Content Warning: Brief mention of sexual assault.
Take a moment to close your eyes. Imagine yourself swimming on a beach. Imagine the sounds and smell of the salty air right before you plunge your head underwater. It’s beautiful. With the sun shining above you, the water seems to be beautifully clear and the ocean creatures swim around you. It’s a mesmerizing sight but sadly you are forced back up to breathe. The people behind you have fallen silent, mesmerized by the beauty of the ocean just like you. You can’t help but take another dive. Once you open your eyes and look around for something to focus on you see nothing but water. You look below you and see nothing but the inky black of the ocean. You have made a mistake. This is the journey that the YouTuber Nexpo takes you on at the start of the video “Fear of the Deep.”
Thalassophobia, or the fear of the ocean, is the topic that Nexpo explores. Through the use of multiple types of media such as games, manga, and found footage, Nexpo helps the reader understand more about thalassophobia and its different categories. You see, thalassophobia is not just the fear of the deep ocean, but a collection of fears based on the ocean. The three main types that are talked about in the video are the fear of the ocean depths, the fear of giant creatures in the ocean, and the fear of things in the ocean that don’t belong there. The first two are rather self-explanatory while the last is specifically about man-made creations such as ships or planes that have sunk and are now part of the ocean’s many ecosystems.
Nexpo uses lots of audio to set the atmosphere. One of these audio elements is music, which plays through most of the video. Sometimes it’s loud and clear, and at other times you can barely hear it. The music itself is eerie. It doesn’t fill you with excitement or even sadness. It simply makes you feel watched and dreadful.
The next element was the sound design. Around mid-way through the video the music, sounds, and voiceover fade and the screen fades to black. Right after this, a sudden and jarring click of a projector is played and Nexpo starts to tell the viewers about abyssal gigantism, the phenomenon where creatures get bigger the deeper down into the ocean that you go.
Lastly, I just want to talk about the voiceover itself. Whether there are sounds of the ocean playing or music, the voiceover remains calm. The voiceover made me feel calm while also managing to send shivers up my spine.
The video itself is honestly terrifying and eerie. Even if you don’t have thalassophobia, finding out how easily the ocean can kill and learning about the story of Yuri Lipski will make you feel chill. Lipski was a diver. He decided to dive into the “Blue Hole” in Egypt. It is known as one of the most dangerous diving locations in the world. This dive was usually done by multiple people. Yuri Lipski decided to do it by himself. He never made it back up. His body was found, something that many other divers who had similar fates didn’t get, their bodies forever hidden in the depths of the abyss. Yuri recorded his death and in the video, we will watch the footage as Nexpo talks about Yuri’s story. As some of the commenters of the video have said, the footage and story of Yuri make the viewers feel terrified and helpless.
Overall I loved this video. From the very beginning, an ominous and eerie mood is set and maintained throughout the entire video. The use of many different media to show thalassophobia and its different categories is something that I haven’t seen before. We learn and are told about a wide range of topics that all managed to be connected to the main topic.
I think that the editing and atmosphere of the video were top notch and they are the main reason why I have watched this video multiple times. The topic itself is also terrifying and I like the fact that so many different media that I like were used. If you are like me and you like videos with these dark and mysterious atmospheres such as the ones done by Night Mind or if you like YouTubers that talk about dark and terrifying topics like Wendigoon or LEMMiNO then you will like “Fear of the Deep” and its creator Nexpo.
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