Ronald.phillips

A decade after escape rooms became popular — in which a team of players play detective and complete tasks together in a shared space in order to accomplish a specific, time-sensitive goal — the exit games, as they're sometimes called, still have a stranglehold on popular culture, particularly in the movie theater. With recent movies like "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions" getting tons of attention, it's a good time to recommend some escape room horror movies to add to the watchlist.

But first, the criteria: an escape room horror movie doesn't have to feature an actual escape room in the workplace-teambuilding exercise sense, but it does need to have some sort of gameplay element or a grand design in which the designated "players" must try to survive a test — this separates this roundup list from the similar but divergent "captivity" film. Paul Sheldon of "Misery" has to pull some clever moves to try to escape the isolated homestead of his number one fan Annie, but she doesn't force him to wade through a pit of needles to find the key to his freedom, he's just locked in the house. 

It's also why booby-trap extravaganza "The Collector" isn't present here; its protagonist may be having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day trying to avoid a psychopath, but Arkin O'Brien doesn't have to solve puzzles so much as he must tiptoe and serpentine past a house of horrors he voluntarily entered. Besides, "Desperate criminal picks the wrong house to rob" is its own subgenre, counting "The Collector" alongside "The People Under the Stairs," "Don't Breathe," and many more. 

Escape room movies have more than a captive in a room; countdowns, dangerous traps, and even rigged games all count in these stories that require sharp wits and steely resolve under the threat of a gnarly death.

Escape Room (2019)

Adam Robitel's "Escape Room" is a good lateral move for fans of the hit Netflix series "Squid Game," each observing the haves culling the have-nots for sport. Six strangers are invited to solve puzzles and read clues, while the last one standing walks away with $10 grand. 

In the beginning, the gameplay is a solid representation of the teamwork and bubbling neuroses that emerge from real-life escape rooms. This movie follows a "Cabin in the Woods" approach, where the setting changes according to the players' interactions with it. The puzzles and clues are closely tethered to each of the players, poking at some tender wound around their deepest shame and fears. Robitel (who previously directed the effective found-footage horror "The Taking of Deborah Logan") told hosts of The Witching Hour podcast, "If it's a movie about puzzles, then the characters need to be a puzzle." Otherwise, he said it's just a bore. 

The result is leagues away from boring. Production designer Ed Thomas oversaw an array of traps including an oven room, an icy lakeside cabin, a topsy-turvy pool hall, and a grungy hospital. From room to room, the players scramble to retrieve a key or a code just in time to lose a member of their party in unfortunate ways. 

Columbia Pictures gave the thumbs up for a sequel which was released in the summer of 2021 after several pandemic-related delays. "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions" brings back the sole survivors of the previous film, the same way winning tributes were being called up for the all-star round in the "Hunger Games" sequel.

Cube (1997)

"You've got to save yourself from yourselves." That's the challenge as escape artist Rennes (Wayne Robson) puts it to his fellow captives in the 1997 Canadian mind-bender "Cube." A handful of random people — a student, doctor, cop, etc. — wake up in a large cube structure that feels like the inside of the Lament Configuration. The cube is connected to other rooms which may or may not be rigged with a series of flamethrowers, razor-thin wire grids, or corrosive acid. 

Their efforts to escape make up the bulk of the movie, a simple concept from the mind of "Splice" director Vincenzo Natali, who wanted to tell a story that could be shot in a single location. With a $350,000 budget and the cinema magic of sliding colored panels, this cube represents exponentially more just like it; the characters move laterally from chamber to chamber but the actors are working on a plain platform, varied only by wall color and type of trap. From there, Natali lets the human condition flourish, putting pressure on the characters' allyship as trust dwindles and hunger becomes a more aggressive motivator. It becomes a tense tug-of-war between those trying to address the immediate dangers ahead of them, and those asking the million-dollar questions: who is behind this, and what do they want? 

Doing a lot with just a little, "Cube" is an intelligent predecessor for escape room movies, priming the pump for the likes of "Saw" and even corporate horror like Joe Lynch's "Mayhem." A sequel, prequel, and a Japanese remake followed "Cube," but none could touch the original.

House On Haunted Hill (1999)

An October viewing staple, "House on Haunted Hill" is a go-to title for horror fans, whether referring to the 1959 William Castle feature (one of whose jump-scares landed at #37 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments) or its superior Dark Castle Entertainment remake from 1999. It takes place at an allegedly haunted cliffside mansion, where the people summoned there are all in dire need of the reward that comes with escape.

The gameplay element is a financial incentive: the winner will emerge from the fortified building significantly richer. In the original, Vincent Price's peculiar fat cat Loren offered $10,000 to the victor, a tidy sum in 1959. When the Dark Castle remake of "House on Haunted Hill" was released four decades later, the cash pot (offered this time by Geoffrey Rush, though his character is named Price and he's clearly using the horror icon as a guiding star in his performance) swelled to a cool million. 

The source of the alleged hauntings changed, as well. The specter-filled mansion is now a private residence converted from the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, leading to a fantastic fourth-wall-breaking scare with an operating room and a handheld camcorder, one of many tight atmospheric, stylized sequences with eerie imagery. But the parameters of Robb White's original story (one of five he penned for William Castle productions) remained: survive a night of lockdown in this spooky house, and the money is all yours. 

"House on Haunted Hill" is one of the few entries on this list that, according to its professed rules, could allow for multiple players to survive. But survival horror movies generally operate by Highlander rules: there can only be one.

No Escape Room (2018)

Originally released for the SyFy network in October of 2018, "No Escape Room" starts at a slower pace than most of its kind. Whereas the majority of these movies drop the audience in on the action with no preamble, Alex Merkin's ("House of the Witch") supernatural horror introduces its doomed father-daughter duo under better circumstances. The pair are on their way back from a botched bonding trip when car trouble strands them in a small, lonesome town. Looking for something to do while it's getting fixed, they try a local escape room in a sprawling mansion, the first of several bad decisions that put them in serious danger. 

Together with three other escape room guests, they give up their cell phones, sign waivers (written on parchment, signed with a quill pen), and once the heavy doors shut behind them, the clock starts ticking. Host Josie (Brianna Barnes) tells them that they'll have to rely on their wits and each other, but that proves difficult as players disappear and bodies turn up. 

The novelty of "No Escape Room" is in its paranormal angle; there's not really a flesh-and-blood killer pulling the strings, nor are there any Rube Goldberg dismemberment traps in this game. Instead, the true source of the "no escape" room is more cosmically grim, loosening its victims' grip on reality itself. Making the most of its made-for-TV parameters, the movie is more of a gloomy horror mystery than a balls-to-the-wall Mouse Trap game. There's the occasional jump-scare, but Merkin mostly goes for low-gore Gothic repulsion: writhing worms in the telephone, silhouettes and bedsheets, a crusty corpse reaching towards the screen. "No Escape Room" offers low-intensity entertainment for a windy night.

Nine Dead (2009)

One common escape movie situation positions the truth as the key to freedom, where liberation only becomes possible once its players start confessing their sins and figuring out how they intersect. In these stories, the players are all pertinent to each other in some way, usually tethered by tragedy. The victims of "Saw III" were all directly involved in a hit-and-run collision that left a child dead. Among them is an eyewitness, a judge, and a driver, all (it's argued) bearing some responsibility for the pain felt by the boy's father, who faces some tough decisions as commanded by the Jigsaw. 

Most of the "Saw" movies operate with the same structure, but one of the lesser-seen deadly-game thrillers to come in its wake is "Nine Dead," dropping in 2009 just a month after the Kevin Greutert-helmed sequel "Saw VI." In Chris Shadley's thriller, the doomed nine awaken in a dingy room, handcuffed to pipes. A masked figure plays the Jigsaw role, informing all present that they were chosen for a reason, and the assailant will return every ten minutes to execute one of them until they figure out that reason. 

Few of these riffs can compete with the original creation from James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and "Nine Dead" doesn't quite reach those heights, but the journey is greater than the goofy reveal. It keeps the tension going with juicy secrets and adds a second, dread-fueled layer of horror that "Saw" custodians know well: how easily a single moment can pivot entire lives.

Read this next: The 31 Scariest Movie Scenes Ever

The post The 5 Best Escape Room Horror Movies appeared first on /Film.

The following article references suicide and suicidal ideation.

Horror movies have a long history of dissecting mental health. The 1920 silent film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," for example, broke ground not only for its artistic achievement in storytelling but its boldness in delving into the recess of the mind and unearthing mental illness. Despite its portrayal of the mentally ill as villainous, it influenced the next 100 years in filmmaking. The genre continued to have an uneven relationship with its on-screen depiction of mental health and often missed the mark on the reality of daily suffering. Thankfully, there have been dozens of films that have dared to defy social norms and redefine mental illness, taking great care to humanize rather than demonize.

With the forthcoming "Mental Health and Horror: A Documentary," filmmaker Jonathan Barkan has enlisted a bevy of fellow creatives, spanning directors, actors, and horror scholars alike, to reassess his favorite genre. "Horror fans have long since been made to feel like there's something wrong with us for loving a genre that tries to be scary," he says in a Kickstarter promo. "But for many people, myself included, horror can be the medium for catharsis, representation, and even hope." Looking back at cinematic history, we have compiled 12 outstanding horror films that excel as chilling tales and showcase the struggle with mental health in beautiful, sometimes brutal detail. While the genre aims to terrify, it can comfort and heal. So take a seat, and dive right in.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

The Night House (2020)

"The Night House" expertly juggles chills and thrills with a devastating story about depression. Director David Bruckner takes great care to fill every single frame, either with palpable dread or raw emotion. With a screenplay co-written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, the film follows a young woman named Beth (Rebecca Hall) in her grief over the suicide of her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit). His death hangs like a shroud over her entire life, but that's not the only darkness following her around. Beth has long struggled with dark thoughts herself, but Owen's unconditional love kept her anchored in the present. His passing further opens the deep crevice running through her mind. Before long, what she determines to be her lover's ghost begins tinkering with her life through physical and auditory hallucinations. She suffers during her long days in the classroom, but the night seems even more suffocating.

What makes "The Night House" such a special feature is the weight given to the quieter character moments. While sitting at her desk one afternoon, a disgruntled parent of a student raises a fit about their son's final grade, eventually forcing Beth to reveal the cause of her absence at the end of term. It's a brief interaction that captures the film's entire thesis around the rippling effects of depression and suicide. It all boils over with the very last scene of the film — unleashing emotion so thick, you'd have to break it with a sledgehammer.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

The Seventh Victim (1943)

"The Seventh Victim" masks a crushing story about depression and suicide with a cult overlay. Director Mark Robson brings a rich poeticism to DeWitt Bodeen and Charles O'Neal's script. From framing to mood-building, the film operates as a downright spooky tale on its own, but the rich thematic layers offer up something truly visionary. The story follows Highcliffe Academy student Mary (Kim Hunter) in a search to find her missing sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks). An initial investigation leads her to the cosmetics business Jacqueline once owned and has since sold to her assistant, an eye-raising decision that sends Mary further into a catacomb of mystery and intrigue. 

Further conversations with other friends and colleagues, as well as a secret husband and a psychiatrist, reveals that Jacqueline suffered from mental illness and may have been involved in an underground cult. The nihilistic edge accompanies the dark spiral of depression. "The Seventh Victim," which features queer subtext, presents strangling mental health in simple terms. It neither sugarcoats nor romanticizes suicide and the end of one's life. It merely presents the tragic tale of Jacqueline in full, blinding light.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Daniel Isn't Real (2019)

Trauma drives "Daniel Isn't Real" and its central character. Director Adam Egypt Mortimer bases the dark and twisted story on a novel, titled "In This Way I Was Saved," by Brian DeLeeuw, who also co-wrote the script. The story focuses on Luke (Miles Robbins) and how witnessing a mass shooting completely derailed his life. In the aftermath, his mind created an imaginary friend named Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to cope. Daniel convinces Luke to grind up pills and put them in his mother Claire's (Mary Stuart Masterson) smoothie, thinking it will give her superpowers. Instead, she falls gravely ill from poisoning. Once recovered, Claire urges Luke to lock Daniel away inside her mother's old dollhouse, a symbolic gesture but one which carries great thematic power.

Years later, Luke struggles to balance school pressures and his mother's failing mental state. He worries he will fall into her orbit and become just like her. Daniel reappears after Luke unlocks the dollhouse, and things spiral dangerously out of control. "Daniel Isn't Real" contains all the reliable scares, but the real terror resides with its ability to capture the sheer tragedy of living daily with mental illness. Luke loses his grasp on reality and his ability to contain Daniel from wreaking havoc on the world. Daniel eventually takes over Luke's mental faculties and assaults a close friend. The world grows increasingly darker, leaving very little chance of escape. Sometimes, those who suffer don't get happy endings.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

The Taking Of Deborah Logan (2014)

In Adam Robitel's directorial debut, "The Taking of Deborah Logan," an elderly woman named Deborah (Jill Larson) is stricken with Alzheimer's disease and comes under the care of her daughter, Sarah (Anne Ramsay). Making a documentary about Alzheimer's and its effects on family, a film crew approaches Sarah about interviewing her mother. She's at first wary of their intentions and if her mother can handle the pressure. Sarah eventually agrees to allow the crew to document Deborah's daily life. Through a series of bizarre events, filmmaker Mia (Michelle Ang) realizes that something far more supernatural may be inhabiting Deborah and causing her erratic behavior. 

Much like the disease itself, the story devolves into utter chaos when Deborah captures a young girl at the local hospital and hides away in the surrounding woods. Mia's research brings them to discover physician Henri Desjardins once attempted to perform a ritual to make him immortal, and it appears his spirit has returned to finish the job. "The Taking of Deborah Logan" is a rejuvenating entry in the found footage genre. It retools tropes and cliches to make an emotional, moving story about mental decay. A once vibrant, elegant woman slips from herself and transforms into a violent and unfeeling shell. The film is as downright terrifying as it is profound.

The Lodge (2019)

Religious trauma and mental anguish course like poison throughout Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's psychological horror "The Lodge." When Richard (Richard Armitage) breaks things off with his wife, revealing plans to marry his mistress Grace (Riley Keough), she puts a gun in her mouth and ends her life. And that's just the opening scene. The film picks up six months later, and the Christmas season is well underway. For a quiet getaway, Richard invites Grace, along with his two children Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), to spend the holiday in a secluded cabin, nestled in the Massachusetts countryside. Winter is especially cruel this time of year and further illuminates Grace's gradual mental decline. Richard is soon called away back to the city for a work emergency, and he leaves Grace, Aiden, and Mia to get acquainted.

