- With “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan Has Crafted The Best Horror Film of The Year (July 24, 2026)
Since his career began, Christopher Nolan has crafted a cinematic environment where horror elements are present. But because his films are often gargantuan and unlike anything else in the cinematic canon, these influences have often not been fully realized until the release of “Oppenheimer” (2023). As Nolan himself has become more jaded about the state of the world, he has begun to use his status as a genre auteur to finally allow these horror influences to permeate the foundations of his most recent work. Nolan’s newest film, an adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” invokes horror motifs tenfold, forcing the audience to confront how this fantastical epic may not be so different from the slowly crumbling world from which its audience is watching the film.
The adaptation begins straightforwardly, alternating between the point of view of Telemachus (Tom Holland), son of Odysseus (Matt Damon), and the missing leader himself. But once things focus on the journey home of Odysseus and his crew, all hell breaks loose.
In the first major horror setpiece, Odysseus and his men find what they believe to be solitude on an island. But once they follow sheep into a cave and try to capture some of them for food, they encounter the flock’s shepherd, the Cyclops Polyphemus. Polyphemus devours some of the soldiers and traps them. They answer this with their own violence, even poking his lone eye with a burning piece of wood. Shrouded in darkness, with only the light of fire gleaming through the cave, Polyphemus shrieks and cries in pain, sounds so garish that it seems as if the theater speakers are about to shatter. The soundscape is unrelenting, ricocheting off the walls of the Cyclops’ cave.
After their escape, the men seek refuge on Telepylos, where they face the Laestrygonian giants. Their pursuit of Odysseus and his men is backed by Ludwig Göransson’s score, which bleats out synths unlike those commonly heard in a film set in the time of the ancient Greeks. Nolan and Göransson use the film’s soundscape to shape these first two terrifying encounters to suggest to the audience that Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians aren’t simply villains, but defenders attempting to stop Odysseus and his men from invading and desecrating their way of life as they did to the people of Troy.
The cruelty that is exposed slowly throughout “The Odyssey” becomes more prevalent in its second act, when the men arrive at Aeaea, looking for provisions and shelter. Separated from his men because they believe him to be cursed, Odysseus goes hunting, while his men slink up a hill to a lone shack that resides at the top. This is the home of Circe (Samantha Morton), who feeds them stew that turns them into pigs. This transformation isn’t done offscreen. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s camera zooms into closeups, focusing on the faces of Odysseus’ men as hairs sprout from their sweaty faces, their ears slowly become pointed, and their gasps for air slowly turn into garish snarls. Circe’s hands mold the faces of these men before our eyes, her fingers peeling back their eyelids and her fists plunging down their throats.
These stomach-turning images are unlike anything Nolan has ever put to screen, and are joined by Morton’s snarls once Odysseus enters her hut looking for his men. When asked why she turned them into pigs, Circe replies, “I didn’t turn your men into anything! Look at them. This is what they are.” Nolan uses Circe and her ire for the crew as a means for the audience to understand that the pillaging and assumed sexual violence Odysseus’ men have wreaked on innocents during their years-long war cannot be denied. The body horror applied as she turns them into animals is used to further signify just how horrific the acts they committed in Troy were, even though the sequences of what really happened there remain slightly bloodless.
Nolan’s penchant for not showcasing the intimate acts of violence as they are is not a ploy to shield the audience from the brutal reality of war, but rather to slowly expose viewers to the violence these characters are capable of. “The Odyssey” is comparable to “Oppenheimer” in this way, where the titular character envisions his fellow Americans with their skin frayed and peeling, but looks away from images of Hiroshima’s actual victims when they’re showcased to him.
Similarly, we watch as Odysseus’ men are eaten, stabbed, and drowned, yet during the sacking of Troy, we are only shown flashes of the havoc these men wreaked on their fellow man. This is not Nolan shying away from the bloodless nature of the crimes his protagonists committed, but instead a reflection of how they are unable to see their victims as actual casualties until the horrors they’ve committed begin to shape the unraveling of the world around them.
The audio and visual motifs used by Nolan, van Hoytema, and Göransson force their audience, which is undeniably made up of cinephiles and average moviegoers alike, to confront how this adaptation of “The Odyssey” stands not as a hero’s journey, but a swan song for a world on the brink of collapse. This intensifies each time we see the city of Troy, first as Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) is retelling it, and later, as Odysseus witnesses it. In Menelaus’ version, the invasion of the city was a righteous thing, yet once again, Göransson’s score and van Hoytema’s lens undercut this fact. The music penetrates the sequence with rhythmic clanging, intensifying drums, and dissonant hums that increase in speed as the scene unfolds.
