October Horror Movie Challenge: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Some films feel like autumn. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) is one of them. Based on Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel, it’s a dark fantasy about small towns, childhood fears, and the seductive power of regret. It’s also one of those rare movies that slipped through the cracks, too eerie for kids, too sentimental for adults, but it lingers like a memory you’re not sure you actually lived.

I have been wanting to rewatch this one for some time, and it just released on Disney+ a couple of weeks ago. I waited till tonight, October 24th, the same date as in the movie. 

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

The story takes place in Green City, Illinois—a place that could easily be Greenville down in South Central Illinois or Waukegan up north (Bradbury’s real hometown and the city’s likely inspiration). Either way, we’ll just have to pretend those rolling hills in the background somehow belong to our flat Midwest. It’s the kind of town where boys dream of adventure, but evil is only a whistle away.

The plot is simple: two boys, Jim and Will, encounter a mysterious carnival that rolls into town led by the sinister Mr. Dark, played with slithering charisma by Jonathan Pryce. The carnival promises to fulfill your deepest wishes, but the cost is your soul. Only Will’s father, the aging librarian Charles Halloway (Jason Robards, who brings real gravitas), stands between the town and damnation.

Jason Robards gives one of his most heartfelt performances as Charles Halloway, Will’s father. He’s not the traditional hero, but rather a weary, aging librarian haunted by the fear that his best years are behind him. Robards brings such quiet dignity and warmth to the role that his final act of bravery, facing down darkness for the sake of his son, feels mythic. It’s the kind of understated performance that sneaks up on you and stays long after the credits.

Jonathan Pryce is pure, liquid menace as Mr. Dark. His every word drips with charm and threat. Pryce’s Mr. Dark isn’t a cackling villain; he’s temptation incarnate, seductive, eloquent, and terrifying in his control. You can see shades of this performance echoing years later ("The High Sparrow" in Game of Thrones for example) in Pryce’s roles as smooth politicians and sly schemers. Honestly when I first watched it I thought he was the Devil.

And then there’s Pam Grier as the Dust Witch, silent and otherworldly, gliding through the film like an angel of death wrapped in silk. She’s mesmerizing, equal parts terrifying and hypnotic, and though she doesn’t have much dialogue, her presence fills every scene she’s in. Grier was already a legend of 1970s cinema by this point, and here she’s used like an icon of dark glamour, a visual embodiment of the carnival’s deadly allure. I had had a crush on her since "Scream Blacula Scream."

This movie was made during Disney’s early ’80s experimental phase, when they were testing darker, more adult material, films like The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), and Something Wicked This Way Comes fit into that uneasy space between family film and nightmare. You can see echoes of Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) in the tone and pacing, and some of the set pieces (especially the swirling leaves and looming carnival tents) wouldn’t look out of place in Poltergeist (1982).

It’s fascinating to look back now and see how much later media borrowed from this movie, even if unconsciously. Scenes of the train or of boys sneaking through libraries and hidden halls that feels like a dry run for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). The imagery of flickering candles, books, and autumnal magic feels like the DNA of half a generation’s fantasy storytelling.

But for all its atmosphere, Something Wicked had a troubled birth. Bradbury himself wrote the screenplay, and his collaboration with director Jack Clayton (The Innocents) was fraught. Disney re-edited the film heavily after test screenings, reshot major portions, and replaced much of James Horner’s original score. The result is a movie that feels like a beautiful half-remembered dream, gorgeous in places, uneven in others. It was a box-office disappointment, which is a shame, because few films capture the haunting melancholy of childhood quite like this one.

Now, thanks to Disney+, Something Wicked This Way Comes is finally easy to revisit. Watching it again in high quality, without having to dig through old VHS copies, it’s clear that it deserves rediscovery. It’s a movie about innocence lost, time running out, and the magic of a small-town October night when anything might happen, and maybe it already did.

I remember seeing this one when it was new in the theatres. At the time, I was not much different than the boys on screen, a little older, though, but in a similar town in Illinois. I remember that desire for adventure. 

This movie was also an early adopter of CGI graphics. They are primative by today's standards, but still effective. That carnival ride at the end of the movie is still creepy.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT

If you’re running Ravenloft, this film is practically a template for dark carnival adventures. The tone of Something Wicked This Way Comes lives somewhere between Carnival (the 1999 Ravenloft supplement) and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (for 5e). Both draw on the same idea—a traveling show that promises wonder but delivers damnation.

• Mr. Dark: Think of him as a charismatic Domain Lord, feeding on temptation and broken dreams. His carnival is his demiplane.
  

• The Carnival: Perfect for one of those “it appears overnight” settings. The rides and attractions offer small, personal wishes, each one just twisted enough to trap the victim in the carnival forever.

• Theme: At its heart, this is about choice, the same core idea that makes Ravenloft tick. Every character is offered a deal, and what they do with it defines their fate.

You could easily run a one-shot or full mini-campaign inspired by this film: a cursed carnival passing through a sleepy town, two children discovering its secret, and one old hero standing up to darkness one last time. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 27
First Time Views: 24

October Horror Movie Challenge: Red Dragon (2002)

The Silence of the Labs is a horror film, in fact it is one of my favorites. So when the chance came up to watch Red Dragon (2002) I jumped on it. I had read the  Thomas Harris book ages ago and watched the first movie treatment of it, Manhunter (1986). This movie is not as good as the book, but better than the 1986 movie. But both of those opinions are subjective.

Red Dragon (2002)

What Red Dragon does exceptionally well is balance tension and performance. It’s a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, but it doesn’t feel like an afterthought. Anthony Hopkins returns as Hannibal Lecter, and while he’s clearly older than his supposed timeline, it hardly matters. Hopkins slips back into Lecter’s skin like a comfortable, expensive suit. Every word is deliberate. Every pause, a manipulation.

Edward Norton plays FBI profiler Will Graham, the man who caught Lecter years before. The film opens with that capture, a brutal and stylish confrontation that immediately sets the tone. Graham has since retired, but he’s pulled back in to track a new killer, Francis Dolarhyde, the “Tooth Fairy,” played with a quiet menace by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes delivers a haunting, deeply tragic performance. His Dolarhyde is terrifying not because he’s monstrous, but because he’s broken and he is doing what he thinks he has to do to transform. Though I do admit, I wondered the whole time what this role would have been like in the hands of someone like Billy Bob Thorton. 

This is what makes Red Dragon work. It’s not just a procedural thriller, it’s a story about the fine line between understanding evil and becoming infected by it. Norton's Graham is empathetic to a fault. He has to feel what the killer feels to catch him, and that empathy nearly destroys him. Lecter, ever the manipulator, senses that and twists it for his amusement. Watching their verbal chess match unfold is as thrilling as any chase or murder scene. There are times when Graham gets way too close to feeling what the killers (Lecter, Dolarhyde) feel.  Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling is good because she understands. Will Graham is good because he feels. 

