Resident Evil: Village has plenty of terrifying and grotesque monsters. From immortal vampires composed of insects to massive mutant fish, Village runs the gamut of horrific beasties. However, none may be as mortifying as the creature players encounter when they enter House Beneviento. As most players are finding, House Beneviento isn’t just one of the creepiest sequences in RE Village, but also in the Resident Evil franchise as a whole.
[WARNING: Spoilers for Resident Evil Village Below]
The horror that originates in the Beneviento estate stems from the Baby Monster that lurks in the lower floors. The Baby is an overgrown fetus whose body appears to be an amalgamation of limbs and has a massive drooping mouth. The Baby will pursue the player through the dark halls of House Beneviento, and should it catch Ethan, it will devour him whole. Despite its nightmarish appearance, its coos and giggles still eerily sounds like a human.
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Most creatures in Resident Evil originate from some sort of mad science gone awry. However, the Baby is unique as its creation is more psychological. To understand how the Baby came to be, players have to understand Donna Beneviento’s powers and Ethan Winters’ mental state.
Resident Evil Village: Donna Beneviento’s Basement
Like the other lords in Resident Evil Village, Donna, the master of the Beneviento estate, possesses a parasite dubbed the “Cadou” that grants each of the lords a specific power. Lady Dimitrescu is an immortal vampire with immense strength, and Heisenberg has electrical and magnetic powers. However, for Donna, her powers are quite different from the others.
For one, rather than keeping it to herself like the other lords, Donna actually shares the Cadou parasite with her ventriloquist doll, Angie. To an extent, Angie can move and talk on her own. However, Donna’s true power is how she can induce vivid hallucinations in her victims that are indistinguishable from reality. These hallucinations draw upon the inner thoughts of the victim, and this is doubly so for Ethan.
Ethan’s trip into the dark recesses of House Beneviento is a hallucination created by Donna, and the nightmare sequence draws upon Ethan’s fears and guilt. The first big clue towards this is the Mia doll Ethan encounters. When he finds the human-sized doll, it is laying next to a photo of Mia shortly after she was shot to death. To progress further, Ethan has to dismantle the Mia doll piece by piece, perhaps representing that he feels responsible for her death.
If this is all in Ethan’s mind, then what does Resident Evil Village’s Baby represent? The player can conclude that the Baby monster is a twisted manifestation of Rose, Ethan’s daughter. The Baby even calls out to Ethan as “da-da” while it pursues him. Why Rose looks so mutated and monstrous here is because, at this point, Ethan already knows that his daughter has been divided up into different parts. The Baby then represents Ethan’s guilt for not being able to protect his daughter, like how he was unable to protect Mia.
Ethan also fears that Rose could become a monster due to the mold experiments. He has already seen how the mold has twisted Mia in the past, so it would be reasonable to believe that Ethan fears this too could happen to his daughter. This is also thematically fitting, since it is revealed later on that Ethan himself is also a mold monster.
Resident Evil Village’s Baby Monster sequence will go down as one of the most brilliant moments in Resident Evil’s history. Not only does it deliver great horror, but it also demonstrates great environmental storytelling in how it showcases the trauma Ethan is working through. Resident Evil: Village may not always be scary, but when it wants to, it can be the stuff of nightmares.
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