News Predator: Badlands Predator: Badlands Director Explains Why the Movie Features a Weyland-Yutani Android Fans hoping that Predator: Badlands is a secret Alien vs. Predator movie may want to start managing their expectations. By Matthew Byrd | Published on July 22, 2025 Screenshot: 20th Century Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: 20th Century Studios While it was rumored that Predator: Badlands would feature some references to the Alien universe, the first full trailer for director Dan Trachtenberg’s follow-up to Prey often felt like as much of a preview for an Alien movie as a Predator film. The trailer even confirms that co-lead Thia (Elle Fanning) is a synth manufactured by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation: the evil tech conglomerate featured throughout the Alien franchise. Naturally, that got fans wondering if Badlands is actually the “stealth” Alien vs. Predator movie that Trachtenberg has previously expressed interest in. However, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Trachtenberg downplayed that connection by saying that he simply did not want Badlands to feature a human co-lead because he worried that audiences would “start to get tempted by that human and their story.” Eventually, he decided to make the character a robot instead. That pivot triggered a lightbulb moment for the Badlands director. “The next thought was, wait a minute, I know a company that makes robots. And that led to the Weyland-Yutani synth of it all,” Trachtenberg reveals. However, fans hoping to see an Alien vs. Predator film that actually lives up to the promise of that premise shouldn’t give up hope just yet. Trachtenberg says he is still very much interested in that idea but wants to make sure it is done in the right way. “It’s important to me — I am sure people anticipate a much bigger thing, and maybe other movies and other cinematic universes would be more aggressive — but I really didn’t want to take all the action figures and smush them together,” Trachtenberg says. “I really wanted to tell a cool story.” Offhand references to the MCU (presumably) aside, that approach makes a lot of sense when you consider that Prey was a thoughtful, measured approach to the Predator franchise. Rather than rush to replicate, or even strongly reference, the original films, Trachtenberg got back to the heart of what made the Predator concept so fascinating while telling a compelling original story. It’s easy enough to believe he would prefer to take a similar approach with an eventual AvP movie. At the same time, it’s hard not to wonder if this is all a way to pull the wool over our eyes and ensure that we’re not looking for whatever deeper Alien references Badlands may contain. In any case, this is all the more reason to watch for the Predator: Badlands panel at SDCC 2025, one of our most anticipated presentations at this year’s show.[end-mark] The post <i>Predator: Badlands</i> Director Explains Why the Movie Features a Weyland-Yutani Android appeared first on Reactor.

News Cristin Milioti Cristin Milioti to Star in New Horror Film From Too Many Cooks Creator Casper Kelly Warning: This article will get Too Many Cooks stuck in your head. By Matthew Byrd | Published on July 22, 2025 Screenshot: Adult Swim Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Adult Swim Much like a stew, it takes a lot to make a great modern horror movie. With studios of all sizes realizing that horror films are as lucrative as ever, the genre is starting to feel like a pressure cooker turned up to high. Yet it’s impossible to ignore the considerable potential of an upcoming horror film directed by Casper Kelly, creator of the legendary Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kelly recently began production on his first feature-length horror film, Buddy. That report also reveals that Cristin Milioti (fresh off her incredible run in HBO’s The Penguin) will star in Buddy, which will be co-written by Kelly and Jamie King (World’s Best) and produced by BoulderLight Pictures (Companion, Friendship). Sadly, we know very little else about the project at this time. It is being described as a “new experience in horror,” though that is a bit of a redundant statement given the aforementioned creative presence of Casper Kelly. Truth be told, though, that’s all we need to know to be excited about Buddy. While Kelly’s Too Many Cooks defies classification, that surrealist take on the opening credits of ’80s and ’90s sitcoms (as well as a host of other pop culture deep cuts) instantly endeared Kelly to the horror community. 10 years after it debuted early one morning without warning on Adult Swim (seriously, 10 years), Too Many Cooks remains one of the most powerful and influential pieces of viral media in the viral media era. It’s the kind of thing that new generations of fans continue to discover and process. The video is embedded below in case you’re one of the lucky ones who has never seen it. Just be warned that it’s as powerful of an ear and brain worm as ever. Granted, it’s a little disappointing that Kelly’s first feature-length horror film isn’t a continuation of the wonderfully weird Cheddar Goblin commercials he contributed to the film Mandy, but it’s generally best to wish our most delightfully strange artists luck in their original endeavors. Besides, there are no guarantees when it comes to a project like this. There’s no word yet regarding Buddy‘s release date or distribution format, but we’ll be sure to let you know if we hear even the faintest rumor that Lars Von Trier will reprise his role as “Pie” in the upcoming film.[end-mark] The post Cristin Milioti to Star in New Horror Film From <i>Too Many Cooks</i> Creator Casper Kelly appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts gothic horror Read an Excerpt From The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… By Isabel Cañas | Published on July 22, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Possession of Alba Díaz, a new gothic horror novel by Isabel Cañas, out from Berkley on August 19. In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.  Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice the growing tension between them every time she enters the room… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood gets stronger. In the fight for her life, Alba and Elías become entangled with the occult, the Church, long-kept secrets, and each other… not knowing that one of these things will spell their doom. I I’d wager you haven’t heard the legend of the Monterrubio mine. Most haven’t, especially if they’re not from around Mina San Gabriel. It’s a rumor, really, whispered from ear to ear, passed from palm to palm like so much silver. It was an ancient terror, I’ve heard people say. Or a pagan devil, rising from the dark maw of the mine to devour all in its path. Some say it was a haunting. If you ask me, that’s too straightforward. Can you imagine if this were nothing but a ghost story, full of cold drafts and shadows where they oughtn’t be, clammy palms and sweaty napes? That’s too clean a tale. Too simple. And this one gets messy. For they say that Alba Díaz de Bolaños barely survived. They say that when she stumbled down the cathedral steps, she was alive, yes—she was screaming, and all of Zacatecas heard it, their breasts chilled by how shredded and raw her voice was—but her wedding gown and all its silver were slick with blood. Gleaming with it, profane and red as cinnabar, wet as afterbirth. Some say no one has seen her since. I have. And, unlike the storytellers who have mangled these events over the years, I know what happened. The truth is worse than the stories would have you believe. I once heard it said that the words themselves are cursed. That the tale, once told, will evaporate like mercury. I can’t know that for certain. Perhaps it will. So lean in. Listen closely. I won’t be repeating myself. II Elías Not long ago in a land far from here, Elías Monterrubio found a book of spells. Or perhaps it found him. In a shadowed corner of a book bazaar, before a stall stacked with manuscripts, he paused. The air around him swam with foreign tongues and the cries of Bosporus gulls and the harsh slant of noon and the smells of men who had traveled far under summer’s sun, but at once, all went still. Softness fell around him. Leatherbound and unassuming, as these texts always are, El Libro de San Cipriano seemed to reach for him more than he reached for it. Now, Elías’s studies of alchemy had taken him from the familiar spires of Sevilla and the chop of Gibraltar to this far side of the Mediterranean. He was a learned man; he had come across the name before. Before he foreswore his black craft and turned to God, San Cipriano was a sorcerer omnipotent, the greatest enchanter to ever light a candle and pray. His was not a showy craft, leveling mountains or levitating to impress princes for jewels and coin, but one of quiet incantations. Love was all he wanted, and so love was what he spun spells for. Love was what San Cipriano’s followers chanted invocations for, even after the sorcerer left the lies of the occult behind and fixed his attention on the promise of life everlasting. Buy the Book The Possession of Alba Díaz Isabel Cañas Buy Book The Possession of Alba Díaz Isabel Cañas Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget An alchemist’s mind is weights and scales. The romance of transmutation is stripped bare to equations. Charcoal figures scribbled on blank paper. A lingering cough from chemical fumes. Love and its spells, as far as Elías was concerned, were as much a myth as San Cipriano. But still he paused. Perhaps it was because the title on the first page was written in aljamía, Spanish words in Arabic ligatures, an ancient marriage of his twin mother tongues. That alone was rare. A curiosity. A souvenir from a time long dead. He bought it. Slipped it into his bag. And then he forgot about it. For late that evening, as the call to prayer rippled midsummer’s humidity like the gentle strum of an oud, a letter arrived at his workshop addressed to Elías Monterrubio Zamora. Your father has returned, it read. Come. Many years later, Elías cursed himself for taking the bait. Of course he told himself that he meant to return to Spain anyway. That he had to, on behalf of his circle of scholars. Hadn’t they all agreed that it would be easier for Elías to obtain their mercury from Sevilla than for any of them? It was logic, cold as metal. Elías knew Almadén and the black markets of Sevilla intimately. The arrival of his grandfather’s letter merely hastened the planning. And the idea of speaking to his father for the first time in over twenty years? He hated that it drew at him. He hated how much he wanted it. He hated how questions and accusations spiraled themselves deep into his uneasy sleep on the ship that departed the Sea of Marmara’s calm waters for the docks of Barcelona. Why did you stop writing? Why did you never return? He was cagey and jumpy on the road; he carried his friends’ fortune sewn into his clothes. He barely slept. He spoke to no one. All he needed was to make it to Sevilla. Visit the mercury dealers from Almadén and pay his respects to his family. Face his father. Then he could turn his back on the man like he deserved and return to sea. Before Elías knew it, he would be bound east, praying that no corsairs sank or captured him and the mercury en route to Constantinople. Then life would resume as before. He could bury his father in his mind and never sleep fitfully again. He knew from years of travel that no trip was ever simple. He did not expect simplicity. Especially not when the sun set over Sevilla’s winding streets and he entered the dark, dust-filled house of the Monterrubio patriarch, Juan Arcadio. Still, when he sat in the drawing room and asked after his father, he did not expect what his grandfather said. “Victoriano died in the Indies six months ago,” Abuelo Arcadio replied flatly. The drop was dark and sudden. The slam of a door and the profound silence in its wake. Elías opened his mouth to speak; nothing came out. He leaned forward to put his head in his hands; no, no his father couldn’t be dead, he had come all this way. He stood abruptly, strode three paces to the door, then whirled on his grandfather. He pointed a finger at the old man, a silent accusation before he could find speech. “You wrote—” “Don’t look at me like that, boy.” Abuelo Arcadio waved a liver-spotted hand dismissively and accepted a glass