Creator In The Casting of Frank Stone, the interactive horror movie expert wants us to be dead by daytime when in the past Supermassive Games dared us to live until sunrise. The goal of this narrative-driven spin-off of the well-liked asymmetric multiplayer sneak-and-slash action game is to provide a deeper understanding of the history of The Entity, the evil force behind all evil in the Dead by Daylight universe. But aged, rapid-fire event-heavy gameplay, terribly shallow fighting, a flat cast of characters, and a total lack of scares combine to create a six-hour boredom that is hardly worth sticking up past your sleep.
The Casting of Frank Stone has an entirely original cast of villains and potential victims, while Dead by Daylight’s cast of characters has grown to include a who-is-who of nightmare-inducing horror icons like Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and even walking internet memes like Nicholas Cage. This is highly detrimental to it, as only a few of them make a significant impact over time.
While the villains and possible victims in The Casting of Frank Stone are entirely new, the cast of Dead by Daylight has expanded to include a who-is-who of horror icons that will give you nightmares, such as Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and even walking internet memes like Nicholas Cage. Because so few of them have a lasting effect, this is extremely harmful to it.
The eight playable characters in the story have meandering chats, with virtually little tension and only a little degree of terror to be found across the unexpectedly long storyline points in both periods. The rest of the leads are forced into relationship contrivances that do not have enough time to grow and are burdened with dialogue that is frequently clumsier than a Freddie Krueger piano solo except the endearing Linda (Lucy Griffiths), whose dry sarcasm occasionally provides some welcome laughs. I never really felt bad about pushing a certain character into the arms of another with my decisions because, in particular, the love triangle between teenagers Jaime (Andrew Wheildon-Dennis), Chris (Rebecca LaChance), and Robert (Idris Debrand) feels rushed, and leaves little room for any believable tension to develop between them.
Every leading man was made into a bleeding man, and I hardly batted an eyebrow.
I was so uninterested in these half-baked characters that I hardly paid attention when the corpse count increased in the second part of the movie and each main guy became a bleeding man. This is where the Entity’s cosmic power is properly unleashed in both the past and the present. While some intriguing revelations about this evil creature and how Frank Stone is affected by its evil are revealed, the whole thing is marred by a disorganized mixture of perplexing multiversal wormholes and obvious plot holes. I was so uninterested in these half-baked characters that I hardly paid attention when the corpse count increased in the second part of the movie and each main guy became a bleeding man. This is where the Entity’s cosmic power is properly unleashed in both the past and the present. While some intriguing revelations about this evil creature and how Frank Stone is affected by its evil are revealed, the whole thing is marred by a disorganized mixture of perplexing multiversal wormholes and obvious plot holes.
Bad Manors
The Casting of Frank Stone’s story and its settings have a lot of branching routes, even though the plot may be disorganized and not at all memorable. Unfortunately, despite their atmosphere-filled aura, neither the dark, subterranean tunnels underneath the Cedar Rapids steel mill nor the opulent, golden hallways of Gerant Manor are fascinating or frightening to explore.
Even worse, I kept walking past the same scenes as if I were a member of Spinal Tap, frantically trying to find the stage entrance since they are replayed way too frequently. When I was periodically granted complete control over a character, it seemed extremely restrictive because I spent the majority of my time clicking through simple button instructions in cutscenes. I was also rarely given anything intriguing to see or do.
Dead by Design
Some of the characters can and probably will perish in this Supermassive Games adventure. However, in my experience with The Casting of Frank Stone, this was either because I was drinking coffee and took a sip too slowly to grab my controller at an unexpected cinematic junction that had a significant impact, or it was because I was completely content to let them go.
Approximately 50% of the playable characters in the cast died before the credits rolled. While I was happy to see that some of the executions were straight out of Dead by Daylight, like one victim being pierced with a sharp hook, none of these forgettable meat sacks met their untimely demise in a particularly memorable or shocking way.
After finishing the campaign, you can access the Cutting Room Floor feature, which lets you go back and forth along each branching story path and rewind into particular scenes. This lets you take a story thread and twist it differently by choosing a different course of action and watching how things work out. That is a great feature if you want to see every scenario that could happen, but I wish it was a little more flexible. Instead of just jumping to the crucial decision and continuing from there, I had to replay six scenes to keep one character alive, which seemed incredibly tedious.
However, if you want to go back and find any Dead by Daylight-inspired trinkets, this branching chapter choice is quite helpful. Notable killers like The Trapper and The Clown are concealed around each scene and have shrunk down into adorable, Chuckie-sized plushes. This is in addition to several other references to the multiplayer murder simulator, such as the rabbit mask worn by The Huntress that I discovered in the curiosity shop in Cedar Rapids. Diehard fans of Dead by Daylight will probably enjoy finding all of them. Still, the degree to which they justify watching (or even replaying) a somewhat unmemorable horror story will depend on how fervently devoted your fandom may be.
Verdict
The most crucial choice Dead by Daylight fans must make is whether or not to put up with a subpar, six-hour story to see the occasional recognizable weapon or subtle allusion to the lore of the source material. Frank Stone’s repetitive, time-hopping horror tale has dozens of character choices to weigh. I would contend that it is not because there is intensely entertaining content to be had in a single, 15-minute Dead by Daylight trial, which is far more enjoyable than any one segment of this dull and unmemorable horror movie. The Casting of Frank Stone is an average interactive slasher that falls short of its violent multiplayer predecessor and trails well behind Until Dawn and The Quarry as a stand-alone narrative.
