Editorials
[Editorial] Channeling Lovecraft & Stuart Gordon in ‘Resident Evil 4’
Few games have single-handedly changed the landscape of an entire genre like Capcom’s massively successful Resident Evil 4. Since the game’s initial launch on the Nintendo GameCube back in 2005, I can’t think of another singular title that (much like the franchise’s iconic undead enemies) simply refuses to die. While I’m partial to the underrated Wii version, the sheer amount of remasters and re-releases here serve as a testament to just how big of an impact this game had on the industry.
At this point, much has been said about how the title was such a big hit that action-oriented copycats nearly destroyed AAA Survival-Horror as a whole (until indie developers redefined interactive scares years later), but today I’d like to talk about something other than the polished third-person shooting and clever level design. While these things are certainly major factors in the game’s massive popularity, what makes this sequel stand out from the rest of the franchise is how it takes a sharp turn away from the established (and honestly, convoluted) Resident Evil continuity, preferring to dive into the bizarre world of Spanish horror while sharing some very specific ideas with the works of Stuart Gordon and H.P. Lovecraft.
So today, I’d like to discuss whether or not these similarities are intentional.
For those who haven’t played this certified classic, here’s a brief rundown of the plot: Since his escape from a zombie-infested Raccoon City six years prior, Leon S. Kennedy has become a special operative for the United States Government. When the President’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by a mysterious cult known only as Los Iluminados, Leon tracks the felons to an isolated Spanish village where nothing is as it seems. It doesn’t take long for the agent to realize that there’s something wrong with the townsfolk, and so begins a perilous journey into terrifying, uncharted territory (for both the player and the RE series as a whole).
Of course, most of the story here is just set dressing, functioning as an excuse to take players from one horrific location to the next while having a clear goal in mind. However, despite some remarkably cheesy B-movie moments, there’s actually quite a bit to unpack especially where the setting and backstory are concerned.
Looks familiar?
In fact, the opening levels of the game bear an uncanny resemblance to Stuart Gordon’s Dagon, a 2001 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s A Shadow Over Innsmouth. From the protagonist being a foreigner stranded in a remote Spanish settlement to being pitted against bizarre villagers manipulated by an ancient cult, these stories have much in common. It’s not just the setup that’s familiar, as both the look and feel of the game hearken back to Gordon and Lovecraft. Not only that, but Dagon was a Spanish production, with the setting of the original story being changed from New England to a village on the Spanish coast for both production and marketability reasons. At that point, the country had also produced another Lovecraft adaptation, Beyond Re-Animator, and would eventually develop a passionate homage to the writer in the form of the Valdemar Legacy duology. Because of this, I have a strong suspicion that the setting of Resident Evil 4 might have been chosen specifically because of Spain’s interest in this type of macabre story
With that in mind, it would also make sense for the game to abandon the corporate espionage elements from previous entries and focus instead on classic eldritch horror. Hell, even the lore behind the Ganados (the main enemies within the game, infected by a prehistoric parasite around which the cult was founded) has more roots in cosmic horror than the traditional sci-fi zombies of previous games.
And speaking of zombies, both Lovecraft and Gordon are well-acquainted with the undead menace that started this whole franchise, with the former having written the Frankenstein satire Herbert West: Re-Animator (which some claim to be the first appearance of what are now popularly known as zombies) and the latter having directed the cult-classic adaptation of the story starring Jeffrey Combs as the titular mad scientist. In fact, Gordon seems to have made a career out of adapting Lovecraft’s tales, having directed five incredibly entertaining takes on the writer’s stories.
It might seem like a bit of a stretch to associate these specific creators with the third sequel in an insanely popular videogame franchise over just a few passing similarities, but the game actually goes a bit further with these parallels. While one might argue that the sections of the game where you’re trapped in a laboratory with inhuman horrors, such as the nigh-invincible Regenerators, are actually hearkening back to the Herbert West stories, I think the greatest evidence of these influences are present in the stages where players infiltrate a medieval castle.
Encountering odd characters, chained up freaks and ancient European lineages, it’s impossible not to be reminded of another (extremely loose) Lovecraft adaptation by Gordon, namely Castle Freak. Though this film takes place in Italy instead of Spain, certain levels within the castle portion of the game look like they were ripped straight out of this underrated classic, with enemies like the tortured Garradors acting as analogs for the titular antagonist, and the Salazar family replacing the Italian Duchess. The original version of the game was actually set almost entirely within the castle itself, so this may have been the jumping-off point for the rest of the title’s ideas.
This could easily have been a boss battle.
So, was Resident Evil 4 definitely influenced by any of these films or stories? While I’m almost certain that the creative team was at least subconsciously channeling elements from Dagon, there’s no hard evidence to support this. However, I find it highly unlikely that all of these similarities are just a coincidence. The developers over at Capcom (Shinji Mikami especially) have always been proud of their love of horror movies, so it stands to reason that the aesthetics here could be more than what they seem.
We may never truly know if these were intentional references or just a case of creators coincidentally drawing from the same source of inspiration, but I can’t help but imagine what a true videogame adaptation of any entry in Stuart Gordon’s filmography might look (and play) like. Now that Lovecraftian stories are popular again, both in gaming and in film, and with filmmaker/game-developer partnerships becoming more common, it would be interesting to see what insane shenanigans developers could come up with when given access to this kind of source material.
Even if we never get more games like this, at the end of the day, it’s likely that Resident Evil 4 will always be playing on a console near you. And I think that’s a good thing.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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