In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, women are the enemy

[Editor's note: This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.]

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard opens on a computer screen playing a video of Mia Winters telling her husband Ethan how much she misses him. At the conclusion of the video, Ethan, depicted in a first-person perspective, opens a new video showing a sweaty, frightened Mia. Panicked, she explains that she has lied to him and that if he ever got this message to “stay away.”

Cut to a drone shot following a car driving through the swamps of Louisiana. After arriving at a dead end, you as Ethan, stumble upon a decrepit, rotting wooden home. After some searching, you find Mia locked in a cell in the basement, but immediately it is evident that her behavior is unusual. She has been held captive by the Baker family who own the house. It’s not long until she starts crawling on the stairs like she’s in The Grudge, making weird sounds and attacking you as her skin and eyes become putrid and veiny. She has become possessed by an outside force and you are forced to kill her in order to defend yourself. Mia is fridged — killed in order to advance the male protagonist’s plot — and only exists for this purpose.

RE7: Biohazard (2017) is a strong horror game in so many moments — from its design to its complex story that kept me guessing until the very end. But a strong narrative need not come at the expense of its female characters.