It sometimes feels like most of the 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code that have reportedly been sold since the novel’s 2003 release ended up in second-hand bookshops or on the sidewalk next to a sign that says “Free Books.” One of the biggest literary sensations ever now feels like a photo of that haircut you had in high school. It’s the kind of thing that can trigger vague memories of a different era while making you ask “what was I thinking?”  Yet the acclaim for 2004’s National Treasure, one of the earliest notable works that emulated The…

Debating about the best and worst Star Trek moments is a geek pastime that will endure until our sun grows cold or to the point where human beings have simply entered into a parallel universe in which Star Trek is real. But the extremes of best and worst lists sometimes exclude the more interesting truth about Star Trek stories; the moments that are just fine. Neither overtly bad nor exceedingly good, the majority of Trek, when you include most of the films, is merely okay. And perhaps the most okay-est of the okay Star Trek movies is the 1994 film…

No matter how you feel about the prequel series, there’s no denying the impact they’ve had on the Star Wars universe at large. The story of Anakin Skywalker and his master Obi-Wan Kenobi that we only briefly hear about in the original trilogy is finally brought to life in the three George Lucas-penned films. But it turns out that how this story began in The Phantom Menace was almost entirely different. Pretty much all Star Wars fans are familiar with how that movie plays out. A young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) are…

This article contains Heretic spoilers. Hugh Grant is the ultimate pompous mansplainer in Heretic, an unusual philosophical horror from writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Young Mormon women Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) visit the home of Mr. Reed (Grant) who has expressed an interest in learning more about the religion. It’s a stormy day and Reed’s wife, he explains, is just inside the kitchen making a blueberry pie. So the women reluctantly enter the house to discuss the Book of Mormon. But all, of course, is not what it seems. Reed’s theological bullying intensifies and…

Somehow, the Skywalker saga returned – at least potentially. Despite the mixed reviews the sequel trilogy received, the unclear current plans for a standalone Rey movie, and Lucasfilm’s current track record for announcing movies only to end up shelving them months or years later, it seems as though yet another filmmaker is set to throw their hat in the ring with a fresh Star Wars trilogy. Deadline reports that Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) is set to write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy, rumored to be Episodes 10-12 of the Skywalker saga. This hasn’t been confirmed…

Things are tense these days. The world is not as we might have known it, and no matter what your thoughts on recent events, we imagine you’re a bit exhausted. So join us as we look to recommend some possible escapes, at least for a couple of smiling hours. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) More than 70 years later, Singin’ in the Rain remains the one musical that even folks who hate musicals cannot help but smile about. A chipper and beguiling fantasy that, like the song says, only wants to “Make ‘Em Laugh,” Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s technicolor…

2018’s Venom will go down as a bizarre footnote in the history of superhero movies. Coming out when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was at its strongest, and the DC Comics Extended Universe hit a major snag with Justice League, Venom became a surprise success. Equal parts stupid and fun, it inspired Sony to not only make sequels, but also mine other Spider-Man-related characters to create their own cinematic universe. While Disney almost has a monopoly on Marvel properties now, there remains off to the side this bizarre pocket of movies about Morbius and Madame Web. They’re not part of the…

There has never been a fully faithful adaptation of the book Frankenstein. While that seminal 1818 novel is often credited with being the birth of science fiction, as well as one of the greatest works of Gothic literature ever penned, generally cinema’s popularization of the story has more to do with Universal Pictures and Boris Karloff under mountains of makeup than it does Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley). Conversely, the post-Enlightenment anxieties which she first dreamed up as a teenager on the shores of Lake Geneva have remained, as ever, on the page. Yet one cinematic offering, at least, made…

The character of Mr. Reed frightened Scott Beck and Bryan Woods years before they knew he looked like Hugh Grant. Dapper, erudite, and domineeringly cheerful in his condescension, their creation was meant to embody every suspicion, doubt, and perhaps ill thought that two lifelong friends from Iowa had about religion. And yet, when they got down to putting pen to paper, a realization occurred: How much about religion did they really know? When Beck and Woods began writing what became Heretic 12 or so years ago, they knew what their setup would be. Two young Mormon missionaries arrive on the…

Released at the apex of the first wave of Pokémania in 2000, the second Pokémon feature film put an exclamation point on a worldwide phenomenon. By the time Pokémon the Movie 2000 arrived to North American theaters in July of…well, 2000, Pokémon was already the biggest game in town. From the 1998 release of the video games Blue and Red to the ongoing run of the anime, to the successful launch of its trading card game, the Pokémon franchise didn’t need to sweeten the pot to get kids to show up en masse for the opening weekend of the second…

