Editorials
[Editorial] How ‘Paratopic’ Builds Terror Through Subversion
Before I sat down with the Steam release of Paratopic tonight, I squeezed in half an hour of Destiny 2. If Paratopic is a forbidden briefcase sat atop a nicotine-stained mattress, then Destiny is a gift-wrapped toy, torn open with glee as your family showers you with enthusiastic praise. Open that present, champ, it gasps at you, as alien heads pop like confetti streamers and numbers rise and hits of serotonin burst along synapses like bullets from a chamber. Destiny is a game designed for the player. Sleek and compulsive as a slot machine. Every rough patch sanded. Every sharp point corked. Every road the path of least resistance to uncomplicated, feel-good fun. Paratopic could do the same thing if it wanted. It knows how you work, and it knows what you’re used to. And just like all the best psychological horror, it’s going to use that knowledge to fuck with you.
It all starts out simply enough, though. In a chair. You can look around, but you can’t move. This isn’t unique to Paratopic, but the sense of claustrophobia as both your interrogator and the controls pin you in place is rarely this pronounced. Remember when we started being able to move our heads around in cutscenes, and how freeing that felt? Here, that snapshot sensation is spliced out in favor of its own negative. This tiny scrap of agency somehow feels more constricting than the comforting oblivion of a purely passive incarceration. You’re made aware that you could have control, just to reinforce your lack of it.
Then there are the voices. Give me clear speech and jittering, warped subtitles, and I might grin at the cute UI tricks you’ve got going on. Give me legible, plain text to translate a garbled, glitching voice, recognizable only for its wordless animosity, and I’ll start doubting my own senses. Even Outlast and Amnesia keep their soundscapes clear and crisp for warning signs; roars and deranged glee and telltale string swells; terrifying but clearly defined exclamation marks. Paratopic’s glitches and distorted bass patches only offer questions. We’re fairly certain what the thing that’s salivating in the dark can do to us if it catches up. Less knowable are the whims of whatever it is that’s hiding between the static.
The game is filled with props just malleable enough to pass dream logic muster; just alive enough to singe their mark on the yellowing fabric of these frayed vignettes, without ever offering the familiar comfort of easy interaction. An elevator that seems to resist gravity like a squeamish guillotine blade. Sinks splutter to life then refuse to work again. A toilet door is locked, but, why is that so surprising? It’s a toilet door. People lock it behind them, or else lock it because it’s no longer usable. You’ve tried once, and it didn’t work. Why would you keep trying? Of course, there’s nothing useful to collect in the cardboard boxes stacked high in your threadbare room. It’s your room, friendo. If there was something useful here, you’d have taken it with you already. These spaces and objects exist, but not for your entertainment, and certainly not for your convenience.
Paratopic: Definitive Cut Review
Then, there’s the driving. It doesn’t end when it should. It doesn’t even end after you feel it should have made its point. And suddenly, your progress craving gamer brain, trained on sugary loot drop loops, is distraught. You might start inventing superstitious rituals, looking for ways to progress. What if I turn the radio on and off? What if build up speed then crash into the side? There’s no choice, ultimately, but to follow the road to its destination. Maybe you’re forced to confront your own thoughts, sitting alone on a night drive to nowhere.
In his book In the Dust of this Planet, horror philosopher Eugene Thacker differentiates the human-centric ‘world for-us’ from the essential ‘world-in-itself’. This world-in-itself is a paradoxical idea, says Thacker, for as soon as we recognize it, or exert our influence upon it, it disappears, replaced by the world-for-us. However intangible, it remains, manifesting in disasters and other malevolent acts of nature that remind us of our own precarious place on the earth. Although we can grasp the concept ephemerally, we can never truly imagine the world-in-itself. Only a third scenario: The world-without-us. Neither hostile or neutral, but “a nebulous zone that is at once impersonal and horrific.”
Paratopia, to use Thacker’s terms, is not a game world for us. But neither is it a game world in itself. Through antagonism and subversion, it accommodates our presence without ever welcoming us, negating our existence even as it requires it to function. A gameworld-without-us. One in which we do not belong, yet will still lead us by the hand into silent madness.
Under that napalm sunrise where you’ll photograph blackbirds, the leaves don’t sway so much as writhe. Bright, pensive synths — strained but hopeful — seem to keep the dread at bay for a while, until you force yourself along the path, and a grime-flecked lens returns to swallow everything.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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