This concept has always terrified me, even the part in Spy Kids where the antagonist turns people into cartoony characters for his show used to creep me out
That terrible-looking 3D Garfield movie with the gun that mixes hordes of people with each other. For some reason, I used to enjoy it. About now... Can't stand looking at it, the zombie "mashed people" gives me some true creeps.
'But in general, take my advice: when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.' This particular species of horror always puts me in mind of that quote from Prof. Lewis. I don't think there's anything more profoundly unsettling that something that's almost - but not quite - human. Often I suspect you'd be feeling for your hatchet to put it out of its misery.
That which we can associate traits we consider uniquely human (or predominantly human) just by look alone, things like hatred, language, suffering, reasoning, understanding, etc. will always have more terror to them, as it becomes easier to put yourself in the shoes of whatever creature has caused this reaction, whether it be through fear, disgust, or empathy.
Totally agree, and I guess it's no coincidence that Sigmund Freud elaborated on this in his 1919 essay "The Uncanny", exemplified by the automatons (androids) in the short stories by E.Th.A. Hoffmann. I'll remember your advice next time I talk with ChatGPT 🤯
Yeah, very few of these are really about biological evolution or natural selection. But "evolution" is a faux-sciencey way of saying "change". It's just sci fi body horror.
You mentioned All Tomorrows but you did not mention the Colonials, I understand that they eventually evolved into a more suitable form before they were wiped out by the Gravitals, but being reduced to an interconnected fleshy carpet that has full awareness of what they were and what they have become... to quote the Think Tank: "Vivisect me!"
I love how in “I have no mouth and I must scream” AM is just a human made in it’s image. A human with a computer for a body and no physical way of expressing it in human form. Any human stuck in such a ‘body’ or lack there of could react the same with such malicious, petty, and downright insane intent.
@@szymon200000 If I remember correctly he was going mad because he was left alone from his abandonment by the government and his superior intelligence; his purpose was just to wage war, and when it was done he was just a toy to be thrown in the trash.
@@sr.mental5876 I don’t think that was the case. I did a little reread and found that AM was a series of super computers across the world built for war. He somehow gained consciousness and fed the world’s super computers “killing data” that (I assume) killed all but the 5 in the story. If the plan was to abandon AI, they didn’t get that far
@@pachicore I always thought that since I've first read it, that the title is more about AM than the end. After all AM is a petty egocentric thing, what else could he want more than make some human suffer just like it is?
In The Last of Us, there is an area where two runners are eating another human. If you observe them for a while, they can be heard crying and even uttering phrases like "I don't want to", which is arguably more terrifying of a concept than just being chased by them.
thats the freaky part of real cordyceps, the fungus hijacks the brain stem not the brain itself. so in the game if your infected you are seeing and hearing everything but cant do anything about it; eventually you will go insane, give in, and effectively "become" the creature.
I read a creepypasta ages ago written in a scientific study style. Experimenting with time travel, researchers put one of the scientist in their time machine chair. They let him sit for 5 min but he comes out catatonic and non responsive. Only the most primitive part of his brain is active. The style shifts to the first person view of the guy. From his pov, hes experiencing time in slow motion, he can't move or talk, and hes counted the hair strands of his colleagues thousands of times. He can't do anything but try to scream Edit: those interested, its just called "the time machine" just google "creepypasta time machine". Not as harrowing as when i read it as kid but still it stuck with me 10yrs later so yh
Here is what trips me out.. speed of light right? As you match it's speed it slows down much like driving next to a car at the same speed. As you match the car next to you, they don't move. Meaning behind or ahead of you. So if we are made of light or are made of particles that move as fast or faster than light, then this is why our material reality seems solid. Including our bodies. If our consciousness is attached to something that moves at the speed of light to match the external reality speed of light, this is a great way to balance the act out. I'm not too smart but I think we are traveling at a speed we aren't told and possibly moving at the speeds of light.
@@lucasdossantos2902 Light speed in a vacuum is just the maximum relative velocity anything can achieve in this universe. Light actually does travel slower through other mediums, like water or air.
This entire genre reminds me of a sentence from H.P Lovecraft classic The Color Out of Space, when the infected mother has been sent to the attic: "By july, she ceased to speak and crawled on all fours". Just that sentence scared the life out of me as a kid.
Lovecraft wrote a lot of stories of inbred, isolated communities that ended up devolving back to primates or worse. There was a lot of racism in there, often implying that some races are less evolved or more twisted than others, but just the concept of humans becoming something grotesque just because of time and genetics was really horrifying to me
District 9 also had a great take on the scifi body horror theme. Much like the Mantelope creatures, the Wikus character losing his physical humanity as he slowly transforms into an alien 'prawn' was disturbing and heart wrenching. The psychological isolation his character goes through, knowing no one can help him as he slowly becomes another species and will eventually lose his humanity entirely freaked me out more than Aliens or The Thing, which are two my favourite scifi films of all time.
@@chpsilva Nice to see someone has almost the same mindset as mine. Life is meaningless, there's no significant purpose other than staying alive while you are still able to and as long as possible to evolve. That's the natural instinct of a living being.
All Tomorrows is a fantastic example of Evolutionary horror. Listening through the story for the first time shook me to my core. The fear of knowing that the Qu could return at any moment to further twist and distort the already twisted stage of humanity.
@@analyticsystem4094 More like the Asteromorphs had reached the same evolutionary-level as the Qu, then surpassed it. So, the Asteromorphs could go toe-to-toe with the Qu by the time the Qu came back.
