Upstream - S4E25: The Descent

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

It's our spoooky halloween episode, and this year, lets watch a movie that has an all-woman cast and yet somehow manages to say absolutely nothing about femininity.  ----- Friend of the show Bella, a refugee evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021, is raising money for her gender confirmation surgery! Anything you can give would be hugely appreciated! https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/team-bella ----- Check out friend of the show Mattie's new book Simplicity here, or wherever fine graphic novels are sold! ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can. -Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 -Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food made with replanted veg patches https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app account

Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodius, satanus, Lucifer, November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. Hello, devilish listener, and well. Welcome to a spooky Halloween episode of Kill James Bond. I can ask for Santana Braxas. I never ordered Santana Braxas. Terrifying greetings and welcome to our Halloween episode of Kill James Bond. Hello and welcome to kill James Bond. I couldn't think of a way to kind of spookify the name of Kill James Bond.

It's already quite scary as it is because of the murder that's in there. But yeah, it's a little thing that we like to do this time of year where we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to explore something a bit scarier and we did try and think about whether or not there was a sort of a scary heist and we had a lot of good suggestions from people all of which we ignored we've got to stop doing that to them at some point well no the thing is they like it when we don't respect them right to make them feel valued they like to be ignored you guys are dirt but so I apologize if this episode we struggle because this was my kind of suggestion. And the reason why I suggested it was because it's a bit of memory lane for me.

I picked out 2005's The Descent, which is a sort of naughty's kind of all-female horror that has a little Halloween in it, absolutely no heisting in it. And the reason why I know it is because back in the day, I learned how to watch films and talk about films doing film studies at Croydon College. And one of the things that I distinctly remember, spooky, Croydon. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It should be. Yeah, yeah. The eighth circle of hell. We'll get some Castle Thunder, you know, maybe mixing some of the, like, Croydon tram link kind of announcement bells. I don't know how many circles of hell there are, but Croydon's won down from that, yeah. It's bad. It's bad. However, I learned a lot there, genuinely. And one of the things that I did

on that film studies course was a module on horror and gender. And so I remember this was like a set text for this, the dissent. So this is really like... Oh, that's so cool. In my wheelhouse. Yeah. That's an interesting choice for them for reasons that I'm sure we'll run into through the course of the movie.

I would say so. Yes. I enjoyed the film. There is some gender going on. There is. There is. There certainly is. There's a lot to talk about.

And I think, again, just to just to shout them out. Like, Croydon may be a terrible place, but if you like the way I talk about films, that's something that in large part I learned to do there. So, yeah, thank you to them for that, I suppose. Check out Croydon, if you get in Jones. Don't. Cildon recommends Croydon's one recommends staying away from Croydon. It's probably nicer now.

I don't know. Avoid orange light warning for Croydon. yeah but so this is this is a horror movie that has an all-female cast but is directed and written by a man namely Neil Marshall who did dog soldiers which is not a good movie which we'll talk about oh shit I didn't realize it was the same guy he did dog soldiers wow that was that he did directly after it so I studied gender and film by being in the army cadets where dog soldiers dog soldiers was a set text So, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about that on the podcast. But no, as I understand it, this wasn't originally written to be like an all-female cast. No. They just kind of shook out that way. It was an idea that someone kind of suggested to him.

Yeah, yeah. And he sort of took and ran with. And so what you end up with is a movie about a group of women. And we'll talk about how they're written, right? But so we begin. As I understand it, this is a story about, it's a metaphor for. for a group of women just like being online. Yeah, that is true.

It's a metaphor for logging on. Yes, it is. And then possibly also contains a metaphor for logging off. But so we begin in some whitewater rapids where this group of women are like... The girls are rafting. They're sort of rafting. That's the verb. Yeah, that's the verb.

This is really fun if you go out the chance to do it listen. I've done this rules. I've never done it as a woman, but I imagine it'd be even more fun. I've only done it on a really like placid river. I've never done like sort of white water rafting that's too dangerous for me but not for these women these women are like

very into their extreme sports adrenaline junkies kind of thing they are they are Johnny Utah's of their own gender Jane Utah yeah exactly towards a feminine Johnny Utah these are part of our core I'm moving towards a feminine Johnny Utah

I try sliding towards a feminine Johnny Utah this is This is our, like, part of our main cast. We've got our protagonist here, Sarah, played with Shawna McDonald. We've got Juno, who is the friend group antagonist, and you can tell because she's wearing red instead of blue. And because she's the hottest one there, to be honest.

Natalie Mendoza, hello. Every friend group who has one member who is, like, evil and up to something. Listeners, if you don't know who that is in your friend group, that's you. Start making some plans. But in this case, it's Juno. Look to your left. Look to your right. Are you the hottest bitch there?

Are you wearing a kind of evil-coded outfit? If so, start scheming. I so often am wearing evil-coded outfits, and I'm very rarely scheming. I'm falling behind. You've got to be scheming more. You've got to be scheme-maxing, number one. You've got to be having an affair with one of our partners.

You've got to be. Can it still be an affair? I don't. You also have Alex Reader's best. Hilariously, I am not doing that anymore. Oh, you've given that. I was doing that. It's not an affair.

That's just polyamory. There's no final content to it. If everyone knows about it and you're hanging out together, that's not evil. That's just normal style socializing. I'm not doing it anymore since November hit me in the leg with an ice accent, left me in cave. Yeah, yeah. I, listen, you deserved it. And I'm sure I will experience no consequences from doing this.

But yeah, so we establish these women. And there's like 50 of the fucking... Yeah, there's like six women. At the moment, there's three women. At the moment, there's three women and an indeterminate number of members of the security department who will be beaming down onto the planet with them to establish threat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

You're so right. The other thing is we establish... One of the first things about Sarah we establish is motherhood. She's a mum. None of the other than she's a mum. She's got a husband and she's got a little daughter waiting for her by the side of the river watching her. And they're all very proud of her. Yeah.

Which is cool. However, as they tie up the raft, we see, you know, Sarah is very close to her daughter and Sarah's husband weirdly close to Juno. Yeah. Curious that. They're very a little bit of a prank, Juno stands up and goes, yay. Sarah like pushes her in when we see that Juno is like slightly bitter about this and then she's she's making fuck eyes at the husband she's like I'm gonna I'm gonna be having an affair with you it'll be revealed later unless you get killed now yeah well and that's really weird but she said that because

pretty much immediately thereafter they're all driving back home in the car and you're just like you're in the car and you're like why do I hear not from the radio or externally but from inside my own head the public service announcement if you hit me at 30 miles an hour voice well so we we at the most point get a return on the podcast of an old friend the pipe that kills you instantly oh god now come here mr husband you're about to be impaled with a pipe it's filmed quite effectively but as a kind of jump scare he like veers into the the like oncoming lane and gets it like a head-on collision with a van which is I guess carrying a bunch of metal pipes

like copper pipes that shoot through and final destination to this guy If you get impaled by a copper pipe at 30 miles an hour There's a 90% chance you'll die Yeah yeah The accent A little bit regional but not sure which region It's doing a little tour

Not even really how the original thing sounds She's doing that thing in the car Where you like turn the whole way around to talk to the kid in the back and like any time you see that in a movie it's like you're dead it's over for you I like it's a husband

getting fringed for once yeah it's nice he's like distant for a second and like she goes hey what's up mate and he goes oh you know it's I've been thinking it's just for

dead over it's done I'm thinking about how I'm not going to tell you I'm having sex with your friend Juno and then kujuk yeah piped down instantly to a fatal end

Sarah wakes up in hospital it's a solo you're about to be impaled by a pipe Yeah, and she's like Oh no, I know something's wrong Because it's a Dutch angle Yeah All the angles are Dutch

And she's like, oh shit I'm like falling over Because everything's canterly She like rips all the stuff out of her And she gets up If we don't get out of her In the next 10 minutes We're going to the Dutch hospital

It's really good actually Well she suspects something's wrong Because of the Dutch angles And then she knows something's wrong When the Dolly zoom hits her And she's like oh shit Yeah She's like Spike Lee

Don't dolly away from me And zoom towards me at the same time That's scary And the hospital is completely completely empty, and then the lights in the corridor she's ran out into, start going out behind her and she starts sprinting, and eventually runs full force into Beth, one of the other women, the nice one, and has this kind of, like, sobbing breakdown in the corridor, as Beth tells her, oh, yeah, your kid also got, like, incredibly killed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, the whole time, there are, like, stuff, like, moving past them, and I just write down, like, average level of NHS patient care year 2025. One of the moves of like a trolley, like, around her while she's on the floor screaming. And I'm like, she's... It's 20-25. They'd also be tutting. It's like, oh, come up, man.

