My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2026

Well well well, it is that time of the year again and once again I have been keeping up my yearly tradition of watching at least 31 horror movies in the month of October i.e. at least one per day, and a bunch of other horror media which I will get to. So here is what I’ve been watching and what I thought.

First off, The Movies:

1. Mononoke the Movie: Chapter III - The Curse of the Serpent
Third and final part of the film spin offs from the Horror-Anime with an incredible art style and absolute horror vibes for days. If you love dazzling art direction and Asian culture then this is a big rec from me, though I think you’d need to watch the first couple at the very least or start off with the series which is excellent too.

2. Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors

Eh, American made anthology very much in the spirit of the Amicus EC comic adaptions but nowhere near as good. Roger Corman would have been ashamed to put this one out.

3. Daughters of Darkness
Man. Don’t you just hate it when you watch a UK cut of a Euro-erotica with all the fun sexy bits cut for the BBFC? I’m sure there’s probably a much more fun version with all the good stuff left in kicking around somewhere hopefully with subtitles but this ain’t it chief. Would not recommend.

4. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Meh, not bad if you like Jump Scares. As an Irish film maker I honestly wish I could get behind Cronins work a bit more but this is passable dumb fun, not bad by any means just not much to write home about.

5. Exit 8
If i had a quid for every horror movie based on a computer game to come out this year that I've seen that is about a protagonist dealing with the anxieties of prospective fatherhood id have two quid, but isn't it weird that it's happened twice? Pretty good tho, made me want to play the game too so fair play.

6. Frankie Freako

From the absolute legends at Astron-6, this is some top tier comedy horror for lovers of practical effects and a penchant for 80s nostalgia. It might not be quite up there with Father’s Day or Psycho Goreman but its still pretty good by anyone else's standards. I had a blast and I defy anyone who has a love of the whole wet-puppets trope in classic pre CGI horror not to have an absolute blast.

7. Monster House

Childrens animated horror that is in the vein of The ‘Burbs but for kids. The CGI animation might be sowing its age a bit but if you have preteens and you want something you can all watch for a bit of crack in the spooky season (and you’ve already rinsed the Henry Sellick / Laika ouvre) then you can do a lot worse. Good voice cast too.

8. Obsession

I actually missed this when it was out at the cinema and having now seen it, yeah its dope AF. Not quite my bag but I can see why the young’uns all like it and the fact that it has done gangbusters are the box office is a good sign for the health of the genre. Great central conceit, well executed, great turns by al the main cast (none of whom I think I’ve seen in anything before either) and gives you a lot to chew on after. Everything a good horror should be.

9. Perfect Blue

Rewatch of one of my absolute favourites by arguably the greatest mangaka / Anime director to ever do it. Brilliant. If you’re reading this and you’ve never seen this then what are you even doing with your life?

10. The Ugly Stepsister

Gloriously twisted darkly humorous body horror take on Cinderella. I have to say this got pretty fucked up in certain parts, like it made me gag a little and I’m hard as f’ing nails in general so be warned.

11. Let the Wrong One In

Irish Vampire comedy horror. Pretty good, there’s a bit where a guy takes a Vampire’s heart out with a Hurl and shouts “Up The Dubs” as he hits it like a sliotar into the sunlight to kill the vamp. Also notable for one of the last performances of the late great Anthony Head.

12. The Empty Village

I always like to hit a new watch from each continent, today I'm doing a new one from Ghana. Not bad. It is a bit odd though that it has the name of the production company being imposed in every frame (i'm guessing that's for copyright, even though its free to watch on youtube).

13. Mārama

Māori gothic horror which is not technically out in the UK until the end of the year but I would consider worth keeping an eye out for. As someone with Māori kin its great to see the culture being depicted on film and this is some excellent work.

14. Hokum

Rewatch for me, another top quality Irish one from the team that brought us Caveat and Oddity, which presumably did well enough that they got the budget to hire Andrew Scott from Severance and numerous other big American TV shows for the lead. Nice wee spooky Irish yarn with an intriguing mystery plot and great creepy vibes all round.

15. Nosferatu

Again, a rewatch but I hadn’t seen it since release and had a fun time introducing it to my family, who all had a great time with it. Totally forgot that its technically a Christmas film and probably should have waited til then, ah well…

16. An Evening Of Edgar Allen Poe

Vincent Price monologing 4 Poe stories. No filter, just Price on gull scenery chewing form and the raw text. Essential for fans of either.

17 PVC-1

This years visit to South America. A Columbian horror-thriller based on the true story of a woman who has a bomb collar attached to her neck by terrorists looking to extort her family. A solid 85 minute shot as a 1-er that never lets up the tension for a single second. Genuinely terrifying. Available to watch for free on Youtube here.

18. Good Boy

From the people that did Skinamarink, which I thought was really interesting but respected more than I enjoyed. This is a horror film about the cutest wee dog experiencing the death of its owner as a haunting and all from the perspective of the dog and has some of the best animal acting you’ll ever see. Very well done and if you’re a dog owner yourself this will fuck you up.

19. Die Säge des Todes (aka Bloody Moon)

Prolific euro-erotica director Jess Franco doing a slasher thriller with some inventive and amusing kills and a plot that is actually a lot smarter than I give it credit for. Like I thought I was just watching a stylish, cool and very horny late giallo but there were a couple of twists and turns that I genuinely didn’t see coming.

20. The Boxer’s Omen

Really weird bit of spooky Hong Kong action-horror. Very very Asian, to the point where its basically nonsensical if you’re not immersed in southern Chinese Buddhist magick lore. That said, it is an incredibly fun ride with some cool action, fever-dream visual sequences and really gnarly gore effects, all practical obviously with it being from the 80s. It’s about a triad-adjacent kick-boxer who has to become a Buddhist monk to fight demons, and that is about all you need to know.

21. Jennifer’s Body

A rewatch. I haven’t seen this for a long time and I always remembered liking it, nice to be confirmed. The scary bits are scary, the body horror is suitably squicky and as a dark, blackly comedic teen drama, aye it rules. The two leads Amanda Seifreid and Megan Fox are quite believable as two girls locked in a toxic friendship, Diablo Cody’s dialogue is just consistently sparkly and funny. I’m glad it has obtained the cult classic status and recognition for its brilliance it richly deserved all these years.

22. Lost Boys

Continuing my binge of classics that I’ve not seen in a bit nor written about here before, the Joel Schumacher Teen vampire horror comedy 80s classic Lost Boys. I have a good mate for whom this is his post-party hangover comfort film and I get it. Great story, lie Jennifer’s Body it could almost be in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe, looks great, had vibes for days and the soundtrack is pure gold.

23. The Witches of Eastwick

Another 80s classic I can’t say I’ve seen since the turn of the century, another Hollywood 80s cinema classic with a packed cast and tons of style. Based on a novel of the same name the writing is clever, the dialogue endlessly quotable and there are great turns from all involved. Good fun.

24. The Lair Of The White Worm

Ok, I might have written about this before in one of these lists but I will never tire of this film, or any other Ken Russell film I’ve seen. Considered one of his lesser works, this was one of the first of his I ever saw (actually probably the first, I’m sure I saw this before Tommy) this is a charming tribute to the classic British technicolour horror tradition and a banger horror comedy in its own right. Did I see anything in the film this time that I hadn’t seen before? Eh, no, but it does have a lot of 90s Amanda Donahoe running around being all sexy and evil so IDGAF.

25. Tremors

Probably the first time I have seen this since I was a kid. This is just a very fun tribute to the classic American creature feature tradition, might be my favourite Kevin Bacon performance too. Constantly inventive with how it scares you, and keeps you on your toes in the sense of characters (that are all very well realised and you genuinely care about) getting themselves in and out of monster related scrapes. Tight, efficient storytelling and again just a lot of fun.

26. Arrebato (aka Rapture)

Art house movie-about-movies from the late 70s. It’s barely a horror except in an existential sense up to the last act. Kind of like 8 & ½ if Fellini was a junky. It’s a study of how one can allow oneself to be consumed by obsession, whether that is with an addictive substance or the process of artistic creation. A dark but nonetheless sincere love-letter to the medium of cinema. I liked it a lot, even if it wasn’t literally scary.

