President Donald Trump emphasized his support for Virginia gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and other Republicans on the ballot in a fast-approaching election day. “I think the Republican candidate is very good, and I think she should win because the Democrat candidate’s a disaster,” Trump said Sunday on Air Force One regarding Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor and the Republican candidate facing off against former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. Before Sunday, Trump had not explicitly endorsed Earle-Sears, who is in a tight race against Spanberger to succeed incumbent Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin, who is term limited, defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2021. “Thank you for your kind words of support, President Trump. And you’re right—Abigail would be a disaster for Virginia,” Earle-Sears posted to X on Monday morning. “I haven’t been too much involved in Virginia,” Trump said on Sunday. “I love the state. I did very well in the state, but I will tell you, I think the Republican candidate is excellent and I think the Democrat candidate is a disaster. I mean, I watched her in the debate, she couldn’t answer the most basic question. Trump went on to say that “the big thing with that race and also the race in New Jersey is going to be energy.” “Both of the Democrats are going to drive the energy prices through the roof,” he continued. That’s a reference to Spanberger and Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, who is facing of against Republican Jack Ciattarelli to succeed New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat. Energy policy, particularly utility costs, has emerged as a hot topic in both states, largely due to policy debates over energy as well as the rise in data centers, NBC News reported. The Hill reported that the rise in electricity costs for New Jerseyans has left both candidates discussing the issue. Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now. Virginia and New Jersey have the only two gubernatorial races in 2025. Both states go to the polls on November 4. Trump endorsed Ciattarelli, a businessman and former New Jersey state representative, during the primary in May. “Jack Ciattarelli is a terrific America First Candidate running to be the next Governor of a State that I love, NEW JERSEY!” the president posted to Truth Social at the time. “Jack, who after getting to know and understand MAGA, has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!). He is strongly supported by the most Highly Respected Leaders in New Jersey and, as your next Governor, Jack Ciattarelli will work closely with me and the Trump Administration to advance our America First Agenda,” he continued.  Ciattarelli is up against Rep. Mikie Sherrill in the gubernatorial race, as Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is termed out. Murphy and Ciattarelli ran against each other in 2021, in which Murphy won with just over 51% of the vote compared with the Republican’s 48%. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won both New Jersey and Virginia during the 2024 election, but Trump won just over 46% of the vote in both states. 

WASHINGTON—The Daily Wire team joined throngs of marchers who took to the streets of the nation’s capital Saturday for the 2025 “No Kings” protest. The Washington, D.C., rally was the focal point of similar events nationwide, meant to counter the “authoritarian threats” posed by President Donald Trump and his administration. Protesters came prepared with posters and costumes. Many of them had gone through media training and learned chants, songs, and dances to perform. But for all that preparation, many of the protesters The Daily Wire encountered couldn’t answer what we thought was a simple question: “If Trump was elected, how is he a king?” Responses ranged from blank stares to Kamala Harris-style word salads and vague references to “checks and balances.” Deep in a hole, a self-identified “he/she” claimed that Trump was taking away women’s right to vote. When pressed for information, he/she said “Trump has said that in interviews everywhere.” [Editor’s note: he hasn’t]. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Daily Wire (@realdailywire) “No Kings” is part of the Indivisible Project, itself part of George Soros’s Open Society Action Fund. The project was created to support “to support the grantee’s social welfare activities.” The Indivisible Project was awarded multiple grants, most recently they received $3 Million from the Open Society Foundations. High-profile Democratic leaders including Harris and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who encouraged participating on social media and in official statements. Some protests took unsettling turns. A disturbing video from Chicago shows a middle-aged woman making a gun gesture with her hand and pointing to her neck. Towards the end of the D.C. protest, a chant broke out that “Turning Point has got to go.” Many signs featured rhetoric claiming “Trump was a Nazi” and “ICE = Gestapo.” A small fragment of the protest made the event a family affair with children holding signs such as “Stop Kidnapping People.”

'You're not allowed to break that'

'It is going to be a big, big event'

What do you think?

