Chris Panatier is a genre-bending American author whose work ranges across dystopian science fiction, dark fantasy, horror, and speculative short fiction. He burst onto the scene with his 2020 debut The Phlebotomist, a near-future dystopia steeped in blood politics and societal collapse, and quickly earned a reputation for imaginative, boundary-testing storytelling. His 2022 space opera Stringers pairs absurdist humour with interstellar adventure, while The Redemption of Morgan Bright (2024) shifted into psychological horror and gothic mystery. Most recently, last year’s Shitshow pushed further into a more grotesque, darkly comic register, blending the absurd and the macabre with his unmistakable ingenuity. Besides his novels, Panatier has also written short fiction and poetry for various anthologies and literary magazines, further demonstrating the full scope of his speculative vision.

Panatier returns with Daytide, a novel that once again ventures into the strange while keeping a firm focus on the human cost, balancing high-concept ideas with vividly flawed and recognisably human characters.

Pitched as a black metal Wizard of Oz, Daytide takes place in a world ravaged by the Longing, a psychological pandemic that drives its victims to suicide. After losing his friend Kaya to the pandemic, Adam navigates the fallout of a society gripped by despair, crossing paths with a priest who claims to have found a cure. Despite his initial extreme scepticism, Adam is drawn into a disturbing revelation at a cathedral that could offer society’s salvation. Featuring original artwork by Panatier himself, the novel combines a distinctive visual identity with themes of human desire, loss, and responsibility.

Ahead of the book’s February 26 release via Rapture Publishing, CinemaChords spoke with Panatier about creating a pandemic rooted in psychology rather than biology, the meaning behind the novel’s angelic power structures, and how the deluxe edition’s illustrations extend the story’s texture far beyond the page.

Michaela McManus and Stella Marcus star in Redux Redux, the inventive, tautly wound sci-fi thriller from brothers Matthew and Kevin McManus, which navigates myriad parallel universes while keeping its focus firmly on the human stakes, giving the story real punch.

Releasing in theaters this Friday, February 20 via Saban Films, the film follows a grieving mother as she navigates alternate realities in pursuit of vengeance for her daughter’s murder, balancing high-concept sci-fi with the personal costs of trauma and endurance.

The film marks the first release from the McManus brothers’ new studio, Mothership Motion Pictures, and is their third collaboration with Michaela McManus.

Premiering at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in the Midnighter category, Redux Redux earned critical acclaim: AVClub highlighted its ingenuity in exploring multiple timelines with minimal resources, while Bloody Disgusting praised its “gritty, grounded approach and tautly wound storytelling.” The film currently holds a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In anticipation of the film’s release, CinemaChords spoke with Michaela McManus and Stella Marcus about approaching the film’s compulsive loop of revenge, how their characters navigated the psychological toll of repeating the same actions across parallel universes, and the ways the story reflects on human obsession, control, and the cost of seeking perfection.

Matthew and Kevin McManus, the filmmaking siblings behind Funeral Kings and The Block Island Sound, return with Redux Redux, a tense, inventive sci-fi thriller that traverses parallel universes while keeping its focus firmly on human stakes. The film, released in cinemas this Friday, 20 February 2026, via Saban Films, stars Michaela McManus, Jim Cummings, Jeremy Holm and newcomer Stella Marcus.

It follows a grieving mother who moves through alternate realities in pursuit of vengeance for her daughter’s murder, balancing high-concept sci-fi with deeply grounded emotion. The film marks the first release from the McManus brothers’ new studio, Mothership Motion Pictures, and their third collaboration with Michaela McManus.

Premiering at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in the Midnighter strand, Redux Redux drew early acclaim: AVClub highlighted its ingenuity in exploring multiple timelines with minimal resources, while Bloody Disgusting praised its “gritty, grounded approach and tautly wound storytelling.” The film currently holds a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ahead of its release, CinemaChords spoke with Matthew and Kevin McManus about the themes of endurance that run through the film, its meditation on trauma and fractured identity, and the challenge of turning a well-worn multiverse conceit into something that feels anchored in the psychological reality of grief, moral reckoning and the weight of a mother’s responsibility, rather than dissolving into something purely conceptual.

This Is Not a Test is a 2025 apocalyptic horror-thriller from writer-director Adam MacDonald, starring Olivia Holt, Froy Gutierrez, Carson MacCormac, and Luke MacFarlane. Adapted from the 2012 novel by Courtney Summers, the film follows Sloane and a group of classmates as they barricade themselves in their high school to survive a suddenly apocalyptic hometown. Set for release in the United States on February 20, 2026, by Independent Film Company and Shudder, it’s a tense, relentless story about survival, perspective, and the human instinct to keep fighting even when the world collapses around you.

