Pirate movies are one of those ideas that should be huge in theory but are actually rather disappointing in execution. For most of the second half of the 20th century, few swashbuckling movies made a dent with audiences, and some infamous failures like Cutthroat Island all but sank the genre to the depths of the cinematic ocean. Then, in 2003, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl came out and revitalized the genre for the next decade or so.
The film was a certified hit that proved pirates could still sell movie tickets, and there was indeed room for some weirdness in mainstream filmmaking. It spawned a highly successful franchise, including three movies that practically defined blockbuster cinema in the 2000s, and two subsequent efforts that undid all the goodwill its predecessors had achieved. But which Pirates of the Caribbean movie is the best? Nostalgia will certainly play a significant part in this ranking, but there should be a consensus on which the best and worst entries are. We might all love the first three movies, but we can also tell when the franchise started going downhill and why.
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‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ (2017)
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the latest entry into the franchise as of 2026. The plot sees a down-on-his-luck Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) on a race to get the Trident of Poseidon while pursued by the ghostly Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), who recently escaped from the Devil’s Triangle alongside his crew. Joining Sparrow on his quest are Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), an astronomer accused of being a witch, and Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), who seeks a way to break his father’s curse.
There are very few redeeming qualities to Dead Men Tell No Tales. There’s some witty humor, Bardem brings a ton of panache to what is otherwise a very simple role, and a few action set pieces manage to impress — at the very least, the franchise remained explosive until the very end. However, everything else is terribly tiresome: the love story between Henry and Carina is as bland as plain oatmeal, and the plot is somehow an uninspired retread of the franchise’s previous stories and an overly convoluted mess of ideas, none of which ever amount to anything coherent. Worst of all is Johnny Depp’s buffoonish, exhausting performance as Sparrow; what was once a wildly original and unpredictable character becomes a proper mockery of itself, a joke without a punchline. By this point, it was clear the franchise was way past its prime, and the box office reflected that, with the film becoming the lowest-grossing entry since the 2003 original. Talks of a sixth film are still ongoing, but judging by this last entry, the Pirates saga is best left at the bottom of the sea.
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4
‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ (2011)
Penelope Cruz and Al Pacino in Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger TidesImage via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the fourth film in the saga, and the first attempt to start a new story away from the overarching narrative of the original trilogy. Here, Sparrow encounters an old fling from his past, Angelica (Penélope Cruz), and the two board the legendary Blackbeard’s (Ian McShane) ship in search of the Fountain of Youth. Meanwhile, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), now a privateer in command of the HMS Providence, is also in search of the Fountain, putting him into conflict with Sparrow once again.
On Stranger Tides is all noise, no substance. Depp’s performance isn’t as exhausting as it is in the follow-up, but Sparrow was already starting to wear out his welcome. His romance with Cruz’s Angelica is nothing particularly special, even though the chemistry is actually strong. McShane and Rush are just going through the motions, putting little to no pizzaz into their performances, and the supporting cast is not much better (there’s a Judi Dench cameo that’s pretty fun, though). As for the plot, it’s more contrived than ever, only coming across as sillier considering how unambitious it is. Overall, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a completely forgettable movie, the equivalent of children playing with wooden ships, clashing them against each other and accompanying the action with louds “Booms” and “Bangs.”
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’ (2007)
The conclusion of the original trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a strong contender for the defining movie event of the 2000s. Picking up where its predecessor left off, the film sees a crew of pirates, including Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, and Barbossa, heading towards Davy Jones’ Locker to rescue Jack Sparrow. Meanwhile, Davy Jones (Billy Nighy) himself is under the control of Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), wreaking havoc across the seven seas. The pirates prepare to gather the Brethren Court and launch one final stand against the East India Trading Company to secure the future of pirates and their way of life.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is far from a perfect movie; in fact, it’s terribly flawed. The plot is needlessly convoluted and makes little to no sense, trying to do too many things at once and failing to provide a satisfying payoff to most of its narrative points. The movie also lags in the middle, to the point where you might start to wonder what you’re watching. However, the climax is so exhilarating that it almost makes up for the larger missteps—almost being the keyword. The climactic battle aboard the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman is one of the most thrilling sequences in Disney history, enhanced by incredible visual effects and Hans Zimmer‘s thunderous score. It has many moving parts, too many things happening at once, but the sheer spectacle of it all is more than enough to fully immerse you in the action. Davy Jones’ tragic ending and the conclusion to Will’s story with his father, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), further elevate the ending and the film overall.
