Editorials
Exploring “Hellnight”, PlayStation’s Barely Known Subterranean Horror Title
The PlayStation’s ‘Hellnight’ incorporates demonic monsters, labyrinthine levels, and doomsday cults to deliver a unique, but unknown, experience.
“You’re all alone now.”
The 1990s were a formative period for survival horror. Not only did the genre get to truly take its first real formative steps and turn out franchises that would help define it like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Clock Tower, but more experimental titles were also allowed to exist, many of which fell into the digital abyss and failed to have a lasting impact on the industry. Hellnight, or Dark Messiah as it’s known in Japan, takes some big swings. It’s set within a futuristic version of Tokyo, largely set underground, and it throws subterranean monsters and apocalypse cults at the audience. Yet in spite all of this craziness, Hellnight is largely a mixed bag.
One of the most interesting things about Hellnight is that it’s developed by Atlus, a company with a formidable reputation, but one that is more commonly known for lengthy RPGs. During the ‘90s it sometimes feels like everyone was trying to capitalize on the survival horror trend and Hellnight is Atlus’ quirky attempt. Konami handled the game’s European release in 1999, but there was no North American release for the title. This can largely explain why the game flew under the radar so much, but Hellnight is a title where there is bizarrely very little information available.
The game received barely any media attention and there aren’t even any official reviews from mainstream publications available for Hellnight. Additionally, details that should be readily available are incredibly scarce, like the game’s director. Hellnight is developed by Dennou Eizou Seisakusho, but details on the game’s production are almost non-existent (there’s basically just the game’s end credits and even those are sparse and do not list a director). Seisakusho would also work on deSPIRIA for the Dreamcast and some Game Gear titles, but nothing of considerable worth or of the same scope as Hellnight.
The introduction and “sizzle reel” that kick off Hellnight honestly feel like the opening cinematic of any survival horror game from he ’90s, but that’s oddly comforting in a way. This introduction also explains the game’s basic premise where not only does a subway accident take place that claims 56 lives (and you were on board during the crash), but most of the world has evidently fled underground to the subways and have found themselves in a war with the Dark Followers of a group called the Holy Ring who wish to bring forth a “Dark Messiah” with a plot that revolves around the impending Millennium (the game came out in 1998/1999). On top of that, the intro also not so elegantly explains that in this game you have no means of attacking and that you’re supposed to flee from your enemies (making this feel like a precursor to Outlast in many ways). “All you can do is run, and keep running,” Hellnight tells the player. The game makes it very clear that your survival largely depends on the help that you either utilize or ignore from others.
On that note, the game’s handful of characters and possible companions are all entertaining, albeit a touch stereotypical. On the other hand, monstrous characters like That Which Wanders or his slew of alien companions, That Which Sways, That Which Judges, That Which Whispers all skew to incredibly unique creations. There’s a real flavor and style to their look. The exchanges of dialogue with the people that Naomi encounters in The Mesh are freaky at times and effective, as well as help shade in details and build up the game’s atmosphere. Although when you beat the final threat it’s pretty amusing that you’re told, “Not bad…Not bad at all.”
Hellnight allows you to bring along one companion at a time through your progress who can assist Naomi on her journey and can also act as a shield of sorts from enemies. Some of these companions do have limited firepower, but it never fully eliminates an enemy and just buys you a few more seconds. You do switch characters throughout the game as you reach new areas and get new people in your party, but due to the first-person mechanic, this largely feels irrelevant and it’s not really clear that you’re no longer playing as Naomi until there’s a death animation and you see your character fall.
In terms of Hellnight’s gameplay, it offers a first-person explorative style of experience that feels akin to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or even Enemy Zero, except you’re in the sewers or the corridors of the infrastructure known as “The Mesh,” as opposed to ventilation ducts. A Resident Evil sheen is placed over all of this where there’s still a degree of looking for items, keys, and solving puzzles (and shutting down a whole lot of control panels), but these mechanics, when combined with the fact that you can’t fight your enemies and need to be on the defensive, makes it feel like a distinct enough entry that’s different from the other survival horror games of the time. It’s weirdly more of a dungeon-crawling adventure with horror aesthetics. You’re highly dependent on the game’s maps and without them it’s a much more difficult experience, whereas in some survival horror games they’re just a helpful tool.
