The Devil in Me review: Jessie Buckley shines in HH Holmes horror

Inspired by real-life serial killer Henry Howard Holmes, as well as the recent popularisation of true-crime media, this game centres on a film crew who are invited to visit a secluded hotel — it is said to be a faithful recreation of the infamous 'Murder Castle' that featured in many of the urban legends about Holmes.

As ever, Supermassive Games has attracted some impressive on-screen talent to The Devil in Me cast, with Wild Rose star Jessie Buckley playing an investigative journalist/TV presenter, while Game of Thrones alum Paul Kaye portrays the producer of a floundering true-crime TV series.

Together with their camera, sound and lighting engineers, these characters travel to a remote island to stay at this creepy hotel, in the hope that such an eye-catching exclusive will improve their show's chances of success. Of course, it doesn't take long for things to go wrong.

To start with, the game seems very promising, with an opening prologue about the original HH Holmes grabbing the attention nicely. In the game's version of the first Murder Castle, Holmes feels like a genuine threat. Add this to some unsettling level design and an interesting period setting, and you've got a game that feels focused and frightening and worth recommending.

When the game jumps to the present day, there's a stretch where it maintains this quality quite well, with the modern hotel quickly proving to be a scream-inducing deathtrap in its own right. The corridors can move, there are doors that lead nowhere, and there's an eerie animatronic in the bar.

The film crew characters are easy to get to know, as well, with Buckley and Kaye deserving special praise for their terrified-yet-likeable performances. Nikki Patel puts in a great turn as Erin, the sound engineer, as well, bringing a believable nervous energy to proceedings.

Compared to the previous games in the Dark Pictures series, The Devil in Me gameplay has a few upgrades, with there now being a light inventory system at play. Each character has their own items (eg Erin has an inhaler for her asthma as well as a microphone and headphones that let her hear through walls).

Some of these items work better than others – trying to use a flash-photography bulb to see anything useful is nigh-on impossible, for example, but the headphones do come in handy when you're trying to find the right direction to move in.

Underneath these upgrades, the underlying systems are largely unchanged. You'll have to make conversational choices and key decisions to guide the crew through various torments, and you'll also have to succeed in button-mashing quick-time events if you want to keep everyone alive.

As ever, unless you're checking an online guide every few minutes, pausing the game anytime a choice comes up, you might find that you lose a couple of characters along the way. There was one death that felt particularly harsh to us, but that is part of the franchise formula here.

Sadly, the game does lose some of its mojo as you enter its third act. The story loses its focus somewhat, morphing from a hotel-set escape-room scenario to a blend between a Saw movie and a slasher flick with an unkillable Michael Myers-type villain.

Again, this was by design (as the developers told us in the interview embedded above), but the lurching tone did get a bit distracting at times. Is this meant to be a HH Holmes copycat or a more general murder fan? The main baddie's motivations get more muddied the more you play.

This isn't helped by the fact that your hotel host's true identity is never properly revealed or overtly explored. If you poke around in every chapter's nooks and crannies, you'll find documents and clips pertaining to a number of troubled individuals and true-crime experts (and various other people who've been lured to the island before your lot), but it feels like the game is lacking a villainous monologue or ending cut-scene that would really hammer home why any of this is happening.

The game loses its focus and the pacing gets a bit sluggish towards the end, as your remaining heroes wander about disused spa facilities and swimming pool changing rooms, picking up the occasional tidbit and bumping into the baddie every half hour or so.

He shows up plenty of times, in so many different places that it sometimes feels like there could be a whole squad of Holmes fanatics doing the rounds, but still we finished the game without feeling like we knew much about him (and we found plenty of the collectables).

That being said, The Devil in Me does pack plenty of scares, which you could argue is more important than narrative cohesion. There were loads of jump-scares and tense moments that got our heart pounding, and if that's what you're looking for, you'll certainly find peril in this game. From hiding in lockers to running for your life, there's plenty of variation in the scares as well.

There are some moments of great level design here, as well, although there are also quite a lot of repeated ideas and old-school gimmicks (eg, pushing a crate over to a wall so you can climb over). The graphics are strong throughout, though, from the photorealistic character models to the creepy animatronics and locations, all of which is helped along by the chilling Devil in Me soundtrack.

The game is also helped along by its strong performances and interesting-enough characters, so much so that you'll probably want to go back and save any of the main crew that you lost along the way (remember there's always the chapter-select option on the main menu).

For someone that has never played a game or seen a horror movie (as we found out in the interview linked earlier), Buckley does a great job of conveying sheer terror here, as well as making her somewhat-arrogant character feel likeable and believable, helping to make the story – however flimsy it may be – feel real enough to give you the creeps.

The Devil in Me is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. We reviewed on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

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