​Ask any video game fan of a particular age to name a soundtrack that affected them profoundly, and odds on there will at least be a passing mention of The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. A surprising franchise to make the quantum leap to three dimensions and 32-bit systems in the late 1990s, Soul Reaver was the sequel to a much less-regarded PC title by the name of Blood Omen. Whereas that title was a more classic, top-down RPG, it made a name for itself by being one of the very few gothic-horror titles in that genre, as well as its superb script and voice acting (a true rarity at the time, when the vast majority of video game voice-acting consisted of poorly-recorded and compressed lines read by whoever happened to be hanging around the studios at the time). Boasting the voice talent of numerous inveterate voice-actors such as Simon Templeman, Michael Bell and the legenday Tony Jay, Blood Omen was one of the first video games to boast an entirely voice-acted script and to tell its story without vast reams of text scrolling across the screen. 


As well as fantastic voice-acting (unequalled in its era), the game also boasted a moody, gothic-horror soundtrack to complement its visuals. Whilst not particularly remarkable, it served its purpose well, enhancing what was a gaphical archaism beyond what might otherwise have been a diverting but ultimately flawed work. 


Skip forward a year or two, and we have the game's sequel: the technically ambitious, three-dimensional adventure that is Soul Reaver. Whereas the original game explored the origins and intriguing destiny of the vampire-noble, Kain, Soul Reaver hurtles the action forward by a measure of millennia, to a time when Kain has swollen beyond any lingering humanity he might've boasted to become the vampire-tyrant of the land of Nosgoth. Rather than playing as the monarch himself, the protagonist of this sequel is Raziel, first and foremost of Kain's vampire sons, who, in the game's opening sequence, is mutilated by Kain in an apparent fit of jealousy over his evolution of a set of demonic wings (a “gift” Kain himself has yet to achieve). Cast into the swirling waters of Nosgoth's abyss, Raziel's vampiric flesh is burned as though immersed in acid. Enduring an eternity of torment, he eventually finds himself in the twisted alternate reality of the spirit realm, where he has been reborn as a soul-devouring ghoul, seemingly at the behest of a faceless Elder-God, who acts as Raziel's guide throughout the game. 


The game is a graphical and technical marvel compared to its predecessor, boasting a three-dimensional environment that can be altered and manipulated by Raziel as he transitions between spirit and physical dimensions. As before, its script, story and voice acting are exemplary; what begins as a simple quest of vengeance becomes more nuanced and convoluted as we and Raziel learn more of his labyrinthine destiny, which is somehow bound up with Kain's own. 


A bleak and nihilistic fantasy-horror, the game boasts vampiric entities, spectres, wraiths and even Lovecraftian abominations, all of which Raziel must negotiate in order to meet his erstwhile Father at its climax. 


From the first notes, the soundtrack is a step beyond almost anything else on the market at the time: mixing gothic, operatic scores with discordant, shrieking guitars and rock and roll riffs, the main Soul Reaver theme -that continues in various forms throughout the subsequent series of games- is a masterpiece of mythological epicness, communicating not only the nihilism of Nosgoth's metaphysics, but also the profound significance of Raziel's quest (not to mention the unspeakably complex game Kain himself is playing). The intro alone is epic enough to leave the player breathless, its FMV (Full Motion Video) graphics extremely impressive for the era, the soundtrack complementing and enhancing every moment. 


Following Raziel's resurrection, he finds himself in the spirit realm; a twisted, distorted, eerily lit parody of physical reality. Here, buildings and structures warp or stretch in impossible ways, moving objects trail phantasmal after-images of themselves, and light flickers all manner of unnatural, pellucid colours. The subtle score of the spirit realm is more muted and recessed than in the physical realm, emphasising its strangeness and lack of substance. Just as the graphics shift and change when Raziel transitions between states, so too does the score: In the physical realm, tracks are always clearer and more pronounced, emphasising the cataclysmic decay Kain's empire has wrought upon Nosgoth. This is a world on its knees, brought to the brink of metaphysical unraveling by the decisions of a solitary man. The score shrieks and wails that quality: as well as complementing the action of the game, it also echoes with utter despair, a moribund sense that, no matter what Raziel does, Nosgoth is doomed to succumb to its cancer. 

