Table of contents for June 2021 in SFX

SUPER SOLDIER Rob Graham, email The Falcon And The Winter Soldier was definitely up among the best superhero shows for me – very different to WandaVision, more grounded, with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan turning into a great double act and Wyatt Russell threatening to steal the series as the dodgy new Captain America you want to hate. The super soldier mystery plot was intriguing too, and there were some nice X-Men hints for comic book fans with Madripoor Island. Isaiah Bradley’s story was tragic. A terrific finale setting up the future Captain America personally made me cheer. It’s looking very good for upcoming Marvel shows on Disney+. SFX Just happy they rebuilt Redwing. That drone has star quality. KONG GONE WRONG David Edward Johnston, email Being a fan of the…

What can you tell us about Star Wars: Andor? We are shooting. We are in London. I am away from home working on that project and really excited. I’m enjoying every second, and we prepared really hard for this moment, because we are approaching this with the rigour that you approach a film in terms of the scale of what we are shooting; it’s just that it’s many, many hours now, and not a two-hour film. But that’s the beauty, for an actor: to have all that time to work in different layers and enrich the character. It’s a dream come true to be back to this universe and to be back with this character that I love so much. And we are just at the beginning now, so we…

WHAT DID YOU accomplish during lockdown? Learn conversational Spanish? Reorganise the shed? Just change out of pyjamas before tea-time? Congratulations – but your achievement pales beside that of Ben Wheatley, who wrote and filmed a movie. The director began writing the script for In The Earth in the second week of the first lockdown, then shot it during the UK’s brief summer respite from Covid-19, across 15 days in August. “It was partially processing what was happening and trying to stay calm,” Wheatley tells Red Alert, “and to have more of a purpose than dog-walking and baking banana bread.” The film’s set in the midst of another pandemic, whose exact nature is vague, but seems to involve the fungal infection ringworm – plus all the now-familiar rigmarole of social distancing,…

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LIVE ACTION DOCTOR WHO IS nothing new – it dates back to 1965’s The Curse Of The Daleks, a stage play which ran at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre. Even placing yourself within certain aspects of the series has become part of modern-day fandom, with interactive elements a central part of Cardiff’s Doctor Who Experience (RIP), Maze Theory games and Escape Hunt escape rooms. But the latest offering blends both worlds – ironically enough, given the universe-warping premise of Doctor Who: Time Fracture – to bring something new to the exploding world of immersive theatre. It’s certainly the most ambitious project to date, taking place in two connected buildings in central London. The production is by Immersive Everywhere, the team behind the UK’s longest-running immersive show, The Great Gatsby, who have created…

FANCY A TRIP TO A galaxy far, far away? Of course you do. We all do. While we’re not quite able to travel to distant planets – or indeed other countries – you can take an extremely detailed look at one of the newest destinations in the Star Wars universe via Amy Ratcliffe’s new coffee table tome. The Art Of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge offers a unique and detailed look at the new world that was crafted, from conception to completion and beyond. That’s over 300 illustrations, blueprints, sketches and concept art from Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm – and we’re able to bring you a look at some here. It’s a rare experience in the world of Star Wars to be able to witness something from the ground-up, and…

With their hulking, ape-like bodies and vicious teeth, you wouldn’t want to come face to face with Attack The Block’s alien horde on a dark night. But the director’s young cast had no problem battling these intergalactic nasties. “I was excited about showing Probs (Sammy Williams) and Mayhem (Michael Ajao) the costume for the first time, so I got Terry Notary, who was inside the suit, to hide behind a wall,” recalls Cornish. “They were only nine years old and I thought they were going to be freaked out. I gave it a massive build up… and they just cracked up laughing as soon as they saw it. Mind you, when you call ‘Action’ and you’re being chased by it, that was very adrenalising for them. It’s really useful to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 15 | SVOD Directors Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini Cast Amanda Seyfried, James Norton, Alex Neustaedter NETFLIX The synopsis for Things Seen And Heard is so generic that even if you’d never heard of All Things Cease To Appear, the Elizabeth Brundage novel it’s based on, you’d still find the story familiar: a young family moves to a big old house in a small town, only to find their fresh start marred by secrets from the past. At over two hours long, you’d hope there were some extra twists to keep things interesting… but you’d be disappointed. Part of the problem is that writer/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini seem only semi-committed to the story’s spookier elements. Sad stay-at-home-mum Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) sees ghosts, but…

