Sardonicast - Sardonicast 155: Aquaman 2, Black Christmas (1974/2006/2019)

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

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Three, two, one. Aquaman. That was a quote from the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial. And I'm not kidding on that one. He does say that. Wait, what? Like in the middle. Well, because they were arguing over, I don't know.

I think there was like a recording playing of Amber Heard. And they were like arguing over like what their accomplishments were or like how much money they made. And you can just hear Johnny Depp, like, I guess, drunkenly or high saying in the background or the recording, like, Aquaman. And just the way he said it has never left my mind. And so I can't think of Aquaman without thinking of Johnny Depp saying,

Aquaman. Hi, I'm Adam from your movie sucks. This is Sardana cast. I'm Alex from Rachi, and I can't figure out if it was a good or bad thing that I just put the horse blinders on, did not pay any attention to any of that trial at all. I don't know. I'm starting,

I wasn't like into it or anything. I wasn't like. It was one of those things where, you know, it was the zeitgeist. Everyone was talking about it. Every time you opened any social media, there were clips.

There was, uh, well, the tabloid stuff. It was like, but I just couldn't be asked to follow it. It made a few YouTubers, a lot of money in a very short amount of time.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oh, it's coming back to me now. So five different YouTubers or with the, five million view, Amber Hood.

Like, holy shit, yeah. Clip videos, yeah. Yeah, because people were just like, pretty much live covering the trial and they were like lawyers doing a little discussion and some streamers doing the thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it was just, it was the biggest thing for a hot minute. And it was always on the front page of YouTube no matter what settings. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What settings and has it wound up obliterating both of their careers or at least hurting?

I think so, yeah. I mean, like Johnny Depp's career, was hurt before the trial started, but then after the trial, the public perception is just so negatively against Amber Hurd as well that I think it would just be difficult to put her in a film. And I think, honestly, they probably, they probably cut her from some parts of it. Like, I don't know if she was supposed to have a bigger role in this. They definitely hit her in the trailer. That's, that is the, at the very least. 100%. That's very intentional. Yeah. But I don't know. If we're talking about the Lost Kingdom now,

the final film of the what is it even called the DCU the DCEU I think it was the DC E CPU the the DC F you the DC K you um I don't know man what there was something so funny about the 2018 Aquaman to me that it was like we didn't even know we're at the height of the superhero like zeitgeist as far as like every one of these things could be shut out and would make a billion. Aquaman being in there, that Captain Marvel, whatever it was called,

these like really middling super-era films, just like, they had this audience. And then fast forward, half a decade later. And man, here we are with Aquaman in the Lost Kingdom.

And I don't know, I was crestfallen by this. I normally, I'm energized by watching these movies and taking like all these notes and like, oh, that was like a fun thing

I can think about or ideas to swell. And I don't know, just creative ideas and stuff. And James Warnett. on is fun and all these things I was kind of hoping for these basic checklist things I just felt like I didn't get I did I barely made any notes I just was like man forget about this this was like such a far ending and yeah just nothing memorable about this nothing I'd rather

just watch that original Ackerman film before and it's not like that first film was like great or anything in fact it's actually pretty hilariously bad in a lot of ways and like totally inconsistent and very odd and just all over the place and like this weird soundtrack and just yeah a really weird film but there's something interesting and engaging about it to me like in that badness it's like the perfect level whereas this i don't know i don't know if it was just tinkled with too much if it is just the timing of it because it is like a long time yeah 2018 to 2023 and just the DC universe being so uninteresting and yeah I just thought this was a wet fart it's it's it's maybe in the worst position to even try to get released yeah you know out of out of

superhero film maybe maybe outdone by the flash but you know it James one didn't seem it didn't seem like his heart was in it first of all no it didn't really seem like he was trying that hard, I agree with you, the James 1 aspects of the first film were fun, and you could almost like see a little bit of it almost in this movie, but most of it just felt like absolutely bland, like it could have been any director, maybe he just passed the torch off to like Josh Trank, I don't know, who's looking for work these days? I don't know. Yeah, it's a, it's a weird position for them to be in when the D-C-E-C-P-U is not, alive anymore.

It got Minecrafted by James Gunn. Actually, more like by Zach Snyder. It's getting Frankenstein by James Gunn. And so, yeah, yeah, like, at the end of the flash, they're like, um, you can still see Aquaman. It's like both universes, which is the funniest thing to try and do for like this one last film, this swan song that's still on their release slate. Oh, it's, it's actually both universes.

is it's a new one and the old one. You can see it, I promise. And it's not positioned as an ending and you can tell that. There's no intentional quality to this whole universe and it's not like, this is like a bittersweet. This is, it's all been building to this and this is the ending type thing. It's more like, oh, we've already sunk enough into this and gotten through the production and we can't write this off and we thought we're going to make the money the first one did. And it's like, well, some can cost at this point. Let's just release this and see what happened. And I suppose it is doing better than the, what's it called the Marvels, the new one. It's like tracking better than that, which symbolically I'm kind of happy with.

Yeah, but I wouldn't actually be surprised if that film is better than this, to be honest. Not that I've seen it yet. We'll see about that in time. I wouldn't be expecting or anticipating that. Well, here's the big thing, though, Adam. Here's the big thing. That film is 90 minutes. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah, well, this is two hours, four minutes. The original Aquaman was actually quite long. It was like two hours, 20 minutes long. But I couldn't remember some scenes from that film. What even happens in this film? They bring the Black Manta back, and he's controlled by a staff that makes you channel an undead army kind of like Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I was going to bring up Lord of the Rings.

Yeah. This movie reminded me of a lot of other movies, just not as good as those. Yeah, has like the adventure elements. So yeah, we're in the desert now doing an Indiana Jones thing in the in the temple and we bring. No, they try to do the like family thing because bringing back the villain from the first movie. The baby. The decision I kind of like. It's kind of funny to bring that villain back.

Try and add some depth or some dynamic or humor. Like, oh man, the humor. What are they doing with this? I think it is really fitting the villain. The final frame, the final shot, the final scene. scene in the entirety of the DC EU is the villain from this film eating a cockroach and a sandwich or burger, a big greasy burger. I think that's symbolically quite nice actually. Oh, yeah.

And does summarize this entire project in like an image. Slimy, yeah, satisfying. No, but at least in the Lion King, those bugs look kind of yummy, you know? True. There's nothing yummy about this film. No. Nothing. I there was a the crab the big crab man sounded like gimley but it was actually Martin Short

there was gilley I swear he was in this film it sounded like gimley but I think you I think Martin Short played that character no I think those are two different characters two different characters but there are two giant crab characters that look similar you're right yeah yeah what the fuck is voiced by gimley oh actually by Martin short I'm serious what the fuck that they're just doing Lord of the Rings Yeah, I didn't even make the... Is it in homage? Is it in homage?

I don't know. Homage, yeah. Amelette do homage. I don't know what they're doing with this. And just, ah, one, all, everything was so, like, obligated about the film. Yeah. Like, Nicole Kidman looking crazy in there, just, like, saying her really boring lines. No one, in that first Aquaman, it felt like people were kind of having fun.

Yes. You know, like, when they were on the set, they were, they were leaning into it. They were chewing the scene. scenery hardcore, but like Willem Defoe was in there and they were, they were doing their job. Whereas here it felt like are so obligated and tired. No one's having fun. No one's really into it. No one cares about it.

There are kind of rumors about the bad state of affairs on set and whatnot and Jason Mamo and not being that into it and I can't even blame him at a certain point. No. Do your job and do what you're paid for, but I do not really even blame these half-fuss performances because there's plenty of like capable actors in here. But like what, what you, it doesn't. translate to anything fun on screen or memorable or no just the whole pacing of it too like there's no like what's the big crescendo action moment what's the big payoff like uh well amber heard

doesn't get fleshed out there's the whole like baby thing is like the new story beat i guess that yeah arthur curry and mirror have a baby because there's like a there's like an infamous aquaman comic where the baby gets killed by black mentor oh so i was like That's what they were trying to make people think maybe. So I was like, oh come what, that sounds hilarious. Like James 1 adapting that story, that could be as like funny, bad as the first Aquaman, or at least entertaining. Like trying to adapt that and having James 1 do it is like intriguing at least.

But they do nothing with it, nothing. I don't know if that's partially because of The Amber Heard drama and they felt like trapped by having. Because I think Black Manter like kills her as well or something in this original story. I'm not an Aquaman fan. I think this whole attempt at making Aquaman cool is like the funniest, lamest, just everything about it is like so hilarious and badly approached and handled. And just, yeah, the poisoning of this whole idea and how sad it is where we've gone is. It's just like boring.

I found it funny that they couldn't even let the audience believe for like a nanosecond that the baby was in any kind of danger. Because they had the part where he was like, okay, I'm going to kidnap him. and then it it it the scene logically just cuts to the house is on fire and the dad's like outside he's like oh blah blah what happened um but right before that as he's as he's coming he says out loud i'm gonna leave you alive so that he can watch you die it's like damn like you really you you could have just let us believe for at millisecond that the baby might have been dead or might have, like, we don't know what's happened to the baby, you know, that would be something

narratively you could get something out of. But they don't let you believe that. They don't let you believe that for even a millisecond. He just, he immediately says, I'm going to leave you alive so that he could watch you die. And he's like, okay, well, we would have, we would have had that found out as soon as Aquaman went up to his dad and asked what happened. Like, he would have just said, like, oh, he kidnapped the baby, right? We would have, we would have had that resolution, it's okay, you know? Like, the people in the audience that are all parents and now their brains are chemically, you know, biased to have baby brain, those people would be fine.

They would only cry for like two seconds. But unfortunately, we live in a baby supremacist society and we can see who's really in power here. We can see who we know who's in control by who you can't criticize babies. The babies. Babies are controlling our government. I mean, this has about as much complexity as a boss baby films. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, so we got Lord of the Rings. We got, I've just, I wrote down a couple notes of like just immediately this, this barrage of, of bad, uncoordinated movie editing and, and just all of this, like, immediately at the beginning. the way that the way that his dialogue was edited it felt like it was so rushed he would say he had this opening monologue like everyone's good at something want to hear something else I'm good at one thing

kicking butt and that's like that's about how closely together those lines were edited it was like it was like how I edit my YMS review videos like no space in between any of the sentences I'm like holy shit right like did you just not think about the cadence as you were filming it or it's all an afterthought or just like what what went on here to make that editing happen and make it feel so uncomfortably rushed and then

just before I even have time to think about any of that born to be wow Jesus Christ is this an illumination movie like I mean I yeah it's they've done it before in these fucking DC there were some weird music choices in the first Aquaman too to be fair was like pit-tling song or something. It's at least consistent in that way, but it just, it felt like an absolute barrage to the senses, which I was kind of into, because that's kind of what I wanted out of seeing a shit movie. But then the rest of it was just so boring. And it just, it meshed into each other and just blended into this big CG mess where all I can observe is just, oh, that looks like it costs a lot of money. But for no, no purpose emotionally. Like, no one's into

this like I see a lot of scenes where the implication is that I'm supposed to be excited but I'm just exhausted and yeah cat BF fell asleep and I didn't wake him up any other movie I would have woken them up but I'm like now you can sleep through this one you need some energy for the next movie it's somehow a sleepy barrage of senses it's a very two of my notes at different points in the movie were so sleepy with a lot of ease. That was so strange, though, because that, that 2018 movie also was a barrage of senses, but it was, I don't know, it was kind of fun.

There was some fun moments, like the moment on the boat, the more horror scene with these weird monsters, kind of chasing him down into the depths of the ocean, and this whole, like, battle scene from the end of the first movie, we have the red army going against the blue army or whatever the hell it was, like giant sharks and all this nonsense. Yeah, it's, it's cheesy. some like scenes yeah it's super cheesy super comfy yeah it's too long it's bloated as hell and

it's like a mess um and the writing's really bad and the dialogue's really bad but it was it released some moments whereas like what's what's like the moments here what are the what is the what is the main character's arc like what does he even go through uh nothing he he's a cool dude He's a bro. He's a surfer guy. And he goes, whee! All the time. That's his main character attribute is that weird squeal. They like love that squeal. Yeah. Like honestly, if they had really leaned into that, that campiness, the goofiness, and just had this villain who is, you know, he's two-dimensional, he's powered by this staff that just makes him want hyper revenge and he has the power to do it now. And then actually follow through on that idea. in like a 90 minute, like just not taking itself seriously, playful, goofy as hell. It could be fine. It could be fun even.

But they don't even do that. They can't commit to anything. It's just so, it just feels focused tested. It feels completely controlled and not like a James 1 film, really. There's no fun writing. There's nothing. You know what it reminded me of a lot? What?

Valerian. It was a very Valerian type film. Yes, I had that same thought. That's a, yeah. Thanks for reminding. me that because yeah I had that exact same thought because yeah look all these like CG monsters and all these like random environments and like the plot having no real focus and like them just doing side quests for like 15 minutes and then it just does another

side quest for 15 minutes that doesn't link to anything and it's yeah a lot of ideas that don't really get fleshed out or properly explored or a lot of concepts for scenes where it's like okay and then move on to the next one and it's like well that wasn't even that wasn't even fun but okay we're going on to the next one yeah Yeah, because honestly, that trilogy of having Aquaman, his brother, and like a CG octopus, like, exploring a desert, there's something kind of absurdly funny about that to me if they'd, like, again, leaned into it or, like, done something with it instead of it just being for 20 minutes or whatever. Remember all those, like, gadgets from Valerian? There's kind of a, they kind of do some of the same stuff in this movie, maybe to not, is an extreme of a degree. there was that he has an invisible suit remember the like tiny suit and it's like

stretched really tight and for some reason it cloaks his whole body even though it doesn't cover his face or hands but okay do they just I don't even remember if they used it in the movie did he use it and then like oh yeah he used it like as they were running away from the desert it was to like break out his brother and then it was just like a never again sort of thing yeah that was kind of like that was kind of like that was sort of the equivalent scene of that first movie with the like more horror design where these like xenomorph yeah monsters like come out of the sand and are like chasing them I say what the what is the like visual stylings or language of this universe because it just seems like completely random like in how it presents

itself uh like why are there like talking crabs and but also like sharks and big demon like it's a very strange like confusing yeah we're there. Were there like human hybrid aqua people in the first movie? I remember there being a giant crab and it's... Because the... The Gimley character references is like claw being chopped off in the first movie, I think. So I think that's supposed to be the same character. Because there's like a...

The pacing in the first movie is so nuts and it like just jumps around, like crazy. I'm pretty sure there is like a five-minute montage that like does some brief world building of like, yeah, there are the different Game of Thrones underwater families and this sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. There was that short moment where he's interrogating the like Star Wars fish guy

and he's like, oh, you could put on the helmet and fill it up with oxygen. And it's like he's drowning under water, but it's oxygen. That was an awful scene. Yeah, it's like a horrendous. I can see what you thought that idea could do on paper. And conceptually, it might be like a tiny, funny thing.

