Sommaire pour November 2025 de SFX

What can you tell us about your character? I don’t know what I’m allowed to reveal yet! I can say that I’m a woman who is new to Derry. I moved to this town with my family, and we’re new and we are melanated. So in 1962 we’re not perhaps that welcome in this new town and my family is navigating that. You haven’t done a project as intense as this, horror-wise. No, I haven’t. I’m naturally very much a scaredy cat. So I maybe accidentally manifested horror because somewhere I said to someone that I’d be great at horror because I’m so scared. But this, you’ve got all the elements for a really great production. You have Andy and Barbara, you have an incredible cast, and it’s Stephen King…

AS LIONSGATE DECIDES WHERE to take the Leprechaun franchise next, Michael Leavy – producer of the Terrifier sequels – has dropped his own take online. His short film, “Leprechaun Revenge”, serves as a proof of concept for what his team at Fuzz on the Lens Productions could bring to the series if given the chance. Leavy first encountered the 1993 original as a child. “It really was a franchise that got me to fall in love with movies,” he tells SFX. In fact, he sees Leprechaun as instrumental in shaping the path he and his brother Jason – who co-directed the short – would later take as filmmakers. “We just got what it was going for,” he explains. “We have a serious love for both comedy and horror.” The short…

SCOTT DERRICKSON HAS ONLY ever directed one sequel – his direct-to-video debut Hellraiser V: Inferno – and for good reason. “A lot of times, for horror sequels, the expectation is a recycled version of the first movie,” he tells SFX. “I’m usually not that interested in those kinds of sequels, and I’m certainly not interested in making one.” It’s a mantra the filmmaker had when making Hellraiser V (reviews of the movie note how his on-screen nightmare wildly differs from its predecessors), and it’s an attitude Derrickson had when approaching his follow-up to The Black Phone. “You’re in a perilous position as a writer/director, making a sequel to a movie that has done very well, and in my case, a movie that was very personal,” he says. “What eventually got…

How does your relationship as twins help you in terms of the creation of the show? Can you communicate by telepathy? ☆ Ross: It’s not telepathic, but we know each other really well, so one look can communicate a lot. There’s telepathy in that. We don’t necessarily have to communicate a lot to tell each other how we are feeling and what to do. A scene will play and we can just shoot a look at each other and then someone goes off to deal with either a camera or the actors to get it to where we want it to go. Obviously, we have grown up together and we have spent so much of our lives together. We went to school together, we went to college together and we…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 109 minutes ▶ Director Kogonada ▶ Cast Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge ➔ It’s surely intentionally ironic that a film about reluctant participants on a life-affirming quest should have an off-putting title requiring a leap of faith. Maybe the garish name is there as a filter for the cynics who’ll struggle to get on board with the unique rhythms and artificial style of director Kogonada’s often dreamy romantic fantasy. If there’s a part of you that’s susceptible to going on an enriching ride, you’re in the same boat as David (Colin Farrell, reuniting with his After Yang director). Hiring a rental car from a whimsical outlet, he ends up following the simple, retro-styled satnav on the titular experience, which he ends…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Matt Roller ▶ Cast Eliza Coupe, Skyler Gisondo, Will Forte, Jimmi Simpson EPISODES 1.01-1.08 To paraphrase the Eagles, “Welcome to the Hotel Undervale – you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” They may have been singing metaphorically, but at the Undervale the ghostly residents can literally never leave. Haunted Hotel is an animated comedy created by Matt Roller, who’s written for cult cartoon hits like Archer and Rick And Morty. When single mum Katherine’s brother Nathan dies, she inherits his spook-infested property and moves in with her neurotic teenage son Ben and supernatural-obsessed daughter Esther. Attracting breathing guests proves difficult, even with ghost-Nathan hanging around – not that he’s much help with the DIY now, being all non-corporeal. But…

▶ RELEASED 13 OCTOBER 1992 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Ted Nicolaou ▶ Cast Paul Hipp, Martha Quinn, Aaron Lustig, Ian Patrick Williams BLU-RAY DEBUT Another month, another reminder that while the odd gem emerged from Charles Band’s Full Moon stable, so did plenty of crud. Centred on a small town radio station, Bad Channels does deliver a memorable alien and its robot sidekick – even if it looks like the budget was about £50. After caking KDUL in green fungus, the pair kidnap young women via the airwaves. They end up miniaturised in jars. God knows why – maybe this odd couple watched Bride Of Frankenstein and decided to copy Dr Pretorius. Said abductions involve listeners imagining themselves in music videos: cue performances by three tiresome LA rock bands. The…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 |15 | Digital ➔ A man wakes up in a sinkhole with a piece of glass sticking out of his guts… and his day only gets worse from there. Scurry is a super-low-budget creature feature – for most of the runtime, it’s just two actors talking in the dark – which means it’s the kind of film that lives or dies on its script and performances. Unfortunately, both are barely mediocre. Throw in some super-cheap CG effects and an eye-roller of an ending and you’ve basically got Cloverfield, if everything about it was infinitely worse.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1990 | 18 | 4K ▶ Director Tom Savini ▶ Cast Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson BLU-RAY DEBUT Remaking a horror classic is a risky business, but this colour redo of George Romero’s seminal zombie film – scripted/overseen by Romero, but helmed by make-up whizz Tom Savini – successfully walks a path between fidelity and freshening things up. It boasts elements Romero’s handmade labour of love couldn’t: complex zombie make-ups; bigger pyrotechnics; sprinkled f-bombs. But the smartest innovation is giving Patricia Tallman’s Barbara a Sigourney Weaver-esque character arc, from whimpering wreck to bandolier-wearing badass. Savini cleverly plays with expectations, there are some neat touches (like a junkie zombie with dangling syringe), and the human conflict still compels, as besieged strangers butt heads over tactics. A…

