Editorials
What Creepypasta Should “Channel Zero” Adapt Next?
If you haven’t checked out SyFy’s unexpectedly delightful new series, Channel Zero: Candle Cove, now is the perfect time to start. As the month of Halloween draws to a climactic close, we’re halfway through the anthology series’ bold retelling and expansion of Kris Straub’s iconic Candle Cove creepypasta. Luckily for us, Syfy has already confirmed a second season based on another classic online tale, Brian Russell’s The No End House.
While a third season isn’t guaranteed at this point, especially since the first one is yet to finish airing, this had me thinking of other creepypastas that might benefit from a small-screen adaptation on Channel Zero. Naturally, the following tales were chosen according personal tastes, but we’d love to see your suggestions in the comments as well!
The Slender Man Mythos
In a way, the character of Slender Man can be held responsible for bringing creepypastas to the mainstream, as there are very few people out there that haven’t at least heard of this iconic horror villain that’s yet to star in a full-fledged adaptation of the original story. The low-budget Marble Hornets web-series masterfully presented the character to Youtube audiences back in 2009, and we’ve had a few indie reimaginings of the story as well, but there’s yet to be a definitive version of the tale.
Created by Eric Knudsen (known as “Victor Surge” online), the Slender Man began as simple internet meme created for a contest on the Something Awful Forums, with a series of photoshopped photographs that claimed to have caught a glimpse of this terrifying entity with a bad habit of kidnapping unwary children. Of course, the story caught on, and the internet soon spread the character around so frequently that many began to consider it a nuisance, especially with the rise of cutesy fan-art and nerdy Slender Man merchandise (which is oddly similar to what happened to Lovecraft’s infamous creation, Cthulhu).
Nevertheless, despite the apparent overexposure of the character, the Slender-Man has even been involved in real life controversies, with several crimes having been linked to avid “fans” of this internet sensation. It’s not hard to see how this would make for some compelling television, and it could be even better if SyFy managed to bring in the THAC team behind the original Marble Hornets series.
The Russian Sleep Experiment
The origins of this macabre tale of unethical science can be traced back to 2010, but no one’s really sure about who wrote it. The Russian Sleep Experiment concerns a strange study on sleep deprivation, allegedly conducted on political prisoners back in the 1940s. Using a mysterious gas-based stimulant, Russian scientists managed to keep a group of five people awake for over two weeks before realizing the horrors that they had unleashed.
While the story is almost certainly a work of fiction, it taps into a universal fear of the unknown, not unlike some of H.P. Lovecraft’s best work. It’s hard to imagine a show like Channel Zero having the budget (or interest) in making a season-long period piece describing the horrors that the prisoners went through, but maybe they could take the story in another direction. Perhaps one of the prisoners survived, or a modern-day journalist could embark on an ill-fated quest to uncover the truth behind the horrific experiment. Either way, I would definitely watch something based on this terrifying yarn.
The SCP Foundation
Like the Slender Man mythos, the SCP Foundation isn’t so much a single story as it is a collection of atrocities that make up a larger universe. SCP stands for Special Containment Procedure, so you can imagine what purpose the Foundation serves. Stories within the SCP universe are usually presented as filed reports concerning the capture of all sorts of terrifying entities, and the subsequent experimentation that the organization conducts on them. Not to mention a few cases of escaped subjects.
Featuring bizarre “characters” and locations, such as a seemingly infinite staircase inhabited by an otherworldly being, sentient Betamax tapes and even entities that make you forget their characteristics after observing them, the sky is the limit with this one. An adaptation could focus on a single captive/escaped subject, or maybe even a handful of them as they terrorize the unsuspecting populace. With a larger budget, we could even follow the adventures of a researcher at the foundation, and how he deals with the cosmic terror he’s confronted with on a daily basis.
Of course, these aren’t the only good creepypastas out there, but it’s fun to imagine what an adaptation of our favorite scary internet stories might be like. If Channel Zero manages to keep up the current quality in future seasons, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned into a yearly romp akin to American Horror Story, that us horror fanatics could enjoy as an annual ritual celebrating the best (or worst) that the internet has to offer.
Channel Zero: Candle Cove airs on Tuesdays at 9PM on SyFy!
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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