Too Scary; Didn't Watch - ANTICHRIST (LIVE!) with Joel Jensen

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

This audio is edited from our live show which is available on our Patreon.Trivia @ 11:38Recap starts @ 18:07TrailerFollow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and additional content!Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary Didn't Watch. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Too Scary Didn't Watch, the horror movie recap podcast for those too scared to watch for themselves. I'm Emily, and I am too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Henley, and I'm also too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Sammy, and I love watching scary movies. And so I watch them so that you don't have to. And it is our Halloween live stream.

Wee! We're all dressed up for the occasion. Emily and I as characters from Alien Earth, Henley's the Louvre Jewel thief. Obviously, Henley missed the fucking. memo, didn't realize there was a theme, even though there was a clear text message conversation that has been read back to me verbatim. And I just missed it. I missed all the context clues on that. No, but you were able to pull something extremely topical, and I do like that. Yeah. And yeah, we're here today to, you know, theoretically have some fun. But it's going to be

tricky. I won't sugarcoat it. Because today we're here to talk about. the movie Antichrist it has been many years on the on the list put on the back burner you gave me a heads up there was like a four week heads up so I've been yeah you've had time to prepare I've been girding my loins every night before I go to bed perfect is that the right way to use that you know I never know sayings who knows I want to take this off can I take it off now yes you can yeah yeah I got to yeah take off your head I won't be taking this off because it's if you believe it even crazier without the. I want to see that.

And if you're listening to the replay, by the way, the audio version, just know that you can see the visuals that we are describing on our Patreon at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. Henley, you're absolutely stunning. Thank you. Now it makes so much more sense, doesn't it? 100%. Antichrist was written and directed by Lars von Trier,

came out in 2009, starring Willam Defoe and Charlotte Gainsburg. And we have a guest with us today, a correspondent, a horror spousandant, none other than our beloved Joel Jensen. What? Hello. Oh, he's Ray Fines. Thank you for having me. Wait, that's a really good Raif. Ray Fines. Thank you. Really good, Joel. I appreciate it.

me what's what's his character's name i can't dr kelson doctor i'm dr kelson who is my favorite uh my favorite character of all of 2025 at the movies yeah wow he's really great joel is if you can't tell covered an iodine for real i've been systematically covering myself in iodine for the past couple of hours oh my god ow you got to layer it oh wow and if you can believe it right before we started he was like it's there's it's not enough it's not dark enough and i was like i think it is. I think it is. Oh my god. And iodine, is that pretty easy to get off? It is actually. Okay. Regular water will get it off. Soap and water at the most extreme. It's like cleansing. If you have any stray cuts, you know, they're going to be so cleansed. It's really good. There was a moment where I was like, we just got tattoos

recently and I was like, oh, Joel, maybe you shouldn't get iodine on the tattoo and I was like, actually, it's probably fine. Probably really good. No, yeah, it didn't hurt it all and it's fine. And it does, hurt in the eyes and it does taste really bad. So these are the lessons that I have learned. It stings the eyes. It tastes quite bad. Okay. All right.

Good to know for the zombie. Zombie apocalypse. Yeah. And also I took my glasses off for effect, but I can't see a single thing, so I have to put them back on. Okay. Wait, and wait,

what's on your head? Hold on. A bald cap. Oh, it's a bald cap. Wait, you guys, I like can't, honestly, this is hard. It's hard to do this episode

because, like, all I want to do is stare at you and I keep losing focus. I mean, I think that you losing focus during this might be really healthy for you and maybe just let yourself go wherever you need to go. Yeah. Yeah. Protect yourself. Just, like, annoyed you guys can't see the full legs, you know? No, the legs look great.

Thanks, guys. Emily, I can't believe you sewed that. Yeah, and it's like, there's really, truly no purpose for it beyond now. It's just going straight in the garbage. was hours and hours of work and an amount of money that I'm embarrassed to admit and it's all going straight in the garage. Maybe Silent Jenna can borrow it. She doesn't have a costume for actual Halloween.

She could be a regular octopus if she wanted, but she could also borrow this, but I will warn you, it's cumbersome. It's cumbersome this guy. I banged me into Joel like three times getting ready to sit down here. You have no peripheral vision at all. Just got to look straight ahead. I can't hear things well, so. Oh, my God.

I'm obsessed with you guys. I'm obsessed with you guys. I can't stop staring at Sammy. Sammy, you look like Timothy Oliphon. Like a young. I can't stop touching the wig. It's like, it's like if Timothy Oliphant like went into a time machine and like de-aged. It's like, if you was like Benjamin but me.

