Innehållsförteckning för October 2021 från SFX

WELL LOKI HERE Rob Graham, email Thoroughly enjoyed Loki, which had an enjoyable finale and promising first appearance from Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains or the next big Marvel villain, Kang the Conqueror. The multiverse set up here could open up all sorts of possibilities for the MCU, especially as the franchise gets older; if it continues to be a huge box office hit it could last decades and this could be a way of bringing back and recasting dead characters through the multiverse. I personally think the return of Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers is inevitable even if they are recast. And recasting T’Challa by introducing a version from another universe would still honour the late Chadwick Boseman. After all, how many times has the Joker…

LONG BEFORE THE WITCHER’S Geralt, there was his mentor, Vesemir – and now, the cocky monster hunter is taking centre stage in The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf. From director Kwang-II Han, executive producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and screenwriter Beau DeMayo, the animated origin story unfolds before the events of the TV series. The movie follows Vesemir as he faces the demons of his past, while contending with a rising new threat… with Geralt nowhere in sight. “When you’re thinking of cracking the world of The Witcher without Geralt or Yennefer or Ciri, it’s like, ‘So, we’re going into Gotham without Batman, Robin or Jim Gordon. Got it,’” DeMayo tells Red Alert. “What helped, and what was so natural when I started thinking about the script, is that The Witcher…

JAMES WAN IS returning to his roots. A modern master of horror, Wan hasn’t directed a non-sequel fright flick since 2013’s The Conjuring. That’s all about to change with the original creepy thriller Malignant. As the architect responsible for the successful Saw, Insidious and Conjuring franchises, Wan, however, warns that audiences should not expect the same bag of spooky tricks from him this time. “I’m a big fan of the haunted house subgenre, but I felt like I had done all that I could do in that genre,” Wan tells Red Alert. “I felt like I had contributed as much as I could to that world, and it was time for me to try something different. My mind always gears to ’80s prosthetic horror films, like the kind of films…

IF DISNEY+ EVER spins off Marvel’s What If…? series into other areas of Disney’s vast entertainment empire, here’s a story pitch they can have for free: what if George Lucas had never fallen in love with the films of Akira Kurosawa when he was a USC film student in the ’60s? We’ll never know for sure, of course, but the legendary Japanese director’s movies – The Hidden Fortress, in particular – were such a big influence on the original Star Wars that there’s a good chance Lucas would never have created his famous galaxy far, far away without them. Now another new show on Disney+, Star Wars: Visions, is bringing things full circle by giving Japanese anime studios the chance to reimagine Jedi, droids and talking rabbits (more on the…

RELEASED 24 SEPTEMBER (also VOD, 27 SEPTEMBER) 15 | 94 minutes Like In The Earth, this South African horror makes the fungal network the menace; when forestry worker Gabi gets lost, she’s found by a father and son who view it as a god. Switching between English and Afrikaans, it has a rather basic storyline, but boasts decent performances (the father’s anti-civilisation rant particularly impresses) and some perversely beautiful body horror: its human forms sprouting colourful fungi could be exhibited in a gallery.…

