There all pretty busy these days .Soren is at American dad ,Dan is with John Oliver ,michaels at IGN and Katie making wired 3d art on blender .Also the did an finale on small beans .It via zoom but worth a car listen
Both Dan and Katie's points are also added to by an inherent fear of the dark. All the scary city stuff happens in a dark alley, or during a blackout. All the nature stuff is scary because "nobody'll hear you squeal". We spread fire and electricity as far as we can, because on some instinctual level, we're afraid that something we don't understand is staring back at us from the shadows. During the daytime, we have doors open, curtains spread for everybody to see (unless we're doing something that'll get us charged with public indecency). But at night, we close our doors, draw our curtains, and do everything we can to not look outside, even if there's a noise five feet from our door. It's all Somebody Else's Problem, and it doesn't exist as long as I don't look at it. That deep, animalistic growling coming from the bushes across the street is just a couple teenagers boning. Now walk home as fast as you can, but don't run, and don't turn around.
All you need to do is buy a gun! Of course you need to train with it to be proficiently dangerous in the safest way possible. When I'm out and about in the sketchiest of places I feel just as safe as I would be at home.
@@SomeGuyNamedRoy what you fear isn't a human you're not gonna kill it with a gun you fear the unknown the feeling of something staring at your back it's completely irrational yet it lingers until you get to a place you consider safe
Ebrahim Ehsan and the need to buy a gun to feel safe is absolute admittance of that fear. If you felt in control of your situation or the world or sure of anything being safe you wouldn’t feel need the comfort of an ace in the hole which automatically makes you feel like you have the power.
Perhaps the “teens parking in cars” trope sprang up as a way to scare kids away from having the sex? I wonder how many of our horror stories have prudish origins.
Kelpies are horselike monsters that drown you when you touch them, and touching a horse you don't know can be very dangerous. It could kick/bite you, or whoever does own the horse might see you and do worse things. Kelpies are thought to be cautionary tales to teach children to stay away from horses. You might be right on the mark with this.
+FanfareT.Loudest There's one when their car breaks down, Soren and Dan start off sitting the other way around, look at each other, then swap places. It's the post-apocalypse one I think.
I loved that show and no I am not afraid of the dark but ppl are usually afraid of things that they don't understand and or the unknown I'll admit it I am afraid of the unknown
Fear is obviously based on multiple factors, but I think in general fear is based on the danger potential of a threat. Our survival is based on our senses. If even one sense is taken away we become extremely vulnerable. The darkness is scary because it hinders our vision making us vulnerable to attack. Odd sounds are scary because we can't determine what it is so we cant properly assess the threat. The list goes on. Now the real heart of fear in my opinion is relate-ability. The more human we perceive something the less scary it is, and this is applied to the surface and on a deeper level. Monsters are scary because they are obviously not human and we cannot relate to them on any level. Scary figures like clowns, masked villains, or disfigured villains are scary because their face, the primary human identifier, is cover, or disfigured. We look for people's facial expressions to understand their motives, in this case its a blank slate, meaning we cannot assess the threat. When it comes to regular looking people, or ghost, or zombies its more of a physiological fear. We fear these things because they are so far out of our understanding that we cannot possibly comprehend their motives, or next move, or anything, leading to us not being able to assess the threat. When a regular guy is a killer its terrifying because hes not acting as we epect humans to act, ghost, and other "dead" things are scary because we know that dead means dead. Its so far out of the norm that we just can't handle this break of nature. So over all I think its obvious that fear is based around danger potential. The harder it becomes to determine the danger potential, or the less we know about how to handle the danger potential, the scarier it becomes.
Da Chud What else makes us scared is the realization that- this is it, this is the end! Like if you are cornered and something is slowly coming to harm you and no matter what you try and do, it all ends in vain... this could lead to an emotional breakdown and it could cripple you! Or phobias... fear of things that mostly aren't that scary to begin with... like your own shadow; basically if you faced those fears and understand the science behind it, you might not be afraid of it again... or if we become immortal and death doesn't count any more, in that case- move aside Jack the Ripper, Vampire, Ghouls and Zombies, you don't scare me anymore, cause I'm immortal!
The relatability thing can be backed by insect phobias. We give cats, dogs, and most mammals all sorts of human like qualities and often treat them like people but bugs are so far removed from us in physiology and behavior. In real life they're hard to anthropomorphize which would explain why they scare so many people even when they rarely present any sort of real threat.
I wish that I could have conversation like this with my friends, and I don't mean copying these guys. For example we wer having a conversation similar to this one, which was fucking brilliant, but then it just dissolved into football after about 2 minutes and the really interesting conversation slipped into the ether.
richard round Your problem is that you aren't hanging out with nerdy enough people then. Nerds rarely veer off topic into conversations about football.
There are plenty of classic horror films that took place in a city environment/urban setting: Rosemary's Baby, Maniac Cop, Candyman just to name a few. I could list more but I lack the brain power.
After watching "The Shape of Water" I had to rewatch this video. So many great points made. We really do fear losing our humanity. The ultimate monster.
More often than not though, that’s the thing. England has horror movies that take place outside the cities, but those are rare exceptions and vise versa.
I just had an epiphany. You know what's funny about "and they were never seen/heard from again" stories. Is that the people in them are never found. So how would other people know what happened to them if they disappeared? I know I'm stupid for not getting this sooner...
If someone tells you a story and the people in the story were never seen/heard from again, then it means the person telling you the story killed them, because that's the only way they would know.
Those were survival genre movies, up to the audience to see them as horror. Revenant was a remake of a based on a true story but then added a fake kid.
watching these ever over and over again is comforting and still funny... small beans "off hours" is off for who knows how long. I wish them all the luck in the world for they have brought hours of joy to me...
this is probably my favorite After Hours they've ever done, simply for the topic. horror, while i'm usually very picky about what kind, is something that always fascinates me, and it's interesting to see them talk about why horror tropes scare us, and frankly, i wish they did more stuff like this
Alien abduction scenes take place in the middle of nowhere because were afraid of being alone and singled out for our punishment. Misery loves company.
I used to live in a small house in redwood-forested canyon about 4 miles down a dirt road, off the California coast. Very late one night after a rain my car slid into the ditch and I couldn't get it out, so I had to walk the rest of the way home. I was only about 1 mile along at the time, and it would be another 2 miles until I even encountered the home of one of my few neighbors. And I didn't have a flashlight. When I heard a twig snap, an axe murderer was the last thing on my mind. I was worried a hell of a lot more about mountain lions.
He gets so excited about his topic which is adorable, watching someone getting to gush about something they've spent ages researching and their happiness just leaks out of them and it so amazing to see
Wait, so after this, Katie went on to watch Jason takes Manhattan and then became obsessed enough with the Friday the 13th movies to be able to keep a proper timeline of it for a later episode. While Dan who already had watched it and is the one who usually knows all that stuff, he didn't know it. Weird
Hilarious, just rewatched this video and was about to comment the exact same thing. Then i saw, it had already been commented, by me. Wow what a small world
rural or wilderness horror is scary because of physical isolation. city horror is scary because of social isolation. its like the true story where the woman was murdered while apartment complexes watched. the scarier thing is being surrounded by people who are apathetic or inept.
Wes Craven pretty much defined his career by setting his horror movies within civilization. Both Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream are pretty successful franchises based in very populated areas full of people and police. Not to mention nearly every Japanese-written horror flick like The Ring or The Grudge--both in big cities. Even the original slasher, Halloween, takes place in the suburbs. Come on, Dan! Lawyered! (dated How I Met Your Mother reference)
+frozenaorta Hmm but those films could still fold into what Katie said about the future and the past (except scream). The antagonist of the Ring, the Grudge, and Nightmare on Elm street are vengeful spirits from the past harming those in order to feel justice.
+estopasowner the sentinel was set in the city, both vhs movies are set in the city, the excorcist is set in the city, silence of the lambs although you could argue was closer to thriller than horror set in the city,henry was set in the city., jacobs ladder is set in a city,american psycho is set in a city. I could keep going, they definitely missed the mark on this one.
Randy Williams American psycho, not Hitchcocks Psycho. If you haven't seen it I strongly suggest you check it out, not so much scary as just generally unsettling but still a classic. Although that reminds me, Hitchcocks rear window was also set in the city as was vertigo haha.
+Heroin Holiday American Psycho is not a horror movie. It was scary at times, but unlike Horror, it never made us feel terror about something. It was more the inhumanity that existed in everyone of us scared us because it reminded us of what reality can be like. But the "scary" elements in that story? way too extreme, bordering on comedy. Christian Bale's performance is laughable during his crazed maniac moments. It's only when he's forced to be restrained and acting among humans that he becomes scared, because we're reminded of just how close these monsters can get without appearing monsterous.
HAH BROOOOO 4:29 “my hand isn’t long enough for the joke off motion in my soul” is still one of my favorite lines of all time. I try to use it whenever possible.
Holy shit. Looks like cheap jokes, but it is actually an extremely deep philosophical reflection of the nature of society and our deepest fears. Good job!
