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I was about half-way through my annual Christmas Gremlins rewatch when I realized it all felt extra familiar this year. Something about the central theme of society’s tendency to disastrously play around with things it doesn’t understand reminded me of the current cultural hellscape in which we all suddenly live.
It was watching Billy Peltzer irresponsibly raise his pets to the detriment of everyone around him that did it. While these days I wouldn’t be surprised to find a corner of the internet where people defend Mrs. Deagle, I’m not one of those people.
Having said that, Billy is not a good pet owner.
We know this right away because his dog – apparently allowed to freely wander the neighborhood – has destroyed Mrs. Deagle’s imported snowman. Then Billy brings that same dog to work, where it is also out of control. He seems like a nice enough kid, but I would not trust Billy to feed my gerbil.
It’s not entirely Billy’s fault, some of this is upbringing. His dad, Rand Peltzer, an unemployed and aggressively mediocre inventor, essentially steals a creature heretofore never seen in modern society and gives it to his kid for Christmas. Elated with the preciousness of the alien/oni/whatever they now possess, the Peltzer family gathers for Polaroids with it before Rand remembers there was a whole list of rules he was supposed to tell them first.
Gremlins would have been a very short movie if that camera flash had fried Gizmo to the bone then and there, though it might have worth it for the following scene where Rand is forced to explain what the hell just happened to his sobbing family.
Even after being given the rest of the rules, Billy breaks them almost immediately.
He doesn’t Mogwai-proof his room like a good pet owner would. He leaves a half-empty glass just sitting around right next to Gizmo, who for-all-he-knows will literally explode upon contact with water. When Gizmo gives give birth to a full litter after getting wet, Billy is so fascinated he takes his beloved new companion to school and willfully repeats the process which it’s worth noting looks super painful and traumatic.
In fairness, Stripe and the rest of Gizmo’s offspring do trick Billy into feeding them after midnight. On the other hand, Billy is easily duped by creatures roughly two days old.
All of this is to say Billy has no idea what he’s doing, and the entire town of Kingston Falls ultimately pays the price for his and Rand’s irresponsibility. (Lynn Peltzer gets a pass because she does all she can to clean up after her family’s mistakes, and by ‘clean up’ I mean explode said mistakes in a microwave.)
The internet was like a Mogwai once.
It was also cute at first glance, with just enough weirdness to make it interesting. You could invite your friends over and show it to them. But unlike the Peltzers, we weren’t given any rules. We brought it into our homes and played with it like the new toy we thought it was. We put in the bath and were alarmed as we found ourselves in a ‘Trouble With Tribbles’ situation. It all escalated so quickly and suddenly it was everywhere. It was still kind of fun – a never-ending torrent of cat photos and funny gifs – but like with Gizmo’s offspring, there was a mischievous aspect right there in front of us we didn’t fully understand or respect.
At first, the mischief seemed harmless. I’ll never forget the first time someone tricked me into watching a jump-scare video, and you might have been a little sick of Rick Astley, but it was a small price to pay to see that Freddy Vs. Jason trailer when it did eventually go up for real. In retrospect, Aunt Beatrice’s forwarded e-mails about beleaguered Nigerian princes might have been a red flag we missed. That’s probably when the Mogwai first started trying to hang the dog on the front porch.
Years from now, in the Future Wastes, we’ll still be huddled around a campfire composed of useless smartphones trying to figure out how the internet went from Mogwai to Gremlin. Because at some point it ate after midnight and now it’s not so cute. Now it’s teeth and claws and hate and it’s playing with the wiring in the traffic lights just for the lulz. People are violently colliding in the streets because they’re all getting different information from a source they previously assumed was reliable and everyone believes they have the right of way.
It’s affecting all of us in incalculable ways, every single day. Targeted harassment. Massive breaches of personal data. Malware. Extremist groups. Clickbait headlines. Russian bot networks. Kingston Falls has fallen into chaos and nobody knows what to do about any of it because most of us are just trying to survive the long, dark night. It’s unlikely the negative aspects of the internet will simply gather in one place for us to blow up because they would first endlessly debate whether Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is ‘real horror’ as though that were a thing.
And of course, this is what’s happened. Of course it is.
This is what Mr. Wing was trying to tell the Peltzers over thirty years ago.
“You do with Mogwai what your society has done with all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand. You are not ready.” From the first time we drove an animal to extinction to the splitting of the atom, we’ve shown the same level of care and caution to new discoveries Billy showed his poor pets. The internet may not be one of nature’s gifts in the same way a rainforest or the climate is, but the principle is the same. We usually have no idea what we’re doing with these things until it’s too late. Mr. Wing saw this clearer than anyone and that’s why Spielberg gave him only one good eye. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is Wing.
So, if someone destroys your credit score with your stolen identity, or an army of trolls ruins your Twitter mentions, or your kitchen appliances are hijacked in a large-scale DDOS attack, don’t bother checking the closets or under the bed. There’s not only a gremlin in your house, it’s already careening through your living room in a snow plow.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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