As of writing this Halloween Ends opened on Friday. I had been planning on doing something about how awful Halloween Kills was as a follow-up to my disappointing second viewing of Halloween (2018) for my personal blog. Then I started thinking — in fairness it’s been a thought that’s been rattling around for a while — that perhaps there shouldn’t be thirteen films with Michael Myers in them.


I’ll start by saying I haven’t seen Halloween Ends. I have gone ahead and waded into all kinds of spoilers, so I know what’s going on in with it. I will eventually watch it — since I’ve insanely committed myself to finishing this particular cycle of the films. I’m not hopeful about this one at all. Not that I’ll reveal any spoilers here, I just felt I needed to say this in a spirit of full disclosure. There will be spoilers for previous films, so watch out for that.


Why do I think that there shouldn’t have been so many films concerned with the Shatner mask-wearing knife enthusiast?


A question that has a cathartically long answer.


We’ll start by talking about the 1978 original. It’s a film I have seen many times since I was a kid and as such has been a major shaper in my tastes. I’m not alone in considering it a classic. From the mood, the pacing, music, and characters it’s as close to perfect as you can get. Even those little imperfections and movie-logic things add to the charm of the piece. Yes, I heart Halloween (1978).


What is it that makes Halloween such an effective horror film? That pacing is a big part of it. Even though it is a lean ninety-minute film it has a deliberateness that some might want two hours to cultivate. The appearances of Michael Myers after his escape from the mental hospital around Haddonfield, set a brooding atmosphere. Once he’s in full murderful swing, Myers’s implacable pursuit and inhuman cunning, make him a particularly intimidating antagonist.


The most fundamental thing about the events in Halloween was the fact that there was no neat explanation for Myers’s actions. It just happens, a bunch of kids are just doing mundane stuff on Halloween and then they are murdered for no reason. The notion that the horror comes from his senselessness and the destruction of the idea of suburban safety isn’t a new one. I’m not bringing anything novel to the table by saying this, it is worth repeating, though.


You can’t discount the purposeful lack of background for the big bad in the mix. Michael Myers is a blank slate, in the years between his attack on his older sister and his spree murder there is nothing. He sits in his room and simply stares at the wall. Even writing that sentence gives a chill. The idea that he was on standby mode for fifteen years is terrifying. His sheer inscrutability builds on this: mute and wearing a neutral expression mask. He lurks in the shadows, and sometimes not-quite-so-shadows, waiting for his opportunity to attack. We don’t know what his motivations are, and we don’t know what his ultimate goal is. All we get is a hulking dude in a boiler suit and a mask, who is extremely keen on making people dead.


What backstory there is doesn’t offer anything, either. He comes from a happy, loving home (if it’s not the Rob Zombie take, at least — another one I haven’t seen and refuse to on account of how terrible I find Rob Zombie films), in a good, unremarkable neighbourhood. There’s nothing overtly supernatural, no years of animal abuse, or suggestion he was bullied, just a normal kid who decides to kill his big sister one day. I mean, being a little brother myself, I kind of understand that, but c’mon man, a bit of restraint.


This is why I think even one sequel was too many. John Carpenter has stated that he said everything he wanted to say with the original Halloween, and given how stripped-down the story is, I can believe it. It’s the reason he didn’t direct Halloween II (1981). However, Halloween II was made after all and then the rest, and ‘the rest’ is a lot. I still quite enjoy Halloween II, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as the original. Michael Myers just walking through a glass door like a Terminator is still hilarious, mind you, but I don’t think that what anyone involved in the production was going for.


To stretch out the story for another ninety minutes John Carpenter and Debra Hill, who were drawn back for writing duties, had to start expanding things. The idea of Samhain thing was the genesis of the original, but they had to make it explicit here and just this little bit of extra lore bloated this world and destroyed The Shape’s mystique. As soon as we were given even a vague motivation it imparted a sense of disappointment, after the initial moment of understanding.


