HOOPTOBER X SHORT #4

This actually was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen and it’s actually quite complicated to explain why. I knew almost nothing about this short, didn’t even know it existed until a little over a month ago when I was looking for acclaimed shorts to sprinkle amongst my Hooptober horror viewing. But the brief look at reviews from Letterboxd follows I trust on the matter said it was one of the scariest things they had seen. I knew the Letterboxd plot description and that haunting background image and that it was a YouTube short. That was it. For maximum effect, I suggest not knowing anything more. But for those who will want more thoughts

I’m planning a mini at home horror marathon to knock off some Hooptober titles and figured I’d precede it with this. But as soon as I put on the shirt I felt an extreme sense of unease. Some horror fans claim they can’t get scared at all anymore but I actually still regularly get spooked by both immediate horrors in movies and the longer implications of them. But it has been a long time since I felt so much to turn off this short as soon as it started. A boy is awakened in his house by a storm. We see things through his camera as he says he’s going to give us a tour of his house. The room is very dilapidated and the framing and camera movements in this are almost pinpoint perfect to imply reveals that keep getting delayed. There is no audio dialogue, though we see text of dialogue, and presence of other sounds varies. I couldn’t take it. I turned it off after two minutes and put football back on. But I couldn’t stop wanting to return so I fired it up again, watched another two minutes, and dipped again lol. I just couldn’t bring myself to continue with what was a loop that the director with perfect structurally suggestion let’s us know is at some point going to reach a jump scare or at least a haunting image. Even the medium-short runtime was the exact amount to wonder if I could make it through. I bounced again, did what I never do, and scanned a couple more reviews to try to get the gist of what happens but none went into too literal details and just confirmed that horrifying turns were coming. I even popped on the first minute of one of those videos where you watch some annoying YouTuber watch the thing as he also started to say it was one of the scariest things he’d ever seen before I was like “what the hell am I doing. Just put the damn movie on.” And so I finally actually put it on.

I was able to lock in, while still being scared enough that I kept the volume low and had my hand on the back button of the remote in case I needed to nope out of there again, and the brilliance of the short was confirmed. It proceeds in a loop but with both pieces of the narrative changing and the details of the rooms until what has happened becomes clear and is then confirmed in the promised horrifying images. I’d say this has maybe one funny line in the whole thing (“this room has no style”) but even that comes right before one of the scariest parts so it’ almost there to let your guard down. The result of it all is not just scary but also quite sad. You’ve perhaps wondered at some point what existing as a ghost trapped in a house for years and years would look like. Well, here you go.

You could say this was not the best way to watch the movie. I try to watch things through all the way if possible. But if I can put on my usual McLuhanite hat, the meta experience of interacting with this short is inextricable from its successfulness. I found out about this short because it was described as the scariest thing ever on a site that can regular throw you things from people you trust. It exists in an environment of YouTube horror shorts that can get a mythic quality to us familiar with the era of creepypasta and such. When you search it on the YouTube app, the second video is a video saying how scary it is. While I’m sure this would also be terrifying if it just came on in a theatre before a horror movie (in a totally dark room? God help those people), there’s also something to having the actual ability to turn it off by being scared that makes you want to do that. So in some ways the breaking it up improves the effects.

Quite a lot for such a small random production. There’s apparently several videos on its making and I’m curious, though part of me wants to keep the remaining mystique. I also want to check out the director’s other shorts listed on Letterboxd. But for much of the reasons explained above, it might take me some to build up the courage.