But it just was not pulled off properly. It was one of the... That's literally a spongeball gag. Oh, is it? Sandy cheeks with the... You know, like they have to wear the water bowl on their heads when they go into Sandy's house and she's got the water bowl, bare bowl, I guess, outside of it. Is SpongeBob, like, logic?

But you could see, like, you could imagine SpongeBob like running around this universe. He might as well be, honestly, in this point. It'll make it more entertaining. Yeah, it's, uh, Aquaman is this weird film even within the DC, ECPU, where the, like, was it the first one that was kind of like leaning into, I guess, the tone that we now more associate with, James Gunn? Like having a bit of color. Yeah. Like characters smiling and laughing and stuff like that's what I think that's kind of why

it stood out at the time. Is it felt like they were trying to experiment and be like, okay, maybe not everything has to be what Zach Snyder wants. Right? Yeah. I think it started all falling apart once that. The BVS stuff like it did it did well, but not as well as they hoped and they started than panicking and green lighting things like Joker, like Aquaman, like all these random, like let's just shotgun approach, see what sticks type thing. And yeah, you wind up with the bizarre film that is 2018 Aquaman.

And in that craziness, you do get some moments, but yeah, that craziness just seems so, like, filtered and forgotten now. And like, God, Dolph Lundgren, like, he's so bad in this. Everyone's so, like, flat and just doesn't care. Like, you mentioned the Martin Short voice, but, and how bad that scene is, but I don't know what it is about Martin Short, like, being typecast is just, if you need, like, if you have a weird character that's in a film for like 10 minutes, just cast Martin Short and he'll do like an annoying screaming thing, like Treasure Planet, whatever.

Just like tank the film for a little bit. I don't know what the deal is if he's got like some contract in Hollywood to be that guy, but that's like a horrendous, horrendous scene. And Randall Park as well, who, he can be funny, he can be funny. he can be fine, but he's like the moral scientist man. Yeah, he was bad actually.

He did a bad job. Yeah, completely awful. Because he's the one who like figures, he like knows the, he's the expedition dump excuse, you know, and the scientist who knows the truth of how the spear thing works. And yeah, so I can explain it to the audience type thing. That was a bad performance.

And his, and Amber Hurd stuck out the worst. Despite not having a lot of screen time, they stuck out the motion. Yeah, what does she even do? She's like, she like, it's very funny when they act, when the baby's stolen and they're all getting their like reaction shots and the baby. Yeah, they're all losing it and it makes you wonder like, was it? Were these like takes of them acting as if the baby had been killed and it's all been like messed with and like reshocs? It like the emotions like didn't match like what was happening.

It was something very like this is very strange. Like how this is jumping around and how yeah, nothing's earned. It's all just everything's too easy or convenient. You just don't care after a while. It's like yeah, you're showing me all these flashy colors and CG goobers like bouncing into each other and whatever.

But man, I just can't. Yeah, I'm with you. I just could not pay attention. It's a sleepy type film. It's a Valerian sleepy type film. Valerian was more. more engaging and memorable.

So even in that sense, like, you know, it's copying Lord of the Rings, it's copying Valerian. It's like, Valerian has more you can remember about it. We'll be talking about, we'll be comparing things to Valerian until the end of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be forgetting about Aquaman. And it just felt like James Wan,

he clearly found some enjoyment in that first Aquaman through some of that spectacle action and like the set pieces you could achieve. with this enormous budget and the freedom to just do craziness underwater and have people being held up on strings with the CG hair and all this kind of stuff and it just seems like exhausted I guess after that experience and it's like well I've kind of done it once like what can I even do now I guess yeah xenomorphs in the desert what even big spectacle is there at the end there's like these this old Atlantean technology that's a part of the movie with these like mech suit

type things which looked okay or an okay design but again they don't really do anything with them there are no there are no like strict rules or even like an attempt to flesh out like interesting rules or a dynamic that is just anything interesting beyond like surface level like kind of like that uncharted film from a few years back level of just like safe adventure film yeah forgettable forgot that ever. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like very similar sort of filmmaking in my mind. And yeah, kind of equally forgettable.

Yeah. James One, he's recently announced that he is doing his dream project, which might be a result of working on Aquaman. And he's like, eh, maybe I should do what I, with my heart's in. So he's going to be allegedly, reportedly working on a call of Cthulhu Adaptation H.P Lovecraft, which could be really cool.

Okay, if you had to do that to get that made, if you had to do this to get that made, then I can forgive it a bit more. And yeah, he can get his bag if he wants, but then... Get it. What, just...

This whole year for Super Era movies has just been something else. Yeah. I'm glad there's only one, there's only one, like, MCU movie next year. It's like, it's mostly

just Sony now who's like clinging on. Oh, the Sony ones will be funny though. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The Sony ones will hopefully be more like the first Aquaman. Yeah, or even worse potentially, like without they look. Fucking, did you see the Madame Webb trailer yet? Oh, yeah. It's so crazy.

Yeah, I actually can't wait for that. It looks so, so bad. It's just such an awful idea, like in every way. I hope they stick to their guns. I hope they don't see people's reaction to the trailer and like try and restructure or edit it down. I hope they just let it be whatever the fuck it was, whatever the fuck that is. That's what I want. I don't know if there's any fix in that, even if they wanted to. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, reshoot the whole movie. I'm just going to mention a couple

moments of note that I have in my notes here. I had the luxury of seeing it yesterday. So there's a few, there's a few things I remember about this movie. There's, uh, so right after the scientist guy is like, oh, I'm spilling the beach. scenes just immediately from behind them in the door, the explosion happens and knocks Jason Mimosa out of the window. He gets up. He's like, I hate when that happens. I'm like, that's a nod.

It's a nod to the first film, because remember, in the first film, there's like six different scenes where somebody just explodes out of a wall out of nowhere. That I liked. Oh, that's what that was nodding to. So it only happened once in this film. but as soon as he said that I'm like what does that mean? And I'm like oh yeah

that was the criticism that a lot of people had of the first movie is that like every scene ended with an explosion out of the side of the wall transition to the next scene so that was cool

the god this was so fucking weird but I had to write it down right after I think it's I don't remember exactly when this yeah right after they kidnapped the baby

Aqua Baby Um The shot ends on Jason Mimosa and he's like No And they actually do The slow-mo choppy frame rate

Because they didn't film in high frame rate I'm like This is the year 2023 I haven't seen this shit for decades I haven't seen this shit for decades I thought it was a relic I thought it was a remnant Of like what people thought

movies could do in the 90s or early 2000s, right? Like that, the last movie we talked about that did that was probably like Hypercube, right? Yeah. I remember Capote doing it a little bit.

Oh yeah, Capote. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. But it is normally a sign of like, yeah, oh, we didn't plan for this or we didn't have the tech to pull off this slow-mo shot. So let's just, oh, we need it for this kind of pacing in the edit so it matches this feeling, whatever.

But yeah, there's lots of that kind of stuff. There's a part where the whales show up and they use sonar to blow up the people in the ship. That was just that happened and then that was it. That was interesting. Was it? It was, you know, some of my notes were not because they were notable, but because I knew that they were so not notable that I would have to write it down in my notes to remember it. Just so you remember it happens.

Exactly. And so we can avoid having like the, the, What happened in this movie? And if I can just refresh our memories a little, we can remember that there were actually things that happened, kind of. Yeah, because I saw this, I saw this like a week ago. And yeah, I've got to admit it's difficult to remember nearly anything that happened in this. Yeah, one week would be just gone for my memory.

One day is already a lot. There was one shot of Aquaman, like right before the Gimli puts on his helmet. Sorry, right after Gimley puts on his helmet, and he's like, thank you, your highness. And the entire shot of Jason Momode's face was CG. So, like, the rest of the movie, they filmed their faces, and maybe they had, like, CG hair or whatever. But the entirety of him was CG, and it was really noticeable. It was, like, one of those, like, chronoble flat, the flash shots, maybe not as bad, but still,

like, damn, like, did you forget to film him, or why did you, why was his entire? your face CG. That was interesting. There is something rushed about it, yeah. Very. And the Flash definitely would have been a funnier ending than this. The Flash should have been the last movie. Honestly. This feels like the...

Go out with a bang. Yeah. Just take the loss on Blue Beetle. Take the loss on this. Just like, his tacks right often. Yeah. Go out with becoming death destroyer of worlds. Yeah. It's so embarrassing, this whole project.

Damn. And they really didn't, like, even the, like, post-credits was just like, hmm, cockroach a burger. Like, that's what they decided. That's the full stop. If they were going to pretend like this was like, oh, you can watch this movie too. It's actually in both universes.

They should have reshot a post-credits thing that got some people hyped for whatever James Gunn thing is supposed to come out, right? Yeah, yeah. It seems like they just gave up. It seems like they're like, nah, that was actually a lie. We tricked you and we're just never going to acknowledge this ever again. Yeah.

Like, that's honestly what it seems like. And while the film, before the film was even out, they're like, Jason Mammao was on the pity tours. Like, yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to be Aquaman again. Basically just being like, yeah, he sucks. He sucks. What hope did it even have? Like, the lead doesn't care. Like, at least when the, uh, the, uh,

what's his face? Tom Holland like when he's in something bad he'd be like yeah at least I like tried like this is a nah no

who cares next yeah and uh with that I agree next I'm giving this one a fucking two out of ten

what more do we say but keep rambling on and fuck this movie fuck it yeah fuck this movie one and a half star from me just generous

expect expect better from you James Swan need more from you you know jame swan song of the d c p you um yeah aquaman and the last script lost memory yeah and the last franchise and the last plan i'd be happy if we just never see this character adapted into a film like ever again i don't think we will i think i think in like 20 years from now maybe like oh superhuman movies are coming back they'll do like the whole like in the flash they had uh nick cage superman they'll do that with jay we'll get another jason mimosa aquaman in that in that type of capacity probably we'll we'll have him like AI generated or something

maybe uh how was your crimbus it was lovely busy i got like an enormous family so it gets pretty But it's nice, yeah, it's like a nice family recharge, can catch up with everyone, see everyone, yeah. It was nice. What about you? It was very interesting. We did an early Christmas. Well, my parents are like driving in their motorhome across the States being retired. And they wanted to do Christmas in L.A., so we met them, me and my brother, his wife, and my BF, and we did an early Christmas because my BF needed to be back home to see his family. And then I think my brother and his wife wanted to see like his wife's family. And so we just did like a Christmas not on Christmas. Oh, how was it early? I've never done that.

I mean, it's the exact same. Like, I don't. Yeah, it's just like a social rule. It's the exact same except stores are open if you need. need something. Yeah. There's no, you don't need to do it. Sounds very good to be honest, yeah. Yeah.

If your, if your schedules don't require the holiday, like, federally off, then do it whenever the fuck you want. It doesn't matter. But I got back to Atlanta, which is where I'm visiting right now. And I have a friend who lives in Vancouver. Oh, the one that gave you super weed, LW. Oh man. Yeah, I got no memory of that, man. Of course. And so his family was doing, his family's in Atlanta. And so he was doing Christmas

here. And so I was invited for a Christmas Eve and a Christmas day thing. And it's a big Italian family. And so that was kind of a new experience for me. They cook a fucking 20 pizzas at least. They had like all this pre-made things of dough. They have a wood fire oven in their backyard. There was like so much shit. They had like brisket. They had like brisket. They had like brisket. They had like, they had lobster mac and cheese. They had fucking, like, it was insane how much food there was, and it was constantly being cooked throughout the entire night. And, uh, damn, it was a very fulfilling experience.

That sounds great. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. They were cool people. His sister looks exactly like Mary Elizabeth Winstead. not exactly but close so it was kind of funny because I watched all the Black Christmas movies the day after that all three the whole trilogy

Speaking of Crembus Mama Mia we watched Black Christmas Black Christmas the tale of the lost sequels very interesting trilogy that we decided to do

because we decided to cover the original film and the two remakes because I always think that it's kind of interesting to compare the original films and remakes. Some of my most popular videos on my channel are just me being like, okay, what did this movie do right? What did this movie do wrong? How did they miss the, how did they misunderstand the assignment? Yeah, it helps you appreciate the original more too. Exactly. Recognize what it did right. Yeah. So Black Christmas is a 1974 film. It's Canadian. It is directed by Bob Clark, who also did a Christmas story and Porkies and baby geniuses. And the baby geniuses.

Of course. Thank you for, you have to include that one. So very interesting filmography. This is considered by many to be the first slasher, but like it really depends on how you define it because, you know, supposedly this is inspired by, like the Italian groups of films called like Gialon. Fuck, I was, I should have this next to me. I always mispronounce it. But things like Dario Argento films like Susperia and, you know, like kind of like murder mystery, women dying, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, like psycho, any of these? Yeah, kind of. Is Psycho considered one of those? See, I'm confused as to whether or not they need to explicitly be Italian films. It's not full slasher, but also I feel like talking about what a slasher is in 2023 is different to... Very different. What that would have meant back in the day. And 74 is obviously the year this came out, and that is pretty a lot of the most famous ones, like Halloween or whatever.

Yes. Yeah, I guess this is the first one to be, specifically is thought to be the one with the featuring the killer's point of view like in the plinket style like actually showing that perspective is like one of the new innovations of this movie

did you did you call it the plinket style yeah I was like I was thinking about the the plinket thing I'm like oh it must have been inspired by this year that's kind of funny yeah it is it is kind of plinket style straight up yeah

because I remember like Yeah, watching that review and being like, this is fun, like they've clearly got a camera attached in and seeing both arms of the character doing stuff. Where in my VHS? Yeah, yeah. And with them being like a serial killer, well, like a character. True.

Hurt and people and all this horror kind of inspiration that's in those reviews. I was thinking about that from. So Black Christmas inspired Halloween and the Planket reviews and nothing else. It would be surprised. honestly I mean it yeah now that you mention it I'm like oh yeah that is very similar but you know it's the what black Christmas what it seems like has happened and I haven't watched every movie ever of all time so I'm just you know basing this off a few different things well I've first of all I've never finished a movie but second I haven't watched every movie I haven't even started every

movie what it seems like is is that this film has at the very least inspired a lot and can be essentially considered to be responsible for a lot of the tropes and a lot of the familiar aspects of mostly slasher films that we see today. And honestly, I was pretty surprised at how mature this film was because when I think slasher films, and if I go and think like, oh yeah, the first slasher, or some people consider it to be like at least inspiring a lot of slasher films. I would expect it to be kind of immature and kind of, yeah, that's much more what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting it to be as psychological as it is, you know, embracing that bottle movie fear of there's something in this space with you. There's someone, an intruder in the house, and it keeps it simple. It doesn't like over-explain anything.

