Reviews
[Review] The Nightmarish Drug-Trip of ‘What Happened’ Is Soured by Its Tonal Inconsistencies
Rarely is a title as apt as What Happened is for this game. Though it’s missing at least three question marks.
On a positive level, you say ‘what happened?’ because the game takes some inventive and frankly gonzo horror visual steps in depicting its protagonist’s downbeat nightmare acid trip. It’s a shame then, that it’s not quite as consistently adept at handling its examination of a teenager’s mental health.
It would be extremely easy to mock the attempts at empathy and mental health depiction What Happened throws at you, even if it means well. It’s trippy nature does not excuse the often jarring tonal shifts, for instance. What you can’t call What Happened is boring. The game is quite fittingly, a chaotic mess of things happening that you can’t quite help but be entranced by.
What Happened begins with our protagonist, high-schooler Stiles, locked in combat with his own mental demons, which leads to him doing acid (apparently not the first time) in the bathroom of his high school. It’s already clear that Stiles is using acid as an escape from bullying, his failed relationship, his broken friendship, and perhaps something darker. Can Stiles get through this trip? He, and you, will have to navigate the ever-changing labyrinth of his mind, solving puzzles and facing up to the reality of his past.
From the off, What Happened leans heavily into its acid trip gone wrong. The swirling blend of reality, past, present, and the surreal get disorientating, and captures the mind space of Stiles’s anxiety and drug-addled brain. Fleeting memories of bad life experiences manifest as twisted nightmares, with deliberately jarring narrative jumps from moment to moment as Stiles’ and the player’s point of view continuously slips in and out of focus, and pulses with color. The game toys with player expectation and perspective in much the same manner as Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear, with the flick of a switch or turn of the head affecting the reality of what stands before you.
This is the most effective aspect of What Happened. It portrays Stiles’ drug trip and anxiety pretty well. Whether by design or by accident, controlling Stiles and interacting with his world aren’t particularly smooth, in fact, it’s often downright unpleasant. That does seem to be the point though, you’re not supposed to enjoy this, you’re supposed to empathize with it. Which is, unfortunately, the cause of What Happened’s biggest problem, its tone.
I absolutely could understand the developers wanted to instill empathy in the player by showing them how fucked up and unpleasant life is for this suicidal, drug-addicted teen, and there are times it manages to capture that effectively. There are sweet and tender moments where Stiles recalls happier moments and times people did care for him. There’s an inventive scene depicting Stiles’ relationship with his ex-girlfriend via a puppet show. It’s the rare combination of the game doing something a bit silly and making it mean something.
Stiles doesn’t initially come across as a sympathetic character however, which, initially, made it hard to want to help him through this self-inflicted acid nightmare. Yes, his poor mental health clearly causes his self-destructive tendencies, but even with the bullying, the early part of What Happened makes him look like a bit of a self-absorbed prick. That does change as you uncover more about him, but the crux of the story is your empathy for him is supposed to shape the outcome, and again, it may be by design, but it’s a little late in the day to roll back your earlier impression in gameplay terms.
The other contributing factor is how silly the game can be. A bit of levity is absolutely welcome in a game about mental health and drug abuse, but it’s either unintentionally silly or completely out of place with the tone.
Having a game open with a distraught teen trying to escape from the world he believes hates him by taking acid doesn’t drive home its tone quite as well as it should when it involves a disembodied voice telling you to ‘enjoy your poo’ in a sing-song voice, and features a psychedelic journey down a toilet bowl.
The storytelling suffers somewhat due to the choppy, non-sequential delivery (though it does also serve the acid trip effect). Sometimes it just feels like points are made by bludgeoning the player with them as quickly as possible in order to move on to the next, rather than building up genuine empathy and understanding.
For all its faults, it’s hard to argue against the intent and ambition of What Happened. It doesn’t always get things right, but it clearly has good intentions to deliver an engaging and heartfelt depiction of mental health issues and a nauseatingly effective drug trip. It’s to the credit of the developers that it succeeds on the latter at least, and shows potential in the former.
What Happened review key for PC provided by the publisher.
What Happened is out now on Steam, with a console release yet to be determined.
