News Daredevil: Born Again The Important Thing About This Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Teaser Is That It Features Jessica Jones And she’s not carrying Matty anywhere By Molly Templeton | Published on January 27, 2026 Photo: Marvel Television Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Marvel Television Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is back, and her outfits haven’t changed (much). Daredevil: Born Again is also finally back, though a little later than expected: the second season of the Disney+ series now premieres on March 24. (Unless they move it again, as they are frequently wont to do.) And how are things in Hell’s Kitchen? Well. You know. Bloody, violent, sometimes confusing, scattered with brief scenes of all the characters you know and love or loathe. Also, Matthew Lillard is here as Mr. Charles, a character he’s said is “completely new to Hell’s Kitchen” who doesn’t wear “any lycra of any kind.” The teaser is set to Donald Glover’s song “Lithonia,” and there’s so little dialogue that it winds up feeling like one of those awkward music videos for a movie’s theme song. I hadn’t thought about Babylon A.D.’s RoboCop 2 tie-in song “The Kid Goes Wild” for a hundred years, but this teaser made me think of it. And the video. Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) and Matt (Charlie Cox) are either continuing their on-again, off-again dance, or he’s hallucinating about it; Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) appears for a brief moment, presumably in flashback; Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) is in a boxing ring; his Anti-Vigilante Task Force is still in action; and Foggy’s murderer Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) is smirking. The Punisher is not here at the moment, being otherwise occupied. The first season of Born Again, as Joe George wrote, was a much-needed correction to relentless copaganda. Will this season continue that theme, or crumple into something lesser? We’ll find out in two months. [end-mark] The post The Important Thing About This <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Season 2 Teaser Is That It Features Jessica Jones appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Heated Rivalry Heated Rivalry Is a Step Forward for Gay Asian Representation — But Also Highlights the Burgeoning Masculinity Crisis Shane Hollander is upending western pop culture stereotypes around Asian men By Kevin Ng | Published on January 27, 2026 Image credit: Sabrina Lantos/Crave Comment 6 Share New Share Image credit: Sabrina Lantos/Crave Come for the butts, stay for the exploration of queer Asian identity. When Heated Rivalry screencaps flooded my social media I didn’t think the show was for me—I’m not generally a romance fan and, despite growing up in Canada, have zero interest in hockey. But I caved, and there was a moment early in the first episode that captured my attention: the half-Asian protagonist Shane Hollander speaking to his mother and manager Yuna, the venerable Christina Chang, about the importance of being a role model to younger Asian kids.  That brief conversation about representation could serve as a meta-narrative about Heated Rivalry itself. In Canada where I’m from, people of Asian descent are the largest and fastest-growing visible minority group. We make up over 20% of Canada’s population in comparison to the US’s 7%—that percentage increases to over 25% in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver. But you would never realize that if you flipped through your typical gay magazine, circuit party, or gay Instagram feed. Images of gay life remain distinctly whitewashed, and there was nearly thirty years between Ang Lee’s 1993 Wedding Banquet and 2022’s Fire Island to provide any mainstream representation of gay Asian life.  Representation isn’t much better for our straight counterparts. It’s a phenomenon that shows the power that culture has over society. The “Yellow Peril” of the 1800s cast Asian men as servile, industrious, and peaceful while at the same time being beastly and uncivilized. For generations Asian men were portrayed in film as caricatures, from Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu to Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  This pushback to this threat was a cultural emasculation of the Asian man. This reached a pinnacle in 1984’s Sixteen Candles, where the character of Long Duk Dong was portrayed as skinny and impotent. Even the kung fu boom of the 1990s, which brought Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Bruce Lee into the mainstream, wasn’t enough to subvert these stereotypes. Despite being amongst the most profitable and physically fit movie stars, they were never marketed as being romantically or sexually desirable. It took 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians to convince Hollywood that an Asian man could be a bankable romantic lead—and even then, Henry Golding’s career hasn’t taken off the way many predicted it would. There is, of course, Keanu Reeves, whose film career has encompassed everything from action to romantic comedy (and, arguably, the gayest possible sports film in Point Break), but his ability to pass as white likely is a contributing factor. Image: Sabrina Lantos/Crave Which is why it’s so gratifying to see a gay Asian character as a main character in one of the biggest hits of the year. Heated Rivalry is based on a book series by Canadian author Rachel Reid, who explicitly describes the character as half-Asian (in an apparent nod to current Montréal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki). There is, of course, a long legacy of Asian and other ethnic minority characters being whitewashed—Scarlett Johansson’s casting in 2017’s Ghost in the Shell being a prime example—so there was no guarantee on how Shane would be cast.  The show’s creator and director Jacob Tierney not only doubles down on Shane’s Asianness, but expands upon the nuances of the character’s ethnicity beyond what is in Reid’s novel. “It was important to me because there are not a lot of people who are not white in the NHL, and there are not a lot of people who are not white as leads in romances either,” Tierney said in a Q&A after the Toronto premiere. “I think a lot about Shane’s personality is as an outsider, and to me Shane had to be Asian. It would just be monstrous to make him white.”  Tierney’s writing is effective because it is specific—the character of Shane is not meant to represent the totality of the Asian experience. There is a precision to the way Tierney writes about Yuna, who represents a very specific kind of East Asian mother; Shane’s overwhelming perfectionism and pressure to act as a role model for all Asians; the nerd-chic of the glasses; how his white last name provides him with some level of social capital; how he folds his clothes before sex. But the character of Shane also reveals the limits placed upon gay Asian men when it comes to masculinity. Hockey is, even within the world of professional sport, a hypermasculine space—the NHL is the one major men’s sports league with no out gay players in its history. The cultural emasculation of Asian men also extends into the gay world: the classic “no fats, no femmes, no Asians” may be less common on Grindr than it was a decade ago, but the stereotypes of Asian men as effeminate, submissive bottoms still persist.  Image: Sabrina Lantos/Crave These feminized stereotypes of gay Asian men are, in some ways, a twisted subversion of how Asian women have historically been portrayed in cinema. From Anna May Wong to Lucy Liu, Asian women have been portrayed either as sinister femme fatales or submissive innocents. Whether threatening or deferential, Asian men and women alike are often typecast into roles where their sexuality solely exists in relation to white masculinity. We can be fetishized or exoticized, these stereotypes seem to suggest, but we are no real threat: at the end of the day, order will be restored, the white man will end up with the white girl, and all will be right with the world. It’s no wonder, then, that gay Asian characters like Shane, or Joel Kim Booster and Conrad Ricamora’s characters in Fire Island conform to white gay standards of masculinity: the chiseled jawlines, the broad shoulders, the defined abs. A large part of this comes from the myth that representation is a zero-sum game. White, straight viewers, apparently, cannot possibly relate to characters who are not exactly like themselves; if shows about non-white characters are jockeying for screentime with shows about non-straight characters, the statistical likelihood of a gay Asian lead becomes vanishingly small.  But without our own role models for masculinity, are we fated to fall into white standards of masculinity?  It’s a particularly striking question when K-pop seems poised to take over American culture. KPop Demon Hunters was Netflix’s unexpected runaway success of 2025, offering an entirely different aesthetic of masculinity shaped by the open vulnerability and slim androgyny of BTS and Exo. Soon, Asian men will be caught between two wildly different masculine ideals, both culturally and aesthetically restrictive in their own ways—though two options are better than one. But in a predominantly white society the choice is clear: conforming to the aesthetic ideals of the dominant culture gives greater access to cultural and political capital. You can see this clearly walking down the streets of San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, or Toronto: the hordes of Asian tech and finance bros with their Patagonia vests and Equinox memberships, manifesting their version of the American Dream. Andrew Yang’s cryptocurrency-forward, Joe Rogan-adjacent political career epitomizes both the folly and tragedy of trying to conform to white standards of masculinity for widespread acceptance, whether on television or in real life. Shane Hollander is, of course, a top-ranked hockey player, and it would be ridiculous for him not to be muscular. But the construction of masculinity is so much more than physical appearance, even if the show’s marketing has been able to capitalize off the proliferation of thirsty screen grabs. Confidence, dominance, control: all of these are explored as facets of Shane’s personality and shapes how he manages (or doesn’t manage) his relationships.  Image: Sabrina Lantos/Crave To me it’s not surprising that he struggles, on account of not just his sexuality but his ethnicity, to navigate life off the rink within the white, hypermasculine world of competitive hockey. It’s equally unsurprising that Shane and Ilya, as cultural outsiders in their own ways, are not offered the whirlwind fairytale romance of Scott and Kip—and thank goodness for that. The emotional payoff of Shane and Ilya’s eventual happy ending is so much the more satisfying after seeing how each has struggled to define themself in relationship to their respective cultures. Shane’s ethnicity is brought up three times in the series: once with a hockey executive, once with his then-girlfriend Rose Landry, and in the final episode when Ilya asks about Shane’s parents. In all of these conversations there is an ambiguity—his ethnicity is at once a marketing boon and liability, one that automatically makes him a candidate to be bullied in his youth and then a role model in adulthood. Shane’s ethnicity is always explored in relation to others, whether it be his bosses, fans, sponsors, or peers. In each of these interactions, you see how his ethnicity comes with the weight of expectation, of fulfilling a particular role—and you see how that expectation prevents him from leading an authentic, free life. There’s satisfaction, too, in using hockey—the whitest major league sport—as a medium through which to explore queer Asian masculinity, as if subverting the decentering and desexualization of Asian men in the UFC world despite its origins in Asian martial arts. It’s notable that both Reid’s books and Tierney’s television series have been a hit amongst women, a fact that they attribute to the fact that many women crave seeing a world free of the patriarchal power dynamics of straight relationships. Yet what this relationship offers is an opportunity to explore the nuances of how hierarchies in power and dominance can be viewed through the synergistic or competing lenses of gender and race. These hierarchies are materialized in Shane and Ilya’s professional rivalry, which poses a further barrier to unmasculine displays of tenderness or intimacy beyond the masculine ideals of race, country, and career. We each embody a multitude of patriarchies. What Reid and Tierney understand is that the experience of an ethnic minority is similar in many ways to that of being queer. There’s a constant need to code-switch, to surveil one’s environment in order to understand which aspects of one’s identity are safe or advantageous to reveal, and a guilt in either conforming or subverting stereotypes. It’s doubly exhausting when both of these identities are at play, and when the expectations and stereotypes of both identities begin to intersect and deviate. Heated Rivalry succeeds because it serves as a meta-narrative about queer Asian identity itself: How much should it divulge about its sexuality versus its ethnicity? How does it conform to or subvert gender tropes? And how does its proximity to whiteness inform its success?[end-mark] The post <i>Heated Rivalry</i> Is a Step Forward for Gay Asian Representation — But Also Highlights the Burgeoning Masculinity Crisis appeared first on Reactor.

