I realize during previews at my Iron Lung movie screening, between squeaking in my pleather seat and wafts of people's salty theater treats, that movies have just discovered indie video games. Since the first Five Nights at Freddy's adaptation's financial success in 2023, there's been an observable increase in movies based on indie games, with Iron Lung, The Mortuary Assistant, and the new Exit 8 all materializing at once like fresh popcorn. And I hope they continue to do so – they offer movies an opportunity to kill their bad luck with game adaptations through a new kind of folk horror.
Movies haven't been able to invent their own folk horror since The Blair Witch Project's notorious marketing campaign in 1999, which swore the actors in its found footage movie were real people missing in the Maryland woods. Now, audiences are either too familiar with the gimmick or mistrustful of ad campaigns. They'd rather donate their imaginations to an indie horror story.