UK Streaming now on iPlayer Director Nick Collett Cast Mathew Baynton, Martha Howe-Douglas, Lolly Adefope, Simon Farnaby EPISODES 1.01-1.06 In the immortal words of John Cleese: “I wish to register a complaint!” Nope, we’re not trying to rid ourselves of a dead parrot – although Ghosts does feature a departed pigeon, so we’re still on-brand. Instead we’re annoyed that we’re limited to a measly six episodes of this fantastic show per season. Damn your eyes, BBC! Still, the upshot of such brevity is that every second on-screen is pretty much perfect; there’s no fatty writing here, and every second counts. You probably know the format by now: Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) can see ghosts and her hubby Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) can’t, although thankfully he’s fully aware of his spectral housemates. A…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 18 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director Michael Chaves Cast Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O’Connor, Eugenie Bondurant At this point, the Conjuringverse is more a superhero franchise than a horror one: a sprawling affair in which supporting characters from one film pop up in others, good and evil meet in swirling CGI vortices, and our heroes must draw upon their inner strength of character to activate their world-saving powers. This time, the saintly Ed and Lorraine Warren are enlisted to save a young man from death row. Caught red-handed after stabbing his landlord to death, he says he was possessed by a demon, and his lawyer wants the couple to help convince the jury. Based very loosely on the real-life case of Arne Johnson, the…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 15 | DVD/download Singer/songwriter Grey is lacking inspiration for her second album, so when a reclusive producer (Greg Bryk) invites her to record at his gothic home studio, she agrees. Even though he’s rumoured to have killed his ex-wife. This slow-burn exploration of the relationship between art and evil may disappoint viewers hoping for something more action-packed, but Amelia Moses’s take on lycanthropy packs at least two properly tense sequences and a gleefully nasty performance from Bryk. Extras None.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Alex Noyer’s directorial debut is a colourful, if slight, modern giallo. Traumatised as a child, experimental musician Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) now gets her kicks by killing people and recording the sounds of their deaths. Despite a strong cast and some attractive direction it quickly devolves into sub-Saw silliness. Alexis is rarely a sympathetic lead and a police procedural subplot feels as if it’s from a different movie. Extras Trailer.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1969 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Ferruccio Casapinta Cast Erna Schurer, Roland Carey, Aurora Battista, Ettore Ribotta BLU-RAY DEBUT If the Crossroadsteam had shot a modern-day gothic horror, it might have turned out like this Italian movie: clumsy editing, night indistinguishable from day, castle interiors more like a suburban semi. Mind you, the gothic trappings – dungeon full of torture devices, mute madwoman in one room – are really just dressing for a giallo about a scheme to scam a woman into selling the castle she’s inherited, via tales of a ghost and a brain-fogging drug. Mostly, the latter just causes dreams/visions of rolling about naked. There’s no sign of Satan. The viewer’s in on the plot early on, so the only real mystery is the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 15 | DVD/download Reality star Jess Impiazzi is a meta piece of casting for this future-shock take on the voyeuristic lure of TV. She’s Ria, whose life – and lovers – are a ratings sensation. Essentially The Truman Show meets The Stepford Wives, it has moments of directorial flourish and a captivating turn by Impiazzi, swerving from doll-like innocence to darker mischief. But as it turns into a twisty revenge tale its satire, already dated, becomes blunted. Luke Goss and Sinitta add vintage Smash Hits vibes.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | U | Blu-ray (4K, standard)/DVD/download Director Enrico Casarosa Cast Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman BLU-RAY DEBUT If Disney+ has inadvertently created a modern version of the “straight to video” tag, the latest Pixar movie should feel hard done by, as this Italian Riviera coming-of-age tale is anything but filler. The studio has never made a film quite like Luca. Sure, the “two characters on a voyage of discovery” structure is Pixar 101, but it’s as much about mood as plot. The stakes are comparatively low too, with leads Luca and Alberto aspiring to little more than owning a second-hand Vespa. Even if Luca isn’t top-tier Pixar, however, it’s a heart-warming tale about long, hot summers hanging out with your best friend –…

RELEASED 17 SEPTEMBER 2021 | 15 | Download (also in selected cinemas) Director Sion Sono Cast Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley It’s not often Southland Tales springs to mind as a comparison, but with its eccentric world-building, oversized performances and random bursting into song, there’s definitely a whiff of Richard Kelly’s grand folly about this screw-loose post-apocalyptic Western. Consolidating his position as the go-to guy if you’ve typed a fever dream into Final Draft and require a leading man with an atrophied sense of shame, Nicolas Cage is the unnamed Hero, a prisoner kitted out in a leather suit (complete with bollock-adjacent explosives – a Nutcracker Suit, if you will) and sent after a runaway by the governor of a town that mashes up Japan and the Old…

RELEASED 14 SEPTEMBER 304 pages | Hardback/ebook Author James Kennedy Publisher Quirk Books Who’d want to know the exact date and time of their death? According to Dare To Know, plenty of people – and they’d be willing to pay for it too. The unnamed narrator is a mathematician and salesman, making the arcane and subjective calculations that produce expiry dates for the clients of a company called Dare To Know. He’s also middle-aged, divorced and directionless; his performance at the company is on the slide and his commissions are shrinking. After a car crash, he takes the forbidden step of looking up his own time, only to discover that he was supposed to die 23 minutes ago. This is unheard of. The calculations are never wrong. He becomes desperate…

RELEASED 21 SEPTEMBER 320 pages | Hardback/ebook Editor Ellen Datlow Publisher Titan Books You won’t find Shirley Jackson’s voice within the pages of this anthology but you may find elements of her essence – her ghost, if you like – among its 18 original stories by some of the best contemporary horror writers. Editor Ellen Datlow’s brief for her contributors was not to write about Jackson, or Jackson’s characters, but to create something new inspired by the legendary writer of works including “The Lottery”, The Haunting Of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle. What she’s achieved is a selection box with elements in common – themes of domestic turmoil, ghostly encounters, female solidarity but also dysfunction – from writers who remain distinctly themselves while playing in…

RELEASED 14 SEPTEMBER 496 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Brigid Kemmerer Publisher Bloomsbury YA The path of true love may not run smoothly, but sometimes it really does run stupidly. In a kingdom riven by disease, young King Harristan and his brother Prince Corrick, who holds the position of King’s Justice, are maintaining a grip on power by giving an impression of ruthlessness. At the lowest level of society, apothecary Tessa and her friend Wes steal ingredients for the cure to the fever from the rich, to give to the poor. You can understand Tessa loving her brave companion. You can understand, if not sympathise with, the levels Corrick will go to to protect his brother, having seen their parents murdered. What is extremely hard to understand is how Tessa can…

