Table of contents for July 2025 in SFX

WITH A SUPERHERO STORY including distinct new elements that director, producer and writer James Gunn promises we’ve never seen in a Man of Steel movie before, the buzz is definitely building for Superman. Flying dog? Check. Giant kaiju? Absolutely. Pocket universes? You’ve got it. Science and sorcery? Sure thing. Max Fleischer cartoon inspirations? No question about it. Yep, Red Alert is super-hyped for DC Studios’ Superman. “I really do believe in this movie,” enthuses Gunn, speaking at a presentation to promote the blockbuster. “Superman is a movie that celebrates kindness and human love. When somebody goes to my movies, I want them to walk out with a magical feeling that we all know we experience from seeing a movie we love. Honestly, that’s the most important thing for me.” “There’s…

IF THERE’S ONE DIRECTOR WHO usually ducks biographical interpretations of their work, it’s David Cronenberg – for obvious reasons. No one’s likely to assume he has personal experience of, say, developing a blood-sucking organ in his armpit (Rabid), exploding heads with telekinetic powers (Scanners), or splicing his DNA with an insect (The Fly). That said, the director’s personal life did factor into 1979’s The Brood, which saw Cronenberg drawing on an acrimonious custody battle for the tale of a man whose daughter is kidnapped by deformed children spawned spontaneously through his estranged wife’s rage. Now there’s a second Cronenberg film which will tempt future authors of monographs to take a biographical approach, because The Shrouds was sparked by the director going through the wringer with grief. The high concept is……

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 98 minutes ▶ Director David Midell ▶ Cast Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, Abigail Cowen “Expect the unexpected!” rasps veteran cleric Father Riesinger (Al Pacino) at the beginning of this ostensibly authentic recreation of a real-life exorcism that took place in Iowa in 1928. That nothing remotely unexpected subsequently occurs in this The Exorcist-indebted chiller won’t surprise anyone, though that doesn’t prevent it supplying the occasional jump scare. A young woman (Abigail Cowen) is exhibiting behaviour odd enough to get the Catholic Church involved, with lowly parish priest Father Steiger (Dan Stevens) selected to be note-taker in chief. It’s his observations that provide the basis for the Satanic bunkum that follows, with Pacino’s readings of scripture over the girl’s initially unfettered body evoking…

▶ RELEASED 7 JULY 2023 | 15 | Digital Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge brings a personal passion for the unexplained to this muddled comedy, which sees a bunch of slackers step into the world of the paranormal. It’s a film with ambition, roping everything from ghosts to Bigfoot into a unified theory of weirdness. But that scattershot approach to Fortean phenomena clutters the storyline, while the tone lurches from stoner humour to earnest messaging on the nature of reality.…

