Inhaltsverzeichnis für November 2022 in SFX

HALO SPACEBOY Rob Graham, email Halo on Paramount+ might be the best videogame adaptation of all time. A lot of fun with a good cast and a solid and enjoyable sci-fi series. Netflix’s Resident Evil, on the other hand, while at least better than the last couple of movies was average at best. Not surprised it got cancelled. While the Sonic The Hedgehog movies seem to have broken the curse of the videogame movies, there could be potential in Halo as a classic sci-fi TV series. SFX: Surely it’s all been downhill since Kylie wielding a bazooka in Street Fighter? PUNK’S NOT DEAD Ruth Lewis, email Re: review of Babel by RF Kuang [SFX 356]. I wouldn’t call Babel an anti-steampunk novel. Rather, it does what steampunk should but often doesn’t.…

“EVERYTHING I WRITE IS IN the genre defined by my name,” said novelist and poet Peter Straub. “Everything I write is Straubian before it is anything else.” Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Straub taught himself to read by memorising the words in comic books and reciting them to neighbourhood kids as they congregated on the front steps. At seven he was struck by a car and had to learn how to walk again, an experience that left him anxious, prone to nightmares and with a premature grasp of his own mortality. A professional writing career began with two stabs at mainstream novels in the early ’70s, later dismissed as “pretty bad”. 1975’s Julia marked a move into the supernatural and was brought to the screen as The Haunting Of Julia in…

Here we are again! Thanks for doing this one last time… • Are you kidding? This is my legacy. This is my final stand. This is the culmination of a long fucking time! You always say that, though. • Yeah. [Laughs] I’ve seen the meme of me with one of those potato faces, Laurie Strode at 80, and it’s funny. So I never say never, but it does feel very much like a conclusion. Rumour is that Laurie faces multiple threats in this movie… • There’s a troubled person in Haddonfield, who Laurie also comes in contact with. The thing about trauma and victimhood and the reaction from everyone in a town to that level of violence – it breeds its own power. It really overtakes everyone in a town.…

IN THE FIVE YEARS THAT DIRECTOR Mike Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy have been making horror movies and series for Netflix under their Intrepid Pictures banner, they’ve been focused on telling adult stories, from Gerald’s Game to Midnight Mass. But their latest production marks a shift to a younger audience, with their adaptation of Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel The Midnight Club. From the mid-eighties through the ’90s, Pike (a pen name for Kevin McFadden) was a one-man bestseller machine, writing a library’s worth of smart, supernatural/horror titles for YA readers. One of his fans was Flanagan, who wrote a spec script adaptation of The Midnight Club while in college. A tale of terminally ill teens who bond over telling scary stories while they reside in a hospice, it…

HORROR WITH A LARGE SIDE OF nostalgia has been all the rage since Stranger Things made it cool for both Gen Z and Gen X to love the ’80s. It’s in that same spirit that Grady Hendrix’s 2016 horror/comedy novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism now comes to life for the Prime Video movie adaptation. Set in 1988, both the book and the movie are centred on the friendship of South Carolina teens Abby (Elsie Fisher) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller), who are navigating growing up in a small town, the discomfort of a broadening friend group and an unexpected demon possession. You know, everyday stuff. Directed by Damon Thomas (Penny Dreadful), My Best Friend’s Exorcism toes that delicate line of balancing comedy with horror, as if The Exorcist had run straight…

CINEMA MADE THE undead immortal. You hope they appreciate the irony: sunlight reduces vampires to dust but projector light has kept them alive for generations of moviegoers. While John Polidori’s 1819 novella The Vampyre popularised the idea of the blood-thirsting revenant, it’s film rather than literature that has fed our fascination with these creatures. And it’s film that has evolved and embellished their myth for over a century now. In fact 1922’s Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens (A Symphony Of Horror) marks the first time a vampire is destroyed by the power of light, a wrinkle entirely absent from traditional folklore. Nosferatu is a landmark but it’s not the first vampire film. So what is? Hard to say. The dawn of filmmaking is notoriously tricky to map. No prints survive…

FOR A LITTLE OVER A DECADE, AMC Networks cornered the episodic horror market with their global hit franchise The Walking Dead. Starting in 2010, the series based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book spawned three spin-off series (with others still in development) and is just now coming to a close after an impressive 11 seasons. Looking to expand its horror empire, AMC has now turned to the beloved works of bestselling gothic horror novelist Anne Rice, creating series based on her Mayfair Witches and Vampire Chronicles books. Executive producer/showrunner Rolin Jones (The Exorcist) is launching the universe with Interview With The Vampire, which takes its name from the first book in Rice’s Chronicles. The primary characters driving the series’ narrative are two of the best-known vampires of modern literature (Dracula aside):…