RELEASED 14 SEPTEMBER 232 pages | Paperback Author Calder Szewczak Publisher Angry Robot On a dying Earth – ravaged by global warming and nuclear fallout – resources are precious, so population growth is controlled by the Offset; for every child born a parent must die. And on their 18th birthday, it’s the child who decides which parent is executed. That synopsis might sounds like the trailer voiceover for the next Hunger Games or Maze Runnerstyle YA movie series – but fortunately The Offset is far more interesting and thought-provoking than that. The plot follows one family: Miri, a fiercely anti-natalist teenager with a self-loathing for her own existence, and her two mothers; one of whom, Jac, just happens to be a scientist who could save the world. Problem is, Miri…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Writer Mark Russell Artist Sean Izaakse ISSUES 1-3 Since it’s the sixtieth anniversary of Marvel’s “first family”, a bunch of specials and miniseries are being released to celebrate the occasion – but, as Fantastic Four: Life Story proves, not all of them are going to be up to snuff. This six-issue miniseries takes the same approach as 2019’s Spider-Man: Life Story, retelling and remixing the FF’s saga as if the characters were ageing in real time. Starting with the ’60s, each issue tackles a different decade, with the plot highlighting significant historical events from each era. We get the transformation of the Four, their first adventures and various personal trials, all framed around the approaching threat of Galactus; but three issues in, the story feels…

ONE OF THE MOST lauded non-superhero comic books of the early 2000s was Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. In it, the world experiences a sudden event where every mammal which has a Y chromosome just dies, except for an unassuming, underachieving 20-something, Yorick Brown, and his pet capuchin monkey called Ampersand. Equal parts thriller, gender exploration, romance and political potboiler, Y: The Last Man seemed like a cert for adaptation to film or TV. But it’s taken almost 20 years for FX’s Y: The Last Man series to finally come into being. After several development iterations and creative changes, it was playwright Eliza Clark’s take on the book that ultimately won out, starring Ben Schnetzer as Yorick, and Diane Lane playing his mother,…

“BACK TO THE FUTURE HAS NEVER BEEN out of my consciousness,” says Bob Gale, co-writer of 1985’s paradox-packed classic. “This movie, these characters, they’re like my children. You never lose sight of your kids, right?” Now his Hill Valley offspring have time-warped to 2021 and the West End stage. Back To The Future: The Musical reimagines the adventures of Marty McFly as a song-and-dance spectacular, complete with show-stopping special effects and music co-written by Alan Silvestri, who scored Bob Zemeckis’s original movie trilogy. “Bob’s wife Leslie actually suggested it back in 2005,” says Gale, who’s adapted his own screenplay for the stage. “And then Bob and I started seriously exploring it in 2006. The producer is Colin Ingram, who produced Ghost: The Musical. He’s a big Back To The Future…

FOR JACOB CHASE, HORROR SITS in the sweet spot between primal fear and new technology. “With horror movies of old, there’s generally something they use that’s all around us, that we can be afraid of,” he tells Red Alert. “A book that comes to life or an old pocket watch that transforms into a monster or the VHS tape in The Ring. What’s the modern equivalent? I hadn’t seen a horror movie that riffed on tablets and phones yet. That’s what now surrounds us, so what would be better than making an audience afraid of the very thing they’re using to tweet while they’re watching the movie?” Meet Larry, the monstrous presence at the heart of Come Play, Chase’s debut feature as writer and director. A pale, cadaverous figure, he…

WITH THE WORLD STUCK AT home and miserable in 2020, one highlight for the masses was season two of What We Do In The Shadows. Created by Jemaine Clement as a spin-off series to his 2014 mockumentary film made with Taika Waititi, the series truly earned its breakout hit status, following a household of dysfunctional vamps residing in Staten Island, New York. Season two finale “Nouveau Théâtre des Vampires” left audiences with a huge cliffhanger as long-suffering familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) was forced to reveal his Van Helsing lineage, while saving Nadia (Natasia Demetriou), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nandor (Kayvan Novak), and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) from a trap set by the local Vampiric Council. With Guillermo staking the lot of them, his vampire “family” now know about his deadly skills.…

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STRIP AWAY THE GADGETRY AND glamour, the schemes and the sex, the cars and the quips. Beyond the globe-hopping and the guns, what truly powers a James Bond film? For Cary Joji Fukunaga it’s the man with the Walther PPK in his hand. “Bond always powers it, right?” says the director of No Time To Die, the superspy’s 25th official big screen mission. “These stories live and die on Bond’s agency and also on his imperfection, but I think this one really plays on a man whose exterior shell has been so hardened through loss and through hardship throughout his life. “I really wanted to dig into the stuff we’ve learned about him now, over the course of the films, from his being orphaned in Skyfall and then the legacy…