Bill of no-goods EXTRAS RELEASED 24 MAY 1965-1988 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Bill Rebane Cast Various unfortunates BLU-RAY DEBUT “Bad movie club” curators will want this Bill Rebane Collection box set. The director’s best known for The Giant Spider Invasion, with its arachnid built on a VW. That’s not included, but six other films – five shot at his rural Wisconsin studio – are. Expect am dram performances, incoherent exposition and massive plotholes. Rebane didn’t finish 1965’s Monster-A-Go-Go; Herschell Gordon Lewis stitched it together with narration and extra footage. An astronaut returns to Earth nine feet tall, with a deadly radioactive touch. Rebane manages to render this Quatermass-y manhunt tedious; Lewis’s ending may be the most baffling in cinema history. Invasion From Inner Earth (1974) comes close, mind. Centred on…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 12 | Download/VOD What’s that, Laddie? You were President of 20th Century Fox in the ’70s? Good boy! It’s due to Alan Ladd Jr’s force of will that Star Wars exists. He greenlit Alien and Blade Runner too. The likes of George Lucas and Ridley Scott praise a rare exec who trusted the talent, and had good instincts – making Ripley female was his idea. His daughter shot this doc, which adds an emotional dimension. But the taciturn Ladd is no raconteur, and his life story is not wildly dramatic.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1995 | 15 | Download Director Robert Longo Cast Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Takeshi Kitano Set in the far-flung future of, er, 2021, when humanity’s suffering from a pandemic caused by overexposure to technology (close…), this gonzo adaptation of William Gibson’s cyberpunk tale is a hoot, though often unintentionally. Scripted by the author, it takes the kernel of his 22-page short story – a data courier with a noggin full of secrets is targeted by the Yakuza – and does a Total Recall on it, giving Johnny (a sharp-suited Keanu Reeves) a heroic mission, a love interest, and machine-gun-toting goons to dodge as he traverses a world with a Tetsuo-esque garbage-tech aesthetic. Sadly, scalpel-nailed assassin Molly Millions is AWOL, but a laser lasso is neatly realised,…

RELEASED 20 MAY 2021 | TBC | SVOD Director Steven Kostanski Cast Nita-Josee Hanna, Owen Myre, Matt Ninaber, Adam Brooks SHUDDER If you’re the sort who has a complete collection of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, this’ll be right up your alley. Seemingly brainstormed by overstimulated 10-year-olds who’ve seen far too many age-inappropriate horror movies, it’s actually the work of the grown adult who previously brought us The Void. After digging a hole in their garden, young siblings Mimi and Luke (Nita-Josee Hanna and Owen Myre) accidentally release a murderous alien who’s been trapped for centuries. Fortunately, the gem which kept this “nameless evil” imprisoned (“Psycho Goreman” is what the kids dub him) also places him at Mimi’s command. Cue much bathos and bad taste comedy as PG roars empty…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 12 | SVOD Director Joe Penna Cast Toni Collette, Anna Kendrick, Shamier Anderson, Daniel Dae Kim NETFLIX Joe Penna’s directorial debut, 2018’s Arctic, was a nail-bitingly intense drama of survival in the harshest of conditions. His second effort could easily be described the same way. Swapping the milky whiteness of the Arctic Circle for the inky blackness of space, Stowaway opens with three astronauts – ship commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), medical researcher Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick) and biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim) – on a two-year mission to Mars. The movie’s title has, of course, already tipped us off to the fact that they’re not alone: a launch support engineer, Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson), who was injured and knocked out during blast off,…

Mary, quite contrary RELEASED OUT NOW! TBC | 99 minutes Director Evan Spiliotopoulos Cast Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket Brown, Katie Aselton, Willam Sadler The idea of putting your faith in a dangerous individual, or believing something to be true when it’s harmful to others, is a timely topic. The Unholy has that to recommend it, but that theme is also wrapped around a rote horror tale that’s unworthy of it, wasting the cast in the process. Adapted by The Huntsman: Winter’s War writer Evan Spiliotopoulos from James Herbert’s 1983 novel Shrine, the film finds washed-up journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) stumbling across – or nearly running over – Alice Pagett (Cricket Brown), a deaf and dumb girl who is suddenly able to hear and speak, and can miraculously cure…

UK/US Apple TV+, streaming now Showrunner Ronald D Moore Cast Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dornan, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten EPISODES 2.01-2.10 Ronald D Moore’s alternative history of the space race fast-forwards to the ’80s, for a second season that feels more sci-fi than its Right Stuff-esque predecessor. With NASA having established a high-tech base on the Moon, the what-ifs may be more extreme, but the inclusion of actual historical events – such as the Korean passenger plane shot down by a Soviet fighter jet – keeps one foot planted in reality. There’s also extra emphasis on tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as outer space becomes the Cold War’s newest frontier. While the East/West rivalry has always been at the heart of For All Mankind – the USSR…

RELEASED 27 MAY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Caroline O’Donoghue Publisher Walker Books This YA mystery, set in Ireland, is a lesson in the perils of fortune-telling. Maeve is a teenager who stumbles upon some old tarot cards and uncovers a talent for giving readings; however, the deck seems to have a mind of its own. It produces an ominous “Housekeeper” card that doesn’t bode well – particularly for Maeve’s old friend Lily, who vanishes after a reading goes terribly wrong. As the small town reels from Lily’s disappearance, not to mention a a spell of unusual freezing weather and a plague of right-wing homophobes who have descended like Bible-bashing locusts, Maeve comes to realise that she has witchy powers and Lily’s life may be in her hands. Young women…

