Editorials
When Game Night Gets Bloody: 8 of the Deadliest Games in Horror
Among the many things keeping us sane these days, besides movies, of course, are games. Video games, board games, virtual escape rooms, and even jigsaw puzzles have become tools of comfort and stress release the longer we remain indoors. As with any other conceivable topic, horror has found a way to exploit games too. We’re not talking films like Saw, The Belko Experiment, Cube, or Battle Royale, which function more as depraved social experiments, but movies that craft their terror around games created for amusement’s sake.
These eight movies raise the stakes of game night, transforming a night of fun into a night of deadly terror. The object of most games is to win, but the games in these horror movies are rigged to slaughter. Odds for survival are minimal…
Mindhunters
Experienced profiler and instructor Jake Harris (Val Kilmer) likes to use simulation to train his FBI students. He takes them to a small island, where he’s created an elaborate town rigged with dummies, mechanized crime scenes, elaborate sets, props, and more, all so his students can test their profiling skills by playing out a serial killer simulator. They’re isolated and trapped on the island for the duration of the test. The only hitch, though, is that someone has tampered with Harris’s simulation, placing an actual murderer into the mix. Paranoia breaks out as the erstwhile profilers start dying. Also starring L.L. Cool J, Christian Slater, Johnny Lee Miller, Kathryn Morris, and Clifton Collins Jr., Mindhunters makes for an overlooked surprise.
Escape Room
The rise of escape rooms meant that it was likely inevitable that horror would eventually set its sights on the popular group puzzle solving activity. Director Adam Robitel and production designer Edward Thomas did just that, crafting an intricately themed escape room for six strangers that have unwittingly entered into a deadly game. From burning hot lobby rooms to inverted pool halls to snowy cabins with icy lakes – and despite the very high stakes involved for the players – the set pieces are so extravagant that you can’t help but wish you could play an escape room like this. Though the characters dying in these rooms would likely disagree.
Beyond the Gates
From the mid-80s to the early nineties, the height of VHS’s dominance in home media spilled over into gaming. It became a common trend to see VCR editions of popular board games or all-new games created around a themed tape. For horror aficionados, Atmosfear (aka The Nightmare) reigned supreme. Jackson Stewart’s Beyond the Gates crafts an endearing horror movie about estranged siblings, using the VCR board game as the gory vehicle by which these brothers work through their inner demons and familial strife. Gordon (Graham Skipper) and John Hardesty (Chase Williamson) discover “Beyond the Gates” while cleaning out their missing father’s video store. Once they hit play, the game’s master Evelyn (Barbara Crampton) guides them through a nightmarish quest for survival. While the body count is relatively low, the deaths can be gruesome. Moreover, Beyond the Gates embraces its ’80s VCR board game so thoroughly that it plays out like a stylized nostalgic hug.
Brainscan
Lonely horror fan Michael (Edward Furlong) immediately sends away for the hot new CD-Rom game “Brainscan” the moment he hears about it. He ignores initial gameplay warnings and submerses himself in the game, allowing the game’s Trickster (T. Ryder Smith) to guide him through acting like a serial killer and slaughtering victims in gruesome ways. The only problem is that these murders seem to occur in the real world, as well. The technology involved is long past dated, and the Smith’s performance as the Trickster takes scene-chewing to another level. Then again, this is a horror-comedy, and there’s still plenty of fun to be had in this mind-bending ’90s cult fave.
Stay Alive
Anyone who dares to play the console game “Stay Alive” winds up dead. After the death of their friend, Loomis (Milo Ventimiglia), a group goes through his belongings, discovers the game, and decides to play together in his memory. They don’t realize that they’ve just invited the game’s villain, the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, to cross over into their world to murder them. The key to stopping her is within the game’s mythology, meaning they have to keep playing. It’s a video game-styled slasher movie, essentially. The rules of Bathory and the game change and evolve, and the kill count isn’t always in the order expected. Stay Alive seems tailor-made for horror video game fans.
As the Gods Will
Move over Battle Royale; Takashi Miike’s manga adaptation doesn’t just center around one high school class forced to play a deadly game, but an entire high school. Teen Shun Takahata is a huge fan of violent video games and wishes his real-life matched the same level of thrills the games give him. It seems some omnipotent being heard his wish and grants it by subjecting his school to a series of deadly games. Each one is as increasingly bizarre as they are violent. This is a video game played out in movie form, by way of Miike’s warped mind. It’s gory, bonkers, and, above all, it’s highly entertaining. Don’t expect a whole lot of explanation behind the zany madness, though.
eXistenZ
In the near future, virtual reality game consoles have evolved past traditional electronic systems. Gamers plug into alternate realities that blur the line between fiction and fact through bio-ports surgically inserted into their spines. Game developers are worshiped as celebrities. While demonstrating her latest game, Allegra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is nearly killed by assassins, and her only copy of the game possibly damaged in the process. Allegra and her ally Ted Pikul (Jude Law) test the extent of the damage by entering into the game’s world, leaving them vulnerable and exposed to dangers both inside and outside. Leave it to David Cronenberg to offer a dizzying, layered examination of our relationship with video games, with his trademark body horror, too. It’s twisty, complex, and thrilling.
Ready or Not
Grace (Samara Weaving) thinks her new in-laws are a bit eccentric when they reveal their family tradition; any new addition to the family by marriage must participate in a family game night. A card pulled from a box selects the game. For many, it’s a harmless game like “Old Maid,” but Grace draws the only game that incites violence- “Hide and Seek.” Grace must hide within the mansion while the entire Le Domas clan seeks her out to sacrifice before dawn. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett hearken back to the simpler days of game night and give it a riotous horror twist. Weaving, as always, steals the film. Family game night, or “hide and seek” for that matter, has never been as cut throat as it is here.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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