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‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ (2003)
Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley look in the same direction as soldiers in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
As previously mentioned, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl started it all. The plot centers on blacksmith Will Turner, who joins forces with the eccentric but surprisingly capable Captain Jack Sparrow to rescue Elizabeth Swann, the governor’s daughter who has been kidnapped by a band of pirates. As it turns out, the pirates, led by Captain Barbossa, are actually an undead crew looking to break their curse by reuniting the pieces of the cursed Aztec treasure behind their misery.
Hardly anyone expected anything from a movie based on a theme park attraction, which is why The Curse of the Black Pearl was such a pleasant surprise. The film is quirky, delightful, and action-packed, featuring a near-perfect balance of humor and thrilling action, the likes of which we seldom see anymore. The romance story between Will and Elizabeth is charming and perfectly utilized, bolstered by the strong chemistry between Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. For his part, Rush is having the time of his life as the undead Barbossa, a villain equal parts compelling and off-putting. The highlight of the movie, however, is Depp’s Oscar-nominated performance as Jack Sparrow, a truly original creation unlike anything fans had seen before. Sparrow was like a breath of fresh air, a complete subversion of what people expected a pirate to look and sound like. Over twenty years later, The Curse of the Black Pearl is still a perfect adventure movie and the peak of the swashbuckling genre.
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‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ (2006)
Davy Jones plays the organ in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s ChestImage via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
The Curse of the Black Pearl is pretty perfect as a standalone adventure, but the film that truly represents the franchise at its best and most ambitious is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Picking up a year after its predecessor, the film sees Jack Sparrow hunted by the ruthless Davy Jones, the captain of the Flying Dutchman, to whom he owes a blood debt. Meanwhile, the wedding of Will and Elizabeth is interrupted by Lord Cutler Beckett, who arrests the latter while forcing the former to locate Sparrow’s magic compass, meaning to use it to locate the legendary Dead Man’s Chest.
Dead Man’s Chest features a lot of the franchise’s overall flaws: it’s overly long, needlessly convoluted, messy, and bombastic. Yet, it’s also ambitious, unrestrained, bold, and creative, a larger-than-life effort that perfectly encapsulates the true meaning of cinematic spectacle. The main trio is in fine shape, and the unexpected flirtation between Elizabeth and Jack is a welcome change. However, it’s Davy Jones who’s the real star of this show. Played by an Oscar-worthy Bill Nighy, Davy Jones is among the best cinematic villains of the noughties and a strong contender for the best and most original character of the decade as a whole. Visually, Jones is striking and incredibly realistic, marking a new peak of visual effects that has rarely been matched, let alone surpassed. In terms of performance, Nighy devours the scenery whole, actors and all, becoming a literal acting kraken. The result is an incredible, timeless villain in an incredible, timeless movie. Is it flawless? No. But Dead Man’s Chest is the best Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the epitome of everything the franchise ever hoped to be.
With Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently expressing his regret over the fact that they couldn’t make a third season of Mindhunter — executive producer David Fincher cited budgetary reasons while Sarandos blamed Fincher’s tight schedule — fans of investigative thrillers have been looking for alternatives. A handful of titles stand out: Black Bird, starring Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser, received excellent reviews on Apple TV, while Des, starring David Tennant, offered a decidedly British take on the genre. Now, a new series is taking on the mantle with terrific reviews and early viewership success.
Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, the show stars Emmy Rossum as an FBI investigator tracking a female serial killer, played by Lola Petticrew. The series also features Scoot McNairy, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, and Jake Lacy in supporting parts, with Rob Delaney, Campbell Scott, and Hope Davis appearing in guest roles. The series premiered with three episodes on Hulu on July 27 and will conclude its eight-episode first season on August 31. For a few days following its debut, the series held a perfect 100% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, which is exactly the kind of stamp of approval that attracts viewers these days. And people certainly showed up, with the show jumping to the top of the Disney+ and Hulu viewership charts. It was only recently replaced by Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis‘ The Shards.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
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🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
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He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
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But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
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You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
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The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
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You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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The Latest ‘Mindhunter’ Replacement Has a Higher Rotten Tomatoes Score than David Fincher’s Masterpiece
The two shows will no doubt continue facing off over the course of the next few weeks. According to FlixPatrol, The Shards is currently the number-one title on the global Disney+ chart, having replaced the show we’re talking about, Furious. The new crime drama no longer holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it seems to have settled at an extraordinary 98% score. The website’s consensus reads, “A tense thrill ride spearheaded by a blazing Emmy Rossum, this striking crime drama serves its stars and audiences Furious justice.” In her review, Collider’s Carly Lane wrote, “It might not be the clear-cut cat-and-mouse thriller that marketing has made it out to be, but that only makes more room for what Furious best embodies at its most successful: a barely contained scream of female rage.” Furious will return with a new episode on August 10. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
To this day, The X-Files is one of the most popular and beloved sci-fi shows ever created, and for good reason. The various adventures of Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have stood the test of time as not only one of the most influential shows in an era long before streaming, but also one of its most boundary-pushing. It’s a more than fitting legacy considering one of the many big names to work on the series is none other than the legendary Vince Gilligan, who worked on the series as a writer, director, and producer. Gilligan, of course, is now known as the creator of some of the best shows ever made, including Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and, most recently, Pluribus.
After producing 128 episodes of The X-Files, the series is easily what put Gilligan on the map as a major force in the television space, but that’s not to say the series was always smooth sailing. A number of X-Files episodes in its long-running career faced a fair amount of controversy and backlash, with one of the most controversial examples being Season 4’s second episode, “Home.” The infamous episode goes full Texas Chainsaw Massacre as Mulder and Scully go toe-to-toe with inbred farmers, and it’s a story that certainly pushes the limit of what can and can’t be on network television.
In a new conversation with Jenelle Riley hosted by The Paley Center for Media attended by Collider, Gilligan is also dumbfounded by “Home” as an episode, saying he “can’t believe it was on network TV.” However, Gilligan also admits that another episode proved to be even more controversial behind-the-scenes, and the team found a surprisingly simple way to get the story past the censors. Referring to Season 2, Episode 13, titled “Irresistible,” Gilligan said that broadcast standards and practices described the episode with the single note of “This episode is absolutely unacceptable for broadcast.” While that would be a sign to many to just toss the episode outright, creator Chris Carter found a novel solution to the problem:
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“Chris Carter, who is this everlasting genius, went through the computer file, and every time the word ‘necrophiliac’ was there, changed it to ‘death fetishist,’ and turned in the same exact script, and they were like ‘yeah okay, this one’s fine.”
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
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🏜️Dune
🚀Star Wars
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01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
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02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
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03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
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04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
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05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
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06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
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07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
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08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
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Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
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The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
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You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
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You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
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You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
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Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
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You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
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The Truth Is Still Out There in Ryan Coogler’s Upcoming ‘X-Files’ Reboot
The X-Files‘ historic TV run is truly something to be studied, but it’s also a story that isn’t over quite yet. Ryan Coogler, the visionary filmmaker behind Creed, Sinners, and the Black Panther movies (including the upcoming third chapter that stars David Jonsson and will be shot on film), is set to reboot the beloved series with a brand-new duo played by Danielle Deadwyler (Rooster) and Himesh Patel (The Odyssey). No word yet on how or if the new show will connect to the original series, but original star Gillian Anderson confirmed she has read a script from the project and has repeatedly praised Coogler as the perfect person for the job, even if she stopped short of confirming a return as Scully.
Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot will stream on Hulu at a later date, which is where the original series is currently available. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Release Date
1993 – 2018-00-00
Network
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FOX
Directors
Rob Bowman, David Nutter, R. W. Goodwin, Michael W. Watkins, Tony Wharmby, Daniel Sackheim, Michael Lange, Cliff Bole, David Duchovny, Jim Charleston, James Wong, Peter Markle, Rod Hardy, Thomas J. Wright, William A. Graham, Jerrold Freedman, Joe Napolitano, Kevin Hooks, Larry Shaw, Richard Compton, Tucker Gates, Allen Coulter, Barry K. Thomas, Brett Dowler
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Writers
jeffrey bell, Frank Spotnitz, Howard Gordon, David Amann, Darin Morgan, Steven Maeda, Greg Walker, Chris Ruppenthal, Kim Newton, Paul Brown, Sara B. Cooper, Thomas Schnauz, Tim Minear, William Gibson, Jeff Vlaming, Charles Grant Craig, Chip Johannessen, Chris Brancato, Daniel Arkin, Gillian Anderson, Jessica Scott, Jim Guttridge, Kenneth Biller, Larry Barber
Roomies, sometimes the love story you least expect to make it all the way from middle school ends up becoming the one you never forget. Marcus Scribner and Gracie Globerman have officially taken their longtime romance to the next level, turning years of history, reconnecting, and growing together into a trip down the aisle.