of sherry from a servant. “There was no dragging you back from your Eastern debauchery without a lie and you know it.” Elías dropped his hand. “Fuck you.” His grandfather laughed, broad and unabashed as a sailor. Too throaty and rude for dark-draped drawing rooms. His shoulders shook; sherry swished in the crystal glass, winking cheekily in the candlelight. Abuelo Arcadio laughed with his whole body. That was the way Elías’s father laughed. Used to laugh. The drop beneath him reopened, and with a sweep of vertigo, he was falling again. Every accusation, every question spun into brilliant, imaginary arguments as he rolled over on cold, rocky ground beneath the stars; all the weeks of wondering how twenty years had changed his father’s face… it was all for nothing. Six months. The man was buried and gone. Even if Elías sailed to the Indies tomorrow with nothing but a pickaxe, desperate to exhume the corpse, there would be nothing to find by the time he reached the grave. There was already nothing to find. “Now that the formalities are out of the way, we can actually talk. Sit.” Abuelo Arcadio gestured to the chair Elías had vacated. He could have walked out the door. Taken the bags of mercury he had purchased on behalf of his friends. Returned to the sea. He had a plan. All he had to do was leave. All he had ever had to do was leave. But he hesitated. That was his inheritance, wasn’t it? A bone-deep lust for more, more, more. This was what Victoriano Monterrubio had left him in death: no answers, no apologies, only a moment of hesitation. A fatal ripple of curiosity about what more lay twinkling beneath the surface of this meeting. Abuelo Arcadio would not call for him—lie to him—without good reason. And the only good reasons that existed in this family were reasons that could be molten, forged, and sold. “What do you want from me?” he asked. “For you to sit,” Abuelo Arcadio said. He did. Sherry was brought to his side; he refused it wordlessly. Watched his grandfather sip his drink. Waited. “Victoriano swore to Heraclio that if we bought that mine, all we had to do was drain the flooding,” Abuelo Arcadio said. “That there was good ore beneath the waterline. The owner defaulted on his loans and his heir was dead, so we could get it for cheap.” “That is why Tío Heraclio and Carlos left for the Indies.” Names attached to faces he had not seen in twenty years or so. Names he had not thought of in just as long. Abuelo Arcadio tapped the rim of the now-empty glass; it was refilled. “They bought it, they drained it, and they began to dig. Your father was right, for once—the ore is good, but even that is not enough. Ah, Victoriano.” A delicate scowl crossed Abuelo Arcadio’s face. “He never made a business decision that did not mire this family in debt.” “To whom this time?” “Criollo merchants. And the Crown.” Abuelo Arcadio’s voice lowered to a growl over the word. “Taxes! All they want is taxes. The tax on buying mercury for amalgamation is choking us. But Victoriano had a solution for this too.” “Did he now,” Elías said. It came out flat. Perhaps he should have accepted the sherry earlier. Unease glimmered in his chest—it was a sense that the ground was shifting under him, like the deck of a ship when the waves grew steep and thick. Abuelo Arcadio’s grin was yellow, stained by years of tobacco. It brought to mind jackal. It was not at all kind. “He had whelped a little magician, hadn’t he?” A flush of heat shot through Elías’s cheeks. Alchemy was weights and calculations. Alchemy was science. But not to all. To his father’s family, he had never been anything more than a charlatan playing with smoke and useless measures. Nothing more than a waste of family money. “‘Summon Elías,’ he said,” Abuelo Arcadio continued. “‘Elías knows mercury.’” He sat back in his chair, gesturing at Elías expansively. “That was the last thing he ever wrote to me. And look what it brought me: a prodigal grandson on my doorstep, laden with bags of mercury. Tax-free mercury.” Smugness becomes few people. Somehow, it suited Abuelo Arcadio, settling over him like the soft, flattering light of sunset. “Do you know how much silver that mercury can refine?” he asked. Elías did not reply. He didn’t need to. Abuelo Arcadio was already dreaming aloud, the divine power of metal lifting him to his feet and carrying him across the room, where he paced as if he itched with possibility. “Enough silver to make the mine profitable.” It was prayerlike in its reverence. “To save this family from ruin. And then some.” He turned to Elías. His final question was unspoken, but it hung in the air with the presence of a ghost. “No,” Elías said. “Mulish as ever,” Abuelo Arcadio said, with a measure of what some might call grandfatherly affection. It felt a touch closer to condescension. “Heraclio predicted this. You take after your mother, after all.” “She stays out of this.” He was on his feet, stung by the lick of a whip. Eagerness glinted in Abuelo Arcadio’s eyes. He had loved baiting Elías when he was a child, for Elías always snapped faster than any of his cousins. Still did, apparently. He did not know which he hated more: Abuelo Arcadio’s power over him, or how he let him have that power. “Victoriano died with an enormous amount of debt in his name. As his only son, it is now yours,” Abuelo Arcadio said. “Bring your mercury to Nueva España. Become azoguero in Victoriano’s place and refine enough silver to repay the debt. Any silver refined from the mercury that remains will be fifty percent yours.” “That mercury is not mine,” Elías said. “It is in your bags,” Abuelo Arcadio said. Again, that jackal smile played across his face. “Is it not?” The trust on his friends’ faces flitted through his mind. How easily they had counted coins into his palms. The way they waved to him from the docks as the ship pulled away. Casually, then returning to their coffee as clouds of gulls rose around them, obscuring them from sight. As if Elías were merely crossing the city and not the Mediterranean. For they knew he would return. Wouldn’t he? Or was it not possible that he could have perished in a storm, sinking to the bottom of the sea, weighed down by all the coins sewn into his jacket? Was it not possible that he could be captured by corsairs and