The Cutprice Guignol

Well, it’s official: internet horror has gone mainstream.

After a couple of years of skirting around the mainstream world of televisual and cinematic horror (in the form of shows such as Channel Zero and movies like Slenderman) horror stories that have their origins online – creepypasta, analog horror, ARGs, however you want to describe them – are one of the biggest things in horror right now. This week alone has seen the announcement of a movie based on Trevor Henderson’s viral creation Sirenhead with Weapons’ Zach Cregger attached to write, and Steven Spielberg’s production company amongst those winning a bidding war for a movie adaptation of the Mandela Catalogue series, while movies like Backrooms are pulling in critical and commercial acclaim in cinemas.

With the glut of recent horror hits either from creators who made their names on online streaming platforms – like Curry Barker, Mark Fishbach, or the Phillipou brothers – or those adapting their indie series for the big screen, such as Kane Parsons, it was only a matter of time before the world of internet horror officially tipped into the mainstream, and I think we’ve finally reached that point. But, I have to be honest – I have some concerns about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m really pleased to see these indie horror creators get a chance to bring their ideas or interpretations to the mainstream. It’s wild to me to see “Steven Spielberg” in the same sentence as “The Mandela Catalogue”, after so long enjoying these horror stories in specific niche spaces. And, after ten years or of the grim trauma horror dominating much of the movie and television mainstream in the genre, I feel like audiences are ready for some new approaches, ideas, and creators to inject the genre with something fresh. I love internet horror in pretty much all its forms, and it’s been one of the most exciting, creative, and varied sub-genres to watch develop in real time. Some of my favourite pieces of horror ever have sprung from this well – yes, I’m talking about Petscop, but some other recent favourites include Vita Carnis and White Stag Education, both of which I would thoroughly recommend checking out. I think it’s really stepped in to the space that was once held by found footage; a place where indie creators can find great success with weird, distinct stories told in very specific ways on a low budget, and that capitalize on the sense of intimacy offered by an increasingly-all-encompassing online space.

But, with that said, I’m not sure that these stories will make for an entirely seamless leap to the big screen. In my experience with the genre, so much of the appeal is in the community that springs up around it, the mixed-media approach to storytelling that has you trawling website backlinks in the hopes of finding one mor crumb of a clue as to what’s going on here – the theory-crafting, the back-and-forth between fans interpreting the work, the sense of slowly unpicking and uncovering the pieces of this story across different platforms. There’s something supremely and uniquely satisfying about that which is, sort of inevitably, going to be lost when they move to more traditional mediums. There are certainly some – like the Backrooms or the SCP foundation – that I think are betted suited to those mediums than others, since the premise is more a playground to create in rather than one specific story, but I can’t help but feel like the mainstreaming of these stories is going to leave some of the more interesting aspects of the genre in the dust.

And, despite that, I’m still looking forward to seeing how these internet horror stories look with a bigger budget and wider release behind them. I’d love to hear your take on this trend in the comments below, and feel free to share your favourite internet horror for me to add to my ever-growing list! Check out some of my other writing on internet horror below, if you’re so inclined:

The Enduring Appeal of Haunted Video Game Horror

The Sickly Coming-of-Age Horror of Lacey Games

The Sprawling Horror Collaboration of the SCP Foundation

The Immersive Horror Stylings of r/NoSleep

The Generational Internet Horror of the Lost Episode Creepypasta

(header image via IMDB)