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Warning: This post contains spoilers for Smile

With a tagline like, “Once you see it, it’s too late,” it’s perhaps not shocking to hear that Smile doesn’t have a happy ending—but the film’s writer and director Parker Finn hopes it’s a poignant one.

The horror movie, in theaters now, follows clinical psychologist Dr. Rose Cotter (played by Sosie Bacon) as she tries to escape a smirking evil entity that is out to kill her. The horrifying presence attaches itself to Rose after she sees Laura (Caitlin Stasey), a patient with no history of mental illness, take her own life. Laura, who, just days earlier, was witness to a gruesome suicide, hurts herself while creepily grinning from ear to ear, making it all the more unsettling.
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Rose soon begins to see Laura everywhere she goes, wearing that same teeth-baring smile that the college student had said was haunting her in the moments right before her death. Eventually, the grinning demon begins to take on the form of other people Rose knows including her therapist, in one of the more off putting scenes in the film. Those closest to Rose believe she’s lost her mind and that her hallucinations are a symptom of some undiagnosed mental illness. (Rose’s mom, we learn, took her own life when she was just a kid, and she has not yet processed it fully.) But Rose knows there is an explanation for what’s happening to her, even if it sounds a little far fetched.

What happens in Smile?

Desperate to figure things out, Rose seeks out her ex-boyfriend, police officer Joel (Kyle Gallner), who is the only one willing to really listen to her. With his help, she discovers that the phantom stalking her feeds off of a person’s trauma. Before attaching itself to Rose, the demon affixed itself to 20 other people. Nineteen of those people took their own life within four to seven days after witnessing someone else die by suicide. In hopes of learning how she can save herself, she visits Robert Talley (Rob Morgan), the only person who has managed to stay alive after encountering the grinning demon. His secret? He killed his neighbor in order to stop the chain and is now serving a life sentence. Robert saved himself from certain death, but he didn’t stop the demon. He just passed the buck to some other innocent person who then in turn passed it on to someone else with no real hope of it ever stopping.

Committing murder isn’t a viable solution for Rose. It’s merely a Band-Aid for a much deeper wound. She wants to stop this specter in its tracks without hurting someone else in the process. Realizing that this evil needs a witness to continue its path of deadly destruction, Rose concludes that if she dies and no one is around to see it—and become traumatized—she could, in theory, permanently end this killing spree.

Read More: How Smile Pays Tribute to Horror Classics Like The Ring and Rosemary’s Baby

Five days after witnessing Laura’s death, Rose heads to her childhood home, a decrepit cabin in the woods where her mom died by suicide. The movie often flashes on the horrific scene of Rose opening the door to her mother’s bedroom to find her lifeless body. She has not forgiven herself for the events of that day. Instead of dealing with the trauma, she’s gotten good at numbing the pain with nonstop work or white wine.

It might be why, on the first night at the cabin, the demon comes to her in the form of her mother. She apologizes to Rose for what she had done to herself, but also asks, “Why did you let me die?” In the film’s final act, it’s revealed that Rose’s mom had asked for help in the final moments of her life, pleading with Rose to call the police because “mommy made a mistake.” Rose admits that she didn’t take action because she was scared of her mom, who had a history of hurting herself.

Rose is able to find a bit of closure in this conversation that allows her to come clean to this version of her mom. Opening up gives Rose the strength to take down this terrifying chameleonic presence that has been feeding off her trauma. She burns the demon and the cabin to the ground, but not before the evil thing reveals that these hallucinations are all a product of her own mind. “This is not real,” it tells her. “Your mind makes it real.” And unfortunately, we can’t escape our mind.

How does Smile end?

Those words soon come back to haunt Rose, who, after killing the demon, heads to Joel’s apartment where she comes clean to him, apologizing for putting up barriers. It’s a sweet moment, the first time we’ve seen Rose be vulnerable with someone else. More importantly, she’s finally being honest with herself about the burden she’s been carrying around since her mom’s death. It feels like a real breakthrough for Rose, who might finally be on the long road to recovery. But when the camera flashes back to Joel a creepy smile appears on his face.

Rose didn’t slay the demon—she only thought that she did. She’s still at the cabin, but she’s not alone. Joel has shown up there in hopes of saving her from herself. She knows that if she doesn’t do something quick Joel will be the demon’s next victim. When she goes back inside the house she immediately finds herself face-to-face with the demon now the size of a giant. This time, it takes hold of her, ripping off its face to reveal a Russian nesting doll of mouths that manage to swallow her up whole.

Moments later, when Joel enters the cabin, he finds Rose standing with her back to him. As she slowly turns towards the camera, she’s wearing a maniacal grin while holding a gas can above her head. She pours it on herself and lights a match. After spending our time seeing things from Rose’s perspective, often in uncomfortably closeup shots, we see her final moments through Joel’s eyes, who can’t look away despite his horror. The curse has now been passed on to him.

Read more: 21 Underrated Horror Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen and Can Stream Right Now

Smile director Parker Finn knows that some will be upset by the “bummer” ending, but hopes it will offer the audience an “emotional catharsis,” he says. “It’s scary to be a person walking around in the world and I wanted the ending to reflect that in a way that felt earned.”

For most of the movie, Rose is left to face this demon on her own, but it’s clear she’s been forced to deal with her demons all by herself for years. The stigma that can come with mental illness has taught Rose to smile through her grief so as not to make others uncomfortable. But it’s just a mask that hides the reality of the depths of her pain. In the end, Rose might have been able to fool everybody else, but she can’t trick her mind into believing she’s fully dealt with the effects of her prior trauma.

Finn leaves the question of whether or not Rose is being haunted by an actual supernatural being or if it’s just her own ghosts returning up to the viewer. For him, the movie is more of a “meditation” on trauma and its rippling effects rather than a definitive commentary on such a complicated subject. He just wanted Rose’s journey to feel honest, even if it’s painful to watch.

“It’d be too easy to be like, ‘I confronted it and now everything is fine and happy.’ I don’t think that’s reflective of real life,” he says of the film’s final fake out. “I think those kinds of things are pernicious. They linger, they don’t let go. They creep back, whether we want them to or not.”

A Disney+ sequel to the classic Halloween movie is magical. Plus, check out a new Marilyn Monroe biopic, "Blonde," a new stand-up comedy special from "Insecure" star Yvonne Orji and a new album from Björk -- which is all about mushrooms.

The October lineup on Netflix fits the month to a T: largely spooky, a little bit scary, tinged with suspense. On Oct. 5, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, based on the short story by Stephen King, tells the tale of an unlikely friendship between small-town kid Craig (Jaeden Martell) and the reclusive billionaire Mr. Harrington (Donald Sutherland)—and how that bond extends beyond the grave. The highly-anticipated fantasy film The School For Good and Evil, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Soman Chainani, will star Sophia Anne Caruso, Sofia Wylie, Michelle Yeoh, Kerry Washington, Charlize Theron, and more in mid-October. And Guillermo del Toro will crack open his Cabinet of Curiosities on Oct. 25, complete with two original stories by the Oscar-winning filmmaker.
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Here’s everything coming to Netflix in October 2022—and what’s leaving.