27. Necronomicon: The Book Of The Dead

Oh, a Brian Yuzna project I’ve not seen before. And it’s in one of my favourite formats the classic Amicus-style Portmanteau. And it’s also loosely based on HP Lovecraft stories, which capture the vibe and imaginative cosmic horror of the originals without Herbert's weird sexist and racist peccadillos. Yeah, very enjoyable and goes harder on the gore and practical SFX than it needed to, like this was 1993 essentially the peak of all that stuff before the CGI blight on cinema got underway, like had it been a year or two younger it would all look like dogshit now.

28. Clayface

Wee trip to the pictures for this one. Loved it. As amusing as it is that it's set in the Battinson DC Universe and that Colin Farrell, Paul Dano and Barry Keogh are also out there in this universe doing villain stuff, really you can watch this as a stand-alone and be very entertained. Didn't catch any DC Easter eggs / references or even nods but I did catch the odd one to other stuff I adore like Darkman being the big one, a little Theatre Of Blood and a bit of Yuzna in its creative DNA.

29. The Devils

The long awaited 4k restored full directors cut is now finally with us and it is truly a glory to behold! The story, based on true events in 1630s France this is a historical gothic about the intersection of sex, religion and political power that hasn’t been available in its intended form, with one particular scene considered the philosophical, moral and theological heart of the entire project by the director finally restored with no small thanks to the efforts of the critic and friend of the director Mark Kermode, who did a live introduction at the premiere showing I attended. This will go down as one of my best cinematic experiences of the year.

30. Necropolis

A sexy blonde multi-breasted reincarnated VVitch returns to stalk the streets of New York in the 80s. Set in the then-contemporary “The Deuce” era when Times Square was full of junkies, pimps and their ho’s it feels like there’s some sort of social commentary being attempted here amongst the fan service but its hard to tell exactly what’s being said and it lacks the raw scrungyness and charm (not to mention the incredible soundtrack) of Liquid Sky which did much of the same things better and on a much lower budget. Still, its fun and thankfully short at a tight 77 minutes.

30. Vampire Hunter D

I decided to finish the season by binging a couple of old OVA Anime Horror classics beginning with the legendary Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter D, first time watching in quite a few years and its as good as I remember. This has big nostalgia vibes for me because I recall that first wave after Akira when all these Japanese cartoons for adults with swearing, blood and titties started hitting the west and that style to us was what anime was supposed to be. Anyway, this was great, the plot is ridiculous and the dialogue is very silly but the vibe and animation are still fire, gorgeous all these years later and now basically impossible to replicate since the generation of people who could do hand drawn cell animation have decidedly aged out of the industry and life itself. It’s wonderful a capsule of another time.

31. BAOH

This one I haven’t seen. Based on the Shonen manga by Hirohiko Araki who would later become world famous as the creator of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure this is essentially an extended origin story for a series that would never get made. Its good fun, basically The Gyver but with a lot more gore and body horror. The art, character design and animation are all in that classic 80s-90s OVA style so much of what I’ve said above about D goes here too.

So that’s the 31 day film challenge.

Other than that I have been reading Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, the basis for the Ken Russell film see above which is actually a work of non-fiction but considering the subject matter very season appropriate. Its great, a long non fictional work, interdisciplinary before the term was much of a thing in academia it is both a work of history that also includes long discursive chapters on theology, philosophy and the psychology of mass hysteria. That took me longer than anticipated so the only other book I managed was Chuck Tingle’s first non-Tingler Camp Damascus which while not quite having the sophistication or polish of his later sci-fi horrors is nonetheless excellent and you can see in it the promise of what was to follow.

I watched all of the latest season of Haunted Hotel, a cool little animated horror comedy which I thoroughly enjoyed. I also saw Poor Devil another animated comedy horror series about the antichrist living in present day New York. It was pretty good, lots of contemporary satirical humour and the penultimate episode about the downstairs neighbour who is barely in the rest of the series is one of the finest single episodes of anything I think I’ve seen all year. And of course it wouldn’t be October without a new Mike Flanaghan project and this time he’s doing a modern adaption of Stephen King’s iconic debut novel Carrie but a very loose one that’s been brought up to date to the age of social media. It was cracking, the long 8 hour miniseries format gives it a lot of time to breathe and really flesh out some of the characters that were a bit one note in the original, like the bully and Mrs White are given enough material that even if you still hate them you actually completely get who they are and why. I can see the King purist super fans hating it for all of that and while I have an issue or two of my own with the ending for the most part this is one of the best things on TV all this year so far.

And that was my October. I did see a bunch of other non-horror related stuff and made it to the theatre a couple of times too, which I may write about again in the near future. Until next year, happy spooky season.

Why I hate the Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas

Boke

I didn’t start this blog to dunk on anything or bitch about media I dislike. Generally I try and support stuff I find interesting and share obscure things from the nooks and crannies of culture that I like and use what little of a platform I have here to shine some light on stuff I like and would like to see getting more support. Today’s post will be a rare departure from that. I’m not doing this because the thing under discussion is spectacularly bad to the point where it needs a major takedown but because in discussing why I don’t like it I think there’s something interesting to be said and possible lessons to be taken. 

Not that one

Cloud Atlas is a big screen adaption of a novel of the same name by the author David Mitchell, and that’s the author as opposed to the guy who played Mark on Peep Show and has published at least one book of nonfiction which may or may not be as good as Business Secrets of the Pharohs and of whom I confess I am a bit of a fan. Different David Mitchell they just share a professional name.

Anyway, I very rarely will not finish a film I’ve set down to watch after the first couple of minutes but the time I tried to watch Cloud Atlas was one of the rare occasions where I tapped out. I don’t recall exactly at which point but it felt like ages in and I have not attempted it again.

I had been looking forwards to it too. I had generally liked the Wachowski sister’s work. As a devotee of Alan Moore Thought I had been disinclined to like any V adaption but with a few criticisms and caveats I ended up liking their version and consider it one of the few “good” Moore adaptions. I loved the Matrix and have time for the sequels, inferior though they are, and consider The Animatrix some of the best cyberpunk media. I also liked the book which I read in one go on a particularly long bus trip from Sheffield to Belfast. On paper the two seemed like a good fit. They’d done complex sprawling sci-fi before, surely they could do this?

Well, no. As much as I hate people who are real purists over source material in this one instance I am very much that guy. My fundamental gripe with it is that they abandoned the structure of the books, the sextette structure which to me seemed like the whole point of the novel was ditched to make it more palatable and they hollowed out a lot of the important stuff in favour of the least interesting most superficial parts. 

If you’re not familiar with the book or don’t know what a sextette is, let me explain.

A sextette is a structure often found in classical music but not elsewhere. If you have an interest in classical and have a favourite composer look it up, they may well have one. What you have is a piece composed of six distinct parts that can sound quite different or similar but with a different lead instrument but have consistent musical themes that connect them all as a singular piece. 

What David Mitchell did was to go, cool, what if I did a book like that? A single book composed of six parts that each feel like their own thing, of different genre, written in a different style like they’re from different authors with some loose connective tissue in the story but consistent themes of enslavement, exploitation and captivity. The book starts with the first section of which you get the first half, then the first half of the second and so on up to the sixth part which plays out in its entirety, finishing followed by the rest of the fifth then the fourth and so on backwards until you get the second half of the first section, finishing where it started. I don’t know if that’s a common way of arranging a sextette in music or Mitchells innovation but that’s what the book is and it’s a cool and interesting read. He very much frontloads the significance of the structure with the title, in the book The Cloud Atlas Sextette is a piece of music that appears in different parts of the text at crucial junctures, the second story being concerned to some extent with its composition.

The Sextette of stories also go backwards and forwards through time. Part 1 is set in the 19th century, part 2 later in the early 20th, and so on till we get to 5 which is set in the cyberpunk far future and the last section in its post-apocalyptic further future.

The film ditches the structure altogether, this is its cardinal sin.

They are, aye

To illustrate why that’s an issue I’ll now bring up the Peter Jackson Lord Of The Rings Trilogy as a point of comparison, specifically the second two films. In the Two Towers and Return of the King novels there's a two book structure, first book follows everyone except Sam and Frodo around Rohan and Isenguard, mostly Aragorn Legolas and Gimli but eventually Gandalf, Merry and Pippin as the first group catches up with them and get filled in on what they've been up to. Book 2 is all Frodo, Sam and Gollum as they approach Mordor over roughly the same timeframe as the previous section. In The Return of the King, same kind of deal first book everything else in the War of the Ring from the fall of Isenguard up to the survivors of the siege of Minas Tirith heading off to the Black Gate for the show down with the forces of Mordor. The last book then picks up with the ringbearer party where they left off at the end of The Two Towers and follows them to mount doom and beyond to the end.