It's just a simple premise, kind of executed to like a really high standard. This was quite surprising to me. Yeah, because I was expecting something a lot more campy, a lot more goofy. But yeah, I found, like, especially after watching these three, there was a lot to be gained, a lot to be appreciated by the approach of this movie. And especially, I wasn't really frightened by much of it for the first half or so. But it was actually steering into territory. It was like, oh, that was like a memorably frightening image you just put in there with like some creepy. the way you frame this and the like using shadows to and uh silhouettes and it's just creepy motion

and creepy images and like never never truly revealing uh the card the full hand and especially where it ends there there is something creepy and deserved and earned about that like atmosphere it builds up and yeah there's some really good like technique in there for building up the horror and playing the sound and this kind of stuff yeah the imagery is really memorable in this film and especially in combination with the sound design, which I thought was overall fantastic. There's maybe like a couple things where it's like, okay, you got to like blame the time period maybe that it was made. Yeah, yeah, you get over that in the first 15 minutes or so. But yeah, all things considered. The choices

for how sound is used in each scene and not just things as simple as like, oh yeah, the killer's making like scary noises in the phone and like you know you can kind of hear your phone static or blah blah blah blah and he sounds weird but also what is the background noise in that scene you know in that first phone call it's like christmas choirs and i love that juxtaposition and it seems it seems a lot more sinister than if you were to just play like stock scary music or like ooh like you're supposed to be scared by this i like that there's a level of confusion i like that there's a level of, you know, just genuine atmosphere to this film. I like that you can hear I'm like breathing behind the camera in the POV shots. There's a lot of really great choices that, you know,

I don't know how far we can trace back these types of choices, but just work incredibly well for the feelings and emotions that they're trying to express in this film. I was pretty pleasantly surprised by it. I wasn't expecting to like it this much. No, yeah, I'm right there with you, because as a rule, in the horror genre, slasher films, they're not really my favorite. In fact, a lot of the time I kind of purposefully ignore them

unless they're like really well reviewed or regarded or whatnot. Like, I like Halloween. I think there's a lot of tension and good stuff in there, but broadly, it's just not usually my thing, because I just feel like I do usually prefer the more psychological angle, the more just more going on than just that kind of simplicity. There's normally some figure, whether it be like a big monster or a thing, some supernatural thing that is chasing a group of people and it's, I guess, the hook is kind of who's going to survive,

are they going to survive, yada, yada, yada, this group getting smaller as it goes along. But yeah, as I say with the psychological element, I feel like that, that focus kind of elevates it. for me and there is there is like a real growing tension throughout the film and I I start getting more engaged specifically when it started leaning more into the kind of procedural detective aspect as well I just was not expecting for it to go in that direction and to kind of treat itself while it's definitely doing a lot of humor or attempts at humor some of which I think are firmly rooted in like 70s sense of humor or stylings of humor like the uh The older woman character.

Miss Mac. Miss Mac. Yeah. MVP. Finding hiding bottles in every room and whatnot. And that's like her recurring gap. Love it. Yeah, she was fun.

It's a little bit more, straight up more goofy and going for that humorous side. But it does treat itself with, like, credence and respect. And when it comes down to it and when the drama hits the row, it takes itself seriously. There is like the whole, like, abortion subplot and that argument. And the whole kind of big question mark, the looming, who done it nature of it of like, oh, so who actually is doing this? Yeah. The way that's wrapped up is quite satisfying as well. Because it's like I feel like it's wrapped up in the creepiest possible way.

Yeah. Spoiler discussion, everybody. I forgot to mention, but, you know. Yeah, yeah. You've heard this podcast before unless you haven't. But yeah, spoiler discussion for everything. And while some of the mechanics of how they do build up to that ending. have me scratched my head, I feel like, yeah, they leaned into that rule of cool imagery thing

sometimes, which I feel like is justified if it is as kind of poignant as, I think the whole imagery of the girl kind of strapped to that rocking chair with the plastic wrap around her face, and you can see like her eyes through it is like quite a, quite a cool image to center it all around and keep returning to and then ultimately end on and have that. that kind of miserable open and open ending where you don't get a clear conclusion and it's left open. That is the correct choice at the end.

Makes it much scarier because I was saying throughout the whole thing with the person I was watching to like that the red herring is clearly the Peter character, the Kea Della, how do you say his name? Kea Dalia, the guy from 2001. Yeah.

He's the boyfriend character. He's got a very recognizable face that fellow, but he, yeah, he was kind of a fun character. And yeah, he's more the red herring. And he's like, as that fun scene where he smashes up the piano and he's just kind of acting weird and suspicious. And yeah, I kind of like that side of it too. Yeah, you can tell that he's got some like disturbing things going on in his mind. Yeah. That you're wondering, like, could that be a sign?

Could that be, could that lead to him being more disturbing? it was him type thing. Like, they could, they, they really couldn't have had him be it because it would have, I don't know, it would have taken a layer away from the film. Well, I do like that they were actually, I don't know, because there was that moment where she's like, well, it couldn't have been because he was with me. But I guess like, yeah, the calls are coming from inside the house. I was a bit confused about that.

I don't know if it's possible to call yourself from your own house in a landline. I don't know if that's possible. Yeah. I was like, did he install a second line? Yeah, I don't know if that was. implication because there was like a phone line at the top I don't know if they were saying I don't know what they were saying with that because he hacked it now I don't know if it's just the three of these movies blending together but was it was it establishing this one

that like this this guy lived there before or was that one of the other movies that was one of the other that was that was that was that was the 2006 sequel where we got the lore of that okay okay so this one this one was more this is the one where yeah and he's kept it's kept it's kind not sequel remake and it's it's it's so vague and they never really reveal anything, right? That's kind of this movie's approach. Like they don't. And that is the correct approach.

Yeah. For this type of character, it's not, it's immediately, that tension's immediately dissipated when the context of why this, this man is just in this house. Like, why is there? Why is he killing? The question of why is kind of the scary part and leaving it unanswered keeps it scary. So it's kind of as simple as that. Like, just keep it simple as stupid.

And that's what they did. And the complexity comes more from how you unravel that story, how you present it, how you, how you scare the audience, how you build up the tension. And yeah, I was like, I got the shivered down my spine with that shot of the, the eye through the gap in the door. That's like, yeah, that's a great shot. I've had some, like intrusive, like, fever dreams that are kind of like that kind of thing. And it's like, people in my house, people in my space. I hate that kind of imagery. and that commitment to never fully showing him too.

Like you see, you think you see him. You see this kind of like blonde guy with the long hair skulking around and you'd get like a couple frames here and there. But it's never, you never get like a comfortable look at whoever the guy is. And I think that, yeah, that's a, that's a good approach. That's the perfect horror approach always talking about what you want to see. Yeah, it almost, it almost leaves room for like a supernatural explanation or at least interpretation. Yeah, that's the joy. That's the joy of leaving it open.

Yeah. It doesn't babadook itself. It's like, yeah, at the halfway point, they show it, and then it kind of diffuses all the tension. True. Just to maintain it throughout the whole thing. We should keep using that. It doesn't babadook itself. Yeah.

This plinket type film. Well, yeah. I mean, I think that you kind of have to give a bit of room in your mind for like a supernatural interpretation, considering the multiple voices on the phone that are happening simultaneously. And like, I don't know. I guess you could maybe, you know, maybe that one call wasn't from in the house and maybe someone else's house. But like, I think I, there has to be at least, I don't know, in my mind, like ghosts or

like demons or some weird unholy thing happening here that isn't just purely like a murder and that's it. I feel like it works both ways too, which is another strength. Yeah. Like you can. I think you can just interpret it as just say it's just some someone who's lost their mind, someone who's, they have something that's going on and not knowing what is happening and the randomness of it, the fact there is no obvious link.

It's not like, I don't know, it's not like a tragic link where it's revealed in the third act that it was an ex-boyfriend who, you know, all this kind of. stuff or whatever it's it's just a mystery it's just a killer that they don't know about and it's tense because you as an audience member know he's sneaking around because you get to watch him do it you get to see him climbing up the side of the house you get to see him creepily watching them from the stairs and all this kind of stuff yeah that is scary like trying to watch these and it's fun watching these characters trying to figure out what is going on and like how they can get out of it and yeah how they can escape the situation um but that that

The main thing that was kind of making that whole tension sometimes fall through to me, and it's what made me not fully love the movie was, yeah, this kind of commitment to the rule of cool type storytelling, where there's just no point where I'm not asking the question once the cops are involved, and the main character has all been like, the story has been told in some degree, and they know that there's someone in the house. Why did they not search the house? They could have resolved some issues by looking in the attic. I think that maybe now, nowadays we're so much more familiar with like what officers would probably do.

I think the number one thing they do is search the house. I think that's the first thing they do in the missing person, right? Yeah. And I kept thinking about how in something like Hellraiser where there is this space that keeps being return to where there is like the supernatural element how that wasn't a bother in that movie and it felt a lot more natural and did feel earned in the way it was like structured the characters and the way they were interacting with the kind of main horror element I feel like that's a better example of how to pull that off but overall there was more I liked with that than that kind

of caveat of the end we got to be like yeah it's kind of silly they didn't do that but I guess like in the real I don't know Jeffrey Dahmer story the cops are incompetent and let all sorts of stuff go on. You're right. You could, I suppose you could write it off in certain ways. Yeah. That is an unfortunate thing to think about. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Maybe some cops are just kind of shit. And these things happen because they're bad. Yeah, yeah. That Jeffrey does, yeah, fucking literally just lets him go away with his victim. Yeah, it's disturbing. You're probably gay, whatever. Yeah

Look that up Everybody It's very bizarre This came out the same year As Texas Chainsaw Massacre Which is also very highly influential Which is kind of interesting In quite different ways

They're like subtle in different ways Yeah But they're both experts at creating atmosphere And using Yeah like a Unique spin on a On a certain setting or space Because I don't know

is there the whole like sorority like frat culture in Canada is that specifically an American thing I don't know yeah I don't know if this was supposed to be set in Canada I know it's a Canadian film but like there's when as soon as we're like you know we got the search party

and vigilantes are running around outside with shotguns knocking on people's door I'm like this doesn't seem very Canadian at one point they're playing hockey that's about it like I don't where is this set Where is this set? I don't know. So, I mean, like, the frats and sororities, I think they do exist somewhere maybe in Ontario. I'm not sure.

There's like campuses, like university campuses, people. Yeah, well, there are campuses here, but there's more this whole subculture that I've never been able to understand of like the hazing and the sorority houses and the frat houses and like the structure of it and how it like works. I'm a little bit confused by. But all three of these movies are set in a sorority house, or at least have it as the main place the action happens. And yeah, that was another reason when you recommended the film when I was reading the synopsis and being like, maybe this is going to be a bit kind of more, I don't know, goofy or,

you know, so many films or the settings that take place in the frat house or the sorority, you know, they have a certain... True. It comes with certain checkmarks that you'd imagine seeing, but it doesn't really ever feel like that in this one anyway. You get a bit more of the expected stuff in the sequel or the other ones. It's kind of frustrating just because the entire cultural conversation around horror movies at this point, slasher movies. You know, what do people think about? We think of like schlock.

and so much of it really is. Yeah. So much it really fucking is. Even if you look at films that are like considered to be like, oh, this is like a classic. Like Friday of the 13th, nowhere near mature is this film. Not even close. Not even in the same, it shouldn't even be the same genre to me, you know? And so there is this weird stigma that comes from horror movies, admittedly because a lot of horror movies are really bad.

Yeah. Most probably. It seems that, you know, people have kind of missed the point, in my opinion, where now it's just like, okay, over-glorified gore, you know, sexualized, weird. It's almost like pornography in a way, you know, like, and that can't be fun if it's self-aware about what it is, and it's just like, you know, fuck, we're doing it. Like, we both enjoyed the new Saw movie. That movie knows what it is to an extent.

And it's fun to watch ironically and unironically. The fucking terrifier movies. You know, anytime they try to do story, it's terrible. But the fucking, the gore and the practical effect, like, that's some insane. Practical effects work. That's some insane. Like, if you know what you're going into the movie for and you can appreciate certain elements of filmmaking, you know, like the effects work, the effects work is. very much a part of the filmmaking.

And Damien Leone is very talented at that. So there's nothing wrong with that, enjoying it for that. But, like, I just hate how most horror movies seem to be really fucking campy, schlucky, uh, nonsense. And, uh, I don't know, you can argue like A24 is changing that a bit, uh, or at least the people, the directors that are being distributed by A24, but. Yeah, they just got lazy. with it it's a because another thing with horror movies is that that keeps them popular is the fact that

this they're fairly cheap to make compared to a lot of other yeah big scope kind of projects and that's why you do see your blum houses and whatnot making just these awful horror films because you can just take the risk and spend five million dollars on black Christmas 2019 and probably even make money back to be honest um so yeah the the bar is just so low and the we've had just so many bad examples and yeah it's just kind of like a tired genre in a lot of ways like yeah with these Halloween remakes with just anything like released after the cabin in the woods and like these let these like meta stories that like are making fun of and scream even is like that's the whole point is like commentary on the genre and taking the tropes and spinning them on their head and trying to

find other angles to approach the slasher genre because Yeah, you're right. It's pretty tired at this point. Like, what was the... Bodies, Bodies, Bodies was quite good. But again, it's like a satire. It's got a lot of different stuff that's playing. It's a bit more clever.

Like, and that kind of thing's a lot more rare, I feel like. Yeah, it's... Doing something new is a lot more rare in any genre. But even Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which, like, I really love, feels a lot less mature. in many points of it than Black Christmas in terms of what type of movie they're going for

like how they present it you know like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre there's that that like shot of the cabin but it's also like a butt shot just yeah there's the first half of Texas Chainsaw Massacre

almost feels like you know kind of a shitty movie in many respects some of the acting and just like how it's shot and blah, blah, blah, blah. And Texas Chainsaw really very much redeems itself in the second half by being just so balls to the wall intense and just like unrelenting and like, holy shit, her performance is so great. And like, just everything just magically comes together. The entire second half of that movie is just incredible and saves the whole thing for me. And I might even like Texas Chainsaw more than Black Christmas.

But Black Christmas is a film where it's more consistent. throughout? Like it doesn't, I don't feel like, oh, yeah, this half's shit and this half's better. It's like a consistent piece of filmmaking where it builds upon itself. And sure, like, the stakes get higher and you might get more interested at certain points. But it's a very, you know, you're not noticing like different levels of quality throughout the entire film in chunks. No, no, no. It seems so much more mature and more well-relipped. realized and like they knew what they were filming before they started filming yeah and meticulous too because there's too much there's too much kind of coordination there's something more like in texas chainsaw

it almost feels a bit more improvisational yeah how they're like stumbling into these environments whereas like the there's so much intention to a lot of like the the camera work the different styles of uh presentation where yeah you are you are you are seeing the lead killers like POV, like literally from his perspective, you're seeing all the creepy, like, there's that great shot where the camera just kind of glides through the hallways going back to the entrance to the loft. And there's, yeah, there's clearly just a lot of planning, intention, storyboarding that's gone down to achieve a lot of the imagery and memorable visuals they were going for, and it definitely paid off because, yeah, that's the mark of.

a good horror movie to me. You need that atmosphere and you need the imagery to pay off in some way and kind of strike you in ways you weren't anticipating or at least get under your skin. I did feel uneasy and it felt like the characters were, while they weren't

always acting in the smartest kind of way, like there were often reasons for it, but you know, like they were all sorority girls, they're often drinking in a lot of scenes. It gives them, I don't know, it gives, it gives the story a level of believability, I guess.

