The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Writer: Steve Gerber Artist: Gil Kane Inker: Vince Colletta  Letters: Tom Orzechowski Sent as a bloodsucking assassin by an occult priest who has taken hypnotic control of him, Morbius is shocked to discover the identity of his target. Although outrage over the atrocity he has been commanded to commit allows Morbius to break the spell, his own intrinsic bloodlust cannot be so easily dismissed. (Although the addition of Gil Kane to a book’s creative team almost always improves it, I must say that Paul Gulacy in the previous issue depicted Morbius’s hunger with a desperate savagery that Kane doesn’t even approach.) His prey, however, is not as helpless as he thought. She is able to manifest a future version of herself. Defeating (and feeding on) the warrior woman seems to cause injury to the child. Before Morbius can rush her to a hospital for a transfusion, a group of mysterious cowled figures intercept him with promises that they are her only hope. The...

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Director: David R. Ellis Writers: Eric Bress, characters by Jeffrey Riddick Stars: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen, Andrew Friscella, Justin Welborn, Stephanie Honore  As in all the previous Final Destination films, a group of characters escape death after one of them experiences a premonition of a terrible disaster.  They spend the rest of the movie in a futile attempt to escape their fate.  I thought the first three movies were okay if you have a hankering for gory mayhem, but this one was so bad that I found myself thinking up my own horror franchise: a group of characters find themselves trapped in a film written by a lazy screenwriter and spend the rest of the movie in a futile attempt to escape their fate.  Fortunately, your attempts need not be futile: push STOP.

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 by Josh Malerman The world is suddenly infested with creatures whose appearance drives people to madness and violence, forcing what’s left of humanity indoors and into a life where you literally keep your eyes closed to survive.  Author Josh Malerman uses that sensory constraint to build dread and show who people become under pressure.  Josh Malerman The story unfolds on three tracks: Malorie in the present, blindfolded in a boat with two children heading downriver toward a possible refuge; four years earlier, as part of a fragile household trying to build a life under the new rules; and earlier still, as the world first falls apart and she discovers she’s pregnant while barricaded with her sister.  The intercutting between the tense river journey and the slow collapse of the house ratchets up the suspense.  The monsters are there, but we never truly see them.  We hear them, we see the way birds react, and we watch what happens to p...