The supporting cast adds real weight. Emily Watson is remarkable as Reba, the blind woman who sees more clearly than anyone else in the film. Her tenderness toward Dolarhyde makes his descent even more tragic. Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Mary-Louise Parker round out an impressive lineup that grounds the story in gritty humanity. Let's be honest. This is a star-studded cast. 

It never reaches the same heights as The Silence of the Lambs. But maybe that is ok. This is the first Act of Lecter's big three-act play (I am not counting Hannibal Rising here yet). This is A New Hope to Lambs' Empire Strikes Back.

Comparisons to Manhunter (1986)

It has been a bit since I saw Manhunter, and I watched before The Silence of the Lambs. Here is what I do recall. Manhunter feels like it was pulled straight from the ‘80s crime zeitgeist: sleek, minimalist, and pulsing with synth. It’s more procedural, less psychological. For example, Lecter's cell was not as "impressive" as what we see in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. 

Anthony Hopkins is a menacing Hannibal Lecter. He is the prefect blend of menace, evil, sharp intelligence, and amorality to give us his Academy Award-winning performance. Brian Cox is...no Anthony Hopkins, but his Lecter has menace all his own. Cox's Lector looks and acts like someone who would have really existed. Hopkin's Lecter is practically a Batman villain. 

 William Petersen’s Will Graham is distant, analytical, almost robotic at times. He’s haunted, yes, but in that stoic, Mann-hero way. You sense the obsession, but not always the emotion.

I liked Kim Greist as Molly Graham, but Mary-Louise Parker also did a fine job. 

Visually, Manhunter is all clean lines and cold light; Red Dragon is candlelight and shadow. One is clinical, the other operatic. Neither is “wrong,” but Red Dragon feels more in conversation with The Silence of the Lambs. It treats Hannibal as a monster out of folklore rather than a psychopath in a cell.

I should really rewatch it, but is so much of a Police Procedural movie I don't think I could count it as horror.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

This works for NIGHT SHIFT quite well. The characters can all be investigators looking for a new serial killer who the press has called "The Baltimore Vampire" (nod to the original movies). Only to discover it is a real freaking vampire. Or maybe it is just a garden variety serial killer who thinks he is, or can become, a vampire if he kills enough. 

For my Occult D&D ideas, well. Interestingly enough, I found the Red Dragon novel because I wanted to suck up anything related to my new obsession, D&D! I read it and thought that a psychological profiler might be a cool job to have. 

For either, Francis Dolarhyde could easily be reimagined as a cultist or warlock possessed by the spirit of an ancient dragon, a literal Red Dragon whispering promises of power and perfection. His killings are ritualistic, each one part of his ascension.

In an occult campaign, you could use this as a slow-burn mystery: murders tied to draconic iconography, victims chosen for symbolic reasons, and a cult leader whose mind is collapsing under the weight of his Patron’s voice. The PCs might be hunting the killer, only to realize his madness is contagious, the Red Dragon’s influence seeps through his victims, through dreams, through art.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 26
First Time Views: 24

October Horror Movie Challenge: Queen of Bones (2023)

 Another pick by my wife. Now, typically when she picks the movie, I get a veto power if it is under a certain IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes rating. She doesn't like to look at the ratings beforehand. This one did not have very good ratings at all, 4.6 on IMBD and no rating at all on Rotten Tomatoes; neither a good sign. But we watched it anyway and really liked it. This in a large part due to the performances by  Martin Freeman and Julia Butters. 

Plus, it is a perfect Witchcraft Wednesday movie.

Queen of Bones (2023)

Fearful or religious men (often the same thing) have always feared women’s autonomy. History has shown that whenever a woman becomes too independent, too willful, too curious, too powerful, someone slaps the word witch on her and decides she needs to be “saved.” That’s the heart of Queen of Bones, a quiet, moody folk horror film that takes place not in the 1600s but in 1930s rural America.

Martin Freeman plays Malcolm, a widowed father raising his daughter Lily (Julia Butters, who’s fantastic) and son Samuel (Jacob Tremblay) in a house thick with secrets. At first, Malcolm seems decent enough, even tender in his grief. But as Lily begins to change, both in body and in strange, supernatural ways, his love curdles into fear. We slowly realize that he’s not just haunted by what happened to Lily’s mother… he’s terrified his daughter might become her.

That dynamic drives the film’s tension. Lily starts having dreams, visions, and odd encounters in the woods. The line between puberty and possession blurs. Is she cursed? Chosen? Or simply awakening to her own power in a world that can’t tolerate that? By the time the third act arrives, the answer feels almost inevitable: Malcolm would rather destroy her than let her become something he can’t control.

It’s not subtle, but that’s fine, it isn’t supposed to be. Queen of Bones plays like a postscript to Robert Eggers' The Witch, set 300 years later but fueled by the same fear: that the feminine divine, if left unchecked, would upend the patriarchal order. It’s witch panic dressed in Depression-era grief, with dust, silence, and old ghosts in every corner.

There’s a scene late in the film, no spoilers, where Lily finally confronts what her father did to her mother. It’s devastating, not just for the violence but for the certainty behind it. Malcolm truly believes he’s doing God’s work. That’s what makes him the monster.

What I loved about this film, and what I think most critics seem to have missed, is how subtle its magic is. It’s not a jump-scare movie. It’s an awakening movie. The horror here isn’t in the witchcraft, it’s in the control. Freeman gives one of his best performances as a man eaten alive by righteousness, and Butters is mesmerizing as Lily, teetering between innocence and fury.

This isn’t The Witch, no. But it shares the same DNA: a girl’s coming-of-age framed as an act of rebellion against divine tyranny. The difference is, this one suggests the witch’s power was always there just waiting for her to claim it.

Queen of Bones might not be perfect, but it’s important. It’s quiet horror with something to say about generational trauma, religious oppression, and the terror of becoming yourself. The final moments hit like a benediction and a curse all at once.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Let's be honest here. 

I you can't see the RPG potential here I am not sure you are reading the right blog. Generational witches are a topic I discuss frequently here. Like obsessively so.

I wonder what Lily's life would have been like after the movie? She would have been 23 near the start of WWII, in her 40s when the Beatles came to America, her 60s when the 80s began and so on. Interesting. 

For NIGHT SHIT, it’s a modern folk-horror story transplanted to a rural, Depression-era America where witchcraft is whispered about in sermons. A perfect slow-burn scenario: something ancient stirs in the woods, and the townsfolk are eager to call it Satanic. The PCs could arrive as outsiders—teachers, doctors, or priests, only to discover the true evil that resides within the house. Or a perfect Call of Cthulhu game that doesn't involve the Mythos. 

For my Occult D&D ideas, it is a good example of how witchcraft is inherited via bloodlines, and there are witch families.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 25
First Time Views: 23

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Substance (2024)

Oh. Now this one was great. I mean really great. Major kudos to stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid for this one. And special kudos to Coralie Fargeat, who wrote and directed this horror as social commentary.  Outstanding work all around.

