SFX -julkaisun February 2026 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

“GHOSTWATCHERS? PIPESPHOBES? There’s never been the one nickname for everyone, you know?” The observation belongs to Rich Lawden, and if we are to agree upon the name, he has a claim to be the world’s pre-eminent “ghostwatcher”. Not only is Lawden responsible for the 2012 documentary Ghostwatch: Behind The Curtains, but he’s assembled a new Blu-ray edition, which sounds like it will be the definitive way to view Ghostwatch in the future – one which attempts to recapture what it was like to watch that original broadcast. The release is the culmination of an obsession that started on Halloween night, 1992. “The three of us watched it together – myself, my mother and my father,” he tells SFX. “I was the kid in the middle of these two grown-ups. Almost…

✿ ELEVEN Amy Parris: I have to consider the shoot going the entire year in Atlanta, Georgia, where the hots and colds are extreme. I know these actors are going to be wearing these outfits all season, and Millie [Bobby Brown] in particular has a lot of physical activity indoors and outdoors. I had to think of an outfit that would keep her warm but not be too hot, and that is a very hard balance. It has to be comfortable. So the sweats were really important. The shoes were custom-made by Nike and they are a recreation of an ’87. They are high and help protect her ankle when she’s running. Then the T-shirt with the sweatshirt on top, it’s layers that are comfortable, but not too hot, and…

▸ RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 15 | 91 minutes ▸ Director Julia Jackman ▸ Cast Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, Nicholas Galitzine, Amir El-Masry Brutally regimented patriarchal societies and the revolutionary power of storytelling, same-sex relationships and gender fluidity all collide in Julia Jackman’s whimsical fable, which finds the attention of neglected bride Cherry (It Follows’ Maika Monroe) torn between the smooth, slinky Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine), trying to seduce anything in sight, and Emma Corrin’s dutiful, crafty and narrative-weaving maid Hero. Set in a fantastical world conjured by a child, but warped by her father (Richard E Grant), 100 Nights Of Hero has production and costume design to die for, a nice line in sly humour, and good work from its leads, but does sometimes fall foul of tones that clash more…

▸ RELEASED 30 JANUARY 18 | 89 minutes ▸ Director Johannes Roberts ▸ Cast Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Miguel Torres Umba Trouble comes to paradise in the form of a rabid chimp in Primate. When Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returns to her Hawaiian home with her friends in tow to see her deaf father (The Mandalorian’s Troy Kotsur), she finds the domesticated family pet has gone ape. Rabies (aka hydrophobia) gives room for a neat twist on survival horror. If Ben the chimp is afraid of water, where else to shelter for the group but in a swimming pool? Ben has learned rudimentary language which he expresses via a keyboard too, making him a sinister and unpredictable foe. This is another strong offering from British director Johannes Roberts, who…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2026 | N/A | Digital Anyone with dental trauma will want to avoid this one – although, to be fair, so will fans of competent filmmaking. This micro-budget British tale of a gummy psycho killer is almost fascinatingly incompetent. Its script is perfunctory, its editing baggy, its sound mix chaotic and the acting awkward. Somehow, the lighting is very professional. That one redeeming quality, combined with an utterly unhinged premise (a toothless killer! Obsessed with teeth-shaped toys!) makes it oddly compelling. Rubbish, but endearing rubbish.…

▸ RELEASED 2 FEBRUARY 2025 | 15 | Digital Though based on a 1986 horror of the same name, this reimagining bears practically no similarity to it, barring a scene of a woman trapped in a scalding shower. That centred on a ouija board; here it’s a 17th century pendulum board – and this time there’s actually a witch, who uses it as a means of resurrection. The vibrant New Orleans setting is also new. This being 2026, it’s bloodier too, with copious VFX, and the leads all look like models. Some may consider that an upgrade, but the cheesy original had more charm.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | N/A | Digital ▸ Director Stimson Snead ▸ Cast Samuel Dunning, Felicia Day, Danny Trejo, Keith David Milking laughs from the finer points of quantum mechanics may be a challenge. But as this quirky indie knows, the laws of causality lie at the very heart of comedy. Samuel Dunning is the titular Tim – no fewer than 17 Tims, in fact, as the credits testify – a boffin determined to break the time barrier, if not reality itself. His experiments spawn a series of doppelgängers, most of whom are inclined to blow each other’s heads off, just to test the truth of paradox theory. Along the way Tim’s also targeted by hitmen, and becomes romantically entangled with Felicia Day’s radio producer. Powered by concepts…