sold? Or, once he reached Spain, could he not be caught in the act of purchasing mercury on the black market and again condemned to Almadén? Months would pass. His friends would mourn him as dead. Perhaps even forgive him, one day. Greed was less a deadly sin than family creed, as inescapable as the name he bore or the way he recognized his father’s gestures in his own hands. He swore he was different from his cousins, his uncles, his grandfather. His greed was different. It buried him in tomes and equations and experiments, for it was a lust for knowledge that drove him to seek more. It was a noble greed. But that much silver… He could sail to China, or Persia, and live as a scholar prince for the rest of his days. He could turn his back on the Monterrubios, for he would never need them. He could put every sin he had ever committed to his back and become someone new. Unburdened. Free. “Seventy-five percent,” he countered. “Seventy,” said Abuelo Arcadio, extending his right hand to shake. Elías took it in his. Shook it once and firmly, before he could change his mind. “Done.” Excerpted from The Possession of Alba Díaz, copyright © 2025 by Isabel Cañas. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Possession of Alba Díaz</i> by Isabel Cañas appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Murderbot I Didn’t Expect Dr. Gurathin To Be My Favorite Part of Murderbot I’d offer Dr. Gurathin a hug but he’d HATE that By Leah Schnelbach | Published on July 22, 2025 Credit: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV+ If you want to make me love your work, take a scene or a character who could have been flat or cliche or basic, and write them a wildly new direction. In Murderbot, to my surprise and delight, it was what the Weitzes did with the character of Dr. Gurathin. In the books, Gurathin is the one member of the PresAux team who’s a little more suspicious of their assigned SecUnit. He clocks that Murderbot is acting weird, and he questions it in front of the rest of the group to figure out whether they’re in danger. Once they figure out that it’s autonomous, he needles Murderbot occasionally just to make sure it’s not going to go rogue and kill them all. This is brave of him, from a certain point of view, but also stupid, and Dr. Mensah mostly seems to be annoyed when he does it. When I learned that David Dastmalchian had been cast in the Murderbot adaptation, I figured he was playing Dr. Gurathin, and that Gurathin’s role was going to be expanded a bit. My first thought was that he would be the Dr. Smith of the group, which would have been fun, but nowhere near as meaningful as the path they took. One of the highlights of reading Martha Wells’ Murderbot books is watching as she builds a comprehensive critique of unchecked capitalism. As we travel through her world, and meet Murderbot, ART, Three, and the Preservation Alliance team, we gradually see how corporate greed has ruined every aspect of sentient life. It works incredibly well because, since we’re in Murderbot’s head, the horrors of the Corporation Rim are presented as simple fact: many of Murderbot’s clients torture it for fun; SecUnits and ComfortUnits have to obey orders no matter the circumstances; many of Murderbot’s clients make equipment a higher priority than human life or safety; yes Murderbot is also equipment; of course the Company can be bribed. We get a sense of how bad things are largely from watching Murderbot’s confusion and initial discomfort as it gets to know its new clients from Preservation Alliance, where life and freedom have intrinsic value, and where Murderbot itself would be a person with autonomy.    Since the first season of Murderbot primarily adapts Wells’ first book, All Systems Red, it can’t show us all the worldbuilding yet. Instead, the writers decided to frontload a critique of capitalism that feels much harsher and more immediate than the one in the book. Some of this is purely a matter of medium I think—we see the cops order SecUnits to attack starving indentured servants; we see the exhaustion and desperation of the people who work at the SecUnit factory; we see that the world Murderbot accepts as normal is deeply, terribly sick. And on top of that, best of all, we have Gurathin. Gurathin starts out as the same character he was in the book: an augmented human, slightly shy and awkward, and openly more suspicious of Murderbot than the rest of the Preservation Alliance team. When we meet him, we see that he hold himself back from the rest of the team. When PresAux meets with the Company to fine tune their mission, he glares at the reps like he expects a fight. He’s reluctant to turn his back on them long enough to join the Consensus Circle; he also doesn’t want them to watch him join hands with his friends. And, as Alex Brown pointed out in their fabulous episode reviews, note how Gurathin dresses: the bright colors of PresAux covered by a bland suit jacket. He doesn’t want people to notice him. He doesn’t want to seem “weird”. At the habitat, while the others dance freely to their upsetting music, Gurathin does… pretty much what I’d do in the scenario: he stands still, only moving his torso and arms, folded into himself like he wants to make himself small. His resistance to Murderbot is presented as a distrust of corporate spyware. But the expansion of his character begins when he asks everyone to meet in the hopper to avoid Murderbot overhearing his suspicions. Ratthi says Gurathin doesn’t trust anyone, which in a different kind of show would just be a comedy setup—“here’s Gurathin, our resident grump, he’ll be cynical about Murderbot until it saves him and he admits he likes it.” But on this show, one that takes human emotion seriously and treats its characters and audience with the care we all deserve, the scene becomes something else entirely. No one treats this like comedy. Gurathin turns to Ratthi, and with total sincerity replies, “I trust you. I trust this team. I don’t trust anything that comes from the Company.” Oh. Mensah responds by saying “You have good reason for that”—which immediately tells us that Gurathin has a history with Corporation Rim that the others do not. And, being Preservation, they all chime in with affirmations, tell him they love him, and