Here are the Netflix originals coming in October 2022

Available Oct. 2

Forever Queens

Available Oct. 3

Chip and Potato: Season 4

Available Oct. 4

Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester

Available Oct. 5

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

Bling Empire: Season 3

High Water

Jumping From High Places

Nailed It: Season 7

The Fight for Justice: Paolo Guerrero

The Trapped 13: How We Survived the Thai Cave

Togo

Available Oct. 6

Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake

The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo

Available Oct. 7

The Midnight Club

Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes

Luckiest Girl Alive

The Redeem Team

Derry Girls: Season 3

Doll House

Glitch

Kev Adams: The Real Me

Man on Pause

The Mole

Oddballs

Old People

Tiger & Bunny 2: Part 2

Available Oct. 10

Spirit Rangers

Available Oct. 11

The Cage

DEAW#13 Udom Taephanich Stand Up Comedy Show

Iliza Shlesinger: Hot Forever

Island of the Sea Wolves

Available Oct. 12

Belascoarán, PI

Easy-Bake Battle

The Nutty Boy

Wild Croc Territory

Available Oct. 13

Dead End: Paranormal Park: Season 2

Exception

The Playlist

Someone Borrowed

Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal

Available Oct. 14

Black Butterflies

The Curse of Bridge Hollow

Everything Calls for Salvation

Holy Family

Mismatched: Season 2

Take 1

Available Oct. 15

Under the Queen’s Umbrella

Available Oct. 17

Waffles + Mochi’s Restaurant

Available Oct. 18

Gabriel Iglesias: Stadium Fluffy Live From Los Angeles

LiSA Another Great Day

Somebody Feed Phil: Season 6

Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 3

Available Oct. 19

The Green Glove Gang

Love Is Blind: Season 3

Notre-Dame

The School For Good and Evil

The Stranger

Available Oct. 21

28 Days Haunted

Barbarians II

Descendant

From Scratch

High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule

ONI: Thunder God’s Tale

Pokémon Ultimate Journeys

Available Oct. 23

Franco Escamilla: Eavesdropping

Available Oct. 24

The Chalk Line

Available Oct. 25

Barbie Epic Road Trip

Fortune Feimster: Good Fortune

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

Available Oct. 26

Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn

The Good Nurse

Hellhole

Robbing Mussolini

Available Oct. 27

Cici

Daniel Spellbound

Dubai Bling

Earthstorm

Family Reunion: Part 5

Romantic Killer

Available Oct. 28

All Quiet on the Western Front

The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself

Big Mouth: Season 6

Drink Masters

I Am a Stalker

If Only

My Encounter With Evil

Wendell & Wild

Wild Is the Wind

Available Oct. 29

Deadwind: Season 3

Here are the TV shows and movies coming to Netflix in October 2022

Available Oct. 1

17 Again

30 Minutes or Less

60 Days In: Season 3

Any Given Sunday

Barbie: It Takes Two: Season 2

Call Me by Your Name

Charlotte’s Web (2006)

Chocolat

City Slickers

The Color Purple

Gladiator

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

I Love You, Man

Labyrinth

Land of the Lost

Last Seen Alive

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

National Lampoon’s European Vacation

National Lampoon’s Vacation

Ocean’s Eleven

Ocean’s Thirteen

Ocean’s Twelve

Point Break (1991)

Risky Business

Robin Hood

Runaway Bride

Rush Hour

Rush Hour 2

Rush Hour 3

Scooby-Doo

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

Sex and the City 2

Sex and the City: The Movie

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

Vegas Vacation

Walking Tall

Wedding Crashers

Yes Man

Available Oct. 3

Jexi

Available Oct. 9

Missing Link

Available Oct. 10

LEGO Ninjago: Season 4, “Crystallized” – Part 2

Available Oct. 13

The Sinner: Season 4: “Percy”

Available Oct. 15

Blippi’s Spooky Spell Halloween

Available Oct. 16

Dracula Untold

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

Available Oct. 22

LOL Surprise! Winter Fashion Show

Available Oct. 25

Blade of the 47 Ronin

Available Oct. 27

Hotel Transylvania 2

Here’s what’s leaving Netflix in October 2022

Leaving Oct. 2

Schitt’s Creek: Seasons 1-6

Leaving Oct. 7

Sofia the First: Seasons 1-4

Leaving Oct. 8

After

Leaving Oct. 13

Apocalypse Now Redux

Everything Must Go

Little Italy

Scary Movie 4

The Girl Next Door

Leaving Oct. 14

Bleach The Movie: Fade to Black

Bleach the Movie: Hell Verse

Leaving Oct. 15

Sinister 2

Leaving Oct. 21

Yes, God, Yes

Leaving Oct. 22

Hemlock Grove: Seasons 1-3

Leaving Oct. 26

Begin Again

Leaving Oct. 27

Metallica Through The Never

Leaving Oct. 31

8 Mile

Bridget Jones’s Diary

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Footloose

Friday

Friday After Next

Johnny Mnemonic

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath: Seasons 1-3

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Monster-in-Law

Naruto: Seasons 1-9

The Notebook

Rock of Ages

Former Disney Channel heartthrob and song-and-dance man extraordinaire Zac Efron should be a much bigger star than he is, though maybe it’s better this way: those of us who love him can be happy whenever he shows up, without having to worry about Efron overkill. In Peter Farrelly’s Greatest Beer Run Ever, Efron plays Chickie Donohue, a young Merchant Mariner from the Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood who, circa 1967, treks to Saigon and beyond to deliver cans of American beer to his neighborhood buddies fighting in the Vietnam War. The ludicrousness of the journey is the whole point: Chickie, along with his pals at home, thinks his soldier friends are fighting for a noble cause. That has sparked some friction with his anti-war-protester sister (played by Ruby Ashbourne Serkis); like plenty of people at the time, Chickie hasn’t grasped that being anti-war doesn’t necessarily mean you’re anti-soldier, and he feels the need to step up and show his support for his buddies in a big way. So the local bartender known as the Colonel (Bill Murray) loads up a duffel bag with Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Chickie signs up for a merchant ship headed for Vietnam, talking his way through war zones with guileless charm.

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It all sounds just crazy enough to be a true story, and basically, it is. There was a real-life John “Chickie” Donohue who made such a run, and four of the buddies to whom he delivered warm brewskis survived the war—reportedly, the guys still get together regularly for dinner. But just because a movie is based on a true story doesn’t mean you have to fully buy it: The Greatest Beer Run Ever, now on Apple TV+, isn’t terrible, and it’s hardly great. But the worst thing you can say about it is that it’s almost as dreamily clueless as its hapless hero is. On the one hand, Chickie is so well-intentioned that it’s hard not to feel warmly toward him. On the other, in stupidly planning one of his surprise visits, he nearly gets one of his buddies killed. You begin to think this guy is really sort of a jerk.

