‘Immortality’ Review: A Cloying And Captivating Cinematic Horror
From developer Half Mermaid and the creator of Her Story and Telling Lies, the truth is suspended at the edges of Immortality. If you look to the side of a dim star in the sky so it resides in the corner of your eye, you’ll see it much more brightly than if you looked directly at it. This same lesson applies here in this game, as you don your smartest detective trilby and delve into the ill-fated filmography of Marissa Marcel, that the real reasons behind her disappearance are revealed when you challenge yourself to look either side of the stars.
Ooooo, mysterious. Here’s the trailer:
Marissa Marcel (played by Manon Gage) should have been one of the biggest stars of the 20th century - beautiful, charismatic and electric. Discovered while modelling in London, she lands a role as the temptress Matilda in director Arthur Fischer’s Ambrosio in 1968, an erotic religious film set in an 18th century monastery in Italy. Unfortunately, the film was never released.
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Two years later, she then collaborated with director John Durick, who was the director of photography on Ambrosio, on the crime thriller Minsky. The film shows serious potential, as a clash between the conservatism of law and the manipulation of art, yet Minsky is abandoned part way through production.
In 1999, Marissa resurfaces in Durick’s Two of Everything, a story about a pop singer and her body double, following a personal and professional hiatus. The film cannot be finished and Marissa falls off the edge of the earth for the second time.
The surviving footage of Ambrosio, Minsky, and Two of Everything has been collated in this editing suite for restoration. The question of why these films never hit the silver screen and why Marissa was never seen again will be answered through parsing these clips for the hidden story simmering under the surface of Hollywood.
Presented with short reels from each of the three films, including behind the scenes interviews, table reads, and rehearsals, the player scrubs through the years of footage in order to stumble upon clues. And "stumble upon" is the most accurate vernacular to start with, as clicking on the objects, actors, and crew that catch your eye is the only way you'll accrue your collection of stills. You might choose an analytical approach, only following instances where a water bottle appears, or go on a more sympathetic path to hunt down an object that has always had heavy symbolism in film. Something like a crucifix or a key or a kiss.
Either strategy is appropriate. The match cut collection of stills soon becomes a constellation, each discovery shining a little more light on what is going on in these three films and what happened to Marissa. Immortality allows you to sort the clips from their films and favourite those segments that require a closer look.
My favourite film was Minsky and seeing the screen degrade in quality to that grainy, hazy, greeny 70s film meant that I was on course for something good. I initially made notes, determined to pull on the threads between actors, themes, crew, events on set to find the truth, but abandoned them once Immortality showed off its sudden twist.
It's super important that I don't give away what that twist is. Because it is so unsettling and so surprising. However, I don't trust myself this early in the morning. What I'll do instead is try to really impress on you the way that the game subtly switches you from observer to direct communicator with what's going on in the scene. It's more than meeting Marissa's eyes as she smirks at the camera. It's more than catching exasperated looks between the crew.
Certain sounds prompt you to peer much more closely at the footage and there's even something sort of scary about this connection between the player and the person in the clip. Spinning the reel slowly, slower, slowest lets you take in every quirk, every jolt, every sway. What does it mean? Should it mean anything?
An incredible attention to detail means that these films become more than a fictitious filmography as Ambrosio, Minsky and Two of Everything look like they are real stories with real actors that have slipped through the history of cinema to ultimately decay and disappear. Humans love a haunting, don’t we. We love when stifled sensations start to rise out of the page, suddenly buoyed with oxygen, causing our eyes to widen and the hairs on our arms to stand up. As an interactive medium, this is heightened even more. It’s not a case of flipping to the next chapter, you’ve got to charm the reel into revealing its secrets. It’s very creepy.
Of course, as you uncover more and more, you reach a tipping point of clicking on random stuff in the hopes that it shows you something new. The trial and error may be monotonous for those with thin patience, the scrubbing through film for a tinge of the strangeness of Marissa's on-screen presence when there is so much to cover might become exhausting. Immortality does well to inform players of sensitive subjects in the films and I would have appreciated the ability to switch on subtitles for every bit of footage to make the most out of the story.
As a game, Immortality is tailor-made for those who like to call movies "films" because it makes them feel superior. Those who exit the theatre and step into the bright light of the halls, instantly initiating a one-sided discussion of how they expected more from that actor given his pedigree, failing to notice crusty popcorn stuck to the back of their trousers. It's for the know-it-alls that realise, diving into these three lost films from Marissa Marcel, they might not know that much about cinema after all.
Pros: unsettling, satisfying and purposefully constructed discovery mechanics, excellent performances
Cons: hits that point of clicking things for the sake of clicking things
For fans of: Her Story, Black Mirror, people who have a Letterboxd account
9/10 : Exceptional
Immortality releases August 30, 2022, for PC (version tested), Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and iOS and Android via Netflix Games. Find a guide to GAMINGbible's review scores here.