At the start of the 1980s, video games were mostly relegated to coin-gobbling arcade machines, but their surging popularity prompted a Time Magazine cover story in January 1982 with a cringeworthy warning: “GRONK! FLASH! ZAP! Video Games are Blitzing the World!”
Molly Manning Walker’s film is a chilling revelation of how sexual pressures can manifest differently for men and women.
Content warning: This feature discusses sexual assault.
It was meant to be the “best holiday ever” but it ended up being a euphoric yet devastating life lesson.
Molly Manning Walker’s Cannes Film Festival breakout How To Have Sex takes audiences on a sizzling, searing journey to Malia, Crete, on a tumultuous girls trip. Three teenage best friends Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) have finished their exams and are taking the Cretan town by storm in a blur of hedonism and newfound independence. But what ensues amongst the fish bowl cocktails and sticky nightclub anthems is a tussle with toxic friendships and the nuances of sexual assault and consent. At its core, the film weaves a dark but important tale of female sexuality and pressure.
How To Have Sex encourages post-watch conversations about problematic gender and sexual dynamics, particularly for young people. Walker’s film highlights the harsh contrast between the perceived experience of the “lads” and “girls” holidays, and how they are both portrayed in popular British culture. As a rite of passage, it is known as a trip taken by young women and men during school or college age – often a first solo trip abroad, even more often an excuse to blow off steam, party and experiment sexually.
When we watch films about “lads holidays” — think The Inbetweeners, American Pie, The Hangover, 22 Jump Street — they’re mostly lighthearted stories of young men on their quest to “get laid”, an experience, for better or worse, that’s often trivialised in comparison to the darker undertones of How To Have Sex and its female leads’ experiences.
The film is a chilling revelation of how sexual pressures can manifest differently for men and women — pop culture represents men having a laugh as they navigate their sexuality, while women are often put in danger. This portrayal is not an accident — it reflects the dark side of this journey for women. One in 16 U.S. women experienced forced or coerced intercourse as their first sexual experience in their early teens, according to a study, while a U.N. Women UK investigation found that 97 percent of women aged 18-24 have been sexually harassed.
For sexologist and relationship therapist Madalaine Munro, this highlights a gender gap when it comes to inherent safety within early sexual experiences, and how it has become normalised. Clinical psychologist Dr. Sarah Bishop adds that the lighter portrayal of male sexual experiences “trivialises male sexual exploration, often without addressing the consequences or complexities involved.”
Walker’s research while making the film revealed surprising attitudes towards consent and sexual assault in younger generations. In an interview with Empire, she described “mind-blowing” pre-shoot workshops with teens during which some girls expressed views that veered towards victim blaming. When the production team asked their focus group to read a scene of sexual assault from the film, “they’d be like, ‘I don’t see any issues with this scene,'” Walker said, with one participant saying: “Girls have to wear better clothes. They have to protect themselves and not get drunk.” Victim blaming aside, it’s clear that young women are absorbing societal messages that the onus of preventing sexual assault falls to those most vulnerable.
Conversations need to be had about the dangerous consequences of victim blaming, particularly amongst women in female friendship groups.
The director described How To Have Sex as “the sort of film we need right now… one we’ve needed for a long, long time”. Conversations need to be had about the dangerous consequences of victim blaming, particularly amongst women in female friendship groups.
“When society teaches women to be competitive, dismissive, and weary of each other it adds to the lack of safety each woman inherently feels,” Munro explains. “It also creates a subtle narrative for women normalising mistreatment — that it is OK to be treated poorly by both men and women. This makes violence against women more dangerous because they feel isolated in it, and they can’t trust others for support while going through traumatic events.”
The film also dives deep into the nuances of consent, as protagonist Mia (played to perfection by McKenna-Bruce) encounters multiple sexual assaults from a “lad” her friends meet and party with on the Malia strip, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). She’s depicted saying “no” repeatedly, then “yes” in one instance, with clear negative and uncomfortable body language throughout all of the interactions, causing the viewer to think deeply about what consent truly is, and how it cannot be binary and must be continuous. More than that, consent can be withdrawn at any stage – and Tara’s experience onscreen brings attention to this often overlooked fact. Here, we see that “giving in” and saying “yes” after saying “no” repeatedly beforehand does not necessarily count as consent.
