Table of contents for March 2024 in SFX

FINALLY! The long wait to return to Arrakis is over. When I tell you that I was completely obsessed with the first of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies… We were just out of lockdown, and it was one of the first sci-fi films I was to see in the cinema after so long – it completely blew me away. Now, three years later – how has that happened already? – my house is full of Dune books and merchandise. Another one of the many reasons I love SFX is it still continues to be a gateway to other worlds I haven’t yet explored, despite them being things that would probably have been right up my alley all along. Another one is The Walking Dead. Confession time – before I started this…

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, DIRECTOR Karyn Kusama and BAFTA- and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody disrupted the horror genre with their gory feminist romp Jennifer’s Body. On release, many audiences didn’t quite get the humour and subtext of their revenge fantasy starring Megan Fox. But in the years since, critics have re-evaluated the film as being delightfully subversive and underappreciated. Now Cody has circled back to the genre with her original screenplay Lisa Frankenstein. Essentially a love letter to her goth youth in the ’80s, Cody’s script fuses together the DNA of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Tim Burton’s oeuvre and a sprinkling of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. Cody tells Red Alert that the idea for Lisa Frankenstein was born out of the lockdowns of the pandemic. She had spent years…

“POWER OVER SPICE IS POWER over all…”. So begins Part Two of Denis Villeneuve’s epic Dune saga, narrated by Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan. The director says he’s tried to “bring the words in a more cinematic way” and that “The movie is slightly different, the movie could be seen as more tragic than the book”, aiming with this iteration to bring it closer to the intention of Frank Herbert. Filmmaker and friend Christopher Nolan has likened Part Two to The Empire Strikes Back. It seems, then, that the original movie wasn’t a hard act to follow – except, of course, for those bringing it to life. Paul Lambert, visual effects supervisor on both movies, says to expect “a heck of a lot more action.” He’s not wrong – the…

How would you describe Stilgar’s relationship with Paul? I think it’s a relationship of starting to not trust this newcomer that acts like he knows that he’s bringing something special. Then the arc happens to go through different layers. That includes being almost like a father figure to him, and also a mentor, to end up in a person, Stilgar, who blindly worships him. So it’s a little bit of an exposition of religious fanaticism, that happens to Stilgar because of his strong belief that he must be the one. He has to be the one. There’s a cultural melting pot in the novel with the Fremen. It is about that. It’s also about trying to find in ourselves what we need in order to help our people to become…

What did you think of Feyd’s overall look? I had long conversations with Denis before we went down the road and, of course, I’d seen the first film and so seen what Stellan had done. I knew that that was the world that I would be fitting into. The first film was just brilliant, and the whole Harkonnen world that Stellan led, I thought was just magnificent. So the first time that I was able to see the transformation, it just helped me to leave this world behind and enter into the Harkonnen world in a way that was very inspiring and exciting. How do you find the humanity or darkness in Feyd? Whenever I think of any quote-unquote villainous character in real life, I don’t think that they see…

“WHATEVER HAPPENED TO those The Walking Dead movies?” That’s been the question swirling around the ether since 2018, when Andrew Lincoln exited the flagship show after eight years and 120 episodes of playing series lead Rick Grimes. Literally as the screen went black on “What Comes After”, the fifth episode of season nine, AMC sent out a press release announcing the intention to make a series of original films with Lincoln “to continue the story of Rick Grimes, with the first expected to begin production as early as 2019.” At SDCC 2019, there was a follow-up teaser trailer that just featured a Civic Republic Military (or CRM) helicopter. Then Covid arrived, which put everything on hold and effectively silenced any movie chatter. Time also rolled on for actress Danai Gurira,…

For decades, many a screenwriter and filmmaker found the task of adapting Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels for film – with their mind-bogglingly high concept sci-fi ideas and world-building – impossible to do. It took the advent of the latest golden age of television, with its big budgets and ambition, plus major advancements in visual effects, for David S Goyer to nail the assignment with his Apple TV+ series. Production designer Rory Cheyne tells SFX that even before production was complete on the recent second season, he was already preparing for the third season, researching Goyer’s locale, vehicle and set-piece needs. However, he believes that it’s going to take a lot to best what he and his team achieved in season two. Here he looks back at some of his favourite…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 95 minutes Director Alberto Corredor Cast Freya Allan, Jeremy Irvine, Ruby Barker, Peter Mullan It may sound like an insult, possibly hurled at someone to imply they’ve spent too much time sniffing UHU, but here “Baghead” describes a supernatural entity. (It’s a sack affair, not the type that’ll set you back 10p.) We’re introduced to it early on, in a prologue which – by kicking off with a character talking to camera – recalls the way YouTube ads desperately try to hook you before you hit skip. This proves characteristic of the film’s anxiety about audience attention span; an info-dumping session later on also occurs with indecent haste. The Witcher’s Freya Allan plays Iris, who after inheriting a rundown pub from her estranged father (Peter…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 15 | Download Music video director Barnaby Clay’s debut feature opens with a shot of a toddler’s face as it munches down a human finger. An arresting first scene, but little else in this Utah-set horror manages to match it for sheer queasiness. Scott Haze plays a hiker who finds himself trapped in the desert and tormented by a gang of sadistic, feral children, all of whom seem to be variations on Deliverance’s banjo kid. A megamix of other, better hillbilly horrors, this film unfortunately adds little new to the genre.…

