ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝖴𝗇𝖼𝖺𝗇𝗇𝗒 𝖵𝖺𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗒ㅤㅤ
Have you ever seen something almost human but not quite human? The eerie feeling of witnessing such a thing is called The uncanny valley effect, which is a psychological phenomenon.
We, humans, generally like things that resemble us, such as emojies. But the more these things become human-like, our comfort level drops. Researches expected things to become more reliable with looking more human-like, but what happened was completly the opposite.
The first time that this name was mantioned was by the japanese robotics professor, Masahiro Mori. He begun an experiment on how people react to robots and based on their appearance. He expected the result to be simple, the more human-like the robots look, the more likable they become. But it didn't happen. He called the gap in our comfort chart toward those robots, "the uncanny valley".
Things get ugly the second we realize that we actually don't know why this makes us feel uncomfortable. There are many theories about this and we're gonna dive into some of them together:
Evolutionary survival

This theory suggests we developed the uncanny valley to protect ourselves from ill people or corpses, which is why we feel wrong about lifeless eyes, stiff movements and unnaturally pale skin. This theory is the most logical one out there.

Category boundary

This one says our brain fails to categorize what we're seeing, because it's not fully human or non-human and this cause that unsettling feeling.

Expectation violation

This one is also connected to how brain works. When we see something human-like, we expect that thing to act human-like too. But when it shows blank expressions or stiff movements, it triggers how brain calculate it's behavior, better say, it violates the pattern our brain expect the thing to show, which will lead to the unease sense we call the uncanny valley effect.

The imposter predator

The last but not least. This theory suggests that the early humans were facing a predator that could mimic the shape of a human or looked almost like a human. And that fear stayed with us untill now.

A queer horror movie that blew everyones mind, leviticus.
This movie wasn't categorized in horror genre because it has slasher or jump scares, it took it's place in horror genre because of what it resembles. The movie's about two teenage boys that are in love with eachother, but people around them doesn't seem to show any acceptance toward them. So they deciede to take them away from eachother, not knowing with this, they unlish a demon who take the shape of the person they desire the most, causing naim and ryan to be haunted by that demon whenever they're not together. This demon feeds on the loss, yearning and agony that main characters are going through. The horror of this movie isn't the demon itself, it's what that demon symbolize: homophobia, which makes this movie more understandable for this generation. Because even due every movement and support, there's still homophobic people out there who harm queer people one way or another. Anyways, if you wanted to watch it, remember, it's R-rated and contain some scenes that your family might not really like. Also there might ne some questions of yours that won't be answered, so be careful choosing this movie to watch.

IMDb: 6.4/10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

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⠀݃ 𝖨𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗌𝖺𝗐 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗆𝖾　━━╋━　
　꒰ ‌ㅤ𝅼　𝖣𝗈𝗇'𝗍 𝗀𝗈 𝗇𝖾𝖺𝗋 𝗂𝗍 ゛𝗂𝗍'𝗌 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗆𝖾　ᣟ݂ 𓐇۪　

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𐌂 𐌂 𐌂 ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖢𝖠𝖴𝖳𝖨𝖮𝖭ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖹𝖮𝖬𝖡𝖨𝖤𝖲 𝖠𝖧𝖤𝖠𝖣

We all know about the Hollywood version of zombies, but have you ever asked yourself what happened that caused these monsters to exist? Let me explain...

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝖮𝗋𝗂𝗀𝗂𝗇ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Let's go back to the old times when plantation slavery was happening. People from Africa had been subjected to forced labor, causing them to move from their homeland and work for others in exchange for nearly nothing. People from different African societies were forcibly brought together in Haiti, where the first spark ignited in the form of a religion named Vodou. Now, don't confuse this with those famous voodoo dolls, those don't have any place here. Back to it, the religion became a system that brought Africans together. It became a form of resistance and a culture against slavery. So within all these beliefs emerged a folklore figure named the zombi, which represented the horror of being forced to labor even after death. There were some practices and beliefs associated with zombification, but they varied greatly, so we'll ignore the details of them for now.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖹𝗈𝗆𝖻𝗂𝖿𝗂𝖼𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇ㅤㅤㅤㅤ

So what was zombification? As I said, these rituals varied a lot, but the general idea was to deprive someone of their will and force them to continue working even after death. Can you see the horror? It wasn't that "OMG, a flesh-eating undead!" It was "You can't be free even after your death," which is a great paradox. Death is supposed to finally free you from everything, to let you rest in peace. The zombi reversed that, and that was the horror.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝖧𝗈𝗅𝗅𝗒𝗐𝗈𝗈𝖽'𝗌 𝖹𝗈𝗆𝖻𝗂𝖾𝗌ㅤ

So obviously, this folklore was taken up by Western writers and filmmakers and transformed into the zombie that you know now. One of the earliest major examples was White Zombie. Later, there was another major change that you can see in The Night of the Living Dead, where zombies were there to eat your flesh. Nowadays, there are many types of zombies, such as Walkers (The Walking Dead), Clickers (The Last of Us), etc. Now, the horror is "dead people are eating people," which is all fun and games. But personally, I think zombies deserve to be known for what they were meant to be, too.