Severance returns to Apple TV in January for its sophomore season.
Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it “one of the best shows on TV.” Needless to say, we have been eagerly awaiting the second season next month. Prime Video just released the official trailer at CCXP24 in São Paulo, Brazil and it does not disappoint.
(Spoilers for first season below.)
In the world of Severance, people can completely disconnect their work and personal lives. Thanks to a new procedure developed by Lumon Industries, workers can bifurcate themselves into “innies” (work selves) and “outies” (personal selves)—with no sharing of memories between them. This appeals to people like Mark (Adam Scott), who lost his wife in a car crash and has struggled to work through the grief. Why not forget all that pain for eight hours a day?
It’s no spoiler to say that things went… badly in S1 as a result of this process. As Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson noted at the time, “The show isn’t just bonkers—though it is that, too. It’s also about the lengths to which we will go to dull or avoid emotional pain, and the ways in which humans will reach out to connect with others even under the most unpromising of circumstances.” In the process, Severance brought out “the latent horror of fluorescent lights, baby goats, cubicles, waffles, middle managers, finger traps, and ‘work/life balance.’ Also cults. And vending machines. Plus corporate training manuals. And talk therapy. Oh, and ‘kind eyes.'”
The first season ended on quite the cliffhanger, with several Lumon employees activating an “overtime contingency” to escape the office confines to get a taste for how their “outies” live—and some pretty startling secrets were revealed. S2 will naturally grapple with the fallout from their brief mutiny. Per the official premise:
One year ago, I didn’t know how to bake bread. I just knew how to follow a recipe.
If everything went perfectly, I could turn out something plain but palatable. But should anything change—temperature, timing, flour, Mercury being in Scorpio—I’d turn out a partly poofy pancake. I presented my partly poofy pancakes to people, and they were polite, but those platters were not particularly palatable.
During a group vacation last year, a friend made fresh sourdough loaves every day, and we devoured it. He gladly shared his knowledge, his starter, and his go-to recipe. I took it home, tried it out, and made a naturally leavened, artisanal pancake.
I took my confusion to YouTube, where I found Hendrik Kleinwächter’s “The Bread Code” channel and his video promising a course on “Your First Sourdough Bread.” I watched and learned a lot, but I couldn’t quite translate 30 minutes of intensive couch time to hours of mixing, raising, slicing, and baking. Pancakes, part three.
It felt like there had to be more to this. And there was—a whole GitHub repository more.
The Bread Code gave Kleinwächter a gratifying second career, and it’s given me bread I’m eager to serve people. This week alone, I’m making sourdough Parker House rolls, a rosemary olive loaf for Friendsgiving, and then a za’atar flatbread and standard wheat loaf for actual Thanksgiving. And each of us has learned more about perhaps the most important aspect of coding, bread, teaching, and lots of other things: patience.
Hendrik Kleinwächter on his Bread Code channel, explaining his book.
Resources, not recipes
The Bread Code is centered around a book, The Sourdough Framework. It’s an open source codebase that self-compiles into new LaTeX book editions and is free to read online. It has one real bread loaf recipe, if you can call a 68-page middle-section journey a recipe. It has 17 flowcharts, 15 tables, and dozens of timelines, process illustrations, and photos of sourdough going both well and terribly. Like any cookbook, there’s a bit about Kleinwächter’s history with this food, and some sourdough bread history. Then the reader is dropped straight into “How Sourdough Works,” which is in no way a summary.
“To understand the many enzymatic reactions that take place when flour and water are mixed, we must first understand seeds and their role in the lifecycle of wheat and other grains,” Kleinwächter writes. From there, we follow a seed through hibernation, germination, photosynthesis, and, through humans’ grinding of these seeds, exposure to amylase and protease enzymes.
I had arrived at this book with these specific loaf problems to address. But first, it asks me to consider, “What is wheat?” This sparked vivid memories of Computer Science 114, in which a professor, asked to troubleshoot misbehaving code, would instead tell students to “Think like a compiler,” or “Consider the recursive way to do it.”
And yet, “What is wheat” did help. Having a sense of what was happening inside my starter, and my dough (which is really just a big, slow starter), helped me diagnose what was going right or wrong with my breads. Extra-sticky dough and tightly arrayed holes in the bread meant I had let the bacteria win out over the yeast. I learned when to be rough with the dough to form gluten and when to gently guide it into shape to preserve its gas-filled form.
I could eat a slice of each loaf and get a sense of how things had gone. The inputs, outputs, and errors could be ascertained and analyzed more easily than in my prior stance, which was, roughly, “This starter is cursed and so am I.” Using hydration percentages, measurements relative to protein content, a few tests, and troubleshooting steps, I could move closer to fresh, delicious bread. Framework: accomplished.
I have found myself very grateful lately that Kleinwächter did not find success with 30-minute YouTube tutorials. Strangely, so has he.
Sometimes weird scoring looks pretty neat. Kevin Purdy
The slow bread of childhood dreams
“I have had some successful startups; I have also had disastrous startups,” Kleinwächter said in an interview. “I have made some money, then I’ve been poor again. I’ve done so many things.”
Most of those things involve software. Kleinwächter is a German full-stack engineer, and he has founded firms and worked at companies related to blogging, e-commerce, food ordering, travel, and health. He tried to escape the boom-bust startup cycle by starting his own digital agency before one of his products was acquired by hotel booking firm Trivago. After that, he needed a break—and he could afford to take one.
“I went to Naples, worked there in a pizzeria for a week, and just figured out, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ And I found my passion. My passion is to teach people how to make amazing bread and pizza at home,” Kleinwächter said.
Kleinwächter’s formative bread experiences—weekend loaves baked by his mother, awe-inspiring pizza from Italian ski towns, discovering all the extra ingredients in a supermarket’s version of the dark Schwarzbrot—made him want to bake his own. Like me, he started with recipes, and he wasted a lot of time and flour turning out stuff that produced both failures and a drive for knowledge. He dug in, learned as much as he could, and once he had his head around the how and why, he worked on a way to guide others along the path.
Bugs and syntax errors in baking
When using recipes, there’s a strong, societally reinforced idea that there is one best, tested, and timed way to arrive at a finished food. That’s why we have America’s Test Kitchen, The Food Lab, and all manner of blogs and videos promoting food “hacks.” I should know; I wrote up a whole bunch of them as a young Lifehacker writer. I’m still a fan of such things, from the standpoint of simply getting food done.
As such, the ultimate “hack” for making bread is to use commercial yeast, i.e., dried “active” or “instant” yeast. A manufacturer has done the work of selecting and isolating yeast at its prime state and preserving it for you. Get your liquids and dough to a yeast-friendly temperature and you’ve removed most of the variables; your success should be repeatable. If you just want bread, you can make the iconic no-knead bread with prepared yeast and very little intervention, and you’ll probably get bread that’s better than you can get at the grocery store.
Baking sourdough—or “naturally leavened,” or with “levain”—means a lot of intervention. You are cultivating and maintaining a small ecosystem of yeast and bacteria, unleashing them onto flour, water, and salt, and stepping in after they’ve produced enough flavor and lift—but before they eat all the stretchy gluten bonds. What that looks like depends on many things: your water, your flours, what you fed your starter, how active it was when you added it, the air in your home, and other variables. Most important is your ability to notice things over long periods of time.
When things go wrong, debugging can be tricky. I was able to personally ask Kleinwächter what was up with my bread, because I was interviewing him for this article. There were many potential answers, including:
I should recognize, first off, that I was trying to bake the hardest kind of bread: Freestanding wheat-based sourdough
You have to watch—and smell—your starter to make sure it has the right mix of yeast to bacteria before you use it
Using less starter (lower “inoculation”) would make it easier not to over-ferment
Eyeballing my dough rise in a bowl was hard; try measuring a sample in something like an aliquot tube
Winter and summer are very different dough timings, even with modern indoor climate control.
