Smile turns trauma into something that follows you. Smile 2 puts that trauma onstage. From Skye Riley’s public unraveling to the way we consume famous women in crisis, this essay looks at what changed when the curse gained an audience, and where the franchise should go next.

Netflix’s Monster increasingly blurs the boundary between dramatisation and true crime fanfiction. But when real names, victims and unresolved histories are involved, how much creative freedom should writers actually have?

Christopher Nolan has built an ancient world with extraordinary physical weight. The problem is that his adaptation sometimes seems less willing to trust the gods, monsters and strange mythology already living inside it.

Bear wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. What if the horror of Obsession isn’t that the wish becomes corrupted—but that it gives him exactly what he asked for?