Ratthi calls him “Gugu”. The grumpy cynic is not being dismissed or discounted, and now we know he has a History. Credit: Apple TV+ When he forces Murderbot to meet with him privately, he vacillates between seemingly sincere questions about Murderbot’s sense of self, and more pointed ones that show his distrust of Corporation Rim. His interrogation is cruel if you know anything about Murderbot and its hatred of interpersonal contact. The eye contact thing is actually torture—there’s no mission-based reason for it, Gurathin’s only doing it because he knows it makes Murderbot uncomfortable, and he knows it can’t say no. The rest of PresAux would be horrified if they saw him doing this. He uses the interrogation to establish that Murderbot shouldn’t have emotional attachments, that there’s a line between it and a “ComfortUnit”—and he takes the time to tell it that in Preservation Alliance it would be considered a person. He goes on to say that he’s only been in the Alliance six years, and that he joined because he was friends with Dr. Mensah. (We later learn that this is a much more complicated situation.) Gurathin describes himself as being “extremely cautious” and tells Murderbot that he cares very deeply about his friends, but his intensity and attempted Bond Villain vibe are undercut when when Mensah and Bharadwaj end up in actual danger, and Murderbot isn’t there to protect them. After that, Gurathin seems to step back for a while, presumably muttering to himself that the rest of the team are being too trusting. While Murderbot is away with Mensah we get the first real hint about Gura’s past, but it’s hidden in a charged moment so it could be overlooked. When Leebeebee is hovering, and trying to get Gura to talk with her about his projects, she offers him a “stimulant” from the Medpak, and he snaps “No!” in response. Which in the moment could be seen as the Grumpy One being annoyed, but it still seems like an overreaction to what could be a traumatized person trying to make a connection. It’s revealed that this wasn’t an overreaction in the next episode, which was when I realized what the show was doing. Credit: Apple TV+ Is the “Bitter/Sweet” scene my favorite in the show? I think there are a few others that top it, but only barely. The teammates are playing a “game” where people share their memories of each other, teasing out moments that were “sweet”, but balancing them with moments that were “bitter”. This is the kind of thing only Preservation Alliance would call a game—if I was invited to their table I’d definitely go with an acid bath instead. When it’s Gurathin’s turn, he only gives in because they chant his name loud enough that people at other tables begin to stare. It seems like he’s never played before—he checks with the others to make sure he’s doing the hand gestures correctly, and, rather than telling them about a simple moment of interpersonal connection, or like a time Ratthi annoyed him or something, he dives straight into terrible trauma. And it’s here that the season’s true critique of capitalism snaps into focus. He was targeted by the Corporation, who saw an opportunity to exploit the augments that set him apart and could be used for so much good. He was intentionally hooked on hardcore drugs, and forced to spy for the Company on pain of being refused his medication. He didn’t just join Preservation Alliance because he and Mensah were “friends” like he told Murderbot—Mensah was meant to be his latest victim. Faced with her loving personality he came clean. Faced with this broken, desperate man, she offered him sanctuary and a shot at a new life. He tells his story in present tense. He’s telling this story to them, now, on the eve of their mission, in the belly of his personal beast, surrounded by the life that almost killed him. He ends his “sweet” memory by saying, “I see what is possible between people of good will. I break down, tell her everything… she forgives me. And I move to Preservation Alliance and here we are.” Then he flees the table rather than giving a “bitter” memory—as though there isn’t enough bitter laced into what he’s just said? Because think about what he’s editing out as he speaks to them: escape from his corporate overlords, flight to a strange part of the galaxy, learning how to live in a society that is utterly alien to him (six years later he’s still visibly uncomfortable with it), a leap into the unknown—all of that without getting into the hell of kicking drugs that were custom-made to control him. (I’ll mention that Dastmalchian’s acting here is among the best of the series–I’ve loved Dastmalchian since I saw The Dark Knight on opening night in 2008, and watching him carve out his own fabulous goth niche alongside his work in stuff like Late Night with The Devil and Animals has made my sparkly black heart sing. And this??? I practically crawled into my TV during this scene.) Credit: Apple TV+ But the other thing that gets to me is just how raw it is. Not to dismiss Bharadwaj’s pain, but she’s confessing to having feelings for a coworker, and whomst among us? But when we get to Gura’s turn, he trusts them with part of the truth of who he is—a truth that could make them look at him differently, that could set him even more apart from them. He honors the conceit of the game with an offering that is as bitter and sweet as anything could be. And he does it in this glittering restaurant, in the place he hates most, surrounded by all the trappings that almost killed him. In this room filled with artifice and small talk, elites eating and drinking while indentured servants and enslaved bots provide all the labor, he cuts through all of it to get to a place of brutal honesty. Gurathin is what happens when capitalism can do whatever it wants. It latches onto a person and sucks them dry until they’d rather die than keep living under it. Again, I love it when people take big swings. This games could have happened privately in the team’s quarters. He could have told his friends his story after he was shot, to explain why he wouldn’t use painkillers. The Weitzes could have undercut it with jokes, Dastmalchian could have added a layer of irony to distance present Gurathin from his past. Instead they use the scene to get the core of what capitalism does to people: make you want more and more and more, and then hold that “more” just out of reach to control you.   