“We are witnessing a transition where consent wasn’t spoken about in the mainstream perhaps a decade ago, so as a society we are catching up with learning about consent,” Munro says. “For many, nuances in consent may be deeply misunderstood because we are living within an infrastructure which wasn’t built to recognise them.” She adds that “consent education at schools is so important, to help children and teenagers understand how to determine their own yes or no, and also how to process someone else’s no.”
“For many, nuances in consent may be deeply misunderstood because we are living within an infrastructure which wasn’t built to recognise them.”
The pressures around damaging trivialisation of “virginity” is also explored, with Tara’s friend Skye threatening to out her sexual inexperience in a game of Never Have I Ever. She tells Tara, “if you don’t get laid this holiday, you never will,” perfectly demonstrating the toxic competitive element of sexual discovery and experimentation, and how peer pressure influences and exacerbates it. It brings attention to how problematic “virginity” is as a concept – after all, it exists as a socially constructed idea within a patriarchal structure to devalue women, including Tara and her friends.
It encapsulates the onus that is applied to one’s first sexual experience, and the way this can warp our expectations to a dangerous degree. Bishop advises that discussions around virginity need to shift from judgement and shame to one that focuses on “personal choice and autonomy”, adding that stories onscreen should depict “a range of experiences and challenge stereotypes”, leading us to a more realistic and inclusive portrayal of virginity. This should help to dismantle harmful narratives, but before these conversations can shift, the negative nature of the status quo has to be highlighted.
In the aftermath of her sexual assault, we see Tara operate in silence, unable to put into words what happened to her. She speaks of how “strong” Paddy is, how he “knew what he was doing”, but the vocabulary of assault is never used. It’s a heartbreaking example of the need for better education around this subject, so that young people, whether they are victims or not, can express themselves about and call out this behaviour.
“From a psychological perspective, sex education is vital to help people develop the emotional and cognitive skills necessary for understanding consent, building healthy relationships, and reducing the stigma around the issues,” Bishop says, adding that a lack of education increases the likelihood of assaults occurring due to people being unaware of what constitutes sexual violence and abusive behaviour.
“For some women, this behaviour can be so normalised that they may not even realise that it is abuse until they see it on the screen.”
Munro adds that this silence and lack of communication after assault is part of a larger picture that involves lack of barriers to resources for victims – government research in January 2023 saw a reduction in conviction rates across domestic abuse (2.1 percent) and rape (7.2 percent). As well as pushing, campaigning and insisting on better sex education, instigating these important conversations through film, TV and other mediums is crucial.
“When consent and violence is portrayed on screen, it can give a voice to women who may not feel they have one. It may help them to understand the impact of what they have been through in a more accessible way,” Munro says.
“For some women, this behaviour can be so normalised that they may not even realise that it is abuse until they see it on the screen.”
Another huge vehicle for change when it comes to sexual assault and violence against women is exploring how men can help in preventing and challenging it – and How To Have Sex depicts this important issue perfectly. Alongside Paddy, we have the dubiously named Badger (played by Shaun Thomas), who forms his own friendship with Tara and clearly holds suspicions about potential sinister behaviour from his mate. But, significantly, he says nothing to try and stop it. He comforts Tara, sure, with weak comments about how long he’s known his friend — as if friendship duration negates the damage and his complicity.
Tackling this tricky dynamic, and the importance of men holding other men responsible for their actions, is one of the film’s biggest achievements.
“Engaging men and boys is very much part of the solution to ending male violence against women and girls,” Rebecca Hitchen, head of policy and campaigns at the End Violence Against Women Coalition tells Mashable. “Women consistently say they want men to call out unacceptable views and behaviour amongst their peer groups, and to be helpful bystanders. This means naming problematic behaviour when you see it, confronting your own ideas about masculinity and sometimes intervening in harassment and assault in safe ways.”
Munro insists that portraying the impact of men not holding other men accountable on screen is important, showing the impact of enabling and perpetuating abuse. “The standard of what is socially acceptable then changes, as we see with outdated perceptions of consent, abuse and violence,” she says.
Tackling this tricky dynamic, and the importance of men holding other men responsible for their actions, is one of the film’s biggest achievements.
One of Walker’s core missions with How To Have Sex was to shine a light on the “gap in education around consent” – she has done this and more, isolating shadowy corners of sexuality and holding them to the light. Munro calls films like this “pivotal for bringing conversations around consent and sexual pressures forward”.