Now do the films stick to that structure? Nah. It’s fine on the page but it there wouldn't be any point doing it that way on film. The films flit between what's going on at a given time with the two or three different groups of characters, sometimes using those to set up little mini cliff-hangers etc. It’s all good because in the language of cinema it makes perfect sense.

In the film Cloud Atlas, like in Jacksons The Lord of The Rings, they ditch the structure in favour of skipping between the stories and in this case it doesn't work, because you're unmoored in time skipping between six discreet stories with minimal connection to each other up and down the shared timeline instead of between things that are happening at around the same time across different locations. It’s a constant random churn. Many critics of the film find this not just needlessly abrasive to the senses but literally confusing. A common observation of the film even from its defenders is that it is hard to know what is actually going on without having read the book. That to me is a fundamental flaw. You shouldn’t have to know the source material of a thing that’s been adapted to parse it. If it doesn’t stand on its own two feet as an art-object in itself then what is the point of it? A film that been adapted from something else can choose not to follow the source and have a certain ambiguity that the source makes explicit and still be good, great even. I’ve not read it but I have read that in the novel Under The Skin the motivations of the alien MC are much les subtle and its got a much more explicit message. Does that mean that the film is “solved” since reading the book answers a lot of the questions and dispels the ambiguity cultivated by the film? Nope, the film is its own thing, the mystery adding to the vibe and its purposefully just showing you the events and letting you draw your own conclusion. Or another classic example would be Blade Runner, in the novel Phil K Dick has no time for moral ambiguities, Batty and Crew are canonically baddies and less than human, Dekkard gets gaslit into thinking he might be a replicant for a couple of chapters but definitely isn’t. In that sense the book is imo worse than the film. People can make sense of these films on their own terms. They aren’t just literally confused by the editing.

Another thing that I don’t like is that the things in the books outside the structure that connect each of the stories are very loose, subtle and intangible. These are brought to the fore in the film and what was subtle made explicit to the detriment of the themes. Some of the characters in the different timelines share a birth mark which seems to imply that they are either related or are reincarnations of each other. The book doesn’t dwell on this point or its significance, the film makes a big deal out of it. It was never what the book was supposed to be about. When you see the film being described like on IMDB or something it always gets brought up.

I feel like all this fuckery was only done because if they'd kept something like the original sextette structure in the screenplay it would have been deemed too weird to ever get out of the slush pile even with that cast and the pre-Jupiter Ascending Wachowski sisters behind it. I could imagine an indie film doing this and it being deemed too “Art House" just on that basis. The production of Block Busters is a lot more regimented and formulaic than would allow for something like that. Without the structure they had to make the film about something, hence the over emphasis on that loose connective tissue. This was just about the end of race swapping actors not being considered really bad crack so we get Tom Hanks in Yellowface because of this.

Could it have been better had they stuck to the structure? Wellll…. I’m not sure that a feature film would be the right medium in the first place and can’t help but think that it might have been better as prestige TV. In a show they could say do it as six episodes in two parts with each having the first two parts of the story then episode 4 finish the second half of part six and five and the rest in descending order. They could keep the essence of the book by having the different sections being shot in a different style even different film stock and all that like retro film producers do, eg Mandy, The Love Witch, The Lighthouse and the films of Mark Jenkin. The section with the composers in black and white, the spy stuff like a 60s American TV, doing The Orison of Soom-Yi like a cyberpunk anime and preferably in the classic OVA style, the bit in the old folks home like a 90s British TV drama etc. I reckon the structural weirdness would be something a modern prestige TV watching audience would be up for now in a way that film goers of the early 2010s wouldn’t have.

I don’t know if that will ever happen. These are just my thoughts. 

2025 My Year In Stuff

 

2025 was actually a pretty good year just for getting through some good media. Working at the Ulster Museum as I had been for the most of it meant having to up my game in terms of good nonfiction and broadening my knowledge of stuff in and out of my wheelhouse. We’d some cracking TV and quite a good year for movies and gigs. So, in no order:

Gaming: Basically the same as last year, still playing Streets of Rage 4 a fair few times a week, Balatro, Pool and Slay The Spire daily. The two new games I got into, Deltarune and the new Shinobi from the guys that did SOR4 I enjoyed up to a point but hit skill walls where there were certain bits that were too hard for me to get past and hence didn’t finish which is a bummer but meh, what can you do? 

Podcasts: Again, aside from the ones I’m still listening to from last year, The Only Podcast About Movies which is co presented by Matt of Extra History. It’s him and another guy who works in industry so you do get a reasonable level of analysis as well as their opinions and they cover a good range of stuff, their crack is generally decent too.

Theatre: I actually did make it out to the theatre a fair bit. I always say that I’m going to but rarely do, this year though I did genuinely get to see a good few shows. I saw Shame Show again, a locally made queer comedy with some very clever production. I saw Imelda May’s one woman show The Mother Of All Behans, based on the autobiography of Kathleen, mother of Brendan, Dominic and Brian. Ottille – another one woman musical about the Northern Irish blues singer Ottille Patterson. The Tunnel, a troubles era prison drama which was part of he Feilé was brilliant as well as was In The Name Of The Son, based on the life of Gerry Conlon and almost entirely focused on his life after prison, his struggles with mental health and slide into drug abuse. This was written by old family friend, former blanket man and scourge of Sinn Fein Ricky O’Rawe. I got to see pretty much all of these with my Dad so it was fun having a wee boys day out with him.  And for my birthday my sister took me down to Dublin to see The Book of Mormon with a couple of our mates.

Youtube: Yeah, aside from the stuff I’ve been keeping up with since last year there’s not been much to write home about. For whatever reason the algorithm seems to want to kill the long form video essay, a lot of the better of which have up sticks and moved to Nebula. Lindsay Ellis though has dropped a few bangers which have made their way back to her channel. The Beatles one is essential watching imo, as is her one on Miss Rachel and the flack she’s been getting from the Israel lobby. The video essay space has been very light on Palestine, only Bad Empanada and the Chapo Trap House podcast seem to have been consistently good on the issue. Sad to see.

TV: There’s been a bunch of live action series I have yet to get around to but really should. I’m part of the way through IT: Welcome To Derry and its been great so far. Pluribus and Silo both look fantastic but aren’t on services I sub to so it is going to take me a minute to get them sorted. Andor season 2, as much as it felt a bit rushed it was still fantastic, arguably the best thing in the whole franchise since the first couple of films. Something that came out at the start of the year and most people, including myself until there now, have probably forgotten was the disney MCU continuation of the Netflix Daredevil series with Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Kingpin, in this iteration essentially as a Donald Trump figure. It was actually great and a worthy addition to the earlier series. Another thing I did see was The Chair Company. Between that and the movie Friendship Tim Robinson has been on a roll this year and long may he continue. It’s a toss up between that and series 2 of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal for best live action show of the year. And I have finally got around to watching all of the original Twin Peaks and I’m well into The Return. I can see why some people consider this the GOAT, I’m not sure I am one of them yet but I’ll reserve judgement until I finish the whole thing.

Anime / Western animated series: Have finally got around to Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and tbh it was good but a bit too kiddyish for me. I have worked my way through a lot of obscure older anime from back in the day and damn, so much of it was absolute forgettable tripe. A couple that I did like were the old OVAs Ellcia a kind of high-seas fantasy and the urban horror fantasy Phantom Quest Corps. As far as newer stuff, we didn’t get anything new from the bit hitters of recent times, Hosoda, Shinkai etc. got a new Rose of Versailles film which was incredible, if you like shojo anyway, I caught the new Mononoke films (no relation to Princess Mononoke) which are as gorgeously animated as they are creepy and weird. Ponoc (or Continuity Studio Ghibli as I like to call them) give us The Imaginary, possibly their best project yet. Disney give us a whole slew of new Star Wars Visions, some direct continuations of the stories from season 1, all by some of the biggest anime studios currently going. Dandadan season 2 continues the standard set by the first ne, which is great to see since it fucking rocked. My only criticism is they didn’t keep the opening theme and the new one isn’t quite as good.  

