Released on April 5th, the second part of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina continues the story of Netflix’s favorite teenage witch started in Part One. While I had thought this offering would feel like a second season, where while it would be connected to the last series of episodes it could be watched alone, instead this nearly directly follows part one and the Christmas special, completing the story there.

The diversity I mentioned in my review of Part One continues in Part Two. The formerly genderqueer character Susie discovers the truth, that he is in fact trans, and takes the name Theo, after the heroine ancestor whose spirit appears to him sometimes. The arc he has, though sometimes wanders a bit, is on the whole amazing, ending with him becoming a hero in his own right.

Sabrina also comes into her own, filled with rage and clear purpose, she runs headfirst into conflict with the High Priest of the Church of Night, who, in turn, spends the whole of the second part trying to turn his church of darkness backward, enacting regressive and misogynistic rules that glorify himself and the warlocks of the coven, while castigating the witches. This arc, while it is the fruit born from the Part One seeds of Sabrina calling out all of the sexism in the Church of Night, doesn’t go as far I hoped it would have. That being said, it’s still more progressive on that front than most other shows.

My only true complaint about the second Part is how it spends a lot of time meandering through world building and showing us cool things inside the world of horror Greendale, rather than focusing in on what’s going on. Talk of Anti-Popes that lasts longer than he actually does, a whole episode that would, on a show on broadcast television released week by week, be a Halloween episode that was more clip show than anything with a plot, and a flash of an episode with witch-hunters that I would have liked to have had a whole season or at least two or three episode arc for. There are so many moving parts in this story, and so few episodes, that it didn’t have time to do justice to all of the threads they wove. If Netflix had spent the time that a usual television show has, something like 13-22, they could have spent the time developing the witch-hunter plot or making the Anti-Pope matter, or perhaps even showing Zelda’s horrific honeymoon with Father Blackwood in Rome, rather than just writing her out for a while.

In the end, the series concludes in a satisfying place that largely wraps up the story so that while I do want more, I don’t need to have more. I’m fine is this is where we leave the story, regardless of the last few minutes that leave a hook for a second season or a Part Three. That, alone, makes me happy as a streaming viewer when I see that there was a plan in mind to complete a story, rather than prolong the mystery or keep it going for however long the train has wheels, which is something American television can learn from both streaming and from international television.

All in all, I would suggest watching Part Two of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina if you enjoyed Part One, or if you missed the train the last time and would like to jump on how. It’s the magic that streaming service television has over broadcast, the ability to just jump in whenever, and if you were looking for something delightfully spooky, I would suggest the chronicles of this plucky teenage witch.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, both Parts One and Two, as well as it’s Christmas special, are all available for streaming now on Netflix.

David Castro is a Puerto Rican writer from New York City. He has worked on the upcoming Undead supplement for Chill Third Edition and is working on launching a Patreon. You can find him on Twitter (@theinkedknight), on Tumblr (thedevilsyouknew), on Facebook (facebook.com/inkstainedstudios), and at davidrcastro.com.

Photo by Mark Rogers

Not all reboots are made equal, and just because something gets a reboot doesn’t mean that either version is lesser. This is the case for the 2019 reboot of Hellboy, based on the Dark Horse Comics character of the same name. Everyone I’ve spoken to loves the original film adaption of it from 2004, by famed genre director Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, and is in my opinion one of the only comic book movies of that decade to be faithful to its source material, both in spirit and in text, and still be good. Thusly, when this reboot was announced, after del Toro left the project and Perlman refused to reprise the role without him as director, the fandom had its doubts about the quality of the film. I am not here to litigate if the film stands up to the original adaption, as I am not at all interested in holding precious works now fifteen years old, but rather to talk about the new film on its own, though some references to the original will have to be made. In that light I will say this, I really enjoyed Hellboy for the action/horror pulp comic book movie that it is, and it does faithfully link back to the comics, though which stories of the canon it uses are more scattershot than the original, but I don’t think that is a bad thing.

This adaption of Hellboy resets the character under the tutelage of Stranger Things alum David Harbour, whose Hellboy is less bombastic than Perlman’s, more jaded and introspective. Harbour’s doesn’t want to be a widely known hero, though he is, he just wants to be, to exist on his own terms. In this, the snide jokes from this version feel darker, cut with more self-loathing, and in some ways, I think I like that about him. He struggles with who he is and who others believe him to be. He is a demon, and for all the good he does, that does not change what he is, but nor does what he is determine who he is, which is, of course, the crux of the Hellboy story. He was born and sent here to destroy the world and bring about the end of days, that is what he is, but he is also a fighter against all that goes bump in the night and a protector of mankind, that is who he is.

