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