Movies hitting shiny disc include Pixar’s ELIO (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now). Abducted by aliens, the titular orphan lad helps them deal with a warlord aggressor. We said: “Colourful and creative… a workable blend between sci-fi and caper comedy.” Bonuses (51 minutes) include a Making Of, astronaut Q&A, “art class”, Easter Eggs rundown, and deleted scenes. The live-action take on HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now) takes a beat-for-beat approach to the story of Hiccup, the young Viking who befriends a dragon. We said: “When it comes to its central relationship, it’s a lesson in how to drain a dragon of its personality.” The extras include director’s commentary, a 45-minute Making Of, six short featurettes, and two deleted scenes. In M3GAN 2.0 (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now), the killer android is rebuilt…

▶ RELEASED 16 OCTOBER 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Marie Lu ▶ Publisher Tor ➔ Urban romantasy gets a neo noir makeover here in a book which could easily be renamed Magical Gangs Of LA. Part Scarface, part Twilight, it’s the tale of two poor young immigrants in an alternate universe LA (or “Angel City”) who are inducted into rival crime gangs of matter-transforming “alchemists”. Sam, from China, can become almost invisible in a crowd, while Ari, from the slums of India, has natural charisma that draws people to him. These are abilities that can be weaponised in a war to control a drug known as Sand, so both Ari and Sam are trained by different gangs to become alchemist assassins. What neither gang realises is that Sam and…

▶ RELEASED 23 OCTOBER 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Joey Batey ▶ Publisher Raven Books ➔ Joey Batey is best known for playing the bard Jaskier in Netflix’s The Witcher. In his debut novel a nameless – and hopeless – band in the North East find themselves the unwitting inspiration for a fandom that makes Swifties look like a picture of restraint. The group is made up of songwriter Callum, attention-hungry singer Melusine, and introverted drummer Al. Callum has concocted a labyrinthine mythology to underpin their music: song cycles that revolve around a pantheon of gods dubbed “Solkats”. When one of their gigs descends into violence, however, the band pick up a dangerous following who believe the Solkats are real. They might be right. Batey likely knows a thing…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Stephanie Garber ▶ Publisher Gollancz ➔ The question mark key on author Stephanie Garber’s keyboard took a pummelling while she was writing this fast-paced, Hollywood-themed urban fantasy. The plot is so convoluted that the protagonist spends vast chunks of the novel asking herself, “Why?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “Who?” and “How?”. Even then she’s only asking a fraction of the questions the reader will be. That protagonist is Holland, the secret daughter of a famous puzzle-loving director who was murdered by his wife when Holland and her twin sister were young. She has grown up fascinated with urban myths, and enrols in a course run by a strange professor who alerts her students to the location of her lectures using cryptic…

▶ RELEASED 14 OCTOBER 400 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Jennifer Kennedy ▶ Publisher Angry Robot ➔ A young wife, a rich husband, the restless souls of murdered women who’ve gone before… it’s a well-known tale, that of Bluebeard and his eventual thwarting by his cleverer-than-expected final bride. This debut novel puts a different spin on it, though, with a new wife, who married to flee accusations of witchcraft, and isn’t as helpless as her husband believes. Fortune Blyth was only a teenager when her first baby, carried in secret, died at birth. She swears to the Devil that she will never let any man touch her again, only to break that vow when marriage is the only escape from her superstitious neighbours. Isaiah Quickly seems a saviour – a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Chris Condon ▶ Artist Jeffrey Alan Love ISSUES 1-3 America’s early-’60s era of nuclear paranoia has always been an evocative setting for sci-fi horror, and this six-issue miniseries wants to tap straight into the mood of that time with a grainy, B-movie-esque nightmare. The action begins in 1962, when a nuclear bomb test at a Nevada military base goes horribly wrong, and the fallout from the detonation starts transforming everyone it touches. Soon the only survivor is taking shelter at a local diner as monstrous adversaries close in. However, writer Chris Condon hasn’t brought a fresh enough approach to what’s largely playing as an ultratraditional tale of desperate survival in a zombie apocalypse. These first three issues feature some nicely played…

