my heart is a chainsaw, and you're the one who starts it

welcome to thatoddhaystack... after dark. by that i mean here is my place to yap about all different kinds of horror media. the good, the bad, and the weird. and there will be weird. I go through phases where I feel desensitized to more mainstream horror media and seek out the most bizzare and offputting things I can find to elicit some sort of response from me. does that sound too pretentious. hopefully not.

some of these pieces of media will have longer reviews attached but for the most part view this as a collection of what I've perused over the years. in individual reviews I'll do my best to provide content warnings, but browse with caution!

watch

whats your favorite sacry movies. throwing in horror shorts and tv in this section, youtube gets to go in the other section because uhhhhhh I said so

the substance
insanely gutting, incredibly blunt, a horrible fantastic fever dream that reaches unimagined levels of insanity in the last act. perhaps my favorite horror movie of 2024
longlegs
a strangely cosy horror movie for me. the plot is kind of scattered but the vibes are impeccable. nic cage does a fantastic job
malignant
one of my favorite horror movies of all time. a horror movie filmed like a 2000's action movie. this is camp. to me. there's a little freak in it that I love a lot
skinamarink
a very divisive horror movie as there's a lot of empty space in the movie and some cheap jumpscares. but! there's such a nostalgic feel to this movie for me... comforting in a strange way
re-animator
this and bride of re-animator are perhaps my favorite b movies of all time. herbert west you are so transgender and gay. To Me.
haunt
haunt is not the best movie of all time. but there is something about it I find comforting in a weird way. maybe it's themeing of an extreme haunted house.
scream (1996)
I'm normal about ghost face. ok but really it's not so much billy and stu I am fascinated by but the concept of ghost face in general? anyone can pick up the mask.
  • heck: a short film from the guy who made skinamarink about a mother and child who are stuck in their house in an endless night. I usually recommend folks watch heck first to see if they'll like the style, because if you don't like heck you'll absolutely hate skinamarink.
  • dragula: for a long time, I didn't think I was into drag, being only familar with the most mainstream representations of it. I saw a performance at spookala in april 2024 of three of the contestants from dragula and suddenly. I Got It. a whole new world had been opened up for me. I saw the dragula season five world tour show and wrote about it in my blog!

back to top

play

what exactly a game is can get kind of loose at times so some of these things might classify more as multimedia projects than proper games? but also it's my house I can do what I want

sweet pool
body horror bl where a guy grapples with a bizzare illness and fellow students bent on antagonizing him. read my review
anatomy
a house decays, a house hungers. one of my favorite horror games of all time if not The Favorite
soma
sad robots, existential dread, an oppressive atmosphere. a game that left me with a hole in my heart in the best of ways
soma
the evil within isn't a particularly scary or horrific game but I had a brainworm for joseph oda so I was obsessed with this game and its sequel for a while
ib
one of the first if not the first horror games I played myself. unique characters and atmosphere that hold up a decade later
.flow
a yume nikki fangame that leans into the grotesque. I was super invested in theorizing about what this game meant for the longest time

back to top

read

books! short stories! internet creepypastas! like with the play section some of these might be a little fast and loose on whether I consider them more game or piece of literature. again it's my house!!

the troop
the thing meets lord of the flies. this book is gross and I say that with the highest compliments. ending kinda fell flat though
my heart is a chainsaw
a book that feels like the author carved out my brain and splattered it onto the pages. an exemplary display of horror as catharsis.
house of leaves
I think, at its core, this book is about love. and also cool and experimental ways to make a person read a book. and also the house
scorch atlas
anthology book about a batshit post-apocalypse world. if a book could be diseased this would be the prime example of one
the girl who loved tom gordon
a stephen king novel I reread every now and then. I think the setting of the woods really appeals to me, and king's fantasy realism works well here
unwind
a YA novel that deals with the issue of reproductive rights in a chilling fashion. there's one sequence in this book that unsettles me to the bone every time I reread it
  • survivor type: a short story from stephen king I come back to every now and then to reread. I think the extremes of what a person will do to survive are compelling... also the protagonist is a shithead and I think that makes watching his gradual unravelling more satsifying
  • father, son, holy rabbit:a short story by stephen graham jones that to me, is the same genre of survivor type but on a different side of the axis. love is at the core of the horror.

back to top

other

anything that defies definition based on my previous categories.