RELEASED 26 FEBRUARY 2023 | 15 | Download A disgraced journalist turns to paranormal podcasting, only to uncover the most unfathomable of phenomena: a conspiracy involving mysterious black bricks, seemingly of alien origin and possessed of uncanny power. The title nods to the iconic artefact in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and this Australian indie shares some of Kubrick’s inscrutability. But while it sustains an unsettling tone, the storytelling feels wilfully oblique. A psychological study that may have worked best as a podcast itself.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download Yes, the makers think it’s a silly title too. But what else are you gonna call a slasher about a killer sloth? Wannabe Sigma Lambda Theta president Emily sets the massacre in motion when she brings the seemingly harmless cutie into her sorority house as a new mascot. Unfortunately, “Alpha” sees Emily posing with a poacher on her Instagram. Then it’s open season. None of it’s remotely plausible, but the sloth puppet is adorable and there’s even a serious point, which is more than you can say for Sharknado.…

RELEASED 26 FEBRUARY 1997 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Anthony Waller Cast Julie Delpy, Tom Everett Scott, Vince Vieluf, Phil Buckman BLU-RAY DEBUT In spite of the bold on-screen claim that it’s “based on characters created by John Landis”, there’s scant connective tissue between this tardy sequel and its beloved 1981 predecessor. Relocating from London to the French capital – presented with choral chants and rain-lashed gargoyles – the film soon locks into breezy teen comedy mode as three American jocks arrive on a European bender. The marginally more sensitive of the bros is smitten by an ethereal Julie Delpy, there to provide a touch of culture-clash romance – and an unexpected link to a lycanthropic scourge that’s menacing the city… It’s a pacy, amiable enough watch, but there’s none…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Joelle Taylor Publisher Riverrun Genre writing tends to prioritise plot and ideas over language. As readers, the first question we ask about a book is generally “What’s it about?”, not “What does it sound like?” In poet and playwright Joelle Taylor’s debut novel, both dimensions are in play. On the one hand, this is an intense look at gender and violence. Narrator Jones has spent her life “falling into” the lives of others, like a Lancastrian Quantum Leap-er. Fetching up in a tattoo parlour in 23rd century Hackney, she uses the patchwork of ink on her own skin to retell her experiences, from “canary” child working in a 19th century coal mine to vigilante sex worker to technician in a future womb…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 624 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Kelly Link Publisher Head Of Zeus Don’t be put off by the title: the kind of love Kelly Link writes about here isn’t just romantic. It’s much, much weirder than that. Several months after mysteriously disappearing, three teenagers – ambitious Laura, loyal Daniel and secretive Mo – find their way home to the small seaside town of Lovesend. They can’t remember where they’ve been, but they know it was dark and cold and scary; a place beyond death, ruled over by a pair of creepy guardians who serve a capricious goddess. And unless they want to be banished back there, they’ll have to learn to do magic, sharpish. Love, here, is a kind of magic. Love for parents, children, friends and siblings;…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 405 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Writer Gareth Brown Publisher Bantam Readers like books – and, it seems, also like reading books about books, and about stories, and the importance of those things. It helps us feel validated. The Book Of Doors isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) novel to embrace this, but we admit to getting a warm fuzzy feeling when characters love losing themselves in books as much as we do. Sometimes literally… Cassie is working in a New York bookshop when a regular customer leaves her a gift: a small leather tome that feels lighter than it should. She soon realises that it’s something special – the Book of Doors, which can be used to step from any doorway through any other, anywhere in…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 154 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson Publisher BBC Books Doctor Who’s Target novelisations used to have a clear purpose, in a world before repeats and video releases. Now that old episodes are available on your TV at the click of a button, it’s harder to justify the need for a book, especially so soon after transmission. It’s even harder, in this case, to justify a hardback (still called a “Target novelisation” on the dust jacket) priced at £14.99 for just 154 pages, with an unembellished plot. Unlike even the recent releases of the Fourteenth Doctor’s anniversary adventures, there are no interesting new takes or rhetorical flourishes here. It’s very much a by-the-numbers adaptation, which exposes the simplicity of a plot designed for Christmas Day viewing. In…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Jason Aaron Artist Doug Mahnke ISSUES 1-3 A huge proportion of DC’s output every month is dedicated to the Dark Knight and his associates. You imagine that it’s sometimes hard finding new stories to tell within the confines of Gotham City, but that’s not a problem for superstar Marvel writer Jason Aaron – now decamped to DC – and artist Doug Mahnke, who have sent the Caped Crusader interstellar. Set early in his crime-fighting career, this six-issue miniseries sees Batman pay a visit to the Slag Galaxy (no, really). After an encounter with an alien on Earth, he decides that the only way to protect Gotham City is to see what life is like in the rest of the universe. “Beats up alien…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Players Two or more players Publisher Warlord Games TABLETOP GAME ABC Warriors: Increase The Peace is the third of Warlord’s tabletop miniatures games based on characters from 2000 AD. In many ways it feels like a direct continuation of their Judge Dredd title from a few years back. As with that, players activate models at random by pulling chips from a bag and then perform a variety of actions in small scale skirmishes. Increase The Peace adds a set of “Tarot cards” – ploys, basically – and some robot-specific rules, but otherwise the games are cross-compatible. However, while the Dredd game pitted Judges against perps and had rules for sentencing criminals, this is set in the context of ABC Warriors’ future conflict. You get eight miniatures, which works…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PS5 Also on Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch Publisher Ubisoft VIDEOGAME Your relationship with the Prince Of Persia series will likely reflect your age. For many, Ubisoft’s 2003 reinvention of the franchise was the definitive crypt-crawling, spike trap-dodging experience. But the 3D action-adventure trilogy doesn’t paint the full picture. For players of a certain vintage, Prince Of Persia is all about two-dimensional platforming. It’s about crumbling concrete walkways, death-defying leaps of faith and remarkable-for-their-time visuals, powered by the MS-DOS machines of the late ’80s. The Lost Crown strives to combine the two, with deft Metroidvania mechanics (where incrementally acquired abilities allow access to new areas in turn), larger than life boss battles, and more level-based hazards than you can shake your twin…

