News
‘Layers of Fear 2’ Trades Tension for Uneven Game Play
Layers of Fear 2, the highly anticipated follow-up to Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear, released this week with a brand new story to tell. Unfortunately, it seems the magic of the first has been somewhat muddled in the creation of this new chapter.
Set on a luxury cruise ship, Layers of Fear 2 is every bit as beautiful as its predecessor. Immaculate dining rooms and state rooms are open for exploration; gorgeous sunsets gleam through portholes and windows, and terror can wait around any turn.
Bloober Team also seriously upped their game in this sequel with sound design adding layers upon layers of directional sound.
Players step into the shoes of an actor who has been brought on board to star in a film directed by a reportedly deranged film director whose musings we hear in voiceover–by none other than Tony Todd (Candyman)–as the game progresses.
Unfortunately, the game seems to flounder, not only in purpose but also in storytelling.
The first hour or so of the game feels much like the first Layers of Fear. Players solve puzzles, rooms change in the blink of an eye, and strange voices whisper from the dark.
The developers deftly use jointed wooden mannequins to incredible effect in these scenes. It’s almost unbelievable how utterly terrifying an inanimate object suddenly moving can be, but the turn of a head or the shift of a hand can be truly startling in these circumstances.
Then things get strange.
Suddenly the actor comes face to face with a deformed creature who can and will kill you…instantly, again and again, until you figure out exactly how to navigate safely away from it. While this might work in other games where the player is expecting confrontation, it was completely unexpected in the Layers of Fear setting.
Not only did it pull me out of the storytelling space the game had curated to that point in the game, but the combination of slow game mechanics versus a very fast-moving monster left me frustrated and angry. What’s more, there’s very little signposting in this game. Many key moments you’re going to figure out only by trial and a lot of errors.
Once this confrontation aka running-for-your-life-while-slamming-doors-without-making-a-single-mistake challenge is over, the player finds themselves back inside the walk and explore model.
Unfortunately, this creates a very uneven gaming experience. It’s as though Bloober attempted to please everyone with this game and somewhere along the way lost sight of their objective.
Still, there is a lot to enjoy here, especially during those sequences where you’re exploring and putting together the story. Unlike the rather internal experience of the first game, Layers of Fear 2‘s story is more external, putting together the story of those who have sailed this ship before while trying to adapt to “the Method” that the director is asking you to take on for his film.
There are moments where the game asks you to simply give over to its madness and it’s up to the player to decide just how deep they’re willing to go in their exploration and immersion.
Can you accept the conceit of stepping out of an elevator on a ship to find yourself on a cobbled stone street while still accepting that you’re actually still on the ship? How about a door in slideshow that actually becomes a door?
If so, and I recommend you go with it, then you may find things to love in Layers of Fear 2.
Layers of Fear 2 is available on PC, PS4, and XBox now.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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