The Big Picture - ‘Abigail,’ ‘Late Night With the Devil,’ and the 10 Best Horror Movies of 2024 … So Far
Episode Date: April 23, 2024Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to discuss the current state of horror in theaters (1:00). They run through a list of movies that are out right now, then dive into what they did and did not like about ...them (10:00). Later, they’re joined by a special guest to explain the plot of ‘Imaginary’ (27:00) to Chris, who hasn’t yet seen the film. Finally, Sean and Chris discuss the directors they’d most like to see work in the horror genre (1:00:00) and discuss their most-anticipated upcoming releases (1:10:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Wake up, babe. Bandsplain is back. That's right. Your favorite extremely long music podcast has
returned. And this season, we're talking grunge. As usual, there's goss, there's tea, there's an
excessive amount of facts and info. And you know what? There's nine hours on a band that rhymes
with schmurlschmam, plus much, much more. Listen to new episodes of Bandsplain with me, Yossi Salek,
every Thursday.
I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture,
a conversation show about the horror
of going down 1-0 to the New York Knicks.
Just kidding!
We're talking about horror movies.
Be real careful.
I don't know when this is coming out.
I'm joined by Chris Ryan.
What's up, man?
Twice a year, we dig into what's going on in horror movies.
This April.
Are you feeling better this April than you were last April?
I'm feeling, yes.
I think I'm feeling more entertained
because last April was, we were in,
we were watching Skidamarink.
It was a more experimental spring in horror films.
This year feels a little bit more traditional.
We'll be covering a lot of horror movies in this discussion.
We'll be talking about Late Night with the Devil.
Many listeners have been asking for a discussion about that film.
Abigail just opened over the weekend, came in number two at the box office.
CRVOD Classics
will be hit.
We'll have a special guest
coming in to break down
the film Imaginary.
That should be interesting.
And it's a huge honor for us
because I think this person
is something of an icon
in the horror community.
Absolutely.
An expert.
Our very own Gulardi
come to explain the films.
Elvira 2.0
is coming through.
So that'll be really exciting.
So horror movies right now,
you're feeling good about what you're seeing. There is a little bit of concern trolling about whether or not horror is still the saber that will guide us through the darkness of the box
office disaster of the last 20 years. Do you buy into that? Do you think that horror movies are
maybe not as powerful as they once were? I think the state of the union is strong,
but a little bit aimless.
In the years past, I think one of the reasons
why this is a dependable
twice a year project, and we could probably
even get away with doing it one or two more times
a year, is that
horror has a really reliable
once
one or two times a quarter
big major theater
release, and then a unbelievably steady stream
of streaming independent stuff that you really you can just look at eric peipenberg's column
in the new york times which is like a really good resource to find uh it's it's like five
horror movies to stream right now or you can just go to like the itunes horror page uh and find
really good stuff.
And there's festivals and there's a whole independent community of media and discourse around these low-budget horror movies.
So we have this wealth of this micro film industry.
And I think in years past, there's been just an obvious amount of like,
ooh, look at this trend creatively going on in an independent space.
And then you get like, while everything else is sort of rising and falling,
horror will always deliver at the box office.
And obviously, it's been a little bit weaker this year in the box office department.
I was curious whether you felt like the undergirding of the genre
isn't any kind of, is wobbling at all. I was curious whether you felt like the undergirding of the genre isn't any kind
of, is wobbling at all. I don't think so. I think, you know, last year we had Talk to Me, which was
a big A24 breakout. We had Five Nights at Freddy's, which is one of the big surprise performers of the
year. Saw X kind of overperformed expectations. Thanksgiving did pretty well. So in the back half
of the year, things did well. But was the exorcist revival a canary in the coal mine right
of people getting a little bit exasperated or bored by the eventized horror movie from the
studio i don't think that's the case we've seen a few soft performers you know abigail was sort
of a soft performer night swim was sort of a soft performer i think that there are some specific
reasons for that a lot of these movies were made either
basically in the run-up
to the strikes.
And the way that
horror works is that
they're very managed
productions.
There's a lot of reshoots
as there are with a lot
of big franchise movies.
A lot of those movies
didn't get to do their
reshoots because there
were strikes.
So the movies maybe
aren't hitting quite as
well as they had.
A lot of development
and writing is obviously
not happening during
those strike periods too.
So these movies are just maybe not as tight.
It doesn't mean that there aren't
great independent films.
Late Night with the Devil, for example,
is kind of operating outside
of the conversation on Abigail.
That's a totally different kind of a production.
So I think that that is contributing
to it a little bit.
I think sometimes it's a little bit
of a crapshoot too.
Last spring, I thought that there was a lot
creatively to talk about with the genre, but it wasn't like crushing at the box office at that point either. No. So
was Smile last year? That was two years ago. And that, you know, was coming off of a 2022,
which is, you know, incredibly successful. It was the Barbarian year and that was a very big fall.
And that was the Terrifier 2 year where, you know, like that was a huge indie sensation.
So things felt a little bit softer last year, despite a couple of big highlights.
And this year feels even softer than that.
I think we'll be fine when we start listing the movies that are coming still for the rest of this year.
There's just a truckload of at least intriguing, if not outright exciting movies.
But you had this great question here in the outline, which is that,
is there a dependable brand in horror? So what made you think about that?
I think just because we probably in our adult lives were like raised by Blumhouse and also
tantalized by the promise of Blumhouse that there could be a way to make really small budgeted
films that economically made it work for really interesting actors to participate,
whether it was Ethan Hawke or Kevin Bacon or whatever.
And that they were just all in the black.
Like it was just all profit because once you got something into a theater,
the horror audience and the,
the either the freaks or the date nights,
we're always going to be there so that you could get your movie,
whether it was like a
sensation like Black Phone or even just like, hey, that did decent, but that's actually 25 million
right in our pocket or whatever. And that's how we talk about 90s movies anyway and the 90s model
of the industry where they would make a variety of different kinds of films for intelligently
budgeted so that if it made 65, $75 million at the box office,
they're like, good job. Everybody get paid. You know, like it wasn't, it didn't have to
prop up the shareholders quarterly reports of an entire mega corporation. It was like a movie
studio making movies for people who like movies. Yeah. I think Smile is actually an interesting
example of this where Smile 2 which is coming out
later this fall
is one of the
most important movies
on Paramount's slate
this year
yeah
and that was a movie
that I think was
originally greenlit
to be a streaming movie
and then Jim Giannopoulos
was still running
Paramount at the time
and he decided to
put it in theaters
and now there's been
a changeover in the
administration
but since then
now Smile 2
becomes in a year
where I think Paramount's only releasing like seven or eight movies.
It becomes like a priority.
It's a huge deal.
Yeah.
And I don't know if that's got long-term damaging effects on the brand, the genre insofar as like the big studio is making these movies.
I don't think they should be counting on them in that way.
The Exorcist is the example of they paid $400 million for the rights to make those films.
I'm not sure if we'll see another Exorcist movie in that story that they were trying to tell. It doesn't seem like Deceiver is going to happen based on the underperformance
of Believer. And David Gorgon Green is obviously off that movie now. But Atomic Monster and
Blumhouse are now combined. So James Wan's company merged with Jason Blum's Blumhouse.
And these were really like the alpha and the omega of horror in the 2010s.
They were the two most successful, I think pretty much coolest,
most interesting franchise brands in this space.
They're only just now coming together.
Like it was announced last year, but you can see.
So I think we're going to see some things in the next couple of years from them
that probably, there's a lot of smart people that work there.
And I think the reason why I long for something like this and it's not to say that
there aren't things like it like there's xyz and gravitas and there's like places where i think
sometimes when you see at least them as like a partner in the film you're like okay like i'll
at least watch through the trailer i'll give it a try something like that um but i i kind of it's
almost like um the way it was with like
record labels like maybe in the 2000s or the 90s where i'm like i just want someone to put a stamp
on this and i as a fan of the genre will be open to checking out almost anything if i could just
get like a who will be our sub pop yeah yeah right i don't know it's a it's a really good question
and there was a minute there where i was like oh a24 maybe a24 should start like a horror sub shingle to be like these are
really good for us you know like why don't we why don't we make a24 midnight i think the problem
with that is that they already they already market every movie as a horror movie yeah right
it would be hard to differentiate you know civil war is basically cut together as a horror movie. Yeah, right. So it would be hard to differentiate.
You know, Civil War is basically cut together
like a horror movie,
even though that's not what it is.
And so I think that that could be a challenge,
but it's a good idea.
I mean, IFC obviously has that.
They have a midnight brand
where they make horror movies
that inevitably get filtered into the shutter system.
And that works pretty well for them.
And then that's something that
I'll probably watch nine out of 10 IFC midnight movies.
You know, that brand does matter to me, but they're fewer and farther between. It's a very,
very challenging time for independent movies. Like it is just not a good moment at all.
And so because of that, I think we're seeing fewer and fewer and you really got to get by
the skin of your teeth. We've covered a few movies this year already. We did an entire
episode where we explained Night Swim to Amanda. It was a lot of fun. And that's basically been
the hit of the year so far.
Yeah, and still,
I think only like
35 million in America.
But I think that movie
is a little underrated,
honestly,
especially relative
to what we've seen so far.
