FiveEvil

FiveEvil is live! Evil. On Kickstarter.

Heretic

Heretic (2024)

Trailer

A pair of young Mormon women go to visit someone who claims to be curious to learn more, but the avuncular Mr. Reed actually wants to teach them something.

Heretic got Halloween “previews” before a regular Friday release, so much so that the adverts on the side of buses say PREVIEWS OCT 31 with a cartoon jack o’ lantern for the O, so I saw it in the afternoon with enough of a crowd to share chuckles at the jokes. Said adverts focus entirely on Hugh Grant smirking evilly. He’s having fun in his villain era as he did in Paddington 2 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, while Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East have the less showy roles in what is largely a three-hander. They get to be smart enough to hold their own against Mr. Reed’s arguments as it moves from the living room to the also much advertised basement.

Also the first film I’ve seen to include a note that no generative AI was used in the production, which gets it a bonus point from me too.

The medium: The cinema!

Gameability: A sinister host presenting a game and a puzzle in a purpose-built “dungeon”... And at one point Mr. Reed calls someone an NPC!

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along stuck the landing.

(It also confirmed that Buffy The Vampire Slayer exists as a show in the MCU, which of course starts up a paradox as Marvel Comics exist in the Buffyverse.)

Annihilation

Annihilation (2018)

Trailer

Due to its extremely limited cinema release, Annihilation became a rare thing, a Netflix movie that has staying power. Based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, adapted and directed by Alex Garland, it stars Natalie Portman as a biologist joining a team heading into a zone affected by an unknown source of change. It’s more SF than horror, but has some gruesome moments as well as an overall grim tone. It has some striking visuals as well, although the abstract look of the climax does end up looking like an update of 1980s-90s “look what CGI can do!” animation demonstrations.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A small team goes in to investigate strange phenomena, though in this case the modern team dealing with a threat plays more Call of Cthulhu than Stargate.

Halloween

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

And when you're done, you can discard me

Like the others always do

And I will nurse my wounds until

Another artist needs me new

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

Marvel D+ 2024-5

A lot of release dates in under two minutes!

What If for Christmas. Daredevil this spring! Ironheart in the summer. Wonder Man next Christmas. The Spider-Man and Wakanda animated series as well.

Google Halloween 2024

Google Halloween Kitty Drawing Game returns, this time IN SPAAAAACE

Late Night With The Devil

31 days popout

Late Night With The Devil (2024)

Trailer

I skipped this at the cinema after learning it used Plagiarism Algorithm for station ident drawings, something it could easily edit out, but oh well.

But it’s really better suited to TV anyway, as it presents itself as a 1970s talk show. It’s not as good as Ghostwatch inevitably, but the period mix of sideburns and Satanic Panic works well. I wish the Randi-esque token sceptic hadn’t been such a dick though.

Gameability: Like the original plan for Ghostwatch as a regular drama with the live broadcast being the finale, how would modern protagonists deal with a TV crew getting in the way of a monster hunt or wanting to interview them afterwards?

Oddity

31 Days popout

Oddity (2024)

Trailer

After a creepy played-straight introduction that cuts before the key murder, the victim’s sister seeks answers, using her power of psychometry and an array of cursed items, including the heavily featured lifesize articulated wooden carving of a screaming man, which is mostly there to be weird and disturbing in a sort of funny way. And the whole film pretty much feels like that, which worked once I got on its wavelength.

(At another scare point I realised I’d seen writer and director Damian Mc Carthy’s work before, as he revisits early short Hungry Hickory that screened here at Dead By Dawn.)

With a less prominent example in Black As Night, it made an unintentional double bill featuring an uncommon development -

V5 Empire 1.05

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade, the PCs may or may not have sent a runaway victim back to a killer vampire because the possible killer’s enemy annoyed them more.

Azrael (2024)

31 Days popout

24: Azrael (2024)

Trailer

Did you know Azrael is out on Shudder after a limited US cinema run last month? I only found out by seeing it mentioned in an io9 list as Shudder itself didn’t want to tell me. Indeed, when I checked Wikipedia after confirming it was there its still listed as streaming on Shudder “at a later date”. But it’s there, honest! (At least in the U.K.)

