it's people who want to get creative using tools at their disposal, you know, using things that they can. edit on their computer using media that already exists so i think that's like a great way to look at you know where we're at currently because it is it's a bit of a baby genre it's brand new we're just seeing some of this content coming out before i

talk about my reactions to the genre. Susie, do you want to get it off your chest? How are you feeling about analog horror? Ineffective, effective? Well, it's... It's hard because I've seen some really amazing analog horror that I've watched over and over again and it still gets me each time. But like for every... good example i see and like worthwhile watching enjoyment uh there are so many just tedious watches i i've been looking for this one

creator who does these liminal spaces but she also is like an act actor in her own youtube shorts and i can't i can't find her i watched a bunch of her stuff one time and she it's almost like the back rooms but a little bit more like poppy and full of color and she jumps in and out of her own shots. I like the back rooms and those kind of analogs.

But the ones that rely on this fragmented narrative and plot structure that doesn't make sense, that's where these shorts and actually longer ones lose me. Okay. Well... I'll be the person. I mean, I champion Skin of Marin, so I don't think anybody's going to be surprised that I... I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of analog horror. I don't think it would be something I actively seek out. Probably...

Because it scares the shit out of me, honestly. I think I am the target demographic of analog horror. Because it... really hits a nerve for me it gives me like that unnerving like heart racing really uncomfortable have to pause Fast forward when I'm watching a lot of this because it does give me such a visceral reaction. And not a lot of horror does that for me anymore. You know, especially as we've kind of embarked on the extreme horror adventure.

I feel nothing. I watched freaking bring her back a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, okay. And so it takes a lot to get a reaction out of me at this point, and analog really does it. Something about... Maybe because it appeals to a lot of my own fears, like as a person, you know, as a person, I'm deeply afraid of the dark. So, I mean, analogies like 85% staring into the dark and wondering what's there. And I think it's insanely creative.

lot of the creators on this work you know you got to give them credit they sat down and really put this shit together so i really i think there's a lot of potential here and i have a little bit of it yeah so yeah i forget you don't like pov do you like pov the subgenre or do you i don't understand the question i'm sorry like the point of view like where yeah like

dash cam and um so i've to this day i still have not seen dash cam um so i don't know if i've seen a lot of horror i don't think i can name a lot of no i haven't seen are you talking about screen life But it's like a lot of it is shot in the point of view of like you are the viewer is also the person who's in the movie experiencing it all. No, I can't. Well, I can't say I have a lot of examples of that. I don't know whether I like it or not.

because a lot of this analog horror is like a lot of pov like you are the audience member is the person that is experiencing everything with the characters in the shorts because I noticed that was a huge theme in a lot of these shorts we watched was the point of view was the viewer. Right. It really relies on nervous anticipation.

and you know they kind of like play that you're you're always waiting for that big boo moment you know and some of them yeah yeah and you're waiting there's one in particular that we watched that like i really liked And I was waiting for that and it didn't come. And then there was another one that I didn't like. And then, of course, it throws that in at the end. And we'll get to that.

It's, I don't know. So I need to ask that before we get into the films, because listen, listeners, I keep trying to do corners reports and.

Y'all don't call me, so I can't put you in the episode if you don't call me. So I have no idea what you guys think about analog horror listeners, so call in. But Billy and Susie, I need to know then. So when you look at liminal... like images liminal spaces do you do they evoke any of the feelings that we talked about like regarding the uncanny valley or do you think it's just a bunch of like baloney billy thoughts i think it really depends

um how ambiguous the images are if they have some type of a connection with me yes you know some of these shorts are just kind of like I mean, obviously rooms or, you know, if you just have like a display of computers, I'm not really getting things of that. One trope that seems to be kind of big in here is like redacted faces.

where you have people sitting with like black boxes over their face. I find that really creepy. And I really think the effectiveness of what I'm seeing is also dictated by like the audio. what's what's going on back in the background yes and uh yeah so it's like and that's something that i really like to play with um just on my own filming something for 30 seconds and then

putting different music with it to see if I can like alter the tone of the visuals. The audio is a huge, like massive part about analog, I think. And that adds to it as well because I don't know. Maybe it goes with the suspense, but you hear a lot of weird shit in a lot of the stuff we're going to be talking about, like things that are just below the surface. They have nothing to do with what's on the screen, but you hear it and then you're like, oh my God, what?

What was that? Like, am I supposed to be paying attention to that? Does it matter? So Susie, do you have any responses to liminal images?

well you were talking earlier about the hijacked nostalgia and a lot of the liminal spaces are are things from the 80s and 90s like toys r us or like the mcdonald's playhouse and they make me like excited excited and nervous at the same time especially because it's it's not ending it keeps going um it's a little creepy to me but it's more like this nervous excitement when i see liminal spaces and tonight we're going to have some of these

shorts that include liminal spaces and we have a few different categories of analog films tonight they range from a few minutes long to a feature-length film we'll talk about at the end and all of the media we're discussing tonight can be found on youtube for free at the time of recording so be sure to check out these films and let us know what you think

First we're going to start off with our minis which are micro media clips and they are less than five minutes each. Most of the media in our first two categories are selections of internet series and collections that forums identified as the scariest installments.

So we're not necessarily going to watch like the entire series. We just have picked a few out and we're going to start with dog nightmares. And the one you want to look for is childhood dreams. It is three minutes long. Dog Nightmares is an analog horror series created by Piggy Soda in 2022. It interposes media created by the artist with tapes by William Wegman's original Made for Sesame Street, which features real dogs and human.

Clothing, participating in human activities. Childhood Dreams is episode two of chapter one in the series. In this episode, the audience surveys some interesting animal photography and drawings. So straight away, you're thrown into this.

little short with like a photograph of an animal and then it'll cut to a child's drawing of the animal like a crayon drawing and it'll go through a couple of those and then you'll get like a weird imposed what would you say that is lonely like almost like memories for me like they threw in like a memory to like this secession of

images well i think that's the that plays to the title so the title of this segment is childhood dreams so i think it's sort of like they're piecing together it's like a trip to the zoo or something where they're piecing together like the photos of what actually happened at the zoo and then whoever the child whoever's remembering it

is piecing it together along the way. So we see this series of photos and then the drawings come and then as we move through the drawings, things start to become amiss. There are some people in the photos. And Billy, do you want to talk about what happens to their faces in these photos? It's the aforementioned redacted faces. So this is just like a lot of creepy juxtaposition of images. You get kind of like a chill when you see, at least I do.

just like a father and a daughter sitting around but there's blocks over their faces so you don't know what's going on and it's it's just super eerie I just got a thought. So you know sometimes when you're watching true crime and they show you crime scene photos and the faces are blocked off, but the body is there?

like that's kind of the feeling i get when i see those it's like looking at a crime scene photo like the crime scene photos that you're talking about For me, my first instinct, my first feeling when I was watching this short was this was like a memory of childhood abuse.

