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.
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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