Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver

Devil in Silver: Aasif Mandvi Talks About Shooting Dr. Anand’s Major Scene

Reactor interviewed Mandvi about his character’s journey over the course of the show.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 5, 2026

Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC

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Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC

Warning: This episode contains spoilers for the fifth episode of The Terror: Devil in Silver, “Vermillion.”

The fifth and penultimate episode of The Devil in Silver has more than one shocking moment, and one of them involves New Hyde’s managing psychiatrist, Dr. Anand.

Dr. Anand, who is played by Evil alum Aasif Mandvi, has a run-in with Dorry, New Hyde’s long-term patient played with disturbing perfection by Judith Light. That run-in involves Dorry crushing Dr. Anand’s face into a pulp and tearing him open with her bare hands. It’s not subtle, and it’s a scene that Light, in character as Dorry, would constantly remind Mandvi of on set.

“She would always just come up to me and secretly whisper [in a singsong voice], ‘I’m gonna kill youuuu… I’m gonna kill you…’ It was kind of a creepy thing that she would do to me,” Mandvi told me in an interview.

Mandvi talked more about Dr. Anand’s final scene, how the social commentary of the show attracted him to the role, and what he thinks his character on Evil, Ben, would think of New Hyde. Read on for our full discussion.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

What attracted you to the role of Dr. Anand from the get-go?

It’s a great role, and multi-layered, and there’s a lot of complexity to the role. As an actor, it felt like it was fun to dig in and sink your teeth into something like that, and then I just liked the social commentary that the series has. I’d done this show Evil, and that was a real mix of horror and social commentary as well, and this lived in a similar space. I also liked the idea of Dr. Anand caught between being a person who genuinely, I think, wants to do good, and then also being beholden and being imprisoned himself inside this institution. He’s a middle management guy who’s stuck in this place where he knows he has to compromise his ethics and sense of right and wrong in order to keep the institution going, and that’s an interesting conundrum that I think that we see a lot in our world right now.

He’s interesting because as episodes go on, it’s not quite clear how much he acknowledges or knows about the supernatural component as well. Did you have a thought in your mind of how much he knew what was really going on in New Hyde?

I think he’s in denial about a lot of it. It was always a question for me: How much does he know? And then the question became: How much is he willing to look in that direction? I always got the feeling that he was a man who didn’t want to see the things he didn’t want to see. He wanted the institution to run smoothly, and with a certain level of consistency. For him, keeping the institution going was more important than losing the institution altogether, and so whatever he had to compromise in order to do that he would do. And then this other stuff with the devil and the supernatural, I don’t think he knows quite what to make of it, and I thought that was interesting, because I don’t think he buys into it 100%, but I think he knows that something is going on, and so I imagine it gives him an ulcer.

It’s ironic too, because he gets punished for trying to do good at the end.

And that’s the thing, right? As long as he just goes along with it and doesn’t take any action, he manages to survive. But the minute he takes action, the metaphor of the devil, through Judith’s character, kills him. I feel like that was a really powerful scene and moment in the show, but also a message about what the show was saying. At the end of the day, it’s all about just get in line, follow the rules, don’t speak up, just take your meds, non-compliance is not an option, all that kind of stuff. And when Dr. Anand decides to step out of line, the institution stamps down on him and kills him. And again, I would say we see more of that in the world today than we want to. It was an interesting and powerful metaphor.

When did you know what would happen to your character?

I think I got all the scripts prior to shooting, so yes, I probably knew before then. And it was kind of fun, because Judith was always in character when we were shooting. I rarely saw her out of character and she would always just come up to me and secretly whisper [in a singsong voice], “I’m gonna kill youuuu… I’m gonna kill you…” It was kind of a creepy thing that she would do to me.”

That is creepy, especially from her.

Yeah she was always Dorry, with the whole wig and the teeth thing. She was very much in that character the whole time.

Can you talk about actually filming that scene, just what that was like?

It was bizarre. There’s a lot of things that we do in this business where you look back on it, and you go, “Oh, right, that’s a weird thing that I had to spend the day doing.” That day I spent like five hours just [making grunting sounds, as one does when their face gets smashed in]. They had to shoot it at all different angles, and then they had a prosthetic, and they had a stunt guy. But I just remember Judith sitting on top of me just screaming for God knows how many hours.

Did she stay in character for that too, in between takes?

In character the whole time, yeah. It was a day. On one hand, I got to lay on the floor all day. On the other hand, I was basically told, “We just want the sounds of her hitting and smashing your face.” And I was like; I know a lot of things that I can call upon but that is not necessarily one of them…  what does that feel like to have your face smashed in?

Have you seen end product of it? The final version on screen?

I haven’t seen that one yet.

It must be a weird thing, to see yourself in something like that.

Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about it. My wife was like, “I’m not watching it.” It’s a weird thing… I’m trying to think if I’ve died in many things. I don’t know if I have or not, but in this particular gruesome fashion, this was a first, although I did get to take a selfie with the guy who had my smashed-in face.

Well that’s good for memories! And for my last question, I have to ask: you mentioned Evil, and I’m a big fan of that show as well. Do you have a take on what Ben [Mandvi’s character on that show] would think of New Hyde if he ended up in there in some capacity?

I think Ben would have quite a field day trying to figure out what was what, and what was real, and what was not real. This show starts to become less ambiguous as it goes along, whereas Evil always remained ambiguous about what was real and what was not. And I think in this case, if Ben went behind that door and ended up in that other world back there, I wonder if it would be more like the episode we did on Evil where he gets stuck in the elevator down in the basement and is suddenly faced with his worst nightmare and fears. So, I don’t know, but I definitely think that Ben would be checking the entire place… he’d be checking into the air conditioning.

The season finale of The Terror: The Devil in Silver premieres on AMC+ and Shudder next Thursday, June 11, 2026.[end-mark]

The post <i>Devil in Silver</i>: Aasif Mandvi Talks About Shooting Dr. Anand’s Major Scene appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch

What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Vampire Lestat Always Plays The Hits

Plus: Is Mads Mikkelsen a genre?

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 5, 2026

Image: AMC

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Image: AMC

It’s June? It’s June. Does anyone remember what it was like when every turn of the calendar didn’t come as a peculiar shock? I guess that was maybe how we lived, once. But here we are in June—the month, the internet advertisers will have you believe, of dads and grads—and there are such things to look forward to. Sam Reid as The Vampire Lestat. Colin Farrell in Sugar. The season finale of Widow’s Bay, which seems to be the thing bringing together the oddest corners of my personal internet. Book discourse! The wary excitement of Knicks fans! A lot of things are very, very bad, but there’s a little hint of hopefulness in the air. Or maybe that’s just pollen. Remember your Claritin, hug your friends, worship your vampire rock gods, call your reps—you know the drill.

Love Bites: The Vampire Lestat

There’s one loud thought in my head this week, and it’s just LESTAT. Jealously, I have been reading every account I can find of the one-night-only The Vampire Lestat screening and concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Ravenously, I have been reading interviews with the cast from previous seasons. My Instagram feed is on to me; the usual cat videos are interrupted with the cast in increasingly lush outfits. I spent two days rereading the novel on which this season is based. I rediscovered my love for this ridiculous dramatic child of a vampire. I am ready. To France! To the past! To a whole-ass tour, which is way more rocking than Lestat gets to do in the novel with his name on it! I cannot wait to see where this goes.

The Vampire Lestat takes the stage Sunday night on AMC+.

RIP Marjane Satrapi

I keep trying to come up with something succinct to say about Marjane Satrapi, who died this week at the far-too-young age of 56, and failing. But you don’t need me to talk about her; what you need is her art. Did you read Persepolis? No? Pick it up now. And watch the movie, too. 

In 2023, the graphic novel turned 20 and got a fancy new edition; writing about it for NPR, Tahneer Oksman said:

Ted Chiang: “No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious”

I keep reading this new Ted Chiang piece on AI in little pieces, both because I need to stop and scream occasionally, and because there are just so many brilliant, biting, necessary bits that I need to take a little pause after each of them. He is clear and sharp and simply not messing around: He asks, “Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious? And if it has feelings, is it capable of receiving moral instruction?”

And answers:

And then goes on to outline the careful reasoning and thought process behind this statement. Sometimes he’s funny even while making important points:

I’m not going to tell you everything good in this piece. I think you should just go read it.

Is Mads Mikkelsen a Genre Unto Himself?

No one is going to argue that the Danish film Another Round is genre. However, it stars Mads Mikkelsen, who feels, at this point, like the embodiment of some kind of mashed-up, unquestionably brilliant genre of his own: stone-faced, emotive, dramatic, swooping in as sad space dads and hit men and, you know, Hannibal. And also Le Chiffre! And I could go on. But the point is, the Danish film Another Round is now on Netflix, and I’ve been meaning to watch it for ages. It has a wild premise: a group of schoolteachers (all men, I feel compelled to note) decide to see what happens if they try to maintain a consistent blood alcohol level of 0.05%, which may perhaps make them more creative. This gives me a headache as a concept. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. And yet: I must know how it all plays out. It won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film! I mean, if you need a reason other than Mads to watch it.[end-mark]

The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: <i>The Vampire Lestat</i> Always Plays The Hits appeared first on Reactor.

News Spider-Noir

Spider-Man Noir Creator Wanted the Prime Video Show to Take a More “Courageous” Political Stance

“Our Peter Parker was a radical communist…”

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on June 3, 2026

Image: Prime Video

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Image: Prime Video

In an interview with Radio Times, Spider-Man Noir comic creator David Hine shared his thoughts on the recently released Prime Video adaptation of the character. Hine said he was “impressed by the cohesive world they’ve built” in the show, and even noted that it is more “‘noir’ than our comic.” He admits that he’ll have to “enjoy it for what it is,” but loves that it will ultimately bring more attention to the character and the comics.

However, compared to those comics, Hine says that there’s one aspect of the show he’s particularly disappointed in: its lack of a clear political voice.

“Our version was explicitly political. We named names,” Hine said. “We referenced the Friends of New Germany and the rise of actual Nazism in the US. Everything referenced was historical reality, except for the obvious elements of pulp weirdness.”

For those who are unfamiliar, the Spider-Man Noir comics were incredibly politically motivated. Uncle Ben was a disillusioned former WWI soldier and political activist who told Peter “If those in power can’t be trusted, it’s the responsibility of the people to remove them.” Aunt May and Peter do indeed encourage the people to unite to rise up against the industrialist Norman Osburne, and, despite taking place in an alternate universe version of 1930s United States, the comic series deals with versions of many of the social and political issues that defined the working class during that time. When it comes to describing that version of the character, Hine doesn’t mince words.

“Our Peter Parker was a radical communist along with Aunt May and Uncle Ben,” Hine says. “The politics of the show are soft left. Aunt May would have been scathing. I’d have been overjoyed if they took a more courageous political stance.”

One distinction there that is very important to note is that the Spider-Man in the Prime Video Spider-Noir show is not Peter Parker but Ben Reilly. It exists in a different universe and, as Hine says, the show is not a direct adaptation of the original story of the same name, nor is it even a continuation of the version of the character seen in the Spider-Verse films.

Politically, the show does tackle some of the issues seen in the comics (such as race relations at the time), though it certainly doesn’t dive into as many of them nor does it address them with anything close to the same fervor and intent. Will we ever get a version of the character that’s basically Warren Beatty’s Reds but with Spider-Man? Probably not. He’s more of a Dick Tracy guy.[end-mark]

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News The Vampire Lestat

How David Bowie Inspired Sam Reid’s Performance in The Vampire Lestat

In a press conference hosted by the Television Critics Association, Sam Reid dished on his inspirations for Lestat’s onstage persona

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 5, 2026

Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

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Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

We’ve already gotten a solid dose of actor Sam Reid performing the rock star version of Lestat. There are the teasers we get in the trailers, of course, and you can listen to original songs “Long Face” and “All Fall Down” to get an extra dose of the vampire’s angst. It’s enough to make clear that Reid embodies Lestat’s musician persona well, and in a press conference hosted by the Television Critics Association that I attended, he shared how he channeled that sexy rockstar energy.

In Reid’s mind, the core of Lestat’s penchant for performance goes back centuries. “His onstage persona is built in the 18th century… it is the French iteration of the Commedia dell’arte, and that’s where I place him as a performer,” he said. “Anything that goes beyond that is an extension of that character, because I feel like that’s where he built his stage presence.”

One of those extensions involved Reid watching David Bowie perform “Cracked Actor” at live concerts. He did so, however, to “remind myself that [Lestat’s] not human… I just got to make sure that I don’t forget that sometimes, because there is a lot more vulnerability in this season than we’ve had before, so I just wanted to make sure we maintain that he is a kind of other thing, which I thought David Bowie just does extraordinarily.”

Lestat’s stage presence also changes as the season goes on. “I wanted to make sure it felt still theatrical in a way, because he’s still performing the idea of a rock star, at least at the beginning. And as the show progresses, the performance starts to disappear, and then I just really focus on the books and [showrunner Rolin Jones’] work, and the songs that Daniel Hart wrote, and trying to hone in on that, and pull the guy out of those things.”

You can see Reid’s performance of Lestat’s performance (and then his performance of Lestat’s vulnerability) when The Vampire Lestat premieres on AMC and AMC+ on June 7, 2026. [end-mark]  

The post How David Bowie Inspired Sam Reid’s Performance in <i>The Vampire Lestat</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books post-apocalyptic fiction

Finally, a Unit of Measurement for a Certain Kind of Moral Depravity…

We’ve all encountered this trope in post-apocalyptic fiction before. Let’s give it a name…

By James Davis Nicoll

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Published on June 5, 2026

Credit: American International Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios

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Credit: American International Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios

Remember this old essay? The morning after I finished writing the article below, Reactor published an article by Ruthanna Emrys titled “Ixnay on the Post-Apocalyptic Cannibals: Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell.” Emrys’ column could have sent my mind down the path that led to the essay below… if I’d read it before writing the essay and not after. What a coincidence—I guess it’s “People Don’t Really Act Like Post-Apocalyptic Novel Protagonists” time!

So, I recently became aware of the absence of a potentially useful unit of measurement, one I could use in review after review. It’s lack came to me as I was reading John Christopher’s 1956 The Death of Grass, which is rather counterintuitively about the death of grass and the consequences that follow. I don’t know how we’re supposed to get that from the title.

The property being measured is temporal: how long does it take protagonists in an existential crisis to embrace war of all against all, to start murdering their way towards refuge—or, having refuge at hand, to aggressively prevent others from joining them?

Obviously, crisis calls for resolute action. Imagine, for example, that you were on an escalator and that escalator halted. Provided you waited an acceptable time for the escalator to start up again or for rescue to appear—five or ten minutes—I don’t think anyone could reasonably criticize you for whipping out a machete to carve your way to freedom. Likewise, light cannibalism or establishing a Cosmic Circle commune working along proper Degleresque¹ lines is just common sense under those circumstances. To quote A Mighty Wind’s Terry Bohner, “You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.”

Even granting the above, fictional characters seem to make the jump from conventional middle-class grudging coexistence to homicide and warlordism astonishingly quickly. For example, The Death of Grass’s heroes… well, no. Protagonists… conclude that impending famine means it’s every man for himself so quickly one might suspect they’ve been dying to hoist the Jolly Roger all along, and only waited for a pretext.

This is almost certainly true for gunsmith Pirrie, who allies with the central characters early on. Pirrie brings his wife Millicent along not because he loves her, but because he is afraid she might thrive without him. As soon as opportunity presents itself, he murders Millicent and replaces her with Jane, whose parents he has just helped murder. I would be in no way surprised to discover Pirrie was a serial killer (or worse) pre-famine.

While Grass’s characters might seem a bit hasty, an objective survey of works such as Varley’s Slow Apocalypse, Ward Moore’s “Lot,” Ing’s Pulling Through, Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer, Tucker’s The Long Loud Silence, and others—too many to list here—suggests that in fact these characters are not really all that exceptional. Survival-oriented pragmatists abound! DO NOT BOARD ESCALATORS WITH THESE PEOPLE.

The lack of a formal measuring system makes it more difficult to compare works along that specific axis. Happily, I am here for you. More accurately, Ray Milland and Ward Moore were here for you, but I am going to steal their credit.

In Ray Milland’s film Panic in the Year Zero! (Based on Moore’s “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter”), Los Angelinos Harry Baldwin and family set out on a camping trip. The Baldwins become aware something is wrong about 2 minutes, 45 seconds into the film. By about the 3-minute, 30-second mark, they see ominous flashes. At about the 6-minute mark, they witness a mushroom cloud rising over Los Angeles. At the 7-minute mark, emergency broadcast radio confirms atomic attack. At the 9-minute mark, Harry sees another man² assault a gas station attendant. 10 minutes in, Harry abandons any thought of returning to rescue his mother-in-law. Over the next minute, Harry convinces himself civilization may have collapsed. At minute 13, Harry asserts survival will have to be on an individual basis. Finally, at just under the 23-minute mark, Harry commits his first survival-related crime.

Now, Panic was not filmed in real time. The 10 minutes between the Baldwins suspecting something is up and Harry concluding it is every man for himself is probably somewhat longer. An hour seems like a reasonable guess.

Therefore, I suggest one hour as the basic unit of measurement for the interval between characters discovering there is a crisis and them deciding to chuck every civilized value overboard in the name of survival. I further propose this unit be henceforth be known as “the Baldwin,” in honour of Harry, who with his family contributed absolutely nothing to the (entirely successful) US war effect in the course of the Baldwins’ post-apocalyptic crime spree.

I don’t know if the Baldwin will be useful to you all, as a concept, but I suspect I will get considerable use out of it.[end-mark]

1. Researching “Cosmic Circle” and “Claude Degler” can only surprise and delight you. ︎
2. Who also witnessed the attack and its effects. ︎

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News Supergirl

The Dog Is Still in Danger in Final Supergirl Trailer

We also get more of Jason Momoa’s Lobo

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 3, 2026

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Tickets are now on sale for Supergirl, and to celebrate the occasion, Warner Bros. has released a final trailer for the DC Universe movie.

The two-minute clip doesn’t give us much that’s new, though we do get to see a little bit more of Jason Momoa’s Lobo as well as Matthias Schoenaerts’ rendition of the dog-hating villain, Krem of the Yellow Hills. We also are reminded that Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El (aka Supergirl) really loves her dog Krypto, and will do everything she can to save him, including hunting down Krem to get the antidote and gaining some found family members (perhaps?) along the way.

The movie is the latest installment in James Gunn’s new DC Universe, which kicked off on the big screen with 2025’s Superman, starring David Corenswet as the Man of Steel. Corenswet makes an appearance in Supergirl as well, according to the trailers, but this film is centered on the more-jaded Kara Zor-El and, as the logline says, her journey where she must “reluctantly join forces with an unlikely companion on an epic, interstellar journey of vengeance and justice.”

The film is directed by Craig Gillespie (Cruella), with a script from Ana Nogueira. It premieres in theaters on June 26, 2026.

Check out the final Supergirl trailer below. [end-mark]

The post The Dog Is Still in Danger in Final <i>Supergirl</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

News Hollow

Sydney Sweeney Will Face Off With the Headless Horseman and a Love Triangle in Hollow

Is this Ichabod Crane Is the Villain, the book/movie?

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 3, 2026

Image: Neon

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Image: Neon

We’ve had Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton version) and Sleepy Hollow (did-Abbie-dirty TV version). We’ve had a lot of takes on Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” honestly. Here’s the latest: In screenwriter, director, and novelist Lindsay Anderson Beer’s novel Hollow, Katrina Van Tassel is the protagonist. And she’ll be played by Sydney Sweeney (Immaculate, pictured above).

Hollow is about to be both a movie and a book. As Deadline reports, Anderson Beer’s novel was picked up by Putnam, which will publish next year. Anderson Beer (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines) is also writing and directing the movie adaptation of her own book.

If any of this sounds lightly familiar, it might be because Anderson Beer’s take on “Sleepy Hollow” was announced in 2022. Back then, it was just a movie adaptation. Why, how, and when did Anderson Beer change it into a novel-first story? That backstory remains to be told.

According to Deadline, “the novel positions Van Tassel not as a romantic prize, but as the central figure in a dangerous mystery and seductive supernatural love triangle. The story blends gothic atmosphere, psychological intrigue, and erotic thriller elements into a contemporary, high-concept reinvention of the classic tale.”

The book is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2027, which Deadline says is “timed to align with development of a feature film adaptation.” This is a little unclear, but the long and short of it is that Hollow will be available for your enjoyment next year—in one form or two.[end-mark]

The post Sydney Sweeney Will Face Off With the Headless Horseman and a Love Triangle in <i>Hollow</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver

The Terror: Devil in Silver Readies Us for a Final Teamup in “Vermillion”

And we get another look at New Hyde’s past.

By Alex Brown

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Published on June 4, 2026

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For the fifth and penultimate episode of this season, Dorry confronts her past, Pepper decides his future, and Miss Chris takes a stand.

We begin with Dr. Cleave (Robert Sean Leonard) of the review board. He is ostensibly investigating the death of Coffee—real name Kofi—but is mostly just checking the boxes so he can shut down the unit. Josephine seems lost and worried, Scotch Tape is defensive, the patients will only say “I don’t know what happened. I was in my room.” I’ve given Miss Chris a hard time, but Coffee being executed by the state for the crimes of being disabled and Black has lit a fire under her feet. Good on her for calling out that “hospital brass” treat New Hyde like they “don’t exist at all” until “doo-doo hits the fan, if you’ll excuse my language.” Dr. Anand also has the chance to fight back, but instead he sulks and accepts his fate. The only person with any power at all, insignificant though it may be, sits there. He grows a bit of a backbone after he gets his walking papers, but too little too late. While he may not have an explicit deal with the Devil, he is nevertheless a willing partner. Anand keeps his job as long as he supplies the Devil with souls and the hospital board with cash (i.e. patients) and the moment he can no longer provide either, he is discarded. Violently.

Young Dorry—or Dorinda, as she’s known before being imprisoned in New Hyde—reminds me of Loochie, except when Loochie gets emotional they get violent and when Dorry gets emotional she cries. It’s obvious she has something going on with her brain, whether mental illness, neurodivergence, or some combination of the two is unclear. It’s also obvious that Dorry’s husband, Ralph, is a patronizing asshole. She can’t do anything right. He’s a saint for having put up with her, blah blah blah. To watch him lie to her about going to the eye doctor before a special date at a fancy restaurant and then betray her so cruelly, my God. 

