Entertainment
Disturbing YouTube Series Will Force You To Document Your Dreams
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Some of my favorite horror entries live on YouTube and are created by up-and-coming filmmakers who have not yet seen their big break. Series like Alex Kister’s The Mandela Catalogue, Steven Chamberlain’s No Through Road, and channels like Bitesized Nightmares and Kepther e, in my opinion, are leading the charge when it comes to the new wave of found footage and analog horror. I am drawn to this corner of the genre because of how visceral it feels, largely because these videos are framed as legitimate uploads that you are not necessarily supposed to be watching.
Given my fondness for this brand of horror, the almighty algorithm eventually led me to a relatively new series known as VCR Willie, which started making its rounds on YouTube this past November. Updated sporadically by YouTube creator Alexanderthetitan, with videos ranging from eight to 20 minutes, VCR Willie plays like a found footage experiment but has far more going on beneath the surface. The key distinction is that the footage we are seeing was not voluntarily recorded, but instead documented by Alex, the owner of the channel.
A Chronicle Of Nightmares
VCR Willie keeps you in the dark until its fourth entry, “NAK,” where Alex finally addresses his audience and explains what is happening to him. Alex, if we take everything he says at face value and suspend our disbelief for a moment, claims he was living a normal life until he woke up from a lucid dream where he discovered a Sony Handycam sitting in his closet. When he wakes up, he realizes the camera is physically there in his house, despite being a make and model he has never owned.
Things get even stranger when Alex finds a tape already inside the camera but has no way to play it, which leads him to send it out to be digitized. Once he receives the file and watches it, he realizes the footage is exactly what he has been seeing in his recent dreams. Every time he wakes up, the process repeats. A new tape appears in the camera, he sends it off to be digitized, and then reviews what was captured. It is heavily implied that Alex himself is behind the camera in the footage, as the people he interacts with refer to him by name.
Mimics, Shadow People, And Apartment 40
The footage itself, which is not presented in a clean chronological order, begins to paint a picture of what is happening in Alex’s alleged dream world. He is paid by a woman named Scarlet to document her boyfriend Jared’s increasingly strange behavior. Scarlet insists that while the person looks exactly like her boyfriend, it is not actually him, but rather an entity mimicking his appearance to deceive her. The real Jared is hiding inside her apartment, cowering in fear, while another version of him stands outside, trying to get in while pretending to be the real thing.
Most of the videos in VCR Willie follow this same basic structure in different variations. They are almost always set in what appears to be the same apartment during different time periods and with different occupants. Someone hires Alex to document unsettling events involving a real person and their mimic, and the line between who is real and who is not grows more difficult to define as the series progresses.
The mimics themselves vary depending on how far along they are in replacing their subject. Some appear nearly complete, while others still feel unfinished, as if they are learning how to pass. One recurring detail, at least so far, is that they all offer Alex water at some point. They prefer to drink straight from the tap, but they always direct him toward the water cooler in the far corner of the kitchen, often referring to it as “the good water.”
The most recent uploads in the series, with “VHS NIGHT” being the latest entry as of January 18, 2026, push the story into increasingly violent territory. It feels as though the mimics are tightening their grip on the narrative itself, subtly pressuring Alex to join them.
A Visceral Thrill Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen Before
What keeps me coming back to VCR Willie is how it sidesteps many of the genre’s most familiar beats. There is shaky camera work, the occasional jump scare, and all the expected trappings of found footage, but there is an added layer of unease that is difficult to explain. The people Alex interacts with feel dangerous and welcoming at the same time. They will casually chat with a smile, then suddenly shift into something hostile, storm off into another room, and peek back around the corner as if they believe they are hidden, despite standing in plain sight.
For the first time in a long while, I found myself watching through my fingers because I genuinely have no idea what kind of horrors Alex is walking into inside this apartment. Throughout every video, there is a persistent feeling that I am being watched as well. The idea that these tapes originate from an alternate dream world that does not intersect with Alex’s waking life only makes it more unsettling. In my mind, the mimics have not crossed over yet, but it feels inevitable, and that possibility adds another layer of dread to the experience.
VCR Willie feels like a breath of fresh air in a genre that often leans on familiar frameworks. We receive the creator’s explanation early on, and everything that follows is left to our imagination as we wait for the next update. It is a genuinely exciting time to be a horror fan when creators like Alexanderthetitan have the freedom to push boundaries without studio interference, resulting in some of the most unsettling horror being produced right now.