BW Media Spotlight

Before we start, let me make one thing clear. I’m not condemning…most of what I’m about to discuss here. I’m not against horror simply because I don’t enjoy being scared. I prefer evil to lose with as few victims as possible while maintaining the drama of a serious threat. With the exceptions I will specifically point out, these things are doing their own thing. I’m still noticing a trend and I’m going to discuss it because it’s relevant to discussing storytelling.

Horror stories for kids are nothing new. From Goosebumps to Are You Afraid Of The Dark? to special Halloween episodes or just general stories of people fighting ghosts, some kids do enjoy being scared for fun. Even the Tales From The Crypt had a Saturday morning counterpart, Tales From The Cryptkeeper. I watched a few of these myself, but again, I wanted to see the villain lose and that’s was less Goosebumps territory and more Real Ghostbusters.

This is not what we’re discussing. It’s the reverse.

Between video games, movies, and YouTube series, there isn’t so much horror for kids as much as horror with kids, or with things kids love. If you’ve heard of Five Nights And Freddy’s and the various sequels, spinoffs, and knockoffs you know what I’m talking about. Film Theory and Game Theory often discuss other productions where a child’s TV show or online game is secretly a doorway to Hell or some other evil supernatural presence, at least within the world they take place in. The actual product isn’t for kids. Game Theory recently discussed a sequel to a “kids” game called Amanda The Adventurer 2 that I’ll that I’ll link to here (will auto play because it’s YouTube but now the Theorist shows are on Tubi) , a game where the player goes through tapes of an old kids show to find it’s been stealing kids’ souls. A lot of kids soul stealing in these Freddy inspirations even when they aren’t knockoffs.

I can take or leave it but it is worth discussing. No, when I get to the “why God why” part of this discussion it’s a different and more direct attack on childhood innocence. We will be looking at the recent trend of taking a preexisting kids show and turning it into a horror story because public domain happened and someone’s first thought was “slasher film”…which oddly started with something NOT in public domain and that’s going to get the hammer, too. This I’m going to be less kind about but let’s start with where this all began.

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