The real Dr. Walter reminds me a lot of Anand. He has moments where he feels bad about torturing Dorry… but it doesn’t stop him from shoving an ice pick into eye socket and digging around in her gray matter. He looks at Ralph like he’s trying to get him to take it back or talk to her first. But in the end he does what every staff member at New Hyde does: nothing. It doesn’t matter if the Devil is real or not. His job is to keep the money/patients coming in and he does his job well. He has plenty of chances to interrupt the process or stand up for his patients, and he takes none of them. Maybe he feels bad about it, but what good does that do Dorry or anyone else whose brains he scrambled? 

Speaking of lobotomies, Dr. Walter is likely named for Dr. Walter Freeman, the American doctor who popularized them. In 1936, Freeman was the first to perform one in the US. According to one survey, by 1952 nearly 50,000 people in the US and Canada had lobotomies performed on them; the majority were women, with some being subjected to multiple surgeries. It goes on to say: “Five of the six patients in the case study by Freeman and Watts were women whose symptoms—apprehension, insomnia—seem incommensurate with their treatment, but whose status as women sanctioned it. A patient previously fearful of aging could now “grow old gracefully” and care for her home. She complained of a lack of spontaneity, but her husband praised the changes her surgery had wrought, declaring her “more normal than she had ever been,” possibly the least credible measure of therapeutic success in the annals of history. By 1942, 75% of the lobotomies Freeman and Watts had performed were on women.” Dorry got hers in the late 1960s, about the same time Freeman was banned from performing them after one of his patients died while being subjected to her third lobotomy. 

This “now he knows he has to get out” business poses some intriguing questions about what happens if the Devil actually does get out. It isn’t trying to attach itself to the staff or Cleave but to patients like Dorry and Pepper, patients who will be transferred to a new facility. It wants to jump to a new food supply like a tick looking for a new host to gorge on. Setting aside the supernatural elements, facilities like Dr. Walter’s New Hyde are often one or two grants or greedy board members away from crumbling into Dr. Anand’s New Hyde. Even the so-called good hospitals are often bad for long-term patients. Dorry lived through New Hyde in both its good and bad years, and she has the psychological scars to prove it. When New Hyde was good, Dr. Walter used a mallet to crack her skull open and cut a chunk of her brain out. When New Hyde was bad, Dr. Anand overmedicated her and punished her for noncompliance. I’d bet good money if lobotomies were still permitted, Anand would’ve given all his patients one.  

These book club choices sure aren’t subtle. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of letters from a man in a mental health crisis so severe he cut his own ear off then took his own life. It’s so interesting that Anand resonated with the passage where van Gogh talked about patients “helping each other” so much that he decided to become a doctor at a mental hospital. When I hear that passage, I don’t think “isn’t it nice that the patients were a little family,” but “conditions were so poor at that institution that the only people looking out for the patients were the patients themselves.” Anand inadvertently recreated the same conditions that failed to help van Gogh. 

Loochie sees themselves reflected in van Gogh. Both are artists stifled by their mental health issues. Both have violent outbursts they can’t control. Both feel insignificant and isolated. Loochie’s conversation with Nana, especially the part about what Loochie did to their brother, hits so much harder when you know the story of Vincent and his brother Theo. Theo always supported his brother’s artistic dreams, and even when he was hospitalized he never gave up on him. He had syphilis when Vincent died, and it’s widely assumed that Theo’s demise was hastened by grief. That relationship stands in stark contrast to Loochie and everyone else in her biological family. 

While Loochie is desperate to connect to their family, Pepper is pushing his only biological family away. He doesn’t want what happened to Coffee to happen to Anthony, especially not after last week when the Devil went strolling through Pepper’s guilty memories. Anthony showing up to offer comfort to the dad who abandoned him is so sweet. It’s a strange experience to be the adult child of a deadbeat dad. You spend your childhood longing for the attention of a man who doesn’t want anything to do with you, but by the time you become an adult you realize you wouldn’t be the person you are if he had been in your life. You want the dad who didn’t exist but don’t want the man who did. In Anthony’s case, he’s lucky that Pepper turned out to be a pretty decent guy who made a shitty choice he regrets and is now trying to repair that damage. 

The-Devil-As-Louie gave Pepper various names for the malevolent force haunting New Hyde, and Miss Chris gives us another: duppy. Duppy are creatures from Black Caribbean folklore, based on supernatural beings from West African folklore. Miss Chris is smart enough to back out of Arnold Visserplein’s (Stephen Bradbury) room, but foolish enough to tell that duppy her big plan for trapping it in Northwest. Never tell the enemy your plan! 

Dorry has a complicated relationship with men. Ralph treated her like she was disposable. Pepper thinks he’s smarter than her. Anand thinks she’s a pathetic nutcase. The Devil (who isn’t a man per se, but often takes the form of men) thinks of her as nothing more than a cog in the machine that funnels food into its maw. Coffee was her only male friend who wanted nothing from her but companionship, and now he’s dead. Dorry has blood on her hands, but so do the staff and so does Pepper. Dorry didn’t cause the violence at New Hyde; she was forced by men and the Devil to do things against her will. But she also made the choice to try and stop people from stopping the Devil. She was compliant, she did “his dirty work.” She had good intentions, but people were hurt in part because of her. 

Maybe wherever the patients get moved to will be better than Northwest. Maybe it’ll be worse. Maybe intervention wouldn’t have mattered because it’ll be more of the same; new wing, new staff, same forced compliance and underfunding. Coffee might still be alive if Pepper had been compliant or Dorry had interfered earlier, but that life would have been as empty as Dorry’s. Before, Coffee and Dorry were alive but not living. Is half a life better than none, or would you rather go out early but on your terms? Coffee was murdered for trying to help his friends. Would he say that was a fair trade? Dorry took decades of suppressed rage—at the patriarchy, at the men who abused her, at herself—and fought back at the cost of her own life. Was it worth it? It’s up to Pepper, Loochie, and Miss Chris to make his sacrifice mean something.. 

Next week we find out if Pepper’s final boss fight is successful or if Loochie is right that they “ain’t going home.” The finale is going to be a doozy!

Quotes

Cleave: “How long did you know the deceased?”
Dorry: “Which one?”

I know that’s not supposed to be funny, but I admit I cackled.

Final Thoughts

• The opening shot of the flickering bulb and the blood spatter is so haunting

• Hey! It’s Wilson!

• The young man staring at Dorry when she arrives at New Hyde is a young Arnold. The way he looks at her makes me wonder if the Devil was in him back then? Maybe he uses Arnold’s body as a vessel now?

• Josephine does an excellent horror movie scream.

• I’m soooooo excited for a Loochie, Pepper, and Miss Chris team-up.

• That can’t be all we get of Robert Sean Leonard, can it? 

• Poor Scotch Tape. The guy has been first on the scene for so much death.

• If the Dr. Walter we keep seeing is actually the Devil in disguise and Arnold his (unwitting?) henchman, then who is the third entity in what Dorry and Coffee called the holy trinity? Was it Dorry?[end-mark]

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Movies & TV anime

Indie Anime Jinsei Is More Conceptually Impressive Than Enjoyable to Watch

It’s exciting to see anime getting wider distribution globally all the same.

By Reuben Baron

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Published on June 5, 2026

Credit: Greenwich Entertainment

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Credit: Greenwich Entertainment

It surprises me how many times I’ve seen the trailer for Jinsei—not just in arthouses but at regular theaters. I thought this could be just my New York cinephile privilege (it has a limited opening at IFC Center on June 5), but the movie’s reported to be playing in over a hundred theaters nationwide starting June 12. That might not be a wide release, but it’s wider than the typical North American anime release from back in my day. No Satoshi Kon film exceeded 37 screens in his lifetime. The Oscar-nominated Studio Ghibli masterpiece The Tale of the Princess Kaguya never played in more than 29 theaters in its initial 2014 release. Summer Wars, as accessible a family-friendly crowdpleaser as any anime, maxed out at 11 theaters in 2010!

It’s cool that anime as a medium is now popular enough to sustain bigger releases (all aforementioned films have since gotten wider rereleases). But even in this era, Jinsei feels like something that would normally play in a dozen arthouses at most. This might be the least mainstream-friendly anime feature to ever get this big a release. It’s certainly the most outside the system.

By “outside the system,” I mean that Jinsei is almost entirely the product of just one guy. First-time filmmaker Ryuya Suzuki wrote, directed, animated, and edited the film entirely by himself, as well as composing the music in collaboration with Yuki Hara. The only other names in the credits are the voice actors, the sound team (led by Shuji Suzuki), marketing people, a long list of Kickstarter backers, effects artist Taishu Tomita, and producer Kenji Iwaisawa. That last name you might recognize as the director of On-Gaku: Our Sound, another crowdfunded indie anime made with only a slightly larger team, and the bigger budget sports anime 100 Meters. Iwaisawa spent seven years animating On-Gaku. Suzuki completed Jinsei in just 18 months.

I realize I’ve spent a long time talking about the circumstances of Jinsei’s release and production without saying anything about the film’s story or quality. That’s because, disappointingly, those circumstances are more interesting to me than the film itself. I was intrigued by the premise of a single character (voiced by rapper ACE COOL) taking on different identities over the course of a century, reminiscent of Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress. I also appreciate how it bends genre, starting realistic before gradually evolving into psychedelic science fiction—the bold swerve recalls another one-man wonder of animation, Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Millennium Actress and It’s Such a Beautiful Day are five-star favorites of mine, so why did Jinsei leave me so cold?

For one thing, I don’t love how the film looks. It turns out the way one person can animate 95 minutes in 18 months is to barely animate anything at all. Limited animation, in my view, works best at extremes: either using graphic simplicity to heighten the appeal of stylized motion (as with something like The Powerpuff Girls or Hertzfeldt’s stick figures), or going the opposite route of providing such lavish detail that the art wows even when the animation doesn’t (the more common route for anime, taken to its furthest extreme with the 1973 erotic horror watercolor slideshow Belladonna of Sadness). Jinsei is neither fish nor fowl, its character designs caught in a bland middle ground between these two approaches, unable to overcome the jerkiness of their movements. At least Suzuki knows how to compose a frame well. The use of symmetry, color design, and different aspect ratios representing different eras call to mind the works of Wes Anderson. Is it coincidence or direct inspiration that the most striking scenes in both Jinsei and in Anderson’s Isle of Dogs juxtapose violence with sushi preparation?

Jinsei divides its narrative into chapters, each using a different name for the protagonist. The first segment, “Se-chan,” makes some of the most effective use of its minimalist visuals, telling the story of the main character’s parents through a montage of car scenes leading up to a deadly accident. In the next chapter, “God of Death,” our protagonist is deep in mourning and subject to bullying but finds a friend in Kin (Taketo Tanaka), a classmate with a love for boy bands. The friends decide to try and become idols themselves (Se-chan/”God of Death” is the son of a famous idol), and so Se-chan becomes “Kuro” as he goes through five years of training under an abusive manager, Shiratori (Kanji Tsuda).

Breaking away from his idol experience with a burst of violence, the protagonist’s next phase of life is as “Reito,” a host club worker who nearly gets killed but survives in an abandoned warehouse. He’s discovered as “Man A,” then gets a second chance at celebrity as “Zen,” somehow ends up getting together with Sakura (Miho Ohashi), a woman he refused to defend from a sexual assault… and then the movie gets really weird, hurtling our protagonist into bunker life during a far-future war and eventually engaging in a 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque alien encounter.

For all the dramatic changes throughout his long lifetime, Jinsei’s protagonist remains a blank slate throughout. Perhaps some might connect to him as a depiction of a certain type of depression, but I never found myself that invested in his journey – the gaps of how he gets from one segment of his life were left too vague for a satisfying character study. The supporting cast also goes underdeveloped. Kin is the most immediately sympathetic and compelling; I found myself wishing we got more time with him. The relationship with Sakura was just baffling. The extreme weirdness and more creative visuals in the gonzo third act make it slightly more entertaining, but the pacing of the film overall feels like a slog.

Despite all my heavy criticisms of Jinsei, it is objectively neat that this film exists. It’s cool that an outsider artist and true indie animator can make a movie like this and get such wide exposure! That doesn’t change how little I cared for the movie itself. Maybe next time, Suzuki can find a co-writer to help develop his big ideas and a few more artistically skilled animators to work with.[end-mark]

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News Stargate

Martin Gero’s Stargate Series Is Canceled at Amazon

Stargate may yet live on in some other form

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 3, 2026

Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The new Stargate series didn’t make it out of the resurrection sarcophagus. In November, Amazon MGM Studios announced a new addition to the franchise: a “next phase” from Martin Gero, who worked on Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe.

But just seven months later, Variety has the news that the show has been canceled.

“According to an individual with knowledge of the situation,” Variety notes, “Amazon execs were concerned that Gero’s take on the series would not have broad appeal beyond the franchise’s already dedicated fanbase.”

No plot or character details were ever announced about the Gero show, which was supposed to be a “bold new chapter” for the franchise that has been running since the 1994 James Spader/Kurt Russell film. The series Stargate SG-1 followed, for ten seasons; Stargate Atlantis ran for five seasons; several other series and two direct-to-video movies exist, and they are not all in continuity with one another. But they all, presumably, have Stargates, alien-built doorways that allow for instantaneous travel across the universe (provided there is another Stargate where one is trying to go).

Amazon had been considering developing new Stargate projects for years; the massive corporation’s purchase of MGM Studios brought with it the rights to a lot of franchises. Variety notes that the studio “is still exploring new ways to further the franchise.”[end-mark]

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News Coyote vs. Acme

Bugs Bunny Returns in Coyote vs. ACME Trailer

The movie found a second life after getting shelved by Warner Bros.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 2, 2026

Credit: Ketchup Entertainment

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Credit: Ketchup Entertainment

The hybrid animated/live-action feature Coyote vs. ACME has had a tumultuous past. Back in 2023, Warner Bros. scrapped the completed film as a tax write-off, but the movie then got a second chance via Ketchup Entertainment to make its way to theaters.

Today, we got our first trailer for the film, and in it we see Wile E. Coyote looking to take on capitalism/big ACME, represented by John Cena, with the help of a flesh-and-blood Will Forte serving as his lawyer.

The trailer also revealed the silhouette of Bugs Bunny in a trench coat, confirming that the rabbit will make an appearance in the film.

It’s exciting stuff! And Coyote vs. ACME’s official synopsis sheds more light on what we’ll see on screen:

Coyote vs. ACME is directed by Dave Green (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows). The story comes from James Gunn & Jeremy Slater and Samy Burch, with Burch penning the actual script. In addition to Cena and Forte, it stars Lana Condor, Tone Bell, and the Road Runner.

The movie premieres in theaters on August 28, 2026. While we wait, check out the trailer below. [end-mark]

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Excerpts Romantasy

Read an Excerpt From The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

The stakes are high, the love is forbidden, and the slow burn turns steamy…

By Brigitte Knightley

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Published on June 4, 2026

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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy, the second book in Brigitte Knightley’s Dearly Beloathed romantasy series, out from Ace on July 7th.

When Aurienne materialised at Rosefell Hall, she clung to the waystone to wait for her stomach to turn right way up. Waystone travel always made her woozy; successive dips into the graticule made her nauseated. The stars spun too quickly overhead. The gravel drive ribboned queasily away.

A piece of darkness detached itself from the waystone. It said, “Hiya.”

Aurienne did not pierce Mordaunt’s eardrums with a scream, but he would have deserved it if she had.

He was dressed in his deepest hood and blackest cowl. Only his pale eyes were visible among the shadows, along with a few artistically placed strands of hair, silver white in the dark.

He pulled down his cowl to uncover a scar-crossed grin. Aurienne had not foreseen the tingle of gladness that possessed her at the sight. As though she had missed it. As though it mattered to her. She quelled the feeling.

Mordaunt swept towards her in an elegant bow. “My saviour has returned. You’ll no doubt find it impertinent of me to tell you what a delight it is to see you again.”

“I wouldn’t if I thought you were sincere,” said Aurienne. “Spare me your theatrical ardours.”

The smile gave way to a laugh. Mordaunt had cast off the softness of their rooftop talk. He was himself again: debonair, arrogant, mocking. There was, however, a new thinness to his face. Cíele was right—he looked like he’d been ill.

“Have you been sick?” asked Aurienne.

“Why?”

“Your face.”

“How dare you?”

“Answer me.”

“I’m fine,” said Mordaunt. “Quite over it, actually.”

“What happened?”

“Stomach bug. Don’t start quizzing me about diarrhoea. It’s not manners.”

“You should tell me when you’re not well,” said Aurienne. “I’m your Haelan.”

“You’re my Haelan,” repeated Mordaunt. He passed a hand along his jaw. His smile lingered but his eyes were unamused.

Then, as one seeking distraction, Mordaunt gave Aurienne’s outfit a look of assessment—this she did find impertinent—and asked, “What look were you going for? Lonely Adventuress? Exploratrix?”

Aurienne gave his ensemble an identical look of assessment and asked, “And you? Widow in mourning? The remains of the deceased?” And then they were at each other again, irresistibly, a pin to a magnet.

Mordaunt, vexed, called her a Paroxysm.

She informed him, on general grounds, that he was an Adhesion.

He called her a Vortex.

“Fiasco,” said Aurienne.

“Crisis,” said Mordaunt.

“Sybarite.”

“Malapert.”

“Furuncle.”

“Niminy-piminy.”

“That’s not a noun.”

“Neither are you.”

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Brigitte Knightley

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Brigitte Knightley

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It was a fruitful exchange. It reminded Aurienne that Mordaunt was the most constitutionally irritating man she could possibly have been cursed with healing.

They glared at each other; aggravation simmered and spat between them. Mordaunt said, “I’ve so missed the pleasures of your company.”

He led Aurienne into crumbling, rambling Rosefell Hall through the kitchens, where he shed his cloak and cowl to reveal a wildly unnecessary—though splendidly cut—silver suit.

Aurienne was greeted by his motley pack of dogs. Rigor Mortis (Great Dane), Arson (retriever), Perjury and Forgery (border collies), Outraging Public Decency (bulldog; prolific farter), High Treason (borzoi) and Crème Brûlée (whippet) all limped to her and collapsed around her feet. Tails flumped at the floor in greeting.

Diverse Felonies, an arthritic terrier who usually objected to Aurienne’s presence through vigorous, voiceless barks, greeted her with cheerful belligerence. Crème Brûlée, the timid one-eyed whippet, permitted himself to be stroked. Arson liberally coated her black clothes with cream fur. High Treason, possessor of a long empty vessel instead of a head, leaned into her from behind and buckled her knees.

Mordaunt snapped out an instruction to sit, which his pensioners ignored as they smeared wet noses all over her.

Aurienne was also greeted by Mrs. Parson, Mordaunt’s steward—a sturdy, sensible woman, out of place in the household of a Fyren—and Mr. Parson, the groundskeeper, kindly and shy.

Mordaunt opened the door of the house’s sole usable sitting room.

Perjury and Forgery herded Aurienne in.

The sitting room was in its usual state: it was a room of rococo exuberance in which an art gallery and an antique shop had fought. The antique shop had won; both had left debris upon every surface.

Aurienne cleared away the bric-a-brac on the coffee table—crystal bottles shaped like anemones, a terracotta horse—and replaced it with Grette’s pies from the Publish or Perish.

“Did you buy me dinner?” asked Mordaunt.

“Yes.”

“Romantic.”

“Economic.”

“What?”

“They were on offer, two for one,” said Aurienne. “Steak and ale or chicken and mushroom?”

Mordaunt chose the steak. They ate. Mordaunt said his pie was lovely and tender, unlike Aurienne. She said her crust was superbly flaky, just like him.

Aurienne extracted materials from her satchel. She laid a map of Glastonbury Tor—the outcrop upon which the Druids had built their stronghold of the Færwundor—on the table.

“We were meant to pool our information on the Færwundor tonight,” she said. “I brought what I could find. What have you got?”

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Show me.”

Mordaunt fished about in his pocket and pulled out a bit of paper, which he gave to Aurienne. It said:

Plan:

Make a plan.

Aurienne delved deep into the font of her patience.

“Your plan is to come up with a plan?” she asked.

“Bit shit, isn’t it?”

“It’s well shit,” said Aurienne. “You are riding my last nerve.”

“My favourite place to be,” said Mordaunt.

“But at least you’ve been inside the Færwundor. That’s something.”

“Er—I haven’t, actually.”

“You haven’t? But you killed the Druids’ Seer.”

“I killed him at a restaurant,” said Mordaunt. “In London.”

“A restaurant?” repeated Aurienne.

“It was his birthday party.”

“You killed a man at his own birthday party?”

“Obviously: I knew he’d be there. What?”

Aurienne and Mordaunt stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. The gap between their principles yawned wide.

“So many of the things you do frankly erode my faith in our species,” said Aurienne.

“I’m not convinced we are the same species,” said Mordaunt.

“Immoralist.”

“Valkyrie.”

Aurienne pressed fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Right. Excellent. Perfect. So we’re going into the Færwundor blind.”

“Not that blind,” said Mordaunt, pointing to the table. “You’ve got a map.”

“Exterior only. We’ve got a few Druid contacts at Swanstone—they’re a major source of plantings for our medicinal gardens—but I daren’t ask for too much information about their headquarters. All this map confirms is Glastonbury Tor’s position over three ley lines and that two watercourses cross somewhere within it, which coincides with Widdershins’ translation notes for the Begbéam moon.”

Widdershins was a professor who claimed to have translated the inscriptions on the Monafyll Stone, an ancient obelisk depicting a healing pilgrimage to be followed at the full moon. Aurienne and Mordaunt had harassed the man in his own home to obtain his translations, which described the pilgrimage in the vaguest and most unhelpful terms.

Aurienne was using Widdershins’ notes to guide her interpretation of the data—it being understood that by “data” she meant a quantity of ill-sourced, poor-quality, unverified anecdotes describing miraculous healings at the full moon.

This was the sum total of the research project upon which Mordaunt’s healing was predicated: maps with scribbles on them, fabricated translations, and anecdata. Ludicrous.

Ludicrous, and yet.

Frankly, the most ludicrous part of it all was that, following this poorly conceived “treatment,” Aurienne had arrested Mordaunt’s seith degeneration. Somehow, on the basis of fairy stories and healing sessions at the full moon, they had done something heretofore medically impossible and stopped the progress of an unstoppable disease. That was immense. A triumph. Or a coincidence. It was too late to be sceptical, but too soon to celebrate.