There’s some impressive sound design that’s also fundamental in this respect, where the footsteps and roars of monsters can be heard in the distance, alerting you to which routes are dangerous or safe and it amounts to a much more intimidating, anxious experience. It makes you be careful in your exploration in a way that you might not necessarily otherwise be in a different survival horror game. This exceptional sound design continues onwards into the game’s unnerving soundtrack, which is definitely one of its biggest selling points. The score greatly immerses you into the game and it’s also the only survival horror game you’ll encounter that incorporates sitar music into its score.
The game’s music is credited to Ryouhei Tomoeda, Rick Tillman, Kinso, Minehiko Tanaka, Naoki Wato, Harumi Fujita, and Masataka Kitaura. The composers strangely receive the largest attention in the game’s credits, but it’s honestly well deserved. The frantic music during the Hive’s final stages (that is also filled with the harrowing screams of victims) is so good and tense. It’s more upsetting than any sort of Halloween SFX soundtrack. It makes playing the game alone, in the dark, even more stressful, which is exactly the energy that Hellnight wants to create.
The graphics in the game may not be anything special, but all of Hellnight’s cut scenes deliver. They’re not only highly gory, but they’re actually surprisingly frightening in some cases, as opposed to the typically hokey nature of the presentation that many of these games have. These even embrace a certain cosmic horror energy that really works for it, too. The monsters themselves all have this very marionette-like artist’s dummy kind of appearance that isn’t really that scary, but it still is creepy in the right context. There are also no bosses to speak of in Hellnight, due to the game’s lack of combat, which is unfortunate.
The game’s story eventually builds to the “Ceremony of the Awakening” where people from Tokyo are kidnapped by the dark cult to be used in their sacrifices to awake their Dark Messiah. There’s a rather seismic reveal when it turn out that Naomi is in fact the second coming of the Dark Messiah and she must decide if she succumbs to these dark forces and gets reborn, or vanquishes them for good. That’s actually not a bad story and it plays with some solid, disturbing ideas that typically aren’t in video games. Things do become considerably stranger once you enter the Great Hall and are surrounded by eerie religious iconography and deformed priest figures. This and the alien-like psychedelic Hive (you could honestly swear that you’re working your way through a secret level in Doom or Hexen) provides a strong final act that becomes increasingly foreign and surreal.
Hellnight does conclude with six different possible endings available, depending on how well you perform, which companion you have with you, the decisions you make, and if Naomi can be kept alive through the whole game. These endings vary from the worst one, where a serial killer gets his way and ascends to become the Dark Messiah, to a moderate success where the Hive is destroyed, to the game’s best ending where not only is the mission accomplished, but Naomi survives the Hive’s destruction and goes on to tell the story. These are a nice attempt at replayability and do make the short game become longer and more challenging in a way.
Overall Hellnight does provide some very sterile, drab, locations that can make for a detached experience. They certainly verge on becoming boring and repetitive, but never quite reach that place. Even still, it does feel like a duller System Shock in many respects. That being said, the game’s main objective is to create the feeling that you are truly alone and lost and these isolating environments do do that. If the setup works for you, it’s easy to lose yourself in this game. At the same time, Resident Evil: Nemesis was also around at the same time, which is a game that does so much, not just with basic combat and level design in a survival horror title, but its additions like real-time decisions and branching paths were proof of what could be done in a game, whereas Hellnight is decidedly more linear, but still creates a memorable experience in some ways.
Hellnight is, unfortunately, a surprisingly short game and it’s easy to breeze through it in a little over two hours without even trying. This definitely holds the title back some, but its strangeness still shines through, despite its flawed nature. There are genuinely some good, creative ideas here, so the fact that there’s almost zero information on the title is a severe shame. It’s got enough charm that it doesn’t deserve to be swallowed into oblivion and forgotten. Throwing it up on Steam, or Microsoft and Sony’s online stores so some people can at least be aware of it would be nice, especially when less impressive titles have gotten such a treatment. Hellnight is a more than worthwhile way to fill up an evening or a weekend in a weird horror universe and get thrown back into the late ‘90s for a little bit. It’s also impressive to see how much Atlus has evolved as a developer and that they figured out that their skills are perhaps not best suited to this genre, but if they made a Hellnight 2 or attempted a few more survival horror games, they maybe could have come up with something really addictive and different.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead Burn.
