Horror became personal for those with their finger on the pulse of a newly-animated creature: viral meme culture.
Enjoy your slay at Hotel 626…
No matter what it was in the mid-00s, horror was the way to sell it.
With the rise of YouTube and easily shareable video content, all it took was a hyperlink and hurriedly-typed MSN message to your best friend to spook them with a jump scare.
We all remember the most infamous of these- an advert depicting a car, driving down a long, winding road before a horrible face pops up screaming bloody murder.
Before you know it, you're screaming too. And then copying & pasting the video to everyone on your MySpace Top 10.
But why?
It's been 15 years and even looking at the thumbnail makes my skin crawl. Yeah. Powerful stuff.
Because horror and meme culture operate identically.
Think about it.
Both are visual languages, ones which defy time zones and demographics for their sheer relatability. They are recognisable to hundreds of thousands of people, jointly satiating our hunger for an adrenal rush and a social network.
This unique shared experience codifies what we consider "memeable".
It's no surprise that advertisers for everything from Doritos to Hollywood movies carved out a goldmine by combining already-popular flash player games with chain-email "screamer" videos, tonnes of which clogged our inboxes in 2007.
The result?
Adverts presented as interactive horror movies, traversing the globe in a matter of hours.
Let's take a look at some of my personal favourites...
Hide and Seek (2005)- Interactive Haunted House
I was about 10 years old when I started getting into horror films, and Hide and Seek was one of the first I ever watched (and subsequently loved). It was released that same year in 2005, so of course I was not allowed to watch it.
However....
This film was the first interactive ad I ever came across. Emblazoned with "Come out come out, whatever you are", the film poster already begged me to do some exploring of my own.
A quick google search later and I came to the official film website. On the homepage I recall red writing, scrawled as if in blood, appearing over a yellowed piece of paper. It read:
Do you want to play hide and seek?
Yes No
Clicking "yes" led you to an interactive map of the house, with each room offering additional information or a wealth of alternate trailers (probably hinting to the four alternate endings which can be found on the DVD).
And what happened if you clicked no?
The text faded and new words resurfaced:
Too bad. You're already playing
As these were the early days of interactive advertisements, the simple click-to-explore map format was enough to get me hooked. That, and how the bloody writing reminded me of the You Are Dead! screens on my brother's classic Resident Evil 2 games.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)- KeepHerAwake.com
Featuring one of the most beloved and terrifying frontmen of the 80s horror canon. 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street paved the way for many a slasher to follow in Freddy's footsteps.
When it was given a modern makeover in 2010, Warner Bro's released a browser game to help generate some buzz amongst newer audiences. The film had large, sharp gloves to fill, after all.
KeepHerAwake.com (now redirecting to the original film's WB page) was a simple click n' drag game. In order to keep the blonde heroine from falling asleep, you had to use the "tools" found in her room and in the red menu bar on the bottom of your screen. From coffee to razor blades, the goal was to keep plying her with jolting stimuli lest she fall asleep (which she eventually does) and you lose her to the deadly dreamworld of Freddy Krueger.
Your time was recorded on a leaderboard. This detailed how long various players were able to stave off sleep, and it was available to share on Facebook after each game. The competitive elements aggressively boosted the game’s viral capabilities as players duked it out with their friends for weeks.
Despite KeepHerAwake gaining near instant notoriety on Facebook and Twitter, the movie itself fell short and received tepid reviews all around.
It's safe to say that this bizarre piece of interactive advertisement outshined and outlived its purpose, perhaps teaching film studios the dangers of over-selling your product.
Or, y'know, over-selling self harm.
Doritos- Hotel 626 / Asylum 626 (2008-2011)
The best thing about Hotel 626 (and a year layer, Asylum 626) is that us teenagers didn't know it was an advertisement for a bag of nachos.
It was a stroke of genius
We were enthralled by the staggering level of immersion. It was an interactive live-action movie which could see and hear you through the screen and manipulate the material world.
Playable only between 6pm-6am (6-to-6, oooh), it encouraged you to play completely in the dark. Sitting with only your screen illuminating your face, it made for priceless photos- snapped by the game after hacking your webcam- which could be posted to your Facebook or Twitter with the click of a button.
The experience was tailored to your level of comfort; supplying your phone number would permit the game to call or text you during your session, or you could leave it blank when prompted during "check-in".
Allowing the game to post to your Facebook would result in some rather disturbing status updates, asking friends to "Help you" by clicking the link and joining you in the Hotel.
In short, Hotel 626 gave young-to-middling teens everything we wanted- and we didn't have to sneak into a cinema or download some dodgy torrent to get our horror fix.
It was an incredibly successful viral advertisement campaign, deservedly winning awards for the ingenuity of it.
Aside from being an ad, however, Hotel 626 was a landmark event in the world of game development, revealing a gap in the market for interactive experiences like those now offered by studios such as Quantic Dream. It also paved the way for Silent Hill P.T. and the psychological horror sub genre itself, these games arguably building upon the atmospheric tension and jump-scare tactics which players of the 626 games found so addictive
Viral horror ad campaigns have long faded into obscurity. Now, they're just nostalgic fragments of cybernetic lore. Outlandish and morally questionable (EG I don't think today's users would be thrilled to let a video game hack their iPhone 13), they forever blurred the realms of cinema and gaming.
So next time you watch a YouTuber scream their head off playing some claustrophobic indie horror game, spare a thought for the evil genius creators above who walked before they could stream!