▶ RELEASED 23 JUNE 1961 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Tai Katô ▶ Cast Tomisaburo Wakayama, Tosshô Sawamura, Sentarô Fushimi BLU-RAY DEBUT Anyone who bought Radiance’s Japanese ghost stories box set Daiei Gothic will get déjà vu watching this standalone release from the label: the story is drawn from the same centuries-old source as one of its entries, 1959’s The Ghost Of Yotsuya. Many of the details vary, but it shares the same core incident: a samurai’s wife is given a poison that disfigures her face, then returns as a ghost. It takes a considerable time for supernatural elements to come to the fore. Prior to that, the film is a grimly sobering depiction of the miserable lot of women in Edo-era Japan. (Oiwa isn’t the only one treated…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1958 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Howard W Koch ▶ Cast Boris Karloff, Tom Duggan, Jana Lund, Donald Barry BLU-RAY DEBUT We have the success of Hammer’s The Curse Of Frankenstein, a box office hit Stateside in 1957, to thank for this inferior effort, which returns Boris Karloff to the milieu where he made his name – now playing a descendant of the Baron, not his creation. Though nominally set in the future, everything sure looks like 1958, barring the tech in the Baron’s secret underground lab. How he sneaks an “atomic steam generator” downstairs is just one troubling detail of a script that’s a terrible mess, riddled with clunky exposition. No film starring Karloff can be all bad, mind. The horror icon shines in a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 18 | SVOD ▶ Director Matt Palmer ▶ Cast India Fowler, Fina Strazza, Lili Taylor, Suzanna Son NETFLIX This fourth entry in the Fear Street franchise is a standalone feature based on RL Stine’s 1992 novel The Prom Queen, though one character does survey the carnage and gasp, “It’s worse than ’78.” Like Fear Street: Part Two – 1978, this is a slasher movie, set not at summer camp this time but during high school prom at Shadyside High. It’s 1988, and Lori Granger (India Fowler) is the biggest outsider to run for Prom Queen since Carrie White. Lori has no chance, surely – she’s up against queen bee Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza) and the other mean girls in Tiffany’s “Wolfpack”. But then perhaps…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 533 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author VE Schwab ▶ Publisher Tor Lesbian vampires are a trope that dates back to at least the 19th century, but rarely have they been handled as interestingly and sensitively as in this latest novel from bestselling author VE Schwab. Combining hefty doses of blood and death with an examination of the curtailed lives of women in history, the book cleverly weaves together timelines, continents and cultures. Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil (more of a tagline than a title, really) tells the stories of three women through history: one from 16th century Spain, another from 19th century England, and the third from 21st century America. The book begins by focusing on the oldest and youngest of the three women:…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 244 pages | Hardback/paperback/ebook ▶ Author Geoff Ryman ▶ Publisher NewCon Press Identity has been a recurring fascination for lauded science fiction/fantasy author Geoff Ryman. It’s in the shared consciousness of a hive mind in 1989’s The Child Garden, and his more recent novel Him (2023), which reimagined Jesus as a trans man. It’s in his pioneering ’90s hypertext novel 253, which allowed readers to experience each character as either interconnected or separate, depending on their chosen format (online or paperback). The idea of merging identities has been a key thread throughout his long career. Horror, however, has not. Animals represents Ryman’s first foray into the genre, and while it features his comfort themes, as well as elements of his self-described subgenre of “mundane science fiction”…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 350 pages | Paperback ▶ Author Toby Hadoke ▶ Publisher Ten Acre Films A landmark production, Nigel Kneale’s 1958 serial saw an astronaut return to Earth having absorbed two fellow crew, then mutate into a monstrous man/plant hybrid. Toby Hadoke’s obsessively detailed study (subtitled The Making Of TV’s First Sci-Fi Classic) strives to do justice to its status in British TV history. Drawing on BBC memos, Kneale’s own archive, press cuttings, and interviews by the author (dating back as far as 1989!), he leaves no stone unturned. Opening with a partial biography of Kneale, the book progresses to an episode by episode Making Of (taking up about 50%) which compares different breakdowns to trace the development of Kneale’s ideas. Need to know precisely when the cast…