RELEASED JUNE (Limited edition hardback OUT NOW) 304 pages | Paperback Authors Mark E Smith, Graham Duff Publisher Strange Attractor Press Did you know that cussed national treasure Mark E Smith, late singer/lyricist/dictator of cult band The Fall, tried to get a supernatural anthology show off the ground? In 2007, Graham Duff, creator of drug-dealer comedy Ideal, approached Smith about playing Jesus in a vision. It turned out MES was a viewer. This sparked a friendship, and a writing partnership whose fruits included the script for a horror film, reproduced here. Centring on a rural studio where The Fall are recording, The Otherwise encompasses Jacobite soldiers who’ve slipped through time, biker sex magick rituals, and the spectre of an old woman who died in a blaze. These elements don’t cohere…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Jeff Noon Publisher Angry Robot Books When Jeff Noon returned to publishing novels in 2017 with his Inspector Nyquist series, it felt like the author had found a vehicle that could fold his predilections for weirdness and wordplay into a formal genre structure. They’re noir detective tales set in an alternative ’50s-’60s, laced with literary psychedelics. With this fourth book, however, the borders are shifting; the strangeness here bleeds off the page. Nyquist and his new assistant Teddy are hired by singer and movie star Vince Craven to track down his missing “image”, without which he’s nothing but an emaciated husk. To do that, the detectives must cross the borders into the city of Delirium, an aptly named place that has disorientating…

RELEASED 1 JUNE 320 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Stark Holborn Publisher Titan Books This is a sci-fi western. It’s other things too – some of them quite interesting – but ultimately they rattle around like beans in a stagecoach. Even the author’s name sounds like a character in Firefly. Ten Low is the grizzled “woman with no name” protagonist, who, it turns out, has actually gone by various names during her shady past. Now she’s wandering a godforsaken frontier-style moon, saving lives to balance up some mysterious “tally”. She’s also plagued by ethereal alien entities, the Ifs, who feed on the chaos created by revealing alternate futures to her. When she rescues a young girl from a spaceship crash, the child turns out to be a juvenile super-soldier, created by…

It never rains but it pours RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Titan Comics Writers K Perkins, Mellow Brown, Mike Johnson, Michael Green Artists Fernando Dagnino, Andres Guinaldo ISSUES 1-3/1-4 Always pissing it down in future LA, isn’t it? The latest two Blade Runner series nail the movie’s aesthetic of neon-lit, rain-lashed streets, but also make you wonder how far this franchise can stretch. Blade Runner: Origins is a year-long series that takes us back to the start of the Blade Runner programme. Cal Moreaux is an LAPD detective and war veteran tasked with investigating an apparent suicide at the Tyrell Corporation; uncovering something more sinister, he finds himself tangling with Tyrell’s perfidious agents. K Perkins and Mellow Brown’s script is a slowburner, perfectly evoking the film’s noir tone, while Fernando Dagnino’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 178 minutes | Vinyl/CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Sadly, Blake’s 7cast are increasingly thin on the ground, so rather than recast major characters, Big Finish has decided to alter course somewhat. The Worlds Of Blake’s 7 will spotlight supporting characters from the B7 universe, like Bayban the Butcher, with still-living stars making guest appearances. The venture kicks off with Avalon, featuring the freedom fighter from season one’s “Project Avalon” (now recast). The three stories in this set are prequels to that, set on Earth around the time of Blake’s trial. Avalon has returned following the Federation’s culling of the resistance leaders, determined to reinvigorate the movement. The second story, Gary Russell’s “Throwback”, really plays to Big Finish’s strengths. In an extended Line Of Duty-style interrogation (with…

THE DEVILISH LUCIFER, HIS TWIN BROTHER MICHAEL, their angelic brother Amenadiel and the demon Maze take family squabbling to a whole new level. The four were last seen locked in immortal combat, trading heated words and blows. Cue their almighty father, God, descending from the heavens to intervene, and you have the ultimate dysfunctional family reunion. That’s where Netflix’s Lucifer picks up when the series returns for season 5B this month. The show was supposed to wrap this season until the streaming giant renewed it for a sixth, and final, year. “So much about Lucifer is how much he actually tortures himself, how much he gets in his own way,” showrunner Joe Henderson tells SFX. “This was one final opportunity to explore that dynamic for Lucifer; how much of it…

AFTER MAKING THEIR SMALL screen debut (see our review on page 82), the Sampson clan are returning to comics with Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem, a new 12-issue third volume which finally promises to bring Mark Millar’s intergenerational superhero saga to a dramatic close. “I’ve told a story set in the past and a story set in the present, so I wanted to do one set in the future,” the writer tells Red Alert. “It’s my little nod to the Justice League, the Justice Society and the Legion of Superheroes, where you have essentially the same team in three different time periods. At the same time, it gave me the chance to do something that was dynastic. That made it quite exciting to write, as you can be more adventurous, since every…

Halloween Kills → Yes, we know images of Michael Myers rampaging on Halloween night do tend to follow a theme, but with Halloween Kills having been held back since October 2020 we’re happy to see anything new from the next instalment at this point. In cinemas 15 October. The Suicide Squad → Hype for James Gunn’s superhero misfits movie continues to build, with more sneak peeks making their way out there. But can anything beat that King Shark moment in the trailer? In cinemas 6 August. Stargirl → With an August release date now confirmed, WB and The CW have given fans a first glimpse at the season two big bad – Eclipso, played by Nick Tarabay. Even better, season three has been confirmed. Season two streams from 10 August…

