Sommaire pour October 2024 de SFX

THE “SURVIVALIST HORROR” IS A micro-genre that’s had something of a resurgence in the past few years, with a spate of family-orientated fright flicks that have successfully crossed over to mainstream audiences. That’s the hope, then, that director Alexandre Aja has for Never Let Go, a movie that has echoes of genre stablemates A Quiet Place, It Comes At Night and Bird Box, while at the same time carving its own distinct niche. “This is a film that was presenting itself as a straightforward survival movie,” says Aja about his first reactions to reading Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby’s script, “something in the vein of Bird Box and A Quiet Place, but then it was taking another direction. That’s really what got me excited.” The movie follows a mother, played…

AFTER SETTING THE STAGE FOR 2023 CROSSOVER DAY Of Blood in 2022’s Star Trek issue 400, Star Trek writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly – along with co-writer and Star Trek: Defiant scripter Christopher Cantwell – are again venturing into new territory in IDW’s latest anniversary issue, which acts as a prelude to the dramatic events to come in 2025. “When we started on the Trek comics line back in 2018 with a short story in the pages of the Waypoint anthology, we could never have imagined what incredible adventures awaited us,” says Lanzing. “I can’t help but feel like we’re on the precipice of another moment now with Star Trek issue 500 as we boldly go into the biggest, craziest story in Star Trek comics history.” “Day Of Blood…

There’s been a lot of speculation about who Teen is… * One of the great things about Marvel and its inherent secrecy is that fan speculation is always great for the show, because it means people are talking about it. It’s always interesting to look at what people are saying and guessing who [they] think people might be or what might happen. Some people are very on and most people are very not on it. It’s quite nice to be like, “Hi, you’re so wrong, and you don’t even know how wrong you are.” Me and Kathryn have talked about how it’s really nice to have a secret to keep and know all the secrets in the show. But also, now it’s time to send our child off to school.…

“THERE’S NO POINT REMAKING A MOVIE that works on its own.” No, that’s not a quote from an angry YouTuber complaining about how Hollywood has run out of ideas, which is why it’s remaking the exquisitely tense Dutch horror Speak No Evil. Instead, those are the words of James Watkins, the writer and director behind the upcoming American retread. “[Director] Christian [Tafdrup]’s film works brilliantly,” Watkins says. “It’s incredibly uncompromising in following through its thesis to its end. There’s just no point remaking it. I thought, ‘Well, I can have a conversation with that movie.’” The original Speak No Evil’s premise is devilishly simple: a happy Danish family go on holiday in Tuscany, where they are befriended by another family. Once back home, the Danes accept an invitation to the…

Four decades after the show was first broadcast, it’s still drawing new fans and generating interest. In October 2021, a podcast dedicated to covering everything to do with the books, TV show and spin-off media was launched. Tripodscast was co-hosted by the authors of this article, alongside Dani Wray (a first-time reader/viewer), and produced by Kevin Hiley. Running for 14 episodes, it included interviews with producer Richard Bates, all of the main cast, and vox pops from fans of the show. The podcast also spoke to Rose and Nick Youd, two of Sam Youd’s children, who run The Syle Press, which preserves the author’s legacy and publishes his various works (excluding the Tripods trilogy, and prequel When The Tripods Came, the rights to which are held by Penguin), and reviewed…

▸ RELEASED 20 SEPTEMBER 18 | 141 minutes ▸ Director Coralie Fargeat ▸ Cast Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Joseph Balderrama From What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? to X, Hollywood has often found horror in ageing women, and Coralie Fargeat’s body horror satirises how, despite the best efforts of the body positivity movement, society still finds women who dare to mature in public distasteful. The Substance sees a perfectly cast Demi Moore playing Elisabeth Sparkle, a TV fitness guru who is relieved of her duties once she has aged out of being an aspirational figure. In a moment of desperation, she orders the titular substance, which promises to transform her into “a better version of yourself. Younger, more beautiful, more perfect.” After a particularly hard-to-watch spinal injection, Sue (Margaret…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 15 | SVOD ▸ Director Lee Daniels ▸ Cast Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Caleb McLaughlin NETFLIX Logically, if you believe in the antiChrist, you also believe that Christ exists too, and in Lee Daniels’s The Deliverance, the message is clear: when Satan comes a-knockin, it’s time to find Jesus. Inspired by a true story, it sees struggling mother Ebony (Andra Day) and her brood, along with her cancer-ridden mom Alberta (Glenn Close, whose styling choices and blaccent need to be seen to be believed), tormented in their new home by nefarious spiritual forces. Their only hope lies in letting the Lord into their hearts. Daniels, who is better known for heartwrenching tragedies like Monster’s Ball and Precious, proves far more adept at non-demonic…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 24 JUNE 1980 | 12 | Blu-ray ▸ Director William Fruet ▸ Cast Kay Hawtrey, Lesleh Donaldson, Barry Morse, Dean Garbett BLU-RAY DEBUT This mild Canadian horror is actually set in a former funeral home, whose owner Maude (Kay Hawtrey) has now converted it into a guest house. So while some of the morbid accoutrements of the undertaking business remain, now disused, their role isn’t that prominent – well, until someone gets the wrong end of an embalming pump… Maude’s visiting granddaughter (Lesleh Donaldson) is our POV figure, as we’re presented with various mysteries, including the discovery of a car in a hay pile, and the disappearance, many moons ago, of Maude’s husband. It’s one of those horrors that seems to have been made by someone who’s made…