What your scared of is making that wrong turn into a non-white neighborhood and knowing what you collectively did to put everyone in said hood as you slowly move that finger to lock the car door while stepping on the gas petal a little harder. Who's laughing now!
Jaws. The Birds. All scary films about nature. In fact the old monsters:werewolves, vampires, etc, were a representation of our fear of nature. Frankenstien and revenants were a reflection of our fear of death.
id completely forgot it was this episode that led me to watch "attack the block" for the first time.. hadn't even heard of it till then. DAMN I MISS THIS SHOW!!
I just wanted to say I've only watched three videos and not only am I already hooked (reminds me of when I used to work at Forbidden Planet and the debates we would get into) but that Dan guys is incredibly hot in my book.
You should check out Today's Topic as well. It is a somewhat smaller version of After Hours. I also used to get in debates with random people who would come in to the comic book store I worked at. I loved it. And Dan is a cutie, but then I think they are all pretty yummy...
I never heard of that movie until I watched this episode today. Literally just finished watching it coz the short clip they played on here looked interesting. Best movie I've seen in a while
What about the Goosebumps show? I remember this one episode where these kids were screwing around in a magic shop and a werewolf was eating kids so there was a curfew put in place. This one girl wouldn't drink this potion that would kill a werewolf and then played it off. At the end of the episode when you were convinced it wasn't her she turns and kills this dude. I had nightmares for months. To be fair I was 5.
I think you could make an argument for Se7en as an American scary story in the city, but it's more a cop film than a thriller. So I think cop films fill the urban niche.
There's tons of British horror that takes place in small towns or in the country though. The Wicker Man, The Shout, Children of the Stones, Under the Skin, The Descent, Whistle and I'll Come to You...
The one movie that I can think about that completely conflicts with Dan's "American horror in rural settings" theory would be Cloverfield. I bet there are others, but that's one of the main ones that I can think of.
Welp, Daniel almost had this one. But in the last second Michael comes around and takes the win with his trademark "Aliens!"-move. Michael wins this one. Daniel: 7 Soren: 6 Katie: 7 Michael: 7
Alien abductions always occur in the woods because just as we're afraid of our actions in the past that occurred in remote desolate areas, we're afraid of becoming the prey that is hunted by a more advanced culture, yet again in a remote desolate area with no control.
+Dr Gammaray Agreed. And alien invasions take place in the city because it is our impenetrable safe haven. For them to be able to take over the city robs us of that protection and has us fleeing to the outside like rats being flushed out. The outside is out in the open and leaves us vulnerable to outside forces.
the reasons that aliens ubduct people in the middle of nowhere is because they are trying to learn our weaknesses, but when they come full scale they attack the citys
Samantha Gates-Christianson any advanced interstellar capable species wouldn't be scared of us at all. Their only interest in us would be a scientific study of primitive races. They would be thousands of years ahead of us in technology, and could simply send a cloud of nano-probes that we couldn't detect, make them lodge in our brains, and just turn us all off at any time. They could send a ship into the asteroid belt and shove a couple dozen of them towards earth wiping us all out. Or put a virus or bacteria into an asteroid; that would sterilize us or terraform the planet to their needs. We might not even be able to understand the scope of the gap in intelligence. It would be the same as us meeting one of the species we evolved from. The best we could hope for is indifference and them just flying by.
Mystery the savior you mean like Russell case says in independence day? god that film was accurate with the atmosphere breaking as the ship entered and now this?
Any space-faring ship; that travels anywhere near the speed of light (even halftime speed), would be made up of materials that could withstand a large nuclear blast. At those speeds a grain of sand has the same kinetic energy as a 1 megaton nuke. We wouldn't stand a chance.
i cant comment on other cultures but the reason our horror stories take place in rural areas is because its scary, your in the middle of nowhere with minimal help you cant call the military or cops for help. sure you can make the monster unstoppable then put them in the city but then it just turns into an action movie. you have to keep the killer as realistic as possible to invoke fear this includes him being to our nations second amendment which beats his machete, axe, or whatever the fuck hes trying to use.
Megan Leigh Do you even have any large predators left in Britain, though? In much of the American wilderness, those animals you hear may well want to eat you. When the largest carnivore you're going to encounter is a badger, there's not a hell of a lot to worry about from nature.
I think the scariest ones are Japanese scary stories, holy shit. Have you heard of Teke-Teke ,or the one about the smiling girl, the Red Cloak/Blue Cloak one, etc. God, those ones freak the shit out of me more than any dumb creepypasta or myth in America I've heard.
Okay, when the girl mentioned 'IT' i freaked out a little. that clown is the reason i hate all clowns because now i just think they're all Demons in disguise
I like to read urban legends from different cultures, and one unique thing I noticed was from Japan, their stories contain a lot more dangerous women. The slit-mouthed-woman a woman who kills with scissors, the Yuki Onna that freezes people to death, Hanako, teketeke, and the kejoro who uses her long hair to kill people. I noticed a considerable number of their stories take place in washrooms as well, like the yokai that licks the waste out of the toilet. Maybe it's an allusion to what unclean things humans can produce.
That goes with their culture's need for purity and cleanliness, but also because their ghost stories feature ghost women, probably because of the mistreatment men tend to do women, forgetting how powerful women can be in th out s life or the next....but that's just my theory...don't forget their ghost ties to water (Ringu dark water) due to being an island nation depends on the sea, but how it holds such unrelenting and terrible powers( Godzilla is a reflection on the power of the atom bomb, but also the ocean and the Dragon gods )
darkservantofheaven No, I think it makes sense. Japanese ancient culture was a macho culture. They looked women down by not letting them play high political/imperial roles, or even in their theatre (I think it's kabuki, too lazy to investigate right now) women were represented by actors, not by actual women. They might have godesses and asexual figures in their cultural expressions, but still women were second grade citizens and they kinda fear their revenge. Also hair scares them too. Most newer Japanese horror movies display creatures with lots of hair or funny haircuts.
Maicol Mallers Really I always thought that the reason that a lot of the ghosts from scary stories and legends was because of the strain society put on women back then in the form of second class citizens and the strain they still put on them today in an entirely different way. In present day Japan a woman is expected to stop working and become a stay-at-home-mom/housewife after she has a baby, to just drop everything unnecessarily (for the most part) to raise children, pressure from other women to keep up with today's fashion (yes this is a concern), they are often almost completely dependent on they're husbands when they have children (and that seems kind of terrifying to me personally). Another is the strain on them just growing up, having to deal with chikan (getting molested on a packed train or elevator, girls also very rarely come forward and tell someone they had been assaulted), to make good grades, to be polite, to learn house keeping such as cleaning and cooking, to get into a good collage and get a good job, expectations from parents to find a nice husband (one they approve of) and someday give them grand-kids. So once they die, the restraint that society put on them are gone, they no longer have to worry about working so hard to be the best at whatever it is they do, they no longer have to worry about what other people think of them, and they no longer have to worry about the rules of society in general. There is a saying in Japan "the nail that sticks up will be hammered down" it means that if you stand out in society in ANY way that you will be judged harshly for it, and you will correct your self or have the stigma of becoming a social outcast. And that goes for any one in Japan, you do it one way and one way only, and that is the Japanese way. So without that threat looming over they're heads like a dark cloud I think they go mad with the power they suddenly have over they're own destiny.
Hate to say it, but Swaim might have been more right than he realizes. For all of our human urges and our human ills, we still all recognize that we are at the top of the food chain. Now, add into that mix that you could be taken from your home while you were sleeping at any time. No screaming, no family notifiers, nothing. Scary? It gets worse. We humans rely heavily on testing on other species when it comes to our survival. Everything we do started with animal testing, or research of other species. We see ourselves as the key, dominant species of the planet and we spend our time researching, digging, and fiddling with every other species out there for our own benefit as a species. It is a bittersweet and unfortunate reality, but imagine that in the black void that we can't see anything in(Even though we CAN, but there's a reason that astronomers aren't typically Ufologists) that there's something out there that could crush us in an afternoon, that wants to take you as an unwilling test subject. A creature that could take every ounce of human achievement and break through it with a bony plate on its face and only be barely bested by a 40 foot tall robot we built. A species that can be in our homes, in our cities, with no warning, no time for armed response, and no possibility of being overcome. We fear aliens because they represent the only real endgame for us. Think about it. The only times we manage to overcome the aliens? Half of the planet is decimated. Hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data are destroyed, which could easily contain identifying information for the human race(Imagine having no identity in a post-attack world), the population is reduced roughly by half, every major city becomes a crater, and the thing that ends up killing them? Is oftentimes something so remarkably implausible that it's not even funny. We know that if an alien species like that came around, we wouldn't know how to hook up a Macbook to their computer system, assuming they even had one, and upload a virus that took over their suspiciously identical systems... And the only other reasons aliens die off are so far into the bullshit range that it's not even funny. It isn't us that stops them, in many cases. Bacteria. Or even just a bizarre unexpected sensitivity to yodeling. Even in the times we DO stop them, we usually end up destroying the one method we could have had to keep them from becoming a problem again in the future. Take Pacific Rim for instance. Spoiler alert, but in the process of getting rid of all the aliens, ALL of the giant robots? Dust. Except by the end of that movie, not only have we resisted said aliens, but we struck back at them. But we also know, from what the movie told us, that they are a colonizing species. They're everywhere. And at any time, they can come back. Except now it's not just colonization. Now it's personal. And what would we have to stop them at that point? A wall? Nope. Robots? Gone. Beast's swanky gold shoes? Hardly. In these alien movies, it takes everything we've got just to repel a basic invasion force, which inevitably lets at least one or two of them get away to run home and say "Hey, they fought back like ___, let's plan for that in the future". Not only do these alien invasions show what happens when we get hit at our worst, but there's that lingering fear that for all our achievement in the face of total adversity, it could very easily mean absolutely nothing when they come back. And suddenly, we're the species being wiped out, instead of doing the wiping as we have for so long.
