Halloween 2025: Day 5

SurrealEstate S01E05-10

This rewatch has me hyped for season 2.

Blood Orange Zombie Killer, B. Nektar

Middling compared to the cherry and peach versions.

Hellraiser: Hellseeker

“Which do you find more exhilarating, Trevor, the pain or the pleasure? Personally, I prefer pain.”

The sixth film in the series would have been significantly better off if Hellraiser: Inferno didn’t exist, and at least a little helped if it wasn’t the immediately preceding film in the franchise. This is a better Hellraiser film, but a worse take on the same central conceit so it suffers from the comparison.

There is also an alternate version of a pivotal scene that is an improvement on what made it into the film. It seems inexplicable that someone actively chose to butcher this into what we got when there are so many other parts of the film that could have been cut down if they needed to save a few seconds.

Netherford Hall, Natania Barron (Love in Netherford #1)

Marketed as a sapphic “Pride and Prejudice and Witches”, which I don’t think does the book any favours (though I did buy it, so… I guess I’m part of the problem.) Apart from an obligatory rework of the famous opening lines there’s not really anything tying the two books together in either plot or characters. Not being a tired retread of an existing story strikes me as a good thing, but while the setting is very intriguing and I’ll probably continue with the series I found the actual plot a drag and the romance lacking. The biggest letdown is the climax, in which things just happen one after the other because it’s time for the plot to be over.