Tabla de contenidos para May 2024 en SFX

THE GLOBAL LAUNCH OF DOCTOR Who has been rumbling along for quite some time. Today it’s mid-March and SFX is in yet another fancy London hotel (no biscuits, tell the Mouse) to catch up with showrunner Russell T Davies and lead cast Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson. It’s a busy week of international press for the team – something that’s only going to get bigger in the build up to 11 May and simultaneous broadcast in nearly 250 countries at the same time. No pressure. An exciting new era awaits… First of all, can we please put the tabloid rumours about Millie to bed? RTD: Not leaving. Not at all. We were ordered for two years of a series off Disney, and we’re delivering two years, and the Ruby Sunday…

WITH ITS ECLECTIC cast, broad comedy and supernatural farce, Rentaghost was a mainstay of BBC children’s TV from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s and like nothing else. “Rentaghost was camp," says actor Christopher Biggins, approvingly. “It was so theatrical, it was so outrageous. I think that’s why the kids loved it so much. I mean, what other show has a pantomime horse?” “A technician once described it to me as ‘Plonky actors standing in a straight line, bawling their lines out front,’” recalls the show’s producer, Jeremy Swan, with a smirk. “Well, that’s what I wanted.” Swan directed episodes in each of the nine series, and was the producer for eight years. Rentaghost debuted in 1976. Writer Bob Block’s pilot script was originally titled Second Chance, reflecting the original,…

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▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 115 minutes ▶ Directors Adam Wingard ▶ Cast Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle Godzilla Minus One may have been a box office minnow in MonsterVerse terms. Yet the ecstatic reception the Japanese film received, and the Oscar it picked up for its visual effects, can’t help but cast a shadow over GxK, a gargantuan successor to 2021’s Godzilla Vs Kong that has the inescapable feel of an epic that’s arrived late to its own party. There’s certainly a sense that we’re on well-trampled ground here, for all the fresh corners of Hollow Earth that Adam Wingard’s film uncovers, and the new antagonists obliging a battle-scarred Kong and a now supercharged Godzilla to set aside their differences. Of those, the most…

▶ RELEASED 3 MAY TBC | 95 minutes ▶ Director Amanda Nell Eu ▶ Cast Zafreen Zairizal, Deena Ezral Fatimah Abu Bakar, Shaheizy Sam Coming of age as a girl is pretty much a horror show, even if nothing supernatural happens to you. But much as in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body or Julia Ducournau’s Raw, in Tiger Stripes a protagonist’s monstrosity feels like a righteous and empowering reaction to the cruel patriarchal world these women inhabit. It’s set in a conservative girls’ school in Malaysia, where young women are indoctrinated with regressive gender norms, and the charming, free-spirited, TikTok-loving Zaffran (Zafreen Zairizal) is viewed as disobedient and transgressive. As puberty kicks in, she at first goes through the expected bodily transitions and grapples with the stigma…

▶ UK iPlayer, streaming now ▶ Creator Ryan J Brown ▶ Cast Oscar Kennedy, Thaddea Graham, Jodie Tyack, Harriet Webb EPISODES 2.01-2.06 BBC Three’s horror-comedy runs aground with its second run, disembarking from the seagoing setting of the first, whose cruise ship killings were revealed as a human-hunting package offered to wealthy clients of an evil corporation. Seven months later, after a cover-up involving huge pay-offs, survivors like Jamie (Oscar Kennedy) and Vivian (Thaddea Graham) conclude that the only way to take down Velorum is to infiltrate their latest venture: a high-end wellness festival in Slovenia. As before, it’s a series with strong LGBT representation, and a waspish tone. You can’t go two minutes without hearing potty talk, with creator Ryan J Brown also tossing in phrases that in other contexts…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download An ingenious premise drives this Czech thriller: in a world heading for dystopia, people have the means to resurrect themselves in the event of unnatural death, using laptop-like restore points. It plays like a twisty, near-future Scandi noir, with a jagged turn by Andrea Mohylová as the detective pursuing a series of killings linked to the tech. And it gets good value out of its provocative high-concept: in a sly touch, a murder victim joins the investigation into their own death.…

▶ RELEASED 22 APRIL 2024 | 15 | Download This testosterone-fuelled, CG-animated sci-fi thriller marries a Blade Runner/Akira aesthetic to a multiverse-meets-Groundhog Day plot for a lot of repetitive designer violence. It’s been created using Unreal Engine, the system behind things like Fortnite, but this is nothing to boast about. The animation looks like a cheap videogame (in-play visuals that is, not cut scenes) and the plot feels like playing the same level over and over. Unsurprisingly, there’s a spin-off game coming next year.…

