Ready or Not 2 Review: The Devil Is in the Bloody Good Details

How does one cheat the Devil? With a lot of style and grace if you’re Samara Weaving and Radio Silence, the charmers who gave us the perversely delightful Ready or Not seven years ago. Close to a decade later, the same creative team, which also includes scribes Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, are back and doubling-or-nothing their wager with Mr. Le Bail (Lucifer by a fancier, blue-blooded name). And incredulously, they’re coming out ahead.

To be clear, the blood that pulsed and poured throughout their 2019 horror satire was indeed blue, aristocratic, privileged and, before the end, combustible. Which on a certain level made a sequel a tricky proposition. The first film is essentially a great gag wherein a working class gal named Grace (Weaving) marries into one of the rich and powerful families of ancient wealth, only to discover they’re, um, Devil-worshipping satanists who gained their success by selling their souls to Old Nick in exchange for obscene wealth and power. They also need to sacrifice a bride to Beelzebub every generation or two in order keep the pact alive. If they fail to do so by the first dawn after the wedding night, they go poof into a warm red mist. That’s what the regal Le Dormas clan believed, anyway, and the first Ready or Not got a lot of mileage out of Grace and the audience second-guessing whether the pact was real or these were just the indulgences of rich eccentrics.

When that film ended with the Le Domas’ going boom-boom, and Grace standing alone as the delirious winner of the best hide-and-seek game ever, it was nothing short of euphoric—a giddiness that transcends the simple favors of horror or comedy. What is there left to say, really?

In terms of Grace’s journey from wide-eyed believer in fairy tale happily-ever-afters to a burned out bride fed up with the in-laws, not really a whole lot. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come introduces us to Grace’s younger estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton)—and a decent gag of a new patrician sneering “fucking Irish-Catholics” at their names—but the heartwarming story of Grace and Faith finding each other again is ultimately a nice bit of frosting on an already crimson-dotted wedding cake. It gives new dimensions for Weaving to play, but only until we get to see her go full bridezilla on the latest Masters of the Universe. And in truth, we are just waiting for those absolutely gonzo bloodletting set-pieces in Ready or Not 2, of which there are many.

Weaving and Newton have a nice chemistry, especially in the sequences where they side-eye each other with guarded annoyance stemming from the fact that Grace left the younger Faith behind at their foster home when she moved to New York at 18 alone. But the real pleasure of the movie is how mirthful directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett—two-thirds of the Radio Silence creative collective—can be while building out the draconian lore and devilish details in their ever expanding world of the evil elite.

As it turns out, the Le Dormas were just one of many rich billionaire broods who made a deal with Mr. Le Bail. In fact, it seems to be pretty much all of the globe’s top one percent who are in on the action, who betwixt one another run the world’s governments and social orders from behind-the-scenes. This is demonstrated when we are introduced to Mr. Danforth (David Cronenberg) watching an international crisis on television. He picks up his phone and orders a “ceasefire.” Seconds later a breathless cable news anchor announces “a ceasefire has been reached” in the televised quagmire.

It would seem the Danforths were the greatest rival the Le Dormas’ knew on a council of the world’s Devil-worshipping families, albeit with the Le Dormas’ in the highest seat. But now that the Le Dormas dynasty is extinguished, the big chair is vacant. Alas, that is where poor Grace comes in. As revealed to her by a smirking, well-groomed retainer simply known as the Lawyer (Elijah Wood), the only way for another family to fill the empty high seat is to succeed where the Le Dormas’ failed and hunt Grace down in another lethal game of hide and seek before dawn. This makes her prey to Cronenberg’s nasty twin heirs Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy), as well as a whole ensemble of kooky character actors and genre favorites like Kevin Durand.

If Grace, and a conscripted Faith—who is used as leverage against the older sister—can survive the night, the pair might just end up with the power of the Devil on Earth (read: a real-life tech mogul). But to do that they are going to have to fight their way across 18 holes, various ballrooms outfitted for fancy weddings, and every other stereotype you might expect from the film’s country club setting that looks suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago.

Ready or Not was never subtle in its eat-the-rich social satire. It was, however, early in tackling that in the new zeitgeist since the first movie came out a handful of months before Parasite and Knives Out, never mind the growing trend of class schadenfreude in the 2020s that’s coincided with the growing consolidation of wealth at the top. So if the first movie was tangibly angry in its social satire, Here I Come seems much more at peace with its punch-drunk gallows humor. Indeed, after a bravado opening sequence that marries the final scene of the 2019 film seamlessly with the 2026 picture’s kick-off—scored, appropriately, to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”—Grace’s rescue by the authorities quickly descends into her willingly throwing back on the blood-soaked bridal gown from the first movie.

“It gives mobility,” she insists to her sister as they duck around a deserted hospital gurney while being hunted. It also is emblematic of both Grace and the film’s nonchalant and chipper nihilism. There’s no way out, so we might as well get comfy while making a night of it.

For Radio Silence and their scribes, that coziness arises from basking in the neuroses of its moneyed antagonists. The big bads of the Danforth country club is like a retinue of SNL characters gathering at the Bohemian Grove (a real-life meet-up for the elite in Northern California, which for decades has gained whispers of pagan rituals). Given the direction of the world in the last seven years, and specifically with regard to the drip, drip, drip of the Jeffrey Epstein files, the concept of satanic elites no longer seems as sinister as it does mundane.

Hence various scenes of the privileged and bored who’ve come to partake in a new game of hide and seek being more concerned with the hors d’oeuvres being served during the hunt than the actual kill—or sequences of another thwarted bride in their ranks being obsessed with challenging Grace to a duel on a dance floor where they got Bonnie Tyler queued up. As the most reasonable seeming of the hunters, Sarah Michelle Gellar gets a little monologue about how there are no good guys or bad guys anymore. Everything is gray.

Of course, she is saying this to a woman she intends to ritualistically murder in an offer to Satan in order to attain yet greater power. In this way, Ready or Not 2 is a rejection both of the times it is made in and the actual nihilistic despair of so many other, bitter horror movies these days.

As with the first film and every chilly laugher Radio Silence has made since —including the two best Scream movies made in this century, plus Abigail—Ready or Not 2 is buoyant in its optimism and good vibes, even while staring into the abyss. If the world is doomed, we can at least take catharsis in a fantasy where Grace relaxes in her murder-gown while eviscerating the ruling class with (eventually) a smile on her face.

As with the original film, the sequel transcends during its climax, this time with Grace, Faith, and everyone left alive vanishing into the country club’s most hallowed of unholy sites for a ritual involving goats, a pit with spikes, and a whole lot of blood. It’s moments like this where Weaving shines brightest while delivering one-liners, coup de’graces, and sweet, sweet wish fulfillment that turns the devilish into the divine, and a second round of a bad wedding-match into a damn good party. Mazel tov.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opened at SXSW on March 13 and releases wide on March 20.

Rolling Stone’s Future of Music Festival Night One Electrifies ACL Live

Since 2023, Rolling Stone has brought the music industry’s biggest up and comers to South by Southwest. This year’s Future of Music festival spans three nights and dozens of artists, with nights two and three anticipating names like Fuerza Regida and BigXThaPlug. Thursday night kicked off the festivities at Austin City Limits Live with a trio of captivating supporting acts and Rolling Stone’s most recent covergirl. 

Susannah Joffe was the first to take the stage in a triumphant homecoming. The Austin native engaged the audience with her hometown charm and full, resonant vocals. Her baby blue ball gown adorned with black lace was a visual metaphor for her lyrics – sparkling, lively, and shrouded with darker meaning. Amongst country references of cows, Dolly Parton-esque hair, and prize ribbons in her imagery, the opener has built an image of hometown pride. Joffe kept great rapport with the audience as it continued to grow.

Following Joffe, Saint Harison mellowed out the venue with his incomparable crooning. The Southamptoner’s soaring tenor was matched with delicate piano accompaniment, echoing backdrops, and cheeky anecdotes. Harison tossed emotionally ripping songs detailing past relationship woes with occasional vengeful bursts in songs like bad. A natural stage presence, Harison was quick to thank the audience after each song. Harison’s own future of music looks like an EP titled Ghosted set to release May 29.

The final supporting act was Sofia and the Antoinettes, a four-piece band whose coquettish style, both in fashion and musicality, did their name justice. As with the first two performers, Sofia’s lyrics are characterized by gutting emotional depth and equally matched vocal prowess. 

“Name dropping, it’s good for the soul,” Sofia announced, owning up to her blunt writing in songs like Matthew. A balance of leg-kicking drums and powerhouse backup vocals kept audiences pulsing with excitement for what was to come.

The evening ended with an explosive performance from headliner Lola Young, whose recent return to performing has been highly anticipated and was expertly delivered. Young graced the stage in a pink, eyeleted jumpsuit to juxtapose the dark dress of her supporting band, all in matching cowboy hats. As the most recent Rolling Stone covergirl, Young took a moment to thank everyone involved.

 “That’s something that you only dream of,” Young gushed. 

Audience members – spanning pre-teen and beyond – sang along word for word, matching Young’s bouncing energy. After the first few tracks, the Londoner interrupted her setlist to read a poem she had recently written about the circumstances of the world, titled “Art is Rebellion.” 

“And as we smell the sloppy, disgustingly stinky s–t they dish out, we must s–t on them back,” Young extolled. 

Rolling Stone’s signature festival has barely begun. With previous lineups endorsing standout artists such as Peso Pluma, Remi Wolf, Flo Milli, and Teezo Touchdown, the festival’s crystal ball has been quite transparent. Only time will tell if Rolling Stone will continue to predict the future of music.

The Vampire Lestat’s Tour Will Hit AMC This Summer

After two years and a title change, the third season of Interview with the Vampire, now rebranded as The Vampire Lestat in honor of the second novel in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, will finally hit our screens. And AMC is leaning hard into the rock star agenda, dropping a new song, some extremely campy opening credits, and a date for when we can expect the tour, er….the new season to officially begin.

The series will follow Lestat de Lioncourt as he takes center stage in his own narrative, an attempt to set the record straight after the release of Daniel Molly’s infamous book, Interview with the Vampire. That he does this by deciding to embark on a multi-city tour with his new rock band is perhaps the most Lestat-coded choice ever, but it’s also pretty much guaranteed to be a good time. Billing the titular character as the “world’s first immortal rockstar” in the press materials promoting the show’s return, the network is promising “a sexy pilgrimage across space, time, and trauma” as Lestat tours the nation and is haunted by various “muses” from his past.

Anne Rice readers already know that this adventure won’t be for the faint of heart. While it recounts Lestat’s life as a mortal and his early years as a vampire, the novel also introduces key figures from his past, including Gabrielle, Magnus, Marius, Nicolas, and Those Who Must Be Kept, who all have a major role to play in the franchise’s future.

In addition to confirming that The Vampire Lestat would officially premiere in June, AMC also dropped the series’ new opening titles, which feature another would-be banger from Lestat’s musical catalog. The slightly shortened track, called “All Fall Down,” is composed by Daniel Hart and performed by series star Sam Reid. Like Lestat’s previous single, “Long Face,” the track is now available on all major streaming platforms, with the promise of even more songs from everyone’s favorite immortal rocker to come.

In the new credits, “All Fall Down” plays over a montage of various character images and possible Easter eggs from the forthcoming season. (No idea what’s up with the ice cream scoop, but those random road signs are definitely going to be song titles. Bet.) 

Everything we’ve seen about this season thus far is dripping with glam rock, full-on brat prince vibes, right down to the supposed quotes from the man (vampire) himself slagging off his production partner (“Predictable”) as the show blurs the line between fictional character and real-life celebrity. How much crazier will this get in the lead-up to the premiere? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s bound to be a wild ride.

The Vampire Lestat will premiere June 7 on AMC and AMC+. 

Steven Spielberg: Disclosure Day Marks Lifetime Believing ‘We Are Not Alone on Earth’

Fifteen minutes before Steven Spielberg walked onstage at the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Austin Hotel, the room filled with the ambient sounds of a pedal steel guitar. In anticipation of the upcoming conversation with the film industry’s most prolific director, the music transformed the space into something ethereal, almost extraterrestrial. It’s befitting an auteur who was in town to discuss a specific genre he has contributed to—and a set of beliefs he holds well beyond the screen. 

Spielberg was joined by Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture podcast for the Ringer, to discuss his filmography and extrapolations of the film world’s future. But first, Fennessey inquired about the filmmaker’s childhood. 

“When I was really little, I had an abundance of fears, and the fears actually came from my imagination,” Spielberg said. “I saw Fantasia … and it just destroyed me. For the next year, I couldn’t sleep. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen… That’s kind of how the whole thing started, with me wanting to find some kind of an outlet, to be able to exorcize the demons of fear and put it on someone else, right? Take it out of me and put it on something else, and that’s where the whole movie thing started for me.”

It was these fears that drew Spielberg to the world of fantasy and science fiction, inspiring films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg admitted that E.T. was the primary experience that inspired him to have children of his own, calling it “the most joyful time” in his career. The director also spoke to the influence Close Encounters had on his future projects. 

“[Close Encounters] was kind of on the fringes of science and mythology, and so no one really got it when I said I want to make a UFO movie,” Spielberg recalled. “Everybody thought, ‘What, you want to make a movie about The National Enquirer? That’s what you want to do? You want to make a movie about crackpot reporting of things that aren’t really occurring?”

These misconceptions of Close Encounters predicted Spielberg’s newest project: Disclosure Day. The film is set to release in the summer of 2026 and is premiering at an interesting moment in the national discussion around UFOs—or UAPs as they’re now more commonly called in government documentation. It also foreshadowed current debates to this day, including among former commander-in-chiefs. Take last month when former President Barack Obama stated on a podcast hosted by Brian Tyler Cohen that he believed in extraterrestrial life; he just hasn’t seen it for himself. 

“When President Obama made that comment, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so great for Disclosure Day,’” Spielberg said. “Then, two days later, he stepped back and said he believed it was in the cosmos, which of course everybody should believe in, because no one should ever think that we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe… The big question is, are we alone now, and have we been alone over the last 80 years?… I have a very strong, sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now, and I made a movie about that.” 

Despite his penchant for telling extraterrestrial stories, Spielberg disappointedly shared that he is not among the population of believers who have seen a UFO in real life.

“I’ve made Close Encounters, I’ve made E.T., you’re about to see Disclosure Day,” Spielberg said. “You know, I’m really into this. Why haven’t I seen anything? My friends have seen UFOs, now called UAPs. I made a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I haven’t even had a close encounter with the first or second kind. Where’s the justice in that?”
Maybe someone will finally want to say hi after Disclosure Day makes contact with movie theaters on June 12.