Aurienne looked up. Mordaunt had placed two heart-shaped nipple pasties over his eyes.

No: the most ludicrous part of it all was him.

“La vie en rose,” said Mordaunt, looking about.

Aurienne had been using the nipple pasties as markers on her map. She plucked them off his face. “Focus, please. The two watercourses may be subterranean. There’s a persistent legend that Glastonbury Tor is hollow—that there’s a large cave system within the hill. Some myths suggest that passage to Annwn can be found down there. The Celtic Otherworld,” she added, in the face of Mordaunt’s blank look. “A paradise of eternal youth, where disease is absent.”

“What are all those wiggly bits going round the Tor?” asked Mordaunt, tapping at white lines circling the Færwundor. “Fortifications?”

“That’s the labyrinth I’d mentioned to you.”

“Not much of a labyrinth,” said Mordaunt. “Looks more like a spiral.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll have to go through it. It’s the only way to the entrance of the Færwundor.”

“And what’s in the Færwundor itself?”

“I don’t know,” said Aurienne. “It’s the Druidic headquarters, so I imagine it’s fairly rustic. A stone tower full of herbs and pestles and things, like an old-fashioned apothecary. Maybe an altar or two. Almost ninety percent of my data for the Begbéam moon points to dawn as the best time for a healing. I suggest we meet at three in the morning to give ourselves time to get into the Færwundor to attempt it. The nearest pub is the Hairy Hodmedod.”

“All right.”

“I wish we could’ve entered the Færwundor by legitimate means.” Aurienne sighed. “This would’ve been so much easier.”

Mordaunt emitted a disdainful tut. “Legitimate is boring. It lacks Incident.”

“How do you propose we proceed, then?”

“I’m going to shadow-walk the two of us right through,” said Mordaunt, in an extremely offhand way, given the ludicrousness of the suggestion.

Aurienne was a Haelan. Haelan did not walk the Dusken Path. She could not possibly have heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered, “shadow-walking? Me?”

“No,” said Mordaunt. “Me. I’ll carry you along.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” said Mordaunt. “Stop clutching your pearls. We’ll be in and out before you can blink.”

Aurienne—who had actually been clutching invisible pearls at her throat—lowered her hands. “I follow the Bright Path. I don’t even know what will happen to me if I try to walk a Dusken one.”

“Nothing. You’ll be a passenger.”

“You’ve shadow-walked others along with you before?” asked Aurienne.

“Yes,” said Mordaunt.

“How did they fare?”

“All right, I think. They hadn’t an opportunity to share how it felt afterwards.”

“They ‘hadn’t an opportunity’?” repeated Aurienne.

“No.”

“Because you murdered them?”

“Because I murdered them.”

“Brilliant.”

“I promise you’ll be fine. Let’s do a few practice runs. Come with me.”

Mordaunt drew his cloak and cowl back on, and led the way to a high-columned ambulatory round the back of the house. Like most of Rosefell Hall, it was overgrown and derelict; poor Mr. Parson, solely in charge of the estate’s thousands of acres, had managed to keep most of the flagstones clear, but moss crept inexorably between cracks and up columns. It also made its way onto the statue of a kore at the far end of the ambulatory. The kore’s chiton was adorned now with green lacework. Her stone basket held scruffy dandelions and a single courageous daisy.

There was a surprisingly lush, well-kept kitchen garden bordering one side of the ambulatory, which Mordaunt indicated was Mrs. Parson’s.

Aurienne remained unenthused by Mordaunt’s idea but, having no better suggestion to make, found herself limited to sprinkling a bit of disaster-mongering into the conversation. “I don’t think it’s wise of you to shadow-walk two people at once. Your seith system is fragile. You mustn’t push it to extremes.”

“Carrying you along isn’t extreme.”

“Is the carrying along literal?” asked Aurienne.

“Yes,” said Mordaunt. “Do you want to be my sack of potatoes or my bride?”

“Potatoes,” said Aurienne.

“Unromantic choice, but you are starchy.”

“Have I got to do anything?” asked Aurienne. “Use my seith?”

“No,” said Mordaunt. “I’m going to sweep you off your feet.”

Which he proceeded to do. He slung Aurienne over his shoulder, exactly as though he were handling a sack of potatoes, which offended her. She hung there with her arse in the air. The chicken and mushroom pie she had just eaten sloshed into a new position.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Aurienne, tapping at Mordaunt’s back. “Bridal-style, please, or I’m going to lose my dinner.”

Mordaunt slipped Aurienne into place accordingly. Now she found herself in the appalling position of being held like a lover by him. He smelled of blackthorn smoke and shaving soap. He radiated his usual warmth.

She had desired to be In Control, and would have preferred anything to this intimate positioning. It felt perilously natural to be held by him. Such was Fate’s sense of humour. Aurienne wished that Fate would mind its own business and not meddle in her affairs.

The moon above was almost full. Lovelily she cast her light on Mordaunt, who held Aurienne like a paramour in the dark.

“Ready?” Mordaunt squeezed her tight. “Don’t want to leave bits of you behind.”

“Leave bits behind?” repeated Aurienne.

Before she could ask for a more fulsome report of the risks involved in the shadow-walk, Mordaunt swept her into it. First they were here, at one end of the ambulatory, and then they were over there, at the other end.

About ten percent of Aurienne’s brain registered fascination with this feat. The rest of it sloshed against her skull in a nauseated stew. Mordaunt might’ve warned her that every moment in the shadow-walk would feel as though her molecules had spun out and joined the iniquitous dark—that she would lose all sense of sight; that her breathing would be oppressed by the thickness of his seith over her; that, after each discombobulating step, she would be left with a brain like a centrifuge; that she would want to spew out the entire contents of her GI tract, as well as the organs themselves, if they would kindly detach themselves for the purpose.

Aurienne came out of a near faint to find herself clinging to the front of Mordaunt’s cloak. Masticated chicken pie heaved ominously in her stomach.

She would never eat again.

“Bit vomity, eh?” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne disentangled herself from Mordaunt to stand on her own. Her triumph lasted but a moment; the world whisked itself out from under her feet and sent her scuttling sideways like an excited crab. She fell into a heap.

The world oozed. Presently it congealed. A swimmy eye cast in Mordaunt’s direction confirmed that he was trying not to laugh about as hard as she was trying not to vomit.

Also: he had lied. He had promised that she would be fine. She was not fine.

Mordaunt squatted next to Aurienne and said, “Down like a bag of spanners.”

“This isn’t funny,” said Aurienne, clinging to flagstone and dirt.

“It’s an unalloyed delight.”

Aurienne could normally stem nausea with her tācn pressed to her own forehead. She tried. It didn’t work. This was not regular nausea. This was sickness born of walking the unwholesome Path. Her every fibre shook in revulsion; her very seith tingled in alarm at the wrongness of it.

“You’ve walked the Dusken Path now,” said Mordaunt. “You must be the first Haelan to do that.”

Aurienne was not gratified by the honour. “I’m a d-disgrace to my Order.”

“Let’s try again,” said Mordaunt. “Permit me to help you up.”

She flung a hand in his direction and said, tragically, “If I die tonight, see to it that someone feeds my cat.”

Mordaunt’s gloved hand closed on her bare one. He pulled her up, took her in his arms again, and stepped back into the shadow-walk. Blackness came over Aurienne; the pressure of his seith pushed against her brain, against her guts. She was conscious, in ways she had never wished to be, of the exact shape of her pancreas and her eye sockets.

Aurienne and Mordaunt materialised a few feet away. Aurienne squirmed out of Mordaunt’s arms. She went down again, exactly like a bag of spanners.

Mordaunt knelt next to her. “You’re doing better.”

His confidence seemed imprudent to Aurienne, presently indisposed. The world continued its spin. She considered anchoring herself to it using her teeth, but didn’t, because she needed her mouth to say, “I wish to die.”

Excerpted from The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley Copyright © 2026 by Brigitte Knightley. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy</i> by Brigitte Knightley appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays video games

Embracing the Therapeutic Power of Katamari Damacy

Who knew that rolling giant balls of garbage around could be so joyful?

By Leah Thomas

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Published on June 4, 2026

Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment

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Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment

“My,” my father says, “Earth is really full of things!”

It does not feel like a criticism, even if the things he is referring to are mostly useless. In this colorful realm, it’s my job to tidy up a world that’s reminiscent of my real-world apartment any time one of my disorders compels me to upend every last drawer at once. The things in question are a broad range of objects that amalgamate in any living space: stationery, thumbtacks, toilet paper, batteries, orange peels, tubes of lip balm, potato chip cannisters, and spiders. While a few of these objects—such as Shogi tiles and Hina dolls—would be less commonplace in non-Japanese households, a cucumber is a cucumber regardless of where you’re from, and a mess is a mess.

Someone has to clean it up. Your father, who made the mess to begin with, can’t be expected to do it. He is the King of All Cosmos, and has other whimsical, catastrophic plans to look forward to. He has already broken the universe beyond repair, thanks to a naughty bout of drinking that resulted in him somehow erasing every star from the sky. It turns out this has made him very unpopular with the denizens of the universe, and he has to find new stars somewhere, so why not just make them from all those useless things piling up on Earth?

You might resent him for it, and certainly, when Dad asks you to tidy dozens of live crabs from a backyard only to then imply you’ve done a poor job of it, he is a hard person to appreciate. He may be the quintessential Bad Dad. Like many parents who are quick to delegate the terrible fallout of their selfishness to their offspring, the burden of fixing the universe falls to you. “You owe Us for your existence,” he informs you. “We collect on the debt. Yes?”

How could anyone argue with that inane logic? Besides, in the charming, batshit world of Katamari Damacy, he’s the only dad you’ve got. And if it takes rolling trash, then furniture, then animals, then people, then vehicles, then cities into stars to earn his approval? Well.

For all that this premise sounds bleak, anyone unwittingly exposed to the Katamari aesthetic would never suspect it. In Katamari, the world is made of bright colors, cubed edges (years before minecraft, mind you), and whimsy, set to a fantastic Shibuya-kei soundtrack, which is some unlikely mishmash of genres ranging from jazz to rap to pop. There is much to love about a cult-classic game franchise like Katamari. Whatever more I may say will be more junk rolled into the ever-growing sphere of its long-standing reputation as a triumphant pioneer in the indie-game canon. 

But go on, kids! Make stars from the trash your parents gave you…

Dust to Stardust?

I am very late to the game when it comes to admiring Katamari Damacy. The first game was released in 2004, and my family had only just purchased its first shared gaming console, a PlayStation 2. I remember the early ads for Katamari because they exist in the same surreal pantheon of bizarro advertising as that one wild Quiznos sub commercial and the infamous Skittles Midas Touch ad. In the commercial, a secretary walks into a beige lobby and tells a salaryman to follow her. He closes his briefcase and leans forward as if to stand—only to remain seated, pulling the entire sofa with him. The sofa folds into the woman, who becomes stuck to it as well, and then folds out the door and absorbs the cleaning lady. In essence, anything a katamari rolls into becomes part of the growing mass, kicking and mewling and flapping. The commercial is memorable because it breaks one barrier the game never does: the live-action commercial depicts this disturbing fate using human beings rather than pixelated cartoons. It’s a delicate line between dreams and nightmares.

The truth is that Katamari presents the goofiest of body horrors, but body horror all the same. We are all familiar with religions or creeds that tell us we return to the universe after death; or if we aren’t religious, we at the very least know the Law of Conservation of Mass: matter can neither be created nor destroyed. As creatures composed of organic stuff, we have a lot more in common with the junk in our houses—nail polish bottles and toilet brushes and our silly little tchotchkes—that we might like to admit. Eventually, we all decay and merge with the world again. Take your pick of oracles—Carl Sagan or Moby or any random fantasy novel—and consider the message they convey: we are all made of stardust. 

And maybe it isn’t trying to be that deep, but Katamari goes one step further. What if the stars are instead made of us? I am oddly charmed by this more ambitious doom. Rarely is the transition from cognizant individual to squirming mindless mass so abrupt, or, well… amusing? I am delighted whenever I absorb a screaming schoolboy or a pompadoured Yankee. The twinge of guilt I feel when I roll over another tomcat and hear his questioning “Meow?” as he becomes one with my rolling hell-cluster is immediately quelled by the knowledge that he and all his new companions will make for a beautiful star.

It might come as no surprise that this whole beautiful disaster of a game was the brainchild of an art student. The series creator, Keita Takahashi, was a talented graduate from Musashino Art University, the same university that produced auteur Satoshi Kon, Hello Kitty creator Yuko Shimizu, and horror author Ryu Murakami. Takahashi was known for his eccentric, playful sculptures, among which was a goat-shaped planter that drained water through its udders. He grew bored with sculpture and began working in the art department of Namco in the late ’90s, where he found himself brainstorming new games. According to Takahashi, the seed of the idea for Katamari began with fond recollections of an old arcade game—I mean, 1880s old—tamakorogashi. You’ve played some iteration of it, probably; remember those plastic keychains with metal balls inside, and the objective was to spin or tilt the damn things until each ball rolled into a corresponding hole? Tamakorogashi is also credited as one of the major inspirations for modern pinball.

Perhaps it is a testament to the oddity of Takahashi’s brain that he realized his ambition to create a game that was “not formulaic” by designing a game around so mundane a concept as cleaning up a mess. Of course, we could all clean up our houses instead of playing, and find our lives better served: “You don’t need cleaning in a video game, son: we have cleaning at home!” 

But that’s not the point. The point is that even the dullest, simplest chores in life can be reimagined and transformed into something playful. With a stable of young game designers at his side, the Katamari Damacy project slowly gained traction. It was not an easy sell, and Namco remained unconvinced until Takahashi secured a student aid grant to help develop the project further.

It has since spawned a critically acclaimed franchise containing more than twenty games, and has been frequently cited as a major inspiration for independent game designers. This impact is probably greater than I have any real sense of—I have played a lot fewer indie games than most avid gamers, which is why it took me twenty years to fall for the Prince and his Bad Dad. Even so, I have felt the impact of Katamari in unlikely places. In the horror game Inside, for example, there comes a point when the player character, a frightened little boy, begins merging with other human beings to form a screeching mass of rolling flesh. 

Na-naaaa, na na-na na-na na na, na Katamari Damacccccy!

Ghost in the Slipper

The word “katamari” means “cluster,” and “damacy” means “soul.” That’s a great title, because this stuff has a real soul, buried under layers of sheep and shopping carts and a kraken or two. The objects we surround ourselves with do help us ground ourselves in the world and define who we are, after all—you can pry my collection of yokai-cat figurines or my Blythe dolls from my cold dead hands.

Here in Japan, there exists extensive folklore about a specific type of yokai (spirit) known as tsukumogami. The word translates to “object ghosts.” According to legend, objects that reach 100 years in age are granted sentience. While many yokai have sinister intentions, most tsukumogami are innocuous, playful creatures: the awakened koto that plays forgotten memories at night, a talkative tea kettle used as a peace offering in a historic tale. While tsukumogami stories maintain a unique charm, most cultures share stories about magical objects. In the immortal words of a charming candlestick in one Academy Award-winning animated film, “Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.”

While tsukumogami stories deliver a variety of moral lessons, many warn owners not to neglect their possessions. Things, however cheap or simple, should be taken care of. Culturally, this notion remains a core principle in Japan. Anyone who goes thrifting in Koenji can tell you that secondhand items are usually in impeccable, often brand-new shape. In general, despite the gachapon refuse and endless layers of plastic wrapping and disposable utensils, Japanese values place a lot of emphasis on the concept of mottainai: waste not, want not. Compounding this, perhaps? It is exceptionally difficult to get rid of trash in Japan, thanks to strict rules about rubbish sorting and specific pickup days. People who are overwhelmed, depressed, or busy are bound to miss these days and find themselves slowly surrounded by piles of plastic bags. You might be familiar with anime or news reports about hikikomori dens, where people withdraw and live in isolation. While many families take part in a traditional deep cleaning before the New Year, those who don’t maintain bonds with family sometimes avoid any such activity. In Japan, it is quite rare to be invited into someone’s apartment, and much more common to meet in a third space. In short, it is all too easy for one’s home to become a guilt-ridden temple of hidden waste. 

But there is zero shame in the messes of Katamari. Roads cluttered with cones and thermoses and yards buried beneath toys and cleaning supplies and appliances are vibrant landscapes, as fun to explore as they are satisfying to clear. Nothing is hidden away, and the larger your katamari grows, the more it can absorb, until even pets and people become part of it. If our stuff is junk and so, ultimately, are we, why should we feel bad about it? We are what we are. It doesn’t mean everything is meaningless. Every object is catalogued with measurements and a blurb as it joins your cause, evidence that a life is being lived, shedding candy wrappers like our bodies shed hair and skin. Gross? Who cares.

I do not think that Katamari is trying to make one clear statement about consumption. Instead, I think it takes an insightful look at the chaotic world we’re all inhabiting and finds the beautiful levity in it. It might be impossible for us to really clean up our planet, and maybe it’s ludicrous to try, but by golly, this little guy is trying anyhow, so who cares if his dad is a hater? The true catharsis in Katamari comes not from tidying up a room, but tidying up the mind along with it. 

Don’t you ever stop, lonely rolling star! Keep going.

Konmari vs. Katamari?

Professional organizer Marie Kondo suggests that every object thrown away should be thanked for its service before being disposed of. Teddy bears should be blindfolded before meeting the trash bag so we don’t incur guilt looking into their eyes one last time. Unwanted gifts on our shelves should be appreciated not for what they are, but for the sentiment, which frees us from having to keep that damn ugly sweater. Give each object a salute and then chuck it, until you are surrounded only by those things that make you happy. This approach to organizing a life has been effective for me and countless others.

The katamari approach is less mindful but just as satisfying. It does not hurt that it is imaginary. The therapeutic benefits exist all the same. The soundtrack alone is the aural equivalent of touching grass. 

The mess in these games is ultimately unconquerable, especially for a subpar player like me. Katamari is known for its unique controls. Using two Joy-Cons is as essential as rowing on both sides of a rowboat if you don’t want to go in circles. In real life, my coordination could never. But with practice, navigating that rolling adhesive ball becomes easier and easier. It’s rare to sense improvement so concretely in gaming. It’s weirdly encouraging, and maybe that’s another lesson: Managing the mess of daily life is a challenge, but it can get easier. The point is to keep rolling, because what the hell else can we do? 

I should really clean my apartment. It will only get messy again, sure, but there will be a brief few days when the sunlight hits the apartment walls just right and the cat dander does not overwhelm me—and then I can sit on the sofa and play Katamari in peace.[end-mark]

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News Silo

The Trailer for Silo’s Third Season Finds Yet More Ways to Make Juliette Suffer

Seriously, where do they get all their furniture?

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 2, 2026

Image: Apple TV

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Image: Apple TV

As if the many almost-drownings weren’t enough! (Maybe it wasn’t that many. But it felt like so many.) In the third season of Silo, there is a new and unexciting way for Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) to suffer. She’s already lost her boyfriend, discovered a pile of secrets, survived being sent outside to “clean” and getting nearly murdered by some children, and solved the mystery of Steve Zahn—but then she had to go back. To the silo where it all began. Where apparently she lost her memories.

It’s a little bit hard not to feel like forced memory loss is a way to drag out the plot, a feeling intensified by the show’s second season, which felt like several episodes of story dragged out into as much misery as possible. But the thing is, this show has such a good cast (certain parties excepted) that I’ll keep watching it anyway.

Here’s what Apple TV says about season three:

The most intriguing parts of this new trailer are definitely the bits from the before times (which I am not going to put in unnecessary quotation marks or use unnecessary capital letters for). They are, to put it lightly, dour as fuck. “The end of the world cannot be stopped,” a man intones. “It can only be survived.” But this contrasts with the bright sunny scenes of the silo planning, with a handy-dandy site map, no less! Is it green and beautiful or doomed forever? Is it both? It’s always both. Probably.

There are three primary reasons to watch this show: Ferguson, who plays it all with a straight face even as her accent slips; Alexandria Riley, who plays a woman with far less power—but far more smarts—than her husband; and Harriet Walter, who is a genius who should be watched in absolutely everything. I don’t know how they got her into this show, but bless whoever did so. Returning cast also includes Common, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Shane McRae (also an excellent reason to watch), Remmie Milner, Rick Gomez, Billy Postlethwaite, Clare Perkins, and the aforementioned Steve Zahn; newcomers to season three include Laura Innes, Jessica Brown Findlay, Morven Christie, Reed Birney, Matt Craven, and Colin Hanks in a recurring role. Oh brave new ended world, that has such people in’t!

Silo’s third season premieres July 3rd. It’s already been renewed for a fourth, so this is not the end, my friends.[end-mark]

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News Backrooms

What the Backrooms Movie Doesn’t Tell You About Backrooms‘ Lore

There is so much more to the Backrooms than what you saw in the movie

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on June 2, 2026

Image: A24

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Image: A24

This article contains spoilers for the 2026 Backrooms movie and the Backrooms YouTube series

Backrooms becoming one of the biggest box office hits of 2026 (so far) is the culmination of a rather remarkable creative journey. What began as a random photo of a liminal space in an abandoned furniture store that began making the rounds online sometime in the 2010s eventually grew into a creepypasta legend about the backrooms: an infinite series of similar rooms you can accidentally fall into and never escape. That horrifying idea eventually became the basis for a series of YouTube shorts created by Kane Parsons, who, in turn, recently directed and co-wrote the Backrooms movie.

And while there are threads that bind the original backrooms photos to the original movie, the connection between those YouTube shorts and the recently released film is much stronger. The movie is, for all intents and purposes, a continuation and, in some ways, a culmination of the story presented in those shorts. That story began as a video of a person who accidentally falls into the backrooms but soon grew into a sweeping epic with a mythology as vast and confusing as the backrooms themselves.

In fact, the YouTube series actually goes into far greater detail about plot points that the Backrooms movie either only hints at or doesn’t reference at all. And while it’s a fool’s promise to suggest that anyone can easily explain the entirety of the backrooms lore (so much of it is intentionally unknowable), there are a few of the more pressing pieces of lore you may not know about if your first trip into the backrooms was via the movie.

Async’s History and True Purpose

The Backrooms movie doesn’t properly introduce the Async corporation until the very end and keeps their purpose, origins, and methods somewhat vague. The only thing it really tells us about them is that they used to make MRI machines and know about the backrooms. The film gives the impression that we’re simply not meant to know about this shadowy organization. In reality, the Backrooms YouTube series explains quite a bit about Async’s true nature.