IT’S LATE OCTOBER IN 1986 and Sigourney Weaver is celebrating the success of the horror sequel Aliens. In recent months, Time magazine has described the extraterrestrial tale of terror “the summer’s scariest movie” and Oscar buzz is starting to build in Tinseltown, which is where the iconic actress sits down to discuss the much-lauded blockbuster. In this honest and frank interview from the archives, Weaver opens up about her experience on the set of the genre gem. Here’s the American icon on everything from space stunts and Shakespeare to deleted scenes and scary movies… What was it like to work with Aliens writer and director James Cameron? I think we worked very well together. Jim was always incredibly open. He really admires my work as Ripley and he refused to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 91 minutes Director Nia DaCosta Cast Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Tony Todd The original 1992 Candyman– Bernard Rose’s horror about the avenging spirit of a black man killed by a lynch mob – has rightly been reappraised in recent years as a sophisticated examination of race in America. Not to mention that it’s also a sharply crafted horror movie, thick with dread. This spiritual sequel – directed by Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) and featuring Jordan Peele as a credited screenwriter – explores similar themes (as relevant now as ever) but doesn’t come close to the original’s wit, edge or conviction. It stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Anthony, a struggling artist who becomes obsessed with the urban legend of Candyman, the hook-handed boogeyman…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 98 minutes Director Rodo Sayagues Cast Stephen Lang, Madelyn Grace, Brendan Sexton III, Rocci William Fede Álvarez’s Don’t Breathe was an effective horror thriller that brought plenty of suspense in its story of a blind veteran who fights off intruders – and was different in that it made you root for the criminals over the apparent victim, Stephan Lang’s Norman Nordstrom, who turned out to have an even darker agenda. The sequel follows some similar beats (and beatings, albeit with more gore this time) but twists itself into knots trying to instead make Norman sympathetic. He’s raising a daughter (Phoenix, played by Madelyn Grace) to be a survivor, and of course, he lives in another rundown house. When more home intruders show up, he springs (well,…

RELEASED 24 SEPTEMBER (also VOD, 27 SEPTEMBER) 15 | 82 minutes In this very enclosed indie horror, a mute boy finds an occult book in his new home, which shows how to request a wish from a Djinn. Have a guess what he wants. Young Ezra Dewey does a good job as the resourceful, home-alone Dylan, and the sound design impresses. But while the Djinn’s true form is creepy, we don’t see much of that; the near-empty apartment makes for a bland setting; and you’ll see the ironic twist coming a mile off… So it’s no Under The Shadow.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2009 | 15 | Blu-ray Directors Oren Peli Cast Katie Featherstone, Micah Sloat, Ashley Palmer, Mark Fredrichs Oren Peli’s no-budget thriller remains a fine example of the found footage genre. Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) are enduring increasingly restless nights, thanks to an unseen presence in their house. Naturally, Micah decides that filming all this is the right course of action… Like its key influence The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity’s tension comes from a semi-improvised script, grimy footage and extended scenes where virtually nothing happens – terrifyingly. While it doesn’t have quite the same unnerving sense of vérité as its predecessor (a scene with a ouija board crosses into Hollywood cliché) it still pokes at a late night worry: what if something is…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 18 | SVOD Director Noel David Taylor Cast Noel David Taylor, Ben Babbitt, Katy Fullan, Frank Perry NETFLIX Gross, violent and flaunting some cheeky nudity – this is no kids’ cartoon – Nightmare Of The Wolf is an animated prequel to The Witcher. Set decades before, its hero is Vesemir, Geralt’s old mentor in the live-action series (and games) but here a cocksure young recruit. Korean outfit Studio Mir is on animation duties. It’s already renowned for adapting fantasy series: the 2016 Voltron reboot is theirs, as is The Legend Of Korra. It looks brooding and elegant, accompanied by rousing East European-inspired strings. We’ve got acclaimed performers like Sherlock’s Lara Pulver, The Hobbit’s Graham McTavish, Divergent’s Theo James and Battlestar Galactica’s Mary McDonnell behind the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 12 | SVOD NETFLIX Michael Caine is sadly absent from this rather less risible French namesake of the Irwin Allen killer bee stinker. When locust farmer Virginie finds feeding the critters blood boosts her crop, she lets them have a nibble – bad news for her goat, nosy neighbour, love interest and kids. Place your bets on who dies, and the order. It’s a daft B-movie premise alright, but one firmly grounded by the fractious family dynamics, which ensures that Virginie’s descent into monomania (and masochism?) is affecting.…

