Little Nightmares | Review | Nightmare Fuel And Disappointment
21Have y’all ever seen Sunshine? It’s a film about a team of astronauts who are on their way to essentially jumpstart the sun before it burns out and the earth is left a barren, frozen husk. It’s a simple enough, almost classical style piece of science fiction that dealt with big ideas, fears, and psychology concerning space travel. It’s a brilliant piece of work with gorgeous special effects, a flawless cast, and a moving, tense script.
For about the first hour.
After the first hour, Sunshine suddenly and inexplicably dives down the sci-fi horror rabbit hole, which is, to fair, a hole I generally like. However, this section of film felt like it was trying to be Event Horizon without actually knowing the first thing about horror. It was abrupt and unnecessary and felt like a waste. It felt like after most of the movie was done, the writer and director suddenly just openly admitted…
Does that mean I refer to Sunshine as a bad movie? No. But it does mean that every time I bring it up, it comes with several caveats and a deep sense of internal sadness. And I second guess my enjoyment of it at times, which is a shitty feeling.
Unfortunately, this was the first thing that I thought of when I finished Little Nightmares. Little Nightmares is a horror puzzle platformer by Swedish game developer Tarsier Studios. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so many highs and lows in the same game. To begin with, Little Nightmares starts strong. You play as a little girl in a raincoat who is making her way through a dark and twisted ship called The Maw. The atmosphere and gaming style is incredibly similar to games like Limbo and Inside, which I had no problem with, because I loved both of those games. The puzzles are fairly rudimentary: push this box, pull this lever. You might get stuck from time to time but it’s never anything you can’t hammer out after a few minutes of searching your immediate surroundings. These puzzle moments are broken up by horrifying chase scenes. But what chases you? Well…
As you venture deeper into the abyss of this rotting, creaking ship, you quickly realize that not only is the dark, twitchy atmosphere of other puzzle platformers here in full force, it almost has some of the most horrifying creature design this side of Ralph Steadman on a head full of acid. The monsters you face are like caricatures of adults in a child’s nightmare: indeed, that might be exactly what they’re meant to represent. Fat lips smack, throats squawk, and arms stretch to disgusting lengths. These melted wax monsters kept my attention and awe any time they were on screen. They really are that grotesque. There’s really very little you can do to protect yourself from these bleak abominations, and so you run and occasionally hide. Eventually you make it past that creature’s lair, and the puzzles continue. During my playthrough, I got through about three moments like these, and when I realized that I was coming up to another, I saved my game, and went to have lunch and get some chores done. I’d been at it for about three hours, and the way the story was lining up, I figured I had another two, possibly even three to go. This seemed like a good halfway point for me to return to later.
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