9 Horror Video Games That Deserve A Film Adaptation (And Who Should Direct Them)

Ok, ok, this one's obvious, sure, but John Carpenter has been campaigning for a Dead Space live-action movie for over a decade now, and while one is reportedly currently in development, the They Live and Halloween director has confirmed that he is sadly not at the helm. And while we're sure whoever is will do a masterful job at bringing EA's space-set sci-fi horror game series to life for the big screen, we can't help but hope and pray that a Carpenter-directed Dead Space will one day crash down onto Earth. After all, we don't call him the horror master for nothing – Carpenter's ability to blend dread-inducing atmosphere with terrifying bodily mutations makes him the perfect fit for Dead Space‘s cosmic horror nightmare. Imagine The Thing-style Necromorphs and The Fog style mystery set in the unknowable depths of the galactic frontier. It just makes sense.

While many, many Resident Evil movies already exist, none of the live-action features are entirely accurate to the canon of Capcom's iconic survival horror franchise, and the same goes for Zach Cregger's upcoming take. For those of us who just really want a true-to-source Resident Evil 4, Ashley Graham and all, Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto has proven himself time and time again to be a master of both skin-crawling horror (see: May the Devil Take You, V/H/S/2′s “Safe Haven”) and immaculately choreographed action thrills (see: The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays), two genres which Resident Evil 4 famously blended to take the series in a new direction. Gallons of blood, cheesy one-liners and Leon Kennedy round-house kicking mutant parasites into next week? Tjahjanto's got you covered.

Lee Cronin‘s Evil Dead Rise bought bloody Deadite chaos to an urban center with its Los Angeles apartment setting, proving that he's a director who could deftly handle a zombie outbreak horror movie set slap bang in the middle of a city. In co-op horror Left 4 Dead, a group of four survivors are tasked with reaching a safe zone across the city for evacuation, all while fighting off hordes of ravenous infected. What makes Cronin a great fit for a film adaptation is that, much like the Evil Dead films, Left 4 Dead mixes fast-paced gore with quippy one-liners and likeable characters. Plus, Evil Dead Rise‘s Marauder proved that Cronin certainly has the chops for crafting grotesque, mutated monsters (like Left 4 Dead‘s Tank or Boomer enemies) that are out for blood.

Blumhouse Games and Cozy Game Pals' Fear the Spotlight may be a newer game on this list, but we'd already love to see a big screen adaptation with Fear Street director Leigh Janiak at the helm. Focussing on two teen girls who find themselves trapped in a nightmarish version of their school, much like Janiak's Fear Street trilogy of Part One: 1994, Part Two: 1978 and Part Three: 1666, Fear the Spotlight blends gateway scares with supernatural mystery to create a cozy, creepy feel that both younger and older horror fans can enjoy.

Japanese survival horror game Kuon is hard to come by, but well worth your time if you can get your hands on a copy. Pulling liberally from traditional history, folklore and ghost stories of the nation means only a Japanese director could do a film adaptation of Kuon justice, and who better than Takashi Shimizu of Ju-On fame. Kuon and Ju-On have plenty in common in terms of scares – kaidan style ghosts with long black hair and pallid skin, an atmosphere of slow, subtle creepiness over jumps and gore, and vengeful female spirits out for blood. Now that the similarly-toned Silent Hill f is pulling in big numbers, maybe a Kuon adaptation (or maybe even a game remaster so people can actually play it) is a more likely scenario than not.

Few living directors are more suited to grand, Gothic fantastical storytelling than Guillermo del Toro – he's just proved this again with Frankenstein – making the Academy Award-winning director the most obvious choice to direct our dream adaptation of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the second game in Crystal Dynamics' vampiric action-horror saga. Soul Reaver‘s setting, the moody, mysterious realm of Nosgoth, is just begging to be brought to life on the big screen by del Toro's eye for blending the beautiful and grotesque. Famously, del Toro's movie monsters are imbued with humanity rather than mindless killing machines, making Legacy of Kain‘s protagonist Raziel, a fallen vampire on a quest for vengeance,  a perfect fit for one of his morally complex tales.

With its ghostly apparitions, gloomy Gothic mansion and themes of humanist vulnerability, there's one director who could truly give the 1995 SNES game Clock Tower the adaptation it deserves, and that's Mike Flanagan. Having proven he's a master of the eerie atmosphere found throughout Clock Tower with The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep, it's Flanagan's ability to craft communities of fully-fleshed, often oddball characters that make him the perfect fit to bring the mysteries of Clock Tower to life. Now, if you're thinking “wait, haven't I seen a Clock Tower movie before?”, you might be thinking of Dario Argento's Phenomena, which of course was released over a decade prior to the point-and-click survival horror game, but so inspired creator Hifumi Kono he based large parts of the game – aesthetically and narratively – on Argento's supernatural horror.

Something of a divisive title in the Silent Hill series, The Room has as many diehard loyal fans as it does detractors. There's no question that a film adaptation helmed by Japanese horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) would unite the (notoriously protective) fanbase once and for all. Kurosawa, famously a master of evil spaces and able to turn the most nondescript warehouse or corridor into a shadowy realm of untold nightmares, would absolutely nail the anxiety-inducing existential dread that The Room delivers, as players take on the role of everyman Henry Townshend, who finds himself locked inside his own apartment and terrorized by ghosts. As for the foggy mysteries lurking outside of the apartment? No question that Kurosawa could nail that too, having dealt with some truly disturbing subject matter across his filmography.

Filmmaker Panos Cosmatos may only have two features under his belt so far, but you only have to watch Beyond the Black Rainbow or Mandy once to know he'd be the perfect fit for Mouthwashing, a game that delivers psychological, often psychedelic horrors in spades, following the survivors of a spaceship crash who are left stranded in the deep vasts of the unknown with only their dwindling sanity to hold on to. Like <em”>Mouthwashing, Cosmatos' films often play with surrealist, nightmarish imagery that leave you feeling somewhat untethered from reality as a viewer/player. Cosmatos also has a knack for casting (see: Nic Cage's career-best freakout in Mandy), which is essential for bringing Mouthwashing‘s motley crew of survivors to life.