Podcasts
Reviews of ‘Vampire Survivors’, ‘The Devil in Me’, and More in The Inventory [Safe Room Podcast]
Before diving into this month’s edition of The Inventory, listen to last week’s discussion on horror game adaptations of film!
Welcome to another edition of The Inventory, Safe Room’s monthly review show, in which we amass some of the latest (and hopefully) greatest horror games released within a given month and discuss their merits or lack thereof.
Just as Neil and I are tackling the ever-daunting task of compiling our respective games of the year lists, another crop of titles has fallen into our laps for consideration.
From the puzzle-solving of Save Room to the horde bashing of Warhammer 40,000: Wartide to the extraterrestrial family drama of Sommerville, November has no shortage of horror and genre-adjacent titles that stood out amongst November’s healthy release schedule.
The Inventory: November 2022 Reviews
Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Bloody Ties
The first expansion for Techland’s zombie-slashing sequel gives us a demented game show of death!
Save Room
Resident Evil 4’s inventory management becomes a puzzle game in this delightful gem.
Sommerville
From the minds behind Limbo and Inside comes a War of the Worlds-esque tale.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me
Supermassive Games closes its first season of The Dark Pictures by having a TV crew get trapped in a shifting murder house with a serial killer.
Vampire Survivors
The hit PC game finally landed on console this month, and it’s ruined our work/life balance.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
Crunchy co-op chaos arrives in the 40K follow-up to the Left 4 Dead-inspired Vermintide series.
We are always looking for recommendations, so if you played a standout horror game this month, feel free to comment below, email us at SafeRoomPod@Gmail.com, or tweet us @SafeRoomPod!
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday on
iTunes/Apple, Sticher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Linktree for additional streaming services.
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Aaliyah Innocent.
May was a busy subgenre-switching month. After kicking things off with disaster “slasher” The Poseidon Adventure (listen), we watched American Giallo The Fan (listen), then wrapped things up with Vincent Price’s horror comedy Theater of Blood (listen).
Now, in honor of Pride Month and the return of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (renamed The Vampire Lestat for S03), Trace and I had to check out the straight-washed second attempt to bring Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles to life.
Back in 2002, director Michael Rymer pitched Hollywood on his vision for Rice’s second Chronicle book, The Vampire Lestat. Instead, the suits opted to adapt the third book, Queen of the Damned (likely due to the ancillary opportunities of the soundtrack, written entirely by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis).
In the film, Lestat (Stuart Townsend) awakens from slumber to reinvent himself as a leather-pant-wearing rocker. Lestat’s very public vampire persona attracts the attention of Talamasca novice Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), as well as the vampire’s maker Marius (Vincent Perez). But the nu-metal has the greatest impact on Akasha (Aaliyah), who awakens and promises to take over the world if her old foe Maharet (Lena Olin) doesn’t stop her.
Whose side will Lestat join? Will Marius help his fledgling or abandon him to public sacrifice? And does anyone actually care about Jesse? (Please note: that last question is rhetorical.)
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Episode 389: Queen of the Damned (2002)
Practice your Egyptian accent and bare that midriff because we are talking the troubled “adaptation” of Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned (2002).
Directed by Australian Michael Rymer, this one was doomed by the suits before it was even greenlit (which happened AFTER all of the songs were written by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis). It’s a bit of a clusterfuck.
Plus: praising everything Aaliyah (RIP); critiquing everything Stuart Townsend (aside from his abs and leather pants); a soft queer reading of Marius; and bemoaning boring protagonist/audience surrogate JESSE.
Cross out Queen of the Damned!
Coming Up Next: We’re tackling Ben Stiller’s horror-adjacent dark comedy The Cable Guy (1996), in anticipation of its 30th anniversary!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 495 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 3 Episodes 5 & 6, Backrooms, Passenger, Leviticus, an audio commentary on the original Scary Movie (2000), and the return of our Requel Tier as we begin our episode coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat.