God Awful Movies - 531: Shadowbuilder

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

This week, Bugs and BamBam from the Bibliowrecks podcast join us to discuss a movie that tries to invoke Bram Stoker in its title -- though you'll see that we declined to follow suit. Find out more about Vulgarity for Charity here. Find Bibliowrecks on Bluesky: @bugs-bibliowrecks.bsky.social Or on Reddit: r/Bibliowreck 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/

Extra value meals are back. For just $5, get a savory and sweet sausage egg and cheese McGrittles, plus hash browns and a coffee. Only at McDonald's. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery. And then he starts, like, prey fighting, and it fails. Yes!

Prayer failing in horror movies used to just infuriating. curate me as a Christian because it was like, what do you mean that name doesn't work? Yeah, that's the whole point. That would be like if Superman one time just trying to jump halfway into the air and flopped to the ground and he was like, fuck!

God-awful movie. Welcome back to the GAMCast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Simna, or it would be too obvious that our trips to England were scouting missions for a backup country. I'm your host, No Illusions. Heath is off again this week, but sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend, Eli Bosnick. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir? I am Bibliorekacious, no illusions.

I don't think that's a word at all, but let's give in some context at least. We're also excited to welcome in not one but two guest massacists this week. Bugs and Bam Bam are the co-hosts of the Bibliorex podcast, where they review the very worst stories the world has to offer, apparently. And they're here today to prove that they can do that with visual shit, too. Bugs, Bam Bam, bam, welcome to God-awful movies. Thank you so much for having us. This is going to be very fun.

I'm very excited. Yeah, like the listeners don't know, but we've already had a lot of fucking fun leading into this part of the record. So I think we're going to have a blast. Yeah, apparently Bugs and Bamb learned about microphones 40 seconds before they're locked on. Yes, I don't know

how we've ever released a recording before. Yeah, right? I promise their podcast is wonderful despite the seven and a half hours we just spent figuring out Skype. All right, so tell us, Bugs, what will we be breaking down today? We watched Shadow Builder the movie

because Bram Stoker wasn't alive to protest the shit. Oh, you just imagine him rolling over in his grave the whole fucking time. I feel so bad for his good name. Yeah, I don't know anything about him. Like, every time you like an old author, he turns out to be a child molester or some weird shit like that. But barring that, I do too. And Eli, how bad was this movie?

Well, if you love the schlocktastic CGI of the CW when you were in high school, but you wish it had the oddly preachy vibe. of your aunt who's still Catholic even after all the kid fucking you will love this movie. This movie is like Goonies meets someone's sleep paralysis

demon. Yes. It is so bizarre. It's all over to fucking Matt. By the way, there was no C.W. and I was in high school. But yeah, but yeah. Well, there was only one channel and it was the one the president got on to tell everybody about the war. No, he was on all the channels. So yes.

But yeah, that's what we So is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best, at being the worst ads? Best Worst Use of an author's name for a completely unrelated movie. This was nothing like the story at all. Right. So the story wasn't like a linear story that told a story at all. Like I looked at it.

I actually read it. I just kind of like looked over it when we started going through this because I was like, well, this can't be fucking right. But yeah. Right. Because like everything Bram Stoker wrote, it is impossibly boring. So what obviously happened is that someone was looking at this short story collection by Brom Stoker. And they were like, that's the guy who wrote Dracula.

I bet it's great. But they forgot that Dracula actually has significantly more recipes than it does interesting scenes. That's a great book. So they read this short story, which is like a meditation on darkness that an eighth grade goth kid would be like, it's a little much. Right? And they were like, oh, fuck. Shadow Monster?

He said shadow. He said, what I'm getting is shadow. Right. Like, they took this character that kind of reminded me of death from Terry Pratchett. Sure. And he's watching the world go by.

He's watching humans, doing human things. And it's just like nostalgia and reminiscence and grief. And then they're like, no, guns and demons. Yes, yes. A priest with double-barreled shotguns.

Yeah, it's fucking hilarious. It's the extent. to which they fucked Bram Stoker's name to death is funny. That's the main humorous thing about this goddamn movie. It would be like if someone wrote Red Hourtown and then made a ghost based on the girl narrator. They're like, pretty spoky. She's looking at her mom and her grandma, right?

Fuck, yeah. Let's get this going. Do you have a best worst for us, Bam Bam? Yeah. For me, it was best worst stunt dog. Ooh. Oh, that's definitely the scene of the film. We won't spoil it now, but yeah, you got that to look forward.

Oh, and speaking of things that I don't want to spoil now, I just want to tease you about, I'm going to go with best, worst, satanic spell. Oh, fuck, yeah, baby. So at the end of this movie, there will come a point where one of the characters has to recite a satanic spell to unmake the world. And it is possibly top 10 funniest things that have ever happened in a movie, top three unintentionally. fun. One million percent. I mean, literally weeping with laughter unable to breathe. I'm almost weeping with laughter thinking about it now. And I'm going to go with best, best fake spoiler subtitles.

So I watch this where all the greatest movies are kept, Tobe.com. And in between, you know, AT&T ads where Billy Bob Thornton wanders around America's countryside swearing to himself about the fact that he used to get to finger Angelina Jolene. I got subtitles for this and every single subtitle in the movie, you know when you're watching a subtitle and someone's off camera

so they do it in brackets, every single one of those is attributed to a demon. It just says demon and then they're a line. So I spent the first half of the movie being like, man, they are really spoiling this movie that everyone in this town including the protagonist is

a demon. I was just the same that everyone was just a demon and everyone was just fine with that. And it wasn't part of the plot at all. Yeah. Maybe I missed it. All right.

Well, this one gets good fast and we're not going to make you wait long. We'll keep the break brief. And when we come back, we'll dive into all the breathless cocaine monologue that is Shadow Builder. Shadow builder. A podcast listener, before we get to the sassy talking about this week's movie, I thought we'd pop in and remind you that it's November. And that means vulgarity for charity. That's right.

Eli, Volgarity for Charity is the time of the year when we do some good by roasting the people who deserve it most, the people who have pissed you off. That's right, podcast, listener, the people who've pissed you off. So here's how it works. This year, we're helping out our friends at Recovering from Religion. So if you want to roast, head to Recovering from Religion.org. Click Vulgarity for Charity at the top of the page. Give us at least 50 bucks.

Tell us about who we're roasting. And you could have all the meanness we can muster on air aimed at the victim of your choice. That's Recovering From Religion.org and click Bulgarity for Charity at the top of the page. Bulgaria for charity. The worst way to do good we could think of that was legal. Um, excuse me. Whoa, what's up? Yeah, so I've been pushing this button to get someone to unlock the deodorant for like 15 minutes.

Oh, why? Why have you been doing that? Because I want to buy it. And this is a store, right? I don't think so. Hey, hey, Craig, is this a store? Uh, don't ask me, man. I just stand behind the desk in the photo area. Do you print photos? What's a photo? Besides, you should be trying Mando. What's Mando? Mando has clinically proven 72-hour odor control. Plus, it's safer the whole body. Pits, package, feet, and everywhere in between.

Oh, that sounds great. It is. Plus, it comes in spring. tray, stick, or cream. Deodorant cream? Yeah, it rubs on like lotion for full-body protection. Okay, but have you actually tried it? I have. Mando sent us a sample to try when they first became sponsors,

and I instantly replaced my boring old drugstore stick. Now I'm dry for 72 hours at a time, and I don't smell like a blue Gatorade looks. That's why I, Eli Bosnick, personally endorse Mando. All right, I'm sold. Where should I start? Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers, or to secure some last-minute stocking stuffers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant,

two free products of your choice like mini body wash and deodorant wipes and free shipping. If only, there was a discount. Well, as a special offer for our listeners, new customers get 20% off sitewide with our exclusive code. Use code awful at shopmando.com for 20% off sitewide plus free shipping. That's S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Mando's got you covered with deodorant plus sweat.

control. Say goodbye to sweat stains and hello to long-lasting freshness. Don't let meat sweats get you this holiday season. Your family and friends will thank you. All right. So why are these all locked up anyway? Oh, because the thought of someone who can't afford deodorant having it drives our owners insane with range. So they're like just bad people? The worst imaginable. Yeah. guys, welcome to the first writer's room meeting of Shadow Builder. Now, as you know, we're basing this on the short story, The Shadow Builder by Bram Stoker. It's a dude who wrote Dracula, so you know it's going to be good. Yeah, I'm like really interested to hear how you're going to turn this story into a movie.

You are? Yeah, I mean, the short story is really more of a meditation on death and loss. Is? sort of a fleeting psychodrama on death and mourning it's not even really a narrative it's not you

you did read the short story right man no yeah well of course I do what do you think I'm the kind of guy who just goes through a collection of short stories by Bram Stoker in the public domain and chooses the one with the spookiest name

before he even reads it come on of course no yeah no so I was thinking you know relevant to the story that I read that this movie could be about a demon who uses

shadows to construct an evil portal to hell. Because he's a shadow builder? Yes, exactly. He builds out of shadows. But that's not what.

I said it's because he's a shadow builder. Got it. And we're back for the breakdown And I'm sorry to say it But I have so many fucking notes On these opening logos Oh you mean the five separate logos For the same fucking company

So yeah so Imperial Even before it decided to take it second take Just a cacophony of like three different intro tunes That came on with it And then we get the Moonstone logo Which looks unfinished Like they meant to put a thing there And then Imperial's like I want to go again

I want to go again I got a better one It was fucking weird This is the logo equivalent of a game Heath and I are playing on our very real way we make a living that Noah usually comes out of the pie It's like later after the record

He's like, so you guys are playing Last Logo wins? Okay, this makes sense. Last logo wins, all right. So, okay, so then we get our title Bram Stoker asterisk's Shadow Builder. And can I just say Bram Stoker is a hell of a name

to try to juice in the year of our Lord, 1998. Fucking, we're all the bram heads at. Now we're getting into the fucking Bram deep cuts. Do you think there was just like one goth kid who was like,

at last? Yeah. Right. Because if you had just said Shadow Builder, everyone would be like who. Right. You have to attach that name

to have any significance. But then they're like, source material, nah. No, well, right. And that's the other thing. Right. Because Shadow Builder,

if you think about it, it's just thing with mass, right? thing that can block photons. That's not very scary. So we get our title. And now we're going to meet, I don't want to spoil it yet.

So we're going to meet a guy with a goatee. He's walking in and he's like investigating a site where there's just recently been a satanic ritual. This movie is so 1998. I called him Leather Jacket guy. Okay. Yeah. I had a goate guy, but sure. I call him PTSD priest.

Well, so now you've spoiled it. You've spoiled as a priest. Oh, okay. Because we can't let them know he's a priest until the collar pops out. Yes, right, right. So we have... Okay, I thought we couldn't spoil

who the actor was. So I would like to talk about the fact that this is Michael fucking rookies. It's Yon-Doo. It's Father Yon-Du. Yes, it's Yon-Du. And you're like, who's that? Okay, he's the blue guy in Guardians of the Galaxy. And the fact that he is doing anything

except whistling through his teeth to his special magic arrow is a terrible mistake. So, all right. So we're seeing like two layers here, right? So we've got Father Yandu investigating the satanic ritual. And at the same time, we're seeing like flashbacks to the satanic ritual where we've got like four Satanists taking it very seriously. And pancakes heath sitting off in the corner going, y'all are stupid. This is stupid.

