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Whether you’re constantly mining for hidden gems or just looking for a change of pace, Sundance Now is an excellent option for when you want a great movie you haven’t seen before.

The streaming service boasts a collection of artful titles in a wide array of genres. There are as many intimate family dramas as there are thrilling true-crime documentaries and deeply quirky comedies. So where should you start?

Listed in no particular order, here are 15 of the best films to stream on Sundance Now.

1. The Vicious Kind (2009)

Credit: 72nd Street Productions

If you preferred Adam Scott in Party Down over Parks and Recreation, then you simply must watch The Vicious Kind. Written and directed by Lee Toland Krieger, this cruelly undersung drama centers on a dysfunctional family of three on a tumultuous Thanksgiving holiday. When an idealistic college boy (Alex Frost) brings home a new girlfriend (Brittany Snow), his misanthropic older brother (Scott) and tone-deaf father (J.K. Simmons) scramble and scrap to make an impression…but not necessarily a good one. The whole ensemble is excellent, but Adams is the standout, providing a performance that’s sharply funny, unapologetically dark, and unnervingly sexy. — Kristy Puchko, Deputy Entertainment Editor

How to watch: The Vicious Kind is streaming on Sundance Now.

2. Short Term 12 (2013)

Before Kaitlyn Dever got Booksmart and Brie Larson became Captain Marvel, they co-starred in writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12. Set in a group home for troubled teens, this indie drama chronicles the bond between supervisor Grace (Larson) and resident Jayden (Dever). As the young women open up to one another, audiences experience a sobering revelation about life’s fragility. Rami Malek, LaKeith Stanfield, John Gallagher Jr., and more star in this beautiful portrait of compassion and community. Bring tissues; this one is a tearjerker. —Alison Foreman, Entertainment Reporter

How to watch: Short Term 12 is streaming on Sundance Now.

3. Archipelago (2010)

Credit: Artificial Eye via Sundance Now

Treat yourself to some exquisite tension with Archipelago. Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, this holiday from hell follows the ambivalent Edward (Tom Hiddleston) on an island vacation with his well-to-do mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard). Ostensibly, the trip should serve as Edward’s send-off before a lengthy volunteer trip to Africa. But as the scenes churn and the characters’ blood boils, the family’s deep-seated conflicts chart a new course. —A.F.

How to watch: Archipelago is streaming on Sundance Now.

4. Chicago 10 (2007)

Whether or not you were a fan of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, this account of the same true story is well worth your time. Mashable’s Adam Rosenberg writes: “Brett Morgen’s 2007 documentary is a movie for people who don’t like documentaries. It sews together archival footage with animated courtroom scenes based on the trial transcript and is voiced by a star-studded cast, with all of it driven forward by the beat of a soundtrack brimming with hard-charging protest music. There’s an energy here that you don’t often find in other docs.”

How to watch: Chicago 10 is streaming on Sundance Now.

5. Boy (2010)

Credit: Transmission Films/Madman Entertainment/Kino Lorber

Before he had us cackling over What We Do In The Shadows or cheering for Thor: Ragnarok, writer-director-actor Taika Waitti awed critics with this quirky coming-of-age comedy. James Rolleston stars as Boy, an imaginative 11-year-old Maori kid in 1984 New Zealand. Though a bit of a misfit, Boy finds confidence in impersonating his idol, Michael Jackson. But when his estranged and eccentric father (Waititi) returns home, Boy hopes he’ll finally have a cool guy to lead him into manhood. If you know Waititi’s work, you know nothing will be that simple. Instead, it’ll get weird, hilarious, and defiantly sweet. —K.P.

How to watch: Boy is streaming on Sundance Now.

6. God’s Own Country (2017)

Ammonite writer-director Francis Lee made his feature debut with another tale of queer romance. Set in rural West Yorkshire, England, God’s Own Country centers on the love that blossoms between a young but hardened farmer (Josh O’Connor) and a handsome Romanian migrant worker (Alec Secareanu). Forget the showy Hollywood theatrics. Lee and his incredible leading men create a slow-burn drama about tough guys with tender hearts. The result is a critically heralded film that is breath-taking and pulse-racing. —K.P.

How to watch: God’s Own Country is streaming on Sundance Now.

7 . Bad Lucky Goat (2017)

Credit: Sundance Now

Bad Lucky Goat is something truly special. Colombian director Samir Oliveros makes his debut in this pseudo-heist film about two siblings living on the island of Port Paradise. When Corn (Honlenny Huffington) and his sister Rita (Kiara Howard) run over a goat in their father’s truck, the teens must race to have the truck repaired — and to get rid of the dead goat’s body. At just 75 minutes, this sweet and short saga is a steal. —A.F.

How to watch: Bad Lucky Goat is streaming on Sundance Now.

8. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)

With seven confirmed victims, Aileen Wuornos remains among the most notorious female serial killers in American history. Documentarian Nick Broomfield interviewed Wuornos first for his 1992 film Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. But it’s his revisitation of the subject in Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, that deserves your attention. Here Broomfield takes a close look at Wuornos in the months leading up to her death and asks whether she was of sound mind at the time Florida officials carried out her execution. — A.F.

How to watch: Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer is streaming on Sundance Now.

9. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

Credit: Zeitgeist Films

The late Hedy Lamarr was an actor, inventor, and rule-breaker. In Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, writer-director-documentarian Alexandra Dean examines Lamarr’s life from her childhood in Austria through her time as a Hollywood icon and groundbreaking technology developer. It caps off with a fascinating look at her reclusive final years. Lamarr makes for an enchanting subject, and Dean’s attention to detail makes this film an especially well-crafted portrait. —A.F.

How to watch: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr is streaming on Sundance Now.

10. Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth (2019)

Documentarian Jeanie Finlay offers her sensitive lens to a beautiful story in Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth. Freddy McConnell, who is a transgender man, gave birth to his son in January 2018. Together, McConnell and Finlay chronicle the pregnancy and the world’s reaction to McConnell’s unconventional experience of fatherhood. It’s essential queer viewing that fundamentally challenges what it means to fill familial roles as an LGBTQ person. —A.F.

How to watch: Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth is streaming on Sundance Now.

11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Credit: Nordisk Film

The late author Stieg Larsson’s beloved crime thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was adapted twice after his death in 2005. Danish director Neils Arden Oplev tackled it first in 2009, with Noomi Rapace appearing as iconic vigilante Lisbeth Salander. Then American filmmaker David Fincher got in on the fun with actor Rooney Mara as Lisbeth in 2011. Both films have merit. But if you’ve only seen the latter, double-back for Oplev’s take. It’s just as magnetic, if not in all the same ways, and you’ll come to appreciate the source material even more. — A.F.

How to watch: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is streaming on Sundance Now.

12. James White (2015)

Girls actor Christopher Abbott stars in this moody film as the titular James White. James is a tortured screw-up living with his terminally ill mother Gail (Cynthia Nixon) in New York City. As Gail’s death nears, James is forced to face the limitations of his self-destructive “coping” and manifest a new way of living for after she’s gone. It’s an uneven movie with some less than stellar pacing, but Abbott is so good in this especially meaty role, you won’t struggle to stay engaged. Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi) also appears as James’ friend Nick. —A.F.

How to watch: James White is streaming on Sundance Now.

13. Who We Are Now (2017)

Credit: FilmRise via TIFF

Writer-director Matthew Newton dissects the impossibility of redemption in this drama, anchored by a heart-breaking performance from Julianne Nicholson. When Beth (Nicholson) is released from prison, she sets out to regain custody of her son. But her sister Gabby (Jess Weixler) isn’t inclined to relinquish her rights as his guardian. Emma Roberts appears as Jess, a young public defender. Zachary Quinto, Jimmy Smits, Jason Biggs, Lea Thompson, and more complete a stellar ensemble cast. —A.F.

How to watch: Who We Are Now is streaming on Sundance Now.

14. Loving Vincent (2017)

Self-described as cinema’s “first feature-length painted animation,” Loving Vincent recounts the life and death of Vincent van Gogh. Written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, the experimental film uses the Dutch painter’s own works to trace his artistic rise and psychological decline across a stunning narrative journey. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards; you’ll see why. —A.F.

How to watch: Loving Vincent is streaming on Sundance Now.

15. Heathers (1988)

Credit: New World Pictures/Getty Images

The ’80s teen comedy gets a pitch-perfect pitch-black twist in Heathers. Winona Ryder stars as the popular but disaffected Veronica, whose life takes a turn when she falls for bad boy J.D. (Christian Slater). And when we say bad, we mean bad: He’s literally a murderer, getting Veronica involved in a killing spree against classmates who’ve tried to humiliate her. Heathers‘ portrayal of the high school experience is so bitingly funny, so sharply observed that it’s never lost its power to draw blood, and probably never will. * — Angie Han, Former Deputy Entertainment Editor

How to watch: Heathers is streaming on Sundance Now.

Asterisks (*) indicate the entry comes from a previous Mashable list.

Did you enjoy glamming up your Facebook photos with profile frames? Those graphics and slogans you could embed over your circular Facebook profile image were a great way to customize your page for a holiday or show support for your favorite sports team. Users could even get creative and create their very own custom frame images.

Well, you won’t be able to do that anymore. Facebook is removing profile frames as we know it, essentially killing the feature. And anti-vaxxers are to blame.

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In a post on Friday, Facebook announced new changes to the feature, officially shutting down the ability for users to create customized profile frames. While profile frames will still exist, only frames from “certain government services or organizations and those providing authoritative information on COVID-19” will be available to users.

“On March 21, only profile frames from certain government services or organizations and those providing authoritative information on COVID-19 will be available,” reads the Facebook post. “This change reflects our continued emphasis on helping people express their support around important issues like voting and reliable health information.”

A sample of the few Facebook profile frames still available to users.
Credit: Facebook

Scrolling through the extremely short list of available frames in the Facebook Frames Gallery, users can right away see the difference. The popular “I got my COVID-19 vaccine” frame from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is still available for users, as are frames created by UNICEF. There are a few generic graphic frames created by Facebook itself that users can use. But, that’s it. There are no other frames currently available.

As Facebook cracked down on anti-vaccination content over the past few years, anti-vaxxers had to get more and more creative in spreading their misinformation on the social networking platform without getting banned. Anti-vaxxers quickly weaponized the profile frame feature by creating frames such as “I trust my immune system, not a shot” and “Fuck the vaccine.” Once a frame was created, they could be shared with any Facebook user who could then embed the frame on their own profile photo.

