Don't Walk Home Alone After Dark
is a series of animated short horror stories and vignettes, created by Andy Coyle (also known for his work directing Hilda) on YouTube. The full-length videos are all standalone horror tales, with the vignettes being short horror-themed clips that hint at larger stories.
Full-length videos:
- The Pine Creepers: A man recalls a terrifying childhood experience that occurred while camping with his friends.
- The Worm: A therapist attempts to treat a troubled teenage girl hiding a dark secret, but his quest for answers causes his own mental health to deteriorate.
- The Devil’s Rock: A teenage runaway and a boy try to fend for themselves against strange monsters who only stay in the cornfield that they’re stranded in.
Shorts:
- "The Girl In The Mirror"
- "Dead End"
- "I Think My Step-Dad's A Werewolf"
- "Don't Look Up"
A full animated series is in development at Mercury Filmworks with Coyle returning.
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General tropes
- All There in the Manual: A lot of background information regarding the characters, such as Jordy's full name and birthday, the name of the police officer, and Haylie's background story, was revealed by Andy Coyle in a livestream on Youtube.
- Antagonist Title: Applies to both The Pine Creepers and The Worm, with the titles referring to the Big Bads of each respective story. It also applies to the malevolent mirror entity in '"The Girl In The Mirror" short.
- Anti-Hero: The main protagonists of the first three shorts are all flawed to varying degrees.
- The narrator of The Pine Creepers is the most innocent and sympathetic of the bunch; he did stay in hiding and not try to help save his friend Jordy from the Pine Creepers, but he was only thirteen at the time and the Creepers would almost certainly have come after him and Auggie too, so there wasn't much he could do.
- Dr Merrick, the main character of The Worm, is one of the more sinister characters; he subjects his vulnerable patient Sparrow to unethical treatment mostly out of professional pride and curiosity, more so than actually wanting to help her, and makes things much worse for himself in the process.
- Sparrow, the secondary protagonist of The Worm, was involved in the violent deaths of her friends and ended up institutionalised, but she's not a truly bad person; she did what she felt was necessary to protect others from the Worm, is willing to sacrifice herself to try and rid the world of the Worm permanently, and was inflicted with the Worm through no fault of her own.
- Haylie, the main protagonist of The Devil's Rock, starts out on the run from the law and admits to doing some shady things in the past, but she never actually wanted to hurt anyone and mostly turned to crime from desperation while fleeing her crappy life. She also matures a lot over the story and pulls off a selfless and courageous Big Damn Heroes act in the end to save Logan.
- Mirror Monster: In "The Girl In The Mirror", a girl is brushing her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror when she leans down to spit in the sink. Her reflection doesn't move with her, before its eyes roll back and it grows an abnormally large mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, preparing to strike...
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- We never find out what happens to the people the Pine Creepers take, including the narrator’s friend Jordy, who simply vanishes with no trace of what might’ve happened to him.
- We never find out what the Worm really is or where it came from; it's implied it might be impossible for humans to fully comprehend it.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The werewolf in "I Think My Step-Dad's A Werewolf" is depicted with a humanoid body and wolf-like head, with a large mane, broader upper-body and glowing yellow eyes; it walks on all fours, though its hunched stance and hand-like front paws suggests it's a facultative biped (capable of walking on two legs).
- Spiders Are Scary: They are if there are heaps of them sliding down their webs towards the street, as depicted in "Don't Look Up"; these spiders also look unusually large. One nearly lands on an unsuspecting woman's head, only scuttling off when she abruptly stretches her arm.
- Spider Swarm: In "Don't Look Up", dozens of spiders can be seen slowly making their way down from who knows where, while a woman on the ground is obliviously scrolling on her phone.
- Wicked Stepfather: Played with regarding the boy's stepfather in "I Think My Step-Dad's A Werewolf"; the boy is shown hiding in terror while his werewolf stepfather stalks past his room, but it's left ambiguous if he's the kind of werewolf who’s only dangerous after they transform (and therefore potentially non-malicious to his stepson in human form).
Tropes found in The Pine Creepers
- The '90s: The story takes place in the summer of 1995. Notably, no one in the protagonists' rural town thinks much of letting three 13-year-olds go camping by themselves in the woods overnight, whereas these days parents would likely be much warier about doing so.
- The Alleged Car: There's a rusty old Buick in the woods behind Jordy's house that serve as a hangout spot for the local teens, as well as the narrator and his friends. Looking back on his memories as an adult, the narrator wonders how it even got out there in the first place, since the clearing is nowhere near any roads, and the trees would have made it difficult to drive it there. Jordy was sleeping in the back of the car when he disappeared, taken by the Pine Creepers.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The narrator and his friends like to go camping in a clearing in the pine woods surrounding their town, though the narrator is unsettled when Jordy brings up a story his dad told him about people seeing strange creatures – known as Pine Creepers – in the woods, round about the same time people started going missing. The narrator tried to dismiss it as a story, but later that very night he finds out the hard way that it's true.