▸ RELEASED 19 SEPTEMBER 928 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Peter F Hamilton ▸ Publisher Tor For anyone worried about the idea of Peter F Hamilton writing a book tied to a new videogame, Exodus, let’s start with reassuring news. This isn’t a novel locked to a predetermined narrative or one that suggests a take-the-money lack of creativity. Rather, as the initial announcement of the book put it, it tells a story set “lightyears away from the star system featured in the game”. The first half of a duology, The Archimede Engine is also, following on from his audiobook-exclusive Arkship Trilogy, a novel that marks Hamilton’s return to widescreen space opera. And it’s good to have him back, because it’s packed with gloriously imaginative flourishes, multiple intersecting plotlines and brilliantly…

JT MOLLNER REMEMBERS THE day his mind conjured up the image that would kickstart the writing of his second feature film. “I just started to see this woman running through the woods,” he says, “being chased by this inescapable evil coming towards her.” It’s a classic image from a thousand horror films, but not one that usually opens a movie – and that’s what makes Strange Darling strikingly different. It’s a cat and mouse story told in six chapters, but crucially not in chronological order. It’s a puzzle, then, with various twists and turns that make talking about it a difficult thing for the writer/director. “We had these uncomfortable conversations with distributors where people were like, ‘Well, we love it, but the things we love about it we can’t really…

THE AIM OF A THEME PARK haunted house is to make guests scream – so how do you adapt a film franchise where your very survival depends on silence? That was the problem for the creative team at Universal Studios when bringing A Quiet Place to life for their record-breaking Halloween Horror Nights event in Orlando and Hollywood. “Uniquely different” is how queen of Halloween, Lora Sauls – one of the team at America’s most popular spooky season attraction – describes the horror maze based on the first two movies in the series. “It’s going to be a huge experiment,” she tells Red Alert. “The guests are a part of this – you can be quiet and just let the haunted house around you do the work. But we know…

⧫ New Classic Doctor Who figures from Character Options are imminent at B&M stores in the UK. From season 25’s “Remembrance Of The Daleks”, Emperor Davros has his own release, while “Resurrection Of The Daleks” is the focus of The History Of The Daleks 18, with two different coloured figures. ⧫ A five-part spin-off series, The War Between The Land And The Sea was announced by showrunner Russell T Davies in Hall H at SDCC. Written by Davies and Pete McTighe, the show will star Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in new roles with Jemma Redgrave and Alexander Devrient returning as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Colonel Ibrahim. Davies said: “I’m so lucky to work with such a magnificent cast. And this is a huge, muscular, thrilling drama which will shake the…

OZ COBB IS A MAN WITH A VISION. His own show, how does that sound? Real sweet, right? One of them classy HBO numbers, the kind that scores Emmys. Eight episodes – long form drama, they call it – all about his rise to top dog in this rat-heap of a town. A Gotham gangster epic to make Tony Soprano look like a penny-ante schmuck. Yeah, put the spotlight on Oz, where it belongs. A shot at respect at last. No chance of that mook with the bat-ears or that double-dealin’ cat-dame stealin’ his screen time. It’s his show. Number one on the call sheet. Name in the title, baby. The Penguin! Sure, it’s a little insultin’, but it’s got a ring to it, right? But listen. Every nickel-and-dime dreamer’s…

NOT QUITE CAPPING Day, but a celebration worthy of note, this month marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of The Tripods on BBC One. The series was based on a set of novels by “John Christopher” – actually a pen name of Sam Youd. A jack of all trades, his work covered various genres including sci-fi, thrillers, comedy, historical gothic romance, cricket novels, hospital erotica and serious literature, all written under different names. Comprising The White Mountains, The City Of Gold And Lead (both 1967) and The Pool Of Fire (1968), the Tripods trilogy marked Youd’s entry into children’s literature. Set in a post-apocalyptic scenario, they depict an Earth ruled for 100 years by huge, three-legged metal walking machines. No one knows if they’re AI, piloted by extraterrestrial beings,…

