Editorials
Breaking Down the Scariest Moments in the ‘Fatal Frame’ Series
We examine what makes the Fatal Frame games so terrifying, why they’re so important to the survival horror genre, and the series’ best scares.
Zombies. Aliens. Hideous Pyramid-Headed Beasts. There are plenty of frightening monsters that fuel the survival horror games that give us so much joy. As much fun as it can be to mow down these threats, the Fatal Frame series (or Project Zero, as it’s known in Japan and Europe) chisels out a very unique place for itself in the genre due to how it approaches its horror. In Fatal Frame, a camera is your only weapon and you have to allow the attacking ghosts to get right up in your face. In fact, Fatal Frame actually encourages you to let your enemies get as close as possible before you snap the flash because you’ll get a higher score and deal more damage that way, yet it also helps intensify this terror to its breaking point. The games also inherently force tension in the way that you explore the rooms and slowly navigate with your camera, shifting over to the first-person perspective. It’s a brilliant game design that finds a way to increase the fear while it also doesn’t compromise gameplay.
The tone of Makoto Shibata and Keisuke Kikuchi’s Fatal Frame series is also more representative of Asian horror cinema than any other survival horror video game series that’s out there (it’s pretty fitting that the director of the Japanese live-action Fatal Frame film also directed a Ju-on sequel). So if that’s your jam, then these atmospheric titles are absolutely for you. The original game also loosely pulls from real events for the inspiration of its haunted story. The environments that fill the games are usually something like an abandoned village or gothic, dilapidated Japanese housing, which is arguably creepier than something ornate like Resident Evil’s Spencer Mansion. It feels more residential and homegrown, like this horror hits at a personal level. It’s the kind of experience where something like surround sound and a proper audio setup really go a long way and were priorities during development.
The Fatal Frame titles requires you to take pictures of lost spirits with your Camera Obscura in order to capture their past pain and help them move on in the process. These ghosts are scary, but the Fatal Frame games always feature an extremely disturbing backstory for these plagued spirits. They often involve sinister cults or other dark territory, which finds a way to make these scary visuals more upsetting and even feel grounded. This isn’t just an outbreak that infects without discrimination. These are people who have been targeted and murdered for terrible purposes. It shines a light on the darkness of humanity in a way that many other survival horror titles don’t experiment with to such great detail. This gives every encounter so much more impact and you almost feel for the vengeful spirits that try to kill you. A random enemy in Silent Hill or Resident Evil is just acting out their impulses and has no agenda, but the ghosts in Fatal Frame have clear vendettas. These are usually accompanied by cut scenes that play out with a certain abrupt harshness. They almost feel like snuff films in nature. They’re quick, effective, and feel like they exist to creep you out just as much as they’re there to convey story beats.
One of the most rewarding aspects of the Fatal Frame games is how their controls continue to refine themselves with each new release and generation of gaming. The Wii’s Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse ups the formula with the Wiimote, and there were even Wii ports of Fatal Frame II, which further intensified its gameplay, but it was still clunky in some respects. The WiiU’s use of its Gamepad for the camera in Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water is also very brilliant and the best and more immersive application of the concept yet. It’s almost like what Takashi Shimizu intended with the Wii’s maligned Ju-on: The Grudge – Haunted House Simulator. Funnily enough, this camera/gamepad concept makes so much sense, it’s why people demanded a Pokemon Snap title on the console so much, but instead they got killer ghost photography instead.
There’s even a 3DS spinoff, Spirit Camera, that goes one step further and implements ARG aspects with the handheld’s camera and gyroscope to place you even further into the fear. A mobile game called Real Zero was also out for a few years, exclusively in Japan, that incorporated real-life environments and ARG effects where ghosts would be superimposed over the pictures that you take with your phone and clues to new ghost locations (or just creepy teases) would be texted to the player’s phone. It’s hard to think of any other survival horror titles that have been able to so effectively and appropriately evolve like that in a way where controls and fear increase together. Fatal Frame has tried to push the survival horror genre forward in many ways, but now let’s take a look at some of the series’ scariest moments.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – The Falling Woman
Fatal Frame II’s Falling Woman spirit is upsetting for a number of reasons. Apparently, this woman took her life by leaping off the top floor, yet her spirit is now trapped in a loop where she perpetually re-lives her suicide. This results in a very startling moment where you encounter the spirit fall (and scream) down the stairs. Accordingly, the fight that follows is also rather disturbing because it appears that this fall has broken her legs and possibly her arms. This means that the Falling Woman just has to drag her contorted body and crawl towards you to attack.
Fatal Fame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse – Face-Cutting Ritual
Fatal Frame IV gets its share of criticism, but it takes place in a freaking Japanese mental institution and hospital! Five girls were kidnapped and used to perform a ritual and years later the surviving three return to figure out what exactly they were a part of. It’s a very disturbing premise, albeit kind of wonky in execution. The game sees the large threat of many people on Rougetsu Island who will “bloom” into monsters after their deaths. The face-cutting ceremony is done to prevent this unseemly fate. When signs of “budding” take place, these bodies are closely observed until they’ve completely passed. Then a shrine guard will remove the corpse’s face with a blade because without a face there can be no blooming. It’s one of the more disturbing rituals from out of the Fatal Frame series, even if it does get performed posthumously.
