Launched in 2001, Adult Swim is an American programming block on the Cartoon Network that airs during late night hours. It targets adult audiences and has made a cultural mark within television for it’s distinctive experimental style and offbeat themes. The channel focuses heavily on the creepy and disturbed and has gained notoriety within the online horror community. Whilst Adult Swim got it’s start through network television, a large proportion of it’s content is also published on YouTube. What has Adult Swim done for the horror genre? And how has it used YouTube as a vessel in an era of 21st century post-cinema?

‘This House Has People In It’ (2016)  is a prime example of the involvement Adult Swim continues to have in the development of modern ‘analog horror’. The short film is exclusively captured through surveillance footage as a suburban family endure an extremely unnerving phenomenon. The use of CCTV to capture a horror story blurs the lines between reality and fiction in film, hence why found footage films bring such a sense of unease. Adult Swim uses a lot of off-kilter techniques in the production of their content, utilising music and animation to depict an unrecognisable reality. Film critic Andre Bazin notes that cinema, by the very nature of its medium, is the art of reality. It must provide a verisimilitude that captures the essence of life. (Bazin, 1971) The reality of ‘This House Has People In It’ is exacerbated also by it’s publication on YouTube, audiences are unaware of the lines between reality and horror. Adult Swim were one of the first to use YouTube to it’s full potential and embrace the new possibilities that post-cinema has, especially in gathering audiences to more experimental works. 

Adult Swim has managed to capture the authenticity of analog cinema in ‘This House Has People In It’ through digital means. In an era of ‘numerical manipulation’ (Rodowick, 2007), Adult Swim continues to creatively close the gaps between horrifying fantasy and cinematic realism, unleashing frightening possibilities into the genre of horror. 

A, Resnick (2016) This House Has People In It Adult Swim 

A, Bazin (1971) What Is Cinema? University California Press 

D, Rodowick (2007) The Virtual Life of Film Harvard University Press

Written by Lara Shaw 33695257