WHATEVER KIND OF 2021 you’re having so far, it’s safe to say that it’s nothing like Zack Snyder’s. First came the release of the “Snyder Cut”, his oft-assumed-mythical four-hour-plus rework of Justice League. And now he’s returning to the genre that made his name with Army Of The Dead – a gloriously gruesome and outrageously entertaining “zombie heist” flick dreamed up at the start of his career. After a well-documented tumultuous and tragic period in his personal and professional lives, it’s safe to say that the director is back – and then some. “It’s cool, it’s fun,” Snyder laughs when SFX puts it to him that he is dominating pop culture in the first half of 2021. “The pandemic kind of makes it all seem, y’know, a little more abstract.…

AMONG THE GRAB BAG OF THOUSANDS of Marvel Comics characters waiting to get called up to fulfill their TV or cinematic destinies, M.O.D.O.K. has always been a bit of a head-scratcher. The creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the disembodied head/supervillain debuted in Tales Of Suspense (1967). Visually, George Tarleton (who was mutated into M.O.D.O.K., the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) has always been the Kirbiest of creations, and his outsized looks and temperament have always made him a tough fit for any grounded adaptations. He’s never played well with others, in any sense. It just took 50 years and writers Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum to figure out that M.O.D.O.K. really can’t share the stage. He’s got to be front and centre; when you humiliate him with…

How much research did you have to do for this project? It gave me a real opportunity to go all the way back to the ’60s and really learn the entire history of the show, and the history of the design as well. It was such a massive treat to design, because I’m designing one space where I’m getting to look into the history of England, or the history of Italy. Then suddenly in the next room I’m designing a spaceship thousands of years from now. What did looking at nearly 60 years of Doctor Who teach you? What I found really amazing and lovely was when I started studying the design features from classic Doctor Who and modern day Doctor Who, I started seeing the similarities. I started seeing…

Would RoboCop-style satire work today? A blowhard reality TV star incumbent of the Oval Office who’d be hilarious if he hadn’t wielded so much terrifying power; the media clogged with vitriolic right wing drivel; political leaders using absurd Orwellian doublespeak… All sound like elements that Neumeier could have considered and rejected in an old script. In 1987, runaway capitalism and abandonment of community in the body politic were exaggerated for the sake of parody. But would something with such incisive comment work today? “Right now, we live in a time where it’s not that it’s not amusing, it’s just on steroids,” is how Neumeier puts it. “Yes, that would be difficult,” Verhoeven adds. “It’s already such a strange time, and an exaggeration of that seems to be impossible. I think…

Triple Trouble RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | TBC | Download (also in select cinemas) Director Chino Moya Cast Johann Myers, Géza Röhrig, Michael Gould, Eric Godon You know how Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketches tend to just fade into the next one, with no punchline as such? This arthouse-appropriate anthology film can feel rather like that, as it slips from one tale to another. We begin with a couple – the first tenants in a new-build apartment block – taking in a neighbour who says he’s been locked out, only for the husband to then be told that no one else has moved in yet… Next, a merchant plots to steal an inventor’s creation, then discovers that his daughter’s been kidnapped. Finally, another couple’s relationship is turned upside down when a…

With Pals like these… RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | U | SVOD Director Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe Cast Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Olivia Colman NETFLIX Originally slated for a 2020 cinema release under the title Connected, this tale of a family battling a robot uprising is heavily influenced by Scott Pilgrim and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse. Every second is drenched in so much visual information you’ll still be spotting jokes on your 20th viewing. Prepare to get the most glorious of headaches. The central theme, mind you, is humdrum: a dad feels rejected by his college-bound daughter, and drags his family on a road trip so they can bond. Thankfully, this coincides with a robocalypse that lifts the film from “so-so” to “laugh until you wee”. That’s because the…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 MAY 2020 | 18 | DVD/download Because frat boys are always gross, the ones in Initiation have a unique system of marking which girls they’ve had sex with: they comment with an exclamation mark on the girls’ social media posts. Harmless? Not when a masked killer with a drill shows up. A slasher with something serious on its mind, Initiation rewards repeat viewings, because the identity of the killer changes the whole tone of the movie. But the inventive and splattery kills make the first watch pretty fun, too. +Extras None.…

Island In The Streams EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1977 | PG | DVD Creator Bruce Lansbury Cast Jared Martin, Ike Eisenmann, Katie Saylor, Roddy McDowall Reputed to snaffle ships and planes, the Bermuda Triangle was a signature slice of ’70s weirdness. This short-lived but nostalgically charged TV series taps into that particular zeitgeist. Pilot episode “Vortex” shipwrecks a scientific research team on an uncharted island where disparate time-streams co-exist, mashed together into a “honeycomb” of stock historical costumes and contemporary futurism: LA’s gleaming Westin Bonaventure hotel doubles for the towers of Atlantium, where the descendants of Atlantis are ruled by a giant disembodied brain. Half the cast members are unceremoniously culled after the first episode, allowing for such colourful substitutions as Katie Saylor’s witchy telepath and Roddy McDowall’s shifty robotics…

