Editorials
5 Things I Want from the ‘Friday the 13th’ Video Game
It’s official. Slasher games are a thing, and I couldn’t be happier. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we’re witnessing the beginning of a brand new genre of horror games — or, perhaps more accurately, the return of a genre that’s been dead for decades.
It started with two radically different stabs (sorry) at breathing new life into the genre with
Splatter Camp, an 80’s style indie from the one-man team behind Babysitter Bloodbath, and the PS4-exclusive Until Dawn, from developer Supermassive Games.
November added two more games to the list, including Summer Camp and Last Year, the latter of which managed to raise over $114,000 on Kickstarter last month.
All these games seem to have inspired another as-of-yet unnamed developer to jump on the stabwagon (again, sorry), and this time it’s a name that’s known by any horror fan who’s worth their salt: Friday the 13th.
We don’t know much about Jason’s return to video games, but that’s not stopping me from wondering what could be. If you’d like to wonder with me, read on for my Friday the 13th video game wish list!
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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