Innehållsförteckning för Holiday Special 2025 från SFX

A personal plea, if you’re a Stranger Things fan that’s picked up this issue because your favourite show is included – please don’t scan or take pictures of the magazine and post them online. You might not think it’s a big deal, but it really damages our sales and makes it even harder to keep SFX going. Anything that we want to share, we’ll do so from our official channels. Then we can do it all again when Tales From ‘85 comes out next year! Stranger Things aside, we’ve got an extremely packed issue this month – including four set visit reports. Ooh, it’s like the good old days of magazines! One of my very favourite shows returns, as it only can at this time of year, A Ghost Story…

WHILE THE 22ND CENTURY WAS over 100 years in the distance when Spider-Man 2099 debuted in 1992, it’s now less than 75 years away, which is partly why Marvel is bringing their near-future line to a close with this five-parter – leading to the introduction of Spider-Man 3099. “Logically, it hasn’t literally been the year 2099 for folks like Miguel O’Hara for a long time, unless he’s been speed-running all his adventures to the extreme,” laughs writer Steve Orlando. “As for The End: 2099, as we’ve seen, conceptually, in fiction, ends are times of change and even the apocalypse is often contextualised as a paradigm shift.” With the Age of Heroes having concluded with 2024’s Annihilation 2099, Mephisto pits its leading protagonists against a range of characters from across the…

Tell us about your protagonist. → Arrow was once Londinium’s most famed female gladiator, but she’s now a respectable governess. When the young girl she’s caring for is abducted, Arrow is forced to unleash her gladiator skills to save the child. How does this world differ from ours? → The Roman Empire never fell – it industrialised. An oil economy powers its wealth, war machines and religion. The Empire’s arrogance has metastasised into something terrifyingly familiar for modern readers. Did the book have any particular spark? → Decades ago, while studying for my Classics degree. I never forgot my lecturer saying “the Roman Empire didn’t fall, it just ran out of energy”. Years later, while working in climate action, his theory itched my brain. What sort of research did you…

CHOOSE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION Print and digital edition £17.87 EVERY 6 MONTHS Digital edition £14.30 EVERY 6 MONTHS PRINT + DIGITAL ACCESS NEW! Digital access to 170+ issues when you subscribe to print!** SUBSCRIBE NOW! ONLINE magazinesdirect.com/SFX/DH44H  PHONE 0330 333 1113 and quote code DH44H Offer closes 27 January 2026. Price is guaranteed for the first six months, please allow up to six weeks for the delivery of your first subscription issue (up to eight weeks overseas). The subscription rate includes postage and packaging. *Savings are based on the cover price. Payment is non-refundable after the 14-day cancellation period. **Access to the digital library will end with your subscription. For full terms and conditions, visit www.magazinesdirect.com/terms. For enquiries and overseas rates please call: +44 (0) 330 333 1113. Lines are open…

“Here I am, sitting in front of a big picture of my own face,” says Jamie Campbell Bower, sitting before a large poster of Vecna’s disembodied head floating above Hawkins. Of course, Vecna barely looks like Bower, thanks to the many hours of makeup and prosthetics work that go into transforming him into Stranger Things’ big bad. This season the actor was given another chance to appear on screen with his real face, playing Henry Creel’s other alter-ego, Mr Whatsit. What do you feel makes Mr Whatsit distinct from playing Henry, One, and Vecna? They’re all the same character, yet they’re all so different. ★ First of all, thank you for recognising that Mr Whatsit is separate. Because he is separate. It is a performance, as it were. Mr Whatsit…

SFX IS SITTING IN Jonathan Nolan’s director chair on the set of Fallout. It’s a dull, drizzly day in Los Angeles, but there are much brighter skies displayed on the huge LED volume screen inside Stage 15 of Culver City Studios. The top-secret scene being shot today involves a conversation between Maximus (Aaron Moten) and Elder Quintus (Michael Cristofer) as they wander across a walkway on a Brotherhood of Steel airship called The Caswennan. The huge Zeppelin is hovering in the empty skies above the Wasteland, a scene that will appear in an early episode of the eight-part second season. “The story of season two picks up directly after the season one finale,” explains Moten, taking a break from filming. “Maximus is newly promoted and he’s dealing with what it…

Writer EF Benson is perhaps less well known for his ghost stories than the authors Gatiss has previously adapted, MR James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “In the ghost community he is very famous,” Gatiss counters. “But that’s the weird thing. In his day, he was more famous for his what he called ‘spook stories’ than he was for Mapp And Lucia, which is what he’s known for now.” That’s a series of six 1920s-set comic novels which have twice been adapted for television. “He was a masterful comic writer, but also a brilliant writer of ghost stories. What I’ve always loved is that his stories actually occupy a very similar territory to Mapp And Lucia. They’re often about middle-aged bachelors who take a summer’s lease on a house in…

Tell us about the character of Billy. There are two sides to the character. I’ve always sort of read it like First Blood, the book that the original Rambo film is based on. For me, the movie kind of comes in like this weird version of Rambo. Billy’s been drifting his whole life. He’s living out of a bag. He can’t attach himself to anyone or any place because it’s always gonna go wrong for him. We meet him in this state of just complete longing – for stability, for something to latch onto – and that comes in the form of love. What Mike did is so genius because it’s the worst possible situation for that to happen to him, and it does. You’ve played a few villains in…

