Editorials
The Creatures in Video Game ‘The Forest’ Are Absolutely Terrifying and We’re Not Okay With Them
We’ve seen some pretty spectacular monster designs in this year’s crop of horror movies, with two standouts being David Bruckner’s The Ritual and Alex Garland’s Annihilation. Both films feature truly unforgettable monsters that are some of the coolest in recent years, one a jaw-dropping human/animal hybrid and the other a nightmare bear. Cannot. Ever. Unsee.
But right up there with the monsters seen in those two movies, if you’re asking me, are the insane creatures that want to eat you alive in Endnight Games’ The Forest, an open world survival-horror game that was launched for Microsoft Windows back in April and for PlayStation 4 just last week, on November 6. A nonlinear game with no set quests or storyline missions, The Forest tasks you with surviving out in the wild (alone or with a friend) after a plane crash that deposits you onto an island that’s infested with hungry cannibals.
Those cannibalistic “Mutants” are the first threats you’ll find yourself battling in The Forest, but soon, other creatures begin emerging from the caves underneath your treacherous new home. The cannibals are easy enough to defeat, once you get the hang of properly swinging your homemade battle axe, but the larger boss-like monsters are a whole nother story.
And holy shit are they TERRIFYING, when they show up.
The game’s two most fearsome foes are the male “Armsy” and the spider-like female “Virginia,” both fleshy beasts that essentially each look like several human-monster hybrids that have been blended together in some nightmarish workshop. They each have multiple limbs fused together in Cronenberg’ian ways, and they’re nothing short of genuine nightmare fuel.
(Yes, I realize that term is way overused. But seriously. They are.)
I’ve only logged a handful of hours playing The Forest thus far so I’m not sure if there’s ever any kind of backstory established for these abominations, but man do they put the fear of God in your heart when they decide to mess your life up. Especially when it’s dark outside (and the game gets a bit *too* dark at night), one of these things darting out at you is liable to turn your shit white, and even the less-terrifying standard cannibal foes have the power to nearly make you lose bowel control when they suddenly start hunting you down. What makes all the game’s monsters even scarier is that they’re *smart*; they’re not just mindless monsters that attack, attack, attack, but rather they stalk, hunt and strike when you let you guard down.
If you’re just starting to play, a little word of advice. If you encounter “Armsy” or “Virginia,” set them on fire with a molotov cocktail. Once they’re charred and injured, they’re much easier to take down with, say, a super cool club that happens to be made out of the skull of a cannibal you just killed. When you slay one, be sure to skin it and score yourself some monster armor.
And whatever you do. Don’t… go out… at night.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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