While our species survival is something that is a concern. And this video was good. Its thinking to much into something so very primal. We fear things that can kill us. Not because of what we've done, or what we're going to do, what happened in the past. None of that bullshit, its all because ... We fear death. If something can kill us, we fear it. For the very simple reason that we do not want to die.
+Travis Tallguy The legend of the Candyman is about a plantation slave who was killed by a mob for falling in love with a white woman. It fits pretty well with what they're saying.
pojot I haven't seen that movie but if its about the Candyman from the legend then it's still about a crime committed on the fringes of society coming back to haunt people. The movie might take place in an urban environment, but everything began with a crime committed in isolation. Right now there are urban legends that take place in the city and I'm sure there will be a lot of movies with those themes soon enough, but the horror in those is that we're just a replaceable cog in the machine of a society that doesn't care. Slenderman has no face (and so no identity) but wears a suit and tie. Several Japanese urban legends are about people who committed suicide out of loneliness and who now wonder around looking for friends. Right now our biggest fear (and one that's unfortunately true) is that as individuals we don't mean anything. However important we think we are, there are billions of people who can and will take our place if something happens to us.
And dont forget about a little fact that when aliens invade Earth the main battle always happens in New York or Washington or whatever big american town. Defeting those aliens instantly results in aliens running the fck away from Earth or just simply dying for no apparent reason. And for that I blame movie directors and american mentality of always thinking they are "numero uno"! Thoughts?
Or, you know, it's because those specific movies were made in america by american actors and american directors and producers. That could be a thing. I mean jeez no one blames bollywood for making films almost always placed in india.
Exactly. Tv shows and movies take place where they ARE FILMED DAMNIT. IF it's filmed in the UK it's going to be centered around the UK. If it's filmed in the US it will be centered on the US. You're frustrated because currently the US has the largest and most profitable film industry (I mean maybe bollywood comes close but I have no idea as I don't know anything about bollywood.), and so because of this all these new movies are centered in the U.S. Basically you're petulant because people won't focus on those they can't relate to, and so the US doesn't produce movies set anywhere else. Ever heard of write what you know? Very few people in the American movie industry know what it's like to live in other countries. And that's not even taking into account the fact that one of the largest demographics for american movies is AMERICAN VIEWERS who are even LESS likely to emphasize with people in other countries. I mean jeez man, you might as well complain that books written by american authors are mostly set in america.
UnusualResults No Im not so much frustrated that those movies are based in their respective countries. True that makes sense, but a little fact that defeating THOSE aliens ( which attack for example New York) or whatever they are causes ALL of these creatures which attack whole damn Earth to run with their tails between their legs or just simply die out for no apparant reason
Omg I just got it. British people are afraid of cities because that's where the plagues happen! America never had serious plagues. Our stories are about the woods because that's where the natives lived. Cities protected us!
+Jacob Levine Perhaps there's a little more to it than that. As someone from England we don't always hear the words of Jerusalem but "England's green and pleasant land" is a phrase that virtually every Englander will know. The industrial revolution disrupted that by turning places that previously resembled the Shire into something akin to Mordor, complete with massive glowing fires and beltching black smoke. Furthermore it could well be based around what societies have done in their own land. Yeah we were heavily involved in the slave trade, conquered India (which at the time included Pakistan and Bangladesh) and parts of Africa with a decent level of bloodshed and bullied our way into China during the Opium wars BUT that was all far far away. In the English psyche the horrors of Imperial expansion are a lot further away than the industrial revolution. Whereas it was in, what is now, the American homeland that the frontier was relentlessly pushed back and thus modern Americans live in a land that is taken from the indigenous people, whereas Brits live in a land that is dominated by factories and warehouses but there weren't any indigenous people living in England for us to wipe out, the English WERE the indigenous people.
***** yeah totally its more of a found footage disaster movie not a horror. I think [rec] would have been a better example for lyadmilo but then again that was originally Barcelonean not american so yeah
But that kind of goes back to the idea of a bigger, badder species coming to fuck us up (like aliens!). They destroy cities because that is the symbol of our power, that's why you only over see cities like Chicago, New York, LA, Tokyo, London, etc getting destroyed; there is not going to be a movie about Louisville getting destroyed because that isn't as much of a symbol. The idea is that these are threats to the ENTIRE human race, because if we can't even protect Chicago, what the hell kind of chance does your hometown stand?
Ran Wolf uhmm.. except his first 1. Remote setting. Farm house ring a bell. The others almost always end in rural areas. Cause the the city setting isnt scary. To many lights...and wimpy ass desk jockeys. Easy prey. Rural areas are dark and creepier.
And actually, an idyllic environment is a great setting for a horror story, because it's the last place you expect horror to happen. If a story is set in a dark, foreboding, gothic castle, or even a cabin in the woods, you're thinking "i know where this is going". But if the horror isn't removed from civilisation, if it is somewhere more relatable, then it is, surely, more horrifying. Because it could happen to you, too. That said the USA isn't all sunshine and palm trees. Montana? Alaska? I have never seen a horror movie set in Miami. I have seen them set in secluded, uninhabited woods, and snow covered ghost towns. And the UK isn't all dark gothic architecture. I live near Portsmouth, and let me say, most of it looks like it was built post 1950. And most of the older stuff, isn't exactly dark and gothic. There are sadly few true examples of gothic architecture here, and they are mostly not in the city. Meaning, not where our scariest horror stories happen.
Srry but I disagree with the lose of humanity. I say its about embracing humanity because for every "good" trait there is a "bad" trait we don't like to admit
The loss of humanity does have a part to play in horror movies. Yeah, you could be a decent person who donates to charity and gives food to the homeless. It's when things get bad that shows the true colors of a person. It's scary because your neighbor of ten years who babysat your kids or your best friend since preschool could turn on you if they thought it would save their own skin. Fear brings out the worst or best in us, and that's when the gloves are off and we truly begin to see people (and ourselves) for what they are. We're afraid of losing our humanity because that would mean that these "monsters" are much closer to home than we thought.
Hmm.. How bout the Halloween franchise? Michael stalks people all over the city in most of those movies. And I believe I saw Jason from that one horror film killing some guy on a building rooftop. Daniel, no.
najhoant They weren't exactly small towns, but they weren't "cities" in the sense that Dan is talking about. Actually, I think Dan's theory would work better as a general rule with a few exceptions. And the most notorious exception has to be John Carpenter's Halloween, seeing as how Dan is talking about "legitimately scary" American horror movies (and Freddy Krueger and "It" happen more in the realm of dreams where victims are helpless anyway, while Chucky and Gremlins aren't legitimately scary to adults). Carpenter really is an exception to Dan's rule because he made the spectator feel helpless in spite of being in the middle of civilization. Michael Myers may have attacked in a semi-small town of Illinois but the police was a phone call away (Laurie's friend's dad was the sheriff).
najhoant And then, there's the less known Carpenter made-for-TV thriller Someone’s Watching Me! which he shot before "Halloween" and released a month after it. It takes place in a Los Angeles high rise! L.A., one of the world's big metropolises!! Yes, it's a thriller, but it's scary because it delivers Carpenter's specialty: making you feel helpless no matter where you are.
najhoant I think it's all about the way he constructs the killers. He makes them so smart and evil that it doesn't matter where you are, once you enter their environment, it makes you feel as good as dead. But if we want to apply Dan’s theory of “how the outskirts of society mean dehumanization to Americans because that’s where we did our dirty stuff” to John Carpenter’s movies, the questions would go something like this: Are Carpenter’s killers dehumanized? [Obviously, yes] How do they make the victims feel dehumanized? The answer is that Carpenter’s killers bring the dehumanization TO the city. We don’t have to go to it. It comes to us. That’s why it’s scary. They invade our space, our safe haven.
Alien movies happen in the city because as long as it's just some hick's drunken story the other characters, and by proxy we, can assume is not real. Bring it to the city and it's suddenly in our face, exploding our landmarks. The Alien movies are all a big "what if those drunks aren't full of shit, what if there is a threat out there waiting to destroy us all."
Independence Day definitely takes place in cities as do most Japanese movies if you consider Kaiju aliens, but I think you would draw the same parallels between Japan and England in terms of cities being the locale for where those people lost their humanity.