▶ RELEASED 12 DECEMBER 12A | 91 minutes ▶ Director Sofia Alaoui ▶ Cast Oumaïma Barid, Mehdi Dehbi, Fouad Oughaou, Souad Khouyi ➔ Animalia begins quietly in a wealthy Moroccan home with stylish furnishings and a sense of order, every day rolling out in a predictable fashion. This status quo is disrupted when the skies begin to transform. A storm rolls in, animals act oddly, and societal norms unravel. Alone and cut off from her family, Itto (Oumaïma Barid) has to navigate a world she no longer recognises. This isn’t sci-fi filled with answers; the true nature of what is happening exists on the peripheries. Director Sofia Alaoui builds tension through atmosphere and ominous sound design; a sense that something larger is at work is constant. Noé Bach’s camera captures…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 91 minutes ▶ Director Chris Stuckmann ▶ Cast Camille Sullivan, Sarah Durn, Sloane Burkett, Mariah Burks, Joe Quinn ➔ YouTube personality Chris Stuckmann makes his feature film debut with Shelby Oaks, a horror movie as patchy as it is creepy, its many surprises sometimes chilling but more often frustrating. It starts out as this month’s The Blair Witch Project, as we meet a documentary crew poking into the disappearance 12 years previously of a quartet of YouTubers known as the Paranormal Paranoids. They offer up the standard wobblecam-in-the-woods footage, the compulsory internet conspiracy theories and the obligatory talking heads, including Mia (Camille Sullivan), the sister of PP’s main presenter Riley (Sarah Durn). Emotion levels are high, and Stuckmann consciously taps into Lake Mungo, as…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 12 | SVOD ▶ Director Roar Uthaug ▶ Cast Ine Marie Wilmann, Kim Falck, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen NETFLIX Reputedly the biggest production in the history of the Nordic countries, Troll 2 sees director Roar Uthaug revisiting the Scandi-kaiju genre he mined in 2022’s original. It’s a sequel that very much knows it’s a sequel (at one point a character even says “Sequels are never any good anyway…”). Loaded with knowing callbacks and cute banter about getting the gang back together, it reunites the main cast in fan-pleasing fashion. “Troll whisperer” Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann) is recruited for a secret research project that’s unearthed another of the big-nosed beasties. She’s the Fay Wray figure here, bringing empathy for the creatures and arguing for their…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1986 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Wes Craven ▶ Cast Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett BLU-RAY DEBUT Almost every movie has something of value. While this risible ’80s horror is a blot on Wes Craven’s CV, it boasts one niche honour: Most Memorable Basketball-Related Death In Cinematic History. Essentially I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, it centres on robotics whizz Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), creator of BB, an irritating, perma-burbling cross between Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 and South Park’s Cartman. When winsome neighbour Sam is killed by her abusive father, Paul reanimates her, implanting a chip from BB into her brain. It’s a tragic situation, but that’s hard to keep in mind when Sam’s robotically walking about, hands held like pincers, the only sign of decay some…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1986 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT Med students staying at a former orphanage (once the site of murders) are killed by axe, microwave and hammer in this cheapo slasher. The “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” feel is mildly endearing, but it remains a badly padded dud. The acting is wooden, the camerawork static, the final twist stupid. One character is a Fangoria reader; the pre-Scream metatextuality his references to Jason et al supply is the one point of interest. + Extras Feature-length documentary; slasher podcast bros commentary.…

▶ RELEASED 8 DECEMBER 1988 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director David DeCoteau ▶ Cast Linnea Quigley, Andras Jones, Robin Rochelle, Hal Havins ➔ The title is by a distance the best thing about this ’80s time capsule. A Charles Band production, it follows sorority girls whose initiation requires stealing from a bowling alley. There they accidentally release a jive-talking imp who acts like a genie. Expect Porkies-style voyeurism, potty talk (you may spit your tea out at the way the simile “Tighter than…” ends), decapitations, and longueurs which prompt suspicion they didn’t get enough in the can. Scream Queen Linnea Quigley’s punky thief Spider is appealing, but it’s all so random it feels like the treatment was jotted down while huffing on a bong. That’s probably the ideal state…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1976-1977 | 12 |Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Producers Brian Clemens, Albert Fennell ▶ Cast Patrick Macnee, Joanna Lumley, Gareth Hunt BLU-RAY DEBUT A hi-def restoration of The Avengers’s ’70s incarnation has long been a holy grail for fans. Finally it’s here, bringing new life to a show too often in the leather-clad shadow of its predecessor. The tone straddles the whimsy of the ’60s and something just a little grittier: tales of giant rats and marauding Cybernauts take place in a harder-edged world that anticipates The Professionals. It’s pacy, witty and crammed with action – a colourful last hurrah for Steed & co that gave a starmaking role to Joanna Lumley, legendary mushroom cut and all. + Extras Lumley is among the names providing nine new audio commentaries for…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1992 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Dennis Dimster Dink ▶ Cast Brian Bonsall, Josie Bissett, Lyman Ward, John Diehl BLU-RAY DEBUT In the wake of the murder of toddler James Bulger, a nervous BBFC denied a certificate to this riff on The Bad Seed. Hopefully this release won’t inspire a wave of psycho kids electrocuting grown-ups… Tossing a hairdryer in the bath is just one way the titular brat (Brian Bonsall) expresses displeasure; you’re also liable to end up drowned, beaten with a bat, or shot with an arrow. Absurdities pile up: at one point Mikey seems to develop a stealth mode… And for much of its duration the film feels like a low-simmer psychological thriller, as Mikey’s new teacher (Hellraiser’s Ashley Laurence) hits the microfiche.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 784 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Rafael Torrubia ▶ Publisher Gollancz ➔ There’s no faulting the scale or ambition of Rafael Torrubia’s debut, set in a world where people have been stripped of their names, leaving them with only their job titles. The heart of the story is the conflict between father and daughter. Crowkisser is on a crusade to purge the world of gods. Her father, Shroudweaver, and his partner, Shipwright, plan to stop Crowkisser by racing her to the northern stronghold of Thell, site of a terrible battle. There, Shroudweaver will harness the souls of the dead to forge a new god to counter Crowkisser’s magic, but the conqueror has schemes of her own. Torrubia crafts a big world, but his prose is excessively…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 248 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Kirk Weddell ▶ Publisher Troubadour Publishing ➔ Logic dictates that the universe should contain loads of planets capable of supporting life, so why have no aliens dropped by to say hello? That’s the basic gist of Fermi’s Paradox, the real-life scientific conundrum that provides an intriguing throughline for this gripping near-future thriller. Recently bereaved computer scientist Mitch Daniels is stationed on the Sentinel defence platform as a chaperone for Amie, the state-of-the-art quantum computer he created. But when he starts to experience vivid premonitions of the Earth’s annihilation – is it war, aliens or something else entirely? – he must work out if he can trust his superiors back home, while convincing them he’s in a fit state to continue…