Well, that was his first mistake. Throughout "The Lodge," Grace experiences a nervous breakdown and relives traumatic moments from her childhood. Having grown up in a cult, her wounds easily reopen, and she tumbles into a pit of despair. Themes of gaslighting and human cruelty are also woven into the narrative to culminate in one of the most uncomfortable watches in recent memory.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

If you or someone you know is dealing with spiritual abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

The Haunting (1963)

In the same way as Mike Flanagan's "The Haunting of Hill House," 1963's "The Haunting" brings the emotional urgency, sorrow, and futility found deeply ingrained in the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson. The film, later remade in 1999, excels in its subtle shades about mental illness, deterioration, and suicide through a classic haunted house template. Director Robert Wise gently nudges the audience into the story and supplies ample chills and nail-biting imagery. In relying on story and character, the scares come naturally as the characters poke around a lavish mansion in the hopes of uncovering its secret truth. 

When Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) plans to investigate Hill House and its reportedly long, storied history with paranormal activity, he sends out invitations to those in the medical and psychic communities to get expert opinions. Only two respond — Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) and psychic Theodora (Claire Bloom), who strike up quite an instant friendship. Bumps in the night play as vital a role in the story as does Eleanor's collapsing mind. As a young child, she once experienced terrible frights of the paranormal, and it has lingered in the back of her brain ever since. But now something far more insidious spills from her wildest dreams. It could be ghosts, or it could be a manifestation of her own wavering mental health. "The Haunting" is a beautifully drawn sketch about how illness is not necessarily loud and overwhelming. It can be just as muted and dull as ghosts rattling chains in a dusty attic.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021)

Director Jane Schoenbrun ties together the weight of mental health and the importance of digital spaces in finding community and connection. Billed as a horror/drama, "We're All Going to the World's Fair" uses conventions of found footage to tell a story about one young girl's desperation to be seen and heard. While living with her father, Casey (Anna Cobb) participates in an online viral trend called "World's Fair Challenge," in which a player watches a disturbing video and documents the effects. Casey doesn't experience anything out of the ordinary at first, but her mental state crumbles in the coming weeks. 

Each of her video updates gets stranger and more troubling. Going by the initials "JLB," another online user reaches out to her and expresses concern over the latest upload, indicating that the online challenge has disastrous repercussions. The videos get even darker. One in particular shows Casey revealing intentions to either kill herself or her father with a shotgun. JLB grows increasingly alarmed, even when Casey claims she doesn't plan on actually following through. "We're All Going to the World's Fair" is a true roller coaster of emotion, highlighting the full breadth of depression and suicidal ideation in a way that feels haunting and raw and relentless.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

"She Dies Tomorrow" suggests that we are all terrified of the Grim Reaper deep down inside ourselves. While juggling collective mortality and an existential crisis, director Amy Seimetz delves into the incessant static of depression, as well. The film largely plays as a visionary thesis statement, less concerned about an overly intricate plot line than a message about hopelessness in the world. Kate Lyn Sheil plays a woman named Amy. And she is going to die tomorrow. If there's one thing she is sure of, it's that. Thoughts of death consume her entire being. She loses any sense of real purpose and simply resigns to the inevitable. 

In her last 24 hours, she relishes everything in the world around her, from the feel of the carpet and branches on her lawn to the rush of a drunken ride in a dune buggy. Upon researching urns and leather jackets, she heads to a leather shop to ask about custom work as she plans to have her skin turned into a wearable leather jacket; but even that ultimately is unsatisfactory. She lumbers out to the desert instead. "She Dies Tomorrow" further connects anxiety with fear. Once one person comes into contact with another, they begin attesting to their own demise the following day. Paranoia is an epidemic, not unlike real life. Beautifully shot and composed, the film presents far more questions than it answers, and that is exactly the point.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Alone With You (2021)

Emily Bennett makes a powerful star turn in "Alone with You," an independent feature she co-directed with Justin Brooks. The low-scale horror picture was filmed during the early days of the global pandemic, so its cultural context certainly heightens the claustrophobic nature of the story. However, its thematic root stretches far and wide into issues of mental health, depression, suicide, and religious trauma. Bennett plays Charlene, a working makeup artist. With her girlfriend flying in from a work trip, she readies their apartment for a grand welcoming home to celebrate their anniversary. 

On the surface, everything reads as normal, yet cracks around the edges tease a much different story. The hours tick by, and the paranoia swells to a suffocating level. Charlene leaves countless voicemails on her girlfriend's phone, lamenting where she is, and the walls bear down upon her shoulders. She begins hearing a blubbering cry from her vents, and her close friend Thea (Dora Madison) is too drunk to care. Her mother (Barbara Crampton) is a religious zealot, and an uncomfortable video call only adds fuel to the fire. Charlene slips further into her delusions, breaking down crying and believing herself trapped inside the apartment. "Alone with You" tightens the screws on mental turmoil in a way that's a remarkable feat, and the filmmakers make sure to bring plenty of unsettling dread and thrills to the mix, as well.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

If you or someone you know is dealing with spiritual abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Dementia (1955)

"Dementia" is unconventional in every sense of the word. Director John Parker uses only stark imagery and composer George Antheil's lush, haunting score to relay the story. The film features not one line of dialogue. Only screams pierce through the pulsating soundscape when necessary. Instead, a sterling lead performance from Adrienne Barrett as Gamine carries the emotional weight. Gamine wakes up frightened in her hotel room after having the most god-awful nightmare. She self-soothes and then stumbles over to the mirror. She smirks in its glassy surface, retrieves a switchblade from her dresser and replaces it, and makes her way into the dark, dank city streets. 

She meanders with no destination in mind, but soon meets a pimp, who tempts her into escorting an older gentleman around town for the night. She obliges. Naturally, the night doesn't go quite as planned. While in the cab between clubs, her mind spirals like a hypnotist's wheel and provokes a buried memory of childhood trauma. Her mind can't be trusted, and reality and fantasy blend together. Come to find out, she killed a man and had been so clouded in a mental hellscape she blocked it out. "Dementia" never makes Gamine out to be a villain; she's the definition of an antihero, a victim of herself as much as the outside world.

Lights Out (2016)

"Lights Out" gets the short end of the stick. Existing in the shadow of "The Babadook," released two years prior, the David F. Sandberg-directed feature bears a striking resemblance to the previous genre film in mood, tone, and theme. Where "The Babadook" deals heavily with grief, though, "Lights Out" focuses on mental health, generational trauma, and inherited conditions. Rebecca's (Teresa Palmer) relationship with her mother, Sophie (Maria Bello), hangs by a thread. Harboring unaddressed resentment and pain, Rebecca has moved out of the family home and left her brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) in Sophie's care. One night, Martin witnesses his mother whispering to an unseen figure in the dark. Sophie later tells the frightened child that she was simply speaking to her friend "Diana." 

Rebecca grows increasingly concerned about her mother's well-being and calls her out about not taking her medication. Tensions boil over, but that's the least of their worries. The dark entity latches onto Rebecca, and it becomes a race against time before it swallows her whole. "Lights Out" uses a malevolent presence to impart the inner struggle to navigate and overcome depression and dark thoughts. As we see with Sophie, these cycles can lead to complete destruction of really living and thriving.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" is a magnificent display of the role of art, as both a means to catharsis and an avenue to mental ruin. Tortured dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) desires to play the dual roles (as White/Black Swan) in an upcoming NYC ballet company production of "Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake." The theater's veteran ballerina begrudgingly goes into retirement, and the artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) eyes a replacement. Nina auditions for the lead, and while she possesses all the elegance of the White Swan, she fails to command the stage as the Black Swan. Another dancer named Lily (Mila Kunis) owns both iterations in her performance and is subbed in as Nina's alternate in the unlikely event she can't perform. Pressure mounting, Nina questions her burgeoning friendship with Lily, who she believes intends to replace her in the show.

In true Aronofsky fashion, "Black Swan" is an arresting and disturbing visual feast. Nina suffers for her art every step of the way. Her reality skews as she delves further into the role, and when opening night finally arrives, it may be far too late for her to back away from the ledge. "Black Swan" is nothing if not a total mind trip.

Read this next: The Highest Rated Horror Movies Of All Time

The post 12 Best Horror Movies About Mental Health appeared first on /Film.

Can't Cat-ch Me

When I cracked into Stray for the first time, I didn't think I'd have to worry about how best to zig-zag, juke, and even "drift" as a cat — but when a coveted trophy is on the line, everything's on the table. Half an hour of failed attempts and several slow-mo guide videos later, I've finally gotten Can't Cat-ch Me, a simple yet deceptively hard trophy.

It's one of the earliest trophies/achievements you can (theoretically) get in Stray, but I'm here to say that it might be best to save it until after you've finished the game. It could put you into a sour mood if you try to force it, so don't let it gnaw away. Come back later.

**Spoilers below**

---

[caption id="attachment_335683" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _{The hungry Zurk horde.}[/caption]

In the second chapter, there's a tense chase sequence on the city streets with Headcrab-esque creatures called the Zurks. They'll scurry, leap, and glom onto your cat, and if you don't shake them off quickly enough, that'll be the end of this journey. Try again.

In a puzzle-solving adventure game that is overwhelmingly chill, these little creeps are very threatening. They're relentless, as they're meant to be, and that works well in the context of the ruined city's story. But when it comes to this trophy, the struggle is real.

• Can't Cat-ch Me: Complete the first Zurk pursuit without being caught.

The chase sequence is about a minute long — how hard could it be? I feared the two-hour speedrun more than anything else, but that seems way less stressful by comparison; there's room for error, at least. Here, you have to memorize every rushdown and pray.

That's your home!

In general, zig-zagging is the play. But sometimes, it's best to strategically run into a group of Zurks and swerve at the last second. Other times, you might need to take a wide swing from one wall all the way to the other, to draw out certain Zurk leaps. It's not so much avoiding coming into contact with them as it is making sure they don't land on top of you.

Of course, in practice, it feels like devious RNG is pulling the strings.

Are you too good for your home?

Here's a successful Can't Cat-ch Me run from Stone Edge Gaming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0o695DxlH8

And another from PowerPyx:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSOPHZcmmXU

Visualizing it can help.

If you're going for the Can't Cat-ch Me trophy in Stray, I would recommend rebinding the run input to something comfortable (not the default R2 on PS5), just in case you're stuck here for a while. Other players recommend increasing the sensitivity, but I kept it as is.

Misery loves company

A few reactions from other Stray players to help ease the pain:

• "This is purely on random luck."
• "Took a solid 45 minutes, sometimes zig-zagging works sometimes they get you no matter what."
• "This trophy really makes me wonder why we trophy hunters do this to ourselves."
• "Stray isn't free if you want the platinum. It costs at least one controller."

Good luck. You can do it!

The post A surprisingly tricky trophy is driving Stray players up the wall appeared first on Destructoid.

When Orson Welles died on October 10, 1985, at the age of 70 he was, as ever, broke. As David Thomson noted in a lovely appreciation for The Guardian in 2009, the profound absence of money was Welles' "abiding condition." Welles had outsized appetites (and, according to his many biographers, his tendency to overeat no doubt contributed to his too-early death), but his most insatiable hunger was for filmmaking. From his medium-redefining debut, "Citizen Kane," to the posthumously released "The Other Side of the Wind," Welles was determined to maximize his time on this planet by setting in motion as many projects as possible. This unceasing activity hurt him early in his career and eventually forced him to partially finance his features by farming himself out as an actor, where his considerable skills held the greatest monetary value.

That he died broke and left so many projects unmade may render him a failure in the eyes of people who desire box office success as much as, if not more than, artistic triumph. If viewed in this narrow regard, yes, Welles was a failure. But if you take the warts-and-all long view, Welles's career looks a lot like a quixotic success.

How Orson Welles Was Brought Low

The trouble for Welles began with his targeting of the fabulously wealthy newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst via "Citizen Kane." Though the publisher failed in his attempt to kibosh RKO's release of the film, he did manage to bully exhibitors into pulling back on showtimes, which damaged the film commercially. The studio nevertheless greenlit Welles' sophomore effort, "The Magnificent Ambersons," and when the production went over schedule, covered the brash young director's budgetary excesses. They did not, however, allow Welles to finish the film after his 135-minute preview cut tested poorly with audiences. Welles might've had a shot at protecting his vision had he not lit out for Brazil at Nelson Rockefeller's request to make the Good Neighbor policy-promoting anthology film "It's All True." With Welles out of town, the studio allowed an editorial team led by Robert Wise to hack the movie down to eighty-eight minutes. Welles' original cut of "The Magnificent Ambersons" was likely destroyed (though archivists haven't completely given up hope that a print still exists).

Welles' wunderkind stature was effectively destroyed, as well. Losing control over "The Magnificent Ambersons" and failing to finish "It's All True" saddled him with the reputation of an impulsive, disorganized brat coasting on the true genius of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland. This perception dogged him for the rest of his life, and was ignorantly weaponized by Pauline Kael in her infamous 1971 essay, "Raising Kane." 

Even though Welles's acolytes like Peter Bogdanovich effectively discredited her thesis, the stain to his image proved permanent. He was a has-been at best, and a creative fraud at worst.

He Was Some Kind Of Man

Welles did himself no favors by hooking up with shady financiers throughout the last three decades of his career, but he was hardly the undisciplined charlatan some made him out to be. Though he typically lacked the resources to mount a film of polished studio quality, he possessed a remarkable clarity of vision. His editing notes on "Touch of Evil" were so exacting, a restoration team headed up by Walter Murch was able to fully reconstruct his version of the movie. The same was true of "The Other Side of the Wind," even though the film was shot piecemeal over six years.

There is a preponderance of evidence demonstrating that Welles was every inch the genius he appeared to be in the 1930s and '40s. He certainly didn't make it easy on himself, but the body of work — which includes handmade masterpieces like "Othello," "Chimes at Midnight," and "F for Fake" — speaks loudly in defense of his rare talent. That Hollywood couldn't figure out what to do with him is the industry's failure. 

As for the money, we'll let Charles Foster Kane's financial advisor have the final word; "It's no trick to make a lot of money ... if all you want is to make a lot of money." All Orson Welles wanted was to make movies.

Read this next: The 14 Best Noir Movies Ranked

The post Was Orson Welles A Failure? Why The Citizen Kane Director Died A Hollywood Outcast (& Legend) appeared first on /Film.

The developer of one of the most used post-processing injector tool, Reshade, has released a brand new version of it. According to crosire, Reshade 5.3.0 packs performance improvements to both OpenGL and DirectX 12. Moreover, it fixes a number of bugs that plagued this tool. Going into more details, Reshade 5.3.0 fixes mouse input and … Continue reading Reshade 5.3.0 available for download, brings performance improvements in OpenGL & DX12 →

The post Reshade 5.3.0 available for download, brings performance improvements in OpenGL & DX12 appeared first on DSOGaming.

Very often, we view data sources as somewhat one dimensional, and don't think about how we can really get value from that data source. We're usually working on a case, just that investigation that's in front of us, and we're so "heads down" that we may not consider that what we see as a single data source, or an entry from that data source (artifact, indicator), is really much more useful, more valuable, than how we're used to viewing it.

So, what am I talking about? Let's consider some of the common data sources we access during investigations, and how they're accessed. Consider something that we're looking at during an investigation...say, a data source that we often say (albeit incorrectly) indicates program execution the "AppCompatCache", or "ShimCache". Let's say that we parse the AppCompatCache, and find an entry of interest, a path to a file with a name that is relevant to our investigation. Many of us will look at that entry and just think, "...that program executed at this time...". But would that statement be correct?