“When we look at old romantic comedies, some of the behaviour normalises nonconsensual, harmful behaviour,” she says. “So films and stories that discuss consent and sexual challenges can help people to identify things that we relate to but may not have words for.”
Hitchen adds: “We’re still a long way from shifting public attitudes to sex, and it’s crucial that this is tackled not only through education and public campaigns, but in popular culture like films, TV shows, books, the media and beyond, which drives a crucial part of what we find acceptable and how we collectively think and behave.”
How To Have Sex, and films like it past and present, can stand strong alongside other campaign methods to change how we speak about sexuality and assault, and how they are navigated in the future.
How To Have Sex is now showing in cinemas.
If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.
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Fantastic fights, stupendous stunts, calamitous chases, and climactic spectacle so bonkers it’ll blow your mind — it’s the 15 best action movies on Max (formerly known as HBO).
Want to shake off the doldrums of a long day with something bone-rattlingly exciting? You need an action movie stuffed with fantastic fights, stupendous stunts, calamitous chases, and climactic spectacle so bonkers it’ll blow your mind.
Whether your interests lean to science fiction, fantasy, cop drama, disaster flicks, superheroes, heist thrillers, mythic monsters, family-friendly adventure, or R-rated violence, we’ve got you covered with a top-notch collection of awesome movies.
Here are the 15 best action movies on Max.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s high-fantasy novel is brought to vivid life by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which began in 2001 with this widely acclaimed first chapter. In the mystical realm of Middle-earth, a humble Hobbit known as Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) takes on an epic quest to destroy a mighty token sought by a powerful sorcerer. Hunted by dark forces, Frodo finds strength in the fellowship that surrounds him. Noble elves, brooding warriors, churlish dwarves, wise wizards, and hungry Hobbits join in the battle to save their world in a celebrated film series that had audiences and critics in awe. Best yet, you can make a DIY movie marathon by adding The Two Towers and The Return of the King to your watch list. — Kristy Puchko, Film Editor
How to watch: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is streaming on Max.
It’s the 1999 action movie that changed the game. Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, a hacker who tumbles down a digital rabbit hole to discover the world he knows is a simulation. Joining forces with a band of rebels (that includes Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss), he seeks to topple the robot tyrants that have enslaved humanity. This quest leads to eye-popping fights, breath-snatching escapes, and mind-bending reveals. Writing and directing duo Lana and Lilly Wachowski blew critics and audiences away with their incredible vision. Their disturbing sci-fi dystopia is snugly wrapped in a captivating cyberpunk aesthetic that’s as cool as Reeves is in a long black trench coat. On top of all this, the Wachowskis presented a ground-breaking visual effect dubbed bullet time, which slowed action down but gave a bevy of angles to make every hit land harder. You can keep the thrills going by completing the trilogy: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are also available on Max. — K.P.
How to watch: The Matrix is streaming on Max.
Max has a whole hub dedicated to DC adaptations, meaning you can enjoy everything from Justice League and Constantine to a slew of Batman movies and animated offerings. Subscribers are spoiled for choice. But our pick for the movie most jam-packed with bonkers action is 2020’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). The Suicide Squad sidekick finally gets her solo outing, and director Cathy Yan dreamed up an incredible three-ring circus of action scenes, ranging from bone-snapping bar brawls to glitter-bombed prison breaks, a maniacal musical number, a car chase on roller skates, and a team-up showdown that is explosively awesome. Margot Robbie stars alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and Ella Jay Basco in an R-rated superhero movie that’s audaciously violent, unapologetically sexy, and as wildly fun as a Harley movie demands. (For bonus thrills, check out the TV-MA cartoon series Harley Quinn.) — K.P.
How to watch: Birds of Prey is streaming on Max.
Two years before Saw writer and actor Leigh Whannell made a name for himself as a director with his outstanding and celebrated freshening-up of The Invisible Man, he delivered a little cult actioner that not nearly enough people noticed at the time called Upgrade. A cybernetic spin on RoboCop, Upgrade stars Alien: Covenant‘s Logan Marshall-Green playing an auto mechanic named Grey who, after being paralyzed by a gang of thugs who also kill his wife right in front of him, accepts a hush-hush invite to test drive some future tech in the form of a computer chip implanted in his brain that will fix his motor functions.