But I kept with it. I was particularly susceptible to wanting things to go quicker and demanding to see a huge rise in my dough before baking. This ironically leads to the flattest results, as the bacteria eats all the gluten bonds. When I slowed down, changed just one thing at a time, and looked deeper into my results, I got better.
The Bread Code YouTube page and the ways in which one must cater to algorithms.
Credit: The Bread Code
The Bread Code YouTube page and the ways in which one must cater to algorithms. Credit: The Bread Code
YouTube faces and TikTok sausage
Emailing and trading video responses with Kleinwächter, I got the sense that he, too, has learned to go the slow, steady route with his Bread Code project.
For a while, he was turning out YouTube videos, and he wanted them to work. “I’m very data-driven and very analytical. I always read the video metrics, and I try to optimize my videos,” Kleinwächter said. “Which means I have to use a clickbait title, and I have to use a clickbait-y thumbnail, plus I need to make sure that I catch people in the first 30 seconds of the video.” This, however, is “not good for us as humans because it leads to more and more extreme content.”
Kleinwächter also dabbled in TikTok, making videos in which, leaning into his German heritage, “the idea was to turn everything into a sausage.” The metrics and imperatives on TikTok were similar to those on YouTube but hyperscaled. He could put hours or days into a video, only for 1 percent of his 200,000 YouTube subscribers to see it unless he caught the algorithm wind.
The frustrations inspired him to slow down and focus on his site and his book. With his community’s help, The Bread Code has just finished its second Kickstarter-backed printing run of 2,000 copies. There’s a Discord full of bread heads eager to diagnose and correct each other’s loaves and occasional pull requests from inspired readers. Kleinwächter has seen people go from buying what he calls “Turbo bread” at the store to making their own, and that’s what keeps him going. He’s not gambling on an attention-getting hit, but he’s in better control of how his knowledge and message get out.
“I think homemade bread is something that’s super, super undervalued, and I see a lot of benefits to making it yourself,” Kleinwächter said. “Good bread just contains flour, water, and salt—nothing else.”
A test loaf of rosemary olive sourdough bread. An uneven amount of olive bits ended up on the top and bottom, because there is always more to learn.
Credit: Kevin Purdy
A test loaf of rosemary olive sourdough bread. An uneven amount of olive bits ended up on the top and bottom, because there is always more to learn. Credit: Kevin Purdy
You gotta keep doing it—that’s the hard part
I can’t say it has been entirely smooth sailing ever since I self-certified with The Bread Code framework. I know what level of fermentation I’m aiming for, but I sometimes get home from an outing later than planned, arriving at dough that’s trying to escape its bucket. My starter can be very temperamental when my house gets dry and chilly in the winter. And my dough slicing (scoring), being the very last step before baking, can be rushed, resulting in some loaves with weird “ears,” not quite ready for the bakery window.
But that’s all part of it. Your sourdough starter is a collection of organisms that are best suited to what you’ve fed them, developed over time, shaped by their environment. There are some modern hacks that can help make good bread, like using a pH meter. But the big hack is just doing it, learning from it, and getting better at figuring out what’s going on. I’m thankful that folks like Kleinwächter are out there encouraging folks like me to slow down, hack less, and learn more.
Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game.
The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we’re finally getting it this year for Christmas. Netflix just released the official trailer.
(Spoilers for S1 below.)
The first season followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae, seen earlier this year in The Acolyte), a down-on-his-luck gambler who has little left to lose when he agrees to play children’s playground games against 455 other players for money. The twist? If you lose a game, you die. If you cheat, you die. And if you win, you might also die.
“The grotesque spectacle of Squid Game is where it gets most of its appeal, but it resonates because of how relatable Gi-hun and the rest of the game’s contestants are,” Ars Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham wrote in our 2021 year-end TV roundup. “Alienated from society and each other, driven by guilt or shame or pride or desperation, each of the players we get to know is inescapably human, which is why Squid Game is more than just a gory sideshow.
In the S1 finale, Gi-hun faced off against fellow finalist and childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) in the titular “squid game.” He won their fight but refused to kill his friend, begging Sang-woo to stop the game by invoking a special clause in their contract whereby they get to live—but do not get the prize money. Sang-woo instead stabbed himself in the neck and asked Gi-hun to take care of his mother. Wracked with guilt, Gi-hun was about to fly to America to live with his daughter when he spotted the game recruiter trying to entice another desperate person. He didn’t get on the plane, deciding instead to try and re-enter the game and take it down from the inside.
In addition to Reeves, new cast members include Krysten Ritter as Director Rockwell; Alyla Browne as Maria, a young girl from Shadow’s past; and Sofia Pernas, Cristo Fernandez, James Wolk, and Jorma Taccone in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Sonic 3 will also introduce the Chao creatures of Chao Gardens.
A tragic backstory
Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are captured. YouTube/Paramount Pictures
It’s no surprise that Carrey is back once again as “Eggman” Robotnik, and this time, he’s playing a dual role: Robotnik and the character’s grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, a genetic engineer who created Shadow while trying to cure his daughter Maria from a deadly disease. In the games, Shadow suffers from past trauma associated with Maria’s death; the two were close friends.
When she is killed by the Guardian Units of Nations (GUN), Shadow sets out for revenge before remembering his promise to Maria to prevent the destruction of the world. He eventually becomes an anti-hero ally to Sonic. We already knew that the third film would probably feature Shadow, thanks to a mid-credits scene in Sonic 2 informing us about the discovery of a secret research facility for something called “Project Shadow.” (Director Jeff Fowler once worked as a character animator, and Shadow was one of his first jobs.)
It’s clear from the new trailer that Shadow is in his early villain phase here. The trailer opens with Sonic and pals in a kid-friendly eatery, where one child mistakes Tails for Pikachu—before they are rudely attacked. Cut to Robotnik Sr. intoning, “It’s time, Shadow”—time for revenge. The trio is captured by the Robotniks, but they escape and end up in the Wachowskis’ living room, and naturally the couple joins them on a super dangerous top-secret mission. We see a flashback to Shadow’s friendship with Maria as well as Sonic and Shadow getting ready to throw down (“This ends now”). The smart money, as always, is on Team Sonic.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 opens in theaters on December 20, 2024.
The first teaser for A Minecraft Movie released in September to some decidedly mixed reactions, particularly concerning the CGI and character design and especially Jason Momoa’s hair. And yes, there were many ridiculous memes. We were inclined to give it a chance based on the casting of Momoa and Jack Black. Now the full trailer has dropped, and honestly, odd design choices aside—and they are indeed odd—it looks like a perfectly acceptable fun family film and not much more, albeit very light on actual plot.
As previously reported, once the film went into development, Jared Hess (who worked with star Jack Black on Nacho Libre) ended up directing. The COVID pandemic and 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike delayed things further, but filming finally wrapped earlier this year in Auckland, New Zealand—just in time for a spring 2025 theatrical release. Per the official premise:
Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Jack Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative… the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.
Game players will recognize Steve as one of the default characters in Minecraft. The teaser was set to The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” and showed our misfits encountering a fantastical Tolkien-esque landscape—only with a lot more cube-like shapes, like a pink sheep with a cubed head.
Ars chats with cinematographer Baz Irvine about creating a fresh look for the sophomore season.
Credit: YouTube/Apple TV+
The second season of Silo, Apple TV’s dystopian sc-fi drama, is off to a powerful start with yesterday’s premiere. Based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. It looks like S2 will be leaning more heavily into sci-fi thriller territory, expanding its storytelling—and its striking cinematography—beyond the original silo.