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These anti-vaccine sentiments quickly spread through the social media platform via Facebook profile frames. Anti-vaccine profile frames could be found all over the network. When CNBC reached out to Facebook in May 2021, the company removed a number of these frames as they were violating Facebook’s existing vaccine misinformation policies. However, other similar frames continued to proliferate across the social network.

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Over the months that followed CNBC’s report, Facebook began removing all profile frames from the gallery that weren’t created by official partners, according to SocialMediaToday. Eventually, users began reporting that the frame creator was disabled too, although messaging on the creator page pointed to it being just a temporary change.

With today’s announcement, Facebook has made it clear: Custom profile frames aren’t coming back.

Facebook says any existing custom profile frames will be deleted from the platform on March 21. Users can download frames that they created from the Frame Studio anytime before that date. 

One consolation to those who really like their current Facebook profile pic with a frame? Facebook says users can keep using them. The company will not be removing photos that were already created with a frame.

For years, NBC’s tagline has been “Comedy starts here.” After a deep dive through Peacock’s streaming catalog, it’s clear that their investment has paid off. We’ve put together the best TV shows to stream on Peacock, and a large majority of the top options are comedies. It can’t be helped! NBC has been putting out some of the best comedies of the last 40 years, and they all deserve a shout-out. 

Here are the best heartfelt dramas, spine-tingling horrors, sprawling science fictions, campy teen soaps, period romances, and of course, top-tier comedies to stream right now on Peacock. Fair warning: a list this stacked means you might not leave the couch this weekend. 

1. We Are Lady Parts

Credit: Saima Khalid / Peacock

The only problem with Nida Manzoor’s exceptional comedy about an all-female Muslim punk bad is that it’s too short — but the good news is we’re getting Season 2. Anjana Vasan stars as Amina, a spectacularly awkward and endearing guitar player who joins the band, Lady Parts. She’s one of five rock-solid performances in a show that explores and embraces complex Muslim women, with an irreverent pop-punk soundtrack and riotous laughs to boot. Watch it now and put that banger on repeat.* —Proma Khosla, Senior Entertainment Reporter

How to watch: We Are Lady Parts is streaming on Peacock.

2. Battlestar Galactica

Very few shows are as addicting, as binge-able, or as mind-warping as 2004’s Battlestar Galactica. A remake of a 1970s classic, Battlestar opens on a contingent of humans, facing off against a cybernetic race called the Cylons, who reappear after decades of no contact to decimate the humans’ 12 planetary colonies. Now, there are only 50,000 humans left in existence, the lucky few who were on space ships at the time of the nuclear holocaust. Their plight to survive only becomes more dire after a terrifying revelation: the Cylons no longer look like metal robots. They look like humans, and anyone anywhere could be an enemy lying in wait. 

Battlestar Galactica is a brilliant, suspenseful, and surprisingly relatable science-fiction epic, layered with religious allegory, political commentary, and human psychology. And it’s a hell of a fun watch! Very few shows can match Battlestar’s level of satisfying plot twists and gut-wrenching cliffhangers while maintaining such fidelity to grounded human behavior. With Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, and Katee Sackhoff at the helm of a scintillating cast, this is a pulsating, enthralling story that can’t be missed.

How to watch: Battlestar Galactica is streaming on Peacock.

3. 30 Rock

Credit: Nicole Rivelli/Nbc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

Ah, 30 Rock. This show taught us it’s okay to flip a table for a good sandwich and that we should “never follow a hippie to a second location.” It is an absurd, fast-paced satire whose jokes are as fresh now as they were when it first debuted in 2006. Tina Fey is Liz Lemon, a prudish know-it-all and head writer for The Girlie Show, a fictional stand-in for Saturday Night Live. Lemon’s life gets flipped upside down when NBC puts Jack Donaghy, a hyper-masculine, hyper-privileged, and hyper-conservative executive (the perfectly-cast Alec Baldwin), in charge of TGS. He subsequently forces her to boost ratings by bringing in the unpredictable and unhinged comedian Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan at his finest). 30 Rock is surreal, ridiculous, and hilarious, with loveable characters and an endlessly quotable library of one-liners. If it isn’t already, this is your new favorite show. 

How to watch: 30 Rock is streaming on Peacock.

4. One of Us is Lying

Credit: Nicola Dove/Peacock

Another silly teen show about murder? Yes, please! One of Us Is Lying takes a classic teen soap trope (“high school sucks!”) and kicks it up a notch by placing five characters — each representing a recognizable high school archetype — in detention. Unlike The Breakfast Club, where everyone ends up dating, only four of these high schoolers are making it out of detention alive. Did someone murder their classmate on purpose? Was it an accident? Or is one of us lying??? The mystery is surprisingly well-crafted and often surprising, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition against its well-worn teen show backdrop. 

How to watch: One of Us Is Lying is streaming on Peacock.

5. Superstore

Binge-ing a season of Superstore in a day is no sweat. So, it makes sense that the series’ six-year run felt as brief as a stroll down the aisle of any Cloud 9. From the beginning, Justin Spitzer’s workplace comedy was sharp, kind, and laugh-out-loud funny — more than it had any right to be and more than most sitcoms pull off in a lifetime. It tackled immigration and other social issues with unparalleled comedic timing and a critical lens. In its final hours, it also achieved the distinction by being one of the only shows to accurately and tactfully portray the pandemic.