▶ RELEASED 3 JULY 192 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Samuel Fisher ▶ Publisher Corsair Psychogeography might sound like the name of a Jack the Ripper walking tour, but it’s actually a way of talking about people’s relationship to their surroundings. The idea is that the environment in which we live shapes how we feel and how we act. Inspired by Iain Sinclair’s meandering musings on London, Migraine is a kind of psychogeography of a climate-changed near future. In a version of the capital that is emerging, derelict, from both a great freeze and an epidemic of migraines, Ellis and Sam explore the remade streets together. Their goal is, nominally, to find Ellis’s ex, and the narrative goes back and forth between their present-day rambling and flashbacks to Ellis’s doomed…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Adrian Tchaikovsky ▶ Publisher Head Of Zeus Earth has suffered the equivalent of a kind of gradual zombie apocalypse. Climate change, rampant capitalism and small wars undermined human society’s technological bases, and now it’s a wild and strange planet. Yet is there hope? When a plea for help reaches a Mars colonised by bioengineered “people” and the distributed intelligence of Bees, a crew sets off across the void. Clever and well-intentioned Martians who know best arrive to find themselves, despite their best efforts, hopelessly unprepared for the vibrancy of the world they’re visiting. Everything that can go wrong duly does. Adrian Tchaikovsky shows us what unfolds from multiple viewpoints, an approach that lets him tease out the weirdness of different…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Dark Horse Comics ▶ Writer Mark Millar ▶ Artist Per Berg ISSUES 1-3 Like Sinners meets The Da Vinci Code, this fastpaced three-parter, set in the Holy See, couldn’t be timelier, what with its release coinciding with the recent election of a new pontiff. Essentially a siege thriller with added bloodsuckers, Mark Millar’s pared-back narrative emphasises action over character nuance. Rather than a larger-than-life protagonist like Huck or Nemesis, the story centres on a band of everyday survivors, who are hiding out in the Vatican after a vampire apocalypse. A practising Catholic, Millar adeptly blends vampiric traditions with religious lore. As the undead hordes attempt to rescue their queen, long-buried in the papal vaults, he also can’t resist throwing in some trademark esoteric history. With…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Joe Kelly ▶ Artist Pepe Larraz ISSUES 1-4 It’s relaunch time for Spidey, as Marvel once again hits the “new first issue” button and Peter Parker finds himself in another heap of superherorelated trouble. In these opening four issues, Peter is down on his luck and unemployable, but finally gets a science job thanks to an old friend – just as a fight with the Rhino ends up with him ingesting a whole bunch of mystery hallucinogens. Peter has to find out who’s manufacturing these drugs, but the attack leaves him suffering from regular hallucinations, making it harder than ever to keep his everyday life on track. All of this is told with style by writer Joe Kelly, who carefully…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PC ▶ Publisher Strange Scaffold VIDEOGAME TMNT but turn-based? How well can that fit these dynamic, pizza-loving protectors of New York City? Very. For all the plastic tat the Turtles have generated over the years, the scrappy indie-energy core from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original comics continues to enable radical departures. Separated after the death of their mortal enemy Shredder and their mentor/father Splinter, the brothers must come together when the Foot Clan threaten the city once again. Rather than playing all four heroes at once, each mission is laser-focused on a bite-size arcade-like challenge that makes use of each turtle’s unique skills. Tech-whizz Donatello throws down traps to keep enemy ninja at bay, for example, while Michelangelo breezily kickflips over enemies…

★ Netflix have announced the release schedule for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. Revealed as part of Tudum, their annual fan event, broadcast live from Kia Forum in Los Angeles on 31 May, the news came with a first look trailer. ★ Season five will have a three-part release across November and December. Part one, comprising four episodes, will release globally on 26 November; part two, with three episodes, on 25 December; and part three, the final episode, will follow on 31 December. ★ All the releases are timed for 5.00pm PT, which means that in Europe they will appear the following day due to time zones. At the moment it appears this means episodes will drop in the UK at 1.00am. ★ Stars Finn Wolfhard (Mike),…

SFX HAS ARRIVED AT HELL. It’s probably not the first time in our 30-year history – and likely won’t be the last – but thankfully this trip is temporary and actually housed within Shepperton Studios in London. It’s February 2024 and we’ve been invited to a banquet – but this isn’t any ordinary meal, this is a gathering of representatives from several different realms, all of whom are vying for ownership of Hell once Lucifer abdicates. We’ll just graze, thanks. This is season two of The Sandman, which returns to Netflix in July for 12 episodes, including a standalone outing for Death. It’s also the final season, as Dream’s story is wrapped up in a slightly different way. “We’re remixing a lot of it,” showrunner and writer Allan Heinberg tells…

OVER THE LAST DECADE, Mike Flanagan has become the go-to director for Stephen King adaptations, convincingly bringing Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life Of Chuck (in cinemas in August) to the screen. But there’s another name that is becoming synonymous with King: Jack Bender, who worked as executive producer on the TV shows Under The Dome, Mr Mercedes and The Outsider. And while Flanagan currently has a Carrie series in development at Amazon, Bender has beaten him to the punch with his own adaptation of a King novel about kids with psychic powers, The Institute. “Stephen sent me the galleys for [2019 novel] The Institute,” says Bender, who’s also directed episodes of The Sopranos, Lost and Game Of Thrones. “He loved, loved, loved Mr Mercedes. When we first discussed…