Fans of The Evil Dead franchise have become accustomed to an excess of gore. From the low-fi horror of Sam Raimi’s 1981 original and the slapstick comedy of Army of Darkness to Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake, which literally ends in a rain of blood, grotesque dismemberment and comedic violence are as important to an Evil Dead film as the outline of Bruce Campbell’s iconic jaw.
Sébastien Vaniček‘s franchise installment, Evil Dead Burn, follows suit with wall-to-wall violence and set pieces built around extreme carnage. As the Deadites rise once again, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) must fight to the death against her possessed in-laws hell-bent on punishing her for their family’s sins.
Co-written by Vaniček and Florent Bernard, Evil Dead Burn follows the ill-fated Price family, descendants of Dr. Benjamin Price who discovered an ancient dagger capable of sending Kandarian demons back to hell. Newly uncovered from its protective spell, this dagger has called to the evil dead and led them to the family’s ramshackle home. Keeping plot to a bare minimum, Vaniček fills nearly every scene with powerful Deadites and their dastardly acts as they torture the Prices to find the weapon. Horrific moments like a woman drinking hot wax from a lit candle and a shocking post-credits child murder don’t even crack the top ten of disgusting, painful, and disturbing carnage that floods the film.
In any other franchise, we would be listing the film’s most gruesome kills. But fans of Evil Dead know that when we’re talking about the Necronomicon, mere death is only the beginning.
10 ) Deadites Burn
Though Burn checks off all the Evil Dead boxes, its story is a franchise anomaly. Rather than possessing anyone who crosses their path, Vaniček’s Deadites have set their sights specifically on an unwitting clan, intent on recovering the powerful dagger. Resurrected from a nearby lake, Deadite Jessica (Greta van den Brink) informs us of this plan while murdering the eldest Price son. Will (George Pullar) is speeding down a deserted road when he slams into the malevolent demon standing in the middle of the road. After his car rolls off the deserted road, he awakens to find himself upside down, a strange woman lodged in his cracked windshield.
As he desperately tries to reach his phone, Jessica slowly twists her head, tearing the skin of her distended neck. Completely detached from her shattered body, the demon’s head rolls out the window and begins chanting a Kandarian curse. Will’s car bursts into flames as Jessica vows to seek out the rest of his family. While burning alive, Will learns that he is merely the first on a deadly hitlist filled with the people he loves most.
9) Dinner from Hell
Despite a remarkably streamlined plot, Vaniček hints at the Price family’s extensive dysfunction. An uncomfortable dinner erupts in aggression as they gather for lunch after Will’s funeral. Mother Susan (Tandi Wright) berates her recently widowed daughter-in-law while father Edgar (Erroll Shand) — already under Kandarian influence — blames younger son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) for his eldest son’s death. No one is safe as long-held tensions break through to the surface and family secrets ricochet through the air.
With Edgar behaving erratically, Alice and Thya (Luciane Buchanan), Joseph’s girlfriend, try to move sharp objects out of his reach. But Edgar manages to get a hold of a fork and turns his rage on the family dog. As he stabs Max repeatedly in the face, Joseph tries to pull his father away. Both are injured in the struggle and rush to the hospital, leaving Susan and Alice to deal with the corpse. A horrific moment of animal cruelty, this scene sets up a no-holds-barred film in which anyone can be brutalized. But perhaps most disturbing is the viciousness already lurking in this troubled family, barely concealed resentments that existed long before the Kandarian threat.
8 ) Bathroom Brawl
As Deadites possess the Price family, Alice barricades herself in an upstairs bathroom. She reluctantly shields her mother-in-law, despite Susan’s atrocious behavior. Almost immediately, Alice regrets this decision when the woman reveals the depths of her hatred. She rejects clear evidence of Will’s domestic abuse, continuing to blame Alice for their troubled marriage. Leaning her cheek against a scalding hot radiator, Susan submits to Kandarian possession and becomes a Deadite before our eyes. Though disturbing on its face, she seems to choose possession over an honest reckoning of her family’s dark secrets.
