Cinemas can be transcendent places. Sitting elbow-to-elbow with your fellow man and basking in the glow of other human imaginations? Joy itself. As long as everybody behaves. When a few simple rules are followed (phones away, shoes on, no talking, stinky food, or stretching your legs through the gap between the seats in front to rest your stockinged feet next to your neighbour’s nose) it all works like a dream. When those rules aren’t followed, then it’s very easy to wonder why you’ve shelled out £15 for the privilege of hearing your fellow man rustle crisps in the dark and seeing…

Den of Geek is a media partner of Haunted House FearFest. A crisp autumn weekend is the perfect time to relax in an old and potentially haunted theater for a marathon of horror films and video games. Now in its third year, Haunted House FearFest hosted its biggest festival yet on the last weekend of October, in the heart of New York City and before a sea of bloodthirsty fans. The three-day event showcased independent short and feature-length films, TV shows, and even video games—all highlighting the broad scope of today’s horror landscape.  Renee Huff, the festival owner and executive…

This month’s 40th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street offers all of us a chance to dwell upon the unforgiving passage of time and celebrate one of horror’s greatest franchises. Back in a moment when slashers and their sequels were still trying to prove they could do more than corrupt youths, A Nightmare on Elm Street showed how big such movies could become, and how they could use their popularity as an excuse to explore increasingly elaborate ideas.  … And few aspects of the Freddy Krueger franchise exhibit the evolution of the series better than its kills. While it…

This article contains spoilers for Venom: The Last Dance. We. Are. Venom. Those three words really capture the appeal of the Venom franchise, a trio of films that somehow, despite being a Spider-Man spinoff that lacks Spider-Man and despite being made by Sony, managed to be huge hits. Those three words, delivered by Tom Hardy in an outrageous voice, point to the warm-hearted romantic comedy vibes that make the movies so much fun. The other appeal to the Venom movies have been seeing just how hard they commit to the symbiote concept. For those who didn’t read Marvel Comics in…

In 1936, Universal Pictures was at the forefront of the American horror genre. The studio built by Carl Laemmle, a man who did not personally care for spooky stories, established its reputation in the silent era, in part, on some of the most iconic chillers starring Lon Chaney Sr. And in the 1930s, they defined what still remains our image of Halloween decorations via classic monster movies like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932). But by the mid-point in the decade, conventional wisdom suggested horror had run its course. British censors outright banned Universal’s Bela Lugosi and Boris…

Family and legacy have always been important parts of the Skywalker Saga in Star Wars. The sequel trilogy especially expanded on this idea in interesting ways. Rey (Daisy Ridley) was revealed to be the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), but decided to carry on the Skywalker legacy instead. Meanwhile her counterpart in the Force, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the son of Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), decided to carry on the legacy of his grandfather, Darth Vader, instead. In the movies, we don’t get to see much regarding Ren’s posthumous relationship with his grandfather. We…

If there’s one thing Hollywood loves, it’s an inexpensive intellectual property ripe for the optioning. That’s why, for a moment there, it really looked like creepypastas were going to be the future of cinema. For the uninitiated, a creepypasta is simply a scary story crafted for the internet. The noodly name derives from the memeable blocks of text known as “copypastas” that get copied, pasted, and shared across multiple forums on the web. The horror version of a “copypasta” is therefore dubbed a “creepypasta.” Creepypastas have been a spooky season internet staple long before they were even known as creepypastas.…

This article contains Conclave spoilers. For many viewers who think they recognize a bit of foreshadowing when they hear it, having Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) demand to know what would be the chosen papal name of Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) seemed to promise a likely finale: the reluctant and doubtful priest we’ve been following this whole time becomes pontiff and heir to the throne of St. Peter. After all, as is wrongly said more than once about Bellini, isn’t the man who does not want power the most deserving of it? Yet if you saw Conclave this weekend, then you…

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction,” intones Christian Bale in the voiceover that fills American Psycho, director Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. “But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.” Bateman’s description of himself is something that movie fans might need to keep in mind, given that Italian director…

Edward Berger is having a wonderful, extended moment in cinema. Despite walking across what appeared to be moviemaking holy ground when he remade—or more accurately reinterpreted—All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022, he came out on the other side with a gut-punch of a film which became one of the rare instances where a foreign-language movie was nominated by the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Berger for Best Adapted Screenplay. Now his follow-up arrives this weekend as one of the most buzzed about pictures of the fall, a surprisingly tense and even explosive thriller set in the bowels…

