Someone once said, horror is cheap to produce. They were referring to horror films.

You just need to look at slasher movies and see they had considerably lower budgets than some high fantasy film. While it is true that a good horror film can be done on the cheap it still requires talent and skill. Good camera work, acting and directing is all needed to create those feelings of fear and suspense, this is regardless of the budget as a big budgeted film can be as big a failure at producing those haunting feelings as ones with a fraction of the money.

And so we come to this year’s subject. For many times I end up watching the creative works of people on YouTube that with whatever they had access to, have managed to make some haunting works online. And yet I can note there’s not much money used. Many may have a snippet of a still image. Those like “The Moon Woke Up” are very clearly c.g. animation and often to the point they are a bit more humorous than scary at times. But when I like them, like the moon one, I keep coming back to them, I enjoy them, I enjoy watching people analyse them to put pieces of information I didn’t have together.

One example of these internet horrors is called Analog Horror. These are videos styled to look like old VHS recordings or similar media quality. They are often styled looking almost like a PSA. They would start seeing ordinary footage like any old PSA film you may have seen in school in days gone by, or perhaps a public service announcement. But as it goes on there’s something unsettling that starts to come in. These are often long series that over the course of many videos build up their world and what threat is growing, often into some unknowable cosmic horror… which also I like, love well done eldritch monstrosities.

This leads into many of the smaller wee indie horror games I’ve encountered. They may not last long, but they don’t need to. They take advantage of the interactive medium to tell a short horror story. Games like Iron Lung and Voyager-19 give you an exploratory mission that can then start playing with your perception in an enclosed claustrophobic vehicle. You know something is going to come, but slowly you start questioning if you saw something before it’s too late.

I mentioned at the start that you can do great horror without a large budget, but that it takes talent. When these works are good, they have good writing that creates an unease, an unsettling thought about the experiences that last far more than a jump scare or unnatural image does. Sure you do get those in them, but if the work is good those work in conjunction with the world these works have made, rather than the work to just be a means to show off a slightly distorted human face. Yes, that human face is slightly distorted and moving in a way that is just off being human and there is horror in that. But it still needs to be done well, and you know what it’s done well when all that has been built into it comes together to haunt you long into the night.

I would much rather see the haunting works of these people than another low budget movie with sharks. I suspect their budget is probably the same to much lower, but the works from the internet are vastly more creative. Some may draw inspiration from another, but better that than all going “Hey people like Jaws, and people like that silly film with the sharks in the water spout, let’s get some bad computer graphics and throw in a film with an unlikable teen”

Perhaps it’s due to working in a budget that helps make some of their works so memorable. That being limited allows for creativity to overcome that limit. Perhaps it’s the modern day version of people that would get round the campfire and tell stories to scare the others. Sure it still requires a lot more resources and time to make an unsettling video bringing forth an inhuman horror, than it is to speak one out loud. But if you are up at night, unable to sleep, maybe you have some of that time.