Immortality review: getting some real Persona (1966) vibes

digitaltrends.com:

There’s a moment in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (no, not that one) that has haunted me since I first saw it. Late in the film, Elisabet, an actress recovering from a mental break at an isolated summer cottage, and her nurse, Alma, begin to lose their sense of self. After delivering a monologue revealing Elisabet’s darkest secret, Alma enters a cabin fever-induced panic, terrified that she and Elisabet could be the same person. The film suddenly merges the two characters’ faces into one alongside a discordant music stab. In that moment, it’s not just Alma who’s stranded on the outskirts of reality, but the viewer too.

It’s no surprise that I had a similarly unsettling moment playing Immortality, the latest game from director Sam Barlow and his studio, Half Mermaid Productions. The psychological horror game plays like a wildly ambitious modernization of Persona, riffing on its most harrowing ideas and images. During one scene (a disturbing moment I couldn’t sufficiently explain even if I wanted to spoil it), I let out a sound somewhere between a befuddled gasp and a guttural scream. It wasn’t because of a cheap jump scare. Rather, it was because the game had robbed me of a crucial human skill: the ability to differentiate reality from fiction.

Immortality is an astonishing work of interactive media, one that fully realizes the potential of Barlow’s signature full-motion video (FMV) style. It explores our complex, and perhaps unhealthy, fascination with art, all while delivering a level of craft that’s light-years beyond what any other game has even attempted to achieve.

Even if you’ve played previous Barlow works like Her Story, you’re bound to be shocked by the sheer scope of Immortality. Presented as a fictional film