(Spoilers for S1 below as well as first five minutes of S2 premiere.)
As previously reported, Silo is set in a self-sustaining underground city inhabited by a community whose recorded history only goes back 140 years, generations after the silo was built by the founders. Outside is a toxic hellscape that is only visible on big screens in the silo’s topmost level. Inside, 10,000 people live together under a pact: Anyone who says they want to “go out” is immediately granted that wish—cast outside in an environment suit on a one-way trip to clean the cameras. But those who make that choice inevitably die soon after because of the toxic environment.
Mechanical keeps the power on and life support from collapsing, and that is where we met mechanical savant Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) at one with the giant geothermal generator that spins in the silo’s core. There were hints at what came before—relics like mechanical wristwatches or electronics far beyond the technical means of the silo’s current inhabitants, due to a rebellion 140 years ago that destroyed the silo’s records in the process. The few computers are managed by the IT department, run by Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins).
Over the course of the first season, Juliette reluctantly became sheriff and investigated the murder of her lover, George (Ferdinand Kingsley), who collected forbidden historical artifacts, as well as the murder of silo mayor Ruth Jahns (Geraldine James). Many twists ensued, including the existence of a secret group dedicated to remembering the past whose members were being systemically killed. Juliette also began to suspect that the desolate landscape seen through the silo’s camera system was a lie and there was actually a lush green landscape outside.
In the season one finale, Juliette made a deal with Holland: She would choose to go outside in exchange for the truth about what happened to George and the continued safety of her friends in Mechanical. The final twist: Juliette survived her outside excursion and realized that the dystopian hellscape was the reality, and the lush green Eden was the lie. And she learned that their silo was one of many, with a ruined city visible in the background.
That’s where the second season picks up. Apple TV+ released the footage of the first five minutes last week:
Official sneak peek for the second season of Apple TV+’s sci-fi drama Silo.
The opening battle, with all new characters, clearly took place in one of the other silos (Silo 17), and the residents desperate to break out did so only to meet their deaths. The footage ends with Juliette walking past their skeletons toward the entrance to Silo 17. We know from the official trailer that rebellion is also brewing back in her own silo as rumors spread that she is alive.
The expansion of Silo‘s world was an opportunity for cinematographer Baz Irvine (who worked on four key episodes this season) to play with lenses, color palettes, lighting, and other elements to bring unique looks to the different settings.
Ars Technica: How did you make things visually different from last season? What were your guidelines going into this for the cinematography?
Baz Irvine: There’s few different things going on. I love season one, but we were going to open it up [in S2]. We were going to introduce this new silo, so that was going to be a whole other world that had to look immediately familiar, but also completely different. We start season one with an exterior of the dystopian, future blasted planet. On the technical point, I saw two things I could do very simply. I felt that the format of season one was two to one, so not quite letterbox, not quite widescreen. When I saw the sets and I saw the art, everything the amazing art department had done, I was like, guys, this needs to be widescreen. I think at the time there was still a little bit of reticence from Apple and a few of the other streamers to commit to full widescreen, but I persuaded them.
I also changed the lenses because I wanted to keep the retro feel, the dystopian future, but retro feel. I chose slightly different lenses to give me a wider feel of view. I talked to my director, Michael Dinner, and we talked about how at times, as brilliant as season one was, it was a bit theatrical, a bit presentational. Here’s the silo, here’s the silo, here’s the silo…., So what you want to do is stop worrying about the silo. It is incredible and it’s in the back of every shot. We wanted to make it more visceral. There was going to be a lot more action. The start of episode one is a full-blown battle. Apple released the first five minutes on Apple. It actually stops at a very critical point, but you can see that it’s the previous world of the other Silo 17.
We still wanted to see the scope and the scale. As a cinematographer, you’ve got to get your head around something that’s very unusual: the Silo is vertical. When we shoot stuff, we go outside, everything’s horizontal. So as a cinematographer, you think horizontally, you frame the skyline, you frame the buildings. But in the silo, it’s all up there and it’s all down there, but it doesn’t exist. A bit of the set exists, but you have to go, oh, okay, what can I see if I point the camera up here, what will VFX brilliantly give me? What can I see down there? So that was another big discussion.
Ars Technica: When you talk about wanting to make it more visceral, what does that mean specifically in a cinematography context?
Baz Irvine: It’s just such a lovely word. Season one had an almost European aesthetic. It was a lot of very beautiful, slow developing shots. Of course it was world building. It was the first time the silo was on the screen. So as a filmmaker, you have a certain responsibility to give the audience a sense of where you are. Season two, we know where we are. Well, we don’t with the other silo, but we discover it. This role for me meant not being head of the action. So with Juliet, Rebecca Ferguson’s character, we discover what she sees with her, rather than showing it ahead of time.We’re trying to be a point of view, almost hand-held. When she’s running, we’re running with her. When she’s trying to smash her helmet, we are very much with her.
On another level, visceral for me also means responding to action—not being too prescriptive about what the camera should do, but when you see the blocking of a scene and you feel it’s going a certain way and there’s a certain energy, responding to that and getting in there. The silo, as I said, is always going to be in the background, but we’re not trying to fetishize the silo too much. We’re going to look down, we’re going to look up, we’re going to use crane moves, but just get in with the action. Just be with the people. That means slightly longer lenses, longer focal lengths at times. And from my point of view, the fall off and focus just looks so beautiful. So I think that’s what visceral means. I bet you somebody else would say something completely different.
Ars Technica: Other specific choices you made included using a muted green palette and torchlight flashlight. So there is this sense of isolation and mystery and a spooky, more immersive atmosphere.
Baz Irvine: The challenge that I could see from when I read the script is that a large part of season two is in the new Silo 17. So the new Silo 17 hasn’t been occupied for 35 years. It’s been in this dormant, strange, half-lit state. It’s overgrown with plants and ivy. Some of the references for that were what Chernobyl looked like 20 years down the line. When humanity leaves, nature just takes over. But as a counterpoint, we needed it to feel dark. Most of the electricity has gone, most of the lights have gone out. I needed to have some lighting motivation to give some sense of the shape of the Silo, so that we weren’t plummeting into darkness for the whole episode. So I came up with this idea, the overhead lights that power the silo, that light the silo, were in broken -down mode. They were in reserve power. They’d gone a bit green because that’s what the bulb technology would’ve done.
Part of the reason to do that is that when you’re cutting between two silos that were built identically, you’ve got to have something to show that you’re in a different world. Yes, it’s empty, and yes, it’s desolate and it’s eerie, and there’s strange clanking noises. But I wanted to make it very clear from a lighting point of view that they were two different places.
The other thing that you will discover in episode one, when Juliet’s character is finally working her way through the Silo 17, she has a flashlight and she breaks into an apartment. As she scans the wallshe starts to notice, oh, it’s not like her silo, there are beautiful murals and art. We really wanted to play into this idea that every silo was different. They had different groups of people potentially from different parts of the states. This silo in a way developed quite an artistic community. Murals and frescoes were very much part of this silo. It’s not something that is obvious, and it’s just the odd little scan of a flashlight that gives you this sense. But also Silo 17 is scary. It’s sort of alive, but is there life in it? That is a big question.
Ars Technica: You talk about not wanting to all be in darkness. I’m now thinking of that infamous Game of Thrones episode where the night battle footage was so dark viewers couldn’t follow what was going on. That’s clearly a big challenge for a cinematographer. Where do you find the balance?
Baz Irvine: This is the eternal dilemma for cinematographers. It’s getting notes back from the grownups going, it’s too dark,it’s too dark. Well, maybe if you were watching it in a dark room and it wasn’t bight outside, it would be fine. You have to balance things. I’ve also got Rebecca Ferguson walking around the silo, and it can’t be in so much shadow that you can’t recognize her. So there’s a type of darkness that in film world I know how to convey it. It’s very subtle. It is underexposed, but I used very soft top light. I didn’t want hard shadows. By using that light and filling in little details in the background, I can then take the lighting down. I had an amazing colorist in Company 3 in Toronto and we had a chat about how dark we could go.
