In 2006, your correspondent got into an argument with a friend of a friend who claimed that video games were a better story-telling medium than movies. Your correspondent deemed this position audacious and preposterous, and argued against it as such. This was a no-brainer. Movies were made by directors and auteurs with aesthetic formations, with the goal of entertaining any given person who chose to watch could be entertained (whether that involved education, amusement or horror). Video games, by contrast, were less accessible, the domain of only the most manually adept, and rarely consisted of more than a series of rote tasks cobbled together by computer programmers. These comp sci types had, for the most part, cartoonish sensibilities and a limited pool of stereotypes around which they based their characters. Arty games like Ico were the rare exceptions. Nonetheless, my opponent, growing agitated now, kept citing Metal Gear Solid as evidence for the insurmountable literary merit of video games, claiming it was a "morality play." Your correspondent counter-cited the films of David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Orson Welles. Blue Velvet blows Metal Gear Solid out of the water—Frank Booth trumps Solid Snake on all axes. To this day, your correspondent still holds that he won the argument, hands down.
If one were to have this argument again in the present, however, the winner isn't so cut and dried. Now an overwhelming number of popular movies are based on comic books and video games, and so they draw from the cartoonish sensibilities and limited pool of character stereotypes that used to be the province of video games. But things have changed in the video game development world as well. In 2010, developer Quantic Dream gave us Heavy Rain, a gripping movie-styled crime-drama whodunit where the player steers several principal characters through major decisions and out of various tight spots. Plot-holes aside, Heavy Rain was a masterpiece. Quantic Dream followed up with several titles of comparable style and quality, most notably 2014’s Detroit, a game that moved this innovative gameplay genre toward a science-fiction narrative space. In between, Supermassive Games released Until Dawn, a ghoulish grab-bag of terror tropes that turned out to be better than most horror movies.
Horror movies don't usually do it for your correspondent. Don't get him wrong: you correspondent has seen hundreds of horror movies and considers himself an aficionado of the genre. However, aside from The Ring, horror movies don't give your correspondent the faintest bit of horripilation. Watching a horror movie, then, is usually an exercise in disappointment or, at best, an appreciation of well-done gore effects.
Until Dawn gripped your correspondent by the throat. That grip is icy, and fittingly so, as the story is based around a gathering of nubile teens in a castle-like cabin in the woods on a mountain somewhere in Canada. Time and again your correspondent's heart palpitated, his throat went dry, and his eyes popped out of his head. As he proceeded through all the familiar horror movie set-pieces, he had a physiological reaction as if encountering them all for the first time. In having to manually carry out via the controller do-or-die tasks for characters he had (for the most part) grown to care about, your correspondent was totally engrossed. If the horror movie is measured by its capacity for evoking reaction, Until Dawn's frisson goes on and on, and so in this way it succeeds. Indeed, Until Dawn has reinvigorated and reclaimed the horror genre. It does this in large part by making so much of the genre its own: to be sure, the game has what we might call an "Omni-horror" aesthetic, mashing up slashers, monster movies, and supernatural scare-fests all into one. The movie synthesizes Saw, Friday the 13th, The Ring and perhaps even the newest Blair Witch in commendable fashion. All the while, it is shaped by the gamer's own internal horror-scape, as therapy sessions interspersed throughout (and hosted by the incomparably creepy Peter Stormare) help determine all the little devilish details, such as what kind of mask the killer will wear, and what kind of fate will befall the various characters. There are dozens of conceivable plot-developments and endings based on the player's choices and competencies, and so Until Dawn delivers almost innumerable horror thrills.
Until Dawn, then, pushes forward the concept not only of a video game, but also of a horror movie. The game moves past the passive observation of a movie by permitting participation. Film, however, is not the only medium it outperforms. Until Dawn eschews the repetitive task management of your average video game (especially a Dead Rising, for instance) in favor of an ever-advancing story. And in its active, hot-medium participation, Until Dawn also outshines horror novels, not just because of the variety of conclusions it’s organic narrative style permits, but also because the continual joystick work is a more engaging interstitial activity than reading the tangents that fill up most books (many of which are just padded novellas). All told, the type of participation that Until Dawn affords proves to be oh-so crucial for the horror genre. Just how many horror movies (and books) have left you indifferent to the plight of the characters? In Until Dawn you have to care about the characters, because you are the guiding force impelling them onward. If movie games have been a triumphantly innovative sub-genre within video gaming, then horror games, apotheosized by Until Dawn, are the sub-sub-genre triumph.
Until Dawn didn't relinquish your correspondent from its grasp until his surviving characters made it out of the cabin. In his initial play-through, only two of the eight principal characters survived. Herein lies your correspondent's only conceivable criticism of the game. The two survivors made for a less than satisfying ending. On the one hand, the goal of having more or all of the characters survive makes for some replay value. On the other hand, the second play-through probably won't have the unwitting frisson that came with the first. Perhaps more crucially, it bothers your correspondent more than a little that there is an "ideal" way to play through the game in which all the principal characters survive. The question is worth considering: is it really a "horror" game if no one dies?
Video games paled against movies ten or fifteen years ago, but, in the hindsight synonymous with 2020, we have to re-evaluate this position. Your correspondent won the argument in 2006, but he might not hold the same position now, at least in certain genres. Until Dawn was better than a horror movie could ever be. Moreover, it was better than watching a Marvel movie, which can often feel like watching someone play a video game. As such, Until Dawn embodies the limitless potential for games as story-telling and story-experiencing mediums, and suggests that video gaming is a medium that should drive movies, rather than being driven by them.