Featured Essays Spider-Noir Where Spider-Noir Fails To Live Up To Its Genre — And Where It Succeeds Age-of-Streaming-and-Smartphone foibles aside, there’s a lot of what’s good about noir in the Spider show. By Ellery Weil | Published on June 10, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share I knew the minute this show walked in the door. It had killer legs—eight of them, to be specific. The kind of show you watched, whiskey in hand, on a dark night in this crazy town. But what I didn’t expect, in giving this wild, mixed-up show a chance, was where it would take me. I’m speaking, of course, of Spider-Noir. One of the latest additions to the sprawling canon of Spider-Man-inspired media, although not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the show debuted on Amazon Prime with not one, but two viewing options: black and white, or “True-Vue Color.” Starring Nicolas Cage as the titular arachnid, the show bills itself not only as another adventure with everyone’s favorite crime-fighting web-slinger, but as a way to introduce less familiar viewers to the noir genre. It’s fun. It’s flashy. It’s a refreshingly novel Spider adventure. But as a tribute to, or recreation of, classic noir media, it stumbles.  For a show so enamored of classic noir that there are arguments to be made that you shouldn’t watch it colorized, it seems to shy away, visually, when it comes to camerawork. Noir as a genre is full of shadows and angles, of the half-seen character or image appearing under the brim of a hat, in the glow of a midnight streetlight, in the rain. Spider-Noir, by contrast, faces itself dead-on. Characters are positioned directly in front of the camera, lit attractively, but without any of the ambiguity that the deep shadows of a noir film mark out. The whole show, with a few key exceptions, is just a little too bright, missing just a touch of visual ambiguity. As with the lighting, so goes the blocking. There’s a pivotal scene early in the series, where Nic Cage’s Ben Reilly, private eye and secret Spider, sees a lounge act by performer Cat Hardy. Rather than the intimate, low-ceilinged club that a genuine 1940s noir would utilize, Hardy is performing in a venue just shy of Radio City Music Hall. Moreover, rather than Reilly watching her from off one side, with an emphasis on his status as a “face in the crowd,” the camera zeroes in on Reilly’s face, directly, as the crowd seemingly fades away, leaving him and Hardy the only ones in the room. It certainly speaks to a point, but it’s far from the noir tradition. In fact, many of the dead-on, perfectly centered shots in Spider-Noir seem less noir and more “made for streaming.” Notoriously, Netflix’s original content has a distinct “look” that’s intended to make it easier to watch on smaller devices, or while slightly distracted, and sometimes it seems Spider-Noir falls into the same patterns, at the expense of its genre. This is likely, as with Netflix, also serving another purpose: to make cropping for social media ads easier, even at the expense of more interesting shots. This is not, however, to say that Spider-Noir is a failure, either as a work of television or as a tribute to the noir genre. It’s neither. In fact, as television, I personally call it a hit. The plot moves along nicely, the characters are compelling, and the whole project feels fresh, with touches of comedy to leaven the action. As a tribute to noir, or even as a straight-up noir project, it may not hit every target, but when it makes the mark, it does so joyfully. Take, for instance, the character of Janet Ruiz, Ben Reilly’s secretary. What a dame! That is to say, a charming take from Karen Rodriguez on the competent, wise-cracking side character who has no time for a noir hero’s moping, even as they help them crack the case. It’s a tradition with such iconic members as Lee Patrick’s Effie Perrine in The Maltese Falcon, Lucille Ball’s Kathleen Stewart in The Dark Corner, and even Thelma Ritter’s Stella in Rear Window, and Rodriguez does it more than justice. Similar kudos to anything and everything to do with the “scoop” reporter Robbie Robertson, played with flair by Lamorne Morris. Image: Prime Video Visually, there are things Spider-Noir does right as well. Shots where the camera is positioned at an angle give a feel that’s part noir, part comic book panel. Pre-episode recaps are pleasingly zippy, and the costumes are beautifully done, with a just-slightly-exaggerated style that recalls vintage media rather than vintage day-to-day clothes. It works well enough that I’ve found myself wondering where I could get my own greedy mitts on some of Cat Hardy’s outfits which, not coincidentally, is a feeling I’ve felt while watching films from the ‘30s and ‘40s. I even like the color palette, for those who choose the True-Vue option, done in a slightly saturated way that does recall colorized film rather than something shot in color. The other aspect where Spider-Noir does its genre justice is in its comedic touches. While “noir” may literally refer to darkness, the genre is very different from the self-consciously gritty aesthetic sometimes erroneously referred to as “grimdark.” While characters may be caught in a jam, or have fallen in with the wrong crowd on the wrong side of the tracks, the films aren’t meant to feel heavy, or unhappy, and neither does Spider-Noir.  