Drinking and just like lounging about. Yeah. And look, I know that he's going to end up being a sacrifice for their satanic ritual. but the fact that you let your sacrifice stay there in heckle probably ruins the vibe of your satanic ritual, yeah? At the very least. And so we're flashing between pancakes Heath about to get sacrificed and Father Yandu,

and he comes across a couple of naked bodies that I guess have been exanguinated for purposes of the ritual. I don't know what we were going. I think they were like, let's put some boobs in here, right? I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dead bodies, dead, dead, dead. Yeah, boobs bodies, more important.

Right, yeah, exactly. And so, but as he's looking at this naked lady that blood starts dripping on her from the ceiling and so he like smears his finger in it and takes a good whiff. Okay, what information do movies think people are getting? This is like two weeks in a row that someone has smelled blood and been like,

well, now I've learned something I didn't know before I smelled this blood. A, B, negative. I don't know. Pennies. I was shocked he didn't stick it in his mouth because that's what they always goddamn do. Yes, then they lick it. Yeah, right. And then in the satanic ritual, we see that, like, pancakes Heath, his job at this point

in the ritual is to burn a tuft of his kid's hair and a photograph of him as, like, part of a sacrifice. But first, there was some mention of financial compensation. Oh, yes. And that's how he introduces it, by the way. Like, they're in the middle. They're like, in the name of the learning, it's like, fucking pay me. And then, okay.

We were going to pay you, man, but you kind of ruined the vibe. We're kind of in the middle of a thing. I got it. Pull up my robe, dig in my pants. Where's my goddamn wallet? Is Gabby Google play gift cards? Because the IRS says I owe him money. So, yeah, so they give him some money, and he goes and he burns the stuff in there.

Like, when he goes to burn the picture of his kid, he hesitates for a second. And the priest's like, come on, you don't believe in any of this raising Satan shit to you. and he goes, hell no. And I point that out because afterwards, after they're done with the ritual, the priest turns to him and he goes, you know, pretty soon, hell no, will be a contradiction in terms.

I thought of some wordplay during our satanic ritual and it wasn't really the time now, but I would like, do you remember when you're walking away? Okay. Goodbye. Also, can I ask a question?

Because all of us here are non-believers to a certain extent, right? Right. I still wouldn't burn a picture of my son. Not because I think it's supernatural, but the vibes would be bad. I'd be like, I don't believe anything's going to happen,

but this feels mean. Right. Yeah, right. Yeah. Fuck you. Fuck your face is my answer. So I'll burn your kid. Give me your kid.

Yeah, I'll burn your kid. But then the shadow monster pops out and eats pancakes heath. and just then we get Father Yandu busted into the fucking room dual wielding y'all he's got laser sights yes two guns with laser sights

and let me just say this actor does not do a very good job of keeping those lasers more or less even no it was a light show he's really excited about the laser sights now it's also so he shoots everybody in the room they run towards him but they and I can't emphasize this enough,

are not armed. Nope. They're just like a PTA in satanic ropes. And they're all old people, right? It's just like a bunch of old men running out and he's shooting them in the dick. It's really a weird vibe there too. It's like they couldn't afford nyes for something. And Yandu was like,

are you sure this isn't going to ruin the vibe? But the first thing my character does is kick down a door and shoot nine people for burning a picture. Yeah. That's what happens. So, yeah, so he shoots all of them. He sees Pancakes Heath's body. He's all desiccated for some reason.

So he gets his wallet. And then the main Satanist, as he's dying, he's like, all right, but you got to admit, I totally raised a shadow demon, though. And Yon, who's like, no, no, no, you didn't. I didn't see no shadow demon. I don't believe in that. Okay. I almost went with Best We're Skeptic because we make it four seconds into this movie before

he sees supernatural evidence that would absolutely convince anybody that the supernatural was real. He will be 90 seconds before the end of the film where he's like, maybe God's real. He'll have fought a shadow demon multiple times before he's like,

okay. Maybe there's something to this. Yeah, but then after he gets done killing everybody, he puts back on his priestly collar and he gives him last rights. I was like, you're going to murder him and then give him last rights. What? Yeah.

That feels so awkward in heaven, right? Just like walking around up there. Jesus is like, come my son at my right hand. He's like, actually, I was kind of working for the other side, but, uh, horse here. Since I'm here anyway, yeah. Is this awkward? It feels awkward. Well, whenever Michael Rooker burst into the room and he was talking to Quinn,

he said initially he was just going to take him back. and then he just immediately shoots him. Yeah, I don't think he had negotiation in mind at any point. Yeah. So, yes, so he gets done with the heat. We watch him like walk back to his priestly limousine in the rain. And the boss priest is there to get debriefed. He's like, so did you kill all the Satanus?

And he's like, yeah, yeah, no, I killed all the Satanus. And he's like, I also, there was a desiccated corpse. I took his wallet. And I'm like, we're just going to split the money now? But no, this is part of his investigation. This is Victor Lambert. That's Pancakes Heath. And he has to check out and see what's up with this guy now.

Right. Now, we introduce in this scene where they're in the car, we really reinforce the whole idea that Father Yandu doesn't believe in the supernatural. He thinks he's just killing for the Vatican, you know, for political reasons. Right. He's saying that he's basically just a hit man for the Vatican. And he's like, it's just politics. And the other guy's like, did you stop him?

Oh my God, that's the end of the world. And it's like, wait, what? Yeah. Yeah, he's like, no, no, he was just a political threat. And the boss is like, no, they have the compendium in furnace. Which, again, you can feel him throw off the vibes when he's like, no, he's just a political opponent. The guy's like, okay, man, well, that makes your willing murder of nine people fucking crazy. Yeah, right.

Yes, exactly. Like, I know that we're bad people and we cover up a child rap, but we haven't done the whole like organized killing thing for a while. So, yeah, but so, but Yandu now has to go investigate a possible second cell of Satanists

that are going to do some crazy shit during the eclipse. I hope there's more old people for me to kill. Well, he even goes, he goes at this point, he's like, will you hear my confession before I go? And the guy's like, are you really, you're going to say sorry? Like, you mean it? And he goes, no, no, I'm not.

Vassi, he doesn't respond. He just gives him this really intense look and starts leaning over. And then doesn't suck his cock. Everything about this place, like he's going to suck his cock. Even when he kisses his ring, right? Because that was a very, I'm going to suck your cock. Ring kiss, wasn't it? Ring kiss, 100%.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So now we cut to this cop. He's his rookie cop. and it's 5 o'clock in the morning in the town that that second satanic sleeper cell might have met in, right? This is the first time we're going to see Satan vision or demon vision.

I called it tunnel vision. Sure, yeah. So the demon in this movie has escaped to the sewers and he's going to make his way through into sewers from this point on. And he's got like poor man's predator vision, right? So every time we see them, we're going to be going through the tunnels in sort of a technicolor acid trip. Yeah, it's like shades of red and orange. Like, everything's really bright and disorienting.

Yeah, regardless of what temperature it would be. Yeah, I know I'm the fresh-faced youth on this particular episode, but did anyone get secret life of Alex Mack vibes from whenever we went into this vision? No, just me? All right. Well, the millennials out there are fucking loving that reference. I'm pretty sure my dad is too young to get that reference. So, okay, so with the cop, so as the demon is floating through the sewer or whatever,

he winds up in this cemetery and he explodes some dirt and a cop, a rookie cop, sees that and he has to go check it out. So he calls it in and we meet Maggie the lady cop who's asleep at the wheel here when he calls it in, right? and he's like clearly scared and calling in an emergency and she's just fucking with him the whole time. Seems inappropriate. She's like, what do you want? Yeah. I was sleeping.

I have better things to do. And he's like, oh, no, man, oh, no. Yeah. And he's like, I saw something mysterious in the cemetery. I'm going to go check it out. And she's like, what's the cop number? You have to tell me what it is. You're doing a what number?

And he's like, I don't fucking know the number. Oh, no, I'm new. Come on. Yeah. So he goes out into the same. cemetery and he finds that one of the graves has all dug up and in that grave is a skeleton because it's you know it's a grave i mean that would be because it's a grave right yeah but then the demon is like i guess off in the distance we don't see the demon at this point we hear it and it like

it's quoting the lines that pancakes heath said earlier yeah there was some mention of financial compensation yeah it's not not relevant lines right Also, not a great way to introduce your demon to the movie. Right. It makes the demon seem like really stupid. Yeah. That would be like if we introduced Freddie Kruger by being like, I want to talk to you about your car's extended wise.

Yes, right. A clever writer would have had pancakes Heath say something that could then be creepy in this situation. But these fucking idiots that wrote this goddamn movie didn't have enough cocaine for that level of clever. So instead, there's going to be a fucking. light explosion and then the demon is going to

summon shadow bees to eat the cop's face yeah I wrote X-Files had better special effects oh my God yeah this was this was 1998 direct-to-video effects yeah fucking dreamcast had better

special effects than this movie it's okay so now it's 5.50 a.m and we cut to the house of that kid from that Polaroid that got burned earlier. Not just any kid, no illusions. That would be Kevin Zeggers of airbud fame.

Maybe you've heard of it. Oh, is that who that is? Yeah. Oh, fuck, yeah. He's making a... He's Josh and AirBut. Yeah, another appearance. He's also crazy hot now, which makes me so happy.

Like, it's rare that a child actor isn't dead. So first of all, think up for being alive. But second of all, whenever you Google this, like, child actor who was in a ton of those, like, Air Bud 2, Air Bud 7, you just see. Kevin Zegger's living his best possible life. Nice. Good for him. All right. So, but now he lives with his aunt Jen. His parents are gods out of the picture.

So he lives with his aunt Jen who is waking up next to Sheriff Sam, right? And very weirdly creepy music playing in the background. Yeah, completely in Congress, it seems like there was a big fight between a lot of different people about what kind of movie we were making, right? This was somewhere between Goonies and Nightmare in Elm Street the entire fucking time, right? So now we see her waking up and the kid, Chris, is dragging shit up in a little basket to the roof of the house, I guess, to make an observatory for the upcoming eclipse. Yep. And she's laying in a bed between two windows.

She is at the very front of the room and it's like the entire neighborhood can see you in your bed. Yep. 100%. Sure can. which makes it really awkward when a few seconds later, her boyfriend, Sheriff Sam, is like, hey, we're trying to keep this relationship on the town low, right? And she's like, well, other than the fact that we're fucking

in front of literally everybody in the neighborhood with these picture windows, yeah, that are open, that we wake up and the windows are open, yeah. Yeah. Also, it's never explained why their relationship needs to be a secret. They're both single, like, they seem to like each other. No one ever reacts to their existence of a relationship. they just established like

no one can know we're fucking and then it does not matter for the rest of the movie and everyone knows they're fucking also hey pro tip if you're making an observatory for your eclipse don't bring a telescope

there are filters that you can use but don't like generally speaking that's not something that you want to no it doesn't want you to really see the sun he doesn't want you to see through the Jew lies that's when you see a bunch of me's like shuffling something in front of the big flat earth that they got going on

All right. Mr. President. So meanwhile, so Father Yandu is he's heading to town. He's scarfing down like that over-the-counter meth we used to be able to get from fucking roadside stores in the 90s. It was a simpler time. I had one note for the previous section. I have no idea what Melrose Place is, and they made a reference to it. Did one of the resident olds explain this reference to me?

How dare you, sir? So I am actually too old for that. That was a 90210.10 spinoff, wasn't it? Oh, is that what that was? Yeah. Eli, I'm asking you, is your generation, not mine? I think I'm too old. I'm not my generation.

I'm too young for Melrose Place. We are immediately between, yeah, we need to tag Heath. There's a huge explosion as Heath burst through the wall. And he's like, my sexual formation. That was my sexual formation. It was a drama, really a drama, running drama about young people living in Melrose Place. It's great. It was sort of like soap opera.

for Gen X before their parents got divorced. They didn't have TVs anymore. I don't think it was Gen X, but yeah. So, yeah, so now we got little Chris, he's making breakfast a little scamp, making breakfast for Sheriff Sam as he comes down from

Aunt Jen's bedroom. There is a bondage moment between Sam and Jen that we left out. And I feel like that was a little much, right? We probably should have probably should have drawn a line around that, that they're into bondage stuff. Right. Well, what's weird is because Sam's now going to

call back to it here. He goes, did you remember your cuffs this time? You know, for the bondage you're doing with my aunt. You pretend that she can't stop you from doing whatever you want with her body. Anyways, have some French toast. And I was like, hey. In front of the double windows

where the curtains are open all night. So, yeah, so and then he walks out this guy who's trying to keep his relationship discreet, walks out to his cop car, which he's got parked in her fucking yard. So yeah, great job. detective. No, I was here for a bank robbery.

All night. Well, and this is where we get the, we get Eli's best worst, right? Because everybody is saying, hi, Sheriff Sam, to him. And the fucking, the subtitles keep saying demons as who's saying that, right? Now, at the end of the movie, all of these characters, everyone in town will like turn demonic and be on the satanic side. So, like, I'm sure in the script, these people were all, like, Demon one, demon two, or something,

and that's how it wound up there. But it's pretty jarring in that moment. Right. So, okay, Chris is about to leave. Aunt Jen wants to talk to him about the nightmares he's been having about satanic stuff. Oh, Noah, will those nightmares later

help us solve mysteries of the movie or be visited ever fucking again? I never have anything to do with anything that happens. He goes, it's not like I'm going to need analysis or anything. And I wrote my notes, okay, Woody Allen, relax. So, yeah, so then we got to the thriving downtown. This is what Walmart stole from us, folks.

And there's this great fucking moment where Sheriff Sam is sitting there with his partner, Nestor. And Nestor says, wow, look at all this traffic. And I paused to the movie and counted one, two, three. And there's six cars. Six moving vehicles. Virtually an empty town. And he's like, yeah, that eclipse festival sure is bringing the folks in this week. Yeah. Oh, and so we should probably introduce.

So Deputy Nestor, his personality is sexual harassment and irritation, right? Yeah, he's deputy purve in all of my notes. Nestor, the resident accurate depiction of a cop. Okay, sure. I originally had 90s cop, but I thought about it. I was like, eh, it's not really. And honestly, so there's a moment here where she says, no, yeah, right, right. Let's be honest with where we are in the world.

But there's a moment here where they're picking up their breakfast And there's a waitress that brings the food out And he sexually harasses her And I can tell by her eye makeup That at some point in this movie We're going to see her boobs, right? Like you just know if you've watched enough 90s movies Like, oh, she's the boobs girl for later

There's the actor who was willing to show us their boobs Yeah, 100%. He also regales us with a lascivious rendition Of she'll be coming around the mountain Which I was very impressed of Just performance-wise, right? Because they give him sort of like I'll leave her alone.

And then as he's heading towards the bathroom, I assume for his morning shit, he does like a, she'll be coming, rat. We're like, we got it, man.

We got it. The actor plan Nestor was making choices. No small parts. It's okay. So, but Maggie at this point tells Sheriff Sam that he needs to go check on cemetery cop because he went to check out an emergency and never called back, right?

I love that that's what they do. A cop goes, I'm going to go check. something out goes missing for eight hours and when the morning shift comes in they're like hey that guy's probably dead you should check that now that you've blocked in I'm so glad you didn't call out sick

otherwise we'd have to check tomorrow because she insinuates that he's going and just peeing on the side of the road but then is like oh he just stood there peeing for eight hours I guess right he's been peeing since early this morning yeah so okay we establish here very quickly that Aunt Jen

is a veterinarian She has a veterinary clinic. That'll never really matter either. But she has to do something, I guess. And then we get Sam arriving at the cemetery looking for the rookie, right? And he notices right away that something's off by the fact that the car's empty, the lights are on, and the guy's gun is sitting on the ground. So he checks and finds out that the engine is still warm.

So he wasn't peeing for that long, I guess. Yeah, I didn't realize that's what he was doing. So it looked like he petted the car like a horse, call him it. He's like, no, girl. We'll find him. We'll find him. Good, girl.

Feeds it a single carrot. Lead us to him. So, yeah, so, but he, he goes up to check out things. He finds the dug-up grave with the skeleton and the dead cop. The cop is there, but also all desiccated, like from before. So, okay. So meanwhile, Father Yandu, still driving. We're going to cut back to him driving some more.

He also, he almost runs over this kid at this point. And they have a great fucking exchange here, right? Where he looks at the kids, he sees Chris. He sees the kid from the photograph that they got burned. And he stares at him for a second. Just a death stare. Yes, right, right. And Chris's friend goes, probably a purve.

I think we all wrote like the same joke here. Yeah. But then the movie beat us to it. Yeah. Right? Because Chris is like, he's not a perv. He's a priest. And the friend is like, what I tell you?

I want to point out this is some cutting edge knowing priests or perf shit like the whole the spotlight thing that wasn't for like three years after this movie was made. Right, yeah. You just had to be one out of ten Catholic boys.

Yeah, right. Exactly, yeah. But then there's an amazing moment here. So now, okay, so now the coroner's there, right? They're checking everything out. They're checking out the body. And they shine a flashlight at it. And it just the body starts burning up like flashpaper.

Right. And the corner goes, and I quote, it's helioreactive. Not a word. And also, yeah, yeah, it seems like a bit of an understatement as well. He's also completely unbothered by it. He's like, no, yeah, one out of three bodies turned to dust when hit by the side, it's when he in. Yeah, all right. Well, they what they're like pooping yourself.

And even Sam was like, oh, yeah, let's just get some tarps to deal with this. You know, the same way see every day. Oh, yeah, yeah. Throw a little shade. So as they're leaving, why does the medical examiner like assume it's a murder? Like he says, I haven't seen a murder

in years. Right, yeah. Like somebody like desiccated him to death. Hmm. Like, as far as he knows, he died of moth stings and has the world's worst case of psoriasis. Yeah.

Yeah, right. Like, I'd love to know what he was assuming the murder weapon would be here at this point, if not demon death. Yeah. All right, well, I'll tell you what, the photons from this movie had me feeling a little heliosensitive by this point.

So we're going to take another quick break, but we're back in a minute with even more Shadow Builder. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So blowing in the cartridges didn't help? I mean, if anything, it probably made the problem worse. No way. Way? Hey, guys, what you doing?

We were just talking to Noah about his old Nintendo's. See the hair, I like now I'm more than you. Um, who's this? Oh, sorry about that. This is my winter blues, everybody. Your winter blues? Yeah, you know, the leaves fall from the trees. The sky turns a little gray and I just start feeling a little blue.

Well, Eli, you know, you could talk to somebody about that. Don't talk to all about that. That's real. It's not weird. It's self-care. And if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, you should try online therapy with better help. What's better help? BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals.

A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 12-plus years of experience and industry-leading match fulfillment rate means they typically 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. That sounds great. It is. This month, don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out for a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier for you to take the first step.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash awful. That's better H-E-L-P-com slash awful. All right, guys, thanks. Winter Blues, I'll take it from here. Just a cry alone on a murder sitter. Wait, maybe, maybe try it sooner rather than later. Yep, yep. On it.

You the sheriff? Yes. Care to tell me what's going on here. No time. I'm Father Oritia McCarthy, and I need all the records of arrests. in the jail last night. Fine, damn it. Wait, sorry?

What is it, deputy? Why are you giving this guy information? Damn it, do you want to stop this thing or not? Yeah, I do with other cops. You're just a guy. He's not just a guy. He's a priest. Exactly.

And we're running out of time. Okay, but priests aren't law enforcement. Any evidence you uncovered or, I don't know, arrests you made? Those would be invalid. because you're not a police officer. Hey, I'm Mormon. Do I still have to help? Yes, you do.

No, nobody has to help. He's just a guy. He's not part of law enforcement. And if he keeps this up, what we should actually do is arrest him. Sorry, Deputy, it's just... We're out of time. Exactly. Follow me.

I'm coming. Out of time for what? They're gone. And we're back for more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action with Father Yandu finally making it to this church and Grand River that he's been driving to for like nine scenes now. Mm-hmm. Which makes me feel confused about like, where are we in the U.S.?

This shadow builder demon got there Zoom immediately, but he had to travel through the sewers and then driving it takes 10 hours? Yeah. Right. Yeah. This movie does seem to think. that all major areas in this country are, like, attached by one big sewer system. Yep.

Well, yeah, so, but there's this great moment, too. So Father Yandu walks into the church, he's swinging his shoulders, like a badass and everything, ready to do badass priest stuff. And then this other priest comes in, and he's like, all these curtains are just filthy. These are just filthy curtains or whatever. And he's just doing, like, normal priest shit. I love the juxtaposition there. But they meet and Father Lambert. But I never caught this other priest's name.

I just call him Father Dork through the rest of my notes. Yeah. But Father Dork, he's, Father Yandu says, Hey, I'm here about Victor Lambert. And Father Dork is like, oh, he fucking sucks. He's the worst. He heckled all of my satanic invocations, I'll tell you. If ever there was a guy who was going to take money to burn a picture of his kid,

it's that guy. Let me tell you. Yeah, right, right. He's like, do you know, Lambert? Yeah, I know. Lambert. What do you do this time? He died. Yeah, died. Oh, that's classic Lambert. That's really fucking awkward. But in his defense, open with he's dead. Don't just be like, do you know? Yeah. Did you know? You can say, did you know? And then you give me a hint. Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. So meanwhile, oh, speaking of which, we go back to the vet clinic now. And we have Sheriff Sam explaining to Aunt Jen about the dead cop in the grave, but totally parries the lead. Right. So apparently the grave that's been opened up is her sister's grave, Chris's mom's grave. So he opens with, yeah, so somebody dug up your sister's grave. Also, there was a dead cop in it.

Like, right, like, you gotta start with Larry's dead, I feel like, in the distance. This is such a small town. Everyone knows everyone. She would be genuinely shocked and upset that this person she probably knows is dead. You would think, yeah, right. So, okay, so we get that scene,

and then we've got, like, We go back to Father Dork showing Father Yandu the files on Vic Lambert on Pankase Heath. It was really funny because I had forgotten that this was on Amazon Prime. And I went and found it on YouTube. And whoever uploaded it changed all of the scenes with blood to black and white. So you wouldn't see red blood. And they blurred everything. So at the beginning, blurred the boobies.