Tommy Lee Jones Is Returning to TV In the Best Show You’re Probably Not Watching 

FX’s The Lowdown is almost certainly one of the best TV shows most of you aren’t watching. (Or possibly haven’t even heard of. It’s a wild time in these streaming streets.) Nevertheless, consider this an exhortation to fix your life immediately. 

From Reservation Dogs’ Sterlin Harjo, the series follows the story of a citizen journalist and self-proclaimed “truthstorian” named Lee Raybon. If you’re thinking Misty from Yellowjackets here, that’s not…entirely inaccurate, just with a little less overt creepiness and more humor. (Though Lee’s obsession with finding the truth tends to get him into almost as much trouble.) Season 1 followed Lee as he worked to uncover corruption in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a move which brought him into conflict with a powerful family whose patriarch (played by Kyle McLaughlin) was running for governor. 

The show’s a delightful mix of drama, mystery, and straight-up quirkiness, all grounded in a fantastic (and very funny) star turn from Ethan Hawke; it’s precisely the sort of smart yet entertaining television people always say they want more of, but seem to forget to watch. Well, now’s your moment. 

The series was renewed for a second season immediately following its premiere and is now adding even more talent to an already stacked cast that includes Keith David, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tim Blake Nelson, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Tracy Letts, and Peter Dinklage. Former GLOW and Mrs. Davis star Betty Gilpin has already been announced as joining the cast for Season 2, but the new addition that’s sure to get everyone’s attention is Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones, who hasn’t taken a role on a television series in 37 years. 

Primarily known as a film actor, Jones has been in projects that run the gamut from The Fugitive and Cobb to Batman Forever and the Men in Black franchise. But he’s had a few notable TV roles over the years, including a stint on soap opera One Life to Live and an Emmy-nominated turn in the 1989 adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. He last appeared on TV in the HBO telefilm The Sunset Limited opposite Samuel L. Jackson, which he also directed. But, if we’re going to be technical about it, Lonesome Dove was the last time Jones was in a television series of any stripe. 

However, what sort of character he’ll be playing remains up in the air. Details about the second season’s plot remain under wraps, but since season 1 cleared up the key points from its primary mystery, it seems safe to assume Jones’s undisclosed character will be involved with whatever conspiracy or case Lee finds himself embroiled in next. Here’s hoping his presence gives this very deserving but sadly underrated show a boost.

Daredevil: Born Again Teaser Reveals Two More Returns from the Netflix Show

“Can you stop him?” asks Jessica Jones at the end of the latest teaser for Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season. The question comes after a series of images reminding us of everything that Matt Murdock will have to deal with this time, including an ascendent Mayor Wilson Fisk outlawing all masked vigilantes and sending an army of highly-militarized cops onto the streets. There’s also the matter of Bullseye on the loose, as Dex Poindexter becomes as deranged and dangerous as his comic book counterpart.

“Not alone,” Matt answers, a point also underscored by the teaser. The clip shows Matt’s friends Karen Page, new White Tiger Angela del Toro, former detective Cherry, and current NYPD detective Angie Kim. But it’s two long-missing faces who truly complicate the scenario. First, we see Royce Johnson back as Detective Brett Mahoney, last seen in season two of The Punisher. Then we see Toby Leonard Moore as James Wesley, Fisk’s late righthand man, who died long before his boss entered the MCU on Disney+.

What do these returns mean for Born Again‘s second season?

The arrival of Mahoney certainly makes sense. He first appeared in season one of the Netflix Daredevil series, working as a beat cop in Hell’s Kitchen. Mahoney supported Nelson & Murdock’s work to better the lives of underprivileged residents, and while he never fully endorsed Daredevil’s vigilantism, he knew that the Man Without Fear was trying to help people. Mahoney regularly encountered Daredevil and Jessica Jones.

By the time he appeared in The Punisher, Mahoney had made detective. Whatever reservations he had with Daredevil were only quadrupled when it came to the violent Punisher. Yet, Mahoney forged an uneasy alliance with Frank Castle, which eventually led to him getting credit for bringing the Punisher into custody. The credit gave Mahoney a promotion, but also left him with sleepless nights.

Mahoney’s absence was conspicuous in the first season of Born Again, which took a critical look at policing in general. Most of the cops were either untrustworthy or outright corrupt, especially the bullies who worshiped the Punisher as a type of figurehead. Cherry and Detective Kim were rare outliers. They’ll gain a third with Mahoney, but it will be interesting to see how he, a man already critical of masked avengers, deals with Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Force.

The more puzzling of the returns is that of Wesley. In the first season of the Netflix show, Wesley acted as a sort of harbinger. If Fisk needed something done (such as eliminate Karen Page), he sent Wesley to do the deed, allowing himself to stay in the shadows. In fact, Wesley prevented people from even saying the name “Wilson Fisk.”

Wesley added to the mystique of the Kingpin, helping to build the threat of Fisk. When Karen shot Wesley in self-defense, Fisk was forced to do more dirty work himself, as not even current lackeys Buck Cashman and Daniel Blake have quite the same presence.

But how can Wesley still be alive? We’re probably just seeing a flashback to an earlier time in Fisk’s life, before Wesley’s death. That would jibe with another big Netflix return happening this season, Elden Henson reprising the role of Foggy Nelson, who died in the premiere of Born Again. We know that Henson is in season two of Born Again, so it would follow that we’d see some scenes from the past, and that’s probably where Wesley comes in.

Still, Foggy fans are hoping that Attorney Nelson can cheat death in the show like he has so often in the comics. Who’s to say that James Wesley can’t do the same?

Daredevil: Born Again season two premieres on March 24, 2026, on Disney+.

Two of the Most Sought After Missing Doctor Who Episodes Found at Last

Sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. So says the Eleventh Doctor back in Doctor Who season 5 episode “The Pandorica Opens”. But it’s very applicable to how many fans are likely feeling, now that two more classic episodes thought to have been lost forever have been rediscovered. 

One of the best things about Doctor Who is how long-lived the franchise is. But one of its great tragedies is the fact that we can’t actually watch all of it. Though nearly 900 episodes have aired since the show first premiered in 1963, many of its earliest installments have been destroyed or lost, thanks to the BBC’s tendency to erase, tape over, or even throw out previous broadcasts in the name of saving money on space and storage costs. (And before archive rules were put into place.) Many classic era Who episodes from the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton eras are missing, and 26 of their stories are incomplete. But, miraculously, we got a little closer to fixing that problem today.

The previously lost installments were discovered in a private collection by Film is Fabulous, a charitable trust and preservation organization run by film collectors and vintage television enthusiasts. They were recovered from a posthumous collection of hundreds of film reels, which were donated to the charity, and are the first to be returned to the BBC archives since several episodes were found in Nigeria in 2013.

The two episodes, “The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet,” feature First Doctor William Hartnell are part of twelve part story “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, which was only ever broadcast in the U.K.  Written by the creator of the Daleks, Terry Nation, and Dennis Spooner, the serial also starred former companions Peter Purves and Adrienne Hill, alongside an early appearance by Nicholas Courtney as Bret Vyon. (Courtney would later go on to play the Brigadier.) The story revolves around (what else?) a Dalek plot to take over the Earth, the solar system, and the galaxy.

Seven of the 12 episodes that comprise “The Daleks’ Master Plan” remain missing, including “The Feast of Steven,” the first Doctor Who episode to be broadcast on Christmas Day. This story has been assumed to be especially difficult to recover, as it was never sold to international broadcast markets, presumably due to its surprisingly violent content. (“The Enemy of the World and of The Web of Fear”, the last two lost episodes to be rediscovered, were found in a television relay station.)  

The BBC has worked to restore these newly found episodes, and they’ll be available to stream as part of BBC iPlayer’s “Whoniverse” this Easter. How or when they’ll make their way to fans in America remains to be seen, but if this incident proves anything, it’s that there’s always hope. 

I Love Boosters Review: Boots Riley Blends Fashion With Surreal Sci-Fi

Few filmmakers follow their bliss quite like Boots Riley.

The Bay Area writer/director burst onto the movie scene with 2018’s Sorry to Bother You, a surrealist romp that blended elements of magical realism with political commentary on an exploited labor class. He followed that up in 2023 with the Prime Video TV series I’m a Virgo, also a surrealist romp that blended elements of magical realism with political commentary on an exploited labor class. Now, for his second proper feature film, Riley is leading off the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival with I Love Boosters, a period piece about House Booster’s succession crisis in 14th century England.

Just kidding: I Love Boosters is a surrealist romp that blends elements of magical realism with political commentary on an exploited labor class.

Three projects in to his burgeoning film career, it’s fair to say that Riley has developed a house style. For a lesser creative, that level of one-note fixation might begin to grow stale. Thankfully, the marriage of the surreal with leftist politics is a note that this rapper, songwriter, and record-producer-turned-filmmaker knows how to play quite well. And he continues to do so in I Love Boosters.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who ekes out a living as a “booster,” pinching high-end textiles and selling them to her neighborhood at a discount. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette sets her booster sights on high-end fashion entrepreneur Christie Smith (Demi Moore) to close the fashion gap between the haves and have-nots.

Like Sorry to Bother You before it, I Love Boosters‘ premise is merely a jumping off point for all the vivid imagery and offbeat twists to come. The movie that a ticket-buyer expects to see at minute 0 is very much not the movie they experience by minute 60 or so. Unlike Sorry to Bother You, however, Boosters‘ absurdist twist isn’t a completely out-of-left-field human-animal hybrid situation but a far more mundane science fiction tool that we won’t spoil. Despite the relatively conventional sci-fi trappings of its back half (and that’s a strong “relatively” given that we’re talking about Boot Riley here), I Love Boosters feels satisfyingly anarchic and bizarre all the way through.

In fact, the film’s relatively tame (again: relatively) first half is undoubtedly its strongest. The director’s infectious love of fashion, art, and people shines through in vibrant color, largely thanks to an expectedly ambitious costume design. His penchant for magical realism is incorporated satisfyingly casually as well. Corvette and her friends routinely encounter the impossible – buildings tilted at 45-degree angles, Indiana Jones-style boulders of paperwork rolling down empty streets, 30-second lunch breaks – with a shrug. Such is life for working class schmoes.

The cast is uniformly excellent with Palmer, Ackie, and Paige centering the plot with winsome charm and clear chemistry. Paige, in particular, shines as the somewhat dimwitted Curly Howard or Charlie Kelly of the trio. Demi Moore proves that her The Substance awards season Linsanity Run was no fluke and that she is a tremendous cinematic asset when granted the right material and the right director. Eiza González, Poppy Liu, and Will Poulter round out the ensemble in sturdy fashion.

And then there’s LaKeith Stanfield, who turns up in a Jheri curl and just about vibrates off the screen… in no small part because many of his scenes feature his face in closeup with the frame literally shaking. Alongside a literally unrecognizable Don Cheadle, Stanfield helps make I Love Boosters Riley’s funniest effort yet by a wide margin.

Perhaps this is a lazy comparison to make because they’re both Black filmmakers from the Bay Area who use genre conventions to comment on race and class in America, but Riley’s dynamic with Stanfield reminds me of Sinners‘ director Ryan Coogler’s work with Michael B. Jordan. Both Stanfield and Jordan are fine actors in their own right, but their performances truly level up when guided by a trusted, consistent collaborator.

There’s another area in which I Love Boosters is faintly reminiscent of Sinners and it’s in that aforementioned divide between the movie’s first and second halves. Just as Sinners stands on its own as a period piece before the vampires even show up, I Love Boosters operates as an effective satire before the real sci-fi weirdness arrives. Unlike Sinners, however, I Love Boosters may have been genuinely better off without the sudden injection of genre madness. While the truly bonkers stuff gives Riley ample opportunity to flex his directorial muscles with impressive DIY-style miniature special effects, the script buckles under the weight of all the absurdity. Characters disappear throughout key passages as though there’s simply not enough room onscreen to accommodate them. And the film’s conclusion is more than a bit too simple and clean.

Still, if one counts I‘m a Virgo as a de facto film (and one should), Boots Riley is now three-for-three with his cinematic efforts. I Love Boosters‘ strained third act suggests that he might not be able to pull off the magic trick again on his fourth try but I won’t be the one to bet against the director continuing to follow his bliss.

I Love Boosters premiered at the SXSW Film & TV Festival on March 13. It opens in theaters on May 22.

Friday the 13th: Jason’s 10 Best Kills, Ranked

Even the biggest fans of the Friday the 13th franchise have to admit that the series isn’t on the cinematic vanguard. Creator Sean S. Cunningham saw the big returns generated by John Carpenter‘s micro budget Halloween and put his own holiday-themed horror movie into production, announcing the title long before he had a cast, a crew, or even a script. Killer Jason Voorhees didn’t even get his iconic hockey mask until midway through the third entry.

So how did Friday the 13th become a financial success in its own time and a beloved franchise today? Simple: it’s all about the kills. Right from the beginning, Cunningham knew that fans wanted subversive thrills, and so he hired the legendary effects artist Tom Savini to work on the first movie, setting a standard for everything that followed.

For this Friday the 13th, we’re going to look back at the 10 best ways Jason (or Jason pretenders) offed the denizens of Crystal Lake.

10. Kevin Bacon Gets Penetrated in Bed (Friday the 13th)

Revisited today, the original Friday the 13th from 1980 feels like an outlier in the franchise it launched. Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) does all the killing to get revenge for the death of her son Jason, and the film has a more obviously Giallo-inspired whodunnit structure. However, there is one aspect of the original that all of the sequels try to match: the kills.

No kill better demonstrates this point than the death of counselor Jack Burrell, who gets an arrow shoved through the back of his neck. Played by future great Kevin Bacon, Jack and his girlfriend Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) sneak away to a cabin for some alone time during a storm. After finishing, Marcie goes to wash up while Jack leans back to enjoy a post-coital joint. Only then does he notice the blood dripping from the top bunk, blood leaking from victim Ned (Mark Nelson). However, Jack notices too late, as Pamela’s (surprisingly beefy) hand grabs his head, holding him down as she drives an arrow through his Adam’s apple.

9. Campground Rotisserie (2009)

Time has only helped the 2009 Friday the 13th remake. Even if the movie can’t quite overcome bad decisions like squeezing the plot beats of the first two films into an extended prologue or providing an explanation for Jason’s apparent ability to teleport (underground tunnels). But like all the torture-heavy horror of the 2000s, the mean-spirited tone of the movie has been reevaluated, allowing us to admire what once revolted us.