For years, this was where we came to gossip with Cheyenne (Nicole Sakura) and Mateo (Nico Santos), to catch up on the drama of Jonah (Ben Feldman) and Amy (America Ferrera), to kick back with Garrett (Colton Dunn), and to be terrorized by Dina (Lauren Ash). By the time Cloud 9 closed its doors for good, Glenn (Mark McKinney) turned out to be right: It was so much more than a store. – P.K. *

How to watch: Superstore is streaming on Peacock.

6. The Office

Credit: Chris Haston/Nbc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

The show that made the mockumentary a treasured American institution, The Office will never go out of style. In 2020, seven years after its last episode aired, it was the most-streamed TV show across all platforms by far. For those of us who love The Office, this comes as no surprise. 

This grounded and charismatic character-based comedy about a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania still hits just as hard on the second rewatch… and third… and fourth. The jokes don’t get stale and the characters don’t get old — we only fall more and more in love with them. Though Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson, and the entire Office cast may have moved on to bigger and better things, they’ll always be Michael Scott, Jim, Pam, and Dwight in our hearts.

How to watch: The Office is streaming on Peacock.

7. Downton Abbey

Has there ever been a more comforting watch than Downton Abbey, a show whose major conflicts include “getting ready for dinner” and “who’s going to inherit the big house?” Sure, sure, there are deeper threads here, like world wars, women’s rights, Irish independence, and the decay of the British aristocracy, which give the widely revered drama a deep gravitas to match its prodigious charm. The cast is full of British greats. Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Dan Stevens, Lily James, Matthew Goode, and more frequent the eponymous manor. Come for the period drama but stay for the slow burn romances. Downton Abbey is a juicy and beautifully shot show, serving up satisfying watches on a silver platter. 

How to watch: Downton Abbey is streaming on Peacock.

8. Cheers

Credit: Paramount Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

Many decades before Ted Danson stole the show as a devilishly handsome silver fox on The Good Place, he spiced up primetime as Sam Malone, a former pro baseball player who drank his career away, only to find himself the proprietor of a charming neighborhood watering hole where everybody, well, you know. Sam spends his days and nights slinging drinks alongside his former coach, Coach (Nicholas Colasanto); fiery cocktail waitress Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman); and erudite fish-out-of-water Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), a new cocktail waitress with whom he spends several seasons flirting in between flings. The witty banter, guest stars, and celeb appearances, as well as an overall cozy vibe between Sam and his regulars (Cliff, Norm, and, yes, Frasier and Lilith) make Cheers a timeless classic. And don’t forget about baby-faced Woody Harrelson, who joined as a main character in the fourth season.* —Jenni Miller, Freelance Writer

How to watch: Cheers is streaming on Peacock.

9. Frasier

This is a show about an insufferable, middle-aged radio psychiatrist pathologically unable to take his own advice. He is pompous, illogical, and far too critical of the parade of women who bafflingly agree to date him. Frasier does not sound like a universally-beloved comedy with heart, wit, and a lot of fun — but reader, it is! It’s an amazing sitcom. There’s magic in this cadre of characters, from Frasier’s down-to-earth father (John Mahoney) who slings insightful mocking of his impossibly snobby sons, to his brother Niles (the iconic David Hyde Pierce), who has a paralyzing crush on the eccentric Daphne (Jane Leeves at her absolute best). 

This is not a show to watch if you’re looking for character development and personal growth. This is the show to watch if you want to see Frasier and Niles insist on throwing yet another elaborate dinner party, though all evidence points to their complete inability to do so without catastrophe. And best of all? Frasier has 11 seasons, so you don’t have to stop watching for months if you don’t want to!*

How to watch: Frasier is streaming on Peacock.

10. Bates Motel

Credit: Universal Tv/Wolper Organization/Kobal/Shutterstock

Alfred Hitchcock invented the slasher genre with his delightfully gory masterpiece Psycho. For over 60 years, the film’s chilling surprise villain, Norman Bates, has been the blueprint for disturbing horror baddies. Bates Motel asks the questions about Norman’s backstory that went unanswered in Psycho. Why is a grown man dressing up as his mother and stabbing women in the shower? How did he get both so good and so bad at taxidermy? And would it be possible to clarify the depths of incest we’re talking about here? Freddie Highmore plays young Norman alongside Emmy-nominated Vera Farmiga as his (still alive) mother Norma — and all of those questions get their answers.* —Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

How to watch: Bates Motel is streaming on Peacock.

11. Saved by the Bell

No one expected the Saved by the Bell reboot to be a self-aware commentary on diversity and socio-economic class disparity. But lo and behold, here we are! Tracy Wigfield’s new Saved by the Bell hits the ground running by re-introducing us to Zack Morris, now the current governor of California. Morris’s idiotic policies have bankrupted schools, forcing Bayside High, a nexus of privilege, to welcome students from underfunded neighborhoods. These new kids clash with the students and teachers of Bayside (included A.C. Slater and Jessie Spano as the football coach and counselor!) in unexpected and often enlightening ways. Honoring its predecessor without feeling like a retread, Saved by the Bell is a bright and clever comedy for the modern era.