You and I talked about
Immaculate,
the Sidney Sweeney film,
which did solid business
for a very small movie.
You talked to Arkasha Stevenson
about First Omen.
I did.
I saw that last week.
We can talk a little bit about First
Omen here because I only briefly talked about it with Amanda.
Love Lies Bleeding is kind of a
horror movie. Kind of a body horror movie. So I think
it qualifies. I wanted to get your take
on Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. I know you've seen it four or five
times now. How do you feel
it fits in the wider story
of Bustin' Ghosts? I just didn't know that
Slimer could get cold like that.
Yeah, he's so ill right now. He's like young Tyrese Maxey. He's just cutting in the lane. I just didn't know that Slimer could get cold like that. Yeah, he's so ill right now.
He's like young Tyrese Maxey.
He's just cutting in the lane.
I didn't see Frozen Empire.
I actually haven't seen
a Ghostbusters.
I haven't seen
either of these two.
After you saw
the Kristen Wiig one,
you were like, I can't.
I was like, I refuse.
Yeah, these are not
my Ghostbusters.
Not all Ghostbusters.
Frozen Empire
is the most fine movie
of all time
is it that weird that there are just some jobs for men?
is that okay?
what else do you think only men should be allowed to do?
I don't know
okay you don't even want to attempt a joke on that one
I do think that one of the big surprises
one of the big exclamation points on the year
it has been Late Night with the Devil
which is a movie that has a controversy attached to it,
which we can talk about a little bit here.
But the film itself is written and directed
by Colin and Cameron Cairns, independent filmmakers,
and stars David S. Malkin, who is a,
I would say a 21st century that guy.
One of the signature character actors of the 21st century,
in part because of his work in the films
of Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve and- James Gunn and James Gunn. And he has popped up in small but very effective creepy parts in big, big movies
over the last 20 years. He's a well-known horror aficionado. He loves horror movies. And so this
is his first big leading role. I love the premise and the framing of this movie, which it opens as a kind of documentary portrait of a discovered tape from a late night show
in, I believe it's 1979.
Yeah.
That transpires on Halloween night.
And the show is kind of a mix of Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett.
Yeah, he's basically doing a variety talk show.
It looks a little bit more thoughtful
or kind of like kitschy
I guess than Carson
which would be like mega celeb
every night and this is more like
you know the snake handler lady
and then like anything to
kind of get but it's basically
like this guy is losing
the ratings race
he's suffered a personal tragedy
and he is clinging on to this job,
and he basically has to do clickbait.
He has to start doing viral stories on his program
so that he can stay on the air.
And on this Halloween night, he programs an episode
that features some very familiar characters
if you watch 70s talk shows.
There is a kind of Uri Geller stand-in a spoon bender
somebody a mentalist who can use their mind to discover facts about people and then there is a
kind of amazing randy-esque figure who is a magician himself and a hypnotist but also someone
who is a real um a doubter you know somebody who points out to the world that this is just trickery
that there's not actually a real science transpiring here.
And then also a,
a,
um,
a woman who studies possession like paranormal and a possessed child.
Yeah.
And the film effectively like takes place over one episode of the show.
And there are some moments where we sort of go behind the scenes and cut to
black and white and,
and see what happens during the commercial breaks.
But for the most part,
the film is made inside the production of an episode. Love the framework, love Des
Malchun, like exceptional performance, like a part that you would imagine doesn't come naturally to
somebody who is so interior and is so, has a kind of naturally occurring malevolence.
Oh yeah, the idea of this guy coming out from behind a curtain and be like, hey everybody!
It's very, while the genre seems consistent with his interests,
it seems like a challenging part.
Yeah, and I thought he really nailed it
because he also has to be a person who is coping with this loss
and you can see it kind of emanating off of him
during the performance of this show.
A lot of people have really loved this movie.
I like it.
I think it's a cool accomplishment for an indie
I thought it really took kind of a wrong turn
in the third act for me
and lost me a little bit
but I think you were more positive about it than I was
I think so much of horror movies
are the context in which you see them
and I watched this really late at night
in a spooky
like an empty house
you know so I was
Did you just rent a home by yourself?
No
I rented my late night with the devil
No I happened to be house sitting for friends in Portland and we just got it up on like the huge
screen and it was like 12 30 when we started it so like really effective uh like setting for the
movie itself I thought like conceptually it was. Yes, some of the found footage conceits,
given the time, were a little bit bendy.
As far as I know about the way they shot it,
where they had cameras running.
It was almost like filming a piece of theater
where they had cameras running all the time.
Yes.
And so every time they were on stage,
they were being filmed from multiple angles
and multiple different quasi film stocks.
I don't know what they did to make it look like
here's 16 millimeter and here's the cameras
that they would be using for the talk show.
I loved it.
The only thing is in my mind, when you think back on it,
you're like, there's a little bit of a hat on a hat
where I think this is kind of an affliction
for a lot of contemporary horror movies. Something that is just like obviously gripping and scary they feel the need to add in a
dollop of either trauma and or conspiracy behind it and they do both in this movie they do uh I
I can't stress this enough like when I watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre it's just terrifying that this
is happening to those people and that in almost like the lack of background on these characters
is why it's so terrifying because it's like what did they do to deserve this is not even
in the equation and all contemporary horror for the most part has like forgotten that lesson and
they're like everybody who is confronted with an evil like this has to be overcoming some sort of either sin or trauma in their recent past or in their past.
Like their mom died, their wife died.
They've done something that they need to like overcome by doing battle with this ghost or
devil or whatever it is.
I'm so glad you brought this up.
This is a huge trip wire for me on a lot of these films.
And there's a few more that we'll talk about today that were you encounter the same yeah crutch of leaning on this to kind of explicate if not
the logic of the world the feeling that the movie wants you to have i don't want the feeling
explained to me i want the movie to hit me if i was just like a talk show host who's cravenly
ambitious will go will stop at nothing to get ratings sold and has a fucking exorcism on his
late night show like i, I would be like,
this is incredible.
I don't care about it.
And then there's like also another whole layer of like his involvement in like a,
the groves.
Yeah.
Like a,
basically Illuminati type.
Yes.
Secret society,
a kind of John Birch meets a cult.
Yeah.
And to me,
if they would have chosen one of those and I would have preferred the cult as a kind of,
maybe it is, maybe it isn't informing what's happening here rather than explicating it, I would have liked that.
I agree.
It just was glazed over with too much stuff.
But I just thought experientially, not for a second was I bored at all, and I was just really locked in on it.
It's got a great mood.
So why do you think this is? Do you think that this is something that filmmakers and young filmmakers have internalized that they need to have this framework to get their movie made or to make it legible to an audience?
Or is it a studio note where they say, we need to tell the audience that this person
lost their wife or this person lost a child.
And that is why they are haunted by this feeling.
And maybe the haunting isn't even real.
It's just something in their mind.
Like, why is this happening?
It's probably a little bit of both.
I think that as we as a society
have just gotten way more comfortable
talking about the things
that have shaped us as people anyway
and like everybody in the world
has got some kind of like trauma
or experience that like kind
of meld molded them into what they are and and continues to influence like what they do on a
daily basis like i think they there's probably a impulse to reflect that on the screen i personally
like don't really ever find myself leaving those kinds of movies feeling like i'm somehow better
in touch with myself
from the people in my life's experiences.
So to me, it's kind of a crutch.
And I think sometimes there is a little bit of shame with people making horror movies
where they're just like, I don't want to just make a movie about a hardcore punk rock band
who get attacked by neo-Nazis or kids driving around Texas who get attacked by like inbred lunatics.
Like, you know what it is?
Here's the difference.
The Green Room and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are like in this way.
Those are movies about the trauma that has happened.
They're not movies that are recalling a trauma that happened that we never see.
Show me the trauma!
That's the thing.
I mean, that really is the difference.
I want to say, I mean, you know, Talk to Me is an interesting example of this
because on the one hand,
Talk to Me is deeply,
almost like obviously allegorical story about addiction.
But the trauma is happening in the movie
in addition to what's happened in the past.
It was trying to have it both ways.
When it's focused on,
holy shit, this kid is possessed by a demon
and is slamming his head against a piece of furniture.
Yeah.
I was like, this movie is exactly what I want from a horror movie. The minute it starts reaching
into the therapized, psychologized version of these stories, I lose a little bit of interest.
And I'm happy to hear you say that. I wonder if we can kind of move past this. These things do
move in waves. In Post Scream, we were in a kind of meta moment where we were acknowledging in
real time what kind of a movie we were in and why we were scared of it.
Found footage was another moment where we were sort of like, we're in a surveillance state as a country.
Post 9-11, we're thinking about what would happen if we were being observed all the time.
And if we were, you'd see in paranormal activity if there was a ghost in your house.
The trauma is obviously, I think you nailed it.
I think it is a reflection of our times.
I think people are more encouraged to talk about their feelings. We talked about this in the rewatchables
with the way you pay, like I parent a kid now I'm like, Alice, please tell me, how are you feeling
today? No one ever asked me that before when I was a kid. And we turned out fine. And I'm okay
watching people get their heads bashed in every day in the movie theater. I'm fine. Don't write in the newspaper.
But I wonder what the next phase will be.
I'm not sure what it will be.
It will be something different.