AFTER CREATING animated series Spectacular Spider-Man, Greg Weisman is now delving into the wall-crawler’s comic book adventures. And as if one Web-head wasn’t enough, The Spectacular Spider-Men pairs Peter Parker with Miles Morales for their first monthly title team-up. “It’s always nice to have someone for your lead to talk to, and if you have two equal leads, as we have in Spectacular Spider-Men, then the job is done for you,” Weisman tells Red Alert. “You play the dynamics between the characters, testing them under different circumstances and challenges.” Along with Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli’s original 2012 series Spider-Men, Weisman has taken inspiration from the classic Spidey-starring Marvel Team-Up and the Thing-centred Marvel Two-In-One. “I’m sure books like Team-Up and Two-In-One are swimming in my head, and I’ve…

WHAT’S BEEN MISSING FROM THE genre landscape? How about a horny, female-centric, adult animated series featuring hardcore SF storylines and Grey’s Anatomy-esque personal dramas, with a surreal aesthetic that’s somewhere between Scavengers Reign and The Fifth Element? If that sounds like your kind of weird, get ready to check into Prime Video’s The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy. Created by writer Cirocco Dunlap (Russian Doll), The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy is essentially a mash-up of the real-life topics and influential shows rattling around inside her noggin. “I love sci-fi and anything with weird genre stuff,” Dunlap tells Red Alert. “And I love comedy and animation. I thought this seems like a really fun place to put a whole lot of ideas that are pretty disparate into a…

NEW SERIES 3 BODY Problem marks the return of David Benioff and DB Weiss (aka D&D) to genre television after some down time following eight seasons of showrunning Game Of Thrones. It’s also the first collaboration for the pair with executive producer Alexander Woo (The Terror). More importantly for fans of contemporary sci-fi literature, this adaptation of Liu Cixin’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem is an opportunity for mainstream audiences to discover the book that put Chinese science fiction on international radars when it was translated into English in 2014. “I don’t think people realise how important this novel is for the Chinese, for China readers and Chinese sci-fi,” Derek Tsang, the Hong Kong-based director of 3 Body Problem, tells Red Alert. “This book was written in…

Tell us about Princess Irulan. Who the hell is Princess Irulan! She is the daughter of the Emperor, who is played by the fantastic Christopher Walken. It’s funny, I was asked this morning, is she like any of the other feisty characters that I’ve played before? Whilst she may be internally, I think she’s probably one of the quietest characters I’ve ever played. She is someone that is constantly listening, and always learning, and that was something that I was so excited [about] when I was reading the script. I always acknowledged that she was always aware, maybe when other people weren’t aware, that she was recording probably internally what was going on. She’s calculated. I think that excited me the most, to see someone that was planning. You don’t…

