Siren Blood Curse is a remake and reimagination of the first Forbidden Siren/Siren, released only on PS3. The game is quite different, with the main characters completely changed, now featuring a foreign TV crew filming a documentary about the rituals of the mysterious Haneda village. Official sources define Blood Curse as the equivalent of a live-action adaptation of the events of the first Siren, if they were real. Surely an interesting way to define a remake.
The main enemies of every Siren game are the Shibito, villagers no more living nor dead, trapped in an eternal curse after entering in contact with the Red Waters. The plot and lore of the Siren franchise are extremely complicated, evolving around mysterious entities and eldritch beings. However, in this article, I will focus on the Shibito and their insect-like features. Because if at the beginning of the game the Shibito are sort of zombified version of their original self, usually more insane-looking and crying blood, they will quickly evolve into more twisted and disturbing creatures connected to insects.
This peculiar feature is because, in Siren Blood Curse, the Shibito are connected to Kaiko, an alien creature that looks like a giant psychedelic insect. Every person that becomes a Shibito automatically shares a connection with Kaiko, becoming part of a huge and complex hive mind. Even characters that are still not completely transformed in Shibito will slowly start to be integrated into this network, with the possibility of hijacking into the visive system of the Shibito. The characters will see through the eyes of these monsters, a trick that will help them to survive, but also a step closer to losing their individuality inside the alien hive mind. With time, the Shibito will become even more integrated into the network. This phenomenon will also have a physical manifestation by creating more insect-like traits in the Shibito, altering their morphology and creating more disturbing beings.
The most common Shibito are the Spiders and the Fly ones. The Fly Shibito is a variant created to dominate the sky, acting as a scout to discover intruders. The mutation will manifest only in the head, which will sprounge a pair of fly-like wings. The eyes will also morph into fly ones, and the creature will use the wings on the head to goofily fly around. Weaker than the Spider Shibito, a Fly Shibito is more a bother in open spaces than a real threat, since they can grab the player up with them in the sky. However, in some rare cases toward the end, they also wield guns, transforming these flying adversaries into a real nightmare.
The Spider ones are really disturbing beings, humanoid creatures with still a human face, but with the bodies horribly twisted. The posture is completely reversed, with the belly looking up, and the head grotesquely torsed to easily look in front. The torso is abnormally swollen and hard, like a sort of armor, making the Shibito looks even more like spiders. And, as the name suggests, this insect Shibito can also crawl on every wall, jumping on its prey and dominating on them while they are harmless on the ground.
The level of threat will drastically change with the Maggot Shibito, a new enemy that was not present in the original game. The disturbing creature is the most dangerous enemy in the game, a colossal titan with a long and disgusting upper body that looks like a maggot. This Shibito has long and thin limbs, and it is often emitting a disturbing shrieking sound. With its titanic strength, the creature can throw heavy objects, such as trees, or instantly kill whoever is trapped in its deadly catch. Luckily, there are very few Maggot Shibito in the game, and they usually act as special encounters or bosses.
As the mutations intensify and the human traits are morphed into insect-like, the Shibito will also get more and more connected with the hive mind, working as agents of an omniscient being. However, the insect-like Shibito are not directly linked to Kaiko but are instead associated with other creatures acting as nodes or emitters: the Brain Shibito. The main purpose of this creature is to connect all the insect Shibito in a specific radius. For this reason, a Brain Shibito is usually hidden and protected by others, since the creature is in general weak and passive. Because with the death of a Brain Shibito, the other insect-like Shibito associated will also collapse. However, there are different kinds of Brain Shibito, always controlling Fly or Spider Shibito in the area.
One of the first encountered Brain Shibito is probably also one of the most disturbing. Controlling the Spider Shibito inside the hospital, this Shibito is an amorphous lump of flesh or leeches sitting on a wheelchair, dragged around by a creepy nurse. Killing the nurse is necessary to then slaughter the almost harmless grotesque creature. This Brain is controlling the Spiders around the hospital, so with its death, the hospital will become a safer place. Another disturbing Brain Shibito is lurking inside dark mines infested with Spider Shibito. This time, the creature has the body of a normal human, but the head is instead a mass of long and twisted tentacles, or centipedes, connected with the ceiling. The grotesque Shibito will be there, harmless pending from the ceiling like a rope, waiting to be killed. And since the player in this level has access to a rifle, it will be an easy task once spotted.
Other Brains are controlling Fly Shibito, sharing a similar phenotype with those creatures. For example, a humanoid Brain controlling the Flies is a fragile man, but with the head grotesquely shaped to look like a wasp abdomen. Another Brain controlling Fly Shibito is in one of the last levels. The creature is emaciated and almost skeletal, missing the arms, and with a very disturbing skull-like face. The monster flies around with moth-like wings erupting from its head, a totally defenseless creature that can only fly away when it identifies a threat. For this reason, being cautious and furtive will be the only way to defeat this Brain. Regardless of how grotesque the Brain Shibito are, the first price for the most disturbing one goes to a totally harmless but disturbing being also controlling Fly Shibito. The creature is very difficult to spot, and the house where it should be, according to the map, looks empty. Then, the terrifying revelation happens when opening a closet. Inside, the giant disembodied head of an old person is there, still disturbingly murmuring. The head is covered in filament like a cocoon, or maybe a spider web, connecting also this hallucinating creature to the insect world. Of course, the creature is also defenseless and easy to kill. There is even a Brain Shibito controlling a gigantic Maggot Shibito, creating an anxious chase to kill the escaping Brain with a stake in its heart to finally stop the giant Maggot Shibito.
The Brain Shibito are the embodiment of the hive mind, neurons serving the eldritch God responsible for all the tragic events in the game, radio towers controlling the insect Shibito in different areas. And if the hive mind is one of the most unique insect traits shaping these disturbing humanoid enemies, what every colony also needs is a proper hive or a nest. And how humanoid insects would build a nest? Of course by creating a chaotic maze of buildings and wooden structures. The nest is the last level of the game, an intricate town completely altered by the Shibito. The buildings will fuse together, without any logic, with corridors ending on rooftops, which then connect to other buildings, extending the nest in vertical levels. The complete chaos of the nest reflects the complexity of the Shibito, hive-minded alien beings but still connected with their humanity, building their impossible geometries by using buildings and other human-like structures. The nest will grow so much in high that the player will lose track of reality, reaching, for example, a tower placed on top of a gigantic structure. What was part of the town and what was built by the Shibito mix in a chaotic whirl, and the player will be lost while wandering in this maze. It would be the same alien and oppressive feeling if a miniaturised human could venture into an ant hive, just in this case the hive is a human-built environment.
The Shibito are a really original way to portray classic zombies or possessed enemies by giving them unique backgrounds and traits. The evolution from human-like enemies, toward more insect-like creatures, reaching the climax with the alien Brains, is well-built and believable. Exploring the nest is the final step into understanding these mysterious creatures, wandering inside an environment that they created during their alien metamorphosis. The Shibito’s evolutions and their “society” are alien but also well-structured and integrated into the human world, creating a set of creatures and rules that could appear in a documentary on National Geographic.
Of course, a very horror and disturbing documentary.
Surreal and Creepy 