Editorials
A Classic Reborn: How the ‘Resident Evil’ Remake Improves on a Horror Game Icon
Unlike movies, it can sometimes be hard for newcomers to enjoy classic games. Sure, movies can look dated, but older video games can be plagued by issues that make the play side of it unpalatable to modern audiences. Not only can old graphics offer less clarity, but archaic control styles or design philosophies can challenge players used to modern conveniences. This makes the video game remake an interesting proposition. How do you update a game without sacrificing what made the original so unique and beloved? What ways can you add to the core concept without making it a completely new experience? It’s a tough line to walk, and even 20 years later, few games have done it with the skill of the 2002 remake of the first Resident Evil.
The GameCube remake started production in 2001, just five years after the original game was released on the PlayStation. While the technology leap between those generations was one of the most pronounced in gaming history, design philosophies had not evolved as much. At that point, the mainline Resident Evil games were still using tank controls and fixed cameras, having not yet reached the game-changing fourth entry. In RE Remake, fixed camera angles are still present, but a different control option was added to the mix that does away with the tank controls many found fairly clunky. This meant that the remake was more of a refinement than a reinvention, retaining a lot of the charm and tension of the original while creating a smoother experience with its own identity.
The atmosphere is one of the strong suits of the remake, taking the iconic locations of the original and recreating them with higher fidelity pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models. The developers made smart use of full-motion video layers and particle effects in order to keep the backgrounds from looking too static, bringing the Spencer Mansion to life with unprecedented clarity. The new console generation also meant they could do a lot more with lighting, creating the perfect rendition of the creepy old mansion. The extra horsepower and space allowed them to add in areas and subplots that were cut from the original, creating surprises for long-time fans who believed they knew exactly what to expect without straying too far from the experience they were used to.
Along with the enhanced visuals, there were many quality-of-life improvements made to the gameplay. Aside from the aforementioned non-tank control options, players were also given a free slot in their inventory to carry a default item for their character, like a lockpick for Jill. Even though inventory management was part of the fun and challenge of the original, this helped the player by not forcing them to decide if they wanted to lug around a starter item they don’t use often in one of their precious inventory slots that could be used by an important key or ammunition. Another inventory adjustment was the inclusion of a defensive item, which could be used to fend off a zombie as it grabbed you. It’s a welcome change that gives you a great in-the-moment choice to make: is this encounter desperate enough that I need to use my defensive item, or do I just take the hit and hope I can survive?
To me, Resident Evil is all about making compelling inventory decisions like that, and none are more compelling than the ones created by the best new addition to the game: the crimson head zombie. After a certain point in the game, zombies that you’ve killed have the possibility to come back as faster, more deadly versions of their previous form. Players have two options to prevent this from happening: decapitating a zombie when you initially kill it or burning its corpse with a fuel canteen and a lighter.
The sheer amount of tension-increasing decisions this change makes is staggering. Previously, as you progressed through the mansion you would analyze each fight, determining if it was worth it to clear a zombie out of a hallway or just save the ammo and run around it each time. Now, the choice to kill a zombie forces you to think more about how you want to do it. Should I wait for it to get close and hit it with a precious shotgun shell in the hopes I take its head off? Do I just put it down from a distance with my plentiful handgun bullets and use one of my few canteen charges to burn its body? Or the even more tense options, do I kill it, leave its corpse and deal with the consequences later? It’s the perfect evolution of the franchise’s iconic enemy that ups their difficulty and forces you to think even more about each time you run into one.
Obviously, this wasn’t the last time that Capcom remade an entry in this long and storied franchise. The remakes of RE2 and 3 decided to go a different route and update the game to a more modern third-person camera, bringing it in line with the RE4-6 style of gameplay. There were some great changes, like the stalker behavior of RE2’s Mr. X, that had big impacts on the design of the game, but I still can’t help but wonder if something was lost by giving the player more control of their view. Fixed camera angles give the developers so much authorial control over the tension in the game, while a player-controlled camera can sometimes cut into the “what’s around that next corner” feeling of the earlier games.
I don’t know if it would have been what players wanted, but the combination of the classic perspective with some more modern design sensibilities sprinkled in could have made for an experience more in-line with what made the originals, and the Resident Evil Remake, so great. It’s tempting for a remake to smooth off all the rough edges of its source material, but Resident Evil Remake knows exactly what to keep without losing its charm. While it won’t be possible to do with the upcoming Resident Evil 4 Remake, which already had the third-person controls modern players are used to in its original form, I would love for Capcom to take a risk and do a remake of Code Veronica in the classic fixed camera style as an experiment to see how audiences would take to it.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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