The Casting of Frank Stone review: Dead by Daylight spinoff struggles to execute

The Casting of Frank Stone MSRP $40.00 Score Details Pros

Supermassive's formula is still great
Lots of Easter eggs
Cutting Room is a great addition
A creative narrative setup

Cons

Story lacks payoff
Its killer feels sidelined
Production value isn't up to snuff

There’s safety in a horror movie. Unwitting teens may be sliced up on-screen, but the viewer always has the power of distance. If I see a trailer for a film that looks too frightening for my tastes, I can choose not to watch it. That leaves its monsters trapped in a containment cell, unable to feed off my fear. I forfeit that power the moment I sit down to watch it. The terror seeps off the screen and clings onto me. I may carry it with me for the rest of my life. Cinema isn’t just escapism for its viewers; perhaps it’s a more literal escape for its monsters too.

Supermassive Games plays with that dynamic in its latest narrative adventure, The Casting of Frank Stone. Positioned as a Dead by Daylight spinoff, the horror game tells the story of a steel mill, the killer that stalks it, and a mysterious film that intersects with his gruesome murders. It’s a tale about a horrifying incident that no one can seem to let go of, whether through reliving the trauma or preserving it on celluloid to be endlessly rewatched — or that’s at least what it’s about when it’s not struggling to thicken up another game’s thin premise.

The Casting of Frank Stone works when Supermassive Games is focused on crafting an original horror story built from the same bones as Until Dawn. Its multigenerational slasher premise gets complicated by its duties as a spinoff, throwing its titular killer and grander themes to the wayside to retroactively build lore for a separate multiplayer game. It makes for a disjointed tale that only claws at a larger point about the intersection of horror and the media about it.