TOP TEN RESIDENT EVIL MONSTERS PART 1: THE CERBERUS

1/3/2022

Top Ten Resident Evil Monsters

A lot of corpses have floated under the bridge since the original Resident Evil first splattered our screens with vitae - “You Died”- way, way back in the nigh-mythic year of 1996, but the franchise is far from down and out (no exploded heads or burnt corpses here, thank you very much). Whilst it certainly looked as though it was finally going to lurch and groan its last at one point (I'm sure we all recall the confused embarrassments that were entries 5 and 6), parent company Capcom have performed a minor miracle in recent years in their wholesale reinvention of the franchise:

With the scintillatingly successful remakes of the first three games in the series -all of which surpass the originals by (predatory bio-weapon) leaps and bounds-, the descent into psychological and Cronembergian body horror that was Resident Evil 7: BioHazard and the luridly gothic, werewolf-infested fairy-tale of Resident Evil 8: Village, the series has experienced a renaissance that so many of its contemporaries -Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, System Shock- sadly can't boast:

Like the zombies and genetically-engineered bio-weapons that infest its myriad environments -from the Night of the Living Dead claustrophobia of the original's Arklay Manor to the underground, science fiction laboratories common to practically all entries-, the series just will not be put down, no matter what stumbles and lurches it might make along the way.

As long time-fans are aware, even the weakest entries boast bestiaries and menageries to shame most other horror franchises. The sheer variety, fluidity and inventiveness of creatures like The Tyrant, William Birkin, Nemesis, The Chimeras, The Leech Man and far, far too many to comfortably list is truly staggering, as are the belovedly traumatic memories many of us boast of our original encounters with them. Unlike contemporaries such as Silent Hill, which takes a more sedate, disturbing approach to its horror, Resident Evil is, was and will always be about THE MONSTERS.

In this series, we're going to dive deep into ten of my personal favourites from the franchise. Please note, that this list is entirely subjective, and based on my own experience of these creatures (experience being the watchword; rather than look at them exclusiely in aesthetic or technical terms, we'll be focusing on the emotional responses they elicit and the lingering disturbia and perverse fascination they exercise).

So, without further ado, let's lope and slouch our way to the first entry in our gribbly and grotesque bestiary:

The Cerberus

Whilst it might seem absurd to those born into eras where horror is an established and prominent sub-genre, at the time of the original Resident Evil's release, horror was still a massively contentious and highly niche subject in video games. Certain platforms -such as the more adult-oriented Commodore Amiga- boasted dedicated horror studios and series (most notably the RPGs and point-and-click adventures of Sierra and Horrorsoft), the vast majority of home consoles were marketed to a younger demographic, making the very concept of horror highly problematic. This arguably reached a head with the release of Night Trap, a horror-comedy for the long-dead Sega CD system, which, despite its comedic absurdity, became a bone of contention for the British gutter-press, which published any number of ludicrously misguided, exaggerated and patently false claims about the game, stirring up a moral panic that resulted in the estbalishment of the ESRB advisory board, whose business is to rate and classify games according to content, in the same manner as the BBFC for film and cinema.

However, the transition from the 16-bit era consoles (the Sega Megadrive and Nintendo's SNES) also saw an evolution in taste and potential audiences: whereas previous generations had always squarely targeted children and teenagers, suddenly, video games expanded to encompass any number of subjects and audiences, including genres that would have been considered taboo or verboten before.

The original Resident Evil dropped with all the force and calamity of a genetically-engineered super-bio-weapon into mainstream markets: a horror game the like of which had never been seen before, that entirely threw out all of the parameters and proscriptions that applied to the medium in previous generations. For those of us who were children and teenagers at the time, who'd grown up within those parameters, it was an event that had all the prurient allure of the forbidden; a horror game that echoed the films lining our parent's VHS collections, that included all of the gore, violence, horror set-pieces and atmosphere that we'd come to expect from TV or cinema.

It may seem cheesy, absurd, ludicrously dated at this point, but I and so many others of my generation have beloved memories of sitting in cold bedrooms on birthdays or Christmas mornings, bent double and trembling as we searched the claustrophobic confines of the Arklay Manor, terrified of what was obscured beyond the fixed camera's eye, just around the corner.