With only the light of sparse lanterns lighting their way, Odysseus and his men scurry around the city like rats before finally welcoming Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), who hovers at the city’s entrance like a representation of death itself. Later, when Odysseus relays what actually happened that fateful night to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), Göransson’s score is largely absent as our protagonist paints a picture of men desecrating places of worship, slaughtering civilians, and brutalizing women.
Nolan’s films have long since resonated with the political climate in which they’re released, but rather than simply make it clear that these films are tied to his audience’s reality, “The Odyssey” pleads with its viewers to understand just what is at cost. In Nolan’s version of this tale, he weaves a sequence told by a triumphant man into a horrific act that has ushered in the unraveling not only of Zeus’ law, but the morality of civilization as Odysseus, his men, and Troy’s inhabitants knew it.
Rather than epic encounters that feel like sections of a sweeping epic, these setpieces instead feel like they belong in a horror film. Throughout the film’s nearly three-hour runtime, Nolan delivers elongated sequences of Odysseus and his men as they are confronted by various creatures, beings, and gods. Nolan, Van Hoytema, and Göransson combine their talents to create a film imbued with influences that the horror genre has long used to shock viewers and fill them with dread. These genre conventions aren’t employed as simple scare tactics but are instead tied to the idea that the customs and laws these men broke, and the violence they enacted in Troy, mirror instances of violence in humanity’s past, present, and future.
Whether moments in the film are bathed in darkness or accompanied by ominous bells and distorted gasps, Nolan makes it clear that this version of Odysseus’ story is a timely warning against the current age his audience exists in; one where civilians are more than happy to turn a blind eye to injustice, welcoming in a new age of violence and darkness. Although this version of “The Odyssey” begins as an epic fantasy, it slowly transforms into a film that binds itself to the realities and horrors of human nature, which can be traced through the director’s filmography from Ancient Greece to the creation of the atom bomb.
Like the Athena (Zendaya) who appears to Odysseus throughout his years of travel, Christopher Nolan has become a specter that haunts his audience, appearing every few years not to deliver a spectacle, but to remind us that the worlds he has created on screen are hauntingly similar to the one in which we live.
- Fantasia 2026: You Are the Film, Someone’s Daughter, Los Vampires (July 23, 2026)
As Fantasia chugs mightily along its first full week, its selections grow ever more niche and specific. That’s nothing new; Fantasia is nothing if not a pure genre festival, less concerned with attracting A-list talent than offering film dorks like myself a taste of the offbeat, the microbudget, the locally endorsed. That’s certainly true with today’s dispatch, featuring three films as constrained by their budgets as their locations and concepts, using small spaces and casts to nonetheless explore big ideas about art, predation, and creativity.
Makoto Ueda’s works are hardly new to the fest; “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” and “River,” both written by Ueda, were featured at previous fests and revealed his penchant for small-scale, charming works that play with time. His latest, “You Are the Film,” features two modest changes: This time, he’s also behind the director’s chair, and the twists shift beyond looped time to the gossamer-thin veil between fantasy and reality that is the cinema screen.
We’re introduced to Madoka (Ito Marika), a struggling playwright grappling with the usual struggles: creative blocks, the logistics of storefront theater, actor friends who are thinking of leaving for greener pastures. After a recommendation from the manager (Ishida Gota) leads her to a cute nearby theater for a film called “Sangenjaya Escape,” she plops down to see the beginnings of another charming tale of creative frustration. In it, a frustrated musician named Kazuma (Kai Inowaki) bickers with the lead guitarist of his band about everything from his inability to practice to some missing cash. That is, until he is encouraged to go to a very similar-looking movie theater.
It’s less than ten minutes into this 68-minute feature that Ueda brings his protagonists together—not in romantic union, but as witnesses to the “movie” of each other’s lives. You see, they’re each watching each other on the screen and are somehow able to converse through it. Neither knows why this is happening, and despite some hokey explanations later on about “cinematic multiverses,” Ueda’s film doesn’t really concern itself with the logistics of such metanarratives (especially the theater pamphlets that allow each of them to warn the other of even the most minuscule plot beats). All that matters is that each of them can help each other solve their problems and find solidarity in the curious situation they’ve found themselves in.