“Dot And Bubble” was originally suggested in 2010. Was the throughline the same? No. It wasn’t a treatment, it was a chat. It was just literally an idea of what if Twitter followed you around all day as a bubble, as pictures. It was that simple. If I had written that in 2010 for Steven [Moffat], then I would have led it somewhere else. I would’ve led it to whatever subject was in my head at that time. I think that rose naturally out of the casting of Ncuti. And thanks to him for allowing that story and portraying it so magnificently in that final scene, which is the performance of a lifetime, I think. I think it’s the Doctor of a lifetime there, I think that’s really, truly astonishing.…

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▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 101 minutes ▸ Director Eli Roth ▸ Cast Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt The fears of many gamers that the long-gestating film version of Gearbox’s beloved looter-shooter franchise would be unworthy of its inspiration are sadly realised by this haphazard sci-fi comedy. Directed, somewhat randomly, by Hostel’s Eli Roth, it’s an anarchic jaunt to the lawless planet of Pandora that retains the original’s vault-hunting premise and elements of its gameplay. Yet fans won’t recognise siren Lilith in Cate Blanchett’s jaded bounty hunter, while casting Kevin Hart as beefcake soldier Roland is a wittier gag than any to be found within the movie itself. The fact that Jack Black supplies the voice for wisecracking WALL-E-alike Claptrap suggests that the film’s creators had…

▸ UK Sky Atlantic/NOW, streaming now ▸ US Max, streaming now ▸ Showrunner Ryan Condal ▸ Cast Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Rhys Ifans EPISODES 2.01-2.08 House Of The Dragon’s second season ends so abruptly that it feels necessary to reiterate that eight episodes really is the extent of the run. The epic denouement teased throughout is conspicuous by its absence, resulting in a frustrating and anticlimactic finale. Season three will have to start with a bang… The decision to leave so many plotlines unresolved is bizarre, particularly in a show so leisurely paced. The two squabbling Targaryen factions (King Aegon’s Greens and Queen Rhaenyra’s Blacks) spend the conversationheavy season engaged in a medieval Cold War, only coming to Game Of Thrones-scale blows in brilliant fourth episode “The Red Dragon And…

Anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (23 September, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD) sees a grieving Japanese boy lured into a spiritual world populated by the starving dead and the not yet born. We said: “There are images here as breathtaking as anything Miyazaki has drawn in his career.” Extras include feature-length storyboards and interviews with the composer, a producer and the lead animator. Arthouse quirkfest SASQUATCH SUNSET (out now, Blu-ray) follows sasquatches living in a beautifully shot Californian forest. They eat. They sleep. They groom… That’s about it. We said: “Unfortunately it’s so slight that it never quite holds your attention.” Good bonuses though: commentary by the directors, plus 98 minutes more stuff, including a BFI Q&A and numerous featurettes. In STING (out now, Blu-ray/DVD), a 12-year-old girl makes a…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Marvel Comics ▸ Writer Deniz Camp Artist Juan Frigeri ISSUES 1-3 Marvel’s new iteration of the Ultimate Universe has taken a little while to find its feet, but there’s finally a clear focus beyond its ultra-complicated backstory. Recasting Marvel heroes as revolutionary underdogs out to topple the rulers of a dark alternate version of history, this latest remix of the Marvel Universe gets its centrepiece with new ongoing title The Ultimates, rebooting the series originally created by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. Directly picking up the story threads from last year’s Ultimate Universe one-shot special, the story follows Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Reed Richards as they try to assemble a team capable of taking on the totalitarian forces controlling the world. Each issue sees…

FANS OF STAR WARS and Lego have been fed especially well the last five years, with new Lego Star Wars videogames, fresh building sets and three Disney+ specials with stories set after the Star Wars sequels. Now the creative team behind those specials return to remix their own work with the four-part miniseries event Lego Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy. Directed by long-time Lego animator Chris Buckley, written by Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit (Pokémon Detective Pikachu) and executive-produced by James Waugh, Rebuild The Galaxy boasts an original story featuring the vocal talents of Star Wars legends Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams and others, all giving their iconic characters very different spins. Waugh tells Red Alert that to celebrate 25 years of the Lego Star Wars partnership, they wanted…

THERE’S NO HIGHER COMPLIMENT TO be paid than becoming the subject of a drag brunch. When clips from a WandaVision themed event in Minneapolis, in which queens high-kicked and death-dropped in the boots, capes and robes of Agatha Harkness and the Scarlet Witch, reached stars Kathryn Hahn and Elizabeth Olsen, they were overjoyed. “I remember Lizzie being, like, ‘Well, we’ve made it,’” Hahn tells SFX. “It was the coolest homage.” “It was so beautiful and thrilling to have our show celebrated in this way,” creator Jac Schaeffer adds. “I could cry thinking about it. I have thought about that drag brunch most days making Agatha All Along. I wanted this show to be worthy of that type of fandom and adulation.” Hahn’s Agatha is the Salem witch with a taste for…