IF YOU KNOW MICHAEL Giacchino’s name, it’s likely because of his Academy Award and BAFTA-winning compositions for some of the biggest cinematic franchises in the world, including Star Wars, Star Trek, Jurassic World and several Marvel Studios films. But Giacchino actually went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a view to directing, and while his music career took off, he never stopped wanting to make films, as he did from childhood to college. His longstanding collaboration with Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios opened the door for him to direct their very first Disney+ special presentation Werewolf By Night. Giacchino tells SFX he officially reignited his directing ambitions in 2018 with the short film Monster Challenge, starring Patton Oswalt. “Then Alex Kurtzman asked me to direct…

SOME NINE YEARS AFTER HE FIRST hacked and slashed his way onto cinema screens, serial killer Art the Clown (embodied with maniacal glee by David Howard Thornton) is back. In Terrifier 2 he has returned to stalk and slash his way through the town of Miles County once more in director Damien Leone’s bigger, bolder and altogether bloodier sequel. This return should come as no surprise to fans who saw Art unnaturally spring back to life in the closing moments of the first film. “I figured that it’s sort of inevitable that if we’re going to continue making these films that Art would eventually have to become supernatural,” says Leone. “All of the great slashers eventually do. You can’t get to part eight of a series, or whatever, without having…

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER… Soon the era of the Thirteenth Doctor – and producer Chris Chibnall – will draw to a close in “The Power Of The Doctor”, a feature-length Doctor Who special which also marks 100 years of the BBC. It’s a story that will not only feature the Doctor’s regeneration, but include Flux’s Vinder, UNIT’s Kate Stewart, Bradley Walsh’s Graham, Lone Cyberman Ashad, the Daleks and Sacha Dhawan’s Master. But none of the above – not even the prospect of regenerative energy blasting from Jodie Whittaker’s coat sleeves – is what’s really set fandom abuzz. That’s the return of ’80s companions Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Tegan (Janet Fielding), as revealed in the teaser trailer at the end of Easter special “Legend Of The Sea Devils”. It’s a turn of…

▸ UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▸ Showrunner Akin Omotoso ▸ Cast Sthandile Nkosi, Bonko Khoza, Nomalanga Nkosi, Zamani Mbatha EPISODES 1.01-1.06 African folklore forms the exotic backstory to a series set against the considerably less exotic backdrop of a Johannesburg township. The contrast between the surreal, nature-worshipping imagery of the show’s fantasy worlds and the harsh, often violent reality of life in South Africa’s poorest areas gives interesting extra spice to some otherwise pretty standard Chosen One supernatural shenanigans. Told using dialogue that’s predominantly in Zulu, it’s the story of a young township woman, Ntsiki Gasa, who discovers that she’s the latest reincarnation of a Brave One, mystical beings created by the Wise Ones of the Tree of Life to protect the Tree. When dodgy developers plan to rip down the…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 18+ | SVOD ▸ Director Damon Thomas ▸ Cast Elsie Fisher, Amiah Miller, Rachel Ogechi Kanu, Christopher Lowell PRIME “Hell is a teenage girl.” Yeah, that’s a line from Jennifer’s Body, but it feels just as apt concerning this adaptation of a Grady Hendrix novel that’s also about two teenaged BFFs being torn apart by demonic possession. After a disastrous girls’ weekend away, Abby (Elsie Fisher) knows something’s up with Gretchen (Amiah Miller), but no one else seems to notice. So when Gretchen’s newfound meanness turns life-threatening, it’s down to Abby to bring her back from the dark side. Considering how deliberately cinematic Hendrix’s novels are, it’s surprising it’s taken this long for one of them to make it to the screen. My Best…