How to watch: Saved by the Bell is streaming on Peacock.

12. Girls5Eva

Credit: Heidi Gutman / Peacock

Produced by 30 Rock legends Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, Girls5Eva is a loony and delightful series poised to usher NBC into its next phase of successful comedies. Sprinkled with ridiculous original songs, Girls5Eva tells the story of a group of 40-something women trying to get their former Spice Girls-style ‘90s girl group back together. Sarah Bareilles and Renée Elise Goldberry’s tremendous musical talent lends authenticity to the group’s backstory, while Busy Phillips and Paula Pell are downright hilarious, making the most of every punchline. In an era when many comedies are actually dramedies, it’s refreshing to watch a show so deeply committed to silliness. 

How to watch: Girls5Eva is streaming on Peacock.

13. Friday Night Lights

You do not have to be a football fan to fall in love with Friday Night Lights. This sports drama about a Texas high school football team and its esteemed coach has something for everyone: romance, teen angst, small-town squabbles, existential crises, discussions on race, gender, and class, and of course, really great football games.

Friday Night Lights launched many of today’s big–name actors. Kyle Chandler is Coach Taylor, the insightful and emotionally intelligent coach helping his boys grow both on the field and into adulthood. Connie Britton is his loving and independent wife. Scott Porter is the star QB whose life is upended by an injury, Minka Kelly, his loyal girlfriend, and Taylor Kitsch, his brooding best friend. Zach Gilford, Jesse Plemons, Adrianne Palicki, Michael B. Jordan, and Jurnee Smollett round out the sparkling cast, guaranteeing that you’ll fall in love with these characters and their stories whether or not you know what a two-point conversion is.

How to watch: Friday Night Lights is streaming on Peacock.

Asterisks (*) indicate the entry has been modified from a previous Mashable list.

Despite what some Tobe Hooper scholars will tell you, a good Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel doesn’t have to do or be anything. A good movie is a good movie — and the latest Leatherface outing just isn’t that.

Directed by David Blue Garcia and written by Chris Thomas Devlin, based on a story by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is a modern-day follow-up to the 1974 original. This marks the ninth flick in the horror series. For those unfamiliar, the seven other titles don’t matter for continuity, and pale only in comparison to this one’s screaming smugness.

Like Halloween (2018), this pseudo-reboot sets out to reclaim the franchise’s confused legacy by retconning away its past and starting semi-fresh. The resurrection of infamous final girl Sally Hardesty (played here by Olwen Fouéré; original actor Marilyn Burns died in 2014) is an especially close parallel to Universal Pictures’ Laurie Strode renaissance. But Sally’s return is such a weak aside, you could just as well spotlight the movie’s use of the titular power tool as its most salient revisitation.

Credit: Netflix

The plot more squarely centers on a gaggle of twentysomethings who, almost 50 years after the events of the first massacre, make plans to flip a small Texas ghost town. Described by locals as “gentrifuckers,” Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) are intent on turning the sleepy homestead of Harlow into a utopian oasis.

Their need for a safe haven is underscored by the presence of Melody’s younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), who recently survived a school shooting. (Unsurprisingly, a story from the dudes who brought you Don’t Breathe 2 is a tasteless train wreck that runs headlong into sensitive subjects.) Also along for the ride is Dante’s blonde fiancée Ruth (Nell Hudson), who in the grand tradition of shitty slashers lets her hair color double as a personality.

Harlow’s inexplicably cash-rich newcomers welcome a party bus of clients to peruse properties in the morning. But by nightfall, they’re fighting for their lives, having awoken Leatherface (Mark Burnham) and unintentionally delivered dozens of would-be victims to his doorstep.

Credit: Netflix

With the stage set for a blood bath, it’s time to watch this Texan do a chainsaw massacre — and boy howdy, does he deliver. For fans of gore and guts, this Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a standout success. Limbs splinter, entrails fly, and bodies mount as the ever-menacing masked murderer plods around getting his. If you’re following the film on social media, then you may have already heard about a buzzy bus-set butchering which, let me tell you, lives up to the hype.

That said, it’s tough to find satisfaction in something so shoddily made. The practical effects are entertaining enough, but everything else in this Texas Chainsaw Massacre is lacking. The characters aren’t likable, nor are they well-written. The shot pacing is erratic, revealing continuity errors throughout. Entire chase scenes occur and never quite make sense. Fisher’s hair sucks — so, so badly.

On the one hand, it’s a bummer to see yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre fail to capture what makes the first among the most terrifying tales ever told. On the other hand, it’s the sort of disappointment you get used to as a TCM fan. Bad sequels are now as much a part of Leatherface’s legacy as his inaugural installment. So, in that way, this one kills.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is now streaming on Netflix

Have you heard? There may or may not be a vibe shift coming. And the vibe may or may not be shifting to “indie sleaze.”

That’s what trend forecasters and apparently all the rest of us are now calling the style that typified the nightlife (and next morning) scene of the mid/late-aughts and very early 2010s. Of course, back then, it was just an unnamed American Apparel-meets-thrift shop look you’d rock to both warehouse concerts and, like, a very niche museum.