Books Seeds of Story The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State On the tricky science of improving (or failing to improve) the human condition… By Ruthanna Emrys | Published on January 27, 2026 Comment 4 Share New Share Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there. This week, I cover James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. It’s about what we lose when we try to make things measurable, regulatable, and optimizable—and why we try to do those things in the first place. It’s probably fair to call this book a foundational text for 21st-century social science fiction; it’s also full of ideas for making social scientists very nervous. What It’s About The history of the state is, in part, a centuries-long quest to be able to see—and therefore control—the activities that take place in their domains. Taxation, law, regulation, provision of services, maintenance and repair, can only happen where the state can measure and understand the resources to be taxed, the activities to be forbidden or required, the needs to be met, and the status of that water main. Scott calls this legibility. While the initial motivations were for the benefit of rulers, modern states also provide value to citizens—or at least, I personally like regular garbage pickup and sewage treatment. However, the quest for legibility comes with serious tradeoffs. Measurement requires quantification and simplification of systems that are, in many cases, healthier in their natural complex forms. It also requires glossing over the reality of complexity that can’t be reduced. This tradeoff was particularly unclear to 20th-century high modernists, drunk on the low-hanging fruit of early 20th-century technocratic organization. New forms of power generation were (and still are) resisted by industrialists profiting off the old; medical advances were (and still are) resisted by popular prejudices and purveyors of snake oil. High modernist overreach quickly led to failures, but was slow to acknowledge them. Le Corbusier demanded well-organized cities. He created the first building standards, but was also convinced that modern, legible communities required absolute separation of functions—pedestrian versus motorized travel, work versus home, all the foundations of modern zoning woes. If your neighborhood isn’t walkable, or your downtown is a desert of parking garages, you can probably blame him. “Many new capitals,” Scott says of Corbusier-planned cities, “seem intended as completed and self-contained objects. No subtraction, addition, or modification is contemplated—only admiration.” Imagine the Jetsons’ towers, and ask yourself what life would be like if flying cars were the only way to leave your house. High modernism gets worse the less room there is for pushback from those who have to live with it. Lenin argued for authoritarian imposition of organization and legibility, which he put into practice as soon as he could. Forced collectivization in the Soviet Union, and similar pushes for easily countable and measurable production (e.g., forced permanent settlement in Tanzania in the ’70s) all aim for standardization at the cost of long-term sustainability and resilience. This kind of centralization is the foundation for any sort of extractive imperialism or authoritarianism; it makes it easier to take resources from those who need them, but also reduces local ability to produce resources tailored to local needs. Long-term, this push for legibility leads to many of the environmental problems we face now. Scott describes how “the systematic, cyclopean shortsightedness of high-modernist agriculture that courts certain forms of failure… casts into relative obscurity all the outcomes lying outside the immediate relationship between farm inputs and yields.” Soil structure, water quality, land-tenure relations—all the things that Kimmerer celebrates about a working ecology are undermined by neat monocropped rows. The rows are easy to count, predict, and harvest with modern machinery. They also demand making all the land’s topography and geography as close to identical as possible, and lose all the advantages of a diverse, thriving ecosystem. It’s not only land and buildings that get simplified in the quest for legibility, but people. So many skills—farming, firefighting, medicine, artistic creation—require the “metis” practical knowledge that involves constant adaptation to situational variability. High modernism values transferability of skills over dependence on individual expertise (except where the expert serves the modernist organizational effort). Standardization allows for scaling and automation, and predictable factory outputs. It also reduces not only the advantages of metis, but recognition and appreciation of that kind of positive variability. Ultimately, what Scott recommends is humility. There are advantages of legibility that most of us would prefer not to give up—but top-down comprehensibility is not the ultimate societal good. It’s also not possible to the degree that 20th-century high modernists imagined. We need compromise systems that begin “from a premise of incomplete knowledge,” and that treat that uncertainty as something beyond a problem to be solved. Buy the Book Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed James C. Scott Buy Book Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed James C. Scott Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget I first heard of Seeing Like a State from Max Gladstone, who I’m pretty sure is the Patient Zero for its spread among modern SFF authors. Like 1491, it immediately reshaped my brain, giving me new tools for thinking about worldbuilding, local activism, and scientific research. As a cognitive psychologist, I was trained to design controlled lab studies with quantifiable outcomes, and make generalizable inferences about human behavior from them. Sometimes this works, but sometimes the lab turns out to be a poor substitute for the complexities of everyday interaction. This particularly becomes an issue when we’re trying to solve a real-world problem. Suddenly I found myself asking what we were simplifying out while trying to make thoughts and relationships legible—a frustrating but provoking question for me, and probably for my colleagues too. “How do we measure this?” is a hard enough question, even before you add in “Why do we measure this?” and “What aren’t we measuring?” It’s also an incredibly productive question for worldbuilding. What is this society trying to see? What do people want or need to do that’s in conflict with legibility efforts? Who gets to do the measurement and interpretation? When we make space for illegible activities, how do we handle the tradeoffs? The whole concept of legibility, ironically, falls into the “can’t unsee it” category, and makes many confusing problems make so much more sense. Most of the non-fiction books I’ve read since encountering Scott—and a good few of the novels—contain marginal notes on the topic. Data harvesting, privacy, labor rights, assholes freaking out about diversity… there are connections to everything. If you’re trying to decide whether a proposed new law is a good idea, legibility is a good place to start—what knowledge does it assume, what simplifications will be required, and what kinds of data will need to be collected by whom to make it work…all are important questions that often get glossed. Online age verification, for example, becomes more problematic when you realize that it only works by submitting your kids’ personal information to social media companies. But I also think that Scott understates the value of legibility, and the tradeoffs that we face when we dismiss that value. The overreaches of high modernism explain the overreaches of the more recent backlashes. If you think all regulation eventually leads to five-year plans with standardized Soviet collectives, then vaccine mandates must be a tool of tyranny. Limiting arsenic in drinking water puts you on the slippery slope to state-forced famine. There’s a point toward the end of the book where Scott celebrates the value of local, adaptive knowledge with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal “yeoman farmer.” My margins overflow with the extremity of my side-eye. Centralized tyrants are bad—but local ones are no better. The yeoman “farmer,” utterly dependent on slavery, is far worse than Le Corbusier. But Scott, like so many, gives more attention to state-level authoritarian failures than to all the other levels and types of institution that can demand conformity and destroy freedom. Scott’s concepts, though, apply just as well to these institutions. On this read, I suddenly realized that the “thin simplification” of metis expertise explains why AI companies try so hard to replace the most variable, rewarding types of human effort. AI art is more predictable than human artists in much the same way that a monocropped tree plantation is more predictable than a healthy forest. It would be very convenient to a lot of people, especially those who judge art by audience size, if our work could be easily directed and systematized. Legibility strikes again! I suspect that the best alternatives are found, not in Jefferson’s slaveholders, but in Kimmerer’s very human appreciation of the systems we work with, not as problems to be solved but as partners to collaborate with. She manages to combine modern botanical studies with asking permission for the harvest; it’s a model for seeing more without seeking impossible, destructive levels of quantified control. The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories Seeing Like a Surveillance State. Surveillance is a core part of most dystopias, and even of some sorta-positive futures. There’s a long inheritance from 1984, but I increasingly see stories imagining “transparent” societies where privacy is traded off for safety and social services. In real life, Orwell’s deliberately salient watchers are mirrored by institutions like China’s social credit system. In other places, we face instead pervasive corporate data collection, masked as convenience and the promise of more interesting ads. All of this opens questions for stories: what new kinds of surveillance might be developed in the future, by whom, and for what purpose? What types of control will they try to exert, with what tradeoffs? And is it possible to get luxury space communism without luxury space panopticons? New Kinds of Science. The history of the modern world—as Ada Palmer points out—is a history of changing methods for gathering and understanding knowledge. And yet, science fiction about new kinds of science is surprisingly rare. Current research wrestles with the dichotomy between quantitative data—legible, standardizable, analyzable via statistics and algorithms—and qualitative data. Qualitative studies capture nuance and local complexity—but then what? Perhaps in the future we’ll develop more systematic methods for handling qualitative information, or perhaps we’ll learn how to glean more and better applications without systematizing everything. Either way, there’s drama to be found amid both the development of those methods, and the researchers trying to navigate them. Invisible Revolutions. The flip side of surveillance is the resistance to that surveillance, and to the control that it enables. As attempts at legibility become more sophisticated, how do we find—or make—cracks to hide in? More subtly, how do we preserve and exercise metis in a world trying to automate it away? The artists’ collectives, guerrilla gardens, and makerspaces of the present will have descendants in every century. These cracks aren’t only the seeds of revolution during dystopia, but of questioning and change in better times. New Growth: What Else to Read Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence is fundamentally an exploration of the tension between pre-modern and high modern societal structures, with the tradeoffs and legibility problems made plain in the form of old gods demanding sacrifice versus necromantic lawyers demanding… mostly different forms of sacrifice. Other books exploring the tension between legibility and privacy/flexibility include Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors and Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Unraveling. Cory Doctorow’s entire oeuvre plays with near-future hackers finding ways around surveillance and control. The recent We Will Rise Again anthology (edited by Annalee Newitz, Karen Lord, and Malka Older) is full of excellent answers to the questions raised above under the Invisible Revolutions seed—if you’ve been wanting more stories with hackers and gardeners and new ideas for resistance, you want to read this one. Most of golden age science fiction reflects the optimistic assumptions of high modernism, but Foundation is particularly illustrative. I don’t actually recommend the book for people who enjoy things like character development; I do recommend the TV adaptation for a modern take. On the non-fiction side, Dan Davies’ The Unaccountability Machine looks at how institutions handle complex problems, and asks both how they can do a better job while hitting fewer of Scott’s failure modes, and why said handling is so often designed to avoid blame rather than find real solutions. Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology comes at legibility from a different direction, contrasting tools designed for legibility and standardization with those designed for artisan expertise. And I’ve just started reading C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game. Nguyen asks why the effect of scoring in games is so different from the effect of quantified metrics in the larger society, and whether and how metrics can ever be made more functional than destructive. It all comes around again to the tradeoffs of legibility, and my margins are once again full of connections to Scott’s work. What are your favorite stories about surveillance, privacy, quantification, and resistance? Share in the comments![end-mark] The post The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. Scott’s <i>Seeing Like a State</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen This March on Netflix The Duffer brothers-produced series explores the potential horrors of marriage By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on January 27, 2026 Courtesy of Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Courtesy of Netflix It’s been about a year and a half since we got news that Netflix was moving forward with Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, a horror series showrun by Haley Z. Boston (Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities) and produced by the Duffer brothers. Today, Netflix’s Tudum website released some first-look images of the series, along with its release date and some quotes from Boston. Before we get into it, here’s what the series is about: It centers on two people, Rachel and Nicky, and follows them through the week leading up to their wedding. Netflix is keeping tight-lipped about further details, though Boston describes the show as horror in the vein of “unsettling, getting-under-your-skin dread” rather than jump scares. The series, Boston explained, is also character-driven. “I love to explore characters. I think sometimes that’s lacking in the horror genre,” she said. “My natural approach is from a place of character and dialogue and humor and then infusing that with unsettling horror… I’m like, ‘I want to be unsettled. I want to be freaked out.’” Boston also described the show as having the tone and visuals of something between Carrie and Rosemary’s Baby, so you can probably pick up what the show’s going for. The first-look images above and below also give us a taste. The series stars Camila Morrone (Daisy Jones & The Six, The Night Manager) as Rachel, Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus, Overcompensating) as Nicky, Jennifer Jason Leigh (Fargo, Annihilation) as Victoria, Ted Levine (Monk, Big Sky) as Boris, Gus Birney (Shining Vale, ​The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window) as Portia, Jeff Wilbusch (Unorthodox, Oslo) as Jules, Karla Crome (The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, Lazarus) as Nell, and Zlatko Burić (Triangle of Sadness). All eight episodes of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen premiere on Netflix on March 26, 2026. Check out some of the first-look images below. [end-mark] Courtesy of Netflix Courtesy of Netflix Courtesy of Netflix Courtesy of Netflix The post Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen This March on Netflix appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Watchlist Here Are All the Genre Movies Premiering in February! Horror movies abound rather than romance this Valentine season By Petrana Radulovic | Published on January 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share There is a lot of entertainment out there these days, and a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror titles to parse through. So we’re rounding up the genre shows coming out each month. Nothing says Valentine’s Day like… a lot of new horror releases, apparently! From beloved franchise sequels and reimaginings of classic Gothic tales to adaptations of indie video games and Creepypasta stories, February is full of scary stories to watch in the dark. But if you’re looking for something less spooky, there are a few quirky sci-fi flicks, including a new anime movie from the director of Mirai. The Morrigan — on VOD February 3 Fiona, an ambitious archaeologist, treks to a remote Irish Island, where she unearths a burial casket containing a mummified figure. Unfortunately, digging up the casket unleashes an ancient evil in the form of the Morrigan, a vengeful Irish war goddess. The Morrigan possesses Fiona’s daughter Lily, and begins a bloody rampage. Fiona must stop the powerful goddess and save her daughter.  The Strangers—Chapter 3 — in theaters February 6 The third film in the most recent installment of The Strangers film franchise, Chapter Three sees sole survivor Maya (Madeline Petsch) going against the mysterious killers one last time. She even dons one of their masks as she gives into her primal instincts and seeks revenge. She’s also seen cozying up to Gregory (Gabriel Basso), one of the local townspeople who is mystified by her survival.  Dracula — in select theaters February 6 The newest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel comes from French director Luc Besson, known for sci-fi epics The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Caleb Landry Jones stars as Count Dracula, with Zoë Bleu as Mina Murray and Ewens Abid as Jonathan Harker. Like in many adaptations, this version of Mina is a reincarnation of Dracula’s lost wife Elisabeta.  The Arborist  — on VOD February 6  An arborist named Ellie and her teenage son Wyatt arrive on the vast property of a wealthy and mysterious recluse, who has hired them to cut down some trees. But strange things begin to happen and Wyatt starts to behave erratically and see eerie hallucinations. Ellie soon stumbles upon the estate’s tragic past and must work to save her son before a strange haunting consumes them all.  The Dresden Sun — in select theaters February 6 In the distant future, everyone wants “the sphere”—a quantum-energy producing orb that can open portals to the afterlife within the mind. A traumatized mercenary is hired to steal it. Megacorporate rivals go head-to-head in order to claim it. An investment analyst gets caught up in technological espionage and must flee from a military contractor.  Twisted — on VOD February 6  Two young con artists run scams by renting out New York apartments that they don’t actually own. But one of the apartment owners they run into (Djimon Hounsou) kidnaps them to run twisted medical experiments on. Twisted comes from Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed four films in the Saw franchise.  Whistle — in theaters February 6  A misfit teenage girl (played by His Dark Materials’ Dafne Keen) finds an ancient Aztec whistle. At a party, one of her new classmates blows into it. Soon, everyone involved begins to be hunted by their future death, which takes the form of eerie dopplegangers. Scarlet — in select theaters February 6 From legendary anime director Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Mirai), Scarlet follows the titular medieval-era, sword-fighting princess on her quest to avenge the death of her father. She sets off on a quest through time and space—eventually finding herself in a surreal world, where she meets a young man from the modern day. Scarlet must decide if her revenge is worth it, or if she can break the cycle of hatred.  The Infinite Husk — in select theaters February 6 An alien is sent to occupy the body of a young woman (played by Peace Ikediuba)—and to this extraterrestrial being, that feels like a prison. The alien’s mission is to spy on one of her own kind, who had been exiled to Earth. She’s supposed to find out the secret behind his dangerous research and if she fails, she can never return to her home planet.  Time Hoppers: The Silk Road — in select theaters February 7  In this family-friendly edutainment movie, four gifted children travel through time and find themselves on an adventure along the Silk Road. They must save great historical Muslim pioneers, like Al-Khwarizimi and Mansa Musa, from the machinations of an evil alchemist.  Gale: Yellow Brick Road— in theaters for a one-day event February 11  This indie horror film asks: what if The Wizard of Oz was actually a dark, psychological horror movie? (Editor’s note: But it’s not Return to Oz, somehow.) Decades after the events of The Wizard of Oz, an elderly Dorothy Gale continues to be tormented by nightmares of Oz. She warns her granddaughter Emily about the curse that ties their family name to this dark land. Emily finds herself pulled into Oz and runs into familiar characters, now twisted beyond recognition.  GOAT — in theaters February 13 Think Zootopia, but for professional sports. A small goat named Will gets a chance to play roarball—a basketball-like sport that’s usually played by fast, fierce animals. Will’s new teammates doubt that he can keep up with them, but he wants to prove that everyone deserves a chance at greatness.  Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die — in theaters February 13 Sam Rockwell plays a time traveler from the future who travels back to present-day Los Angeles. He ends up in a diner, trying to convince the patrons to help him combat a rogue artificial intelligence. He recruits a plucky bunch of misfits and they team up to save the world from a terrible future.  The Mortuary Assistant — in select theaters February 13 A young woman named Rebecca begins a job at a mortuary and begins to experience eerie occurrences. She soon learns that the owner of the mortuary is hiding a dark secret—a demon in the building has targeted Rebecca and she must return every night to work at the mortuary in order to fend it off. The Mortuary Assistant is based on an indie horror game of the same name.  Cold Storage — in select theaters and on VOD February 13 Stranger Things’ Joe Keery and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell star in this horror comedy about two unsuspecting employees at a self-storage facility built on a former military base. Things take a dark turn one night shift, when a parasitic fungus escapes from the deep underground levels. The fungus is able to control minds and burst bodies, so the two employees must team up with a bioterror operative (Liam Neeson) in order to contain the threat.  Mimics — in select theaters February 13 A struggling Reno impressionist makes a pact with a Fergus, a mysterious ventriloquist dummy with a rough-and-gruff voice. Fergus promises to ignite Sam’s career—but there might be some strings attached to this wicked deal.  Broken Bird — in select theaters February 13 Sybil is a lonely woman who works as an undertaker, who finds more solace with the dead than with the living. She enjoys taxidermy, poetry, and extravagant daydreams. After starting a job at a new funeral parlor, she develops a dark obsession with a local man, which takes a sinister turn.  Honey Bunch — on Shudder February 13 A woman journeys to an experimental trauma rehabilitation center in the middle of nowhere with her husband… yet she can’t remember exactly why. The longer she stays, though, the more her fragmented memories begin to return and she slowly realizes that there might be a dark secret to her marriage.  Psycho Killer — in theaters February 20 A police officer embarks on a quest to track down the person who killed her late husband. But she soon realizes that this murderer isn’t just a murderer: he’s a sadistic serial killer with a twisted, Satanic agenda. Psycho Killer was penned by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, who also wrote Se7en and Sleepy Hollow.  