Editorials
The Craft of Fourth Wall Breaking Anxiety in ‘Doki Doki Literature Club!’
SPOILERS FOR DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB! FOLLOW.
Doki Doki Literature Club! opens on a warning. Not only does the game express that the experience is not suitable for children, but it also stresses caution for those suffering from anxiety and depression. The game asks you if you are old enough to play and consent to disturbing imagery; upon agreeing to this, you are brought to Doki Doki Literature Club!’s title screen. Four animesque girls stare at you as joyful music plays in the background.
On the surface Doki Doki Literature Club! comes across as a typical, anime-like romance visual novel. You play as a young schoolboy who is pushed by his friend Sayori to join their school’s literature club. Sayori, introduces you to Natsuki, Yuri, and Monika. The game has you reading numerous lines of text, including the thoughts of your character and how he interacts with the girls. Among small instances where you choose a dialogue option or the order of who you speak to, the player will also construct poems. In these segments, a variety of words will be laid out to pick from; each word you choose pleases a different girl, and depending on your choices, will open up additional scenes in the game.
The girls themselves come off like cookie cutter anime stereotypes; Natsuki is pushy and obnoxious, while Monika is the charming club president, and Yuri is the quiet one. The overall tone of Doki Doki is also very reminiscent of a cutesy anime; the animation style is buoyant, and the music caters to pleasant and uplifting vibes.
All of this, however, is meant to mislead the player, for in all actuality, Doki Doki is a fourth wall breaking nightmare.
After some time Sayori reveals to your character that she suffers from depression; the conversation makes for a sad moment, while also providing additional depth to the narrative. Later on, she also confesses her love to you; this is a very intimate moment with a plethora of emotions, given that you’ve learned of what Sayori is struggling with and how your character strives to be there for her.
The next day when you go to her house, you enter her bedroom to see that she has hung herself.
Nothing prepares you for the imagery of Sayori’s lifeless body and empty eyes as she hangs from her ceiling. The game then proceeds to “end,” sending you back to the title screen. Everything appears normal except where Sayori once stood; her character image is now scrambled.
At the beginning of the game Sayori was the first character introduced to you; when you “restart” the game, the beginning plays out in a similar manner, but with a big difference. This time, as our character talks about Sayori, her name and dialogue appear in abstract text characters. Things get weirder when she appears as a black box that rapidly shifts between images of the other girls, all before the screen blacks out and our character states it is just an ordinary school day.
The oddities don’t stop there, for Doki Doki continues to sporadically “glitch.” You may be talking with one of the girls when all of a sudden their text appears as random characters, or maybe their eyes have turned to blackened squares or their face has completely disappeared. There are conversations where Monika will begin to fade over the text as you’re talking to one of the other girls, blocking you from being able to read.
The experience of reading this story becomes more bizarre as Doki Doki juggles its dual tones; even after Sayori’s suicide and the moments of odd glitches, the game continues to play out to upbeat music, playful imagery, and carry on with the conversations of the literature club. You may spend a good amount of time with the game’s perky nature, to all of a sudden have a haunting image pop up before you (to then have things return to “normal”). Because of this back and forth, Doki Doki keeps the player in a constant state of anxiety.
After more time has passed the game finally reveals its major twist. Upon Yuri committing suicide, Monika “deletes” her and Natsuki’s files and the setting shifts; after an odd transition, you find yourself sitting across from Monika in the classroom, except this time the room has an amber hue to it, the windows looking out to an infinite cosmic space. Monika begins to share how she is self-aware of her existence in the game and how she wants to be with “you,” the player. From there she speaks to you about a variety of existential ideas concerning the game and other aspects of life.
Doki Doki then enters a unique fourth wall segment where you are just “sitting with Monika,” making for a bizarre interaction that stretches from the digital to the physical space. Sitting and listening to Monika presents this existential anxiety where the game is not only aware of you, but making an effort to be close to you.
If you attempt to quit the game, Monika will speak up, asking you not to leave, keeping you in the room with her. Eventually she does allow you to quit, giving you the opportunity to proceed towards the ending. The only way to end Monika’s many existential musings is to exit out and locate the game’s files; once you find Monika’s character file, you then have to delete it. Upon deleting the file, you see that she is beginning to disappear, the scene returning back to you with the other girls in the regular classroom setting. Sayori approaches you, and as the screen’s visuals start to glitch, she states she knows everything that Monika did, and she’s happy to have you all to herself forever. Monika intervenes, however, and as the credits begin rolling, she deletes the files of the game, sending you one last chilling goodbye before vanishing.
The inspiration behind Doki Doki Literature Club! for its writer and lead developer Dan Salvato came from his love/hate relationship with anime; in particular, he has felt at odds with the trope of how “cute girls do cute things,” and how this impacts the narrative for so many anime. And within Doki Doki Literature Club!, even before the big reveal with Monika, each girl is likable for these reasons; using cute tropes engages players with their understandings of these kinds of stories, all while preparing to subvert their expectations.
All of these elements are what allows the game to be an excellent work of deception. Doki Doki Literature Club! has the feeling of walking down a hallway cloaked in shadows and threatening danger, all while dressed in rainbows and flowing to delightful tunes. Under the facade of bright and whimsical characters lies a reality of despair and heartache; through the disturbing nature of the story, interacting with each character is as intimate as it is unsettling. Doki Doki Literature Club! is psychological horror that messes with players, forcing them to question the reality of its narrative and their role in it.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
You must be logged in to post a comment.