Today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema kicked off a month of Halloween programming with a look at horror movies based on video games. For a long time these adaptations were dismissed but the critical and financial success of The Last of Us and Iron Lung and as well as Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Bros. Movie have changed that. 2026 has turned out to be a banner year for video game based movies. Here is a look at the films discussed on the show as well as a few other titles.
The Last of Us
The Last of Us is is a zombie-adjacent post apocalyptic story. Video game adaptations were generally regarded as an unserious sort of filmmaking. Early video games were kid stuff and the movie adaptations were regarded the same way. Turning The Last of Us into a prestige television program marked a change in the social and artistic status of these adaptations and for video games themselves.
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat is a series of fighting games originally released in the early 1990s. The early games were quite controversial in their day and sparked concerns about the impact of violent media on children. The first live action film was released in 1995 and toned down the violence to get a PG-13 rating. It was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson who would later helm the Resident Evil series. This was followed by the disastrous sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. An R-rated live action film was released in 2021 and a sequel was released in 2026.
Resident Evil
The Capcom video game Resident Evil (originally titled Biohazard) is a long running horror game in which the player encounters monsters following an industrial disaster. In the 1990s multiple efforts were made to adapt Resident Evil into a feature film. One of those projects was to be written and directed by Night of the Living Dead creator George A. Romero. That project was abandoned but the documentary George A. Romero’s Resident Evil explored what it might have been. The game eventually made it to the silver screen in a 2002 movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich. That series had six installments. A 2021 Resident Evil reboot and a 2022 television series followed. A new Resident Evil film was released in 2026. It’s a fun mix of humor and scares.
Uwe Boll
In addition to Paul W.S. Anderson, filmmaker Uwe Boll has been one of the primary directors adapting video games into movies. One of his first efforts was 2003’s House of the Dead which based on the 1997 video game. The movie was conceived as a prequel to the game. A group of college student looking for a good time travel to an island expecting a rave but instead find it’s overrun by zombies. House of the Dead is not a good movie but it has been embraced as a so-bad-it’s-good movie. Uwe Boll made a career out of bad movies based on video games including Far Cry, In the Name of the King, Alone in the Dark, Postal, and the BloodRayne series. Boll has been prolific in the video game movie genre and his films were financially successful but the quality of Boll’s movies also stigmatized video game adaptations.
Silent Hill
Silent Hill is a horror video game series published by Konami in which the player navigates through a town covered in ash and invested with monsters. Filmmaker Christophe Gans is a fan of the Silent Hill video games and he directed the 2006 film. Gans was not involved with the 2012 sequel Silent Hill: Revelation but he did return for 2026’s Return to Silent Hill. Resident Evil producer Roy Lee has expressed interest in a new adaptation of Silent Hill although it is unclear if the project would be a television series or a feature film.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Five Nights at Freddy’s turned the 1980s childhood staples Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza into a nightmare. (These places were already nightmares for a lot of parents, but that’s a different kind of horror.) What began as a video game has spawned a multimedia franchise.Two movies were adapted from the games. Neither of them were very good. The popularity of Five Nights at Freddy’s also inspired The Banana Splits Movie and Willy’s Wonderland.
Movies as Games
While today’s show focused on horror movies that were adapted from video games, there are also plenty of games adapted from horror movies.
There have been numerous video games based on the Alien movie series, going back all the way to the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64. Various Alien games were released throughout the 1990s and 2000s, some of them tie-in products for the movies and others standalone stories in the Alien universe or crossovers with the Predator series.
In addition to Alien, Atari also had games based on Frankenstein, Halloween, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game was controversial at the time because players assumed the role of Leatherface and murdered teenagers. In the 1980s and 90s, the original Nintendo system had several games based on R-rated films including Terminator 2, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The past decade has seen a surge of interest in properties from the 1970s and 80s. In Hollywood that meant legacy sequels which continued the stories from those retro films. Video games did this as well and there have been video games for Halloween and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Some of these video games included actors and other creative personnel from the original movies. Hellraiser: Revival was conceived in collaboration with creator Clive Barker and Doug Bradley reprised his role as Pinhead. Evil Dead: The Game included Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams and Joseph Lo Duca returned to provide the music. Friday the 13th: The Game enlisted Kane Hodder to play Jason and Harry Manfredini did the music. Manfredini scored eight of the films and he reworked his themes for the game.
Other Films
Exit 8 is a liminal space horror film. A man is trapped in an endless loop, walking the same section of hallway. To escape, he must pass through the correct version of the hallway eight times in consecutive order. Exit 8 minimizes the puzzle aspect of the premise but the film uses this concept to explore the emotional and psychological aspects of the human experience.
The Mortuary Assistant is about a newly graduated mortician who experiences spooky phenomena when she covers the night shift. It’s made with some style but this is frustratingly incoherent.
Werewolves Within is a game published by Ubisoft in which the players have to figure out which their neighbors is a lycanthrope. The 2021 movie is a lot of fun, mixing horror with humor.
Until Dawn is a horror survival game that was adapted into a 2025 movie. The film version had some self-aware humor but it was mostly a collection of horror movie tropes.
Iron Lung was one of the surprise box office successes of 2026. The game was a submarine simulation game and the filmmakers seized on that angle. The movie expands our understanding of what a video game adaptation can be.
Castlevania is a long-running media franchise that originated in a game for Nintendo. It’s a Dracula inspired tale of a vampire hunter. Castlevania was the basis for a couple of Netflix series.
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