The Cerberus is the very first creature we ever encountered in the Resident Evil franchise; the monster that started it all, and so deserves a spot somewhere on this list, even though the franchise would evolve far, far beyond them in titles to come:

Having landed in the forests outside of the fictional Raccoon City, the specialist police unit, S.T.A.R.S Alpha team discover the crashed helicopter of their compatriots Bravo Team, only to find evidence of a vicious and bloody attack; bodies, blood, strewn viscera. No sooner are they shocked by the carnage than something hurtles towards them through the trees and mists; a mob of growling, slathering monsters, that fall on the incidental members of the team and graphically tear them apart. The survivors fire bullets into the scabrous animals but to little effect, other than to antagonise them. As they do so, they (and we) are provided an unenviable view of their conditions:

A pack of guard dogs suffering some form of lepros disease, their bodies riddled with sores and cankers, their flanks and bellies ripped open, exposing muscle and organ, their heads likewise sloughing away, revealing the skulls beneath.

The beasts pause momentarily to gorily feast on those they've already killed before setting after the surviving S.T.A.R.S members. Given no choice, they flee, finding dubious sanctuary in a nearby mansion.

And this, ladies and gentleman, was our introduction to Resident Evil.

Whilst the franchise is now so embedded in video game culture and general public consciousness, everyone and their dogs (a ha!) know that it's essentially a video game riff on horror and science fiction cinema of yesteryear, involving genetically-engineered monsters, zombie-viruses and flesh-hungry, lab-cultured mutants, it's worth bearing in mind, this was during the days when the internet was in its infancy; most homes did not have access to it, and even those that did found the experience severely limited. As such, many of us playing Resident Evil at the time had no context for these zombie-dogs (later revealed to be classified as “Cerberus” by their creators). For all we knew, the malady affecting them might have been supernatural, occult or Lovecraftian. The lack of context or explanation, the nature of their framing in these early chapters, made for a terrifying experience, and set the tone for the rest of the game.

Unlike most later entries, Resident Evil 1 is all about atmosphere; a sincere experiment in translating horror tropes from passive mediums to the interactivity of video games, it is a quiet, isolated experience, in which even the occurrence of a single enemy is terrifying. Each beasty has its own peculiar, introductory set-piece, as well as general environment.

The Cerberus dogs -effectively experiments in which the zombifying “T-Virus” was administered to dogs instead of human beings- recur throughout:

If one is quixotic enough to brave peeking out of the front door of the mansion, one is terrified out of one's seat by a Cerberus that pokes its head through the door, howling in hunger for flesh. One of the most keenly-remembered jump-scares in the game comes when (and if) the player attempts to traverse a particular corridor, off from the main hallway. Whilst ostensibly quiet and peaceful, the camera is placed to take in the arrays of windows lining its walls, which look out over foreboding darkness. Should the player make it a particular distance, a musical chord sounds, the windows burst in and a pair of Cerberuses leap through, hounding the player through the narrow confines until they make it out the door on the other side. Unless they put the dogs down, this transitional area now becomes a zone of extreme threat and menace, through which they will be obliged to pass several times in order to complete the game.

Encounters with the Cerberus then become exceedingly rare, as the game slowly reveals the other monsters and beasties infesting the Arklay Manor. However, their threat remains omnipresent: it's made clear through various journals and diary entries that they prowl the surrounding grounds in packs, making any venture outside a risky exercise. In the outdoors areas of the mansion -which consist of various patios, porches and gardens-, they can be heard howling and sloping around in the distance, sometimes visible through wire fencing or in the distance. This renders them not only an omnipresent threat, but also a significant driver for the main story (the characters can't risk leaving the mansion when they'll almost certainly be set upon and torn apart by undead doggos).

Should they catch the player in a state of ill health, they will be treated to a particularly gruesome death animation in which the dogs bear them to the ground, violently tearing out their throats before beginning to feast on their carcass.

The Cerberus certainly becomes less of a threat as the main game progresses and newer, more elaborate monsters come to take its place, but, for those of us who were there at the very beginning, they will always hold an especial place in the bestiaries of video game horror.