The Zombie Effect: How Horror Films and Video Games Have Bled Together

In the mid to late 1990s, video games began to take on a more of a horror feel with the Doom and Resident Evil series. Since that time, the terror has accelerated, thanks to famed director John Carpenter consulting on and even making an appearance in the game version of his cult classic "The Thing," and also becoming an official spokesman for F.E.A.R. Horror novelist Clive Barker helped develop none other than Clive Barker's Undying in 2001, and is now working on another upcoming game, Clive Barker's Jericho.

From the success of the Silent Hill series to the hit Xbox 360 Dead Rising, zombies, ghosts and other monsters are everywhere these days. Thus, with people scaring themselves late into the night not with scary films but with scary games, it's clear that the horror genre has infiltrated the game world like never before.

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What brought games and horror together? What's the connection between horror fans and gamers? Why are games getting scarier than scary movies? TwitchGuru decided it was time to examine the terror and games connection with a number of experts in the field of fear.

At first, it's hard to imagine zombies driving video games - when you think of games, you usually think of speed and fast interaction. Zombies aren't too smart, they can't outwit their opponents unless they work in groups, and until recently they couldn't even move fast. But with first person shooter games, zombies make perfect targets. Witness the chart-topping success of Dead Rising. The game, which bears a strong resemblance to George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," has been one of the most acclaimed and popular Xbox 360 titles released so far.

Effects and make-up genius Tom Savini, who plied his fantastic gory skills in the original "Dawn of the Dead," says, "you don't feel like you're a victim just protecting yourself from the zombies: you can actually be a hunter. It's almost like the rednecks in Night of the Living Dead: 'Let's go a-huntin'! Let's go hunt us some zombies!' You get to hunt down, shoot and protect yourself from zombies. How much further from the first person shooter position can you be?"

Zombies were a whole other monster entirely before Romero laid down all the ground rules for them in "Night of the Living Dead." In previous movies, like the RKO classic "I Walked With a Zombie," they were just roaming around sleepwalking. In Romero's films, they became deadly, lurching flesh eaters that could only be defeated by killing their brain activity. Only in the most recent zombie films have they been running and moving fast.

Savini says, "You'll never see a fast moving zombie in a Romero film because as far as he's concerned, they're dead and would continue to die. They would continue to rot and get weak, they wouldn't gain super powers. But to keep it more interesting, that's what they did in the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" - they made them faster, stronger, and more of a threat." Thus, faster-moving and more aggressive zombie-like creatures from films like "28 Days Later" are more prevalent in today's games, such as Half-Life 2.

Another classic horror franchise, the "Evil Dead" series, seemed more of a natural to turn into a game, with its wild special effects and creatures, and its fanatical cult audience. Many of the best horror films move slowly and take the time to build suspense, but the trademark of the Evil Dead films was their frantic, cartoonish pace. Mark Shostrom, the make-up wizard of "Evil Dead II" says, "it definitely lends itself to a video game because video games are like an exhilarating amusement park ride, and that's what watching the Evil Dead movies is like. As soon as the screen goes dark and that camera starts moving, you know you're in for a long ride."