Editorials
[Editorial] It’s Time For Capcom to Bring Back ‘Dino Crisis’
Public Service Announcement: Dinosaurs are badass! They’re big, they’re toothy and they come equipped with all manner of fascinating adaptations, making each of them feel idiosyncratic and unique. For instance, did you know that the Parasaurolophus had a weird crest on its head that served as an inbuilt resonating chamber? More than just ornamentation, this evolutionary tool enabled the funky-looking herbivore to amplify its warning call and alert the herd to potential threats.
I mean come on, how awesome is that!? It’s no wonder that our culture has such an enduring obsession with these animals when they’re all so visually interesting and have these unique behavioral traits. Dinosaurs are just way cooler than anything we could dream up, hence why they keep popping up everywhere in our media landscape.
Secondary PSA: Resident Evil is also badass! Although it’s not quite the earliest progenitor of survival horror (depending on who you ask, that distinction belongs to either Sweet Home, Clocktower, or Alone in the Dark), it’s generally accepted to be the one that got the ball rolling and established many of the genre’s long-standing conventions. Put bluntly, it’s a masterclass in everything from level-design, to puzzles, atmosphere and – the most crucial ingredient of all- scares.
So to reiterate, Resident Evil is more-or-less the pinnacle of human achievement and Dinosaurs are pretty neat as well. Pairing them together is, therefore, a no-brainer and the result of such a union would is guaranteed to be something special. Indeed, if we were in the Victorian Gentry, we would call them an ‘Advantageous Match’’ and get them hitched before one of them died of cholera or something.
They simply fit together. I mean just picture it: the undisputed apex of horror gaming being given a Michael Crichton paint job. The design document practically writes itself! How has no one jumped on this already?
Well, actually they have. You see, way back in 1999, the industrious folks over at Capcom recognized the potential of this concept and produced the criminally overlooked Dino Crisis. Granted, it was a basically a shameless reskin of Resident Evil, featuring near-identical mechanics and story beats (Same hapless special forces team, same fixed camera-angles, same scavenger hunt gameplay loop, same window-based jump scares). However, the salient point is that it had a fucking T-Rex in it and that goes a long way in my book.
Moreover, it was an effective little horror title in its own right, suggesting that the franchise would eventually grow out of its forbear’s shadow, a promising quality that was retained for its sequel approximately one year later. Indeed, Dino Crisis 2 was a thoroughly decent stab at building upon the first game’s momentum and signaled a bright future ahead for the burgeoning series.
Unfortunately, everything then came crashing down with the spectacularly misjudged third offering. Falling flat on its face by trying to reinvent the wheel, this franchise-killing catastrophe was crippled by an ill-fitting space theme, fiddly platforming sections, irritating navigation and an unwieldy camera that was intent on sabotaging the player at every turn. The end result was so bad that it ultimately relegated the series to a state of dormancy from which it has yet to recover.
Now for the record, Dino Crisis 3 is fully deserving of its bad reputation and you could even argue that it warranted a lengthy timeout for the franchise. But it’s been over 15 years since and Capcom has still not been given a chance to redeem the brand. Therefore, a comeback is long overdue.
On that note, the climate is ideal for a revival, as we’re currently in the midst of a veritable horror boom, courtesy of indie breakouts like Outlast, FNAF and Slender. Hell, even the AAA sphere is starting to take notice. Meanwhile, Dinosaurs are all the rage in pop culture right now, what with the Jurassic World films proving to be incredibly lucrative at the box-office and Ark: Survival Evolved demonstrating that the creatures have a strong appeal on the virtual front. Not to mention that PSOne nostalgia is in full effect, so why not strike while the iron is hot?
If you want concrete proof that this is the opportune moment, then look no further than Resident Evil, which recently staged a fierce comeback of its own, with the fantastically old-school RE:7. In fact, while we’re on the subject, that game could function as a useful template for a new Dino Crisis. After all, it beautifully showcases the benefits of taking a horror series back to its roots and reemphasizing the sense of powerlessness that made it so successful in the first place.
You could even go down a similar path by updating Dino Crisis to be a first-person stealth horror, ala Outlast. Think about it, there aren’t many dinosaur games out there at the moment and the ones that do exist are invariably combat-oriented. Stripping you of your capacity to fight back (or at least reducing it) would, therefore, be a fresh take on the material, leading to something that’s along the lines of Alien: Isolation, but with the Xenomorph swapped out for Velociraptor!
There are so many tantalizing scenarios that you could devise from this premise like you could emulate the nerve-wracking kitchen scene from Jurassic Park. Or you could capitalize on the (scientifically disputed) idea that a T-Rex’s vision is movement-based, and formulate some clever stealth sections around that concept. Whatever comes to mind, the possibilities are endless. Doing this would also inject some life back into the increasingly stale ‘’hide-and-seek’’ sub-genre, by giving us something new to hide from, instead of just more Slenderman clones and P.T Knock-offs.
Of course, you wouldn’t have to resort to such a radical change if you didn’t want to. In fact, you wouldn’t necessarily have to alter anything, as Dino Crisis has aged surprisingly well, with many of its ideas feeling curiously modern and ahead of the curve. For example, it already has a Last of Us crafting system, interlocking level-design that recalls Dark Souls, and an ingenious mechanic that has you activate laser grids in order to barricade yourself away from enemies (much like you would in Amnesia).
Come to think of it, you could probably get away with a straightforward remastering and it would still be a worthwhile endeavor. Perhaps that would be the best way forward, as it would allow Capcom to test the waters and see if there’s a real appetite out there for more of this series. I for one certainly hope that there is because this is one franchise that did not deserve to go extinct so prematurely.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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