Okay. But then they blurred the crucifix in the church. Oh, really? Nipples on Jesus. Oh, that's how you know it's a Christian when someone's like, oh, I won't have my Lord and Savior being mocked on the tube of you. Yeah. Is this the scene where Father Finler is showing Michael Rooker the files?

Yes, yeah. And he asked him, hey, why do you need these files? And he says, I have no idea. Yes. Now show me someone's personal information right now. Right, I shouldn't probably give him to you then, yeah. But this is where he realizes that Pancakes Heath is Chris's dad. Now, critically, like, the picture of Chris was already burned when he got there.

Like, we have no reason to think that that Father Yandu would know who Chris is or anything. Like, this movie very often just assumes that every character has been watching the movie to this point. Right. It's not even established to us that Lambert, was Chris's dad until we kind of get to this point. Right. I was clue. I was like, wait, who is Lambert?

Why does Chris live with Jen? Where's his parents? I was just like, I don't understand any of these families or who's related to who. And then we expect Vasi to just know all of it. Yeah, that's how Father Yandu is Vasi. Yeah. Well, there's also, there's this fucking moment here where Father Yandu realizes, he's like, oh, that kid is, that he was the kid's dad.

I got to go find the kid and he runs off. And Father Dork calls back to him. He's like, yeah, that kid's probably a fucking loser just like a piece of shit-ass dad. And I'm like, wow, father. Got him. Got him. Good roast me. Yeah.

Did Fenler get like his lunch money stolen by Lambert? He got reverse molested by Lander. Oh, what? Yeah. So meanwhile, so my hero, that's like the kid who called out the Perf priest. I have him just down as my hero for the rest of them. notes. We cut to him and Chris and their other friend. I have these three collectively down as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew from here on. Appropriate. Yeah. And they're trying to figure out

who's behind the dead body in the grave at the cemetery. This is what we had to do before iPads. Okay, people? Before there were iPads and Roblox, we were just like, hey, I heard there was a murder. Do you want to go check it out? And the answer was always yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we always had to blame the mentally ill person in town, which is what they do, right? Yeah, don't worry. It's not going to be the only black guy in the movie. It's so going to be the only black guy

in the movie. So, yeah. So, but they got to go see if Kovie is the murderer. Now, we haven't been introduced to Kovie. I guess some characters and some people have mentioned him as having stolen their lights in the background of the film up to this point. But he's like, I'm going to go check it out. And his friends are like, you can't

go check it out. And he, Chris says, hey, look, my mom's fucking the sheriff. basically makes me a cop. I mean, genuine, truly kid logic. Sure. Yeah, no, you know what, that's fair. That's fair. And his friends agree with you. They're like, yeah, no, that's good logic. We're going. We're going.

So then we cut over, there's a moment here with the, with the coroner. He's checking out the body, but it's heliosensitive. So they have to use lights that don't have any light on them. Helios. Right. Is the, like, what lights are helio and

which ones aren't. Yes. Yeah. I'm pretty sure this movie thought black lights aren't light and it was, I was really excited

to see like glow in the dark dead body demons. But a bunch of stoner posters on the wall. Finally, people get my glowing shroo. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So then we see, okay, so then we see Father Yandu showing up at the sheriff's office. And he walks right up to the counter and he goes, I need the sheriff's help trying to find a small boy.

Whoa. Whoa. But again, Nestor beats us to joke. He's like, hey, how's he going? I'm the Sivius guy from earlier, and priests creaked me out, and I was like, ahead of your time movie, ahead of your fucking time. But yeah,

he starts giving him some shit, and Yandu turns to him, and he's like, fuck off. And we're supposed to be like, ooh, priest, fuck off. He's been pretty bad ass for a priest. So, but he's trying to find the sheriff. The sheriff, though, has gone over to the coroner's office. So we cut to the coroner, the coroner's by himself, he's like narrating his autopsy as coroners are want to do, right? but just as he starts digging into the body, it sits up.

And none of the other bodies in the entire movie do this. No. Right. Steeman has a very inconsistent power set. It has a critters ray, which will vary wildly. And in this scene, and only this scene, it inhabits dead bodies as well. Or can create zombies. Yeah, we're not really sure.

But I will say this corner, fast-thinking motherfucker, when this body comes to life, if he just turns on the lights and turns it to dust. And I'm like, well done. Instantly. And the amount of people in this movie who react to these monsters by turning on the light, very surprising considering they're not supposed to know what's actually going on. Well, so again, like all the characters in the movie are watching the movie, right? So from this point on, everybody in the movie's like, oh, the light, good call, right?

Because that's why, yeah, like, Kovie was stealing the lights from the mayor and whoever. because of the coming eclipse. So that makes sense that he's like, oh, I want light. We're having an eclipse and I'm scared of the dark or whatever. Sure. But all of these other characters are like,

oh, what will defend me? Light. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so, but then we get Sheriff Sam, he shows up a little bit late to the attack. He will show up a little bit late to everything from this point on in the film, right?

Yeah. But he shows up, it's too late. The coroner has also been turned into a heliose sensitive, desiccated body. Mm-hmm. Yep. So he opens up the door and the corner gets shadowed to death or whatever. I don't know. You've been shadowed.

I guess, yes. But then Father Yandu shows up right on his tail. Now, if you think about it, Father Yandu is even better at showing up late because he showed up late for the satanic ritual at the beginning as well. Yeah, exactly. Right. Because usually I tell people, hey, don't speed because it doesn't really matter in the end. What are you going to save three minutes?

If Father Yandu had sped a little bit more, he could have saved the human race. This movie is 15 minutes long. Right, yeah. But he shows up just in time to info dump at Sam. He goes, at this point, he looks at the skeleton. This is the skeleton of the woman that was the grave that was dug up in the cemetery. And he goes, the long bones are gone.

What? And it's like, but why? Yeah. That'll never be relevant to the rest of the mood. it'll never be part of anything it'll never be brought back also I think by long bones he means fucking legs it's the

weirdest possible use of the line it's okay so what I think we were going for here is that part of the ritual to unmake reality that this demon is trying to do requires him to have the bones of this kid's mom right but like the movie is so unclear on that

that I'm just sort of like retrofitting that in an effort to make this make sense right I also have a retrofitted theory. I think they're specifically the long bones to make the scythe, because that's what's in the little pictures later.

Sure. Yeah. A bony sithe. You're right. Because that's the only time he deals with bones is the scythe at the end. I think you're right. Oh. We're making a better movie than they did. We did. Yeah. So, but meanwhile, they've decided to try

their hands at the fucking goonies, right? Because now the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, they go over to inspect the the town eccentric with all the lights, right? And he is a stoner pirate. Yeah. Listening to Rasta music? Reggae, yep.

Listen to reggae with a blunt in his mouth and an eye patch. Yeah, and he's stealing Christmas lights from around town, I guess, is what we're supposed to think he's doing. Yeah, the kids solve the mystery of the mayor's missing tomato lights. Yes, the right, like in case you were worried about that plot line. Yeah. Right, like I said, they're having their own little fucking movie going on. And hey, you know, congratulations to them. It seems like more interesting than whatever we're doing.

Hmm. But they have to hide from the town's only black guy. They're very frightened of the town's only black guy. It's real uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable. To be fair, Covey finds it very funny. Yeah. Clearly.

It's his favorite thing. It's his favorite thing to scare the kids who, like, like peeking on him. Yeah, no, he's loving it. He's like, every white person in town is afraid of me. It's the bad. Yes. I steal their lights, but they're afraid to come to my house and take a bag.

So, okay. So now, so Yandu, Sam, and Jen, they're all meeting together about the plot now, right? And look, I know this is a trope for movies in general, but is there anything funnier than the, like, now we're doing our second of four exposition scenes because no one went, no wait tell me the entire story tell me all the information right gather everyone needed you just have to imagine that between the two locations we saw them then everyone was walking and or driving in complete silence i felt like half this movie would have disappeared if father yandu as you call him had just stayed in the basement reading those papers because we jump from place to place to place to place going like oh this is the storyline no that's the storyline hey i have this idea

Yeah. And also there's a moment here where like Yandu's trying to explain what's going on to Aunt Jen, but he's sort of pre-freaking out, right? Because there has to be a moment where she wanders away from them. And so he just starts going like, he's like, did this pancakes Heath take anything from your kid when he saw him? And she's like, no. And he's like, he must have taken something, some hair or some urine or some fingernail or clippings are blood. And she's like, whoa, calm the fuck down, man. What? What's going on? Did you notice any used band-aids go missing? Yeah, right, do you inventory of those normally?

But she goes to leave, she thinks that Chris is in trouble, so she's going to go find him. So Yandu, like, chases her out of the building, and he wants to know what the backstory about Chris's baptism is. Now, this is something that we've just sort of shoehorned into the movie in the last few minutes. We didn't forget to set this up. The movie did.

He might as well chase her down the street being like, come on, doodoo doodoo. Do-D-D-D-D-N-H Right, right. Give me a reason to be here harassing you. Right, yeah. But we learn here that when he was baptized, the Holy Water gave him stigmata. Stigmata, baby. Hell yeah.

And he's like, oh, yeah. So this must be like, he must be a pure soul that the demon needs. And we're like, fucking what? And he's like, don't even worry about it. We made it up for the movie. I don't know why. He could just be. A kid.

It doesn't fucking matter, yeah. We did a whole satanic ritual at the beginning, so there's a perfectly good reason for him to be the kid we need to get killed by the demon. I don't know why we introduce this mythology to a very real religious. But, yeah, so, but Father Yandu's like, I need to go back and look at the files at the church. And Sam goes, I demand to be your partner for the rest of the movie. And he's like, yeah, whatever. So then we cut to the kids.

They're hanging out at there's like a sewer, pipe, or, whatever, that they're all sitting around talking about how much danger they used to be in? They're having a look at the sun. No, you look at the sun fight. And I wrote in my notes, can confirm this was a lot of our childhood. It was really bad before iPads. So at this part, they do a jump scare. And I understand that she's looking down before staring at the sun.

And that's why she's scared. But why didn't the other two kids see him? And also, why is he screaming? Yeah, so, yeah, let me set that up for the listeners a bit. So, Jen is talking about, they're talking about how they can't look into the eclipse. And they're like, oh, I dare you to look into the sun if you think you can look into the eclipse. So she, like, looks down, closes her eyes, goes to open her eyes. And the Rasta pirate is there yelling at them.

And they all run away screaming. And yeah, that's the question. Like, yeah, I get why she wasn't there. But are the boys in on it? Black eye. Yeah. So, okay. So they all run away.

The demon at this point, the rasta pirate guy looks into the sewer pipe and he goes, is that a fucking demon in there? And then the demon runs away, popping manhole covers all the way, right? He has upgraded to public property damage. Yeah, yeah. He's getting, he's getting ever more municipally out of hand as we go. Yeah. And he also starts making little kids rip the heads off of their dolls.

Yeah, that seems like a property crime on some level as well. Right. So, yeah, and then, so Jen is out looking for Chris. The kids are ripping the heads off their dolls. We cut over to Sam and Yandu expositing on their way to the next clue. Yeah, this is where we're going to get the backstory on the pure souls. They are souls that are born pure, free of original sin. And I just think this is such a weird trope that religious horror movies always feel entitled to.