When the Justice League are kidnapped, Superman’s mutt Krypto and Bat-Hound-in-waiting Ace assemble a team including a pig, a turtle and a squirrel to rescue them in DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS (Blu-ray/DVD, 10 October). Blu-ray bonuses include deleted scenes, a guide to Easter eggs and kid-friendly fare like a bit on drawing Krypto. We said: “Pixar charm is in short supply… seems less a child-friendly spin-off than a cynical exercise in brand extension.” George Romero completists will feel the urge to own THE AMUSEMENT PARK (17 October, Blu-ray/DVD/download), though this 1975 short (54 minutes) is just an interesting curio. Commissioned by the Lutherans to encourage volunteering with the elderly, it sees Martin star Lincoln Maazel patronised, ignored and menaced in an allegorical amusement park. Extras include commentary by the assistant…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Paul McAuley ▸ Publisher Gollancz Paul McAuley has moved in recent years between noirinflected SF, climate change near-future fiction and hard SF – respectively Something Coming Through, Austral and War Of The Maps. If there’s a unifying thread, it’s the theme of people struggling in the aftermath of civilisational breakdown. But rather than write dreary dystopias, McAuley is interested in what happens next after things go awry. This idea is to the fore in Beyond The Burn Line – the title a reference to evidence of the Anthropocene left hundreds of thousands of years ago by mankind’s demise. Mother Earth has recovered and its primary species are peaceful, honourable and in the early stages of creating an industrial civilisation. It’s…

WITH MARVEL firming up the rights to the character in 2013, Miracleman is finally set to make his big comeback proper this month, four decades after Alan Moore, Garry Leach and Alan Davis’s seminal reinvention of Mick Anglo’s British superhero debuted in Warrior magazine in 1982. As teased at the tantalising climax of last Christmas’s Timeless one-shot, first up is a special zero issue, before Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham return to The Silver Age, a six-issue volume which was infamously left incomplete after Eclipse Comics’ bankruptcy in 1994. “We’re always looking for awesome ways to make every book special and when [Marvel Executive Editor] Tom Brevoort was building Timeless and we knew we were doing Miracleman in 2022, it just felt right,” explains editor Nick Lowe. “Neil and Mark…

EVERYONE’S ENTITLED TO ONE GOOD scare at Halloween – but with 10 new haunted houses and five scare zones at Universal Orlando’s holiday celebration each year, you’ll be getting more frights than you can count… Every horror fan should experience Halloween Horror Nights at least once – it’s more than just jump scares, it’s immersive horror art where you find yourself in original nightmares and recreations of iconic genre classics. This year the event returns to Haddonfield 1978 with John Carpenter’s Halloween. SFX went behind the scenes… This is a rare occasion where a haunted house returns – it was originally staged in 2014, where it was located in a large tent. The new version includes additional and updated scenes. This production is in Soundstage 23 – a larger facility…

DON’T LOOK AT THE clock if you wake up with a start in the middle of the night. Chances are it’s the Devil’s Hour, between 3.00am and 4.00am – specifically at 3.33am, a time where things can cross between realms and the unexplainable happens. Just turn over and tell yourself it’s only a dream… Child protection officer Lucy (Jessica Raine) has been plagued by nightmares her entire life, waking at 3.33am with a jolt and a feeling of déjà vu. Her eight-year-old son Isaac, meanwhile, is an emotionless husk – unable to enjoy music or food, or even to laugh or cry. Unknown to Lucy, a murderer – Gideon (Peter Capadi) – is watching from afar and his victims are linked to the mother who’s living her life on a…

WHEN SALLY GREEN’S HALF Bad scooped the 2015 Waterstones Teen Book Prize, it was only a matter of time before there was a bidding war for the screen rights. In the end, it was The Imaginarium wot won it. The production company set up in 2011 by actor/director Andy Serkis and producer Jonathan Cavendish had come across the book on its publication in 2014 and, in Cavendish’s words, both of them had “fallen in love with the world”. The plan was to turn the first of Green’s fantasy trilogy into a feature. Writer Joe Barton, whom The Imaginarium were then working with on horror flick The Ritual, duly crafted a screenplay, only for nothing to come of it. “So I kinda put it away and forgot about it,” Barton tells…

Did Hammer tell you that your films were inspired by Carmilla, the first female vampire story? Nobody explained anything. I was just a “dim dolly” as far as they were concerned. Whatever was being discussed in Hammer House in Soho was never translated into paying respect to the “dim dollies” that they were employing. They’d just tell you to get on with it. There was no intellectualising at all, which is a shame in retrospect. You were memorably seduced by an undead Yutte Stensgaard in Lust For A Vampire. I can vividly remember filming that scene. They’d say, “This is for the Japanese audience” or “This is for the Scandinavian audience,” and they’d do all these varying degrees of nudity. It was pretty much a closed set and it was…