▶ Running until: 28 February 2026 ▶ Venue: Museum of Brands, London EXHIBITION A treasure trove of memorabilia awaits both casual fans and Gerry Anderson obsessives in this eye-popping retrospective, assembled to mark the 60th and 50th anniversaries of Thunderbirds and Space: 1999 respectively. An opening vestibule acknowledges the latter alongside its live-action predecessor UFO, with a diorama of Moonbase Alpha and multiple iterations of the Eagle spacecraft taking centre stage. This is merely an appetiser for the larger gallery beyond, devoted to Anderson’s Supermarionation adventures – sure to leave visitors mutely slack-jawed in wonder. Larger items, like a vintage kiddie ride inspired by Gerry’s early show Supercar, command the attention initially. But it’s the dozen display cases surrounding it which reveal the range of the exhibition’s riches, from Dinky…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PS5 ▶ Also on PC, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X ▶ Publisher Bloober Team VIDEOGAME Cronos: The New Dawn feels like an interactive mood board at times. There’s a good take on a survival horror shooter here, but it’s one that bears the shapes of its influences in occasionally stark silhouette. Dead Space is an obvious source for much of it, from the protagonist’s heavy, floor-stomping presence, to her shape-changing gun and enemies with a gruesome gimmick. Whereas Dead Space had you “cut off their limbs”, here creatures “merge” with bodies to become more powerful. Gravity-defying, wallwalking sections also feel lifted from EA’s space adventure. Elsewhere, Resident Evil rears its rotting head, while John Carpenter and ’80s body horror loom large. Obviously most…

Crash Landing 18 JANUARY 1974 Debuting in Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg, bionically refurbished astronaut Steve Austin brought his brand of high-tech heroics to three feature-length pilots in 1973. Noting their popularity, Universal TV supremo Frank Price tasked producer Harve Bennett with creating an ongoing series, adding one crucial stipulation: “You have to be on the air in six weeks.” “I thought it was insane,” recalled Bennett, who would go on to steer the Star Trek movie franchise in the ’80s. Committing to the scramble, his first instinct was to retool Austin’s screen persona. The recent TV movies had saddled star Lee Majors with a tuxedoed, wannabe-Bondian image. Bennett saw his leading man as more Gary Cooper than Roger Moore, “a cowboy without a horse” – albeit a cowboy who could hit…

Crown Court “Destruct, Destruct” Nick Setchfield, Editor At Large Watched by housewives, “the jobless” and legions of fluriddled, Lucozade-sipping kids, afternoon telly in the ’70s was usually the safest of spaces. Sure, Crown Court offered up the occasional juicy murder among its property disputes, muggings and fraud claims, but you never suspected that it might be doused in pure nightmare fuel and ready to hand you the match. A dependable, oddly melancholy fixture of the post-lunch schedule, it dramatised fictional criminal cases in front of a jury of genuine members of the public, plucked from the electoral registers of Granadaland. It was the late summer of 1973 when the Case of the Queen against Ainsworth scarred me forever. Ominously titled “Destruct, Destruct”, the three-part story opens with a scene of…

What can you tell us about your character? He’s a father. He takes a position that allows him to relocate to Derry with his family. He’s someone who actually reminded me a lot of my father just because of the type of man he was. He can be a bit strict, but really just parenting the way that he was parented. He’s a driven individual, ambitious, strong-willed father, and he’s just trying to get acclimated to this new town of Derry and trying to raise a family in the ’60s. He seems a very noble and just character… One of the exercises I was doing was journalling early in preproduction. I actually attempted to draw Captain America, just because this character seems like somebody who’s the guy that you think…

CHARLES DANCE IS tucking into a third boiled egg. He’s seated at the head of a long dining table in a stately room, the high walls adorned with imposing oil paintings and an eight-foot mirror with a golden frame. Outside it’s a blazing morning, but inside the atmosphere is rather dismal, with heavy velvet curtains drawn across the trio of floor-to-ceiling windows. Bewigged servants encircle the table at a respectful distance. They’re silent and still, careful not to interrupt Dance’s small grunts of joy as he slurps at a spoonful of egg. Likewise, the young boy sat to Dance’s right is prudently respectful, eating his own boiled egg with no words and a minimum of movement. Dance, playing Leopold Frankenstein, tugs at his ear and then inserts a finger for…

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY WAS the horror success story of 2007. Oren Peli’s found-footage thriller was shot for just $15,000, but became an instant smash hit, grossing almost $200m at the box office and leading to six cinematic sequels before the franchise petered out with 2021’s underwhelming Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin. But ghost stories never truly die… Now Paranormal Activity has come shrieking back to life as a stage play. Following a successful first run at Leeds Playhouse earlier this year, the production is now set to haunt London’s West End. SFX spoke with writer Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett to find out more… “It starts with a couple of newlyweds, James and Lou, who have moved from Chicago to London, looking for a fresh start,” says Holloway, who also…

NE OF THE BIGGEST AND best spooky season celebrations is Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, taking over four of their global theme parks annually. This year, for around 50 evenings between August and November, their Hollywood and Orlando destinations share five haunted houses based on known franchises – Fallout, Jason Universe, WWE, Five Nights At Freddy’s and Terrifier. Art the Clown has become something of an event icon this year, roaming the streets and appearing in unexpected places, and taking part in the opening ceremony in Hollywood. These appearances have, of course, gone viral. Art the Clown is the first iconic slasher movie character in two decades John Murdy, Creative Director and Executive Producer of HHN Hollywood, explains why that decision was an easy one: “Art the Clown is the…

The final season of Stranger Things is nearly here! In order to prepare for your upcoming season five binge, step into the SFX interview archives for exclusive, all-new treats from the past. Whether you want behind-the-scenes secrets from the cast and crew, on-set stories from your Hawkins favourites or interviews we’ve never published before, we’ve got you covered. HE FOURTH SEASON OF STRANGER Things was released in two bumper volumes of spooky deliciousness. The first batch of seven episodes dropped on Netflix on 27 May 2022 and the final two episodes followed on 1 July, just in time for Independence Day celebrations in the USA. Set in March 1986, the main storyline was a global adventure that introduced the world to Vecna, Eddie Munson and the Hellfire Club. A multitude…