The ‘Black-ish’ and ‘Grown-ish’ star, 26, and his childhood sweetheart tied the knot on May 9, 2026, during an intimate dinner-party ceremony at République in Los Angeles. The couple later shared the news publicly through Vogue’s August weddings issue, giving fans a closer look at the relationship that began when they were just kids.
Scribner and Globerman first met in sixth grade at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. Scribner recalled spotting her during lunch and immediately wondering, “Who is that?” Although he was too shy to make a move at the time, the pair continued crossing paths through mutual friends. Globerman said they look back fondly on those middle school years, joking that their “archive” includes everything from trick-or-treating together to Scribner’s Halloween parties and their graduation day.
How They Went From “Yes” To “I Do”
Years later, Scribner popped the question on August 30, 2025, during a trip to Davis, California, where Globerman attended college. He planned a 48-hour anniversary getaway and arranged a picnic at an arboretum surrounded by friends. After grabbing deep-fried corn dogs at a local farmers market, Scribner got down on one knee and asked Globerman to marry him — and she said yes.
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When it came time to choose their wedding location, the couple said Los Angeles was especially meaningful because it was their hometown. They also wanted their living grandparents to be there to witness their first grandchild getting married. République ultimately became the perfect setting for the celebration, giving the couple the restaurant-style dinner party they envisioned without having to worry about arranging a traditional venue setup. Now, after years of friendship, romance, and a proposal that brought their story full circle, Marcus Scribner and Gracie Globerman are officially husband and wife.
Folks Turned The Comments Into A Whole Party
One Instagram user @luigi_muah commented, “Congrats to them 👏❤️”
This Instagram user @_baeoftheday_ said, “That should be me 😭😂”
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And, Instagram user @itsyannniiii added, “🥳🥳🥳”
Meanwhile, Instagram user @90scherrieday wrote, “Why they lowkey look alike 😂😂”
While Instagram user @rollinwit_alexis said, “that’s not very blackish of you🫣! jk jk i’m glad he found love”
Then Instagram user @just_zerah shared, “Congratulations to them 👏🎉🎉”
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Finally, Instagram user @slayby2ella added, “😍im so happy for them”
Among the most surprising takeaways from the recently revealed Emmy nominations was that All’s Fair, the critically panned legal drama series featuring Kim Kardashian, had received two nods. The show, executive-produced by the prolific hitmaker Ryan Murphy, currently holds a 6% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Most viewers were seemingly of the opinion that the show was too camp even by Murphy’s standards. But the television mogul has made a career out of over-the-top dramas, several of which have received significant backlash. Collider’s review of the Murphy-produced Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story ran with the headline, “It’s 2025, Ryan Murphy, Please Stop Making These Serial Killer Sob Stories.” But Murphy remains as prolific as ever, and going by the reception for his latest offering, just as polarizing.
The show is Murphy’s third new release of 2026, following the sci-fi horror series The Beauty, and the period romance hit Love Story. All three titles premiered on FX and are available to stream on Hulu. The new series is headlined by Igby Rigney and Kaia Gerber, and is based on celebrated author Bret Easton Ellis‘ autofictional novel. The story is inspired by Easton Ellis’ semi-autobiographical youth at an elite prep school, but it takes a turn into genre territory with a murder subplot. As with most Murphy shows, this one, too, has benefited from divisive reviews. According to FlixPatrol, it jumped to the top of the global Disney+ viewership charts immediately after its two-episode premiere on August 5.
