Editorials
The Top Horror-based Video Games You Need to Check Out in 2019
2018 was a fine year for horror-based gaming. From heavy hitters such as God of War, to indie gems like DUSK or SEPTEMBER 1999, and VR fare such as The Persistence, gamers were treated to exhilarating, emotional, and disturbing, experiences. But the terror and adventure are far from over, for 2019 looks to be an even more epic year for games flavored by our favorite genre. Taking a look at everything from AAA to indie titles, here are a healthy selection of horror games to keep an eye out for this year.
Devil May Cry 5
The beloved hack ‘n slash series plans on making a stellar return in the first quarter of 2019. Players will have the chance to take control of Nero once again, along with Dante and a new character called V. This time around Nero is without his devil arm and will have to rely on a brand new robot one! The team at Capcom has made sure to include a variety of tricks into the game, allowing for players to go all-out in their demon rampage.
Moons of Madness
Taking place on Mars, you play a lone wanderer who begins to slowly lose his grip on reality. The plot is being kept under wraps, but early details state that Moons of Madness will deal with science fiction horror and themes of mental illness. Lovecraftian elements are said to appear throughout as well, building tension as players strive to survive on the desolate planet.
Metro Exodus (Multi)
As the next installment in the Metro series, Exodus comes forth with a beautifully somber atmosphere that has fast become a signature staple. The barren Russian wasteland will keep players on their toes as they fight through hordes of mutated creatures. This action-shooter looks to pack plenty of adrenaline, as survival will be a key factor in traversing such difficult terrain.
Sea of Solitude (Multi)
You play as a young girl who is exploring an abandoned submerged city. As you travel about the land you’ll come into contact with a terrifying creature, all while trying to discover why you have become a monster yourself. With details being hidden regarding the deeper themes at work, it’ll be fascinating to see how Sea of Solitude intertwines its story into the gameplay.
Resident Evil 2 Remake (Multi)
Speaking of other horrifying classics – Capcom will be releasing the remake to Resident Evil 2 in just a matter of weeks. From the trailers and gameplay footage already released, the game looks grimly breathtaking; seriously, the characters are some of the most lifelike in all of gaming. You’ll take on the role of Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, running about Raccoon City in an attempt to survive and fight off waves of zombies and other horrifying threats.
Scorn (PC)
Like an H.R. Giger wet dream, Scorn is a first-person shooter where you’ll embark into a world that is (to be blunt), quite uncomfortable to look at. Brimming with slimy, fleshy textures, the world of Scorn feels alive (especially when even your weapons are wiggling in your hands). There is little context so far about the plot other than the fact that you take on the role of a “strange skinless humanoid” being.
DOOM Eternal (Multi)
DOOM is still exciting and relevant 25 years after Romero and company first unleashed hell on home computers, and a lot of that is down to 2016’s semi-reboot rebirthing the legend for a whole new era, and now its stunning-looking sequel, DOOM Eternal, looks to iterate on the formula and become just as celebrated a successor as DOOM II was to the original.
Mortal Kombat 11 (Multi)
Ed Boon’s blood-soaked fighting series returns for the 11th round of bone-crunching, skin-slicing brutality. The reveal trailer certainly provided some of the grisly kombat fans relish seeing. The big question is, however, what horror icons will join the roster this time? In the previous two series entries, we had the likes of Freddy Krueger and Leatherface enter the grisly tournament. Evil Dead‘s Ash this time, please?
The Sinking City (Multi)
2018 had Call of Cthulhu and 2019 plans to have The Sinking City. The trailer alone is captivating in how it hints at time and space manipulation (along with the monstrous tentacle that grabs at the protagonist). Offering a fascinating Lovecraftian world to explore, The Sinking City looks to be another surreal mystery adventure full of untold horrors.
Atomic Heart (Multi)
Taking inspiration from the likes of Bioshock, Atomic Heart takes place in an alternate universe in Soviet Russia. What could have happened if the USSR succeeded above other countries? Through Soviet and science fiction aesthetics, you take on the role of a KGB officer, in charge of surveying a land and all its creepy dangers. With RPG elements on top of all the action, Atomic Heart looks to be one of the more unique titles in recent years.
Devotion (TBA)
RedCandle Games made one of the most fascinating horror games of modern times with 2D Survival Horror Detention by blending real Taiwanese history into its creepiness, and its follow-up, Devotion, will tackle a particularly hot horror trend in faith and family. This time we’ll be going 3D, and into first-person to explore a seemingly abandoned apartment complex that’s quite likely haunted by something. Devotion looks to be another fine slice of Taiwanese horror.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Multi)
We got a tasty bite of what Bloodstained can do with the retrotastic Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon last year, but 2019 should finally see the release of the much-troubled spiritual successor to Castlevania people backed on Kickstarter to begin with. The jury is still out on whether it will deliver on its initial promise, but things have looked a touch brighter in recent months.
Code Vein (Multi)
Bandai Namco, short of a Dark Souls this year, instead has a vampiric anime-inspired take on the formula in Code Vein. This post-apocalyptic action RPG sees your character able to harness vampire-like abilities and naturally that leads to some heavily crimson-soaked action. A delay from September last year seems to be for no reason beyond a bit of tweaking and polishing, so the promise is still incredibly high for this one.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Multi)
Yes, a DOOM and a Wolfenstein in the same year. Youngblood takes the alt-history route started by The New Order and thrusts it into the 1980s where series hero BJ Blazkowicz is replaced by his twin daughters as the protagonist. With twins in the lead role, Wolfenstein goes co-op with Youngblood. It’ll be just as fascinating to see how that works out as it will be to see where the Nazi War Machine is at in an alternate 1980s.
Days Gone (PS4)
Bend Studios’ post-apocalyptic open world game has been living in the shadow of its PlayStation stablemate The Last of Us Part II for quite some time. It finally gets its time in the spotlight this Spring. Previews last year suggested it needed a fair bit of polish, and zombie games are a hard sell critically at the best of times, but Sony’s delivered a fair few surprises with its exclusives in recent years despite early concerns. Hopefully Days Gone falls into this camp.
DECEMBER 2000 (PC)
Last year’s five and a half minute found-footage style horror game SEPTEMBER 1999 was among the most interesting things to happen to horror gaming in recent memory. It undoubtedly left fans wanting more, and creator 98DEMAKE has happily obliged with follow-up title DECEMBER 2000. The sequel promises to further expand on what came before and will be a much longer game this time around.
What games on this list are you most excited to see in 2019? What games aren’t on this list you’re looking forward to?
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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