Editorials
Batteries Not Included: 10 Tech-Gone-Wrong Horror Movies
Chucky has received a makeover in just about every way in the new reboot of Child’s Play. His voice, his design, and above all, his origin. Gone is the serial killer Charles Lee Ray inhabited Good Guy Doll out to play a game of hide-the-soul with little Andy Barclay. Instead, Andy has to contend with a seriously upgraded Best Buddi Doll by tech company Kaslan Corp. Kaslan imbued their product with sophisticated software, algorithms, and over 20 sensors that means the Best Buddi can process information about its environment in realtime, comprehend speech in multiple languages, and voice recognition. Programming can be handled via smartphone, tablets, and computers, no less. That’s just the starting point. Needless to say, Andy’s particular Best Buddi is a little too advanced for anyone’s good, and his new toy becomes the epitome of tech gone wrong in horror.
Tales of technology gone awry has made for great horror for a while now; there’s something inherently terrifying about the very thing that’s supposed to make our lives easier turning against us. It’s also attributed to the fear of the unknown- technology continues to evolve at a rapid rate that it’s difficult to keep up. Especially with the advent of A.I., programming robots with sentience just seems like a bad idea, right? In other words, it’s not hard to imagine that technology could plausibly be our downfall. Chucky might be terrorizing the Barclay family, but it could happen anywhere and everywhere. We look back at other terrifying tech gone wrong horror movies that make us rethink our overreliance on technology.
The Ring
It’s funny to think of VHS tapes as technology, but it was the definitive format of the home video market for over two decades. It changed the landscape of movie consumption. So, it’s not surprising at all that horror would eventually use VHS as a basis of fear. The Ring, and the original on which it’s based (Ringu), reign supreme. The plot is simple; a journalist embarks on an investigation of a mysterious videotape that causes death to those who have watched it, a week to the day. Of all the various ways to die in horror, few are as unnerving as the slow creeping dread of Samara/Sadako. The imagery of her crawling out of the well will embed itself in your mind like a nightmare that’s taken up permanent residence.
Videodrome
This surreal, mind-melting David Cronenberg classic sees its horror unleashed by way of intercepted television broadcast picked up by an unauthorized satellite dish. That broadcast is Videodrome, a show that doesn’t seem to have a plot- just brutal torture and murder. When sleazy cable TV programmer Max Renn (James Woods) orders unlicensed use of the show, he begins to suffer hallucinations. It’s only the beginning of his terrifying new reality. In an age where viral videos and mindless entertainment still holds relevancy, Videodrome’s horror still feels timeless. Long live the new flesh.
Evilspeak
Poor Stanley (Clint Howard). He’s an orphan at a military academy, and ostracized by both peers and staff. When forced to clean the basement, he discovers an ancient book of dark magic. Of course, he can’t understand Latin, so he does what any tech-savvy person would do- he uses his computer to translate it. Reading from Satanic books never ends well for anyone, and for the bullied Stanley, it means a lot of revenge and bloodshed upon those who have wronged him. And many of them really, really deserved it.
Brainscan
One of the earlier adapters of the killer video game concept, Brainscan follows Michael (Edward Furlong) an outcast and horror fan who orders a new game touted to be ultra-realistic. Of course, he didn’t grasp how realistic it would ultimately be. The game sees him playing as a psychopathic killer, only he discovers those murders are actually happening in the real world too. It gets trippy, and pure ‘90s horror. Especially with the memorably wacky character The Trickster.
Chopping Mall
In recent years, shopping malls have begun incorporating robots to provide information services or security. They clearly haven’t seen Chopping Mall. Three state-of-the-art high-tech security robots go on the fritz when lightning strikes during a storm, damaging the computer that controls them. For the group of teens that opted to stay after hours to party, this means certain doom, as the robots are out to slaughter any living thing roaming the mall. All that separated this tech from peacekeeper to murderer was a thunderstorm.
Shutter
What Ringu did for videotapes this 2004 Thai horror movie does for cameras, demonstrating that not even the most seemingly simple of tech can frighten. For Jane and her photographer boyfriend Tun, their lives are about to be upended in the most nightmarish of ways when mysterious figures and shadows start popping up in Tun’s photos post hit and run accident. Thanks to his camera, and investigating the mystery behind its unusual activity, Tun learns you can’t ignore your past. And it’s oh, so creepy.
The Den
A found footage horror film that takes aim at the dangers lurking on the internet, The Den follows a young woman using a webcam-based social media site as the basis for her sociology graduate project. In doing so, her account is unwittingly hacked and her webcam turned on without her knowing. When she witnesses a murder online, she soon realizes she’s in over her head. It’s scary for so many reasons, between our reliance on the internet, that our own tech can be hacked by others so easily, and that those hackers can use that info to invade our privacy with ease. And the police can do nothing about it.
Event Horizon
Sure, the technology in Event Horizon doesn’t exist (yet?), but that doesn’t make it any less creepy. When a space ship with the capabilities of opening up a faux black hole to bridge two points in space and time disappears on its maiden voyage to a point over 4 light years away, its sudden reappearance prompts a rescue ship sent to investigate. The Event Horizon didn’t come back the same, and its determined to take the new crew back to the hellish dimensions of space where the last crew wound up. If ever there was a case that it’s better to leave well enough alone and forgo curiosity, this is it.
Christine
Of all the technology we wield on a daily basis, it’s our vehicles that consistently prove to be the most dangerous (and lethal). Leave it to Stephen King and director John Carpenter to take it to stylish yet chilling new depths. For Arnie Cunningham, his life changes when he buys a beat up 1958 Plymouth Fury dubbed Christine. The more he spends time repairing her, the more he transitions from awkward nerd to confident greaser. It turns out Christine is the jealous type, to the point of homicide, and anyone who gets in between Arnie and her should prepare to pay with their life. Hell hath no fury like a possessed Plymouth.
Hardware
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, a scavenger finds a robot buried in the desert. A former soldier buys and sells its parts, leaving the head intact as a gift for his reclusive girlfriend Jill, a metal sculptor. Both are unaware that the robot is a government created weapon programmed for genocide, one that’s as capable of self-repair as it is deadly. Written and directed by the enigmatic Richard Stanley, this tech-based horror delivers on the suspense and gore, which originally earned the film an X-rating. A stellar entry in tech gone wrong horror, Hardware is also worth watching to get ahead of the curve on Stanley’s upcoming adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Colour Out of Space.
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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