Содержание выпуска: January 2023 — SFX

WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE? Ian Salsbury, email What a joy the final episode of Chibnall and Whittaker’s Doctor Who was. A love letter to the show with some delightful nods to the past, wrapped up in a deliciously barmy plot. It was with heavy heart that I trundled over to the various forums and social media groups, expecting the usual naysayers and grouches… but no! What was this? A Chibnall episode that was getting universal praise? Almost everyone seemed to love it! Could this be a first?! After picking up SFX 359 however, it would appear not. What a miserable, misjudged review, and one that seems so at odds with the masses. I haven’t been a huge fan of this era, but I’m glad that, for most of…

➤ SCI-FACT! Wanda Maximoff first appeared as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in 1964’s X-Men issue four. PREVIOUSLY haunted by her cataclysmic actions, Wanda Maximoff is in a surprisingly peaceful place at the start of her new monthly series, after literally conquering her demon in 2021’s Darkhold crossover event. “Wanda has grown beyond her past mistakes, while not ignoring and still making amends for the pain she has caused,” says writer Steve Orlando, who also penned the Darkhold Alpha and Omega issues. “She’s self-actualised now, with the power to make the impossible possible at her fingertips. And she’s finally looking ahead to help as many people as she can, to ensure no-one has to be where she was: at rock bottom, so sure that’s she’s truly alone…

YOU’VE SEEN THE MEMES, you’ve seen the dancing, you’ve probably heard the incredible word-of-mouth – it seems M3GAN is the breakout star of 2023, and it’s only January. For those avoiding spoilers/the internet/killer dolls (delete as applicable), M3GAN is the titular character of Universal’s new horror movie. An eerily life-like doll, Model 3 Generative Android – or M3GAN for short – has been built using AI in order to become a protective companion to children. She’s brought into action when her creator Gemma (Allison Williams) suddenly finds herself caring for her orphaned niece Cady. Look, you know where this is going don’t you? “We all came up with dolls of some kind in our lives, and while we love them, there is that inherently creepy thing about them,” writer Akela…

“CAN YOU PUT IN YOUR article that it’s really important everybody sees it at least four times?” jokes Mark Jenkin. “Commercially speaking, that would be ideal.” Happy to oblige, as there may be something in that. We catch up with the Cornish director during a spare hour at BFI Southbank, before he reviews a print of Enys Men, his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Bait. Jenkin’s 2019 drama about a struggling fisherman earned him a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut. Enys Men (for those wondering: Enys rhymes with tennis and is Cornish for island, while Men sounds like main and translates as stone) sees him moving into eerie, fantastical territory. This is not a straightforward chiller, though, but something more elusive and allusive. If the film chimes with you then you’ll…

▸ RELEASED 9 JANUARY 2022 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD ▸ Director Rob Zombie ▸ Cast Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Daniel Roebuck, Sylvester McCoy Known for a gnarly noughties reboot of the Halloween franchise among other things, director and musician Rob Zombie now exhumes The Munsters, rivals to the Addams Family as top ghouls of sitcomland. It’s a creaky prequel to the beloved ’60s TV show, charting Herman’s creation, his courtship with goth vampiress Lily and their move to undes res 1313 Mockingbird Lane (Eddie and Marilyn Munster are missing from the mix). Zombie drenches it all in colour, aiming for a psychotronic, pop art vibe very different to the monochrome aesthetic of the original. While there’s craft on display – sets, prosthetics and lighting more than pull their weight…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1963-1965 | PG | Blu-ray ▸ Creator Leslie Stevens BLU-RAY DEBUT The Outer Limits is probably the second most iconic anthology show after The Twilight Zone, but there’s a reason why Rod Serling’s series snagged the lion’s share of the Simpsons references. Serling took to sci-fi and fantasy in part to smuggle serious issues past TV executives. The avowed intent of season one producer Joseph Stefano (screenwriter of Psycho) was to do the same, but at times his show feels more like flicking through a pile of sci-fi pulps with lurid covers. That’s largely due to his insistence that every episode have what he called a “bear” – an effect which made it memorable. Usually that translates to some weird grotesque, like an ant with a…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 12 | SVOD NETFLIX Before rebooting Tomb Raider in 2018, director Roar Uthaug made his name in his native Norway with natural disaster thriller The Wave. Troll finds him in unnatural disaster mode, as demolition work rouses a towering menace from its underground slumber. It’s Fjordzilla, essentially, a Scandi spin on monster-on-the-rampage tropes. The troll design fuses sinister physicality with a honest whiff of fairy tale, and alongside the obligatory chopper-swatting there’s some imaginative use of local lore.…

