Léa Seydoux has joined Mikey Madison in the cast of A24's take on Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Madison will be playing twin sisters, while Seydoux's character is "a scheming lady-in-waiting who is conniving her way to the top."

According to the publication, the film sees "a mad prince take in the noble class to his castle while a plague devastates the peasantry" and "a long-lost twin, hidden among the lower class, enter the castle and into a decadent world of orgies, opium, power schemes, revenge and decapitations."

Although based on Poe's 1842 short story, A24 is describing the movie as "wildly revisionist and darkly comedic." The original Gothic tale follows Prince Prospero as he attempts to avoid a disease ravaging the land by hiding in his abbey. While he's there, he hosts a masquerade ball for other nobility, but he has a surprise guest in the form of a mysterious figure dressed as a plague victim. The story was previously adapted into movie starring Vincent Price in 1964.

Production is due to start next month. The movie will be helmed by Charlie Polinger, who made his directorial debut last year with the psychological horror The Plague, starring Joel Edgerton.

As for Seydoux, she's starred in movies like Dune: Part Two, No Time to Die, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, while Madison won an Oscar for her role in 2024's comedy-drama Anora.

The Masque of the Red Death doesn't have a release date yet. While we wait for more updates, check out our guide to the other most exciting upcoming horror movies.

One of the core elements of Lovecraftian storytelling is the idea that brushing up against knowledge changes you—the fear is not that you look upon something comprehensible, it's that you look at something no-one else can understand and, just for a fleeting moment, get that it is possible. Then you need to go back to your ordinary life.

The creator of Painkiller and current creative director of Witchfire, Adrian Chmielarz, sounds a little like a Cthulhu-stricken Lovecraft protagonist in his recent interview with Gamesindustry.biz. The cosmic entity in question? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has confounded executive suits and game developers alike by raking in enormous success despite being built by a core team of 30 people (and a large list of contractors).

At the very least, Chmielarz is talking from a place of comparison with Witchfire's similarly-sized team of just under 30 devs—he's cognisant of the above quibble, stating later in the interview "we use outsourcing, and Sandfall Interactive used a lot of outsourcing". And he boggles not at the size, but at the relative amount of novices on Sandfall's roster.

"We only wanted to work with the best," Chmielarz explains, "Because during the development of Bulletstorm or Gears, I had a taste of that, and then I thought, 'This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.' So I don't care if the project is big or small, I only want to work with like-minded people: really passionate, really talented people."

He uses Valve as an example of the kind of team he wanted to create: "Valve hires people that can be self-organized. They don't really need a producer with a whip in order to create something. But when you have passionate people, this comes naturally. You also remove a lot of traction, because you just mention something to the guy, he gets it very quickly, you iterate, and then it's done."

In other words, "There is this old saying that ten professional soldiers are as effective as a hundred amateurs, or even a thousand, and that's quite simply true. So when you have a small team, it's really important that you have the best people."

Which is where Clair Obscur comes in, because ostensibly, it's a team of first-timers. Its composer was stumbled into on soundcloud, its lead writer from Reddit. Director Guillaume Broche seemingly has a sharp eye for talented newcomers and the guts to give them a chance, rather than hiring industry vets.

"Last week I learned that the guys behind Expedition 33 hired a lot of newbies, people who [hadn't made] a game before. And now my world view is ruined, and I don't know what to do.

"Here we have a game that looks AAA to me, it's just phenomenal in every aspect. There's a deep story, deep method of work, good gameplay, great visuals and sound. It's a very coherent product. And then you hear that the core team was 30 people, half of which were first timers. And I'm like, 'I don't know what to believe anymore.'

"Obviously, we didn't make Witchfire with 26 people, because we use outsourcing, and Sandfall Interactive used a lot of outsourcing—when you roll the credits on Expedition 33, it's 10 or 15 minutes long. But still, that doesn't change the fact that the core team responsible for the vast majority of the game and the ideas and execution is around 30 people, half of which are new. So it's the biggest mystery in gaming right now."

He's got some theories, though. For instance, Clair Obscur's a pretty cleverly put-together game: "When you actually look at Expedition 33 from a designer's point of view, there's an incredible amount of smart decisions that allow them to make a game that looks AAA, but is in reality full of shortcuts.

"I'll give you two examples: one is very easy, the other is more complex. The easy one is the enemies don't have faces. You don't really think about it, because the main characters have faces, but 99% of enemies don't have a face that you need to animate.

"A more complex one is that I couldn't understand how such a small studio can produce such high-quality cinematics. But then when you watch it, 99% of these cut scenes are actually theatre plays, meaning the characters do not interact with the environment … It takes a lot of effort and time to match animations with the environment, because even an act as simple as moving a chair to the right suddenly becomes a super, super complicated thing."

This also tracks with how Sandfall Interactive handled its voice actors. Clair Obscur has some top-billing VO talent, including Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis, Ben Starr, and Jennifer English. But rather than do the AAA thing of hiring them for expensive, in-depth mocap sessions, Sandfall used its own in-house mocap actors.

