It’s a bit of a mixed bag being a nun in The First Omen. One minute you’re enjoying smutty talk with the sisters while peeling potatoes, or jumping on a trampoline smoking a cig, and the next you’re at the center of a terrifying conspiracy which could change the world as we know it. A direct prequel to the original 1976 Richard Donner movie, at it’s best The First Omen is an intriguing bit of new lore for a beloved franchise that is also very much its own film—and an intensely female one at that. Director Arkasha Steveson, who makes…

Glenmaroon House hunches at the top of a long driveway, the severe angles of its walls and joints softened by climbing ivy and deepening twilight shadows. A bronze elk statue towers over the drive’s wet flagstones, antlers pointing to the treeline as though the creature was frozen as it fled the house’s open front doors, the darkness within. Much like the team of criminals at the center of Abigail, Universal Pictures’ upcoming horror movie, Den of Geek is invited to cross the threshold and spend (part of) the night inside to do a job.  Our stakes might not be as…

“It was all me, James. It’s always been me,” the villain played by Christoph Waltz reveals to super spy James Bond. “The author of all your pain.” The name of that author? Ernst Stavro Blofeld. When Waltz revealed himself as Blofeld in 2015’s Spectre, he reversed a problem that had plagued the Bond franchise for decades: the long absence of 007’s greatest recurring arch-enemy and the huge stakes that came along with his every appearance. How could the man who escaped every death trap and seduced every woman lose his man? How did the notoriously controlling EON Productions, which owns…

A case can be made that Drew Goddard is one of the more underappreciated genre voices to break through in the last 20 years. The filmmaker has had an impressive track record, from writing and directing a bonafide cult classic like Cabin in the Woods to also penning one of the best sci-fi movies of this century, 2015’s The Martian, which was adapted from the Andy Weir novel of the same name and earned Goddard an Oscar nomination. He also wrote the original Cloverfield and helmed the extremely overlooked Bad Times at the El Royale. In nerd circles, his name…

Before he became a professional actor, Dev Patel was a competitive martial artist. Really. The British-born son of Indian immigrants took up Taekwondo at the age of 10 in a neighborhood dojo where he’d go on to earn a black belt. Furthermore, only three years prior to his breakout on the TV series Skins, young Patel won a bronze medal at the Action International Martial Arts World Championships in Dublin. It was a defining moment in his youth. It was also something—he concedes on the other side of completing his first action film, the ferocious Monkey Man—which has always been…

This article contains mild Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire spoilers. Before Godzilla vs. Kong finished its opening weekend, genre director and lifelong kaiju fan, Adam Wingard, knew he had to get these two crazy guys together again. Despite releasing the film in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic—Godzilla vs. Kong was in fact one of the first bright spots for movie theaters in the spring of 2021 when social distancing kept cinemas at a quarter capacity—the vibe in the auditorium was still electric by picture’s end. “I remember there’s a moment at the end of the movie when Godzilla…

Is there any movie opinion more wrong-headed than saying that Godzilla isn’t my Godzilla? Sure, you might prefer the serious allegorical Godzilla from the 1954 movie or, more recently, Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One. Or you might like the goofier Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Gigan and the newest film, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Heck, it is absolutely okay if the American Iguana monster Zilla is your jam. The only thing that’s unacceptable, that’s absolutely dumb and worthless, is saying that a particular movie doesn’t understand Godzilla. A movie may botch everything else around the giant lizard monster,…

The First Omen is a direct prequel to The Omen that exists very deliberately within that world. There are visual nods to the first film as well as introductions to characters who we will see in more depth in the ‘76 Richard Donner original. It’s an Easter egg hunter’s heaven. But The First Omen is still very much its own film, and it’s very deliberately a female one. Following Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), who travels to Rome to take the veil and be initiated into the church, it’s a movie populated predominantly with women, from the Abbesses and Sisters of…

This article contains massive Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ending spoilers. Adam Wingard grew up on the Shōwa era of Godzilla movies. That would be the period of time when Toho Studios produced monster movies during the reign of Emperor Hirohito—so all the kaiju flicks released between 1954 and 1975. This included ones where Godzilla was a scary emblem of nuclear radiation, sure, but more often than not, the Big G spent these decades as a glorified superhero who hung out with pals like Mothra or Anguirus on Monster Island. “Those were the movies that were playing on daytime…

There will be many comparisons in the next day or three between Godzilla Minus One, Takashi Yamazaki’s shockingly beautiful and elegiac epic about a giant lizard triggering nationwide trauma for a country in ruins, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the newest monster smash up between the Big G and the Ape from Skull Island. But right at the top, every reader should recognize this is a fruitless exercise; a contrast as meaningful as pondering the differences between a genuine Oscar winner and a Saturday morning cartoon. For make no mistake, Godzilla x Kong is a cartoon. I’m told…