We saw the baliset in Part One, but never got to hear you sing… I sang last time, it’s just Denis decided to cut it out! I sang and rightfully he cut it out because it was wrong. He felt so bad. He felt much worse than he needed to, because I’m not that insecure. I’m a little insecure, but I’m not that insecure. This time around, he basically said, “Brolin, write the lyrics, and Hans, do the music, and work together,” which was very strange. I don’t know how you get put in the same collaborative place as Hans Zimmer. That sounds like a really bad idea. But we fought our way through it… We didn’t actually fight, he travelled his way through it and I was in the…

WHEN WORD HIT THE internet that the latest inductee to the public domain, AA Milne’s beloved Winnie-the-Pooh, was to be reinvented as a Michael Myers-esque slasher villain in a horror film, everybody had an opinion. For some, the very thought of Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey was enough to trigger the instantaneous destruction of their childhoods. Others were hungry to see the cuddly bear slicing and dicing unsuspecting visitors to the Hundred Acre Wood. In either case, the grisly new Winnie-the-Pooh became a viral sensation. Nobody was more surprised than writer, editor, director and producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who tells SFX the film was “made for the VOD market, not a worldwide theatrical release. We obviously didn’t expect it to blow up in the way that it did!” Financially, Winnie was a…

BUILT ON A PREMISE as concise as its title, claustrophobic psychological horror Cube did a whole lot with very little. It introduced us to a group of strangers who wake to find themselves trapped in their own cube-shaped prisons. Before they can figure out who has caged them and why, their mystery cubes start fighting back, punishing each incorrect escape attempt with vicious booby traps and inventive and frequently bloody kills. 27 years later, the afterlife of director Vincenzo Natali’s debut remains as alluring as ever. Spawning two direct sequels and a Japanese remake, its fingerprints can be found all over the gore-flecked “consequence horrors” of the early noughties. In hindsight, it feels like Cube sliced so that films like James Wan’s Saw franchise could dice – a pretty apt…

UK/US Apple TV+, Wednesdays Creator Peter Harness Cast Noomi Rapace, James D’Arcy, Davina Coleman, Rosie Coleman, Jonathan Banks EPISODES 1.01-1.08 This enigmatic show is an original creation from writer Peter Harness, who previously adapted Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The War Of The Worlds – and revealed that the Moon is an egg in Doctor Who. It’s a series loath to spell out exactly what is going on, which makes it tricky to know where to draw the line re: spoilers. Still, you should get the gist after two or three episodes, and it seems fair to discuss three elements seeded early on: a child-friendly explanation of how quantum physics suggests that the same thing can exist in two states simultaneously; the CAL (Cold Atomic Lab), a piece of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 18 | SVOD NETFLIX If you’re in the mood for a designer-violence Korean post-apocalyptic movie with minimal plot but tons of inventive fight scenes and black humour, Badland Hunters delivers in some style. Low-budget and unapologetically lowbrow, it’s surprisingly slick, as a pair of warriors of the wasteland take on the mutated forces of a gloriously odious evil scientist. It ain’t Citizen Kane, but then, Kane didn’t have a crocodile decapitation scene.…

RELEASED 4 MARCH 2022 | 15 | Download This sombre French indie finds twin brothers competing for a place on a mission to the stars – but an encounter with a parasitic alien organism leaves one of them disfigured and mentally wounded, cheated of his chance. Anchored by Earthly reality more than the interstellar, this study of trauma and corrosive male jealousy favours psychological complexity over genre trappings; when it edges into straight monster flick territory, it feels just a little cheap. A tough, ultimately rewarding watch.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download When a nun claims to be bearing twins from immaculate conception, a young priest is assigned to investigate. An ancient prophecy appears close to fulfilment: the birth of the Messiah and the Antichrist in a two-for-one deal. Essentially The Omen with goth trimmings, this apocalyptic horror is artfully shot but ends up a meandering, portentous slog, all gloomy interiors and whispered lore. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans may appreciate the sight of Alexander Siddig as a cardinal, though.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 12 | Blu-ray Director Junta Yamaguchi Cast Riko Fujitani, Manami Honjô, Gôta Ishida, Yoshimasa Kondô Director Junta Yamaguchi follows Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes with another movie obsessed with that exact slice of time. But while his 2020 debut dealt in meticulous temporal logic, River proves a sweeter, more emotional tale. In a riverside inn in wintry Kyoto, guests and staff experience a seemingly endless succession of time loops, rewinding their lives in two-minute chunks while their memories remain intact. For some it’s an existential nightmare of neverending bowls of rice, while for others it’s a blessing: a despairing novelist relishes the chance to kiss goodbye to a deadline. The characters grasp their situation absurdly quickly, but that’s the gag. For the inn’s workers,…

