News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Chase the Minamalist Backrooms With These Maximalist Genre Movies Plus: A sea shanty band with a secret and Mina the Hollower By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 29, 2026 Screenshot: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: A24 Hey all! Molly is out this week fighting dragons or some damn thing (I don’t keep track or bother to ask), so I’m stepping in to guide you through the weekend as best as possible. This weekend, we’ve got a horror movie you need to see, a few genre films that will help you scare away the liminal nightmares caused by that movie, and a video game from another time that may just be the best video game you’ll play this year. Still not convinced tonight’s going to be a good night? Then may I interest you in increasingly specific obsessions and the story of a sea shanty singing band with a dark secret? Ah, that’s the spirit. So don’t forget to call your reps, and let’s dive in. Nobody Can Be Told What Is In the Backrooms Do you know the horror of having to go back to school after hours to get that book out of your locker that you lost? What about the terror of having to work late in a retail store doing inventory after the employees and customers are gone? Can you relate to the dread of discovering that you have been living and working in the shadows of a seemingly infinite series of hallways and rooms seemingly disconnected from reality even as they expose something about your crumbling world? In its own way, Backrooms capitalizes on those all-too-familiar anxieties. The on-screen story of the new movie Backrooms (a man discovers his furniture store is connected to a seemingly infinite series of mysterious rooms) is really only half the story. The film’s behind-the-scenes origins are arguably just as compelling. Based on a creepypasta post about liminal spaces that you can accidentally “noclip” into, the Backrooms concept was eventually turned into a successful series of YouTube videos by Kane Parsons. Now, at only 20 years old, Parsons is the latest online content creator to take their second screen vision to the big screen. And by all accounts, the full-length Backrooms movie is every bit as ominous, terrifying, and visually inspired as its source material. The minimalist, liminal nature of the Backrooms idea has long spoken to those who harbored a silent fear of the sterile spaces that have seemingly become more prolific in the age of private equity, disappearing design identities, and dying institutions. It’s also yet another recent example of a burgeoning modern golden age of horror led by creators from non-traditional origins. See it in a room with fluorescent lighting if you can. Backrooms is now playing in theaters. Maximalist Genre Movies For Maximum Enjoyment If the Severance-esque minimalist hallways of Backrooms get you craving a little color, a few explosions, and a slice of gonzo insanity, then here are a few maximalist genre films to add to your watchlist: Speed Racer – Perhaps the Wachowskis’ greatest film, Speed Racer is certainly one of the greatest assaults on the senses ever crafted by human hands. Deliriously colorful and over-the-top in every technical and spiritual way, it’s the movie lesser minds are trying to make when they claim to bring a classic cartoon to life. House (1977) – Inspired by the ideas and fears of director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s young daughter, House (Hausu) is quite possibly the strangest and most wonderful horror movie ever made. Every frame of this cult classic masterpiece is designed to make you utter “What the hell?” even as you gradually accept that nothing approaching traditional explanations will ever grace your weary conscience. Also one of the better movies where a girl is eaten by a piano. Mandy – Many modern directors are trying to weaponize the generational weirdness of Nicolas Cage. Few have ever done it half as well as Panos Cosmatos in Mandy. Imagine if every heavy metal album cover merged into a single entity, came to life, and burst into our reality while riding a violent spectrum of colors as they are heralded by the sound of every noise playing at once. That’s roughly what it’s like to watch this revenge story that somehow finds new places to go when you think it couldn’t possibly go new places. Phantom of the Paradise – There are, in this writer’s opinion, too few horror musicals. Then again, when you consider that director Brian De Palma arguably perfected the concept in 1974, the hesitation to follow in those footsteps becomes that much more understandable. This story of a modern(ish) day phantom whose masterpiece is stolen by a slimy record producer is a gift for those of us who live in the Venn diagram of absurdity between musicals and horror. Escape From The 21st Century – One of the most underrated sci-fi films in recent memory, Escape from the 21st Century is also one of the most unabashedly maximalist films you’ll ever need to brace yourself for. It tells the story of three young men who mysteriously gain the power to travel through time simply by sneezing, and use (often unwillingly) that ability to create colorful chaos through time and space. Imagine if Everything Everywhere All at Once consumed all the acid that has ever and will ever be produced. Master and Commander: A Long Read About a Sea Shanty Band With a Secret Author Peter Ward’s longread story Master and Commander is not technically a genre tale. It is, however, the kind of epic bit of online journalism that reminds you the internet isn’t always a terrible place and occasionally lends a voice to stories that would otherwise go untold despite being truly remarkable. It’s the story of a traveling sea shanty band that captures the hearts and minds of the residents of a small Welsh town where they become something of a sensation. Slowly, though, the enamored residents begin to realize that there’s something about the band’s manager that doesn’t seem quite right. To say any more would be a crime, but it’s a must-read for fans of excellent writing and small-town mysteries. Mina the Hollower Is A Modern Game Boy Color Masterpiece In 2014, developer Yacht Club Games released Shovel Knight: a throwback to 8-bit action-adventure video games that has gone on to join many shortlists of the greatest such games ever made. While Yacht Club has expanded Shovel Knight in the years since then (and released a few spin-offs of the title), fans have patiently waited for their proper follow-up to the iconic retro experience. Well, Mina the Hollower is finally here, and it’s somehow even better than the years of hype could have prepared us for. Visually