Obsessed with catching and punishing his wife’s murderers, Grey makes an easy mark for a computer chip that inevitably begins revealing its sentience. Gifting him with the super-human ability to kick unholy amounts of ass in hand-to-hand combat, it turns out the tech has its own nefarious motives. Disgracefully ignored at the box office, Upgrade is sleek and hyper-violent and pretty much perfect. — Jason Adams, Entertainment Reporter
How to watch: Upgrade is now streaming on Max.
Schwarzenegger. Stallone. Van Damme. And, uhh, Melissa McCarthy? Believe it or not, the Bridesmaids actress and Go scene-stealer made the case for herself as a terrific action star, albeit of the comic variety, with Paul Feig’s stellar spy spoof from 2015. A goof on the James Bond movies, Spy is as twisty and thrilling as anything Daniel Craig blue-steeled his way through, just with way more cat sweatshirts — which is to say everybody wins.
As Susan Cooper, a CIA agent on permanent desk duty who gets pulled into the action precisely because she doesn’t look like anyone anybody would think of as a spy, McCarthy revels in her fish-out-of-water fights with an evil Russian arms dealer and his crew, especially his daughter Rayna (a wildly funny Rose Byrne). The jokes stick as hard as the stabbings, and there are enough double and triple and quadruple-crosses to keep everybody guessing in between the rat-a-tat punchlines. And extra bonus points for Feig and co. letting Jason Statham flex his funny bone alongside his biceps. — J.A.
How to watch: Spy is now streaming on Max.
Although it’s practically impossible now to not know that this is a vampire movie, when Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn landed in 1996, nobody saw the second-act swerve into full-on horror territory ahead. Instead, this seemed like just another Pulp Fiction riff about wise-cracking criminals getting in over their heads, co-starring Tarantino himself no less. Tarantino, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rodriguez, brilliantly used that misdirection to the movie’s advantage, so it was truly a WTF moment when Salma Hayek’s character morphed mid-strip into a bloodsucker in stilettos.
Watching the movie now, it’s just a bloody good time, with a barnstormer of an ensemble cast that includes Harvey Keitel (playing the straight man!), Juliette Lewis, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, Fred Williamson, genre icon Tom Savini, John Hawkes, and of course George Clooney at his Caesar cut-sporting, sleaziest best. Ludicrous fun. — J.A.
How to watch: From Dusk Till Dawn is now streaming on Max.
Shoved aside as yet another rip-off of Zack Snyder’s 2006 blockbuster 300, Tarsem Singh’s Immortals has nevertheless in the 12 years since its release become my preferred destination for visually spectacular and mythologically inclined hyper-stylized action of the homoerotic kind. Starring Henry Cavill as mortal warrior Theseus, Immortals is a remix of myths similar to what Baz Luhrmann would do to musicals with Moulin Rouge.
With stunning costumes from Oscar-winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka lighting up Singh’s typically outrageous visuals, we watch as the deities (including Luke Evans as Zeus) reluctantly team up with the mortals to battle the scheming King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke). It’s one spectacular spectacle sent down from Mount Olympus itself. — J.A.
How to watch: Immortals is now streaming on Max.
Who could have thought that a techno slasher starring a monosyllabic bodybuilder from the co-director of Piranha II: The Spawning would go on to become one of the most iconic sci-fi films ever? But that’s just what happened when director James Cameron hallucinated a terrifying robot skeleton during a literal fever dream, setting him off to plot out the relatively simple story of a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that travels back in time in order to kill a woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the leader of the robot resistance.
While the story has grown more convoluted with each progressive sequel and reboot, this first in the series has a clear, horror-movie simplicity that never loses its appeal. Also appealing? Sweaty Michael Biehn as Sarah’s future-sent protector, as well as the gritty, neon-lit Los Angeles it’s all set against. It really doesn’t matter how many times that dastardly robot tells us he’ll be back, the first time remains the sweetest. — J.A.
How to watch: The Terminator is now streaming on Max.