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN 70 YEARS SINCE the eponymous amphibian of Creature From The Black Lagoon shambled his way onto American cinema screens and into the hearts of moviegoers round the world. But despite almost Universal recognition (pun intended), the studio’s so-called “Gill-man” is their only iconic movie monster to never get a remake. It’s certainly not for lack of trying; more than a dozen A-list filmmakers have been involved in various attempts over the years, but none of them have even got to the cinematic starting gate, let alone a finish line. CREATURE FEATURE The first real attempt to reboot the franchise came in 1982 thanks to John Landis, who approached the original film’s director Jack Arnold to helm a remake that Landis would produce from a script by…

▶ RELEASED 10 OCTOBER 15 | 72 minutes ▶ Director Ben Leonberg ▶ Cast Indy, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden ➔ Forget Leo in One Battle After Another or Timothée in Marty Supreme, next year’s Oscar for Best Actor should go to Indy, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever belonging to first-time director Ben Leonberg, who owns every scene of Good Boy. Indy accompanies his on-screen owner Todd (Shane Jensen) to the rural house left by Todd’s deceased grandfather (Larry Fessenden). Our furry hero is, naturally, a good boy, but he’s also a scared boy because his beloved Todd is clearly ill, and his keen senses detect an ominous presence in the house. With every shot containing Indy or presenting his POV, Good Boy has a USP that could become gimmicky…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 98 minutes ▶ Director Renny Harlin ▶ Cast Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Richard Brake ➔ Filmed back-to-back with last year’s Chapter 1 and a soon-to-be-released Chapter 3, The Strangers: Chapter 2 is both the second film in a trilogy and the fourth film in a franchise that began in 2008 with Bryan Bertino’s original. Renny Harlin more or less remade that film last time out, which at least permits him to tinker with the formula this time around. Despite a creepy interlude in a hospital morgue and some autovehicular action, however, the claustrophobic intimacy of its housebound predecessors is inevitably sacrificed by transplanting the mayhem to a variety of locales. It also means the series’ trio of masked serial killers have to acquire almost superhuman…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Showrunners Bryan Andrews, Zeb Wells ▶ Cast Iman Vellani, Dominique Thorne, Hailee Steinfeld, David Harbour EPISODES 1.01-1.04 The latest Marvel animated series to slink onto Disney+ with minimal fanfare is this four-episode take on Robert Kirkman’s comic series. Following on from 2021’s What If…? episode “What If… Zombies?!”, the show drops us straight into a dystopian parallel world where the familiar Marvel heroes are outnumbered by hordes of flesh-munching undead. Our guide to this dangerous world is Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), surviving with the help of Ironheart/Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) and Hawkeye/Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). When the gang stumble upon an old SHIELD base they begin a journey that may bring an end to the zombie plague once and for all. Along the way they meet…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2002 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray ▶ Director Marina de Van ▶ Cast Marina de Van, Laurent Lucas, Léa Drucker BLU-RAY DEBUT Label Radiance describes In The Skin as “body horror”, and “part of the New French Extremity movement”. Director Marina de Van would beg to differ. You can see why. Though liable to have viewers watching through their fingers, it’s more of a psychological portrait. De Van herself plays Esther, whose life is pretty banal: boring marketing job; unremarkable boyfriend. One night she trips and badly cuts her leg, awakening a compulsion to self-harm. This is more than your average razorslashing, with Esher biting off small chunks of flesh, and even slicing off skin and tanning it. De Van’s argument that this isn’t a horror is strengthened…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 18 | Digital/DVD (13 October) ➔ Guy Peace toplines this supernaturally-tinged, often brutally dark Western. His ether-sniffing sawbones escorts a freed slave on the journey to a preacher she hopes can cure her daughter’s deadly touch. It’s a film of big skies, tense stand-offs, and quirky characterisation: a “halfwit” farm boy who’s forever babbling and a well-spoken Native American by the name of William Shakespeare both impress. But ultimately the girl’s mysterious power feels like merely a hollow MacGuffin. + Extras None.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 15 | Digital ➔ Surviving a near-fatal mission disaster, an astronaut (Kate Mara) finds herself experiencing disturbing phenomena. Locked down in a government safehouse, she begins to wonder if the true threat is inside or outside… Mara makes an appealingly resilient heroine, and this often tense thriller holds its mystery for much of its runtime. But as it riffs on everything from The Quatermass Experiment to The Fly to Halloween it never quite commits to its own identity. A brazenly Spielbergian climax feels pure karaoke.…