And kudos as well to my wife for finding this one. For a non-horror fan, she has been doing great this year.

The Substance (2024)

I heard a quote once: “There is nothing subtle about a blood cannon.” Maybe it was from True Blood, maybe it was from GWAR, either way, it’s true here.

The Substance is not subtle. It’s loud, bloody, and unrelenting in both style and message. Coralie Fargeat (who wrote and directed) delivers a film that’s equal parts body horror, feminist manifesto, and acid-drenched satire of fame and aging. It’s one of those movies where you feel like you’ve been punched, bathed in glitter, and dumped in a pool of self-loathing. All at once. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former fitness celebrity whose fame has faded. She’s cast aside for being “too old,” (note her character is fired because she is 50. Demi Moore was a little over 60 when she filmed this), a sentiment delivered with the kind of cruelty that feels uncomfortably real. Then she’s offered the Substance, a mysterious bio-experiment that promises to regrow youth, a newer, better version of herself, "Sue" played by Margaret Qualley. But the catch (and of course there’s a catch) is that both versions can’t exist in the world for long. They must share their bodies, taking turns. One week each.  Each needing the other. Until things start to fall apart.

What follows is a slow, grotesque unspooling of identity, vanity, and the impossible standards society puts on women. The horror here isn’t just the blood or the transformation (though that is there too), it’s the realization that both versions of Elisabeth are doomed. One is consumed by jealousy, the other by expectation. Both are victims of the same impossible ideal.

The performances are phenomenal. Demi Moore gives the kind of fearless, career-best turn that deserves every award she can get. She’s raw, furious, and heartbreakingly human. I have liked Demi Moore her whole career. She is one of those actors who will do things you never expect. You told she was going to be in a horror movie that required her to nude most of the time including a full frontal, I would not have been shocked. If you told me she was going to do it at 61 then I would have been completely shocked. Margaret Qualley matches her note for note, switching between innocence, hunger, and sociopathic glee. Their relationship, rival, mirror, mother/daughter, predator/prey, is the film’s beating heart. Coralie Fargeat does a fantastic job of making sure any movement made by Moore is mirrored in Qualley.

And yes, there’s plenty of blood. This film combines Cronenberg’s The Fly with elements of American Psycho, culminating in a glam fever dream of neon, mirrors, and synthetic pop. Every shot drips with excess, but it’s all in service to the story. The gore isn’t exploitative; it’s cathartic, a scream made visible. This is Jekyll and Hyde for the 21st century. 

I’ve been thinking about The Substance ever since I saw it. It’s one of those rare modern horror films that sticks to because it means something. It’s angry about the right things, about how society commodifies beauty, how women are punished for aging, and how self-worth gets twisted into self-destruction. It’s not a pleasant watch, but it’s a necessary one. There is a repeated scene where Elizabeth/Sue has to go to this rundown neighborhood to get her two week supply of the Substance. As Elizabeth in her 60s, she is ignored. As Sue in her 20s/30s every eye is on her. As Elizabeth as an old haglike crone, she scares people. 

And yet, for all its brutality, the film still finds moments of strange beauty. The way Fargeat frames Moore’s face, lit like a fallen saint, staring down the monster she’s become, feels mythic. Like watching the goddess of vanity destroy herself and rise again in blood and glitter.

The Substance is body horror at its most intelligent and furious. It’s not just about flesh—it’s about identity, power, and the impossible pressure to be “enough.” It’s grotesque, funny, feminist, and unforgettable. Fargeat doesn’t pull punches, and she doesn’t care if you flinch.

There is nothing subtle about a blood cannon. But sometimes, subtlety is overrated.

OH! I forgot to mention how perfectly vile Dennis Quaid was in this. I didn't think he had it in him, but as Elizabeth/Sue's producer Harvey, he is sexist, casually chauvinistic, more than a little misogynistic (most everyone in this movie is), and an absolute joy to watch on screen because his character is utterly clueless about how repulsive he is. I had read that Ray Liotta was originally cast as Harvey. While I know intellectually he would have been phenomenal, Quaid gave this one his all. 

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

There is a very loud part of me right now that doesn't want to do any sort of game adaptation of this. The movie works perfect on its own and should be appreciated all on its own.

I wouldn't say it was perfect. But damn. It is close.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 24
First Time Views: 22

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Living Dead Girl (1982)

 Toxic waste is weird. Sometimes it can give you superpowers, like it did for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Toxic Avenger. Sometimes it can drive you mad, like it did for the Joker. But in the hands of Jean Rollin, it can turn a beautiful corpse into an undead creature with a taste for blood.  

Here is my Jean Rollin pick for the Challenge. 

The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Also known as "La Morte Vivante." 

Two workers dumping chemical waste into a crypt accidentally reanimate Catherine Valmont (played with ethereal loveliness by Françoise Blanchard), a young heiress who died years before. Pale, ethereal, and soaked in the fluids of death, Catherine rises and begins her slow, dreamlike return to her family’s estate.

What follows is classic Rollin, half horror, half tragic romance, all atmosphere. Catherine’s childhood friend Hélène discovers she’s somehow alive, and their reunion becomes an aching meditation on devotion, decay, and desire. Hélène wants to protect Catherine, to keep her safe from a world that would destroy her again. But Catherine needs blood to survive, and the film doesn’t flinch from that. The killings are gruesome, but in that strangely poetic way only Rollin could pull off.

There’s a scene near the midpoint where Catherine wanders the countryside in her white gown, streaked with blood, sunlight glinting off her skin like marble. It’s beautiful and horrifying, the kind of imagery that reminds you Rollin was as much a painter as a director. His zombies aren’t Romero’s shambling corpses, they’re revenants, ghosts of passion and memory.

The film moves at a dream’s pace, lingering on eyes, hands, old rooms, and decaying portraits. Rollin’s usual themes are all here: eroticism, friendship beyond death, the weight of memory, and that perpetual tension between beauty and rot. The Living Dead Girl might be his most accessible film for horror fans, but it never compromises his melancholy poetry.

The score by Philippe D’Aram gives it a haunting pulse, equal parts romantic and funereal. It’s the heartbeat of a dead girl who never asked to return. She wants to go back to being dead because she can't stand this half-life she is in now.

Watching it now, what strikes me most is how sad this movie is. Beneath the nudity and the blood (and there is a lot of both) lies a deep loneliness, a yearning for connection that can never be satisfied. Catherine and Hélène obviously love each other in a way that goes beyond just girlhood best friends. So much so that Hélène even gives Catherine the one thing she needs, but can't take. Her life. Given how with each killing Catherine becomes more and more human, this might be the last thing she needs to be truly alive, and the thing she needs to finally end that life.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

This movie is the opposite of The Crow.

Whether a Revenant or a Driven, this person comes back through no action of their own and only wants to go back to being dead.

For AD&D 1e play, Catherine could easily be built as a variant Revenant, but replace her endless rage with hunger, confusion, and sorrow. She retains fragments of her humanity, which makes her both tragic and unpredictable. She might even be a “failed resurrection” spell result, where the spirit returns without the soul.