Of course, “You Are the Film” does a lot more with its premise than that, as their respective crises escalate from the quotidian aggravations of the working-class artist into stakes ranging from gangland violence to alien invasions. Yet through all of those wacky, goofy turns, Ueda keeps the tone light, his cast effervescently throwing themselves into each new twist with tremendous aplomb. And, like so many of Ueda’s works, we see the delight that comes from engaging in artistic play: even within the four walls of a tiny boutique theater, universes can be created, and lives changed.
The local press was out in force for the premiere of Wiebke von Carolsfeld’s intimate thriller “Someone’s Daughter,” and it’s easy to see why. The film co-stars “Heated Rivalry” breakout François Arnaud (though he only offered a video intro after not being able to make the festival premiere), and (crucially) was shot in Quebec’s Eastern Townships region, a mere hour’s drive from Montreal. Its Appalachian hills and thick foliage offer a suitably claustrophobic setting for the film’s high-concept conceit, even as von Carolsfeld’s script doesn’t explore it with as much depth (or pulp) as one would like.
“Someone’s Daughter” wastes little time setting its characters and its stage: fiftysomething defense attorney Sam (Pascale Bussières) wakes up in a car, kidnapped by the father (Peter Outerbridge, making the most of a few minutes’ appearance) of a young girl who lost her trial against the man who allegedly raped her (Arnaud), years prior. Sam is told that the girl has since died of drug use spurred by trauma and grief, and the father has chosen a particularly noxious mode of revenge: Stranding Sam and her ex-client, Paul, out in the Canadian wilderness. A boat ride and three haunting gunshots later, Sam and Paul are stuck in the wilds on their own, with no food and a long, dangerous hike back to safety.
And so begins a patient, if occasionally lumbering, morality play, as the two people wrestle both with their immediate survival needs and the innate tension of the role they played, both directly and indirectly, in the destruction of a young woman’s life. Sam, a widower whose hikes with her late husband imbued her with some essential survival skills, must play mother and survival guide to the urbane, whiny Paul; he’s impulsive and childish in ways that hardly endear him to Sam, much less the audience. Still, both actors play off each other electrically, Bussières’s measured resolve giving Arnaud plenty of runway to run pages from the manipulator’s playbook. Should he ingratiate? Should he cower in need? Should he bide his time, waiting for the right moment to take advantage of their situation?
These tensions are occasionally explored in a few bubbling outbursts of conflict, especially in its final act. But “Someone’s Daughter” remains frustratingly sedate for most of its runtime, preferring not to explore the characters’ thorny pasts in favor of a more straightforward survival narrative. One would hope that this lack of trust in each other, this lack of certitude about one of the most important truths in their lives, would play more actively in the drama. Instead, it fizzles in the background for long stretches before exploding in a thorny but abrupt ending that makes room for Michael Greyeyes to make a far-too-short cameo. A beautiful showcase for two fine actors and the claustrophobia of the Canadian wilderness, but more dramatically inert than one might hope.
The battle of wills between two people more alike than they’d like to believe continues in Craig Mitchell’s beguiling “Los Vampires,” which thinly restages the presumed behind-the-scenes production of George Melford’s 1931 Spanish-language adaptation of “Dracula,”—shot at the same time as Tod Browning’s classic, on the same sets, at night when the English-language film would stop production. Here, we follow Luis de Ossorio (“Lost”‘s Henry Ian Cusick), the Spanish actor cast to play “Count Vlad”; he’s been tasked to watch the day’s dailies of his English-language counterpart, Hans Orlov (Thomas Krestchmann), as Orlov (and the producers) insist he emulate each mannerism to a tee. Luis, however, bristles; he is an ack-tor, after all, and wants to make the role his own. (He’s even brought some custom-made fangs for the trouble.)
But Luis’ growing rivalry with Orlov, and their growing mutual fascination with the Spanish-speaking ingenue, Vianca (newcomer Daniela Couso), who’s been cast alongside him, begin to turn the production into a psychological nightmare for the struggling actor. And that’s before a series of mysterious murders around the soundstages begin to threaten the production itself.
