Video games and movies have a somewhat fraught relationship. Movies based on video games are only just crawling out of the deep dark hole they dug themselves into, but movies about fictional video games have a different history. When horror movies make use of games, they usually do so with the Most Dangerous Video Game trope.
There’s something hilarious about the games that kids in movies and TV shows play. Viewers often watch characters play games that lookwatching characters play gamesthat look either terrible or absurd. Sometimes, however, the games invented by screenwriters and VFX teams for other mediums might be scarier than they are funny.
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The “Most Dangerous Video Game” trope imagines a video game that has a nightmarish effect on its players. It’s usually either cursed, haunted, or developed andpublished by some sadistic monster. The game could be just about anything, though it usually falls into the survival horror genre. Players find themselves tied to their in-game avatar. Their safety is often linked to their performance in the game. Other haunted video games might cause madness in their players, the sheer nightmarish experience of going through its challenges evoking a Lovecraftian dread. A few of these games don’t even kill or corrupt their players, they just bewitch them through some sorcery to keep them playing forever. The trope combinescomically outdated fearmongeringabout the negative societal and personal effects of gaming with supernatural horror, sometimes with the graceless paranoia of an after-school special.
Though far from the first example, the seminal “Most Dangerous Video Game” film is William Brent Bell’s 2006 classicStay Alive. The film was producedbyTerminator SalvationdirectorMcG and distributed by Buena Vista, making it Disney’s only full-fledged horror film to date.Stay Alivefollows a handful of friends who are sent reeling by an unexplained and sudden death. When they find the eponymous PC game in the deceased’s personal effects, they make the inexplicable choice to play it. The game leads them through a prayer comparable to the Latin atthe beginning ofEvil Dead. Players start turning up dead in eerily identical ways to their in-game fate, leading to the immortal line “If you die in the game, you die for real.” It’s a hilarious film, well worth a watch as an object of mockery. It’s also the perfect codifier for the trope.
Tons of TV series have a single episode in which the monster of the week is a deadly video game. It’s a weirdly common dalliance that shows of all genres can enjoy, but it doesn’t always carry the same risk.Star Trekhas done it at least twice.Deep Space Ninefeatures an episode called “Move Along Home”, which plays with the idea by introducing a race of aliens obsessed with a VR game. At the episode’s end, Quark fails, but everyone realizes at once that the game is only a game. There’s also aNext Generationepisode in which a woman uses a VR game that addicts its players to steal the Enterprise, and it catches on through peer pressure.X-Fileshas a hilariousepisode called “First-Person Shooter” in which a VR game becomes haunted and begins murdering real people. Spectral superheroDanny Phantomunleashed a ghost into an MMO in “Teacher of the Year” that could’ve threatened to kill players in real life. It’s an easy and common story for an episodic narrative.
There are some fun variations of this trope that have popped up in films. The 1994 filmBrainscanintroduces a game that uses hypnosis to create immersion, only to reveal that it also leads players to enact violence in the real world. Neveldine and Taylor’s 2009 filmGamerputs players in control of real people in first-person shooters andSecond Lifeclones, but that isn’t a twist, it’s the unique selling point. The universallypanned thirdSpy Kidsfilm borrows this trope by threatening to trap players in a VR world forever. More recently, Netflix put outChoose or Die, in which an 80s text-based adventure game warps reality and forces players to risk the lives of their loved ones. Loads of anime series start from this concept or borrow it for a brief weekly threat.
The funniest thing about this trope is the fact that the overwhelming majority of examples seem to know nothing about video games. So many of these killer video games come from a place of comical fearmongering about the violence, addiction, or societal degradation that some argue video games will cause. Most movies using this trope are cash-ins hoping to get attention from gamers. They typically lack any actual critical lens on video games. There are a ton of interesting elements of the video game world that could makeripe fodder for horror cinema. Hopefully, this well-worn and often silly trope could be used to explore some more interesting aspects of the concept.