Yes, Async used to manufacture medical equipment (primarily MRI machines). However, the nature of their work changed quite dramatically in the late 1980s when they decided to continue the research conducted by an organization known as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. That research facility was working on a device known as the Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System (later referred to as “The Threshold”). It’s an electromagnetic field generator that was seemingly capable of accessing a vast, inexplicable space. That space is often offhandedly referred to as “the backrooms,” though Async began officially referring to it as the “Complex” and unofficially referring to it as the “Hallways.”

Why does Async care about the Complex in the first place? Their idea was that the seemingly infinite space could be used to solve everything from global housing shortages to storage issues. Essentially, they saw it as the greatest real estate opportunity in the history of mankind. The idea was so popular that Async even began receiving government funding to help continue their research.

The extent of Async’s exploration of the Complex is massive. Think of the Complex as a frontier. Or, maybe more accurately, think of it as a galaxy that a Federation-level organization is exploring in the distant future. They sent teams of researchers to set up stations in every corner of the Complex they could access. What began as an effort to map the area for eventual commercial purposes soon proved to be a futile endeavor. It wasn’t just that the space was massive; Async researchers soon found that the architecture of the Complex made no sense. Rooms violated the laws of physics and would often even shift. Any intentions to use that space in a productive way were slowly pushed aside when Async began to understand that they could never really tame what they had discovered.

As you probably know, Async’s exploration of that space also soon revealed a number of horrors that converted them from explorers to reluctant guardians.

Did Async Create the Backrooms?

It’s not entirely clear whether Async created the backrooms or simply discovered them.

A popular theory suggests that the Complex always existed in some form or another and that Async simply opened a door that led to the area. However, given that the Complex seems to be at least partially based on variations of our reality, another theory argues that the Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System actually created the Complex space rather than simply unlocked it.

One possible argument for the “discovery” of the backrooms rather than their creation is the fact that it took Async multiple tries to successfully access the Complex for a prolonged period of time. It wasn’t until the sixth test of that technology that they were really able to create a sustainable doorway to the area. That successful test coincided with a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault that killed hundreds and injured thousands. That would seem to suggest that they really created a dangerous gateway, but again, it’s an unanswered question at the moment.

Time Distortion

One element of the Complex that the Backrooms movie doesn’t really dive into is the idea that time (much like space and architecture) doesn’t function normally in that area.

The specifics of the differences between how time works in that area compared to our world are left intentionally ambiguous. There are actually competing theories among fans about the nature of time in that space. Some argue that time moves slower in there, while others say it’s actually faster. A few theories suggest that it depends on what area you’re in, and a popular idea argues that time ceases to function in the traditional sense in our world so long as you are navigating the Complex.

There is also the more complicated idea of temporal anomalies. Basically, being in the Complex isn’t just a matter of figuring out the hour, day, week, or year. There’s also the idea that the entire area exists at the convergence of multiple timelines. At the very least, the Complex has displayed evidence of distortions and temporal anomalies that strongly suggest it is not limited to our perception of traditional realities. So while the film focuses on a slightly smaller story based on a core group of characters, the nature of that space is much greater than what we are focusing on at any given moment.

Missing People

Arguably the most important element of the Complex that the Backrooms movie only hints at are the various missing people who accidentally found their way into that space at some point. We see people go missing there, and the movie references the idea that doors into the Complex are opening up more frequently, but it undersells the scope of the problem.

Since the Complex was “opened” in 1989, there has been a dramatic spike in reported missing persons cases. The exact number of missing persons is unknown, but you’re potentially talking about hundreds of people that accidentally wandered into the backrooms via one portal or another, if not more. The first Backrooms video Parsons ever created (though not the first chronological video in the series) involved a young filmmaker who fell into the backrooms via an unseen portal underneath his feet.

This also brings us back to the time distortion element of the whole thing. See, Async members have not only discovered some of those missing people in the Complex but, in some cases, discovered decomposed versions of those people in rooms where they weren’t just shortly before (at least in terms of how we perceive time). We again catch a hint of this concept in the movie when we see the tattered clothes of one of the soon-to-be-missing people in one of the Complex’s rooms, but it’s the missing people that have really accelerated the need for Async to get a hold of this situation.

The Lifeform

The Backrooms movie invokes the idea that the Complex contains variations of real-life individuals who have been mutated in various ways. We see at least one of those individuals (Pirate Clark) behave violently, but the film also suggests that these mutations are not inherently dangerous. For that matter, the movie seemingly offers a pretty big answer to a major backrooms lore question by saying that the space is, at least in part, essentially perpetual copies of our reality, mutations of ourselves included.

In the Backrooms YouTube series, though, there is another threat we don’t clearly see in the film: an entity commonly referred to as The Lifeform.

The Lifeform is a tall, gangly creature that is seemingly born from the black mold-like substance that is found throughout the Complex. Like many elements of the Complex, the exact origins of this creature remain unknown. The idea that it is born from this strange bacteria which somehow appears native to the Complex hints that The Lifeform was, in fact, born from these rooms. However, arguing for that idea also forces you to determine whether or not you believe that Async created these rooms and whether or not their presence/experiments may have altered them in ways that led to The Lifeform’s creation. Actually, a popular theory suggests that The Lifeform is able to alter its form by consuming or even just examining some of the objects it finds that have been left behind by Async researchers.

Regardless, The Lifeform is consistently hostile in ways that the doppelgangers seen in the film are not. It is hostile to anyone it encounters, and Async researchers began to pack weapons in the (sometimes vain) hopes of defending themselves against it. What that says about The Lifeform in relation to the mutations we see in the movie is another mystery. Perhaps its openly hostile nature suggests a fundamental difference between it and the copies, or maybe the copies themselves are some sort of variation of the material and methods that resulted in The Lifeform’s existence.

If you’re interested in learning more about Backrooms, you can find a playlist of the entire original YouTube series here. [end-mark]

The post What the <i>Backrooms</i> Movie Doesn’t Tell You About <i>Backrooms</i>‘ Lore appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird

An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: Donald A. Wollheim’s “Mimic”

Could non-human creatures walk among us, hidden in plain view?

By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth

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Published on June 3, 2026

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Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Donald A. Wollheim’s “Mimic,” first published in Astonishing Stories in December 1942. You can find it more easily in column-favorite anthology The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Spoilers ahead!

This week’s story opens with a classic preamble about human hubris. We think we know a lot, but half the planet remained undiscovered less than five hundred years ago. Science and technology remain in their infancies—why, the discipline of atomics has barely been born! Many truths lurk unimagined, and “when they are discovered, they may shock us to the bone.”

Our unnamed narrator works as a museum curator’s assistant, “mounting beetles and classifying exhibits of stuffed animals and preserved plants, and hundreds and hundreds of insects from all over.” He soon learns that “Nature is a strange thing.” Look at its fondness for camouflage and mimicry. Soft-bodied moths masquerade as armored wasps. Beetles imitate army ants and march undetected in their all-devouring columns. In all animal groups, there are the killers, the survivors. Lesser species are wise to ape them.

And since man is “the greatest hunter of them all,” the “irresistible master” of the world, why wouldn’t inferior creatures walk among us, hidden in plain view?

When narrator was young, a neighbor rented rooms in a grimy tenement at the end of the street. He appeared twice a day, early morning to head for the elevated train, after nightfall to return home. He always wore a black ankle-length cloak, and a wide-brimmed black hat pulled low over his face. Though he looked like a creature from “some weird story out of the old lands,” he harmed nobody; indeed, he paid attention to nobody. Except, maybe, women. If a woman crossed his path, he’d close his wide, watery blue eyes until she passed. Then he’d march on as if there’d been no such encounter. At Antonio’s grocery he never spoke, only pointing to what he wanted. The kids jeered until they grew bored with his unresponsiveness; then, like their parents, they ignored him.

Only one incident of note occurred during Black-Cloak’s long residence. He dragged sheets of metal into his room, banged on them for several days, then stopped. That was all anyone ever knew until years later, when narrator was grown. Sheer luck found him nearby when the janitor of Black-Cloak’s building ran out shouting for help. Narrator and a policeman followed him to Black-Cloak’s rooms, where he’d heard thuds and screaming. Silence greeted them. Knocking received no answer. At last the policeman and narrator broke in the door.

Beyond lay a room littered with torn papers and garbage. Oddly, it was unfurnished except for a metal box four feet square, screwed and roped shut, its lid sealed with a waxy substance. Black-Cloak lay on the floor, still cloaked though his hat was cast aside. He was dead. Inside the box, something rustled.

The would-be rescuers examined the body, “gradually—horribly” becoming aware of its wrongness. Black-Cloak’s eyes remained open, staring. The eyebrows were mere lines in the flesh of a face with no nose—mottled skin only presented as a nose if unscrutinized. It had no teeth. The “coat” was “a huge black wing sheath, like a beetle”. The thorax underneath had six insectile legs and a hole oozing watery liquid, while the abdomen below was crumpled, reminding narrator of a wasp after egg-laying.

The janitor fled, “gibbering.” The policeman began to pray, but at narrator’s instigation he helped break the seal on the box. Together they lifted the lid. “Noxious vapor” poured out, along with things two or three inches long, dozens flying on gauzy beetle wings. They looked like little men in black suits, with expressionless faces and watery blue eyes. Out the open window they streamed. Narrator ran to watch their exodus. How could people have known about army ant imitators without ever suspecting some creature might disguise itself to look like “the supreme animal himself—man.”

They found bones at the bottom of the box, maybe human—they didn’t try too hard to identify them.

In retrospect, narrator supposes that Black-Cloak was female, the box her nest, the flying throng her offspring. He speculates that Black-Cloak was wary of women because they observe men more closely and could suspect her inhumanity. Or maybe Black-Cloak had an “instinctive feminine jealousy” of potential competitors.

But what shakes narrator most is the thing only he saw, staring after the fliers in the dawn sky. On the roof of a lower building, what looked like a red brick chimney opened two white eyes, unfurled great bat-wings, and peeled away from the real chimney to pursue Black-Cloak’s young.

What’s Cyclopean: Gibbering!

The Degenerate Dutch: “It is less than five hundred years since an entire half of the world was discovered.” Does that mean that First Nations folks already knew about cape-men as well?

Weirdbuilding: Vampires get close by passing as human. But there are a lot of opportunities for monstrous urban camouflage—just ask Fritz Leiber’s smoke ghost. And if you want really terrifying insects (with bonus human mimicry), there’s T. Kingfisher’s new Wolf Worm.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

Humans may be top predators—the army ants of the larger world. But we are also awfully anxious.

Evolve without predators, like the dodo, and you’ll be without fear (or protection). But evolve as a predator—or an adaptable scavenger, which is humanity’s actual niche—and you’re forever aware that something bigger or sharper or smarter might come along any minute. Thus our endless, ant-like stream of b-movie giant insects/tomatoes/amorphous blobs. And thus the fear of predators passing as our own.

It’s interesting that this latter fear barely arises in “Mimic.” Amid the variety of insect-kind, there are species that look like other species so they can eat their young, or lay cuckoo eggs, or just free-ride on the work of busier ants. But Wolheim’s examples involve vulnerable beetles passing as dangerous wasps, or finding safety amid army ant columns.

The man in the black cloak walks among humans, even buys our food, but fears us more than we do her. There’s that bone in the nestbox, of course. But corpses are pretty easy to find in 40s New York, and grave-robbing is probably safer than killing for yourself. A single escaped victim would be a lot more dangerous than a random perceptive woman.

I’m side-eyeing the explanation for the mimic’s femmephobia, by the way. Sure, women are on average socialized to pick up indications that a man might be dangerously… off. But freezing every time one goes by is A Lot, and not a good way to avoid scrutiny. Nor does it seem likely that insectile femininity should find conflict with the mammalian version. Birds get jealous, sure, but they also pick out human “mates” about whom to get territorial. Maybe the mimic is actually an insect-looking bird? It would explain a certain amount, not least the violation of the inverse square law.

But we only rarely fear birds, while insects can raise an instinctive flinch. Like snakes, they’re often-enough venomous that we have our own adaptations—many but not all humans are predisposed to develop phobias. Narrator, oddly, isn’t. He works with insects in the museum, finding more interest than terror in their strangeness. His fear, perhaps, comes more from that knowledge than from uncanny valley reflex, from inferring a whole mimetic ecology from one individual. Or two: there’s that chimney flyer.

And where harmless beetles pass themselves off as army ants, there are probably predators and scavengers as well. There are parasitic breeders with faster and more vicious reproductive cycles than the mimic.

It scares our narrator. But it’s not what scares me. This is New York only a little after Lovecraft’s time there—and no less prone to xenophobia. There may be cape-man beetles every few blocks, but more often there are visitors terrified of unfamiliar languages, human predators taking advantage of immigrants, and white supremacists eager to prove their egos on othered bodies. All of whom would leverage “some supposed people are actually insects” for their own purposes. Not that we need excuses, but any new impetus for dehumanization is terrifying.

Wollheim presumably knew this—it was 1942, and it would be hard to miss. Earlier that same year, the U.S. had entered World War II and sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps. So is the story infavor of identifying the “real” inhuman threats, or is the reader expected to infer the dangers of looking for them?

My head-canon: we never do figure out where cape-man gets her money. I think those “bills” are the most dangerous mimetic predators in the story. They have a symbiotic relationship with the cape-men, helping them scrounge human food in exchange for insertion into the economy. Hapless bodega-owners pass them to landlords or bankers; eventually they’ll fasten onto the richest and most greedy humans. They’ll send feelers, cordyceps-like, into the brains of CEOs, encouraging them to focus on profit alone until the bills reach their final instars in the form of crypto. What happens then, we are only just starting to learn.

Anne’s Commentary

Wollheim’s “Mimic” kicks off with the cautionary reflections of a narrator who has Come to Know Too Much and Seen That Which He Cannot Unsee. After graduating from college (with a degree in biology would be my guess), he may justifiably think he knows a lot, or at least something, about his subject. His studies earn him a museum job, where he assists in curating exhibits and organizing collections, with an apparent emphasis on class Insecta and order Coleoptera. The beetles alone would be humbling, comprising as they do almost 40% of all arthropods. As the story goes, evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane quipped to a group of theologians that God must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles,” but the junior curator assigned to sort through endless drawers of them could be excused for not always sharing that fondness.

And for concluding, like “Mimic’s” narrator, that Nature is a strange thing. The strangeness specific to his story is that Nature revels in camouflage and mimicry. My favorite example of the two combined is Pseudocerastes urarachnoides, the Spider-tailed Horned Viper. Its mottled pattern of creams and browns allow it to hide in plain sight on the arid substrate of the west Iranian mountains. That’s not surprising — camouflage is a common feature of ambush predators. Less common but far from singular is its use of a caudal lure, usually a tail-tip that squirms in imitation of a wormy treat. This snake’s lure, however, sports a bulbous “abdomen” and scales elongated into spidery “legs,” irresistible to its largely avian prey.

This is a form of Peckhamian or aggressive mimicry. The Black-Cloak Man primarily practices another form, though we can’t rule out him keeping some kind of lure under his cloak or wing-protective “suitcoat” elytra. If those bones in his metal box are human, after all….

The stereotypical images of candy-offering pedophiles and alley-lurking flashers come too forcibly for me to speculate further about Black-Cloak lures.

I brake my current train of thought to mention that my appreciation of “Mimic” was several times sidetracked by credulity-stretchers. Also, narrator annoyed me right off with his Anglo-European-centric remark that the Americas were discovered less than five hundred years ago, his time frame. Hello, peoples inhabiting North and South America long before 1492 might have said. If establishing even freaking empires doesn’t count as discovery with you guys, we don’t know what would. I wasn’t inordinately fond, either, of his analysis of why Black-Cloak particularly avoided women. First off, how women may notice men more closely than men do, thus having a greater chance of detecting Black-Cloak’s inhumanity. Men, of course, only notice women. Unless they’re gay men, who didn’t exist in 1940s America, at least not in narrator’s neighborhood. Second off, Black-Cloak turns out to be a she, not a he, which given that males of some inhuman species can tend to their young is not a necessary conclusion.

But allowing Black-Cloak is female, she might experience “some touch of instinctive feminine jealousy” toward women. I can’t. I’m restarting my previous train of thought.

So. Assuming that Black-Cloak is some sort of giant arthropod that has survived to the Age of Superior Humanity and has had time to evolve alongside said Superior Humanity long enough to mimic it, not that really Superior Humanity has been around long, evolutionarily speaking, what advantage does Black-Cloak gain by the deception? They go regularly to the grocery store, and there have been no disappearances of neighborhood kids or pets since their arrival. So, let’s assume they’re not large-scale carnivores needing mimicry to go as “wolves in the fold” among their prey.

We could ask Antonio whether it’s the meat case or the produce section to which Black-Cloak points when they visit his grocery.

Moving on, hypothesis-wise. Narrator mentions army ants and their beetle-mimics among his examples of Nature’s strangeness. Army ants will devour everything in their “marching” path, but the beetles that resemble the ants (probably by tactile and chemical imitation as well as visual) can be engulfed by a column while escaping predation. This is protective mimicry. But if Black-Cloaks need to escape human aggression, do they need to blend in with humans? It would be “cheaper” for them to avoid humans altogether by living in unpeopled areas. Certainly not in big cities.

This suggests that Black-Cloaks gain some advantage exactly by living in much-populated areas, the very strongholds of their models. We’re back to the ants, and creatures that don’t want to beat ants but to join them. Myrmecophiles, “ant-lovers,” are broadly defined as “any organism that is dependent on ants at least during part of its life cycle.” Many myrmecophiles make their homes within ant colonies, or even in the midst of army ant columns, drawing advantages from the protection, resources, and stability these communities provide. Ant guests (inquilines) have relationships with their hosts ranging from the parasitic through the commensal and mutualistic. If Black-Cloaks are live-in myrmecophiles, or rather anthropophiles of a sort, where would they fall on the relationship spectrum? Lacking textual evidence that humans benefit from Black-Cloaks, I’ll go with a commensal one, with Black-Cloaks benefiting from humans and neither hurting nor harming humans (with the possible exception of harvesting the odd human for larva fodder.)

It’s possible that Black-Cloaks aren’t human mimics in the evolutionary sense Wollheim’s going after, which I continue to have problems buying. Maybe they’re aliens with the ability to semi-shapeshift in short order and pass on the shift to offspring. Maybe over time they could perfect their human mimicry. Maybe that bat-winged thing that peeled off the chimney is another alien with cephalopod-level camouflaging ability—it seems unlikely it would have evolved only to imitate brickwork. And maybe Brick-Bat was what put the hole in Black-Cloak’s thorax, preparatory to devouring their succulent hatchlings.

Not that I think the narrator would take greater comfort in finding out that extraterrestrial or interdimensional shapeshifters are real, rather than terrestrially evolved megaroaches and chameleon-bats. Whatever he’s seen, he still Can’t Unsee It.

Next week, Arthur clings to civilization in Chapters 17-18 of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.[end-mark]

The post An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: Donald A. Wollheim’s “Mimic” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Widow’s Bay

Widow’s Bay: Kate O’Flynn on Patricia’s Final Girl Moment

Reactor interviewed O’Flynn about Patricia’s journey against The Boogeyman, and what the latest episode means for the rest of the season.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 3, 2026

Credit: Apple TV

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Credit: Apple TV

Warning: This post contains spoilers for season one, episode eight of Widow’s Bay, “Your Baggage.”

Kate O’Flynn, who plays the peculiarly indomitable Patricia on Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay, didn’t even know what a Final Girl was before doing press rounds for the show. That didn’t stop her, however, from channeling big slasher movie energy while staying true to Patricia’s demure demeanor as she timidly shrieks along the darkened streets of the island while The Boogeyman plods after her, intent on her murder.

“My memory of filming that episode is just running and screaming,” she jokingly told me in an interview, though she also praised her character’s “amazingly innovative problem-solving” with the gasoline and the lighter, and that “doing that Final Girl trot and action hero thing as Patricia… just felt really fun.”

The entire sequence between Patricia and The Boogeyman is when I laughed the hardest during the show’s first season. Not only because of O’Flynn’s riff on the slasher movie as Patricia, but also because we get a dose of Mean Girls when she crashes book club and ends a face-off with her former classmate in a definitively violent way. “She’s over it at that point, she is over that whole dynamic,” O’Flynn said about her high school bully. “There’s something bigger and she’s able to let it go… by tasering it.”

Tasering gags aside, the latest episode of Widow’s Bay is also an emotional turning point for O’Flynn’s character. “I love the fact that Patricia gets that payoff… this is where she finds her strength and her courage, and she’s able to deliver the goods when it comes to The Boogeyman,” she told me.

“Those goods” involve not only shooting The Boogeyman, but keeping a shotgun on his corpse until his remains are properly burned to ash. Patricia is done with his supernatural serial killer nonsense, thank you very much, and this episode, O’Flynn explained, tees Patricia up for rest of the season.

“She breaks through that neurosis she has about caring what other people think, and she finds agency that carries her through to the end,” she said. “There’s less flapping from her… it’s a bit more serious in those last two episodes.”

The last two episodes of Widow’s Bay premiere on Apple TV on June 10, 2026, and June 17, 2026.[end-mark]

The post <i>Widow’s Bay</i>: Kate O’Flynn on Patricia’s Final Girl Moment appeared first on Reactor.

Books The Wheel of Time

Reading The Wheel of Time: Rand’s Past and Present Collide in The Gathering Storm (Part 28)

Rand’s reunion with Tam doesn’t go as well as was hoped.

By Sylas K Barrett

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Published on June 2, 2026

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This week on Reading The Wheel of Time, things come to a head for Rand with the surprising arrival of his father, Tam, and the subsequent mental breakdown everyone, especially the reader, has been waiting for pretty much since Rand decided he had to become “hard.” Also, Min considers prophecies, while Tam has some very choice words for Cadsuane Sedai. Let us begin with the recap of chapters 47 and 48.

Rand, unable to settle after the failed attempt at meeting with the Borderlanders, ends up roaming the halls of the Stone aimlessly, trailed by two Maidens. Regarding the strange, One Power-made walls, Rand observes the way tapestries and rugs try to hide how unnatural the place is, just as the titles and fine clothes try to disguise the fact that Rand is also unnatural, a creature of legend and prophecy, 

He also realizes that what truly disturbed him about the encounter is that Hurin was there. The contact reminded Rand of the person he used to be, so different from the person he is now.