The best thing though was 17-26, a compilation of stories by Tatsuki Fujimoto, creator of Chainsaw Man and Look Back. Honestly, this was incredible, unmissable stuff even if you’re not that into anime, every story is different and has some of the lushest animation and bravura story telling you’ll ever see. The other big stand out of the year in anime for me was Nukitashi: The Series. This was some of the most bizarre stuff I’ve ever seen in my entire life and really just reminds me of the good old days and everything I got into anime for in the first place. I’m not sure how exactly to describe it, it’s a sex comedy, borderline hentai but like a parody of the genre and not even that sexy, yet weirdly compelling. 

Western animation, we got The Mighty Nein, another show from Critical Role who were responsible for The Legend of Vox Machina, which we also got the last season of this year. Just solid fantasy hijinks. Creature Commandos, a suicide squad but with horror monsters set in the new DC Gunn-verse was a lot of fun, reminds me of the good old days of the 90s Vertigo era. Unknown Side-effects from the team that did Scavengers Reign was an absolute belter. The new Invincible season continues to be great too. 

My favourite series, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the second season of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. While it didn’t quite have the shock of the new of season 1 the animation quality, the cuts and turns of the plotting and the stream of consciousness visual storytelling were absolutely mind-blowing. A constant treat for old fans and new beginning to end, and good news is that we’re apparently getting more, a movie and 2 shows, a BMO centric one for babies and Side Quests, which is basically them going back to basics and doing stuff in the style of the early seasons, i.e. non arc plot single stories. We also got a short from Adult Swim called The Elephant made by a bunch of the OG adventure Time team, Penn Ward, Rebecca Sugar and Pat McHale which was almost three self contained minis where each handed the last panels off to the next with no context and let them riff on what they saw.

And yeah, I did see K-Pop Demon Hunters and it rules, not quite my bag but I can see why the kids all love it. Dogman might be the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. Predator Killer Of Killers was a lot of fun, one of the nest action films of the year animated or no.

For me though the best western animated feature was Memoir Of a Snail, the latest from ozzy stop motion animator Adam Elliott. A gothic, tragic, funny and sometimes heart-breaking story about two twins separated by the child services system and their subsequent lives. Its pretty dark in places but one you can definitely watch with older kids.

Movies: God damn, this has been a very good year for films. We’ve had a bumper crop of great horrors including Sinners, the best black Marxist vampire horror musical crime drama you’ll ever see, and not just because its likely the only film to blend those particular genres. Weapons, Together and 28 Years Later were all excellent. We got two great takes on the classics, passion projects by their respective directors with Robert Eggers Nosferatu and DelToro’s Frankenstein. I got to see 3 cracking new(ish) Irish horror film, All You Need is Death (came out 2023 but only got to see it on streaming this year) which was scored by one of the Lynch lads from Lankum, Fréwaka and An Taibshe two creepy atmospheric elevated folk horrors which are also fine additions to the cannon of Irish Language cinema. My favourite though was Bring Her Back, the second effort from the Philippou brothers. There were bits in that that had me squirming in my seat, and I’m hard as fucking nails and generally don’t get effected like that, so fair play to the lads.

Palestine features quite a lot in the cinema as one of the big things happening in the world at the moment. Even the new Superman seemed to be throwing digs (I personally think it was initially more about the Ukraine but as things unfolded during the production it leant into it). In fiction, To A Land Unknown was basically an update of Steinbecks Of Mice and Men but with Palestinian migrants in Greece. Palestine 36, a historic epic about the origins of the conflict was excellent, a few minor liberties with the historical accuracy aside. We had the documentary No Other Land which did a very good job of showing the general maniacal shittyness of the settlers and the IDF who defend and support them and the day to day bullshit Palestinians on the West Bank have to put up with. The Encampments, which was about the solidarity movement in the states and te sea change in public opinion that seems to be happening there based on the campus protests.

Other than that, The People’s Joker I really enjoyed but I feel like I need to rewatch, its basically the DC villains’ origin story as a trans narrative and its fun as hell. I’m Still Here, a Brazilian film, a true story about the family of a politician, a sitting senator who becomes one of The Disappeared by the fascist Junta in the 70s and their long quest for justice. The Return, an adaptation of the last sections of The Odyssey with Ralph Feins as Odysseus himself was classy good stuff. Pillion with Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård and Babygirl with Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson both did some excellent work bringing BDSM relationship dramas to the big screen with an element of realism conspicuously missing from tripe like 50 Shades of Grey. Cool OSTs on both of those two, particularly the latter. Bugonia is maybe my second least favourite Lanthimos film that I’ve seen but that’s still a pretty high bar and definitely a must see with a lot to say about contemporary society in the usual Lanthinmos bizarre style. Sorry, Baby will probably be remembered as the first of many masterpieces from its writer-director. As for: One Battle After Another, yeah believe the hype it IS that good.

Best new film, at least of the ones I’ve managed to catch so far was It Was Just An Accident. An Iranian films made by a dissident director who was banned from making films and had to shoot the whole thing in secret and smuggle it out of the country. And you can kind of see why, he does not pull any punches. A man who had been tortured by the regime for trades union activity thinks he has come across one of his torturers, by accident, chases him down and captures him with the intent of getting revenge. But, as the man swears innocence he begins to doubt himself and sets out on a journey to find others who were captured with him who might be able to positively identify him. A comedy of errors ensues that takes him all over Tehran with his drugged captive in a box in the back of his truck. It’s great vital film making, as much a black comedy as it is a thriller.

I also saw a fair few older films for the first time that I really enjoyed. The Blaxploitation classic Black Caesar is an absolute banger. Haneke’s Time Of The Wolf was bleak AF in the best possible way. The best film I saw all year might well be the French Resistance classic from the 1960s Army Of Shadows. Based on a novel by a resistance veteran it has a grittiness and a lack of romanticism about it that chimes with what I know about the real history of the time period.

Music: I’ve got to some cracking gigs this year, Managed to knock Laibach off the bucket list when I was over in London, and finally got to see clipping. in Paris (in The Moulin Rouge) touring their latest cyberpunk concept album, where I also saw Violent Magic Orchestra doing their new album in a tiny basement which was frankly the perfect setting. Nice bunch of lads too (and heck out their Boiler Room from Osaka, its unreal). I saw Max Cooper again in Dublin and at Bangface where he headlined the Sunday again and yeah, his music and his AV work are up there with the greats, your Aphex Twins and Autechres. Speaking of which Autechre played the Mandela hall and between them and the support who all played some absolutely sick wonky IDM and breakcore this was the best night of music in Belfast this decade, easy.

Other big gigs, Charlie XCX, fuck the haters I thought she was great. Kneecap and The Fontaines DC – great seeing Irish music repping hard on a world stage. The whole thing with Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s attempted cancelling and prosecution by the genocide propaganda complex was like the current generations big pop culture rebellion moment, Beatles “bigger than Jesus” or the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy or the God Save the Queen banning, or the 80s metal Satanic Panic do not have shit on this in terms of the literal seriousness of the politics implicit in the whole goings on. 

One gig I did miss unfortunately was Billy Woods, as it was in Dublin and that was the night at the start of October where the weather was completely mental. Shame because along with clipping. Billy is probably the best in the game at the moment and Gollywog is some of the rawest horrorcore. Similarly, Brian Ennals and Infinity Knives new joint A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears is another masterpiece of raw alt-industrial hip-hop. FKA Twigs latest Eusexual, dark, clubby some tough edges to it and still kind of poppy.

It's not been a bad year for punk, I saw The Circle Jerks and The Descendants in the Limelight here back at the start of the year. I got listening to The Chats album which I only got hearing this year though it’s from last year. Lambrini Girls LP was a class bit of modern Riot Girl. 

Favourite LP of the year though was Kae Tempests latest where he’s essentially come out as trans-masc after identifying as non-binary for the last couple of years and that’s pretty much the theme of the album with Tempests usual fiery poetic delivery. If you can hunt down a bootleg of the Glasto set its really worth seeing.