But then, it’s Zac Efron we’re talking about. The Greatest Beer Run might have been a total disaster with any other star, but Efron—sporting a Tom Selleck-style mustache and looking perfectly affable in his dorky plaid shirts—manages to keep the movie on track with sheer laid-back charisma. One of the movie’s recurring jokes is Chickie’s ability to slip into heavily restricted war zones because the Army higher-ups think he’s CIA. (It must be those dorky plaid shirts.) It’s a joke until it’s not—at one point he runs afoul of a real CIA agent who’s just done something nefarious, and that endangers Chickie’s life. But of course, he escapes, and manages to keep delivering those beers. His dauntless bonhomie also wins over a crusty war correspondent, Russell Crowe’s Coates. And eventually, he becomes hip to the grim reality of this particular war and its ruthlessness. “This ain’t a war no more,” he tells Coates, wide-eyed as a lemur. “It’s mass murder.” Coates replies solemnly, “That’s what war is, Chickie. It’s one giant crime scene.”

Cornpone like that abounds in The Greatest Beer Run. (The script is by Farrelly, Pete Jones, and Brian Hayes Currie.) Still, to hold this movie up as any kind of mortal sin against filmmaking is both silly and unfair. Farrelly made his name directing open-hearted, if crude, comedies with his brother, Bobby Farrelly, pictures like Dumb & Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. In 2018, he attracted a great deal of ire with Green Book, another movie based on a true story, that of a trip taken by jazz pianist and intellectual Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) with his white bodyguard Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) through the Jim Crow-era South. The movie won three Oscars—Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture and, for Ali’s performance, Best Supporting Actor—though by the time the awards were given, the film had already angered many viewers over what they saw as its racist overtones. One claim was that Farrelly had failed to consult with Shirley’s surviving relatives and had basically highjacked a Black man’s story for his own cheerful aims, with the goal of making white folks feel good about themselves.

There’s some validity to the idea that Green Book’s casual feel-goodism could be read as nostalgia for the good old days of rigid Black-and-white divisions. But that doesn’t track with Farrelly’s past work: the movies he made with his brother used crass humor to locate the best qualities in human beings. If his approach in Green Book was misguided, it’s harder to make the case that it was an act of racist calculation. The Greatest Beer Run Ever betrays a similar naivete. Farrelly’s great sin here is that he just wants to tell a nice story about a guy who did a crazy thing and learned some valuable lessons in the process. It doesn’t fully work, but it’s not a crime against humanity. And Efron carries the whole thing ably on his shoulders. His Chickie is a goofball loser at the beginning and a believably conscientious citizen by the end—the earnestness in Efron’s eyes guarantees it. “Less drinkin’, more thinkin’,” is his new ambition, as he tells his sister. It’s all totally absurd. But plenty of real-life people have done stupider things and lived to tell the tale.

TikTok has the power to make quite literally anything popular—even an obscure 2007 performance of the Miami Boys Choir singing an Orthodox pop song. The video is ripe for nostalgic virality online: prepubescent awkwardness, ill-fitting button-down shirts and slacks, and surprisingly crisp vocals. But what makes it stand out, in particular, is the cross-cultural nature of newfound fans’ obsession with the music.

The Miami Boys Choir posted their first video back in June, and since then, their page has grown in popularity. The video in question, of their 2007 performance, has spawned fan-favorite members who are becoming TikTok celebrities in their own right, as well as a hunger, from their 124,000 followers, for more content..
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The choir was founded in Miami Beach, Fla., by Yerachmiel Begun in 1977. They still perform as a group today with new members, though they are now based out of New York City. According to The Jewish Chronicle, Yerachmiel is still the director of the choir, and he composes all of the arrangements and writes the songs that the group sings. Begun’s son, Chananya, told NBC News that he started the TikTok account. “I told him: ‘Dad, we have to get on TikTok … There’s a chance, nobody knows for sure, but there’s a chance something crazy could happen.” He uploaded the performance from 2007 and within a month, it had garnered more than eight million views.

@miamiboyschoir

🗣🗣🗣🗣 after 40+ years of performance excellence, here were 4 soloists who helped usher in big changes for the Miami Boys Choir – the beginning of the Gen-Z generation of MBC’s worldwide fans and followers (2008-2012) #vocals #solo #performance #israel #ישראל #מוסיקה #music #jewish

♬ original sound – Yerachmiel Begun and MBC

The video features four soloists—brothers Binyamin and Akiva Abramowitz, Yoshi Bender, and David Herskowitz—singing “Yerushalayim” (which translates to Jerusalem). Each of the boys takes turns singing a verse from the upbeat, Orthodox song in Hebrew with some true vocal talent. Recently, TikTok users became drawn to the buoyant nature of the song and how well the boys were singing it—even if they don’t know the lyrics’ meaning. “I’ve never heard of the Miami boys choir and I have no idea what they are saying but I think I’m in love with this video,” one TikTok user commented. Someone else joked that the song gave new meaning to the term Kpop: “Kosher Pop.”

@gordacorajuda

#duet with @miamiboyschoir they are all of my FYP. #miamiboyschoir #mbc #vocals

♬ original sound – Yerachmiel Begun and MBC

Good pop music is inherently addictive, and the appeal of the choir seems to lie in just how catchy the songs are even to viewers who lack a linguistic or cultural understanding of them. Binyamin, who joined when he was 9 and left at around age 14, is now in his residency to be a gastroenterologist in New York. “We never got recognition like this before. It’s fascinating,” he told NBC News, which tracked down the singers after the video went viral. “The fact that everyone in the world is loving this even though they don’t understand the language … I’m trying to wrap my head around it.” Akiva is studying to be a lawyer and still sings with an a capella group called the YStuds, The Jewish Chronicle reports. “I’m still taken aback by the fact that people are being exposed to this and really enjoying it, because our audience whenever when we performed were always Orthodox Jews,” he tells The Jewish Chronicle.

Hershkowitz, like Binyamin, was also in the choir for five years. Since the video started to go viral, he made his own TikTok account and comically duetted the video. His duet has over six million views, and people have continued to request that he sing some of their new favorite Hebrew songs.

@davidhersko

#duet with @miamiboyschoir #vocals that outfit though… #mbc #miamiboyschoir #jewish #jewishtiktok

♬ original sound – Yerachmiel Begun and MBC

Though Bender has not made an appearance, there are demands for all four boys (now men) to reunite and sing together once again. Both of the Abramowitz brothers are open to the possibility of a reunion but played it coy when asked about it by the Jewish Chronicle. “I can’t answer that question. There’s so much interest flying around right now, which is incredible in itself,” he said.

Imagine the year is 1935. It’s a dark and stormy night in the midst of the Great Depression, the Hays Code banning motion picture portrayals of “sexual persuasion and immorality” is newly in effect, and you’re watching the Bride of Frankenstein spurn the man she was literally made for on the silver screen.