The bloat didn’t stop there, with the further revelation that Laurie Strode was adopted and was in fact Michael’s sister. This connection was dropped for the 2018 Halloween, which was a good decision. The clunky familial tie dilutes the nihilistic meaninglessness of Michael Myers’s actions even more. This is something that was crammed into the US television cut of the original, with the clumsy expedience of the word ‘sister’ being scrawled in Michael’s abandoned cell. Not the most elegant solution and given his refusal to communicate, completely out of character — such as it was.


And I’d like to go on a tangent here about the level of gore in Halloween II in comparison with Halloween. The first film is almost bloodless, with literally only a few splashes here and there. My understanding is that for Halloween II, John Carpenter, having seen the much gorier Friday the 13th insisted on having the blood spray more liberally. Because of this the Halloween films have the reputation of being grue-fests. While I’ve always been something of a gorehound, I think this does a major disservice to the restraint of the original. It also means that instead of an atmosphere of dread in the Halloween there was a heavy emphasis on brutality and gore, despite the statements by David Gordon-Green and Danny McBride saying they wanted something closer to the original.


The Cult of Thorn trilogy is the ultimate expression of story bloat and ties together Halloween IV-VI. Gone was the ambiguity of whether Michael Myers was supernatural, and in came a series of ever more ridiculous twists to keep the franchise alive, which included just a wee bit of incest, because everyone loves that. The franchise thankfully went dormant for a few years after that.


Even though the most recent trilogy of films has stripped back most of the baggage of lore with respect to Michael Myers, they come with their own in the form of overblown character developments for the survivors. In some ways this is almost as damaging to the mystique of Myers; everyone even tangentially involved with the original has become obsessed with Michael Myers, damaging and destroying lives. I see what they are doing here, and how it fits their thesis on the nature of evil, but it feels forced and as clumsy as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers being siblings.


Michael Myers should always have been an enigmatic one-shot creation. His bizarre disappearance at the end of Halloween had power because we didn’t know where he was or if he was alive. The struggles and diminishing returns of the baker’s dozen of films reinforces my belief. I used to want Halloween sequels, but now I feel like that was a juvenile want, something to soothe the unease of Michael Myers stalking somewhere, ready to strike. That uneasiness was the original film’s greatest triumph, a culmination of beautifully combined elements, that has been eroded more and more in the forty-four years since it was released.

Halloween Ends won’t be the final outing for Michael Myers. No doubt in a few years’ time someone will think they can handle the material, a reboot or a different continuation of Myers’s mysterious quest. My hope is that this doesn’t happen, and that anyone who might want to tackle it takes a long consider and just puts it back on the shelf with a nice wistful pat. My preference would be that we had eleven original films in the intervening decades since 1978, but that’s a unfulfillable wish, and letting the old codger who is way too into sticking sharp metal things into squishy pink squealy things retire is a more achievable outcome.

When it comes to horror soundtracks, Found Footage and Documentary horror films aren't necessarily the most ideal subjects. For the most part, their reliance on verisimilitude means that any score they boast is minimal at best, usually consisting of simple themes or -as in The Blair Witch Project's case- a single, resonant chord that repeats over the end credits. Factors such as background or incidental music are, obviously, abandoned in favour of vast, resonant silences and environmental soundscapes, in order to enhance the impression of sincere footage rather than a contrivance of fiction. 


However, there are exceptions that prove the rule: 


The Last Broadcast garnered something of a cult status in the wake of The Blair Witch Project phenomena. The latter film having introduced mainstream audiences to the concept of Found Footage horror, The Last Broadcast errs more towards the documentary format, marketing itself as an exploratory work by an amateur film-maker in his apparent search for the truth regarding a series of grizzly and violent murders that occurred in the USA pine barrens. 


As a result, unlike the footage of The Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast is a necessarily more cultivated work, aping the editing and framing of TV documentaries familiar to 1990s audiences. It therefore boasts its own unique and fascinating soundtrack; one that mingles the realist silences and profound absences of Found Footage pieces with chilling incidental work, designed to convey a particular ethos on behalf of the in-fiction film-maker, and elicit emotional reaction in the manner of a more traditional horror film. 