BLENDING HORROR-COMEDY WITH HITCHCOCKIAN intrigue, Fright Night follows “Peeping Tom” Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), a teenage horror movie fan who becomes convinced that his charming new neighbour is a vampire. It opens with a voyeuristic, self-aware sequence that tilts down from a full moon, sweeps across a suburban street, and into Brewster’s bedroom, where he’s making out with his girlfriend as a cheesy horror movie plays. However, he soon becomes distracted by something he sees through his window. “I told them If you want to get closer to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, you need to modernise it; it has to have a kid look out the window and see a vampire in the house next door, and Universal [Studios] threw me out!” writer/director Tom Holland tells SFX. “They thought the idea…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 108 minutes ▶ Director Dean Fleischer Camp ▶ Cast Maia Kealoha, Sydney Agudong, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis Shockingly, it’s been a whopping 23 years since the original Lilo & Stitch hit cinemas. Despite being a modest hit at the time, it never quite reached the mainstream recognisability of some of Disney’s other animated franchises, but it also never went away. Direct-to-video sequels and TV shows kept the kiddies hooked, while the sheer cuddliness of little alien Stitch did not go unnoticed by Disney’s merchandising heads. And so here we are in 2025, welcoming a live-action remake of the original movie and an avalanche of blue cuddly toys to go with it. The good news is that rather than being solely a cynical cash-grab, it’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 97 minutes ▶ Director Tony Burke ▶ Cast Craig Russell, Kezia Burrows, Steve Meo, Kai Owen This Welsh serial killer thriller is a smart and unexpectedly funny portrait of small town violence, given a mondo twist. Sion (Craig Russell) is a traumatised veteran of Afghanistan. Homeless and hungry, he starts doing cash-in-hand work for hard-working Katrina (Kezia Burrows) at a run-down gym. Witnessing one of the many awful blokes there threatening her, however, leads Sion to take some fairly drastic action: he kills and eats him. “Gym bro cannibal chows down on other, more awful, gym bros for the protein” is a great idea for a horror movie, but Tony Burke’s debut feature doesn’t fully lean into the inherent outréness of the premise, instead…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1974 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Kevin Connor ▶ Cast Peter Cushing, David Warner, Ian Bannen, Ian Carmichael BLU-RAY DEBUT “Never fiddle an antiques dealer” is the lesson of this horror anthology – the last of seven made by British studio Amicus. The directorial debut of Kevin Connor, who went on to regularly wrangle Doug McClure, it’s an enjoyable affair, thanks to a cast of dependable character actors, a varying tone, and its snapshot of ‘70s Britain – all chintz, kipper ties, and sausage and beans for tea. The four principal parts adapt stories by R Chetwynd-Hayes. A flat-capped Peter Cushing provides the glue as a shopkeeper who brings down doom on cheating customers. A tale of a haunted mirror which pushes its latest owner…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 |15 | Digital Jena Malone puts on her best English accent for this deeply confused religious horror – despite no reason for her to have bothered. Thrown into the Edward Woodward role investigating strange goings-on in an extremist sect in deepest darkest Scotland, she’s already an outsider. The more bizarre secrets her amateur detective work uncovers, the less sense any of it makes. One brilliant mirror trick shot aside, there’s not much to recommend this unspooky nun-sense.…

▶ RELEASED 23 JUNE 2019 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Gabriel Mascaro ▶ Cast Dira Paes, Julio Machado, Teca Pereira, Calum Rio This tale of a near-future Brazil is considerably nearer-future now that it’s making its post-Bolsonaro Blu-ray debut. Set in 2027, it’s an allegorical treatment of the degree to which the state exerts control over the bodies of its citizens. Dira Paes is Joana, a registry office notary who uses her position to dissuade people from divorcing – in very hands-on style. For the god-fearing Joana is a member of Divine Love, an organisation which helps couples reignite the spark via support groups which combine Bible readings with (graphically depicted) spouse-swapping. Director Gabriel Mascaro riffs on existing tech to create some striking images: doorway metal detectors are transmuted into…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 12 | SVOD ▶ Director Guy Ritchie ▶ Cast John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson APPLE TV+ Harrison Ford’s retirement from the whole exhausting business of Indiana Jonesing has left a vacancy when it comes to stubbly treasure-chasers. Into that void steps John Krasinski as incorrigible adventurer Luke Purdue, on the trail of the fabled Fountain of Youth. He’s joined by sister Charlotte – a withering Natalie Portman – and in flirtatious competition with Eiza González’s guardian of secret knowledge. Globe-trotting from Thailand to Vienna and the Pyramids, Guy Ritchie’s film plunders as much from Dan Brown as Spielberg and Lucas. Esoteric clues to the Fountain’s location are concealed in Tibetan scrolls, paintings by Old Masters and misprinted Bibles, cueing some serious Sherlocking.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Holly Race ▶ Publisher Orbit Books Henry VIII was a monstrous figure, a man-child monarch who had two of his wives executed. Because of his myriad faults, he fascinates us, but in recent years, as the work of historians has shifted focus, he’s increasingly had to play second fiddle to those in his orbit. This in turn has played into historical fiction, notably via Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. With the publication of Six Wild Crowns, the ripples have reached fantasy fiction, in that Holly Race’s first novel for adults imagines a world where a polygamous Henry is required, seemingly for the good of the kingdom, to marry six wives. It’s a world we see from the perspective of (Ann) Boleyn,…