Maybe the scene—or the entire subtext-rich story—comes across like a wink from director James Whale, himself openly gay in a time and culture that meant his sexuality endangered both his livelihood and his life. Maybe you go still at the sudden, strange tension in your heart, the words for how you feel not yet known to you. Or maybe you’re holding hands with a partner of the state-sanctioned gender, oblivious to the queerness of Bride’s choice to reject the preordained future foisted upon her, and construct the meaning of her own monstrous femininity for herself.
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No matter how you might react, you’re watching an example of vintage queer horror—a story whose uncanny inversion of the gender and sexuality norms of its time struck a note that was inaudible to some, but rang clear for those who also found themselves outside those norms. From the start, the way horror can be a funhouse mirror reflection of the cultural anxieties and preoccupation with what it means to be a monster have made it an ideal venue for stories that resonate with the marginalized. And since the fateful days of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, it has been built on integral contributions from queer creators.

Queer for Fear, a four-part documentary series out now from the horror streaming service Shudder, explores the evolution of horror through a queer lens, in an expansive work from executive producers and horror veterans Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) and Steak House (By Hook or by Crook, Disney Launchpad).

Constructing community through horror with Queer for Fear

Conceived as a follow-up to Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror features interviews with actors, writers, directors, producers, and creators who are icons of horror and suspense, including Boys Don’t Cry and Carrie (2013) director Kimberly Peirce; Scream writer Kevin Williamson; Dear White People and Bad Hair writer Justin Simien; In the Dream House writer Carmen Maria Machado; and Yellowjackets director Karyn Kusama and cast members Jasmin Savoy Brown, Tawny Cypress, and Liv Hewson.

The vibe is part horror history curriculum and part old-fashioned salon, very much by design. “It’s like if you said, ‘Let’s go to the Algonquin and hang out with the savvy horror art queers,’” Fuller tells TIME.

With such a large and enthusiastic group, a community quickly built itself around the project, House says. “We wanted to interview a broad spectrum of people, because we were looking at a lot of movies from the past that white men made, and we wanted to make sure to be looking at it in a different lens today.” For instance, as the show’s third episode discusses films featuring “dangerous women” in all their gender-transgressing glory, the interviewees reflect on how these scenes and their impact are shaped by having been created entirely by men.

Read more: 21 Underrated Horror Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen and Can Stream Right Now

While the producers approached filming with an outline, the personal stories and connections of both Queer for Fear’s historical subjects and its interviewees are what brought the series to life. Says House, “We discovered we were going to push boundaries further and further with each new person we talked to.”

In one moving moment in episode two, Gretel & Hansel writer and son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, Oz Perkins, describes the emotional shockwaves sent through his family as his father’s career was both defined and derailed by the franchise: “Psycho was too good and therefore no good.” According to Perkins, Norman Bates’ notoriety turned the truth of his father’s sexuality into a crushing secret, putting immense pressure on a loving, if complicated, home life. Fuller says Perkins was initially only meant to have a couple lines in the series. But when the depth of his story became clear, Fuller insisted the production take the time to capture it. “It was about slowing down the history lesson and allowing the audience to absorb some of the personal aspects.”

For some, Queer for Fear was an opportunity to discover with delight just how many people shared their passion for horror. For others, like Yellowjackets star Jasmin Savoy Brown, and series consultant and Attack of the Queerwolf podcast host Nay Bever, it was a chance to deepen and strengthen the conversation, recruiting others to join the salon and, by extension, the community. For all involved, to participate in the show was to join a conversation spanning everything from the very first time they felt seen onscreen to the sexual proclivities of Rebecca’s Mrs. Danvers—discussions they might previously have thought was only their own internal monologue.

House says the timing of Queer for Fear, as LGBTQ+ people face increasing cultural and legislative attacks, is especially important. “Our rights are being challenged again. I hope it pushes buttons, pushes boundaries, and gets people talking. I hope this show is out there for people who don’t have a community.”

How queer representation, in horror and elsewhere, has evolved

As Justin Simiens says in Queer for Fear, “The evolution of queer horror really parallels the evolution of queer liberation.” As queer people have gained a louder voice in public conversation, there has been an increase in explicit television and film LGBTQ+ representation. Projects exploring queer themes are not only being greenlit, but actively solicited—just look at this very series.

And yet, as House points out, “Some things are better. Nothing’s 100% better.”

Queer creators and actors are still discriminated against by studios that have already hit what they consider to be their quota of LGBTQ+ stories, reducing a boundless diversity of experiences to a single category on a streamer’s dropdown menu. Black and brown, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming creators face these same hurdles, further exacerbated by racism and transphobia. The films that do get made then face high expectations from audiences and studios to open the hearts and wallets of an entire community.

Mix challenges like these with a genre as maligned as horror, and you may be fated to blunt its bite, at least sometimes. You could end up with a romp like A24’s scary-silly neon spectacle Bodies Bodies Bodies. Or you could also get a film like Peacock’s queer slasher They/Them, so lost in its own toothlessly self-serious approach to its subject matter that it forgets to bring the fear. It’s no wonder storytelling can sometimes seem left by the wayside.

Read More: How Smile Pays Tribute to Horror Classics Like The Ring and Rosemary’s Baby

The queer horror examined in the series, which includes titles spanning from the gothic literature of the 1800s to the camp vampires of the 1980s, was almost never explicit, owing to the cultural and legal constraints that kept queer characcters from being blatantly identified as such. In those films, their queerness became a puzzle to be solved—and for decades, that puzzle was largely the only template available. Audiences looking to see themselves reflected developed a keen eye for decoding. Newer “queer horror” that explicitly labels its characters and plots often offers a vastly different viewing experience.

Fuller, for one, says he’s always been excited by the “decoder ring” experience of “drawing the queer metaphor. Of course,” he adds, “it may be generational because that’s always been my experience.”

“I find it so satisfying, like a delicious meal, that when I see modern queer characters being explicit, it’s not as exciting because it’s so one-to-one. [We might] have two queer characters, but they’re just as dumb as everybody else and die just as horribly. That’s the price we pay,” he says.

At the same time, research and lived experience consistently demonstrate that meaningful representation is absolutely vital. Fuller, House, and Queer for Fear’s interviewees across the board were eager to celebrate the immense and essential progress that’s been made in opportunities for queer creators to tell their stories. Discussing the exciting queer horror especially present today in shows like Yellowjackets, House says, “A huge difference now is we’re starting to get people telling stories [in which] they’re not explaining [queerness]. It’s just happening. I think that’s the evolution.”

It’s when the only substance to a character is a two-dimensional rainbow nametag, that representation falls flat. As Queer for Fear makes clear, queer stories are exciting in large part because of the opportunity to relate to the dynamics and feelings they portray, whether they’re sweet, scary, electrifying, agonizing or all of the above.

