God Awful Movies - 527: House (2008)
Episode Date: October 7, 2025This week, Amanda Jane Stern joins the guys for an atheist review of House (2008), the story of a hotel. Not a house. And it's haunted or something, but the movie's name makes no sense at all and that...'s the real issue here. Check Out Amanda's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-be-crazy/id1450793937 Or check out her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandajanestern/?hl=en If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with BudMGM Casino.
Check out our hottest exclusive.
Friends of one with Multi-Drop.
Want to even more options?
Play our wide variety of table games.
Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM.
Download the BetMGM Ontario app today.
19 plus to wager, Ontario only.
Please play responsibly.
If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,
please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.
But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.
Ghosts that have to do their research is my favorite genre.
All right, everyone, let's get Insta stalking.
So, Beelzebub, do you have that file I asked for on the grad student?
Her Facebook profile was private, but her mom's is not,
so I'm looking at a bunch of the likes on there to see if I can find it.
I'm going to check out Instagram.
I'm doing two-factor authentic.
It's going to take me a second.
Oh, my God, Heath, you're the worst demon ghost ever.
God-awful, movie.
Movies.
Welcome back to the GameCast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema
because otherwise we'd have to listen to Joe Rogan with Cecil.
I'm your host, No Illusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left as my
good friend Heath and Wright, Heath, welcome back.
Spooktacular time.
Fuck, yeah, it is.
Do it.
And sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend,
Eli Bosnick, Eli.
How are you this fine afternoon, sir?
Oh, I'm ready to dig into this one.
Yeah, I bet you are.
But before we do, I'm also excited to welcome in a brand new
guest masochist.
Amanda Jane Stern is an actor, writer, and podcaster.
She's the co-host of the Don't Be Crazy podcast,
which explores what makes movies good or bad.
And her movie, perfectly good moment,
is streaming for free on Tooby.
Amanda, welcome to God Offa Movies.
Thank you for having me.
As I said, before we started recording, I think I got very lucky with just by being on this
for Halloween month, my favorite month, at least the movie was a thing.
Yeah.
It had a plot and characters.
It wasn't the Nigerian one you watched where someone just started peeing.
Yes, right, right.
Well, that's the thing is that like normally when we have a guest,
and I'm like, you're actually getting lucky.
They're like, no, the fuck I'm not.
But you know, you've actually listened to the show enough
that you know how lucky you're getting.
So tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today?
We watched House, the movie from 2008, not the show or whatever.
It's the story of the hell that is couples therapy.
It's an interesting one.
And Eli, how bad was this movie?
Well, if you wish the mediocre horror films of the early,
had been cast and written by the hair gel of the late 90s.
You will love this movie.
And I do.
I love this movie so much.
There's a lot of reasons to love this one.
If you've ever wondered what the Hallmark movie actors are doing in their off-season, it's this.
Is that even what they are?
Yeah.
What are these people from?
Other than Betty, who is within Laverne and Shirley and is extremely right-wing now.
Oh, is she?
And Mr. Blonde.
And Mr. Blonde was in this, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but this is definitely like the
Spirit Halloween pop-up of
Hallmark actors. Yeah, right, yeah.
There you go. There you go.
So is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best
at being the worst at? Yeah, I'm going to go with
Best Worst trying to make
a tin can
be scary in a horror movie.
We'll get to the details of that, but just know that they will
try to do that throughout. They're convinced
it's quite scary.
They try to pop scare us.
us with a tin can at multiple points.
Oh, yeah. It's frightening.
Clink, clink, cling, cling.
Oh, scary.
What about a bunch of tin cans.
Yeah. All right.
So I'm going to go with, I stole this one early.
Best, worst, titular building type.
Okay? The fucking movie is called fucking house.
There's no houses in the fight.
It takes place in a hotel.
No one is ever in a house at any point in the fucking movie.
Oh, yeah.
It's a B&B.
At best.
At best.
I think it's just a fucking hotel.
But yeah, like...
It's like they were trying to hide themselves in SEO.
Like, they saw the movie and they were like,
what title do we pick?
Best Chinese Food, Your City.
Is that one take no?
A movie film house.
That's clearly what it was.
They were like, well, you know,
there are several good movies called House guys
so we could get mistaken for any number of them.
Is the book the same title?
Because it's based on a book.
Is it really?
Yes.
It's based on a Christian horror book by him or Ted Decker and some other dude whose name I forget.
Oh, really? Okay. He was one of the filmmakers.
Okay. Did you read the book? Did you read the source material?
I am a non-religious Jew from New York City. Anything that screamed Christian to me when I was growing up, I stayed far away from.
Hard pass. Such a hard pass. And I didn't even have all those excuses. So did you have any best words for us, Amanda?
I did. I had two, and I didn't know where to go, so I'll just say them both because none of you went with them.
Best Worst character naming?
Yes.
What the hell is Randy Massaroo?
Masseroo.
I rewound to pause because what the fucks Maseru?
Yeah. It felt like people lying, just being like noise masseroo.
Right. It's like, what's your name? Oh, I'm manly, manly.
How shit, that's the title.
This is how we came up with the title, too.
But also, I don't know if you noticed the,
when she took out the card for the couples therapist,
it didn't say doctor or anything.
It just said Betty Louise.
Yep, sure did.
Which, I'll get back to Betty because
did they just use that name twice?
There's a cop name fucking officer.
Lawdale. Lawdale.
Lawdale.
Lawdale. That was what came to my mind.
Hi, I'm cop officer.
Law.
Police.
I am bad.
Officers, stop resisting.
Yeah.
I'm going to go with Best McGuffin or should I say Ms. Susan.
Okay.
This movie, which has a plot so thin you could use it for a penetration-based magic trick,
runs out of itself about two-thirds of the way through.
So they introduce a McGuffin character who just sort of leads us the rest of the way through the movie.
Just how I'm here is the rest of the film.
Yeah, in the third act, yeah.
Hey, magicians should call it not a penetration-based trick as a genre.
They should come up with a different title for that.
I'm not, I don't take that feedback.
Why did they call her Susan?
Again, bad.
Like, it's such a, they could have at least given her a name that fit to the character, yeah.
Yeah, something.
Yeah, but paid her off in some way.
Susie McGuffin.
That would have done it.
Yeah, there you go.
I wouldn't have put it past them to call her Susan McGuffin.
Honestly, yeah.
They never asked the last name, yeah.
All right, well, I'll tell you what, the metaphors in this movie are so heavy-handed.
We need to stretch before we attempt to lift them.
So we're going to take a quick break, but we're back in a minute with all the hotel that is house.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Okay, and then one time I was right in the middle of my audition song, and they just started taking lunch orders.
Oh, I've had that happen to me, too.
Like passing a phone?
No, out loud.
Out loud.
Hey, guys.
You ready to record the episode?
Yeah, the listeners are waiting.
Sorry, guys. Me and Amanda were just talking about acting horror stories.
I feel like you need to succeed to have actor horror stories.
No, you don't. No, you don't. I tried and I failed and that's enough. Tell him, Amanda.
It's true. He did fail.
No, the trying part. You know what? It doesn't matter because I've got Better Help.
What's Better Help?
Oh, now that's what I've taught. Obviously professional.
Phenomenal performance. Perfect.
Better Help has 12 years of experience in matching people to the right therapist.
Plus, BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals.
A short questionnaire helps you identify your needs and preferences, and their 10 years of experience
and industry-leading match fulfillment rate means that typically they get it right the first time.
If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their
tailored recommendations.
Well, that sounds great.
Where do I sign up?
This World Mental Health Day, we're celebrating the therapists who've helped millions of people
take a step forward.
If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey.
Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash awful.
That's better help.com slash awful.
All right.
Y'all ready to go?
Yeah, let's do it.
I teach acting sometimes.
Why?
Because they let me.
No, it's true.
They do let him.
It's so sad.
All right, everyone.
Welcome to the second writer's room meeting for House.
Now, look, I feel like I might have gotten a little carried away at our first.
meeting when I handed out that extensive list of tired horror movie tropes that I didn't
want you guys to use.
I should have let you make your own mistakes.
And I just want to apologize for that.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, sorry.
You wanted us not to write that stuff?
Yeah, we thought that's like what you wanted.
What?
Why would I ask for things like two-dimensional characters and people whose trauma is their
fault?
Yeah, that was a weird request now that I think about it.
Okay, well, did you guys at least figure out why we're calling the movie House?
I literally wrote, hey, guys, I'm not married to House.
I think it's just a good placeholder.
Oh, we thought you meant that should be the plot.
How would I mean that could be the plot?
Yelling.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
House?
I like it.
Thank you.
Claire.
Thank you.
Positive.
And we're back for the breakdown
and we're going to open up on the does two count Bible quote
This is John 1.5
And I want to complain about this quote, right?
Because the quote is,
the light shineth in the darkness
And the darkness comprehended it not.
Okay, light does not shine in the fucking darkness, right?
Because it's not darkness.
If there's light shining around it, light can shine with darkness around it.
But the very fact that there's light shining means it's not fucking darkness.
Sorry.
Yeah, they're trying to do the like,
the fish being like, what the fuck is water?
But like, fuck you, you're doing it wrong.
Yeah, exactly.
So this was the case where I was like,
okay, is this really going to be a Christian movie?
And then it started with that.
And I went, yep, it sure is.
It is, though.
Amanda mentioned in the intro that this is based on a Christian novel.
So I looked into this and I am so excited because not only have we watched one of the movies
that is a sister book to the book that this movie is based on,
three.
but we've enjoyed this guy's work
in various other forms before
and I am so pleased to announce that
House is part of his fucking
podcast diverse but not part
of his main. This is his side project.
This is his D&D minus. Wait, who is this?
Frank Peretti and Ted Decker.
Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.
Wait, did you say three? He has something just called three?
Yes, he has another horror book called three
which was turned into a movie
so hard to find that we had to have a listener
buy the DVD and rip it to YouTube for us.
I mean, that SEO is even worse than House.
Right? Yes.
Who titles shit for him?
Apparently Ted Decker takes two authors.
Yeah, right, right.
Look, I find titling really hard,
but I would never come up with something as shitty as three.
Yes, right. The.
Yeah.
So we're going to open up on this woman,
and she's like hiding in this mansion.
It's supposed to be real creepy.
and the way that we're going to establish that as creepy
is we're going to have a mouse walk in front of her like a rat
but the rat is way too cute to be the dungeon silhouette
it's like a chunker
it's somebody's pet mouse obviously
very clearly yeah so here's the thing
I don't like rats but my wife adores rats
so any creepiness I was going to get from this movie
was immediately ruled out when my wife was like
oh just in my right ear
yeah I was just so fucking confused by
the layout of this house because it seemed like
she was locked in the basement
at first and then I realized she was just behind
the banister of the stairs. Yeah, it felt
like a cage or something for sure. Yeah, and it wasn't.
That's how they shot it. They wanted us to think that, yeah.
But just then, the clock strikes
558, right? Because we can see the fucking clock.
It's not his clock. Don't show us that.
You could lie and be like
at six and we wouldn't have known. Or you could
move the fucking... Give it a nudge, perhaps. Right,
or wait two fucking minutes. You would
patient bastards, but yeah, clock strikes at 5.58, we see a tin can.
I wrote in my notes, is that the swear jar?
It's so much dumber than that.
It's so much dumber than this one.
I didn't notice everything it said on the tin can at first.
So all I read was, he who comes.
Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
I saw shotgun shells, a wedding ring, an hourglass, and a tin can that says,
he who comes in magic marker.
And I was like, this guy's having a bad day.
This is like a minority report scenario.
I don't know what he's doing next, but let's arrest him just to be sure.
That is all I saw too.
And I was just like, ah, in the can?
Is that what the can is for?
It's the jackpot.
I wrote in my notes, this is what the Trump administration calls proof that he's a leftist.
Yeah, right.
So, okay, so this woman is like sneaking away from a guy, but he catches up with her.
And she goes, you can't shoot me.
I'm your wife.
And he goes, no, I can definitely shoot you.
watch.
Lady, you need to check out the statistics.
I'm worse for you than heart disease.
Oh, no.
As someone who produces true crime TV shows,
do you know how hard it is to find the case where it's not the husband?
Well, right.
Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, he's like, no, it's everything's going to be okay.
She's like, is it?
He goes, for me.
And then he shoots him.
Which is, hey, can I say if you're in a madness-induced murder state and you can do a
not joke, I feel like you can choose not to kill your wife.
I think you might not be in a madness-induced state,
and this might just want to be you.
Yep, exactly.
So, okay, so then we're going to watch drunken drone operator
try to catch a fucking car going down the road.
Like, I don't know if he was just zoomed in too much or what,
but I have never seen more nauseous drone footage.
It also felt like it was slowed down almost.
Mm-hmm.
Like the speed of the footage in that car scene was off.
from every other scene.
Well, so I genuinely think what happened
is that this drone operator was like,
guys, you're going too fucking fast.
I can't follow you at 45 miles north.
So they've got this thing just coasting down at 15
and they're like, well, we're going to have to speed up
the fucking footage now.
That's silly.
There's a dog.
There's a dog running by keeping pace with the car.
It was really distracting.
I checked my settings to see if I was watching
on like a different speed
because it was just so jarring.
Yeah.