It's not their fault that grotesquely underfunded. Anyway, so, yeah, she is, of course, going through it because of this. And then we jump forward. Of course. Yeah. There is Juno. Juno is in the hospital, but doesn't come forward to it. Yeah, she's like in the background.

She's like, oh, shit. She doesn't come forward to comfort, Sarah. She's busy doing evil things. You know, she's busy whispering in the ears of junior doctors being like, no, don't go on strike. So we jump forward a bit to like a year later to the Appalachian Mountains, bracket, Scotland. It's so clearly Scotland. This is the same bit where they filmed under the skin, the ending of that. It's, yeah.

Nice and cheap to film. We have to establish that, this is true, we have to establish that like, Appalachia is spooky because it's in America and it's scary and it's rural. And also because this movie fucking loves deliverance, which is also, I suspect, where they're white water rafting in the beginning. Oh, God, you're so right. And so it's like, oh yeah, there's just like banjo music on the radio.

All of the signs are like shot through with like shotgun pellets and there's like spooky skulls hanging up and stuff. What's a great way to establish that something's ominous? You have one of your characters go, that's ominous. Yes. It's like, oh, great, cool, thanks. Beth tries to do like checking in on your girls for when you're friends have women's mental health

which goes roughly along the line of babes you've been really miserable since your husband got impaled by those pipes and then like two exes at the end of the message. Yeah. It's not working is the thing. Sarah is still miserable because she's sad about her daughter and she's sad about her dead husband.

She's putting a brave face on her though. She has come on this trip, which is pretty cool. They arrive at the cabin and there we meet three more ladies who as November said are from the security these red shirts who were Sam Rebecca and Holly I was like yeah redshirt's dead

show it yeah Holly Holly is more memorable because she's described as Juno's protégé and what we mean by that is that she's also kind of adventure junkie the thing is I don't think this is lesbian coded right because there is a specific

generational thing to this movie of women who are in their like 20s like late 20s in 2005 right so like women a bit older than me who would have and this is still true really really short hair

really like tomboyish affect and be both straight and incredibly homophobic and transphobic oh that's disappointing yes that is that's true that's real that is that is how I read this is not as a gay thing but just as a this generation of women, sometimes a few of them were like, yeah, I have short hair, and because of that,

I have even more toxic expectations of masculinity for my straight boyfriend kind of thing. That's the same. Yeah, I see what you mean. Something just went wrong at the factory with that generation. It's like, oh, they're kind of fucked up to it. Possibly. It all gets about LGBT alliance. But perhaps I'm projecting, I don't know.

I'm sure they're all very happy now and normal. Yes, of course. But so all of these women, there's like. a little friend group here it's sort of centered around Juno and Sarah is sort of reluctantly along for the ride and we get a lot of like dialogue of how women relate to one another

yeah this is so this is your first indication for the rest of the movie that it's going to be like this which is I suspect that our writer here Mr. Neil Marshall thinks of women as kind of like people which is great for the time but he thinks that the way that you show that is by just writing them as men

and just casting women like they just they're so fucking blokey they're like so unbelievably blokey with each other well most of them are English and I have met English women who are like this it's true it's a kind of generational aspect to this there is an extreme sport aspect to this

but like it's that's the actors carrying that off the script I think is is kind of misfiring on this one they're all sporty spice yeah oh god yeah She had a Boring from Ripper Street is here as well.

So that's cool. She's great in Kill List as well. Oh, yeah. Of a movie that will watch at some point. They all get drunk together. And at some point, some indeterminate point, they're going on a sort of like expedition adventure. But before then, Sarah has another jump scare because this movie really lacks the kind of self-confidence to like, you know, think that you're going to keep watching it. So it's got to be like jump scare, jumps scare, jumps scare.

So she's looking out of a window and she hears like if you're standing by a window 30 miles an hour So now are you doing that? Yeah. She gets him The pipe that kills you instantly hits her in the head and she wakes up

She gets in front of the pipe. Yeah. Also the previous evening Holly's like Oh we're supposed to be going to these caves But these caves suck It's really tame. They're like loser caves. They're gay caves for idiots.

And then Juno is like Don't worry. I'm sure the caves will be plenty exciting. there's like thunder and lightning and they're like shit you know how should do that really really funny

you know you've got to be less arch at the female gathering this is very weird Holly also puts a foot in it because I was sort of all sitting around drinking and he's like I'd love to like get married to a man someday and have a baby or have like a small child

about like four years old who's about to turn five and Sarah has to be like yeah yeah the pipe that kills you instantly killed my husband or whatever I'd love to be a really careful driver, things of his nature, sensitive things. Sarah was like, pro tip, don't let him drive.

So the next morning, Holly is the one to wake everyone up, and I should have got a drop of this, and I didn't, so I apologize, but there's a really funny moment where she bangs on the door and issues maybe one of the most distressing things you can say the single wiki.

Not wiki, wiki, just one. Just one wiki. That's a wiki with the weight of expectation behind it. Slightly too late, the second wiki strikes the North Tower but it's like this is at that point that's two single wakeys if they're looking

at that on Morse code that's two dots man it's over it's very much like the how many instances of chugger do you do before chew chew when imitating a train right and the most upsetting number is one because you can't do that yeah there's something wrong with that train

yeah Sarah's also taking the pills that show you that show you're vulnerable instantly that's how you show your protagonist is vulnerable as they're taking pills we don't know what they are Juno is doing

sort of like very aggressive yoga poses where she's lifting like one leg up to the side of her head she's literally flexing on them Juno takes her role as friend group antagonist so seriously she's like jogging before dawn

she's waking everyone up it's fucking annoying she's the black side spike air she's the evil Charlie Angel she's my favorite hands down yeah yeah no she's the best they're all this is terrible

by the way, they're all wearing the fuck-ass like naughty, zip-up polar fleeces. It's really bad. It's such a time capsule. And they're driving up and they're driving too fast as well because they're all thrill seekers. So they go to the cave.

Sam is wearing a goofy-looking watch and someone's like, hey, can I draw attention to that? So when it comes up later, we would be surprised. She's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, I'm wearing it so it can do a thing later, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can check off watch. The only problem is his alarm's too loud. There's a little bit earlier on where they're talking about Holly

and one of them refers to her as that mentalist that jumps off buildings. Just wanted to have, just wanted to get that in there. Mentalist. Yeah, she's a base jump. Yeah, mentalists, again, very 2005. But so they leave the cars and we see that Juno leaves the big book of caves, the cave instruction manual, the Haynes owner's manual for caves. The Dalling Kindersley Book of Caves.

Yeah, the guide to the cave that they're supposed to be in, which is the Boreham Caves in North Carolina. Yeah, yeah. The, like, printed out gamefacts.com. Really shit labeled, labeled diagrams. Yeah. Game Wiki for the cave. It's like got Asky art of a cave at the top, you know. The Prima Strategy Guide to Caves.