When Cage’s Reilly is impersonating a member of a non-existent “Benevolent Society” and repeatedly punctuates his sentences with “yeah, see?” he’s doing so to question, and eventually threaten, a witness, but it’s also legitimately and intentionally funny. There’s a lightness to his relationship with a local, cap-wearing, streetwise newsboy, to say nothing of Janet Ruiz’s bribing bank tellers with burgers, or Robbie Robertson’s not-so-secret notes to Reilly in the paper. It all recalls some of Sam Spade’s best wisecracks, and provides a welcome note of difference between Spider-Noir and, for instance, Zack Snyder’s take on Watchmen, where there were plenty of noir-inspired visuals, but the complex plot would have made levity a challenge at any rate. And maybe any modern noir was always going to have its differences from the classics of the form. Styles come to be as a result of their time and place; noir came to prominence in the 1930s and 40s as the result of the Great Depression, and postwar fatigue felt on a global scale. While modern people might see parallels between those times and our own, they are not the same. Maybe we aren’t faithfully, perfectly recreating a vintage film style because, artistically, we can’t; the world has moved on, and we’re different now.  More to the point, does it matter? The question of whether Spider-Noir lives up to the noir genre it bills itself as might be less important than the question of whether it’s something worth making, and worth watching.  And that’s a much easier question to answer: in a word, yes. Spider-Noir is good, and both noir fans and neophytes will have a good time watching it. While it may not be a beat-for-beat tribute to classic noir, it recognizes not just what makes the genre “cool,” but what makes it fun. As I’ve written about before, it works because, between the Hoovervilles and World War One veterans that populate the show, the gangsters and artists and blackmailers our heroes encounter, it takes its time, place, and genre seriously, while not being so self-serious that it lacks a spark. So go watch it, see?[end-mark] The post Where <i>Spider-Noir</i> Fails To Live Up To Its Genre — And Where It Succeeds appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club The Endless: You Can Go Home Again (But Maybe You Shouldn’t) A disturbingly cheery cult, cosmic horror, and classic Southern California weirdness. By Kali Wallace | Published on June 10, 2026 Credit: Rustic Films / Snowfort Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Rustic Films / Snowfort Pictures The Endless (2017) Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Justin Benson. Starring Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, Callie Hernandez, and Tate Ellington. Note: You know to expect spoilers in all of my Film Club articles, but this one deserves an extra warning, especially because it’s an indie film that many people haven’t seen or heard about. I’m going to spoil the plot extensively, because I think it’s a very cool movie with lots to discuss. I’m also going to talk about Resolution (2012), a related movie from the same filmmakers. I won’t go into as much detail, but discussing how they are related is in itself a spoiler for the ending of Resolution. If you haven’t watched them yet and prefer to avoid spoilers, all you need to know is that they are both great films, they are freely available all over the internet, and you should watch them. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, I was living in San Diego. Just a few months earlier, my roommate (whom you know as Reactor anime columnist Leah Thomas) and I had very abruptly had moved into a cute, witchy 100-year-old cottage, after some roofers at our previous apartment dropped an air compressor through the roof and left a two-foot hole in the ceiling with a nice asbestos-framed view of the California sky. The very typical SoCal landlord tried to tell us that a surprise skylight was not reason enough to move without providing thirty days notice. We disagreed. The 100-year-old cottage we found to rent had cockroaches and some oddball neighbors, but aside from those quirks it was genuinely lovely. It was a good place to be living when the world ground to a halt. But even a nice place to live can start to feel weird when the whole world has gone weird. By the time we were celebrating Halloween by making a short horror film about our cute little house being possessed by a Nicolas Cage-worshipping death cult, it was impossible to ignore something we had both suspected for years but had dismissed until the pandemic came around. What we realized is this: Time doesn’t pass normally in San Diego. Yes, yes, technically time passes the same there as it does anywhere else. Probably. Mostly. The sun rises and sets, deadlines come and go, cats remember their mealtime every day. In theory there are seasons, as different flowers bloom at different times of year and sometimes it’s almost chilly enough to need a sweater, but for the most part the changes are subtle in that southernmost part of California. Months can pass without a person ever feeling it. You can spend years living a fairly pleasant, uneventful life, only to look up one day and have absolutely no idea how long you’ve been there because you have very few anchor points with which to mark the passage of time. I felt a sense of deep recognition when I watched The Endless, which was filmed and takes place in eastern San Diego County, near the unincorporated town of Descanso, about forty miles east of the city. East County has its own unique character (she says, diplomatically), but it still felt so familiar. Justin Benson, the film’s writer, co-director, and co-star, was born and raised in San Diego and knows the area well. Which means he knows, too, that this is the perfect setting for cosmic horror. The vibe is a bit uncanny—outwardly pleasant but still unsettling. Most people are chill and easygoing and trying to find their passion. You’ll definitely meet people with fervent spiritual beliefs that make absolutely no sense no matter how earnestly they try to explain. Nobody can remember how long they’ve lived there. You’re never more than two degrees of separation from a tweaker with too many guns. There is always a man with a beard asking you to try his home-brewed Hefeweizen. Somebody you know is in a cult. And time most certainly does not pass normally. The Endless was born out of Resolution (2012), the first film Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead made together. They were both fairly new to the film industry, and Benson was on the verge of giving it up and going to medical school instead when they decided to make a small, self-financed indie film together. Resolution is about a man named Mike (Peter Cilella) who receives a worrying video from his addict friend Chris (Vinny Curran), who has been squatting in a house in the woods. Mike heads out to East County to either convince Chris to go to rehab or force him to detox. Over the course of the week they spend together, some very strange things start happening that make it clear that some mysterious entity or force is toying with them for unknown reasons. During that week, Mike has a brief meeting with some members of a local religious group that sounds an awful lot like a UFO cult. (The wealthy San Diego suburb of Rancho Sante Fe was the site of the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in 1997.) Two of the cult members in Resolution are played by Benson and Moorhead, but at the time of filming those were only supposed to be quick cameo roles. If they had intended to develop the characters, they later said in interviews, they would have given them names besides Justin and Aaron. I watched Resolution after I watched The Endless, and I think it works just fine that way, although it does cast a grim pall over the entire thing. Resolution is a very good movie, one that offers an unflinching look at friendship, addiction, bad choices, and the grinding depression of being stuck in old habits that you don’t see any reason to break out of. It’s at turns funny and shocking, with a host of delightfully weird red herrings, and the lead actors are great. It’s a fantastic example of what filmmakers can do with the industry equivalent of loose change and the willingness to commit to a disturbing idea. Resolution ends with the characters of Mike and Chris thinking they understand the weird, frightening things going on around them. And they do, to an extent, although they don’t have the full picture, because Benson and Moorhead hadn’t yet developed the full picture. Resolution was a very small film from unknown filmmakers, but it did premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, which earned them just enough of a reputation to make their second film, Spring (2014), which the internet tells me is tangentially connected, as is their later film Synchronic (2019). But I haven’t seen either of those so I’m not sure how they fit in. The Endless introduces us to brothers Justin (played by Benson) and Aaron (played by Moorhead), who have left the cult they were proselytizing for in Resolution to live a rather dreary life in Los Angeles. Justin, the older brother, got them away from the cult’s Camp Arcadia nearly ten years ago; there was a brief flurry of press because he told Aaron and various authorities that the people at Camp Arcadia were planning a mass suicide in the manner of Heaven’s Gate. Now adults, the brothers receive a video tape in the mail with a recording of cult member Anna (Callie Hernandez) talking about the group’s coming “ascension.” Aaron wants to go back to see if the group has finally carried out their planned suicide. He remembers their time at the camp a lot more fondly than Justin does, especially in comparison to how hard their lives are now. Justin agrees that they can return for a single night, just to see if anybody is still alive, and they head south on the 5 (with an obligatory mention of “the boobs” that won’t be a landmark much longer) and into rural eastern San Diego County.   What they find is that Camp Arcadia is pretty much just the way they left it. Anna is still there, as are de facto leader Hal (Tate Ellington), brewmaster Tim (Lew Temple), newcomer Lizzy (Kira Powell), amateur magician Shane (Shane Brady), and silent Smiling Dave (David Lawson Jr., one of the producers who funded the film). Everybody is friendly and welcoming and healthy—so healthy, in fact, that Justin swears they haven’t aged at all in ten years. Another thing that hasn’t changed is how eccentric the camp is. Not in a sinister way, not at first; I love that the movie understands how important it is to make life in the camp seem appealing, at least on the surface. Camp Arcadia doesn’t look like a creepy cult. It looks like a very SoCal kind of commune. But it is a commune organized around a single powerful principle. It’s just that their center isn’t a charismatic leader who claims to be on first-name basis with God, as in so many American cults. It’s… something else. Something that nobody claims to fully understand. And, okay, maybe everybody’s a little forceful in their woo-woo acceptance of this mysterious god-like being in the woods, but they welcome the brothers back warmly. Sure, their nighttime tug-of-war game with this unseen entity in the inky darkness might be a bit unsettling, but they seem to be having fun. And yeah, they are pretty isolated, but they’ve got beer and something like weed and plenty of food, and everybody gets to do whatever arts and crafts they want, so is it really that bad? Don’t think about why there are two moons in the sky. It’s a weird weather thing. It’s fine. One person who isn’t taken in is new arrival Jennifer (Emily Montague), who has come to the area looking for her missing husband and is frustrated at how little help she’s received. Justin also remains wary; he knows something unnaturally strange is going on and demands answers that Hal refuses to provide. But we can see Aaron getting drawn back in. The brothers fight over Aaron’s desire to stay, and the camp members eventually ask Justin to leave, in part because they’re mad that he told the world they were a self-castrating UFO death cult. Which, to be clear, they aren’t. Well, there’s no castration and no UFOs. The death thing is more complicated. In the woods, Justin meets a guy