io9Movies

Let’s Unmask the Epic New Friday the 13th Blu-ray Box Set

When or if we’ll ever see another Friday the 13th film, we don’t know. What we do know is Jason Voorhees (and his mom) have been hacking and slashing for 12 movies over the past 40 years, and a brand new box set brings them all together in a very impressive package. Called simply The … Continued

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His House Puts a Fresh Coat of Terror on the Haunting Genre

After barely escaping the horrors of war in South Sudan, Rial (Lovecraft Country’s Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) Majul have made it all the way to London and into their first home. But their apparent good fortune has a terrifying downside, as Remi Weekes’ chilling His House soon reveals. In any film about a haunted … Continued

ReviewsHeadphones

Skullcandy’s Incredibly Cheap Wire-Free Earbuds Sound a Lot Better Than You’d Expect

Released to coincide with the news that the iPhone 12 line would no longer ship with headphones, Apple’s new $50 Beats Flex are the cheapest wireless earbuds the company sells—but they’re not completely wireless, and they’re not that cheap. Skullcandy’s new Jib True wireless earbuds easily best Beats with a truly wireless design, a $30 … Continued

ReviewsSmartphones

The Pixel 4a 5G Is Hands Down the Best $500 Phone

The Pixel 4a 5G is an interesting phone, because on the outside it’s as plain as can be. But just like the Millennium Falcon, she’s got it where it counts. The Pixel 4a 5G is also somewhat awkwardly named, having more in common with the Pixel 5 than its smaller sibling, the standard Pixel 4a. … Continued

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Spell Is a Gorgeous B Horror Movie With Messy Ideas About Class and Power

Paramount Pictures’Spell—from director Mark Tonderai—is a film that sets out to exist in a number of emotional spaces while terrifying you with a story about how simultaneously horrific and freeing homecomings can be. While the film doesn’t quite accomplish all of its goals, it does manage—perhaps accidentally—to be a wildly fun horror flick centering one … Continued

io9Movies

The Craft: Legacy Has Good Intentions But Fails to Cast a Spell

The Craft has become a cult classic thanks to its indelible portrayal of misfit teen witches gone wild, with an appealing dose of 1990s nostalgia baked in. The Craft: Legacy aims to capture the spirit of the original, and while it definitely succeeds in putting a modern spin on the story, it comes up lacking … Continued

ReviewsGaming

The Nvidia RTX 3070 Has No Business Being This Good

While Nvidia’s RTX 3080 release last month didn’t quite go as planned, there’s no denying that Nvidia’s 3000 series of ray tracing graphics cards are the ones that matter. The RTX 3080 finally made 4K gaming at 60 fps possible and more affordable for the average PC gamer, and the 3000-series as a whole makes … Continued

ReviewsLaptops

HP’s MacBook Rival Has a Lot to Love, but the Thermals Are Terrifying

Sometimes the only thing differentiating a gaming laptop from a workstation laptop is the aesthetic. A lot of gaming laptops are dressed in a deep, matte black and accented with an RGB keyboard, or the air vents resemble a muscle car rear end. Mobile workstations blend into the coffee shop environment much more subtlety, only … Continued

io9Movies

The Witches Remake Is a Silly Comedy for Kids Who Aren’t Afraid of the Dark

Roald Dahl’sThe Witches was terrifying as both a novel and as a high-camp ‘90s horror-comedy. It presented, quite frankly, a world full of child-hating witches whose sole purpose in life was to exterminate young people. Robert Zemeckis’ new adaptation of the story is far sillier than any of its predecessors, but it still manages to … Continued

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Lupin III: The First Is a Gorgeous Adventure About Finding Family and Punching Nazis

Monkey Punch’s beloved gentleman thief has been an animated icon for decades, giving us oodles of cinematic and small screen escapades. But Lupin’s latest heist is an epic unlike anything he’s done before, and not just because he’s been stunningly realized in a whole new medium. Lupin III: The First, directed by Dragon Quest: Your … Continued

