The Painter

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The Painter
Just because it's disturbing doesn't mean it's scary.
Genre: Horror Running Time: Varies depending on episode Network(s): YouTube Created by: UrbanSPOOK Seasons: 1 Episodes: 9

"You're such a fucking pussy. Just because extreme horror doesnt fit into your little autistic furry horror taste doesnt mean that there isnt a place for it. Use your platform to talk about things you like instead of shitting on actual creators, cunt."

— UrbanSPOOK

The Painter is a horror web-series created by internet artist, UrbanSPOOK.

The series revolves around a found set of video tapes that details the police attempting to locate a psychopathic serial killer who leaves a disturbing painting of their victims as they die. The series was released on YouTube during late 2022 and currently has 9 episodes.

Why It Goes Way Too Far

1. The main problem with the series is that it tries too hard to be cruel and disturbing for the sake of being edgy. Because of this, the series relies too heavily on shock value and disturbing imagery/content rather than fully fleshing out its story. Such details being breaking the legs of a dog, murdering an infant, and disemboweling a pig to place a man inside.
2. The plot of the series uses cliche elements in analog horror, such as finding mysterious tapes and an uncaught serial killer, which has all been done before.
3. The episodes are very formulaic, as they mostly start with a warning, text on a screen, and finally, disturbing imagery. This causes the series to be very predictable and almost boring. To be fair though, any other analog horror series have also been formulaic due to using the same jumpscares and glitches and the exact same stories (even Mandela Catalogue and Walten Files also were guilty for being formulaic and predictable storywise as well).
4. The plot twist of Bill Collins being the second killer was pretty predictable since it was already speculated.
5. The antagonists are not good, for starters, they are impossible to take seriously since they kill people in cartoonishly brutal ways, and do it every episode, second, they don’t break new ground in the analog horror genre. The character employs familiar tropes—gruesome murders, cryptic symbols, and disturbing imagery—but lacks unique traits to set them apart from other horror villains as they are pretty one-note, and they are basically just one-note shock value villains that just want to make the viewers vomit and be... afraid?
6. There is a noticeable lack of world-building, as we never get to hear things like what the police have done to locate the killers or how the residents feel to having heard that there loved ones get murdered, making it hard to relate to any of the characters.
7. Visual Error: The episodes are styled as police tapes, but tapes made by the police aren't described in as much detail as presented, so as to avoid too much connection to the victims and most of the tapes don't show any insights of the police investigations and more just discuss the gruesome murders.
8. Lazy content warnings in every episode.
9. The series has a confusing timeline, which causes many moments that happen in one episode to contradict another episode entirely.
10. The murders themselves are unrealistic, such as one episode describing a pair victims being physically ripped in half and sewn together.
11. The episodes constantly repeat the same sound effect in the background, which gets annoying real quick.
12. The series doesn't give you time to develop with any of the future victims, with very few actually being plot relevant, causing their deaths to be unceremonious and casual cannon-fodder.
13. Most of the time the "live-action" scenes don't look that different from the paintings as the one in "MEAT" the Painters were drawn, which makes the scenes even more inconsistent since in the newest episode "HELL", it is 3D animated, so the "live-action" scenes in the earlier episodes likely should've been 3D animated too.
14. Some of the topics used in The Painter (such as Child murder and rape) is used extremely lazily and insensitively, nor does it effect the series or the plot, making most of the sensitive topics being used very unnecessary.
15. The paintings reuse styles and imagery, namely a skinless face, a lot.
16. The main reason the series exists is to sell UrbanSPOOK's artworks, which is a terribly bad idea given the context of the art used.
17. The maker of the series, UrbanSPOOK, cannot handle criticism and infamously went on a rant on Twitter after a YouTuber named Pastra criticized the series.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The artwork shown is extremely impressive, despite its repetition and chosen context.
2. There are moments that rely on suspense rather than shock value that do get a good scare.
3. The new episode actually improved on some of the flaws the series has and introduced more depth to the killers, though it is still bad and the edgy writing has not been solved.
4. The idea of having psychopathic human killers rather than a supernatural monster is a breath of fresh air in analog horror, despite its poor execution.
5. Although the series mainly uses text, the episode, "FAMILY" introduced voice acting, that was pretty good and suspenseful.
   • "MEAT" also showed animation for the killers, which is pretty decent.

Reception

Although the series initially started out with overwhelmingly positive reception, receiving praise for its introduction of human antagonists in analog horror and impressive art, the series started to become more disliked as it continued, with criticism being towards its shock value, its formulaic plot, and controversy around the creator. As of now, it is regarded as one of the worst analog horror series of all time, some even going so far as to say it's the all time worst. Despite this, the series does have a small fanbase and the reception improved just a little bit when the newest episode "MEAT" came out, but it is still cited as one of the worst.

Trivia

• The series has often been called "UrbanSPOOK" after its creator due to that being the channel name that the series is released on.

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