Yeah. The characters feel like they're kind of real people, which is a problem that gets more accentuated, the more these films go on. Yeah, they weren't like all super fucking annoying people that I wanted to die immediately, which is what I'm now remembering about Texas chainsaw massacre is just how a fucking annoying everybody was at the beginning.

I'm like, you should die. Yeah, you should die. You know, just thinking of that in my head and like, yeah. Like, I think that horror. works better when you're scared of someone dying, not when you're anticipating and just waiting for them. Like, oh, I hope this guy gets killed. You know, that's such a common trope nowadays. When the fuck did that start of like, oh, yeah, we're going to take all these characters and make them assholes so that you feel good when they die because they deserve it or something. Like,

that seems to be horror movies approach. Yeah. That only works for me if there's like a satire angle. It's a huge trove. Commentary that like justifies it. Yeah. But, Yeah, you're right. Most of the time it is just, well, we've got nothing else going on. So just we're not even going to, we're not even going to attempt to make you care about these characters because it's a lot easier just to. It's better when you care. It's better when you care because then you don't want them to die. And then it's like, what's the intended emotion? Do you want me to feel horrified?

Because if the genre horror wants me to feel horrified, I think that's a good thing. We need to be able to project yourself onto at least like one character, at least one perspective where you can kind of, yeah, insert yourself. into a scary scene and be there with the character otherwise like if you're sat there just thinking oh i would never do that i would i've never known anyone to behave this way and it just feels like i'm watching a movie then you can't engage with the horror so yeah that's quite an essential element yeah this black black christmas is a little i would say it's like closer to hitchcock than like texas chainsaw massacre or whatever it's it doesn't it's not yeah it's not presenting itself as if it is lower class or whatever like one of these things that's the

throw away, like happy death day or something on that kind of level, you know, really sensible, very mature choices in this film. Everything comes together in a clear, consistent way. I was very impressed by it. I think pacing could probably be a little bit better. There were some slow parts, but maybe I'll find it a bit more atmospheric on a second watch rather than slow at certain parts, because there is just, there's a lot that sticks with you about this movie.

I will be thinking about it. I won't immediately be forgetting about it. Like, uh, fucking Aquaman and the lost memory. Oh, yeah. I'd forget what we'd even spoken about that.

Exactly. What did we do today? Yeah. Um, there is, I, I have to admit, you say that there is like a level of believability and like,

yeah, they're drinking or whatever. It's like, it's not just that, you know, she goes upstairs after, without a real plan. just a fire poker.

Like, sure, that's dumb. That's the dumbest choice for a view. I don't eat. Even in this, you know, if we're imagining that the police officers are the same in the, what was it, Ted Bundy or whoever, I don't remember the guy's name. Even if we imagine those are the same police officers, they're not going to fucking leave her in bed alone. Like, she should be in a hospital, first of all.

Second, they're not going to leave her like that. Like they're going to have somebody watching over her. Like they haven't even interrogated her yet. They're like, oh, she'll be fine when to you like that. Like, that just seemed entirely unreasonable. So, again, like, I guess maybe I can excuse that as being like, okay, this isn't a real narrative. This is like a just a nightmare logic sort of thing. I don't know if the film is that self-aware.

I think that maybe just dumb things happen in horror movies sometimes. but um damn and the way the way that it kind of started even was the one guy what what i wrote this down oh yeah he's in shock i'm like where were you the whole fucking like we've seen you once before you didn't see any action you didn't see he's in shock just by like looking at a girl sleeping after a traumatic event he's then they're all like we got to help this guy and then maybe they get him to a hospital and not her like that that was weird but maybe actually now that i come to think about it. We could also interpret it in kind of a feminist angle of like, oh yeah, the men just leave her alone with like an abusive thing in the house. Because, you know, we had the abortion conversation.

We have the controlling boyfriend conversation. This is a very feminist movie. And also, uh, I spoke about horror movies being sexualized. This is the least, this is the least, like, exploitative, sexualized horror movie involving all women, like maybe ever. Which is even crazier considering it was the 70s, you know, that it's 74. Yeah. It's not quite what you'd expect. Oh, yeah. An abortion would have been like a much more touchy conversation then, I assume.

Well, yeah. Well, even going back to the, uh, those scary phone calls, some of the language that is in there would have been quite cutting edge quite, quite out there for 74. And I got those, they were scary and effective. Like I thought the performance on those, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, for those phone calls. And whoever they achieved that was quite like intense. It is scary, scary audio and well-made audio. Yeah.

When I heard that, I was immediately thinking about like, there's no way that you could even attempt to recreate this. Just knowing that there's two remakes, I'm like, you can't do this. This is the ideal version of this. I know this already. You can't do this better. The 70s nature also makes it like creepy. Exactly.

The 70s setting, the analogue horror nature of that, it's just so much scarier than the internet being involved with phones being involved. Any of that at play does, yeah, just inherently hurt some of the setting. I'm getting scary texts. Yeah, we'll get on to that. All right, yeah, why don't we move on? Because unless you have more to say about it, we can talk more about this in the discussion of the other ones anyway. Yeah, I'm sure it will come up as we talk about the other two, but yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by this. I was, yeah, surprised by its tact, it's reservation. It's, uh, I don't know, it seemed to actually care about the atmosphere and trying to frighten you or create something unnerving and creepy and it never, like,

blows its load too early or messes around too much. I, yeah, I quite enjoyed this. This would be a, if not for that kind of goofy way they got to that ending sequence, uh, might even be higher. than a three and a half star seven out of ten but for now everything in mind being that budget that runtime the 74 setting how kind of progressive it is for that and where it stands in the history of slashes so yeah this is really solid and surprising you know what i'm going to bump mine up to a seven it was a it was a hovering around uh high six low seven i'm like yeah fuck it let's do it it's got enough going on yeah yeah i mean you know there's enough about it that like you know, after watching it, what, two days ago?

Two days ago. You know, there's things that stick with me more than Aquaman that I watched one day ago. Yeah, yeah. I can kind of tell, you know, watching this. You know, there's things that I will remember about this in the future, and I will rewatch it. It's a movie that I'll definitely revisit. There's a 4K Blu-ray. Why don't I fucking get that?

I think I put it on my wish list. I'll buy it later. Yeah, 7 out of 10. It's a shockingly good horror movie and just makes me upset at what horror movies are. If this is where we start, this and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is like start point. Everybody's like, whoa, we can get inspired so much. And then make a bunch of shit, a bunch of bullshit. I thought it was funny.

Last episode when you mentioned, well, last recording, you mentioned you wanted to recommend Black Christmas or whatever. And I mistakenly thought you were recommending like some Black Splutation movie or something. This is the name. And apparently that was like a fear that some of the distributors had for the movie too. Oh, weird. It's more of like a play on, yeah, white Christmas, obviously Black Christmas. Okay. Or maybe.

Yeah. Because I thought, so the original title was not Black Christmas. It was originally titled Silent Night Evil Night in the United States and then retitled Stranger in the House on television screenings, which is very odd. So I guess maybe the Canadian screenings, they retain the Black Christmas. I don't know. It just says in the United States it was different. So I, yeah, that is funny to think about it.

I do like that name. Yeah, I do. It is a good name. Something I forgot to mention about LW's family. There was there were two Vinnie's and at least one of them was his cousin. He actually had him. He literally said, this is my cousin Vinny. And then I didn't say anything.

But I was thinking it. That was cool. Oh, man. They did the hand thing, even the ones that like, Like, his sister doesn't even sound that Italian, but, like, they were kind of having, like, fun little family arguments, and they were still doing the, doing the hand thing. Yeah. When I went to Italy a few months ago, like, the hand thing is just everywhere. Yeah.

Because, oh, it's just, yeah, straight real. It rocks. That hand thing. It's so expressive. Black Christmas. 2006. Oh. I have a history with this movie.

Oh, you do? Yeah, I do. So is this the only one of the three you'd already seen? Yes, but it doesn't matter because I didn't remember anything about it. Yeah, yeah. So it was like I was experiencing it for the first time again. So I think I was 16 years old, is my best guess. Yeah.

And I rated it a 1 out of 10 on IMB in like, what, 2007? And all I remember about it, I think I tried watching it more than one. I think it was one of those like I was just discovering how unwatchable and bad a movie could be. Yeah. And, you know, had that maybe self-doubt of like, maybe I just got to watch it again. Or like, maybe I was like tired or something. And then just, yeah, I don't know if I finished it on both. I think I remember I tried more than once.

I don't know if I actually finished it on either attempt. I think I tried skipping around on the DVD to see like when Mary Elizabeth Winstead dies. because I was like, well, she was in final diss, in Agent 3. And I think I remember not finding that part and giving up. Because now watching the movie, we don't even know if she died, really. That could have been someone else's blood. This was so much more what I was expecting from that original movie. So it's like everything, everything, it's like all the inverse decisions.

How could you expect anything like this? What do you mean? This is like, how do you, you say more of what you're expecting. This is, this is like a very uniquely bad film. This is like, this is not even in the like, oh, it's a horror movie. Like, oh, it's so tropey. Like, this isn't even just bad Friday the 13th sequel. This is like incompetent levels of incompetency.

Oh, it's definitely incompetent. But I just mean more the like just bad slasher, you know? Like you just, you turn on the TV at like two in the morning in the, in the and this is the kind of thing that's going to be on there on like just yeah some garbage horror channel or whatever um that's more what i mean by it but i wasn't i don't know it's it is extremely bad but i wasn't mad i was kind of entertained by a lot of this this dumbass film um i yeah i wasn't bored it's like so short an hour and 20 minutes long it messes the whole thing up but i don't know it's it's kind of funny to me uh just i

much they did fumble that back. It was fascinating. I wish that that fascination was consistent throughout the entire film because I was definitely bored in the middle chunk. I wish I could have been entertained the entire. Yeah, yeah, I get that, but it was more the, and the inverse nature of from that 70s one where there is something so reserved about it and a lot of the, like, violence is a bit more obscured or implied or just a bit smarter. It's a complete opposite. This is like complete schlock, you know, like you see all the silly gore, like, I guess, spoilers, but like, you know, falling on like Christmas, being impaled on Christmas trees and all this, like, ridiculous stuff that you're seeing. It's a complete, up inverse approach. And yeah,

never has any tension, never has any, anything you actually want from a good horror film. But there was, there was some kind of interesting stuff there to me, like the, it's just like a weird project for this guy, the director, Glenn Moore. Morgan, who if you look up, he's like, he like wrote that, the X files, like a bunch of episodes. And he has some stuff on that. It's like, oh, so it's not like you were just handed this for no reason. It didn't wind up working out, but there's something there. Like he wrote the screenplay for the first final destination, which is a pretty fun horror film.

Some good stuff in there. But yeah, the time gap too. as well, like from 74 to 2006. It's a multiple generations of past. It's a completely different style. And yeah, the whole genre is completely different. And it's way more just, yeah, but this is the bargain bucket type thing. This is what would be in the dollar bucket of like, oh, those horror movies, you know.

The Walmart films. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find it, I find it interesting that there were. no sequels for like 30 years. Yeah, that is weird for there to be three remakes of one film from the 70s and them never to have considered to do a sequel. Because it's not like that first movie wasn't a financial success. In fact, that was part of it, that it was made on the shoestring budget and actually managed

to make a fair amount of money like five times its budget or so, which is, yeah, in any instance, you'd consider a success. So why they just left it. I'm not sure. I guess it was because it was the 70s and the whole grinding out sequels thing just wasn't expected or anticipated in the exact same kind of way, you know? I mean, we saw how many sequels existed for Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was like fucking like five of them or some shit. Yeah, what's the difference there then?

Why does Texas Chene? Is it just because it's much more popular and there's a figurehead? That was another thing of the reservation of the Black Christmas, like the main villain. Because you never see him and he stays obscured. That means there's not something that can be put on a poster or sold in a shop, like a mask or an image to encapsulate it. We want to see more leatherface. Exactly, yeah. So they can't really do that in the same war.

And that's one of the kind of trappings that falls into in 2006 version where it's like, you know, in the Texas chainsaw sequels where they try to flesh out the backstory and give the perspective of the villain in some way. explain how he is the way he is and there are multiple flashback scenes in the 2006 Black Christmas going into the the Billy character who is yeah they they basically diffuse and uh all of the the tension of the the mystery from that first movie of like oh who is it like what is this who or what is this person like in the house like living in the walls it's billy it's billy like it opens like in a in an asylum and it's like oh this is the guy right here. It's never a question.

It's like, no, this is him. He tries to break out of here every Christmas. We're going to let him this time. He does it so stupid. Oh, yeah.

I'm going to leave the door wide open and get on my hands and knees. Well, this guy that tries to break out of here every Christmas is, he doesn't even react to like him getting stabbed. He looks like, well, you got me. He doesn't even react like he looks like he's going to die.

He looks like just kind of pissed. Yeah. And then the other thing I mentioned in the 70s version that, like the crux of that tension being, you are aware as an audience member that there is something in the house that the main characters don't know. Whereas in this version, all the characters in the house know who Billy is. And they're like, oh, Billy lived here. He's home. And it's like, oh, see, you know he's around? So this really is just a standard, like, guy escaped from the insane.

in asylum and it's killing people. Although, it's not... There's a line where I got really confused because they say, but they can't be Billy. Billy's dead. I'm like, why would they think he's dead? Is it not like public information that he's in the...

That's never expanded on. Yeah, why did that... Why was that line there? What did they mean by that? Yeah, I have no clue. What? Apparently there are a bunch of like reshoots

and the director and the Weinsteins could not agree on a tone or I guess a story. So that might be the remnant of something. You never know. Like, I don't know exactly which parts of the movie are Glenn Morgan and which parts are just reshoot Glenn Morgan. But it seemed to be like a production hell kind of thing. I look at this film and I'm not sure I can, you know, Chris Stuckman thinks that this is like a doesn't deserve the hate thing and he gives Glenn Morgan a lot of like leeway and you know he he seems to be of the mind where it's like oh yeah like probably all the bad stuff is from Harvey Weinstein I don't know if I can give this movie that much leeway uh it seems like it's

it's pretty fucking rotten to the core um yeah it seems it seems unsalvageable like I sure there's like there's a split diopter shot you know there's some low angles but even as I'm watching the film, I'm like, okay, there is cinematography here, but how is it motivated, right? Like, but for what purpose is the cinematography different in this movie? For what purpose, right? And I could never find any kind of, like, good answer. It was just like, oh, here's a low angle. Like, okay.

Yeah, and it's like the hyperfixation almost on the eye shot from the first film. And like, yeah, let's just do that. but now let's do it 20 times. Oh yeah. Let's just keep doing it again, again, again. For a peep hole the size of a fucking thumbtack puncture. Yeah, yeah. How are you going to see shit?

How are you going to see shit out of that? That doesn't make any sense. That was the only thing I kind of liked was the goofiness of, uh, I don't know, this guy just like living in the walls. Oh, yeah. Taking that to the next level. He's actually just like crawling through the walls and like making little peep holes and all this kind of stuff. That's kind of a funny way to expand it.

