Type in the search term “horror short” on YouTube and chances are you will be met with a non-stop barrage of short horror films from a wide variety of different creators all attempting to break through the YouTube algorithm. These films are often short on story, but effective in atmosphere and potential. Shazam! and Lights Out director David F. Sandberg famously blew up thanks to his Lights Out short that went viral on YouTube years before his Hollywood career took off.
Director Colin Krawchuk has also used the horror short format to his advantage with the success of his short horror trilogy, The Jester, available for free on YouTube. Though far from an easy process, horror shorts can work wonders for exposure and experience in the field of filmmaking. With horror maintaining strong reactions from general moviegoers on the regular, the format presents endless opportunities for creators to go off and showcase their talent.
But YouTube isn’t the only useful platform for such creators, as the likes of Shudder and Syfy have taken to showcasing more outlandish horror from filmmakers wanting to stand out from the pack. Whether they be in a short or feature length format, horror creators have now been given viable options to show off their hard work, in spite of how “inaccessible” their content may be, and nowhere is this more certain than the bizarre land of Adult Swim.
Making its debut in 2001, Adult Swim has long prided itself as the adult alternative of the children’s content shown in the daytime portion of Cartoon Network’s schedule. Starting at 8 PM, Adult Swim would showcase programming that can best be described as “otherworldly,” responsible for the popularity of such shows as Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Venture Bros, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Robot Chicken, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, and most recently The Eric Andre Show.
All of these shows share a common theme of embracing the bizarre, using a range of different methods – from edgy gross-out humor to absurdist nonsense – to present unusual concepts and ideas in the most creative way possible for each team. Each show has this creeping feeling of the “Wrong,” as though we’re watching something that should be probably be considered illegal; even if nothing particularly shocking is happening onscreen. Another way to describe Adult Swim is “What if Yorgos Lanthimos ran Cartoon Network?” and that comparison might seem strange, but it feels the most appropriate.
So naturally, the freaky Bizarro universe that is Adult Swim is the perfect place for creators to flex their horror muscles and craft some truly unique and terrifying content. The fact that famed horror manga writer, Junji Ito, is having his most infamous story, Uzumaki, being adapted into a mini-series on Adult Swim in 2020 is further proof of this, A story like Uzumaki – about the secret behind a mysterious curse involving spirals – feels as though it can only work on Adult Swim, which encourages more transgressive content.
But the acquirement of Uzumaki is only the latest in a long string of horror acquisitions for Adult Swim, which has quietly made a name for itself as a viable platform for horror creators over the past decade. Shows like Robot Chicken feature many edgy jokes, but some aspects fit right into Adult Swim’s bizarre horror aesthetic. Where else can we see a hypothetical version of Toy Story 4 that ends with Woody suffocating Buzz to put him out of his misery after becoming a makeshift bong?
This brand of horror-comedy has also continued with the duo Tim & Eric, who expanded off of their previous show and premiered Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories in 2014, mixing their brand of absurd cringe comedy with surreal horror to come out with a unique (and perhaps not FDA-approved) horror-comedy that was simply textbook Adult Swim. Dreamlike and in-your-face, the show’s horror was elevated by the convenient scheduling of Adult Swim’s programming being in the night, making it feel like a show literally glitching out into dead air.
But where the horror of Adult Swim programming truly takes center stage is with its Infomercials series, starting in 2009. Intended as a very late-night “show” on the network’s block, Infomercials is the program destined to sneak up on viewers, mimicking late-night commercials and ads by presenting a seemingly innocuous show that has to take a quick ad break, only for the ad itself to be the true show hidden underneath.
Each of the “infomercials” are disconnected from each other, effectively acting as short films focusing on different subjects each time. When Panties Fly is the most recent addition to the series, premiering last December on the block and exploring the true historical importance of panties. That’s it, that’s the whole video and while each segment focuses on something different, that air of “professionally unprofessional” seeps through in each of the segments.
One of the most notorious segments is the Paranormal Activity-inspired found footage film, This House Has People In It, which depicts the life of a seemingly regular American family over the course of one day. Things are a little off, but nothing goes truly off-the-rails until a strange occurrence causes the family to go, for the lack of a better term, a little mad.
The segment uses the static camera format to present the story as though it were told through security cameras, escalating the disturbing nature of what happens to a higher degree, only helped by the program’s air time being way past midnight. Truth be told, there could be an entire standalone article breaking down This House Has People In It, but the ultimate point is that the segment only touches the iceberg of strange horror that lives within Adult Swim.
Infomercials was also responsible for the famous Unedited Footage of a Bear segment, presented as a lovely running shot of a bear just hanging out, until the program gets interrupted by a YouTube ad about allergy medication that goes on much longer than it needs to. Using the commercial aesthetic, the ad quickly morphs into a psychological thriller about baby blues, depression, and the negative effect of the wrong medication at the wrong time, all presented in a trippy, occasionally non-linear structure to boot.
There’s always an element of comedy in these shorts, playing up the absurdity of the concept in a self-aware manner that still does nothing to take away from the drastic tonal shifts in the majority of the segments. The comedy comes less from traditional jokes and more from the situations arising in the segments or even the unusual delivery of an otherwise mundane line. The segments are alien in nature, despite (allegedly) being made by human casts and crews, which is arguably more disturbing when viewing the ideas conjured up in this setting.
With all the talk on Infomercials, it’s impossible not to bring up the success of the series’ most popular segment, Too Many Cooks. The short premiered back in 2014 and caused quite the commotion online, going viral for its unique concept and chaotic execution. The short, if you haven’t already watched, is presented as the opening to a random 80s looking sitcom, introducing the main cast of white-bread middle class characters with unfamiliar names. The intro is quite long, in fact too long, as it just continues and adds in even more characters – one of them being a deranged serial killer – that blend into one another in gruesome and frightening combinations.
The most common interpretation seems to be that the short is a commentary on the saturation of cheesy feel-good sitcoms and TV shows eventually blending into one another until nothing becomes distinguishable anymore. Perhaps it’s a commentary on the many facets of pop culture bleeding into one giant deformed ball of soulless entertainment attempting to consume us all. No matter what, Too Many Cooks is one of the strongest examples of transgressive programming on Adult Swim, taking full advantage of its environment to craft a memorable short that delivers both horror and comedy in an unusually successful manner.
That’s ultimately the beauty of Adult Swim horror: there’s truly no boundaries to what a creator can do on the network. Obviously, all companies have their limits and Adult Swim likely has its fair share of guidelines to meet, but those guidelines have still allowed creators to present their ideas in an accepting environment that actively encourages weird and off-kilter content. From Infomercials to the demented core of many Adult Swim comedy shows, the late night block has transformed itself into an unlikely champion for low-budget and outlandish horror in the age of oversaturation on YouTube.
With Uzumaki looking as though it’ll be presented in the style of Junji Ito’s original manga, Adult Swim continues to bang the drum for horror creators to get creative and fearless for their future projects and I personally can’t wait to see what else Adult Swim will have up its sleeve for the rest of the year. There’s always room for some surprises and it wouldn’t be Adult Swim without one or two of those.
