In numerous forms of media, the apocalypse provides people with an excuse to surrender to their primal instincts. In the Mad Max franchise, everyone fights over resources using tricked-out vehicles, while Snowpiercer depicts the lower class on a train having to eat bugs to survive. HBO’s The Last of Us isn’t as fantastical as those properties, but it’s still got plenty to say about humanity and what becomes of it after society collapses. David’s group, for example, resorts to eating humans to survive the cold winters in Colorado. Season 2 takes things a step further by introducing a cult full of religious fanatics who have no qualms about gutting their enemies.

At first, the Seraphites don’t seem so bad, with the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF, ambushing them while they peacefully make their way to their new home. However, as The Last of Us Season 2 progresses, it becomes clear that the Seraphites are every bit as dangerous as the WLF and answer to a strange figure who appears in art all over Seattle.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II video game!

The Seraphites Have Their Own Way of Doing Things in The Last of Us

When Ellie and Dina arrive in Seattle, they stumble across the bodies of a group of Seraphites. Since they don’t have any guns and there are children among them, Ellie takes the scene as more evidence that Abby and her group have to go. Visiting the WLF outpost changes things, though, because the two girls stumble upon WLF soldiers with their guts spilling out and the words “Feel Her Love” written in blood on the wall, making it clear the Seraphites aren’t just retaliating but fighting in someone’s name.

The actions of the WLF’s leader, Isaac, only pour fuel on the fire because, while he’s a disturbed individual, he knows what it’s like to subjugate people and still doesn’t have any problem torturing Seraphites, whom he refers to as “Scars.” The conflict between the two groups clearly dates back several years, and while the details surrounding it are murky at best, there is mention of a treaty in The Last of Us Season 2 that’s no longer in place. So, at some point, the groups met up and came to some kind of understanding, but all that went out the window, and it’s hard to believe the “her” the Seraphites talk about didn’t have something to do with that.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Shows Why Video Game Adaptations Can’t Please Fans]

The Seraphites Feel More Than One Person’s Love in The Last of Us Season 2

Exploring more of Seattle allows Dina and Ellie to come across more Seraphite propaganda. They notice symbols and portraits of a white woman who is seemingly the group’s prophet. However, Season 2’s finale throws that theory for a loop by showing a different art piece that portrays a Black woman as the prophet, with Ellie even going as far as to ask, “Is there more than one?” The show doesn’t explore the topic any further because Ellie has bigger fish to fry, but Season 3 is sure to dive into the Seraphite lore, especially during the attack on the group’s island.

While next season is sure to adapt some of the major Seraphite moments from The Last of Us Part II, things are going to be different because there’s only one prophet in the game. She dies before Ellie arrives in Seattle, sparking an all-out war between the Seraphites and the WLF. The show may have events play out the same, but rather than have the elders assume control of the group, it will opt to have another person fill the role of prophet or even build different factions. How that alters the course of Abby’s story remains to be seen, but, given her appearance in the theater in the finale, it’s entirely possible that the new prophet has a mean streak and won’t think twice about wiping out the WLF when they come knocking on her door.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you catch Ellie’s line about there being more than one Seraphite prophet in The Last of Us Season 2? How do you think the change will affect Season 3’s story?

The post The Last of Us Made a Surprising Change to One Major Character With Just One Line appeared first on ComicBook.com.

WARNING: Spoilers for Smile and Smile 2 ahead.

The Smile franchise has quickly become one of the latest horror franchises to find success, grow legs, and terrify audiences in recent years. It spawned a sequel, released in 2024, that helped plant seeds for the future third entry in the franchise. It’ll also raised the stakes from one victim to many by exponentially upping the number of witnesses to the final murder, putting more people at risk than we’ve seen in either movie up to this point. Does this indicate a skyrocketing body count? A possible panic in the streets? Or is it an open door full of failure by the minds behind the franchise? While difficult to broach, we’ve seen this type of plot change sink many a horror movie in previous years. Some of these horror projects went from the great to the disappointing very quickly, and we’re hoping Smile doesn’t follow suit.

The ending of Smile 2 sees the main heroine, pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), take the stage for her big show at the Herald Square Garden and is soon left horrified after realizing the events of her day were an illusion created by the Smile entity (or “Smiler”) that has tormented victims in both films. In front of the massive crowd, she ends up confronted by the monster and gets possessed. After a few beats, she turns, smiling at the audience, and brutally stabs herself in the eye with her microphone.

It’s not only a far more brutal demise than Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) got in the first movie, but also dooms everyone watching Skye’s concert during the slaying.

In Good Company

Smile is right at home with similar movies released in the past decade. It Follows creates a similar tone for its story, where an unknown creature steadily follows its cursed victim until they are dead. Other similar films include Truth or Dare in 2018 and The Ring in 2002, adapting the original Japanese films and books. Both movies feature a seemingly invincible supernatural force that moves to kill its victim within a time frame. The Smile Entity acts as a parasite, wearing its victims down and feeding on them before moving to the next victim, similar to The Ring‘s Samara Morgan, who kills her victims 7 days after viewing her cursed video cassette. The only way to avoid your fate is to copy and show the videotape to someone else.

[RELATED – 7 Movies to Watch After Smile 2]

The Ring‘s third installment in 2017 is where fans of Smile seriously should take note. Much like Smile 2, Rings takes the rules set in the original film and expands them to affect a larger group of victims. In Rings, the cursed video from the original story ends up going viral and spreads through email. A similar thing happened in Truth or Dare back in 2018, where Lucy Hale’s Olivia uploads a video extending her game to everybody online and thus buying her more time to survive.

Smile 3 Needs to Pay Attention to Failed Franchises

With an entire crowd of victims created in Smile 2, any potential third entry will have to navigate these waters while keeping its predecessors in mind. Both Rings and Truth or Dare suffered critically and financially, crafting open-ended finales that played on the possibility of a sequel. Critics slammed Blumhouse Productions, calling it a “backwards stumble” for the company on the heels of Get Out or Happy Death Day. But Rings seemed to be hit harder by criticism, with only an 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some called it a “botch job” and complained it rehashed old plot points while undermining the mythology established in the original films.

Both films felt flat and seemingly dashed any hopes for a sequel, unless you want to think about Fantasy Island as a pseudo-Truth or Dare sequel. Most won’t go for that, so the pressure is on for the filmmakers behind Smile to either hit the landing with its plot, taking the larger group of victims and using it to grow the franchise, instead of rehashing the first two films.

This extends to the promotion of the film, which also represents a stumble for Rings after the trailer gave away its big plot twist at the end of the film. It’s a road map for what to avoid when you’re making a new horror franchise; raising the stakes and lifting the bar for a sequel warrants a lot of care and attention, with fans always frothing at the mouth and waiting to unload if they’re left unhappy.

What Can Fans Expect From Smile 3?

Smile and Smile 2 director Parker Finn seems aware of this and revealed he has already started to work on the third entry, revealing the depth he seems willing to take the franchise.

“There was information I had for myself that wasn’t expressed in the first film that I took the opportunity to bring into the new one, so what Smile 2 is doing is showing us new things,” Finn told SFX Magazine. “We felt like we’d uncovered the mystery in the first one, but we’ve maybe only scooped a single glass of water out of the ocean.”

Finn also echoed this during a chat with Collider on a potential third movie.

“I think there are a lot of interesting roads that any future Smile could go down. For me, I love all the stuff that goes bump in the night, and all the really frightening things of the big concept of Smile and the Smiler,” Finn told the outlet. “But really, for me, Smile is a vehicle to tell really intense and hopefully thoughtful character stories, and so I’d wanna make sure, regardless of if more than one person might have it, that we still find a way to really invest intimacy into the storytelling. That’s super important to me. But I think there are some really interesting tricks still up the sleeves of Smile.”

So it is safe to say that Smile 3 has a long road to travel before it earns the same praise as its predecessors. Fans are sure to flock to see the film when it is finally released, but its success and future rely on avoiding the pitfalls of the past.

Smile 2 and the original film are available to stream on Paramount+, with the original film still holding a 79 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the sequel improving on that, with critics calling it a success and praising star Naomi Scott. But the sins of those past films that earned comparisons, and the responses from some critics who felt the sequel closed the door on the franchise perfectly.

Will Smile 3 be a success, or is it destined to fall flat like Rings and other similar projects? Should the Smile franchise make a jump to a weekly TV format? Let us know in the comments.

The post Could Smile 3 Make Similar Mistakes as Another “Cursed” Horror Franchise? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Though Wednesday Addams isn’t one for big displays of emotion, Wednesday‘s horror fans can rejoice! In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, show creators Al Gough and Miles Millar teased what’s to come in the new season of the hit Netflix show, which premieres this August. Their big promise? Wednesday will be going even darker and lean more into the horror aspect of the show’s horror-comedy tone. While Millar and Gough are well aware of Wednesday‘s broad, family audience appeal, the show’s second season will push the envelope with its fear factor. The upped horror element reflects the creator’s wish to up the stakes and sense of danger in the world of Wednesday.

“There’s some moments which are definitely horror movie-worthy,” Millar teased. “We have that in Season 1, but I think this season there are moments that are very intense, I’ll say.” Wednesday Season 1 had its fair share of bite, Gough and Millar are doubling down to bring horror fans a more scream-worthy Season 2 as they evolve the show.

Gough and Millar Promise More Frights in Wednesday Season 2

In addition to more straight “horror” moments in Season 2, Gough and Millar teased more of everything that made Wednesday such a hit when it debuted in November 2022 on Netflix.

“We certainly set out to really stretch ourselves and stretch what the show could do and see where our characters could go,” Millar said. “The last thing you want is people to be disappointed having waited for so long. We really want to ensure that the show is loaded with surprises and comedy and action, and that they see the characters they love, but also introduce new ones.”

We’re not sure yet exactly how these new characters — played by Steve Buscemi, Thandiwe Newton, Haley Joel Osment, Heather Matarazzo, Billie Piper, and star of the 1991 The Addams Family, Christopher Lloyd — will factor into Season 2’s heightened horror. However, they are all no strangers to the genre.

RELATED: Wednesday Season 2 Sneak Peek Brings the Addams Family to Nevermore

Jenna Ortega is set to return in her star-making role as Wednesday Addams, but this time, she won’t be the only Addams at Nevermore Academy. Her younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) will enroll at the school. Wednesday’s parents, and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also find themselves sticking around campus, yet we’re not sure why yet. Even Wednesday’s Grandmama (Joanna Lumley) will be making an appearance on the show’s second season.

Wednesday Not to Leave Its Beloved Horror-Comedy Tone Totally Behind

Fans of horror may be chomping at the bit for Wednesday‘s darker tone, it won’t all be doom and gloom. The series’ juxtaposition between horror and levity, all set against a compelling mystery, is what made the show a smash for Netflix. Gough and Millar claim to have not lost sight of that.

“Season 2 definitely has some moments which are more straightforward horror, and we’re very aware that the show is watched by everybody in terms of the age groups,” Millar said. “So we want to make sure that it’s never torture porn, but that there’s enough bite to it that it feels that there are real stakes and that people die in this world, and it’s scary at moments. And I think that’s the great tonal shift that the show makes between comedy and horror.”

The bar is undoubtedly high among both horror fans and family viewers for Wednesday‘s second season. The series distinguished itself by leaning more toward horror and mystery rather than humor and camp from previous incarnations of The Addams Family. Even so, it seems no matter how scary Season 2 of Wednesday might get, Gough and Millar will be ready to counterbalance with levity at a moment’s notice to make for another hit season of television.

Wednesday Season 2 premieres with Part 1 on August 6th and Part 2 on September 3rd on Netflix.

The post Wednesday Showrunners Tease Big Season 2 Change (& Horror Fans Will Be Excited) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Ready or Not and Scream screenwriter Guy Busick is enjoying more success with the release of the revival of the Final Destination franchise with Final Destination Bloodlines. The screenwriter has found a successful group of like-minded filmmakers in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a collaboration that started with Ready or Not and will continue with co-screenwriter R. Christopher Murphy in Ready or Not‘s sequel. During a recent interview with ComicBook, Busick addressed what fans can expect in the upcoming follow-up and how it’ll address the finale of the first film.

As it turns out, he’s got some lofty goals for where the series could go in the future. When asked how he sees the sequel avoiding the dreaded sophomore curse, Busick revealed he took a cue from his work between Scream V and VI to “throw out the rule book.”

“For us, it was a complete meal. It was a one-and-done. We were all really proud of the movie. We love how it turned out. We love the fact that it did resonate in the horror community. It was the most special to make and I got to write it with my childhood friend, Ryan [Christopher Murphy],” he told ComicBook. “When Searchlight said, ‘We want to do another one.’ We were like, ‘Okay, we have to make sure there is a reason. It can’t just be to do this again.'”

Busick is also using a pair of classic sequels as a benchmark to aim for while writing the horror sequel: Aliens and Terminator 2. For him and Murray, these are the films that bring the best of both worlds from their sequels.

“What’s the crazy one? Things that we reference … Radio Silence, the producers, Ryan and myself … over and over again are Aliens and Terminator 2,” he said. “How do you blow it up in a way that isn’t even the same genre, but hits all the notes and has the same DNA? Here I Come is a horror movie with humor, just like the first one. But what’s the crazy, bigger world of it?”

[RELATED – The Top 10 Slasher Movie Sequels, Ranked]

For Busick and Murphy, they got excited after forming their pitch and presenting it, pinpointing a “reason to exist” for the sequel, and a way to bring back Grace, played by horror star Samara Weaving.

“Samara is such a brilliant actor. We were like, ‘We want to do it again with her. We just have to make it make sense.’ When we hit the idea, we were like, ‘Yes, we get more Sam. We get more Grace,'” he said. “It’s been so rewarding. Ryan and I both went up to set this last week and just got back yesterday.”

While he kept most of the details under wraps, Busick did confirm some of the timeline funkiness we’ll see in the sequel. He also teased the larger world of Ready or Not and the other families that might have made their own deals with the devil.

“[The] movie picks up the second after the first movie ends. Grace wakes up in the hospital. No time has passed for her. The last thing she remembers is her in-laws exploded, including her new husband. They exploded in front of her and covered her in blood. She went outside and had her cigarette. The EMTs and fire department came. The credits roll and it picks up right there,” he told ComicBook. “Worldbuilding was important to us in that even in the first one, we were asking ourselves, ‘The Le Domas aren’t the only family that has done that.’

“We were like, ‘Okay, there is a bigger story. So, who are the other families and are they connected? Could there be a network of families that have made these Faustian bargains with the mysterious Le Bail character? And what would that look like?’ he continued. “Those questions just became a lot of fun to chase.”

Ready or Not: Here I Come is currently in production and will likely aim for theaters in 2026. Weaving is returning as Grace, while other famous names have joined the cast. This includes Buffy alum Sarah Michelle Gellar, Abigail star Kevin Durand, iconic horror director David Cronenberg, and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood.

Do you think expanding the world of Ready or Not is the right direction for the sequel? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

The post Ready or Not 2 Writer Compares Sequel to Aliens and Confirms Timeline appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Fans of Keanu Reeves’ Constantine (2005) movie have been on a rollercoaster ride of hope and disappointment and renewed hope for years now, but it finally started looking like real progress was being made on Constantine 2, at least until we got this latest update. Actor Peter Stormare also appeared in Constantine, with his brief but iconic scene as Lucifer, aka the Devil. Stormare is currently promoting his new film, Stand Your Ground, and he was asked where things stand with Constantine 2. DC fans may not want to hear it, but Stormare hints that development on the sequel may not be going as hoped.

In regards to the Constantine 2 script, Stormare tells The Direct that, “It’s a lot of back and forth, because… I think Keanu [Reeves], who I know pretty good, is not so happy with the scripts and usually what comes out of the studios…” He later stated that Reeves has a specific vision for what he wants Constantine 2 to be: “I think Keanu says, ‘I’ve done John Wick. This movie is spiritual. It’s about demons and regular people. And I wanted to keep it that way.’ And we talked about that… I think Keanu, he wants to do a sequel that is very close to the first one.”

Stormare goes on to break down how the first Constantine side-stepped the typical superhero movie formula. Director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games sequels and prequels) leaned deeper into the supernatural lore surrounding John Constantine, while adapting the DC comics material into his own distinct stylised world, which both fit perfectly in step with Reeves’ post-Matrix fame and carved out a new lane for the actor, as a surly, unlikable (but noble) anti-hero. Now, two decades later, Marvel and DC are major blockbuster movie franchises, and comic book movies now come with a certain level of formulaic expectations. For those who made Constantine, the idea of losing that “go against the grain” spirit in favor of a generic popcorn sequel is not the biggest sell.

[RELATED: What Will It Take For The Penguin Season 2 to Happen?]

“The first one wasn’t that successful in the beginning, it became a sleeper and became a cult movie, and now it is one of the biggest cult movies ever,” Stormare explained. “But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes.”

It was made clear that Stormare hasn’t seen these scripts himself, but is getting the official rundown from Keanu Reeves himself. And it seems the two actors are in sync about what they don’t want this sequel to be.

“It turns into an action movie, and not like going deeper and deeper into the characters,” Stormare continued. “I think he [Keanu] wants to do this character again, Constantine, as grounded as it was in the first one. It took a long time to become a cult movie, it really worked, and it will work on the audience again. You don’t have to add a lot of action and shootouts. You have other movies. Don’t turn it into big Marvel… [Don’t turn it] into us flying around in harnesses all the time and shooting each other up. Don’t bring in the big guns. Let it be.”

For his part, Francis Lawrence has previously stated his intention to feed the fans who have come around on his interpretation of John Constantine – and even make the R-rated film that he wanted to make originally.

“I certainly think there is a bigger fan base and certainly it’s become a kind of cult classic, which has been really exciting to see and very strange, but it’s something we’ve always loved… I’d say more than any of my other movies, Constantine has been something that I felt like was really worthy of a sequel. There is a world that you can really explore and there’s a character that we certainly loved and really wanted to explore… So we’re like, ‘F–k it, let’s go and do a sequel and really make an R-rated movie. Give us an R, let us make a real R-rated movie.'”

Constantine 2 is still reportedly in development.

The post Keanu Reeves Is Not Happy With Constantine 2 (& He’s Got a Point) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Hello again, Sidney. Six movies, multiple Ghostfaces, and three decades after the original Woodsboro murders, Neve Campbell‘s Sidney Prescott is picking up the phone one more time in Scream 7. (Campbell chose not to return for 2023’s Scream VI, with the New York-set sequel namechecking Sidney when Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers reported that she and her husband, Mark, took their kids “somewhere safe.”)

The torch had passed to the Carpenter sisters, Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega), with Sam having a connection to the OG Ghostface: she’s the daughter of the late Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), Sidney’s ex and the masked killer who committed the Woodsboro murders with accomplice Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) in 1996’s Scream.

RELATED: Scream Star Says Their Return for Scream 7 Was Supposed to Be a Surprise: “It Was a Spoiler”

Sam, Tara, and Meeks-Martin twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) formed the “Core Four,” which is down to two. Barrera was fired by production company Spyglass Media Group over her comments about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in which she expressed support for the the Palestinian cause, and Ortega announced her own exit in the wake of Barrera’s firing.

The original Scream 7 with Barrera and Ortega “was a completely different thing,” writer Guy Busick tells ComicBook in an interview pegged to Final Destination Bloodlines, which he also co-wrote. “We weren’t able to use what we had in the previous iteration for this one. [We] just had to start from scratch, which was a bummer.”

“We were excited about what we had for that movie. We wanted to do one more ‘Core Four’ movie,” Busick continues of the four friends introduced together in the 2022 legacy sequel Scream. “We know the fans love those characters. We love those characters. We created those characters. I would love to see, in some universe, the continuation of their characters, in some way. But we weren’t able to port over the stuff from the other story. It was like, ‘Okay, here is what the universe dealt us.’ We always wanted to do a Sidney movie and so it was like, ‘All right, let’s get into it and why now and why this one?'”

So, why bring back Sidney now, and why in Scream 7? After all, Gale told Sam and Tara in VI, “She deserves her happy ending.”

“I don’t want to give anything away about the reason [Scream 7] had to be a Sidney movie because there’s a really cool reason,” Busick teases. “In all these movies, you have to ask, ‘Why now? What is the thing Scream is commenting on now?’ Scream is always in a conversation with the audience about the state of movies, the state of horror movies and in particular, franchises.”

Busick seems to suggest that the meta-horror franchise’s seventh entry is a commentary on the trend of the legacy sequel. 2018’s Halloween, 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer, and 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, decades-later sequels and quasi-reboots that brought back original characters and actors. 2022’s Scream got in on the legacy-quel by reuniting the trio of Sidney, Gale, and Dewey (David Arquette) for the first time since 2011.

“There is a really specific reason why Sidney is in this movie. I will say there is a reason and we were happy with it when we cracked it,” Busick says. “We went to Neve Campbell and said, ‘This is why. This is why Sidney now.’ Neve was like, ‘Oh, I get that.’ I pitched Kevin [Williamson] this first, too. He got it and then I pitched the studio. I came up with the story with my co-writer on [Scream] 5 and 6, James Vanderbilt.”

Scream writer-creator Williamson, who also penned the screenplays for 1997’s Scream 2 and 2011’s Scream 4, is making his series directorial debut after taking over from Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon (who dropped out from the “dream job that turned into a nightmare” in December 2023).

Busick credits Vanderbilt with the idea bringing the Meeks-Martin twins into Scream 7 without the other half of the Core Four.

“I believe it was James that came up with it. I want to give credit where credit is due, but it was an organic way why they would be in this movie,” Busick adds. “I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say it’s through Gale. She’s the connective tissue in 5 and 6 and she’s in this. New York was obviously a big part of that. She bonded with those four and there’s a reason why these two come to this town where the action is happening.”

Whether that town is Woodsboro, California, or the as-yet-unnamed town where Sidney is in hiding, Busick couldn’t say. “It’s not New York,” he offers. “I don’t want to be the one to spoil where it is. It’s an unspecified amount of time [after VI]. I might get contradicted by other people, but in my mind, more than two years. I would say at least two years. It could be two years, but I would say two years plus.”

Adding to the mystery: Dewey, who was killed off in 5, is somehow returning. Arquette reprises his role alongside Lillard (Scream) and Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger (Scream 3), both killed-off Ghostfaces.

New cast members include Joel McHale (Community) as Sidney’s husband, Mark, and Isabel May (1883) as Sidney’s daughter. Actors cast in undisclosed roles include Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect), Mark Consuelos (Riverdale), Ethan Embry (Grace and Frankie), Asa Germann (Gen V), Sam Rechner (The Fabelmans), Michelle Randolph (Landman), Jimmy Tatro (Theater Camp), Celeste O’Connor (Madame Web), and Mckenna Grace (Sunrise on the Reaping).

Scream 7 slashes into theaters on Feb. 27, 2026.

The post Scream 7 Writer Reveals Why Sidney Returns and How Sequel Handles the “Core Four” appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us is working overtime to fill the void left behind on HBO by Game of Thrones. The two series are similar in a lot of ways, including featuring undead hordes and young protagonists. However, there’s one massive difference between the properties that makes The Last of Us more relatable than Game of Thrones: the former takes place in a version of the real world. While Game of Thrones visits massive castles that have to fend off dragon attacks, The Last of Us sends Ellie and Joel to familiar cities like Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh. But setting something in the real world also comes with its fair share of challenges.

One of the problems HBO’s The Last of Us keeps running into is that, because it pushes its outbreak back ten years, placing it in 2003 instead of 2013 like the game, there are constant continuity errors. Some are easy to look past, but the one in the Season 2 finale is big enough to warrant an explanation.

The Last of Us Sends Ellie to an Iconic Seattle Location in the Season 2 Finale

As soon as Abby plunges the broken golf club into Joel’s skull, Ellie wants to learn as much about the former Firefly as possible. She spends three months in the hospital thinking about getting revenge, and thankfully, her good friend Dina has the same plan. Dina uses the information Eugene gave her about the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF, and puts together a plan to get to Seattle. Once Ellie and Dina get there, they fly by the seed of their pants, trying to avoid getting into the middle of the conflict between the WLF and the Seraphites.

Ellie eventually sneaks into the hospital where Nora works and tortures Abby’s friend for information. All she gets out of her is the words “whale” and “wheel,” which isn’t enough to go on when Jesse recommends heading back to Jackson because Dina’s not in great shape. Before they can head out, though, they have to grab Tommy, who’s in the middle of a firefight with WLF soldiers. Jesse and Ellie head to the top of a building to get a better vantage point before charging in, but Ellie notices an aquarium and a Ferris wheel in the distance. The two locations make Nora’s last words make a lot more sense, but the only problem is that the Ferris wheel shouldn’t be there.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Season 2 Made One of the Game’s Darkest Moments Even Worse]

HBO’s The Last of Us Doesn’t Care About Continuity Errors

The developer of The Last of Us games, Naughty Dog, includes plenty of notable landmarks to make its title more realistic. One of the most notable is The Seattle Great Wheel, which officially opened in June 2012, a little over a year before Outbreak Day. And with the show following The Last of Us Part II‘s story so closely, the powers that be felt they had to include the Ferris wheel. The show’s timeline makes things much more complicated, though, as some suspension of disbelief is required to get onboard with the structure being there in 2003.

What helps HBO’s case is that Ferris wheels have been around since the 1800s, so it’s easy to say that, in the show’s reality, some Seattle bigwig got the idea earlier and made sure the attraction got done before Cordyceps took over the world. But even if they hadn’t, the show probably wouldn’t care because it’s already thrown caution to the wind when it comes to continuity errors. For example, the Pearl Jam song Joel sings to Ellie in Season 2, Episode 6, “Future Days,” didn’t come out until 2013, meaning it was already a hard sell for the game. However, HBO isn’t concerned about nitpicking, especially when it’s the only thing in the way of a good story coming to life.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you know that the Ferris wheel in Seattle in The Last of Us wasn’t built until 2012? Does it bother you that the show really doesn’t care about continuity errors? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Last of Us Included a Glaring Continuity Error in Season 2 Finale appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Like with any other long-running major horror franchise, Friday the 13th has some installments that are better than others. Just the same, there are some installments that have a lot more familiar faces. When it comes to the big four horror franchises (Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween), each IP has served as a launching pad for careers that were just getting started. Halloween had the likes of Josh Hartnett, Paul Rudd, Katee Sackhoff, and, of course, Jamie Lee Curtis. A Nightmare on Elm Street had, among others, Johnny Depp and Patricia Arquette, while Texas Chainsaw was an early stop for both Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey.

So what about Friday the 13th? As it turns out, over half of the franchise’s 12 total installments featured at least one actor who went onto bigger and, depending who you ask, better things.

1) Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th (1980)

The biggest star to have been in a Friday the 13th movie just so happens to have been in the first Friday the 13th movie. Not to mention, he also happened to have the most iconic death of the franchise, no small feat considering it’s an IP based almost entirely on crafting inventive character send-offs.

Prior to Friday the 13th, Kevin Bacon’s biggest role was as jerky frat boy Chip Diller in Animal House. Two years after getting an arrow through the throat, he had a major role in the fantastic Diner, and after another two years he got his true star-making gig as the lead in Footloose. This was followed by lead roles in movies like She’s Having a Baby, Tremors, Balto, Stir of Echoes, Hollow Man, Death Sentence, and Cop Car as well as supporting roles in many major films, including Flatliners, JFK, A Few Good Men, The River Wild, Apollo 13, Sleepers, Wild Things, Mystic River, X-Men: First Class, R.I.P.D., Black Mass, MaXXXine, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.

2) Crispin Glover in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

On top of featuring one of Jason Voorhees’ most iconic physical appearances, Joseph Zito’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is also the most star-studded installment of the eight-film Paramount years. It has not one, but two major stars just shy of their biggest roles, not to mention Judie Aronson (Weird Science, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Bruce Mahler (Police Academy, Seinfeld), and Lawrence Monoson (The Last American Virgin).

The first of the two major stars in The Final Chapter is Crispin Glover, who spends most of his screentime bouncing off of Monoson’s Ted until he manages to hook up with one of the film’s two British twins. Unfortunately for him, his time on screen is short lived, as he gets a corkscrew to the hand and a cleaver to the face. The next year, Glover played his biggest role ever: George McFly in Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future. Since then, Glover has continued to excel in scene stealing supporting roles in movies like River’s Edge, At Close Range, Wild at Heart, The Doors, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Like Mike, Alice in Wonderland, and as Thin Man in the two Charlie’s Angels movies from the 2000s. He also played the lead role in 2003’s underrated Willard.

3) Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Like another of 1984’s best horror movies, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter has a role for Corey Feldman. Though, while he was relegated to just a few scenes in Joe Dante’s Gremlins, he’s the real star of the show in Joe Zito’s slasher (well, beyond the hockey masked killer).

Prior to The Final Chapter, Feldman had worked in television, e.g. in the TV series adaptation of The Bad News Bears and had voiced the younger version of Kurt Russell’s character in The Fox and the Hound, but the part of Tommy Jarvis was really his breakthrough. Later that year he starred in the aforementioned Gremlins, and the next year he played the beloved part of Clark “Mouth” Devereaux in The Goonies. Because of that Richard Donner treasure hunting classic, he could only come back for a cameo in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Feldman remained a big screen presence throughout the ’80s, with roles in Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, The ‘Burbs, as well as License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream with his The Lost Boys co-star and friend, Corey Haim.

[RELATED: Why Has Another Friday the 13th Movie Been So Hard to Make?]

4) Tony Goldwyn in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Scandal‘s Tony Goldwyn made his very first appearance, big screen or small, in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives as the ill-fated Darren. After single-episode appearances in shows like St. Elsewhere, Matlock, Murphy Brown, and L.A. Law, he got his breakthrough role as the duplicitous Carl Bruner in Ghost.

Since then, his biggest movies have been The Pelican Brief, Nixon, Kiss the Girls, The 6th Day, The Last Samurai, The Last House on the Left (2009), the first two installments of the Divergent franchise, King Richard, and Oppenheimer. He also voiced the title role in Disney’s Tarzan. As for the small screen, the role of President Fitzgerald Grant III on the aforementioned hit show Scandal is undoubtedly his biggest.

5) Kelly Hu in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

After winning the title of Miss Hawaii Teen USA in 1985, Kelly Hu modeled in Japan and Italy and starred in a series of TV ads for Philadelphia brand cream cheese. She transitioned to acting in 1987, first with a recurring role on Growing Pains. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, her very first movie, came shortly thereafter.

Following her appearance in the slasher sequel, her next movie was 1991’s The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone and starring the late Val Kilmer. She then had roles in the bizarre Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, Surf Ninjas, and the Ralph Fiennes-led sci-fi cult classic Strange Days. Those were all fairly small roles, but in 2002 she starred alongside Dwayne Johnson in The Scorpion King, which she followed up with her most well-known role to date, as Lady Deathstrike in X2: X-Men United.

6) Jason Ritter in Freddy vs. Jason

It was only a matter of time before Jason Ritter followed in the steps of his equally likable father, the late John Ritter. But, instead of getting started on a series similar to Three’s Company, he starred in Freddy vs. Jason from director Ronny Yu (who had directed his father in Bride of Chucky just a few years before). Prior to Freddy vs. Jason, the younger Ritter’s biggest role in a movie had been a small part in Swimfan.

Since Freddy vs. Jason‘s release in 2003, Ritter has had roles in the movies W. (as Jeb Bush), indies like The Intervention (alongside his wife, Melanie Lynskey), and Frozen II. He’s found even greater success on the small screen, with main roles in Joan of Arcadia, The Event, Gravity Falls, Another Period, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, Raising Dion, and Matlock as well as recurring roles in Parenthood and Girls. Ritter is currently filming Lanterns, a DCU TV series set to arrive on HBO.

7) Ben Feldman in Friday the 13th (2009)

In Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th, Ben Feldman plays Richie, one of the unlucky teens we follow throughout the film’s opening (the best part of the movie). And, outside his girlfriend, who gets roasted in a sleeping bag, Richie gets it the worst. Specifically, his ankle gets snagged in a bear trap, where he’s left as a screaming piece of bait until Jason runs up and plants a machete in his skull.

Prior to Friday the 13th, Feldman’s biggest role was as Travis Marello in the opening scene of 2008’s Cloverfield. Since then, he’s had roles in a few big screen projects, e.g. As Above, So Below, but most of his success has been found on the small screen, first on Drop Dead Diva, then on Mad Men (for which he received an Emmy nomination). His TV career would then carry on to HBO’s Silicon Valley and then NBC’s Superstore as one of the lead characters of the series.

The post 7 Actors That Starred in Friday the 13th Movies Before They Got Famous appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Guy Busick enjoys getting his hands bloody — perhaps a little too much. The screenwriter chronicled Ghostface’s reign of terror in 2022’s Scream and then in Scream VI. He blew up a Satan-worshipping family to smithereens in Ready or Not. Plus, he locked a ragtag gang of kidnappers in a mansion with a vampire ballerina in Abigail. But Busick’s most bizarre and gory killing spree arguably transpires in Final Destination Bloodlines. A box office smash, the sixth installment of the franchise once again finds Death picking off victims who had previously avoided an untimely fate. This time around, however, it is a whole family’s bloodline at stake.

The newest chapter in New Line Cinema’s bloody successful franchise takes audiences back to the very beginning of Death’s twisted sense of justice — Final Destination Bloodlines. Plagued by a violent recurring nightmare, college student Stefanie heads home to track down the one person who might be able to break the cycle — her grandmother, Iris — and save her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all.

ComicBook caught up with Busick to break down Death’s grand design, those gruesome kills, his wishlist for future chapters, Sidney’s role in Scream 7, Tara and Sam’s absence, as well as shattering the Ready or Not universe.

ComicBook: Before landing on this high-rise restaurant tower disaster in Final Destination Bloodlines, what were some other ideas that you bandied around? And in what ways did this one check off all the boxes for you?

Guy Busick: There was actually a scripted version that was a river boat. That was the original idea that Jon Watts had pitched. We went through the development process with the river boat and had some real fun kills. It was like a clandestine gambling den. It was the high-class gamblers and then the crew. Our character was a last-minute addition, working in the gambling parlor. A friend had dragged her along. It was a fun thing.

I believe it was when directors Adam [B. Stein] and Zach [Lipovsky] came onboard and we were rattle-testing everything. Their feeling was the opening disaster, in all these movies, is something that is a universal experience. We can all be afraid of a plane crash or a traffic pileup or a roller coaster and a bridge. Maybe not NASCAR, but even then, it’s a sporting event. They felt the river boat was something that maybe not so many people had experienced. There was the fear of water and the fear of drowning, which were relatable. But they really pushed to find something more universal in terms of human experience. We settled on heights and not just heights, but being trapped in a high place when something was going horribly, horribly wrong. Co-writer Lori Evans Taylor and myself, Zach and Adam and the whole team were all brainstorming. There were a few other ideas that I am sure came and went. But, when we found this, it clicked and we all latched onto it and decided this was the way to go, kind of a Space Needle-type restaurant, where something goes wrong and people can’t get down. Chaos ensues.

The restaurant boasts a glass floor. It could have simply broken and attendees consequently fall to their death. The movie version was more elaborate than that. How much trial and error, and mapping the beats out, did this sequence require?

It took a minute. I give all the credit in the world to Lori. She did a lot of the heavy lifting, so to speak, on this sequence. I think we talked a lot about it conceptually. She took the first run on the pages and I was blown away. I didn’t have to do much, which is nice when you are a writing team. When you look at something and you are like, “Oh, this is already great. I could just add a little bit of gravy here.” But I think we landed on the penny pretty early.

There is this little brat and that he would dig a penny out of the fountain, and the penny would cause all the problems. I know we had a piano pretty early and I know we had a fire component pretty early. The rest of it wasn’t trial and error, in so much as, “Let’s just keep raising the bar. Let’s keep adding another wrinkle. Let’s turn over another card.” I think some of it we were able to bring over from the river boat. I know that there was a woman that caught on fire and started an explosion. There were a lot of people being rushed by things. This is why it’s a dream project to write because these are the fun days of just sitting on a Zoom, or sitting in person, with Lori and I just going, “How do we kill people in a really fun and gross and creative way?” It was a long process, but the big pieces came very quickly.

Where did the idea come for starting in the past and targeting this family in the present day?

That was all Jon Watts. My first connection with this project, and Lori’s as well, was we were invited to participate in a roundtable where Jon and his producing partner Diane had pitched this idea of the family line. He was a fan of the franchise and came in and said, “I don’t think I can write or direct this. I have too many other commitments, but here’s an idea.”

New Line, of course, loved it because it’s brilliant. Then, Lori and myself and a few other horror writers were invited to read the treatment that Jon had given to New Line and pitch on it. “Here’s the structure of the thing or the big idea. Now what would you do with the movie?” A lot of it was just kill sequences and kill order and what the rules were this time and what the deal is with Tony Todd’s character. “Let’s finally get into that.” That was something Jon was always curious about and so was I. We had a really fun day of horror writers just pitching ideas. Then, she and I were contacted separately. “Hey, would you like to pitch on this to write it?”

Lori and I both had a bunch of other commitments at the time. But, like you, I am a huge fan of the franchise. I remember every time I saw each of these for the first time. The franchise was influential on me. We were like, “Oh man. We are both so busy, but it’s Final Destination and we don’t want to let it go.” We decided to team up and pitch together, so we could share the load. We had never written together. We had just been friends for a long time, probably about 20 years. We trusted each other, but when we came in, Jon had carved a path for us. All we were hired to do was flesh it out, figure out the rest of the beats in the movie and just go write it. But it was Jon’s brilliant idea to start in the past and then when we pull out of the eyeball this time, it’s decades later. “Hey, that’s a twist. We haven’t seen that before.” The challenge was how to make it make sense.

Did you have a reason for why Iris was the one with the premonition? Did you craft a backstory where she was also the descendent of a tragedy, as well? Was there an explanation why she specifically had it?

No, we didn’t overthink that. The premonition character in the previous five movies just sort of had it. I love that [Final Destination 5] was a prequel to [the original]. I feel like the more you explain that, the less fun and interesting it is. It’s Final Destination language that you have a character that has this ability to see five seconds into the future and realize that something terrible is going to happen.

Now, in a future instalment, I would love somebody to answer that. Where do the premonitions come from? We talked about that a lot, but it felt like, “No, let’s just go with it because we already have one big change,” which is the time jump. If you start taking on too much exposition, it can start to feel a little bit too loaded with rules and explanations. It’s basically like if Devon Sawa’s character in one was successful in trying to death proof that cabin. What if he had succeeded for decades? This is that movie.

Why was it important to delve into Tony Todd’s character Bludworth and tie him into the film’s mythology?

We just love that character and we love the actor so much. It is such a cool and mysterious character, who just pops up in most of these movies, has some wisdom, says some ominous stuff and fades into the background. But it’s Tony Todd. He has a wonderful presence and that voice … He’s such a wonderful actor. It was really special that we got to craft his origin story. Jon and Diane asked, “What’s the deal with this guy?”

There were a lot of conversations about whether he is a manifestation of Death. Is he a messenger for Death? What is his connection to these disasters? It just felt really nice and organic and simple to say, “When he was a little boy, he was involved in one of these and somebody saved his life.” That was a primal and emotional starting point for the character that felt right. From there, it was like, “Oh, we know Todd is not in the best of health and we think we can get him for this.” We took such great care in writing this because we knew it was probably the last time he would be reprising the Bludworth character. And that character is so important to fans and was so important to us, that we were like, “We have to get this right.” I get emotional just thinking about it, but seeing Todd in that scene and his final words that he improvised. “What would you like to say to the fans?”

He came up with that last bit. It’s so beautiful. I feel honored to have written for that character and to be a part of the contribution to figuring out where he came from.

You go into a Final Destination movie and believe there’s a by-the-book formula. There’s definitely twists and turns in this one. How essential was it to switch up the rules for Death, specifically if you kill somebody it can extend your life expectancy?

Well, in all of these movies, part of the juggling act is you have to figure out a clever way for the characters to figure out the order, so they can try to prevent it before the clock runs out, essentially. The other thing is what are the rules in terms of, “Is it something you can stop?” Final Destination 2 and 5 were our reference points. In 2, Kimberly is able to survive past the end of the movie. Her and the cop character make it to the end credits. That’s the only time that happens in the whole franchise.

Then in 5, they introduce through Tony Todd’s Bludworth the idea that if you were to take someone else’s life, you would get that time for yourself, but you don’t know how much it is. I’m a big fan of continuity. I’m a comic book nerd. With the Scream franchise, my co-writer, mentor, and friend James Vanderbilt and me approached that as fans. We were like, “All of that happened. Every one of these movies happened. And all these characters exist.” It’s okay to reference that. You don’t want to make it a burden for the viewer, like you have to have seen all the previous entries. You want it to be a full meal. But for the fan, like you and me and the comic book nerds, it’s nice to reference those things.

I always loved it when I was reading a comic and it’s like, “Remember in issue #241…” And I would be like, “Oh, I didn’t read that. Now I am going to go get it.” It’s just really cool and fun. So, we were like, “2 and 5 explain how you can stop it, so let’s use that.” When they finally make it to Bludworth and he says, “There is only one person that I know of that ever survived,” and it was the protagonist of Final Destination 2. But there’s also this other thing I sent these people off on, this errand in 5. So, giving the characters that information late in the game was fun because you have these two knuckleheads, Erik and Bobby, who are like, “Okay, Bobby is next. Let’s go rogue. And we are going to be heroes because we are going to stop this whole thing. We are going to save everybody else.” And it’s like, “Oh no, no. Death is already ahead of you. He’s been ahead of you this whole time.” They ask him. “Why wouldn’t everyone have done that?” He basically says, “Because it’s too risky. You never know what is going to happen.” That’s why Iris didn’t do it. That’s why JB isn’t going to do it. It’s too risky.”

It’s a guilty pleasure for viewers to watch Death dispatch his victims in creative and gory fashion. Besides the opening sequence, what demise stands out for you in Bloodlines?

It’s hard to choose. I would have to go to the MRI machine. It’s another universal thing. We’ve all had some experience, whether it’s personal or someone who has done it. We all know it’s a big magnet and these things happen in real life. When Lori and I were looking into it, there have been horrible accidents and tragedies that have happened around these machines. And I just find it so fun to rope Erik back in. Even though he’s not part of the bloodline, it was his hubris of, “Oh, I can outsmart Death,” that roped him into the whole thing.

And then poor Bobby with the peanut allergy. That was something I pitched in the first roundtable. “What if somebody had a peanut allergy and then they intentionally triggered it so they could die and come back?” I might be remembering that wrong. I think it was me, but it’s such a scary thing. I don’t have any allergies like that, but I know people who do and they always have their EpiPen. But I love that whole sequence. It came together beautifully.

One thing I should say is, my gosh, the way Adam and Zach shot these things, it’s some of the best kills in the franchise. It’s not just what was on the page, but the way they elevated it. The way they shot and cut it is so much fun. Kudos to those guys. I think they are brilliant directors.

Death seems to have more personality. How intentional was that?

Kudos to the directors for putting that on the screen. I know Lori and I looked at the other movies and a lot of times there is water. Water seems to almost creep on its own, especially in that first movie. It was important to us. Even with the Iris character, we had the opportunity to create “a person” that she could talk to for the last 20 years in the cabin. This was her only companion. So, she anthropomorphizes Death to be a person, in a way, that she can have conversations with. She looks insane, but is she because Death is a being in these movies. That is really fun. We like the idea that she is talking to Death as if it’s her only friend.

In a genre where we root for the final girl or guy, why kill everybody off? Why does that work for this franchise?

That was a debate for all of us throughout. Is there a way to let Stefani and Charlie live? I’m a big softie, so that is always my preference. “Well, we did it in 2. Why can’t we have a connective character maybe go into the next movie?” But it just feels the big lesson these characters learn by the end of the movie is you just can’t cheat Death. There really isn’t a way out, aside from Kimberly. That is why everybody eventually does die.

I like the idea that through the penny, this was all part of Death’s design. And Death used Stefani to go and knock off Iris, so he could finally check the names off the list that he hadn’t gotten to. Ultimately, I love the moment where it’s like, “Yeah, he brought me back to life.” And the doctor character goes, “Well, no. You didn’t actually die and come back. Your heart stopped. That’s all.” You just know it is going to come full circle and then it does. I feel it’s the right way to end most of the movies in the franchise. I would love to be in the audience for another installment and see that person live and carry on for a few movies. That would be really cool, but I understood why it needed to happen.

Next on your plate is the highly anticipated seventh instalment of Scream. What does having [Neve Campbell’s] Sidney return allow you to explore in this movie?

I don’t want to give anything away about the reason this had to be a Sidney movie because there’s a really cool reason. In all these movies, you have to ask, “Why now? What is the thing Scream is commenting on now?” Scream is always in a conversation with the audience about the state of movies, the state of horror movies and in particular, franchises. There is a really specific reason why Sidney is in this movie. I will say there is a reason and we were happy with it when we cracked it. We went to Neve Campbell and said, “This is why. This is why Sidney now.” Neve was like, “Oh, I get that.” I pitched Kevin [Williamson] this first, too. He got it and then I pitched the studio. I came up with the story with my co-writer on 5 and 6, James Vanderbilt.

The last Screams were based around [Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega’s] Sam and Tara, but they aren’t coming back. How did that alter the blueprint from the original script?

It was a completely different thing. We weren’t able to use what we had in the previous iteration for this one. It was literally you just had to start from scratch, which was a bummer. We were excited about what we had for that movie. We wanted to do one more “Core Four” movie. We know the fans love those characters. We love those characters. We created those characters. I would love to see, in some universe, the continuation of their characters, in some way. But we weren’t able to port over the stuff from the other story. It was like, “Okay, here is what the universe dealt us.” We always wanted to do a Sidney movie and so it was like, “All right, let’s get into it and why now and why this one?”

The Core Four is no more. What does that mean for [Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding’s] Mindy and Chad?

I believe it was James that came up with it. I want to give credit where credit is due, but it was an organic way why they would be in this movie. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say it’s through [Courteney Cox’s] Gale. She’s the connective tissue in 5 and 6 and she’s in this. New York was obviously a big part of that. She bonded with those four and there’s a reason why these two come to this town where the action is happening.

How long after the last Scream does the new one take place? And is it in New York City again?

It’s not New York. I don’t want to be the one to spoil where it is. It’s an unspecified amount of time. I might get contradicted by other people, but in my mind, more than two years. I would say at least two years. It could be two years, but I would say two years plus.

Regarding the upcoming Ready or Not: Here I Come, the original felt like a complete story. How did you go about avoiding the dreaded sequel curse for this one?

It was kind of what we did between Scream V and VI, which is throw out the rule book and just go nuts. For us, it was a complete meal. It was a one-and-done. We were all really proud of the movie. We love how it turned out. We love the fact that it did resonate in the horror community. It was the most special to make and I got to write it with my childhood friend, Ryan [Christopher Murphy]. When Searchlight said, “We want to do another one.” We were like, “Okay, we have to make sure there is a reason. It can’t just be to do this again.”

Ryan Christopher Murphy and I sat down at his place, at my house, and we were racking our heads going, “What’s the crazy one?” Things that we reference … Radio Silence, the producers, Ryan and myself … over and over again are Aliens and Terminator 2. How do you blow it up in a way that isn’t even the same genre, but hits all the notes and has the same DNA? Here I Come is a horror movie with humor, just like the first one. But what’s the crazy, bigger world of it?

Ryan and I came up with a pitch and we took it to everybody. We all just got excited and went, “There is a reason for this to exist, that isn’t just to do another one.” It’s so big and fun and strange. More than that, we love the character Grace so much. We love actress Samara Weaving. That is one of the best characters I’ve had a hand in creating. Her performance is so iconic. Samara is such a brilliant actor. We were like, “We want to do it again with her. We just have to make it make sense.” When we hit the idea, we were like, “Yes, we get more Sam. We get more Grace.” It’s been so rewarding. Ryan and I both went up to set this last week and just got back yesterday. We chose that week for a reason. There’s a set piece at the end of the movie — and you will know it when you see it — that had been in our heads for almost six years. We were like, “We have to be there when they shoot.” That set is so cool.

What can you tease about where we meet Grace after the prior events? How is she processing everything that has happened to her?

She hasn’t had a chance to because the movie picks up the second after the first movie ends. Grace wakes up in the hospital. No time has passed for her. The last thing she remembers is her in-laws exploded, including her new husband. They exploded in front of her and covered her in blood. She went outside and had her cigarette. The EMTs and fire department came. The credits roll and it picks up right there. So, when she wakes up, no time has passed. She hasn’t processed any of it and then she’s thrust immediately into another weirder, bigger game that she doesn’t understand … and that we don’t understand at first. There’s a weird kind of logic to it. Because she survived that adventure in the first one, something has now been triggered and has thrown the entire world into disorder.

The sequel encapsulates worldbuilding. Why was that so crucial going into this second chapter?

Worldbuilding was important to us in that even in the first one, we were asking ourselves, “The Le Domas aren’t the only family that has done that.” There’s another family referenced in the first movie, where everyone is asking each other, “Is this real? What would happen if we didn’t kill her? Did our ancestor actually make a pact with the devil or is all this just crap?” Tony references the Van Horns and says, “You know what happened to the Van Horns?” The Fitch character was like, “Didn’t they die in a house fire?” And he was like, “Well, that’s what they told you.” We were like, “Okay, there is a bigger story. So, who are the other families and are they connected? Could there be a network of families that have made these Faustian bargains with the mysterious Le Bail character? And what would that look like?” Those questions just became a lot of fun to chase.

Finally, do you have any thoughts on an Abigail sequel?

Oh boy. I would love to go back to that world. I really love that movie. I think it’s really special. Again, just in case, I don’t want to say what the thing would be, but in the early days, I went and pitched one of the Universal execs, “Here is what I would want to do next.” Probably not a big surprise, but it involves the father, Mr. Lazar.

Final Destination Bloodlines is in theaters now.

The post Final Destination Bloodlines Writer Opens Up About Reviving the Beloved Franchise appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The world of The Last of Us is very complicated. After the Cordyceps infection ravages the world, the Federal Disaster Response Agency, aka FEDRA, seizes the opportunity to claim power, tossing civilians into quarantine zones and treating them however it sees fit. FEDRA’s extreme methods lead to revolts all around the country, including in Kansas City, where Joel and Ellie visit in Season 1. The show’s central duo finds themselves trying to avoid the conflict between FEDRA and the rebels in the city, but it’s not as simple as just walking by, and they lose a couple of friends along the way.

Ellie finds herself in the same boat in The Last of Us Season 2 when she and Dina arrive in Seattle to find Joel’s killers. Abby’s group, the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF, is at war with religious fanatics known as Seraphites. The show’s second season touches on the details of the conflict on several occasions, even teasing events happening off-screen that are sure to become more critical once Season 3 rolls around.

The Last of Us Season 2 Establishes the WLF and Seraphite War

Ellie first hears about the WLF from Dina, who has Eugene to thank for giving her a heads-up about the organization. They believe that the WLF is made up of Abby’s group and maybe a few more people, but that goes out the window when they arrive in Seattle and see a group of dead Seraphites. Seeing dead children only strengthens Ellie’s belief that she needs to hunt down Abby, and things don’t change until she sees what the Seraphites are capable of, gutting people all over town. Still, the only fight Ellie wants to be part of is one that involves the group that came to Jackson Hole and killed Joel.

The Last of Us Season 2 doesn’t only provide Ellie’s perspective, however, as Episode 4 introduces Isaac Dixon, the leader of the WLF. A former FEDRA officer, he does everything he can to ensure the people of Seattle don’t have to fear for their lives. Throughout Season 2, he’s planning a major attack on the Seraphites because the two sides are at each other’s throats again after a period of peace. It’s unclear which side is responsible for the current situation, and the show won’t be able to provide an answer until Season 3, which will push the war in Seattle to the forefront.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Season 2 Has Changed One of Its Best Characters For the Worse]

The Stage Is Already Set for The Last of Us Season 3

By spending so much time with the WLF in Season 2, The Last of Us ensures it doesn’t lose any momentum going into Season 3. Season 2, Episode 7 reveals during its final moments that it’s turning back the clock in the next outing by showing Abby’s perspective during Ellie’s three days in Seattle. Abby’s the subject of many conversations during the second season, but she doesn’t appear after her group leaves Jackson Hole. In the finale, Isaac even talks about how she goes missing at the worst time because he’s hoping she will take over the WLF once he’s gone.

Isaac expects to die during the attack on the Seraphite island, which is going on when Ellie heads to the aquarium and kills Mel and Owen. However, the show doesn’t show him again after the boats hit the water, leaving his fate a mystery. Abby’s condition when she gets to the theater doesn’t make it seem like the WLF is having a great day, though, mainly because she has a mark on her neck from being on the wrong end of a noose. Whether Abby makes it to the island remains to be seen, but it’s clear she’s having as rough a week as Ellie, driving home the point that The Last of Us isn’t about right or wrong but rather the humanity one is able to tap into when times get tough.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you realize that The Last of Us Season 2 was setting up Season 3 the whole time? Where do you expect the story to go? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Last of Us Was Preparing You for Season 3 And You Didn’t Even Notice It appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Despite a poor Tomatometer and Popcornmeter score, Netflix’s Fear Street: Prom Queen reigned supreme on the streaming charts over the holiday weekend. The streamer shared that Prom Queen, the Fear Street series’ first standalone film, came in first among Netflix’s English-language films with 10.7 million views over three days. Quite an achievement, since the film scored considerably lower than its predecessors, Fear Street: 1994, 1978, and 1666. While the previous Fear Street movies were hits with both critics and viewers, Prom Queen garnered a mere 29% of Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer of critics’ reviews of a title. The film fared worse among fans, scoring a pitiful 27%.

Set in 1988, the horror-slasher returns to Shadyside just in time for prom season. The classic clique of popular girls, who go by the Wolf Pack at Shadyside High, compete viciously with one another for prom queen. However, when a gutsy outsider (India Fowler) unexpectedly earns a nomination for the crown and her competitors begin mysteriously disappearing, the class of ’88 finds itself suddenly in for one hell of a prom night. The film seems to have all the makings for an entertaining, if not a bit campy, slasher, but Prom Queen fails to live up to the Fear Street series pedigree established in 2021.

Viewers and Critics Agree: Prom Queen is a Dud

The film’s problem stems from its uninventive recycling of genre and period tropes, with nothing fresh and compelling to offer like the original Fear Street. ComicBook’s review of the film points out where Prom Queen falls short: “Either through the lenses of romantic love or sorority, each Fear Street movie told a story that was essentially about women loving and supporting each other. On the contrary, the new installment is about the petty disputes of high school girls who are never given more than one or two personality traits.”

Related: Fear Street: Prom Queen Connects With the Trilogy in the Weirdest Way

Rotten Tomatoes user Mirza M laments, “Fear Street: Prom Queen is an uninspired slasher that offers neither the inventive thrills of its predecessors nor the rich mythology that made the series so compelling.” The film is a bitter disappointment, since we know Netflix can nail both horror and a period setting even outside the R.L. Stine-inspired film series with their juggernaut Stranger Things.

Fear Street: Prom Queen, a Victim of Franchise Fatigue?

The 10-million-plus viewers who pressed play must have figured that co-writer/director Matt Palmer’s movie would deliver similar bone-chilling delights, yet the consensus is clear: Prom Queen doesn’t measure up. What makes the letdown all the more painful is that Netflix took four years to release a follow-up to the beloved series, and the result feels like a slapdash, lazy slasher that may well be remembered as a stain on the Fear Street series’ name. Though Prom Queen has a strong showing this weekend, only time will tell if it’ll continue to grab such large swaths of viewers with its poor reviews in the coming days.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is currently streaming on Netflix.

The post Netflix Horror Sequel Tops Streaming Charts (Despite Low Rotten Tomatoes Score) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The highly anticipated sequel to the 2019 horror hit Ready or Not is taking shape, and producer James Vanderbilt has offered some tantalizing teases about how the new film will delve deeper into the Le Domas family mythology. Speaking with ComicBook in an exclusive interview for his current film Fountain of Youth, now streaming on Apple TV+, Vanderbilt revealed that the creative team was incredibly careful in their approach to expanding the story, ensuring the follow-up, titled Ready or Not: Here I Come, both honors the original and offers something fresh. The focus for the sequel is to broaden the disturbing lore surrounding the deadly game without over-explaining its enigmatic elements, aiming for the “right amount of worldbuilding” coupled with a compelling emotional narrative for returning star Samara Weaving’s character, Grace.