Fatal Frame III: The Tormented – The Crawling Woman/Fatal Frame V: Maiden of the Black Water – The Tall Woman
Fatal Frame III’s Kiriko Asanuma, more popularly known as the Crawling Woman spirit is definitely one of the more effective jump scares from the title. This is a ghost that capitalizes on what makes so many of the creepy girls from “J-horror” stand out so much. She just crawls at you at an alarming rate and looks extremely angry as she does this. Fatal Frame V’s Tall Woman (also known as “Eight Feet Tall”) spirit resonates in the same way. This spirit is just supremely upsetting with her body proportions, odd appearances, and disturbing demeanor. Hell, the visual of this ghost is so alarming that it’s even spurred its own creepypasta and become it’s own Japanese Slenderman. Both of these spirits are strong examples where less is more. These ghosts’ iconic features get to speak for themselves and then they don’t overstay their welcomes.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – Woman in Box
So the developers have the game have fully admitted that the Woman in Box spirit is inspired by Sadako from the Ringu films, but even without that confirmation it’s pretty obvious. This long-haired spirit pries herself out of a small box and slowly moves towards you in exaggerated motions. It’s the ghost’s frightening appearance that’s the most effective thing about this enemy, but the fact that this woman perished with her newborn child and that there’s also a ghost baby in that box with her is extremely grim.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – The Cutting Ritual
Kusabi suffers a particularly gruesome fate due to a sacrificial ritual in Fatal Frame II. The stipulations of the Cutting Ritual require the sacrifice to be tied up and restrained by a number of ropes, then repeatedly slashed and mutilated. The more damage that the sacrifice takes, the more significance this offering has to the Hellish Abyss. It’s a lot. Beyond the horrific ritual itself, its victim also becomes quite the intimidating spirit. Kusabi, the Folklorist, can kill players in a single attack and is ostensibly invincible. He’s a major pain.
Fatal Frame – The Blinding Ritual
The original Fatal Frame features some of the most disturbing cult rituals from the whole series and it doesn’t hold back in the slightest. These rituals involve a number of different masks, all of which look scary in their own right, but it’s the Blinding Mask that’s the darkest of the lot. The Blinding Ritual shows that a child gets selected to become the next Blind Maiden, a process that helps once a decade. This “honor” involves wearing a mask that’s fitted with spikes that’s meant to blind the wearer. It’s a traumatic sight and the way in which the Blind Maiden screams for her eyes is an extra upsetting touch.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – The Broken Neck Woman
That’s’ right, the Fatal Frame franchise was playing around with a creepy Broken Neck Woman years before The Haunting of Hill House made this kind of thing such an infamous ghost scare. Fatal Frame II’s Broken Neck Woman is easily one of the most unsettling sights in the game and you only encounter her twice. Much like the Falling Woman, this is a woman who jumped to her death, but happened to land on her neck. This gives the spirit her haunting off-kilter aesthetic and it really sticks with you (as does the original Fatal Frame’s Broken Neck spirit).
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly –Akane and Azami Twin Doll
The Fatal Frame series as a whole gets a lot of mileage out of twins and dolls, but the Kiryu twins from Crimson Butterfly are one of the more depressing combinations of these ideas. The story behind these spirits involves Yoshitatsu Kiryu, an esteemed dollmaker, builds his daughter Akane all sorts of dolls to make her feel better over the loss of her sister, Azami, included a life-sized replica of her passed sister. Akane forms an unhealthy attachment with the Azami doll and then it doesn’t take long for this doll to get possessed by an evil spirit and operate on its own. The possessed doll makes Akane kill her father and then proceeds to take Akane’s soul, which is just devastating all around. They’re just a supremely alarming and terrifying duo to go up against.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – Sae’s Introduction In The Great Hall
Fatal Frame II contains an extremely unsettling cut scene where you stumble upon a room full of mangled corpses and introduces one of the game’s most deranged villains, Sae Kurosawa, the very worst kind of clingy partner who just can’t take no for an answer. Sae makes an incredibly memorable first impression, a lot of which has to do with her psychotic laugh, which has since become iconic in the Fatal Frame community. The character’s dangerous, unstable nature makes her highly unpredictable. It feels like maybe she doesn’t even fully understand what she’s doing.
Fatal Frame III: The Tormented – Rei Kurosawa’s House
Fatal Frame III messes with its formula and introduces the concept of the survival horror segments taking place in a dreamscape of sorts. This beautifully leads to the game’s best and most frightening moment that manages to be so effective because it’s such a deviation in form. During this seemingly safe sequence set in Rei’s home you don’t have your Camera Obscura to defend yourself and you’re so used to only encountering ghosts in the dream world up until this point. You slowly feel this sanctuary get invaded and become dangerous and it comes as such a shock. This throws all the rules out the window and keeps you guessing as to when spirits might strike. Just the concept of dreams alone makes this game feel like more of a prison. You can’t exit the dangerous areas until the game lets you, whereas in the other titles you could at least leave the tense areas if they became too much.
Fatal Frame knows how to make its scares count and where the real trauma lies. It absolutely deserves an HD Trilogy on current consoles more than a lot of other stuff that’s seen re-releases. It’s a rare series where many people don’t actually finish the games because they’re such a stressful, tense experience. They deserve another shot. With Fatal Frame games coming out as recently as 2014, it’s very possible that new games could still be on the horizon, perhaps even making use of the Switch’s capabilities or VR tech. There will hopefully be plenty more opportunities for this disturbing series to traumatize gamers in the future.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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