Abigail is something different.
Abigail is not,
it is a little bit about trauma
and there is some rending
of emotional garments
by the time we get to the end of the film.
I talked about this a little bit
with Amanda last week on the show.
This is Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette's new film, their two-thirds of Radio Silence. film i talked about this a little bit with amanda last week on the show this is uh matt benna matt
bettenelli olpin and tyler gillette's new film they're two-thirds of radio silence who have
directed the last two scream movies yeah independent horror filmmakers who we like who
participated in the vhs series and you know who are really really talented this movie was
announced a while ago i think maybe over a year, as they're not doing the next Scream,
they're actually doing this.
Yes.
And then somewhere along the way,
it became clear that this was some kind of a vampire movie.
I think even early on,
there was,
when it was announced,
I think it was like,
they're making a monster movie for Universal.
Yes.
And so that inevitably leads you to be like,
what of the dark universe are they dabbling with?
Is it going to be a wolf or a vampire or Frankenstein
or something like that?
Just because Universal still at least has,
I think probably a lot of the rights to that stuff.
Funnily enough, I thought that this was,
I thought that this was like a little bit of a throwback
to Ready or Not, a movie I like a lot.
I like it more than Out of Gale.
I agree with you. You tweeted out last week where you were just like, I think you were talking to Bil movie I like a lot. I like it more than Out of Gale. I agree with you.
You tweeted out last week where you were just like,
I think you were talking to Bilge, where you were just like,
I can't believe that
the premise of this movie is in the
trailer. They gave it away.
They designed a really cool idea for a movie,
which is that they were making a movie that for the first
45 to 50 minutes is
a pure abduction crime thriller
with a very appealing cast
you know
you've got
Melissa Barrera
Dan Stevens
Catherine Newton
Kevin Durand
like people who are
Jean Carlo Esposito
it's one of
Angus Cloud's last
roles
I think it's his final role
the film is dedicated
to Angus Cloud
who you may have seen
in Euphoria
who's a great screen presence
Alicia Weir
this young girl
who's abducted
who's like a real find. I thought she was really,
really fun in this movie. And then, at the
50-minute mark, and I'm not spoiling this
by saying it because it's in the trailer and the marketing materials,
it turns out that she's a vampire.
The movie is a soft
remake of Dracula's Daughter, which is a
30s universal horror movie.
And it seems like
they actually backpedaled a little bit because
the Dracula aspect of this is kind of not discussed.
You could see a world in which there's more Dracula mythology.
Well, I thought, I was like, oh, here comes, this is going to be Dracula.
Yes.
You know, like, and it's his daughter.
And instead it becomes more like Kaiser Soze's daughter.
Yes, exactly.
A crime boss.
And I said it to you over the weekend.
If I was sitting in a movie theater and I didn't know that this movie was a vampire movie and 50 minutes in this 12 year old girl
bared her fangs and started biting people I would have been like we are so fucking back like this is
such a cool way but the truth is is that I don't know if any movie can do this anymore I don't know
if you can have I don't know if you can have a Blair Witch. We talked about it when we did 1999 Movie Draft. I don't know if you can get people into a movie theater
without telling them what kind of a movie your movie is.
It's funny.
So we're doing, I think this will go up tomorrow.
So we're doing rewatchables today
about the Paul Schrader movie, Hardcore.
The original poster for Hardcore
is a black box with white text that said,
is that my daughter?
And that's like insane,
right?
If Abigail's poster was a black poster,
a picture of Dracula,
a black poster with white text that said they kidnapped the wrong girl.
I don't,
wouldn't you see it?
Yeah,
I would,
I would,
I would.
I don't know nearly as much about marketing or screenwriting
as people who work on these movies,
but I would love to try to get back to a moment
where you could at least experiment with something like that
and see if it works.
Because if it works...
Even if it just had like an alien-style trailer
of we've kidnapped her and then something is happening.
But when you...
To give away the vampire part is,
put all that aside,
I thought that this was like an enjoyable
but kind of like forgettable movie.
I thought it was kind of like a mishmash of genres.
It was.
And kind of like a cast where I was like,
I don't believe any of these people are criminals.
You know, so it's, but it was fine.
Like I was, it was totally.
It does a couple things in the third act that feel more like ready or not yeah i was like i think the movie maybe should
have had this energy the whole time yeah yeah like a lot of uh and like explosive gore yeah that is a
is a trademark of the radio silence guys and they really kind of pulled their punches and they're
really good at doing shit all in one house like yes um interestingly i thought i mean i don't i
i'm i don't know
when they shot Abigail,
but one thing that I've noticed
from the list of movies
that we're kind of going to
have to go through here
is how many of them feel like
residual end of COVID protocol shoots.
So a lot of movies in one location
or outdoors,
a lot of movies with very small contained casts
that are you know almost quarantined together and uh that might be something that i feel
subconsciously is affecting my level of enjoyment with these movies although there are some that i
quite like and also i am looking forward to getting over now obviously there's budgetary
concerns where you can't just have a serial killer
marauding people.
Although, I guess M. Night Shyamalan's going to test this idea.
That's a post-COVID movie.
Can't have a huge crowd scene and stuff like that.
But a lot of these movies,
and even to some extent,
Abigail feels like,
let's just get five good actors in a house.
I think that's very perceptive. And I'm sure that that's one of the reasons why that movie was made, was because they could, Abigail feels like, let's just get five good actors in a house. I think that's very perceptive.
And I'm sure that that's one of the reasons
why that movie was made,
was because they could, in this environment,
in the 2022 environment,
they could get a movie like that made.
It's a broken bat single.
It's a fun movie.
Underperforming, I don't think, means very much
because I think it's a confusing movie to sell.
And clearly the studio had some trouble
selling the movie to the audience
that it needed to
find.
But I'm curious to see what those guys do next, because I do think that they're talented.
Okay, let's bring in a guest to talk about Imaginary. That is how you know that I just absolutely
want to take over the podcast now.
He has an out at 11.45.
It's him, not me.
I don't care about Shogun.
Okay.
I just want to talk with my friends.
And you've thrown down the gauntlet.
Okay.
You can put this in the episode if you want, Bobby.
Honestly, I think we're already in.
I think you guys should just start right away.
Don't even count down.
Well, this surprise is gone now
because everybody,
we were telling people that.
He's going to Europe.
And so I want to talk about,
you know,
creepy teddy bears.
Yeah.
Early morning with the devil,
Amanda Dobbins,
AKA Elvira Jr. is here.
One of our world's foremost horror experts.
Yeah.
You have been grinding tape.
This is your NFL draft.
You've watched 300 horror films in the last three days,
leading with the film Imaginary.
Sure, which I did not know had been released six weeks ago.
But hopefully it's now available on VOD.
Yes.
So Saturday night, prime time, 7 p.m.
Nas goes to bed. That's not prime time. That's prime time for me. Let me tell you
something. Saturday night, that is like big billing. Yeah. You and the Bay City Rollers. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y.
Imaginary. Knox goes to sleep. Zach heads into the kitchen to make a beautiful meal. I sit down on the couch.
Let's be honest.
I lied.
Out on the couch.
Full, full couch.
Rent imaginary for $19.99.
What?
$19.99?
That is the price.
That is the going rate to rent imaginary.
You gotta reject that expense.
That would be the funniest thing ever.
I am committed to the craft of
watching horror movies
for giggles
so I have seen
Imaginary
but Chris has not
seen it
so
why not
it looked really stupid
and
so this is
can you
yeah
tell me what you think
Imaginary is about
it's not a five night
at Freddy's
offshoot right
it's not
it is
it's not quite gateway horror for ten year olds but it's not a Five Nights at Freddy's offshoot, right? It's not. It is. It's not quite gateway horror for 10-year-olds,
but it's not like an adult horror movie either.
It's in that 15-year-old zone, I would say.
The trailer was just flashing like Megan vibes.
I gotta be completely honest.
I hated the trailer for the John Krasinski movie so much
that I don't think I'll ever be participating in any imaginary friend content for the rest of my life.
Okay, so let's start here.
Chris Ryan, did you have an imaginary friend?
No.
I talked to my baseball cards, though.
Does that count?
Say more.
Say more.
I would look at Kent Herbeck and Gary Gaiety and Kirby Puckett,
and I would be like, you guys are my friends.
I would imagine locker room drama with those guys.
I just got sweaty palms hearing you say that.
I feel like I'm simultaneously so connected to you and so freaked out by you.
It's an amazing feeling.
I would have Kent Herbeck the card go up to Kirby Puckett and be like, we need you today.
Okay, I don't think I had imaginary friends, but I do remember having a very active imagination with action figures in the same way that Chris did with trading cards.
But those are like, you were pretending that Kirbyby puckett was kirby puckett right like the card was standing in
for the real person and i had like a game that i would play where you put like the nine baseball
cards out yeah and like you would roll the dice and be like oh it's a it's a double you played
silo with baseball cards okay but that is all at, those are like connected. So you weren't like inventing a person?
No.
Did you?
I don't think so. I think I was much more like, I was pretending that I was like the
eighth Von Trapp child. That's a Sound of Music reference. This sort of thing, you know?
I mean, I was lonely. That's why I asked Chris, because only children, you know, you gotta
really populate the space.
