Indie horror 'The Fridge is Red' hits highs and lows during its brief tale.

There’s something so pure and genuinely scary about the original PlayStation’s line-up of horror games. Between obvious survival horrors like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, and Dino Crisis (still waiting, Capcom), plus overlooked classics like Clock Tower and Nightmare Creatures, the PS1 was a breeding ground for deep-seated fears among young gamers that continue to this day.

5WORD’s The Fridge is Red, a short, sharp psychological indie, aims to bring these past frights into the modern day. While The Fridge is Red is openly inspired by 32-bit audiovisual styles, it’s still much more akin to PS2-era first-person games, albeit with a restrictive color palette, artificial VHS grain, and a script largely processed with text-to-speech software to provide disjointed dialogue.

While this might not sound like your cup of tea, it works remarkably well–to begin with, at least. Unnerving and intimidating in equal measure, The Fridge is Red plays out across around two hours through six oddly-named chapters, which drill into deep fears including desperation, fear, loss, loneliness, grief, and helplessness:

Each one of these sections plays out in a highly symbolic way before briefly being broken down in real-life terms at the end of each section. These quick snippets progress the story, preparing you to interpret the next chapter through its heavily emblematic lens. It’s just a shame The Fridge is Red can’t maintain the pace of its strong start.

There are more than a few vibes of games like 'Silent Hill'.

From its first main chapter, For Daddy to Work–the real high point of the experience–you learn the game’s core puzzle mechanics, which are straightforward for the most part, though their ease is cleverly masked with an often brutal, heavy atmosphere. While there are mercifully few jumpscares, you may still find yourself drenched in sweat at the sight of low-light corridors and guttural sounds.

Strange and intimidating characters–and straight-up monsters–punctuate your journey to, say, collect severed hands, find the reason why a priest and his congregation have lost their minds, or find an alternator for your car. Everything is so consistently weird, but the intrigue of the story keeps you going.

However, with each revelation at the end of its first three chapters, the tale begins to slow down, losing momentum and intrigue in favor of over-the-top symbolism that increasingly disconnects from the tale it’s trying to tell.

'The Fridge is Red' is more than a little heavy with its symbolism.

Goldi Vern, in particular, is a truly dull and overlong section which, save for a couple of moments of intermittent fear, amounts to a series of behind-the-wheel fetch quests that don’t seem to tally with the development of the story. By the time you get to the penultimate chapter Chili Handled, there’s a fair chance you’ll predict exactly how things play out–and wonder how certain elements of the game represented the overall tragedy that The Fridge is Red portrays.

The Fridge is Red is a genuinely brilliant premise and, when the game hits its highs, it’s horror gaming at its finest: atmospheric, confusing, intimidating, and capable of getting deep under your skin. At its lows–which, sadly, get more frequent as this short tale unfolds–it feels tired and underdeveloped.

For $15, you may feel short-changed by The Fridge is Red’s quick and inconsistent experience, but horror movie fans will get an interactive arthouse escapade worth checking out. While certain big moments will stay with you for days after you’ve blazed through it, you will likely come away knowing it could’ve offered so much more.