  • mystery flesh pit national park: a fascinating exploration of hubris and the exploitation of nature. I especially love the faux park brochures; they feel authentic while still keeping a creepy edge
  • dead meat and dead meat presents: horror youtubers regularly post kill counts covering horror movies new and old. their presents channel hosts their horror podcast, as well as event coverage and promotional videos
  • saya in underworld: blog translating short horror stories from japanese, along with rituals and some creepy photos
  • ghosttundra: artist who (among other things) makes the lacey games series of videos, a horror take on the girl flash games of the 2000's
  • nana825763: a youtuber who makes fantastic horror videos and is currently working on a game. my house walkthrough is one that I go back to rewatch every now and then.
  • the ghost in my machine: horror blog that goes over all kinds of media - from creepypastas to ritualpastas to roundups of horror games and movies.
  • ted the caver: an old short story about a man who discovers a small hole within a local cave that leads to an undiscovered area. the first time I read this I had horrible nightmares afterwards which means I give it the vita seal of approval
  • photograph, the boys are back in town (to kill you) and kiss me (kill me): series of loosely connected songs/music videos that are parodies of actual songs with the injection of cosmic horror entities. kiss me (kill me) deserves a special shout out for keeping me up at night for whatever reason? it made me feel like something was coming to Get Me (which again, is a vita seal of approval)
  • HannahTheHorrible: youtuber who goes over creepy tiktoks, icebergs, and a variety of unsettling stories.
  • john wolfeand john twolfe: youtuber I've watched for ages who plays horror games and more recently discusses ghost debunking and goosebumps reviews. even as a believer of ghosts I think his debunking videos are super interesting! he's moved his game playthroughs to the twolfe channel, but his main channel still has a huge backlog of horror game videos to watch
  • alpha beta gamer: not strictly a horror youtuber, but posts videos highlighting obscure indie games (of which a lot are horror). does not have commentary on their videos, which is a plus imo
  • myhouse.wad: a perfectly normal doom mod. honestly I don't even want to say much about this one because I think it's best experienced blind. one of my favorite pieces of horror media
  • 6th floor: a long defunct website that is an archive of pokemon creepypasta. throwing this on the list mainly for nostalgia purposes, since I spent many early morning bus trips to middle school obsessively reading through creepypasta on my dinky little phone
  • plagued moth: I grappled with whether I should put this youtuber on this page or not, as I haven't watched their videos in a long time, and the content they cover is way more graphic than most other things on this site (like. real life snuff videos). I had relied on their videos to cope during an especially low point in my life (because my brain decided to distract myself from my own misery I should look at videos of people who are having it way, Way worse) so I figured the channel was worth a mention. I'll reiterate that I haven't watched their content in a few years nor do I really have interest in it anymore so this isn't a glowing endorsement of their channel, more so a nod to something I used as a crutch in the past.
  • linkrot:multimedia web project about a research station and the biological artificial creature that has taken up residence in it

back to top

the hater corner

in the journey to find good pieces of horror media I also find a lot of stinkers. here is the hall of shame for the ones I thought were the worst. a word of warning, even, for people who have tastes similar to mine

also, if you like any of these things this is not a personal slight against you. horror is art and art is subjective, to co-opt and twist a phrase from dragula

  • the summer I died: I went through a stint where I read splatterpunk books back to back in an effort to find something that would really scare me. this book made me break out in a cold sweat. after I let the dust settle though, I realized that the writing was Butt And Ass. there was little reason for me to care about the characters, and the antagonist falls back on some really lazy tropes. also I think it was in really poor taste to loop in the younger sister of the protagonist who gets tortured to death because protag was a fucking idiot. read the troop instead if you want a good (borderline) splatterpunk book that will make you sweat
  • terrifier and terrifier 2: drags hands down face. the special effects in these movies are great. david howard thornton does a knockout job as art the clown. everything else about these movies sucks. the first one is such a nothingburger with the plot and characters. the second one is marginally better on account of the actors (outside of art) are actually. acting. but every scene drags on just a little too long and the protagonist isn't compelling (not the actress' fault, the writing is flawed) and the last like. 40 minutes of the movie could have been shortened to like 10. also, this is between both movies, but a lot of the violence against women characters in the movie is Weirdly Charged. like. I don't think damien leone is intentionally misogynistic but it sure is weird that women repeatedly get killed in their underwear/naked/revealing outfits. just thinking about it
  • noend house: I read this a billion trillion years ago and I'm still mad about it to this day. I think I'm mad because superficially it feels like a creepypasta I would love? I'm fascinating by the concept of extreme haunted houses, and while I would never do one myself I have spent a lot of time reading reviews of them. noend house... is not that. it's a collection of tropes loosely tied together that keeps ramping the stakes up to ridiculous levels. the ending is stupid. I can't believe that a season of channel zero was based off this, though I did watch the first episode of it and realized they changed basically everything about the story which I mean like. Yeah. Duh. the original creepypasta doesn't give you much to work with.

back to top

ramble

some more long form yapping about horror. because I have many many thoughts on the genre.

tba: horror as a form of coping, spooky ableism, ao oni is a better game than outlast and I am not joking (not clickbait), ghostface and liminality, glitch horror

back to top