There’re lots more books we couldn’t squeeze in. Brandon Sanderson’s new collection TAILORED REALITIES (9 December, Gollancz) includes nine tales. The centrepiece is Moment Zero, a “very long novella” in which two detectives investigate a missing person case involving time travel and alternate realities. Set after Revenge Of The Sith, Adam Christopher’s STAR WARS: MASTER OF EVIL (out now, Del Rey) follows Darth Vader as he embarks on a quest to conquer death itself. Meanwhile, Gavin G Smith’s ALIEN: CULT (out now, Titan) sees an FBI agent and his synth partner tangling with a xenomorph-worshipping religion as they investigate a serial killer. Former Blue Peter editor-in-chief Richard Marson is the author of BOX OF DELIGHTS (out now, Ten Acre), a history of BBC children’s programmes between 1967 and 1997 which…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Rick Remender ▶ Artist Daniel Acuña ISSUES 1-3 Throwing unexpected genres together with anthropomorphic animals is a narrative trick that’s perfect for comics, whether it be the traumatic autobiography of Maus, or the noir-thriller stylings of Blacksad. The latest example comes via Escape, a new ongoing title from Image Comics. It’s the story of a brutal war against a fascist empire, and Milton Shaw, a battle-hardened bomber pilot who ends up stranded behind enemy lines in a city he just helped to bomb. Now he’s got 24 hours to finish a mission that could end the war, but these first three issues also make it clear that this isn’t going to be a simple “struggle for survival” tale. Instead, Rick Remender’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Al Ewing ▶ Artist Pasqual Ferry ISSUES 1-3 When is a relaunch not really a relaunch? This new take on Marvel’s legendary hero features a fresh title, a new number one, and technically a new character – but it’s also the second chapter of writer Al Ewing’s ongoing epic reinterpretation of the God of Thunder. Following on from Ewing’s acclaimed first volume, The Immortal Thor, this new run throws us in at the deep end: Thor is not only dead, but has been erased from history, and Earth is sealed off from the other Nine Realms. However, in New York, a familiar-looking blonde man called Sigurd Jarlson has woken up with no memories, and while he’s an ordinary human with no…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Running time 60 minutes ▶ Format CD/download ▶ Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA For all Doctor Who’s sci-fi trappings, the show is often at its best when leaning into fairy-tale horror. In this latest addition to Big Finish’s range featuring the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper), the TARDIS returns to the Powell Estate. The Doctor is keen to investigate a temporal anomaly near the butcher’s, only to discover that the locals are being haunted by a voice that compels them to act on their intrusive thoughts. This is the third Ninth Doctor adventure in a row set on the estate where Rose grew up, and while the first half of Dare You is enjoyably creepy, there is a sense that Big Finish is relying…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Format PS5 ▶ Also on PC, Xbox Series X/S ▶ Publisher Paradox Interactive VIDEOGAME Awakening from an extended nap, elder vampire Phyre finds themselves in modern, snowbound Seattle. Capable of turning foes into bloody smears upon the snow, they waste no time in painting the town red. But flurries of clunky, supernatural violence grow tiresome alongside an equally shallow plot – it’s enough to make you want to crawl right back into the coffin. Each flavour of vampire “clan” comes with their own mix of powers, from the Banu Haqim’s immensely satisfying barehanded decapitation ability, to the Toreador’s kiss turning enemies to fight for you. But sadly there’s little opportunity to tackle constant scuffles differently. Detours away from combat feel even worse. The narrative lacks…

DARREN SCOTT EDITOR RAVES → Wicked: For Good goes hard. It’s darker than the first part, and all the better for it. → Really excited for a new episode of A Ghost Story For Christmas – a rare occasion where I didn’t get to go on set! → Bugonia rocks. That ending is bleak. RANTS → I can’t lie, this year – and in particular these last few issues – has really knocked the wind out of my sails. Hoping that a lot of SFX subscriptions make their way under the Christmas tree! IAN BERRIMAN DEPUTY EDITOR RAVES → Only watched the first two episodes of Pluribus so far, but I loved them. → The trailer for Gore Verbinski’s latest, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, is fantastic. I’m really…

THE REINCARNATED SON OF THE Scarlet Witch and the Vision, Billy Kaplan first appeared as a Young Avenger in 2001. Now, nearly two and a half decades later, Wiccan is starring in his first, five-issue miniseries, in which he travels the mythical Witches’ Road, following in the footsteps of his television counterpart – as played by Joe Locke – in last year’s Agatha All Along. “Billy’s a wonderfully rich character with so many aspects that have been left unexplored,” writer Wyatt Kennedy tells Red Alert. “But the thing that attracted me most was getting to put him front and centre of the story. It’s no secret that he has what one could generously call a ‘complicated’ backstory, especially given his power set, so I wanted to start him from a…

THE FIRST SEASON OF Netflix’s animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft had this version of the iconic videogame heroine (voiced by Hayley Atwell) globe-trotting for mystical artefacts, outwitting a “Big Bad” peer named Charles Devereaux (Richard Armitage) and even taking out a Tyrannosaurus in a season finale fight. All of which begs the question: where do you possibly take Lara Croft next? Luckily, lifelong Croft aficionado and series creator Tasha Huo tells Red Alert that season two is brimming with new locales and challenges for the antiquities seeker, as well as a crisis of purpose. Croft’s whole mission comes under question when she meets the formidable Mila (Tricia Helfer), a billionaire visionary out to “save the world” through her company, Pithos. One of their major initiatives is…

When SFX meets Nell Fisher just before the LA premiere of season five, she has yet to speak to any other outlet about Stranger Things. In fact, we’re so early to interviewing the 14-year-old, who took over the role of Holly Wheeler from identical twins Anniston and Tinsley Price, that we’re able to break some news: her character appears in a new Lego set. “I’ve been Lego-fied!” she exclaims with understandable excitement – a feeling she had more than a few times throughout her Stranger Things journey. What was your history with Stranger Things like before getting the part? Were you allowed to watch the show when you were younger? ★ When I got the audition, I was bursting at the seams, but I also saw it as my way…

What’s going through Lucy’s mind at the start of season two? Going into season two, I had a lot of questions about what Lucy learned at the end of season one – about her father, the vaults and where she comes from. What does that do to a person? That was my biggest question. Who is she going to be now? How is she going to be now? Is she broken? Is she irreversibly damaged? Does she go on a killing spree? Does she become the bad guy, or does she double down and use this as fuel and motivation to lead a revolution and promote world peace in the Wasteland? Where do we find Lucy at the start of the new season? When we pick up season two, she’s…

Where do we find Maximus at the start of season two? The first time we see Maximus, he’s on a scavenge for the Brotherhood. I don’t know how to describe the location. We shot it at a prison, but it’s a scavenge for a relic that Elder Quintus has told him is really vital and important for them to track down and find. That’s where we discover him. He’s in the middle of this scavenge in his T-60 suit. When did you find out what’s in store for Maximus this season? It all starts with a conversation. We usually get multiple scripts to give us a launching springboard – and then we circle the wagon. For myself, Ella and Walton, we are aware of where we’re starting and where we’re…

How was working with Mark Gatiss? Mark is a staggering brainbox and also the kindest and funniest person to be with. And it was lovely to work with Tobias Menzies again; we did The Cherry Orchard together for Jonathan Miller at the Crucible in Sheffield. How did it feel the first time you saw yourself fully transformed as Mrs Stone? The make-up took forever – four-and-a-half hours – and I couldn’t see any part of the process as I was lying back in the chair. When I saw myself in the mirror, I literally felt I had died and gone to hell and back: it was utterly brilliant and terrifying. What’s the most unexpected way you’ve ever celebrated Christmas? Doing two shows on Christmas Eve, racing out to Buckinghamshire and…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 94 minutes ▶ Director Lotfy Nathan ▶ Cast Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, Isla Johnston, FKA twigs ➔ A teenage Jesus grapples with demons in a Biblical horror whose apocryphal origins – the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas – permit writer/director Nathan to play fast and loose with traditional Christian orthodoxy. In this re-reading, for example, cuckolded patsy Joseph (Nicolas Cage) is elevated into a saintly guardian who has sworn to protect both wife Mary (FKA twigs) and “son” Jesus (Noah Jupe) from threats both worldly and Satanic. Jesus, meanwhile, is no benevolent messiah, but a headstrong youth only just coming to realise the extent of his God-given powers. That makes him an easy mark for a mysterious girl (Isla Johnston), who tempts him into…

▶ RELEASED 5 DECEMBER 15 | 114 minutes ▶ Director David Freyne ▶ Cast Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph ➔ The concept of life after death is hardly a new one for film to explore – but Eternity co-writer/director David Freyne does at least find some freshness in an age-old story. We’re introduced to an elderly couple gently bickering about vacation plans. Before too long one of them, Larry, is dead, popping up in younger form played by Miles Teller in an art deco train terminal that exists as a stopping-off point for souls who must then choose their “eternity”. A veritable Comic Con sales floor of options stymies Larry, who really just wants to be reunited with wife Joan. When she passes away soon after…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 137 minutes ▶ Director Jon M Chu ▶ Cast Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey ➔ How exactly do you follow a show-stopping number such as “Defying Gravity”? And indeed, a pop cultural hit as big as the first Wicked? If you’re director Jon M Chu, you’re pretty much locked into what has already been shot, since that film and Wicked: For Good were made together. Not to mention destined to follow the path of the musical/book’s source material. For Good faces a pacing dilemma: it’s largely all third act, the big resolution to something that has come before, but without the big guns of the true banger songs from the first. Yet it still works. Now intersecting more directly with the…

UK/US ITVX, ITV Retro YouTube, Thunderbirds social channels; streaming now ▶Director Unknown EPISODES 1.01-1.04 Stand by for cringe. “Is Thunderbirds still relevant today?” asks breakout Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt at the start of this four-episode vodcast celebrating six decades of International Rescue. She swiftly answers her own question: “Yes.” To prove her point, her guests include pop-culture influencer Henry Calvert and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK runner-up Ella Vaday. Also on a list of interviewees that gives a whole new meaning to “eclectic” are budget-Tracy Island-creating Blue Peter presenter Anthea Turner, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s daughter Dee, Gerry’s son (and boss of Anderson Entertainment) Jamie, and Thunderbirds puppeteer Mary Turner. It’s all completely lacking in any structure or editorial mission – it’s just wheel ’em in and see what Moffatt can get…