The biggest thing to hit shiny disc this month is THE MARVELS (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now) – also now on Disney+. When Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan’s light-based powers get entangled, they must work together to foil Kree ruler Dar-Benn. We said: “A remarkably sprightly instalment with winning performances and memorable set-pieces.” Bonuses: director/VFX supervisor commentary; Making Of (11 minutes); behind-the-scenes footage (five minutes); four deleted scenes; gag reel. Timothée Chalamet shows us his Willy in prequel WONKA (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 4 March), which sees the young chocolatier colliding with shadowy businessmen as he looks for a shop to sell his wares. We said: “The whimsical worldbuilding is exquisite.” Extras: five featurettes (45 minutes) on the director’s “vision”, music, sets, costumes and the chocolates. Prequel THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF…

RELEASED 14 MARCH 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Authors Chris Sugden, Jen Sugden Publisher Gollancz Considering the huge success of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, comic SFF novels remain surprisingly few and far between. Then again, such books aren’t easy to get right – as, in taking too long to introduce us to private investigators Archibald Fleet and Clara Entwhistle, the early pages here illustrate. Stick with High Vaultage though, because once the plot kicks in, as the duo work a corruption case linked to a series of seemingly impossible bank robberies, there’s much fun to be had – for all that a few more laugh-out-loud moments would be welcome. Set in the same world as the authors’ successful podcast Victoriocity, it takes place in 1887, against a backdrop of the…

RELEASED 29 FEBRUARY 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/ Author Meredith Mooring Publisher Solaris In a universe created by a triumvirate of female deities, three very different women from the Orders following each of those gods are on a collision course that threatens the status quo of the ruling Imperium. The central character in this unusual body horror/fantasy/space opera hybrid is Korinna, a blind priestess and “Redseer” from a sect with the ability to bend space/time to pilot ships (though they do bleed a lot while doing it). She thinks she’s an underachiever, but somehow lands a plum assignment on a warship on a mission to wipe out the sole surviving member of another, darker Order. With its queer romance, exclusively female main cast and visually impaired heroine (author Meredith Mooring is,…

RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Daniel Polansky Publisher Angry Robot Don’t be put off by the bizarrely bland title; Tomorrow’s Children is an adrenalised dystopian fantasy that’s as near to a Mad Max movie in book form as you’re ever likely to experience. You think James Patterson is pacy? He’s glacial compared to Daniel Polansky, an author who’s mastered the action montage in words. Welcome to a future New York City cut off from the rest of the world by some ill-defined cataclysmic event known as the funk, where the inhabitants have gone feral, gangs are at constant war with each other, dog meat is haute cuisine and written language has devolved into emojis. When a gang led by a young Turk known only as The Kid…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Skybound Entertainment/Image Comics Writer James Tynion IV Artists Martin Simmonds ISSUES 1-4 Skybound’s new Universal Monsters comics line is off to a fine start with this impressively unsettling four-parter from the creators of The Department Of Truth. Adapting Tod Browning’s 1931 film of Dracula, James Tynion IV dispenses with the early scenes in Transylvania, opening with ill-fated ship the Vesta having docked in London. With his stooge Renfield imprisoned in an asylum, the Count is initially a remote presence, making him even scarier as he carries out his attacks from the shadows. Following Lucy Weston’s murder, Tynion concentrates on the rivalry between Dr Seward and Abraham Van Helsing, which leaves the former’s daughter Mina in deadly peril. Keeping his script fast-paced and taut, with several wordless sequences,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Robert Venditti Artist Riley Rossmo ISSUES 1-4 As part of DC’s current retooling of the classic Justice Society of America superteam, they’re publishing several six-issue miniseries exploring the backgrounds and historical eras of these Golden Age heroes. Here, we’ve got a new take on the original version of the Sandman, ’40s New York gentleman turned masked vigilante Wesley Dodds. The basic set-up is that it’s 1940, and Wesley’s plan to use his sleep gas research to create a non-lethal weapon of war is derailed when his original, potentially cataclysmic research is stolen by a mystery antagonist. The potential for nightmarish chemical weapons to be unleashed is a strong narrative hook, and these first four issues deliver a number of well-executed set-pieces, with some…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Games Workshop TABLETOP GAME The Old World is a bit like port. If wargames were wine, this would be the richer kind; heavier, and more intense. That’ll be an understandable turn-off for some, but anyone seeking something sophisticated will get their money’s worth. You could never argue that it’s “just” another wargame, either; this version of Warhammer is grander than the skirmishes we’re used to. Instead of models that move independently or in small groups, players direct chunky blocks of infantry, cavalry and monsters in a bid to outmanoeuvre their rivals. The direction your warriors are facing plays a much bigger role as a result (hello, flanking), and that “crunchiness” defines The Old World in general. While the basics seem straightforward, there’s layer upon layer of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 159 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Usually with these Ninth Doctor Adventures sets there’s a clear stand-out – a story that leaps ahead of the pack as the best of the box. This time, however, all three have a lot to recommend them. “A Theatre Of Cruelty” is a historical tale themed around the life of immersive theatre pioneer (and Christopher Eccleston’s personal hero) Antonin Artaud, as dark forces from the dawn of time attempt to make use of his boundless imagination. “The Running Men” is set in present-day Halifax and heavily inspired by local legend. The Doctor must team up with local copper Ambika Desai to stop an avaricious businesswoman from destroying the local gibbet and setting loose an alien evil Finally, “Ancient…

