The Cutprice Guignol

When it came to deciding what to cover this month in the expansive world of internet horror, there was one topic that I knew I couldn’t go without talking. And that, of course, is Petscop.

Petscop is a twenty-four episode horror series, published on the YouTube channel of the same name between March 2017 and September 2019; created in its entirety by Tony Domenico, it takes the form of a series of Let’s Play videos depicting the fictional PS1 game Petscop, narrated, in part, by an unseen player named Paul.

And let me tell you, I get that this series is a bit of a hard sell on paper. I can still remember sitting down excitedly with a friend of mine who is as big a horror fanatic as me, intent on introducing them to this amazing new piece of storytelling I had discovered, only to be met with some bemusement at the scantly-narrated gameplay footage of a game that never existed. The story’s deliberately abstract nature and unsettling, almost uncanny tone isn’t exactly something I think you can just plonk yourself down in front of, watch in its entirety, and then get on with your life (I know I certainly haven’t) – but, for me, the innovation on display here is exactly what makes it pretty much the gold standard of the new wave of internet horror.

Petscop is a uniquely complex story, one that plays with the idea of protagonists almost constantly – at first, we think we’re following Paul as he plays this game, but it becomes clear that he might not be the only one whose gameplay we’re following over the course of the series. The off-screen creator of the game directs the narrative in some ways, but the storytelling of the game seems to rebel against the constraints placed on it. Timelines parallel and repeat across decades, and, even though most of what we get is limited to in-game footage, there’s a constant sense of things happening out of sight, parts of the story that we’re left to piece together through the little snatches of what remains. That feeling of being left out of the loop, of something happening in the corner of your eye where you can’t quite make it out, is the most enduring horror in Petscop as an experience, and I’ve still never really found it done this well anywhere else.

Petscop (in my interpretation, but we’ll get to that), is a story about child abuse. It’s a topic that’s tough at the best of times, but not least in horror, where it can so often feel like a banking on the shock value of violence against children to deliver an unsettling tone. And, look, I don’t think Petscop got everything right in this regard, when it comes to handling this topic tastefully – series creator Domenico name-checked aspects of the real-life murder of Candace Newmaker, which he later went on to express regret about – but the way that Petscop as a story uses the distinct medium to communicate the harm done to the children in the wake of their abuse is still, to this day, one of the most downright brilliant things I’ve seen in the horror genre.

Aside from Paul, the most prominent character in the Petscop series is, arguably, Care (also known as Carrie Mark) – we never see anything of her other than the static object of her in-game sprite, but she’s a constant figure across various timelines and various forms. The series tells, in part, of her kidnapping in 1997, and, while the nature of what happened to her during her abduction is never made entirely clear, the version of Care that returns is not the same one who existed before. This is depicted with a few images of Care: Care A, Care B, and Care NLM (Nobody Loves Me). After her escape from her abuser, Care is left permanently changed, permanently convinced that she’s not deserving or or subject to the love of the people around her.

It’s not an uncommon reaction, for people and especially children who survive abuse, to view themselves as fundamentally changed for the worse – and the way Petscop communicates this idea is via the corruption of the game, the aspects of it that no longer hold together as they’re meant to. As Care feels broken by her abuse, the game starts to fall apart around her, the parts of her contained in this piece of fiction are infected with the same sense of destruction and rot that she feels has been forced on to her. As the game takes on a more discomforting edge – dissonant tones to the music, darker colour schemes, more scrambled layouts and maps, even aspects entirely blotted out behind black boxes – it captures this profound sense of discomfort and disconnection that can so often serve as a part of life for those living with the mental and emotional scars of abuse. For a story that shows nothing even close to actual child abuse, what it does in using the medium to capture the aftermath is, for me, downright extraordinary.

And let me put particular emphasis on the for me part, because, as with so many enduring horror classics, most of Petscop can be left up to the interpretation of the viewer. When it was still being released, I browsed those community boards like the morning paper, reading analyses, theories, speculation, the lot, and it underlined to me just how big a part the community in these kinds of stories plays as part of the way we experience it.

And, to be quite honest, I think it’s that community that really drew me in to this series, and cemented it as such an all-time favourite. Not to get too personal on the proverbial main here, but when this series was coming out, I had recently moved to a new city, far away from the friends I’d lived just a few streets from while attending university, and I was struggling with finding a purpose and a plan for the rest of my adult life now that I suddenly had it laid out in front of me. Petscop and the surrounding community really was a little refuge of sorts during that time, a place I could come and lose myself in the passion of a small corner of the internet a few times a year when new videos dropped. At a time when I felt like I didn’t have much purpose, Petscop, however briefly, offered me something to lose myself in, a little something to work towards in decoding this story along with the community that surrounded it.

The last video on the Petscop channel is the Petscop soundtrack (and let me be clear – these bangers are still all in my rotation to this day, as they well deserve) – it’s mostly just that, the soundtrack to the series as a whole, but it closes with a brief interaction between two of the major recurring in-game characters. The interaction – and the series – closes with the exchange “we will investigate this together”, and I can’t think of a more fitting way to end this story. Despite the heavy themes and the brutally effective execution, I will always look at this series as a reminder of the strange places that we can find community, and for that, it will always have a place in my heart.

Anyway! I’d love to hear your interpretations with this series – I will happily spend hours browsing theories on Petscop and I’d be delighted to hear a few more from you in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, check out my other blog, No But Listen, as well as my fiction work! You can also support me on Patreon to help keep my very demanding little cat in treaties, and me out of her clutches for another month yet.

(header image via The Indie Game Website)