It’s hard not to think of E. Elias Merhige’s haunting “Shadow of the Vampire” when watching this, finding similar supernatural sins in Spanish “Dracula” as that film did with “Nosferatu.” And granted, Mitchell makes the most of what was an exceedingly modest budget (the film was self-funded); the sets feel sparse in ways that match the charms of Old Hollywood, with graveyards backed by ominous backdrops featuring gigantic moons. The famous Dracula steps are emulated too (though not too much, to avoid litigation), and Simon Coull’s cinematography coats the whole thing in a soft-focus dream haze.
The central performances are uniformly excellent, too; Cusick’s antic disposition as Luis bounces wonderfully off Krestchmann’s Romanian diva. The real standout, surprisingly, is Couso, who finds a delicate balance between slinky ingenue and more complex aims as the film progresses. Mitchell’s script juggles a murderer’s row of thematic aims: acting as vampirism, the immortality of cinema, Old Hollywood’s fear of the immigrant, the impending censorship of the Hays Code, the predation of older men upon younger women. Some get plenty of room to shine; others get lost in a few moments of miscalibrated comedy and a wonky sound design (the English-language dialogue suffers most for this; the Spanish, helpfully, is subtitled).
But there’s a hallucinatory mist that surrounds “Los Vampires” that still intrigues among all its formlessness, especially as it stalks its way toward a surprising, somber grace note that evokes everything from “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” to “Boogie Nights.” Some actors lose themselves in the part; others succumb to it.
- Netflix’s “Ransom Canyon” Turns Up the Soapy Drama in Serviceable Second Season (July 23, 2026)
In a world filled with far too many real-life horrors, the concept of the cozy comfort show has become more important than ever. These sorts of programs—think Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias” or “Virgin River”—tend to be relationship dramas focused on family and romance, and are really just here to have a good time. Full of picturesque small-town scenery, slow-burn love stories, and twisty, if largely predictable plots, they’re inoffensively familiar and don’t ask for much from you as a viewer beyond sitting back and enjoying the (entertainingly twisty) ride.
“Ransom Canyon” is Netflix’s Western-flavored take on this particular subgenre, complete with cowboys, horses, and the kind of family and communal rivalries that span generations. Set in the eponymous small Texas town, the series primarily revolves around the relationship between Staten Kirkland (Josh Duhamel), a widowed rancher trying to preserve his family’s legacy, and Quinn O’Grady (Minka Kelly), owner of the local dance hall. But despite its down to earth setting, the show’s first season took itself just a smidge too seriously, awkwardly attempting to balance the pair’s slow burn will they / won’t they romance with a larger plot about a corporate pipeline project that threatens to swallow up several local homesteads.
Thankfully, “Ransom Canyon’s” second season course-corrects many of the mistakes of its first. The pace feels more propulsive thanks to its tighter episode count, and the show has smartly jettisoned some of its more irritating subplots, including the complicated (read: dull) fight between Staten and his former brother-in-law about whether to sell their ranches to an Austin water and power company.
It’s an abrupt shift, to be sure, but it does get the show out from under the shadow of the relentless “Yellowstone” comparisons that dogged its first season. And “Ransom Canyon” is finally free to lean into its soapiest and most over-the-top narrative tendencies without having to try and pretend there’s anything resembling prestige TV going on here. Instead, badly hidden secrets, equally poorly disguised yearning, and a little bit of overt scheming are the order of the day. And boy does Season 2 understand the assignment on that score.
RANSOM CANYON SEASON 2. (L to R) Marianly Tejada as Ellie and Minka Kelly as Quinn in Episode 201 of Ransom Canyon Season 2. Cr. Jeff Neumann/Netflix © 2025
Throughout its briskly paced eight episodes, new relationships, ill-advised flirtations, messy mistakes, and straight-up betrayals abound, all set against the backdrop of stunning Texas scenery and a parade of shirtless men doing various forms of construction and/or farm work. While nothing quite reaches the melodramatic heights of last season’s tornado incident, Quinn’s determination to boost Ransom’s local economy by launching a massive country music festival gives the episodes a cohesive central arc.
The show’s second season picks up six months after its first. Quinn, freshly returned from her stint with the New York Philharmonic, has brought a little bit of big-city shine back to small-town Texas with her. Not to mention an attractive NYC-based boyfriend (Ben Robson) whose open, uber-supportive vibe is very much the opposite of Staten’s difficult, closed-off approach to relationships. Staten, for his part, is engaged in an ongoing power struggle with his father (Brett Cullen), who, having lost his reelection bid, is inserting himself in the day-to-day running of the Double K Ranch.
