This Halloween, the monsters aren’t just coming out to play – they’re here to stay. The Halloween Horrors Bundle unites six unforgettable titles that explore fear, tension, and the twisted beauty of the unknown. From supernatural thrillers to haunting psychological journeys, this is the ultimate collection for players who dare to face the dark.
Even better, every purchase supports Safe In Our World, the video games mental health charity helping to raise awareness, provide support, and foster wellbeing across the gaming community. With this bundle, you’ll experience horror that stays with you, for all the right reasons.
Six Terrifying Worlds Await
Control Ultimate Edition: Unravel the mysteries of the Federal Bureau of Control in Remedy’s award-winning masterpiece of supernatural science fiction and shifting reality.
Iratus: Lord of the Dead: Command an army of the undead in this darkly humorous strategy RPG where death is only the beginning.
Don’t Be Afraid: Step into the shoes of a kidnapped boy in a deeply unsettling first-person psychological horror that tests your nerves and your resolve.
Sker Ritual: Survive the horrors of Sker Island in this cooperative, round-based FPS from the creators of Maid of Sker. Face monstrous foes, mysterious cultists, and nightmarish folklore.
Scorn: Immerse yourself in a grotesque biomechanical world of flesh and machinery. A first-person horror adventure that’s as visually striking as it is disturbing.
Trepang2: Unleash chaos in this high-octane FPS where supernatural power meets brutal gunplay – think horror meets action movie adrenaline.
Play for a Purpose
Behind the scares lies a message of hope. Every purchase of the Halloween Horrors Bundle helps support Safe In Our World, a charity dedicated to promoting mental health awareness in gaming and ensuring no player ever feels alone in the dark.
By joining in, you’re not only diving into some of the best horror experiences around — you’re helping build a healthier, more supportive community for everyone.
Limited Time Only
Your keys arrive instantly, but this haunting offer won’t last forever. When the shadows fade and the pumpkins rot, this bundle disappears into the mist.
Step into the darkness. Conquer your fears. And help make the world a safer place, in and out of the game.
Green Man Gaming
The Green Man Gaming Staff account represents the voices of the team behind Green Man Gaming, bringing you the latest in store news, industry insights, and curated gaming recommendations.
Silent Hill f marks the long-awaited return of Konami’s legendary horror series, bringing with it a fresh setting, unsettling atmosphere, and a creative team rooted in Japanese horror storytelling. With a new direction that promises to balance psychological dread and survival tension, it’s already shaping up to be one of the most anticipated releases of 2025. If you’re curious about what to expect, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about Silent Hill f — including its release date, gameplay, story, editions, pre-order bonuses, and the latest trailer.
Silent Hill f Release Date
Silent Hill f will launch worldwide on September 25, 2025. The game will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. At this stage, no Nintendo Switch 2 version has been announced.
Silent Hill f Pre-Order Bonuses
Players who pre-order Silent Hill f will gain access to exclusive bonuses depending on the edition chosen. Regardless of which edition they choose, placing a pre-order nets them the following:
White Sailor School Uniform – a cosmetic upgrade that changes Hinako’s appearance
Omamori: Peony – an equipable item unlocked with progression
Item Pack – an item pack that contains three consumables and is comprised of one Shrivelled Abura-age, one Divine Water and one First Aid Kit
Additionally, pre-ordering the Digital Deluxe Edition grants up to 48 hours of early access to the game before its official release date.
Silent Hill f Special Editions
Alongside the Standard Edition, Silent Hill f will also launch with a Digital Deluxe Edition, offering additional content for dedicated fans:
Silent Hill f Deluxe Edition
Base game of Silent Hill f
48-Hour Early Access
Digital Artbook
Digital Soundtrack
Pink Rabbit Costume
Silent Hill f Gameplay
As Hinako Shimizu, players will explore the mist-covered town of Ebisugaoka, a place where everyday life slowly unravels into something far darker. Exploration is at the heart of the experience, with narrow streets, abandoned interiors, and unsettling details that reward those who look closely.
Fighting to survive feels desperate and personal. Instead of a stockpile of guns, Hinako relies on improvised weapons like spears and blades, making every encounter tense. Sometimes, stealth or simply running away is the smarter choice, pushing players to weigh risk against reward.
Puzzles carry the same uneasy atmosphere, often pulling from Japanese folklore and psychological themes to keep the tension high. Decisions along the way influence how Hinako’s story unfolds, leading to different outcomes that reflect her struggle.
Layered on top of it all is the chilling soundscape and grotesque creature design, which ensures that dread never truly lifts.
Silent Hill f Story
Unlike previous Silent Hill entries set in America, Silent Hill f takes place in 1960s Japan (more on that here), in the fictional rural town of Ebisugaoka. The protagonist is Hinako Shimizu, a high school student whose quiet life is disrupted when the fog creeps in and the world begins to twist into a nightmarish reflection of itself.
