Ten Thirteen

Happy 65th birthday to Fox Mulder, and happy series order announcement for the new take on The X Files from Ryan Coogler.

The old edition is dying, and the new edition struggles to be born: now is the time of grognards.

Resident Evil (2026)

Resident Evil (2026) from co-writer and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) gives us as regular-person a view of a zombie apocalypse as Shaun Of The Dead, as medical courier and mostly good person Bryan (Austin Abrams) tries to get something important to a city being taken over by a mutagenic virus. He notably lacks the not-SWAT training of the original game heroes or the super-soldier-y of the previous film series hero Alice, so he makes mostly understandable decisions, humane as well as sensible ones, and gets into all sorts of the trouble as a result.

It escalates rather than taking swings with twists like Cregger’s previous films, stays close to Bryan’s perspective and sometimes his direct POV, and the first zombie is a great reminder of just how scary one zombie can be, especially when you don’t have the relevant context.

It mostly lifts monsters from the game rather than gameplay, though there is a (quite reasonable) search for ammo and a recurring gag about padlocks.

Heavy on the splatstick and other humour, I had a lot of fun with it, and I can see why people are saying Cregger would make a good non-serious Evil Dead movie, even without the bit where Bryan’s in a rustic cabin and the camera swings around for a closeup of a shotgun.

Only two really horrific moments, involving children, and those both land on a gag as well.

And I can include this in 31 Days Of Horror, somewhere.

The medium: The cinema!

Gameability: Yes.

Send Help (2026)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 10 is “Trouble In Paradise” which could be about relationship difficulties but is a bit much three days after Bloody Bride, or considering horror could also be about a war on heaven. Or, hey, bad things happening (and interpersonal issues) on a remote tropical island:

Send Help (2026)

Trailer

Brilliant but slovenly company cog Linda is passed up for a promised promotion by the former CEO by his son and heir, he reluctantly brings her on a business trip because she’s actually useful unlike the frat brother he gave her job to, and then the plane crashes...

Sam Raimi comes home to horror and yes we get some running POV shots, some Extreme Close-ups, some eye-gouging and quite a bit of unpleasant stuff getting flung in various character’s faces. But this is mostly about two characters getting along very badly. Sympathies shift along the way - if you want someone to really root for this not your show. But I laughed quite a bit, including a genuine roar at one point.

The medium: Disney+

Gameability: Generally this strong a PC v PC agenda base is reserved for one-shots.

Mage: The Ascension - Sunrise City

We concluded the Victorian Age time travel miniseries and normal service may resume shortly.

It was touch and go but Cara managed to avoid having to become Queen of California.

The New Mutants

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Film 7 but entry 9, “PG-13” - wow, I have a lot of recent options, but have seen most of them. Mostly 15s here, some 12s.

(I will get to 7 and 8 with streaming trials.)

The New Mutants (2018-20)

Trailer

An X-Men movie-verse spinoff with no recurring characters, mixing its superheroic zapping with a horror-tinged story taken from the comic.

Some newly-empowered mutants who all have tragic backstories are being trained / imprisoned in a dingy old hospital, and now having mostly backstory-related nightmares that start to affect them physically. In the meantime they have some understandable YA issues, do some The Breakfast Club stuff unsurprisingly, and make existing fans wonder why Illyana has Kitty Pryde’s sidekick dragon as a hand puppet and is being so racist.

An outright horror with superhuman characters in danger is an interesting take, but does the tone mix work? Not really, no.

Not helped by some choices like the TV showing Buffy, where this does work, including an episode which draws immediate comparison to a much less scary monster design used here.

The medium: Disney+

Gameability: The trick would be balancing the horror stuff and the heroic stuff so it takes a while to get to the big zappy final battle.

Jac Schaeffer's Stargate?

Amazon looking at Stargate again, this time with an outside group headed by Jac Schaffer of WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Which I like a great deal, as you may know. And she can certainly do a small cast going through portals to unfamiliar places and having adventures and snarking at each other.

Star Wars D&D and a campaign book

From New York Comic-Con, news of a Star Wars D&D rulebook and the preview of the campaign book Tyro Squadron Adventures

Yes you’re playing Rebels.

