Editorials
Horror on Wheels – Revisiting ‘Twisted Metal: Black’
The demolition derby is the perfect template for a video game. It’s fast, exciting and focused heavily on the sensory experience. During the late 90s and early 2000s, the car combat genre, a natural evolution of the demolition derby, had its moment in the sun. Games like Carmageddon, Interstate ’76, Vigilante 8 and even Cel Damage all brought their unique perspectives to the genre, but none made as big of an impact as the series that popularized the genre: Twisted Metal.
In 1995, Twisted Metal took the core concept of the demolition derby and merged it with the game design of Mario Kart. Players race unique vehicles around levels loosely based on real-world locations picking up powerups that range from missiles to napalm to a good old fashion oil slick as they eliminate each other one by one until only one remains. Each of the over-the-top drivers is brought to the competition with the promise of having a wish granted by Calypso, the mysterious figure behind the contest. The single-player campaign plays out like a fighting game, with the player battling a series of matches until they face the final boss.
The theming of the characters have always been horror-adjacent, featuring a sinister clown and the Grim Reaper himself, but the game never took itself too seriously. Character endings often had a tongue-in-cheek, Twilight Zone-style “be careful what you wish for” twist to them. As the series went on, it seemed to lean more into the goofiness, especially after the original developers left the series starting with the third entry. By the time Twisted Metal 4 rolled around, it was clear the series had lost its luster and was in need of retooling.
Enter Twisted Metal: Black. Series creator David Jaffe and his studio comprised of developers of the first two games rebooted the series for the still relatively new PlayStation 2. The gameplay was a more finely tuned version of what was already there. It was prettier, bigger and much faster than the game they could make on the original PlayStation, making it all the more satisfying in your hands. But what made the game stand out the most was its shift in tone. Black took a turn down a dark road, fully embracing the horror in disturbing and gruesome ways.
Twisted Metal Steering Towards TV Carnage?
Many of the same characters were present in the game, but they were all re-conceptualized as patients from Blackfield Asylum. Gone are the campier days of the first games, replaced with a thick coat of darkness. Whereas the earlier version of Mr. Grimm was the literal Grim Reaper, he’s now a broken Vietnam War veteran who wears the skull of a man he was forced to eat while captured. Needles Kane, the iconic driver of Sweet Tooth, is now an unrepentant, vicious serial killer cursed with a flaming skull, one of the few instances of the supernatural in the decidedly more grounded game.
Each of the characters tells their tale in the single-player story mode, which remains relatively unchanged from previous iterations. You select a character at the beginning, and are presented with three cutscenes throughout the campaign. In the beginning, you see the character getting recruited by the Calypso from the asylum, giving you a quick intro to what the character wants from the contest, but only tease the horrors they have experienced.
After fighting Minion, the mid-game boss, the full backstory of your character is revealed. These stories are some of the most upsetting elements of the game, diving deep into gruesome tragedy. My favorite backstory involves one of the new characters, No-Face, the driver of Crazy 8. No-Face was a small-time boxer who was badly injured in a big fight. Without much money, he went to a back alley doctor to get fixed up, only to find that the doctor had bet on him big and lost. After putting No-Face under, the doctor removed No-Face’s eyes and tongue, then stitched him shut, giving him his nickname.
When you finish the game, you are treated to one last ending scene where Calypso grants the contestant’s wish. Some of them do have a cruel twist of fate vibe like the earlier games, but often times characters end up getting violent retribution on those who wronged them. In the end, No-Face ends up with the doctor at his mercy and is handed a barbed wire-wrapped boxing glove. These finales aren’t quite as satisfying as the mid-game backstory cinematics, but they are a nice little black bow on the depraved gift that is the story mode.
Twisted Metal: Black shows you just how far strong and consistent aesthetics can go into changing the perception of your game. Even though the cutscenes are completely separate from the gameplay, this dark tone gives the combat a more desperate and vicious feel without having to make many tweaks, and made it the most memorable entry in the series. This tactic could definitely be applied to other genres in order to create unique and impactful new horror properties. Catherine gave us a glimpse at a horror-puzzle game hybrid, Mortal Kombat has been making horror-themed fighting games for decades, but what would it look like to put a dark coat of paint on a sports game? Or a superhero epic? Hopefully, some creative developers can find a scary angle on a well-worn genre to recapture this feeling.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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