Author: Trafficblast

The Conjuring universe is undoubtedly one of the most consistent franchises in horror movie history, and the latest entry, Annabelle Comes Home, doesn’t break that trend. The third Annabelle spin-off is reliably scary, brimming with tense atmosphere and jarring jump scares, with excellent performances from its small cast and several intriguing additions to Conjuring lore. For those who enjoy Conjuring movies, Annabelle Comes Home is yet another predictably fun, popcorn-throwing scare fest.

The third Annabelle movie takes place after the first two (2014’s Annabelle, a spin-off/prequel to the first Conjuring movie, and 2017’s Annabelle: Creation, which was a prequel to that). Where exactly this movie falls within the larger Conjuring timeline–before or after the main Conjuring movies, for example–isn’t made totally clear in the film itself, but it doesn’t exactly matter, either.

In its opening scenes, Annabelle Comes Home revisits the moments from the first Conjuring movie that spawned the whole spin-off series, when Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprising their roles as horror’s most wholesome couple) take possession of the Annabelle doll from the young women it had been terrorizing. The movie takes several moments here to clarify exactly what the doll is capable of: Annabelle isn’t evil herself, or even possessed by a spirit or demon; the doll is simply a “conduit” or “beacon” to which evil is drawn.

The scares begin in the opening scenes, although ACH is also self-aware enough to play with audiences’ expectations, sometimes sidestepping obvious jump scare opportunities, often to inflict them with double the impact a few moments later. But after a brief introduction to the Warrens and the twisted lore of Annabelle herself, the familiar characters and elements take a backseat as the film enters its main act.

If you’re expecting a movie all about the Warrens, you might be disappointed to learn that Annabelle Comes Home actually primarily follows their daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace), her babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), and Mary Ellen’s mischievous friend Daniella (Katie Sarife). The Warrens leave Judy in Mary Ellen’s care, but when Daniella arrives to snoop around their infamous artifact room–well, you can probably figure out what happens, if not from the trailer then simply from knowing how these things play out.

Annabelle Comes Home is hopelessly predictable, but that’s not a bad thing here. Like the rest of the Conjuring series, it’s simply incredibly well made horror movie comfort food. It doesn’t challenge your expectations or throw in any shocking twists; it simply sets up various monsters, ghosts, ghouls, and other threats, throws them at the characters, and relishes in their terror. The centrifuge of its setting is a literal room full of evil objects–what else could it be besides Night at the Conjuring Museum?

The endlessly repeated setup goes something like this: 1. Object moves on its own, 2. Character tip-toes around as slowly as humanly possible until a suitable amount of tension has been built, and 3. The threat is finally revealed, and it’s all-out horror for a few moments. And it’s so predictable that, should you watch ACH in a theater with a lively audience, the crowd’s shrieks will usually be half laughter as well. There’s undeniable fun in the knowledge of what’s coming when floorboards start creaking and glasses of milk hurl themselves to the ground, not to mention catharsis in the payoff.

It’s almost a prerequisite for Conjuring movies to introduce various spooky threats that might someday be spun off into their own franchises, from Annabelle herself to The Conjuring 2’s Nun and Crooked Man. Annabelle Comes Home adds to this tradition with The Ferryman, whose funereal coins seem to pile up all over the Warrens’ house, the haunted Samurai armor seen in the Warrens’ artifact room in prior movies, and more–I won’t spoil them all.

Annabelle Comes Home works largely due to its smart writing and skilled direction from Gary Dauberman (writer of the previous Annabelle movies, The Nun, It and It Chapter 2, the unfortunately just-canceled Swamp Thing show, and more). But the movie’s three lead actresses really carry the whole thing on their shoulders. The young Grace plays her often sad role with subtlety and skill–she’s bullied at school due to her parents’ profession, and the actress perfectly conveys the pain of being a kid at that age who doesn’t fit in. Iseman is the iconic innocent horror movie teenage girl, all bubblegum and shrieks. Sarife’s Daniella could have easily become a frustrating force in the plot, as her role is mostly to make bad decisions like infiltrating the artifact room and opening Annabelle’s case. But thanks to smart writing and Sarife’s complex performance, Daniella is a sympathetic character whose actions make sense, even if they’re not well-thought-out.

Annabelle Comes Home has just the right mix of horror and humor, predictable structure and shocking jump scares, terrifying ghouls and relatable characters that a scary summer blockbuster should. It doesn’t break the mold–Midsommar, this is not–but it’s not trying to. And if you’re a fan of the Conjuring series, you’ll walk out of the theater satisfied.