Because look, religious horror movies. And we get pushed back sometimes because we'll do like exorcism movies. or, you know, religious horror movies and people say, oh, that's not really a Christian movie. I don't know why he did it on your show, but, like, they are pushing the main message of those religions. They also just add a bunch of shit that would get them burned 100 years ago.

Every horror movie feels like they can go just be like, and have you ever heard of Jesus' brother, Steveus? Well, yes, that's whose cup we're after. And Christians are just like, popcorn. M-Rom. So, yeah, so Sam is like, so I thought Stigmata was just a bunch of religious horse shit. And I'm like, that's a great way to open the conversation with the priest.

But he goes into this whole thing. And then we cut to this, this older couple. This is the Butterman couple. Fun fact, according to IMDB, these two are the voice actors for Rudolph and that fucking elf that was in the Rudolph thing. No way. That's what, yeah, that's what IMDB said anyway. There's a lot of heavy hitters in this movie. Is there, is there, Eli?

In Shadow Builder? Yeah. I mean, for Shadow Builder, yeah, I guess that is produced. Kevin, you call us anytime. I'll choose you over no illusions. I want to be an Air Bud 7. So, yeah, so, but we cut to this couple and they're getting home from like tennis or whatever, but there's evil bubbling up from the sewer.

So this is where we're going to introduce the fact that the, that the demon is making everybody in town evil. Right. Right. We're going to start with Mr. Butterman axe murdering his horse. wife at this point. Okay, but here's the problem. They won't bring this up for another 20 minutes. So my notes, which I will try not to bring up, every three scenes for the rest of the movie until they introduce this concept will be, why did that guy kill his wife with an axe? Right. She is like, oh, the drain is like stinky. And he looks at her and gets this intense look on his face. And then he

just picks up an axe and walks over and just chops her head. Right. It's like, damn. as though she's complained about the drain one time too many. Yeah. That honey-do list was just too heavy, honey. So, okay. So now we go back to the church where Father Dork, he hears some glass breaking in the creepy, drippy basements. So he goes down to check it out.

He sees, you know, the movie is shot. Like, the whole plot of this movie is that light kills the monster. So we're constantly in the, the dark, which makes it kind of hard to see what the fuck is happening. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he looks in this little, like this area and he finds a bunch of bones. The long bones.

Right, that's what I assumed. And then he's attacked by bats. And the bats eat the light bulbs. Light bulb eating bats. They do eat the light bulbs. That's true. Yep. As bats are wanted to do as they are creatures of the dark, you see.

Exactly. So he gets to attack by bats. He screams and he, and he rolls around on the ground, like he's on fire for a while. And then we get the demon cam, like the demon comes up to get him. So he grabs a light because he's been watching the movie to this point and knows that light is the weakness for these. Like, why wouldn't he use a cross? Right.

It's just also worth pointing out that making your bad guy a shadow is a terrible choice for a visual medium, right? Because every time we see this, it's very clear that we wanted to get a clear view of the shadow builder. And every time they were like, yeah, but that would be light. And we already established that light is bad for him. So just every shot of the villain of the movie is dark. He's Mr. Dark. Yeah, right, right.

But so, yeah, the light works for a minute to keep him away. But then the light bulb breaks. I guess one of the bats snuck around and threw a little battering at it. I had no fucking clue. Just some guys from PS E and G outside. Sorry, that was us. And then he starts like prey fighting and it fails. Yes.

Prayer failing in horror movies used to just infuriate me as a Christian. Because it was like, what do you mean that name doesn't work? Yeah, that's the whole point. Yeah. That would be like if Superman one time just trying to jumped halfway into the air and flopped to the ground and he was like, fuck. Ah! so yeah so and then okay so now of course yandu and sam have have teamed up so obviously they're going to arrive late to this demon they show up at the church just too late to save father dork from the demon right and shadow builder talks to uh father yandu and is like me existing confirms all the supernatural claims of the church so yandu pulls out pistols and starts shooting yes start shooting him in the face.

How dare you prove my religion right? Bang, bang, bang. Right. How fucking awesome would it have been if this had worked and that was the end of the movie? Ah, shit. Last time all they had was chariots of iron.

Holy fucking. I'm losing a lot of blood. I'm losing a lot of demon blood. So, no, I also, I want to point out, I almost went with best, worst, demon voice. So sometimes when we do sketches, Eli will write a voice for, like, somebody will like me or somebody or a guest

will have to play a demon, and they'll go for a voice right away, and you can immediately hear them regret it, right? Like, it felt like through this entire movie, the guy who did this demon voice was like, fuck, I got to keep this up. The whole goddamn time. God damn it, Christ, Biggins.

You've destroyed my vocal help. This is really going to hurt later. Yeah. So, yeah, but the demon appears before them. Yandu tries shooting him in the face. That doesn't work. So then he shoots holes in the floor, right? Which creates light barriers between him and the demon,

and the demon can't go through light. So they're safe. That's the closest this movie will ever come to being clever, guys. So get it up, soak it up. So they get back in the car.

I love this moment so much because Sam turns to Yandu and he goes, what the fuck was that? And Yandu has to go like, look, we're not going to look up fucking actual theology for this. It's like a fucking,

you know, it's a demon or something. You know, it's a bad thing. Don't make me say it, man. I don't believe this. That's my whole thing. That's my shtick. I don't believe it. Don't make me say it.

Yeah. After shooting a demon in the face, he's still like, I'm not sold on this whole supernatural thing. It's not even that he's not sold. It's just like, I don't like to admit when I'm wrong. I'm going to have to go home

and write this out as an eye message. So then we see Chris breaking off from his friends to go meet Aunt Jen for dinner. We learned that through demon cam in the sewers, right? And we go back. to the sheriff's office, Yandu is taking control.

Again, he's just a fucking, he's just some priest that walked in. He is just a man. Yeah. And, but he's taking control. Maggie is like, hey, why are we letting this priest tell us what to do? And so they send her home. Maggie, get out of the movie. You're asking too many questions.

You get out of this movie, Maggie. She's the only one acting reasonable. And they're like, go home. It's like, oh, because I'm a woman. Like, no, no, no. We're sending Nest her home too. Yes. Which they don't, by the way.

They're just lying to get her out of the way. So then we cut over to the vet clinic where the assistant is checking on a dog when suddenly its shadow turns into demon shadow dogs too. Here's the most confusing thing that happens in this scene. The dog multiplies into two shadow demon dogs and she goes, easy, easy. This is a thing that occasionally happens to her as a veterinarian.

And not only that, the dog that's in the scene initially is a Doberman, but the two dogs that come out of the Doerman are Rottweilers. Yes. Yes. Each Doberman is made of the soul of two Rottweilers from hell. That's what they say. No, that tracks. That actually tracks.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Thank God we didn't come for pit bulls. Otherwise, the pit bull owners would be all over this episode. You're allowed to come for the Dobermans. It's okay. So, yeah, but then. she tries to talk down the hounds of hell. Doesn't work.

There's a shadow explosion and she gets eaten by the shadow monster. Meanwhile, we cut back to this police station where Father Yandu is having some like old-timey texts faxed over. He's getting it. He's reading the dark text. By the way, the dark text will just be pictographs of the things that happen in the movie but medieval style.

Right? So there's like a dog that attacks someone. At one point we just see like a kind of sort of demon using a sickle on a baby that will be like instrumental to the plot. Yes. But there's never any like text that he references. It's the fucking illustration. I wanted it at one point for someone to be like, hey man, you can read these, right?

And he was like, oh, yeah, totally. It's just like to look at the pictures too. So yeah. So but Jen, at this point, she's been running around looking for Chris for so long. Now she remembers that she was supposed to meet him for dinner. So she calls Sam and she's like, hey, get to the clinic quick. you're closer than I am and you've got one of those police cars

with the overhead lights so you can get there faster. So Sam calls Nestor the fucking per fuck-up guy and just outsources saving Chris to him. Hey, buddy.

Do you mind going and picking up Jen's kid? He talks about the sexual positions I do with his aunt every time I'm alone with him. And this is where Nestor introduces the concept that one's killy right now. Yes.

Keep in mind, this is like, you've been listening to this podcast for an extra like six or seven minutes. For us, it has been 20 minutes

of movie that we are finally getting an explanation for why that old man hit his wife in the head with an axe. And I was like, oh, okay. Now it's coming together. Yeah.

So, and we should also point out, by the way, he says, hey, can you go pick up her kid? He doesn't say he's being targeted by a demon, you know, that is impervious to bullets. And we'll try

to kill you, right? Just keep that in mind when the demon kills Nestor later. As far as Nestor knows, Randos on the street are fighting and his co-worker's step kid is just going to be waiting outside of the vet clinic. Getting ready

to be picked up. Right. That's all he knows. Yeah. So, okay. So Chris gets to the clinic, you know, where the demon is waiting on him. And so he starts wandering through the clinic without turning any lights on, just calling for Aunt Jen. And then, as he's going into her office,

he opens Jinn's office door with an adult man's hand. It's something I noticed. And so, yeah, so he goes in and he suddenly is attacked by the shadow Dobermans or the shadow Rottweilers. So he climbs up on a desk

and I'm like, well, it's not high enough. So he climbs up on a cabinet, which also isn't high enough. But on his climb up, he's like, oh, you know what, I've been watching the movie the whole time, I know that their weakness is light,

if only I could reach that Polaroid over there. Yeah. Which is like a gun for Shadow Monsters. Okay, so he's biting the dogs. Meanwhile, Officer Nester is fucking Yuvaldeying his way in, right? Because he hears that there's like some problem.

He knows there's a kid in there. He's like, I'm going to take my fucking time. Just stops to smoke a full cigarette out there, like me, no and Lucinda trying to catch a plane. Come on! I'm going to go look for this kid, pulls out my gun. Yeah, right, right. So he walks in, instantly disemboweled by the demon dogs.

So it's good, good that he got that last cigarette in, I guess. But then he uses the flash on the dogs, which is really insane, right? Because the kid, at least, like, maybe he's been talking to the other people, they've had a conversation about, there is some universe in which we can imagine the kid has been informed that the demons are affected by light. There is no reason for Nestor to reach for the fucking pull. Polaroid camera, except to be like, want to get a quick pick of the dogs that murdered me. Oh, look, it worked. Nice. So, yeah, so we have this moment here where Nestor's bleeding out, and the demon now appears

and is trying to, like, sweet talk Chris into joining him, like, you know, like Darth Vader trying to turn Luke to the dark side, kind of. Yeah. It was like hypnotizing him like they were vampires. I was like, are we still doing the Brom Stoker thing? Are we still trying to pretend? Well, there it is. Yeah.

But yeah, so this is the best view we get of the demon, too. He's very oily, we realize at this point. And then we've got this moment where, like, the kid is, like, moving towards him. And Nestor is like, you know, will the Polaroid flash charge up in time? And it does. So with this dying breath, Nestor Polaroids the demon and breaks the spell so Chris can get away. Okay. But then, and look, that's fine, right?

Standard horror movie stuff, a wacky sidekick has just been killed by the demon so the protagonist can get away. But then we see a fucking post-script shit talk with the demon and Nestor for no reason? Where the demon's like, you really fucked up my plan, Nestor.

And he's like, yeah, that's what I was going for. And he's like, yeah, well, fuck you, man. Don't have to be a dick about it. You don't have to be a fucking dick. I'm working. I don't even understand. You did that weird, sexy coming around the mountain thing and it really made me uncomfortable.