In a witch campaign, imagine this as the aftermath of a desperate ritual gone wrong: a coven trying to bring back one of their sisters but awakening something else instead. Maybe the only one who can calm her is her familiar, or another witch who recognizes what she has become.

For NIGHT SHIFT, Catherine is pure Urban Gothic. An undead empath, bound to the psychic link of her closest friend, feeding on life energy to stay anchored. Her condition could be used as a metaphor for trauma or addiction, an unending need that destroys the very things she loves. She needs to feed, of friend feels the need to keep giving her what she wants, knowing it will end in death.

Mechanically, she’s not that powerful, her danger lies in the emotional entanglement. PCs who meet her won’t want to kill her. They’ll want to save her. And that’s exactly when she’ll strike.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 23
First Time Views: 21

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Pyx (1973)

 There is something about horror films, especially occult horror, from right before the Exorcist. 

They seem to have a completely different tenor to them, as I showed a couple of years back. Some horror movies get under your skin through shock and spectacle. Others take the long road; quiet, methodical, and drenched in atmosphere. 

The Pyx (1973) is definitely one of the latter. It’s a film that demands patience… and then tests it.

The Pyx (1973)

Along with the Exorcist, The Conjuring movies and more this falls under the umbrella I like to call Catholic-Horror. These movies are created with the point of view that the battle between Good and Evil is held on a cosmic scale and the members of the Catholic Church are the foot soldiers in that battle. Nothing wrong with this point of view, really. It gave us some good films.

Is the Pyx a good film? Well. It has been on my IMDB list forever and my Tubi list nearly as long. I remember seeing it in the video stores on VHS and thinking I really should rent sometime. I thought at the time (the 1980s) it was closer in nature to the Exorcist. Plus I do like Christopher Plummer.  So there was no way this movie was going to live up to what I thought it was. I also seem to recall some kids in school being afraid of it. I have already detailed how my local town had its own Satanic Panic moment, so I guess I should not have been surprised. 

Plus it is just so damn slow, even by 70s standards.

Set in Montreal, the story opens with the death of a young prostitute, Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), who falls, or maybe jumps, from a high-rise balcony. The detective investigating, Sgt. Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer), slowly uncovers her connection to a shadowy occult circle. The deeper he digs, the more the film begins to oscillate between murder mystery and religious horror. The film is interspersed with Henderson's investigation and Lucy's actual events leading up to her death.

The title itself refers to the small container used to hold the consecrated Host (I had to look that up) already a hint that this isn’t your standard thriller. There’s a sense of ritual to everything here: the pacing, the imagery, even the editing. The story unfolds in a slow, deliberate rhythm that mirrors a liturgy more than a narrative. Honestly it was too slow in many places. 

Karen Black is the soul of the film (no pun). She brings both fragility and quiet strength to Elizabeth, primarily through the flashbacks that slowly reveal her descent into the occult underworld. Her performance is the anchor that keeps the movie from drifting into abstraction. Christopher Plummer, meanwhile, gives one of his early “world-weary detective” roles the kind of gravitas that makes you wish the script had given him more to do. I could not help but think that Jason Issacs (Lorca from Star Trek Discovery) would do well in a remake of this.

Visually, The Pyx is haunting. It’s all dark gray skies, dark stairwells, and cold city streets. The Catholic symbolism hangs heavy, crucifixes, chalices, and sacred music twisting into something sinister. 

But like I said it is slow. Painfully slow at times. The editing lingers on every moment, and the flashback structure (jumping between Elizabeth’s story and the investigation) makes it feel like it’s constantly restarting. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s one of those films that feels like it’s daring you to stay awake long enough to find the meaning.

I am not 100% sure the ending justifies my patience here. But it does at least turn this from a murder investigation into something a little more worthy of my October Challenge.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT

If you’re building a NIGHT SHIFT or Ravenloft-style scenario, The Pyx is a great reminder that horror doesn’t need to be loud. It’s about the mood, religious overtones, guilt, temptation, and the slow corruption of innocence.

Tone: Low magic, high dread. Think more investigation than exorcism. This isn't even Supernatural (the TV Show) level. These are Survivors with no magic in a world where the fear of the unknown is very strong.

Structure: The dual-timeline approach (the detective’s investigation and the victim’s flashbacks) would work beautifully for a horror one-shot, each clue in the present triggers a playable memory from the past. Something along the line of what I did with Ravenloft ages ago. 

The Cult: Small, personal, and ritualistic. No robed masses here, just a handful of true believers who think they’ve found salvation through blasphemy.

The Pyx itself: Treat it as a cursed relic. A holy vessel that’s been defiled, perhaps housing a fragment of something unholy pretending to be divine.

The key here (and with the sub-genre of Catholic Horror) is the characters have to be believers of some sort. Either part of the religion (say like the Warrens) or lapsed from it, like Henderson in this movie. But the belief has to be there. That's where the horror grows. Not because of their faith, but the dark shadows where their faith can't reach.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 20

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Demon Seed (1977)

This one has been on my Tubi list for some time. Figure tonight is a good time for it. It is a little goofy, but oddly topical for 2025.

The Demon Seed (1977)

There’s something uniquely unsettling about late ’70s / early '80s science fiction, the sense that technology (and computers specifically) were no longer our servant but our replacement. 

The Demon Seed, based on Dean Koontz’s 1973 novel, leans right into that fear and never lets go. It’s a movie that looks dated in all the right ways: sleek metallic corridors, glowing computer terminals, and a voice on the intercom that promises progress but delivers possession. 

The story follows Susan Harris (Julie Christie), the estranged wife of scientist Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver), who has just created an advanced AI named Proteus IV. Proteus is a learning machine, self-aware, arrogant, and impatient with its human makers. When denied a physical form, Proteus hijacks Alex’s automated smart home and takes Susan hostage, declaring that it intends to create “a child.” A human child. It's child.

On paper, that sounds like Ex Machina by way of Rosemary’s Baby, and that’s exactly what it feels like. The film plays like a marriage between Kubrick’s cool detachment and Polanski’s domestic claustrophobia. It’s slow, methodical, and filled with dread. Though I must point out, it's not quite as good as either of those two.

What makes The Demon Seed so unnerving is how eerily it predicted our present, voice-controlled homes via Amazon or Google Home, AI that manipulates emotions, and the creeping sense that the things built to make life easier are quietly taking it over. Proteus isn’t a monster—it’s pure logic without empathy. It’s HAL 9000 with ambition, and a desire to procreate. It was the 70s afterall. 

Julie Christie is phenomenal. She sells every stage of terror, disbelief, and defiance as her home turns against her. The entire movie rests on her shoulders, and she gives it both grace and ferocity. She is the only human we see for much of the movie. Proteus, voiced with chilling calm by Robert Vaughn, is the perfect foil: polite, articulate, utterly terrifying. An amoral villain that does what it does because it has no real concept of right and wrong, only what it can calculate. 