Nathan Milaszewski Kaiju aren't aliens, well, sometimes they're aliens but for the most part they are giant monsters or animals. They happen in cities because that's where their rampage would be the most destructive and create the most casualties which leads to what the kaiju actually are; Natural and/or Man made Disasters. What are the most destructive events Japan has faced in the last centuries? Tsunamis, Earthquakes and Nuclear threats. Not just the two bombs btw, but contamination from facilities damaged by natural disasters. But most of Japan's "scary stories" involve the supernatural anyway. =/
ProfessorLawl Tsunamis are the result of earthquakes, so I don't think you can really consider those two things distinct. Those disasters have been occurring in Japan prior to human beings living on the islands. Kaiju as a metaphor for nuclear threats and those with access to them (USA), definitely seems possible. The fact that Godzilla debuted 10 years after the end of WWII seems like too much of a coincidence. In that film, Godzilla was released by an atomic bomb explosion, he has radioactive breath, and many people that survive go to the hospital with radiation poisoning. Finally, in the climax of the film Serizawa uses an incredibly destructive experimental weapon to kill Godzilla then kills himself, so the knowledge of its design can never be known. After writing that I found this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(franchise)#Series_development
I love that she says no one makes scary stories about animals and "the darkness" is in her next sentence. As in the ghost and the darkness, a scary story about animals.
This is kinda weird for me...I would never say a story about aliens is a horrorstory o.O aliens just aren't scary. is that an american thing? or is it just me who doesn't get what's scary about lights in the sky?
I take it you have never seen any alien movies, like say war of the worlds. Or the TV show fallen skies. Sorry but the idea of those kinds of situations actually happening is damn scary. Maybe just watching the show itself is not scary, although entertaining. If you put yourself in that actual situation, are you telling me you would be all calm and thinking oh this ain't bad.
some of them are quite good, but sometimes they leave me a little confused. maybe because I wasn't brought up in the culture and I'm missing references in the movie. A perfect example was the Parasite Eve movie, I was fine until the very last minute of the movie, it seemed to come out of left field and be completely unrelated to the rest of the story
Well there's the grudge I guess that takes place in Japan or something right? A movie that if I recall takes place in an entire urban environment. But most Asian horror movies that I've seen are almost always about ghosts. Not really monsters or aliens.
YusefKnight This is completely accurate. Japan specifically (but Asia in general) sets their horror movies with ghosts or zombies. As a culture they are VERY afraid of what would happen if someone was to not die properly (aka reanimate or not find peace and therefore turn around to haunt someone). There are so many stipulations on honorable deaths (samurai, yakuza, public officials) that even today we see some very important people commit suicide as a way to reclaim their honor so that they can find peace in the afterlife and NOT be bound to a place or person for all eternity. They are also ALL cremated so that people can't come back as zombies.
SamIAm1260 This is something that i am wondering, because the argument that the fear in movies and how they are set in the wilderness and big cities is just so empty, ie. a person from some other country (say peru) watches an american horror flick and gets scared even though he hasnt been subjected to american culture, or equally a german watches an english horror film and gets scared even when he is not subjected to that culture, it really does seem they are trying to get to something deeper when the answer is something simple, such as, american horror flicks set in the wilderness do better than american horror films set in cities because an old movie did it well and set the standard.
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I constantly come back and rewatch these every year. Love this group chemistry. Please come back lol sooooo many bad movies to pick apart lol
I remembered how much I loved these and started binging these again
@@TuckerKratt yep. At this point I rewatch them every like 18-24 months or so. Extremely well written, well researched, and well performed
@@15drasedrase same
SAME
There all pretty busy these days .Soren is at American dad ,Dan is with John Oliver ,michaels at IGN and Katie making wired 3d art on blender .Also the did an finale on small beans .It via zoom but worth a car listen
Both Dan and Katie's points are also added to by an inherent fear of the dark. All the scary city stuff happens in a dark alley, or during a blackout. All the nature stuff is scary because "nobody'll hear you squeal". We spread fire and electricity as far as we can, because on some instinctual level, we're afraid that something we don't understand is staring back at us from the shadows. During the daytime, we have doors open, curtains spread for everybody to see (unless we're doing something that'll get us charged with public indecency). But at night, we close our doors, draw our curtains, and do everything we can to not look outside, even if there's a noise five feet from our door. It's all Somebody Else's Problem, and it doesn't exist as long as I don't look at it. That deep, animalistic growling coming from the bushes across the street is just a couple teenagers boning. Now walk home as fast as you can, but don't run, and don't turn around.
Also a giant multitude of other factors depending on location and timeframe, but I got on a roll and forgot to mention that.
All you need to do is buy a gun! Of course you need to train with it to be proficiently dangerous in the safest way possible. When I'm out and about in the sketchiest of places I feel just as safe as I would be at home.
@@SomeGuyNamedRoy what you fear isn't a human you're not gonna kill it with a gun you fear the unknown the feeling of something staring at your back it's completely irrational yet it lingers until you get to a place you consider safe
Ebrahim Ehsan and the need to buy a gun to feel safe is absolute admittance of that fear. If you felt in control of your situation or the world or sure of anything being safe you wouldn’t feel need the comfort of an ace in the hole which automatically makes you feel like you have the power.
Very right. Not because we fear the dark, we fear what's in the dark with an advantage. Goes back to control, and also fear of being weak, powerless.
"An armed maniac is just as scary as a bear- we just fear it more because we fear what we can't control."
Wait... Katie can control bears? 😉🐻
+Cheeseanonioncrisps She probably just means that a bear is more predictable than a violent lunatic. Both could easily kill you though
but you can control whether a bear will attack or not you're more likely to be killed by a lunatic than mauled by a bear..
now I'm scared of Katie
@2:40 "We fear what we can't control in ourselves"
not where i live
"When that technologically advanced race DOES come...Inevitably. Shut up, Dan..." hahaha
This line is literally why I came back to find this episode haha
"Ok, I have proven time and again that I can control clowns by putting them in a choke hold." ... another great Soren quote.
I love that “time and again” implies they have seen have choke multiple clowns
“My arm is not long enough for the jerk off motion that is in my soul right now.”
That moment when Cracked features an old After Hours episode on their front page so that you think it's new, only to be crushed by disappointment :'(
that moment when u realize all after hours r amazing
+Aidan Renneker Not all of them. The newer ones are clearly so very forced.
Epsilon Karamazov like the one about feminism in movies
Ugh, don't remind me!
I've never seen it maybe you aren't the target audience.
Perhaps the “teens parking in cars” trope sprang up as a way to scare kids away from having the sex? I wonder how many of our horror stories have prudish origins.
Kelpies are horselike monsters that drown you when you touch them, and touching a horse you don't know can be very dangerous. It could kick/bite you, or whoever does own the horse might see you and do worse things. Kelpies are thought to be cautionary tales to teach children to stay away from horses. You might be right on the mark with this.
Between zodiac and the town that dreaded sundown it’s not an unfounded fear
Many of them!
Well, they do say that if you masturbate too much, you'll grow hair on your hand like a werewolf.
They even sit in the same order when they are around a campfire too. Interesting.
and when they go to the bathroom.
shits weird.
+FanfareT.Loudest There's one when their car breaks down, Soren and Dan start off sitting the other way around, look at each other, then swap places.
It's the post-apocalypse one I think.
Maisie Summers Love that, haha! I should check that one out. Love when they do little inside jokes for the fans.
+Maisie Summers Ding
Ding Ding
Ding
Are You Afraid of the Dark reference with the powder toss, so cool!!
I loved that show and no I am not afraid of the dark but ppl are usually afraid of things that they don't understand and or the unknown I'll admit it I am afraid of the unknown
I am afraid of the dark
After hours is my comfort show, its background noise and entertaining to me still even all these years later
Katie in this episode did not watch Friday the 13th 8. Years later she knew the entire Jason universe. Good on you Katie!!!
I still quote "My arm is not long enough for the 'Jerk-Off' motion that is in my soul right now" and people just think I'm clever. 😂
Fear is obviously based on multiple factors, but I think in general fear is based on the danger potential of a threat. Our survival is based on our senses. If even one sense is taken away we become extremely vulnerable. The darkness is scary because it hinders our vision making us vulnerable to attack. Odd sounds are scary because we can't determine what it is so we cant properly assess the threat. The list goes on. Now the real heart of fear in my opinion is relate-ability. The more human we perceive something the less scary it is, and this is applied to the surface and on a deeper level. Monsters are scary because they are obviously not human and we cannot relate to them on any level. Scary figures like clowns, masked villains, or disfigured villains are scary because their face, the primary human identifier, is cover, or disfigured. We look for people's facial expressions to understand their motives, in this case its a blank slate, meaning we cannot assess the threat. When it comes to regular looking people, or ghost, or zombies its more of a physiological fear. We fear these things because they are so far out of our understanding that we cannot possibly comprehend their motives, or next move, or anything, leading to us not being able to assess the threat. When a regular guy is a killer its terrifying because hes not acting as we epect humans to act, ghost, and other "dead" things are scary because we know that dead means dead. Its so far out of the norm that we just can't handle this break of nature.