Elsewhere, Yancy (Jack Schumacher) and Ellie’s romance (Marianly Tejada) faces new challenges in the form of Sidney (Heidi Grace Engerman), a woman who technically happens to be Yancy’s wife. While Sidney’s character is woefully underdeveloped—like so many other things, her presence is yet one more roadblock in the way of their happiness—Engerman provides a much-needed spark whenever she’s onscreen.
And, if that’s not enough, teen cheerleader Lauren (Lizzy Greene), still reeling from the revelation that her alcoholic mother was responsible for the death of Staten’s son Randall (Hubert Smielecki), struggles to communicate her complicated feelings to her loyal, try-hard boyfriend, Lucas (Garrett Wareing), the same guy she spent all of last season trying to find a way to be with romantically. That she ultimately finds a sympathetic ear in his older bad boy brother Kit (Casey W. Johnson) is just the kind of emotional complication that “Ransom Canyon” loves to deploy, even if it doesn’t make a ton of sense from a narrative perspective. (He slept with her mother! And they somehow never really talk about this!)
RANSOM CANYON SEASON 2. (L to R) Lizzy Greene as Lauren and Casey W. Johnson as Kit in Episode 203 of Ransom Canyon Season 2. Cr. Jeff Neumann/Netflix © 2025
Duhamel continues to brood handsomely, whether he’s poorly smothering his obvious longing for Quinn or questioning his role at the Double K. And although Staten’s prickly relationship with his ex-politician father is woefully thin, Duhamel and Cullen go at each other with palpable gusto as their inter-family drama spirals out through much of the rest of the town. But it is Kelly who remains “Ransom Canyon’s” secret weapon, oozing warmth and genuine enthusiasm for the magic of small-town life without becoming cloying.
As a duo, the pair still have chemistry to spare, but the show’s determination to drag out the slow-burn relationship between Staten and Quinn remains incredibly frustrating. Season 2 is at least less random when it comes to the various obstacles that are thrown into their path, and even manages to give the pair a couple of very necessary heart-to-hearts about their shared history and anxieties about the future. But, at this point, “Ransom Canyon’s” reticence to allow their relationship to either genuinely move forward or truly end is the most frustrating aspect of the show. At least a delicious guest turn from Patricia Clarkson as Quinn’s self-involved mother adds a dash of entertaining snark to proceedings.
Still, “Ransom Canyon” Season 2 is a lighter and more shamelessly entertaining outing than its predecessor, and if it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel when it comes to storytelling, the show has figured out what it’s good at, and unabashedly leans into it. Yes, it’s often predictable, relentlessly soapy, and doesn’t give any twist more than a few minutes to breathe. But its practiced brand of easily bingeable escapism sure does go down easy.
All eight episodes screened for review. Premieres July 23 on Netflix.
- Cinema is My Calling Again: Nicolas Winding Refn on “Her Private Hell” (July 23, 2026)
Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn shared with audiences at the Cannes premiere of his new film “Her Private Hell” that a near-death experience inspired his return from the streaming desert to the world of making movies.
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and partly raised in New York City, filmmaking is in Refn’s blood. The son of filmmaker Anders Refn (whose decades’ long career includes editing half a dozen films by fellow Dane Lars von Trier) and cinematographer Vibeke Winding, Refn broke out in the mid-’90s with his “Pusher” trilogy starring Mads Mikkelsen, broke into the English-speaking film world with the 2008 black comedy biopic “Bronson” starring Tom Hardy and the 2009 adventure flick “Valhalla Rising,” and solidified his place in the pantheon on modern cinema with his Cannes Best Director-winning cult film “Drive” starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks.
Although Refn has spent the last decade working in streaming television with the Netflix supernatural noir-thriller series “Copenhagen Cowboy” and the Prime crime drama miniseries “Too Old to Die Young,” his latest film “Her Private Hell” is more aligned with his last two feature films–2013’s “Only God Forgives” and 2016’s “The Neon Demon“—both of which can be viewed as dark fairytales exploring hidden emotions and taboo subject matter like incest and cannibalism.
With high-key bisexual lighting and Giallo-style gore, “Her Private Hell” stars Sophie Thatcher as an actress named Elle whose lothario of a father, the impossibly named Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), has financially backed a film for her to star in based on a popular comic series called Candy Floss. Also starring in the film within the film are Elle’s ex-best friend (and likely one-time lover) Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who is also her new stepmother, and a vapid influencer named Hunter (Kristine Froseth).
