Netflix Just Turned Your Phone Into a Horror Movie and the Cast List Is Wild
The line between watching a thriller and surviving one has always been thin, but Netflix and Night School Studio are about to dissolve it entirely. ‘Unhinged’ is an interactive horror game designed to blur the boundary between watching a story and actually being inside one, arriving on Netflix Games on June 30. It is the kind of project that feels less like a gaming announcement and more like a genre experiment, and it has the star power to match.
‘Unhinged’ was made by the team behind ‘Oxenfree’ and its sequel ‘Oxenfree II: Lost Signals’, Night School Studio, which Netflix acquired as its first internal game developer back in 2021. That pedigree matters. Night School built its reputation on narrative-driven, atmospheric storytelling, and ‘Unhinged’ appears to be the studio swinging for something far more ambitious in both scope and star appeal.
The voice cast is what has the internet genuinely buzzing. Zoë Kravitz plays Ava, the protagonist navigating a power outage during an intense storm, while Sadie Sink voices Claire, Ava’s best friend who serves as her primary connection to the outside world, and Troy Baker plays Ben, the building superintendent. This will be Kravitz’s first project with Netflix, while Sink has long been a prominent face of the streamer through ‘Stranger Things’ and the ‘Fear Street’ franchise.
What makes ‘Unhinged’ genuinely stand out from any other horror release this year is how it uses your actual phone as part of the experience. Players scan a QR code to launch an app that allows their phone to guide them through the game, with the integration tracking 1:1, meaning moving your real-world phone controls Ava’s flashlight directly through the shadows. When Ava receives a call or message, the player’s own phone will ring, vibrate, and play audio through the device, making the tension feel less like gameplay and more like a genuine emergency.
For players who want a pure narrative experience, a Story Mode removes timers and eliminates the possibility of dying, letting you move through the story at your own pace. In Standard Mode, however, a shrinking timer during high-stakes moments forces quick decisions, and running out of time means Ava dies, though the game restarts from the last checkpoint rather than ending entirely.
Award-winning composer Jason Hill, whose credits include ‘Mindhunter’ and ‘Gone Girl’, handled the score, while Ren Klyce, the sound designer behind ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, contributed to the audio design. The full experience clocks in at roughly the length of a standard TV episode, and the game requires no ads or in-game purchases, just an active Netflix subscription and a smartphone.
With a Hollywood-caliber cast, a veteran narrative studio at the helm, and a gameplay mechanic that turns your personal device into the horror itself, ‘Unhinged’ might be the project that finally convinces casual viewers to take Netflix Games seriously. Whether it becomes a defining moment for the format or a fascinating one-off, it arrives at exactly the right moment for the platform to prove that games can carry the same cultural weight as its biggest shows. Do you think a horror game starring Zoë Kravitz and Sadie Sink is enough to pull you into Netflix Games, or does the format still feel like a stretch?