As with most things in life, the answer is, "it depends." For example, if you read Caching Out: The Value Of ShimCache to Investigators (Mandiant), it becomes pretty clear that the AppCompatCache is not the same on all versions of Windows. On some, an associated time stamp does indeed indicate that the file was executed, but on others, only that the file existed on the system, and not that it was explicitly executed. The time stamp associated with the entry is not (with the exception of 32-bit Windows XP) the time that the file was executed; rather, it's the last modification time from the $STANDARD_INFORMATION attribute in the MFT record for that file. To understand if that time stamp corresponds to the time that the file was executed, we need to consider artifact constellations, correlating the data point with other data sources to develop the context, to develop a better understanding of the data source (and point), and to validate our findings.

Further, we need to remember that ShimCache entries are written at shutdown; as a result, a file may exist on the system long enough to be included in the ShimCache, but a shutdown or two later, that entry will no longer be available within the data source. This can tell us something about the efforts of the threat actor or malware author (malware authors have been known to embed and launch copies of sdelete.exe), and it also tells us something about the file system at a point in time during the incident.

The point is that the data sources we rely on very often have much more value and context than we realize or acknowledge, and are often much more nuanced that we might imagine. With the ShimCache, for example, an important factor to understand is which version of Windows from which the data was retrieved...because it matters. And that's just the beginning.

I hope this is beginning to shine light on the fact that the data sources we very often rely on are actually multidimensional, have context and nuance, and have a number of attributes. For example, some artifacts (constituents of data sources) do not have an indefinite lifetime on the system, and some artifacts are more easily mutable than others. To that point, Joe Slowik wrote an excellent paper last year on Formulating a Robust Pivoting Methodology. On the top of the third page of that paper, Joe refers to IOCs as "compound objects linking multiple observations and context into a single indicator", and I have to say, that is the best, most succinct description I think I've ever seen. The same can be said for indicators found with the various data sources we access during investigations, so the question is, are we fully exploiting those data sources?

One downside to being a beautiful genius is that people are quick to dismiss your ideas simply because they’re too intimidated by your brain and body. Why else would I be mocked for mixing up an MSG martini, only to see it featured in a slick PUNCH spread years later? What other explanation could there be for my…

Read more...

A new method devised to leak information and jump over air-gaps takes advantage of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) or Serial ATA cables as a communication medium, adding to a long list of electromagnetic, magnetic, electric, optical, and acoustic methods already demonstrated to plunder data. "Although air-gap computers have no wireless connectivity, we show that attackers can use

Two client-side risks dominate the problems with data loss and data exfiltration: improperly placed trackers on websites and web applications and malicious client-side code pulled from third-party repositories like NPM.  Client-side security researchers are finding that improperly placed trackers, while not intentionally malicious, are a growing problem and have clear and significant privacy

submitted by /u/Saulios
[link] [comments]

There has never been a greater demand for specialized cybersecurity expertise—or a greater opportunity for our partners to support our customers with new services and solutions. Over the last year, the permanent shift to hybrid work has empowered businesses to be remote and mobile. Increased adoption of public and private clouds has unlocked innovation, agility, and scale. At the same time, ransomware grew 105 percent over the past year and continues to become more sophisticated.¹ The global cybersecurity talent shortage is now 2.72 million, and economic uncertainty has put the spotlight on extracting the highest possible return on investments.²

This week, as we join our partners at Microsoft Inspire, much of our conversation is focused on how, together, we can help our customers prioritize their security initiatives while getting the most out of the solutions they already have.

Security services are a critical need for the year ahead

Every year I am so energized by the expertise and creativity of our partners. Much of what we learn comes from them, so we commissioned a Total Economic Impact from Forrester Consulting to better understand the high-level trends driving their security, compliance, and identity opportunities. It’s incredible to see that the Microsoft Security partner opportunity grew 21 percent year-over-year across the board in Microsoft 365 security, cloud security, compliance, and identity:

• With the shift to hybrid work, workplace security has seen the most growth. It’s exciting to see that customers are taking advantage of the expanded security capabilities we’ve added to Microsoft 365, and enlisting partners to help them protect frontline workers, implement data discovery for Microsoft Teams, and activate more Microsoft 365 workloads securely. With many organizations struggling to staff their in-house security teams, partners are creating and delivering managed services built on top of Microsoft Sentinel for security information and event management (SIEM) and extended detection and response (XDR), as well as management, monitoring, and remediation across Microsoft 365.
• There’s also an incredible demand for cloud security services—particularly multicloud. The rapid shift to cloud services has created an ever-evolving threat landscape, driving the need to better protect cloud resources, workloads, and applications. Without the expertise or resources to do that, customers are looking to partners to help with secure cloud migrations, managed services for the security operations center (SOC), and security management of all levels of cloud-based infrastructure.
• Compliance-related managed services are the newest and fastest-growing area for most partners. More partners are starting to expand their general security services to include compliance, typically starting with information protection, communications governance, and insider risk, which are natural extensions of security practices. A trend we’re seeing is an increase in very large information protection deployment opportunities, as well as governance advisory services, which are central to the successful adoption of Microsoft compliance solutions.
• As the foundation for all the previously mentioned points, our identity solutions are also fueling significant partner growth. Securing access for every identity—human and non-human—is critical in today’s connected world. Partners are capitalizing on these investments with repeatable identity-specific security solutions, off-the-shelf connectors, and managed services. Identity-first implementations of Zero Trust continue to be key areas of interest for security decision-makers, and partners serve a critical role in collaborating on plans, priorities, and architecture decisions.

Microsoft Security partners are expanding their existing offerings and creating new offerings in all these areas, packaging their unique experience, expertise, and IP for effective and efficient service delivery. Security deployment, advisory, solutions development, and managed services are needed now more than ever. In fact, within the USD247 billion cybersecurity market, security services spending is projected to reach USD77 billion by the end of 2022.³

Optimization through consolidation

Given the breadth of challenges our customers are facing, and recent economic headwinds, many organizations are looking to consolidate their security portfolios to optimize costs and reduce complexity. In fact, 78 percent of chief information security officers (CISOs) have 16 or more tools in their cybersecurity vendor portfolio, and according to Gartner®, “most organizations recognize vendor consolidation as an avenue for more efficient security, with 80 [percent] executing or interested in a strategy for this.”⁴

Microsoft integrates more than 50 different categories across security, compliance, identity, device management, and privacy—and most customers save 60 percent on average by leveraging Microsoft’s comprehensive security solutions compared to a multi-vendor strategy. All Microsoft Security product families work together as one comprehensive solution across clouds and across platforms, helping customers to reduce tool sprawl, maximize value out of what they already have, and reduce complexity. With recent announcements of Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Purview, we’ve also aligned our product portfolio with how our customers view the totality of their security challenges.

Consolidation isn’t just about tools—the lines between security workloads are blurring as well. Virtually every customer scenario includes elements of secure infrastructure, threat detection and response, identity management and secure access, compliance, and privacy—in fact, 90 percent of the Fortune 100 companies use four or more of these solutions. Our partners agree, and many are moving beyond their core specialty to provide a wider range of services to customers, creating new revenue streams and expanding their expertise as a result.

Maximizing the value of current investments

Assisting customers to deploy and fully leverage products they already own is one of the strongest ways our partners can deliver customer value. This week, Microsoft is announcing an entirely new partner investment to help partners drive customer success and product usage. Starting October 1, 2022, partners who help customers deploy their untapped security capabilities within Microsoft 365 E5 and Microsoft Azure will be eligible for up to USD25,000 per account. Microsoft is excited to provide this co-investment to ensure partners remain competitive in their offerings.

Once security products have been deployed, customers often need assistance analyzing and triaging security data to monitor their ecosystem. Microsoft is seeing a surge in organizations looking for a trusted managed detection and response (MDR) partner to help offload time-consuming work and augment their existing in-house security teams. Gartner estimates that 50 percent of organizations will be using MDR services by 2025, and with more than 785,000 customers currently using Microsoft’s advanced security products, the partner opportunity is tremendous. To meet this need, Microsoft has recently announced investments in our managed XDR partner community, including working with them to verify their XDR solutions for use with Microsoft products. Partners with a verified XDR service will have increased access to co-marketing funding to support their business and direct integration with Microsoft field sellers through co-sell opportunities. Partners can learn more about investing in managed XDR partner success.

At Microsoft, we are continually looking for ways to deliver more value with our solutions—and to make it easier for our partners to do the same. For example:

• Most organizations don’t have IoT security at all, and those that do often need help integrating it into their broader SIEM and XDR programs. Microsoft Defender for IoT positions partners to solve both problems for customers. With new native integration with Microsoft 365 Defender that enables you to see vulnerable IoT devices in the Microsoft 365 Defender console and complete coverage across IoT, enterprise IoT, and operational technology (OT) devices, Defender for IoT can now secure all endpoint types, correlate incidents across the entire kill chain, and provide faster detection and response for attacks that previously may have been left undiscovered.
• Despite facing similar risks as enterprises, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often lack the same level of resources. Microsoft Defender for Business provides next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), threat and vulnerability management, and automated investigation and remediation—all in a cost-effective package that’s easy to implement and use. Server support is now available in preview. Integration with Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions enable Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners to build on that value by delivering a fully managed service. Partners can learn more with the Microsoft Defender for Business partner kit.
• Simplifying the cloud for the public sector and government entities empowers them to accelerate their digital transformation journey. Azure Confidential Computing now helps customers encrypt their data while it’s in use, so trusted partners can now migrate customer applications that handle sensitive data to Azure without rewriting them, and public sector customers can have confidence that their data is protected. And, to empower public sector customers to take advantage of the full power of the cloud while respecting their digital sovereignty, Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty provides a means to build, move, and operate data and workloads in the cloud while meeting legal, security, and policy requirements.

Recognizing our partners of the year

Microsoft recently announced a simplified and more flexible way to be identified as a Microsoft Security Solution Provider. If you’ve historically been a silver or gold security partner or Enterprise Mobility Management partner, you now have the opportunity this coming year to be recognized through the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program (MCPP) as a security solution partner. 

Once identified, Microsoft offers a wide variety of co-marketing opportunities you can take advantage of in your own programs and in collaboration with Microsoft to differentiate your business, not the least of which is the opportunity to be recognized by Microsoft as the Security or Compliance partner of the year.

I’d like to congratulate Ernst and Young as the 2022 Security Partner of the Year in recognition of the use of the Zero Trust framework that fully leverages Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and Microsoft Azure Key Vault. I’d also like to recognize Edgile as the 2022 Compliance Partner of the Year for their integration of a comprehensive security framework that extends the capabilities of enterprises to also measure the maturity of their data governance. I want to congratulate these partners for their incredible work, as well as all the winners of the 2022 Microsoft Security Excellence Awards. I also want to express my gratitude to our entire partner community for all you do to advance our shared mission of security and to make the world a safer place.

Top takeaways for our partners

Microsoft partners have an amazing opportunity to showcase their security proficiency, drive new growth, and create real-world impact. We invite all our partners to download our commissioned Forrester report to spur ideas on how to differentiate and expand their business. I’ll close with a few ideas:

• If you don’t have a security practice yet, now is the time! Explore a managed security services practice, such as managed XDR.
• If you’re already offering your customers security services, you should consider going bigger! Lean into governance, risk management, and compliance and privacy with Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Priva.
• Bolster security for small and medium-sized businesses with our Microsoft Defender for Business partner kit.

Be sure to check out our sessions at Microsoft Inspire that go deeper into these topics as well:

• Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender—Protect customers and grow your business
• Unlock new opportunities for modern access with Microsoft Entra
• Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Priva Platforms—Opportunities for partner ecosystem

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

---

¹Report: Pretty much every type of cyberattack increased in 2021, Brandon Vigliarolo. February 17, 2022.

²(ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study, (ISC)². 2021.

³Worldwide information security services spending from 2017 to 2022, Justina Alexandra Sava. April 27, 2022.

⁴Smarter with Gartner, The Top 8 Security and Risk Trends We’re Watching, November 15, 2021.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The post How Microsoft Security partners are helping customers do more with less appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In Jordan Peele's sci-fi horror "Nope," releasing in theaters this week, ranch-operating siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) are hit with a sudden tragedy. During a bizarre storm, their father Otis (Keith David) is struck and killed by a piece of debris that seemingly fell from the sky out of nowhere. In order to both find the truth about their father's death and to make some easy money, Emerald suggests trying to get footage of whatever was in the sky that night -- after all, undisputed proof of the existence of aliens could result in a hefty paycheck.

There have been tons of alien-centric hoaxes promising to showcase "real" extraterrestrial lifeforms over the decades. Some of these, such as the infamous "Alien Autopsy" of 1995, have been made in the form of movies. This prevalence, as well as the burgeoning found-footage subgenre that blurred lines between fiction and reality, is likely why there is a growing list of fictional found footage movies that center around aliens. Here are some of the best ones and where you can watch them.

UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape

Where to watch: Shudder

This piece of found-footage history is the film that arguably helped to kick-start the entire subgenre. Unlike "Cannibal Holocaust," which is often considered the first found footage film, it was shot entirely in the first-person point of view and often passes as a real family video at times. It later gained the moniker "The McPherson Tape" after an incident that will be explained just a bit further down.

"UFO Abduction" documents the final hours of the Van Heese family as they celebrate a birthday. Michael (director Dean Alioto) records his niece Michelle (Laura Tomas) blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, only for him and the rest of the family to have trouble turning the lights back on. Since the video camera also provides a source of light, he and his brother Eric (Tommy Giavocchini) go investigate the outside breaker before stumbling across what appears to be some kind of spacecraft. This encounter kickstarts a drastic turn of events that eventually results in the entire family being abducted.

Without Warning

Where to watch: YouTube

This film is one of the more unique found footage movies on this list, and that's because it isn't filmed in the traditional sense. Instead, it is depicted entirely as a special report from a local news network, where the events are explained in real-time by reporters. Outside of perhaps "WNUF Halloween Special," found footage movies shot in this way aren't that widely-made, which is a shame as it's a very interesting perspective.

The world experiences a series of earthquakes happening at the exact same time, being caused by the impact of three meteors across the United States, France, and China. Scientists and experts predict that all three impacts were somehow intentional, bringing into question the existence of aliens. Out of all of these films, "Without Warning" is probably the scariest one, not because of how realistic it looks, but rather how realistically the reporters and scientists act in the face of earthly destruction.

Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County

Where to watch: YouTube

This entry might be cheating just a little bit, as this is technically a remake of "UFO Abduction." However, this one is more infamous of the two, given how it aired on UPN with dubious indication that it was fiction. The channel claimed it was based on an actual case, but the case in question was the "UFO Abduction" film. Yikes!

