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‘The Evil Within: The Assignment’ Review: In Need of a Gun
It might not have been the most inspired big-budget horror game we’ve seen, but The Evil Within was still, despite its familiar ideas, a thoroughly unforgettable game that proved Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami knows what fans of the genre want. If the base game was “a terrifying patchwork of nightmares,” then its first DLC is more of that, with moderately better execution.
I went into The Assignment with a cautious optimism that the talented folks at developer Tango Gameworks would be able to pick up the numerous unfinished narrative threads left by The Evil Within and construct something around it that’s worth playing.
That’s exactly what they did, and I couldn’t be happier to return to this twisted world.
This DLC is the first half of a two-part story that follows detective Juli “Kid” Kidman — Sebastian’s woefully underdeveloped partner — that, aside from offering more scares, aims to answer some of the many lingering questions about her, and specifically her connections to the shady Mobius organization and where the hell she went off to for a substantial chunk of The Evil Within.
I was disappointed when I realized how little screen time was dedicated to Juli, who’s voiced by the consistently wonderful Jennifer Carpenter (“Dexter”, Quarantine). Her character is finally given the time to shine, and shine she does. She’s far more intriguing to me than Sebastian or his goofy sidekick, Joseph Oda.
The Assignment does a wonderful job of answering some questions that needed answering while at the same time bringing up a few more that I can’t wait to see answered in the follow-up DLC, The Consequence.
Mikami has called The Evil Within an answer to the more action-oriented direction the Resident Evil series has taken since Resident Evil 4, which he also happened to direct. That remains true in this DLC, which continues to put an emphasis on its stealth mechanics. Running in guns blazing was never an option in the main story, and it’s even less of an option here.
As an agent of Mobius, a mysterious organization that’s responsible for the horrific events in The Evil Within, Juli was supposed to infiltrate Sebastian’s team in an effort to find Leslie, whose mind has everything they need to complete the STEM system, within which all of this takes place. Think of STEM as a hellish version of The Matrix, or like Inception, if DiCaprio’s adventures had been limited exclusively to nightmares.
Mobius would fit in nicely as the evil organization in basically any Saturday morning cartoon. They’re not all that intimidating, mostly because we’ve seen groups like them done better so many times before in other video games, movies and television. This doesn’t change, but I stopped caring when Juli starts fighting back.
This also happens to be exactly when The Assignment really gets interesting.
From take-off to landing, it’s about 3 1/2 hours. During that time, we’re treated to a veritable sampler platter of scary things, some of which will be familiar to those of you who played The Evil Within, while others will be completely new.
The biggest difference here is Kidman herself. She spends most of the game unarmed, and the upgrade system has been removed. This forces players to embrace those polarizing stealth mechanics. In addition to the tried and true bottle throwing mechanic, Kidman can call out to enemies from cover and she eventually gets a stealth attack, which I found pairs nicely with the lure.
And when the situation calls for it, she can also run considerably longer than Sebastian. It’s a good thing, too, because there’s a lot of cardio involved in this DLC.
Without Sebastian’s physical prowess or his array of weapons and gadgets to defend against enemies, playing as Kidman can be tough. I died a lot, and the source of that frustration usually came from the game’s purposefully wonky, old school controls.
I thought the added challenge would be frustrating, but there’s an element of nostalgia to this that reminds me of the golden age of survival horror games, where being underpowered and outnumbered was expected. The Assignment offers more of a challenge than the game whose story it’s trying to expand upon, and I loved (almost) every second of it.
I’ve lamented the lack of quality DLC for horror games, but The Assignment gives me hope that The Evil Within will buck that trend and give fans a reason — or three — to return to this fantastic horror game. The Consequence cannot come soon enough.
The Final Word: The Assignment takes the best aspects of The Evil Within — namely the stealth, unsettling enemies and the strategy that’s required in combat — and successfully builds a bite-sized adventure around it that never outstays its welcome.
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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