Unasked for advice

Unasked for advice

You’re in shock right now. Like an unexpected death or betrayal. 

Eat what you need to. No guilt about that today. 

However you feel is the right way to feel. Anyone who tells you you’re exaggerating or being overly dramatic you walk away from. 

If you can meditate, do so for 10 min.  Lots of youtube videos from Headspace and other places for that. They help to self regulate. 

Limit your time online, it’s not helping right now, it will in the future. 

Nothing can be fixed today so just take care of yourself and those you love. 

If you can play a video game or watch an old movie or tv series do so. With a new one you’ll probably lose track of the plot as your mind wanders so old ones from the past are better.

With a video game you’ll have a dopamine release for winning small victories and when you beat what seems like an impossible boss.  

Write down how you feel. Write it all down. By hand if possible. Then fold it and put it somewhere. 

Look at nature if you can for a while.  

Know that even though there’s hate in the world, you’re loved. You really are. 

Let’s get through this day after a terrible night.

Ian Boothby

Haunt Season

Haunt Season (2024) (trailer) wuld have been a nice late entry in 31 Days if I’d spotted it sooner. A horror comedy about a haunted house attraction - from the POV of the “theatre kids who never grew up” who work it. Yes, there’s a slasher involved, but until that gets going it looks pretty fun, and when it does get going everybody acts pretty sensibly after a moment of shocked disbelief.

Be surprised. Be very surprised.

I was not expecting another film fpllowing David Cronenberg’s The Fly, let alone one a decade longer after it than it was after the original.

V5 Empire 1.06

They checked on the possible victim, who is fine, but as a result might be slightly at war with the alleged killer because they questioned her intentions.

Playing a game together or just sharing a table?

The Lost Boys looks like two movies with a small crossover when the brothers are in the same scene.

Action!

After a month of horror movies, a change of pace with an action movie about...

checks notes

... organ thieves.

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World album launch concert

November

Halloween Boxing Day seems like an odd day for The Cure to release a new album, but here we are.

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.