and mechanically, Mina the Hollower is a tribute to Game Boy Color games like The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. Functionally, it’s actually a very Zelda-like title with a little Dark Souls and Castlevania thrown in for flavor. But much like Shovel Knight, Mina the Hollower is so much more than a bit of retro aesthetics flattery. It’s a deep, emotionally resonant, and sometimes even surprisingly scary adventure game that examines the evolution of that very concept even as it inches the genre forward. It may very well be the best game of 2026, and it will almost certainly become quite a few people’s next obsession. Engage in Hypedrive Overfixation Finally, if you’re looking for something lovely to interrupt the occasional bit of inevitable doomscrolling this weekend, may I recommend our own Hyperdrive Overfixation series? As curated by our own social media manager, Hyperdrive Overfixation offers people a platform to sound off on the incredibly specific subjects that just mean the world to them. Examples so far include the argument that Star Wars would have benefited from a throuple storyline, why you should consider Red Dead Redemption 2 to be a horse girl masterpiece, and a deep dive into the anatomy of mermen. Give them a watch when you get the chance. They’re some of the best things we do here.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Chase the Minamalist <i>Backrooms</i> With These Maximalist Genre Movies appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star City Star City: A For All Mankind Spinoff for Fans and Newcomers Alike The new series has a very different tone from its predecessor, which might be part of the appeal. By Lacy Baugher Milas | Published on May 29, 2026 Image: AppleTV Comment 0 Share New Share Image: AppleTV Spinoffs are often unpredictable beasts in the world of entertainment. While every network and streamer undoubtedly wants the opportunity to capitalize on the success of a familiar, already beloved property, they’re hard to do well. (To put it another way, for every Better Call Saul that captures lightning in a bottle, there are far more misfires like Once Upon a Time in Wonderland or How I Met Your Father.) These kinds of series must serve many masters: They need to stand on their own as a story, entice existing franchise fans, and remain accessible to viewers who’ve never seen the original. It’s a delicate balancing act, and one that even the most successful sequels, prequels, and in-universe expansions can struggle to manage.  Apple TV’s Star City is a spin-off of its critically acclaimed alternate history science fiction drama For All Mankind, which asks a disarmingly simple question: what if the Soviet Union had won the race to the moon in 1969? In exploring the butterfly effect of that single change, the original series catapults humanity further into the stars than anyone could have believed possible. And by the time Season 5 (set in a version of 2012) rolls around, its story has evolved to include everything from a Martian space colony to a search for life among Saturn’s moons. Star City takes the franchise back to its beginning, offering a grittier, darker companion piece that interrogates the series’ original point of divergence through a completely new lens.  Image: AppleTV Taking audiences through the space race from the perspective of those living and working in the U.S.S.R, Star City begins at the same moment For All Mankind once did, with cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (Sam Wilkinson) becoming the first human to walk on the moon. But what follows is very different, as the show journeys behind the Iron Curtain for an in-depth exploration of what the Soviet Union’s space program—and life in a country that had achieved such a triumph before the United States did—is like. Put in the unenviable position of crafting an alternate take on a pre-existing alternate history, Star City still manages to distinguish itself tonally and stylistically, expanding the world of its larger franchise rather than retreading what we’ve seen before.  Technically, For All Mankind isn’t even required viewing to enjoy this spin-off, which is as much an espionage thriller as it is a sci-fi drama. But it’s also almost certain to appeal to those fans who have already bought into the franchise’s worldbuilding and who are comfortable with its occasionally creepy “this isn’t our reality, but, wow, it occasionally sure does rhyme with it in uncomfortable ways”-style premise. The series initially follows the Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans), the anonymous space program head whose life is carefully monitored and controlled—and whom the original series hinted was most likely based on the real-life Soviet engineer Sergei Korolev. Thrilled by the success of the lunar landing, the Chief Designer has grand dreams of expanding Soviet spaceflight beyond the moon. However, his superiors are more interested in power, control, and publicly humiliating America on the world stage than in genuine scientific advancement.  Yet, it’s apparent fairly immediately that for all the glory the Chief Designer has won for his homeland, he is also essentially a prisoner within it. Given a hero’s award he can’t keep and a victory parade he isn’t allowed to attend because he must keep his identity a secret from the public, he has little freedom, physically or otherwise. His superiors are uninterested in his plans for the next phase of the space program and insist that his focus remain on the moon, no matter how he feels about it. Still, the Chief Designer is both protective and fond of the cosmonauts he calls his “eagles”: Yana Akhmatova (Niamh Alger), Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis), and Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), who are all eager to help make history, even though most of them aren’t allowed even to tell their families when they’re assigned to space missions until after they’re completed.  Image: AppleTV Although the show is named after its fictional home base of the Soviet space program (as well as the real-life Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow), Star City is as much about politics and personnel as it is about spaceflight, and the series weaves in stories of the base’s intelligence officers, scientists, and analysts alongside its cosmonauts. As the Chief Designer is forced to turn his attention to a mission to send the first woman to the moon, rumors fly about an American spy stealing Soviet secrets, and he frequently butts heads with the appealingly ruthless Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin), the head of KGB surveillance.  