She leaves the dungeon map behind. As you may be able to tell, listener, this movie's a little thin on the ground for summary, so we're having to, like, fill the gap with a lot of bit. it's a pleasure to do but she leaves the fucking Prima strategy guide behind in the car and as they're walking up to the cave I think it's I think it's

Beth says can we hurry up we're late to which I go it's it's a cave they don't close it at five you'll woke up at the crack of dawn and came straight here also I was about to say like well I don't know you don't want to go caving

when it's dark but like it's always dark when you're in the cave got a light, I hope. But so, Juno is leading them. She's out in front. She's wearing a fuck-ass Indiana Jones hat as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And the party encounter a level one dead deer, which is, I would describe this as being portentous. And when I encounter something that's portentous, I get real, like, superstitious about it, especially if I'm going to go in a cave, which I'm not, because fuck going in a cave. Yeah, I'm not going in a cave. I would leave. Well, it's not dead in the cave, is it? It's straight outside the cave. They take a foot.

One of them takes a photo of it and the refers to it, goes like, that's a real Kodak moment. It's nice. But you see on the deer that there are these like bite marks that don't look like wolves or anything like that. Yeah. And Juno's like, it must have been a bear. It's Holly taking the photos. And I didn't catch what camera she's using, but I do want to start internet movie camera database. There was a bit where I went slightly insane watching the movie Spy Game recently because Brad Pitt's character

undercover as a, like a war photographer, and he has, in the course of two scenes, two likers at once and a Nikon F, and I'm just like... Like, oh my God. What is the CIA's budget for this? They're made of fucking money. They get to the cave, which is like a hole in the ground, and they've got to, like, repel down into it. I don't know anything about caving, because I'm smart enough not to get into a cave.

Yes. I've done a little bit, but I don't know that much about it. The caves I've been in, you just walk in. Yeah, I walk into it. I walk into a cave and it's like a show cave I'm barely into a house I don't even trust a roof

You can't get me in a cave I've repelled inside some caves It's not hard So they repel They repel into this cave Holly It's not hard Golly goes too fast

Because she's a thrill seeker And almost squishes I think Beth Yeah Holly establishes But she's reckless Yeah And then one of them

One of them goes to like Investigate one of It's like beautiful Or whatever down there They've got like flares to light it with. One of them goes to like the, the mouth of one of the sort of subsidiary caves. I don't know anything about caves. And instead of going to like tourist cave, Juno has actually taken them to Jump Scare Cave

because she triggers the fight or flight reflex of one trillion bats. Yes. One thousand bats. Also, Sarah finds a bloody handprint on the wall and doesn't tell any of them. That's the point. I'd flag that up. If the deer hasn't stopped me, the bloody handprint is absolutely where I'm pulling the plug on this.

Yeah. But so they continue into the caves. There's a funny bit where Juno says, the only way out of this chamber is down the pipe that points to this hole in the ground. And I'm like, don't mention pipes around Sarah. Come on, you really have a pipe thing. She's got pipe trauma, yeah.

This bit is like quite well. A pipe killed by husband. This bit is quite well filmed, and then it does show us effectively how disorienting. it is being underground because, and it's also an excuse to, like, you don't really have to follow the rules of editing because it's meant to not hold together, right? But it does work quite well. So it's a nicely edited sequence. I forgot, though, that the problem with a movie set in the caves is that in a visual medium, one of the things about the caves is that you can't see.

It's pretty tight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is all a beautifully constructed set. All of the, like, cave bits are. And they do some really interesting stuff with it. Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know, bits of it might be foam or something, but like, yeah, they go in the cave. And as I understand it, not knowing anything about caving, rule number one of caving is just kind of go off on your own, you know? Yeah, like have fun and enjoy yourself, number one. Don't check in with your homies. Fib, yeah. Don't leave any kind of markers behind. It's the first instance of Juno sneaking up behind someone wordlessly. She loves to do it.

Something she loves to fucking do. Well, the thing is, she loves. She loves to jump scare her friend who has jump scare trauma. Which is a really funny, evil thing to do. By the way, they've been down here like three minutes, and Sarah is already hearing her daughter's laugh. And I'm like, you go on. Don't go into the cave.

The cave that makes you hallucinate instantly. She's being beguiled already. Yeah, she is, already, yeah, instantly. The cave that beguiles you instantly. Holly's quite impressed. She's like, oh shit, I thought this cave was boring cave, but actually this cave is kind of like rad cave. for hell yeah

exciting cave yeah so they have to go through a little like claustrophobic bit where you have to crawl which is very very scary

by the way I have to say in sort of Sarah's defense this might seem implausible but like I would also

ask my hottest most evil friend if I could get in on the like all woman adventure holidays she was running if that was a thing

you know if anything I'd be disappointed to rock up and find out they're actually caving Yeah. Can we play Lemonheads, the outdoor type, right now?

Extreme Sports wasn't a euphemism? Oh, you're all straight? Oh, some of you were like homophobic, actually? Oh, fuck, what am I doing? What the hell's going on? It's all, it's all like all the lesbianism is there, but it's weirdly sublimated. Yeah, no, this sucks. Give me the actual, like, unsublimated lesbianism. Yeah. So they crawl through this one that all kind of fast. So sublimated, it's underground. Yeah, quite. And as they're getting through, Sarah's the last one. She's got to bring, like, one of their bags of ropes, which again, supplementated. Yeah, right? Yeah, why is Sarah doing all this?

I don't know. But as she's about to reach for it, the quest design means that you can't go back to the sort of overworld until you've been, so you've, like, resolved this dungeon. So, like, a bunch of rocks fall and, like, cut off the thing. First, again, she gets stuck. And, like, she's stuck in the cave. and there's all the shots of her stuck in that tunnel and the whole time I'm going

I would simply not be in this situation I'm never going to be I'm not going through a cave tunnel at the best of times not if there's like like if there's an edge case but I'm going to make it through you'd hate to find out in that scenario

that you're the biggest one in the friend group oh you have to be like oh I've gained weight when it's like oh shit actually we have to break your collar to get you through this Beth calms her down and stops her panicking Best technique for calming her down

is crazy is to like I'm going to yell my friend through her panic attack by being like no you're fine you're fine and then tell more sublimated lesbianism

she literally goes the worst thing that can happen to you already has and you're still here it's like don't bring that up don't bring that up remember when your husband got impaled through the fucking head killed your husband and child

and then she says how do you give a lemon and orgasm you tickle it's citrus. Stupid. I was like, I was going to say put it inside a tart, but all right. It's pretty good. But the cave starts collapsing and then they have to...

The joke's so bad. It collapses the entire cave system. Yeah. They have to leave the rope bag behind. And then they're trapped in there. And then they have their like little argument where they're like, all right. Well, thankfully, we've still got the book. We've got the book, right?

We got the book and she's like, ah, the book was kind of cringe. we don't need the book for reasons that I'll reveal it, just a bobbin. Yeah, second rule of caving is fuck books, just vibe it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, well, okay, well, before you go caving, you have to file a, like, a plan with mountain rescue, so they know what time we do back, so they'll come find us, right? And she's like, yeah, but the flight plan says that we're going to the boring shit cave for gay people, and we're actually in like uncharted radical cave that just opened, actually.

Yeah, there's a different movie about a very, extreme lesbian polycule just having a lovely time in the like shit cave pricks but we are we are in the new cave that just opened yeah we're in bad time cave yeah and juno's like i i wanted us to be the first people into bad time cave juno goes immediately blames every single other person there like tries to deflect so much she's so real for that she's just like well holly was saying that it would be boring to be in the normal cave so i thought and she's like don't fucking put it on me it all gets a bit your party down there It does, it does. And especially because it turns out they're all fucking each other's partners behind their backs. Well, quite. Yeah, because Beth says,

Juno, you brought us into like shit to it. You brought us into a shit evil time, evil cave. And also, by the way, I'm bringing this up for no reason. You weren't there for Sarah when the crash happened. And Juno is just like, I'll have you know, we all lost something in that crash. It's like, yeah, okay. Juno, why are you saying that so portentously?

We all know what you lost in the fucking. crash, Shudor. We knew it from the first scene. Yeah. They were driving her car at the time. She's just so fucking cut up about it. It'd be really funny. She's like, if it totaled my car. Shuna was actually the kid's mom and Sarah didn't know. And they're just like, wait, what?