That just like wavered through my head the entire time I'm watching this, like happy memories at the zoo. And then, oh, I need to forget that person because they did something bad to me. And then walking up the stairs into this room where something bad may have happened. You see a little girl from behind.

And then at the very end of this short, there's a mom, I'm assuming the mom, like collecting the child's drawings. And the last drawing is of this like creepy image. And I'm like, oh, children draw what they feel. And I just thought. child abuse and it left a really terrible feeling in my whole body and I was like I do not want to watch any more of these I'm glad we put this one at the top I'm so like it's interesting that you caught that Susie because I didn't

I'll be honest. I didn't know what the fuck was going on here. I thought that there was a... So the big reveal, listeners, is that there's a picture. They've drawn a photo of the window in the bedroom that we assume that we're in. And there's a creepy dog man.

in the window and then we look to the window and you can just make out is it a creepy dog man we're not quite sure but it's creepy so i was like oh we're just waiting for the scare which is the creepy dog man but i like your interpretation not that i want to like i want the story to be about child abuse but i like your interpretation a lot better because it adds something that is

wasn't previously there and i think i wonder if because you're an art teacher and you see what children are doing more often like what they're actually creating i wonder if that gives you like an insight to it billy did you get that interpretation at all or did i miss it and you you got it too i i did not really um some of these i have to admit i really didn't pick up on an interpretation of it um this

This form is – I'm really into it. I like the experimentation of it, but I almost wonder if I'm too much of an old man to pick up on some of these things in the sense of… Just the nature of what they're showing in relation to my experience with it and the artist's experience with it. Because I feel like a lot of these creators are... a lot younger than me. And they're kind of almost like romanticizing things that they never experienced. Yeah, I'm not really sure how to explain that.

No, I think that's totally because we talked about this when we talked about Skidmerink, I think on our yearly review or recap, we talked about how for Skidmerink, a lot of the people who don't enjoy Skidmerink are. or an older generation of horror viewers. And a lot of the people who enjoy Skinner Inc. are people from a bit of a younger...

like on the cusp of the generations, you know? So I wonder if there really is just a difference in generation in terms of what people prefer, but we can move on to the next one, which has a little bit more of a straightforward.

interpretation i think at least so our next short is from the series local 58 and the short we'll be talking about is you are on the fastest available route it's three minutes long Local 58 is an analog horror series created by Chris Straub in 2017 after the rise of his creepypasta, Candle Cove.

Local 58 is an extension of that story and is made of public access television broadcasts that are supposedly being hijacked. And many consider the series to be the first analog series found on the Internet. You Are on the Fastest Available Route is episode three in the series. And in this episode, the audience is out on a drive with the help of their trusty GPS.

So this one I thought was really fun. So we're in the car and this is where like the dash cam comes in. So we're looking as if we're driving, you know, in the car with this person and we're just headed on the highway and all of a sudden. We're in the woods. Why are we in the woods, you might ask? Not quite sure. But the GPS isn't too pleased. So, Susie, what did you think about this one and our insidious GPS?

This one was one of the ones I couldn't really get into. I mean, that initial hop from one location to another is something you see in analog horror, and we'll see it again in some of the shorts we're going to talk about. But this one just seemed like... a boring car ride to me. Did I miss something? Yes. So this one really relies on like the nervous anticipation. And if you blink it blank, you will miss at around two minutes, 47 seconds.

There's an image of what I took to be like an alien. I guess I'd think, yeah. Or it's at least that, it's that, it's that. it's that that typical um long skinny like bulbous head type alien shape and it's two minutes and 47 seconds you're saying two minutes 47 seconds yeah two okay and i think the car's going forward and that at that moment boom you see the thing and then i think the car that's when the car's like it's like we got to get out of here and it starts kind of reversing so so the

Oh, it's there. It's there. It is there. It's an alien. It's there. You're freeze-framing it? Okay, confirmed. Your timestamp was right, Billy. Oh, my God. Well, so the crux of analog, there are like two common storylines in analog that we're going to hear come up multiple times. So one is this idea of broadcast being hijacked by something, aliens, some other creature.

That's a big thing is this idea of the media being used against us. And the other common storyline in analog is doppelgangers for some reason. those are the two main storylines and actually if we're going to complain about anything with analog those are my complaints that we were just seeing really two storylines in a lot of this it's either a doppelganger or an alien but

I think this one's kind of funny and cute because, I mean, it's cute because the alien is like hijacking the GPS because at one point the GPS says, turn your headlights off. Excuse me? imagine if you're driving in the woods at night and your gps was like turn your headlights off no one else is unnerved i'm unnerved i would probably drop dead right there I'm just excited I saw the alien in this one. It's still not like that much better, but it moved up like a happy night.

Okay, so this one, like I said, this is three minutes. So we're going to move on. Let's sink our teeth into something a little bit longer. Let's move into our midis. See, I was going for like miniskirt, midi skirt, maxi skirt. That's what I was going for. That's my vibe here. But...

The videos are mid-length media clips. These are the length of most common short films, ranging between 10 and 12 minutes. And oh boy, we are going to talk about World's Weirdest Animals from Gemini Home Entertainment, which is eight minutes. Gemini Home Video is an analog series created by Remy Abode in 2019. And this series is in the style of the educational VHS box set teaching videos that, you know, people, you know, think of like the zoo tapes.

And the series is about our new neighbors and alien species. World's Weirdest Animals is the first episode in the series, and in this episode, we are learning about our new neighbors, the woodcrawlers, who are excellent predators and nests in the homes of large families. I just gotta say...

