RESIDENT EVIL: IT'S BEHIND YOU!

​Oh, my. The original Resident Evil.
 
It's perhaps somewhat bizarre when nostalgia consists of material that, on a popular level, might be regarded as disturbing, gruesome and unsettling.
 
But there's very little so evocative to me (and, as multiple articles and videos at large on the interwebz testify, to many) as hearing the foreshadowing chords and atmospheric strains of the original Resident Evil's soundtrack (or its fantastic HD remake, which can be currently downloaded from the PS4 store).
 
For many of us, this was the first time in our lives we realised that video games could be as distressing as the horror films and literature we'd already come to love, even at so young an age. It's therefore somewhat difficult to express to those who weren't old enough to experience it from that context why its ostensibly derivative and cliché set pieces exercise such sentiment.
 
The original game marked a turning point in video game horror, but was also an enormous love letter to the genre in its more traditional mediums: almost every element and set piece was derived from some pre-existing archetype or template, from the George A. Romero stylings of its setting and iconic monsters to the Cronenbergian body horror that occurs in its later chapters.
 
As such, the various horror set pieces that comprise it are nothing new: they have all been seen and done before, many, many times, but rarely, if at all, within video games up to that point in the medium's history.
 
And there are so many. So, so many that fans of video games recognise and react to with the slightest reference to the game's hackneyed, B-movie dialogue.
 
For my part, those moments are indelibly ingrained in my memory, recalling a cold bedroom in which I spent most of my time one Christmas holiday, unable to contain my excitement for the game or to prize myself away from it for longer than an hour or two.
 
Therefore, choosing one is somewhat problematic. Do I go for the moment the player finds colleague Richard slumped out in a cramped hallway, bleeding and mutilated to the Nth degree by God only knows what or the cut-scene that occurs after returning to the main mansion from the garden area, in which the player is suddenly transported behind the eyes of something barrelling across the same path they've only just walked? 

​But no. The moment that occurs most prominently, that excites the most intense memories, is comparatively quiet:
 
A small, cramped bedroom just off from the mansion's dining room (“A dining room!”), an unmade bed, drawers still full of clothing and personal effects. What seems to be one of the game's rare safe spaces.
 
Investigating, the player finds the journal of what appears to be a groundskeeper of some description, that provides some suggestion as to what the Hell happened to reduce the manor to its current condition.
 
As the journal progresses, the player gets the impression of some sort of accident occurring on the lower levels, a chemical spill that requires various clandestine saftey protocols to be activated. The groundskeeper, for his part, doesn't know much about them or what's going on, but finds himself suffering some odd physical symptoms such as itchy rashes, headaches, nausea, the situation escalating such that portions of his flesh start to become necrotic.
 
By the end of the journal, his state of mind has decayed such that he can only communicate in infantile, impressionist statements of one or two words (“Itchy itchy Scott came. Ugly face so killed him. Tasty.”).
 
The journal is simultaneously horrifying and bleakly comic, setting the tone and the player's state of mind for what happens next: 

​Without warning, the walk-in closet at the player's back bursts open, the former groundskeeper shambling out in a horrendous state, his arms raised as he lunges to grasp the player and bite into their throat.
 
For those of us who experienced the game contemporaneously, this was one of many instances that made us leap out of our skins, often resulting in dropped controllers and game overs, requiring re-loads so that we might attempt the encounter again.
 
To fans of present day video game horror and the twenty years of evolution that the genre has experienced since Resident Evil's release, the moment might seem somewhat crude, unsophisticated: a routine jump-scare the like of which has become powerfully unfashionable to present day palates.
 
And, to a degree, that is true: the moment is one in which the original Resi betrays its age. However, it's also an example of something video game players of the era had rarely -if ever- seen before in the medium, something we were so unfamiliar with, it induced a degree of trauma that has resonated down the succeeding decades to fix this moment as one of the most iconic in horror video gaming.
 
Also, despite its jump-scare nature, the moment boasts more sophistication than it might initially appear:
 
The moment occurs in a room that seems like a safe-zone, after a fraught and frenetic scramble through a series of narrow corridors in which zombies lurch from the shadows, break through windows and emerge from adjacent recesses. As such, the player is already on edge when they enter the room, experiencing a moment of profound relief when they realise it seems to be comparatively safe.
 
That relief is gradually eroded as they read the journal entry, which provides some of the earliest clues as to what is happening within the mansion, but also degrades the atmosphere from one of relief to one of foreboding.
 
The eventual emergence of the groundskeeper is not an isolated jump-scare, but merely one note in a symphony, that serves to reinforce that nowhere is truly safe here, that even places that seem like havens or sancturaries hide malign secrets and hideous revelations.
 

​The moment is recreated in the HD remake but, as is the nature of remakes, re-jigged and made somewhat more threatening by the presence of two corpses in the room:
 
As the player enters, there's a particularly rotund gnawed and eaten corpse on the floor, the closet doors juddering slightly in what seems to be a breeze. Approaching the closet causes the doors to swing open, the groundskeeper emerging, but also the corpse on the floor to stand up, meaning that the player has to deal with both of them before investigating the room.
 
It's difficult to say which is better on a technical level, though the remake certainly takes more time to build atmosphere and tension.
 
Whichever version you favour, it's a moment that has become so iconic in horror video gaming that it has even been referenced and parodied in both successive Resident Evils and other horror franchises and has become part of an unlikely gospel in video game horror.