Rather than recommend a single horror film or an unsettling album for our final installment of spooky season recs, I present you with a small selection of creepy, disturbing, and just plain weird videos from YouTube. There’s a little something for everyone here. Whether you’re a fan of surreal art house shorts, cosmic horror, or classic viral clips, you’re bound to find something below that will get you in the Halloween spirit.
This 1983 short film from Cecelia Condit found its audience over 30 years later when it was uploaded to YouTube and eventually found its way to Reddit. If you’ve ever wondered what a feminist musical about cannibals directed by David Lynch would be like, wonder no more. Possibly in Michigan is only 12 minutes long, but it has inspired hours of YouTube videos dedicated to analyzing its deeply unsettling imagery and meaning.
The line between horror and comedy is razor thin, and Homemade Gatorade expertly threads that line. It’s bizarre, uncomfortable, and uncanny. It blends stiff animation with heavily processed video to create something quite unique. I’m never sure if I should be laughing or squirming in terror with every turn this road trip short takes.
Big budget cosmic horror films often make the same mistake — they try to show too much. What makes Portrait of God work is it knows less is more. So much of its short runtime is spent staring into an empty abyss. Or is it empty…
Speaking of staring intently at nothing and wondering if you did actually see anything, Heck is the short that eventually was turned into the experimental horror Skinamarink. Personally, I love Skinamarink, but I understand it’s not for everyone. 100 minutes is a long time to be staring into staticky corners of a drab suburban home. Heck delivers the same tension-building quiet, but in a much more digestible 29 minutes.
There’s not much to say about this one-minute loopable short from David B Earle. It’s the sort of video that did gangbusters on early YouTube. It’s all abstract creepiness and nightmare-fuel visuals. If you want the full effect and need something to put on the TV at your Halloween party, put on this four-hour looped version.
No Halloween is complete without this banger from Nick Lutsko.