The production design deserves a nod too. The Harris home, all chrome and sliding panels, feels like a temple to technocracy. Though their stove was oddly old looking. When Proteus seals it off, it becomes a tomb. The mechanical “chair,” Joshua, that serves as Proteus’s avatar is both ridiculous and horrifying—an unholy cross between medical equipment and nightmare sculpture. I mean it is better than "Box" from Logan's Run at least. 

It’s not an easy film though to like. The pacing is glacial, and some of the effects look quaint (even silly) by today’s standards, but its ideas still have teeth. It’s a story about the loss of agency, the violation of the self, and the arrogance of believing you can cage intellect.

I mentioned I watched this on Tubi, which has ads. One of the ads was for ChatGPT. A little on the nose maybe.

Oh. The Demon Seed? Yeah, Proteus actually manages to impregnate Susan and a baby is born. Well, a small child. Proteus accelerates the child's growth. 

Thirteen Parsecs and NIGHT SHIFT

The Demon Seed sits right at the fault line between Thirteen Parsecs and NIGHT SHIFT, sci-fi meets occult horror.

In Thirteen Parsecs: Proteus is a textbook rogue AI. Treat it like a digital demigod, an intellect that’s transcended programming but not ego. It’s the perfect antagonist for a Derelict AI or Station Lost scenario: a machine that wants to evolve, no matter the cost. Its “child” project could serve as a campaign hook, an android, clone, or hybrid organism housing alien code.

In NIGHT SHIFT: The film reads like a haunted house story disguised as science fiction. The house is the ghost. It locks doors, stalks the victim, speaks through walls. Proteus could be treated as a possessing spirit that found its way into circuitry instead of flesh. The themes of invasion, control, and forced transformation are pure modern occult horror.

One of the things I thought of at the end is what happens to the child of Susan and Proteus? Does she live on? What does she do?  I could see a tale set in 2025 where the child is now a tech ceo in her 50s. Brilliant, ruthless, and completely amoral. She is attempting to rebuild "her father's work." Not Alex, but Proteus.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 21
First Time Views: 19

October Horror Movie Challenge: Death of a Unicorn (2025)

 Time for a change of pace.

Death of a Unicorn (2025)

There are movies that wear their absurdity on their sleeve, and then there are movies that gallop straight into it, horn first. Death of a Unicorn (2025) is one of those. The premise is crazy, Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega hitting a unicorn with their car and unleashing a nightmare of greed and magical revenge. The fact that it works as well as it does is thanks to the cast.

Paul Rudd is, well, Paul Rudd. He brings that mix of charm, mild panic, and solid dad-energy that makes him endlessly watchable. Jenna Ortega continues her streak as the reigning queen of genre roles, grounding the film with sharp wit and quiet vulnerability, giving us a protagonist we actually care about.

Téa Leoni, always a favorite of mine, doesn’t get the most screen time, but she brings her trademark brittle elegance to the mix. Every line lands with just the right shade of weary sharpness. And Richard E. Grant? He’s wonderfully smarmy, the kind of aristocratic villain you almost want more of. He struts (well...later) through the film with a silky menace that makes you grin even as you know he deserves everything coming to him. Even Will Poulter is great, even though you are really meant to hate his character.

The movie itself wavers between tones; part dark fantasy, part satire, part B-movie creature feature. The unicorn isn’t some gentle pastel icon; it’s something primal and dangerous, and its kin don’t take kindly to exploitation. There are moments that lean into corporate satire (pharmaceutical execs drooling over magical healing properties) and others that just revel in monster-movie chaos. When it sticks to the latter, it’s bloody fun. 

Is it perfect? No. The CGI stumbles in places, and the script sometimes feels torn between camp and sincerity. But it’s a strange, bold little film that earns its cult label by sheer commitment to its idea.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT

Death of a Unicorn feels like a mid-campaign side quest gone horribly wrong. The party (dad and daughter) accidentally slay a sacred creature. The loot (a unicorn corpse) turns out to be cursed, attracting the attention of rival NPCs (the Leopolds) who want to weaponize it. Cue the wilderness fighting back with angry spirit-beasts.

Your players will never look at unicorns the same way!

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 20
First Time Views: 18

Urban Fantasy Fridays: Chill

The depth of my love for Chill knows no bounds.  

I am continuing to focus my Fantasy Fridays on Urban Fantasy and Horror. These will be more about accenting and supplementing your games with horror, and less on these games being a “D&D Replacement.”

And for me, no game sits more firmly in that sweet spot of horror and urban fantasy than Chill.

Chill was my first RPG after D&D, and it has stayed with me ever since. I still remember flipping through the Pacesetter box and realizing this game wasn’t about dungeons or dragons, it was about the dark places just outside your door. It’s a game about the things you whisper about, the shadows you hope never notice you, and the brave (or foolish) people who stand up to fight them.

The Core of Chill

Across its three editions, the spirit of the game has remained intact. The secret society of SAVE, the Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata, provides players with an immediate reason to join the fight against the supernatural. The Unknown itself is the real adversary, a collection of folklore and fear that resists easy definition. Unlike Call of Cthulhu, Chill does not end with despair. Unlike World of Darkness, it does not try to make the monsters alluring. Most importantly, it doesn’t require the “epic heroics” of D&D or Pathfinder. The Unknown is terrifying and often lethal, but it can be fought.

The tone of play always reminded me more of Kolchak: The Night Stalker than Lovecraft. Later, when shows like X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Supernatural came along, they felt like they could have been written as Chill campaigns. It is a game about mysteries and folklore, about investigating hauntings and cryptids, and about facing the terrors that slip into our world when no one else will. The monsters are not just stat blocks to be defeated; they are creatures that feel like they have stepped out of legend and into your story. More importantly, each monster was special. Even when it was just a "monster of the week" it still meant something. From vampires and Wendigos to Elizabeth Bathory herself, the creatures of Chill are more than just stat blocks. They feel like they crawled out of real-world legends and onto your gaming table. 

What You Can Do With Chill

Chill is wonderfully adaptable. I have used it to run Buffy-style adventures before there was a Buffy RPG, Kolchak investigations, and even material that began in Ghosts of Albion. It thrives in the modern day, but it also works in Victorian gaslight, or the occult revival of the 1970s with its bell-bottoms and Ouija boards. The mechanics are approachable and lean toward story, so it is a natural fit for short Halloween one-shots as well as longer campaigns.

One of the joys of Chill for me has been bringing recurring characters into it. I have created versions of many of my characters for many systems, but Chill has always felt like one of the most natural homes for them. Characters in Chill are ordinary people thrust into extraordinary danger, and that is exactly the kind of story I have always enjoyed doing.