Take My Breath Away RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 15 | SVOD Director Alexandre Aja Cast Mélanie Laurent, Mathieu Almaric, Malik Zidi NETFLIX Mélanie Laurent has form when it comes to commanding the camera’s gaze. Tarantino deployed her as the Nazi-baiting Giant Face in Inglourious Basterds, unleashing cinema-sized vengeance in tight close-up. Alexandre Aja uses her visage to equally compelling effect in this high-tech thriller, another entry in an oeuvre of sweaty, knuckle-blading survival tales. As with Aja’s last movie, the premise is all: the kind of tight, arresting pitch custom-built for Hollywood elevators. But if the flooded house in Crawl was a compact thrill-space, Oxygen shrinks the dimensions of its drama still further. “Given the confines, Aja is never less than inventive” “I’m awake in here!” cries Laurent, finding…

The Girl With The Dragon, Sisu EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | PG | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Directors Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada Cast Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Izaac Wang, Gemma Chan Disney gives dragons a My Little Pony-esque makeover in this fun but muddled CG adventure. Warrior princess Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) forms an engaging double act with self-deprecating last dragon Sisu (Awkwafina) as they try to save the fictional land of Kumandra from malevolent clouds that turn everyone they touch to stone. Taking inspiration from the cultures of numerous Southeast Asian countries, the movie’s world looks stunning, while the fight scenes are suitably epic. The use of split-screen and anime sequences – along with the lack of songs – also displays a willingness to shake up the Disney formula.…

New Power Generation UK/US Netflix, streaming now Creator/showrunner Steven S DeKnight/Sang Kim Cast Leslie Bibb, Elena Kampouris, Josh Duhamel, Ben Daniels, Andrew Horton, Mike Wade EPISODES 1.01-1.08 You’d have thought the double whammy of Watchmen and The Boys would have been TV’s last word in deconstructing superhero mythology. Any new show aiming to put an edgy spin on the cape ’n’ cowl brigade had better be sure it has something major to add to the conversation, or it could end up looking like a pale imitation. To be fair, Jupiter’s Legacy, based on the Mark Miller comic, does have something new to say; it just seems weirdly keen on disguising the fact. The series has two parallel storylines. One, set in the 1920s, is the origin story of a first…

Female Trouble UK Sky One/NOW, streaming now Showrunner Julie Gearey Cast Savannah Steyn, Eleanor Tomlinson, Natasha O’Keeffe, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Thomas Turgoose, Imogen Daines EPISODES 1.01-1.08 It’s 40 years since Tarrant, Soolin, Vila and Dayna were gunned down in slow-mo by Federation troopers, and some of us have been dreaming of a revival of Blake’s 7 ever since. There have been numerous false dawns over the last 15 years, with series for Sky and SyFy failing to get off the ground. Intergalactic takes some of the sting out of that. You couldn’t wish for a series that’s more Blake’s 7 without actually being Blake’s 7. It follows a crew consisting mostly of female escaped convicts, on the run from Earth authorities in a stolen prison ship. Their weekly objectives feel cosily…

Architects & Morality RELEASED 27 MAY 533 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Adrian Tchaikovsky Publisher Tor It’s difficult to do the Space War With An Unknowable Enemy interestingly because we’ve seen it so many times, but Adrian Tchaikovsky finds a way with the deployment of a simple, arresting image: his alien menace, the Architects, don’t just destroy planets, they seismically reshape them, with no regard for those who live there. Are they just a particularly driven race of installation artists? No one really knows, and there’s something genuinely unsettling about this – they clearly have a purpose, but what it is remains a mystery. Earth fell victim to the Architects’ attentions, leaving humanity scattered across its colonies, still scarred by a bitter war that they only just survived. Worse, they don’t…

Not your average Joe RELEASED 27 MAY 436 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Natasha Pulley Publisher Bloomsbury Who is Joe Tournier? As The Kingdoms begins he couldn’t tell you himself; struck with amnesia, he becomes conscious on the platform of the Gare du Roi in Londres. It’s 1898, and Joe is a slave in this steelmaking city in England, part of the empire of France. Haunted by visions of a man on a beach, and told that the moments when he’s convinced everything around him is somehow wrong are the result of epilepsy, the arrival of a postcard sent decades earlier leads him to travel to the lighthouse at Eilean Mòr, in the Outer Hebrides. Natasha Pulley’s use of Eilean Mòr is a neat touch; the story of its keepers (who disappeared…

Canon and thrall RELEASED 10 JUNE 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author CJ Carey Publisher Quercus Dystopian alternate histories where the Nazis won the Second World War have a long history within SFF and popular fiction more generally. Generally, this is literature that takes the male perspective on events. And yet – and this is a key idea with which CJ Carey’s feminist take on the genre runs – the Nazis were obsessed with the role of women in society; more specifically, with controlling women. Welcome to a fictional realm that recasts 1953 Blighty as a kind of Nazi Gilead. It’s a world we see from the perspective of Rose Ransom. Living under a highly stratified and patriarchal system, she’s part of the elite Geli caste. Her day-to-day work involves rewriting…