These actors did an incredible job, mind: Maxence Cazorla's ability to render heartbreak on his face is written all over Gustave in-game. But whenever you're looking at a cutscene in Clair Obscur, you're actually seeing two performances from two separate actors punched into one virtual body. Which leads to situations like the poor Charlie Cox being a bit ambushed as he's credited for a performance he spent around four hours recording.

This is ultimately what Chmielarz thinks let Sandfall punch above its weight, and what he believes is "missing in AAA games, which is finding shortcuts, [rather than] brute forcing."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: late spawns suck for everyone in Arc Raiders, not just those who come into matches with just 11 minutes on the clock. Now, after months of player complaints and debates around this contentious feature, the devs have finally addressed the topic.

"[Late spawns] is also another topic we've been discussing a lot," Embark Studios design lead Virgil Watkins says in an interview with GamesRadar. "It's another one of those interesting things of data versus perception. We 100% acknowledge the whole thing of, 'Man, I came in to do that trial and now I clearly don't have enough time to do that, and that sucks, so I'm just going to leave,' or whatever. That aspect is definitely not great."

"But similar to the perception of free kits versus what they do, the perception around late joining and what it affords you has been quite interesting. Players are like, 'The loot's all gone,' or whatever else. But players who join late economically profit way more than people who don't. The session, when they are fresh, does eventually get quieter, and very often they come across the remnants of fights or can maybe take out bigger drones or hit high-ticket areas more readily than other players. So that's been a very interesting thing to look at."

I'm not sure I've ever benefited economically from joining a raid late. Sure, I've stumbled across a dead Leaper before and stripped whatever meat was left on the bones, but that tends not to be a whole lot—Arc Raiders players truly leave nothing to waste. Have you ever seen them strip a Matriarch? I have. They're like locusts, swarming around the carcass, stripping it of any value in seconds. It's a very impressive sight to behold.

But I do understand the concept of there technically being enough loot in a match for everyone to take at least something back with them. But cloth and plastic parts don't go as hard as Bastion Cells or Queen Reactors.

On the other hand, I get why late spawning is implemented. Watkins even points out that the "original intent with the late join system" was to ensure maps had multiple players in them until the very end. The theory being that if everyone spawned in at the beginning, most players would leave after 10 minutes or so. Leaving the few remaining players "running around by themselves, effectively", which would be quite lonesome.

But that doesn't negate the fact that late spawns, on the whole, just kind of suck. If you spawn in late, chances are you're left with loot scraps and don't have enough time to complete objectives. And if you encounter someone who's spawned in late after getting into a couple of PvP fights, you'll be at a disadvantage as you're going up against someone with a fresh kit.

But in the meantime, all we can really do is 'git gud' and work with what time we're given. "Okay, well, my plan A isn't possible, I'm gonna do my plan B or C now instead," Watkins says. "The amount of loot we spawn, where it's spawned, where the spawn points are—it's all set up in a way that there should be plenty of stuff for players to do."

"With things like trials, where that is the only objective, then fine, that's kind of off the table, and that really sucks, because that was the time you had set aside for it. I think trying to do more on that side of things is where I want to look next. Coming in with a dedicated purpose, and that's been undercut by the late join, is where I'd want to remove the pain point first."

Evil Dead director Sam Raimi's upcoming movie Send Help seems to be winning over horror fans, as the survival thriller debuts to overwhelmingly positive first reactions.

Following an early press screening, first reactions to the Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien starrer are trickling in on social media, with many moviegoers praising the film's comedic elements, even going as far as to compare it to Raimi's 2009 flick Drag Me to Hell. "Send Help is a MASSIVE win for the Drag Me to Hell fans!... At times feels like Raimi's sadistic take on Phantom Thread – a karmic undressing of monstrous man-babies in an inverted power dynamic," said Film Peak's Griffin Schiller.

The critic went on to praise McAdams and O'Brien's performances, "Provides the perfect stage for McAdams & O'Brien to showcase their impressive range and versatility as Raimi tests the limits of our sympathies mining the tension between our perception of Linda and Bradley and their true nature." Forbes' Jeff Conway echoed, "Rachel McAdams gives a career-best performance! Dylan O'Brien is so good in this easy crowd-pleaser from Sam Raimi's witty cinematic vision."

Many are celebrating Raimi's return to the horror genre as a director after 15 years. Slash Film's Bill Bria writes, "Send Help is a deliciously sadistic & demented thriller that only Sam Raimi can deliver…This may very well be the grossest, most disgusting 3D movie yet made." Similarly, ScreenRant's Todd Gilchrist said, "Send Help is a tremendous reminder of how gifted Sam Raimi is at entertaining audiences while tormenting actors. Aided by a fantastic script by Shannon and Swift, Raimi delivers a movie that's smart, suspenseful, and incredibly funny."

Directed by Raimi and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, Send Help stars McAdams as a hardworking but underappreciated employee named Linda, and O'Brien as her younger, arrogant boss Bradley. But when the two become stranded on a deserted island after their company plane crashes, the power dynamic shifts and survivalist Linda takes the reins.

Send Help hits theatres on January 30. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies, and keep up with upcoming horror movies heading your way.