Editorials
[You Should Play This] ‘Layers of Fear’ Unravels an Increasingly Disturbing Mystery
“You Should Play This” focuses on modern horror games worth your time and attention.
The first-person perspective is a keen favorite for the makers of modern horror video games. After all, not knowing what might be there when you turn around is an essential tactic for instilling fear and dread, and it means you can load stuff behind the player’s back too!
Few games embrace that latter part quite as well as Layers of Fear. Pretty much every time you look again at something behind you, it’s changed in some way, and while not a bloody or aggressively terrifying horror game, it’s very good at ratcheting up the disorientation and unease.
The resurgence of horror as a video game genre has been predominantly down to indie developers simplifying the process and taking horror back to the basics whilst using the strength of their interactivity to play on players fears in far more cerebral ways rather than chucking body parts at them, and this game is definitely a part of that.
Layers of Fear comes from Bloober Team, a Polish game developer whose last outing into horror was creating the horrific BRAWL (horrific because it was a terrible game rather than anything upsetting psychologically. Well…a bit). Noting was really expected of Layers of Fear as a result, even if the pitch did sound rather interesting.
The plot to this psychological horror game sees you in the paint-specked shoes of a troubled artist who is trying to complete his magnum opus painting. In fact, your first task upon entering his creaking, sprawling homestead, is to seek out the unfinished art and continue it. A few brushstrokes in and our tortured artist begins to have some trippy hallucinations that seem to stem from the secrets behind this masterwork.
It’s from here that Layers of Fear sets its stall out as a veritable headfuck machine, as it plays with perspective and that aforementioned fear/dread of what might be over your shoulder. All while unraveling an intriguing, and increasingly disturbing, mystery as to the source of the painter’s woes.
There’s a very basic fetch quest dynamic to each of the game’s six chapters. Each has an item at the end that ties into the completion of the painting, and along the way, more of the story behind that painting is uncovered. Of course, the journey is often more interesting than the destination, and Layers of Fear really makes its journeys memorable bites of psychological horror.
Despite starting life before P.T. was even a surprise teaser, Layers of Fear shows that P.T. is, in fact, the most relevant horror game of the modern era to discuss when considering horror’s current evolution in video games. Its clever manipulation of perspective and disorientating world shifts is the backbone of a new breed of psychological horror-led games that play tricks with the player.
It’s pretty clear early on that the artist’s own psychological problems have an effect on what he sees in his home. Each time you turn your head in Layers of Fear, you invite it to manipulate the painter’s mansion while you’re not looking. Rooms change entirely, corridors loop endlessly, words are scrawled on walls, objects move unseen and paintings shift and change before your eyes.
You never quite trust that the next time you turn around, something hasn’t changed, even if it is in the subtlest sense. The changes to rooms are often impressively clever in design and are done in such a way that you never feel sure that you’re the one controlling things. One thing is for certain though, Layers of Fear is never done messing with you.
Your interaction with the house may be as simple as opening doors, drawers and examining items, but like the best ‘walking simulators’, the real interactivity is discovering what’s around you and why. Jump scares are thankfully kept to a minimum (and are the weakest parts of the game). There’s some wild imagery thrown about during your time in the artist’s house, but it’s honestly remarkable how restrained the horror is most of the time.
The build-up to the more unsettling and trippy moments in Layers of Fear comes in slow-drip form. The small tweaks to the visuals escalate into some striking scenes (the child’s bedroom set-piece manages to be mesmerizing and creepy in equal measure) of psychosis-induced delirium, and as you uncover the story behind the artist’s obsession it only gets more intense.
To say much more spoils the experience immensely. Going in as cold as possible hugely benefits Layers of Fear and its approach. I will say the Inheritance DLC, that takes a time jump forward to tell the story of the artist’s daughter and her return to this seemingly cursed home, adds a much-needed second perspective on events, even though it lacks the same impact as the main game. It’s still short and important enough to be worth supplementing the main story with.
Layers of Fear is the kind of horror I wanted more of in this current era of video games. The sort that goes out of its way to disorientate, manipulate and unnerve you at every turn without screaming it in your face with gore and gaudiness.
You can find Layers of Fear on PC, Mac, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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