Editorials
Looking Back at Prison-Based Horror Game ‘The Suffering’
The Playstation 2/Xbox/GameCube generation was one that really helped evolve the horror genre. Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness were landmark games, but it was probably Resident Evil 4 that is most known for moving the genre forward. Released in 2005 and directed by the great Shinji Mikami, RE4 was praised for moving the genre away from the clunky controls of the previous generation. But there was another game that was released prior to RE4 that not only melded horror with more action-oriented movement, but also implemented several other gameplay elements that would soon become popularized.
The Suffering was developed by Surreal Software and released in the spring of 2004. The game casts the player as Torque, a death row inmate who fights to survive when the prison is attacked by horrific creatures. The game ended up selling well, over 1.5 million copies, and was credited with bringing publisher Midway back to prominence. Despite the fact that this success allowed the developers to make a sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Bind, the game remains largely forgotten by most, and the franchise has been dormant since 2005.
Resident Evil 4 certainly popularized the more actiony version of horror, but The Suffering brought faster controls to the genre almost a year earlier. It definitely had a bit of the early-console-shooter feel, but still managed to make the player more mobile than other horror games, even allowing you to play in first person mode. RE4 tried to keep some roots of older survival horror games, forcing you to stay in one place while shooting, but The Suffering did what games like Dead Space would eventually do and allowed full movement while gunning enemies down.
While the extra mobility may have taken away some of the tension that came from being forced to use tank controls, the creature design added it right back in. Since the game takes place in prison with a sinister past, all of the enemies were designed to reflect either execution methods or atrocities that happened there. The creature designs are truly iconic, which shouldn’t come as a surprise because of the involvement of Stan Winston Studios.
To aid in the combat, there was also an “Insanity Meter” that filled up with each kill. Upon filling the meter, Torque turns into a hulking monster letting you tear apart your enemies with vicious melee strikes. Attack-related meters like this ended up being very common, but it felt particularly in line with the themes of the game. Torque has a (possibly) violent past, and this monster is a very straightforward interpretation of the concept of “inner demons.” There’s also a very smart risk-reward system in your transformed state: your monster’s health bar is constantly draining as time goes on, and you don’t change back in time, you die.
One of the most highly regarded innovations in the game is a morality system. Morality was something that was not new to games, tons of CRPGs like the early Fallouts had moral choices that were far more complicated, but The Suffering was an early adopter in the mainstream console space. At the very beginning, you find out that Torque is on death row for murdering his family, a crime that he’s not even sure if he committed. As you go through the game, you’re presented with binary moral choices about how to treat NPCs. A demonic voice tries to move you to violence while your wife’s voice encourages you to show mercy. How you react ends up coloring the ending of the game, which reveals Torque’s guilt or innocence.
What this Schrodinger’s Cat-like situation creates is something that circumvents a problem seen in a lot of games: ludo-narrative dissonance. Often times in games, the character will be acting one way, but once control is given back to the player, they will make choices that contradict the character that has been set up. One of the most famous examples of this is in Uncharted, where Nathan Drake cracks wise through all the cutscenes, but murders hundreds of people during gameplay. There’s a disconnect there that doesn’t quite line up and causes problems for the player.
With The Suffering, your character intentionally remains a mystery until the game sees how you play. If the initial setup of the game established your innocence, then you made the choice to murder NPCs, this may cause that dissonance, but instead the game allows YOU to make decisions that will color the history of the character, making it all fit together tonally in the end. Silent Hill 2 had this to some extent, where it tracked how played to determine the ending, but all of the elements of The Suffering perfectly line up with this more overt version of a morality system, making for a tight, consistent package.
The direction they took with Ties that Bind ended up being very disappointing. I would have much preferred if they had made the franchise more of a thematic anthology than just following Torque to a different location. Doing something more akin to the Bioshock to Bioshock Infinite transition would have been an interesting way to explore the franchise, as the theme of testing a morally ambiguous character by running them through a psychologically intense location is a strong anchor for a franchise. Hopefully, whoever holds the rights figures out a good angle to take and brings The Suffering back in a bold way, as the mainstream horror genre has evolved into the type of game this was 15 years ago.
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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