The score of The Last Broadcast is itself part of the fundamental illusion: in order for the horror of the film to work, we as the audience must be able to suspend disbelief to a degree, and allow ourselves into the world of the documentary-maker himself. As such, the score is a peculiar beast: Throughout, the host attempts to cultivate a narrative that incorporates everything from cryptozoology -the murders having taken place whilst the victims were on the hunt for the mythic “Jersey Devil”- to potentially supernatural occurrences. He makes comment upon the almost ritualistic, mystical nature of film-making; how demons might be summoned or monsters born on the interstice between electronic image, sound, broadcast and audience participation. Thematically, this makes the piece a sincere companion to 1992's BBC Halloween project, Ghostwatch, which explores similarly esoteric concepts. 


Between the scraps of silence and strangely quilted, almost priestly dialogue of our host, are scraps of music that derive from a variety of eclectic sources, some ostensibly cribbed from what scattered archives existed back in the day, others purportedly from recordings created by the man framed for the murders themselves, Jim Seward. In every instance, the pieces selected are subtle, eerie and resonant, echoing the vast, almost alien emptiness of the Pine Barrens, but also the strange alienation and detachment we experience from atrocity when it is conveyed through media (bearing in mind that, at the time, images of atrocity in the news were de rigeur, from footage of distant wars to grizzly details of the work of domestic serial killers).


The Internet, radio, broadcast television...all of these mediums become the anatomy of the greater beast within the documentary's purview, rendering the murders themselves almost incidental; Baudrillardian signs and signifiers within a far more profound and all-consuming hyper-reality. Pieces overlaying images of the Pine Barrens sound like the ghosts of lost children or, in more intense, graphic moments, the simultaneously electronic and bestial buzzing growl of "The Jersey Devil” itself.


At other times, Jim Seward's Nirvana-esque pieces emphasise the impression of a troubled mind in a troubled world; a sense of isolation within one's own skull that echoes the condition of being lost and afraid in the woods, or within the equally alienating, profoundly haunted tracts of the Internet. 

Throughout, musical tracks mingle with and complement the sounds of electronic media; the clicks and whirs of analogue tape, the now-archaic shrieks and whines of Internet dial-up, which the documentary frames variously as digitised, tortured expressions and the shrieks and howls of something inhuman. 


Whilst the twist ending of the documentary is ultimately disappointing, and serves to undo much of the ambiguity and mystery that forms the foundations of its essential horror, it does pull a fascinating trick in terms of format and perspective: 


Up until that moment, everything has occurred from the perspective of a documentary film-maker. As the film reveals itself, that perspective is shed in favour of a more traditional, external approach, as though there are indeed other eyes and cameras present at the film's climax, spectral documentarians who are as fascinated by scenes of human atrocity as we are as audiences, and as unconcerned by consequence. This shift towards a more traditional, horror film format is also true of the soundtrack, which suddenly adopts more elaborate, spine-tingling chords and cues, redolent of any slasher film or psychological thriller of the era. 


Whilst the film arguably flubs the landing, it remains a consistently fascinating historical artefact to this day, and nowhere moreso than in its soundscape, whose tracts are as alien and evocatively desolate as those of the Pine Barrens themselves. ​

​Over the past decade and a half, we have seen a plethora of monsters birthed in online forums that have become viral sensations. These monsters often become the subjects of video games, fiction, art, and films, as well as even the catalysts for moral panics and even becoming linked to real-life crimes.

In 2009, Eric Knudsen, AKA Victor Surge, created the granddaddy of these monsters, Slender Man. In 2018, a partially cropped image of a rubber bird-woman creature created by Japanese special effects company Link Factory became the face of Momo, an inhuman figure who supposedly reached out to children via social media and YouTube to encourage violent behavior. That same year, artist Trevor Henderson created Siren Head, a forty-foot skeletal figure with two giant, megaphone-like speakers for a head, each one filled with man-eating teeth and blaring random words and siren noises. Siren Head has since become the subject of several successful indie video games and mods, short films and TikTok videos, creepypastas and children’s fan art.

And in 2022, we are seeing the birth of a new monster, though this one, like Fiddler’s Green in The Sandman, is less of a person or creature and more of a place: the Backrooms. Birthed from an anonymously posted photo of an empty office hallway with yellow wallpaper and its accompanying text on 4chan in 2019, the Backrooms are an alternate universe in the shape of an endless maze of these yellow office rooms and hallways, rank with the smell of moldy carpet and the buzz of electric lights, as well as the presence of some unknown monster stalking you from within the depths of the maze.