Conclave is a movie rooted in the medieval. This is evident from one of the very first scenes in which men adorned in red robes and white collars scurry hushedly across the Sistine Chapel. It is here that we find Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) reluctantly assuming his role of the Dean of the College of Cardinals—which means he is in charge of overseeing the next papal conclave that will elect a new Pope to the seat of St. Peter. By design, this world looks positively ancient with its arcane customs and rituals. Yet any viewer who might be feeling…

Star Wars seems to have become a revolving door for writers and directors as of late. Whether projects simply change hands or get scrapped entirely, fewer and fewer movies have safely made it from announcement to production since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Unfortunately, it looks like the upcoming Rey film, currently going by the working title Star Wars: New Jedi Order, has once again joined the ranks of Star Wars movies trapped in the development cycle with writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) leaving the project. Knight signed onto the film in March 2023, after the film’s original screenwriters…

This article contains Venom: The Last Dance spoilers. For many, losing their significant other can feel a lot like the end of the world. But for Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, it could be literally that after Venom: The Last Dance comes to a close. When we leave Hardy’s erstwhile superhero, his better half—the slimy, gooey, raven-black symbiote who calls itself Venom—is dead. Probably. Venom definitely seems to sacrifice himself when the symbiote assimilates and destroys all of the bad juju from a symbiotic tracker sent to Earth to hunt him down. In the aftermath, most of the other symbiotes in…

One thing was clear to Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel back before Venom’s black gooey goodness ever slithered off the comic book page: Venom 3, or Venom: The Last Dance as it became known, needed to be the end of the story. “We always knew this was the conclusion,” writer-director Marcel explains while stepping into the Den of Geek studio alongside Venom 3 co-star Rhys Ifans. “We knew that we were signed up for three movies, or that Tom was signed up for three movies, and that there would be a three-movie arc, and that this is where we would…

“We’ve never seen a force like this,” says Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) in the final trailer for the HBO prequel series Dune: Prophecy. That comment is delivered amidst images of impressive forces, including the sandworms of Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit witches, and Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong). But the most striking image might be the most human, that of an arm covered by boiling skin. Although the trailer doesn’t say for sure, readers of Frank Herbert‘s Dune novels have a good idea of what they’re seeing. That appears to be the effects of a weapon called a stone burner, one…

About 90 percent of the enjoyment in Deadpool & Wolverine hinges on knowing references about the recent history of Hollywood and the current state of superhero movies. And none of those winking asides hit as hard as the moment where Blade, played once again by Wesley Snipes, does something cool, looks at the camera, and says, “There’s only been one Blade. There’s only gonna be one Blade.” As always, the Daywalker is correct, as it was announced that Marvel will no longer continue to try and ice skate uphill. The long in-development and beleaguered Blade film starring Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali…

Jason Blum is skeptical of folks who claim they know they have a hit while watching the dailies. As far as he’s concerned, it has never happened in his career, even after he smiled the first time he viewed a playback of child actor Amie Donald pirouetting down a hallway and grabbing a machete. It was a darkly funny moment that had just been shot for director Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN, a film which would combine Donald’s movements with Jenna Davis’ vocal performance in order to create the vicious title character. But that this would be the birth of a thoroughly…

It’s cliché to lament about “the days when MTV played music videos,” but it’s true. Those were a magical time, and with all the countless music videos, there was a very specific subgenre that was peppered in for years. By that I mean the movie tie-in music video. Back then, to advertise both a new movie and its soundtrack, they would take one of the tracks and give it its own music video. It usually involved the musician performing their song with a narrative that loosely linked them to the movie’s story, and every few moments they would throw in…

The Wolf Man has always held a special place in Jason Blum’s heart. While, gun to his head, Dracula was his absolute favorite Universal Monster growing up, Lon Chaney Jr.’s depiction of poor, cursed Larry Talbot was pretty close behind. To this day, the filmmaker reminisces about watching the 1941 original with his mother. Perhaps that was one reason that when Blumhouse Productions first began entertaining the idea of reimagining some of the classic Universal Monsters for the 21st century, the Wolf Man remained high on the list. “It’s a project I’ve been passionate about for a very long time,…

New York Comic Con is an event filled with cosplay, merch, and plenty of fan interaction, but the annual convention also features plenty of big announcements coming from the television and film panels as well as activations to create a unique experience for attendees. If you weren’t able to make it to NYCC this year, we’ve got you covered with all of the most exciting news and memorable moments coming from this year’s gathering. Plus, a few exclusive tidbits we learned at our interview studio! Panels  The Future of the Star Trek Universe Star Trek was in full force at…