Anyways, this film is how "UFO Abduction" eventually became known as "The McPherson Tape," as the family in this remake were actually called the McPhersons. This film also centered around a family member documenting an important get-together, this time being a Thanksgiving dinner that gets interrupted by faulty power. The aliens in this version are seemingly more aggressive with their attempts at abduction, employing tactics like coma-inducing balls of light and invisible branding to get the McPhersons to submit. Alito definitely made the most of the bigger budget he was given, and both of his abduction movies are essential watches.

Cloverfield

Where to Watch: HBO Max

To say that this movie was a major deal when it was released would be a massive understatement. After a year-long advertising campaign that sent people into online rabbit holes, "Cloverfield" didn't disappoint with its depiction of a real-time invasion by a devastating alien creature. It also arguably helped to promote the idea that the found-footage format can be used for higher budget movies; while not Marvel-levels of expensive, "Cloverfield's" $25 million budget drastically eclipsed that of "Paranormal Activity," which was released on a paltry $230,000 budget the following year.

Several friends in New York City get together for a farewell party for their friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is about to move to Japan for a promotion. His friend, Hud (T.J. Miller), is recording the party for posterity when an earthquake and power outage occurs. The friends find themselves running for their lives (a movement displayed through the camera movements that famously causes intense motion sickness in some people) as New York is destroyed by an alien monster that crash-landed on Earth. While the proceeding sequels abandoned the found-footage format with mixed results, "Cloverfield" still remains an important piece of the subgenre's history.

The Fourth Kind

Where to Rent: Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple

Okay, this might be a controversial entry, as the reception to "The Fourth Kind" among the horror community is mixed at best. However, you can't deny that the central mystery of the film, as well as its deceptive framing as a pseudo-documentary with both "real footage" and reenactments, makes it stand out among other found-footage fare. Perhaps it was too ahead of its time, or maybe it was a concept that wasn't fleshed out to its full potential. Either way, it should still be considered one of the most ambitious entries on this list.

An Alaskan therapist named Dr. Abbey Tyler (Milla Jovovich) sees a number of clients in the town of Nome, many of who recount similar experiences or emotions that they can't seem to explain. When one of these patients commits a gruesome act of violence as a result of his pain, Abbey begins to suspect that something far more sinister is linking her patients together, potentially proving the existence of aliens.

Unaware

Where to Watch: Vudu

This entry is an interesting one for several reasons. The cast for the film is not included in the credits, nor have the actors shown in the film ever been identified. The directors, Sean Bardin and Robert Cooley, have also made conflicting statements over whether or not the events shown in the film were staged. We suppose you'll just have to watch it for yourself and make your own conclusions ... or not, because it's pretty clear that the footage shown in the film isn't real. Still, that air of mystery still makes it an engaging watch.

Two young lovers, Joe and Lisa, have decided to take a trip to New Mexico, documenting their journey with a camera along the way. However, they find their plans changed just a bit when they find that the house belonging to Joe's grandfather is abandoned. When trying to discover what happened, the couple find themselves in the middle of a wide-spanning conspiracy involving the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Alienators

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Vudu

The majority of movies on this list can easily be classified as horror. However, who said that found footage alien horror movies had to just be horror? If you're looking for a more relaxed watch, you can check out this comedic take on alien abductions and shady government conspiracies. Think of this film as the found-footage "Paul," just without the alien being a stoner sidekick.

Skot (Aaron Leddick) and Vic (Derek Reckley) are two amateur Ufologists, or investigators of extraterrestrial phenomena. They are called to investigate a supposed case of alien surveillance by a woman named Jessa (Alycia Tracy), which goes awry due to both the threat of the aliens and the overall incompetence of the duo. Thankfully, the footage was salvaged by the actual researchers at the totally-real Civilian Department of Ufology. Sure, the film is extremely immature and oftentimes cringey to watch, but hey, who doesn't like to laugh at urinary humor every once in a while?

Phoenix Forgotten

Where to Rent: Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple

This entry actually has the distinction of being produced by Ridley Scott and his Scott Free Productions banner, which is pretty damn cool considering this was director Justin Barber's debut. It is also based on a real-life event that has never been fully disproven as otherworldly phenomenon (at least not its first recorded instance), the 1997 Phoenix Lights in Arizona, Nevada, and Sonora, Mexico. We recommend you read up on this event before turning on the film, as it'll give you some much-needed background information.

Anyways, the film follows Sophie (Florence Hartigan), who is hoping to find answers about her brother Mark's (Luke Spencer Roberts) disappearance shortly after the Phoenix Lights incident. In the present day, she discovers some of her brother's old video tapes, which show him and two of his friends attempting to investigate the phenomenon while accidentally becoming a part of a major conspiracy. Worst of all, Sophie might be this same conspiracy's next target.

The Gracefield Incident

Where to Watch: Pluto, Tubi, Vudu

If there is any movie on this list that deserves to be watched with friends while drinking, it's this one. While not exactly fitting into the mold of a "good" found footage movie, it is highly entertaining because of how ridiculous even the smallest plot points are. It knows the type of movie it is and embraces it, albeit not in a purposefully-so-bad-it's-good way. Rather, "The Graceland Incident" seems to understand that it's not going to be the next "Paranormal Activity," so instead of either becoming melodramatic or phoning it in, it decides to just have fun with itself.

The biggest indicator of this? The fact that the footage that makes up the movie is shot through a camera embedded into a prosthetic eye. The eye is worn by Matthew (director Matheiu Ratthe), who lost it after surviving a car crash. He, along with his wife Jessica (Kimberly Laferriere) go camping in the woods of Quebec along with some of their friends. However, their vacation takes a turn for the worse when a meteorite crashes nearby. This movie really has it all: leaping aliens, goofy eyes, Bigfoot, over-exaggerated facial expressions, and zombies. Must we say more?

Skyman

Where to Watch: Roku, Tubi, Vudu

This one isn't that dissimilar to "The Fourth Kind," at least regarding its subject matter. "Skyman" is probably the darkest entry on this list, as it's more of a character study into trauma than anything actually scary. Still, there's a compassion that is present throughout that makes it a fascinating and engaging watch.

Carl (Michael Selle) is a man haunted by a terrifying secret -- he believes he was abducted by aliens as a child. Few people believe him, but he is convinced that the event happened and has been obsessed with contacting aliens since. His sister Gina (Nicolette Sweeney) is supportive of her brother but is still skeptical, even when he hires a film crew to document the lead-up to his 40th birthday. Why is this specific date so important? According to Carl, it's when the aliens that abducted him as a child will come to visit him again. However, this prophesied interaction isn't as predictable as he thinks it will be.

Read this next: 20 Movies About Aliens That You Definitely Need To Watch

The post The Top 10 Found Footage Alien Horror Movies appeared first on /Film.

How do you feed a house full of people on a budget, while still keeping the meals reasonably balanced and healthy? That was the subject of a few threads on our favorite meal idea subreddit, r/EatCheapandHealthy. One poster asked how to feed five people who don’t like rice and beans, and another wanted to feed four…

Read more...

The Agatha Christie-inspired mystery movie genre is filled with corkers like "Clue" and "Knives Out" where the whole point is a clever whodunnit. In truth, an intriguing mystery plot can transform any thriller (here's a list of the 95 best) from a movie you watch while scrolling TikTok to one you watch while holding your breath.

In a way, all storytelling involves mystery. Your attention span for any yarn can be graphed based on how much you want to know what happens next. Although love remains mysterious, that doesn't mean "The Notebook" is a mystery. Mystery movies do something more specific. The plot isn't necessarily a vehicle for lofty literary insight. It's just a plain riddle, and because good storytelling is a circle, the answer is in the question. A mystery will telegraph its intentions, but when the last piece is placed, you ought to feel a slight but satisfying sense of déjà vu. Therefore, mystery is the most cunningly meta-cinematic genre. Screenwriters must internalize what the audience expects and then invent something new that they don't see coming.

A Perfect Murder

Inexplicably, critics dissed this excellent and taut 1998 murder-for-hire thriller. The king of '90s slimeballs, Michael Douglas, plays Steven, a wealthy Manhattan investor whose portfolio just took a serious dive. His beautiful and much younger wife, Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow), hails from an obscenely wealthy clan. She's having affair with a scruffy starving artist David (Viggo Mortensen). When Steven finds out, he also discovers David is a conman and offers the scammer a deal: Kill my wife for cash or go to jail. Of course, this very Hitchcockian proposal goes violently wrong. Emily survives, and Steven is left with a lot of explaining to do. An excellent cat-and-mouse game ensues as this greedy hubby tries to cover his tracks.

"A Perfect Murder" has little visual style and no big ideas. It's "Strangers On A Train" without all the Freudian subtext — though a crucial scene does happen on a train, which isn't by accident. However, it does present a portrait of a homicidal marriage in which no one ever says what they mean. This kind of murder-for-hire drama happens in real life way more than any happy couple wants to admit. More broadly, one in five homicide victims is killed by an intimate partner according to a 2011 study. Douglas and Paltrow are incredibly compelling as they tell lies with their mouths while they reveal the dark truth with their eyes.

Side Effects

The unintended consequences of prescription drugs can get a little glossed over in those sunny slow-motion ads with happy couples holding hands across adjacent clawfoot bathtubs. The real catch in Steven Soderbergh's excellent 2013 big-pharma thriller, "Side Effects," is the shady people who might be low-key lethal, too.

Rooney Mara plays Emily. She's clinically depressed. After a suspicious car accident, she comes under the care of the dashing and seemingly doting psychiatrist Dr. Banks (Jude Law.) He seems like a good doctor, but he's got money trouble and has been bent by the pharmaceutical industry to push their latest wonder pill. Emily takes a turn for the worst, as things get violent with her husband (Channing Tatum) in what seems like a drug-induced fugue state. As the film delves into an apparent medical industrial complex critique, Soderbergh takes a hard turn toward a violent mystery plot in which we find nothing is what it seems. "Side Effects" doesn't have the shine of "Magic Mike" or "Ocean's Eleven," but it's one of the iconic filmmaker's most efficacious concoctions.

The Interview

A year before Hugo Weaving became a major star as Agent Smith in "The Matrix," he found himself on the wrong side of a brutal interrogation in "The Interview." Weaving plays Eddie Flemming, a man nabbed by police with seemingly no idea why. As two officers ramp up the good-cop-bad-cop pressure, we learn that Flemming is suspected in connection with a series of murders.

Flemming goes from being bemused to making a strange and twisted confession, but that's only the beginning of the cat-and-mouse game, as we learn this cop shop is rife with corruption. The validity of confessions under such pressure comes into play, but the mystery is really whether Flemming is the brutal killer he so casually describes or if he's simply playing mind games on two cops abusing their power. Critics liked this mostly forgotten 1998 film that's shot like a stage play. It's a claustrophobic man-in-a-box thriller that closes in on you like a vice.

In The Earth

If you like the cultish creepiness of Ari Aster's brilliant and buzzy "Midsommar," "In The Earth" grows in a similar direction. This 2021 horror mystery is set entirely in a forest near Bristol, England. The remote location is a timeless trick for low-budget movies, but it keeps this thriller's poor protagonists frightfully far from help.

Some unspecified contagious calamity has hit the Earth, and a scientist Martin (Joel Fry) is sent into the wild to meet up with his ex and former colleague Olivia (Hayley Squires). She thinks a psychic property found in plants can increase crop efficiency. It's murky but seems important to humanity's survival. Martin sets out with park guide Alma (Ellora Torchia), but they are soon attacked by unseen assailants and have their shoes stolen. That's when the duo encounters an eccentric woodland homesteader named Zach (Reece Shearsmith). He offers to help but abducts them and starts strange and torturous experiments as things get increasingly psychedelic.

This is an arthouse indie, a hostage movie, and at times, a very base piece of torture porn that goes to gratuitous places. It's also a "Heart of Darkness"-style odyssey, as we wait to meet the mad scientist. Most blatantly, "In The Earth' can be read as a pandemic-era film that connects the end of the world to scientists playing God and then following their curiosities straight to hell.

I Am Mother

A good sci-fi thriller doesn't explain itself with title cards or expository dialogue. "I Am Mother" from 2019 opens à la "Alien," with the camera slowly roving through what looks like the inside of an advanced spaceship. There are no humans around — just a very Boston Dynamics-inspired robot working away to create a fetus in a futuristic laboratory.

The robot is the titular Mother, and she uses her reassuring voice (courtesy of Rose Byrne) to tutor a young girl who goes by "Daughter" (Clare Ruggard). We learn they're actually on Earth in some kind of sterile ward that protects this human survivor from the apocalyptic outside world. As Daughter enters a rebellious teenage phase, an injured "Woman" (Hillary Swank) shows up at the front door. When Daughter breaks quarantine and lets Woman inside, this visitor has a very different take on life beyond the compound's walls.

Despite a busy slate, Netflix doesn't make many great originals, and the company seemed to admit as much when they announced a strategy shift away from the glut of low-budget features in 2022. However, "I Am Mother" is a total standout with a central mystery that excellently incubates our high-tech paranoias.

The Night House

"The Night House" will have you pulling out your phone to Shazam this excellent metaphysical mystery movie's motif track. The always convincing Rebecca Hall plays Beth. She's a young widow grieving the unexpected death of her husband (Evan Jonigkeit). In her mourning, the haunting and gothic blues song "Calvary Cross" by Richard Thompson suddenly starts blaring on the sound system in the beautifully modern lake home handcrafted by her dearly departed.

Beth begins having nightmares and visions that lead her across the lake, where she discovers a house identical to her own — but built backward. When this increasingly disturbed widow sifts through her late husband's phone, she finds a picture of a woman who looks just like her ... but isn't. So begins a painful and often trippy odyssey to find out who the man she loved really was. There's a familiar form factor here, as we wonder if Beth is dealing with the supernatural, an elaborate gaslighting, or has simply gone mad with grief. "The Night House" has more to offer than a typical haunting story. This is a beautifully lit film that goes in a darker direction than lesser ghost stories dare.

The Rental

"The Rental" was written and directed by James Franco's talented little brother, Dave Franco, in his feature debut, and that lad can really do the work. It's a relatively low-budget movie ($16 million) but nonetheless an example of a new genre: the "Airbnb thriller." This is the increasingly common genre in which a studio rents out a house and makes a scary movie within the confines of a single setting.

This is also an Airbnb-style sort of plot, as two affluent young couples rent a beach house for a weekend getaway. Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Michelle (Alison Brie) seem like a solid pair, but they bring along Charlie's insecure brother and his girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand). On night one, the hard drugs come out and Charlie ends up having sex with his brother's girlfriend. The next day, as the hangovers and guilt kick in, these renters discover a secret camera mounted in the shower head that could've recorded the entire affair. When the group confronts the creepy property manager (Toby Huss), the truth starts to come out, and this vacay goes from a merely regrettable bender to a blood-soaked mystery.

Interestingly, Franco, though a great performer himself, resists a cameo. He's happy to stand behind his work, and his somewhat Ari Aster-inspired screenplay and tone are voyeuristic perfection. He's a student of the horror genre, and this modest 2020 movie makes him a filmmaker to watch.

Welcome Home

"Welcome Home" is another solidly trashy "Airbnb thriller" in which the production company rents a cool house and shoots a suspense film mostly in that one location. 