In 2012, they assembled to confront Loki and hordes of Chitauri aliens who were attacking New York City; in 2019 they assembled again to give Thanos and his extreme form of population control the spanking it deserved; and now in 2024, to many’s surprise—including perhaps the Disney executives who ran Scarlett Johansson’s name through the mud three years ago—the Avengers are back. And as they see it, they are confronting the gravest threat to America they’ve seen in their lifetimes: Donald J. Trump. That is at least one way to read the pointed, if light-footed and humor-leaning new political video…

Near the tailend of producer Walter Wanger’s Gabriel Over the White House, an American commander-in-chief sits side by side with the leader of an American gang. The visual and cultural cues of such a scenario might look unfamiliar to modern eyes, but the subtext being conveyed to audiences circa 1933 feels eerily familiar. The self-named Nick Diamond—who we learned earlier in the picture was born with the ethnic-sounding moniker of Antone Brilawski—presents himself as a man about town, a dapper gent with a smart suit and expensive cane. He even quotes the recently incarcerated Al Capone. And yet, the President…

When trying to describe his new movie Drop, Happy Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon found the scariest premise of all time. “This movie is like Twitter,” Landon tells Den of Geek at our New York Comic Con studio. “The movie touches on online culture, where you are being harassed or tormented by someone that you cannot see and cannot find, and cannot respond to.” Honestly, it was only a matter of time before someone made a horror movie about the most cursed hellsite on the internet. Barbarian, Open Windows, M3GAN, and AfrAId already showed the terrors of Air…

The thing—the one gnawing, irreconcilable thing—about religion is you never get to see “the truth,” which you’re told repeatedly exists just beyond your senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Instead you are asked to think of the answers as a great mystery someone else has solved for you, and you must take their word for it as a matter of faith. The appeal of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic is a little bit like that too. You don’t see what exactly is at the end of its central game, its own great mystery, but you’re left with the unwavering…

Love can come in many forms, and in horror movies, anything that has a beating heart can make for an affectionate partner. Think about it: hairy beasts, grotesque flies, glistening vampires, and other creatures have proven time and again to be better romantic partners than actual humans. Many of these entries are the perfect lover boys who gave definition to the horror romance subgenre, whether it be creatures who bite, claw, roar, growl, or what have you. You hear, fellas, you need to become as potent as Edward Cullen or Lisa Frankenstein’s monster!  In that vein, last weekend’s weekend’s Your…

There is something bleakly sinister about a serial killer thriller that begins with said killer “saving” a woman from suicide so that he can kill her himself. Such is the perverse opening sequence of Don’t Move, directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s nasty little genre piece which is blowing up on Netflix just in time for Halloween. Set in a gorgeous stretch of remote backwoods, Don’t Move is all about the cat and mouse moves between “Richard” (Finn Wittrock), the cat, and Iris (Kelsey Asbille), the mouse. In fact, Iris is a grieving mother who lost a child under tragic…

At the end of Dirty Harry, tough guy Inspector Harry Callahan guns down the Scorpio Killer. In 1971, audiences were primed to see a Zodiac Killer stand-in get so definitively taken down. But Callahan himself felt clear remorse for crossing a line. After killing Scorpio, Callahan tosses his badge into a murky pond and walks away, no longer fit to be a police officer. Despite the moral clarity Callahan shows in Dirty Harry, and when he goes up against rogue cops in the sequel Magnum Force, audiences loved the rough and tumble attitude embraced by Dirty Harry and The French…

From M.R. James’s lone academics, stalked by ancient horrors, to the grisly cases explored by the Fringe Division: the search goes on for answers to the questions most of us don’t dare ask. The truth is out there, somewhere. It always was. Twenty years before the X-Files were opened, another intrepid investigator was already on the case. Chasing down ghouls and ghosts, he was the scourge of vampires and werewolves: a thorn in the side of police chiefs and politicians. In a well-worn suit straight out of the ‘50s and his trademark hat, he looked – to loosely quote his…

This article contains spoilers for Venom: The Last Dance. “Your champion is fallen,” sneers the symbiote god Knull in the post-credit scene of Venom: The Last Dance. “The planets will be mine. The King in Black is awake. I will kill your world. Everyone will burn.” With each clipped line, the camera pans up a little bit more, from the black CGI sludge of Knull’s body to the white CGI sludge of Knull’s face. In the last second, Knull looks directly into the lens to growl at the audience, “And you will watch!” The scene raises a lot of questions,…

Five years since Joe and Anthony Russo unleashed Avengers: Endgame on the world, the pair are finally returning to the big sci-fi action genre, this time in a brand new world. But just like the Avengers, many of the heroes of this new world are… assembled. This weekend, audiences at MCM London got a first glimpse at just what that new film will look like. The new movie, inspired by artist Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel The Electric State, is coming to Netflix next year. But the Russos have been working on it since before Thanos had finished assembling the infinity…