For those who don’t know, I’m a big fan of video game movies and TV shows based on them.
As someone who has played video games for a good portion of her life, from story-driven masterpieces to action RPG’s, I’ve seen possibly every video game movie under the sun just for the sake of my connection to these games. I freaked out when I heard The Last Of Us, one of my favorite story-driven games with horror aspects, was getting an HBO adaptation, and I’m still counting down the days until I get to see the first trailer.
But, that got me thinking - there are so many other great horror games - those driven by their scariness, and those with amazing horror aspects with a great story - that deserve their own movie. While Resident Evil is the obvious horror game that exploded onto the movie screens, none of those movies have ever really been, well, good.
Now, there are so many other modern horror video games that deserve the spotlight. Here are seven choices that I personally feel would make for a great movie.
Little Nightmares
When I first played Little Nightmares it was a freaking trip. The way in which the game is played gives you a different kind of perspective as the protagonist, as you play a little girl, named Six, who must escape the Maw, a place occupied by monsters that are all trying to kill her. It’s so brilliantly told and well-done.
Little Nightmares isn’t even that scary of a horror game, in my opinion. I’m more focused on the brilliant gameplay. At the same time, those scary aspects would make for a great horror film, or, at the very least, something that feels relatively close to the stop-motion animated film, Coraline - where it’s not directly called a horror film, but has plenty of great horror themes in it.
I just feel like so many people would come to love Six as a character in a film, and the creative team could do an excellent job with the makeup. There apparently was a TV show in development based on the game from the Russo Brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but nothing has come from that in years. I demand to see a movie, dang it.
Dead By Daylight
This is such a freaking cool concept. Dead By Daylight takes five players and makes one of them the killer, and the other four have to try and somehow outsmart the killer in order to survive the night and not be killed, with them playing in the third-person.
Literally think of any classic slasher horror film you can, like the Friday the 13th franchise or the Halloween franchise. This is what a Dead by Daylight film could be - just four kids trying to survive a murderous killer. Have we seen this before in horror? Of course we have. There’s really not much you can do to revitalize the slasher genre except make things bloodier.
But, what really makes Dead by Daylight such an interesting game is that the killer is picked at random, so maybe they could somehow incorporate that into the movie. It could be someone you least expect. That would make for a great twist. While this game has actually been adapted into a board game, it’s time for a movie.
Left 4 Dead
I present to you, the first zombie game I ever played.
God, the hours I spent playing this with my brother or with people online are endless, uniting into a four-person team to take on endless hordes of zombies, from giant ones that would explode to ones that would scream. It was truly a horrifying experience - and paved the way for my love of zombie films and shows like All Of Us Are Dead or The Walking Dead.
Which is why this one should be quite obvious. Zombie films can be quite realistic and are usually a hit, whether it’s something like Army of the Dead, or World War Z, and the world of Left 4 Dead has some really interesting zombies that are really creatively done and would be so much fun to bring to life on the big screen. I love zombie movies, and this would make an excellent one about a group of survivors just trying to make it through the night.
Outlast
Outlast has to be one of the few horror games over the last decade that has truly scared my desensitized mind. I genuinely had nightmares from playing this game - which is why it would be the perfect horror film.
In Outlast, you, in first-person mode, are a freelance journalist working as an investigator who is looking into a remote, abandoned psychiatric hospital with only the light of a camera as your way to see. However, as monsters and horrible people start to pop up, it’s up to you to try and survive the assignment.
I mean, not that long ago, we were living in an era of found footage horror, and while some of them were...ah, less than great (like The Amityville Haunting), other found footage horror movies have been fantastic, like Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project. An Outlast film could be the chance to maybe bring that genre back - and possibly make it better than ever before.
Until Dawn
Okay, so this would be really hard to do, but I believe that it’s possible.
In Until Dawn, a group of teenagers are up at a cabin that ends up with them, at first, getting hunted down by a supposed serial killer. In the end, it turns out to be Wendigos, evil creatures, and one of them happens to be a former friend of theirs - someone who died in a blizzard.
The thing with Until Dawn is that it’s a decision-based game, which means you’re given a series of questions and you have to answer them, and with that answer, it will affect the outcome of the game. That would be incredibly hard to do in a movie, which is why I was thinking it could either be one storyline that most game players have gotten, or (and I prefer this option) the people could pull a Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and make it a “choose your own ending” movie.
This game truly does get scary, especially with how these monsters react to killings and there being other types of weapons, and you start to genuinely care for the characters, which is why I believe it would be perfect for a horror film. But, it would take some time to get that story just right.
Dark Souls
Okay, okay, hear me out.
While I know that the Dark Souls series isn’t necessarily a horror-based video game and is mainly an action role-playing game, there are many horror aspects to this game that I think would make a really good horror movie. Some of those bosses have truly terrified me in the past and I swear, I’ve literally skipped over optional bosses because I straight-up hate how they look - and not in a “oh, that design is bad” way. More like “that monster is freaking terrifying.”
I’m thinking more of a horror-fantasy, like Pan’s Labyrinth or something like that for this adaptation. It could be fantastically well-done and would certainly have a devoted fan-base for it.
Dead Space
Last but not least, we have Dead Space. This science-fiction horror game tells the story of an engineer who goes on a mission to repair a mining ship in deep-space that suddenly turns off after it finds a weird artifact on another planet. When he gets there, he finds everyone on the ship dead - and he'll be next if he doesn’t beat the alien that is hunting him down.
There are so many sci-fi horror films. Literally one of the best known horror films of all time is Alien. Dead Space could be the next best one. With its interesting storytelling, brilliant combat and super scary freaking aliens, Dead Space would be a hit.
While there did seem to be an adaptation in the works a long time ago (according to Electronic Arts reps at Comic-Con, via Giant Freakin’ Robot) there has not been any news of an update for this movie in nearly a decade. Honestly, there really should be because it would be fantastic.
Horror films have truly become even more creative and tell amazing stories, and I know that some of these games would give way to some really cool horror movies that we would all love. Studios just have to give them the chance to shine.