Rand can’t understand why, after all his efforts to harden himself and resign himself to what he must do, there is a little voice in his heart that whispers something is wrong. He pushes away thoughts of Elayne, who he misses, and reminds himself again and again that he must be strong. Coming across the chamber where Callandor used to be, he thinks angrily about how the sword is just another box. He also wonders why the Choedan Kal aren’t mentioned in the prophecies, since they are far superior to the flawed Callandor, which requires Rand to submit to female channelers in order to wield it safely.

In his head, Lews Therin murmurs that he tried to warn everyone that the Choedan Kal were too powerful and dangerous, and that no man should hold such power. Rand isn’t sure what he means.

After abruptly telling the Defenders standing outside the chamber to stop guarding an empty room, he continues on, seething with growing anger as he considers everyone who defies him—the Seanchan, the Borderlands, Cadsuane—until he comes upon a familiar hallway. Lews Therin realizes this is the place where Rand tried to use the One Power to bring a little girl back to life, until Moiraine stopped him. Rand wishes Moiraine were still with him, and considers that moment to be his first failure.

But Rand is also ready to do something about his failures, and the defiance that the Seanchan have shown him. He tells his two attendant Maidens to fetch their spear sisters, and snaps at them when they don’t move quickly enough.

When Rand returns to his room, he finds someone waiting inside, and is shocked to recognize his father.

But that comfort conflicts with the person Rand is now, and he is destabilized by the experience. 

They sit and begin to talk, both awkward and uncertain. Tam notices Rand’s missing hand but does not mention it. Rand deduces that Nynaeve went to check on Perrin and that Tam asked to be brought to see Rand. Tam remarks that they have truly managed to turn Rand into a King, and asks what happened to the uncertain, wide-eyed boy Tam raised. Rand responds instantly that he is dead, and Tam agrees that he can see that.

Rand admits that he has known Tam is not his biological father since Tam spoke of it in his fever-dreams, the day Rand left Emond’s Field. Tam supposes that he should not call Rand “son,” then, and although the voice inside Rand insists that Tam has every right, that Tam is his father, he does not say so.

Rand tells Tam, in a rather pompous way, that Tam keeping the secret of where Rand was found probably saved Rand from being assassinated as a child, and that the world owes him a great debt. Tam muses on how funny it is to suddenly be a part of legends, but Rand counters that it isn’t funny at all. He tells Tam that he is a puppet for the Pattern and the prophecies, with no free will of his own. They discuss that lowly soldiers don’t have much freedom either, though Rand insists they could desert or find a way to retire; no matter what Rand does, the Pattern will push him back to where it wants him to be.

Tam asks if it matters if Rand can or cannot run, if he knows that he would never do it. Rand counters by telling Tam that he is going to die at the end of this, and that he has no choice. Tam tells him that the choice is not always about what you do, but why you do it, and speaks of the different motivations soldiers have for fighting and dying.

He also tells Rand that he believes it’s possible for Rand to survive, and that the Pattern will give him peace after everything he has done for the world. But a soldier going to battle always knows he might die. He asks why Rand is going to battle, and rejects Rand’s answer of “because I must,” complaining that Cadsuane should have come to get him sooner.

Rand realizes that Tam did not come to see him by way of Nynaeve, but was brought to him by Cadsuane; he is part of her attempts to control and manipulate him. Tam admits that she instructed him to talk about Rand’s childhood and remind him of better times, and that she mentioned Rand might be angry if Tam mentioned her.

Rand snaps that Cadsuane is trying to manipulate him through Tam. He can’t find calm or his habitual detached iciness, even when he tries the old trick of the Flame and the Void. He does find saidin.

When Tam tries to speak again, Rand throws him to the floor with flows of air, screaming at Tam for being Cadsuane’s pawn. Demanding to be free of everyone, he begins to channel through the access key, making balefire. When he sees the terrified look in his father’s eyes, his weave unravels and he stumbles back.

In Cadsuane’s room, Min sits with the rest of Cadsuane’s Aes Sedai, reading a book on the prophecies of the Dragon. She was initially very resentful that Nynaeve’s submission to Cadsuane had apparently included Min too, and that she’d been very thoroughly drilled by Cadsuane about every one of her visions, but at this point she is just resigned.

Her attention is caught by a cryptic phrase mostly ignored by scholars: He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one. Most seem to believe this refers to the Dragon uniting three great kingdoms, and the blade of light is clearly Callandor. When questioned, Cadsuane admits that this line was what led her to investigate and eventually discover the flaw in Callandor that makes it only safe to wield when a woman is in control of a circle. But Min thinks that there is something else to the passage, something no one has figured out yet, and Cadsuane agrees.

Beldeine is dismissive of Min’s attempts to act like a scholar. When Cadsuane suggests Beldeine apologize, the Green leaves the room. Min has a vision of a black dagger over Beldeine’s head. She also has a vision of Nynaeve “kneeling over someone’s corpse in a posture of grief,” but since Min can’t interpret it, she doesn’t mention what she has seen. 

Tam suddenly bursts through the door, demanding to know what Cadsuane has done to Rand, talking about how the entire room seemed to grow dark when Rand entered. Min is horrified and terrified when Tam admits that Rand tried to kill him with the One Power, and has to remind herself that it was Semirhage, not Rand, who tried to kill her. Cadsuane asks if he used the script she prepared for him, and Tam answers that he did at first, but it didn’t work. When he continues to demand to know what Cadsuane did to Rand, Cadsuane lifts him into the Air with the One Power.

When Nynaeve reminds Tam that he was told about Rand’s instability, Tam replies that he isn’t unstable, he’s insane.

The room falls silent. Min realizes that Rand feels distant through the bond. Tam confirms that Rand seemed on the point of killing him, then suddenly appeared to be distracted by something, opening a gateway and leaving through it with his little statue. 

Min announces that Rand has gone to Ebou Dar to kill the Seanchan, just as he told the Maidens he was going to do.

My very first thought when Tam mentioned Cadsuane’s name was “didn’t she tell Tam not to bring her up?” I desperately wanted to know if it was Tam’s mistake or Cadsuane’s, so I’m glad that question was answered in the next chapter. Unsurprisingly, the mistake was Cadsuane’s.

The thing about Cadsuane—and about Aes Sedai in general—is that she is very wise about many things. After all, she has lived a long time and is well-educated and a talented channeler. She has interacted with great rulers, has hunted men who can channel, and has experience leading both other Aes Sedai and laypeople.

However, like most Aes Sedai, her understanding of humanity is general, not specific. She knows how to put pressure on rulers, how to present herself as the authority she is and inspire loyalty through awe and/or fear. But she doesn’t really seem to understand how people think, or more accurately why they think and feel as they do. I’ve remarked several times throughout the read that many Aes Sedai mistook Rand’s early arrogance as egotism, when it was usually a defense mechanism for not letting people see how much he was struggling. Even when it was arrogance, it was still a very different form of arrogance than we have seen from other characters, like Mazrim Taim or Logain, for example. Rand doesn’t think he’s better than anyone. He actually thinks he’s worse, but he also has a very large chip on his shoulder about the burden those shoulders have been forced to carry. Because he fears that his humanity is a weakness that will be exploited both to hurt him personally and to cause him to fail in his duty, the only part of himself that he feels he can lean into is the part that is supposed to be mythic and powerful and aloof and terrifying.

Even his friends, like Nynaeve, failed to understand this about Rand’s arrogance, but it’s a little more surprising to me that none of the Aes Sedai clocked it, since it is, in many ways, exactly the same strategy they use to handle their own outward images. For the Light’s sake, the Aes Sedai chose to let the world believe that they allowed Malkier to fall, rather than admit they weren’t magical enough to cross the entire continent before the Shadow swallowed Malkier completely. They try to strike a balance between seeming like caretakers and like rulers, but they will always lean towards the latter, towards an appearance of harsh strength, rather than show vulnerability or even empathy.

(An aside: This is why I sometimes think Nynaeve is the best Aes Sedai, even though she’s also really bad at being an Aes Sedai. Her sense of empathy is extremely high, keeping her grounded both as a person and a channeler, especially as her bluster and fear of failure has slowly been replaced by confidence and a sense of authority.)

Most channelers see themselves as something a little more than ordinary humans, too; the good ones just don’t take it as far as the Forsaken do, remaining servants of humanity rather than desiring to rid themselves of it.

This brings us back to Cadsuane’s mistake, because she may be a servant of humanity—and I think we can all agree that, whatever her flaws, her goal is to protect the world—but she certainly doesn’t think of herself as a servant to any individual human. Her desire to teach Rand to treat her with civility has always had an air of control about it. Rather than demand respect she is due from everyone, regardless of that person’s rank and title, it feels like she demands it as a sort of offering or gesture of fealty. When she demanded Rand speak to her with a certain degree of politeness and deference, it felt more about keeping him in line than keeping him from walking all over other people just because he’s the Dragon Reborn.

And let us not forget that it isn’t only trauma and mistreatment by Aes Sedai (and others) that have driven Rand to this place. Saidin has been cleansed, but any effect of the taint remains on anyone who wielded it before that time—and Rand had been wielding it a lot. Plus he has now used the “True Power,” and we know what the corruption of that can do to a person.

Looking at you, Ishamael.

Speaking of Ishamael, I have found myself thinking about those early days of Ishamael/Ba’alzamon invading Rand’s dreams and insisting that the Aes Sedai will “put strings” on him and use him as a puppet for their own ends. His whisperings planted a fear in Rand that he has carried since the beginning, and while that fear has been amplified by the Aes Sedai themselves (Rand doesn’t even know Galina was Black, and sees the torture she inflicted on him as something any Aes Sedai would do), it also stands to reason that the seeds Ishamael planted were watered and grown into something monstrous by the effects of the taint. We even see Rand consistently using the same language that Ishamael used, phrases like “Cadsuane’s puppet” and “everyone wants to tie strings to me.”

I really do wonder how things would have gone if Tam hadn’t mentioned Cadsuane. It’s clear that, while she told him not to mention her name, Cadsuane did not let Tam know how much Rand hates and fears her. Tam found the script she gave him was unhelpful, so it stands to reason that a firm but casual sentence like “he might be angry if you say my name” wouldn’t have seemed to Tam like a particularly important warning. Indeed, Tam was expressing disapproval of Cadsuane when he mentioned her. If Rand’s dislike of Cadsuane had been ordinary and manageable, that could have been a bonding moment for them, rather than the spark to an over-filled barrel of illuminator’s night-flowers that it turned out to be.

Also, Cadsuane’s advice was bad! Tam abandons it when he sees that it’s not working, but reminding Rand of a childhood he misses and a life he can never go back to doesn’t exactly strike me as helpful. At best it makes Rand sad—an emotion Cadsuane knows he’s avoiding. At worst, it heightens his feelings of alienation from the world and the pain of an identity he did not choose, which is why he started avoiding emotions in the first place.

You can see the moment when Tam abandons following Cadsuane’s directions, too. It’s right after he comments that he shouldn’t call Rand his son and Rand does not disagree with him, instead giving a pompous speech about how Tam has performed a great service for the world by keeping Rand’s identity a secret. Tam doesn’t challenge Rand’s perspective or grow angry with his apparent arrogance; he is merely quietly amused, and when Rand notices that, he identifies his own words as pompous and begins to relax and speak more honestly. The first thing he does in that honesty is apologize for losing the sword Tam gave him, which in and of itself is a reminder of a better time. The conversation that follows is less stilted and uncertain, flowing more naturally between the two men.

Tam is, after all, someone Rand looked to for guidance and understanding all his life. It is natural for him to seek that out now, as long as his head doesn’t get in the way.

Honestly, the most heartbreaking moment in the chapter wasn’t even Rand using the One Power against his father, or Tam’s fear at seeing the channeling of balefire—which he wouldn’t have been able to identify but certainly seems to understand the basic threat of. Rather, it was the moment when Rand thought to himself that of course Tam should call him son, and of course he is Rand’s father, but stops himself from saying the words out loud.

Rand doesn’t believe that shepherds are less than other people, or even less than him. But he is so convinced that everything is a liability; every human connection makes him weak and makes him look weak to others. Again and again he rejects the strength and wisdom his connections can offer him in favor of soldiering on alone—and then he turns around and resents the world for that very aloneness. And while there’s no telling just how much of his madness and despair is taint, trauma, fear, or good old fashioned self-pity, in this moment it is mostly Rand’s misunderstanding of the purpose of emotions causing the problem. It’s something I’ve talked about at length in other posts so I won’t dwell on it now, but I will point out that it’s this self-pity that Tam is addressing when he responds to Rand’s claim that he isn’t as free as an ordinary soldier, and the implication that Rand’s existence is not fair.

I found it a bit condescending the first time Rand made this comment, calling the poor and ordinary people free while he himself is a prisoner of the Pattern. It is certainly true that Rand carries a greater responsibility, and affects more of the world, than a foot soldier or peasant might. But every person’s life is their own world, and every person is at least somewhat trapped by the circumstances of their birth.

A peasant born to poverty might be able to improve his station through hard work and luck, but he will always have less opportunities than a man born to wealth and status. A sword-for-hire could potentially have chosen another career (if he had other marketable skills) but the need to make money exists no matter which of his limited choices of occupation he settled on. The man whose body spontaneously combusted or the one who turned into insects certainly had less freedom than Rand does; they were just random victims of the corruption of the Pattern, tossed aside by the very circumstances that make Rand’s existence necessary.

All that being said, Tam’s point is better, and more useful than mine. I think it speaks to the only healthy philosophy one can have in a world like The Wheel of Time, where the question of “is there actually free will” and “how much of life is fated beyond my control” might be debated in degrees, but can’t ever be answered without the admission that much of one’s fate is already dictated, woven without one’s input or consent. To some extent or other, everyone’s life is controlled by the Pattern and dictated by the Wheel; everyone was chosen, so to speak, to be born into their identity and purpose in the Pattern.

Tam offers Rand an alternative perspective, and an alternative action. Instead of bemoaning the fact that he was born to carry this burden and be this legendary figure—a fact he cannot alter or control—Rand can focus on what he can control. And what he can control is meaning. He can create and give meaning to his own life, to his own choices, and to his own emotions. Tam tells Rand:

Then he encourages Rand to think about why he is going to battle, perhaps to die. It’s unfortunate that Tam got frustrated and mentioned Cadsuane, because I think there was an opportunity for Tam to push Rand a little. When Rand’s first response is that he is going to battle “because I must,” Tam tells him that reason isn’t good enough. If Tam had asked Rand to try again, pressed him to find a reason, Rand might have done just that. He might have looked for the motivation, and understanding, that I think he had once. After all, the conversation was already headed that way before Rand’s resentment of fate came up; he was already asking Tam for perspective, and even accepting Tam’s prompts and direction. He was beginning to open up, if only a little.

He was pleased that Tam cared enough to come check on him.

Perhaps Rand’s breaking point was inevitable, and even if he’d never discovered that Cadsuane was behind Tam’s arrival, something else would have set it off. Those intolerable and mounting pressures weren’t just going to go away because his dad gave him better advice on how to engage them. And of course, Rand’s madness was always there as well, muddying the waters.

Still, it is significant, I think, that we saw Rand begin to respond to Tam’s gentle, loving, but firm guidance. This is what he has always needed: someone who could call him out and challenge his perspective without making him feel belittled or as though they were trying to control or force him. Min could do this, sometimes, but Semirhage got in the way of their connection. Elayne also can, and I think Aviendha would be able to as well, but they are both too wrapped up in their own journeys and responsibilities and are both far away from Rand. This firm but loving approach is also one of the reasons Rand did better with, and felt safer with, Moiraine. She wasn’t just walking a line of careful obedience in order to get him to listen to her. Moiraine really cared about Rand, and understood him, and wanted to be the type of councilor that he needed, rather than making him into someone who would take advice delivered the way she wanted to deliver it.

The way Cadsuane does.

Tam is right that Cadsuane is a bully, and that many Aes Sedai are. This attitude comes in part from their extremely hierarchical organizational system; a woman used to having anyone weaker in the power have to defer to her would certainly come to expect even more from those with no ability at all. It also comes from the Aes Sedai need to be taken as an authority by those who are more likely to fear their power than respect it. Rand has been a bully for the same reasons—increasingly so, as he labors under the belief that the only way to unite the world is for them to submit utterly to his authority and do whatever he says.

And now he has gone to destroy the Seanchan. Hopefully his horror at what he nearly did to Tam will ultimately stay his hand. After all, while he was already intending to kill the Seanchan before he discovered Tam in his room, part of the move in the moment was to sublimate his desire to kill away from Tam and Cadsuane and towards a more acceptable target. We will have to wait and see if the right lesson sinks in.

He is certainly taking the wrong lesson from the sudden explosion of feeling he is experiencing. Obviously suppressing his emotions for so long would leave him unprepared for when they (inevitably) burst forth. He is now unused to having to navigate them, unused to weathering a storm of feeling that normal people might turn into a crying fit, or journal about, or look for a punching bag, to deal with. Rand, powerful and suffering and maladapted to normal human emotions, turns to genocide instead.

More people should listen to Min, obviously. Her comment about how this is the result of everyone trying to make Rand do what they want felt like something Moiraine might have said when she was still around. Advice that she might have given.

You can never force people to do and be exactly what you want—not unless you break them so completely that they are practically not human anymore, the way the a’dam does or the way strong forms of Compulsion do. But everyone has done just that with Rand, and now, he has indeed broken.

When it comes to Min’s interpretation of the line, He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one, I was tempted to point out that the blade of light doesn’t have to be Callandor. After all, we saw Rand make a sword of light with the One Power quite a bit after he lost Tam’s sword. But from a narrative perspective, I think there are far too many clues that Callandor is about to be very important for me to be right about this. Min and Cadsuane’s interpretations might be red herrings, but Rand spent a good portion of chapter 47 musing on Callandor, its flawed nature as a trap, or “box,” and the memory of the time he tried to use its power to bring the dead little girl back to life. This is clearly an indication that we are leading up to something, and a very obvious one at that—Sanderson’s narrative clues are less subtle than Jordan’s.

When it comes to the three being one, there are two ways to tackle trying to make sense of it. The first way is to assume that the entire sentence is talking about two incidents that will happen at the same time, but aren’t necessarily related. If we read it that way, the phrase could mean just about anything, and there are not really any clues to know what the words “the three” are is referring to. But if we look at the two phrases as a sort of if/than equation, I think it’s possible to guess at the meaning.

The most obvious interpretation would be that Rand will wield Callandor in a circle with Aviendha and Elayne. “The three” could either mean the three of them, or possibly it could refer to Rand’s three bonded lovers, with Aviendha, Elayne, and Min becoming one in some kind of spiritual or symbolic way. Min is not a channeler, but her connection to the rest through the bond could have any number of effects that might draw her into the circle.

The other idea I had was to wonder if Rand might end up controlling saidin, saidar, and the “True Power” through his wielding of Callandor. We know that Callandor amplifies the effects of the taint, which makes me wonder if the “flaw” in the not-sword allows it to be a sa’angreal not just for saidin but perhaps for the True Power as well. I was already suspecting that Rand’s ability to wield the “True Power” without the Dark One’s permission would be important in the eventual showdown at Shayol Ghul, and that Rand might be able to use the Dark One’s own power against him in order to avoid either half of the One Power being tainted by his touch, as saidin was when Lews Therin and the Hundred companions sealed the Bore. Perhaps he could shield the Dark One, the way channelers shield each other, even when they channel the same half of the One Power. Or maybe he could wrap the True Power around the One Power somehow, much like he used saidar as a conduit to channel saidin and dump the taint into Shadar Logoth, keeping the Dark One from being able to reach through it to taint saidar or saidin.

The thing about prophecies, as Min reflects in chapter 48, is that it’s really hard to tell what they are talking about until the moment referenced is happening, or has happened. Aside from the omens and portents which are there to let you know when the Dragon appears, most of the Karaethon Cycle is treated as a guide towards action by the Aes Sedai, and by Rand himself. And yet there have not been many times when a passage from the prophecies have given Rand more than the vaguest clue about what he needs to do next.

These passages show Rand struggling with interpretations of the Prophecies. It also shows the limitation of a Foretelling or prophecy’s usefulness, as well as the inherent difficulty in looking past one’s own desires and biases to see the truth. Rand believes that the sword is inferior as a sa’angreal, but this is because it doesn’t work in a way that makes him feel comfortable. He views the need to wield Callandor in a circle controlled by a woman as a flaw and a disadvantage, but one could argue that such great power should not, and cannot, be safely controlled by a single person. Wielding it in a circle, giving a female channeler some control over him and his choices, provides a sort of checks-and-balances system on a very powerful sa’angreal. It also means that Callandor’s use, if handled properly, will be by men and women working together. And we know that this is how the greatest works of channeling have always been done.

It is very probable that Callandor is supposed to be used as a sa’angreal in some momentous moment during the Last Battle. Rand doesn’t believe it will be, because he can’t accept what using it would require of him. But Min and Cadsuane believe that it will be, and I expect that they are right.

And then there is the issue of Rand’s comfort item, the male Choedan Kal. The only thing which makes him feel remotely safe right now, and an item that even the madman in his head thinks he shouldn’t have.

Rand wonders why the Choedan Kal, more powerful and more suitable than Callandor, isn’t mentioned at all in the Prophecies. But he never considers the most obvious answer to that question, which is that they aren’t meant to be: Rand won’t use the Choedan Kal in the Last Battle or at Shayol Ghul, at least not if the Dark One is defeated and the Pattern continues.

It is perhaps too much of a stretch to say that the absence of the Choedan Kal indicates that its use will result in Rand’s failure. However, there is a very important clue about this danger, and it comes from Lews Therin himself.

Rand has difficulty recalling exactly how Lews Therin’s plan to seal the Dark One’s prison was supposed to go, but what is most significant about this exchange is how badly Rand misinterprets it. Lews Therin has said, very clearly in my opinion, that however much the other Aes Sedai thought his plan was too risky, Lews Therin saw the Choeden Kal as even more dangerous, too dangerous to be used. He states outright that no one should hold that much Power. And yet, as Rand considers Lews Therin’s words, he wonders if the lesson is that Lews Therin made the wrong choice, that the Choedan Kal should have been used.

