Henry O'Brien
Once I Saw the TV Glow hit theaters in May, the film certainly felt like a stylistic and financial step forward for writer-director Jane Schoenbrun. Releasing the movie under A24, Schoenbrun had a reported $10 million budget compared to the micro one they had for their directorial feature debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Similarly, Schoenbrun tackled a broader and more expansive story in TV Glow than in World’s Fair, focusing on the relationship between a person, media and the trans experience.
The past few years seem like a classic rise for an auteurist director working in Hollywood. But Schoenbrun, a fully-fledged millennial, used the internet to make their filmmaking career possible and sustainable. First directing a 2015 short film called The School Is Watching, made up of 1990s school morning announcements, Schoenbrun posted their early works online. Both the short and the 2018 feature documentary about Slenderman, A Self-Induced Hallucination, are still only available on Vimeo. Additionally, the documentary and World’s Fair are primarily shot and touch on the subconscious of the internet and specifically the horror communities they were a part of.
“People were collaborating in this very decentralized way to create new narratives that really only could have been created on the internet. It really resonated and reminded me of something I went looking for online in my own youth, which was an effort to remove myself from my body and my identity and exist in a space where I could express myself creatively, and perhaps even explore myself personally, outside of ‘the real world,’” Schoenbrun said in The Hollywood Reporter in 2022.
Even though TV Glow features analog technologies like VHS tapes, Schoenbrun’s films still have a stylistic similarity to this new masterwork. But all of the director’s works take a clear influence from the internet horror subgenre: analog horror.
Emerging with the popularity of YouTube in the late 2000s and expanding throughout the 2010s, analog horror is primarily made up of found footage in media like VHS tapes and CRT TV. In reality, it is a subgenre within a subgenre, relying on found footage horror films like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and *REC. However, analog horror relies on manipulating these older forms of media and long periods of unflinching time in the uncanny valley to create dread.
The subgenre has been growing in popularity over the past decade, culminating in the first feature film in the genre, Skinamarink. As Timothy Glaraton pointed out in his review of the film for Film Obsessive, Skinamarink just offers glimpses of what horror may be on the other side, saying, “the disembodied voices always communicating from somewhere else in the house or just out of view; the windows, doors, and other household objects that disappear with no rhyme or reason; the rooms that we inexplicably discover to be upside down.” The film and its methods of scares all come back to many of the classic internet series utilizing the uncanniness of it all to get under your skin.
Both Schoenbrun and analog horror share this stylistic tendency while also relying on similar themes in their stories, especially when it comes to media and how it can be used as a controlling technology and society, forcing and subjecting people to bodies that do not feel like their own.
Schoenbrun is aware of this subgenre, even discussing it at a Q&A following a May 3 screening of I Saw The TV Glow. They said some of the film’s inspirations came from videos like The Blair Witch Project trailer and “Salad Fingers,” the viral internet series for its disconcerting levels of gore, depravity and screeching sound design, creating an influence that analog horror soon picked up.
“This lineage that feels very internety of just like, ‘What are you going to see that shakes your sense of reality?’” Schoenbrun said. “…It seems like this…I guess people are calling it ‘analog horror’ now, this sort of post-creepypasta, liminal, uncanny valley sort of horror thing, which is in my blood. I think it’s always been in there.”
Animatronics, puppets and liminal spaces
Similar to Schoenbrun’s films, analog horror relies on long takes that make the deafening and suspenseful silence take a back seat to the static noises of the VHS tapes and CRT TV. This, in turn, weaponizes the medium from being just an example of old technology to a tool for psychological horror in liminal spaces. Additionally, both Schoenbrun and analog horror rely on centering their characters and ghoulish, deformed creatures to connect the viewer and the unsettling images on the screen.
One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the series “The Walten Files,” made by Chilean YouTuber Martin Walls that tells the story of the fictional restaurant known as Bon’s Burgers, which has animatronic animals, and its founders, Jack Walten and Felix Kranken. Furthermore, the show delves into the tragedy around the co-founders’ families and the paranormal happenings at the restaurant, including graphic depictions of people getting stuffed into animatronic suits.
An animated series that employs compilations of found VHS tapes, “The Walten Files” amplifies the volume of the static at every moment. Based on some of the animatronic scares of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, the series uses both static, misshapen audio and deformed animatronic creatures to create a terrifying atmosphere.
For example, just over three minutes into the first episode of “The Walten Files,” we are shown a tape of a childish cartoon of the series’ animatronics having a sleepover. There is a still shot in the cartoon where a blue animatronic bunny lists off his animatronic friends at the sleepover before repeating their names again. However, right before he can finish all the names, the bunny’s green and white eyes turn black along with the rest of the background, seemingly as part of a nefarious or supernatural glitch on tape. We also see the deformed face of Jack Walten as the screen is just filled with uncanny images. The VHS static becomes the only thing we can hear until there is a high-pitched transition that seemingly takes everything back to normal.