Toy Story 4 reviews are in and critics largely adore the latest Pixar animation. It could be because of the heartfelt story about belonging and independence, or it could be because Toy Story 4 features an end-credits scene.

Director Josh Cooley (Inside Out, Up) revealed via Twitter that fans and moviegoers alike should “stay after the credits” for a possible surprise. “The story doesn’t end until the very last frame,” Cooley concluded, suggesting that something special awaits at the end of the toy’s story.

Debuting this past weekend on Friday, June 21, Toy Story 4 already has the best opening box office weekend of the Toy Story movies. 2010’s Toy Story 3 sits at $110 million, trailing behind Toy Story 4’s steadily-climbing $121 million. Toy Story 2 hovers around $57 million, while the first Toy Story amassed $29 million.

While Toy Story 3 ended “perfectly,” Pixar revealed how it pulled together one more story for Andy’s toys. With Bo-Peep established as a main character, producer Jonas Rivera found the relationship between Woody and Bo-Peep to be “so intriguing to us [at Pixar].” Cooley agreed, saying, “So that was our goal for this film: to make this [second] meeting [between Woody and Bo-Peep] so powerful, it would be deserving of Toy Story 4.”

Toy Story 4 is now in theatres.

Like the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter books and movies, there are a lot of characteristics of magic at play in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. One of them is the creation of potions, which can give you a serious edge in battles against wizards and magical creatures, speed your progress through the game, or help you capture the most difficult Foundables (we’ve got lots more Harry Potter: Wizards Unite coverage on that stuff, too). You’ll get lots of potions as you play the game, but like any Hogwarts student, you can also brew your own.

Brewing potions is pretty simple at first–if you have the ingredients, you just push a button to start cooking. But there are actually a few nuances to the system that aren’t immediately apparent. If you know what you’re doing, you can make sure you get the right ingredients to make every kind of potion without having to rely too much on random chance. You can also brew your potions more quickly, with a little extra care.

Here’s everything you need to know about potions, including how to get the right ingredients and all the Master Notes.

Ingredients: Find Them, Pick Them, Grow Them

Ingredients are the essential part of your potion-brewing process, obviously. There are lots of locations where you can find ingredients out in the world of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. First, you’ll find plenty of ingredients spawning out on the map around you as you walk around playing the game, and you can just pick them up by tapping on them.

Using a Greenhouse presents a more reliable way of getting the specific ingredients you need. Tapping on any Greenhouse takes you inside, where you can interact with the building and get a random supply of ingredients (you also get a chance at some Spell Energy), more or less just like an Inn. You’re presented with three potted plants in a Greenhouse, and pulling out one of the plants gives you some smattering of potion-brewing stuff. You won’t know what you’ll receive until you get it, which makes planning difficult.

If you need an ingredient in particular, you can use a Greenhouse to grow your own plants. You do that with Seeds and Water, which you’ll also find spawning on the world map. Tap into the Greenhouse and flip to the tab in the bottom right corner of the screen. There, you can use your seeds and any water you’ve found to start growing something. You’ll have to return when the seed is fully grown in order to claim your ingredients.

Stir It Up

Once you start a potion, you’re stuck waiting for it to finish brewing–usually at least a couple of hours. You can speed up that timer, however, if you know the Half-Blood Prince-like secrets to master potion-brewing. There’s a system of stirs and taps that, like in the Harry Potter movies and books, is not immediately apparent to the novice potion maker, even in the game.

When you brew a potion, tap the wooden spoon sticking out of the cauldron once the recipe has been started, when the liquid is swirling in place. You should get a closer, top-down view of the potion as it’s cooking. This is when you can start your master brewing. In order to speed up the recipe, you’ll need to try various touch gestures on the potion. These include things like a clockwise stir, a counter-clockwise stir, tapping on the potion, shaking your mobile device, and drawing vertical or horizontal lines.

You’ll need to do all the gestures for the potion in order, but once you find the correct one, it’ll be revealed in the Master Notes at the top of the screen. Brew the Master version of the potion correctly three times, and you’ll get the Master Notes unlocked automatically, so you won’t have to try to remember the gestures you used. Master Notes only speed up your brew times, so don’t expect better version of your potions just because you’re a Snape-level potions master. We’ve got the full list of Master Brewing notes below.

Use Potions For Everything

Potions are very useful in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The ones you’ll use most often are probably the Healing Potions, which can keep you alive during battles and Wizarding Challenges in Fortresses, and the Exstimulo Potions, which make your spells more effective against Confoundables and in battles. But there are a bunch of other kinds of potions as well, which can increase your Focus in battle, raise your experience gains as you play, and help you keep Confoundables from fleeing when you try to catch them.