It doesn’t feel like he is disagreeing with Lews Therin here, but rather that he is misunderstanding him. Even after his failure, even after the death of his wife and his own suicide, Lews Therin is still in Rand’s head whispering that his plan was a better choice than creating the Choedan Kal. But Rand hears the opposite, or nearly the opposite, and turns his mind again to the idea that the Choedan Kal should be the answer, that they should exist in the Prophecies.

(Note: I don’t think that Rand knows that the female Choedan Kal was destroyed. He only knows that the Access Key Nynaeve used was destroyed, but that isn’t the only way to access the Choedan Kal. I’m pretty sure there were more Access Keys created, though I can’t remember where I read that. And one could theoretically access a Choedan Kal directly as long as you knew where it was and could get to it. So Rand is thinking about both Choedan Kal, even though I have sometimes referred to just the male one in this post.)

They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and whether Rand is in that place of corruption because he thinks he should have absolute Power or because he fears what will happen if he doesn’t have it, the results are going to be the same. He’s either going to commit genocide… or he’s going to have to get rid of the Choedan Kal.

We’ll find out which option he chooses next week, whenReading The Wheel of Time we cover chapters 49 and 50 of The Gathering Storm, as well as the epilogue.[end-mark]

The post Reading The Wheel of Time: Rand’s Past and Present Collide in <i>The Gathering Storm</i> (Part 28) appeared first on Reactor.

News Obsession

Obsession Director Wants an Anthology TV Series If He Can Explain a Major Plot Hole

Curry Barker would love to helm an Obsession TV series, but there’s at least one annoying detail in the way

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on June 1, 2026

Screenshot: Focus Features

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Screenshot: Focus Features

Obsession continues to shatter expectations and records, thanks largely to the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that modern movies rarely enjoy. Naturally, a fair bit of that talk now includes speculation about what Obsession director Curry Barker will do next. The director is reportedly receiving some big money offers for his next project, even though Barker himself seemingly isn’t sure what that next project will actually be.

So far as an Obsession sequel or follow-up goes, though, Barker has said that he’s certainly considered the possibility. Specifically, he’s interested in an Obsession anthology TV series based on one of the film’s twists.

“I obviously have a couple more things that I’m excited about next, but I do see Obsession 2, maybe,” Barker said in an interview with Total Film. “But what really is exciting to me is maybe an anthology. Like a one-hour episode [where] each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I’ll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to kind of give their spin at it. That would be really cool.”

That does sound pretty fantastic, though to be clear, Barker is not saying that there is any deal in place for such a project. One imagines he has the clout required to get the ball rolling on that idea, though, as the director notes, there are other ideas he seemingly wants to work on next.

Besides, such a series would require Barker to figure out what he admits is a fairly notable plot hole in Obsession’s premise: the idea that the One Wish Willows actually work and make people’s wishes come true

“It’s kind of a plot hole. It’s something I don’t like to think about too much because it totally doesn’t make sense,” Barker admits. “If there’s a world of people making wishes… it really doesn’t make sense at all.”

As Barker explains, a world where everyone is having their wish granted (or at least multiple people) would result in crazy things such as “dragons.” Based on what we see, though, the world of Obsession is pretty normal. Barker then offered his own take on how that whole thing possibly works.

“Every time someone makes a wish, they enter into an alternate reality where their wish comes true,” the director muses. “So you’re not experiencing everybody’s wish at the same time.”

Hilariously, the director soon realizes that the explanation doesn’t make sense as we see another character’s wish for a billion dollars be granted in real-time. Given the creative potential of that series premise, though, perhaps it’s worth a bit of a hand-wave if it fulfills my wish for the next great horror anthology series.[end-mark]

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Column Science Fiction Film Club

Coherence: Dinner at My Place Tonight, Just Bring Yourself

Schrödinger’s cat, astronomical anomalies, and parallel realities collide with an ill-fated dinner party.

By Kali Wallace

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Published on June 3, 2026

Credit: Bellanova Films / Ugly Duckling Films

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Credit: Bellanova Films / Ugly Duckling Films

Coherence (2014) Written and directed by James Ward Byrkit. Starring Emily Foxler, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen, Lauren Maher, Alex Manugian, Lorene Scafaria, and Hugo Armstrong.

Back in the early 1930s, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to fellow physicist Erwin Schrödinger as part of their ongoing correspondence trying to make sense of the more confounding aspects of quantum mechanics. Einstein was troubled by some of the interpretation put forth by their colleagues Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Einstein was particularly disgruntled by the idea that quantum systems exist simultaneously in a superposition of different states until they are observed, at which point the system collapses into a single state.

In his letter to Schrödinger, Einstein said this idea was as ridiculous as a keg of gunpowder being both exploded and unexploded. It might work in the math, but it did not fit with the observable world.

Schrödinger agreed and offered a more developed thought experiment: Imagine a cat in an enclosed box. Also within the box is a device that may or may not release a deadly poison, depending on a random quantum trigger, such as the radioactive decay of a single atom. According to Heisenberg and Bohr’s mathematical formulation, the state of that single atom—and therefore the release of the poison and fate of the cat—exists in a state where it is both decayed and not decayed until it is observed.

That would mean the cat is both alive and dead until something is present to measure whether the atom controlling the poison’s release has decayed or not. This is obviously absurd in the real world, as we all know that any cat in a box is loafing adorably while you take twenty pictures of him because he’s the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen.

But it wasn’t until physicists in the ’80s began finding experimental proof of some of the wilder ideas in quantum physics, such as particles being able to exist in a state of superposition, that Schrödinger’s cat began to shift from a fairly niche thought experiment meant to illustrate a key weakness of quantum mechanics to a simple metaphor meant to explain the model’s fundamental weirdness. That’s the version of the idea that grew into a pop cultural meme over the past few decades.

Before that, sure, philosophers read about it and considered the implications, and sci fi writers were of course interested in the implications, with Ursula K. Le Guin often being credited as the first to bring the quantum cat into fiction… but definitely not the last.

There are a lot of interpretations of quantum mechanics, because it has the dubious prestige of being the most rigorously tested and proven scientific theory humanity has yet devised, yet nobody can agree on what it means. Physicists love that, because it means there are always more bizarre mysteries for them to dig into, but they aren’t the only ones.

Sci fi writers also love it, especially the “many worlds interpretation,” which was proposed by physicist Hugh Everett in the 1950s. In this interpretation, in that box with the cat, the radioactive atom set to release the poison both does and does not decay, meaning the cat both lives and dies in two different realities, because every quantum outcome exists in an infinite and infinitely multiplying number of possible worlds.

There were stories about parallel universes or alternate timelines before the idea became a serious scientific concept, but not nearly as many as there have been in the decades since. It has become such a commonplace trope in mainstream fiction that it feels silly to even name examples, but I’m going to anyway because they include everything from the DC comics multiverses of the 1960s to Star Trek’s goateed Mirror universe to the ’90s show Sliders to the many Spider-verses of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) to the universe-hopping existentialism of Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

When James Ward Byrkit and Alex Manugian (who also plays Amir in the film) started brainstorming the treatment that would become Coherence back in about 2013, the idea of multiple universes was definitely present in mainstream pop culture, even if it hadn’t yet become the focal point of multiple blockbuster Hollywood films.

But the origin of the film didn’t come from science fictional ideas or themes. That would come later, when Byrkit was refining the idea and dug into the works of Stephen Hawking and other physicists to learn more. The origin of the film came from the unique way in which it was made.

Or, to put it another way, it’s what happens when you invite eight actor friends over to your house and scare the daylights out of them for fun and profit.

Byrkit was no stranger to Hollywood and filmmaking when he started thinking about making his own movie. He had worked as a storyboard and concept artist on Gore Verbinski’s three Pirates of the Caribbean films and had co-written the animated film Rango (2011)—all of which were huge productions with massive budgets, big-name stars, and major studio backing. Those experiences made him want to try something completely different: a film that wasn’t controlled by executive decisions and corporate demands down to the last detail. “I missed the days where it was just me, some actors, and a story. I wondered what it would look like to strip it down to the bare minimum of elements—to get rid of the crew, the script, and to just have the camera and actors,” he said in a 2014 interview.

That didn’t mean he would jump right in without preparation. There was, in fact, a huge amount of preparation behind Coherence. He and Manugian sat down to brainstorm what kind of story they could tell in a film with a bare-bones production, and the cultural touchstone they landed on was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). As a weekly, half-hour anthology television series, each episode of The Twilight Zone combined basic settings with unknown characters to explore heady and bizarre scenarios. It’s a show that does a lot with a little, in other words, which makes it an appealing model for somebody who wants to make a movie without using many resources.

So Byrkit decided the setting would be his living room, and the premise would be “a Twilight Zone-like fractured reality.” Then he spent about a year figure out exactly how that would work. He cites the episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” as the primary influence; that’s the episode about a neighborhood descending into paranoia and violence when a meteor passes overhead and they lose contact with the rest of the world. Another inspiration was Roman Polanski’s film Carnage (2011), which is about two couples losing their shit when they have a dinner party to discuss a childish fight between their sons.

When Coherence was making the festival rounds, just about every single interviewer also asked Byrkit about Primer (2007), because Primer is the film everybody goes to when they think “high-concept micro-budget sci fi filmed in somebody’s house.” Byrkit acknowledges that he saw Primer and took its success as a sign that there was an audience for that sort of film. I agree with him that they are very different stories that approach their ideas in different ways, even though both fall into the category of “ordinary people in weird sci fi scenarios.”

In Coherence, the characters don’t start out thinking they are in a weird sci fi scenario. Lee (Lorene Scafaria) and Mike (Nicholas Brendon) are hosting a dinner party for their friends, who are all the most stereotypical white middle-aged Californians you’ve ever seen in your life. There’s Em (Emily Foxler) and Kevin (Maury Sterling), who are going through a rough patch. There’s Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) and Beth (Elizabeth Gracen), who has brought the all-natural organic ketamine-spiked tincture. And there’s Amir (Manugian), who has brought along Laurie (Lauren Maher), who nobody seems to like because she’s Kevin’s ex.

There’s a comet passing overhead, but it is otherwise a very normal night. They are drinking wine and eating dinner when strange things start to happen. First, their phones aren’t working; a few of the screens randomly shatter. Then the power goes out everywhere except at one other house nearby. Hugh and Amir head out to see if they can use the phone at that house, but they return injured and rattled and insisting that they witnessed something impossible: the other house is this house, filled with their doppelgangers.

It spirals outward from there. As soon as somebody brings up Schrödinger’s cat and the 1998 film Sliding Doors, we know exactly what kind of movie we’re in, even if we don’t know where it will go. That’s intentional, because we’re supposed to gain this genre awareness as the characters gain it. They want to believe they’re all hallucinating, but they keep running into versions of themselves, which makes denial a bit difficult.

To preserve the feeling of weirdness inflicted upon an evening of normalcy, Byrkit didn’t write a script. What he did instead was pick actors he knew to be willing and able to handle improvisation. He gave them each some guiding notes, but nobody knew the whole story except Manugian, who helped write the treatment and knew the major twists and turns. For five nights, they filmed at Byrkit’s house, letting the actors improvise wildly as the tiny crew threw curveballs into the mix. (There seems to have been some preparation in the form of a short trial run, so they weren’t going into the process completely blind.)

The actors all agreed to this and, after an initial adjustment period, it seems like they enjoyed themselves. (Even Scafaria, who actually had to cook for the others as part of playing the dinner party host, but also actually got to take a nap in the middle of it.) There are so many stories out there about directors subjecting actors to unpleasantness to get genuine reactions, but this was more like giving some seasoned professionals a specific scenario and letting them play out a nerdy sci fi RPG for a few nights. In one interview Byrkit specifically said, “We set out to make a B-movie. We didn’t set out to make a talky, indie high-art film.” He specifically picked chatty extroverts so there wouldn’t be awkward lulls, and when they got hung up in places or the story needed to move along, he would step in and give them a nudge. (One example: When Hugh and Amir first return to the house, the other actors were so wound up they refused to let them inside. Which is, well, a little ironic. Considering.)

The actors had personal details and any information their characters would know, such as Em’s story about missing out on a major career opportunity or the book belonging to Hugo’s physicist brother. But they weren’t told how or when to share that information, and nobody had guidance about what to do with it. They also didn’t know when external events would intrude upon their dinner party; their startled reactions to the first knock at the door are genuine, as they were all getting so into the scenario they didn’t expect a change.

There were, naturally, some problems with making a film this way. Directors of photography Arlene Muller and Nic Sadler had to deal with the obvious technical challenge of following eight people around a house for several hours. They had to suffuse the main areas with light, except for when the lights go out and the characters are using candles or glowsticks, but they also had to keep the few exterior shots completely dark. They had to somehow keep everybody in focus, even when everybody was moving around unpredictably. They didn’t quite manage that, as there are several places where the lack of focus gives a sort of pseudo-cinéma vérité look, which is not exactly what they were going for.

The editing is also quite jumpy, in part because editor Lance Pereira was piecing together five nights of improv and in part because the movie as a whole is piecing together an unspecified number of realities joined together by a cosmic “roulette wheel” that shunts the characters unexpectedly into different worlds.

I think the film is edited together quite well overall, and I think the movie works overall, but I fully admit I have no interest in going through the movie and tracing every single character or thread to see if it all fits.

Not only does that sound very tedious, but I also think it’s pretty much beside the point. The movie is filmed so that we’re in the scenario with the characters. When they start trying to figure out what’s going on, we want them to make some progress toward a solution, but we also understand how freaked out and curious they are. When they realize the physics book and the comet knowledge won’t help them, we’re as lost as they are. (The comet story from 1920s Finland was made up, which makes me a little sad. I was prepared to go down a rabbit hole learning about weird historical comet happenings.) When they start to piece together the fact that people have swapped worlds without knowing, we get to feel those jolts of surprise and discomfort.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable movie to watch, and I’ll probably watch it again to pick up more details next time. It plays out at a nice pace, with a good number of surprises and twists, and we really do want the characters to get through it. It all builds together to make Em’s search for a world that hasn’t noticed what’s going on, and the violence she resorts to in order to stay there, all the more haunting.

Part of my enjoyment comes from knowing that it was an experiment in creative filmmaking, an artistic passion project, and it worked. I love the idea of stripping away everything we associate with modern sci fi films—the huge productions, the special effects, the big stakes—and exploring what’s left. I love the idea of figuring out what kind of weird, twisty, surprising stories can be told in a limited setting with a lot of careful planning, some clever guidelines, and a willing cast. I am always delighted by people finding more ways to tell the stories they want to tell.

What do you think of Coherence? Have you ever been to a California dinner party that ended up like that? You can share in comments. We want to know.

If you’re wondering how much the movie cost: Most reports put the budget at $50,000. Those reports do not include information about whether Lorene Scafaria had to buy the garlic chicken she cooked for the dinner party.

Next week: I do love a story about a cult, so we’re watching Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless (2017). Find it online. I’ll probably also talk a bit about their 2012 debut film Resolution, which is a prequel of sorts to The Endless but it is not at all necessary to watch beforehand. (I swear that makes sense, but it’s a huge spoiler to explain how or why.)[end-mark]

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News Escape from New York

Zack Snyder Is Eyeing a Remake of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York

The 1981 film is perfect… just sayin’

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 1, 2026

Credit: Embassy Pictures / StudioCanal

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Credit: Embassy Pictures / StudioCanal

Zack Snyder, the force behind movies like 300, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Rebel Moon, has set his sights on a remaking of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic film, Escape From New York.

The original movie featured Kurt Russell as the eyepatch-wearing Snake Plissken, a military man turned outlaw who is tasked with rescuing the President from a crash landing in Manhattan, which in this dystopian version of 1997, has been turned into a walled penitentiary.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder will be shopping the remake to studios in the upcoming weeks, with plans to have the film release in theaters rather than on a streamer. The director plans to have the movie be more “more down and dirty” and lean more on practical effects than CGI.

This isn’t the first attempt to push a remake of Escape From New York. Carpenter also came out with the sequel Escape From LA in 1996, but more recently, New Line and 20th Century Fox tried to make Escape From New York films with numerous directors and actors attached. Snyder is now trying with StudioCanal, which THR reports is trying to amp up its franchises, something they’ve already done with Paddington and Evil Dead.

Synder’s project is still in its very early days, so it’s certainly possible his version of the movie will never make its way to a theater near you. There’s a perfect Escape From New York movie already out in the world, however, which I encourage you to give a (re)watch. [end-mark]

The post Zack Snyder Is Eyeing a Remake of John Carpenter’s <i>Escape From New York</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Warrior Cats

Warrior Cats Gets Animated Series Adaptation With Ms. Marvel Showrunner on Board

The series also has a Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia alum in the director’s chair

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 1, 2026

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If you were a young person in the early 2000s (or later… or know someone in that age bracket), odds are good you’re familiar with the Warrior Cat books. The novels, of which there are dozens, chronicle the emotional and geopolitical travails of different clans of feral cats. Think Game of Thrones but for kids, and talking feral housecats rather than humans. I can personally say they’re engaging reads, and the books have sold 90 million copies, been translated into 38 languages, and have fomented fan content that’s garnered over 50 million YouTube views and 3 billion TikTok views per month, according to Coolabi, which owns the IP.

The books’ popularity (they’ve been written by multiple authors under the nom de plume Erin Hunter) has unsurprisingly resulted in attempts to adapt the series to the screen. Back in 2016, there was an effort to make a feature film in the Warrior Cat world, which sadly fell to the wayside.

Today, however, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Coolabi, along with Tencent Video, is developing an animated Warrior Cat series, with What If…? and Ms. Marvel showrunner A.C. Bradley on board and Rodrigo Blaas (Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia) directing. The show will focus on the first Warrior Cat book series: Warrior Cats: The Prophecies Begin.

“We’re excited to partner with Coolabi on Warrior Cats, a franchise that embodies the future of global storytelling,” Tina Ma, Co-President & COO of Tencent Video said in a statement. “Together we’re bringing the beloved Warrior Cats world to new platforms and markets in a way that feels both familiar and fresh, creating an animated series designed to captivate existing fans and win new ones.”

The animated series will also roll out with a bunch of toy tie-ins, so get ready for a lot of Warrior Cats in your future, although the exact date for the premiere of the show remains unknown. [end-mark]

The post <i>Warrior Cats</i> Gets Animated Series Adaptation With <i>Ms. Marvel</i> Showrunner on Board appeared first on Reactor.

News Witch Season

Witch Season: Julia Bianco’s Contemporary Romantasy Gets Picked Up for TV

The novel isn’t even out yet! You can read it starting on June 30, 2026

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 1, 2026

Julia Bianco photo credit: Audrey Steimer

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Julia Bianco photo credit: Audrey Steimer

Julia Bianco’s debut novel Witch Season has been picked up for potential television adaptation before it’s even released.

Today, Deadline broke the news that Lionsgate Television is developing a show based on the book, which is set to come out via St. Martin’s Press on June 30, 2026.   

Here’s the blurb for Witch Season, a contemporary romance fantasy involving sparks flying between two members of different covens:

Bianco, who is currently in a writers’ room for an undisclosed series, will pen the adaptation and is on board the Lionsgate TV project as an executive producer. The project doesn’t have a showrunner attached yet, and no news on casting or if/when/where the show will make it to production. [end-mark]

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News Locus Awards

Here Are the Winners of the 2026 Locus Awards

Congratulations to the winners!

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 1, 2026

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This past weekend, the Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners of the 2026 Locus Awards during the Bay Area Book Festival. Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, and Nnedi Okorafor were this year’s guests of honor, with Alyssa Winans the featured local artist.

The Locus Awards are chosen by open public ballot.

Congratulations to the winners!