▶ RELEASED 29 APRIL 1975 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Luigi Bazzoni ▶ Cast Florinda Bolkan, Peter McEnery, Nicoletta Elmi, Lila Kedrova BLU-RAY DEBUT While it draws on elements of both science fiction and giallo, this enigmatic Italian film may frustrate those who come to it expecting a conventional example of either genre. Florinda Bolkan plays Alice, a translator who’s bewildered to learn that she has a three-day gap in her memory. A postcard leads her to a Turkish resort, where various people recall seeing her – only then she had long red hair. Intercut throughout are black and white sequences, featuring an astronaut abandoned on the moon, and Klaus Kinski as a scientist babbling about conditioning. Alice identifies these as memories of a film, but they’re suggestive of…

▶ RELEASED 25 APRIL 608 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author James Logan ▶ Publisher Jo Fletcher Books There’s an Indiana Jones vibe to this fantasy. That comparison relates to its characters and plot, not its setting; forget ’30s Cairo, Lukan Gardova’s quest takes place in a realm reminiscent of Renaissance Italy’s city states. A roguish adventurer, Lukan blunders through encounters by luck and wit. He’s the son of an antiquarian, and Dad’s been murdered. Now he must unravel a conspiracy to find out what happened. His sidekick, young cutpurse Flea, is a Short Round-alike who keeps him grounded, popping up to distract villains when needed. They don disguises, sprint through catacombs and leap out of towers. The name James Logan may be new to book shelves, but his debut arrives…

▶ RELEASED 18 APRIL 560 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Rogba Payne ▶ Publisher Gollancz Rumi is a member of the Odu people, despised by other tribes. He lives on a continent where the Palmaine, colonisers, hold sway. But he’s also a musician of rare dexterity and imagination. Could his talent offer a way out of poverty? Yes and no. That’s because, in Anglo-Nigerian author Rogba Payne’s debut fantasy, which draws on West African stories, little is ever quite as it initially seems. Rumi, it’s gradually revealed, can command far more power than he realises. If, that is, he can survive the attentions of the Priest of Vultures, a macabre figure who attacks both Rumi and his family. Sanctuary lies in the Eredo, an underground city where Rumi, helped by…

▶ RELEASED 2 MAY 254 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Gianni Washington ▶ Publisher Serpent’s Tail The world is a terrifying place, and what makes it so can be seen on the evening news. But Gianni Washington’s version of the world is much more than just scary: it is queasy, disquieting and an existential hell from which its victims cannot escape. Her debut collection of horror short stories is an uneasy proposition. They tackle grief, loneliness and unending darkness within a desolate, unsettling and truly depressing landscape. At first, her prose can seem overwrought and borders on bathos; she never selects an adjective when three metaphors could do, for instance. But this results in horrifying poetry that sees her protagonists subjected to (and subjecting others to) unspeakable cruelty. The collection…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Salinee Goldenberg ▶ Publisher Angry Robot A young male hunter, eager to prove himself, meets a beautiful woman in need of aid. Through journeying together, they both begin to recognise their feelings for the other… It’s not the most original set-up for a fantasy novel, but The Last Phi Hunter sets it in a powerfully drawn, Asian-inspired world of magic and myth, rituals and reincarnation, bringing a freshness to the tropes that makes for a satisfying read. Ex is a Phi Hunter, travelling the countryside killing the “hungry ghosts” that attack villagers, planning for and dreaming of the day he slays a true demon and gains respect and recognition from his guild. He’s rescued from a drunken fight by Arinya,…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DSTLRY ▶ Writer/artists Becky Cloonan, Tula Lotay ISSUES 1-3 Publisher DSTLRY launched last year with a roster of high-profile comics creators and the promise of doing things a little bit differently to the likes of Marvel and DC. It’s still early days for the company, but with Somna they have their first bona-fide instant classic. The three-issue series blurs the lines between folk horror and female-gaze erotica. Ingrid is a woman living in 16th century England. Her husband Roland is the local witchfinder, which puts her in a comparatively privileged position compared to her neighbours, but at night she’s beset by visitations. These are perhaps a nasty case of sleep paralysis, or possibly the actual Devil himself. As these experiences worsen, the lines between…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Players Two+ ▶ Publisher Fantasy Flight Games TRADING CARD GAME If you’ve so much as cracked open a booster pack, you’ll know that trading card games can be trickier to get into than a briar thicket. They’re dense with terms you’ll need a glossary to understand, and it’s easy to trip up on their convoluted strategies. However, much like Disney Lorcana a few months ago, Star Wars Unlimited takes a hatchet to all this. While it’s still couched in tactical smarts, Unlimited is much more accessible than the likes of Magic: The Gathering or the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It feels like a good middle ground between their complexity and ‘s Lorcana’s family-friendly straightforwardness. In this tabletop spin on a galaxy far, far away, you…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PS5 ▶ Also on Xbox Series S|X, PC ▶ Publisher THQ Nordic VIDEOGAME Some of the reception to this reboot of the original groundbreaking 1992 game has been so hostile that you’d think Uwe Boll was directing again. Shame, because there’s actually a lot to like here. Playing as either Edward Carnby (David Harbour) or Emily Hartwood (Jodie Comer), you explore Derceto Manor, a building with a sinister past and not exactly a joyous and lovely present. “Brainteasers are clever and beautifully constructed” Though there’s the odd effective jump scare, combat is often more tedious than terrifying, and too many of the horror tricks (sneak past the blind monster, throw bottles to distract enemies) have been seen way too many times before. It’s…

