‘Dead Reset’ Review: A Fast and Exhilarating Adventure [FrightFest]

The live-action, full-motion video game Dead Reset was released to positive reception by publisher Wales Interactive last year, and director Stewart Sparke of developer/production company Dark Rift Horror has now re-edited footage from the game into a feature-length runtime. Also titled Dead Reset, the film premiered at FrightFest and is just as exciting as the game. Sparke is known for previously directing The Creature Below, Dread’s very own Book of Monsters, and the fun How to Kill Monsters, and he wrote the screenplay for Dead Reset alongside his frequent collaborator, Paul Butler. Needless to say, the pair delivered a gruesome adventure that packs a bloody punch.

Dead Reset follows a surgeon named Cole Mason (Daniel Thrace) who finds himself trapped in a mysterious research facility, with no idea how he got there. Ordered to perform an emergency operation on a patient by the facility’s manager, Magson (Andrina Carroll), Cole soon learns that he is trapped in a never-ending time loop, and that the facility is also home to a parasitic creature that wants to kill everyone on board. With time running out, Cole desperately needs to escape the loop and the facility before he dies permanently.

What follows is an exhilarating adventure as Cole desperately searches for a way out, dying countless times in the process. Thrace perfectly captures the desperation and panic Cole feels as his situation grows increasingly hopeless, and the relentlessly fast pace keeps things moving at breakneck speed, keeping viewers interested at all times. The production design makes the facility seem like something straight out of a high-tech nightmare, and the gradual revelation about its true location will certainly shock most viewers. And, as with Sparke’s previous films, the level of gore on display is absolutely abundant, with human entrails being splashed across the screen at regular intervals. Once again, the production team primarily relies on practical gore effects over CGI, making the gore seem all the more satisfying. This is a film where nobody peacefully dies in their sleep, with each death sequence instead being as overly brutal and over the top as fans have come to expect from previous Dark Rift Horror productions.