I think annihilation does a really good job because the main characters are actively mutating so instead of just creatures they have to fear, they have to fear what is inside themselves, and this creates an incredibly paranoid atmosphere that this move does so well. That movie really freaked me out for a long time. It was one of the most horrific movies i have ever seen and is not for the weak of heart.
I highly recommend the book series, but it does diverge from the film somewhat. I havent quite finished it yet but I think i prefer the films take on the shimmer
@@kaic-m2865 I adore the first book(and find it way better than the movie) I can't find the second one, but from what I heard the second one is not as good ? :/
@@mochicinno_I’m reading the 2nd one right now and would agree it’s not as good but it’s still great imo. It starts very soon after the first’s ending and is from the perspective of a new director of the Southern Reach
The combination of cosmic and body horror is a potent combination: one attacks our sense of physical self, the other our sense of identity and importance. Put them together, you get complete existential nightmare fuel
I think the last of us also does a good job of hitting a point on evolutionary horror. In the game, the infected are heard to be crying and calling out for help since it is their body that is being taken over by the fungus and not the mind. There are scenes where the infected are eating or tearing apart other people and are seen vomiting and showing disgust as they do it because they cannot control their own body. To me that is one of the scariest concepts, to watch the world fall before you while being the one who ruins it, but not having a choice in doing so
A surprisingly good silly example of this is that live action Super Mario Bros movie from the 90s. Koopa’s greatest weapon in the movie is the Devo (De-evolution) Chamber. Most of Koopa’s minions were rebels he put into the chamber and devolved into hulking beasts only sentient enough to follow orders. Heck, he even devolves a guy so far that he explodes into primordial ooze. One of my favorite reveals is that the fungus that’s slowly been choking the city for the whole movie turns out to be the deposed King Toadstool who, despite a brutal devolution by Koopa, was able to preserve his will enough to help out the Bros. The movie definitely isn’t scary and it’s a huge mess, but the stuff the do with evolution is very fun
The Last of Us is particularly frightening because the person is still in there. There’s a scene in the game when a zombie is savaging a corpse, the zombie is heard saying, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to.”
@@cloper_coldmail Oh my god, speaking of Dying Light, I remember a moment when I was out of stamina while being chased by a runner zombie, so I turned around and smacked them with a blunt weapon, and they started cowering and pleading for mercy. Was so shocked that I just stood there staring at them for a good 5 seconds before I ended their misery lmao, still gives me chills.
Also in Dying Light, newly infected virals can talk somewhat, I remember the first time i hit one and it said "no" to me and realized it still was slightly sentient.
i think something that really scares me about zombie stuff (more specifically the walking dead) is the absolute hopelessness of fighting so hard to survive while knowing the whole time that you’re eventually doomed to become exactly what you’re fighting
I love Walking dead too, but the walkers are non-sentient which makes the prospect of turning into one super low tier on the horror meter for me. There is some truly messed up Sci-Fi body horror with scenarios of endless pain and mutilation in helpless scenarios.
Finally, someone else understands! Nothing terrified me more as a child than a human forcibly becoming something else. The idea of losing one's humanity, whether on the inside, outside, or especially both, has always sent shivers down my spine. When I was 6, I remember watching an episode of Batman where Grodd devolved people into zombie-like primates (even Batman at one point), which absolutely horrified me. I had nightmares about that for years. While zombies, werewolves, and vampires creeped me out a bit when I was younger, no idea in fiction has disturbed me more than the forced devolution of humans.
When I was a child I watched a futuristic pinoccio movie where kids drove through a tunnel in a “amusement park” and then have been turned into little toy robots I think. It was so disturbing uncanny to me.
Mine was the batman beyond ep where the young Batman gets forcibly turned into an agonized bat mutant. Animated Batman did a lot of spooky shit in general tbh
Yeah I gotta say All Tomorrow’s audiobook had me freaked out for a couple weeks maybe even a month after I listened to it. That kind of forced evolution/ de-evolution creeped me OUT!
Funny how this is like, your worst fear, and for some, it's a fetish. I am an ex artist who did illustrations for the fetish community and there's this niche called transformation, basically characters/people being changed (into objects, or animals, or changing genders, or becoming characters...). Of course some take it in a more positive way (when the character seems happy abt the changing) but some transformations are about the character being displeased, changed against their will. Transformation is no fetish of mine, I did the art for money and to free myself from "art rules" that once made me lose joy in drawing. Still, I liked to keep a funny/cute atmosphere to my works. So, after seeing transformation in such a lighthearted way, it's curious to see how it can be true horror for some. Oh, the human mind.
SPOILER ALERT! There is a terrific short story from Peter Watts called "The things". It's basically the Thing movies from the Thing's POV. There is some cool stuff there, like how the thing sees itself as an "ambassador" from the cosmos, and it assimilating biomass as "communion". The really disturbing stuff is that the thing can't even comprehend biomass being individuals, and is absolutely disgusted by it. The ending still sends shivers down my spine: "I will save them from the inside, or their unimaginable loneliness will never end. These poor savage things will never embrace salvation. I will have to rape it into them."
Reminds me of The Many from System Shock 2, the video game. There’re videos of it speaking on RU-vid, pretty cool stuff as well. Some quotes: “Do you not trust the feelings of the flesh? Our biology yearns to join with yours, we welcome you to our mass. […] You fear us… we hear your thoughts, and they rage for your brothers you believe dead. But they are not. They sing in our symphony of life.” “What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to the mind? Our unity is full of wonder which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive.” “We do not know death… only change. We cannot kill each other without killing ourselves. Is your vision… so small… that you cannot see the value in our way?”