▶ RELEASED 19 JUNE 292 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Will Carver ▶ Publisher Orenda Books Imagine Dr Strangelove with weaponised viruses instead of atomic bombs, and you’ve got the genome of this sledgehammer-subtle Covid-19 satire. As a shadowy cabal of world leaders plot to boost their electoral chances with a lethal pandemic, a scientist fights back with an infection genetically engineered to make the populus kinder. But for all the sci-fi elements – Red Dwarf-esque positive viruses, nanotechnology – Will Carver’s novel is first and foremost a scathing takedown of government responses to the coronavirus outbreak. Although the names have been changed, the inspirations for certain characters and scenarios are clear. References to lockdowns, wet markets and politicians thinking the rules don’t apply to them are painfully familiar. And…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Laura Elliott ▶ Publisher Angry Robot Ever wish you had more time? In the near future, scientists have developed a neural chip that can suppress your need to sleep. It’s the must-have accessory for politicians, the military and pretty much everyone else, but when the tech goes spectacularly wrong, the world’s population is transformed into a mindless horde known as the Sleepless. With a bunch of scientists holed up in the Tower of London searching for a cure, journalist Laura Elliott’s gripping debut novel could easily have played out as a by-the-numbers zombie tale. It turns out to be nothing of the sort, however, as narrator Thea Chares (one of the original team who developed the tech) recounts her experiences…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 256 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Anna James ▶ Publisher HarperCollins Children’s Books One of the classic works of English children’s literature, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland has inspired dozens of sequels, parodies and retellings since its publication in 1865. This latest one skips forward to 1919 and the aftermath of the Great War, in which the original Alice’s granddaughter Alyce (“with a Y”) has lost her father. Playing in the garden, Alyce discovers an invitation that was maybe not meant for her, and quickly finds herself falling down to Wonderland. Here she meets the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse, and learns that a war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon is playing havoc with the days and nights. The…

CSI: Moon 6 JULY 1987 “It was a road to Hell paved with good intentions,” Star Cops star David Calder told SFX in 2018, reflecting on one of sci-fi TV’s greatest missed opportunities. “I was actually very disappointed by the way it was handled by the BBC.” Perhaps all involved should have heeded the lyrics to the show’s theme song, a weedy weepie by Justin Hayward that warned, “It Won’t Be Easy”. Set in 2027, the nine-episode series gave a near-future twist to the standard police procedural. Calder played Detective Chief Inspector Nathan Spring, a “good copper” newly promoted to Commander of the International Space Police Force. Stationed on the Moon, Spring and his multinational team are tasked with enforcing law and order as humanity edges into the Solar System.…

DIRECTOR DAN TRACHTENBERG is, as you might have suspected, one of us. The former Geekdrome podcast presenter is a self-proclaimed nerd and at the moment the man holding the reins to the Predator franchise is very animated about headlining at Geek Glastonbury – San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H. “I went on an 11-year stretch going to Comic-Con, but I haven’t been for quite a few years, so I’m very excited to be part of Hall H,” he tells Red Alert, promising that Predator will be represented with “cool stuff” next month. “I was in there when the Avengers assembled, I was in there for the pen stabbing [prior to the Resident Evil: Afterlife panel in 2010], I was two rows behind it. I was there for the big Tron reveal,…

DANNY BOYLE HAS A TWINKLE in his eye. “Age is no indication of maturity,” the 68-year-old director says, rather mischievously. The Academy Award winner is standing on stage to speak about his new movie, 28 Years Later, and the audience is lapping it up. The post-apocalyptic project is a follow-up to the acclaimed British horror 28 Days Later and its 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later – and Boyle is in the perfect mood to describe what film fans can expect from the “infectious” third movie. “I still love an apocalypse, British style,” he says with a smile. “I love killing the Infected, or zombies, if you like. And I still love blowing shit up. You know, that’s how my agent describes my best stuff.” While development of the third film…