Books: I read a fair bit of good genre fiction, Alan Moore’s The Great When being the most literary and the highlight. Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils, basically a Catholic Gothic Suicide Squad set in an alternative middle ages, was fun. I read the whole Empire of The Vampire trilogy, and cheesy, derivative and all as it is it was also very enjoyable. I did also read a fair bit of serious non-fiction. I read The Wretched Of The Earth and Said’s Orientalism as well as the whole of Jonathan Bardon’s History of Ulster. I read Dead As Doornails, Anthony Cronin’s readable and insightful memoir of his time in mid 20th century bohemian Dublin, which in turn inspired me to read Pat Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger and Other Poems. 

Finn Dwyer of The Irish History Podcast’s pop-history book A Lethal Legacy was another absolute delight. It tells the story of modern Ireland through a series of True Crime Podcast-esque murder stories and is as recommendable to the layman as anyone in academia. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals by Maurice J. Casey I picked up after hearing him on Dwyer’s podcast talking about the book and again, its in the sweet spot between pop-history and the serious stuff for academics. It takes in feminism, the Russian revolution, Trotskyism Vs Stalinism, queer history too. And it’s a good read to boot, the author puts a lot of himself and his journey as a researcher into the text, much more so than one usually gets. 

Similarly, Kincora: Britain's Shame - Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover Up by Chris Moore has a lot of Moore’s own story of his decades long involvement with the case and is, I personally think, essential reading for anyone with the slightest interest in the conflict here. Beyond conspiracy theory, this is conspiracy fact and it is harrowing.

Much more fun was the collected EC Ray Bradbury stories published and collected by Fantagraphics. This is pre code when comics production was basically the wild west and they would occasionally cut corners by ripping off stories from the more respectable sci-fi magazines assuming nobody would notice. Bradbury though actually did read EC horror comics and was a little surprised to come across his own work. Instead of getting mad and getting the lawyers involved he just wrote them and said he actually liked what they did with it and maybe in future they could cut a deal and he’d let them do his work with his official endorsement and name on the cover if they credited him and sent him a reasonable remuneration, which they did and the stories are an absolute joy, not surprising considering that they’d the likes of Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Davis and so on on art duties. 

So that was 2025, or at least the highlights. There was a bunch of stuff I didn’t quite gel with or like over much. Or just thought was fine. There’s still a bunch of stuff I’ve not got around to that might well have made this post if I’d got to it. 2026 is shaping up to be a good one too and no doubt if I do another one of these at the end of next year you’ll be hearing all about Arco, Hamnet, Hades 2 or The Voice of Hind Rajab from me. I really hope we keep up the good run of horror films and The Bone Temple lives up to the last one. I’m also hoping to get a lot more stuff written for this blog. So, here’s to another new year, hope 2026 brings us happier times because it is grim out there and that doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon.

My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2025

 31 days of Halloween, 2024

Keeping up my yearly tradition of sharing the various films and spooky / horror media I’ve been enjoying over October, usually averaging about 1 per day. This year I have been in a bit of a slump but I did hit my target and did some other stuff that’s seasonably relevant, which I’ll get into. 

But first the movies:

1. Brimstone and Treacle (1982) – this was the movie version of the incredible Play for Today from the 70s by Denis Potter that was subsequently banned for being genuinely unsettling and narking off the TV Censors of the day with its themes of religious obsession and sexual exploitation. It was an undisputed classic but wouldn’t see the light of day to a mass audience until the 1990s. This film was an attempt to cash in on the controversy and get something out so people could at least see a version of it. Of the two despite better production standards this is the inferior version. The whole thing is dumbed down, the whole thing is dumbed down for a mass audience and the sexual element is amped up to being genuinely icky and exploitative. Also, whoever decided to recast the main character as Sting should have been shot.

2. Netherworld (1992) – Unmemorable cheap ropey American horror. 

3. Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) – This was a lot of fun. Part of a Netflix series based on the RL Stein YA horror books, it’s a stand alone and just goes ham on the 80s setting and slasher tropes. Its 1988 and someone is killing the prom queens in a small town high school, does what it says on the tin. Good crack.

4. Time Of The Wolf (2003) – Definitely one of the classier things I saw over the season. Michael Hanneke doing a post apocalypse. The nature of the crisis is not apparent, there’s no world building just a clear societal collapse and focus on character. We follow one family unit as they try to make their way through the world and survive as best they can. Bleak.

5. Extraordinary Tales (2013) – This is a delightful animated feature taking audio of 5 Edgar Allen Poe stories and setting them to creepy gothic animation. Solid.

6. Mermaid Forest (1991) – classic OVA period anime based on Japanese mythology around their mermaid lore. Nice and suitably creepy but if you like this sort of thjing try and find a torrent or stream for the full uncut version which is not the one that’s on Youtube.

7. Ginger Snaps (2000) – first rewatch of the season, still as great as it ever was. This is just a very cool idea executed really well, the style is iconic and the young cast rinse all the pathos out of the scenario that you could ever want.

8. Fréwaka (2024) – I managed to miss this in the pictures the one showing that it had. Really good to catch up, we need more bleak elevated horror As Gaeilgé and this did us proud. Nice creepy one.

9. Invoking Yell (2023) – Yous know I like to hit each continent at least once when I’m doing these. This was our South American film of the year and tho looking okay on paper it wasn’t much to write home about. A Blair Witch-esque FF horror about a bunch of metallers trying to get some spooky field recordings for their mix tape ought to have been great but this was poorly executed and just boring.

10. Hell and Back (2015) – Stop motion horror, couple of stoner dudes doing Orpheus with Bob Odenkirk as the devil. Again sounds like a better time on paper than it actually was. A lot of shitty bro-y humour, probably of interest and worth only as a time capsule of dumb edgy-boy comedy just before #MeToo. 

11. Abigail (2025) – Dumb trashy blockbuster horror, best going in unspoiled as all the promotional material gives far too much away. Like the reveal as to whats happening is 45 minutes into this 1hour 40 minute film. Turn your brain off, enjoy, it’s a good ride.

12. V/H/S/Beyond (2024) – I got Shudder again this year so I got to catch up on this sci-fi volume of the ongoing anthology series. A bit hit and miss but the last few sections were pretty good.

13. Basket Case (1982) – A classic that I got to introduce my mum and sister to. We all had a great time. My Ma enjoyed it a lot and has recommended it to other people too. Will now see if can’t coax them to watch the sequels with me.

14. Frank and Zed (2020) – As far as low budget animated projects made by essentially one guy doing it all in his basement and garage nights and weekends around the day job go, its grand. Charming even. It feels churlish to say that the writing isn’t great and its not “good” per say in general considering but eh, ‘tis what it is.

15. To Your Last Death (2019) – A corporate exec sets his fuck-up children against each other in a death game in a high rise office to see which, if any are worthy of getting the keys to the big office and run things after he retires. This is why I need to be hard on Frank and Zed. This is an animated indie feature that seems to have been mostly funded online and it absolutely rocks, no excuses no qualifications. Good cast, well written, animation isn’t spectacular but it does the job. Some very inventive kills and very memorable twists and turns. 

16. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) – direct sequel to the previous one. My first time watching and it does not disappoint. Adds to and deepens the mythos around the series and the angsty queer stuff in the subtext. Great series in general nice to get fully onboard with it.

17. The Devil’s Work (2023) – This was the Australian movie from the month. A home invasion film mostly done as a 1er with the USP being that the monster is the sister of the girl from the couple getting stalked and potentially murdled. I just didn’t get on with it, too much faffing about in the dark.

18. Head Count (2018) – the Horrors of partying with people you don’t know that well! Nice idea, execution was lacking. Not scary or fun.

19. PG: Psycho Goreman (2020) – Loved it as much as the first time I saw it. Had fun introducing my sister to it which considering that it really is all about family seems appropriate. Basically ET or Mac and Me but the main kid is a sociopathic bullying weirdo and the alien is an all powerful evil warlord and it’s the best.

20. Dachra (2018) – This was our African film for the month. Never seen any sort of film from Tunisia before. This was interesting, based on North African superstitions around witchcraft but seems to run deeper as some sort of commentary on life in Tunis post Arab Spring. I wish I knew more about the culture and what’s been happening since the revolution because it comes off as quite generic and somewhat conservative and pro-fundamentaist Islam in the messaging.

21. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) – 1800s set prequel with the same lead actresses. That kind of doesn’t make sense but its fine, very well done vintage frontier horror. This was a great series of films, would recommend, may rewatch.

22. MadS (2024) – recommended to me by my friend Jason Mills. Its quite good, another “horrors of partying” film that asks, what if you’re having a bad time on trippy gear but its all real (or is it tho?) again done mostly as a 1er but this all just clicked and worked rather well in ways the films I watched earlier this month that attempted those things didn’t quite. Yes, very good, worth catching.

23. The Stuff (1985) – another rewatch where I got to introduce it to the fam. Classic but jesus don’t watch the cut that’s on Shudder, must have been edited for TV showings in the day or something because it feels weird and like there’s a bunch of stuff missing.

24. V/H/S/Halloween (2025) – This years one! And its themed around Halloween so there’s a bit of trick-or-treating and some really grim stuff done to and by children! If that turns you off fair enough, some are sensitive to those things. I personally enjoyed it, a good combo of the edgy modern youtube horror culture with FF and has a fair few bits that will stay with me.

25. The Devil’s Path (2024) – German Language historical gothic, based on real accounts of actual events. Basically, if you were suicidal according to Christian theology you can’t just kill yourself since you’ll end up in hell as suicide is a sin itself and you can’t get absolution. So some people rather than be put off by all that used the loophole that if you kill someone else and confess to it the state will execute you and give you last rights before so you do definitely get to heaven. This was heavily gendered as these were mostly desperate women and their victims were generally children in their care. Grim eh? Well aye, that’s how it was and this film does a good job of depicting the personal / psychological, cultural and social context.

26. Spoonful of Sugar (2022) – Oh dear, we’re at the point with “Elevated Horror” where we’re getting By The Numbers iterations of the Horrors Of Fucked-up Families and thats what we’re getting here. 

27. The Being (1983) – nice old school creature feature with a good cast and some dope practical SFX. Basically jaws but in a small potato orientated town in the mid west.

28. Golem (1979) – Polish “horrors of living behind the Iron Curtain” sci-fi horror. Its similar to Possession in that our removal from the original context and what is being satirised makes it impenetrable and frustratingly inscrutable though certainly memorable.

29. Bloodsuckers (2021) – Not even sure if this counts as a horror film or even adjacent. It’s a mannered satire about communism that takes the lines from Capital about the Vampiric nature of capitalism as a basis with some light implications of real vampirism in the story. I enjoyed it because I’m a nerd for this sort of thing, Eisenstein shows up in it as a character ffs, not sure how many other people I know would like it.

30. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) – we lost an absolute legend this year. RIP David Lynch, one of the best to ever do it. The last time I saw this I was a teenager and hadn’t seen any of the series, watching it again now, I can absolutely see why people were generally baffled and frustrated but I enjoyed it a whole lot. Poor Laura! 

31. I wanted to cap the month off by rewatching Sinners and showing it to my Dad at least, who is a big Blues fan, but he’s been busy and I couldn’t get him to sit and watch a 2 hour film with me on the day or any other I tried him. So instead I dipped again into the extended To Watch list and watched a new Irish film All You Need is Death (2023). This is about Irish traditional music and musicologists getting in over their heads collecting unheard and nearly forgotten tunes back in troubles era rural Ireland. The soundtrack is done by Ian Lynch of Lynched / Lankum, Darragh is in the film, as are members of The Mary Wallopers. Naturally, all that is the best part of the film, which does the typical horror thing of starting well with a creepy set of ideas and visual conceits but not quite sticking the landing re. taking it all somewhere. So imperfectly executed as the last act might be I’d say its still worth seeing just on that basis.

Other visual media:

Netflix actually came up a blinder by showing a pretty decent wee horror comedy series Haunted Hotel. A woman co-runs a Shining style haunted hotel with her Brothers ghost, there are supernatural hijinks etc. Good fun. I also got recommended a Polish indie animated horror series Bad Exorcist which probably makes more sense and is funnier / more relatable if you are polish or familiar with the culture. Still pretty good without that. I also rewatched Over The Garden Wall and aye, still great. Cutesy YA Autumnal spookiness that just happens to match with The Divine Comedy’s circles of hell each episode. Great voice cast too.

Reads:

Wasn’t reading as much as usual this year. I read Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica that came out in its native Argentina in 2017 but since getting published in English at the start of this decade has developed a cult following online. It’s easy to see why, a meatless, animal-less dystopia where people that supposedly don’t have a consciousness are used as cattle and treated the way we treat animals in the meat industry IRL. Reads like vegan agitprop. Its well written and relentlessly grim. Decent enough, not quite my bag though. I also started reading but haven’t finished the latest Chuck Tingle non-tingler Lucky Day (2025) which is very good so far. It’s about probability and the central theme of the horrors of being hit by the random unfairness of existence is very resonant to me right now. I have also started and am still reading through Back For Good the collected EC Ray Bradbury collaborations, and most of the ones I’ve been through so far are his work on the Tales From The Crypt and adjacent lines. These are a whole lot of fun and its cool getting them all in one volume with supplementary materials (including a short bit by Greg Bear about Bradbury’s involvement in the fandom / convention culture in California during his lifetime). 

So that’s been basically it. If anyone else has been watching or reading anything fun please comment. Happy Halloween!

Hunting Captain Nairac

 

I was at the Queens Film Theatre this afternoon for the last day of the Docs Ireland festival. The showing was "Hunting Captain Nairac" a documentary about the search for the human remains of people disappeared by republican forces during the troubles, in this instance an army intelligence officer who famously walked into a bar in South Armagh full of 200 people and was never seen again. It was an interesting and well made documentary it answered a lot of questions and debunked some old myths but it did leave me with a few questions. 

1. It did a lot to humanise Nairac and present his complexities as a person. Fair enough I suppose but I feel like they might be overegging things a little. It presents his Catholicism and seemingly genuine hibernophillia as being in contradiction with his role as an army intelligence officer. That is very simply not the case as anyone who is familiar with British colonial practice can tell you, that just made him better at his job, the British founded the SOAS to train their cadre in the complexities of the cultures they were sending them out to imperialise.

2. Fair play for trying to dispel 2 big myths you'd hear about Niarac, that his body was "fed to the pigs" as my aul Uncle Danny (RIP) used to say (and that was way before Snatch put that particular method of body disposal into the public consciousness). And that the rumours of his involvement with The Miami Showband massacre (which I also heard and believed once) was probably flack generated by the PIRAs counter intelligence machine. That said the extent and nature of his actual activities isn't really touched on. Troublingly, what he was literally said to be doing in the bar that night was to "Further a relationship" with the sister of an IRA activist. I'm sorry but to me that sounds like the very common practice in intelligence circles of undercovers getting in with a particular situation through a sexual relationship, which is rightly considered to be a form of SA as you can't meaningfully consent to sex with someone who is misrepresenting themselves at that level. That's an implication that seems rightly obvious to anyone familiar with these issues. Not that if it was the case that it justifies what happened to him, corpse-napping is a horrible thing to happen and its no more cool when the 'Ra were doing it than when the  CIA trained secret police were doing it across Latin America in the 70s and 80s or when Israel do it today, it just seems odd that that's put out there and handwaved very quickly. 

My take away from it was that it seemed oddly in step with the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man that was also featured at the Docs Ireland festival the night before (with live commentary by the editor!) about another eccentric wee man with terminal Main Character syndrome who intentionally put himself in the line of danger doing something he was passionate about and paid the ultimate price for it.

I do sincerely hope that his body is found and returned to his people. Its good that for the future generations here to heal properly we need a full reckoning with the past. I just don't want that to come at the cost of downplaying the seriousness of any aspect of the conflict in the name of "balance".

Things I Enjoyed in 2024

 

Having made and successfully kept my New Years resolution of last year (which I’ll get onto) this years is to write more and actually use the blog. Even if at this point blogging is a dead art form and nobody is reading this stuff or likely to make me even a modicum of “internet-famous”, it’ll at least alleviate the mild guilt I feel about not having written. This is essentially just for me, but I hope it’ll be something at least a couple of people might get something out of. 

This is going to take the format of a SuperEyepatchWolf season roundup video. Maybe not as good (I wish I had the work ethic that guy has tbh). This is really more about cataloguing and recording where I am with certain things. It will contain a mixture of things that are brand new in the sense that they came out this year, as well as a few things that will be noted as such that came out in previous years but I only got to experience this year for the first time.