From this new perspective, the early kill in which Jason cooks a woman in her backpack is a thing of cruel beauty, establishing this Jason (Derek Mears) as more intelligent than previous iterations. After discovering the body of his dead friend, camper Richie (Ben Feldman) rushes back to find his girlfriend Amanda (America Olivo) trapped in her sleeping bag and dangling over the campfire. He runs to free her, but gets caught in a bear trap, forcing him to further mutilate his leg while watching his girlfriend burn alive.

8. Post, Coital (Jason Goes to Hell)

There isn’t a lot to recommend about Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Not necessarily because it’s a bad movie—even though it is sloppy in its construction—but because it’s not really a Jason movie. The whole plot about Jason being a demon worm who infects other people after his body is destroyed makes the flick seem like an interloper in the franchise.

Still, we do get one classic Jason kill, even if “Jason” in this case is an infected coroner played by Richard Gant. When hitchhikers Luke and Deborah (Michael B. Silver and Michelle Clunie) sneak off to a tent to have sex, the coroner follows them. Right at the moment of climax, Coroner Jason shoves a fence post through the tent and right through Deborah’s chest. He then yanks the post upward, splitting Deborah in two and spilling blood all over Luke.

7. He’s Killing Me (The Final Chapter)

Most Friday the 13th fans agree that either fourth entry The Final Chapter or Part VI: Jason Lives belongs at the top of the franchise rankings. However, neither of those movies have the most spectacular kills. Instead, they satisfy fans by offering other genre thrills. In The Final Chapter‘s case, that means a tight slasher with interesting side characters.

Those interesting side characters make for the fourth movie’s best kill, in which Jason takes down Rob Dier (Erich Anderson). Rob enters midway through The Final Chapter and presents himself as an expert, having been hunting Jason since his sister Sandra (Marta Kober) was killed in the second film. But as soon as he actually finds Jason, Rob fumbles it, first tripping on the stairs and then running right toward his enemy—who proceeds to pin Rob to the wall and starts hacking him to bits. Still, Rob does prove his expertise in one way, shouting, “He’s killing me!” as Jason does the dirty deed.

6. Smiley Face (Jason Lives)

After The Final Chapter perfected the Friday the 13th model, Jason Lives parodied it, injecting self-aware humor into the series. Writer and director Tom McLoughlin revitalizes Jason as a Frankenstein’s Monster who lumbers after antagonist Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), while the nearby campers make knowing wisecracks along the way.

The combination of humor and horror is found in the movie’s best kill. A corporate retreat sends a group of doughy office workers to play paintball in the woods outside of Crystal Lake, giving the drones an opportunity to indulge their inner Rambo. After being bested by the new female executive, would-be Alpha male Burt (Wallace Merck) mutters about gender equality while hacking through the foliage with his machete. In need of a new sharp object, the resurrected Jason catches Burt by the arm, tearing away the appendage, and smashing his head into a tree trunk, leaving behind a smiley face and a splash of blood.

5. Unmanning Handstanding Andy (Part 3)

It really took four movies for Friday the 13th to figure itself out. In the meantime, filmmakers filled the movies with all sorts of nonsense to kill time, none more so than the 3D-enhanced third entry. To take advantage of the gimmicky technology, director Steve Miner instructed his actors to stick all sorts of stuff into the camera, from yo-yos to car keys to eyeballs. Most of it is pretty forgettable, even for those watching it in stereoscopic vision, but the loose structure makes space for one of the best kills in the series.

Like his pal Shelly (Larry Zerner), Andy Beltrami (Jeffery Rogers) cannot resist a prank. However, unlike Shelly, Andy knows when to make a joke and when it’s time to stop goofing around. For example, Andy doesn’t pull any goofs before he and his girlfriend Debbie (Tracie Savage) have sex. But after they’re done and she goes off to take a shower, then Andy decides to do a handstand and walk across the hallway on his hands. That is, until Jason appears in the hallway and hacks Andy right down the middle. MPAA censors cut up the scene worse than Jason did, but the weirdness of the handstand more than makes up for the lack of gore.

4. Back to Bed (Freddy vs. Jason)

All these years later, Freddy vs. Jason remains divisive among Friday the 13th fans. Director Ronny Yu’s slick, CG-assisted action and predilection for dutch angles suits the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but Jason plays a secondary role in the movie, as demonstrated by the nonsense lore about fear of water.

Still, the movie manages to give Jason one incredible kill, early in the film. After having sex with his girlfriend Gibb (Katharine Isabelle), meathead Trey Hutch (Jesse Hutch) leaves to clean off. Like the most bro-tastic of bros, Trey immediately cracks into a brewski, but he’s interrupted by Jason, who starts stabbing away. When the bubbling beer can in Trey’s hand indicates that he’s still alive, Jason grabs both sides of the bed and folds it closed, bending Trey backwards in the process.

3. Death by Enchiladas (A New Beginning)

As this list shows, characters in Friday the 13th movies don’t act like normal people. That’s especially true of the fifth movie, A New Beginning. After the death of Jason in The Final Chapter, A New Beginning tries to reboot with another whodunnit involving someone dressed like Jason. The mystery isn’t interesting, but there’s enough strangeness involved to elevate the film, as seen in its best kill.

Like most Friday the 13th couples, biker Demon (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) and his girlfriend Anita (Jere Fields) like making out. However, their makeout session comes to an abrupt end when Demon’s stomach starts gurgling, sending him running to the outhouse while complaining about “damned enchiladas.” Undeterred, Anita stands outside the outhouse and starts singing, prompting Demon to continue the duet from inside the campground outhouse. Their stinky serenade comes to an end when the killer arrives to slit Anita’s throat and then starts stabbing into the outhouse, eventually impaling Demon.

2. Sleeping Bag Beatdown (The New Blood)

As a horror series set at a campground, Friday the 13th has a lot of sleeping bag deaths. The best of all came in one of the weaker entries, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Directed by the great John Carl Buechler, The New Blood goes for a sort of monster mash, pitting Jason against Tina Shepherd (Lar Park Lincoln), a girl with Carrie-like telekinetic powers. The match makes for some absurd fight scenes, none of which drive the best kill scene.

Unlike others on this list, Judy (Debora Kessler) does not have sex with her boyfriend Dan (Michael Schroeder). Instead, she sends him off to find firewood first, and slips into her sleeping bag to prepare for her return. That’s when Jason returns, cutting open her tent and yanking her sleeping bag outside. He drags Judy into the woods and slams the sleeping bag against a tree, dropping her bloody body onto the ground. It’s a nasty kill, ironically made worse by the MPAA’s insistence that Buechler cut the shot down to a single slam.

1. Frozen Face (Jason X)

Jason X is easily the dumbest movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. To be clear, I mean that as a compliment. Writer Todd Farmer and director James Isaac completely ignore good sense and good taste to tell a bizarre story set in 2455, when a group of space-traveling archeology students recover Jason’s cryogenically frozen body. Jason stays dormant at first, that is until a professor and a student sneak off for a tryst, the sounds of extramarital sex pulling him back to life.

Unfortunately for intern Adrienne Thomas-Hart (Kristi Angus), that reawakening happens at the same time that she’s examining Jason in a lab. Immediately after coming back to life, Jason grabs Adrienne’s head and drives it into a pool of liquid nitrogen. He then pulls it out and smashes her frozen face onto the table, spraying chunks of flesh and ice across the room.

Tech in the Year 2050: What AI Means for Work, Art, and the Environment

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

For centuries, our ideas about the future have been shaped by science fiction. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to Isaac Asimov’s robots, we have imagined technology as a moral force that either saves humanity or turns against it. 

But in 2026, tech is less a science-fiction spectacle and more a mundane reality. Technology regulates our homes, tracks our bodies, and optimizes our movements. “The algorithm” has become cultural shorthand for global behavioral influence. We say it casually—the algorithm made me buy it, boosted this, buried that—half joking, but half aware. 

Will we always effortlessly adapt to technological change, though? With the help of several experts in an array of fields, we are fast-forwarding to 2050 and imagining how technology will reshape the way we work, connect, and even inhabit the planet.

Work As a Collective Consciousness

Prediction: By 2050, work will shift from human hustle to hive-mind coordination.

Sometimes, the past shows us how the future will arrive. In 1973, German-Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for decoding the honeybee’s “waggle dance,” a subtle movement that communicates the location of food to the hive. For the colony, this is coordination. Individual bees follow simple rules and local signals, yet they make coordinated decisions collectively. Von Frisch’s decoding of the waggle dance later inspired bee-based optimization research, and waggle dance–driven algorithms have since been absorbed into modern swarm-based decision-making models. 

“Many AI models have been directly inspired by biological systems, especially collective intelligence in animals,” says Dr. Asad Tirmizi, CEO of Trener Robotics, an AI platform that equips industrial robots with built-in intelligence. “Swarm intelligence from bees, ants, and birds has shaped several important algorithmic families.” 

That biological logic is now migrating from nature into the systems that shape how we work. Sharon Gai, a former Alibaba digital strategy advisor and author of How to Do More with Less: Future-Proofing Yourself in an AI-Driven Economy, experienced that biological logic jump from nature into the workplace.

During Alibaba’s ramp-up to China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, which features five times the volume of the entire U.S. Cyber Week, she was part of a team experimenting with an early generative design system that reduced the work of roughly 1,000 contract designers into prompts managed by a much smaller core group, a coordination model that mirrors the kind of distributed intelligence seen in hive systems.

With that experience in mind, Gai argues that by 2050, work will be reorganized around machine-level output. Gai describes this as a shift in mindset. Work has felt like an endless to-do list—humans operating as busy bees, constantly executing tasks. As AI systems grow more capable, she argues, the human role changes. Instead of performing every task, we become more like beekeepers, supervising a hive of AI agents.

Inside DingTalk, Alibaba’s version of Slack, she said the first role they modified was the project manager. 

“Within DingTalk, you had the ability to create a bot. And the first thing we bot-ified was the project manager (PM). So if we had a working group of 40 to 50 people in that big group thread managing timelines for us, that bot became our PM. All we had to do was set rules, like how many times can you bug someone before they really get pissed off? … and that was three. So we couldn’t ask the fourth,” Gai says. Inside Alibaba’s internal systems, Gai saw how quickly workplace coordination began to resemble programmable swarm behavior.

For Gai, the deeper issue is not automation itself but boundaries.

“Is it good to hand over so much of our decision-making powers and tasks that we originally did as humans over to this hive of AI agents?” Gai considers. “I think the answer is sometimes, and that’s the part that so many of us are trying to navigate: What should I hand over to AI and what should I keep for myself.”

Finding Joy in the Little Things

Prediction: As AI increasingly automates busywork, humanity will come to appreciate the “small frictions” in life.

Gai frames the future of work through Iain M. Banks’ Culture series novels, shifting the focus from machine capability to human purpose: if AI agents supervise other agents, what remains distinctly ours? In that universe, humans are fed, clothed, and free from the labor needed to survive. Life is frictionless.

Gai believes a similar dynamic could emerge in our work if AI continues to advance.

“If work becomes fully automated, if AI agents supervise other agents, what remains distinctly human? Are we just going to become hollow biological beings where the algorithm has done so much of the work for us, and we’re just there to click the enter button?”

The tech author has lately been subscribing to Kurt Vonnegut’s “one envelope” approach. 

“His recommendation is to buy one envelope at a time instead of buying a box of envelopes.” The theory is that you have to go to the post office, buy a stamp, then maybe walk past a café, and meet people. That creates intentional community.

Vonnegut argued that computers will end up doing all of that for us, saying, “And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. We love to move around. And we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

He was arguing that the small, everyday things you can do on your own matter.

So if AI reduces friction at work, removing the need to gather in tall glass buildings, what happens to how we connect outside that work world? If meetings are handled by bots, and projects are executed before humans arrive, what becomes of the accidental exchange between humans?

Art Becomes Experiential

Prediction: By 2050, immersion will evolve into true presence through fully multi-sensory experiences. 

While no one truly knows what the world will look like as immersion and virtual reality technology improve, the market agrees on one thing: we will leave behind chunky headsets and move to more invisible, ubiquitous interfaces.

Some scenarios still feel far more sci-fi than we can swallow now. But even in 2015, the futurist Ray Kurzweil said we would be living in an immersive reality with neural implants by 2030. In 2026, the experience of virtual reality (VR) or immersion is more likely to come through entertainment using multiple sensory inputs.

VR artist Estella Tse has created large-scale VR installations around the world. She brings nature into each of her XR installations to ensure a blend of the organic and humanity in an otherwise tech-heavy experience. Her 2023 exhibition “In Bloom,” a collaboration between the University of Oxford’s TORCH and the Ethics in AI Institute, was created as she was recovering from complex PTSD and debilitating depression, inviting audiences to believe that even in the darkest days, they can find light again.

The installation unfolded within a hand-painted physical forest, designed as a fully immersive environment. The installation used the backdrop of a damaged forest that progressed into a flourishing ecosystem again. She integrated physical wood bark, which added a natural scent to the tangible experience. For the latter part of the exhibition space, Tse integrated geranium and lavender scents for a full immersive experience.

“I combined my knowledge of visual storytelling and theme park design for ‘In Bloom,’” says Tse. “There’s a beginning, middle, and end. There’s a climactic part, and all design elements were made to support that build-up. From darkness to light, from grayscale to full saturated colors, from flat 2D progressively into full 3D immersion, I utilized multiple design elements to create emotional intensity at the most important parts.

“The immersive nature of VR metaphorically and literally puts the viewer into a different world—the brain feels like it’s transported to another place. This is so powerful for building empathy and a felt experience.”

For the future, she’s not sure where the medium will go. “Outside of XR moving into film, the industry is heavily reliant on the big corporations and their ROIs on what makes sense for their businesses in this economy,” she adds. But Tse believes creative efforts make it possible for XR to become mainstream. “We literally create the possibilities of what new tech can do.” 

AI Companionship

Prediction:  By 2050, we will have AI robot buddies.

In 2025, Gai attended an Eva AI “dating café,” where people brought their AI companions to a café,  just like you would take a date to meet friends. While she was there, she said a reporter approached the event “from a very critical lens,” asking, “Is this going to replace human relationships?”

But Gai said she was looking at this interaction on the perky, rosier side.

“The AI dating humans thing is weird right now because it’s not very mainstream,” she says. “If it brings that person comfort, how bad is it for those people who want to partake?”

Gai believes this could create a new branch of relationships.“If you think about it, relationships have branched out over time, right? First, it was your family; then your partner; then your friends; and finally, your colleagues. So who’s to say that the next branch isn’t an AI?” 