So, but we're going to meet.
two characters here we have Jack
who is driving recklessly because he's just very
upset and we have his wife Stephanie
who's had enough of his bullshit.
Yeah and we get a real cheesecake shot
of Stephanie's toes here and I was like
oh I was going to make a Tarantino joke here
but it's a short shot and then we got eight more
shots of her feet and I was like oh okay it is a Tarantino
she's like doing her toenails and like at one
point she actually like gets the toenail polish
all over her foot and everything I'm like
yeah this guy's got a fetish you know
but don't tell him
that.
No, yeah.
Don't tell him that.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
No, no, no.
He would never admit it.
No.
And also, this movie was made in 2000, I think it came out in 2008.
I think this might be the last movie that could get away with the We Got Lost trope without
explaining why they're not just using GPS, right?
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, because the iPhone basically came out right around then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then, so they're lost.
He's trying to find the highway.
and a cop
hits his lights behind him
so he's getting pulled over
she goes slow down
he goes
I'm trying
it's the pedal on the left
I know that's tricky
this is also the first time
and look we've seen a lot of bad
pulling over slash movie scenes
this is the first time
where the movie forgets he's being pulled over
because he just kind of like
shakes the wheel a little bit
and then the cop just drives by
yeah yeah well the cop's on his
to an emergency out, like a further
up. He wasn't actually pulling him up. He just wanted him to get the
fuck out of the way. And he was trying,
you guys. He was.
Not very hard, but he was.
Okay, did any of you look at that, the CD
cover, the photo of,
that doesn't even look like her. It looks like a woman
20 years older than her on that
CD cover. Interesting, yeah.
So Stephanie pulls out
this CD, right? So she's
like, let's listen to this CD. And
her husband, Jack, is just like, oh God,
not that fucking CD again. And
at first we're just like, okay, what is it?
And then she's like, it's my greatest hits.
And I'm like, oh, my God, okay, well, I'm on his side now.
Okay, to be fair, that is some full on hovering above your seat level psychosis.
To be like, what should we listen to on the road?
How about a little bit of me?
Yes, yes.
She phrases it as, don't you want to listen to your wife's greatest hits?
And he's like, no.
I want to listen to like an actual album, not a compilation album, if I'm going to listen at all.
Let me hear some of your older stuff
Like on a full album
Maybe she does a cover of Melissa
Yeah
Which I did sing several times
While watching this movie
Yeah, exactly
So but yeah
But he's so pissed about
Listen to her shitty demo CD
The almost hits the cop car
Who's pulled over on the road
I had, you know,
seeing about some kind of a chicken chase
an accident
Yeah, he violently's trying to turn off the music
Like he has to strangle the knob to death
to get it to turn off.
Right.
Yeah.
So he pulls over, he hits the cops like cones and shit that he's got out on the road.
And we see there's a truck that's got like, you know, a couple of people running around chasing all the chickens that got away.
Yeah.
Which is just kind of silly and funny for a second until we, they try to do a chicken jump scare.
Mm-hmm.
Which is fucking hilarious.
Yeah, hard to do a pop scare with a chicken.
It is.
It is because chicken is a comedy prop.
I think we've all agreed.
I mean
Stephanie chickened out
at the chickens
No that's true
That's true
Freaked to write the fuck out
And then okay
And then the cop comes up
And I wrote in my notes
Oh wow
The cop is a poor man's
Michael Madsen
No
But it's Michael Madsen
Michael Madsen
Is poor man's Michael
Manson
So how do we think
They got him in this movie
Did he have bills to pay
Is he secretly weird
Was he secretly weirdly Christian?
That was he?
my assumption.
Did they not tell him?
Because they could have not told him.
That's very possible, actually.
Yeah.
I would imagine it's both that he's both,
he had large bills to pay
and is secretly Christian.
And they didn't tell him, all of them, maybe?
Oh, it could be all three.
Yeah, no, whenever I see an actor like him
in a movie like this,
I always assume that this is somebody
in his church talked him into this shit.
But it could be, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe it was that he just spent too much money
on crack cocaine or something, yeah.
So I'll tell you this, because this was fun.
I was sort of like, oh, I wonder if he's, like, been out of work and then he came back to do this movie.
Fun fact, Michael Madsen has been consistently working his entire life in movies.
I have never fucking seen.
I was going, if you go through his IMDB, it sounds like movies that are on a poster in another movie, right?
2023, the lurking fear, assault on Hill 400, dark feathers,
Dance of the Geisha, right?
These are all real movies that Michael Batson was been in in the last two calendar years,
and I could find no trace of them on the internet except for his IMDB.
Oh, okay.
So I don't see anything about him being super religious, but he did get arrested for domestic
assault.
Okay.
So he really registered with the characters in this.
It feels like he's genuinely been just in a fugue state of Mr. Blonde ever since 1990.
and doesn't know he's been in all these movies,
that would fit with everything I've seen ever since.
Yeah, kind of a Nick Cage situation.
So, but Stephanie pops out to flirt with Michael Madsen for a little while
because she's like, well, this guy when my husband is a fucking nobody,
but you know Quentin Tarantino.
Let me tell you that it's audio up to you.
He let you be in the hateful eight, 26 years after he allowed you to be in his last movie.
Yeah.
So, but ultimately he gives him directions on how to get back to the highway and he lets him get away.
right
does he
yeah right
yeah
he gives them
two choices
he's like
you could go this way
or there's a
short cut
yeah
mwaha
hey you said
shortcut weird
you actually
literally said
moh
after that too
once in one
of these movies
I want someone
to be like
you said that funny
I don't want to do
the thing
that you said funny
yeah
so okay
so they drive away
and now
Jack's getting
all pissy
because Stephanie
was flirting
with Michael Madsen
right? Because he wasn't pissy before.
Oh, right, right. Yeah, so he's getting different pissy. Yeah.
My first note on this movie was like, oh, is this going to turn into basically the couple that we saw at the beginning of the movie and that he's going to turn into this murderous asshole because I already buy that.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. He seems to have it lurking just beneath the surface here, yeah.
Yeah. All the couples in this movie will wildly swing from wild jealousy to absolutely hating each other and not.
nothing in between.
You'd think they'd be mutually exclusive, right?
You wouldn't be as jealous if you hate yourself, apparently.
Jealousy's the connection maker there.
A movie also has the worst blame the victim.
Yes.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my gosh.
Truly insane.
It was almost my other best worst because what on earth?
Yeah.
No, we'll get into a lot of that in a minute here.
But yeah, so we learned here that they were on their way to see a marriage counselor,
but they've changed their mind.
They're going to head back home.
And her name is Betty Louise.
Yes.
Which I was like, is this Tina Louise's sister?
Yes, they spelled it B-E-T-T-E, like Betty Page Betty.
Yeah, and they spelled Louise.
We see her business card for a second.
Stephanie, the wife here, she holds it up for a second to call and I guess be like we're not coming now.
It's Betty, B-E-E-T-E, and then Louise L-U-I-S-E, which is weird.
And then it says family coosling, spelled,
C-O-U-C-E-L-Y-N-G.
What?
I have a theory that Betty Louise isn't real because the woman in the house, the spooky lady, her name is Betty.
Is Betty?
Why would you have two characters named Betty?
No, unless that was some reveal that we were supposed to get, but it's not.
I think they're the same.
That's what I think.
We never saw them in the same room because we never saw Betty Louise.
we just see the future character named Betty,
who is a very interesting family counselor.
I really think that's what's happening here.
I think this is how she lures them to counseling.
Interesting.
Or I guess it's not counseling as we talk about this.
Yeah, the coosling.
Yeah, this is the most creative family cooslinger in history as we go through this plot.
I think that's an interesting theory.
And it doesn't even say doctor on that business card.
Interesting.
The name.
Yeah.
Just Betty.
So, okay, so they've decided they're not going.
She tries to call to cancel their session, but she has no cell reception out here.
And then he hit something in the road and two of their tires blow out, right?
And it's weird to do two near car accidents as you're inciting incident in the movie, right?
It feels like they could have just done the one.
It shows me that Jack's a really bad driver.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Don't tell him that, though.
I wrote in my note,
I was like, Jack is single-handedly proving
why they say, men can't drive.
That's the saying, right?
Yeah.
Statistically speaking.
Anyone who's written in my car.
We do drive like that.
It's true.
They blow out their tires.
They don't wreck the car
because this movie didn't have wrecked the car
kind of money, right?
But they see that there's another car on the side of the road
with its emergency blinkers on.
Nobody's in it, though.
Right?
And then there's thunder and it starts.
is raining instantly.
I was saying if I were lucky,
this would have been turned into Rocky Horror.
Oh, there you go.
But I wasn't lucky.
No, none of us were lucky.
So they're sitting in their car in the rain.
He's trying to figure out where they are on the map.
He can't find this road anywhere on the map.
And she's like, Stephanie's like,
hey, why don't we check and see
if Michael Madsen is up for a threesome?
I mean, he's just back there.
He wasn't doing anything, right?
So they decided to walk out in the pouring rain
to go get some help.
But along the way, they come across this mysterious old hotel that they don't remember seeing.
No.
No.
It says the sign out front.
Building.
It says wayside in.
It's a fucking inn.
And then he goes, he goes, well, looks like some kind of bed and breakfast.
I'm like no, the fucking doesn't.
It looks like some kind of in.
The sign on the front says in.
The bungalow.
Don't try to confuse me about what fucking.
It's not done.
Have we stumbled upon a.
a noun?
I think it's a noun.
It's not a fucking yurt.
It's not a fucking tent.
It's not a fucking skyscraper.
It's a goddamn hotel.
We've got to work for that thing.
One could even say the noun
with a definite article if you wanted to.
It's also a building.
A domicile.
Yes. So they go up to the domicile.
Now, like most houses,
it's got a fucking lobby, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that they just
see this like Gothic mansion with like
demon noises coming out of it and like a crazy
wrought iron fence that has like evil spikes
going. And they're just like, chill.
It looks like a nice B&B.
We've got a bed and breakfast. Yeah, right.
It's a B&B. What a nice house. How
homely.
There's no cars in the parking lot. And I'm like, well, it's funny
that a fucking house would have a parking lot. Yeah.
But they go into the lobby and they see that there's a
guest register and two people
have checked in today.
Randy Massaroo.
Massaroo.
And Leslie Taylor or something.
they didn't get exciting with her last name.
No, it's just him.
That's what makes it so much more absurd.
Yeah.
So, and I want to,
these people's motives in signing that goddamn guest book
just baffled me for the rest of the fucking movie.
But they come down from downstairs and they're like,
hey, we found ourselves in this weird,
creepy, abandoned hotel and,
and signed the guest book.
How are you guys doing?
Oh, we're doing it.
You should sign the guest book too.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, no, we'll sign the guest book.
And then we can talk.
Write a fun message, like a nice message that future guests will enjoy.
Point out your favorite thing about the property.
Don't come here.
Lost in rain.
No exit.
Yeah, right.
Lots of metal spikes on road.
Fun.
So they're like, yeah, we hit some farm equipment down the road.
They're like, oh my God, that's the same farm equipment we hit.
And I'm like, and you didn't move it out of the fucking road, you absolute prick.
Jesus.
I don't know if any of you turned the suburb.
subtitles on watching this movie, but they kept calling the Beamer, a Bimmer.
B-I-M-M-E-R.
Yep, the Bimmer.
Also, and I wasn't going to point this up, but they keep spoiling things because they'll keep telling you who's talking when you're not supposed to know, right?
They'll be like, Stephanie, they're like, we're not supposed to know that's her behind.
Jack's ghost.
Yeah, come on.
The devil.
No, man.
So, oh, they walk into the dining room at one point, and one of the guys, Randy goes, oh, wow, this is like an ag of the cream.
Christie novel, huh?
And I'm like, calm down Ted Decker, Rob Green, and Frank Peretti.
No, no, your fucking story's not like the second best British author after Shakespeare.
Shut the fuck up.
I would describe this movie as no exit, but except the four of us watching it, we were the people trapped in purgatory.
Yeah, that's the other.
Yeah, that's the hell.
Kind of like an Agatha Christie novel.
It is.
It's a building house, maybe.
there's a chandelier in some of her work
to a lot of similarities.
Yeah.
And fucking Leslie goes,
well,
don't the people in her books wind up dead?
That's not helpful,
Leslie,
right now.
Not the majority of them.
Or shadowing.
Or are they?
And then the light,
just as she says that,
this thunder clap and the lights go out.
So Randy says,
come on,
Jack,
you girls stay put.
I'm sorry.
No,
I couldn't help but notice
that when you said,
come on, Jack.
Now you just said it,
one time. Just the one time.
Just the one time. Is that what he says?
Which was drastically different than what actually happened.
They will exit the scene and I guess they like had the audio of him saying come on Jack
because they will use it. And guys, back me up. Five or six more times. We'll just hear him
being like, come on Jack. Oh, come on Jack. Somebody learned about a soundboard and put just that
on it like Eli learned about a soundboard and we couldn't not hear a Mystic River.
for like eight or ten times every episode?
I was two episodes.
It was two episodes before no one took it away from that.
I made my husband watch this with me.
And he was like, if you told me that this was a Christian adaptation of Clue, I'd believe you.
It's pretty close, yeah.
But bad.
Yeah, right, right.
