horror

The Found Footage Horror of ‘Resident Evil 7’

The Found Footage Horror of ‘Resident Evil 7’

Resident Evil 7 contains a strong grindhouse aesthetic, but I’d hesitate to call it a grindhouse game because it’s actually more stylistically complicated than that. It absolutely does evoke grindhouse in its violence, but its exploration, atmosphere, and puzzles are inspired by a very tonally different kind of horror: Found footage. It seems like an obvious comparison given the fact that one sequence has you literally playing as the cameraman for a TV show, but the inspirations go deeper than this kind of obvious imitation.

The Grindhouse Violence of ‘Resident Evil 7’

The Grindhouse Violence of ‘Resident Evil 7’

Grindhouse is a term that describes a certain type of horror movie.  Critics have described Resident Evil 7 as brutal, dirty, and personal, but what exactly does it do to evoke such a specific aesthetic of violence?

I think it has a lot to do with how RE7 diverges from its predecessors.