Books reading recommendations Five Horror Stories About Unstoppable, Inescapable Forces How can you hope to defeat a curse or monster that’s utterly relentless? By Lorna Wallace | Published on May 14, 2026 Maggie’s Grave cover art by Trevor Henderson Comment 0 Share New Share Maggie’s Grave cover art by Trevor Henderson In horror stories, there’s usually some clear way to defeat the monster. For zombies, you destroy the brain. For werewolves, it’s a silver bullet. But in some stories, the characters are pursued by a seemingly unstoppable creature, curse, or force—no matter what they do, the villain hunting them just keeps on coming. Relentless entities that can’t be defeated crop up fairly often in popular horror movies—The Return of the Living Dead (1985),  It Follows (2014), and the entire Final Destination franchise are just a few of the better-known examples—but they also appear in literature. (And of course, there are films that started out as fiction: Ringu [1998], which epitomizes this trope, is an adaptation of a Koji Suzuki book!) Here are five such scary books and short stories that feature characters trying to outrun and/or outwit unstoppable malevolent forces. “The Road Virus Heads North” by Stephen King (1999) The main character (a horror author) and setting (Maine) of “The Road Virus Heads North” is quintessentially Stephen King. Richard Kinnell has been in Boston for a literary conference and is driving home to Derry when he spots a yard sale. He’s instantly drawn to an odd piece of art which depicts a man with a fang-filled mouth driving a muscle car across Boston’s Tobin Bridge. He buys the painting and hits the road again, but it’s not long before he realizes that the artwork has changed slightly. Feeling sufficiently creeped out, he decides to ditch the painting. If only it were that easy… The idea of a living painting might not sound all that scary, but King has a knack for making inanimate objects come to life in the most terrifying ways. I also never thought a topiary animal could inspire fear, but The Shining (1977) proved me wrong. Maggie’s Grave by David Sodergren (2020) Maggie’s Grave blends a folk horror plotline with campy B-movie vibes, resulting in a story that’s as hilariously silly as it is genuinely scary. And the blood-red cherry on top is the hefty dose of gore throughout. The small Scottish town of Auchenmullan has been slowly dying for decades, and by 2019 only 47 people call it home. When an American tourist unexpectedly shows up, the town’s few remaining young adults take her to the one place they think is worth seeing: a witch’s grave. Maggie Wall was killed for being a witch back in 1657 and her grave sits on the mountain that overlooks the town. The group don’t take the eerie and tragic history all that seriously—until a very angry Maggie rises from the grave. Maggie may not look undefeatable—she is a desiccated corpse after all—but that just means that she isn’t hampered by corporeal constraints (something which she puts to very good use). The residents of Auchenmullan soon learn that there’s no stopping a vengeful witch on a deadly mission. Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman (2024) From what I’ve seen, Incidents Around the House is a fairly divisive book. The story is told from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl called Bela (who I’d say actually feels even younger than that), resulting in a writing style that is purposefully simplistic and choppy. Bela has befriended a supernatural entity called Other Mommy, who constantly asks if she can go into the girl’s heart. Bela doesn’t really know what that means and she keeps saying no, but Other Mommy is starting to run out of patience. I personally didn’t love the writing style—and I especially tired of Bela’s overuse of the word “Daddo”—but the horror elements are so strong that it overrides those complaints. The descriptions of Other Mommy’s physical form are creepy, there are a few excellently executed jump scares, and it’s both chilling and heartbreaking to witness the family’s various attempts to escape the evil entity. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle (2025) Misha Byrne is a screenwriter who has found success in Hollywood, but that doesn’t make him immune to the meddling of studio executives. The script for the upcoming season of his hit sci-fi show, Travelers, has the two female leads finally sharing a kiss, but the studio isn’t happy about that—not unless the characters die in a blaze of glory afterwards. Misha isn’t willing to bury his gays—invoking the term for the depressingly common trope of queer characters being killed off—but before he’s able to figure out how to write his characters out of this corner, his own life comes under threat. Somehow, the fictional villains he’s created throughout his career have come to life… and they’re after him. Worst of all is The Smoker, a hauntingly pale man with no eyelids who asks for a light; if denied, he kills the person five days later. Now he has his sights set on Misha—and foolishly, Misha didn’t write any way to defeat him. Although Bury Your Gays engages with some heavy real-world issues—including AI, corporate greed, and queer erasure—there’s still a sense of fun thanks to the horror elements being delightfully creative and Misha (mostly) managing to retain his dry sense of humor through it all. “Come” by Nat Cassidy (2026) The premise of “Come”—a cursed sex tape is unleashed upon a high school—feels like a mixture of Ringu and It Follows, but it sets itself apart with its protagonist. Our unnamed main character is one of the first from their school