10 Celebrated Horror Directors That Made Video Games

The relationship between Hollywood and video games has always been a bumpy one. Licensed movie tie-ins have carried a bad reputation for decades, hyped cross-platform media franchises rarely pay off (see: The Matrix), and on the flip side, there’s an equally long history of terrible game-to-film adaptations to boot, although in recent years, the tides are appearing to turn.

The fascination between the two industries is palpable, with several filmmakers openly admitting to being avid gamers themselves. We’ve seen major blockbuster directors hop over the fence and take on genuine creative roles in video games amid their busy schedules. John Woo did it with Stranglehold, Peter Jackson with the (surprisingly good) King Kong tie-in, and Steven Spielberg with… Boom Blox?

The horror world, however, seems to attract filmmakers on a whole other level. Perhaps it’s because horror games offer a more immersive, modern way to terrify audiences, but there’s a long history of celebrated horror talents crossing into gaming - lending their creative touch with varying results. Some produced championed titles, others divisive experiments, and some became trapped in development hell before ever seeing daylight.

For this list, the criteria are simple: the filmmaker must have played a robust creative role - executive producer credits or voice cameos don’t count here, or this list would stretch into the hundreds.

Game Credits: Undying, Jericho, Demonik (canceled), Hellraiser: Revival

Clive Barker is essentially a horror Renaissance man, wearing many hats across the territory. While best known and still active in the literary space, with his Books of Blood series remaining his most revered work, he was also a major directorial force in film for a brief but memorable period. His debut, Hellraiser (1987), grabbed audiences by the lapels and birthed a classic boogeyman and franchise in turn. Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions followed, but both were compromised by studio interference, which ultimately dampened Barker’s enthusiasm for directing and made him shift into a producer/writer role instead (e.g., Candyman)

Barker also tried his hand at video games, working on several original projects as a writer and creative supervisor. He even publicly defended the medium as a legitimate art form following Roger Ebert’s dismissal of it. 

As lead writer, he made the following: Undying became a cult classic among PC gamers, praised for its creative monsters, solid shooting mechanics, and Lovecraftian-inspired mythos. Jericho was a big-budget, ambitious project that sadly faceplanted due to muddy gameplay and repetitive missions. Demonik was another promising project that advanced well into production, even appearing in the comedy Grandma’s Boy, but funding was pulled, and the game was canceled.

After stepping away from hands-on work in gaming for several years, Barker has recently returned as a creative supervisor for the upcoming Hellraiser game, an exciting and seemingly authentic new take on his own legendary universe.