Just like Agatha Christie.
Yeah.
No.
So Jack and Randy go looking for the generator.
At one point, this is so great.
There's this creepy kid voice, you know, like, Daddy, help.
And chat goes, did you hear that?
And Randy goes, and I quote, house noise.
Sorry.
I did a spit take.
House noise?
House noise, yeah.
I actually spit out the tea.
I was drinking when that happened.
And I had to pause to wipe down my laptop screen because it was so fucking absurd.
No.
See, when you got old pipes, they go, follow me, daddy.
Yes.
You got to have steam heat.
Yeah.
Okay. Just pan over.
There's like a house DJ doing Foley.
This is on a turntable.
Foley time.
So, and then a ghost kid's walks by, now, okay, I'm just going to give you a general
piece of advice, aspiring horror movie makers.
If you're going to have a ghost kid, don't put her in a bright red tomato-ass looking jacket,
right? Or at least let us see it very clearly so that we're all not like,
is she dressed as the Kool-Aid man for like the first three times we see?
I thought it was, don't look now.
is what they were referencing.
Yeah.
And what makes it even worse
is that she's in a red puffy jacket.
So it looks like they had like a really fat ghost kid.
When they said all you can eat,
they should have been more specific.
But, of course,
it's a normal-sized kid in a puffy jacket,
but because we'll only see her
out of the corner of the camera's eye,
for the first half of the movie,
I was like, okay,
we're getting Heath's baby pictures
as the ghost here, all right.
I did like to dress up as Santa Claus sometimes
and walk around mansions
and whispered a piece.
It's not good because it's only out of the corner
and you're just like, what am I looking at?
I thought it was a specific reference to Don't Look Now.
I don't know the movie, so I can't tell you.
Don't Look Now is from the 70s.
It's Donald Sutherland and Christy.
It's a classic horror movie with one of like the most notoriously good sex scenes in the movie history.
You will miss me on a lot of classic horror movie references.
So this was like an amazing illusion right here.
Yeah, right.
Very good literary illusion, cinematic.
Illusion. Got it.
So meanwhile, back with the women, folk,
we check in with Leslie and
Stephanie, and they immediately
fail the Bechdel test, right?
She's like, tell me about your
husband. And she says,
quote, Jack's a writer. He's
signed and published.
Is he? Really?
A lot of freaking da for him.
She goes, I'm a singer.
And Leslie says, anything I'd heard of?
And she says, why you got to be a bitch about it?
Yes, we both work at the same Applebee's.
Perhaps you've heard the last song
on the Starbucks album that they used to offer there
at the front near the cashier that nobody bought?
Well, this movie definitely has no concept
of how her music career works
because she has an agent, she is signed,
she has a record.
So conceivably someone has listened to this.
You would think? Yeah, you'd think.
She has greatest hits.
Yeah, obviously, yeah, multiple albums.
Nobody puts up.
an album of greatest hits
if they don't have
greatest hits.
That's an awesome debut album though
for some of the movies.
It's okay.
But then the guys come back
with, they found lanterns
apparently.
And as they return
with the lanterns,
suddenly a creepy guy
appears in the room with them.
This is Pete the
pervert, I guess.
I don't know.
Uncle.
Yeah.
He's creepy.
And he's creeping on
specifically on Leslie.
Yeah.
And then suddenly
Betty appears.
A creepy woman appears
by setting a pitcher down
too hard.
So we're being introduced
now to our horror movie family.
There was also a husband,
Stuart, who we won't meet
quite yet.
Yeah.
When Betty introduces herself,
she says Betty,
just Betty.
And I wrote in my notes,
like,
Cher?
Yeah, well, she didn't want to say
Louise yet.
Exactly.
She didn't want to tell us
that she was Betty Louise.
Yeah.
That this whole thing has been a marriage counseling intervention.
Yeah, right.
I'm not a coosler.
Well, see, that's why the card says that because she's not really licensed.
Right, yeah, yeah, you can't say counselor.
Exactly, you can't sue her.
Anybody's allowed to do coosling.
Yeah, you can.
That's not protected.
We're saying marriage coosler.
No, that's true.
So she's like, oh, are you all staying here?
It'll be $20 a night, which is damn reasonable in two.
in 2007.
And then Randy's like,
does that include food?
And I was like,
fuck yeah, Randy.
That's such a good question right now.
Love this guy.
You could charge so much more
for a haunted house.
People want to stay somewhere haunted.
Right?
Even without food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She says, he goes,
does that include food?
And she's like, well, I get,
yeah, I guess.
Jesus, it was already a pretty good deal,
but fine.
She says, we'll feed you,
but you got to go clean up first.
Only pigs wallow in their own muck.
All right, that was another, that's like too super weird.
We're going to maybe take off.
Should we take off?
I cannot explain how normal, absolutely everything else could be.
If someone said that as an instruction to wash my hands,
there is no thing that could keep me in the building.
Yeah, I would be out.
Dive through window.
So, yeah, well, to her credit, Stephanie, it goes,
we don't actually want to be here at all.
Can we use your phone and then leave?
And they're like, well, you can use the phone,
but ain't no towed truck coming out.
Tonight, you're stuck with us.
But then Betty also tells Pete to take Stephanie and Jack to see Ma Bell.
That doesn't go anywhere.
Who's Ma Bell?
They just fully, fully abandoned that.
That's an old-timey reference for a phone.
Is it?
Oh, thank you.
I had no idea.
I was like, what?
That's what Noah.
No one grew up calling it.
Yes, no.
We did.
Gotta go see Alexander Graham about a horse.
I think it's just like an old-time.
Yeah, right.
Drop some kid off at the segregated pool.
Yeah, growing up in New York City, definitely never heard that.
So they all go to leave, but Leslie goes to leave last, and Betty stops her.
Now, we should point out that Leslie is like the tempteress.
We know that.
Yes, right.
Leslie is the boobs, yes.
That's how the movie sees her.
And Betty stops and she says, you look clean enough.
Why don't you come die first in the movie?
I mean, help me in the.
kitchen over here, you know. Yeah. And the counselor's like, she's, yeah. Oh, yeah. So we didn't,
we didn't mention that, actually. So Leslie is, just to make this movie even more confusing,
a grad student psychologist, right? So she's learning to be a coosler, we would assume.
She's, she's pre-cus at Auburn. Yeah. Yes. So, wait, no, no, no. This does make sense in the Lord.
Okay, okay, I'm putting it together because we know that Betty Louise, Kusler, is actually this Betty in the house, who, and her Kuseling is luring couples to this purgatory house, hotel.
So, Leslie is studying to take over for her.
Oh, interesting.
So she's going to become Leslie Taylor family Kusler next.
Yeah, family Kusler.
Oh, I like that.
Yeah, like maybe Betty Louie's wants to move on.
She's with different demon duties that she wants to do.
Yeah, things that don't require...
You've got to pass on the business.
I'm giving this movie so much more lore than it deserves.
She's like, you know, I'm looking for a position where I don't get my face cracked open by angry dudes as often.
Yeah.
All right.
So they try to use the phone.
Phone doesn't work, of course.
So then we cut to Stephanie and Jack cleaning up for dinner, right?
And there's this moment here where, like, Stephanie is trying to convince Jack that this.
situation is creepy as fuck and he is shockingly dense about it he's like i don't trust these people
and he's like why what's wrong it's nice they tell us about pigs only eating in their own
swamp they let us use their weird unplugged phone and robbed us of a corner did you hear what you just
said did you hear yourself i did not know i didn't hear anything see this is why we need to go to
couples there we pete literally his first line was your purdy to boobs so yeah that's not good no
nothing about this is good.
There's also this moment
where she looks away
and the faucet turns itself on
and then it turns itself back off
like Michigan J. Frog style or whatever
and I'm like, that's the least fucking
creepy imagine.
You're not even close when it comes to creepiness.
The faucet turned on?
Fuck you.
Guys, I don't want to blow our load
at the start. Can we just turn
a faucet on when no one's...
Okay, that's just for us then. I don't know why we...
But I also think this movie proves
the whole thing that white man in a haunted house
they're just going to stay, stay oblivious
and pretend that nothing's happening
and everyone else is like,
this place is fucking haunted.
There's something wrong.
100%.
Fair.
We're not asking for directions
out of the haunted house,
man.
Yes, exactly.
Right. So also, but at this point,
Stephanie looks in the mirror,
she sees that tomato girl
was behind her.
And you can tell,
I've been doing this guy off
with these things too long.
I wrote my notes,
calling it now,
that's her aborted fetus.
It's not.
It wasn't.
But close.
You were brandy.
You were good, yeah.
I was pretty fucking sure, but yeah.
All right, well, I'll tell you.
These writers need a minute to look up more generic horror movie cliches.
So we're going to give them a break.
But we'll be back in a minute with even more house.
Okay, what about pumpkin-spiced sugar bombs?
I mean, sugar bomb is right there in the title.
I thought maybe they bombed the sugar, like got rid of it.
No.
Hey, guys.
What's you doing?
Yeah, what's with the menus?
Oh, hey, Noah.
Hey, Heath.
Me and Amanda are trying to figure out how to really go all.
in on our fall flavors while staying healthy, and it's tough.
Tell me about it.
Well, why don't you guys try Green Chef?
What's Green Chef?
Amanda's was still better.
Paul Tree.
Green Chef makes it easy to spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying fall.
And with their new heat and eat meals, enjoy a delicious, wholesome meal in just three minutes.
I don't know, Noah.
Don't those meal kits get kind of samey?
Not with Green Chef, they don't.
With 80-plus dietitian-approved weekly meal options,
Green Chef makes it easy to find meals that fit your lifestyle.
Pick from Mediterranean, gluten-free, plant-based, and protein-heavy, even calorie-smart
choices, too.
I don't know, Heath.
Have you actually tried it?
I sure have.
I was a Green Chef customer even before they were a sponsor.
I love how I can stop and start my subscription on my schedule, so I've got a great meal
headed to my door whenever I want.
All right, guys.
I'm sold.
Where do I sign up?
Make this phone your healthiest yet with Green Chef.
Head to greenchef.com slash 50 awful and use the code 50 awful to get 50% off your first
month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50 offal at greenchef.com
slash 50 offal.
All right, guys. Thanks.
Hey, do you think Starbucks will just sell me the pumpkin syrup?
Probably not after last year.
What happened last year?
Oh, you do not want to know.
Don't ask.
Oh.
Thanks so much for letting us wait out the storm in here.
No problem.
Lots of folks get lost on this road.
I can't believe it just started raining like that.
Insane.
Yes, things can get quite unexpected up here.
Sorry, what's that mean?
I think my husband means a lot of folks find more than they're looking for in these hills.
Right.
But like what?
What do they find?
Like they find a demon house?
I knew it.
I told you.
I said it.
Damn it, Harold.
What?
Nobody has ever asked us a follow-up when we said that stuff.
And I just, I panic.
He's right.
Nobody ever has.
It's true.
Okay.
Well, we're going to go.
Yep.
No, no, don't go.
Don't you want to use the phone?
Is your phone broken?
Yep.
Broken.
Harold.
Yeah.
We're out.
We're going to go.
Head in the game, Harold.
Need more rehearsal.
And we're back for more of this shit.
We're going to reach.
join the action with everybody's sitting down for a very awkward dinner.
And now here's the thing, though, this movie doesn't have enough creepy shit to happen
at this dinner.
So they try to, like, use the cinematography to make you think creepy shit's going on.
Like, oh, we're zooming in real close on that pot roast, you know.
Okay.
I just noticed something.
So my very first note in the scene is pot roast looks good.
Amanda's first note is, ew.
I feel like that those happened independently.
Was that a reaction to the pot roast or the people?
Mine wasn't to the first shot of the pot roast.
It was moving around on someone's plate being cut up really small
and it was just like mushing around there.
Yeah, that was gross.
They have somebody just like infinitely cutting the pot roast up
because that looks gross.
Yeah.
That didn't look, it didn't make me hungry at all that part.
Yeah, right.
Agree, we same.
Uh-huh.
So Stephanie, also Stephanie's over here,
fingering her ice tea.
Yeah. I also didn't, I thought that was weird too.
It's weird. It is weird.
And again, I just, I just wanted any character to be like, hey, why is your finger in your drink?
That's fucking insane that that's happening.
Push in the ice.
That's the thing that just keeps happening in horror movies.
Big time out, whole room. The vibes are crazy here, right?
Can we all to acknowledge it's insane what's going on in this house?
If you're doing a terrifying thing right now, let's stop.
Stop. One, two, three, stop.
Okay, great.
Now, let's each do one thing and we'll judge if it's terrifying.
I'm putting my finger in the pot.
Terrify.
There we go.
See, we're walking.
I'm just, like, moving my food around.
Yeah, just cutting my food.
I'm not eating it.
Just cutting it.
Also, hey, I'm sorry, but does Jack's hair look like that even after he freshenes up?
It's so bad.
It looks so greasy.
It's so gross.
What did he do in the bathroom?
I would not want to run my fingers through that.
Oh, God.
No, you'd never get them back.
Right?
You'd get...
Four of them or something.
That's a great image for a much better horror movie.
Oh, there you know.
Like fingers getting cut off in hair.
Absolutely everybody in this movie looks like they did not make it to the cast of Charmed.
