I’ve spent so much time watching analog horror lately, like it’s almost become my go-to in my free time. I tend to get these periods where I’ll become obsessed with a certain thing or category, and that obsession will either stick around, or fade away really quickly. However, I believe my obsession with analog horror is here to stay.
As a quick summary of what analog horror is, the best way I can define it is horror that is based around things like VHS, old recordings, TV broadcasts, and just generally stuff like that. I think more recently, the term has come to encompass a broader swatch of indie YouTube horror and/or horror creators that are sort of adjacent to this. Whether or not this is a good use of the term is debatable, but what’s certain is that the sub-genre has grown, over the past several years, from a very niche sub-category, pioneered by people like Local 58, into something very big. As of the time of writing this, the Backrooms movie by Kane Parsons is about to debut, fully cementing analog horror as a genuine genre in and of itself.
I might do a whole blog just explaining and summarizing analog horror in the future, but for now, I want to just write a little entry here about probably one of my personal favorite creators from this category (although “analog horror creator” is not in any way a good term for him, his work is incredibly unique in and of itself) Doctor Nowhere, otherwise known as Silas Orion, and the video that introduced me to him, Desiderio.
Desiderio is an almost seven-minute animation that centers around a character named Fran Keel. Described as a lone hypochondriac (basically, Illness Anxiety Disorder, someone who experiences constant fear about having or developing a serious disease) we see him become increasingly paranoid throughout the video.
One of my favorite elements of the whole animation is the main entity, a towering, white, sort of tree-like creature. He talks to Fran Keel, like some sort of twisted internal monologue, and creates a parasitic relationship with him through preying on his fears, and the physical manifestation of a monster that grows within his stomach. He makes Fran distrust doctors and medicine, as he cruelly speaks of an end that Fran will have to face.
The climax is when Fran pulls this creature out of his stomach, severing himself in half. The top half of his body floats away, through his chimney, and out of his house. It completely drops his physical form, like a carcass, left to rot in the grass, to reveal a white entity with wings, who flies and escapes into a hole. And so ends the story of Fran Keel and his tormenter.
I’ve seen a few theories on what the meaning is of everything that happens in Desiderio, but I feel like probably the one that’s stuck with me is that the tree-like entity is some sort of wish-granter, who preys on Fran Keel’s fears, and through this pact, slowly turns Fran into something else – the white fairy creature who we see at the end.
As a writer, Desiderio is inspiring to me. I really like the way that Doctor Nowhere is able to turn a mental illness into such a terrifying story device. Also, Desiderio is horrifying. Lowkey, I could not get through the whole thing in one clean take originally. The art is beautiful and disturbing, with so much deeply unsettling texturing. Almost like you can somehow feel the texturing itself, it’s just unnerving.
To me, I could help but get reminded of storybook art in a way, something that you would see in some older European children’s book about witches or the things that lurk in the forest, but completely corrupted. The sort of painting-like feeling of all of it, not to mention the frame around the animation, like a wooden picture frame, creates the idea that this is some sort of “tale” or story to be passed down, warned of, or learned from.
The story of Desiderio really is a tale. It’s a tale of the inner psyche of a man obsessed with a possibility, and through finding a “solution,” the loss of his soul. It’s a beautiful, haunting, disturbing piece of art, and if you haven’t checked it out (and feel okay with the themes discussed), I would highly recommend it.
Doctor Nowhere, or Silas Orion, has done a bunch of different works, all of which are available on his channel. I would love to do entries like this on some of his other stuff (like The Boiled One, which, even though it has been sort of done to death already, I still feel like would be fun). Again, I highly recommend his stuff to anyone who likes horror. He’s incredibly talented, and as an artist who’s around the same age as him, his work gives me a lot of hope in my own right.
That’s all for now – thanks for reading.
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