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.
Editorials
Tales from ‘Tales from the Crypt’: Exhuming The Final Season’s “A Slight Case of Murder” Episode
All good things must come to an end—yes, even Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996). That iconic horror show finally concluded after airing ninety-three episodes. As we all know, traditional anthologies aren’t too common to see on TV anymore, much less be that long, so this kind of endurance is even more impressive.
Now, I would be remiss to not bring up how very off that last season felt, in comparison to past ones. If not for the Crypt Keeper’s bookends, it was like a different show at that point. Essentially, it was when you assessed how much had changed. Producer Gilbert Adler was responsible for those divisive renovations; his moving production to England was an attempt to give Crypt “a shot in the arm”. What he instead did was create obstacles for both himself and the series. Some could be overcome, whereas others were less yielding.
Fans decry Season Seven, but in all fairness, Season Six wasn’t all roses, either. And like Six, Seven does have a few bright spots. The move to merry England couldn’t completely undo what we love about the series. Yes, there was a decline in gore; the dial had especially been turned down on those big, bloody conclusions we all love. It must be said, though, that the final season was hardly the only one to be gruesome-lite. Plenty of past episodes also did without copious amounts of the red stuff.
At the time, traveling abroad may not have been seen as a bad thing. The new season was off to a strong start, based on favorable reactions to the premiere. The Natasha Richardson-starring opener, “Fatal Caper” (Bob Hoskins, Colman deKay, A. L. Katz, Gilbert Adler), is as ridiculous as it is clever. However, it would soon become apparent that not everything to come in Season Seven was up to the same standards as that first episode. It was going to be a bumpy ride, to say the least.
Most will agree that the seventh season wasn’t a complete bust. The blood-soaked “Horror in the Night” (Russell Mulcahy, John Harrison) is atmospheric and trippy; there, a jewel thief (James Wilby) experiences a nightmarish evening while hiding out in a haunted hotel. Then there is what many consider to be the season’s standout, and perhaps even the last great episode of the series. In the gritty “Confession” (Peter Hewitt, Scott Nimerfro), a detective (Ciarán Hinds) suspects a screenwriter (Eddie Izzard) is behind a string of murders. Although it is a strange way to end things, “The Third Pig” (Bill Kopp, Pat Ventura) also has its admirers; this animated entry is a demented new spin on the classic fairytale “The Three Little Pigs“, as opposed to anything out of EC Comics‘ vault.
Another fine episode is “A Slight Case of Murder”, which I find a bit lighthearted for Tales from the Crypt. In spite of all the killing, of course. It also makes good use of the scenery change; an upside of the show’s relocation is the real estate. A Tudor-style home sits at the heart of this amusing episode, written and directed by Brian Helgeland (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, 976-EVIL). Cozy mystery lovers should be quite smitten with the story’s choice of venue.
A common complaint about Season Seven is its lack of star power. Gone were the days when anyone who was anyone in Hollywood stopped by and played a role. That said, it wasn’t as if the series was now just hiring nobodies off the street; the problem was that many American viewers weren’t as familiar with the new casts. “A Slight Case of Murder” was such a case, given how Francesca Annis, Elizabeth Spriggs, and Christopher Cazenove weren’t exactly household names in the States. Naturally, the English would have an easier time recognizing the leads of this and other Season Seven episodes.
“A Slight Case of Murder” is an example of a crabby author getting what’s coming to them. Generally speaking, the horror genre has never cared much for depictions of kind writers. And here, Annis plays that rather irritable novelist whose next bestseller is at risk of being published posthumously. After brilliantly insulting her neighbor, an aspiring author named Mrs. Trask (Spriggs), Sharon Bannister detects a prowler. She then takes no comfort knowing the intruder is just her ex (Cazenove). He’s not here to reminisce about old times.
The last page from “A Slight Case of Murder!”, as seen in EC Comics’ The Vault of Horror.
The episode, while amusing, feels like it belongs in another anthology. The one I’m thinking of, on account of the British actors and the story being centered around jealousy, is Tales of the Unexpected. That series, by the way, also eventually went overseas; some later episodes cast Americans and were set in the U.S. So, yes, “A Slight Case of Murder” isn’t a thing like classic Crypt, but it is awfully charming.
By now, no one should be shocked to learn that an episode of Tales from the Crypt is different from its basis. In fact, the “A Slight Case of Murder!” found in EC’s The Vault of Horror bears no resemblance to Helgeland’s adaptation. An old doctor returns to his hometown to solve a bunch of murders—the victims were all women. At each crime, there was no sign of a break-in, seeing as how the women’s doors and windows were locked from the inside. The sheriff says the only other way in, in one case, was a hot-air vent. He concludes no human could have fit through that, but the doctor suggests the culprit is “not an ordinary human”.
The doctor meets with the sheriff at an old house formerly known as the Bates Mansion. Yet before revealing the killer’s identity, the doctor tells a story about a local widow named Amelia Bates. After her newborn turned out to be—and I’m merely quoting writers Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein—a “misshapen monster”, Amelia asked the doctor to tell everyone her child was a stillborn. She kept that underdeveloped, slithering boy a secret from everyone; only the doctor knew.
Years later, that same child went on to murder a series of women. All of whom rejected his love. And who, pray tell, did that baby become? The town’s sheriff, that’s who! The last frame of the comic, one showing the sheriff’s hidden mechanical body, is so startling that it’s actually disappointing that Tales from the Crypt didn’t properly adapt this story. It would have fit in so well with the older seasons.
As they say in the biz, the show must go on—and Tales from the Crypt did just that, even when the quality had noticeably dropped. But like I always tell myself during the lesser episodes, any Crypt is still better than no Crypt.
Along with Seasons One through Six, Season Seven of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 12.
A delightful shot from “A Slight Case of Murder” suggests Elizabeth Spriggs’ character, Mrs. Trask, is more devilish than she first seemed.
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