When the new teaser trailer for Avatar: The way of the water—the next entry in James Cameron’s CGI-heavy movie franchise — came out, many viewers believed the visuals resemble a video game. as praise or pejoratively, that comparison is a little hyperbolic. Yet it also signals the perceived overlap between the video game and film industries, which increasingly share technological, narrative and visual approaches.
Multiplexed screens these days are fraught with game-like visuals – there are exceptions, but a sense of unreality with a green screen certainly abounds, whether you’re watching an explosive action movie or a well-paced drama. Other ideas also flow freely across the media: both games and movies have their watches set to Matrix-style “bullet time” effects; both forms have their cameras à la . shaken Bourne† and an equally virtuoso filmmaker like Brian De Palma has marveled at how certain games have deftly repurposed cinema’s wandering first-person point-of-view shots.
And in a more recent development, high-profile games now routinely feature the performance-recorded likenesses of movie and television stars. The latter is not so surprising, because it was prophesied long ago – more or less. In the October 1982 issue of Illustrated Video Gamingyou’ll find the vaguely manic headline “THE ROBERT REDFORD VIDEOGAME,” and an exhortation: “Don’t laugh, we may see another one as more and more movie studios enter the video game scene.”
smash cut to the quarry, the latest horror adventure game from British developer Supermassive Games, or the latest movie-ravaged boxer to cross the ropes. Granted, Supermassive isn’t a movie studio — nor is it openly affiliated with one — but it does specialize in horror games with distinct cinematic ambitions. the quarry is therefore a kind of interactive movie and its cast is made up of new and established screen actors. Skyler Gisondo – who recently appeared in the Oscar nominated film Licorice Pizza—has a key role in the game, just like Jurassic World Dominion cost, among others, Justice Smith. The performance capture technology recorded each cast member’s voice, facial and body expressions, which were translated into the computer-generated facsimiles that players operate and/or encounter within the game itself. Supermassive was assisted in this regard by Digital Domain, a Los Angeles-based visual effects studio co-founded by James Cameron, who has since worked on a series of films, games and TV shows.
Will Byles, who directed and wrote the quarryfound inspiration in the 1980 summer camp slasher movie Friday the 13thand in the baroque death scenes of the Final destination franchisee. But the game is mainly indebted to the horror comedy from 1981 An American Werewolf in London, which Byles remembers as “the first horror movie I ever saw where I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is funny’.” As he tells me via Zoom, Byles admires the way the film blends its humor with believable relationships and “real horror.” In the quarrythere is also a commonality of tones: it meanders from maudlin needle drops to low-key jokes to its own terrifying werewolves.
The game takes place in Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp, which has the usual trappings: huts, canoes, corpses floating in lakes. At the beginning of the story, the campers have driven home, but the teenage counselors are still scurrying around the property. When their own ride home is delayed, they choose to relight the bonfire and make the most of the night. As they will discover in the coming hours, the vast forests hold many secrets, although a cameo from Robert Redford is sadly not among them.