RELEASED 27 MAY 300 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Sammy HK Smith Publisher Solaris Books You don’t need to look hard to find a society where men oppress women – violently, even. There are probably more examples of that happening than not, both around the world and throughout history. So the idea that a dystopian society trying to rebuild itself from the ashes of a catastrophic war would see men using brute strength to claim, brand and then enslave women isn’t exactly implausible, but it’s not interesting either. In Anna, an unnamed protagonist (sometimes called “Anna”) spends a long time trying to avoid getting abused, then a long time being abused, and then a long time trying to escape being abused. It’s exhausting; a grim, grinding account of nastiness that doesn’t…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 158 pages | Hardback Author Daniel Wallace Publisher Titan Books Getting two skyscrapersized Titans to beat the crap out of each other isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. That’s the main thrust of this visually impressive Making Of – subtitled The Art Of The Ultimate Battle Royale – which shows just how far movie monsters have come since Toho Studios unleashed guys in rubber suits on an unsuspecting miniature Tokyo. Director Adam Wingard is joined by numerous members of the production team to explain the thought processes that go into reimagining a pair of cinematic icons – from designing the physics-defying new location of Hollow Earth, to the importance of red (the Titans’ signature colour) in the film’s colour scheme. There’s also backstory on…

RELEASED 20 MAY Publisher Profile Books Writer Val McDermid Artist Kathryn Briggs GRAPHIC NOVEL Look elsewhere if you’re after escapist uplift. In large part, the story Resistance tells is very familiar. That’ll go double if you heard crime writer Val McDermid’s radio version, produced for Radio 4’s Dangerous Visions season in 2017. Centred on journalist Zoe Meadows, it charts how a deadly bacterium transfers from pigs to humans via a food stall at a music festival, spreading globally and eventually bringing civilisation to its knees. Developed in partnership with health charity the Wellcome Trust, it fulfils its educational remit well, accessibly explaining the dangers of antibiotic resistance and the role of big pharma in stymying research. This isn’t the “heart-racing thriller” of the blurb, though – it’s far too talky…

RELEASED 27 MAY Publisher Rebellion Writer Tom Tully Artists Tom Kerr, Francisco Solano López, Colin Page COLLECTION Even in the oddball pantheon of classic British comics, Adam Eterno is one of the stranger propositions. Debuting in the pages of Thunder in 1970, the strip riffs on the legend of the Wandering Jew, its morbid flavour captured in the skull-and-hourglass logo that adorns the first page like a plague warning. Adam is an alchemist’s assistant in 16th century England, impatient to quaff the elixir that will grant eternal life. Betraying his master, he’s cursed “to wander the world through the labyrinths of time”, an outcast figure whose release will only come from a weapon of solid gold. It’s a weird, doomy premise – the hero seeking his own bling-powered death –…

AT THE END OF THE second season of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, those five “lucky” inaugural visitors to the island’s first youth camp were still stuck on a now evacuated Isla Nublar, having recently defeated a deranged big game hunter couple, a family of Baryonyx and a T. rex. Even OG Dr Ian Malcolm would be impressed with their ability to overcome that very adult level of chaos. As season three drops on Netflix with 10 brand new episodes, the main question remains: will these kids finally make it off the island before the show’s narrative catches up with the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? “Look, we know the island ain’t gonna be there forever,” showrunner Scott Kreamer teases Red Alert, alluding to the volcanic eruption which takes place…

IT WAS ONCE COMMON WISDOM IN Hollywood that horror franchises don’t do big numbers. Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th, Saw et al may have their cheerleaders, but box office-wise, they’re small fry next to your Fast & Furious flicks and your Pirates Of The Caribbeans, billion-dollar juggernauts that keep studio execs in Lamborghinis and Mayan Sicar cigars. That was until The Conjuring came along. Few expected James Wan’s 2013 supernatural scarefest to hit like it did. After all, Wan’s previous feature, 2010’s Insidious, had grossed just under $100 million worldwide, which was considered pretty decent for a mid-budget horror. So when The Conjuring ended up as one of the best performing movies of 2013, grossing a whopping $320 million against a $20 million budget, it rewrote…

A CO-OWNER OF independent effects company Milk, Jean-Claude Deguara has worked in visual effects for over 20 years, racking up credits on the likes of Doctor Who, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (for which Milk’s team won a BAFTA) and Good Omens. Pre-production on Intergalactic was well advanced when he boarded, with production designer Mark Geraghty’s team having created concept art for many of the key ships, props and planets. “They were already building the Hemlock, and there were lots of concepts already in play,” Deguara tells SFX. “They had a corridor at the studio, and for every episode all the artwork was there. But it wasn’t, ‘Here’s the concept, get on with it”, it was, ‘This is what we’re thinking’, and then input. And we got our guys on…

There’s been a Starship Troopers reboot in the works since 2016 (2020 saw the news that Tron: Legacy and Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski is on board to direct), and with Verhoeven happily enjoying creative freedom in Holland, he’s not involved with RoboCop Returns. Neumeier and Verhoeven both speak glowingly about working together though, so it’s no surprise that they’re collaborating for a new project. “We’re working on a spy thriller,” says Neumeier. “Whether it’s funny or not is always up for debate, but it’s set in Washington DC, about a young woman who’s spying on a congressman.” Verhoeven describes it as having an element of film noir and being (perhaps unsurprisingly given his oeuvre) “very sexual”. “We’re basically outlining it. It’s something new, but it will also refer to the…

