The Ghostbuster and Blues Brother on living in a haunted house, jamming with a president, and befriending a bear called Uncle Joe

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As a self-described spiritualist who comes from a long line of spiritualists – is there anything you don’t believe in?

Well, I don’t believe in associating with beings that have no souls. Like psychic vampires. Right? If you go through life, you’ll either meet a psychic vampire every day or every year. You should avoid beings like that, that’s a good rule for life. That’s what I don’t believe in, associating with them. I’m sure you’ve met some beings that draw the energy out of you if you give them 10 minutes. But after 10 minutes, you gotta run. I give everybody 10 minutes.

As the shockingly violent anticapitalist hit returns, its star and creator talk about spinoffs, the dangers of desensitisation, David Fincher’s mooted remake – and why they couldn’t say no to tie-ins with McDonald’s and Uber

When season two of Squid Game dropped, fans were split in their response to Netflix’s hit Korean drama. While some viewers loved the dialled-up-to-11 intensity of everything – more characters, more drama, more staggering brutality – others found the tone relentlessly bleak. And this was a show whose original concept – a cabal of rich benefactors recruit poor people to compete in bloodsports for cash – was already plenty dark. Anyone hoping the show’s third and final season, arriving this week, will provide a reprieve should probably just rewatch Emily in Paris instead.

“The tone is going to be more dark and bleak,” says series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, through an interpreter. “The world, as I observe it, has less hope. I wanted to explore questions like, ‘What is the very last resort of humankind? And do we have the will to give future generations something better?’ After watching all three seasons, I hope we can each ask ourselves, ‘How much humanity do I have left in me?’”

Danny Boyle’s much-anticipated sequel kicks off a new trilogy filled with surprises but what does it all mean and what can we expect next?

• This article contains spoilers for 28 Years Later

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have done it again. In the early 2000s, 28 Days Later became the most popular and influential zombie movie in decades, with its fast-moving, virally infected, not-quite-undead marauders rampaging through a post-apocalyptic England. Now Boyle and Garland have reunited with 28 Years Later, easily the most talked-about horror movie since Sinners, and the biggest zombie movie since the PG-13 dilutions of World War Z back in 2013. Compared with the countless familiar zombie movies and TV shows that have popped up since the original movie, 28 Years Later is a thorny, challenging, unpredictable work, which means there’s plenty to discuss now that it’s spent a well-attended weekend in wide release. Here are some major spoiler-heavy topics related to the film’s style, themes, sociological implications and, of course, that ending.

Families of detained activists talk of their fear and confusion as Israeli missiles strike Evin prison in Iran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When Mehraveh Khandan heard about Israel’s evacuation order in Tehran last week, the first thing she thought of was her father. Reza Khandan, imprisoned for his human rights activism in 2024, was sitting in a cell in Tehran’s Evin prison on the edge of the evacuation zone.

She fielded calls from her friends, who were breathless from the shock of the Israeli bombs as tens of thousands fled the Iranian capital. Her father, by contrast, had no way to flee. He was stuck.

Department said message saying ‘our hearts go out to the victims and families impacted’ by strikes was ‘offensive’

The Los Angeles county sheriff’s department deleted and then apologized for posting a message expressing sympathy for “the victims and families impacted” by US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The message, posted on X, Facebook and Instagram, said the sheriffs’ “hearts go out” to Iranian “victims”. A swift online backlash followed, and the department then issued an apology that referred to its own original post as “offensive and inappropriate”.

Dust settles after impassioned protests but military presence unnerves California leaders – and threatens to inflame already tense situation

Shortly before last November’s presidential election, before anyone could envision him defying his “America first” political base and launching a bombing raid on Iran, Donald Trump offered a preview of how and why he would want to deploy the military on US soil.

It was, the president said, to deal with “the enemy within”.

One in 10 long-term couples keep separate homes – and they have much more sex than those who cohabit. But there are some unexpected downsides …

Name: Living apart together.

Age: At least since Victorian times.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

This is a mystifying and provocatively slow-paced game with more celebrities than you would find on a Cannes red carpet
PS5; Sony / Kojima Productions

What is Death Stranding 2 trying to say? It’s a question you will ask yourself on many occasions during the second instalment of Hideo Kojima’s hypnotising, mystifying, and provocatively slow-paced cargo management simulator series. First, because during the many long and uneventful treks across its supernatural vision of Mexico and Australia, you have all the headspace in the world to ponder its small details and decipher the perplexing things you just witnessed. And second, because the question so often reveals something profound.

That it can stand up to such extended contemplation is a marker of the fine craftsmanship that went into this game. Nobody is scribbling down notes to uncover what Doom: The Dark Ages is getting at or poring over Marvel Rivals’ cutscenes for clues, fantastic as those games are. It is rare for any game to invite this kind of scrutiny, let alone hold up to it. But Death Stranding 2 is a different kind of game, one with the atmosphere and narrative delivery of arthouse cinema, light of touch in its storytelling but exhaustive in its gameplay systems, and the tension between the two makes it so compelling. At first you brave one for the other; then, over time, you savour both.