▶ RELEASED 8 DECEMBER 1968 | 15 | 4K & Blu-ray ▶ Director Roger Vadim ▶ Cast Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O’Shea ➔ A breezily saucy, tongue-in cheek romp with ravishing Technicolor visuals, Barbarella is arguably the ultimate sci-fi comic-book movie. The title sequence, which sees Jane Fonda floating in zero-G as she strips out of a spacesuit, sets the tone. After a political awakening, Fonda would come to view the role as an embarrassment; more recently, she came round to seeing the funny side. Based on a French comic, it’s an episodic affair, with Fonda’s astronavigatrix Venus encountering homicidal children, a blind angel, and a decadent Black Queen as she searches for Earth scientist Durand Durand, inventor of a deadly positronic ray. The sets (built…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | PG | SVOD ▶ Directors Erik Benson, Alexander Woo ▶ Cast Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Elias Janssen, Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti NETFLIX A candy-striped rollercoaster ride through a dozen homages, including Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, the art of MC Escher, anime tropes and even The Shining. We open with Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) fretting about her annoying little brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), until – in time-honoured cartoon tradition – their parents start having marriage problems. Although at least neither of them die, which is a nice change for a kids’ film these days. But fear not! Stevie and Elliot soon find a magic spell that conjures up the mythical Sandman (Omid Djalili), who can grant them a wish for their parents to live happy ever after.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 |N/A | Digital ➔A father brings his naive young son up in the woods, far from civilisation, in this Macedonian horror. At first M (as the film is titled in some territories, for Marko, Miko, mother, and more) feels like it’s treading similar territory to the BBC’s drama Somewhere Boy. Alas, it is soon revealed to be more conventional than that – yep, we’re back in zombie-land. Happily, it’s atmospherically shot, well-acted, and there’s a strong bond between the two young protagonists.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1970 | 12/15 | 4K & Blu-ray ▶ Directors Jimmy Sangster, Roy Ward Baker Cast Ralph Bates, Kate O’Mara, Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman ➔ Originally a double-bill in cinemas, these new restorations make a fitting pair of releases. Essentially a failed reboot, The Horror Of Frankenstein is a darkly comic sidestep in the studio’s Frankenstein saga. Ralph Bates picks up Peter Cushing’s bloodied scalpel, turning Victor into a sardonic psychopath, while future Darth Vader Dave Prowse is a barrel-chested lunk of a Creature, missing that crucial glimmer of pathos. Its grave-snatched tongue may be firmly placed in its cheek, but this is underpowered Hammer. Scars Of Dracula is stronger, straighter stuff, save for some moments of pure French farce in the bedroom. The gory aftermath of…

▶ RELEASED 15 DECEMBER 1974 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Freddie Francis ▶ Cast Jack Palance, Diana Dors, Julie Ege, Edith Evans BLU-RAY DEBUT One of many British horrors helmed by Freddie Francis in-between his critically acclaimed cinematography for the likes of The Innocents and The Elephant Man, this campy slice of sleaze was described by the director as “not that good”, but has its guilty pleasures. Jack Palance plays a hard-up antiques dealer who worships a goggle-eyed African idol in his cellar. After an accidental death leads to a fortuitous discovery of gold coins, he keeps on providing it with offerings… Craze is the definition of “that escalated quickly” – it’s only seven minutes before a corpse is being rolled up in a rug. The cast is impressively crammed…

▶ RELEASED 9 DECEMBER 192 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Simon Stålenhag ▶ Publisher Simon & Schuster ➔ This lavish illustrated novella returns us to the retro-futurist worlds of The Electric State author and artist Simon Stålenhag. Sunset At Zero Point (titled Swedish Machines in its Kickstarter edition) is a queer coming-of-age story set in an alternative version of the early 2000s. Valter and Linus are teenagers living in Torsvik, a town close to the Black Fallow Exclusion Zone – the site, some decades previously, of an explosion caused by experimental technology. Valter is obsessed with exploring the anomalous zone, while Linus tags along hoping to get closer to his friend and occasional lover. Sunset At Zero Point is a wordier affair than previous Stålenhag books, but his images remain…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Brooke Fast ▶ Publisher Wayward TxF ➔This is being marketed as The Hunger Games meets Prison Break: a good combo, but you can also toss in every YA trope under the sun, and some porn. That’s not a criticism, though. In her debut novel, Brooke Fast has successfully distilled a heap of clichés into an engrossing dystopian thriller. Bounty hunter Raven catches criminals: it’s the only way to survive in her half-starved society. But when her little brother is arrested, she deliberately breaks the law herself so that she can follow him to Endlock, the brutal prison where she’s been sending her captives. It’s not just a prison, though; it’s an attraction – felons are hunted there for sport by rich…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Hardback ▶ Authors Linus O’Brien, Richard O’Brien ▶ Publisher Weldon Owen ➔ An accompaniment to the documentary by Linus O’Brien, son of Rocky Horror creator Richard, this 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition comprises two volumes: Strange Journey: The Illustrated Oral History Of Rocky Horror, which pretty much repeats the documentary on the page; and It Was Great When It All Began: The Original Annotated Theatrical Script, covering the early ’70s London and Los Angeles stage shows. The script book is beautifully illustrated and fascinating for anyone who hasn’t seen the stage version. If a cinema showing is more your thing, there are instructions for “virgins” who don’t know the prompts for audience partici… pation. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Strange Journey, meanwhile, gives you the opportunity…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 339 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Finn Longman ▶ Publisher Gollancz ➔ Fantasy novels inspired by classic myths and medieval tales are nothing new, but this one, a queer retelling of the 12th century French tale of Bisclavret, written down by Marie de France, manages to feel fresh and modern. Bisclavret is a garwolf, a man who changes unpredictably into a wolf at night, with no control over the changes or his actions. When the old king dies and the prince is crowned, his cousin urges him to rejoin court life, reclaim the lands lost to his father, and live again. Bisclavret is terrified of revealing himself, but drawn by childhood dreams of knighthood and belonging. Meanwhile, the young king, recently returned from exile, is fascinated…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 248 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author John Francis O’Neill ▶ Publisher Killrithmere Publishing ➔ More nostalgia porn than an actual novel, In His Day feels like Life On Mars without all that cop-show shtick. The plot is minimal, the fantasy element even more so. When suicidal fiftysomething documentary maker Shay O’Rourke pays a final visit to the estates in London where he grew up in poverty, he finds himself back in the ’70s, and immediately bumps into his younger self. Now trapped in the past (for reasons that are never actually explained) he decides he needs to change the course of young Shay’s miserable life for the better. But before he can do that, he needs to work out how to survive in the ’70s, with…