We have to be very dark in places because a couple of times in this season, the electricity gets pulled altogether in the old silo as well. You can’t pull the plug and then suddenly everybody’s visible. But it is a film aesthetic that, as a cinematographer, you just learn, how dark can I go? When am I going to get in trouble? Please can I stay on the job, but make it as dark as possible? You mentioned Game of Thrones, clearly audiences have become more used to seeing imagery that I would consider more photographic, more bold generally. I try to tap into that as much as possible. If you have one character with a flashlight, then suddenly that changes everything because you point a flashlight at the surface and the light bounces back in the face. You have to use all the tools that you can.
Ars Technica: In season one there were different looks (lighting and textures) for different social hierarchies of the social hierarchies. Does that continue in season two?
Baz Irvine: I tried to push that a little bit more in season two. I loved the idea of that J.G. Ballard high rise, the rich at the top, everything inverted. The silo is crazy tall. We worked it out. It’s about a kilometer and a half.
The mechanical is the fun bit because mechanical is the bottom of the silo. Down there, we wet the walls, wet the floors, so that the more greeny, orangey colors you associate with fluorescent lights and more mechanical fixtures would reflect. You keep the light levels low because you get this lovely sheen off the walls. As you move up through the middle, where a lot of the action takes place, the lighting is more normal. I’m not really trying to push it one way or another.
Then you go up top where the judicial live, where the money and power is. You’re a lot closer to the light source because there only is this one huge light source that lights down in the silo. So up there the air is more rarefied. It’s like you’re on top of a Swiss mountain. It just feels cleaner. There’s less atmosphere, slightly bluer in light, different color temperatures on the practical lighting in offices. It’s less chaotic, more like a more modern aesthetic up there. You’ve got to be careful not to overplay it. Once you establish colors, you run with it and it just becomes second nature. It was a lot of fun to be able to demarcate—ss long as you remembered where you were, that was always the trick.
Ars Technica: What were the most notable challenges and highlights for you—without giving away anything beyond episode one.
Baz Irvine: I think the big thing about episode one is that it’s like a silent movie. Rebecca Ferguson has maybe two lines, or maybe she doesn’t actually say anything. It’s a journey of discovery, and there’s some quite scary, terrifying things that happen. There’s a lot of action. Also, we find out there’s water in Silo 17. Silo 17 is flooded. You don’t find that out until she slips and falls and you think she’s fallen to her death. From the outset knew that there would be an extensive amount of underwater, or on the surface of the water, filming that would need to take place. We had to do a massive amount of testing, looking at textures of water, what equipment we could use, how we could get the depth, the width. We built a huge tank at one of our studios in London and used Pinewood’s famous underwater tank for the fall.
Also there was the challenge of trying to do shots of that scale outside because we actually built sets. We could probably see 50 feet beyond Rebecca. We had the surface of the scorched surface, but beyond that is VFX. So we had huge blue screens and all these different cranes and things called Manitous with massive frames and had to control the sun. That was very challenging. You can really go down a very cliched path when trying to imagine what the fallout of a massive nuclear attack would look like. But we didn’t want to overplay it too much, we wanted to embed it in some sort of reality so that you didn’t suddenly feel at the start of episode one, oh my, you’re on the surface of Mars. It had to feel real, but also just completely different from the interior world of the silo.
Ars Technica: I assume that there’s a lot more exciting stuff coming in the other episodes that we can’t talk about.
Baz Irvine: There is so much exciting stuff. There’s a lot of action. The silo cafeteria, by the way, is just incredible because you have this huge screen. When I turned up, I was thinking, okay, well this is clearly going to be some big VFX blue screen. It is not. It is a projected image. The work that they did to make it feel like it was a camera mounted to the top of the silo, showing the world outside, and the different times of day—we just literally dialed in. Can I have dusk please? Can I have late afternoon with a little bit of cloud? It was such a fun toy box to play with.
New episodes of Silo S2 will premiere every Friday through January 17, 2025, on Apple TV+.
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Captain America: Brave New World is star Anthony Mackie’s first cinematic appearance as the new Captain America.
Marvel Studios dropped a full-length trailer for Captain America: Brave New World at the first ever Brazil D23 fan event this weekend. This is star Anthony Mackie’s first cinematic appearance as the new Captain America after the Phase Four 2021 TV miniseries, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The event also featured a special look at Marvel’s forthcoming Thunderbolts* film, followed by a new trailer.
As previously reported, it’s the fifth film in the MCU’s Phase Five, directed by Julius Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox) and building on events not just in F&WS but also the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk. Per the official premise:
After meeting with newly elected US President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
In addition to Mackie and Ford, the cast includes Liv Tyler as the president’s daughter, Betty Ross, and Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns, both reprising their roles in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. (Ford replaces the late William Hurt, who played Ross in that earlier film.) Carl Lumbley plays Isaiah Bradley, reprising his F&WS role as a Korean War veteran who had been secretly imprisoned and given the Super Soldier Serum against his will, enduring 30 years of experimentation. (He told Sam he couldn’t imagine how any black man could take up Captain America’s shield because of what it represented to people like him, and one could hardly blame him.)
Rosa Salazar plays Rachel Leighton, Danny Ramirez plays Joaquin Torres, and Shira Haas plays Ruth Bat-Seraph. Giancarlo Esposito will also appear as Sidewinder, the alter ego of economics professor Seth Voelker, who gains the power of teleportation via a cloak (a gift from the Egyptian god Set) and forms a criminal organization called The Serpent Society in the comics.
Spoilers ahead! This imaginative sequel to WandaVision is a reminder of just how good the MCU can be.
Kathryn Hahn stars as Agatha Harkness, reprising her WandaVision role. Credit: Disney+
The MCU’s foray into streaming television has produced mixed results, but one of my favorites was the weirdly inventive, oh-so-meta WandaVision. I’m happy to report that the spinoff sequel, Agatha All Along, taps into that same offbeat creativity, giving us a welcome reminder of just how good the MCU can be when it’s firing on all storytelling cylinders.
(Spoilers below, including for WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness. We’ll give you another heads up when major spoilers for Agatha All Along are imminent.)
The true identity of nosy next-door neighbor Agnes—played to perfection by Kathryn Hahn—was the big reveal of 2021’s WandaVision, even inspiring a jingle that went viral. Agnes turned out to be a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, who had studied magic for centuries and was just dying to learn the source of Wanda’s incredible power. Wanda’s natural abilities were magnified by the Mind Stone, but Agatha realized that Wanda was a wielder of “chaos magic.” She was, in fact, the Scarlet Witch. In the finale, Wanda trapped Agatha in her nosy neighbor persona while releasing the rest of the town of Westview from her grief-driven Hex.
Then Wanda presumably died in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (and count me among those who thought her arc in that film was a massive fail on Marvel’s part). What happened to Agatha? It seems the hex is still in place but went a bit wonky. Agatha All Along opens like a true crime serial (cf. Mare of Easttown) with Agatha/Agnes as the rebellious, socially challenged tough detective called to investigate a body found in the woods outside Westview. Then a young Teen (Joe Locke) breaks the hex and asks her to show him the way to the legendary Witches’ Road, a journey involving a series of trials. The reward: at the end of the road, the surviving witches get what they most desire. Agatha wants her powers back and Teen—well, his motives are murkier, as is his identity, which is guarded by a sigil.