▸ RELEASED 9 JANUARY 1970 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Daniel Haller ▸ Cast Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner BLU-RAY DEBUT After success with Edgar Allan Poe movies, American International Pictures decided to give HP Lovecraft a try. This was director Daniel Haller’s second such effort (and AIP’s third). In the original story, an occultist steals a copy of the Necronomicon to help open a door to the realm of the Old Ones. This very loose adaptation retains basic components and dials up the sauce, adding the sacrifice of a pretty blonde (Sandra Dee); this involves much orgasmic lip-licking. It also turns Wilbur Whateley (“exceedingly ugly” on the page) into Dean Stockwell’s softly-spoken seducer, all corduroy, big brown eyes and immaculately trimmed moustache. Haller has a good…

▸ RELEASED 12 JANUARY 368 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Hadeer Elsbai ▸ Publisher Orbit Books With Iranian women’s fight for their rights in the news, this fantasy feels horribly realistic in many ways. The stories of two women from very different backgrounds – rich, privileged Nehal, who wants to attend the academy where she can learn to use her elemental “weaving” skills, and poor bookseller Giorgina – intertwine repeatedly. Nehal’s marriage to Giorgina’s lover is arranged, and both are involved with the Daughters of the title, a group fighting for women’s rights – from the vote, to the plain right to speak for themselves legally without needing a male relative. The weaving is intriguing, and proves pivotal to the wider political picture as their country, Ramsawa, has used elemental…

▸ RELEASED 19 JANUARY 290 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Hannah Kaner ▸ Publisher Harper Voyager With her debut novel, Hannah Kaner displays an impressive breadth of vision as she constructs an animistic world where gods reside alongside humans, from the humblest deities – like the diminutive god of a town crossroads – up to terrifying, powerful gods of fire and war. Here, gods are chaotic, selfish creatures and have been banished from the land by royal decree. Swordswoman Kissen is a Godkiller, hunting any gods threatening to disturb the peace of the kingdom. She enjoys her dangerous work until she meets Inara, youthful heiress of the influential Craier family who, for reasons unknown, has become bonded with Skedi, a god of white lies. As Kissen searches for a way…

▸ RELEASED 19 JANUARY 297 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Katy Hays ▸ Publisher Bantam Press A small fish in a big city, looking to make something of themselves – it’s an old story, but it’s a classic for a reason. Is ambition enough to drive success when everything seems against you? Ann Stilwell is an art history scholar who arrives in New York to find her summer placement cancelled, but is quickly swept up into an assignment at The Cloisters, a gothic museum where she’s put to work researching Renaissance methods of divination. Curator Patrick and fellow assistant Rachel are fascinated by the history of the tarot deck, but is there more to their obsession than academic interest? Ann becomes caught up in their world as she fights to…