Read More: The 52 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2022

The future of queer horror

Queer creators today find themselves tasked with both educating and entertaining. Optimistically, an adjustment period is more than understandable. So what does the ideal future of queer horror hold?

“I hope we get to make movies with queer people in them, not discussing why we’re queer, or how did we become queer, or coming out. I hope we have stories about us as people.” House says. “That would be my dream for the filmmaking community.”

In response to those who say with derision that horror was better before it “got woke,” Fuller and House can only laugh. As House points out, “There’s always been a queer mafia in Hollywood.” People who think horror just recently became a refuge for the marginalized should, as Fuller suggests, “maybe try watching Queer for Fear. We have a lot of material—enough for two more seasons.”

And although the series covers a staggering amount of historical material, the personal is what gives it its tell-tale heart. In a community of chosen family, Queer for Fear is like a scrapbook of sorts, tracing throughlines and documenting generations of a genre in which countless queer people have found a home.

Parker Finn is a self-proclaimed “video store kid” who spent most of his time in the horror section. “What I’m always fascinated by is when a horror film can show me something that I didn’t know I was afraid of,” the writer and director of Smile tells TIME ahead of the Sept. 30 release of his debut film. As a kid, it was the “cursed chain films” such as 2002’s The Ring that introduced him to horrors that he could never imagine. But it wasn’t The Ring’s supernatural villain Samara, a stringy haired ghost girl whose vengeful spirit lives on through a cursed videotape, that scared him most. It was watching Naomi Watts’ protagonist slowly lose her mind—and her humanity—over a sinister video tape. “In my opinion, the very best horror films work as human dramas first,” he says. “I need to be invested in a character’s plight to really be scared.”
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With his first full-length feature, which is inspired by his 2020 short film Laura Hasn’t Slept, Finn made a love letter to The Ring that taps into his own anxieties and fears. His onscreen proxy is clinical psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter (played by Sosie Bacon), who witnesses a young patient (the delightfully creepy Caitlin Stasey) gruesomely take her own life, and becomes the latest victim of a malevolent spirit with an unnerving Cheshire cat grin.

Finn began writing the film in the early days of the pandemic when he was afraid of the “indescribable thing that could be coming for me,” he says. “You know, the fear of strangers, the fear of loved ones, of transmission.” He wanted the “pass it on” horror movie to feel like an “escalating nightmare” that explores the rippling effects of trauma. The kind of pain that can’t be covered up with a smile. “I really wanted to make a movie that feels like you’re experiencing a character’s mind turning against them,” he says. Like The Ring, he also wanted it to feel like “a very strange urban legend that feels so familiar it’s like you’ve always known it on this weird existential level.”

Finn helps viewers understand Rose’s fraught mental state by using extreme close-ups that make it feel as if the walls are closing in on her as she tries to put a stop to this demonic killer. To achieve that claustrophobic feel, he looked to some of his favorite psychological thrillers for inspiration: the 1997 oppressive Japanese horror film Cure, Todd Haynes’ 1995 anxiety-inducing indie Safe, and 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby. Mia Farrow’s titular character “is constantly being gaslit and told that she’s hysterical. That she’s wrong about what she’s feeling” he says. “That was really something that affected me.” In his film, Rose’s family and co-workers are quick to ignore her fears. Instead they blame an undiagnosed mental illness for what is happening to her. (In the film, it’s revealed that Rose’s mom also struggled with mental illness.)

Smile lets the audience decide whether Rose is being haunted by a supernatural being or just the ghosts of her traumatic past. But, in some ways, it doesn’t matter; these smiling demons feel all too real to Rose. (They may also feel real to viewers since these smirking weirdos have been popping up in subway stations and at baseball games in the lead up to Smile’s release.) The smiles like a majority of the film’s effects were done practically. Not using CGI to achieve these jarringly toothy grins “lends itself to this sense of uncanny valley,” Finn says. It’s only once you realize that these exaggerated smiles are entirely human that they become all the more horrifying. (Finn admits that out of all the smiles that appear in the movie it’s Stasey’s sinister smirk, which is featured on the film’s poster, that creeps him out the most.)

Smile looks at the consequences of smiling through the pain. “Sometimes it can feel like everything’s ok. That the pain has been put to bed,” he says. “But often it creeps back, whether we want it to or not.” But the film is not intended to be a definitive commentary on grief, anxiety or trauma. Instead he hopes the audience will see a bit of themselves in Rose’s plight and therefore feel compelled to follow her down the rabbithole. “This character ends up going to these really kind of bonkers places,” he admits. “In order for that to have weight and gravity, you have to care about her. Those are the kinds of films that you end up thinking about for a long time.”

October’s almost here, and with it comes the changing of the leaves, the pumpkin spice-ing of the lattes, and the return of the quintessential Halloween classic: Hocus Pocus. This year, in fact, there’s even a sequel.

Hocus Pocus 2—starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy in reprisals of their original roles, and now, Whitney Peak, Lilia Buckingham, and Belissa Escobedo—picks up three decades after the events of the first film with even more magic—and slightly better CGI.

What Hocus Pocus is about

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The original Hocus Pocus, released on July 16, 1993, follows two stories: that of the Sanderson sisters, a coven of witches hanged in 1693 Salem, Mass., and that of the Dennison siblings, who moved from Los Angeles to Salem three hundred years later.

The two storylines converge under the full moon on Halloween, when Max Dennison (Omri Katz) lights a cursed candle inside the witches’ old cottage in an attempt to impress his crush, Allison Watts (Vinessa Shaw). Max, of course, accidentally resurrects the witches, who must drain the lifeforce of a child before dawn or risk turning to dust. Their sights are set, conveniently, on Max’s younger sister, Dani Dennison (Thora Birch).

Magic and mayhem ensue, as the Dennison siblings are aided by a zombie with a penchant for losing his head (Doug Jones) and a talking black cat named Binx.

Binx was named after Inks, an actual black cat from the childhood of David Kirschner, producer and co-writer of the film. The plot itself arose from a bedtime story that Kirschner told his two young daughters in the 1980s.

In 1984, Kirschner pitched the idea to Walt Disney Studios, pouring candy corn on the table, hanging broomsticks from the ceiling, and putting up hand-drawn pictures of black cats. A dozen writers worked on the script in the years that followed.

Read More: The 52 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2022

How Hocus Pocus was received

Hocus Pocus was no instant success—due in part, perhaps, to its mid-July theatrical release. (There was talk that Disney didn’t want the film to compete with its other Halloween movie that year, The Nightmare Before Christmas, which came out in mid-October.)

The now-favorite was, by all accounts, a box office flop. With a budget of $28 million, Hocus Pocus brought in about $45 million globally, and was panned across the board by critics at the time.

“Apparently too much eye of newt got into the formula for ‘Hocus Pocus,’ transforming a potentially wicked Bette Midler vehicle into an unholy mess,” wrote the New York Times. “It changes tone as casually as the actors don their masquerade costumes, and has no scruples about breaking its own mood altogether.”

