The Quarry Blurs the Line Between Video Games and Cinema

Many viewers thought the footage in the new trailer looked like a video game. That comparison is a bit hyperbolic. It shows that the video game and film industries share technological, narrative, and visual approaches.

Multiplex screens are now filled with game-like images, but there is still a sense of green-screened unreality, whether you are watching a well-paced drama or an action film. Games and movies alike have set their watches to Matrix-style "bullet time" effects, both forms have shaken up their cameras, and Brian De Palma has marveled at how certain games have deftly reinvented cinema's

Performance-captured likenesses of movie and television stars are now featured in high-profile games. It was prophesied and it's not so surprising. As more and more motion picture studios enter the video gaming ring, one may see a Robert Redford video game.

Smash to The Quarry, the newest horror adventure game from British developer Supermassive Games, or the latest movie-obsessed pugilist to cross the rope. Supermassive isn't a movie studio but it does specialize in horror games. The cast of The Quarry consists of new and established screen actors. Justice Smith, who recently appeared in the film Licorice Pizza, is one of the key players in the game. The performance-capture technology registered each cast member's vocal, facial, and bodily expressions, which were translated into the computer-generated facsimiles that players control and/or encounter in the game itself. Digital Domain, a Los Angeles-based visual effects studio founded by James Cameron, has since worked on a raft of movies, games, and TV shows.

The 1980 summer-camp slasher film Friday the 13th and the baroque death scenes of the FinalDestination franchise inspired Will Byles, who directed and co-wrote The Quarry. Byles remembers the 1981 horror-comedy An American Werewolf in London as the first horror film he had ever seen. Byles likes the way the film combines humor with real horror. There is a mixture of tones in The Quarry, from maudlin needle drops to low-brow jokes.

The game is set at a summer camp that has cabins, canoes, corpses floating in the lake. The campers have been driven home but the counselors are still on the grounds. They seize the night when their own ride is delayed. They will discover a lot of secrets in the hours ahead, but not one of them is related to Robert Redford.