Instead of Rasputin as the great villain of this tale, though he does make an appearance in a cutaway scene reminding us of Hellboy’s origins as the result of a  Nazi occult ritual, we have Nimue the Blood Queen, an immortal witch who originally warred with King Arthur himself, but was defeated only to return in modernity, who is played by the amazing Milla Jovovich. While the performance is amazing, she fills the same sort of role as him, the being from the shadows that tempt Hellboy’s darker nature into fulfilling his destiny, such as it is.

As an R-rated movie, this version has a foul tongue and a penchant for gore that the previous iterations couldn’t contend with at PG-13, but while other critics take that to be a mark against the film, I believe that it works for the genre. Hellboy, both in comics and on the big screen, it has a layer of grit that this version has for me, and while the story itself is weak, I don’t exactly mind it.

I like how this film takes place after Hellboy has been doing things in the world before the events of this movie that has repercussions on it. I love the new takes on the Professor and Hellboy, as well as the new to the film’s characters, especially Alice Monaghan played by Sasha Lane. She was my favorite, and I’m looking into other things she’s been in.

Honestly, the two films are different enough for me to not want or need to compare the two, and regardless of that, both now exist. I sincerely suggest that fans of the comics and films take the time to check out this reboot with an open mind because I do believe it is a fun movie and a great time at the movies.

Hellboy is now open wide in cinemas everywhere.

David Castro is a Puerto Rican writer from New York City. He has worked on the upcoming Undead supplement for Chill Third Edition and is working on launching a Patreon. You can find him on Twitter (@theinkedknight), on Tumblr (thedevilsyouknew), on Facebook (facebook.com/inkstainedstudios), and at davidrcastro.com.

Based on the DC Comics about the character created in 1939 that was originally called Captain Marvel, it makes the perfect reason why they didn’t go with that title, as Marvel’s movie is still on the top five list after five weeks, a list that Shazam! currently is at the top of charts with nearly fifty-seven million dollars. Staring both Zachary Levi and Asher Angel as the title character, the former as the hero, and the later when he’s the host of the powers Billy Batson. Gifted great magical abilities on par with any of the titans of DC Comics and yet still a young boy, Shazam is both vastly powerful and innocent in a way that no DC film heroes I’ve seen before are, and in that way, this movie surpasses all of the entries into the DC cinematic universe.

Where most of the DC Comics films thus far can be lumped together as “dark and gritty”, Shazam! has a levity and light to it, even though it does talk about some serious things, like finding one’s family to be more than just the people who gave birth to you. Billy Batson is an orphan, moving from foster family to group homes, always running away in a search for his birth mother, not exactly uncommon actions, but through the course of the film, once he settles in the Philadelphia group home with five other kids, he finds a home.

That said, when not dealing with the kids of the movie, this film feels strange. It wants to do adult things, but all of it is through the filter of this being a movie for kids, and thus, only makes sense using kid logic. Of course, the villain is looking for power because his father always told him how terrible he was as a child and the Wizard told him that he wasn’t worthy. Why wouldn’t he spend the intervening thirty some odd years obsessing over it? It makes complete sense, for a child telling the story, that a young mother would decide, after losing track of her son, that he’d be better off in the system. None that that works, if this was a movie for and about adults, but as it is, in my opinion anyway, for kids or teens, sure, why not?

I think the best part of the film is how it exists in a setting in which both the characters of the other DC Comics films exist and their exploits happened, but also where there are comic books and perhaps even movies. Billy’s eventual best friend and foster brother Freddy Freeman is a super fan of comic books and heroes, and a third of the film is spent with them trying to figure out the powers of Shazam, as the Wizard didn’t include an instruction manual with his magic. The comedy montage of the pair of them filming their power tests for their YouTube channel is just pure fun and provides lasting levity that makes some of the darker bits easier to swallow.

I didn’t go into seeing the movie with the most favorable of views. I wasn’t certain that the trailers were selling me something I would have gone to see of my own volition if I wasn’t going to review it, but in all honesty, it changed my mind. I had fun, I laughed, even with the weakness of the narrative. I realized that I was not the target demographic for this film, and the earnestness of it made me okay with that.

If you aren’t too nonplussed by young teen boys swearing and are looking for a comic book movie that was made with children of that age in mind, Shazam! might be the movie to take them to this weekend.

Shazam! is open wide in theatres now.

