Resident Evil: Zombies of Christmas Past, A My Life In Horror Christmas Special

My Life In Horror Christmas Special Resident Evil: Zombies of Christmas Past

The holiday season often evokes images of cozy family gatherings, festive decorations, and joyful celebrations. However, for some of us, this time of year intertwines with darker memories and unexpected delights. In this Christmas special, George Daniel Lee invites you to explore the intersection of nostalgia and horror through my unique lens as an avid fan of the macabre. As he reflects on the holiday of 1999—a turning point in his life marked by isolation, anxiety, and an insatiable curiosity for horror—one pivotal gift stands out: a copy of the Resident Evil: Director’s Cut. This game not only shaped his understanding of video game horror but also served as a sanctuary during a tumultuous time. Join George Daniel Lee on a journey into the eerie shadows of his past, where the lines between festive cheer and chilling dread blurred, revealing the unexpected connection between the two.

I’ll freely admit, some of my associations with the festive season are. . .odd. Being an ardent fan of the strange and “speculative” in all their forms, my Christmases were often dominated by monsters and other-worldly entities, dark mysteries and myths of other worlds. From the books and comics that filled my Christmas stocking from the earliest age to the action figures, play-sets and video games that sat beneath the Christmas tree, my holidays tended to be haunted spans of time, filled with the absurd and darkly miraculous. 

As a younger child, those artefacts tended to be plastic toys and play-sets; objects that spurred imaginative play (and, in many respects, became the vectors for the earliest stories I ever constructed). As I grew, however, they soon became replaced by video-games and their requisite systems.

Again, that medium became a source of profound inspiration, providing digital worlds and stories into which I might project myself and where stories proliferated in their many, nascent hundreds (some of the imagery and concepts from those earliest days can be found in much of my published work). 

Amongst my fondest Christmas memories is that of 1999, the year I turned fifteen: 

Already a strange, isolated and diffident teenager, I was always more happy in my own company and imaginary worlds than communal reality (in that regard, little has changed). That year, I’d long since begun to wrestle with numerous internal demons (profound social anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, depression), the transition from childhood to some semblance of the adult proving acutely painful. Unhappy at school, at home, in my own head, I began to retreat deeper, immersing myself in art and fiction, which were the only places I found solace and distraction (which I would later realise was neither, rather the means of processing those issues). 

Horror was already a beloved subject, and one I devoured with a rapaciousness that only the young and increasingly obsessive can know. 

Into this shifting, fractious, uncertain condition dropped an unassuming stocking-filler; a copy of a video game already legendary in the gossip of the school-yard and classroom, that I’d heard so many stories of but never played for myself: 

The “Director’s Cut” of Resident Evil. 

To understand the significance of this game, we need to take a look at the history of horror in the medium: 

Still largely regarded as a children’s toy in 1990s Western cultures, the existence of horror in video games had always been contentious. Here in the UK, little was likely to get the right-wing tabloids champing at the bit more rabidly than the suggestion that children might be exposed to some filthy, transgressive, corrupting influence. 

Resident Evil, therefore, was an act of conscious transgression: Whilst rare and isolated examples of horror did exist beforehand, nothing had the marketing, exposure or unfettered gumption of Resident Evil in terms of the demographics it targeted: Whilst it might seem extremely crude -and more than a little adolescent by present-day standards-, Resident Evil was a declaration: “We are not children any more. Time to put away childish things and stagger into the fractious, chaotic world of early adulthood.” 

For those of us who’d effectively grown up with the medium, it was a shocking, titillating rallying cry: Here was a video game that catered to our most forbidden and taboo tastes, that wore its deviance with punkish, confrontational pride: 

Little before Resident Evil dared to flaunt its influences so brazenly or acknowledge the interests and obsessions we’d developed as a result of our exposure to earlier horror media: 

This game, rather than trying to shape, coerce or judge our interests, catered directly to them, homaging the various zombie, body and science-fiction horror films we loved, whilst also establishing itself as another franchise in that tradition. 

For me, as for many of my age and ilk, the game was a revelation: 

While my family engaged in the traditional Christmas past-times, I retreated upstairs to the cold, dark sanctuary of a room where our PlayStation sat (a kind of domestic temple; a sanctuary away from the requirements of family existence where I could breathe and think and let my mind wander).

For the next several hours, I gave myself to the experience, immersing myself so completely in the digital world and its myriad horrors, I barely heard my Mother summoning me down for dinner (and likely resented the disruption). A Christmas of cold, darkness and isolation, the crude, electric hum of the original PlayStation, the creaks and groans of creepy, seemingly-abandoned mansions, zombies and monsters, mutant plants and animals, horror set-pieces. Hardly most people’s idea of a happy holiday. 