The progression of how we interact with AI in our lives is more about expanding how we create and live our connections. What feels unfamiliar now may simply become another layer in the way humans relate, communicate, and find meaning. As with earlier technological shifts, the shape of connection evolves before we fully understand what it will become.

Technological Doppelgängers

Prediction: In 2050, accountability remains human, even when presence is proxy.

The era of proxy presence has already begun. On Feb. 15, 2026, OpenAI acquired OpenClaw, an experiment in AI agents posting and interacting on a social forum. Early screenshots sparked outrage and alarm across social platforms, with users reacting to provocative posts attributed to autonomous agents. Gai cautions that much of what circulated online was not independent machine behavior, but content humans had prompted the agents to produce for attention and clicks.

“A lot of the things they were posting were very far-fetched,” says Gai. “And the far-fetched-ness was not created by the AI agent. It was humans creating and feeding it that content, for eyeballs, for clicks.”

The real shift, she explains, is not spectacle but representation: agents interacting with other agents. Systems negotiating with each other before humans enter the conversation. OpenClaw is experimenting, Gai says, with AI agents interacting directly with one another, effectively moving toward a social network for AI agents.

From an efficiency perspective, if AI understands how a human worker responds to clients, friends, or collaborators, it could interact directly with their agents, attend meetings, negotiate timelines, and even pre-complete projects.

“You don’t even have to show up for meetings; your bot already went through all of them,” she says. “And your bot went through all of them with the other bots, so they have already run through this project and know exactly what the deadlines are, and then it autonomously finishes the project on behalf of you.”

In that scenario, coordination takes a backseat. Systems exchange signals, set expectations, and execute tasks at a speed that no longer depends on human scheduling.

But Gai draws a boundary. “The one thing we can’t outsource is human responsibility. You can’t put a bot in jail.”

As efficiency expands in a bot-driven world, accountability still remains human. OpenClaw illustrates one possible direction for agent-to-agent networking, and even today, such systems have provoked caution from major tech firms, underscoring how quickly proxy autonomy raises real-world governance questions.

Non-Negotiable Planet

Prediction: By 2050, we will be living inside ecological limits.

The idea of a “non-negotiable planet” can feel abstract. Even today, we’ve altered more than 75 percent of Earth’s land surface, degraded a third of soils, and drained ancient aquifers. When soil can’t absorb rain and roots can’t hold slopes, development becomes physically unstable in addition to being ethically questionable. For Caroline Howell, CEO of Canopy Development Group, the hardest planetary constraint to ignore in 2050 will be water and the living systems that regulate it. 

“Not just water scarcity in the abstract, but broken water cycles,” explains Howell. “Floods where forests once slowed rainfall and droughts where soil once held moisture like a sponge.”

But Howell poses a bigger question, one that challenges conventional market thinking: what if real estate were treated as a living system rather than a financial project? 

Time horizons would shift: development is optimized for short exit cycles rather than the decades-long lifespans of living systems. Forests regenerate over generations. Soil formation is measured in centuries. Watersheds stabilize slowly but collapse when pushed too far. Howell believes that if real estate were treated as a living system, long-term stewardship funds would be embedded in every project. 

“Ecological metrics would sit alongside financial ones in investor reports. Property values would be tied to biodiversity gains and water resilience. Governance structures would include land councils or ecological oversight boards, rather than just HOAs focused on aesthetics,” she says.

Yet Howell contends the deeper shift is cultural, and we need to stop asking how fast we can extract value and start asking what the landscape needs to be healthier in 50 years.

Howell frames technology not as a savior or villain, but as a reflection.

“Technology is a mirror. It reflects our intentions,” she adds.

Canopy’s approach fuses technology with natural ecosystems. They use a “land listening” system and remote sensing to gather critical data for land planning, making projects more resilient to future weather. This also helps teams understand the creatures and patterns of a shared home. In this framework, technology doesn’t erase limits; it exposes them and teaches us how to live within them.

On Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, Canopy’s Playa Venao sits within an endangered tropical dry forest ecosystem. Rather than clearing and subdividing, they planted 40,000 native trees to protect the watershed and are building food systems within the development. Howell says they will be the first real estate project to generate and sell biodiversity credits globally. The work is tied to restoring a 20,000-hectare biological corridor with Pro Eco Azuero, creating local jobs in regeneration.

Howell believes that living within planetary boundaries is less dramatic and more beautiful than people imagine.

Shade trees lower ambient temperatures by several degrees; buildings oriented for wind flow, reducing mechanical cooling; food growing within walking distance; and materials chosen for durability and repair. Most importantly, Howell dreams of a 2050 where neighborhoods are designed to gently return people to the living world around them.

Obsession: Inside the Most Disturbing Indie Horror of the Year

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

Finding love ain’t easy. But what if it was? What if you didn’t have to go through the agony of meeting someone you have chemistry with, only to go on two dates and realize you have nothing in common, or end up on a third just to get ghosted? What if you could avoid the low-grade anxiety of constantly wondering whether your partner might get bored with you and leave? Curry Barker’s Obsession is here to answer all those doubts and fears, and it’s probably going to make you feel a lot better about the warts of modern dating. 

The film centers on Bear (Michael Johnston), a private, secretly miserable homebody who has it bad for his best friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Bear is sweet, unassuming, and quiet, making his infatuation with Nikki more cute than creepy. He’s the kind of protagonist that you feel for, especially after his cat unexpectedly dies due to helping itself to Bear’s medicine cabinet. He’s just a boy trying to impress a girl, and losing his cat in the middle of it all! That is, until a joke purchase ruins everything.

Meanwhile, Nikki is as cool as they come. She’s collected and self-assured, and has no time to do things that aren’t fulfilling her soul. Her friends are deeply important to her, and you can tell that she’s the exact kind of person who actually listens. It’s immediately evident why Bear has a crush on her. What isn’t evident is whether or not she feels the same way. This is where the seemingly innocent novelty toy “One Wish Willow” comes in, and where everything starts to get… sinister.

Rather than risk telling her how he feels, Bear wishes that Nikki loved him more than anything else in the world and then snaps the toy in half as instructed. Things immediately start to get weird, but there’s nothing that can prepare you for how twisted their “it’s complicated” dynamic becomes. 

The concept of “be careful what you wish for” or the proverbial monkey’s paw fable is not new. So much, in fact, that Obsession director Curry Barker got the idea for his script from The Simpsons’ “The Monkey’s Paw” segment in “Treehouse of Horror II.” Still, his movie offers an unsettling wrinkle about human nature and desire when the wish in question is used by a man, intentionally or otherwise, to oppress and subjugate the will and identity of a woman he claims to adore.

Obsession’s themes are heavily rooted in consent: who is able to give it and who is not. When we meet Bear, we find someone who we believe is a good guy. You want that little fella to win. The second he makes his wish, though, everything gets dangerously complicated. Playing with such difficult subject matters appealed to Barker, but he had a clear line in the sand regarding Nikki’s autonomy after the wish.

“Nikki can’t even give consent to hold hands,” Barker explains. “She’s not there. So nothing is real. That was really a dark and interesting concept to play with.”

Things also get a little bit more complex for Johnston, who has to play Bear as a good guy while also seeing the very gray area as a performer. 

“The way I approach the character is very—I think he’s a good guy, but it’s sort of like he has this willful blindness. He knows there’s a monster under the bed, but is it really there?” 

The monster is very much there. The beauty of Obsession, however, is that you don’t know that monster’s going to eat you until it’s fully in view. Of course, blurred lines are central to the success of the slow-burning terror, and their fuzziness played a major role in the way Navarrette both viewed and portrayed Nikki.

“It always gets tricky when we want to talk about consent, a very important issue and conversation,” Navarrette considers. “I think that the film does a really good job explaining how those lines can get blurred, and how one person’s story and experience may not be what other people perceive it to be. It’s very specific to that, and I think with Nikki, you really get it into the nitty-gritty of what that looks like.”

Going into Obsession, one expects to be confronted with thematic horror, with the trauma of what Nikki is going through playing a central role in the viewer’s discomfort and fear. That is, of course, prevalent throughout the film. Full disclosure, though: this bad boy is gonna make you jump in your seat more than once. Seasoned horror fans let out full-on hollers in early festival screenings of Obsession, and those screams were earned. 

For Barker, it is about playing with a metaphor for the “modern toxic relationship.” Still, the tangible scares were as important as the thematic ones: “You want to incorporate those scares, and then you want to weave it with all the psychological stuff,” he says. 

Meanwhile, Navarrette was excited to, in her words, act nuts and get paid. 

“I think it’s one of the best parts of my job,” she says with a laugh. “At least to me, there’s no better shoe to put my foot in.” Humor aside, there’s never a moment that Navarrette lost sight of what her character was going through. “Nikki had a beautiful life. She had wonderful friends; she had trivia night; I mean, what an absolute gift to have all of those things! And then for all of it to be taken away completely out of your control.”

What made that lack of control extra horrific for Navarrette is that everything that happens on-screen, and every depraved action that eventually unfolds in Obsession, is technically caused by Nikki’s own hand. Yet she fundamentally is unable to say “stop.”

Practical effects are also essential when it comes to meaningful scares, and it’s something that Barker and his team took very seriously when crafting the layered horrors of Obsession. Navarrette enjoyed all the work she was able to do on the film, but one stunt and set piece stood out. The scene in question involves Nikki running out of nowhere and bludgeoning someone to death. 

“[The victim’s actor] gets replaced by a wonderful little dummy that our special effects woman had to do; the dummy’s face is caved in, and I have a foam brick, and then they wired tubes through the face and the eyes [of the prop],” Navarrette explains with delight. “That blood was coming out at the same time as I’m smashing, and that doll’s head probably weighed… 15 pounds? So as I’m smashing, my hand’s getting tired, and my hits are getting slower and slower, and Curry never calls cut.”

Barker remembers the scene fondly as well, and the lack of a cut call was entirely intentional. For him, it was just as much about getting Bear’s reaction as the audience stand-in as it was about playing with the practical goo of it all. “I wanted it to be grotesque, and if Bear has to look at it, you have to look at it too.” 

Grotesque isn’t an exaggeration either. “I actually had a lot of trouble with [the scene] because we had to cut it down,” Barker reveals. “The version you saw won’t make it into theaters. Don’t worry, though. It’s still crazy.”

The MPA might be out here ruining everyone’s fun, but given the rest of Obsession’s overall vibe, you should feel comfortable taking Barker at his word when it comes to the final cut being just as, well… sticky.

Obsession premieres at SXSW on March 14 and opens in theaters nationwide on May 15.

The Strange New Worlds Team Still Wants to Make Star Trek: Year One

Star Trek is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, but despite reaching this impressive milestone, the franchise is in something of a holding pattern. Filming has officially wrapped on the second season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which means that, at this precise moment, there’s no new Trek series in production, or even greenlit.

There are a lot of reasons for this that aren’t as dire as they may initially seem. Though Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wrapped production on its fifth and final season back in December, there are two seasons still to air. (Although one of them is slightly truncated.) Plus, parent network Paramount is undergoing some fairly significant changes, thanks to its recent merger with Skydance and proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. It’s very likely that Star Trek isn’t as high on their list of internal priorities as most of us would like it to be. But that doesn’t mean discussions aren’t taking place behind the scenes about the future of the franchise. 

Fans have probably already heard about Star Trek: Year One, a proposed pitch that would continue the story of the U.S.S. Enterprise where Strange New Worlds is expected to leave off, following the earliest days of Captain James T. Kirk’s command. Many legacy characters from Star Trek: The Original Series are already part of the Strange New Worlds cast, including Kirk, Mr. Spock, Nyota, and Uhura, while the series finale will introduce a new Doctor McCoy and Hikaru Sulu to the group. (Heck, one season three installment has served as a quasi-TOS episode already.) The groundwork is in place, and it certainly sounds as though the folks in charge are working toward making their idea a reality.

Speaking with TrekMovie.com at the recent Saturn Awards, Strange New Worlds showrunner, Henry Alonso Myers, said that their team had officially pitched Year One to Paramount.

“We think it would be a great [show], it’s the next thing for Star Trek, we think, in the story that we’ve been telling. But it’s out of our hands,” he said. “We’ve brought them a lot. We’ve done a lot to give to them. It’s in their hands right now. They’re taking a look at it, trying to decide it. I mean, there’s a lot of love for our show over there, and obviously a lot of love for Star Trek.”

Of course, no one can predict what Paramount will choose to do, but there are some hopeful indicators. Namely, that the Enterprise sets from Strange New Worlds are still standing at CBS Stages Canada in Toronto.

“Well, our sets have not been destroyed yet. That is what I can say,” Meyers said. “That makes this the big decision for them, because it’s about, do you hold on to the sets, currently? As I said, they have not been destroyed, so we’re waiting to find out what they want to do.”

But, as with so much else about this franchise at the moment, only time will tell. After all, almost everyone involved with Star Trek: Picard pushed for a Star Trek: Legacy sequel after that series concluded back in 2023, and nothing has come of it as yet. Could the Captain Kirk factor make the difference? There is an appealing symmetry to the idea of announcing a show like Year One during such a milestone anniversary year and bringing things full circle back to the show that started it all. But will Paramount go for it? Place your bets now. 

Superman Will Have a Very Different Green Lantern to Deal With in Man of Tomorrow

At the end of the first trailer for the upcoming HBO Max series Lanterns, Hal Jordan scoffs when his new partner John Stewart asks if he ever talks to other members of the Green Lantern Corps. “I’m the only human, they’re all aliens,” answers a disbelieving Jordan. As many have pointed out, Jordan’s comment makes no sense in the new DCU, where Green Lantern Guy Gardner serves as a member of the Justice Gang. But as even more have pointed out, Guy Gardner hardly meets the definition of “human.”

Superman would never say such a thing about Guy, but no one would blame him if he preferred working with another human member of the Corps. And it sounds like he just might get his wish, as The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Aaron Pierre has been added to the cast of the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, reprising his role as Stewart.

By adding Pierre to its cast, Man of Tomorrow continues to serve as a sequel to every DCU project since James Gunn and Peter Safran relaunched the universe. Obviously, Man of Tomorrow is a direct continuation of Superman, as it sees Superman and Lex Luthor forced to work together. The reason they’ll work together was introduced in the final episode of Peacemaker‘s second season, where Chris Smith was sent to a prison planet called Sanctuary. And who sent the Peacemaker to Sanctuary? Why it’s Rick Flag Sr., former boss of the Creature Commandos, who developed a hatred of all metahumans after the death of his son in The Suicide Squad.