Raskova essentially sits atop a web of information, brought to her by her squad of female workers charged with listening in on virtually every resident of Star City. As she tortures potential informants and digs into personal lives in the hopes of tracking down the alleged mole, the Chief Designer scrambles to keep secrets of his own, particularly about his ultimate vision for the future of the space program, which doesn’t entirely mesh with the superiors who control his life. Franchise fans will recognize a few familiar faces from the world of For All Mankind, including young engineer Sergei Nikulov (Josef Davies) and junior surveillance agent Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey), both of whom will go on to play key roles on the main series and who get intriguing origin stories here. And cosmonaut Polivanov’s unique surname almost certainly implies he’s in some way connected to the man who’s currently the Governor of Mars in the fifth season of the flagship series.  Image: AppleTV While the five episodes available to screen for critics (out of a total of eight) feature a handful of breathtakingly intense space scenes, most of the action remains firmly Earth-bound. Like the earliest seasons of For All Mankind, Star City shines brightest when it digs into the interior lives of its characters, depicting the complicated strain that living under constant surveillance and brutal obligation to the state inevitably brings. However, the series’s unrelenting bleak tone and suffocating sense of paranoia mean that the spin-off as a whole lacks some of the humor and optimism that ultimately defined the original. It also doesn’t help that most of the characters’ default emotional states tend to register somewhere between “withdrawn” and “deeply emotionally repressed”; it’s difficult to feel as though we really get to know any of them beyond a surface level.  Still, the show has real potential. Ifans and Maxwell Martin have a deliciously fractious chemistry, and scenes in which the two of them butt heads are as entertaining as you might expect. O’Casey smartly doesn’t attempt to imitate Svetlana Efremova’s performance on For All Mankind, and her Irina is a softer, more emotionally malleable figure, one that’s still capable of being horrified by the things her government asks her to do in its name. (For All Mankind fans will have loads of questions about how this character will transform in the years to come.) And the season’s larger plot, which involves multiple betrayals and a secret off-the-books space mission no one’s supposed to know about, is much more ambitious than the initial descriptions of the series indicated. Where this story is ultimately headed remains an open question. But it’s a journey that (at least for now) seems worth signing up for.[end-mark] The post <i>Star City</i>: A <i>For All Mankind</i> Spinoff for Fans and Newcomers Alike appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Spider-Noir Power and Responsibility With Bullets and Booze — Spider-Noir Season One Is a Superb Pulp Adventure Nicolas Cage returns as Spider-Noir in Sony’s first unqualified live-action success at a Spider-project. By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 29, 2026 Image: Aaron Epstein/Prime Comment 1 Share New Share Image: Aaron Epstein/Prime Spider-Noir wasn’t even supposed to be a thing. The character has its origins in a series of “Noir” comics that Marvel did from 2009-2010. Besides Spider-Man, they did Depression-era versions of the X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man, Luke Cage, and the Punisher. The line had its run and then went away, and that should’ve been it. But then in 2014, Marvel did the “Spider-verse” event, which brought together every alternate version of Spidey we’d seen over the years (Miles Morales, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man 2099, and, yes, Spider-Noir, among others), along with some new ones (most notably Spider-Gwen).  Then two things happened in 2018. First, Marvel did “Spider-geddon,” which was designed to cull the herd, as it were, with several alternate Spideys being killed off, Spider-Noir among them. But then came the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with Nicolas Cage voicing the animated version of Spider-Noir. The character existed only in black-and-white, and he was captivated by a Rubik’s Cube, which he carried around for most of the movie. Suddenly, thanks mainly to Cage’s delightful vocal performance, there was renewed interest in a 1930s Spider-Man, and so the comics character was resurrected by a mystical handwave, and has continued to show up, with new miniseries released in 2020 and 2025. The love for the character was strong enough to get him his own TV series, with Cage going back on his long-avowed desire to not do television because he loves the character so much. SPOILERS FOR ALL EIGHT EPISODES OF SPIDER-NOIR AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! There’s a lot to love about this eight-episode season of Spider-Noir, which dropped all at once on Amazon Prime after a preview on MGM+. One is that you have a choice of watching it in black and white or in color. I know many who chose b&w because what else could you possibly choose? But I went for it in color. The only reason so many films from that era are dark and grainy-looking is because of the quality of the film used, combined with age-related degradation. But the actual New York City of the early 1930s existed in color, and I’m pleased to see that the producers embraced that. The color version of Spider-Noir is vibrant and impressive. Image: Prime Video Still, it’s cool that we have the option. Sony has not had the best luck with their Spider-adjacent projects in live action, with only the three Venom films even coming close to being successes, and everything else—Morbius, Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter—being unmitigated disasters. With this TV series, however, they’ve finally hit paydirt. Spider-Noir is a love letter to the film noir genre while also being a really good superhero story in general and a really good Spider-Man story in particular. Unlike the comic-book version, which has gone out of its way to have direct analogues to the mainline Spider-Man cast of characters, Spider-Noir’s relation to the comics characters is more thematic. Only three names will be familiar: Ben Reilly, Flint Marko, and Joe “Robbie” Robertson. And that first one is actually the name of the protagonist. They decided to go with Reilly, which was the name chosen by the clone of Spider-Man to distinguish himself from his genetic brother Peter Parker. For that matter, the superhero identity Reilly uses