The movie goes straight for the jugular with no drawn-out exposition, just immediate stakes and character-driven tension. MacDonald ramps up the immediacy from the page to the screen, letting the story reveal its characters through their choices and arcs rather than telling the audience everything up front. It’s visceral, fast-paced, and emotionally charged, keeping viewers on edge as Sloane navigates danger, leadership, and the shifting moral landscape of a world falling apart.

To celebrate the film's release this February 20th, Adam MacDonald spoke with CinemaChords to share why Sloane’s character resonated with him on a personal level and how that shaped his approach to the story. He also teased the creative choices behind the adaptation - whether the story’s urgency was in the book from the start, or if he dialled it up with a dash of cinematic licence to make it hit even harder on screen.

After a whole decade off the radar, The Enemy are back where they belong: on the road, selling out venues, and with a new album incoming. Coventry trio Tom Clarke, Andy Hopkins, and Liam Watts release Social Disguises on February 20, their first record since 2015’s It’s Automatic. Since reforming in 2022, they’ve barely had a moment to breathe: headline shows, festival slots, and the Indie Til I Die tour with The Subways and The Holloways have reignited the connection with fans who grew up on We’ll Live and Die in These Towns.

Produced by Matt Terry, the man behind fan favourite “40 Days and 40 Nights” and the Top 20 hit “No Time for Tears,” Social Disguises was made with a very clear and specific intent. Clarke says the band threw themselves back into the same headspace as their debut, treating it like the follow-up they’d always imagined. It took a year to write, around 90 demos to narrow down, and another year in the studio getting it right. “I’m very proud of it. We all are,” he says.

In anticipation of the album’s release on February 20, Tom Clarke sat down with CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman to break down that hugely prolific demo process, the discipline behind cutting it to the bare bones, the pressure of keeping pace with a culture that doesn’t slow down, and how the band took the frustration and regret running through Social Disguises and channelled it into tracks that surge with unbridled energy, honest to the core but without a hint of lament or languish.

Geoff Zanelli is an American composer whose work spans film, television, and video games. Early in his career, he contributed additional music to scores by Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Ramin Djawadi, Danny Elfman, and Steve Jablonsky before moving into solo projects. He won a Primetime Emmy for his score to Into the West and now brings his experience to Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, a film that shifts rapidly across genres and tones, requiring a score capable of keeping pace.

The film follows a man claiming to be from the future, played by Sam Rockwell, as he takes a Los Angeles diner hostage, insisting that humanity faces extinction through distraction and indifference. Drawing on the cultural paranoia of They Live, the social decay of Dawn of the Dead, and the technological anxieties of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the story reframes these ideas for a present dominated by screens and short attention spans. As the standoff escalates, persuasion gives way to coercion, and the narrative throws unexpected turns at every stage.

In a conversation with CinemaChords, Zanelli breaks down how he crafted a score that keeps pace with the film’s fast-moving shifts between satire, suspense, and dark humour, and weighs in on what the rise of AI could mean for music and creativity.

Catriona Ward is widely regarded as one of contemporary horror’s most distinctive voices, known for her bold, inventive storytelling and her ability to consistently upend readers’ expectations. The American-born British novelist has won three British Fantasy Awards and a Shirley Jackson Award, and she became the first woman to receive the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel twice, for Rawblood and Little Eve. Her breakout gothic sensation, The Last House on Needless Street, established her as a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Ward now returns with her sixth novel, Nowhere Burning, a dark and twisted take on Peter Pan that fans of Riley Sager or William Golding’s seminal masterpiece, Lord of the Flies, will not be able to put down.

Nowhere Burning follows Riley, who drags her younger brother Oliver into the night to head for “Nowhere,” the burned-out ranch of disgraced movie star Leaf Winham, exposed as a murderer after a fire destroyed his mountain estate. Rumour has it that a tribe of feral teenagers now occupies the property, a land abandoned to its own devices, beyond the reach of adults. Here, Riley seeks sanctuary, a new family, and a clean break, but the Nowhere Kids guard their territory fiercely, and once inside “Nowhere,” she is forced to confront the paradox of the place: that freedom and captivity are terrifyingly entwined, demanding the complete and unconditional devotion of its inhabitants. And, as if that were not enough, it soon becomes apparent that something even more sinister lies in wait in “Nowhere’s” charred bones.

In anticipation of the publication of Nowhere Burning in the UK on February 19, 2026, and in the US on February 24, CinemaChords caught up with Ward to discuss writing under readers’ expectations of her signature “big twists,” the challenges of reimagining a cultural touchstone like Peter Pan, and the ways the novel renders the idea of refuge into its opposite, a space of power play and menace.

