Editorials
Hands-On With ‘The Evil Within’
For horror fans, The Evil Within is a pretty big deal. This is because of a bunch of reasons, but a majority of it stems from some extremely high expectations for the team behind it, as well as the commonly held belief that AAA horror is either dead or dying, depending on who you ask.
With so few big budget horror games on the way and the remaining kings (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space) either dying slow deaths or losing much of what made them special in the first place, The Evil Within stands out as a potential “savior” for the survival horror genre. Many hope the game will “bring back” survival horror, at least in the now depressingly desolate AAA space.
Looking at the gaming industry as a whole, you would think that horror, in all its myriad forms, is not only alive, but flourishing. And that’s because it is.
This is entirely thanks to a steadily increasing number of indie horror games from talented developers of various sizes and backgrounds. They range from passion projects from one and two-person teams (Neverending Nightmares, Homesick), to ambitious debuts from small studios (Among the Sleep, The Forest), to horror games from established developers (Daylight, Until Dawn).
I could go on, but that would probably be redundant.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that The Evil Within has a lot of people excited, that Mikami has a lot to prove, and that maybe, just maybe, we should all stop looking for a savior for the genre and instead enjoy games like this for what they are. Because you know what? While I wouldn’t go so far as to label Mikami’s return to horror as revolutionary, it’s still very much something that’s worth getting excited about.
For the uninitiated, The Evil Within is a survival horror game developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda, the latter of which I still refer to as the House of Doom, partly because of the series of shooters, but mostly because it sounds cool.
It’s the first game from Tango, which was established by Shinji Mikami — a name Resident Evil fans might recognize as he’s largely credited for both creating the iconic series back in 1996 and rebooting it in 2005 with the gargantuan success that was Resident Evil 4. Mikami has spent a significant portion of his impressive career making Resident Evil games, and it shows in his work.
Earlier this month, Bethesda flew me and a bunch of writers out to Los Angeles to get some hands-on time with the game. Having been looking forward to The Evil Within since its reveal last April, it took me all of five seconds to throw my journalistic integrity out the window and accept the offer to fly out to L.A., stay in a swanky hotel, and play a game I’ve been dying to get my hands on for a little over a year. It sounds boastful, but I’m only being transparent. All that was on Bethesda’s dime, and while I don’t believe it had any impact on my opinion of the game, it’s still something you should know.
Enough foreplay, let’s talk about the game.
Once I was finally sitting comfortably in my seat, surrounded on three sides by a black curtain that separated me from the view of the other games journos, with a desk in front of me, I was ready. My body was ready.
The computer monitor was big enough to make me ache for one like it at home, the headset was top-notch, and while there was a mouse waiting for me, I instead elected to go with the controller. Shut up, PC master race.
There were two demos available to play, and after I chose the first one I was greeted with four difficulty options: Casual, Survival, Nightmare, and Akumu. Only the first two were available, so I went with Survival. When I was finished playing the game, I asked one of the random Bethesda badged passersby what it was. With an almost mischievous grin on his face, he told me it was nearly impossible to beat. I think I’ll be taking you up on that when October comes around, thankyouverymuch.
The first demo starts off a few hours into the game and opens with Sebastian and Jiminez — the doctor seen tagging along in the above video (at the 1:29 mark) — who are searching for a boy named Leslie. After a brief cut-scene establishes that, I’m free to take over and seek out my first victim: a large, gurgling man who’s wrapped in chains like a dirty Christmas tree and entirely oblivious to my presence.
In an effort to get a look at his face, I cautiously creep up behind him, gun drawn, until he notices me and begins to slowly turns around. He looks like any of the many ‘villager’ type enemies we’ve seen scattered about all of the game’s trailers. A bulbous body covered in damaged flesh that’s clearly been dead for some time, as it lacks the color a living person would have.
There’s an underlying theme of pain that permeates The Evil Within’s selection of enemies. Every one of them looks like it had been tortured using chains, spikes, barbed wire, or some combination of the three. The body horror doesn’t end there, as all of them have also been mutilated and disfigured, with parts of their face having been removed, crushed, or torn.
It’s unsettling to say the least, and the creep factor is only elevated by their glowing eyes and the inhuman sounds each emits — including, but not limited to growling, wheezing, and howling.
Once I was sure the area was clear of enemies, I decided to start inspecting. The inventory wheel, which slows down — but doesn’t stop — time when accessed held dedicated spots for a number of items and weapons, many of which can be easily mapped to the d-pad for quick use while in combat.
The weapons I had available to me included a pistol, shotgun, combat knife, syringes, grenades, and a nifty weapon the game referred to as the Agony Crossbow (more on that in a bit).
The syringes are used to heal Sebastian, with each use replenishing a portion of the health bar. There are also med packs that can be found and used to completely refill one’s health as well as offer a small increase to Sebastian’s maximum health. The only downside to using one of these is it renders Sebastian temporarily incapacitated, so you’ll want to use it in a safe place.
Sebastian’s arsenal of weapons should be pretty familiar, assuming you’ve spent any real amount of time playing shooters. The one that differs from the rest is the Agony Crossbow, which offers a significant amount of strategy to the game’s combat.