Over the years, Disney Channel and Freeform (formerly ABC Family) integrated the movie into their Halloween lineups, and it gradually climbed up the ratings. After Hocus Pocus was released on DVD in 2002, DVD sales crept up too. Since 2011, the movie has made more than $1 million in DVD sales every October alone.

Slowly but surely, Hocus Pocus became a seasonal staple, especially for those nostalgic millennials who caught it on Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween. “When it came out, it laid a tiny little bit of an egg, so we didn’t expect much,” wrote Bette Midler on Reddit. “And now look at it! OCTOBER is HOCUS POCUS MONTH!”

How the sequel came about

Around 2008 or so, over a decade following its release, the original film began to accrue cult status, Vinessa Shaw (who played Allison Watts) told The Wrap. About six years later, rumors began to swirl of a potential sequel in the works, though nothing came to fruition immediately.

When producer and co-writer Kirschner first pitched the sequel to Disney, it took six months of waiting before the studio even passed on the project—so they brought it to Freeform instead. Eventually, Disney+ took over the film.

In October 2019, it became official: Hocus Pocus 2 was happening, and Jen D’Angelo would be writing the script. (Kirschner stayed on as a writer and producer.) At the time, D’Angelo was assigned the job of finding a way to bring back the original witches—Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy—who now reappear in the sequel alongside Doug Jones as the affable zombie Billy Butcherson.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies Under 2 Hours

How the new movie compares to the original

Hocus Pocus 2 serves as both a prequel and a sequel, opening in 1653 Salem on the origin story of the Sanderson sisters. Viewers learn that the siblings, ostracized by the village, seek refuge in the nearby woods, where they’re taken under the wing of the powerful Mother Witch (Hannah Waddingham).

Flash forward 330 years and we meet a group of friends—Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo), and Cassie (Lilia Buckingham)—splintered by high school politics. On her 16th birthday, Becca accidentally summons the Sanderson sisters again with yet another cursed candle.

Winnie (Bette Midler), Mary (Kathy Najimy), and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) are back and campier than ever, in stark contrast to the more dramatic acting by Peak, Escobedo, and Buckingham. But somehow, the same Hocus Pocus magic works: the movie leans into larger than life qualities while still maintaining the spirit of a Halloween classic.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt can't quit teasing each other.

Billy Eichner’s character in Nicholas Stoller’s fizzy romantic comedy Bros is what you’d call, in relationship parlance, a handful. Bobby Leiber is a high-strung smart-aleck who, at 40, has never been in love—he admits as much on his podcast, where he covers gay history for an audience of young people who weren’t even tadpoles when the AIDS crisis erupted. Bobby also has a great job, as part of a team charged with designing and opening a new museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ history in New York. He’s serious about his work, and overly serious about everything else. He’s quick with a cutdown wisecrack, and his face is set in a perpetual limburger scowl. That’s his everyday expression, at work or when he’s hooking up with guys he’s met on Grindr. And it’s the look he’s wearing when, at a party, he meets the insanely adorable Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who seems at least mildly intrigued by Bobby’s scrawny, nerdy demeanor.

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That’s the setup for Bros, which was cowritten by Eichner and Stoller, and you’ll notice that even though the film is being billed as a gay romantic comedy, the mechanics aren’t much different from the rom-coms we’re already used to. Eichner is the first openly gay man to write and star in his own big-studio comedy. (The film is being released by Universal.) And admittedly, there are certain erotic setups you don’t see every day in straight romantic comedies: Bobby and Aaron’s first date ends with Bobby joining Aaron, reluctantly, as the fourth in a three-way hookup Aaron had tentatively planned for that evening, an awkward setup that Eichner plays for laughs.

Read more: Billy Eichner Has Been Waiting His Whole Life for This Moment

But what’s wonderful about Bros is how un-different it is. The bewilderment of early love, the insecurities, the confusion over what sex “means,” or doesn’t—all of that is universal, which is exactly the point. First Bobby and Aaron flirt a little, awkwardly. Eventually they go on a date, though neither of them wants to call it that. They don’t sleep together right away—that would be too intimate. (This is where the threesome-turned-awkward-foursome comes in.) Instead, in the days following, Bobby and Aaron play cat-and-mouse via text messaging. It takes forever for them to get into bed, just the two of them, and even then, Bobby nearly sabotages the relationship with his own pepper spray of neuroses, chief among them his insistence that a sizzling hottie like Aaron could never be attracted to a guy like him. Meanwhile, it’s completely clear that Aaron thinks Bobby—supersmart, pale and gangly, fast with a hilarious putdown—is awesome.

Aaron is the sweet one, with calendar-fireman good looks, and Macfarlane vests him with layers of affable charm, though he has his insecurities too. Aaron works in probate law, and it’s not making him happy. (His workplace angst does set the stage for a great gag: he instructs a client, unsure about where to bequeath his money, to close his eyes and “think about the person who means the most to you.” The man gives it a few seconds, and, blinking awake, says, “Cher.”) There’s also some awkwardness with Aaron’s family: they know he’s gay, but still, when they meet Bobby for the first time, Aaron begs him to “tone it down.” The screening audience I saw the film with gasped at that one: They, and I, wanted to tell Bobby to run—but Aaron, kind but confused, and ever-so-cute, would be hard for anyone to run away from.

As with the best romantic comedies, there are serious underpinnings here. In a new relationship, we’re always asking, “Who am I? Whom do I want to be? Am I trying to change myself to fit what I think is this new person’s ideal?” To watch Bobby run through those questions for himself is amusing, but it’s also a little heartrending. Eichner is famous for his long-running comedy series Billy on the Street, which began as a Funny Or Die experiment and eventually landed on Netflix. Eichner would race up and down the streets of New York—often accompanied by a guest like Paul Rudd or Chris Evans—and accost random strangers with trivia questions or other off-the-cuff queries. (In one episode, he dashes up to a bewildered pedestrian and shoves a petition under his nose, “to remove Kevin Spacey from homosexuality and add Chris Evans.”) Eichner’s style is mildly assaultive and still, at its heart, good-natured. He’s also hilarious, because even though it may seem that his crabbiness is directed at his unsuspecting marks, his impatience with humanity is really a kind of self-criticism. Overcaffeinated overthinkers are always their own worst enemies, and he’s in on that joke.

Read more: 20 of the Sweetest, Funniest, and Most Outrageous Meet-Cutes in Rom-Com History

With Bros, Eichner spins that persona into something more complex, and just as funny. He thinks fast and he moves fast, and as a director, Stoller—whose credits as a director include Neighbors and Forgetting Sarah Marshall—has no trouble keeping up. In one early scene, as Bobby and Aaron are just getting to know one another and strolling through New York, a bee invades Bobby’s personal space. It lands on his shirt; he freaks out. But Aaron calmly removes the precious little pollinating interloper and sets it free. Bobby is in awe, yet not at a loss for words: “You’re like a grown-up gay Boy Scout and I’m like whatever happens to Evan Hansen.” He’s sure of his smarts, but unsure about everything else. That uncertainty about “everything else” is the motor of classic romantic comedy, a tradition that Bros steps into easily. Love, like bees, can sting. But without it, we’re doomed.

