Crypt TV, Lights Out, and the Rebirth of Short Horror Films

Until recently, there was no way mainstream audiences could watch short films, let alone short horror films. Sure, you had those animated shorts before Pixar Films and the occasional special program on television that showcased short films from aspiring film makers, but short-form story telling never had a real place in the cinematic landscape.

It’s really thanks to platforms like YouTube that short-form entertainment didn’t die out entirely. YouTube offered indie filmmakers and entertainers a chance to reach a whole new audience, who embraced tightly written, condensed stories.

But horror, even before YouTube, was unique in that its audience seemed to embrace short-form entertainment, either on television or the ever-popular anthology films. However, what YouTube offered was a chance for new audiences to embrace and enjoy short films produced by up and coming filmmakers…and horror was never the same after.

Horror Anthology Films

Horror and short-form story telling go hand in hand. When looking at the greatest examples of horror fiction around, fans usually fall back on the works of two authors: Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Both writers specialized in short fiction. While Poe is undeniably the superior of the two in terms of writing and horror, Lovecraft’s publications were a sign of things to come. Lovecraft’s short fiction was published in the pulps: inexpensive magazines which offered quick and effective scares.

It’s maybe by accident that so many good writers published in Weird Tales, a pulp magazine that published the majority of Lovecraft’s work. Several writers reached their audiences through Weird Tales, though, and not just horror writers. Robert E. Howard published his adventure fantasy epic, Conan, through the lurid pages of Weird Tales.

In fact, several sorts of exploitative stories were published in pulps, including westerns, crime thrillers, and SFF. Later, during the comic boom of the 40s and early 50s, comics offered more anthologies of short-form fiction. Horror comics especially, most notably Tales from the Crypt, offered short horror pieces that left audiences (kids) terrified.

Over time, this love affair with short fiction ended. SFF writers collected their short stories into novels (see Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy or Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles). Many short fiction magazines and pulps wilted and faded.

But short horror fiction found a new home on television, thanks in parts to Rod Sterling’s The Twilight Zone. This led to the creation of shows like The Outer Limits and The Night Gallery, which, while derivative of The Twilight Zone (the latter featured Rod Sterling as well), exposed viewers to a collection of short horror films under a recognizable intellectual property.

After all, consider this: if a short film is released out in the wild…okay, so what? No one cares. But if you slap on Rod Sterling and the label “The Twilight Zone episode so-and-so,” everyone immediately cares.

Every episode of the aforementioned shows is a short horror film.

But the true horror anthology wouldn’t come until years later, during the rise of independent films that drew inspiration from the old comics and Weird Tales in order to make new, effective collections of short horror films. Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath is probably among the earliest to do this right. The original Tales from the Crypt film, for example, took old comics from the original comic run and adapted them for the first time on the big screen.

But for my money the first great horror anthology film was Stephen King and George A Romero’s collaboration: Creepshow.

The success of Creepshow helped establish the anthology horror film as a staple in horror. I could probably create a list of the best anthology horror films, go on about fifty films, and still find more that are worthy of acclaim. But that’s not the point of this article.

The thing about anthology horror films, however, is that, invariably, one film always stands out (except maybe Creepshow, since, in my opinion, all five short films are pretty great). Black Sabbath has that short with the woman rotting in the bed. Tales from the Crypt has the short with Peter Cushing. V/H/S 2 has that brilliant short with the cult. Sometimes, the surrounding shorts were good. Other times, not so much.

In fact, with some films, you’d be forced to watch multiple shorts you didn’t enjoy in the hopes that maybe you’d find one you liked. In The ABCs of Death, there are maybe four short films I enjoyed. Each of the twenty-six short films are short, but, as there are twenty-six short films to wade through, you’re bound to find several that are pointless, boring, dull, or otherwise forgettable.

Additionally, because of the format of the anthology horror film, very often credit would not be given to the short film’s creator, especially if multiple people worked on the multiple segments. And — even worse — without a big name actor or recognizable brand, your short film idea wouldn’t merit the budget required to get investors.

So with the rise of new entertainment, story tellers needed to find a way to make the short horror film relevant.

Enter YouTube

YouTube offered a way for independent content creators to make material for an audience. No studio interference. Every video starts on the same level field, until it garners attention due to either playing the algorithm or word of mouth.

Of all the forms of new media to spring from YouTube, it seems inevitable that the old-school short horror film would find success on this platform.

The benefits seemed obvious. With anthology films, you often had to watch other short films that may or may not have interested you in order to find that one that resonated with you. YouTube offered a platform through which you could enjoy just the short film you wanted to see, and nothing — necessarily — else.

YouTube paved the way for a lot of unique horror films to reach a mainstream audience. YouTube series like Marble Hornets stand out especially. That said, the Slender Man never really transitioned from internet lore to cinematic material, as indicated by Sony’s latest attempt to suck the money from your wallets, Slender Man.

But that is not to say that short horror films on Youtube haven’t had succcess.

Mama and Lights Out

Two short horror films to gain massive public attention on YouTube are “Lights Out” and “Mama.” The two shorts are brief, simple, but effective at offering a truly nightmarish scenario to its audience.

But what stands out about both films isn’t that they’re both scary or that they both racked up millions of views in an era where that was super uncommon. What stands out is that both were eventually produced by Academy-Award-Winning director Guillermo del Toro (god it feels validating to write that after being a fan of his films for years) into full-length films.

Guillermo del Toro didn’t direct Mama or Lights Out. The filmmakers who did (Andrés Muschietti and David Sandberg) both directed the original short films and had a great deal of success following the release of both films. Muschietti is most well-known today not for Mama, but for his recent adaptation of Stephen King’s IT. Sandberg did several other horror films, but is currently working on DC’s Shazaam.

Both filmmakers might’ve toiled away in obscurity until discovered by the internet.

So it’s clear that the short horror film industry owes a degree of its success to the ease through which the viewer can see the film. In the era of short form online story telling, YouTube is the best medium for short horror.

So of course a company would capitalize on this interest.

Crypt TV

I’m a fan of Crypt TV. I’d be lying if I said their entertaining content didn’t in part inspire this whole article. What Crypt TV has done is bring high-quality short horror to an audience who otherwise would never be exposed to it. Modern audiences (read: kids) can’t discover Creepshow in the back of an old video store, but they can see a video for “The Birch” on Facebook, click it, and get immersed.

Crypt TV creates a universe of monsters using short horror films that seem separate from one another. There are on occasion subtle allusions to other films, but it hardly matters that there is continuity between films, as the films stand alone on their own as entertaining packages of horror.

In previous anthologies, many of the directors of the short films were established in the horror community. The V/H/S films utilized short films from established and respected horror film makers like Ti West, Adam Wingard, and Gareth Evans. Creepshow and Black Sabbath were the dream childs of the Masters of Horror themselves.

But Crypt TV? Up and comers recruited to make a film in a recognizable IP before they use the success of their film to move onto bigger features. While we are in the early days of the channel and cannot for sure determine the eventual success of its individual directors, we can foresee that their content is reaching an increasingly large audience, when even ten years prior the horror community would never be able to appreciate a large undertaking like Crypt TV.

The digital age has revolutionized the way we view and enjoy media. Is it any surprise it’s also changed the way we experience fear?

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