Agatha and Teen first have to assemble a coven: Lilia (Patti LuPone), a divination witch; Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata), a potions witch; Alice (Ali Ahn), a protection witch; and Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp, reprising her WandaVision role), standing in for a green witch on account of her gardening skills. They sing the spell in the form of a ballad—”Down the Witches’ Road,” a killer earworm that recurs throughout the series and is already spawning lots of cover versions. The entrance appears and the journey begins. As if the Witches’ Road weren’t dangerous enough, Agatha is also being pursued by her ex, Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), a powerful green witch, as well as the Salem Seven, vengeful wraiths of Agatha’s first coven, who (we learned in a WandaVision flashback) she killed by draining their powers when they attacked her.
Trapped in a reality-warping spell, Agatha is apparently a detective now. YouTube/Marvel Studios
A large part of WandaVision‘s delight came from the various sitcom styles featured in each episode. Agatha All Along has its own take on that approach: each trial takes on the setting and style of witches from popular culture (even the ending credits play on this). One evokes the New England WASP-y style of the 1998 film Practical Magic; another plays on Stevie Nicks’ Bohemian “white witch” phase with elements of the 1972 film Season of the Witch; yet another trial dresses the coven in high school summer camp 1980s garb.
There are nods to the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda from the Wizard of Oz, Malificent, and the hag version of Snow White’s Evil Queen in the seventh episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine.” It might just be the best single episode of all the Marvel series. This is Lilia’s trial, requiring her to use her divination skills to navigate a deadly tarot reading. Every wrong card releases one of the many swords suspended above the table.
Throughout the journey, Lilia has uttered seemingly random nonsensical things. Here we learn this is because she experiences life out of temporal sequence, moving between past and present while peering into the future. Suddenly all those earlier sprinkled breadcrumbs make sense, a testament to the skillful writing and directing—not to mention LuPone’s powerful performance. (Apparently she requested a script with the events in linear order to better evoke the necessary emotions when shooting scenes out of sequence.)
To glory at the end
(WARNING: Major spoilers below. Stop reading now if you haven’t finished the series.)
By this time the coven has already lost two members: Sharon Davis (who didn’t even last the first trial), replaced by Rio; and Alice, who tried to help Agatha when the latter was briefly possessed during a ouija board trial—only to have Agatha do what she always does and drain Alice of all her power. Lilia’s tarot reading reveals that Death has been traveling with them all along in the form of Rio. Yes, Agatha’s ex is Death, aka “the original Green Witch.” They end up losing Lilia, too; she sacrifices herself to take out the Salem Seven after letting the surviving coven members escape. We see her falling to her death and then show up as a child in her homeland for her very first divination lesson—the cycle of life and death come full circle.
Agatha likes her new look for this trial. Marvel/Disney+
We soon discover that Rio/Death is mostly there because of Teen. There was much fan speculation about his identity in the run-up to the series release and fans guessed correctly: it’s Wanda and Vision’s son, Billy Maximoff, whose soul found its way into the body of a dying teenager named William Kaplan just as Wanda’s hex was unraveling him and his twin, Tommy, out of existence. That’s why he went on the Witches’ Road: to find Tommy. But this also makes him an aberration in Death’s eyes that must be removed to restore the balance. The catch: Billy has to sacrifice himself; in this unusual case, Death cannot simply take him.
Agatha initially agrees to manipulate Billy into doing just that, then has a last-minute change of heart. She kisses Rio/Death and thereby embraces her fate, sacrificing herself so Billy can live. From the start she had a soft spot for the teen, accompanied by references to her long-dead son. The backstory is quite moving and key to Agatha’s unexpected change of heart. Her son’s fate was revealed in the finale. Death came for him when Agatha was in labor but agreed to grant her “time.” How much time? Six or seven years, during which mother and son bonded and wandered from village to village, with Agatha occasionally killing more covens to absorb their power. But Death did not forget, and with Nicky (Abel Lysenko) gone, Agatha indulged all her worst impulses.
Which brings us to the Big Twist: Agatha and her son made up the ballad of the Witches’ Road, singing it in local taverns and slowly building up the legend. The Witches’ Road never existed. Agatha used the legend over centuries to lure witches into a trap to steal their powers. That was her intention at the start of the series, too, except this time—a portal opened. Billy, it seems, inherited Wanda’s ability to warp and shape reality, even subconsciously. He wanted the road to be real and so it was.
The reveal is skillfully done and ties everything up in a nice satisfying bow, with one exception. The writers just couldn’t let Agatha go completely; she returns as a ghost and joins Billy on his search for his brother Tommy. That’s a creative choice that leaves the door open for a second season, and I strongly suspect we’ll get one. But Ghost Agatha will be a tough plot point to crack. And it rather undercuts the pivotal moment of Agatha’s sacrifice—actually doing something that doesn’t directly benefit herself. On the whole, though, Agatha All Along is marvelously entertaining, binge-able fun with just enough emotional resonance and heartbreak to add some depth.
All episodes of Agatha All Along are now streaming on Disney+.
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Confirming previous rumors, Variety reports that Amazon will be moving ahead with producing a TV series based on the popular Mass Effect video game franchise. The writing and production staff involved might not inspire confidence from fans, though.
The series’ writer and executive producer is slated to be Daniel Casey, who until now was best known as the primary screenwriter on F9: The Fast Saga, one of the late sequels in the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was also part of a team of writers behind the relatively little-known 2018 science fiction film Kin.
Karim Zreik will also produce, and his background is a little more encouraging; his main claim to fame is in the short-lived Marvel Television unit, which produced relatively well-received series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix before Disney+ launched with its Marvel Cinematic Universe shows.
Another listed producer is Ari Arad, who has some background in video game adaptations, including the Borderlands and Uncharted movies, as well as the much-maligned live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.
So yeah, it’s a bit of a mixed bag here. No plot details have been released, but it seems likely that the show will tell a new story rather than focus on the saga of Commander Shepherd from the games, since the games were all about the player inhabiting that character with their own choices. That’s only a guess, though.
Amazon is currently riding high after the smash success of another video game TV series, Fallout, which impressed both longtime and new fans when it debuted to critical acclaim and record viewing numbers earlier this year.
Jude Law stars as Force-user Jod Na Nawood in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.
It’s no secret that the new spinoff series, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, was inspired by the 1985 film The Goonies. Executive Producer Kathleen Kennedy (who co-produced The Goonies) has publicly confirmed as much. The latest trailer really leans into that influence: The series feels like something not created specifically for kids, but rather telling a story that just happens to be about kids going on an adventure.
As previously reported, the eight-episode standalone series is set in the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Per the official premise:
Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy, crossing paths with the likes of Jod Na Nawood, the mysterious character played by [Jude] Law. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.
Jude Law leads the cast as the quick-witted and charming (per Law) “Force-user” Jod Na Nawood. Ravi Cabot-Conyers plays Wim, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays Fern, Kyriana Kratter plays KB, and Robert Timothy Smith plays Neil. Nick Frost will voice a droid named SM 33, the first mate of a spaceship called the Onyx Cylinder. The cast also includes Fred Tatasciore as Brutus, Jaleel White as Gunther, Mike Estes as Pax, Marti Matulis as Vane, and Dale Soules as Chaelt. Tunde Adebimpe and Kerry Condon will appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
Vampires and werewolves and zombies, oh my! Plus a slasher smorgasbord of serial killers…
Halloween is upon us, which means costumes, candy, and settling in for a nice long night of scary movies. For those who crave a bit of humor with their blood-soaked scares, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite horror comedies for your viewing pleasure.
What constitutes a horror comedy? Is it merging classic creature features with goofy slapstick humor? Is it primarily super scary with a few notes of humor? Is the humor sharply satirical or primarily delivered by wisecracking characters? Is it parody? Or does good horror comedy go full meta, poking fun at the tropes while sneaking in incisive cultural commentary?