During the five seconds that the VHS tape glitches, the black-eyed bunny seems to stare directly into the frame. The bunny and picture of Jack Walten aren’t in the center of the frame, but they’re staring directly at the viewer, who is more likely than not looking at this video on a computer. There’s no guarantee that a cut-to-black will lead back to the cartoon, which is how this series creates a new, horrific liminal space.
But “The Walten Files” isn’t the only series that forms these horror liminal spaces and simultaneously takes inspiration from Five Nights at Freddy’s. A separate analog horror series, “Harmony and Horror,” made by the channel Battington, follows a deranged puppet maker who murders family and friends to force their souls into his puppet creations. The series depicts how destructive creative ruts and obsession can become, terrifyingly revealing the consequences as family members must live their days trapped inside puppets.
Much like “The Walten Files,” “Harmony and Horror” is shown through VHS tapes where the static sound makes the atmosphere far more tense. In the first episode of this series, titled “Lost_VHS_tape | Henry.mp4,” we get a frightening glimpse into the lives of a child whose soul is now trapped in a puppet. In the video’s final two minutes, the cursed smiling puppet stares directly at the viewer into the center of the screen. While the puppet shakes up and down with the static, there are captions for what it says.
“I can’t feel my arms; I can’t feel my legs; Yet I only feel pain,” the puppet states. “There is something inside me; Something that beats.” At this point, the puppet’s head moves, seemingly opening up to reveal something inside as it says, “Like it wants to get out.” The horrifying climax comes to a close with glitches as the puppet speeds up the video, raises the volume and moves its face into an extreme closeup as the caption says, “I want to get out.”
Although this episode of “Harmony and Horror” leans more into horror movie clichés by raising the volume, it achieves a creeping anxiety very similar to “The Walten Files” through its construction. Both of the episodes utilize their framing to plant the viewer right into the experience. Moreover, each video tactically incorporates the eyes in the buildup of suspense. Once the eyes of both the bunny and the puppet change into something more supernatural and monstrous, we see something is truly wrong with these objects that are usually associated with children and playfulness.
Schoenbrun equally employs these techniques not simply to scare but to crawl under the skin of the viewer. In I Saw the TV Glow’s pivotal scenes, where Owen (Justice Smith) starts to learn about his repressed memories as reality and fiction start to blur, Schoenbrun mostly keeps the camera still with characters’ faces at the center in closeups. When Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) questions Owen about thinking back to The Pink Opaque, the camera starts on a medium closeup before it later intensifies into a closeup as the questioning becomes more intense. There’s also an intercut to a shot of Maddy and Owen standing on a football field with an angrily shaking moon as static seemingly plays in the background, carefully painting an image that feels right at home with series like “The Walten Files” or “Harmony and Horror.”
But Schoenbrun doesn’t stop there. Later in the film, Owen watches the final episode of The Pink Opaque before it is unceremoniously canceled. In it, the show’s villain, Mr. Melancholy (Emma Portner), tortures one of the main protagonists. Mr. Melancholy’s face is of the moon, which is constantly decaying and reforming as Schoenbrun frames it right in front of the camera to completely envelope the whole screen. Fittingly, as the scene is part of showing how Owen is losing himself, he eventually is found by his father with his head directly in the television as he’s screaming in agony that his favorite television program ends for good. Schoenbrun places the supernatural front and center, further heightening the terror and establishing a literal and metaphorical connection between the medium and the viewer.
“You are on the fastest available route”
Throughout much of the press material in I Saw the TV Glow, hypnotism feels pivotal. The film’s poster and the press stills depict both Owen and Maddy in the trance of the television. This manifests in the film as Schoenbrun once again frames the two teens at the center to seemingly portray how spellbound they are, bringing up a key thematic element for both the director and analog horror. These films and internet videos are obsessed with depicting how these technologies have the ability to control humans. Furthermore, an evolution in technology can also change who is in control.
There is no better example of this thematic throughline than the analog horror series that gave the subgenre its name. Kris Straub’s “Local 58” follows the hijacked footage from a public access television station over the course of several decades. While it’s not explicitly clear who is doing the hijacking (you can go to Reddit for that), the intention remains the same: to mindcontrol humans with “analog horror at 476 MHz.”
In the series’ first episode, “You Are On The Fastest Available Route,” the channel’s scheduled programming is interrupted by dashboard footage where a GPS directs a driver for over three and a half hours. Initially, the GPS seems to guide the car on regular highways before leading the driver into unmarked roads in the woods. In the uncanny climax, the robotic GPS voice says to stop 300 feet and turn off their headlights before an unidentifiable creature subdues the panicked driver.