Science Fiction Novel

• WINNER: Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)
• The Folded Sky, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz)
• Picks & Shovels, Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra; Tor)
• Notes from a Regicide, Isaac Fellman (Tor)  
• When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga)  
• All That We See or Seem, Ken Liu (Saga; Ad Astra)  
• Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler (MCD; Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK)  
• The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)  
• Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)  

Fantasy Novel

• WINNER: The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor; Tor UK)
• The Devils, Joe Abercrombie (Tor; Gollancz)  
• The Tomb of Dragons, Katherine Addison (Tor; Solaris UK)  
• Lessons in Magic and Disaster, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan UK)  
• A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)  
• The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)  
• Hemlock & Silver, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Tor UK)  
• Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager; Harper Voyager UK)  
• The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)  
• Queen Demon, Martha Wells (Tor)

Horror Novel

• WINNER: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)  
• The Possession of Alba Díaz, Isabel Cañas (Berkley; Solaris UK)  
• Spread Me, Sarah Gailey (Nightfire)  
• King Sorrow, Joe Hill (Morrow; Headline UK)  
• The Library at Hellebore, Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire; Titan UK)  
• Never Flinch, Stephen King (Scribner, Hodder & Stoughton UK)  
• The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Arcadia UK)  
• It Was Her House First, Cherie Priest (Poisoned Pen)  
• The Crimson Road, A.G. Slatter (Titan UK)  
• The Staircase in the Woods, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)  

Young Adult Novel

• WINNER: Starstrike, Yoon Ha Lee (Delacorte; Solaris UK) [SF]  
• The Singular Life of Aria Patel, Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown; Atom UK) [SF]  
• Make Me a Monster, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK) [H]  
• Costumes for Time Travelers, A.R. Capetta (Candlewick; Walker UK) [F]  
• The Executioners Three, Susan Dennard (Tor Teen; Daphne UK) [H]  
• The Underwood Tapes, Amanda DeWitt (Peachtree Teen) [H]  
• Among Ghosts, Rachel Hartman (Random House) [F]  
• Sky on Fire, E.K. Johnston (Dutton) [F]  
• I Am Not Jessica Chen, Ann Liang (Harper) [F]  
• They Bloom at Night, Trang Thanh Tran (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK) [H]  

First Novel

• WINNER: Sour Cherry, Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire UK) [F]  
• A Song of Legends Lost, M.H. Ayinde (Orbit UK; Saga) [F]  
• Red Rabbit Ghost, Jen Julian (Run For It) [H]  
• When Devils Sing, Xan Kaur (Holt; First Ink UK) [H]  
• Awake in the Floating City, Susanna Kwan (Pantheon; Simon & Schuster UK) [SF]  
• Luminous, Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster; Magpie) [SF]  
• Archive of Unknown Universes, Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner; Footnote UK) [SF]  
• North Sun, Or The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, Ethan Rutherford (A Strange Object) [H]  
• Blob, Maggie Su (Harper; Sceptre UK) [F]  
• Song of Spores, Bogi Takács (Broken Eye) [SF]  

Translated Novel

• WINNER: On the Calculation of Volume III, Solvej Balle, tr. Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell (New Directions; Faber & Faber) [SF]  
• The Unworthy, Agustina Bazterrica, tr. Sarah Moses (Scribner; Pushkin UK) [H]  
• The Midnight Shift, Cheon Seon-Ran, tr. Gene Png (Bloomsbury UK; Bloomsbury US) [H]  
• Red Sword, Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur (Honford Star) [SF]  
• The Midnight Timetable, Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur (Algonquin) [H]  
• Ice, Jacek Dukaj, tr. Ursula Phillips (Head of Zeus) [SF]  
• Blood for the Undying Throne, Sung-il Kim, tr. Anton Hur (Tor) [F]  
• Vanishing World, Sayaka Murata, tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove; Granta UK) [SF]  
• Dengue Boy, Michel Nieva, tr. Rahul Bery (Astra House; Serpent’s Tail) [SF]  
• The Wax Child, Olga Ravn, tr. Martin Aitken (New Directions; Viking UK) [F]  

Novella

• WINNER: The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom)  
• The Orb of Cairado, Katherine Addison (Subterranean)  
• What Stalks the Deep, T. Kingfisher (Nightfire)  
• Cinder House, Freya Marske (Tordotcom)  
• Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)  
• Making History, K.J. Parker (Tordotcom)  
• Psychopomp & Circumstance, Eden Royce (Tordotcom)  
• Lives of Bitter Rain, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Head of Zeus)  
• A Mouthful of Dust, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)  
• Murder by Memory, Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)  

Novelette

• WINNER: “We Begin Where Infinity Ends,” Somto Ihezue (Clarkesworld 2/25)
• “The Witch and the Wyrm,” Elizabeth Bear (Reactor 2/26/25)
• “Barnacle,” Kate Elliott (Reactor 11/5/25)
• “Uncertain Sons,” Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons)
• “The Tin Man’s Ghost,” Ray Nayler (Asimov’s 5-6/25)
• “The Millay Illusion,” Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 11-12/25)
• “When He Calls Your Name,” Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny 7-8/25)
• “The Twenty-One Second God,” Peter Watts (Lightspeed 6/25)
• “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon,” A.C. Wise (Reactor 1/13/25)
• “Phantom View,” John Wiswell (Reactor 10/22/25)

Short Story

• WINNER: “In My Country,” Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25)
• “Secret Night,” Nathan Ballingrud (Night & Day)
• “In the Halls of the Makeshift King,” Tobias S. Buckell (Asimov’s 7-8/25)
• “Wire Mother,” Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 10/25)
• “The Shape of Stones,” Hildur Knútsdóttir (Reactor 3/12/25)
• “Courtney Lovecraft’s Book of the Dead,” Sam J. Miller (Nightmare 10/25)
• “Because I Held His Name Like a Key,” Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25)
• “Landline,” Kelly Robson (Reactor 3/5/25)
• “Missing Helen,” Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld 7/25)
• “Woolly,” Carrie Vaughn (Asimov’s 5-6/25)

Anthology

• WINNER: We Will Rise Again, Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz & Malka Older, eds. (Saga)  
• The Black Fantastic, andré m. carrington, ed. (Library of America)  
• Night & Day, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Saga)  
• Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology, Julie C. Day, Carina Bissett & Craig Laurance Gidney, eds. (Essential Dreams)  
• The End of the World As We Know It, Christopher Golden & Brian Keene, eds. (Gallery)  
• Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, Lee Mandelo, ed. (Erewhon)  
• The Best Weird Fiction of the Year: Volume 1, Michael Kelly, ed. (Undertow)  
• Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Three, Stephen Kotowych, ed. (Ansible)
• The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025, Nnedi Okorafor & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner)  
• As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, Terese Mason Pierre, ed. (Spiderline)  

Collection

• WINNER: Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Thomas Ha (Undertow)  
• Call and Response, Christopher Caldwell (Neon Hemlock)  
• Moon Songs, Carol Emshwiller (Third Man)  
• Letters from an Imaginary Country, Theodora Goss (Tachyon)  
• Bright Dead Star, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean)  
• The Essential Patricia A. McKillip, Patricia A. McKillip (Tachyon)  
• One Message Remains, Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp)  
• The Revelation Space Collection Volumes 1 & 2, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)  
• Crows and Silences, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean)  
• A Catalog of Storms, Fran Wilde (Fairwood)  

Magazine

• WINNER: Clarkesworld
• Asimov’s
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• F&SF
• Fiyah
• khōréō
• Lightspeed
• Reactor
• Strange Horizons
• Uncanny Magazine

Publisher

 (Tor Publishing Group and Subterranean Press have recused themselves from this category. Tor UK is an imprint of Pan Macmillan, not TPG.)

• WINNER: Orbit
• Angry Robot
• DAW
• Del Rey
• Gollancz
• Neon Hemlock
• Pan Macmillan/Tor UK
• Saga
• Solaris
• Tachyon

Editor

• WINNER: Neil Clarke
• John Joseph Adams
• Scott H. Andrews
• Ellen Datlow
• dave ring
• Jonathan Strahan
• Bogi Takács
• Wendy N. Wagner
• Fran Wilde & Julian Yap
• Sheila Williams

Artist

• WINNER: John Picacio
• Brom
• Rovina Cai
• Galen Dara
• Bob Eggleton
• Kathleen Jennings
• Alan Lee
• Shaun Tan
• Charles Vess
• Michael Whelan

Illustrated and Art Book

• WINNER: The Space Cat, Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford (First Second)  
• The Invisible Parade, Leigh Bardugo & John Picacio (Little, Brown)  
• Frank Frazetta: Fine Lines, Sara Frazetta & Arnie Fenner, eds., art by Frank Frazetta (Frazetta Girls)
• Starling House, Alix E. Harrow, art by Rovina Cai (Subterranean)  
• Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Paul Kidby (Harper; Doubleday UK)  
• Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, art by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Beehive)
• Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene Volumes 1-3, adapted by Rebecca K. Reynolds, art by Justin Gerard (Sky Turtle)
• Sunset at Zero Point, Simon Stålenhag (as Swedish Machines Free League Sweden; Saga US)  
• Faraway Dreaming, Ulla Thynell (Atthis Arts)
• Icons of the Fantastic: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature from the Korshak Collection, Amanda T. Zehnder & David M. Brinley, eds. (University of Delaware Press)  

Non-Fiction

• WINNER: Enshittification, Cory Doctorow (MCD)  
• The Outspoken and the Incendiary, Terry Bisson (PM)  
• Colourfields, Paul Kincaid (Briardene)
• Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling, Henry Lien (Norton)  
• Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, Susana M. Morris (Amistad)  
• Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World, Tavia Nyong’o (University of California Press)  
• Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet, Tochi Onyebuchi (Roxane Gay)  
• Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature, Becky Siegel Spratford, ed. (Saga)  
• Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, Richard Wolinsky, ed. (Tachyon)  
• Octavia E. Butler: H is for Horse, Chi-ming Yang (Oxford University Press)  

[end-mark]

The post Here Are the Winners of the 2026 Locus Awards appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations

Seven Deeply Unsettling Nautical Horror and Fantasy Novels

We’ve got mermaids, elder gods, ghost pirates, sunken cities, and more!

By Sam Reader

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Published on June 4, 2026

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The seas are dark, deep, and full of mystery. Older than much of the surrounding land (the Appalachian Mountains might be older, but that’s a different article), older than all life on Earth, oceans exert a primal allure over everyone who dares to explore the watery depths. Writers have always been drawn to the briny deep as well, finding inspiration for everything from high-seas adventure to terrifying stories of what lurks beneath the tides. As it can be difficult to navigate these busy waters at times, here are seven books about nautical journeys, and the mysteries and magic one might encounter above and below the roiling waves…

The Boatman by Alex Grecian

June James boards the Maria Calypso on her honeymoon. It’s a perfect moment, setting sail with her husband just as she’s finished the draft of her first major novel, the two of them joking and leaving their anxieties behind on land. Then the sinister man in the white suit poles his way alongside the boat, the captain orders a gun taken out of the ship’s safe to shoot him, and the situation suddenly takes an eerie, unnerving turn. The Boatman represents death, and as long as he’s chasing the Maria Calypso around the world, that means everyone on the boat might be safe from death—at least in the minds of the mentally deteriorating passengers. Grecian’s story of desperate people running from death is fueled by the sinister appearance of the Boatman, but it’s in the immortal passengers where the horror lies, as they begin stockpiling weapons, throwing all their resources into the cruise ship, and eventually resorting to more sinister means of slowing their relentless enemy down. It’s a terrifying exploration of immortality and an interesting twist on the “lost ship” genre, all centered on the terrifying image of a lone man on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington

Bullington’s vision of the Middle Ages lends itself to crass, grotesque places. His tale of 15^th-century Holland after a massive flood is no different. Beginning with a ram skeleton stuck to a moss-covered windmill and one of the protagonists contemplating how much he’ll enjoy his own hanging, Bullington introduces a new cast of ne’er-do-wells for his revisionist-Western brand of medieval misadventures, led by a con man on the trail of treasure in a flooded town. Aided by a murderous psychopath and an unwillingly indentured young woman with a talent for diving, the conniving Jan embarks on his doomed mission, one that’s filled with danger and treachery at every step even before they can reach the newly formed inland sea. While the abrasive and extreme nature of Bullington’s settings isn’t for everyone, the unusual balance between gothic imagery, alternate history, and noir that Bullington strikes here is perfect for a dark tale of dark deeds.

Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois

Lu Ortega is a distinguished officer in the Fleet tasked with a mission to retrieve a sacred artifact from a young ocean-dweller. Pearl is a merwoman entrusted with an important talisman significant to Agwe, the god of the sea, currently stuck as a mute land-dweller on the run from a cult that wants to forcibly marry her to a dictator. Nnenna is a pirate warlord known as “The Devil of the Deep,” scourge to the Fleet and currently the protector of Pearl and Agwe’s conch shell. Jean-Francois’ tale of conspiracy, corrupt religions, dead sea gods, and nautical intrigue plays out in quick chapters switching between POVs, each one flipping breathlessly to the next with the pace of a serial cliffhanger, but it’s in her complex characters where the book truly shines, with Lu’s conflict between duty, faith, and the discoveries he makes over the course of the novel, Pearl’s crisis of faith and the body horror of her “curse,” and Nnenna’s pirate swagger juxtaposed with her anxiety-riddled dreams and personal relationships.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers

A puppeteer named John Chandagnac is bound for Jamaica to reclaim his family’s honor when the boat is captured by pirates. Brought to an anarcho-syndicalist pirate haven in the Caribbean and rechristened with the name Jack Shandy, Chandagnac is plunged into a world of voudoun, alchemy, and the Satanic figure of the seas himself, Blackbeard. Powers’ classic adventure novel starts slow but gets weird very fast, as Shandy is forced to navigate competing sorcerers’ schemes, brushes with the undead, and a search for the fountain of youth. Once it gets going, On Stranger Tides turns into a swashbuckling dark fantasy adventure worthy of a matinee screen (and of course, it has served as the inspiration for a very loose film adaptation) with Powers’ customary eye towards adding real-world details—in this case, legends of the South Atlantic, folklore, and a surprisingly historical perspective on piratical political beliefs.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt

Amelia Harsh, famed adventurer and archaeologist, is putting together a crew. Their goal? Discover the lost city of Camlantis, a utopia sunk beneath the waters of the treacherous jungle of Liongeli. Aided by a motley assortment of pirates, criminals, mercenaries, and her eccentric robot companion Ironflanks, Harsh pilots a decommissioned submarine into the unknown. What begins as a pulp story (the second in a seven-book series) that starts out somewhere between Jules Verne and jungle adventure quickly morphs into a power struggle for the secrets within Camlantis, as shadowy governments, masked heroes, supervillains, and cultists converge on the lost kingdom and its dangerous technology. While some might be daunted by Hunt’s kitchen-sink approach to adventure and fantasy, the bombastic way he mashes genres together at high speeds creates a story that wears its influences clearly but transforms them into something unique and compelling.

Sacculina by Philip Fracassi

Jim, his ex-con brother Jack, his brother’s boisterous friend Chris, and their emotionally exhausted elderly father charter a boat for a fishing trip. When the wind and waves are too heavy, the boat’s captain tells them of a perfect fishing spot about an hour out, a deep section of ocean full of fish and unnaturally still. Sure enough, they find their fish, but also attract the attention of something else…something that soon makes its presence known and pulls the men into a desperate struggle for their lives. The sudden onslaught of violence, Fracassi’s exploration of the deep bonds between the men on the boat, and their sheer loneliness and isolation out on the open water make this book an uncomfortable read even before the body horror and nautical terrors kick in, turning a story of survival on the high seas into a deeply upsetting story of alien horrors.

Tidepool by Nicole Willson

On a business trip to the town of Tidepool, Henry Hamilton is enticed by the town’s wealthy matron Ada Oliver down into the basement, meets her daughter, sees something horrifying about her, and promptly disappears without a trace. Sorrow Hamilton, his sister, comes to Tidepool looking for Henry and begins her own series of encounters with the strange inhabitants of the town. While they do their best to get Sorrow to leave, Sorrow has her own agenda and the strange goings-on in Tidepool (including bodies washing up on the beach) do nothing to deter her. Willson’s belligerently rational heroine and the deadpan humor found in the descriptions of the town create an offbeat picture of Tidepool, a place where the general unnerving events, eccentric locals, and elder gods in the deep try their hardest to force a narrative, whether the protagonist wants to be a part of it or not.

While a complete list of works of nautical horror and fantasy would run as deep as the seas themselves, we hope this list offers some interesting places to dive in! And of course, please recommend your own favorites in the comments below.[end-mark]

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News The End of Oak Street

The End of Oak Street Trailer: Forget Traveling to Distant Islands; Dinosaurs Come to You

Sledgehammers very useful in The Legend of Zelda; perhaps less so against dinosaurs

By Molly Templeton

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Published on June 1, 2026

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Once upon a time, one had to leave home and travel to the distant Isla Nublar in order to find oneself faced with a rampaging T. rex. No more! No, nowadays, you just have to live in the wrong suburb, and the dinosaurs will come to you. Sort of. Really it seems like the quaint suburban neighborhood of The End of Oak Street has itself traveled somewhere. But the Platt family did not have to leave their house. All the comforts of home—and pets whose lives are most certainly about to be threatened—plus dinosaurs. Somehow. Somewhere. Somewhen.

Despite throwing some big dinosaur names into this trailer—you got your T. rex, you got your pterodactyls—Oak Street is still keeping some cards close to its chest. It’s clear that the Platts (played by Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, and Christian Convery) are going to figure some things out and fight back. It’s less clear whether anyone else survives, or if there is a boundary to their newly displaced neighborhood, or even which decade this peculiar “cosmic event” happens in. The signs are mostly giving ’80s: that little plastic desk organizer absolutely everyone had, the Superman sheets, the boom box. I also feel like McGregory’s shorts are too short, and his collars too dramatic, for this to be fully of our own moment. So perhaps we’ve got a period film as well as time travel as well as dinosaurs.

Sure, why not? The End of Oak Street is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake). It’s in theaters (and IMAX!) on August 14.[end-mark]

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Column SFF Bestiary

Deer-ly Beloved: Walt Disney’s Bambi

The film has been a staple of American childhood since 1942.

By Judith Tarr

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Published on June 1, 2026

Credit: Walt Disney Animation Studios

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Credit: Walt Disney Animation Studios

I have a reasonably high tolerance for cute. Kittens, puppies, I’m there. Funny cat videos, sweet dog videos, bring them on. Nesting cams, den cams. Baby animals—who doesn’t love Zooborns? Baby giraffes, baby hippos. Did you know a baby tapir looks like a watermelon? And baby rhinos are funny and playful, and they bounce?

And then there’s Disney’s Bambi.

The film has been a staple of American childhood since 1942. It’s based on a book by Austrian writer Felix Salten. I’ll have more to say about that next week, when I focus on the book and it’s very interesting author. What I will say here is that when people talk of Disneyfication, Bambi is a signal example.

Walt Disney had a dream. That dream was to take over the world of childhood, define and delineate it. He smoothed the hard edges of his sources. He simplified them. He reduced them to a few carefully curated basics.

Primary colors. Streamlined plots. Anthropomorphized animals. Cute—always cute. Big eyes, big heads, softened contours. In Bambi, one of the major secondary characters is supposedly a hare, a fluffy little fellow named Thumper. Thumper is always thumping with his big back foot. Because that’s his name, and that’s who he is.

I have seen an actual Austrian hare in an Alpine meadow. That thing was the size of a borzoi. It was anything but fluffy and cute. It was an archetype, an avatar. The power of nature, the image of Spring in lagomorphine form.

Bambi himself is presented repeatedly as the Prince of the Forest. In this world, deer are the rulers. All the other animals bow before them.

What we see through more than half of the film is an adorable little spotted creature who takes days to learn to walk, let alone run. His mother is a sweet-voiced, gentle being who well understands the dangers of the world, chief of which is Man. When Man comes into the forest, all creatures must flee. Man is the enemy. Man destroys.

There’s another Disney trope in here, the heavily sanitized romance. Faline the adorable blue-eyed girl fawn who giggles and simpers and teases. Faline is Bambi’s connection to the young of his kind, and their mothers appear to be friends.

He doesn’t meet any other fawns except Faline. When he encounters other males, they’re adults in full flight, running toward the Great Prince of the Forest who poses nobly on a high hill.

He’s Bambi’s father. Which explains why the whole forest welcomed Bambi and called him Prince. Bambi is his heir.

At the halfway mark, this bright world with its saccharine sweetness goes suddenly dark. Generations of children have known the trauma of that moment. We don’t see it, but we hear it. A single gunshot. Then Bambi is all alone, and his father appears to tell him that his mother can’t come back. They walk off together in the swirl of a spring blizzard.

That’s the Disney child’s experience of death and permanent loss. It turns around quickly. Everything circles back to the beginning, this time with human-caused forest fire and two fawns instead of one, and Bambi on the high hill, posing nobly next to his father. Fade to credits, with sweet music.

Bambi’s infancy lasts well beyond the norm for deer. Tiny spotted fawn Bambi nearly starves when winter comes, because all the forage is gone and evidently there’s no mother’s milk to sustain him.

In the early spring he’s still a spotted baby, but when his mother is gone and winter ends (with lengthy musical interlude), suddenly he’s a handsome four-point buck. There’s no gradual growth. He’s one, then he’s the other.

He’s learned things and suffered loss, but it’s a fast-forward rather than a process. As Friend Owl intones, “I see you’ve traded in your spots for a pair of antlers.”

Then it’s all about a color-saturated version of spring. Animals pairing off adorably, two by two. Being twitterpated. Falling in love with love.

Life goes on. Sorrow doesn’t last. Winter always ends. Love conquers all.

It’s comforting. It’s reassuring. What it’s not, in spite of appearances, is simple.

The first great loss is personal for Bambi. The second is universal. Man’s campfire runs wild. The animals flee, huddling together on a single island, while the world burns down around them.

That’s the context of 1942. A world at war, Disney’s own country dragged into it in December of 1941, and years of sacrifice ahead.

And that’s one of the reasons this film is a classic. Bambi’s world at its heart isn’t either safe or simple. It defaults to hope. But even in Disney’s airbrushed version, with its overwhelmingly cute animals, that hope is fought for, and hard won.[end-mark]

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News What to Watch

What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Chase the Minimalist Backrooms With These Maximalist Genre Movies

Plus: A sea shanty band with a secret and Mina the Hollower

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on May 29, 2026

Screenshot: A24

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Screenshot: A24

Hey all! Molly is out this week fighting dragons or some damn thing (I don’t keep track or bother to ask), so I’m stepping in to guide you through the weekend as best as possible.

This weekend, we’ve got a horror movie you need to see, a few genre films that will help you scare away the liminal nightmares caused by that movie, and a video game from another time that may just be the best video game you’ll play this year. Still not convinced tonight’s going to be a good night? Then may I interest you in increasingly specific obsessions and the story of a sea shanty singing band with a dark secret? Ah, that’s the spirit. So don’t forget to call your reps, and let’s dive in.

Nobody Can Be Told What Is In the Backrooms

Do you know the horror of having to go back to school after hours to get that book out of your locker that you lost? What about the terror of having to work late in a retail store doing inventory after the employees and customers are gone? Can you relate to the dread of discovering that you have been living and working in the shadows of a seemingly infinite series of hallways and rooms seemingly disconnected from reality even as they expose something about your crumbling world? In its own way, Backrooms capitalizes on those all-too-familiar anxieties.

The on-screen story of the new movie Backrooms (a man discovers his furniture store is connected to a seemingly infinite series of mysterious rooms) is really only half the story. The film’s behind-the-scenes origins are arguably just as compelling. Based on a creepypasta post about liminal spaces that you can accidentally “noclip” into, the Backrooms concept was eventually turned into a successful series of YouTube videos by Kane Parsons. Now, at only 20 years old, Parsons is the latest online content creator to take their second screen vision to the big screen.

And by all accounts, the full-length Backrooms movie is every bit as ominous, terrifying, and visually inspired as its source material. The minimalist, liminal nature of the Backrooms idea has long spoken to those who harbored a silent fear of the sterile spaces that have seemingly become more prolific in the age of private equity, disappearing design identities, and dying institutions. It’s also yet another recent example of a burgeoning modern golden age of horror led by creators from non-traditional origins. See it in a room with fluorescent lighting if you can.

Backrooms is now playing in theaters.

Maximalist Genre Movies For Maximum Enjoyment

If the Severance-esque minimalist hallways of Backrooms get you craving a little color, a few explosions, and a slice of gonzo insanity, then here are a few maximalist genre films to add to your watchlist:

• Speed Racer – Perhaps the Wachowskis’ greatest film, Speed Racer is certainly one of the greatest assaults on the senses ever crafted by human hands. Deliriously colorful and over-the-top in every technical and spiritual way, it’s the movie lesser minds are trying to make when they claim to bring a classic cartoon to life.

• House (1977) – Inspired by the ideas and fears of director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s young daughter, House (Hausu) is quite possibly the strangest and most wonderful horror movie ever made. Every frame of this cult classic masterpiece is designed to make you utter “What the hell?” even as you gradually accept that nothing approaching traditional explanations will ever grace your weary conscience. Also one of the better movies where a girl is eaten by a piano.

