Reviews
‘The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me’ Review – A Satisfying Season Finale That’s Still Rough Around the Edges
Supermassive Games has positioned itself as the face of choice-based survival-horror. Since its 2015 smash-hit, Until Dawn, the studio has teetered the line of triumphs and mishaps with its Dark Pictures Anthology, as well as Until Dawn’s spiritual successor, The Quarry. The games are essentially horror movies where you’re placed at the helm of deciding who lives and who dies–a formula that has been explored in other games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead or Dontnod’s Vampyr. The first three entries of The Dark Pictures Anthology have been divisive: while praised in many ways, they’ve also each carried unique flaws as well. The latest entry, The Devil In Me, which is dubbed the “season one finale” of the anthology, is certainly an anthology highlight; however, it has some quirks of its own that can’t be overlooked.
Stepping away from psychological scares and supernatural creature features, The Devil In Me is the most true step in the traditional slasher direction for the anthology yet, and the closest to replicating the campy slasher tropes of Until Dawn. A ragtag crew of five filmmakers desperate to save their company are serendipitously invited by a stranger to film in a replica of serial killer H. H. Holmes’ famous Murder Castle. The catch–which oddly doesn’t seem to bother the crew–is that they don’t know much of anything about the person who has invited them, that they’re forced to forfeit all of their phones, and that the hotel is in the middle of an isolated island.
The tropeiness is a bit on the nose, but it’s fun and classic–the sense of tension is palpable, and Supermassive took extra care to fully lean into the slasher genre. Like previous entries in the anthology, a continued highlight is how The Devil In Me takes inspiration from seminal horror classics and incorporates it into the cinematography. Expect POV shots from the killer watching the characters that you’re controlling a la Black Christmas or Halloween, which is incorporated seamlessly for a setting like a booby-trap laced mansion and a killer molded to be as sinister as H. H. Holmes.
In terms of gameplay and performance, it’s a bit more of a mixed bag that may be more reliant on personal preference. On the plus side, Supermassive has implemented expansive accessibility options that range from easier to read audio and visual queues, to more simplified versions of quick-time-events (QTEs), which had been scrutinized for being a bit too unforgiving in the past.
When it comes to actual gameplay, the verdict sits more on middle-ground. In an effort to combat linearity, The Devil In Me is the most interactive title of the series to date–for better or worse. Personally, I enjoyed the interactive additions. Simple puzzles, like moving a dumpster to help me climb up a wall or hunting through documents to find a numerical code needed to advance, made it feel more like a classic horror game and helped maintain my attention. However, I could see how this could be a hindrance for folks who are seeking out the more choice-based-movie angle of the game who don’t want to get slowed down by having to solve puzzles. I preferred the slowdown that the puzzles provided, as it allowed tension to build again after narrowly avoiding being killed, but again, I can see this being a divisive aspect.
Unfortunately, I was surprised with the lack of polish that The Devil In Me had in comparison to its predecessors. As someone who has played both single player and multiplayer modes of every previous title, this was by far the glitchiest experience I’ve had with the anthology to date. These glitches ranged from minor quirks, like characters levitating through crevices that they should be squeezing through, to one character appearing in a cutscene alive and well despite being crushed to death by a wall just moments before.
Other times, in multiplayer, the game would arbitrarily decide that one player had “failed” certain QTEs despite being completed properly, leading to some frustrating deaths that felt unfair. There’s also a noticeable decline in character graphics–while the vocal performances are fine, the character expressions look notably more stiff and awkward, which is jarring given that this wasn’t an issue in any previous game. I can’t help but feel that The Devil In Me was more of a rushed product than the previous entries, but this could potentially be fixed with near-future patches.
Rearing back to the plot and characters, they’re some of the best of the anthology thus far. The killer is the most viscerally frightening antagonist to date (which is no surprise given the serial killer he’s based off of). He’s an omnipresent predator that likes to chase and play with his food, leading to some devastating traps with near impossible choices, and some pretty gnarly death scenes. Even if you don’t vibe with the entire cast of main characters, you’re sure to pick out at least one or two members of Lonnit Entertainment that you’ll fight tooth and nail to keep alive through the night. I resonated most with the girls of the group (including Kate, portrayed by Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley), who each exhibited Final Girl qualities in one way or another when they weren’t running away screaming down the halls Scooby-Doo style with the killer chasing them.
Without spoiling anything, some of my favorite aspects of The Devil In Me involve its lore and endings, which I’d argue will be very satisfying for fans of the series who have felt prior titles had trouble sticking the landing. There’s quite a few possible endings, each with interesting implications, including an extremely devastating ending that can only be achieved through specific means. I’d argue The Devil In Me has the most alluring replay value of the entire anthology.
