Editorials
Best PS4 Horror Games -The Finest Horror on Sony’s Juggernaut Console
What do we think the best PS4 horror games are? Bloody Disgusting lists the best horror on Sony’s juggernaut console.
The PS4 turned 5 at the end of last year. In that time it’s gone on to become the king of the consoles for this generation and Sony has produced a procession of critically-acclaimed exclusives that helped cement its place at the head of the table.
It’s also racked up an impressive roster of horror games, and in honor of this fifth anniversary, we’ve selected eleven of the best PS4 horror games from the last five or so years.
The Evil Within 2 (2017)
The original The Evil Within left survival horror fans with lofty expectations. After all, it was Shinji Mikami, the mastermind behind Resident Evil’s greatest entries, back in the genre with a brand new game. It frustrated in places, but there was no denying the deft touch of Mikami was present.
The Evil Within 2 dialed up the crazy and produced a far more inventive take on survival horror. Set inside a corrupted simulation of a small town, you face vicious monsters and an everchanging environment as you aim to cleanse the corruption and find the soldiers who were sent in before you.
The only real downside of The Evil Within 2 is its first-person sections, which take the tension of the stealth in the rest of the game and replaces it with wonky frustration. Thankfully, it’s a rarity.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017)
Not only is Hellblade a truly effective horror game, it’s also a mature and well-intentioned look at the effects of mental illness. The latter is what makes the former true, as the titular Senua sees and hears her personal demons everywhere, with the Dualshock controller’s speaker even emitting the whispers of multiple voices in her head (some are helpful, some malicious).
Senua’s trip to Helheim (the Norse realm of Hell) is fraught with physical dangers too, and her already fragile psyche is in peril every time she has to confront and attack the denizens of the underworld.
Yes, Hellblade is full of monsters and you literally go to Hell, but the true horror is in that mental health representation and how effectively it conveys the terror many go through on a daily basis.
Prey (2017)
Arkane has proved itself to be adept at building self-contained worlds filled with detail and depth with its Dishonored series. Prey certainly continues that with an intricate space station filled with inky alien beasts out to murder you. Oh, and some of them can mimic inanimate objects so you can’t look at a Coffee mug again without the temptation to lug a wrench at it.
The star of the show is Talos-I, the space station itself. A sprawling maze of corridors and departments filled with a variety of horrifying threats. In the tradition of System Shock and Bioshock, the environment does a great job of telling the story, allowing you to get on with making a stairway out of futuristic glue blobs to escape a monster that was a stapler five seconds ago.
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Capcom followed on from the success of Resident Evil 7 with a sublime reimagining of its 1998 classic, Resident Evil 2.
The game manages to be both a warmly nostalgic trip back to the height of survival horror greatness and a very good modernization of it. The switch to a behind the shoulder camera could have taken the tension and uncertainty created by the original’s fixed camera angles, but there’s an impressive mixture of sound and shadow that replicates the terror and panic anew.
Not only is Resident Evil 2 among the best PS4 horror games, but it’s also a top contender for best Resident Evil game.
Death Road to Canada (2018)
A hybrid of old-school text adventure and a top-down survival game, Death Road to Canada is a celebration of the zombie apocalypse that’s not afraid to take the piss out of it at every turn.
The meat of the game is looting locations whilst keeping the growing zombie horde at bay, but in between, you’re on that ‘Death Road to Canada’ and having random situations flung at you.
You might chance upon a crazed bear, or enlist the help of a lethal dog as a companion. Death Road to Canada is deliciously silly and yet still manages to recreate the panicked gorefest of post-apocalyptic survival. It may take you through a lot of survivors to get to Canada, but the journey is always entertaining.
Layers of Fear (2016)
First-person horror games where you’re relatively defenseless has been a winning trend in recent years, so to stand out from a growing crowd you have to do something pretty different.
Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear did just that with its consistently trippy, creepy horror set in a dilapidated mansion of a mentally-tortured painter. Every time you turn your virtual head, something has changed in the environment. Sometime’s it small, other times it’s big and bonkers.
There was no reliance on cheap scares or bloodletting, just a steady stream of unease. It stands out for doing something a bit classical in the realm of these best PS4 horror games.
Dying Light (2015)
Techland was all hype and shoddy trousers with previous open-world zombie co-op game Dead Island but in 2015 it released Dying Light and righted a lot of wrongs.
Dying Light refined its formula, threw in an attractive day/night system, and laid on a thick layer of parkour for good measure. The day brought swarms of sluggish undead to jump over and hack to pieces as you searched for supplies in the slums of a virus-ridden city. When night fell, a far nastier form of infected came out to play, and you’re the toy.
