Movies
Five Horror Video Game Adaptations To Stream This Week
This week brings the release of Return to Silent Hill, Christophe Gans‘ adaptation of Konami’s Silent Hill 2. Markiplier’s Iron Lung is right around the corner, with Mortal Kombat 2 and Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil arriving later this year. It’s safe to say that video game adaptations aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. This week’s streaming picks highlight horror video game adaptations that range from blockbuster hits to obscure indie releases.
Here’s where to stream this week’s picks.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Detention – Fandango at Home, Kanopy, Prime Video
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.
DreadOut – Prime Video
High school friends accidentally open a portal to hell when they decide to livestream themselves in a haunted house. This adaptation of Digital Happiness’ survival horror game comes from Kimo Stamboel, the writer/director behind gory Indonesian hits The Queen of Black Magic and Netflix’s The Elixir. While not exactly a faithful adaptation, nor one with much of a body count, this supernatural chiller does bring eerie atmosphere in spades.
Resident Evil – Hulu
Paul W.S. Anderson’s action horror adaptation of Capcom’s beloved video game opts to carve its own path forward, tossing faithfulness to its source material out the window. Resident Evil scraps the game’s characters in favor of Alice (Milla Jovovich), an amnesiac discovering just how deep the horrors of the Umbrella Corporation run after a lab accident causes employees to mutate. The adaptation spawned five more sequels before Johannes Roberts rebooted with Welcome to Raccoon City, and Netflix remixed the games’ lore with a YA series. And there’s more on the way; Zach Cregger’s take arrives later this year.
Silent Hill – AMC+, Shudder
In this film adaptation of the popular video game, Rose (Radha Mitchell) takes her adoptive daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to Silent Hill’s mysterious town for the truth of Sharon’s troubled past. One car crash later, Sharon is missing, and the area is blanketed in a thick fog inhabited by monsters. Rose will have to fight both the monsters and the town’s fanatical cult to get her daughter back. It’s a visually impressive adaptation full of extraordinary creatures and gore. The cast is stacked as well; Alice Krige continues to nail the terrifying villainess role. All you need to know is two words: Pyramid Head.
Werewolves Within – AMC+, Hulu, Kanopy, Shudder
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. Werewolves Within is less interested in werewolves and more interested in exploring how the possibility of one hiding in plain sight can turn a town inside out. It’s a much more playful, comedic twist on a Needful Things-like setup.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallis.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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