Azrael stars Samara Weaving as a post-Rapture survivor who like many has had her vocal cords seared, including a local cult out collecting sacrifices to feed and placate the “burned people”, vampiric things living in the woods. This sets off a roaring rampage of revenge which is great fun and might have been even more fun played purely as grisly action without the possible supernatural side.

Contains at least one full helping of F YEAH.

The medium: Shudder, despite its attempts to hide it

Gameability: A story where hardly any of the characters can speak would be tricky to play in a vocal medium like RPGs, but the switch from description to lack of dialogue would stand out.

Halloween One-Shot: Sinking

An ocean research submersible descends to investigate an anomalous reading. What will the crew find, and will they get to report it?

Using the World of Darkness 5 system of escalating threat dice for a submarine in trouble, drawing on Grace Under Pressure and Grave And Watery and that genre.

Update: I got players! Four of a possible six, so I only really mauled the NPC aboard, though I ended with worrying uncertainty. They liked the rising threat dice mechanic, which I thought would work well for something like this. (Should have given them less Willpower for rerolls!)

Predator: Badlands and something more

Thanks to Dan Trachtenberg, director of Prey, two new Predator movies come along at once, one we knew and a whole other one.

Important Agatha update

“We are not cool, Teenager!”

“Damn, using his full name.”

Open letter against Plagiarism Engines

The AI training statement, open for signing.

No dinner but a show

As is traditional, we once again didn’t get to the dinner party in City of Angels. Maybe next time?

The Blair Witch Project

October 21st marks the thirtieth anniversary of the last day anyone saw film students Heather Donahue, Mike Williams or Joshua Leonard alive.

V5 Empire 1.04

The players gathered on a dark and stormy night, a week early for Halloween special...

Bram Stoker's Gibbet Hill

A Bram Stoker ghost story found and to be reprinted for charity after 134 years.

Prince Charming

Disney making a Prince Charming origin film, with Paddington 1 and 2 (and Wonka) director Paul King involved.

As someone who couldn’t find a name or origin for the Fairy Godmother and so unilaterally made her Aglaea of the Three Graces for Relics, I can hardly talk.

Besides, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

View-Master: The Motion Picture

I can imagine how a View-Master movie could work... as a jokey horror movie...

Only Murders update

I figured out the latest development largely by checking how many episodes we have left.

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition, now live on Backerkit.

Language Barriers

Inspired by Watcher (31 Days Of Horror 2024 Day 13), where a couple move to a country where only one speaks the language and it adds to the other’s isolation as she starts to worry she’s being watched, how would a language barrier complicate an adventure?

V5 Empire 1.03

Tied up the missing sire plot in three sessions rather than, say, twelve.

Not today

Half-hour-plus update for Windows 10 proved to be Copilot. To be fair, it has an easy right-click Uninstall.

Jurassic World: Dominion

31 Days Of Horror Adjacent In This Case

12: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Battle At Big Rock short film set between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, which gets to the scary part right away

The Jurassic Park and World trilogies have always been on the horror-adjacent adventure end of “monster” movies, more so than Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s adventure-adjacent horror with a big carnivore. How much horror gets in varies from film to film, but there’s always at least one “stalked by a dinosaur” scene.

And since I also watched a couple of full-fledged horror films this weekend that had nothing I felt like writing about, here we are.

That introductory short very much plays up how scary these things could be, but this particular film doesn’t, instead playing a sub Indiana Jones international adventure romp with added dinosaurs in the black market sale and roguish pilot until it inevitably gets to the enclosed area full of dinosaurs. And those bits are fine, but after the first World was a retread of Park like its own sequels I like that the World follow-ups mix in different genres.

This has the legacy sequel crossover problem of too many characters which the first two World films avoided and this one jumps straight into, but balances them... okay. The ending didn't entirely convince, after nearly six films of people being worried about dinosaurs getting out it's not really that big of a deal?

The medium: Netflix, also home to the YA animated series in case there aren’t enough kids in danger normally.

Gameability: There are RPGs and setting subsections about avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs through cloning, time travel and the like. This opens a setting so that could be a regular issue.

