By David Dent
When I was a lad, filmed adaptations of computer games saw live action actors bringing CGI created content to life. Flash forward to 2025, and here we have Dead Reset, which is a version of a full-motion video (FMV) game developed by Dark Rift Horror and Wales Interactive and directed by Stewart Sparke; basically a movie based game where the player has to make ‘choose your own adventure’ style choices as the story progresses.
The central character here is Cole Mason (David Tennant sort of lookalike Daniel Thrace), a surgeon who has been brought into a research lab by bossy Magson (Adrina Carroll) to operate on a patient who has a parasitic growth in her lower abdomen which needs to be removed. His anxious crew mates are trigger happy Slade (Dennis Rasaq), Fearne (Lyndsey Craine) and Cooper (Michaela Longden). Confusingly in a crimson saturated prologue we’ve already seen the disastrous results of the parasite’s extraction; death to everyone, including Cole. But Mason gets another chance to carry out the operation which also ends fatally; and another, and another, for he’s locked in a time loop where his death, either via creature or other team member, triggers a reset.
This, along with a multiverse setup, is becoming a popular narrative choice for ‘fantastic’ filmmakers; it’s cheap, can be done using one set, and relies on the audience gradually understanding what’s happening to the person in the loop, and how they can get out of it.
The problem here is that Dead Reset is basically a re-edit of Dead Reset the video game, where Sparke has removed the player options (obviously) and set out a version of the game as decided by him; so it’s like a greatest hits of the game.
Now in a game format the FMV elements are undoubtedly impressive; there’s some practical gore, a big take no prisoners creature, and a set which may be cramped but allows the action to open out, particularly towards the end. But on screen this has some major limitations, chiefly that a lot of the film is a small cast chatting to – or shouting at – each other, with not much else going on.
Sparke is a talented director; his most recent two films, 2018’s Book of Monsters and its 2023 follow up How to Kill Monsters were both hugely enjoyable, and many of the cast members in those movies turn up here. But despite the impressive practical effects and on a budget set design, Dead Reset rather drags, which is a shame. And if you’ve already played the video game, to be honest you don’t really need to see this.
Bloody Flicks 