Johnny Compton is bringing a hard-edged noir sensibility to supernatural horror with Dead First, his new novel publishing February 10 via Putnam. The story follows private investigator Shyla Sinclair as she’s hired to investigate a baffling subject: billionaire Saxton Braith, a man who appears incapable of dying. What begins as a routine case quickly draws Shyla into a world of occult forces, buried trauma, and a secret that threatens to dismantle everything she holds close.Rather than leaning on genre spectacle alone, Dead First fuses the grim mechanics of a classic detective story with the destabilising logic of the supernatural. The novel moves between investigation and revelation, using its immortal antagonist to test the limits of suspense while steadily deepening the psychological and emotional stakes of the mystery.In a conversation with CinemaChords ahead of the book’s release, Compton discussed the craft challenges of keeping a multi-genre narrative tightly controlled, the narrative tension created by an antagonist who cannot be killed, and the ways themes of power, revenge, and consequence shape the novel beneath its supernatural whodunit framework.Follow Johnny Compton online: https://johnnycompton.com/Buy the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771888/dead-first-by-johnny-compton/

Roadside Attractions and Saban Films have now released King Ivory on digital platforms (VOD). The latest film from award-winning filmmaker John Swab (One Day as a Lion, Little Dixie) delivers a gritty, unflinching look at the deadly realities of fentanyl trafficking in the United States.

Based on extensive research with law enforcement, gangs, inmates, migrants and addicts, King Ivory positions itself as an exposé of the fentanyl epidemic and its far-reaching consequences. Swab, who both wrote and directed the film, presents a world where the drug trade touches all corners of society — from civilians to criminals to law enforcement — and no one remains untouched.

Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the story follows narcotics officer Layne West (James Badge Dale), whose job takes on new urgency when his own son, Jack (Jasper Jones), becomes addicted to fentanyl. Working alongside his partner Ty (George Carroll) and FBI agent Beatty (Rory Cochrane), West attempts to track down those responsible for fuelling the epidemic.

The film features a wide-reaching network of traffickers, from Ramón Garza (Michael Mando), a local figure for the Mexican cartel, to Holt Lightfeather (Graham Greene), the Indian Brotherhood War Chief, who continues to oversee trafficking operations from inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, known as “Big Mac”. Also involved is the local Irish Mob, led by George “Smiley” Greene (Ben Foster), his mother Ginger (Melissa Leo), and uncle Mickey (Ritchie Coster). During a visit to the prison, Lightfeather offers West a warning that underlines the film’s central message: “The cartels want your kids, the next generation, who want what is new, and fentanyl is new.”

King Ivory premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the 2024 Smithers Foundation Award.

CinemaChords sat down with James Badge Dale, Michael Mando, and Ben Foster to discuss how the film explores how no one remains untouched by the problem in the film, how the film tackles holding empathy for everyone caught in this crisis, including those doing harm, and how they each found that sliver of emotional truth that keeps their characters human, even at their worst…

The world of 28 Days Later has always been one of brutal, unrelenting dread. From the moment Cillian Murphy’s Jim awoke in a deserted London, audiences have been gripped by the terrifying reality of the Rage virus. The franchise was brought back to life last summer with the release of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later, which picked up nearly three decades on from the original outbreak and plunged audiences into a new era of horror. Now, the second film in the revitalised saga, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, is set to arrive this week, promising to turn that world on its head once again.

While the first film in this new trilogy marked a long-awaited return for Boyle and Garland, The Bone Temple sees the director’s chair filled by Nia DaCosta (Hedda, Candyman. “Top Boy”). An expert at blending sharp social commentary with visceral horror and high-stakes action, DaCosta was a savvy choice to take the reins and bring a new perspective to the franchise.

The third and final film in the trilogy has also recently been greenlit following early praise for The Bone Temple at advance screenings, meaning audiences can watch the film safe in the knowledge that this chapter is building towards a definitive conclusion.

With the infected now a fading threat, the story pivots to something far more unsettling: the survivors themselves, and the inhumanity they are capable of. The film explores the darkest corners of human nature as Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) forges a disturbing new relationship that could change the world, while Spike’s (Alfie Williams) encounter with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) — set up at the end of last year’s film — spirals into an inescapable nightmare.

In celebration of the film’s international theatrical release, we sat down with DaCosta to discuss the ideas shaping The Bone Temple — from the way history’s repeating cycles inform its vision of survival, belief and unchecked power, to the challenge of carving out a distinct directorial voice within a world so closely associated with Boyle and Garland.