In between film shoots, the women find themselves trapped in the liminal space of their lux, neon-lit hotel waiting out a mythical fog, which has brought with it a vicious serial killer named the Leatherman and a mysterious soldier named Private K (Charles Melton), whose young daughter was a victim of the killer. Jealousy, fear, and desire swell in the unrelenting haze as the score by long-time Brian De Palma and Dario Argento collaborator Pino Donaggio wraps everything into an operatic bow of love, hate, death, and resurrection.
Before the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, Refn spoke with RogerEbert.com about the film’s daddy issues, “Riverdale,” silent film, comic books, and the intoxicating structure of fairytales.
You’ve said that you decided you wanted to go back to movies because you died and then came back. Could you talk about that experience of realizing that’s what you wanted to do again? Did you see something?
No, no, no. Not that cinematic. I died, and I was dead for 25 minutes, and in the process up to that experience, you go through a lot of emotional turmoil. But in the end I realized I’d been given a gift. How many people get a chance of starting over again?
Yeah, I almost died at 14, so that’s why I was interested.
So you know the feeling a little bit.
Yeah.
It provides a perspective, especially on time. What time means. So when I came back, I realized I only had half the time left that I had already spent. I only had, you know, x amount of years left … good years. And so I thought, “Okay, well, the good news is that I’ve been rejuvenated.” My mind had forgotten everything I’d made, meaning that all the experiences I’d had prior to that kind of vanished. So I can start over again, because I had run out of ideas.
Second, I realized that art is, again, like always, an important part of our existence. So I wanted to make movies, because I believe in the collective experience. It means that I wanted to make something that was, first of all, shown in a cinema, because cinema is a collective where people of all sexes, lives, and statuses meet on equal terms. There’s no first class; there’s no economy class; it’s just central. It’s totally democratic, accessible, and cheap enough for everyone to afford. That is where people should experience creativity. And then it can feed out in all these other formats afterward, which is great. I love it, I love it, I love it, but that means that cinema is my calling again, so I have to go back and make movies.
There are so many different classic films mixed in here. I got a little film noir, got some giallo, and felt some campy ‘60s sci-fi, like “The Green Slime” or “Barbarella.” There’s like little tidbits of all these things.
And “Planet of the Vampires.”
Since you’re clearly someone who watches a lot of films, when you’re writing, do you think in imagery? Do you think in emotions? How does that all mix in your brain and then come back out as your own stuff?
Well, because I’m dyslexic, I’m used to being dependent on the image, so it always starts with what I like to see. Thank God I’m not a writer because that would be really bad. I start with what I would like to see.
I am also dyslexic, and I feel like I also start with imagery when I write.
I think it’s because that’s our strength. It becomes our go-to place. Other people, especially if you’re a master of the written word, approach it from a different perspective, and it can be from a character narrative, or you create a character that you then jump off from. But to me, I start with what is the canvas, what would I like to see.
Charles Melton’s character could have fallen out of a silent film. It’s almost completely his body, his emotions. How did you go about developing that with him?
Well, I’d seen him in “Riverdale,” and I thought he was very good. I had this superhero character called Private K that he was going to play, and it was all going to be in his expressions, his gestures, his movement. It becomes like pantomime, because you can convey a lot of emotions without words. We’re so dependent on words today, because everything is about information secondhand. So I thought it could be interesting to have, again, a character that does not talk. It seems to be something I’m fascinated by.
Yeah, Driver from “Drive” doesn’t say much. I think that’s universal. That’s why silent film was so popular when it began, because you didn’t need to know anything other than what the human face can express.
It just showed you everything. I think it’s interesting that you say that, because last week my daughter Lizzielou suddenly came home from school and was asking about Joan of Arc and said she wanted to watch the movies because they’re making a new one or something. I said, “Wait, hold on, kid, if you’re going to watch anything, you’ve got to watch the original, the Carl Theodor Dreyer one [“The Passion of Joan of Arc”] from the 1920s.” So, we watched it together, and she cried because that performance [by Renée Jeanne Falconetti] is the greatest performance ever.
Similarly, all of the characters in this film, in particular, are emoting from the face. You really hold on to their facial expressions. There’s a scene towards the end where Sophie Thatcher goes through at least ten emotions with her eyes. I don’t know that a lot of directors these days trust the human face, so I appreciate when a film does.