Tom Holland’s 1985 horror-comedy FRIGHT NIGHT (out now) sees a teen turn to Roddy McDowall’s late-night TV horror host to combat his vampiric neighbour. We said: “It’s still got plenty of bite… the gooey special effects hold up surprisingly well.” The US got a 4K in 2022; expect Sony’s UK Steelbook to carry over its new additions, including a cast reunion script read. In Dan O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (13 October), a chemical leak causes partying punks to be caught up in an outbreak of fast-moving and (for the first time) brains-hungry zombies. We said: “Studded with moments of delicious jet-black comedy… a flavoursome blend of sweet and sour.” This Arrow Video Limited Edition replicates the (copious) bonuses from Second Sight’s 2013 Blu-ray. But hey, you do get…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1990 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray ▶ Director Alain Robak ▶ Cast Emmanuelle Escourrou, Jean-François Gallotte BLU-RAY DEBUT If someone played you Baby Blood with the sound turned down (and subtitles turned off) you could be forgiven for not realising it’s a French film. With its focus on the scuzzy underbelly of society, and its lashings of gore (and gratuitous nudity) – not to mention gliding Evil Dead POV shots – this low-budget effort has far more in common with the work of Frank Hennenlotter than the glossy Cinéma du look. Emmanuelle Escourrou plays a circus employee rudely impregnated by an ancient parasite, which then psychically commands her to commit murders to supply it with blood. Yep, it’s a Prevenge precursor. The mere fact that this was France’s…

▶ RELEASED 21 OCTOBER 896 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Joe Hill ▶ Publisher Headline ➔ In our forebears’ worldview, in the comparatively near past, the veil between the worlds was permeable. Our ancestors, departed friends and the saints could visit us, but so too could the unquiet dead, fey folk up to no good, and monsters. Moreover, our own world was a far stranger place than we imagine today, less susceptible to rational explanation. Well, unless you’re a conspiracy theorist. But what if our reality mapped far more closely onto how our predecessors thought? What if our fear of the eldritch creatures that inhabit the dark was justified? What if the human imagination could manifest our deepest fears? To judge by King Sorrow, such a world would be a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Stephen Baxter ▶ Publisher Gollancz ➔ Without being sniffy about fantasy or its kid sibling, romantasy, there has been a relative dearth of hard SF novels recently. More specifically, the kind of books that Stephen Baxter often writes – set in space, featuring arcane ships, full of big ideas – seem to come around less often. Still, while we wait for the next space opera boom, Baxter is still producing novels that are epic, yet always seem plausible. It probably helps that Baxter is a trained engineer whose connections with the British Interplanetary Society run deep. He does his research – as anyone who’s ever read the reference-heavy afterwords to his books can testify. This time, the setting is the…

▶ RELEASED 21 OCTOBER 496 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Tasha Suri ▶ Publisher Orbit Books ➔ Human beings, the late Sir Terry Pratchett liked to point out, run on narrative. We are storytelling apes. The latest novel from Tasha Suri takes this idea and runs with it. It conjures a Britain where powerful stories recur and certain people, incarnates, are predestined to play out these tales. The story that animates Suri’s book is “The Tale Of The Knight And The Witch”, a tragedy in which the central couple are doomed to fall in love and die at the hands of the other. Incarnates are honoured, in great part because the future of the kingdom is bound up with them, in ways that are unclear at the beginning of the…

▶ RELEASED 9 OCTOBER 240 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Michelle Paver ▶ Publisher Orion ➔ After a bad break-up, a change of scenery can be rejuvenating, but entomologist Simon Corbett takes it to the extreme in this tropical ghost story. Joining a dig in Central America, he’s hoping to shake off his heartbreak by discovering a new kind of mantid. The thing is, ghosts don’t need plane tickets, and this one isn’t letting Simon go… The story initially unfolds through Simon’s journal entries, which means we get to see his unpleasant personality up close. He’s cold, judgemental, and violently racist – the book is set in the early ’70s, but Simon seems particularly bigoted. He’s also lying to himself (and us) about what happened between him and his beloved…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writers/artists Various ONE-SHOT It’s been over 20 years since the last Marvel/DC crossover, and the two companies have finally linked up again to deliver the most unashamedly commercial superhero team-up you could possibly imagine. The first of two self-contained specials, this initial outing is largely written and drawn by Marvel talent (with a second Batman/Deadpool special, featuring DC writers and artists, arriving in November). The biggest chunk of this jumbo-sized issue sees Batman having to deal with the anarchic arrival of Wade Wilson in Gotham City. Naturally, there’s a predictable amount of chaos (and a brief Deadpool/Joker team-up), but while the story from Zeb Wells evolves almost exactly as you’d expect, enough of the gags land to make this a fun…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Running time 140 minutes ▶ Format CD/download ▶ Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA “Alixion” is perhaps the most mysterious of the “lost” stories that would have made up Doctor Who’s never-made 27th season. Aside from the name of the writer – Robin Mukherjee – and a few fragmentary details about the setting, little has been known about this adventure for almost 40 years – until now. The Doctor and Ace have narrowly escaped a taxing adventure and are in need of some rest and recuperation. They check into a luxury health spa, but the Doctor grows suspicious of the elixir that everybody seems to drink. There’s a scuttling behind the walls, and as the duo investigate they find themselves at the mercy of an entity who…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PS5 ▶ Also on PC, Xbox Series X|S ▶ Publisher Nacon VIDEOGAME Smuggled out of the war-ravaged country of Hadea as a small child, Remi was explicitly told never to return by his mother. Yet that’s exactly what he does as an adult, determined to find his parents, with little more than the name of a village to go on. Although the signs of a brutal war are everywhere – destroyed buildings, bodies in the street, traumatised civilians – it’s not humans that you’ll be fighting. Strange creatures known as Hollow Walkers have flooded Hadea, and it’s these that you’ll be tackling with melee weapons and special abilities. The rhythm of combat is a close cousin to Soulslikes – guard, parry, dodge –…