And of course the twist of there being multiple killers this time. So there's the two people crawling around the house. And there was, there's a moment where the character is trapped in the walls and she's screaming for help. And they're kind of like trying to get down to her where it's like thinking, that's kind of a cool idea. Man, if this could have just been, I don't know, rewritten, re. If these ideas could have been focused in a different way.

There could have been something cool here, something interesting. Yeah. It can't commit to like a tone to the story it wants to tell. They completely remove the procedural element that was in that 70s version. And it is more of like, yeah, let's flesh out Billy for some reason. Like why? So they can show off more gore, I guess. So he can watch his father get beaten to death with a hammer.

And you can like see all the goo and the gunge and the, he's pulling out people's eyes and eating them. And it's just focus on the eyes. It's like they thought it would be disturbing. in of itself if like he came from a John Disd family and everyone's yellow and there was incest and it's like oh such a disturbing backstory it's like I don't know I guess like it was inspired by other movies like the Texas chainsaw or something like oh the family is so fucked up it's such a bad family it's like it doesn't really add anything I don't care it just seems like padding it's like oh just

get back to these people. And what I found to be particularly frustrating about this movie is like, there's a lot of horror movies where I'm like, just get on with it. Just kill them, right? Just kill them. Just show me the deaths. In this one,

I found myself almost thinking that, but then remembering none of the deaths are fun. So I don't even know if I want to see the deaths. I just want the movie to end. Like none of the deaths are fun. They're not like cool or interesting. Like one of them was kind of gory. You didn't like any of it.

Yeah, there were a couple of moments that that was really the only thing that was keeping me going was like when there was a death scene and they did something so like silly or ridiculous or over the top or campy like when the Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the car like exploding into blood and then the like which part of her exploding. Getting impaled. What happened? Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. Did she spontaneously do that or was the killer somewhere else? Did that just happen to her? Is that with like what JFK's head or whatever? They would do just that cliche where I would.

guess he was hiding in the back seat or something. But we never see it. It doesn't make any sense. We don't even know if it was her blood. We don't even know if she died. Yeah, maybe that was just him like vomiting blood on the screen. That was like a squirrel. Who knows?

Who ate too many, uh, mentos and Coke? But then that scene ending with the, the icicle falling down. Oh, yeah. She just died incidentally. Yeah. Like, she, that wasn't even, the killer didn't even kill her. And then like, I don't know. She just had a,

an unrelated accident. Yeah, that's, that's like hilarious. And the whole, there's this ongoing thing where he has this obsession with eyes, Billy, and he's like pulling out people's eyes. And there are a few fun shots of him doing that, like popping someone's eye out. Like the first victim is quite like a brutal scene where it's like the equivalent kill from the poster of the 70s one. Are you sure that's not the second?

Oh yeah, you might be right. Because they did two in a row of the fucking bag over the head. And the second one, they pulled, there were eye holes cut already. And he just put it on her perfectly. There were a few moments where eyes come out and there's like the full cartoon like thing, like popping out, which was funny to me. And then the quote unquote kind of payoff at the end where in the attic equivalent space there's like a Christmas tree of like eyes hung on it and all this kind of silliness.

That was kind of funny to me and then falling on the tree at the end and being impaled. So this is so stupid and making the meat cookies it's like so over the top and ridiculous. Oh yeah, it's like those things aren't that sharp. That was kind of entertaining. What the hell? You can just use a knife. Like what the fuck?

What did you do? Yeah. So many bizarre, bad decisions. It just feels like nothing about it could have possibly come together in any way. All of the acting is atrocious. none of the characters do anything interesting they're not defined in any particular way

one of them is just like oh I'm drinking and that's it we don't know why she's drinking did ever explain that is she like stressed out about something or she just like the worst alcoholic ever just she drinks her like she's gonna kill herself before the killer even gets her right she's like halfway to alcohol poisoning before the killer even shows up

yeah I figured that was them just trying to do the the Margot Kidder character the original. Mrs. Mac or whatever. Like, oh, there's one person loves alcohol. It's like, well, okay, well, it was funny in the original. It didn't take away from anything in the original, despite it being funny. In this one, it's just confusing.

Like, oh, why is she doing this? Okay, I guess she's throwing up. Like, is this, she's not a likable character. She's not a, you know, endearing character. She's just another random hot girl, which seemed to be the entire casting of this movie was just hot girls. It was like I was watching fucking Saw 6 or some shit, right? Like, and then,

and then like, I don't know, for you to call this black Christmas ostensibly, they watched the first movie, right? Like, was there a point to the,

that this being so sexualized also? Like, it's not inherently wrong for things to be sexualized, you know, I'm not like one of those, you know,

anti-sex people, obviously. Mm-hmm. But it just seems weird in a movie that was already, you know, from the get-go, the first film, a pretty uniquely feminist, non-sexualized horror movie. It feels weird for all of a sudden every casting choice to be like, okay, looks over acting, first of all.

And then a fucking pervy shot, like, ooh, he's not only hiding underneath the tiles, but he's getting a good look of that ass. Are those the Harvey Weinstein reshoots? Is that, like, I don't know. Do we blame him for that? You never know. It's just the film takes much more enjoyment in like the kills and the excess of that and like yeah Yeah, yeah, there's something there's something weirdly sexual about the whole You know like killing girls in a violent

Gratuitous way because it's always hot girls, right and so I'm like, oh, we're gonna like pop you We're gonna pop you and get all the blood and we're gonna make a squishy noise Yeah, and again though like some other thing the seven one gets right is there is the threat of these kind of concepts like the stuff that is being said over the phone it's it's going to these places and it is creepy but it's also left to the imagination is the difference you're not you're not really seeing these things when they actually play out because when they do play out in the 2006 version it's it's just goofy as hell or it does feel like more exploitative or yeah more just standard cliche horror you know like yeah of course

you have the hot girls being taken out one by one and yeah, there's this underlying kind of sexual element to it all. Yeah. What I found interesting about the first movie is, you know, there's points where we have to imagine that he's not inside the house. You know, did he kill the child? We don't know. He definitely, it seems like he probably killed the police officer in the car outside. Whereas this movie is just, no, he's like in the walls.

He just likes being in the walls. Um, and yeah, that's right. mentioning that child killing. Yeah. That's just another example of the reserve nature of that earlier movie, just being willing to be like, yeah, it stays scary by leaving it open, by leaving the question. We don't know who killed the child. Answers enough.

Was it related? You understand what's going on. But yeah, was it related? Was it what was going on? And it gives like a good excuse for why there's a paranoia in the town and why people want to be locked up in their house and not leave. Um, yeah. The least structurally intact house of all time in this 2006 film.

Yeah. People, people are just like fucking throwing themselves through walls. And he's like, popping out the tiles from underneath. There's no glue holding those tiles together. They just, they just come up like they're just coins on the floor. You know, he just pop. That was kind of a, that was a moment I did kind of like was the, the pin being pushed out from that's weird.

inside it. That was weird. Yeah. That was like, oh, this is kind of like weird and freaky, but... He's everywhere. He's everywhere in your walls. Yeah. And it has just like stupid stuff like the... What's he called? Was it Billy? Billy. Yeah, Billy.

Billy. Um, he like lifts the the grown man by his head with like a bin bag towards the end and it locks him in the loft and kills him. And it's just like, this is so goofy. even the sound effects are goofy like I didn't mention it in the 70s one but there's I'm sure you've heard it before this

that just that that door sound effect that like every film uses yeah the 70s one and the 2006 one like multiple times they just kept hearing that goddamn door something like the door hinge that's definitely like a me thing but can't not hear it now

I didn't hear it in the 70s one but I definitely heard one in the 2006 one it's like what is there there only is there only one recording of a door hinge like ever or something? I guess so. Well, it's a thing where it's like if nobody notices it, people will just keep using it. Yeah, yeah. You know, they already have a license for it.

You don't have to pay a folie artist. It's just in the, it's, that's what stock sounds are. Yeah. It's for that. Like VHSs and DVDs, I guess, you couldn't have the option to like rewatch things a million, million, million times and like overanalyze every single sound and frame. Yeah, we can now, so I get it from that perspective, but yeah, just the sound is just such a downgrade from that. Oh, hell yeah.

Just the sound design in this film is just fucking atrocious. The mixing, I kept having to adjust my volume. I hate that. Yeah, that was bad. Everybody hates that. Stop doing that. Nobody likes that. Like, oh, it's going to be scarier because it's louder at this point.

louder is equal scarier so we have to make the rest of the movie quiet so that you turn up the volume and then it's loud blah blah blah blah blah also sound design choices I mentioned in the 70s film the choice to have

the Christmas choir music being played the first phone call in this film they play the stock well not technically stock but just low quality badly composed might as well be stock

horror, scary music of like, oh, like, droning, kind of like, oh, you can tell in the background, it's supposed to be scary. You're supposed to be scared right now. It's creepy and sinister. Right. They do that. They ruin the effect or anything that could be coming out of that phone scene, just absolutely ruined in post.

And another thing they ruined in post twice in this movie, they have that snow globe with the chime music, the whatever, I don't know, it's nutcracker theme, whatever. They have some Christmasy kind of like chime being played. And the noise is like beckoning another character into the attic. They hear it in the attic. They're like, what is that? And they follow the music. But they can't just play the music in this film.

They have this urge to also play scary music score underneath. So you have two songs playing at once. You can't like, like, if you just removed that, that extra score of like, mm-na-da-mm-mm. If you removed that, it would be so much more. But they rob us of any potential experience. They rob us. They won't even let us begin to think that something is scary or atmospheric.

No, you can't tell what's in the environment of this place. Like even looking back to the 70s film, the music that I'm praising that for in that scene, that was dietic. Like that was music being played in their house. Like, that's cool. It brings us into what the environment must have been like for those characters. and it makes it feel more real and grounded. But in this 2006 film, it's like, no, it's a movie.

Let's remind you that it's a movie. We won't even let you hear what the character's hearing. We're going to play this other shit over top. I also liked in the 70s one how the boyfriend character was a piano player. And there was like an ongoing kind of creepy use of piano notes. And there was something I read about the composer using like a, that's a technique I think like Hans Zimmer used in the Dark Knight score by putting like blades or something weird on piano-wise or guitar-wise.

You can just get these unsettling weird noises, and they do that a bunch in the 70s one. And there's really nothing, there's nothing like that in the sequels at all. They're not interested in the audio-visual experience. Like the 2006 one, all it cares about is the killing hot babes thing. I guess that's kind of it. That's the main crux.

Hell yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. Them hot babes are gonna die And I'm gonna jerk to it I guess like is that what I'm supposed to feel? I'm I don't know And more of yeah it's way more goofy like the whole When that character in an unowned way is like Merry Christmas

motherfucker and like kind of a hero type thing I was like what? What that's your first off it's like a lame bad line And then it just it's not even the the end of the That like crescendo that action sequence like it just keeps going So oh like why did you why do you why do you? you put it there that whole thing with the morgue was really really oh that was hilarious that was maybe the best part it's so so goofy by that point like you've seen it all at that by that stage

in the story like there's nothing really dumber you could even imagine them pulling out of the hat but they go there like the two the two killers in the body bags and they're just like alive and no one notice like no one they survived they both survived both killers in the body bags yeah and then they just start climbing in the walls again like it's just so stupid they're little gremlins

yeah they're little trolls and I guess it was supposed to be a twist that there's like two killers like oh that's scary yeah that was the like yeah that's what was up this movie sleeve to this time yeah I forgot to mention about the soundtrack a lot of it was like really obviously

just like keyboard soundtrack like not real or orchestra like like shitty fucking sampled tuba and trombone and like god like the soundtrack for this film was just absolutely fucking just uh oh stinky um and i also should mention about the weird the it's maybe the worst edited film of like the decade i don't know like there's no there's no it's like partially editing and then partially also just like the cinematography and the storyboarding and like the intent from the director, because he filmed so many shots. It's one of those just like, we'll figure out in post sort of shoots, where there's no patience for anything,

and it's constantly cutting between different things with no room to breathe. And the mature nature of the original 70s film, it allowed you to get into the atmosphere. It allowed you to get scared because it was, was atmospheric and slow and and you feel what's in the environment you feel what's happening in that that universe this it's just constantly like cut cut cut cut this is a movie music music cut cut cut cut fake trombone bamp brown brown wow hot girl hot girl stupid thing like it's just it's it's an absolute bombardment of terrible filmmaking and just a terrible structure of like the entire

the entire project coming together is just so fucking unsalvigable. And it's like nobody knew what they were making. Nobody had an intent. And just like you were mentioning with like some of these other slasher horror movies of like, you know, did they have an idea of what they wanted to do on set before they filmed it? I don't know. I don't know.

I was asking myself whether or not this was supposed to be scary at different points in the movie. I'm like, is this supposed to be partially a comedy? I don't see the genre listed there. I don't see it listed on IMDB or Wiki. Yeah. I don't see any of it.

Comedy, that seemed more like a kind of pathetic attempt to balance like that original movie to have like the comedic elements to have, like, they saw the original was like, oh, that's something we have to get in there. It's like some earnest attempts at comedy. And it just completely falls flat. Yeah. The places they choose to put their focus on are very strange. Like they really felt the need to justify in the script.

a lot more and try to explain why the characters are trapped in the house as well. It's like, that's really a concern in the first movie. There's a storm. And the phones are out and nothing's working. All this kind of stuff. It's like, oh, so this is the cliche stuff. Because of the storm. Yeah, exactly.

The storm is affecting everybody really badly right now. Yeah, every fucking, there's like a million Chekhov's moments in this film. And they're all used within like seconds of them appearing. Like literally the opening, the opening fucking sequence, the opening death, I'm like, oh, it's kind of interesting that they showed a close shot of her setting down the pen. I wonder what the pen is going to be used for very quickly. Oh, she gets stabbed in the head by a pen, right? Yeah.

Like, it's just constantly just setting things up very explicitly and obviously only to be set up, which is just dumb filmmaking. It's just dumb. Like, stop doing that. Yeah. They do, they do like a whole emphasis on the fire. Prada as well. Like it's like the

the camera lingers on it. It's like oh, that's definitely going to be in someone's eye. Pay attention for this later in the film. You're a child. It's essentially what they're saying. Yeah, the structural integrity of the house, everything felt like it was made out of paper machine,

including every character's head. They kind of just exploded spontaneously. Like, I don't know what that. What is this trying to be? I'm genuinely confused if it's like trying to be a comedy or not. And I shouldn't be so confused as to what emotion that a film is trying to make me feel. That sucks. When I don't even understand the intent.

And it's not like, I don't know, it's got a $9 million budget this one. Ouch. Quite a difference from that 70s one for a start. and made 21 million worldwide. So it's not quite five times the budget this time, but I guess enough to justify another remake a decade later. This does not seem like a $9 million budget movie to me. Probably all gone to those actors for the most part

because I don't really see it in the film otherwise. Yeah. Maybe some gorse stuff. It's just, yeah, I don't know what the fuck. This is just absolute fucking garbage. And apparently I was correct about this at the age of 16. My opinion has not changed. My rating has not changed.