Diabolic — in select theaters and VOD February 20  Out of desperation, Elise, a young woman experiencing strange and unsettling blackouts, returns to her old Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community to undergo a healing ritual. But they accidentally awaken the spirit of a vengeful witch, who has decided to make Elise her new target. Elise must escape the witch’s curse, while confronting disturbing memories from her past.  The Dreadful — in select theaters and VOD February 20  Set in the 15th century, during the War of the Roses, Anne (Sophie Turner) lives an isolated existence with her domineering mother-in-law Morwen (Marcia Gay Harden), while her husband is off at war. But when Jago (Kit Harrington), one of Anne’s husband’s friends, returns with tragic news, a curse in the form of a mysterious knight begins to pursue the three of them.  This Is Not a Test — in select theaters February 20  Based on the 2012 YA novel of the same name, This Is Not a Test follows a group of six high school students trapped inside their school as a zombie apocalypse rages on. The main character, Sloane, is initially jaded about survival, but eventually she bands with her fellow students to strike out against the zombies.  Scream 7 — in theaters February 27  A new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Sidney Prescott has attempted to rebuild her life—and this time, it’s targeting her daughter Tatum. Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox reprise their roles as Sidney and reporter Gale Weathers. Additionally Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley, who previously played two of the Ghostface killers, have also been cast, though it’s unclear what their roles will be.  Crazy Old Lady — on Shudder February 27  Pedro is asked by his ex-girlfriend to briefly check on her aging mother, Alicia. He thinks it’ll be a simple wellness check, but he realizes that things are amiss when Alicia doesn’t recognize him. Instead, she mistakes him for a mysterious man named Cesar—a former lover with whom she shared a terrible secret. Alicia traps him in the house, determined to make “Cesar” pay for what he’s done to her.  Matter of Time — in select theaters February 27 Charlie, a video game designer, receives a magical time-stopping device from an eccentric toy store owner (played by Sean Astin). But even though it seems like the chance of a lifetime, Charlie runs into challenges as he tries to use this new device to pursue his dreams.[end-mark] The post Here Are All the Genre Movies Premiering in February! appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club RoboCop: A Glorious, Scathing Satire of America “Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Uphold the law.” By Kali Wallace | Published on January 28, 2026 Credit: Orion Pictures / MGM Studios Comment 8 Share New Share Credit: Orion Pictures / MGM Studios RoboCop (1987) Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Miguel Ferrer, and Kurtwood Smith. Let me start with my favorite story about the making of RoboCop. In the middle of the 1980s, film producer Jon Davison, then working at Orion Studios, picked up a screenplay by two young screenwriters. Davison is the man who produced the films Airplane! (1980) and Top Secret! (1984), those gleefully over-the-top parodies that people of a certain generation (i.e., me and my siblings) still reference incessantly. Davison liked the satirical nature of this script that was titled RoboCop: The Future of Law Enforcement. At first, he and the studio intended Jonathan Kaplan to direct it. When the director he had in mind left to work on a different movie, Davison had to find another. That proved to be rather difficult. The studio approached David Cronenberg (who, as far as I can tell, was offered every sci fi movie produced in the ’80s) and Alex Cox (director of Repo Man [1984]), but they both turned it down, and nobody else the studio considered was able to sign on. They started to think the movie would never get made. Finally, one of the people at Orion, Barbara Boyle, suggested they send the script to Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, with whom the studio had recently worked with on his first English-language film. The grim, gory historical Flesh and Blood (1985) had been a resolute failure, the kind of box-office bomb that makes a movie vanish from theaters almost as soon as it arrives. Screenwriter Michael Miner would later say, “[Edward Neumeier] and I were two of only a handful of people in the theater when we went to see it.” They, and everybody else, were more impressed by Verhoeven’s 1977 war film Soldier of Orange. The studio sent Neumeier and Miner’s screenplay to Verhoeven to see if he was interested. Verhoeven read maybe one page of the script and threw it away. “I thought it was a piece of shit,” he would later say. It was his wife, Martine Tours, who read through the script and persuaded him to reconsider. He listened to her, but he’s always been very frank about the fact that he didn’t get it at first. He didn’t understand the humor. He didn’t understand the satire. The title was too cheesy. The story was too American. I love this bit of backstory for a couple of reasons. One small reason is that it’s hilarious to imagine Verhoeven chucking the screenplay away in disgust, not knowing that RoboCop would one day become his career-defining magnum opus. The larger reason is about what happened next, which is that Verhoeven actually read the screenplay to figure out what he was missing. He looked for the character hooks his wife had seen. He asked Neumeier and Miner to explain the politics, the satire, the humor. He didn’t understand why they wanted the movie to be darkly funny instead of serious, so Neumeier gave him a pile of comic books, including Judge Dredd; Verhoeven dutifully read through them to understand out what tone the screenwriters were going for. In a 2017 interview, Miner said, “Ed and I were the luckiest screenwriters in the decade of the ’80s.” He’s got a point. It’s more or less taken as fact in the film industry that the screenwriter stops mattering once a director signs on to a project, and the film that gets made will be a reflection of the director’s vision. It’s vanishingly rare to hear about a director putting so much effort into crafting a film that is exactly what the screenwriters want it to be. I also feel like if we surveyed people, just in general, and asked them to name movies that are screenwriter-driven rather than director-driven, most would probably come up with serious, dialogue-heavy dramas. Most would probably not name an ultraviolent ’80s sci fi satire that features a man’s skin gruesomely melting off after he crashes into a giant tank helpfully labeled “TOXIC WASTE.” So let’s go back to the beginning: RoboCop was born because Neumeier and Miner loved robots and really fucking hated Ronald Reagan. In the early ’80s Neumeier was a film school graduate working as a story analyst at Columbia Pictures, reading scripts in a trailer on the lot Columbia shared with Warner Brothers. He was captivated by what was going on outside his window. “…Next door was this giant street they built, suddenly, which is a lovely thing to behold in and of itself,” he said in a 2014 interview. “It was for a big science-fiction movie called Blade Runner, and I never had seen anything like it.” Neumeier marched over to the Blade Runner set to do some work on the film during the night shift, and it was Blade Runner’s replicants that gave him the idea for a robot policeman. The corporate side of the story came from his experience of working at MCA and watching studio execs interact with legendary media mogul Lew Wasserman; Wasserman was the blueprint for “The Old Man” (Daniel O’Herlihy), the chief executive of Omni Consumer Products in RoboCop. Neumeier wanted to skewer the macho, worshipful culture of corporate America in the ’80s. He later said, “Everybody was walking around in the ’80s talking about ‘corporate raiders’ and ‘killers’ and how business was for tough guys. I just thought that was absurd.” Around the same time, Neumeier made the acquaintance of Miner, who was working as a cinematographer and directing music videos for Bay Area metal bands. They began talking about their projects and discovered that they both loved robot stories as much as they both hated Ronald Reagan. In the 2014 oral history published in Esquire, Miner makes the film’s political and economic intent about as clear as can be: “Because we were in the midst of the Reagan era, I always characterize RoboCop as comic relief for a cynical time. Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys ransacked the world, enabled by Reagan and the CIA.” Both of them were absolutely determined to keep the movie set in Detroit, because Detroit was the city that best exemplified the politics of the story. Neumeier specifically cites Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam’s 1986 book The Reckoning, which details the decline of the American auto industry, as one of his inspirations while writing. The characterization of Detroit as a crime-ridden hellscape is deliberately mocking the so-called “law and order” politics of the era. As Miner explained it, “That is a cop trope, right? ‘Crime was out of control, blah, blah, blah.’ It’s a very Republican idea.” (The film might be set in Detroit, but it was mostly filmed in Dallas, with a few scenes serving as notable exceptions. Such are the whims of the movie business.) With that’s ’80s context in mind, RoboCop takes us to a science fictional near future. According to Neumeier, Verhoeven wanted the future to look more like Blade Runner, but producer Jon Davison basically said, ha, no, we can’t afford that. So it’s an unspecified future in which “Old Detroit” is overrun with crime and drugs, and the city’s police department has been privatized and is now run by a mega-corporation called Omni Consumer Products. As the company’s Senior Vice President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) observes at one of the most iconic board meetings ever put to film, “You see that we’ve gambled in markets traditionally regarded as non-profit. Hospitals. Prisons. Space exploration.” Jones delivers this line just before introducing his newest innovation: the ED-209, a police robot that he wants to deploy to clean up Old Detroit. Of course, nobody in that boardroom actually cares about crime. They want to empty the city so they can embark on a massive (and massively profitable) real estate development project. The ED-209 was designed by Phil Tippett, the man behind the AT-AT Imperial Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and built by Craig Hayes (credited as Craig Davies). Due to budget limitations, Tippett went completely old school in animating the robot’s motion; he used Ray Harryhausen’s Dynamation technique and filmed it using the older widescreen VistaVision film format. That’s why ED-209 has that halting, janky movement that makes it look so unsettling when it’s first introduced. Jones instructs doomed junior executive Kinney (Kevin Page) to take a gun and threaten ED-209. We know the demonstration is going to go badly, and it does, in an outrageously over-the-top way. The scene is pure, bloody, pitch-black comedy, with the culminating moment being somebody shouting for a paramedic and the ambitious Bob Morton (played by the wonderful Miguel Ferrer) seizing the moment to pitch his own pet project to the company head. Morton’s project is RoboCop: an experimental cyborg police officer. First, Morton needs a dead human cop, however—so he has helpfully transferred some officers from less dangerous parts of the city into the worst neighborhood in hopes of getting a fresh donor body. One of those unlucky transfers is Officer Murphy (Peter Weller), an ordinary cop with a wife and kid who just wants to do his job. Murphy and his new partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), are out on patrol when they get a call about an armed robbery. They chase a group of criminals led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) to an abandoned steel mill. The criminal gang captures Murphy and tortures him to death in a scene so gruesome the MPAA gave the first several cuts of the film an X rating. (Those parts, and the climactic scene, were filmed in a defunct Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel mill in Monessen, Pennsylvania, which has since been demolished. I’ve never watched RoboCop with my dad, who worked for Wheeling Steel at a different mill when he was young, but if I ever do, I’m sure he’ll helpfully identify every part of the mill that he can.) But Omni Consumer Products isn’t done with Murphy, so he’s brought back to life with his memory wiped and his body replaced by a machine. We see this