Benjamin. Benjamin. Benjamin. Benjamin. Benjamin. Benjamin, but memes. Benjamin butt memes. Benjamin butt memes.

Benjamin bit bit bit bit bit bit. Um, Joel, Joel, Joel, Joel. Had you ever seen a Lars von Trier movie before? No. This was my first, my first run-in with Mr. Von Trier. What a, what a kickoff. What a kickoff. And I loved it. I do want to put a disclaimer on the fact that I'm simply the messenger here. I am just telling you what I saw. And this was not chosen by you. None of this was my idea. In fact, Joel was pretty upset about it. I asked him, I think I mentioned in an episode I asked him to come on for the Halloween show and he was so excited

and then I told him what the movie was and he was not excited much less excited but I will say that I truly had a I really enjoyed it I love this movie the way I describe it is

if you're willing to laugh it's very funny Oh I'm here to laugh baby about a lot of Lars von Schreer movies and I'm curious if you'll continue down this road I will be yes I absolutely you know I

so I am very skeptical of the idea of autour theory but you watch a Lars Ransurer movie and you go oh no I guess they have a point It's undeniable it's truly like His films are art and sorry they just are In like a pretentious annoying way I will go to bat for them and be like

Sorry this man is an artist and he is creating Yeah he's doing his thing and he's like He directs the fucking shit out of this movie And it is rough But you got to admire the Cajonis on this dude To do it Massive Cajonis can you imagine how big they are I mean, bigger than Willam Defoe's.

Do you think Willam Defoe has tiny little balls? Tiny little balls, big. Yeah, you only get one. You can't have both. You can't have both. If both were really big, it would honestly, that's like, there's just not enough space for that. Yeah, that's, like, very basic male anatomy stuff where, like, you have a total, one total volume that you can reach, and it's split between balls and penis. One total volume.

So they're like little M&Ms up there for Willampho. They're really small. And you see them in this movie. But apparently they're not real I guess not his but you do see balls You think the prosthetic is penis and balls You must be I suppose Because how else?

What prosthetic? There's no prosthetics Oh It's just not Willem Defoe's penis Oh it's just someone else's penis That's true How does they make his penis smaller With the prosthetic

They'd have to shrink I think you could tuck it up and back That's not possible You would tuck it up and back And sort of tape it in Movie magic You know they can do anything You guys don't know

what it's like to be a guy, dude. Up into the back. What are you talking about? I imagine it's like how they shot Lord of the Rings with Gandalf and the Hobbits, and they had to do some, like, movie magic. Exactly. It's worse perspective. It's worse perspective.

They made his body look really big. Emily, you look so funny. You're killing me. telling me it's such a good costume you're really good you're literally my queen you guys you guys are I'm obsessed with you guys can I say to um shout out shout out to Seamus for reminding me what our previous Halloween costumes have been because I had completely forgotten I completely forgot about last year as a total experience totally forgot about the mosquito totally forgot about the pope I mean I know you weren't a pope bishop I don't know what I was I was just something that Tim got from the church. I don't know if there's a name for it. I also can't believe this is our fourth time doing this. That means next year will be our fifth anniversary of doing the Halloween show and we're

going to have to freaking go big. Go big. And Paul of Tompkins was really sad to miss it. We did talk to him about it and I also am glad to not have to make him watch. Yeah, we'll make Joel have to do this. Also, thanks for slotting me in when you can't get a better booking. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. He, he, he, Joel, Joel, Joel.

No, I'll fall on this sort for Paul. I don't want Paul to see this movie. Yes, you're protecting him. I don't want the words that are going to come out of... I don't want the words that are coming out of my mouth to come out of PFT's mouth. I don't want that. Joel, look, don't belittle yourself in this way.

No, Joel. You're a star in your own right. I'm prosthetically belittling myself the way Willem DeFoe's penis was prosthetically belittal. We've just got a bit of a tradition now of having Paul on this show. Yes, no, I understand. I understand.

I understand. No, I was, before this, before this, I was telling, I was telling Tim, I was telling Tim, like, I'm really not okay about the movie, but thank God it's Joel who's going to be delivering the information to me. I don't think I could tolerate it from another individual on this planet, on the entire planet Earth. Thank you. What about me, Henley? Sammy, you know, I have some problems with some of the movies you told me. Sammy, Sammy, because I'll be delivering some of the information, too. Some of the worst of it, I do believe. Sammy, actually, I did request, I did request Sammy do the second half because I truly believe that there are sequences that I have no right to describe. And there are moments in the first one that I'm also like, ooh. It's got to be me, huh? This is, you know what? We all know what we've signed up for here?