The Devil In Me is an effective and satisfying conclusion to the first round of games in The Dark Pictures Anthology. It’s been an exciting ride seeing how each new game builds off of its predecessor, and The Devil In Me is a clear amalgamation of Supermassive Games’ lessons learned of the past three years since the anthology’s inaugural release of Man of Medan. While it did have some surprising pitfalls in terms of performance and polish, I can easily see The Devil In Me sitting firm near the top of many fans’ rankings of the anthology.
If you’re eager to book a stay at the Murder Castle, The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me is available on Playstation 4 & 5, Xbox One, and PC.
There’s a layer of the mythic in everything Cynthia Pelayo writes, whether she’s charting the little-known history of her home city of Chicago or digging deep into the pool of shared stories that’s served humanity since ancient times. Regardless of subject matter or narrative, Pelayo reads like a writer constantly in search of the threads of legend and myth that bind us all together and keep us awake at night.
It Came From Neverland, Pelayo’s latest novel, takes that search and applies it to one of the most famous children’s stories ever conceived, J.M. Barrie’s beloved and oft-adapted tale of the Boy Who Never Grew Up. But this is not just a Peter Pan retelling, or a Peter Pan meta-sequel. Through gorgeous prose, finely drawn characters, and an iron grip on the themes that drive the story, Pelayo crafts It Came From Neverland into one of the year’s must-read genre novels, both a horrifying spin on Peter Pan and a luminous dark fantasy about the search for salvation in a cold, brutal world.
In Pelayo’s version of events, Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael really did travel to Neverland when they were children, drawn there by a charismatic and irresistible figure called Peter Pan. But this Neverland is far from the Disney version, and after fighting to survive in that ageless place, the children made their way home and shut Peter Pan out of their lives, refusing to so much as utter his name, lest he find them again.
Flash forward to 1914, where Wendy’s working as a schoolteacher at Marigold House, a London orphanage growing increasingly crowded amid the outbreak of World War I. By day, she teaches and volunteers at a local hospital, reading to the war wounded, and by night, she remembers to check every window latch and keep an eye on every shadow. But lately those shadows seem to behave strangely again. Crows caw all around her. And worst of all, children are disappearing again. Peter Pan is back, and faced with memories of how no one believed her the first time, Wendy prepares to face him one more time.
This is a remarkably well-suited atmosphere for moments of classic, chill-inducing terror, and Pelayo wastes no time weaving a world in which every bird call, every stray thought from the mouth of a child, could be evidence that this monstrous Peter Pan is near. Wendy lives a haunted existence, and as the chaos of war grips London, old fears grip her while new ones fight for position. If you come to this novel looking for something like Stephen King’s IT by way of J.M. Barrie, you’re going to get it, through flashbacks and dark lore and wonderfully well-timed scares, but Pelayo’s not done.
This version of Wendy Darling, through whom we see most of the narrative, cares for children in adulthood because she did not receive the care she needed herself as a child in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. She considers it her duty to listen to them, to protect them, to understand them in a world that still views them not as human beings, but as potential locked up in tiny bodies.
Setting the book in 1914, when young men across Europe were signing up to go and die in a war they didn’t quite understand, underscores this beautifully. Children are grist for the mill in the world of It Came From Neverland, their eager spirits waiting to be crushed by a machine of war and empire and capitalism that will not relent even if an armistice eventually arrives. It’s a wider, more existential layer of horror than the storybook monster, which gets us to open the book in the first place, but the real brilliance at work here is how Pelayo ties it all together.
At the core of all of this, the beating, icy heart of It Came From Neverland‘s horror and its search for meaning amid the narratives of war, children’s fiction, collective memory, and more, Pelayo is most interested in what it really means to never grow up. It means retaining a sense of play, yes, but it also means a refusal to move on, to embrace not just the responsibilities of aging, but the moral burdens of it.
Peter Pan is a monster not because he likes to play, but because he does not consider consequences, mortality, or even the needs and desires of others. The same is true of the leaders of Europe sending young men off to die in a war, and the same is true of leaders now, playing dice with human lives amid the rise and fall of the stock market. To never grow up is to lose something essential about being human, and Pelayo depicts that loss as both existentially terrifying and heartbreaking. That terror and heartbreak drive the novel, but Wendy’s efforts to escape that terror and to mend her broken heart make it fly.
It Came From Neverland is available June 9 wherever books are sold.
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