Editorials
Ghostface in the Machine: A Brief History of ‘Scream’ Video Games
1996 was a pretty important year for horror. Not only did Resident Evil burst onto the scene to thrust horror games into the limelight, but Wes Craven’s meta-slasher Scream exploded onto cinema screens and changed the face of horror. I’m sure that, like me, there were a few horror fans whose real horror awakening came during those last few years of the previous century when both franchises dominated their respective mediums.
Despite these two particular big bangs being in close proximity, there’s been far more crossover for Resident Evil into film than there has been for Scream into video games, but that hasn’t stopped ol’ Ghostface from calling up publishers to appear in a game or two over the past 26 years.
Still to this day, however, there are remarkably no official Scream video games available to legally purchase. In fact, there wasn’t a Scream video game or Ghostface appearance at all in any video game until 2011. This, the only official game to be made about the franchise, was a tie-in mobile game for the release of Scream 4, and used the gameplay mechanics of popular phone hit Fruit Ninja. This isometric romp saw you pick up the Ghostface mantle to slay unsuspecting young things against the clock with a swipe of the screen representing a knife slash.
Intentional or not, it looks exactly like the kind of cheesy tie-in you’d expect from the film’s own in-universe Stab franchise. The game, unfortunately, vanished from mobile stores after a while, consigning this particular bit of Scream media to the forgotten files.
Scream resurfaced in the video game world in 2017 when news of a tie-in demo project by HorrorGameDev was revealed to be in the works for the 20th anniversary of Scream 3, leading to a full game release in time for the 25th anniversary of the Scream franchise. It was going to blend the world of the television series with that of the films, and involved a storyline where series heroine Sidney Prescott was killed off. For whatever reason, HorrorGameDev stepped away from the project, and it didn’t end up happening.
Still, it did birth a small game inspired by that premise that was released on itch.io by Stefano Cagnani in 2021, so there was at least some kind of (unofficial) Scream video game for the 25th anniversary.
After that, Ghostface did make a couple of significant appearances in other video games. In 2019 the killer joined the ranks of asymmetrical multiplayer horror game Dead By Daylight, which in suitably meta fashion, meant Ghostface could potentially murder Halloween’s Laurie Strode. Weirdly, due to licensing red tape, it’s not canonically the Ghostface of Scream, rather a copycat living in Florida.
Finally, for Halloween of 2021, we did get an official Ghostface appearance in a video game, voiced by Roger Jackson himself. That game? Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (and Warzone). Yes, Ghostface has now modernized its schtick by harassing victims online over Xbox Live.
A quarter of a century on, and horror is in a healthy place where games can be made of its movie icons with relative freedom. There’s an Evil Dead game on the horizon that includes 30 plus years of characters in its roster. Gun Media has brought Jason Voorhees to life (only to be massacred by the greatest killer of all; legal battles) on PC and consoles, and will soon do the same for Leatherface in the upcoming Texas Chain Saw game, so perhaps we may see the murder-weary residents of Woodsboro represented in digital form yet. Surely there’s no better time for a Scream video game
The potential templates for such a game are already there in the likes of Until Dawn, Dead by Daylight and Among Us, so what are we waiting for? A phone call?
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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