What is your daily writing routine like? ◗It took me a long time to learn when not to write, because it’s just stuff I’ll rip out the next day. So I work until what I call Homes Under The Hammer time, and then start up again around 4:00pm. Describe the room in which you typically write. ◗ Stupidly, it’s the coldest room in the house, but it overlooks my garden and I can see the planes coming in to Belfast City Airport, which gives me immense pleasure. Desk, book cases, the feckin’ printer… Do you have any personal mementos or knick-knacks on your desk/within reach? ◗ A Thunderbirds set (£5 from an Oxfam shop), a battle-panda from teaching in China, and a little glass bauble with the Moon laser-etched in…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Greg Pak ▶ Artist Sumit Kumar ISSUES 1-5 After Julia Garner in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Marvel now also has a new female Silver Surfer – not Shalla-Bal, but Major Kelly Koh. Working for BAN, the Bureau of Alien Neutralization, hunting down extraterrestrials, she initially isn’t a sympathetic protagonist, but eventually sees the error of her ways. With the main villain, BAN director Dennis Harmon, insisting that aliens like Norrin Radd shouldn’t be humanised by being gendered, but instead referred to as “it”, Greg Pak’s script draws unsubtle parallels with current social issues. It’s impressively illustrated by Sumit Kumar, whose art blends atmospheric detail with sinewy figurework; #2 features eerie opening scenes of a raiding party looting Galactus’s corpse in…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PC ▶ Also available on PS5 ▶ Publisher AdHoc Studio VIDEOGAME Usually, when a game casts you as a superhero, you aren’t asked to spend a lot of your time sat at a desk sending other superheroes on missions. You’ll be punching keys more often than bad guys here, though; but, in a plot twist that the set-up would never have you guessing, this is one of the best games of the year. LA’s premier hero Mecha Man, forced out of action when a fight ends with his suit getting wrecked, is recruited by the local superhero dispatch centre. There, he acts as mentor to a team of reformed(ish) supervillains, doing his best to earn their respect and keep them on the path…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Players Two-four players ▶ Publisher Games Workshop BOARDGAME This year marks the 30th anniversary of Warhammer Quest, Games Workshop’s co-operative dungeon crawler. Darkwater is the sixth edition, and marks another evolution for a game that shakes up its format every few years. The most recent iterations, Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City, were extremely good fun, but also took an age to set up, with the tile-based board a particular faff. In some ways Darkwater plays quite similarly – once again you’re leading a party of adventurers into a perilous lair to fight monsters and find treasure – but the process has been streamlined. Rather than moving tiles between rounds, the board is presented as a large-format hardback book that contains 18 different playable maps. It’s…

QUESTION 1 Victor Frankenstein received a name change for James Whale’s 1931 movie of Frankenstein… but to what? QUESTION 2 Which ’80s pop band named themselves after the mad scientist in Barbarella? QUESTION 3 When he made his earliest appearance in Action Comics, what was markedly different about Luthor’s look? QUESTION 4 Picture Question Identify this mad scientist. QUESTION 5 In Day Of The Dead, what name does Dr Logan give the zombie he’s attempting to domesticate? QUESTION 6 Who directed films such as The Awful Dr Orloff, The Sinister Eyes Of Dr Orloff and The Sinister Dr Orloff? QUESTION 7 Which deadly creatures were the creation of Professor Mortimer Gangreen? QUESTION 8 Picture Question Vincent Price played numerous mad scientists – but which one is this? QUESTION 9 Name…

BOLDLY GOING… FURTHER THAN WE’VE EVER BEEN! SFX CELEBRATES 400 ISSUES AND 60 YEARS OF STAR TREK WITH STARFLEET ACADEMY… AND BEYOND! SFX 400 ON SALE 31 DEC STRANGER THINGS THE CAST SAY A FINAL FAREWELL TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES HEROES IN A HALF-SHELL! PLUS! DAVID LYNCH DESIGN MONSTERS ALIENS UNDEAD AND MORE! ALL CONTENTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, LIKE A PROPOSED KELVIN TIMELINE MOVIE. Sign up to our monthly newsletter to receive a sneak preview! bit.ly/SFXnewsletter…

LOOKING TO DO SOMETHING creative after “the tumultuous time” of Covid, Dave Elliott “kind of fell down a rabbit hole, trying to figure out what Deadline would mean now” after being given the rights to the defunct, anarchic comics magazine, which he once edited for its former publisher, Tom Astor. After being told by another creator that “if he ever revived A1 again, they’d love to do a story for it” – referring to the prestigious anthology series that Elliott also edited and published – “that little interaction wormed its way inside my head and sparked an idea,” he says. “Why not merge A1 and Deadline? I’d co-created one and worked on the other. I approached Deadline in a similar fashion to A1 and started to expand it from being…

MANY FILMMAKERS who were enamoured with – or slightly terrorised by – the films created by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment are still trying to reproduce that shingle’s special alchemy of childlike wonder meets scares. It’s not easy to make the next Gremlins or Poltergeist, but it helped Bryan Fuller nail that Spielbergian tone that the filmmaker had a hand in his feature directing debut, Dust Bunny. It’s based on an original story that Fuller first developed for the 2020 Amazing Stories revival, and the director tells Red Alert that he’s thrilled his unproduced script eventually turned into his first film. “What was fun about it is that this is a story that Spielberg was involved in developing, so it has a bit of that direct-from-the-tap Amblin fairy dust that makes…

Did you really think Max was just going to lie there all season? Kate Bush’s biggest fan may not be awake just yet, but she’s helping in the fight against Vecna nonetheless, saving Holly from the creepy Creel household and travelling through Henry’s memories, trying to find a way back to Lucas and Hawkins. Sadie Sink sits down with SFX to talk about her return to Stranger Things – and why hearing “Running Up That Hill” on set again was more than a little strange… Max is alive! Sort of… she was back in a big way for season five? ★ I always knew she’d play some role in season five, because the Duffers briefed me on it. But yeah, it was exciting to see what that role was and…

