Editorials
‘Dino Crisis’: The Classic Panic Horror Turns 20
“Resident Evil with dinosaurs.”
That’s always been the predictable and dismissive answer for those who’ve never really experienced Capcom’s Dino Crisis. And to be fair, that’s part of the game, for better and for worse. But, as fans of the series know, that’s not a reason to overlook the game. And on the original’s 20th anniversary, with fans pining for a return by Capcom to series (either by sequel or remake), it’s only fair that Shinji Mikami’s birth of Panic Horror gets noticed for what it did to distance itself from Resident Evil.
In 2009, the Secret Operation Raid Team (SORT) sends an agent to investigate a research facility on Ibis Island. The research facility is home to Dr. Edward Kirk, a world-renowned scientist who was reported dead three years ago, but is very much alive, and leading a secret weapons project within the facility. SORT sends four agents (Regina, Gail, Rick, and Cooper) to acquire Kirk and return him to custody. However, on arrival, the team find themselves being hunted by creatures thought extinct for millions of years. As Regina, the player must not only complete the mission, but survive.
After the wild success of Resident Evil, Mikami and his team wanted to move away from the fantasy elements of that series, and make something more realistic. Citing films such as The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Aliens as influences, Dino Crisis replaced the visceral horror of slow-moving zombies with persistent unease and tension brought by the more mobile and intelligent dinosaurs. Furthermore, unlike the zombies, the dinosaurs would pursue Regina from room to room, and were aggressive and quick. Eschewing the label of Survival Horror, Capcom marketed the game as Panic Horror in Japan to separate their new game from its already-established RE brethren, but also not neglecting elements that could be carried over.
This change in genre also included the idea of having more gameplay changes, such as a greater focus on physical puzzles. Gone were the “find the key to fit the door” or “get the gemstones and place them in this wall” puzzles. In their place, players had to match up electric fuses, reroute power grids and switch laser gates on and off. To add an extra layer of complexity, many of the locked doors in the facility use a digital disc key (DDK) system. The system requires players to obtain both a code disk and an input disk in order to decode a door’s password. Some passwords were simple enough, but eventually grew to be more difficult. This also potentially required players to have a pen and paper handy to write down DDK clues and solutions.
Another change was the level design. Instead of being stuck in a cliché mansion, Dino Crisis not only put players in a mix of a futuristic metallic facility and the dense jungles of the island, but balanced it all with a mix of linear and open areas. These areas also forced you into tense encounters, where you’d have to rely less on your sparse Anaesthetic Darts supply, and more on the facility’s laser fences to deal with lethally-quick raptors.
Speaking of which, prior to Resident Evil 3‘s ammo creation system, Dino Crisis players could mix a variety of different ammo types, both lethal and non-lethal. Which, given the scarcity of ammo in the game, provided another layer of strategy to avoid combat. Dino Crisis also features branching paths, which is another innovation prior to RE3 doing it. In fact, the quicktime “Danger Events”, where players would have to push buttons quickly enough in order to avoid an instant death, preceded Resident Evil 4‘s use of the mechanic!
Further developing the mechanic of Resident Evil 2‘s Chris or Clair limping as they received damage, Regina also received the same mechanic, but was expanded upon. On occasion, after receiving enough damage, Regina would start “bleeding out”, resulting in a trail of blood following her and her health gradually dropping. No amount of med packs will stop the bleeding, requiring the player to use hemostats to stop bleeding injuries.
As mentioned, Capcom didn’t entirely abandon everything that Resident Evil did. The familiar (though obviously antiquated) tank control scheme is here, alongside the door opening/stair climbings to mask loading times and inventory management. The story is also schlocky B-Movie goodness, although Dino Crisis‘ script was more refined. There’s also not as much cheese in the delivery as in the first two RE games, but the deadpan delivery of lines does creep in during some cutscenes. On the other hand, thanks to the hammy delivery, Dr. Kirk is made an even bigger prick.
Surprisingly, apart from the obvious knocks that one could make about the game being too much like its forbearers, the audio is also one of Dino Crisis‘ shortcomings. While the score by Makoto Tomozawa, Sayaka Fujita and Akari Kaida accentuates the tension and horror, the score is often too loud during cutscenes, forcing you to strain to hear the dialogue. That’s obviously less of a knock against the sound team, and more of Capcom not mixing the audio correctly.
In spite of the innovations and attempts to try and differentiate Dino Crisis from being just another Resident Evil clone (which it did), the game was still overshadowed by the presumption that it was just that. It also didn’t help that the game was pushed to the side once Resident Evil 3 showed up the following year. Thankfully, Dino Crisis did see a sequel, but Dino Crisis 2 took on a more action-oriented tone than Panic/Survival Horror. Ironically, this preceded Resident Evil 4‘s shift in the RE series to a similar action vein.
The question of whether Dino Crisis deserves a return is obviously moot for fans. The incredibly successful remake of Resident Evil 2, coupled with Capcom’s interest in exploring other remakes/revivals, leaves DC fans in a tortured state of hope and wondering. There would be no doubt that Capcom would be able to modernize and innovate with either a Dino Crisis remake or sequel. But the question of whether there would be a large enough audience that would see it as more than that “Resident Evil with dinosaurs” moniker is another question, entirely.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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