resurrection from his point of view, with confusing glimpses of memories for which he has no context. There’s a grimly funny moment when the scientists and doctors say they can save his remaining arm, but Morton berates them for caring about preserving the human when they can replace every part with machines. The RoboCop suit was built by special effects artist Rob Bottin. We’ve talked about his work before in this column; he’s the one who got his start working on the cantina clientele in Star Wars (1977), then went on to craft The Thing in The Thing (1982) and the mutant make-up in Total Recall (1990). That suit was apparently something of a problem for everybody. Verhoeven and Neumeier wanted something more “sensational,” Bottin had to try to make their impossible ideas work, and Weller was miserable the whole time he was wearing the contraption, because it took six and a half hours to put on the face and head prosthetic, and another hour and a half to put on the suit. By all accounts, including their own, Verhoeven and Weller came very close to strangling each other on set, but they also say they made up before it was over. (Note: There is a lot of information out there about the making of RoboCop, because it was a film that attracted industry interest even while it was in production. The Cinefantastique article from December 1987 is a very detailed contemporary account. As a bonus, that same issue contains a piece wondering if the brand-new show Star Trek: The Next Generation could possibly be any good.) When Omni Consumer Products debuts its cyborg cop, RoboCop is at first a success for the company, as he struts around the city stopping assaults and robberies. This sequence is punctuated by one of the film’s amazing interludes of evening news clips; news broadcaster Mario Machado and Entertainment Tonight host Leeza Gibbons play the anchors. The news is a litany of apocalyptic horrors, delivered in chipper evening news style, complete with a commercial that shows a family playing the fun new boardgame “Nukem,” in which they try to defeat each other in nuclear warfare. But RoboCop’s successful patrols don’t last. One of Boddicker’s henchmen (played by Paul McCrane) and Officer Lewis both recognize Murphy, and their recognition triggers confusing memories that send him looking for who he used to be. That leads him to the old Murphy home, now unoccupied and up for sale. He remembers a little about his wife and son as he’s walking around the detritus of their life together, but it’s a distant recognition, the kind of disconnected memories that frustrate him and provide no catharsis. That’s the scene that convinced Verhoeven to make the movie, even when he was skeptical about the rest of it. It’s the scene he paid attention to when his wife told him he was focusing too much on the outward trappings of the film and not enough on the soul. I can see why that would draw him in, but I think what’s really interesting about that scene is that it does not lead to Murphy regaining his memories or reuniting with his family or reconciling his past life with his current existence. It doesn’t fix anything. There’s no catharsis. When he talks to Lewis about it later, he says that he can feel the loss of his family, but he can’t actually remember them. The rest of the movie is a flurry of action: RoboCop discovers that Boddicker is working for Jones, because of course he is; Jones has Boddicker blow up Morton as part of their corporate dick-measuring contest. RoboCop apprehends Boddicker, but he can’t do the same with Jones because he is programmed to keep his hands off the company executives. (That is a very on-the-nose metaphor for law enforcement working to protect wealthy criminals at the expense of everybody else, but it’s one that has only become more relevant over time.) Jones sends ED-209 and a bunch of cops to kill RoboCop, but he escapes with the help of Officer Lewis. Boddicker and his henchmen track Murphy and Lewis to the abandoned steel mill and there is a big, messy fight. None of the criminals survive that encounter. And, yes, Rob Bottin also did the toxic waste/melting face special effects on actor Paul McCrane—do you even need to ask? If we all take nothing else away from this film club, let us all cherish our hard-earned ability to recognize Rob Bottin’s special effects when they explode all over the front of cars in a gory mess of fake blood and chicken soup. From that point onward, it’s relatively straightforward to dispatch Jones. Murphy’s final act in the film is to reclaim his name. Does that make it a happy ending? Not exactly. The world hasn’t changed. The corporation is still in control. The city is still in chaos, violence is still the norm, and rich men are still profiting from it. The company still owns RoboCop. His family is still gone. His tragedy is not undone. Much like Total Recall, it’s only a happy ending if you don’t think about it. Once you start thinking about it, all the fridge horror returns and you can’t escape how incredibly bleak it is. Only onscreen, though. Off screen, for the people who made the movie, it was very much a happy ending, because the movie was a wild success. It made a ton of money at the American box office and even more money when it was released internationally on VHS. The character of RoboCop became an indelible part of American pop culture. There are sequels and remakes (I’ve never seen them) and video games (never played them) and comic book appearances (never read them). RoboCop has never gone away. As for the screenwriters: Neumeier went on to make Starship Troopers (1997) with Verhoeven. Miner also did more screenwriting after RoboCop, but he is now a landscape photographer and writing teacher. We can’t separate RoboCop from its politics, although people have certainly tried, many in ways that will make you admire their mental gymnastics. A fun and edifying thing to do is to search for what self-proclaimed RoboCop fans say about the movie on Reddit. You may encounter some of the wildest media interpretation known to humankind! It’s not quite the same situation as They Live (1988), where there is a critical effort to repurpose the film for politics completely counter to the movie itself. It’s more that a great many people who still love RoboCop today saw it when they were quite young, and naturally didn’t pick up on the satire, and aren’t quite sure what to make of the film now. It’s been thirty-nine years and we live in a world in which all the things RoboCop is commenting on are now depressingly normalized: The militarization of police and justification of extrajudicial police violence. The privatization of public services into for-profit industries. The idea that any public-serving part of society should ever be run by people who want to be rich. The fundamental sociopathy of corporate America. The histrionic fear regularly drummed up about crime-ridden urban centers. Rich old men ranting about sending armies into cities to clean them up. None of that ever went anywhere. We don’t need movies to show us government agents shooting people in the streets. It’s on the news right now. I don’t have a pithy conclusion to this article. I read it over, trying to think of a way to end it, then went up to change the headline. It used to specify “1980s America.” But that’s letting us off the hook too easily. RoboCop is a great movie. It’s smart and vicious and funny in the darkest, bleakest way. I love it. I’m glad I’ve rewatched it and researched its origins as an adult, with a lot more knowledge and perspective than I ever had as a kid. But I also wish it hadn’t remained so relevant. What do you think of RoboCop and its place among the great sci fi political satires to come out of the ’80s? What about the sequels and the more recent remake? There is so more lore about this film… it could fill an entire book, and there is no way I could write about all of it, so I’m sure I’ve left out some interesting tidbits.[end-mark] You’re Not From Around Here, Are You? We’ve watched a number of movies about alien invasions, both successful and failed, but what happens when it’s not an invasion? What happens when it’s just an individual or a small group who finds themselves on Earth and now must figure out how to survive? That’s the theme of the films we’re watching in February. February 4 — Man Facing Southeast (1987), directed by Eliseo Subiela A man appears in a psychiatric hospital and claims to be from outer space. Watch: This one isn’t online in many places, but you can watch it for free with English subtitles on Fawesome.tv, and if you do a good old fashioned “full movie” search you’ll find complete uploads around the internet. View the trailer. February 11 — The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), directed by Nicolas Roeg In which an alien played by David Bowie comes to Earth looking for help for his home planet. Watch: Find links here, including free versions through public libraries on Kanopy and Hoopla. View the trailer. February 18 — Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979), directed by Grigori Kromanov A Soviet-era Estonian film about a police inspector encountering some strange guests at a remote hotel. Watch: You can find it on Cultpix, Klassiki (which offers a free trial), and once again I encourage a “full movie” search of the usual upload sites. View the trailer. February 25 — Under the Skin (2013), directed by Jonathan Glazer Either a beautiful alien is hunting men or that’s just what Glasgow nightlife is like sometimes. Watch: This one is available in a few places online. View the trailer. The post <i>RoboCop</i>: A Glorious, Scathing Satire of America appeared first on Reactor.

News Saturn Awards Here Are the Nominees for the 53rd Annual Saturn Awards The 2026 Saturn Award nominees include a wide and wild collection of works By Molly Templeton | Published on January 28, 2026 Photo: The Saturn Awards Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: The Saturn Awards The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films has announced the nominees for the 53rd Saturn Awards, which recognize the year’s outstanding science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, and action/adventure entertainment in movies and on TV. That is a lot of categories, and a lot of nominations, some of which are slightly baffling (how is Dust Bunny star Mads Mikkelsen in the supporting actor category?)! But there’s certainly something for every fan of these genres in the nominees below. This year’s awards will be presented on March 8th; Joel McHale hosts the ceremony. Here’s the complete list of nominees: Best Science Fiction Film Avatar: Fire and Ash Bugonia Jurassic World: Rebirth Predator: Badlands The Running Man Tron: Ares Best Fantasy Film Freakier Friday Hamnet How to Train Your Dragon The Life of Chuck Lilo & Stitch Wicked: For Good Best Horror Film 28 Years Later The Conjuring: Last Rites Final Destination: Bloodlines Frankenstein The Monkey Weapons Best Cinematic Adaptation Film Black Phone 2 Captain America: Brave New World The Fantastic Four: First Steps A Minecraft Movie Superman Thunderbolts Best Thriller Film Highest 2 Lowest The Housemaid The Long Walk Marty Supreme Sinners Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery Best Action / Adventure Film Ballerina F1: The Movie Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Novocaine Now You See Me, Now You Don’t One Battle After Another Best Actor in a Film David Corenswet (Superman) Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) Tom Hiddleston (The Life of Chuck) Oscar Isaac (Frankenstein) Michael B. Jordan (Sinners) Pedro Pascal (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) Sam Worthington (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Best Actress in a Film Rachel Brosnahan (Superman) Cynthia Erivo ( Wicked: For Good) Elle Fanning (Predator: Badlands) Julia Garner (Weapons) Vanessa Kirby (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) Zoe Saldana (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Emma Stone (Bugonia) Best Supporting Actor in a Film Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) Edi Gathegi (Superman) Jeff Goldblum (Wicked: For Good) Stephan Lang (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Delroy Lindo (Sinners) Mads Mikkelsen (Dust Bunny) Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) Best Supporting Actress in a Film Oona Chaplin (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Mia Goth (Frankenstein) Ariana Grande (Wicked: For Good) Amy Madigan (Weapons) Florence Pugh (Thunderbolts) Hailee Steinfeld (Sinners) Sigourney Weaver (Dust Bunny) Best Younger Performer in a Film Miles Caton (Sinners) Jack Champion (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Maia Kealoha (Lilo & Stitch) Madeleine McGraw (Black Phone 2) Sophie Sloan (Dust Bunny) Mason Thames (How