Sure, Linda Hamilton may have once saved the world from a terrifying Arnold Schwarzenegger-shaped robot, but today, speaking to SFX, she has been conquered by technology. “Sorry, really sorry for keeping you waiting,” she says, joining our call just five minutes late. A dodgy computer clock and daylight savings had managed to scupper her time-keeping, yet the actor – best known to the world for playing The Terminator’s Sarah Connor – is here now, and finally able to talk about playing the formidable Dr Kay in Stranger Things. What was your relationship like with Stranger Things before joining the show? ★ I’m a big fan! I enjoyed the show so much. I moved to New Orleans the first year that Stranger Things came along, and there’s a part of my…

What are you most excited for audiences to see in season two? It’s batshit crazy, man! It’s a vibe. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that if you tell a story in season one that resonates with people, you have the opportunity to transcend that in season two, because the foundation has been laid. We get to expand in ways that are organic to the story and not gratuitous. It’s something very, very special. How does season two compare to season one? I think I understand who the Ghoul is now. Cooper Howard? Not so much. I understood who he was in season one up until the point where he realised that his wife was one of the principal architects for the ending of the fucking world, right?…

“WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A killer Santa Claus meets a girl and wants to change his ways?” puts Mike P Nelson to SFX. That’s the twisted premise at the heart of Silent Night, Deadly Night, his blood-soaked reimagining of the notorious 1984 holiday horror. And, as he explains, it’s also a way of capturing what he calls the original film’s “tonal weirdness”. “Everyone’s nice, it’s cheery, Christmassy, warm and cosy… and then there’s this guy, Billy, doing very bad things,” he says. “Somehow, it then becomes a love story – the complete opposite of what the original movie is. This love interest really shifts everything. It puts Billy in situations you wouldn’t expect.” When distributor Cineverse, together with original executive producers Scott Schneid and Dennis Whitehead, first reached out to Nelson…

UK/US Prime Video, streaming now ▶ Creators Mike Roth, Jase Ricci ▶ Cast Luke Wilson, Yonas Kibreab, London Hughes, Michael Benyaer EPISODES 1.01-1.10 Fans of the Dark Knight being, well, dark may arch an eyebrow at this animated series, which is aimed squarely at younger audiences, but they’d be foolish to miss out on a show that puts an anarchic spin on Bruce Wayne’s family dynamics. Bat-Fam follows a bearded Bruce (Luke Wilson) and his son Damian (Yonas Kibreab) in a Gotham that is, more or less, free from crime. That’s frustrating for young Damian, who is just itching to get into some adventures. This “Little Batman” is backed up by a cast of eccentric characters, like Judy and Trudy Dent – the nice and nasty twin daughters of Two-Face, naturally…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1988-1990 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Directors Marilyn Fox, Alex Kirby ▶ Cast Jonathan R Scott, Sophie Cook, Tom Baker, Sam West BLU-RAY DEBUT Nobody could accuse the BBC of lacking ambition. Despite a £3 million budget (three times that of 1984’s The Box Of Delights), adapting The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in pre-CGI-era 1988 was going to be a challenge. Even at the time (this isn’t just a matter of hindsight) there were moments when it looked less like a drama worthy of a Radio Times cover and more like an end-of-term play: comedy beaver costumes, 2D-animated mythical beasts (courtesy of the company behind The Snowman), some very shonky CSO (green screen as we’d call it now), and a witch clearly biding time between…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | N/A | Digital ➔ This smart update of Dracula starts out as a sequel and ends by completely rewriting the original. In 1915, Van Helsing and his family have fled the horrors of Europe for California. But some demons you can’t outrun… Moving the action to America updates the colonial metaphor of Stoker’s tale, with the New World offering a whole new perspective on who was really feeding upon whom. It shouldn’t work – but, brutally, it does.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 18 | 4K/Blu-ray/DVD/digital ➔ The sight of Highlander’s Christopher Lambert swinging a sword again is just one of the geek-bait treats in this Finnish horror-comedy. Inspired by everything from Gremlins to Shaun Of The Dead, it sees a ski resort menaced by murderous, other-dimensional snowmen. Some cheap, frathouse humour is balanced by the occasional flash of invention. The gleeful trashiness of it all clearly comes from the heart, but the film never quite matches the influences worn on its sleeve. + Extras None.…

John Carpenter’s 1974 feature debut DARK STAR (out now) is a low-fi SF-comedy following a spaceship crew tasked with destroying unstable planets. We said: “Nothing much happens except bearded men killing time… One for a monged-out Sunday.” Fabulous Films’ dual-format set comes with two posters, eight art cards, a sew-on patch and more… but the extras (including a two-hour Making Of) are the same as the 2012 Blu-ray. OUTLAND (out now) transplants High Noon to a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter, as Sean Connery’s Marshall takes on a drug ring. We said: “The direction is stylish, but the script is disastrously humdrum.” Extras-wise, it’s a step up from 2017’s Premiere Collection Blu-ray, adding three interviews, a visual essay, an appreciation, and a critical commentary. It also comes with…

▶ RELEASED 15 DECEMBER 1984 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Directors Edmund Purdom, Alan Birkinshaw ▶ Cast Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne, Gerry Sundquist BLU-RAY DEBUT In key respects – like the holiday-themed title – Don’t Open Till Christmas is a generic early ’80s slasher. What makes it stand out is that it couldn’t be more British unless it performatively zip-tagged a Union Jack to a lamppost. So you can expect boozers, punks with mohicans, and a familiar face from The Bill. And scenes play out in New Scotland Yard, a Soho peep show, The London Dungeon, and The Piccadilly Theatre. The plot? In an inversion of the norm, instead of the killer dressing up as Santa, Santas are their victims. Anyone who grinds their teeth the moment they hear…

