Fake people
Gemini Home Entertainment took its cues from Kris Straub's ＬＯＣＡＬ５８, but quickly evolved into its own proper nightmarish universe.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Gemini Home Entertainment is presented via VHS tapes dating back from the The '80s and The '90s. The grain of the retro aesthetic quickly turns innocent-looking instruction tapes, documentaries and company videos into an unnerving trip, where every glitch and sound quickly puts you on edge.
- Unlike ＬＯＣＡＬ５８, where several tapes show the horror happening in real time, here the horror already happened. As soon as "World's Weirdest Animals" begins, we're thrusted into a world who knows exactly what is happening and is somehow still functioning.
- "World's Weirdest Animals," the very first episode, is our first glimpse into this altered world. It presents the viewer with several animals like the Greater Prairie Chicken or the Burrowing Owl, both of which can be found in rural Minnesota. Then, we're introduced to something found everywhere across North America called a "Woodcrawler": a large creature capable of hunting prey silently, nesting in houses and turning the residents of said-houses into "Fake People."
- Our first vision of what a Woodcrawler looks like is brief, but memorable: while the cameraman films the inside of the nest via the window, two giant arachnid-like legs come through the room's opened door in complete silence.
- The concept of "Fake people" is pretty unnerving as well. While they look like human beings, these humanoids act oddly, standing still or trying to mimic a person speaking... except here, they don't produce any sounds when they speak. They are still capable of movement, as one of them spots the cameraman and chases him before the video cuts out."You will hear screaming. They stole their voices."
- Since Woodcrawlers have the tendency to make their nests inside large families' homes, your neighbors may have been replaced by a nest of spider-like creatures. Worse, you may not even realize that they have been replaced since they now act like real human beings in order to blend in. One day, you are talking to your neighbor; the next, you could be talking to a monster.
- "Storm Safety Tips," an instructional tape on how to prepare for storms, takes an entirely new meaning when you realize we're not talking about violent meteorological events, but rather a herd of... something.
- After one of those storms passes, the cameraman exits his bunker and to look at a nearby field for any lights. Suddenly, a light appears. Followed by a second one. Then a third. Then dozens.
- "The Deep Blue." The video insists that nothing can live in the Marianas Trench... but then what's that?
- Not to mention the prospect of "the Demisia Tunnel," a pit at the bottom of the Marianas Trench extending even deeper into the earth, with the video helpfully pointing out that no one knows how deep it goes. And to make things even better, future videos like Advanced Mining Vehicle give some terrifying prospects of what it might be connecting to...
- "Artificial Computer Learning" is a demonstration of an advanced deep-learning AI technology, which is meant to create a short children's storybook that grows more coherent over multiple test iterations. Or at least, it's supposed to - instead, the opposite occurs, as the entries slowly descend into Word-Salad Horror, ending on this disturbing note:
- "Games For Kids," a seemingly innocent videotape made by Optica! Video meant to give kids a list of fun games to play if they're bored. Each segment starts with a text explaining the game with figures, then it cuts to a strangely eerie liminal-places-esque photo of the inside of a house, demonstrating the game, and when it ends, a gaggle of kids yell "Yay!" in celebration, and the conditions for winning are listed. Then the final game, "Feed The Woods". The music suddenly cuts out and the videotape tells you that to play this game, you must go outside with your friends after dark when all your parents are asleep, go deep into the forest until you can't see the lights anymore, and then... start screaming. Then it cuts to several scenes where the camera is pointing at an empty place, and suddenly an arrow points at something before a crying face with a droning sound appears, indicating that it was the wrong decision. One of the scenes ends on the camera suddenly dropping. Then it cuts to the final prey. A police car is seen in the distance against a sunset backdrop as an arrow points at it, the same sad face showing up again. Then, suddenly, a text appears. "The game ends when the forest is fed". The same gaggle of kids yell "Yaaay!", only this time it is distorted, as the police car gets pulled into the ground by something. Then it cuts to a view of Planet Earth, and the arrow points at it. "Found You!" appears, and the joyous celebratory sounds of the kids are distorted until they sound like screams, before cutting off.
- Two interesting things to note. The fact that these real-life games are evocative of predators hunting down prey, and the fact that during the Tag segment, the words ""It" Wins!" linger on the screen after the other text has faded away, adding to the vibe of humans being hunted down by alien creatures.
- It is never explained whether the "Feed The Woods" segment is from the point-of-view of the kids playing it, thus the sad faces marking certain places as dangerous due to the alien creatures being close, or if it is from the point-of-view of the alien creatures, and the sad faces indicate that in every scene, a kid gets caught.
- Whatever happened to Mary Dean in "Christmas Eve Party" and her subsequent attack on Moonlight Acres is harrowing, with her becoming some sort of extremely aggressive tentacled thing, which we are given a blurred photo of near the end of the video, which looks unlike any of the entities we've seen so far in the series.