SLICK AND STYLISH, WITH a killer soundtrack to boot, sci-fi comedy Attack The Block established Joe Cornish as a filmmaker full of surprises. By smashing the mundanity of everyday life together with an out-of-this-world alien invasion, it helped redefine what audiences expect of their big-screen heroes, while also introducing us to a future Resistance fighter in star John Boyega. With its neon-toothed nasties and hoodie-clad warriors, Cornish’s polished debut made the jump to late-night cult favourite quicker than you can say “brap brap” – and according to the director, it was just as fun to make as it is to watch. “It was my first movie, so I just did it from the gut. I didn’t really question myself,” says Cornish as the movie celebrates its tenth birthday. Having cut…

Not-so-Flawless Victory RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | TBC | VOD Director Simon McQuoid Cast Lewis Tan, Josh Lawson, Joe Taslim, Tadanobu Asano Fans of the hugely successful Mortal Kombat videogame series have long had mixed feelings about its portrayal in other media, particularly the big screen. Some love the first film (which launched director Paul WS Anderson upon the world), while others find it overly campy and never as violent as they might want. This new version, with Simon McQuoid taking his own debut spin in the director’s chair, aims to correct at least the second part, putting the “Mortal” back in Mortal Kombat. He’s only partially successful. True, the battles are bloodier and the kills more inventive, but our way into the story here is Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, a…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | TBC | SVOD Director Ryan Kruger Cast Gary Green, Chanelle de Jager, Bianka Hartenstein SHUDDER The credits should give you the general idea here: they include the roles “Blowjob King”, “Transgender Sex Worker” and “Vomiting Girl’s Friend”. If anyone had ever thought to turn the music video for The Prodigy’s “Smack The Bitch Up” into a feature, it’d probably be similarly grimy and lurid. Set in Cape Town, it centres on the titular Barry (Gary Green), a junkie taken over by some alien life force. It proceeds to joyride his body about town, through an urban underbelly viewed via Dutch angles and fisheye lenses, getting into one scrape after another (generally involving sex or drugs). Green’s task is basically to do a stiff-legged C-3PO shuffle,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 18 | Download Bruce Davison dominates as a god-fearing patriarch in this patchy thriller. Three teens on a road trip stumble upon a farm where Maggie (Holly Taylor) lives with her father (Davison), mother and sister. But something is up with Dad, and it’s not long before the boys are in fear of their lives. It starts well, but the script dwells too long with the fellas and loses sight of the real horrors – child abuse and parental gaslighting – in favour of a lurid, OTT finale.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 12 | Download Who still uses a manual typewriter? Lisa, that’s who. She’s a writer struggling for inspiration until a trip to Ireland, where she discovers an old diary – and unlocks dark forces that threaten her and husband David. You can’t fault the ambition of this slow-burn paranormal thriller, which takes place over several hundred years, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired, with some whiffy dialogue and a flat daytime-TV aesthetic that kills much of the atmosphere.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Jeff Wamester Cast Stana Katic, Matt Bomer, Elysia Rotaru, Chris Diamantopoulos DC’s latest animated movie anticipates the multiversal shenanigans soon to hit the big screen in live-action form. Our modern-day Flash is hurled to the battle-ravaged Europe of the 1940s, encountering a team of superheroes recruited by none other than Franklin D Roosevelt to fight the Nazi threat. But this isn’t just the past: it’s a parallel Earth, populated by DC’s original Golden Age icons, including a war-hardened Wonder Woman voiced with an audible scowl by Castle’s Stana Katic. The ’40s vibe and stylings keep this feeling fresh and the animation impresses, with kinetic, well-choreographed action scenes and evocatively rendered backdrops. There’s just a hint of much-missed comic book artist…

RELEASED OUT NOW! (VOD and Blu-ray 5 July) 2021 | 15 | SVOD Directors Powell Robinson, Patrick R Young Cast Joey Millin, Madison West, Daniel Abraham Stevens, John Terrell ARROW “Threshold” is the name of the Star Trek: Voyager episode where Janeway and Paris turn into giant newts, and also of a sci-fi TV show pulled before it had all aired. The title may be cursed. In one respect, this no-budget indie is quite an achievement. It was shot entirely using two iPhones running the FiLMiC Pro app, with a crew of three. Aside from one or two moments where the image quality looks a touch dodgy, you wouldn’t guess. From a storytelling point of view, however, it falls flat. A character-led piece, it sees Leo (Joey Millin) coming to…

It was only last issue that we could deliver our verdict on ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 24 May), so we won’t repeat ourselves at length. Short version? “The backstories of Flash and Cyborg are deepened, explored, given genuine emotional weight that gifts the film a heart… A vindication and a redemption.” Buy it on Blu and you get one featurette. The download (out now) adds a second, plus Justice League Grey – yep, a black and white version. (Shrugs). ONE CUT OF THE DEAD HOLLYWOOD EDITION (Blu-ray, 31 May) boosts the package previously available. We loved this one-take Japanese zombie horror, calling it “an ingenious and heartwarming paean to the collaborative nature of filmmaking”. The one new bonus is 57-minute sequel One Cut Of The Dead In Hollywood; set…

