Video games make great fodder for horror movie inspiration.
It’s why a bunch of them have been (quite badly) adapted into movies over the years.
While video game movie adaptations clearly haven’t figured out how to hit their stride
yet, here’s hoping that the future will be filled with proper adaptations moving forward!
So today, we’ve whipped up a little dream wish list of horror games that we think would
be great up on the silver screen – if done correctly.
This is our picks for the top 10 horror games that should be movies.
10 Amnesia Amnesia The Dark Descent is a survival horror
from 2010 that puts you in the shoes of a character with amnesia named Daniel inside
of a dark and creepy castle.
You have to maintain your sanity all while avoiding some of the most terrifying monsters
to ever make their way into the horror gaming genre.
The sanity factor is a big aspect; depending on the state of your sanity, your perspective
in the game drastically changes, making it all the more scarier to play.
There’s visual and auditory hallucinations, and Daniel needs to balance the amount of
light he surrounds himself with in order to maintain his sanity and keep the visions and
monsters at bay.
The film version could be a total psychological thriller full of twists, turns and horrifying
monsters spawned from movie magic to match the aesthetic of the game.
9 Home Home is an indie horror game that I will defend
to the end of time.
It’s really simple, super effective and it’s ending is quite ambiguous and entirely
subjective based on what clues you’ve managed to find in the game.
So what is Home?
Home is a murder mystery adventure in which you wake up in a building you don’t recognize
with a busted leg.
As you progress through this dark pixelated world with only a flashlight, it becomes apparent
that there’s a lot of other factors at work; your wife is missing, you stumble upon a murder
scene in the forest, and there’s something really suspicious going on with your once
co-worker.
All of this as you are trying to find your way back home.
While a film version would have to give us a definitive ending, a narrative as strong
as Home’s would be great inspiration for crafting a strong, unsettling and sophisticated
cinematic story.
Hopefully not in 8 bit though.
8 The Last of Us The Last of Us can be classified as partially
a horror survival game.
Personally, I think it’s such a great video game that a film adaptation just couldn’t
do it justice.
Leave it as is!
But imagine a film, or a television series, in which one of the threats are Clickers.
Yeah, that would scare the pants off of anyone.
Imagine the beautiful special effects makeup work that would go into making Clickers a
reality!
That being said, an adaptation of The Last of Us could feel painfully too similar to
The Walking Dead if Joel and Ellie’s stories weren’t written, let alone directed properly.
It’s a dangerous venture considering it’s so darn beloved by fans.
7 Silent Hill Oh wait, that already happened.
Yeeeeeah.
So really, if someone tried to reboot Silent Hill as a film franchise, hell, maybe they’d
do it right this time.
There’s a whole film that exists that does exactly what players of this beloved title
DON’T want to see happen in an adaptation.
And really, what are the chances that a new Silent Hill film could be as bad as that 2006
one?
Knock on wood, I guess.
6 Dead by Daylight Sure you’re probably thinking, hey, Dead
by Daylight is basically riffing off of classic horror movie tropes anyway!
And most of its killers are inspired by actual horror icons in cinema.
And yes, that’s all true.
But, hear me out.
Make a film that follows the premise of four survivors dropped into a horrific looking
landscape where a killer like the Trapper is roaming around trying to sacrifice these
four individuals on hooks to some creepy unknown Entity.
And all the survivors have to do is not get killed while turning on some generators.
If you play Dead by Daylight you know how every game is different, and some matches
prove to be filled with surprises, excitement, unexpected frights and much more.
Imagine a film riffing off of a simple concept like that and not over complicating it.
Could make for a great movie.
Or series.
New survivors, new killers each episode.
Someone get Netflix on the phone with me.
Seriously though.
I’d love that.
5 PT PT aka playable trailer is often considered
to be one of the best horror games ever created.
And one of the most difficult to get your hands on these days since it was taken down
from the Playstation store, with Konami cancelling the game.
Developed by Kojima productions and directed by both Hideo Kojima himself and film legend
Guillermo del Toro, PT was an interactive teaser for the next Silent Hills game prior
to its cancellation.
Essentially, you wake up in a suburban house and wall down its L shaped corridor, which
loops.
You must investigate the paranormal events occurring and solve puzzles in order to progress,
which changes things in the corridor.
You also have no means of defense.
Considering it’s from the minds of Kojima and Del Toro, if PT was ever adapted into
a full blown story (or, it’s intended story was turned into a screenplay) it would without
a doubt be an absolutely terrifying film.
4 FEAR FEAR, aka First Encounter Assault Recon, is
a horror survival first person shooter that came out back in 2005.
It revolves around a supernatural phenomenon – an experimental unit of telepathically
controlled clone super soldiers - that the FEAR team is called in to try to contain in
the year 2025.
You play the Point Man of the team, and as you progress, you begin to uncover secrets
that pertain to the experimental unit and your own past.
It’s a game that’s been called thrilling and involving by critics, and additional media
has already been created for it – a live action short film prequel and a comic book.
All in all, it’s a story that’s got some serious chops, and could make for one hell
of a terrifying yet compelling film.
3 Until Dawn Until Dawn follows the story of eight teenagers
who return to a cabin in the woods in Western Canada after the disappearance of two of their
friends, twin sisters, one year prior.
The gameplay alternates between the characters, with each decision you make affecting the
outcome of the game and who lives and who dies.
At first, it seems as if the teens are soon to be victims of a mysterious killer, but
as the story unfolds, a more sinister paranormal threat rises, and they all must survive until
dawn when help arrives to get them out of those dark and mysterious mountains.
The developers of the game have since been slated to work on a new horror anthology series
starting with the game Man of Medan.
The narrative, while a little linear for a game that boasts itself on its butterfly effect
narrative, would be perfectly suitable for a film, or a limited series.
Get yourself a pretty CW Riverdale-esque attractive cast and bam, we’ve got a blockbuster here!
2 Dead Space Space is scary AF.
And that makes it the perfect setting for a horror survival game!
Enter Dead Space, a game in which you play as an engineer named Isaac Clarke on board
an interstellar mining ship, fighting off creatures called Necromorphs – reanimated
human corpses of slaughtered crew members.
Set in the year 2508, you must venture around the ship and make various repairs in order
to keep you and the remaining survivors alive long enough to be rescued.
It also has a stellar soundtrack and the sound design is amazing; both of which won multiple
awards.
So imagine a film that follows Isaac’s journey – kind of like a modern day version of Alien.
Considering the design team of the game spent hours analyzing various horror films for inspiration,
it’s a title that could fit right in with some of the best sci fi horror classics if
made correctly.
1 Outlast Outlast’s concept is simply that – to
outlast and survive.
With two main titles in the series so far, the Outlast games have managed to not only
scare the crap out of us, but have us craving more.
And if there were to ever be a film adaptation, the game’s narratives leave a lot open to
really getting creative cinematically.
Let’s look at the first Outlast, for example.
You play as a freelance investigative journalist named Miles who is exploring a remote psychiatric
hospital called Mount Massive Asylum in the mountains of Colorado that is notoriously
unethical towards its patients.
After you get inside, it becomes clear something is seriously wrong, and all of the patients
and deranged inmates are roaming freely on the grounds, with many threatening to kill
Miles.
Armed with only a video camera, the game is a stealth horror survival with a fairly decent
storyline that could be shaped up into a really strong horror feature film.
There we have it friends!
What other horror games do you think would make great films or television series?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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