The narrative, penned by celebrated writer Ryukishi07 (Higurashi, Umineko), explores psychological and societal horror, intertwining the beautiful with the grotesque. Themes of fear, social pressure, and transformation form the backbone of this chilling tale.
PC Specifications
Silent Hill f is being designed to deliver its haunting atmosphere with cutting-edge visuals and immersive audio, and Konami has released the official PC specifications to help players prepare their systems ahead of launch:
MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows® 11 (64-bit OS required)
Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 5700
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 50 GB available space
Additional Notes: Playing on minimum requirements should enable you to play on Performance quality settings in 30 at 720p. SSD is recommended.
Additional Notes: Playing on recommended requirements should enable you to play on Performance settings in 60 FPS or Quality settings in 30 FPS at FullHD (or 4k using DLSS or similar technology). SSD required.
Where Can I Watch the Latest Trailer?
The most recent trailer, revealed during gamescom Opening Night Live, showcases both the atmosphere and the terror at the heart of Silent Hill f. Opening with what appears to be a crime scene and ominous radio chatter, it quickly spirals into haunting imagery and a chilling sense of dread. It sets the stage for the unsettling journey players can expect when the game launches.
Jason Coles
Jason likes to focus on roguelikes and co-op games; in a dream world he’d make a living writing about Dark Souls. As well as being a writer he also does personal training and accounting and can occasionally be seen on other people’s streams. Being a big fan of fluffy things means he has two cats, both of whom refuse to let him sleep, but at least they are cute.
Horror is a staple on nearly every streaming service, but what if you’ve seen all the important classics and are looking to venture a little further afield? One way to keep mainlining your favorite villains and settings is to dive into sequel territory. Not all horror sequels are created equal, but for every misguided cash grab, there’s a cult classic waiting to be rediscovered. Head to Peacock, home of next year’s Crystal Lake prequel series, to check out these 10 horror sequels.
Halloween II
We’ve had Halloween II on the brain thanks to the upcoming Strangers: Chapter 2, which imperils the Final Girl anew as she’s trying to recover from the first film’s horrific attack. That’s not unlike Laurie Strode’s ordeal in 1981’s Halloween II, which shows us what happens once she checks into Haddonfield’s local hospital—a facility with a horny staff and not many existing patients, where Michael Myers easily tracks down that troublesome babysitter and continues his stalking rampage. Watch on Peacock.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
The only film in the Halloween series not to feature Michael Myers as the killer—he does get a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, though—Halloween III is a wonderfully bonkers tale involving a witchy plot to massacre scores of children using cursed Halloween masks powered by Stonehenge-adjacent witchcraft and activated by an irritatingly catchy commercial jingle. It also features one of the least likely horror-movie heroes ever, as well as one of the booziest. Watch on Peacock.
The Exorcist III
The first Exorcist is an influential masterpiece. The second Exorcist teeters between “so bad it’s good” and “no, seriously, what were they thinking?” But The Exorcist III, written and directed by Exorcist book author William Peter Blatty (and, as pop culture will have us believe, beloved by Jeffrey Dahmer), is a deeply distressing tale that both picks up the threads of William Friedkin’s original film and creates its own specific nightmare. It also has one of the greatest jump scares in cinematic history, so searing that even if you know it’s coming, you’ll still flinch. Watch on Peacock.
Day of the Dead
Make sure you click on the 1985 version from George A. Romero; Peacock also has the forgettable 2008 remake. Zombies are still roaming the earth in this third entry in Romero’s classic trilogy, but in this military-focused entry, you can definitely see why it’s time for humankind to consider bowing out. Wonderful gore further elevates the story, as does the endearing undead dude Bub, an eternal fan favorite. Watch on Peacock.
Terrifier 2 and 3
The saga of Sienna the warrior angel versus the maniacal Art the Clown takes shape in Damien Leone’s second and third Terrifier movies, which back-to-back equal some four and a half hours of circus-tinged mayhem and cruel brutality. The kill scenes are always the main attraction, but part three in particular introduces some intriguing Art lore that Leone has said he’ll further explore in the upcoming fourth film. Watch on Peacock: Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3.
Son of Frankenstein
Most horror fans have watched the classic Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. But as we await Guillermo del Toro’s fresh take on Mary Shelley’s literary creation, why not watch the third film in that original series? Released in 1939, Son of Frankenstein stars Boris Karloff as the revived Monster, Bela Lugosi as the diabolical Ygor, and Basil Rathbone as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein. As the title suggests, he’s Henry Frankenstein’s son, and he ill-advisedly decides it’s his job to restore the family reputation. Watch on Peacock.