A post-"Breaking Bad" Aaron Paul plays Bryan, husband to the underrated Emily Ratajkowski as Cassie. They've got serious trust issues after Cassie cheats, so they rent an old villa in the Italian countryside in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. When Cassie goes out for a jog, she twists her ankle and a handsome and mysterious Italian stranger Federico (Riccardo Scamarcio) swoops in and brings her home. Bryan becomes increasingly suspicious as Federico keeps finding ways to interrupt the couple's romantic getaway. 

This is a stalker thriller, but the mystery is really Federico's motivation. "Welcome Home" is a low-budget film with absolutely dire reviews and audience scores, so I'm not saying it's brilliant. It's just entertainingly unflinching as an awkward situation becomes a fight to survive and unearths a series of irresistible moral dilemmas.

Antlers

"Antlers" is a beautifully shot supernatural horror thriller set in rural Oregon. The plot follows two brothers, 12-year-old Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas) and 7-year-old Aiden Weaver (Sawyer Jones). A caring teacher, Julia Meadows (Keri Russell), becomes alarmed when Lucas begins coming to school filthy and exhausted. He's been making strange drawings and collecting road kill, too. Julia has a history of abuse at the hands of her father and enlists the help of her brother Paul (Jesse Plemmons), the sheriff, to help investigate. 

In the opening scene, we learn the boy's father is involved in the meth trade, but he's attacked by something terrifying, and now, that dark mystery resides in the Weaver home. Critics liked this creature feature well enough. This film brings out the Pacific Northwest's eerie, gloomy beauty. Under cover of darkness, the Weaver boys don't just suffer the terror of an evil force, they are conscripted into sustaining their trauma in this monstrous metaphor for a broken home.

The Empty Man

Audiences really underrated this excellent 2020 horror thriller with a mind-bending central mystery. The film opens with four friends on a hiking trip. They seem to come across a supernatural cave that drives two of them insane. Cut to decades later, and we're following former detective James Lasombra (James Badge Dale). He's grieving the death of his wife and throws himself into investigating the disappearance of the teen daughter of his widowed neighbor, Nora (Marin Ireland). His only clue is a cryptic note that reads, "The empty man made me do it."

What James uncovers in this graphic novel adaptation is a Slender Man-style cult. There's an urban legend among the local teens that says a few incantations can summon this specter, but that game is about as fun as saying Candyman three times in the mirror. James is eventually led to a strange church that seems to be open to him while also hiding something sinister. Like all good mysteries, some of the truth is hidden in plain sight. "The Empty Man" has an appalling payoff that delivers.

Dead Again

"Dead Again" is kind of like Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" with an ironic farce of film noir built on top. If that's your speed, this forgotten Kenneth Branagh-directed tale of love, death, and reincarnation might be for you.

Branagh stars as Mike Church, a private eye hired to help an amnesiac, Grace (Emma Thompson), find her identity. She suffers terrible nightmares and links up with a hypnotist played by the always creepy Derek Jacobi. The visions are fleshed out as Grace sees herself in the late 1940s, falling for a handsome opera composer Roman Strauss. The two settle into his gothic mansion with his suspiciously young and attractive maid. Flash forward and a Time Magazine cover reveals the composer is real and murdered his wife with a pair of scissors. Weirdly, this opera man is also played by Branagh. Is this time travel? Past lives? An elaborate fraud?

Hypnosis fell out of favor after the so-called Satanic panic of the 1980s in which patients fabulated wild accusations about occult rituals and sexual abuse. Some particularly suggestible children even sent their parents to prison for heinous and totally imagined crimes. The history is absurd and tragic and so is Branagh's take on this discredited dark art. "Dead Again" is so relentlessly deadpan that it's like an episode of "Seinfeld" at times. Jerry's nemesis, Newman the mailman (Wayne Knight), even has an amusing role in this idiosyncratic gem.

Wind River

Writer-director Taylor Sheridan is the most dedicated practitioner of the modern Western. The scribe behind "Sicario," "Hell or High Water," and creator of "Yellowstone" helms "Wind River," a murder mystery set in the icy wilds of Wyoming.

When the body of an 18-year-old girl is discovered barefoot in the snow as if she ran miles through freezing temperatures, FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) is sent to a remote and mountainous reservation to investigate. She taps local tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) to help navigate the terrain, and the pair soon discover two more murders that seem to be connected to a local oil drilling operation.

The best scene in "Wind River" is a tense standoff between Olsen's FBI agent, tribal police, and corporate security. It's a jurisdictional showdown that highlights the legal vagaries of crimes on Native lands. Jane and Cory aren't going to let that happen, though. This modern Western might be a tad conventional, but it's also satisfying.

Presumed Innocent

"Presumed Innocent" is a reference to one of the bedrock principles of the American legal system. The burden of proof is on the state, not the citizen. The title is also a kind of in-joke about casting a beloved movie star to play a role in which we slowly come to suspect he's a brutal killer. In other words, only Harrison Ford coming off the heroic goodwill of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" could make this otherwise ordinary movie work.

Ford plays Rusty Sabich. He's a junior lawyer working in the district attorney's office. He's having an affair with a gorgeous fellow attorney, Carolyn (Greta Scacchi). He confesses the romance to his wife, but when Carolyn turns up dead, Sabich is tasked to investigate and then charged with the crime.

Thrillers from the 1990s are great because they are so straightforward. Cameras are expensive and slow and nixed a lot of the arty angles and excesses that weigh down more modern mysteries where shooting a lot of B-roll is cheap. This whodunit just focuses on Ford as we go from being sympathetic to his character's situation to suspecting he might have done the unthinkable.

Memories Of Murder

Long before South Korean superstar director Bong Joon-ho became a world-famous Oscar winner for "Parasite" he was busy making violent crime films with his unique brand of social satire and slapstick silliness.

"Memories of Murder" follows detectives in a small Korean province who stumble on the case of a lifetime. Several women are found dead, and it's clearly the work of one assailant. The always hilarious Song Kang-ho plays lead detective Park Doo-man. He teams up with two other officers as they bumble through the case. Their department is as corrupt as it is incompetent, and they're used to simply beating confessions out of suspects — whether they are guilty or not. When this killer proves elusive, they change tacks and try some real detective work, mostly thanks to a big-city cop with good instincts played by the easy-on-the-eyes Kim Sang-kyung.

There's a conventional veneer in this slight deconstruction of the serial killer mystery genre, but it's also an original and beautifully shot work that humanizes even horrible characters. "Memories of Murder" is based on a real Korean case and goes in a somewhat similar direction as David Fincher's "Zodiac" — but is arguably more challenging. This odd film will make you laugh out loud and eventually marvel at its offbeat poignancy.

The Red Riding Trilogy

The best of this English murder mystery trilogy about missing young girls is the first film, "Red Riding: 1974." It's all sepia-toned and tungsten, like a vintage Instagram filter, perfectly matching the bang-on period sets and costumes. Andrew Garfield plays rookie reporter Eddie Dunford, whose spidey-sense starts tingling when he connects a string of similar abductions. He's a dogged reporter working in the north of England, but his real skill is his soft touch with the grieving mothers. The story is sprawling. There are persecuted Romani people and greedy developers, but when a pair of corrupt cops start to hamper his investigation, Eddie bloody well knows he's getting warmer.

The story is based on the real Yorkshire Ripper who killed 13 women, though this is a work of fiction adapted from a quartet of even darker novels by David Peace. There are two more films, "1980" and "1983," but it's all one continuous story that first aired on British TV. "Red Riding" is a five-hour film, really, and a hypnotic piece of work that pulls you into the low-tech, shoe-leather detective work of the day. "Red Riding" is so good that Ridley Scott was set to do an unnecessary American remake, but that never got off the ground.

The Clovehitch Killer

"The Clovehitch Killer" is a standout Netflix release. It's the story of a church-going family man who might be a sadistic serial killer. The usually dashing Dylan McDermott goes all doughy and earnest as he leans into this creepy twist on the suburban dad aesthetic. He plays Don Burnside, a Boy Scout leader whose son soon suspects is secretly the titular Clovehitch Killer who leaves a signature knot at the crime scenes where he tortures and kills his victims.

Relative newcomer Charlie Plummer plays the suspicious son who finds some damming evidence in dad's oddly off-limits toolshed. He doesn't want to believe his eyes but is soon teaming up with his love interest (Madisen Beaty) to track down the truth. Clovehitch is based on the BTK Killer, and the cases share the same "bind, torture, kill" modus operandi, but where they really overlap is in the banality of evil that allows a fetishistic sadist to hide in plain sight.

Witness

"Witness" is more of a drama than a mystery, but there's a corrupt cop conspiracy to unravel in this thrilling fish-out-of-water story.

Harrison Ford plays Philadelphia flatfoot John Book, and he catches a hot one. A cop from his department has been killed in cold blood, and there's just one witness, a young Amish boy named Samuel (Lukas Haas). When the child identifies another cop as the killer, an assassin soon comes for Book too. A wounded Book flees to Pennsylvania Dutch Country to warn the boy and his beautiful (and single) young mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis). Soon, this city slicker is raising barns with the Amish as he is torn between his growing affection for Rachel and Samuel and his duty to get justice for one of his own.

Without giving away any spoilers, this 1985 film has a surprisingly stoic ending that just would not get the green light today. This is Ford at his rugged best, and his chemistry with McGillis is pretty steamy given the pious constraints of her character's disapproving community.

The Nice Guys

Jimmy Kimmel once joked that Ryan Gosling "casts a powerful spell on women and talk show hosts alike." The actor is easily the best couch performer among Hollywood's movie star set. His anecdotes are colorful and full of self-deprecating cracks like his story about growing up in an Orlando trailer park or his incredible yarn about the time his father came into possession of a massive stockpile of cellophane and sent young Ryan to school to sell it.

"The Nice Guys" doesn't quite reach the heights of just listening to the actor talk, but his natural comic chops help carry this Shane Black bromance throwback to the legendary scribe's investigative classics like "Lethal Weapon." Gosling plays down-and-out private investigator Holland March who is hired to find a missing woman named Amelia (Margaret Qualley). That pits him against freelance thug Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), but circumstances have them, of course, forming an unlikely partnership. As they delve into a classically seedy Los Angeles noir plot full of corruption and treachery, the duo's chemistry is better than this amusing film's soft box-office opening would indicate.

Black Coal, Thin Ice

If you pay attention to the opening shots of movies, "Black Coal, Thin Ice" is a handy quality control shortcut for your Netflix queue. For example, many modern filmmakers have fallen in love with sweeping drone panoramas during the introductory credit sequence. It's mostly nature photography, and it's beautiful. It's also a cliche and an indication the filmmaker is more concerned about their movie appearing cinematic in scope rather than being good cinema.

That's a long way of saying you're in good hands with Yi'nan Diao, director of this suspenseful and thoughtful Chinese serial killer murder mystery. The opening shot of 2014's "Black Coal, Thin Ice" is aggressively un-beautiful. It's just a shaky camera at medium distance pointed straight at a mound of dirt with something suspicious partially buried. Of course, it turns out to be a human body part — and our the first clue. The story follows two detectives who catch the case and get into a bloody shootout but can't solve the crime. Years later, similar murders occur, and these traumatized cops go all "True Detective" as they confront their past and a killer is still on the loose.

In A Lonely Place

Next to "Casablanca," "In A Lonely Place" from 1950 is Humphrey Bogart's best film  It also doesn't get the attention that his detective films noir like "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep" receive either, but it's arguably aged better than those better-known classics.

Bogey gives one of his best-ever performances as Dixon Steele, a boozy Hollywood screenwriter who is as cynical about the business as he is as his private eye characters are about the world at large. Dixon is tapped to adapt a trashy novel but can't be bothered to read it, so he brings home a coat check girl who is familiar with the story. This is a Hays code film, so the seduction is all implied, but soon, he's bored with her, too, and sends her away. Or does he? When this young woman turns up dead, Dixon becomes the prime suspect. That's inconvenient for his burgeoning romance with neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame). As Dixon's increasingly erratic behavior makes him seem either demented or callous, Laurel soon suspects he might be a killer.

The Handmaiden

"The Handmaiden" from 2016 is a wildly devious and complex story of love, deception, and cruelty that deserves its place up there with director Park Chan-wook's iconic experiment in human extremes, "Oldboy."

"The Handmaiden" is a Korean film set in Japan but takes the form of a Victorian novel. It follows a Korean conman posing as Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo). He insinuates himself in the home of a wealthy young heiress, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). He plans to seduce her and then steal her fortune. To aid in this plot, be brings along an accomplice, another Korean grifter named Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ree), who will pose as one of the lady's maids and pour the appropriate poison in her ear.

The plan seems to go awry when this handpicked pleb begins a passionate affair with her aristocratic employer, but there's much, much more going on here. Another wrinkle is that Lady Hideko lives with her wealthy and diabolically perverted uncle — to whom she is also engaged! This uncle is a purveyor of rare books that read like Penthouse letters, and he forces his niece-fiancé into steamy readings for a panel of panting aristocrats. His other command is a warning: "Never enter the basement!" "The Handmaiden" is long and difficult to follow, but there's more to this mystery than mere depravity to reward your patience.

Read this next: The 14 Best Noir Movies Ranked

The post 21 Underrated Mystery Movies You Really Need to See appeared first on /Film.

The Series: "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo"

Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max, Boomerang

The Pitch: As the twelfth "Scooby-Doo" show to hit the airwaves since the franchise first began in 1969, the two-season hidden gem "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo" is easy to overlook. But if you've ever enjoyed the mystery-solving hijinks of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo, you shouldn't skip this iteration. This series is mostly remembered for switching up the Mystery Inc. animation style, but it should be remembered as the funniest and most delightfully kooky "Scooby-Doo" iteration to date — the kind of show that appeals to parents or college-age stoners just as much as kids.

Technically, "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo" follows the same beats as a typical "Scooby-Doo" procedural, but it forges new, hilarious paths for its characters, turning Daphne into an eccentric jack-of-all-trades, putting Fred on trial for his alleged mystery solving misdeeds, and giving Scoob himself all the best lines. The show's writer's room had some crossover with other super sharp and quirky animated shows like "Phineas and Ferb" and "Teen Titans! Go" and it shows.

To top it all off, "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo" should go down in history for perfecting the ultimate all-star lineup of modern Mystery Inc. voice actors, with Kate Micucci making her Velma debut alongside Matthew Lillard's Shaggy, Grey DeLisle's Daphne, and original series actor Frank Welker as Fred and Scooby.

Why It's Essential Viewing

"Be Cool, Scooby-Doo" is, first and foremost, ridiculously funny. The series began in 2015, yet several of its one-off bits can still reduce my friend and me to tears of laughter if we mention them seven years later. The show isn't afraid to take a joyfully absurd approach to its stories and characters: in the very first episode, Daphne has to dramatically sacrifice a beloved hand puppet version of herself in order to save Fred, who's fallen off a roof thanks to his debilitating fear of widths. The series sometimes builds up offbeat and irreverent character mythologies for the sake of just one or two punchlines, but those punchlines are always absolutely worth it.