with the most excellent name of Shitty Carl (James Jordan). Or, to be more precise, he finds Shitty Carl’s very dead body hanging in a shack, then he meets a very alive Shitty Carl moments later, and he finally learns exactly what’s going on. Shitty Carl tells him there is something in the woods—a monster, a god, an entity, whatever—that has trapped people in time-loop bubbles. Some of those bubbles have a very long loop; the one encompassing Camp Arcadia resets every ten years. Some are much shorter; Shitty Carl’s loop is three hours. Our friends Mike and Chris from Resolution have been repeating the same week over and over again for an unknown amount of time—long enough that Mike’s wife, the aforementioned Jennifer, has come looking for him. Later on, while searching for Justin, Aaron will come across a rustic tent in which a man in old-timey clothes is caught in a violent five-second loop and presumably has been for a century or longer. There are references to other loops as well: We never find out what sort of loop has caught the French researchers mentioned in Resolution and referenced obliquely in The Endless, although Benson and Moorhead said they had planned to include their fate but had to cut it from the second film. The geographical rules of this situation are not entirely clear, but it also doesn’t matter, because the one rule is that the once people are caught, the entity can generally do what it wants to fuck them up. And it has been doing so for a long, long time. After the brothers reunite, they come across various statues and artifacts that suggest there have been people interacting with and worshipping the entity for centuries. The horror of this reveal is the kind that hits over and over again. It gets worse the more you think about it. The twin premises of time loops and a powerful entity trapping people in isolation for mysterious reasons are common in sci fi and horror, and there are all manner of metaphors and allegories that can be tied to them. A lot of Resolution is about the painful cycles of addiction and depression, but The Endless takes it in a different direction. The people in these bubbles know they are caught in time loops. They know something has trapped them for its own reasons. None of them can see this entity, but it interacts with them using various media, like videos, tape recordings, and photographs, which they all interpret in different ways. That’s also how it lures new people in. The brothers return to Camp Arcadia after receiving a videotape that Anne never sent, just as Mike went to check on his friend after receiving an email Chris never sent. The entity did all of that. (We can conclude it has access to a post office and also an email account. It probably still uses Facebook.) The man in the five-second loop is obviously existing in unending misery, but he never gets a chance to do more than warn Aaron away. Shitty Carl thinks the entity just wants to torture him and hopes that at some point he’ll find a way to die that ends the loop. Mike and Chris still seem to believe the conclusion they came to at the end of Resolution, which is that the entity is using them for entertainment, and the loop will end if they provide it with the right kind of story. All of them warn Justin to get his brother and leave before Camp Arcadia’s ten-year loop resets. They warn him not to play the entity’s game, not to go along with it, not to submit to what it wants. That’s not what the people at Camp Arcadia do. They welcome newcomers with open arms—even when they really probably shouldn’t. They took in the brothers after their mother died in a car crash, which is not what you are supposed to do when you find two injured kids by the side of the road. They welcomed Lizzy, a troubled young woman who wandered away from a mental health facility. They welcome Jennifer, even though they probably know why Mike disappeared and definitely know she has a kid outside the bubble waiting for her to come home. Hal refuses to explain what’s happening to Justin, even when Justin specifically asks, because he wants the brothers to decide to stay long enough to be trapped. They don’t warn people away from getting caught in their ten-year loop. They welcome them instead, because they believe their situation is sacred. They welcome a chance at apparently eternal life, a chance to live over and over again, perfecting whatever pursuits they choose. The process of dying gruesomely at the end of each loop is a cherished ritual for them. Or so they say. Their earnest acceptance is not entirely convincing. Hal is still trying to understand the entity enough to change things, and Tim, who appears to have been around the longest, directly tells Aaron he shouldn’t stay if he doesn’t want to. The members of Camp Arcadia give the impression that they aren’t so much fervent believers in their own message, but rather that they are desperately trying to believe because they don’t have any other choice. So they invent meaning for their suffering. This is cosmic horror in the sense that the entity’s motives are fundamentally unknowable; there is never confirmation about what the entity wants or why. The meta-explanation of the entity wanting stories or entertainment—like it’s a director forcing people to act out versions of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games over and over again—is a decent one, but that doesn’t explain the man in the tent, or even Shitty Carl, who never have a chance for narrative or change. They only have suffering. Camp Arcadia’s situation may not be as immediately horrifying, but their slow-burn time loop is insidious in its own way. They spend ten years living in peaceful isolation, building up to a brutal death they have decided to call ascension, trying to learn more, trying to perfect their skills and lives, every time hoping the outcome will be different. They think there is a trick. They think there is