▸ RELEASED 10 JANUARY 272 pages | Hardback/paperback/ebook ▸ Author JG Faherty ▸ Publisher Flame Tree Press Oh mummy! This entertainingly silly horror novel exhumes a classic monster that has fallen out of favour in recent years. There’s a murderer loose in New York, and detectives Tom Reardon and Dan Reese are on the case. Whoever the killer is is leaving a bloody trail through the city’s wealthy socialites, breaking into locked rooms and aircraft before vanishing into thin air. As Reardon and Reese investigate they uncover a string of clues that suggest a connection to ancient Egypt… Ragman is defiantly old-school in its approach, and while not exactly good, it’s a lot of fun. There’s something amusingly Garth Marenghiesque about JG Faherty’s mundane descriptions of supernatural phenomena (spells are…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Image Comics ▸ Writer Donny Cates ▸ Artist Ryan Stegman ISSUES 1-3 Writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman don’t do subtle; for proof, look to their recently concluded, gleefully over-the-top run on Marvel’s symbiote antihero Venom. They’ve channelled the same unhinged energy into this new ongoing series. It’s the story of Oliver Harrison, who saved the world from a magical threat as a child, but has grown up into a paranoid mess with a substance abuse problem. Oliver’s attempt at living a normal life ends when a superhero team are revealed as evil adversaries from his past, and soon the story is throwing in massive fight sequences and plenty of gore as our protagonist goes increasingly off the rails. These first three issues are…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Reviewed on PC ▸ Also on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S ▸ Publisher 2K Games VIDEOGAME Given the chance to share a house with a bunch of Marvel heroes, what would excite you more? The prospect of fighting alongside them against Hydra and various supernatural threats? Or the prospect of buying them outfits which you can then demand that they wear? Well, here you can do both! As the Hunter – the child of Lilith, a character created specifically for this game – you’ll team up with names both big and relatively small in order to prevent your mum from calling the elder god Chthon into the world. Given the imminent apocalypse, there’s a surprising emphasis on socialising with the heroes. The turn-based battles are…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Reviewed on PlayStation 5 ▸ Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC ▸ Publisher Krafton VIDEOGAME There’s a lot to like about the general vibe of this spiritual successor to Dead Space from co-creator Glen Schofield – shades of Aliens meet The Thing, with a dose of The Expanse’s contemporary hard SF holding it together. It’s all grimy metal corridors with heavy doors, and weary, everyman spacers who can’t believe the shit they’re having to deal with when an extraterrestrial infection turns a space prison’s entire population into pustule-covered zombies. It’s a good set-up, and makes for an incredible looking game as you explore a base on the moon of Jupiter, battling barely human creatures with a bone-crunching…

IT’S GOING TO BE a showdown of the maternal figures in the fourth and final season of Servant. The ongoing battle of wills between nanny Leanne Grayson (Nell Tiger Free) and high-strung mama Dorothy Turner (Lauren Ambrose) over the safety of baby Jericho is finally coming to a head, and it’s going to get wild. The horror/thriller series from executive producers M Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop has quietly become one of streaming TV’s under-the-radar gems. Claustrophobically set (and primarily shot) inside the well-appointed Philadelphia home of the affluent Turners (Ambrose and Toby Kebbell), Servant left audiences aghast at the third season finale, as the rot inside the house caused Dorothy to fall to what looked like her demise. JERICHO AND CO Series writer/director Ishana Night Shyamalan (Night’s middle daughter)…

EMPEROR PALPATINE doesn’t do sentiment. So while his Clone Army was instrumental in defeating separatist forces and all but wiping out the Jedi, the newly formed Galactic Empire is doing its best to create a hostile environment for its lab-grown soldiers. In the first season of Clone Wars spin-off The Bad Batch, we saw ordinary humans being conscripted as proto-Stormtroopers, and the cloning facilities on Kamino ruthlessly destroyed by the Empire. For Hunter, Tech, Wrecker and Echo – aka the specialist Clone operatives of the eponymous Batch – the only sensible course of action is to lay low, while working muscle-for-hire jobs for former Jedi informant Cid. “When we first meet them in season two, a little bit of time has passed,” says head writer Jennifer Corbett, reluctant to confirm…

YOUR FAVOURITE SCI-FI magazine is standing inside a giant hangar, hidden away from view in east London. Above us, being hoisted high – so very high – into the air in front of the biggest greenscreen we’ve ever seen is a handsome actor, preparing to use his flying superpowers for the latest Disney+ show. No, it’s not the latest instalment of the MCU – this is “hybrid sitcom” Extraordinary. “The flying is very fun when you’re mic’d up to the actors,” writer and creator Emma Moran tells us. “You can hear them 50 feet up talking about what kind of sandwiches they like and how massively uncomfortable everything is. It looks really graceful and cool on screen, but they’re just hoiked up by their pants, trying to make small talk…

