
The Devil in Me’s early cast interactions provide a broad insight into the group’s dynamic – lighting tech Jamie and sound engineer Erin are nurturing a budding romance, journalist Kate and cameraman Mark are getting over a break up, while the only thing that director Charlie pines for is his lost packet of cigarettes – but the writing just isn’t strong enough to put any real meat on their bones before it can be burnt or bludgeoned by one of the hotel’s devious torture devices.ĭeveloper Supermassive Games did a much better job at adding a believably human spark to its cast via the friendly quips in The Quarry earlier this year, but here any such attempts at playful banter all too frequently fall flat, and it doesn’t help when the lines are often delivered with dead-eyed stares and stilted movements that make it seem like each character is literally scared stiff. The main problem with its cast is that they are so uniformly uninteresting that I never felt particularly invested in their attempts to survive this harrowing stay in the heart-stab hotel. The promise of bed and breakfast soon gives way to the threat of bedlam and bloodlust. Uncovering the clues about the hotel’s disturbing origins and the true identity of its owner remained a gripping endeavour, and I was definitely more preoccupied with piecing its central mystery together than I was with ensuring its five playable leads each remained in one piece by the end.

Unlike the previous installments in The Dark Pictures Anthology which were each inspired by supernatural evils, The Devil in Me’s roots in real historical events brings a far more plausible edge to its horror, which I personally find far more compelling than fantastical tales of ghosts and vampires.