CHILD’S PLAY 2 (1990) Directed by original co-writer John Lafia, this solid sequel is set two years after the events of the original. When his mother is incarcerated after corroborating his killer doll story, Andy (a returning Alex Vincent) is placed in foster care with gutsy teenager Kyle (Christine Elise). It isn’t long before Chucky tracks him down, culminating in a nasty showdown at the doll assembly line. CHILD’S PLAY 3 (1991) Set eight years later, Child’s Play 3 sees future Jimmy Olsen Justin Whalin playing a teenage Andy who’s sent to a military academy. The impressive animatronics, performances and confined setting ramp up the suspense. A scene from the film would later infamously (and unjustifiably) be linked to the motivation behind the tragic murder of James Bulger. BRIDE OF…

AFTER 35 YEARS AND 10 MOVIES, the Hellraiser franchise has been resurrected by David Bruckner, director of The Night House. With writer and creator Clive Barker on board, it marks a return to the original source material but also a departure to new territories inspired by Barker’s novel. SFX solves the puzzle box… What was the story of Hellraiser returning? • Spyglass had picked up the rights from Dimension. David Goyer wrote a treatment while I was working on The Night House. Having come off of that movie, that has some Hellraiser-like themes, it only made sense that they approached the team and asked us “What will you do with this?” I actually didn’t know that The Night House was loosely based on a Hellraiser pitch that the writers had…

▸ RELEASED 28 OCTOBER TBC | 107 minutes ▸ Director Zach Cregger ▸ Cast Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgard, Justin Long Watch the trailer for Barbarian and you think you know what you’re going to get: a tense red flag simulator, as a woman (Georgina Campbell) books an Airbnb in a crummy neighbourhood, only to find out that it’s already occupied by a seemingly innocent and charming man who also appears to have booked it for the same dark and stormy night. So far, so “Absolutely not, I’ll just find a hotel, even if you are Bill Skarsgård, thank you.” And sure, the menace of that premise is here as you scream for her to leave instead of bringing in her luggage, but Barbarian, well… it takes some unexpected turns. For the…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 10 OCTOBER 2022 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD ▸ Director Jim Archer ▸ Cast David Earl, Chris Hayward, Louis Brealey, Jamie Michie Eccentrics come about third, behind tea and queuing, on the list of Stuff British People Love. That alone should secure this gently humorous faux-documentary a place in the nation’s heart. Chris Hayward is the middleaged Brian, whose chipper facade can’t mask his loneliness. His hobby is making inventions Vic Reeves might have brainstormed: the egg belt; trawler nets for shoes. All quite useless… until he decides to build a robot and creates Brian, an AI with a washing machine body and a mannequin’s head. Their relationship – part father/son, part owner/dog – is hugely endearing. So is Brian’s dialogue: a compendium of whimsical British idioms, all…

▸ RELEASED 11 OCTOBER 464 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Alan Moore ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury It’s probably not wildly unfair to describe Alan Moore’s literary output to date as “intimidating”. His first book Voice Of The Fire explored the lives of numerous characters in the author’s beloved hometown Northampton over the course of some 6,000 years. 2016’s Jerusalem, meanwhile, took a decade to write and easily breezed past the million word mark. This collection of eight short stories and a novel offers perhaps a rather more approachable way into his writing. Opening story “Hypothetical Lizard” is the oldest tale included (indeed, with the exception of this and “Cold Reading” from 2009, most of the writing here is either new or very recent). Penned in 1987 for one of the Liavek…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Comics ▸ Editor Nick Lowe ▸ Artists Various SPECIAL ISSUE Anyone wondering if they missed the other 900-ish issues of Amazing Fantasy can rest easy – Marvel is playing its sneaky renumbering game, cooking the books so that this new anthology special counts as a 1000th issue, when it’s actually a celebration of Spider-Man’s 60th anniversary. These bumper-sized anthologies can often be a mixed bag, but Marvel manages a good hit-rate among the eight selfcontained tales here, along with a properly star-studded creative line-up. The biggest name is Neil Gaiman, who delivers “With Great Power…”, a semi-autobiographical salute to Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko that’s both very charming and the most absurdly Neil Gaiman-esque thing he could possibly have done. Elsewhere, The Thick Of It creator…