a way to do it right. They have to believe that, even though absolutely nothing in their experience has suggested this to be the case. What’s the alternative? It’s not like they can decide to leave. At the end of the film, Justin and Aaron escape the time loop because they listened to what Shitty Carl and Mike and Chris told them: Get out before it resets, and don’t submit to the entity’s game. It’s strongly implied (and has been confirmed by the directors) that Jennifer also escapes, as she never bought into the camp’s ideology and is seen riding away before the loop resets. But the members of Camp Arcadia do not. We see them after the loop resets, whole and healthy again. They all look a little resigned, a little tired. They’ve got another ten years to try it all over again. The Endless is sometimes funny, sometimes spooky, sometimes disorienting, but there is also a relaxed, naturalistic, and rather melancholy feel over the whole film. There’s a short documentary available about the making of the film, which provides a good look at how it all came together. My main takeaway is that it was, from start to finish, a thoroughly collaborative process. Benson and Moorhead conceived, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the film, but they are very clear about the fact that the other people in the production had a great deal of say along the way. They talk about developing the characters with actors, even a character like Tim, who says basically ten words in the entire movie. They refer to sound mixer Yahel Dooley as their “third director” and discuss how he was involved from the earliest stages to craft the film’s sound design. They rave about how composer Jimmy LaValle would eagerly go off on his own musical whims when making the score based on their vague and not always helpful requests. Moorhead did the visual effects with the help of one of the camera operators who decided to learn just because she wanted to; the limited effects are mostly straightforward scene compositing (i.e., filming two real things then combining them) with a few digital images and a few miniatures thrown in. The production designer Ariel Vida and her team of artists were living on set at the camp as they were filming. That is: actually on set, as their workshop took up half of a cabin that was transformed into all of the interior scenes for different days of filming. The whole production was small, close-knit, and cooperative, which is what happens when filmmakers don’t have a lot of money to work with, but do have a group of talented people invested in a creative project. Recently Benson and Moorhead have been at work directing episodes of television for the Marvel juggernaut. The movie business is tough and times are uncertain, so I certainly don’t fault anybody from getting those Disney dollars while they can, but I also hope they someday come back to this niche of micro-budget sci fi horror. It’s immensely satisfying when high-concept films with small-scale productions find that perfect match between the right story and the right way to tell the story. Both Resolution and The Endless have achieved that. They’re strange and unsettling stories, built around big concepts but almost uncomfortably intimate in how closely they examine their characters, like we’re stumbling into the scene while strange and terrible things happen to people who have found themselves in a bizarre situation. That’s an experience that comes along with a lot of indie and arthouse film, but it’s less common for high-concept sci fi. The stakes are personal, the tone naturalistic, and in place of flashy spectacle there is instead an appealing, almost voyeuristic urge to stick around and watch how it will turn out. What do you think of The Endless and/or Resolution? Do you agree with my brand-new, just-devised theory that they are secretly documentaries about the cosmic time loop that encompasses all of San Diego County? Next week: One night in the woods, three astronomers hear a strange signal from outer space, but Jodie Foster is nowhere to be found. Jodie Foster probably has socks that cost more than the entire budget of Cosmos (2019). Find it online.[end-mark] The post <i>The Endless</i>: You Can Go Home Again (But Maybe You Shouldn’t) appeared first on Reactor.

News Doctor Who Doctor Who Christmas Special Canceled as BBC Changes Gears Russell Davies weighs in as the BBC puts Doctor Who up for “competitive tender” By Molly Templeton | Published on June 10, 2026 Screencap: BBC Comment 0 Share New Share Screencap: BBC Last October, we got the most promising bit of Doctor Who news anyone had heard in a minute: The Doctor would return at Christmas 2026, in a new special written by Russell T. Davies. Today, the BBC announced that the Christmas special is canceled, and that both writer/showrunner Russell T. Davies and production company Bad Wolf are leaving the series. It’s another huge shift for a series which just went through a huge shift during its partnership-with-Disney era (an era which is still yet to bring US viewers the spinoff series The War Between the Land and the Sea). The BBC has put the show out for “competitive tender,” which—as The Hollywood Reporter explained—is “a formal, open process in which the BBC invites independent production companies to pitch for production rights on an existing series, and they then pick a favorite.” Basically, production companies can now compete to win the hand of the long-running series and its broadcast owners. On Instagram, Davies wrote: And so GOODBYE from me to Doctor Who but HELLO to a big new future for the show, as the BBC announces it’s putting the show out to tender. As a result, there won’t be a Christmas Special – we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it! For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor. You may disagree; fine, sit in that chair and wait to be proved right. You’ll wait a lonnng time Now I’m as excited as anyone to see what comes next! Will they keep the theme tune? Will they lose the blue box? Will they bring back the Drahvin?! It’s all up for grabs, which is so Doctor Who, exciting and unpredictable and new! Here comes the future, vworp vworp What a line: “we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it.” A statement on the official Doctor Who website says: After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode. This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one-off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory. The last full season of Doctor Who, which saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor regenerate into Billie Piper, aired in 2025. As of tomorrow, you’ll be able to watch much of Doctor Who—Disney seasons aside—on AMC+.