We all lost something in that crash. For instance, I lost my keys in the course of coming to meet you in the hospital. So really, like, who's the asshole? You. Couldn't find it for like a couple of hours. Yeah, I lost the whole day. I lost a lot of time I lost my duolingo streak

because I had to take you to the hospital and you never said sorry never once to me about my duenoo's been doing like a thousand days of like duolingo like Chinese and she can't speak a fucking word of it because duolingo's terrible because they fired everyone to replace with AI last year awful so they're gonna cross like

this is like the fucking crystal maze in here right It's like Fort Boyer They've got to cross like Like a void They're gonna cross a gorge Yeah, an underground gorge Yeah Rebecca fucking saves their asses I love Rebecca

She's fantastic She's fantastic She's got to hang off the ceiling And then put like spreaders The like grappley points Into the cracks in the roof And then like monkey bar her way across Putting rope through it

You've got to have like wicked fucking shoulder strength And as she's three quarters Of the way across She notices there's already I forget what the name is for this little piece of equipment A petan

Thank you Marshall Petan There's already a petan in the ceiling and it's like an old one An old-timey one Yeah Okay crazy

But she makes it across She doesn't just She also This is a real kind of zombie bite situation in that she doesn't tell any of the others that there was already a petan there And she also chooses to like

rely on that Instead of hammering in one of her own Next to it Yeah My jackals my sort of climbing and formed jackals who I watch this with inform me that this whole sequence is

and I quote, baffling rope work, which I guess is what you have to expect from cis women. Your jackals would know. Yeah, quite. Sarah and Juno are the last ones to go across and then Juno's like,

hey Sarah, I wanted us to have a win. That's why I brought us down here, you know? I was going to name the cave after you. And then Sarah's like, you wanted a win for yourself, Juno.

And then so Sarah shimmies across. and then because Juno's the last one and they need the equipment Juno has to do what Rebecca did but like backwards so she can't use the safe rope way she has to like come across and she's the one who pulls out the paton

and it's like oh an old time he put on Juno is interesting here because she's like okay I accept that you're sad because your husband who I was fucking got perfectly lanced through the face with a metal pipe would some settler colonialism make you feel better

would like naming a landform and exploring it for the first time make you feel good. Yeah, they get to the other side and Juno's like, so this is old Tommy Piton. It's like at least 100 years old which suggests two things. Firstly, people have already been down here

which sucks for my wanting to claim it. But also secondly, the fact that this cave system isn't known about suggests that whoever did make it down here did not make it out, which is slightly worrying. We missed a bit in that she falls. She doesn't make it a course quite so easily. Oh, yes, you're right.

Yeah, she's like. falls and one of the security team, I don't remember who, maybe it's Rebecca, Rebecca, got her climbing gloves from Timu because she's like holding the rope, which of course then like gets pulled really hard by, you know, by Juno falling and it properly like fucks up her hand. Yeah, like fully cuts it. Which, uh-oh. You don't really want that, especially when she's the one of the main like ceiling hanging ones. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, she's kind of the boss climbers. Yeah, it's like, oh shit. Stakes are raising. It's good. That's good. Just incapacitate your strongest one. So they progress forward into the thing, and they run into a prehistoric cave painting, which all of them immediately shine headlamps on, destroying it. Yeah, completely blurring instantly. This is real, like, Lasco cave painting shit. Yeah, it's, fuck it, yeah.

This is where I put on my big glasses and I'm like, oh, those are, those megafauna weren't in North America. Dumb cunts. that's based on the French cave paintings you just like fucking put it straight there coffee pasted it yeah they weren't up there there were no horses they noticed something interesting

there because there's it's like a drawing of the mountain that they're in and there's two caves they're like oh there's an exit on the other side there's another entrance something that I noticed

which none of them commented on is that all the animals in the drawing are running away from the cave which is a nice little detail oh that's pretty cool I can catch that it suggests

It suggests both some prehistory and some indigenity to the cave as well, right? Like, there have been people down here who, I don't know. Really high effort cave paintings to, like, warn people away from the cave they're in. Yeah, I would have put that at the entrance, actually. Yeah. And then we get another jump scare as sort of further up on the cave roof, like, across from them, some, like, blood seems to drip down from like an open mouth. And it's like, there is a guy down here with really bad ginger vices.

There's a creepy, there's a creepy little guy down here. It might be a creepy guy down here. Because of this creepy little guy, we get another rule of caving to drive, which is get really scared and sprint off on your own. Yeah, run around, scream a bit. Yeah. Yeah. If you see a guy in a cave, just lose your shit and start running. Holly doesn't even see him.

Holly just runs ahead. Holly sees a bit of light. Yes. Like phosphorescence from the rocks or something. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. She does. In the daylight community, we call that Fool's Daylight. She takes a run for it. Everyone's going, Holly, don't run in the cave. Like, what the fuck are you doing? It's made out of water. Trip hazards. There's cables everywhere. And it's not real daylight. It's just phosphorus. Fosser essence.

Fools daylight. And she falls down into like a big hole. Big hole. Deadfall pit into a big hole. Yeah. Oh, it gets a protruding fracture too It's a nasty fucking fracture Yeah, yeah, yeah

Oh, you don't want that anywhere Not even, especially not in a cave Well, like, because they get down to her And they try and splint it first Which is like, we're good luck Splinting an open fracture in a wet cave Or indeed at all Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Yeah, she's lying in like a river And I'm like, we should probably move her At the river before we start fucking out of the bone You're gonna get a bunch of like cave organisms And in your blood, but like Yeah, you'll die in the stuff No one's ever even seen before Yeah, yeah

Which I guess is what happens, but Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we have to like set the, but we have to make the fracture stop being open and start being closed. We have to close the fracture by pushing the bone back in. Oh. And then you can splint it. Yeah. I don't know, I don't know about the kind of emergency medicine there, but like, it's good horror.

I don't know how medically sound that is, yeah. It's good. Sarah's just fucking hallucinating all the time in this point. She's like most of her auditory input is hallucinatory because her daughter's laughing and running around the cave. She wanders off to pursue this hallucination. She finds an old-timey helmet, which I thought was quite nice. A morian, yes, making them like Spanish conquistadors, I guess. Oh, okay.

It's that kind of style of helmet. Do you think of like... Oh, that's fun. Anand Cortez, so, yeah. And the other thing she finds is Gollum. Yeah, she hears some guy sipping at the water in this, like, cave that she's in and just like lowers the light. And you get like a real pale guy in the distance.

Yeah. And he, like, scampers off. and she makes the court decision immediately and goes, oh, that's probably a guy and he can help me. I'm going to start yelling. Yeah. Just yell as such as possible. Play riddles with me.

And he's like, kind of like, it's like, that's clearly a cave creature. What are I got in my pocket? I mean, to be fair, everyone is yelling because Holly is getting her bone reset and is, of course, screaming. They're using a, they're like, give her something to bite down on,

which is a quick draw, the like, a, like, loop between two carabiners. And I'm like, that's lesbian. That's lesbian technology. This is appropriation, you know. But, so Sarah gets back to the group and she's like, I just saw award-winning actor Andy Circus. And then Juno's like, no, Andy Circus isn't real. Like, Andy Circus is just a fucking myth, okay.

Gollum is an entirely CGI character. And she's like, no, no, no. I saw the movie they made out of the series Luther. He was real and he was in it. Andy Circus is a CGI creation of New Line Cinema. He's like the Muppets. Everyone pretends that Andy Circus is real, but he's not actually real. You didn't really see Andy Circus, right?

Yeah, why do you think they call him Andy Circus? Yeah, right? Because he's not real. Like the circus, which also isn't real. They don't call him Andy Play, do they? You saw a shadow on the cave wall, Sarah. You saw nothing. Yeah.

Come on. Come on, fucking Plato. And also, the daylight wasn't real. It's illusionary. You saw a ping pong ball on a stick, so you know where to look. Yeah. So they start carrying Holly and they're like, this isn't real, this is all just green screen. However, one of them has brought the camcorder from the Blair Witch Project, which was very nice of them to do that.