I don't like the way you treat women. And I've been wanting to talk to you about it. I'm a shadow. So now Chris, he jumps on his bike. He's hauling ass from the demon dogs. It's dark so they can chase him outside. We see that the town's going crazy by which we mean two people have set something on fire

and all the beheaded dolls are in a pentagram shape. Fuck, yeah, they are. And I'm like, wait, I thought we were getting rid of light. Why are we burning furniture? Right. Is that not light? it's not healy oh I don't know yeah right so yeah and then back at the PD yandu is looking over his picture book they Sam is mad at Nestor for not checking in

yet and I'm like hey man you sent him to die against the demon he didn't even know was there fuck you for getting mad at him from taking too long so ultimately Chris almost runs into Jen's truck as he's trying to get away from the demon dog oh my god this is such a badly coordinated car chase, right? So what's happening is he's being chased by the dogs and his bike. Okay, I can get that. But then her car pulls in front of the bike.

Okay, that's a weird, unrelated vehicle. So his bike has to catch up to the car, but the dogs don't catch up to the bike. And then he's in the car, but the dogs are caught up to the car. It's like a fucking chicken and grain puzzle is taking place in the midst of this high-speed chase. Well, also, there's a moment here

where the kids hang in half out of her truck window, Just his shoulders and up are in the truck window, and she's driving away, and she's like, ah, finally you're safe. And I'm like, I don't think he is. Right. But, of course, this is where we get Bam Bam's best, worst. Yeah. Right.

This is where we get the amazing stunt dog. Where they tape a fake rubber dog to the door and hit it on a parked car. Yes. Actually, if you go to YouTube and you look up Shadow Builder, this scene is at the end. exact one hour mark. It is worth watching. That's very 60 seconds to see this stuffed animal that is taped to a door, just go fly. This carnival prize gets squished between a fucking Ford Focus and a truck.

Yeah, and then he falls down. He turns into a shadow. And there's a moment where everybody's like, no, no, don't worry, he's okay, though. He turned back into a shadow. It's a shadow dog. It's okay. Yeah. I checked on does the dog die.

And it says, don't worry, is a shadow. Yeah, right. So, yeah, but so they're driving away. And so the dogs are still chasing them, right? Because it's been reconstituted as a shadow dog. And they're like, oh, where could we go? Where there'd be a lot of light? If only there was a light-obsessed Rasta pirate nearby, right?

Yeah, the guy who literally set all of his lights on fire just earlier that day. Yes, yeah, he should be good. Yeah. So they drive to his house to Kovie's house and they try to have the suspenseful will he get the lights on on time moment and then he does and they kill the shadow dog with his

mental illness I guess All right well this movie thinks it just did a clever foreshadowing thing by introducing a light obsessed character out of nowhere a few pages before it needed one and I don't have the heart to tell him otherwise so we're going to take a quick break instead

but first let me give Act 3 the hard sell. Will they introduce a backstory that makes this rost of pirate character make any sense? Will he serve any appreciable role in the movie? Will he remain attached to the main characters that they hit from this point forward despite serving no role as though they thought his mere presence would count as comic relief? No, no, and yes, but find out the extent to which this movie really does suck when we return for the at least nobody can say they weren't going for a conclusion of

Shadow Builder. Oh, man, that beach day was fantastic, you do. Dude, you have frostbite. More like fun bite. Hey, guys. Why is Eli dressed like that? Did he try to get you guys to act out a remake of Roadhouse again? Because you can say no.

No, no. We enjoyed reenacting the remake of Roadhouse. It's just that Eli is feeling really behind on fall activities. So he's acting like it's still summer. Surf's up. That is ice. Eli, if you want to savor the flavors of fall, why don't you just try Factor?

What's Factor? Factor chef-prep dietitian-approved meals have make it easy to stay on track and enjoy something comforting and delicious no matter how hectic the season gets. I don't know, Noah. Don't those meals get kind of samey? Not with Factor.

Choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost. But have you actually tried it? I sure have. I love that Factor lets me stick to my heart-healthy diet even when I'm short on time. That's why I know illusions personally

endorse factor. All right, Noah, I'm sold. And also, I really hurt myself on the ice just now. Where do I sign up? Eat smart at factormeals.com slash awful 50 off and use code awful 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. That's code awful 50 off at factor meals.com for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. Get delicious, ready to eat meals delivered with factor. Offer only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. All right, Noah, thanks. Is that, is that Is that a sunburn? No, it's friction from the ice.

Ouch. Ouch, indeed. Father Capricone, welcome to heaven. Thank you, St. Peter. Hello, Father. My goodness, is that you, Jesus? Indeed, it is I. You have entered the kingdom of heaven to sit at my right hand.

Right, right. So, um, about what happened down there? Down where? On earth? When I died just now? Oh, yeah. What about it? Oh, it's just that, you know, I invocated your name and the demon.

Well, it still killed me. What? No. Yeah, no, big son. Name of Jesus Christ and he was just like, rah, and he got me. There's no way. Michael, did you hear this guy invoke my name? You were playing Silk Song.

What? No, I was, they're actually a baby cancer that I was working on and I was just sort of keeping my hands busy with Soxong. He's still suck on Phantom. Who's thought are you on? I'm still stuck on Phantom

and I hate it. The problem is I've done too much therapy, so when I lose in a video game, I don't go like, motherfucker. I put it down and I go like, I'm really disappointed right now, feeling a lot of disappointment. Which is way crazier than throwing my seam deck.

Right. And we're back for still more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action with Jen calling Sam from high atop a pole at the Rasta Pirates House. Cannot decide what kind of movie we're watching here. Also, keep in mind that like the Rasta Pirate has not been introduced to the sheriff yet who has not been introduced, Jen has not been introduced to Father Yandu. So the fact that everyone's just sort of coming together, she might as well call him and be like,

hey, it's Act 3. Everyone from the movie is getting together. Yes, right, right. Again, they've all been watching the movie. She tells him at this point she's like, Nestor's dead and he's like, how did he die? A heart attack, man. He was killed by the demon that you sent him to fight with no warning whatsoever. I also love how blah everybody is about Nestor dying, right?

They're like, Nestor's dead. And they're like, yeah, he was not a very likable character. But also, I feel like the actor who played Sam, he didn't show emotion about anything in this movie. He was not capable of emoting. No, I looked this actor up. He was still working early. He had IMDB credits going all the way up to 2020. He got to start in guiding light.

But yeah, no sign of acting acumen in this movie whatsoever. No. So, okay. So now we're going to check in, we check him briefly with Maggie, who's watching the town going crazy. So this is the part of the movie where we watched the girl,

the waitress from earlier, dancing in her weirdly high underwear trying to like clearly they've given this poor dance or the instruction to sort of like pole dance but with this big cross right so that it'll be more satanic but you can't pull dance if it's a big ass cross if it's a giant square pillar so she does her best

and it's like ah yes the progression of demon possession let's see pull dolls heads off axe murder and pole dancing, yes. Yes, and pole dancing. And wolf whistling, because that means demons. Well, a lot of wolf whistle. Yeah, right, right. Well, and then, so as this is going on, we get Yondo and Sam, they pull up,

because I guess they got to break into this hardware store, they pull up and Sam, who is the sheriff, he looks and he sees that there's like people drinking and throwing eggs at houses, you know, so that's another one of those levels of demon possession there. But yeah, real Sodom. and Gomorrah shit. They're making people's houses. But he sees all this bacchanalia and Yandu goes,

there's nothing you can do. And I'm like, well, I feel like he's legally obligated to at least try. He's the sheriff. He's the sheriff, yeah. And then it struck me. Why are none of our main characters getting demon possessed either? It's all around them. It's in front of them and behind them.

But they're not getting demon possessed. And I was like, and they're not shown to be particularly religious. Jen says we're not a religious family. Sam has no indication he's religious at all. And even Yandu is like, I don't believe it's all political. Yeah, it's this whole thing, yeah. And I'm like, well, these guys should be the ones getting possessed, right? And the Rasta pirate, yeah, like why just the named characters are immune?

Yeah. Oh, and so they break into this hardware store to get a generator and more lights. and this is where axe-murdering Mr. Butterman shows up, right? And he almost ax-murters him, but then Topless girl runs by and he's like, ooh, Topless Girl. Yeah, did he want to kill Topless Lady or was, like, killing the wife, like, totally unrelated and... I don't know. He's carried the axe every... He's single now.

Excuse me, my wife just passed away. I really used some comfort. Oh, no. I'm the coach for the New England Patriots. Former coach. So meanwhile, so Jen, Chris, and Rasta Pirate have now taken a very long ladder back to her house so they can put up as many lights as possible before the demon gets there. Yeah.

Now, this is so fucking stupid because, okay, so the demon can't get to lights because he's a shadow demon or whatever. But that doesn't mean that more lights would be better. Like, he can't get there less if it's brighter. no it's just like it's there's light and not light I think it's just too it's a binary yeah also they haven't used any like significant lights there's not like a spotlight or an LED light like everything it's just like we need a hundred pounds of Christmas life yes right yeah exactly no one's got a fucking overhead lamp no so so we get Chris now gets to the house and he's running around turning on every light he can and and the roster pirate is put up more lights because that's his thing he's really good that but then we see that some of the townsfolk are just like standing around at the edge of the property looking all murdery or bored or bored one or the other right so keep in mind that like the the mythos at this point is that the demon's presence is making everyone murdery not they work for the demon right right but now they're apparently all doing his bidding because it's time for that

in the fucking move. Yes, right again. He has this ever-morphing power set. Oh, and so also we have to establish that the kid, Chris, has a superpower too. When Yandu looks at him, all of his sins flashed before his eyes. Gosh, that I am so grateful.

I've never met a child like that. Hey, mister, you just kept listing a bunch of websites with upsetting names when you made eye contact with these with his name. You were in there for like 55 minutes and I'm like, yeah, no. No, I want that. Because like most of my, most of my best memories are the sins, right? Like, I would love, like, hey, come here.

I want to look at you again. I want to, because I totally forgot about that acid trip back in 98. So yeah, but he does that for a little while. And then quick before anything interesting can happen, Yandu and Sam and Jen have to have a chat about fucking Chris's inner truth and light Jesus. So, okay,

but now before they have that conversation, though, like, fucking Sam is going to leave Chris in the hands of the delusional stranger with the gasoline generator in the living room. Yeah, as you do.

Who would you like to babysit your son? The man who has been popping pills and screaming about urine and fingernail clippings or the rasta pirate who is light, light, light. Yeah, well, to be fair, the Rasta Pirate is not a Catholic priest. So they did make the right choice if it was between those two.

It wasn't, though, is importantly, yeah. And also, like, they set this up so painstakingly that this generator is in the living room. Hey, guys, pro tip, don't put your generator in the living room. I mean, the demon can't get you

if you all die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Well, that's true. Pro tip. I'd like to point out as the northerner. I was like, that's a great idea. That way all your power stays inside. Tell me you don't live in a dangerous part of the United States without telling me.

So, and then, but while they're working on the gas power generator in the living room, Yondo's in the kitchen telling war stories about how he became the pistol pack and padre that he is, right? Right. And I know that in this script writer's mind, this was supposed to be some tragic, amazing backstory, but it's the people I was preaching to were murdered. So I murdered those people. And the implication from there seems to be, and I kind of caught the bug, you know.