Ed and Lorraine Warren bow out in THE CONJURING: LAST RITES (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD), with the paranormal investigators assisting a Pennsylvanian family who appear to have inherited a haunted mirror. We said: “Director Michael Chaves’s slavish reliance on hoary jump scares and shameless Exorcist steals rather tests the patience.” Extras-wise, you get three featurettes (totalling 23 minutes). An exploration of grief inspired by the death of his wife, David Cronenberg’s THE SHROUDS (8 December, 4K/Blu-ray), has a startling concept: tech which allows you to watch a loved one’s corpse decay. We said: “A confounding, haunting, mordantly humorous film, which may linger in the mind for days afterwards.” The US Criterion Collection release had a 17-minute Cronenberg interview; The UK release just has trailers. Real-life partners Alison Brie and Dave Franco…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Elizabeth Anne Martins ▶ Publisher Flame Tree Press ➔ It takes a while to work out where Opposite World is going, but the slow-build of the opening chapters proves worthwhile in the long run. Elizabeth Anne Martins’s second novel kicks off by explaining Piper “Pip” Screed’s unconventional upbringing, living off-the-grid with her seemingly paranoid dad. Everything changes when a friendly (or is she?) neighbour gives her a job at a nearby tech firm, pulling her into the orbit of the Reverie Cloud, a groundbreaking new virtual space where you can explore your own subconscious. Martins tells the story in first person, using evocative descriptions of sights, sounds and – most notably – smells to get you inside Pip’s head. Few…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 176 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author James Field ▶ Publisher Abrams Books ➔ As his foreword reveals, star David Corenswet’s first thought on reading the Superman screenplay was “How do you even begin to make this work?” Here’s how. This copiously illustrated volume charts the creation of what James Gunn intended to be “the most comic book movie ever”, restoring the Last Son of Krypton to centre stage while launching a new and cohesive cinematic universe with all the Silver Age magic of the printed page. Quotes from cast and crew cover everything from the influence of Edward Hopper paintings to Gunn’s own rescue dog Ozu – inspiration for the mischievous Krypto, right down to the permanently cocked shaggy ear. There’s lots of lovely concept art,…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author MR Carey ▶ Publisher Orbit ➔ With any career that endures, there comes a point where a writer is reliable, and in truth, some novelists plateau here. However, a few push on, and to judge by his latest novel, MR Carey is one such writer. In great part this is because the anti-heroine in Outlaw Planet, which is set in the same fictional universe as Carey’s Pandominium duology, is so memorable. Ex-schoolteacher and outlaw Dog-Bitch Bess, as she will be dubbed during a brutal civil war, is one of those characters who’s so alive that she seems constantly to be straining to escape the page. Just as remarkably, one of her central relationships in what’s often a lonely life is…

Our pick of the paperbacks this time is Ian McDonald’s THE WILDING ( , out now, Gollancz). It follows a group of Irish teenagers and teachers camping in a former commercial peat bog that’s recently been rewilded. They find themselves in a struggle for survival as they’re attacked by something ancient and predatory… We said: “Melds the urban and rural to take folk horror somewhere unexpected, spooky and, rather paradoxically, new”. Set in 1970, Grady Hendrix’s WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS( , 1 January, Tor Nightfire) centres on a home in Florida, where unwed teenage mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret. There, 15-year-old Fern meets a strange librarian who’s very keen for the girls to read a book about witchcraft… We said: “Hendrix employs a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 371 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Georgia Summers ▶ Publisher Hodderscape ➔ There’s an understanding readers have, that books are something magical, and that a life surrounded by them would in many ways be the best kind of life. It’s a philosophy shared by the protagonists of this fantasy – though in their case, the books really are enchanting. Cassandra grew up in Chiron’s shop, one of several “tributary bookshops” that deal in magical books. She was his protégé, expected to take over the shop, until she broke one rule too many and was kicked out. Since then she’s survived by stealing books and conducting unauthorised “readings”, channelling the power of the books – but now Chiron has died and left her the shop. Plunged back…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writer Matt Fraction ▶ Artist Jorge Jiménez ISSUES 1-3 Certain comic-book writers are always worth paying attention to, and Matt Fraction has been a resident on that list for the last 20 years. In that time he’s done extensive work for Marvel (including his legendary run on Hawkeye with artist David Aja) and some wild independent comics (like Sex Criminals and Casanova). Now DC have handed him the keys to the Bat-kingdom with the newly relaunched main Batman ongoing title. He’s picking up the situation left by Chip Zdarsky’s recently concluded run, where Gotham is a newly dangerous place for Batman thanks to an aggressively anti-vigilante police force led by the corrupt and immortal Vandal Savage. With Alfred dead and Jim Gordon…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Running time 30 minutes ▶ Format Vinyl/CD ▶ Label Buried Treasure SOUNDTRACK Anyone who’s seen The Shout may experience a twinge of anxiety before dropping the needle here. Jerzy Skolimowski’s brilliant, enigmatic 1978 film centres on the charismatic Crossley (Alan Bates), who claims to have learned a deadly “terror shout” living among aborigines. After he inveigles his way into the home of avant-garde composer Anthony Fielding (John Hurt), we see this is no hollow boast… The lion’s share of the score is electronics by Rupert Hine – later to produce albums such as Howard Jones’s Human’s Lib. (A couple of themes by Genesis’ Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks are absent.) Utilising synths like the EMS VCS 3 and the Yamaha CS-80, the 32 tracks intersperse…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Format PC ▶ Also on Nintendo Switch, PS 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S ▶ Publisher Ysbryd Games VIDEOGAME When an isolated university starts summoning demons, it’s up to the students to foil its apocalyptic plot. Thankfully, heroine Faye has been studying up on demon slaying, and she’s keen to put what she’s learnt into practice. It’s a stylish affair. Gorgeous 2D pixel art is cleverly punctuated by 3D demonic influences, from gross tentacles to fighty floating eyeballs overshadowing the students. Character writing is light-touch but charming enough to make each of Faye’s friends stand out, while a funky soundtrack accompanies you through many, many grid-based fights. Faye’s pals are squishy young adults, so you’ve got to play tactically. Loveable meathead Destin can punch demons…