isn’t Spider-Man, but just the Spider—which can be viewed as a tribute to the pulp character of the same name. Said character, who was created in 1933 as competition for the Shadow, was allegedly one of the inspirations for Spider-Man, and Spider-Noir’s costume has all along been an homage to the original Spider’s outfit. Spider-Noir’s main thing is to play with pulp tropes. Reilly is a private investigator, he’s got a long-suffering secretary and a best friend, a femme fatale comes through his door with a dangerous case, there’s corruption, mob bosses, love triangles, smoking, drinking, and lots of fisticuffs and gunplay (with webbing thrown in for good measure). The story also leans into the fact that Cage is, um, not a young man. (Allegedly, one reason for using the Reilly name was because the alliterative Peter Parker sounds too much like a teenager.) As the story commences, he hasn’t been the Spider for five years, and he’s old enough to have served in the Great War. He quit the hero game when the love of his life died, a death for which he blames himself. (Said love of his life was a blonde named Ruby. Comics fans are likely to be confused as to why they didn’t just name her Gwen Stacy, but that happens a lot in this story…) The story also leans into the fact that latter-day Nic Cage can get, um, weird. The origin of the Spider’s powers, as well as that of the four super-powered bad guys we meet over the course of the series, is from genetic experiments done on American prisoners of war by the Germans during what we now call World War I. It involved combining the genetics of humans with animals. Reilly was in charge of the platoon that freed the POWs, but during the rescue he was bitten by a guy who was being transformed into a spider, hence the powers. Because of that bite, he’s constantly wanting to act like a spider rather than a human, and so he has to really fight and concentrate to act normal. He uses movies as a guideline, basing his speaking patterns on James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, and also occasionally makes weird gestures and odd facial tics because of the spider bite. This allows Cage to be completely batshit (spidershit?) and it actually has a plot reason! Image: Prime Video Four of the POWs Reilly and his platoon rescued wind up in New York, and also wind up working for Silvermane. The main bad guy of the piece, played by Brendan Gleeson, Silvermane is your prototypical crime boss—he’s pretty much Sidney Greenstreet with an Irish accent, and it’s a bravura performance. (Also based on a comics character, but the four-color version is an Italian mobster named Silvio Manfredi.) One of the POWs, Addison, is killed in the first episode—indeed, the confrontation that ends with him being shot is pretty much what catalyzes the plot of the whole season. He has the ability to generate flames. The others include Lonnie Lincoln (Abraham Popoola), who has super-strength and invulnerability (he seems to be a cross between the Lizard and Tombstone), Dirk Leyden (Andrew Lewis Caldwell, who leaves no piece of scenery unchewed), who has the ability to harness electricity (a mix of Electro and the Shocker), and Flint Marko (Jack Huston) who can turn to sand (the Sandman, and the only one of the four who uses the actual name of his comics counterpart).  The inevitable love triangle comes from Marko, Reilly, and the aforementioned femme fatale, Cat Hardy (an impressively steely performance by Li Jun Li). She’s a riff on the Black Cat, who in the mainline comics is a thief and love interest of Spidey’s named Felicia Hardy, and in the Spider-Man Noir comics was the owner of a night club called the Black Cat. Hardy is a lounge singer and a favorite of Silvermane’s, and is in love with Marko. But she also starts to fall for Reilly, and when she thinks Marko has disappeared she even considers running away with him. But then, like any good femme fatale, she betrays Reilly, revealing that he’s the Spider to a scientist who is trying to cure the POWs (Amy Aquino).  I love that Hardy figures it out, which happens after she watched the Spider in action. Cage and his stunt double both have very unique body language (part of that spidery stuff mentioned above), so it’s not surprising that Hardy picks up on it.  While Spider-Noir embraces all the tropes of the genre, it also doesn’t soft-pedal the aspects of the era that the films of the time ignored. We start with the racism. Robbie Robertson (Lamorne Morris) is a reporter, who was very obviously fired from the Daily Bugle because of the color of his skin, and whose attempts to get rehired are made more complicated by the fact that he’s Black. And when he is finally rehired, he gets a crappy desk and the rest of the staff, which is entirely white, looks at him with disdain. When Marko is trying to talk Lincoln into working for Silvermane, Lincoln angrily replies that he’s done being beholden to powerful white men, and he has to remind Marko that, while he’s been deemed a monster by the public since being outed as the Sandman, that’s been Lincoln’s reality all his life. We also see the crippling poverty of the era, including several “Hoovervilles,” and the general struggle to make money in the midst of the greatest economic crisis in the country’s history. And, naturally, the massive criminal empire that sprung up thanks to Prohibition, as Silvermane’s main source of income and power is his bootleg booze.  Image: Prime Video One of the things I liked best about this is the relationship among Reilly, Robertson, and Reilly’s secretary Janet Ruiz, played with magnificent charm and verve by Karen Rodriguez. First of all, Rodriguez is fantastic; Ruiz is my favorite character in the whole thing, as she’s the glue that holds Reilly’s office (and, often, Reilly himself) together. She’s sassy, smart, compassionate, brilliant, and hugely valuable to the effort. On top of that, she’s a type rarely seen in pulp and noir (but seen all over New York City), a plus-sized Latina. And the dialogue among these three characters is superlative. They sound like three friends who’ve known each other forever, and care for each other, and also have very little patience with each others’ nonsense. One of my absolute favorite moments in the season is when Reilly shows up to the office after being away dealing with stuff to find Robertson and Ruiz in his office with some revelations of their own, which necessitates a trip. Reilly says, “What are we waiting for?” as he grabs his coat, and Robertson stares at him and says, “You, asshole, we were waiting for you!” It was just a perfect moment. There are some flaws. Mayor Morris (Michael Kostroff, who will always