This Room Does Not Exist

I've been on a Youtube horror kick recently, and this show really stuck out to me, so I thought I'd give it a plug. This Room Does Not Exist is an ongoing sci-fi horror/mystery show that's reminiscent of Black Mirror, but extremely stylistically varied. Part of what makes it so striking and unnerving is that it features so many different visual and narrative styles; grainy, amatuerish "found footage" is interspersed with high-res, professionally lit cinematic shots, or screen captures from computer interfaces, or security camera video. Some segments are straightforward narratives that feel scripted, some are candid vlog or documentary style pieces, some are seemingly nonsensical avant-garde art film segments. There's no guessing what the next video, or even the next scene in the same video is going to be like, yet it all converges remarkably well into a single storyline. I'm still trying to put my finger on exactly why this makes it so unsettling, but I think it has something to do with the fact that since it all clearly takes place in the same fictional "universe" and as part of the same narrative, it's implied that even the most bizarre, artificially cinematic, or non-linear parts are a literal representation of what's happening rather than metaphorical or abstract "art", just as much as the found footage is.

Anyway, here's episode one. As of right now, the total runtime is less than 2 hours, so it's not a big commitment. Make sure to read the description of every video.