[end-mark] The post <i>Doctor Who</i> Christmas Special Canceled as BBC Changes Gears appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five Horror Books Featuring Older Protagonists From an aging Elvis Presley to a Final Girl in her late 70s, these characters spend their golden years fighting evil By Lorna Wallace | Published on June 10, 2026 Credit: Vitagraph Films Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Vitagraph Films I don’t have stats to back this statement up, but in my reading experience, the majority of main characters seem to be somewhere in their teens, 20s, or 30s. On the one hand, I completely understand this—those decades are marked by rapid identity changes, which often makes for a compelling protagonist. But on the other hand, I prefer a bit more variety when it comes to my main characters, and people at every age have stories worth telling. When it comes to horror stories, I find older protagonists—I’m talking 70 and above—to be particularly interesting. Aging itself can be a very scary prospect—not because of superficial things like wrinkles and grey hair, but in terms of facing the possibility of mental and physical decline that affect so many people—so it can be a ripe subject for horror stories, when handled well. Here are five books that play on our fears about getting older while adding some supernatural scariness into the mix. Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale Bubba Ho-Tep is best known as a cult classic horror comedy film starring Bruce Campbell, but it’s based (fairly faithfully!) on an equally fun novella. The main character is an aged Elvis Presley—or, at least, that’s what he tells people. His story is that he got fed up of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and switched places with an Elvis impersonator by the name of Sebastian Haff. It was Haff who died on the toilet back in ’77 and now the real Elvis is stuck in Mud Creek Shady Grove Convalescence Home. But a little excitement is injected into Elvis’ sunset years when he and his new friend—a Black man who claims he’s John F. Kennedy—discover an Egyptian mummy stalking the halls of their retirement home. This story does touch on many of the more troubling aspects of aging—from not being visited by family to struggling to control bodily functions—but it’s also comically crude and self-consciously silly. And in the end it’s actually pretty uplifting, thanks to our cantankerous main characters being given a new lease on life through their mission to stop the murderous mummy. The Haar by David Sodergren Muriel McAuley is a feisty widowed granny who has lived her whole life in the little village of Witchaven on Scotland’s coast. Her quiet life is upended when an American property developer sets its sights on the village and although many of Muriel’s neighbors have already been bought out, she intends to die in her home. Just when the developer starts using more aggressive methods to shift the few remaining residents, a strange creature washes in with the haar—the Scots word for a fog that rolls in from the sea. Muriel saves the beached creature and then realizes that it just might give her the upper hand in the fight to keep her home. The Haar is at once a gleefully gore-splattered creature feature and an emotionally heart-wrenching reflection on grief. Those two things might not sound like they work together, but David Sodergren somehow pulls it off with style. We Spread by Iain Reid We Spread is told from the POV of Penny—an aging artist who has been living alone since the death of her partner a few years earlier. Penny isn’t coping as well as she used to and after a particularly bad fall, her landlord takes her to an assisted living facility in the woods. But not only does Penny have no memory of choosing Six Cedars, it’s also not long before she suspects that everything isn’t as it seems at the facility. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling deeply anxious over the possibility of losing my memory and sense of self in my later years, and We Spread preys upon that very fear. It’s left deliberately ambiguous as to whether the creepy supernatural elements are real or whether it’s all just a symptom of Penny’s mental decline. The result is a story that constantly chases its scary moments with a feeling of sadness. The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi The other retirement homes on this list are fairly depressing places, but Autumn Springs would be a great final stop before the end. Main character Rose DuBois not only has her own apartment at the fancy facility, she’s also got a very active social life. But her happy golden years are interrupted when her fellow residents start dropping dead at an alarming rate. Rose thinks a murderer might be stalking Autumn Springs, but the authorities aren’t willing to listen to her (death is a common occurrence in retirement homes, after all), so she decides to put on her sleuthing hat and stop the slasher herself. Being in her late 70s, Rose isn’t your regular final girl, but she’s no less formidable than her younger counterparts. And as