The adrenaline rush of escaping that first nighttime encounter by the skin of your teeth is among the purest horror moments in gaming this decade. It’s a more intimidating experience alone but played in co-op, Dying Light becomes a goofy, gory hoot. Throw in the vehicular madness of its expansion The Following and you’ve got the best pure zombie game around, and of course, one of the best PS4 horror games too.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
By the end of the previous console generation, Resident Evil was more successful than ever, but steering further and further away from what made it a survival horror force. The series needed a fresh start and in 2017, we got just that with Resident Evil 7.
Resident Evil 7 returns to a puzzle-filled homestead, a shift to first-person, and some of the most memorable villains Resident Evil has seen for some time. It’s clearly inspired by the likes of Texas Chainsaw in its grimy, Southern hostility, especially in its twisted Baker family.
Then there’s the series using virtual reality for the first time with Sony’s PSVR. The already intense opening hours take on a whole new level of terror when you actually feel like you’re in that crumbling backwoods home.
The Last of Us Remastered (2014)
Naughty Dog capped off the PS3’s lifecycle with perhaps the system’s best game. It was no surprise it found its way to Sony’s console successor soon after to be an easy pick for the best PS4 horror games.
Initially telling the story of Joel, a broken man surviving in the post-apocalyptic world where a fungus has mutated much of the population into vile monsters, The Last of Us then brings in Ellie, a teen girl who may hold the key to finding a cure. Joel reluctantly takes Ellie across America in search of the group who can test for the cure, but the pair bond via their shared traumas and the many close encounters with the infected and the less pleasant human survivors around.
Detention (2017)
This side-scrolling horror from Red Candle Games takes inspiration from real-life political issues in 1960’s Taiwan where martial law ruled all, and also takes on religious elements with Taiwanese culture and mythology. By blending these into one game, Detention is perhaps the closest a game has got to the Guillermo Del Toro school of horror storytelling.
The game focuses on the two remaining students trapped in a school due to an incoming typhoon. Things begin to get very strange and ultimately horrifying for the duo.
There’s nothing else on this list quite like Detention. It has a stumble towards the end, but for most of the time, it’s a slow-building cycle of dread and terror with a bit of a worthwhile history lesson thrown into the mix.
Until Dawn (2015)
Stuck in development hell for a long time, Until Dawn arrived to little fanfare, but before long, it gained a following and is repeatedly brought up when discussions concerning modern horror games arise, and for good reason. It’s clearly among the best PS4 horror games.
Until Dawn is a choose your own adventure meets teen slasher movie and in the spirit of the latter half, having an audience really ramps up the enjoyment factor. The cast of young things (including Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek) can all fall to the cruel hand of fate at multiple points in the story, giving the player the job of role-playing as director. If you wish to go traditional Final Girl route, that’s totally an option, but you can just as easily have a bleak no survivors playthrough or a relatively happy finale with the majority of the cast still breathing (but where’s the fun in that?).
The game takes an interesting turn or two with its plot and characters, and in doing so, it goes beyond simply being a homage to slashers and becomes a fantastic hybrid that remains one of the PS4’s best surprises.
Alien Isolation (2014)
Not only is Alien Isolation the best Alien anything in the last couple of decades, but it’s also the purest form of what made the xenomorph a terrifying entity since the original film.
Alien Isolation takes the gorgeous aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic as its inspiration too. Every clunky monitor and beige padded wall panel is represented when Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda boards the Sevastopol space station and discovers things are going south rapidly thanks to a rogue Xeno deciding to call the place home.
After an extended introduction to the space station, you finally meet the beast, and so begins hours of being hounded, watching every vent, dreading every ping of your motion tracker, and hiding under desks in a futile hope the slathering insectile bastard will leave you alone.
As if dealing with the xenomorph wasn’t bad enough, the remaining crew isn’t exactly friendly either, and the local android population has gone a tad haywire. You can shoot them of course, but that brings the unpleasant risk of the alien showing up.
The final hours take a slightly unpleasant turn, but it is at least in line with the balance of power found in the rest of it. The important thing to remember here is that Alien Isolation is still an utterly fantastic Alien experience in spite of any issues, and worthy of being called one of the best PS4 horror games.
Doom (2016)
Few games revel in their ultraviolence quite as much as Id’s 2016 reboot of Doom. This is a game that rewards the act of ‘Rip and Tear’, after all. As one angry soldier obliterates the minions of Hell whilst on Mars (naturally).
The fast-paced action sees Doom Guy display his full range of gory executions to each and every one of disgusting residents of the underworld for no other reason than he feels like it. What a guy.
Aside from being one of the best PS4 horror games around, it’s quite possibly the most metal video game in history, with a soundtrack that drives that point home like a fist down a demon’s throat. 25 years on from the original Doom, the series is still as relevant and exciting as it ever was, and 2016’s Doom is a big reason for that.
What do you consider the best PS4 horror games to be? Anything you’d add to this list? We’ll be expanding it in future so let us know!
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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