In my head it was a Sunday afternoon at about 3.30pm and on ITV when I first encountered Killdozer. I’ve no idea if that’s actually true or not, but that’s the half-memory that always comes to mind when I think of this prosaic, yet weirdly memorable made-for-TV thriller. Based on a novella by Theodore Sturgeon, it tells the story of a meteor that crashes to Earth and – in a flash of special effects and the burble of a vintage synthesiser – unleashes an alien force that possesses an unmanned bulldozer and sends it on a murderous rampage. A quick glance at the internet tells me that the screening I saw may have been in 1988 and that feels about right – I would have been eight. It’s the colours…

IT’S BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE EVIL premiered as a procedural mystery with supernatural proclivities, exploring the intersection of faith and science. The show’s premise has the Catholic Church hiring two atheists – forensic psychologist Dr Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) – to join seminarian (now priest) David Acosta (Mike Colter) to investigate cases having to do with possession or demonic intervention. Sounds pretty staid, but the level of crazy that’s unfolded across three seasons has made Evil one of the most insane yet addictive shows since The X-Files. From apocalyptic codex cases to Bouchard’s daughter having a secret tail, the show goes places no one would expect. Yet creators Robert and Michelle King have kept it grounded and intellectually daring. Evil’s fourth and final…

Tell us about “Space Babies”. ◆ The TARDIS lands on a spaceship. It was very, very hard to shoot. We used real babies! I like to do things that I’ve never done before and sometimes that’s quite hard, with such a long career as mine. So I was very happy to be doing science fiction and working with Russell, and with babies who were high on the call sheet. I think some were about one-and-a-half years old. Is there a CG element to the babies? ◆ Yes, there’s a slight CG element to it. But that happened after I left. It was all worked out by fantastic people who took on the very tricky job of figuring out how to make the babies actually talk. So I had to just…

THE LIVE-ACTION JOURNEY for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic spin-off Dead Boy Detectives – about two teenage boys who die, but whose ghosts hang around to solve mysteries – has been long. Showrunner, executive producer and writer Steve Yockey had been a fan since the duo first appeared in 1991 and, as part of his overall deal with the studio, approached Warner Bros and DC to see if he could have the property. They said no. Then in 2019 The Sandman finally made it to the screen. “Then the studio was more willing to let me give it a shot,” Yockey explains. The pilot was completed in October 2021, by which time the characters had appeared, played by different actors, in a Doom Patrol episode also written by Yockey. But his…

LATE JANUARY, AND SFX IS AT another vast stately home in England for filming on a gothic production. “Joanna Lumley said ‘Fuck off’ in this room,” Steve Ryde, executive producer of Inside No 9, tells us. Not that she’s appearing in the ninth, and final, series of the iconic British anthology show – that we know of, at least. We’re informed that Arley Hall in Cheshire, where their penultimate week of filming is taking place, has also recently been used for Netflix’s Fool Me Once, as well as Peaky Blinders. We’re in a library, which is almost floor to ceiling with books. Right in front of us is the famous No 9 hare, sitting opposite a bust of one of the guest actors. “We’ll probably give it to him,” Ryde…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 115 minutes ▶ Director Gil Kenan ▶ Cast Paul Rudd, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard Few films in recent years have delivered such an unexpected emotional gut-punch as 2021’s Ghostbusters Afterlife. Somehow, even while introducing an entirely new cast, it allowed us to wallow in beautifully measured nostalgia and grief for old friends lost. But with all due respect now paid to the late lamented Harold Ramis and, by extension, Egon Spengler, what’s left for his on-screen family in this sequel? The nostalgia remains in Frozen Empire; co-writer and director Gil Kenan lives and breathes the original movie with camera angles, music cues and cameos from 1984’s ghosts. You could argue that there’s actually too much looking backwards, but at the same time…