The problem with parodies is that there’s an extremely fine line between precise mockery and simply creating a genuine example of what was being made fun of in the first place. That’s why the best kind of cinematic satire comes from a place of love, as unironic appreciation for the material being parodied means that you’re still left with something fun to watch even when the humor fails.
I was reminded of this while watching I Hate Found Footage, the latest horror comedy by Michael Rock, director of the Tahoe Joe trilogy and founding member of Horror Dadz Productions. This cheekily titled parody has just been released on Found TV as one of the budding streamer’s first exclusive productions, and while I commend the folks at FTV for enlisting a found footage veteran to help popularize their fan-funded platform, the ensuing product might just be a little too accurate for its own good.
Taking inspiration from classic Muppets spoofs as well as a lifetime of experience with some of the best and worst that found footage movies have to offer, I Hate Found Footage may not be the very first comedy to poke fun at the FF genre, but it’s certainly the first one to feature colorful puppets as the protagonists.
In this decidedly meta experience, we follow Eddie Blake and Michael Rock himself as Ollie and Filbert – a duo of talkative hand puppets who embark on a quest to shoot a no-budget found footage movie in the middle of the Nevada wilderness. Unfortunately for the budding filmmakers, their cameras end up picking up much more than they bargained for when their impromptu monster movie accidentally puts them in the path of a masked gang of ritualistic murderers.
What follows is a self-conscious comedy of errors poking fun at all of the most hated and some of the most beloved tropes that the found footage genre has to offer. Ollie and Filbert frequently interrupt their terrifying POV misadventure with jabs at common faux pas like their own inability to stop filming even under risk of death, as well as multiple instances of puppet-based physical humor.
In general, this is far from a bad premise. The kid-friendly puppetry might be a bit jarring during the first few minutes as you get used to seeing this playful duo interact with the gritty real world, but there’s an undeniable charm to the way that these unorthodox characters record ironic versions of the familiar exposition dumps and ominous testimonials that we’re so used to seeing in “serious” found footage flicks.
Unfortunately, Rock is so dedicated to recreating an authentically terrible found footage production that the finished film often feels more like a failed attempt at an earnest project than an enjoyable parody. Sure, the copious amount of jokes and the fact that our leads are played by fluffy masses of felt should indicate that the film isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but pointing out how amateur found footage productions suffer from long stretches of dead air and unnecessary build-up is only funny until the movie becomes the very thing it’s supposed to be criticizing.
I get that having Ollie and Filbert’s ill-advised cinematic endeavor be a laughably bad movie is itself part of the joke, but unlike similar genre parodies in the vein of Ed Wood or even stuff like Sharknado and Velocipastor, which benefit from the fun parts of traditionally “bad” horror filmmaking, I Hate Found Footage has to contend with the fact that poorly-made found footage tends to be more boring than ridiculous.
That’s not to say that there’s no enjoyment to be found here, as I especially appreciate absurdist jokes like when the characters encounter the murdered “corpse” of another hand-puppet, and his full skeleton only consists of a bloodied arm. Or even the ridiculous scene where the duo attempts to simulate a jump scare for their monster movie using embarrassing levels of puppet-on-puppet effects work. But it’s a shame that these elements are shackled to excruciatingly long, though admittedly beautiful, shots of the Nevada setting.
That being said, regardless of certain stilted/unfunny line deliveries and the painfully slow build-up that doesn’t really lead to a horrific finale, Rock is still a skilled enough filmmaker to know that this kind of comedic experience works best in short bursts. That’s why the hour-long runtime comes as a blessing even if it also serves as an example of why the flick would probably have been better off as a short film. As it stands, however, I’d argue that it’s still worth suffering through some of the flick’s cringy moments in order to get to the good stuff.
Ironically enough, I Hate Found Footage will probably only entertain veterans who are already more inclined to forgive the genre’s common pitfalls and recurring tropes. After all, the production was clearly helmed by a team with a deep knowledge of how these movies work and what fans expect to see when they press play on a low-budget POV adventure. While I still think there’s only enough humor and story here to sustain a half-hour-long short, I’d still recommend this feature to die-hard fans who enjoy a healthy dose of silliness alongside their POV scares.
I Hate Found Footage is now streaming on Found TV.
You must be logged in to post a comment.