- Dramatic Thunder: The arrival of the Pine Creepers is heralded by a thunderstorm breaking the summer heatwave, which is what wakes the narrator up in the middle of the night.
- Foregone Conclusion: We know from the start the narrator will survive his encounter with the Pine Creepers, as he's telling the story decades later as an adult. His friend Jordy isn't so fortunate.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The narrators first glimpse of the Pine Creepers is their eyes reflecting the light from his lantern, making them glow in the dark.
- Harmful to Minors: The narrator and his friends are only 13 during their horrifying encounter with the Pine Creepers, which ends with the Creepers taking and presumably doing something horrible to Jordy.
- Held Back in School: It’s mentioned that Pike Lister was two grades ahead of the narrator and he "probably failed a couple on top of that"; it’s implied he had a tendency to be disruptive and unengaged in class, as he frequently got detention.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Pine Creepers are pale humanoid creatures with long, spindly limbs, sharp teeth, glowing eyes and ape-like faces. They live in the woods surrounding the narrator's hometown and are reportedly responsible for several people going missing over the decades.
- It's All My Fault: From the way the narrator talks about Jordy's disappearance, it's implied he blames himself for what happened because he never tried to help or warn Jordy despite knowing the Pine Creepers were out there, instead hiding in his tent and trying not to draw attention to himself out of fear. Under the circumstances, there probably wasn't anything the narrator could've done and he'd have likely further endangered himself had he tried to intervene.
- Lightning Reveal: A lightning clash reveals the Pine Creepers lurking among the trees to the narrator.
- Missing Child:
- A local teenage boy named Pike Lister disappeared while walking home from after-school detention the previous year, never to be seen or heard from again. There are a few theories as to what happened to him, though Jordy Baker is convinced he was taken by the Pine Creepers.
- 13-year-old Jordy himself is discovered to be missing the night after the narrator's encounter with the Pine Creepers and despite the whole town searching, he's never found. 27 years later, no one knows what happened to Jordy save for the narrator, who is aware the Pine Creepers are involved but probably wouldn't be believed.
- Never a Runaway: Some people believed Pike Lister, a trouble-making teenager who went missing in November of 1994, just took off by himself. However, others thought he might've drowned in the lake, while Jordy and his dad are convinced the Pine Creepers "got him", especially as something similar occurred back in The '70s. It’s implied that Jordy and his dad were right.
- The Quiet One: Subverted with Auggie; the narrator says he was a quiet kid except when he was alone with his friends, where he tended to be much louder and let rip with his high-pitched laugh (which resulted in the friends getting kicked out of the narrator's backyard, because Auggie's loud laughing was keeping the narrator's dad awake).
- Teens Are Monsters: While the narrator never goes into specifics about Pike Lester, he does state that everybody was scared of him and that he had near-daily detentions, implying that Lester wasn't the nicest guy.
- Tragic Bromance: The narrator will "never forget the summer of '95" because it's the year his childhood best friend Jordy disappeared, taken by the Pine Creepers; the narrator knew the Pine Creepers were out there but hid in the tent while Jordy was sleeping in an abandoned car, too scared to do anything (there realistically wasn't much he could've done against the Creepers, but he feels guilty nevertheless). When morning came Jordy was gone, never to be seen again, and only the narrator has an inkling of what really happened.
Tropes found in The Worm
- See tropes page for The Worm here.
Tropes found in The Devil’s Rock
- Ambiguous Situation: Haylie herself notes that she's not certain if the creatures are physically incapable of leaving the cornfield, or if they just believe they can't and simply never tried leaving.
- Apocalyptic Log: The story is revealed in the tailend to be told through a cell phone log that Haylie recorded about her experiences, believing her and Logan are most certainly doomed. Subverted once Haylie realizes that the call from the creatures was recorded on her phone, which not only gives a chance to escape, but allows her to come back for Logan and kill the creatures for good.
- Bait-and-Switch: Once Haylie makes it out of the cornfield, she looks back at Logan still stuck on the Devil's Rock, climbs in the van and drives off... only to come hurtling through the cornfield at top speed towards the rock, intending to clear a path to Logan to rescue him.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The monsters resemble giant alien cicadas; notably, they apparently only emerge every 17 years, similar to real cicadas.