They mentioned into the next room of the cave, the bone room, which you don't want to be in the bone room. Well, sometimes I want to be in the bone room, bracket's literal bones. I don't want to be in a cave. If I'm in a cave, I don't want to be in the bone room. Plus, Holly has an exposed bone right now, which means she's, like, the bone room has an affinity for her. They have arrived at Bone Town. Yes, yeah.

This bit's really good, actually. We get some, like, POV, the camcorder. It's in infrared, so they're kind of scanning around it. And at this point, I did genuinely leap up and yell the words, whoa, fuck. Yeah, this is a really good creature reveal. I love this. They're panning across all of them and, like, going back and forth,

and then just one of them just has a big fucking gollon standing behind them, and I was like, ah, fuck! I love the shot because he's so fucking stanced up and it's very much like, hey, guys, thanks for inviting me to your function. It's genuinely like, suddenly the seventh member of the group knows Faratu, is he? How I feel hanging out with cisgender women for real, for real. He's not like fucking crawling troglodymode in the corner of anything. He's stood full in the middle of the room. Hey guys, what's up?

The episode art, I think. Yeah, he's really funny. And when they, when they notice, when they notice this, can I say profoundly British-looking creature? Yes. He does look very British, yeah. Yeah, this very pale, very kind of like toothy. Well, they shot it in Scotland, you know. They can save it his Appalachia, but that's a British cave creature right there.

Weird standing freak. He doesn't attack them either. He just goes, we're like, oh shit, sorry. He's awkward. He didn't know he wasn't supposed to be there. This guy looks like what Harper's thinks gooners are. He's down here in the goon cave. He's been gooning for too long.

He's a borno-sexual gooner and now he's confronted with real woman. It doesn't know what to do. He's been in the goon cave so long he's like evolved into a cave beast. Yeah. It's a shame, you know, it's a real shame. But these things happen. The male lonely this epidemic is not a joke. Yeah.

So the gooner disappears back into the shadows. And we get a lot of them sort of like, looking around at each other terrified. It'd be fair to say if they lose their minds a little bit at this point. You would. He would. Yeah. There's some like skittering noises. There's, and then, of course, that's when they're going to start to like get you.

Right. Yeah. They start getting people at this point. Yeah. These being British creatures. This fucking goon that does a full back, because they're carrying Holly. Yeah. I think Juno is this guy like does a reverse backflip over them and like rips out.

Holly's neck with his teeth in mid-air. And so Holly's fucking, Holly's toast at this point. Yeah, it's like, that's crazy, man. How the hell can you do that? Lots of gore.

This is a British creature or a British coded creature in 2005, so of course he's into parkour. Mm. And, I mean, he's playing fire starter in the background. Yeah.

Yeah, for real. And so Holly is fucking compromised to a permanent end. Yeah, it goes over for Holly. Mm-hmm. Everybody else. Scatters.

Yeah. Yes. This is where Juno goes fucking Juno mode. She does go to you know. I'm not putting up with this fucking... We'll talk about the groups at Scalage. We'll start with Juno because she's going crazy. She locks in immediately.

I'm not putting up with this fucking wank battling limey. I'm pulling out in my sacks and I'm going fucking Juno mode and she kills this fucker. This is why you need your hot evil friend in the friend's group. It's because occasionally she might have to go Juno mode. Yeah, she kills it She kills one of them with Isaxx A second one starts attacking her

And it's like a long, drawn-out fight That she eventually wins And then, you know, she does it all the time But she can't take it herself A friend silently creeps up behind her And goes, hey, do you know how you doing And get some Issax just directly To the fucking throw

It's Beth, yeah Who I've written down in the thing is Hot Beth Which, okay Beth who hasn't really had a character moment yet So like whatever But she gets she gets axed in the side of the neck like Leon Trotsky, like sideways

Leon Trotsky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Juno, as more there's more like Guna's closing in, you can hear the clicky noises of the mouses that they use, and then Juno has to leave Beth behind. Juno's like, I'm out, I'm done. I now have to have to introduce

a bit of theory to this, right? Oh, Beth takes Juno's necklace as she falls over by the way. She's got a big fucking necklace. Big fucking necklace. So one of your kind of seminal works of feminist film theory, particularly about horror, is Carol J. Clover's book Men, Women and Chainsaws, right? And one of the things that that book posits is that part of

the kind of function of, it's the book that coined the expression the final girl, right? Like the one woman who survives, right? But one of the things about a final girl is often a kind of androgyny tending masculine that involves like an appropriation of a violent phallic symbol most notably in Texas chainsaw massacre that's a chainsaw right in this case

this is like a big fucking ice axe that Juno has and this you know this is a again it's a like it's a phallic penetrative thing and I encountered in the course of my research into this a film studies

article about this aspect of the descent, the title of which was chicks with picks, so you cannot fucking avoid the trans misogyny in this. It's just around all the time, which is apt, because that's also how this movie tries to convey male violence, right? Because all of these Andy Circus-looking motherfuckers have been male coded, right? And what we get is a lot of women in the dark surrounded by the constant looming presence of male violence.

And again, these are all, like, big white, naked guys who are just going to jump on you. And that's that kind of, like, fighting game tech as well is very, like, jump on and then bite, which is not just, you know, you're sort of monstrous thing, but it's also like it's, that's, that's sexualized, right? Yeah. Yeah. They also look like Gollum. I don't think that's necessarily like a point of criticism with the movie.

That's just what's happened right now. Yeah, no. I think that's, if anything, I think that's effective. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, it's actually better that you made this with all women. It wouldn't have been as good if you had some guys down here,

which is also why they just said part two isn't as good, I think. But Sarah wakes up alone. She has the infrared camera, and she's surrounded by a bunch of human skeletons. So she decides quite wisely, I think, to leave the situation. Yeah, that's absolutely reasonable, I think. Yeah, yeah. She's like, okay, I'm going to get out of here. I want to be voided like those guys in that move as Scully Hansen.

And then we get another jump scare because Holly's body gets dropped down right next to her. and like four or five Andy's circuses start eating Holly she's like right next to Holly but they don't notice her and this is how she discovers that she's like oh their vision is based on they can't see yeah it's because of it's dark in cave

because a cave yeah a blind they don't need it because they live in a cave it's interesting again to see from from white noise the kind of like video camera as a like a defensive lens between between yourself and the horror you know because she's she's watching this and it's our only way of seeing them is to put the camera between herself and them but it's also this kind of layer of abstraction which I think the movie conveys quite well with the mix of kind of night vision from the camera and not one of the things I really like about

this movie is the lighting because yeah the like the group split up and each like individual or like pair of like characters together. Yeah. They use lighting to distinguish separated characters in identical environments in a way that I really like. Yeah, it's really cool. So Sarah finds them knife and the material to make a flaming torch. So she's got a fire.

I think Juno has a red glow stick. Yeah. And it's Sam and Rebecca have a green glow stick. Yeah. So we can always tell who we're with. Sam's watch beeps really loudly and the Guno nearly finds them. And so that we, that's check off's watch. That's how we feel that.

Yeah, that's how they figure out that they can only hear as well as they're like, oh, the watch from earlier because of... Sam says they use sound to hunt like a bat, except not in any of the ways that a bat does because they just hear stuff. Yeah, they're just, this thing too. I like being pedantic about that. They use sound to hunt like anything does. Juno sees one going down a tunnel and then she's like, right, I'm gonna fucking kill that

con. Juno has got a taste for fucking blood at this point. I'm like, yeah. Juno's been like how many of them are there? like four. I'll fucking just kill them all, I guess. Easy. Yeah, now we're in business, right? Yeah.

Sethyl colonialism mode very much in effect here. You know, I'm going to kill every life form in this geological feature and then name it after me. Yeah. Juno actually saves Sam and Rebecca because the goona with the watch goes after them and then Juno fucking kills him with an ice axe again. She's like, this is great. Have you tried killing them? Yeah.

You've got ice axes. Just fucking hit them. You don't have to feel guilty about it. They're not even sentient. You can just hack them up. This movie gets, I think, some unearned praise for having invented, like, uh, girl boss stuff like this, which it really didn't, like alien was doing this stuff decades before.