Right?
Like they were in the last running, but.
Yep.
They look like they did their own hair and makeup.
That too, yeah.
So, okay, but this is where we meet Stewart, who is Betty's husband.
He's going to come in and bully Pete a little bit.
And then, so, we're.
We're supposed to be establishing here that each of these people has a great sin, right,
that they're going to, like, be paying for here.
Oh, God.
And we're about to start establishing that the great sin that Leslie has is her boobs, right?
Like, we will over and over again establish in this movie that she is a temptress,
tempting men with all of her cleavage.
How dare she?
Now, can I say this about Leslie?
And we'll talk about it when it comes up through the movie.
She is very quick to advise other people to murder.
Can I say that?
That should be your sin.
Can I speak from an open heart?
Yeah.
I was cool with most of her murder recommendations, though.
No, that's true.
She's going straight to it.
She goes straight to the murder, yeah.
I've heard Noah make that advisement for, like, Irish airport security, and they weren't.
She did politics the right way.
Oh, God.
Exactly, yes.
But she did coosling the wrong way.
Unfortunately, yeah.
That's where she had to go.
So basically, so Stewart sits down and he goes,
so I see you two aren't married, but I bet you're fucking aren't you, you know.
Oh, no, he says, are you going to violate your woman in our bed?
That is what he says.
Yeah, it's even worse than I made it sound God.
It's really bad.
Yeah, and this is just how I imagine Noah feels whenever he chooses to eat with me and Heath at the same time.
You're going to fuck upstairs.
You're pretty.
Sorry, Seth, Andrews.
I'm so sorry.
They work here.
She goes,
Pete goes,
I want her,
Ma.
And Betty turns to Leslie
and she says,
you got to forgive Pete,
quote,
his saps a bubbling.
Terrifying.
Yeah.
That's what the tin can is for,
Pete.
Leave Leslie alone.
That's why there's a hole in it.
I was wondering why there's a hole.
Oh,
okay.
It is ribbed for his place.
Oh my God.
I thought the.
Ribbing was for her pleasure.
No.
Never was.
When it's in the can, it's
for everybody's pleasure.
So, but Randy's like, because Pete keeps
saying that he wants to, he wants
to fuck Leslie and Randy's like, hey,
she's with me, man.
I thought it was clear that we were together,
but no, okay.
Yeah.
Can I say, though, like, hey man,
if a guy is across a dining room table
going, can I have her mom?
He's probably not going to be like,
oh, I'm sorry.
I thought you guys were in like an
ethical monogamy situation.
Like, I don't think
Pete understands the subtlety
of relationship dynamics.
Nice try, Jack.
I get it.
I don't think he cares.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, but meanwhile,
Stephanie is flashing back
to an ice-related trauma,
and Betty keeps trying to put
more ice in her drink,
even though there's already
enough ice in it.
Yes.
And what you can tell in this,
this is a weird meta moment,
but what you can tell
is that they did a shot of this scene
where she puts too much ice in the drink
and the drink overflowed.
And they were like, well, that looks extremely silly.
So we need you to just kind of be blocking the box
while she tries to put ice in the drink.
Right.
So yeah, but that freaks Stephanie out.
She runs away from the table and Jack pursues.
At this point, Stephanie turns to Jack and she goes,
they know about the accident, right?
So, you know, a little foreshadowing going on there.
But Stephanie goes to leave.
But when she opens the door,
there's a shotgun.
silhouette dudes standing out there.
This is the bad guy.
This is the tin man who they will spend the rest of the movie hiding from, right?
Okay.
I have a question.
Why does the tin man arrange for there to be a slightly unpleasant dinner party
to enact his long con haunting?
He likes formalities.
I guess that's what, okay, yeah.
The relationship between the tin man and these three other characters is baffling to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so Betty sees him and she goes,
Oh, you brought the tin man.
We're all in for it tonight.
And so she starts locking the doors
and pulling like special barred gates over them and everything.
Mm-hmm.
I think you have to look at their relationship like this is their kink.
And they're just forcing other people into it.
It's a role play thing.
Like, he's the bad boss kind of thing.
Okay.
Ooh, I like that.
I thought it was like a sometimes word on American atheist conference.
and they have to pretend that they know us.
Right, like, you know,
Nick Fish is out there trying to do advocacy
and I'm wearing a shirt that says
Baby's favorite daddy.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you got to like,
this is a classic regular.
There they are.
We got to lock Eli out of the building now.
As usual.
Interesting. I'm so sorry, Seth Andrews.
So, but just then,
Stephanie notices a big wall of exposition
in the form of news clippings, right?
this is where we learn about Officer Lawdale
Fuck yeah
Because Officer Bad Guy Cop was two on the nose
And nothing else was
Yeah
And this is when they refer to the hotel as a farmhouse
Okay
They say you know Officer Laudale and his wife
Went missing in a farmhouse
And Jack goes is this the farmhouse
And I went well it's not a fucking farmhouse
Or a house, it's a fucking hotel
So it can't be that
And Betty goes
Maybe it is
No, doesn't she say
I reckon it is?
Oh yeah, yeah, I reckon it is.
So, but everybody starts running,
Randy demands backstory.
So she explains like,
well, some folks call him
the tin man.
And everybody's like, really,
I would have thought
it would be something creepier than that.
And she goes, come on.
The Joker?
Some people call him the Joker.
Like, nope, that's a Batman villain.
Scarecrow.
You had to know about the Wizard of Oz.
Come on.
someone else write out the lyrics to
some people call me the Joker
because I did in my notes.
Fantastic.
I know I wrote
that and I just started
singing it. Oh,
oh yeah, some folks call me the tin man
some call me the Joker.
Oh, and at some point
Pete just shouted something that sounded
like Mamnet.
Mamnet? Yeah, I don't know what that was.
Mamnet. Sorry, some people call me
ma'am net. Because I speak
with the shotgun of love.
She also
says Betty describing the tin man.
She says he only goes after
the guilty. Yes.
And then Leslie, this is my favorite moment
in the whole fucking I laughed so much. Leslie's like
she means us.
Yes. So perfect on the timing.
I laughed so much. It's the pause.
It was like it was like Kanye
when he was like, I don't like this doctor.
It was a Jewish doctor.
I'm not going to say what religion the doctor is.
He's a Jewish dog.
It's incredible.
I think I missed that.
That was one of his crazy.
I have it on my soundboard that Noah took away.
I don't know.
But I may literally have it on a soundboard that Noah took away from me.
Okay.
So now we have to introduce the menacing can of beans.
Amazing.
So the Tin Man.
drops a tin can, because he's tin man, down the chimney or whatever.
Hey, man, do you have a prop that rhymes with your name as a bad guy up there at the top of the chimney?
Is that why this is a tin can?
So he's just doing prop comedy over here.
He took his first UCB class and then thought, yep.
No, I could be a sick of kind of killer.
This is, I've got it.
Read it.
It's scary.
Yeah, right, right.
So he's written three rules on the...
Are you reading it?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, no, we're reading it.
So rule one.
What's her say?
I'll say it out loud.
I was reading.
I was saying what it said.
Rule one, I killed God.
Hey, man, that's more of a statement than a question or a rule.
What am I supposed to do with that?
What do I follow?
Right.
Yes, right.
No running in the pool.
Rule two.
rule two
I'll kill anybody that comes into my house
just like I killed God
now wait is this your house
is that really a rule or like
a statement
is this a house it's not really
it's more of a hotel
hey man do you want to drop another one down
with like corrections on the rule
rule to be
yeah did you do okay in English class
rule three
like the third rule
but now so here's the
but here's the rub right here's the moment
that these idiot fucking writers thought
that they had a whole movie from
Rule 3, if they kill
one person, well, so they
if they present him one dead body
before morning, he'll let
everybody else live.
Right? So what they're trying
to set up here is this convoluted
if you guys decide amongst yourself
who dies that everyone
else can live, otherwise I kill everybody, right?
Yeah. Now, I want to be
clear that we will eventually get
to those stakes, but it's like
the movie like an elderly person
sort of wanders away from those things
because we'll spend the next 60
minutes not with those stakes
and then like grandma trying to
clean up before everyone comes over it'll be like
nope those were always the stakes of the room
because everybody will be separated for like the next
hour of this film yeah
oh yeah no I thought we were getting some couple
swapping action going on when
what comes up
yeah you know when you go
to someone's house and they've planned an activity
but the night just sort of carries
naturally and you eat and you talk
and you have a good time.
But then that person sort of stops everybody
at the natural point of the night
where everyone would go home and is like,
we're playing macarena.
I thought we were just, you know,
let me go put my coat back on the bed.
I thought we forgot about that, yeah?
Okay, you want to play the game of Prisoner's Dilemma now?
Yeah, right, yes.
Yeah, okay, put in my coat back.
So, yeah, so, but then Stewart goes and gets a shotgun.
And Randy's like, well, if you have a shotgun,
I want a shot gun.
And Stewart is like, no, the guy who gets the gun first wins the getting guns game, right?
That's just how that.
I would also like a gun.
No, you don't get to have a gun.
I like that there was a question that this might be some kind of sick prank for a second.
And they were just like, yep.
No, that's stupid.
That's stupid.
We're going to dismiss that for now.
The most logical answer.
No, no, not at all.
Definitely not.
They entertained that for way too long.
It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, guys, what are the chances?
this is a shenanigan, and they're like,
hmm, seems, I mean, he had a gun
and he shot it at us.
The guy with a leather mask,
he's like, there's a camera there, and
there, oh my God, look at your faces.
I'm Ashton Coucher.
It is a game,
just not for these four. It's a game for the other
people. They're having a blast.
Clearly, yeah. Okay, I do like that
Leslie jumps in here, and she's like, okay,
it's not a sick prank that was stupid
that we thought about that for a while. It is a game
though. We've got to figure out the best
strategy in the game. And I was like, yes, team Leslie. This is awesome. She's going to figure out
how to talk everybody into the strategy of prisoners dilemma. She's going to coocele them.
Podcast listener, I cannot emphasize to you how quickly Heath would have shot me after reading that
tin can. I don't think, here's what I'll say. I'm kind of a slow reader. I don't know I would have
made it to the end of the tin can. Well, I can tell you one thing's for sure is that Heath would have
read it in his head first, right? He wouldn't have read it out loud for everybody.
He would have said, oh, it doesn't say anything at all, and he would have crumpled it up.
So, yeah.
Ten man's at the top of the chimney.
He just hears one pip right away, and he's like, oh, ah.
Said, somebody just killed themselves right away.
Now we can all watch dancing with the stars if you guys want to catch him.
You see, I'm a, I got to admit, I'm rooting for Andy.
Adorable.
Are you coming down the chimney?
So, okay.
So, but now Stuart and.
And Betty and Pete decide that they're just going to lock these couples
in the walk-in refrigerator that houses have.
Uh-huh.
Yes.
Your house doesn't, it doesn't have one?
Well, no, of course it does because it's a house.
How would it even be a house without a walk-in fridge?
Every house.
Yeah.
So they take them to the walk-in.
They go, these are the sorriest bunch of sinners I've ever seen.
And then Randy starts having a day.
Dad was a dick flashback.
Can I give a weird note?
I feel like from what we're about to learn,
they didn't let Dad be established as enough of a villain.
Right? Yes.
I mean, we'll get to what happens next in a second,
but Dad's sort of like, shoot that deer, and then he doesn't, and he's like, fuck you.
And I'm like, okay, that's like 90% of our list.
That's better than 90% of our list there's at.
At least he took him hunting with him.
I didn't even understand this as a bad dad character.
I was like, oh, is it?
Well, he's supposed to kill the damn dear.
I probably wanted him to get good.
They were, yeah, they wanted us to, they did not.
But Leslie's story, oh my God.
Yeah.
So we'll get, we'll get in there.
But while Randy is having the first inklings of his flashback, Jack says,
hey, guys, we don't have time for fucking flashbacks.
And so he starts fighting to get the gun, to get the shotgun.
Randy stands there like an idiot.
And he goes, hey, Randy, there's an axe next to you.
He's like, right.
X, I'll get that, but Betty gets to it too fast.
I thought that Randy's backstory, based on what we got of that flashback at the beginning,
was actually that his dad, like, bullied him for perceiving him to be
effeminate or queer and that this was going to be some real, like, gay shaming shit going on.
Yeah, the movie didn't have the guts to actually do much of anything with anybody here.
Which, again, would have been bad because then that would have been blaming him.
instead of the actual abuser.
Right.
Which don't worry, they do.
Yeah, they do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've got Jack fighting with Stewart over the gun and now Betty's attacking with an axe.
Randy punches her square in the face.
Okay.
Betty with the very large axe was fun for me.
I enjoyed, like she looked like in Soul Calibur.
Remember Nightmare had the giant shirt or like Siegfried with the huge.
Also, can I say she definitely accidentally totally totally totally totally.
shifted there, right?
Because they're sort of doing
like a
welcome to a house of horrors
and she comes in like
No, I killed the
okay, that's not the vibe.
Seth Andrews, I'd like to apologize.
There are several moments
in this movie
that should be good or creepy.
But yeah.
They're not.
They never get there.
They never get there.
Never.
So they crack her head open
and then Stephanie like gets
a meat hook
into the back of Stewart's head.
