Editorials
‘Alien: Isolation’ 10 Years Later – Why It’s a Perfect Adaptation
Alien: Isolation is a special game; every single element of it works. Even in wireframe, without the Alien-themed coat of paint, it makes for a completely satisfying gameplay experience. If you had a different styling to it, the world would still feel fully realized and fun to navigate. The tension of being stalked by a relentless predator would be amazing even if it wasn’t the much-beloved Xenomorph. This all coalesces into a great experience that is only elevated by setting it in a perfect rendition of the Alien Universe.
Many other games have been set in this world, but they often don’t capture the soul of the franchise in the way that Isolation does. The ones that find success usually do so by adopting the tone of Aliens rather than Alien. The faster, more action-packed style is more conducive to the medium of video games, giving you more active tasks to be doing as you progress.
The late 90s/early 2000s Alien vs Predator PC games did a great job of this when you were playing as the marines. There, you’re capable of fighting back against the Xenomorphs, much like the movie Aliens, but their speed and numbers combined with the environments make them a formidable force. Alien Infestation for the Nintendo DS also did a good job capturing that Aliens tone, this time in the Metroidvania genre. You were adequately armed but easily ambushed as you explored the Sulaco.
But Alien: Isolation took on the challenge of capturing the tone of the original Alien film. Instead of giving you action in short, controlled bursts, you truly feel like you’re engaged in a game of wits with the infamous perfect organism. Just like the original film, there’s one Xenomorph hunting you throughout the Sevastapol, and just like the original film, you are not in any way prepared for it. As Amanda Ripley, daughter of franchise protagonist Ellen Ripley, you put your engineering skills to work assembling makeshift weapons from parts you scrounge in order to repel, but never kill, the alien.
Focusing entirely on conflict with the Alien might make the game feel sparse and empty, especially when the creature is run by an adapting AI rather than scripted sequences, so the developer, Creative Assembly, smartly populates the game with other enemies that feel right at home in the Alien Universe. The Working Joe androids that menace you in the halls of the Sevastapol keep you from getting too comfortable while hiding from the Alien itself. Going all the way back to the first Alien film, androids have been a massive presence in the Alien Universe, so it only makes sense for them to be included here.
One moment that always stuck with me from Alien was when Ash finally shows his true colors and tries to attack Ripley by shoving a magazine into her mouth. Everything about the way Ash acts in that scene is so cold and mechanical, making it all the more chilling. The movements of the Working Joes evoke that image, and their calm dialog offering you assistance only doubles down on the tone. Nothing is worse than finally shaking the Xenomorph, only to hear a cold “I will be with your shortly” from around the corner.
[Related] ‘Alien: Romulus’ Teaser Trailer Returns to the Confined Terror of the Original Classic
Alien to me has always been so interesting because it was a group of working class people in space that were caught up in a fight with an incomprehensible creature. They weren’t scientists or a military squadron, so the tech seen on the Nostromo is a lot more low-tech than the sleek sci-fi we’re used to. This created a unique aesthetic that set Alien apart from others in the genre, and it carried forward into other entries into the film franchise.
Creative Assembly was able to perfectly translate this aesthetic as they created the world of the Sevastapol. Every area of the station feels perfectly at home in the Alien franchise. The technology that you use and craft throughout also fits right in. The noisemakers and pipe bombs look like big piles of junk slapped together. The maintenance jack you use as a melee weapon looks is just a wonderfully low-tech tool. Even the stations where you save your game look delightfully analog. All these elements come together to create a cohesive picture that carries the Alien tone into the video game medium with unprecedented accuracy.
Licensed games have always been a bit of a sore subject for gamers, but Alien Isolation shows how you can do it by carefully examining the tone and style of the source material. Every design decision was made to try to emulate the feel of Alien, creating an experience that works for the same reasons the film does. It places the player in a desperate situation where they have to use the meager resources at hand to defend themselves against a horrific monster. Obviously not all movies can be translated this directly to a video game, but Creative Assembly managed the impossible and created a near-perfect adaptation.
This article was originally published for the fifth anniversary on October 7, 2019.