Child’s Play 2
Chucky may have been burned to a crisp at the end of 1988’s Child’s Play, but you can’t keep a killer doll down—especially one hellbent on claiming a human body by any means necessary. The sequel brings back kid actor Alex Vincent as Andy Barclay, giving him a tough foster sister (Christine Elise) and cementing one of horror’s best sibling duos. It also takes on the corporate jerks behind the Good Guy doll line, which gives the film reason to skewer big business and build to an inspired climax in a Chucky-filled toy factory. Watch on Peacock.
Amityville II: The Possession
There are now over 50 movies purporting to be part of the Amityville film series, including several parodies and in-name-only entries. But back in 1982, just a few years after The Amityville Horror “true story” book, Amityville II did its best to continue the success of the first film by offering a prequel of sorts to its events. While the famous haunting was later debunked as a hoax, there was a real-life tragedy behind the ghost story, and Amityville II digs into the family massacre—with the expected sensational supernatural twist, of course. Watch on Peacock.
Phantasm: Ravager
The final Phantasm film was released in 2016 and reunited original stars A. Michael Baldwin (Mike Pearson), Reggie Bannister (Reggie), and Angus Scrimm (the Tall Man)—the latter sadly passing away before the film hit theaters. While the original Phantasm will always be the best entry, not to mention one of the purely weirdest horror movies ever made, this farewell entry offers a blend of “one last time” nostalgia as well as its own extremely freaky dream-world adventures. Watch on Peacock.
Scream 4
Wes Craven’s Scream 4 is sort of the odd man out of his Scream series. It was released in 2011, 11 years after Scream 3 and 11 years before the series’ revival with Scream in 2022. It follows Sidney Prescott, self-help author, as she returns to Woodsboro, where Ghostface launches a fresh series of attacks, with Sidney’s teenage cousin at the center. Scream 4 is not unaware of its odd place in the continuity, poking fun at excessive sequels with glimpses of the in-universe Stab series having reached parts six and seven—and it’s well worthy of rediscovery. Watch on Peacock.
It’s been nearly 15 years since Final Destination 5, the most recent installment in the horror-movie franchise where someone responds to a premonition about deadly disaster by saving the victims, who death then jealously pursues in the order they should have died, through a series of ridiculous contrivances. The series revives with Final Destination: Bloodlines, which puts a new twist on the gimmick: This time around, one survivor of the original disaster staved off death long enough to have kids and grandkids, so death chases them down too, in order of birth.
For a lot of filmmakers, that time gap would be a reason to start from scratch as much as possible, to revamp and update the franchise. Directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky (who also made the fascinating 2018 sci-fi puzzlebox movie Freaks, now on Netflix) certainly do some of that — including using their framing for an IMAX version of the movie they say will never be seen in any other format. But they also told Polygon that they went back to study the franchise’s previous films in obsessive detail, to capture everything that made these movies work.
“There are key shots in the previous movies that are iconic,” Lipovsky told Polygon via Zoom. “We just were so inspired by them. We even took it to the next level — we analyzed every single death set piece in all the previous movies, and built this incredibly complex spreadsheet with how many omens they had, what type of death it was, and what the other deaths were that came after it, to see what the pattern of death was, and which ones worked really well, and which ones didn’t. We really analyzed the key DNA pieces, the set pieces we could best learn from and bring into our movie.”
Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment
He says previous Final Destination movies showed death’s impending arrival on a scene in a variety of ways, “whether that’s through wind, or the way the camera moves, or the way water drips, or things like that,” which the directors picked up for Bloodlines. “But even the fun they had with the way they transition from one scene to the next, we were really inspired by that as well. One of our all-time favorite shots is when [2006’s Final Destination 3] cuts from the two tanning beds to the two coffins. It’s cinematic, but it also has an irony and a fun to it. That’s the tone you’re always trying to capture.”
The “arrival of death” tipoffs in a Final Destination movie also include creepy music cues, and ominous shots of the various mundane objects that are about to self-assemble into a murderous Rube Goldberg device leading to a messy death. But with Bloodlines, Stein says, the team added in IMAX camera cues.
“Because we got to work with the IMAX team, to film it for IMAX with their cameras and their specs, they really encouraged us to see if there was a way we could use the IMAX aspect ratio shift as a creative tool,” Stein says. “And that got us really excited to use it almost as a omen in itself. In the IMAX version of this movie, there is a specific shot where we have a creepy push-in for each death sequence that we designed to be the moment where we expand to the IMAX aspect ratio right as death arrives. It’s the harbinger of death.”
That effect won’t be visible at all for people in regular theaters, or watching the film later in home formats, Stein says. “It’s only in the IMAX version of the movie, which you can only see opening week in IMAX theaters. It’ll never be released on home video or on streaming. So for audiences that don’t know that’s what’s happening, they’ll just feel it as a bit of an increase in the intensity in those moments, as they get sucked into that bigger aspect ratio. And for the IMAX fans who have a keen eye, who are looking out for it, they’ll be able to see those particular shots where death arrives and leaves each scene.”
Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment
Stein and Lipovsky’s enthusiasm for the franchise shows through when they talk about the details of their plot, with the central family facing death one by one. But they light up even more when talking about the filmmaking process. “Final Destination is the ultimate treat for a filmmaker to shoot, because there is no personified antagonist,” Lipovsky said. “There’s no monster, there’s no man with a knife, no nothing. It’s just shots of objects and the wind, and the way the camera rotates slightly and pushes in. Ultimately, it’s really the filmmaking that’s coming for these characters, and all the clever ways these objects are misdirecting them and moving around them — which is ultimately us.
“So basically, Adam and I got to be death, to build all these crazy machines and use all the tools of cinema we delight in to create tension. And that’s a really just a beautiful gift as a filmmaker to indulge yourself with, and to play with all the incredible technicians we collaborated with, to just give the sense that there’s an evil force there, even though you don’t see anything.”
Stein says that dynamic — getting to “play death” in every sequence — made the project fun for him and Lipovsky in a way that they hope carries over to the audience. “A lot of people assume horror movie sets are very bleak, but there’s a great sense of playfulness and fun in horror,” he said. “Because you’re letting loose with your dark sense of humor, and all the technicians are having so much fun with being covered in fake blood, and having fake bodies being torn apart by puppeteers. All those practical effects bring a lot of fun to the set, as everyone’s figuring out how to do all this stuff.
“And I think that comes across on screen, especially in a tone like Final Destination’s. We always said we wanted to create a movie where you have to watch it through your fingers ’cause it’s so intense, but you’re also laughing at the same time. And when you see this movie in a packed theater with an audience that is really coming into the audience experience in that way — everyone is horrified, and they have to look away. But they’re also laughing uproariously, which I think surprises some people when they really see this movie in a packed theater.”
Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.
It can sometimes feel like Florence Pugh emerged into the world a full-formed movie star. One day, she was getting some light awards buzz for roles in indie roles on the festival circuit; the next, she was headlining major films and strutting down red carpets in designer fashion. Now, for another career milestone: As the top-billed star of Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, Pugh continues to solidify her place as one of the most successful actors of her generation.
If you’ve been paying attention, Pugh’s rise to A-lister status was painstakingly earned. Before her career-making role in the cult thriller Midsommar — which led to parts in major projects like Little Women and multiple MCU installments — she paid her dues with a series of lesser-known movies. Of the bunch, one of the most overlooked and underrated is the horror flick Malevolent, a Netflix original that landed quietly in 2018 but is worth revisiting as Pugh leads a ragtag team to save the Marvel universe on movie screens across the world this weekend.
In Malevolent, Pugh plays Angela, part of a team of phony ghost hunters whose scam runs its course when they’re lured to an actual haunted house. While the group’s scheme mostly relies on technological trickery, Angela appears to have some actual, latent psychic powers. Director Olaf de Fleur reveals these within its first few minutes, showing the world through her eyes as objects mysteriously move and ghosts jump out at her from the shadows (the first of many jump scares Malevolent has in store).
Pugh plays all this with surprising coolness, even as the horror amps up in the film’s final act. There’s an impressive stoicism to her performance: she’s calm and collected, with a clear hint of sadness just below the surface. She doesn’t shriek once, at the most letting out a gasp when she comes face to face with one of Malevolent’s many deformed ghosts.
This type of subtle performance has become a cornerstone of Pugh’s career. You can see the same approach in movies like Midsommar and Dune: Part Two, where she’s able to establish complex characters with just a few sparse lines of dialogue and a soulful look into the camera. It’s a talent that dates at least back to Malevolent, where Pugh conveys more with a simple facial expression than most actors can with an entire monologue. During the movie’s few happy moments, the camera will sometimes linger on Pugh’s smile for one second too long as it falls away to reveal the despair underneath.
That’s also a stylistic choice for Malevolent, as de Fleur makes a habit of holding each shot for an extra second or two, imbuing the movie with a sense of dread that never breaks. He also constructs some impressive shots, including an opening scene in which the camera is framed through the perspective of a young girl. Her father has hired the group to communicate with his dead wife, but as the scene plays out, you can’t see anyone’s faces until they crouch down to speak to the girl directly.
While there are plenty of reasons to praise Malevolent — the synthy soundtrack is eerie without sounding like a Stranger Things imitation, and some of the practical effects are downright terrifying — it’s also far from a perfect movie. Not all the characters get quite enough development for their eventual deaths to resonate, and as the film reaches a somewhat hectic climax, it can be hard to follow the action. De Fleur’s insistence on building mood over noisy jump scares also limits Malevolent’s effectiveness as a horror film. Because sometimes, you really do need the main character to scream bloody murder when the moment calls for it.