And I'm like, okay, by the technical rules
of the tin can, they're good now.
Yeah.
That's a body.
Right.
You just push Stewart out and you're like,
there you go.
We get to go now.
Can you call us a tow truck?
Well, no, we'll call it tow truck.
That's fine.
That's fine.
Right?
But no.
Leslie at this point, by the way, too.
Leslie runs away.
She gets away as their whole fighting and just
fucks right on off.
Right.
She could not be bothered with anyone else in that room ever again.
And this is why the rules on the can should have been, well, I mean, for one thing,
only one of them is actually a rule.
Right.
Yes.
They should have been rules is what they should have been.
But it should have specified that you have to kill one of each other and not the inhabitants
of the house.
If you weren't an idiot fucking writer, then yes.
That's like obviously what you would have set up, that one of the four.
Exactly.
Because it says one body.
Well, that includes these weirdos who live in this house tell.
He dropped another can that says like footnote one and then a third.
Dan has a list of footnotes.
The week after Heath visits the house, he drops down like a six-pack.
And he's like, read the whole six-pack before you respond.
You can't just go to the cemetery and dig one up.
That's not obviously not what I'm met.
It's not the spirit of the game.
It doesn't have to be a human body.
Right?
Oh, yeah.
It doesn't have to be a dead body.
It just has a body.
Oh, you're right.
There you go.
Fantastic two points just now.
Love this is what I'm talking.
Body. Like a doll could be a body. A mannequin could be a body. You could lie down and be like, hi, I'm a body.
Yeah, right. Anybody would do. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, okay.
An antibody technically.
So, okay, so now we're going to go. We're going to check in on Leslie. She's getting nabbed by Pete. Right. He's going to kidnap her. We'll see her later on in the movie. Meanwhile, Stephanie has gotten away. And she's decided to see if screaming and shaking the padlocked gate over the front.
front door helps.
It's usually a good move.
Yeah, that seems to be her number one strategy.
Always works.
That's the best way to go about things.
It's going great, but then all of a sudden
some water starts flooding in from below the door,
which is the most terrifying thing that can possibly happen.
Yep.
Yep, that was my note.
scariest thing in the world, water under a door.
Why would you be, like, it's not your, like,
if it was my tile and I was like, oh, fuck,
this is going to cost a fortune.
Like, that would be one thing, but it's not even your place.
Yeah, and I think the movie was going for that scene
where the water starts to pour in,
and then, like, slowly rises up
and the character's afraid of drowning,
which would have made sense
and been scary in relation to the movie,
but they only had the budget
for it ever to be sort of bottom of your shoes level water.
So what we're watching is a woman just, like,
really freak out about what it's going to do to the carpet.
It's just a really bad icebreaker game.
That's it.
Horrible icebreaker.
Icebreaker, nice.
So, okay, so, but she's scared that her socks are going to get wet,
and that's going to be very uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, Randy and Jack have gone,
gone down to the basement in search of guns.
Now, I love this exchange because Jack goes, we have to save the girls.
And Randy goes, guns first, then girls.
Guns before huns?
Guns before huns.
The redneck grito.
I think that's a book by Mike Huckabee.
Explos before hose.
Ammoes.
So, okay.
But yeah, so they're looking for the guns.
We cut to Stephanie.
She's decided now to hide in a closet.
but then scream for Jack
loud enough that he can hear
from the basement.
So, like, I don't know why she's hiding.
That doesn't seem helpful.
They hear her screaming.
I so wanted Randy to go,
house noises, man.
Sometimes the house screams.
Jacket, Stephanie, help me.
It's just a, when the wood settles, you know.
The wind.
It's the wind in these old houses.
It's the noise in my house.
Am I right?
Right?
this guy gets it
women
but okay
so now
so we're in the closet
with Stephanie
and she sees
calm down
it was Randy
in the closet
actually
so but
she's in the closet
and she sees
the red tomato jacket
and then
there's also
there's a great moment
where she's looking
at the jacket
and the door
the door handle
for the closet
starts to turn
and we're like
oh, they're coming in, but then nothing happens?
Yeah.
And then it starts to open again.
And then nothing happens.
Yeah.
Is there a ghost on the other side being like,
oh, nope, it's a pole door.
Nope, push.
Okay.
It's like a USB stick.
I'm going to kill you.
I really want to make the entrance good.
And I feel like if there's like a bustle,
it's going to ruin.
Hey, were you the one who was doing the water earlier in the same?
Was that you?
I thought it would be scarier, but you weren't looking.
I thought you'd look.
So that was nothing.
Hi, sorry. Just the locksmith.
I'm here to fix the door.
Does this work now?
Read the tin can.
So as you, I guess the ghost
decides to give up on the door and then like water
starts pouring in from the floor
and we're like, oh, the scariest thing again.
But now it's also flooding the ceiling.
So she's going to get caught in between the water, I guess.
I don't know. We'll come back to it.
But first, we have to check back in with
Jack and Randy, because this is where they come across
the satanic symbols on the wall.
Okay, these were almost my best
worst in the movie. I want you to
imagine that, like, I
want to say, like, sixth graders
had to draw satanic
props on the set. But, like, and
no one's mom is, like, crazy
Christian, but there are Christians
in the neighborhood, you know? So you can't get
like crazy with it, because it's just like
a goat's head, but he's smiling.
Some Latin-looking
letters.
It's easy to get Latin-looking letters, yeah.
But the whole basement is an infinite maze of locked doors and satanic symbols.
I love when they see the first one, Jack just says,
and I quote, oh, God, it's black magic.
It's so good.
They just walk up to a wall and they're like,
let's look behind this curtain.
I don't know why.
Yep.
It says, this is a satanic house in spray paint.
Oh, sorry.
Yes, every satanic house must.
announced they are same. That's why they put up the...
Those are like the rules of Satanism.
Obviously, yeah. So there's also a great moment where he goes,
oh my God, this mirror, we have no reflection in it.
And Randy, Mr. House noises, goes,
yeah, it's a trick mirror, man.
Like, how do you think a trick mirror works?
Glass? Are you describing glass?
Oh, glass is trick, mirror. It's a mirror.
It's a mirror that pretended to be mirror, but it's not.
So now, okay, so Stephanie is in the closet and the water's filling up and the water starts to freeze, right?
And we go back to her ice flashback and we see that her daughter is caught under the ice.
And then she falls through the ice.
So, okay, I do have to, because I know now that none of you have seen, don't look now, how much this is a reference to that.
She is in, it might not be a yellow.
no, I think it is a red coat
and she, the daughter
who's a little blonde girl,
dies in like the pond
by her parents' house
when they're not looking.
Okay, look, there is
not a single
original thought anywhere in this movie.
No. Right? Yeah.
Literally nothing. That's why,
except for their spelling of the word counselor,
there is nothing original that happens
in this movie.
Oh, God, I should.
But it is.
is a very original spelling of the word
It is. It carries a lot.
I've never seen that before. Yeah, I've never seen
the Kusler movie.
So, okay, so
we're back in the basement.
Betty and Stewart are hot on
Randy's tail, right? So Randy, like,
hides. Randy boy. Yeah.
Oh, God, they call him like that like
over and over again. I laughed
every time because it's in the
in this voice and it just goes like this
Randy boy.
And I'm just like, okay, this
this movie is like so trying to do some kinky stuff in it but is also Christian
also maybe I would just rather it be a horny movie so that's me projecting because
you got to do something right old dark house but also old dark house movies are so often
steeped in queerness and sexuality and that's why it's so good for rocky horror because
like even the history of the old dark house is so queer and horny well I think this
movie was like trying to rescue it from like like right the
I think that might just be this, this movie might just be somebody going like,
too damn gay on those whole house movies, too damn gay.
We need one that's straight for men, fuck women.
Damn James Whale.
Yeah.
This movie walked right up to some sexuality that could have been interesting.
And then they were like, no, panic.
And then they don't do it.
And then the one time they do walk all the way across, it's fucking terrifying.
Yeah.
It's no good.
Yep.
And the action of this scene is kind of stupid, but I have to walk us through it at least a little bit.
So Randy like sneaks past Betty and Stewart
and he goes out through this tunnel
where he thinks he can get out.
But when he opens the door to get out,
he accidentally lets the tin man in.
That's the evil bad guy with the mask
that throws down the cans.
Which, can I say, is not nearly as terrifying
as it is like your roommate has a cat
that they haven't given you enough warning about, right?
Ah, fuck, it's inside.
Okay, I don't know what I do.
What do I do?
Hey, man, your tin man, got
into the house.
Is he cool?
Do we open all the windows
and hope they run out?
Well, and then they're like,
the movie is like,
ah, now he's in the house
and we're like,
there were already people in the house
trying to kill them.
Yeah.
And he already said
that they could like kill one
and then like we would wait till morning.
This changes nothing from our perspective.
Nope.
Okay.
So now we check in on Leslie.
Oh, God.
I guess she was unconscious
for some amount of time.
and in that time, Pete dressed her up like a doll.
It reminded me of a criminal lines episode.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely had that reference.
Yeah, there was a serial killer who had abducted petite women.
I just remember this one freaking me out because I watched it as a teenager and I am five foot two.
I felt that way about the fat guy in seven.
I get it.
I can't have a spaghettio without being judged by Kevin Spacey.
What did you do?
Space. He turns out Kevin Space. He had a lot to learn
from me and my SpaghettiOs. Really bad things. He did
some pretty bad shit. That pound
of flesh thing, I was like, I would go for
Love handles first. Yeah.
All right.
So, Ed, can we acknowledge, okay, look, Pete
overdid the blush. He over did the eye shadow.
But he was on point with that lipstick, right?
That was pretty spot on. It was too much,
but, like, he was on point. He didn't
overline it. Yeah. No, it was good.
Yeah. So, okay. And then we get
like the beginning of
her flashback. Now,
her great sin, correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
is getting molested as a child.
Yep.
It's her fault.
That's what this movie is saying.
She as a child, a child-ass child,
tempted her uncle.
I guess...
Or didn't fight hard enough against her uncle?
Uh-huh.
So I think what the writer would tell you
is that that was just like he was just trying to set up the character in a way here.
But like, yeah, the way it reads is that like she's a foul...
Because we're going to say,
over and over again, that she is a foul temptress, right?
Oh, yes.
Tempting Pete with her, with her sinful cleavage and whatnot.
So, yeah, it's really hard to watch this and not come away with the idea that the writer
is saying, how dare she get molested like some kind of slut?
Yeah, it's like, you know how a church guy just went to jail for the time he molested a child
and all the Christian media outlets are like, but it was so many years ago.
That's what it feels like this movie is doing.
He's like, sure, she was molested by her uncle, but she was a real slut.
a lot about it. We're telling you. Yeah. But also, watching this movie, because I was a teenager when
this movie came out. Not that I saw it when it came out. Obviously, I watched it for the first and only
time two nights ago. But that level of slut shaming of not necessarily children. And obviously,
I'm not coming from, you know, fundamentals Christian land or anything. But even in liberal New York
city, that level of slutchaming of teenage girls, oh, well, you're just, you know, the amount
of times that me as a teenager got told, well, you're just so mature for your age. And you
internalize that in some real fucked up ways. And then you get old and you're like, yeah,
uh-uh, no, no, wait, wait, that's, yeah, nope. And so like, that really was this, this pervasive
idea of, yeah, no, it's her fault for being booby? Yeah, yeah. Like, how dare you grow tits? Yeah,
And we're going to dive deeper into that in a second.
But then we have to go check in on Jack
who's wandering through the infinite flooded basement
when he hears creepy child whispers and laughs
because this movie is just a big fucking box
of horror movie cliches.
They bought the whole scary movie sound effects CD
and they were going to use it, damn it.
So this is where the tin man says,
Busy, busy Jack.
And we all wrote, oh my God, is his sin being busy?
And it is.
Yep.
It is, yeah.
He was too busy to go out and watch his daughter Ice Skate
and make sure she didn't fall through the ice and die,
so it's his fault.
And look, here's the thing, right?
If you're writing this movie, well, not well,
but if you're writing this movie better, right?
He's so busy that he tells the little girl to go out on her own an ice skate
and she dies.
But the mom is with her.
His sin is trusting his wife with their child.
Yeah.
She was the one who wasn't paying attention.
But also, if you're writing this better,
then it's not actually that these are their sins,
but that this is the trauma that they are still blaming themselves for
when it's not their fault.
And it's about learning to, you know,
move on from the things that have been done to you
or mistakes that you've made.
You know, for Jack, yeah, he was busy.
And he wishes that he just put his fingers down from the computer
and gone ice skating with her.
We're told her don't ice skate now.
Yeah.
And, you know, Leslie easily blames herself
for what happened to her and has to move past that
and realize none of it is her fault.
But nope, nope, that's where the real
Kusler helps you move through.
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. That's the thing
is that like maybe that's even
what they were going for, but the fact
is that we constantly refer to these people
as guilty as sin and they have
these sins, et cetera, et cetera. And by the
way, if you thought to yourself, busy, busy
Jack, wow, that sounds like a real rip off
of the Shining.
