i get it its like the granddad from yu-gi-oh

i love the way bdg and karen use technology and the way it evolves and becomes obsolete. ive always been fascinated in the way the internet reinvents faerie stories of old, with its infinite unyielding nature, the ease with which a name can be stolen, and this style of storytelling really captures that horror.

GODFUCKINGDAMNITNBRIAN!

This reminds me of sco 1733 that if I remember correctly is about a recording of basketball match that everytime it gets replayed the more aware the people in the video become of the fact that they are in a recording

I lost my grandma at a very young age, my earliest memory is her fighting for her life. We have a tape of me running around her house and she calls me inside. One day we decided to watch it again and I kept trying to focus on her voice. I wish I could hear it again This video reminded me of her and my grief a lot. I hope she's out there still somewhere

ive never liked horror but watching this makes me tingle in a funny way

What's cool about this is that he technically set the rules of the world up at the beginning, but it was so seamless that you barely even realize. Damn good storytelling.

Why am I crying?

Masterpiece

Jake's dad died when Jake was very young, maybe under mysterious circumstances, and his kid brain's memories are mixing remembering that with other strange interactions he witnessed as a child. Maybe his dad died in agonizing pain and he was in the same room to see it, and that's the screaming. Maybe there was a home invasion at some point and he witnessed his dad being freaked out by it, what would a child think of that situation? They're confused, and the person they look to for guidance is confused too, so they're even more confused. And then there's the context of his adult brain remembering in a process of unresolved grief that mashes those together with what he thinks his dad would probably say to him now. That's my take after watching this a million times. The ending still trips me up. The silhouette suggests a hanged person. Maybe Jake killed himself by hanging, and these were the thoughts that flashed through his mind as his brain was shutting down. That could be the connection of the orange light at the end of the hallway; the death of a man remembering the death of his father. Goddamn, Brian, you're amazing. I may be completely off the mark of what you intended, maybe you were intentionally vague, but that's the beauty of art that you're taking advantage of; it can be interpreted by the viewer a completely different way than the artist intended, and that only adds to the arty-ness of it.

I never expected the funny guy from polygon to make some of the most genuinely scary content ive seen on KGglobal. I'm surprised film theory hasn't gotten onto this.

what? I didn't get the notification for this one.

I just noticed that the masked man is the demon from your autobiography 🤯

he looks like eddy burback in the thumbnail

Okay, I'm gonna be a bit of a nerd about this. Having sat with this for a little while, I'm somewhat amused by the focus everyone is placing on piecing together a specific timeline, or trying to understand the specific beats of the story within the artwork-not unlike what Brian railed against in his last Unraveled video. To me, I read this as a fairly straightforward tale of grief and refusal to accept, and how our brains reject reality and strive for meaning when faced with difficult truths. The frame-within-a-frame, as well as the Dad's comments about rewinding and recording over precious memories, draw particular attention to the layers of interpretation here. The camcorder video is a construct being played on an old TV, and that playback has been filmed and uploaded as this video. We are not watching the original moment with the Dad, we're watching an interpretation of an interpretation. And once you acknowledge just how far we are from fact anymore, it calls into question everything else that happens. Every moment displayed on the Samsung TV screen is suspect, which is why I think it's more fruitful to examine them metaphorically or symbolically instead of literally. When the specter lurks over the Dad's shoulder, what do you feel? Like there was something lurking there. You want to call out and warn him. You feel powerless. Perhaps you feel like he should have known. Perhaps you feel like you should have told him. Contrast that with what happens when the Dad confronts the specter directly. You feel scared, maybe. Supportive. You share in his outrage-now you're on his side. In this vein, I read the rabbit as, well... pareidolia. Reading meaning into a symbol when there is none. By the time the rabbit appears, we're afraid for the Dad, and we're doubting our own "memories", so we're primed to look for an answer. When the camera falls and our gaze is cast around the room, what we spot seems to take on extra meaning. Did the rabbit hold the key? Could it have saved the Dad-or, perhaps, was it responsible for what happened? Our very act of trying to piece these things together, I'd argue, is the point, not actually knowing what happened. The evidence we have is shoddy, contradictory, over-written and tainted. If there is an actual picture there, our very insistence upon finding it may have barred us from doing so. We can't even remember what the Dad's facial hair looked like. There was a factually correct answer, but the Viewer watching on the Samsung TV can't remember it anymore, and we, watching on KGglobal, have no way of knowing. And so, when we, ourselves, watching on KGglobal, see all these fragmented memories, hinting at a story beyond what is immediately apparent, we want to string them together, we want to make a tale out of it-even though we will never, _ever_ know. There may not even be a story there at all, just fragments that we desperately want to assemble, just as we do when faced with immense grief. Personally, I'm fond of the most mundane interpretation: One day, the Dad left. He didn't die, he wasn't taken by a malevolent spirit. He just left. He walked out the door and never left a reason why. That can't be right, of course. There must be a reason why he left. Maybe there's something we missed, some clue in a key frame of our memories. There must be a bigger story at play. So we'll hit "replay" and watch again. It'll make sense this time.

