As is the tradition in all creative mediums, video games are partial to pilfering ideas from the big screen, and vice versa. It’s an agreeable relationship — one that can help propel the whole horror genre’s core DNA forward in significant and meaningful ways. Like two blood-red shooting stars coalescing symphonically, these distinct art forms can help mould each other into something fresh and something new.
These cultural cross-medium exchanges can lead to a commodity that’s extremely invaluable: an unmistakably unique, beautifully freakish and wonderfully nail-biting experience, which is something us gore-hounds chomp at the bit to put through their horrifying paces.
Sure, some attempts can be written off as eye-meltingly awful travesties — Gearbox’s Colonial Marines and VectorCell’s 28 Days Later-esque Amy spring to mind — however, there are some video games that transcend their heart-on-sleeve horror movie inspirations and use them in smart and clever ways, parlaying them into truly interesting experiences.
Before I kick things off, it’s important to note that I’ve tried to keep things fairly modern here — a topic like this can easily veer off and get lost deep in the weeds, so to avoid this, I’ve decided to focus solely on games that have come out on the Xbox 360/PS3 era and onwards. Sorry Halloween (1983) on the old-school Atari 2600!
With that out of the way, here are ten of the most memorable and most interesting modern horror games that were clearly inspired by the silver screen. As always, if you feel like we’ve left any of your favorites off, be sure to add them in via the comments section down below.