He chooses to tell his friends about this now, on the eve of their mission, so they can see what the Corporation is truly capable of. He chooses to tell his friends about this now, on the eve of their mission, so they can see what the Corporation is truly capable of. This is why he’s been holding himself back, this is why he’s been suspicious of Murderbot, why he was suspicious of Leebeebee, why he snarled at her when she casually offered him speed. Where Murderbot’s greatest fear is the Acid Bath, Gura’s is falling back into addiction, being dragged back to the Corporation Rim, back to the half life he had there. This is how much he loves Mensah and the team, that he’ll come on the mission with them, because he knows he’s the only one who understands what they’re dealing with. Well, him and Murderbot. But he can’t trust Murderbot. Which leads to the most heartbreaking scene of the show. He’s been shot, the wound is infected, Bharadwaj can operate on him but he can’t have any pain meds without risking addiction again. At first he tells Murderbot to restrain him, but then both of them seem to have the same idea at the same time—Murderbot can link to him and block the pain from hitting his nervous system. If he hadn’t had the idea, it seems like Murderbot would have suggested it anyway, which is what makes everything worse. Murderbot pokes around in Gura’s head (payback for their earlier confrontation) but then inadvertently reveals the man’s deepest secret, and most likely the thing he would have claimed as “bitter” during that dinner a month ago: he’s in love with Mensah, and she doesn’t love him back. Not like that, anyway. But even here, Murderbot doesn’t announce that—it just, again, seemingly accidentally, says “Why don’t you love me back” out loud. Mensah knows what the words means; who knows if the others do? Gura even asks if he’s said something, implying that when the two of them are linked together, the lines between Murderbot and Gura are blurry at best. So when Gura chooses to stay in Murderbot’s mind for an extra second, dredge up the memory of the massacre, blurt it out to the group, and reveal Murderbot’s name for itself—despite Murderbot saying “Don’t!” with more emotion than it’s ever had in its voice before—it feels like a far greater betrayal than Murderbot’s slip. Is this Gura’s spy training coming to the fore? Or was this pure anger, lashing out at a being he already doesn’t trust, after having to make himself vulnerable? Why else would he take that extra beat to lock eyes with Murderbot and say, “You’re defective”? Credit: Apple TV+ Under a capitalist system “defective” is the worst thing you can be. If you can’t do your job, make your company money, and spend your money to fund other companies, you’re useless. Everything in a society like that will hammer home the idea that your life has no worth if it isn’t earning money or spending it. If you’re a SecUnit who can’t be trusted to do security, you’ll be melted down and stripped for parts. If you’re an augmented human, you’ll be hooked on drugs and used as a weapon.   How often were insults like that thrown at Gurathin, in his old life? Of course he puts Murderbot’s worst fear, and his own, into words and spits it out for the whole team to hear. But as he says later, he’s been in Murderbot’s mind. He’s the one who figures out its secret plan, who has an abrupt and total change of heart when he realizes that Murderbot is about to sacrifice itself for them. He’s the one who risks capture to finish the beacon launch, and it’s him, not Mensah, who realizes Murderbot is dying and runs to its side. He’s also the only one who knows what it’s going to take to get Murderbot back. While the rest of the team try to use political power (“‘Madame President’. You will address me as ‘Madame President’.”) legal wrestling in the form of Pin-Lee’s massive lawsuit, and sheer emotion and appeals to common decency, it’s Gurathin who understands the Corporation Rim. He’s the one who finally steps into the center, sits down across from the company reps, and tells them that they’ll buy SecUnit. Naturally the others react in horror, because SecUnit isn’t an object to be bought or sold, but Gurathin understands that here, it is. But more than that: they all are. The Preservation Alliance doesn’t realize it, but he knows: you can believe in autonomy and self-determination and free will and even the soul—you can believe anything you want; functionally speaking, if you’re in a room with people who are more powerful than you and the majority of them don’t agree that you’re a person, your internal personhood ceases to matter. So, use your wallet. The problem is that they’ve already downloaded SecUnit’s personality and cycled it back into the system. And it’s here that for once capitalism inadvertently saves the day. While the rest of them are basically helpless, Mensah says, “I refuse to believe that the experience of everything we went through together is just a stream of zeros and ones” and Gurathin snaps “It is.” As she looks up at him, startled, he repeats himself, but more quietly. Mensah still pushes back. “Removed? Yes. Erased? No.” But Gurathin points out that that’s the true evil here. Sure, they’ll keep Murderbot’s memories to strip them for any data they can use, but “personality doesn’t possess any monetary value to them. This is Corporation Rim—they don’t play fair.” And he thinks like one of them. Credit: Apple TV+ He goes back to his old dealer, but this isn’t the kind of soapy, over-the-top show Murderbot would like, so there’s nothing seedy here. This isn’t a drug den or the backroom of a nightclub or anything, just an apartment. Gura’s dealer was a co-worker, a regular man with a day job, who ended up exploiting someone who would have been his friend in a better society. I would be willing to bet my own capitalist earnings that the dealer didn’t have much more choice than Gurathin did. Now he’s free of that life. He has a kid, and (thanks to Leebeebee) we know that’s prohibitively expensive, so he must have done well for himself. But here’s where Gurathin twists the knife. There is only a thin door between the