pelliculae interretiales terrificae

CWs: mention of suicide in media, mental health, physical harm, negative self-talk in media; caveat lector

The title is my phrase for of “terrifying Internet videos,” using the Neo-Latin Lexicon’s coinage interretialis, -e as “(of the) Internet” (inter-, “between” + rete, “net”). I’ve spent a lot of time going down the rabbit hole with scary videos lately and thought it’d be worth sharing with y’all. The high-water mark for me is still Petscop, a highly-unsettling video series involving a “Let’s Play”-style deep dive into a seemingly-cursed, unfinished PSX game (now that is a bit of a shibboleth; I grew up referring to the original PlayStation as “PSX,” while a lot of younger people call it “PS1” to differentiate from PS2 &c.). I got in almost on the ground floor for that particular series, and while it was frustrating waiting for new videos to come out, it was really fun at the same time. Sad it’s over, but it was a wonderful run. If you know me, you know I am a big fan of horror in general, and I’ve been really pleasantly surprised at how good the scene for it is on YouTube. People are really doing some wonderful stuff over there and you should definitely check some of it out if you can. OK, let’s get into it. (FYI, this is very much inspired by another list I came across, so I’ll try not to duplicate things from there, but I want to give my own take on it)

The first series I want to talk about is Marble Hornets; it is very much inspired by the “Slender Man” internet meme/myth/&c., but definitely does its own thing. The main “character,” Jay, was a producer on his friend’s college film project, Marble Hornets, which was never finished, and production ended under strange circumstances, and he has lost touch with this particular friend. The series is made up of a cache of videotapes that Jay’s friend, the director, gave to him after abandoning the project. I don’t want to give anything away about if you haven’t seen it, but it started in around 2009 and went to around 2014, so it lasted quite a while. I’ve definitely heard of it before, but somehow I managed to avoid any and all spoilers about it over the last decade (go figure!). There are some incredibly creepy locations (woods are always creepy), the story is interesting, and yeah, definitely check it out if you haven’t yet!

Pretty quickly after that, I came upon another creepy little series, No Through Road. This is a British series about friends driving backroads through the countryside, and it takes a left turn (no pun intended) real quick. I don’t want to spoil any of it, but it accomplishes a hell of a lot in four short videos. Def recommend.

Chalk one up for the comedically unsettling if you watch Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared. This is a twisted kids’ show with puppets (think something like Wonder Showzen, but this is more minimalist, understated, and bizarre, and honestly better), and while you’ll find the songs catchy (they are!), you’ll end a video being like “what did I just watch?” Just let it wash over you. Apparently they made a TV season of the show after the last video came out, which I’d really like to check out as well. This series has some serious nightmare fuel, despite being upbeat and happy overall, with bright colors and fun songs.

One of the creepiest ones I watched was 2h32. The core conceit is that every episode takes place right around 2:32 a.m., very close to “the witching hour” of 3 a.m. Every video is 2m32s long as well, and apparently most of them released on the 23rd of every month. I don’t know if there will be more videos, but the ones we have are delightfully terrifying. You’ll get to know “characters” (if you want to call them that, or can), recurring motifs, and terrifying locales (of course, yes, the woods make an appearance). It is very experimental, strange, avant-garde, whatever you want to call it, a decadent art project. This is a creepypasta made video in its purest and most distilled form, and that is high praise.

After that, I started watching The West Records, which I initially thought was about (music) records, but no, it is “records” in the more traditional sense of documentation. There are lots of woods, and undoubtedly this was inspired by Marble Hornets, but it very much does its own thing. The main character is making a documentary about West Naval Base, a remote military installation in Massachusetts, where the whole population of the base, ~3K people or so, just “disappeared” suddenly. That is the core premise, but it gets much weirder from there, and goes places you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Some of the camerawork is jarring in this one, as is an issue with “found-footage” series/films in general, but if you can get past that, it’s well worth watching.

Now I just finished Hi I’m Mary Mary, which a friend recommended to me after I posted about the other stuff I’ve been watching. Just so you’re forewarned, suicide, physical harm, and negative mental health are a big theme in this particular series (hence the CWs at the top), so if those are a dealbreaker, steer clear (suicide is especially an issue with this series). The concept is simple: a young woman wakes up, with no recollection of who or where she is, other than that her name is Mary and she is in what appears to be her parents’ house. The door won’t open and she can only look outside. And strange things happen at night. With those simple ingredients, some really terrifying stuff happens. I wrote on Mastodon that this series “horrorizes and prefigures pandemic-era isolation in 2017,” and I stand by that. The last video came out in May 2020; IIRC, a commenter cheekily wrote that if she gets out and realizes it’s 2020, then what? In any case, the house, a supposed sanctuary, becomes terrifying and alienating. I read a little piece talking about the series and Freud’s “uncanny” (unheimlich, literally “un-homelike” in German, and I would agree it certainly applies here, at least in concept).

I also remarked that Hi I’m Mary Mary is like a better, more interesting Silent Hill 4, where the protagonist is also seemingly stuck in his house. Very few pieces of media violate the “rule” that a house or town, especially in RPGs, is supposed to be a little “bubble” safe from enemies and harm, and when they do, it definitely makes a point. The earliest example I can think of is from Zelda II, where a town later in the game isn’t safe, but is full of monsters and danger. Cf. also Kakariko Village in the Dark World from A Link to the Past, and, the example par excellence that is most recent for me, the zombie town of Avdol in Rudra no Hihou.

Even if I have terrifying things going on in life, or life is stressing me out in general, I tend to turn to horror, since at least those are imaginary horrors, y’know? And there’s even “cozy horror” sometimes; I have an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Ghosts in the Burbs hanging out in my podcast app queue. They don’t release very often, so I’m trying to hold onto it for a little while, but I do want to listen to it soon. It’s really hard to find quality horror these days; I just watched Saw X and it was just aggressively OK, and I groaned when I saw the inevitable sequel was greenlit (my spouse said “as long as people keep watching them, they’ll keep making them”). Same with Terrifier 2; it was less nihilistic than the first one, had more plot, but still was just aggressively OK. But hilariously I’m sure I’ll watch the sequel to that if it’s easily accessible, because why not? But it’s hard to find horror that really scares me these days, since I’ve just watched so many horror movies/shows &c. that I’ve “seen it all” in some ways.

In any case, I’m just rambling at this point. I hope y’all check out at least some of the series on this list and hope they are enjoyable, as enjoyable as something terrifying and unsettling can be! thanks for reading!!