ReviewsHome Entertainment & Smart Home

The $50 Chromecast with Google TV Is the Best and Smartest Streaming Dongle for the Money

For the past few years, I never felt like I understood Google’s approach to streaming video. It vexed me, I was terribly vexxed. That’s because while Google was happy to provide Android TV to partners like Sony, Hisense, Nvidia, Xiaomi, and others for use in TVs and streaming video boxes, when it came to Google’s … Continued

io9Movies

Synchronic Tells a Dramatic Time Travel Story That Could Have Used More Time

Time travel is a drug and the results can be deadly. Anthony Mackie (Avengers: Infinity War) and Jamie Dornan (50 Shades of Grey) star in the new sci-fi film Synchronic as two best friends, and New Orleans paramedics, who begin to notice kids dying in horrible, improbable ways. Stabbed through the chest with a sword, … Continued

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The Church of the SubGenius Documentary Examines the Cult of a Cult

Long before the internet invaded every aspect of culture, a pair of friends who first bonded over their love of comic books and Captain Beefheart dreamed up “a weird fringe cult specifically for weirdos” that would walk the line between sincerity and parody. Thus, the Church of the SubGenius was born. For those who have … Continued

ReviewsSmartphones

The OnePlus 8T Is a Solid Phone, But OnePlus Needs to Level Up

Over the last couple of years, OnePlus has sort of had the “budget flagship” phone segment to itself, offering well-built phones with top-notch specs for hundreds less than its traditional high-end competitors. However, with the price of premium phones having risen to $1,000 (or more), especially in 2020, many mainstream phone makers like Samsung and … Continued

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The Exorcist Documentary Leap of Faith Takes You Inside an Iconic Director’s Mind and Process

You’ve seen The Exorcist, probably more than once; by now, even the often-repeated stories about its creation are the stuff of Hollywood legend. But there’s always room for more—especially in a new doc that goes straight to the source to dig into one of the most acclaimed horror movies ever made. Alexandre O. Philippe—whose previous … Continued

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I Imagined Halloween III: Season of the Witch Being Way Better Than the Real Thing

Until recently, I’d never seen Halloween III: Season of the Witch. I know. Blasphemy. We all have our blind spots and this was one of mine. As I finally watched it though, I realized the movie I thought it was going to be wasn’t even close to the actual movie. How did that happen? Why? … Continued

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Nocturne Tells a Deliciously Diabolical Tale of Sibling Rivalry

Amazon’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series, produced by Blumhouse Television, debuted its first two films last week (we reviewed the sci-fi entry, Black Box; the other, The Lie, is a psychological drama). Two more arrive this week, and with them the standout of the series so far: the haunting Nocturne. Nocturne is the debut feature … Continued

ReviewsSmartphones

The Galaxy S20 FE Is the More Affordable Samsung Phone You Really Want

When Samsung chose the Galaxy S20 FE’s name (FE stands for Fan Edition), it did so because FE tested better in focus groups compared to other tags like “Lite” that normally get slapped on slightly cheaper budget flagship devices. But you know what? I’m kind of OK with that slice of corporate nonsense because it’s … Continued

io9Television

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts Season 3 Isn’t Perfect, But It’s Perfectly Kipo

And now, the end is near. Netflix’s Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is heading into its third and final season on the promise of global unity or Mute-ually assured destruction. The series does a beautiful job of bringing our beloved heroes’ story to a close, but gets weighed down by a villain who fails … Continued

io9Television

Helstrom Is an MCU One-Off in Search of a Reason to Exist

Once upon a time, there was a multibillion-dollar multimedia corporation that dreamed of creating a wildly successful franchise of movies that could serve as backdrops for multiple spin-off series starring characters who were plucked from the source material’s same shared narrative universe. That corporation was Marvel, and one of those series is Hulu’s Helstrom. Helstrom … Continued