- Bittersweet Ending: Probably the closest to a happy ending this series has yet. Haylie and Logan both escape from the cornfield and Haylie burns it down, killing the monsters. The sight of the smoke will attract people from town, so they'll be rescued pretty soon and Logan's injuries will be treated. Laura, the cop and Logan's grandmother are unfortunately dead, and Haylie will almost certainly be arrested for her crimes, though she has a mostly positive attitude towards her situation, saying she feels it's time to stop running from her problems.
- Bloodier and Gorier: While far from a gorefest, this short has a lot more onscreen violence compared to the previous stories (which tended to avoid depicting or describing violence in detail); we see the pustule-covered bodies of the creatures' victims multiple times and Logan has a serious leg wound wrapped in a bloody bandage, with a lot of blood staining the rock.
- Body Horror: The bodies of those killed by the creatures are swollen and covered in nasty-looking blisters or pustules; given their faces are contorted in pain and fear, it's not a nice way to go.
- Chekhov's Gun: Logan carries a rabbit's foot lighter with him that belonged to his late father; he doesn't smoke but keeps it with him for luck and out of sentimentality. He uses it to light Haylie's cigarettes early on and gives it to her for luck before she tries to make it out of the cornfield. In the ending, Haylie uses the lighter to ignite petrol via Vapor Trail and burn down the cornfield with the creatures in it.
- Closed Circle: Haylie and Logan end up trapped on a large rock, known as the Devil's Rock to the locals, in the middle of a cornfield for the duration of the story. The cornfield is filled with huge, fast-moving predatory creatures; they don't seem to leave the field but Logan and Haylie have little hope of outrunning them, especially as Logan's leg is badly injured and he's lost a lot of blood. Because of the remoteness of the field, there's no phone signal and hardly anyone passes the area, so Haylie and Logan are stuck on the Devil's Rock waiting for someone to eventually turn up and rescue them somehow, or to eventually die from dehydration. At least, until Haylie figures out a way to distract the creatures and give herself a head start.
- Dark and Troubled Past: We aren't given a lot of detail but Haylie clearly has a rough background. Her beloved father died when she was young and she got sent to a "stupid camp up north", implied to be some kind of wilderness therapy camp, which was bad enough that she and another girl, Laura, ran away. She and Laura robbed a Q-Mart because they desperately needed the cash with Haylie accidently shooting someone, after which they stole a car to escape and eventually ended up at the cornfield looking for gas to siphon. Haylie clearly regrets a lot of things in her past and feels that running away is the only option.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Haylie is playing a recording on her cellphone regarding her and Logan's predicament near the end of the episode, and the call of the creatures plays right after, with the cicadas being drawn to it. Playing it again just to be sure yielding the same result gives Haylie a plan to distract them to give her the very slim chance she needs to escape.
- Foreshadowing: At one point, an ordinary cicada is shown climbing on one of the corn stalks. This foreshadows the true nature of the monsters as giant mutant cicadas.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: When Haylie makes it out of the cornfield, she has a choice: either try to help Logan and risk her safety again, or get away with the car and the bag of stolen money. After what she's been through, she decides to risk it all to save Logan.
- Good Is Not Soft: Logan is easily the nicest character in the story. And the whole time, he keeps a rifle by his side, shooting at the creatures multiple times.
- Hope Spot: Midway through the story, a cop pulls up beside the cornfield, inspecting the seemingly abandoned vehicles, and Logan gets his attention from the Devil's Rock. Unfortunately, the cop doesn't understand or can't properly hear Logan and Haylie's warnings not to enter the cornfield and he quickly runs afoul of the creatures.
- In Medias Res: The story begins with Haylie and Laura running through a remote cornfield, with unseen creatures chasing them. After Logan helps pull Haylie up onto the relative safety of the Devil's Rock, Haylie begins narrating how she got into this situation.
- It Can Think: Downplayed. It's left ambiguous if the creatures can't or simply won't leave the field, but it is shown the creatures are at least cognizant enough to realize they've been fooled, with one of them destroying Haylie's cellphone after she exploits their calls to distract them, seemingly out of frustration and to keep focus on the escaping Haylie.
- Kill It with Fire: How the monsters are eventually dealt with, alongside burning down the cornfield where they roam.
- Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Early on, Laura and Haylie literally stumble over an older woman's body in the cornfield, killed by the creatures. Logan later tells Haylie he'd entered the field looking for his grandmother and wasn't sure if she'd made it out; Haylie narrates that she couldn't bring herself to tell him about the body she saw.
- Magic Meteor: The Devil's Rock was originally a meteor that crashed into the area, with Logan telling Haylie that the crops planted around the rock "grew like crazy", implying the meteor contained extra-terrestrial properties that altered the land close to it. On a darker note, the Devil's Rock is also believed to be the cause of sinister goings-on every seventeen years, hence its name. It's hinted but never confirmed that whatever was in the meteor that affected the crops also caused the local cicada population to be mutated into giant, bloodthirsty predators capable of hunting humans.
