‘Pig Killer’ Trailer – Jake Busey Plays Real-Life Canadian Serial Killer
‘The Inhabitant’ – Odessa A’zion Horror Movie Coming to 100 Theaters This October
Friendship Unravels During a Camping Trip in ‘Wilder Than Her’
‘Nope 2’? Jordan Peele Teases More Stories in the ‘Nope’ Universe
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ – Reevaluating the Pulpy Thrills of the Literary Horror Mashup [The Silver Lining]
“Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” Trailer Assaults the Senses With Bloody Violence and NSFW Nudity
“Ghostwriter” Season 3 Premieres on Apple TV+ This Halloween Season
“Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes” Coming to Netflix in October
Netflix’s “Resident Evil” Series Cancelled After One Season
“The Walking Dead: Dead City” – Negan and Maggie Spinoff Series Gets a New Title
‘Who Invited Them’ Review – Witty Horror Comedy Introduces the Neighbors from Hell
‘Hard West 2’ Review – Tactics Game Brings Bloody Personality to the Supernatural Wild West
‘The Invitation’ Review – Contemporary Retelling of Dracula’s Brides Struggles to Deliver Bite
“American Horror Stories” Review – ‘Facelift’ Performs a Makeover So Wacky That It Works
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Review – Thoughts on the Final Five Episodes Including the Finale
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ – Reevaluating the Pulpy Thrills of the Literary Horror Mashup [The Silver Lining]
Swedish Horror ‘Månguden’ Is a Smörgåsbord of Slasher, Giallo and Found Footage Elements [Horrors Elsewhere]
The Best Horror Games to Play on the Nintendo Switch This Halloween Season
All Aboard Diane Hoh’s 1992 Young Adult Horror Novel ‘The Train’ [Buried in a Book]
‘The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me’ Looks to Be the Series’ Most Cohesive Title to Date [Hands-Off Preview]
‘Pig Killer’ Trailer – Jake Busey Plays Real-Life Canadian Serial Killer
“Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” Trailer Assaults the Senses With Bloody Violence and NSFW Nudity
‘Slayers’ Red Band Trailer – A Bearded Thomas Jane Kills Vampires in Upcoming Horror-Comedy
‘Nanny’ Trailer – Sundance Horror Hit Comes to Theaters and Amazon Prime Later This Year
‘Resident Evil’ Returns to ‘Dead by Daylight’ in “Project W” Crossover Today [Trailer]
‘Resident Evil’ Returns to ‘Dead by Daylight’ in “Project W” Crossover Today [Trailer]
‘Hard West 2’ Review – Tactics Game Brings Bloody Personality to the Supernatural Wild West
Fan Recreates Opening Scene From ‘Silent Hill 2’ in Unreal Engine 5 [Video]
‘Scanner Sombre’, ‘LIDAR.EXE’ & Horror Roundup From Gamescom 2022 [Safe Room Podcast]
GOG Makes Roguelite ‘Lovecraft’s Untold Stories’ Available for Free for the Next 48 Hours
Summer this year has been killer. Between record breaking heat waves, humidity that matches running a hot shower with the door shut, and just overall unpleasantness, it would come as no surprise that some people are looking to get away. Be it a cabin in the mountains, a house on the beach shore, or if you’re anything like me a secluded desert getaway.
But how do you get your horror game fix on vacations? Nintendo solved this issue with the release of Nintendo Switch back in 2017. The tiny hybrid console has been no stranger to great horror experiences and today we’ll run through the best horror games you can currently play right now on the Nintendo Switch… on the road to Halloween!
What hasn’t been said about this one? The 2002 remake of the Capcom game that invented the survival horror genre holds up exceptionally even after 20 years. After searching for the lost Bravo team, S.T.A.R.S. members Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are thrust into a house of horrors when they take shelter in a secluded mansion filled with zombies. The first installment is perfectly suited for portable play with its focus on slower, more methodical play and gameplay centered around puzzle solving and exploration.
Based on the legendary horror franchise starring hockey mask wearing Jason Voorhees, the asymmetrical multiplayer game was at one time the go-to horror game. Though updates have stopped in recent years and the multiplayer crowd has moved on to other games, the single player challenges provide fun recreations of some of the best moments in the series and the single player/bot matches provide the ultimate power trip. There’s even a mode where you can explore a cabin filled with Friday the 13th easter eggs and unlock an insanely cool Jason X easter egg. It’s a shame this one is no longer getting updates, but legal issues are to blame for that.