Alien was doing this shit, yeah. I still like it in the sense that this is like, yeah, this is, this is heroic, right? We also do get some cool. I like the way that the gooners fight because when you get, they do like ambush and flips and stuff, but when you get in a one-on-one with them, they're kind of shit on account of they're blind. so they do kind of like flail around

and so in this fight people so like they don't have like claws or teeth really yeah in this fight between Juno and this one like it's it can hear the three women because like Sam and Rebecca are also there making noise

it doesn't know which one has the ice axe and Juno just kind of goes straight down the middle and just kills the fucker and it's like oh actually it's yes it's tense in the sense that like there could be everywhere and there's many of them but also like you can fucking beat these guys in a stand up fight they're not the predator

yeah and also the thing is being stuck in a cave with no way out is bad enough that like adding the sort of flesh-eating beasts only takes it from like an eight to a nine really yeah you're basically like taking this in stride I mean you're like fine yeah there's beasts okay cool they make some horrible noises which I like they're kind of a mix of like pig noises cat noises and some wolf noises I think they're really good costumes like clicky noises too yeah yeah so so so Sarah they're same as dog It's just really good, like, creature design, great costuming. Yeah.

Sarah sneaking around, runs into Beth, who is still bleeding badly out of this neck, like Sideways Trotsky. Beth, fucking goss queen, shit-stirring queen. Holy fuck. Yeah. She's on her death bed. She is bleeding out from an axe wound to the carotid artery, and she's like, come here, come here, I want to tell you some gossip about Juno.

She's fucking your man, girl. Yeah. Did she know that you have been placed in the cuckpastard? passenger seat of your own car. Yeah. She gives her the necklace, which is engraved with I Am Your Secret Boyfriend from Love Paul, presumably the same. Yeah, like Paul's favorite catchphrase, I don't want to get killed by a pipe.

Presumably got it engraved the same place, Anthony Hopkins' wife got that watch engraved in the edge. This is pro tip from the Kill James Bond podcast, if you are having an affair and you want to give the person that you're sleeping with secretly some jewel. jewelry. Fine, do that. That's romantic. That's sexy even. Don't get it engraved. Don't get it engraved with a secret message that is something you say all the time. Don't get engraved with your name and face. Can I offer a suggestion at this point? I would like to suggest that Sarah's late husband, Paul, he of the pipe, be awarded posthumously the Brian Cox Award for Studies and Intelligence. I actually am fully with your knowledge. For getting his side

chick the most obvious piece of jewelry possible that like when you see it is enough to fully convince sarah that like judo is having an affair you are my side chick love paul paul bracket sarah's husband yeah you know sarah's husband got like an engraving of his own face on there as well just so you're really like dental records national insurance number as well If lost return to Paul. Just to make absolutely clear, yeah, like, I am the same guy who is married to Sarah. I will never die in a pipe accident.

P.S., don't tell Sarah that we're having an affair. Yeah. Massive necklace, honestly, kind of weird that Juno was carried around this whole time was really heavy. Kind of a flavor-flav situation at this massive fucking clock. Like small text. No, I'd have left that at home when Sarah was around, you know? I wouldn't have worn it.

Long history of when they started cheating on his wife and then please turn over other side of necklace because it keeps going. It continues on. Oh my God. Yeah, like I just, I just, I don't know, Juno. I don't think you're sending yourself off for success here. And the thing is, I want to defend Juno so bad because everything she does in the cave post the point where she tricks them all to go into the wrong cave is like,

Correct. Yeah. By the way, listen, there's all that stuff we were implying about Juno being evil and maybe leading them knowingly into the cave. No, forget about that. Juno rules, actually. She's great. It seems unlikely that she did that.

It's relatable to me to the extent that, like, I like getting jewelry enough that I would keep the jewelry that, like, was evidence that I was cheating on my husband, you know? Like, I would probably do that. I don't think, have I ever done that? Just, I just don't know. Just like, is that in the Rolodex, yeah? No, none of my infidelity involved jewelry. Sadly.

Yeah, that's crazy. I know, yeah, yeah, got it. You got to, yeah, absolutely. But so, Beth is dying. And Beth is like, hey, I need you to do me some, like, end of life care here by axing me to death. I don't want to be eaten alive by these gooners. I mean, this is a good argument for sort of like euthanasia in this case, in the sense that if I'm going into the cave, I want a cyanide pill, you know?

I don't want to, and I want that accessible to me at all times, at a second's notice. Like, you tell me it's going to take five minutes longer to get out of the cave than I thought it would, cyanide pill, you know? This is why you can't have the cyanide pill, so we had the discussions in the office meeting last year. We're not letting you have a cyanide pill. But fortunately, on this occasion, the cyanide pill arrives in the form of a big rock that Sarah just brains her friends with. Which, to be fair, a cave is abundant in. Yeah, very true. That's true. That's kind of the natural home of,

of the rock, yeah. And at this point, we experience the female Guna, less mentioned in the Harper's article, but the Gounette. The Gounettes. Yeah, there's Guna. Yeah, Gounet attacks and chases Sarah. Yeah, well, so she, she kills, because, like, genuinely, she, like, kills Beth,

and then she gets jumped by another Guna, who she kills, and then the Gounette appears and is, like, you can tell it to girl, because it's got long hair and tits, which is insane to have, like, Beauty standards for the female gooner. It's got a little bo. It's crazy that they'd have the hanging tits.

It doesn't make any sense. It's also defined by motherhood because it's sad because she killed its kid. Yeah, she killed the juvenile. And like it's got feelings, you know? Because like women have those. Women have those. And Sarah has zero moments of, wow, we're not so different. I killed your child with a pipe.

No, they kind of both fall into like a big pool of blood and like fight to death. Yeah. Yeah. kills the symbol of motherhood and she stabs it through the eye with an antler, it rules. It's a great movie if you like women covered in blood.

I do. I do. Or if you like the one shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger covered in mud from the movie Predator? I do. Yeah, because the daddy gooner arrives after she kills the mummy guner

and then she hides from it and then like brains it with a bone club and now she's like giving Sarah Connor she's at a tank top covered in blood And on my notes say, hell yeah. Yeah, she's like, this is even hard. Like, this isn't even difficult. Yeah, I'm also strongly pro-woman and covered in blood.

Yeah. Well, this is the thing, right? They're killing these motherfuckers so easily. It's like pure gym cardio. Like, genuinely. Yeah, it's like fine. You're like women covered in blood. You're going to love what I've just finished filming.

What could be coming out next time? Fantastic. It's like, yeah, these are giant beasts, but actually it's like, they've got no, they've got no nutrients at all. You can just tear apart, like, fucking tissue paper. Yeah, yeah. They've got no vitamin D whatsoever. All these guys have rickets.

It's fucked, actually. Such a shame. So, do you know, Sam and Rebecca? I'm having to go to the Wikipedia here. Yeah, you're right. All find each other, and they all realize they share the information that, like, their vision is based on sound. And so they have to be quiet. And so they sneak out to, like, another gorge.

Juno, by the way, gives this an impetus for a... This is evil friendship, because Juno sees a bunch of... Guna's following them. They can't fucking see her, but she's the one who decides to yell, run, and then they're chased. Yeah, then they start running. Sam has to cross the gorge, which is a moment of like cool character development. She's like, oh, Rebecca's her big sister.

Can she do it as well as her big sister? No, is the answer to that. No, because there's a beast actually in the scene. No, actually, yeah, the Guna kills her, uh, rips her throat out. Guna rips her throat out and she like, like stabs it and then dies in a way that's a little weird. Hi Peter, Mianaburring, yeah. The Guna falls into the kind of water below, and then as Sam sort of goes over the same ropes, like, fighting, she falls in.

Sam dead. Sam's dead. Sam's dead. Rebecca also instantly is like, Rebecca doesn't have a lot of time to mourn her sister. This is worse than like ice breakers at fucking uni. I can't do this. There's too many names. Yeah, Sam is dead.