to Train Your Dragon) Best Film Direction James Cameron (Avatar: Fire and Ash) Ryan Coogler (Sinners) Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein) James Gunn (Superman) Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) Matt Shakman (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) Dan Trachtenberg (Predator: Badlands) Best Film Screenwriting Avatar: Fire and Ash (James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver; Story by: Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno) Dust Bunny (Bryan Fuller) The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer) Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro ) Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen) Sinners (Ryan Coogler) Weapons (Zach Cregger) Best Film Visual / Special Effects Avatar: Fire and Ash The Fantastic Four: First Steps How to Train Your Dragon Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Superman Wicked: For Good Best Film Music Avatar: Fire and Ash (Simon Franglen) The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Michael Giacchino) Frankenstein (Alexandre Desplat) Sinners (Ludwig Göransson) Tron: Ares (Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) Wicked: For Good (John Powell & Stephen Schwartz) Best Film Production Design Avatar: Fire and Ash The Fantastic Four: First Steps Frankenstein Sinners Superman Wicked: For Good Best Film Make Up 28 Years Later Frankenstein Sinners Tron: Ares Weapons Wicked: For Good Best Film Editing Avatar: Fire and Ash The Fantastic Four: First Steps Frankenstein Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Predator: Badlands Sinners Best Film Costume Design The Fantastic Four: First Steps Frankenstein Predator: Badlands Sinners Superman Wicked: For Good Best Independent Film Adulthood Eden Dust Bunny Good Boy The Rule of Jenny Pen The Plague The Toxic Avenger Best International Film 40 Acres Bring Her Back Dead of Winter Night Call The Ugly Stepsister Sisu 2: Road to Revenge Best Animated Film The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie The Bad Guys 2 Elio KPop Demon Hunters The SpongeBob Movie: Search For Squarepants Zootopia 2 Best International Animated Film (New Category) Attack on Titan the Movie: The Last Attack Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc The Colors Within Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle Ne Zha 2 Stitch Head Best Science Fiction Television Series Andor The Ark Foundation Severance Silo Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Best Fantasy Television Series Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches Ghosts The Librarians: The Next Chapter Outlander Stranger Things Wednesday Best Horror Television Series Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order The Institute It: Welcome to Derry The Last of Us The Walking Dead: Dead City Yellowjackets Best New Genre Series Alien: Earth Outlander: Blood of My Blood Pluribus Robin Hood Spartacus: House of Ashur Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Best Action/Adventure Television Series Cobra Kai Duster Paradise Reacher Squid Game Twisted Metal Best Thriller Television Series Dark Winds Dexter: Resurrection The Lowdown MobLand The Rainmaker Your Friends and Neighbors Best Superhero Television Series Daredevil: Born Again Gen V Invincible Iron Heart Peacemaker The Sandman Best Television Presentation The Beast in Me Black Mirror Murderbot Nautilus The Pitt The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Best Animated Television Series or Special Creature Commandos Harley Quinn Marvel Zombies Predator: Killer of Killers Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Solo Leveling Season 2 – Arise from the Shadow Best Actor in a Television Series Sterling K. Brown (Paradise) John Cena (Peacemaker) Michael C. Hall (Dexter: Resurrection) Sam Heughan (Outlander) Diego Luna (Andor) Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon) Adam Scott (Severance) Best Actress in a Television Series Caitriona Balfe (Outlander) Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) Sydney Chandler (Alien: Earth) Britt Lower (Severance) Melissa McBride (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon) Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) Rhea Seehorn (Pluribus) Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series Jack Alcott (Dexter: Resurrection) William Fichtner (Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order) Jude Law (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) James Marsden (Paradise) Babou Ceesay (Alien: Earth) Ethan Peck (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) Stellan Skarsgard (Andor) Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series Christina Chong (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) Denise Gough (Andor) Julianne Nicholson (Paradise) Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) Genevieve O’Reilly (Andor) Uma Thurman (Dexter: Resurrection) Karolina Wydra (Pluribus) Best Guest Star in a Television Series Dave Dastmalchian (Dexter: Resurrection) Peter Dinklage (Dexter: Resurrection) Linda Hamilton (Stranger Things) James Remar (It: Welcome to Derry) Bill Skarsgard (It: Welcome to Derry) Samba Schutte (Pluribus) Paul Wesley (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) Best Young Performer in a Television Series Ravi Cabot-Conyers (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) Arian S. Cartaya (It: Welcome to Derry) Joe Freeman (The Institute) Noah Schnapp (Stranger Things) Jaz Sinclair (Gen V) Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) Clara Stack (It: Welcome to Derry) Best 4K Home Media Release Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning (Paramount) Nightmare Alley (Criterion) The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney/Marvel) Thunderbolts (Disney/Marvel) When Evil Lurks (Second Sight Films) Wicked (Universal) Best Classic Film Home Media Release Dead of Night (Kino Lorber) Frailty (Lionsgate Home Video) Kingdom of Heaven (Director’s Cut) (20th Century/Disney) Night of the Juggler (Kino Lorber) Night of the Living Dead 1990 (Sony) The Re-Animator 40th Anniversary (Ignite Films) Tombstone (Disney) Best Film Home Media Collection 007: James Bond – Sean Connery 6 Film Collection (Warner Bros.) A Nightmare on Elm Street 7 Film Collection (Warner Bros.) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy (Arrow) Terror in the Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC (Eureka) The Abbott and Costello Horror Film Collection (Kino Lorber) The Pink Panther Peter Sellers Comedy Collection (Kino Lorber) Best Television Home Media Release Chucky: The Complete Series (Universal) Creepshow Complete Series (Shudder) Knight Rider: The Complete Series (Universal) Peanuts 75th Ultimate TV Specials (Warner Bros.) The Huckleberry Hound Show (Warner Archives) The Penguin Season 1 (Warner Bros.) [end-mark] The post Here Are the Nominees for the 53rd Annual Saturn Awards appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird The Magnificent Vanishing Act of the Mountains of Madness: K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites” Humanity might deserve to one day unleash the shoggoths upon itself… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on January 28, 2026 Comment 5 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites,” first published in 2014 in S.T. Joshi’s The Madness of Cthulhu anthology. Spoilers ahead! Paul Dyer, chairman of the Geology Department at Miskatonic University, is “something of an outsider” among the faculty. Most professors have transitioned into the digital age; a stoop-shouldered “pipe-smoking dinosaur of tweed suits and bow ties,” Dyer’s more likely to be found among books, papers and pens than screens. Alf Marsh meets Dyer as a (pre-digital) undergraduate, and comes to appreciate the professor’s kindness when Dyer accepts a hand-written paper after Marsh’s typewriter breaks. What’s more, Dyer gives the paper an A. Dyer shares Marsh’s interest in abyssal-zone hydrothermal vents that mysteriously occur away from subduction zones or magma plumes. He becomes Marsh’s mentor, but when Marsh decides to pursue geology, Dyer warns him that it’s “perilous work.” Consider Dyer’s father. Paul Dyer’s father was William Dyer, who led Miskatonic’s ill-fated 1930 Antarctic expedition. Marsh finds little information until, with Paul’s permission, he gains access to the MU Library’s Special Collection. The first expedition report describes the plan to obtain geological specimens buried under deep ice, via engineer Frank Pabodie’s then-revolutionary drilling rig. Peculiar Comanchean Era fossils sent biologist Lake into unexplored territory, dominated by mountains higher than Everest. Terrific windstorms wiped out Lake’s party, along with Pabodie’s rig, and the expedition was terminated. So far sad but ordinary – why is this information restricted? A second report, though, contains William’s account of the party he led to Lake’s camp. There rescuers found not only the mutilated bodies of men and dogs, but incredibly well-preserved specimens of giant radiates: barrel-shaped, starfish-headed creatures with many eyes and mouths, and limbs arranged in fives. William called the creatures “Old Ones” and claimed they “filtered down” from space to a lifeless primordial earth. Indeed, the Old Ones’ biological experiments started the evolution of all Terran organisms. William and a colleague explored Old One ruins beyond the new-discovered mountain range and gleaned their history from carven wall murals. But what inspired William to warn against future Antarctic exploration was a survival of the Old Ones’ servants, “half-sentient conglomerations of hypnotically controlled cells.” These “shoggoths” had destroyed their masters, and could destroy humanity if roused. Ironically, the Starkweather-Moore expedition that William tried to stop would refute his claims. At the charted location of the super-Himalayan peaks, they found no mountains, no ruined city or Old Ones, just wind-swept ice and snow. William’s tenure was revoked. His reports were placed among “the equally hysterical delusions of d’Erlette and Prinn” in Special Collections. Marsh is torn between William Dyer’s compelling narrative and the evidence against him. After a rough break-up with his fiancée, he takes refuge in Paul’s house, an inherited edifice that he rattles around in alone. The two live together as “congenial colleagues” for years, comfortable and celibate (as Marsh stresses). Aware that Paul’s “ensnared” in the same “moebius” of credulity and doubt as himself regarding William, he digs deeper into the enigma. He learns that a Kalpaxia Mining Company ventured to Lake’s mountains in 1933; no luckier than Lake, it lost all its equipment and thousands of workers. Only a dozen men escaped, half-mad. The last survivor is fully mad and institutionalized outside of Arkham; Marsh interviews the man. He reveals that the reason the later Starkweather-Moore expedition found no mountains was that Kalpaxia accidentally leveled the vulnerable Archean slate peaks, trying to uncover their mineral wealth. The mountains slid into the valley behind, burying the ruined city but releasing amorphous monsters, which in turn destroyed Kalpaxia’s venture. Soon after, Dyer learns that core samples from an abyssal “smoker” contain cryptically marked soapstones like those his father found—perhaps it’s an enclave of surviving Old Ones, and vindication for William! He and Marsh plan an expedition to the ten-thousand-meters deep smoker, made possible by the engineer grandson of Frank Pabodie, who’s developed a submersible super-resistant to pressure, and bathysuits designed around breathing liquid oxygenated perfluorocarbons. Dyer and Marsh make the first dive. Halfway down, they spot a dim glow emanating from a sea-mount cave. They exit the submersible in bathysuits and enter a vast grotto of stalagmite pillars lit by bioluminescent algae-animal growths. More disturbing is a “subliminal current… of pure thought” both pick up, repeating “You shall not come.” Deeper in, they find barrel-shaped bodies—Old Ones!