While the Backrooms had proven popular before 2022, it went viral early in the year when teenage YouTuber Kane Parsons released a short film called Backrooms (Found Footage) on his channel, Kane Pixels. The tense nine-minute video currently has thirty-nine million views at the time I’m writing this, and Parsons has since released a series of videos on the Backrooms, creating both his own unique lore for the space and spreading the idea to new fans everywhere.

The subject of Internet boogeymen and horror folklore spawned online has long fascinated me, leading me to create my own monster, Queen Alice, who will be making her debut in 2023 in my new book Hannah and Other Stories. I am also developing a short story or novelette set in the Backrooms, hoping to give this relatively young entry into the realm of horror folklore a personal spin. 

These creations have also made me wonder: what makes these characters not just terrifying, but also causes them to become online sensations that spread to every corner of the globe? And while it’s near impossible to definitively say there’s any recipe for viral success, let alone in the realm of horror, I have noticed among the four examples I’ve given some commonalities that I believe contributed to their virality:

Occupying the uncanny valley or being something ordinary turned unordinary. The uncanny valley is the idea that objects or beings that resemble humans to a point that we see recognizable features, but not enough that we recognize them as human, causes feelings of nervousness, anxiety, and fear. This is the idea behind phobias of dolls, dummies, and mannequins, among other things, and it’s at the heart of many Internet monsters. Slender Man is a humanoid being in a black suit but without a face; Momo’s human face has oversized eyes and a long, beaklike mouth; and Siren Head has a body resembling a starved or skeletal human with pieces of technology where his head should be.

And while the Backrooms in no way resemble humans, they often elicit the same feelings of wrongness and anxiety. Even the original image of the empty yellow office space evokes an eerie sensation in viewers. That’s because the Backrooms, like the other mentioned characters, are also something ordinary that’s been made unordinary and terrifying. Think of a normal office, including one you might go to every day: they are spaces occupied by furniture, equipment and technology, the occasional decoration or art piece, and of course, people. The fact that the office space depicted in the backrooms is empty, coupled with descriptions such as a moldy or damp carpet, evoking the idea that the space is long abandoned, brings out a feeling of wrongness all on its own.

Spread via public forum and audience participation. Slender Man first appeared on the Something Awful website forums and quickly spread across the internet via creepypasta sites. Momo was first brought to the attention of people via YouTube, both as a featured character and in discussing the character herself. Siren Head was released on his creator’s Twitter account, and the Backrooms were born on 4chan.

In addition, each one, with so little lore attached by the original creators, were almost inviting other users and creators to add their own spins to the characters. Slender Man’s video games, artwork and films added concepts like his tentacles and his notes, for example, and the Backrooms gained popularity via creators creating games and short films where they add their own ideas as to what the Backrooms are. Kane Parsons, in particular, has created his own miniature universe of folklore thanks to his highly successful video series, which in turn has influenced other creators in their additions to the Backrooms mythology, particularly Parson’s version.

This invitation to copy, imitate and add in contributing to the ideas and beliefs of these phenomena creates a perpetual feedback loop, allowing for continual exposure to the masses, imaginative infection, and spreading via new copying in new places or in the creation of new works. In other words, to go viral.

Technology may be part of their allure/horror. To varying degrees, each of these examples use technology to further their nefarious ends or have technology wrapped up in what makes them horrifying and fascinating, separate from their going viral via the internet. Slender Man is sometimes able to reach out to people via the internet, enslaving them or making them his next targets, and Momo was believed to reach out to people via social media platforms, especially YouTube and messaging apps like Whatsapp.

Siren Head, meanwhile, is part technological equipment himself with his megaphones, a callback to WWII and Cold War era sirens warning of possible impending bombings. The presence of mouths within the megaphone pieces moves Siren Head from harbinger of doom to the actual cause of it as he chases his prey.

And in some variants of the mythology, especially Kane Parsons’s, the Backrooms are born or created from scientific experiments into the fabric of reality. This itself adds a further layer of terror, as well as a feeling of responsibility. After all, any threats to humanity that the Backrooms and the entities within present are partially our fault.