Now a Deadite, Susan attacks Alice with broken shards of the toilet bowl and wraps the shower curtain around her head. Scampering across the ceiling, she hangs her daughter-in-law by the neck with the plastic sheet as Alice desperately gasps for air. With only her hand free, Alice gouges Susan’s face with a safety razor, finally managing to break herself free. As Deadite Susan taunts her from the corner, Alice revs up a brush trimmer and plunges the circular blade into her shoulder and chest. We cheer for Alice as she finally pushes back against Susan’s passive-aggressive disdain.
7) The Pen is Mightier
In a sea of blood-splattered dismemberment, one scene is so tense that it makes us squirm despite its lack of visual gore. With the family’s ailing matriarch possessed, Deadite Polly (Maude Davey) attacks Alice in the upstairs hallway, pressing her face against the bush trimmer’s still blade. Insisting that Alice has caused Will’s death, Polly invites the grieving woman to avenge her child by turning on the power tool. An instant before her mother-in-law can send the blade tearing into her cheek, Alice manages to escape by jamming a shard of glass into Polly’s eye. But not before the elderly demon can deliver a cringe-worthy injury.
Though Alice struggles with all her might, Polly slowly drives a fountain pen into the younger woman’s ear canal. Ringing blots out all other sounds as Alice’s face twists in pain. We imagine a tiny object bursting through our own eardrums, puncturing the soft tissue lying beneath. Though Alice tries to extract the pen, she only succeeds in breaking it off, leaving half of the quill buried in her ear. She will eventually use tweezers to remove the tip, sparking another moment of deafening agony.
6) Chekhov’s Dishwasher
As Susan prepares for the aforementioned family meal, Vaniček drops a delicious bit of foreshadowing. While the grieving mother thaws frozen food, she absently fills an old dishwasher whose door has long since busted its latch. Reminiscent of a scene from Final Destination, the faulty appliance falls open, leaving a shelf full of gleaming forks and knives suspended a foot above the floor, just waiting for their moment to strike. After returning from a fatal incident we’ll discuss in a moment, Deadite Thya returns to the Price home, hell-bent on retrieving the powerful knife.
As she advances on Joseph, the frightened son retreats to the kitchen and brandishes a carving knife, subtly nodding to an ultra-violent kitchen scene in Álvarez’s Evil Dead. But Thya will not be deterred. Advancing on her boyfriend, the Deadite startles him into tripping on the outstretched door and impaling himself on the upturned utensils. She presses Joseph further onto the blades while he plunges a corkscrew into her throat. But even this will not stop the maniacal demon, who rips her throat open with the wine tool, dripping her blood over Joseph’s upturned face. Adding insult to injury, she marvels at his willingness to kill the woman he professed to love, casting a pall over their entire relationship. Not only gruesome and excruciatingly tense, but this moment plays into Joseph’s insecurities as the failed son of this disturbed family.
5 ) On the Lake
Evil Dead Burn begins on a seemingly peaceful lake overrun with lurking Kandarian demons. Jared (Keanu Karim) is trying to enjoy a quiet day of fishing but can’t stop his friend Leo (Victory Ndukwe) from answering the phone. Along the dock, Jared notices a bite on Leo’s reel and eventually pulls up a severed head savvy viewers may recognize from Lee Cronin’s 2023 sequel Evil Dead Rise. Moments later, Jared finds himself ensnared by reels, hooks digging into the corner of his mouth and eyelid. As the fishing line wraps around his neck, he’s dragged, screaming, into the lake.
Leo returns in the pouring rain and sees Jared desperately calling for help. He quickly boats out to save his friend, but a mysterious force pulls him down into the depths. Leo finally drags Jared back into the boat, only to see that his body has been cut in half, intestines spilling out of his bisected waist. As he struggles to make sense of this carnage, Deadite Jessica emerges from the lake and capsizes the boat, her clenched demon hands causing the water to boil. Though Leo manages to swim to shore, his skin is a blistered and bubbly mess. Deadite Jessica absently steps on his hand, easily peeling away flesh like overcooked meat. This jaw-dropping opener not only sets the stage for a brutal film, but situates the story in franchise lore while simply explaining the Deadites’ return.