I’m relatively new to the Bloody Disgusting family, but I feel the need to admit something that you might find disturbing, distasteful, and downright disappointing. Basically, and with the utmost respect for your feelings, I’m of the opinion that Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead is the best entry in the entire franchise.
To be clear, I like Sam Raimi’s original trilogy well enough, especially 1987’s Evil Dead II, but the zaniness can’t help but neuter the horror for me. They’re fun movies! I’m entertained by them, but I’m just drawn to Alvarez’s meaner, gorier, and more tonally unrelenting take on the same material.
A new Evil Dead film is now in theaters, and just as 2023’s Evil Dead Rise followed this same brutal vibe, Evil Dead Burn is continuing that wet slide into utter carnage.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Evil Dead (2013)
Commentators: Fede Alvarez (director/co-writer), Rodo Sayagues (co-writer), Jane Levy (actor), Lou Taylor Pucci (actor), Jessica Lucas (actor)
1. The family watching in the basement at 3:11 includes producer Rob Tapert’s son and a local actor from New Zealand, the one with the disfigured face, who has survived two separate plane crashes.
2. The decision to flip the opening shot (post title) upside down came in editing as Alvarez recalled being unsettled by a shot from Raimi’s original Evil Dead. “Something that really impressed me about the original was all the camera work, and there’s a moment… where Bruce [Campbell] runs from one side of the room to the other, and the camera looks back and upside down.”
3. It was composer Roque Banos who came up with adding the siren sounds. His inspiration came after living in Los Angeles for a short time and hearing many, many sirens.
4. It was Pucci’s idea for his character, Eric, to have a beard and long hair – partly as a visual nod to the film’s 1970s vibe, and partly because “you never have to do anything” with it.
5. “In any good story you have one of the main characters taking a bad step in the beginning,” says Alvarez as David (Shiloh Fernandez) fails to simply turn around and apologize to his sister Mia (Levy). “He makes another mistake,” adds Levy when he ignores her pleas for help after she’s been assaulted by the tree, but Alvarez says that choice is far more understandable.
6. Pucci is asked if it was his choice to be playing with the deck of cards on the porch swing, but he says it was Alvarez’s suggestion. The director adds that he had just tried impressing Pucci with a card trick – turns out they’re both amateur magicians – and Pucci carried it into the scene. It’s also a nod to the original film.
7. The clock at 14:56 is the actual one from the original film.
8. Most of them agree that the blood would send them packing in real life well before the book would. They’d be curious about the latter.
9. “It smells like burnt hair” was improvised by Pucci.
10. The script called for dead crows in the basement, but Tapert suggested they try something different, so they went with cats. A dead one had been found “in an alley” somewhere, and they took a mold of it to craft additional prosthetic cat corpses.
11. All of the closeups of people touching the book feature Alvarez’s hands.
12. Mia’s front yard vomit consisted of cold soup.
13. Early scenes of a wet and angry Mia were preceded by her doing sprints or jumping jacks offscreen to make her seem more exasperated. She was so amped up while driving the car that Alvarez, who was hidden in the backseat, was scared “while Jane is going crazy.”
14. Levy recalls Alvarez suggesting a similar scene from Wild at Heart as a reference point for her own performance after crashing the car into the pond.
15. They shot the film mostly chronologically, and that left producers a little concerned as they were seeing a lot of character drama. “They didn’t know what we were doing, and they were really anxious to get to the horror.” Those concerns were put to rest when they saw the dailies for the assault and bunkbed scene that follows.
16. It was Tapert who suggested they include the tree vine assault, and Alvarez was happy to see it used as more than just a shocker. “Being raped is her being injected with the devil,” says Levy, and he adds that it moves the story forward rather than just disturb.
17. The shower burn was the first bit of graphic mutilation that the writers conceived when they started working on the script.
18. The attempted escape in the Jeep after Mia is burned originally included a shot of David trying to call for help on his cell phone only to be stymied by a lack of service, but Alvarez took it out. He doesn’t think the audience needed it, and he didn’t want it to knock viewers out of the scene’s intensity.
