As a fan of retro horror, a VHS collector, and someone who has already dived into analog horror before even knowing the name of it by becoming a fan of such stories as Blink, Five Nights at Freddy’s/Willy’s Wonderland, and Public Access TTRPG, when I saw someone suggest this documentary in the Public Access discord, I was intrigued and knew I needed to see it to understand the path I’d wandered down.
Just a heads up, I viewed this documentary as an outsider to the analog horror genre and review it as such. Analog horror super fans will likely have a very different opinion of this film.
An unprecedented unfiction documentary featuring ARG & Analog Horror legends such as Kris Straub (Local58), Nick Nocturne (Night Mind), Nexpo, Alex Kister (Mandela Catalogue), MISTER MANTICORE (Monument Mythos), Turkey Lenin III (CH/SS & Good Old Days), Wiktor Stribog (KrainaGrzybowTV), and Quarks & Rec (Minerva Alliance & Tapes from the Darkside). This feature-length documentary from director Alex Hera explores the complete history of the genre. Analog horror is one of the most popular and influential developments in internet horror in the past decade. To understand why it’s so successful, what the importance of this new genre is, and what impact it will have in the future, we need to explore its origins. It’s time to take a look back… into the History of Analog Horror.
You can watch the entire documentary free on youtube
5 Star Documentary
Alex Hera does an amazing job not only with conceptualizing this project, researching the hell out of it, and interviewing various creators within analog horror but by putting it together to feel like its something out of an analog horror story itself is perfection.
There were cut scenes where Hera’s narration while being filmed in a dark room, applying images and papers to a pin board with red string, and looking at a grainy computer screen that gave me major Night Vale vibes. These could have been scenes from a V/H/S/ horror short or a story in and of itself. Loved this editing and creative choice. I almost wish Hera had leaned into it further, made it creepier, but also reason that doing so might have taken away from the documentary itself…but still, It would have been cool.
The History of Analog Horror documentary follows the timeline of analog horror from back to the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast unknowingly creating the unfiction genre of horror to the hay day of Creepy Pasta to today with a speculation on what is to come with Millennium Horror and more. There are moments when the timeline is abandoned and the path strays into tangents but the string is never dropped and Hera brings us back to the timeline again, holding our hand as we maneuver through this uncanny landscape.
Despite these moments where we go down the rabbit hole, I never felt like there was a scene or time that was unnecessary. This documentary, though long, is tight. There’s no rambling or trivial moment…unlike this blog perhaps.
What I think a lot of viewers will enjoy from this documentary is a list of projects to go and check out – either because you, like me, hadn’t heard of them and they look awesome! OR because you are already eyeballs deep in the analog horror fandom and want to go back down memory lane and revisit the daddies of the genre.
What I Didn’t Love
Before I go any further, I want to make it clear I enjoyed this documentary and look forward to deep diving further into the projects discussed within it. But the fact that I hadn’t heard of many…most…of these projects prior leads me to my one irritation with the movie. There is a section in the documentary that comes up and then is talked about continuously from middle to end where the creators of these analog horror projects say that the genre is becoming over saturated and mainstream. I could not help but side-eye this a great deal.
I’m not saying that I am on the up and up when it comes to all things horror or all things online. In fact, when I was live tweeting my viewing of this documentary, I mentioned that when things were hot in the unfiction, creepy pasta, and beginnings of analog horror (the early 2000s and even into the 2010s) I didn’t have reliable internet. So I was not really present for the hay days of these genres or the birth of analog horror.
What irked me was the discussion among these creators as if the genre is over saturated and mainstream when…if it weren’t for some rando dropping this documentary on a discord discussion I wouldn’t even know the terms unfiction and analog horror (even though I had of course heard of certain projects such as The Mandela Catalogue and knew of Slenderman mostly because of the stabbing of Payton Leutner).
What these statements of over saturation and mainstream came across as was “that indie guy” attempting to sound cool because he was here first and anyone after him was just following a bandwagon. That something cool and underground became uncool because of popularity. However, its more likely the case of living in an echo chamber.
If you’re only around people and only talk to people who are aware of your subgenre and subculture, then yea its gonna seem like its mainstream. The thing is, even within the subculture of horror fans, this is barely a blip on the radar and I’m certain you will find MANY horror fans who have not heard of analog horror or, like me, have brushed by it, enjoyed it, but weren’t away it was a “thing.” And that’s not even going into the real mainstream of media and popularity.
Recommendation
Other than that bit of side-eye, this was an excellent documentary and I recommend it for those of you who, like me, have had a brush with analog horror and want more OR who are retro horror fans who are interested in what creators are doing with this aesthetic we already know and love.
If you enjoyed this and want to play around in the analog horror genre more, I highly recommend the ttrpgs by The Gauntlet.
Public Access is a game focused on adults returning to the small town of Deep Lake, New Mexico where they spent time as kids. There, they investigate the local tv station and public access channel TV Odyssey as well as other strange, uncanny, and horrific mysteries in the town.