▶ RELEASED 19 APRIL 15 | 97 minutes ▶ Director Paul Duane ▶ Cast Simone Collins, Charlie Maher, Nigel O’Neill This eerie Irish horror taps into the spookiness inherent in folk music, following a couple who belong to a subculture of people who hunt down old songs. Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) surreptitiously record private performances and sell them to a collector; the more obscure the music, the greater its value. Following a lead to an old woman’s house, they’re treated to an ancient ballad in Old Irish about a King, the woman who cheated on him, and a terrible punishment. This doesn’t end well for anyone involved… A cursed song makes for an intriguing premise, and the film has bags of atmosphere, a poetic turn of phrase,…

▶ RELEASED 26 APRIL 12A | 105 minutes ▶ Director Kobi Libii ▶ Cast Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, An-Li Bogan, Nicole Byer Spike Lee coined the term “magical negro” to describe black supporting characters in films like The Green Mile, Ghost and The Legend of Bagger Vance, who use their powers in aid of white protagonists. In Kobi Libii’s directorial debut, he satirises this stock type and creates the titular society, which is devoted to using its magic in service of “white comfort” – believing that it ultimately makes the black population safer. After being inducted into the order, young sculptor Aren (Justice Smith) is mentored by Roger (David Alan Grier) and tasked with infiltrating a tech company called Meetbox where mediocre white men fail upwards. One of the…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 104 minutes ▶ Director Jeff Wadlow ▶ Cast DeWanda Wise, Pyper Braun, Taegen Burns, Betty Buckley Imaginary friends are looking set to supersede scary dolls this year, given the presence of both this new horror title and John Krasinski’s kid-friendlier IF. But Imaginary, which bears the Blumhouse moniker (and features a scare bear) falls far short of the campy fun of M3GAN and its like. It’s the tortured tale of a woman (DeWanda Wise’s Jessica) moving back to her childhood home with stepfamily in tow: a forgettable hubby, soon-to-be-influenced younger girl and bratty teen older girl. She discovers, however, that something she left behind as a kid has been waiting for her. The film soon stumbles, weighed down with exposition and predictable jump scares.…

▶ RELEASED 29 APRIL 2024 | N/A | Download Set in 1585, this indie horror finds a blacksmith’s wife accused of witchcraft, along with a local girl who has slain her own parents and paraded their heads in the street. No wonder the town’s known as the Devil’s Door… While the dialogue can feel jarringly anachronistic, this modest production makes effective, extensive use of locations to conjure 16th century grime and gloom. It’s sincerely played by the cast, and an unexpected plot wrinkle adds intrigue to the familiar folk horror beats.…

▶ RELEASED 6 MAY 1976 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Michael Pataki ▶ Cast Richard Basehart, Gloria Grahame, Trish Stewart BLU-RAY DEBUT 101 Films’ latest Black Label release revives B-movie producer Charles Band’s first horror. It takes its cue from Eyes Without A Face. In George Franju’s 1960 classic, a surgeon kidnaps young women, slicing their faces off to restore his disfigured daughter’s looks. Mansion Of The Doomed is more A Face Without Eyes, as Richard Basehart’s similarly situated Dr Chaney harvests eyeballs for a series of unsuccessful transplants. A film of threadbare logic, it throws viewers in the deep end with indecent haste, and (after parading some real-life surgical footage) quickly loses interest in the operations themselves. The focus is more on the aftermath, as a cage gradually fills…