So over all I think its obvious that fear is based around danger potential. The harder it becomes to determine the danger potential, or the less we know about how to handle the danger potential, the scarier it becomes.
Da Chud What else makes us scared is the realization that- this is it, this is the end!
Like if you are cornered and something is slowly coming to harm you and no matter what you try and do, it all ends in vain... this could lead to an emotional breakdown and it could cripple you!
Or phobias... fear of things that mostly aren't that scary to begin with... like your own shadow; basically if you faced those fears and understand the science behind it, you might not be afraid of it again... or if we become immortal and death doesn't count any more, in that case- move aside Jack the Ripper, Vampire, Ghouls and Zombies, you don't scare me anymore, cause I'm immortal!
The relatability thing can be backed by insect phobias. We give cats, dogs, and most mammals all sorts of human like qualities and often treat them like people but bugs are so far removed from us in physiology and behavior. In real life they're hard to anthropomorphize which would explain why they scare so many people even when they rarely present any sort of real threat.
I wish that I could have conversation like this with my friends, and I don't mean copying these guys. For example we wer having a conversation similar to this one, which was fucking brilliant, but then it just dissolved into football after about 2 minutes and the really interesting conversation slipped into the ether.
richard round I would like to do a much deeper comparison between the US ghost/horror stories and the UK horror stories.
I do too, but just remember that these videos are scripted! Most conversations don't happen like this, which sucks.
Katie Hirsekorn That is very true, still a shame though, and even though it was scripted, I bet that they had a good time writing it at Cracked HQ.
richard round Your problem is that you aren't hanging out with nerdy enough people then. Nerds rarely veer off topic into conversations about football.
Kevin Mackey
people can actually talk about football for more than a few sentences?
I loved that every after hours comment section is half analyzing the episode and half jokes
There are plenty of classic horror films that took place in a city environment/urban setting: Rosemary's Baby, Maniac Cop, Candyman just to name a few. I could list more but I lack the brain power.
Final Destination ?
The Exorcist was set in DC
The Omen
+Damien Taylor Also I think the Halloween movies 75% of the time
Purge
The subtle things in this webseries is really what makes it. The 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' campfire opener, so much love.
After watching "The Shape of Water" I had to rewatch this video. So many great points made. We really do fear losing our humanity. The ultimate monster.
I love the face Katy makes when Dan starts the conversation.
American horror stories that take place in a city: Child's Play, Candyman, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
In the words of Megan Freeman, "He's right, you know."
More often than not though, that’s the thing. England has horror movies that take place outside the cities, but those are rare exceptions and vise versa.
how many of those are scary and utilize their environment in the city though?
childs play-chucky attacks when you alone/ exocist happend in a city but was isolated in one small room. don't know the others
I just had an epiphany. You know what's funny about "and they were never seen/heard from again" stories. Is that the people in them are never found. So how would other people know what happened to them if they disappeared? I know I'm stupid for not getting this sooner...
wouldn't it be cooler if there were an explaination? like some meta element to make it more believable
If someone tells you a story and the people in the story were never seen/heard from again, then it means the person telling you the story killed them, because that's the only way they would know.
@@Logan_Baron Or they're making it all up. Or they heard it from a friend who "heard it from a friend" ...
"No one makes any horror stories about wolves or bears..."
Neeson and Di Caprico accepted that challenge.
to be fair to Di Caprio the revenent wasn't a horror movie
Neither of those were horror movies
Ok, but Baldwin and Hopkins made one about a bear...
Those were survival genre movies, up to the audience to see them as horror. Revenant was a remake of a based on a true story but then added a fake kid.
But we did make a horror movie about sharks.
No one makes scary movies about wolves?
*points at the Wolfman*
Not wolf-y enough?
*points at The Grey*
I think this one falls into the category of man losing his humanity, don't you think?
"Wolfen" came out in 1981. That's a cool movie about wolves...😁
watching these ever over and over again is comforting and still funny... small beans "off hours" is off for who knows how long. I wish them all the luck in the world for they have brought hours of joy to me...
this is probably my favorite After Hours they've ever done, simply for the topic. horror, while i'm usually very picky about what kind, is something that always fascinates me, and it's interesting to see them talk about why horror tropes scare us, and frankly, i wish they did more stuff like this
The"butt stuff"lol!
Alien abduction scenes take place in the middle of nowhere because were afraid of being alone and singled out for our punishment. Misery loves company.
I used to live in a small house in redwood-forested canyon about 4 miles down a dirt road, off the California coast. Very late one night after a rain my car slid into the ditch and I couldn't get it out, so I had to walk the rest of the way home. I was only about 1 mile along at the time, and it would be another 2 miles until I even encountered the home of one of my few neighbors. And I didn't have a flashlight.
When I heard a twig snap, an axe murderer was the last thing on my mind. I was worried a hell of a lot more about mountain lions.
I've been binge watching After Hours and omg, Dan is so adorable; I can't get over how cute he is ^^
Soren is more my type but I can see how Dan can be cute for some
He gets so excited about his topic which is adorable, watching someone getting to gush about something they've spent ages researching and their happiness just leaks out of them and it so amazing to see
Wait, so after this, Katie went on to watch Jason takes Manhattan and then became obsessed enough with the Friday the 13th movies to be able to keep a proper timeline of it for a later episode. While Dan who already had watched it and is the one who usually knows all that stuff, he didn't know it. Weird
Hilarious, just rewatched this video and was about to comment the exact same thing. Then i saw, it had already been commented, by me. Wow what a small world
Is it bad that I wish there were a LOT more After Hours videos so I can just watch them constantly?
rural or wilderness horror is scary because of physical isolation.
city horror is scary because of social isolation. its like the true story where the woman was murdered while apartment complexes watched. the scarier thing is being surrounded by people who are apathetic or inept.
Wes Craven pretty much defined his career by setting his horror movies within civilization. Both Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream are pretty successful franchises based in very populated areas full of people and police. Not to mention nearly every Japanese-written horror flick like The Ring or The Grudge--both in big cities. Even the original slasher, Halloween, takes place in the suburbs. Come on, Dan! Lawyered! (dated How I Met Your Mother reference)
+frozenaorta Hmm but those films could still fold into what Katie said about the future and the past (except scream). The antagonist of the Ring, the Grudge, and Nightmare on Elm street are vengeful spirits from the past harming those in order to feel justice.
He didn’t say civilization, he said cities… like downtown, not so much in the suburbs…
@@monogalaxia So not the point.
Rosemery's baby happened in Manhattan
+estopasowner the sentinel was set in the city, both vhs movies are set in the city, the excorcist is set in the city, silence of the lambs although you could argue was closer to thriller than horror set in the city,henry was set in the city., jacobs ladder is set in a city,american psycho is set in a city. I could keep going, they definitely missed the mark on this one.
Randy Williams American psycho, not Hitchcocks Psycho. If you haven't seen it I strongly suggest you check it out, not so much scary as just generally unsettling but still a classic. Although that reminds me, Hitchcocks rear window was also set in the city as was vertigo haha.
+Heroin Holiday American Psycho is not a horror movie. It was scary at times, but unlike Horror, it never made us feel terror about something. It was more the inhumanity that existed in everyone of us scared us because it reminded us of what reality can be like. But the "scary" elements in that story? way too extreme, bordering on comedy. Christian Bale's performance is laughable during his crazed maniac moments. It's only when he's forced to be restrained and acting among humans that he becomes scared, because we're reminded of just how close these monsters can get without appearing monsterous.
Didn't it mostly take place in a house?
+estopasowner And Child's Play took place in Chicago.
HAH BROOOOO 4:29 “my hand isn’t long enough for the joke off motion in my soul” is still one of my favorite lines of all time. I try to use it whenever possible.
Holy shit. Looks like cheap jokes, but it is actually an extremely deep philosophical reflection of the nature of society and our deepest fears. Good job!
That's how Cracked is, they mix humor with intelligent discussion.
"We're scared of white guilt?" LMAO
What your scared of is making that wrong turn into a non-white neighborhood and knowing what you collectively did to put everyone in said hood as you slowly move that finger to lock the car door while stepping on the gas petal a little harder. Who's laughing now!
Those non-white neighborhoods are just terrifying.
"Nobody makes films abut wolves or bears." What about "The Grey" or "The Edge"?
Jaws. The Birds.
All scary films about nature.
In fact the old monsters:werewolves, vampires, etc, were a representation of our fear of nature.
Frankenstien and revenants were a reflection of our fear of death.
Levon Gevorgyan It's not just about fear of death. It's about fear of dying and then coming back as something as inhuman.
Pat Moon right but those movies are moreso suspense thrillers than horror
id completely forgot it was this episode that led me to watch "attack the block" for the first time.. hadn't even heard of it till then. DAMN I MISS THIS SHOW!!
"when that advanced alien race finally does come, shut up Dan." 😂 favorite part.
I just wanted to say I've only watched three videos and not only am I already hooked (reminds me of when I used to work at Forbidden Planet and the debates we would get into) but that Dan guys is incredibly hot in my book.