You can only carry 50 potions at the start of the game (you can buy more space with Gold if you like), and you’ll quickly fill that up with potions you get from leveling up and completing Achievements and other objectives. Especially as you get further into the game, you’ll face harder challenges that will require potions–but they’re easy to come by, so don’t save them up. Use them, and keep brewing more.

Master Brewing Notes

Here’s a rundown of the Master Brewing notes for each potion recipe.

• Exstimulo Potion: Vertical line, vertical line, clockwise stir.
• Invigoration Draught: Horizontal line, vertical line, vertical line, zoom out gesture.
• Baruffio’s Brain Elixir: Clockwise stir, pinch gesture, vertical line, vertical line, zoom out gesture, shake.
• Healing Potion: Zoom out gesture, clockwise stir, tap, pinch gesture.
• Strong Exstimulo Potion: Vertical line, vertical line, counterclockwise stir, clockwise stir.
• Potent Exstimulo Potion: Vertical line, horizontal line, vertical line, counterclockwise stir, clockwise stir, counterclockwise stir.
• Dawdle Draught: Shake, clockwise stir, counterclockwise stir, counterclockwise stir, pinch gesture.
• Strong Invigoration Draught: Horizontal line, vertical line, vertical line, vertical line, zoom out gesture, zoom out gesture.
• Wit-Sharpening Potion: Zoom out gesture, vertical line, vertical line, tap.
• Bountiful Brew: Tap, tap, clockwise stir, vertical line, vertical line.
• Draught of Perception: Shake, clockwise stir, counterclockwise stir, counterclockwise stir, pinch gesture.
• Felix Felicis Potion: Clockwise stir, pinch gesture, horizontal line, horizontal line, zoom out gesture, shake.
• Memory Potion: Tap, zoom out gesture, horizontal line, clockwise stir.
• Scintillation Potion: Clockwise stir, pinch gesture, horizontal line, horizontal line, zoom out gesture, shake.
• Wideye Potion: Clockwise stir, shake, counterclockwise stir, counterclockwise stir.

More than likely, you subscribe to some sort of streaming service, like Netflix. In fact, you probably have yourself signed up for more than one. Every week, services like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Shudder release new content for you to binge from the sanctity of your own home.

This is actually a pretty quiet week for releases. Most of Amazon’s new releases come out on June 30, and next week is July, so expect a slew of new movies, TV shows, and more to hit next week. You’ll have a lot to watch during your holiday weekend. Let’s check out a couple of the highlights for this week.

True Grit heads to Amazon Prime Video on Saturday, June 29. The Coen brothers western follows a teenager whose father was murdered. She hires a U.S. Marshall to track down the killer. It’s a great genre film and one of the few times where the remake is better than the original. If you don’t have Prime and you want to watch the film, don’t worry, as True Grit will be available on Hulu on Sunday, June 30.

The only other notable movie coming this week is 2018’s The Spy Who Dumped Me. The action comedy stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon as best friends that become involved in a conspiracy when one of them discovers her ex-boyfriend is a spy.

Below, you’ll find the full list for everything being released on Amazon, Hulu, and Shudder this week. If you want to look into the future, both Amazon and Hulu have revealed what’s coming ahead for July.

Monday, June 24

Amazon Prime Video:

• Juliet, Naked (2018)

Hulu:

• Hurley (2019)
• Juliet, Naked (2018)

Shudder:

• Next of Kin
• Viy

Friday, June 28

Amazon Prime Video:

• The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Hulu:

• Diane (2019)

Saturday, June 29

Amazon Prime Video:

• Moose (2015)
• True Grit (2010)

Hulu:

• The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Blizzard has announced some big changes slated for the next major Hearthstone update. The collectible card game will add two more cards to the Hall of Fame, which makes them ineligible for Standard mode play, and at the same time it will introduce a whopping 10 new cards.

In an update on the Hearthstone Blog, the team explained how it tries to define class identity, and outlined what it sees as the core strengths and weaknesses of each class. The studio has concluded that two Basic cards don’t fit the theme of their classes’ identities, and so they’ll be retired into the Hall of Fame: the Rogue card Vanish and the Priest card Mind Blast. Both will still be playable in Wild mode.

Vanish is a spell that returns all minions to their owners’ hands, but Blizzard feels the efficient board clear is counter to one of its intended weaknesses. Mind Blast allows Priests to do a lot of damage to their opponent in a pinch, especially with spell damage boosts, while Blizzard intends the class to be limited in its direct damage. Those two will be replaced by two new cards, Plaguebringer and Radiance.