▸ RELEASED 12 FEBRUARY 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author AM Shine ▸ Publisher Head of Zeus Lying off the west coast of Ireland, Croaghnakeela isn’t a place to spend a holiday. At least not in the fictionalised version portrayed in AM Shine’s latest novel, a study of what happens when secrets fester. Instead, it’s shown as “an island of lost dreams”, a place where children are notable by their absence and an ageing population gets by as best they can while trying not to think about the past. It’s a forbidding place, yet it draws a bookseller, Grace, who receives a call from the island’s priest after her biological mother dies. A young woman who was adopted and knows little about her origins, she ignores the horror flick 101…

▸ RELEASED 12 FEBRUARY 384 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Paul McAuley ▸ Publisher Gollancz We are living through a decade when the literary establishment seems increasingly fascinated with the techniques of science fiction. No wonder. In the era of Trump, climate change and huge technological change, science fiction offers a ready-made tool kit to grapple with what lies just ahead. One result here is that those who say they don’t like SFF will tackle a new slipstream novel by Ian McEwan, while remaining sniffy about “genre”. It’s a shame, because they miss so much. For example, the work of Paul McAuley, whose latest novel conjures up a Britain where climate change, extreme weather events and ecological breakdown are day-to-day realities, even mundane facets of life. At the centre of…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author KJ Parker ▸ Publisher Orbit It’s hard to shake the notion that KJ Parker – Tom Holt writing under his preferred pseudonym – is a cynic. The protagonist of Sister Svangerd is not the titular nun who works as an assassin for the Holy Mother Church, but her mission partner Brother Desiderius. Dispatched to assassinate a troublesome princess, the pair become entangled with rival factions fighting to control the church, while delegates keep being murdered by Walkers – nigh-on indestructible revenants from Desiderius’s homeland. Brother Desiderius is a bundle of contradictions – an atheist with enthusiasm for doctrinal minutiae. The plot hinges on the threat of a schism within the church following the discovery of a set of rare scrolls.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Rebecca Orwin ▸ Publisher Puffin In a post-apocalyptic world – possibly somewhere in northern England, although we don’t find out for sure – a small seaside town struggles to survive. Enclosed by poisoned land, their crops are on the verge of failing, which means that their only food source may soon have to come from the sea. Unfortunately for the brave fisherfolk who sail out with their nets, the waves are patrolled by huge, deadly monsters who don’t always let them return. Brought up to fear and hate these sea-beasts, young Sunny is in for a shock when she finds a baby monster caught in a snare. Torn between letting it die or saving it, she follows her heart, and…

▸ RELEASED 3 FEBRUARY 304 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Molly O’Neill ▸ Publisher Orbit Molly O’Neill’s debut novel Greenteeth was full of the folklore and mythology of the British Isles, and the author’s affection for the source material shone through. Her second, though set hundreds of years before, burns with that love. The Nightshade of the title is Mallt Y Nos, a goddess charged with helping souls move on towards the afterworld, Annwn. The Oak is Belis, daughter of queen Boudica. But Boudica is dead, while Belis’s sister Cati is trapped near death, her soul departed from her still-living body. The same spell has taken Mallt’s powers, leaving her human and mortal – and souls of the island unshepherded. Mallt and Belis travel to Annwn to attempt to release Cati…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Rebellion ▸ Writer Graham Baker ▸ Artist Jordi Bernet COLLECTION Meet Rollo Stones and Danny Charters, daring adventurers from a 40th century where chaps still smoke pipes. Employed as fact-checkers, they use time travel to zap themselves into history and test the veracity of assorted myth-encrusted museum exhibits. As a sharply observed speech bubble has it, “Wow! What a weird way to earn a living!” Originally serialised in the pages of British weekly Smash! in 1966, this pulpy strip predates TV’s The Time Tunnel by five months, but shares the setup of a time-hopping male duo – not to mention a concentric swirl to represent fourth-dimensional travel. It’s also many orders of magnitude crazier than even the mind of Irwin Allen could conjure. Take…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Bad Idea ▸ Writer Mike Carey ▸ Artist Jonathan Wayshak ISSUES 1-6 With issue one’s references to Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer, Mike Carey perhaps acknowledges he’s on familiar territory with this six-parter, although its recently orphaned young protagonists are actually Necratil – apex predators who feed off other species, including bloodsuckers. The vampire classic Cul-De-Sac most resembles is Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 film Near Dark. The story takes the form of a road movie as the kids, drawn from three families, hit the highway, pursued both by the vampire hunters who murdered their respective parents and by a vampiric Federal agent turned ferocious bat lady, all either knowingly or unknowingly in the employ of Mafia-style vampire clans. This is perhaps Carey’s most straightforwardly horror series.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher IDW Publishing ▸ Writers Dan Watters, Tom Scioli, James Stokoe ▸ Artists Morgan Beem, Tom Scioli, James Stokoe ISSUES 1-3 Sixty-seven years after its first broadcast, The Twilight Zone remains hugely influential television, and now IDW are having a go at reviving the mood and style of the legendarily spooky anthology. This five-issue series presents five self-contained tales from different comic creators, each one illustrated in black and white (echoing the original show), and each one aiming to deliver an impactful concept. There’s also a distinctly indie-comic vibe to the chosen creators, giving it an offbeat, characterful atmosphere. We’re now three issues in, and while the trio of tales so far don’t reach the heights of the show’s best episodes, they’re certainly worthy of attention.…