be sleazy lawyer Maury Levy on The Wire to me), running for reelection, makes repealing Prohibition a part of his campaign—except that’s a federal law, a city official would have no ability to repeal it. Also, we never get any impression of Morris’ opponent, Hudson, beyond his existence, even though he’s the one Silvermane winds up backing. The connection between Reilly and the POWs is eventually revealed to be sufficiently deep that it retroactively strains credulity that Reilly didn’t put the pieces together sooner. And Marko’s loyalties keep shifting in ways that are less dictated by character and more dictated by plot and the need for action scenes. In particular, the climactic fight on the street between the Spider and both Leyden and Marko in the finale is a bit head-scratching, as at that point, Marko really didn’t have any reason to be beating up the Spider. At one point, Reilly covers his involuntary spidery moves by saying he’s practicing tai chi, but that martial art wasn’t even seen in the United States until 1939, several years after this takes place. (We don’t get a specific year, but it has to be between 1929, when the Depression started, and 1933, when Prohibition was repealed.) Also, the field of genetic study wasn’t anywhere near advanced enough to do what they were talking about doing during World War I—a lot of the terms that were used to describe the procedure weren’t even coined yet in the 1930s… Still, this is a really good series. While it doesn’t embrace its comics roots as much as it might, the storyline does understand the important part of any Spider-Man story of any flavor: he’s a hero, even when he doesn’t want to be, even when he thinks he isn’t, and even when the world has defecated in his trousers. The world has defecated in Reilly’s trousers a lot—what has often been referred to in the comics as “the ol’ Parker luck, all of it bad”—but when it matters, he antes up and kicks in.  On top of that, this is an eight-episode season that actually tells its story in eight episodes. The pacing is strong, the plot moves, there’s no filler, no stretching out of plot points to create artificial suspense. Too many of the superhero TV shows in the streaming era have had a lull at the two-thirds point, but there’s no such lull here. More to the point, for the first time I can look at a live-action Sony Spider-project and unreservedly say that it’s fantastic. And it’s about damn time.[end-mark] The post Power and Responsibility With Bullets and Booze — <i>Spider-Noir</i> Season One Is a Superb Pulp Adventure appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Backrooms Backrooms Is The Best Nightmare You’ll Ever Have Liminal spaces are excellent for horror, but it’s even better when the liminal space IS the horror. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on May 29, 2026 Credit: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 The highly anticipated feature Backrooms movie has finally revealed itself, appearing as though it was always… there, waiting, a sickly fluorescent light flickering behind a door that was always locked until today. I’m going to try to sum the film up in a couple of completely non-spoiler paragraphs, and then go into some very light thematic spoilers for a little bit, but if I think I have to give anything really vital away I’ll warn you as we go. Backrooms is everything I was hoping it would be. It’s creepy and weird, but based just enough in solid reality—at least at first—that there’s room for the creepiness and weirdness to grow. The basic premise is the same creepypasta that has been popular for a few years now: A person discovers a seemingly endless secret realm of empty rooms, many of which make no architectural sense, some empty, some piled with old furniture, some with stairs that go nowhere or doors that won’t open. Once discovered, the space seems to exert an almost mystical pull on the person—they need to explore it, even as it becomes clear that it’s really not safe. Liminal spaces are excellent for horror, of course, but I’m really, really excited that this is a movie where the liminal space IS the horror. The thing that creates the sense of dread, and even terror, is the space itself. The emptiness, the wrong-ness, gets to you long before you notice that one of the shadows in the corner looks darker than it should, or you hear footsteps in another room. If you love the creepypasta, I think you’ll love the movie—but also this is simply a great work of modern horror that stands on its own. You don’t need to know anything about the lore going in. I think writer Will Soodik and director Kane Parsons take this premise in a lot of gorgeous directions. It’s genuinely tense, and scary, and uncanny, and every time I thought they’d gone as deep as they could, they found a new layer. The camera work is superb; cinematographer Jeremy Cox doesn’t use over-the-top Dutch angles, but things seem tilted enough to never feel quite stable, and a lot of the footage is grainy and nauseating even when nothing is technically “wrong”. The carpeting in the room dulls the sound, but the emptiness makes every sound ECHO. This is the kind of movie that will get into your dreams even if it doesn’t scare you during its runtime—but I think chances are high that it will scare you during its runtime. The sense of dread is instantaneous, the camerawork builds that dread without relying too much on cheap jump scares (there are jump scares, but they’re not cheap), the humor and meta references work beautifully, and, like a lot of horror right now, this movie has something to say. Like a lot of horror, this movie is about trauma (but not an easy, pat way), and even more than that, it’s about loneliness. Are there people out there who deserve to be alone? Credit: A24 The cast is small—the better to isolate them in a yellow-lit room with chairs that don’t make sense. