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PLAYMIND’s ‘The Inner Friend’ is a Fantastic, Internalized Game of Horrors

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A broken, terrified man writhes on a filthy bed. He twists and turns and utters garbled cries of apparent mental anguish. The form of a childlike, not quite whole spirit approaches and stares down into the fiery glowing place where the man’s face should be and finds himself falling into his unconscious, damaged mind.

This is the genuinely chilling beginning of PLAYMIND’s brand new release, The Inner Friend, making it’s debut today on PC with the promise of a console release next year.

From the official synopsis:

Dive into an eerie subconscious universe to face childhood fears and nightmares in order to restore peace to the distressed mind. Led by a mysterious Shadow, players will collect memories while they journey always deeper through the subconscious, unraveling a rich but wordless story and eluding gruesome beings.

My first impression of the game was how gorgeous and surreal developer Emmanuel Sevigny’s world really is.

In order to access the deeper portions of the subconscious mind, you must take a leap of faith of sorts. Abandoning the safe space of a child’s bedroom inside the character’s mind, you leap into a void falling down and down until you reach the floating buildings below. Inside some, there are portals, and through those portals you will find the pieces needed to rebuild a broken mind.

Looking over a wasteland inside the mind in The Inner Friend from PLAYMIND

It’s a clever device that works to the game’s advantage, reminding us quickly that nothing is quite as it appears, but that’s really only the beginning.

The pieces you need aren’t easy to find, you see, and there are a whole host of genuinely creepy beings and scenes to work through in order to obtain them. A hallway that leads from one room to the next may go somewhere else entirely when you take it again. An object or character that is seemingly harmless, may be the most deadly you’ve faced.

The creative team left no stone un-turned in building their world, providing as much for the ears as for the eyes. The ambient sounds, intensified because I was using my headphones no less, constantly warn of horrors in your periphery while the heavily synthesized 80s-inspired soundtrack–with gentle nods to Netflix’s “Stranger Things”– keeps you constantly moving.

The more deeply you move into the subconscious, the more terrifying and challenging the game becomes, of course, echoing the idea that those things we bury deepest are the ones that hurt us most, and it serves as a reminder that healing can be almost as painful as the trauma that created one’s wounds.

Taking a step back to look at the big picture, however, sheds light on the question that is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the game.

How much does a human being have to go through for their mind to shatter so completely?

Game play in The Inner Friend is fairly straightforward and easy to master with simple controls. You’re often required to make lightning fast decisions on the fly, however, in order to solve the challenges of each level so be prepared to use your brain and also to pay the piper when your choice is the wrong one.

The Inner Friend is available September 6, 2018 on Steam, and at only $14.99 it’s a really great deal. Check out the trailer below, and prepare yourself to enter this amazing world.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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