The best movies and TV that inspired the Alan Wake games

The long-awaited sequel to Remedy Entertainment’s action-horror cult classic Alan WakeThe Dark Place, the development hell has now been finally exited and is glorious.

The game is re-played 13 years later. Alan Wake 2, follows both the cult horror writer and a new protagonist in the form of FBI profiler Saga Anderson as they battle the machinations of a deranged murder cult and the possessed minions of Alan’s evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch. Apart from brushing up on the events of the first game and all that’s transpired since, the release of Alan Wake 2, The series offers an opportunity to delve back into movies and TV programs that inspired its storyline and character.

Like Hideo Kojima, Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake is an avid and omnivorous lover of books, films, and television, seldom neglecting an opportunity to pay homage to the influences behind his work and talk at length about how they’ve informed his creative process. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of some of the best movies and TV that have either inspired the Alan Wake games or resemble them so strongly that fans would be remiss not to check them out or revisit them.

Let’s dive in!

Hannibal

Image: NBC

Year: 2013-2015
Showrunner/creator: Bryan Fuller
Cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas
You can watch the following: Hulu

Saga Anderson was the deuteragonist in Alan Wake 2,,It is not difficult to see why. Hannibal’s Will Graham, routinely diving into the minds of suspects to unearth clues and connections that can aid her in the investigation of the brutal ritualistic killings surrounding the fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington.

You can find out more about the movie in this article.

Scream Factory

Year: 1994
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow
You can watch the following:Criterion Channel Tubi

Even though not specifically cited, Alan Wake 2,Both the game and movie have surprising similarities when they are viewed in comparison. Both Remedy Entertainment’s latest game and You can find out more about the movie in this article.Both films center around investigations into disappearances of famous authors whose work has taken on its own life. Their protagonists are on the hunt for answers which could destroy or not them. The two also delight in shocking their audiences by incorporating scenes based on the cosmic horrors of H.P. Lovecraft.

Lost

Image: NBC

Year: 2004-2010
Showrunners/creators: Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof
Cast: Naveen Andrews, Emilie de Ravin, Matthew Fox
You can watch the following: Hulu

Lost was a bona fide cultural phenomenon during the early 2000s, introducing a whole generation of viewers to the joys and frustrations of their particular brand of “mystery box” storytelling. It only makes sense, given the time when the original game came out, that Sam Lake and company would cite the series as an inspiration behind the mystery of Alan Wake’s universe. “They do the pacing very well,” Lake said about the show in a 2010 interview with GamesBeat. “That was something we were talking about when writing Alan Wake.” Lost also inspired the structure of the original game’s story, which divides each of its levels into six “episodes.”

Memento

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Year: 2000
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
You can watch the following: Prime Video, Pluto TV, Plex

Sam Lake cites Christopher Nolan’s films as an influence on his work Alan Wake 2,Included MementoYou can also find out more about the following: Inception. Speaking to IGN, Lake said, “Inception The role of the player [in the dreamlike nature of the Dark Place]. His struggle to understand and recall, I can feel MementoIt’s a detective story that tries to unravel and understand what happened. Him being the narrator and kind of not a reliable narrator from the perspective that he doesn’t have the full picture. The story is told by the narrator, who doesn’t have the full picture. Fight Club I think is this kind of a pretty anxious horror-esque, urban story and a psychological thriller.”

Seven

Warner Home Video

Year: 1995
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman Gwyneth Paley
You can watch the following: Hulu

It was difficult to bridge the gap between Alan Wake 2,’s detective fiction ambitions and its supernatural horror roots, Lake and principal narrative designer Molly Maloney cited this serial killer thriller as one of their biggest inspirations. “When I look at Saga, I see a lot of Seven,” Maloney stated in an IGN interview. “She is a consummate professional, she’s very talented at what she does. She’s here with her partner, Alex Casey, trying to solve this increasingly impossible seeming series of mysteries. I mean, it’s not that they’re being funny, but there’s a pleasant back-and-forth that really reminds me of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, didn’t feel dissimilar.”