Extras RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Issa López Cast Paola Lara, Juan Ramón López, Ianis Guerrero, Rodrigo Cortés A host of horrors which debuted on Shudder are now getting physical releases from Acorn Media; they include Belzebuth, The Dark And The Wicked, Scare Me and Terrified. But the pick of the first wave is this Mexican film, which puts a magical realist spin on the country’s drug war. Paola Lara is Estrella, who, after her mother disappears, joins up with a group of street kids. They’re at constant threat of being sold into slavery by the local gangsters. It doesn’t help that Shine (Juan Ramón López) has stolen a phone and gun from one of the criminals… Taking place in a world where the divide between…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | 7+ | SVOD Director Kay Cannon Cast Camila Cabello, Nicholas Galitzine, Billy Porter, Idina Menzel PRIME There will be those who say this update of the well-worn fairy tale has changed too much in an attempt to be (yawn) “woke”. Sod them. As the characters themselves point out, falling in love and getting married after just one night is ridiculous – and besides, this Cinderella wants a career, not just a husband. The fact that writer/director Kay Cannon has managed to squeeze this modern sensibility into a stale tale without it feeling forced is commendable – as is the energetic, likeable performance from Ella herself, The X-Factor US star Camila Cabello. Her prince, however, leaves a lot to be desired, with Nicholas Galitzine struggling to…

RELEASED 27 SEPTEMBER 2021 | 15 | Download The usual post-Wicker Mantropes get another run out in this vapid folk horror. Four young women go away for a weekend in the country, but get roped into attending a quasi-pagan ritual with the promise of some dubious free weed, which causes them to hallucinate their worst fears. The cult are never explored in any detail – they’re just evil – and the hallucinations (getting old suddenly, a big dog and so on) aren’t scary. An insufficient sacrifice to the horror gods.…

RELEASED 20 SEPTEMBER 2021 | 15 | VOD (also in selected cinemas) Director Quentin Dupieux Cast David Marsais, Grégoire Ludig, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Fresh characterisation The second of his films to reach these shores in the space of two months (and the second to clock in under 80 minutes), Mandibles rather prompts the feeling that French writer/director Quentin Dupieux could be trying a bit harder. Just as random/seemingly made up on the hoof as Deerskin, it centres on Jean-Gab and Manu, a pair of amoral slackers who make Bill and Ted look like intellectual powerhouses. After Jean-Gab discovers a giant fly (an oddly cute puppetry/CG combo) in the boot of a stolen car, Manu hatches a plan: train the fly, and use it to rob banks. Riiiiight. Except that never quite…

RELEASED 30 SEPTEMBER 224 pages | Paperback Author Yvette Fielding Publisher Andersen Press She’s been producing and presenting Most Haunted for almost two decades, so you’d expect former children’s programme presenter Yvette Fielding to be something of an expert at making up spooky stories by now. But judging by this first instalment of children’s series The Ghost Hunter Chronicles, she still hasn’t got the hang of it. Best friends Eve, Tom and Clovis fancy themselves as paranormal investigators, so on Halloween night they lie to their parents and sneak out to a haunted house. After the glass on their Ouija board flies across the room, they run home terrified, only to find that something has followed them. Scary? It should be, but the identity of the ghost is uncovered too…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia Publisher Jo Fletcher Books In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest, everything you know about vampires is true – just not in the way you think. Here, in an alternate timeline, the world learned about the existence of vampires in 1967, and adjusted its laws accordingly. Mexico City is supposed to be a blood-suckerfree zone, so when a feud between two warring clans breaks out there, local narcos join up with the police in an attempt to stop the spread. Meanwhile, Atl, the pampered youngest daughter of the Tl huihpochtin – a kind of feathery Aztec flying vampire – finds herself relying on the help of a hopelessly besotted street kid to get her safely out of town before the brutal Necros track…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 496 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Stephen Graham Jones Publisher Titan Books Slashers are having a bit of a resurgence right now with Fear Street, Candyman and Halloween Kills, as well as Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group. Stephen Graham Jones’s new novel is probably the most literary of the bunch but also the most nerdy, packed as it is with movie references. In the hands of a lesser writer it could have felt like horror-hound grandstanding, but Jones’s hero Jade, a young woman who drowns herself in slashers to escape the realities of her world, is anything but a show off. Like Jones, Jane is a Blackfeet Native American, living on the scuzzy side of a lake which carries legends of an ancient curse. Jade dreams…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 736 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Jay Kristoff There’s a real thrill at the Publisher HarperVoyager Empires are made up of many nations, and Empire Of The Vampire is made up of many fairly easily identifiable parts. The world is mostly medieval France, with a dash of Celt and Norse – because everyone loves those noble bruisers, right? The story is littered with clichés, from the rebellious hero who ends up rejecting the military-religious order he’s been drafted into, to the beautiful novice nun he leaves it for (there may not be fridges in this world, but you know that the equivalent awaits her), to the betrayals you can spot a long way off. And everything’s laden with references to genitals and breasts to the point of being…

