Credit to YouTube
“The Painter” was created by a YouTube content creator, called UrbanSPOOK. This creator is known for a fictional crime spree of two serial killers; depicting very unsettling and horrendous violent acts against their victims. The story does have its fair share of fans, but only very few can handle this type of heavy content.
What makes this specific analog horror so terrifying, is that this type of horror can happen in real life. Serial killers have existed for decades, an unfortunate and sad fact that these monsters hiding behind human skin walk among us. These fictional killers and their crimes are extremely sick, I struggled to watch the content the first time I was introduced to the series.
It follows a stranger the viewer is not yet aware of, who finds VHS tapes and plays them. The story plays out with authorities struggling to catch two serial killers; leaving behind paintings of their victims; like a sick parody of what was inflicted upon them.
From my point of view, I do feel that the kills are done for shock value.
I’m not exactly sure how to feel about this particular element to the series, if it had a sort of supernatural feel to it, then maybe I would excuse the brutality. Mandela Catalogue, another analog horror on YouTube does feature several kills, the implications behind the murders are very dark, but at least I can tell myself that this is not real.
When it comes to UrbanSPOOK, I feel very uncomfortable with how to view the series as a whole.
Credit to YouTube
The murders just bother me so much. I know that none of these victims are real; but as someone who does watch true crime, it is so horrible to think about. Like in the image above, this video shows three friends who go on a small trip, but their trip is cut short, when they bump into one of the killers.
Flora is beaten to death with a hammer, Jack goes missing, and Tina gets each of her limbs hacked off. Tina miraculously becomes the only survivor, but she is forced to relive the loss of her sister, remembering the aftermath of her new face. A painting is discovered of how her sister’s face now looks, deeming her “Flower Face Flora.” This literally sounds a real crime, and these kills are only the “edge of the iceberg.”
The majority of the videos actually show murdered families, with children. How is that supposed to be “appealing horror” to fans? This analog horror is like watching A Serbian Film, a movie I will never watch, due to the heavy content I heard about the film, and I’m pretty sure I received a through explanation why I should never watch it from Youtubers.
It takes a lot for me to feel disgusted from gore and death, this one definitely took the cake when I read the descriptions of how the victims were killed by the two sadistic killers. Horror fans seek ambiguity from analog horror; if the series just centered around the paintings, without any explanation to the victims' bodies, I think this series would have been considered a runner up in the analog horror universe.
Credit to YouTube
The paintings work very well in the series’ favor; it is a creative aspect that gives the series the edge it needs to have fans flock to YouTube to check out this type of horror content. This could have been like the next Mandela Catalogue or Greylock. The motive of the killers had huge potential to be like a puzzle piece for fans asking themselves:
Why were they killed? For what purpose?
Also, the series could have done without the children or the families getting slaughtered, it still would have been just as effective without these unnecessary murders. Like come on, the farm one was one of the worst videos ever, along with the twins, who the hell would want to be introduced to something to like this? It’s like UrbanSPOOK purposely wanted to see just how much his fans can handle.
I can’t exactly call myself a fan, I do love the art of the creator, I feel that the art is so eerie. UrbanSPOOK is a master at creating horror artwork, and he did begin this series to show his art to the world. I think it is a great idea to introduce one’s own art to potential future fans, but the way the creator started to advertise his art later didn’t exactly sit well with fans.
Allegedly, the creator didn’t take it well when the public started to question his merch ideas, such as selling merch of the victims from his videos. He began an online debate of his work, throwing out his own opinions to those who dared to question his content, coming off a bit too harsh.
Again, I know this is fictional, but this is just too disturbing and weird. The fact that the creator advertises fanart that was made by fans of the killers is a bit too much as well.
This may sound a little hypocritical, but I will excuse fanart of the killers like Ghostface, Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy Kruger, Pinhead, Chucky, etc. These killers are already so messed up, but at least they have limits when it comes to murder. They are fictional killers for a reason; despite their evilness, they are at least not as sick as the assholes from “The Painter” analog horror series.
UrbanSPOOK does have creativity, but I think the creator went a little too far with the content; if you are interested in checking out this series…I would not advise anyone to do so. I know horror fans want to challenge themselves sometimes, but trust me, this is like “shock value,” content to see how much you can actually stomach.
If you want a really interesting explanation of the series to get a better idea of how you would feel about it, I suggest you give Wendigoon’s recent YouTube video a watch. This horror creator is phenomenal, he always provides very through explanations to horror, especially when it comes to analog horror.
His video goes over an analysis description of how the analog horror Greylock and UrbanSPOOK’s, “The Painter” fares in the analog world of horror. Here is the link below!
https://youtu.be/kYhnFGKGrHs?si=z7rX1elDA0Sf-1rq
Thank you for reading!
Emy Quinn
Comments
Post a Comment