The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and a stand-alone example of animated horror employed effectively.
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A routine aspect of design exists in many video games; one so obvious and familiar it appears as less of a feature and more as a natural result of poor player performance. Excepting sports, puzzle, and some (but not all) children’s games, this mechanic is almost omnipresent. From gritty Call of Duty installments to a whimsical title like Super Mario World, it’s crucial to a functioning player experience, and yet exists entirely to be avoided. Any guesses?
Keen readers may have pictured a Marine archetype holding in his fallen squadmate’s guts, screaming to the sky, “Don’t you die on me!” Or perhaps a jovial Italian plumber misjudging his leap to the next platform and falling into a chasm with a yelp, accompanied by Koji Kondo’s iconic “Game Over” jingle. Either way, you’d be correct in that the common theme is death.
No matter the genre or tone, it’s such a ubiquitous concept in gaming that I’d estimate more games include death as an outcome than not. Some demises are scripted, serving as plot points and driving stories: think Red Dead Redemption. Others can be avoided based on a character’s actions, a hallmark feature of playable “choose-your-own-adventures” associated with developers like Telltale and Supermassive Games.
The most frequent bucket-kicking, however, is done by the player. If you’ve ever struggled with a new video game, you’ve undoubtedly subjected the character you control to dozens, if not hundreds, of rage-inducing deaths. This is to be expected: dying and restarting is part of the learning experience, even for seasoned gamers. While permanent death, or “permadeath,” has been explored as a mechanic, with the aptly named Flash games You Only Live Once and One Chance serving as examples, this unforgiving design prevents further interaction with a product. For developers, that’s not ideal if you want anyone to play your game more than once.
So players will fail, their playable characters will die, and restarting will reanimate these digital vessels for another attempt. It’s called a respawn, and it’s simple, right?
Australian director Chad Payne has clearly put more thought into it than that. His feature-length horror movie Emesis Blue, released online in February 2023, focuses on the psychological ramifications of endless respawns, using the characters of Valve’s 2007 first-person-shooter Team Fortress 2 (TF2) as its cast.
For those who haven’t played, TF2 pits two teams of mercenaries against each other, battling interminably for control over parcels of the New Mexico desert (plus Alaska, Borneo, and Brazil to name a few, but the lore centers on the Southwest badlands). Not only is the objective to kill the other team, but the 16-year-old game’s skill ceiling is towering. Death is inevitable, which means respawns are inevitable. Setting aside that these colorful characters are pixelated creations, what kind of effect would crossing that mortal threshold repeatedly have on someone? And what if the process somehow went wrong?
Payne takes this premise, sprinkles some corporate backstabbing and mislabeled benzodiazepines into the mix, and polishes it off with a myriad of references to iconic horror genre predecessors. The result is a highly engaging, albeit somewhat befuddling, experience over the duration of Emesis Blue’s nearly two-hour runtime.
The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and a stand-alone example of animated horror employed effectively. That said, the film’s Hitman: Blood Money-esque finale stars two curmudgeonly supercentenarians whom casual viewers may not recognize. Though it’s not necessary to enjoy the movie, those who want to briefly familiarize themselves can use Valve’s handy “Catch-Up Comic” as a resource.
For a fan-made work, the storytelling and characterization in Emesis Blue are commendable. But perhaps far more of a feat than the film’s plotting is one defining element of its development. Emesis Blue was created entirely within Source Filmmaker, a seminal 3D graphics processing program that was released by Valve almost twelve years ago. Animation, as a general art form, is no easy task: major studios like Pixar pay programmers six-figure salaries to keep their proprietary, hush-hush software at the cutting edge of digital advancement. Using an outdated, abandoned application would be a nightmare for even a big-budget studio, and yet Payne and producer Anton Pelizzari overcame what must’ve been grueling technical difficulties over more than four years of development. Their end result is not only a triumph of machinima and potentially Source Filmmaker’s crowning achievement, it’s also an inspiring case of independent animation and moviemaking.
Even the film’s technical limitations are artistically expressed. Within the limitless virtual battlegrounds of TF2, calling the cops is not a gameplay mechanic. There are no police cruisers on the scene, uniformed officers spilling out to read our playable mercenaries their Miranda rights. So, lacking any Source Filmmaker models to use, how would this animated thriller filled with sirens and crime scenes portray the fuzz? The solution was simply to absorb this issue within the aesthetic. Consistent stylization and mysterious lighting allow Emesis Blue to depict its lawmen as shadowy, obscured figures. A choice that could have been a lazy cop-out (no pun intended) in a less focused movie is instead a strong, in fact advantageous characterization, giving viewers even less reason to trust the police of Mortem, New Mexico.
Like many indie films, of course, Emesis Blue is flawed. The voice acting strays at times and the narrative seems almost designed with the expectation that online theorists would fill in the blanks. But, simply put, a “video game movie” appealing to folks who haven’t picked up a controller since Wii Sports is nothing to scoff at. Although 2023 saw other strong horror contenders, including a fellow Aussie indie picture in Danny Philippou’s Talk to Me, I found Emesis Blue to feature one of the most unsettling single scenes of any recent release. Payne, Pelizzari, and their crew deserve their online accolades, not just as filmmakers but as fans: Team Fortress 2 hasn’t received a finale to its comic series nor a major update in nearly seven years, which has left the community tasked with maintaining itself.
Countless projects with more budget, staff, and polish have failed to impress like this animated indie gem does, its imperfections notwithstanding. Luckily for fans, Payne and his production team, Fortress Films, have all but confirmed the development of another movie, also using TF2 character models. A second film would ideally show improvements in writing and voice acting while maintaining the first’s excellent direction and style. Supposedly titled “Murder Inc,” let’s hope this sequel avoids a faulty respawn and comes out better, not worse, than the original.
Emesis Blue is worth a watch, in this life or the next. But don’t wait around unless you’re quite sure – Stephen King and Chad Payne seem to agree that “it’s eternity in there.”
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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots from the film. Header art by Eddie Groer. See his work here.