At this point in Pugh’s career, it seems unlikely she’ll ever wind up in another low-budget Netflix horror movie, and that makes Malevolent’s existence all the more special. She may not approach the role in typical scream queen fashion, but her skills as an actor more than make up for it. All the building blocks of a remarkable career are on display here, from her subtle, inward performance to a tangible coolness under pressure she is able to evoke. In the years since, Pugh’s added a few more tricks to her repertoire (you wouldn’t know it from Malevolent, but she’s also hilarious). And yet, even in this imperfect, scary horror flick from 2018, there’s no doubt that Florence Pugh was a movie star in the making.
Ryan Coogler, the Academy Award-nominated director of Creed and Black Panther, hasn’t been shy at all about citing the various inspirations behind his new horror thriller Sinners. In the weeks leading up to the film’s premiere, Coogler has been making the rounds along the press circuit, drumming up excitement and talking at length about the creative process behind his latest original feature. “It’s a genre-fluid film,” Coogler told SciFiNow in January. “There are vampires in the film, okay, but it’s really about a lot more than just that. It’s one of many elements and I think we’re gonna surprise people with it.”
Coogler’s right; there’s a lot more to Sinners than first meets the eye, and that’s especially apparent from the breadth of influences Coogler has pulled from while writing the film’s script. He’s cited From Dusk Till Dawn,The Faculty, the oeuvre of the Coen brothers, and even Puss in Boots: The Last Wish as inspirations behind Sinners, though the most intriguing reference he’s nodded to might be a lesser-known episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.
Image: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
“Truthfully, the biggest influences are not in cinema,” Coogler told SciFiNow. “The novel Salem’s Lot is a massive influence on the film. Then there’s a real deep-cut influence. My favorite thing ever made is The Twilight Zone, and my favorite episode is called ‘The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank’ – probably Salem’s Lot and ‘The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank’ are probably the biggest influences.”
Premiering in the third season of The Twilight Zone, the episode centers on Jeff Myrtlebank, a young man living in a small town in the southernmost section of the Midwest who mysteriously returns to life at his own funeral, much to the shock of his loved ones and pastor. Despite their reasonable trepidation, the townspeople declare it a miracle — that is, until rumors begin to swirl regarding minor yet noticeable shifts in Jeff’s behavior following his unexpected resurrection.
“I’m real concerned,” Jeff’s mother tells her husband over breakfast. “He only ate two eggs again; why, ever since he’s sprouted teeth he’s been having three eggs at breakfast.” Jeff’s father notices a change in Jeff as well. “I recollect worrying many times that he leaned just a shade towards the side of shiftlessness,” he says. “And since his sickness, he’s been fighting in that work just like he was a year behind.”
Image: Paramount Global
Eventually, these idle rumors become fodder for suspicion and outright hatred of Jeff’s newfound character and candor. It gets so bad that even Comfort Gatewood, Jeff’s own fiancée, begins to doubt that Jeff is who he says he is. “I expect it from the others, but not from you, Comfort,” Jeff tells her in frustration. “I’m getting sick and tired the way everybody treats me like a vampire.”
The conclusion of the episode leaves the question of Jeff’s true nature, as well as that of his resurrection, tantalizingly unanswered, but the most intriguing connection between “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” and Coogler’s Sinners is evident in its penultimate moment. When Jeff is surrounded by a group of angry neighbors, Comfort’s brother Orgram accuses him of being a “haint,” a ghostly presence believed to possess the bodies of mortal men for its own nefarious purposes. This same term appears in Sinners, when Wunmi Mosaku’s character, Annie, speaks about the power of music to rend asunder the veil dividing the world of the living and the dead.
Even apart from its connection to Coogler’s latest film, however, “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” is a terrific Twilight Zone episode that knows that the most interesting questions are often best left unanswered. It may not be as iconic as “Nightmare at 20000 Feet” or “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” but it’s nevertheless a great episode to watch whether or not you plan on venturing out to the theater to see Sinners.
The Twilight Zone is available to stream on Pluto TV and Paramount Plus.
What kind of person would you be in the face of a disaster that’s beyond explanation? Would you help distressed neighbors and open your home even to sketchy-looking strangers in the hope that there’s strength in numbers, or go it alone regardless of how heavily the odds are stacked against you? Would you still brush your teeth every day?
The horror in Francis Coulombe’s RPG Look Outside is all encompassing. There is the cosmic element: something incomprehensible is happening beyond the walls of your apartment building and it’s in your best interest to not even look outside, let alone go there. And as you quickly learn, anyone who has looked or been outside is transformed in unimaginable ways, making for some extreme (and extraordinarily creative) body horror. But in much of the game leading up to its multiple climactic endings, the unease also stems from how it makes you look inside — at the choices you’ve made and the person you’ve become in order to survive.