You should check out Today's Topic as well. It is a somewhat smaller version of After Hours. I also used to get in debates with random people who would come in to the comic book store I worked at. I loved it. And Dan is a cutie, but then I think they are all pretty yummy...
I loved Attack the Block
Me Too!!
I never heard of that movie until I watched this episode today. Literally just finished watching it coz the short clip they played on here looked interesting. Best movie I've seen in a while
The beginning reminds me of one of my fave scary shows growing up watching Nickelodeon: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
What about the Goosebumps show? I remember this one episode where these kids were screwing around in a magic shop and a werewolf was eating kids so there was a curfew put in place. This one girl wouldn't drink this potion that would kill a werewolf and then played it off. At the end of the episode when you were convinced it wasn't her she turns and kills this dude. I had nightmares for months. To be fair I was 5.
I was banned from watching Goosebumps as a kid cause it gave me so many nightmares and made me scared of everything
Francesca Winter you were too? I was banned from watching Goosebumps too
Did anyone else get the "Are You Afraid of the Dark" reference? That made my whole day.
aaaa, the release of Get Out SOOOOO much just ENFORCES Dan's point here and there'll never be another episode for him to FOLLOW UP!!!! GAHH!!!!
I think you could make an argument for Se7en as an American scary story in the city, but it's more a cop film than a thriller. So I think cop films fill the urban niche.
+Joshua Furtado but candy man started on a slave plantation and IT took place in small town in New England...
There's tons of British horror that takes place in small towns or in the country though. The Wicker Man, The Shout, Children of the Stones, Under the Skin, The Descent, Whistle and I'll Come to You...
GOD DAMNIT CRACKED WHY YOU GOTTA RUIN SOME OF THE INTERNETS BEST CONTENT FOR SHEER GREED. god I miss this show
This video is the reason I watched Attack the Block and I am thankful for it every single day of my life. Attack the Block might be my favorite movie.
Watching this 9 years later. They look so young!!
The one movie that I can think about that completely conflicts with Dan's "American horror in rural settings" theory would be Cloverfield. I bet there are others, but that's one of the main ones that I can think of.
Stephen King's "It". It is set in an urban environment.
Fair Enough.
Cracked after hours is basically me and my friends at lunch. I'm Soren. lol.
Me and my friends do they same I'm Michael
+Castielle TM My friends do that too, I'm a mix of Dan and Katie.
lol same!!! I'm Daniel 😢
+Castielle TM Got my friends but none like these. Would've love to have had met people like all of you.
Omg same but I'm Dan.
Welp, Daniel almost had this one. But in the last second Michael comes around and takes the win with his trademark "Aliens!"-move. Michael wins this one.
Daniel: 7
Soren: 6
Katie: 7
Michael: 7
this just feels so natural and it makes sense
very funny, and very poiniant, maybe the best after hours so far. thanks, the crackedteam are the best thing on RUclips.
I miss this show
was that a reference to the tv show "are you afraid of the dark"
Alien abductions always occur in the woods because just as we're afraid of our actions in the past that occurred in remote desolate areas, we're afraid of becoming the prey that is hunted by a more advanced culture, yet again in a remote desolate area with no control.
+Dr Gammaray Agreed. And alien invasions take place in the city because it is our impenetrable safe haven. For them to be able to take over the city robs us of that protection and has us fleeing to the outside like rats being flushed out. The outside is out in the open and leaves us vulnerable to outside forces.
3:40 It was at this moment when Kate became obsessed with the Friday the 13th Franchise which drove Michael crazy.
i can't stop watching these !!! why !?!?!
The Ring, Nightmare on elm street, Gremlins (and yes it's considered a horror movie) take place in cities or towns.
Those are all suburbs, twins count as suburbs
*towns
the reasons that aliens ubduct people in the middle of nowhere is because they are trying to learn our weaknesses, but when they come full scale they attack the citys
Samantha Gates-Christianson any advanced interstellar capable species wouldn't be scared of us at all. Their only interest in us would be a scientific study of primitive races.
They would be thousands of years ahead of us in technology, and could simply send a cloud of nano-probes that we couldn't detect, make them lodge in our brains, and just turn us all off at any time. They could send a ship into the asteroid belt and shove a couple dozen of them towards earth wiping us all out. Or put a virus or bacteria into an asteroid; that would sterilize us or terraform the planet to their needs.
We might not even be able to understand the scope of the gap in intelligence. It would be the same as us meeting one of the species we evolved from. The best we could hope for is indifference and them just flying by.
Mac McGruff yeah basically
Mystery the savior you mean like Russell case says in independence day? god that film was accurate with the atmosphere breaking as the ship entered and now this?
Any space-faring ship; that travels anywhere near the speed of light (even halftime speed), would be made up of materials that could withstand a large nuclear blast. At those speeds a grain of sand has the same kinetic energy as a 1 megaton nuke. We wouldn't stand a chance.
Doctor Cthulhu so if someone approached tattooine at light speed and produced a slight but of air then everyone is screwed?
i cant comment on other cultures but the reason our horror stories take place in rural areas is because its scary, your in the middle of nowhere with minimal help you cant call the military or cops for help. sure you can make the monster unstoppable then put them in the city but then it just turns into an action movie. you have to keep the killer as realistic as possible to invoke fear this includes him being to our nations second amendment which beats his machete, axe, or whatever the fuck hes trying to use.
Megan Leigh Do you even have any large predators left in Britain, though? In much of the American wilderness, those animals you hear may well want to eat you. When the largest carnivore you're going to encounter is a badger, there's not a hell of a lot to worry about from nature.
I think the scariest ones are Japanese scary stories, holy shit. Have you heard of Teke-Teke ,or the one about the smiling girl, the Red Cloak/Blue Cloak one, etc. God, those ones freak the shit out of me more than any dumb creepypasta or myth in America I've heard.
ChrisC spiders are scary as he'll though
Spiders are adorable. And tiny. Except in Australia.
This is my favorite internet video
Omg an "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?" reference. So much win!
Okay, when the girl mentioned 'IT' i freaked out a little. that clown is the reason i hate all clowns because now i just think they're all Demons in disguise
"I have proven time and again that I can control clowns by putting them in a choke hold"
-Soren Bowie
+Jacob Knight That line was epic.
What about Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street? All in urban environments. Scream? Poltergeist?
suburbs...
+snatchadams69 yeah? A Suburb is urban. He's saying they all take place in isolation.
Well, Nightmare on Elm Street is in their dreams, which is about as isolated as it gets. And in Halloween the whole block seems to disappear.
BEYOND AWESOME FILMS yeah that's the point nowhere near big city influence you know an URBAN area the SUB(urban) is basically the outskirts...
american psycho anyone?
are the SAW movies, horror movies? they are usually in the city...
kcegr wouldn't they be more body horror. Those happen in isolated spaces and aren't about the location, like human centipede.
The "dust-throw-into-the-fire" from Afraid Of The Dark is what got me to thumbs up
love the "are you afraid of the dark' intro lol also really liked Dan in this
I like to read urban legends from different cultures, and one unique thing I noticed was from Japan, their stories contain a lot more dangerous women. The slit-mouthed-woman a woman who kills with scissors, the Yuki Onna that freezes people to death, Hanako, teketeke, and the kejoro who uses her long hair to kill people. I noticed a considerable number of their stories take place in washrooms as well, like the yokai that licks the waste out of the toilet. Maybe it's an allusion to what unclean things humans can produce.
That goes with their culture's need for purity and cleanliness, but also because their ghost stories feature ghost women, probably because of the mistreatment men tend to do women, forgetting how powerful women can be in th out s life or the next....but that's just my theory...don't forget their ghost ties to water (Ringu dark water) due to being an island nation depends on the sea, but how it holds such unrelenting and terrible powers( Godzilla is a reflection on the power of the atom bomb, but also the ocean and the Dragon gods )
Thank you for sharing, that was very eloquently put, and I learned something. Again thank you. :)
darkservantofheaven No, I think it makes sense. Japanese ancient culture was a macho culture. They looked women down by not letting them play high political/imperial roles, or even in their theatre (I think it's kabuki, too lazy to investigate right now) women were represented by actors, not by actual women.
They might have godesses and asexual figures in their cultural expressions, but still women were second grade citizens and they kinda fear their revenge.
Also hair scares them too. Most newer Japanese horror movies display creatures with lots of hair or funny haircuts.
Maicol Mallers
so true, especially in Ju-on the grudge 2. Sadako was choking poeple with her hair like one's business
Maicol Mallers Really I always thought that the reason that a lot of the ghosts from scary stories and legends was because of the strain society put on women back then in the form of second class citizens and the strain they still put on them today in an entirely different way.
In present day Japan a woman is expected to stop working and become a stay-at-home-mom/housewife after she has a baby, to just drop everything unnecessarily (for the most part) to raise children, pressure from other women to keep up with today's fashion (yes this is a concern), they are often almost completely dependent on they're husbands when they have children (and that seems kind of terrifying to me personally).
