The main game mechanic of its source material is present here as well, with Linda using her phone camera to repel ghosts. Some of the CGI used is questionable, but the practical effects were quite impressive for the small budget I must assume this movie had going for it. While the original game had more variety in their ghosts and scares, the movie does manage to bring some of those ghosts to life on the big screen. In that respect, DreadOut certainly delivers. Why not go the whole way and give fans of the game what they want? It’s not a bad thing to attempt an original story, but if you’re adapting a story from a videogame, originality is already out the window to begin with. So many videogame adaptations tend to irk me by choosing to do their own weird thing, leaving the end product of the film virtually unrecognizable from the game it’s adapting from. A couple scenes even seem to be lifted directly off the videogame for the movie, and I actually quite liked that. Having seen some gameplay of DreadOut, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of the movie follows the main story beats of the game. Let’s begin with the things this movie does right.

If that sounds like a rather flimsy premise for a movie, that’s because it unfortunately is.

While scouring one of the more forbidden areas in the apartment, our protagonist Linda unknowingly reads a cursed mantra that opens a mystical portal to another realm. It follows five high school students who visit an abandoned apartment to shoot some videos to ‘go viral’, in their words. This movie adaptation follows the storyline of the game very loosely, expanding more on its DLC component. The movie reached Malaysian shores on 18 April. It’s no surprise then, that the movie has enjoyed financial success in Indonesia after its debut in January this year. Pewdiepie covered it soon after the game’s release, bring the title to mainstream players worldwide. Ever since its release, some DLC has been released for the game and it appears to have gathered a small cult following in Asia. It’s a true testament to the lack of originality that plagues the horror movie scene these days, and doesn’t even arrive quickly enough to capitalize on its counterpart game’s popularity being 4 years late to that party.įor context, DreadOut is an Indonesian horror movie based on another horror survival game released in 2014 that shares its title. This horror flick has its moments, certainly, but they are few and far between, buried under hammy acting and a script that seems content with rehashing tired horror movie tropes and clichés. One would think filmmakers would have learned that by now, but here we are at the umpteenth half-baked film adaptation of a videogame. Maybe videogames just shouldn’t be made into movies.

Indonesian horror movies 2014