The Death of Analog Horror

*NOTE: This is a reupload, earlier when it exported from Premiere Pro it was only 8 minutes of the 19 minute video, so I've spent the last 4 or 5 hours trying to fix the problem. Everything should be fine now but if not, I'll see what I can do to fix it

We've reached the "hyper-realistic blood" phase for analog horror

Jerma unintentionally becoming analog horror icon is so funny yet such thing happening to him fits him so well. “No chat, I don’t look like an analog horror icon!”

The clear takeaway from this video is that someone needs to make an Analog Horror series called Jerma Syndrome.

I wonder if analog horror fans just scream when their game lags

with any internet horror thing, there’s inevitably a scary guy who’s whole thing is either having big eyes or a large toothy smile

The reason I’m so drawn to vita carnis isn’t because of its horror, like it was with local 58 and Gemini home entertainment. I love it because of how unique the world building is. The humanoid one was creepy, yeah, but the other creatures were equally - if not more - interesting. I also have been growing a little disenchanted with analogue horror recently, but that one stood out to me.

19:08 Whoever created that knocking sound deserves either pain or praise. It gets me every time.

I remember the whole backrooms popularity phase was so annoying. It was a novel idea, endless rooms of yellow, with absolutely nothing in them. The concept itself was terrifying enough to be stuck there. But the internet began turning it into SCP, making hundreds of ridiculous levels and almost comedic "entities" into the mix.

I think vita carnis does better than some of the more recent analog horror series. Wonderful art, legitimately terrifying scenes and ideas, and interesting lore

As an analog-horror creator, the genre seems to be mocked a lot for its overused tropes and such. This makes it really hard for smaller series and creators to get off the ground. Hopefully it'll be fixed or saved sometime in the future.

I think my favorite entry in the genre (I believe it counts?) is the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. I love the world building there, the bizarre pamphlets, the unsettling lore implications, and most importantly the fact that it was left alone and not milked into oblivion and expanded into 10000 different series, making it lose all its mystery

Vita Carnis, the Mandela Catalogue, Gemini Home Entertainment, and Local58 all impress me with how scary they can be with such little done to actively try to scare someone. They all feed off of this uncanny valley vibe, wnd I love it

I think what I love about the Mandela Catalogue is that Alex seemingly recognizes the issues with analog horror, and has as a result shifted the series away from the tropes it itself created. Jerma Syndrome has been almost completely removed from the newer parts, including the Volume One remake, instead replaced with wholly original 3D assets that look human, but don’t move like humans. The guy’s a damn genius, and more importantly, I’m still scared by the series because it still actively introduces new concepts to scare the shit out of you.

Things like the SCP Foundation and the Backrooms became so popular that people took notice and simply decided to take advantage of them as outlets for their creativity. Instead of submitting new articles that were simply new spooky/paranormal things that need to be locked away for the former, or creepy places you could get trapped in for the latter, people just used them as platforms to post their ideas for characters, monsters, organizations, world building, and so forth. Popularity runs the risk of attracting the attention of the wrong people who do not appreciate it for what it is but instead for what they can use it for to benefit themselves.

"Oversaturated" is probably the best way of summarising what happened to analogue horror. From that you get the development of commen tropes and the abundance of similar and/or low effort work. I do hope the newest series in the genre hold their own against the flood of similar content. I also think digital horror (nostalgic late 90s to 2010 video game/computer horror) still has much to offer, however. But it's unfortunately much more difficult to produce due to how one must make, play, emulate, and/or modify a game or program in order to get footage.

I was so ready to throw hands until you clarified that you don't hate Vita Carnis, the video of the mother and son getting killed by the harvester is probably the best analog horror video I have ever seen

I remember back in 2019, my best friend showed me the backrooms, and she was massively intruiged by the unknown aspect of it, the constant threat of something being in the backrooms with you or not. So when the backrooms footage came out back in 2022, she was rightfully kinda pissed when the entire concept was thrown away just to put a bunch of cliche, cookie-cutter looking monsters into it. Completely altering what the backrooms were from the start.

Personally I like analog horrors where the "monsters" are just animals. They aren't malicious in any way, they're just doing what animals (or plants) do to survive Some series I like that have this are The Living Flesh Pit National Park and Vita Carnis, as well as some based on jurassic park/dinosaurs

My biggest grievance with analog horror is how often the story jumps the shark. The biggest appeal of analog horror, to me at least, is how grounded and believable it is while still entertaining elements outside the realm of reality. The medium of VHS tapes, security camera footage, news broadcasts, and tape recordings makes it more fantastical than something like true crime, but it's not full on supernatural horror. But then the accompanying plot completely defeats that appeal by using aliens, zombies, lizard people, demons from another dimensional, alternate universes, and other totally unrealistic and outlandish characters and ideas. If I'm supposed to be afraid of the extradimensional shapeshifting demons that prey upon humans, you can't expect me to think I'm going to be learning about them from a vintage VHS player on a cathode ray tube television.