“There are a couple of different ways we are doing it,” Vanderbilt explained about the sequel. “I don’t want to give anything away. It’s so early, and there is so little out there. What I will say is one of the reasons it has taken a minute to make this sequel was that we were really hard on ourselves on not just repeating what the first movie was, but also, not losing the sauce of what the first movie was.” According to Vanderbilt, the goal of Ready or Not: Here I Come is to build upon the foundation of horror and dark comedy of the first movie, ensuring fans will get a meaningful expansion of the franchise.

[RELATED: Ready or Not Directors Tease an “Absolute F-cking Banger” of a Sequel]

“It’s interesting because there’s a debate all the way through as to what is real and what is not,” Vanderbilt stated, highlighting the challenge of moving forward from the original’s definitive ending. “That is answered at the end of the first movie, so you can’t put that Le Bail back in the bottle. What Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy do in this script is incredibly smart. As soon as they pitched it, it was, ‘Of course that’s what it is. That’s a great idea.’ It’s such a great way to tell this story. I am so excited for people to see it.”

“I think it’s safe to say we expand the mythology without explaining the entire mythology,” Vanderbilt emphasized the sequel’s narrative goals.  “I don’t know if that sounds exciting, but it’s exciting to us. I think it’s the right amount of worldbuilding, while still telling an amazing emotional story. We felt so privileged that people embraced that movie, that we didn’t want to revisit it if it was going to kinda be like, ‘Oh, look. They did it again.’ We were all okay leaving it be if we didn’t come up with something that we felt added to it, or in some ways, topped it. We are all really excited about what it is going to be.”

Everything We Know About Ready or Not: Here I Come

Searchlight Pictures officially greenlit Ready or Not: Here I Come in October 2024, signaling a commitment to continue the harrowing tale of Grace Le Domas. Fans of the original will be pleased to know that the core creative team is returning to ensure continuity in vision and tone. In addition to Busick and Murphy, the writers who penned the first film, directing duo Radio Silence, comprised of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, are also back at the helm of the sequel. Their expertise in blending horror, comedy, and suspense was a hallmark of the original Ready or Not and has since been demonstrated in films like SCREAM, Scream VI, and Abigail.

Joining Weaving is a cast that promises to elevate the sequel’s stakes and expand its world. For starters, Ready or Not: Here I Come stars Kathryn Newton, known for her roles in Abigail and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Plus, in a highly anticipated return to the genre, Sarah Michelle Gellar, iconic for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is also part of the cast. The ensemble is further bolstered by genre veteran Elijah Wood, recognized for his work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and more recently in Yellowjackets. One of the most talked-about new cast members is legendary director David Cronenberg (The Fly, Crimes of the Future), who will be stepping in front of the camera for a rare acting performance. Kevin Durand, who previously worked with Radio Silence on Abigail, has also been confirmed for the sequel, teasing a role that is the “polar opposite” of his character in the vampire film.

Searchlight Pictures has not yet announced an official release date for Ready or Not: Here I Come.

What are you most hoping to see in the expansion of the Ready or Not mythology? Let us know in the comments!

The post Ready or Not Producer Teases How Sequel Expands the Disturbing Mythology appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The characters in The Last of Us like to keep things close to the vest. After all, the world isn’t a very nice place, and when it’s hard to determine who is a friend and a foe, it’s a good idea not to trust anyone. Joel has to get Ellie onboard with that line of thinking during Season 1, as she’s quick to trust people she believes are in need. However, Joel has seen what happens when one’s guard is let down, and he won’t let something happen to Ellie because she still has some of her humanity left. Abby is very much the same way in Season 2, trusting only the friends she has from her days as a Firefly.

It’s hard to blame Abby because she loses her father after the Fireflies trust a man they hardly know to bring the most important person in the world across the country, and he betrays them. Abby takes her pain and uses it as motivation to find Joel and kill him. But what she doesn’t realize is that, by doing that, she’s kicking off a series of events that will lead her to make an unexpected ally.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II game!

Ellie Force Abby’s Hand in The Last of Us Season 2

When Abby kills Joel, she and her friends truly believe their mission is over. They don’t want anyone else to get hurt, so they leave Dina and Ellie alive and head home. Of course, Ellie won’t go down without a fight, with her and Dina formulating a plan and heading to Seattle, where Abby’s group, the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF, operates. The duo starts to learn more about the WLF’s war with the Seraphites, a group of religious fanatics who have no qualms about ripping people’s guts out. They try to stay on track, but the conflict swallows them whole, leaving Dina badly hurt and Ellie fighting for her life.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back is Ellie’s confrontation with Owen and Mel. While looking for Abby, she comes across the couple and kills them both after Owen tries to grab his gun. Ellie hates what she’s become, especially after learning that Mel is pregnant, so she’s ready to go home when Tommy and Jesse show up. Ellie decompresses a bit while they pack up the theater, but a noise in the other room grabs her and Jesse’s attention. As soon as they enter, Jesse takes a bullet to the head, and Ellie finds Abby standing over Tommy. Abby is upset that Ellie didn’t let Joel’s death go and looks ready to shoot, but she’s not the same character she was at the start of the season, and one character who is seemingly just off-screen deserves credit for that.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Has Its Own In-Universe Comics (But Will They Ever Really Be Released?)]

The Last of Us Season 3’s Biggest Addition Should Be Present in Season 2’s Finale

Abby doesn’t look great when she arrives at the theater. She’s dirty and has a neck wound that could only have come from a noose. It seems unlikely that she could’ve tracked Ellie and her friends all the way back to the theater in her condition alone, and that’s because she didn’t. In The Last of Us Part II video game, Abby goes through her own journey in Seattle while Ellie is hunting her down. She comes across a couple of Seraphites who are cast out by their tribe and in need of help. One of them, Lev, grows fond of Abby and helps her whenever possible. They fight all kinds of battles together, and Lev is even present at the theater when Abby confronts Ellie.

Lev doesn’t know much about the situation, but he has Abby’s back and even does serious damage to Ellie’s group. While The Last of Us Season 2 opts to save all that for Season 3, it’s impossible not to feel Lev’s presence during the finale even if they’re not physically on screen. With most of Abby’s friends dead, he’s all she has left to fight for, and, as her attitude in the theater proves, she won’t let Ellie or anyone else take anything else from her.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you think Abby got to the theater by herself in The Last of Us Season 2? Are you excited for Lev to show up in Season 3? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Last of Us Season 2’s Finale Cuts Season 3’s Most Important Character appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Fear Street: Prom Queen came to Netflix with the promise of delivering a slasher with heart, just like the Fear Street trilogy did in 2021. Sadly, the latest movie in the franchise failed to impress critics and fans alike, receiving harsh reviews that underline Prom Queen has little to do with the previous installments, delivering a bland story, shallow characters, and half-baked connections to the Fear Street canon. As a result, horror fiends looking for their next slasher rush were left with disappointment instead of a thrilling movie. Fortunately, the 2020s have seen the release of multiple slasher gems that could scratch your itch for inventive deaths and well-paced scares.

If you are looking for modern slashers, we’ve selected the best entries in the subgenre released in the past few years. All of these movies excel at the slasher formula while still offering a unique take on the subgenre and delivering an experience unlike any other. Here’s our pick for the best 2020s slashers, with the limit of one movie per franchise.

1) Scream (2022)

2022’s Scream masterfully revitalizes the iconic franchise by returning to Woodsboro, where a new Ghostface targets individuals linked to the town’s bloody past. This sequel distinguishes itself with sharp meta-commentary on “requels” and toxic fandom, seamlessly integrating legacy characters Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) with a compelling new generation led by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega. Furthermore, Scream earned praise for its suspenseful sequences, brutal kills, and its thoughtful exploration of trauma, proving the enduring power of its self-aware formula.

To make things better, Scream successfully balances nostalgia with fresh scares, reaffirming Ghostface’s status as a top-tier slasher villain. Its intelligent script and strong performances resonate with both longtime fans and newcomers, offering a sophisticated and thrilling experience. For those seeking a modern slasher that reworks established tropes while delivering genuine tension, Scream is a prime example of how to update a classic for contemporary audiences looking for more than just a body count.

2) X

Ti West’s X plunges audiences into the gritty atmosphere of 1979 rural Texas, where a group of ambitious young filmmakers sets out to shoot an adult film. Their pursuit of stardom takes a dark turn when their elderly hosts reveal a sinister side. X garnered acclaim for its atmospheric tension, strong performances (particularly Mia Goth in a dual role), and stylish homage to 1970s exploitation and slasher cinema. It cleverly explores themes of aging, ambition, and the American Dream, all set against a backdrop of escalating horror.

X is celebrated for its unique artistic vision, compelling character studies, and the way it subverts typical slasher conventions while still delivering visceral scares. Its deliberate pacing and unsettling tone create a deeply unnerving experience that helped West launch a fan-favorite trilogy with Pearl and MaXXXine. Furthermore, the film offers a distinctive and thought-provoking journey into darkness, making it a must-watch for those who appreciate slashers that are as thematically rich as they are terrifying.

3) Thanksgiving

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving brings his infamous mock trailer from Grindhouse to full, blood-soaked life. Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the film sees a mysterious killer dressed as John Carver terrorizing the town a year after a deadly Black Friday riot. Patrick Dempsey stars as the local sheriff trying to stop Carver, who uses an array of holiday-themed props for his creative and gruesome murders. Critics lauded Thanksgiving for its over-the-top gore, dark humor, and faithful expansion of the original Grindhouse concept, successfully blending suspense with outrageous kills.

[RELATED: R.L. Stine Confirms Even More Fear Street Movies Are on the Way (Even After Prom Queen)]

Thanksgiving excels as a modern slasher by fully embracing its wild premise and delivering a relentlessly entertaining experience filled with inventive death scenes and a classic whodunit structure. Critics and audiences were charmed by its fun, throwback slasher energy and Roth’s signature directorial style. As a result, this holiday-themed horrorfest serves up a bloody good time for viewers eager for a slasher that combines gory creativity with a knowing sense of humor.

4) In a Violent Nature

Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature offers a strikingly unconventional entry in the slasher genre by primarily adopting the perspective of its undead killer, Johnny. The film follows the resurrected murderer’s methodical rampage through a remote forest as he targets a group of teenagers. Its distinct style, characterized by long takes and an observational approach to Johnny’s gruesome work, sets In a Violent Nature apart from typical slasher flair. The movie quickly garnered attention for its arthouse sensibilities, focusing on the stark brutality of the kills rather than traditional narrative suspense or character development for the victims.

Due to its point of view, In a Violent Nature provides a uniquely immersive and chilling experience, stripping down the slasher formula to its raw essence. The film’s commitment to its gimmick and its unflinching depiction of violence make for a polarizing yet fascinating watch for horror fans, boldly deconstructing the subgenre. Therefore, In a Violent Nature offers a meditative and deeply unsettling alternative for audiences seeking a slasher that challenges conventions.

5) Terrifier 3

Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3 sees Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) once again resurrected, this time to unleash a horrific Christmas Eve massacre in Miles County. Following the gruesome events of the previous film, Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) attempt to rebuild their lives, but Art, now donning a Santa Claus costume and joined by a possessed Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) as an accomplice, has other bloody plans. The film continues the franchise’s commitment to extreme, unrated horror, making the most of its $2 million budget, eight times more than what Leone used for Terrifier 2.

Terrifier 3 achieved massive commercial success, grossing over $90 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing unrated film ever. Critics offered generally positive reviews, noting the film’s elevated production values and inventive, practical gore effects. Even the narrative and dialogue, usually secondary to the extreme splatter in the franchise, were praised, a clear sign that Terrifier gets better with each installment. Plus, David Howard Thornton’s physical performance as Art continues to be a highlight that makes Terrifier 3 an easy slasher to recommend.

6) Freaky

Christopher Landon’s Freaky masterfully blends the body-swap comedy with the slasher genre, creating a unique and highly entertaining horror-comedy. In the movie, Kathryn Newton stars as Millie, a high school student who accidentally swaps bodies with a notorious serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher, played by Vince Vaughn. The film follows Millie (in the Butcher’s body) as she tries to reverse the curse, while the Butcher (in Millie’s body) uses his new disguise to go on a killing spree. Freaky received near-universal praise for its clever premise, strong performances, and successful tonal balance, making it a must-see for slasher fans.

Freaky excels due to the brilliant comedic and horror timing of Newton and Vaughn, making both the humorous situations and the suspenseful slasher moments equally effective. It delivers inventive kills and genuine laughs, subverting tropes from both genres it incorporates. For audiences seeking a fresh, energetic, and witty take on the slasher, Freaky offers a sharply written and thoroughly enjoyable experience that stands out for its creativity and fun.

7) M3GAN

The 2023 horror hit M3GAN updates the killer doll concept for the AI era with its blend of dark humor, unsettling horror, and sharp social commentary. Allison Williams plays Gemma in M3GAN, a roboticist who creates an advanced AI doll as a companion for her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). As M3GAN’s protective instincts become dangerously extreme, she evolves into a chilling antagonist. The film became a viral sensation, largely due to M3GAN’s unnerving design and iconic dance sequences. However, the movie is a marvelous slasher that deserves equal praise for how it handles its gruesome kills.

M3GAN stands as a superior modern horror film because of its intelligent script that explores themes of technology, grief, and parenting, alongside delivering effective scares and darkly comedic moments. It provides a sleek, entertaining, and thought-provoking thrill ride, making it an excellent choice for those looking for a contemporary horror film that is both fun and genuinely creepy.

Which modern slasher movies from the 2020s do you think are a cut above the rest?

The post 7 Modern Slasher Movies Better Than Fear Street: Prom Queen appeared first on ComicBook.com.

“Becoming,” the two-part finale of Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains a fan-favorite episode nearly 30 years after its original broadcast. The downbeat conclusion to the second season of the show saw Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) impaling Angel (David Boreanaz) with an enchanted sword and sending him to hell. That sent shockwaves through the show’s dedicated fanbase. How could series creator Joss Whedon and company kill off a character with such an important presence on the show? Perhaps even more shockingly, the character’s demise was initially supposed to be permanent. However, thanks to the WB Network’s interest in casting the character in a spinoff, Buffy brought Angel back in Season 3.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine what the series would have been like without Angel as a mainstay following his (brief) departure at the end of Season 2. We say that for a couple of reasons.

Killing Angel After Season 2 Would Have Changed Buffy Forever

Fans were gutted by the way the program left off at the end of its second season, however, that sorrow turned to joy for many when Angel returned to the series in Season 3, Episode 3. Very little context is given regarding his return, and that might have something to do with the fact that the original plan was for the character to remain dead permanently.

Many fans were delighted by the brooding vampire’s homecoming, but a handful of others note that the decision to bring Angel back undid a very powerful, very poignant exit for the sake of further expanding the intellectual property.

RELATED – Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Best Season Was Altered Due to a Real-Life Tragedy

In retrospect, it’s almost impossible to imagine the series going on without Angel. Although his arc largely segues to the spinoff series Angel after Season 3, the character continues to make appearances on the series for the balance of its seven-season run, remaining an important part of the shared universe throughout the duration.

One element that Angel’s permanent absence would have likely impacted is Cordelia’s (Charisma Carpenter) arc. The character’s role in the third season is reduced to pave the way for her transition to the spinoff. If Angel had remained dead, what would her role have looked like? Would the writers have given her a larger presence on the series, or would she have been written off regardless?

Although we’ll never know what might have been, it’s still interesting to think how the third through seventh seasons of Buffy could have played out without Angel around as a part of the shared televised universe.

Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Spinoff Series Angel Made a Lasting Mark on Pop Culture

Both shows remain deeply imprinted upon the minds of an entire generation who grew up watching the respective programs, as well as new fans who are discovering them post-cancellation.

Part of what makes the shows resonate after all this time is the emotional investment each elicits from viewers. Though neither series had a particularly sizable budget, the writing and the performances pulled us in. The show’s tendency to kill off key players worked well to keep us on our toes. When there’s a potential that almost any character might get written off at any given time, that leaves fans in a perpetual state of high alert.

All things considered, bringing Angel back in Season 3 remains a pleasant surprise for most. With characters like Joyce, Anya, Wesley, and Tara all dying (permanently), it’s nice to see characters like Angel beating the odds and living to fight another day. If Angel had stayed dead after his tragic demise at the end of Season 2, the series would surely be different for it.

What do you think about the slightly unorthodox decision to bring Angel back from the dead in Season 3? Did it help or hurt your relationship with the show? Make sure to let us know by sounding off in the comments section below.

As fans know, Buffy went off the air in the early ’00s, but the program’s seven-season run is available to stream on Hulu. Following cancellation, the IP continued in comic form for many years. Additionally, several original cast members reunited for the audio drama “Slayers: A Buffyverse Story” in 2023. That nine-episode series won’t be returning for a second season, but don’t fret, Hulu is presently in development on a series reboot that will focus on a new slayer. The best news about that development is that Gellar will feature as a recurring guest star.

No word just yet on when the Hulu series will go into production or make its debut on the platform, but we will keep you updated as we learn more.

The post The Original Plan for Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Would Have Totally Changed the Series appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone was so influential that it not only inspired filmmakers to craft their own similar narratives, but it also inspired people to remake the series and some of its best episodes, as well. In fact, there have been three separate reboots of The Twilight Zone. Two years after Twilight Zone: The Movie elicited shrugs in 1983, there was the first reimagining. That series ran (primarily on CBS, like the original) from 1985 to 1989 for a total of 65 episodes. The second reboot aired from 2002 to 2003 on UPN, which amounted to a massive 43-episode single season. The most recent reboot, which was hosted and co-developed by Jordan Peele, ran for two 10-episode seasons on CBS All Access. That show, like Twilight Zone: The Movie, had a reimagining of the classic episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

But that episode wasn’t the only one to see itself redone over the years. The 2000s reboot, which was hosted by Forest Whitaker, actually not only remade a pair of the original series’ most well-regarded episodes, it produced a sequel to one, too (specifically, a sequel to “It’s a Good Life” titled “It’s Still a Good Life”).

What Is the Original “Eye of the Beholder” About?

If “Eye of the Beholder” isn’t the most iconic episode of The Twilight Zone, it still ranks mighty close. It’s fully in line with “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” As just the 39th episode of the series (still within its first season), “Eye of the Beholder” was also an early sign that the show was quite capable of being as thoughtful as it was frightening.

We follow Janet Tyler, a woman lying back in a hospital bed with bandages fully surrounding her head. In time, we are told that this surgery is her eleventh attempt to acclimate to the society that surrounds her, one that deems her physically repulsive. But this is the society of a different time and a different place, one that is highly implied to be totalitarian in nature. She is only allowed eleven procedures and should this one prove to be a failure like the other ten, she’ll be sequestered to an area that is filled with people as hideous as she is.

[RELATED: There’s a Reason These Six Episodes of The Twilight Zone Are So Different from the Rest]

For the most part throughout the first two-thirds of the episode, we don’t leave Janet’s side. We feel her growing anxiety. And, all the while, we’re wondering just how bad she can look to warrant such trepidation, almost outright fear, from the staff. The doctor has a different outlook, he questions why physical appearance is such a big deal, at which point he is warned by a nurse that his words are treasonous.

Janet is eager to have the bandages removed, and finally, the sympathetic doctor complies. Slowly, they’re unwrapped from her head until we see what the doctor and nurses see. But, while they recoil in, respectively, disappointment and horror, we’re taken aback by her beauty. We don’t recoil until light is shown on the medical staff’s face.

The beautiful Janet rushes out of her room and tries to evade any number of gruesome-looking hospital staff until she stumbles into the break room. There she finds a handsome man named Mr. Smith, who escorts her to the area where she will be kept away from the more traditional-looking (in this society, at least, certainly not in ours) pig-snout people.

Whereas those behind the early aughts Twilight Zone shook things up a bit with their take on “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” they kept things pretty much verbatim with “Eye of the Beholder.” Even Whitaker’s bookending narrations are almost exactly what Serling had said.

The only real difference was that the impact of something like this is considerably lessened when done a second time without anything new to say. Specifically, the 2003 version has a 6.5 on IMDb, whereas the original series episode has a 9.1. Not to mention, even though the original version had aired over 40 years prior, the quality of makeup seemingly hadn’t improved much by the time the early aughts edition rolled around.

The post The Most Iconic Episode of The Twilight Zone Actually Got a Remake (But Fans Forgot About It) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Far more of Stephen King‘s many, many works have been adapted for either the big screen or small (sometimes both, like with IT) than have not been adapted. Sometimes, the director is hired, turns out a movie or miniseries, then never touches the Master of Horror’s bibliography again. Other directors seem to find a great amount of comfort in adapting the author, because it’s a well they’ve returned to time and time again. And, whether they’ve directed two King adaptations or eight, there’s always one that stands above the others. Not always by a wide margin, but always by some margin.

We’re restricting everything to frequent Stephen King directors here. Or, really, directors with more than one King adaptation under their belt. That means no producers who have, to varying degrees, been behind some of the author’s adaptations. This includes J.J. Abrams, who has a great track record after serving as executive producer on 11.22.63, Castle Rock, and Lisey’s Story.

1) Storm of the Century by Craig R. Baxley

1999’s Storm of the Century is an odd duck in the list of Stephen King TV miniseries. This is because it wasn’t even based on a King novel; it was a wholly original project he wrote for the screen. And even though it doesn’t have any fan-favorite source material fueling its narrative, it ends up being the best of the bunch. It’s fun to watch an original King narrative playing out in front of your own eyes.

Storm of the Century helmer Craig R. Baxley directed three other King miniseries after Storm of the Century, all of which had their merits but didn’t quite live up to his first time out of the gate. Those were Rose Red, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (a prequel to Rose Red), and Kingdom Hospital. Like Storm of the Century, Rose Red was an original teleplay by the author himself. Kingdom Hospital was also not based on a pre-existing King novel or novella. Rather, it was loosely based on Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom.

2) Cujo by Lewis Teague

Lewis Teague was one of the 1980s’ more underappreciated genre film directors. 1980’s Alligator is a truly top-tier Jaws rip-off, but it didn’t make even a third of the money that a project focused on a smaller animal did. Namely, a St. Bernard.

Cujo is not a perfect movie, but by the same token, Cujo was not a perfect book. As a whole, it’s disjointed, because the first half is filled with mostly unlikable characters and a great focus on infidelity. The latter half, though, is a rollercoaster ride that never leaves the interior of a Ford Pinto. As Donna, the mother cradling her asthmatic baby from the snarls of the rabid dog, Dee Wallace gives a powerhouse performance. Not to mention, while jump scares are typically best left avoided, Cujo has a truly great one. Teague also directed Cat’s Eye two years later, and while that anthology film has its moments, it’s Cujo for the win.

3) Salem’s Lot by Tobe Hooper

Most of ’80s horror’s best directors adapted Stephen King at one time or another. Halloween‘s John Carpenter had Christine, Dawn of the Dead‘s George A. Romero had Creepshow, The Fly‘s David Cronenberg had The Dead Zone, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s Tobe Hooper had 1979’s Salem’s Lot. Salem’s Lot isn’t quite as good as Christine, Creepshow, or The Dead Zone, but it is by far the best of the three adaptations of King’s vampire tale released thus far.

Hooper also directed the execrable The Mangler, so it was an easy win for Salem’s Lot. It takes one of King’s more expansive early novels and focuses on the best parts while leaving out most of what wasn’t fully necessary. It’s like how the Harry Potter film sequels focused just on the scenes told from Harry’s POV.

4) Mr. Mercedes by Jack Bender

Director Jack Bender may have directed Child’s Play 3 back in 1991, but he’s mostly known for his work in television, e.g. helming episodes of A-list series such as Game of Thrones and The Sopranos. He’s also done quite well with small-screen King adaptations.

First, he directed nine of Under the Dome‘s 39 total episodes. Like that show, his subsequent King project, Mr. Mercedes ran for three seasons, but unlike Under the Dome, Mr. Mercedes was cancelled as opposed to concluding on its own terms. He helmed 23 of Mr. Mercedes‘s 30 total episodes, and considering it’s one of King’s more highly regarded small-screen projects, he deserves a substantial amount of credit for its success. Up next for Bender is The Institute, led by Ben Barnes and Mary-Louise Parker. Will it be as critically praised as Mr. Mercedes?

5) Creepshow by George A. Romero

George A. Romero’s Creepshow is the definitive horror anthology film, setting a bar so high that not even its own sequel could come close to touching. It’s the perfect mix of grim humor and suitably different horror tales. It also comes equipped with one segment that features the Master of Horror himself. That segment is “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” one of two based on a pre-existing King short story. The other three were original stories penned by King for the big screen.

Creepshow was one of the stronger entries in the legendary horror director’s filmography, so it makes sense why he was keen to return to the world of King. Romero also helmed The Dark Half, created Tales from the Darkside (which twice adapted King short stories, including one episode King himself wrote), and wrote the segment of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie that was based on a pre-existing King work, “The Cat from Hell.”

[RELATED: Stephen King Actually Wrote One Episode of The X-Files (And It’s Terrifying)]

6) IT by Andy Muschietti

Like the next entry on this list and its source material, IT is a definitive coming-of-age tale. And, also like the next entry, it’s one that benefits from spot-on casting. Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Chosen Jacobs, Sophia Lillis; they’re all very well cast. But at the end of the day, IT is Bill Skarsgård’s showcase, and he gives Tim Curry a serious run for his menace-money as the updated take on Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Admittedly, the film that surrounds the cast isn’t as impressive as they are, as it far too often relies on both weak CGI and the not-so-scary tactic of having something run directly towards the camera (it really seems to think that is terrifying, but it isn’t). But, as a whole, IT is an impressive adaptation of the book’s infinitely better half.

Muschietti, of course, also directed IT CHAPTER TWO, but that’s not all, as he’s also directing and executive producing the upcoming IT: Welcome to Derry. Not to mention, he also executive produced Locke & Key, based on the comic book series of the same name by King’s son, Joe Hill.

7) Stand by Me by Rob Reiner

As far as coming-of-age movies go, there’s really no beating 1986’s Stand by Me. King’s novella The Body was already great, but thanks to the pitch-perfect casting of Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, and, especially, River Phoenix, there’s a strong argument to be made that the movie is better than the source material. It was and remains one of Rob Reiner’s best films. Which is saying something because Reiner’s early filmography is pretty much solid across the board. Stand by Me came on the heels of The Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing and was followed by The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, another top-shelf King adaptation, A Few Good Men, and The American President.

What was that other top-shelf King adaptation? Misery, a movie that also benefited from pitch-perfect casting. Both of Reiner’s King adaptations are comparably superb, yet very different in tone. It’s a wonder why he never adapted the author a third time. That said, it’s also a wonder how Reiner could direct what is arguably the best coming of age film and the worst — North.

8) The Stand by Mick Garris

The Stand is certainly one of King’s longer novels, practically necessitating a miniseries over a film adaptation. But, even if given the benefit of an expanded runtime, it’s hard work to really get right. But Mick Garris came pretty close with his 1994. At least closer than the even more divisive 2020 attempt came.

Garris also directed the theatrical (and profoundly bizarre) Sleepwalkers, which was an original screenplay by King, and the TV movie Riding the Bullet. As for TV series besides The Stand, Garris directed all three episodes of 1997’s The Shining, and both episodes of Bag of Bones. Furthermore, he helmed a pair of King TV movies in Quicksilver Highway and Desperation.

9) Gerald’s Game by Mike Flanagan

Gerald’s Game was the ultimate example of a King book that people thought to be unfilmable. Enter Mike Flanagan, who, along with Carla Gugino, turned it into one of the best King adaptations in a long while.

After knocking Gerald’s Game out of the park, Flanagan helmed the wildly underrated The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep, in 2019. And, after creating a few non-King TV series, Flanagan returned to the Master of Horror with, ironically enough, a project outside the horror genre: The Life of Chuck.

10) The Shawshank Redemption by Frank Darabont

The Shawshank Redemption isn’t just many people’s favorite Stephen King movie, it’s their favorite movie, period. It’s been the highest-rated movie on all of IMDb for quite some time now, over other heavy hitters such as The Godfather, The Dark Knight, and Pulp Fiction.

Shawshank wasn’t a one-off win for Darabont adapting King, either, as his next directed adaptation (which was also his next directed film in general) scored an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination. That film was The Green Mile, but Darabont proved eight years later that he was just as capable of memorably directing a King horror story with The Mist.

