Back in the late 70s and early 80s, the American cinema exploded in a big way when movies like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Halloween," and "Friday the 13th" made big bucks. Hollywood was more than happy to keep them coming, as they were relatively inexpensive to make, and typically didn't require that much thought into the plot, just have some pissed off dude running around killing oversexed teenagers. From the emergence of the slasher genre, you got a few standouts like Freddy Kruger, and the aforementioned mute trio. You also got a few hidden gems like "Sleepaway Camp," "My Bloody Valentine," and "The Burning." However- by and large you got dozens of forgotten movies which tried to follow the same path cut by superior movies, which did nothing more than water down the genre to the point of near-obsolescence, with a few notable exceptions ("Scream," "Candyman," the Saw franchise, etc.)
Fast forward a few decades and we find ourselves doing the same dance, just with different partners, and a much larger dance floor. What started with a few pioneering games like "Slender: The Eight Pages" "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" and "FNaF," (not to mention a shitton of influence or grandaddy series like "Silent Hill," "Fatal Frame," and "System Shock."), you get a lot of people trying to capture the same lightning in a bottle by doing the same song and dance as these games did. What compounds this however is the emergence of LP'ers on YouTube who make a simple game blow up just by acting incredibly shocked by the same jumpscares, over and over again. However through the dreck, you can still find a handful of gems like "Outlast," and "Lone Survivor." Nice thing too is unlike slasher movies from the 80s, typically word of mouth spreads quickly and the good indie horror games rise to the top.