IT’S BEEN ALMOST three years since we last saw genius MIT student Riri Williams/Ironheart (Dominique Thorne) in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, suiting up to fight alongside the Wakandans against King Namor and his Talokan warriors. And after that life-changing experience, Williams returned to her academic life sans suit, where she was left to figure out what’s next. In the long-awaited Disney+ series Ironheart, audiences will get to see Williams figure out how to stake out her place in Chicago and the world of superheroes. Since she was introduced into the MCU by director Ryan Coogler, he and his production shingle, Proximity Media, have been key in helping to creatively define her Disney+ series. Co-executive producer Sev Ohanian tells Red Alert that they worked closely with Marvel Studios executive producers Kevin…

FULL WARP AHEAD! A familiar command on any starship bridge but it could also be a mission statement for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. From an all-singing, all-dancing encounter with a cosmic improbability field to an equally reality-melting crossover with cartoon sister show Lower Decks, this 23rd century prequel is unafraid to bend, stretch and, yes, warp the very protomatter of the franchise. “We definitely challenge ourselves to find genres we can use to continue to serve the story and that we haven’t used before,” says series co-creator Akiva Goldsman. “We’re probably not going to do another musical, even though we loved doing the musical. “We have this cadence of sci-fi action-adventure, which is sort of the metronome, right? Then in between we do other things. The precedent there is…

Do you feel like you have a deeper understanding of your character now in season two? You can’t help but have a deeper understanding after you’ve spent a year doing something, rather than when you’re a total virgin to the experience. Having time away from it was also incredibly helpful. There’s something about time breeds subconscious experience, which, ironically, is what our entire show is about, and that’s been very helpful with Dream. But more than me personally, it’s such a communal experience, the making of something like this. What’s most thrilling is everyone together having an understanding of what they’re doing, because at the beginning, you have actors who can be obsessive about characters, but members of the crew don’t necessarily have a historic understanding of The Sandman. Suddenly…

Dream’s private quarters are sparse, but huge. “It’s not homely. It’s somewhere he just comes. It’s a bit Zen, and it’s got that traditional feel to it, but elegant, very stylised,” we’re told by the production team. The library from season one was filmed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields – this time it was built. They “kept the essence of it”, we’re told, with a table brought over from France in a van. “I thought it was a beautiful thing for Lucienne to be sitting at.” There are buckets everywhere because when Dream’s in a really foul mood it rains. The show goes through many different time periods, particularly Ancient Greece – meaning that a lot of the set pieces dotted throughout the season are from Ancient Greece. “That’s the joy…

WHEN SFX LAST SPOKE WITH director Gareth Edwards in autumn 2023, he was decompressing from locking The Creator and was contemplating what his movie-making future might look like in the wake of its release. Extremely satisfied with how he was able to marry the “pros of a small independent film and the pros of a big blockbuster” on that film, Edwards said he was planning to only chase that model going forward. And then Team Spielberg came calling with Jurassic World Rebirth. Edwards tells SFX that he unintentionally started manifesting his next gig during New Year’s Eve of 2023, when he spontaneously collected his girlfriend to usher in 2024 at Universal Studios Hollywood, a local haunt when he’s working in Los Angeles. “I spent New Year’s Eve on the Jurassic…

