(6/13/23: Edited to add a new section at the end, because I can’t leave well enough alone)
If you’re like me, you’re a horror fan and you’ve dabbled in the realm of Dead By Daylight. If you’re not like me and you have no idea what I’m talking about, Dead By Daylight is an online asymmetrical horror survival game where four people play human characters called “survivors” whose job it is to repair enough broken down generators which power a gate that will allow them to escape the trial. The entire time, they are being pursued by a bloodthirsty monster affectionately known as the killer, a fifth character controlled by another human being who had a much rougher childhood than the other four. These killers usually have some wacky supernatural powers (or just like… beartraps) that allow them to be super effective murder machines, and their main goal throughout the game is to catch survivors and put them on hooks, sacrificing them to a cosmic horror known only as The Entity. It’s a great way to spend an evening, and despite a seemingly neverending torrent of complaints from the community anytime the developers at Behaviour Interactive make any kind of change, it has tens of thousands of users per day.
Well, it seems that Hollywood finally caught wind of that popularity, and a Dead By Daylight film adaptation from Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster has been announced!
As you know, video game adaptions have a questionable track record, and horror games are no exception. For every The Last Of Us there are five Resident Evil sequels starring Milla Jovovich (the first one was good and I’ll fight you), and even though we know next to nothing about the upcoming Dead By Daylight movie, there’s a lot of game elements that this film will need to bring to the table in order to please both the existing Dead By Daylight fans and the people who have never had the pleasure of being smacked on a basement hook by Bubba’s mallet.
Lucky for James Wan, I–a random internet nobody with an incredibly noncommittal 301 hours in the game–am here to help. Here’s what the Dead By Daylight movie needs to succeed…
Palettes? Time? Loop ‘em both!
Part of the game lore states that between the trials, the survivors have their minds wiped, and then they’re thrown into the next trial. Supposedly they don’t remember dying or watching their soft fleshy comrades die, but I don’t think this will work for the movie. Why? One reason and one reason only:
The generators.
I’m always going to be a firm believer that if people put their minds to something, they can achieve great things. However, that belief falls just short of four complete strangers all somehow knowing how to repair a gas-powered generator.
DBD said, “Look at the person to your left. Now, look at the person to your right. Now, look at the person directly in front of you. You all know how to rebuild a complex engine.”
None of these characters have an engineering degree or an electrician’s license, so as far as repairing an incredibly complex machine goes, they’re wee babes fumbling in the dark.
But not if they remember their previous incarnations.
You have a bunch of trials where your goal is to escape. To do that, you need to be able to repair a generator while someone is constantly attempting to 360-no-scope you with a hatchet. That’s a recipe for an awful lot of death. The only hope these people have of getting anywhere is if they learn a little more about how to repair generators over time. I want a new survivor to show up and have these severely traumatized veterans of the monster war scream at them every time they turn the wrong screw. Remember that mentally they could be decades older than when they entered. Hilarity ensues, you get a meaningful exploration of trauma, and you’re doing right by the time loop trope. Am I hired now? Can I be a part of your movin’ picher show?
Whining
It wouldn’t be a Dead By Daylight film without someone getting salty and making excuses. This needs to happen on both the killer and survivor sides to accurately convey the DBD experience. What does that look like? I have two scenarios that the DBD screenwriting team is welcome to use in exchange for branded trinkets and doo-dads.
Scenario #1: Claudette Morel jumps into action, using her extensive knowledge of the local plant life to begin mending Dwight Fairfield’s potentially life-threatening hook wound. As she does so, track star Meg Thomas rounds the corner with a first aid kit she managed to pilfer from a nearby crate. Together they get Dwight back in good health, and off in the distance, the audience hears the murderous Trapper say, “Wooooow. They’re sweatin’. Damn, you really wanna win. Bro calm down.”
Scenario #2: Young survivor Jake Park is yanked backward through a window he tried to vault by a levitating, slender figure wearing a dirty nurse uniform and a full face covering. As she carries him towards the rusty hook and certain doom, Jake says to the Nurse, “Woooooow, Nurse really wants that 4K, huh? I can’t believe you came after me and no one else. That’s what I hate about this bloodthirsty alternate dimension: the toxicity.”
After that, the movie pauses, and the audience gets five minutes to yell at the screen about how the movie is killer or survivor-sided. Everyone will be right and everyone will also be wrong, as is our way.
Happy Holidays, You Dead Motherfuckers
I know we already established a time loop scenario in the spirit of Groundhog Day, but even though that implies that they’re living the same day over and over, this is a realm run by magic, so we can do whatever we want. Therefore, I want the in-game holidays to be part of the movie.
I want these survivors to live through endless scenarios where they all get brutally murdered, and then one day the all-powerful Entity is just like, “lmao it’s Christmas now”, and then big weird spider leg tendril things descend from the sky, build a bunch of snowmen, and carefully decorate the hooks and generators with cute lil x-mas lights. Meanwhile, on the other end of this endless nowhere dimension, I want even more spider legs furiously knitting custom sweaters for everyone. I wanna see that happen. I want the ageless, unknowable cosmic horror to be weirdly committed to pageantry.
