What Remains of Edith Finch Review

The structure is the argument. Every Finch who died gets a room, and every room becomes a different kind of game: a horror comic with panels you flip, a photograph you take from a swing, a bathtub that becomes an ocean. That variety could easily read as showing off, and it does not, because each form is chosen to match how that person saw the world. The cannery sequence, where one hand performs a repetitive job while the other steers a daydream that slowly consumes the screen, is the most precise piece of interactive storytelling anyone has produced, and it says something about dissociation that prose could not.

The house itself is a beautiful object, stacked with sealed bedrooms and peepholes. It is short, around two hours, and the framing narration occasionally over explains a scene that had already landed. Some vignettes are much weaker than others, and the wraparound about a family curse is the least interesting thing in it. The peaks are worth the whole price.