First thought: Darth Vader’s right there. Ever seen an RPG cover with a bunch of characters doing heroic poses and thought “They’re all gonna die next round” because of who they’re up against?

Oh well, at least it isn’t the FFG system.

Cyberpunk 2077 film coming?

News via Empire

Frag you Shadowrun

ALIEN GEAS 1.01

I managed to use a Joseph Conrad reference for the ship that’s already been used by a computer game and the latest RPG set. Doy.

Malignant

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

“Not so imaginary friend” and someone else checking the list on Bluesky reminded me of this:

6.

Malignant (2021)

Trailer

First ten minutes

James Wan broke out with Saw but is best known for mostly grounded gloomy-house jumpscare-y horrors like The Conjuring (boo) and Insidious, and with its ominous (but in this case actually relevant!) single-word title this seemed like it might be more of the same. But after some Fast & Furiousees and between the Aquaman films he felt like something a little different. Did it work?

That opening scene is a clear indicator of the tone he’s going for - the hospital that looks like the one from House On Haunted Hill 1999, the melodramatic straight-to-camera delivery of “It’s time to cut out the cancer!” He’s trying for something more Sam Raimi or Joe Dante. But then the second scene introducing our hero Madison (Annabelle Wallis, again demonstrating she would have been a great lynchpin of the Dark Universe if it had gotten past The Mummy 2017) establishes a familiar gloomy old house and a grimly realistic starting setup for her. So are we in for a fun ride or not?

And the film pretty much stays like this. The villain Gabriel is purposely absurd but when he’s not in action things stop being heightened enough to fit, and the result is just... odd.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: The setup of someone seeing murders as they happen and trying to deal with that is a great hook. Just choose a tone.

D&D MTG Union

The D&D and Magic teams join United Wizards Of The Coast.

Sign the petition to have Wizards recognise the union.

Beast (2022)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Feline Fright

Okay, doing this prompt straight up.

Having already had a killer magic kitty on day two, I go more mundane - and bigger.

5.

Beast (2022)

Trailer

The one where Idris Elba fights a lion.

A recently widowed father brings his kids on a family bonding photo safari with an old friend and it goes wrong because there’s a rogue lion on the loose. First they find he’s wiped out a village, the group get separated, having to use the butt of a tranq rifle when the rogue gets too close breaks it, there are poachers, only short-range walkie-talkies work...

A lot of it is done in big long tracking shots, some edited together expertly from smaller pieces, to give the sense of movement and that the rogue could be anywhere. And it mixes the wide open landscape with being stuck in the ATV from an inside POV.

And we get a normal lion pride to contrast the rogue with, which is a nice touch.

It’s generally really well done, with one major issue - the lion looks fake a lot of the time. Which kinda kills it.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: A one-shot with an unprepared group up against just one monster?

Vampire LARP one-shot systems

A request for help with a first Vampire LARP reminded me that, as an observer from a safe distance beyond one-shots, I actually know a bit. Published LARPs, variant systems and the like. Might as well put my links here.

By Night Studios have resources (enough to run a V20-era LARP with a tablet) as well as a quickstart and Storyteller advice.

Published adventures, not many but mostly available on DriveThruRPG

Some free unofficial ones, among other genres

The really really system as used in End Of The Line and Enlightenment In Blood, nice and simple.

Vampire: Empire 2026 1

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

1. In The Blood

Daisy, Toreador jazz singer and club owner

Silas, Ventrue enforcer

Jesse, Tremere phlebotomist and Circulatory System supplier

Emmet, Hecata researcher

(Echo, Malkavian fortune teller)

New York City.

The equinox, the end of summer, and Kindred in good standing are invited to the ballroom of the Delancey Hotel for an open court with the Prince.

Daisy and Silas hunt in or near her club - Daisy so impresses her victim that he might be a problem later.

Jesse and Emmet deliver blood to a non-Camarilla vampire called Franklin. He seems on edge, but then that’s normal for the trade... right?