Originally released in 2015, Dying Light was a unique take on the genre of open-world zombie games with a focus on free running/parkour and melee combat. Dying Light also saw an unprecedented amount of support from its developer that saw content drops and updates all the way to 2022, including a “better late than never” port to the Switch. Folks, I’m here to tell you this is by far and away one of the greatest ports to ever hit the system. With a rock steady framerate, visuals almost on par with the original release, and ALL of the content that other systems received, Dying Light is the one zombie horror game you should be getting for your Nintendo Switch for that portable gory goodness.
Darkest Dungeon is a turn-based roguelite RPG inspired by the hardcore playstyle of early editions of Dungeons & Dragons where you threw a d20 and you were most likely killed. Darkest Dungeon applies that to video game form where you take a random group of adventurers and explore the depths where they can be ambushed by monsters, go mad because of the darkness, or straight up have a heart attack from stress. The Ancestral Edition gets a special shout out due to including The Crimson Court and Color of Madness expansions. Crimson Court as you can probably guess from the name is an endgame expansion that adds vampires and other gory surprises and Color of Madness is a Lovecraft-inspired expansion that adds eldritch horror beyond your wildest imagination. With fast load times and intuitive touch controls in portable mode, this is an easy recommendation (although seriously, beat the game before you even attempt The Crimson Court .)
Puppet Combo is the online moniker of a single developer who has a knack for creating PS1/PS2 type experiences inspired by famous slasher movies. The two horror games available on Nintendo Switch are Murder House , a fixed camera angle nightmare about a documentary crew filming a famous serial killer’s home only for the rabbit suit wearing maniac to return (sure sounds like Halloween: Resurrection don’t it), and Nun Massacre, an escape room of horror as you try to escape a run down catholic school with a killer nun on the loose. They’re cheap. They’re short. They’re a love letter to slashers and Puppet Combo himself has hinted that more are on the way to consoles soon. These are highly recommended.
Going to cap this list off with not only one of the best horror games to ever grace the switch but one of the finest games ever to be released. Deadly Premonition often comes up in the conversation of “are video games art?” and is a prime example of an experience you can only get in this medium. Deadly Premonition plays like a cheap knock off of Resident Evil 4 with a story that can only be described as a cheap copy of Twin Peaks . The game follows FBI agent Francis York Morgan as he travels to the small town of Greenvale, Washington to investigate the murder of a young girl that has eerie similarities to murders that are happening all over the country. It is old, filled with glitches, has some questionable choices in its writing but it’s also filled with memorable characters, laugh out loud moments, fantastic music, and a jaw dropper of an ending. Origins presents the game as it was in its original release and not the inferior “Director’s Cut”. The game also has a Nintendo Switch exclusive sequel called Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise (though we don’t talk about that one).
‘Resident Evil’ Returns to ‘Dead by Daylight’ in “Project W” Crossover Today [Trailer]
Netflix’s “Resident Evil” Series Cancelled After One Season
Cryptic Tweet by ‘Dead by Daylight’ Twitter Account Hints at “Project W” Release Date?
In this edition of The Silver Lining, we’ll be discussing Burr Steers’ underrated adaptation, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
She may not have been a best-selling author when she was alive, but later critics would recognize Jane Austen as one of the most important writers in all of western fiction. That’s why it’s no surprise that there are dozens of adaptations of her work, with some of them dating back to the very origins of cinema. However, one of the most interesting interpretations of her stories is Burr Steers’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s literary parody of the same name.
The 2009 novel was already quite the oddity, having been originally commissioned by Jason Rekulak, an editor who wanted to pair popular genre tropes with famous public domain stories. In fact, Grahame-Smith’s book wasn’t so much a complete reimagining of Pride and Prejudice but rather a bizarre reworking of Austen’s original text, only adding passing mentions to an ongoing zombie epidemic and including a handful of martial-arts-based action sequences.