Time to run through recent theatrical releases hitting shiny disc. Set in 45,000 BC, OUT OF DARKNESS (22 April, Blu-ray), has echoes of Prey, following Stone Age wanderers who discover a barren realm where shrieking demons wait in the shadows. We said: “Played with absolute conviction… A bone-chiller of a campfire fable.” Bonuses: nada, sadly. In BAGHEAD (out now, Blu-ray/DVD) a young woman inherits a pub with an entity in the basement which can shapeshift into a dead person, allowing the bereaved an audience with a lost loved one. We said: “Too much about the set-up feels arbitrary or unconvincing.” Bonuses: again, nowt. In Blumhouse horror NIGHT SWIM (6 May/22 April, 4K/Blu-ray, DVD) a family move into a home boasting a pool with a dodgy history. We said: “Early on,…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Writer Kaaron Warren ▶ Publisher Viper Books Generally speaking, ghost tours aren’t actively dangerous: you pay your money, you listen to the spooky stories, and you leave, pleasantly creeped out. But in The Underhistory, there’s a tour with a difference. Pera Sinclair, now in her sixties, was the sole survivor of a tragedy that killed her entire family when she was a child. Now she welcomes curious tourists into her home to regale them with stories of the ghosts she says lurk within. Then one day a group of dangerous escaped prisoners gatecrashes the tour… The juxtaposition throughout of Pera’s various tragedies with the horrors the prisoners have committed is chilling. It’s her house, her tour, filled with her secrets, but…

▶ RELEASED 25 APRIL 564 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Taran Matharu ▶ Publisher HarperVoyager Taran Matharu, author of the hugely popular Summoner series, leaves the Young Adult bracket behind with Dragon Rider. Early on, the shadow of Games Of Thrones looms large, particularly when a royal engagement party turns into a massacre, but Matharu has his own voice and ideas as a writer. Jai is a Steppeman, handed over as hostage to the Sabine Empire in the wake of his nation’s defeat. The Sabines’ rise to power looks unstoppable when a marriage is arranged between the empire’s prince and a princess from their northerly rivals, the dragon-riding Dansk. But a bloody coup forces Jai to flee the palace, hoping to find his way home, accompanied by a freshly hatched…

▶ RELEASED 18 APRIL 305 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Scott Alexander Howard ▶ Publisher Atlantic Books There’s something comfortingly familiar about the set-up of Scott Alexander Howard’s debut novel. The plot basics – a young girl in an isolated community discovers unexpected things about herself and the world – sound like the stuff of YA cliché. But while this is certainly a coming of age novel, it offers an unusual twist on time travel, while also going deeper into its themes than most. Odile is 16 and on track to join her community’s ruling Conseil. The valley she lives in is one of a succession of identical valleys that stretch to the east and the west. Head in one direction and you’ll find the same town – and people…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Jonathan Hickman ▶ Artists Marco Checchetto ISSUES 1-3 Marvel’s reboot of its Ultimate universe got off to a mildly perplexing start in 2023, but this first ongoing Ultimate series is the shot in the arm the project needed. Ultimate Spider-Man keeps the worldbuilding from last year’s Ultimate Invasion in the background, and instead builds an accessible superhero adventure with interesting new angles on Spidey’s mythology. The basic set-up is that in the new Ultimate universe, Peter Parker gains his powers 20 years after he should have done, meaning we’ve got a new Spider-Man who’s in his late thirties, married to Mary Jane Watson, and father to two precocious children. We also get some different character relationships – most notably that…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writer Jason Aaron ▶ Artist John Timms ISSUES 1061-1063 DC is trying something a little different with Action Comics this year. The publisher’s new “Superman Superstars” initiative pairs high-profile writers and artists for discreet three-issue arcs. The first of these, “I, Bizarro”, sees recent Marvel defector Jason Aaron team up with artist John Timms to tell a tale centred on the Man of Steel’s goofiest foe. Bizarro – basically a dumb as rocks mirror image of Superman – is rarely portrayed as anything other than an admittedly powerful joke. Here, however, he becomes a major threat when his apparent death magically transforms everyone in the city into Bizarro refections of themselves. Superman can be a hard character to get right, but…

