Sweet Home, The Movie That Inspired Resident Evil, Just Got Remastered

I've been wanting to watch this for around 20 years now. At last I have.

Personaly... I hated it. Dreadful film. Bad pacing, stilted dialogue, and a weird surreal atmosphere that feels more like theatre than film.

Also nonsensical scenes that make no sense. What was that throne of neon honey? The pointless sing song bit?

It's like randomised video salad.

Mostly it's just boring though.

Compared to something like Poltergeist it's just laughable, mediocre guff whose main claim to fame is its much better videogame adaptation. Poltergeist had great pacing, great dialogue, and it made coherent logical sense within the rules of the film. Poltergeist was exciting! Sweet Home was not.

Loved the game. Hated the film sadly.

So I rewatched this. As a film I still think it's godawful. But!

After the first viewing I went and replayed the entire game (maybe 10 hours?). The last time was around 2001 after the fan-translation. I loved it at the time - Sweet Home on Famicom is an 8-bit masterpiece.

But I had enjoyed it devoid of context.

Watching the film and playing the game again, however, elevates the game to god-tier status. (Even though the film still sucks.) Because as supplementary material, the films adds context to in-game events, subverts certain expected events, and makes the game experience even better.

Thus making Sweet Home possibly the greatest film/game tie-in the history of either medium.

Great film adaptations like Platoon, Batman, Robocop, Die Hard... Whatever. Etc. They all worked without the film, and knowing the film only improved the experience moderately. Here, the film feels like it was meant to be part of the game experience (which was fantastic anyway).

There have been a few similar attempts over the years. Exile on the BBC Micro had a novella included. Antiriad had a comic. Galaxy Odyssey had an audio novel on cassette. The Matrix games years later pitched themselves as missing segments from the movie, meant to dovetail together. That was more than a decade later though.

Sweet Home came out in 1989 and does the above far more elegantly.

On my second playthrough I renamed the characters to match how I saw them in the film (the reporter was renamed April). Knowing the character relations also improved the experience. I kept the father and daughter together, and I paired the pervy cameraman and reporter off, since they had a thing going on in the film

And you know what? Following the groupings in the film made the game easier - it was meant to be played like this. The cameraman and reporter work so well as a pair for reading the frescos.

I was also able to visualise each character as in the film, and imagine their voices. And items, such as the dress which heals mental power, made so much more sense now. Before it was just an arbitrary game item, now I mentally align it with the film, where the dress was Emi's late mother's, and gives them the will to fight on.

The game also adds a little more backstory to the film - notably what happened to the mysterious painter, which wasn't explained in the film itself!

Plus it alters some things, such as the coffin location, and other bits, to keep you on your toes.

I hated my 2nd viewing even more since I knew what happened. But by virtue of improving the game, I have to recommend it - watch it, then play the game. Consider it like reading the manual.

This might actually be the perfect film/game symbiosis. Not because the film is good, but because of how well the two are integrated.

@OldManHermit I do like 80s horror. Poltergeist and Elm Street are favourites. I think part of it is I like the production veneer these Hollywood films have.

If you play Sweet Home post back here and quote me so I get notification - curious to hear your thoughts in the context of liking the film. Will you love the game because the two resonate so well? Or will you feel the gameification of the narrative detracts from it?