Well, so even worse than that, right? So he's like, you know, he was preaching in Somalia and a warlord killed his whole congregation. So he killed the warlord and all his men. And then the Vatican was like, man, you're pretty good at killing a motherfucker. You want to do that for us? And so the Vatican trained him to be an assassin.

For Christ. Were you guys picturing a bunch of virgins and dresses doing dive rolls back and forth? Yes, that's what I was picturing. John 316 Wick over here or whatever. So, but yeah, that's his backstory. And then we cut to Mr. Buttersworth or whatever, walking around with his axe,

crying because he misses his wife, right? The demon shows up and he's like, but wouldn't you love to axe murder her in the head again? And he's like, I kind of would, actually. I would, though. That was kind of fun. And Mrs. Butterworth, illusion looks like she's down for it. Yeah, no, it looks like it's a consensual axe murdering, yeah.

But what the demon is doing is he's tricking Mr. Butterman into axing down that one light pole that controls the entire fucking town, like the goddamn exhaust port on the death store. Yes, no, that is the one. Also, we haven't seen any evidence that Mr. Shadow can't touch regular things. he's killed people, he's blown the fucking sewer grates off. There's no indication that he needs Mr. Buttersworth to cut this telephone pull down. Well, and also he's making people do his bidding elsewhere in town, so it also doesn't seem like he would need to trick anybody

either, right? I would love an entire movie of just him tricking people into doing the things that they're doing for the entire movie. Yeah, exactly. And at some point, Father Yando says, says, oh, if we stay near Chris, we can't get demon possessed. And I was like, oh, they saw the plot hole, but none of these people were around Chris all day. No, no, you didn't solve it.

Sorry. Well, and also, wouldn't that, like, so if that's the case, if you can't get demon possessed if you were around Chris, wouldn't the people who are demon possessed, like, run towards Chris and then stop and go, what the fuck was I doing here? And even at coming up, one of the little kids come. and starts, like, attacking them in their house. That little kid was his best friend running around with him all day.

Yeah. He should have been protected. If anybody was going to be protected, yeah. So, yeah, we're back in the house. Yandu's given, like, some last-minute demonology lessons. Chris comes in with the title drop. He goes, so this monster is some kind of shadow builder, Bram Stoker, TM.

How badly did you want the shadow builder from outside the house to be like, that's the name of the movie. That's me, baby. So, yeah, but this is where they explain that the eclipse tomorrow will open a doorway to hell. And Chris, the kid goes, well, how?

And I'm like, why do you want to know how to open the doorway to hell, kid? But of course, that's him setting up for them to be like, well, actually, by sacrificing you with a hatchet as it turns out. So we have a picture right here from the fucking morbius textose or whatever fucking dumbass shit we call

the compendium in front. And this picture is just a black and white illustration. And Chris says, wait a minute. That's me, isn't it? And his aunt goes, no, honey, you weren't an ugly cabbage patch baby. Right. So it's a baby. Like the picture that we're seeing is a baby being sacrificed with a big sickle by a monkey.

Yes, by a monkey. And he's like, that's me. And it's like, why would you think that? I mean, it is. But why would you think that? Because they're watching the movie. Yeah, clearly. Yes, exactly.

everybody's watching this fucking movie. And then they have this hilarious moment where they realize for convoluted reasons that serve no purpose in the film that before the monster can level up all the way he has to kill six people. And they spend two and a half minutes arguing about who does and doesn't count

and trying to figure out how many kills there have been up. It's like when you got like two drunk people trying to remember how they started talking about that topic. Also, do they mention, whether or not the vet tech got killed because nobody in the movie saw the vet tech disappear or saw her body.

Oh, God, it's so funny because later in the movie, maybe we could talk about it when it comes, they'll be totaling up the victims of the demon. And they kind of have to trash. They're like, wait, did the vet tech die? Yeah. God, I wasn't there that shooting day. My uncle was sick.

No, the kid is like, well, you know, I saw her car, but I didn't see her. So it's very safe to assume that she also. Can we get a show of hands? Who in the movie has been with who else in the movie? Wow, a lot of gaps. A lot of gaps in this plot. Didn't happen on air, bud.

I'll just say that. But they ultimately, they land on the number being five. The demons killed five people and he only needs to kill one more before, quote, no amount of light made by man will stop him. Right? That's not a quote. But it was something like that. That was a paraphrase quote.

That will not matter in any way to the movie because he'll kill like three more people and later they'll stop him with light still. But at this point, Mr. Butterman finishes axing down that light pole and gets crushed to death by the light pole he was axing down. Shit, wrong direction. It's as good as you can imagine.

When I said it, what you were picturing, is what happens in the movie. It's Burke levels of funny. Real Gallagher moment. Yeah, exactly. So, but the power goes out all over the entire city because that was that one light pole that all the lights were on.

And then this, we cut over to the house where Yandu realizes he's like, hey, if I just shoot Chris in the head, he can't sacrifice him during the eclipse later. Yeah, jumps to child murder like really fast. Fast even for a Catholic priest, yes. But Chris talks him out of it.

He's like, you know, the demons getting in your head, dude. And then Rasta Pirate pops a flare to break the tension in the living room with the gas can in it but you know hey what are you going to do? So okay

so but then there's a noise outside and it sounds like the finale's revving up. Yeah. Don't worry it's not this is a false lead to the finale. No right. Instead we're going to somebody's got to fuck Maggie

remember Maggie of course you don't. We barely talked about her. The assistant deputy who answered the phone one hour and 20 minutes ago. Yes. So Maggie is looking out the window at the town all going crazy

and the demon shows up pretending to be the rookie cop that died earlier and he fucks Maggie real quick. Right. Now, I have to be clear.

He doesn't, and correct me if I'm wrong, he doesn't kill Maggie. They just have a ghost moment and the demon's like, all right, well, that was nice. I'm going to shower and go kill him.

Chris, not sure why they did it into the film, but this was a lot of fun. I wasn't clear the point of that scene at all. Because I don't remember seeing her die or get sucked up by the shadow builder. I thought she did. She doesn't even say anything. Well, if she did, it was like, but nobody's,

the other people who are making a count can't see that this happened. Right. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And also, we don't have any attachment to this character so it doesn't fucking matter one way or the other. So, okay, so now back at the house, now all the townsfolk are breaking in because the power's gone up, but they've got their in-the-living-room generator hooked up. So they've still got lights. But now the town folks have broken in and are trying to knock out their light bulbs.

Sam, our intrepid hero, is going to proceed to get his ass absolutely handed to him here. Yeah. Now, I want to put out, Sam is one of those characters where, like, he will actually never help at any. You could call him the hero of the movie, but he actually never helps anyone in any way throughout. No, it is impossible to overstate how useless Sam is in the rest of this film. Yeah. So, but of course, while they're fighting,

the gas can gets tipped over and the house is set on fire. Who could have possibly seen that coming? Yondo was attacked. There was a photographer kid that we saw earlier that had these, like, weird heads. edge clippers or something. Yeah, he had like 10 snips in his hand. Okay. This is how poorly planned this movie is.

At one point, the demon, during this sequence where the fire is going and they're fighting the villagers who now work for the demon as opposed to just doing random bad shit, the demon will like tie Aunt Jan up with shadow Christmas lights. Yes. And it's literally just because they didn't have a villager for her to fight. Because when this scene is over, the Christmas lights go away. and she's just like, all right, well, that was why I wasn't in those scenes.

Yes, in case anyone is wondering. So fucking dumb. So now the kid is getting away, right? So he runs to his room, locks the shadow demon out. The shadow's like, I'm a shadow. I can go in under the fucking door, you dumbass. Kid escapes, he gets on the roof, right? He's got roof access from his room.

And he's like, he goes, oh, but you need to kill me at the eclipse. If you come any closer, I'll jump off this, this house and kill myself. Right. But he's only two stories up. Yeah. He would just, like, break his ankle or something. Yeah, it's my knee. Okay, well, now you're like hurt, but I'm going to come down there and get you.

A few minutes ago, actually, the father Yandu got stabbed in the gut by that photographer guy who was holding the tin snips. So he's like limping along, has to go save crests, and he's bleeding. And when he finally gets up there, Shadow Buller's like, oh, hey, A victim I can torture. Yes. Well, not just that. He brings him up and he's like, Chris, give yourself to me for this priest who, and I cannot

emphasize this enough, you have had two interactions with, one where he made hard eye contact and the second where he was very convinced he needed to shoot you in the head. And Chris is like, not Father Young, dude. Yes, right. Right, he gives in. He's like, oh, if you promise to stop torturing the guy who's already been stabbed in the gut with tin snips, I'll go with you willingly. How great.

How much would we all love this movie if he had just been like, I don't really know him. And then he jumps off the roof and breaks his ankle, yeah. I thought Yandu was kind of central to the movie. Yeah, but it's just like we haven't interacted a lot. Okay, well.

But if I go get your mom. I'm going to go downstairs and get your friend, the one with the hockey stick. It would have made so much more sense if it was Jenny who had gone up there. Or Hockey. Even Kobe, he cares more about Kobe. Sure.

There is no person in the movie he is less interacted with to choose as his turn yourself into mehast. The demon, because at least the demon hasn't tried to kill him at any point. Yeah. So, but the demon leaves with Chris. Jen comes up and she's like, you know,

what happened? And fucking, the priest's father, Yandu goes, Chris traded himself for us. And I'm like, well, right, but like, the sacrifice unmakes all of humanity so he didn't sacrifice himself so you guys

could get an extra hour and a half or whatever, you know. Chris is pretty short-sighted, honestly. Yes. Not really sure why he went for that gambit. So, okay, so now sunrises on the day of the eclipse and the fucking Rasta pirate

is sewing Yandu's wounds back up for him. You know. Yeah. Because he can. Obviously. And I was like, wait, the house was on fire. Yes, that went nowhere. They went to so much trouble to establish,

oh, there's a gas can in the house with the generator and it falls and it catches on fire. And then later the house just, no, no, it just went out on its own. You know how gasoline fires do. Inside houses that have caught the curtains on fire so often do. Okay, but this is my favorite laziest plotting of the movie, right? Because the end of this movie takes place in a church, right?

Big confrontation takes place in a church. they are in the house how do they get from the house to the church I'll tell you he looks at his picture of a monkey

killing a baby with a sickle and he goes hey doesn't that kind of look like the sewers to you the sewers

that lead to the church so it's actually it's actually dumber than that because it happens in two pieces right Father Yandu is

unconscious and they're like where do we go where did he take the kid and Rostapir pirate's like oh you know

I happen to know that there are evil spirits that live in the sewers and they're like, you seem like a trustworthy fellow so they go to the sewers. But they're wrong.

He's wrong about where it is. And then later, Yandu wakes up and he's like, no, look at the picture. And the thing, it looks more like a church, doesn't it? And so they go to the church. It's so stupid. And wait, so they go to, do Sam and Jen go through the sewers to the church?

