Deadly Premonition at first seems like an absurdly over the top Camp crime dramedy, but it quickly becomes apparent that it's a true horror game, in various ways.
Unmarked spoilers below:
- The Other World. Imagine the Other World from Silent Hill, only instead of blood and rust, it has blood and fleshy, pulsating vines, tumors and other growths. And instead of crimes against humanity as enemies, you have "shadows" that are heavily implied to have once been normal people, whose dialogue alternate between vicious threats and begging you to kill them.
- The Nonstandard Game Over in the lumber mill and the art gallery - York starts half-laughing, half-gibbering before turning to face the player with a terrifying... grin-like expression.
- The murders themselves are already unkind, especially since all of them had their tongue ''bitten'' off. Then they get worse.
- Anna gets stabbed in the chest and cut open all the way down to her stomach, while fully conscious.
- The second one has the victim flayed and the killer arranged her body in a wire contraption that is made to look like cutting the wires will free her, when actually it causes the victim to be strangled to death with blood soaked rags.
- As for the third murder, the victim is severely beaten and hung by the hands by a very flimsy rope right above a spikey sculpture. When York and co save her, she suddenly stands up as if nothing happens, and with a calm and serene tone, gives a very unsettling description of the sculpture. Oh, and when the sculpture is accidentally knocked over during the struggle with the suspect and is about to crush the victim. She resists all attempts to move her out of the way, and her last act to grasp Emily's hand with a deranged grin as she's crushed to death.
- Kaysen's method of 'growing red trees'.
- Forrest Kaysen in general shows an oddly big amount of this trope, having his own eerie music (do not watch, as it contains the name spoilered)
certainly helps.
- Forrest Kaysen in general shows an oddly big amount of this trope, having his own eerie music (do not watch, as it contains the name spoilered)
- Everything to do with the red seeds. They only grow in the local graveyard, they are found stuffed inside the mouths of all of the murder victims, York revealing he has several samples of them during Anna's autopsy implies that they are linked to many other murders all across the country, they were first created by the purple fog seeping into the soil of the town, they only sprout into saplings by being embedded in a human body and draining its lifeforce...The list just goes on and on.
- Also, it's heavily implied that being used as "fertilizer" for a red tree sapling is a Fate Worse than Death.
- Just before the final boss fight at the clock tower, York encounters many of the townspeoplenote , driven insane by the purple fog. Isaach and Isaiah are cowering behind him in fear, only for York to realize it's a ruse they use to stab him with some gardening shears.
- One of the few genuinely terrifying moments is encountering those massive hellhounds — especially since they have a tendency to appear behind you. You're out at night, everything is spooky, but it's just more zombies which don't pose much of a threat so you're not feeling too worried... and then you turn around to see a pitch black dog standing in the middle of the street, unmoving, staring at you with those glowing red eyes. Maybe it's friendly? And then it lunges at you so fast it's practically teleporting. The dogs are just about the only thing that make being out at night feel threatening.