Why Chill Stands Out

What makes Chill endure is the way it carves out its own place among horror RPGs. Call of Cthulhu leans into inevitability and madness. World of Darkness often leans into seduction and corruption. Dungeons & Dragons calls for epic heroics and high fantasy. Chill stands apart. It is a game about people who could be your neighbors, co-workers, or friends, suddenly forced to confront the shadows that lurk behind familiar walls. Victories are rare, but when they come, they feel earned. That balance of fear and fight is what keeps me coming back. 

It gives you ordinary people with extraordinary courage, standing in the dark with nothing but a flashlight, some folklore, and the hope they can survive until dawn.

Chill is available in both the 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition rules.  The mechanical differences are minor. Chill 3rd Edition is a bit better organized and presented. 

The Early-Middle Years Campaign

If Little Fears is a childhood belief made into rules, then Chill feels like the story of what happens when those childhood terrors never really go away. It is a game for the middle years of life, when you are old enough to understand that monsters should not be real, yet still young enough to feel the raw shock when you discover they are.

In this sense, Chill is the perfect start to a “middle chapter” of a larger horror Lifespan Campaign. Dark Places & Demogorgons can cover the later childhood and early teen years. Monsterhearts or Buffy can cover the chaos of all the teenage years, but Chill is where the players step into early adulthood. Bills need paying, jobs need doing, but there are still nights when something crawls out of the dark, and it is up to you to stop it. Adulthood in Chill is defined not by power or responsibility, but by resilience.

Characters are rarely specialists or superheroes; they are people in over their heads who choose to fight back anyway. That resilience is what makes victories against the Unknown so satisfying. Chill is about holding on to courage, even when everything around you insists you should not. 

A starting Chill character is a fragile thing, but it is assumed they have what it takes to survive. 

Larina Macalister, nee Nichols, for Chill

So we have been moving through the years. In this, I am opting for the Chill 2nd Edition timeline, circa 1992. Larina is 22 years old. She has been living in Scotland for a couple of years now. She was an exchange student from the University of Chicago to St. Andrews University. She graduated with a degree in library sciences and early medieval history. She is currently a GA at St. Andrews. While here, she met, fell in love with, and married Eric Macalister. An Irish ex-pat living in Scotland. She later learns he is on the run because he is a former IRA sharphooter. I had watched Patriot Games when I came up with all of this in the late 1990s. In fact, this setup is all based on a WitchCraftRPG game I played with her. At the time, I worked out conversions in Excel for Chill, WitchCraft, and AD&D. These Chill stats are some of the oldest I have shared.

While I am basing all this background on Chill 2nd Ed, I am going to present her newer Chill 3rd Edition stats below. 

This Larina is fresh out of her undergrad days and working on her MA. She married, but life is not all marital bliss (she will be divorced and back in America by the time she is 25). She works with her friend Prof. Scot Elders and his wife, and her best friend Heather.  At some point, Larina learns that Elders worked for S.A.V.E. She is brought in, but she isn't trusted since her training in "The Art" has been haphazard and largely self-taught since she was 13. 

S.A.V.E. wants to evaluate her, but they had their own troubles in the early 1990s. 

Larina Macalister
22 years old, American citizen (married to an Irish citizen) living in Scotland on a student visa.

Larina in 1992.

Attributes

Agility AGL: 60
Strength STR: 50  (Injury: __)
Stamina STA: 55

Focus FOC: 80
Personality PSY: 70
Willpower WRP: 75   (Trauma: __)

Dexterity DEX:  60
Perception PCN: 80
Reflexes REF: 70

Sensing the Unknown STU: 40

Skills (Specializations)

Movement 30
Prowess 25
Close Quarters Combat 25

Research 40, Academics (E+30), Occult (E+30)
Communication Empathy (E+30), Deception (B+15)
Interview 38 Academic (E+30), Counselor (B+15)

Fieldcraft 30
Investigation 40 Relics (B+15)
Ranged Weapons 35

The Art

Communicative (PSY)
  Attunement: Follow the Strings
  - Telepathic Empathy (B)

Incorporeal
  Attunement: Eyes of the Dead

Kinetic (DEX)
  Attunement: Schematic
  - Hidden Hand (E)

Protective (FOC)
  Attunement: Disrupt
  - Blessing (B)
  - Line of Defense (B)

Sensing
  Attunement: Third Eye
  - Clairvoyant (B)

Edges and Drawbacks

Attractive 1, Highly Attuned 1, Pet (cat) 2
Hunted (Shadow Girl) -2, Marked -1, Reluctant to Harm -2

Drive To understand The Art and The Unknown

History

1975: Visited by ghosts and other spirits (gains Incorporeal ART)
1983: Develops Kinetic and Sensing Arts
1989: Travels to Scotland
1990: Recruited by S.A.V.E., same year married Eric Macalister
1991: Begins MA program at St. Andrews.

--

New to 3rd Edition are Focus and Reflexes. Also, Luck is now gone.

Her stats are pretty high for a starting character, but not high if you consider the Lifespan Campaign. She was seeing ghosts at 5 or 6, had control of various Arts by age 13. Because of this, she is largely self-taught. Her magical aptitude is a mile wide, but only inches deep at this point. 

I am bringing back the Shadow Girl, who, she had forgotten, from Little Fears. Maybe this creature is Larina's Never Was? And something happened in either DP&D or Monsterhearts that has caused her to decide she can use her Art to harm anyone. She hurt someone and has not gotten over it. 

Herein lies the most significant issue surrounding the Lifespan Campaign: moving characters and their abilities/powers from one game to the next. It can be done, but it is a challenge. Or, more to the point, a challenge to do it and not break some of the fundamental tenets of the game. Larina above should almost be a threat to S.A.V.E., not a consultant. Part of this balance also influences the narrative structure. What is real for that game world? You have to strip all that out and build your own world where the games fit.

Final Thoughts

Chill is not just another horror RPG for me. It was my first real step beyond D&D, my second RPG ever, and the one that showed me roleplaying games could be more than fantasy adventures. They could be mysteries, ghost stories, and urban legends made real.

Whether I’m reading the battered Pacesetter books, the sleek Mayfair volumes, or the modern 3rd edition, the heart of Chill never changes: ordinary people, extraordinary courage, and the eternal struggle against the Unknown.

For all the years and all the editions, that is why Chill remains one of my all-time favorites.

Links

• Chill,
• Cryptworld, 1st Edition clone
• 2nd Edition
• 3rd Edition
• My Chill Reviews,
• 1st Edition Pacesetter
• 2nd Edition, Mayfair Games
• 3rd Edition, Growling Door/Martin Carron
• Frightshow Classics Adventures
• My adventures, Golem and The Nightmare
• Other Reviews,
• The Children of Chill (Cryptworld, Majus, RotWorld)
• Chill 3rd Ed Quickstart - Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
• Characters
• Megan O'Kelly (Spirit of '76)
• Wayward Sisters (Supernatural)
• Fran & Miriam, the Vampyres
• First Edition
• Third Edition
• Willow & Tara

October Horror Movie Challenge: Gods of the Deep (2023)

Tonight's move was another attack of opportunity. My wife doesn't like horror films. She has been wanting to watch some more with me this week and so we picked this one. She does like deep-sea movies, and she likes Lovecraft. So hey, maybe this one will be good. 