• Mandy – Many modern directors are trying to weaponize the generational weirdness of Nicolas Cage. Few have ever done it half as well as Panos Cosmatos in Mandy. Imagine if every heavy metal album cover merged into a single entity, came to life, and burst into our reality while riding a violent spectrum of colors as they are heralded by the sound of every noise playing at once. That’s roughly what it’s like to watch this revenge story that somehow finds new places to go when you think it couldn’t possibly go new places.

• Phantom of the Paradise – There are, in this writer’s opinion, too few horror musicals. Then again, when you consider that director Brian De Palma arguably perfected the concept in 1974, the hesitation to follow in those footsteps becomes that much more understandable. This story of a modern(ish) day phantom whose masterpiece is stolen by a slimy record producer is a gift for those of us who live in the Venn diagram of absurdity between musicals and horror.

• Escape From The 21st Century – One of the most underrated sci-fi films in recent memory, Escape from the 21st Century is also one of the most unabashedly maximalist films you’ll ever need to brace yourself for. It tells the story of three young men who mysteriously gain the power to travel through time simply by sneezing, and use (often unwillingly) that ability to create colorful chaos through time and space. Imagine if Everything Everywhere All at Once consumed all the acid that has ever and will ever be produced.

Master and Commander: A Long Read About a Sea Shanty Band With a Secret

Author Peter Ward’s longread story Master and Commander is not technically a genre tale. It is, however, the kind of epic bit of online journalism that reminds you the internet isn’t always a terrible place and occasionally lends a voice to stories that would otherwise go untold despite being truly remarkable.

It’s the story of a traveling sea shanty band that captures the hearts and minds of the residents of a small Welsh town where they become something of a sensation. Slowly, though, the enamored residents begin to realize that there’s something about the band’s manager that doesn’t seem quite right. To say any more would be a crime, but it’s a must-read for fans of excellent writing and small-town mysteries.

Mina the Hollower Is A Modern Game Boy Color Masterpiece

In 2014, developer Yacht Club Games released Shovel Knight: a throwback to 8-bit action-adventure video games that has gone on to join many shortlists of the greatest such games ever made. While Yacht Club has expanded Shovel Knight in the years since then (and released a few spin-offs of the title), fans have patiently waited for their proper follow-up to the iconic retro experience. Well, Mina the Hollower is finally here, and it’s somehow even better than the years of hype could have prepared us for.

Visually and mechanically, Mina the Hollower is a tribute to Game Boy Color games like The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. Functionally, it’s actually a very Zelda-like title with a little Dark Souls and Castlevania thrown in for flavor. But much like Shovel Knight, Mina the Hollower is so much more than a bit of retro aesthetics flattery. It’s a deep, emotionally resonant, and sometimes even surprisingly scary adventure game that examines the evolution of that very concept even as it inches the genre forward. It may very well be the best game of 2026, and it will almost certainly become quite a few people’s next obsession.

Engage in Hypedrive Overfixation

Finally, if you’re looking for something lovely to interrupt the occasional bit of inevitable doomscrolling this weekend, may I recommend our own Hyperdrive Overfixation series?

As curated by our own social media manager, Hyperdrive Overfixation offers people a platform to sound off on the incredibly specific subjects that just mean the world to them. Examples so far include the argument that Star Wars would have benefited from a throuple storyline, why you should consider Red Dead Redemption 2 to be a horse girl masterpiece, and a deep dive into the anatomy of mermen. Give them a watch when you get the chance. They’re some of the best things we do here.[end-mark]

The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Chase the Minimalist <i>Backrooms</i> With These Maximalist Genre Movies appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Backrooms

Backrooms Is the Best Nightmare You’ll Ever Have

Liminal spaces are excellent for horror, but it’s even better when the liminal space IS the horror.

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on May 29, 2026

Credit: A24

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Credit: A24

The highly anticipated feature Backrooms movie has finally revealed itself, appearing as though it was always… there, waiting, a sickly fluorescent light flickering behind a door that was always locked until today. I’m going to try to sum the film up in a couple of completely non-spoiler paragraphs, and then go into some very light thematic spoilers for a little bit, but if I think I have to give anything really vital away I’ll warn you as we go.

Backrooms is everything I was hoping it would be. It’s creepy and weird, but based just enough in solid reality—at least at first—that there’s room for the creepiness and weirdness to grow. The basic premise is the same creepypasta that has been popular for a few years now: A person discovers a seemingly endless secret realm of empty rooms, many of which make no architectural sense, some empty, some piled with old furniture, some with stairs that go nowhere or doors that won’t open.

Once discovered, the space seems to exert an almost mystical pull on the person—they need to explore it, even as it becomes clear that it’s really not safe.

Liminal spaces are excellent for horror, of course, but I’m really, really excited that this is a movie where the liminal space IS the horror. The thing that creates the sense of dread, and even terror, is the space itself. The emptiness, the wrong-ness, gets to you long before you notice that one of the shadows in the corner looks darker than it should, or you hear footsteps in another room. If you love the creepypasta, I think you’ll love the movie—but also this is simply a great work of modern horror that stands on its own. You don’t need to know anything about the lore going in.

I think writer Will Soodik and director Kane Parsons take this premise in a lot of gorgeous directions. It’s genuinely tense, and scary, and uncanny, and every time I thought they’d gone as deep as they could, they found a new layer. The camera work is superb; cinematographer Jeremy Cox doesn’t use over-the-top Dutch angles, but things seem tilted enough to never feel quite stable, and a lot of the footage is grainy and nauseating even when nothing is technically “wrong”. The carpeting in the room dulls the sound, but the emptiness makes every sound ECHO. This is the kind of movie that will get into your dreams even if it doesn’t scare you during its runtime—but I think chances are high that it will scare you during its runtime. The sense of dread is instantaneous, the camerawork builds that dread without relying too much on cheap jump scares (there are jump scares, but they’re not cheap), the humor and meta references work beautifully, and, like a lot of horror right now, this movie has something to say. Like a lot of horror, this movie is about trauma (but not an easy, pat way), and even more than that, it’s about loneliness.

Are there people out there who deserve to be alone?

The cast is small—the better to isolate them in a yellow-lit room with chairs that don’t make sense. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Clark, a depressed furniture store owner who stumbles into a liminal space at work, and finds it taking over his entire mind. Renate Reinsve is Dr. Mary Kline, a therapist who’s recently published a successful self-help book. Lukita Maxwell is Kat, Clark’s employee, and Finn Bennett  is Bobby, her boyfriend, who owns a video camera. And then there’s Mark Duplass as Phil, who plays a tiny but pivotal role.

From here on I will get into very light spoilers after telling you once again that if you’re enjoying our current wave of excellent horror you’ll probably want to get out and see this in a theater with other people if you can. So if you want to know absolutely nothing, skedaddle back through whatever uncanny portal brought you here, or click here to skip past the spoiler section.

Now if you clocked my mention of “video camera” there a second ago: Backrooms is set in 1990. I didn’t know that going in, and it takes a few minutes to become obvious, but it’s the best choice for this film. The furniture, the cars, the clothing, the hairstyles, all of it works. Unlike the director of this film, I can remember 1990, and I think this movie gets everything exactly right. Also, as with Kyle Edward Ball’s 2023 Skinamarink, people who were young and vulnerable in the 1990s might get an extra jolt of queasiness from all the cultural clutter that the movie takes for granted.

But what the setting does that’s brilliant is: remove cellphones from the world, and along with them any mention of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Insta, Snapchat, Youtube, Vine—all the ways that ordinary people would record and chart the Backrooms are still at least 15 years in the future. If you try to tell someone about the Backrooms, you’re going to sound mentally disturbed. If you want to record them, you’re gonna have to bring a video camera, and it’s gonna to be a video camera you could use in 1990. Even the ones the Blair Witch kids took into the woods were sleeker and easier to carry.  

The other thing this does is link the film directly to the A E S T H E T I C movement of Vaporwave from 15 years back, that amorphous burst of nostalgia for a made-up mashup of the early ‘80s and early ‘90s, that as far as I could tell was created by people who weren’t born in time to experience either, and gleefully swirled them together into a cultural Orange Julius.

There are moments here where people stumble into a room that echoes one of those abandoned, flooded malls full of fish. There are rooms that look to be riffing on gym pools, beach cabanas, homes at various socioeconomic levels. At all times the film feels like a dream, and operates increasingly on dream logic. As a result, everything makes sense as you watch, but the further I’ve gotten away from it the more the images have bubbled up and struck me as nauseating. (What I’m really excited about it watching this sucker at home when I can pause it and look for details.) But on first watch, every moment of the film felt true, like a dream I had as a kid and never quite shook. Even the one moment where I thought the film might be veering off-course went in an unexpected new direction, and restored my trust in the movie before it ever fully broke it.

Liminality in anthropology and the study of religion is pretty straightforward: a liminal period is the time between the beginning and end of a rite of passage. If a young person has to go through a particular ordeal to be considered an adult, then that ordeal is a kind of liminal space. A young kid studying for a Confirmation or Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony is in an in-between state that can be considered liminal: when they start their classes, they’re a child; when they complete the ritual with their family and community they are, in the eyes of their religion, a rational adult with the responsibility to behave rationally. A couple on their wedding day are in a liminal period until the officiant declares them married, or they kiss, or possibly, depending on the culture, until they’ve consummated the marriage. Certain kinds of holidays can be liminal periods—Samhain, Dia de Muertos, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Yom Kippur—all acting to guide people from one part of the year, with specific rules and guidelines, into another.

On the internet, a liminal space is a physical space, an empty room or hallway or storage facility that, for whatever reason, feels uncanny. Maybe there are no windows, maybe things seem a little too symmetrical, maybe the heights of the ceiling makes no sense, maybe there’s a small door. It can be anything from just a room all the way up to a sort of M.C. Escher or Piranesi-esque space.

Since Backrooms is set in 1990, when only a certain kind of military wonk knew of this thing that would become “the internet”, the movie is able to start fresh and sweep all the creepypasta clutter, fun as it is, out one of those weird small doors. Much like with my other recent favorite Hokum, there’s no winking. Ohm Bauman never mentions Stephen King or Stanley Kubrick—he just has to figure out how to survive in a haunted hotel. Clark can’t hop onto TikTok to figure out how to navigate a Backroom. The people in the film have never heard the term “the backrooms”. They’ve never been in a Discord chat. There is no preexisting lore for them to riff on, no well of knowledge to use as a shield. They think they understand reality, then they know they don’t.

You know, horror.

The other choice Parsons and Soodik make, which I think might be the biggest key to the film’s success, is that they explain nothing. We don’t know why the Backrooms exist, we don’t know how, we don’t know how many there are or how many people know about them. The Backrooms are simply a nightmare with their own rules, and you either survive or you don’t. I know there are going to be more of these films, and I dearly hope that they don’t explain all of this horrific magic away.

OK, I’m done even lightly spoiling things, you can come back! From here on in it’s a personal essay.

After the movie two profound things happened. First, my friend and I went to a diner, and I descended into their basement to use the bathroom, and this happened:

Second, after I told my friend a little bit about my childhood, she said “you were raised by liminal spaces.” And thinking about it that way feels strange, but she’s right: I was.

My first few years were spent deep in the woods halfway between Pittsburgh and the West Virginia border, in a town that wasn’t so much a town as much as a blinking yellow light at a gas station (the gas station was also a pizza joint, and you could buy weed there) where the accents were Appalachian in one direction, and full nasal Rust Belt Pittsburgh in the other. My family was Pre-Vatican II Catholic, my neighbors were tongues-speaking Pentecostal.

I spent a year living in a hotel, which once school let out that meant I was running wild through empty rooms, storage spaces, a ballroom no one used anymore, the shuttered restaurant, the new bar as it was being built. As my parents desperately tried to salvage the place (their business partner, uhhh, well, departed earlier and wealthier than they expected him to, let’s say), I was left largely to my own devices, and those devices involved elaborate games played around piles of old furniture and busted TVs that no one had thrown out yet.

After that, when my dad returned to his old job of managing malls—well, you can see where this is going, can’t you? The next few years worth of free time were spent in the echoing back hallways of malls, the echoing main thoroughfares of malls after closing. Empty spaces where the quiet became a physical thing to navigate, dark, shadowy corners, flickering fluorescent lights, broken detritus and stuff no one liked enough to buy.

Which is my roundabout way of saying that Backrooms made me homesick.

I loved the way this movie made me queasy, I loved all of its weird choices and unsettling corners, and I can’t wait to stumble back through that totally normal-looking wall.[end-mark]

The post <em>Backrooms</em> Is the Best Nightmare You’ll Ever Have appeared first on Reactor.

Books Seeds of Story

Vegetable Neighborhoods, Clan Wars, and Hunting Strategies: Zoë Schlanger’s The Light Eaters

What the cutting-edge science of plant behavior and intelligence can teach us about the world and our place in it…

By Ruthanna Emrys

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Published on June 2, 2026

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Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there.

This week, I cover Zoë Schlanger’s The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. It describes the increasing scientific evidence for plants as active organisms that respond to—and shape—their environments every bit as much as animals. Plant senses and plant communication were once treated as nonsense, but are now helping us understand the ecosystems on which we depend.

What It’s About

When I was younger, there was a song with a chorus that began “I’ve heard the screams of the vegetables…” It was a joke, of course. Who would imagine that plants could feel you plucking their fruits, or care? So it’s fascinating to join Zoë Schlanger in a lab, where researchers are studying Arabidopsis responses to touch. Rub a leaf, suggesting possible predatory threat, and the whole plant lights up with electrical signals. As quickly as you can stub your toe, the whole organism knows what’s happening. Following this kind of signal, plants may produce chemicals to make their leaves bitter or sticky excretions to gum up caterpillar mouths. They also warn each other through airborne chemicals. Plants that haven’t yet dealt with a pest pay attention to these signals, and start proactively preparing for attack.

Lest you find yourself now feeling guilty about that carrot, many plants have mutualistic relationships with things that eat them. They work to look, smell, and taste attractive to reproductive symbionts, from humans to wasps—not only over generations but in the moment. Nasa poissoniana raises stamens at whatever rate bees have been visiting, adjusting when they grow more frequent or neglectful.

Initial resistance to these findings stemmed from backlash against a bit of ’70s pseudoscience titled The Secret Life of Plants. The book was responsible for a big houseplant fad, and also for making scientists very shy of vegetal intelligence claims. (A similar dynamic delayed scientific acceptance of airborne rather than droplet-based transmission in the early years of COVID; apparently it sounded too much like miasma theory.) But the tide is turning. Current work doesn’t suggest that plants have preferences between rock and classical music, but they do redirect roots toward the sound of running water, and produce tannins in response to recordings of chewing caterpillars.

Not only can plants hear and communicate, but they also have some degree of vision. This makes sense after a moments’ thought: a plant that grows toward light can clearly sense it, and it would be odd if they didn’t have a way to pick up the presence of their solar food. At that point, there’s an evolutionary advantage to sensing more details about that food, and using it to learn about other aspects of the environment. Many species, it turns out, use changes in light passing through leaves to recognize and respond to other plants. There’s also at least one species, the chameleon vine, that changes its leaves to blend in with whatever plants appear around it. Explanations vary (and all are pretty cool), but at least one study has shown it doing this with plastic plants, suggesting detailed visual processing.

As we already know from Entangled Life, plants are terrifically social across species and kingdoms. Mycelial networks play a core role in their lives, trading nutrients and passing messages. So do animals. But plants also have relationships with each other. Like animals, they often share and protect kin more than strangers. Closely-related sunflowers point in different directions to avoid blocking each other’s light; many species crowd out the roots of unrelated plants while sharing high-nutrient patches with siblings and cousins. One pictures them like great Italian Renaissance families, plotting for control of the nitrogen. Schlanger quotes J.B.S. Haldane: “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.” These findings have serious implications for agriculture—you can get considerably more yield from the same rice crop with just the right level of genetic diversity.

But plants also cooperate across species, and do better in richly varied “neighborhoods.” Schlanger touches on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s research, showing that beautiful-to-humans flower combinations also attract more pollinators by growing together—and they put more energy into flowering when they have this opportunity. Plants change height, leaves, roots, to best fit the communities around them. They offer more carbon to fungi that share more phosphorus (and vice versa), but can also maintain relationships that balance only over many seasons.

Vegetal interaction doesn’t look much like animal behavior—unless you watch a speeded-up film of a vine seeking a good climbing stem. But they can do things that animals can’t, as well. Their chemical adaptability goes far beyond ours, allowing orchids to tailor their scents to available pollinators, sunflowers to discourage nearby seedlings, and many species to fight off a variety of predators. Ironically, modern human cultivation often discourages variation and selects for qualities that undermine natural pest resistance. It’s time, Schlanger argues, that we took plant behavior seriously in its own right, and learned to work with it rather than against.

Buy the Book

The Light Eaters

Zoë Schlanger

Buy Book

The Light Eaters

Zoë Schlanger

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
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• Target

I’m a big fan of active plants. Show me a B-movie anthropophagus green monster, and I shiver in delight. I’m sympathetic to anything that speaks and acts for itself, when people expected it to remain conveniently passive.

I’m also sympathetic to the idea that living in this world is a complex challenge, requiring complex behavior for anything larger than a bacterium. (Stay tuned, no doubt, for a book about the complex social lives of bacteria. Honestly, the first primitive cell to take in the first mitochondrial organism probably has a lot to share, a love story for the aeons.) Plants are large, multicellular, and face the same basic challenges as us—sessility should be no more a constraint on their intelligence than it is on human babies. But what an alien intelligence it must be! Slow movement, shape-changing rather than traveling, processing distributed across the body and perhaps beyond, into the fuzzy boundaries of entwined roots and mycelia.

So I’m excited by the scientific results and arguments that Schlanger shares here. But I’m frustrated by the way she sometimes presents those arguments. Debate and disagreement are natural parts of research. Stubborn resistance to new scientific paradigms is a real thing. But that resistance is practically the only narrative that Schlanger has for scientific disagreement. Every cutting-edge researcher is risking their reputation, every failure to get an NSF grant is an indication of skepticism, every young scientist fears being ostracized for admitting to belief in plant intelligence. It’s true that the Society for Plant Neurobiology (now the Society of Plant Signaling and Behavior) picked their original name to make a sharp point, and received a fair amount of blowback. But resistance hasn’t been one-size-fits-all, and Schlanger treats fringe theorists, well-meaning researchers whose experiments fail to replicate, and tenured eminences with the same scripted brush.

This feels like a minor point, but it’s also incredibly frustrating as someone who cares how people think about science. The idea of resistance followed by paradigm shift isn’t wrong, but it isn’t complete either. And this kind of simplification is what leads vaccine deniers to think “scientists disagree” just makes them brave mavericks—that the preponderance of evidence doesn’t matter, and that truth is the polar opposite of consensus. Schlanger’s not doing that, but she’s feeding it unnecessarily. A lot of her mavericks look less like Galileo and more like one faction among many trying to hash out the interpretation of exciting new results. I’ve been in that room, it was just that we were arguing about the right framework for studying reconstructive memory. Nobody ostracized us; they didn’t even usually schedule us for separate sessions.

The new results really are exciting all on their own. Combined with The Sounds of Life, Is a River Alive?, An Immense World, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Entangled Life, they add to my increasing sense that our world is an interconnected place of thriving awareness, connection, and communication—and that we are on the verge of dramatic breakthroughs in how we participate.

The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories

Growing Together. Hey solarpunks! We’ve written about regenerative agriculture and the death of monocultures—but wouldn’t farming be even cooler if it involved mediating relationships between plant neighborhoods, or using plant behavior findings to build the best cooperative vegetable gardens? That is, gardens where the vegetables cooperate with each other. What about sending translators into the food forest to figure out why the spicebush isn’t thriving?

At the end of the book, Schlanger also brings up the Rights of Nature movement centered in Is a River Alive? She mentions a couple of failed efforts, in particular the Ojibwe effort to give legal standing to wild rice. But the tide is shifting on this as well—and it seems like it ought to make a difference if the rice can testify.

Talking to Trees. Every time I write, lately, I imagine communication with non-human life. Not just extraterrestrials, with whom I’ve always been obsessed, but octopuses, ravens, fungally-networked swamps—and plants. It’s the attitude shift that most appeals. We’d have to slow down, to think about what a redwood is likely to say, and what we could possibly say in return that it would care about.

What would a future look like where we could have these conversations? It probably wouldn’t be much like talking to another human, or even a whale. But we already have longstanding relationships with these organisms, which have shaped us as much as we’ve shaped them. Grains changed the shape of the human jaw; human cultivation changed the shape of grains. There’s a mutual aspect to domestication—much as dogs benefited from our trashpits and then from hunting with us, grasses like rye evolved to blend into our early wheat fields. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about longstanding traditions of plant communication, and the evidence for their value. Technology for translating plants’ chemical, electrical, and acoustic communication could add its own layer to those connections.

About That Mean Green Mother… Yeah, I’m still not tired of triffids. We could—and should—use new findings about plant capabilities to imagine how those abilities might be turned against… us. Da-da-dum!

New Growth: What Else to Read

Schlanger quotes Sue Burke’s Semiosis, in which humans submit to alien plants, and Ursula Le Guin’s “‘The Author of the Acacia Seeds’ and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics.” Both are great. She also recommends the poetry of Báyò Akómoláfé, a Yoruba poet of interspecies interconnection.

I’ve recently been introduced to Tractor Beam, an SF magazine focused on “soilpunk.” They’re publishing cool stories that aren’t like anything else. I particularly liked T.K. Rex’s “Like a Skeleton in Desert Sand”—not actually related to plant communication, but how often do you see stories about the future of paleontology?

If you want dangerous plants more recent than Little Shop of Horrors (Da-doo!), Mira Grant’s Overgrowth and Jenn Lyons’ Green & Deadly Things are recent favorites. The former is an alien invasion in the tradition of Audrey II and the triffids; the latter is epic fantasy and, unexpectedly, a strong critique of the Jedi Order.

Probably that bacteria book I’ll eventually cover will be Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World looks like an interesting take on multi-kingdom intelligence. Riley Black’s When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution’s Greatest Romance covers our early symbiosis.

Do you sing to your plants? Or listen to them? Tell us about it in the comments![end-mark]

The post Vegetable Neighborhoods, Clan Wars, and Hunting Strategies: Zoë Schlanger’s <i>The Light Eaters</i> appeared first on Reactor.