im tooooooo high! for this i hahah

"Well look at you, Mr. Bigshot Director!" - Brian, every morning, to his mirror

THANKS SO MUCH FOR NOT PUTTING A JUMPSCARE HERE. This is gold

BDG: Hon come take a look- who are you Me: zjqolrtmgmxnshhwor

This definitely feels like an intimate father son moment caught mid-home invasion.

Well that's gonna be some nightmare fuel. On the plus side I got to hear BDG say my name a dozen times so that's kind of cool.

this is NIGHTMARE and i'm in LOVE

this is why i have trust issues, thanks brian

the thing that hit me upon this rewatch is that beard dad says “say something” to the intruder and mustache dad says “say something” to Jake.

is nobody gonna talk about how a shadow hand pushes jakes hand to put the vhs in

Now I'm just waiting for the first movie written/directed by bdg and karen han!

This is fantastic work!

Yo wtf I got to the "I don't want you to get stuck" bit at 6:59 and the video fucking paused itself and shat me the fuck up for like half a second until I realised it's cause I was getting a phone call from my landlord

I was not emotionally prepared for this oh my god

This is S-Tier KGglobal.

I know this is like a month old but I really see no one talking about the, "You're not.." at 7:10, that seems like it was going to be followed with ".. jake." Meaning that the person watching this isn't "Jake" at all.

two words: Alan Resnick

solid work.. i am freaked out but my brain is whirring

HEy brian, what uh.... whats up?

That was terrifying, thank you

Wouldya look at how dale is doing without his brothers, so proud of him

NO THANK YOU I’M GOOD BRIAN

This was fantastic

you know how he goes "you're not-" and then then the tape rewinds, implying he's saying "you're not Jake"? i think we're the ones torturing him by rewinding the video, looking for narrative clues and coming up with theories, going back to the beginning over and over again distorting what once was an untouched memory. the reason the figure in the back is a shadowy silhouette is because it represents all of us and any one of use

shit yeah.

THE SLOW CRESENDO OF MY HEARTBEAT, I GOT MORE AND MORE SCARED AS THE VIDEO WENT ON MY HEART IS THROBBING IN MY STOMACH-

Honestly the part that hits the hardest for me isn’t even the theme of the whole video, it just the emotion and panic in his voice when he’s confronting the intruder. It just sound so real and unsettling.

oh cool bdg invented horror

My interpretation: The thing in all black is dread, Jake is watching this knowing it's the last recording of their father. The changing attitudes, length of hair and facial hair is about the imperfection of memory influencing Jake's interpretation of the video as he begins to forget what his dad looked and acted like making him interpret the video differently. The reaction to the bunny is Jake suddenly remembering he was a child once, which is a thought that seems alien now that he's on the other side of losing a parent. His dad walking out of the room is a further representation of his dad being gone and there being nothing he could do about it. The silhouette appearing in the door way is the dread of impending death moving on to Jake, it might not happen soon but Jake knows death is waiting for him at any moment just like it did for his dad. All of the pleading his dad did with the Jake watching the video was him trying to tell his son to let it go and live his life without dwelling on his past or future loss.

wait whats so creepy/unsettling about this?

i'm gonna watch the pickle video again, that'll get rid of the nightmares, right?