The post The 10 Best Stephen King Adaptations by His Frequent Directors appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Audiences came out in full force to support Ryan Coogler’s Sinners during its very lucrative box office run, and they’ll be able to rewatch the film at home in the near future. According to The Wrap, Sinners will be available on various digital platforms beginning Tuesday, June 3rd. Those interested in owning a physical copy of the movie will have to wait until Tuesday, July 8th, which is when the Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UHD go on sale. Both the physical and digital versions of Sinners on home media contain a bevy of special features that explore topics such as the making of the film and the role music plays in the story.

Fans will also get to see around 20 minutes of deleted scenes. The home media versions of Sinners come equipped with expanded aspect ratios, “allowing consumers to see both 1.78:1 and 2.76:1 aspect ratios, as intended by the filmmaker for home viewing” per a press release from Warner Bros.

Hitting theaters back in April, Sinners quickly emerged as a critical and commercial juggernaut. Hailed as one of the best films of the year, it exceeded box office expectations and has grossed $338.9 million worldwide against a $90 million production budget as of this writing. Sinners earned considerable praise for Coogler’s distinct vision, Michael B. Jordan’s dual performances as twin brothers, and it’s ability to deftly blend genre entertainment with smart social commentary.

[RELATED – 10 Best Non-Superhero Movies From MCU Directors]

Releasing on the heels of some notable WB bombs, Sinners gave the studio the hit it desperately needed in what is a critical year. Despite the movie’s success, Coogler has said he does not have any plans to develop a sequel, expressing a desire to craft more non-franchise films in the future.

Over a month after it premiered, Sinners is still a decent box office draw. It grossed $11 million domestically over Memorial Day weekend. And while the film is tailor made to be seen on the biggest screens (taking full advantage of the IMAX format), it’s great to see it will be available to watch at home soon. Considering how popular Sinners was in theaters, it stands reason to believe it will be an equally hot seller on home media. The film’s many fans are likely eager to add it to their collections and rewatch it whenever they want. In addition to seeing the movie again, it should be a treat to see the behind-the-scenes featurettes that will give people a greater insight into what makes Sinners so special.

One question that still needs to be answered is when Sinners will be available to stream on HBO Max. Only the digital and Blu-ray dates have been announced so far. It stands reason to believe Sinners will hit Max around the same time the Blu-ray hits shelves. In an effort to boost digital sales, Warner Bros. likely wouldn’t want to put Sinners on streaming for “free” in early June.

Will you be picking up Sinners on home media? Let us know in the comments!

The post Sinners Finally Sets Streaming & Blu-ray Release Dates (& They’re Soon) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

It’s hard to find joy in the world of HBO’s The Last of Us. After all, once the Cordyceps infection starts to spread, society breaks down, forcing the humans still around to give in to their primal instincts. Joel knows what bad people are capable of, so he tries to keep his travel partner, Ellie, on track by never indulging in her antics. Slowly but surely, though, she wears him down, and by the time Season 2 rolls around, he’s the cool father figure who loves to mess around. Unfortunately, the good times don’t last because Joel dies at the hands of a group of former Fireflies.

Joel’s death confirms that there’s little to no happiness to be found in the world, and even though Ellie tries to run from that fact for a while, it catches up to her in the Season 2 finale. She kills Mel, who’s pregnant, and loses Jesse shortly after when Abby arrives in the theater to end the threat to her friends. However, despite all the darkness, The Last of Us Season 2’s last episode finds the time to sneak in a hilarious Easter egg.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Finally Adds Major Aspect From the Games]

The Last of Us Won’t Let Abby Find Peace at Home

After killing Owen and Mel, Ellie isn’t doing too hot. She’s starting to realize that her quest for revenge is taking her down a dark road, so when Tommy and Jesse suggest heading back to Jackson Hole, she’s all about it. Ellie isn’t happy that Abby gets to live, but the conflict in Seattle is too much for the small group to handle, and staying any longer likely means death. Ellie doesn’t get away scot-free, though, because Abby makes her way to the theater, shoots Jesse dead, and holds Tommy at gunpoint before turning the weapon on Ellie. Before The Last of Us can reveal the aftermath of Abby’s last shot, it cuts to black and shows what Abby was up to three days earlier.

With the Jackson Hole mission behind her, Abby is back to her routine as a member of the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF. She’s grabbing a quick power nap when Manny walks in and lets her know that Isaac wants to talk to them. However, Abby can’t just stand right up because she has a book on top of her, “Thieves of the City” by Ben Davidoff. The scene draws attention to the novel for a few seconds, teasing that there’s more to it than meets the eye.

There’s Something Wrong With Abby’s Book in The Last of Us Season 2

A quick Google search will not yield results for “Thieves of the City” because it is not a real book. What will come up is a book called City of Thieves by David Benioff about two young people living in Leningrad, Russia, during World War II, who have to find a dozen eggs after ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the book’s main selling points is that the two main characters are polar opposites but come to love each other after going through a traumatic experience. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, and that’s not a coincidence because the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, credits City of Thieves as one of his inspirations.

Druckmann appreciates the book so much that he includes it in The Last of Us Part II when Abby is sleeping on the couch. However, things are different in the live-action adaptation, with Abby reading a book that pays homage to Benioff’s work without outright using it. It’s possible HBO just wasn’t able to secure the rights to use City of Thieves, which is funny because Benioff is one of the creators of arguably the network’s biggest show of all time, Game of Thrones. But when money is involved, relationships only go so far, leaving HBO to create a story of its own that probably follows the same outline as the original but makes some big changes along the way.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you make note of the book Abby is reading in The Last of Us Season 2 finale? Why do you think City of Thieves didn’t end up in the show? Let us know in the comments below!

The post There’s a Hilarious Easter Egg in The Last of Us Season 2 Finale That You Missed appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us Season 2 takes on the tough challenge of adapting a game that takes about 25 hours to complete. Thankfully, it doesn’t try to fit it all in one outing, saving a good portion of the game for Season 3 and potentially a fourth season. However, the HBO show doesn’t do itself any favors by making Season 2 only seven episodes. Plenty of major moments are cut, and the remaining storylines feel condensed. Still, Season 2, Episode 7 does a solid job of advancing the story as Ellie continues her quest for vengeance in Seattle. There’s just one head-scratching moment keeping the episode from being an all-timer.

Season 2, Episode 7 focuses on the gang from Jackson regrouping after running into the Washington Liberation Front and Seraphites in Episode 5. Jesse wants to head home, and Ellie initially agrees because Dina isn’t doing well after taking an arrow to the leg. But when Ellie’s rage gets the better of her, she goes on a solo mission to take out Abby, which quickly goes awry.

The Last of Us Season 2 Throws a Wrench in Ellie’s Big Moment

Jesse isn’t happy with Ellie when she makes her way back to the theater in Seattle. She’s acting recklessly and won’t give him any answers about where she’s been. Jesse tries to have a heart-to-heart with his friend when they leave to go find Tommy, but it’s clear that Ellie isn’t thinking straight. Even when they have Tommy in their sights and are ready to rescue him from a WLF ambush, Ellie turns her attention to the Ferris wheel and aquarium she learned about from Nora. Jesse pleads with her to say, even revealing to her that he voted no to the mission in Seattle. However, Ellie’s mind is made up, so she heads toward her destination.

Getting to the aquarium requires a boat, and it doesn’t take Ellie long to find one. Once she gets to the dock, though, she notices two guys walking around. Her initial plan is to kill them, which seems smart. She hesitates for just a second, and a fleet of boats arrives with the rest of the WLF. They’re heading out to take the fight to the Seraphites, and while Ellie disagrees with the group’s methods and is starting to feel bad for their enemies, it’s not her fight. She grabs a boat and continues on despite the bad conditions. Unfortunately, the waves get the better of her, with a wave sending her flying into the water.

Ellie washes up on the Seraphite’s island, where a kid sees her and calls for help. Before she can act, Ellie is being strung up, and a Seraphite is ready to cut her guts out. She only escapes because the WLF’s attack distracts the people attacking her, forcing them to leave her behind. The whole sequence is a jarring pitstop in the episode, but it’s not completely out of left field.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Shows Why Video Game Adaptations Can’t Please Fans]

Ellie’s Compassion Doesn’t Go Very Far in Seattle in The Last of Us Season 2

Season 2, Episode 7 makes a big point to focus on Ellie’s feelings about the conflict in Seattle. While she’s out looking for Tommy with Jesse, they come across a group of Wolves trying to corner a Seraphite. They catch up to the young man and strip him of his clothes before dragging him away. Ellie wants to intervene, but Jesse stops him because they’re significantly outnumbered. She grows frustrated because she’s seen the WLF and Seraphites tear each other apart, likely leaving children like the one she just saw fighting for their lives. However, in the world of The Last of Us, it’s important to pick your battles, and Jesse knows the fight they’re in the middle of is no joke.

Ellie comes to that same realization on the island when a child doesn’t hesitate to turn her over. They even act enthusiastically instruct the other Seraphites to kill the stranger they believe to be a WLF soldier. Ellie can’t believe what she’s seeing, but the people in Seattle don’t seem to have much humanity left. She even becomes part of the problem shortly after when she heads to the aquarium and kills Owen and Mel, who is pregnant.

The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann wanted to drive that point home as early as The Last of Us Part II video game. He mentioned on the series’ companion podcast that Ellie ending up on the Seraphite island was going to be part of the game until time constraints caught up to the creative team. Despite good intentions, however, the scene doesn’t add enough to the Season 2 finale to fully justify its existence.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you have a problem with Ellie ending up on the Seraphite island in The Last of Us Season 2? Do you see what the show is going for? Let us know in the comments below!

The post There’s One Big Problem With The Last of Us Season 2 Finale appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The original Twilight Zone inspired many imitators in its wake. From the more science fiction-oriented Outer Limits to the straight horror of Tales From the Crypt, countless TV shows have taken the twist-ending, anthology format and put their own spin on it with varying degrees of success. Some series like Black Mirror have managed to comment on the existential dilemmas that plague humanity in a way that equals or — in rare cases —surpasses the Twilight Zone. And then there’s Monsters.

Monsters was a late ’80s horror anthology that ran in syndication. Unlike similar shows, it didn’t have any feelings at all about holding a mirror up to darker aspects of mankind in order to deliver some kind of thought-provoking message. Monsters just wanted to have fun and creep you out a little in the process. As much as I love the Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, sometimes you just want cheap, sleazy entertainment, and that’s where Monsters excels.

What Is Monsters?

Monsters ran for three seasons from 1988-1990 for a total of 72 episodes, starring an equal number of gruesome critters. Creator Richard P. Rubinstein came up with Monsters after growing frustrated with what he saw as a lack of appreciation for his production company’s special effects work on the horror anthology Tales from the Darkside. While Tales was praised for its storytelling and acting, critics hardly ever mentioned the makeup and creature effects that Rubinstein felt were of equal quality. As a result, Rubinstein decided to create an anthology that would focus specifically on weird creatures and grotesque oddities.

That’s not to say that the acting and storytelling in Monsters are bad — but they definitely take a backseat to the grotesqueries promised by the show’s title. The show’s “monsters” were a mix of old standbys like vampires, aliens, and zombies, with more unique fare like killer beds and a weird man/pig hybrid. It was important to Rubinstein that Monsters eschew slashers like Freddy and Jason, who were popular at the time, in favor of what the creator described as “Brothers Grimm” style beasts that were more “bump in the night” than “slice and dice.”

Rubinstein considered a “good monster” to be a mixture of “fun and scare.” As such, the creatures of Monsters are often just as goofy as they are terrifying. Monsters never takes itself too seriously. For me, that’s part of the series’ charm. The show was like the anti-Twilight Zone, and I mean that as a compliment.

Monsters Was a Unique Horror Anthology, For Better and Worse

There weren’t a lot of messages in Monsters, and what was there was more “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” than “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” Instead, the show was more interested in making the audience laugh and groan. Monsters lets you know what kind of show you’re watching right from the tongue-in-cheek opening, where a family of inhuman mutants settles in to watch their favorite TV show.

Like most sci-fi/horror anthologies, Monsters attracted a smattering of celebrity guest-stars. Steve Buscemi, Adrien Barbeau, and Pam Grier each starred in an episode as did several other well-known actors. The series also adapted several short stories, including one from Stephen King about a giant finger protruding from a man’s bathroom sink.

Sadly, Monsters is largely forgotten these days. It never made the lasting impression culturally that its contemporaries like Tales from the Crypt did, although I’d argue that it wasn’t really trying to. Still, it’s a shame when any show — even a guilty pleasure like Monsters — fades from the collective consciousness. Luckily the show lives on in streaming.

All three seasons of Monsters are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. If you don’t have a Prime subscription, fret not — you can also stream Monsters on Tubi, although sadly, only the first season is available. If you’re looking to relax with a fun creature feature that you don’t have to think too hard about, I can’t recommend Monsters enough. If you do decide to check it out, make sure to let us know what you thought in the comments.

The post This Forgotten Horror Anthology Is The Anti-Twilight Zone (And I Love It For That) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 episode 4, “Feisty Friendly.”] It can be difficult keeping track of time in the apocalypse. We know that August 27, 2010, is the day the world ended in The Walking Dead universe, and that The Walking Dead: Dead City takes place furthest in the timeline (season 2 is set circa 2027). In the first season, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) generously estimates he first formed the Saviors some “12, 15 years ago,” not long before Negan’s gang forced the pregnant Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) to their knees in the sixth season finale of The Walking Dead.

Glenn’s “Last Day on Earth,” as the episode was titled, was in 2012. Months after Negan took his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat to Glenn’s head, Maggie gave birth to Glenn’s son, the now 15-year-old Hershel Rhee (Logan Kim).

That means that Glenn died just about two years into the apocalypse, and that the events of the first seven seasons of The Walking Dead — from the CDC, to the farm, the prison, and then to Terminus and Alexandria — all happened in the span of less than 24 months. So it’s understandable that Maggie may have misremembered when a sweet moment with her late husband actually took place.

RELATED: The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Hershel Twist Explained

In Sunday’s “Feisty Friendly” episode of Dead City, Maggie and New Babylon Federation Colonel Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) reminiscence about the old world and the food they miss most. For Armstrong, it’s a breakfast sandwich you’d get from a hole-in-the-wall bodega. For Maggie, it’s a Kit-Kat.

“Sometimes, early on, you’d luck out and find a candy bar. Last time I saw a candy bar was three years in. It was my birthday, and he surprised me,” Maggie recalls somberly, referencing Glenn without uttering his name.

That scene has now come under scrutiny as a potential timeline discrepancy. “Three years in” to the apocalypse would date Maggie’s candy bar birthday present from Glenn to have happened in 2013, by which time Glenn was dead.

It’s not a scene that played out on The Walking Dead, so it’s hard to say for sure when the exchange might have happened. But there was about an eight-month time jump between seasons 2 and 3 (when Maggie, Glenn, and the rest of group left the Greene farm for the prison), and another months-long time skip between seasons 3 and 4. There’s also about a month between the death of Maggie’s sister, Beth (Emily Kinney), and the group arriving at Alexandria in season 5. Some two weeks after that, Maggie reveals she’s pregnant, and Glenn dies not even two months later.

As difficult as it may be to believe that Maggie misremembered the last time she broke off a piece of a Kit-Kat bar some 15 years ago, a lot happened in a short amount of time. And let’s remember: there’s no real keeping track of time in the apocalypse.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

The post Is The Walking Dead: Dead City’s Glenn Reference a Timeline Discrepancy? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us Season 2 has come to an end, but we already have a pretty good idea of what will happen in Season 3. Fans of The Last of Us video games likely knew full well where this second season would end, as the show has followed the game pretty faithfully, even adhering to its divisive structure. With that said, all seven episodes of Season 2 are now streaming, confirming speculation that The Last of Us Season 3 will adapt the very controversial second half of the game. With that said, there’s a lot of stuff set up in the finale that will paint a big picture of what’s to come next season.

Of course, this goes without saying: if you don’t want any spoilers for The Last of Us Season 3, get out now. We will keep it pretty broad so as not to give away anything significant; everything being discussed here is high-concept material that will probably be revealed in trailers anyway.

1) Abby’s Perspective

What you saw at the end of The Last of Us Season 2 isn’t a red herring. The Last of Us Season 3 will follow Abby almost exclusively. In the game, players see the same confrontation between Ellie and Abby before it cuts to black, then the entire game shifts, putting players on Abby’s side of the story. We get some flashbacks with her and her dad, but primarily, the second half of The Last of Us Part 2 video game is seeing what Abby has been up to for the last three days, while Ellie and Dina infiltrate Seattle. As you might imagine, this was extremely controversial for players, as the shift in protagonist wasn’t advertised almost at all. There was one brief tease years before the game was released, but it was largely forgotten by the time people played it.

Players were furious that they’d have to spend upwards of 8 – 10+ hours as someone they hated, but that’s part of the point of the game. By the end of Abby’s section of The Last of Us Part 2, some fans were able to empathize with her and enjoy her side more than Ellie’s. With that said, don’t expect to see much Ellie next season, unless they make some major changes that wouldn’t really make any sense, structurally. Unless you’ve played the game, there is simply no way you will be able to guess where things are going with her plotline, and that makes for a very interesting season.

2) The Explosion

At the end of The Last of Us Season 2, there’s a pretty massive explosion that occurs while Ellie is about to be executed. This scene with Ellie is not in the game, but the explosion is. That explosion is part of Abby’s section of the story and will make for a big moment in The Last of Us Season 3. This big boom is the result of the ongoing war between the WLF and the Scars, and Abby will have a front row seat to it. If it’s anything like the game, this will make for one hell of a season finale or, at the very least, a great penultimate episode.

3) The WLF vs. Seraphite War

We are going to get a lot more information on what’s happening between the WLF and the Seraphites in The Last of Us Season 3. In fact, it has been teased in various interviews that the medium of television may be used to show us more than what we’ve seen in the games. The Last of Us has shown us lots of stuff not seen in the games and it seems like Season 3 will explore the background of this war in a big way.

[RELATED: The Last of Us – 8 Game Moments Not Included in Season 2]

4. The Skybridge

There’s a very quick shot of a big bridge made up of cranes in between skyscrapers during The Last of Us Season 2’s finale. If you’ve never played the game, this may not jump out at you. However, it does jump out to those who’ve played the game and it was confirmed during a press conference with the creators of the game that this was a very intentional set-up.

Without revealing too much, Abby is terrified of heights in The Last of Us Part 2 video game. One can imagine that fear will carry over to the TV version as well. In the game, Abby is forced to cross this bridge to urgently reach the hospital that we see in Season 2. It’s a highly dangerous, but necessary shortcut. It should make for a pretty riveting piece of TV in The Last of Us Season 3.

The Last of Us Seasons 1 & 2 are streaming on Max. Season 3 is in development at HBO.

The post Everything The Last of Us Season 2 Finale Teased for Season 3 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us Season 2 has officially ended, and although it’s quite faithful to the game, there is a lot of stuff from the game that’s not in the TV show. One of the great things about The Last of Us is that it’s a fairly good translation of the game for people who aren’t gamers. There’s no homework required, and largely, you’re not going to miss out on anything substantial. Still, there are some great moments in the game that were cut from the show, likely due to budget/timing reasons or because it just didn’t fit in with the story the showrunners wanted to convey.

With all of that said, we’ve rounded up some of the biggest moments from The Last of Us Part 2 game that aren’t in the TV series. Some of these moments make the story a lot better or nuanced, but others boil down to action scenes likely being cut down for time.

Here are 8 moments from The Last of Us Part II that didn’t make it into HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2.

1. Shimmer Dies

Unfortunately, one of the first fatalities of The Last of Us Part 2 is the horse Shimmer. Shortly after arriving in Seattle, Ellie and Dina’s horse trips some sort of explosive trap. Ellie and Dina are thrown from the horse, and a WLF member promptly executes Shimmer. It’s a crushing reminder that Dina and Ellie are in over their heads, and there’s no turning back.

2. School Shootout

After the aforementioned explosion, Ellie is captured by one of Abby’s crew members, Jordan (who is not featured in the show at all), and held captive inside an abandoned school. Ellie eventually breaks free with the assistance of Dina, and the two mow down a bunch of WLF members before escaping the school.

3. Hillcrest

During Seattle Day Two, Ellie is made aware of someone causing some chaos for the WLF in a suburban neighborhood known as Hillcrest. Believing it’s Tommy, she makes her way over there and sneaks her way through a couple of dozen WLF troops. She’s eventually met by Jesse, who she believed was still back in Jackson. The two devise a plan to escape the neighborhood, prompting them to steal a truck, which results in a pretty dramatic set piece with lots of infected and WLF. Unfortunately, it ends with their truck at the bottom of some sort of lake or river.

4. Ellie and Joel Flashbacks

Most of the Ellie and Joel flashbacks are featured in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6; however, one didn’t make the cut. Ellie and Joel go on patrol and end up having to cut through a hotel, where they’re attacked by infected. At the end of this flashback, they discover the bodies of a couple who had left Jackson to go help people who were suffering elsewhere. Sadly, within an hour of leaving, they were infected and decided to commit suicide. Unfortunately, the boyfriend shot his girlfriend as part of their agreement, but was too scared to shoot himself.

Ellie notes to Joel that this could’ve been avoided if they were immune, which causes her to question his lie about the hospital from the first game having other immune people. Joel’s answers are unable to satisfy Ellie and prompt her to become frustrated with him.

5. Ellie Returns to Salt Lake City Before Joel’s Death

Eventually, Ellie’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she leaves Jackson by herself, headed for Salt Lake City. She eventually finds a tape recorder that explains that Ellie was indeed the only immune person they know of, and even if they found her again, it wouldn’t matter because the only person who could create a cure was dead. Joel catches up to her, and she confronts him about the truth. Ellie goes back to Jackson, but their relationship becomes fractured, which explains her anger toward him earlier in the game, prior to his death.

6. Ellie Lashes Out at Dina for Her Pregnancy

In The Last of Us Season 2, Ellie seems to be pretty enthusiastic about Dina’s incoming baby. However, in the game, she lashes out at Dina for not revealing her pregnancy sooner. She tells Dina she’s a burden to her mission of revenge, creating some deep tension between the two.

7. Optional Locations from the Game

In The Last of Us Part 2, there are a bunch of optional locations for players to find in Seattle, which have all kinds of interesting stories within them. One of these moments is actually featured in the show. The Last of Us Season 2 features Ellie’s rendition of Take On Me, which can be missed if players don’t find the music store and guitar in the game.

Some other optional locations include a WLF propaganda workshop and a bank, which features a group of dead bank robbers who tried to perform a heist when the day the outbreak began. As you might imagine, it didn’t end very well for them. The bank vault also contains a safety deposit box with Nathan Drake’s signature ring from the Uncharted series.

8. Ellie Kills Alice

Similar to Shimmer, The Last of Us Season 2 cut another big animal death. In the game, Ellie breaks into the aquarium and is attacked by a WLF dog named Alice. Ellie promptly stabs the dog to death before making her way to Mel and Owen. This dog belongs to Abby’s group, so it’s yet another personal blow to Abby.

HBO’s The Last of Us is streaming on Max. The Last of Us Part II game is available for purchase.

The post The Last of Us: 8 Moments from the Game Not in the Show appeared first on ComicBook.com.

There are so many elements to creating an unforgettable wrestling entrance, but it’s clear that AEW’s Swerve Strickland has the process down to a science. Look no further than Strickland’s epic entrance at tonight’s AEW Double or Nothing, which saw the star debut some insanely slick Predator gear, which came complete with an actual Predator helmet and weapons, including the trademark clawed gauntlet. It was a rather amazing way to start off Anarchy in the Arena, and you can watch the entrance for yourself in the video below.

The entrance was pretty great even before fans saw the gear up close, as the lights were dimmed and the entrance ramp was flooded with red lasers and smoke. Emerging from the smoke was Strickland, and as the lights came up, fans got to see the full gear in all its glory, though it got even better.

As the lights came up, the LED screens behind him were all in Predator vision mode, displaying that trademark heat signature visual from the films as Strickland’s name was emblazoned on top. Strickland would eventually take the helmet off as he made his way to the ring, and it all made for an unforgettable start to what was going to end up being an equally unforgettable match.

Anarchy in the Arena matches are known for taking place all over the arena, and this one kept that tradition alive with brawls in the crowd, outside the arena doors, and in the ring. The two teams battled it out everywhere, and as you have also come to expect from this type of match, things didn’t take long to get brutal.

[RELATED: Adam Cole on Finding Himself Again in AEW, Most Underrated Final Fantasy, and Witcher’s Big Debate]

Some memorable moments of this in action include Jon Moxley attacking Powerhouse Hobbs with a fork to the head, Samoa Joe slamming Claudio Castagnoli’s head with a trash can lid, Willow Nightingale smashing a bottle over Mina Shafir’s head, and Katsuyori Shibata kicking Wheeler Yuta with a barbed wire-covered boot.

Things continued to get more chaotic as the match went on, with Castagnoli swinging Strickland into a large speaker, a host of people being smashed through tables, and Nightingale having her earring locked to a chain around the ring post. Then there was a battle of the staple guns, which had Strickland stapling Moxley on the throat, Yuta on the body, Castagnoli on the head, and Matthew Jackson on the groin.

Strickland then upped the ante and put on his new shoes, though they were adorned with thumb-tack cleats. Then Strickland delivered a stomp from the top rope onto Jackson in a moment that looked absolutely painful, closing out an epic brawl.

AEW Double or Nothing

• AEW Women’s World Championship Match: “Timeless” Toni Storm (C) def. Mina Shirakawa
• AEW World Tag Team Championship Match: The Hurt Syndicate (Bobby Lashley & Shelton Benjamin) (C) vs. Sons of Texas (Sammy Guevera & Dustin Rhodes)
• Men’s Owen Hart Cup Final: Will Ospreay vs. Hangman Adam Page
• Women’s Owen Hart Cup Final: Mercedes Moné def. Jamie Hayter
• Anarchy in the Arena: Kenny Omega, Swerve Strickland, the Opps & Willow Nightingale def. Death Riders & Young Bucks
• AEW Continental Championship Match: Kazuchika Okada def. Speedball Bailey
• Stretcher Match: Ricochet def. Mark Briscoe
• FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) def. Nigel McGuinness & Daniel Garcia
• Don Callis Family (Konosuke Takeshita, Kyle Fletcher & Josh Alexander) def. Paragon (AEW TNT Champion Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly & Roderick Strong)
• AEW Double or Nothing Buy In: Anna Jay & Harley Cameron def. Megan Bayne & Penelope Ford
• AEW Double or Nothing Buy In: Bandido, AR Fox and Los Titanes Del Aire def. RPG Vice & CRU

What did you think of Strickland’s Predator gear? Let us know in the comments, and you can talk all things wrestling with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!

The post AEW’s Swerve Strickland Debuts the Sickest Predator Gear at Double or Nothing appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us is full of dark moments. In Season 1 alone, Tess dies a gruesome death to save Joel and Ellie, Henry kills himself after his brother, Sam, turns, and Joel kills an entire hospital full of Fireflies to stop them from killing Ellie to use her brain to make a cure. At first, Season 2 appears to be turning over a new leaf, allowing Joel and Ellie to live peacefully in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. However, by Episode 2, the show is harder to watch than ever when Abby kills Joel with a golf club in front of Ellie.

Watching her father figure die awakens something inside of Ellie, sending her on a quest for revenge in Seattle, Washington. She taps into her dark side on numerous occasions, such as when she tortures Nora for information in the hospital. Another moment surpasses that one on the darkness scale, though, making the scene in The Last of Us Part II feel like a trip to Disneyland.

Ellie Chooses the Path of Most Resistance in The Last of Us Season 2

It takes Ellie a few episodes to hunt down a member of Abby’s crew. She learns that Nora works at a hospital and makes her way there after Jesse arrives and gets Dina to safety. After a brief chase, they end up on a level of the building that’s full of spores, which immediately affect Nora. Ellie watches her struggle to breathe and proceeds to beat her with a pipe, hoping she’ll reveal Abby’s location. She only gets a couple of words out of her, and when she gets back to Jesse and Dina, she’s ready to meet up with Tommy and head back home.

When she heads out with Jesse, they climb to the top level of a building to get a better view of the city. It doesn’t take long to figure out Tommy’s location because he’s in a firefight with members of the Washington Liberation Front, but Ellie turns her attention elsewhere. She spots a Ferris wheel and an aquarium that seem to be in the area Nora described. After a brief argument, she leaves Jesse and heads toward her destination. She makes her way into the aquarium, looks around, and eventually hears two people talking.