Lest it sound like the series gets too far off book, let me be clear: "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo" also loves the franchise it's a part of, and is a great viewing experience even for Joe Ruby and Ken Spears purists. The franchise's classic tropes are all there, from capitalistic villains to musical chase sequences to cross-series in-jokes. One of the show's best bits involves the extreme lengths to which Shaggy and Scooby sometimes go to dupe and distract pea-brained monsters: it's the type of thrilling ongoing comedic escalation that seems more like something out of a meta-comedy like "Community" than a kids' show. Yet it stays true to the core of "Scooby-Doo" and the many costume-clad versions of Shaggy and Scooby that have fooled the bad guys in decades past.

I'm of the mindset that nearly all Scooby-Doo is good Scooby-Doo, but once you've seen "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo," it's hard to expect anything less than Mystery Inc. at its most uproarious and creative.

Read this next: 14 Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

The post The Daily Stream: Be Cool, Scooby-Doo is a Long-Running Franchise at its Funniest appeared first on /Film.

If you think that all cartoons about caped crusaders are for audiences of all ages, Prime Video's "Invincible" will shock you with its violence and cynicism. Based on the Image Comics series by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley, "Invincible" is similar to other projects by "The Walking Dead" co-creator Kirkman. It deconstructs a popular genre and offers a more nuanced take on familiar archetypes.

"Invincible" revolves around a teenage boy named Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun). Mark's father, Nolan (J.K. Simmons), is an alien from the planet Vitrum, and is better known to the masses as the superhero Omni-Man. Nolan possesses incredible strength and the ability to fly, but while he pretends to be a mild-mannered travel writer in his civilian identity, he's secretly violent and abusive. As Mark grows up, he begins to recognize his father's true nature.

"Invincible" is a terrific coming-of-age story. Being a teenager is stressful enough on its own; having to deal with emerging superpowers only makes things more difficult for Mark. "Invincible" also does a great job at depicting a complex familial relationship, and its harrowing emotional moments are just as gripping as the bloody action sequences. If you loved "Invincible," you will definitely want to binge these shows as well.

The Boys

Superhero media is more popular than ever before. It seems like a new project based on a Marvel or DC property is announced every single day. However, "The Boys" offers a more nuanced perspective on the genre than most mainstream projects. Similar to "Invincible," "The Boys" explores how the public's perception of superheroes clashes with their actual nature.

Both shows pull off a similarly tricky task: They lampoon familiar comic book archetypes, but also get to indulge in the genre's excesses. Neither show is for the faint of heart, either. Both "Invincible" and "The Boys" contain moments that are so graphic and disturbing that they make even the most hardened fans squirm. However, both shows are also completely addictive. Even if you are turned off by the violence, you can't help but watch the next episode.

Omni-Man is also very similar to Homelander (Antony Starr), one of the main villains on "The Boys." Homelander is the leader of the Seven, a Justice League-type superhero squad. Despite being known by the public as a hero, Homelander is violent, cruel, and unhinged, and Antony Starr brings all of his flaws to life with one of the best performances currently on television.

Watchmen

The 1986 graphic novel "Watchmen" isn't just one of the most important texts in the history of superhero media; it's a foundational work of American literature. It is the only graphic novel that was included on Time Magazine's list of the 100 greatest English-language novels published since 1923. "Watchmen" has such a complex story, however, that adapting it to live-action has proved to be more than many filmmakers can handle. HBO's 2019 limited series avoided these pitfalls by taking the themes of the original text and inserting them into the modern day.

One of the reasons why the original "Watchmen" is so incredible is its incorporation of political, social, and cultural commentary that was relevant at the time of its release. "Watchmen" takes place in an alternative version of 1985, where superheroes have influenced American history since World War II, and addresses issues like power and authoritarianism and the thin — maybe even non-existent — line between good and evil.

Instead of reiterating the same themes, the HBO series tackles topics that are at the forefront in the 21st century. "Watchmen" offers loaded insights on police brutality, systematic racism, trauma, and political radicalization. As such, HBO's "Watchmen" isn't a straight adaptation. Series creator Damon Lindelof refers to it as more of a "remix." If you enjoyed the subversive nature of "Invincible," you will appreciate "Watchmen" as well. 

Compared to multi-season superhero shows like "Arrow" and "Daredevil," "Watchmen" is also a pretty quick binge. The series manages to wrap up its story in only nine episodes, and does not feel bloated in the slightest.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

If you enjoyed the coming-of-age aspects of "Invincible," then "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" could become your next television obsession. This groundbreaking teen fantasy drama explores the difficulties of growing up through the perspective of a teenage superhero. Similar to how "Invincible" wrestles with common themes in the superhero genre, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" serves as an alternative to stereotypical monster movies. Despite what the title may suggest, Buffy's rogue's gallery isn't limited to blood-sucking vampires. The teenage monster slayer, who became a feminist icon thanks largely to Sarah Michelle Gellar's remarkable performance, encounters all sorts of mythological creatures over the course of the show's seven seasons.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" grew more mature as it continued. While season 1 is entertaining, it only teases the heights that the series would rise to. In the later seasons, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" went from an amusing and spooky teen comedy to an essential drama about the perils of adulthood. Buffy grows up, and along the way explores her sexuality, loses her mother, and becomes a leader.

Batman: The Animated Series

"Batman: The Animated Series" isn't just one of the best onscreen takes on the Caped Crusader, and it's not just a great animated series. It transcended all expectations for either genre, and became one of the most important television shows of the last few decades. It's unlikely that we would get mature animated superhero stories like "Invincible" if it wasn't for the precedent set by "Batman: The Animated Series." The show proved that animation wasn't just for kids; even though it appealed to a youthful audience, "Batman: The Animated Series" has just as much to offer adults.

Omni-Man is a complex villain, and "Invincible" does a great job at fleshing out his motivations and exploring his backstory. "Batman: The Animated Series" brought the Dark Knight's antagonists to life with similar depth. Although the competition is fierce, Mark Hamill's version of the Joker is the definitive version of the character, with a take that's both demented and playful.

"Batman: The Animated Series" includes many episodes dedicated to different bad guys. "Heart of Ice," for example, explores the heartbreaking backstory of Mr. Freeze, offering up a much more nuanced depiction of the character than the campy Arnold Schwarzenegger version found in 1997's "Batman & Robin."

BoJack Horseman

Animation is a great tool for delving into mental health issues, allowing creators to tackle social stigmas and inner turmoil by using creative visual techniques. "Invincible" is essentially a series that revolves around trauma: Mark has to wrestle with the fact that his father has lied to him for his entire life, while Omni-Man's challenging upbringing transformed him into the hero (and villain) that we know today.

Ironically, a show about talking animals is more "human" in that regard than most live-action shows. The Netflix animated series "BoJack Horseman" has been praised for its nuanced depiction of depression, alcoholism, creative anxiety, and celebrity culture. It follows the titular star (Will Arnett) of a popular 1990s sitcom who, after his career peaked, lost himself in his indulgences. He struggles with addiction, and is unable to launch a successful comeback. BoJack's greatest villain is himself; as much as he wants to get better, BoJack can't help but make his situation worse.

Like Mark in "Invincible," BoJack's life is dominated by the abuse he suffered at his parents' hands, and he wrestles with the demons from his past throughout the series. "BoJack Horseman" is incredibly respectful with how it tackles these sensitive topics, too. Finally, like "Invincible," "BoJack Horseman" offers up a fair amount of humor to balance out the darker moments.

The Punisher

When they debuted, Netflix's Marvel shows offered a more mature alternative to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While the MCU films are fairly comedic, the Netflix shows were relatively grounded and serious. Each one of these series tackled a different political or social issue: "Daredevil" explored the ethical dilemmas surrounding the law, "Jessica Jones" dealt with female rage and trauma, "Luke Cage" addressed racial discrimination, and "Iron Fist" (unsuccessfully) tried to confront the wealth gap.

Netflix's version of "The Punisher" is the best live-action interpretation of the character. While previous film adaptations were nothing more than bland, shoot-'em'-up action movies, Jon Bernthal played up the tragic backstory that transformed Frank Castle into a vigilante. Castle is haunted by his experiences in the military, and when loses his entire family in a tragedy, he decides to take the law into his own hands.

Like "Invincible," "The Punisher" has no shortage of shocking moments. Castle's battle with Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) at the end of the first season is unforgettable. However, the violence isn't there just for shock value — it would have felt disrespectful if the series had shied away from Castle's struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Star Wars: Clone Wars

Star Wars is a dominant media franchise, but before Disney acquired Lucasfilm, its presence on television was rather scarce. It took Dave Filoni's "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which debuted in 2008 after the theatrical release of the film of the same name, to really establish the series' ongoing presence on the small screen. 

However, Filoni's version of "The Clone Wars" isn't the only animated show that takes place between 2002's "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones" and 2005's "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith." In 2003, animator Genndy Tartakovsky, who was best known for his work on "Samurai Jack" and "Dexter's Laboratory," created a very unique Star Wars series titled "Star Wars: Clone Wars." Like Filoni, Tartakovsky fleshed out the war between the Jedi Order and the emerging threat of Count Dooku (Corey Burton) and his Confederacy of Independent Systems. Tartakovsky told fast-paced stories that unfolded in short, action-focused episodes. The episodes in season 1 and season 2 were between 3 and 5 minutes; season 3 included extended episodes that were as long as 15 minutes.

Due to the shorter runtimes, "Clone Wars" offered a wide variety of "Star Wars" action. Similar to "Invincible," "Clone Wars" made its respective genre feel fresh again, thanks to its unique depiction of stylized combat, and pushed the space opera in a number of intriguing new directions.

Legion

The FX superhero series "Legion" is based on the X-Men character of the same name, who was created by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, but it does not directly tie into 20th Century Fox's X-Men film franchise. Showrunner Noah Hawley instead takes a subversive approach to the superhero genre, using David Haller (Dan Stevens) and his powers to explore mental health issues. Before "Legion," Hawley had steered the FX series "Fargo," which drew inspiration from the classic Coen Brothers film. Similar to "Fargo," "Legion" pays homage to its source material, but tells a much darker and more emotionally nuanced story.

Both "Legion" and "Invincible" use their characters' powers as a metaphor for the stigma against those who are dealing with trauma. Both Mark in "Invincible" and David in "Legion" are struggling to overcome their difficult childhoods. David was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was young because he started hearing voices in his head. However, as an adult David discovers that his superpowers are psychic in nature, and that he might be completely sane. As a result, David struggles to define who he really is.

Defending Jacob

J.K. Simmons is one of the best and most versatile actors working today. Regardless of how large his role is, he never fails to make his characters memorable. You don't even see Simmons' face in "Invincible," but he creates a memorable antagonist out of Omni-Man using the power of his voice alone. Omni-Man has seen true evil during his experiences in space, but he tries to justify his violent behavior. He shows true affection for his son, Mark, but doesn't realize that his lies have only made Mark's adolescence even more difficult.

If you want to see Simmons take on another complex father figure, check out the excellent Apple TV+ miniseries "Defending Jacob." Based on the 2012 novel by William Landay, the series follows Andrew Barber (Chris Evans), a successful lawyer who learns that his teenage son, Jacob (Jaeden Martell), has been accused of murder. Andrew is caught between his obligations to the law and his love for his son.

One of the most engaging subplots in "Defending Jacob" is Andrew's confrontation with his father, William (J.K. Simmons). William is a convicted murderer who earned the nickname "Bloody Billy" for his crimes, and Andrew is disturbed when he begins to notice similarities emerging between William and Jacob.

The Americans

Besides being a subversive sendup of the archetypes found in superhero stories, "Invincible" is also an effective family drama. If you forget all about the superpowers and intergalactic creatures for a moment, the familial scenes between Mark and Nolan are very relatable. Questioning your parents' beliefs is just a part of growing up, regardless of whether or not your father is a superhero. Mark's wife, Debbie (Sandra Oh), has adjusted her life to fit the parameters of her husband's profession, and struggles to find agency of her own.

The FX series "The Americans" shows a similarly complex family dynamic. The series takes place in the '80s during the height of the Cold War, and follows Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), spies from the Soviet Union who are sent on a long-term assignment to the United States. Philip and Elizabeth disguise themselves as an average American couple, and their two children, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), know nothing about their parents' actual professions. They are forced to confront their parents' activities over the course of the series' six excellent seasons.

Rick And Morty

"Invincible" is often humorous. Although it deals with serious topics and features a shocking level of violence, the show's satire of American pop culture and its obsession with superheroes is genuinely hilarious. With "Invincible," humor is a gateway to get viewers hooked on the story — it might have been difficult to address trauma and anxiety if there weren't a few moments of levity for balance.

By contrast, Cartoon Network's "Rick and Morty" is one of the funniest television shows of the past few years, but it too delves into some heavy material. The series follows the madcap misadventures of a teenage boy, Morty (Justin Roiland), and his grandfather, the nihilistic scientist Rick (also voiced by Roiland). Although Rick is a genius, he's neglectful of his daughter, Beth (Sarah Chalke), and (unintentionally) abusive towards Morty. Rick and Morty struggle to bring their family closer together as the series goes on. Despite the show's wacky tone, these beats are treated seriously, and the humor doesn't detract from the emotional weight of the characters' relationships.

That '70s Show

Young people are shaped by the cultural properties that are popular when they're growing up. In "Invincible," Mark grows up in the shadow of his father, who just happens to be the most famous superhero on the planet. Comic book fans will certainly appreciate the show's references to the history of superhero media; eagle-eyed viewers who have watched the show several times might even pick up on some hidden Easter eggs and references.

Even though it's a sitcom, the beloved comedy "That '70s Show" features a similar coming-of-age dynamic. This hilarious series centers on a group of teenagers in the fictional town of Point Place, Wisconsin, in the 1970s. Eric Forman (Topher Grace), Jackie Burnhart (Mila Kunis), Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher), Steven Hyde (Danny Masterson), Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon), and Fez (Wilmer Valderrama) grow up using popular films from the 1970s, including "Star Wars," "A Star Is Born," "The Omen," and "All The President's Men," as touchstones, and their larger pop culture awareness helps fuel series' jokes and makes the show's world feel more realistic and relatable.

Mr. Robot

"Invincible" handles the complex relationship between Mark and his father with sensitivity. It would have been easy for the series to gloss over the thornier sides of childhood trauma, abuse, and victimization. However, "Invincible" takes the time to show how Mark's suffering shapes him into the hero that he eventually becomes. He has a wonderful character arc, and ultimately decides that he will not follow in his father's dark footsteps.

The USA Network series "Mr. Robot" also does a great job at showing a complex father-son relationship. The thriller series follows a young hacker named Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), who secretly hacks powerful corporations and exposes corrupt individuals. Elliot is recruited by an enigmatic hacker codenamed "Mr. Robot," who leads a mysterious group of hacktivists called fsociety. As Elliot learns more about Mr. Robot and joins his movement, he begins to confront the demons of his past, particularly his relationship with his late father.