RELEASED 26 MAY 15 | 117 minutes Director Haruo Sotozaki Cast Natsuki Hanae, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Satoshi Hino, Akari Kito Screening in both dubbed and subtitled forms, this is the most successful film ever in Japanese cinemas… and we can’t really say why. It’s an enjoyable enough but largely standard anime actioner about, as you could probably guess, heroes slaying demons on a train. It’s also not a standalone story, bridging the first and upcoming second seasons of the Demon Slayer TV series. But it’s easy to discern much of what’s going on, as three young male heroes board a night train (the setting is Japan circa 1920), to find a monster feeding on humans. The central slayer, Tanjiro, is paradoxically a gentle, selfless boy saint. He’s amusingly counterpointed by a…

RELEASED 27 MAY 480 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Christopher Buehlman Publisher Gollancz Horror writer Christopher Buehlman brings a generous dose of darkness with him as he jumps into epic fantasy for the first time. His hero is Kinch Na Shannack, a thief deep in debt to the Takers Guild that trained him in the finer points of pilfering. With a caustic sense of humour and irrepressible streak of cynicism, Kinch could easily have become a glib narrator, but the story digs out depths in the character that aren’t immediately apparent. The plot sees Kinch ordered by the Guild to accompany a knight called Galva on her mission to find a missing queen in a land overrun by invading giants. The worldbuilding is rich and immersive, but Buehlman has the skill…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Hardback/ebook Author AM Strickland Publisher Hodder & Stoughton This should be an anime, one whose aesthetics start in Ancient Greece, before veering off into overblown, overbuilt territory for its architecture, which echoes flesh and bone. If that seems a strange place to start discussing a book, well, the descriptions are one of the strong points. The setting has more personality than most of the characters. Protagonist Rovan is a young woman set to inherit remarkable magical powers, a “bloodline”. The city of Thanopolis is ruled by a royal family that maintains a strong grip on the bloodlines, whose possessors are kept in line by observant ghosts. It’s an intriguing set-up, offering plenty of scope for ghastly situations, and after Rovan is captured things look…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Sarah Pinsker Publisher Head of Zeus Any summary of We Are Satellites’ plot might leave you under the impression that it’s a high-concept near-future thriller. It’s not, though, not really. We would describe it as Hallmark Channel’s attempt at Black Mirror if that didn’t sound absolutely ghastly. But you get the idea: Satellites is a book about family as much as it is about technofear. Val and Julie are the mums of youngsters David and Sophie. David and Julie both take advantage of a new fad: brain implants called pilots, which boost your ability to concentrate on various tasks at once. Sophie can’t have one, as she suffers from seizures, while Val is ideologically opposed. As the years go by and pilots become…

RELEASED 4 MAY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Genevieve Gornichec Publisher Titan Books Loki was a bit of a player back in the day, fathering children all over the place – he even gave birth to an eight-legged horse himself (try telling the kids of today that; they won’t believe you). But not much has been written in the old Norse sagas of Angrboda, who bore three of his offspring: Hel, the queen of, er, Hel; a gigantic snake named Jormungand; and Fenrir, the wolf who helped bring about Ragnarok. In her debut novel, Genevieve Gornichec spins the backstory of Loki’s beloved, a witch and a giant who rather commendably takes birthing snakes and wolves entirely in her stride. Without reams of Angrboda-specific mythology to call upon, Gornichec has done…

RELEASED 10 JUNE 432 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Edward Cox Publisher Gollancz An abundance of ideas compete for space in Edward Cox’s crowded fantasy adventure. The story is set across two parallel versions of the same town – on Earth, Strange Ground By The Skea, and Strange Ground Beneath The Skea in the Realm, a land of magic. In the latter, the ocean hangs in the sky, a potentially intriguing idea that proves to lead nowhere, making no contribution to the plot. Cox’s protagonist is Ebbie, a humble Earth librarian dragged into the dispute for the throne of Strange Ground Beneath The Skea, where the evil Yandira plots to seize the crown from the rightful heir Ghador. The struggle between the pair is a proxy for the contest between two…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Rebellion Writer Alex de Campi Artist Eduardo Ocana COLLECTION Originally appearing in a Regened all-ages issue before being serialised in 2000 AD itself, Full Tilt Boogie is inspired by writer Alex de Campi’s childhood love of classic anime. However, its irreverent tale of a band of intergalactic freebooters also channels Firefly’s offbeat spirit – like the much-loved TV show, Boogie takes its name from their ramshackle space craft. Whether it’s the deep bond linking aspiring bounty hunter Tee, her acerbic grandmother and her incorrigible pet cat – which can mysteriously swallow all manner of objects, including nuclear weapons – or the bitter divisions between spoilt young prince Ifan and his sister, de Campi places the idea of family and its various iterations at the heart of…

On 17 May 2001, season three of Charmed ended with a humdinger of a cliffhanger. Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) is trapped in the underworld, while her sisters Prue (Shannen Doherty) and Piper (Holly Marie Combs) have been left for dead by a demonic assassin. Like every Charmed season finale, the episode ends with the manor’s stained-glass front doors magically closing. This time, its windows shatter. Charmed was never the same again. “All Hell Breaks Loose” marked not only the departure of Prue, but also Doherty, who played the character for the show’s first three seasons but quit during the summer hiatus, amid reports of a cast feud. Whatever really happened behind the scenes, the third season finale provides one heck of a farewell for Doherty and her character – and, fittingly…