I’ve been spending a lot of time fixating on little things in my Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly remake demo. When I’m done unlocking cursed doors as protagonist Mio, feeling sick as I meet an abandoned doll’s shark-eye stare, or tripping around wraiths in my ballet flats, I quietly observe the dusty prettiness of the Japanese countryside developer Koei Tecmo built for its remake, due March 12. It’s impossible to not notice the new, starlight glimmer of the red butterfly that guides me to my next task, the fragile lace on my camisole, and other evidence of directors Makoto Shibata and Hidehiko Nakajima’s commitment to making a horror game from 2003 feel vulnerable and look beautiful.
Fraying loveliness feels nearly as critical to Fatal Frame 2 existence as the magic Camera Obscura in Mio’s hands, which allows me to wound ghosts I encounter each time I snap a moody film photo. My twin sister Mayu has gone missing in the possessed Minakami Village, and in the first four chapters of the demo, it’s my job to retrieve her and hold her hand without letting the stifling atmosphere of the undead really choke me out. Though, as Shibata and Nakajima say in a joint interview with GamesRadar+, this atmosphere is “the essence of Japanese horror.”
A real Japanese horror game is good at “restraining jump scares and graphic violence,” say the Fatal Frame 2 directors, “instead stimulating the player’s imagination.” Think of the genre’s history, from 1995’s Clock Tower and how it helped introduce the sinister stalker-type enemy, to the recent Silent Hill f and its foreboding mountains – Japanese is a candle melting rather than a house fire.
In that way, it should also be as irresistible as flame. So Shibata and Nakajima echo what Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka recently told me about the Konami franchise being painfully gorgeous. About their own game, the Fatal Frame 2 remake directors say, “I feel that beauty often contains fear or even poison within it. Beautiful things can be frightening, and frightening things can be beautiful.”
“These two concepts are closely connected, almost like twins,” the directors continue, “and ultimately I believe they are two sides of the same thing.”
They give me another example with a ghost story they enjoy, saying, “One story I like comes from the horror storyteller Junji Inagawa. During the filming of a TV program, he visited Aokigahara, a forest known as a suicide site near Mt. Fuji.
“Late at night, he sensed chanting-like voices approaching from deep within the forest.
“Instinctively, he took a photo and fired the flash, causing the voices to disappear – only for them to suddenly grow louder and reappear much closer. He fled by car, and later found many handprints covering it. This incident was actually broadcast, and I happened to see it.”
I’m eager to know what happens next, waiting for the pretty part of Shibata and Nakajima’s tale to appear the way I’ve been looking for more butterflies in Fatal Frame 2.
“Much like in this game, when someone holding a camera senses a spirit approaching, they instinctively try to take a picture,” the directors say. But real life, I’m frustrated to admit, isn’t as poetic as Japanese horror. “The difference, of course, is that an ordinary camera cannot drive spirits away.”