American Dad!

Today, it's clear that animated shows are not only for children. Despite the success of "The Simpsons," adult animation did not become widely popular until the late 1990s, when Seth MacFarlane helped to change this outdated stereotype with his wildly popular animated comedy "Family Guy." Although "Family Guy" is often cited as the animated show that changed television, MacFarlane's follow-up, "American Dad!," is a much better series overall.

Similar to "Invincible," "American Dad!" offers searing commentary on patriotism, popular culture, and idealism. The series follows the adventures of CIA employee Stan Smith (MacFarlane), his dutiful wife Francine (Wendy Schaal), his strong-willed daughter Hayley (Rachael MacFarlane), his geeky son Steve (Scott Grimes), Hayley's boyfriend Jeff (Jeff Fischer), and their idiosyncratic alien friend Roger (MacFarlane). Although "American Dad!" is just as funny as "Family Guy," it also includes more serious moments that should appeal to "Invincible" fans, too.

Commando Cody: Sky Marshal Of The Universe

It's amazing to think about how much the superhero genre has changed over the past century. "Invincible" is just one of many examples of great superhero stories that are not based on properties from Marvel or DC Comics. Although superhero movies did not become widely popular until the release of "Superman: The Movie" in 1978, these stories were already very successful on television. A series that is as subversive as "Invincible" would not exist if it was not for the precedent set by these early superhero adventures.

As such, "Invincible" fans might enjoy watching some of these older shows to see how much these types of stories have evolved. "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" was first released theatrically as a serial, but later aired as a TV series. The science fiction adventure, which debuted all the way back in 1953, follows the exploits of Commando Cody (Judd Holdren), a masked hero who protects Earth from an extraterrestrial threat. It's worth watching as a companion piece to "Invincible," both because it's charming on its own, but also because it's fascinating to see just how far things have come.

Read this next: The 15 Best Batman: The Animated Series Episodes

The post Shows Like Invincible You'll Want to Binge Right Now appeared first on /Film.

John Romero, one of the brains behind Doom, is working on another first-person shooter, Romero Games announced today. In a tweet, the independent studio founded by Romero and his wife Brenda Romero said it will be teaming up with a major publisher to develop the game and will be using an “original, new IP." 

Few other details were revealed about the upcoming title, which will be the first title from Romero Games since Brenda's 2020 strategy game Empire of Sin. We do know that it will be powered by Unreal Engine 5. The studio mentioned that it is recruiting staff at all levels to help build the game, particularly people with UE5 experience.

The Galway-based studio isn’t revealing much else about the game. In the FAQ section of its website, the question “What can you tell us about the new shooter?” appears first. “We can confirm that it’s new, that it’s a shooter and that we’re making it with a major publisher. Otherwise, it’s way too early to share any other information on it. We’re grateful for your interest, though,” the studio writes in response.

It’s only been a few months since Epic Games released UE5 to developers, and we’ve already seen a number of new, promising game announcements — though we won't see most of them until later on in 2022 or 2023. Fans of Romero's work will likely have to remain patient for this latest title, and it's unclear where whether it will take precedence over Sigil 2, which Romero Games announced last year but which still lacks a release date.

Correction 7/19/22 5:51pm:Empire of Sin has now been appropriately attributed to Brenda Romero.

Arkane Studios’ back catalogue shows a team that's constantly growing, changing and learning from their past – something that has never been clearer than in their most recent game, Deathloop. The studio’s latest feels at once unique and distinct – and yet clearly carries that Arkane DNA, which has been fine-tuned with each successive release. It's an ethos encapsulated by the game’s own time loop, in which protagonist Colt Vahn relives the same day again and again as he searches for a way to break free of it - an idea that was, among other things, designed to encourage something hardcore Arkane fans had been doing already – replaying the game over and over again.

While Dishonored had gently suggested repeat playthroughs with its kill/non-lethal runs, plenty of players still called it a day at the end of their first playthrough. Deathloop needed a more direct approach, its developers tell us.

Read more

The post Next Exit – Fantasia Review (4/5) appeared first on Heaven of Horror.

Coming from Epic Pictures and having its world premiere during the opening night of the Fantasia Film Festival, POLARIS tells a revenge story set against an endless snowy landscape. Taking place in 2144, in a land known as Frozen World, few have survived the freezing temperatures. One survivor is a girl named Sumi (Viva Lee), who was raised by a bear and is able to bring hope from the stars. Director KC Carthew awakens the audience to an immersive experience as we visually experience the unforgiving climate as well as the fear (and tenacity) of a girl who will do anything to protect her friends.

The film begins with Sumi and her companion (a giant polar bear) romping through the snow. There is no hierarchy of pet and owner in the wilderness, and in fact, the polar bear serves more as a parent or guardian to the young Sumi. The pair live in a snowy landscape where the cold and the elements do not seem to bother either of them. And because the movie was filmed in the Yukon, the director has endless scenery to race through. Sumi finds comfort in sprawling out in the fluffy snow with her equally white and fluffy friend. The opening hints at a post-apocalyptic land where discarded cars sit in piles and stay mostly obscured by the snow, while the animal-skin-clad remaining humans hide among the useless vehicles.

The communication occurs mostly through yelling and grunts, as Sumi never gained human speech. However, she appears very fluent in the languages of the local wildlife. She exchanges words with the animals and even trees as she goes about her perfectly normal day. However, her blissful existence becomes shattered when Sumi barbarically loses her polar bear buddy and suddenly the snowy world is no longer her playground filled with fun and friends. She becomes hungry and scared, which also hints that the bear provided more than companionship. She knows she must follow the Polaris star, but she cannot make the journey alone.

Thankfully, the elderly Dee (Muriel Dutil) takes in Sumi and offers her food and a place to stay safe. With the old woman’s help, Sumi finds Frozen Girl (Khamisa Wilsher), a badly wounded woman encased in green armor. The villains of the film, the Morad hunters rely on brutality and appear to kill without reason, and now they plan to kill Sumi and her new friends. Sumi and Frozen Girl escape into the frozen wasteland, but Dee is not so lucky. So now, Sumi must protect Frozen Girl and bring the incapacitated woman to safety before the hunters find them.

Even when other characters communicate with each other, the audience will not understand any of the dialogue because the language was created for the movie. The film does not rely on subtitles at all, but instead, we must experience the world through the eyes and ears of Sumi. She never learned how to communicate with humans, so we must rely on visual cues to understand relationships and life-saving objectives. While this method of storytelling creates a more rushed approach which does help create a sense of urgency, it also hinders the development of the characters’ relationships.

The costumes and technical aspects give the film a Mad Max feel with the mix of primal and mechanical. One scene shows two of the characters racing on show mobiles, but both machines come equipped with antlers or horns as if the rivals are both riding their noble steeds into battle. However, the film also holds quite a bit of mysticism and hope, so the journey of the main characters also holds some similarities with The Wizard of Oz. POLARIS is a bloody post-apocalyptic version of Oz (so do not confuse this for a family friendly movie), but the story and the driving theme still exist. Sumi needs an eye. Frozen Girl needs a heart. While they both want to go home, they also desperately need a human connection to help them physically and mentally survive.

Despite some of the issues with a rushed narrative, the physical commitment given by the actors (especially Lee) brings an intense amount of emotion despite the film being void of a recognizable language. And while many readers might feel an eagerness to see POLARIS, I highly recommend waiting to experience the film on the big screen. The vastness of the landscape would lose too much of its power if viewed on anything smaller.

The post [Fantasia 2022 Review] POLARIS appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

HBO's behind-the-scenes videos help clarify exactly how Hale uses flies this season.

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "André The Giant"

Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max

The Pitch: André René Roussimoff dazzled the world as André the Giant, a French professional wrestler and actor who towered over his opponents with his larger-than-life stature. Called "The Eighth Wonder of the World," André became a household celebrity as people all across the globe were fascinated by this living giant. As he gained more and more notoriety, André was plagued with a multitude of health issues, many stemming from merely existing in a world that wasn't built for someone of his size. Due to his unbelievable physique, André became a living legend, with the myth of his existence often overshadowing the real life human being underneath the singlet and wild hair. Roussimoff was a fascinating marvel by sheer will of existence, but the fact he could actually wrestle, and could throw men across the ring like rag dolls, turned him into a Goliath God among mere mortals. In this gripping documentary from HBO Sports, "André The Giant" gives an unflinching look at the truth behind the life of André the Giant, and remains one of the best (although imperfect) wrestling documentaries ever made.

Why It's Essential Viewing

Thanks to the internet allowing a view into celebrity lives unlike ever before, André the Giant very well may be the last great folk hero. The image of Roussimoff was titanic in nature by virtue of his size, wearing 22 size shoes, with hands that could cover an adult man's entire face, and a towering height rumored to be 7'4" before his numerous back surgeries, but everything else about him was also notoriously huge. He could throw around the 6-foot-8 Big John Studd like nothing, could easily drink a case of wine as a pre-game warm-up, and was said to rip farts that could clear out a whole room. There was no such thing as "go big or go home," because when it comes to André the Giant, big is home.

Unfortunately, this meant that the circumstances which led to his colossal size were ignored. Roussimoff was born with acromegaly, a rare condition where the body produces too much growth hormone, causing body tissues and bones to grow more quickly. Not only did André spend much of his life in the physically demanding and taxing world of professional wrestling, but he had to travel without any proper accommodations. "It'd be like having to sit on baby furniture for your entire life," Hulk Hogan describes. As much as André was beloved the world over, he was also seen as a "freak of nature" by those who were unfamiliar with him. In the doc, "Mean" Gene Okerlund recounts a few touching instances where he confesses André would be brought to tears by some of the hurtful comments from strangers, but he'd never let the public see him cry.

'It's Not My Fault Being The Biggest And The Strongest'

It's important to acknowledge that WWE and Vince McMahon had a hand in this documentary, in the sense that Vince McMahon is interviewed and HBO obviously needed the permission of WWE to use archival footage that they owned. If you don't know anything about Vince McMahon, think of a billionaire comic book villain and you're in the right ballpark. The decline of André's health and well-being is portrayed in this documentary as an inevitable result of his genetic anomaly and self-medication through alcohol, which is true, but it ignores the way the company's working conditions likely also contributed to his untimely death. As he said as Fezzik in "The Princess Bride," it wasn't his fault that he was "the biggest and the strongest," but it was absolutely the fault of his employers for not keeping him safe ... and yes, that does include putting him in the match against Hulk Hogan at "Wrestlemania III." I said what I said.

André the Giant's legacy is one that sounds more apt for storybook characters, but the "André the Giant" documentary allows us all to get to know and love the man behind the myth.

Read this next: The 50 Best Documentaries You Can Watch On Netflix Right Now (July 2022)

The post The Daily Stream: André the Giant Documentary Proves He Truly Was the Eighth Wonder of the World appeared first on /Film.

US Democrats have urged the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to crack down on deceptive practices in the Virtual Private Network (VPN) industry, The Verge has reported. In an open letter, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) cited research indicating that three-quarters of the most popular VPNs "misrepresented their products," leading consumers to a false sense of security.

The news comes in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade that allows states to ban abortions. That may lead people to sign up for VPN services, but Wyden and Eshoo expressed concerns about the level of privacy they can actually expect.

 "Advocacy groups have... found that leading VPN services intentionally misrepresent the functionality of their product and fail to provide adequate security to their users," they said, citing research from Consumer Reports. "We’re highly concerned that this deceptive advertising is giving abortion-seekers a false sense of security when searching for abortion-related care or information, putting them at a higher risk of prosecution."

The letter notes that "there are a lack of practical tools" to audit security claims made by VPN providers, allowing them to advertise data that may be incorrect. They also asked the FTC to develop a brochure informing anyone seeking an abortion about online privacy and the risks and benefits of using a VPN service.

"With abortion illegal or soon to be illegal in 13 states and severely restricted in many more, these abusive and exploitative data practices are simply unacceptable," according to the letter. "We urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take immediate action... to curtail abusive and deceptive data practices in companies providing VPN services to protect internet users seeking abortions."

Stemming from my article last week noting how Linux 5.19 Git broke Intel Alder Lake P graphics support due to requiring new firmware while not retaining backwards compatibility with the existing Intel GuC firmware, a solution is still being worked on prior to Linux 5.19 final whether it be a revert or the proposed patch working on GuC v69/70 firmware compatibility. Linux firmware guidelines are also being proposed to ensure kernel developers in the future don't try to break firmware support guarantees...

Scientists anticipated that the James Webb Space Telescope would sustain repeated micrometeoroid strikes throughout its lifetime, slowly degrading the image quality. The first significant strike occurred, it hit last May. Around one strike per month is anticipated; however, the frequency of hits that cause actual damage wasn't stated in the article. — Read the rest

Sometime in the '90s -- I couldn't have been no more than 4 years old -- my big brother brought home this fighting game called "Mortal Kombat" for the Sega Genesis. My favorite character quickly became Liu Kang. In my young, impressionable eyes, the character's martial arts moveset and his high-pitched "Whaaaaah!" and "Wha-taaaah!" every time he connected on one of his flying kicks made him way cooler than the rest of the playable characters. I put to memory the controls to executing one of those flying kicks and obnoxiously repeated the move over and over again until I reached the point where no one wanted to play against me.

That video game character was my introduction to the martial arts movie star and pop culture icon Bruce Lee. The legendary figure was so iconic by the time I entered the world that his image and likeness were serving as inspiration for the creation of a number of video game characters, and Lui Kang was just one of many (Marshall Law from "Tekken'' became another one of my favorites). In my adulthood Bruce Lee remained a mythical figure, the personification of martial arts with his high-pitched kiai, white wife beater underneath the traditional navy-blue tunic, and matching trousers.

I didn't begin to understand the human behind the myth until I watched ESPN's 2020 documentary "Be Water." The film's director, Bao Nguyen, made a concerted effort to humanize Lee. "I wanted to do the film because Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, a global figure," Nguyen told The Film Experience in 2021. "But because he's those things, people don't really see him as a person, or as a human being."

Controversy Surrounding Who Bruce Lee Really Was

Before ESPN's released "Be Water" as a part of the network's "30 for 30" series, Bruce Lee's personality had become a hot topic for debate. Let some tell it, the "Fist of Fury'' star was an arrogant, ethnocentric person who looked down on white Americans. In an interview with Cityonfire.com, American karateka and kickboxer Joe Lewis (not the boxer) said Lee originally asked him to play the antagonist and world-class fighter Colt in 1972's "Way of the Dragon." Lewis, who is white, said he turned down the role that would later be given to an unknown Chuck Norris because Lee had specific intentions for his inclusion in the film. He explained:

"[Bruce Lee] used to tell me his agenda when we were training about how he wanted to show the world that the Oriental was the superior fighter. He always used the term 'by beating the Caucasian,' and asked if I wanted to be in a movie with him. I said no then, as I did later on for "The Way of the Dragon." He then would laugh and say he'd get Chuck [Norris] instead and how he'd enjoy beating the hell out of him."