JEFF WADLOW’S RUNNING A FEW minutes late for our interview – and with good reason. The director behind Kick-Ass 2, Truth Or Dare and the upcoming horror Imaginary, about a young girl’s terrifyingly real imaginary friend, has just been on the phone with the president of film at Blumhouse. “We were talking about another imaginary friend movie that’s coming out shortly, that just dropped its trailer,” he tells Red Alert. The culprit is John Krasinski’s If, about a young girl’s real – but not terrifying – imaginary friend. The two similarly-premised movies are due to reach cinemas within months of each other, but Wadlow’s not worried. “It’s like Volcano and Dante’s Peak,” he says. “There’s an interesting Hollywood history of zeitgeisty movies hitting cinemas at the same time. [Imaginary friends]…

AFTER EVERY MAJOR PROJECT, JOHAN Renck, the director behind some of the best episodes of Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Vikings, found himself wandering the streets of Brooklyn, telling himself “I’m never going to do this again.” In fact, after helming every episode in the Emmy-winning series Chernobyl, he planned on either opening a restaurant or becoming a gardener. But then he read the script for an adaptation of Spaceman Of Bohemia, a 2017 novel by Czech-born author Jaroslav Kalfař, and decided to park his alternate career plans. “I read it and I’m like, ‘Oh, shit’, because it was so evident that I had to do this movie, it was very biographical for me,” he tells Red Alert. In the main character Jakub Procházka – an astronaut on a…

ASK SOMEONE TO CITE A favourite fairy tale these days, and most people immediately think of a Disney-fied version of a classic like Cinderella – but when that story was first published in France in the 17th century, it was rather different. Before they evolved, spreading around the globe, these cultural cautionary tales were often sexual, violent and very weird. We have the Brothers Grimm to blame for sanitising many fairy tales to make them more digestible for children; they’re also often sexist, with inert princesses being saved by heroic princes. However, Netflix’s Damsel, executive-produced by and starring Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown as Princess Elodie, is a refreshing return to fairy tales rife with dark themes, violence and human behaviour that’s worse than anything seen from monsters. Directed by…

IN PRODUCTION Following the successful resolution of strikes in Hollywood, many of our favourite genre productions have resumed filming. The fifth and final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things got underway in early January, while Section 31, Michelle Yeoh’s Star Trek event movie for Paramount+, kicked off at the end of the month. Meanwhile, work on season two of The Sandman continues for Netflix. All three productions released first-look images to mark the occasion. WORLD BUILDING Universal Orlando has unveiled plans for its new theme park, Epic Universe, opening in 2025. Comprising five different lands, it will include Super Nintendo World, How To Train Your Dragon: Isle Of Berk, The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter: Ministry Of Magic and Dark Universe, the new home of Universal Monsters. Work also continues on…

The Baron has a new throne – is there new make-up too? I didn’t have to spend that long in make-up on the first film. I was naked sometimes! It took eight hours in the make-up chair, and I was not naked in this one. But I didn’t change physically, we didn’t do any make-up changes of the poison. It’s not like in [David] Lynch’s film, he’s distorted and there’s pus running over his face and stuff; he can’t survive without that new machine with those balls and pumps and stuff. That’s the only difference we did, because we didn’t want to put too much make-up on – which is funny to say when we’d just put eight hours of make-up on him. There’s darkness in the Harkonnens. How do…

WHEN GHOSTBUSTERS: Afterlife reached cinemas, the franchise was a proton blast away from being trapped and tossed into the basement for another 30 years. Paul Feig’s female-fronted reboot in 2016 had disappointed at the box office, and no one knew whether that misfire would haunt Afterlife as it tried to win back audiences by bringing back the original ’Busters. “With Afterlife, [director] Jason [Reitman] and I felt, both in conceiving and writing it, and then watching that film come to life, that it was like finding a rusty old proton pack wrapped in a cloth in the garage and having to dust it off, turn it on, and see if it still fires,” co-writer Gil Kenan tells SFX. “A lot of that film was about tapping into the original spark…

Erica McEwan, Creative Director and Graphics Art Director: One of our founders, Joel Collins, is also an exec on Doctor Who. We have a good relationship with Bad Wolf after previous productions like His Dark Materials and they came to us to find a way to keep the magic of Doctor Who and bring it into a new chapter, with the visual storytelling that we do so well. They wanted to take it to a new level. Another reason the producers were interested in getting us onboard was our traditional relationship between the art department and VFX. We have a digital art department, which is quite a unique thing in terms of design companies. Dan May, co-founder and VFX Supervisor: Just because of the nature of the show it spans…