And yet, for me, at that time, it couldn’t have been more perfect. This was the matter my imagination craved, that my -admittedly broken, tormented- mind devoured more eagerly than I might have any seasonal treat. 

Family atmospheres are difficult for me. Notions of “community” are reluctantly entertained, and always with a degree of distance or separation.

This isn’t necessarily due to any particular experience; I recall -and I’m sure my parents do likewise- that I’ve always been of that nature, from the earliest age. Always happier alone, immersed in my own or imaginary worlds, always fractious and uncomfortable in atmospheres of “togetherness.” 

I hasten to add: This is not some edge-lord condemnation of the concept; I understand fully that others find sincere place, poetry and contentment in those experiences. Rather, it’s a sincere confession of my own strange incapacity: I am so made that “family” is an uncomfortable place. And that is a sincere problem, given how our cultures and systems of society are structured, what they promote. 

Video-games, then as now, being primarily and essentially solitary, have always provided windows into other states, immersion in alternative realities that, whilst ostensibly horrific, have often proved preferable to the grey hell outside the screen (again, should you read my fiction, you’ll find this tension expressed again and again).

Resident Evil is not only an artefact of Christmas for me; it’s a reminder of conditions that, whilst painful to remember, it’s essential that I do so, if only as a means of understanding how far I’ve come, how different my lived experience is now. As such, the game has a strange association of sentiment; resonant with echoes of that fifteen-year-old boy, putative queer that he was, only just beginning to realise the contradictions that informed him.

The game itself was revelatory.

Unlike anything I’d experienced in the medium before. The transition from two dimensions to three, the existence of full-motion video sequences, voice-acting (for all its legendarily awful quality), a fully-rendered score, was all technologically so far beyond anything we’d seen before, it blew our Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive-conditioned little minds. 

But beyond any technical impressions was the horror. Horror had existed in video games before, to some limited degree, but it was always somewhat ghettoised (and universally crude). Relegated to more “adult” oriented earlier systems such as the Commodore Amiga, horror had largely died a death as a video game genre in Western markets with the ascendancy of Japanese titans, Nintendo and Sega. Whilst the likes of Super Metroid and Probotector/Contra boasted certain horror elements, they tended to be tertiary to action or other focuses (and always muted with reference to the requirements of the market). 

Resident Evil was not only unabashed in its influences -everything from George Romero zombie films to the body horror of Cronenberg-, it also set out to actively terrify its audience with every factor and fibre of its being. 

In terms of design, the Arklay Manor -which provides the setting for the game- is so made as to confuse, disorient and heighten anxiety. Hallways connect to corridors which lead to isolated rooms or other areas of the mansion, many of them murkily lit and difficult to see every recess of. Littered amongst these areas are various species of monster, from the squelching, shuffling, moaning zombies to the mutant plants and animals that occur at different points and set-pieces. 

A simple but radical point of genius was to set the three-dimensional characters and monsters in rendered, two-dimensional backgrounds (that nevertheless create the impression of operating in a fully accessible, almost real space). As well as cultivating an uncanny atmosphere, the decision to make the rooms and corridors of the manor rendered images also means that the camera angles from which we view events are fixed in place.

This has the effect of limiting the player’s view, meaning we can never quite see the entirety of any given room or corridor.

Combined with the dubious lighting, this evokes an atmosphere of sincere dread and tension. Often, we emerge into a new corridor or pass through a previously-locked door, only to hear some groaning, shambling monstrosity in the distance that we can’t see. It’s difficult to describe now the anxiety of those moments; the raw panic that seized our teenage hearts and often resulted in scrambling, terrified game overs (the hilariously gory death-screen proclaiming “You Died” in the player character’s blood has gone down as one of the most iconic in gaming history). 

Layered upon these environmental and interface factors, the game also boasts unique, excessively creepy music in every area, numerous set-pieces in which the game cuts to the POV of a monster approaching through a corridor or hallway we only just transitioned from, and a unique “loading screen,” in which transition from one setting to another involves an animated door slowly creaking open or a set of stairs being traversed. 

Despite its obvious b-movie influences, atmosphere is all-important to the experience of Resident Evil, and the original -not to mention its stunning remake- has that quality in abundance. 

For the remaining days of the Christmas holiday of 1999, I found myself immersed in the game’s world, happy in the company of digital monsters and virtual horrors, obsessed with the mysteries of the zombie-haunted manor, but also my own reaction to it: 

Rarely before had a game evoked such consistent dread, such a tangible, sumptuous state of anxiety. As one of the earliest such experiences I ever encountered, it remains amongst my most beloved, and one I return to again and again in memory. 

George Daniel Lea 05-12-24