➤ SCI-FACT! February brings Williamson/Campbell’s Superman and March Taylor/Henry’s Adventures Of Superman: Jon Kent. USHERING IN A “NEW DAWN OF the DC Universe”, Action 1051 heralds the arrival of a new beginning for Kal-El, who has recently returned to Earth. Adopting a 48-page format, it harks back to Superman’s classic titles as the main narrative will be joined by two back-ups, highlighting characters from the wider supporting cast. “Clark Kent is still very much the focus of Action Comics, and always will be,” says writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson, who is joined by artist Rafa Sandoval. “But in the wake of Superman’s off-world adventures in The Warworld Saga, I saw an opening to pay tribute to the old 80-Page Giants I grew up on, that told stories about all of the…

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NAME A VIDEOGAME you’ve played that gave you goosebumps, made you sweat with tension and then sob because the story broke your heart? Not a big list to choose from, right? One of the few to tick all those boxes is Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic hit The Last Of Us. A third-person survival/adventure game set in an America ravaged by a virulent fungus, it was released in 2013 and went on to win a myriad of awards, spawn a sequel, and now an HBO series co-created by game creator Neil Druckmann with Craig Mazin, the award-winning creator of the HBO series Chernobyl. What really set the game apart was how uniquely the developers cultivated a narrative that invested players in the two primary heroes: the adult, world-weary Joel, and Ellie, the…

IT’S ONLY BEEN A YEAR SINCE ANNE Rice, the prolific author of gothic, supernatural novels, including The Vampire Chronicles, passed away. And while her fans are still grieving, they’ve also been gifted with a brand new way to experience her worlds and characters with the birth of AMC’s Immortal Universe. Launched in October last year with the series adaptation of Interview With The Vampire, which received both audience and critical acclaim, the interconnected universe based on her mythology continues in January with Mayfair Witches. Based on Rice’s Lives Of The Mayfair Witches trilogy, the series stars Alexandra Daddario as Dr Rowan Fielding, a San Francisco-based neurosurgeon who discovers her relation to an ancient, powerful coven of witches now based in New Orleans. It’s a story steeped in tradition, legacy and…

▸ RELEASED 13 JANUARY 15 | 91 minutes ▸ Director Mark Jenkin ▸ Cast Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe, Flo Crowe, John Woodvine How do you feel about walking out of the cinema scratching your head? Your answer will define your response to Mark Jenkin’s follow-up to Bait. There are various reasons why a film might puzzle viewers. It may be incoherently plotted, with no internal logic. Then there are films that don’t spell things out, choosing to work by subtle insinuations; where apprehending meaning is like trying to wrap your arms around a phantom. Enys Men falls in the latter camp. While it will (with good reason) be bracketed as folk horror, don’t expect a linear presentation of, say, an old Cornish folk tale. What solid data we have can…