HELL IS GETTING even more complicated in season two of Prime Video’s hit very adult animated musical comedy Hazbin Hotel. An original series created by Vivienne Medrano based on her Patreonfunded YouTube series, it centres on the battle between Heaven and Hell, just with dirty songs and lots of blush-worthy story points. Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen) is the daughter of Lucifer (Jeremy Jordan) and she wants to solve Hell’s overpopulation problem by peacefully rehabilitating souls in her Hazbin Hotel. Once redeemed, they can head up to Heaven and clear some space. However, her disruption of the norms between Heaven and Hell pisses off a lot of major players, inciting a battle in the first season finale that Charlie ultimately won. Now she’s got an even busier hotel, resentful souls nursing…

Faster than a speeding bullet… James Gunn’s Man Of Tomorrow arrives 9 July 2027. According to the DCU screen supremo it’s “a story about Lex Luthor and Superman having to work together to a certain degree against a much, much bigger threat”. Filming begins in April. Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Amy Adams and Aaron Pierre join Ryan Gosling in Star Wars: Starfighter. Directed by Shawn Levy, it’s set to open 28 May 2027, marking 50 years of the Force on the big screen. Apple TV+ has ordered a fourth season of Foundation. “We look forward to continuing the epic, emotional storytelling that defined the first three seasons of the show,” say showrunners Ian Goldberg and David Kob, in dazzling unison. The Conjuring franchise is set to become a TV series…

WHEN YOUR LONG-AWAITED FEATURE film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s biggest novels breaks box office records, becoming the highest-grossing horror film of all time, it’s a no-brainer that talk is swiftly going to turn to continuing the franchise. But director Andy Muschietti’s two It movies (2017/2019) told the story of the Losers Club and the ultimate defeat of Pennywise the Dancing Clown with nowhere left to go – except backwards. Andy says that it was while work was completing on the second movie that conversations with Pennywise star Bill Skarsgård gravitated to a prequel and the character of Bob Gray, the real person behind the clown in the original book. While the treatment of Bob Gray in prose is very cryptic, It: Welcome To Derry – a nine-episode television…

Your character is established in the world of Stephen King, but what is he bringing to this series? The thing we do know about Dick from the movie The Shining and Doctor Sleep, and if anybody’s read the books he’s actually appeared in, is he has the Shining and that allows him the ability to communicate otherworldly. So this is how I’ll say it: I wonder what that means for someone who exists on another reality and plane as far as Pennywise is concerned. There’s not many adults that have anything to do with Pennywise, but can experience Pennywise and I think that they might have some psychic interferences. Does it help playing a character with previous history? It’s always beneficial to have as much material as possible. It’s tough…

MONDAY MORNING, AND YOUR intrepid SFX reporter is hunched in front of a bottle of lube in a Soho strip bar. It’s all in the line of duty, of course. It’s November 2024 and we find ourselves behind the beaded curtain of the very dated Cupid’s Error – actually on a studio backlot in Manchester, where AMC has recreated not only a club, but an entire London street. But nothing is as it really seems with their new chapter in Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe. Talamasca: The Secret Order is, it turns out, actually a spy show – albeit one with vampires, witches and more. Creator, writer, director and producer John Lee Hancock explains he was approached by Mark Johnson (Interview With The Vampire, Mayfair Witches) who asked if he was…

BAD GIRLS These comedy horror queens have got their knockers, but we’re delighted to see the pair of them As the host of ’80s TV series Movie Macabre With Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark is the perfect candidate to usher in this spooky season’s offering of scary comics. She’s teaming up with DC Comics’ own Maid of Mischief Harley Quinn in a new six-parter from Dynamite Entertainment, Harley Quinn X Elvira. It’s co-written by long-running Harley scripters Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, with the latter sharing art duties with Juan Samu. “Elvira and Harley are quite different in many ways,” says Palmiotti. “Harley is driven by her instincts and emotions the minute they pop into her overworking brain, and reacts a bit too quickly to just about everything. “Whereas Elvira…

BY THE EARLY NOUGHTIES, “people in peril” survival horror films were ubiquitous. It took the might of British director Neil Marshall, who struck survival horror gold with his 2002 squaddies-in-peril debut Dog Soldiers, and an enthusiastic cast of largely unknown young female actors to breathe new, terrifying life into the subgenre. The result was The Descent, an intensely claustrophobic chiller that follows six friends as they explore an uncharted cave system beneath the Appalachian Mountains and are hunted by a breed of ravenous humanoid creatures. “It was really clever casting, because nobody was a name, and we had nothing to lose and everything to gain – so we just threw ourselves into it,” Shauna Macdonald, who played the lead character, Sarah, tells SFX. “Everyone was early on in their careers…

