What are people's thoughts on this genre?
The articles and survey I did made me realize how a lot of people have positive feelings towards this genre. Even people who weren’t aware of this genre before taking my survey, after taking the survey and reading about the genre said that they would interact with nostalgic horror media. With this survey and the articles I read, I was able to find a lot of interesting connections between them.
One of the reasons why I love nostalgic horror, is how it can connect to the audience with emotions and scenarios you would experience as a kid. I found that many people who took the survey also felt the same way about the genre and how it is able to make it seem relatable and hit close to home, making it scarier in the end. And I think the way nostalgic horror is executed, especially in Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 plays with and exaggerates child-like fears of the dark and makes the animatronics way more nightmarish than before.
A screen-cap of one of the animatronic featured in Five Nights at Freddy's 4
My observations of this genre is that there are not many types of media that are made with this genre in mind. There are the few big ones that a lot of people know about but this genre is more popular within indie horror than the mainstream. This is supported by how in the survey, 43% of people did not know what nostalgic horror was before taking my survey which backs up how I think it doesn’t get much attention in popular media. I think it is cool how after people learn about it they are more intrigued by it and want to interact with the genre and see more movies, tv shows, video games, etc. with this type of subgenre.
My theory is how nostalgic horror is a very interesting subgenre of horror but it can end up being very repetitive if people do not try and stray away from the projects that have already been created within the genre. I think with how small it is there can be a problem with repeating themes and having the same idea but slightly changing it to make it original. Especially if we look at and compare Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Walten Files. They both are about restaurants that have animatronics to attract business, and in both they put people into the animatronic suits after killing them. There are slight differences in the storylines and events, and FNAF is a video game series while The Walten Files is an ARG/found footage, but besides that
there are many overlapping similarities. I think that with this genre, since FNAF is what really made it explode and inspired many people to create a story of things meant for kids but made scary, in many of the things following there are a lot of overlapping ideas that ends up making it very repetitive.
This theory is important because this is a very small genre and there tends to be many overlapping concepts as we can see above with the comparisons between Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Walten Files. I’ve found that the reason for so many similarities is because one of the only things to become super popular within this genre was Five Nights at Freddy’s. So since there has only been one really popular media associated with this genre a lot of people got inspired and ended up taking a lot of inspiration off of Five Nights at Freddy’s. With any genre there is bound to be repeated content and people taking inspiration from other things of the genre, but this one in particular has a lot of repeated themes across different media because of how small it is. The overall response I ended up getting from the survey shows how a lot of people find this genre interesting, and if people want this genre to be successful it is important that there is a variety of movies, t.v. shows, video games, etc. to keep the genre going with unique ideas instead of recycling the same things over and over again.
Bon from The Walten Files
Bonnie from Five Nights at Freddy's
These photos are a great example of how similar some things within the genre are. Both of these are animatronic bunnies, both are blue and have green eyes and are wearing a red bow tie. Not to mention how similar both of their names are to each others.