Before writing this guide, I need to let you know my horror bonafides. I'm a horror nut. I started my high school horror movie club. I've been to the Fangoria Weekend of Horror three or four times. I write a horror blog and host a horror podcast. I have actually traveled to Transylvania and ascended Vlad Dracula's actual castle. I've been exposed to the most dark, twisted, and depraved extremes of the horror genre and I barely blink anymore. Nothing really phases me.
I couldn't finish Fatal Frame.
Fatal Frame gets horror right. You don't play a commando or a space marine or any common hypermasculine video game archetype. You play a scared teenage girl trapped in a terrible place and surrounded by terrifying ghosts. Your one protection is the Camera Obscura, an old camera that can capture spirits. As you go through the game, you discover the awful secrets of the spirits pursuing you. The atmosphere in the game is unbearably tense and chilling, with many iconic characters and ghosts. My personal favorite is the woman with the broken neck, victim of a botched suicide attempt, who issues a creaking, sore-throated groan as she chases after you, her head lolling. That one kept me up nights.
"You can't run away... you can never run away!"
There are certain repeating motifs that show up in the Fatal Frame games. Each game takes place in Japan and all center around dark Shinto rituals of sacrifice and pain: the heroines are usually trying to locate or defend a loved one, and the spirits pursing them are yurei, the vengeful ghosts of Japanese folklore that have been featured in films like The Ring and The Grudge.
The Fatal Frame series doesn't have the same appeal in America as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but it has a strong cult following for people who like hard, uncompromising horror without all the guns and macho melodrama that have come to define the other franchises. Fatal Frame 1, 2, and 3 have all been released in the United States, but the fourth edition has not made it to these shores yet. Hopefully, Temco will import their latest adventure so fans like me won't have to play it on modded systems with translation kits.