The best Batman movie of them all! Period. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 Miss Kitties. Max has all the other Bat-candidates streaming — Tim Burton’s original, the Nolan trilogy, the Schumacher one-off, plus Matt Reeves’s fresh 2022 take with Robert Pattinson — so feel free to test that assertion, but I stand by it. Where else are you gonna get Michelle Pfeiffer purring in patent leather? A soiled Danny DeVito biting a man’s nose off? A cascade of sexual perversions masquerading as a routine superhero flick, Batman Returns bewildered the unsuspecting public when it came out in 1992. But it was formative for an entire generation of queer kids to be, and we’re still cat-whipping ourselves to completion with umpteenth Christmas-time rewatch. Never forget: Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it, but a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it, baby. — J.A.
How to watch: Batman Returns is now streaming on Max.
This list could be nothing but Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and we’d all leave satisfied. As is, we’ll make do with two, including John McTiernan’s glorious 1987 hyper-violent jungle thriller Predator here. Introducing one of cinema’s coolest and creepiest villains, a lizardy space hunter who has a thing for tearing out spines and turning invisible, Predator takes a page out of Aliens‘ playbook by introducing us to a ragtag gang of hard-ass soldier-types, each one cooler and harder-assed than the one before him. And then it shows them each getting sliced through like Velveeta cheese by an enemy that’s way outta their league. All until the final girl — in this case, the big, burly, cigar-chomping Dutch (Schwarzenegger) — and the monster finally go toe-to-toe in an explosive finale wherein the word “explosive” can barely contain the amount of charges these filmmakers detonated in the jungle. This is deliciously muscular stuff. Literally! — J.A.
How to watch: Predator is now streaming on Max.
Groundhog Day on steroids is a good way to describe director Doug Liman’s ass-kicking Edge of Tomorrow, which stars Tom Cruise as a soldier trapped in a time loop while fighting some bad mother aliens from outer space. It turns out that every time the aliens kill him, he wakes back up at the beginning of the day before the big battle, which forces him to use what he learns each time through to get him further and further behind the enemy’s defenses. So yes, it’s explicit video-game plotting, but with the added benefit of watching one of the world’s most obnoxious movie stars die repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Emily Blunt struts off with the whole shebang (but then, she has a tendency to do that) as a much-heralded soldier who, it turns out, has been through the same experience. Her character, Sergeant Major Rita Vrataski, becomes vital to helping William Cage (Cruise) get his bearings — and also for laughing at him. Basically, this is a good movie for Tom Cruise haters, while also simultaneously highlighting all of the things he’s good at: running, leaping, smirking until he gets punched. We all win. — J.A.
How to watch: Edge of Tomorrow is now streaming on Max.
Although it’s tough to choose between Stephen Norrington’s 1998 original and Guillermo del Toro’s excellent 2002 sequel, I give the edge to the first film because it’s got two things that del Toro’s lacks – namely, Stephen Dorff chewing the scenery as the villain Deacon Frost (and what a ’90s villain name that is), and that iconic opening scene where it starts raining blood at the vampire rave. (And what a ’90s concept that is!) The good news is that you don’t have to choose; they’re both streaming on Max.
But both films are fortunate enough to have Wesley Snipes in the title role, kicking unholy amounts of vampire ass as the Marvel creation of a half-vampire who hunts his vampire kind, way before “Marvel creations” in the movies were really a thing. Of course, we’re supposed to be getting a new Blade in the MCU eventually, starring Mahershala Ali, and I wish them well. But as dated as they may be in some ways, these two Blades remain as sharp as ever in others. — J.A.
How to watch: Blade is now streaming on Max.
Unfairly maligned upon release, the Wachowskis’ live-action take on the 1960s manga and anime from Tatsuo Yoshida has gained cult status in the 15 years since it flopped in theaters. This kaleidoscopic creation begs to be beheld on the big screen, spinning and whirling and careening as it does with every candy color under the sun. If you’ve got a good set-up at home, you can’t go wrong watching the pop-saturated adventures of Speed (Emile Hirsch), Trixie (Christina Ricci), Pops and Mom (John Goodman and Susan Sarandon), and the whole gang as they rush us through a hallucinogenic wonderland of fast cars, thrilling races, and one adorable pet chimp. As usual with the Wachowskis, this movie was deeply ahead of its time and deserves total rediscovery. At least until I can see it again on a big screen as intended! — J.A.
How to watch: Speed Racer is now streaming on Max.
