Editorials
‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ Sequel Has a Horror Vibe and We’re Here For it
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is getting a sequel that looks scarier every time I watch the trailer.
The brief tease that Nintendo unveiled at the end of their E3 2019 Direct video presentation on Tuesday, revealed a Hyrule that is largely unchanged, and yet, completely different.
The Zelda games have often used art style as a shorthand to indicate continuity — Majora’s Mask reused assets from Ocarina of Time (allowing for a breathtakingly quick year-and-a-half turnaround time); Phantom Hourglass, the DS sequel to The Wind Waker, adopted its predecessor’s cel-shaded style; and A Link Between Worlds recreated the map of its classic precursor, A Link to the Past. “Breath of the Wild 2” looks to be no different; its graphics, as seen in the trailer, are virtually indistinguishable from those used in the first game. Additionally, a quick glimpse of Hyrule shows the same prominent castle and rolling green hills that defined BOTW’s landscape. Link and Zelda even sport the same blue clothing they wore last time around.
So, on the one hand, this is clearly a sequel.
But, as a mood piece, this first look suggests a very different kind of game. The trailer finds Link and Princess Zelda (who now sports shoulder-length hair, the symbolism of which this article does a good job of unpacking) with torches in hand, inspecting the runes along the dark rock walls in a cavern seemingly located below Hyrule Castle. The oozy black malice that flowed from Calamity Ganon in the previous game seems to have vanished entirely on the surface, but remains active (if in diminished capacity) underground. A dried out body, which fans speculate is the corpse of Ganondorf (though it resembles one of the ancient monks, who once would have congratulated Link upon the completion of a shrine), is shown surrounded by tendrils of malice. A neon bright severed arm juts from his chest. His neck snaps toward the camera; his eyes lighting up with an orange glow. Above ground, the earth around Hyrule Castle shakes, sending birds flying noisily away.
In short, to quote Ikumi Nakamura, it’s spooky.
Throughout its 33-year history, The Legend of Zelda series has been many things to many people. Majora’s Mask is horror with an impressively bold central conceit. Wind Waker is an almost ageless, surprisingly open (and waterlogged) world. Link’s Awakening is indelibly strange. And Breath of the Wild is as fervently beloved as it is for pulling off the lightning-in-a-bottle feat of making exploration feel truly adventurous; like anything could be waiting for, just out of sight.
In Breath of the Wild, it felt like anything was possible, in large part because so much truly was. If you were confronted with a chasm, you could chop down a tree to bridge the gap and walk across. If you needed to scale an unclimbable barrier, you could blow yourself up. If you wanted to kill a giant sand monster with a swarm of chickens, you could. Many small decisions added up to the Hyrule of BOTW feeling uniquely ripe with potential.
But, I’ve played Breath of the Wild. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into exploring its nooks and crannies; hunting its expansive map in dogged pursuit of Korok seeds and shrines and dragon lairs across multiple playthroughs on both consoles it released on. The sense of adventure still remains — last week, I used Link’s stasis ability to push a minecart to a shrine I had never seen before, and was rewarded with an uncommonly meaty series of puzzles — but I can never experience its world for the first time again.
That’s why “Breath of the Wild 2”’s teaser is so exciting. This sequel may be set in the same world as its predecessor, but the vibe this time around is vastly different. Breath of the Wild’s colorful world invited players to explore its delightful world, but the horror of the trailer suggests a Hyrule that will push back against its players; where progress will be hard-earned. Nintendo’s last Zelda game drew comparisons to Dark Souls for the steep challenge of early game combat encounters; the ease with which even low-level enemies could send you to a “Game Over” screen. I won’t be surprised if “Breath of the Wild 2” leans further in the Dark Souls direction, embracing the terrifying monsters and oppressive world design that define From Software’s RPGs. That’s another way to make exploration exhilarating; by making progress hard-won.
I suspect that, given the success of BOTW and the kind of games the dev team is playing, “Breath of the Wild 2” will still be an open world game. But, that mood piece suggests a world of terror, not of wonder.
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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