This is the only piece of horror media in recent memory that made me verbally scream. I'll be honest. This scared the shit out of me. So much so that I actually had to get up, turn all the lights on. This really fucked me up. I'll be honest. That's funny. Why? Did no one else get scared by this? Well, my only real note is this straddles the line between horror and comedy.

and then i know and then i have home alone written next to it i could not stop thinking about the scene in home alone where he has the cardboard cutouts dancing around on the i guess he puts him on a train whatever he did to fool the the

the wet bandits and that's i once i saw that that's all i could think of all right i'm gonna break it down for anybody out there who's listening who hasn't seen this so we start off with this educational video and it's showing like these weird birds doing weird bird things and then it goes into this found footage like point of view type style where somebody's in the woods watching this house and they're zooming in into the house windows and you see these very humanoid like

people creatures but they don't walk they kind of just glide over the floor and the way they're moving is very uneasy it really reminded me of the episode the gentleman from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and they just glide over the floor lonely and I think that was like the really like awkward like feeling i was getting watching it and then when they came to the window because they just glided over to the window and then they noticed somebody was out there filming and then bam it ends

it was like i literally screamed so there's a jump there's one jump scare in this as susie mentioned so there's a lot of you know billy you were talking about this is like long drawn out like scare like we're waiting we're waiting we're waiting what's gonna happen and this one hits you

oh my god in my opinion is you're sitting here and this guy is like looking through first of all it's kind of creepy at his baseline he's like peeping into these windows and we're not really quite sure like if he's looking at people or what the fuck these things are And it lunges at the window. And it's more so, it's not just the lunging. It's the fact that you know that man is dead. That man is gone.

he's like far gone he did not survive whatever the fuck happened to him and gemini home video is where we start seeing what i consider to be one of the scariest pieces of analog for me which is the weird like overlays of text that are displaced and like don't make sense in terms of the story so billy not sure if you want to talk about any of that where you know we're going through these birds and all of a sudden we start reading some things that are not about birds

Right. I don't really have any notes on that. There's others that do have that that I've found really striking. Yeah, like I said, I could not get over the... The home alone aspect of it. Sorry about that. So the woodcrawlers, they talk about how they move into the homes of large families because it's easier to assimilate. Like, what the fuck? That's not a bird. What are we talking about right now?

I'm going to say my recommendation, if any of you guys watch anything from this watch list, humor me and watch Gemini home video, World's Weirdest Animals.

No, if you're going to watch anything from our list today, I got two other ones that I think you should watch. And the next one is The Backrooms found footage and it is nine minutes. The Backrooms is an analog horror series created by Kane Parsons. I think he's also known as Cane Pixel. yeah yeah yeah yeah and he made this in 2022 it was inspired by the creepypasta of the same name and he actually came up with this idea when he was 16 years old in the series a company successfully opened

a portal to another realm known as the complex. The back room's lore became wildly popular during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown through TikTok. So he made this using Blender to create a test animation of a chair in the back rooms being thrown and hitting a wall and this shot would later be used in his whole video series.

He also used Adobe After Effects alongside Blender to create this video, and it took him about a month to complete the short. It is amazing, and it's so amazing that A24 just announced the production of the Backrooms for... feature-length film with Kane Parsons directing. So that would make him the youngest director in A24 history at just 19 years old. And James Wan, I think, is on board to produce. And then we have a couple actors that are always also...

slated for the lead roles and they aren't your typical horror actors. So I wonder what we're going to get. I believe they're starting to film that right around now. He's on his summer break. Oh, yeah, because he's a little college boy. Man, I've watched some interviews with him. I don't know how this kid does it because he's making these and he talks about how he writes a song a day and does this and does that. And I'm like, I can barely get out of bed and go do something. And he's doing...

a year's worth of work in like an afternoon. He's young. He's got that young blood. He's not, he's probably not neurotypical. And I mean that in the most loving, loving way. Maybe he's got like, you know, OCD or something. And he might have two loving parents, too, so that could be something different. Yeah, he's from a stable home. They encouraged me. They said, you can do this. You can do it. So, what happens in the back rooms?

all right so this is mostly a found footage type uh episode where in the series it follows this young filmmaker who literally stumbles into a demented abandoned office building and searches for a way out so it starts off with these kids

I think they're supposed to be kids. Maybe they're kids playing grownups, but they like somehow go into this other dimension by going through this brick wall. And then it's the point of view, the found footage, and you're just walking down these hallways, these really weird.

almost like office building hallways and as it's it starts off like not that creepy it's just kind of you're looking around it's kind of interesting that like weird anxiety excitement i explained but then there's a creature in the back rooms with the person wandering and he's trying to get away from the creature and then the very end of this

he like falls down this slide and the slide like opens up a portal into like the sky and he's falling through the sky. And the last scene is him like hitting the ground and the camera just almost like, what is that movie that I really like about New York? the found footage almost like clover fear where the camera just like falls on the ground and like starts through just like keeps recording for a little bit overall i think this was like a 10 out of 10 for a short for me so

Let's just give you some terms here. So when he, it's called, as the kids say, clipping. So we're clipping in and out of the back rooms. That's what happens when you show up in the multiple dimensions. Well, except for the part where he clips into the literal sky and then, you know, goes splat. But the one comment I will give and then I'll pass it over to Billy is, can I just say that our main character is far too calm for this situation?

homeboy just like literally like falls into an alternate dimension and he's like oh my god where am i i'd be screaming crying throwing up like no i would not this would not be would not be a good space for me also then he proceeds to not follow any directions the entire the directions are on the walls and he does not follow them but whatever

Billy, thoughts on the back rooms? So I really like these and... I end up watching a bunch of them, and I actually don't know how many there are because every time I think I've seen them all, I find like 20 more. So I'm not even sure how many. I think I watched about 20 or 25 of them or something like that. and i like them to varying degrees some of them there's not really much going on some of them seem like they're he's kind of just exploring uh his tools and

There was one in particular that's titled found footage number two. That's about 13 minutes and 22 seconds long. and i think that's the one it's it's similar to this one where there's a i believe it's a young girl filming and um there's she's got a piece of tape on the on a floor of a square and she's dropping objects into it and they're disappearing and she takes a tape measure to stick down to see how far it goes down and it keeps going down and then all of a sudden she falls into it

And again, lonely, like this, this person is acting like it's just, oh, I tripped and like, you know, fell. And they're just kind of like, oh, hello, anyone there? Like, they're not freaking out. See, I feel like that's how I would be, though.

No. Oh, my God. i i would say if i'm in this situation i would i mean i would probably be i wouldn't be freaking freaking out but i would be more vocal you know um and then another one that i liked was called reunion and that's about another one that's about 13 minutes long But yeah, do you guys have any idea how many of these are there? I guess there's some that are like fan made too as well. So they just keep going. Yeah, this has become like a phenomenon with the kids.