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Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
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Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
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🩺Scrubs
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01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
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02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
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03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
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04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
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05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
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06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
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07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
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08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
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Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
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Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
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County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
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Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
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Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
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Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
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Ryan Murphy’s New Show Is Dividing Audiences and Critics
We’re talking, of course, about The Shards. The show currently holds a 55% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “The combination of Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis should elicit magnanimously pulpy TV, but instead The Shards relegates itself to obtuse style with mildly entertaining substance.” In her review for Collider, Garbrielle Moss wrote, “This is a Ryan Murphy show, so, of course, there are some problematic moments: an unnamed disability is handled with a true minimum of sensitivity, and while the show’s running theme of teenagers being targeted by sexually predatory adults is sometimes handled with depth, care, and thoughtfulness, there are also moments when it’s played for laughs.” The Shards will return with two new episodes on August 12. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Release Date
August 5, 2026
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Directors
Max Minghella, Crystle Roberson Dorsey, Michael Uppendahl, Ryan Murphy
Writers
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Juli Weiner, Charles Rogers, Bret Easton Ellis, Ryan Murphy, Lenore Zion
Kylie Jenner celebrated her upcoming 29th birthday surrounded by famous friends and family, but her boyfriend, Timothée Chalamet, was not photographed among the guests arriving at her Beverly Hills mansion. The Kylie Cosmetics founder hosted an intimate “princess kitty”-themed party Friday evening ahead of officially turning 29 on Monday.
Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Hailey Bieber were among those joining the festivities, while Kylie documented her bold pink outfit, playful decorations and three elaborate birthday cakes on Instagram. Chalamet’s absence from the arrival photographs does not confirm that he skipped the party, and neither he nor Kylie has publicly addressed whether he attended privately.
Khloé Kardashian, Hailey & Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Tristan Thompson, Devon Lee Carlson, Sydney Lee Carlson, Duke Nicholson & Kelsey Calemine at Kylie Jenner’s birthday party last night in Beverly Hills pic.twitter.com/mxFpuMWZVi
While several members of Kylie’s inner circle were seen heading into her multimillion-dollar home, Chalamet was not pictured making an entrance. The 30-year-old actor and reality star were last publicly seen together approximately one month ago at the World Cup final. During that outing, the couple appeared affectionate as they kissed while watching the game.
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Their relationship has frequently been kept away from social media, meaning Chalamet’s absence from Kylie’s posts does not necessarily indicate anything about their status. Kylie also did not share photographs of every person who attended Friday’s celebration.
Kylie Jenner Embraces Her ‘Princess Kitty’ Theme
Kylie fully committed to the party’s hot-pink aesthetic. The mother of two wore a fitted pink latex minidress with matching sandals covered in feathers and fringe. She completed the look with a bright-pink manicure and posed for a closet selfie in front of her extensive collection of Hermès Birkin bags. Her party accessories included a pink feather boa, rhinestone tiara, and a bedazzled drinking cup.
Before her guests arrived, Kylie shared glimpses of her decorations and documented the pampering session that helped her prepare for the evening.
Hailey Bieber Mixes Drinks For The Party Guests
Hailey helped celebrate her close friend by mixing drinks for those attending. The Rhode founder wore fitted tan pants, keeping the foundation of her outfit understated before adding accessories that matched Kylie’s theme. Hailey completed her party look with a pink feather boa and rhinestone tiara similar to the ones Kylie wore.
Khloé and Kim were also photographed heading to their younger sister’s mansion. Kim brought her youngest daughter, Chicago, eight, who may have spent time with Kylie’s daughter Stormi. The cousins are the same age and have grown up closely together.
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Kylie Jenner Shows Off Three Custom Birthday Cakes
Kylie revealed that her friends had three different cakes custom-made for the celebration. The first featured white frosting covered with colorful gemstone decorations, coordinating with her sparkling cup and rhinestone party accessories.
Another cake was designed to resemble Kylie’s famous hourglass figure wearing a pink bikini. The word “meow” was written across the playful creation.
Her third cake continued the cat-inspired concept with decorations created specifically for “Kitty Kylie’s” birthday celebration.
Kylie’s Previous Birthday Had A More Elegant Theme
Kylie’s latest party looked dramatically different from the sophisticated dinner Kendall Jenner organized for her 28th birthday last year. That celebration featured a long dining table positioned on a gravel path in the front lawn.
