Editorials
Experiencing Horror From a Child’s Viewpoint in ‘Among the Sleep’ [What We Play in the Shadows]
For all their heinousness, most horror villains know there’s an unwritten rule that should always be observed: don’t kill the kid. Adults, sure. Horny teens? Ripe for the slaughter. The family pet? Not a crowd-pleaser, but not unprecedented. The young child though, the wee baby, that’s a line crossed. Even Michael Myers walked past the sobbing infant in Halloween (2018). So when a game not only puts a baby in danger but makes the player that defenseless little tyke, that’s a power move. Does Among the Sleep deliver a bloodcurdling pre-K experience, or will you just want to stop playing and take a nap? Let’s draw a picture…
David is a toddler who loves his mom and his teddy bear. He’s celebrating turning two, and all is right with the world. Or it was, until a stranger knocked on the door and upset mommy. After the cake, after the nap, things don’t feel right anymore. The house is too dark, the nursery is too big. Also, Teddy is alive and telling David that bad things are happening, so that’s a clue right there. He may only be two, but David is determined to keep mommy safe from the monsters. So with Teddy’s help, he escapes the crib, the nursery, the house, and eventually, reality itself.
Among the Sleep nails two things right at the start: the scale of the world, and the frustration of moving like a toddler. Everything feels big, imposing, and potentially dangerous, while David moves pretty much how you’d expect. He shambles slowly, can run for just a little while before falling down, and is best at crawling, which is crucial for navigating some tight spots later on. Teddy is by your side for most of the game, though he will occasionally get lost when you go down a slide or enter a new level. Teddy can be hugged to emit a calming and powerful light in darker areas. Norwegian developer Krillbite Studio put a lot of effort into twisting familiar locations like a parent’s bedroom or the local park into ominous, Tim Burton-esque obstacle courses. David’s small steps and miniscule height require pulling dresser drawers and moving chairs to get around some of the time.
Beyond the furniture fumbling, you’ll be searching for safe spaces to avoid the big bads. There are two unique monsters in the game, and specific levels where they’ll be searching for David. If the player is caught, they’ll be picked up, receive a chilling face-to-face scream, and then given the option to restart from the most recent checkpoint. This also occurs if David falls into a chasm or is otherwise hurt, although Krillbite wisely did not include any animations or sound effects of an injured baby. A “bad ending” that was ultimately scrapped but is included in the definitive edition reveals very bad fortunes for the player indeed, on par with the children in a Grimm fairy tale.
The sore point here is that the game is never very frightening. Whether that’s due to the concept of playing as an infant or because the developers are going for horror of a quieter sort, the scares are minimal here. The monsters are easy enough to steer clear of and the puzzles never get all that difficult. Krillbite wanted to hit harder with their story. Did they succeed? That’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. I appreciated the tale they were telling and I know many people that have lived through a similar experience. It may be especially affecting for some.
There’s fun to be had in thinking up one-to-one philosophical ratios for all the things represented in the game -is this a deadly game of cat and mouse, or just hide-and-seek?- but ultimately, Among the Sleep excels with its environmental design more than anything else. The game itself is too easy, the scares too light. This doesn’t erase the power of its story and the inventiveness of its design, but others may want more from their horror titles. A definitive edition adds the previously mentioned alternate “bad ending” as well as a prologue DLC, with a wintry setting and a new monster. There’s also a free demo available to see what you think of David’s adventures.
Among the Sleep is available on XBOX One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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