People are obsessed with this to the point where people are not that they think it's real. I don't know. They're like trying to clip into the back rooms for real. And people will go into abandoned places and, quote, try to clip into the back rooms. is this like the slender man of oh my god you're right suzy it is yes it's like the slender man of your generation

But some of them and some I think some of these people creators are like they're being very precious about it, too, because they're like, you need to follow the rules. And, you know, that's Slender Man, too. Yeah, that's Slender Man. Oh, no, there's going to be a dateline coming up. I know. We called it. You heard it here first. So let's move on to something less interesting to me.

in the back rooms and that was the walton files and its introductory tape it's 11 minutes long the walton files is an analog horror series created by martin walls in 2023 this series is inspired by five nights at freddy's and follows the story of an animatronic family dining chain called bombs burgers so this is the introductory tape and it's the first episode in the series and in this episode the viewer is trained on bombs burgers new higher policy

see so i mean i actually had to when i worked at starbucks i had to watch something like this which told you like how to be a starbucks employee but this one goes into the realm of analog by I can't even explain what's happening here. I'm with you on that. I found this one just like too abstract and scattershot. It's showing like the introductory video. Then it's showing animatronic.

characters singing kind of like five nights at freddy's and it really just went on too long and it made no sense it was grainy it hopped all over the place because first we're watching that employee video then a cartoon then a missing poster

of Walter from Bondsburgers flashes on the screen and then it goes into this found footage. It's almost like it couldn't find its footing and I have auditory processing issues where I can't understand much of what I see without subtitles i have to watch everything with subtitles that's why i don't go to the movies much but this was so hard to watch because i couldn't understand anything i was hearing it plus plus i think for us being

a bit older i find myself with a lot of these being like fix the fucking tracking fix the fucking tracking turn that knob so i thought this was boring i really did and i it almost felt like when some so when people are saying they don't like analog horror because it's slow and it's like pedantic this is a great example in my opinion sorry to the creator of this and i think where it goes wrong

I think the way you described it, Susie, that they didn't know where they were going and they didn't know where to land was a great thing. But I think also, like it says it's inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's. It literally is just Five Nights at Freddy's.

yeah like it's just like they interpose like a different set of animatronics and there's a difference between something being like inspired by and literally just being like the dollar store copy and you're working with five nights at freddy's like it's you're not working with gems

to start off like to replicate so not a lot happens here like Susie said we have the the intro tape there's some like distorted audio and then we get the the guy going into the woods at night to the abandoned restaurant and

He doesn't make it out. Okay. That's really it. There's not a jump scare here. I understand it's the first part of a series, so it's probably setting up a lot of this, but it didn't do it particularly well. Do we have any other thoughts on this? You need the punch on the first. episode so you want to watch the rest of it this just like punched me in the face and knocked me out

Yeah, like this one, I was watching these with my father-in-law and he has decided he officially hates analog horror because this put him to sleep. The whole entire watch list put him to sleep. He was not a fan. He also can't hear anything.

Love you, Doug, but you can't hear anything. So it probably didn't make his viewing experience very good. But he did love this next one, and I cannot wait to hear what Susie has to say about this one, because I... I thought this was cool as fuck. And that is Possibly in Michigan from 1983. Directed by Cecilia Condit. And it is a 12 minute short.

And this is the only piece of media on the list with an actual IMDb page and synopsis. And the synopsis is two women are chased through a shopping mall by a stalker named Arthur. So in the year of the film's release, a clip of this was shown by the 700 Club as an example of gay anti-family and anti-men media. Love that. My favorite kind of media.

And more recently, the film has gained a cult following and notoriety among Gen Z through social media, first being used in 2015 on 4chan and now still being actively used on TikTok a decade later. So basically on TikTok, they're sampling the media. So the sounds from the songs and everything, they're making a shit ton of TikToks about them. And it's fresh and vibrant and 80s sexy.

I keep saying sexy with analog horror. I don't know if that's going to be synonymous with it. But this is from 1983. Like they had weird shit back in 1983. And when I was thinking about it, I was like a little shocked. But then I was thinking, you know, since the dawn of time, when people have been creating art, there's been weird people creating art. So you've got.

like dolly and the surrealists creating really weird stuff that looks very similar to this so if you liked possibly in michigan go check out dolly and the surrealists and some of the videos that they were making even andy warhol did some really strange stuff like this i have a question for both of you though so the guy chasing arthur in the mall chasing these women i got like shining vibes of the the like dog guy that you see in the

Or the pig man mask that you see in the room really quickly at the end. You following me at all? Yes, yes. And I was like, was there a little inspiration there? No, not at all. Maybe because I was really focused on the allegory that was happening. I didn't even make the connection, but you're probably right. Oh, I don't know. The Shining was 1980. This was 1983. But you were talking about the allegory? Go on. Yes.

So, of course, this is gay, anti-family, anti-men media, obviously. But in reality, this director seems super freaking cool. So, Cecilia.

You're not on Instagram, I already checked, but, you know, come on the show. Love to hear what this movie is actually about. But the allegory it's been alluded to is basically, I guess not much of an allegory, but it's like rape culture, essentially. The idea that this is just... colorful almost like they made a play about women walking home alone at night but made it really surrealist and strange.

the man arthur is portrayed like as a wolf at some points and he's like stalking them and nobody believes them except these two women and the only thing they have to believe what's happening is each other it's just like a really cool like good for her

Why is it so dreamy and romantic and sexy if it's portraying something that's disgusting and great? see it as dreamy like in like lacy outfits putting on makeup had like the wind blowing through their hair Because that's the way the Predator sees them. That's the way the Predator sees them. We're viewing them through the eyes. The Predator doesn't see them as beautiful. Racists don't see their targets as beautiful. They see them as like, I need to dominate you and put power over you.

i don't know okay well the way i saw it was that there it's like a play on like hyper femininity and this idea because in the story you have these two women and then you have our our singular male character who isn't quite like he's a man, but he's also, he has a mask and his face is really weird. And sometimes he's portrayed as a wolf. So he could just be like a creature of masculine energy type of creature thing. But these are the two.

like they're they're opposite ends of the spectrum so they portray the women as like hyper feminine as a contrast to that masculine energy in my opinion it was also um later reinforced as a queer narrative and was shown at moma for like a lesbian narrative so i don't know billy what did you take from this one

i i thought it was amazing i loved it um they're both consuming for different reasons um you know you got like the stalker murder cannibal lesbian story going on and it the the aesthetics of it reminded me of like an 80s kids show like morning kids show mixed with like weird

like i was reminded of like sonic youth videos like early on where it was just like maybe kim gordon standing there with some weirdness playing behind her and she's kind of singing a little bit off key and weirdness and saying strange things um the the sing-songy delivery of all the dialogue was was great um i watched this several times and if anyone's interested uh there's a interview with a director on youtube under um eternal family is the name of the uh channel

And the interviews, I think it's about maybe a 15-minute long interview, but the way they've edited the interview is very similar to possibly in Michigan, where they have all this weird stuff in the background, and it's very artistic. So the plot for the listeners is there's obviously two women being chased through the mall. So we get these really nice montages of like the 80s mall culture.

r.i.p because malls are dead isn't that so sad so they're chased through this mall so you get a lot of like cool imagery with that and there's all this original music that is like sing-songy but also like like it's dreamlike but you get the sense the entire time that something is wrong and You know, every shot you can see the stalker, Arthur, like peering in the background. And eventually he follows one of our women home and Arthur meets his demise.