Horror comedy is all of those things and more, which is why picking films to include on this list proved so tricky. For instance, The Mummy (1999) features a classic monster, but it fits just as well in the action/comedy category, while Ghostbusters (1984) is pretty much straight-up comedy. Yet I could have included both on this list without too many complaints. In the end, I cut the list down to 20, opting for a sampler that features blockbusters, vintage films, cult classics, and contemporary offerings, each with its own unique mix of horror and comedic elements. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.
(Some spoilers below.)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
Famed comedic duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were on the verge of splitting up when they signed on to make Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which made for a rather fraught shoot. Director Charles Barton once described them as “the real monsters” on set. But they still created a horror comedy for the ages that is included in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula teams up with a mad scientist (Lenore Aubert) to reactivate Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange). And who should have the ideal brain for those purposes? A baggage clerk named Wilbur Grey (Costello), whose BFF Chick Young (Abbott) joins him to foil the plot. Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man also makes an appearance, and Vincent Price briefly voices the Invisible Man, setting up a slew of sequels that never quite matched the giddy heights of the first.
Theater of Blood (1973)
Credit: United Artists
Credit: United Artists
Vincent Price built his storied career on making horror movies, House of Wax and several Edgar Allan Poe adaptations among them. But my all-time favorite is Theater of Blood, in which Price plays an aging Shakespearean actor named Edward Lionheart. When his final season is ridiculed by the snobby Theater Critics Guild, Lionheart throws himself into the Thames. He is rescued by vagrants and, having gone mad, proceeds to exact revenge on the members of the Guild by knocking them off, each in a manner inspired by a Shakespeare play.
One is stabbed to death by a mob (Julius Caesar); another is decapitated while sleeping (Cymbeline); yet another is drowned in a “butt of Malmsey” wine, just like the Duke of Clarence in Richard III. A flamboyant gourmand is forced to eat pies made from his beloved toy poodles (Titus Andronicus), while Lionheart lures a female critic to a hair salon, posing as a groovy hairdresser who can’t wait to get his hands on her “dishy, dishy hair”—but electrocutes her in the hair dryer instead, a la Joan of Arc in Henry IV, Part I. And let’s just say that Lionheart takes the mention of a pound of flesh in The Merchant of Venice quite literally. Theater of Blood revels in its campiness, and Price’s over-the-top scene-chewing melodrama makes the movie. It’s grimly funny with a hint of pathos and never lapses into outright farce.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Credit: 20th Century Fox
Credit: 20th Century Fox
Young Frankenstein marks its 50th anniversary this year: five decades of sheer joy rendered by a constant stream of bad puns, double entendres, slapstick visual gags, and a goofy musical number—all to create an affectionate, timeless tribute to the classic Frankenstein movies of the 1930s. It’s even shot in black and white, with old-school opening credits and filmmaking techniques, as well as featuring the original lab equipment designed for 1931’s Frankenstein.
Gene Wilder stars as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, a lecturer at a US medical school who is ashamed of his infamous grandfather, Victor, to the point where he deliberately pronounces his last name differently (“It’s FRONK-en-steen”). But then he inherits the family’s Transylvania estate and takes leave of his fiancée, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), to pay a visit. There he meets the hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman); housekeeper Frau Blücher (Chloris Leachman); and comely lab assistant Inga (the late, great Teri Garr). After discovering his grandfather’s notebooks, Frederick decides to continue his work, creating The Monster (Peter Boyle), whose impressive physical dimensions include an “enormous Schwanzstucker.” With all that comedic talent, small wonder the Oscar-nominated Young Frankenstein also has a place in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
Writer/director John Landis was ahead of his time when he first pitched the script for An American Werewolf in London in 1969. It was deemed not scary enough to be horror and not funny enough to be a comedy, so Landis shelved the idea for over 10 years. Hollywood culture finally caught up and Landis got to make his film, having since risen to fame with such hits as Animal House and The Blues Brothers.
David Naughton stars as David Kessler, a US graduate student who treks across the Yorkshire moors with his best friend Jack (Griffin Dunne), only to be attacked by a mysterious creature. Jack is killed and David is bitten, waking up in a London hospital. As the full moon approaches, David starts experiencing some changes, finally transforming into a werewolf and embarking on a couple of killing sprees. He falls in love with his nurse, Alex (Jenny Agutter), but is also haunted by repeated visions of the mauled (and gradually decomposing) Jack, warning him that until he dies, Jack and all his other victims are doomed to an undead existence in limbo. At one point, Jack appears to David in an adult movie theater and introduces him to the cheery young couple he killed the night before, who helpfully offer suicide tips.
The humor is more clever than funny, and there are some genuine scares. There’s also a good amount of gore, although not as much as Landis originally planned; he had to cut certain details to get an R rating, like Jack trying to eat a piece of toast and having it fall out of his decaying neck. It’s the famous long transformation scene that made the most waves, using what were then groundbreaking makeup and visual effects. In fact, it won the Oscar for Best Makeup that year.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Credit: Warner Bros.
Credit: Warner Bros.
This one is an adaptation of a hit off-Broadway musical that was, in turn, an adaptation of the 1960 horror comedy directed by Roger Corman. Little Shop of Horrors stars Rick Moranis as Seymour Krelborn, a floral shop employee in love with his co-worker, Audrey (Ellen Greene), who is also being pursued by a sadistic dentist addicted to nitrous oxide (Steve Martin). The discovery of an exotic sentient plant that Seymour names Audrey II helps boost business, but Seymour discovers it needs human flesh and blood to survive… and the bigger the insatiable Audrey II grows, the more blood she needs (“Feed me, Seymour!”).
Director Frank Oz used animatronic puppetry to create Audrey II, eschewing blue screens or other visual effects. He wasn’t particularly happy with his final Oscar-nominated film, mostly because the studio forced him to scrap the musical’s original ending, in which Seymour and Audrey both die and Audrey II and her alien plant offspring ravage the Earth. Critics and audiences didn’t mind the more upbeat ending, however, no doubt won over by the catchy tunes and deft mix of campy humor and horror.
Evil Dead II (1987)
This franchise made Bruce Campbell a horror-comedy icon.
Credit: Renaissance Pictures
This franchise made Bruce Campbell a horror-comedy icon. Credit: Renaissance Pictures
Sam Raimi’s blood-soaked trilogy made Bruce Campbell a horror icon, and Evil Dead II is arguably the best of the lot (although I also have a soft spot for Army of Darkness). Whether it’s a remake of the original Evil Dead or a sequel is a matter of debate; honestly, it’s a bit of both. Campbell stars as Ash Williams, a college student who takes his girlfriend on a romantic getaway to an abandoned cabin in the woods. They discover that the former owner, an archaeologist, left behind a “book of the dead” (Necronomicon Ex-Mortis) and commit the fatal error of reading some of the passages out loud.
This unleashes a Kandarian Demon that kills and possesses his girlfriend, turning her into a “Deadite.” Ash is forced to decapitate her and ends up battling multiple Deadite victims of the demon, cutting off his own arm when his right hand becomes possessed. The moment when a blooded Ash straps a modified chainsaw to the stump and mows down a bunch of deadites is a scene for the ages. It’s got a rough, low-budget energy, smirking humor, and enough blood and gore to fuel three average horror movies—a bona fide “comedy of terrors.”
Tremors (1990)
Earl and Val realize the threat is underground.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Earl and Val realize the threat is underground. Credit: Universal Pictures
Tremors is an unabashed love letter to the B-movie creature features of the 1950s that remains as fresh today as it was over three decades ago. The film is sheer perfection and ranks among my personal favorite films of all time. The story takes place in the tiny fictional desert town of Perfection, Nevada—population 15, at least at the start of the film. But something begins killing the residents (and the livestock). Director Ron Underwood set the narrative up like a mystery, introducing us to the main characters and setting as they realize the threat that is coming for them: subterranean monsters dubbed “graboids.”