In No Order:

Gaming:

So I’ve kind of stopped playing new computer games. I got back into gaming over the pandemic, got a PS4, played everything I’d been hearing about and wanting to play for years. It was great, but before the start of last year I kind of ran right out of steam. All I want out of games now is something diverting I can do with my hands while I listen to the sort of podcasts I actually want to listen to beginning to end and not use as a sleep aid. I’m still playing Streets of Rage 4, always the Survival Mode from the DLC where you have one life and have to fight your way through increasing hordes of enemies in an enclosed environment while levelling up your core attributes or adding buffs to types of attacks. I’m also playing a cheap Pool simulator (its just Pool in an Unreal 4 engine) and Slay The Spire. To this I have very recently added Balatro, a game with Poker and making poker hands at its core. 

I did get back briefly into playing Magic The Gathering on Arena for a couple of months but that software is a piece of janky shit that after a certain update just became crash-y and unusable on both the devices I was using it on, and is basically unplayable on a mobile phone anyway, like how small the text is makes it functionally unusable unless you already know the cards by the cover art and don’t need to read what anything does. Yeah you fucked up there Wizards, you could have had me back suckling on your milky duds for the odd fix that beating up on people from across the world at Magic can give me, but you bollocksed it.

Podcasts:

Yeah I ought to say what podcasts I’ve been into listening to while gaming since I literally just mentioned they’re my entire reason for continuing to game. Chapo Trap House, I don’t agree 100% with everything they say but we hate a lot of the same things and they are genuinely good crack. They called the US election correctly and their coverage of the proceedings has been sterling in terms of making that whole mess explicable to someone like me over here with the rest of the world looking on at the absolute mess happening over there. TrashFuture, a podcast with a similar bent and humour but by queer Brits. The Only Podcast About Movies, slightly lighter fare but good analytical takes on mostly contemporary cinema. I also like, though don’t listen to quite as much as I did, RevLeftRadio – a Marxist podcast on a variety of subjects including; History, Current Affairs, Theory, Philosphy, Esoterica and hosted by a Canadian Maoist called Brett with a blessedly ecumenical approach to intra-left factionalism.

The ones I do listen to for sleep I do so not because they are boring or anything (it actually has to be interesting or it won’t hold my conscious attention, which is part of the trick I’m playing on myself), but because they are soothing and not likely to get me angry or excitable the way listening to stuff about politics generally will. These include; The Blindboy podcast - which I’ve been on since pretty early in the day, Ghibliotheque, A Podcast About Studio Ghibli - but has actually come to encompass all sorts of animated media and this year has covered the works of Makoto Shinkai, Linklaters animated films and the work of Nick Park, and The French Whisperer ASMR. Ghost Notes, a podcast broadly about music of all sorts from the two guys that do the Polyphonic and 12tone Youtube channels is the real best of both of those projects and the guys bounce off each other nicely.

YouTube:

This seems to follow on neatly from talking about Podcasts. Feels like I’m not coming across many new channels that are really grabbing my attention but I’ve got more than enough established favourites now to eat up as much of my spare time as I can throw at it. Novarra Media continues to be a good news resource. Iconic early video-essayist Every Frame a Painting returned after an 8 year hiatus with a whopping two new videos over four months, and it being an oldschool Youtube channel, these have been ten and five minutes respectively. Better than nothing, still great quality, one can hardly complain. 

Overly Sarcastic Productions and Extra Credits / Extra History continue to be an absolute joy in terms of delivering a weekly fix of good informative history and media-analysis. Red of OSP (the team don’t use real names, just colours like in Reservoir Dogs) is an absolute super-star, like if I could get to live in a house and hang out and just have the crack all day with anyone off the internet right now it would be Red by miles, hands down. 

Super Eyepatch Wolf, my distant cousin (maybe) whom I’ve already mentioned, continues to be one of the best things on the platform. I only saw his guest appearance on the Trash Taste Podast (not to be confused with Trash Future, a different trashy thing altogether) this year for the first time and it was an absolute joy and also got me into watching their stuff again which I had done in the past but bounced off for some reason. 

Fiq The Signifier's ongoing coverage of and eventual long form video essay on the Kendrick V Drake Beef that went on last spring and summer was absolutely magnificent. 

The Leftist Cooks, only managed 4 essays this year, fair enough considering they managed to conceive and birth a child between them and their essays are all feature length these days. Still killing it, really insightful and heartfelt with a lot of intellectual heft. This is maybe best exemplified in the video essay where they announce their good news itself, that sends Neil into a deep dive on the topic of anti-natalism to the point where he writes a book length refutation of David Benatar that you can buy from their patreon. Based.

Georg Rockall-Schmidt, the man is out here doing gods work. Some media analysis, just him talking movies or about stuff on TV with a reasonable amount of anti-corporate videos where he just goes ham on some particular set of capitalist bastards, be they Shein, Temu, The Sacklers, American Healthcare in general. I’m living for how snarky my boy is.

Less on the political side, the music channel Trash Theory (again, not to be confused with either Trash Future or Trash Taste) continues to be one of the most consistently entertaining and informative things on the platform. Its kind of a 90s nostalgia channel but he does cover other eras and some contemporary music. He always sounds genuinely enthused about whatever it is he's covering,  in a way that brings you along with him even if you're not mad into whatever the topic is yourself.

Music:

(Sigh). Y’know. I’ve not been on top of music at all. I’ve barely listened to anything new. I think when I stopped DJing or their being any prospect of me DJing much ever again, even for myself or to post online, that just lost my focus on finding new stuff. What I have been listening to, Cerys Matthews and Mark Radcliffe’s Blues and Folk shows on BBC Radio 2, Sherelle’s Saturday night shows on Radio 6 and other random bits and pieces on the BBC digital radio stations which I’ll generally have on as background when I’m doing my breakfast or dinner.

I loved the ØXN debut LP that came out in 2023. ØXN are a side project by Radie and the other non-Lynch member of Lankum that is if anything even darker and more Lankum-y than Lankum itself. I missed opportunities to get to see them play live this year, I literally didn’t make any festivals this year, to my shame.

What I did enjoy also that was actually from this year was Chelsea Wolfe’s latest album She Reaches Out to She where she’s still bringing the dark doom-metal-y goodness but has gone more industrial and a little trip-hop-y. She played Belfast on the tour for this one and I did get to see her, and she was great.

I did manage to get to a fair few nights and gigs about Belfast, and over to Glasgow with my sister to see Max Cooper’s big AV show. I think the best one might well have been getting to see Caribou live in the Telegraph building, which luckily for me has now been immortalised forever as it was a Boiler Room event.

TV: 

I’ve been on quite an animation tip this year. I’ve managed to finally get around to Star Vs The Forces of Evil and Amphibia on Disney as well as the masterful OK KO, Lets Be Heros!, of which I will not say too much other that they were really good since a couple of them may or may not feature on the return of a regular segment that has long been in hiatus on this corner of the internet. Arcane came through with a second and final season which while not quite up to the standard set by season one still fucking well kills dead near enough any other western animation series. 

I watched and mostly enjoyed The Dragon Prince, like I only started it this year not knowing that the final season was dropping in December. If I’d have known it was written by the Avatar The Last Airbender (which I did rewatch and loved all over again) team I probably would have got to it sooner tbh. If has what are for me some rough edges, the world is nowhere near as interesting or unique as Avatar, its just some guys DnD campaign – which is fine just not that original, I don’t like the occasional segues into goofy naturalistic dialogue. The tone shifts are jarring, to me at least, but not enough that I bounced off. It also falls for some ball achingly obvious tropes in storytelling. Its actually decent though and worth seeing. The animation style is really class, really pleasing to see something in 3d that is that old and doesn’t look like ass.

Speaking of tone shifts and a “some guys DnD campaign” setting, The Legend of Vox Machina was a whole heap of fun once again. The tone shifts were seamless and yes, this is literally a DnD Campaign turned into a series but they nailed the transition its just great fun.