The rest of the series follows a similar pattern to the first episode, where the regular public access TV station glitches out for programs with dark messages littered throughout. In an episode titled “Contingency,” which seems to be a video from the 1960s or 1970s in the event the United States would fall. It eventually demands viewers commit suicide to “preserve the memory” of the U.S. Even as the Local 58 channel regains control and maintains that this message was an accident, there’s a sinister, unspoken implication that this clarification is too little, too late.
While the general structure becomes a tad grating and predictable, “Local 58” reveals how these analog technologies widely used in homes in this country could be subject to commandeering. The series becomes as blunt as possible in the episode “Real Sleep,” where subliminal messages flash on the screen, telling viewers what to do for these seemingly alien hijackers.
Fellow analog horror series “The Mandela Catalogue” has a similar lack of subtlety regarding “media as brainwashing tool.” Set in the fictional Mandela County, Wisconsin during the 1990s and 2000s, the series involves demonic entities called “alternates,” which can mimic and psychologically torture their human victims. At the same time, there is a humanoid entity called “The Intruder” who invades parents’ homes and steals their children. Whether or not these separate antagonists are in cahoots is unclear (once again, Reddit), but the fact remains that they both use technologies like old television sets, VeggieTales-esque cartoons or public service announcements to spread their menacing influence.
Series creator Alex Kister litters each of the episodes with religious imagery and scenes of authority figures like government agencies and police to show how these American institutions can keep the public under their thumb. This is accomplished through television in different means. For example, in the third volume of tapes in the series, the so-called Intruder takes the form of a crude puppet face named “Stanley” to lure children into his grasp. Stanley’s form takes direct inspiration from the Jim Henson character Limbo from The Organized Mind and later Sesame Street, arguing how children’s programming can be a site for indoctrination.
Additionally, one episode titled “interlude” is partially a governmental propaganda tape about how authorities have done such a good job at stopping the alternates even though the opposite is true.
At one point, Schoenbrun, too, showed an interest in how technology can be used as a form of agitprop. In their short The School Is Watching, the morning announcements feature messages straight out of 1990s foreign policy propaganda where a student asks a fellow student, who is supposed to be dressed as Saddam Hussein, what it’s like to be compared to Adolf Hilter. Even on a level as basic and non-threatening as morning school announcements, Schoenbrun found that analog technology is always a way of spreading a message and a motive.
Conversely, I Saw the TV Glow, “The Mandela Catalogue” and “Local 58” all show an awareness of technology’s tendency to evolve and how control evolves. While the film and the web series come to slightly varying conclusions about evolution, there is still a depiction of a sudden change in the medium, altering a character’s or a creator’s worldview.
Possibly the most devastating scene in Schoenbrun’s latest feature comes when Owen, now a miserable adult with a “happy life,” buys a flat screen LG TV, replacing his older model. When he comes upon The Pink Opaque on a streaming service, he realizes the show is much less intense and magical than he remembered. We can relate to the shattering realization that pieces of our childhood are much less glamorous or important, but this scene comes during a brutal montage where Owen grows older and buries his true self deeper and deeper down. By using a streaming service to make this soul crushing moment, Schoenbrun is keenly aware that streaming can take away the magic of going to a movie theater or waiting each week to watch a new TV episode. The ephemeral experience of watching something can be taken away once you can just wait five more seconds for something else to watch. The hypnotism that The Pink Opaque held over Owen vanishes as the new brainwashing medium feels more focused on ruthless efficiency and finding the fastest available route to the next show or movie.
In its series finale (or at least the latest listed video in the series as of 2024), “Local 58” shows a transformation that could count as the first “subversive” entry in this subgenre, courtesy of Straub. In the episode, the fictional channel is undergoing a transition from analog airwaves to digital ones, representing some form of rejection of the past that seems inherent in a subgenre involving tech from periods of nostalgia like the 1980s. But the entity that has been hacking the station furiously takes control back, citing the digital transition as a “betrayal.” The entity stops the station from transitioning, cryptically saying “There are other receivers” before a melting face appears on screen. But the violent resistance feels as though the entity cannot move forward, needing the old technologies to maintain control.
Kister, on the other hand, comes to a much darker conclusion. “The Mandela Catalogue,” which now has 16 episodes, has now dabbled in depicting various technologies. As the series progresses, there is much more live action footage and real-life actors are shown on screen. But the series highlights how malicious entities can adapt. Nowhere is this clearer in the most recent upload, “Unraveling, Pt.1,” which shows a TikTok beauty video slowly growing more distorted and uneasy. The series thinks that technology can change, but the maleficient forces in the world can adapt to it all the same.