Another is the strain on them just growing up, having to deal with chikan (getting molested on a packed train or elevator, girls also very rarely come forward and tell someone they had been assaulted), to make good grades, to be polite, to learn house keeping such as cleaning and cooking, to get into a good collage and get a good job, expectations from parents to find a nice husband (one they approve of) and someday give them grand-kids.
So once they die, the restraint that society put on them are gone, they no longer have to worry about working so hard to be the best at whatever it is they do, they no longer have to worry about what other people think of them, and they no longer have to worry about the rules of society in general.
There is a saying in Japan "the nail that sticks up will be hammered down" it means that if you stand out in society in ANY way that you will be judged harshly for it, and you will correct your self or have the stigma of becoming a social outcast. And that goes for any one in Japan, you do it one way and one way only, and that is the Japanese way. So without that threat looming over they're heads like a dark cloud I think they go mad with the power they suddenly have over they're own destiny.
Hate to say it, but Swaim might have been more right than he realizes. For all of our human urges and our human ills, we still all recognize that we are at the top of the food chain. Now, add into that mix that you could be taken from your home while you were sleeping at any time. No screaming, no family notifiers, nothing. Scary? It gets worse.
We humans rely heavily on testing on other species when it comes to our survival. Everything we do started with animal testing, or research of other species. We see ourselves as the key, dominant species of the planet and we spend our time researching, digging, and fiddling with every other species out there for our own benefit as a species. It is a bittersweet and unfortunate reality, but imagine that in the black void that we can't see anything in(Even though we CAN, but there's a reason that astronomers aren't typically Ufologists) that there's something out there that could crush us in an afternoon, that wants to take you as an unwilling test subject. A creature that could take every ounce of human achievement and break through it with a bony plate on its face and only be barely bested by a 40 foot tall robot we built. A species that can be in our homes, in our cities, with no warning, no time for armed response, and no possibility of being overcome.
We fear aliens because they represent the only real endgame for us. Think about it. The only times we manage to overcome the aliens? Half of the planet is decimated. Hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data are destroyed, which could easily contain identifying information for the human race(Imagine having no identity in a post-attack world), the population is reduced roughly by half, every major city becomes a crater, and the thing that ends up killing them? Is oftentimes something so remarkably implausible that it's not even funny. We know that if an alien species like that came around, we wouldn't know how to hook up a Macbook to their computer system, assuming they even had one, and upload a virus that took over their suspiciously identical systems... And the only other reasons aliens die off are so far into the bullshit range that it's not even funny. It isn't us that stops them, in many cases. Bacteria. Or even just a bizarre unexpected sensitivity to yodeling. Even in the times we DO stop them, we usually end up destroying the one method we could have had to keep them from becoming a problem again in the future. Take Pacific Rim for instance. Spoiler alert, but in the process of getting rid of all the aliens, ALL of the giant robots? Dust. Except by the end of that movie, not only have we resisted said aliens, but we struck back at them. But we also know, from what the movie told us, that they are a colonizing species. They're everywhere. And at any time, they can come back. Except now it's not just colonization. Now it's personal. And what would we have to stop them at that point? A wall? Nope. Robots? Gone. Beast's swanky gold shoes? Hardly. In these alien movies, it takes everything we've got just to repel a basic invasion force, which inevitably lets at least one or two of them get away to run home and say "Hey, they fought back like ___, let's plan for that in the future". Not only do these alien invasions show what happens when we get hit at our worst, but there's that lingering fear that for all our achievement in the face of total adversity, it could very easily mean absolutely nothing when they come back. And suddenly, we're the species being wiped out, instead of doing the wiping as we have for so long.
While our species survival is something that is a concern. And this video was good.
Its thinking to much into something so very primal.
We fear things that can kill us. Not because of what we've done, or what we're going to do, what happened in the past.
None of that bullshit, its all because ... We fear death.
If something can kill us, we fear it.
For the very simple reason that we do not want to die.
candyman is in an urban enviroment.
+Travis Tallguy THANK YOU.
+Travis Tallguy The legend of the Candyman is about a plantation slave who was killed by a mob for falling in love with a white woman. It fits pretty well with what they're saying.
+J A OP was probably talking about the cult horror film called candyman
pojot I haven't seen that movie but if its about the Candyman from the legend then it's still about a crime committed on the fringes of society coming back to haunt people. The movie might take place in an urban environment, but everything began with a crime committed in isolation.
Right now there are urban legends that take place in the city and I'm sure there will be a lot of movies with those themes soon enough, but the horror in those is that we're just a replaceable cog in the machine of a society that doesn't care. Slenderman has no face (and so no identity) but wears a suit and tie. Several Japanese urban legends are about people who committed suicide out of loneliness and who now wonder around looking for friends.
Right now our biggest fear (and one that's unfortunately true) is that as individuals we don't mean anything. However important we think we are, there are billions of people who can and will take our place if something happens to us.
was just about to comment this hoping someone else already did.
woah, wasn't expecting this one to be genuinely insightful!
Katie 2012: "Nobody makes scary movies about bears."
Kaite 2015: "The Revenant is *so* good!"
I can control clowns by putting them in chokeholds
And dont forget about a little fact that when aliens invade Earth the main battle always happens in New York or Washington or whatever big american town. Defeting those aliens instantly results in aliens running the fck away from Earth or just simply dying for no apparent reason. And for that I blame movie directors and american mentality of always thinking they are "numero uno"! Thoughts?
Or, you know, it's because those specific movies were made in america by american actors and american directors and producers.
That could be a thing.
I mean jeez no one blames bollywood for making films almost always placed in india.
you have clearly never seen Doctor Who...xD
Sky Jones Doctor Who is a british tv show not american
Exactly. Tv shows and movies take place where they ARE FILMED DAMNIT.
IF it's filmed in the UK it's going to be centered around the UK. If it's filmed in the US it will be centered on the US. You're frustrated because currently the US has the largest and most profitable film industry (I mean maybe bollywood comes close but I have no idea as I don't know anything about bollywood.), and so because of this all these new movies are centered in the U.S.
Basically you're petulant because people won't focus on those they can't relate to, and so the US doesn't produce movies set anywhere else. Ever heard of write what you know?
Very few people in the American movie industry know what it's like to live in other countries. And that's not even taking into account the fact that one of the largest demographics for american movies is AMERICAN VIEWERS who are even LESS likely to emphasize with people in other countries.
I mean jeez man, you might as well complain that books written by american authors are mostly set in america.
UnusualResults No Im not so much frustrated that those movies are based in their respective countries. True that makes sense, but a little fact that defeating THOSE aliens ( which attack for example New York) or whatever they are causes ALL of these creatures which attack whole damn Earth to run with their tails between their legs or just simply die out for no apparant reason
Omg I just got it. British people are afraid of cities because that's where the plagues happen! America never had serious plagues. Our stories are about the woods because that's where the natives lived. Cities protected us!
We had the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 which killed more people than WWI.
+L Ryuzaki It's less about the actual number than the percentage of people dead
+Matt Bayes That also works with the hole in Daniel's story which is the fact that the english were as bad or even worse than us on the frontier
+Jacob Levine Perhaps there's a little more to it than that.
As someone from England we don't always hear the words of Jerusalem but "England's green and pleasant land" is a phrase that virtually every Englander will know. The industrial revolution disrupted that by turning places that previously resembled the Shire into something akin to Mordor, complete with massive glowing fires and beltching black smoke.
Furthermore it could well be based around what societies have done in their own land. Yeah we were heavily involved in the slave trade, conquered India (which at the time included Pakistan and Bangladesh) and parts of Africa with a decent level of bloodshed and bullied our way into China during the Opium wars BUT that was all far far away. In the English psyche the horrors of Imperial expansion are a lot further away than the industrial revolution.
Whereas it was in, what is now, the American homeland that the frontier was relentlessly pushed back and thus modern Americans live in a land that is taken from the indigenous people, whereas Brits live in a land that is dominated by factories and warehouses but there weren't any indigenous people living in England for us to wipe out, the English WERE the indigenous people.
Very True.
I can't believe this channel got revived for scaremongering instead of bringing back quality shows like this.
I love the Are You Afraid of the Dark reference!
CLOVERFIELD. boom.
Thats a giant monster movie, which its mandatory to be in a big city. Also, scary? That movie isn't even close to being scary.
***** yeah totally its more of a found footage disaster movie not a horror. I think [rec] would have been a better example for lyadmilo but then again that was originally Barcelonean not american so yeah
al might still in an urban setting, same with some of the Romero movies
But that kind of goes back to the idea of a bigger, badder species coming to fuck us up (like aliens!). They destroy cities because that is the symbol of our power, that's why you only over see cities like Chicago, New York, LA, Tokyo, London, etc getting destroyed; there is not going to be a movie about Louisville getting destroyed because that isn't as much of a symbol. The idea is that these are threats to the ENTIRE human race, because if we can't even protect Chicago, what the hell kind of chance does your hometown stand?
