The older you become, the more imagination leaches out of your life. Routines become baked into the day-to-day, and you learn to take things at face value. You get up, head to work or attend to other responsibility, and there’s few surprises along the way. You’ve seen most things that can be seen, or you think you have. You’re hyperaware there’s an order to the world, and there’s rarely room for imagined monsters in your daily quests.
So, how does a horror game attempt to find an opening against this backdrop? How does a horror game get under your skin, and properly leech into your daily life? How does it genuinely horrify, when our minds are so closed to the possibility of being even a little bit surprised? One only has to look to Resident Evil 7 and its grim dance with mundane horror for the answer.
I’d like to think I’m a hardy sort, having delved into the horror genre across the realm of video games and beyond. I love a good vampire or zombie story, and I find gore so overdone that it’s lost its impact. But for the first time in a long time, I found fear in a video game, while playing Resident Evil 7.
And it’s not so much the monsters that did it – which is what surprised me most.
There is a trend in horror games to rely on monsters for scares. There’s an assumption that twisting limbs and body horror will be enough to send players running, to give them nightmares for weeks. Alan Wake 2 tried it, in its Taken Divers, with their mirrored limbs and extended torsos. Dead Space is defined by its reanimated Necromorphs.
Resident Evil 7 tries it as well, with its slime-like Molded – but as a key point of difference, it understands these enemies aren’t its true horror. Even the deadly Bakers, transformed into near-immortal creatures of ooze and darkness, aren’t really the true horror of the game.
That honour belongs to the game’s humble fridge.
It was a strange realisation to have, in the wake of finishing Resident Evil 7‘s journey.
See, in the context of the game, the Molded are typically part of a power fantasy. You’re given a knife and multiple guns when you set off to explore the Baker home, and even while ammunition is limited, you always have options for dealing with the Molded – and they typically go down fast. They’re punching bags and obstacles as you attempt to escape, but even in their diegetic creaking and the flowing of ooze behind you, they’re no real threat to your survival.
They might pop out from behind a corner for a brief jumpscare (most of these are telegraphed anyway), but their advances won’t stay with you long. An oozing monster might be scary in the first moment, but when you know monsters aren’t real, impactful horror needs to be different. It needs to be surprising. It needs to be relatable, and possible. Like when you’re strapped to a bed and force-fed a pot of disgusting, indecipherable food.
Read: Resident Evil 9 is officially in development, per Capcom
Or when you open a fridge, and find a moulding, rotting lump that barely resembles food anymore.
In the end, it was the rotting food that stayed with me well after the game ended. The way the tacked-on greasy and fleshy bits stick to the door of the kitchen fridge as you open it, leaving elongated tendrils to drape in the wind. The way flies and other insects crowd around and crawl through holes in a glob of meat. The way you open a pot of what should be wholesome soup to find an inky liquid burbling away, populated by leggy insects and chunks of stuff. When you open a microwave expecting a plate of forgotten dinner to find a dead bird with exposed wounds.
Food is an integral part of the Resident Evil 7 story and its core themes of family. When protagonist Ethan Winters enters the Baker home in search of his partner Mia, he becomes embroiled in a tale of mutated family values, as the the Bakers attempt to make him one of their own. And so, food – the bonding agent of family, that brings people together and allows them to forge memories – becomes an icon of horror. A twisted symbol of the Bakers, and their horrific attempt to create an artificial love within Ethan.
It’s horrific because it’s so mundane. Because it’s so closely related to the reality of family, that we can draw an immediate connection to our own homes, our own lives. I fear the rotting fruit of Resident Evil 7 because I know what it looks like, what it smells like. It’s a tangible fear.
You see a Molded monster, and you know it’s not real. You can’t solidify it in your mind. Can’t imagine the way its flesh oozes and twists.
But you see a soup filled with guts and a liquid ink, and you can almost smell how bad it would be. How awful it would be to have to forcibly ingest it. Capcom expertly builds on this away from the main game, in the tale of Clancy Jarvis, strapped to a bed and forced to eat strange concoctions by the rotting Marguerite. The camera stays close as Marguerite watches, focussing on the grim bubbling. You can feel feel Clancy’s pain as he attempts to ingest the food, and coughs and sputters, sending bits flying.
It’s disgusting and horrific, and again – so very tangible. In leaning into the mundane, Resident Evil 7 becomes a masterclass of building tension, and a pure example of more mature horror. In other Resident Evil adventures, it’s fair to say the horror is not lasting, even as well-designed as it is. I’m not kept awake at night by shambling zombies.
Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 build horror with jump scares and ever-approaching forces like Mr. X and Nemesis. But the horror doesn’t quite reach into your soul. It’s superseded by fun action gameplay and the joy of puzzles – whereas Resident Evil 7 feels relentless in its dreadful mundanity.
For the most part, it’s all down to food. When my grapes go sour, or I forget a tomato at the back of a fridge, I’ll remember the horrors of RE7 all over again – and that’s by such clever design. In the end, it’s the smallest things that make adults afraid, and the smallest things we’ll remember most. In my mind, the greatest horror of all in RE7 – the most impactful, far beyond transformation into a mould creature, or being pursued by a rabid family – is simple soup, a leg of meat, and rotten fruit.