After busting in the room, Ellie realizes she’s face to face with Owen and Mel, members of Abby’s crew. She tells them she doesn’t want to hurt them and just wants to know where Abby is, but Owen doesn’t believe her. He reaches for his gun, forcing Ellie to shoot and kill him. Her gun is no joke, though, as the bullet it fires goes through him and finds a second tyarget, Mel, who falls to the floor and reveals to Ellie that she’s pregnant. The whole sequence up to that point is pretty similar to The Last of Us Part II video game, but the show forges its own path by having Mel give Ellie an impossible task.

[RELATED – The Last of Us May Have Just Confirmed It’s Sticking Closer to the Games Than We Thought]

The Last of Us Season 2’s Ellie Fails Worse Than Her Video Game Counterpart

Mel has more of a heart than her fellow former Fireflies. She shows compassion during the attack on Joel, even reassuring Dina that the sedative they give her won’t kill her. Mel’s attitude doesn’t change during the season because, when Ellie crosses paths with her again, she’s pleading with Owen to be smart about involving himself in the WLF’s attack on the Seraphite island. She also tries to extend an olive branch to Ellie by trusting that the grieving girl won’t shoot them. However, Owen just can’t let cooler heads prevail, which forces Mel to use her dying breath to ask her killer to save her baby.

In The Last of Us Part II, Mel goes after Ellie after she shoots Owen, and during the scuffle, Ellie stabs Mel in the neck. Mel dies pretty quickly, giving Ellie the chance to open her coat and see that she’s pregnant without fear of another attack. Show Mel, on the other hand, isn’t trying to hurt anyone, and once she realizes her time is limited, she tries to coach Ellie through delivering the baby. Ellie tries at first to understand what Mel is saying, but as the Wolf begins to slur her words, it becomes a losing battle. Ellie just pulls Mel’s shirt back down and sobs until Tommy and Jesse arrive at the aquarium. Ellie shows the same emotion in the game, but she doesn’t have to deal with the fact that she’s unable to give Mel’s baby a fighting chance.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Do you think Mel’s death in The Last of Us Season 2 is darker than in the game? How do you think the show handled the moment in the aquarium in general? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Last of Us Season 2 Made One of the Game’s Darkest Moments Even Worse appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us Season 2 focuses on Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) quest for revenge. After five years of living peacefully in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she loses the most important person in her life, Joel (Pedro Pascal), when a group of former Fireflies rolls into town and kills him. The town votes on whether to go after the fiends, but the motion doesn’t pass because there’s too much rebuilding to do after the infected attack. However, Ellie’s mind is already made up, so she heads to Seattle with Dina (Isabela Merced) to hunt down Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and the rest of her crew.

It quickly becomes apparent that Ellie and Dina are in over their heads, with the conflict between the Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites tearing Seattle apart. Ellie pushes forward anyway and gets so close to achieving her goal. She comes up just short, though, which opens the door for a controversial moment from The Last of Us Part II to come to life, and it does just as the season ends.

Ellie Passes the Torch in The Last of Us Season 2 Finale

When Dina and Ellie arrive in Seattle, things don’t seem that complicated: they’re hot on the trail of Abby’s group and, through the first couple of episodes, make good progress on learning more about the WLF. But coming across the remains of battles between the WLF and Seraphites changes the vibe. There’s clearly a lot going on in the background that the show doesn’t want to reveal. Ellie and Dina only pick up clues about the gravity of the situation, and in reality, they don’t have time to do more digging because Dina takes an arrow to the leg, forcing her off her feet.

With the walls closing in, Ellie accelerates her timetable and leaves Jesse to fend for himself in the Season 2 finale. She learns that the aquarium is Abby’s hideout from Nora and makes a beeline for it when the opportunity presents itself. It’s not an easy journey by any means, with the WLF traveling on the same body of water Ellie has to cross to launch an attack against the Seraphites. Ellie ignores all the explosions on her way over and even has a brief encounter with a group of Seraphites who aren’t looking to make friends. None of that matters, however, because Ellie reaches the aquarium and appears close to finding Abby.

Unfortunately, Joel’s killer is nowhere to be found, and Ellie has to bargain with Owen and Mel for information. Owen thinks he can take control of the situation and grabs for his gun, forcing Ellie to kill him. The bullet also hits Mel, who is pregnant and pleads with Ellie to get her baby out. Ellie isn’t able to do it, and once Jesse and Tommy arrive, she leaves in shame and heads back to the theater to pack up. But before the group from Jackson can get out of dodge, Abby arrives, shoots Jesse, and fires another bullet as the screen cuts to black. The Last of Us Season 2 then concludes by revealing that the next outing will focus on Abby’s story during the same three days that Ellie was in Seattle.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Shows Why Video Game Adaptations Can’t Please Fans]

The Last of Us Season 3 Will Borrow From Part II‘s Most Controversial Section

Like in The Last of Us Season 2, Abby doesn’t appear much after killing Joel in Part II. Ellie goes on her rampage in Seattle, killing Wolves and Seraphites to get closer to Abby. However, despite learning more about her enemy and hearing about her in passing, she doesn’t cross paths with her again until the theater. Abby goes on her own journey while Ellie kills her friends, which sees her make new allies, have brushes with death, and reconsider her place in the Seattle conflict.

The point of Abby’s section in the game is to drive home the core theme of The Last of Us games: perspective. It’s hard to see Abby as anything but evil early on because she kills the main character from the first game, but her story is much more complicated than that, and the only way to prove it is for the game to make her playable. Gamers spend hours experiencing the world through Abby’s eyes, and while many refuse to embrace her because of her actions, by the end of the game, she’s every bit as relatable as Ellie. The Last of Us Season 3 will now follow in the game’s footsteps and force viewers to rethink their opinion of Abby’s character.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Are you looking forward to seeing Abby’s story in The Last of Us Season 3? Do you think your opinion of her will change? Let us know in the comments below!

The post The Last of Us Confirms a Controversial Game Moment Is Happening in Season 3 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

HBO never pulls its punches; it’s one of the things that makes the network so unique. Even as far back as The Sopranos, there’s just a certain vibe that surrounds HBO content, one that says that anything can happen and no one is safe. Game of Thrones centers its entire series around the idea that characters can and will die, killing off the patriarch of the Stark family, Ned Stark, in the first season before whacking countless other beloved characters. With The Sopranos and Game of Thrones over, however, HBO is in need of a new show that provides shocking moments, and the best candidate is The Last of Us.

Based on the wildly successful video games by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us tells the story of a man, Joel (Pedro Pascal), helping a young girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), survive in a desolate world. He does his job in Season 1, but the lines he has to cross put him on the radar of a dangerous group. They kill Joel at the start of Season 2, which pushes Ellie to seek revenge and head into a situation that’s very likely to take her life as well.

Ellie Has Her Hands Full in The Last of Us Season 2 Finale

After Ellie and Dina get in over their heads in Seattle, Jesse finds them and rescues them from a group of Stalkers. They aren’t out of the woods yet, though, because Wolves and Seraphites are in the area and not looking to make friends. Ellie splits up from her friends to allow them to escape and ends up at the hospital where Nora works. She tortures Abby’s friend for information before heading back to the theater, where Jesse pleads with her to call the whole thing off. The next day, they search for Tommy, and while they find him, Ellie goes off on her own because she believes she spots Abby’s hideout.

Ellie steals a boat and has a brief run-in with Seraphites before arriving at the aquarium, where she finds Owen and Mel. They refuse to tell her where Abby is, and Owen grabs for his gun, hoping to turn the tide to his side. Ellie shoots him before he can do anything, but the bullet goes through him and hits Mel, who is pregnant. Ellie can’t believe what’s happening and breaks down as Tommy and Jesse arrive. While the group heads back to the theater, ready to head home, they get an unexpected visitor, Abby, who kills Jesse and doesn’t want to stop there.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Finally Adds Major Aspect From the Games]

Ellie’s Fate Is Left as a Mystery At the End of The Last of Us Season 2

After Abby shoots Jesse, she realizes who Ellie is and gets pretty upset about seeing her again. She didn’t kill anyone but Joel in Jackson, and now her friends are dead because the community couldn’t leave well enough alone. Out of frustration, Abby seemingly fires another bullet in Ellie’s direction as the show does a hard cut to black, and transitions to a flashback featuring the WLF soldier a few days earlier. The Last of Us does this to create a shroud of mystery around its main character’s fate going into Season 3, but it’s easy to surmise that her story still has a ways to go.

The Last of Us Part II video game, which Season 2 is based on, has all the answers because it cuts off at almost the exact same point to pass the torch to Abby, who has her own story to tell. Once that’s complete, however, the conflict between her and Ellie will resume and leave more devastation in its wake.

The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.

Do you think Abby shoots Ellie in The Last of Us Season 2 finale? Where do you think the story will go from here? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Does Ellie Die in The Last of Us Season 2? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Outside the likes of William Shakespeare, there is no author more frequently adapted for the screen (big and small) than Stephen King. With character-focused works that never forget to bring the chills and thrills, he’s one of the more adaptable writers out there. Naturally, his books in the horror genre find themselves to be the most common picks to end up as a movie or miniseries, but he’s also more than capable of having dramas transported to screens (e.g., The Shawshank Redemption and Hearts in Atlantis) as well as thrillers (11/22/63 and Mr. Mercedes). So, of his many books, which have not been adapted?

Those are the ones that follow. But it should be noted we’re leaving out short stories seen in collections such as Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, and Four Past Midnight. This is relegated to individual works. Furthermore, given how many King adaptations have entered some level of production over recent years only to stall, there must have been some update on the project’s progress in either 2024 or 2025. Not to mention, books that have adaptations on the way (e.g., The Long Walk, From a Buick 8) were not included.

1) Rage

King started using the Richard Bachman pseudonym early on in his career, but not for long (seven times total). He used it when the novel wasn’t what people typically associated with him and the horror genre in which he made his bones. The first time he did so was for just his fourth novel, Rage. The second time he did so was for his sixth novel, The Long Walk. And, while that 1979 Bachman novel is soon getting an adaptation, Rage never will. It would be an even bigger disaster than Maximum Overdrive, but for a different reason. You can’t even purchase the novel. Why? It’s all about a school shooting, and King himself has (quite rightly) allowed it to fall out of print.

2) Roadwork

King’s third novel as Richard Bachman, Roadwork, is another one that has never seen an adaptation of any type. The plot concerns a man who has become increasingly unstable after his son dies, his marriage falls apart, and he learns that his home and place of work will be leveled to make room for a highway. There were talks for an adaptation produced by Andy Muschietti (of It fame) back in 2019, but there’s been no forward progress since that point.

3) The Talisman / Black House

Outside of The Dark Tower, King’s few fantasy novels have had a hard time receiving adaptations. For instance, The Talisman (1984) and its sequel, Black House (2001), both of which he co-wrote alongside the late Peter Straub. However, a third and final novel in the series, which King is tackling solo out of necessity, is en route, so perhaps this one will get a fire lit under it sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t be the first time discussions around The Talisman would have taken place, along with being adapted in 2008 as a short film and a graphic novel, there were talks in 2021 about a Netflix series.

4) The Eyes of the Dragon

Released the same year as The Talisman, The Eyes of the Dragon was another King fantasy novel that was and remains unadapted. Interesting considering this novel features a character named Flagg, who the author’s fans might recognize as the personification of evil seen in The Stand and the Dark Tower novels. There have been talks surrounding The Eyes of the Dragon in the past, first as an animated film in the early aughts, then as a Syfy series in 2012, and then in 2019 as a Hulu show. None came to fruition, with the Hulu series getting canceled early on in part due to budgetary concerns.

5) Insomnia

After the one-two punch of Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne in 1992, there was a whole King-free year. He came back in 1994 with Insomnia and, like the book that followed it in 1995, it was one he called a “stiff, trying-too-hard” novel. It’s also like that 1995 novel, which we’ll get to in a second, in that it blends horror and fantasy. Like the author’s other fantasy works, it has never been turned into a film or television series. But, in the case of Insomnia, there’s never been so much as a serious talk. Rose Madder, however….

6) Rose Madder

Like Insomnia, Rose Madder is pretty far from the author’s breeziest read. It wouldn’t make for a particularly enthralling film (a hard maybe on it working as a TV series). But, in the case of Rose Madder, there has at least been a discussion about adapting it. Specifically, by HBO Pictures back in the mid-’90s. That fell apart, as did the revised project when it entered development in 2011.

7) The Regulators

As the “mirror novel” of Desperation (which King did attach his name to), The Regulators technically has been adapted. But only technically. There have been discussions regarding a direct adaptation several times, first in 2014 and then in 2022, but nothing really ever came of them. The two Bachman books in between Roadwork and The Regulators, The Running Man and Thinner, did receive film adaptations.

8) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon wasn’t the first time King had a child as the protagonist of a novel, and as was seen in It and Stand by Me, it’s a direction that works for him. That’s the case for this 1999 novel (which really isn’t far off from a novella), too. It’s a tightly written and fast-paced little psychological horror tale, and it would do quite well as either a movie or a series. And that was certainly a possibility back in the mid-aughts, when none other than George A. Romero was attached to both write and direct a movie. But that take on the project stalled in 2005, and there was no word on another attempt until 2019. That was two years after Romero’s passing, but his production company was still attached, with his wife, Chris Romero, serving as producer. The only other word on it came in 2020, when Lynne Ramsay was announced as the director. But five years is a long time, so it seems the movie is dead in the water.

9) Blaze

Blaze was the final novel published using the name Richard Bachman, but he actually wrote the thing before even his debut novel, Carrie. The reason for its late publication? He found it in his attic. It’s the story of an intellectually disabled con artist who kidnaps a wealthy man’s baby in a way of honoring his deceased partner in crime. An adaptation of Blaze has seemingly never been discussed.

10) Duma Key

Typically, King is associated with having two excellent acts then a major letdown of a conclusion. Duma Key actually peaks with its third act. But, overall, it’s not the first novel of his that springs to mind when one thinks of necessary adaptations. There were loose talks at one point, but they never really got off the ground.

[RELATED: Matthew Lillard Teases How Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Will Be Different from Other Adaptations]

11) Joyland

An underrated King novel, Joyland was his second hardboiled crime novel after The Colorado Kid. That similarly brisk 2005 novel received a loose adaptation on Syfy, but 2013’s Joyland remains sans cinematic take. However, Freeform was developing a series back in 2018, though it never got beyond an initial treatment for a pilot script. As far as adapting his crime work goes, King had better work with his Bill Hodges Trilogy and the excellent Mr. Mercedes series.

12) Revival

Even at 400 pages, Revival is a pretty quick read, especially for those who love subtle references to classic horror from masters such as H. P. Lovecraft. It would make for a fine movie, and back in 2016, there were discussions about that prospect, with Russell Crowe in the lead. Down the road, in 2020, frequent King adapter Mike Flanagan was in serious talks to helm the film, even going so far as to write a first draft of a screenplay. Later that year, Flanagan stated the adaptation was no longer moving forward. Never say never on it getting a new life now that Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck is such a critical smash.

13) Gwendy’s Button Box

The Gwendy Trilogy was odd for King, primarily due to the fact that he didn’t write the second installment. The first one, Gwendy’s Button Box (2017) was co-written with Richard Chizmar, who then wrote Gwendy’s Magic Feather (2019), at which point they once more collaborated on 2022’s Gwendy’s Final Task. This is another project where there haven’t been any discussions surrounding a movie or TV series.

14) Sleeping Beauties

Co-written with his son, Owen, Sleeping Beauties is a sort of a dark, fantastical spin on A Nightmare on Elm Street. The reviews were mixed, but positive enough to spark interest in a television series on AMC. But that was back in 2019, and nothing has really come of it.

15) Elevation

A brief novel tonally closer to something like The Green Mile than The Shining, Elevation is a fun little King book. It’s somewhat similar to Thinner in that it focuses on a man losing weight no matter what he does, but in this case, it’s less focused on a curse and more focused on him floating away. Like with the final entry on this list, director and producer Jack Bender (The Sopranos, Game of Thrones) has stated he’s working on an adaptation, but nothing has been set in stone as of yet.

16) Later

King’s most recent book for Hard Case Crime, Later, is as solid as The Colorado Kid and Joyland, and like with that second book, it hasn’t been adapted in any way. It’s a shame, because it would make for a terrific miniseries.

17) Holly

Holly‘s title character, Holly Gibney, may have been a presence in Mr. Mercedes, but her solo novel has yet to receive a film or series. That said, the novel was released in 2023, and the very same year, like with Elevation, Jack Bender said he was working on an adaptation. So this one seems to be on its way, even if not officially announced.

You can stream plenty of Stephen King adaptations online.

The post Every Stephen King Book That’s Never Been Adapted Into a Movie or Series appeared first on ComicBook.com.

If Frodo Baggins succumbed to the temptation of the One Ring, he would probably look like Fritz Garbinger in the new trailer for The Toxic Avenger. The movie finds Elijah Wood playing a stooped, balding, pallid man who tries to wrangle an over-the-top band called The Killer Nutz. Fans have been waiting years for this remake to come out, but now that it’s drawing close they’re not really sure what to make of this teaser. The main plot follows Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage) as he is transformed into a vigilante called The Toxic Avenger, or Toxie. The movie will hit theaters in the U.S. on August 29th, nearly two years after its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2023.

The Toxic Avenger is billed a remake of the original 1984 film, though it renames many of the main characters and changes the plot up quite a bit. It’s unclear how Fritz Garbinger and his clown-faced band will factor into the story, but it’s clear that they are antagonists to the titular hero. For Lord of the Rings fans, this teaser is almost like a dark vision of what could have befallen Frodo.

Wood is still best-known for the starring role in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, though at this point, most of his work has more in common with this reboot. The actor has pursued a lot of passion projects and shown a lot of creative integrity over the years, often leaning into counter-cultural themes and aesthetics like this one. He even co-founded a record label and a horror production company, making him a perfect fit for this movie.

[RELATED: The Toxic Avenger Reboot Reveals First Look at Brand New Toxie]

The Toxic Avenger is a dark comedy, a horror film, and a superhero movie all rolled into one. It started as a low-budget indie film in 1984, written by Joe Ritter, Lloyd Kaufman, and Michael Herz with Kaufman and Herz directing. It spawned four sequels in the following years as well as a few comic book series and a short-lived TV spinoff. Talks of a reboot started as early as 2010, but did not come to fruition until 2021. The movie was filmed in over the course of that summer and got a ew screenings in 2023.

Sadly, the movie had trouble finding support for wider distribution, which is why it has been delayed for nearly two years. However, Cineverse got on board in January, securing release throughout the country later this year. The Toxic Avenger hits theaters on August 29th.

The post Lord of the Rings Fans Think Elijah Wood Looks Like Gollum in R-Rated Cult Classic Reboot appeared first on ComicBook.com.

When it comes to American Horror Story, it’s not just the storylines that have left a mark on a generation and the horror genre – it’s also the cast. Over 12 seasons (so far), the show has featured a wide range of characters, and many actors have returned across seasons, becoming the soul of the series for many fans. But while names like Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, and Evan Peters have reached almost legendary status, there’s one actress who’s always been there, shaping each season – often in a more supporting role. And yet, it’s her commitment and depth that have managed to steal the spotlight on several occasions.

Lily Rabe is undoubtedly one of the most versatile actresses on American Horror Story, but even so, her name doesn’t come up as often as it should when people talk about the most iconic performers from the show. Since season 1, she’s been a frequent presence, playing eight completely distinct characters, each with unique traits – a true testament to how crucial she is to the anthology. Her work is consistent, powerful, and absolutely worthy of more recognition.

Rabe first appeared in Murder House as Nora Montgomery, a 1920s socialite haunted by the loss of her son. Even though the role was relatively small, she stood out thanks to her emotional delivery, making Nora memorable even among other central characters who remain fan favorites to this day. In Asylum, on the other hand, she took on one of her most significant parts: Sister Mary Eunice. The character starts as an innocent nun and gradually changes after being possessed by a demon. That’s when Rabe completely took control of the screen.

Her portrayal of this transformation was so seamless – balancing both light and dark sides – that it’s surprising she didn’t receive more widespread praise. The character was even strong enough to make a return in Freak Show, reinforcing how unforgettable that performance truly was. For some fans, Sister Mary Eunice was a highlight – but Misty Day might be the role where Rabe truly left her mark.

In Coven, she played a witch with the power to resurrect the dead. Misty stood apart from Rabe’s previous roles – she was more whimsical, spiritual, and deeply connected to nature and music. The actress infused the character with charm and charisma, quickly turning her into a fan favorite. She was even brought back in Apocalypse, where her storyline was given closure, again showing how important Rabe was in tying the seasons together.

[RELATED: The Best Thing About Every Season of American Horror Story Isn’t Up for Debate]

Then, in Hotel, Rabe had a brief but striking appearance as real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Even with just one episode, her performance was intense and chilling, staying true to the disturbing nature of the infamous figure. That dinner scene with James Patrick March (Peters) and other notorious murderers, for example, is one of the season’s most unforgettable moments – and Rabe’s portrayal is often among the first remembered from it.

Then came Roanoke, where she played Shelby Miller – a woman experiencing terrifying paranormal events in a rural home. The season blended documentary-style storytelling with reenactments, and Rabe played the “real” version of the character. She delivered a grounded and emotional performance that helped sell the season’s premise. Unfortunately, since Roanoke is arguably the most underrated season of the series, her work there didn’t get the attention it deserved. It was a compelling role, but one of the few that barely gets brought up.

The truth is, as the show moved forward, it began to lose some of its earlier momentum, but even in 1984, Rabe’s contribution didn’t get the recognition it deserved. She played Lavinia Richter – also known as the “Lady in White” – a grieving mother whose sorrow turns her into a vengeful spirit at Camp Redwood. Once again, Rabe brought depth and humanity to a supernatural role, despite appearing in only a handful of episodes. It was another clear example of how she can make a lasting impression, even with limited screen time.

As for Double Feature, Rabe showcased her range once more by playing two very different characters. As Doris Gardner in Red Tide, she portrayed a mother and wife who undergoes a drastic transformation after moving to a mysterious town. In Death Valley, she played a fictional version of the legendary pilot Amelia Earhart caught up in an alien abduction storyline. Though the season wasn’t the most popular among fans, Rabe once again proved how adaptable and committed she is. She moved seamlessly between restrained, emotional roles and eccentric, larger-than-life characters. It’s no wonder she’s considered a core part of the American Horror Story ensemble. So why does she still fly under the radar for so many viewers?

It could be that Rabe doesn’t seek the spotlight in the same way as some of her co-stars, which makes her less visible to more casual fans. But for those who’ve followed the show closely, it’s impossible not to see the impact she’s had. Still, it’s puzzling that someone who’s played such diverse and meaningful roles is often left out of the conversation. Her performances are thoughtful, emotional, and precise – the kind of acting that quietly holds a series like American Horror Story together, even when other characters might be getting more attention.

A new season is in development, with a high possibility that the original cast will return. With all these achievements throughout the show’s history, it’s almost impossible that the actress will not be involved as well. Although this is only speculation, it’s not unreasonable. Let’s hope she returns and finally gets the credit she’s long deserved. That kind of appreciation might be late, but it’s more than earned. After all, Lily Rabe wasn’t just part of American Horror Story. She helped build the entire legacy that still influences pop culture and the horror genre on TV.

The post The Most Underrated Actress on American Horror Story Has Played 8 Different Characters appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Life imitated art at a movie theater in La Plata, Argentina during the opening weekend of Final Destination: Bloodlines. A ceiling panel broke loose and fell at Cinema Ocho seemingly out of nowhere, striking a member of the audience below. It hit a woman named Fiamma Villaverde, who shared her story on social media, and later in an interview with Infobae. The falling debris hit Villaverde’s knee so hard that she needed to be hospitalized, yet she’s just grateful it didn’t land on her head a few inches away. She feels certain that if it had, the injury would have been much worse — perhaps even deadly.

Villaverde went out to the movies to celebrate her own birthday this weekend with her friend and her 11-year-old daughter. She said they were all enthralled by the new Final Destination movie, which had plenty of the franchise’s signature Rube Goldberg-esque mishaps and injuries. They were watching so closely that they almost fell victim to an unlikely accident of their own.

“There was a really loud noise. At first, we thought it was part of the movie because we were so absorbed, but then a huge piece fell on me,” Villaverde told Infobae, according to a translation published by The Express Tribune. “It didn’t hit me in the head because I was just leaning a little over the armrest.”

[RELATED: Final Destination Bloodlines’ Most Horrifying Deaths, Ranked]

Villaverde was happy to joke about this incident’s similarities to the Final Destination movies, but in all seriousness, she held the theater’s management responsible for the substantial bruise on her leg. She said that the manager asked her, “How do you want to fix this?” to which she responded: “How do I want to fix this? I’m going to file a complaint… Just imagine if they hit my daughter in the head! They’re irresponsible!”

Villaverde’s injury caused her to miss work at her job as a bartender. She said that she is in contact with a lawyer and intends to file a complaint. It’s not clear if she will be taking legal action as well.

Final Destination: Bloodlines revived the series after more than a decade-long hiatus. It brought back all the beloved tropes and archetypes for the fatalistic franchise, but with new writers, directors, and stars. As usual, the premise had also been tweaked slightly to keep the suspense alive. After its first weekend, the movie has gotten generally positive reviews, with a 92% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s playing now in theaters around the U.S.

The post Final Destination: Bloodlines Almost Killed Someone in Real Life Theater Accident appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Last of Us TV series, like so many other hit TV shows, had an extensive gap between its first two seasons. Though the larger landscape of Hollywood has resulted in the time between new episodes of TV shows being longer and longer, many fans still think that an annual release for shows is the standard. Despite that feeling, the reality of production costs and scheduling as forced creatives to take longer between delivering new seasons. With Season 2 of The Last of Us headed for its final episode tonight, the question has to be asked, how long are we going to have to wait for The Last of Us Season 3?

What Is The Last of Us Season 3 Release Date?

Currently, The Last of Us Season 3 has had no release window updates from HBO beyond confirmation that the season has been ordered. HBO ordering the new episodes of the show ahead of The Last of Us Season 2’s premiere bodes well for the potential of filming starting soon on the project, as it would lock in the talent for the production.

Previous rumors pointed toward a potential summer 2025 start date for filming on The Last of Us Season 3, but now that appears to have been delayed. In an interview with Variety published on May 4, Dina actress Isabela Merced teased that she didn’t know when exactly Season 3 would be filming, but when asked about a production timeline noted: “I think it should be next year.”

If that holds true, and filming doesn’t begin any earlier, it could mean production on The Last of Us Season 3 won’t start until 2026, meaning a late-2026 or even 2027 premiere date seems likely for the actual release date of the next batch of episodes.

[RELATED: 7 The Last of Us Easter Eggs That the Show Forgot About]

Will The Last of Us Season 3 Be Delayed?

This timeline would line-up with the delay between Season 1 and Season 2 of The Last of Us though, so it makes sense. The Last of Us Season 1 premiered on HBO in January of 2023, wrapping up in March of that year. After the Hollywood strikes of 2023 delayed production on the next episodes, filming began on The Last of Us Season 2 in February of 2024 and continued into August of that year, ahead of its April 2025 premiere.

Knowing this, and assuming a similar production timeline for The Last of Us Season 3 and its story (which we now know will consist of an epic part of the game), it’s entirely possible that The Last of Us Season 3 will not premiere on HBO and Max until the spring of 2027. However, this all remains unconfirmed and is based around the previous timelines of the seasons.

What Is The Last of Us Season 3 About?

As if fans needed a bigger clue about what will happen in The Last of Us Season 3, series guest star Catherine O’Hara confirmed it. Speaking to Variety, O’Hara was asked if she would be returning as Gail in Season 3, revealing that series showrunner Craig Mazin told he that she would “definitely not” be in the next season.

“It’s the Abby story,” O’Hara said of The Last of Us Season 3. “Maybe. But I think it was to serve Joel and Ellie.”

Knowing this, The Last of Us Season 3 will need to announce the casting of major characters ahead of the start of filming, as fans of the games will be eager to see the new faces that are integral to this part of the story.

When do you think The Last of Us Season 3 will premiere? How long do you believe we’ll have to wait for more? Sounds off in the comments and give us your best theories.

