Horror And Perspective

The first person view is the easiest way to instil fear in the viewer, the forced perspective makes the experience a lot more personal. The found footage subgenre is great at forcing us into the eyes of the victims and helping us share the experience side-by-side with them, and video games are starting to borrow a few tricks from found footage, such as camera tilting and jolting. Amnesia started those tricks early, having the camera drop to the floor in panic and crawl through a short and boring corridor.

There’s a growing amount of games that bring horror into new perspectives, Limbo, Little Nightmares, and Deadlight are all prime examples of platform horrors that shift the view of the player so that they act as witnesses, rather than active participants, but they employ some rather different methods to inspire dread:

Top 10 Vampires

You voted for it, you’ve got it. This week, we’re looking at some of the most blood thirsty creatures ever known to sci-fi/fantasy. No, we’re not on about a leech, nor a parasite, but they certainly could fall under these categories. We can only be talking about Vampires, a type of undead that likes to nom on your blood, essentially draining you of your very life force. What a horrible way to go.

Have you ever looked outside at the dark night (not to be confused with the film that scores better than 5/7), then romanticised about someone nibbling on your neck? These guys will be a literal pain in your neck when they clamp down on your flesh and drain you of your fluids (That doesn’t sound healthy). Join us as we count down our Top 10 Vampires.

Vampires, Film Stars and Monsters

Of all the many monsters of myth and legend, none make for better films than vampires.Enigmatic and deadly stalkers of the night, sourced from a thousand legends from a thousand cultures throughout history, with many conflicting accounts of their strengths, their weaknesses, and their origins. There are a few things that the majority of vampires have in common:

• Bloodlust – Mostly a direct need to feed on blood, but many vampire myths talk of full-flesh cannibalism, blood-rites, or simple anaemia or a blood-borne disease that carries vampirism.
• Aversion to Sunlight – No vampire likes the sun, not one. Even dhampyrs (half-vamps) like Rayne or Blade prefer the dark to the day. It varies between an irritation to a lethal reaction to the hard light of day, but it’s always there.
• The Bat Motif – Vampire bats are the most famous haematophages, with the possible exception of mosquitoes, but they’re not quite so scary. Vampires and bats all share the fangs and the night life, so they tend to get along just fine.

So many times the lords of darkness have been put to the silver screen, and in so many different forms that they can barely be called a single creature, and more a category. Werewolves are always werewolves, and Frankenstein’s monster will always be called Frankenstein by those with limited mental capacity, but vampires are a lore unto themselves.