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The tablescape included red and white flowers, lit candles, raspberries, tomatoes and red floral-painted plates and napkins. “I have the best sister @kendalljenner,” Kylie wrote while sharing a photograph of the arrangement.
The reality star wore a black lace Bardot top for the meal and showed off a large birthday cake covered with raspberries and daisies.
Hailey also attended that celebration and filmed Kylie blowing out her candles while seated beside her.
Kylie Jenner Celebrates With Her Closest Circle
Kylie’s early birthday bash brought together several of the women closest to her, including her sisters and Hailey.
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While Chalamet was noticeably missing from the available arrival photographs and Kylie’s social media updates, there is no confirmation that he was absent from the mansion for the entire evening. The couple’s limited public visibility has generated questions about them before, but their affectionate World Cup appearance last month remains their most recent confirmed outing.
For now, Kylie appears focused on celebrating her birthday with her family, friends and three extravagant cakes, while Chalamet’s whereabouts during the party remain unclear.
There’s a specific feeling you get watching a stunt and knowing, somewhere in the back of your mind, that a real person actually did that. Not a digital double, or a green screen, but an actual human being hanging off an actual jet or freezing in an actual river. That feeling has mostly disappeared from big blockbusters over the last couple decades, buried under so much CGI that nothing on screen feels real.
The six movies on this list are proof that feeling never actually died, it just got rarer. Every one of them found a way to put something real on screen. A good adventure movie is supposed to make your heart rate climb a little. These are the six that still know how to do that without cheating.
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6
‘Life of Pi’ (2012)
Image via 20th Century Studios
Ang Lee built a tiger that doesn’t exist and somehow made it feel more real than most animals I’ve seen in actual nature documentaries. Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger sharing a lifeboat with Pi (Suraj Sharma) after a shipwreck, was almost entirely computer generated, and it still took home an Oscar for visual effects because nobody in the theater could tell the difference.
What keeps this movie with me, though, isn’t the tiger. It’s the very end, when adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) offers the writer listening to his story a second version of events, a much darker, more human one, without any animals in it, and asks which version he’d rather believe. The movie never tells you which story actually happened. It just lets you sit with the fact that you’d rather believe the one with the tiger in it, and that says something true about why we tell stories like this in the first place.
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5
‘The Martian’ (2015)
Mark Watney wearing his spacesuit and kneeling on Mars’ dusty surface in The MartianImage via 20th Century Studios
Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets left behind on Mars, alone, with barely any supplies, and instead of panicking, his first move is to calmly explain to a camera that he’s going to have to, in his exact words, science the hell out of this. That line tells you everything about why this movie works. Ridley Scott could have made a bleak survival story out of this premise, and instead made something genuinely funny, even while a man is growing potatoes in his own waste just to survive another few weeks.
The rescue sequence near the end had me leaning forward in my seat despite already knowing, on some level, that a movie built entirely around problem-solving wasn’t going to end with the problem unsolved. That’s the real trick of The Martian. It makes competence itself feel like the most thrilling thing on screen.
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4
‘The Revenant’ (2015)
Will Poulter as Jim Bridger with a gun in ‘The Revenant’Image via 20th Century Studios
Leonardo DiCaprio ate raw bison liver for one scene in this movie, and that’s not even close to the hardest thing he does in it. Hugh Glass gets mauled by a bear in a scene so physical and drawn out that it stops feeling like a stunt and starts feeling like something you shouldn’t be allowed to watch this closely. Alejandro G. Iñárritu shot the whole film using only natural light, which meant DiCaprio spent months freezing, actually freezing, in real rivers just to get the shot.
DiCaprio finally won his long-overdue Oscar for this role, and watching the film, it’s hard to argue he didn’t earn every bit of it through sheer physical punishment alone. This isn’t an adventure movie about excitement. It’s one about endurance, about how far a human body can be pushed and still refuse to stop moving, and it commits to that idea more fully than almost anything else on this list.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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3
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury RoadImage via Warner Bros. Pictures
I saw this movie in theaters not knowing much about it going in, and I remember walking out afterward feeling like my heart rate hadn’t actually come down yet.George Miller shot this thing almost entirely with real stunt drivers, real vehicles, and real explosions across an actual desert, and you can feel that reality in every single frame. Nothing about the chases looks like it’s being generated on a computer, because almost none of it was.