They chop him up and they eat him, which I think is great. Who can name a better way to end a film except chopping up men and eating them? And I don't know. I think it's freaking cool as hell. I really do. I think this was really freaking cool. So did you like it though, Susie? I did. I enjoyed it. And it seemed almost like something that could have been made today to look like the 80s and captured it.

perfectly yeah right right i was really surprised to find out that this was like one of the few ones it's actually i know i know some of these are taking footage from them and splicing it in but this is like a person

who was there, made it then, and it's still out there. Great productivity. It's a great example of what... analog is trying to be you know what i mean like this is like probably one of the clearest examples of what they're aiming for and this was super cool apparently it's i think it's either a a double or a trio it's a set of films there are other ones that go along with this universe but i did not watch the others so you know any interest somebody tell us more

But I think there was something real quick. I think there was something with the film before this that she did the story in it where they're where they're talking about, oh, I dated a guy who told me that he wanted to eat me. And I think that it either happened to her or a friend of hers. And so it's kind of based in reality. And it has that. I know when I was reading up on the director, all of her work around this time had that same.

I don't know if it was going for feminism take on it, but it has that like female like lens going throughout. So definitely something to revisit in the future.

But we can move on to another one of my favorites from this list, which is the Mandela Catalog. This is what actually introduced me to analog horror. And we're going to be talking about the Mandela Catalog Volume 1. This is an analog horror series created by... Alex Kister in 2021. And the series follows the fictional Mandela County dealing with an attack by shape-shifting entities known as the alternates.

We're going to be talking about Volume 1, and this is the second episode in the series, and begins to unravel the first appearances of the Alternates in Mandela County. It is 18 minutes long, and Billy, you want to get us started on this one? So the thing that I was really just hung up on about this one were like all these horror mantras that were going on, all these weirdness, you know, do not speak too much. You might accidentally reveal your fear.

And one of the weirdest ones, Daddy Didn't Tuck Me In. Yeah, what do you think this one's really saying? What's your view on this one, Lonely? So... Well, this is probably another one that really scared the shit out of me. So I think, so I get what you're saying.

get where you're going billy and i think we're all safe let me establish the scene first and i'll go back to your question so the ultimates are basically we're following the united states department of temporal phenomenon and they are talking we're watching this video that's showing And basically what we find is that they are like people.

But there's not people. So there's something off about them that is quite strange. And thinking about some of those text overlays and like the strange audio clips that we sometimes hear in this, Billy. Dare I say, this might be a foil for trauma. Am I reading into it? Probably. But it really plays with... like spaces of like the home because in this everything happens in like the person's house so it's like making an enemy of those rooms and of those spaces in my opinion susie want to weigh in

This one was interesting. So it's rooted in reality, which a lot of this analog horror starts off rooted in reality and then goes off the rails. What I liked about this one, which... is weird because i didn't like it about the other one is how it it goes from one type of media to the next so you'll get like the found footage and then you'll get just a screen with two pictures of two people having a conversation together and it'll literally type out their dialogue and then it'll it'll flash to

you know an ominous figure on the screen this one had a plot and the plot i could understand and follow i think it was a little too long for me but i like what they were trying to do overall should we get into the plot though so that people can know what what's going on here

so yeah there's a general is about the temporal we're watching a video on how to identify the alternates but we also have this subplot here about what are our what are our gentlemen's names mark mark is one of them What's the other guy's name? Caesar. So Mark and Caesar are pals and they someone has to leave the house. One of them has to leave the house. And I believe I think Mark goes to Caesar's house. Question mark.

And he has to go check the video cameras because there's all of these things, these precautions they have to put in place to make sure that the alternates don't get into the house or that the alternates don't accidentally get exposed as a real person. So he asked his friend. take his mom to the hospital because she may have seen something that scared her so much that she got hurt.

Mark has to go check the video cameras at the house or turn them on while Caesar is out of the home. And then some things happened to Mark. Billy, you want to talk about that? I honestly don't remember what happened to Mark. Mark does not... It does not bode well for Mark. So Mark begins a downward spiral into either insanity or something because he begins to see strange things. He begins to see things out of the corner.

of his eye he starts we start seeing all these drawings and at one part at one point we get an idea that maybe mark has been seeing shit all along susie did you get that too oh bad decision mark I have a gift for you. All of the text I want on the screen was deliberate. And each thing that flashed on there, I felt like it was the other people. What do you call it? What do we call them?

They're the alternates in this universe. Yeah, the alternates. I feel like this is what they were saying and they can transmit thoughts to you. And we're just getting it as a viewer through this text. the two scariest parts of this short for me are bad decision mark so mark is uh in his house and he start we start seeing text and hearing some weird shit and it says bad decision mark and then you slowly see a face come into view.

Crazy, crazy. And the other scary part for me is when so at one point during the tape, we see a training video for first responders. And it's about the first responders who are receiving like 911 calls, basically. about the alternates, and it says, do not help the caller. It's like, just let them die. They'll stop screaming eventually. And then it flashes to that really weird toddler stress assessment video. Which just came out of nowhere.

i think that all connects back to mark i haven't watched the rest of the mandela catalog because i think this one was scary enough for me but i think it all connects back to mark and this idea that some people were more sensitive to like seeing the alternates than others and

Because in the toddler assessment, they talk about the MAD disease. So this idea that the kids could essentially become like... i don't know like hysterical by seeing some of this stuff so i'm wondering if it's supposed to indicate that maybe some people were more sensitive to the alternates which then goes back to that potential sub like undertone of trauma that was me i had an imaginary friend i was scared to walk by the dark room i ran by the mirror daddy didn't check under my bed at night

This media just really creeped me out. It reminded me of like a scared child. Like how you felt about Skinner Inc. I think is how I feel about this one. well like i'm just sitting here now and like my stomach is turning like thinking about that one the bad decision mark scene the face it's freaking me the out billy any last thoughts it's you two got way more out of this than i did

I need to go back and rewatch it. I think maybe when I was watching it, I kept just thinking of this show that Susie recommended to me called Calls, where it's all... audio but the visuals you're seeing like the voice patterns and uh the voice wave sound waves on the screen and it it deals with like a lot of weirdness like this where people are trying to call people and talk to people about weirdness.

weird things that are happening is it an alien thing is it an interdimensional thing um i would highly recommend that i enjoyed that a lot more this one i'm gonna have to go back and uh see what i missed

Well, let's see if you liked the next one, which you probably didn't if you didn't like this one, and it's called the Greylock Tapes. We have tape one, tape two, tape three, and tape four. This is 20 minutes. total. And the Greylock Archives is an analog horror series created by Rob Gavigan. The series consists with a series of tapes that document strange occurrences happening around Berkshire County, Massachusetts, specifically Mount Greylock.