Yeah. Because there's no one else to hang out with.
But I don't remember, like, creating someone whole cloth.
I mean, I'm watching it happen with Alice right now,
where she's really, really into John Smith from Pocahontas.
Right.
Which is just the most confusing thing that's ever happened in our house.
That is like, when are you going to tell her?
You know?
I'm like, what are you?
When do you
show her the new world yeah i mean i'm just imagine the number of of of non-fiction texts
she'll have to read to understand white saviordom um every morning now when i get her i pick her up
and i'm like dad i cannot find john smith in my dreams we have to go look for him in the other
room and i'm like sweetheart that's beautiful
but also really really alarming it's it's interesting it's she's she has an active
imagination yeah i watching this movie you know the the little girl in imaginary is named alice
yeah which was another reason that i wanted to see it because the trailer like had megan vibes
i thought like the creepy teddy bear going down the...
In my mind, I had put the teddy bear in a Roomba.
Yes.
Which it's just moving of its own volition or other volitions, which we can talk about.
But I thought it looked silly.
I thought the kid being possessed looked funny.
And I thought it was extra funny that the kid was named Alice. And then I just thought it was like a good bit for this to be the one that i was interested
in so what did you think and tell chris what happens okay so hold on i gotta pull up the
wikipedia so i can use these people's names see this is we never have to do this when we're
accounting the movie it's right you remember you. You remember that Jessica, played by Dewanda Wise, is moving into her childhood home with her new family, her husband, and her two stepdaughters.
Classic.
One's a teenager and one is Alice.
And what is her husband's occupation?
He's in a band.
He's in a band.
He is like a, his... The husband really inspired me
just to do a whole thing of like,
where do they find these people?
And apparently he was on Walking Dead,
but it's just like,
sometimes you have to look further than the CW
for your actors.
Tom Paine is the actor.
Do you know him?
No.
British actor.
He's basically in
The Shitty Arctic Monkeys.
Oh, okay.
The Shitty Monkeys.
Yeah, yeah.
So they're moving back
to her childhood home in Louisiana.
But before that, she has, the movie starts with like a nightmare of hers.
And a giant spider is chasing her through what I guess is her childhood home.
And I was like, I did not, I was not told that there were going to be spiders in this.
And it wasn't like a scary spider. Have i got a film for you later on this podcast it wasn't that scary but i was like very big and i was just kind of like i don't want to watch a
creature movie you know that's not what i'm here for i'm here for little kids like screaming
at imaginary like haunted dolls well and so it isn't really a creature movie ultimately no so
she wakes up from the dream
and then they're like,
oh, no, it's probably a good idea
to move to the house anyway.
So they move to the house anyway
and then Alice gets to exploring
and is allowed to go down
into the basement unsupervised.
How old's Alice?
Six, five?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's funny.
I guess it's a little girl
so she's six.
Like, if it were a boy, I'd be like, well, he's probably like 15.
Knox's version of imagination right now is being like, don't touch a cactus for two weeks
and then touching a fucking cactus and being like, ouch.
So she goes into the basement.
There's like a layer of doors that somehow a six-year-old opens by herself and she finds like a teddy bear like in prison behind like three layers of bricks in the basement and
then she's like this is my new best friend the teddy bear it's totally ripped off from beetlejuice
the drawing of the door they painted in this movie but you know in in beetlejuice when they
draw with the chalk and that opens a portal to the other side. She does the same thing. It was also my reaction.
You guys have never seen Beetlejuice.
I'm just also remembering the text of like, Vegas is abuzz with Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
I've gotten many messages from kind listeners saying you guys were mean.
Many men have come up to me and said, sir, sir.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice will perform at the box office.
Does that track for you guys?
All right.
So,
the bear gets released
from Beetlejuice
basement prison.
And,
you know,
it's revealed
at some point
that
the girls,
their mom
has some problems.
It's been a period
of transition.
Alice has been
through a lot.
Yeah.
Very much.
There's some trauma.
She's,
she's, she's in a facility. Yeah. Very much. There's some trauma.
She's in a facility.
She's not well.
The mom is, not Alice.
Yeah, not Alice.
There's a history of mental health struggles in their family.
Gotcha.
And Jessica is trying to be like a good new stepmom and be patient.
And the teenager is being a real bitch to her.
So they're like, oh, okay.
She's got this new bear.
That's good for Alice to have a friend.
And then Alice starts talking about Chauncey and the bear is her friend Chauncey
and Chauncey says this and Chauncey says that.
And they're still like, okay, well,
it seems fine that Alice has an imaginary friend.
She's been through a lot.
And then Chauncey makes her a scavenger hunt
and she's got to, you know, do bad things.
Like steal her stepmom's artwork.
Oh, yeah.
Her mom is like a children's book illustrator.
And she like turns her nightmares into commercial books.
She writes books about a friendly spider.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because she has spider trauma.
Spider trauma.
Yeah, she has spider trauma spider trauma yeah she has spider trauma and so then alice the little girl has to collect all the things on the scavenger hunt and no one else can
know about the scavenger hunt because it's secret between her and chauncey and so and then at some
point the scavenger hunt wants her to hurt herself and then jessica's like oh no this is a problem
so we've got to call al Alice's therapist because as previously discussed.
Oh, she's got one.
Yeah, she's got one.
She's been through a lot.
And that's Jessica Lange,
who plays the therapist.
Okay, and I thought this was
the actually one fun scene in the movie.
This scene is excellent.
This scene is so good.
Excellent.
So the therapist comes in,
you know, and sets up
and does all the child therapy stuff.
So it's the therapist and Aliceice and the therapist is like alice you know i hear you have a new
friend would you like him to join us and so alice goes and gets chauncey and sets him up
on the couch and see the couch seated behind yeah the two chairs where they are having a discussion okay and the therapist starts asking alice about
her friendship with chauncey and alice is answering but then also chauncey starts taking
over alice's voice and answering like so chauncey is like possessing alice and being like no alice
no friends but me and then that was good thank you and then alice is being like, no, Alice, no friends but me. And then. That was good.
Thank you.
And then Alice is being like, Chauncey, I want to have other friends.
And then she is like, she turns around.
She's like yelling at this stuffed bear with demon eyes.
And he's like, no, Alice, no friends.
And then she's screaming.
And so, apart from the trailer, like the seven year old is being like i don't think we should be friends anymore
and then the bear makes her yell like we won't be friends you know and they're screaming at each
other uh-huh and the therapist is like pretty rattled to say the least so it's i mean it's
pretty it's like it's like a you know a seven-year-old being demonized by a stuffed bear
and what happens after this is the
best yeah and this is the best so then she leaves the room alice like runs away is very upset the
therapist comes out and talks to jessica and they're like going through it and um she's explaining
what happened and you know this it was troubling and jessica like, yeah, well, she has been pretty attached to that bear.
And the therapist goes, Jessica, there is no bear.
And so this stuffed bear that we and Jessica and the baby have been seeing.
Yeah.
That's good.
It's good.
That was really good.
The interview has been filmed and she shows on her phone that the little girl, Alice, is talking to an empty couch.
Yeah, gotcha.
But there is no bear there.
And it is the one reveal in the movie where you're like, yes, let's go.
For like 30 minutes, I'd been like,
this is not an imaginary friend.
There's a bear right there.
That's not, she's, you know,
it's a different form of child psychology.
But then it actually was an imaginary friend.
So that was really good.
Then it just like fucking goes insane. It really goes off the rails it's really really bad there's like a a nosy neighbor there's an old
lady who's a nosy neighbor is there a single person in this movie that i would have ever heard
of no no betty buckley is the nosy neighbor she's she's a very well-known actress she's been in a
lot of m.i.t. shaman movies movies in the 70s she's the nosy neighbor right who it turns out is also jessica parapsychologist and jessica's
babysitter and her her use in the plot is to show up and be like oh no um chauncey is actually your
old imaginary best friend and jessica had suppressed this yeah sure and so jessica's father
also has mental health struggles and he is also in like a home of some kind.
And they've moved into the house because he has to be sent to a home.
He goes on the road.
Of course.
Yeah.
He's on the road.
And Jessica's got to watch the girls, a teenage girl and a six year old who's got an imaginary psychotic friend.
We need this time together.
It's important.
Said no parent ever or step parent yeah um but so yeah
so then chauncey is actually her old imaginary friend she's been like luring her back and using
alice to lure her back to the beetlejuice door which turns out to be a portal to imaginary world
and then and then it just really goes. And I
couldn't tell you all of the mythology. At what point in the movie did dinner get served?
Before the good scene with the therapist. And did you guys eat while watching the film?
Oh, no, Zach didn't watch it with me. Zach was in the kitchen. I was alone. And then I was like,
okay, bye. I'm going to go watch Imaginary by myself upstairs.
It was wonderful.
He made the John and Vinny's
vodka pasta,
some sauteed kale.
Thank you, Zach,
for all that you do.
Yeah, that's very nice.
It really does.
The third act
takes place entirely
in the imaginary world,
which actually does look like
a shitty Beetlejuice rendering.
And it's, you know,
you open one, there's a series of doors. You open one. And it's, you know, you open one,
there's a series of doors.
You open one door
and it's your worst nightmare ever.
You open another door
and it's your childhood bedroom.