UK/US Prime Video, streaming now ▸ Showrunner Scott B Smith ▸ Cast Chloë Grace Moretz, Gary Carr, Jack Reynor, JJ Feild EPISODES 1.01-1.08 It’s faintly appalling that it’s taken 32 years from Neuromancer’s publication for any of William Gibson’s bibliography to come to TV – until now, the nearest we got were the X-Files episodes he co-wrote either side of the millennium. Now it’s finally happened, with this adaptation of his 2014 novel. The results are by turns bewildering and crowd-pleasing, with audacious concepts wedded to kickass action set-pieces. Or should that be Kick-Ass action set-pieces? Former Hitgirl Chloë Grace Moretz is Flynne Fisher, an expert gamer from small-town North Carolina, 2032. When her army vet brother Burton is offered a gig beta-testing a new VR sim, she takes his place,…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▸ Showrunner Declan de Barra ▸ Cast Sophia Brown, Laurence O’Fuarain, Michelle Yeoh, Mirren Mack EPISODES 1.01-1.04 Big-budget fantasy prequels were all the rage in 2022, but this Witcher spin-off wields a power House Of The Dragon and The Rings Of Power can only dream of: brevity. Keeping things short and to the point isn’t always fashionable in realms of magic and monsters, but Blood Origin’s pacy, highly bingeable four-episode arc is its greatest strength. The fact that it’s set around 1,200 years before Geralt of Rivia’s monster-slaying exploits is also a massive plus. Blood Origin’s plot and characters are so many generations removed from the parent show that the curse which afflicts most prequels – the challenge of maintaining suspense in a story whose outcome is…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1976 | 12 | Blu-ray (standard/4K)/DVD/download ▸ Director John Guillermin ▸ Cast Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, Charles Grodin, Rene Auberjonois BLU-RAY DEBUT “Who the hell do you think went through there?” demands Jeff Bridges’s luxuriantly hirsute hero. “Some guy in an ape suit?” It may be the most shameless lampshading in Hollywood history, given that the titular star of this colour remake of the 1933 classic (now impressively restored) is indeed some guy in an ape suit. At least, when it’s not a giant mechanical paw or an inert, life-sized prop with faulty hydraulics, looming over a crowd of unimpressed extras. Showman producer Dino De Laurentiis was determined to deliver a supersized ’70s epic, roping in The Towering Inferno’s John Guillermin to direct. But a clash of tones…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1980 | 18 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) ▸ Director Ruggero Deodato ▸ Cast Robert Kerman, Gabriel Yorke, Luca Giorgio Barbareschi, Francesca Ciardi Ruggero Deodato’s infamous exploitation flick remains highly controversial. Following an American film crew who make contact with a tribe of cannibals, it’s an undeniably unpleasant film, which includes deeply unsettling footage of (real) animal cruelty. On the other hand, the points it’s making about media manipulation and Western attitudes towards other cultures still feel relevant. Plus, the second half invents the found footage genre 19 years before The Blair Witch Project. + Extras 88 Films’ new 4K transfer is stunning, and the disc is stuffed with interviews. Deodato gets a pair of new ones (10 minutes and 25 respectively); there’s also an archive piece (12 minutes)…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER Greek mythology and Surrealism (with a capital S) collide in Travis Stevens’s accomplished third feature. Museum curator Meredith is looking forward to a weekend away with her new boyfriend, but the romance sours when she spots an ancient sculpture of the three Furies in his cabin in the woods… Snappily written and stylishly shot on 16mm, A Wounded Fawn balances its spooky metaphysical business with visceral effects work, resulting in some impressively striking imagery.…

Fans of It Follows should enjoy SMILE (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD/download), which sees a therapist becoming the next link in a chain of suicides who died with a creepy grin on their face. We said: “More chewy subtext than you usually find in a popcorn horror… Afterwards you might find yourself turning on all the lights on the way to the bathroom.” Blu-ray bonuses: director’s commentary, the short that inspired the film, a Making Of; deleted scenes, a score featurette. Starting out like a comedy of manners, festive horror-comedy THE LEECH (out now, Blu-ray) then turns into the story of a descent into madness. A Catholic priest invites a homeless man into his home – a decision he soon regrets… Graham Skipper impresses as the unravelling Father David, but the rinky-dink…

▸ RELEASED 19 JANUARY 336 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Heather Fawcett ▸ Publisher Orbit Books It’s almost impossible to write this review without pulling out overused words such as “whimsical”, “charming” or “delightful”. Nowhere near as dry as its title suggests (don’t expect a Fantastic Beasts-style glossary), it contains a selection of early 19th-century diary entries penned by scientist Emily Wilde, opening as she arrives in a remote Scandinavian town to spend a chilly winter researching the faerie folk who live in the nearby forests. Emily has trouble connecting with people and so the townsfolk are wary of their nosy visitor – right up until her colleague, fellow researcher Wendell Bambleby, arrives and takes charge, much to her annoyance. He’s lazy, irritating and selfish… but he’s also stunningly handsome and,…

