Editorials
Making Possession Fun in ‘Haunt the House: TerrorTown’ [What We Play in the Shadows]
In horror movies, possession is a terrifying (and messy) affair. Head-spinning, furniture tossing, foul language and so much vomit. In Haunt The House: Terrortown however, possession is a (mostly) harmless and hysterical experience. Let’s scare up the details on this unique puzzler.
You’re a wee little spectre with a literal ghost town all to yourself, but when some corporeal jerks move in and try to establish a new suburb, your eternal sleep is ruined. It’s gonna take every trick in the haunting book to scare these idiots out of your neighborhood and go back to resting in peace. There’s a handful of different locations to clear out, including a museum, an opera house, and a science lab. By possessing inanimate objects at the right time, cynical adults and their snot-nosed kids start getting freaked. This raises the atmosphere of the place, which means you can possess bigger stuff, and discover new abilities with the smaller stuff. Once everyone has run screaming out of the building, the level is cleared!
The gameplay could not be simpler. Fly, possess, scare, repeat. The flying can be a bit slippery to control, but eventually, a rhythm develops and it becomes just another part of the routine. Playing the game on mobile might actually be better in that regard. Half the fun is in seeing what each item does once possessed. In reaction, the humans will climb the ladder of reactions from curious to suspicious to pants-wetteningly terrified. Once frightened enough, most people will flee the scene. If overly scared though, characters are capable of jumping out a window and committing suicide. This results in a new ghostie roommate. Others can be flat-out killed by your ghostly machinations if they’re too brave or foolish.
There’s a jazzy soundtrack that keeps things moving, and the color palette and adorable animation make everything feel like a moving Halloween card. You know, the kind that came with a pack of stickers so you could create a little scene. With the spooky season officially underway, Haunt The House: Terrortown will do wonders for your autumnal mood.
Haunted The House: Terrortown is available on iOS, Android, and Steam.
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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