But in your childhood bedroom,
all of your stuffed animals
are actually demons
and they're possessed
and they're growing
to great sizes.
Your mom is there
and she's healthy
and she loves you,
but then she's actually
a demon trying to trap you
in the imaginary world.
And then the psycho,
the neighbor slash like,
Betty Buckley. Yeah. Par yeah paranormal expert or whatever is like no we must stay here and she's like working on behalf of like the imaginary spirit who also she wants to study it she thinks that
because she's like a scientist she's interested in the world we haven't mentioned that also
throughout there's just some sort of like gremlin man who like pops up behind people in certain shots.
And he's supposed to be like some manifestation of the imaginary.
I think he's the demon that is inside of Chauncey.
Oh, okay.
I think that's what he's supposed to be.
That's what he is, yeah.
Were you ever scared?
Oh, absolutely not.
Okay.
Yeah, it's not that scary.
And I was like, and I did, I like started online shopping during the imaginary world stuff.
But, well, I just, I didn't buy anything good.
There's sort of a.
Anything good or anything?
I don't think I bought anything that time.
I'm really.
How many teacups?
No tea.
Listen, I'm waiting for that and cheesecake from you.
I might get you cheesecake.
I will never buy you a teacup.
There will never be a teacup.
It's like, you know,
transitional weather.
Are you having a hard time
dressing right now?
I just change 14 times a day.
Yeah, but that's where I am.
It's very confusing.
Chris is in a crisp green
long sleeve polo.
Over a tie-dye shirt
with like neon green accents.
Is that a basketball
is very good t-shirt?
Yeah.
Wow.
You really, you brought it today.
Yeah.
Three pod day. I try. It's a three pod day. I got to feel good. Oh, yeah. Amanda, closing thoughts on Imag access. Is that a basketball is very good t-shirt? Yeah. Wow. You brought it today. Yeah. Three pod day.
I try.
It's a three pod day.
I got to feel good.
Oh, yeah.
Amanda, closing thoughts
on Imaginary.
Would you recommend it to Chris?
No, but he could watch
that one scene.
I'll try and watch that one scene
when it goes on YouTube.
It was really good
because the little girl,
her name is Piper James,
I believe.
Piper Braun.
Piper Braun.
Okay.
Well, I got her first name right.
Piper with a Y.
Yeah.
Good job, Piper Braun. Ifiper Braun. Okay. Well, I got her first name right. Piper with a Y. Yeah. Good job, Piper Braun.
If we were going to recommend any movie from today for Amanda,
either because it was good or because it would just be hilarious to watch her
just get on tilt because she was so scared, what would you recommend?
I mean, Infested would fuck with her.
Oh, but is it all bugs?
Yeah.
But you know I'm not afraid of bugs.
These ones are tough.
I mean, I don't like a lot of bugs.
Did you guys ever have to read that short story with like the 10,000, I think they were ants that ate everyone?
No.
Or maybe it was Bobby?
Sounds like an imaginary story to me.
No, no, no.
We read it in eighth grade.
Eighth grade?
You read a story about ants eating things?
Yeah, and it really stayed with me because it was like the volume of the ants.
I think they were ants.
I don't think it was spiders.
But if anyone anywhere knows what I'm talking about.
So bugs and numbers, not a huge fan.
Obviously, we had a bee problem at my house.
You were the beekeeper.
Yeah.
It kept you.
Yeah, it kept me and my husband.
But, you know, I deal with the bugs in the home.
I've already told you that the first Omen, I think,
would be an intriguing experience to watch you watch it.
That is one of the hardest trolls I've ever seen in my life,
is you saying that.
Yeah, I think you should check it out.
It's about how men want to control women's bodies and Satan.
Yeah.
It's an intriguing film.
We're going to talk about it
right now, actually.
Amanda, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Will you be back on the podcast
later this week?
Yes, I will.
What were you talking about?
Challengers.
Yeah.
Get ready.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Could be a good one.
Okay.
Thanks, Amanda.
Bye. anything you want to say about the first omen arkasha is him yeah like i can't i can't wait
for her next movie uh i thought it was such an amazing recreation
of 1970s
horror vibes while not feeling
dated or even particularly
pious about it.
No pun intended.
The fact that
a demon
puts his claw through
someone's birth canal
and it's a 20th century Fox movie,
I think it just says some really amazing things
about our country right now.
I shed a tear.
I was so moved by that moment.
We have never been more divided.
Perhaps we are never more together.
That's right.
What we need more of is demon claws
emerging from women's bodily orifices.
That will really bring us together.
Should that be on Biden's campaign poster?
That image from the first omen?
I feel like we would all agree.
Hurts nobody.
Grows the economy.
Let me tell you, Jack, this demon.
He just wanted a fair shot at the American dream.
This demon reminds me.
What's so bad about that?
Not since corn pop has a demon come along that has struggled.
Okay. It's a very exciting announcement of a filmmaker yeah um there's a new movie coming to shutter on friday called infested
this is a french film it's a it premiered at festivals last fall i got a heads up about it
a couple of months ago sebastian vanacek is a filmmaker keep an eye on that name i think he's
going to be the director of the next Evil Dead movie.
Ooh, really?
Which is very notable
based on his work here.
I was saying he had
some Jom Kolejera
like juice to him.
Yes.
It was like whenever you make...
Again, this is a movie set
in an apartment block.
Has like a contained cast
and a really good ensemble.
I do not like bugs.
And thought that this was a little bit closer to an
action movie than it really was it is scary it's attack the block with spiders yeah yeah yeah yeah
um very similar framework very similar concept about the people who live in these homes
young people kind of fighting to build an identity outside of themselves opening scene though very
very very good the like the world of like the spider where the spiders come from the people
trying to capture the spiders.
I love that.
There's a little bit of the trauma stuff in this.
A little bit of the cultural,
like, oh, what have we lost
or what have we gained?
But it has a little bit of an Aliens feel, too.
It's a very low-budget movie,
but it's like the team trying to get through
the cave that is full of fucking spiders.
There's three or four sequences in the movie, and I don't
like spiders. I don't mind saying right now. I just
do not like them. I don't want them around. I don't care
if they don't bite. I don't care if they're safe.
I don't care if a daddy longlegs is harmless.
Don't want it near me. Just keep it away from me. As long as they're
outside, and also we did have that thing
last summer here in LA
for whatever reason. Yeah. Where
everybody's... The orb weavers.
They just covered people's houses and so like i
was out there with a broom like every day and i i had like the conservationist you know like what's
maybe i shouldn't do this but then i was like actually these guys are entombing me yeah they're
huge the orb weavers were huge too it's kind of hard to explain that to a little kid you know
where i'm like yeah this is harmless but she's fucking of hard to explain that to a little kid, you know, where I'm like, yeah, this is harmless, but she's fucking mortified of that creature.
Infested,
I thought was very, very effective.
Bug horror
always works on me, and this one worked
on me. So I would definitely recommend that one on Shudder.
Lovely, dark, and deep.
Watch this. Again,
a really good context movie. Watched it
late at night in a remote part
of the Central Valley in California.
Okay.
So you keep doing this.
I wanted to, when you mentioned that you did this for Portland, I wanted to say, this is
an idea that I have for a movie theater.
It's a house.
Oh, Sean.
It's a, it's a.
And it opens at 9.30 PM.
10 PM.
First screening is at 10 PM every night.
We show films 10, 12, and two.
It's only horror programming
it's out you know on the outskirts we could call it house of the devil yes it's in pomona it's not
in los angeles you got to travel to get out there and you got to drive back in the middle of the
night to get home but the setting is creaky floorboards yeah you know it's a dusty banister
you got to go upstairs it's a beautiful screen it's a it's a dusty banister. You got to go upstairs. It's a beautiful screen.
It's a hundred seat movie theater,
tricked out.
But everything else
is a perfectly designed haunted house.
David Ellison calls.
I'm telling you, this is a business.
We can make this work.
It's Chris and I programming
old films and new horror films.
And who doesn't want to start work at 10 p.m.?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I'll never be there.
I'll be asleep. But I will own it, and that will be great.
Lovely Dark and Deep is basically when I'm watching a horror movie,
I have an X and Y axis.
I have concept and execution.
The concept of this movie is awesome.
It's about a traumatized woman who is a forest ranger.
Traumatized, you say?
Yes.
And she finally gets the job of her dreams or nightmares,
which is to be in the most remote part of a national park
on her own at a ranger station for the summer.
And she's played by Georgina Campbell.
And it's like the premise,
which is another awesome opening scene,
which is the previous forest ranger
nailing a
sign up that says we owe this land a body or i own this land a body and this idea that like
people go missing in the national parks all the time which i don't know if that's true or not
all the shit that starts this movie is really really cool and then it turns into
she's stuck inside of her mind palace trying to find her sister who was lost.
And there is like a kind of scales of justice
where like will she or won't she be able to satisfy
like the underworlds that wants a body.
It's just kind of like, it just gets lost in a dream logic
that I think is another affliction of horror movies,
which is like the least scary thing is a person being like stuck in a dream to me.
Completely agree with you.
You know, I don't dream.
We've talked about this before.
I dream, but I dream about like,
you know, like I walked into work today.
Yeah, like, yeah.
I'm sure I do dream,
but I almost never remember them.