—four dead, one dying. The thought-current comes from this survivor, beside which the compassionate Dyer kneels to clasp one of its “manual” stalks. Marsh explores ahead. He’s stopped by a massive rock-and-debris wall, behind which a “hot-wave of stubborn hate” glows like a “half-sentient furnace.” He fears that the Old One’s telepathic “You shall not come” is all that keeps shoggoths from breaking through this last barrier between their Antarctic prison and the world. He retreats to find Dyer whispering “a final parting grace” to the Old One. It dies. The barrier groans under the shoggoths’ assault. Dyer and Marsh rush back to their submersible, but Dyer doesn’t enter. He releases two explosive devices he’d attached to the hull, in case what Marsh learned about Kalpaxia’s destruction was true. He’ll set them off manually while Dyer heads home. Having vindicated William to himself, Paul’s work is done. Marsh survives. He doctors the dive records to suggest that Dyer’s bathysuit failed. Miskatonic, loath to deal with another uncanny failure, accepts the story. Back in Arkham, the grieving Marsh learns that he’s Paul’s sole heir. He goes on living in their house. Often he worries that Paul’s sacrifice might not be enough. What about new deep drilling studies? What about other Kalpaxias? When cynical, he figures humanity will “manage to hold on to our comparatively wretched lives.” When less despairing, he remembers Paul’s “final valediction,” mouthed to the Old One in hope it would telepathically understand. It was a “message of profound peace and reconciliation. Simply: “I forgive you.” The Degenerate Dutch: Amid his tale of lost expeditions and ancient aliens, Alf takes time to “no homo” his decades-long bachelor residence with his mentor. He certainly wouldn’t want the local Gay and Lesbian Coalition to profit from their “celibate Castalia.” Libronomicon: Dyer Senior was shortsighted in naming his discoveries using terms from the Necronomicon. Miskatonic keeps that tome, and others, in “the Vault” where access requires either professorial permission… or a bribe. Weirdbuilding: We’re in full-on mythos mode, with a Dyer and a Marsh (plus a Pabodie) working at Miskatonic and tracking down sequalae to the Dyer Antarctica Expedition, with Old Ones and Shoggothim waiting in the wings. Madness Takes Its Toll: The last survivor of the Kalpaxia mining expedition just happens to be in a badly-run asylum outside Arkham. He dies in response to Alf’s questioning; Alf seems weirdly un-bothered. Anne’s Commentary It’s been a long time since Ruthanna and I went back to our Lovecraft Reread roots and considered a story that not only riffs on the Cthulhu Mythos but that also employs HPL’s structural modus operandi, milieu, and even style without the writer’s tongue obviously planted in cheek. K. M. Tonso is a nom-de-plume of Gael Baudino, who has written novels and short stories across multiple genres. With “Last Rites,” she nails the sub-sub-subgenre of Mythos (core Lovecraft) — “At the Mountains of Madness” inspired — Canon-friendly sequel. That sub-sub-subgenre’s an official thing, right? In my office, anyhow, where it disappears as quickly as doughnuts. It seems like Miskatonic University had a strong legacy admissions program, not that I mean to imply that William Dyer’s son and Frank Pabodie’s grandson were not amply qualified to succeed their relations all the way to tenure level. Alf Marsh doesn’t mention any particular predecessor at MU, but surely the Marshes of Innsmouth were always welcome there. From Paul Dyer’s jest that Alf would do fine with breathing liquids given his hometown, I take it that at least some of the university community has gotten over stigmatizing those blessed with amphibious genes. The university community with access to the SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, you know. I wonder if having breathed liquid perfluorocarbons might trigger Alf’s dormant genes to produce water-breathing modifications. Then he wouldn’t need any bathysuit to explore the ocean depths. That’s assuming he could get over the traumatic stress of nearly meeting some very, very angry shoggoths. On the other hand, Deep Ones do get along with shoggoths, even at times employing them as servants—servants, one hopes, with better pay and benefits than those the Old Ones provided. Which brings us to the aeons-old ethical problem of Old One/Shoggoth relations. Does the creator of a life form have the right to control (exploit, enslave) that creature? What if the creature is sentient, and does the degree to which it is sentient or sapient matter? In At the Mountains of Madness, Dyer and Danforth finally accept that the barrel-shaped beings from the ruined city’s murals aren’t some sort of totemic metaphor for a lost race of humans, but a truly alien race. At this point, Lovecraft’s sympathies encompass the Old Ones. Star-headed radiates though they are, they are men, damn it. It was chancy for them to make a subordinate species as physically malleable and powerful as shoggoths. It was a fatal miscalculation to control them telepathically, so that the hyperimitative beasts developed rudimentary intelligence, self-awareness and will. So, yeah, the Old Ones made a mistake, but they didn’t commit a crime or sin. They were not “evil things of their kind.” At worst, they were tragic victims of hubris. But, come on, it’s easy to be over-confident when you’re interstellar travelers and founders of a great civilization! Whereas shoggoths are just jumped-up blobs who graffiti poor imitations over the art of their betters and otherwise just suck the heads off penguins, gross. They are always going to be the bad guys. “Last Rites” basically reiterates this dichotomy between the Old Ones and the shoggoths, with the former being flawed but capable of heroism, and worthy of human compassion like that of both Dyers. Whereas the latter are treacherous servants and merciless killers, “hot [waves] of stubborn hate” and “huge, half-sentient [furnaces].” Not that shoggoths are that much worse than the humans Alf Marsh deprecates as wagers of “useless wars” and indulgers in “petty hate and bigotry.” Humanity might deserve to one day unleash the shoggoths upon itself. Except— Except that humanity includes a human like Paul Dyer, who clasps appendages with the dying Old One defender of whatever remains worth fighting for. It’s a genuinely moving scene, as are Dyer’s final words to this fellow creature: “I forgive you.” Exactly what he forgives is up to each reader. The very act of forgiveness, I think, is where the deep benediction lies. Ruthanna’s Commentary My wife likes to describe Rodrigo Borgia as “the guy who literally gave nepotism a bad name.” That was in 1492, but word clearly hasn’t reached Miskatonic University, where the best way to get a professorship is to be descended from a previous professor, and the second-best way is to be a student-turned-grad-student-turned-teacher with an old-money name. This is a striking contrast to most Ivy Leagues—what I always heard was that you get tenure at Harvard not by going there, nor by taking a tenure-track job there, but by becoming a rock star somewhere else at which point they will lure you away with scads of money (on the academic scale). But poor Miskatonic doesn’t get its pick of rock stars, perhaps because of the ding to its scientific reputation from the old Dyer Expedition, now firmly considered a hoax. So they’re stuck offering jobs to Dyer Junior and Pabodie Junior and a wayward, non-water-breathing Marsh. And both Dyer and Marsh have very specific research interests: they are absolutely obsessed with uncovering the truth about Dyer Senior. Here’s where things get dicey. I am totally willing to believe in an ancient star-headed civilization, and their collapse in the Great Shoggoth Revolt. I’m happy to imagine that remnant Old Ones have held out for aeons, with shoggothim still going strong in the 21st Century, and that the last Old One conveniently draws their last breath just as the last Dyer happens by. But one wayward blast of TNT taking down two Everest-high mountain ranges? In a way that leaves absolutely no trace discernible by PhD geologists a couple years later? A mining disaster in the exact location of a controversial Miskatonic expedition that somehow never comes to the attention of Miskatonic? Hell, the mining company not bothering to consult with Miskatonic – perhaps to poach a consultant about their promising geological findings—prior to haring off? This makes no bloody sense. I also strongly advise not getting into a submersible that your local oceanographers won’t touch. But that, at least, is realistic. If you want effective amateur deep-ocean expeditions, consult with your local James Cameron. Alf isn’t persuaded of the Old Ones’ reality by photos, but recognizes something ineluctably inhuman in their art. “Regardless of deformity, futurism, style, or evidence of mental instability, a work of art made by a human being demonstrates by its very nature the axiomatic groundwork of our consciousness and psychology.” This is a fascinating claim, and absolutely the sort of thing a geologist would believe with great confidence. It makes me want to run a psychological experiment presenting people with a full range of human and Old One art, and asking them to judge which is which. What does it take for art to be non-human, and yet recognizable to humans as art? There’s a whole untapped field of inquiry here. The scene with Dyer holding the dying Old One’s tentacle is sweet, even moving. They were men, after all, and recognize us as such when they aren’t dissecting us. I would like to know what Dyer thinks he’s forgiving the Old One for, though. Failing to leave a resilient enough record to preserve the Dyer reputation? (Not the Old Ones’ fault.) Dying, and thus unleashing angry shoggothim on an unsuspecting world? (Also not the Old Ones’ fault.) Creating shoggothim in the first place, enslaving them, and refusing to recognize their personhood? (Actually the Old Ones’ fault, and really not Dyer’s place to forgive.) Finding evidence of still-surviving-until-yesterday Old Ones, and then blowing it up without giving your surviving student a sample corpse to carry away for further research? Not forgivable at all. Next week, we wrap up Sister, Maiden, Monster—and perhaps the lifespan of the human species—with Chapters 29-30.[end-mark] The post The Magnificent Vanishing Act of the Mountains of Madness: K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites” appeared first on Reactor.

News paradise Paradise Season 2 Trailer Brings the Post-Apocalyptic Series to the Surface We’re beyond the bunker now (but also still in the bunker, sometimes) By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on January 28, 2026 Credit: Disney/Anne Marie Fox Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Disney/Anne Marie Fox Paradise, the Hulu series where a segment of humanity lives underground in an uncanny creepy version of a neighborhood after an apocalyptic event, is about a month away from its second season. In the lead-up to this season’s premiere, Hulu has gifted us a trailer. In it, we see Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) exploring the surface to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), after he discovered that life above ground was habitable. That information was something that Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), the leader of the bunker folk, doesn’t want people to know. As Sinatra explains in today’s trailer, it has “never [been] just about the bunker.” What does that mean? We don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s not great! Here’s the logline for season two of Paradise, which sums things up nicely: Xavier searches for Teri out in the world and learns how people survived the three years since “The Day.” Back in Paradise, the social fabric frays and new secrets are uncovered about the city’s origins. In addition to Brown, Nicholson, and Okuma, Paradise stars Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Krys Marshall, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV, and Charlie Evans, with recurring guest stars James Marsden, Shailene Woodley, Thomas Doherty, and Jon Beavers. We see Woodley, in fact, in this trailer as a surface dweller (as well as Marsden reprising his role as the President). Season two of Paradise premieres on Hulu on February 23, 2026. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Paradise</i> Season 2 Trailer Brings the Post-Apocalyptic Series to the Surface appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson A group of girls does Death incarnate’s bidding in this haunting speculative young adult novel. By Alexis Henderson | Published on January 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from When I Was Death, a new speculative young adult novel by Alexis Henderson, out from G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 3. Roslyn isn’t herself anymore. It’s been a year since her sister, Adeline, died under mysterious circumstances, and Roslyn is still tormented by her absence. So when the elusive caravan of girls that Adeline spent her last summer with rolls back into town, Roslyn joins them to finally figure out what happened to her sister.Strange, beautiful, and intriguing, the girls are closed off from the world. And as it turns out, they’re brought together by a force more sinister than Roslyn’s nightmares could’ve conjured up: Death himself.Death has spared the girls from untimely endings, and to pay for their lives, the girls travel the country reaping souls on his behalf. Now Roslyn must decide if finding closure is worth the price of striking the same deal. The girls arrived on a bleak morning in May, eight months after my sister’s death. I first saw them through my bedroom window, three vehicles—a rust-eaten pickup truck, an old station wagon, and an Airstream RV—crawling down the street and around the bend of the cul-de-sac. There were three teenage girls sitting in the bed of the pickup truck, all of them staring at my house as though it were a landmark. I stared back, and I swore one of them—a pale girl with hair like fire—looked up at my window and smiled. But by the time I scrambled downstairs and burst through the front door, they were gone. I might’ve thought I’d dreamed them if not for the smell of diesel hanging like a ghost in the cool morning air. A few hours later, I left my house and walked down the sorry little main street of my hometown in Michigan. But calling it a town at all is generous. Towns are comprised of people, and once emptied of them, they lose their respective designations and become something else. The something else is what I walked through that day. Cracked streets licked with heat waves, a thin trickle of traffic passing by. The dusty storefronts of antique shops and jewelry stores that never had any customers. The remnants of a place that barely existed. I scanned the streets, half hoping to spot the girls who had driven past my house that morning, but they seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. It was a two-mile walk from my house to Conny’s Coney Dogs, the twenty-four-hour diner where I worked as a waitress. The diner’s owner and namesake, Conny—a tall, grave woman who smelled perpetually of patchouli and pot smoke—had hired me, probably out of pity, because I’d never waited a table in my life. By that time, the whole town knew about my sister and had closed ranks around my family the way small towns are supposed to when something tragic and terrible happens to one of their own. But Conny had offered something others hadn’t: distraction. In the long months that followed my sister’s death, she taught me the rhythms of the diner—how to flirt tips from begrudging patrons who had next to nothing in their pockets, how to anticipate their needs with no more than a passing glance. In the grimy staff bathroom, I gathered my curls into a fat braid, scrubbed at my armpits with hand soap and a soggy wad of paper towels (I’d slept through my alarm and hadn’t had the chance to shower) before changing into my uniform. It was a peach-pink dress—the color of a newborn baby’s flush—with snagged stockings and a paper-pale apron so small it didn’t cover much of anything. Once dressed, I pinned on my name tag just a few inches below my starched collar. It read RoslynVolk in smudged Sharpie, because Conny liked it when her servers introduced themselves by their first and last names. Something about the importance of family, of knowing where a person was from and, in her words, exactly what stuff they were made of. My sneakers squelched on the sticky tile floors as I carried steaming plates of pancakes and scrambled eggs, biscuits half submerged in gravy, and burnt triangles of toast to their respective tables. I refilled coffeepots and chatted with the regulars, trying my best to keep up with the breakfast rush. On a staticky TV screen above the bar, the news was playing, though the sound was partly drowned out by the clamor of the kitchen—pots and pans clattering, slabs of bacon sizzling on the grill, cooks shouting orders above the din. The headline of the day was a string of violent storms that had washed across the Midwest the night before, spawning a series of tornadoes, one of which flattened a small town in Ohio, claiming the lives of more than a dozen people. It was the first bad storm of the year, and the meteorologist predicted more would follow. There was a congressman on TV crying about the devastation when the girls entered the diner, the five of them streaming in single file. One of the girls wore a long fur-collared coat despite the thickening heat. Another swept past in a heavy peasant skirt paired with a cropped and pilled flannel shirt. A third wore heavy boots and ripped men’s jeans that looked like they were fished from the bowels of a Salvation Army bin and attacked with a razor. Buy the Book When I Was Death Alexis Henderson Buy Book When I Was Death Alexis Henderson Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget They were around my age, but they dressed the way sixth graders imagined themselves dressing at twenty, without the smothering supervision of their parents or the pressure of their peers. Their hair was wild, as if none of them owned a brush. And they were all pretty, but in the way that girls find each other pretty. Which is to say, unkempt and decidedly intimidating, like a boy’s idea of a dream girl gone ragged at the edges. I hoped they wouldn’t sit in my section—groups of girls my age made me anxious—but the five of them did just that, occupying a small booth at the back of the diner, sitting crushed together hip-to-hip on the same side as if there wasn’t another empty bench right in front of them. I recognized the redhead immediately. She was the same fire-haired girl who I thought might’ve smiled at me that morning when the caravan drove past the house. Her bony hands were covered in faded stick-and-poke tattoos that looked like doodles drawn with pen, and she had wedding rings on every finger. She wore hoop earrings so large I could’ve slid one halfway up my arm, and she was impeccably dressed in wide-cut patchwork jeans and a lace top that looked like vintage lingerie with its vaguely cone-shaped bra cups. Sitting close beside the redhead was the youngest of the five— maybe thirteen, give or take a year. She fixed her brilliant blue eyes on me and smiled at my approach. She had downy blond hair and wore lipstick, cracked and smeared and bleeding at the edges of her mouth like she’d applied and reapplied it with a heavy hand several days prior. She slipped a vape pen from the pocket of her coat and held it like a cigarette, pinched between two knuckles. One of the older girls—she had dark eyes and hair the color of sand, which hung down her back in long microbraids—leaned across the table, snatched the vape pen from the blonde’s hand, and turned it off despite the younger girl’s protests. None of them were locals, of that much I was certain. My graduating class would be comprised of fewer than a dozen students. I could rattle off their names, first and last, and some of their parents’ too. These girls were newcomers, which was strange for a small town devoid of tourism where things never really changed. The young girl kept smiling at me, mouth wide and bloody from the lipstick. “I like your dress. I’ve been looking for one just like that for ages. Do they sell them here?” “Um… afraid not, b-but thank you?” I fumbled with my pen and notepad and nearly dropped both. “What would you like to drink?” “Pink lemonade,” said the girl. She kicked off her sandals, cork platforms with leather straps as thin as strings, and swapped them with the sneakers of the girl to her left. “They’re a better match. Don’t you think?” “Um, yeah. We don’t have pink lemonade. Is regular lemonade okay? It’s house made.” She bobbed her head. “Sounds good. You can just bring it by the pitcher, and we’d like coffee, or better yet, hot chocolate if you have it. And we’ll order the rest now too. Assuming you’re ready?” I nodded down at my notepad, my pen poised. Together, they ordered what seemed like half the menu—several stacks of pancakes, French toast, hash browns smothered with cheese and onions, six sunny-side up eggs, a plate of bacon, two chili dogs from the lunch menu, a ham and cheese omelet, as well as fresh fruit in a to-go box. “For Shiloh,” said a different, more sullen girl with a shifting gaze and the golden sliver of a nose ring pierced through her left nostril. Her hair was dark and cut in a ragged jaw-length bob, and her eyes were large and gray. Conny, overhearing their lengthy order, got suspicious and made the girls pay for the meal up front. An older girl with blunt black bangs and blue eyeshadow lifted a large purse that looked like a carpetbag and set it on the table with a heavy thud that made the silverware jump and clatter. From it, she produced several fistfuls of wrinkled bills (I put them in the pocket of my apron to count later) and a small mason jar filled with silver change. She slid it to Conny with a smile. “Keep the change.” Whenever I returned to their table, their conversation seemed to die into silence or abruptly change subjects. They were enviably self-contained and entirely unbothered despite the curious gazes of the other diners, particularly the male ones who watched them with rapt, too-sharp interest. The girls weren’t naive or otherwise oblivious to the attention they received. Nor were they distant in the heavy-lidded, theatrical way girls often are when they’re trying to appear pointedly aloof. They were merely… impassive. Perhaps they were too consumed by their own conversation. At times, their discussion grew so intense it appeared they were arguing about something. The same name kept coming up repeatedly; I’d hear it—a hot, hissing whisper—as I passed their table: Shiloh. The one the fruit was for. I watched them eat with furtive glances cast over my shoulder or from across the diner behind the bar. The redhead shoveled large forkfuls of French toast into her mouth as if this were the last meal she’d ever eat and she had only minutes left to finish it. Beside her sat the girl with the braids. I was tempted to call her the pretty one, because even among the girls she stood out as particularly stunning. Her skin was deep and dewy, utterly flawless, though she didn’t look like she was wearing any concealer. She had full lips and high cheekbones that would’ve been the envy of any model. I stared as she popped the yolks of all six eggs on her plate— one after the other—with the tip of a steak knife and watched the yellow bleed into the white with dead eyes before licking the blade clean. The blonde emptied a small ramekin of maple syrup into the dregs of her coffee and drank the sludgy remnants in a single gulp. “Slow down or you’ll choke,” said the older girl, the one with the powdery blue eyeshadow who’d paid for the food. When the youngest did, in fact, begin to choke just minutes later, the older girl patted her back until the coughing fit subsided. It was a strange and intimate gesture, so maternal and natural that I wondered for a moment if the two were family. But they couldn’t have looked any less alike. Different races—one white, the other Asian. Different hair. Different demeanor. All five girls had a distinct way of being. I didn’t know how to describe it exactly, but it was both familiar and distinctly unusual. They had a kind of confidence that came easily to them. The redhead kicked her feet out into the aisle that ran between tables, oblivious to the way she was taking up space. Bold in a way that boys are usually, and even then, only the most self-assured among them. The varsity athletes or that one overeager theater kid who lands all the lead roles in school plays. After the girls finished their feast, I brought them a copy of the receipt. I doubted they’d want it. They’d refused to accept their change and seemed to have no care for cost, but I wanted another excuse to return to their table—curiosity surmounting my initial anxiety—to examine them up close one more time. “Can I interest you in something else? Maybe some dessert?” “I’ll take a hot fudge sundae,” said the girl with the long braids. “No peanuts, with extra whip and maraschino cherries if you have them. And can you box it up so we can take it for the road?” I nodded and was leaving to make it when the youngest of the group, the little blond girl, called me back. “Do you like to swim?” “Sure,” I said. “I guess so.” The young one nodded to the blue-eyeshadow girl, whom I took to be the leader of this strange flock. She reached into the other girl’s carpetbag purse, found a pen, and scrawled an address on the back of the receipt I’d supplied them with, then folded it and put it into the pocket of my apron without asking whether or not I wanted it. “Tonight.” She slipped out of the booth. “Show up anytime after nine.” I made the sundae as the girls wolfed down their final bites of food. When I delivered it to the booth, they were already on their feet, laughing and talking among themselves. “See you tonight,” said the blonde. And then they were gone into the white brilliance of the day. Excerpted from When I Was Death, copyright © 2026 by Alexis Henderson. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>When I Was Death</i> by Alexis Henderson appeared first on Reactor.