What happened to the Giants is completely inexcusable

He faces a total of 4 felony charges

'I don’t want to kill anybody'

News Sinners Werewolves or Vampires? How Ryan Coogler Chose the “Monster” for Sinners Which shapeshifter is the best for Sinners? By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 20, 2025 Credit: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is rightfully getting a lot of award buzz, and to help that effort, the writer-director is sitting down to talk about how the film came to be. One of those conversations was a panel discussion hosted by the Directors Guild of America on Sunday, where Coogler shared how Sinners ended up with vampires instead of another type of supernatural being. “I knew the movie would always be kind of a shape-shifting movie,” he said (via Gold Derby). “But I didn’t know it would be crazy as it was. There was always going to be a musical element. It was always going to have horror element. And they were always going to end up in that juke joint. It was always going to be working with Delta blues… all forms of popular music kind of branch out of that.” Coogler also shared that the decision to go with vampires came about after discussions with his wife and producing partner, Zinzi: “I was like, ‘Yo, what kind of monster should they be?’ We were thinking about werewolves and stuff. But it kept coming back to vampires. I don’t think there’s a cryptid or monster more sexy or seductive as vampires can be. Also, it just makes sense for the music that that it would have to be a common monster that can offer a deal that’s attractive. So we zeroed in on that creature.” Sinners would have been a different movie if there were werewolves in it rather than vampires. I’m usually Team Werewolf, and I’m sure the version of Sinners with werewolves would still be great, given it would still be from Coogler. But vampires work so well in the film, and help make it the modern masterpiece that it is. [end-mark]   The post Werewolves or Vampires? How Ryan Coogler Chose the “Monster” for <i>Sinners</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Frankenstein Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Is a Puzzling Affair It’s an absorbing experience, but the director’s adaptations never hit quite so well as his original stories. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on October 20, 2025 Image: Ken Woroner/Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Ken Woroner/Netflix There are certain directors who seem as though they are made to retell certain stories. And within that suggestion there is perhaps an implicit warning: What seems “meant to be” rarely plays out as we anticipate. The fact that many of us were elated at the idea of Guillermo del Toro adapting the arguable first work of the science fiction canon may have been a warning in and of itself. This isn’t to say that Frankenstein is an unenjoyable watch—it is a thoroughly engaging two and a half hour appointment to cozy up to as the days get increasingly chilly. But as a whole, it never quite hangs together in a way that satisfies. The result is a film full of what-ifs and unmet desires… which feels very much the opposite of the intention behind making it. You know how this story goes: Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is found in the Arctic by an expedition ship, which then encounters the doctor’s monster (Jacob Elordi). To save the lives of the ship and its men, Frankenstein tells the story of how he created this abomination of nature. Halfway into the film’s runtime, the monster makes it aboard the boat and tells his side of the story as well. Though it feels strange to say it, in many ways, this film resembles nothing so much as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. And that comparison is meant for the full breadth of its potential to compliment and criticize: It is a gorgeous self-indulgence that might age well as time wears on, but it’s hard to dispel the feelings of squashed potential. And it relies, perhaps overmuch, on the director’s love of source material they might have spent more time dissecting. All the hallmarks of del Toro’s best works are there; layered and meticulous performances by beautiful humans; costumes that are showcased to make you gasp in near-religious awe; the gothic sublime; viscera and gore rendered with lingering care; a story grounded in the emotional turns between manipulation, cruelty, and connection. Many of the beats one expects from the book itself are present and accounted for, and the film does take its time in the telling. But there are far too many potential themes to ever settle in, and every place where the director’s strengths are begging to shine through, he seems to be holding back. The question of unreliable narrators is perhaps the most noticeable misstep the film makes at the outset. Victor tells the expedition captain that some of what he says did not happen, but all of it is true. (If you’re a Deep Space Nine fan, you know exactly which meme I’m reaching for right now.) However, there’s nothing within the film to suggest that Frankenstein is ever lying, or would even have reason to do so. The easiest way to have given us an unreliable narrator then would have been to make the monster’s story contradict Victor’s in some way—but the creature chooses to begin his part of