I remember one out of every 100 dreams.
And my wife thinks I'm a sociopath because I don't, but I just never remember them. I remember one out of every 100 dreams.
And my wife thinks I'm a sociopath because I don't.
But I just don't.
I don't know why that is.
Maybe first showing at House of the Devil is Dreamless,
a film by Sean Fennessey about a guy who has no dreams.
Yeah.
I mean, the person who should make that film is David Lynch.
That would be the hardest thing ever.
That would be like tying both hands behind his back.
What if there were no dreams, David?
What would you do then?
I, Lovely Dark and Deep is okay.
I have Georgina Campbell's stock.
I will be holding my stock after Barbarian because she's appearing in The Watchers in June,
which I'm looking forward to.
She's a scream queen.
Yeah, she is.
She's a real final girl right now.
Another scream queen.
I'll just jump ahead here
because this is another great concept.
And the execution is pretty good
is this movie called Somewhere Quiet.
And one of our low-key screen queens is Maren Ireland,
who's an incredibly accomplished character actress
and is one of the great New York theater actors
of the last couple decades.
And it's just awesome.
And I checked this out the other day.
This is about a woman played by Jennifer Kim
who was recently kidnapped and escaped.
And her husband, as a form of like trying to help
her get over this takes her to his family's home in cape cod in the off season so in like the kind
of winter christmas time and when they get out there his cousin is already on the property is
already staying on the property with her mother and his cousin is played by um uh marin ireland and as uh the movie goes on not only is
jennifer kim experiencing can't tell between dream and reality and like whether or not she's
seeing things or whether or not they're actually happening but it's starting to become increasingly
paranoid about her husband's relationship with his cousin and whether or not they had something
to do with her kidnapping so it's a little bit thrillery. It's, uh, I think this is a good example of one of those movies
that I wish it had like a little bit more space or a little bit more like, like there was just
like a little bit more life in what was going on because it's just really three, three and a half
characters and, and hanging out at a beach house.
But it's pretty effective use of this idea
of like off-season Cape Cod
is a pretty interestingly scary area.
I got to check this one out.
I'm looking forward to it.
I also have Marin Ireland stock,
so that should be a good one.
You want me to give you one that I've seen?
Please.
How about stop motion?
Yeah, what's up?
This is a tricky one for you.
I'm not a stop motion guy.
Not an animation guy.
Not a stop motion guy.
This movie was released in theaters a couple months ago.
I think you can rent it on VOD right now.
It's going to be on Shudder in May.
It's Robert Morgan's first feature.
And very small, very contained production,
similar to what we're describing with Abigail.
It stars Eileen Franciosi,
who people may remember from the
nightingale incredible actress almost entirely focused on her she was a young woman whose mother
is an acclaimed stop-motion animator and she is a son of a bitch she is so tough on her daughter
and on her world because stop-motion animation of course is this incredibly meticulous art form
craft and everything has to be just so.
And we watch her kind of coaching her daughter through how to make the movements for the
characters that she's created. Her mother dies tragically. And then the haunting begins.
Trauma.
And trauma has reared its ugly head once more. And her creations start to come to life,
or at least maybe in the life of her mind, and start to torture her and start to come to life or at least maybe in the life of her mind and start to torture her
and start to encourage her
to do things.
Kind of the flip side
of imaginary
now that I think about it.
The friends that we made
along the way
are all imaginary.
Just really, really impressive
as like a debut feature
as a small movie.
Like a special performance
in the middle of it.
It's a little bit,
you know,
comes apart a little bit
at the seams
as a lot of these movies do near the end.
But I was really impressed and I liked it a lot.
I don't know.
There's very rarely any sequences that are just animation.
They're often interacting with the real world.
So where does that fit on your animation register?
I'm open to it.
I definitely would be open to it.
You told me that you were confronted by an animator
this weekend in a social setting.
And what did that person say they said that uh they didn't seem to know my personal stance but I was like oh I've just recently started trying to open myself up
to animation she's and and she she didn't seem impressed she was just like a typical blockhead
who who doesn't understand the glories of Miyazaki and etc. Did you end up watching Blackout?
I did.
To be completely honest, I did not finish it yet,
but I did start it last night.
I really want to see this.
I haven't had a chance to see this one yet,
but this is Larry Fessenden's new movie,
one of the signature independent horror auteurs of the last 20 years.
And I think the point at which time, if I can speak for you,
that Sean and I got probably most like because
we're not like Fangoria subscribers but I think the most like thrilled we were with like the
developments of what were happening on indie horror cinema was just when Adam Wingard and Joe
Swanberg were collaborating on your next and Ty West was making House of the Devil and Larry
Fessenden was kind of like the godfather yes the, hey, you can make essentially a mumblecore movie. And if you put a monster or a killer or a demon or something in it, you can get it into festivals and into theaters and you can make your money. And, you know, the Duplass brothers did Baghead. Like there was like a lot of stuff happening around that where it was like, oh, okay, this is a really interesting use of genre
with indie film.
That's exactly it.
That's when I got into
indie horror.
And you could see,
he's an actor as well,
Larry Fessenden,
and he is in a lot of
those Ty West movies
and Adam Wingard movies.
He's always being cast
as kind of like,
you know,
he's a kind of big,
kind of grizzled guy
with a beard
who's a little bit dopey.
And so he always fits
really well into these movies.
Blackout is his
werewolf movie.
Yeah. And he's made like a Wend movies. Blackout is his werewolf movie. Yeah.
And he's made
like a Wendigo movie,
he's made a vampire movie,
he's made a Frankenstein movie.
He's made a lot of
different kinds of these movies.
This is a werewolf movie.
I'm pumped for it.
Yeah.
I don't have anything
to say about it.
What I saw was really good.
I just had to turn on
the sympathizer.
The vagaries
of the TV podcaster.
Did you see the seating?
I did.
I haven't seen this.
Again, concept and execution. This is an interesting one because the director,
Barnaby Clay, has been really open about like, this was a COVID movie or like a post-COVID movie
where it was like, you still had a lot of COVID restrictions. And I think that their financing
fell apart and came back together multiple times so that he had to rethink a lot of
it on the fly. I thought that this was conceptually awesome. I'll just give you guys the premise.
A man is taking photographs of an eclipse in like a Utah National Park desert area,
rocky desert. Comes across kid who's like, I've lost my parents. The guy's like, okay,
I'll help you try and find your parents. But the kid seems to be leading him.
They wind up where the guy gets lost
and sees a house at the bottom of a canyon.
So there is a ladder going down into the canyon.
He climbs down the ladder
and goes into the house where Caitlin Sheel,
who's sort of a massive indie legend,
is living in this house.
She is quite odd.
There's something up with her, but he's like...
What? Caitlin Sheil is playing an odd woman?
Yes, but he is like,
I guess I will stay here the night and rest
and then go back and try and find my car in the morning.
When he wakes up in the morning,
half of the ladder has been removed.
So he cannot reach the ladder to get out of the canyon.
And they begin getting harassed by feral children surrounding the canyon who seem to get off on like kind of starts off and it's like when i when i when i
wrote this down i was like i shouldn't write this down i should just like go write this movie which
is like what if denis villeneuve did the hills have eyes because it has like a little bit of
like a deep staring at the sun spiritual ecological vibe to it but then it is also
like feral children are harassing this photographer who's stuck at the bottom of a canyon.
It just gets really
moon girly at certain
points. It's just like a lot of
stuff about like, I don't know. I don't want to give
too much away. It sounds like, it honestly
sounds like Tessha Gahara's
Woman in the Dunes. It just wasn't scary
I guess is what I would say.
It just winds up being a little bit more of a
chore. But I thought that the premise was awesome and if you're just like, I guess is what I would say. It just winds up being a little bit more of a chore. Yeah, but I thought that the premise was awesome.
And if you're just like, I just will watch anything,
this is definitely well-made
and Kitten Shield's quite creepy in it.
I'll give you one more
and then I want to play a little bit of a game
that you pitched to me.
So the last one is Arcadian.
You haven't seen this yet, right?
I have not.
So this movie's in theaters now.
I think it's coming to VOD very soon.
Nicolas Cage film.
It's a classic nicholas cage independent programmer
it's directed by ben brewer who has worked as a vfx artist that is really the thing to recommend
about this it's a classic post-apocalyptic film about a father and two sons who are living and
trying to survive in the midst of a kind of alien invasion essentially, where they are being tormented by these creatures
that we don't see for a long time in the film
when they're trying to live quietly.
And the reason to watch the movie
is because it's an independent film
that has some remarkable visual effects
and creature design
that is clearly digitally created,
but has a kind of like energy and look that i've never seen
before okay there's like a snapping clapping ferocity to the character to the creatures
that even though the movie i was like this is a little stiff and a little leaden at times in
terms of how the story is being told the creatures are so fucking scary and intense that i gotta tip my
cap because this is clearly a very low budgeted movie and i thought ben bro really really nailed
it and i'm wondering like what he did to you know we saw this a little bit with gareth edwards with
the creator where it's like that's a movie that looks like it costs 300 million dollars it costs
like 80 and it's because he is such a smart visual filmmaker who understands effects work this is a way scaled down version of
that but i was like i kind of want to see ben brewer with a budget it's almost like stileski
doing stunts where it's like oh like if you let the best stunt guy ever do of direct a movie it'll
probably have like five incredible fight scenes exactly so so just worth checking out for that
reason and of course cage Cage, going full Cage,
you know, just like,
you know, emotionally destroyed.
