We Need More Triple-A Horror Games
thegamer.comHorror is probably the coolest genre in cinema right now. After decades of being the schlock joke genre of the movie industry, the starting point (or final resting place) for screaming starlets and buff idiots, crammed with monsters and gore and special effects and nothing close to resembling nuance, horror is now quietly enjoying a golden age. ‘Elevated horror’, as Scream mockingly labels it and then copies it, is in. Thanks to Jordan Peele, A24, and cult hits like The Babadook, horror movies are no longer brainless buckets of blood, they mean something. Unfortunately, games have missed the memo.
Friday the 13th is just about a bunch of teens being killed at a campsite. Evil Dead is just about a bunch of teens being killed in a cabin. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just about a bunch of teens being killed with a chainsaw. Get Out, however, is a deconstruction of how white Americans appropriate and fetishise Black culture even as they discriminate against Black people themselves. Midsommar is about the ways vulnerable white women can be indoctrinated by the alt-right under the guise of feminism and empowerment.
Related: Playing Alien: Isolation On An iPad Is An Excellently Scary Experience
We try to overthink old horror movies, like claiming Texas is an examination of the ways society enacts a kind of violence on poor citizens of the Midwest, but we’re injecting meaning where it does not exist. There are some basic points made, like The Wicker Man bravely standing up to say cults are bad, but nothing like what we have today. The closest late 20th century horror got to these types of thoughts is the use of sexual activity as a sign of condemnation in Halloween, a trope director John Carpenter has since admitted was not
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