Rebecca has no time to mourn her sister. because she's instantly just got and then like chewed her guts the chewed apart like the Irish guy from Shorto the Dead It's instantly grabbed by the legs and just like dragged down a fucking off tunnel like they couldn't figure out how to get rid of her in the scripts

Yeah, that sucks. She's dead, it's a shame. Rebecca gets fully revched and she gets like dragged down into the cave. Juno is the one who's, so now there's only two left, Juno and Sarah. Now it's just Juno and Sarah. Two final girls, two girl bosses.

Yes. Juno falls into the water and the gooner who was like who had previously been stabbed wakes up and bites her or whatever and it's like I want to give that that specific guna a Cronstein Roseette because he was waiting

in the water having been stabbed for someone else to fall in so that he could scare her yeah yeah in the dark that's legendary yeah that's commitment she pulls the knife out of its chest and they like finishes it off starts climbing up and then as she's climbing the wall Sarah who's now gone false

Schwarzeneggerber just like pulls her into a crevasse and it's just like covered in blood looking rough as hell and Juno's like what the fuck happened to you this is compelling right you were trapped in a cave I've experienced some character development yeah you're trapped in a cave

with the woman that you cuckled at who found out that she's kind of too into killing is a fun bit this is the plot of the edge but underground yeah yeah yeah I like it but I mean I do also write down the same thing you said earlier, Dev, which is

why would you wear what I describe as the cuck necklace or the cuckless to this? Like, why would you wear that to this holiday when he knew she was coming? And Sarah says, what happened to Beth? And Juno's like, she died. It was an

accident. Like, fucking... I'm sorry, she snuck up behind me when I was in a kill frenzy. Like, I thought she was a beast. What's the problem? I wasn't just going to let my special move go, I built up my combo bar. This is why Beth is kind of like a gossip queen is because

she knew it was an accident and she just went on a kind of anti-Juno kick with her dying breath for no reason. Yeah, she didn't let Sarah know that it was an accident. She didn't employ that at all. She was just like, no, fucking Juno like killed me on purpose and she was like,

she told me that she was mad at me when she did it. She was kill crazy. Like, that should be a legal defense. Yeah, you snuck up behind her, yeah. But Juno conceals this. None of this is said. This is all spoken only with the eyes. They move on and there are many gounas in their path.

And so they just go fucking sicker mode. They go crazy on these guys. They do. There's like five or six of them and they fuck them up. Sarah gives one of them a taste of his own medicine by biting his throat out and then pushes the eyes of another one into its skull with her thumbs. And she's like, you're right, you know. It's great.

You can just kill them. And it's like, guilt-free. Juno gets some good kills in with the icex. This feels great, actually. It's really helped me work through my trauma. Yeah, violence is fantastic, right? Yeah, I can see what men have been on about, actually. Yeah.

And at this point, Sarah's like, yo, I also picked up this huge necklace with this massive message. Yeah, is this yours? This manhole cover that you were wearing around your neck. Yeah. Yeah, is this your giant clock? Oh, fuck, it is. And so Sarah hits her in the knee with an ice axe and leaves her for dead, which is fucking ice cold.

Which is crazy because like ever since the fucking cave-in, Juno has done nothing but axed to like get them out of the cave. Like she actually stepped up. Yeah. Also, she's proven herself to be a valuable ally. It's kind of like, but she leaves her with her axe so that she can die going to go Valhalla or Galhalla. Yeah, legitimately so. God damn, I want to die going to Galhalla. Yeah, don't we all? Yeah, got a die-in girl battle?

What? Yeah, so again, I'm thinking about Carol J. Clover, right? And about the punitive function of horror, right? So, like, it's one of the main things in a slasher movie is it's why you get a final girl, because a final girl is, like, androgynous in ways that we want to praise, unlike other women who are bitches and therefore have qualities that make us want to see them get killed, right? like, you know, being fucking insincere or unsurious or whatever. And so a lot of the function of horror is to show us these kind of like constructed social negatives being purged by the form of like murder, right?

What is Juno's, okay, it's infidelity. Juno's thing is infidelity, yeah, it's adultery. She's a home wrecker, okay. She is. Her crime is being hotter than. her friend. Really? That's still a crime. The movie takes the position that it does, yeah.

Apparently, yeah. I don't know if it says death, but... Also, we don't know, maybe Paul seduced her. We don't know. You know, maybe Juno was feeling vulnerable one evening and Sarah wasn't there and Paul hit on Juno. We don't know. Doesn't matter. We're constructing a socially acceptable kind of thing to punish, which is infidelity, right? Like, cuckolding your friend. Is it still cuckolding? More films that could be solved with polyamore.

Cuck queen, I think. Either way, you can't, like, no matter how cheated on you are, you can't just kill her and leave her in a cave. You can't come and murder about it. You're not allowed to do that. But she does. She sort of puts an ice axe for her leg and then leaves. Yeah.

I didn't seek retribution against, I'm trying to think of the people who've cuckolded me. Did I? No, I've never sought retribution against any of them. Yet. Yet. I know you're out there. Do you want to come to a caving adventure

that we're putting on, by the way, and you're not even going to say the name in case you forget to bleep it. Yeah, no, no, don't risk it. Sarah is like covered in blood, still got the eye sacks, still got the fucking phallic symbol. She's like fully final girl at this point,

and she, like, fleeing the gooners, climbs up this kind of incline of bones out through the earth, into the open air, It's like a rebirth, in it, because it's all fucking a bit Freudian. The cave's like a womb, and it's all very kind of feminine and stuff. Yeah, all right. And then she flees to the safety of car, which we love car.

We love car. Car is safe. Yeah, car is safe. Go to the supermarket, you know, like Don Cheedle's safe. Probably where she was driving, too, so fast. She's going to, I've got to go to a supermarket. And drives past. Get another jump scare in as we get an end cameo from the logs from final destination.

Mm-hmm. as she gets like sort of nearly missed by an HIV carrying those logs has a panic attack pulls over, stops the car

throws up yeah throws up live by the jump scare die by the jump scare like throws up sees vision of Juno in the car next to her now this movie

has two endings if you are American this is where the movie ends but if you are a normal person who can deal with a tragic ending and like there's actually an extra 60 seconds

of it, which changes the ending. It does. And which makes Sarah much less sort of endorsed by the movie as a final girl, right? And which makes the sort of plot a bit more obvious in the sense of like, oh, it's like a dissent into madness kind of thing. In the Brid cut after the Juno jump scare, Sarah wakes up and we're back in the cave. That was all a fucking cave dream. It was all, that was hallucination.

And the golems are still after her. Yeah, but she's okay because she has a vision of her daughter, and it's like, oh, she just never got over it. She's now completely like lost her reason. As a piece of like sort of film it construction, I don't like this in the sense of like, I always think it's cheap to be like, oh, this last bit was a hallucination. Yeah. But it makes the movie a lot more coherent in the sense of like, oh, there's not really good guys here, you know? There isn't really a final goal. and nobody

gets to survive because Sarah is just too like insane again the way this movie treats mental illness not great but like she's she's just like gone right she's not making it out

she sees a vision of her daughter with her fifth birthday cake the birthday she never got to have and we kind of pull back as these gooners close in and presumably rip out of shreds and then that's just the end of the movie yeah which is a better ending

in a lot of ways but it didn't test well for Americans and so they cut that out, which is... Also in the Descent Part 2, she survives. Yeah, as is Juno, in fact, in the Descent Part 2. Yeah, as is stupid. Juneau alive in part 2. Same two actors reprised their role as well, so...

I haven't read it to Descent Part 2. I looked up the summary on Wikipedia, but yeah, it picks up two days later with Sarah getting out with amnesia. Oh my God, that sounds so fucking stupid. Come out of amnesia and just get put straight back into the cave. Yeah, she had a bunch of the guys go underground. And then it turns out, also, because you have to reveal more about the gooners in part two and what their whole deal is. And that just makes them less scary.

