Editorials
[‘Dead Rising’ at 15] Why Capcom Needs to Give its Goofy Zombie Series Another Shot
A successful series usually occurs when a creator knows what its best qualities are, and builds on them or twists them into new and exciting ways. Capcom in particular has shown that in recent years with the revitalization of Devil May Cry and Resident Evil, but it’s important to note that before that, both series were in a poor state because of how far the original vision had pulled away from what was actually made. For a long time, Capcom followed the wrong trends in an attempt to keep these long-standing series relevant, and often got it painfully wrong.
Never was that more apparent than with Dead Rising, a series where the people in charge clearly listened to the wrong feedback time and again to the point the series’ credibility is at an all-time low after the mess that was Dead Rising 4.
And yet, as the aforementioned Resident Evil and Devil May Cry have shown, there’s a solution to that. Take Dead Rising back to its roots, understand what made the original such a classic 15 years ago, and build on that.
At the core of that is the ticking clock mechanic (the smarts of which are explained so well here by Cole Henry). It was always a sticking point for some with the original game, and even in the first sequel to some degree (albeit for different reasons), but its limitations are exactly what makes Dead Rising’s relative freedom outside of it such a joy.
It’s telling that later entries lost something without the rigidity of that strict timeframe to do specific tasks, and that’s exacerbated by game worlds that were far too open and busy. Given Capcom’s smartly frugal approach to getting other franchises back to their best, a smaller, tighter game to reboot the Dead Rising series makes a lot of sense. The safest way to approach that would surely be to give the original game a similar reimagining treatment that was bestowed upon Resident Evil 2. Hit the key beats, keep the essence of the original, but present it in a more comfortable, modern way.
I adore the original Dead Rising for what it is, but as with the older Resident Evil games, I can appreciate the way they handle isn’t particularly pleasant for the majority of newcomers. Finding the balance between the old way and the new is a very tricky challenge for any publisher/developer revitalizing a series, but this is arguably where Capcom has excelled these past few years. You don’t need to replicate the control set to make a new game feel like an old one. It’s what’s baked deeper into the game that matters most.
At its best, Dead Rising made the player feel like they had the upper hand just enough to encourage a bit of risky experimentation, but was never afraid to punish overconfidence, either by the smart placement of its zombie hordes or by the sudden panic-inducing reminder of a time-sensitive event almost being out of reach. Few games achieve such a wonderful bounce between goofing off and facing dire situations as well as Dead Rising did.
Goofing off is another key component necessary in the thick soup that makes up the essence of Dead Rising. Again, the exact nature and level of it has been misunderstood in the sequels, or worse, poorly balanced with an attempt to be more serious. That weird disconnected way some horror films of the 80s had about them is also present in the make-up of the original Dead Rising, and in both cases, it makes for a more memorable experience because of how casually nonsensical they can be. Having story is fine, and should still be a part of things, but it can afford to be handled lightly and be a touch absurd if it’s to capture the tone of Dead Rising as it should be.
Most importantly of all, if ever there was a good time to give Dead Rising another shot with less risk for Capcom, this is it. The recent excitement over Dead Space being remade (even if that’s not without some concerns), and a strong time for horror games in general, shows that there’s bound to be an audience, both old and new, out there for more Dead Rising. Any excuse to give this series the chance it deserves to be back in the spotlight, and to erase the unpleasant memory that was Dead Rising 4 and its horribly Hollywood version of Frank West as the final time we got to mow down hordes with a shopping trolley.
Actually, now I think about it, the most important thing is to ensure Frank West doesn’t get a makeover. Give us back our unpleasant war-covering weirdo, please.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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