My favourite season is finally here – Halloween! To be fair, “spooky season” begins for me on 1 September. Things are bad enough without denying yourself some little extra pleasures in life. To celebrate, here’s our biggest issue in ages, honouring horror over a mammoth 66 pages – there’s just so many new things landing ahead of 31 October. No tricks, all treats. The whole section is topped and tailed with two iconic movie monsters, Michael Myers and Pinhead. It’s been even more of a joy than usual and the team have really pulled out all the stops to make this happen. Tell your friends to get a copy! But even with all those extra pages, there’s still a slew of horror that we’ve not been able to bring you,…

AMEGA CRUISE SHIP, somewhere in the middle of the ocean. A missing crew member, and a brother who will stop at nothing to discover the truth. A masked killer, slaughtering a crew of teenagers in increasingly grisly ways… No, that isn’t the preview of the latest Hollywood horror blockbuster; it’s the premise of Wreck, a six-episode black comedy slasher series from writer Ryan J Brown. And it’s British. Hang on… a British slasher TV show? No one could have been more surprised than Brown himself. “I’ve always found that horror in general is the most difficult sell in the UK for television,” he tells SFX. “I was constantly told commissioners were not really looking for that, but I kept ploughing away.” Brown, who was awarded a BAFTA New Writing Prize…

AN AMERICAN TRADITION with its own fanbase, Spirit Halloween is a chain of stores that take over vacant retail spaces in the run-up to October. But this year they’re breaking out and bringing the screams to screens with their very first film. Spirit Halloween: The Movie sees three teenagers spend the night of 31 October inside the store – but they’re not alone… The restless spirit (see what they did there?) of town meanie Alec Windsor (Christopher Lloyd) is determined to find his way back to mortal soil! Director David Poag sat down with SFX to talk through animatronic troubles and cinematic inspirations. Where did the idea for this movie originally come from? • Billie [Bates] wrote the script years prior – it had completed some festival circuits. She’s Australian…

ANDREW HINDERAKER remembers the day that Let The Right One In entered his life. A long-time fan of the 2008 Swedish horror film, he was at a meeting at Tomorrow Studios (Cowboy Bebop, Snowpiercer) for another project when they mentioned, almost in passing, that they had the rights to John Ajvide Lindqvist’s cult novel. “As politely as possible,” Hinderaker tells SFX, “I told them, ‘I’m really not going to hear anything else you say in this meeting!’” When news dropped in September 2021 that Showtime had okayed a small screen adaptation of Let The Right One In, it was met with plenty of raised eyebrows. TV shows based on critically adored films can go either two ways: they can be a Cobra Kai or a Blade. Any production company with…

RUNNING ORIGINALLY FOR 73 issues between 1975 and 1976, kids’ comic Monster Fun returned earlier this year thanks to Rebellion, introducing a new generation to its hilarious horror with a bi-monthly series. Now it’s celebrating the scary season with the Monster Fun Halloween Spooktacular 2022, which features a roster of old characters drawn not only from the original Monster Fun but from across IPC’s classic comics stable. “When I got to write Kid Kong, it was really just a case of understanding the concept, which is that Kid is essentially a three-ton toddler with all the appetites and extreme overreactions that come with that,” laughs writer Alec Worley. “We’ve developed Gran a little more, as she’s one of those formidable, unflappable, working-class old ladies who’d lived through the Blitz and…

AFTER THE SUCCESS OF LAST YEAR’S anthology Chilling Adventures Of Sorcery, Archie Comics is marking 2022’s spooky season with the inaugural Archie Horror Month Of Mayhem, unleashing four new titles – Chilling Adventures Presents Weirder Mysteries, Chilling Adventures Of Salem, Return Of Chilling Adventures In Sorcery and the Young Adult title Fear The Funhouse – that see all manner of grisly creatures and otherworldly beings descend on Riverdale. “We wanted to go big for Halloween this year,” says editor Jamie L Rotante. “Editorial came up with the Month Of Mayhem moniker, some fun ideas to span different genres and styles of horror, and from there it quickly became a full-on comic event, which we’re hoping becomes a tradition associated with Archie Comics for years to come.” AAAAAARCHIE The Archie Horror…

THE APOCALYPTIC ZOMBIE – sorry, Walker – drama reaches its conclusion this month after a mammoth 11 seasons over 12 years and 177 episodes. But it’s not really the end – with several spin-off series either currently airing (Fear The Walking Dead and Tales Of The Walking Dead) or in production (Daryl, The Walking Dead: Dead City and the untitled Rick and Michonne series). But it does still feel like the end of an era… SFX sat down for a (sort of) farewell with the producers of The Walking Dead, Angela Kang and Greg Nicotero, and Chief Content Officer of the Walking Dead Universe, Scott Gimple. What’s it like being so close to the finishing line of the final eight episodes? Angela Kang: It’s surreal, because it took a long…