IN SEE, APPLE TV+’S ambitious postapocalyptic drama, Jason Momoa plays Baba Voss, a tribe leader in a future where the majority of surviving humanity no longer have sight due to a devastating virus. Having adapted to exist over hundreds of years, it is the rare “sighted” people – like Voss’s two adopted children Kofun (Archie Madekwe) and Haniwa (Nesta Cooper) – who are feared as “the other”. As such, in the first season finale, Haniwa is taken from her family in a distant city and remanded to Voss’s estranged brother, General Edo Voss. For the second season, the world of See is going to reflect a lot of changes for Baba Voss and his brethren. In his quest to retrieve his daughter, Voss will descend the mountain and reveal the…

AS THE BEST-KNOWN RESIDENT of one of the most famous fictional cities, the Dark Knight’s influence extends well beyond his homeland. Now DC has produced Batman: The World, a 184-page graphic novel comprised of 14 stories by creators from all over the planet, including countries such as Mexico, Czech Republic and Korea – although it opens with “Global City” by Batman: Damned collaborators Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. “As the world gets more rotten, it gets more Gotham,” laughs Azzarello. “What we’ve tried to do is show how Gotham is a character in itself – not just a city. That’s what was interesting about being a part of this project, which is made up of stories set in all these other cities, which are also characters.” With Bermejo mostly favouring…

THIS YEAR MARKS THE 70th anniversary of Isaac Asimov’s landmark science fiction series, the Foundation trilogy. Consisting of Foundation, Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation, the trilogy went on to earn Asimov the Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. To this day, they’re still considered mandatory reads for serious science fiction readers, with Asimov weaving the epic, thousand-year history of a Galactic Empire facing its certain demise. Exploring deep, intellectual, mathematical and existential issues, Foundation has always been categorised as a challenging read, as well as deemed to be virtually impossible to adapt because of its structure, scale and scope. But, as is now becoming commonplace with a lot of sci-fi literature, that isn’t the case any more because technology – especially visual effects – and streaming television…

AFTER LAST YEAR’S COR!! BUSTER EASTER Special, the Treasury Of British Comics is celebrating the spooky season with the Monster Fun Halloween Spooktacular Special. Taking its name from IPC’s 1970s humour horror weekly, the 48-pager features appearances from the likes of Frankie Stein, Kid Kong, Draculass, Gums, Teddy Scare and Hire a Horror. “What better title to release at Halloween than Monster Fun?” says Treasury editor Keith Richardson. “It’s good to do a comic with one core theme running throughout and this title tells new readers exactly what to expect.” Kek-W and Lew Stringer are reviving Wiz War, which centres around a pair of feuding magicians and which was first published in the late ’60s in Pow! and Smash!. “Lew and I are from the same generation and grew up…

PUBLISHED AT THE HEIGHT of the Cold War in 1965 and set thousands of years in the future, it’s fair to say Frank Herbert’s interplanetary epic Dune – later followed by another five Herbert-penned novels – is a mammoth undertaking. It tells the story of feuding noble families and the power struggle to control the vast, inhospitable desert world of Arrakis, source of “the spice” – a valuable drug-like substance that enables interstellar travel, increased life expectancy and superior intellects. It’s a story that’s resonated with millions of people over the decades, but for one teenager deciding whether he was going to become a filmmaker or biologist, it would shape a career. Academy Award nominee Denis Villeneuve has finally fulfilled his lifelong dream to make his version of Dune for…

AT ITS CORE, DUNE IS A Shakespearian parable that explores the destructive power that erupts from the clash of different economic, religious and political forces. Successfully realising the rich cinematic prospects of Herbert’s sacred text has, until now, always been difficult. An initiative of biblical proportions, it was temporarily romanced by such big-screen visionaries as David Lean, Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky, before David Lynch lent a large dose of surrealism to the visually spectacular yet famously ill-fated 1984 feature, which the filmmaker subsequently disowned because he wasn’t given final cut. Then came the TV adaptation, first broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel (as Syfy was known then) back in 2000. John Harrison – previously George Romero’s first AD on Creepshow and Day Of The Dead, and a director for…

TIME HAS A TENDENCY TO SMOOTH out even the roughest of edges, especially when it comes to Star Trek. The passionate fanbase has never been shy about voicing when they don’t like choices made regarding the television series or films. But as years go by, assessments are almost always revisited and kinder eyes prevail. Such is the case with Star Trek: Enterprise, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its launch on 26 September 2021. The sixth series in the television franchise, Enterprise represented a big creative swing for the fences: a prequel, set 100 years before Kirk’s time, with the pilot taking place in 2151. The NX-01 was the earliest class of deep space explorer ships, with a Warp 5 engine, and a sort of The Right Stuff vibe prevailed.…

