I may be the only one in the world who thinks this, but I’m just going to say it: Resident Evil: Code Veronica is one of my favourite games. (I expect RE6 will take its place, but nostalgia and Claire Redfield are a hard team to overcome.) I have a good reason, too: it’s scary. Well, yeah, you’re thinking, it’s Resident Evil, it’s made its name by making adults cry and run to turn on the lights. And because zombies are, by their very nature, horrifying. All of this is true — if not more so in other RE games, like Nemesis for example.
But there’s just something about Code Veronica that is so chilling in a much more detailed and subtle way. I think it’s because, unlike Nemesis, Code Veronica plays on a psychological fear, rather than just an intense this-monster-is-going-to-eat-my-face fear. The game emulates a perfect classic cult horror story, following all the right conventions of the genre. It’s a beautiful blend of The Haunting (1963) and Night of the Living Dead (1968). This approach is exemplified in the twins, Alfred and Alexia Ashford
Contemporary theory surrounding horror films discusses the pleasure of horror in the way that it “dramatizes the psychological processes of human development and gendered sexual relationships” or how a loss of control over technology disrupts society (Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst). They play out existent fears within a society, if not to achieve a form of catharsis, then at least to remind us that society contains within it all sorts of potential for crazy shit that we are, at best, unprepared to deal with. In Code Veronica, we get this perfectly: the T-virus and the Ashford twins represent the perversion of human development, relationships and the potential danger inherent in technological advances all rolled into one weird Freudian ball.
Not only does Code Veronica engage thematically with issues usually found in cult classic horror movies, it also follows the classic conventions (almost to a T). For starters, there’s the creepy haunted house — a staple in cult horror films. Think The Terror (1963), Nosferatu (1922), House on Haunted Hill (1959) . And it’s not just that these stories take place at these locations: these haunted houses are instrumental to the terror, and to a certain extent, are villainous themselves. At the very least, they provide a home-field advantage for the bad guys. The Ashford mansion, as the home of our psychotic villains, is a perfect setting for Code Veronica, as it not only provides the familiar anticipation of the evils of the T-virus, but also a staging ground for new revelations and hidden secrets.
Compare the two cut scenes on the main stairs: when Claire first encounters Alfred, who has her in his scope from the top of the stairs, and secondly Alexia’s fiery descent towards Wesker. Alexia standing at the top of the stairs, laughing maniacally, is incredibly more frightening than if she was laughing crazily in the middle of nowhere. The setting acts as her accomplice: it implies a safety for Alexia and Alfred that necessitates extreme danger for our heroes. It is the Freudian uncanny: it is the familiar made unfamiliar. It is familiar, because it is a setting and a trope that we’ve all witnessed a million times, yet foreign because it houses the unseen terrors of the Ashford family that we are psychologically unprepared to deal with.
Of course, the Ashford Twins are probably the best part of Code Veronica and what makes it feel so much like a great cult tale. Alfred Ashford is a special kind of villain, the likes of Norman Bates. The terror is in realizing that he is fundamentally unbalanced. Alfred is an insane, entirely off-his-rocker homicidal brother. What’s terrifying here is that without a clear, sane rationale, the villain becomes capable of anything. Anything.
Alfred is more than just the overly protective, clearly criminally insane brother, though. Since him and Alexia were both genetic experiements created by their father, they represent not only the dangers inherent in certain technological advances, but how this directly influences human development. The fear isn’t just that he’s completely insane (although let’s not underestimate the importance of that); the fear the game plays on is that Alfred will not be an isolated case in the future. With Norman Bates, we get it, his mamma screwed up him pretty good. But Alfred and Alexia very well represent the threats created through an unrestricted and unintelligent use of technology — even moreso than zombies (which also expose the same threat), because Alfred is a very real possibility. How can zombies be dead, but still using enough of their brain to move and eat and make those weird, disgusting noises? No idea. But Alfred, the isolated and aggressively insane boy, we can imagine.
Code Veronica ups the ante, of course, by adding Alexia, who is also clearly bonkers, but for added measure, is also a mutated monster. And as The Wasp Woman (1959) teaches us, there’s nothing scarier than an angry, powerful, and unbalanced woman who turns into a monster. If Alfred is the fear of what technology can do to human development, then Alexia is an example of people who want to try these genetic modifications. Alfred is an unfortunate circumstance; Alexia wanted to become this.
Code Veronica represents a two-fold terror: the consequences and the impetus of unrestricted technological advances and their direct impact on human development. And unlike most current horror stories, we are not let down when the awful truth is revealed (cough Cloverfield cough). And that’s what makes Code Veronica so great. We know the story of Alfred, the son who is forced into his position through familial pressures, and we know Alexia, the powerful, commanding daughter who will stop at nothing to gain what she wants. They’re conventional characters, but they serve their purpose of playing on our fears of the future and what technology can bring us. And the fact that the Ashford twins operate in contrast and in union with zombies, heightens this fear in an incredibly poigant manner.
But most importantly, the terror is in the details. Like when Claire stumbles across a home video of creepy Alfred ripping the wings off a dragonfly (Who is filming that? No home-videos of Christmas morning at the Ashford residence, apparently.), which is disturbing and kind of subtle (well, subtle for a zombie video game). Add the weird incest element between Alfred and Alexia, and you realize that these two are capable of doing anything to protect each other. The terror is taken to a whole new level that isn’t just based off of survival and running for your life. These aren’t just mindless zombies. These are calculating wackos, who really want you dead.
So, we have the Norman Bates meets Lady MacBeth characters. We have the haunted house. We have the insane human villains and the mind-bending monsters. And then we add in the zombies. It pleases both the cult horror movie fan, and the zombie apocalypse fan in me. And that’s typically hard to do with a zombie narrative, because zombies are anything but subtle.
A story is, in some ways, only as good as its villains. For me, Code Veronica ups the ante perfectly by providing genuinely terrifying villains that promise more than a mindless future of shambling zombies. The Ashford twins, in their cruelty and ambiguous sexuality, speak to the past by recalling the tropes of cult horror movies like the Hammer films, while also providing a glimpse into an unnerving, inhuman future of genetic modification. The Ashfords, and their home, suggest a narrative that players will never quite piece together except through associations with other stories, other pieces of horror.
As well, while you may fight them in particular, you also fight the specter of what they represent – and everyone knows the scariest monsters are the ones you can’t see.
Further Reading: The Beauty of Roger Corman’s “The Wasp Woman” (1959); or, Make-Up Tips From Patrick Bateman (ThatMonster)
Horror Done Right: Identifying the Player in System Shock 2 (Medium Difficulty)