The post When Is The Last of Us Season 3 Coming Out? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street kicked off not just a successful franchise, but a pop culture phenomenon as well. Yet, at its core, it has the same appeal as the Friday the 13th franchise: particularly inventive kills. And, throughout six mainline films, an early example of meta horror, and a crossover with Jason Voorhees, the franchise blessed horror with some of its most compellingly unique character send-offs. The best of the bunch follow. Just don’t expect to see anything from the horrendous 2010 remake (all due respect to Jackie Earle Haley’s best efforts), because there wasn’t anything from even Wes Craven’s New Nightmare or Freddy vs. Jason that made the razor-gloved cut.

On one hand, this is because New Nightmare is light on kills and Jason does the vast majority of the killing in Freddy vs. Jason. On the other hand, it’s because the bloody dream sequences seen in the earlier films were just so good.

1) Tina Gray in A Nightmare on Elm Street

Even factoring in Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains the late Wes Craven’s best movie. Sublimely paced and, as one could guess given the title, amply dreamy, it was the exact shot in the arm the dwindling slasher subgenre needed in 1984. Furthermore, while Freddy was always a formidable antagonist, this was the one movie where he seemed truly, horrifically dangerous.

The key to that impact is two-fold. For one, he’s not shown much. He’s far from the wiseacre true head of the IP he’d become. Secondly, two of his four kills in the original film are absolute bloodbaths. It’s tough to watch the characters go out that way, too, because they’re so likable. We don’t get much time to know Tina Gray, as she’s only in the first 20 or so minutes, but her presence remains throughout the entirety of the runtime (and not just because Nancy dreams of her rotting, bug-covered corpse at one point). We’re haunted by the memory of her getting dragged up her bedroom wall, the four claw marks on her stomach gushing blood. Perhaps not coincidentally, the film’s other great character send-off also involved the technique of the spinning room. Speaking of which….

2) Glen Lantz in A Nightmare on Elm Street

As mentioned, the death scene for Johnny Depp’s Glen Lantz was crafted via the same technique as Tina Gray’s offing. Specifically, a manually rotated room. There, though, the death is drawn out. Here, the effect is put to a more instantaneous use (though the buildup to the death itself is also drawn out).

Like with Kevin Bacon in the original Friday the 13th, there’s something pop-culturally significant about seeing a future A-lister in the very first installment of one of slasher cinema’s few genuinely A-list IPs. And, just as the end of Bacon’s Jack was iconic in Friday the 13th, so too is the one experienced by Depp’s Glen in A Nightmare on Elm Street. We watch Glen laying back with his headphones on and a TV running just off-screen. We know he’s going to fall asleep. And, while we watch him doze, Freddy’s glove emerges from the bed, wraps around Glen, and pulls him down into the mattress. He’s replaced with a blood geyser. It’s startling imagery and thank goodness they took out the scene that followed, which had Glen emerge (missing not a single piece of his body) from the bed, coated in blood, at which point he falls forward. With the excising of that final moment, we’re forced to imagine what’s happening to Glen in that mattress that results in a water park’s worth of blood.

3) Phillip Anderson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The original A Nightmare on Elm Street is the best A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the mental health clinic-based third film ranks awfully close. For one, Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne are in it. Two, it succeeds both in crafting unique characters and equally unique sendoffs for those characters. It set the tone for the franchise just as much if not more so than the original film and was a much-needed course correction after the misguided (but interesting) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.

Each of the film’s six death scenes are top tier A Nightmare on Elm Street stuff, starting with Phillip Anderson’s. It starts with a puppet who looks an awful lot like Freddy slash his restraining control strings and grow to full size. He then switches from puppet to puppeteer, and Phillip is his Pinocchio. The strings are coming out of Phillips’ arms, and Freddy gleefully walks him to the edge of the hospital’s highest tower. The hospital’s other patients watch in horror as Phillip, who seems to be awake (and has a history of self-harm), has the strings cut, and he plummets to his death.

4) Jennifer Caulfield in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Even factoring in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is the definitive classic slasher sequel. If it weren’t for Scream 2 and Scream (2022), it would be a shoe-in for best slasher sequel, period (and, honestly, it still might be after factoring in those Ghostface sequels).

It also may have the single most famous line in slasher movie history. Specifically, when Freddy, as a television, pulls up the sleep-deprived Jennifer and says “This is it, Jennifer, your big break in TV! Welcome to primetime, bitch!” The latter part is the iconic part and, impressively enough, it was improvised by Freddy himself, Robert Englund.

[RELATED: This Freddy Krueger Detail from A Nightmare on Elm Street Is Still Up for Debate (So What’s the Truth?)]

5) Debbie Stevens in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Widely deemed the MTV version of a Freddy Krueger movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master exists in a weird quality nebulous. On one hand, it’s often as inventive as Dream Warriors, but it also started to show Freddy skew more towards comedic leading man than the sparsely seen antagonist he should be. With Dream Warriors, it really did come down first and foremost to character. The kill scenes, while mostly brilliant, were second to that.

In The Dream Master, it’s only really the latter factor that is still nailed. For instance, the offing of Debbie Stevens, which was and remains one of the franchise’s most famous sequences. The best Elm Street deaths, at least after the original film, were tailored to the character’s own personal fears and history. With Debbie, the final character to die in the film, Freddy targets and exploits her entomophobia, or fear of bugs. Most people shiver at the sight of a cockroach scurrying across their kitchen floor, but to be turned into one? That’s a bridge too far. At least Freddy puts her out of her misery (eventually) via a squished roach motel.

6) Greta Gibson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child may be the final installment to have that classic Elm Street vibe, but it’s a pale imitation of the installments that preceded it (especially the third and fourth entries). There are aspects about it that work, but it frequently buckles under the weight of the IP’s increasingly complex mythology.

It also shorts the audience on kills. There are three total, and only one of them really works. Mark’s comic book sequence and Dan’s motorcycle man sequences are too bizarre to work, but Greta’s does. Like the best Elm Street kills, it’s a character offing that merges the individual’s real world concerns or obsessions with a heightened dreamscape reality. In the case of Greta, it’s retaining a slim weight for a career as a model. Unfortunately, this kill was edited down to its bare bones, but we still get the point: Freddy feeds Greta her own internal organs.

7) Carlos Rodriguez in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is a letdown of a final chapter. For one, it’s even sillier than the preceding installment. The difference is, here, it’s outright trying to be silly. It’s hard to know what’s worse, a horror movie coming across as silly while simultaneously trying to be serious or a horror move that’s outright trying to be goofy, pretty much forgoing the horror entirely. And, like The Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead doesn’t even really deliver when it comes to a Freddy-worthy kill count. There are three: Carlos, Spencer (Breckin Meyer), and John Doe. Spencer’s drug trippy, videogame-inspired offing is without a doubt the lamest in the franchise’s history. It even comes with a quip about the short-lived Nintendo Power Glove.

But Carlos’ is flat out excellent. We learn that Carlos had an abusive mother growing up, and her main device of torment was a Q-Tip. Freddy exploits this, first by jamming one into Carlos’ ear until it practically touches his brain, then giving him an extra-sensitive ear to replace his hard of hearing one. Freddy then drops a single needle from a great height only to then reveal he’s holding hundreds of them. When that doesn’t get the job done, Freddy waves his claw over a chalkboard until Carlos’ head explodes. Like everything else in the movie its an exaggerated sequence, especially when Freddy gleefully and cartoonishly sneaks behind Carlos like he just fell out of a Looney Tunes episode, but it works.

The post 7 Most Memorable Kills in the A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise appeared first on ComicBook.com.

PlayStation Plus subscribers are losing free access to one of the very best PS5 horror games. The good news for PS Plus Essential subscribers is they never had access to this PS Plus free game to begin with. The bad news for PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium subscribers is this is not the case. The PS5 game is currently free with both a PS Plus Extra and a PS Plus Premium subscription. However, come sometime in the middle of June this will change.

The game leaving the libraries of PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium is, more specifically, Inscryption, a 2021 release from developer Daniel Mullin Games and publisher Devolver Digital. A roguelike deck-building game with horror elements, Inscryption debuted as a PC-only game before coming to PS4 and PS5 in 2022. It would eventually come to Xbox consoles and the Nintendo Switch as well.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it boasts an 87 on Metacritic and was notably nominated for Best Independent Game and Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2021. Meanwhile, on the PlayStation Store it has a 4.73 out of 5 across more than 10,000 user reviews from PS4 and PS5 users.

While Inscryption is not a horror game in the purest sense, it certainly has strong psychological horror elements that blend and fuse with its deck-building roguelike gameplay and meta narrative.

“From the creator of Pony Island and The Hex comes the latest mind-melting, self-destructing love letter to video games,’ reads an official description of the PS4 and PS5 game on the PlayStation Store. “Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards…”

RELATED: New PlayStation Plus Free Game Is a Huge Hit With Subscribers

Currently, there is no specific date when Inscryption will leave PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium, but it will be sometime in the middle of June. Once removed from PlayStation Plus there is no guarantee it will ever return to the subscription service, though games have certainly been removed and then added back at a later date.

For more PlayStation Plus coverage — including all of the latest PS Plus news, all of the latest PS Plus rumors and leaks, and all of the latest PS Plus deals — click here.

The post PlayStation Plus Subscribers Are Losing Their Free Access to One of the Best PS5 Horror Games appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Ghostbusters features one of the most iconic and recognizable ensemble casts of any feature film released in the 1980s. In the years since the flick’s 1984 debut, the faces of the core characters have been plastered all over various forms of merchandising; the key players have appeared in multiple animated spinoffs; and each of the original team members has returned for several subsequent follow-up efforts. Imagine a world, though, where one of the original members of the squad was played by a completely different actor. Imagine further if the role in question was played by Eddie Murphy. What a different film that might have been.

As it turns out, Ghostbusters co-writer and star Dan Aykroyd originally had designs on fellow Saturday Night Live cast member Murphy playing one of the team’s core members.

Eddie Murphy Says He Declined to Appear in Ghostbusters Due to Scheduling Conflicts

Murphy previously spoke with Jimmy Fallon about why he didn’t take part in the film during an appearance on The Tonight Show, and it turns out that the actor wasn’t opposed to appearing, more so than overextended. Fallon walked Murphy through a series of footnotes from his storied career, eventually bringing up reports that the prolific actor almost starred in Ghostbusters but instead had to dedicate his efforts elsewhere.

“Yes, but I did Beverly Hills … because I did Beverly Hills Cop,” Murphy explained. “It wasn’t like I turned it down inasmuch as I wasn’t available because I was doing this other movie.”

There are conflicting reports on who Murphy would have actually played, with many of said reports suggesting he would have appeared as Winston Zeddmore, a role that eventually went to Ernie Hudson. To hear Aykroyd tell the story, however, Murphy would have played Dr. Peter Venkman, a part fans know ultimately went to Bill Murray.

RELATED – Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Director Reveals Influence The Real Ghostbusters Series Had on Sequel

When Aykroyd appeared on the Netflix docu-series The Movies That Made Us to talk all things Ghostbusters, he asserted that he initially envisioned himself and Murphy as two of the three original team members.

“I wrote it for Eddie Murphy,” Aykroyd recalled. “It was me, John Belushi, and Eddie Murphy. Uh, we were the original — supposed to be the original Ghostbusters.”

What Would Ghostbusters Have Looked Like With Eddie Murphy in a Leading Role?

Regardless of who Murphy might or might not have played, Ghostbusters would have been a very different movie with him attached. Murphy plays a scene stealer in many of his ‘80s films, a distinction that could have gone a couple of different ways if things had played out differently.

If director Ivan Reitman let Murphy run free, the actor may have taken something away from the impressive cast chemistry we know and love. One of the things fans appreciate about Ghostbusters is the pitch-perfect dynamic between the core lineup. With a different actor playing one of the leads, that dynamic may have looked a lot different.

Inversely, Murphy’s hypothetical presence may have seen the actor emerging as a fan favorite. It’s impossible to say for sure. One thing we do know is that the cast, as it stands, has unforgettable chemistry.

All things considered, Ghostbusters would have been a very different movie if any of the iconic lead roles went to a different actor, this goes double for a world where Eddie Murphy was tapped to play one of the titular characters.

Ghostbusters has a storied history with multiple canonical installments, animated series, reboots, and more. The future of the franchise is nebulous at this point, but there are plenty of projects in various states of completion. We know that Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman (who collaborated on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) are interested in making more Ghostbusters movies, but no word on when that might happen. Additionally, Reitman and Kenan are also working on an animated Ghostbusters series for Netflix. That, however, is not the only animated Ghostbusters project in the works for the streamer, Netflix is also in development on an animated Ghostbusters feature. There’s no word just yet on when you can expect to see any of these projects materialize, but we will continue to update you as we learn more.

What do you think of a Ghostbusters film featuring the scene-stealing Eddie Murphy as a core character? Make sure to let us know in the comments section!

The post The Original Plan for This Ghostbusters Favorite Would Have Changed the Franchise Forever appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Video games have so much time to tell their stories. While plenty of titles get players in and out in a few hours, the great ones take advantage of the opportunity and build worlds that take forever to explore. The Last of Us certainly fits into that category because, while it’s not an open-world game, there are so many nooks and crannies to discover, and it’s in the player’s best interest to find them all because of the constant need for resources. However, The Last of Us always makes it worth it, hiding Easter eggs all over the game to enhance the experience.

HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us brings plenty of the game’s Easter eggs to life, such as the “Savage Starlight” comic books and Ellie’s rendition of “Take on Me” by A-ha. Not every reference makes the jump to live-action, though, including some that are more than deserving.

1) Sarah’s Photo

Joel reluctantly agrees to get Ellie across the country to the Fireflies in the first The Last of Us game. He’s not happy about the arrangement because it’s a massive inconvenience, but he’s also still struggling with the death of his daughter Sarah, whom Ellie reminds him of. While Joel’s brother, Tommy, tries to help him move on by giving him a photo of Sarah, he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Only when Ellie hands the photo over later in the game does Joel accept that his daughter is gone.

The show removes the photo, with Joel’s visit with Tommy focusing on Ellie’s immunity. Sarah still comes up, and Joel and Ellie even get into an argument about her, just like in the game, but the emotional moment where Joel moves past his grief is nowhere to be found.

2) Dunder Mifflin Office

Players spend a lot of hours in The Last of Us games just walking through buildings. There’s always a bottle in a drawer or a rag on a desk, so it’s worth not running through all the rooms without looking around. The remake of the first game even entices players to stay awhile by recreating the Dunder Mifflin office from the sitcom The Office.

The Easter egg appears in Pittsburgh, which doesn’t show up in HBO’s The Last of Us. Kansas City takes its place, and while Ellie and Joel still find themselves in offices, none of them resemble the place Michael Scott and Co. work at.

3) Video Game References

It’s normal for video games to show love to titles from the same developer or ones on the same console. The Last of Us features plenty of PlayStation Easter eggs, such as Jax and Dax figurines, as well as items from Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series.

Since HBO’s series isn’t a game, it opts to cut most of the video game shout-outs. Tess’ lighter and a keychain late in Season 1 ensure that Naughty Dog is still a small part of the story, but the show still leaves a lot to be desired in the video game Easter egg department.

4) The First Bloater

While Ellie and Joel are visiting Bill in the first game, they have to obtain a battery to get their vehicle working. They head to a school nearby to search, and while their mission is a success, it’s not easy because they run into a Bloater. Ellie and Joel have to fight off the beast by themselves before escaping the school and getting back on the road.

HBO’s version makes Ellie and Joel’s journey easy because Bill and his husband, Frank, are already dead and left a car in the garage. Billy and Frank’s story is better than that portion of the game by a mile, but the change delays the Bloater’s arrival by quite a while.

[RELATED – The Last of Us Finally Adds Major Aspect From the Games]

5) The Bunny

Ellie finds herself hunting for food after Joel gets injured in The Last of Us game. She comes across a bunny just minding its own business and shoots it dead. It’s a very jarring scene in the game, and it comes back around in The Last of Us Part II when a bunny appears outside Ellie’s window.

The Last of Us series still sends Ellie out on her own to look for food. However, she never takes out the adorable woodland creature, finding a deer instead that leads her to David. While it’s far from the show’s biggest omission, it still hurts that it’s gone.

6) Ellie’s Swimming

Growing up in a quarantine zone, Ellie doesn’t have a lot of life skills that most kids her age are supposed to have. One of her major knowledge gaps is swimming, which Joel helps her learn during the first The Last of Us game. She’s proficient by the time Part II rolls around, with Joel throwing her in water to test her skills during a flashback.

The show never really touches on Ellie’s fear of water. There’s even an opportunity in Season 2 for Joel to push Ellie into water, but it never comes to pass, leaving the level of the girl’s aquatic skills a mystery.

7) Safe Combinations

One of the most rewarding things in The Last of Us games is finding the combination to a safe and busting it open to earn additional resources. It usually takes a lot of effort because the code and safe are rarely in the same spot, meaning a lot of exploring is required.

In The Last of Us show, the characters almost always have what they need. Obviously, using valuable time to have Ellie and Joel look through drawers and cabinets would be a waste, but a nod to such an important aspect of the games wouldn’t hurt anybody.

The Last of Us is streaming on HBO Max.

Did you notice these Easter eggs are missing from HBO’s The Last of Us? What other parts of the game didn’t make the jump to live-action? Let us know in the comments below!

The post 7 The Last of Us Easter Eggs That the Show Forgot About appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Pretty much the undisputed Master of Horror, John Carpenter is, like Wes Craven, responsible for some of the spooky genre’s most iconic entries. His filmography isn’t completely stocked with winners, but what director’s is? That filmography consists of 18 theatrical feature films, and, without a doubt, it was a filmography of diminishing returns. The last seven movies are nowhere near as well-regarded as those that preceded them, but even in those final films, there’s that distinctly Carpenter touch that makes them something special. And, of course, there are the soundtracks that far more often than not he supplies.

Speaking of Carpenter’s music, he’s still very active in that medium today. Will Carpenter ever direct another film? One hopes, but considering The Ward was 15 years ago, it seems decreasingly likely. It would be great, though, because The Ward is one of two films of his (including Memoirs of an Invisible Man) that in no way feel like one of his. We Carpenter fans need a better swan song, one that would rank with his best. Or, in other words, the films that follow.

10) Vampires

When it comes to later years Carpenter, Vampires stands above Ghosts of Mars and Village of the Damned, but it shares some of their problems, too. Though, with those two films, there was a case of excellent set-up followed by a flatline whereas, here, there’s a pretty decent execution of that set-up.

Vampires‘ ace in the hole (and the reason it’s here instead of Starman), though, is James Woods, who is having an absolute ball as vampire hunter Jack Crow. His extremely vocal and often controversial political vocalizations may have gotten him essentially blacklisted by Hollywood at this point, but Woods was always one of the more charismatic perpetually serious actors on the block. Here he gets to have fun, and it works.

9) Prince of Darkness

The second entry of Carpenter’s so-called Apocalypse Trilogy (which, in spite of its apocalyptic vibes, does not include They Live), Prince of Darkness isn’t the masterpiece The Thing is, but it’s quite a bit more effective than the subsequent In the Mouth of Madness. But, it shares the same core problem as In the Mouth of Madness.

Specifically, Prince of Darkness can be a bit overstuffed and ambitious for its own good. The difference comes down to execution. Many Carpenter aficionados agree that, like many of his films, In the Mouth of Madness starts off far better than it ends. If there’s any example of a movie of his where it really falls off in the third act, that’s it. Prince of Darkness, however, starts a bit slow and improves as it progresses. The despair-laden ending is the best part, so once the credits roll, you’re left with a better taste in your mouth.

Rent Prince of Darkness on Prime Video.

8) Big Trouble in Little China

Oft referenced by more modern pop culture touchstones such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Big Trouble in Little China is arguably Carpenter’s definitive cult film. For the most part, either you love it or you hate it. There aren’t many folks out there who fall in the middle.

But even Big Trouble in Little China‘s detractors have to admit that it’s a wholly unique film. There’s really nothing else out there quite like it, even after decades of subsequent cinema history. That alone has substantial merit, even if its tone isn’t always the most accessible thing in the world. With wacky imagery, an iconic magic-fueled alley fight, and Kurt Russell at his most charming, Big Trouble in Little China is a winner, even if it takes a few viewings to fully recognize that.

Stream Big Trouble in Little China on Prime Video.

7) Christine

One of only two Stephen King movies to ever be released at Christmastime, Christine wasn’t the blockbuster Carpenter needed after the financial failure of The Thing, but it did all right for itself. And, in time, it has been correctly recognized as one of the better King adaptations.

The key to its success comes down to casting (and, per usual, the music). John Stockwell and Alexandra Paul are charming in the protagonist roles, but in the end, this is Keith Gordon’s movie. It’s tough to call his Arnie Cunningham a true antagonist, it’s more the 1958 Plymouth Fury he’s driving that is the antagonist, but Gordon nails his character’s justifiable anger just as much as he nails every other emotion. And Cunningham is a character who goes through a lot of different emotions. Gordon makes you believe every step of his transformation.

Rent Christine on Prime Video.

6) Assault on Precinct 13

With just his second film, Carpenter showed himself to be a filmmaker with some guts. Assault on Precinct 13 is an intense movie, yet even though it features a little girl getting gunned down next to an ice cream truck in the first act, it never crosses the line into unpleasantness.

It’s an action film first, but even before he officially moved into horror with Halloween, one can feel his proclivity for that genre here. Precinct 13 is grim and claustrophobic, with an ingenious core concept and top-notch performances from Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, and Carpenter favorites Charles Cyphers and Nancy Kyes.

Stream Assault on Precinct 13 on Prime Video.

[RELATED: 31 Years Later, John Carpenter Fans Are Finally Getting a Major Horror Surprise]

5) The Fog

Carpenter had to follow Halloween up with something, so he went with a ghost story. Is The Fog perfect? Not at all. Some of it doesn’t even make sense (e.g. how the corpse gets up from the autopsy table). But, in terms of possessing that tone that is distinctively his, it is absolutely peak early Carpenter.

Many of his cast favorites are here, and some of them were never used better. This is especially true of Adrienne Barbeau, who is dynamite in the lead role of Stevie Wayne. The main flaw of The Fog is that there just isn’t enough of it. At an hour and 29 minutes, the viewer wants more right as the credits are winding up to roll. But, if there’s any complaint about a film that’s actually a compliment, it’s that it isn’t long enough. And there’s an argument to be made that this is Carpenter’s best score outside Halloween. For proof, just listen to the up-tempo theme that plays over Andy Wayne’s run across the beach.

Watch The Fog on Prime Video.

4) They Live

The latter half of Carpenter’s filmography consists of exactly one great film and that film is They Live. Bolstered by a great central performance from the late Roddy Piper, featuring the best fist fight in movie history, and equipped with a genuinely surprising betrayal in the final minutes, it’s a blast of a movie.

More importantly, though, They Live is Carpenter’s smartest movie, hands down. An incisive and biting attack on commercialism, it’s not a movie that pulls its punches. Carpenter managed to craft a goofy action-horror flick around some really pointed ideas, and it’s impressive.

Rent They Live on Prime Video.

3) Escape from New York

Escape from New York is influential even over 40 years later, with talks of a remake or legacy sequel popping up frequently. It is essential Carpenter. For one, most of his casting favorites are here. Donald Pleasence, Adrienne Barbeau, Christine‘s Harry Dean Stanton, Charles Cyphers, Buck Flower, and Tom Atkins are all here. But it’s Isaac Hayes and, especially, Kurt Russell (Carpenter’s top leading man) who steal the show. As for Hayes, The Duke is the best character he has ever played outside Chef in South Park. When it comes to Russell, even with such a storied and lengthy career, Snake Plissken is the character with which he’s most associated. And rightly so.

Escape from New York also benefits from the apocalyptic tone that Assault on Precinct 13 carried to an extent and They Live, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness carried in full. Furthermore, like Halloween and The Fog before it, Escape from New York comes equipped with an absolute A+ soundtrack by Carpenter. Like the movie that surrounds it, the music is wildly different than those two horror classics, but it’s every bit as memorable.

Stream Escape from New York on fuboTV.

2) Halloween

Carpenter’s breakthrough movie didn’t just give birth to a long-running slasher franchise, it inspired any number of similar films, from Friday the 13th and The Burning to Valentine and Scream. Halloween was and remains the true start of the slasher subgenre, even more than the earlier Psycho and Peeping Tom.

But what it really is, more than a slasher film, is a thriller. It’s subtle, methodical in crafting its scares. Michael Myers feels like he’s in the room with the characters (and you, the viewer) at all times. Quite often he is, or close by, peering into the window in the background, but not always. The original Halloween is best viewed as a one-off. The reason for this is that you’re not looking at Michael Myers as the unkillable center of a massive franchise, you’re looking at him as just a man who broke out of a mental health clinic. Now he’s come home and he’s stalking the first group of teens he saw. There’s no rhyme or reason, no real emotion behind it, he’s just there.

Stream Halloween on fuboTV.

1) The Thing

Like Blade Runner and The Shining, Carpenter’s The Thing was a film that, at the time, underperformed commercially and wasn’t properly appreciated by critics. And, since its time of release, it has gone on to be seen by many as a perfect film. And it truly is that.

An ingenious work that holds immense power no matter how many times it’s rewatched, The Thing is terrifying, engrossing, and entertaining in equal measure. Perhaps just as important as all that, though, is the fact it displays the single most impressive display of horrific practical effects in the genre’s history.

Rent The Thing on Prime Video.

The post Top 10 John Carpenter Movies appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth is set for a landing on FX and Hulu in August, and with it, we’ll see a new heroine attempt to survive and stop the spread of the xenomorphs before the entire planet is overrun. But don’t expect this story to just be a copy of Ellen Ripley’s experience on the Nostromo. For one, the story brings the action to Earth, so there’s little chance any of the characters to just launch the alien into space and win the day. Also, don’t expect Sydney Chandler’s hybrid Wendy to act like your typical heroine. This is a new type of robotic hybrid in a world where corporations control the planet, and they might be worse than the xenomorphs by the time the show premieres.

Chandler and creator Noah Hawley spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the series, Chandler’s hybrid character, and where the actress sees her place among the franchise’s other heroes. These hybrids are owned by the Prodigy corporation, a rival to Weyland-Yutani and one of five corporations holding power over the entire globe.

“Let’s just say the climate predictions are coming true. It’s a hotter, wetter planet,” Hawley tells the outlet. “If we just extrapolate where we are now, it’s driven much more by corporations than democracies. It’s very much wrapped up in a competition for technological superiority. The nature of power is, ‘In the end, there can be only one.’ So we’re in the middle of a battle on that level for who has the power in the human race.”

The hybrids play a part in this struggle, with Wendy arriving with other hybrids to investigate the site of a crashed Weyland-Yutani ship in Prodigy City. These hybrids stand different than other types of robots and cyborgs we’ve seen in the franchise before Alien: Earth. The hybrids are exclusive property of the Prodigy corporation as exclusive IP, painting a picture where we’ve moved on from a new phone each year to having companies push out new versions of robots like the latest iPhone. A big difference with the hybrids, though, is that they have a child’s brain in their adult robot body.

[RELATED – From “A” to “Xenomorph,” All 9 Alien Films Ranked]

“We started working with the mechanics of how these kids would move physically, and Noah took us more into the mindset space,” Chandler tells EW. “What is the essence of a kid or a young adult? How do their minds work differently than the adult mind? Kids are so present and they haven’t been battered by the world as much as an adult. So they trust their gut and they don’t second guess.”

Hawley cites Ripley’s quote from Aliens where she says she doesn’t know which species is worse, humans or the xenomorphs, as important to his story.

“I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them f—ing each other over for a goddamn percentage,” Weaver says in the film, getting some sparks flying in Hawley’s neurons.

“This idea of the horrible things that we do to each other,” the creator adds. “Sydney plays a somewhat innocent character who finds herself trying to navigate two kinds of monsters. One is human and the other is from outer space. We do expand on that idea that it’s going to be up to the audience which species is worse.”

For Chandler, she’s just hopeful that fans can see how her character is fresh for the series while not affecting the quality of the story.

“I don’t even want to try to compare my character with Ripley,” Chandler said. “That’s just impossible to do. But I hope people like Wendy as much as I love her … She’s my favorite character that I’ve ever been able to play.”