MOST NOVELISTS HAVE AT LEAST ONE book in a drawer that represents an early effort, a text that will never be offered up to a wider readership. In the case of Jay Kristoff, this book was a tale of bloodsuckers he wrote in 2008. “It was right at the tail end of Twilight hysteria,” he says, “so you basically couldn’t sell a vampire book for love nor money.” Fast-forward 13 years and things are rather different. Not only have we capricious readers forgotten how bored we were of vampire stories back then, but Kristoff is now a bestselling writer, well placed to serve up a new undead trilogy, which begins with Empire Of The Vampire. This first volume is an epic tale, drenched in blood, gore and high gothic flourishes.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 115 minutes Director Shawn Levy Cast Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Joe Keery The renaissance of Ryan Reynolds as Hollywood’s most meta and self-deprecating dickjoke maker continues apace with Free Guy, an action-comedy about a non-player character who gradually begins to realise he’s in a huge GTA-style game. It’s an arresting premise for anyone familiar with videogames; NPCs, after all, are an endearingly dumb part of the experience. There are shades of The Truman Show in the way Reynolds’s Guy cheerily gets up for another great day of walking the same route, saying the same catchphrase and getting robbed at gun point in his job as a bank teller. Then his AI is scrambled by the appearance of Jodie Comer’s Mille, a player who’s…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now Creators Dave Filoni, Jennifer Corbett Cast Dee Bradley Baker, Dee Bradley Baker, Dee Bradley Baker, Dee Bradley Baker, Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang EPISODES 1.01-1.16 Almost by definition, the beginning and end of The Clone Wars were baked in from day one. Unfortunately, that spells bad news for spin-off series The Bad Batch, because with the most pivotal events in that galaxy far, far away done and dusted – y’know, Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace, Palpatine appointing himself Emperor, and the purge of the Jedi – the new show feels like it’s arrived a little late to the party. In most regards, The Bad Batch makes a seamless transition from The Clone Wars, with familiar animation, a similar tone and composer Kevin Kiner returning to continue…

EXTRAS RELEASED 13 SEPTEMBER (Download out now) 2021 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director Cate Shortland Cast Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz Black Widow’s long-demanded solo adventure arrives so belatedly it’s actually posthumous. Rewinding to the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War, when Natasha Romanoff was still a warm-bodied concern, it’s a film on a mission to declassify the history of Marvel’s trained assassin turned world-saver. “I’ve lived a lot of lives,” Natasha tells us, as we see her torn from the blissful green suburbia of ’90s Ohio to the abusive horror of the Red Room, where young girls are weaponised in the name of Mother Russia, to being a fugitive hunted by the US government. Stylistically the movie embraces the spy genre, in all its incarnations:…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1971 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Bernard McEveety Cast Strother Martin, LQ Jones, Ahna Capri, Charles Bateman BLU-RAY DEBUT There was a pungent scent of brimstone in ’70s horror cinema. This long-overlooked obscurity plays into that Satanic paranoia, the suspicion that the lord of Hell and his acolytes were the new Commies, plotting to overthrow society even as they moved among us. Here the locus of ungodly activity is a desert town, where kids are vanishing and the corpses are piling up. Isolated and rural, this is just as much the America of Duel and Deliverance as Rosemary’s Baby. Director Bernard McEveety was a TV journeyman, notching credits on the likes of Gunsmoke and Rawhide. This feels like a stranger, more personal vision, brought to the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | SVOD Director Joe Carnahan Cast Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, Rio Grillo PRIME Belatedly arriving over here with timing that guarantees comparisons to Free Guy, Boss Level is Groundhog Day if the Bill Murray movie had required a small army (81 – we counted) of stunt performers. Former special forces guy Roy (Frank Grillo, who was clearly working out through all those Purges) wakes up to a machetewielding assassin and a helicopter pumping lead into his flat. It’s just the first of a series of attacks that he’s now thoroughly blasé about, having already lived this day 138 times. Slowly, he begins to piece together the connection to a machine his ex-wife was working on, and a route to saving her –…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | TBC | Download You’ll want to put some tape over your webcam before watching this miserable thriller. Agoraphobic Henry (Dakota Shapiro) is a digital voyeur, peeping at women through their laptops. One night, he witnesses what looks like a murder, and calls the cops – tipping off his victim, in the process, to his presence… Dodgy acting aside, this has its moments but the final act reveal is so bleak it leaves something of an exploitative taste in the mouth.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 26 JULY 2021 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director John Krasinki Cast Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe We’ve seen it before: smallscale horror is a hit. Cue chiming cash registers in everyone’s eyes, and an overblown cash-in. Thankfully, that’s not the case with John Krasinki’s multiple-xhushing 2018 thriller about a family struggling to survive an invasion by monsters who hunt by sound, as Krasinski’s still at the helm (and the keyboard). Beginning moments after the first film ended, the sequel grabs a means of fighting back and runs with it. It’s a bigger, more ambitious film – a nail-biting “day one” flashback even flips a police car – and it opens up this world, journeying to four new locations, but all this seems to flow…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2021 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER If a friend had scripted this, you’d be concerned. Shot mostly in Poland but set in NYC prior to the 2008 crash, this deeply Cronenbergian film centres on a hunched, awkward Wall Street data analyst. As he mentally unravels, a swarm of mosquitos builds in his luxury apartment, and grotesque lumps appear all over his body. “Let go of trying to control it all” seems the key underlying message, but you could infer a more nihilist one. Though anticlimactic, it’s strangely haunting.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1976 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT Euro-sleaze king Jess Franco reused Female Vampire’s “death by sex” premise for this softcore sci-fi. His muse Lina Romay gets increasingly glittery as an alien uses her to bump people off via now poisoned lady-parts. This “plot” only emerges in brief infodumps. The focus is Romay: gyrating, having lesbian sex, whipped. She’s undeniably stunning; the vibes get eerie; and library jazz heads will dig Daniel White’s score. But close-ups of naughty bits are now easily sourced for free.…