Despite trying to take an empathetic approach, I still found myself in situations that left my character (and me) wracked with guilt. There is a gnawing sense of doubt that grows over the course of the game, repeatedly making me question whether I’d, say, made a bad call and been too quick to kill that neighbor whose entire head is teeth, or if my hand was really forced into making a very upsetting sacrifice.
After a while, the most unnerving thing is looking in the mirror. And you have to do that a lot in this game, because hygiene affects your stats.
Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital
It all begins with your character, Sam (you can change the name, if you want), waking up after a strange dream with a strong urge to look outside. You are immediately given the choice between satisfying your curiosity and listening to your gut, and you’ll find yourself grappling with that dilemma time and time again.
At this point, you also meet Sybil, the mysterious next-door neighbor who only speaks to you through the wall, with one glaring eyeball peering out of a large crack. Sybil, whom it’s unclear if you should trust, tells you that everything will blow over in 15 days if you just wait it out. You need to scavenge for resources if you’re going to make it that long, though, and once you leave your apartment and get a chance to talk to some other neighbors, you may decide you want to take a more active role in getting to the bottom of the catastrophe.
Some neighbors, particularly a few robed amateur astronomers who appear to be in a cult, seem to know quite a bit about what’s going on, and it’s insinuated that doing tasks for them will help you figure out the how and why of the phenomena around you. Others are more focused on addressing their immediate needs and will try to rope you into their causes: locating missing people, picking up laundry, cleaning the messes left behind by eldritch horrors, etc. There’s a full on war happening somewhere in the building, which you can choose to play a part in if you’re so inclined. Your landlord will unsurprisingly still demand you pay him rent despite the circumstances.
If you choose to play in Normal mode, like I did, Sybil is your only save point, so you’ll have to return home regularly. Easy mode autosaves.
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All interactions are turn-based, and as you explore the apartment building, you’ll run into tons of enemies and potential allies — but the line between the two isn’t always easy to distinguish. Sometimes you can only attack or try to escape, which answers the question for you, but other times, you have the opportunity to talk and ask questions. The turn-based nature allows you to take a moment and evaluate each new encounter, but there’s always an air of ambiguity about everyone’s trustworthiness. Even when you’re back at your apartment, where you can shower, rest, do some cooking and crafting, and play video games, people will come along and knock on your door, and you’ll have to make up your mind about whether you should let them in.
The thing is, surviving can be pretty difficult once you really get going if you’re on your own. Enemies will outnumber and overpower you. That’s where it becomes helpful to have a few allies. With as many as three other people in your party, the scale tips heavily in your favor. I took the trusting approach, for better or worse. This resulted in me having a pretty solid group of fighters on my side, but a pair of those same allies kicked me out of my own bedroom and complained about my cooking.
The creature designs come disgustingly, beautifully alive in the pixel art style. Body horror can be really hard to stomach, and something is often lost for me in the process of consuming it when it’s intended to seem realistic — either because I’m hiding behind my hands and only taking tiny peeks through my fingers, or because it ends up achieving the opposite effect and just looks ridiculous without meaning to. But Coulombe’s art equally embraces the horrifying and the absurd, and the effect of that balance is powerful.
Nothing was ever so disturbing that I couldn’t look straight at it, but there were certainly moments that gave me a genuine scare or made my skin crawl. Even the characters that aren’t being transformed, like the protagonist, look a little grotesque, which adds to how unsettling everything feels. But just when the dread would reach a fever pitch, something overtly silly would be thrown in almost as if to splash some cold water on the whole thing and say, yes this is the apocalypse but we’re still human, we still have a sense of humor.
Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital
So much of the joy of playing this game is discovering all the tricks it has up its sleeve, so I won’t get into any descriptions of bosses, puzzles or the building itself, other than to say that the latter has a whole House of Leaves thing going on that is unbelievably frustrating at times, but in a way that only adds to the brilliance of it all. There is no map to guide you, either. The soundtrack, composed by Eric Shumaker, keeps in perfect step with every emotion the environment evokes, and I could probably write an entire separate review about how good it is.
All of this builds up to an absolute cosmic gut-punch of an ending (or endings, there are several) that completely changed the way I felt about the game up until that point. In the end, it becomes something much, much bigger than it once seemed, and the feelings were almost overwhelming. I can’t stop thinking about it.
By now I’ve played Look Outside many hours beyond what a typical run would be, just picking apart every detail and turning over every stone to try and figure out all the secrets, reach all the conclusions. I have died in all sorts of strange ways, and lived to see wildly different fates pan out.
