Editorials
The Greatest Strength of ‘Resident Evil Village’ Comes From its Variety
Horror games thrive on being able to surprise the player. AAA horror games occasionally believe they need to artificially extend their length in order to justify their price tag, which can lead to a more repetitive experience. By the end of the game, you’ve been doing the same thing long enough that you are no longer surprised, and thus no longer scared. Resident Evil: Village managed to get around that by creating a theme park of horror, constantly moving between completely different areas, with wildly different tones and gameplay, in order to keep you from feeling safe.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
After a story-focused intro, the game drops you in the titular village, providing a classic RE-style compact space that slowly unlocks and loops back on itself as you progress. For fans of Resident Evil 4, the setting feels familiar, as does the opening set-piece where you have to survive an onslaught of enemies, giving you a chance to get used to the game’s combat mechanics. The village area acts as your hub, and keys or items you find in other areas will unlock new places to search for secrets. Each time you return, the village acts as a palette cleanser before letting you sample the next flavor of horror it has to offer.
The subsequent main locations are all given a unique tone, each reflecting one of the four lords that reside there. While the series isn’t exactly known for its subtle villains, the four lords seem a lot more over-the-top and cartoonish compared to the relatively grounded Baker family from RE7. Much like Metal Gear Solid antagonists, they each have a strong visual language that communicates their character, with a matching powerset to further differentiate them. It’s a bold strategy that gives the rest of the game a segmented feel, while still managing to act as a cohesive whole.
The first of these themed areas is Lady Dimitrescu’s castle, which plays out like an opulent version of the RE2 police station. This area is meant to appeal to people who may have recently played the RE2 Remake, as it is the only one that features an unkillable, Mr. X-like stalker character, the aforementioned Lady Dimitrescu. The gameplay fits perfectly in the new setting, with a few miniboss fights sprinkled throughout the standard key collection and light puzzle solving. It’s a perfect way to ease you into the game and lull you into a false sense of familiarity before pulling the rug out from under you.
After a brief stop in the central village, you head to House Beneviento, which is easily my favorite section of the game. Upon entering, your weapons are taken away, immediately shattering the expectations from the previous area, letting you know you’re in for a complete change of pace. Here, the game switches from the standard RE-style exploration to a more dream logic, puzzle-focused gameplay, echoing the found footage escape room sections of RE7. The surreal puzzles all have a surprisingly emotional focus on Ethan’s family, giving the game a much-needed emotional grounding while still managing to creep the hell out of you. I’m not sure RE: Village could survive completely on this type of gameplay, but it’s a perfect diversion after the more standard opening level.
At the end of each of the first two areas, you find one of four plot-important flasks, but in the third area, the Reservoir, you find it immediately and spend the rest of your time trying to escape. Rather than constantly searching for keys and doubling back to unlock new rooms, this section focuses more on figuring out how to navigate the area and unlock it in a more linear fashion. While it’s not as big of a departure as House Beneviento, it is another welcome change of pace, and once again brings to mind RE4 with its choice of set dressing. The linearity of it is appreciated, especially when it comes to the chase with the giant fish monsters in a flooded portion of the map.
The final few areas switch things up to a more action-heavy focus, with a change of scenery each time. First, you have a large-scale battle in a Stronghold, fighting off wave after wave of werewolves. It’s a tense exercise in ammo management that leads nicely into Heisenberg’s Factory. Here, you face off against strange mechanized experiments, an entirely different type of enemy than anything you’ve seen in the game. Even though it’s very action-heavy like the Stronghold, the enemy types change how you play, asking the player to target specific, often challenging to reach, weak points. This all climaxes in a guns-blazing showdown in the central village, where you’re tearing through monsters as a well-armed Chris Redfield. After all the more measured gameplay of the first half, it’s a little disappointing that the end becomes so action-oriented, but it feels like an appropriate escalation of the story.
If RE7 proved anything, it’s that the series could be malleable with its content while still feeling like it belonged with the other games. Rather than the traditional zombies we got unstoppable cannibals and strange mold creatures. With VIllage, the RE team stretched the premise even further, incorporating vampires, werewolves, creepy dolls, and mechanized monstrosities, all without shattering the world they’ve created over the last 25 years. While RE7 succeeded because they scaled it down and focused on the basics, Village succeeded because they took the revamped gameplay of 7 and blew it up with a kitchen sink approach to worldbuilding. The sheer variety of horror tropes that are thrown at you without feeling overwhelming makes for one of the most thrilling experiences of 2021.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Mountain Man’ – Joe Manganiello Will Battle Zombies in Upcoming Horror Movie
‘The Blair Witch Project’ – Original Stars Release a Statement Asking Lionsgate for Residuals & Recognition
‘Trap’ – Official Trailer Previews a Wild New Horror Experience from M. Night Shyamalan
‘Halloween: Illustrated’ Review: Original Novelization of John Carpenter’s Classic Gets an Upgrade
You must be logged in to post a comment.