So they have like an alpha gooner who just fucks them up. And then, yeah, Juno dies and then Sarah dies. I mean, the thing is, it's more, it's more interesting when you sort of like hint at stuff. There is an interesting thread you could unpick of this kind of terror of, again, like, American indigenity of like, it's something that like, because this movie borrows. a lot from deliverance as well, which has like a kind of similarly kind of penetrative horror of like rural white American violence. But here it's like we're kind of, you can construct these as Native Americans in the sense of the cave paintings and stuff, right? And they've just been eating conquistadors and you and your extreme sports girls are just sort of like

latter-day settler colonialists. And that's interesting to me. And I think that's a reading you can absolutely make of the film. Is it a good feminist film? I like that there's all women in the movie I do too but it feels like a bit of a gimmick in the sense that like it feels like a film and is a film in which you wrote a sort of straight horror film

as a man and then someone said why don't you make them all women and you do that and you make no other changes Oh yeah just like just like erase them he's terminus shoes I almost feel like the movie would have probably turned out worse if they tried to write women from the start

Yes certainly Yeah you know Because then they'd have a bunch of like We're all women Yes, we are We're strong and independent And it's like We would have had a bunch of like

I would have been a lot smarmy And more pleased with itself If they'd set out to do that Whereas I and also I remind you Like this is what they did with Alien Is that Ripley was originally written as a man And then they're just like fuck So Gourney Weaver did a good edition

Let her do it Yeah absolutely So I don't know I kind of like it I'd be in a movie like this It's not a bad movie You did this movie like this actually A lot of jump scares

Which kind of date it now We don't necessarily tend to make horror films in the same way and watching it sort of like, you know, years after the fact of having sort of like studied it. It's interesting how much, how different it feels and how like dated it feels as well. But like, I think, I think there's kind of useful stuff here to talk about horror in that way. There's decent film. I think it still holds up. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. It's just there's a lot of, there's a lot of sexuality and horror, you know, and there's a lot of penetration and fear of penetration

and a lot of sort of like, both sort of phallic and kind of like womb metaphors. And yeah, it's just, it's loaded for all of them. This movie isn't examining them. And it is crazy that you can do this stuff basically by accident and just replicate these things.

Yeah, I guess because I don't think the movie's really laying that stuff on thick, but also like, you know, if you're killing someone with an ice axe, that's kind of necessarily penetrative, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Unless he just bonk them with it.

You know? Yeah. Well, that's my feeling on the dissent. But are we scumming this? This is a mainline episode. This is a mainline episode. We don't normally scum our Halloween ones, though. We didn't scum Van Helsing or Sex in the city too.

No. Okay. Well, I suppose we don't have to. Well, we stick with the Cronstein rosette for that one gooner. For the one guna, the underwater gooner. And the Brian Cox Award for Studies and Intelligence. possibly awarded to four for Paul, yeah

The way Juno kills that underwater Guna by the way is by grabbing the knife that's already in it and twisting but I like miss saw and thought that she'd grabbed his nipples and twist and say how he died and unfortunately that wasn't the case I had to go back for it

but like I couldn't let the episode go by or that eventually. It's a real hazard It can happen, it can happen, yeah. I don't like the way this movie kills so many women sort of broadly unthinkingly as to establish threat

but you know whatever. I do think that Rebecca got done dirty because it's like oh man you killed her in the same scene

as someone else I'm like at least give that actor like her own death yeah she had like a big character moment

fortunately I mean most of the girls managed to get like a big character moment in except for Beth who just is yeah

big character moment is being a fucking snake on the death bed last word gossip she's so real for that final breath

fantastic you gotta kill Juno she's a bitch yeah thank you so much for listening to the podcast, happy Halloween. Happy Halloween, listeners.

Don't go into any caves. Yeah, never go in the caves. Always spread gossip with your dying breath. Absolutely. Commemorate your infidelity and the infidelity of others with you with enormous engraved jewelry. Grave jewels, yeah.

Subscribe to the Patreon. Yes, do. And we will see you next time. Bye, everyone. Hail Satan. Bye. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. The next episode, the next heist episode, in two weeks' time on the free feed will be Kruppier

with Clive Owen, a man who will be being referred to as Mark Strong probably throughout. So heads up on that front. And if that is simply too long for you to wait and you want a rip-roaring good time, then it's my bonus pick next and I'm picking judgment. at Nuremberg, because this is the kind of thing I've been watching recently, and I think that we will have an incredible time talking about it. I think that it has a lot to say. It has a lot to say.

I've never seen so clearly articulated the possibility of the Emuio Post War that we just fail to live up to. Just completely fucking fail to live up to. So if you're ready for that, head on, head on out of patreon.com slash killjay's bond, all one word and sign up today for as little as £5 a month. And special thanks, as always, to our £15 and above Patreon subscribers, and all 125 of them are Loebbeyondstere, Frere, Aloysius, Candy Fox, no name, Gustavo Lira, Helspeth Haunt. Jordan Gammy, Nick Boris, Frankenstein, Hannah Oberhardt for I Am Burdened. of glorious beard.

The scariest thing of all. A trans individual. George Rohack. Canada will remember Devin's promise to serve in any land war against the criminal American empire. Hey, Venezuela, hit me up. Drone lover, Yarek, Melody Mora Gonzalez, live free or cry. Congratulations.

Labor Delender S. The Project, Sorgonfalter, library hitman, Saiga, Kill James Bond, Highlights, Tarp O, Trip, Jack Drummond, Max Gameinhard, Germainhard, Joseph Sochay, Viniferra, Cosmic Parking Lot. Pop-napped Princess Reese will never lose her ballgag again. Wonderful. Catherine, perhaps, is all right.

Rhododendron. Athena the. Ashley. Danielle Williams, Molly, spooky slide. Claire Baker, Claire, Ann Hedonia, Globo-Homo Culture Ministry. Make Fascism History again. Tune in next week. Annie Ruby is releasing music on Halloween.

That'll be today. Folks, that'll be today. Liz Rossi, committing to the bit is too much work. Vita Braver, Staz, Arizona Frog Strangler, my best friend, Paras Social Butterfly, Science Daddy, May Victoria Roth turned in her badge and laptop, some sort of silly Canadian creature, joyous woo. Six, six sheep, sip, six ship, fuck fine, whatever, moving on.

Ray. Chris Roth, Vigson, Kekadon, Saturday's Claire, Anya Top, peniles bearing vaginoplasty, ladyhounds too, with Robert Niro in heat and I'm not apologising. Kayenne Belladonna, defiant gender disaster, gay underscore rat, crush hazard, gender swap podcast, Tim Welsh, meat popsicle, Finn Ross, Devon needs to stop being so sexy. Krista Swisher, Elite Aaron's Elite Epic Adventures in Femininity,

Daniel, Britain, Commander Freddy, April, Slut Gavin, Mortran, Envious Mby, Anya Shenanagan's, clairvoyance, rope trick, Lady Ariane, Clarification, Wolse Cod Alex, Nobles Obler Eye, Delta Echo, Victor, John 2089, Liz and Ash at the University of Florida. Isopod gal, obsidian polymer, casquatch, Sengshen, Abigail, Emily Queen of Sloths, Cassandra, Philippa is catching up with KJB? Hi, Philippa, Misidentified Lemon, Brackets, derogatory,

Carriad, Josh Simmons, Loz Bycock, Talkative Tiger, Zoe Shepherd, Witch Hazel, Turfs each shit, die alone, Al Irwing, Mistress Angela Aalus, Lauren Bastin, the Duck Whisperer, Robert Greensmith, Mega Bee, Wolfie is normal Magpie Charlotte with a D small twink energy

Merrill is not a vampire She is a hopeless lesbian Groundhog Trams guy I guess Valeria Venificia Local lesbian Bob Witch Armored underscore contempt

Tiny Lily and Sonia the moon Thank you all so much for being subscribers Kirj James Bond is as always Abigail Devon and November No Abigail November and Devon

Our producer is the wonderful Miss Neighbor Thay our podcast art is by John DeLuca, on our website is by Tom Allen, and I will see you next time. I'm going to be able to.