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Game Manuals Suck These Days
I remember buying 8-bit Nintendo games the day they came out. Oh yeah, I’m an old-school gamer through and through. One of the things I loved about getting those games was that the manual explained things that perhaps the game had no way of going over. They also had sections on items and their uses, weapons and the damage they dealt, characters and a bit of backstory about them. It was awesome! Talk about bathroom reading material! Oh, and if I was ever stuck? Well, no worries! Loads of times, these manuals came with hints for some of the more difficult areas!
I was playing video games before I could read. If I got stuck, I would ask my parents to help me read through the manual to find some kind of clue. By them helping me leaf through them, I started picking up on words and associating them properly. So, game manuals actually aided me in my quest to learn how to read. But that’s not the case anymore. In fact, it’s pretty much the complete opposite. Take for instance Silent Hill: Downpour (which I just purchased and can’t wait to play). The manual is the same few pages but repeated in English, French, and Spanish. Know what’s in those few pages? A warning page, a “Table of Contents”, a controller lay-out, and a warranty. That. Is. It. Were this Twitter, I would add “#bullshit”.
Where’s a little something about the main character? Where’s a map of the town? Maybe an item list? Maybe a little bit of a backstory? How about the freaking credits so I can know who designed the monsters? Don’t game companies want to give credit to the employees who busted their ass to put out this game???
No. That’s not what people get these days. Hell, you’re lucky if you get an insert at all. As a matter of fact, I think some games are abandoning printed manuals entirely in place of putting the manual on the disc. Thanks, but no thanks. I want my booklet so I can actually leaf through it.
It seems like anything that even closely resembles a manual of worth is only included in the special editions of games. But why should I pay extra for that? Basic instructions and advice should be made available to ALL the players, not just the ones who shell out an extra $20!
In summation, I miss awesome manuals. That is all.
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Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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