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Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Max (Tom Hardy) barely stop moving for the entire runtime, and somehow the film still finds room for a real emotional core underneath all that momentum. Miller even released a black-and-white cut of the film later, closer to his original vision, and watching it that way makes the practical stunt work even more obvious. This is what pure, uncut adventure filmmaking looks like when nobody’s cutting corners.
2
‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)
Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible FalloutImage via Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruise broke his ankle jumping between two buildings in London while filming this movie, and rather than cut around it, the final film keeps the footage of him limping and wincing in visible pain right after the landing. That’s the whole philosophy behind this franchise by this point that if it can be done for real, Cruise is going to do it for real, audience safety briefings be damned.
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The HALO jump sequence, where Ethan Hunt skydives from an altitude high enough to require oxygen, was actually performed by Cruise himself, not a stunt double, not a green screen. Christopher McQuarrie builds the whole movie around stunts that are dangerous, and somehow the plot, dense with double crosses and fake identities, never gets lost underneath all that. This is the entry in the franchise where everything, story and stunts both, finally line up at once.
1
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
Tom Cruise as Maverick flying a plane in Top Gun- Maverick’ (2022).Image via Paramount Pictures
Every pilot shot in this movie is real footage taken from inside actual F-18 fighter jets, with the actors themselves operating the cameras while pulling real G-forces, and you can feel that authenticity in a way no amount of CGI could ever fake. Tom Cruise spent years just getting the cast physically prepared to handle flying like that before filming even started.
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But the reason this movie actually got to me was watching Val Kilmer return as Iceman, knowing that Kilmer’s real voice had been damaged by his own cancer treatment, and hearing the film use AI-restored audio to let him speak just one more time on screen. That scene is about an actor and a character both fighting to still have a voice, and it’s the reason this legacy sequel ended up hitting harder than the original film ever did.
Of all the casting coups performed by Marvel Studios over the years — the franchise has prominently featured legends such as Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins, and Cate Blanchett — few can top Robert Redford in Captain America: Civil War. The movie, which also marked the MCU debut of directors Joe and Anthony Russo, was modeled on the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, which became massively popular during Redford’s heyday as a leading man. In fact, he headlined some of the best ones. Who can forget All the President’s Men? In addition to that classic, Redford also starred in another movie that influenced Captain America: Civil War; it’s a movie that director Quentin Tarantino is a massive fan of.
Tarantino has praised the movie on several occasions as being a product of its times, highlighting how it turned cynicism against the government into populist entertainment. The film, he pointed out, was about as mainstream as it could be. It also featured Faye Dunaway alongside Redford, and was directed by Sydney Pollack. The movie follows a CIA agent whose job is to analyze print media from around the world, which Tarantino pointed out isn’t exactly a cinematic profession. But, he said in an appearance on Bill Maher‘s podcast, the movie found a way to make even reading on screen exciting. The film in question is currently streaming for free in the United States, where audiences who haven’t yet checked it out can do so.
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Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz Which Taylor Sheridan Show Do You Belong In? Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
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⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
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01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
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02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
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03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
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04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
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05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
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06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
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07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
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08
Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
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09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
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10
When it’s over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
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Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
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🤠 Yellowstone
🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
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You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
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You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
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Here’s Where You Can Watch the Classic Conspiracy Thriller for Free
We’re talking, of course, about Three Days of the Condor. Released in 1975, the film was a major hit, grossing more than $40 million against a reported budget of $7.8 million. The movie received an Oscar nomination in the Best Film Editing category, and is now sitting at a “Certified Fresh” 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “This post-Watergate thriller captures the paranoid tenor of the times, thanks to Sydney Pollack’s taut direction and excellent performances from Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.” You can watch the film on Pluto TV in the United States. Redford, who passed away in 2025, made his final screen appearance in the blockbuster Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
It might be a superhero movie and an adaptation of a Greek epic that are stealing the theatrical spotlight, but horror remains a popular choice for movie lovers in 2026. Already this year, the devil’s favorite genre has delivered some of 2026’s best movies, including Severance star Adam Scott headlining the underrated Hokum, Sam Raimi finally returning to the genre with Send Help, Nia DaCosta continuing one of horror’s best franchises with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and Kane Parsons breaking records with his directorial debut Backrooms.