With the recent death of director William Friedkin, it’s the perfect time to revisit the movie that won him the Best Director Oscar in 1972. (Two years later, he got nominated again for The Exorcist… and then inexplicably was never nominated again.) Not just one of the greatest cops-and-robbers films ever made but one of the greatest films ever made, The French Connection stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as two NYPD detectives on the tail of some big-time heroin smugglers. Based on real-life detectives, the film has a gritty vérité quality that captures the essence of 1970s New York, especially in its second half, which is generally considered the greatest chase scene of all time. — J.A.
How to watch: The French Connection is now streaming on Max.
The ultimate comic book movie, bar none. Christopher Reeve will always be Superman to me, no matter how many square-jawed, hyper-muscular Brandon Rouths and Henry Cavills and David Corenswets they toss at the role. And the same goes for Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. So, credit where credit is due — a man named Lynn Stalmaster was the casting director on Richard Donner’s 1978 film, and the dude did his job and then some. Every actor in every role of this movie feels forever iconic.
And that feeling infects every corner. Long before comic book movies were a thing, Donner and his crew cobbled together the blueprint, and every single Marvel and DC movie since has been forced to borrow something from it. Although I tend to think of the first and second Superman films as one story, because a little kneeling-before-Zod is needed too. But Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor makes for a splendid (albeit goofy) villain, and every second of screen time that Reeve & Kidder share is movie magic. May we all find somebody to spin the world backwards for us when the time comes. — J.A.
How to watch: Superman is now streaming on Max.
UPDATE: Oct. 27, 2023, 1:57 p.m. EDT Updated to include the latest Max offerings.
A review of Remedy Entertainment’s ‘Alan Wake II’ for PS5, Xbox, and PC.
There is nothing out there quite like Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake II. A tense, slow, and acid-induced horror journey through the eyes of its main protagonists, Alan Wake and Saga Anderson, Alan Wake II sits at the very pinnacle of the survival horror genre.
If that sounds like high praise, well, it is, because it’s a damn good game. Building upon not just its predecessor, Alan Wake, but on everything within the Remedy catalog — taking the old and creating a wholly unique gaming experience, unlike anything its contemporaries in the genre offer.
Alan Wake II launched on Oct. 27, and from the 14 hours I played — about 70 percent of the game — I was very impressed. In a month stacked with heavy hitters such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Alan Wake II is a stand-out that kept me hooked.
Alan Wake II‘s inspirations reach across all genres and mediums, creating a game that both feels familiar and unique at the same time. From its Twin Peaks-inspired town to its grungy, dirty crime noir nightmare version of New York City, the games’ two worlds offer players a feast for the eyes.
The game, set 13 years after its predecessor, sees FBI Agent Saga Anderson travel to the fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington, to investigate several disappearances and murders that have taken place in town. Meanwhile, the titular Alan Wake tries to write himself out of the Dark Place — a surreal alternate reality outside space and time that can turn art into reality — which sits at the bottom of Bright Falls’ Cauldron Lake.
Players can at any time switch between the two protagonists, its two worlds offering a distinctive style and tone. The two areas are small, dense, and technical marvels to enjoy. As Saga, players are introduced to a methodical, investigatory slow-burn detective story, while Wake is trapped in a filthy art-deco neo-noir meets horror movie mashup. And it’s a clear choice by Remedy to make its story a slow, plodding build so as to invest players in its characters and mystery.
Essential to this detective story is the game’s central mechanic, the Plot Board, which Saga can access from her Mind Place — a sort of quasi-pause menu where players can piece together deductions made from their investigations of the main quest and the various side quests found around town and other areas. It’s a unique way of keeping track of character progression but also doesn’t require the player to use it in order to figure out how to progress the plot. This allows players to piece together the case themselves without the game holding their hands as they explore the surroundings on offer.
And that’s a good thing because this game demands the player’s attention as they slowly walk through the beautiful town of Bright Falls and the surrounding areas of Watery and Cauldron Lake. Set in the Pacific Northwest, trekking through these areas as Saga is a treat as the environments feel natural and authentic, with Remedy playing into its strength with compelling environmental storytelling. Wading through the woods outside of town as your investigation furthers, the sound design and level of detail make sure you never feel safe. There is always a sense of foreboding doom the minute you leave your safe havens, and it makes for a tense journey as you progress through the game.