▶ RELEASED 30 APRIL ▶ 13 minutes | Vinyl/download ▶ Publisher Mulgrave Audio AUDIO DRAMA The second release from Mulgrave Audio is a slight affair – just 13 minutes long, enough for two sides of 10” vinyl – but it provides another strong indication of what this new label is all about. Young Eleanor Wood (Aja Dodd) discovers that an obscure cult fantasy film, Fellfoul, was shot near her house. Intrigued, she investigates the novel series that the movie was based on, but finds herself pulled into a mystery. Written by label co-founder Andrew Orton, Fellfoul is a pitch-perfect conjuring of a specific era and mood. While the plot is rooted in the world of cheap paperback sword-and-sorcery novels, Fellfoul also strongly evokes Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. It’s effectively…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ 236 minutes | CD/download ▶ Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA 22 March marked 40 years since the broadcast of “The Twin Dilemma” – the Sixth Doctor’s debut, notorious for both its general poor quality and the Time Lord’s attempt to strangle companion Peri. This six-part box takes inspiration from that story and crafts a superior one. “The Exaltation” sets the scene, as the Doctor and Mel explore the planet Arunopal just as King Otho declares his successor: whichever of his five sons brings him the Doctor! He’s not after just one Doc through, sending them out across space to find different versions of Six. “Escape From Holy Island” is a slight but touching story which sees the Doctor and Peri helping to defend Lindisfarne from…

GIVEN THE SHEER VOLUME OF horror movies, it’s surprising how few have exploited the subject of tarot. Sure, it’s featured – in films from Live And Let Die to The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones to A Dark Song – but barely any have made these mystical cards central to the story. “It’s crazy to think that tarot has been around for hundreds of years and no one’s really made a movie about it,” writer/director Anna Halberg tells Red Alert, somewhat incredulously. “They’re so iconic and so inherently scary. I have friends who refuse to get readings done, because they just don’t want to know just in case.” Tarot is the first co-directing feature credit for Halbert and her creative partner Spenser Cohen. In 2022 the two wrote (with Cohen…

WHEN IT COMES TO NOVELISTS having their books adapted for film or television, the rule of thumb is Hollywood rarely invites them to help in that process. So when someone bucks that trend – as is the case with writer Blake Crouch – it’s worth taking note. Since 2004, Crouch has published more than a dozen books, with three being adapted into series. With Wayward Pines and Good Behaviour, he was hired as a staff writer. For the latest, Dark Matter, Apple TV+’s adaptation of his 2016 book, Crouch is showrunner, responsible for bringing his quantum mechanics-infused mystery to life. Crouch tells Red Alert that after years trying to adapt Dark Matter into a film, multiple script drafts made it clear that the book’s emotional relationships were getting short-changed. “It…

The inevitable question: what did you steal from the set? → I got my name plaque that goes on the back of your cast chair, and they also gifted me with my producer’s chair as well. So I have both things! Was there a moment when you felt the show had arrived, or did you have that from the start? → To be honest with you, no, we did not have it from the start. We had a troubled start. From what I understand, every iteration has a challenge before them at the beginning. I do believe that we were kind of on wobbly legs. We were walking with purpose and intention and passion, and trying to walk with excellence as much as we possibly could, but we were still…

STEMMING FROM A conversation writer Mike Sizemore had with Storm King Comics CEO Sandy King, Fetch demonstrates the lengths people will go to for their four-legged friends. Illustrated by Dave Kennedy, the middle-school-age graphic novel series begins with 12-year-old Danni traveling to Hades to rescue her late dog, Pirate. “The bare bones of the core idea had been rattling around in my head for a while,” Sizemore tells Red Alert. “Sandy’s dog had recently passed away so we were talking about our pets when I said, ‘I have a story that would be perfect for Storm Kids…’ and it was greenlit there and then.” Sizemore was raised on a diet of Ray Harryhausen’s movies, and Fetch embodies his childhood love of Greek mythology – especially Homer’s Odyssey. “Odysseus is such…

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Tell us about the look for Ncuti’s Doctor. ◆ I had worked with Ncuti before – I did season one of Sex Education. So he was a known quantity, we’re good friends. As well as giving us a little bit of scope to be a bit more adventurous and playful in a way that’s suited to his personality, I wanted to do something a little bit more interesting. So we started looking at nail tattoos. Then I was looking at some of the symbols in the Gallifreyan alphabet. Obviously, they’re too big to fit on a fingernail, because they’re quite elaborate and quite large. So we just took elements and adapted them and shrunk them to size. We just put them on like a normal tattoo. They’re water transfer tattoos…

THE REBOOTED PLANET OF THE Apes franchise has been running far, far longer than the original film series did. Okay, that’s largely down to the slower pace of production when you’re replacing human actors with CG creations, rather than glueing prosthetics onto them… Still, it’s no mean feat that the revival is well into its twelfth year, with a fourth entry – designed to kick-start a fresh trilogy – in cinemas shortly. Two people who’ve been there from the beginning – right back to the original pitch in 2006 – are husband-and-wife writing team Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. As the scriptwriters of 2011’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, they created Caesar, the chimp who, in the wake of the spread of a virus that both devastates human…