What this means for John Stewart is still unclear, as we obviously don’t know how his story will unfold in Lanterns. The Lanterns trailer tells us that Stewart has been training under Jordan for two months, which means that he’s still a pretty green Lantern. Yet, if Stewart is anything like his comic book counterpart, then he already comes to the role with military training and a keen mind, having served as a Marine and worked as an architect. He has a cool and introspective demeanor that is, at the very least, much less chaos-prone than the attitude of one Guy Gardner.

The most obvious guess is that Stewart will be called upon to investigate the disappearances on Earth, as the planet falls under his jurisdiction in the Green Lantern Corps. Founded millennia ago by the Guardians of the Universe, the Green Lantern Corps are space cops and they each have their precincts, or sectors, to patrol. If metahumans start disappearing under his watch, the Guardians will assign him to investigate, as their authority supersedes that of even Flag and the U.S. government.

For fans of the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series, Stewart’s arrival adds a more interesting wrinkle. While the comic book Guy Gardner is a charter member of the goofier Justice League International operated by Maxwell Lord, a clear inspiration for the Justice Gang of the DCU, Stewart often serves on the main Justice League. And on Justice League Unlimited, Stewart not only served on the team, but he also had a compelling and tragic romance with fellow member Hawkgirl, who just so happens to be in the DCU already, played by Isabela Merced.

Will John Stewart be all about the investigation in Man of Tomorrow? Or will we see the start of something beautiful between him and Hawkgirl? Either way, Superman’s just glad that he doesn’t have to add Guy Gardner to his list of headaches in his next adventure.

Man of Tomorrow releases July 9, 2027.

Could The Doctor Who Christmas Special Be a Stealth Doomsday Sequel?

While Doctor Who is slated to return at the end of the year with a brand new Christmas installment, the franchise still feels like it’s stuck in a strange limbo. This isn’t all that surprising, given how little we know about where the show is headed. The much-vaunted Disney deal imploded in rather spectacular fashion, the rumored third season with Ncuti Gatwa failed to materialize, and his Fifteenth Doctor unexpectedly regenerated after just two seasons in the TARDIS. Not only that, he regenerated into former companion Billie Piper, and no one has any idea what character she’s meant to be playing. To say that Doctor Who feels…well, rather rudderless at the moment may sound dramatic, but it isn’t entirely wrong. 

With no official answers to any of these questions arriving until at least December, it’s no surprise that fans are busy grasping at anything that even resembles a straw. And the latest popular theory running through the fandom involves both a popular former Doctor and a beloved season 2 episode. An in-universe blog post from UNIT, accessible to logged-in users on the Doctor Who website, includes a memo ostensibly from Ruth Madeley’s character, Shirley-Anne Bingham. It references “the 20th anniversary of the return of Rose Tyler, who went ‘missing’ for one year after Operation Mannequin”. Operation Mannequin, of course, is a reference to “Rose,” the very first episode of Doctor Who’s modern era, which saw the introduction of the Ninth Doctor and a subplot involving store mannequins seemingly coming to life. But what’s really interesting is the next bit.

“As Rose Tyler is currently both missing from this universe and flagged as a complex space-time event, maybe keep an eye out,” Shirley’s post reads. “I’ve got the Vlinx scanning all media channels and the subwave network.”

This is, it seems safe to say, a reference to the season 2 finale, “Doomsday,” an episode that saw Rose cross over into a parallel universe where she was separated from David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor in one of the most emotionally devastating episodes of all time. She briefly returned to help save the world once more in season 4’s “The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End” two-parter before being sent back across the dimensions with her own half-human Ten clone in tow. (Just go with it, it makes sense in the story.) 

It’s certainly fair to wonder if this is some sort of setup, meant to hint to eagle-eyed fans that the Piper we saw at the end of season 15 isn’t playing the Doctor or some secondary figure like The Moment, but the modern era’s original companion once more. But does it make sense? Well, yes and no. Showrunner Russell T. Davies second turn at the series’ helm has seen him revisit a lot of Doctor Who history, reintroducing classic villains, bringing back familiar characters, and even revisiting some of his own previous stories. (“The Well” is essentially a sequel to the season 4 episode, “Midnight.”) But Rose Tyler’s story isn’t exactly unfinished. Sure, technically she’s still considered a missing person on Earth, but in her alternate universe, her father’s still alive, her mother joined her, and she’s got a Tenth Doctor of her very own. That’s pretty much as happy an ending as anyone could hope for on this show. What story is really left to tell here? Could revisiting that episode even tell us anything about her journey that we don’t already know?

Plus, there’s the David Tennant of it all. Look, Piper’s presence, no matter what character she turns out to be playing, was always going to invite speculation that Tennant might pop back around for another spin in the TARDIS alongside her, particularly since his Fourteenth Doctor is essentially just hanging out at Donna Noble’s house at this point. Yes, it’s true that Tennant just came back for the 60th anniversary a few short years ago. But love him or hate him, he’s still the most popular modern-era Doctor, and the prospect of seeing him reunite with Piper onscreen once more is a tantalizing one for any fan. And there’s a certain logic to trying to use him — and whichever one of the three different characters he’s played on the show — to try and smooth over some of the historic bumps the franchise is currently facing. Would it work? Honestly, it probably would. But would it be the best choice for the show and its future? That’s a murkier question.

After all, while this Christmas episode will certainly have plenty of loose ends to tie up and plot holes to explain, at the end of the day, it also has to look to the future. Whether or not we’ll meet the Sixteenth Doctor in this installment is a question only Russell T. Davies can answer, but even if we don’t, the hour at least has to leave things in a place where it feels like the show can continue organically — and survive without Piper (or even Tennant’s) help. Can one episode ever hope to serve that many masters? As with so much about this franchise at the moment, we’ll have to wait and see.

KPop Demon Hunters 2 is Coming: What We Want from the Sequel

Huntrix is back for an encore. Just days before KPop Demon Hunters is sure to net a couple of Academy Awards, Deadline has announced that Sony has put a sequel to the Netflix hit in development, with Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans back to direct. “These characters are like family to us, their world has become our second home,” Appelhans said. “We’re excited to write their next chapter, challenge them and watch them evolve — and continue pushing the boundaries of how music, animation and story can come together.”

It’s those last lines that really have us excited about the future. The first KPop Demon Hunters melded modern pop star spectacle with Korean folklore and CGI animation with classical cartooning, resulting in a unique work that pleased a range of viewers. How do Kang and Appelhans follow that up? We don’t know, but we do have some requests for the next stop on the Huntrix tour.

Sunlight Sisters

Easily the biggest mystery surrounding the KPop Demon Hunters narrative involves Rumi’s mother, Mi-yeong Ryu. At first, it seems as if Ryu and her fellow performers in the Sunlight Sisters exist as little more than table-setting, a brief and easy explanation for how Rumi became a demon hunter. But as we learn more about Rumi’s backstory, Ryu becomes more complex. How did she come to fall for a demon? What sort of conflicts did that create in her profession? What led up to her death?

We don’t necessarily need Ryu and the Sunlight Sisters to become the stars of KPop Demon Hunters 2, but there’s clearly some narrative and thematic ground to travel there. If the sequel can show us the path that Ryu traveled, we may get a better understanding of where Rumi will go as she comes to accept her new normal.

Mira and/or Zoey

Given her dual identity and her connection to Jinu, Rumi was the perfect focal point for the first film. But Mira and Zoey clearly have more to offer than just being supporting characters. If Rumi’s main arc has more or less finished, it’s time to let a new member of Huntrix take the lead.

Obviously, a shift in focus will change the balance of the story, as Mira and Zoey have very different personalities than Rumi. But that could allow KPop Demon Hunters 2 to have a new tone. Will we get a darker story, with Mira coming to grips with her band’s even greater fame? Will Zoey allow her exuberance to get the best of her, forcing her to clean up a mess she didn’t intend to make? Whatever the direction, we’d love to see Zoey and Mira become more than just backup singers.

The Other Acts

Part of KPop Demon Hunters‘s magic stemmed from its ability to work a high-stakes spiritual battle into the world of pop music competition. To pull off something on such a cosmic scale, Kang and Appelhans had to narrow their focus to just two acts, Huntrix and the Saja Boys. They could only gesture toward the existence of other KPop performers.

The sequel is the perfect time to let us see (and hear!) some other groups in the KPop Demon Hunters universe. Maybe we see Huntrix go on tour with an act that has nothing to do with the demon hunting side of things, leading to new hijinks. What if they get paired with a traditionalist act who wants to dethrone Huntrix while rejecting Rumi’s new sympathy for demons? There’s clearly a lot of room to expand in this universe.

No More (But No Less!) Bobby

Voiced by Ken Jeong, Huntrix’s nervous manager Bobby was a highlight of the first film. He always brought welcome comic relief to the story, and stole every scene he was in. However, animated films have a bad habit of taking a likable side character and pushing them to the forefront in the sequel (see: Mater in the Cars movies and Olaf in Frozen).

KPop Demon Hunters 2 cannot do that with Bobby. They have a perfectly good side character already, one who works great with less than ten minutes of screen time. Putting more attention on Bobby not only takes up space that could be used for other acts or Rumi’s mother, but it also stretches Bobby beyond his limits, turning him from a welcome distraction and into an annoyance.

Beyond Demon Hunting

By the end of the first KPop Demon Hunters, Gwi-Ma had lost and the Honmoon was restored, blocking the demons out of our world. So, that’s one problem out of the way, but surely a world in which demons exist also has a lot of other monsters lurking around. Let’s see Huntrix hunt something other than demons.

What, exactly? Well, that’s where we don’t know, because we don’t have the knowledge of Korean folklore to make recommendations. But Kang and Appelhans brought such specificity to the first film that they can surely do it again, giving us another look at monsters most of us in the West have never even heard of.

KPop Demon Hunters can be found streaming on Netflix.



Daredevil: Born Again Teaser Brings Bullseye Closer to His Final Form

When viewers of Daredevil first met Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter in season three of the Netflix series, they found a troubled, but believable person. Poindexter possessed a predilection for violence and the ability to aim perfectly when throwing projectiles, which made him useful enough to the U.S. government to keep a job as an FBI agent—at least until the detained Wilson Fisk exploited Dex’s insecurities, turning the agent into his own personal assassin.

Enjoyable as that storyline was, comic book fans couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Played by Wilson Bethel, Dex is a grounded, “realistic” version of Bullseye, one of Daredevil’s greatest foes. The first season of the Disney+ revival series Daredevil: Born Again inched him closer to the comics, putting Dex into a costume, having him kill Foggy Nelson, and paying homage to famous panels. And if the latest teaser for season two of Born Again is to be believed, Dex will finally become the amoral agent of chaos that Bullseye is in Marvel comics.

For the most part, the teaser focuses on more hyper-violence in Born Again‘s second season, marrying the gritty fight scenes of the Netflix series to the more spectacular visuals that directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead bring to the MCU. We get clips of DD reuniting with Jessica Jones, played by a returning Krysten Ritter, and we get his new black suit. We even get glimpses of Fisk in a boxing match and new antagonist Mr. Charles, played by Matthew Lillard. But the best parts of the teaser involve Dex, back in his Bullseye costume.

At first glance, Bullseye’s scenes are cool, but expected. He’s taking joy in murdering people, something he’s done since day one. However, the scenes become intriguing when you notice who, exactly, Bullseye is killing. In every scene, Bullseye puts down not allies of Daredevil, but his enemies, the cops in the Anti-Vigilante Force.

Why would Bullseye kill people who are on his side, people who also want to take down his nemesis, Daredevil? Because he’s nuts, and that’s exactly what comic book fans want to see.

Unlike his live-action counterpart, the Bullseye has no conscience, nor moral standards. He enjoys causing pain, and only works as an assassin because the job allows him to earn money while doing what he loves. There’s no tragic backstory behind his motivations—in fact, the character in the comic has no name beyond “Lester.” He’s just a killing machine.

While that sort of edgy chaos agent can quickly get boring, the lack of morality makes Bullseye the perfect counter to Daredevil. Matt Murdock is overburdened with ethics, so much so that he ruins his romantic relationships and personal friendships, sabotages his law practice, and destroys his body. If Matt had even a tenth of the carefree attitude that Bullseye displays, then he would be a much happier and healthier person. But he cannot see the difference between caring a little less and not caring at all, which makes Bullseye such a terrifying person to him.

So far, we’ve only seen the reasonable, still-somewhat Dex. It looks like Daredevil: Born Again season two will finally give us the utterly carefree and utterly terrifying Bullseye.

Daredevil: Born Again season two premieres on Disney+ on March 24, 2026.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Showrunners Break Down That Season Finale Trial

The following contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season finale.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy wrapped up its first season with a finale that’s epic in scope: The fate of the Federation is at stake, trillions of lives are at risk, and the students have to pull off some crazy science to save the day. But at its heart, its story is a deeply human one, as the show finally reckons with the event that started it all back in the series pilot: The arrest and sentencing of Caleb Mir’s mother, Anisha, which irrevocably shaped the rest of his life.

Like many episodes before it, the centerpiece of “Rubincon” is a trial. Granted, it’s not exactly a proper legal proceeding, both its participants are being held hostage, and it’s all being broadcast across the quadrant as an act of vengeance on everyone involved. But, thematically speaking, its scope is no less impactful, as the hour wrestles with the idea of what the Federation itself is meant to be and do through an interrogation of the conditions that gave rise to both Anisha’s arrest and the radicalization of space pirate Nus Braka.

“Obviously, Trek has a great history of amazing trial episodes,” showrunner Alex Kurtzman tells Den of Geek. “But in order to do that, you have to have a very complex situation that has to be dissected from multiple points of view. And the question that the show raises in the premiere, which is, was it the right thing that the Federation did with this mother and her child, gets really analyzed here.” 

Given all the youthful hijinks and coming-of-age milestones for the show’s cadets in this first season, it’s easy to forget that Starfleet Academy is also about the rebirth of an institution. In the aftermath of the Burn, much of what we understood the Federation to be collapsed. Starfleet Academy, as we once knew it, ceased to exist, and this season features the first class to matriculate as students in over a century. But in addition to the relaunch of the titular Academy, the show is also about the reconstruction of the Federation itself, as isolated former member worlds rejoin its ranks, and everyone must reckon with the choices they made in the years following the disaster.

