Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 7 (The Amazing Digital Circus)

Good news! I have returned home! Bad news! I have been on the road for several hours and now have the unenviable task of firing off something about nine episodes of Internet television! Oh! Oh no! Oh fucking no! Whatever way you slice it, The Amazing Digital Circus is a bizarre and mystifying artifact that has generated a lot of buzz. I actually wanted to do it a year or two ago, but didn't realize that it was an ongoing thing. It wrapped earlier this year, so now the whole thing's out there. Honestly, it could deserve reams of analysis on its own. I don't have the energy or wherewithal for that right now, so it's just going to get some impressionistic paragraphs and then we're calling it a day. It does deserve those accolades, however. This was neat!

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 6 (Doom 64)

Continuing our quest to find light snacks of spooky entertainment that I can nibble on whilst hundreds of miles from home for Canadian Thanksgiving, we arrive here on the actual day of. Okay so technically it's tomorrow but we have the big turkey dinner on Sunday. I am full of turkey and the New York Giants just choked harder than could ever be choked here in OT (I would be madder if they were my actual blorbos), so let's stop stalling and talk about computer video games. I got extremely lucky to have one of the game suggestions this year be something that I happened to have on my Switch, so here and there over the past two days I've been picking at it, and I have some thoughts. Enough thoughts to fill out a decent article. So let's talk Doom 64.

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 5 (Horror Shorts)

Alright, gang, here's the circumstance in which we find ourselves. It is currently Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, and I am several hundred miles from my cozy home, in a basement in the capital city, banging out these words on a laptop with a low battery capacity. I obviously have a lot on my plate, so the next couple of posts have to be more snack-like than big substantial meals. Forgive the brevity, but I have to try and take it easy and hit some softball entries this time around. Luckily, my pals were on the ball in that regard, and some of the suggestions I got were for these neat little horror shorts. So, then, here's a paragraph or so on three of those, fired off at rapid speed so I can return to idyllic vacation time. Let's begin with...

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (Exit 8)

 To close out our little trilogy of liminal horror inspired by Internet shit, we have this. Right away we require extra context, as once again I myself am trapped within these hellish hallways. Exit 8 is a spooky video game wherein you are stuck in a stark white underground subway corridor, and you have to attempt to spot minute differences in the architecture 8 times in a row to get out. Failure resets you back to the beginning, and so you must remain attentive to detail and hyperfocus on damn near everything in this liminal space. I actually streamed this game once, and only once. What followed was one of the most hellish streams I have ever endured. Even though it was only 90 minutes or so, I did not escape the hallway. In some regards, I'm still in there. I faltered miserably at it, and that led me to get inside my head as I so often do. Anxious feelings of being utterly horrible at streaming, at entertaining, at being a supposed hard game beater. Add to that the fact that staring at the same shit for so long actually gave me an ocular migraine, a giant floating blurry spot at the center of my vision due to overexerting my eyes trying to spot the differences. As a final indignance, I was raided twice by pals. I would welcome such joys for a fun stream, but it almost never happens. The one time it happens twice and it's during the worst moment of my goddamn playing games for the Internet life. Exit 8 was my sworn enemy from then on.

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (Backrooms)

Continuing on our little thread of liminal Internet horror, which was a thing that was just In The Water This Year, we have perhaps the ultimate example of it. The Backrooms has just been a concept floating about in the creepypasta ether for quite some time, various wild permutations of it being invented by folks online, a living legend of liminal space and creepy stark hallways haunted. There are countless angles one could take when adapting that to a major motion picture, but given that this is an A24 production, a certain style took hold. Not a bad style, to be clear, but one that's incredibly self-evident once the credits roll on the film. Let's map out this maze and talk about that.

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Iron Lung)

There was a bit of a trend this year when it came to horror cinema: Internet horror/strange liminal spaces given wide mainstream release in film adaptations. For the next little while we'll be looking at a trio of those, and let's start with one that caught my interest. Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach has always been on my radar: I have many friends who like the guy and his video work a lot, and I will occasionally revisit the clip of him trying and failing to not laugh at Big Bill Hell's. Funny guy! He also made his name by playing many spooky video games and screaming real loud and good at all the goddamn jumpscares. The big one that comes to mind is Five Nights At Freddy's, but that was too big a franchise to become a passion project indie horror film from a Youtube Let's Player. Now, Iron Lung, on the other hand? Sure, let bro cook. Did bro cook? He kind of cooked, and it's my job to tell you what he cooked.

Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 1(Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma)

You've got red on you.

Welcome, newcomers and Constant Readers alike, to the 2026 Sixteen Screams season! This year was particularly absolutely awash with spooky media, and all of it has been saved for this moment. Please enjoy the beginning of my busy season as I transition from doing sixteen of these in a row to November writing month. Oh my god and I still need to slip in some words about the Zombie Land Saga movie in between one of these October days. Fuck. Help me. Well, I made my own bed, so now we get to lie in it. The bed is also full of blood and gore but it's okay because it's like, filled with blood and gore in an erotic way. THAT'S ABOUT AS GOOD A SEGUE AS YOU'RE GONNA FUCKING GET INTO TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA! ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THE MOVIE NOW!