Living life with general anxiety and panic disorder can make creaking walls sound like an intruder. A flickering light can trigger an intense fight or flight response. Any sudden movement can sometimes be interpreted as an active threat. That's why, despite it being my favorite video game series, Resident Evil can be a visceral experience if you're playing it while managing a real-life anxiety condition.
Resident Evil 7 in particular has always been an intensely stressful game for me to play, the awareness that the terrifying Jack Baker can crash through the wall at any second constantly at the forefront of my consciousness. But Resident Evil Requiem has taken its crown as the scariest game in the series – largely due to Angela Sant'Albano's incredibly faithful portrayal of anxiety and panic in her role as Grace Ashcroft.
Of course, the game designers also deserve ample credit for creating such an oppressive atmosphere and nightmarish, unpredictable monsters, not to mention gameplay flourishes unique to Grace, like her unsteady aiming hand and proneness to trip while fleeing from enemies – all things that compound my immersion in the character's unease.
That said, if it weren't for Grace being such a terribly relatable cauldron of stress, I'd probably say Requiem and Biohazard are about equal in terms of scare factor. It's specifically when playing as Grace – hearing, no, feeling her stilted breathing, the panicked shuddering, the desperate pleas for homeostasis to magically return — that Resident Evil Requiem becomes almost unbearably scary.
Immersed in unease
"I really wanted to do that element or side to Grace justice," Sant'Albano tells me when we discuss key motivations behind her performance. "I felt, especially [in] a generation where anxiety is so widespread and such a part of people's everyday life, I didn't want to overdo it, but I also didn't want to undersell it, because it can be so all-encompassing and mind-altering. And so I did a lot of research. Sounds strange, but I researched a lot of different types of panic attacks and how literally being triggered by something that you see can cause your heart rate to quicken. It's completely out of your control."
Spoilers for the beginning of Resident Evil Requiem follow.
I'll never forget the moment in Resident Evil Requiem where I realized I had a connection with Grace that would bring the horror of playing the game to a whole new level. When the Wrenwood Hotel manager is killed and Grace descends into a full-blown panic attack, in which she feels nauseous and struggles to control her breathing, I knew right away it was going to be much harder to maintain composure against whatever atrocities awaited me – especially compared to my time with relatively steadfast heroes like Leon Kennedy, and even Ethan Winters.
That moment is followed by the shocking death of a classic Resident Evil character – Grace's mother, Alyssa Ashcroft – and the heartbreaking fallout for our heroine.
Sant'Albano tells me she relied on pure instinct for that particular performance. "I was quite nervous about filming that scene," she reflects on the harrowing "primal cry and scream" she channeled. "I mean, that's a whole other level of horror and shock and fear and sadness and pain, and there are just so many emotions, and it's so primal. Maybe this is crazy, but I didn't plan it at all. Like, at all. I was just like, 'You know what? We're just gonna see what happens here'."
Save me, Leon
That early scene proved pivotal to Sant'Albano's portrayal, as well as Grace as a character, as it was emotionally traumatizing enough that it caused her to develop a stutter that surfaces during moments of heightened anxiety.
The timing of the stutter having emerged following that scene was very intentional, Sant'Albano tells me. "Capcom really liked that element to her," she says. "They felt like it was very real. They were like, 'Yeah, lean into that. Like, if that feels natural, go for it.'
"I wanted the stutter to have an actual meaning behind it. I wanted it to really be embedded in the story and in the arc of her storyline, which is why, in the flashback, I didn't want her to have that."
I had the chance to talk with Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides recently, and he told me Resident Evil Requiem "could have been just a solo Grace" game. Even as someone who once proudly declared that "Resident Evil Requiem doesn't need Leon Kennedy," I have to respectfully disagree with both Apostolides and myself from July 2025. Resident Evil does need Leon Kennedy. It really does.
If it weren't for Leon, there'd be no respite from the mercilessly sustained tension and dread that flavors the Grace sections of the game. There'd be no cathartic release after what feels like hours of tip-toeing around cavernous buildings and feeling utterly defenseless. When I'm controlling a character that essentially feels like how I would act in a similar situation, boy howdy does that first successful roundhouse kick as "hot unc" Leon Kennedy feel earned.
Ultimately I'm privileged to be able to feel these unpleasant emotions in a safe space where the only real threat – physical or psychological – is the exhaustion I'll feel the next morning when I realize I stayed up way too late playing video games again. That's because I'm fortunate enough that emotions I feel from playing games typically don't spiral into legitimate psychological events, but I know others might not be so lucky. I hope Resident Evil Requiem and Grace Ashcroft raise awareness to something millions of people struggle with every day.