The Enterprise-C has returned! Again! According to a Variety report about the future of the Star Trek franchise, the upcoming Section 31 movie will feature Kacey Rohl as a “young” Rachel Garrett, presumably before she became the captain of the Enterprise-C. It’s a surprising but exciting turn of events, to be sure, since Garrett has only appeared in a single episode of Star Trek, leaving much of her history yet to be explored. In fact, digging into more of Garrett’s story would be a way to unlock a piece of Star Trek captain lore that’s long been missing despite the…

Forty years later, it’s safe to say Sony and one of its most beloved film titles still ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost. They also apparently need not fear curmudgeonly film reviews either based on the solid performance of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire over last weekend’s box office. Despite receiving a tepid Rotten Tomatoes aggregate score of 44 percent, the fourth or fifth film in the franchise—depending how you count Paul Feig’s 2016 remake of the same name—opened above expectations with an estimated $45 million in three days. That is nearly identical to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which opened at $44 million, and…

“Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like fucking Shaft.” – Tim Bisley, Spaced, “Change” (2001). Reviews for The Phantom Menace were, it’s fair to say, mixed. Looking back on it, that’s understandable. It’s a mixed film. After a lot of excitement and hype for the return of the game-changing franchise, some anti-climax was inevitable. 133 minutes and countless midi-chlorians later, a sense of disappointment gave way to rage for some (which, given Anakin Skywalker’s whole thing, is bleakly fitting).  Attack of the Clones had an improved, if not stellar, critical reception and Revenge of the Sith continued this trend…

Each new episode of Shōgun raises the stakes, deepens the political intrigue, and brings us closer to the brink of war. It’s a description that, years ago, would have applied to Game of Thrones, a show to which Shōgun has been compared ad nauseam. It’s not an inappropriate comparison. Both tout sprawling casts, sweeping locations, political intrigue, backstabbing, and characters residing in moral gray areas, ready to surprise and disappoint. Though, it may be more apt to compare the show to Japan’s Chanbara or samurai films. Given Shōgun’s intensity and cliffhangers, waiting a week between episodes is excruciating. Digging back into…

This article contains some Ghostbusters: forzen empire spoilers. You know about Zuul. You know about Gozer. You know about Vigo the Carpathian. You might even know about Dr. Rowan North. But for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, director Gil Kenan needed to pit the next generation of Ghostbusters against an all-new spook we’ve never seen before. “You don’t get many opportunities in this world to create a Ghostbusters villain. And I took on that role with relish,” Kenan tells Den of Geek. That enthusiasm resulted in Garraka, a horned creature who can not only cover the world in ice but also controls…

June 1982 saw the release of not one, but two movies about aliens bonding with humans. Both of them are remembered today as early masterpieces that confirm their directors’ skill and vision. One, of course, is Steven Spielberg‘s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which released on June 11, 1982. Two weeks later came The Thing, directed by John Carpenter. But in 1982, only E.T. earned praise. “In fact the film was an enormous failure,” Carpenter recently told The Guardian in his typically blunt manner in a feature that published Tuesday morning. But then that’s about as nostalgic as Carpenter often sounds, even…

Beau should not sleep. Earlier in the day, when he tried to leave his apartment to see his mother, Beau left his door open with the keys still in the lock. When he returned to the door after turning back to retrieve a forgotten item, his keys were gone. Worse, when Beau asks a man in the hallway about the missing keys, the passerby shouts, “You’re fucked, pal!” Yes, the above scene does occur in Beau is Afraid, last year’s weirdo epic starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular disturbed man. But before he made Beau is Afraid as his third…

“There will always be war,” intones an authoritative voice at the end of the second trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. “But to get home, Furiosa fought the world.” A narrator isn’t exactly something new to the world of Mad Max, as the 1981 sequel Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior opens and closes with voiceover, as does 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. But in those cases, the narration served a basic expositional purpose, providing basic information for those who have not seen the previous films — something particularly important for The Road Warrior, as few Americans had the…

“When I was a kid, there was a gangster, real old school type,” recalls Oswald Cobblepot at the start of the trailer for The Penguin. Anyone who has seen a gangster flick before recognizes that kind of talk. Henry Hill, Tony Soprano, Michael Corleone — wiseguys love to wax poetic about the past. It’s no secret that the classic Batman villain was a highlight of 2021’s The Batman, with director Matt Reeves taking a more grounded approach to the bird-themed character that removed the bright colors and gimmicks. The Penguin’s storyline in the movie focused on his rise through the…

One day in 1979, the phone rang at producer Bob Weiss’ house. “Be on your property tonight,” said the voice on the other line. According to the book Wild and Crazy Guys: The Comedy Mavericks of the ’80s Changed Hollywood Forever by Nick de Semlyen, later that evening, an object came flying over the fence and onto Weiss’ backyard. It was the script for a Blues Brothers movie that Wiess commissioned from Dan Aykroyd, who created the musical comedy act with John Belushi for Saturday Night Live. If the way that Aykroyd delivered the manuscript was odd, the contents inside…