The Devil in Me review: Supermassive tackles the true-crime obsession

Dark Pictures Anthology is a collection of all horror stories, from Sumerian demons living deep in desert to sea-bound ghost ships. Me and the Devil, the newest and final entry in the anthology series’ first season, promises a more intimate adventure, delving into the true-crime story of H.H. Holmes, his Chicago-based semi-apocryphal Murder Castle. This isn’t a story of supernatural mummies or harrowing journeys through time — it’s about five burned-out media employees trying to survive a modern imitator of Holmes (and probably dying in the process).

Like in every Dark Pictures game. Me and the Devil You are able to control five characters. The characters interact and work together in strange new places. They also solve puzzles, share information, and have fun. It’s a series of quick events that allow players to help the character they choose escape an attacker or fight an ambush. Me and the Devil tackles true crime — and when it focuses on that subject, it gets Really scary.

Director Charlie looks worried, and the camera is close up on his face, in The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me.

Me and the Devil opens with a tutorial where a young married couple come to Chicago to experience the first Ferris wheel at the 1893 World’s Fair. The misfortune of choosing the wrong hotel leads to them meeting Holmes who then ends up killing them. Supermassive depicts Holmes as a terrifying killer, with unnerving line delivery and literal skeletons in his closet, but the studio deftly captures that he’s also a Scam artist. His crowning achievement at the end of the tutorial isn’t cradling a corpse or admiring a skull but stealing a woman’s wedding ring. Holmes made a good profit selling the skulls Holmes spotted in the tutorial to hospitals.

Past the tutorial, in the modern day, we’re hanging out with director Charlie and his crew: lighting tech Jamie, sound engineer Erin, cameraman Mark, and journalist Kate. As in previous games, there is already some intense drama between these characters. Kate and Mark have just come off a broken up, while Erin is examining a possibility of starting a relationship. They all work on a reality TV show that’s almost out of money and dead in the water, but a mysterious benefactor named Granthem Du’Met offers them a chance to tour his property, which is a replica of the infamous murder hotel run by H.H. Holmes during the latter part of 1800. Predictably, things go horribly wrong, and Du’Met is imitating Holmes’ tendency to build elaborate murder traps.

All things great at Me and the DevilThe true-crime angle is the focus. An obsessed recluse and Holmes stan building animatronics of his victims and coming up with modern murder traps in imitation of Holmes is a genuinely creepy idea, and it’s believable in an era where we tend to treat serial killers with equal parts revulsion and reverence. Netflix recently released a docudrama series about Jeffrey Dahmer that drew heavy criticism for failing to respect the victims’ families. It makes sense that someone might fall into a kind of hero worship for the country’s first urban serial killer.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me - A young woman carries a box through a dark room. Mannequin parts hang from the ceiling, blocking the light.

Supermassive doesn’t spend much time on Holmes asking to be buried under concrete. He claimed that he was driven to death by a devil within him, just like how a muse motivates poets to write. It’s a great courtroom speech. However, the man’s motivations were financial as well as criminal. Me and the Devil suggests that Du’Met’s machinations are the result of the true-crime craze as much as Holmes’ dark deeds, and it’s a fun idea to chew on.

I’m not totally in love with Me and the DevilI had technical issues throughout the playthrough. There were also awkward puzzles that required long platforms and lengthy platforming sequences. You can grab an item from the inventory. It can show up later during a cutscene for the characters to deploy) but doesn’t feel fully fleshed out. It is also not the main cast. You can alsoThey are eager to give up their smartphones and drive to the deadly location in order to get their plot moving.

Me and the Devil doesn’t rank particularly high on my personal Dark Pictures ranking — it comes in just under House of Ashes The Man of MedanThere are many great reasons to play these games. What the game excels at is taking a well-known true-crime case, and exploring it in an engaging and not exploitative manner. Supermassive could probably have carved a good two or three hours out of this game and ended up with a much stronger product — just as long as it left all of the Holmes-related stuff untouched, please, because that’s where it shines.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me On Nov. 18, the game was available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. It also came out on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox One and Xbox One. Bandai Namco provided a prerelease code for PC review. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products sold via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.