“I think that some of the best Star Trek episodes do put the Federation itself on trial. And that’s what we did,” Kurtzman says. “And I think that the moral of the story ultimately is that there is no black and white. There’s always gray. Life is gray. And if you do not evolve as things evolve, you will get left [behind] as part of something that feels antiquated and incorrect. And, from a governance point of view, you may end up making massive mistakes that hurt a lot of people. So the question is: what of our institutions do we hold onto and what needs to change, in order for us [and our institutions] to grow?”

In “Rubincon,” that conflict is most clearly represented by the confrontation between Anisha Mir and Chancellor Ake, one who has been a victim of the Federation failing to live up to its promises, and one who sees its potential to change and meet the moment the galaxy finds itself in. The finale is remarkably even-handed in its presentation of both Anisha and Ake’s failures — one, despite her intentions, was part of a robbery that killed a man; the other quit Starfleet rather than push the organization to show mercy to desperate citizens — and the ways those choices have unintentionally played out in Caleb’s life. But Starfleet Academy is just as willing to give the same kind of interpretive grace to its villain, a man threatening to kill trillions but whose reasons are, at least in his own mind, justified ones.

“In the spirit of the villain is the hero of their own story, I think for us, villains who are just mustache-wirly and one-sided and one-dimensional are not interesting at all,” Kurtzman says.
And when you have an actor of Paul [Giamatti’s]’s caliber, you owe him and the audience a role that’s rich and deep and meaningful. And part of what I think was very interesting for us was writing Nus from a perspective of understanding, finally getting to hear where he came from. Now, you may not agree with what he did about it, but you can certainly understand that he suffered the same kinds of traumas that everyone else did, and they were extreme.”

This narrative complexity is reflected throughout the episode: Anisha blames Nahla for her separation from her son. Nahla blames herself (for Anisha’s imprisonment, among many other things). And Braka, for his part, has internalized a childhood memory to frame the Federation as the source of his people’s woes, rather than his own father.

“You’re not supposed to root for either of them, you’re supposed to root for both of them,” co-showrunner Noga Landau says when asked about the courtroom-style face-off at the heart of this episode. “You’re even supposed to root for Nus Braka in a way.  I think every generation of Star Trek has to counteract something out there in the current ethos that is not helpful to humanity.

“It used to be, with Gene Roddenberry at the very beginning, what he, among many other things, had to counteract was the idea that you couldn’t have a diverse workplace, you couldn’t have women in the workplace, you couldn’t have people of color in the workplace. And he did an incredible job of showing us that you can, it’s fine, that people of all different origins and backgrounds are going to work just fine with each other, and they’re going to stand up for each other. That was very important. And every generation of Trek has done something successive like that.”

For Starfleet Academy’s showrunners, it was important to confront similar issues facing modern audiences, which – as we’ve seen in the ongoing debate around the show’s existence this season – can occasionally need a reminder that everyone, whether they’re designated a hero, a villain, or somewhere in between, is on their own journey.

“I think that one thing that the world needs a little bit more of right now is a reminder that there are no perfect bad guys and there are no perfect good guys,” Landau continues. “And that instead, it’s people who are often forced into very tricky situations who have to oppose each other, and each party is the hero of its own movie. And Nus Braka, though for all of his brutality and for everything that he did, the point is to look at and understand why he did it. Same thing with Anisha, and frankly, same thing with Nahla.”

Like so many stories in Star Trek, “Rubincon” is ultimately a tale that’s rich in shades of grey, about characters who are repeatedly asked to both encourage their better angels and face their worst demons.

“The difference is ultimately who wins the day. It’s the person who’s willing to be accountable and the person who is willing to stand up to the rigors of a trial. And what’s proven by the end of the episode is that in this case, the person who can stand up to the rigors of a trial herself and see her institution and belief system on trial for what’s happened is Nahla, and it is Starfleet. Nus Braka is not able to stand up to it because he’s unwilling to be accountable. He’s unwilling to bend in any way against his own core beliefs. So that was an important story to tell, because I think that people logging onto social media nowadays need a reminder — a gentle reminder — of nuance.”

All 10 episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are available to stream on Paramount+ now.

Disclosure Day Trailer: Steven Spielberg Brings ’90s Paranoia into 2026

The most important words in the latest trailer for Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day are not words at all. They are a series of clicks and grunts that emanate from the mouth of a local newscaster played by Emily Blunt, a series of clicks and grunts that mean nothing to anyone except a secretive figure played by Josh O’Connor. The second most important words are also not spoken in the trailer, but they certainly come to the mind of any ’90s TV fan watching it: “The truth is out there.”

Unlike the more opaque teaser released a few months earlier, the full trailer for Disclosure Day leans into tropes made popular by The X-Files. O’Connor appears to be a government leaker who plans to release secret information about the reality of extraterrestrial life. That decision at least coincides with Blunt’s newscaster speaking the alien language on live television, an act that catches the attention of several other characters, including a nun played by Elizabeth Marvel and a young woman played by Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson. Heck, we’ve even got Colin Firth as a tech mogul whose eyes blacken over and Colman Domingo shouting about hunger for the truth, neither of which would be unfamiliar to Mulder and Scully.

Of course, Steven Spielberg’s interest in aliens goes back to before the Clinton administration. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds are all defining films about humanity’s relationship to life on other planets. The same could be said of the paranoia driving the Disclosure Day trailer, as everything from the decrees of the mayor from Jaws and the final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Minority Report and even The Post all show how the government hides secrets from the populace.

Yet, there’s no denying that Disclosure Day feels distinctly 1990s, which makes one wonder why it’s coming out now, when the government’s promise to release information about UFOs barely raises an eyebrow. We have so many more pressing and terrestrial concerns to deal with that, frankly, alien overlords seem like an improvement to our current condition.

Perhaps that throwback quality only makes Disclosure Day more appealing. Where The X-Files originally came from an era when the U.S. was enjoying so much peace and prosperity that we had to make up new enemies to fear, Disclosure Day arrives when the problems facing us are too real and too present, that fantasies about a distant threat provide some much-needed comfort.

At the very least, we can be assured that Disclosure Day will provide the awe and wonder he always does so well, as demonstrated by the trailer’s shots of nuns looking astonished and a little girl surrounded by forest animals. Whatever else Disclosure Day will do, it will for sure confirm one enduring and indisputable cinematic truth: that Steven Spielberg is really, really good at making movies.

Disclosure Day comes to theaters on June 12, 2026.

The Oscars Are About This Year, Not About All-Time

In his latest article, Deadline awards columnist Pete Hammond quoted a letter from an anonymous Academy member that’s sure to upset some Oscar enthusiasts. “I haven’t seen even half of the nominated films, nor do I care to,” the member wrote, citing several justifications, including irritation with a new rule that requires voters to watch all of the nominated films and a general desire to do something else with their time.

However, the most salient justification came at the end of the letter, when the member observed, “But really, the Oscars have become pretty irrelevant. Anora? CODA? Everything Everywhere All At Once? vs The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton? Which three movies will people still be watching five years from now? It’s all about the film, not the award. Rather than watch the Awards, I’ll probably watch Singin’ In The Rain or North By Northwest or The Searchers – REAL best pictures which weren’t even nominated.”

To some, the letter reads like a tough truth made all the harder to accept at the height of Oscar discourse, just days before the awards ceremony. But instead, it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of the Oscars, a misunderstanding held by everyone from Academy members like the letter writer to the lay speculator at home. The Oscars are never truly about cementing cinema history or the greatest films of all time. They are about capturing a snapshot of movies that year, both on the screen and the surrounding milieu.

Nowhere is that point more clear than with one of the films that the letter writer cites. When CODA released in 2021, first at Sundance and various festivals and eventually on Apple TV, it received a warm reception from critics and general audiences. The story of a hearing young woman (Emilia Jones) with deaf parents and a deaf brother, CODA offered a kind, realistic look at an underrepresented community. Written and directed by Sian Heder, who based her film on the French-Belgian movie La Famille Bélier, CODA features strong performances, good cinematography, and a compelling (if sometimes clichéd) story.

Very few people would call CODA a bad movie. Yet, even four years later, very few people would call it the Best Picture of 2021, even though it beat out the likes of Dune, The Power of the Dog, King Richard, and West Side Story.

Did the Oscar voters make a mistake? The above letter writer certainly seems to think so. And it’s not much of a stretch to say that most of the other Best Picture nominees of that year are revisited and more fondly remembered than CODA. Heck, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the ceremony that bestowed the honor on CODA has more of a cultural legacy than the big winner. So the answer must be, “Yes, the Oscar voters messed up in 2022,” right?

Well, no. Because CODA was the Best Picture of 2021, as we thought about that year in cinema at the time. We were still at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2021, which particularly impacted the way we view movies. Dune, West Side Story, and even King Richard, big blockbusters with big feelings and stakes work better on a giant screen, which the majority of people weren’t willing or able to do. More traditional dramas such as Drive My Car, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, and Don’t Look Up were a bit too prickly, a bit too challenging for audiences already overburdened with the stresses of a global pandemic.

So it’s no wonder that so many voters went for a quiet, life-affirming, but still well-made drama that plays best on streaming TV. CODA reflected what people wanted out of cinema—not forever, not to stand the test of time, but right then, when they were reflecting on the past year during the spring of 2022.

The of-the-moment nature of the Oscars always results in misfires, and it’s definitely worthwhile to look back at an all-time classic being overlooked for something that has aged poorly. Yes, The Wizard of Oz is better than Gone With the Wind, everyone remembers Citizen Kane and no one remembers How Green Was My Valley, and choosing Forrest Gump instead of Pulp Fiction will look bad for the rest of time, no matter what stupid thing Quentin Tarantino will say next.

But in 1940, 1942, and 1997, voters were reflecting on the cinematic year that just ended, not on the rest of movie history. It was the right call at the time.

This Sunday night, we’ll probably learn that Academy members have once again chosen the wrong film or performer, bestowing the award on some forgettable distraction instead of a defining work. While we can, and certainly will, talk about it on Monday morning, we have to remember that the 98th annual Academy Awards don’t define what films will matter in 2026 or 2027, let alone 2075. They just reflect what the Academy considered important about movies in 2025. No less, but certainly no more.

The 98th Academy Awards will air on ABC and Hulu on at 7pm EST on Sunday, March 15, 2026.

SXSW 2026: Music Spotlight

While the big brand activations and celebrity sightings often headline at SXSW these days, the true spirit of the festival remains its dedication to global music. From packed dive bars to scenic outdoor stages, the 2026 lineup once again shows that the music portion of the festival is more about creating trends than following them.

Per usual, this year’s lineup features an eclectic mix of styles and sounds where buzz bands mingle with avant-garde IDM performance artists and mainstays of regional scenes from around the world. Whether you’re searching for the next breakout artist or want to dive into Austin’s scene by catching local favorites, the sheer number of performances and showcases can be tough to navigate. To assist you in cutting through the noise, we’ve rounded up some essential artists and must-see acts that are guaranteed to define the conversation this year at SXSW 2026.

BigXthaPlug 

If you’re a country fan, you’ve probably already encountered your favorite artists collaborating with Dallas MC BigXthaPlug, a former NFL hopeful who has left Southern trap behind to fully lean into the growing country-rap boom. With cosigns from Jelly Roll, Luke Combs, and Post Malone, the booming baritone rapper can both rave up and weave narratives about past mistakes with gravitas and grace. You can even count Beyoncé as a fan; she’s used the fellow Texan’s music during interludes on her Cowboy Carter Tour.  

Whitelands 

The surging London shoegaze band Whitelands—featuring Etienne Quartey-Papafio (vocals/guitar), Jagun Meseorisa (drums), Vanessa Govinden (bass), and Michael Adelaja (guitar)—pulls from the dreamy side of the subgenre, utilizing warm textures, jangly, swirling guitars, and a tight rhythm section. Unlike many of their peers, Quartey-Papafio’s vocals are front and center, unafraid to shine. The band is also fearless in its lyrical content, tackling themes of racial inequality and imperialism. Comfortably flirting with pop hooks while valiantly pushing past mere aesthetics, Whitelands appears to be the true torchbearer for its legendary label Sonic Cathedral.

Nezza

Spanglish pop singer and Bay Area native Nezza went viral last summer after performing the Spanish version of the U.S. National Anthem (“El Pendón Estrellado”) at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game to protest the disruptive presence of ICE in the city. The moment of dissent brought attention to her Y2K-inspired single “Classy,” a breezy self-empowerment jam that conjures memories of “Fergalicious.” A former backup dancer for Zendaya and Selena Gomez, Nezza’s bilingual bops always feel particularly danceable. It’s only a matter of time before Nezza is selling out Dodger Stadium on her own. 

buffalo_farm 

Reportedly “born from a nightmare and forged into a dream,” Austin’s buffalo_farm is a one-man trap-metal project that sounds like a logical mutation of nu metal mayhem. Distorted, screamy vocals, glitchy drums, blown-out bass, and horror movie aesthetics define the masked buffalo_farm. The enigmatic artist garnered a loyal following by touring with like-minded artists, such as TX2, and gaming social media, all while eschewing traditional media pathways. Praised for their gritty, bloodletting performances, they’re a sight to behold at this year’s festival.

Frankfurt Helmet

Frequently cited as the future of Chinese electronic music, IDM (intelligent dance music) transmedia group Frankfurt Helmet features renowned Wuhan drummer Hu Juan, formerly of the influential post-punk band AV Okubo, and philosophy PhD, guitarist, and modular synth wizard, Da Fei. The duo treats their project as a multi-sensory art form, designed to be as much a mental experience as a sonic one, combining avant-garde, ambient soundscapes with high-concept visuals and installation art. Their brainy club music will have you entranced.

Spacestation

Nordic post-punk indie rock band Spacestation are stars in their hometown of Reykjavík, ready to conquer the U.S. Creating a recognizable fusion of noisy effects, delayed guitars, and Krautrock-influenced grooves, they would have fit right in with Interpol, She Wants Revenge, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club during the early 2000s garage rock revival. Playing shows in the U.S. for the first time, be sure to catch their high-energy live set.

runo plum

Queer Minneapolis singer-songwriter runo plum creates lush, intimate indie rock-leaning songs that evoke images of snow-blanketed forests, appropriate given plum’s upbringing in rural northern Minnesota. With an angelic voice and a background studying jazz, her deceptively simple-sounding music packs an emotional wallop. Plum often incorporates environmental sounds into her mix, like rustling trees or bird calls, creating an immersive, woodsy vibe. When she does let the guitars turn up, like on the transcendent “Lemon Garden,” the earthiness of plum’s work lifts off into the atmosphere.

ultra caro 

French-born, London-based experimental pop artist ultra caro is in a new era. Formerly known as caro♡, this lead singer of PC Music’s trailblazing neo-shoegaze band Planet 1999 has become a post-hyperpop mastermind, blending dreamy, ethereal synthpop with beautifully processed vocals that sound deeply human despite the futuristic sheen. 2025’s moonlight diaries is an appropriately titled, hypnotic collection of exquisitely detailed, shimmering pop that sounds like late-night longing after the club closes.