▸ 5 JANUARY 416 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Dhonielle Clayton ▸ Publisher Bonnier Books In 1960, Ruby Bridges became the first black child to attend a previously segregated American school… and many people weren’t happy about it. In The Marvellers, Dhonielle Clayton has taken this painful historical event and applied it to another black girl: a Conjurer from the Deep South attending a school full of Marvellers, who see her branch of magic as wrong and, tellingly, “dark”. As a study of bigotry seen through a child’s eyes, The Marvellers is important. It’s also nowhere near as depressing as you might be expecting. Clayton has, however, essentially reimagined the world of Harry Potter. She’s not the first author to write about a magical school – JK Rowling certainly wasn’t…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Skybound Entertainment/Image Comics ▸ Writers/artists Various ISSUES 1-3 Considering that Stephen King and George Romero’s 1982 film took its cue from the classic EC Comics of the ’50s, it’s appropriate that an old-fashioned grisliness pervades this new comic, spun off from the Shudder anthology show. With a strict morality running through each tale, there’s inevitably a degree of sameyness about the stories in these first three issues, as the invariably venal protagonists eventually all receive their (usually deserved) comeuppance. There’s no compunction about inflicting mortal pain upon youngsters either, as demonstrated in issue one by Chris Burnham’s ominous “Take One”, which teaches a trio of trick or treaters about the importance of only taking a single candy bar. Paul Dini and Stephen Langford’s “Shingo” –…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ 57 minutes | Radio (now on BBC Sounds) ▸ Broadcaster Radio 4 AUDIO DRAMA While MR James is the writer usually associated with festive chills, this adaptation reminds us that there are works by his contemporaries equally deserving of being enjoyed by a roaring fire. Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 story “The Willows” follows two friends on a canoe trip down the Danube. Making camp on a small island in a desolate stretch of the river, surrounded by an army of rustling willow bushes, they slowly become aware that some strange, inhuman power means them harm. It couldn’t really be better suited to radio, being centrally concerned with the uncanny potential of sound: the gurgles, splashes and hissing of the river, a roaring wind “beating an elemental tune”,…

➤ SCI-FACT! Created by Stan Lee, Ernie Hart and Jack Kirby, Janet van Dyne debuted in Tales To Astonish issue 44 in 1963. AFTER HIS RECENT Ant-Man miniseries, Al Ewing has now turned his attention to original master of many sizes Hank Pym’s long-time partner, Janet van Dyne. Illustrated by Kasia Nie, the four-parter arrives shortly ahead of February’s release of big-screen blockbuster Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania. “This book is a subtly different beast, for while Ant-Man was a series of stories set in the past that joined together into a larger pattern, this is a single story that references and grows out of the past,” explains Ewing. He adds that the series grew out of Janet’s guest appearance in Ant-Man: “She was very light and fresh and fun…

JOE CORNISH IS HAUNTED. NOT BY ANY BONE-chilling apparition or plate-flinging poltergeist but by a time. A vanished age, of strange torments and diabolical dread. “This is a world of draughty houses and windows that don’t quite close properly and creaky floorboards and clicking pipes,” he tells SFX, smiling over a Zoom connection. “The world I remember from my childhood, before double-glazing and insulation!” Welcome to the phantom-infested Britain of Lockwood & Co. It’s a little like the 1970s, only even weirder. Adapted from the popular series of books by Jonathan Stroud, this new Netflix offering pits swashbuckling teens against the unquiet dead in a London spilling over with paranormal activity. Even the local A-Z, you strongly suspect, drips with ectoplasm. ANATOMY OF A GHOST “I love supernatural stories,” says…