Anime; I feel like I’ve rinsed the well of classics from the OVA era that I would care about. At least until Angel’s Egg makes it back to the big screens (maybe this year?). I have actually been enjoying some new stuff. NGL, those are some really basic picks for those in the know and will probably appear on most if not all anime commentators Best Of The Year lists. I will mostly just watch a small selection of the stuff I think sounds interesting from the handful of people I follow in the space and maybe see getting recommended on my socials. I’m not out here seeking out the really obscure stuff, I don’t think they still make much of the type of anime I like anymore, but the odd thing that filters through I get a lot of joy from.

Dan De Dan is one of the big anime series of this year and its not hard to see why. On paper the plot my make it appear to be more typical shonen weeb trash but it was done by Science Saru, the studio led by the guy that did Mind Game and who also did the Devilman Cry-Baby series a few years back. It scratches that itch for the genuinely unhinged shit that Anime has been lacking for a while. 

I really liked Frieren: Beyond The Journeys End, a very meditative and mostly glacially slowly paced fantasy series about an Elf mage who is, as elves are in fantasy, extremely long  lived, going on immortal that does have some great high fantasy magical combat in it but is mostly about the idea of human connections and what its like to live long enough to see your mates live and die while you stay essentially the same person. 

Less serious but equally good (better imo), Delicious In Dungeon. Like some of the other stuff I’ve been talking about it’s a very DnD-esque setting but it dares to ask questions that DnD players rarely ask in these last 50 odd years of the game, like what does dragon taste like? Does a gelatinous cube have any vitamins and minerals or is it just empty calories? Are the giant mushroom monsters that you have to fight some times going to kill you or get you high if you try to eat them or are they just a good source of zinc to the weary dungeon-crawling murder-hobo? You wouldn’t ear a person, probably not an Orc either but would Merefolk be more like fish or people, and is it ok to eat them? Its really just a good sprawling adventure fantasy with some great characters and also some interesting dissections of the notions of taboo and the value of good nutrition.

In terms of live TV, yeah there’s been some fire stuff out there. Something I only watched for the first time this year though it’s been out for a while; Wu Tang: An American Saga with the kid from the middle section of Moonlight as RZA I found and watched earlier in the year. Yeah it takes some liberties with the truth and leaves some stuff out for dramatic purposes (like RZA and ODB both had kids by the time the main plot starts, this does not come up at all) but it does their whole story and schtick really well. There’s three seasons, the third season isn’t quite as good just because the story itself IRL is less compelling than the coming together and coming up of these outsiders from Staten Island, seeing them get rich and famous and fall out with each other is not nearly as much fun. We are spared seeing Ason’s fall into madness and self destruction though that does somewhat hang over the narrative its not handled in a way that’s prurient or anything. 

Say Nothing, is yet another somewhat controversial take on actual historical events. This is about Sinn Fein / The Provos, the Finucane murders and the life of Dolours price. It managed to recreate the old Divis tower block accurately enough, down to the vibe, that it retraumatised my Mum who lived there during the events dramatized in the series. It’s good seeing something made about here with that sort of attention to detail and period accuracy, that also treats all sides reasonably fairly. Like there’s literal Gerry Adams in there as a low-key villain in the piece and he’s not some sort of moustache twirling cartoon. Shame that they blew a lot of the good will in a completely unnecessary plot point in the last episode that only seems to be in there for the sake of a Bad TV Writing climactic reveal involving one of the few players in the narrative that’s still alive and as I write is in the process of suing Disney. Worth watching in spite of all that.

The new series of Interview With A Vampire kept up the quality of the first and was if anything even better than the first. That show does a lot right, the fifth episode about the circumstances of the actual first interview that fills in a lot of Molloy’s character and story was just edge of the seat stuff from beginning to end. Like if you know the book or the film, you know exactly what happens to Claudia and Louis in Paris and you just spend the season waiting for the other shoe to drop, but this was unique to the series (afaik) and made for really gut-wrenching emotive TV. 

Books:

I was mostly using Duolingo to learn gaeilgé in my down time this year. I got the paid version after getting my first bit of paid work of the year and have finished the Irish course (standard Irish though, not Ulster unfortunately). That and The Mists Of Avalon being a long slog, and not just because of the length of the book or the writing style (see my review), I didn't really get reading nearly as much this year as usual. I did hit my years reading goals of finishing the three series I'd stated in the previous couple by reading the final books in the series. These were Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (a good cap to the trilogy but the first book definitely rocks the others, okay to read on its own), Ancillary Mercy, which finishes the trilogy out well but doesn’t add a whole lot to the last ones in terms of world building and Emperor of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay which is the second of his books about Sarantium, the Byzantium of his fictional universe that runs analogous to our own medieval and ancient history but isn’t and so gives him license to tinker with the world building and throw in some magic and supernatural elements. It was pretty good, probably best read straight after part one Sailing To Sarantium and not a year-ish apart like I did it. 

Other things I read and liked included Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, the latest Blindboy Boatclub collection Topographia Hibernica which only came out 2023, and the collection of shorts by Norman Spinrad from the 1960s No Direction Home.

Comics / graphic novels, wise I read Bone for the first time. Its cool, like very a typical high fantasy that just happens to have three Fleischer Bros. / Old Disney cartoon characters as the Hobbits that bungle their way into the scenario. I also started Berserk, completed the first volume of the big over-sized collected editions just before the end of the year. I am already digging the vibe and we’re only just getting to what most people agree is The Good Bit, the first part of The Golden Age is what that edition finishes on.

Best book though was Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle. A new book from this year that is not his first non-Tingler as in actual proper novel but is the first one I’ve read and its incredibly good. Easily as good an exploration of Queer people’s relationship with certain types of media and place in that media as I Saw The TV Glow (which tbf I also liked a lot, even if it didn’t make my top 10). The prose is a constant pleasure, readable while also being wry and funny, scary or disturbing where it needs to be. It has a lot of heart in it too. Its also low-key based AF, as in the subtext is almost pure Marxism. I’m not sure if that’s exactly where Chuck is coming from but I see it and even if unconscious its definitely in there.

Movies:

I already have a top ten for the year up on my Letterboxd. Just to reiterate what I said there, Kneecap was my favourite of the year closely followed by The Substance. When I get to my favourites of this decade these will definitely both be in there. I am very much the target audience of Kneecap, or course I’m going to love it. I have been semi-adjacent to that life in my own city for parts of my own, some of the stuff in the film literally happened to my mates, I’ll not say what so as not to implicate anyone living or dead but it is very close to my heart, even if I know for a fact that they aren’t the complete spides they make themselves out to be or the best rappers on the local scene (though they are definitely the best at doing it bilingually and best at promoting themselves). The Substance gave me everything my body-horror loving degenerate arse could ever wish for in a film, a very straight-forwards feminist allegory that goes bat shit in the last act and is really gross, people were leaving. People left my showing like 20 minutes before the end, that never happens but they must have just been like “yeah I’m already two hours into this thing and we are close to the end but this is already way past my comfort zone and is just going to get worse from here – I’m out”. Normally I would decry such behaviour as weakness but in this case I say fair play to those people. It did just keep getting worse.

We had a lot of other great films this year, see the list. A few of the big Awards-bait movies from last year that dropped in January here were, right enough, some of the best most interesting, medium pushing and generally great films of the year, Poor Things, Zone of Interest, All Of Us Strangers, The Holdovers really had us spoiled. It was a good year for horror - Oddity, Longlegs, In A Violent Nature, Stop Motion. Big Popcorn actioners gave us Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Dune 2 and Deadpool Vs Wolverine (which was essentially a Zucker Brothers screwball comedy set in the current Marvel comic book movie landscape). Not such a good year imo for animated features, 2022 and 2023 really had us spoiled, but The First Slam Dunk was very enjoyable, we got a new Wallace and Gromit film which was awesome and my favourite animated film of the year Robot Dreams was an absolute joy. It was though a good year for Irish cinema. I’ve already sung Kneecap’s praises (did I mention just how viscerally funny it all is? No? Well it’s hilarious), but we also did have Small Things Like These and That They May Face The Rising Sun, which was incredible and will hopefully bring John McGahern’s legacy and work to a new generation of people across the world.

 

I think that just about covers everything I feel it’s necessary to say. As I said up top I’m trying to get back into updating this thing a bit more regularly. I have a steady enough job now I could see going for a wee while that could give me the sort of schedule I could see myself building a decent routine around that might lead to me being able to do more writing. Here’s hoping anyway so watch this space.