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While viewing today’s movie, a quote revolving around The Doors and their band name popped into my head, “There are things you know about and things you don't, the known and the unknown, and in between are the doors – that's us”. With links to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perceptions, and before that the even more apropos William Blake’s 18th century poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, one line from it reads, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.” It only seems fitting that this rather abstract lineage which discusses both reality and exploring expanded consciousness somehow links to the sci-fi psychological horror film Backrooms (2026), co-written and directed by 20 year old Kane Parsons.

After the success of 2022's eighteenth century set Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg has returned to the Predator franchise once more, this feature titled Predator: Badlands (2025), again coming up with a wholly different concept that transports the story in an engaging new direction. Taking place about as far away as possible from his previous effort (a concept developed by Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison, the latter then writing the screenplay), this one opens on Yautja Prime, the home planet of the Predators (who are formally known as Yautja), where the audience meets Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) – the weakling runt of the family who hasn’t earned his camouflaging cloak... which, if you known Predator culture, is not a good thing.

hough today’s feature is immediately sited as a science fiction classic, Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956) is perhaps just as well remembered for its majestic original robot and pinup infused movie poster design (that is still, to this day, a costly collectible)... though the art is quite misleading when you know what the movie is actually about. Following a narrative loosely inspired by William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, which, for those who do not know, is about a man forced to live stranded upon a magical island with his daughter, until he causes a shipwreck that brings with it possible rescue (and a man who may fall in love with his daughter)... this futuristic feature follows a somewhat similar sci-fi blueprint.

An over the top, campy kitsch cult classic that plays like a wildly fun rock opera, Flash Gordon (1980), directed by Mike Hodges, and based on the Alex Raymond comic strip first published in 1934, is perhaps most intriguing for attracting the rock band Queen to compose and perform the theme song and score with the help of orchestral scorer Howard Blake (though much of his work was cut in favour of Brian May). Produced by the famed Dino De Laurentiis, this would be his third and final creation of a former comic strip, with the first two being Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik, both released in 1968

Despite not being written or directed by the famed special effects expert Ray Harryhausen, that latter honour going to Nathan Juran instead, there is no denying that the magic man’s hands are all over this horror infused sci-fi monster bash. Spawning the unique concept originally titled as The Giant Ymir, while also suggesting it be set in Rome, Italy instead of the United States (why you may ask... he simply always wanted to vacation there), whilst also being in charge of the stop-motion animation that makes this feature succeed, the final product eventually became known as 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). A strong warning of the fears of moving too quickly into ‘futuristic’ ways, which is clearly a callback to ample anxiety revolving around the atomic bomb... which, with it, could bring possible nuclear annihilation, here we have the result of space exploration of the planet Venus.

A clever reworking of the Predator franchise, 2022's Prey, a prequel co-written and directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), is set some 250 years prior to what we thought was the alien species first arrival opposite human beings on Earth. Set in the vast Great Plains in 1719, the story follows Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman who has been trained as a healer, though not so secretly yearns to be a hunter. Overshadowed by her successful bow and arrow wielding brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), she uses whatever free time she has to continue training at the useful skill. It is worth noting that the familial relationship is nicely crafted, not simply one of brutish sibling rivalry (like we’ve seen in other motion pictures), instead holding within it a nuanced combination of direct competition, hunting mentorship, and much needed cooperation.