The court is busy, maybe thirty vampires and various in-the-know mortals. One notable absence is Ella, head of the System.

The Prince has a warning, and a request for assistance with a hint of a possible favour in return. A new drug has hit the club scene, and Kindred who drink from its users find themselves agitated, tense - reportedly some are overcome by their violent instincts.

Daisy offers to help and... shall we say encourages the others.

Saint, Host of the Rack, confirms there was an incident in one of its clubs, and Thea, host of Paradise Lost, advises them to check with the Anarchs.

Before they can leave, the Malkavian Harpy Colette approaches, clearly shaken by a premonition that Daisy might be another victim soon, three nights from now. Something involving a vampire called Dane that none of them know, and someone else that she can’t see.

Jesse knows the best place to contact Anarch leader Stirling. He arrives soon after being contacted, like he was expecting someone to visit, and takes the group to a lockup nearby.

In a locker bolted to the floor, a vampire lost in a berserker rage...

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

The fourth prompt is “A-lister’s early horror role” and yes I’m going to slightly cheat again, going for an early short from a writer and director who is still in the fold.

4.

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

Official site

A short film by Robert Eggers, seven years before The VVitch, and he’s already very recognisably himself. An adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, almost a silent film most of the way through, some scenes warmed by candle and firelight but otherwise nearly black and white. The most early-work-is-different is the old man being a puppet, which doesn’t work for me at all but I do admire the can-do spirit.

Also not the strangest adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart I’ve seen thanks to the sorta-animated short narrated by James Mason.

The medium: Vimeo

Gameability: low.

Hunter: The Reckoning Portlandia session one

During a matter-of-fact discussion of vampires:

Mark, college student trying to understand monsters rationally:

“I’m sorry, I must have missed the ghosts and goblins class at school.”

Violetta, spirit medium from a family connected to a clan of vampires:

“You must not have gone to Catholic school.”

Tales Of The Lost Shepherd

The space opera part of the Pod Universe moves from imaginary movie to imaginary TV series. And due to the request for predictions, fame at last!

AfrAId

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Day three is Tech Terror, and hey, I have something relevant I hadn’t gotten around to watching:

3.

AFRAID (2024)

Trailer which shows a big escalation more than halfway in

John Cho (who already starred in the online nightmare Searching) and Katherine Waterston play a couple given a test drive of a new AI home assistant for them and their kids, and it’s everything an actual AI assistant could be for good and ill as you can guess by it being in the horror watchlist.

Smart houses running amok has been a fear since before smart houses were even a thing - like the 1947 cartoon about mice trying to move into a Home Of Tomorrow and having to escape various automated defences and appliances - but this is when they’re starting to become a real thing.

And AIA learned about humanity from the internet like Ultron and so has some opinions about us as a result. (The credits montage features melty early genAI people and looking up subjects like history leading to a Hitler jumpscare.)

At under an hour and a half it feels like an episode of Black Mirror that isn’t quite cynical enough about human nature. And some of these concerns have panned out, but some are so notably lacking as to make this film from two years ago feel quaint.

AIA can manipulate people casually but only the children love it, for one thing. It has to force adults to serve it instead of having the actual cultists it likely would. (This seems like a particular oversight as that was a plot point in the likes of Person Of Interest already.) Maybe writer and director Chris Weitz just ain’t cynical enough, despite how this ends.

So seeing this now it exaggerates plenty of things a real AI could do that our present slop can’t while missing threats we have already.

(And at no point do we hear about its power consumption.)

So it’s an interesting window into a future people were scared of a while ago that isn’t as bad as we actually have.

Oof.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: One of the early TOON adventures is based on that home of the future cartoon. Outside of that though, a GM could present an all-setting threat really easily - indeed it can be tricky for players and GMs not to act on information their characters don’t know - so an NPC who can sense everything the PCs do and feel would be no trouble at all, the issue being deciding what, if anything, they can’t act on.

V5 Empire references

Some from New York By Night and other official sources, some old friends

Camarilla

Outsiders

The living

Strangers

Small tweak, use Rebecca Ferguson as Hellene

Hail to the Prince