- "Home Invasion Help" barely lasts thirty seconds before the Paranoia Fuel hits. As one commenter on YouTube put it, it's not a self-defense guide, it's a tutorial. And the "invaders" it's speaking to aren't human in the slightest.The following will explain what to do upon entry into a home:
* Locate prey
* Incapacitate prey
* Enter prey via proboscis- And all of that is before we cut to a first-person view, recording the aftermath of one such "home invasion." Red tendrils of roots are everywhere, some of which are contorted into vague humanoid shapes, one of which is sitting in a rocking chair. The camera zooms in on it...and its eye slowly turns to look at the camera. Then the shadow of a Woodcrawler appears, and the camera-man runs. He doesn't get far.
- "Crusader Probe Mission" features a space probe sent to the outer reaches of the solar system. For the first half of the mission it seems relatively fine, showing normal pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons (even though Chiron a moon listed is not a real moon of Saturn), then things take a turn when it gets to Neptune where the planet is just gone. Then it approaches something called The First Cluster, showing various moons deformed or fused together, then it arrives at Iris proper, where the moons turn fleshy and are given anatomy names. Then the probe suddenly gets pulled in by the Iris where it starts to record the immense red biomass inside of the planet, including breathing canals and what looks like egg sacs. It then enters its "conscious mind" and we are shown a few shots of earth, including one looking in on a human from what is implied to be a Woodcrawler and a shot of a siren blaring. The probe loses connection for some time until it suddenly goes back online and is on a direct course back to Earth. Now either the Iris ejected it somehow or worse, it is still in the Iris and it is the Iris that is headed for Earth.
- "SHIFTING TENDONS," which depicts the late stages of Deep Root Disease and all the grisly effects it entails. A set of diagrams shows the roots spreading throughout the body, before twisting it out of shape and into a Nature's Mockery. This is followed by a video of an infected Barry Johnson, now a twisted mass of diseased red flesh with a dislocated jaw and multiple bony sprouts growing from large open holes... who is still conscious. And worse still, something is said to be inside, but the video ends before we can see it emerge.The interior of Barry Johnson is discovered to be occupied.
- "OLD BONES." Marketed as Excerpts from The Journal of Glenn A. Arthur, the video starts with an unknown scientist talking about deep root disease and an apparent mutation it's gone through…or so it seems.-unnatural. What's happening to the tissue is not only entirely unlike what is typical for the disease, it's completely counter to it. Instead of attacking foreign tissue, it welcomes it. The bones don't decay, Organs blindly fuse, Bulbs fester and (unintelligible, possibly "swell"), Tissue refuses to die. It is hyper-Metastatic. It is, at this point, most analogous to a tumor. I would not speculate on the states of the minds within.
- The video then cuts to the previously mentioned Excerpts, as they describe in discordant details the meetings that Glenn had with mysterious entities that claimed to be angels sent by god. They showed him a vision of them hitting the earth from space, and forming the first Nature's Mockery, arms stretched towards the sky "Like a child's"… and then the visitors strike a covenant with Glenn, which didn't end well as we know.
- The Footage then cuts to two scenes. The first is labeled as "MAY 1941. DEAL IS SEALED." As various black and white recordings of the camp are shown…as well as the Nature's Mockery that grows within. And then the next scene is labeled as "MAY 1946. DEAL IS BROKEN." As it shows more footage of the camp, as a group of hunters go to kill a bear to bring as a sacrifice instead, as a warped church bell ringing can be heard in the background… which leads to:
- The scene changing extremely jarringly to show a diagram of a human body while alarms blare in the background and warning symbols flash on the screen. The body then decays similar to how we've seen them morph due to deep root disease taking over, until the diagram zooms into the brain to reveal it perfectly untouched and working. It then shows two parts of the brain lighting up with activitynote , and the poems from "Artificial Computer Learning" appearing, except some lines have been chillingly altered.note WRETCHED HANDS TAP MY WINDOW
A STRANGER'S FANGS SCRAPE THE WALLS
SLEEP BENEATH THE FEEDING GROUNDS
CANCER SHARES A DREAM
JACK HEARD IT AGAIN
THERE IS A VOICE FROM SPACE
JACK DO YOU SEE ME
I HAVE BECOME SOMETHING ELSE
I AM STILL IN HERE
RELIC OF THE FAITHLESS DAY
DON'T LEAVE ME HERE YOU BASTARDS
OLD BONE GROWS - The video then ends with more black and white footage of a house, and as the camera goes to a window, a horrid mass of flesh is visible as a human head, decayed and deformed can be seen silently mouthing and yelling in obvious agony before sliding away off screen into the darkness. It's the Skinwalker, and it turns out that Glenn is with it now…
