Editorials
Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ Could Help Open Up a Bright New Frontier For Video Game Horror
From the dimly lit, shadow draped corridors of Layers of Fear, to the unrelenting and oppressive darkness that so many other horror offerings seem content to ply their fearsome trade from, it’s way past time that the gaming horror genre realizes that ample terror and foreboding lay beyond such typical realms of gloom.
Rather than looking inwardly to their peers, developers should instead look to the silver screen where Hereditary director Ari Aster is making progressive moves in this regard. For his part, Aster has been violently wrenching the horror genre nakedly back into the blazing light of day, providing a highly underutilized direction for others to follow with his latest film, Midsommar, a Sweden-set daytime cult thriller with a psychological horror bent
At its root, both video game and cinematic horror efforts alike have embraced the gloom in the belief that such scenarios ran parallel with the tales we were told as children, that some unseen horror lay in the dark corners and under the beds of the world where their powers were perceived to be at the zenith.
Of course, horror games on the small screen have also long worked their trade from the shadowy peripheries, not just to elicit moody atmospherics, but also because it allows them to fall back on that most common, shopworn and most nervously reflexive trope – the classic jump scare.
In Aster’s Midsommar however, horror and terror find themselves not withered by the exposure to the blazing sun, but rather emboldened by it – a notion that is arguably more terrifying than that base fear of shadows that movies and games have sought to instill in us for so long.
Much of that newfound fear revolves around the long-held concept of safe places. The idea that if some unspeakable grotesque born from the shadows is hellbent on our destruction, that we can somehow banish it by escaping into the bright day – a physical manifestation of the notion that light overcomes darkness; another long-held belief that holds solace for many of us.
And that is arguably where the strongest horrors do their best work – in stripping away those safe places and layers of respite until we realize, ultimately, that nowhere is safe and that as much as good can be wrought in the darkness, so is the opposite true for evil as well.
As Aster’s Midsommar has done then, so too must games follow. Effectively etching out a new frontier of boundless possibilities for the genre, the creative latitude for engineering new scenarios of fear, horror, and terror is generously vast.
Unfortunately, though Aster’s caliber as an auteur and the quality of his output his hardly in question, it remains to be seen just how quickly the mainstream will adjust to the idea of moving horror out of the darkness. Being as slow and reticent to swift change as the mainstream machine is, it will likely be a good while until the great masses accept such new ideas about horror to be embedded in their collective consciousness.
As such, we can probably look to the likes of smaller studios, such as the Bloober Teams and the Red Candle Games of the world to make those first bold steps, rather than the likes of Capcom and EA for whom fresh ideas and concepts often find themselves hoisted upon the altar of mass market sacrifice.
Unlike the silver screen, the games industry has many more avenues with which to embark on this change too. In addition to the long established and fairly static PC and home console platforms, more immersive technology such as VR, AR, and mixed reality headsets all provide unique opportunities to engineer compelling takes on this new direction that the cinema simply cannot match.
Given its position as an influential medium then, gaming needs to do its part and follow in Aster’s footsteps in order to keep the horror genre fresh. As much as cinemagoers used to cling to the light as a respite from the dark, so too must creators now leave the ironically comfortable embrace of the dark behind and seek out the fresh opportunities for fear and horror in the blazing sun that lay beyond.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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