QUESTION 1 In which Illinois small town is Halloween set? QUESTION 2 Which Buffy The Vampire Slayer star appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer? QUESTION 3 Which Star Trek star appeared in the Canadian slasher movie Visiting Hours? QUESTION 4 Picture Question Identify this slasher film from the killer’s mask. QUESTION 5 Which director was behind the proto-slashers Blood And Black Lace and A Bay Of Blood? QUESTION 6 At the start of the original version of Scream, what foodstuff is Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore’s character) making? QUESTION 7 Which slasher franchise had sequels subtitled Dead End, Left For Dead, Bloody Beginnings, Bloodlines and Last Resort? QUESTION 8 Picture Question Identify this slasher film from the killer’s mask. QUESTION 9 In Sleepaway Camp, what is the shock…

WHILE MEMBERS OF THE Marvel Universe have clashed with both Alien and Predator, Marvel’s First Family is set to travel to the Planet of the Apes in a new miniseries that takes place within the continuity of the original films, occurring between 1968’s Planet Of The Apes and 1970’s Beneath The Planet Of The Apes. “I’ve worked closely with 20th Century Studios to make sure we aren’t breaking any of the established lore while still carving out enough space to tell our own story,” says writer Josh Trujillo, who believes that the Fantastic Four were obvious candidates for the four-parter. “Once the crossover was announced, fans immediately saw the news and thought, ‘Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense!’” he continues. “It’s an Earth-shattering event – no pun intended…

“I THINK AUDIENCES should just expect the unexpected,” says producer Zainab Azizi, teasing Sam Raimi’s twisty and twisted survival tale Send Help. Raimi’s much-anticipated return to cinema after 2022’s Marvel joint Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, it’s a film that hides its blood-spattered secrets behind an irresistibly simple pitch. Two work colleagues – obnoxious boss and dowdy, put-upon underling – find themselves marooned in paradise, their power dynamic flipped. “Linda [Rachel McAdams] is a hard worker,” shares Azizi. “She’s been working at this company for several years. She’s been promised this promotion by her boss, and her whole life is her job. She’s a little kooky, she’s a little weird, but she means very well and she’s a hard-working bee. Unfortunately, the boss passes away and the young…

TO BE OR NOT TO BE? For Mamoru Hosoda, there’s a very simple answer to this loaded Shakespearean question. “The main driver for me in making this film is doing something that doesn’t exist,” says the acclaimed Japanese auteur behind such anime hits as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and the Oscar-nominated Mirai. “Because it didn’t exist, I thought we had to make it.” Hosoda has willed into existence what might be the strangest and most ambitious movie of his career. An epic four and a half years in the making, Scarlet begins as a gender-flipped riff on Hamlet, recounting the familiar tale of fratricidal power games in 16th century Denmark. A determined Princess Scarlet picks up the sword, vowing vengeance on the scheming uncle who has…