RELEASED 1 MARCH 15 | 101 minutes Director Zelda Williams Cast Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano, Cole Sprouse, Carla Gugino Some things were just better in the ’80s. Watching the 1989-set Lisa Frankenstein, you can’t help but long for a time when hair was back-combed within an inch of its life, and whimsical dark comedies featuring gothy teenage girls, like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Heathers, were actually funny. This horror “comedy” from acclaimed writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body, Young Adult) and first-time director Zelda Williams centres on the titular Lisa (Kathryn Newton), an outcast still mourning the loss of her mother, who was murdered by an axe-wielding maniac two years prior. She spends her free time in an old cemetery for bachelors doing rubbings of tombstones, and is particularly taken…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Showrunner Kevin Smith Cast Chris Wood, Mark Hamill, William Shatner, Melissa Benoist EPISODES 1.01-1.05 While 2021’s Masters Of The Universe: Revelation might have disappointed fans by sidelining Prince Adam, Revolution will be more recognisable to dedicated He-Maniacs. Our hero has the power once again, taking centre stage in his own story, surrounded by some surprising and rewarding new (old) faces. Bringing in Hordak from She-Ra as a new Big Bad, Gwildor from Cannon’s Masters Of The Universe movie as additional comic relief, and obscure cool characters like Rio Blast (who didn’t appear in the original cartoon), Kevin Smith digs deep into his toy box to populate Revolution with a wide range of fan favourites. Which isn’t to say he is simply smashing together action figures; an early subplot…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1993 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Wong Jing Cast Jet Li, Sharla Cheung, Chingmy Yau, Gigi Lai BLU-RAY DEBUT If, like many raised in Hong Kong, you know Jin Yong’s Condor Trilogy – a series of wuxia books set during the Yuan dynasty – you’ll get something out of this martial arts epic. If not… good luck. Indeed, as it’s based on trilogy-closer The Heaven Sword And Dragon Saber, you may struggle to survive the opening narration, which in summarising “the story so far” feels like a CliffsNotes for the history of the Universe. The film proper is almost as dense. Every other line seems to crowbar in a name, an artefact and a fighting style. After half an hour of “Golden Haired Lion King, Heaven…

RELEASED 26 FEBRUARY 2024 | 15 | Download Sébastien Drouin makes the most of his micro-budget with this chilling chamberpiece set almost entirely inside a snow-trapped car in the Colorado Rockies. Nina Bergman is the kidnapped waitress and Allen Leech her murderous captor in this inventive and smartly written riff on the serial killer genre. Featuring some deftly delivered plot twists, imaginative visual flourishes and a light dusting of the supernatural, it’s an assured debut by a director who’s one to watch.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | PG | SVOD Director Sean Charmatz Cast Jacob Tremblay, Colin Hanks, Paul Walter Hauser, Angela Bassett NETFLIX Sean Charmatz’s animation starts as you would expect: a straightforward retelling of Emma Yarlett’s adorable children’s book about a young boy named Orion (Jacob Tremblay) who’s afraid of mostly everything, but more than anything else of the dark. When dusk comes, Orion nervously hides beneath the covers, hoping the shadows won’t get him. But they do. The literal embodiment of Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) appears before him and whisks him off on an overnight adventure to learn that the world’s not that scary. So far, so normal, but this wouldn’t be much of a film if it stuck to the 40 pages of source material. Writer Charlie Kaufman’s…

RELEASED 23 FEBRUARY 2024 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER There’s a lot going on in this dystopian horror – arguably too much. Set in a future USA that’s become a hardline Christian theocracy, it follows activists Alegre and Ron (Strange New Worlds’ Paul Wesley) as they go on the run… and hole up in a haunted house. Director Bo Mirhosseni tries to weave these elements together into a thematic whole, but it never entirely coheres. Still, there are some genuinely tense moments here, and some efficient world-building. An admirable attempt to do something new.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | PG | SVOD Director Raman Hui Cast Brandon Soo Hoo, Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Lucy Liu PARAMOUNT+ At a slim 99 minutes (and a good chunk of those are taken up with the end credits), The Tiger’s Apprentice is a colourful blast of noise, chaos and fun cartoon critters. If you want more – original storytelling, unexpected plot twists, kids who don’t say “Whoa!” all the bleedin’ time – you’re out of luck. The animals of the Chinese zodiac take centre stage here, rallying around teenager Tom (Brandon Soo Hoo), new guardian of a magical pendant that could destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands. Those hands belong to Michelle Yeoh’s wicked Loo, who chases Tom all over San Francisco while he…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | TBC | SVOD Director Simone Scafidi SHUDDER This documentary on the Italian horror director has a selling point that rather falls flat. It follows Argento to a hotel where, we’re told, he’s completing work on a script. But this set-up seems contrived, and affords no insights into his creative process. No matter. The celebration which follows, with talking heads chronologically organised, has plenty to recommend it. The interviewee list is impressive, encompassing numerous collaborators, family members, and (surprisingly) Argento’s first wife. Fellow filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé pop up to lay tributes at the maestro’s feet, while the archives are raided for interesting clips from old newsreels and TV interviews. The man himself doesn’t give much away – an…