The possibility of being real. With their virality and the enthusiasm of those spreading and contributing to their mythology, its sometimes easy to believe these entities are real rather than the creation of other human beings. This is especially the case when the creator is not immediately known or quickly found out, such as Stephen King for Pennywise or HP Lovecraft for Cthulhu. Even when the creator of a fictional character or place is known, some may still mistake them for being real simply because of their ubiquitous nature. For example, the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, England often receives guests who believe Sherlock Holmes is a real detective and not the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is not helped when the staff are required to tell guests wondering where the great detective is that “he’s out on a case,” allowing the mistaken belief to continue.

Thus, it’s easy to believe in the actual existence of these characters and places, which we have seen before. Momo, for example, was the subject of a moral panic in 2018 fueled by concerned parents and watchdog groups believing her to be a real threat to children, which also in turn fueled her virality. And while there’s no evidence anyone was actually hurt or encouraged to hurt others or themselves because of Momo, Slender Man has famously been the inspiration for acts of violence by disturbed individuals. These incidents led to a nationwide panic around the character, as well as a decline in his popularity and an increase in benevolent portrayals from a shocked community of fans.

Keep in mind, most fans and non-fans alike can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and just because an internet horror phenomenon seems real isn’t necessarily a bad thing or something to worry about. It’s simply a factor that has helped to spread these creations across the world and into the horror zeitgeist.


Being uncanny or making something ordinary look unordinary or terrifying. The invitation to spread and add to the lore of the central character or idea. Technology being part of the allure and/or horror in some way or another. And finally, the idea that what is being spread could be real. All these factors contribute to new creations of internet horror folklore and allow for them to spread across the world till they are part our culture. It may not be the case for all the examples out there, or the case for the next one to come and scar our collective psyches, but it is certainly the case with some of our most well-known examples, including the ones I have mentioned. And, in all likelihood, will be present with the next big internet horror craze, whatever form that may take.

 

​Shirley Dobbins wants nothing more than to live a quiet life and become a head housekeeper at a prestigious house. So when she is invited to come work for the mysterious baronet Sir Joseph Hunting at his estate, she thinks it is the chance of a lifetime. However, from the moment she arrives things are not what they seem. As she becomes wrapped up in more of the baronet's radical science, she realizes something dark and otherworldly is loose within the estate. And if left unchecked, it'll claim the lives of all she holds dear.

A beauty pageant veteran appeases her mother by competing for one final crown, only to find herself trapped in a hand-sewn gown that cuts into her flesh. A journalist falls deeply in love with a mysterious woman but discovers his beloved can vanish and reappear hours later in the same spot, as if no time has passed at all. A cash-strapped college student agrees to work in a shop window as a mannequin but quickly learns she’s not free to break her pose. And what happens when the family pet decides it no longer wants to have “owners?”

In the grim and often horrific thirteen tales collected here, beauty is violent, and love and hate are the same feeling, laid bare by unbridled obsession. Entering worlds both strange and quotidian, and spanning horror landscapes both speculative and real, Unshod, Cackling, and Naked asks who among us is worthy of love and who deserves to die?

During my early twenties, as a student barely able to keep mind and body together, I recall happening across a late-night broadcast of a show that hooked me almost from the first instant: 

Crude, poorly shot, ludicrously acted, edited and conceived, I couldn't help but be intrigued enough to not only keep watching, but tune in for every broadcast thereafter. It was only with further exposure to the show I began to realise that, not only were its various technical crudities part of a sophisticated series of running gags (essentially a loving lampoon of crude televisual tropes and shortcomings of 1980s broadcast television), the show knows its subject matter so intimately (in this instance, mass-published horror media of the same era), its various spoofs, satires and show-ups are some of the most trenchant in all of comedy. 