the story at the exact moment where Victor’s ends, preventing the chance for discrepancy. The result is perplexing in the extreme. Del Toro has stated in interviews that his version of Frankenstein is about fathers and sons. But it’s also sometimes about a creation’s relationship with their creator in a more divine sense, and because the movie manages to avoid both of these themes throughout much of the film, it is then baffling each time they surface. This is true of other key arcs as well; the monster’s kinship with Lady Elisabeth (Mia Goth), fiancée of Frankenstein’s brother William (Felix Kammerer) and object of Victor’s fixation; the role of Henrich Harlander (Chistoph Waltz) as benefactor of Victor’s research and his nonsensical endgame in that role; the question of what it means to genuinely live one’s life rather than organizing it around the avoidance of death; society’s treatment of those who are othered and outside the privileged classes.  There are strange Hollywood-esque choices that feel thoroughly out of place in any screen adaptation of Frankenstein present as well. Though the film runs incredibly long, the actual amount of time the story covers seems abrupt by comparison, which robs the tale of its original creeping dread in being a creator sought by a monster of one’s own making; Victor is running from the monster for perhaps a year? Maybe two? And we’re supposed to buy into his fear at being hunted when it receives no build time whatsoever. Oh, and in an aggravating superhero-lite twist, the monster can endlessly regenerate its body for no reason whatsoever, which only reads as an excuse to let countless characters draw guns and explosives on the creature to no end. There’s an awkward genre shift that takes place mid-film as well—while Victor’s story reads as pure gothic horror, the monster’s side of the narrative reads like pure fairy tale. This includes giving the monster a magical connection with prey animals in nature (he feeds a stag like a Disney princess) and portraying wolves like rabid, murderous beasts. If that narrative shift seemed intentional, it could have been an enjoyable switchup halfway through a lengthy tale… but that doesn’t seem to be the point, so much as a reminder to the audience of which character the film’s director empathizes with the most. There are shades of similarity to Edward Scissorhands in both visuals and soundtrack on more than one occasion, too—but that story was an original take on a Frankenstein myth, making the comparisons odd to account for. Possibly due to the tonal bifurcation within the story itself, the film is incredibly awkward in its handling of romance, sex, and sensuality of any kind. There are heavy BDSM overtones at specific points of the story, but they are never brought to the forefront or carried through the narrative in any meaningful way. The fact that Victor’s brand of love always is only ever depicted as obsession is never remarked upon. And queerness or even deep platonic bonds are elided in a strangely pointed manner; when the creature asks Victor for a “companion” here as he does in the book, no mention of gender is ever made—it is instead Victor who makes the monster’s request about the potential for lust, sex, and procreation, which seems as though it should be very important in a tale that asks what it means to have life… but this is immediately dropped and we move on to the next story beat. Guillermo del Toro has tackled these ideas with such depth and beauty before—the sexual exploration we find in The Shape of Water, the unfettered and terrifying lust of Crimson Peak, the maturity of two minds meeting in drift compatibility in Pacific Rim. It seems strange that none of these themes could translate over into Frankenstein, particularly when the other central themes are so lacking. More’s the pity because each and every actor gives an outstanding performance here. Oscar Isaac vibrates off the screen in eternal manic frenzy; Jacob Elordi moves like he exists only in dreams as the creature born anew; Mia Goth is ethereal and vulnerable in her bids for freedom from the choices of men; Christoph Waltz brings his trademark unsettling cheerfulness to an otherwise unremarkable role. Moreover, in terms of gothic horror, this is the only film I’ve ever seen that properly showcases how disgusting the creation of a new lifeform stitched together from dead parts would be. Frankenstein’s lab is awash in guts and blood, a human game of Tetris, making the assemblage sequence a real treat if that’s your bag. (Sorry, it’s definitely mine.) There’s also a frankly unhinged quote choice placed at the end of the film. It caused myself and several other audience members to laugh uproariously, to the point where another audience member stopped by our seats on the way out and asked us to explain in case she missed something. (We happily relayed the reasons for our reaction to her.) After the feature was complete, myself and my theater-going companions walked and snacked around the city for another few hours, shouting lovingly into each other’s faces about what bothered us—we all had significant complaints to lodge. In that capacity, I will say, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein cannot be beat.[end-mark] The post Guillermo del Toro’s <i>Frankenstein</i> Is a Puzzling Affair appeared first on Reactor.