Are you a fan of Stephen King’s work? I am a fan. I’m more of a fantasy, thriller, sci-fi, mystery reader. He writes a lot of premise-heavy stuff that I love. The Shawshank Redemption is one of the films I’ve watched the most in my life. Anything with a mystery/thriller bent, that is absolutely my cup of tea. Did they come to you for the role? I had a new team of agents and they suggested I read the book. I was thinking, “That’s very proactive!” But I was really grateful, because when I got there I had all these thoughts about it. We just got into a really dynamic chat about the show and the characters. We were getting excited, throwing ideas around, and that chat really informed what…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ PG |125 minutes ▶ Director Dean DeBlois ▶ Cast Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost When first released in 2010, How To Train Your Dragon signified a marked step up in quality and ambition for a DreamWorks Animation outfit overly dependent on its Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda franchises. Its 2014 sequel was even better: so good, in fact, that the relative disappointment of 2019 closer The Hidden World did little to tarnish its memory. It was inevitable, then, that writer/director Dean DeBlois would revisit the series at some point, especially given Disney’s recent successes in the live-action make-over department. Should anyone be anticipating a radical reinvention, however, they should be immediately disabused of that fanciful notion. The “new” How To Train Your…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 110 minutes ▶ Directors Adam B Stein, Zach Lipovsky ▶ Cast Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Tony Todd, Brec Bassinger Fourteen years on from its fifth chapter, the Final Destination franchise returns with at least one new kink to the formula: the notion that even the unborn can find themselves on the Grim Reaper’s hit list, should anyone intuitive enough to dodge his scythe happen to be pregnant. Having escaped a fiery demise in a collapsing Space Needle-like structure in this reboot’s ’60s-set prelude, the cost of survival for Iris (Brec Bassinger) is to have her progeny stalked by Death: a generational curse that catches up with granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) and the rest of her extended family. The elaborate expirations…

UK BBC One/iPlayer, streaming now US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Russell T Davies ▶ Cast Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Millie Gibson, Anita Dobson EPISODES 2.01-2.08 “Get Belinda home!” That was the rallying cry at the start of Ncuti Gatwa’s second and final season. First episode “The Robot Revolution” sets that arc in motion, flinging Varada Sethu’s nurse into the far future and pitting her and the Doctor against some gorgeously retro bots and “Bel”’s incel ex. It’s a solid opener, and one that immediately positions the reluctant traveller as a different sort of companion: more a Tegan than a Sarah Jane, if you will. “Lux” is another early high point, as the duo tackle a malevolent cartoon in ’50s Florida. Brilliantly realised by effects house Framestore, Mr Ring-A-Ding is a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | N/A | Digital A struggling cleaner is used in a reality-bending experiment by shady wannabe tech bros in this Indian time travel tale. “This will bring us toward God territory!” they tell each other, heedless of the human cost. Tannishtha Chatterjee’s truthful performance anchors the timey-wimey of it all as she finds herself confronted by multiple selves. With an evocative score that nudges into dream pop territory, this is an absorbing exploration of fourth-dimensional ethics, played with eerie restraint.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | N/A | SVOD SHUDDER Elevated horror is the order of the day in Julia Max’s firmly grounded chiller, which deals with themes like accepting loved ones’ flaws. A fractious mother/daughter relationship is stress-tested when mom (Grey’s Anatomy’s Kate Burton) hires an occultist to resurrect her dead husband. The ritual that ensues has moments that are eerie, wince-inducing, and bleakly comic. But it’s the blazing rows which precede it – brilliantly played by Burton and The Boys’ Colby Minifie – that most impress.…

▶ RELEASED 23 JUNE 1970 | PG | Blu-ray ▶ Director Yoshiyuki Kuroda ▶ Cast Osamu Sakai, Sanshi Katsura, Hachirô Oka, Bunshi Katsura VI BLU-RAY DEBUT Aimed squarely at kids, this Edo-era fantasy is liable to frustrate more cynical older viewers. It centres on cowardly klutz Sanshiro (Osamu Sakai), who’s clearly never going to live up to his samurai father’s example. When dad is killed during a night watch by a bunch of thieving ronins, responsibility for exacting revenge falls upon our woefully ill-equipped hero. Luckily, a trip to the afterlife introduces a yōkai (a supernatural being) which supplies him with the recipe for an invisibility potion. Cue buckets, logs and footwear bobbing about. The appeal of such effects soon palls, and while the baddies eventually realise that they can…

Latvian animated film FLOW (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 30 June) won a Golden Globe. Free of dialogue, it follows a black cat trying to survive in a human-free landscape; when a flood comes, it hops on board a sailboat, journeying through submerged forest and city. We said: “It’s a stimulating journey, motored by suggestions rather than slogans”. Extras include a 58-minute doc, an animatic version, a director Q&A and two shorts. Final Destination fans should dig Longlegs director Osgood Perkins’s latest. Expanding upon a Stephen King story, THE MONKEY (Blu-ray/DVD, out now) centres on a sinister toy that causes a horrific death every time its key is wound. We said: “A jump-filled, guts-splattered thrill-ride… never short of funny moments.” Bonuses: 11 minutes of featurettes. Disney’s latest live-action remake SNOW WHITE (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 30 June)…