And this is a real place. I actually go to the Berkshires in the summer. Mount Greylock is right next to this lake that I go to every summer. I spend... A lot of weekends in the Berkshires with my friend Kara. And there's actually this camp called Camp Greylock. And it's on the lake. And it's just like.

camp for like uber wealthy boys and i just feel like maybe some weird stuff does does happen there so maybe analog shit who knows okay so we watched tapes one through four and they're the first four installments in the series The tape introduces the operations of Unit 13, a special unit that studies thought forms and the immediate aftermath of an experiment.

There's so much point of view in this, and I usually love that, but I didn't care for it here. And I don't know how we got to where we got in this. I need some sort of plot in this. maybe had a plot in mind, but didn't give it to the audience. We start with found footage from a car on a road, and then we're walking through the snow and following a trail of blood, and then there's just muffled talking. It's really incoherent, and then we're back in the car.

that's all i got from the great lock tapes nothing happened so for me it was um the the third one that really had all the meat of this where it breaks down thought form and tulpas which are basically like uh if you've seen the empty man you know what they are it's basically a group of people um in that movie people get together and essentially kind of like like will a person into existence and

This, this Greylock tapes was kind of taking that idea. And to me, it was like, oh, this is kind of where ghosts possibly come from. or physical representations of emotions um i really like the idea behind that and i think it plays big into uh you know cinema across the board that idea of us you know, being a viewer and manifesting what we're seeing on the screen. That, that one I found really interesting, but then it goes back to.

the last one the home invaders which more of a one that just kind of does the nervous anticipation and then boom jump scare at the end so yeah i think you hit it right on the head billy that especially this like this set of tapes tapes one through four we start to get some introduction on what's happening here so as the synopsis mentioned we follow this unit of basically the government who is

kind of will thought forms into existence one could only imagine this is for some kind of warfare i guess right why else would be we willing thought forms into existence and They start to kind of explain what thought forms are like with experiences and what average people would consider.

you know ghosts so they're like oh well thought forms and ghosts are the same thing and thought forms are docile in nature and don't worry when you're in the special thought form chamber they can't get you they can't pass through the barrier and then as we move through the tapes we start to see that that's not the case and that these thought forms are actually have potential to cause harm and

I don't know. Maybe I don't know enough about the Berkshires, but I think there's something about there's something happened at Mount Greenlock. I don't know. Is there like some magic energy up there, Susie? The Berkshires are a very magical place. I know you guys are older than me, so you don't. Have you ever seen the SpongeBob episode where he goes, it's a magical place, and he sings the song about being inside? He's like, indoors, a magical place. No? Okay. I've never seen a SpongeBob.

It's like, what is a SpongeBob? Not a tulpa. So clearly, you could see how much the Greylock tapes impacted us because we've already moved on. But...

do we want to move into our feature length yes let's move into our closing feature and it is winter of 83 but it was made in 2022 it was created by lewis love hogg and it follows the investigation of disappearing during a blizzard in Fawn Circle Minnesota in January 1983 I'm gonna just let you know hands down this was fucking amazing I love this to me this could have been like a horror story that you'd hear on like a podcast, like the No Sleep podcast, I feel like this.

is that it was set up so coherently where you could understand what was happening from the the opening scene to the final credits we've got This town that there's a blizzard that is approaching the town and all of a sudden everybody is trapped in various places around the town. Come to find out there is some secret scientific experiments going on in the town that created this sentient bacteria that could start.

copying humans and taking on their form and they were made of snow. And it sounds so silly, but the way this media was set up, I think it's brilliant. I love this and I can't wait to hear what you guys thought of it. This one gave me kind of a, like, War of the Worlds, like, radio presentation. Oh, yeah. Because this is one of the few in these that...

Normally when we're hearing a dialogue, we're not seeing a person. We're seeing some obscure shot of the woods or of a house, and we're kind of hearing an overdub. This, they've taken... images of like a town hall meeting and using the you know the the shaking tracking blips they're hiding the fact that the the

dialogue isn't syncing up but you're led to believe that's what's going on in this meeting and so you have all this dialogue of their they're talking just about banal stuff about The town and what they need to spend money on and then that's interspersed with like pictures of other characters that are talking and how they're driving back and forth to this building and like walking into rooms full of snow and finding frozen bodies and

traipsing through the snow and turning around and out of nowhere there's a snowman and it's following them. This was kind of like calls. Parts of this were like that.

netflix show calls where you were just hearing the story i i enjoyed did you like it i did it's it i probably put it maybe third or fourth out of the ones that we watched. So I did enjoy it. It takes a little while to get into it, I think.

i watched this in the laundromat while i was waiting for a comforter to dry in the dryer so it just seemed like perfect the time i was using a laundromat to watch it but lonely you're quiet over there and i I'm thinking you really enjoyed this one, but it does kind of teeter on sci-fi, so I could be wrong.

this is my brand of sci-fi before we i want i make a couple comments about it because this is this is a small very independent made production i just want to like shout out how fucking cohesive and creative this was for an independent creator. We have watched some stuff on the show, Susie, that hasn't been this cohesive. No shade.

To any of our independent creators who've been on the show, it is not about you. If Susie and I don't feel comfortable reviewing independent film, we just won't review it because we're... you know we're we give you pains in the asses but we're not like evil terrible people but anyway major kudos to the director but from there this was like a lot of fun i would love to see this as a stage play this is so freaking cool

My favorite part of this in terms of the analog elements are the text overlays. And you're watching these town hall meetings. And it's similar to when we were talking about you're on the fastest route where if you blink, you might miss it.

There's a lot of text overlay in this that's critical to the story. So you have the mayor talking and then all of a sudden... the text over his name will change so he's talking about snow plows and shit and how the people are studying things at the manor and all of a sudden it goes they are with us now or They have embraced us. And so will you.

