Analog Horror
A horror subgenre told through fake old media, such as VHS tapes, TV broadcasts and emergency alerts, whose ordinary format slowly reveals something wrong. It grew on YouTube with series like Local 58 (2015).
In practice
Analog horror is a horror subgenre made to look like recovered old media: VHS tapes, local TV broadcasts, instructional videos, emergency alerts and public-access programs. The surface is mundane and official. The horror arrives through what the format almost hides: a garbled instruction, a frame that shouldn't be there, a broadcast that keeps running after everyone should have stopped watching.
It grew on YouTube. Kris Straub's Local 58 began in October 2015 with ‘Weather Service,’ a fake TV station's emergency message, and is widely credited with shaping the form. Gemini Home Entertainment (2019), presented as a company's old VHS releases, and Alex Kister's The Mandela Catalogue (2021) followed. Kane Parsons' Backrooms videos, begun in 2022, led to A24's feature Backrooms, released in May 2026.
Its roots are found footage and the older tradition of the fake broadcast. Where found footage presents a character's own camera, analog horror usually presents an institution's media: a station, an agency, a company. The voice is calm and authoritative, and the gap between that calm and what it describes is where the dread lives.
An analog horror cold open in screenplay form
INT. LIVING ROOM - 3:12 AM (ON TV, TAPED BROADCAST)
Color bars. A steady tone. Tracking lines crawl up the screen.
Text scrolls across the bars: THIS IS A TEST OF THE OVERNIGHT SIGNAL. NO ACTION IS REQUIRED.
ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
If you are awake, please remain in a lit room. Do not open the front door for anyone who already lives with you.
The tone stops. The bars stay. In the bottom corner, one bar is the wrong color.
Opens as a new Plot project once you sign in or create a free account. Inkwell keeps this copy for 24 hours.
The scene heading names the medium, so the reader knows everything after it is a recording. The announcer speaks in the flat voice of an official notice, and the instruction is reasonable until its last clause. Analog horror lives in that turn: a familiar format delivering one impossible rule, and a visual detail too small to be sure of.
How analog horror works
The format is the frame. Each entry imitates a specific kind of old media with its own rules: the rhythm of a weather bulletin, the cheerful narrator of a training tape, the menu screen of a home video. The audience knows those rules, so a small break is felt immediately.
The story is assembled, not told. Episodes are short, out of order and full of gaps, and viewers piece events together across them, which is why many series grew alongside communities trading theories.
Sound and texture carry the fear: tape hiss, warped audio, low resolution and long holds on static. Much of the menace is withheld, and a single still image can be the climax.
Analog horror series and films
Local 58 (Kris Straub, from 2015): a fictional TV station's broadcasts, from emergency alerts to a children's program, interrupted by something that has taken over the signal.
Gemini Home Entertainment (Remy Abode, from 2019): presented as old VHS releases from a home-video company, its nature programs and instructional tapes trace a creeping catastrophe.
The Mandela Catalogue (Alex Kister, from 2021): case files and public-safety tapes from a fictional Wisconsin county, built around beings that imitate people.
The Backrooms (Kane Parsons, from 2022): found tapes from an endless maze of yellow office rooms. The series led to Backrooms (2026), Parsons' feature for A24.
Analog horror vs. found footage
Found footage presents recordings made by characters, usually on a handheld camera, and follows them through events. Analog horror usually presents recordings made by institutions, and often has no central character at all.
They overlap at the edges. The Backrooms began as a single camcorder tape, which is found footage in its purest form, and many analog horror series mix official broadcasts with personal tapes. The difference is mostly the voice: a person filming what happens to them, or an authority describing it as though it were routine.
How to write an analog horror script
Choose the medium before the monster. Decide exactly what the recording is, who made it, for whom and in what year, then study real examples of that format until you can write its rhythm from memory.
Write the institution's voice straight. The narrator never panics. Instructions, disclaimers and cheerful sign-offs should read like the real thing, with the wrongness confined to a phrase, a number or a rule.
Mark the medium in the scene heading, such as (ON TV, TAPED BROADCAST) or (VHS, HOME RECORDING), and describe on-screen text and picture defects in the action. In Plot, a title card or text crawl is ordinary action, so the page stays readable as a script while it describes a screen.
Plan the gaps. Keep each episode short and let the next one answer a question the last one raised, so the audience assembles the story the way the form expects.
Common questions
What is analog horror?
Analog horror is a horror subgenre that imitates old media, such as VHS tapes, TV broadcasts and emergency alerts, and hides a disturbing story inside their ordinary format.
What was the first analog horror series?
Kris Straub's Local 58, which began on YouTube in October 2015, is widely credited as the series that shaped the subgenre and inspired the ones that followed.
Is analog horror the same as found footage?
No. Found footage shows recordings made by characters, usually on a personal camera. Analog horror usually imitates recordings made by institutions, such as TV stations, companies or government agencies.
Is The Backrooms analog horror?
Kane Parsons' Backrooms series is usually grouped with analog horror. It began as a found camcorder tape in 2022 and led to A24's feature Backrooms in 2026.
Why is it called analog horror?
Because it imitates analog media, such as videotape and broadcast television, whose hiss, warping and low resolution are part of the effect.