One Instagram account that has captured the vibe is the user submission-based profile @indiesleaze, which “Document[s] the decadence of mid-late aughts and the indie sleaze party scene that died in 2012,” according to the Instagram bio. The account features grainy or fisheye lens photos of candid, messy-haired debauchery. Some of the subjects are celebrities and party icons, most are just kids in glitter and hole-filled t-shirts that could be you or me. It’s joyful, embarrassing, scene-y, wistful, and a real good time.

All @indiesleaze photos courtesy of Olivia V. and @ron_snake

View this post on Instagram

The account owner is a 31-year-old who referred to herself only as Olivia V. She began the account in January 2021, and in just over a year it has grown to around 30,000 followers. While that might not sound huge, she’s gotten photo submissions from party kings and queens like the fashion designer Jeremy Scott, the photographer @ron_snake who shot on behalf of Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter, Princess Nokia, and more. 

“It’s been sort of a whirlwind, surreal experience seeing this account grow,” Olivia said. “I didn’t know that as many people would connect with it as they have.”

But people are connecting with the account, and the time and culture it documents. Looking back is ‘fun’ and ‘sad’ for those of us who lived it as a way to justify nostalgia for when we were younger and hotter and had more fun. The thought that a culture based on dancing your face off to electro-pop might be coming back is both horrifying and exciting for us young 30-somethings. And to Gen-Zers circulating through trend cycles at warp speed, the year 2009 is already retro, partially because it was the very last gasp of socializing before smartphones. Therefore it’s worthy of nostalgic rebirth or at the very least cherry-pickable, fashion-wise. 

“It’s easy to see how in the moment people were,” Olivia said of the photos from that time. “Technology was such a big part of this time, but it also wasn’t so integral [that] people couldn’t look away from their phones.”

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Olivia is a Toronto-based producer, video editor, and writer who moved to the city for college in 2008. That’s when she developed her indie bona-fides putting on local shows with friends and attending a weekly dance night at a “very cheap” venue where the DJ always ended his set with some MGMT.

Like so many, Olivia found herself unemployed in January 2021 thanks to the pandemic. She was looking for something creative that made her feel good, and thought back to her college and young adult years, a time she associated with fun and connectedness with the scene.

Olivia decided to start an Instagram account to post pictures from that time as a way to have some collective feel-good nostalgia, while also getting a potential jump on what she suspected would be a trend making a comeback. But she needed a name.

She shuddered at any variation of the dreaded term “hipster.” She thought “electro-pop” and “blog haus” described more musical genres than the culture as a whole. And “twee” was a cutesy fashion and music movement that, while it occurred alongside nouveau disco looks, was not the same thing. “Indie,” however, was the umbrella term for the underground music scene of the time which was really the cultural center, so she landed on that anchor. Olivia also thought about the smudged makeup and the messiness of it all, which made her think of “trashiness,” but that felt too negative. Then, she remembered the early 2000s magazine Sleaze, and the Uffie lyric “I’ll make your sleazy dreams come true.” So there she had it: Indie Sleaze. 

“It was like you had to be effortless, or at least appear effortless,” Olivia said.

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Olivia’s thought process was right on the money. The online aesthetics collective Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI) lists “indie sleaze” as a distinct aesthetic. Mashable asked CARI for a history of the term and it also began with associations to Sleaze magazine. The concept saw some resurgence in the mid-2010s: In 2016, a CARI-affiliated Facebook group called Post-Post-Y2K dedicated to 2000s/2010s aesthetics posted a poll about what the group should re-name itself. Someone suggested “indie über-sleaze.” Two years later, an aesthetics documenter named Dalia Barillaro created a Facebook group called Indie über-sleaze, and CARI created an official aesthetic category of the same name on its website. In 2021, it shortened the term to Indie Sleaze. 

Olivia says that when she looked up Indie Sleaze, there were no hashtags or aesthetics associated with it yet. Probably, the concept was coalescing in more place than one. But it’s clear that in the era of nu-disco, blog house, and indie pop, sleaze was in the air.

The word “sleaze” is a reminder that even if that time was fun, it was also problematic. Party pics and American Apparel model campaigns came with a helping of objectification, while the rising prominence of electronic music failed to acknowledge the black and brown communities where many of the sounds originated.

“In retrospect, this term absolutely fits this zeitgeist, as scumbags like Terry Richardson and Dov Charney (American Apparel) were elevated into celebrity and cultural status,” Froyo Tam, CARI’s lead director, said over email.

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Things began to take off for Olivia’s account in October 2021. Trend forecaster Mandy Lee, who said she had heard the term on Tumblr and saw it on CARI, posted a video on her @oldloserinbrooklyn TikTok showing how the trend was coming back. The video went viral, and then suddenly, follows and submissions to @indiesleaze started rolling in. 

“People started sending me stuff from across the world,” Olivia said. “Through this account, I’ve been really talking with all these people that have been helping me make the account what it is and giving it back this community driven vibe, which is what I experienced at the time when I was growing up here in Toronto.”