Purported to be a genuine TV production (albeit one that was never officially aired or even commissioned), Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is a scalpel-sharp satire of genre TV, horror fiction and the cults of personality that so often predominate such phenomena. Marenghi himself is a brilliantly Frankensteinian creation, marrying characteristics from the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert, Clive Barker, Shaun Hutson and numerous others fans of the genre will instantly recognise, suffusing the resultant “monster” with a vein of pretentious ignorance that makes itself plain every time he pontificates on subjects he has no business speaking about (everything from horror as a genre and the craft of writing to politics and philosophy are -according to the man himself- part of Marenghi's dubious purview). The genius of the character is how lightly the satire is played; writer and creator Matthew Holness manifests Marenghi with such straight-laced pomposity and narcissistic self-importance, it's almost possible to become inveigled into the mythos of high art that he spins around the show, no matter how ludicrous or absurd it actually gets (indeed, I recall speaking to those who'd perhaps only glimpsed the show or not taken the time to appreciate its satirical nature before switching channels who believed its sincerity). ​

Alongside his rogue's gallery of supporting cast, Marenghi comes across as a clueless, self-important, irascible individual who comprehends little, yet has somehow managed to cobble together a self-sustaining industry around himself in a manner akin to the legendary Tommy Wisseau. Part of the show's sincere genius is its painting of a world as hapless in its assumptions as Marenghi himself. Parodying pompous, self-mythologising documentaries on similar creative endeavours, the various “talking head” interviews that intersperse the episodes of Dark Place treat entirely risible material as high art, weaving a mythology around the show so sincerely communicated -in its ignorance-, it's hard not to get swept up in the self-congratulatory bravura of it all. Marenghi, alongside his editor (night-club owner, pimp, director, editor, cast-mate and general raconteur, Dean Learner) and actor Todd Rivers (magnificently played by the legendary Matt Berry) provide dubious elucidations throughout each episode, commenting not only on the diastrously under-qualified, chaotic (and purportedly lethal, in one or two instances) creation of the show, but also procrastinations on writing, art, acting, direction, philosophy, politics, all of which seem to be derived from 1980s US serials and day-time TV shows (Quantum Leap, The A-Team etc) that were imported onto UK screens. The ego, assumption and general lack of intelligence on display is played with just enough sincerity to lend it a patina of seriousness. Were those performances a molecule more absurd, were the statements they make an inch more extreme, the show would lose something essential to its integrity, i.e. the contrast between these moments of -often quite solemn- speculation and the ill-conceived ridiculousness of Dark Place itself. 


The dichotomy lends the show a certain complexity of flavour, leavening the sillier moments and sequences of visual or slapstick comedy with a delicious quality of audience doubt. Despite how ridiculous the show gets, the constant insistence that one is experiencing high and forbidden art leaves the audience in a constant quandary: Is this indeed some satirical take on genre television and fiction, as conceived by a genius who wholly apprehends the tropes and conventions of those phenomena? The answer is yes and no; Marenghi himself is totally oblivious to any irony that derives from the show's short-comings. He and his fellows take their work incredibly seriously, and will brook no suggestion that it is anything less. Matt Holness, on the other hand, is acutely aware of that which he satirises, and has a great love of the various genres and mediums the show sends up. ​

This is nowhere more evident than in the realisation of Marenghi himself: the beats that he hits are extremely niche, the references he manifests esoteric to the point of obsurity. Yet, for those of a similar frame of obsession, the references chime profoundly, and reveal that Holness is as much a horror and science fiction buff as he is someone who perceives the short-comings inherent to their popular manifestations. Who would, for example, note Marenghi's deployment of highly idiosyncratic and abstruse terms such as “The Fantastique,” which is a sly dig at Clive Barker's early interviews and TV appearances, or visual elements such as his leather jacket which echo the manner in which James Herbert often appeared in public? Who but horror fans would get the joke of Marenghi himself setting up an institute to harness the apparent psychic potential of children (an overt reference to Stephen King's fascination in his fiction with the same subject)? 


