Editorials
A Brilliant Nightmare In Space: Celebrating 10 Years of ‘Dead Space’
We tend to talk a lot about horror nowadays having too many jumpscares; or how so many works throughout the genre are too “in-your-face” with violence, taking away from the suspense and dread of stories. There are plenty of titles in gaming that one can find this and wave their finger at, but there are also those titles that obtain a superb balance within action-horror.
One of those games is none other than Dead Space.
The first entry of the Dead Space trilogy celebrates its 10 year anniversary today. While its sequels would become those action-horror games with a greater emphasis on the former rather than the latter, the first Dead Space is a horrifying masterpiece.
Developed by the late Visceral Studios, Dead Space puts you in the shoes of Isaac Clarke, an engineer sent with a team to answer a distress signal. Said signal is coming from the USG Ishimura, where Isaac’s girlfriend also happens to be. Shortly after docking the Ishimura all goes to hell; Isaac and crew are attacked and split up by a Necromorph, the alien lifeforms responsible for the station’s devastation. It is then up to Issac to make every effort he can to reconnect with his crew and get out alive.
In a formalistic sense, Dead Space is a “run and gun” game; Issac is able to use a variety of weapons to take on the Necromorphs as he moves from objective to objective. That said, Dead Space is a unique experience that uses its atmosphere to amplify tension throughout its formalist structure. Even from the moment you enter the Ishimura there’s an air of dread; from the damaged rooms and smeared blood trails, there’s so much to take in (and with zero understanding of the situation). Even considering the initial Necromorph attack, the creature pursues you without skipping a beat; and once you finally escape it, you’re left alone in a foreign place without your crew. It’s just you and the various hisses and hums of pipes surrounding you; nothing but the cold steel of the station’s infrastructure; nothing but the dead bodies surrounding you, and the Necromorphs trailing you from the shadows.
For action games it is common to maintain a high speed in aggression; games will provide many opportunities to throw waves of enemies at the player, allowing them to swing their sword or shoot away. And while Dead Space offers this same idea, it executes it much differently, elevating the emotion of horror. So many horror-action games allow players to feel powerful thanks to heavy weaponry; Dead Space on the other hand, provides you with the weaponry, but continuously messes with the player’s senses. Brief visual and audio cues keep them on guard, balancing out periods of running to slowly creeping down halls.
The environment surrounding Isaac is one of Dead Space’s greatest qualities. The design feeds into the game’s tension and suspense; while Dead Space moves like a “run and gun” title, the player may find themselves hesitating from time to time. There are numerous moments where a shadow will scurry by, or there will be a random scream in the distance. These elements work to slow the player down, aiding to pace out the flow of the game.
The Necromorphs cannot be easily killed; you can’t just fill them with bullets, they must be dismembered to be defeated. So when the player controlling Isaac turns a corner and hears a sound and hesitates, they may turn around to find a swarm of Necromorphs behind them. The player is then forced into a situation where they need to react as fast as possible (while making sure to be careful with ammo). These predicaments exude anxiety, the player cornered and panicking as they strive to survive.
Survival is key, for the wrong move will surely lead to horrific results. Dead Space has some of the most satisfying, grotesque gore I’ve witnessed in a video game. Not only is dismembering the Necromorphs brutal, but all of Isaac’s death sequences are explicitly detailed. Being torn apart comes with gruesome detail as ligaments and blood spew about the environment. The gore and violence make Dead Space one of the most visually provoking games in horror.
Dead Space is very much in the vein of films like Alien; the latter a masterful horror/sci-fi film with action elements, effectively pacing out its on-screen violence. Dead Space also shares many similarities to that of Event Horizon; in this case, the latter is a tremendous gem of psychological horror/sci-fi. Within Dead Space and Event Horizon there’s a focus of psychological instability, both deriving from some ancient artifact. In the second half of the game, this psychological component begins to grow over time, presenting a new anxiety and horror while battling the Necromorphs. Without going into spoilers, characters throughout Dead Space slowly begin to lose their sanity (with Isaac facing some effects as well).
There have been a few action-horror games that have captured that balance of violence and emotion like Dead Space. F.E.A.R. is a major example of course, as it’s a first person shooter that also effectively measures out suspense through its action pacing. That said, many titles continue to pursue the traditional elements found within action games, having the player pick up powerful weapons and plow their way through enemies.
In Dead Space, terrifying detail comes together with formalist gameplay to present an ominous experience capable of establishing unease within players. While its structure may appear simple at first, the more you play, you will soon realize the depths of madness the game offers. Maybe one day we’ll see a reboot or another sequel that honors the mechanics and atmosphere of the original entry; for now, Dead Space stands as a testament to how action-horror titles are capable of establishing adrenaline, anxiety, and dread.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
You must be logged in to post a comment.