MILLIE BOBBY BROWN ☆ “Last year, Gaten’s mum saved me. It was Halloween and I was, like, ‘I don’t have a costume.’ She said to me, ‘Don’t worry.’ And she went and got me one. My best costume was probably Batgirl. I had the full-on outfit. I had eyeliner, I had black lipstick and it felt very cool.” CALEB MCLAUGHLIN ☆ “My favourite Halloween costume? For my best costume, I was a mime – but I did talk a lot. [Laughs] My sister was, like, ‘Be quiet.’ And I was, like, ‘Oh sorry!’ But I was really excited.” FINN WOLFHARD ☆ “My best Halloween costume was probably when I went as Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I wore it at school, where there was a costume contest –…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 135 minutes ▶ Director Michael Chaves ▶ Cast Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy ➔ Old demons come home to roost in the fourth and ostensibly final Conjuring, a send-off of sorts for paranormal sleuths Ed and Louise Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga) that suggests it’ll be their daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) and her partner Tony (Ben Hardy) who’ll take the franchise on from here. Before they are put out to pasture, though, the Warrens have one more family to aid: a three-generation Pennsylvanian clan that appears to have inherited a haunted mirror Ed and Lorraine were investigating around the time of Judy’s birth. Gruesome hangings, sinks full of blood and a ghostly crone reminiscent of Weapons’ Aunt Gladys make for a…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Creator Noah Hawley ▶ Cast Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Adarsh Gourav EPISODES 1.01-1.08 After nine theatrical outings, one fundamental issue facing anyone adding to the Alien franchise is how much to focus on the titular creatures. Do you restrict them, for the most part, to the shadows? And if you do that, what do you place in the foreground? Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley isn’t shy of taking an expansive approach. Here, the xenomorphs are just one piece of a puzzle which includes four other deadly lifeforms; Prodigy, a new conglomerate in competition with Weyland-Yutani; a cyborg (alongside the usual androids); and something new – a group of “hybrids” created by downloading dying children’s consciousnesses into synthetic bodies. Though it’s pleasing…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Showrunners Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit ▶ Cast Gaten Matarazzo, Tony Revolori, Marsai Martin, Dan Stevens EPISODES 2.01-2.04 A Star Wars sequel that’s smarter, more ambitious and – dare we say it – darker than its predecessor? This entertaining follow-up to last year’s Rebuild The Galaxy borrows from the long-established The Empire Strikes Back instruction booklet, without ever forgetting that playing with Lego is supposed to be fun. Feuding brothers Sig (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo) and Dev (Spider-Man’s Tony Revolori) are back in a totally reinvented Star Wars galaxy, where goodies are baddies, baddies are goodies, and the Millennium Falcon comes in a stylish shade of black. This time, however, the evil Solitus (a scenery-chewing Dan Stevens) is hoping to find peace and quiet by consigning the entire…

▶ RELEASED 13 OCTOBER 1996 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Director William Lustig ▶ Cast David Fralick, Christopher Ogden, Leslie Neale, Bo Hopkins ➔ The Maniac Cop team of director William Lustig and writer Larry Cohen united once again for this sledgehammer-subtle satirical horror, which plays with the iconography of the titular personification of the USA. The remains of soldier Sam Harper, killed by friendly fire, are belatedly found in the Kuwaiti desert and returned to his wife. His charred revenant then dons a stolen costume for a Fourth of July killing spree. It doesn’t quite hang together. Sam’s motivations are muddy – he punishes flag-burners and their ilk, but also, in one baffling subplot, vows to avenge a boy burned by fireworks. The pacing is low-energy. And for an…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1961 | PG | 4K ▶ Director Eugène Lourié ▶ Cast Bill Travers, William Sylvester, Vincent Winter, Christopher Rhodes ➔ A British take on a kaiju flick, Gorgo unleashes a scaly Suitmation monster on London. It plunders as much from King Kong as Godzilla: disturbed by a volcanic eruption off the coast of Ireland, an oversized prehistoric critter is captured, chained and exhibited as the Eighth Wonder of the World – albeit in Battersea Park, not Broadway. But an amusing twist finds an even larger, even stompier beast descending on the Big Smoke to free her child. Where were you, Mama Kong? Eugène Lourié had form when it came to rampaging marine life, having helmed The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Behemoth The Sea Monster (1959).…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | N/A | Digital ➔ Rocky Horror, the world’s cultiest movie, gets another 50th anniversary doc, following the Richard O’Brien-focused Strange Journey. He’s nowhere to be seen here, but an impressive array of talking-head talent makes up for that. It’s very much a warts ’n’ all exploration: these filmmakers tackle everything, including who got all the movie money. Meanwhile fans from around the world melt hearts as they show what Rocky Horror means to them.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1974 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray ▶ Director Francesco Barilli ▶ Cast Mimsy Farmer, Maurizio Bonuglia, Mario Scaccia, Jho Jenkins ➔ Though generally described as a giallo, this strange kettle of fish is such a deranged example that it pushes the limits of the genre to the brink of explosion. Melding Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion, it centres on the fragile Silvia (Mimsy Farmer), who’s plagued by visions of her dead mother and visitations by a little girl – apparently her younger self. Chat about black magic and a visit to a psychic leave us uncertain whether a trauma is bubbling up of its own accord, or Silvia’s being gaslit for some sinister purpose. Answers are finally delivered in shockingly visceral fashion. En route this is a strikingly colourful…