Cashy C's, a rap musical about life on the breadline, is being performed in a recreated pawnbrokers.

The presenter says the BBC could have handled her exit better when it decided to shake up the show.

Lately, the female singing trio Brownstone has been all about the "re."

The deal is one of the biggest in music history, approaching the sum paid for Bob Dylan's music.

Class is back in session once again.

Many of this month’s best new books border on the surreal or otherworldly, transporting readers to settings slightly removed from our everyday realities. In Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, Louise Glück narrates the inner lives of two infant twins, who, it turns out, have much the same grasp on the world that adults do. Lydia Millet’s Dinosaurs dips a toe into the uncanny territory between community and self. Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses (translated by Megan McDowell) dabbles in the eerie and the absent. And George Saunders’s Liberation Day explores the haunting nature of a dream derailed. Here, the best new books to read this October.
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Catching the Light, Joy Harjo (Oct. 4)

Joy Harjo has enjoyed a long and storied career as a poet, from becoming the first Native American to serve as the U.S. Poet Laureate to being elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets—not to mention publishing her own nine books of poetry. Now, 50 years into her career, she has written something of a memoir—part of Yale University Press’ “Why I Write” series—about the “why” of writing poetry. In 50 vignettes, Harjo recalls the moments that shaped her own journey and how Indigenous people have been treated by history. “To write,” she asserts, “is to make a mark in the world, to assert ‘I am.’”

Buy Now: Catching the Light on Bookshop | Amazon

When They Tell You to Be Good, Prince Shakur (Oct. 4)

The magnetic debut book from the essayist and organizer Prince Shakur delves into his Black, queer identity, his family’s immigration from Jamaica to the United States, and the longlasting impacts of colonial and patriarchal violence through generations. Shakur pairs his own experience with familial homophobia with his broader recognition of social injustice in the U.S. to gradually unravel both forces. “If America could not deliver me what I deserved as a young and curious Black person,” he writes, “I deserved to try to find it where I could and not be overpowered by the kind of son or citizen I needed to be.”

Buy Now: When They Tell You to Be Good on Bookshop | Amazon

Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, Louise Glück (Oct. 11)

In her fiction debut, 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Louise Glück harnesses her background in poetry to tell the luminous tale of two infant twins who engage with the world in much the same way adults do—albeit with perhaps a bit more wonder. Marigold is quietly mentally writing a book about what their mother was like as a child. Rose is more outgoing and outspoken: her first words arrive “in loud gusts and torrents.” The slim book, though fiction, shimmers with Glück’s trademark poetic voice, weaving everyday magic into playpens and cribs.

Buy Now: Marigold and Rose: A Fiction on Bookshop | Amazon

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey (Oct. 11)

The Instagram page @thenapministry, with roughly 477,000 followers, has changed lives. Founded in 2016 by artist and theologian Tricia Hersey, the Nap Ministry is an organization that believes rest is “a form of resistance and reparations” and examines the liberating power of naps. Now Hersey is coming out with a manifesto of sorts that expands on the meaning and power of rest. Rooted in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism, Rest Is Resistance connects the dots between capitalism and white supremacy. Rest, Hersey posits, asserts humanity and pushes back against all-consuming grind culture. “All of culture is collaborating for us not to rest,” Hersey writes—and she wants to change that.

Buy Now: Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto on Bookshop | Amazon

Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet (Oct. 11)

Forty-something Gil has just moved—walked, to be specific—from New York to Arizona in the wake of a necessary but painful breakup. In Phoenix, he meets a family of four who live next door: Arlis, Ted, and their kids, Clem and Tom. The neighbors become unlikely friends as Gil bonds with Ted over manly things and keeps the high-energy Tom occupied with sports. Gradually, Gil seems to become part of the family, which raises some philosophical questions—like where the individual ends and the community begins.

Buy Now: Dinosaurs on Bookshop | Amazon

When We Were Sisters, Fatimah Asghar (Oct. 18)

With If They Come For Us, their 2018 debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar established their lyrical voice as one to contend with. Now, the artist is back with their debut novel, When We Were Sisters, which channels their poetic sensibilities into a tender tale about three siblings—Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar, from oldest to youngest—and how they care for each other in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. The siblings are taken in by their uncle and learn to rely on one another as they grow. Through Kausar’s eyes, readers experience the ebb and flow of grief alongside the tumultuous journey that is adolescence.

Buy Now: When We Were Sisters on Bookshop | Amazon

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (Oct. 18)

In this contemporary reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Barbara Kingsolver transposes a Victorian epic novel to the American South—the mountains of southern Appalachia, to be specific. When we meet him, Demon Copperhead is 11 and living in poverty with a single mother who has an opioid addiction. In this modern coming-of-age story, Demon learns to navigate the inhospitable landscape of the foster care system, landing in the home of the town’s celebrated high school football coach, where he’ll face his own opioid addiction. “Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out,” Kingsolver writes, “win or lose.”

Buy Now: Demon Copperhead on Bookshop | Amazon

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, Paul Newman (Oct. 18)

The late Paul Newman is known for quite a few accomplishments, among them his memorable roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting, 10 Oscar nominations, and one Oscar win (for best actor in The Color of Money). But he was, as his posthumous memoir illustrates, also a deeply private man. Among the intimate topics he covers in the book are his turbulent childhood, his relationship with the love of his life, Joanne Woodward, and the grief and guilt he bore after losing his son. Acting, he says in the book, “gave me a sanctuary where I was able to create emotions without being penalized for having them.”

Buy Now: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man on Bookshop | Amazon

Liberation Day, George Saunders (Oct. 18)

In 2013, for TIME100, the poet Mary Karr wrote that “for more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short-story writer in English.” Now, almost a decade later, Saunders has written the short story collection to defend his title. In the titular essay, three workers, called “Speakers,” are indentured to entertain a family in an alternate reality. In another dystopia, this one Trumpian, a grandfather writes to his grandson to warn him about the perils of a world in which “loyalists” report dissenters for infractions. In the story “Ghoul,” the narrator, Brian, who works at a Hell-themed amusement park, prays, “Though I will not live to see it, may these words play some part in bringing the old world down.”

Buy Now: Liberation Day on Bookshop | Amazon

The White Mosque, Sofia Samatar (Oct. 25)

Sofia Samatar, a professor of African and Arabic literature and a fantasy novelist, is also the daughter of Swiss Mennonite and Somali Muslim parents—religious identities that, to many, may seem diametrically opposed. Samatar breaks from her usual sci-fi and fantasy writing to offer an enthralling memoir tracing the path of Mennonite minister Claas Epp Jr. from Russia into what is now Uzbekistan in the 1880s. In the summer of 2016, Samatar retraced this journey for two weeks, ending at Ak Mechet, a Mennonite church that resembles a white mosque.