It is a one. It is a one out of ten. You cannot get much worse than this for making a film. If the goal of this movie was to make a movie, they did a pretty fucking bad job. This doesn't really resemble movies. Let alone a horror movie. This really reminds me of the the cube trilogy discussion. Yeah.

We're like, yeah, Hypercube following up and just just doing everything inversely wrong. But I guess where I differ is I just find when it goes this wrong to just be a bit more memorable. And especially before I knew, I don't know, the 2019 one kind of just changes things for me. So I'd put it slightly higher than you. This would either be an extremely low two star or four. four out of ten or a one and a half star three out of ten um wow yeah very generous there's at least some things i can remember about it there's some imagery a couple of fun goal moments so like yeah i liked this more than like fnaf or some of the recent like blumouts are like i'm serious yeah i was

more entertained but uh because there's it's just like that middling level so many horror films gonna be where I just man I was bored by the time it was like at the morgue but I think I I don't know it's so short this is so it's so nothingy I uh at least it wasn't two hours you're right at least it wasn't two hours um yeah the fuck the blueprint was there you'd had the same title and then like what what did you what did you get out of the first movie if this is what your interpretation is. If this is you improving it even, if this is you thinking,

oh, I'm going to do it different and here's why. And that's what's weird. It's like, it's not like it is as famous as a text at chainsaw or a Halloween or whatever. It's not like the name recognition alone. It's like going to get butts and see. So why did you even call it Black Christmas?

Why did you do that? You could have just made something else. Like, it might as well be. Yeah. The phone call starts so late in the movie. we got like maybe one POV shot from the killer and that was 28 minutes through the movie it wasn't it wasn't anything

it just immediately cut away it was nothing what were they doing? What were they trying to do? I don't fucking know movies a piece of shit garbage absolute garbage deserves all the hate and more one out of ten all right now it's time to talk about black Christmas yes finally

2009 um this time fuck this film fuck this film this time it's political I hate this film I hate this film man

great I was I was let me hear it oh my god that that first act I was like if not for the podcast I would have turned it off I was like so

wow really I was getting it was it was it was pissing me off it was making it was because you hate women yes okay the end just end the epitome.

No, because it is crazy. I guess I'll start with, there's a piece of trivia on the 70s one that is screenshot that kind of just summarizes the whole thing and adds to the ultimate irony of this with this. A strict rule that Clark, the director, had set for himself

of the original one, sorry, when it came to writing the female characters was to never objectify them sexually or give them nude scenes. He wanted the college girls to come off as real people and not disposable horror characters waiting to die. Whereas like when the characters were dying in the 2019 version, I was cheering. I hate these people.

They're all very obnoxious. They are obnoxious. They are unlikable. They are all over the place. They don't feel like real people. It's the thing that's been coming up more and more again recently where just every character feels like the writer and it's just, there's no subtlety. If there's one word to summarize that 74 version, it is subtle. It is like reserved.

Yes. That is not what this movie is. Like, when I got to the end and then, like, looked at the listing on IMDB, and it was like, oh, my God, what? It was PG-13 as well. Yeah. It's a literal, it's a slasher film. It's a slasher. They love doing that.

It's a slasher film without the slashing. There's no slashing in the film. True. There's no gore in the film. Nobody got slashed, really. If the 2006 one was confused as far as, like, what it was trying to say and what it was trying to communicate, what the hell is this one trying to do? because, yeah, you made the political joke and yeah, you could say the 70s one was political,

but it was like, the 70s one is a feminist film. It's a feminist film. It's a really good feminist film. It's a feminist horror movie. This one is like, what do we, what do we fucking call this? Like, detached from reality tumbler fucking, like, pretend white feminism, like, never experienced a bad day in her life privileged version of feminism movie. It reminded me. fucking not understanding what reality is at all. Yeah. It reminded me of that 13 reasons-wise style of writing where it's not about characters. It's not about a story.

It's not about a plot. It's about starting with like a list of like talking points almost and just structuring it around that. Nothing else. This film doesn't care about the fact that it's a horror film. It's not interested in the horror. It's not interested in the tension. It's not interested in the atmosphere. None of the things that make horror good does this film care about.

So then you ask yourself, so what is it trying to do? Is it trying to be like a satire? Is it trying to do like a scream type thing and critique these ideas or deconstruct it in some way? No. It's not doing that either. Like what is it doing? It's trying to be this like commentary on the frat culture and this essay stuff. Yeah, she thinks she's Jordan Peel or some shit.

Yeah, yeah. She thinks she's Chantelle Ackerman. And then when you read that it feels like a like a Jason Blum like guilt trip movie. Like he was guilt tripped into making this. Because there was something about him, like, he made some statement about how there was some, some drama about there were no, there were no female directors in the Blumhouse staple of movies. Oh. Oh, God. And he made some clumsy, he made a clumsy statement about it.

And then shortly after chose the director of this movie to. That's fucking hilarious. And write it. So it's like, even the motivation from the beginning is messed up. Like, you didn't care about this being linked to the original one at all. No. Doesn't need to have the same deal. It's more like hot fuzz than it is Black Christmas. Yeah, it is.

It's, it's, there's nothing that links it to that original. And it's even more inept to me than the 2006 one with what it does. Like, what, what is anything that this film gets right? Because, you know, even in 2006 one, there were like moments I was listing off. They were like little bits of gore here and there or parts where it was so, so bad that it was kind of funny. When does that happen here? I thought this movie was very funny. I thought this was so bad that it was kind of funny.

I enjoyed it very much for that, actually. I also, here I'll give you this. This movie had a little bit more room to breathe and wasn't as ADHD-ly edited. You know? This movie... But it was boring. Well, it was annoying.

I would say it was more annoying than boring. We have a little bit of the opposite reactions here. This is another hypercube situation, actually. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Because I was annoyed by this, but I was very engaged with how annoyed I was at it. And I found it very funny. And I was like, okay, this is like a character study of a director, right? It's like a Neil Breen type film where I'm like, I'm learning about the person that made this by watching their big piece of shit. And it's fucking fascinating.

You think like, you know, there's the trope, as you mentioned, of like, unlikable characters in horror films. what makes this one stand out is that it's from the perspective of the director who seemingly thinks that these are like good people who seemingly thinks the characters are not annoying. Right? In every other fucking movie where it's like annoying characters are supposed to die,

the director knows that they're annoying. The writer knows that they're annoying. They're setting them up to be annoying so that you feel like you feel like, oh, hell yeah, they're finally dead. Like terrible people. The perspective of this film doesn't know that they're terrible people. Right? Which I find very fast.

It's so wacky about that. It's like you're in a fucking bubble. You're in an absolute bubble. Completely. You don't know what the real world is. Yeah, 100%. Like there's no part where you're with these characters or they even feel like characters. It feels like, oh man, it is like 13 reasons why.

Very much. I thought of, it's nowhere near on this level, but like promising young woman or something like this. That's a lot better than this. but it's a better kind of deconstruction of those kind of ideas. But man, it's not like we don't have examples of like good take downs or at least discussions or explorations of stuff like council culture in tar or succession. You have the essay stuff that's in The Boys or the more satirical angle of something like I mentioned earlier,

Bodies, Bodies, and that whole commentary. and having the more contemporary angle than modernizing something and bringing it into a contemporary setting. Whereas this, I guess we can talk about the like texting calling thing now. That's like an angle of it. That's where it starts instead of the scary calls. It's more like texts. I got a scary text.

Scary text. Oh, I got scary text too. Great. That's fun. That's frightening for the audience. Yeah. That's visceral. especially considering the starting point the 1970s film this makes it so much worse yeah

like oh is that what they're trying to do is this the obligatory like oh we got a scary phone call but it's like but i just it's 2019 I feel like where it kind of where it kind of crosses the line for me is that is that main character in her arc and like what I feel like they unintentionally wind up saying with the way they try to explore it because like she is a, I guess a victim of SA. And the culprit was like a frat boy. And there's this whole dynamic of her like trying to empower herself and take some kind of agency back in this situation.

But the way it's like kind of explored and talked about with this like main friend group and especially like one or two main characters where they basically kind of boil it down to you didn't fight hard enough and you've just got to fight hard fight harder. Let's boil down this complex stuff into an army of boys

running at an army of girls and they have a big fight scene in a hall dressed like wizards. Yeah, because they're a secret society and they actually just want to control all women and the ones who are not subservient they kill.

And that's the commentary. and it is all men because if you say if you say it's not all men did you just not all men me? Did you just not all men me? As she's like aggressively pushing him out the door as he's like not even doing anything

and it's like what Jesus is this a protagonist like what kind of fucked up lens do you do you view this through like this is a crazy person who made this movie. Yeah, it's crazy that she doesn't understand. It's like what are you trying to say lack of empathy in your attempt to try and be like ahead of the curve and I guess progressive it's almost like the opposite in a way and it winds up kind of being like the inverse and kind of like

genuinely kind of offensive in ways yeah um yeah I was really quite I was really struggling for that first part until I was like I really might have to turn this off this is like pissing me off so much Like I'm so just frustrated by by everything to do with this thinking this was a good idea how they're how they're approaching the subject matter. No. Just the lack of subtlety, you know, it's it's just so fucking obvious. Yeah, but it's the most preaching. Man. That's all it is.

It's preachy as unlikable and it could have been satirical, but they like chose not to. Like, did they think they're being funny and like they were hoping for more of a like, as they're saying the like snarky preachy lines that people will be like yeah hell yeah like the audience would be cheering it in that regard but it's like you know how in um uh oh man why am i blanking on its name the the barbie no not barby the fuck sorry damien chazelle uh sound of freedom um oh that's what i was trying to get at sound of freedom Yeah, no, I was trying to remember Sound of Freedom because, like, it's almost like a weird inverse version of that film.

Oh, yeah. A complete opposite way. Oh, yeah. I actually mentioned this in my fucking watchalong, reading some of the reviews for this. Oh, yeah, because some of the reviews were like literally just like, oh, yeah, we get to see them smash the patriarchy. And then one of the other reviews is like, this is a well justified thing that women have been angry about for so long.

And it's like, okay, did you? are you rating the movie or are you rating like based on your political fucking team? Because you were the exact same fucking person as all the people that are promoting Santa Freedom going like, it's the movie that liberals don't want you to see because they're all pedophiles. Like it's you're just the same fucking shit. Just be a real fucking human being for once. Stop being an NPC.

Think for yourselves. Jesus Christ. It's so annoying. It's like the horseshoe thing. It is a horseshoe thing. It really is. It's not equivalent Is in like oh both sides are the same amount of bad in the same ways and have the same political power right?

There's some nuance to this conversation But I just wish that people were less tribalistic and I wish that people were actually being fair and open and honest and self-critical and You know all of these things that we think we try to be at least It's just fucking Obnoxious and brain rot and you're just giving people ammo you're giving people ammo when you do this Like if this movie came out 2015 people would be like, this is why Trump won. This is one of those things where it's just like,

it makes the average person who can be swayed by just how annoying or prominent someone is being on a particular side, it makes them not like that side more. There are people that are in the middle somewhere that are just like they will go whichever direction the wind is turning, right? And in 2015, we did see a lot of like equivalencies of this movie. but, you know, across social media and in political discourse, et cetera, that really turn people off, you know, and you could blame this type of thing for Trump getting elected, even though, you know, obviously this movie came out in 2019. But it breathes the same energy. It is exactly the same type of wrong and the same type of stupid and just like, my God, you shouldn't be having these conversations because you're not capable of having them in any sort of intelligent, substantive way. Remember we were talking about about dry grasses and something that Nuri Bilgid Jeylon

probably got the name right. Something that he does in his film so well is that he'll have characters arguing with each other and he explores different perspectives and it doesn't just feel like the writer arguing with himself because he understands whatever other side of the argument there is. You can't even tell which one he's on. You can't even tell which side he's on because it's the characters talking about these things. It's the characters having these arguments. In this film, it's so fucking.

obvious what the perspective of the writer is, and that every single character is the writer, and you get scenes like the way that they justify their secret society, it's like, well, we were so scared of being called out for rape that we had to silence women. It's like, you don't even, like, have a little bit of nuance. Have, like, just show us that you understand what reality is. Show us that you understand what empathy is. Show us that you understand what the conversation even is instead of this weird, like nonsense bubble of the whitest fucking feminism,

imagine the whitest upon whitest of feminism that you pretend isn't because you threw a black character in it. And that's it. It's like comical. Go fuck yourself. And it undercuts itself at every corner as well. Like when it finally towards the end explains and has the whole dump about the kind of fantasy elements and the haunted bust and this kind of stuff. It's like, oh my God, you're actually, you're actually going there. Like, we talked about the, well, in the 70s version where we both kind of had slightly different interpretations where I was taking a bit more matter of fact like it was just like a crazy person and you were interpreting more as sort of a fantasy nightmare scenario type thing, whether it's not literal. But this is like, it's like preteen, goofy, like, it's like twilight or something. It's like so.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so, it's so, it's, it was actually like jaw dropping. It was, I like have my head and my hands for so much of this film. And then like when they actually start dying and it's all like edited and obscured to specifically hide the violence and cut around it. And it's like, what is the point of this film? Like what, even, even the mystery element of this like cult angle, sure, that's something you could

do, right? That's something you could explore. That's the twist of this movie that there's there's not just two killers now. It's a whole cult of killers who are, I guess, killing people on Christmas for some reason, killing sorority girls on Christmas. But they ruined that early in the film with the main character like stumbling across a creepy hazing ritual. And it's like, well, there goes any mystery or surprise with what is, like, you can guess every single element. And when the guy from Saw like turns out to be the head of the cult, it's like,

Oh, wow. What a surprise that was. The really suspicious guy from earlier who you saw in the, it's just like so, so lazy. Like, did they write this in, in a day? Damn. Like what? Did Twitter write this? And honestly, the only, the only element that in hindsight is kind of interesting

and, like, prophetic is more the, the importance of that bust thing. And, like, there's the whole, they want to take down the bust because it's like the bust of someone who is, represent something bad and this was before the riots in 2020 where that became like a huge thing and that was like the only time I was like oh like there you go it did kind of predict something or have some kind of commentary that like lines up with reality I guess I don't know that was like the only thing to me that was like oh this weird that that happened but I mean

there was that conversation still happening pretty prominently before 2020 but I think in American political discourse. Yeah, it's very, what's funny is I'm not even, I'm not the type to necessarily even just like dislike a movie because of its perspective. I think you can show me the exact same perspective. Like you could have someone who's like, who has this exact same worldview and just make a better movie. You could just you could just have the kind of. commentary in the film in a way where it doesn't feel like it replaced the film, right? It's the

difference between a Pepsi product placement in a David Fincher film versus the Pepsi product placement in World War Z, right? Is it something that's there that you can be like, oh, okay, that's cool, that's in the, whatever, like, that's in the movie, and you notice that it's in the movie, and you can have different interpretations of why it's in the movie, or did you stop the movie just to give us your lecture on how we should buy Pepsi? Right. That's essentially what this is. And damn, there was another movie that you haven't seen yet that will hopefully be able to talk about next episode. Not going to spoil anything for you.

