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And everything happening this week for Future Fest!

As you know if you've been on here lately, your pals at Popverse have been doing a bit of crystal-ball-gazing, jointly looking ahead to what we think may be the future of our favorite pieces of entertainment in a little event we're calling Future Fest. And as you might expect from the bunch of horror hounds that make up your staff writers, at least a little bit of that brain power is going into what's next for spooky cinema (because fortune telling never goes wrong in that genre, right?).

Now, as you might expect with something as huge as horror movies, that's not going to be something that the Popverse gang can predict with 100% accuracy, me least of all (in case you haven't already clocked this, reader, I was hired for my looks). However, I do spend quite a lot of on and off work time thinking and writing about the horror genre, and though I can't tell you what to look for in its future, I might just be able to tell you where.

That is: on YouTube and Twitch, respectively.

The YouTube to Horror Darling Pipeline

Before we can talk about what's down the road, let's skip a few spaces back, to the early days of 2023. It was cold, it was gray, and the only thing that horror fans could talk about was a new film traumatizing audiences across North America: the experimental, not-quite-found footage masterpiece Skinamarink. The film, which made headlines for its lack of plot but surplus in terror, was directed by Kyle Edward Ball, whose name was pretty much unknown in the community... unless you'd been following his YouTube channel.

Yes, before Ball made his landmark debut in the world of big screen frights, the director had been running a YouTube channel of bite-sized nightmares called, well, Bitesized Nightmares. The page is an exercise in scares, consisting of stylized, short-form scares crafted by Ball, many of which were reflected in his pioneering 2023 shockbuster. Today, the channel boasts over 53K followers, and Ball himself is on track for even more horror success, the former YouTuber having joined with starmaker A24 for a mysterious upcoming project called The Land of Nod.

And on that track, he is not alone. A look ahead at the horror landscape will reveal that former YouTuber Curry Barker has just signed a whopping seven-figure deal on a horror project with Focus Features, not long after Milk & Serial - Barker's found-footage frightener made for just $800 - racked up a mindboggling 2 million views on the platform. Need another example? Then what about Kane Parsons, who will adapt a big screen outing of his YT tingler The Backrooms for A24... at just 19 years old?

One thing to note about Parsons here - of the three directors mentioned above, he's the only one directly adapting a story that began with his YouTube page. Both Ball and Barker (and probably Parsons himself eventually, if his movie is a hit), are working on ideas separate from their beginnings. And just as I told you where I think you'll find the next generation of horror movie makers, I think I also know where studios will be finding their next generation of horror ideas.

From Twitch Streaming to Cinematic Screaming

Every generation has its "horror gateways" - I grew up on the Goosebumps books, while I know folks my parents' age who were introduced to the genre via late-night Elvira specials. And while I'd never speak so broadly to say that there's a single grisly gateway for Gen Z, I want to point out that there is one that's both as unique to this time period as it is popular: horror gaming streamers.

Scroll through Twitch and you'll meet folks like Markiplier and Dawko, who both rack up 6-to-7-figure viewer counts and whose content is largely (if not solely) videos of themselves playing spooky video games. I probably don't need to tell you which currently massive spooky video game is at the top of their lists, because if you've been paying attention to the horror world at all, you know it's Five Nights at Freddy's.

It's true - before FNAF was a blockbuster Blumhouse movie (duology in a month or two here), it was terrifying a rabid fanbase of younger Twitch users. And when the company that brought us other petrifying pioneers like Paranormal Activity took a gamble on the game making a successful film adaptation, their bet paid off enormously, with a bunch of those same Markiplier fans making up ticket sales. Is it any surprise that other studios would want to try and do the same thing?

Well, it shouldn't be. Other popular streaming sensations like Poppy Playtime and Dead by Daylight are already confirmed to have adaptations in the works, from Legendary and Blumhouse/Atomic Monster, respectively. Even production companies like Story Kitchen, known for their work on the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, are dipping their toes into Lovecraftian fishing sim Dredge, and we wouldn't be surprised if the thousands of cumulative views reported across multiple Twitch channels had something to do with that.

As I said up top, I can't say with 100% accuracy that the trends I've noticed above will continue down the walk the Misty Streets of Horror Future. There are other trends going on (such as, say, the horrorization of public domain properties) that they'll have to compete with, after all, to say nothing of genre titans - the Friday the 13ths and Aliens of the world - that aren't going anywhere. And yet, I can't help but feel that horror studios are taking heed of a lesson that would've stopped so much bloodshed in slashers of the past.

That is, when the teens tell you what's scary out there, you believe them.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.