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Clark, a depressed furniture store owner who stumbles into a liminal space at work, and finds it taking over his entire mind. Renate Reinsve is Dr. Mary Kline, a therapist who’s recently published a successful self-help book. Lukita Maxwell is Kat, Clark’s employee, and Finn Bennett  is Bobby, her boyfriend, who owns a video camera. And then there’s Mark Duplass as Phil, who plays a tiny but pivotal role. From here on I will get into very light spoilers after telling you once again that if you’re enjoying our current wave of excellent horror you’ll probably want to get out and see this in a theater with other people if you can. So if you want to know absolutely nothing, skedaddle back through whatever uncanny portal brought you here, or click here to skip past the spoiler section. Credit: A24 Now if you clocked my mention of “video camera” there a second ago: Backrooms is set in 1990. I didn’t know that going in, and it takes a few minutes to become obvious, but it’s the best choice for this film. The furniture, the cars, the clothing, the hairstyles, all of it works. Unlike the director of this film, I can remember 1990, and I think this movie gets everything exactly right. Also, as with Kyle Edward Ball’s 2023 Skinamarink, people who were young and vulnerable in the 1990s might get an extra jolt of queasiness from all the cultural clutter that the movie takes for granted. But what the setting does that’s brilliant is: remove cellphones from the world, and along with them any mention of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Insta, Snapchat, Youtube, Vine—all the ways that ordinary people would record and chart the Backrooms are still at least 15 years in the future. If you try to tell someone about the Backrooms, you’re going to sound mentally disturbed. If you want to record them, you’re gonna have to bring a video camera, and it’s gonna to be a video camera you could use in 1990. Even the ones the Blair Witch kids took into the woods were sleeker and easier to carry.   The other thing this does is link the film directly to the A E S T H E T I C movement of Vaporwave from 15 years back, that amorphous burst of nostalgia for a made-up mashup of the early ‘80s and early ‘90s, that as far as I could tell was created by people who weren’t born in time to experience either, and gleefully swirled them together into a cultural Orange Julius. There are moments here where people stumble into a room that echoes one of those abandoned, flooded malls full of fish. There are rooms that look to be riffing on gym pools, beach cabanas, homes at various socioeconomic levels. At all times the film feels like a dream, and operates increasingly on dream logic. As a result, everything makes sense as you watch, but the further I’ve gotten away from it the more the images have bubbled up and struck me as nauseating. (What I’m really excited about it watching this sucker at home when I can pause it and look for details.) But on first watch, every moment of the film felt true, like a dream I had as a kid and never quite shook. Even the one moment where I thought the film might be veering off-course went in an unexpected new direction, and restored my trust in the movie before it ever fully broke it. Liminality in anthropology and the study of religion is pretty straightforward: a liminal period is the time between the beginning and end of a rite of passage. If a young person has to go through a particular ordeal to be considered an adult, then that ordeal is a kind of liminal space. A young kid studying for a Confirmation or Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony is in an in-between state that can be considered liminal: when they start their classes, they’re a child; when they complete the ritual with their family and community they are, in the eyes of their religion, a rational adult with the responsibility to behave rationally. A couple on their wedding day are in a liminal period until the officiant declares them married, or they kiss, or possibly, depending on the culture, until they’ve consummated the marriage. Certain kinds of holidays can be liminal periods—Samhain, Dia de Muertos, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Yom Kippur—all acting to guide people from one part of the year, with specific rules and guidelines, into another. On the internet, a liminal space is a physical space, an empty room or hallway or storage facility that, for whatever reason, feels uncanny. Maybe there are no windows, maybe things seem a little too symmetrical, maybe the heights of the ceiling makes no sense, maybe there’s a small door. It can be anything from just a room all the way up to a sort of M.C. Escher or Piranesi-esque space. Since Backrooms is set in 1990, when only a certain kind of military wonk knew of this thing that would become “the internet”, the movie is able to start fresh and sweep all the creepypasta clutter, fun as it is, out one of those weird small doors. Much like with my other recent favorite Hokum, there’s no winking. Ohm Bauman never mentions Stephen King or Stanley Kubrick—he just has to figure out how to survive in a haunted hotel. Clark can’t hop onto TikTok to figure out how to navigate a Backroom. The people in the film have never heard the term “the backrooms”. They’ve never been in a Discord chat. There is no preexisting lore for them to riff on, no well of knowledge to use as a shield. They think they understand reality, then they know they don’t. You know, horror. The other choice Parsons and Soodik make, which I think might be the biggest key to the film’s success, is that they explain nothing. We don’t know why the Backrooms exist, we don’t know how, we don’t know how many there are or how many people know about them. The Backrooms are simply a nightmare with their own rules, and you either survive or you don’t. I know there are going to be more of these films, and I dearly hope that they don’t explain all of this horrific magic away. Credit: A24 OK, I’m done even lightly spoiling things, you can come back! From here on in it’s a personal essay. After the movie two profound things happened. First, my friend and I went to a diner, and I descended into their basement to use the bathroom, and this happened: Second, after I told my friend a little bit about my childhood, she said “you were raised by liminal spaces.” And thinking about it that way feels strange, but she’s right: I was. My first few years were spent deep in the woods halfway between Pittsburgh and the West Virginia border, in a town that wasn’t so much a town as much as a blinking yellow light at a gas station (the gas station was also a pizza joint, and you could buy weed there) where the accents were Appalachian in one direction, and full nasal Rust Belt Pittsburgh in the other. My family was Pre-Vatican II Catholic, my neighbors were tongues-speaking Pentecostal. I spent a year living in a hotel, which once school let out that meant I was running wild through empty rooms, storage spaces, a ballroom no one used anymore, the shuttered restaurant, the new bar as it was being built. As my parents desperately tried to salvage the place (their business partner, uhhh, well, departed earlier and wealthier than they expected him to, let’s say), I was left largely to my own devices, and those devices involved elaborate games played around piles of old furniture and busted TVs that no one had thrown out yet. After that, when my dad returned to his old job of managing malls—well, you can see where this is going, can’t you? The next few years worth of free time were spent in the echoing back hallways of malls, the echoing main thoroughfares of malls after closing. Empty spaces where the quiet became a physical thing to navigate, dark, shadowy corners, flickering fluorescent lights, broken detritus and stuff no one liked enough to buy. Which is my roundabout way of saying that Backrooms made me homesick. I loved the way this movie made me queasy, I loved all of its weird choices and unsettling corners, and I can’t wait to stumble back through that totally normal-looking wall.[end-mark] The post <em>Backrooms</em> Is The Best Nightmare You’ll Ever Have appeared first on Reactor.