I want a black, suffocating fog to envelop the horrified survivors, and as they struggle desperately for each and every breath of air, they hear the cursed voices of 10,000 long-slain victims all whisper in one decaying chorus, “Happy Pride”. Then the fog rolls back out and everyone has a little pride flag keychain.
I want the Entity to be as unserious as it is in the game. This isn’t me being unreasonable; this is me demanding that the filmmakers respect the source material.
“Do You Or Do You Not Feel Bonita?” -The Entity
Speaking of those fabulous Christmas sweaters, I want outfit changes. I want survivors to undergo 78 rounds of psychological and physical torture and then wake up with new shorts or a fun blue wig. I want killers to hack and slash their way through an endless supply of screaming human meat for the equivalent of a year, and when they head back to the locker room, The Entity hands them a box with a gorgeous dress inside like that scene from Pretty Woman.
New clothes randomly appearing opens the film up to makeover sequences (the Cadillac of film sequences), and that leads to the ultimate goal of the movie: Shirtless Dwight. If you know, you know.
The more I write about the holiday events and the outfits, the more the Entity seems less like an eldritch god, and more like a child playing with dolls. I think the movie should run with that.
A Bill I’d Gladly Pay
I know he’s not an original character, and they’d end up having to pay Valve Software to depict him in the film version of Dead By Daylight, but I have one extremely good reason why Bill from Left 4 Dead should be included:
Nick Offerman.
We already know the gravitas and emotion that Nick Offerman can bring to a video game adaptation and so do all of our therapists. He is more than capable of playing a grizzled survivalist, but more importantly, we know that he can sing. This means that there can be a scene where the survivors reawaken at their campfire respawn point, and while most of them are freaking the fuck out, tough-as-nails Bill can calmly reach behind a tree, pick up an acoustic guitar, and play a gut-wrenching cover of Sufjan Stevens’ “Fourth of July”.
I feel like we deserve this nice little moment. As a treat.
Maurice
Put a fucked up horse in it. Kids love fucked up horses.
Dead Hard
They have to do it. Dead Hard is a perk in Dead By Daylight that prevents you from taking damage right before a hit, and the movie has to have to have a moment that features a survivor’s fool-proof magical strategy of throwing their arm up in front of their face and somehow neutralizing the fierce, mangling blow of a machete. It will be stupid, and I will cheer when it happens.
Bonus points if the killer is like, “Of course. Yeah yeah, you’re so cool doing what literally everyone else does” and then immediately gives up and waits for the next trial. Bonus bonus points if the killer is played by John Cena.
Make Them Kiss
We’ve all seen the fanart. We’ve all read the fanfiction. You can’t just sweep that horniness aside. It’s part of us. It is the very air we breathe. Do you really think they made the Trickster and said, “Sure, he’s incredibly attractive, but we’re certain that the players will be repulsed by his despicable acts and therefore not want to fuck him”?
If someone did say it, they said it as a joke, because they all knew what they were doing. Just look at how many of the female killers were created without shoes.
Also, the Tricker was the 23rd killer introduced into the game, which means he was the 23rd killer to have erotic fanart made of him. The fact that he’s handsome is irrelevant. People just be mad horny for monsters. Isn’t that fun and not at all worrying? The human psyche is so fascinating and vast! Any ol’ thing can just be crawlin’ around in there!
Basically, they need a scene where the Trapper picks up Dwight and holds him like a baby in his big, strong arms. I don’t care that it doesn’t make sense. Make it make sense.
Don’t Rely on CGI
So much of Dead by Daylight’s drawing power and charm is derived from the slashers and splatterers from horror days gone by. Back in the 70s and 80’s when you had skilled artisans crafting creatures and effects from items you could find in kitchen cabinets. When you saw these effects play out on screen, you could feel the weight of every brutal action.
This is exactly what the movie needs.
Practical effects are a must. I don’t want some bullshit CGI blood cascading from Ace’s neck, I want a literal pulsing fountain of viscera coating our killer in a torrent of crimson glory! I want a dummy painstakingly crafted to look exactly like a human being just so they can whack it with a flying hatchet. Sure, you can do effects with CGI, but consider this: What if it looked GOOD instead?
Vigo’s Jar of Salty Lips
Put fucked up jar filled with human lips in the movie. Kids love fucked up jars full of lips.
Those are just some of my thousands of good ideas. I’m an untapped resource in Hollywood, and honestly, whoever discovers me first is going to be the envy of Tinseltown. Everything I just gave them for free is pure gold. You can’t deny it.
In all seriousness, the Dead By Daylight movie has a lot of potential to be something truly great. I don’t just mean as a horror film but as a meta-horror commentary a la the Scream franchise. My ideas may be silly, but underneath the jokes, there’s opportunity.
By leaning into the rules, the inherent weirdness of the story, and by including snippets of how the players have shaped the game’s culture, we not only get a thoughtful exploration of the horror genre but how horror fans end up interacting with the properties they love. There’s a passion for the material, but a deep disdain for change that’s very apparent in the Dead By Daylight community.
Don’t break your backs trying to make a film anchored in reality. Embrace the weirdness. Embrace the violence. Embrace the good. Embrace the bad. We don’t need another bad video game adaptation, especially not when it could be so much more.
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Au Revoir, Fingernails 
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