ALMOST 40 YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE Beetlejuice was eaten by a sandworm on his wedding day. For a long time it felt like it would be his last appearance on the big screen, which always felt… odd. After all, Tim Burton’s movie was a huge hit back in 1988, and work on a sequel began immediately – one infamous draft saw Beetlejuice move to Hawaii and enter an undead surfing contest – but nothing ever materialised, on film at least. There were four seasons of an animated show, a couple of minor videogame appearances, and most recently a short-lived musical on Broadway. By modern standards, that’s a meagre offering for such a beloved character. But it’s finally happening, and the task of resurrecting the character and exploring his strange and…

IN THE 14 YEARS OF AMC’S THE WALKING DEAD universe, the 2022 announcement that the much-anticipated spin-off series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, starring Norman Reedus, would be set and filmed in France ranks as one of the most unexpected twists of the whole franchise. From his introduction in the third episode of the flagship series, Daryl Dixon has always represented the personification of the insular, rural American. From his poor, abused upbringing to his indefatigable loyalty for the very few people he trusts, Dixon is the antithesis of worldliness. However, Reedus and his character’s global popularity remains undisputed to this day. So the rough biker with a good heart found himself the ultimate fish out of water, literally washed up on the shore near Marseilles in season one. Over…

KEVIN CLARKE UNEXPECTEDLY found his calling while training to be a drama teacher at Bretton Hall college, near Wakefield. “[Playwright] Trevor Griffiths came along to do a talk,” he recalls. “As soon as he started talking, I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be; that’s what I want to do.’” Clarke went on to beat 25,000 applicants in becoming one of seven students on the first-ever BBC scriptwriters’ course. What was the path that led you to write for Doctor Who? I did Casualty and I went straight on to another BBC show; a long-forgotten cop show. Then I got an ITV one. I had a very good agent when I started out! Then suddenly, nothing. I bumped into one of the people I’d encountered on the course: Caroline Oulton,…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 |119 minutes ▸ Director Fede Alvarez ▸ Cast Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced Given how much of the publicity for the seventh Alien film focused on how it was “set in-between Alien and Aliens” (yes, we plead guilty), it may surprise people that it probably has as much in common with Alien Resurrection as it does James Cameron’s celebrated sequel. The entry it shares the most DNA with, however, is Ridley Scott’s 1979 original – in ways that are for the most part a cause for celebration, but occasionally questionable. Romulus looks just right, every battered texture and primitive computer graphic evincing a meticulous level of care. However, the biggest callback – which we won’t spoil here – seems rather unnecessary, and threatens…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 23 SEPTEMBER 1993/1995/1997 | 18 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Álex de la Iglesia ▸ Cast Antonio Resines, Álex Angulo, Armando De Razza, Santiago Segura, Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem BLU-RAY DEBUT Although Álex de la Iglesia’s filmography has 17 titles, he’s still best known for the first three – collected in this box set. Their scabrous blend of black humour, violence and the grotesque attached the jump-leads to Spanish cinema, kicking open doors for other genre filmmakers. The 2000 AD-esque Accion Mutante sets the tone – in de la Iglesia’s words, “weaponised frivolity”. It follows a bumbling group of disabled terrorists – including conjoined twins and a chap with a flying wheelchair – who spit on beauty standards, shooting up a TV aerobics show and assassinating bodybuilders. After kidnapping…

▸ RELEASED 26 SEPTEMBER 320 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Neal Stephenson ▸ Publisher The Borough Press Not for the first time with a new book from Neal Stephenson, there was a debate about whether SFX should be reviewing Polostan at all. The reason? Because this first volume in the Bomb Light cycle is set in the USA and the USSR in the years between the First and Second World Wars. No spaceships are involved. No time travel or dragons either. Reallife historical figures appear. Those who want only to read reviews of books with at least a splash of the overtly incredible can look away now. Except, of course, Stephenson’s historical fiction has always been, in its way, as fantastical as his genre offerings – in great part because…

I’m too young to have had to pick a side in the punk/disco wars, but while I wouldn’t have burned the records (à la “Disco Demolition Night”), I might have rocked a DISCO SUCKS badge. That said, I think sci-fi and disco are a very good fit. Both are prone to synthesised sounds and sparkly silver outfits. And I’ve got a soft spot for the ’70s discs that encouraged people to flap their nylon wing collars to the sounds of space. Domenico Monardo, aka Meco, is the best known exponent. His 1977 album Star Wars And Other Galactic Funk, which includes a 16-minute medley of John Williams cues, went platinum. Personally, I prefer the Music From Star Trek LP, thanks to a version of The Motion Picture’s theme that’d make…