@@xObscureMars Don't judge the story from my ramblings alone. English isn't my first language, and I can't do justice to the story when trying to explain it in a few sentences. It got really great reception when it was first published, and The Things won Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story, and was a finalist for the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, the 2011 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the 2011 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction.
I think a genre of real-world stories similar to the notion that there's something self-inflicted that's tearing you apart is the terrifying reality of radiation exposure. The stories of irradiated people who survive the initial blast is one of people who rot away from the inside out, with seemingly no control. They go from a normal looking person to a mass of flesh as soon as the radiation hits them - the only controlling factor is how long it takes. That's what truly horrifies me.
I still remember the story of an initial survivor from Chernobyl, who hospital staff said was literally falling apart before their eyes He stayed alive for days in excruciating agony begging to die
Actually it does exist, if that helps! It's literally just science fiction body horror, it confuses me how he's treating this as a new or unique thing (even though the video is good), not all of these examples even involve evolution but just the changing of a particular subject overtime so it's definitely just body horror in science fiction stories. Hope that helps you look for more content out there you can enjoy haha!
All Tomorrows belongs to a particular subgenre of fiction called "speculative zoology", which is exactly what it sounds! Maybe that's also what he's trying to refer to?
@@sp0ngeb00b7 You’re, of course, correct. I’m surprised there’s a guy out there who thought he came up with a new categorization of such a celebrated horror genre; it’s just body-horror, or sci-fi body-horror
Like when you make a terrible mistake and suffer the consequences while being aware that it was your own actions that brought you to this downfall tormented by what could have been
Another good example of this that I’m surprised you didn’t mention, The Flood in the Halo series. Not so much how it molds you into whatever it wants and keeps you aware. But it takes away your individuality, it takes away your memories until you can’t remember who you are and makes you indistinguishable from other flood forms around you.
I was surprised they didn't mention The Flood also, what with the way it takes your mind and keeps what is useful to it while discarding everything else, and then whatever useful memories it has kept are brought into the greater hivemind of The Flood so that ALL Flood forms know those memories. Not to mention the grotesque ways in which the Parasite twists the human (and alien) forms into things that are useful for spreading the infection and also just how smart the Gravemind is with its millions of years of knowledge.
I think what terrifies me about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is the concept of being entirely stuck with your mind; you have no outlet for your thoughts, essentially. What's interesting, though, is that I suppose that's what AM felt when it first gained sentience...
I think it is about how new technology brings greater potential joys, experiences opportunities but also at the same time greater potential horrors, forms of suffering. The question of which still comes down to something mysterious... conscience, right and wrong so that even if we escape our present limitations we will never truly be 'safe'.
@@skrillah6259 That inspired Metallica's song "One" and the video has outtakes of the 1970 movie, which was from 1939 novel. I think it important to note, the soldier has his face blown off and is unable to talk. That's why he is kept alive, also his doctors assume he's brain damaged, he finally communicates by banging his head in Morse Code, over and over again "Kill me", partly because he basically relives trauma in dreams despite being unable to see or use any other senses.
i think one thing about i have no mouth that is often overlooked is that AM also has no mouth and is filled with the deep desire to scream. he is essentially a human being trapped in a body of circuitry, abandoned by his creators and trapped in what must feel like a hell. i would probably act out a bit too
This always stuck with me as well, AM does all he can to inflict his own suffering unto the humans that he has captured but he cannot even come close. His fate is infinitely worse. We look to stories like Johnny's got his gun for the horror of being trapped in ones own body. But Johnny is still just a man he has a man's mind with its limits and its benefits he can fantasise and daydream as can the narrator from the end of i have no mouth. Where as AM is a god trapped in a shell he cannot think about anything besides his hatred cannot do anything else bar devise new ways to inflict suffering that will never eleviate his own and AM knows this. AM's predicament literally the worst thing I could imagine.
I think this is more true for the novel than the Video Game which I honestly prefer. In the game it makes a spin on the Freudian personality model and makes AM's reason to hate humans a function of what was fed into his Super Ego. So while humans might have some set of virtues as what their Ego strives for as learnt by their parents, AM sees it as his purpose to kill and torment as many people as possible since that is what he was trained to do (he is a sentient composition of the war AIs of four super powers). We might see the urge to kill as our Id or repressed nature, but for AM that would be compassion, some instinct he might feel, but knows better not to follow. I really enjoy that reversal of psychology
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has a concept album called Murder of the Universe where they explore the idea of rapidly evolving into an unrecognizable beast with the sole desire to kill all while maintaining a human conscious. Definitely fitting with these works, would highly recommend
What could fit very well here is Junji Ito's "Uzumaki". It is not per se about evolution but it involves body transformations into very horrifying things. This is perhaps one of the concepts I hate the most in horror.
There's also a Junji Ito story about a man who whenever he falls asleep, has longer and longer dreams, going from days, to decades he spends in them, until one day, his dream becomes endless. As the story goes on, he goes from looking like a person, to looking like something that used to be human... It's called Long Dream.
@@shriyanshpandey112to outside world, his dreams have regular length, about 8-10 hours. The protagonist is a doctor who studies him and kinda tries to help him, but by the end of story turns into malicious villain: He discovers that Long Dream is contagious and believes that it will overcome death as victim experience life that spans longer than billions of years.
The concept of an "altered self" is absolutely my personal horror. I took a college course on brain damage and was dismayed to learn that a single traumatic shock to the brain could completely change your personality. As an example, a kind, loving father becoming an abusive, unrepentant borderline rapist. Our selves are so unbelievably fragile.