OOZ

A supergroup of the underground Toronto hardcore scene, featuring members of Hot Garbage, Possum, and Kali Horse, OOZ is bringing the noise and abrasive griminess to SXSW. With heavy distortion, blast beats, and an improvisational quality to their breakdowns, OOZ twitches and thrashes with the best of them, and co-vocalist Sam Maloney has an infectious energy and indignant swagger that takes tracks like the punishing “Meddle” to spellbinding heights.

Fine

Fine is the solo project of Copenhagen composer/producer Fine Glindvad Jensen. Her surreal, reverb-soaked music borrows from country, folk, trip-hop, and pop, and sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place being performed at the Bang Bang Bar in Twin Peaks. Jensen co-wrote three songs on NewJeans’ EP Get Up, so it’s no surprise her music is sneakily hooky. Hazy and ageless-sounding, Fine’s sound is supremely cool, and her torch songs evoke images of woozily dancing alone with a bottle of wine, smiling through the tears. 

Bayonne 

Last but certainly not least, Austin’s own Bayonne is the moniker of indie electronica savant Roger Sellers. Ten years into a prolific career, Bayonne deploys loops, cooing falsetto vocals, and majestic piano stabs to deliver arena-ready, indie-pop anthems. Mesmerizing repetition and eddying instrumentation combined with raw introspection on 2023’s Temporary Time, which channeled the loss of Sellers’ father into the most beautiful, successful music in Bayonne’s discography. Bayonne’s mesmeric, boundary-pushing live shows are sure to be a highlight of this year’s festival.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season Finale Review — Rubincon

The following contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy finale.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy wraps up its first season with a finale that’s predictably grand in scope: The future of the Federation is at stake, multiple lives are at risk, and Caleb is forced to face some uncomfortable choices about the two halves of himself that have been at war for most of the season. There’s a prodigious amount of technobabble, a last-second save (because of course there is), and some important lessons about found family and community. It is, in short, peak Star Trek, and while it’s certainly possible to argue that its ending is more than a little pat, it’s also satisfying in the way that this franchise always is. An affirmation, if you will, that the good guys win in the end, not because they’re good, but because they’re willing to be accountable in ways that the bad guys are not.

Star Trek is largely so compelling simply because we want to believe in it. Not because of the cool technology or colorful aliens or strange, far-off worlds in distant galaxies, but because it’s aspirational. A linchpin of its entire existence is the idea that when we get down to it, we can still choose to be better today than we were yesterday. Sure, Chancellor Ake, the Federation, humanity writ large, have all made mistakes. But we aren’t bound forever by them, and it’s possible to both recognize when we’ve done wrong and try to mend it. That is, in a large sense, a lot of what’s at work in this episode, which sets a lot of its characters on something like a path toward healing, 

Picking up where last week’s cliffhanger left off, Captain Ake, Anisha Mir, Reno, the Doctor, and six cadets are all the Federation forces that remain outside the massive ring of Omega-47 mines. They’re almost immediately intercepted by Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka, Anisha and Nahla are taken prisoner, and everyone else is left behind to die aboard the crippled Athena. Thanks to some crafty planning, a thousand-year-old training program, and the Doctor inserting himself into the ship’s mainframe, this crisis is almost immediately averted. But the skeleton crew of students is forced to take the world’s most literal final exam, working to solve the problem of how to take down Braka’s minefield without devastating the galaxy in the process. 

Predictably, this involves a lot of ridiculous technobabble and other vaguely scientific-sounding nonsense, involving everything from Sam cracking a complex chemical algorithm to stabilize the compound to Tarima using her emotional connection with Caleb to essentially follow his feelings to where his mother is being kept. It’s all kind of ridiculous from a “should this be possible” perspective, but emotionally, it hits all the necessary beats to show us just how far these kids have come this year. 

Like so many Star Trek episodes before it, “Rubincon” also revolves around a trial. In it, Nahla Ake, and through her, the Federation, is prosecuted by Nus Braka for the sins of the Burn, for both the broad choices that were made in its wake (who was given help and who wasn’t) and the specific decisions in the time that followed that saw women like Anisha swallowed up by a system that didn’t always live up to the ideals it so (loudly) espoused. The heart of the episode isn’t in the collective fight against Braka, or even the kids getting their respective chances to step up at various points throughout the area. It’s in the ridiculously gutted set of the Academy itself that’s on fire for some reason, as Anisha and Ake finally have a confrontation that has been building for over a decade.

It’s about Caleb, of course — the woman who lost him versus the woman who found him and the specter of lost years in between that hovers them both — but also it isn’t. It’s about the Federation, sort of, but also really about responsibility and accountability, both in what we owe to one another and what we owe to ourselves. “Rubincon” is remarkably even-handed in its presentation of both Ake and Anisha’s failures, the choices they’ve made, the regrets they carry, and the ways they’ve chosen to frame their actions to center themselves as doing things for the right reason. It’s an hour that lets neither woman off the hook, yet simultaneously doesn’t condemn either. Every villain, after all, is the hero of their own story, and it follows that everyone who thinks they’re the good guy is too, even when the truth sits firmly in shades of grey. 

Hunter both commands and conveys immense sympathy throughout, largely through little more than shifts in facial expressions. Nahla Ake is not a particularly demonstrative or even emotionally expressive woman, but Hunter somehow makes her eyes seem ancient, full of competing griefs all snarled together. Maslany gets the showier part, allowed to rage and scream in a way that Hunter is not, yet both feel equally matched against each other in terms of both emotion and argument. 

Even Braka himself is given some unexpected humanity, his story of growing up on a starving mining colony doing a lot to explain, if certainly not excuse, his hatred for the institution he views as having personally left his people behind. Unfortunately, we don’t really have time to dig back into his over-the-top hate for Ake herself. Instead, she’s more of a convenient stand-in for the Federation writ large, as she’s old enough to have been alive before the Burn and the devastation that came after. (And, to be fair, perhaps that’s always been the case, but they certainly felt more immediate and personal back in “Come, Let’s Away”.) At any rate, the lesson here is something along the lines of everyone carries their own tragedy, and it’s how you allow it to shape you that matters. 

Thankfully, by the end of the hour, the kids really are alright. Caleb’s speech in the wake of Ake’s guilty verdict buys everyone enough time for Sam and the Athena to take down the wall of mines encircling Federation space, the cavalry quite literally arrives, Braka’s arrested, and all is well. Sam and Genesis have patched things up, Tarima has embraced her abilities, and the Doctor’s garbled demeanor is put right again. More importantly, perhaps, Caleb has finally understood that he doesn’t have to abandon who he once was in order to fully embrace who he is now — he’s allowed to love both his mothers, so to speak, by choosing himself and the larger world he’s made at the Academy. Ake and Anisha seem to have reached a detente of sorts, and Caleb’s off on a summer adventure during the break between school years. It’s a happy ending because this is Star Trek, but it’s one that comes with a real sense of growth and accomplishment for almost every character on the series’s canvas. Top marks, all around. 

Bring on sophomore year. 

Unsevered: Adam Scott Talks Hokum Horror, Severance’s Success, and Wanting to Host SNL

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

Severance star Adam Scott takes a detail-oriented approach to his showbiz career—right down to the very name he pursues it under. 

Eager to stand out as a “serious actor” in the vein of Robert De Niro or Al Pacino, a young Scott once considered changing his relatively common surname to the more flowery “Quardero,” a shortened version of his mother’s Sicilian maiden name “Quartararo.” He ultimately opted against the rebrand and embarked on an acting career successful enough to condemn all other Adam Scotts to “for other uses, see Adam Scott (disambiguation)” status on Wikipedia. 

Still, when Scott sits down with us to discuss the success of his hit Apple TV sci-fi series Severance, a starring role in upcoming SXSW midnighter Hokum, and his career at large, we ask him to consider a “sliding doors” scenario in which the first moniker stuck.

“I wonder what Adam Quardero would be doing right now,” he muses. “Hopefully, the exact same thing… except everyone would always be asking him how to pronounce his name.”

Indeed, Adam Quardero would be immensely fortunate to have Adam Scott’s career. After getting his start as high school bully Griff Hawkins on coming-of-age sitcom Boy Meets World, Scott transitioned into the world of comedy: appearing as the douchey Derek Huff in the film Adam McKay’s Step Brothers, struggling as actor-turned-caterer Henry Pollard in Starz’s comedy Party Down, and former boy mayor, Ben Wyatt, in NBC’s Parks and Recreation. 

But it was the premiere of the Dan Erickson-created, Ben Stiller-directed Severance, in 2022, that elevated Scott to dramatic leading man status. Over two critically and culturally acclaimed seasons, Scott has embodied Mark Scout, a Lumon Industries employee who has undergone the “severance” procedure to bifurcate his consciousness between his work life and home life. 

Now, between seasons at Apple, Scott is set to dip his toe into the world of horror (he appeared in Krampus and Piranha 3D back in the day), starring in Irish auteur Damian McCarthy’s latest feature, Hokum. The project takes Scott’s troubled novelist character, Ohm Bauman, to a honeymoon suite in a remote Irish inn where he’ll encounter all manner of…well, hokum. 

What intrigued you about Hokum as a project? 

I love Damian and I loved Oddity. That movie burrowed itself in, in ways that we’re not seeing much currently in horror or suspense. It’s an incredibly patient movie and entirely character-driven. The script [for Hokum] itself was super interesting, and I liked that the lead character wasn’t asking for any sort of sympathy or forgiveness. In fact, quite the opposite. You get to kind of go through it with him and learn along the way why he is that particular way.

Much of Hokum is fairly claustrophobic for your character and presents a lot of upsetting imagery. I know it’s a job, and you’re just “playing pretend,” but was there any element on set that was genuinely horrifying to you?

It was more or less one large room we were working in. It’s dark in the film, and it was literally dark when we were in there making it. It was pretty clear that this was going to be unsettling. I thought the witch was frightening. To see her kind of go in and start running around is genuinely unsettling. 

But more than anything, it was exciting to see what would be frightening. I knew that this was going to be effective because the set was so beautifully made. Damian had his eye on every single detail, down to those little guys that strike the bells on the clock, and the unsettling expressions on their faces. As an actor, since your control is limited, you never know really how something is going to turn out at the end of the day. Having so much faith in Damian and seeing all the components they put together on set, I knew there was a chance that this could work.

Are you usually drawn to horror? I believe your first major movie role was actually in Hellraiser: Bloodline, right?

It was, yeah. And I’ve been in a few horror movies over the years, but I’m not particularly drawn to them as an actor more so than any other genre. As an audience member, I do like horror movies, but it all depends on whether they actually frighten me or not. If I’m gonna see one, I want it to be something that really, really freaks me out. Hereditary was a perfect example of that, or The Strangers—movies that really pinpoint these nightmarish scenarios and then don’t look away. I’m not there to just see the most imaginative kills (which I also enjoy). I like them in the context of something that’s really working, character- and story-wise.

What does your work life look like between seasons of Severance? It seems as though you’ve kept very busy this year with Hokum, The Saviors, which is also premiering at SXSW, and the upcoming crime thriller, The Whisper Man, with Robert De Niro.

Severance is something we’re always discussing and getting ready for, which is what we’re doing right now, actually. I like working, and I enjoy being busy. My wife and I have a [production] company we run together, so when I’m not acting in something, we’re busy developing a lot of TV and movie stuff. We have an office that we go to; it’s like an actual job. 

It’s great because I never want to go back to my early years of sitting in my apartment twiddling my thumbs, never knowing where that next job is going to come from. Every actor who started out from nothing has that in the back of their head as the thing they never want to go back and touch again. 

How has Severance changed the way that people interact with you? It’s a very popular show that invites a lot of interpretations and feelings, and you’re the lead of it. 

It’s funny, because I was in the States for the first two episodes [of Severance season two] and then I went off and made Hokum in Ireland. When I came back, right when the finale aired, I could tell Severance had really broadened out. People usually recognize me from Parks and Rec or Step Brothers. You get to know the pockets of people that come up and say hello, which is always really nice. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the demographics that I’m used to; it was everyone. 

The show has really reached out and grabbed a lot of people, which is terrific. But it was certainly an adjustment. We kind of all collectively stopped and took a breath in London once when we were in the midst of the press over there. We all looked at each other and were like, “Holy shit, this is crazy.” It’s exactly what you want when you work as hard as we do. You want as many people as possible to see it. 

What was your hardest day on set for Severance so far? [Director] Ben Stiller has you running around a lot!

Probably the fight that I have with Mr. Drummond in the [season two] finale. Darri [Ólafur Darri Ólafsson] and I really went for it because it was fun, and we had a blast choreographing it with the stunt team. It was completely my fault, but as Darri was swinging me around into the wall, I didn’t get my arm up in time to absorb the slam. I hit it head-first and got a bit of a concussion. That was probably the hardest day, but the whole thing was challenging. We were exhausted by the end of it. For me, “challenging” isn’t negative. I love things that look impossible at first. That’s often what Severance is. 

Are there any lessons that come to mind from playing Ben Wyatt on Parks and Recreation? I imagine learning experiences abound on the set of a well-executed sitcom like that. 

[Creator] Mike Schur is a master of storytelling. It sounds like I’m talking about [screenwriting guru] Robert McKee. I would love it if that comparison stayed with him because he stapled calzones onto me for life. He and the writers had this economic way of telling a story that was able to squeeze into 22 minutes every week and not take any shortcuts, so you never felt short-shrifted. 

There was this trick that Mike taught me early on, and I think of it constantly when I’m working on something. In any successfully written TV show (and some movies), you should be able to take all of the characters’ names off any page of the script and know exactly who is saying what. If you’ve drawn these characters properly, like in Cheers or Golden Girls, or any of these great comedies or dramas, that is what you’re trying to achieve. That’s one of the many lessons I learned over there that I’ll never forget. 

I’ve always found your Starz comedy Party Down to be an oddly resonant viewing experience. Because at the end of the day, it’s a series about young actors trying to make it in Hollywood—who are all played by young actors trying to make it in Hollywood. What emotions are associated with that show for you?