RELEASED 7 MARCH 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Katherine Arden Publisher Century The First World War was barely underway when “The Bowmen”, Arthur Machen’s short story about ghostly Agincourt archers protecting British soldiers in Belgium, was published. The tale was inspired by rumours of angelic intervention during the retreat from Mons the month before; so fully did his version take root in popular imagination that Machen apparently later had to remind readers his tale was fantasy. Intense, brutal and precarious as it was, life in the trenches of WWI was permeated with superstitions; for those anxiously awaiting news back home, too, magical thinking had an appeal. It’s this marginal, reality-bending territory that Katherine Arden builds upon, to considerable atmospheric effect. She focuses on a Nova Scotia family which, although 3,000…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Robert Jackson Bennett Publisher Hodderscape Since making his debut with the Stephen King-esque Mr Shivers in 2010, Robert Jackson Bennett has demonstrated his fluency in horror, fantasy and science fiction. With The Tainted Cup, he combines epic fantasy with a murder mystery. His protagonist is Dinios Kol, freshly appointed assistant investigator to the brilliant if highly eccentric Ana Dolabra. An “Engraver” with perfect recall, Kol serves as the eyes and ears for the blind and reclusive Dolabra. His first case is the unsettling murder of an Imperial official, killed when a tree suddenly and fatally sprouts from his torso. The relationship between the two detectives fits the classic blueprint of the oddball genius and their strait-laced assistant, but Bennett compensates for the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 356 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Authors Jeff Noon, Steve Beard Publisher Angry Robot Ideas compete for space in Gogmagog, the first half of a duology. Cady is an ancient riverboat captain, dragged out of retirement to pilot her old ship the Juniper, on a trip to deliver a young girl called Brin and her android guardian Lek to the city of Ludwich. The river that Cady must navigate, called the Nysis, is entwined with the ghost of a dead dragon and imbued with unpredictable, supernatural qualities. The salty captain is an unlikely heroine, foul-mouthed and short-tempered. The book slowly reveals her true nature, although she’s not always presented consistently. Cady bemoans her aged body, but in one scene she suddenly becomes a nimble and quick-footed fighter. The plot struggles…

RELEASED 29 FEBRUARY 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Eliza Chan Publisher Orbit Books Wars and rising waters driving migration and waves of refugees; prejudice against those with less money and power, and those who look different… Yes, this debut may be a fantasy, but it certainly resonates with current global headlines. In the half-flooded city of Tiankawi, humans live alongside “fathomfolk” – sea creatures such as sirens, kelpies and water dragons, who can slip through the water with ease or take semi-human form to walk around on dry land with only their neck gills to give them away. They’re only tolerated – at best – by humans though, forced to wear bracelets that prevent them from ever harming someone – even in self-defence. Half-human, half-siren border guard captain Mira has…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Jodie Matthews Publisher Fourth Estate In this debut novel, gothic romance and Cornish folklore coil together like the scales on a mermaid’s tail. We meet Merryn, a girl estranged from her mother, who returns to the wild lands that birthed her and the secrets that haunt the family home, slipping between scenes of her childhood growing up on Bodmin Moor and the present day, as she’s lured back to attend the funeral of the girl she loved. A love letter to Cornwall, this is a land where mermaids, selkies and fairy creatures called piskies are worshipped. It’s lushly written, sensations and smells dripping vividly from the page: burst berries, the sweet smell of rot, the wildflowers of the Cornish moors, a farmhouse…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writer Rob Williams Artists Pye Parr ISSUES 1-3 It’s always interesting when 2000 AD writers get to play in the sandbox of American mainstream comics, and the latest example is this delightfully entertaining post-apocalyptic robo-saga. The brainchild of long-time 2000 AD contributor Rob Williams, this new ongoing series is a gleeful slice of futuristic action-packed mayhem, in which humanity is stuck living in domed cities to escape the polluted environment. The titular Petrol Head is a robotic, borderline obsolete race-car driver with a liking for hot-rods, who ends up in serious trouble when he rescues a 10-year-old girl and her scientist father from the supposedly benevolent authorities. Soon they’re all on the run, and these first three issues waste no time in cranking up…