▶ RELEASED 3 JULY 316 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Hal LaCroix ▶ Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing A multigenerational saga set on a spaceship taking around 600 (depending on how the breeding program’s going) colonists (though, mostly being of liberal-left leanings, it’s not a term they’re keen on) to a Goldilocks planet 300 years away, Here And Beyond is epic in scale while fascinatingly prosaic in its detail. Told in a series of different eras from throughout the voyage (but following certain families), it’s more concerned with the social, theological, mental and physical effects of such a voyage on the humans enduring it – especially those in mid-voyage for who the ship (christened Shipworld) will be their whole world. It’s a well-realised setting, complete with a river, robot birds and rituals,…

▶ RELEASED 8 JULY 256 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Authors Troy Benjamin, Craig Goldberg ▶ Publisher Dark Horse Books Ghostbusters was a box office smash in 1984, but the animated spin-off and associated toys arguably did just as much to secure the franchise’s legacy – certainly for a generation of kids too young to appreciate the film’s more adult humour. As this comprehensive book reveals, however, the original group of writers (including future Babylon 5 creator J Michael Straczynski) treated The Real Ghostbusters as a serious sci-fi comedy gig, relishing the chance to unleash new spooks on New York. The vast archive of production sketches, memos and photos will be enough to win over hardcore fans. But it’s the meticulously researched history of the show that lifts the book above…

▶ RELEASED 1 JULY 352 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Matt Wixey ▶ Publisher Titan Books If you’re one of the people who couldn’t sleep in a room with a TV in it after seeing The Ring, you might want to give Basilisk a swerve, because this post-post-cyberpunk hacker horror will make you afraid of your computer. When ethical hacker Alex uncovers her first Helmsman puzzle, she’s intrigued, but she assumes it’s a straightforward (if especially tricky) ARG (alternate reality game). However, the more she and fellow hacker Jay play, the more it seems like the lethal cognitive weapon at the heart of the game might not be fictional after all. And the more you read about it, the more vulnerable you become. Thrillingly dense, with philosophical conundrums stacked on…

Reviews ▶ RELEASED 3 JULY 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Aisling Rawle ▶ Publisher The Borough Press The problem with fictional dystopian worlds is that reality is plenty dystopian all by itself. On reality TV show The Compound, 10 boys and 10 girls are dropped into a semifurnished mansion in the middle of the desert and told to couple up. Hidden cameras track their every move, while personal screens issue them with secret tasks. If they succeed, they’re rewarded: with food, furniture, or anything else they might want. If not? They’re banished from the Compound, left to trek back to safety. It’s basically Love Island, but with the threat of feral dog attacks any time someone gets dumped. Our narrator, Lily, is rated the second most attractive girl on…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writer Deniz Camp ▶ Artists Javier Rodríguez ISSUES 1-3 The Absolute Universe line has afforded DC the chance to take a few big risks with its core characters, usually altering their personal circumstances while keeping the core of the character intact. The Absolute Batman, for example, is no longer a wealthy playboy, but grew up in poverty. Wonder Woman is from Hell rather than Paradise Island, but still stands for all that is good. Absolute Martian Manhunter goes a step further by reimagining the entire concept from the ground up. Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez’s comic is more a weird psychological thriller/buddy cop story than it is an alien superhero story. Its central character is no longer an alien posing as…

Una McCormack, second-hand paperback aficionado Those readers who, like me, have spent a fair chunk of their lives scouring secondhand and/or charity book shops will surely be familiar with the black-and-white “zig-zag” spines of The Women’s Press. No? There’s also a little steam iron icon to help identify them. Yes? You’ve got them now. Set up in 1977 by writer Stephanie Dowrick and entrepreneur Naim Attallah, The Women’s Press was one of a number of independent feminist presses that emerged around this time (Virago – dark-green spines, bitten apple – is surely the best known) dedicated to publishing writing by women. Both Virago and The Women’s Press published a combination of contemporary women’s fiction and reprints of lost classics. But The Women’s Press was unique among these presses, as far…