Reviews
[Review] ‘The Padre’ is a Throwback Survival Horror That Needs to Exorcise a Few Demons
Survival Horror gets biblical. Find out if the Switch has a horror blessing on its hands in Bloody Disgusting’s The Padre review.
While Capcom has reworked the Survival Horror formula of its own Resident Evil series to suit more modern tastes, some smaller, often independent, developers are embracing the late 90s template in a bid to channel some of that nostalgic energy into something closer to the source material. See the recent The Glass Staircase for an example of how to do it right.
The latest entrant into the tank control Survival Horror throwback sub-genre is The Padre, a 3D pixel art trip to a haunted house full of monsters, ghosts, and ghouls. You certainly get a strong whiff of the typical 90s Survival Horror trappings, and there’s no shame in embracing the hits of the genre as it does, but unfortunately, developer Shotgun With Glitters leans a little too hard on the wrong parts.
You play the titular Padre, a priest investigating the disappearance of a Cardinal. The search inevitably leads to him entering a gloomy, sprawling mansion filled with enough demonic entities to form a new horror film franchise. With just his wits and smart acquisition of the right tools, the Padre embarks upon a hellish journey through the mansion, solving puzzles, banishing demons, and making jokes along the way.
Yes, the biggest deviation from the Survival Horror template The Padre has is its humor. The priest is a bit of a talker despite being on his own, and regularly pipes up to make a quip about a situation. It’s an interesting angle to take, and while comedy is naturally subjective, I felt the hit rate of The Padre‘s puns, quips, and musings were pretty low, and often contributed to diminishing the game’s horror aspect.
The important part of the package is the Survival Horror itself. The Padre fills the quota for intricate puzzles built into the mansion’s architecture, and the slow crawl nightmare of tank controls against the shambling threats roaming the halls is indeed present. There is a traditional fixed camera if you want it, but there’s also usually an alternate angle you can manually switch to in each area too. If only the fixed cameras were put to their intended use more often.
Back in the day, fixed cameras in horror games were good for building the fear of the unknown. What’s making that noise? Is it just around the corner? The Padre doesn’t utilize this nearly enough, putting threats in plain view too often, and the voxel art style doesn’t exactly create the kind of detailed terrors that this decision merits.
Movement and combat are understandably treacly, but there’s no real weight to Padre’s movement or weapon handling, nor the attacks by enemies. It’s difficult to get invested in the survival or the horror when you can nearly always see your threats, they aren’t intimidating, and there’s little satisfaction in dispatching them. You can see the damage done to Padre in a fairly clever manner though, via his cassock draining of light as he takes hits.
So there’s a fair bit of disappointment to be found in The Padre, but it’s not without some highlights. The mansion design is well done. The voxel art style works for it in a way the character design doesn’t, packing plenty of detail in and bringing a decent moody atmosphere, even if it is undermined by the aforementioned flaws. The humor is hit and miss, yet the strange delivery of the jokes is often the making of the better ones. The nods to old horror games are also nicely handled. The puzzles are the standout feature. The one thing that carries over from that era well is puzzles and by sticking close to that, The Padre finds its major strength. There’s cryptic clues and hints in the dialogue, back and forth trips to fetch items to combine, and more. It’s far more interesting than any of the fighting in The Padre.
The Padre means well, trying to offer players the kind of Survival Horror experience that has been missing (for good reason in a lot of ways) for some time. It does sometimes capture the spirit of that well, but misses what made the games that it was inspired by into such beloved favorites. Whenever you’re dragged away from puzzling and exploring the mansion, things take a turn for the worse, with tedium and annoyance robbing the game of its atmosphere. The effort is appreciated, it just needs refining.
The Padre review code for Nintendo Switch provided by the publisher
The Padre is available April 18 on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PC, and Xbox One.
Avalon Fast’s Camp looks to be part of that recent trend of witchcraft stories, yet what sets this movie apart is its approach to magic. So often, the presence of witches would suggest a lot of destruction (in both the past and the near future). By no means is Camp short on hurt as provocation. In an energizing change of pace, though, the spells enacted by this one particular coven bring the complete opposite of pain.
Camp finds itself in harmony, not contention, with its dreamlike parts. Even when a scene comes across as straightforward, there is still something rather surreal in its presentation. Take, for instance, that game of truth or dare that prefaces the story’s inciting incident. Zola Grimmer’s character is pressed to dish out a juicier truth that, ultimately, goes on to make her audience feel both engaged and uncomfortable. The whole quality of this moment is similar to that of our most mortifying dreams.
As the title indicates, the movie takes place at a summer camp. This, of course, is only after Grimmer’s character, Emily, has been directly involved with another person’s death. This time, it’s the loss of a loved one, as opposed to a stranger, that sends the protagonist into a deep and guilt-ridden depression. Emily’s father (Michael Tan) then helps turn things around by signing Emily up to be a camp counselor. That’s when the movie enters more familiar territory, in terms of genre, but astonishingly, Fast doesn’t ever settle into the same-old routine that we now associate with these sorts of camping trips.
Zola Grimmer as Emily in Camp.
Grief and trauma are always on display here. From Emily becoming something of a death magnet in her life, to the other camp counselors working through their own private issues, this movie doesn’t ever avoid personal tragedy and suffering. However, these components of the story are handled with a kind of care that doesn’t come up often enough in modern horror. Rather than sensationalizing or exploiting Emily’s pain, there is an aware attempt at helping her. And not just using the cinematic tactics that would force the character to confront her fears, either.
Camp has the setup for a more traditional-acting horror movie. A bunch of young women ominously head off into the woods, unaware of all the potential terrors that could be waiting for them. Even the trailer implies a sinister movie. In contrast, though, Fast goes the opposite way of addressing Emily’s problems. Most importantly, this new direction is without the act of creating more trauma for the main character.
What sounds unfeasible, especially for a movie marked down as horror, is actually quite the refreshing approach to a very common concept nowadays. Yes, simple revenge has its perks and fans, as does the paring down of casts until only one person is left standing. But opting for restoration, as opposed to destruction, in dark scenarios is surely also worth exploring.
Deeply felt, textured, and always self-questioning, Camp is an extraordinary movie that goes to some unexpected places. The gorgeous presentation alone is one rife with beautiful nature and spotted with haunting, otherworldly imagery. Performance-wise, Grimmer makes a tremendous debut here; she and co-star Alice Wordsworth have this growingly incandescent chemistry that lights up all the right parts of the story. Overall, Camp is a pleasant surprise that is light on conventional horror but never low on compassion for its characters.
Camp plays in select theaters on June 26.
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