It is common knowledge that horror is a great genre for up and coming filmmakers to tackle. There’s a lot of room for creativity with completely messed up stories, and you can come up with a surefire hit (or at least a profit) with a very small budget and a vision. I don’t think that the same can be said about horror games. I appreciate when a single developer, or a very small team decides to make a low budget horror indie, especially one with retro influences, but results aren’t always amazing. Case and point, let’s talk about Don’t Let Him In. A really bad game, but one I can almost respect.

I’ve reviewed a lot of bad games over the years, and I believe I can now easily differentiate a bad game with a vision from an asset flip meant to make a quick buck with little effort. Don’t Let Him In is the former. It’s a bad horror game, one that didn’t scare me, nor managed to engage me for long, but it featured original assets, a unique vision, and, as bad as the story was… they tried. They failed miserably, but hey, they tried.

To be fair, the premise itself isn’t terrible. The game centers around three friends driving down a road, on their way to a rock concert. Shenanigans ensue after they pick a hitchhiker up, and let him into their car (there ya go, here’s the reasoning behind the title). Hallucinations, poor dialogue, atrocious combat sections and rushed editing follow, but the premise itself, sure, it’s almost passable. The game is clearly inspired by Silent Hill, and it tries to convey that same feeling of being trapped in a limbo of sorts, and witnessing your inner thoughts haunt you in the real world… at least at first.

I don’t want to spoil the final acts of this hour-long experience, but it stops being psychological, favoring a literal couple of (really bad) combat sections with borderline Scooby-Doo-esque plot twists and reveals. The game was almost getting interesting when it was trying to be about inner demons and whatnot, even if that meant the first 45 minutes or so of gameplay were comprised of walking around really small environments, collecting half a dozen puzzles, as well as enough prescription pills to keep mid-2010’s Lindsay Lohan entertained for an afternoon.

I feel this could have worked as a low-budget indie horror movie. The plot isn’t unsalvageable; it would have just required some massive rewriting and tons of revisions. The runtime is nearly ideal for horror, and considering what little supernatural elements are included in this story, there wouldn’t have been the need for a big special effects budget. As a game, however, this just doesn’t make the cut. Even if the PS1-inspired graphics are somewhat charming, there’s no fear, tension, nothing. You will endure it for an hour, get a platinum trophy, and never care about it again.

The best thing I can say about Don’t Let Him In is that, sure, there was an honest attempt at making a Silent Hill-esque indie horror experience on a very small budget. Sadly, this would have been a more acceptable attempt if it were a movie, not a piece of interactive “entertainment”. Even if there were microscopic glimpses of hope coming from the premise, the game is bogged by terrible controls, a literal couple of terrible combat sections, a minuscule runtime, and really bad execution. It can give you a platinum trophy in less than an hour, but you’re better than that.

Graphics: 4.5 Meant to resemble Silent Hill on the PS1, the visuals are poor, but somewhat charming.	Gameplay: 2.0 For three fourths of the runtime, this is just a mediocre and unresponsive walking simulator. There is one combat section involving a bat, and one involving a shotgun. Both sections are terrible.
Sound: 2.5 No voice acting, nearly no sound effects, underwhelming usage of scary noises, and really poor music.	Fun Factor: 2.0 I almost started caring about the story by the end of my hour-long stint with Don’t Let Him In, but the horrible gameplay and laughable execution were too much for me to ignore. The premise would have worked as a movie. As a game, this is just pure failure. Not even the easy platinum trophy was worth the hassle.
Final Verdict: 2.5

Don’t Let Him In is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of Don’t Let Him In was provided by the publisher.