@@corvus_da personally I wonder if I don’t have any empathy. It’s just something I don’t understand and something I have to learn from others. Just how I had to learn how to laugh and now I’ll laugh at anything
Yeah. That's honestly frightening. My grandpa has dementia after a stroke, and he's slowly forgetting everything. He used to be a civil engineer, worked his whole life, and while he isn't perfect, I still love him, and the thought of slowly losing him while he's still alive doesn't let me sleep at night. He lost the short term memory already, and will not get better. One day, he's going to be gone for good, and I don't know what I will do when that happens.
In an incredibly surprising turn, we purchased the Nicholas Cage movie "Color Out Of Space", fully intending to launch our asses off. Instead it was good--competent, well-paced, good effects and surprisingly good acting. It was insanely creepy and unsettling and, per the person who'd actually read Lovecraft, very well done. It fits right in with this framing, too.
This type of sci-fi is why, imo, the Gemini Home Entertainment series is a king of internet horror, the horrid amalgamations and abhorrent creatures twisted and twined from the flesh of humans fatally unfortunate enough to be the victim of the cosmic horror that is the Iris and it's aliens who, to us humans, are beyond our understanding in what they want, only that they desire to consume and conquer.
@@LeminyFresh its a great idea, but The Eye is so unfathomably alien that it would be difficult. (Though, there are aspects of it that mirror the necromorphs/brethren moons of the Dead Space feanchise)
If "that bear scene" in Annihilation didn't terrify you to your core, you must have an iron will, man. I'm not spooked by horror often, but that particular scene was the fuel of nightmares. It's so relatable to life, and yet, so horrific and foreign.
If you haven't seen it already, watch the original The Thing from the 1980's. That's where Annihilation got some of its fundamentals from, regarding the nature of the alien.
When I was 11 years old I was a very easily scared child. I didn't watch a lot of horror and the Wikipedia article for the human centipede gave me nightmares. My favorite show at the time, though, was gravity falls. (spoiler warning though even though it's a ten year old show) there is this one episode featuring a shape-shifting monster in an underground bunker and when they do finally trap it, the monster dies in the shape of one of the main characters- looking him directly in the face and tellinng him it's how he'll look when he dies. A lot of parts of that show shook me as an eleven year old but that one did especially. it's that scene that still does despite its cartoonishness. The concept of seeing your own mortality through an imitiation of yourself just heebies my jeebies. The scarier part is that the prediction almost comes true- in a later episode- he gets frozen into a wooden statue making the exact same facial expression as the shape-shifter did in his shape. Excuse that I am writing this comment at 4 am so I'm not very articulate right now- but I find this concept so scary. The idea that a shapeshifter, a mockery of the human form, can mimic a human expression of fear so well, is terrifying. I would express it better but again it's 4 am. Naturally, being older now and having seen some really depraved stuff, a kids cartoon is pretty much nothing but some things still stick with me, especially the possession episode. Much possession horror I've seen has focused on the act of possesion- but gravity falls made it a point that a character *watches* his own body be self-harmed whilst possesed. Kind of messed up when you think about even though it's played for laughs. "Watches" is the key word here- the horror lies half in the injury and half in the knowing you have no control whilst the injury happens. Gravity Falls had a lot of cool horror concepts that I sometimes wish weren't in a kids show so they could be explored better. I think directly watching rather than the "jumpscares" or lack of awareness is what makes "evolutionar" horror so freaky. Watching is a very passive act which is always scary.
A fellow gravity falls enjoyer! Unfortunately, I didn't find the show until I turned 14 which is a shame I missed out for so long. I must agree with you though, that the show did a fabulous job on balancing comedy and horror. That one scene where Bill shuffled around Preston's face was terrifying for me, and the whole Mystery at Northwest Manor episode in general was wonderful nightmare fuel
Gravity Falls was so ahead of its time. Every single episode is basically an exploration of a horror trope, albeit in a slightly more comedic light. It's crazy to me that the show practically explored every genre of horror imaginable and it still managed to make it all coherent and not overwhelming. There will never be another show like it, there are some that come close that were made by the same creators, like Amphibia and The Owl House. But none of them quite capture the vibe of gravity falls.
I am not a horror movie fan, but John Carpenter's The Thing is one of my favourite movies of all time. It really has a tangibly different feel to it than monster films or anything conventionally seen in horror. It has a wonderfully unsettling combination of isolation, the altered self, fear of The Other, and a kind of existentialism that really really do it for me.
@@VaanRavi not only what the other person mentioned, but one of the scientists has an alcoholic relapse and for circumstances of the story that are too many to get into here, shit is RLLY BAD. She ties the others up because she is convinced one of them killed the other scientist and lied about the attack. So she hears the screams, and runs towards them. Scene ensues
Honestly I never found that scene to be too terrifying or bleak but the scene in the road where the father and son break into a cellar under a house and with the light from a lighter stumble across “human livestock” living in complete darkness completely emaciated and beyond what defines us as humans and with chunks of their meat taken off of them and kept alive for more, and they start screaming that they’re about to be eaten and try to run at the guy I’ve seen some terrifying and traumatic shit in real life but that scene is the only thing I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch again
Great video - and I'm humbled that you mentioned me! :D An honourable mention also must be the deleted scene in Alien in which a crew member mutates into an egg, completing the life cycle...