MOST ACTORS PLAYING superheroes don’t look like superheroes until they go through a rigorous training regime and step into their expensively tailored super-togs. Before he showed up as Ant-Man, for example, Paul Rudd was better known for bringing the aroma of Sex Panther when Ron Burgundy’s Channel 4 news team assembled. Chris Pratt, meanwhile, made his name as the slobby lead singer of Mouse Rat in Parks And Recreation before guarding the galaxy as Star-Lord. Dwayne Johnson is not most actors. In fact, if ever there was a movie star precision engineered to fill a skin-tight spandex suit, it’s the artist sometimes known as the Rock. Obviously there’s that physique, honed over a couple of decades in the rings of WWE. But there’s also the grin, the mastery of the…

ALL WRITERS HAVE THEIR PROCESS. SOME are planners; some set off without necessarily knowing where they’re going. George Saunders belongs in the latter category, but in a very particular way. He likens his approach to “procedural pointillism”, after a post-Impressionist painting technique in which images are made up from small dots of paint. Saunders edits and re-edits his prose. “What I’ll do is take a given story and then go crazy on one section of it, try to perfect it,” he explains. “Then, if I do that, it’ll start telling me what the next section needs to do, and so on.” As to how this works in practice, the short stories in Saunders’s new collection Liberation Day resonate with each other without being thematically linked in a conventional sense. This…

▸ SCREENING DATES 25-29 AUGUST With 74 features shown across the horror weekend, it’d take a supplement to cover everything screened at Frightfest, but here’s our pick of 10 notable films which you’ll be waiting a little while yet to see in cinemas/via VOD. Stylish, Shudder-bound slasher A Wounded Fawn mixes Greek mythology with giallo thrills. Serial killer Bruce (Josh Ruben) takes his next potential victim, art dealer Meredith (Sarah Lind), to a cabin in the woods, where things take a turn for the strange. Very much a film of two halves, it starts out as pretty but predictable, before taking a turn for the psychedelic in a bizarre second half. A grotty love letter to ’90s backwater America that’s so visceral you can almost taste the hamburger grease, Candy…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 15 | SVOD ▸ Director Matt Sobel ▸ Cast Naomi Watts. Cameron Crovetti, Nicholas Crovetti, Peter Hermann PRIME While there’s nothing seriously wrong with this English-language remake of Austrian filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2014 film Ich Seh, Ich Seh (I See, I See), it is, as is often the case, an ultimately pointless exercise. Naomi Watts is great as the sinister titular mommy, an actress recovering from plastic surgery with a face bound in bandages. Her adorable twin sons suspect something is amiss and that the woman claiming to be their mother is an evil imposter. For those who love a twist, this one is a doozy, but the film sticks to recreating the sharp turns of the original rather than building…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 586 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Stephen Baxter ▸ Publisher Gollancz It’s safe to say that nobody does massive, epoch-spanning Hard SF quite like Stephen Baxter. He’s a writer known for his inventive speculation and serious science, and his latest novel kicks off with 22nd-century astronaut John Hackett about to start an interstellar round-trip that – thanks to relativistic lightspeed – will catapult him five million years into the future. The book also follows Mela, an inhabitant of one of the “Thousand Earths”, a land that’s facing eventual and inescapable destruction. There are only 30 years left until the unstoppable Tide consumes everything, and soon Mela has to survive in a dangerous world of scarce resources and brutal hardships. It takes most of the novel for…

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT The Making Of The Classic Film ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 159 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Joe Fordham ▸ Publisher Titan Books • Eighteen interviewees here. No Patrick Stewart or Brent Spiner, but the likes of Jonathan Frakes and Alice Krige more than compensate. • Draws some interesting revelations from the producers. Brannon Braga met with Nicolas Roeg, and also HR Giger – who priced himself out of designing the Borg by expecting a cool million! • Includes plenty of neat concept sketches: the Enterprise-E, the Borg Queen, the Vulcan ship… • There’s some good behind-the-scenes photos too, especially those of the Borg Queen’s iconic entry (inspired by The Brain That Wouldn’t Die). • Fun fact: for a giggle, they put action-figure voiceboxes of Picard and…