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‘Dementium’ Remaster Isn’t Selling Well At All
It would be enormously disappointing to see an old school survival horror series like Dementium fizzle out after two remasters. Renegade Kid’s next game might’ve been an actual sequel had the Nintendo 3DS exclusive Dementium Remastered not been such a huge disappointment.
“The sales of Dementium Remastered have been very low so far. Much lower than I expected. My expectations were based on how our other games have sold, and as such were already quite conservative,” explained Jools Watsham, creative director at Renegade Kid, in a recent interview with We Got This Covered.
The horror genre has struggled to find an audience on Nintendo’s platforms for years. It’s not a matter of quality either, as Dead Space: Extraction, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and ZombiU were all considered flops. And horror is generally a tougher sell on mobile, so while a game like Dementium might stand out on the Nintendo 3DS, it’s not necessarily to its benefit.
This won’t impact what the studio already has in the pipeline, but it’s clear their support for Nintendo’s handheld is waning.
“We will still continue with releasing the game in Europe and also release Dementium II Remastered, but the sales results definitely make us pause with future development on 3DS beyond Mutant Mudds Super Challenge and Treasurenauts, which is very unfortunate. In an ideal world, I would love to continue developing games for 3DS. It is my personal favorite console to play games on, but if we can’t generate enough revenue from our games to cover the cost of 4 people with no office space, then something must change.
Sounds like someone could use a Christmas miracle. Maybe folks will realize that Dementium Remastered is the ideal size for a stocking stuffer and start buying up all the copies. The surge in sales would motivate Renegade Kid to make a Dementium III, then when that sells out, they could use their riches to fund Cult County.
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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