Reminds me of the music video for A Hero's Death, except less surreal.

this is some marble hornets type shit

Hey Todd, w̨̗̦̯͛ͫ҉̢ḩ̠͉̕̕ä̡͍̖̪͙́͜͞t̨̗̬͆͜͟͢ t̔ͭ̌̀͟͏h̵̴̹̮͚̞̚e̸̿ͭ̅ͫ͞ f̯̞͈̾͜ủ̮̯̆͘͜͠͡c̷̡̨̘͍͌͛̂͡k̛̠͜

This made me cry. I expected the horror, but what I wasn't expecting was the grief. I didn't get very many photos or videos of my dad before he passed, so I've almost entirely forgotten his voice and his laugh and other little details, and this just really hit home for me. We have a few pictures of him scattered around the house and sometimes, even 10 years later, I'll find myself staring at them and wishing he'd just walk through the front door, home in time for dinner. The "you're an adult now" bit made me sob. He never even got to see me turn 11. I often think about whether or not he'd be proud of me, whether or not he'd like the adult I'd become. It also really hit home the sections where Brian had a goatee, because he looked so strikingly similar to my dad.

So this is about unraveled right

This is my favorite video on the channel by far, keep doing surreal horror shorts like this, they are so good.

what a beaut

I really love how your independent content draws from modern technology and culture as the origin for both humor and horror; this, the get rich quick skit, basically everything you’ve done feels like both a cutting commentary and a distinctly modern piece. and, it’s always super fun/enjoyable!! I feel like I could teach a whole college course on “Brian David Gilbert and the New Modernism” or something

When you want to wandavision but you can only hex a vhs

It took reading the script for me to realize his facial hair changes between rewinds. How did I miss that?

That was fuckin scary

I felt a little called out by this ngl.

I just listened to Everywhere At The End Of Time in its entirety for the first time last week and now I find this. I sense a recurring theme that I may explore for my next D&D one-shot

The natural progression of stretching the footage to get to the ten minute mark

Fun fact, this type of horror is called analog horror and vhs tapes are a staple of the genre

I'm glad i came back and watched this but I don't know why everyone's calling it horror it's just kinda bitter sweet

What.....what was this

Are those new shoes?

Gave me a good laugh. Nice work

Fucking WOW!

I suppose horror and comedy both rely on the same core skill - subverting expectations. And I know how good BDG is at comedy, so it shouldn't have been a surprise how good he can be at horror. But then, that's the point, isn't it? With BDG, it's always a surprise.

Brian. Stop, giving me anxiety attacks.

I need someone to explain this 😔

holy shit

Also how he gets cut off at one point "your not-" Uhhhg, my heart!

I want to see a behind the scenes video or how he came up with the idea/breakdown?

Rewatching this video doesn't feel quite right.

Being named Jacob, this video is very weird

Brain and his spectacular acting: Jake? Me, despite my name not being Jake: *me? Meme*

I came for a good laugh, I got a psychological thriller about grief

im not one to overshare in youtube comments but this.. didnt feel like horror. i lost my brother in november and my grandma in feb and ive been living in the images i have of them before everything. i keep looking into their faces and expecting something to happen. i am that figure haunting pasts i dont belong in

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Imagine how much freakier this video must be for someone named Jake

Hes got really nice teeth

Huge Shattered Memories vibe, I love it

this invokes the same terror in me that PT first did

As someone named Jake this is very unsettling.

wow.

Like. There are two things that give me "so it's late and I'm now afraid there's something behind the door" vibes. The Babadook and this.

I am very impressed by this concept and everything but I should not have watched at 2 A.M.

Attaboy

jesus christ

Well just got around to watching this, and I must say a good hat tip to you BDG. My only available response for a solid ten minutes was to start at my screen and then shed a few tears. That was disturbing and rocked me in ways I cannot explain. Very nice work.👍

Well that got fucking dark huh?

Nope nope nope

I love it when you make horror stuff.

My name is Jake and this fucks me up lol

Perhaps comedy and horror are inextricably linked? First Jordan Peele and now BDG are experts at both.

*attaboy*

I am in a sound design class right now and this is phenomenal

I am extremely uncomfortable and i love it

Ah yes, the perfect video to watch home alone

This was a trip. Like it managed to be unsettling and uncanny and just so much

This video really hits different when your name is Jake and your dad's dead.