UK BBC Two, now on iPlayer ▸ Director Mark Gatiss ▸ Cast Jason Watkins, MyAnna Buring, Max Bremer, Allan Corduner Another Christmas, another MR James tale, and another very solid adaptation by Mark Gatiss. First published in 1904, James’s short story recounts the fate of a Mr Wroxall, whose researches among the papers in a Swedish manor house unearth a very dark sheep in the family: Magnus de la Gardie, renowned locally for his cruelty, and for rumours that he brought something back from a Satanic “Black Pilgrimage”. Wroxall’s fascination with his mausoleum does not end well… Jason Hawkins brings wry humour to his portrayal of Wroxall – a slightly fatuous fellow, prone to making up little songs. And Gatiss makes the process of adaptation look effortless – although given…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2000-2009 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) ▸ Directors Takashi Shimizu, Mari Asato, Ryuta Miyake ▸ Cast Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Takashi Matsuyama, Takako Fuji Second only to Ring in terms of crossing over to a Western audience, Ju-On was a key title in the Japanese horror boom of the ‘00s. It’s a measure of its success that this six-film box set only covers a fraction of the franchise. Its ingenuity lies in the fact that it’s conceptually simple, but structurally complex. The central conceit is basic: violent deaths in a location create a curse; visitors spread said curse to their own homes and workplaces. Cue pale-faced ghosts, an eerie elongated croaking noise, and shots of people sensing something looming behind them and then turning veeeery slowly. Characters…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 15 | SVOD ▸ Director Nikyatu Jusu ▸ Cast Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector PRIME VIDEO Nikyatu Jusu’s debut won the big prize at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, and it’s not hard to see why. While there’s no shortage of metaphor-heavy horrors out there, Jusu brings a unique east-meets-west perspective, with figures from West African folklore tormenting her protagonist Aisha (Alice Diop) on the streets of Manhattan. To make matters worse, Aisha is being subjected to as many sociopolitical evils as supernatural ones. She’s in New York working as a nanny for a filthy rich white couple with a dysfunctional marriage, poor professional boundaries and an aversion to paying overtime. While she lovingly cares for their sweet daughter, the injustice…

▸ RELEASED 9 JANUARY 2022 | 15 | DVD/download There’s a cute visual gag near the start of this cheap werewolf horror: having made American Werewolf In London jokes about a country pub, two city types find themselves in an almost shot-for-shot recreation of the “keep off the moors” sequence. Promisingly, that’s followed by a properly gruesome wolf attack. But the rest of the meagre runtime feels more like a prolonged whinge about the trials of low-budget filmmaking. With no actual story to tell, Wolf Manor rather lacks bite. + Extras None.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | 12 | SVOD ▸ Director James Gunn ▸ Cast Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Kevin Bacon, Chris Pratt DISNEY+ Until now, Marvel’s TV operation has spotlit supporting characters from the movies or acted as R&D for icons-in-the-making. The title of this seasonal treat is a knowing riff on the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which brought George Lucas’s heroes from big-screen to small with a catastrophic bump. Will the Guardians of the Galaxy find themselves stuffing an equivalent turkey? Thankfully not. Written and directed by franchise supremo James Gunn, this is a slight but charming piece of MCU ephemera, more stocking-filler than blockbuster. It certainly doesn’t stint on the festive vibe, throwing in sleigh bells, novelty jumpers and The Pogues. All that’s missing is Shakin’ Stevens…

▸ RELEASED 19 JANUARY 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author John Marrs ▸ Publisher Macmillan At one point in The Marriage Act, a character notes that they’re “living in a Margaret Atwood novel”. If they’d also referenced Black Mirror and Russell T Davies’s Years And Years, you’d know what to expect from John Marrs’s quasi-dystopian novel. Set a few decades from now, the story takes place in a United Kingdom where walking down the aisle is heavily incentivised. Thanks to the Sanctity of Marriage Act, happy couples can sign up for a Smart Marriage offering tax breaks, preferable mortgage rates and higher status. There’s a hitch to getting hitched, however, as these benefits are conditional on installing an Alexa-like smart device in your home. This Audite (Latin for I hear/I listen/I…

▸ RELEASED 19 JANUARY 272 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Jonathan Carroll ▸ Publisher Melville House Comedian Graham Patterson has a problem. After another dreary gig, he has to face facts: it’s not the audience, it’s him – he’s just not that funny. Patterson needs some time out and, on a whim, decides to drive across America. Here’s an opportunity to rethink his life and to do what he wants, like getting a tattoo on a stopover in North Carolina. Except this isn’t just any ink. Turns out Patterson has selected a design that enables him to see three very different lives that, depending on the choice he makes, are open to him. Should he commit to a relationship and have a family? Should he adopt a new onstage persona?…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author SM Stirling ▸ Publisher Titan Books Blood Of The Serpent is a prequel to Robert E Howard’s last Conan story: the novella Red Nails, published in 1936. The tale recounts the first meeting of Conan and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, when Conan is working as a soldier in Stygia, a sun-baked country of deserts and danger. There are slave rebellions and a curse to contend with, even as Conan pursues the elusive Valeria. SM Stirling keeps the battles flowing fast and thick, and the burly hero remains the embodiment of teenage wish-fulfilment, the manliest man ever to grace the Earth. The story feels episodic, and there’s a self-contained subplot in which Conan helps a warrior-woman called Irawagbon rescue her…