He has a few rage moments.
But Jaden Martell
from Stranger Things
is actually in many ways
kind of like at the center
of the movie.
He's a very good actor.
You asked me over the weekend,
who are the great filmmakers
who should make a horror movie?
Yes.
Because that's the other thing.
This is a trick you can pull
if you want to take a break
from an Oscar film or from a franchise film. Rearing back and making a horror movie. Because that's the other thing. This is a trick you can pull if you want to take a break from an Oscar film
or from a franchise film.
Rearing back
into making a scary movie,
we're about to talk about
Paul Schrader.
He made a Cat People movie.
Yeah.
You know, like,
this can be done.
Is there someone that you
really want to see
take a shot at pure horror?
Well, I think Villeneuve
kind of did that with Enemy.
I mean, it's not horror.
It's more of a psychological thriller.
But I do think that his
five-tool playerness
and the fact that he's so good
at not only composition, but
thinking about sound and thinking about music
and thinking about creating atmosphere.
I think that's a pretty easy
answer, though.
I was curious who you thought.
I saw a few people point out
that Nolan in the aftermath
of oppenheimer it would be really fun to watch him just crank out a 40 million dollar haunted
creature movie yeah right yeah that he his sense of atmosphere and pace right now is unrivaled and
those are the things that you really need to create to make a horror movie i mean that's a very easy
lottery pick for something like this but I was really really
intrigued by that um I also just really would I've always wanted to see the Coen brothers try
to make a pure genre play like this like they've done pure genre plays with comedy they've done
pure genre plays with noir I always thought they could make like a great Frankenstein movie or
something there's two Frankenstein movies coming out next year. There's Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein.
And there's also The Bride,
which is a Bride of Frankenstein film from Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Right.
Both of which have incredible cast.
And then we have Lisa Frankenstein this year.
And Lisa Frankenstein,
which I saw and thought was okay.
I don't know if you saw that.
I didn't.
I didn't really mention it here on the pod
because I didn't love it.
But I don't know.
Who else?
Who else would you want to see?
So I guess just because he's on the brain because I've been watching it. But, I don't know. Who else? Who else would you want to see? So,
I guess just because he's on the brain
because I've been watching Sympathizer,
Park Chan-wook
would be like a cool,
like,
you know,
I mean,
and he obviously has horror elements
to some of his films.
The Vengeance trilogy,
especially the old boy,
has like a degree of,
of,
of action set piece horror.
Yeah,
Thirst is basically a horror movie.
And Thirst is a horror movie.
But after just like watching how effective he is
at creating something out of nothing,
like there are scenes in The Sympathizer
where, you know, a guy is just walking into a room,
but he's like, I'm going to do this whip pan,
then I'm going to go back in time 30 seconds,
then I'm going to, you know,
he has so much juice to his style
that I think it could very easily be effectively applied
to like a horror story.
There's also like,
are filmmakers like Steve McQueen or Alexander Payne,
where you're like,
I never would have guessed
that they would have made a movie about spiders, you know?
But I kind of want to see what happens
when you put their tonality on a horror movie.
That is something
that is a little missing.
You really have to love the genre
to dig into it and to make it.
You know, like,
if Edgar Wright was like,
I'm doing another horror movie,
you wouldn't be like, wow.
You'd be like, of course
he's doing another horror movie.
There's parts of it
where I'm like,
it's not necessarily
even a filmmaker who I'm like,
you have horror in your bag
and I can't, I mean,
Garland would be
a really good example.
Like, I know that he's,
I mean, and Men is essentially a horror movie but I was just thinking about um a quality like Paul
Greengrass where you're just like and you know he hasn't made a film you know in a while but like uh
it's like that kind of verite like what if it just felt so real that that was the terror
because I think one of the things in
the in the directors that we're talking about is there's like a kind of um pristine nature to their
compositions and to their like visual style like it's so exacting and perfect that it's like yeah
that would be really scary and like that would be really cool but like you know what's really scary
is like that jeremy saulnier like running through the fucking room thing
you know and like
I think that
somebody like
employing
I would love to see
that come back into it
what about
I thought of this
when we were talking
about Larry Fessenden
you know the producer
of this filmmaker's
early films
is Larry Fessenden
is Kelly Reichert
who
you know on the one hand
you might be like
that would seem
maybe a little slow
but if you've seen Night Moves for example you know, on the one hand, you might be like, that would seem maybe a little slow. But if you've seen Night Moves, for example,
you know that she's got a sense of dramatic tension
that she's able to...
In Meek's Cutoff, there's a moment,
an hour and a half into Meek's Cutoff,
where you're like, holy shit, they are lost.
Like, we are lost.
This is hopeless.
And that's a feeling that you're trying to conjure in these movies.
Does a movie like that need to have like giant monsters?
Not necessarily.
Like there's a different way.
A Kelly Reichardt slasher.
That's a fucking cool idea.
I would love to see that.
I don't know if she's really interested in doing that.
Who else?
Do you think this Coogler vampire movie is going to be like more of a vampire action movie or a vampire movie?
I mean, my gut is that it's a vampire action movie.
If it's not, if it's
like Nosferatu.
Is it the untitled
Ryan Coogler movie with
Michael B. Jordan that
he negotiated successfully
to get the rights to
revert back to him.
So it's like, it was
like one of the hottest
properties in Warner
Brothers.
Yes.
And you keep seeing new
names added to the cast
every day.
We're like, oh shit.
This sounds really,
really good.
Obviously, this is
exactly what I've wanted
Coogler to do.
An original story that is genre. that's like why i'm always praising
jordan peele because i'm like this guy this is exactly what i want from these creative filmmakers
anybody else todd haynes that's interesting kenneth lonergan probably not kenneth if i could
give you one more kenneth lonergan movie would you do a horror or would you do like a
Margaret Manchester by the Sea drama?
Imaginary too?
Kenneth Lonergan's Imaginary?
I'm trying to think of people.
I really want to get another Arkausha Stevenson horror movie.
I think you will.
That seems to be where her head is at.
I wonder whether or not the Radio Silence guys
will try and do something different now or if they'll keep doing...
Victorian drama.
Victorian drama, yeah.
There's...
Oh, you know who would be interesting?
Who?
Mark Milod, who I think has like...
He's kind of like what I'm talking about with the Schrader thing of like, is able to like follow someone from one room to another and make it feel really naturalistic.
And the menu has a little bit of that.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Again, he ratchets the tension really well,
whether that film pays off or not is debatable.
There's a ton of stuff coming out this year.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about some of the stuff on the...
What horror movie are you most anticipating for the rest of the year?
I refuse to watch the Speak no evil trailer okay um i am most excited probably about seeing how they how they execute that i
know that you are very upset about that i just wish they hadn't cut it that way the movie itself
i'm open-minded yeah um i love scoot mcnary and james mAvoy. And I think those are inspired casting choices
for the two fathers from the original film.
So I'm of course going to see it.
What else?
I'm really, really, really, really excited for Maxine,
even if it's more of like an LA thriller,
like noir movie than it is like a horror movie.
I am too.
Are you going to be in town when this movie comes out
so you can pod with me?
July 5th? Yes. Okay. going to be in town when this movie comes out? So you can pod with me? July 5th?
Yes.
Okay.
I will be here for Independence Day when they free Maxine in theaters.
Or she frees Los Angeles from the Vice Squad.
And then I'll be honest, like, I mean, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago,
but Romulus, the Fede Alvarez alien movie looks terrifying.
And that is, I don't know if that's going to call it a sci-fi horror,
but like that looked absolutely awesome.
I'm so pumped.
I'm coming back from vacation to podcast about Alien Romulus.
And I'm very, very excited about that.
It's our terrible, what is it?
Ferrari life.
Our terrible joy.
Yeah, yeah.
That should be a good one.
I will revisit the works of Fede Alvarez too.
And that's also a movie where
I am going to be very careful not to listen to any
pre-critical buzz
because I don't think people understand
what I want.
I want extreme terror.
I don't care about
the xenomorphs, where they are
in the timeline of Weyland-Yutani.
I just want shit to explode.
Just rip some dude's throats out, please.
Just let that alien
with its bleeding claws
rip throats.
A lot of good smaller stuff
that I'm excited about.
Okay.
The trailers for Long Legs and Cuckoo
are like great.
The Cuckoo trailer looks awesome.
And that's the Luz director, right?
Yeah.
The Luz filmmaker, Dan Stevens.
I heard it's extremely strange.
Hunter Schaefer's the star.
Extremely strange,
because Luz is extremely strange.
But I heard,
I think that that looks really, really good.
Long Legs is a Nick Cage serial killer movie
by Oz Perkins,
which has also a great trailer.
You know, I just had the good fortune
of doing a trivia at the academy
museum and i was sitting next to a guy named greg jardine uh and he directed a movie called it's
what's inside that was at sundance and sold to netflix that i've had a couple people recommend
to me is it on netflix already awesome no it comes out i think it's gonna be in the fall i think okay
um but it was a huge acquisition at sundance and a real like chair rattler at the festival
and apparently it's very scary
that stars
is it Brittany O'Grady
from the White Lotus?
Sydney Sweeney's pal
in the White Lotus?
Oh yeah
Yeah
So I'm looking forward to that
We have a Soderbergh
ghost movie coming?
Presence?
Just give it to me
It sounds great
Speaking of guys
who we've been waiting
to make a horror movie
And the conceit of it
I think it's been
pretty widely talked about but I think it's been pretty widely talked about,
but I think it's told from the POV of the ghost.
Of the ghost, yes.
Lucy Liu is a star of that one.
I guess I shouldn't say Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to you.
You don't want to talk about that.
So you and I, we were on The Stranger's Island,
The Stranger's Corner, when that movie came out.
We were like, Strangers, this is one of the scariest movies.
We were there, committed to the cause.
Yes. They're making a prequel? This is The Stranger's Call in Chapter 1, directed by who? Strangers, this is one of the scariest movies. We were there committed to the cause.
They're making a prequel?
This is The Strangers Call in Chapter One,
directed by who?
Do you know who it's directed by?
Rennie Harlan.
Rennie Harlan.
What's your favorite Rennie Harlan film?
It's either Die Hard 2 or Cliffhanger,
but I think Deep Blue Sea is very fun.
Yeah.
Cutthroat Island?
I don't think I ever saw Cutthroat Island.
But this could be awesome.
I don't know.
I don't like.
I saw an extended trailer for this at CinemaCon
and I was a little bit like,
why do we need this?
We have the strangers at home.
Not sure I understand, but.
Just looking at
Randy Harlan's most recent.
Oh, he did The Devil's Pass.
That's right.
Yeah.
So Devil's Pass was pretty good
effective horror movie.
Gnarly.
That's why I was like,
maybe he could do a really good job with this.
Where are you at on Blink Twice?
Are you familiar with this one?
This is Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut.
Oh.
It was originally called Pussy Island.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
So what's the deal?
Is this like people are on an island
and then, okay.
We will find out.
Channing Tatum's in this?
Channing Tatum is in it.
You know, I think
Shades of Epstein.
Oh, okay.
Should be an interesting
exploration.
Jeff Epstein?
The financier.
One of the great bits.
Honestly, one of the
greatest bits in the
history of podcasting.
Can't do better than
Jim Downey.
Three big ones at the end of the year.
Smile 2.
Yeah.
I was pretty mixed on Smile.
Me too.
Even though it was a huge sensation.
Terrifier 3.
Did I correctly hear that Smile 2 is going to be less scary and it's more...
More trauma?
It's more of a psychological thriller, I guess.
Yeah, I would be okay with that if you can pull it off.
I think audiences might be big mad about that.
Okay.
One of my favorite things about Smile was the big creature at the end of it,
which was, I think, practically made, which I thought was great.
It was super effective.
Anyway, Terrifier 3, I'm in.
Terrifier 2, seen in the bedroom, is the funniest, grossest horror thing I've seen in like 10 years.
And then Nosferatu.
Yeah. Which, like, the whispers've seen in like 10 years. And then Nosferatu. Yeah.
Which like the whispers are starting to trickle out.
Like speaking of is him, like that Eggers is him,
that this is the one.
That Daddy Bobby is going to scare us.
Yeah.
And he, I saw a quote from him today where he was like,
I can't even look at the witch.
All the actors are great, but God, I screwed that movie up so much.
And I was like, if you screwed up the witch,
I'm pumped for Nosferatu.
Should we revive The Northman
as like a classic?
We were there.
I know.
We were on it.
I know.
I'm comfortable with my,
where I am with Eggers.
Like,
each one out,
I'll be like,
there's no one doing it
quite like him.
Yeah.
And
The Northman,
if it was released in 2024,
I wonder if it would have been received differently.
You know what they say,
though?
It was like a big VOD movie.
I don't really know.
I wish there were VOD charts
where I could understand that.
watching the Northman?
You think we're still
listening to the Northman?
That's a good question.
You can text him.
You think we're still
in on Eggers?
I wonder if he saw the witch.
I bet he saw the Northman
just to see what Skarsgård did
with his lats.
Think about, next time you listen to Bill and Ryan
on a Sunday, just think of them as the guys in the lighthouse.
That's kind of how I see it.
They definitely are the guys in the lighthouse.
CR, you feel good about this?
I do. I do. I mean, this is like,
is there any other genre that we do this for
with any regularity?
I mean, there isn't any other genre that Hollywood does it for, really.
They don't give us this much.
Start pumping out Westerns again, and we'll do that.
Where were you at with Deadpool and Wolverine trailer?
Did you watch it?
I didn't watch the new one.
I'm trying to keep the magic alive.
You don't want anything spoiled for you.
Just like, no.
Can I tell you something?
Yeah.
Thought it looked good.
And it's a Deadpool and Wolverine movie.
It's not Deadpool 3.
Well, I think they're one and the same.
They're not.
Sean Levy has gone out of his way to be like,
this is not Deadpool 3.
Well, that's going to be very annoying
when they call the next movie Deadpool 3.
Do you think there will be a next movie?
You think he's like Iron Man now?
This is so hard for me to answer
because for whatever lizard brain reason,
I'm just really charmed
by what this is.
And I know that there are
many 40-year-old men
listening to this podcast
thinking to themselves,
you're a fucking clown show.
Like,
get,
like,
grow up.
But this is the last thing
where I'm like,
I was watching the trailer
this morning in bed
at 7 a.m.
And I was like,
yeah,
that was funny.
I'm well. I think this ism. And I was like, yeah, that was funny. I'm well.
I think this is funny.
And I know it's very stupid and obvious.
And we're way past the expiration date on meta humor around superheroes.
And the boys has like completely obviated Deadpool.
But I always liked Jackman in that part.
I always thought Ryan Reynolds was funny in that character.
I want to watch it. It's going to be so funny if this resets the Marvel Universe and like the entire thing that we were
like it's so precise what he's doing over the course of these two decades and then it's like
this thing that they got like for like randomly brought actually Ryan Reynolds in and completely
changes the sort of
what was previously known as their
aesthetic in terms of like, I can't curse that
much.
Specifically because it is the antithesis
of the brand that they were building.
What happens to the rest of Marvel if they're like, Deadpool is
Iron Man now? I mean, literally, there
are at least five F-bombs
in the trailer. So, they're
obviously not changing what Deadpool is. The first joke is a pegging in the trailer. So they're obviously not changing
what Deadpool is.
The first joke
is a pegging joke.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I think
that's funny.
I think that tells you
that nobody has
a lifetime plan.
Like whatever Feige
whatever he had cooking
in 17
is not cooking anymore
so they have to adapt.
But yeah I'm intrigued.
Chloe would love
to do another Eternals
but we have some notes
on the sensibility.
Did you end up watching that film?
You did.
The Eternals?
Yeah.
In the theater.
One of the longest nights of my life.
That's actually one of the great episodes of The Watch
where Andy's like,
this film touched me.
It touched my heart.
When he's like,
when Brian Tyree Henry has a catch with his son.
Yeah.
The Oppenheimer prequel.
Yeah.
It's one of the best parts of that movie.
It was originally supposed to be Brian Tyree Henry.
I think he's like, Killers of the Flower Moon is mid.
No, I think he was just dealing at that point.
You're about to join Andy on a podcast, on the Watch podcast.
Yep.
Can I tell you something?
I listened to Philly Special.
And it was just, it was a vast quantum of copium coming out of your body.
Thanks for being supportive of my projects.
It was my first time listening to the show.
Me being like, I just want to hear what Nick Nurse does.
I thought that was a fair point.
I thought your failure to acknowledge that Joel Embiid
looked like he died in the fourth quarter was an oversight.
He was 0 for 5 from the field,
and he only shot from 18 feet, and he was exhausted.
Yes, I'm aware of that.
I hope Maxie plays tonight.
I want you to know.
It was not even so...
It was such an unremarkable occurrence
aside from the fact
that he almost went
into the center of the earth
when he came down from that dunk
that I didn't feel
it was worth noting
that yes, he looks bad
at the end of games.
He's very tired.
He looked bad at the end of games
when he won the MVP.
He gets tired.
Well, hopefully that bodes well
for the Knicks
I wish you well
I thank you
any Eagles picks
you want to
who are they taking
in the draft
I would love
what happens if
Brock Bowers
falls to the Eagles
oh wow
that's terrifying
well that would be something
yeah
AJ
Devonta
and Brock Bowers
and double
Goddard Bowers
two tight ends
and you signed Saquon
yes wow yeah Howie I'm happy for you and Brock Bowers. And double Goddard Bowers, two tight ends. And you signed Saquon.
Yes.
Wow.
Yeah.
Howie.
I'm happy for you.
All right, Chris, thanks so much.
Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner,
for his work on this episode.
Thanks to Amanda for her cutting insights on the film Imaginary.
Her work on this episode too.
And later this week, of course,
Amanda and I will be talking about
what I think is the movie of the year for us,
Challengers. A genuinely thrilling movie that I hope people will race out to see in the movie of the year for us, Challengers. A genuinely
thrilling movie that I hope people will race out to see in the movie theater. We'll see you then.