well as having a bad-ass protagonist, this book also features creative kills along with some very poignant commentary on society’s less-than-ideal treatment of older people. The Dorians by Nick Cutter Frank Doyle is mere minutes away from meeting his maker via assisted suicide when he’s given another option: the chance to be a test subject in a top-secret science experiment. With nothing left to lose, Frank agrees and is whisked away to an isolated island along with four other elderly participants. The scientist behind the experiment—young prodigy Astrid Marsh—explains that she may have cracked the code to eternal life. But while Astrid may dazzle them with her confident promises of youth, what she doesn’t say is that scientific progress is rarely straightforward. Given that The Dorians is written by Nick Cutter, it should come as no surprise that there’s a lot of grotesque body horror involved. But gross-out descriptions aren’t the only thing on offer, and I actually found the psychological horror elements to be just as scary. De-aging and immortality might look desirable on the surface, but under the skin, things aren’t so pretty. The Dorians is as tragic as it is horrific, and certainly makes a convincing case for aging naturally over more drastic measures. Although older protagonists aren’t a common feature in most horror stories, there are certainly more examples than just these five, so please feel free to mention any I’ve missed in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five Horror Books Featuring Older Protagonists appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden A man tries to protect his dead mother’s body from the evil that is hunting them. By Christopher Golden | Published on June 9, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Carry Me to My Grave, a new horror novel by Christopher Golden publishing with St. Martin’s Press on July 21st. Maggie Wise will take your eyes.When Malcolm was growing up, the local kids made up that chant about his mother, claiming she was a witch. He and his siblings did their best to ignore it. Now, Maggie is dying, and those same siblings have left Malcolm and his sister-in-law Violet to hold a vigil at her bedside.But they’re not as alone as they think they are. A dark figure waits and watches from beneath the willow tree across the street. Hundreds of miles away, an ancient evil stirs in its burrow under a farmer’s cornfield. Across the country, other buried things begin to dream in anticipation of Maggie’s demise. On her deathbed, the old woman elicits a promise from Malcolm, her youngest child―when she dies, he and Violet must return her body to her birthplace in Shediak, Maine.From the moment she takes her last breath, before her remains are even loaded aboard the baggage car of the Imperial Limited, there are forces trying to stop Malcolm from fulfilling that promise. Violence erupts on the train, evil preys on its passengers, and once the sun goes down, those long-buried things are coming to make Maggie Wise pay for her past. God help anyone who stands in their way. The wind fought back as Malcolm forced the door closed and threw the dead bolt. Hundreds of leaves had blown across the threshold. Violet stood in his mother’s bedroom doorway. “I almost wish that guy would try something, so I’d have a reason to…” He faltered when he understood the impatience in Violet’s eyes. “Hurry,” she whispered, as if they were trying to keep his mother from learning her death was imminent, though Maggie knew better than anyone. Malcolm squeezed Violet’s hand as he passed her, heading into the bedroom. “Thank you.” He expected to find that his mother had taken a turn for the worse, or woken up with the gift of clarity and strength that the dying sometimes received in their final hours. Instead, Maggie lay on the floor of her bedroom, tangled in her blankets, reaching toward him as he entered. Her eyes were yellowed and pleading, her skin so gray she looked almost bloodless. “Momma!” Malcolm called, rushing to kneel on the floor beside her. Maggie chided him with her eyes and clucked her tongue. “You’re a grown man, been to war, killed your enemies. You’d better not need a ‘momma’ now.” He couldn’t help but smile. Her voice might be a thin, reedy version of itself, but it still held the pride of her life. Maggie had always told her children that she loved being their mother, but wanted to be a person to them first and a mother to them second. Thus, she was always “Maggie.” Other kids were amazed by this, and their parents found it disrespectful, but she stuck to her guns. “Crazy old bat,” he said, and slid his hands beneath her. Maggie groaned in pain as he lifted her and settled her into her bed. “What were you thinking?” Her eyelids were heavy. The effort of getting out of bed had drained the last of her. “Maggie,” he said, clapping his hands to bring her around. “What happened?” When she spoke, she had a raspy echo in her throat, as if there were open doorways deep inside her, letting in a draft. “I needed you in here,” she said. “There are things you have to know.” Malcolm sat on the edge of the bed, sheets crinkling beneath his weight. “Maybe start with who the hell is out there watching our house. I don’t think he’s going to leave unless I get the police to drag him off, or I get violent, in which case they’ll drag me off instead.” Her eyelids drooped. Her breathing softened. “Maggie?” No reply. Still alive, but no longer with him. He swore. The hinges creaked. He whipped around to see Violet in the doorway. What a strange life they were leading, the three of them, but at least it had been quiet until now. Maggie coughed and blinked her eyes open as if the cough had pulled her back from the brink. He didn’t know how much time remained, but not much. “You had things you wanted to say,” he prompted. Her eyes were green. They weren’t always. Sometimes blue, sometimes gray. The whites were sickly, but her irises glinted as she looked at him. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone,” Maggie said. The floorboards creaked as Violet took a step into the room. “He’s not alone.” Maggie looked at her, nodding slowly, eyes glistening. “You’re as good as a daughter to me, Vi, but leave us now. This part isn’t for you.” Violet looked stung. She loved Maggie nearly as much as Malcolm did. He’d often thought she loved Maggie more than he did. At times, it was easier to love someone else’s mother than it was to love your own. “Shout if you need me,” Violet said quietly, before she withdrew and closed the door behind her. “I wish you hadn’t sent her out,” Malcolm said. “You know what you mean to her.” “Don’t chide me, boy. Not today. This is just for you, because everything depends on you now.” She gripped his hand. “What time is it?” “Half past three in the morning.” “A few hours yet.” Malcolm started to ask what she meant, but she shushed him. Buy the Book Carry Me to My Grave Christopher Golden Buy Book Carry Me to My Grave Christopher Golden Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “Just listen.” He wanted to go to the curtain and look across the street. The man in the raven mask would still be there, he was sure. “I’m listening.” The gleam in her eyes dimmed a little, and so did the strength of her grip. Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to stay awake. Or conscious. Or alive. “Death is coming for me, and long overdue,” she said. “I’ve held it off as long as I can.” “Held it off?” Maggie clucked her tongue to shush him. “I’m a lot older than I look, Mal, and I know how I look, so that’s saying something.” She’d alluded to such things before. They went along with the mystery within which she loved to immerse herself. “I nearly gave in while you and Violet were cleaning up after dinner, but I fought it off.” Withered and gray, she barely had the breath to speak. “It would’ve made things much harder for you, and I want to give you as much time as I can.” Malcolm lowered his head, trying to keep himself in her field of vision. “Time for what?” Her chest had gone still. He inhaled sharply, but then she squeezed his hand again, still alive. “Sunrise is just after seven,” she said, so quietly he could barely make out the words. “I can hold on till then. You have a few hours to prepare.” He’d have asked her to elaborate, but she didn’t need prompting now. “It’s a long journey, Malcolm. But when you’re sure I’m dead, you’ve got to move me right away. You’ve gotta take me home. Bury me in Shediak.” “In Maine?” She’d been born in Shediak. It was more than a thousand miles away. “In Maine,” she echoed. “Once my heart stops, you’ll have two nights. I’ve got to be in Shediak by the second sunrise or it’ll all be for nothing.” Malcolm sat back. “Maggie… Mom. This is crazy.” Her eyes widened, and she focused on him, keenly alert for the last time in her life. Truly seeing him for what would be the last time. “This isn’t some whim. It’s important in a way most folks couldn’t imagine. You’ve gotta be quick, and careful, and ready to fight. There are people who’ll try to stop you.” Malcolm thought of the raven, out beneath the willow tree. “People… and things,” she rasped. He’d had enough. “Okay, what in God’s name does that mean?” Her gray pallor had blanched nearly to white. “Nothing godly, son. Not this trip.” “Maggie—” She shushed him. Her body and voice were so weak now that it came out like a tiny whistle. “Ring up Paxson when I’m…” Paxson Keates. The old man who owned the funeral parlor on Church Street. Malcolm had no idea his mother even knew Paxson Keates, but she had always been a bottomless well of secrets, and now they were spilling out. “I’ll call him,” Malcolm vowed. “What else?” But there was nothing else. She hadn’t left her mortal shell quite yet, though her eyes were closed. These might not have been her last words, but the supply was running low. Malcolm felt a rising bitterness toward his siblings. Jennie and Elias should have been here with him. With their mother. It had been over a year since either of them had crossed the threshold. He understood—she made them all feel both loved and discarded, sometimes in the same breath. “Ah, Maggie,” he whispered, “what am I going to do without you?” He sat with her for another quarter hour, listening to the rasping of her breath, before he allowed his thoughts to return to her final request. Maine, of all places, and in two days? She insisted it wasn’t simply a whim, that it was important in some larger sense, but Maggie was a narcissist, which meant anything having to do with herself always seemed important to her. For Malcolm, it felt like some kind of morbid prank. Or it would have, if not for the other strange things that had happened over the course of his life as the son of Maggie Wise. Not the least of which was the tall man in the raven mask who even now stood across the street, waiting for his mother to die. You don’t have to be here for what comes next, the raven had said. But that wasn’t true. Jennie and Elias didn’t care enough to be at their mother’s bedside, which left it to him to fulfill her final wish, no matter how crazy it seemed. Because even if he sometimes hated her, he loved her, too. And because if he let himself accept the ominous tone in her voice when she insisted on the importance of this task, it scared him a little. Malcolm would bury Maggie in Shediak. If the man in the mask tried to interfere, he would show that son of a bitch the error of his ways. He had fought for his life along the Nakdong River and made it home with just a few scars. One asshole in a Halloween mask wasn’t going to give him much trouble. Excerpted from Carry Me to My Grave, copyright © 2026 by Christopher Golden. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Carry Me to My Grave</i> by Christopher Golden appeared first on Reactor.