19. The flooded river at 35:16 “is a real river.” It’s the same one the Jeep passes through at the beginning, and they simply waited for a heavy rain and then filmed the result.
20. Alvarez asked the sound department to come up with a unique sound for the Deadites, and the result was the crackling, “bug in a jar” noise.
21. “This was the hardest thing ever,” says Levy at 37:54 as her character projectile vomits blood onto Olivia’s (Lucas) face. They did four takes of the scene with Lucas having to be completely rinsed off and reset each time.
22. That’s not digital trickery at 39:32 as Olivia’s reflection gives an evil grin. “This was a timing thing because the mirror had to go away from me, and as it went away from me I had to actually do that face.” We see mostly the back and slight side of her outside of the reflection at this point, and the result is a cool little shot.
23. The bathroom encounter between Olivia and Eric originally ended with her hitting her head, but Raimi watched the dailies and asked Alvarez to milk the horror and gore a little bit longer.
24. “So everyone actually kills each other,” says Levy, “Mia never kills anybody in this movie.” Alvarez adds, “That’s the whole beauty of the story; Mia is the only innocent person, she’s a victim all the way.”
25. Alvarez recalls that one of Raimi’s “three rules of horror” is that “the innocent must be punished.” Does that contradict the point immediately above? Maybe, but she went through hell, and at the end of the day, are any of us actually innocent?
26. He acknowledges that the film, like many horror movies, is filled with characters making questionable choices, but he defends most of them as being understandable given the context.
27. “It’s my first sex scene,” says Levy at 1:31:11 as her character licks Natalie’s (Elizabeth Blackmore) leg. “This one was her stunt double’s leg.” She adds that “Kiss me, you dirty cunt!” is the favorite thing she’s ever said.
28. Natalie’s attempt to rinse her hand wound was originally written to include a black worm coming out of the gash, “but we didn’t want to be too supernatural.” Mr. Alvarez, my good man, have you seen your own movie?
29. Alvarez sees the theme of the movie as accepting that sometimes the only way out of a problem is through it – and here that means killing your friends before dismembering or burning their bodies. A good lesson for us all, really.
30. Eric’s laughter at Natalie saying “My face hurts” was real as Pucci found the line – one that Alvarez added on the fly – to be very funny given the situation and the fact that both of her arms are gone.
31. “Those woods were really, really creepy,” says Pucci, and Lucas adds that their New Zealand filming location was near a Maori burial ground.
32. Mia, gasping for her life in the hole with the plastic bag over her head, was apparently Levy’s audition scene.
33. They see Mia’s resurrection – the real Mia coming back to life after her brother’s janky defibrillator attempt – as a reward from beyond for David finally apologizing to her like he should have done from the start. I don’t mind saying that this is an odd take given how clear this film (and franchise as a whole) makes it that there’s absolutely no good supernatural entity looking out for these characters. Characters in these movies are absolutely and utterly fucked, and they should probably just accept that. Alvarez ultimately concedes that you can also just believe that the defibrillator actually worked.
34. For those who missed it, the necklace chain on the ground at 1:16:51 is in the shape of a skull as a nod to the scene in the original film where Ash (Campbell) goes for a necklace and sees a skull.
35. The machete comes through the wall at 1:20:10 and slices Mia’s leg, and they used Natalie’s prosthetic arm for the shot – it’s getting cut at the elbow.
36. They went through various versions of the Abomination Mia (Randal Wilson), including one that was made up of all five of the friends.
37. The original ending saw Mia walking on the road, but they cut it. The image still made it into the one-sheet poster.
38. The end credits feature extremely bloody shots filmed at high speed and meant to reference various beats from the film itself in tighter, close-up detail that viewers might have missed.
Quotes Without Context
“You kind of want to put the rape idea in people’s minds.”
“The car, of course.”
“I would definitely open the book.”
“Swimming through the swamp was fun.”
“Duct tape fixes everything.”
“How come David is such a bad boyfriend?”
“This kiss, I was really suffocating her.”
“I’m such a perv.”
“It’s like Beetlejuice.”
“Fede kept telling me this is my Bruce Willis moment to pump me up.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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