And you're like, what the fuck is going on? It's crazy. Where I actually lost some of my attention are the random, like, I didn't love the interspersed POV, like handheld camera stuff. I think I, I, the first one where she's in the snow and she's like, Oh my God, I forget what his name is, but she's like, Oh my God, Kevin, we're to get married. I'm like, okay, I see something happening here. And then when we're outside the.

video shop i was like less enthused i was very bored by that i really liked the when the analog like goes full swing and we start hearing from the entities there are some really funny voice acting pieces in this though Our detective, private investigator, bless him. He tried his hardest with this script. One of my favorite quotes, he goes, oh, this is his exact tone. Oh, man, your legs are gone.

total like flatline like sees the like he's supposed to be seeing you know some like lovesraftian crazy shit and he's like oh man your legs and That's just my one qualm is that the detective becomes a primary character here and he really struggles to a moment throughout the script. What was the line of dialogue that was like the giveaway that they weren't dealing with a human? Was it like...

I'll be right there or hey, come here or something like that. Can you help me with this? Can you help me with this? Oh, yeah. Can you help me with this? Thanks, bud.

Thanks, bud. Thanks, bud. And these quotes that we're hearing throughout the movie is when the sentient bacteria is picking up on what the scientists are saying and they're adapting that language. And then it's just very creepy when they're... adding it at the most inappropriate times yes and then so we go through so there's a big storm coming and that is the bacteria's chance right for some reason the bacteria like

I don't know, reproduces in the snow. I think that's a key part of whatever its biological background is. So this blizzard is prime time. to eat all of these people. Actually, I don't even know if they want to eat them. They just really say they like, you will become one of us. You will become like us.

their god yeah and they think they're god so maybe they're not trying to hurt them i don't know who knows but the blizzard's coming and then the mayor and the town are like we need snow plows and we need to get ready for the blizzard and for some reason they're having a town hall meeting the night of the blizzard and this is where the audio and the the clips start to go off the walls the

bacteria take over the broadcast completely and we start seeing things like text that reads you will never be alone again and these walls you erect can't hold us out we will creep in and then the lights go out During the town hall meeting. And it just says no escape. No escape. My favorite was when they were. Like it was almost like a commercial. To come visit the Berkshires. You can stay in this beautiful cabin.

And then it like shifts to this dilapidated building and it's like, you will be cold. You will never leave. You'll be here forever. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. This is a 10 out of 10 for me.

It's crazy. So the, the, the way the, the film concludes is, um, are the people of the town hall, they, they've been, the private investor has been looking for a guy this whole time, the whole time named Steven. Well, Steven. Shows up to the town hall meeting and Billy, do you want to tell the listeners what happens to Steven?

If you remember. No, I don't remember. What happens to Stephen? Tell me. It's not Stephen. Stephen is the bacteria. He's been assimilated, huh? He has. Just hilarious. Because everyone... At this point, everyone else, like, the viewer knows that's not fucking Steven. And the sister's like, oh, my God. Like, Steven, are you okay? It's like, girlfriend, you're about to kill everybody. You're about to kill everyone. And then... There's like Lovecraftian screaming. And then, yeah, the...

our private investigator is our lone wolf. He's running through the snow and he sees a snow person that has assimilated his face and that cuts to black. Did any of you, did either of you watch the, the post credits?

I didn't see the end credits what happened after the credits after the credits roll there is like a flash of like the the what's it called it's not the menu the the list of things that are playing on the on this radio station that night and it's like christmas movies and all of a sudden it like glitches out and it's like talking about like blood and death and how they will become god

and it's like just step into the snow the snow is home I'm like oh my god that was like cool as hell so and the only reason why i caught that is because i cheated and i was watching this on like 0.5 speed like i was watching it accelerated And if you watch it on YouTube, it will spike. It'll show you this little graph of where people replay the most. And I saw that people were replaying the last like 10 seconds of the movie. I'm like, why? So I was like, I'll stay and see what happens.

I was a big fan of this. I think it's hella cool for what it was. You know, major credits to this person. And I know this is going to sound like so blah, but I don't want this remade as a blockbuster. What do you guys think? I think it's already kind of been done in a way, like a big budget Hollywood way, like the thing. This is the thing pretty much. Right. Yeah. This is like a much.

More analog version of it, which is why it's here and it belongs here. I love it. 10 out of 10. Do we want to move on to our worst and best from this subgenre? Hell yeah.

So my worst would probably be that weird animatronic Five Nights at Freddy's one. What was that called? The Walton Files. Yeah, the Walton Files. That would be my worst. Overall, I think some of the... media on this list was not great and it was a little pretentious like the person who put this list together but what were your worst so you just called me pretentious are we gonna ignore that oh wait you put this list together i thought you got this list from somebody else

You know, I did all this research and picked these films and I... culminated it go ahead billy it's fine good good job they're all great lonely good job good job um no i agree with you susie uh the walton files is uh the one that i rated the lowest

Next to a couple of the Greylock tapes like that. The first one I didn't really get anything out of on the Greylock tapes. It's really that third one that got me. But yeah. And everything else I. somewhat pretty much enjoyed and then there were two in particular that i thought were really great lonely what was your worst i'm it's probably the animatronic one right yeah i agree the wallet files and i would say the

I don't want to say that the entire Greylock tapes was not good. I haven't seen the rest of them, but the first four were pretty sluggish, so I would say those were my bottom two. So since we're already talking to Pretentious Lonely over here, what was your best from your list that you curated? Well, because I'm just so pretentious, you know, after all those Criterion Collection films we reviewed on the iceberg, I just...

I've risen above the common folk and my favorite from this list. It's actually pretty hard because I did like a bunch of them. I would have to say cohesively, possibly in Michigan. was really fucking cool so i think that would be really up there i have to give it to world's weirdest animals for freaking me out like that and i also think the mandela catalog is super strong so probably possibly in michigan first but

I really enjoyed both of the others as well. Oh, and, you know, the feature length too, Winter of 83. I really liked a lot of the things on this list, so maybe I am pretentious. Billy, what do you think? Possibly in Michigan was a 10 out of 10 for me. I love that one. And the back rooms is probably second behind that. And that is.

Maybe more so because I watched a lot more than the assignment asked for. And I think the magic of that is really just diving deep into there. And then I would go with Winter of 83 for the third one. Well, my best is definitely The Winter of 83. It just had the most cohesive plot with the different types of media speckled in there in a way that really helped the tasting of this. So if you're getting bored with one part of it, they'll throw in this.

really weird set of images and text and it worked for me so I'm gonna have to go with that one first and then the back room second and I didn't really care for Many of the other ones I appreciate the one that you liked lonely, but I don't think it was great I thought it was like beautiful, but I wouldn't watch it again. I would watch the winter of 83 again, and I'd recommend it

Well, clearly you hated my list, so I hope you brought your own list to the table, because you were assigned deep cuts, so did you bring any? Yes, I did. And I thought it was going to be really hard to come up with deep cuts for this episode because everything on here is a deep cut. But I think you've missed two of my favorite analog horror shorts. And the first one is Too Many Cooks.