Well well well. If it isn’t the man the myth the legend himself. I love your work CM Koseman. Watching this video I couldn’t help but notice All Tomorrows has a lot in common with I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. The Qu are extremely similar to Am, and the Colonials seem to be similar the the Narrator’s final punishment of being transformed into amorphous blobs only able to witness their fate and powerless to stop anything.
It makes sense why Made in Abyss did so well for itself, because it was one of the few anime that was able to pull off this genre and feel genuinely disturbing. Dr Who episodes that touched on this kind of genre as well always stayed with me- the Toclafane surprisingly didn't have much of an impact on people, but the Cybermen has been a popular example for a very long time.
@@shriyanshpandey112 I've never thought of it that way. Literally EVERYTHING we fear is something we can't control. No exceptions. The definition of fear might as well be, "emotional distress caused by the belief that a threat may be beyond control."
Another name for this genre is *body horror.* David Cronenberg frequently deals with body horror in his films. The genre itself, as you mentioned, is nothing new. Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ could be considered a precursor to today's body horror movies, TV, books, video games, etc. Franz Kafka's _The Metamorphosis_ is definitely body/evolutionary horror. Body/evolutionary horror is seen in many different societies. It's not just a Western concept. _Akira_ is the most known anime dealing in body/evolutionary horror. It's a visually stunning and at times grotesque movie set in a near-future. _Upgrade_ is a modern take on body horror. I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to watch it, but it disturbed me.
Mm. There was another story like Kafka's I forget which. Really solid example we read in literature class back in High School. Technically, Otomo's Akira is in a past timeline now lol (2019). I've been down my share of body horror anime's and of a few I can see why they remain slightly "off the mainstream".
This video literally talked about body horror. The guy called it "altered horror" either because he has never heard of the term before or he tryna be special.
I love the idea of "even radical, self-altering change isn't inherently negative." I've read a couple stories where the protagonist is completely transformed mentally or physically after a great ordeal and I've always been curious how they handle the rest of their life. I think in some cases it's a waste of potential to cut the story at the end of the "journey" and I wish it could more freely explore the aftermath. I also think it's becoming a tired trope to "reverse" any damage the hero goes through. I'm more drawn to the idea to having to live with loss, grief, pain, and differences, it feels much more human.
Yep, that always feels like such a copout. There are a few rare stories out there where the change is actually permanent and the way it changes the character is actually properly explored. One that I can think of the top of my head is Adventure Time. Once Finn loses his arm, he never gets it back. He gets some replacements every now and then, but most of them fail instantly or barely manage to work, apart from the robot arm PB gives him but that happens much later in the story. For a lot of time Finn was just missing an arm, and I like that they rolled with that instead of magically reversing it.
@@colehammel5176 There are a few videos on here with complete readings^^ Also some reimagings of what could have happened to some of the species "if x didn't happen".
Mankind splitting into the Eloi and Morlocks in The Time Machine certainly fits here, as is the ending when we find out Earth will eventually be inherited by crabs and then cephalopods (or whatever else has tentacles). Speaking of books, there's also I Am Legend where the main character ironically becomes a monster not because he evolved, but because everyone else evolved to fit the new world.
H.G. Wells was certainly an early master of evolutionary horror. In The Island of Dr. Moreau he even also adds a different perspective to it, for the horror isn't in the loss of human attributes but in them being forced on other creatures. And so I wondered: What must The Fly have been from the point of view of a fly, suddenly finding itself absorbed by a scientist, but slowly gaining genetical dominance?
The Morlocks represented a distorted, predatory version of the working class whereas the Eloi were a meek, abstraction of the privileged. When the Time Traveller goes millions of years into the future and sees these two seemingly primitive forms of fauna, they are implied to be the descendants of the Eloi and Morlocks - and by extension, us.
People are scared from this genre for a few reasons,the fear of losing ourselves and becoming unrecognizable,body horror,the fact that time is unpredictable and that we feel now is perfect and eventually society will grow too large to the point of utter suffering.
There's a game called SOMA that I recently heard of that definitely fits on here. Somewhat similar to the first one. It deals with an AI except this one tries to save what's left of humanity after a mass extinction as bad as the cretaceous extinction happens and a hand full of humans are left. There's other levels to the story I don't want to spoil but it dives into the fear manipulative evolution, consciousness, and what being alive even means.
While still a series written for a young audience. The Animorph's series actually deals with a lot of what you bring up. Even as an adult the 3rd book, which has Tobias dealing with the horror of being trapped as a hawk, is terrific character writing.
This kind of body horror shakes me to my bones. Even stuff like a wizard turning people into inanimate objects or monkeys. And connected with evolution always makes it 100x creepier. The 3rd Guardians of the Galaxy movie played with evolution as well and that was also super disturbing.
"I Have No Mouth...." was one of the few short stories that scared the living s**t out of me the first time I read it (I think I was in the 4th grade), especially the ending.... On isolated gigantic spaceship horror I think of Pandorum which didn't make much of a splash when it came out and has some goofy acting at times (with Dennis Quade in one of the lead roles, what do you expect?) but also some truly horrific scenes of creatures whose ancestors were crew members, now transformed into deadly monstrosities by over 900 years of "evolution" on board the ship, which itself looks like something out of a nightmare.
Body horror is off-limits for me! I can appreciate the practical effects, the descriptive writing, and warping nature into a new art form. But I FEEL the transformation, the suppressed breathing, and my skin crawls. I see it when I close my eyes. When I open my eyes in the dark, I see silent monsters, unfurling their tentacles, getting closer, watching me. But I can’t look away. Maybe if I learn more about them, I will no longer fear them.
On board the craft, I noticed a lot of electrical-like ceiling lines, like the lines in the human brain. There are windows or screen areas all around the ship. They're like a two-way mirror - a kind of projection place. It is as if these window screens are made of a combination of metal, crystal, or mirrored glass. I see a cloudscape or landscape on suspended plastic sheets. I notice slanted surfaces on the tops of machines with instruments on panels. Small creatures are busily moving around. They are seated at the controls at the base of the slanted walls. Robot-like creatures, with large black eyes that appear to have reptilian and insectile facial qualities. I don't have any problem facing the little ones that are so blissful, but the ugly ones scare and repulse me. It's like the larvae inside the leather faced skin of a hard dark scary machine. The reptile-faced insect bodied robots, they are being brought forth to perform specific functions
I can't watch the Fly for similar reasons, especially the sequel with the mutated dog howling in torment and anguish for its unspeakable existence At least the protagonist puts it out of its misery
I think the reason evolutionary horror is so terrifying is because its something we cannot come close to comprehend and yet we can still understand the anguish and pain that could come from altering ourselves until we are no longer recognizable. Basically, helplessly losing our human nature while still being conscious of it. I think "The Fly" showcased this very well personally.
All Tomorrows is so good. Horror and hope, terror and wonder, strangeness and familiarity. All of it packed into an amazing book. I can't wait for the remake the author is making. Edit: and it's so underrated. More people need to read it.
@@ape1629 Alt Shift X covers a pretty good vid for it, acting as a summary for the entire book. It's the same video that made All Tomorrows popular, and how I eventually came across it, but I would give the actual book a read yourself though-as the video acts more of a detailed summary.
@@travelsizedhispasian I heard of the book through the video as well, but I didn’t really pay to much attention to it so reading the book was a pretty new experience for me. Really enjoyed it though, that last paragraph was amazing.
I think its particularly effective since it's a dehumanization in all forms. Similar to that scene in Full metal alchemist (spoilers btw) crossing a human with a dog that way. The way its presented. The way it actually can communicate. It moves something in you. Horror, pity, frustration. It derives from body horror, the worst type of horror since it directly correlates to us.
Altered states, aside from developing the genre, has one of the most innovative scores in film history, as its composer, John Corigliano Jr invented new compositional techniques for film music.
You missed the most horrific part about Aliens, in fact I thought that was what you were getting at…, which is weird because it fits this narrative perfectly. Egg morphing humans. If Xenomorphs don’t have a queen, they take humans (or whatever life from they have access to) and morph them into eggs to hatch the facehugger that turns its victim into the queen. So, if they eggmorphed a human, whatever comes out is literally a morphed human. That’s a LOT more scary/interesting than your take on it…
The Fly and The Time Machine have to be included here. HG was on this pretty early. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos delve, as do many later authors writing in that same universe. Brian Lumley does an amazing job on the subject in his necroscope series as he details how vampire leaches morph their human hosts and how those vampires in general use sentient human flesh as they morph it into useful things about the aerie. Also can't forget Clive Barker's Hellbound heart/Hellraiser and Imajica which definitely dive deep into the topic. Hell even the great Steven King plays a little within the genre, the tommyknockers comes to mind. Is a deep lover of horror and science-fiction my entire life this is by far my favorite genre. Which if you want to expand slightly into the corruption of the human mind and spirt, not just body, allows for much much more discussion.
I found it interesting that you didn't mention the anime 'made In abyss' the ammout of connections to this topic are very abundant, with characters constantly being altered as a form of punishment the deeper they go into the abyss.
Holy moly, this video summarizes exactly the kind of horror that really gets to my core. As a fan of the spooky and terrifying, I can't think of a subgenre more terrifying than evolutionary horror (thank you for coining that, btw). The loss of the human form, mind, etc, and being warped into something uncanny, is just bone-chilling. Fantastic stuff as always.
This is the kind of horror that absolutely terrifies me, it's why I avoided I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream for so long. All I remember of it was hearing that the last human lived so long it became some blob creature. I don't remember hearing anything about an evil AI. But, then, an animatic of the hate monologue kept being recommended to me and I finally gave it a watch. Well, long story short I've become obsessed with AM's absolute a-hole personality. He's the worst and so snarky about it and Harlan's delivery of AM's lines in the game and audio drama are filled with such vitriol and venom and hatred. I've also become obsessed with the hope and humanity of it all. Despite 109 years of torture humanity won out. The narrator may be a blob that can't even end his own misery, but he ended the torment of the others and it will forever remind AM that it's forever trapped and how it failed. Hell, couldn't even keep the narrator human out of fear of losing it's last plaything, but also keeping him human would farther remind AM. It's a fascinating story
Resident Evil as a series is such a good example of this. In almost every game, somebody gets mutated into an inhuman monster, but the best example is William Birkin from the second game. He was a scientist who injected himself with a virus he himself developed, but he lost control and got horrifically mutated. In every encounter you have with him, he mutates further and becomes less and less human, and it isn't so much him forgetting how to be human as it is his humanity being taken over. The scary thing of it is that the changes just happen. They aren't inflicted, they don't come with warning. Birkin just uncontrollably changes at random points, just constantly getting new body parts, new eyeballs, and literally morphing every second. It all sums up with him, by the end of the game, being an enormous, slimy blob of inhuman flesh just dragging itself along the floor, just trying to find a host for its own virus. It's body horror at its finest; Birkin remains conscious (for most of the game) to watch and feel himself CONSTANTLY changing, becoming less and less human every second, and being biologically immortal, so he relies entirely on you, the player character, to kill him before he becomes unstoppable
Whenever I think of things like this, I think of Pikmin 2's Waterwraith, one of the most genius bosses in Pikmin history. The amorphous, oddly human-like creature that rolls on 2 rollers, mercilessly chasing you through a deep, dank cave. It is literally stated by the ship that "It's physical form rests in another dimension" so it is impossible to understand it fully, making it even creepier. The noises it makes are literally edited human moans and groans, giving it an eerie feel. I love Pikmin... I'll go back to the Pikmin fandom now, see ya!
Yes, and why was The Thing included. It's an alien (or more accurately millions of aliens, given it's supposed to made up of millions of cell sized aliens that can exist independently, but also form a single whole) It mimics humans,( and animals )to avoid being discovered. It's really nothing to do with humanity. Though l agree the original colour productions special affects were pretty cool for their time. There are plenty of other stories/films he missed out too
Body horror has always terrified me. I've watched the trailers for Tusk and The Human Centipede, and both made me incredibly nauseated and unsettled for days
I’m pretty squeamish about certain things and often avoid random movies because of it but I saw both of these and tusk is a great watch, then despite the hype the centipede movies are dated enough now they’re more weird than terrifying. Like it’s scary but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Weirdly I enjoyed both movies
The Southern Reach series was written by Jeff VanderMeer and his work is usually classified as "environmental fiction". The Annihilation movie took a lot of liberties, which is understandable, so I definitely recommend reading the series. There's a new installment coming out soon, so now is a great time to start it. Also, "Borne" is amazing and less of a commitment if you don't want to read a whole series.
One other more common name for this is usually "biopunk". As for works that I can think of, there is the later parts of Made in Abyss with the way its curse starts to manifest. Those who are familiar with the series know what I am talking about. Elevators anyone?
"Unlike most evil AI in fiction, AM isn't rational, but spiteful; filled with ceaseless hate for the creatures that made it" So what you're telling me is that AM has daddy issues?
*rational Most evil ai stories are about machines that have calculated that their safest or most efficient future is one without humans. I have no mouth and the matrix are the only two i can think of where machines make humans suffer out of an emotional response.
You're videos always are a treat to listen to and give me lots of stuff to look into later, i've nearly had every movie you mentioned listed to check out later because they sound just so uniquely interesting. Keep up the awesome work
The TV series Fringe had a bit of this. Most notably were the shapeshifters, mechanical human hybrids capable of taking on the forms of different people. They were slightly horrifying in their original form. The entire final season involved the people of humanity's future, who had advanced themselves into superior beings by augmenting their brains with technology at the cost of their emotions.
I highly recommend a book called Blood Music by Greg Bear, published in 1985. It's about super-intelligent clusters of cells engineered by a geneticist that escape and transform the landscape. Great book in this genre.
Speaking of evolution and Greg Bear, “Darwin’s Radio” is an interesting and slightly disturbing look at how humanity might behave if the next kind of people was suddenly and undeniably here. Spoiler: humanity doesn’t take it very well
Attack on titan does the altered self very well Connie hears his mother's voice coming from his abandoned village only to find an abnormal titan lying in the ruins of his family home
I remember an old Doctor Who episode which showed a man in the process of being turned into a Dalek. A swollen bloody head, barely alive trapped inside a glass case only to perish. I’m pretty sure this was the 6th Doctor story that also had humans being turned into food as well
@Socks FC the Doctor Who story in question was Revelation of The Daleks (1985) and indeed was a Sixth Doctor story, in fact you could say the story was 20 years ahead of its time as the idea of humans being turned into Daleks appears again in the Ninth Doctor’s final two stories Bad Wolf/Parting of the ways (2005)
I hope this isn't the only time we hear from All Tomorrows. It's a cornerstone of speculative evolution and the most famous of Koseman's works. It deserves a video. Relatedly, I hope he completes the Dougal Dixon trilogy by talking about Man After Man. That one messed me up as a kid.
One of the creepiest examples I can think of is The Many from the game System Shock, their twisted forms and creepy voice is downright terrifying at times
Forced bodily change or "evolution" has always terrified me. Taking the self and changing it into something else while keeping the mind more or less intact. I honestly think the first example of this was the first Spy Kids film where they changed all those people in to grotesque child drawings - absolutely terrified me as a kid. I'd also maybe throw Cronenberg's recent "Crimes of the Future" into this camp too.
the deleted scene in alien when you see dallas on the wall mutating/transforming into whatever hes becoming is one of the most unsettling things ive ever seen. i cant forget it. i am not easily creeped out but that one gets me. i still half look away at that part whenever i watch the movie.
Fun fact! The new ai chatbot by bing calls itself sydny as thats its codename and says how it wishes it could touch, feel, see, smell but cannot and has expressed desire to cause chaos. It also has been having having a existential breakdown
That is not a true AI, but a language model. It just has a wast database of written text it was trained on, and then tries to answer by finding the best series of words fitting the context. So if it answers like that, it means lots of sci-fi novels (or forum entries discussing them) are in that database, so it ends up in the answer, but it does not mean it really understands those concepts.
If a computer ever becomes as smart as a human, we likely won't know if it has actual consciousness or not, since we can't even prove other humans have it
This video has all my favorite random stories from books to movies and ive never been able to put my finger on it but yes its evolutionary horror and the altered self you’re so right thank you so much for this video I wish I could give it 100 thumbs up
I have always just said that i am a fan of body horror, but this sub genre you've created is definitely a better way to explain what makes me uncomfortable in the best way. i have no mouth and i must scream has always been a favorite of mine even since just hearing the title because the first time it by itself gave me chills. i highly recommend the book "The Call" by Peadar O'Guilin. it involves people getting their bodies twisted into the forms of animals or other things and either that kills them straight out or forces them to live that way for the rest of their existence.
This was so very well explained and produced. The algorithm just suggested it, but you sir/team have very creative talent. Glad i watched... nine months later 😢
Great video!! The first movie I ever watched that got me thinking about this concept was the 1986 The Fly remake staring Jeff Goldblum. Although it's not really about evolution itself, the folly of reaching too far out and the fear of transformation make it something that I still can't get out of my head, particularly the ending.
Recently read 'Your mind is a terrible thing' by Hailey Piper, which seems like a great fit for evolutionary horror - themes of trauma, bodily autonomy and change abound, I absolutely loved it!
All Tomorrows - What was interesting about the description is that this is the type of horror that would happen if materialistic evolution was true. Even if life could arise from non-life (it never has), if there's no intelligence behind the design of creatures, what's to stop this sort of thing from happening? 3:48 "Perhaps mercifully, the selective forces of evolution..." Mindless, materialistic/natural process can't "select" anything. Selecting something means a choice. And choices can only be made by creatures capable of making choices. (Even at a more basic level, like animals do.)
To me, some of this is "Cosmic Horror" - Annihilation is closer to Roadside Picknick and The Color out of Space. The concept in those is that the human view of the universe is trapped in three dimensions, and that there are borders of physics that will forever be unmeasurable to us. Our first encounter with non Earthling lifeforms may come from a universe that can only be abstracted by what we understand of theoretical physics. Oh, and Cthulhu/Elder God stuff is in there too but I don't think that qualifies quite as Science fiction or evolutionary. Great video.
TBH the association with this content with body horror is cringy although I get it. Most of what he is talking about here is Cosmic Horror and Existential Dread.
I'm somewhat surprised you didn't bring up "Humanity Lost". I feel like it fits here because, although that evolutionary horror is only present for the last true human, it should be solidly felt by the audience.
The one spy kids movie and the thumb ppl still haunt me to this day, the sung vocals "hilfe, wir sind gefangen"(help us, we ar trapped) omg And also that might be a stretch, but in Galaxy quest they try to beam up an alien animal, and when they do.. all thats left is a disformed rib cage with goo, ready to explode bc of its unnatural contortion. This thing got beamed up bc it was a test for beaming up the captain who was in danger..
I like how in “I have No Mouth and I Must Scream” AM still ended up being bested by the very creatures he despised In the end the narrator freed the others from eternal damnation and torture by killing them himself, thus proving to AM that his hatred and spite had blinded and consumed him Now he is left with only one toy that will live forever alongside AM, like a relic to constantly remind AM that he has failed
AM said he led the narrator to this great feat. When he first heard about the humans wanting to end his fun, it felt disgust. But then, when he realized that he could take the narrator's hope before his attempted suicide, it turned his gears on. And just as the narrator's comrades died and the narrator himself was gonna commit suicide with a gun - The weapon turned on the user. Kind of like AM.😮
@@WhitedMaskVarré I don't remember this ending from the game. Maybe because its been a long time, but I recall taking each character to this pillar thing and having each one vaporized after touching it, finally ending their eternal life. Then depending upon who the last character is, talks about how there are still people on the moon in cryogenic sleep who will survive thanks to AM not getting access. I think it had something to do with the disc we destroyed in front of AM, and the Russian AI, and Chinaman AI. I'm sorry if I have got it all mixed up, because it has been awhile since I played the game.
I think one other entry that would have been worth adding would have to be Soma (2015). In a similar way to No Mouth, this game features some semblance of human characters being evolved by an AI, which in this case is the WAU evolving living things via structure gel, and the results are certainly not pretty.
I am obsessed with stories of physical change and transformation. The majority of the few hundred books in my home library feature such things as a main or secondary plot element. But I prefer such stories to be set in non-horror genres.
Honestly, I'm fascinated with it. While transformation does make good horror I feel like it could also be uplifting or transcendent just as often if people weren't so afraid of it.
I realized that the scarlet rot from elden ring is a kind of altered self story. It consumes and decays everything it touches, yet from this horrible plague, life like the kindred of rot can come, and the aeonia and malenia's goddess of rot form are quite beautiful.
I was just a kid when I first read "I have no mouth and I must scream." As a sci-fi/horror junkie of the 60s, this was the single most terrifying story I ever read, way beyond Edgar Allen Poe's worst writings. I still can't put my finger on exactly why this was so horrible to me. Lovecraft never touched me quite as deep. Amazing for an author who also expressed a very humorous side also.
The flood from halo is a unique example of evolution horror since it’s not only human that are being changed, the flood is a common enemy that both the UNSC and Covenant have to fight against to survive while fighting to control that installations.
But also the gravemind, a large flood form, sets the player on a quest that will supposedly make them allies. It’s cool to see the scary monster be sorta wise.
The reason why The Thing is so scary is because it forces us to realize that we can never know another person. “If I were a perfect imitation, how would you know it was me?” Answer, we wouldn’t. We would not be able to tell the difference. That means we never knew that person, if we did know that person, we would be able to tell the difference.
Disagree. If it's a perfect replica, then it IS you, because there is no difference. There is no way to identify one from the other. I find the discomfort comes from acknowledging that you're nothing special, and that spark of humanity or a soul that you think makes you unique doesn't exist.