- Motifs: The act of doing something different. Near the tail end of the episode, Haylie comes back to save Logan, and tells him that she was doing "something different". This contrasts her with the monsters, who will only travel within the confines of the cornfield despite having full capability to exit it. In the end, Haylie's act of doing something different instead of running away saves both Logan and herself, while the creatures' refusal to exit the cornfields ends up becoming their demise after Haylie burns it down.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Haylie explains to Logan that after she and Laura fled from the camp they'd been forcibly sent to, they got hold of a gun and used it to hold up a Q-Mart, as they desperately needed the money. Haylie says that "no one was supposed to get hurt" but she didn't realise the gun was actually loaded, and it accidentally went off. It's unclear if someone was killed or just seriously wounded, but either way someone did get hurt and Haylie expresses deep remorse for it.
- Nice Guy: Logan, despite being severely injured, having lost his grandmother (possibly his only family), and being in the same life-threatening situation as Haylie, is nothing but kind to her the entire time they're stuck. He doesn't even seem to judge her when she reveals her past (and her crimes) to him.
- Nothing Is Scarier: While Logan mentions that the rock he and Haylie are trapped on came from space years ago, he knows nothing about the creatures that appeared in the field. Nor does anyone else.
- Police Are Useless: The police officer who sees the teens in the field gets taken out pretty quickly. Justified in that he entered the situation with absolutely no context (although he did seem to take his job pretty seriously once he saw Laura's corpse).
- Raised by Grandparents: Logan lived with his grandmother ever since his father died (it's unclear what happened to his mother but she's no longer involved in his life, either).
- Throwing the Distraction: Upon accidentally recording one of the creatures chirping (realizing that they respond to each others' noises), Haylie sets a timer on her phone to play the noise, throws it as far into the cornfield as she can, and gets ready to run for it. When the timer starts broadcasting the chirps throughout the field, the creatures all run towards it.
- Vapor Trail: After Haylie crashes her car from the road into Devil's Rock and saves Logan, it's revealed that she punctured her car's fuel feed and caused it to leak a line of fuel from the road to the rock. She lights it on fire, causing the car to explode into flames and set the cornfield ablaze, killing the monsters who are unable to escape the cornfield.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The monsters' weakness is that they will only travel within the cornfield and nowhere else, despite having full capability to exit it. This prevents them from climbing onto Devil's Rock, and after Haylie uses her car to plow a giant line through to Devil's Rock to save Logan, the two simply use the flattened path to exit to the main road with the creatures unable to touch them. This even becomes the monsters' undoing — when Haylie lights the oil trail on fire and sets the cornfield ablaze, the monsters have nowhere to escape and burn to death.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Haylie's friend Laura gets dragged off by one of the creatures only minutes into the story, while Haylie manages to escape. Haylie can hear Laura crying and begging for help from somewhere in the cornfield but has no way to safely reach her; eventually she falls quiet. The cop finds Laura's body later, confirming she didn't make it.
- What You Are in the Dark:
- Logan is already on top of the Devil's Rock when he sees Haylie struggling to climb it and escape the creatures; she hasn't noticed he's there because she's focused on survival. Despite being seriously injured, Logan doesn't hesitate to risk his own life to help Haylie up the rock. Haylie herself notes that Logan "didn't have to do that" and quickly takes a liking to him.
- Logan is resting and doesn't notice a cop pulling up outside the cornfield, while Haylie does. Haylie actually doesn't try to call out to the cop because she's on the run from the law, even though this is the first time in hours another person has come down this backroad and it may be her and Logan's only hope of escape. Haylie keeps glancing from the cop to Logan, conflicted about what she should do... until Logan finally notices the cop and gets his attention, taking the choice out of Haylie's hands.
- When Haylie escapes from the cornfield, she fills up her getaway car's gas tank and appears to be preparing to drive off with the bag of stolen money, leaving Logan for dead while she gets a head start to escape to a new life. No one else knows he's out there and with his injury, he wouldn't last much longer. Instead, Haylie drives back through the cornfield to save him, smashing up the car in the process when a creature attacks her. Once they're both safely out, Haylie ignites the car to burn down the cornfield and kill the creatures, burning all the money. Haylie is very likely going to get caught but she's saved Logan's life, also remarking she wanted to "try something different" instead of running away like she usually does.
- You Remind Me of X: Despite Logan being around the same age as her, Haylie says he reminds her a lot of her late father and finds herself instinctively wanting to open up to him.