ex-dealer’s husband and child—and the truth of how he used to make his money. The man caves to Gurathin’s blackmail almost immediately. Who knows if there will be consequences for this man? If Gurathin’s hacking and theft comes to light will it be traced back to him? Will he lose his career and family after all this, anyway? Gurathin can’t let himself care. He can’t think like a member of Preservation Alliance if he wants to win against the Corporation. He goes into the system, searches for the remnants of Murderbot’s personality. He tries a couple basic searches before he realizes that the key to finding Murderbot is through accepting Murderbot for who it is. He searches for the soap opera that he’s never watched and regards with distaste, and there’s their Murderbot, its personality shaped by the media it loves. Gurathin then does something that no one else could do: he uploads Murderbot into his own mind. Even as he’s told not to. Pin-Lee’s legal actions have worked in that they’ve been able to retrieve Murderbot’s body; Mensah’s political clout allowed her to offer up the GrayCris scandal to a ravenous media industrial complex. They’re able to fight the Corporation Rim in ways that don’t touch their selfhood—if anything, this will enhance Pin-Lee’s status as a lawyer, and other leaders will learn not to test Mensah. But Gurathin is the one who knows that you have to get dirty if you want to beat the Corporation. He drags himself back into the shame of his old life, he comes face-to-face with the worst moments of his past by confronting his old dealer. He checks his own moral code at the door to threaten the man into giving him what he wants. He presumably risks arrest if he’s caught hacking into a Company database. He risks his own mind by uploading Murderbot. And what happens? He runs back into PresAux’s suite and pukes into the sink from the physical strain, and Mensah, of course, thinks he’s relapsed. His friends are so shocked by what’s happening, and by seeing Murderbot come back to itself, that no one even thinks to thank him at first. He wants so badly to be Murderbot’s mentor, to help it learn how to live in Preservation Alliance, as Mensah helped him six years before. And of everyone on the team, he might be the one human who could. But he’s also the only one who can really understand why Murderbot needs to go. It has to be in its own head for a while, and figure out what it wants on its own terms, not by talking about it with humans who, try as they might, literally can’t imagine what it’s been through. He hasn’t just seen inside Murderbot’s mind, he’s held it inside of his own, and learned its language enough to let it go by agreeing that, “You need to check the perimeter.” Credit: Apple TV+ In the end we watch the person who was the most twisted by Corporation Rim’s capitalist machine define himself by the gifts he gives freely to his friends. He chooses to tell his friends his story. To trust them. To let them in. He chooses to dive back into his past, and face his worst fears, to rescue Murderbot’s consciousness. He takes Murderbot into himself, gives it the gift of space in his own mind, to give it a shot at a new life. And he gives it the gift of letting it go without an argument, something I don’t think Mensah herself would have been able to do, if she’d been the one to wake up. Lately I’ve been thinking even more than usual about What Art Can Accomplish Right Now. I doubt I’m alone in that. I think it’s this. The Weitzes looked at Dr. Gurathin, and saw an opportunity to layer in a backstory that didn’t just add depth to the character, but also became a prism for the themes of the books and the show. Murderbot is about free will, but through Gurathin the show is able to ask: how much free will can even a human person really have under a system that sees them as only as a resource to be exploited? Rather than giving us info dumps or exposition, they found a way to talk about this giant capital-T THEME through an irritating, hilarious, deeply lovable character.[end-mark] The post I Didn’t Expect Dr. Gurathin To Be My Favorite Part of <em>Murderbot</em> appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Examining the Nightmare That Is the American Dream in When Devils Sing by Xan Kaur Four unlikely allies in a small town investigate a local teen’s disappearance… By Mahvesh Murad | Published on July 22, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share A blood-stained motel room just outside a small town called Carrion, in the deep south of America. A missing young man. A local legend about three devils. Four desperate young adults trying to change their fates. Souls to be sold, Faustian bargains to be made, and a hundred thousand screaming cicadas that rise in hunger, in greed, in want.  Xan Kaur’s debut novel When Devils Sing is centred around the oldest rumour in this fictitious small town in Georgia: that one of the founding fathers of Carrion met the devil at a crossroads at a time of great desperation, and made a bargain to ensure the infinite prosperity of certain families. “If you bring me a warm body,” the cicada-devil promised William Langley generations ago, “I will bless your lands and your soil. As long as I am fed, you will live like a king for the rest of your days.” Generations later, the Langley family are still at the top of the area’s pecking order, living their wealthy lives amidst others like them in the fancy community of Lake Clearwater, with the rest of Carrion constantly struggling to make ends meet. The lines between those who have and those who have not are etched into the land in Carrion, as clear and as hard as the southern sun. Every thirteen years, something evil awakens and demands to be fed. The cicadas start to scream, people start to go missing, yet somehow the rich families in Lake Clearwater remain privileged, powerful and rich, their micro-economy keeping all of Carrion afloat.  