→ Two to beam up: ex-Punisher Thomas Jane boards the Enterprise as Dr “Bones” McCoy in the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, alongside Kai Murakami as a young Sulu. Expect them stardate 2027. → Babylon Berlin’s Lars Eidinger goes green as villain Brainiac in James Gunn’s Superman sequel Man Of Tomorrow. → Jason Isaacs joins Prime Video’s live-action Tomb Raider. → JJ Abrams is heading to The Great Beyond. That’s the newly disclosed title of his next movie, reportedly the tale of a fantasy author whose mythical world turns out to be real. Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega star. → Showrunner Ryan Condal confirms that Game Of Thrones spin-off House Of The Dragon will end with its fourth season. Season three arrives on HBO this…

IT’S STARTLING TO REALISE that Legendary’s Monsterverse is now 12 years into its successful Westernised reboot of Toho’s Godzilla franchise. There have been five feature films, an animated series, and an ongoing comic book series. Perhaps most surprising is that one of the best spinoffs within the mythology is the Apple TV series Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters. The first season was released in late 2023 with modest expectations, but proceeded to impress fans, critics and even those uninitiated with the lore by being a thrilling, generational, character-centric piece that also featured cinema-worthy visual effects. It also had the special weapon of the father/son casting of Kurt and Wyatt Russell to play past and present versions of US Army colonel Lee Shaw. By the end of its 10-episode run, it became…

PAY ATTENTION. THIS SHIT IS REAL. THIS STARK WARNING SLAMS ONTO THE screen at the start of Cold Storage. The same words – minus the accompanying thunderclap – greeted director Jonny Campbell on the script’s opening page. He tells SFX that they hooked him immediately. “It gave you a clue that this is serious, but serious with an attitude,” he says. “It’s kind of confident. Audacious. You know that it’s going to be a witty ride. And this shit is real: there are lots of facts in there.” Adapted from his own debut novel, Cold Storage adds another entry to David Koepp’s prolific history of book-to-screen adaptations, following screenplays for Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and The Lost World, and Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, among many others. “Dave is a…

“THE FIRST TRAILER FOR THE Phantom Menace was playing, and by chance, half of the shots in it I’d shot as second unit director. John Travolta had seen it, set up a dinner meeting with me, and said, ‘Look, I’ve got to make Battlefield Earth. I’m going to do it now, and I’m not doing another film until I make it, and you’re going to have to do it!’” Roger Christian tells SFX regarding the moment he was approached by the actor to direct an adaptation of pulp science fiction author (and Scientology founder) L Ron Hubbard’s mammoth 1982 novel. Set in 3000 AD, on a post-apocalyptic Earth ruled by the towering, dreadlocked, gold-hungry alien race the Psychlos, Battlefield Earth tells the story of how the now-enslaved human race, led…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 109 minutes ▸Director Nia DaCosta ▸Cast Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Chi Lewis-Parry, Erin Kellyman Shot back to back with 28 Years Later, and kicking off a couple of days after its climax, The Bone Temple expands the world with a mix of cynicism and beauty that makes for an existential horror that’s not exactly scary, but is at times profound, led by superb performances from its returning cast. Mind you, when was the last time a zombie movie was truly scary? 28 Days Later perhaps… but with Alex Garland on script duties and Danny Boyle as producer, this remains a sophisticated, satisfying horror that packs a punch. Outside of the crazed, gnashing Infected, the biggest threat now comes from Jack O’Connell as “Lord…

▸ RELEASED 13 FEBRUARY U | 91 minutes ▸ Director Steve Hudson ▸ Cast Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry, Rob Brydon, Alison Steadman Adapted from Guy Bass’s book series, Stitch Head is a cuddly spin on the Frankenstein mythos. The titular hero is a mild-mannered cross between the Monster and Igor; created in a castle by the Professor (Rob Brydon), Stitch Head has become the on-boarding guide for all new creatures emerging from the gothic lab. It’s geared towards younger viewers. There’s nothing here that will cause sleepless nights, and the central relationship between Stitch Head and the latest creature – called, um, Creature – is sweetly handled. Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game) voices the polite patchwork people-pleaser with a timid sweetness, while Joel Fry (Cruella) brings a beastly boisterousness to loveable…