While this literary novelty was initially only meant to supply Jane Austen fans with some pulpy laughs, it wasn’t long before the book became a runaway success and Hollywood came a-knockin’, optioning the rights to the bestselling mashup. This actually made a lot of sense, as producers thought that Austen’s beloved characters could actually make a solid foundation for a fun zombie thriller, and the title alone was sure to attract curious moviegoers.
Unfortunately, the project was trapped in development hell for years, with everyone from Neil Marshall to Natalie Portman (and even Rowan Atkinson) becoming attached to the film at one point or another. It was only in 2013 that Steers came onboard and production finally began to take shape, slowly accruing a star-studded cast featuring veterans like Charles Dance sharing the screen with more recent celebrities like Doctor Who’s Matt Smith. The main romantic duo of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy was set to be played by Lily James and Sam Riley, a curious pairing that caught the attention of romance fans.
With the studio agreeing to a surprisingly large budget for a romantic-horror-comedy and Steers boasting a clear creative vision – not to mention a solid narrative backbone courteously provided by Austen – it seemed like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was set to be a fun little blockbuster with a literary twist.
Making a mere $16.4 million at the box-office despite a $28 million production budget, it’s clear that the filmmakers overestimated how many people were dying to see a George Romero-inspired take on Jane Austen. Reviewers didn’t take too kindly to the finished film either, with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies currently sitting on a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and being heavily criticizing for its unbalanced narrative and underdeveloped characters.
A common complaint was that the film’s humor didn’t quite work, with the story suffering from tonal whiplash as it transitions from Austen’s deliberately paced drama elements to the silly zombie war (which is played completely straight). At times, the picture feels like two incongruous movies edited together, as the genre elements don’t necessarily enhance any of the original narrative’s tension.
Some critics also complained about a certain lack of chemistry between the leads, which is a bit of an issue when the entire film hinges on a fresh depiction of an iconic romance. Although I legitimately enjoy Riley’s brooding take on a martial-arts-adept Mr. Darcy and have a soft spot for Lily James, even I have to admit that the romantic elements could have been handled differently.
Of course, horror fans were particularly displeased with the picture’s PG-13 rating, a decision which resulted in neutered action scenes and lackluster gore effects. Not only did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies rely on easily censored digital blood splatters and zombie bites, but it also made its main characters way too skilled at dispatching the undead, making for a disappointingly toothless romp.
At the end of the day, the flick’s odd take on romance and subdued horror elements meant that it didn’t really appeal to Jane Austen or horror fans, stranding the project in both box-office and critical limbo.
Not every scary movie needs to be Cannibal Holocaust to get its point across, and sometimes it’s okay to share our favorite kind of spooky thrills in a more family-friendly package. There may be better zombie flicks out there (and there are certainly better Jane Austen adaptations), but if you approach Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in the right mindset, I honestly think that you’ll find an enjoyable gateway horror movie.
While I’ll concede that the lack of proper bloodthirsty zombie action is disappointing, Steers pushes the PG-13 rating to the very limit through some clever directing, allowing the film to get away with a lot more than other similar horror-comedy hybrids. The reduced rating also allows the film to expand on its blockbuster elements with an increased budget, which results in some impressively choreographed martial arts sequences made all the more entertaining by the cast performing many of their own stunts.
Ultimately, the film has the spirit of a schlocky grindhouse thriller and the production value of a traditional summer blockbuster, which I think is an admirable combination even if it doesn’t always work. Additionally, the filmmakers show a lot of love for the source material, with Steers appearing to be a genuine Austen fan and claiming to have re-inserted most of the original novel’s plot-points back into the story when he first joined the project, making it a surprisingly faithful adaptation despite its B-movie influences.
While Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is likely best enjoyed by folks who are already familiar with the original story, as the movie has to divide its runtime between tender character moments and an ongoing zombie outbreak, it’s still one hell of an entertaining love-letter to both zombie movies and classic literature. That’s why I’d recommend this zombified rom-com to genre fans that aren’t afraid of gateway horror flicks trying to do something different.
That being said, it’s still a shame that we haven’t seen an unrated cut of the movie on Blu-Ray.
Watching a bad movie doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad experience. Even the worst films can boast a good idea or two, and that’s why we’re trying to look on the bright side with The Silver Lining, where we shine a light on the best parts of traditionally maligned horror flicks.
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