Tremors has a terrific cast of characters, played by gifted actors. But it’s the ingenious design of the graboids that really makes the film for me—how the characters figure out the monsters’ characteristics. Above all, the graboids are smart and capable of learning about their human prey and adapting accordingly. When humans hide in a car, they dig around the surrounding soil so the whole vehicle sinks underground. They do the same thing to loosen building foundations when the residents take refuge on their roofs. They dig a trap just as the humans are almost safely to the mountains, and so forth. The humans have to keep upping their game to survive, and the ingenious ways they outwit the monsters is a huge part of the film’s delight.
Scream (1996)
Credit: Dimension Films
Credit: Dimension Films
No horror comedy list would be complete without including the oh-so-meta Scream, which introduced the costumed serial killer Ghostface to the world. Scream deftly deconstructs the slasher genre and its surprisingly moralistic “rules,” helpfully defined by horror fan Randy (Jamie Kennedy): no drinking, doing drugs, or having sex—the Final Girl, Sidney (Neve Campbell), is naturally a virgin—and also never, ever leave your friend group and tell them you’ll “be right back.” (You won’t.) Naturally, all of these rules are broken by one character or another, with the expected bloody results.
The humor is self-referential without being parody; the performances are strong; and the jump scares and horror tributes are plentiful (Linda Blair of The Exorcist fame makes a cameo). Those elements helped the film tap into the cultural zeitgeist of the mid-1990s, blasting past low box office projections to gross $173 million worldwide. Scream has spawned multiple sequels, an anthology film series, and the Scary Movie horror parody franchise, revitalizing what was at the time a stagnating market for horror. It’s now widely viewed as one of the most influential horror movies of all time.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
Shaun of the Dead is the first film in Simon Pegg’s Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy, in which Pegg’s Shaun, a mild-mannered slacker London salesman, finds himself caught up in a zombie apocalypse and must rise to the occasion to save his friends and family. That includes his best friend Ed (Nick Frost), girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), mom Barbara (Penelope Wilton), and stepdad Philip (Bill Nighy), as well as Liz’s roommates, David (Dylan Moran) and Diane (Lucy Davis).
Shaun is an unlikely hero; Liz has broken up with him because he’s unambitious and spends all his free time playing video games with Ed or hanging out at the Winchester pub. The film is about this everyman finding his inner hero. He and Ed hurl vinyl records at a pair of zombies—pausing to quibble over which ones they should preserve—and take out even more brain-eaters with cricket bats. At one point the crew pretends to be zombies to make their way to the Winchester for a final showdown. But their little group is wildly outnumbered, and while Shaun of the Dead is very funny with its distinctively British humor, it’s also sometimes downright heartbreaking. That’s a fine line to navigate, and Pegg does so exceptionally well.
Zombieland (2009)
Credit: Sony Pictures
Credit: Sony Pictures
Zombieland is America’s answer to Shaun of the Dead: a fresh, fun take on the “zom-com” format. A virulent form of human-adapted mad cow disease sweeps across the United States, transforming most of the nation’s populace into ravenous zombies. The film follows a ragtag group of unlikely survivors—Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), and orphaned sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin)—on a road trip in hopes of finding some place yet untouched by the disease, ending with a pitched battle against zombie hordes in an abandoned amusement park.
It’s a fun mix of horror and dark screwball comedy, especially the “Zombie Kills of the Week” and Columbus’ hilarious survival rules—cardio, limber up, beware of bathrooms, and buckle up, for instance, not to mention the “double tap”—often illustrated by various doomed souls who failed to heed those rules. Bill Murray’s star turn playing himself just might rank as one of the best surprise cameos of all time. The 2019 sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap, didn’t quite hit the same high marks, but the pair still make for a terrific double feature.
Trollhunter (2010)
Credit: SF Norge A/S
Credit: SF Norge A/S
This quirky Norwegian offering is shot in the style of a found footage mockumentary. A group of college students set off into the wilds of the fjord land to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher named Hans, played by Norwegian comedian Otto Jesperson. They discover that Hans and another hunter named Finn (Hans Morten Hansen) are actually hunting down trolls and decide to document those endeavors instead. They soon realize they are very much out of their depth.
Writer/director André Øvredal infuses Trollhunter with myriad references to Norwegian culture, especially its folklore and fairy tales surrounding trolls. There are woodland trolls and mountain trolls, some with tails, some with multiple heads. They turn to stone when exposed to sunlight—which is why one of the troll hunters carries around a powerful UV lamp—and mostly eat rocks but can develop a taste for human flesh, and they can smell the blood of a Christian. The film is peppered with dry wit rather than laugh-out-loud moments, and non-Norwegians might miss some of the cultural in-jokes. But Øvredal masterfully builds suspense and a creeping sense of dread, plus there’s all that gorgeous footage of the Norwegian landscape to delight viewers around the world.
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Credit: Lionsgate
Credit: Lionsgate
When will college students learn to avoid weekend getaways to remote wilderness locations? The Cabin in the Woods is in a similar vein to Scream, but Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard definitely put their unique stamp on this satirical ode to the slasher genre. In this case, the five students are lured to the titular cabin by technicians working for a mysterious corporation located in an underground facility. It’s not initially clear what the operation is about, but failure is not an option. The technicians manipulate the students via careful staging and mind-altering drugs, among other tricks, until they accidentally summon a zombified family of sadists who start killing off the students.
That is all according to plan. And just when you think that’s all the movie has to offer, it takes a sudden, unexpected, and very bold lurch into outright Lovecraftian horror—the less said about that, the better, particularly the jaw-dropping finale featuring a cameo by Sigourney Weaver as The Director. The Cabin in the Woods goes places horror comedies have rarely gone before, and it does so with considerable wit and flair.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Credit: Madman Entertainment
Credit: Madman Entertainment
Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement wrote, directed, and starred in the delightfully offbeat What We Do in the Shadows, playing vampire roommates Vladislav (Clement) and Viago (Waititi) in Wellington, New Zealand. Given their nocturnal nature, they and their vampire friends haven’t adapted to modern life particularly well, and their mishaps as they struggle to navigate mundane trivialities in the 21st century are the source of much of the film’s deadpan humor.
The rather circuitous plot culminates with our underdogs attending the annual Unholy Masquerade and battling several rival vampires, as well as a pack of werewolves. What We Do in the Shadows garnered a solid cult following after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, ultimately earning $6.9 million—a decent showing given its modest $1.6 million budget. And it spawned a successful TV spinoff, now in its final season.
Happy Death Day (2017)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
Happy Death Day is basically a combination of Scream and Groundhog Day, in which sorority sister Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is murdered on her birthday by a killer in a Babyface mask and finds herself reliving that day over and over. (Babyface is the fictional Bayfield University’s mascot, and they should really rethink that choice.) She takes advantage of the time loop to solve her own murder and maybe get some closure over some personal trauma in her past. Bonus: She also snags a nice guy boyfriend, Carter (Israel Broussard). There’s even an overt nod to Groundhog Day at one point, with Tree confessing that she’s never seen the film. Pair it with the entertaining sequel, Happy Death Day 2 U, which adds a multiverse twist and pays particular homage to Back to the Future II.