Ran Wolf uhmm.. except his first 1. Remote setting. Farm house ring a bell. The others almost always end in rural areas. Cause the the city setting isnt scary. To many lights...and wimpy ass desk jockeys. Easy prey. Rural areas are dark and creepier.
There's a lot of old, gothic architecture in England. In USA, it's sunshine and palm trees. What's spooky about that?
Depends on the region and the plot. Sunshine and palm trees beaches...here comes jaws.
And actually, an idyllic environment is a great setting for a horror story, because it's the last place you expect horror to happen. If a story is set in a dark, foreboding, gothic castle, or even a cabin in the woods, you're thinking "i know where this is going". But if the horror isn't removed from civilisation, if it is somewhere more relatable, then it is, surely, more horrifying. Because it could happen to you, too.
That said the USA isn't all sunshine and palm trees. Montana? Alaska? I have never seen a horror movie set in Miami. I have seen them set in secluded, uninhabited woods, and snow covered ghost towns.
And the UK isn't all dark gothic architecture. I live near Portsmouth, and let me say, most of it looks like it was built post 1950. And most of the older stuff, isn't exactly dark and gothic. There are sadly few true examples of gothic architecture here, and they are mostly not in the city. Meaning, not where our scariest horror stories happen.
Sunshine and palm trees? America is composed of more than California.
California is composed of more than Orange County.
^Good one.
Srry but I disagree with the lose of humanity. I say its about embracing humanity because for every "good" trait there is a "bad" trait we don't like to admit
The loss of humanity does have a part to play in horror movies. Yeah, you could be a decent person who donates to charity and gives food to the homeless. It's when things get bad that shows the true colors of a person. It's scary because your neighbor of ten years who babysat your kids or your best friend since preschool could turn on you if they thought it would save their own skin. Fear brings out the worst or best in us, and that's when the gloves are off and we truly begin to see people (and ourselves) for what they are. We're afraid of losing our humanity because that would mean that these "monsters" are much closer to home than we thought.
Submitted for the approval of the Cracked Society 😂😂 Love it. I miss these guys
wow, i was not prepared for that. mind blown
He would have won (in my book) but then he said"in the butt"
Hmm.. How bout the Halloween franchise? Michael stalks people all over the city in most of those movies. And I believe I saw Jason from that one horror film killing some guy on a building rooftop. Daniel, no.
Exactly what I was thinking. That clown movie "It", "Nightmare on Elm Street", even "Child's Play" and "Gremlins" all happened in urban areas.
Pepinrock
Didn't those mostly happen in smaller, more rural towns rather than big cities?
najhoant They weren't exactly small towns, but they weren't "cities" in the sense that Dan is talking about. Actually, I think Dan's theory would work better as a general rule with a few exceptions. And the most notorious exception has to be John Carpenter's Halloween, seeing as how Dan is talking about "legitimately scary" American horror movies (and Freddy Krueger and "It" happen more in the realm of dreams where victims are helpless anyway, while Chucky and Gremlins aren't legitimately scary to adults). Carpenter really is an exception to Dan's rule because he made the spectator feel helpless in spite of being in the middle of civilization. Michael Myers may have attacked in a semi-small town of Illinois but the police was a phone call away (Laurie's friend's dad was the sheriff).
najhoant And then, there's the less known Carpenter made-for-TV thriller Someone’s Watching Me! which he shot before "Halloween" and released a month after it. It takes place in a Los Angeles high rise! L.A., one of the world's big metropolises!! Yes, it's a thriller, but it's scary because it delivers Carpenter's specialty: making you feel helpless no matter where you are.
najhoant I think it's all about the way he constructs the killers. He makes them so smart and evil that it doesn't matter where you are, once you enter their environment, it makes you feel as good as dead. But if we want to apply Dan’s theory of “how the outskirts of society mean dehumanization to Americans because that’s where we did our dirty stuff” to John Carpenter’s movies, the questions would go something like this: Are Carpenter’s killers dehumanized? [Obviously, yes] How do they make the victims feel dehumanized? The answer is that Carpenter’s killers bring the dehumanization TO the city. We don’t have to go to it. It comes to us. That’s why it’s scary. They invade our space, our safe haven.
Alien movies happen in the city because as long as it's just some hick's drunken story the other characters, and by proxy we, can assume is not real. Bring it to the city and it's suddenly in our face, exploding our landmarks. The Alien movies are all a big "what if those drunks aren't full of shit, what if there is a threat out there waiting to destroy us all."
oh shi
Independence Day definitely takes place in cities as do most Japanese movies if you consider Kaiju aliens, but I think you would draw the same parallels between Japan and England in terms of cities being the locale for where those people lost their humanity.
Nathan Milaszewski Kaiju aren't aliens, well, sometimes they're aliens but for the most part they are giant monsters or animals. They happen in cities because that's where their rampage would be the most destructive and create the most casualties which leads to what the kaiju actually are; Natural and/or Man made Disasters. What are the most destructive events Japan has faced in the last centuries? Tsunamis, Earthquakes and Nuclear threats. Not just the two bombs btw, but contamination from facilities damaged by natural disasters. But most of Japan's "scary stories" involve the supernatural anyway. =/
ProfessorLawl Tsunamis are the result of earthquakes, so I don't think you can really consider those two things distinct. Those disasters have been occurring in Japan prior to human beings living on the islands. Kaiju as a metaphor for nuclear threats and those with access to them (USA), definitely seems possible. The fact that Godzilla debuted 10 years after the end of WWII seems like too much of a coincidence. In that film, Godzilla was released by an atomic bomb explosion, he has radioactive breath, and many people that survive go to the hospital with radiation poisoning. Finally, in the climax of the film Serizawa uses an incredibly destructive experimental weapon to kill Godzilla then kills himself, so the knowledge of its design can never be known.
After writing that I found this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(franchise)#Series_development
The imagery from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the axe murderer cartoon cutaway is such a weird but excellent deep cut
I love that she says no one makes scary stories about animals and "the darkness" is in her next sentence. As in the ghost and the darkness, a scary story about animals.
3:45
American Pshyco
A movie about losing humanity because of consumerism tho.
Ivan Martinez Still more of a psychological horror though
+Trevor Smith Not horror. Not even a little bit like a horror movie. Psychological thriller maybe but not scary story horror.
+nick sousa I still consider it a horror movie, because then it'll be one of the few that might be scary
Trevor Smith Except nothing in the movie is scary at all either. It's played more as satire or black comedy.
Kati seems particularly cute by firelight.
hmm yes,we are afraid of universal justice.all wrongs must be paid for
This... was actually really insightful. Wow.
love the are u afraid of the dark reference!
This is kinda weird for me...I would never say a story about aliens is a horrorstory o.O aliens just aren't scary. is that an american thing? or is it just me who doesn't get what's scary about lights in the sky?
The fear of not being the top of the food chain. Did you watch the video?
*****
did you read my comment?
You said is it an American thing. The video talks about how people from different regions have different ideas of scary.
I take it you have never seen any alien movies, like say war of the worlds. Or the TV show fallen skies.
Sorry but the idea of those kinds of situations actually happening is damn scary.
Maybe just watching the show itself is not scary, although entertaining. If you put yourself in that actual situation, are you telling me you would be all calm and thinking oh this ain't bad.
TBH the guy talking about aliens started to annoy the shit out of me, instead of making me laugh
the morony is great in this young one
Ventura Ace Forgive me "morony", is that even a word? Just wondering
i like how you trying to waste my time some MOAR!
Ventura Ace I am not wasting your time you could have ignored the comment in the first place you fuck.
Ventura Ace Stay in school.
what about asian horror movies?
some of them are quite good, but sometimes they leave me a little confused. maybe because I wasn't brought up in the culture and I'm missing references in the movie. A perfect example was the Parasite Eve movie, I was fine until the very last minute of the movie, it seemed to come out of left field and be completely unrelated to the rest of the story
Radiation ?
Well there's the grudge I guess that takes place in Japan or something right? A movie that if I recall takes place in an entire urban environment. But most Asian horror movies that I've seen are almost always about ghosts. Not really monsters or aliens.
YusefKnight This is completely accurate. Japan specifically (but Asia in general) sets their horror movies with ghosts or zombies. As a culture they are VERY afraid of what would happen if someone was to not die properly (aka reanimate or not find peace and therefore turn around to haunt someone). There are so many stipulations on honorable deaths (samurai, yakuza, public officials) that even today we see some very important people commit suicide as a way to reclaim their honor so that they can find peace in the afterlife and NOT be bound to a place or person for all eternity. They are also ALL cremated so that people can't come back as zombies.
SamIAm1260 This is something that i am wondering, because the argument that the fear in movies and how they are set in the wilderness and big cities is just so empty, ie. a person from some other country (say peru) watches an american horror flick and gets scared even though he hasnt been subjected to american culture, or equally a german watches an english horror film and gets scared even when he is not subjected to that culture, it really does seem they are trying to get to something deeper when the answer is something simple, such as, american horror flicks set in the wilderness do better than american horror films set in cities because an old movie did it well and set the standard.
0:58 Nice reference to "Are You Afraid of The Dark"
This one did it for me. Subscribed!