David Castro is a Puerto Rican writer from New York City. He has worked on the upcoming Undead supplement for Chill Third Edition and is working on launching a Patreon. You can find him on Twitter (@theinkedknight), on Tumblr (thedevilsyouknew), on Facebook (facebook.com/inkstainedstudios), and at davidrcastro.com.

Released on April 5th, this most recent adaptation of the Stephen King novel opened in second place at the box office, making approximately twenty-five million dollars domestically, clearing it’s twenty-one million dollar budget. While a commercial success to be sure, does the film succeed to be an adaptation of the novel that King himself has said is the book that scares him to most? I don’t think it does, especially when one considers that there is already an adaption of this film, albeit thirty years old now, that does successfully put the nihilist novel on the screen.

Starring Jason Clarke (Mudbound, Zero Dark Thirty), Amy Seimetz (Get Shorty, Stranger Things), and John Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun, Interstellar), the film tells the tale that horror fans know well, a family moves to home in Maine, and on that property is a local landmark, a pet cemetery, spelled “sematary” on the handmade sign. Beyond that, however, and still on the land they bought is another place, where if the dead are buried in that accursed soil, they are returned to life, but wrong, violent and cruel.

It’s hard to not spoil a movie based on a nearly forty-year-old book that already has an adaptation that is three decades old and a sequel of its own, but this version does twist things up, some for the better. The film itself feels streamlined, they cut characters, switched up which things happen to which characters, but for all of that, there is still a lot of fat on this movie, and as it is only a hundred minutes in length, there’s not all that much room for the chaff.

It spends nearly three-quarters of it’s run time setting up the strange and otherness of the house, Seimetz’s character’s trauma with death, and the history of the place, though with only vague mentions of the ancient Native American burial ground and its curse, a welcome change. Their cat, Church, dies at what could be described as the end of the first act if I believed that this movie followed a three act structure, but it really doesn’t. Their daughter, in this version, dies with about twenty minutes left, and the third act barely has any denouement to speak of.

I did find the ending, which is different from the novel, interesting and makes me think about the implications of it in a different way than the novel did, and in that, I think the movie makes a better choice than the book, but I don’t have much else good to say about the film.

It makes choices I would not have, from building the tension in the movie almost entirely off of jump scares, and a half of them from things that don’t matter. Furthermore, there are so many strings that don’t become part of the final knot of the plot. The masked kids that appear in the trailer don’t mean anything, nor does any part of the faint traces of the burial ground origin. Once the child is dead and resurrected, we spend no time with her. The cat was around for longer. If we spent more time exploring how corrupted whatever dark power behind the cemetery, I think that would have been a better use of the film’s time.

All things considered, for those who only know the premise of Pet Sematary through cultural osmosis or are just horror movie fans, this one may be fun. Stephen King fans may or may not enjoy the things that had been changed, and may question why does this movie exist when is already been adapted, and well to boot. I can’t answer those thoughts, but I’m not sure that Pet Sematary is worth a watch.

Pet Sematary is open wide in theaters.

David Castro is a Puerto Rican writer from New York City. He has worked on the upcoming Undead supplement for Chill Third Edition and is working on launching a Patreon. You can find him on Twitter (@theinkedknight), on Tumblr (thedevilsyouknew), on Facebook (facebook.com/inkstainedstudios), and at davidrcastro.com.

Four of Michael Anderle’s most loved characters return in audio this week with two new releases.

Sit Down Shut Up And Pull The Trigger

First up, is Emily Beresford performing book four of the Protected By The Damned Series, Sit Down Shut Up And Pull The Trigger, and yes, the lack of punctuation in the title is intentional.

Sometimes, you have to let the top down and your hair fly free.

Especially when you spent so much time, money and effort to buy a fake ID.

T’Chezz is working on an attack, but the team doesn’t know about it.

After the successful fight in Los Angeles, Katie and Pandora are letting their hair down, arguing over donuts and how much Italian food to eat.

Then, their investigator contact calls with alarming intel, and Katie is asked to get up close and personal with the politician to find out what he knows.

The answer is something no one expected and will change the course of Korbin’s Killers forever.

Grab your copy at Audible in the US here:  Audible US

Grab a copy at Audible in the UK here:  Audible UK

Or you can grab a copy through Amazon or iTunes.

Rampage

And Ranger Tabitha and Nickie return with book two of the Deuces Wild series from Michael and Ell Leigh Clarke, Rampage, performed by Kate Rudd.

Grab your copy at Audible in the US here:  Audible US

Grab a copy at Audible in the UK here:  Audible UK

Or you can grab a copy through Amazon or iTunes.

You can also purchase this and other audiobooks in the Deuces Wild series directly from the LMBPN audio store, here.