It’s the most effective and inexpensive commodity.
This film felt a bit like Red Riding Hood, and I know you’ve talked about the influence of fairytales on your previous few films. Obviously, the Leatherman is a folktale in this film. I wondered if you could talk a bit about incorporating folktales and fairytales into your cinematic storytelling.
I started my career being very obsessed with capturing authenticity and making everything as real as possible, and their environments as real, and their emotions as real, and everything had to be really real, and I would shoot in chronological order to make it real. But then I realized at the end of the day that I was never going to make reality, because reality doesn’t work like that. So I decided to make unreality my canvas, and because I’m connected to Hans Christian Andersen, I felt like maybe fairytales are my language.
That’s something we share in common, he and I. The thing about a fairytale is that it transcends genre, it transcends narrative, it transcends culture, it transcends sex, it transcends years, it’s ageless, and suddenly it has an endless amount of possibilities. It’s childish, yet it’s very advanced. It’s sophisticated. It’s psychology. It’s culture. It’s social infrastructure. Everything is tied up in that one word, fairytales, and I just find it so intoxicating. So, ever since then, everything I have made is a fairytale.
You hear fairytale, and you think they are for children, but really, folktales are the oldest form of entertainment for everybody. I love that your films are really rooted in what is something everybody can feel.
Everybody can understand it. Everyone can relate to it. It’s not a cultural difference. There’s not a barrier of intellect or knowledge.
I wanted to ask you about the Candy Floss comics. Can you talk a bit about developing the comics and their connection between Private K holding an issue and Elle appearing in an adaptation of one?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to draw. I wish I could be an illustrator. I grew up collecting comics, and I’ve always liked the medium very much, the visual medium of comics, whether it’s European or American. I very much still buy a lot of European comics. It just felt like an object that I remember from my childhood. Because I didn’t learn to read until I was thirteen, I could only buy them to look at them. Comics became my kind of go-to place, because I certainly couldn’t read books; I could only read images. So, I stuck with that idea. I thought in the movie the Candy Floss world is a pop culture world; it’s a chewing gum world. I thought the comic book represented that.
When “Neon Demon” came out, you talked a lot about how you were inspired by what it would be like to be a beautiful woman, and this one is very much about female friendship, female coming of age, about being a daughter and being a father of a daughter. I wonder if you could talk a bit about whether you were working through some feelings as a father of a daughter? It almost felt like this is your “Eraserhead,” you know how David Lynch made that film to work through his feelings about becoming a dad. I could be projecting, but it felt–
No, no. It’s not off. I had two stories in the beginning. Two ideas to be precise. I had the idea of the Elle character, Sophie Thatcher, and I had the idea of Private K, but they were in DNA very opposite ideas. They were hard to connect together. So the third idea, which is the monster, created a triangle between them. Then the theme of Private K was very specific, because he was me in that sense that when you are going to die, you have to make peace with certain things. I made peace with my wife; we’d been together for thirty years. My eldest was old enough to exist without me. But my youngest wasn’t. And I had to come back for her. So, like Orpheus, if I could go to Hell, I would bring her back. That was my gasoline to stay alive, to come back. So, once that cemented itself in Private K’s DNA, then the father narrative began to infuse everything else and the father construction.
So then I had something that was beginning to make sense, and it had a mirrored image of “Only God Forgives,” which is about a son-and-mother relationship in all its complexity, set in the world of fairytales. Then, I had this idea about Elle’s father marrying her lover and her lover taking her father away from her. Then this idea about Elle fantasizing an alter ego, who is a father who will go to Hell to bring back his daughter, because her father’s always leaving her, not trying to find her. Suddenly, everything began to make sense on an overall infrastructure, and then it was about how to translate it all into the film.
I think the way the film is edited is so beautiful, where you’re really not sure: is it the film, is it the film in the film, is it her dream? It doesn’t actually matter because you’re just feeling it. Then the heightened Sirkian score that wraps it up so perfectly. Can you talk about what inspired it?
I shoot in order, and I play a lot of music on set for the actors for the mood and for myself to figure out what we are searching for here. So, when I was done shooting, I realized that I wanted to make an opera, because it was shot very operatically. So, I said, “Well, who’s around and who do I like?” And there was only one, because I’ve been using his music for many years, like all the way back as a kind of source music for ideas when I am writing or shooting: Pino Donaggio. He agreed, “I want to make an opera.” He said he always wanted to make an opera, and his score is what tied the entire film together. His score took everything and made sure that there was a bloodline that ran from A to Z.