to (unintentionally and only partly) watch an infamous lost video from years past of a student and a teacher having sex in one of the classrooms. But it then becomes clear that anyone who watches the video will soon die—all except our protagonist. Short and not-so-sweet, “Come” captures the frivolous and vulgar attitude that some teenagers would have towards such a tape, but while the tone is largely light and comical, the story also brings the scares and manages to not make a joke out of the grim subject matter. I’d love to hear your suggestions for stories that feature killers or curses that can’t be outsmarted or stopped—please feel free to leave recommendations in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five Horror Stories About Unstoppable, Inescapable Forces appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver The Terror: Devil in Silver’s Karyn Kusama Explains Second Episode’s Very Messy Scene In interviews with Reactor, the director, as well as co-showrunner Chris Cantwell, share how Pepper differs from the book By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 14, 2026 Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Warning: This post contains mild spoilers for the second episode of The Terror: Devil in Silver. We come to learn more about Dan Stevens’ Pepper in the second episode of The Terror: Devil in Silver, including what he thinks about rats. If you’ve seen the episode, you know what scene I’m referencing; a rat falls from the ceiling of New Hyde’s lounge, and most patients and staff react as you might expect—gasps and shrieks laced with surprise and disgust. Pepper perhaps shares those feelings, but takes action, viciously stomping the rodent to death, something that we get to see in great detail. When I interviewed director Karyn Kusama, I asked her about this scene, specifically why we see (and hear) the rat die via multiple close-ups of the mauled creature. She admitted that it was “gross and upsetting” to shoot, but that it says something about Pepper. “I think part of what was always intrinsic to Pepper’s character was that there’s a light switch, a mechanism to violence,” she said. “I, personally, am pretty phobic about rats,” she added, “but the last thing I would ever do is what Pepper does.” Kusama added that the scene (which was a technical challenge to shoot, given the mix of live and artificial rodents required) is also a reminder that “in this environment, all of the patients are the rat waiting to get stomped.” Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC The second episode also reveals more about Pepper, including the fact that he has an ongoing relationship with his girlfriend and her daughter, as well as an estranged son. Those who’ve read Victor LaValle’s book will know that these details are unique to the TV series. In my interview with LaValle and his co-showrunner Chris Cantwell, they shared how Pepper’s character developed after Stevens signed on to the show.   “We were able to build out a man who is connected on the outside to a woman and her child and has this unbridled compassion and love for them, and then also has this third characteristic of wanting to be a good guy,” Cantwell explained in a separate interview I had with him and LaValle. “He pushes on that to a point where, I think as the series progresses, we wonder, ‘Where’s that part coming from?’  And then we were able to unpack that over the course of the season, and that became intrinsic to the character and the character’s arc.” We’ll see to see the rest of Pepper’s arc unfold as new episodes of The Terror: Devil in Silver release on AMC+ and Shudder on Thursdays.[end-mark] The post <i>The Terror: Devil in Silver</i>’s Karyn Kusama Explains Second Episode’s Very Messy Scene appeared first on Reactor.

News Spider-Noir Spider-Noir Is a “Distant Cousin” to Spider-Verse, With a Bogart-Leaning Bent Humphrey Bogart, but make him Nic Cage… I mean Spider-Man By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 13, 2026 Courtesy of Prime Video Comment 0 Share New Share Courtesy of Prime Video Nicolas Cage’s Ben Reilly in Spider-Noir is a mashup of the Spider superhero we know and love, with 1930s-style noir. That mix, according to co-showrunner Oren Uziel, was the guiding light for the series, with one additional detail. “The thing that I said a lot from start to finish was, ‘We’re really trying to make an old [Humphrey] Bogart movie,’” Uziel told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s just that Bogart happens to be Spider-Man.” This character, Uziel also emphasized to EW, will be a “distant cousin” and “not the same at all” as the Spider-Noir character Cage voiced in the animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The co-showrunner went on to say that Cage—whose character has been out of the masked hero business for decades and, when he was a superhero, went by the moniker, The Spider—also used Bogart and similar actors for inspiration: “Every day on set when we talked in his trailer, [Cage] would come to work with, ‘This bit is gonna be Bogart from The Big Sleep. This bit is gonna be a little bit of Cagney. You’re gonna see some Peter Lorre here.’ He gets so much joy out of it. That’s why he’s Nic Cage.” We can also get joy from Nic Cage’s performance (in color OR in black-and-white, as Prime Video will be releasing both versions of the show), when Spider-Noir premieres on the MGM+ linear channel on May 25, 2026, followed by Prime Video on May 27, 2026. [end-mark] The post <i>Spider-Noir</i> Is a “Distant Cousin” to <i>Spider-Verse</i>, With a Bogart-Leaning Bent appeared first on Reactor.