But there are very prominent feminist messages in that film. And, you know, it's not, I'm not going to say anything about it. But I'm reminded of that I know that there's examples of ways that things can be done right. and not even necessarily have that drastically different of a perspective than this film. It's the way in which these ideas are presented. And just the absolute childishness that you can tell goes into how they thought about these ideas. It's definitely childish. That's a great way to refer to it as because, I mean, yeah, what you're saying is true.

But if you talk about a film like Get Out, like Titain, it is communication. It is communicating these similar kind of progressive ideas, but it's still a good movie. It has scenes. It has characters. It has, yeah, it's a film. Whereas I just don't see any element outside of that kind of like empty commentary. Yeah. Present.

That's all it has. It's, it's, it's, we have Jordan Peel at home. It's, we have, we have Barbie at home, right? It's just, it's, it's absolutely fucking. useless. And some of these scenes really pissed me off, especially when all that's left is just the commentary. It's like you're watching somebody's vlog, right? So they say things in the movie like men get away with everything. They say that, they say that earlier and then both characters agree, men do get away with everything. And then they have later in the film, I can't, we can't

go to the police because what are we going to tell them if we were in a physical altercation? they'll just believe the man. It's like, what fucking reality? I'm sorry. Like, there's tons of substantive, legitimate, feminist commentary, right? In reality,

there's unique struggles that women have that men don't have to deal with. There's struggles on, you know, both genders, and there are conversations that can be had about those types of struggles. But you cannot pretend,

like cops show up to a physical alter, and they just take the man's side and like prisons just oh you know overwhelmingly filled with women right yeah like this is this this is not even an opinion this is like an empirically measured thing this is the same crime right different gender we know for a fucking fact men get sent to prison more often we know for a fucking fact if there's a physical altercation chances are statistically you know the men gets locked up and they believe the woman's side of it you know, if you have like physical evidence or bruises or anything, right? This is this is a factually measured thing.

This isn't a theoretical thing. This is, are you acknowledging reality? And she's not. And she's, she's put it in her film as though it is fact. And that's all there is to the film. And that's the entire movie. Yeah. It's just her commentary.

And it's, it's baby's interpretation of, of gender commentary. It's baby's interpretation of gender, any kind of feminist critical theory, right? You're not saying anything interesting. You're showing us that you're a child. You're showing us that you have literally a child's understanding of the universe and that you shouldn't be anywhere near a script. Jesus. Or I was thinking about, I recently saw Jennifer's body for the first time. Still happened.

It was kind of, it was kind of does what this movie was like trying to do. to actually some success because like it has interesting dialogue it's like that quippy dialogue it has a bit more of like a comedic slant it like knows what it's trying to be whereas like the the mere fact is just not interested in anything to do with the genre that it's in just destroys it from moment one like it has no chance like oh yeah who is this for who is it for yeah and the foundation is just so flimsy what can you build on top of it Nothing. Nothing. There is nothing. It's actually crazy this film. Like, it's crazy that even got made to me. Yeah. It's, it's shockingly bad. This is, this is, uh, your explanation

of Jason Blum producing this makes a lot of sense now. It does really feel like a, uh, just toss them a bone sort of like, you know, I guess I'll find this one. Yeah. And because like he's the one in power. Like the only way you can do anything about the criticism. because to actually do something because he's the one holding the money and the power and he green lights this uh five million dollars just wasted yeah just throwing to the trash and burn like three uh two people two people writing the script as well like if they spent more than a day on this i'd be i'd be shocked and honestly offended like i honestly can't i can't i can't

I can't even really find the words to like justify how mad this made me how just, it's just lazy. That's what gets me the most. It's just lazy. Like you got nothing to say. You're not interested in like any conversation to be had around these subject matters or anything unique or man, it's saying nothing. It's self-fulfilling. It's self-fulfilling.

But it presents itself as if it is like saying something. It's saying something important. It's saying something that needs to be said where it's like, well. Oh, yeah. Not really. It's not really, it's not original. It's not a unique, like, deconstructive spin on that original one in any way. It's not modernizing the concepts of the original. It's not got any unique angle. In fact, it's the most, it's as, like, embarrassing as an equivalent as, like, these weird reactionary, like, daily wire, like, westerns and things or, like, weird. I saw an advert for a new, like, animated show where they're releasing that's just like, you know, all the jokes are about like woke people and all the stuff you'd exactly expect. It's just the exact inverse of that.

Yeah. Children. Just children pretending to do political commentary. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's condescending in that way. Yeah. It's fascinating.

I would buy this movie on 4K Blu-ray if it existed. This is a funny movie. Really? It's a funny movie to me. It's up there. It's a very, um, I just, I laugh, I laugh at the Avengers Assemble scene, women. It's great. That scene literally happens in the boys.

Like they are making fun of it in this exact way. It's crazy. And that, oh man. Yeah, I was, yeah, quite shocked by how bad this one was. And I guess that's maybe why in the 2006 one discussion I sound way more positive on it. Because this coming after that was like, man, I'd, I'd watch Black Christmas. Christmas 2006 like a hundred times no no this one I get more out of there's more to chew on here I want to learn like I feel like I could watch this again and just like get more into like

the deranged baby psyche of this director just like how fucking awful of a person she must be I was intrigued by this director too and like I was looking at their MDB to try and see like what was it that got this green lit I guess or at least got her attached to it and I couldn't really find any good justification. It doesn't really seem particularly well known or anything. There's a vague link to VHS, the original, where I think she acted in or something like this. So I don't know.

I don't know how that came together, but it doesn't seem like a match made in heaven. And man, there's just something about bad Blumhouse horror that it just pisses me off unlike so many other types of films. Like something about it's just like, it doesn't need to be this bad. You guys are just so fucking late.

easy. Why are you doing this? Oh, just you make money easy or, uh, got it. Blumhouse just pissed me off so much. Yeah, I don't understand how you can release this and not know ahead of time that everybody's going to hate it and it's not going to do well and nobody's going to see it. Like, how can you, like, it's the most predictable thing on the fucking planet. If you, if you're alive on planet Earth, like you would understand very easily that this is the exact type of thing that everybody hates and nobody likes. Yes. This is the exact, this is across the board, bipartisan hatred for this, right?

Some group of people put up $5 million. Five million dollars for this to get made. That would have been just one person. It would have been a suite of people all investing in this. And you're telling me they all watched it and were like, yeah. Brilliant. Put that out into the world. There's your artistic statement.

you want to you want to add to the pile. And then again, like, in the conversation, like, the fact that it is a Black Christmas remake slash ode thing, the way that manifests in the film is so weird. Like in the first five minutes, they, like, reference the unicorn. So what? Yeah. Why? Like, why are you even referencing it? They had a white cat in this one.

And the cat's got a girl name now instead of a boy name. It's Claudeette now instead of Claude from the original. yeah that's the kind of level yep it's uh really uh interesting um i don't know like did anybody expect this i don't find a film interesting but i would find to hear the justification from this director as to like their approach to this yeah maybe a commentary track I would watch that that's the only chance I gotta get the Blu-ray if there's a commentary track

If there was that's the only Yeah find out because that would be kind of funny That's the only chance I'd ever watch this again It's with an embarrassing commentary track Yeah that's gotta be I hope it exists Oh there is a feature commentary All right here it is Oh really? Feature commentary it says on the

Oh who's on it does it say? It does not say Oh interesting I'm gonna have it's it just says feature commentary that's it on the bag of the Blu-ray. Yeah, that would be interesting. Outside of that, I don't know about that. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'm going to buy this movie.

Got to do it. Oh, man. I think it's cheap. It better be cheap. $8 for the Blu-ray. That's not bad. There's not a 4K. It's on 4K on digital, but there's not yet.

No 4K Blu-ray. Unfortunately, I know, crime. Yeah, well, what I learned is that men get away with everything. Not rich men, not rich white men, but all men. Poor black men get away with everything is what I learned. That's true. They even make the point of that with that character.

Not all men. Did you just say not all men? Did you not own men me? Blu-bubhbibhba-bibh. This film is everything that if you listen to Ben Shapiro about the Barbie movie, you would have assumed it was. Yeah, yeah. This film, this film is.

the straw man that conservative grifting commentators will claim that any random feminist or slightly woke or whatever you call it movie is. This one is the real deal. This one is their boogie man fully realized. We found it. So politically shallow and dishonest. This is the, yeah, this is the quintessential woke movie or whatever we want to go. And it was so, it was so unclear to me at first, like if it was trying to be funny or have a satirical angle. and I was like so confused by that because there was like the character that is presented as being like the most progressive um and like has the most kind of catchphrasey talking pointy dialogue uh there's a scene with her where they're buying a christmas tree and she goes over to the the most enormous extravagant tree in the lot and it's like

i'm going to choose this one let's get this one and they're like oh how are you going to afford that and she's like yeah my I've got my dad's card and he's like loaded. I was like, oh, are they going to like, is this more of like a satire thing then? Are they going to try to make out like this is more of like a bubble type opinion thing? And it's more like, I don't know what it was going for. Look at this spoil rich. I don't know. Yeah.

But then like it just wasn't self-aware. I think that these are characters that you were like inherently supposed to enjoy or find relatable or root for just because it's a feminist movie and they're women or something. I think that was the implication. Because any rational, like, non-tribalistic person looks at that scene where, like, she's, did you just not own men me? Did you, like, chasing him at the door? And you're like, you're not the good person in this dispute.

You're being the aggressor. Like, you strip away the genders for a second. Think of people as people, right? Have empathy. She's being the aggressor. Yeah, straight up I don't know what Why is it

Yeah It's such a bizarre And disturbing and sick and twisted Perspective from the film That is Yeah you might as well just This might as well be sound of freedom And there's no bottle element

Or at least how people reviewed it Yeah Yeah Yeah it just completely misses the forest It's I thought this was like Incredibly embarrassing It's very funny

one involved with this should be embarrassed oh hell yeah so it's up there I'm about to buy it it's yeah it should be pointed out and laughed for how just shallow and dishonest and just uninterested in like any real artistic discussion or philosophical debate or anything it's just it's just completely empty fuck this film half star get out my face get out my face um I give this one a two out of ten. I think that if we, so in my mind, if I'm judging the film, any of these films, if the goal of the movie was to make a movie, I think that this did it a little bit better than the 2006 one. I think that that like, this, this resembles what a movie is more closely than the 2006 one.

It's a bad movie. It's an annoying movie. The perspective of the movie's insane. And it's the preachiest, worst script maybe ever maybe I don't know actually maybe yes maybe ever but it still feels like more of a movie and it still I feel like I can understand the intent

of the filmmakers a bit better in this film even though what they're intending on doing is shit and what they wanted to do was shit and they made a shit movie but I feel like I got more out of it in the sense of like you know I was never as confused of like what is this

trying to be. It's just like, oh, I see what you're trying to be. It's just terrible. So I give this one a two out of ten. I think it's slightly better than the 2006 one. But I also think that the 2006 film is like the lowest bar. Like you can't, 2006 one is like maybe worst of the decade material. Like you can't really get much worse than that in terms of like what was your goal? To make a movie? I don't even know. I don't even know if that was a goal. At least the 2006 one managed to achieve killing hot girls, which is like their main goal, you know? I mean, some of the, we didn't even see that. We don't even know if it killed Mary Elizabeth Winske.

Yeah, and you get the funniest scene. You didn't see her get killed. Like, we, we, even in, even on that standard. Like, I'm not sure if it actually completes its goal. Like, did she just leave to film Final Destination 3? And they're like, okay, we'll just, we'll just explode a blood bag in the back of the car. yeah so low two out of ten for the 2019 one it's closer to a one than a three um but uh i'm glad we watched those i thought it turned out pretty good for a trilogy

one movie and that all unique and like completely different in how they in their approach i guess very different i'm i am glad that the 2019 one wasn't just 2006 again but also you know just incompetent in the same sorts of ways. Yeah, or it's like more interesting than the Japanese Cube remake or whatever. You know, it's more out there and crazy, it feels like, then. Something as bland as that, yeah. All right, let's do a couple questions from the Sert-Donnercast community, then. Head over to the suggestion thread on the subreddit where we can answer questions like this one from Greenhood 300.

Only four words here. thoughts on Mr. Beast he's like a weirdly controversial figure in the in the YouTube space I can't really I can't really deal of watching the videos myself they're a bit too like

I don't know they're so like tailor made for the engagement and you can like feel it he's always been very good at that he's like this is like the late stage YouTube engagement sort of thing Yeah, yeah.

But he makes good content in that sense, right? He's like the Marvel movies, well, when they were at their peak at least. He's like the Marvel movies of YouTube is like, oh, you figured out exactly what sells. And you're making something that like most people, if they watched it, would not like dislike, I guess. Yeah. Children love it. Some adults love it. Yeah, I mean, like, he's got like good concepts for videos.

For a while, I knew nothing about it. him other than everybody was just trying to suck his dick on Twitter because they thought he would give them money, like an Elon Musk type. Yeah, yeah. Or if someone's known for their money, you'll see a lot of people just being like, oh, please, I love everything you do. Which is not a commentary on him. It's a commentary on the other people that surround him.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have any issue with him, really. Yeah, it's, uh, one. Some kind of weird knock on effect, I feel like I've seen, like, kind of as a response to the Mr. Beast popularity in movement, is kind of a resurgence of, do you remember during the, it's just a prank era. There was like, just before that, there was this whole, like, social experiment, like, obsession, you know? Mm-hmm. I'm going to go up and, like, film a homeless person and do something that makes me look good type thing. Not saying that Mr. Beast does that necessarily, but I've seen like a uprising on like people doing that kind of content again in like YouTube shorts and like I'm going to go up to a homeless person and offer them 500 quid or double it to the next person and we're going to do this whole like, let's all feel good about giving each other money type thing. I don't know.

If a politician is improving people's lives and their only motivation is to get elected the next. next year and they don't actually care, I still think it's a good thing. If the net result is people's lives being improved. And in that same sense, on a different smaller scale, if Mr. Beast is only curing people's blindness to look good, I think the net result is still a good thing. Um, one could, you know, the, the, the actions of like an empath, an empath and a sociopath, if it's the same action, I'm going to think that it's a good action, that it's a net good for people. We might think differently about the person, maybe, but, I mean, it's, what, you want to stop him from, like, being a good person?

I mean, I guess the other end of the conversation is just tax people more, but, I mean, he's not a, he's not like a billionaire. He just spends a lot of money on his, he just puts a lot back into the content. He makes a lot of money. He's probably hundreds of millions at this point. I don't know, tens of millions. He's at least a tens of millions of error. And I feel like him being kind of at the top of the hierarchy makes sense.