Trapped in the snow
In the same post-screening Q&A for I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun quipped that transness in itself is a “liminal space, baby.” Indeed, Schoenbrun has touched on this idea throughout their first two feature films, with the most recent film being a clear allegory for being transgender, as Lundy-Paine states in an interview with CBR, “I think it’s always been a trans story. For me, I think from the beginning, when I first met Jane, we talked about what the story meant. And I think it’s cool because the root of it is what it means to be trans and what it means to blow up your life and choose to transition or choose to not, and to be slowly dying, as what happens to Owen’s character, Justice’s character, but it’s also like there’s a real, true fantasy story in it as well.”
Similarly, in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, the lead character, Casey (Anna Cobb), experiences a form of internet-fueled dysphoria. At one point, she states that she will one day disappear. Taking on a more personal level, Schoenbrun said they realized they were trans in April 2019, right when they were finishing up the script for the film. But I Saw the TV Glow uses the metaphor of burying oneself to further the larger sentiment of feeling trapped in one’s body by society.
While analog horror series like “The Walten Files” or “Harmony and Horror” don’t explicitly feel like trans allegories, they rely on the idea of being trapped inside a body that they are not. These storylines originally stem from being direct inspirations of the Five Nights at Freddy’s video game series, which has a large fanbase within the LGBTQ community that explored concepts of gender through animatronic robots while also reckoning with a creator who did not have those intentions.
The popularity of the video games and their increasing online presence throughout the 2010s made an FNAF analog horror series feel inevitable. And sure enough, YouTubers like Squimpus McGrimpus (who has stopped making videos since admitting to grooming a minor in 2023) formed their own version of the video game series, aptly called “FNAF VHS Tapes.” The series is a retelling of games through the lens of the subgenre, focused less on jumpscares and more on psychological horror and tragedy of both childhood and family.
In an episode called “Sound Response Check,” a child who was murdered and trapped inside a chicken animatron talks about seeing a bird trapped in snow. The child goes on to say they feel like they’re stuck under a blanket of snow and cannot breathe. Furthermore, in the seventh video of the series, “Security Footage,” two children whose souls are now fused with the animatronics roam the halls of “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.” The two eventually have a silent conversation, translated through captions, about wanting to escape the bodies they were currently in.
This metaphor of feeling trapped or buried under a large force can be found both in I Saw the TV Glow and the “FNAF VHS Tapes.” Schoenbrun states as much in a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, saying, “‘The genre version’ of that experience is literally burying yourself alive. You need to feel that level of powerlessness and suffocation.” To clarify, the analog horror series takes on much more of a subconscious reading when it comes to ideas of being forced inside another body, especially since the process of being forced comes from murder. But there seems to be a common theme in these separate works of horror.
Along those same lines, with “The Walten Files” and “Harmony and Horror” being inspired by Five Nights at Freddy’s, both of these series have explicit mentions of characters wanting to break free from the object their souls are forcibly placed in. The “Henry.mp4” tape from “Harmony and Horror” loudly ends with the soul wanting to escape the puppet doll, while the opening video of “The Walten Files” features the phrase “let me out of here,” referencing a man being forced into an animatronic bunny suit. It continues along with this idea by placing Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” whose text ends with asking God to “Grant them eternal rest,” in the second episode of the series. Again, the intention and end results may differ, but the bodily metaphor for both analog horror and Schoenbrun feels apt.
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The YouTube subgenre of analog horror feels at times so far away from any form of cinematic presentation, particularly because these series are made on an online video-sharing platform and not a big screen release. But the differences do not stop there. Schoenbrun’s movies, particularly I Saw the TV Glow, pay homage and take inspiration from filmmakers like David Cronenberg and David Lynch. The films feel like they’re communicating in cinematic language and engaging with material and themes more commonly shown via traditional moviemaking.
Analog horror videos, on the other hand, focus on storytelling but in a very different way than movies or television shows. Employing the Five Nights route, analog horror videos are full of easter eggs, broken links, hidden source code and clues that feel less like a three act structure and more like a treasure map. This is not meant to be a diss or criticism, but rather a layout of creators’ intents to tell scary and dramatic stories. Additionally, analog horror is still widely popular on YouTube. There are plenty of series like “CH/SS,” “Archive 81,” “Marble Hornets,” “Gemini Home Entertainment” and “Eventide Media Center” that were not mentioned in this piece that are foundational in this subgenre.
But as I watched these series in the early 2020s, I had looked and hoped that somehow this creepy subgenre of horror videos that got much under my skin through their style and themes much more than most horror movies today could somehow be translated to the silver screen. I did not find that through Skinamarink. Although it feels aesthetically more aligned with analog horror, it does not share much of the same ideas of technology and identity that made “The Walten Files” so terrifying.
Instead, I found it through Jane Schoenbrun.