▸ RELEASED 10 JANUARY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Mary Baader Kaley ▸ Publisher Angry Robot Burrowed feels like a contemporary twist on the far-future world of HG Wells’s The Time Machine – though Wells was famously a supporter of eugenics, while Mary Baader Kaley clearly has a more enlightened view about humans with physical differences. In this future, a global virus has split humanity into the physically perfect but mentally slow Omniterraneans, who live on the surface and do all the manual work, and the physically challenged, almost permanently ill Subters, who live underground and do the sciency stuff. Their fragile co-existence is coming increasingly under threat, with extremists on both sides kicking up trouble. Could a diminutive girl with extreme photosensitive eyes, a severely limited life expectancy…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher DC Comics ▸ Writer Josie Campbell ▸ Artist Evan “Doc” Shaner ISSUES 1-4 When it comes to bright, kid-friendly superheroes, Billy Batson and his adult alter-ego Shazam have been the best choice for a long time. Thanks to recent DC continuity shenanigans, however, Billy has lost his powers and vanished – and it’s up to his foster sister Mary to take on the mantle of Shazam in this new four-issue miniseries. It’s a traditional tale of ordinary life vs superhero craziness, as Mary is gifted with Billy’s powers, but then forced to abandon her college studies when her foster parents unexpectedly go missing. Her attempts to use her new powers to track them down set off a whole series of colourful misadventures and luridly realised…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher DC Comics ▸ Writer Todd McFarlane ▸ Artists Greg Capullo, Todd McFarlane ONE-SHOT Cleverly tying the characters together through a mutually shared detail in Bruce Wayne and Al Simmons’s tragic histories, this 48-page one-shot proves to be an engaging, accessible read that’s an ideal entry point to both DC’s Caped Crusader and Todd McFarlane’s Hellspawn, who are meeting here for the first time in three decades. A relatively recent addition to the Batman rogues’ gallery, secret society the Court of Owls make for intriguing adversaries with their nefarious machinations and their ferocious assassins the Talons – although there’s also a cameo from a disfigured Joker, who is rendered in gloriously hideous detail by Capullo. It’s set mostly in Gotham, and good use is made…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 47 minutes | Vinyl ▸ Label Trunk Records SOUNDTRACK In the past, Trunk Records have released LPs of The Wicker Man and Blood On Satan’s Claw; the addition of Witchfinder General to their catalogue makes it a clean sweep for the three cornerstones of folk horror. Given that Micheel Reeve’s 1968 film features rape, torture, hangings and a vengeful axe killing, the score is at times surprisingly idyllic. Composer Paul Ferris assembled a 55-piece orchestra to record it. Expect plenty of shivering strings, and drum rolls of the sort you might hear just before the hatch opens on the gallows. The prettiness comes in cues like “Nearly Home” and “Peaceful Interlude”, which accompany scenes where Ian Ogilvy’s Roundhead gallops home and enjoys tender moments with his…

I’ve always loved comics. The first book I can remember reading was Asterix The Gaul, and I devoured any comic I could get my hands on, from American superheroes to Lucky Luke and Hergé’s Adventures Of Tintin. My most prized possessions were a paperback collecting the early Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Spider-Man stories, and a massive hardback, Superman: From The Thirties To The Seventies. European or American, these comics were upbeat, and the heroes always won. There was, in short, nothing in them to prepare me for 2000 AD. The post-apocalyptic visions of Strontium Dog and Judge Dredd dispensing lethal justice were light years removed from Superman tangling with the Toyman, or Superboy dealing with Lana Lang’s schemes to expose his identity. But even Strontium Dog and Dredd paled…