Dead Reset (2026) Review

In 2023 the brilliant Dark Rift Horror, the team behind How to Kill Monsters, Book of Monsters and The Creature Below, joined up with Wales Interactive to create a full motion video horror game named Dead Reset. A game that threw you straight into a sick and scary Sci-Fi scenario.

Taking the part of a surgeon with memory loss, you are forced to operate on a patient with a parasitic monster inside of her. When things go wrong, you and everyone else is torn apart by the blood-thirsty beast. But after being killer, you wake up alive, and discover that you are stuck in a time loop. From that point on every decision dramatically effects the outcome of the game, and whether you and everyone around you stays alive.

A hugely ambitious project that forced writer and director Stewart Sparke and his co-writer Paul Butler to learn a whole new way of working, the game took double the length of a normal film shoot to create, meaning they had over four and half hours of footage for players to forge multiple story paths with a myriad of different moments, splintered storylines and insane endings to find.

Inspired by the experience, the filmmakers decided to take the game and create an altogether more linear and traditional sci-horror out of it… and so Dead Reset the movie was born.

Not happy to offer audiences something they could ultimately direct and discover themselves, the dedicated bunch of creatives filmed new material, changed scenes and recorded new dialogue to create a timeline that you could never truly experience by playing the game.

The setup is the same, with Daniel Thrace playing Cole the reluctant doctor who is stuck travelling back through time whenever he dies. Forced by the manipulative facility director Magson (Andrina Carroll) to remove the alien being from Amanda (Elle O’Hara), he quickly realises that he and his patients are far more expendable than the disturbing and destructive life form hiding inside.

After a gruesome and graphic time looping opening involving Cole and the rest of the crew – including sullen security chief Slade (Dennis Rasaq), head researcher Fearne (Lyndsey Craine), psychologist Weir (Andrew Dunn) and engineer Cooper (Michaela McCormick), being ripped apart in all manor or memorable ways – our hero convinces the team of his strange powers and the real story starts.

A truly independent movie, Dark Rift Horror deliver an extremely entertaining experience packed with plenty of tension and action to keep the viewer engaged. Looking like a blend of Red Dwarf and Brazil, the practical effects, although not always the most refined, do the job, and huge credit is due to Graham Taylor and Mim Williams whose low budget, high impact special effects are a refreshing break from the lazy AI and CGI VFX overload we see in many modern movies.

Dead Reset is a film that wears its influences proudly on its company issued boiler suit sleeve, drawing from classic Sci-Fi like Alien, Aliens, Edge of Tomorrow and Event Horizon as well as video games from Doom to Dead Space and even Mortal Kombat. That said, it has its own brand of Britishness which might limit its popularity overseas, but adds a certain charm for those willing to be swept along for the ride.

The cast are all excellent managing to inject some genuine dramatic weight into what is fundamentally a gore filled creature feature. There are familiar faces from Dark Rift’s other productions popping up across the movie including the always excellent Johnny Vivash whose role, although small, will have an eye opening impact on audiences for sure.

Video game adaptations are de rigueur these days and although there is no doubting that the quality is improving the innovation and originality is not always there. The huge benefit to Dead Reset is that the adaptation is pure and unfiltered, and in this way it works not just for people who loved the game but for those completely unaware of its existence – perhaps even converting some of the film audience into gamers in the process when they do discover its an adaptation.

Gross, exciting and always engaging Dead Reset is the perfect popcorn genre-jumping horror. It proves not only that video game movies aren’t just for kids and hardcore gamers, but also that independent productions can hold their own against Hollywood, especially when it comes to creativity.

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