IS THERE A BETTER EXAMPLE OF the agony and the ecstasy of dysfunctional relationships than the vampiric love/hate story of Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt? Gothic novelist Anne Rice introduced the poster boys of homoerotic hotness in her 1976 novel Interview With The Vampire, and vampire storytelling took off in new directions. Yet despite the characters’ incredible popularity, Rice’s creations have sputtered in live-action films, with Hollywood clearly too chicken to go as far as her books do. Lestat was disappointingly watered down in interpretations played by Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire (1994) and Stuart Townsend in Queen Of The Damned (2002). It wasn’t until AMC’s 2022 television adaptation of Interview With The Vampire that series executive producer and showrunner Rolin Jones and his…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 89 minutes ▶ Director Michael Mohan ▶ Cast Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Dora Romano, Simona Tabasco When Hamlet tells Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery!” he’s being kind of a dick, but at least Shakespeare was not condemning her to the terrors that befall Sister Cecilia when she arrives at her new convent. Nestled in her remote new home within picturesque Tuscan hills, Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) devotes herself to bonding with her fellow nuns, helping the sick and serving her Lord and Saviour. Unfortunately, the violent nightmares that interrupt her sleep prove to be more than just figments of her imagination, and it becomes clear that this house of God is more despicable than divine. The wonderful Sydney Sweeney, who produces and stars,…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 119 minutes ▶ Director Arkasha Stevenson ▶ Cast Nell Tiger Free, Bill Nighy, Sonia Braga, Ralph Ineson How did The Omen’s Damien get born? That’s the pregnant premise in this belated prequel to Richard Donner’s 1976 classic, a Rome-set chiller of moderate effectiveness which nimbly avoids the car crash that was John Moore’s woeful 2006 remake, only to pile headlong into unavoidable comparisons with Immaculate. In that film, Sydney Sweeney stars as a young American nun who travels to Italy, only to have her womb co-opted by a malevolent Catholic cabal. That’s pretty much what happens to The First Omen’s Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) too, a naïve novitiate from Massachusetts who comes to suspect that the priests at the orphanage she’s gone to work…

