Movies
Five Horror Movies Based on Video Games to Stream This Week
With season two of “The Last of Us” now underway and director David F. Sandberg‘s adaptation of Until Dawn arriving in theaters this Friday, horror video game adaptations are having a moment. That doesn’t even touch on the box office juggernaut that is Minecraft, or sequels Mortal Kombat 2 and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 arriving later this year.
It doesn’t appear that the horror video game adaptation trend will slow down any time soon, with Barbarian director Zach Cregger gearing up to take on Resident Evil and André Øvredal (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) attached to direct Bendy and the Ink Machine.
All of this to say that movies based on video games have come a very long way since 1993’s Super Mario Bros., especially in the genre space. This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to horror video game adaptations. Here’s where to stream these five horror movies.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Detention – Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Tubi
Detention is based on Red Candle’s excellent 2017 side-scrolling horror game of the same name and is frequently considered one of the best horror video game adaptations. It’s set in 1960s Taiwan during the grim White Terror Period and follows Fang Ray-shin. She’s a student who wakes to discover her school has evacuated for a storm, and she’s trapped there by floods. Fang Ray-shin, along with one other student, looks for a way out by candlelight, but they find they’re not alone. It’s a politically charged nightmare filled with ghosts, monsters, and more.
Doom – Prime Video
An entertaining B-horror movie romp with loose ties to the fan-favorite game. Space Marines get sent to Mars to investigate a strange attack on a research facility and soon find themselves in a fight for survival against predatorial mutated humans. With fun creature work and action sequences and a notable cast led by Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban, and Rosamund Pike, Doom brings the monster carnage. Approach it as a fun creature feature over faithful adaptation, though it does feature references and nods to the video game, including an inspired use of “God mode.” Look for perennial favorite Richard Brake among the Marines.
Monster Hunter – Hulu
Resident Evil filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson takes on another popular video game franchise from Capcom with this action-heavy adaptation starring Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa. Jovovich stars as Lt. Artemis, who guides her unit to search for a Bravo team that disappeared without a trace. A freak sandstorm appears, whisking them away to a strange and hostile land filled with deadly monsters. The mythology here is as uncomplicated and straightforward as its characters, all the more room to let the exciting set pieces and creatures take center stage. Monster Hunter lives up to its title when it comes to big spectacle monster mayhem.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City – Starz
A video game adaptation is often measured by its faithfulness to the source material, and on that front, director Johannes Roberts delivered the most faithful rendition of Capcom’s beloved Resident Evil games so far. Welcome to Raccoon City remixes the first two games in Capcom’s popular game series, giving a highlight reel that delivers on iconic moments, intense horror sequences, and the clunky dialogue fans come to expect. That means stunning set pieces and standout scenes lifted straight out of the game, but it also means an overstuffed plot and drastically different takes on fan favorites like Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker. It’s so densely plotted that it may not be welcoming to newcomers, either. Roberts is a clear Resident Evil fan with his love letter to the first two games, though, and doesn’t waste the opportunity to cram in every nod and easter egg he can.
Werewolves Within – AMC+, Kanopy, Shudder
Heart Eyes and Scare Me director Josh Ruben’s murder mystery whodunit based on the Ubisoft game wrings paranoid tension and laughs in equal measure. Forest ranger Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) embraces his new assignment in the cozy little town of Beaverfield. He barely settles in before he’s getting to know the colorful residents through their vocal opinions on the new pipeline construction project that’s creating major division among them. Then he discovers that a brutal murderer is hiding among them, and a severe snowstorm traps them all together at the inn. Think Needful Things by way of violent whodunnit comedy.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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