I went into this only with the expectation of cool art and a relatively unique approach to survival horror, and came away shook from what turned out to be one of the best cosmic horror games I’ve played in a while, maybe ever. Look Outside, published by Devolver Digital, is only available on Steam for now, but I sure hope it makes its way to other platforms soon so more people can experience it.
One thing I did not foresee happening this year was us getting a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But the author announced exactly that back in April, and I’ve pretty much been counting down the days until the book’s release ever since. Absolution, the fourth novel in what previously stood as a trilogy, hit the shelves this week and it takes us back to the beginning of Area X and the ill-fated first expeditions to explore it.
For the uninitiated, the series deals with a strange coastal region in the US that’s inexplicably been shut off behind an invisible border and has returned to a wild state. A shady government agency has been tasked with studying it, but the people who set out on those exploration missions either never come back out, or come back different. The series includes Annihilation (which inspired the 2018 movie starring Natalie Portman), Authority and Acceptance.
Ten years after the series was originally released, a prequel feels like the perfect way to dive back into the mysteries of Area X and the Southern Reach. The trilogy concluded in a way that answered some questions but also left so much else up in the air. And while you probably shouldn’t expect Absolution to neatly wrap it all up, it does give us more insight on the early days of the anomaly and the perspective of key characters in that timeline, like Lowry. Absolution is hefty — it’s structured so there are three novella-like parts, and is nearly 500 pages long in all. Which is great, because I can’t get enough of Area X.
Do you feel that? That chill in the air, that tingling sensation at the back of your neck? It can only mean one thing. That’s right: Halloween season is once again upon us!
We especially love Halloween, though, a holiday dedicated to all things scary and spooky. Which is why, every year for thepastfouryears, Polygon has put together a Halloween countdown calendar, selecting 31 of our staff’s top horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks across movies, TV, and online videos throughout the month of October, all available to watch at home. It’s been so much fun, in fact, we’re doing it again — with an all new batch of films, shows, and videos to choose from.
Every day for the month of October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this countdown and tell you where you can watch it. So curl up on the couch, dim the lights, and grab some popcorn for a spine-tingling marathon of Halloween-adjacent delights.
Image: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Where to watch: Available to stream on Plex and Pluto TV with ads and to rent on Amazon
Kicking off the Halloween horror movie season is a delicate art. Just a few days into the official start of fall, it’s important to pick exactly the right movie to subtly shift that chill in the air from cozy to spooky as gently as you can. With that in mind, we’re easing into Halloween this year with Dario Argento’s Phenomena, a perfect blend of spooky, campy, and bleak that sets that stage just right for the frights to come.
Phenomena takes place in a remote town in Switzerland at a boarding school where Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a famous American actor, is the newest student. The only problem is there’s also a serial killer rampaging through the town, and when Jennifer witnesses one of the murders, her life is suddenly in grave danger. The good news is she has an inexplicable telekinetic power over insects to help keep her alive.
And while the movie isn’t quite as silly as the premise would imply, it is among the most bizarre and fun of the many sleazy slashers of the 1980s. But what truly elevates it to a special place is that it’s one of the rare horror movies where the supernatural is seemingly wholly on the side of good. It’s rare that a movie lets us unambiguously root for the mystical power at its center, giving the whole thing the strange, otherworldly feeling of a particularly grotesque fairytale.
All of this makes for a tremendously entertaining and odd mystery movie, and a great way to begin a month full of horror movies. —Austen Goslin
Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Where to watch: Shudder, AMC Plus
Anthony Waller’s 1995 horror thriller is a premise straight out of a waking nightmare. Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute special effects makeup artist, is in Moscow working out of a dilapidated movie studio on a low-budget slasher. After returning to the building after hours to pick up an important piece of equipment, Billy accidentally locks herself inside with no way of getting in touch with either her sister Karen or her sister’s boyfriend Andy. Things quickly go from bad to worse when she secretly stumbles upon the filming of a snuff film perpetrated by a pair of Russian gangsters. When the gangsters suspect that someone else is inside the studio, Billy must find a way to escape undetected before her own life is put into danger.
Mute Witness is a terrific cat-and-mouse murder thriller packed with teeth-clenchingly tense sequences and a compelling lead performance courtesy of Marina Zudina. The first hour of the film is expertly paced and edited, ingratiating the viewer within the layout of the studio before transitioning into a mad-dash climax that’s breathtaking and terrifying to behold. If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, the film touts a brief yet memorable cameo appearance by Sir Alec Guinness (Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia) in one of his final on-screen performances. —Toussaint Egan
Image: Warner Home Video
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon and Apple
If you ever get bored with the same old restaurant cuisines, the answer is often to look for a fusion restaurant that mixes a couple of your favorites, taking spices and techniques from different cultures and mashing them up into something new. The same goes for horror movies: If you’re bored of the usual executions of all the familiar tropes, a genre mashup like 1998’s Fallen may be the best way to find some new flavor in familiar ideas.
