Untitled (Underground)

an idiosyncrasy of found footage horror is that the video itself is a diegetic element; someone must have recorded that footage, and, the more complicated facet, that footage had to have been "found." if the cameraman dies, gets stuck in an alternate universe, or if the camera gets abandoned, there still must be some process where the footage gets retrieved, uploaded, and shared with us, whether that be by the cameraman themselves or a third party (the more worrisome option). the story extends past the final frame of the video.

i played for two endings, (Spoiler - click to show)where the player respectively always selects "there is something" and "there is nothing" when deciding if the looping hallway holds anomalies for aisling. these endings show the different implications of how this footage is found: in the "nothing" ending, they escape with the librarian and sign off their vlog with a "see you next time" - they still have autonomy to edit their journey to tell this story how they please; they have a choice as to whether it gets uploaded at all. in the "something" ending, rather, they wait for help that never comes, with a long train of ellipses that eventually stops with a message of the footage's end[^1]. this ending leaves us with unknowns: what is aisling's status? the cover art for this project is the thumbnail of this video on aisling's youtube channel. who uploaded this?

[^1]: (Spoiler - click to show)for a moment, i expected that the ending was going to be that infinite loop of waiting, and i think i got myself excited by this prospect - aisling is still waiting, the video never ends, this "found" footage may not have been found at all. but alas, i was stubborn enough to have reached that final end screen.

the physical exit 8-like subway seems to be an allegory for the internet: the subway itself is called the ailing broadband underground station; aisling is a 'tuber and refers to the subway as the "tube"; when aisling complains about the "the woman at the front desk" misdirecting them, the librarian says "i believe the algorithm was changed so that what you seek is always out of reach," saying the receptionist is a metaphorical or literal youtube search query. my interpretation was that (Spoiler - click to show)the loop itself is the social media algorithm, its looping nature reminiscent of dark patterns and addictive design that keep people scrolling in tailored feeds. when there's nothing in the loop for aisling, when there's no content in the algorithm, they escape its grasp and move on to their next project. but when there is content, aisling is stuck, maybe as a passive viewer or maybe as a content creator who's chained to these trends in hopes of growing their channel. aisling had no conclusion amidst the content. the content subsumes aisling? in this case, the uploading of this video carries a much more pessimistic undertone: the video, the content, must persist, whether or not aisling or other creators are consumed in the process. the machine grinds on.

this being my read of the project, i think the execution could have been tighter to support these ideas. being a backrooms purist is not a title i care at all to defend, but i found its premise most effective at conception, where the horror was the liminality and uncertainty of the never-ending yellowed rooms instead of the inevitable tendrilled spooky monsters that jumpscare you around the corner. (Spoiler - click to show)for this reason i found the "nothing" ending of untitled (underground) more compelling; aisling has to reckon with their internal conflict of what compelled them to this place. i think it could have been more impactful if it leaned into more play with the spatial horror of a looping hallway, or with a similar uncanniness from the medium itself, and left the fellow traveller transmogrifying into a scary beast for the different ending, as that feels much more like trending content material. the long train of ellipses in the "something" ending was one of the most interesting parts of the piece to me, and i would've loved to see something like that here in its absence.

i also wish there was more exploration with the aesthetics of found footage. i don't think any urban explorer-adjacent youtubers in the 2020s would be filming with 00s digicams that print the time and date in the bottom left corner, how gauche would that be, but maybe adding in hints of glitches or corruptions could look apt. there's ideas of a mixed media presentation going on: aisling and the travelers are full sprites, the librarian is a scanned illustration cutout, the backgrounds are photographs. i really enjoy nulla's chaotic graphic design, like in the cover arts of violent delight, nothing in my veins, the sand at the end, etc, and i think pushing this multimedia style in that direction would lend itself well to this commentary about the internet and its deluge of fleeting trends.

something i missed on my first playthrough was that the black screen for the spectator's dialogue is not pure black, but a very darkened photo of a barren office(?) space. this background is shown in the cover art of the game, aisling's video thumbnail, where it appears as an inverted reflection of a subway window. i like how this imagery is a play on the different meanings of the word liminal: it blends its literary definition (a temporary, transitional state, which i attribute to physical places like hotels, airplanes, subways) and the more popular aesthetic of "liminal" (of regular places that feel uncanny due to abandonment or architectural oddities, like barren storefronts or office spaces). this journey is both a possible transition for aisling as a creator and a mark of their loneliness. as algorithms curate content For You, they isolate everyone else.