And it doesn't, it doesn't like annoy me like T series or something, like a big thing like that. I like that it's someone who like loves YouTube, I guess, and like understands it and not just like a mega corp type thing that just is at the top. yeah but it's not like yeah it's not that passionate either way about him to be honest I think he's pretty cool I know that only saying that because of my one him to give me money

yeah I think there's some he doesn't seem like a bad guy but he just also kind of seems like a machine just like the end result of like an AI that's fake you know you know like some people will use

I forget what it's called. I think they make like scripts to like beat a Mario game or something in ways that are much more precise than a normal human being could. It feels like that, but like the YouTube algorithm. We're like he's like an AI

that was trained to figure out exactly how to like min-max fucking YouTube. Yeah, it's very min-maxy. Down to the thumbnails and everything with like overexposed kind of colors and the faces doing the certain expressions. And everybody copies him. He's like he is,

what people copy, which you know you're doing something right if everybody's fucking trying to copy you, or at least you know you're being successful at it. Yeah, it's cool that, um, remember I was telling you about that like really terrible, uh, video from, uh, what the fuck is their name? Sunny V2. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like, it is kind of cool that like, Mr. Beast, I don't even know his name. The Beast boy, the Beastie boy. Um, It's cool that he's retained that friend Chris and accepted them for who they are and hasn't like You know Diminished their presence on the channel

Which is I mean Depending on what circle you're in It's like okay, that's the least someone could do but in a lot of other circles Considering how popular he is and considering he is at the top and in order for him to have that audience There's gonna be a huge chunk of like Either children or conservatives or both That just don't think trans people should be in a video and think that it's like inherently a bad thing.

So I like that he is kind of just going like, no, I'm, you know, fuck it, whatever. He's still at the top. It hasn't hurt his brand. And I'm glad that he didn't get scared about that and caved into the hive mind of, you know, agreed. Yeah. Okay. So that much is cool about him. How about this one then from its slider 19? Hey fellas. The other day I was talking to a friend friend about Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. I'm an avid fan of the film, it being my favorite Kubrick joint. I've never heard a Kubrick film been referred to like that before, but she told me

that she found it offensive, claiming that by its, uh, Clockwork Orange. Claiming that by depicting graphic sequences of essay and, uh, violence, it was sensationalizing and trivializing said horrid actions and behaviors. Of course the film is a satire and makes no claim for its graphic scenes, nor against it. Therein lies much of the controversy for the film. By not coding such behaviour as clearly bad, I think it leads many to misunderstand the intended purpose of depicting such scenes. My question is, what do you think about a Clockwork Orange's depiction of essay, and follow up? How do you think such topics should be depicted?

And what are examples of, dare I say good examples of these things in other films? so there's a I feel like I mentioned this a few episodes ago or in the previous months there's just more and more discourse I feel like around like sex scenes and considering irrelevant or unnecessary

unnecessary being a big one there was a little bit of a popular unnecessary sex scenes in films thread I saw going around on Twitter the other week that had I don't know I had like 50,000 likes and it was

starting the thread with that scene from Oppenheimer. That's an engagement farming Twitter account. I've seen that. Literally every single one of their tweets is like name this, I'll start. I don't even think it's a real opinion. Most of Twitter is that

now to be fair. Oh yeah, that's literally most of Twitter. You're absolutely right. But I don't know, there's just something weird about that because there does seem to be more of a push or at least discussion about this idea of it being unnecessary or somehow something we shouldn't include in stories despite sexuality being so important and crucial to society to human storytelling.

So that's kind of my stance on that. Like these things are real and it's more just the tact of how you approach them. Like we were just saying the commentary in Black Christmas 2019, and what it's trying to deal with is not subtle and it falls on its face and it's a horrible example of dealing with that kind of subject matter. But an equally unsubtle broaching of the same subject matter is something like the boys, but they pull it off because it's framed in kind of a funer interesting or kind of crazy gonzo way. So yeah, I have no problem with like sex scenes or more like violence being depicted as long as it's justified and you have something to say and you're trying to make some kind of artistic statement or peace with it. These things are, you know, it's a part of humanity and if we're being real with each other, yeah, you know, stuff like this is England show like that happens and it'll be crazy to me to. not have this stuff in in stories, but you do need a delicate touch, that's for sure.

So, yeah, the conversation is, I think, more trying to get at the tone in which some of these horrid, you know, horrendous violent acts are being portrayed in. So, like, the music and like, I feel pretty, you know, like, the excited nature that the film doesn't explicitly just show you and being like, this is bad, and play like, bad. scary music and like this is a bad scary thing happening to these people. I love that it's juxtaposed. I love that we maybe perhaps feel the same excitement and insanity terribly from a moral perspective, but we can understand the characters a bit more. We understand that those psychopaths hurting those people feel that way when it's happening. And I love that it's removing us from the reality of

that situation from, you know, it's, it, it almost makes it more scary thinking about how much joy that person would be experiencing as they're doing this terrible thing to you. So if let's say you're attaching yourselves onto the victims in the scene in Clockwork Orange, I think it's way more fucked up that there's not a shred of remorse, that there's not a shred of like, um, you know, thinking about it being morally bad from, those characters that they're just having fun. They're not going to stop. It doesn't matter how much pain you're in. It doesn't matter how much how terrible this is. It doesn't matter how fucked up it is. I think that that works for the film a lot better. There's tons of examples of

films where people can take away the wrong interpretation, right? Wolf of Wall Street, right? Any Scorsese movie, right? Is it cool that they're doing the thing or is it bad that they're doing the thing? American Psycho, yeah. I do really love films that aren't afraid to be morally ambiguous. I do really love films that aren't afraid to even make you feel like fun or excitement over like something horrific happening because I don't know, maybe my brain's a little bit different. I'm maybe a bit more able to distinguish friction from reality than some people. But this goes into the same conversation as like violent video games. I'm sorry, it's fun to shoot people in the head in a video game. It's not fun to do it in real life. Well, maybe it is

fun to do it in real life. I don't know. I don't feel compelled to try it. But like, you know, even just like ignoring the violence, just moral choices in general, I play as a renegade in Mass Effect. I think it's more interesting. I think it's more fun. It's called role play, right? It's not me in real life. I'm exploring a character, right? In that same sense, films can explore characters and you can experience emotions of that character through the film. And if the film does a great job at doing that, maybe, I don't know, perhaps there's some people on the planet that are really fucked up and they might see it as jerk off material.

Can't really stop that either way. They might be imagining it otherwise. Yeah, let artists be what they want, let them express things how they want. And if it's really well made and, you know, we don't want to have a morality police trying to enforce the, you know, intended emotion of a scene, right? Is a full metal jacket a war film or an anti-war film? You know, sometimes people get confused.

Yeah. It's really up to the interpretation, and it's another conversation, I guess, about media literacy. And also just, I don't know, assuming ignorance over malice at the very least. Yeah. It does feel like a lot of people just, the second they get uncomfortable, they just, like, want to try and hide it or something. I love being uncomfortable.

Act like other. Yeah, that's why I love horror. It's why I love thrillers. It's why I love stories. You know, it is a roleplay of the mind. Let's just take a step back and yeah, get improved our media.

Let's just see you a little bit. That would be great. Should we do one more here? Let's do it. I'll send on this one then from Goosey McGooseface 2. Hello Suds with the Gtie 6 trailer blowing up. What's your history with the GTA series? What are your favorite entries and what do you consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of the games? Wishing you, lads, a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2024. I was never really a GTA guy until 5. That's the only one I've played in full. I've only been in the room when like a friend has been playing GTA 4 or San Andreas or whatever. It was never really my thing. I really really got into the whole like satire angle. and all the craziness, the sandbox in five,

which, well, there hasn't been one in a decade, so there's not much outside of that. I was always more of a red dead guy myself. That's what I'm after from Rockstar. I get the appeal, though. I love the satire stuff. I like that. And the fact it's made by, like, Scottish people, too,

a Scottish town is kind of funny. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed five. I enjoyed the characters. I thought it was fun to play as, you know, those types of people. You know, some morally questionable, psychopathic kind of things. Yeah, it's kind of what we're just saying. Do you remember that drama around the time Gtie 5 came out

when there's a torture scene in the game where it's, I guess, it's like a parody of, like, some of the things the American government have done to get information out of people and you're doing it as Trevor. And there was this whole controversy about like, should this be allowed? Children are going to play this type thing.

Yeah. GTA is so fucking immensely popular that like there's controversy around like every fart. Yeah, yeah. That comes from the direction of rock star headquarters, right? So I don't take much of it seriously. People are just looking for reasons to be mad. It's a, you know, a lot of video game moral panic,

satanic panic. I don't know what the fuck you can call it. but yeah, I mean, I more or less have like the same history in the sense that like the GTA 5 is the first one I played in full. I've heard some good things about three and four, so I might revisit them at some point. Yeah, people love four. I've played like tiny little snippets of them just sandboxily when I was younger, but like at a friend's house, but I've never. Yeah, and there's no real good way to go. There's no good way to play four.

right now and they kind of botched the that remake collection thing they did for some of the old ones um use all just like half baked uh AI stuff um yeah I just I don't want to buy a PS3 again man you have a Steam deck do you want me to teach you how to get a PS3 game on a Steam deck maybe maybe that's the that's the answer it literally is yeah yeah true I hadn't considered that You should start considering it. So maybe that's the way to plan. It is. I'm telling you that that's what you do.

You have no more agency. Yeah, I like the story in five. I think I remember trying to start for and not being like as into the story because from memory, and I could be wrong. I think I tried starting it and just being like, what, this guy is like a moral. character and then I just go outside and start punching people. Because like if I'm in a sandbox game, I'm just going to like, I'm just going to immediately contradict whatever goody two shoes, like good guy thing going on with the character.

So I remember in five just like, oh, these people are psychopaths. That kind of helps. Right. And again, I could be completely wrong about four. I might be misremembering. I might be remembering a completely different game. I don't know. But I vaguely remember that being like a criticism.

and yeah five was just so graphically great for the time which is something that rock stars was incredible yeah um i loved how many different games within the game there are you could just like go do things it's like it's like what they promised uh fucking cyberpunk would be like oh you can go into a building and do that fucking whatever i thought the the like character switching thing was quite cool as well yeah that is when you switch to another character and it immediately loads to another place in the map and then it will have some kind of like animation or environmental storytelling of like what they'd been doing when you weren't playing as them.

I thought that's like really cool stuff. You play tennis. Yeah, you go off. Yeah, it's cool. I'll play GTA 6 when it comes out. What's funny is I realize that they're probably going to do the not on PC for the first two years thing with GTA 5. And so we'll see it how much.

much of a display of patience that I can have because GTA 5 I just waited for the PC release. I experienced it for the first time on PC. I was like, yeah, I can wait. So we'll see what happens with six. We'll see what else is out and what my backlog of other games are. And, you know, if I'm going to play it on PC anyway, I might as well wait, but whatever. We'll see. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how well it's going to, what kind of PC you're going to need to, like, run it because it looks just incredible. as far as visual fidelity. Oh, true.

Yeah. But, yeah, I also think Florida is like an awesome... Hell yeah, I agree. You get some funny stuff in there if it's like written, right? And that's the only thing, I guess, is the one or both of the Hauser brothers, who are like the writers, I guess, the main lead writers, are gone now. So I don't know if... Oh.

If that's going to affect the satire anger at all, I'm sure. Like it's like the first like two billion dollar game like the budget so I'm sure I mean They're gonna have like the best people probably in in in the whole space on it so Yeah, we'll see we'll see crazy the like most viewed video like on YouTube in 24 hours or something It craziness almost almost I think it's like second place to like a bt s music video Oh really it was it was beating out by that because I thought uh mr beast had the previous record oh i don't know It was like 69 million views in 24 hours and I don't care enough.

I got like 80 or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to spread misinformation. I'm confident about this actually. My dad works at YouTube and that's what he told me. My dad works at Rockstar, so that's what he told me. Oh, damn. Did you leak it?

Were you the leaker? Oh, man. That was, man, I don't even know, like, how you'd reprimand your, like, 17-year-old son who's, like, destroyed your... 20 year career at rockstar games like the most reputable like developer in the entire space I just I don't even understand the point of leaking things yeah for TikTok likes that's literally it none of you people can like have any impulse control you're all like oh please leak some stuff please leak it it's not finished let them

fucking release a trailer when they want yeah all the people reporting on these leaks at like insomniac of just being like, look at how shitty this Wolverine character model looks. Like, yeah, it's not finished. They don't want you to see it. That's that point. There's no conversation to be had in, like, I don't know, there's some leaks that were interested. The Sony leaks were interesting, just like the emails and stuff.

I'm more interested about the corporate shit. Don't give me like early versions of a product being worked on. Just to give me, give me the fucking nitty-gritty details about how their business runs. sure. Give me that in a leak. Yeah, that's what's interesting. Yeah. Like the whole, all the, all the emails that came out with the, like, Activision, uh, purchased by Microsoft and all these weird, like,

internal dealings and these anti-trust stuff and all the stuff that leaks out. That's valuable. That's fascinating. That's, that's a, that's a worthy discussion and reporting. Leaking the hateful eight. That's just so pathetic. Yeah. Like, right.

Yo, you want to read this script? Yeah. For a movie that's not out yet, that it, he would. working very hard on. Come on, help me ruin this for a bunch of people. Let's do it, man.

Let's spoil this shit. Yeah, I don't understand. I do not empathize with that mentality. I don't get it. It just seems like poor impulse control and boredom. It just seems like a combination of that. There's like an anarchy angle as well. It's like knowing this two billion dollar thing

that you've got this like bit of information about, yeah, look at the power I've got now. And if you're 17 years old, I guess the 10,000 TikTok likes you get will be a, that's worth it for you in your mind. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I guess that's about it. That is about it.

I think we did it. Throw a fucking movie at me. I want to throw... I don't know. I want to throw a Ken Loach at you right now. I want to throw a Ken Loach. I don't think either of us have seen. The wind that shakes,

Hell yeah. Killian Murphy. Yeah, it's been on mine for a while. Palm Door winner. Awesome, yeah, I think. I think we're in safe hands with this. Ken Loach, I think it'll be right. I think this is a safe.

Safe recommendation, probably, hopefully. Yeah, been on my watch list since fucking forever. 2007, Palm Door winner, or 2006, sorry, Palm Door winner. Yeah, very excited. if you don't want to be spoiled for the wind that shakes the barley directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty

starring Killian Murphy 2006 watch it before the next episode's out these episodes come out every two weeks but you can listen to them early by going to sardonicast.com signing up for premium it's only $2 a month

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uh hit the bell on YouTube if you're on YouTube subscribe to the Sardonicast and hit the bell so you know when these things come out publicly if you're not going to give as money, you might as well. It's the least you could do. Oh, uh, we got merch, link in the description. And, uh, did I forget something? I think that's it. I think you've covered the whole gambit then. I think we got it. And have a happy forever, forever mentioning

Valerian in this podcast. I hope everyone had a black Christmas 1974 and not a black Christmas 2019 yeah 2019 black Christmas is probably where a lot of people got COVID so yeah yeah exactly right at the end of the year I don't even be thinking about that man yeah

all right happy Shrek or something bye everybody thanks for listening hey