Movies
‘Twilight’ Fan Dies In Tragic San Diego Comic-Con Accident
In the past few years there have been some pretty insane stories to come out of the San Diego Comic-Con. With the event not even kicking off until tomorrow night, something incredibly tragic occurred today that’s already shrouding the event in sadness.
Per the U-T San Diego, “A 53-year-old Comic-Con visitor who had been camping in front of the San Diego Convention Center to secure a place at the popular Twilight panel was struck by a car and killed Tuesday.”
The full story is inside.
U-T continues: “Police closed westbound Harbor from Fifth to Eighth avenues for more than two hours while they investigated the crash, said police Lt. Andra Brown. The road has since reopened.
The woman was in a crosswalk and had a red light when she tried to run across Harbor toward the convention center about 9:20 a.m., said Sgt. Ron Glass.
The driver of one car saw her and slowed down, but the driver of a Subaru Outback didn’t see her in time, Glass said. The pedestrian tried to stop her own momentum when she saw the oncoming Subaru but ended up tripping into the car, Brown said.
An ambulance took the unconscious woman, who was bleeding profusely from her head, to a hospital where she died, Brown said. Her name has not been released.
The 67-year-old driver, a San Diego man, stopped and was interviewed by officers.
Comic-Con fans said the woman, who was with a group, had been in line since Sunday for the panel for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, set for Thursday afternoon in Hall H. The highly-anticipated panel will include cast appearances and exclusive footage from the movie.
Fans said the convention center staff was about to switch the line, so the beginning became the end, and that the pedestrian was running to keeping her place in line.
“It’s such a sad loss for our community,” said 23-year-old Melissa Sandate of Tucson, who is a fellow fan of the teen vampire saga.
She said the woman was not wearing a costume at the time.
“It is with tremendous sadness that we offer our heartfelt condolences,” said Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer. “Our sincere thoughts and prayers go out to all those involved in this tragic incident.”
Fans took to Twitter shortly under the hashtag #RIPTwiFanG after the crash to express condolences and were working to organize a moment of silence and memorial fund.
The convention opens to some fans Wednesday for preview night.”
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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