▸ RELEASED 30 JANUARY 15 | 88 minutes ▸ Director Bryn Chainey ▸ Cast Rosy McEwen, Dev Patel, Jade Croot Bryn Chainey’s debut feature is a heady mix of Welsh folklore and experimental music. While much modern folk horror has been content simply to retread tropes pinched from The Wicker Man, Rabbit Trap feels genuinely distinctive. Rosy McEwen stars as Daphne Davenport, an avant garde musician who moves, with her sound recordist husband Darcy (Dev Patel), to an isolated cabin in rural Wales. The couple plan to put down some roots and complete Daphne’s next album. Their world is shaken, however, when Darcy encounters an unearthly child (Jade Croot), who tells eerie tales of the old ones lurking in the woods. The film plays out as a restrained three-hander, with…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▸ Creators The Duffer Brothers ▸ Cast Millie Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer EPISODES 5.01-5.08 After nine years, Stranger Things comes to an end with a two-hour finale that goes full-on The Return Of The King with its post-climax tearful goodbyes. And you know what? If Dustin sticking it to Principal Higgins at Graduation, or the Hellfires passing on the Dungeons & Dragons baton to the younger kids, or Mike’s theory about Eleven’s fate don’t have your heart singing as much as Team Hawkins taking hit points off a giant Vecna-spider had your heart beating, then Stranger Things really wasn’t for you. Season five has its flaws. Hell, it’s arguably the worst season of Stranger Things. But that’s worst when set…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2026 | N/A | SVOD SHUDDER The latest from filmmaking clan The Adams Family sees a young woman with cancer (Zelda Adams) visiting a highly unconventional healer (Zelda’s mum, Toby Poser), sceptic dad (Poser’s husband, John Adams) in tow. The production design is a triumph: healer Solveig’s cottage, with its internal trees and beds of moss, is somewhere Hansel and Gretel might have come to a sticky end. However, historical flashbacks render the big twist no surprise, and the witch’s poetic turn of phrase soon wears thin.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 9 FEBRUARY 1982 | 15 | 4K & Blu-ray ▸ Director Wes Craven ▸ Cast Adrienne Barbeau, Ray Wise, Dick Durock, Louis Jourdan Future Scream supremo Wes Craven brings DC’s bayou-haunting icon to the screen in this horror-tinged comic adaptation. While reasonably faithful to the character’s origin story – targeted by bad guys, a research scientist is transformed into a hulking but noble vegebeast – Craven’s vision is fatally compromised by its budget. Frequently undone by risible monster costumes, it’s an uneven watch that carries the whiff of a cheapjack ’80s action flick, despite making stabs at the kind of eco-lyricism Alan Moore would subsequently perfect on the page. Rising above it all is Adrienne Barbeau, who as Alice Cable makes for a sardonic, kick-ass lead and…

▸ RELEASED 12 FEBRUARY 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Miranda Reason ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing As post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds go, the one in Day Of Now is especially grim… and very familiar. Civilisation as we know it has fallen apart thanks to a mutated fungus whose spores cause either death or… well, they call it “the craze”, but it’s basically the 28 Days Later flavour of zombies. Standard enough rules, then, but with a nasty post-Covid twist. Our protagonists are Dayna and Pax, two kids on the run after their dad got bitten. In desperation, they called the Hummingbirds for help. This incongruously named pseudo-military organisation couldn’t, it turns out, be trusted. The other obvious comparison is The Girl With All The Gifts, both because of the plant-based apocalypse,…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author CE Hulse ▸ Publisher Viper Books How do you solve a murder mystery when the person being murdered is… you? Viv is the black sheep of her family; the one without a career or a husband, who parties too hard and doesn’t plan for the future. And she almost didn’t get one, because at a memorial service for her uncle and his wife, she’s pushed off a balcony by an unseen assailant. But then she wakes up a few hours earlier… with no memory of what happened. And not for the first time. She’s in a Happy Death Day scenario, already many repetitions deep, but the only person who remembers is Jamie, a waiter at the memorial. He stays aware…