Lists video games 10 Examples of Hard Science Fiction Video Games Only science can save you in this hardcore hard sci-fi titles By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 29, 2026 Image: 11 Bit Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 11 Bit Studios “Hard science fiction video games” is an inherently confusing phrase. When you first hear it, you may think of the far more general topic of difficult sci-fi games rather than video games that represent the hard sci-fi subgenre. In this instance, the confusion over that topic is amplified by the fact that most hard sci-fi games are also difficult. There’s also the relative lack of true hard sci-fi titles compared to the softer, more fantastical sci-fi titles that you’re more likely to think of when you think of the great sci-fi video games. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true hard sci-fi video games. In fact, in the last 10 years or so, the hard sci-fi genre has enjoyed a massive influx of new experiences led by indie developers who are dedicated to crafting the deepest and most accurate depictions of hardcore scientific concepts in an only vaguely fictional space. The games represent some of the best examples of that movement that technically began decades ago with a few notable outliers but has recently evolved into something far more exciting. And while I tried to focus on the “hardest” possible examples of hard sci-fi (meaning games that lean into accurate scientific elements as much as possible), this list includes a couple of slightly softer examples that help demonstrate the depth of this subgenre that is too rarely discussed despite the incredible work that goes into these titles that often attract a hardcore fanbase. Frontier: Elite II (1993) Screenshot: Konami 1984’s Elite may be the ultimate example of a game ahead of its time. Essentially an early open world (open universe, actually) game, Elite introduced mechanics and concepts regarding freedom of player choice that wouldn’t be fully-realized for decades to come. But Elite’s sequel truly took the emerging hard sci-fi video game genre into a new era. Frontier: Elite II utilized realistic Newtonian physics to simulate everything from the movement of moons around a planet to the controls of your trusty spaceship. Though relatively simple compared to the games that would follow in its footsteps, Frontier: Elite II forced gamers to completely reconsider movement mechanics that were previously limited to pressing a button and not thinking too much about what would happen next. On top of that, the game attempted to account for things like the weight of a ship and gravitational pulls during everything from dogfights to FTL jumps. Again, it all probably seems a little familiar now, but it remains the foundational example of how a more challengingly realistic hard sci-fi game can still entertain and inspire wonder. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999) Screenshot: Electronic Arts To be very fair, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri isn’t as hard sci-fi as some of the other hard sci-fi games we’ll be discussing. It’s more stylistically inspired by hard sci-fi works (as well as Dune). However, this game deserves a ton of credit for its use of realistic hypothetical hard-sci technological concepts. Powered by the Civilization game engine, Alpha Centauri tasks you with building a new civilization on the planet Chiron as you work with (and against) other groups of settlers. Many of the game’s broad scientific ideas (such as terraforming) are certainly based on real-life concepts, but Alpha Centauri is built upon a robust series of scientific principles that humanity could theoretically aspire to achieve. Imagine playing a Civilization game made to represent a world that exists a few hundred years from now. It’s a fascinating, addictive, and absurdly complicated look at hard sci-fi logic in a slightly more speculative environment.  Kerbal Space Program (2015) Screenshot: Private Division At a glance, Kerbal Space Program must feel like a damnable example of hard sci-fi. Between its cute visuals and leading alien race, it looks closer to a Burger King kid’s meal commercial than anything approaching scientific accuracy. Beyond those first impressions, though, lies one of the greatest joys those who grew up dreaming of joining NASA will ever play. Kerbal Space Program puts you in charge of a fictional (alien, as noted above) space program. The moment you realize the act of getting a spaceship to remain upright (much less launch or make it into space) is only slightly less difficult than it would be in real life is the moment you realize those cute visuals are there to keep you from becoming too frustrated too quickly. Remarkably, it works. Despite the many challenges and endless menus it throws your way, Kerbal Space Program is all about the joy of slowly figuring out the seemingly impossible. Just stay far away from its inferior sequel.  Children of a Dead Earth (2016) Screenshot: Q Switched Productions, LLC Many hard sci-fi video games attempt to replicate “real” outer-space warfare, but few match the depth and intensity of Children of a Dead Earth. Billed as “The Most Scientifically Accurate Space Warfare Simulator Ever Made,” Children of a Dead Earth asks you to consider absolutely everything about commanding a fleet of ships into the great unknown.  I can’t emphasize the absolutely everything of it all enough. Children of a Dead Earth may be as close to a 1:1 simulation of space travel and space combat as you can get. There’s even a massive document that explains and justifies all of the scientific concepts utilized by the game. Even those who navigate its gauntlet of menus and submenus will likely struggle to accomplish anything more impressive than modifying a ship’s radiation shield by one meter. The capabilities of this program and the thought that went into it are the real marvels here, though.  