If the Indie Sleaze vibe is in fact re-surging — and not just being fondly looked back upon — that’s what Olivia hopes we really take from it, especially as we rebuild our social lives. More important than fashion is her hope for the return of affordable venues with a sense of community. That there’s an explosion of live music, where bands you love are at the center of your life and your friendships. When we go out, maybe we can keep our phones in our pockets and give party photographers back some business. Maybe we can rediscover the fun of going online to look at a magazine’s pictures days later. Also, let’s leave the ogling Terry Richardson-esque lens in the past, OK? And after quarantines and lockdowns galore, Olivia hopes the vibe shifts to embracing the sexuality of the time — or “get[ting] some of our mojo back,” as Olivia put it. 

“We can learn from the past and make an even better kind of revitalization of that era,” Olivia said. “I think it’s good to look back, take the good parts, and incorporate those into a new world.”

Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we’re obsessed with this week.

At the risk of pissing off every gore-loving Saw franchise fanatic or Human Centipede devotee (if you sick freaks even exist), we need to state an undeniable truth: After all these decades, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre still reigns supreme as the ultimate masterclass in gross body horror.

Back in 1974, the beloved slasher was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before. Receiving an X rating in America, it was flat-out banned from several countries, including the UK. Yet despite featuring literal cannibals hungry for innocent teen flesh, the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre was surprisingly devoid of any truly graphic gore. In fact, director Tobe Hooper purposefully shot his first feature film with a PG rating in mind, only for an obviously shook MPAA to slap him with its most explicit label available at the time (later replaced by today’s NC-17).

After the first film’s unmitigated success, Hooper got a free license to amp up the bloodiness as many notches as he wanted in the sequels. But that only resulted in movies with 100% more camp and about 15% of its predecessor’s masterfully immersive rancidness. Every subsequent reboot, like the 2003 series (and, in all likelihood, the upcoming 2022 remake) equally fails to capture the original’s iconically understated grisliness.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get another horror movie where you can so viscerally smell the blood, sweat, and decay wafting off the silver screen.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get another horror movie where you can so viscerally smell the blood, sweat, and decay wafting off the silver screen. Much like the happy accident that forced Steven Spielberg to barely show the titular shark in Jaws, 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s PG-restrictiveness inadvertently revealed how less can be so much more when it comes to body horror. Over-the-top torture porn certainly makes one squeamish. But The Texas Chainsaw Massacre grounds viewers in a body horror that’s closer to home — and far more disturbing for it.

In one of Hooper’s most famous quotes on horror, the director insists, “You’ve got to send a physical sensation through and not let [the audience] off the hook.” And let us off the hook he does not! Hooper’s Leatherface instead casually hangs us on a meat hook by our flesh, only to ignore our screams and meander off to deal with something more pressing.

In essence, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reveals the stark difference between horror that prioritizes grossness over goriness. In the modern age of gore horror, popularized by franchises like Saw, the fantastically over-the-top torture of a character scooping out their own eyeball has an almost disassociative effect, numbing the viewer with shock value. In contrast, Texas Chainsaw Massacre keeps you trapped in a mundane, existential disgust over just how fragile the human body you’re living in really is.

Leatherface got all dressed up for his dinner date 🙂
Credit: Vortex

Despite the bombastic flashiness of Leatherface’s iconic weapon, his most horrific kills are carried out with the quick and quiet precision of a club. A single crack to the skull of Pam’s boyfriend, Kirk, sends the poor hunk into a silent seizure reminiscent of a floundering fish out of water. It’s the kind of body horror that shows how brutally easy it is to turn us all into lifeless meat sacks, rather than reveling in how much drawn-out mutilation a person can handle before expiring.

The terror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre lies in each character being so unceremoniously dealt with — like they’re just livestock at a slaughterhouse. There’s no particular cruelty or belabored torment to Leatherface’s matter-of-fact executions. Each death is over in the span of about a five-second shot, each kill performed with the practiced professionalism of a man who’s been doing this so long he barely notices when the last gasps for air leave your body so he can finally just be done with the job already. In his longer standoffs with Sally, the physical altercations are almost comically awkward. Her panicked desperation is met with little more than mild annoyance that this little lamb won’t accept her inevitable fate of winding up skewered on his family’s dinner table.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” keeps you trapped in a mundane, existential disgust over just how fragile the human body you’re living in really is.

Modern horror can take a lot of lessons from the cinematic choices of this undisputed classic. Yet, at the same time, as we learn more about real-life horror stories the cast had to go through to get that realism, it raises some important ethical questions. According to many cast and crew members, shoots often lasted as many as 16 hours and took place during an awful heatwave in Texas. Allegedly, during the shooting of the iconic dinner scene, real animal corpses were used as props. They filled the unventilated set with such a putrid stench of rot that people had to go outside to puke, only to jump right back into the scene.

I love the pungent, embodied fear that permeates every showing of this movie. But if we’re going to re-evaluate Stanley Kubrick’s abusive workplace behavior during The Shining, then we should certainly afford Tobe Hooper the same scrutiny. We likely won’t get another horror masterpiece quite like 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre ever again. And honestly, maybe we shouldn’t.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1979) is now streaming on Prime Video.

When it comes to Hummers, you go big or you go home. It was true of the gas-guzzling SUVs of the ’00s, and it’s going to be true of the next-generation all-electric pickup.

GMC unveiled the first-of-its-kind Hummer EV Edition 1 more than a year ago, with the promise of a 350-mile driving range and 800-volt DC fast charging. What it failed to mention at the time, though, is that the battery required to power this new Hummer would end up weighing more than a typical small car.