If you have time, firing its many different types of bolts can be used as traps. For example, firing an electric bolt at a wall turns it into a proximity trap, which electrically immobilizes the first passersby (not including Sebastian). If you don’t have time, the crossbow can also be used like any other weapon, though firing shots requires a short charge to increase its efficacy.
If you’re feeling creative, the crossbow’s ammunition comes in a plethora of flavors, including flash bolts, explosive bolts, freeze bolts, harpoons, and the aforementioned electric bolts.
It’s easily my favorite weapon.
A few minutes into the first demo introduces me to a large bloody room filled with corpses, rusty walls, and so much blood. It looks like a scene out of Silent Hill’s Otherworld. It’s also covered in various tripwire traps, that Sebastian can either duck and walk under, evade entirely, or take the time to disarm them for supplies.
Just be warned that in choosing the latter option, failure can seriously injure Sebastian.
When I tried to go for the exit — because I’m weird and bloody, corpse laden rooms creep me out — Ruvik (the hooded bad guy we’ve seen in a few of the game’s trailers) appears and summons some a horde of the bad guys.
I dispatch them, though not without some effort (and at least one death). When I make my way through to the next level, I see something that sends the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. It’s the room where RE-Bone Laura — the four-armed blood witch — crawls screaming out of a puddle of blood. I am so no ready for this.
And of course, once I draw near enough, she comes. Knowing I won’t survive a close encounter, I immediately run in the other direction, which turns into a long and ridiculously intense — though strangely easy — chase scene. The most unsettling part about the whole thing were the sounds she made as she slowly creeped up behind me. It was bizarre.
That marked the end of the first demo. Sweaty and anxious, I booted up the next.
The second demo starts off in Chapter 8, with a very brief dream-like sequence that has Sebastian walking through a dark wooded area, blurred somewhat by a hefty noise filter. Ruvik appears, as he does, then it’s back to the “normal” world.
This would become the first of many times I’d get to see Ruvik, one of my least favorite things about an other wise incredibly promising horror game.
Chapter 8 starts off in the woods outside of a large mansion, lead by an expansive, albeit untidy, courtyard. I was almost immediately reminded of the Spencer estate from the original Resident Evil, and that feeling was only heightened when I went inside.
The layout is almost like a homage to that mansion. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was deliberate, seeing as it’s been done it before in the Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares and again in Resident Evil 6.
The two-story mansion is almost completely open to exploration, with its many wings and elaborately detailed rooms marked with the glimmer of the occasional collectible item. I came across a piano in one, and as I passed it I half expected ghostly fingers to start playing “Moonlight Sonata”.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
The goal isn’t immediately apparent, but it becomes so after some exploration. I liked this level a lot. It was creepy, brimming with atmosphere, and there aren’t too many enemies.
What there is, is a fun room with huge double doors that suddenly open, revealing massive spinning blades, that drag Sebastian into their screaming maw, forcing an extremely quick response from the player. This thing killed me twice.
This is the first are with a series of puzzles that make you think. They’re not terribly difficult, but they are gruesome.
The goal of this level is to get through this big metal door that has three locks, with each corresponding to a puzzle that’s been hidden at a different part of the mansion. Naturally.
I won’t spoil anything, but the puzzles themselves revolve around discovering what part of a brain needs to be poked with a needle. The only thing is this brain is very much attached to a living head that squirms and makes facial expressions as you poke and prod your way to the puzzle. I found myself apologizing more than once after making a mistake.
Getting through the mansion is easy enough — it’s the annoying, and seemingly random, appearances of Ruvik, who’s either a an interdimensional being or a (dangerous) spirit. He’ll randomly appear, begin walking toward you Jason Voorhees style, and if he manages to catch up, he’ll sap all of your health. If you manage to avoid him for 15 seconds, he just disappears. It’s annoying, cheap, and entirely unscary.
I can tell Ruvik is almost definitely going to be the main baddie in this game, and that really bums me out. I’ve never been a big fan of enemies in games that A., can’t be killed, B., chase you every-goddamn-where, and C., kill you instantly or deal an unfair amount of damage. This guy has all of the above. Let’s get rid of that.
I noticed a few new features during my time with the second demo that will likely appeal to fans of Resident Evil 4. In that game, when you’re low on ammo, you have options. In The Evil Within, you do too, and they’re a lot of fun.
Scattered about the game’s world are bottle, which can be thrown as distractions for enemies. They can also be thrown at an enemy’s stupid, malformed face, causing them to stagger, giving you a very small window off opportunity to walk up to them so Sebastian can proceed to ventilate their face with his combat knife.
That’s right, there are contextual executions, and they can be used on enemies that are either stunned or unaware of your existence behind them. You can even pick up an axe dropped by the guy who’s face you just poked a hole in to use it on his friends. It’s fantastic.
The Evil Within is a great horror game. It’s flawed, but it’s also a work-in-progress. I greatly enjoyed my time with it, even if to get a better grasp on its still very bizarre story. If you’ve been looking forward to this, keep doing that. It’s going to be good.
The Evil Within releases for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on October 21.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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