Salem's Lot (2022)

31 Days Of Horror

Salem’s Lot (2022)

Trailer

Apparently director Gary Dauberman handed in a three hour version, released at just over two it’s by far the shortest adaptation and loses a lot of the flavour of the town slowly falling, but the streamlining is largely fine, remixing the 1979 version in particular. Someone coming in unfamiliar with the book or the previous adaptation would get it, though might wonder why it was named after the town. I largely nodded along, and thought a couple of bits didn’t hit, but I really liked the play on the sunset race at the end.

It escaped its streaming doom here, and seeing it in the cinema probably helped with some of the little details seen only in the dark.

Gameability: Small group of regular people (in this very quickly) discovering and facing horrors in a small town. So, yes. Although Mark’s clearly playing a different game system to everyone else. (RPG fan bonus, a Vampire: The Masquerade Actual Play regular baring fangs on the big screen.)

The Thing

Kali Wallace on John Carpenter’s The Thing for Reactor’s Science Fiction Film Club. I knew the dog was creepy but this really lays out why. Also that the original review were bad, but oof.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld

Guess they finally made that animate Buffy show after all. Trailer.

Crushing

Got a tub of “spooky” sweets as it appeared to contain Skull Crushers, the skull-shaped white chocolate shells with red fondant filling from my morbid childhood, but no, these were just solid white chocolate with a dash of red colouring.

Skulls not crushed. Only I was crushed.

(Skull Crushers are still made and available by mail order but this seems a bit of an extravagance even for me.)

It's What's Inside

31 Days of Horror more or less

It’s What’s Inside (2024)

Trailer that reveals the premise that I’m spoiler-blurring and comes up quite early but it has only been out for four days

Spoilerfiic writer-director interview

Getting its own entry as it’s new to Netflix as of this weekend. Horror-adjacent as a dark comedy with an SF/F premise.

A group of more-or-less friends meet up years after their college closeness, including a tech genius who brings a game of sorts...

Halloween one-shots

I know that GEAS one-shots after Welcome Week are hit and miss, but Halloween is my hour, so.

Nothing Darkness-y for simplicity.

Not Dread as I doubt we would have a room to ourselves so crashing Jenga tower would bother other tables.

Dead Of Night for something basic? Slasher deconstruction, haunted house, zombie apocalypse, that kind of thing. Maybe the crime gone very wrong subgenre? Paranormal investigators on camera and see if it ends up as Found Footage?

(Could also use Cthulhu, EPOCH, Fear Itself, FiveEvil, mortal WoD...)

ALIEN? Eh.

Ghostbusters? Back in public consciousness, though through movies I don’t rate.

V5 Empire 1.02

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

1.02

Trying not to overcomplicate why a PC was abandoned by the vampire that turned them, as I often do.

Angel at 25

Cue the cello.

Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels premiered ten years ago today. A space adventure in the lead-up to A New Hope, with a lot of fun, the occasional hefty moral question, maybe slightly too much Force mysticism, and showed its WEG RPG influence so much that one episode adapts one of the adventures.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Well, that was thirty-six years in development and felt like two first drafts held together with unabsorbed studio notes.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, among other things, has the worst case of sequel villain bloat I’ve ever seen and I’m pretty sure it was by accident, replaces the musical stylings of Harry Belafonte with those of Richard Harris, goes to great trouble to include Charles without featuring the original actor except in stills and also writes out the Maitlands in a way so lazy it’s almost ballsy in its audacity.

I also kind of admire their commitment to the Mario Bava and Soul Train references, though would have more if they’d been in any way funny and/or a good two minutes shorter each.

Although Delia gets more to do, which is nice.

The medium: well, the cinema seat was comfy.

Gameability: About as much as the first, though I’d include a “people can find those they care about in the afterlife very conveniently” power.

Escape From New York

Science Fiction Film Club at Reactor gets to John Carpenter’s Escape From New York and as writer Kali Wallace provides context for the films here sets the dystopian cyberpunk mood with “some fun facts that are not remotely fun” about America’s actual crime rate and the national mood of the times.

31 Days Of Horror 2024

31 Days Of Horror XIV: Officially A Reimagining, Bur We Don’t Know Why

at RPGnet

Also at Bluesky

I will, as is traditional, also try to mention gameability of the films.

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Curseborne Kickstarter

Curseborne is live on Kickstarter, and I believe my pledge put it over the halfway point after eight minutes. Fully funded in thirty-two.

OCTOBER

RELEASE THE BATS