He's typing at this point
the whole time. Yeah, it does get more.
explicit yes exactly i literally thought i was like is it going to turn around and be all work and no play
it's it's the same bit but less clever right because he like picks up the paper like ghost him
picks up the paper that real him is typing flashback him is typing on and all it says is you know she
over and over again it says she let melissa die my description for jack is all mope and no quips
makes jack a dull character yeah right right so let in okay eli if you're
Being honest, at this moment, did you think Jack was going to go out on the ice and yell,
is that my daughter down there?
Did you have a moment of that after she fell through?
So, all right.
Now, Ghost Melissa is beckoning Jack upstairs.
He's done with his flashback, right?
And we meet a ghost character.
Oh, no, she's not.
Oh, yes, she is.
This is where he comes across Susan.
Now, Susan will at first react like a shy cat, right?
Like kind of looking at him around the corner.
but not meeting his eye or whatever.
But ultimately he's like, wait, are you
Melissa? And she's like, no, I'm not Melissa. I'm somebody
else. And he goes, are you sure? She's like,
I'm absolutely sure. It's like no shit.
Yeah. She doesn't look like Melissa.
No. Yeah. No. Different hair color. Different age.
And I had this moment where I was like, oh, interesting. It's not going to be Melissa.
Let me spoil it for you now, podcast listener.
She's not going to turn out to be anybody.
Anybody.
Nope.
She's literally like, okay, you know when you're playing a video game,
especially one of the video games
that's sort of meant
for the mass market
and you die too many times
so a character comes up
and is like
I wonder what's over there
in that cave
that's what she is
but for a movie
Yeah
and it's not like the name
Susan is an anagram
of anything
U.S.S.A. Navy?
I don't know.
I think I actually wrote down
Susan is the easy mode
of the movie.
Yeah.
It's for real.
Yeah.
So she's like
She's like, here, I'll help you out.
Let's go this way.
And he goes, hey, can you explain?
She's like, hey, there's a psychotic killer guy trying to kill us right now.
Why don't you shut the fuck up?
How about you shut the fuck up?
He's like, okay.
So then we check in on Randy, who's elsewhere in the infinite basement.
Randy Boy.
Yeah, Randy Boy.
Now Tin Man is, yeah, Tin Man is over top of him.
Every time.
He just keeps going Randy Boy.
Randy Boy.
I lost it every time.
So now we get the rest of his flashback, right?
So his dad was taking him out.
hunting and his dad made him murder a deer but he wasn't good at deer murdering so his dad
hit him so he killed his dad with the shotgun which again feels like an overreaction to the dad
being like you miss well yeah well yeah again a better writer would establish this as as something
that like you would understand but you know we're supposed to do all of that work ourselves as
the viewers they really want us to infer that his dad was fully abusive but they don't know how to write
Yeah, right.
They don't know how to establish that.
So we're all writing in our notes.
Wait, did Randy kill his dad to save the deer?
I wrote my notes when he shot him.
Sure hope he deserved that.
Yeah.
Oh, and this is, he comes out of his, out of his flashback.
And now suddenly there's a whole hallway filled with tin cans in front of him
hanging off strings.
He, rule number four.
No doing really long flashbacks.
You're just all.
And here's a gun.
I mean, a whole bunch of tin cans are really scary if you're an alley cat, I guess.
Sure. Sure. Or if you're trying to take out like an old-timey childhood phone call on one of them, but you can't tell which one now because there's so many.
Yeah. Wow. I think I saw a scene like that in something that was horror for children. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So okay. But so Randy like out of the flashback shoots the tin cans with his shotgun. He found a shotgun. I'm sorry. I didn't even mention that because it's just such a stupid.
thing. Like, he basically found a shotgun, like, under a box with a, like, a stick holding it up and a string of it.
With, like, a rotating hologram in a video game being like, here's a gun you could use now.
Right. Because easy mode. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So Tin Man, to be clear, first of all, he just like, he's hanging out this whole time.
And he's just doing, like, taunty whispers every so often and being like, Randy boy. Not only doing anything else. He's just kind of like verbally harassing people once in a while.
I'm still in the movie.
Yeah.
And then while Randy was doing this long flashback of murdering his dad for no reason, Tin Man set up like, he's like, I'm going to do some mobiling with my tin.
I guess.
Was that already there?
Yeah.
It's really Randy, but Tin Man is the only one he talks to the whole time.
Really?
Yeah.
I like the idea that he just got bored, right?
But like, he was like, oh, I thought we were kind of doing the Killers' d'aunt thing.
Okay, well, I'm going to work on my crafts.
Yeah.
but he shoots the tin cans
I feel like you've got limited ammo
maybe you preserve it but he shoots some tin cans
Jack who's walking now with Susan
this hastily introduced teenage character
he says oh we should turn back
towards where those gunshots came from
and Susan's like what the fuck are you talking about
it'd be so stupid when all these people
are trying to kill you and he goes no no
you can trust me Susan
it's like it's not that I don't trust you it's that it's fucking stupid
it's a bad idea it's a dumb thing to do
When Noah wrote that in his notes, it's not that I don't trust you.
It's a bad idea.
I wrote next to it, the Eli Postick story.
Me and Noah have had that fight a lot.
Yeah.
So then we check back in on Leslie again.
She's sadly eating pie.
And this is where, like, Pete comes in wearing a corsage.
And they try to do this thing.
I think they're trying to go for like, I don't know, she's got her like pie all over her face.
And it's kind of got a gross sexual thing to it.
And I was not comfortable.
They were really, really confused
with the pie metaphor, but I'm fairly
certain that the cherry is supposed to be
like the Hyman cherry.
I think so. And that's why they did that.
That's what they were, but they also
really did not. Yeah, and she ends up
with like white cream all over her chin
and her lips and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
It's all kind of gross. Yeah. There's a
weird moment here, which I really enjoyed, because
we've all seen horror movies use
like the threat of sexual assault or sexual
assault as like a dramatic foil and it's gross
and we hate it and it's bad. But I will
say she did kind of change the mood
when she was like, so how did you meet Stuart and Betty?
I was like, okay.
Yeah.
I thought she was going to do Friday the 13th, part two
to him.
Another reference to you're going to lose me.
Come on.
I got it, Amanda.
I got it, Amanda.
She's the psychology student
and she tries to, you know,
psychoanalyze him by pretending to be his dead mom
who he's killing for.
I got you. So there's a, it's a, there's a,
funny moment here just from an acting perspective, right?
So Pete's trying to slut shame her
because I guess she killed the uncle that molested her.
Good.
Right?
That's her great sin.
Yeah.
And he says something.
He talks some shit about that.
Your uncle did politics the right way.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
You still out of me out.
Ah, yeah.
But this poor actor has to deliver this line.
She goes, I used my life experience to help people, you pig.
That's the dramatic line.
and this poor actor had to deliver.
Oh.
She is one of the only,
only one of like three actors
in this movie with the Wikipedia page.
Yeah.
Oh, well, then go her.
So yeah.
So meanwhile, so we check back in the,
we're back in the basement.
Jack hears Leslie crying and screaming or whatever.
And he's like, Stephanie.
And I'm like, can't you read the fucking subtitles, man?
It says Lesby.
He can't.
A lot of house noise.
Yeah.
That must be it.
Yeah.
All the house noise.
That DJ.
He's really.
Yeah.
He's got some weird records.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then, so Jack breaks into the room where Pete is about to molest Leslie or whatever, about to, whatever he's planning, and does nothing with a surprise advantage.
But it's okay.
He's significantly bigger than Pete.
And literally every time they fight anyone in this movie, they win and kill that person.
Yes.
They ignore the cardinal rule of horror movies, right?
Which is like, you never show anyone fist fighting Freddie or Jason or anything because it just kind of.
loses its vim and vigor,
but they will just constantly
kick the shit out of these ghosts
and then run away from them,
which is a very odd choice.
Well, yeah, and so we're also
going to introduce a very important character
at this point, which is Leslie's bloodlust, right?
Now, I get it in this moment, right?
So Jack gets the best of Pete
and starts beating his brains in
with this candlestick, right?
And she's like, kill him, kill him!
But then she starts getting really explicit.
She's like, beat his brains in more
with the candlestick. Wait, keep
hitting until I finish. Keep hitting until
Yeah. And can I say I hate
when women micromanage like this?
It's just like, my wife, am I right?
And then Susan's just like, no, don't.
And I'm like, why? He's really bad.
Right, no. Yeah, what the
fuck are you doing, Susan?
In fairness, Susan comes in and says that and Leslie's
like, who the fuck is this?
I'm sorry, I'm the tutorial. You guys
were doing bad at the horror.
Jack has to be like,
Oh, that's Susan.
I'm clippy.
She's kind of like.
So, yeah, and after trying to figure out who Susan is,
Betty, who is apparently hiding in the closet with an axe this whole time,
just runs out of the closet axe swinging.
Okay, so for those not paying attention,
that means that Betty has entered now two scenes in a row screaming with an axe,
okay?
At this point, I just expected, like, the end credits for her to run through
It would be like the clip rail of her
Just running with the axe
But then
But Jack hits her with the candlestick
Like it's his fucking signature weapon now
And kills her
It's like Clue
Yeah right
Christian Clue
It was Jack in the creepy pedophile room
With the candlestick
There you go
So but black smokesters
pouring out of her brain
So she's a demon or something
She'll be fine
All right, well, every single time the good guys have fought back, as we've said,
they've prevailed easily.
So we need to give this movie a minute to rethink its fucking strategy.
But first, let me give Act 3 the hard sell.
Will the Tin Man have a heart?
How sick do you think he gets of explaining why he didn't start being the aluminum man around
the late 50s, early 60s?
How many bad guy names that he thought of had to have been taken before he settled on Tin Man?
Find out the answers to pretty much nothing when we return for the after-school sports.
special conclusion of
House.
I was going to be
Stanem man,
but I don't think
people would get it
and see the Latins.
And then it just
becomes its own category
under YP.
That's so neat.
Right?
Hey guys,
what you're doing?
Oh, I was just
showing Amanda Rocket Money.
For the last time,
Eli, we can't
big heist Elon Musk.
His money isn't real.
No, no.
Rocket Money is a personal
finance app that lets you
find and cancel
your unwanted subscriptions.
It monitors your
spending and helped you lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
Well, how do they do that?
Well, Rocket Money shows you all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions
that you might have forgotten about.
If you see a subscription you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it.
Rocket Money will even negotiate lower bills for you.
The app automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save and then goes to
work to get you better deals.
They'll even talk to customer service so you don't have to.
But will it actually save me money?
It sure will.
Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved.
saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions,
with members saving up to $740 a year
when they use all of the app's premium features.
Okay, but have you actually tried it?
I sure have, Noah.
Now that my son is exclusively on a diet of 12 to 15 strawberry yogurt pouches a day,
I need you to create a yogurt pouch budget.
All I did was tell Rocket Money to make it a category,
and I was set to figure out my spending.
That's why I, Eli Bosnick, personally endorse Rocket Money.
All right, I'm sold.
Where do I sign up?
Cancel your unwanted subscriptions
and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.
Go to RocketMoney.com slash awful movies today.
That's rocketmoney.com slash awful movies.
RocketMoney.com slash awful movies.
So does he eat different flavors?
No, Amanda, he does not.
Got it.
This is strawberry.
And now that you are trapped in here,
we evil spirits will manifest
as your trauma.
Oh, no.
Nothing is happening.
Yeah, nothing.
Give me a second.
Oh, okay. Sorry. Go ahead.
Jesus, do you guys not have any trauma?
What?
Yeah. Yes, we do.
Yeah. I think so.
Okay, what?
Sad.
Sad stuff has happened to us.
For sure. Thank you.
That's not trauma.
Well, what's trauma then?
Like, scarring, shocking experiences.
Have you guys not read the body keeps the score?
I've been meaning to get that one.
I'm just reading it.
Yeah, you should really, you should check it out.
I know, I will.
Totally, totally.
I'm going to read it to right after.
Is there a audible?
Right.
Well, shall I just chase you around with an axe or something?
Oh, yeah, that might work.
Wait, wait.
Sometimes women.
didn't want to date us
like in our past.
Is that trauma? Does that come?
Yeah. Yeah.
No. No. No.
No. That's not trauma.
Okay. Well, the ax thing is great then.
Sure.
You're sure it's not trauma.
Really sure, dude.
No. Heard.
It's hard for me.
And we're back for still more of the shit.
We're going to rejoin the action by suddenly remembering
that Stephanie is in this movie.
she's crying and wet in the basement again.
To be fair, the other one was dressed up as a little girl and being assaulted.
So when we get back to Stephanie and she's just crying about the shoe length water again,
I can see why the movie forgot about her.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
That's fair.
Yeah, but she's listening to her dead daughter's ghost voice or whatever.
Meanwhile, Jack and Leslie have lost Susan, right?
They were all walking together and they're like, where's Susan?
Because they had to write that character out for the next few scenes.
No, it's okay.
You guys are doing okay in the movie now.
Who the fuck is Susan?
Yeah, right.
Yeah, keep asking that question.
But this is also where Leslie's like, by the way, I murdered my molesty uncle.
Just wanted to clear that up in case the flashbacks didn't do the trick.
And Jackie's like, yeah, I wasn't really involved in those scenes.
So that's a buck wild thing for you to bring up with me right now.
Just so you know.
That is true.
Yeah, he didn't hear any of that.
Nope.
Yeah, no.