As Car and Driver reports, according to General Motors test data filed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the vehicle tips the scales at 9,063 pounds—2,923 pounds of which belongs solely to the battery pack. Despite its giant size, GMC’s Hummer EV only boasts a 329-mile EPA combined range (from 212.7 kWh of usable energy), consuming electricity at 47 MPGe. It’s a figure that will not appear on the truck’s window sticker, as machines with a gross vehicle weight rating above 8,500 pounds are not required to advertise the fact.

General Motors launched its first Hummer models, based on the military Humvee, in 1998. By the mid-noughties, an economic recession and failed acquisition drove GM to dismantle the brand; the final Hummer H3 rolled off the line in May 2010. A decade later, the automaker began teasing its return with two GMC Hummer EV brand models: an electric pickup and SUV.

The $112,595 Edition 1 features 0-60 mph acceleration in three seconds, drive mode control, an Infinity Roof and removable transparent Sky Panels, as well as a large infotainment screen powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. If all goes well with Edition 1, consumers can expect additional trims introduced in future models, including the $79,995 Hummer EV2 (spring 2024), $89,995 EV 2X (spring 2023), and $99,995 EV3X (fall 2022).

It turns out that the initial reports about the $100 million deal between Spotify and Joe Rogan were off…by approximately $100 million dollars.

According to the New York Times, Spotify is apparently paying podcaster Joe Rogan way more for their licensing deal than previously reported.

When the deal was first announced in 2020, it was reported that Spotify would pay Rogan $100 million to exclusively host his extremely popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, on the music streaming company’s platform.

However, according to two of the Times’ sources, the three-and-a-half year deal is actually for $200 million. Those initial reports were off by double the actual amount. The deal was already huge when it was reported to be $100 million.

When Neil Young demanded his music be taken off of Spotify due to the COVID misinformation found on Rogan’s podcast, it was clear which side Spotify would land on…precisely because of the money involved with Rogan. Knowing that that the deal apparently cost $200 million makes Spotify’s decision to stand by Rogan even more clear.

As the New York Times points out, Spotify has acquired entire podcasting companies, such as the popular podcast producer Gimlet, for around the same amount that it’s paying Rogan for a licensing deal. Spotify is simply paying for the exclusivity. Rogan keeps creative control and ownership over his show.

The money Spotify is paying Rogan makes sense though, when you look at the big picture: The music streaming service wanted to become the de facto podcasting platform, much like Apple Podcasts was for many years. In fact, last October, Spotify beat Apple to become the biggest podcast platform.

And the company is only doubling down on podcasting. On Wednesday, Spotify announced the acquisition of two of the biggest podcasting advertising and analytics firms: Podsights and Chartable. 

But still, $200 million to simply host Joe Rogan’s show exclusively for three-and-a-half years. That’s an astounding amount of money.

Mashable has reached out to Spotify for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.

Bitcoin will just have to learn to share.

Twitter announced Wednesday that users can now add their Ethereum wallet addresses to their profiles as part of the social media giant’s iOS and Android Tips payment feature. Tips lets Twitter users add public-facing payment methods to their accounts, so that users can (as the name suggests) send tips or payments to others on the platform.

Up until today, Twitter had included traditional payment apps like Cash App in Tips, as well as the less traditional Bitcoin wallet addresses.

Notably, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is considered by many in the cryptocurrency space to be a Bitcoin Maximalist. That is, he has historically been all in on Bitcoin, while dismissing other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.

Pay up.
Credit: Screenshot: Twitter

“All of the other coins, for me, don’t factor in at all,” Decrypt reports Dorsey explaining at 2021’s Miami Bitcoin conference.

Dorsey, of course, resigned as Twitter CEO in November of last year.

Tweet may have been deleted

When asked, a Twitter spokesperson denied Dorsey’s recent departure has anything to do with Twitter finally adding Ethereum to its Tips feature. A coincidence, surely.

Indeed, despite Dorsey’s professed passion for Bitcoin, Twitter has been slowly and steadily welcoming Ethereum with open arms. In January of this year (less than two months after Dorsey’s departure), Twitter announced users could link NFTs — as long as they lived on the Ethereum blockchain — to their user profile pics. And in June of 2021, Twitter gave away NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain.

So it’s not like Wednesday’s Tips announcement is totally out of the blue. Still, the timing sure is funny.

Samsung’s got even more news for its fans before February’s over, if they’re still hungry for it.

The tech giant announced via its website that there will be an announcement stream tied to Mobile World Congress to close out February. You’ll be able to watch it on YouTube or Samsung’s site on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.

And that’s about all we know right now.

Samsung’s announcement was noticeably light on details, so it’s tough for us to speculate on what might be shown. We can pretty definitively say what it’s not, however, as Samsung just did its big Galaxy S22 flagship phone event earlier this month. If you’re a Samsung phone fanatic, maybe temper your expectations a bit for the MWC event. It’s unlikely to be more phone news, though, again, we can’t really say.

We could be in store for some wearable news, given that’s what Samsung talked about at MWC last year. New Galaxy Buds and Books could even show up here, too. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Still, more Samsung news is better than no Samsung news. So squirrel away $1,000 or so just in case one of its MWC announcements really tickles your fancy.