Alien: Earth premieres on FX and Hulu on Tuesday, August 12, with two episodes leading the premiere and a new episode following every week. Will you be tuning in? Let us know in the comments.

The post Alien: Earth’s Hero Is a New Type of “Hybrid” (But What Does That Mean?) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Like Friends, Scream and Scream 2 were definitive pieces of ’90s entertainment. Everyone watched them then and just as many people continue to watch them today. Furthermore, both Friends and Scream served as launching pads of sorts for many of the decade’s up-and-coming talent (not to mention, both featured Courteney Cox in important roles). This roster included Sarah Michelle Gellar, who, in Scream 2‘s release year of 1997, had just begun playing Buffy Summers and played an equally ill-fated part in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gellar’s Cici Cooper is only in two scenes of the Ghostface sequel, but she had a substantial impact on the series. Yet, it seems she won’t be coming back for the upcoming Scream 7.

Both of her scenes in the movie are fantastic. First, we see her in film class, debating the merits of sequels alongside Joshua Jackson’s unnamed character and Timothy Olyphant’s Mickey Altieri, who just so happens to be one of the film’s two killers (and almost certainly the one who kills her). Then, she has her death scene in the Omega Beta Zeta sorority house, which is as expertly drawn out as any of the phone call scenes in the first movie, perhaps just a hair under the effectiveness of Casey Becker’s (Drew Barrymore).

Gellar was interviewed by ET‘s Brice Sander at the premiere of her newest project, Lifetime’s Pretty Hurts. The topic of Scream 7 (inadvertently) came up, and it sounds like the opposite of what happened with this year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. In the case of that legacy sequel, Gellar was offered the chance to return, but she declined, as her Helen Shivers was killed off in the 1997 original film. With Scream 7, she hasn’t received the call, and even though her character was killed off by Ghostface, it would make sense for her to return, as she wouldn’t be alone in doing so.

[RELATED – Scream 7 Confirms Return of Another Dead Character (But Fans Will Be Excited)]

After Sander said that she’ll be back on screen soon in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival, Gellar initially believed he had said Scream, not “screen,” to which she said “I thought you said ‘Scream,’ but no I’m not in Scream, I tried to get in Scream but nobody wanted me … they’re bringing everybody back. I was thinking I would get a call, I didn’t get a call.”

Sander mentions how she died in Scream 2, so she wouldn’t be able to come back, but Gellar is apparently far more aware of the details of the seventh film’s casting announcements than he is, as she replies with, “Yeah, but there’s a lot of people who died in all the Scream movies that are back. Skeet [Ulrich], [Matthew] Lillard, I’m just saying I’m waiting for my call.”

As we saw in Scream (2022) and Scream VI, the franchise has no problem bringing back deceased characters, even if they’re antagonists. And, while it looks like Ulrich’s Billy Loomis won’t be returning for the seventh film, it’s still taking things up a notch by bringing back former Ghostfaces Stu Macher (the aforementioned Lillard) from Scream and Roman Bridger (Scott Foley) from Scream 3.

Not to mention, it’s also bringing back David Arquette as Dewey Riley, even though he was heartbreakingly killed off in Scream (2022). Whatever Kevin Williamson and crew are doing with all of these returning characters in the newest film one thing is certain: fans would love to see the return of Cici Cooper.

The post Sarah Michelle Gellar Shares Perfect Response to Scream 7 Return (But Is That Even Possible?) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

There were only two highly anticipated major horror flicks in 1984 that ended up being total misfires: Mark L. Lester’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter and Wes Craven’s stock-footage-stuffed The Hills Have Eyes Part II. Of the other A-list or B+-list projects, it was an overall solid year. The great thing about ’80s horror is that it’s littered with notable entries that really only could have come from that decade. And, if there’s any specific year of the ’80s that proves this, it certainly must be ’84. From iconic dream demons to cannibalistic humanoids, it was a weird year for the genre.

What follows are the best of the major horror films from 1984. Some are fun little cultural curiosities, others are stone-cold classics, and all of them are worth watching at least once.

1) C.H.U.D.

C.H.U.D., or Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, is more cult curiosity than great film, but it’s certainly a wild ride when it wants to be. The only issue is that it stretches itself too thin from time to time. But really, there are greater crimes than ambition in the horror genre.

There are a few reasons for the culturally curious to check out the film. For one, the title monsters are impressively ugly little things. Two, if there’s any ’80s horror movie with a surplus of pre-fame stars, it’s this one. Home Alone‘s John Heard and Daniel Stern, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey‘s Kim Greist, The Silence of the Lambs‘ Frankie R. Faison, The Crow‘s Jon Polito, and Home Improvement‘s Patricia Richardson, they’re all here. There’s even a cameo from a young John Goodman.

Stream C.H.U.D. on Prime Video.

2) Children of the Corn

Quality-wise, one wouldn’t expect Children of the Corn to be the Stephen King adaptation that led to a long, long-running franchise, but it was. And, while the original is the best of the bunch, that’s less a testament to its quality than it is an indictment of its remakes and sequels’ lack thereof.

However, there’s a charm to 1984’s Children of the Corn. It has Linda Hamilton as one of the two leads the same year she fronted The Terminator. Additionally, it can be spooky (until some truly terrible special effects turn it into an unintentional comedy). Plus, John Franklin and Courtney Gains are genuinely iconic as young villains Isaac and Malachai.

Stream Children of the Corn on Prime Video.

3) The Company of Wolves

The same year she started playing Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury starred alongside The Omen‘s David Warner in The Company of Wolves. While it doesn’t skimp the audience on scares and practical effects-generated lupine transition sequences, it is without a doubt the artiest film on this list.

After all, it was the sophomore film of Neil Jordan. One might recognize his name as the director of 1992’s The Crying Game, 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, 1996’s Michael Collins, and 2018’s Greta.

Stream The Company of Wolves on Prime Video.

4) Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Filled with some well-drawn characters and a few of the most memorable kills in the whole franchise, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is many of the IP’s fans’ favorite for good reason. There’s just something about the first four Friday the 13th films. They are the definitive check your brain at the door slashers. After this, it was a bit downhill for the franchise, but even then, there were high points, most notably Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

There’s a distinct three-point layout to the Friday the 13th films, and The Final Chapter is the one that found the best balance between those three points. First, a group of young people is introduced. All of them are fairly similar to one another, but slight differences in personality are established. Then, Jason (or, the first time, Mrs. Voorhees) picks them off in various ways one by one. Lastly, the survivor (or, in the case of The Final Chapter, two survivors) engages in a long chase with Jason that ultimately results in them barely escaping with their lives. What helps The Final Chapter stand out is that it carries a sort of John Hughes-like aura to it. The characters are slightly more well-developed, and even a kid is brought into the mix (played by Corey Feldman, much less). Toss in a goofball dance from Crispin Glover, one year shy of Back to the Future, and this is top-tier Friday the 13th.

Stream Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter on Paramount+ Apple TV channel.

5) Gremlins

Joe Dante’s Gremlins was one of those movies that inspired numerous copycats, none of which came even close to replicating its success (though the original Critters managed to do fairly well for itself, ironic considering it’s the only one that wasn’t actively copying Gremlins). It’s both a product of its time yet fully timeless.

To the former point, Gremlins is arguably the ultimate example of a movie that could have only come from the ’80s. But, thanks to its fantastic creation of an almost Mayberry-like setting and the work of the cast, it’s impossible to dislike, even if you’re watching it over 40 years later. Furthermore, its little toothy jerks were crafted by top-level practical effects, so they’re sure to continue spooking kids for many generations to come.

Rent Gremlins on Prime Video.

6) Night of the Comet

A zombie movie you can watch once you’re caught up on The Last of Us, Night of the Comet is also a great companion piece to something like Gremlins. Not unlike Joe Dante’s film, it manages to balance several genres (specifically, horror, sci-fi, and comedy) and do so in a way that never shortchanges any of them.

The narrative follows a pair of teenage sisters as they wake up to find the world greatly changed. For one, there are far fewer people around. The vast majority have been reduced to red dust. Worse yet, the sisters also have to contend with both violent (and speaking) zombies as well as a group of thugs. The biggest surprise of all, though, is just who is behind all this.

[RELATED: Friday the 13th Reveals New Franchise Logo, Jason Mask for 45th Anniversary]

Stream Night of the Comet on fuboTV.

7) A Nightmare on Elm Street

The same year Wes Craven directed his worst film, the aforementioned The Hills Have Eyes Part II, he almost helmed his best, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Even factoring in how great A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is, there’s simply no topping Craven’s original masterpiece (one of two he helmed, including Scream).

With haunting music, the perfect amount of screentime for Freddy Krueger, and two of horror’s best death scenes, it’s not only one of the best horror films of all time, it’s a near-perfect film regardless of genre. There’s really just the issue of Ronee Blakley’s performance, but even the over-the-top nature of her work has its charms.

Rent A Nightmare on Elm Street on Prime Video.

8) Razorback

A woefully underappreciated monster movie, Razorback was essentially Australia’s answer to Jaws. Quite a few copycat movies came out in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s classic. On the lower end of the quality scale, there was stuff like Grizzly and Orca. On the higher end, there was Alligator and Joe Dante’s Piranha.

Razorback is definitely more in the Alligator and Piranha column. The title beast, a massive wild boar, is an impressively ugly creation, and, as is the key to all when animals attack movies, he’s not overused. Razorback also comes equipped with some solid acting for the subgenre (not across the board, but a few of the performances are as modulated as they should be). More often than not, Russell Mulcahy’s movie works.

Stream Razorback on Hoopla.

9) Silent Night, Deadly Night

A movie that’s disturbing to this day, Silent Night, Deadly Night is one of the more well-known B-level slashers. Given how it was the most controversial slasher of the ’80s, its clout is less due to supreme quality and more do to graphic violence and trailers that were inevitable nightmare fuel for children.

On the whole, Silent Night, Deadly Night is a slightly above-average slasher. It’s more here because it’s important. At the very least, it’s better than Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, which is a stock footage parade until its now-iconic suburb-set finale.

Rent Silent Night, Deadly Night on Prime Video.

10) The Toxic Avenger

The Toxic Avenger was never an IP that had macro-scale appeal, but its fan base is strong enough to warrant a forthcoming reboot. It makes sense because it’s certainly one of the more unique superhero movies out there.

The narrative follows a scrawny janitor who suffers daily torment at the hands of the members of the health club where he works. After falling into a vat of toxic waste, he becomes the title character, going all around the city beating up small-time crooks and drug dealers. It’s not a traditional horror film, but it’s not a traditional superhero movie or comedy movie either. It certainly contains some horrific injuries. After all, this movie has a kid’s head get run over within the first 10 minutes.

Stream The Toxic Avenger on Prime Video.

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Dexter has some extremely high highs and some very low lows, but where did the series peak? Dexter really changed the TV landscape in a big way back when it debuted in 2006. Although the medium was already inching into the world of morally dubious protagonists with Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan was definitely a step above the rest. We know Tony Soprano is a bad guy, no one really tries to argue that. Some would argue that Dexter isn’t the bad guy and that’s what makes it such an interesting show. He’s a “moral” serial killer, one with a code that aims to bring justice to an imperfect world. However, this code is often manipulated for selfish reasons.

There’s a reason why Dexter had a big resurgence on Netflix just last year and that’s because it’s a show that really challenges its audience. Are you okay with rooting for a serial killer, particularly one that puts his loved ones in harm’s way while enjoying the thrill of the hunt? Each season continues to put Dexter under the microscope and question who he really is. Is he lacking humanity and emotions like he says he is or is that a cover to justify his own actions without remorse? As the show goes on, the layers get peeled further and further back. With Dexter: Resurrection premiering this summer, it’s clear that Dexter Morgan’s humanity will be questioned even further as he makes efforts to connect with his estranged son. With that said, now seems like a good time to pinpoint the best season of the show so far.

Why Dexter Season 4 Is the Show at Its Best

I recently ranked all seasons of Dexter and Season 4 was number one. Unlike some other seasons on the list, this was never a question. Dexter Morgan finally seems to be coming to terms with his own humanity and trying to be a suburban dad, but he won’t give up his serial killer antics. It creates all kinds of new challenges, but he thinks he can overcome them by learning from the despicable Trinity Killer as played by the great John Lithgow. It results in a pretty classic comic book-y storyline where the “hero’s” double life clash in catastrophic ways.

Dexter thinks he can be this vigilante for good while also being father of the year material, but it becomes increasingly clear that’s not going to be possible. The finale of the season really emphasizes this by holding Dexter accountable for his actions for one of the first times. He is punished for dragging out his time with Trinity and trying to learn from an evil man. As a result, it permanently changes Dexter and the ripple effects of that season are still being felt in shows like Dexter: New Blood and seemingly Dexter: Resurrection as well.

On top of that, this season includes some of the most brilliant episodes of the entire show. Hungry Man, the Thanksgiving episode, is one of the most stressful hours of television I have ever seen and it culminates in one of the most satisfying tension releases when Dexter finally reveals his true self to Arthur on his kitchen floor. Of course, all of this allows for some excellent follow-up episodes that continue to create pressure for both Dexter and the viewer as well.

Not only was Season 4 tense, but it was also incredibly twisty. Close to half of the season goes by before we learn that the Trinity Killer is a church going, charitable family man. It’s a stunning reveal for those who don’t know it’s coming and makes the violent moments we see with him prior to this even more disturbing. That’s not even mentioning the twists with his secret daughter and of course, the jaw-dropping finale.

Ultimately, Dexter Season 4 was so good that it almost hurt the show. It was an extremely good season that generated award buzz for the series, but it stumbled for the next four seasons as it tried to recapture some of that magic. The writers even revisited this storyline in a later season by having Dexter learn that Trinity’s son may be picking up his dad’s dark tendencies. It was an interesting episode, but one that reminded viewers of better days for the show.

While there has been plenty of good TV since this season aired, there’s never been anything that quite matches the specific energy and momentum of Dexter Season 4. All of the stars aligned perfectly and created one of the most impactful 12 episodes of television I have had the pleasure of consuming.

The post What Is the Best Season of Dexter? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Resident Evil is one of the most legendary horror game franchises out there. It has numerous classic games for fans to revisit and remakes for newcomers to try as an entryway into the world of mutant lifeforms and overly dramatic cutscenes. Looking purely at canon games (Revelations) and the mainline series, we’re going to rank the iconic franchise that started from humble zombie beginnings.

To avoid repeating entries, this list has picked only one Resident Evil game when that entry has a remake. You can debate any placement on this list as the best Resident Evil games are each fantastic in their own way. We cannot judge these games based on how scary they are because—let’s be real—only RE1, RE2, RE3, and RE7 could be classified as true horror.

Therefore, this list has looked at Resident Evil’s story, characters, gameplay, level design, and entertainment value for each entry to determine their spot on the list. Let’s get into it.

12) Resident Evil 6

Release date: October 2nd, 2012

I played Resident Evil 6 solo, then with a friend and found co-op was significantly more fun because we only did one playthrough. RE6 frustrated me because it’s the same game on a loop, with variation only given through cutscenes. There is no change between the enemies, settings, or gameplay aside from obvious plot differences. Some characters and their stories were significantly better than others, but everything was surface-level, with little development in its forgettable story. RE6 will get repetitive really quickly if you’re looking to play as every character. This entry should be viewed only as an action game as you sprint through each level, blasting at anything in your path.

Quick-time events were particularly exhausting in Resident Evil 6. While Resident Evil isn’t really scary to begin with, there isn’t a single moment in RE6 that made me feel tense. It’s not an awful game by any means, but there’s a clear divide from the very best of the franchise, to the mediocre.

11) Resident Evil: Revelations 2

Release date: February 24th, 2015

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 expanded on the first game by adding a much-needed co-op feature. Playing this with family and friends is better than single-player and that’s not just at the detriment of the more basic AI partner. Just like other co-op entries, most of the entertainment is created through you, the player. Fear is contagious, and it’s felt more in this entry than in any other co-op Resident Evil. Revelations 2 offers variation in gameplay, providing a mix of action and stealth; a combo that’s missing in every other co-op entry.

There are more enemy types than Revelations, but this sequel has scarce puzzles and repetitive enemy designs, making it less desirable to me as there wasn’t much variety. This is only an enjoyable experience in co-op as the AI will often find itself in trouble, feeling more like an escort mission than RE4. What makes Revelations worth playing now is the Raid Mode, offering replayability like no other Resident Evil. But this is a separate entity from the main campaign, acting more like Mercenaries Mode.

10) Resident Evil: Revelations

Release date: January 26th, 2012

Although I’m not ranking these games based on how they look, Resident Evil: Revelations still looks amazing. Compared to the hugeness of Raccoon City, I appreciate how this entry managed to pack so much into a more confined setting. The story played more like a film, seeing Jill bounce around and have to quickly adapt to the new area, which added much-needed tension. However, the more simplistic gameplay for a third-person shooter felt too much like the original games—being more clunky and stiff as you tracked the slow-moving target ahead of you. Yes, it included the interesting scan mechanic, but it felt like it was only added to juxtapose the gunfights that grew more and more repetitive as I progressed.

I’m shocked Revelations didn’t give me that polished feeling I expected from what should have been a fluid third-person shooter. Granted, I played Revelations on PS4 when it was intended for Nintendo 3DS, so its gameplay would inevitably be more limited, and it’s still seriously impressive for a handheld game. A throwback to Resident Evil’s roots, Revelations offered more puzzles than its sequel, with a better Raid Mode, story, exploration, and weapon variety. So if you’re a fan of these classic shooters then you should enjoy Revelations, but sadly this one wasn’t for me.

9) Resident Evil Zero

Release date: November 12th, 2002

RE0 is classic Resident Evil with a twist. It has some interesting ideas, expanding on the original game with its core gameplay mechanics like the party system and unique weapons. This made RE0 feel more like a JRPG, where you needed to strategize and manage your inventory across both characters. But here is where the biggest gameplay fault lies. While RE0 kept a lot of what made the original so fantastic (the level design, fixed camera angles, zombified enemies, and puzzles), Rebecca quickly becomes tedious in the gameplay department.

I would love to see RE0 remade. This wasn’t so much a challenging entry, but frustrating and slow because of the decision to massively limit your inventory space and remove the safe room item box. Having to interact with everything so I knew where it was on the map forced me to backtrack too often. It’s unnecessary and an inconvenience as you have to either leave loot in random places around the map or dedicate one safe room as a huge item box. Compared to the first game, RE0 felt like a step backwards and clearly shows its age now as loading screens to swap characters and backtrack for items took me out of the immersive and compact setting. If it weren’t for Zero’s gameplay choices, this game would be ranked higher on the list. It’s so close to being a classic.

8) Resident Evil 5

Release date: March 5th, 2009

Resident Evil 5 is best enjoyed with family or friends. Similar to RE6, the fifth installment is more about action than survival horror. Packed with cheesy cutscenes and seemingly endless gunfights, there’s high entertainment value, but only for those playing co-op. For solo players, RE5 feels slow and janky, with repetitive chapters following the same format, only ending with a different boss. The best part is telling your teammate to catch up when you’re waiting at the door, screaming for Chris or Sheva.

The setting and lighting, in particular, are jarring to me and only fit its action gameplay, feeling far removed from the survival horror the franchise became so famous for. Just like RE6, I often felt like I had to create my own fun with this entry, as entertainment was limited to messing around with weapons and equipment. RE5 is a good game, but I’m adamant it’s only a good time for those playing split-screen. This is one of those games that needs a remake for the AI alone, so single-player can be as good as the co-op was.

7) Resident Evil Village

Release date: May 7th, 2021

I genuinely don’t see Village as a Resident Evil game. Village shone in entertainment value, but this entry peaked incredibly early, specifically with Lady Dimitrescu’s boss fight. The game is surprisingly easy and very forgiving, only having a handful of difficult moments (e.g., Beast of East Old Town and surviving the first Lycans attack). It felt like I was being hand-held throughout and led from point A to B, with little pushback from the village residents. The horror elements felt cheap when implemented, like a desperate callback to Biohazard‘s success.

Exploring each area was enjoyable, but I found myself flying through the game, having bought most upgrades from The Duke in record time for Resident Evil, and feeling underwhelmed by every boss post-Dimitrescu. It wasn’t until I reached Heisenberg’s Factory that I felt like I was playing a Resident Evil game. Village packs a lot in, but its ideas feel like they were hastily thrown together. The story gets more ridiculous and dragged out as it goes on, and I was surprisingly bored by the time I switched to Chris Redfield’s POV.

6) Resident Evil: Code Veronica

Release date: February 3rd, 2000

Code Veronica is the darkest entry in the series because of its art direction. The entire setting feels grimy and decrepit, warning us that Claire made a huge mistake coming to Rockfort Island. It’s one of the scarier entries for its aesthetic alone, with chaotic cutscenes that stressed me out when I had to pick the controller back up. Most situations felt hopeless as I was often thrown into the deep end. It is one of the hardest Resident Evils, where the fixed camera angles worked overtime at keeping me on edge. Like Nemesis, Code Veronica had the look and feel of old-school Silent Hill.

Code Veronica‘s plot grows more nonsensical as time goes on, giving it one of the weakest stories in the series. Its quirky cast, each getting important character development, made the setting feel more believable (and entertaining). It has good atmosphere and pacing, but its flaw is that you can get soft-locked if you don’t have the right resources with you. Code Veronica is one of the most challenging and stressful Resident Evils, with standout boss fights that (although you’re trapped in a small arena) felt unique compared to other entries.

5) Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Release date: January 24th, 2017

The atmosphere of Biohazard made it the one true horror game of the series, with an impressively long high that lasts for most of its runtime. I felt like a mouse caught in a trap, being persistently hunted by the Baker family. Biohazard offers little room to breathe as you open up new areas to explore on the farm, with the overarching story expanding along the way. The level design felt like a throwback to the first game, but where it succeeds most is with its villains and first-person horror elements.

What’s very different about Biohazard (but worked incredibly well) is the enemy variety is restricted purely to the bosses. The game perfectly mixed stealth with action as you needed to navigate around the farm without alerting the enemies to your position, to reach the point where you can finally fight back. I liked how everyone felt like Nemesis, where I couldn’t get sick of seeing the same enemy type, for this wasn’t in Biohazard (unlike RE5 and RE6). The Baker family is iconic, both for their personalities and character design that reached its terrifying climax when the boss fight finally ensued. Biohazard reaches its peak at Marguerite’s boss fight, only to sadly dip in quality when the focus shifts to Eveline.

4) Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Release date: September 22nd, 1999

Bizarrely, the remake of Resident Evil 3 lost everything that made the original so damn good. While the remake was stunning, the characters were surface-level and annoying, while the main threat of Nemesis was restricted to cutscenes, and quickly became frustrating to avoid when regaining control of Jill. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience, which is a shame as many likely missed out on the original. This is the only time I’d say you have to play the original over the remake. Nemesis held onto what made the first and second games fantastic, with survival horror elements and item management, mixed inside the gigantic Raccoon City you could freely explore.

RELATED: 10 Best Resident Evil Protagonists

For its time, the jagged pixels and flat surfaces had surprising depth that brought the city to life as you have to survive the retreat to safety, all while Nemesis stalks your every move. The exterior level design is some of the best Resident Evil has ever done. I love how everything is interconnected and you had to work out where you need to go, rather than simply being led there. I felt cornered, uncertain of what awaited me if I made a mad dash toward the nearest exit. Raccoon City felt the most real in this pixelated setting. It’s impressive how Capcom managed to capture such hopelessness and dread in the claustrophobic alleyways of Raccoon City.

3) Resident Evil Remaster

Release date: March 22nd, 2002

What Resident Evil did so well is that you never knew what to expect. Perfectly placed jump scares, unique enemies, and satisfying puzzles, the first in this long-standing series had peak level design. I always anticipated something would jump out at me following the dramatically slow door opening animation. Resident Evil remains at the top for its level design and puzzles, having some of the greatest scares in the series. A cinematic experience, Resident Evil was monumental when it first released, and has aged well for a survival horror game.

The pacing for Resident Evil is spot on and demonstrates exactly what survival horror is supposed to be: fighting back with limited resources. The mansion setting is coated in mystery, with narrow corridors and fixed camera angles to spread uneasiness and paranoia for what lurks just shy of being on-screen. Things were simpler in the first installment, with strange bosses that felt fitting for the start of a global pandemic that later added more complicated enemies into the fray.

2) Resident Evil 4 Remake

Release date: March 24th, 2023

If Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has the best horror in the series, RE4 has the best action. Unlike RE5 and RE6, the fourth game balanced action and horror perfectly, neither ever overstaying its welcome. While I struggled to play the original because of the aim controls, the remake let me properly enjoy this entry. I love how RE4 showcases horror during the day, something that’s rarely done with these games (and was completely missed in RE5). With optional side quests, level design variety, and challenging moments, this massive escort mission to rescue Ashley is the best action-survival horror you can play.

Resident Evil 4 is both fun and challenging, being a satisfying entry every time you complete a chapter. It never feels repetitive as you are always faced with different challenges. My one qualm I have with RE4 is its difficulty scaling, where there’s a massive gap between Standard and Hardcore—and the harder difficulties are a true test of patience. There’s so much variety in this entry that it never gets stale, enticing you with exploration, puzzles, and optional side quests to keep you fully engrossed, and lengthen out the playthrough. While the story is relatively simple, it’s so easily digestible that anyone can jump into RE4 without knowing the rest of the series and have a great experience.

1) Resident Evil 2 Remake

Release date: January 25th, 2019

Resident Evil 2 is the ultimate survival horror game, having everything you could possibly need: exploration, puzzles, resource management, intricate level design, and scares. To me, RE2 is perfection. With two playthroughs readily available, both having completely separate adventures where they overlap through serendipitous cutscenes, RE2 is a blast from start to finish. It has the perfect balance of action and horror, with excellent level design that makes backtracking both refreshing and satisfying. The enemy variety is great, the puzzles are just right, and the persistent threat of Mr. X gave me the kick I needed to keep pressing forward.

The only fault I’d give RE2 is its repetitive boss fights that trap you in a compact arena, which is a common flaw I’d give the series as a whole. The boss fights felt more arcadey to me. I could run around the perimeter and handle the threat, easily avoid damage, and cheese the boss, removing most of the panic or seriousness of the battle. Aside from this, however, RE2 captured the original’s excellent level design, worldbuilding, storytelling, and added two beloved characters with their own story to tell, to craft what I deem to be the best Resident Evil.

The post All 12 Mainline Resident Evil Games, Ranked appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Universal Monsters have been icons for nearly a century, with figures like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, and more striking fear into the hearts of audiences and inspiring countless creatives. While various years of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios parks have paid respects to the characters, Epic Universe’s Dark Universe is taking things to an all-new level, as the attraction takes guests to Darkmoor for rides, photo ops, themed food, and more. In honor of the official opening of Epic Universe, a number of icons in horror assembled to pay their respects to the origins of horror cinema.

ComicBook was in attendance for the event, allowing us to get answers on who these creatives love most from the beloved roster.

“I like them all. Come on, I love Dracula, Frankenstein, and of course, Creature [from the Black Lagoon]. Hard to beat Creature. Oh, Wolf Man. Obviously, Wolf Man, as well,” filmmaker James Wan shared. Rick Baker noted, “Frankenstein’s Monster is what made me do what I do. That film inspired me to become a makeup artist. What I liked about it so much was that I am like Frankenstein. I create life, only it’s out of rubber.”

“I was always a Dracula kid growing up. We went on [Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment] six times yesterday. It is the greatest ride I’ve ever been on in my life, to be a lifelong Universal Monster fan,” The Exorcist TV show creator Jeremy Slater pointed out. “And Creature from the Black Lagoon, they’re neck and neck, and just to see them brought to life and have them trying to kill you, lunging at you, it is incredible. There’s so much love and so much attention to detail just poured into every square inch of this park. It blew us away, it really did.”

The Exorcist actor Melissa Russell confirmed, “[Frankenstein’s Monster is] my favorite Universal Monster. He just wants a friend.”

[RELATED – Epic Universe Reveals Official New Looks at Harry Potter, Super Mario, and Dark Universe Attractions]

Composer Danny Elfman helped compose music for Dark Universe, causing him to reveal the unexpected reason he felt a connection to Dracula.

