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‘System Shock’ Remake put on Hold Temporarily
When we last heard from Nightdive Studios and their upcoming remake of System Shock, the team was still at work on the game’s “vertical slice”. However, that was really back in November. And the news coming out yesterday is not what fans wanted to hear.
On the game’s Kickstarter page, Nightdive Studios’ CEO and founder Stephen Kick has posted to state that development on the game has halted while the Nightdive team regroup to get back on track. You’re probably asking the same questions I asked when I first read that announcement. Well, according to Kick, along the way, the team moved from the remaster to “a completely new game.” After the change in engine from Unity to Unreal, the team “began envisioning doing more, but straying from the core concepts of the original title.”
As the concept grew, so did the scope of the game (and the game’s budget). “The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great.” As a result, Kick has “put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project…System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled.”
Certainly a small indie studio trying to update and bring one of the greatest PC games ever to a whole new generation of gamers is no small task. And at least Kick is up front with what’s going on, even if it’s not the greatest news in the world to backers. And it’s certainly more than what we’ve heard from the also-in-development System Shock 3 camp for a while now. Still, it’s not something you want to hear from a game that was set to come out later this year.
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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