Buy Now: The White Mosque on Bookshop | Amazon

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff (Oct. 25)

Stacy Schiff has mastered the art of writing thoroughly researched, often captivating biographies, breathing new life into history. (She won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 2000 for her biography of Vera Nabokov.) For her latest act, Schiff re-introduces readers to Samuel Adams, considered to be one of the more historically overlooked of the founding fathers. And that, in fact, may have been intentional: Adams destroyed most of his personal correspondence and countless documents, preferring to move inconspicuously. This biography, at times brimming with drama, carefully sifts through the limited remaining materials available to build a hearty portrait of a founding father.

Buy Now: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams on Bookshop | Amazon

Seven Empty Houses, Samanta Schweblin, translation by Megan McDowell (Oct. 25)

Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature, Seven Empty Houses, originally written in Spanish, depicts, yes, seven empty houses. But it simultaneously seeks to capture both the absence that defines them and what exactly it is that creeps back inside. In the opening story, “None of That,” what’s missing is, perhaps, control: a mother and daughter are driving through a wealthy neighborhood, seemingly unsure of how they got there. When the pair end up inside the landowner’s house, that control is regained, in a way—the mother obsessively straightens up the landowner’s belongings. The slightly unnerving and surreal tone throughout the stories, translated by Megan McDowell, makes for an ideal October read.

Buy Now: Seven Empty Houses on Bookshop | Amazon

A mystery that’s funny, amusing, and fairly low-stakes: sounds like the perfect movie to flip on when you need a diversion, right? The sort of movie that used to play on repeat on cable, that you tuned into when you were home sick or needed a bit of cheering up after a tough day at work?

A new movie fitting that description is available to stream right now, though you’ve probably never heard of it. Confess, Fletch is the latest adaptation of the popular series of novels by Gregory Mcdonald, and it stars one of our most criminally underutilized movie stars—Jon Hamm—in the lead role of a wisecracking investigative journalist who finds himself in various sticky situations. Hamm turns in his most charming performance since “The Bubble” episode of 30 Rock, while Kyle MacLachlan channels his bizarre Twin Peaks energy in a hilarious scene in which he dances solo to EDM. The whole thing is orchestrated by Greg Mottola, the director behind comedy hits like Superbad and Adventureland.
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But Hollywood hasn’t figured out what to do with mid-budget comedies since superhero movies took over the box office. When you look at 2022 domestic box office figures, you’d have to scroll down to no. 13 (The Lost City) to find a comedy that is not also a Marvel movie (Thor: Love and Thunder, no. 7). Still, you would think, given the tremendous success of other hilarious whodunits like Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building, that Miramax would be screaming from the rooftops that Confess, Fletch is a crowdpleaser audiences should flock to. Like those other projects, it features movie stars, a cast of kooky characters, and a mystery that will keep viewers tuned in.

Yet somehow the studio mounted virtually no marketing campaign for Confess, Fletch. It was released on streaming services the same day it hit a very limited number of movie theaters. As of the publication of this story, the film is playing in exactly one cinema across all five boroughs of New York City.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies Under 2 Hours

A perfect vehicle for an underrated star

Confess, Fletch deserved far better. The movie begins with Hamm’s Fletch finding a dead body in a luxury townhouse that his Italian girlfriend is renting in Boston. The police arrive and assume that Fletch is the killer, but Fletch is nonplussed. As he explains over and over again, he used to be an “investigative journalist of some note,” and he’s confident that he’ll breezily find his way out of this mess. And besides, he has his own, separate mystery to pursue: the disappearance of his girlfriend’s father and some of his most valuable paintings, including a Picasso.

The movie ambles into the world of the Boston elite. Fletch goes undercover at a yacht club clambake and as a reporter receiving a tour from a Goop-like lifestyle guru, disguises he can pull off because he, well, looks like Jon Hamm. He gleefully helps the rich and famous make fools of themselves as he hunts for clues.

In the wrong hands, Fletch might turn smarmy. Chevy Chase starred in two Fletch films in the ’80s, and in retrospect his overconfidence and privilege haven’t aged all that well. But Hamm, who has frustratingly been confined to playing gruff cops and military men (see, most recently, Top Gun: Maverick) since his Emmy-winning turn on Mad Men, has found a perfect vehicle for his charm.

Hamm’s version is less cruel and more hapless than Chase’s. As this modern Fletch fumbles his way through a mystery, Hamm musters the movie-star charisma needed to convince the audience to go along with his dubious plans. And he often plays the straight man in comedic scenes, allowing his fellow performers to shine, like when he tries to put off his girlfriend’s stepmother (Marcia Gay Harden) and her over-the-top attempts to seduce him, or when he follows around his neighbor (Bridesmaids’ Annie Mumolo) and literally puts out fires as she creates chaos in her kitchen.

Read more:The 19 Most Underrated Movies on Netflix

A missed opportunity

In an interview with Uproxx, Mottola expressed confusion and frustration that the movie was unceremoniously dumped online, where it is available to rent on Prime, Vudu, and iTunes, until it premieres on Showtime on Oct. 28. He said that Hamm gave up 60 percent of his paycheck in order to fund extra days of shooting and finish the film. Mottola, too, gave back part of his salary because he believed in the movie.

Usually this sort of treatment is reserved for bad movies. But Confess, Fletch is not only good, it’s the exact sort of film that should be heavily promoted on streaming services—a midweek laugh that goes down easy. Miramax does not have a streaming service of its own, and it’s easy to imagine a movie like this thriving on Netflix, had a studio with built-in streaming distribution produced it. Indeed, given that Netflix cut a $400 million deal for a series of Knives Out films with director Rian Johnson, it’s surprising that streamers like Hulu and HBO Max aren’t begging for a series of these Fletch movies that could reinvent Hamm as a mainstream comedian and lure mystery lovers to their services.

In fact, for decades, Hollywood was seemingly eager to make a Fletch movie. The Chevy Chase movies were hits, and since then, producers have approached a variety of A-listers including Ben Affleck and Ryan Reynolds to reprise the role. The movie never got off the ground, in part because it was embroiled in Harvey Weinstein drama, and in part because few wanted to follow Chase’s performance. The fact that Hamm was eager to produce and star in an adaptation would seem a fortuitous turn of events.

The fate of Fletch is up in the air: Mottola says there’s talk of a sequel, though the studio’s unceremonious treatment of Confess would suggest a follow-up is unlikely. That would be a shame. There’s a reason movies like Knives Out and shows like Only Murders in the Building are huge hits. They offer audiences the coziness of a murder mystery but the levity of farce. Confess, Fletch is a delightful entry in this burgeoning mashup genre. Hollywood should be making more movies like it.

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