From prehistoric campfire tales to modern movies and video games, storytelling has come a long way since we first began expressing ourselves through fiction. In fact, it seems that every time we invent a form of communication, someone comes along and discovers a way to use it to tell stories in new and interesting ways. And if any medium comes close to defining the spirit of 21st century storytelling, it would have to be Alternate Reality Games.
Commonly defined as a kind of interactive fiction that incorporates several different forms of media into a cohesive narrative that supposedly takes place in real life, ARGs have been steadily growing in popularity since the 2000s – especially when it comes to horror. And with A24 currently developing a big screen adaptation of Kane Pixel’s immensely popular The Backrooms, we’ve decided to come up with a list highlighting six other ARGs that Hollywood should adapt next.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll only be considering ARG’s that involve some form of active audience engagement, meaning that it’s not enough for creators to simply incorporate found footage elements into a traditional story. With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite online horror experiments if you think we missed a particularly spooky one.
Now, onto the list…
6. Daisy Brown
Simultaneously one of the most bizarre and entertaining entries on this list, Daisy Brown is also one of the easiest ones to turn into a low-budget feature. A tale as old as time, this eerie ARG follows the titular Daisy and her sugar-eating monster “Alan” (brought to life through inexpensive yet charming practical effects) through a series of vlogs and Twitter posts that slowly reveal their terrifying history.
Unlike many other popular ARGs, Daisy Brown relies on solid characters and genuinely interesting mythology to keep fans engaged rather than cryptic storytelling and imagery. This means that a hypothetical movie could just be a straightforward adaptation of the existing story, albeit with a much larger effects budget.
5. Petscop
From Sonic.Exe to Ben Drowned, cursed videogames have been at the heart of countless creepypastas over the years, so it was only a matter of time before some clever storyteller would decide to use a simulated videogame to tell a terrifying story. Chronicling an in-depth let’s play of a supposedly unreleased PlayStation game, this cryptic little experiment spawned a sizable community of fans obsessed with figuring out what it all means.
Yet another case of a creator using multi-layered storytelling to craft an extensive mythology, Petscop could easily be turned into an investigative thriller akin to 8mm or even Sinister, following a paranoid protagonist diving down a digital rabbit hole involving disturbed artists and the real-world horrors that inspire them.
4. Hiimmarymary
Imagine waking up one day and finding yourself completely trapped within in your own home, with doors and windows held shut by a seemingly supernatural force and no one around to help you. No, I’m not referring to Silent Hill 4, but rather the underrated ARG, Hiimmarymary. Presented as a YouTube channel (as well as a series of social media accounts) run by the titular Mary as she attempts to survive this unexplainable ordeal, the most surprising thing about Hiimmarymary is the fact that it still hasn’t been adapted into a movie!
With both liminal horror and Found Footage on the rise, a compelling yet cost-effective horror yarn about loneliness and isolation seems like a no-brainer, especially in a post-Covid world. That being said, I’d appreciate it if filmmakers could take the time to give the original ARG’s monsters a big screen facelift.
3. Local 58
Analog horror has become something of a fad in recent years, with countless creators attempting to simulate the grimy aesthetic of older media, but one of the greatest and earliest examples of this trend is nearly a decade old at this point. A spin-off of the infamous Candle Cove creepypasta (which was already adapted into the first season of SyFy’s Channel Zero), Local 58 tells the story of a public access television channel that occasionally gets hijacked and broadcasts bizarre messages and weather alerts.
While the overarching story in between these freaky shorts is frustratingly vague (and you’re likely to only get a kick out of the experience if you engage with fellow viewers and the associated websites), I think there’s plenty of material here for a Videodrome-styled deep dive into paranoia and mass hysteria – especially if they can get Kris Straub involved.
You might not expect a thrilling horror story to come about of the website formerly known as Twitter, but you’ve got to hand it to Aidan Elliot for making the most out of a microblogging platform when coming up with this large-scale tale of cosmic terror. Told through a series of posts made by a young man trapped in a world where the sun literally vanished, these short tidbits (and the occasional pictures) place us in an unconventional apocalypse featuring everything from UFOs to zombies.
Personally, I think TheSunVanished is naturally well suited for indie Found Footage due to the diary-like approach of its source material, but a large-scale blockbuster could also be incredibly entertaining with the right budget.
1. This House Has People In It
Surveillance footage is naturally creepy. After all, we tend to only watch these videos if something goes terribly wrong, so it stands to reason that viewers were spooked when the comedy-oriented channel Adult Swim began to air seemingly real footage of a family slowly succumbing to supernatural horrors in their suburban home: This House Has People In It.
While the broadcast only lasted around 11 minutes, this strange story (which happened to be created by artist/comedian Alan Resnick) continued online with an interactive mystery as fans attempted to reveal the sinister secrets lurking behind the AB Surveillance Solutions website. The abundance of supplemental material here means that expanding this transmedia oddity into a feature-length Found Footage flick wouldn’t be all that hard, especially if filmmakers took a mockumentary approach to presenting the narrative.
And if you’re already a fan of Resnick’s surrealist genre-benders, I’d also recommend checking out his very first horror-comedy ARG, AlanTutorial!
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