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‘Stasis’ Puts a Unique Twist On Giving Up
In a brief new teaser for the spooky sci-fi indie Stasis, we get to watch its lead character, John, kill himself by ventilating his abdomen with a shard of glass, Seppuku style. I’ve spent enough time with early prototypes of the game to appreciate the value of such a feature, which injects some guilt into the all-too-familiar act of giving up.
Knowing I have this option for when I need it may motivate me to keep John alive, in spite of my morbid desire to see all of the death animations. I can, and do, blame games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space for making death an awesome thing to behold. When you’ve seen Leon take a chainsaw to the neck or watched as a helpless Isaac gets zombiefied by a creature that more or less resembles the creepy head spider form of The Thing, you begin to develop a taste for it.
I should probably be worried about the celebratory relationship that horror games have with death — and non-horror too, as explored by the likes of Dark Souls and Gears of War — or how frighteningly appealing that kind of thing is to me.
I’ll put a pin in that for now, because I’m too distracted by how cool it’d be if Dead Space let me reenact that glorious impalement death from Jason X, with a Marker in the place of a man-sized floor screw. That scene wasn’t as memorable as the one where Jason transformed two topless holograms into bludgeoning tools, but I can’t picture a situation in which a Necromorph could keep Isaac inside a sleeping bag long enough to do much with him.
Stasis releases later this year on PC. You can pre-order the game on its official website.
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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