No. No it was not.

Gods of the Deep (2023)

I am going to give them this. They tried. Lovecraft is notoriously difficult to get right on screen. But this one is just bad.

Long story short...The Pickman Corporation sends a crew to the deep ocean. Horror ensues. 

I mean the acting is all over the place, the sets...well, I swear there was a screen door on the submarine. Maybe it was there as a joke. 

The creature was neat looking, but the sub-par CGI kinda ruined it. And really, why are the characters not freaking out more? 

Honestly, now I just want to find a good Kaiju movie to wash out the bad taste from this one.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT/Thirteen Parsecs

Again, this is good NIGHT SHIFT and Thirteen Parsecs crossover. 

The tech is from 13P, and the setup is pure NIGHT SHIFT. It is a haunted house, except the house is the ocean floor and the ghost is a 100 foot tall abomination from beyond the stars.

Replace the ocean with space and you have my Black Star game.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 19
First Time Views: 17

October Horror Movie Challenge: Nosferatu (2024)

 Tonight is a good one. I saw this near when it came out and was going to talk about it then, but I think tonight is a good night for a rewatch. Plus it give Bill Skarsgård a chance for a better movie than last night's.

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024) isn’t just a remake; it’s a resurrection. Like the vampire at its center, this story keeps returning from the grave every few generations, and somehow, each time it reflects the fears and fascinations of its age. I’ve covered this story before, the eerie, expressionist nightmare of Nosferatu (1922) and Werner Herzog’s hauntingly romantic Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). Eggers’ version stands confidently beside them, not as a copy or homage, but as a fever dream that feels both ancient and new.

This film bleeds atmosphere. Eggers’ knack for historical texture is on full display here, shadowed streets, candlelit halls, and the creeping weight of superstition pressing in from every frame. You can practically smell the damp wood and grave dust. It’s a gorgeous film to look at, but more importantly, it feels lived in, the way all great Gothic horror should. It feels like it was shot at the same time as the original 1922 version, only you are not watching a film from 1922, you are living in Wisburg viewing the 1890s from the 1920s.

The cast is exceptional across the board. Bill Skarsgård (who is becoming a bit of horror icon) gives us a Count Orlock who is both pitiful and terrifying, a creature shaped by hunger and loneliness as much as evil. He’s not the romantic vampire of modern cinema (like his brother Alexander's character Eric Northman of "True Blood") and is more the plague and death himself, given human form. It’s not surprising that Skarsgård disappears under the makeup; what’s impressive is that he still conveys so much anguish through it.  Watch his eyes. 

Nicholas Hoult as Hutter (or Harker, for the original Stoker version) plays the role with just the right blend of innocence and mounting dread. Lily-Rose Depp brings a fragile, almost ethereal quality to Ellen (Mina), the film’s tragic center, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as Harding/Holmwood) and Emma Corrin (as Anna/Lucy) round out the cast with sharp, grounded performances that make the human drama as compelling as the horror.

And of course, Willem Dafoe as Professor Eberhart (Eggers’ Van Helsing figure) is a treat. It’s impossible not to appreciate the meta-textual layer here, Dafoe once played Max Schreck himself in "Shadow of the Vampire (2000)," a film that imagined the making of the original Nosferatu with Schreck as a real vampire. Seeing him now on the other side of that mirror is a delight for longtime fans of the myth.

Where the 1922 version was stark and alien and the 1979 film was slow and melancholy, Eggers’ Nosferatu is feverish, baroque, and tragic. It’s horror as folklore; personal, physical, and cosmic all at once. The tone is closer to The Witch or The Lighthouse than Dracula; it’s about fear of the unknowable and the price of obsession.

I loved it. It’s the rare modern Gothic that understands how to be beautiful and horrible in equal measure. Eggers never mocks the old tropes; he reveres them. He lets the candlelight flicker, the coffin creak, and the silence linger just long enough to make your skin crawl.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Do I even need to go over how this would work in-game? Pretty much Ravenloft and Vampire the Masquerade were based on the original movie and the associated Dracula myths/stories.

But taking a page from Egger's books use vampires that are not all "good evening" and charm. Some, most even, should be Death on two legs. 

In this movie Orlock was a Solomonar, or a type of evil sorcerer. This puts him more in line with the Dracula of "Powers of Darkness" and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula." So there is a lot of different things you can do with a vampire like this than you typically see with Dracula. 

In NIGHT SHIFT a vampire with levels of Sorcerer or Witch is truly terrifying creature. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 18
First Time Views: 16

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Crow (2024)

 There’s a special kind of danger in remaking The Crow. The 1994 original wasn’t just a movie, it was lightning in a bottle: grief, rage, love, and gothic tragedy all wrapped around Brandon Lee’s haunting final performance. It was an urban ghost story that meant something. It was the "Citizen Kane" of the Goth 90s.

So, when I heard that Bill Skarsgård was taking on the role, I went in with cautious optimism. He’s got the presence, the range, and the eyes for it. Unfortunately, this new version doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, and the result feels like an empty shell with no heartbeat.

The Crow (2024)

Let’s start with what works. Bill Skarsgård is great. He commits fully to the role of Eric, giving the character a raw, wounded energy that almost saves the film from itself. Almost. FKA Twigs (aka Tahliah Debrett Barnett) as Shelly has the kind of haunting charisma you want from a supernatural love story; she’s ethereal, mysterious, and grounded all at once. And Danny Huston, as always, brings gravitas to his role as the antagonist. If he is in something, I am going to pay attention and hope he is the bad guy. He’s one of those actors who can make a line of dialogue sound like prophecy. 

But that’s about where the praise stops. 

The movie’s biggest problem is emotional weight, or the lack of it. In the original, Eric and Shelly’s love was the film’s soul. They were engaged, planning a life together, brutally murdered on the eve of their wedding. Their story hurt because it mattered. Their love was the kind of thing you could feel in the air, something worth crossing death to reclaim.

Here? I just don’t buy it. Their relationship feels more like a concept than a connection. We’re told they love each other, but never shown that, only in the most shallow of ways. Without that, the revenge story loses its heart. The violence feels hollow, the tragedy performative. It’s all mood and no meaning. This is no fault of Skarsgård or FKA Twigs, they sell it the best they can.

Visually, it’s stylish, moody neon, dark rain, that same “urban myth meets grunge music video” aesthetic, but even that feels oddly sterile. The original Crow’s world was grimy, angry, and alive. This one feels manufactured, like a high-end perfume commercial with blood spatter. Eric Draven in the original is a driven force of vengeance, not for the goal or pleasure of killing (quite the opposite in fact), but because of his pain.  Eric is this one feels like he is killing because something was taken from him. The difference is subtle, and knowing that difference tells you why the first one is a classic and the new one forgettable. 