Surviving Mars (2018) Screenshot: Paradox Interactive Those looking for a The Martian-like experience could certainly do worse than Surviving Mars: a game that fairly accurately recreates the red planet and asks you to build a thriving settlement upon it.  Surviving Mars is certainly similar to city-building titles like Tropico (which its developers also made) but it uses its unique scenario to incorporate some more complex ideas. While said ideas include surviving AI revolts and finding sponsorship money, the most consistent barrier in this title is the first one you’ll encounter: how do you build a city in a place that is entirely hostile to your existence? It’s not the most hardcore example of the hard sci-fi genre, but it’s an inviting and engaging attempt to see how you would fare if you had to start with nothing but red rock.  Hardspace: Shipbreaker (2022) Screenshot: Blackbird Interactive “Blue collar hard sci-fi” is a rarely seen but consistently fascinating concept. Numerous stories attempt to more realistically convey some of the grandest sci-fi ideas. Fewer stories attempt to show what such scenarios might look like for the average working person. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is one of those stories.  In Hardspace: Shipbreaker, you play an indentured employee for the Lynx Corporation who must work off a forced debt by salvaging parts from abandoned spaceships. The work is tedious, cruel, dangerous, and, in ways that serve as a testament to this game’s narrative and mechanics, consistently compelling. Hardspace: Shipbreaker compellingly conveys the dangers of this hypothetical position through a risk/reward system that forces you to consider the possible implications of every action in your desperate attempts to get out of debt. But you know… in a fun way.  Nebulous: Fleet Command (2022) Screenshot: Hooded Horse If your style of hard sci-fi fantasies leans more towards imagining yourself leading the combat station of a military ship, then consider giving Nebulous: Fleet Command a try. Like other games in its category, it offers realistic ships that you must manage in a hostile environment. Unlike many of its contemporaries, Nebulous downplays certain resource management elements in favor of focusing almost entirely on all things space combat related.  And when I say “all things,” you better know that I mean more than firing missiles and activating shields. From monitoring and maintaining radar equipment to deploying electronic countermeasures, Nebulous forces you to consider every possibility that could realistically impact a space combat scenario. Think of it as an especially realistic submarine commander game where you are in control of a fleet of spacefaring submarines. Yes, it’s pretty great.  The Invincible (2023) Screenshot: 11 Bit Studios Hard sci-fi video games are understandably often defined by their complexity. As it turns out, rocket science is an accurate shorthand for intellectually challenging endeavors. What makes The Invincible a standout example of this subgenre is its commitment to exemplifying the feel and atmosphere of a great hard sci-fi work rather than that genre’s sometimes alienating intricacies.  Based on the Stanisław Lem novel of the same name, The Invincible casts players as an astrobiologist who must explore a strange planet in search of her lost crew. Though often described as a “walking simulator” (a sometimes derogatory term for more linear narrative-based titles), The Invincible often offers you the chance to both alter its narrative and examine the smaller parts of this world via various scientific tools. Those moments demonstrate the game’s commitment to the idea that science is as much an appreciation of life and possibilities as it is a field of facts and logic. Along with its wonderful retrofuturistic aesthetics, The Invincible’s greatest asset is its commitment to the idea that hope for humanity can be found through science.  ΔV: Rings of Saturn (2023) Screenshot: Kodera Software A modern masterpiece of hard sci-fi gaming, ΔV: Rings of Saturn is an asteroid mining “simulator” that goes to great lengths to be the most accurate possible representation of an endeavor that is largely hypothetical (at least on this scale). It places you in command of a small asteroid excavation ship in a rich mining area. From there, you can grow a corporate empire, explore a few lingering mysteries, or simply enjoy a simpler life relative to your work. It’s all about choices. Just know that Rings of Saturn‘s developers take particular pride in the game’s dedication to absolute science over anything even vaguely fiction. The team at Kodera Software notes that every technological idea in this game is “real” and that even some of the more generally accepted hard sci-fi assumptions are not utilized. The logic behind every action has been thoroughly implemented, and the reactions to all of those actions will force you to consider the consequences of decisions great and small. It’s a hardcore example of hard sci-fi even by hardcore hard sci-fi fan standards, which means that it’s a niche entry into a niche world that will instantly alienate the majority of players. But Rings of Saturn is so much more than a testament to the intelligence of its creators. It’s a rich and rewarding experience that eventually offers joys that will justify the agony for those who stick around long enough to discover them. Terra Invicta (2026) Screenshot: Hooded Horse Terra Invicta begins with an all-too-familiar premise: humanity is divided. In this instance, though, the division wasn’t caused by the usual political or religious debates but the arrival of an alien race that effectively splits humanity into seven factions that are carving their own visions of the future in the wake of this revelation. Your job is to lead one of those factions into a bold new tomorrow.  Terra Invicta was made by the team that worked on XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s popular Long War mod. While that mod greatly expanded the depth of that game’s alien invasion scenario, it turned out to only be a whiff of what the developers had in mind. Terra Invicta is the most ambitiously deep examination of what may occur during an alien invasion scenario that has ever been presented in any medium.  Every element of the title is swimming in possibilities and legions of mechanics that must be navigated before even the smallest decisions can be executed. It is, to put it mildly, a daunting and often unnecessarily obtuse experience. However, there really is nothing quite like it.[end-mark] The post 10 Examples of Hard Science Fiction Video Games appeared first on Reactor.