▶ RELEASED 26 APRIL 18 | 110 minutes ▶ Director Moritz Mohr ▶ Cast Bill Skarsgård, Sharlto Copley, Michelle Dockery, Jessica Rothe If Marvel ever find themselves scrambling around for a director for Deadpool 4, they could look no further than Moritz Mohr. His first feature after a series of attention-grabbing shorts, Boy Kills World is a virtual audition piece for the MCU. Set in a dystopian future, it centres on an unnamed deaf and dumb man (Bill Skarsgård) who, after his family’s killed, is trained by a mysterious mentor to exact revenge on the tyrannical Hilda van der Koy (Famke Janssen). This involves picking off various members of her odious family until he gets to the murderous head honcho. That all sounds simple enough, but the movie is a…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Creator Sally Wainwright ▶ Cast Louisa Harland, Bo Bragason, Florence Keen, Adrian Lester EPISODES 1.01-1.08 Highway robbery is clearly the new “wait ages for a bus, then two come at once”. On 1 March The Completely Made-Up Adventures Of Dick Turpin landed on Apple TV+: a tongue-in-cheek take on the British highwayman starring GBBO host Noel Fielding. Then at the end of the month, Disney+ released the slightly more serious Renegade Nell, this time telling the story of a mythical highwaywoman robbing carriages. Renegade Nell is easily the superior of the two. It also slots firmly into the pages of SFX, thanks to its flaunting of witchcraft, folklore and, in one stirring sequence, a deadly Herne the Hunter. It’s hardly what you’d expect from the pen…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | PG-13 | SVOD ▶ Director Ned Benson ▶ Cast Lucy Boynton, Justin H Min, David Corenswet, Austin Crute DISNEY+ Some people time travel using an old Police Box or a DeLorean. Lucy Boynton’s Harriet, though, simply listens to a song that reminds her of her dead boyfriend. One moment she’ll be sitting in front of her record player; the next, she’ll be back in the past in the arms of the hunky Max (David Corenswet). Although, frustratingly, she can’t seem to prevent the car crash that killed him. With her life on hold in the present day as she keeps jaunting back in time, Harriet is reluctant at first to get involved with fellow music-lover David (The Umbrella Academy’s Justin Min). Can their growing attraction compete…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download Staring down the barrel of a lifetime commitment, a bride-to-be flees her wedding… only to be stalked by the best man and other groomsmen, who are determined not to let her escape. This low-budget thriller should be fun, but because it thinks it’s a mystery, it won’t commit to any of its characters or storylines, so it’s a soupy nonsensical mess. Try drinking every time there’s a pointless dance sequence; that way you might enjoy yourself.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1983 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray ▶ Director Lamberto Bava ▶ Cast Andrea Occhipinti, Anny Papa, Fabiola Toledo, Michele Soavi A giallo/slasher hybrid so bare-bones it’s skeletal, this second feature by Lamberto Bava (son of Mario) follows a composer who, while working on a horror movie at a remote villa, finds scares intruding into real life as various female visitors are hacked up. The film industry milieu supplies added interest for cinephiles, and the fact that the kills use tools of the trade is a neat touch: several involve an editor’s blade; another is strangulation by celluloid! However, the characters are paper thin, the setting is bland, and there’s little intrigue – you are basically just waiting for the reveal. A tin-eared English dub provides a little…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author CJ Tudor ▶ Publisher Michael Joseph If you’re looking for a setting that’s got the icy chill of Scandi noir but none of the social democracy, Alaska could hardly be better – as demonstrated by the recent True Detective: Night Country. Not only is it far enough north to have (dependent on the time of year) long nights and long days, but it’s also isolated, physically separated from the rest of the USA by Canada. Anchorage, Alaska’s capital, was home to just 288,121 souls in 2021. More people live in Dudley. Take all this together and it’s easy to imagine all manner of horrific things happening in Alaska. Especially if, as CJ Tudor does in The Gathering, you add bloodsuckers…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author John Wiswell ▶ Publisher Jo Fletcher Books Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 2024 winner of the award for Most Literal Book Title! Shesheshen, the lead character of Someone You Can Build A Nest In, really does want to lay her offspring inside one special person. They’ll then serve as both a comfy nest and, well, lunch. Romance isn’t dead. Shesheshen is a glutinous lump who can impersonate humans by absorbing them. The nearby townsfolk want her dead and, after a skirmish, Shesheshen is injured. The unsuspecting Homily finds her in human form, tends her wounds, and the two fall in love – much to the monster’s surprise. But she needs to breed, and Homily looks like such a delicious…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 312 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Edward Ashton ▶ Publisher Solaris Getting your novel adapted by an Oscar-winning filmmaker is the kind of attention most authors would kill for, and Edward Ashton pulled off just this trick with his previous sci-fi thriller Mickey7 (soon to be upcoming blockbuster Mickey17, helmed by Parasite’s Bong Joon-Ho). His latest book Mal Goes To War isn’t connected to Mickey7, but it does live in the same realm of heady science fiction, just with a larger accompanying dose of dark comedy. Set in a war-torn future America, it’s the story of Mal (short for “Malware”), a free AI entity who wants nothing to do with the ongoing conflict between the genetically modded and the puritanical “Humanists”. Unfortunately, Mal then gets sealed…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 224 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Oliver K Langmead ▶ Publisher Titan Books Considered in précis form, you could be forgiven for thinking that Oliver K Langmead’s Calypso is a slight work, even clichéd. Here is a story of a colony ship that arrives at a new world, only for it to turn out that members of the crew have ideological differences over what the future should hold for those who live on this new planet. Arguments and violence inevitably result. But that’s to overlook the form. This is a book written in verse, which nods back to days when people told epic stories in poetry. Indeed, when speaking to SFX this issue (see page 70), Langmead pointed out that the book is in key respects…

▶ RELEASED 25 APRIL ▶ Publisher Rebellion ▶ Writers/artists Various COLLECTION Despite running for only 15 weeks in 1984, torpedoed by industrial action and senior management jitters, British horror comic Scream! is fondly remembered. This £45 hardback (469 pages) collects the whole kit and caboodle. Featuring the work of a host of 2000 AD contributors, it’s delightfully gruesome. The editors clearly knew what kids wanted: giant spiders, zombies, mummies, and all manner of slathering, toothy monstrosity. Three core strips previously received standalone releases. “The Dracula Files” effectively transplants the Count into a Cold War landscape of MI5 operatives and double-decker buses. In “Monster”, a lad discovers a Quasimodo-esque uncle in the attic, who keeps forgetting his “No more killing!” rule. And in “The Thirteenth Floor”, tower block computer Max punishes…