Axes to Grind: Re-Imagining the Horrific in Visual Media and Culture Harmony Wu, editor, Special Issue of Spectator 22:2 (Fall 2002) 12-23 12 “Can you survive the horror?” asks the cover of the interactive game Resident Evil 2 (Capcom/ Virgin Interactive, 1998), a question that explic- itly positions the game within the rhetoric of the horror film genre. Yet something greater than generic familiarity with horror is needed to sur- vive the specifically interactive nature of the horror game—the player must summon the willpower to learn the skills needed to with- stand the onslaught of evil monsters and restore equilibrium. In contrast to film, games place a central emphasis on the act of doing that goes beyond the kinetic and emotional responses that might be produced in cinema. Espen Aarseth proposes the term “ergodic” to identify forms in which “nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text,” 1 an effort greater than that involved in watching a film; games’ interactive requirement situates them squarely in the “ergodic.” In this article I will explore how interactivity, with its concomitant emphasis on doing, affects the shape and pleasures of the horror-based videogames, and in so doing begin to elaborate on games’ formal differences from cinematic horror. Given the recent release of several films based on games, such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Final Fantasy (2001) and most pertinently Resident Evil (2002), such an analy- sis into such media cross-fertilization is a timely intervention. Each of these films bears only a superficial relation to the games, how- ever, and although there are some references (particularly in Resident Evil) to the games that inspire them, the films do not attempt to re- create the interactive aspects specific to the formal nature of their game counterparts. 2 This spate of game-to-film remakes indicates a closing of the circle of the cross-media ex- change from horror film to games and back to film. But the overwhelmingly disappointing and unengaging nature of most of the films so far seems to suggest that while media interac- tion works in multiple directions, it is in the realm of games (and how they adapt and ex- change templates inherited from cinema) where the most exciting innovations in the TANYA KRZYWINSKA Hands-On Horror It troubles me that an anonymous oracle knows more of my business than I do. —Alice American McGee’s Alice (Rogue/EA, 2000)