There’s an excited buzz amongst horror fans at the moment. Or maybe that’s just a malfunctioning air conditioning unit, located somewhere in the endless liminal space that gives this film its title. Directed by Kane Parsons - who was just 19 at the time of production - and based on his own YouTube series, it’s a mood-piece about a depressed furniture store manager Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the therapist (Renate Reinsve) who goes looking for him. Alongside other work from horror’s new generation, it’s also a great example of how “creepypasta” (online horror content) might translate to the big screen.

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

Suzan-Lori Parks’ lively adaptation of the 1972 Jimmy Cliff movie premiered in Stratford last autumn but this victory lap feels like the perfect show for the hotter months. Simon Kenny’s bustling shanty-town set stands in for a Jamaica where every institution — church, police, music business — is corrupt and Ivan (Natey Jones) is transformed from a sweet-natured aspiring reggae singer into a celebrity outlaw. Weaving in other 70s reggae classics and some brand-new storytelling songs, the show is more joyful than the movie and gives much more space to Ivan’s mother and girlfriend, who join forces on a stunning Many Rivers to Cross. What it loses in tragedy and grit it certainly makes up for in exuberance. I haven’t seen a happier audience all year.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

Ann Patchett’s new novel, Whistler, is about love lost and found. Not the epic, youthful kind of love at the heart of the gorgeous, pandemic-set Tom Lake, but something gentler and more profound. Walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Daphne Fuller’s husband Jonathan teases her about an older man who can’t keep his eyes off her. When it turns out the man is her former stepfather, Eddie, Daphne feels she “stepped into an open crack in time and fell backwards”. She hasn’t seen him since she was nine years old and a car crash broke apart his seemingly happy marriage to her mother. Warm, wise and wryly entertaining as always, Patchett moves the story onward from this chance encounter, as Daphne and Eddie rekindle their relationship, but also takes us back to the calamitous night of the crash.

Patchett has often spoken about having “three fathers” – her biological father and two stepfathers – and the aftermath of divorce and blended families are subjects she revisits in many of her novels. Few writers do it with such nuance, emotional intelligence and wit.

Lisa O’Kelly, Nerve writer

The centrepiece of Gagosian’s new Christo show comprises an enormously plump transparent polyethylene sack constrained by lengths of artfully knotted rope criss-crossing the gallery’s ceiling - all 16 metres of it - containing the room’s air. It was sweltering on the day I visited and the thought of visiting a load of hot air tickled me. It being Gagosian’s fancy Mayfair gallery, in reality it was delightfully cool air-conditioned air. Still, the feeling of being tickled remained: both physically, as the artwork balloons down from the ceiling brushing your head or forcing you to stoop as you move underneath it. But also emotionally: a giddy, glowing thing containing the very air that sustains us, it’s both playfully charming and yet also thought-provoking, especially situated in the heart of a city plagued by air pollution.

With his collaborator and life partner Jeanne-Claude, Christo was renowned for creating large-scale public artworks including wrapping Berlin's Reichstag, and this first-ever presentation of Air Package on a Ceiling - conceived in 1968 by Christo and Jeanne-Claude but never realized because of technical restraints – is accompanied by gorgeous preparatory drawings and models that are a lovely insight into their creative process. The show is one of the highlights of the sixth London Gallery Weekend in which over 120 galleries are throwing open their doors for exhibitions, talks and events - do go along and be tickled.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

Lynn Nottage's mighty 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winner examines the fraying social fabric in a Rust Belt steel town in the early 2000s, as job losses, strikes and skullduggery disrupt the bonhomie of a close-knit group of barflies: here, in a Pennsylvania drinking den, is the fractured landscape of modern America. Rising star Joanna Bowman's staging, the play's Scottish premiere, unfolds with a judicious mix of fluid naturalism and directorial flair, and boasts an excellent eight-strong ensemble. It ran to acclaim in Glasgow earlier this month, and now transfers to the Edinburgh Lyceum for a fortnight.

Fergus Morgan, writer

Two years ago, musician Liz Lawrence’s older sister died suddenly following an accident on holiday, leaving behind a partner and young children. For months afterwards, Lawrence could not listen to music, and then started opening up to it again via artists such as Adrianne Lenker and Joanna Newsom. Six months after Jessie's death, in a three week “burst of creativity” and clearly influenced by these musicians, she wrote this extraordinary, delicate album that faces grief square in the face. Exploded into Flowers is a beautiful folk-tinged hymn to the days after Jessie's death, while the lyrics of Black Ulysses – a cri de coeur built around an instant-classic melody - are typically direct: “It’s total chaos. Help me God, help me God, help me."

Sarah Donaldson, Nerve co-founder

The tropics of the Dominican Republic meet the great British seaside this summer thanks to Hulda Guzmán’s solo exhibition in Margate. Filled with joyous and surreal depictions of Caribbean life, Guzmán’s paintings transport viewers to vivid, dreamlike places and act as portals into her imagination. She combines images of everyday life in the rainforest mountains of the Samaná region - including her family members, pets and domestic surroundings - with mythical moments rich in symbolism. In Yes (2025), a group of figures sit in a circle as blazing sunlight filters through like the arrival of a higher being. Resisting absolute interpretation, Guzmán's paintings are a powerful and joyful reminder to celebrate the vibrancy of daily life and the natural world.

Meg Molloy, writer

THEATRE/COMEDY
Shedinburgh
7-30 August (Assembly Checkpoint); 19 September-10 October (Young Vic)

For the second year running the producer Francesca Moody (Fleabag, Baby Reindeer) is bringing the pioneering purpose-built space back to the Edinburgh Festival and then, for the first time, transferring some of the work to London. At its heart the project supports artists - offering both payment and accommodation. This year’s bill includes Bryony Kimmings, Anoushka Lucas and Inua Ellams.

EXHIBITION
Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery
(30 October-20 June, British Library, London)

Marking 50 years since the Queen of Crime’s death, the exhibition will include letters, recordings, manuscripts and even her 1937 Remington typewriter.

COMEDY
Nish Kumar: Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy
(September-November, touring)

New standup show with dates across the UK from the host of Pod Save the UK who says: "I'm going back on tour to try and reconnect with the thing I love more than anything else."

ART
The Royal Scottish Academy 200th annual exhibition
(Edinburgh, ends 14 June)

The largest and longest-running exhibition of contemporary art in Scotland celebrates its 200th birthday.