The Quarry is the first game to come after Supermassive Games’ runaway Until Dawn success story, and the hype has been real. The well-reviewed game sees a half-dozen protagonists on the last day of summer camp at Hackett’s Quarry engaging in some teenage shenanigans — only to be met with backwoods creatures, mutant horrors, and supernatural assailants.
If this premise sounds familiar to you, that’s by design. Supermassive Games is shamelessly cribbing from a whole lineage of horror classics to bring their remote, woodsy freakout story. And that’s not a bad thing, because most effective horror movies riff on previous stories and tropes. So if you want to keep the scares you got from The Quarry going, here are some horror classics that will scratch that slasher itch.
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
The obvious corollary for The Quarry is the oddball 1983 mystery-slasher film Sleepaway Camp. The setting and subject matter are obvious stand-ins here: The film sees a group of disparate campers, counselors, and staff being hunted by a first-person assailant in a brutal-but-campy film that’s amassed a sizable cult following in recent years.
What’s perhaps more potent in comparison is that Sleepaway Camp relies almost entirely on the interactions between campers to build suspense and dread. The main protagonist is a young girl with a traumatic past who doesn’t even speak for nearly a third of the film and harbors shocking secrets — making this movie distressing from an interpersonal standpoint. Players of The Quarry will love this feeling of “did he say the right thing or not?” dread.
Sleepaway Camp is available to rent on multiple platforms including Apple TV, and it’s streaming on Peacock.
The Evil Dead (1981 and 2013)
Sam Raimi’s quintessential campy gore fest The Evil Dead is a great tonal follow-up for a few reasons. First, the obvious: A group of teens heads to a remote cabin and supernatural forces make them their prey. But perhaps more relevant is just how influential The Evil Dead is to horror as a genre.
You just can’t get away from the campy, gory choices by Sam Raimi and how they influenced some of the kills and setting in The Quarry. It also doesn’t hurt that Raimi’s brother Ted is an actor in both Dead and Quarry. If you prefer a more polished approach to this classic horror story, go for the actually pretty great 2013 remake, which features modern production and a freshly disgusting take on gore.
The Evil Dead is available to rent on multiple platforms including Prime Video.
Cabin Fever (2002)
Heralding in the “torture porn” genre, Eli Roth is a visionary in his own right — even if his medium is blood and carnage. To be fair, Roth’s 2002 film Cabin Fever isn’t quite as gory as efforts like Hostel, and in fact, the film ends up portraying a much more complicated interplay between characters quarantined in a cabin.
Obviously, the setting at play here is directly comparable to The Quarry, but so is the move to explore moral absolutes. While The Quarry lets you choose your own path, Cabin Fever has you watching as characters push their respective moral compasses to the limits navigating a bloody, debilitating illness in the woods.
Cabin Fever is available to rent on multiple platforms including Apple TV, and it’s streaming on Hulu.
Cabin in the Woods (2011)
The title alone basically describes a number of scenes from The Quarry, but Cabin in the Woods is nothing like it appears on the surface. Sure, it follows the Evil Dead footprint of luring a group of teens to the woods to get wasted and then … get wasted. But the villains here may not be as supernatural as they seem. Without giving away this film’s truly excellent premise, we will say that Cabin in the Woods is sort of a video game unto itself, with cartoonish tropes and even some sci-fi elements, making it an impressively unique horror comedy that’s worth a watch.
Cabin in the Woods is available to rent on multiple platforms including Google Play.
The Thing (1982)
Take the feeling of isolated desperation and the trust-averse characters from The Quarry and drop them into an arctic research base plagued by a shape-shifting monster and you’ve got John Carpenter’s The Thing. Most horror fans won’t require an introduction to this seminal ‘80s body-horror gem, so we’ll dispense with spoiler-y plot points.
There’s a ton of satisfying tension on tap here, with multidimensional characters who are — in some cases, quite literally — not who they seem. Stick with the original, though; the 2011 remake isn’t worth your time or energy.
The Thing is available to rent on multiple platforms including Prime Video, and it’s streaming on Peacock.
V/H/S (2012)
We’re going to move away from the direct “lost in a remote area” comparisons here and give you a fresh film to watch that you may not have seen. V/H/S rides the coattails of found-footage films of the aughts, sure, but it does so in a really fascinating anthology format. This film is actually a collection of half a dozen short films bound by one central conceit: Found VHS tapes.
What makes it so pairable with The Quarry is how the story is told from multiple perspectives, seeing narratives unfold from new angles and keeping the viewer on their toes. The Quarry does this really well by putting you in the driver’s seat of a ton of different characters, and V/H/S brings that forward in a horror-anthology format.
VHS is available to rent on multiple platforms including Prime Video.
Creep (2014)
Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass took some big swings with their shockingly low-budget horror film in 2014. Depicting a certifiable weirdo and a Craigslist ad gone wrong, this film isn’t narratively similar to The Quarry in almost any way. But the feeling of building dread, character confusion, and, of course, the setting at a house in a remote, woodsy area all make it a nice epilogue to your time in Hackett’s Quarry.
VHS is available to rent on multiple platforms including Prime Video, and it’s streaming on Netflix.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
It’s hard not to see connective tissue between The Quarry and Tobe Hooper’s 1974 backwoods slasher film. The beginning of the game shows a harbinger in the form of a police officer who seems just a bit left of center. Many of the assailants hunting our protagonists take up the “rural, sadistic clan” mantle. And the gore is, well, dramatic.
All of this is true of Chain Saw as well, but the connection is most prevalent in the “icky” feeling you have both watching the film and exploring The Quarry. There’s just something festering under the surface in both cases that feels … dangerous.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is available to rent on multiple platforms including Apple TV, and it’s streaming on Hulu.
Friday the 13th (1980)
Friday the 13th: Summer camp, doomed teens, creepy dark woods scenery. The Quarry: Summer camp, doomed teens … you get the picture. Friday the 13th is a bona fide classic in the supernatural slasher genre, and Jason is about as iconic as horror villains come.
The only real difference here is that The Quarry doesn’t have one slasher stalking the teens, but several. Though, if you want a direct Jason gaming experience, you could just play Friday the 13th: The Game.
Friday the 13th is available to rent on multiple platforms including Google Play, and it’s streaming on Starz.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
If The Quarry owes its locational conceit to Sleepaway Camp first and foremost, then it owes its villain conceit almost entirely to The Hills Have Eyes. In fact, these two films would make nearly a perfect double-feature right after playing the game. Why? Quite simply, both Hills and The Quarry feature mutant villains attacking young people in desperately remote areas. It’s the perfect nightcap to The Quarry’s patchwork of endings.
The Hills Have Eyes is available to rent on multiple platforms including Prime Video.
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