RELEASED 13 SEPTEMBER 2020 | 15 | Download Director Jacob Chase Cast Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr, Azhy Robertson Fresh characterisation combines with old tropes in this child-in-peril horror, in which a supernatural entity attempts to cross over into our realm to take a playmate back to his. What’s original is the focus on a boy with autism: Oscar (Azhy Robertson), who struggles to speak a sentence or make eye contact. It’s a sensitive (even educational) portrayal, and the script walks a fine line well as it portrays the weary frustration of his mother (Gillian Jacobs) while insisting that Oscar is worthy of love just the way he is. Other aspects seem rather familiar. The monstrous “Larry”’s gateway to our world, a children’s storybook that keeps popping up on iPads…

David Lynch fans, don’t get too excited about the UK Criterion Collection edition of TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (Blu-ray, 13 September). There’s a restored 4K transfer, but the Entire Mystery box set had an identical one. Most of the extras were in that too, so the only new reasons to buy are interviews with Sheryl Lee and composer Angelo Badalamenti (42 minutes) from 2017’s US release. We said: “Of little interest to those without a love for Twin Peaks, but for the rest it offers a hellish insight into the final days of Laura Palmer.” LABYRINTH (4K Blu-ray, out now), Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy about a girl on a quest to rescue her baby stepbrother from the Goblin King, has been out on 4K before. However, this Zavvi-exclusive…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 528 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Alexandra Bell Publisher Del Rey Beatrice is only eight when her mother dies, but her grief is tempered by the appearance at night of the Winter Garden – a magical place ruled by the Spider Queen that allows her to visit for seven nights before vanishing, possibly forever. Seventeen years later, she walks out on a wedding to pursue her love of botany and to search the world for any trace she can find of the garden. Her friend Rosa, herself doomed to an unhappy marriage, is also entranced by the idea – and soon they’re both invited to create spectacular pleasure gardens of their own to delight the Queen. The winner of her contest will receive one wish, and with both…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 348 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Angharad Walker Publisher Chicken House Stories that engage both children and adults are fairly common in dramatic form, but rarer in fiction, where the language can be trickier to navigate across the age divide. It takes a lot of skill. Fortunately it’s a skill that debut author Angharad Walker has in spades. Aimed at children aged 10+, The Ash House tells the story of a boy suffering from an unknown affliction, who’s taken from his hospital bed and delivered to a mysterious property where he’s greeted only by other children. The Headmaster, he’s told, is away. Unable to remember his name, the boy is named Solitude – a “niceness” admired by the children, who are all named after such virtues. Sol quickly…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 566 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Anthony Ryan Publisher Orbit There’s a real thrill at the midpoint of this picaresque fantasy tale, when the characters gather just as battle starts. The vivid scene places you amid the chaos beside our anti-hero, Alwyn Scribe, and his rag-tag companions, in the claustrophobic press of a company about to charge. Reluctant soldiers swear in fear, then cower as arrows slice into people around them. It’s like a medieval Saving Private Ryan. The book’s told in the first person, as an older Alwyn recounts his memoirs, mostly resisting the temptation to address the reader directly. A band of not-very-merry outlaws suffer betrayals and wrong turns that transform our narrator from forest urchin to scholar. There’s something of Sergio Leone about The Pariah…