Get Out (2017)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
At its core, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a subtle exploration of racial tensions that quietly builds to reveal its horrifying premise and inevitable bloody conclusion. But it’s also packed with sly, smartly satirical humor, hence its inclusion on this list. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a Black photographer who is meeting his girlfriend Rose’s (Alison Williams) stereotypically liberal white family for the first time at their upstate home. At first things are merely awkward, as they clumsily try to bond with Chris by using the word “thang” and reassuring him that they would have totally voted for Obama a third time. Concurrently with Chris’ visit, the family is hosting a party in honor of her late grandfather, which involves hordes of clueless old white people. We learn that it is not a coincidence as the film gradually veers from satire into sinister psychological horror.
Kaluuya is terrific at playing Chris’ transition from bemusement to terror, and Williams is pitch-perfect as a suburban white girl who just doesn’t get why he’s so on edge. As Chris is drawn more deeply into the bizarro secret at the heart of Rose’s family, we get a series of reveals that are pleasingly unexpected. And Lil Rel Howery steals every scene as Chris’ best friend, a TSA agent who is suspicious about the weekend getaway and ends up saving the day—because the TSA “gets st done.”
One kind of terrible conspiracy gives way to another, and the final truth is far more complicated than what you’d expect from a typical horror movie. The narrative pacing is perfection: You’ll see the twists coming right when Peele wants you to see them. As Annalee Newitz wrote in her 2017 review, “Writing good satire is hard, but writing good horror-satire requires exquisite timing. It’s been a long time since a movie took me from laughing to abject horror in five minutes flat. Peele and his cast sell us on both the silliness and creepiness, and they make it so intense that the final moments of white-hot action (heh) are genuinely cathartic.”
Ready or Not (2019)
Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures
An unsuspecting bride (Samara Weaving) finds herself fighting for her life on her wedding night in this wickedly funny, blood-soaked thriller. Weaving plays Grace, who marries Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), a member of a wealthy gaming dynasty, in a picture-perfect wedding on the family estate. Then she learns that at midnight, she must play a game to officially join the family by drawing a card from a mysterious box to choose the game. She gets Hide and Seek. Grace is the prey, and she must evade detection until dawn to avoid being killed in a bizarre ritual sacrifice.
Ready or Not gets the tone just right throughout, perfectly balanced between humor and horror. Relative newcomer Weaving, in particular, delivers a standout performance as Grace—a role that requires her to be, in turn, sweetly submissive, shocked, and terrified, and a tough-as-nails badass in a fight for her life. Moments like brother-in-law Fitch Bradley (Kristian Bruun) watching YouTube videos on “Getting To Know Your Crossbow” provide comic relief and make those genuinely shocking bloody twists all the more effective. The pacing is crisp, the narrative is tight, it’s genuinely suspenseful, and the entire cast is clearly having a blast in their respective roles.
Freaky (2020)
Credit: Universal Pictures
Credit: Universal Pictures
In Freaky, an homage to Friday the 13th (1980) and slasher films like Scream, Vince Vaughn stars as an aging serial killer who switches bodies with a hapless teenage girl named Millie (Kathryn Newton). The success of the body-swapping concept in any given film always rests on the shoulders of its leads, who must nimbly switch between characters. Vaughn and Newton do not disappoint.
Vaughn especially shines at channeling his inner teenage girl, despite his hulking 6-foot, 5-inch frame—and not just in the obvious slapstick moments, like when he performs the Blissfield High mascot dance to convince Millie’s best friends that it’s really him. He also brings out Millie’s sweet vulnerability and aptly conveys her delight at being able to pee standing up. On the flip side, The Butcher in Millie’s body shows a surprisingly keen fashion sense and relishes being able to slide under everybody’s radar as an “innocent” high school student. The cast is clearly having a blast, and Freaky ultimately succeeds in mixing horror, humor, and pathos in just the right measures.
Vampires vs. The Bronx (2020)
Credit: Netflix
Credit: Netflix
The title of this charming, smart horror-comedy pretty much says it all. Tween-age Miguel Martinez, aka “Lil Mayor” (Jaden Michael), is trying to organize a neighborhood block party in the Bronx to save the local bodega from rising rents in the wake of gentrification. One company in particular, Murnau Properties, is buying up local businesses at an alarming rate, and the former owners keep mysteriously disappearing. It’s assumed they cashed in and moved to the suburbs—but the fact that the company’s logo is an image of Vlad the Impaler (associated with Dracula in popular culture) is a strong hint that something more sinister is afoot.
When Miguel witnesses a vampire killing firsthand, he recruits his BFFs Bobby (Gerald W. Jones III) and Luis (Gregory Diaz IV) to discover the vampire nest and take out the bloodsuckers. Miguel and his plucky gang prove to be formidable opponents, so vampires in search of easy territorial pickings would do well to heed local livestream sensation Gloria’s closing words: “You don’t want no smoke with the BX.” If the Goonies battled vampires in the Bronx, this would be that movie.
Werewolves Within (2021)
Credit: IFC Films
Credit: IFC Films
Werewolves Within is a warmly satirical horror comedy loosely based on the Ubisoft multiplayer VR game of the same name. The VR game is essentially a social deduction game, where players take on cartoon avatars, sit in a virtual circle, and try to guess which of them is the werewolf terrorizing a medieval village. Werewolves Within updates the setting to a contemporary mountain town in the Hudson Valley, but it’s the same premise: the people of Beaverfield have to figure out which one of their quirky neighbors is a lying, murdering werewolf.
Director Josh Ruben sets the cheekily irreverent tone right off the bat, playing a deep cut from 1959, “The Phantom Strikes Again,” as Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) arrives in Beaverfield to take up his new post as the local park ranger. The ridiculously talented cast members all possess the skills and onscreen ensemble chemistry to make the script come alive. Granted, the characters aren’t especially deep—more akin to what you’d find in the best sketch comedy—but that suits the film’s tone. And there is a moral to the tale, courtesy of Finn and his role model, Mister Rogers: that at its heart, the town is a community, despite their differences, and everyone is at their best when they remember their common humanity.
The Menu (2022)
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
At the highest echelon of fine dining, a multi-course meal can attain a level of theatricality that elevates it to performance art. In the case of horror/comedy The Menu, it’s a particularly macabre kind of performance art. Ralph Fiennes stars as Julian Slowik, a disillusioned celebrity chef who presides over a fictional molecular gastronomy restaurant called Hawthorne, located on an exclusive private island. Chef Slowik invites a select group of guests for a very special dinner, but the presence of Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy) as a last-minute substitute throws a wrench into his carefully planned revenge.
This is a subculture that presents an easy target for cheap shots, but The Menu opts for sharp, scalpel precision in its satire. Its barbs often leave the viewer speechless with delight, like the bread course served without anything so pedestrian as actual bread, just the fancy accoutrements—and a pinot noir with “notes of longing and regret.” Director Mark Mylod masterfully controls the tone throughout, beginning with odd passive-aggressive comments from Chef Slowik and his staff (“You will eat less than you desire and more than you deserve”) before escalating into outright horror. Margo has joined the ranks of the best Final Girls in horror. And despite the horror elements, Mylod never sacrifices the biting comedy that makes this film such a delectable pleasure.
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Robert Downey Jr. has declared that he will sue any future Hollywood executives who try to re-create his likeness using AI digital replicas, as reported by Variety. His comments came during an appearance on the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast, where he discussed AI’s growing role in entertainment.
“I intend to sue all future executives just on spec,” Downey told Swisher when discussing the possibility of studios using AI or deepfakes to re-create his performances after his death. When Swisher pointed out he would be deceased at the time, Downey responded that his law firm “will still be very active.”
The Oscar winner expressed confidence that Marvel Studios would not use AI to re-create his Tony Stark character, citing his trust in decision-makers there. “I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me,” he said.
Downey currently performs on Broadway in McNeal, a play that examines corporate leaders in AI technology. During the interview, he freely critiqued tech executives—Variety pointed out a particular quote from the interview where he criticized tech leaders who potentially do negative things but seek positive attention.