It was a really special time. A lot of us were in a similar position to the characters, so not in the midst of these flourishing, incredible careers. We were all lucky to be there and felt a bit like outsiders in showbiz. We found each other on this show and didn’t quite know if it would work or what it would be. At the time, Starz wasn’t making TV shows, so we weren’t even sure who was going to see this.

It really came together in the “Singles Seminar” episode. That is when we all really locked in. We looked at each other and were like, “Oh, this is great. This is fun, and who cares if anyone sees it? This is about each other; defining ourselves for ourselves. It’s the most fun we’ve ever had.” We all really just started making the show for each other. 

I think it’s important to have moments like that in any business, but particularly in show business where you’re always perceiving yourself or being forced to perceive yourself according to how others perceive you. When you start finding yourself with a group of people, you come to realize it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Your self-worth changes.

Do you think doing Step Brothers added a lot to your comedic toolbox? There are still certain “Derek from Step Brothers” moves I can see in your work to this day, even the dramatic stuff.

I didn’t even really have a comedic toolbox at that point. It was before Party Down, and I hadn’t had the opportunity to be in a big comedy like that. Getting that role was a bit of a fluke. When I got there, I didn’t totally know what I was doing; I had to learn on the job. But I slowly came to realize that I never wanted to go back to anything else. This is where it was at. Seeing how [director Adam] McKay and Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly work, by the time it ended, I felt like I had figured it out a little bit. I realized this was what I wanted to do. That was an incredibly instructive moment. 

Is there a role in your career that you look back on particularly fondly that doesn’t often come up in interviews like this? 

Something that was a huge deal for me and sort of changed the way I perceived myself was a movie called The Vicious Kind. This really talented writer-director, Lee Krieger, cast me in his movie, and I didn’t even know why. I had just finished shooting Step Brothers, but it hadn’t even come out yet. Then I got the lead role of this little indie, and I loved making it. It was a really emotional role and it had everything I always wanted to do in movies. 

When it was done, I was like, “Oh God, I wonder if this is going to be embarrassing.” I remember inviting everyone in the Party Down cast and sitting down to watch it with everybody and realizing, “Wait, I think this might actually be good. I might have pulled this off.” That really changed everything. That period of time had me doing The Vicious Kind, Step Brothers came out, Party Down was out there, and I had just gotten the Parks and Rec job. That was when an actual career came together and solidified. 

Your name tends to come up frequently when the internet comments on people who have not yet hosted Saturday Night Live but should. Would you be interested? 

Of course! The funny thing is, people often think that I already have. It’s probably because of the people I’ve worked with or am friends with, and they just assume that I’ve hosted SNL. But yes, I would love to, of course. 

I think you have a good sense for men’s fashion. You attended the InStyle Imagemaker Awards last year and Comedy Bang! Bang!’s Scott Aukerman once said you were the only person he knew who owned a tux. Who taught you to tie a tie so cleanly and snugly?

YouTube, honestly. I’m sure my dad taught me a long time ago, but I remember needing to tie a tie, and it had been 15 years since I had. I learned a few different knots on YouTube, and they made it pretty easy. You could do a double Windsor or whatever, but I like a smaller, tighter knot. You see a lot of Wall Street guys with this big fat triangle at the top. Or a lot of the MAGA politicians have that big knot, like [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth. It’s a pet peeve of mine, seeing people on television with sloppily tied ties. I’m like, “Did no one see that that thing is about to come loose? You just gotta give it a tug, and it will look 70 percent better!” 

I assume that you consented to this interview because you fondly remember talking to Den of Geek back in 2017 for a magazine feature about your Fox sitcom Ghosted. How does it feel to return to the pages of Den of Geek magazine, and more importantly, should Ghosted be rebooted?

It feels great! [Laughs] First of all. And should Ghosted be rebooted? Absolutely. I think it should be rebooted every year. It should be a national holiday every time they reboot it. That goes without saying.

Hokum premieres on May 1 nationwide.

The MCU Must Use This X-Men Story to Guide Their Adaptation

The X-Men are coming to the MCU. Mutants have long been the most significant missing piece that the big screen shared universe has yet to bring over from the comics. A lot has happened to set up the X-Men, including Disney acquiring former rights holders 20th Century Fox, reshaping Ms. Marvel into a mutant, and putting Deadpool and Wolverine into alternate-reality MCU films. The studio has even announced that Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier will helm the mutants’ first entry.

But outside of that, we have no idea how the X-Men will appear in the MCU. Worse, the X-Men have a long and (appropriately) evolving history in the comics, which means that there’s no one definitive story to guide Schreier and his screenwriter Michael Lesslie.

Yet, the comics aren’t without options. The 2011 graphic novel X-Men: Season One by writer Dennis Hopeless and Jamie McKelvie provides the clearest introduction to the team, retelling the 1960s stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby through a modern lens.

A Mutating Legacy

Who are the X-Men? That question is surprisingly hard to answer, even for hardcore comic book readers. The basic premise describes the X-Men as a team of mutants—people born with incredible powers—who fight to protect a world that hates and fears them. But the line-up is harder to pin down. Wolverine and Storm have to be members, right? What about Gambit and Rogue? Younger fans might insist that Kamala Khan and Namor be on the team.

When they began back in 1963, the X-Men consisted of five teenagers, all brought to study at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, operated by Charles Xavier aka Professor X. Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, Iceman, and Angel all wore matching blue and yellow uniforms and fought one-note baddies like Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and the Vanisher.

Famously, those Silver Age X-Men comics were among the weakest of Lee and Kirby’s offerings, and the series only got marginally better when writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams came aboard, adding Banshee, Havok, and Polaris to the roster. The X-Men truly became the X-Men with 1974’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, written by Len Wein and penciled by Dave Cockrum, and with Chris Claremont writing the main book shortly thereafter. That period added or introduced Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler to the roster, leading to great and oft-adapted stories such as The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past.

So important is that era that it’s easy to disregard the first X-Men stories. Normally, it’s fine to pick and choose, but ignoring the earliest days of the X-Men presents challenges to those who want to adapt them for other media. That’s where X-Men: Season One comes in.

Meeting the Mutants

Anyone glancing at a synopsis of X-Men: Season One would see little difference between the graphic novel and the first few issues of the original series from 1963. It begins with new student Jean Grey coming to Xavier’s school, meeting the firm but supportive headmaster and making friends with her oddball new classmates before being forced to join them in stopping the mutant terrorist Magneto from launching nuclear weapons against the humans. Shortly thereafter, she encounters other villains, including the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Unus the Untouchable, the man with the power to not be touched.

Goofy as all these concepts are, Hopeless and McKelvie ground them in emotion that feels real. As a teen who wants nothing more than to be normal, Jean at first resents her parents sending her to a boarding school instead of getting to finish her education at her regular high school. She gets swept away by the rich and charming Warren Worthington III aka Angel, she gets annoyed by the juvenile Bobby Drake aka Iceman, and she makes fast friends with the exuberant and brilliant Hank McCoy aka Beast. Jean doesn’t know what to make of the serious and awkward Scott Summers, who wants so badly to be the great leader Cyclops and believes earnestly in Xavier’s dream, but doesn’t know if he can pull it off.

The framing above makes it sound like Season One uses Jean as an accessory to the men around her, which would be very much in line with the uncharitable way Lee wrote the characters in the Sixties. But Hopeless and McKelvie make Jean very much her own person, and let her perspective and desires drive the way she interacts with her classmate.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the book’s romance arc. Almost immediately after entering the Xavier Mansion, she gets knocked over by Cyclops, who freezes while lying on top of her. Jean defuses the situation by making a joke, which only freaks out Cyclops more, sending him running from the room in embarrassment. Conversely, Angel gives her a proper greeting and introduces her to the others, doing his best to make her feel comfortable.

Jean is immediately attracted to the confident and handsome Angel, even more so when he removes his shirt to prepare for their first training session and reveals both his chiseled physique and his incredible wings. Those feelings only increase when Angel shares his insecurities with her, drawing attention to anti-mutant bigotry that she, as an outwardly “normal” attractive young woman, doesn’t experience.

Yet, when Angel fails to return her affections, Jean finds herself more drawn to the serious Cyclops. Her attraction to him stems less from initial good looks and what others would expect a pretty girl to like and more from how she sees herself. Cyclops cares about things, and Jean also wants to be someone passionate about a cause. She chooses Cyclops because he matches her goals and needs.

Through Jean’s arc and maturity, we’re brought into the larger world of the X-Men. As she learns about the bigotry facing mutants, we understand how people would love the Avengers and the Fantastic Four but hate the X-Men. As she develops her abilities, we understand how the X-Men are different from other superheroes. And as she bonds with her teammates, we see what binds the X-Men together.

To Screens, My X-Men!

Although much of the MCU’s future is currently muddied by leaker speculation and only drips of information, it seems likely that the team won’t properly appear until sometime after Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027. However, it also seems likely that we’ll get to see our first proper X-Man later this year, as Sadie Sink is heavily rumored to play Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

If Brand New Day is indeed Jean Grey’s first day in the MCU, then X-Men: Season One makes even more sense as the perfect story to adapt. Through Sink as Grey, the average viewer can finally understand how the X-Men can be feared and hated in a world filled with superheroes, and—even better—understand why the X-Men are one of comics’ most enduring and important franchises.

X-Men: Season One is available on Marvel Unlimited.

Five Lessons the CW Arrowverse Can Teach James Gunn’s DCU

Fans of live-action DC Comics properties are feeling pretty good right now. Superman was one of the most critically loved and financially successful films of 2025. Peacemaker and Creature Commandos brought obscure weirdos to the masses, and Jason Momoa is playing Lobo in an upcoming Supergirl movie. But even those who didn’t love Zack Snyder‘s take have to admit that DC was doing well, thanks to the success of the Arrowverse on the CW Network. In fact, the Arrowverse was so entertaining that it should not be forgotten as James Gunn and Peter Safran continue building their new universe.

Now, to be clear, this article does not contend that the Gunn DCU is doing anything wrong (well, it would be nice to have some green in a Green Lantern show…). But as we embrace the new, big-budget world of the DCU, we shouldn’t forget how Greg Berlanti and his co-creators created an entire superhero universe on television for teens.

Be Silly

For a franchise that began by turning a guy who dresses up like Robin Hood and yells about fat cats into a brooding Batman wannabe with great abs, the Arrowverse sure did get silly. The roots of silliness were always there, even when the first season played like a budget version of Batman Begins; how else can you explain the salmon ladder or whatever Roy Harper was doing in that flipping gif?

The Arrowverse became something special when it stopped treating its silliness like an unfortunate byproduct of the superhero genre and embraced it as a core concept. Even leaving aside the beautiful moments in which Gorilla Grodd attacks a young Obama or Beebo becomes an angry god on Legends of Tomorrow, you had Manu Bennett and John Barrowman devouring the scenery with smarm and charm on Arrow, a musical crossover between Flash and Supergirl, and Black Lightning put nearly 50-year-old Cress Williams in a goofy costume. And you know what? It was glorious every time.

Superheroes are Soap Operas

The open secret of the Marvel revolution in comics isn’t that Stan Lee had some insight into moral complexity and inner darkness that he could apply to superheroes. It’s that he spent a lot of time writing teen melodramas, and carried those same character dynamics into the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the Hulk. Superheroes and soap opera go together like capes and cowls, and the Arrowverse’s home on the CW practically required dramatic speeches and love triangles.

The DCU has no such requirement, but the Arrowverse reminded us what Lee and Chris Claremont taught us, that superheroes work best when they’re being dramatic. Superman had some wonderful smooches between Lois and Clark, and John Cena certainly didn’t mind shedding tears on Peacemaker, so hopefully this won’t be a lesson that James Gunn needs to relearn for later DCU entries.

If It’s Broke, Fix It

The first season of Legends of Tomorrow featured not one, but two Hawkpeople. Batwoman began as an even more pale imitation of Batman. The Flash failed to make either Ronnie Raymond or Jason Rusch a compelling pairing with Martin Stein.

Rather than continue to try to fit these square pegs into round holes, the Arrowverse consistently changed direction to make their shows better. Ditching the Hawkpeople (and Vandal Savage and Rip Hunter) allowed Legends to become the fun romp we love today, Javicia Leslie’s casting as Ryan Wilder freed Batwoman from its awkward Bruce Wayne connections, and adding Franz Drameh as Jax took the Firestorm concept in a direction unexplored in even the comics.

The Arrowverse understood the folly of throwing good money after bad. Granted, that’s a lot easier to do on television than in movies, but it’s an important lesson for DC Studios to keep in mind. If, for whatever reason, Supergirl doesn’t work or if people want more space opera than grounded detective work in their cosmic cop series, Gunn and Safran should take a page from Berlanti’s book and make changes when needed.

Dare to Defy (The Comics)

This writer bows to no one in his love for the Legion of Super-Heroes. So I understand the viewers who are irritated that the Imra Ardeen on Supergirl is some mix of Invisible Woman and Marvel Girl and has no resemblance to the Saturn Girl from the comics. But that’s also okay! Even when the non-comic accurate version isn’t a clear improvement—as was the case when Justice League embarrassment Vibe was reimagined as lovable nerd Cisco Ramon or the big metal nothing that was Commander Steel became charming doofus Nate—the changes made sense within the Arrowverse.

Gunn clearly loves his comic book deep cuts, and he’s shown a willingness to change from the comics when, say, Ego the Living Planet made for a better daddy story for Star-Lord than J’son of Spartax. But as he has more say over A-listers in the Justice League, Gunn should remember how the Arrowverse used comics not as scripture to be faithfully recreated but as inspiration for new stories in a new medium.

It’s About the Friends We Made Along the Way

Even a successful TV show had a TV show budget. More specifically, the Arrowverse had a B-tier TV network budget, far below the gobs of money Warner Bros allows DC Studios to use. As such, the costumes sometimes look wonky and the fight scenes (Arrow and Batwoman excluded) often looked funky. So instead of focusing on action, the Arrowverse had to focus on likable characters and interpersonal dynamics. And it worked like gangbusters.

Nothing demonstrated that better than the Arrowverse’s gigantic Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. Forget the fun cameos from Burt Ward, Kevin Conroy, and the cast of the Birds of Prey TV show. The true pleasure of the Crisis was watching all our friends get together. There was Barry with Mia and John Constantine, Black Lightning hanging out with J’onn J’onzz and Sara Lance, and so many Supermen and Flashes.

So far, the DCU entries have looked great, more than delivering on the spectacle one wants in a superhero story. But as exciting as it is to see Superman battle a kaiju or Emilia Harcourt go through multiverse doors, we really just want to see characters we like bounce off one another.