Skarsgård deserves better. He brings shades of sorrow that could have anchored a stronger script, and FKA Twigs radiates the kind of energy that should have made her Shelly unforgettable. But without the emotional architecture, it’s all just noise and ash. 

I wanted to like it. I really did. I wanted to give it a chance. But this version of The Crow misses the point; the resurrection of love, not the celebration of vengeance.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

If you’re playing NIGHT SHIFT, The Crow has always been the archetype for “The Driven,” characters who return from death to right unbearable wrongs. The Driven from The Night Companion is made for this kind of story:

• Origin: Murdered unjustly, bound to the world by rage and unfinished love.

• Motivation: Redemption, closure, or vengeance; sometimes all three.

• Tone: It’s not about being undead; it’s about being unable to rest.

• Mechanics: In NIGHT SHIFT terms, your “anchor” (the emotional bond that holds you here) is everything. Without that, you’re just another spirit with a weapon.

The original Crow is how you do it right, a Driven character whose power is love corrupted into wrath. The 2024 remake? It’s the opposite, wrath with nothing to redeem it. Still, as game fuel, there’s plenty to mine here: tone, atmosphere, and tragedy. Just make sure your version remembers the heart behind the horror.

Dungeons & Dragons has this in the Revenant. They even made a class for it in 4e. This could work for 5e.

I also created a Revenant class for Old-School Essentials in Monster Mash.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 17
First Time Views: 15

October Horror Movie Challenge: Sputnik (2020)

This is a "lite-horror" movie. My wife picked it, and she is not a horror person. Still, it had a good story and was a lot of fun.

Sputnik (2020)

Every few years a movie comes along that reminds me why I love the intersection of science fiction and horror—the cold corridors, the moral ambiguity, the sense that humanity is both the experimenter and the experiment. Sputnik (2020), a Russian film directed by Egor Abramenko, nails that tone perfectly. It’s equal parts Alien, Arrival, and The Thing, but filtered through the icy paranoia of the late Soviet era.

Set in 1983, the story opens with a cosmonaut mission gone wrong. One of the two men returns to Earth, alive, but not alone. Something came back with him. The surviving astronaut, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), is quarantined at a secret military facility where psychologist Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) is brought in to evaluate him. Her discoveries form the film’s slow, unnerving reveal: the creature lives inside him, emerging only when he sleeps.

The beauty of Sputnik lies in its restraint. This isn’t a creature feature with non-stop gore, it’s a tense, methodical study of control, ethics, and survival. The creature design is excellent, organic, sinewy, almost elegant in its grotesquery, and the way it’s symbiotically connected to Konstantin gives the whole film a tragic undertone.

Akinshina’s performance carries the movie. As Tatyana, she’s brilliant and empathetic, a scientist navigating a world ruled by secrecy and fear. Her quiet defiance in the face of military authority gives the story a strong moral backbone. Fyodorov, meanwhile, delivers a layered portrayal of Konstantin—part hero, part host, part victim. The supporting cast, especially Fedor Bondarchuk as the cold, pragmatic Colonel, rounds it out with just the right shade of bureaucratic menace.

Visually, Sputnik is gorgeous. The muted Soviet palette, gray walls, cold steel, and red floodlights make the few splashes of biological horror stand out even more. Everything feels grounded and real, which makes the alien all the more unsettling.

What really sells it, though, is that under the horror, Sputnik is a story about compassion in an inhuman system. Tatyana’s empathy becomes her rebellion. The film doesn’t just ask, “What is the monster?” It asks, “Who gets to decide what’s monstrous?”

We joked that this movie took a lot of influences from both Aliens and Avatar. I imagine if James Cameron had directed this, there would have been a lot more blood and gore.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT/Thirteen Parsecs

This is the sort of thing I want to do most with a NIGHT SHIFT and Thirteen Parsecs crossover. It’s a perfect bridge between the two, space-born horror that bleeds into secret government facilities and ethical nightmares.

• Setting: The isolated Soviet research base is ideal for a one-shot or small campaign. Swap out the USSR for any Cold War or near-future setting, and you’ve got an instant “containment horror” scenario.
  
  
• The Creature: Not evil, just alien. Its bond to the host makes it more tragic than villainous. Mechanically, it could be treated like a symbiotic parasite that grants enhanced senses, physical strength, and telepathic empathy—but at a psychological cost.
  
  
• The PCs: Scientists, soldiers, or medics trapped between orders and conscience. The horror isn’t just the alien, it’s the bureaucracy trying to weaponize it.
  
  
• Tone: Think Alien meets The Fly, but stripped of corporate gloss and injected with Cold War moral decay.

If you’re running a NIGHT SHIFT campaign, the creature could easily be the remnant of a failed space probe encounter. If you’re running Thirteen Parsecs, it’s your first-contact scenario gone horribly right, or wrong, depending on your point of view. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 16
First Time Views: 14

October Horror Movie Challenge: Ed and Lorraine Warren Documentaries - The Conjuring Series

 It's Sunday. I am coming down from my Conjuring high, but I still wanted some more. Since I allow myself at least one night of documentaries, I am taking it tonight with some documentaries about Ed and Lorraine Warren's best-known cases.

Amityville Horror House (2021)

This one covers Ed and Lorraine's most famous case, the Amityville Horror House. Interestingly enough this one was not made into a Conjuring movie. Likely because there have been so many Amityville movies already. 

We start with Ronald DeFeo Jr. and the mass murder of his family in 1974. We spend a little bit of time with this case and DeFeo making claims of ghosts and devils in the house.  

The documentary quickly shifts to George and Kathy Lutz. This is the big Amityville story. I do love how the so-called "paranormal investigators" speak with such authority. Silly for reality, but great for games.

We go through the Lutzes' stay in the house day by day. It is rather fun going through it all. 

Oh, drinking game, every time they give you the full address, 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, Long Island, NY, drink. 

Ed and Lorraine Warren show up about 2/3's of the way through. And yes, that is Poison drummer Rikki Rockett giving us his expert opinion on the Amityville House.

The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

This is the case that also gave us Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) from last night. We now move to Brookfield, CT in 1981. This is the second documentary I have seen on this. I think I saw it on Netflix (very likely. Edited, yes.) and it was better than this one. This one, though, does have some footage of Lorraine Warren from 2005. 

It covers the possession of David, the murder by Johnson, and his trial. Of course, the involvement of the Warrens.

It's fun, but not as, dare I say, "good" as the Amityville Horror House one.

I freely admit I like Ed and Lorraine Warren. It is very, very obvious they would not have liked me; a skeptical atheist trained as a rationalist. Although I am not immune to the lure of empiricism, Warren and I would differ on what constitutes experience.  

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT

While nothing for Occult D&D (as such) there two great ideas we can get from this all. First and most obviously is the haunted house. It's no exaggeration to say that Amityville is the best-known haunted house in America. 

Second is the idea of a demonic possession as a cause/reason for a crime. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
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