4) Car Trouble
The shocking trailer to Evil Dead Burns shows the aftermath of a vicious attack. As Deadite Thya crosses the family threshold, the camera reveals a car’s headrest still impaling her face. But this devastating sight merely hints at the cruel circumstances of her actual death. Incapacitated in the disastrous family dinner, Edgar slumps in the backseat while Joseph tends to his wounds. Though seemingly incapacitated, the possessed father snaps to attention and wraps his seatbelt around Thya’s neck, pushing against the back of her seat. Joseph holds a gun to his father’s head, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
As Thya tries to escape the car, Edgar viciously slams the door, severing four of her fingers. She manages to trigger a fire extinguisher, filling the car with cloudy white chemicals and giving Joseph a chance to escape. But Thya is not so lucky. Trapped in the car, she screams as Edgar pummels her with a detached headrest, stabbing the poles through her neck and face. Joseph watches from a safe distance as his father beats his girlfriend to death, knowing he was unable to save her life.
3) Head Shots
When Deadite Thya comes stumbling back home, Joseph believes he’s seen the worst. Unfortunately, his misery is only beginning. After fighting off his newly-sadistic undead girlfriend, he tries to flee with his surviving family, only to find Deadite Edgar blocking his path. Flanked by Deadite Max, Edgar taunts his son by insisting that he should be dead in Will’s place and confirming the young man’s greatest fears. Edgar then does what Joseph could not and shoots himself in the head.
The family screams in horror at this devastating sight, then freezes in stunned silence as Edgar does not fall. Grinning, the maniacal father shoots himself twice more, blowing gaping holes in the sides of his head. For the rest of the film, Deadite Edgar will terrorize his family with these unthinkable wounds, even tempting his wife with a bloody kiss. Vaniček mixes emotional devastation with gore as Joseph must watch his father’s suicide while confronting the truth of his own ineptitude.
2) Down Through the Chimney
Along with references to the beloved Ash (Campbell), it’s become tradition for an Evil Dead film to reference the franchise’s signature weapon. But Vaniček subverts our expectations when Edgar’s chainsaw is out of gas. Instead, Alice employs a rusty bush trimmer to fight off her Deadite mother-in-law. Unfortunately, the extended weapon only shreds her flesh, leaving the monstrous woman still able to fight. Trapped in the attic, Alice must clamber out of an upper window with Deadite Susan hot on her heels.
Having dropped the ceremonial knife off the third-story roof, Alice has no choice but to improvise. Toting the bush trimmer, she inches her way down the chimney, pausing to turn halfway down. As Susan follows her daughter-in-law down the chute, Alice turns on the bush trimmer and waits for impact. Vaniček brings us into the living room as buckets of blood and dismembered body parts begin to rain down over the hearth. It’s the kind of moment Evil Dead fans love, gleefully gory carnage via an unexpected power tool.
1 ) Goodbye Stranger
Despite this plethora of grisly gore, Vaniček’s final act tops the list while delivering a poignant beat of empowerment. With the house on fire and the Deadites subdued, we believe that Alice is finally safe. But as she watches the Price home burn to the ground, the corpse of her husband walks out of the flames. He taunts her memories of their abusive marriage, insisting that she stayed because she likes the pain. Demanding the sacred weapon, Deadite Will chases Alice to a construction site and into an open hydraulic press. In the fall, Alice impales her ankle on a massive spike, leaving her trapped as the pit fills with boiling hot tar.
But Alice finds the strength to save herself and pulls her ankle off the bloody spike. She distracts Will with a decoy knife, then pummels his chest with a jackhammer. Exacerbating her emotional pain, Deadite Will reminds her of his love. But it seems that Alice has had enough. She stabs him with the ceremonial blade, then crushes his head as it turns to ash. It’s a well-earned moment of empowerment as our final girl vanquishes her most powerful demon.
Vaniček’s crowd-pleaser continues the Evil Dead trend of gleefully crude massacres. Two extra scenes hint at a continuation of this gruesome massacre, promising more brutality in films to come.
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