I didn’t know what to think about Amazon’s Secret Level series when I first started watching it, and now that I’ve seen the entire season, I don’t think much of it at all. This strange assortment of 15 short films plays it safe more often than not, offering us protracted retellings of games that didn’t have particularly compelling stories in the first place.
Some are stylish, like the hyper-violent Sifu short, and some I found enjoyable as a fan, but it’s a weird assortment of IP, some of which you’ll have never heard of – one of which became the biggest flop in video game history this year – but through the highlights and low points, my big takeaway from Secret Level is that overall, it’s pretty forgettable.
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That sentiment does not apply to the PAC-MAN episode, however. Believe it or not, PAC-MAN is Secret Level’s biggest swing. It’s the season’s most ambitious episode and it’s the one that convinced me another season of Secret Level could be worthwhile. It makes the more generic episodes look worse by comparison. In fact, my biggest disappointment with the season is that all the episodes weren’t as bold and imaginative as PAC-Man: Circle. It’s not just Secret Level’s best episode, it’s also one of the most gripping horror shorts of the year.
PAC-MAN: Circle Is A Gory Horror Film
Yes, horror. PAC-MAN: Circle is a total reimagining of the arcade classic that strips away virtually all of its iconography to focus on the basic, carnal desires that drives the spherical hero: his insatiable hunger. Circle is a body horror that evokes the fear of Apocalypse Now’s guerilla warfare. In discussing the episode, writer JT Petty referenced both author John Milius and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as inspiration. Creators are often wont to overhype their projects in interviews, but none of these comparisons are an exaggeration.
PAC-MAN: Circle follows The Swordsman, a slight and grey-skinned creature that looks like an Oddworld Mudokon, who finds himself trapped in an exotic outdoor prison with no memories. His companion, a small floating sphere, informs him that in order to escape the labyrinth, he must become stronger. Almost immediately he’s attacked by carnivorous plants, and after narrowly escaping, the sphere delivers the episode’s theme: eat or be eaten.
On the surface, Circle bears almost no resemblance to PAC-MAN. It has more in common with Returnal, a game that places an amnesiac protagonist in a hostile alien world and forces her to find a way to the maze’s exit through force. But it’s in the way it deconstructs PAC-MAN that the brilliance of this episode is revealed. Secret Level’s creators took an iconic video game, looked at it with fresh eyes, and realized how bizarre and unsettling the premise of PAC-Man actually is. A strange creature is trapped in an endless maze, haunted by ghosts, and has no hope of escaping. All he can do is consume and survive. Maybe PAC-MAN was a horror game all along.
The Best Secret Level Has To Offer
This is Secret Level’s bloodiest episode, which is saying a lot when it’s up against Warhammer 40K and Unreal Tournament. The Swordsman fights his way through the labyrinth slaying horrific mutated creatures and eating the stinky flesh off their putrid bones, and it doesn’t shy away from showing you all the gory details. All the while, the floating orb urges him on, celebrating each conquest and reveling in his carnage. The ten-minute episode is a relentless assault on the senses that ends the only way PAC-MAN ever ends: in despair.
I wish the whole season of Secret Level had been as creatively courageous as PAC-MAN. Gory horror isn’t a good fit for every game – and I imagine very few game companies would be happy to see their mascot character represented in such a repulsive way – but this episode demonstrates precisely what Secret Level has to offer.
Modern games often feel like movies already, and much of Secret Level feels like cinematic trailers at The Game Awards. PAC-MAN: Circle recontextualizes a character that is so old and ubiquitous that he’s become easy to take for granted. It adds new layers to a game no one has any reason to think about. It’s the only episode that doesn’t feel like an advertisement – but if this was a game, I’d sure like to play it.
Secret Level is a computer-animated anthology series that tells bold, unique, and emotive stories set in popular video game franchise worlds.