“It’s hard to say, other than the one that I feel like I’m actually related to, which is Dracula, because I was told as a child that we have vampire in the family, which is why we can’t go in the sun, and neither can my children,” the composer detailed. “So I told them the same thing, and then they’re telling that to their children. So my grandchildren, everybody, every Elfman is told that we, definitely from the old country, have vampire [in us] and that’s why none of us can go in the sun. And it’s true. Vlad, on the mother’s side, back in Lithuania.”

The filmmakers also went on to share the projects they’ve been involved in that would make for the best theme park attractions.

“I think Saw would be pretty fun. Saw would be fun for everyone involved. Fun for the whole family. Young and old,” Wan joked. Baker teased, “Well, the Wolfman actually is here. The Wolfman looks very much like the Wolfman I did [from 2010]. So yeah, I don’t know. I mean, all of them. It is epic. I’ve got to say, I’ve been blown away. I’m not easily impressed, and I’ve been blown away by this.”

Slater noted, “Well, an Exorcist theme park would be incredibly disturbing and sad and no one would go to it. Umbrella Academy could be fun, could be weird. Mortal Kombat comes out in a couple of months and it is the most fun you’re going to have in a movie theater this year. It is such a good time. I really think a Scorpion-themed roller coaster would be killer.”

Elfman teased one of his various collaborations with Tim Burton, naming, “Who wouldn’t love a Beetlejuice world? I would be the first one to go to Pee-wee Land.”

The Universal Monsters are undeniably timeless, coming back to life over and over again. Baker and Slater had mixed reactions when asked about which of these monsters they’d want to put their own spin on.

“The Boris Karloff Frankenstein’s Monster is so ingrained in me, I don’t think I could do a better makeup than that. To me, that’s Frankenstein’s Monster. I’ve actually, a couple of times, was going to try and I chickened out,” the artist revealed. Meanwhile, Slater offered, “I would take any Universal Monster, happily. I think Creature and Dracula are the two who are crying out to be reintroduced. We just had a Wolf Man, I think Guillermo del Toro has Frankenstein, and I can’t wait to see what he does with that. So I would say Dracula. I’d throw my hat in the ring for that one.”

In Dark Universe, guests will explore the shadowy village of Darkmoor – home to Universal Monster legends like Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and more. The icon of this ominous world is Frankenstein Manor, where guests will venture deep into its catacombs and face a horde of enraged monsters on Universal Orlando’s most chilling attraction ever – Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment.

Universal’s Epic Universe is open now.

Who is your favorite Universal Monster? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

The post James Wan, Rick Baker, and More Share Universal Monsters Love at Epic Universe appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone quite often covered serious topics, aiming its lens at society and its dysfunctional functioning in influential episodes like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Yet it wasn’t those types of episodes that would prove to be its most controversial. In fact, the show rarely pushed buttons hard enough to really generate much in terms of controversy. There wasn’t much that crossed the lines of what could or could not be featured on a network television show. Even still, there were a few episodes that ruffled feathers at the time, and a few that might do the same today.

That so few episodes angered people back then and so few 60 years later is a testament to how Serling’s show was able to walk a fine line. One that allowed it to convey its messages and rarely display anything that would be considered in poor taste over half a century later (without a doubt a rarity for a 1960s television show).

1) “The Big Tall Wish” (Season 1, Episode 27)

Like with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, having a Black actor in the lead role of a The Twilight Zone episode didn’t sit with every ’60s-era viewer. Suffice to say, having a primarily Black cast is not a factor that would make “The Big Tall Wish” controversial now but did to a degree back in the day.

“To a degree” because this episode (as well as other episodes that incorporated Black actors in primary roles, e.g. “The Night of the Meek“) helped The Twilight Zone win the Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations in 1961. Serling himself was proud of his show’s incorporation of different races. In reference to the topic of casting Black actors, he said “Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission…it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose.”

2) The Chaser (Season 1, Episode 31)

Whenever The Twilight Zone went the comedic route over sticking with horror or sci-fi, it just didn’t work. Comedy can be peppered in, but it just can’t be the main focus. But, for the most part, the comedy just didn’t work because it felt out of place and fell flat. The exception is “The Chaser,” which makes the unfortunate error of judgment in tackling a very serious topic with a comedic tone.

The narrative follows a man who uses a potion on a woman that gets her to fall head over heels in love with him. In time, her forced “love” for him becomes irritating, and he plots to once more give her a potion. This time, though, one that will kill her. He doesn’t go through with it after she reveals she’s pregnant, and he also says that he couldn’t have gone through with it anyway. But whether or not he would have gone through with it is irrelevant. He still essentially stole her free will, grew tired of her, then was going to steal her life. Even with a goofy tone it’s far from funny stuff. Tales from the Crypt later adapted the same source material (the short story of the same name by John Collier), but there was a heftier price to pay for the manipulative male lead.

3) The Mirror (Season 3, Episode 6)

Featuring Peter Falk before he started playing the title role in Columbo, “The Mirror” is an episode of The Twilight Zone that was perhaps fine by ’60s standards, but not so much today. It’s an overall very solid look at how short-lived dictatorships are designed to be, and how much a price there is to be paid for ruling with an iron thumb, but it still features a white actor playing a Cuban man while wearing brownface.

The episode has also received some modern-day pushback for its stereotypical portrayal of Latin American characters. There’s not much differentiation between the people we meet in the episode. So, while the narrative itself works, there were certainly better ways to go about its construction.

[RELATED: This The Twilight Zone Episode Has Been Remade Twice (And the Original Is the Best)]

4) Death’s Head Revisited (Season 3, Episode 9)

It was gutsy to air an episode about Nazism just fifteen years after the close of World War II, but that’s exactly what The Twilight Zone did. “Deaths-Head Revisited” follows a former SS officer who returns to the concentration camp where he inflicted pain, suffering, and death on thousands of people.

There, he’s put on trial by the shots of his victims, and the penalty of his guilty verdict is a series of illusions, each one tailored to the grotesque actions he committed against the camp’s prisoners. Naturally, Americans had no problem seeing a Nazi gets his comeuppance, but the episode was never aired in Germany. It’s certainly an impactful episode, one that is both rooted in a particular period of time yet holds an air of timelessness. Everyone who has been cruel should be forced to have a version of that cruelty shown to them up close and personal, but that’s not often the case in reality. Good thing The Twilight Zone isn’t based in reality.

5) Black Leather Jackets (Season 5, Episode 18)

Not many episodes of The Twilight Zone are considered outright failures of storytelling, but with 156 total episodes, that’s somewhat inevitable. For instance, the final two episodes, “The Fear” and “The Bewitchin’ Pool” fall within that category.

But there is perhaps no better example than the extremely silly “Black Leather Jackets,” an episode that elicited eyerolls at the time and hasn’t seen its standing improve over the course of 61 subsequent years. The show made extra-terrestrials work on occasion, e.g. in “To Serve Man,” but having a trio of aliens dressed up as the Fonz simply didn’t work. So really, “Black Leather Jackets” isn’t offensive in the traditional sense, it’s just a stretch of 22 minutes that sticks out like a lame sore thumb in a pool of episodes that are typically either good or very good.

6) An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (Season 5, Episode 22)

Featuring a gut punch of a twist ending (the primary thing The Twilight Zone is known for), the dour “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is controversial on several fronts. For one, it’s like The Outlaw Josey Whales in that its protagonist is a Confederate soldier. It’s hard to feel a surplus of empathy for a character’s plights if they’re on the wrong side of history.

Two, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” really isn’t an episode of The Twilight Zone, like how Tales from the Crypt‘s “Yellow” and “King of the Road” were technically produced for a show called Two Fisted Tales, but were just given to Tales from the Crypt when that show wasn’t picked up. In the case of this The Twilight Zone episode, it’s actually an Academy Award-winning French short film. As Serling says in his episode intro, “Tonight, a presentation so special and unique that for the first time in the five years we’ve been presenting The Twilight Zone, we’re offering a film shot in France by others. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival of 1962, as well as other international awards, here is a haunting study of the incredible from the past master of the incredible, Ambrose Bierce.” As mentioned, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” does come equipped with a twist ending, but it never quite feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

7) The Encounter (Season 5, Episode 31)

This episode of The Twilight Zone is without a doubt its most controversial, so much so that it was banned from TV for over 50 years. The episode aired once in May 1964, but wasn’t shown again until 2016. You basically had to own The Twilight Zone box set DVD to view it. The reason can be simply summarized as its tough view of race relations. The narrative follows George Takei’s young Japanese-American Arthur Takamori, who is looking for work and thinks he’s found it when he meets WWII veteran Fenton.

Fenton invites Arthur up to his attic for a beer, and amidst all the clutter in that attic, there’s a particularly interesting katana. At first things are peaceful enough, but in time Fenton starts saying some bigoted things and Arthur keeps finding himself holding this katana. Worse yet, the door to the attic is locked, even though it doesn’t even have a lock. They’re trapped together up there until they can work through their differences or Arthur does what the sword is telling him to do: kill Fenton. Neither option really pans out, but both men end up dead.

The post 7 Most Controversial Episodes of The Twilight Zone appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Disney’s The Nightmare Before Christmas landed in theaters on October 29, 1993, and for the past three decades, the movie has been celebrated every September through December. While the themes of the movie make it an appropriate watch for both Halloween and Christmas, fans have drawn a line in the sand over whether the movie is more appropriate for one holiday than the other. While speaking with ComicBook at the grand opening of Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida, Danny Elfman, who provided Jack Skellington with his singing voice and composed the music for the movie, entered the debate by saying the movie was meant for both holidays, but he thinks its true heart is in Halloween.

“Well, technically, it’s both. But for me, it’s still a Halloween movie because I’m a Halloween baby. Halloween is my favorite night of the year,” Elfman confirmed. “I did voice Jack Skellington, who is Halloweenland, and even though Jack loves Christmasland, and I love singing about and writing songs about Christmasland, in Jack’s heart, he’s still the king of Halloweenland, come on now. He’s the Pumpkin King, not the Christmas Tree King.”

With the film exploring how Jack feels as though his creative talents are being wasted on Halloween and how he has a lot to contribute towards Christmas, it allows the experience to put a creepy and macabre spin on Christmas iconography. Jack’s acceptance of being the Pumpkin King can be seen as his acceptance that his heart will always belong to Halloween, which can be seen as confirmation that the movie is a tribute to Halloween.

[RELATED – Tim Burton Explains Why He Won’t Make More Sequels to His Movies After Beetlejuice 2]

Chris Sarandon, who provided Jack with his speaking voicing, previously shared with ComicBook in 2019, “I know that there are a lot of fans who come up to me saying, ‘We watch it every Halloween,’ and I have fans that come up and say, ‘We watch it every Christmas,’ I have fans who come up and say, ‘We watch it at both Christmas and Halloween.’ What’s the debate? It’s what pleases the people who watch it most, the audience, that’s what’s important. It’s the fans. It’s the people who it had a profound effect on over these years.”

Director Henry Selick similarly thinks the movie is a great fit for either holiday, having shared with ComicBook in 2024, “At the very beginning, when Tim Burton came up with this original idea in the ’80s at Disney, when it was intended to be a half-hour TV special in stop-motion, at the very beginning, I saw it as a mashup, that it’s both … Then subsequently, when we actually made the film as a feature, I might have tended to answer one way, but I’ve arrived at the original feeling. It is a mashup. It is a perfect collision between those two holidays. So there’s no better answer than both. It is both, and it’s its own thing. It’s a great celebration of Halloween that can last all the way into Christmas.”

Elfman was in attendance at the grand opening of Epic Universe, as he helped contribute music to the park’s Dark Universe. In Dark Universe, guests will explore the shadowy village of Darkmoor – home to Universal Monster legends like Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and more. The icon of this ominous world is Frankenstein Manor, where guests will venture deep into its catacombs and face a horde of enraged monsters on Universal Orlando’s most chilling attraction ever – Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment.

Epic Universe is now open in Orlando, Florida.

Do you think The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or Christmas movie? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

The post Danny Elfman Weighs in on Heated The Nightmare Before Christmas Debate (And He’s Right) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Bring Her Back is the latest horror film from YouTubers-turned-directors Danny and Michael Philippou, following their breakout debut film Talk to Me (2023). However, while Talk to Me was a standalone horror movie, the Philippous are already indicating that Bring Her Back could evolve to be something much bigger. At least there’s potential there: When ComicBook spoke to the directing duo at the press junket for Bring Her Back, we learned just how much background mythos was created for this dark new cinematic vision, enough that there already seems to be enough to develop a sequel idea before the first film even hits theaters!

The story of Bring Her Back follows Piper (Sora Wong) and Andy (Billy Barratt), two siblings who are left parentless and placed with a foster mother, named Laura (Sally Hawkins). While Laura seems like a “safe and reliable” caretaker at first, it slowly but surely becomes clear that Laura is into some dark rituals, tied to an even darker arcane legacy of religious mysticism. It also becomes clear that Laura’s other young charge, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), may have been affected by those rituals and is either the earthly manifestation of an angel, or something far worse…

[RELATED: Bring Her Back Official Review & Critic Score]

Danny and Michael Philippou took a deep dive into occult practices and rituals to create the story for Bring Her Back, a “rabbit hole” that led them to a much larger mythos for the world of the film:

“It’s always the funnest thing when you’re doing the background, and when you’re building your own mythology and going down that rabbit hole, and talking to people that actually practice the occult, I love that whole thing,” Danny explained to ComicBook’s Chris Killian. “You’re just grabbing different parts that scare you… I love building out mythology — same so [with] Talk To Me, same so here — who the angel is, where it came from, where this tape came from, yeah.”

Michael indicated that savvy viewers will be able to piece together a much bigger story that’s at work in Bring Her Back. As he explained it, the process of creating the lore for a potential horror franchise is “the same as developing a character. You need to know who the character is, all the moments in their lives that led them here, their personalities, so it’s good to know that with the occult stuff as well.” While all that background lore won’t fit into the movie, Philippou hinted that viewers will be able to connect the dots. “All those answers are there, but it’s told in a different way. It’s not told in an overt way.”

Chris Killian had to ask: with all that lore on the table, how could Danny and Michael Philippou not be considering expanding into a sequel film? Based on their reaction, the Philippous are likely considering that very idea. “We recorded the entire ritual. We did,” Danny said. “So who knows [about a sequel]? You never know.”

Bring Her Back will be released in theaters on May 30th.

The post Bring Her Back Directors Say They Have Enough Mythology for Another Movie (Will There Be a Sequel?) (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

With Fear Street: Prom Queen, Netflix adds to its catalogue another bloody tale inspired by the books of R.L. Stine. The fourth movie in the franchise is set in 1988 and follows events that take place between the two major Shadyside massacres depicted in the original Fear Street Trilogy. However, unlike the original movies, Prom Queen tells a standalone story, rather than retreading the supernatural mythology of the witch Sarah Fier. That doesn’t mean the film is entirely uncoupled from the Fear Street Trilogy, as Prom Queen has several references to the larger franchise and an ending that ties it closely to the original movies, albeit in a weird way.

Warning: Spoilers below for Fear Street: Prom Queen

Fear Street: Prom Queen revolves around Lori Granger (India Fowler), a student from Shadyside High who decides to run for the coveted prom crown. As a citizen of Shadyside, Lori is used to awful things happening in her city, but even in her turf, she is a pariah, bullied for something that supposedly happened with her parents. Years before the movie begins, Lori’s mother fell in love with a Sunnyvale boy who got her pregnant before prom. The boy was found stabbed to death, which started nasty rumors that Lori’s mother was responsible. This grim story underlines the recurrent schism between Shadyside and Sunnyvale, at the heart of the original Fear Street Trilogy. Prom Queen also reinforces this divide by name-dropping both communities and explaining how the social inequality between Shadyside and Sunnyvale is part of everyday life.

[RELATED: R.L. Stine Confirms Even More Fear Street Movies Are on the Way (Even After Prom Queen)]

The latest Fear Street movie also directly references the series’ events. For instance, there is a shrine in Shadyside High honoring the victims of the Camp Nightwing massacre, a story told in Fear Street: 1978. This massacre is also mentioned by police officers who are called in to handle the murder spree at prom night, right at the end of the movie. Keen-eyed fans will also see “Sarah Fier lives” graffiti in the school’s bathroom stalls, referencing the pervasive witchcraft myths that the Fear Street Trilogy slowly unravels.

The most direct reference to the supernatural elements of Fear Street appears in the final moments of Prom Queen. At the movie’s end, Lori must fight for her life as she’s attacked by her arch-nemesis, high schooler Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), and her vicious mother, Nancy (Katherine Waterston). Tiffany dies after falling from a flight of stairs and being impaled on her way down. Nancy, enraged, tries to get revenge on Lori, only to be bashed in the head by a trophy. Lori escapes the Falconers’ mansion, leaving Nancy behind, bleeding to death. In the final seconds of Fear Street: Prom Queen, we see the body of Nancy, now deceased, beside a pool of blood that dripped from her eyes. This pool of blood is shaped like the Witch’s Mark of the Fear Street Trilogy, hinting at a supernatural force guiding the Falconers’ murderous impulses. That contradicts the franchise’s canon and makes absolutely no sense.

Fear Street: Prom Queen Ignores the Franchise’s Mythology

The Fear Street Trilogy reveals that Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman) made a pact with the Devil in 1966, trading his neighbours’ happiness for healthy crops. To seal his deal, Goode gives the name of Pastor Cyrus Miller (Michael Chandler) to the Devil, dooming him to be possessed by the forces of darkness and become the first Shadyside serial killer. Over the years, the Goode family ensured their continuous fortune and the wealth of Sunnyvale by frequently marking other Shadysiders to be possessed and sent on a killing spree, which explains the centuries-old cycle of violence that plagues Shadyside. The Witch’s Mark is the symbol used by Solomon Goode in his incantation and the evidence of his dark deals.

The appearance of the Witch’s Mark in Nancy’s pool of blood suggests she was possessed by the Devil when killing the prom queen candidates. However, that just cannot be true. For starters, the Fear Street Trilogy underlines that only one person is chosen at a time to become a serial killer. Yet, in Prom Queen, Nancy works with her daughter Tiffany and her husband Dan (Chris Klein) to slay the teenage girls. Furthermore, the killing spree of each possessed serial killer lasts only a few hours, while the Falconers killed their first victim the evening before prom. Also, Nancy admits to having killed Lori’s father because she was jealous, meaning she was a killer decades before the movie begins. Finally, the people possessed through the Goodes’ rituals lose autonomy and become enraged murderers. The Falconers, on the contrary, still maintain their mental faculties, carefully selecting their targets and making grandiose villain speeches.

The Falconers were supposed to be simple serial killers who decided to slay some girls to ensure Tiffany’s victory as prom queen. It’s a simplistic reason, but at least it doesn’t contradict the supernatural rules set by the Fear Street Trilogy. However, by showing the Witch’s Mark and connecting it to Nancy, Fear Street: Prom Queen suggests a link that makes no sense. Hopefully, new movies in the franchise will be more careful with the canon.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is currently available on Netflix.

What did you think of the new Fear Street movie? What are your thoughts on how Prom Queen alludes to the franchise’s mythology? Join the discussion in the comments!

The post Fear Street: Prom Queen Connects With the Trilogy in the Weirdest Way appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Most fans of The X-Files don’t know that Stephen King wrote an episode of the acclaimed sci-fi horror series. The esteemed author has written dozens of horror novels, many of which have been adapted into movies and TV shows. It, The Green Mile, The Shining, and Pet Sematary are just a few of the popular films derived from King’s stories, while The Outsider and The Stand represent the best adaptations of his stories in the TV world. King’s work on The X-Files might surprise some viewers of the show since he typically serves as a writer on projects based on his books. But, The X-Files had a knack for bringing on top-notch creatives throughout its original nine-season run, enlisting the likes of Vince Gilligan in the writers’ room and soon-to-be-famous actors Bryan Cranston, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, and tons more in guest roles.

King is listed as a writer alongside series creator Chris Carter on The X-Files Season 5, Episode 10, “Chinga”, — which aired in 1998. Set against the backdrop of FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully’s (Gillian Anderson) investigations of unexplained paranormal and extraterrestrial events, the episode’s plot centers on a series of strange and deadly occurrences involving a young girl and her doll. “Chinga” is one of The X-Files‘ more terrifying “Monster of the Week” stories, however, King’s influence didn’t end up as prominent as initially planned.

[RELATED: 3 Times 2017’s IT Confirmed It’s One of the Best Stephen King Movies]

“Chinga” Is a Horrifying Episode of The X-Files

“Chinga” opens with a chilling sequence that sets the tone for the episode. In Maine, Melissa Turner (Susannah Hoffman) and her daughter Polly (Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson), with her doll named Chinga, walk into a grocery store. After Polly expresses her discontent with being at the store, the doll opens its eyes and says, “Let’s have fun!” In an instant, the tension mounts, as Melissa sees an apparition of the store’s butcher with a knife in his eye. Everyone in the store begins bleeding from their face, and some invisible force compels the butcher to fatally stab himself in the eye.

The rest of the episode isn’t quite as scary, but it’s an exceptionally intense narrative with plenty of creepy imagery of dolls and gory deaths. While vacationing in Maine, Scully investigates the case, leading her down a rabbit hole of witchcraft before determining that Polly’s doll was behind the grocery store massacre and other similar events. Melissa’s visions of soon-to-be-dead people continue and end with her. Near the conclusion of the episode, Melissa grows agitated while Polly refuses to go to bed. The doll wakes, and Melissa is forced to repeatedly bash her head with a hammer. Scully and the local police chief arrive at the house too late to save Melissa, but they toss Chinga in the microwave to burn her. Yet, the sinister doll has the last laugh. In the episode’s bone-chilling final scene, a fisherman finds a charred doll in a lobster trap. Her eyes open, and she exclaims, “I want to play!”

The X-Files succeeds in frightening audiences in “Chinga” by appealing to the common fear of haunted dolls and delivering some extremely disturbing scenes. The doll not only looks spooky, but she also has a creepy-sounding voice. In addition to the episode’s blood-soaked opening sequence, the flashback of Richer Turner’s (Dean Wray) death is particularly graphic, as Melissa’s deceased husband meets his demise via a giant hook through his skull while on a fishing trip. The episode’s score generates a high level of tension to keep viewers on the edge of their seats, and the ending twist is the stuff of nightmares.

Stephen King’s Involvement in Writing “Chinga” Didn’t Go as Expected

King became a co-writer on “Chinga” thanks to his own love for The X-Files. He approached Duchovny and Carter with his interest in penning an episode, and was granted the opportunity to write. King devised drafts of his episodes, which were later rewritten by Carter. In fact, Carter’s rewrites were so extensive that King later described his X-Files gig as a “very odd experience,” per Lilja’s Library. Thus, the final draft of the script contained significant changes from King’s initial version. For example, Mulder and Scully weren’t supposed to be separated for the entire episode.

In the 2008 book The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series the Myths and the Movies includes an account of the matter from the episode’s director, Kim Manners. “I was very excited to be able to direct a Stephen King piece, and when it was all said and done, there was very little Stephen King left in it. The nuts and bolts were his, but that was really one of Chris’ scripts,” she said.

Even though King’s vision for “Chinga” wasn’t fully realized in the end, this episode of The X-Files still manages to deliver an eerie atmosphere and genuine scares. Yet, with this information in mind, one can’t help but wonder how King’s version of “Chinga” would have turned out. Known for some of the best horror writing of his time, King can frighten readers and viewers like no one else, and it’s a safe bet that his true rendition of his X-Files episode would have been great.

All seasons of The X-Files are available to stream on Hulu.

The post Stephen King Actually Wrote One Episode of The X-Files (And It’s Terrifying) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

In 2021, Netflix debuted a fresh trilogy of horror movies inspired by R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book series, unleashed on a Friday of three subsequent weeks as part of an unprecedented event release strategy. At first glance, the period setting and young cast of the Fear Street trilogy seemed like an excuse for Netflix to bank on the success of Stranger Things, strategically positioned to help fill the gap left by the lengthy hiatus between new seasons of the streaming service’s flagship title. However, the three films became a hit on their own, thanks to Leigh Janiak’s sleek direction, unexpected character depth, a queer-centric narrative concerned with social themes, and deliciously paced slasher kills. Given the critical and commercial success of the Fear Street trilogy, it’s shocking that Netflix took so long to release a fourth movie. However, watching Fear Street: Prom Queen makes us wish they had waited even longer to get it right, as the latest instalment is a downgrade of everything that made the first three special.

Set in 1988, Fear Street: Prom Queen takes fans back to Shadyside, a city marked by a history of violence and structural inequality, living in the shadow of the prosperous Sunnyvale. While the cultural schism between the two neighbouring communities was part of the Fear Street trilogy foundation, in Prom Queen, the conflict is reduced to a few throwaway lines, added for brand recognition but with little meaning for the actual plot. Instead, the fourth movie unfolds almost entirely in Shadyside High, as six senior students vie for the coveted prom queen crown.

First, we have the Wolf Pack, a quartet of popular girls led by the vicious Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza). Then, the two outliers of the competition are rebellious drug dealer Christy Renault (Ariana Greenblatt) and ostracized Lori Granger (India Fowler), who is constantly bullied due to the pervasive rumors that her mother killed her father at prom, many years prior. Unsurprisingly, prom night takes a bloody turn as a masked killer starts chasing the candidates, one by one, disposing of them with extreme prejudice.

[RELATED: R.L. Stine Confirms Even More Fear Street Movies Are on the Way (Even After Prom Queen)]

The very premise of Fear Street: Prom Queen already betrays the franchise’s ethos. Either through the lenses of romantic love or sorority, each Fear Street movie told a story that was essentially about women loving and supporting each other. On the contrary, the new installment is about the petty disputes of high school girls who are never given more than one or two personality traits. The movie doesn’t care about explaining the characters’ motivations, and after each of them is described in a lengthy and slow internal monologue at the opening scene, almost all of them will be reduced to the role of the next victim, deprived of agency or relevance. It’s an appalling contrast with the Fear Street trilogy, where even minor characters are made memorable through their choices.

Lori and Tiffanny, as arch-rivals, get a bit more screen time than the rest of the cast. Not that it does them any good. Lori’s desire to challenge the odds and become prom queen is born from a collection of cliches, including her poorly hidden crush on Tiffany’s jock boyfriend. As for Tiffany, she is nothing more than the popular girl who wants to remain popular, which, of course, means she must be cruel all the time, per the book of tired stereotypes. As a result, the two main women of the new Fear Street are so incredibly bland that watching them on screen becomes an exercise in boredom. And yet, Suzanna Son’s Megan Rogers, Lori’s best friend, might be the biggest waste of talent of the movie, paraded around as half-baked queer-bait in an incredibly heteronormative high school story.

Another aspect of the Fear Street brand that Prom Queen unceremoniously murders is its ability to surprise the audience. Each original trilogy movie peeled back new layers of an interconnected mystery that constantly challenged fans to question every rule of its supernatural game. Fear Street: Prom Queen is more akin to a classic slasher movie, never straying from the most obvious path until its very end. The plot’s predictability makes the whole experience a lot less thrilling than it could have been, something that’s worsened by the fact that the kill scenes are not particularly impressive.

The special effects team of Fear Street: Prom Queen does its best to improve each murder sequence, making the most of practical effects and blood-soaked prosthetics to bring some fun to a dull story. Unfortunately, the deaths are too familiar to make any impact. Also, these scenes are sabotaged by rushed editing that fails to build anticipation and just splatter the screen with blood as fast as possible, so the story can go back to the redundant bickering of Lori and Tiffany. Without reasons to care about the victims or well-directed scenes that build the suspense before the blade finally cuts the flesh, not even the gore of Prom Queen can save it from being tedious. It’s clear, by comparison, how much the franchise has suffered with the departure of Janiak, as Prom Queen lacks the expressive direction that elevated the original movies.

It’s not all bad, as Prom Queen carries over some stylish lighting that the original trilogy cemented. There’s still some genuine care put into capturing the feel of the 1980s through clothing, hairstyle, and selected soundtrack. Without the “Fear Street” brand on its title, Prom Queen could even pass as a casual horror movie you turn on with friends when you need something that doesn’t demand attention to keep running in the background. But the latest Fear Street installment is by and large the worst in the franchise, while also a low-tier slasher and a cinematic disservice in terms of character depth, relevant themes, and well-rounded script.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Fear Street: Prom Queen is now streaming on Netflix.

The post Fear Street: Prom Queen Review: A Bloody Betrayal of the Franchise  appeared first on ComicBook.com.