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.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
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