This is not a cruel or mean-spirited piece of work; trenchant and merciless as it can sometimes be, it also has an incredible love for its subject matter. The sadly limited run of six episodes each revolve around tropes, story structures and subjects familiar to any fan of genre fiction, referencing everything from Doctor Who to the body-horror works of David Cronenberg, TV classics such as Day of the Triffids, Planet of the Apes, the various works of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, as well as -stylistically- numerous US TV shows, whose tropes and style of storytelling, cinematography etc the show shamelessly cribs from. Expect absurdities such as exploding ambulances, fast-action (and deliberately poorly shot) chase sequences, horror-comedy segments involving telekinetically-animated office furniture, guns, guns, guns and more guns (bearing in mind the show is ostensibly set in a British hospital) and even a musical sequence in the final episode that is as incongruous as it is hilarious. ​

In terms of the landscape of British comedy at the time of its airing, Dark Place stands as one of the most idiosyncratic and unusual works in the arena. At a time when British comedy was pervaded by political satire and social commentary (owing to the cultural upheavals of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the various broken promises and atrocities committed by the Blair administraton etc), Dark Place dared to derive comedy from an extremely niche subject, playing to an audience whose erudition and intelligence it had to assume in order to make any kind of impact. Despite Channel 4's frankly baffling marketing and shunting of the show to a graveyard slot on weekday evenings, it only found its audience, but has sustained a mythic status all these years later, such that calls for a return to Dark Place in one medium or another are de rigeur in horror and genre fiction circles. Garth Marenghi himself has become cemented as an ironic figure within the echelons of popular horror writers, such that fans spin their own satires around him and his body of work, from essays, interviews and articles to Twitter stories and blog posts exploring -in fittingly wry fashion- the impact that Marenghi's writing has had on various creators. 


A significant factor of the show's success is the aforementioned respect it has for its target audience: at a time when focus-grouped and written-by-committee, edited-by-test-audience projects were producing the most bland, inoffensive work imaginable, Dark Place remained steadfastly true to its core spirit and foundational conceits, relying on its audience to be literate and intelligent enough to understand its satire and the molecular detail that pervades every performance, sequence and episode. It might seem strange to the casual viewer to state, but appreciation of Dark Place in its totality requires a sincere degree of background in horror, science fiction and genre media in general, not to mention an understanding of 1970s/1980s TV trends and tropes. This makes the show an incredibly unique project with a deliberately targeted and exclusive core audience. Rather than attempting to dilute itself in order to appeal to a wider demographic (always death to any sincere creative project), Dark Place doubles down at every instance, throwing out references and visual gags that only those immersed in such topics will even perceive, much less understand. For all the overt silliness and -aesthetic- crudity of the show, the subtlety of its comedy cannot be over-emphasised:


For every slapstick gag or cleverly masked joke, there are a hundred visual details, felicities of performance, writing and direction that aren't laugh out loud funny, but feed into the ethos of the show and make it an environment where humour foments. This is even evident in the physical editing; scenes are deliberately choppy and poorly constructed, continuity is a gaff-laden nightmare and framing is naïve as only something produced by those with no background, training or experience in film can be. Performance-wise, this factor is particularly acute with regards to Dean Learner, ably played by Richard Ayoade, whose “performance” as Thornton Reed is bad in a way that only a truly great actor could conceive: Learner constantly misses his marks, doesn't know where to stand, glances at the camera, mugs, runs through his lines without emphasis or emotion and interacts woodenly with the props on set. It's a genuinely brilliant performance that identifies everything that an actor can do wrong and goes for it with gusto. This factor is complemented by various sequences in which rushed and poorly-dubbed voice-overs have been used to communicate exposition or back story. Catching these sequences in isolation, audiences might be forgiven for wondering what in blue Hell they've discovered, how any product airing on TV could be quite so bad. However, as part of the whole, they are sincerely brilliant details that serve to complexify the final product, layering in shades and levels of humour it might not otherwise possess. Nothing here is arbitrary, from line-readings to framing, from the physical performances of actors to the jerky, often baffling editing decisions. Dark Place thereby provides a satire not only of genre fiction, but of televisual media itself: Marenghi and his team are effectively presumptuous ignorami who have no idea what they're doing or the protocols and processes of production, but do it anyway, driven by an unshakeable belief in the apparent artistry of their project that's as oddly admirable as it is bone-headedly, obsessively masochistic (whilst there's little elucidation regarding the untimely end of the project, Marenghi, Rivers and Learner provide subtle suggestions of a disastrous conclusion, which -purportedly- resulted in the deaths of crew members, the suspicius disapprearance of lead actress Madelaine Wool and various unspecified criminal investigations).