Editorials
Eight of the Most Memorable Deaths in Horror Games
Spoiler alert: Death occurs quite frequently in horror games.
Characters have met their demise in all sorts of ways: Being sacrificed to demonic gods, turned into the undead, blown up by a rocket launcher while sinking into a volcano…you name it! Despite this, while sifting through the many corpses of horror past, there are a handful of character deaths whose ghosts still haunt us. These are the deaths that have reverberated throughout the rest of a series, deaths that have made us shed tears, and deaths that were so gruesome, that the image has been seared into our brains.
For the sake of casting a broad net into a large genre of deaths, this list will include only one character each from a respective series, as a series like Silent Hill could have its own list of memorable character deaths in itself.
With that: Let the killing begin!
Mayu Amakura (Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly)
Mayu was the very first character that I thought of when considering which deaths have stuck with me the most. The weight of Mayu’s death touches on so many relatable emotional facets—familial love, sacrifice, and grappling with the inevitability of death. The Amakura twins are immediately tragic victims of circumstance when they’re dragged into All God’s Village, and Mio’s devotion to her sister is what gives her the courage to face the hostile spirits that block her path.
We’re led to believe that Mio has the ability to protect her sister wielding the Camera Obscura, yet in a tragic twist, she herself ends up falling victim to the spirits and killing Mayu to complete the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual. It was a brilliant choice of the developers to give players control of Mio until the last minute, when it counts the most, and force us to watch helplessly as Mio does the exact opposite of what players have been trying to avoid the entire time. The disbelief and confusion in Mio’s face as the spirits toss Mayu’s lifeless body into the Hellish Abyss mirrors the feeling of the player as you realize that this tale doesn’t have a truly happy ending. Before you say, “Wait! There are endings where Mayu lives!”, Fatal Frame III, unfortunately, canonizes the fact that Mio had murdered her own sister and is tormented by her death.
Emily (Until Dawn)
This entry may be a bit polarizing for those that have played Until Dawn, as people tend to have a love/hate relationship Emily. Regardless of whether you like her or not, Emily’s potential death at the hand of Mike is the most memorable death from Until Dawn. The moments leading up to her death scream classic horror movie—the group (whoever is still left) notices Emily’s Wendigo bite, and immediately draws upon prior knowledge of horror tropes that she herself could end up turning into one of the bloodthirsty creatures. The question is then: kill, or be killed?
What makes Emily’s death so memorable, aside from the aftermath of Mike’s sharpshot directly into her left eye, is the lasting impact that it has. You find out immediately afterwards that Emily was never going to turn into a Wendigo, and you then have to grapple with the guilt that while Emily was able to survive the Wendigo attacking her, she couldn’t survive her own friends. It also drastically changes the ending, as you realize that whoever manages to survive the night is now going to have to deal with potential murder charges (which you can see as Mike helplessly tries to explain his actions in the epilogue, had he killed her).
Lee (Telltale’s The Walking Dead)
Remember when I mentioned character deaths that reverberated throughout the rest of a series? Lee’s death left a gaping hole in our hearts, and the rest of Telltale’s The Walking Dead seasons. Throughout the first episode, you mold Lee into the character that you want him to be, particularly when it comes to his relationship with young Clementine. Whether Lee shields her from the atrocities of the apocalypse, or prepares her to become self-sufficient, the two inevitably develop a touching familial bond.
This culminates in the finale of the episode, in which Lee sustains a bite from a Walker while trying to reunite with her, and Clementine must decide whether to shoot him out of mercy or escape before he turns into a Walker himself. It’s a tragic moment that symbolizes what coming-of-age means in the world of the undead, and the memory of Lee persists Clementine and other characters that knew Lee in various ways throughout the rest of the series.
Scissorman (Clock Tower)
Scissorman makes this list for the dramatic end he faces in his tenacious quest to kill Jennifer Simpson. Players are led to believe that Jennifer had canonically killed Scissorman (then Bobby Barrows) in the original Clock Tower, until it’s revealed that his twin brother, Dan, had taken up the mantle (er, giant pair of scissors) in the sequel.
Whether you’re playing as Jennifer or Helen, both bring about the true destruction of Scissorman in the same way: By reciting a strange spell that opens up an ancient, giant door that sucks him in. No one knows for sure where that door leads or why it exists in the first place, but it brings about a very over-the-top and climactic end to the series’ most iconic killer.
Albert Wesker (Resident Evil 5)
Picking the most iconic character death throughout the entire Resident Evil series is no easy feat. However, when it comes to the most referenced and recognizable moments in the series, Chris Redfield’s determination to killing Wesker manifesting into superhuman strength to shove a boulder into molten lava may take the cake.
On top of the memes and jokes that it spawned, Wesker’s death was monumental in the series, as he’d been tormenting Chris and fellow STARS members since their initial voyage through the Spencer Mansion. He followed suit in tradition to almost every other mutant final boss in the series by ultimately getting exploded by a rocket launcher, bringing an end to his brooding, traitorous ways.
Seiko (Corpse Party)
Corpse Party may be one of the more obscure titles referenced on this list, but if you’re like me and stumbled upon playthrough videos of it randomly late one night while you were in high school, you may have also been scarred by the gruesome fate that befalls Seiko. Corpse Party follows a group of teenagers that find themselves lost in the halls of an alternate reality called Heavenly Host Elementary School, whose restless spirits eat away at the mental sanity of the victims that it ensnares.
In the first chapter of the game, best friends Naomi and Seiko find themselves separated from the group. Seiko seems like the more composed of the duo initially, with Naomi quickly falling into panic about something seeming off about the school. When the situation reaches a head and the two separate after bickering about what to do next, Seiko ultimately snaps. Naomi stumbles across her hanging body in a bathroom stall as she is still barely clinging to life. Seiko’s death scene is gruesome and graphic, as Naomi scrambles to try and save her, dumping a bucket of maggots all over herself to place and use as support. Naomi’s efforts prove futile, leaving Naomi alone in the darkness and Seiko’s spirit trapped in the halls.
James Sunderland (Silent Hill 2)
Similar to the Resident Evil series, fans inevitably have different opinions on what the most iconic and significant death in the Silent Hill series is. While Harry Mason gets an honorable mention, James Sunderland’s potential suicide ending, In The Water (which has often been speculated as the canon ending to the game) is a testament to how Silent Hill can truly get under your skin when it comes to deeper themes of human nature like morality and redemption.
Whether you forgive, empathize with, or hate James in the end, his monologue as he comes to terms with ending his own life to be with Mary is chilling and unforgettable. Instead of showing James plunging into Toluca Lake, a black screen is shown as the sound effects leave the details of his death up to the player’s imagination.
Daniella (Haunting Ground)
Daniella may be the most complex character in Haunting Ground (and in my opinion, the scariest stalker to pursue Fiona). At first, she simply appears to be an apathetic maid with a strange fixation on Fiona, until clues around the Belli castle reveal the sinister forces that have completely warped her mental state, to the point that she can’t even look at her own reflection without having a meltdown.
This facet of her mental disarray is what leads to her memorable, almost campy death scene. After a boss battle sequence, Daniella is exposed to a large mirror beneath her, causing her to scream out in despair and frustration. Her screams are somehow so loud that they shatter the window of an atrium above her, causing a giant shard of glass to plunge down into her chest. In her last moments, a smirk creeps across her face, revealing that death is what she may have been seeking all along after a life of physical and mental torture. Much of Daniella’s characterization is never fully elaborated on, and her death scene opens up an even deeper layer of depth that makes you reconsider what her motives were all along.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.