Editorials
How Repetition and Despair Are Created in Indie Horror Game ‘FAITH’
Imagine you are at home. You go outside and you start watching the buildings in front of you. Look deep into the details: the houses, departments, maybe some clothes stores, one restaurant, and a pub on the corner. The second house from the left has two big windows, one next to the other. This rather insignificant detail stays in your mind, because of reasons.
Now turn back, you forgot to pick up your mobile phone. You return your view to the street again and now the house has one window. “That’s funny,” you think, “I’m sure there were at least two windows there”. When you cross the street, you notice the pub on the corner is gone, too. You start grabbing your head with both hands. Something’s wrong. You turn around, decide it’s time to go home, lock every damn door and stay in bed. But guess what: your house isn’t in the place it’s supposed to be. Now it’s on the next street, on your right, with the same white walls and black roof. For some unfathomable reason this is happening, and you can’t do anything to change it.
When you start your short but intense ‘journey’ in FAITH, an indie horror game with a retro ZX Spectrum visual style, the sensation of everything moving happens in your first few steps. You leave your car in the middle of a highway and you walk into a forest. Each scene has some trees and maybe an object of interest, like a small fountain. Reaching the end of the current scene, you get into a new one and see yet more trees, this time with some rocks around. You think you should have tried another direction before, so you go back from where you originally came to find out that the fountain is gone and the trees are displayed differently. The screens change randomly, so does the way to the destination. If you add a huge and horrendous white spider which screams in Latin coming for you every now and then, the recipe for a small mental breakdown is right there.
Being in a maze or a non-linear path with an unclear destination could be a stressful activity itself. But if the maze is also changing while you are going through it, it’s madness. Our sense of direction can help us find the way to go, or at least make us feel secure about where we are standing on space. The lack of visual references eliminates this feeling of security, and anxiety begins to rise. Where to go now? Why are these puddles here? I was here a moment ago. What is this shriveled tree doing there? Luckily enough for us, this “section” doesn’t last long, when we find the mansion and its key we can stop listening to that terrifying music and tell that displeasing spider to go to hell.
Inside the mansion, this continuous change of perception doesn’t exist. The orange rooms, with small ‘touches’ of other colors in specific objects, are fixed. However, you have another resource for fear and restiveness. You are searching for Amy, the daughter of a couple who has been possessed by some evil spirit. ‘Nobody’ is home apparently, but you can feel a presence wandering around. In certain moments you will see two brief ‘cutscenes’ which show you the spirit in first person. The disturbing effect it produces is almost tangible. Aghast I walked between rooms when I was attacked and immediately killed. Then the cutscene started again. I reached another room, and was again slaughtered by this spirit. The same five seconds of cutscenes played again. This cycle repeated itself, again and again.
Usually, when you see a specific scary image or experience a unique jump scare, the effect produced starts decreasing as you see it repeatedly. You get used to the stimulus –this is called Habituation. Nevertheless, I never stopped feeling nervous every time I watched the cutscene. Was it because of the briefness of the moment? Maybe the image itself is disturbing enough and it doesn’t get old? The music and sounds wrapping the moment? No, it’s none of these possible answers. Actually, it’s a more deep and disturbing feeling: the sense of despair created by inevitability.
“Wait a moment”, you may exclaim. “You are speaking about a ‘game over’ scene, one that can be easily be avoided by just not getting killed”. Yes, you are right, my dear reader. However, that’s not specifically what I’m thinking about. You see, there are five different endings in FAITH. Without getting too much into spoilers’ territory, almost all of these endings have a tragic outcome. Only one has a kind of positive vibe, but when you think about the bigger picture, it’s more ambiguous than anything. How can we stop another possession like Amy’s before happening? How can we be sure this evil spirit won’t appear again, anytime soon? What’s the point in trying to stop it again, anyway? When you are in a cyclic journey and events begin to repeat themselves, even before you reach the “beginning” of the cycle, it’s hard not to feel a little lost. Both the first forest scene and these reiterative cutscenes made me wonder: what if we are doomed to repeat the same thing over and over again? We are trapped in this cycle, and maybe there isn’t a way out.
I honestly don’t know. Maybe the upcoming sequel of FAITH will tell us a different story.
FAITH is available on PC via itch.io
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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