▶ RELEASED 13 OCTOBER 1973 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Harry Kümel ▶ Cast Orson Welles, Susan Hampshire, Michel Bouquet, Charles Janssens BLU-RAY DEBUT Harry Kümel’s follow-up to his cult vampire film Daughters Of Darkness is an exercise in sumptuous squalor. Based on Belgian author Jean Ray’s 1943 book, it follows sailor Jan (Mathieu Carrière) – a Jean Cocteau sketch come to life. He’s abducted to the titular mansion, where his bedridden uncle (Orson Welles) is set to announce his will. This madhouse holds a bizarre secret that’s maintained almost to the end. While we wait, the labyrinthine confines of Malpertuis, with its leaf-strewn corridors, spiral staircases, stuffed bats and pickled foetuses are a joy to get lost in. Populating it are grotesques like a leering taxidermist, who provide a…

▶ RELEASED 9 OCTOBER 416 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Ken Liu ▶ Publisher Head Of Zeus ➔ Look past the professionally curated shared dream experiences at the heart of this sci-fi thriller, and All That We See Or Seem is undeniably a novel about now. Ken Liu (Hugo Award-winning author of The Dandelion Dynasty, as well as the translator of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem) expertly taps into contemporary concerns about AI, social media and the sinister actors manipulating new tech for their own benefit. He also takes inspiration from his previous careers in software engineering and the law, as reclusive tech expert Julia Z (a sort of near-future Lisbeth Salander) agrees to help corporate lawyer Piers Neri find his missing wife. The AWOL Elli Krantz’s status as a…

▶ RELEASED 9 OCTOBER 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author EJ Swift ▶ Publisher Arcadia ➔ When thinking about human destruction of the natural world, your mind probably goes to the Amazon rainforest. But according to government advisory body Natural England, the UK is “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”, with one in six species threatened with extinction. To many, conservation doesn’t cut it; what we need is a more radical approach, popularly known as “rewilding”. In 2070, two women look back on their roles in rewilding: Lucy as an activist, Hester as a documentary-maker. Author EJ Swift extrapolates from current initiatives – beavers reintroduced in Argyll, marshlands recreated in Somerset – to imagine the dreams and dangers of reshaping Britain’s relationship with the natural world. It’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Kit Burgoyne ▶ Publisher Titan Books ➔ The “debut” novel from Kit Burgoyne (actually Ned Beauman, the award-winning author of Venomous Lumpsucker, writing under his new horror-focused alter-ego) is a deadpan horror thriller that feels perfectly timed for our present moment. Luke is a member of The Nail, a group of anti-capitalist guerrillas who intend to make a stand against the all-powerful Woolsaw Group, an evil corporation not a million miles away from several real-world multinationals. To do so, they concoct an elaborate plan to abduct young heiress Adeline Woolsaw. Surprisingly, it more or less goes off without a hitch, until they discover that Adeline is pregnant – and about to go into labour. Complicating matters further: her newborn appears…

▶ RELEASED 16 OCTOBER 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Hiron Ennes ▶ Publisher Tor Nightfire ➔ Plenty of horror novels have been described as “skin-crawling”, but none of them deserves the epithet as much as The Works Of Vermin. Set in the grotesque city of Tiliard, which grows like a fungus from the remains of an ancient tree, this is a book infested with bugs. Dual narratives draw the reader into a world where people and insects alike shed their skins and emerge in different forms; where everything’s rotting, but nothing’s ever really dead. Guy Moulène is an exterminator, taking on all kinds of work to keep himself and his sister fed. In the court of the Grand Marshal, head perfumer Aster Voth lives in luxury, cooking up scent…

▶ RELEASED 23 OCTOBER 568 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Marvellous Michael Anson ▶ Publisher Michael Joseph ➔ Marvellous Michael Anson adds to the growing canon of fantasy novels that draw upon Yoruba mythology with Firstborn Of The Sun. Her premise is a familiar one: a young woman, L’ore, is the only person in the kingdom of Oru born without agbára, the ability to harness the power of the sun. Inevitably, L’ore discovers that she possesses a secret and forbidden ice magic, the existence of which has been kept hidden by the high priest who rules Oru. Anson throws in a handsome prince, Alawani, to whom L’ore has never confessed her love, and a mystery about the origin of L’ore’s powers and the identity of her mother for good measure. The…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Oni Press ▶ Writer Ben H Winters ▶ Artist Leomacs ISSUES 1-3 Like a more phantasmagorical Memento, this archly meta three-parter centres around obscure ’70s science-fiction writer Benjamin J Carp, who inexplicably wakes up in an LA hotel room decades after his apparent death. While there are obvious comparisons with Philip K Dick, Winters – author of The Last Policeman – has also put a lot of himself into Benjamin. Irascible and prone to verbose speeches that can overcrowd panels, Benjamin is initially quite arrogant and unlikeable, although there are some witty jokes about mobile phones resembling the Star Trek-style “psy-tac intercommulators” from his books. After developing a tender relationship with motel receptionist Marcus Dingle, the pair set out to discover the reasons behind his…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Brian K Vaughan ▶ Artist Niko Henrichon GRAPHIC NOVEL On top of being one of the best known modern comics writers, Brian K Vaughan is also someone who likes to use comics to push boundaries. He’s been regularly exploring adult themes and explicit content in his long-running, massively successful series Saga, and his latest self-contained graphic novel sees him going even further than that. An offbeat blend of supernatural romance and bleakly satirical science fiction, Spectators follows two ghosts – Val, a voyeuristic woman who was killed in a mass shooting, and Sam, a gunslinger from the Old West – who haunt a strange, technology-obsessed future New York. Only able to spectate on the living, they gradually realise that the world…