He comes in, stops Pete from attacking her.
saves her, they run out of the room
and then I guess according to the timeline of the movie
we're supposed to believe she was like, I murdered my uncle
and he's like, okay, cool.
Sorry, what?
Are we almost kissing?
Oh yeah, she's really down to fuck.
Yeah, because again, we have to establish
that she is a temptress though.
But then Randy is wandering around still
doing his thing and he sees Stuart
but when he looks at Stewart, he sees his dad
and so he shoots Stewart and kills him.
And he talks a little shit, and he walks off.
So once again, every time they confront the bad guys, they win and murder them.
But, you know, he's full of demon smoke.
So he's coming back.
So, okay.
So now Jack is filling Leslie in on any plot points.
She might have missed vis-a-vis Stephanie's backstory because that's just what this movie is doing.
Now it's just having characters explain the movie to themselves.
Hey, I'm really hoping that this movie is on like ABC in the middle of the day,
while grandmas are falling asleep,
so I'm just going to sum up
where we've been so far,
so Susan doesn't come back.
Oh, God damn it here's Susan.
They call it folding laundry TV
so that you can tune in at any minute
and not be lost.
Yep.
Yeah, so and then,
so Randy at this point,
he's talking about
and he sees some sunlight,
and he's like,
oh, maybe that's a way out.
And I'm like, well, it's night.
So maybe not.
So he goes towards the light.
The demon smoke is falling him.
because that's cheap as fuck to animate.
And this is where he comes across Stephanie.
So now we've got Stephanie with Leslie's boyfriend
and Leslie with Stephanie's husband.
And this is where I said it's couple swapping time.
Yeah, right?
It seemed like that's where they were going.
Yep.
And in case we didn't dislike Randy yet,
so here's the exchange, she turns to Randy and she goes,
oh, I fell through the closet.
I thought I saw my daughter who died falling through the ice.
And Randy's like, oh, cool.
I just killed Stewart, so
that's pretty good.
I'm going to win in this game over here.
My body count is really high.
Have you killed anybody yet?
Because if you killed Betty, we're good.
We're game.
So he takes her.
This is where he finds that hallway that he was in earlier
where he saw the tin man and he tries to get out of it again,
but now there's a cage over it.
Yeah.
You have a shotgun, man.
The force of bullets also works on metal.
cages, and it apparently works on ghosts, but
he realizes he's trapped. That's a blocked off level
in whatever this video game is.
Susan's like, it won't work. Not even the gun. Don't bother.
Just look at the tin can again and read it
out loud, please.
Press L1 to activate your hawk vision.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Can I be picky
about one moment here when he's emerging into the cage?
So they're in that hallway
and the actor who's tall, handsome, charmed,
reject kind of has to duck a little and do like a little bit of a crab walk and it's just
such an odd choice for them to have him do that because like he's this tall handsome hair jailed up
guy but we watch him be like oh no it's weird if you watch along with us please watch that
scene and let me know it felt like weird to you i scraped a little bit handsome people shouldn't
bend over i got a little cut so okay who has neosporin there's also a great moment here we
we cut back over to leslie and jack and leslie's still
trying to find a logical explanation for
everything. And at one point, Jack
is like, hey, hey, I
cracked the lady's head open and black
demon smoke poured out of it.
And she's like, right.
Yeah, no, good point. We should move on
from the, you know, non-supernatural
explanations. But this
is also where they realize they're in the boiler
room and it's too hot.
And then
even these writers are like, wait, that can't
be the conflict that's too hot.
Sticks can't be that it's a little
Warman here. Come on. Oh, no.
Is this when Leslie
puts out the theory that maybe
they, as in the demons
in the house, got their case
files from their real
life therapists and therapy
sessions? Yes. And can I say
demon ghosts
that have to do their research is
my favorite genre.
All right, everyone.
Let's get Insta stalking.
So, Beelzebub, do you have that
file I asked for on the
The grad student.
Her Facebook profile was private, but her mom's is not.
So I'm looking at a bunch of the likes on there to see if I can find anything.
I'm going to check out Instagram.
I'm doing two-factor authentication.
It's going to take me a second.
Oh, my God, Heath, you're the worst demon ghost ever.
I guess her, I lexist her, and guys, it looks like that she got arrested once for stealing lip gloss from a Sephora.
Oh.
Quite a sin.
quite a sin. Well, I'll turn into a
Sephora later. Okay, so
they're running from the boiler, right? The boiler's
attacking them with steam.
This movie's so fucking dumb.
And as they're running with the steam,
Jack gives Leslie his jacket,
right, so the steam won't burn her.
So they escape out into a room where
it turns out that Randy and
Stephanie were, and immediately
Randy starts slut-shaming
Leslie for accepting the jacket
that kept her from being burned
by the steam. He's like,
Like, why are you in his fucking jacket?
Tramp.
Tramp is his exact word.
Yeah, give him back his
tracket, you tramp.
There's nothing worse than being a
sexy woman.
That is the greatest sin of all.
Obviously, obviously, yeah.
And also, like, Stephanie is like,
yeah, why are you wearing my fucking
husband's jacket?
Or?
So, okay.
So, but then Randy is like, hey, you know,
this all gets super easy.
If I just kill Jack, right?
If I shoot him in the head.
head, and then we'll win the movie.
The rest of us get to get out.
But just as he's saying that,
this is so fucking dumb,
a second Jack
appears out of the demon smoke.
Okay.
Okay.
They all see this.
Okay.
I just need to emphasize.
They all see this happen.
They all watch the smoke turn into Jack.
Which one's the real one?
And then they do, which one's the real one?
It's the one that just turned into a person out of space.
Yes, right, but also, but also Randy was about to kill the real one, right?
Like, that's what he was about to do when the second Jack shut up.
So it makes, it doesn't make sense squared at this point because, yes, I would guess that
the one that just appeared out of demon smoke is the fake, but also it doesn't fucking
matter if you wanted to kill the real one anyway.
What is the demon's game here?
Yeah.
And then to make it even more confusing, Susan, who I will remind you, two of the characters
in this scene.
have not met steps into the room and she's like guys don't fall for it fall for fucking what susan
yes yeah no she should have been like just shoot both like noah just said in a podcast
that'll do it my favorite part of this thing though this is so fucking good the the writing just
the moment in the writer's room where this happened i want to be a fly on the wall for this
shit right because jack goes look look look i can prove that i'm the real me right because
evil shit has black smoke
pouring out of it, right?
And everybody's like, well, no, it does.
Evil stuff does have black smoke pouring out.
He said, right.
So let me cut myself.
It's a movie, so I'm going to cut myself in the fucking palm
because every goddamn movie since Robin Hood has somebody
cutting themselves in a goddamn palm.
Just do a little cut somewhere else.
Just do a little...
Yeah, almost anywhere else would be better.
Yeah.
My Carter-Roid diary.
Yeah, let me cut my junkler.
Let me cut my penis.
So, yeah, so he cuts this fucking palm.
And he's like, see,
I have blood coming out of me, not demon smoke.
But then demon smoke comes out of his fucking hand.
And he's like, fuck, fuck.
Okay.
And I like how these guys have no concept that, wait, we're in a demon house.
Demons are tricksters.
Yes.
Maybe they're tricking us.
Right.
But I will say, this is incredible.
Because I want to say what I think happens next.
And I genuinely want you to correct me if this is incorrect.
The smoke comes out of his palm.
And then all the characters in the movie go, well, I guess that's a bad test.
and move on
and I believe
there are two jacks
for the rest of the
okay
we never
you're right
we never
establish what happens
like I wanted an
after credit scene
where the other
Jack was still going
no shoot him
there
he phased through a wall
okay
they're gone
yeah
oh yeah
what happened to the other
like where did he go
did he just poof
yeah I don't know
we don't even see him
poof if I recall correctly
yeah so okay
so but then
Just then, Michael Madsen shows up, right?
The door opens upstairs and it's a cop going,
hey, I'm a cop.
Come run towards me.
And they're like, wow, you know, the bad guy is a cop,
but let's all run towards him.
I'm officer law man, not Law Dale.
Dude, totally different guy.
Yep, we're not the same.
I protect the law, man.
He yells from the top of the stairs.
I'm an officer of the law.
Exact words.
His last name is also Lawdale.
allegedly. And I was like, come on.
That feels like those fake text messages from that killer.
Nobody talks like that.
Absolutely not. Your vehicle? Your vehicle.
My vehicular accompaniment?
So Mr. Blonde, Officer Mr. Blonde directs him to the garage, right, to make their escape.
But then when they get into the garage, Stephanie's suspicious.
Because remember that truck that was wrecked that they were chasing the chickens around?
Well, that truck is.
in the garage.
So she realizes Michael Madsen is in on it
with the demon people.
Well, that's just clucking crazy.
Who could have foreseen that?
Yeah, right, right.
But, like, it doesn't function as a twist
because we never thought the tin man was someone else.
Right.
Like, there's no reason for there to be a twist.
So much of this movie feels like
they just took a movie trope and inserted it randomly.
And they were like, no, justify it.
Motherfuckers.
Right.
The smarter thing is that one of the people,
in the two couples is actually, like, the mastermind behind all of this.
Not...
Right, like, Randy is the Tin Manor.
Yeah.
Not the only, like, vaguely famous actor in the whole movie.
Well, right.
That's just the thing is that, like,
to whatever extent, this could have been a twist that you fuck it up with the casting
because obviously Michael Madsen isn't just the cop they happened upon in the first
fucking scene and we're never going to see him again.
And just looks straight into the camera.
You should have done the thing that Amanda just said on the podcast.
Instead, that would have been something.
This was nothing.
And this is why I am a writer.
You can hire me, people.
I will not write Christian movies.
But hey, but if you did,
you'd automatically be the best
Christian movie writer in the fucking world.
You're going to jump right to the top of the thing.
You're right.
How do you feel about Riyadh this time of year?
Oh, God.
So, but yeah, they have this big moment where, like,
it turns out that he's not office.
Lawdale. He's the tin man and Officer Lawdale was the guy at the beginning of the movie
that killed his wife and now they killed him. None of it fucking matters. None of it fucking matters.
The twist, honestly, the oh shit moment for us is, oh shit, they thought they were doing a twist,
right? Like that was the moment of realization that we had. Yeah. The best twist in this movie
is when the credits rolled and I was like, so they're not going to explain Susan.
So he makes him go back inside. This movie isn't called yard, damn it. It's called house.
So they go back inside where Michael Madsen can monologue for a little bit.
Oh, yes.
He has to put his skin mask back on before he does his evil speech.
He's got to earn that paycheck.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like the other thing about his weird little tin mask is that it,
there's like a reason why Jason doesn't talk, right?
Because when he's like, let me tell you a thing about my jar.
I want to them to be like, hey, sorry, we actually.
We genuinely cannot understand you.
Do you want to write it on a can?
Because we can't hear you.
There's a bunch downstairs.
You put so many.
You hung them up.
I ran out when I was doing a decoration earlier.
I don't know if you saw.
Can we explain to you first what a rule is?
Yeah, right.
I don't think you know what rules are versus just statements.
You're playing with some knives?
What are you doing that about?
Right.
Yeah, he's got his little kitchen knives.
They don't even have like scary knives.
Just fucking kitchen knives.
And he's playing.
with them as he's as he's walking around and he's supposed to be doing the like now i'm going to
lay out all of your sins before you but they kind of they kind of lose track of that halfway through
they turn to leslie and they're like you're only fucking randy for his money and i'm like i feel like
the jaw line is factoring in right the rocking body like randy's pretty fucking hot right i would
fucking poor as they're doing this they are also dressing the set i have to be clear
They're not like mysteriously placing down weapons.
They are making up the set for the ending of this movie.
Well, that's because this movie did not hire an art director or a production designer.
So they just had the actors do it while the camera was rolling.
While the camera was rolling.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, so he goes all the way around and he declares that they're all guilty as sin.
But then he reminds him that they still have a chance to just kill one of each other.
And then they all don't all have to die.
He sort of reminds him.
You guys remember the stakes of the movie originally were this
and we kind of lost track of it, but that's been it the whole time.
There were stakes.
This was also when we get the best self-correction moment of the movie
because she goes, well, wait, didn't the officer kill his wife
and you didn't let him go?
And he's like, no, he was a little late.
Two minutes late.
Yeah. Remember when it clock struck 558?
Yeah.
It was after sunrise.
Okay.
Here's the thing with them set dressing all the way.
weapons. They're placing weapons out on the table with the idea that someone at the table will
grab a weapon and kill someone else at the table. But they're all tied up. He doesn't untie
them. He never unties them. So like he's supposed to pick a knife up with your fucking mouth
scooch over and then cut somebody's throat over it. What was his plan? How did he see this
working out? Yeah. So, okay, so he's doing all of that. Susan shows up and she's like,
Hey, guys, he's not going to play by the fucking rules.
I don't know if you, why you would trust him.
Susan, get out of my murder sketch.
Who the fuck is Susan?
Yeah, this is what happens whenever I introduce a board game that's not very good and
Noah decides not to play, but just sits there in the room being like, obviously you just
play defense the whole game and then everybody that, shit, shit, no, Susan, stop.
Stop it, Susan.
She's like the duolingo owl.
Yes.
Incredibly sexy.
Oh, God.
What?
That's not what you were going?