▸ RELEASED 3 FEBRUARY 208 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Davis Bunn ▸ Publisher Severn House Young Kirra Barret is smarter than most of the people around her. She has a mysterious connection to the usually weary flying creatures of her home, the planet of Treaty. She should be set for life, but in a stratified society she’s also a lowly member of a mining clan. Opportunity will likely never knock. But then she’s offered a chance to transcend her situation – if she’s prepared to take a huge risk. At the other end of the social spectrum, Eva Fourier, of the city of Florian’s glitzy Second Ward, is about to become a secret agent working on behalf of the government. At a time when tension between humans and aliens…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 380 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Dean Koontz ▸ Publisher Thomas & Mercer Dean Koontz may be best known as a genre-crossing thriller writer, but his latest novel offers something different: a fairy tale-like magic realist fable set against ’20s and ’30s Hollywood. It’s the story of Alida, a side-show “freak” with a beautiful face but a twisted body, who’s rescued from exploitation by a film-producing husband and wife. They integrate her into their family, who accept her enthusiastically. They also discover that Alida has an eidetic memory and can perfectly quote from any book she’s ever read. Later, Alida discovers another ability that could even more profoundly affect her new family. This is an endearingly odd book that’s almost devoid of tension or suspense until…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Dark Horse Comics ▸ Writer James Robinson ▸ Artist Phil Hester ISSUES 1-4 “Victorian adventure fiction crossover” was never a concept that was going to be left alone for long, and The Adventures Of Lumen N is daring to pick up the baton left by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but in a much lighter and more child-friendly manner. This four-issue miniseries (planned to be the first of an ongoing saga) follows the titular Lumen, a young Indian girl in 1901 who discovers she’s the granddaughter of legendary mariner Captain Nemo. Forced on the run with Nemo, she’s swept up into an adventure that sees her having to save Paris from the plans of the villainous Robur the Conqueror. Veteran comics writer James Robinson is…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Mad Cave Studios ▸ Writer Ray Fawkes ▸ Artist Russell Olson ISSUES 1-4 While The Ghost Who Walks’ adventures are published regularly in countries such as Australia and Sweden, this is the first US Phantom monthly for over a decade. While Ray Fawkes’s script emphasises The Phantom’s status as a legendary fighter who apparently never dies, it’s a shame that he doesn’t tap into the intergenerational aspect, as hinted at in last year’s Free Comic Book Day issue, and the fact that there have been many Phantoms, dating back centuries. Instead Fawkes serves up a routine if still thrilling plot that would better suit The Punisher, as the Phantom’s home village in fictional East African nation Bangalla is invaded by ruthless drug smugglers, who initially…

WE’VE BARELY BEGUN 2026, but there’s no question that the controversies around generative AI will remain a hot-button topic around the globe. For creatives, generative AI most definitely represents a massive threat to livelihoods. But what if it’s even worse than we could imagine? Director Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Caribbean) and screenwriter Matthew Robinson (Love And Monsters) are more than happy to amplify the AI boogeymen in our heads with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, their darkly comedic exploration of the tech’s worstcase scenarios. Unfolding like a modern-day Time Bandits meets Black Mirror, Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest) plays a rumpled Man from the Future whose mission is to travel to the past to save the world. He’s convinced that his heroes are among the patrons of a Norms…

RED ALERT IS SAT WITH director Corin Hardy (The Nun). He’s showing us the Grim Reaper-summoning death device at the centre of his new horror, Whistle, which centres on an ancient Aztec death whistle. “When I read the script, I knew the design had to hold up,” he tells us, turning the ornately decorated prop until a grotesquely carved skull comes into view. “It had to almost embody the spirit of oncoming death – it’s this ancient object that feels like it holds the souls of everyone who’s come before it. The scream it emits is made up of hundreds, thousands of people who’ve perished.” From the outset, Hardy wanted the artefact to “feel real, ancient, lived-in and worn,” while also being “detailed and textured; strange and terrifying”. He was…

WRITER AND director Steve Hudson makes his animation debut with the upcoming feature Stitch Head, an adaptation of Guy Bass’s illustrated children’s book series. Though Hudson first encountered the stories in a non-visual medium, listening to an audio CD on a car journey one wet afternoon. “It was read all by one actress doing all the voices,” he recalls. “We’re all listening and the kids are all listening and I suddenly realised that we’re all really into it.” He had a 13-year-old at the time, and eight-year-old twins. “I think none of them had ever seen a Frankenstein movie, but we all get it. It’s like, ‘Oh, right, there’s a little village and the castle and a laboratory and a professor. It saves so much faff because normally with an…