In Fallen’s case, director Gregory Hoblit and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan put the serial-killer procedural thriller and the possession horror story in a blender and use ideas and techniques from both to spice up the drama. Hoblit is a police-show vet (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, LA Law, um, Cop Rock) who keeps the action grounded and gritty, even as the supernatural edge pushes the story far from the genre’s normal beat.
Denzel Washington stars homicide detective John Hobbes, with John Goodman as his partner Jonesy. The two men (working under a sinister lieutenant played by Donald Sutherland) recently cracked a murder case that sent a serial killer (Elias Koteas) to the gas chamber. After his death, though, the killings start again, and Hobbes and Jonesy start working a new case that seems to be the old case. Horror vets will know where this is going long before they do, but Hoblit ramps up the eerie tension as Hobbes’ life starts to unravel.
A lot of horror involves people encountering the supernatural for the first time and fumbling for a response that will let them survive, but the stakes always seem higher when the protagonist is in law enforcement and in theory has to follow procedures, obey rules, and presume innocence. (See also: The Hidden, Angel Heart, Longlegs, etc.) Washington makes for a terrific rule-following cop who’s stuck in a terrifying situation where none of the rules he’s learned can possibly apply. The result is a solidly creepy movie with just the slightest tinge of knowing camp. —Tasha Robinson
Image: Scream Factory
Where to watch: Prime Video, Peacock, Shudder
Creature feature directors often cite Jaws as inspiration for holding back on full monster carnage until the end — the less you show, the scarier it is. Screw off! If a movie promises a big mutant alligator terrorizing the city, then we best see a big mutant alligator terrorizing that city, and often!
Good news: Alligator is exactly that, with the added bonus of great performances, a wicked sense of humor, and a touch of social commentary.
Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Breaking Bad) stars as detective David Madison, a cop with a reputation for doing good while losing his partners in the heat of action. When word of a killer alligator prowling the sewers reaches the surface, Det. Madison springs into action with a Dr. Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker), a herpetologist whose no-bullshit approach to amphibian research paves the way for a classic zinger-filled romance. Only the legendary John Sayles could squeeze a throwback screwball romance into a killer alligator movie and still find room to stick to the bumbling bureaucracy.
Much like Jaws, Sayles and director Lewis Teague interrogate the failed institutions that allow a 36-foot hyper-metabolic alligator to run rampant in Chicago — not only can the cops not get their shit together, but the alligator is only dino-like after consuming a biotech company’s discarded animal carcasses, all radiated with growth formula. Unlike Jaws, Teague puts his giant alligator puppet to good use, snapping its jaws on countless victims, from alleycats to random kids in a pool. Blood splatters, Chicagoans run for dear life, Det. Madison complains about his receding hairline, and by the end, things go boom. Alligator isn’t super scary, but it is a raucous good time, a cut above most monster B-movies of any era. —Matt Patches
Image: Scream Factory
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon and Apple
Park Chan-wook is in the top tier of living filmmakers for me, so of course I’m fond of even the “minor” works in his catalog. Stoker, his only English-language movie to date (although he’s made two English-language miniseries, including the fantastic TheLittle Drummer Girl), is an eerie, atmospheric psychological thriller that’s a perfect fit for people who want to participate in spooky season without getting too scared.
It’s India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) 18th birthday. Her father (Dermot Mulroney) has died, and her mother (Nicole Kidman) has welcomed his younger brother (Matthew Goode) into their home. What follows is a Hitchcockian gothic fairy tale filled with sensory delight. The score is pitch-perfect in the eerie atmosphere it provides, and Park never fails to deliver memorable images.
Oh, and fun fact: The movie was written by Wentworth Miller, of Prison Break/CW-verse fame, under a pseudonym. —Pete Volk
Oct. 6: Doctor Who, “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances”
Image: BBC
Doctor Who has two tones: the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism, and heebie-jeebie-inducing horror that keeps young viewers peeking through their hands, hiding behind the couch, or dreading the occasional nightmare about it for years.
This two-parter from the first season of the franchise’s 2005 reboot embodies the best of both. Sure, it’s the one that gave us the indelible Doctor line, “Just this once… everybody lives!” But it’s also an episode that made me, a grown-ass adult, terrified of my own ringing apartment intercom. Set in London during the Blitz, the Doctor and co. battle a strange plague that seems to be transmitted through phones. The phone rings, you pick it up, a creepy little British child voice on the other end says, “Are you my mummy?” Five minutes later there’s a knock on your door, and the creepy little British child is there wearing a gas mask, saying “Are you my mummy?” and BAM, you’re a gas mask zombie now. Millions of Doctor Who fans have never recovered. —Susana Polo