No, sorry.
You were talking.
Don't.
Not about the teenage actress.
So, okay.
So there's a point.
She's not a teenager.
She's a grown-up.
Okay.
So there's a-
Dressed like a teenager.
Wait, really?
He sure hopes so.
He sure hopes so for his duo-lingo joke to work.
You really help.
Hey, podcastist, so you're not going to hear me for the next 48 seconds.
It's because I'm Googling super hard how old that actor is.
You're not even going to find out because there's such nobody is.
Yeah, right.
So, okay, but okay, there's a moment here where Michael Massachusetts, Susan comes in and starts saying, like, he is not a trustworthy agent.
And he throws a fucking knife at her.
She dodges it like Neo.
Right?
She literally just duck dodges it and sticks into the wall beside her.
And she looks at him like, come on, man, you know, I'm fucking magical.
I could get through that.
Okay.
Google tells me that Alana Bale, who played Susan, was born in 1991.
one. So she would have been 17. 16 or 17. 17. 17. We have a lot of Southern listeners.
a lot of Southern listeners. Not making it any better. So, okay. So, all right, but Randy is like,
so Leslie is like, hey, Randy, just kill somebody who isn't me already, okay? And Randy, like, so,
you know, it does make sense to kill somebody at this point from a logical perspective. But Randy
has been way too into it the whole time, right? So he's like trying to break free of his bonds so
that he can kill somebody
and in so doing he knocks everybody over
like everybody falls over together
including himself
yep including him
in the silliest way possible
and at this point
this is where Stephanie becomes selfless
she says hey if one of us has to die
I want it to be me because I did let
her daughter die I wasn't even looking
in the direction she was in
when I set her out on the ice that I hadn't tested
I wanted Jack to be like cool
yeah right
Yeah, I mean, she did.
That is really bad.
No, that is what happened.
I was actually just getting out of the chair.
I was planning to shoot you.
But I appreciate that.
Really, we were all just hinting that you should kill yourself this whole movie as the clearly guilty, you because you killed your daughter.
She's the only one who actually has a real, like, bad thing they did.
Right.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
But Leslie wants Randy to murder the teenage ghost.
Because at one point, Susan says,
I'm the one that the Tin Man is really after.
And Leslie's like, cool, kill her then.
We don't even know who the fuck she is, right?
Which is why this movie needs to ask?
Is she an angel?
Is she actually God?
Does God like the name Susan?
Also, that opens up a lot of questions about God and gender.
So let's go there.
Yeah, right?
Right?
More interesting than staying with this movie.
Do you think of Clippy as like a gender in particular?
Oh, he's definitely a guy.
I think of Clippy as God.
Of course.
You think of Clippy as a guy?
guy? Yeah. Really? He offers you help when you don't want it and there's no way to dismiss him. Come on. Well done. Yeah, no, that's, yep, that's fair. Yeah, that's definitely. Like, that's the guy at the bar. Hey, I noticed you're reading. Clippy would go up to you at a bar when you were reading and be like, I notice you're reading. You want to talk about it. Yeah. If you didn't want to talk about it, why'd you wear that shirt? Yeah, right. Yeah, why'd you bring. Why'd you bring tapress? It's okay. Did you kill your uncle? I know about spreadsheets, stupid. That last part is how I would be clip.
You know about spreadsheets?
I do, though.
So Randy goes to shoot Susan.
But just as he does,
Jack kicks the table out from under him
so he accidentally shoots Michael Madsen.
This elicits nothing but another bad guy monologue.
Does it count?
Does it count?
Do you think that Michael Madsen had in his contract
that I will only do these scenes once
and there's no retakes like Eric Roberts did
with a talking cat question mark
exclamation point question mark
which if you don't know about that movie
it's a movie oh yeah
where the premises there's a cat
and he talks but it's kind of like
he only says a few things
and he can only say the same thing once
and Eric Roberts said that he'd do it
but he'd only record every line once
meta we have
we have spent a lot of time with Eric Roberts
on this show let me talk to me on
you have
so okay
at this point though
they've now broken out of their bonds or whatever
and Leslie kind of freaks out
she's got her knife out
and she kind of freaks out and she stabs Randy
because she just turns around and she's like
ah Randy and she stabs him to death
which Randy has had no redeeming qualities within this movie
so I feel like we're good
you know we've established we've done everything
we set out to do but Randy then shoots Leslie
for stabbing him
I just want to point out that all of the characters in this movie
are so unlikable that every time someone has gotten
shot or stabbed.
We as a podcast have been like, good.
Yes, that's fine.
It's true.
So, okay, so, but Randy and Leslie kill each other.
And Susan is very bummed about the double homicide, but now Michael Madsen is going
to kill her.
I don't fucking know, guys.
I just, I didn't write the fucking thing.
So, this is where he should have, like, broken out and just song about being the devil,
but that would be a more fun performance.
And that's not what we're getting in this movie.
Yeah, that would have been nice
Be bold, be bold movie
And then there's this moment
Where the movie wants to be super clear
They're never going to tell you who Susan is
But it's not Melissa
Melissa is safe
And she loves you
Yeah, yeah, right, because they're like
Not you mom
Susan, wait, are you
Are you Melissa?
And she goes, no, I'm not Melissa
I'm different than that
But also why would they think she was Melissa?
She doesn't look like Melissa
She's got jet black hair
and Melissa was blonde.
I know.
It doesn't, yeah.
Right.
But again, I think this is probably something that was like added afterwards
after they showed it to the fucking test audience
and everybody went, who the fuck is Susan?
Is she supposed to be Melissa?
And I don't know.
I think she's supposed to be Jesus.
Oh, Jesus.
So Jesus is a girl.
And this one, yeah, yeah.
Sue son of God.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, it's it.
Yeah.
So, okay.
But here's the thing.
thing, though. So Michael Madsen
shoots her and then
she dies. Yep.
But she glows.
But she glow dies.
Right. She's got this light
coming out of her bullet wound.
Well, it goes back to the quote at the beginning.
Yes. Yes. The light
shines in the darkness or whatever.
So Stephanie's like, hey, you know what I'm
good at, what we've established I'm good at
is fingering things. So she
fingers the wound.
A second, Susan is like, hey,
You got to do the light.
She's dead so she can't tell you this,
but you probably have to use that light.
And Stephanie,
get in there with your finger.
It's a terrifying moment.
Oh, God.
So,
and this is when Jack remembers why he loves her,
apparently,
it was her glowing finger that he'd forgotten about.
She takes the Jesus light.
They do the E.T.
Yeah.
It's like the E.T.
thing.
Yeah.
Stephanie takes the Jesusy light like it's peanut butter.
Like you would take peanut butter out of a jar for yourself.
Well, I just, I feel like the screenwriters of this movie have watched the, like, TV edits of a bunch of movies, not the full movies, but, you know, like the TV edits.
Okay. Yeah.
Texas chainsaw massacre, the one that's like five minutes long.
All right.
So, yeah, but so they touch their fingers together, Zana and Jana style, and that unlocked the power of the light.
And so they glow finger Michael Madsen to glow death.
They had a moment where they were like, okay, well, we did the fingers thing.
It's like a, do we smear it on his face?
Does he have to heat it?
Will we heal him if we do it?
It feels like it's helpful.
Really, really in the woods here.
That's what that means, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Totally, that's all it means.
Yep.
So, yeah.
So, but, but no, but they, they unleashed their light powers against him.
He gets sucked into the wall because he is the house or something.
It looks like a wall pussy.
I did write in my notes,
Wall Lucy.
So, yeah, it gets turned into a wall Lucy,
and then the whole house starts coming down
around them. So they run to safety. There's one
point, as they're running away, Jack goes, don't look
back. And I'm like, why do you know
this is a Christian movie? What are you?
Okay, turns to salt.
But they run out of the house.
A car's driving by right then, so they try to wave down the car,
but the car doesn't stop because they're ghosts.
And instead of stopping the cars, they walk on and they find that the cars are responding to a terrible accident where two couples were killed in a car wreck.
And it takes them so long to figure out it's them.
They're walking around and they're like, oh my God.
The Bimmer.
They had the same car as we did.
No, God damn it.
Susan, you want to get out of here?
So, yeah, right, right.
So, but Leslie and Randy, I guess, are all the way dead.
We see them like, oh, burn to a crisp.
Well, we see one of their arms.
Yes, they chose death.
They killed each other in the purgatory space.
Oh.
Right.
So the message of this movie is if your loved one died in a car accident,
it was their own damn fault.
They chose it.
Right.
It's because they made bad choices in the haunted house run by Michael Benson.
You get a shot in purgatory to be cool with each other.
And if you don't, you actually die?
I think that's what I'm going on.
Yeah.
At first I was thinking it was purgatory for all four of them
It would be who goes to heaven and who goes to hell
Right, but it's not
It's who just dies and who gets to go back to the plane of the living
Yes, Jack and Stephanie just come back to life
And also there's a lot of like, they're like
Oh, everything's fine, we're back to life
And Melissa's safe and there's an afterlife
And I'm like, hey, you guys did just kill two people in a car
Because Jack was driving in a snit
But, yes, but other than that, things are going great.
Yeah, but those two people wanted to die, and that's been born out now in all that.
No, that's true.
That is true.
So it's cool.
I think they were already dead before the other car hit them.
They were just dead driving down the road?
They've been dead the whole time.
Yeah, right.
They did 30 years ago this very night.
Like, they hit the farm equipment.
Oh, I see.
Flipped over, and the car blew up, and they died.
And then Stephanie and Jack.
hit the farm equipment as well.
All right.
We'll go with that.
Didn't flip over.
The couple's Coussela had a very long con scenario going on.
Fuck yeah.
And pulled it off.
But then like my last like five notes are like, okay, but they ran into Michael Madsen
before the car accident.
So is he really Satan?
And then they show Michael Madsen kind of to hohoho.
So yes, he is.
Yeah.
It's like a game.
It's a game that people driving down this road that he's
set up. I guess. Like he's just a regular serial killer who's like way of getting people is by putting
things in the middle of the road. And being supernatural. Yeah. So yeah, my last three notes were
what about the family? Who are they? Who to fuck was Susan? Fuck me, I guess. Right? That's all we get.
That's the end of the movie. We can only tell it's over because the credits start running. So Amanda,
thank you so much for helping us get through that
and for like some
theories that give this movie I think
way more credit than it is due
Hell yeah
Clippy is an obnoxious man
I think you're right
I think you're absolutely right
It was a blast as I said
I definitely got lucky
because this was at least an attempt of the movie
Yeah no this is the yeah
I'd say top tier as far as the gam
fodder goes
Don't get me wrong
I would totally come back and do one of the
other things that you watch
But you'd also probably get
Amanda like, why the fuck
did I do this to myself?
Yeah, I was going to say,
be careful what you wish for.
Yeah.
And, hey, speaking to which,
if our listeners don't feel like
they're done with you,
remind them where they can go to hear more.
Yes, I co-host the film podcast.
Don't be crazy.
Just a general film podcast.
We've only ever covered one Christian movie
and it was saving Christmas.
And it was because we were doing tops and bottoms,
mom.
If you're only going to do one, man.
Exactly.
But I talk a lot about,
horror, film noir, and my love of Roadhouse, the original. Do not come at me with
the remake. You can find me on Instagram and Blue Sky at Amanda Jane Stern and Letterbox at
Witchie Wanderer, and you can watch my not Christian movie. Perfectly good moment on Tooby.
Awesome. And of course, most of that will also be linked on the show notes. And while that's going
to do it for a review of house, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still
need to step on this same fucking
rake again. So, Eli, tell us what's
on deck. In
1986, paranormal investigators
Ed and Lorraine Warren
traveled to Pennsylvania to vanquish
a demon from a family home.
God damn it. We're headed
back to the theaters for
The Conjuring. Last
right. Because they can't stop
making them. Fuck.
All right. So with that to let's say look forward to
we're going to bring episode 527 to a merciful
close. Once again, a huge thanks to Amanda for all her help
today and a reminder that you can find her show linked on the show notes
and an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors
to help make the show go. If you like to cast out among
their ranks, you can make per episode donation at patreon.com
and thereby an early access to an ad-free version
of every episode. You can also help with time about leaving the five-star
review and by sharing the show on all your various social media
and if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out of our siblings,
shows, the skitt of a citation date of D&D minus
and the Skype for credit, available wherever podcast live.
If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions,
you can email godawful movies at gmail. Tim Robertson
takes care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by
Ryan Slavink of the Dress on Mars. All the other music was
written and performed by our audio engineer
Morgan Clark and was used with permission.
Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week
for Heath and Eli Bosnick.
I'm no illusions, promise to work hard
to earn another check next week.
Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes.
Stephanie and Jack
were very disappointed
with their next couples therapists.
Couples Kusler,
Betty Louise, stopped practicing
couples counseling after
all of her patients kept getting lost on the drive over.
She now runs
a wellness retreat.
Huh.
Pete Sapp is still a bubbling.
Ew.
Susan continued her job as a kind-hearted real estate agent in that part of Southern Alabama.
Oh, she's the surreal estate woman.
That's me.
Actually, that is the name of the lead on surreal estate.
That's who Susan is.
This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment.
and abuse or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4-255 or on their website at creator-accountability
network.org. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright
2025. All rights reserved.