IN SLASHER MOVIE parlance Madelaine Petsch is the Final Girl. And as she stands alone against a trilogy-capping slaydown in The Strangers – Chapter 3 she’s all about the finality. “With the first two films, the biggest complaint I received was ‘It doesn’t feel like a finished film,’” Petsch tells Red Alert. “And the answer is ‘Because it’s not!’ It’s act one, act two and act three of a giant story. I’ve never seen that done before, where you’re guaranteed three parts of a film that have already been shot but we’re not giving you an ending to each one. It feels a little less satisfying, in the way that audiences are used to being satisfied. So this one should give them ‘[exhales] Okay, I got the satisfaction I’m looking…

A CREATURE has been CRUCIFIED in here; hauled up on ropes… A 6ft-plus BODY. Slightly human face. But with an extended snout. Though somehow elegant at the back of the head, the skull stretching out, backwards, into two long, beautiful fins. The flesh green and scaly. Its clothes – or is it skin? – make it look as though it’s swaddled in algae. Episode one, draft five, scene 20 COME TOGETHER If anyone’s well-placed to explain the challenges of creature design, it’s The War Between’s executive producer Joel Collins. Before moving into producer roles, Collins was a production designer – back in the day, he was behind the look of Marvin the Paranoid Android and the Vogons in the 2005 movie of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. “Creatures are…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 90 minutes ▸ Director Ben Wheatley ▸ Cast Sam Riley, Alexandra Maria Lara, Noah Taylor, Mark Monero If you were concerned that Kill List and A Field In England director Ben Wheatley had sold out when he directed big budget killer shark flick Meg 2: The Trench, then this defiantly home-made thriller should disabuse you of that notion. BULK is a low-budget science fiction adventure told in a non-linear, non-naturalistic style that aims for maximum confusion – and succeeds. “Narrative is tyranny!” a character declares at one point. Right you are, then. The story follows freelance journalist Corey Harlan (Sam Riley) as he’s abducted by two oddly familiar strangers and forced on a surreal journey through multiple planes of reality. In practice that means a…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 99 minutes ▸ Director Tom Gormican ▸ Cast Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton Back in 1997, the original Anaconda’s campy combo of ripe performances, cheesy effects and B-picture plotting was preposterously inept enough to earn it an enthusiastic cult following. Almost 30 years on, this latest take on a giant snake wreaking havoc in the Amazon tries to resuscitate the franchise by amalgamating creature feature horror with knowing meta satire. A mirth-free misfire results. The wobbly plank underpinning Tom Gormican’s follow-up to his enjoyable Nicolas Cage vehicle The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is that two filmmaker buddies – would-be director Doug (Jack Black) and struggling actor Griff (Paul Rudd) – should hold the original Anaconda in such high esteem they would…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 100 minutes ▸ Director Timur Bekmambetov ▸ Cast Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Chris Sullivan would it be like in the near future if an advanced AI system served as judge, jury and executioner in murder trials? Something like a mash-up of Minority Report, Memento and screen-centric mystery Searching, if Timur Bekmambetov’s disposable but pacy sci-fi thriller is anything to go by. Mercy puts a techy spin on the single-location thriller, as LAPD detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) wakes to find himself strapped into a chair in a newfangled Mercy trial. Accused of killing his wife, he’s given 90 minutes – and access to copious digital evidence – to prove his innocence to AI arbiter Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson). “The ticking digital clock…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Michelle Garza Cervera ▸ Cast Natalia Solián, Alfonso Dosal, Mayra Batalla, Sonia Couoh You’re going to need to turn the volume up for this one. Formerly released on Shudder, now available on crisp Arrow Video Blu-ray, Huesera: The Bone Woman is a psychological body horror that works best when you can hear every bone crack loud enough to feel it. Valeria and Raúl are a picture-perfect couple, about to have their first child. But pregnancy does weird things to Valeria. One night, she sees a woman jump from a balcony, breaking all her legs grotesquely – but when Raúl looks, there’s no one there. The spectre haunts Valeria, whose own bones seem to want to crack too… There’s…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | N/A | Digital Say what you like about the ethics of reality TV, but it feels pretty unlikely that any Big Brother producer would really let a houseful of contestants stay ignorant while a pandemic destroyed the world. That’s the premise of this daft Turkish horror, and it’s initially an interesting one – how long would it take for housemates to realise no one was watching them any more? But once that’s established, the film runs out of ideas; there’s one scene of wince-inducing gore, then a dull stumble to the end.…

Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest, BUGONIA (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 9 February), is a remake of Korean film Save The Green Planet! It centres on two men who kidnap a pharma CEO (Emma Stone), believing she’s an alien bent on destroying the planet. We said: “That rare remake which finds new things to say rather than simply pumping out a carbon copy.” Just one bonus: a 23-minute Making Of. Ethan Hawke’s child snatcher The Grabber returns from the grave as a vengeful Freddy Krueger type in BLACK PHONE 2 (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now), which shifts the emphasis from original hero Finn to his psychic sister Gwen, and the action to a snowed-in youth camp, We said: “Would have done well to heed its forerunner’s less is more mindset.” Extras: director’s commentary, seven deleted scenes, and three…

▸ RELEASED 12 FEBRUARY 440 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Matt Dinniman ▸ Publisher Michael Joseph Taking in everything from generation ships and sentient AI to social media and Ready Player One-style pop culture references, Operation Bounce House is a tricky book to pin down. It’s also, for the most part, an extremely entertaining action novel about a group of settlers under siege on an alien world. The big twist here is that farmer Oliver Lewis and his 20-something mates are battling an army of mechs controlled by gamers back on Earth, all of whom have paid for the privilege of wiping out the alleged insurgents of New Sonora. You can’t fault author Matt Dinniman for ambition. As well as being, at times, the story of a brutal war against…

▸ RELEASED 29 JANUARY 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Liza Anderson ▸ Publisher Bantam This debut novel from Liza Anderson is burdened with the most pretentious of titles, and worse, doesn’t bring anything new to the already crowded Dark Academia genre. In fact, its characters and beats are so familiar that your reviewer had to keep checking she hadn’t read it before. The story follows Victoria Wood (no comment) as she looks out for her little brother Henry, who is a witch. Reluctantly bundling him off to a magical school, non-witch Vic goes to keep an eye on him – falling in lust with the school’s Chief Sentinel, Xan, in the process. Naturally, there’s also a Muggle-hating bad guy who’s obsessed with her. Perhaps Vic has more magical ability…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher IDW ▸ Writers Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing ▸ Artist Adrián Bonilla ISSUES 1-3 IDW’s previous ongoing title drew its cast from across the various Star Trek eras, but Captain James T Kirk is the only classic character resurrected for their latest monthly book, brought back to life 700 years after his original passing. After the awe and wonder of Star Trek, The Last Starship is set in considerably less optimistic times, right at the start of The Burn, the cataclysmic galaxy-wide event which, as the crew of USS Discovery later found, rendered dilithium inert, destroying countless warp drive vessels. The first three issues form a neat introductory storyline, and despite featuring prominently on the covers, Kirk initially assumes a lesser role in the first two,…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Marvel Comics ▸ Writer Benjamin Percy ▸ Artists Marcelo Ferreira, Daniel Picciotto, Brent Peeples ISSUES 1-5 Sometimes spinoff comics can go in unpredictable directions (like 2024/25’s Aliens vs Avengers), but most will settle for exactly what’s expected, like Marvel’s latest outing with the Predator franchise. This five-issue miniseries follows in the footsteps of Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe, but it’s also the climax of a story arc running through recent Predator comics in which the alien Yautja warriors battled Wolverine, Spider-Man and Black Panther. The basic set-up is that the Yautja have decided to invade Earth to transform it into their own exclusive hunting ground. The Predators soon launch a devastating worldwide attack, murdering the majority of Marvel’s heroes, and it’s up to a small…

Wood You Believe It? 14 JULY 1999 The Blair Witch Project was far from the first horror movie to splice its chills from found footage. In 1980, Cannibal Holocaust fabricated filmed evidence of a doomed expedition into the Amazon, while The Last Broadcast beat it into cinemas by a year, presenting a goosebumping quest for the fabled Jersey Devil with the same shaky, lo-fi aesthetic that defined the camcorder boom of the ’90s. Indie filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez took their inspiration from the paranormal documentaries that had so deliciously unsettled them as children: Chariots Of The Gods (1970), The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972), and Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of… series, which brought Vulcan gravitas to everything from the Bermuda Triangle to killer bees. The Blair Witch is named Elly…