News Barbaric Netflix to Adapt Barbaric Comic Into TV Series He’s got a talking axe and a lot to discover about himself By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 13, 2026 Robert Rovner photo credit: CAA Comment 0 Share New Share Robert Rovner photo credit: CAA It’s upfront week! That time of year when all the networks and streaming platforms treat us to a slew of announcements about what’s on their roster for the upcoming seasons. Today was Netflix’s day, and during their presentation, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria announced a new show called Barbaric, which is based on the Vault Comics medieval fantasy series created by Mike Moreci and Nathan Gooden and edited by Adrian Wassel. Here’s the logline for the show: “A ruthless and crass barbarian is cursed to only use his violence for good, which sends him, his talking axe, and a young witch on a road of self-discovery, redemption, and revenge.” In the comics, the barbarian goes by the name Owen the Barbarian and has a strong dislike for witches. The project, which appears to be Netflix’s answer to filling the future gap left by The Witcher, is in its early days, which means there’s no news yet on casting. We do know that Sheldon Turner (Up In The Air, X-Men: First Class, Straight Outta Compton) will co-showrun and write the series, with Robert Rovner (Supergirl) serving as the other co-showrunner. Other executive producers include Barry Jossen and Tana Jamieson for A+E Studios, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, The Witcher), F.J. DeSanto , Damian Wassel for Vault Comics, and Jennifer Klein (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor), who runs 100% Productions with Rovner. What will the show turn out to be? Time will tell, but having a talking axe involved speaks in its favor. [end-mark] The post Netflix to Adapt <i>Barbaric</i> Comic Into TV Series appeared first on Reactor.

News The Librarians: The Next Chapter The Librarians: The Next Chapter Season 2 Has a Release Date, and It’s Delightfully Soon The spinoff series’ upcoming episodes will have loads of guest stars and see the return of some old Librarians… By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 13, 2026 Photograph by Aleksandar Letic/TNT Comment 0 Share New Share Photograph by Aleksandar Letic/TNT At Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation today, the company shared that the spinoff series, The Librarians: The Next Chapter, will see its second season premiere on TNT in mere months. The show’s first season was a hit for the cable network. In it, we followed Vikram Chamberlain (Callum McGowan), a magician from 1847 who finds himself stuck in our present day. While heading to his old castle in Serbia (which is now a museum), he accidentally releases magic into the world, and assembles a team to set things right. We don’t have details on the plot, though we do know that Christian Kane’s Jacob Stone, a character from the original Librarians series, will appear in season two, as well as Lindy Booth’s telepathic mathematician, Cassandra Cillian. We also know there will be a bevy of guest stars, including Dominic Monaghan, Jeremy Swift, Ty Tennant, Josh Gates, Stefan Kapičić, Oliver Dench, Flula Borg, Alan Emrys, Malcolm Sinclair, Reece Ritchie, Cat White, Gledisa Arthur, Jack Cunningham-Nuttall, Danny Rea, Luka Divac, and Alex Henry. Those actors will join McGowan and series regulars Olivia Morris, Bluey Robinson, and Jessica Green. The series, showrun by Dean Devlin, had a difficult road to the screen. It was supposed to premiere on the CW in the fall of 2024. The CW, however, was going through some changes, and the series was “indefinitely” shelved. Luckily for fans, however, TNT picked it up and the first season aired in May 2025. We’ll be able to watch more episodes of the series when season two of The Librarians: The Next Chapter premieres on TNT on Sunday, August 2, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. [end-mark] The post <i>The Librarians: The Next Chapter</i> Season 2 Has a Release Date, and It’s Delightfully Soon appeared first on Reactor.