- Relive the Launch That Changed Gaming in “Halo: Campaign Evolved” (July 23, 2026)
It’s no exaggeration to say that 2001’s “Halo” changed the entire gaming landscape. A launch title for the original Xbox a quarter-century ago, “Halo: Combat Evolved” not only started its own still-running franchise (which included a recent Paramount+ original adaptation) but influenced so much of the shooter landscape. It’s not only difficult to imagine Microsoft titles like “Gears of War” playing quite the same without it, but its blend of sci-fi and action also inspired the direction that the “Call of Duty” series would take.
Twenty-five years after its release, Xbox Game Studios has reimagined that original experience in “Halo: Campaign Evolved,” a remake that enhances the strengths of the source with upgrades throughout the expanded narrative. Seen from the POV of a 2026 gamer, it’s a remarkably simple experience that recalls the relatively recent rebirth of “Doom” in how it emphasizes weapons and enemies without the clutter of upgrades, side missions, or other elements that often weigh down effective shooters with extra baggage. “Campaign Evolved” is sleek and effective, arguably a bit thin on a design level for 2026 but a game that plays as an effective throwback to a simpler time without feeling overly dated.
Get your squad together (either four-player online or split-screen at home) and jump into the story of “Halo: Campaign Evolved,” which actually opens with new missions that set the stage for the imported narrative of the original game. The stage is set with something known as “Operation: Meteorite,” in which protagonist Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and the United Nations Space Command first encounter the Covenant forces. This unfolds over three missions that organically segue into the ten from the original game, most of which take place on the Pillar of Autumn or the planet Reach. The main enemy, a force known as the Covenant, remains the same, joined later in the game by the Flood, parasitic enemies that look like “Doom” cast-offs, or further nightmares of “Alien” designer H.R. Giger. The blend of traditional warrior-like enemies and later sci-fi/horror ones help keep the gameplay and storytelling of “Halo” from getting stale, but it is a game that follows a relatively predictable model: Enter room, kill everything in, move on to the next room, repeat about 50 times.
To make “Campaign Evolved” feel fresher to an audience with different expectations than those in 2001, the developers have integrated nine new weapons, alongside all of the previously available ones. Fans of “Halo 2” will recognize firepower like the SMG, Fuel Rod Cannon, and Sentinel Beam, and relish the opportunity to deploy them in the franchise’s origin story. You can also get your hands on the Energy Sword in this game, although good luck wielding a melee weapon in a game in which everything is shooting you. (I never found it very useful, sticking mostly to SMG, Assault Rifle, Plasma Rifle, and Needler whenever they were available.) Like most shooters of this era, “Halo: Campaign Evolved” is a cycle of weaponry as you run out of ammo and pick up firepower from the enemies you kill. With the game’s relatively bland environments, the variety comes down to enemy types and weapon types, but there’s something almost refreshing about a game that keeps it this simple in a time when too many feel cluttered.
If the environments sometimes feel 2000s, the cut scenes feel somewhere between then and now, upgraded and remade with much of the same voice cast as the original, and designed in a manner that makes them feel of a piece with the dated aspects of the game. The developers at Xbox take the upgrade a step further by expanding vehicle usage and, somewhat controversially, allowing you to sprint. Finally, the creators introduce a collectible element from other “Halo” titles called “Skulls,” which can mix up the gameplay even further by varying the experience, and open up something called “Campaign Remix,” an all-new mode that can basically make “Halo” into a Roguelike with randomized enemies, weapons, and other variables.
It may not be the deepest video game criticism, but “Halo: Campaign Evolved” is exactly what people expect it to be: a game that’s both nostalgic and current, entertaining while also reminding gamers how far the industry has come. In fact, its biggest controversy may be the fact that it’s being released on PlayStation at the same time as Xbox, with some insinuating that meant the end of the console wars (and Sony had won). Back in 2001, the exclusivity of “Halo” helped define the Microsoft gaming brand, but the incredible breadth of gaming options 25 years later has helped lead to a day when access feels more important than ever. And now everyone, even Sony gamers, can appreciate the legacy of “Halo.”
Microsoft provided a review copy of this title. It will be released for PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on July 28, 2026.