Quentin Tarantino's Portrayal Of Bruce Lee Draws Backlash

Director Quentin Tarantino depicted Bruce Lee in an unflattering light in his 2019 comedy-drama film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." In a cameo, Lee (portrayed by Mike Moh) delivers an overbearing speech on the set of the TV series "The Green Hornet." He says he would cripple Muhammad Ali if the two icons ever fought, then proceeded to challenge an American stuntman, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) to a fight. Booth ends up throwing Lee back-first into a car in embarrassing fashion.

Tarantino received backlash for this depiction, but the director defended his portrayal in an interview on Joe Rogan's podcast, saying Lee had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen. "He was always hitting them with his feet; he was always tagging -- it's called tagging when you hit a stuntman for real," the director explained. "And he was always tagging them with his fist." Tarantino said it had gotten to a point where stuntmen refused to work with the actor.

Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter blasting Tarantino, writing that she was "really f****ing tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was." She added: "I'm tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an a**hole when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and '70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of color."

In "Be Water," Bao Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, bridges the disconnect between who Bruce Lee was and how he was perceived, especially by Hollywood.

Bruce Lee Had A Tough Time Breaking Into Hollywood

"Be Water" dives into Bruce Lee's upbringing. He was born in San Francisco, California but spent his childhood in Hong Kong. He took up martial arts at age 13 for self-defense after a group of boys jumped him at school. By 18, he was in so much trouble in Hong Kong that his family decided he needed a fresh start and sent him packing to Seattle, Washington with $100 in his pocket. Determined to succeed without his father's money, Lee worked as a waiter while attending school and working to start his own martial arts practice.

He struggled to find his way in a predominantly white country, so much so that he tried to mask his accent. He detested the harmful Asian stereotypes in American films. The 1961 romance comedy "Breakfast at Tiffany's" especially offended him. When he tried to break into Hollywood, he resisted any role he saw demeaning to his heritage and culture. He landed the role of Kato in "The Green Hornet" and had to fight for speaking lines. Eventually, he resorted to creating his own roles.

In an industry where Asian characters received the short end of the stick, Lee wanted to balance the scale and make films in which an Asian protagonist came out on top. His yearning for cultural respect explains his perceived cocky demeanor and desire to cast Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris as the villain and beat them in "The Way of the Dragon." Bao Nguyen made sure he highlighted Lee's struggles.

"Because he faced a lot of challenges, a lot of obstacles, being an Asian in America at that time," Nguyen told JumpCut Online in 2021. "I wanted to present those challenges to an audience that maybe didn't know about them."

Read this next: The 50 Best Documentaries You Can Watch On Netflix Right Now (July 2022)

The post How ESPN's Be Water Tried to Bring Humanity Back to the Mythic Bruce Lee appeared first on /Film.

(Disclaimer: I am a transhumanist skeptic these days, not to mention a singularity curmudgeon and a critic of Mars colonization, but I still find these ideas nice to chew on sometimes.)

Humans are social animals, and it seems reasonable to assume that any transhuman condition we can wrap our minds around will also be a social one for most of its participants.

Society implies a social contract, that is: we grant one another rights and in return make the concession of respecting each others' rights, in order that our own rights be observed and respected.

And violations of rights tend to be at the root of our concept of crime and injustice—at least, any modern concept of crime once we discard religious justifications and start trying to figure things out from first principles.

Which leads me to ask: in a transhumanist society—go read Accelerando, or Glasshouse, or The Rapture of the Nerds—what currently recognized crimes need to be re-evaluated because their social impact has changed? And what strange new crimes might universally be recognized by a society with, for example, mind uploading, strong AI, or near-immortality?

SF authors are paid to think our way around the outside of ideas, so it's always worth raiding the used fiction bin for side-effects and consequences. Here's qntm's take on the early years of mind uploading--the process of digitizing the connectome of a human brain in order to treat it as software: I strongly suggest you read Lena (if you haven't previously done so) before continuing. It's a short story, structured as a Wikipedia monograph, and absolutely horrifying by implication, for various reasons.

Let me give you that link again: Lena. (Go read: it's short, good fiction, and the rest of this essay will still be here when you get back.)

Mind uploading makes certain assumptions. (Notably: mind/body dualism is a bust, there is no supernatural element to consciousness, also that we can resolve the structures involved in neurological information processing with sufficient resolution to be useful, and that the connectivity and training of the weighted neural network in the wetware is what consciousness emerges from.)

Uploading also implies that consciousness is replicable and fungible, which in turn implies our legal systems can't cope without extensive modification because we rely on an implicit definition of humanity which at that point will be obsolete, as the treatment of MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo), aka "Miguel" in the story, demonstrates: MMAcevedo is considered by some to be the "first immortal", and by others to be a profound warning of the horrors of immortality.

Historically, our identity has been linear: there is a start, there is a terminus, along the way we are indivisible, although we undergo change over time (and may lose or gain significant portions of our selves—for example, most people retain few or no memories of their life before a point some time between the ages of 3 and 5 years old).

The premature termination of a human life is an irrevocable act, and to deliberately inflict it on someone is seen as a crime (various degrees of murder).

Because our identity is indivisible and of limited duration, time is a rivalrous resource to us: we have to choose what to do with it, or be subject to someone else's choices. (One of the reasons why imprisonment is seen as a punishment—to which we are averse—is the total loss of opportunities to choose what to do with the time we lose. (Yes, there are other reasons: let's ignore them and focus on what this might signify for the posthuman condition.)

There's a fascinating sequence early in Linda Nagata's space opera novel Vast that throws the implications of alienated labour for uploaded minds into stark relief: if you're confronted with a mind-numbingly tedious task that needs human-level cognitive supervision for a period of years or decades, why not divide your time up in chunks and discard the boring ones? You could set up a watchdog timer to reset your uploaded mind to a baseline state every 3 minutes, unless an exception occurs—an emergency that makes you hit the dead man's handle in your environment, at which point the subjective passage of time resumes. In Vast, a human mind is needed to supervise a slower-than-light starship on a voyage that takes centuries during which nothing much happens. The crew use this three minute reset cycle to avoid experiencing tedium: subjectively, they condense the entire voyage into 180 seconds. (If you've driven long distance you'll probably have wished for the ability to push a button and find yourself at your destination. Right?)

Other authors found other angles on this question: the first book in Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur trilogy (The Quantum Thief starts with the exact opposite—a thief sentenced to spend a subjective eternity in an escape-proof prison, as a punishment of sorts. Spoiler: he escapes. How he does it and why he was there is the start of yet more musing on what might constitute crimes in a realm populated entirely by uploaded minds. In particular Rajaniemi dives headlong into two really disturbing questions: firstly, the potential for eternal enslavement such a setting offers (never mind perpetual torment), and secondly, what it does to the post-Enlightenment social concept of human equality.

We are all living in the afterglow of a sociological big bang that took place in 1649—the execution of Charles I, who was variously King of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland at the time of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms: his trial and execution by a court--appointed by a parliament of the people—shattered the then-prevalent understanding among European/Christian communities that Kings were appointed by God to rule on Earth. A corollary of the Divine Right of Kings is that some people really aren't equal--monarchs, and by extension, aristocrats, have more rights (by religious decree) than other people, and some categories (chattel slavery springs to mind: also the status of women and children) have less. But if the People could try the King for crimes against the state, then what next?

"What next" turned out to be a troublesome precedent. Charles I's younger son James II tried to walk back the uneasy settlement with parliament and got yeeted into exile in 1688-90 as a result, with the resounding and lasting outcome that the powers of the Crown in English and Scottish law was now vested in Parliament, and the head beneath the fancy hat was merely a figurehead who could be sacked if he (or she) acted up. If the monarch wasn't divinely appointed, what set him apart? Numerous philosophical maunderings later it was the French king's turn, and also time for the US Bill of Rights--which, while based on the 1698 English Bill of Rights, implicitly adopted the pernicious logic that there could be no king, no nobility, only free citizens. (Pay no attention to the slaves—for now.)

Here's the thing: our current prevailing political philosophy of human rights and constitutional democracy is invalidated if we have mind uploading/replication or super-human intelligence. (The latter need not be AI; it could be uploaded human minds able to monopolize sufficient computing substrate to get more thinking done per unit baseline time than actual humans can achieve.) Some people are, once again, clearly superior in capability to born-humans. And other persons can be ruthlessly exploited for their labour output without reward, and without even being allowed to know that they're being exploited. Again, see also the subtext of Ken MacLeod's The Corporation Wars trilogy: in which the war between the neoreactionaries and the post-Enlightenment democrats has been won ... by the wrong side.

The second book in The Quantum Thief trilogy, The Fractal Prince, gives us a ghastly look at a world where genocide and enslavement are carried out by forcibly abducting and uploading the last born-human survivors—is it actually genocide if the body is dead but the mind is still there? (It's a new version of Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius, of course.) It may not be genocide in the currently accepted legal sense of the term—the forcible extermination of a cultural group or of the people who are members of such a group—but it's certainly a comparable abomination.

Our intuitions about crimes against people (and humanity) are based on a set of assumptions about the parameters of personhood that are going to be completely destroyed if mind uploading turns out to be possible. And the only people I see doing much thinking about this (in public) are either SF authors or people pushing a crankish ideology based on 19th century Russian orthodox theology.

Surely we can do better?

Moving is probably one of the most stressful things you can do, especially when moving across any border. Even more so when you've got a child, a pet, and your relationship with your partner is strained. That's without factoring in being taken hostage by a band of desperate thieves.

As Dusk Falls is an interactive, multiplayer story with a host of characters, choices, and QTEs events that branch the story in a variety of ways. At first, with its constant reminders that you can play on your phone, As Dusk Falls might remind you of the short-lived PlayStation Playlink games that had you voting for outcomes against shoddy, strange, or experimental games. Thankfully, As Dusk Falls has much more than a mobile voting system to keep you invested.

As you may have imagined, the story centers on a family moving across America in the late 90s and taking an unexpected stop at Two Rocks, Arizona, before all hell breaks loose. Whether or not these are accurate portrayals of Arizona or the 90s, neither of these things actually exist. You play as Vince, the father whose life was turned upside down thanks to corporate capitalism, with a strained relationship with your wife, father, and potentially daughter too, trying to survive well outside anyone's comfort zone.

The pace and beats of the story are fantastic and feel like a modern classic thriller. Each time you think you get a handle on the situation, someone throws another wrench, or bullet, into the mix, and you're left reeling again. While some of the decisions you're forced to make throughout the campaign are easy, all of them carry enough weight to grip you as the consequences unfurl.

But the story doesn't entirely play out in the sleepy little motel or with just Vince. Some sections of each chapter are devoted to flashbacks that allow you to discover and develop the characters' relationships. These are often intriguing, subtly or overtly changing the dynamics back in the present of the motel. Other times, you play as Jay, the youngest of the bandits holed up with Vince and his family. What decisions you make during these flashbacks feed into his mood and actions at the motel while you're controlling Vince.

And there are many options for how this will all play out. At the end of each chapter, you're shown the timeline you traversed both in the past and present. It's a meandering weave of choices and consequences, with so many dark spots of undiscovered potential. Most games of this nature have only superficial decisions that don't disembark from the main narrative, but As Dusk Falls is happy to spin you out as far as you can, bringing all the timelines back together for inevitable, unmovable scenes. The nature of the hostage situation works remarkably well, meaning that you're not in control enough to change the big setpieces but still empowered to make some pretty drastic changes. And most of the time is tense and exciting to explore these difficult choices and weigh up survival, loyalty, and trust against each other.

Sometimes though, things don't quite add up as you'll expect. This is a common problem in any game with dialogue choices where nuance can be lost between the player and game. Sometimes you make a choice for a very particular reason, but Vince, or Jay, vocalise something entirely different. It's jarring but almost impossible to avoid and happens surprisingly rarely throughout As Dusk Falls, which almost makes the moments it does occur all the more disjointed. Nevertheless, the story is so well told, intriguing, and varied with each playthrough that these moments are lost to the grand machinations of the narrative.

While the story is a masterpiece of complexity and payoff, the actual gameplay is beautifully simple. As Dusk Falls explains the whole thing in one eager page when you first begin the game: in some cases, you will wheel a cursor around the environment looking for something to interact with; other times, you will choose dialogue or actions from a selection, and in action sequences, you complete quick time events to prevail. The entire game utilizes only the mouse when played on PC.

The dialogue and choice options stand out in the nearly flawless execution of the gameplay. These are nearly always accompanied by a timer and force to make desperate, difficult choices with lightning determination. But sometimes, patience is key. Sometimes, waiting for a moment and collecting your thoughts will reveal another option. It might not be the one you want to choose, but these hidden choices reflect a player and character searching for a better solution. And it feels great when they allow you to take a breath and make a smarter, cleverer, or sneakier move.

If you've seen a trailer for As Dusk Falls, one key aspect has not yet been addressed: the art style. As Dusk Falls utilizes a gorgeous hand-painted effect, allowing for deeply expressive faces, beautiful environments, and generally fantastic snapshots. But that is what most of the game is, snapshots. These portraits and characters and the world don't move fluidly but slide between a series of still images instead. It brilliantly highlights all the essential aspects of the mood and action, but it is hard not to be distracted initially.

For those that fall into the story, you'll quickly get a sense of the rhythm of the showreel and enjoy each change of sense and subtle emotive expression. As Dusk Falls is a fantastic game, filled with secrets and surprises and entirely available to explore. You don't have to master anything to unlock everything As Dusk Falls has to offer, save for a curious mind. More so than that, As Dusk Falls gives you meaningful, varied, and genuinely exciting choices and consequences from beginning to end. And if you want an intriguing adventure, flawed characters, and the chance to repeated drop a pager, you couldn't do much better than this.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

The post As Dusk Falls Review – A Masterpiece Rises by Rosh Kelly appeared first on Wccftech.

Cats are masters of their domain. As an owner of two tortoiseshells myself, they've unlocked routes in our house I never knew existed, using the tiny lip of our fridge as a gateway to the top of our kitchen cupboards, bed frames as launch pads to the middle bar of our sash windows (not even the actual window sill, those daft beasts), and don't even get me started on how they managed to get onto the top of our 2cm wide shower rail that one time.

Stray, BlueTwelve Studio's cat 'em up explorathon, puts you in the paws of a similarly savvy feline protagonist. The cat itself is a marvel of digital observation, fully inhabiting all of the best cat-isms I know and love. You can scratch the backs of sofas and knead and shred carpets with alternate squeezes of the trigger buttons, meow at will, lap from dripping water bowls, topple piles of carefully stacked books and push paint cans off the edge of ledges - and, if you leave them idle long enough, they'll stretch and catch flies too tiny to be caught by the human eye. You can also play a mean game of billiards, much to the annoyance of the local robots. I wouldn't go as far as saying it loosened my jaw quite as much as when I first set eyes on Trico from The Last Guardian, all told, but I reckon if BlueTwelve had the same kind of budget and scale as GenDesign and Sony's Japan Studio did back then, then Stray's cat would be every bit the equal of that famous cat-bird-chimera.

Read more