“Seven is definitely a good example of the merging of detective fiction with horror,” Lake added. “Serial killer stories overall often come really close to a horror film while being very much a detective story as well.”

Silence of the Lambs

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Year: 1991
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn
You can watch the following: Max

Lake as well as Kyle Rowley, the director of game at Lake have both directly quoted Silence of the Lambs Saga Anderson was based on this character. Early in production, the development team sought to create a new protagonist who could serve as a foil to Alan Wake and a talented investigator and criminal profiler not unlike Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling.

Taxi Driver

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Year: 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks
You can watch the following:Rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu

Taxi Driver Directly inspired by the feel and look of Alan Wake 2,’s depiction of the Dark Place, a malevolent shape-shifting dimension where the protagonist has been imprisoned for over a decade. “I inhaled American pop culture as a kid, and New York was the beating heart of it,” Lake told horror director Mike Flanagan during a panel discussion at Tribeca Festival 2023. The “neon-y, borderline gothic vibe” and urban isolation of Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece were a huge influence on the look and feel of the Dark Place’s nightmarish vision of New York, which also derives inspiration from Alan Wake’s in-universe crime novels.

True Detective Season 1

HBO Home Entertainment

Year: 2014
Showrunner/creator: Nic Pizzolatto
Cast: Matthew McConaughey Woody Harrelson Michelle Monaghan
You can watch the following: Max

“One of the first things that came to us when we were thinking about creating a concept of an FBI agent coming with her partner to investigate these murders was season one of True Detective,” Rowley revealed to IGN. “The kind of dynamics between the two detectives there and how they work together to solve that case was something that’s very compelling to us. And then obviously just stylistically wise, again, it’s got a lot of ritualistic elements to it that we could lean on quite well.”

The game also shares a number of aesthetic similarities to the series, especially Saga’s visions while profiling subjects, which employ double-exposure photography that strongly resembles that of True Detective’s mesmerizing opening titles.

The Twilight Zone

Image Entertainment

Year: 1959-1964
Showrunner/creator: Rod Serling
You can watch the following: Paramount Plus

What is the impact of The Twilight ZoneThe following are some of the most effective ways to improve your own effectiveness. Alan WakeYou can also find out more about the following: Alan Wake 2,Most visible is the’smile’ Night Springs, a fictional in-universe analog for Serling’s own series that features several short episodes which appear at various times throughout the first game. Night SpringsAlso serves as a link between Alan Wake and 2019’s Control, with the character of Alan Wake having written several episodes of the series early on in his writing career, including the script for an episode called “Over the Threshold Darkly” which eerily mirrors the events of Control.

Twin Peaks / Twin Peaks The Return

Showtime

Year: 1990-1991 (Twin Peaks); 2017 (Twin Peaks: the Return)
Showrunners/creators: David Lynch, Mark Frost
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Mädchen Amick
You can watch the following: Paramount Plus (Twin PeaksShowtimeTwin Peaks: the Return)

Perhaps more than any other work cited on this list, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s supernatural mystery drama towers over all others as the most prominent influence on not only the Alan Wake series, but on Lake. The fictional Pacific Northwest town of Twin Peaks is a direct inspiration behind Alan Wake’s own Bright Falls, the Dark Place is a heavily inspired by the extradimensional liminal space of Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge, and even the character of Cynthia Weaver in the original game is directly inspired by Margaret Lanterman, the so-called “Log Lady” in Twin Peaks. That’s not even delving into the parallels between Alan Wake 2,You can also find out more about the following: Twin Peaks: the ReturnThe series picks up about 25 years after events in the first one and has its hero escape from an alternate, sinister dimension before facing his evil double.

And both Alan WakeYou can also find out more about the following: Twin Peaks feature tons of coffee — with some damn fine cups, if you ask the right people.