And it's a surreal comedy horror short. It was made in 2014 by Casper Kelly. It has this catchy little song that starts off with too many cooks. And it just keeps going and going and introducing all these cooks.

too many cooks in the kitchen and then it just takes like this crazy turn billy i know you've seen this what do you think of it it's been a while like in my memory of it it kind of starts off just going into like absurdness yeah but then it gets into a little bit of like horror correct yeah yeah so it could come into play in an episode we're gonna have in a couple weeks but too many cooks is phenomenal if you watch it in A state of not.

your own reality it's going to be even creepier and the second meteor wreck i have is this house has people in it and it's from 2016 it's by alan resnick and it is just I don't even know how to explain it. There's surveillance footage inside a suburban home.

it just shows what's happening in each room and something really creepy happens with the teenage daughter who lies on the floor and when she's like in protest but yeah that one is messed up and if you haven't seen this one billy and you liked the too many cooks this one's going to blow your mind okay i'll mark that down i would add the wnuf halloween special i'm going to look up the uh the imdb They describe it as a horror comedy with fake commercials.

And it was filmed on an old video camera to make it look like a real VHS recording of a commercial television station's Halloween special from 1987. But it was made in 2013. Yes. Yes, they they try and say that it was originally broadcast October 31st, 1987. But yeah, so this for me, I remember like Dave Z really talking about this one. And I actually like.

bought it i'm not so much a big fan of of it as just really immersing in it for me it's more of kind of like something to fun to kind of put on the background on halloween um and especially if you grew up in that time the commercials kind of get progressively weirder they start off very normal and then it gets like very yeah like some some really strange stuff going on

And then there was a sequel to that in 2022 called Out There Halloween Mega Tape, which is definitely not as good as the first installment, but it's still something that you could have on in the background. It's pretty creepy. All right. It's about that time.

It's time for closing thoughts. So our question this evening is how do you think the rise of analog horror will impact the future of the horror genre and horror storytelling, if at all? Is this just a fad or is this going to impact what comes next?

susie you want to start all right so as we were watching all of these horror analog media i just kept thinking of one of my favorite adult swim shows which was um Space goes coast to coast and that isn't so much like horror, but it still has like that analog feel to it and that was around like 10 years ago maybe even longer now so i feel like this type of horror has always been around it's just evolving and becoming more accessible like you mentioned earlier and i think we're gonna

Keep seeing it go there because YouTube just keeps getting weirder and weirder. So I think this might be the future of, you know, everybody Too many cooks, too many cooks making too many things. And we'll have one good one for every million bad ones. Yeah, I think it's effectiveness relies on its referencing something old by creating something new.

And it's through a trial and error process. And it's a lot of experimentation. And so they're building a lot of... avant-garde cinematic language and i think that's really what i take away from it um and i know lonely you're a fan of skinner rink correct yes i'm not a skinner rink hater like everyone else in this community

I did not hate it either. I went and saw it in the theater. And to me, that... The thing, it's that cinematic language. It's a new language that's being infused into the genre. And I think...

Like you said, a lot of people don't like it, but I think there's someone out there who's going to watch this and it's going to inspire them and be able to use that and interpret it in a way that's going to make those haters kind of... stand up and you know bring it to attention because uh there's something there i wouldn't say this is the like the future i'm not gonna be like oh my god this is gonna take over the genre and be the next big thing

But I do think even in subtle ways, it's going to be impacting the way we see horror. I know when I had posted about this episode, our pal Libby had mentioned the connections even subtly between analog horror and i saw the tv glow so i think

the ways in which we use sound and blending different types of media and nonlinear storylines is changing. And I do think that has a lot to do with... you know the younger generation starting to create and the younger generation starting to create horror films that speak to them you know i think we're you know if you can liken it to We're not watching classic Hollywood cinema anymore. We're not watching old westerns anymore. And I think we may be on the brink of...

Maybe some older horror tropes starting to be put to bed or seen less likely and a lot of new stuff coming to the front. I don't think that's going to be analog, but I do think this is an indicator of where the storytelling is going to go. And you know what? I don't hate it. I don't hate it. I'm going to go with the flow.

We do see some feature-length movies kind of veering into analog in the past 10 years. We've got the broadcast signal intrusion. I think that was from 2021. And then that... series on netflix archive is it archive 81 yes archive 81 don't even get me started on that series another conversation for another day that's kind of those are analog correct Right, right. And Lonely, you mentioned I Saw the TV Glow, the director's first one before that. We're all going to the World's Fair.

Yes, yes, so good. And even it creeps a lot into the VHS movie series. Oh yeah, 100%. a mix of the analog and like straight up horror shorts. And I think that as we, like what's happening is, you know, screen life and like, think, um, what's the stupid host the zoom you know era of horror that was a fad and it's going to be dying but you can see like elements of screen life like still existing in you know we're all going to the world's fair alongside

which is you know analog is almost like a catch-all like it's like picking up things that are being dropped along the way and sticking them together and you know what i think that's really cool this real punk rock of us don't you think no I'm going to champion this sub-genre. In 20 years, they're going to call me the subject expert, I think. That's my theory. Okay. And maybe you'll have another pretentious list for us. I sure will. But until then...

Oh, you know what? Since we are going to do like a horror shorts, which kind of like goes hand in hand with this, maybe we should bring Billy back for that one. What do you think? Yes, yes. The monkey agrees. The monkey agrees.

Well, thank you for coming on with us tonight, Billy. And I hope you can come back in like a month to talk about some horror shorts with us. But where can the listeners find more of you, your monkey, and your work? You can find my podcast, Halloween Babies Podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and on my Halloween Babies Podcast. Podcast YouTube channel. I've got a lot of weird things that you might say is analog horror as well. And I'm on Instagram at Halloween Babies Podcast.

And when I'm not here, I'll be hanging out at Camp Greylock. And if I'm not there, you might find me on Instagram at projectile underscore underscore varmint. You can find my horror reviews and rants for lonely souls over on Instagram. I try to post reviews when the world is not collapsing and cause problems whenever I can. You can also find my writing on my website, lonelyhorrorclub.com. Thank you, dear internet.

for tuning in to episode 59 of Nobodies. As always, sources, additional reading, and all that fun stuff will be in our show notes. Call us. If you want to leave us a message, you can give us a call at 617-431-4322.

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