Yes. The church is like basement. is directly attached to the sewers. Oh, wait. I forgot we have a nationwide sewer system that allows... The nationwide sewer system that the zombie

that even with Alex... All the church or basements are connected to the same sewer catacombs. Yeah. My Q and on aunt always says that to me. There's also this weird moment where they try to make a joke because we've got Sam and Chen

like hanging out in the sewer together walking around looking for Chris and he tries to make this joke of like, we shouldn't have kept our relationship secret because then we wouldn't be walking around in the sewer. I had no idea what was going on with that. How are those two things related?

Sorry, I haven't contributed a lot to the movie and I thought I'd remind everybody that we are fucking. But then he like gets sucked into the sewer by a sewer monster, right? Like he just, like he gets sucked out into the water and dragged away only to show up later when it's too late for him to help with the movie. Okay. So up above, Yandu comes to, he realizes that they're going to to the sewer, but that's the wrong place to go.

They have to go to the church instead. And then we cut to the demon kind of like just tapping his feet, waiting for the eclipse. You know, doom scrolling a bit. I got you a little earlier than I thought I should. So how is sixth grade? Are you in sixth grade? You know how it is.

You plan ahead. You get there. Oh, now we have to just wait. Right, right. Could have slept in. Can I give you an iPad? I hear those are bad for kids. But I also think that that's a lot of like,

mortal panic, you know? Like, I don't see a lot of data. So, okay, and what is a skibbitty toilet? We hear a lot about it in hell. So, you know how, like, Keith gets all mad when they fuck up basketball in movies and shit? Like, that's me when they fuck up eclipses, apparently. I was livid by their shit-ass graphic for the eclipse, right? They just...

Well, the eclipse is when the sun, which is small and the moon, which is bigger. Well, so look at each other. They basically put like a fucking blowpop between the camera and the sun and they're like, eclipse, that looks like this. And that's what we get. So, but the eclipse comes, the demon, he's got his like big bone scythe now

and he has to stab it into the Jesus on the crucifix's heart. Which screams? Yes, yeah. Or I don't know if he has to or if he just chooses to, but he does. So he's got the kid all prepared for sacrifice And then he starts my best worst

He starts his satanic spell Which is just him reading The first chapter of Genesis Backwards And I don't even mean like Akephyrus Accus so like I mean like just saying the words But in a backwards order

It's so dumb It's not like listening to the beast beetles backwards or anything. He's just reversing the sentence. Yes. He's reversing the sentence. And it is, speaking of the word, all of the words, all of these passages of the Bible begin with and. And so he has to keep being like, the water he did and, and so he just keeps having to

hit these dramatic ands. I was breath with leafy laughter by the end of this thing. It was fucking, because it takes a second. you just keep hearing him say these random words ending an and then you're just like oh god that's what he's fucking doing isn't and it goes on for so long and he's trying to inject it with so much demonic cravatus and there are a couple where it kind of works right where it's like across the water he did and you can hear the act of being like that would kind of make sense right that one kind of backwards a little cool and at some point somebody says he's trying to reverse creation

And I was like, wait, that's what we're doing now. I thought we were opening a portal to hell. That's what I heard. Okay. Yeah. But just when you think this can't get any funnier, Father Yandu busts in and starts doing a anti-demon forward Bible wizard battle. He's like, I'll go from the beginning.

You go from the end and we'll meet him in the middle. No, if we meet in the middle, then I think we're just light over the water. So reading the Bible forward. you get the literal armor of God, but reading it backwards, undoes creation. Yes. I was like,

oh, it's a Bible verse battle. Vacation Bible school memories. There's also a moment where Jen runs in, right? Like she runs from the sewer into the church, which is appropriate, I guess. And she's the one person who hasn't been paying attention

to the fucking movie instead of a light-based attack. She just pushes a pole into the demon. And I only point this out because the demon then says, and I quote, you absurd little bitch. And then back hands are away from the scene. But so, yeah,

so now Yandu's there and he's trying to Bible quote four words. Well, the demon is Bible quote and backwards. Brasda pirate is trying to get Jen out of there, but the door's locked now. And the demon is like,

hey, wait a minute, I actually can power up into an even sillier looking graving. Now I am a spooky skeleton angel made of bones. Like this was goosebumps level funny. Yeah, it was amazing.

And so the demon like rears up with his scythe to give a good slow motion sacrifice and Yandu leaps between the scythe and the kid you know, all bodyguard or whatever. Right. And first of all, it's way too long a sight. so I wanted him to get Chris as well.

But second of all, I really wanted just 11 minutes of the movie for him to be trying to shake Yandu off his sight. God damn, really. Really fucking on. Okay, I'm going to put a foot. I'm going to put a foot on your chest and I'm going to pull. I'm going to pull it.

Ow, ow, ow. I can't get leveraged. Like scraping him on the side of the altar. Scrape, scrape, scrape. There's a great moment here where the Jesus statue that had the scythe in it kind of looks over at Yandu. Like, you're all. All right, kid, you know.

And so now the eclipse is over, right? The demon missed his window of opportunity. So he starts to demons explode. Yep. And just then when the light like spills back in and he starts to like melt or whatever, Sam shows up all useless and too fucking late. grabs the scythe and hits him with the scythe and where he's like, I also helped.

I'm like, yes, Sam. You also helped. I had a hallucination at this moment, which I need to share. So it cuts, Sam bursts in. But because it cuts to Jesus on the cross first, my filmmaking eye was like, I think the church doors are about to open. And Jesus Christ of Nazareth is about to run in and scissor kick the demon in the chest. And if that's what happened, this podcast is over. We just talk about this movie every week.

We convince a new group of people to love the great. greatest movie ever Rob Stoker's shadow builder TM TMTMTM but instead of scissor kicking Jesus we get

Chekhov's window curtains yeah oh yeah right the dirty curtains he pulls him down and they get the they kill him

with the light and then you know the demon is dead and the good guys have won and so now Chris has to like put a sheet

over Yandu and bless him in his sinlessness or whatever so funny it's like he doesn't even properly pull it over him.

He's just like, eh, kind of on your face. Yeah, it's got your face and your hands more or less. Like, first of all, like conveniently placed burial shroud, must I, may I say, but yeah, it didn't really do the trick.

And then everybody all walks away wishing they'd been in a better movie, and I wish that too. Oh, but Chris says, he wanted me to believe you wouldn't come, Mr. Priest, that I'd just met and pulled a gun on me earlier for the third time here you really were a godsend the end god's so fucking dumb but delightfully

dumb bugs bam bam thank you so much for hanging out with us and watching like genuinely one of the least unenjoyable movies that we've ever watched on this show with us i was just so happy that this was christian enough yeah no i just barely made it over the line and so a quick reminder Where should our listeners go if they want to hear more from you? Our podcast is Bibliorex, B-I-B-L-I-O-O-R-C-K-S. We're on all the podcast apps. Our blue sky is at bugs-bublyorex. B-S-K-Y dot social.

And we have a Reddit community called R-S-Biblio-X. And I occasionally write on Substack at Bugs and Books. Nice. And, of course, we'll have a bunch of that linked in the show notes as well. And while that was for our review of Brams, Stoker, asterisk, shadow builder, and our extended spookacular, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to lure you back next week. So Eli, tell us what's on deck. Children will experience the Bible's fascinating stories of the Garden of Eden play out

in this beautifully animated presentation about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We'll be watching greatest heroes legends of the Bible, the Garden of Eden. Okay. So with that to look forward to We're going to bring episode 531 to a merciful close. Once I get a huge thanks to Bugs and Bam Bam for all their help this week. Be sure to check the show notes for our links to their stuff. And an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors to help make this show. If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, you can make a per episode donation at patreon. And thereby earn early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show and all your various social media platforms. And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our siblings shows to skate the Athea-the-Citation-needed D&D minus and the SkepforCrat available wherever podcast live. If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions, you get about God-awful, movies at gmail.com. Tim Roberts and digs here of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Vival Drafts 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 Enright, Neelai Posnig, I'm Nalus. Promising to Work Harder to Earn Another chunk next week. Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes. Mr. Covey became one of those Christmas light technicians who puts on giant light

shows and never lets a bolt burn out. Aw. Jasmine is still staring at the sun because someone told her she couldn't. Yeah, we did a documentary about her. Chris turned out to only be medium saintly. The shadow builder went on to a successful career as a New York landlord, where he was never confronted with a working light bulb ever again. Gone red.

I'm on. I don't know what the hell Eli's talking about. Are you guys recording on your end? Yeah. All right. So I'm going to do a quick five count. And if one or the other of you can join with me and count four and five, this is just for Morgan, so we can sync up the tracks nice and easy later.

Right. Yeah. One. You're going to do it? Two, two, three, three, four, four, five. I forgot to do it because I was distracted by what happened. I was distracted by what happened. No, you're right.

They joined a two. They both joined a two. You're right. You're right. This was not, that was not the instruction given. So, yeah, one more time. Just one. Choose between the two.

Now choose. Yep. What about just a piece of shit during the sound jay? I was just like a total asshole. I was like, hey, guys, we can gut anything. And then during the sound check, I was like, a little professionalism. Fuck. God.

I'm trying to do my job here. You just need to be smashing in the background. All right. So, yeah, so one more time. This time, Bam, bam, we'll go with you. Just join me on four and five. And Eli, if you could also join me on four and five this time, that was great. I wanted it to be bugs, but you know what?

I'm not here. So you know what? We have to go a certain way. And we're so where that's the way. How was being a god awful movies? It was the worst. I'm the man. I have to do the counting.

We all know ladies can't do no count. Yeah, yeah, you know. Women are bad at math. Unless it's shopping, am I right? I'm the accountant. I get ignored. I didn't know we had a professional encounter here. Yeah, right.

Would you like to do therapy with our accountant, Tony D? Who I regularly send TikToks to? All right, here we go. Okay. We're going to do this five count and we're going to make it work. Here it is. One, two, three, four, four, five. That was awesome.

I know my place. I think Eli went a little early on five. It's because you're so pretty, Noah. Yeah, right. So, Morgan, go with his four if you have to choose between the two. Here we go. Now we go down to the interstitials. Which are on page.

31. I'm already there. God damn it. We always race down to the bottom of the fantasy. Yeah, give us a second. Yeah, no, no. So we're seasoned veterans at racing down this document. So we were told that the race was part of the ready set go. You didn't even get a ready set go.

Exactly. Oh, we should start doing a ready set go. That would probably fuck Heath up a little bit, right? Like that would change the numbers a bit. What's better help? Better help. How dare you? Well, done.

Holy shit. What's the first actual steal in the history of the fucking game? I was hearing of what to say? Wow. We had that plan because we couldn't let me get both points. I wrote audio boom.

I wrote audio boom and I was like, hey, can I have my winter blues tell me to kill myself in a better help ad? And they were like, no, man. No. A really dedicated guy who's job at him. to tell Eli no. Matthew.

Matthew hates me so fucking much. The funny thing is audio boom's a pretty chill company, so we always know we got a new person because they're like, hey guys, it's me, Chris. Can't wait to work with one of our best clients. And by the end of the month, he's like, what's up? Fuck face.

You're so funny, don't you? We actually, we throw it ads, but we don't have real ads. We just have a little promo for our socials. So we absolutely live it up and make the worst throws that are they like most awful because we don't actually have to deal with advertisers. I did that for a while. I remember those days.

This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-425 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. to value meals are back. For just $5, get a savory and sweet

sausage egg and cheese McGrittles, plus hash browns and a coffee. Only at McDonald's. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery.