APPENDIX F

Appendix F is a list of existing media, (films, music, games, comics, novels, et al.) which provide examples of the Hypermodern Horror genre, either wholly or in regards to particular elements, even though few if any have been explicitely labeled as a part of the genre. This list is added to by the Feature Creep community over time, so continue to check back to learn about further works.

If you'd like to suggest a work to be added to the Appendix, you can send an email to the address below, with the subject line ‘Appendix F.’ Please include details about the work, such as the medium, release date and creators, as well as a brief description of why you feel it would be a relevant addition:

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Sapphire & Steel
[ TV Series / Created by Peter J. Hammond for ATV / 1979-1982 ]

A British sci-fi television series, starring the titular Sapphire and Steel, mysterious (and likely inhuman) agents of a vague Authority who are sent to deal with ruptures in time. Rather than dealing with time travel in the conventional sense, the show instead explores breakages in time, with elements from one temporality bleeding into another, often creating disturbing or delerious effects.

Similar in feel to the more serious/gothic series of Doctor Who, (those starring Tom Baker's fourth Doctor in particular) the show delves even deeper into these elements, frequently rising to the status of true horror. Assignments 2 and 6 are of especial relevance.


Ice Cream Man
[ Comic Series / Created by W.Maxwell Prince + Martin Morazzo + Chris O'Halloran / 2018 - Present ]

An anthology horror comic, with individual issues being loosely tied together by a small cast of recurring characters, including the titular Ice Cream Man. While it contains fantastical elements, it leans more into the surrealistic and psychological side of horror, and regularly explores contemporary fears and anxieties, and the systems which they stem from or are heightened by.

Issue 5 serves as a good example of the relevant elements of the series.


Possessor
[ Movie / Written and Directed by Brandon Cronenberg / 2020 ]

A near future sci-fi psychological horror film, about a corporate assassin who uses technology to possess the bodies of others, using them to eliminate targets without detection. The film is a haunting, often visceral exploration of identity and voyeurism as they exist within a digital, highly online age. As it progresses, it begins to challenge the idea of agency between watcher and watched, as the root of the assassin's motivations begin to blur with that of the man she's possessed.


Depression Quest
[ Interactive Narrative Game / Created by Zoe Quinn / 2013 ]

An interactive narrative game, created using the Twine engine, Depression Quest simulates the experiences of someone living with severe depression. While not outright horror, it captures the claustrophobic and isolating experience of dealing with mental health issues within our current world. Characterised by descriptions of sleepless nights and gnawing, everpresent anxieties, as well as a sparse, lo-fi aesthetic, the game evokes gothic horror while remaining firmly rooted in the reality of present conditions.


Pattern Recognition
[ Novel / Written by William Gibson / 2003 ]

A speculative fiction novel about a woman trying to track down the unknown creator of a mysterious work of online art. While residing mostly in the realm of mystery/thriller, the work delves into anxieties surrounding surveillance, both online and irl, as well as the tectonic shift in security and digital culture in the wake of 9/11.

The setting is also defined by transient and commercial spaces, such as hotels, malls, corporate offices, anonymous chatrooms, and a host of other contemporary non-spaces, which adds further relevance as an example of Hypermodern Horror.


Cyber City Oedo 808
[ Animated Miniseries / Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri / 1990 ]

A cyberpunk Anime OVA which follows three cybernetically enhanced human prisoners, forced into policing their fellow cyborgs for the benefit of the state. While the miniseries delves into more overt, even bordering on supernatural, horror elements, it grounds each of them within the social and economic realities of its world, with recurring themes of exploitation, control, state violence, and the pitting of marginalized groups against themselves. It is also a great example of peak early 90s anime, with all of the excesses that go with it.


Severance
[ TV Series / Created by Dan Erickson / 2022 ]

A contemporary sci-fi drama in which the main characters have undergone "severance," a process by which their working life and personal life are segregated within their minds. While at home they cannot remember the events of their day at work, and while at work they have no memory of their true life whatsoever. Contrasting the split lives of its main characters against one another, it explores many of the anxieties of contemporary work, as well as the insular, cult-like logic of Neoliberal Capitalism, which has little to no relation to the world as it actually is. Think Beyond the Black Rainbow meets The Office.


Music for Menus
[ Album + Youtube Video / Blank Banshee / 2022 ]

An album which falls broadly within the genre of vapourwave, Music for Menus is most fully realized when viewed on the creator's YouTube channel. The stark 3d visuals of the accompanying video, which depict an endless menu screen, devoid of context and explicitly outside of time, create a uniquely hypermodern non-space to experience the music within. While often calm, even soothing, the minimal music manages to charge the banality of contemporary existence with a haunting meloncholy. Watching in a dark room with the brightness turned all the way up is recommended.


Six Figures
[ Movie / Directed by David Christensen / 2005 ]

A small budget, Canadian made psychological horror film, which follows a man struggling within his tenuously held corporate job while also juggling an unhappy marriage and two young children. When his wife is the subject of a violent attack, he becomes the primary suspect. The film never confirms what truly happened, but instead paints a picture of the protagonist as a man who COULD have done it, and goes into harrowing, soul crushing detail about the contemporary circumstances which could create such a man. Themes of depression, precarity and supressed rage run throughout, and far from being merely the catalyst for the story, the character of the wife instead follows her own arc about the compromises contemprary people must often make, and how gendered expectations play into them.


BLAME!
[ Manga / Written and Illustrated by Tsutomu Nihei / 1997 - 2003 ]

BLAME! is a sci-fi manga set within a massive artificial structure, called simply "The City," which has subsumed most of the solar system. Populated only sparsely with humans, it is expanded and (minimally) maintained by an artificial intelligence which long ago grew beyond human control. The narrative of BLAME! is less relevant to the genre of Hypermodern Horror than its setting, which shows the reader the outcomes of capitalist expansion taken to their extreme. The construction of The City has consumed all available matter within the solar system, including Earth, to build an endless, inhuman innerscape, which is both hostile to life and violently obsessed with expansion for its own sake.


No Future / MONOLITH
[ Album + Browser Game / Moire / 2017 ]

Moire is a UK-based musician, trained initailly as an architect. Their 2017 album No Future, while itself a fine inclusion into the ranks of the Hypermodern Horror genre, is not as interesting as the now extinct game they released alongside it, titled MONOLITH. In the handful of years since its release, MONOLITH, described by the publication Kill Screen as a 'glitchy hellscape' has already turned to vapourware. A dead link as well as a few screenshots still exist, depicting humaoid figures, barely differentiated from their lo-fi digital surroundings, approach a black shape reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. These evocative afterimages, when considered in relation to the album itself, create a ghostly experience unique to online spaces.


Ghosts of My Life
[ Collection of Articles / Mark Fisher / 2014 ]

Fully titled 'Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures' this work collects articles and excerpts from various sources, all written by Mark Fisher on the then contemporary state of media and the world, typically viewed through the lens of music, film, or similar works. In addition to offering invaluable insight into the theme of Hypermodern Horror itself, the work also has its own haunting pressence, especially in the wake of the author's later suicide.


Perfect Blue
[ Animated Film / Directed by Satoshi Kon / 1997 ]

Perfect Blue follows a pop singer named Mima Kirigoe as she attempts to transition into a career in acting. As the film progresses, we watch as her mental state comes apart at the seams, fueled by anxiety, isolation, toxic fan attention and the workings of an industry which seeks to exploit her to the fullest. The main thrust of the plot involves an obsessive stalker, who invades both Mima's physical and online lives. Psychlogically, the film hinges on the filming of a sexual assault scene, which Mima enters into against her wishes, and which kicks off a spiral of trauma and dissociation. Complex, haunting and well ahead of its time.


Society
[ Movie / Directed by Brian Yuzna / 1989 ]

Society is a bizarre, often garish work of 80s excess, complete with a plethora of very wet, very horny monster effects. The film follows a protagonist who has been adopted into a wealthy family, and who is plagued by anxiety and disturbing dreams, never feeling as though he's truly a part of the wealthy society around him. As the facade which surrounds his life begins to crack and fall apart, he discovers that his family, and the rest of the upper classes they belong to, are actually inhuman, monstrous creatures, who adopted him as part of a lengthy joke. Hypersexual and over the top in the best ways, Society looks at class, wealth, and many other still contemporary issues in a uniquely horrifying and 80s way.


In the Penal Colony
[ Short Story / Franz Kafka / 1919 ]

In this short story, Kafka describes a penal colony, in which men who have been condemned to death (often without knowledge of what their supposed offense even is) are placed within a unique torture/execution device. The device inscribes the name of their crime into their body, deeper and deeper over the course of twelve hours, until they eventually die. This arrangement speaks to contemporary control mechanisms, not just within the prison industrial complex, but also the entrenched financial institutions of Neoliberalism. A bad credit score or being unjustly fired from a job can mark us indellibly, as can simply being born to the wrong class, race, level of ability, et al. Often these marks are a slow death sentence, and we are trapped within a brutal system which exists to enforce it.

Sadly, Kafka's story is, if anything, too optimistic, as the story portrays the final use of the device. Rather than being a form of punishment that humanity has moved away from, such torturous methods have instead only become more subtle.