The stark contrast to the greenery and stunning views of Bright Falls is Alan Wake’s nightmare version of New York City. An unnatural, grimy place, this version of New York feels like being trapped in an art museum after hours. Each building was placed with careful consideration, as if the city was put on display for the mind of its imprisoned inhabitant. The area is detailed and dense, with everything from the street clutter to the graffiti on the wall having some message behind it. The ambiance of the city is filled with broken street lamps and dingy neon lights that guide Alan toward his next objective. Compared to the strange eeriness of Bright Falls, the world of Nightmare New York is more hard-boiled, its city inspired by right-wing vigilante fantasies like Death Wish and its ilk.
The world design, by far, is the best part of Alan Wake II. It’s small and intimate, and it tells a hundred stories before a word is even said. It’s atmospheric in a way that not even a lot of immersive sims are, and it allows Remedy to do some truly bizarre and meta things within the chosen genres and motifs of its world.
I spent a lot of time gushing about the world of Alan Wake II, but how’s the gameplay? It’s fine. If you’ve played any of the Resident Evil remakes, you’ve played Alan Wake II. Not to say the gameplay is bad–it’s quite solid, actually—but it’s clear that combat was not what Remedy was focused on here.
The shooting is good, with each gun having a decent weight to it when fired. The core gameplay loop doesn’t get tiring, with your character shining their light on enemies to get rid of their darkness shield before blasting away at them. This is complemented by an excellent sound design that makes for an auditory treat whenever you shoot enemies’ weak spots. However, the options of weapons are quite limited for both characters, and the enemy variety is sparse. There are 3-4 different variants of “Taken,” there’s the big variant, the melee variants, and the ranged variants. While the game says that there are different ways to approach each of these, in my experience in the game, this is very inconsistent, and most of the enemies tend to be bullet sponges.
The bosses are particular high points. While the bosses are still of the point-and-shoot variety, they do offer compelling visual and thematic areas not found in the game as players enter “Overlaps” between the real world and the Dark Place. With the way combat is designed, Remedy understood that too much can be a bad thing, and you’ll rarely ever engage in combat and seldom, if ever, face more than one or two enemies at a time.
Alan’s side of the game is a little tenser and less combat-focused. Instead of running into bog-standard enemies, Nightmare New York is littered with shadowed silhouettes that may or may not try to engage you. The game forces you to get up close and personal with them as they whisper and shout your name. Some shadows may grab you while others will full-on attack you, with Alan never knowing which is which until it’s too late. This makes for tense encounters as you progress through the plot, and it’s clear that Remedy is more focused on building a sense of dread as the player rummages through the world than just becoming another action-horror shooter. It’s a massive improvement compared to its predecessor, Alan Wake, with its floaty combat mechanics and stilted graphics making it the quintessential 2010s bargain bin action-horror title.
Often with these kinds of games, the story is secondary to the combat, but Alan Wake II takes a different approach, building upon its connected universe without getting too in the player’s face. In each of the games, Remedy has sought to combine gameplay with narrative. Alan Wake’s story within the story told you how everything would play out, Max Payne was heavy on reactive internal monologues, and Control was a lore-rich narrative that rewarded players for exploration. All these combined create what is essentially a magnum opus for Remedy, with Alan Wake II being the culmination of a decade’s worth of experience and game design. That’s without talking about its performance, which runs almost perfectly, bar the rare visual glitch.
With the review for this game, which was possible thanks to a review code from Remedy and Epic Games, I didn’t want to talk about the story too much beyond the bare-bones plot. That’s because it has to be experienced first, and anything I can say about it will undersell just how impressive it is. Video games have never been a bastion of good writing, except in rare cases, and that just comes with the territory. But Alan Wake II is a story that needs to be replayed a couple of times — it’s a unique blend of meta-commentary, live-action, and incorporation of music that creates a story that can’t be told in other any format, medium, or genre — and it needs more than one playthrough to truly, fully understand and appreciate it. Alan Wake II touches upon and references Remedy’s other games, but does so in a way that feels familiar to fans of these games while also allowing new players to feel welcomed into the world.
In an industry littered with unfinished, high-budget triple-A video games, it is refreshing to see a near-perfect and polished game released on day one. Remedy’s Alan Wake II is not only the studio’s best game to date, but it’s one of the best games of its genre and perhaps of the year.