When a young man called Dawson goes missing from a blood-spattered motel room, and a young woman is caught in a hit-and-run accident right before the Cicada Festival, it sets off a chain of events that lead four young people into the deepest recesses of Carrion’s horrific past, in an attempt to rid themselves of a future they did not choose, in a town where something is building up to a powerful anniversary: “There was a palpable strangeness to Carrion, felt especially during the summer months, even more so with the arrival of the thirteen-year cicadas. Everything, both wonderful and horrible felt equally likely then. As if the sticky, muggy air buzzed with a sense of tremendous possibility.” Much of the horror element is atmospheric: Alongside the otherworldly din of the screaming cicadas, the constantly increasing pressure of something sinister in the air, and a festering within the town itself, there is also the actual presence of the devils of Carrion legend, two of whom appear again to make ominous deals that will clearly not end well.  Dawson’s best friend Reid is the youngest descendant of the Langleys, who remain the town’s wealthiest family. Reid, who has never quite accepted his mother’s sudden disappearance nor his father’s often violent pressure to act a certain way, now has to contend with Dawson’s loss. Dawson was last seen at the Colonial Motel, a rundown place managed by Neera’s Punjabi immigrant grandparents, which she helps clean while she harbours grand dreams of becoming a professional musician like her uncle, who mysteriously committed suicide years ago. Neera’s grandparents are heavily in debt and being threatened by the Langley’s henchman Wiley, a violent abusive man whose daughter Sam has been in a hit-and-run car accident and will do anything to save her little brother both from the outcome of that accident, and from their father’s abuse. Isaiah is the son of the only Black person in Carrion to have crossed the social divide into Lake Clearwater; he is destined to law school like his father, though he is not willing to turn his back on his Carrion family, or the anonymous podcast he produces that investigates Carrion mysteries.  Buy the Book When Devils Sing Xan Kaur Buy Book When Devils Sing Xan Kaur Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Four young people, each with something to run from, each with a need and a desperate desire to take control of their future, to find themselves building a new life as far from Carrion as they can. Each at a crossroads, just one decision away from leaving their old lives, for better or worse. Each carries a burden they’ve inherited; whether it be trauma or privilege, it is still generational pressure; something they didn’t ask for. But none of them are able to move on without trying to get to the truth, and that is what makes them heroes, albeit flawed ones. Kaur is good at making sure her protagonists are not single dimension “good” kids, as it were: All four of her lead characters struggle with their moral compass and question themselves and their intentions. Sam “learned early that people were rarely good, but they were also rarely bad. Instead, they were neither wholly committed to either side, which, in her eyes, was much worse.” Reid, for example, knows that no matter how much he wishes otherwise, “he was still a Langley. Cowardice and cruelty were in his blood.”  In this world, Kaur is clear that you inherit more than just wealth. You inherit the ways that wealth was gained, whatever bargains were made to achieve that status, whatever evil was committed for that power. You inherit it all. But are you willing to take it on, just to maintain the comforts you’ve known? Or are you willing to break free of that cycle? Everyone, it seems, is complicit, including all four POV characters. And the sacrifices made to keep Lake Clearwater prosperous are truly horrific: They are not always metaphysical, but made via blood, via innocent lives. Death lurks around the corner, encountered in the eyes of animals torn apart and left by the roadside, in the hypnotic power a simple song can have when its source is Faustian.  The lead characters make mistakes and bad decisions; they stumble in their path. They are trying to avoid being defined by their ancestry, but also aware that this may not be possible. The path before them is not evenly laid for each of them. When Devils Sing is ultimately a look at the horror of capitalist society and class warfare. Kaur’s metaphor of the elite continuously using everyone else in order to maintain their wealth is not subtle, but then YA isn’t known for its subtlety so we cannot fault the nature of the beast. That being said, the plot is a little awkwardly paced, with some not so neatly tied up ends, and as much as the setting is lush and appropriate, there are some things that aren’t explored to satisfaction, such as the three devils we meet, and why two are subordinate to the third (one assumes this has to do with the ancient pact).  Kaur is a first generation Punjabi-American raised in the American south and has a unique lens on the landscape, on society, and on the immigrant life of those who come to the US hoping for better than what they have known, only to find that class divides are just as deeply set in their new home. Generational wealth, privilege, power, greed; poverty, desperation, need—these things don’t change just because your geography has. Neera, on seeing her mother work with a detached focus, knows that there is a “level of capacity to her mom [she] could never quite mirror, no matter how hard she tried.” Neera guesses correctly that this was the immigrant experience “‘”that chewed you up and spat you out. Whoever you were after it all determined how far you made it in the world.”  When Devils Sing is a well-written Southern Gothic that provides a welcome perspective on immigration, capitalism and the nightmare that the American Dream can so easily become for many in the modern world. “How would it look,” asks one character, “if I said the secret to a long and healthy life was to be extraordinarily wealthy? This is a narrative I never wanted to promote.” It is, however, the absolute truth, making When Devils Sing a social critique in more ways than one. There is plenty here to chew on, should you choose to look beneath the sticky, creeping Southern Gothic ambience that covers the narrative like the kudzu vines of Carrion.[end-mark] When Devils Sing is published by Henry Holt & Co. The post Examining the Nightmare That Is the American Dream in <i>When Devils Sing</i> by Xan Kaur appeared first on Reactor.