In addition, Blizzard is introducing ten new cards to the Classic set, which will be obtainable through Classic packs or crafting. It says it wants to steadily introduce new Classic cards to maintain a “healthy amount of easily-obtainable cards” through Standard games, as it rotates some out into the Hall of Fame. The studio said these cards will be coming in the next major update, but didn’t announce a date.

Hearthstone has traditionally introduced a handful of new expansions per year with only minor balance changes in-between. This season the game has been noticeably more active in filling the months between major expansions with other in-game events and changes. After the latest expansion launched in April, its single-player component began rolling out in May, and in June the game issued its first-ever batch of card buffs alongside a brand-new card. You can still claim that card for free by logging in by July 1.

Summer is officially here, and Fortnite is celebrating the start of the season with a two-week-long event. 14 Days of Summer kicks off on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices tomorrow, June 25, and it’ll bring a load of new things to do and see in Fortnite’s Battle Royale, Creative, and Save the World modes.

On the Battle Royale front, developer Epic will unvault one weapon for only 24 hours every day during the 14 Days of Summer event, giving you a chance to play around with some of the items that have been removed from the game. On top of that, there will be new challenges to complete and rewards to unlock each day of the event, as well as new outfits and other items to purchase from the in-game shop.

Finally, Battle Royale players will be able to jump into a new limited-time mode every day during 14 Days of Summer. Epic hasn’t yet revealed the order these modes will arrive, but it has given fans an overview of all 14 LTMs on the Fortnite website, and they include the John Wick crossover, Wick’s Bounty, as well as a handful of new modes, such as the summer-themed Splashdown Squads–in which players will try to eliminate opponents with a new water balloon item–and Storm Chasers Surfin’ Squads.

In Save the World mode, meanwhile, players will be able to complete new quests every day during the 14 Days of Fortnite event. Clearing these quests will earn you Summer Tickets, and if you mange to complete all 14 before the event ends, you’ll unlock a “new explosive weapon.” Fortnite Creative will also feature a new island every day during the event.

There are still a few weeks left in Season 9 of Fortnite, but Epic has already announced it is making some changes for next season. Specifically, Fortnite’s minimum requirements on PC will change beginning in Season 10. In the meantime, you still have a few weeks left to complete any remaining challenges from this season. If you need help, you can find tips and guides for all the trickier tasks in our complete Fortnite Season 9 challenges roundup.

Last Month, All Elite Wrestling’s first PPV outing, Double or Nothing, debuted. It was a smashing success, and one of the better wrestling events of 2018. How does AEW follow that up? Well, they’re involved with CEO Gaming’s annual tournament, all while mocking the failed Fyre Festival at the same time.

The PPV has been a part of Kenny Omega’s storyline on AEW’s YouTube series Bring The Elite, which is one of the few ways to keep up with what’s going on in the company. Most recently, Omega has been having a meltdown because his show can’t get finer foods (all they have is bread and cheese), and everything is falling apart. The PPV is a part of CEO Gaming–the fighting game championships–and Fyter Fest will take place on Saturday, June 28 at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida at 7:30 PM ET / 4:40 PM PT. There is a preshow, but at the time of this writing, it’s unclear if it starts at 7:30 PM ET or an hour prior.

How To Watch

If you’re interested in watching Fyter Fest, then there is no reason to miss out on the show. Why? Because you can watch it all for free. B/R Live is hosting the event for the low, low cost of $0. All you need to do is go to the event on the B/R Live website and watch it. You’ll probably have to create an account, but you will not need to put credit card information in.

There is a downside, and that is the fact that B/R Live doesn’t have many options for you to watch. Both iOS and Android devices have an app, and you can supposedly cast from your devices, but during Double or Nothing, that was not something I could do. The app would timeout or crash. The best course of action, on my end, was to connect my TV to my computer, using an HDMI cable, and use it as an extra monitor. Using this method resulted in zero streaming issues as well.

Below, you’ll find the full match card for Fyter Fest. If there are any changes leading up to the event, you’ll find updates below.

Match Card:

• SCU (Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky) vs. Best Friends vs. Private Party (Winners get first round bye for AEW Tag Team Championship Tournament) — Buy-In Pre-Show
• Christopher Daniels vs. Cima
• Michael Nakazawa vs. Alex Jebailey (Hardcore match)
• Yuka Sakazaki vs. Riho vs. Nyla Rose
• Hangman Page vs. Jungle Boy vs. Jimmy Havoc vs. MJF
• Cody vs. Darby Allin
• Jon Moxley vs. Joey Janela
• The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega vs. The Lucha Bros & Laredo Kid

Make sure to come back to GameSpot on Saturday, June 29 for live coverage and a review of the show!