But the best horror entry from 2026 so far, and perhaps one of the best of the decade, is undeniably Focus Features’ Obsession. Curry Barker‘s breakout masterpiece has certainly cemented itself as one of the most astonishing success stories of this century, becoming the highest-grossing non-animated original film of the past decade, the first film with a sub-million production budget to earn over $200 million this century, and even the highest-grossing original horror movie of this century. The movie was also a huge hit with critics, with Inde Navarrette‘s jaw-dropping performance destined to earn Academy recognition in 2027.
As Obsession continues proving a favorite on the streaming charts, another new horror arrival has established its place among the best on Prime Video. At the time of writing, The Devil’s Mouth, which was first released on July 29, is the most-streamed movie on Prime Video in the world. The pulse-racing popcorn flick follows a group of friends as their venture into an underwater cave system is rudely interrupted by a vicious bull shark. Avengers: Doomsday‘s Kathryn Newtonand X-Men: Apocalypse‘s Lana Condorstar alongside Gavin Casalegno and Nico Hiraga in the movie, which was directed by Jeff Wadlow, who previously delivered the 2024 sleeper streaming hit Imaginary.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
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🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
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He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
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But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
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You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
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The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
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You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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How Have Critics Reacted to ‘The Devil’s Mouth’?
A movie such as The Devil’s Mouth will be more interested in streaming figures than critical acclaim, but it is impossible to ignore just how negative the reception to the film has been. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Wadlow’s creature feature has earned just 34% from critics and 16% from audiences. One critic described it as “not bad enough for it to be fun, ridiculous but not enough to inspire a drinking game,” whilst another said it is “one of those ‘I hate all these characters and can’t wait to see them die’ movies.” Make up your own mind on Prime Video now.
Make sure to stay tuned to Collider for all the latest streaming stories.
Image of Netflix logoImage via rootstock / Shutterstock.com
2026 has been one of the biggest years in horror history so far, with two of the most memorable smash hits releasing in just the last few months. The first horror movie that immediately comes to mind is Obsession, directed by the young Curry Barker. After grossing over $475 million at the box office against a $750,000 budget — this alone is enough to make it one of the most profitable movies of all time — Obsession is now streaming on Peacock, and the film is expected to earn some Oscar nominations come next year. The other horror movie that took over the world in 2026 was Backrooms, the A24-backed feature directed by the young Kane Parsons. After grossing almost $400 million at the global box office, Backrooms is finally set to arrive on HBO Max soon.
Before Backrooms or Obsession, though, there was another horror movie that debuted in late February that was a smash hit. The film in question is Scream 7, the latest sequel from the iconic horror franchise that first rose to fame in the 1990s. After grossing over $200 million at the box office against a $45 million budget, Scream 7 has since been available to stream on Paramount Plus. However, earlier installments in the franchise, including the first three Scream movies, have been available to watch on Netflix for a while now. Unfortunately, the streamer announced this week that the last day to watch the original Scream trilogy will be on August 23. Scream (2022) andScream 6 (2023) will remain streaming on Netflix even after the older movies are removed from the platform.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
Advertisement
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
Advertisement
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
Advertisement
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
Advertisement
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
Advertisement
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
Advertisement
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
Advertisement
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
Advertisement
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
Advertisement
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Advertisement
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Advertisement
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Advertisement
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Advertisement
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Advertisement
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Advertisement
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
Advertisement
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Advertisement
Is Paramount Making Another ‘Scream’ Movie?
Paramount has yet to officially confirm if Scream 8 is in the works, but stars such as Neve Campbell have expressed a desire to come back and do more. After this latest film grossed over $200 million at the box office, despite all the controversy and boycotts surrounding it, it would be surprising if Paramount wasn’t searching for some way to bring the franchise back to the big screen. Many fans promised not to see Scream 7 in theaters or on streaming once Paramount fired Melissa Barrera after she voiced her pro-Palestine stance on social media. Her co-star, Jenna Ortega, vowed not to come back to the franchise in solidarity with Barrera.
Check out the original Scream trilogy before it’s removed from Netflix later this month, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the franchise.
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Release Date
December 20, 1996
Runtime
112 minutes
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Writers
Kevin Williamson
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Producers
Bob Weinstein, Cary Woods, Cathy Konrad, Harvey Weinstein
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