100%. And I'm, I'm ready to go. And I make a promise now to continue loving all of you just as much when this is over. Me too. Oh, of course. Of course. I mean, I might be mad. Yeah, but that doesn't, just because you're mad doesn't mean you don't love someone.

Yeah, love is unconditional. Just remember that. It's unconditional. Just remember that love is unconditional. And it's not about one recap. Okay, let me give you guys some stats. Please. Antichrist has a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 49% on Metacritic, and a 6.5 on IMDB.

Okay. The budget was $5 million. It made $7.4 million. Just like pretty impressive for this movie. For this content? For this content. People are fucking freaks and they want this shit. You know, they just want it. Like me.

Yeah. To be honest, I, after watching this, I'm like craving more. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm so happy. That's music to say in public. I'm very excited for it. But I felt bad and I felt good.

Do you know what I mean? I think I think I was really at a state. feeling back feels good. I was going to text Sammy where I was like, I think I understand. Yeah. Because I also don't think

he actually wants you to feel bad. I think he's trying to be funny in this movie. Yeah. Well, we'll perhaps... I mean, he's trying to make you laugh. Yeah. You're not going to laugh at me.

I'm not going to laugh at it. I don't think we're going to like it. Joel and I watched weapons last night. Ooh. I'm going crazy over here for Halloween. I'm caught up in the Craig Reverse. But I'll say this. I, I, I, droop in a little.

I'm sorry, sorry, hold on. It upset me. So, oh, it did. I'm just saying, it's like, it's, it was really fun, but like darker. It was darker watching than just hearing about it. And I, and so I'm like, I don't like to feel bad. Oh, okay, I see. Yeah.

Well, yeah, you shouldn't watch this movie. Well, no, I won't, but I just, you know, I don't think it feels good to feel bad. I'm just, like, reminding everybody at that. to know there's everybody's different i just don't feel that way like at all totally i have the same i have the same thing i'm like i don't know that's the premise of your podcast just in case you guys didn't know why does this podcast just do a quick little refresh yeah yeah um so okay here's a fun little tidbit some trivia when the filming of this movie started Lars von Trier had just left a mental hospital where he stayed for two months receiving treatment for depression.

So that's kind of a good little idea of the state of mind. This movie is the first in his trilogy of depression, the second being melancholia and the third being Nymphomaniac Parts 1 and 2. Highly recommend. Really great trilogy. is part of the Criterion Collection and Charlotte Gainsburg won best actress at Cannes for this but Lars von Trier won an anti-award

for the most misogynistic movie of the year which I think we'll talk about more at the end I have some things to say about that and I think the fact that they like gave best actress and then was like but also this is the most misogy it's like already a little yeah like what are you talking about? What are you talking about?

So we'll talk about that more at the end, but just putting that in our minds. Yeah, there's definitely a conversation to be had about what he's getting after. Yeah, right. And how misogyny might play into that. But I also am inclined to be like, I don't know, man, I think probably he was after something bigger than that conversation is going to allow. I think it's a pretty simplistic reading of it.

Yeah. Uh-huh. This is a rich text, you guys. It's a rich text. I didn't realize that those movies were technically a trilogy. Have you guys seen Infomediac one and two? I've seen one, not two. I just want to know how they connect.

Those are two separate movies? Yeah, maybe. Okay, so that's four movies, so it's not really a trilogy. Well, it's part one and two, so it's... Well, that feels like cheating. It is. That's like calling the Batman trilogy one movie. Right.

So I guess I want to know, I guess I want to know, we can talk about this. more at the end because I don't really know much about the other, but I'm curious what he was getting after with the like all of the films together, like as a piece together what they're trying to say. Who's in Nymphomaniac? Also Charlotte Gainsburg, right? Charlotte Gainsberg's in all four, I believe. She's incredible. Is Kirsten Dunst only in, only in Melancholia? Kirsten Scarsguard is in Melancholia and Nymphomaniac and Shilobov and Mia Gondalia. come into nymphomaniac part two. That's where they met.

I believe. That's not, that doesn't make me feel good. Yeah. Also, like, is Charlotte Gainsburg okay? Does anyone, like, checked it on her recently?

She seems fine from the interviews. I think she's just a really true artist. Like, I think she's a full tilt, very brave, unbelievable artist. Is she French? Yeah.

She's French British. She was born in England to French, I believe. But there are people that have had a bad time with Lars von Trier's. Bjork was famously like, I can't remember exactly what happened, but there's controversial stuff with Lars von Trier for sure. He's not like just a hundred percent a great guy.

But, you know, we're not here to talk about all of that. Yeah, as far as I know, Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsburg had an okay time. on this set. And so shall we get into it? I mean, sure. I'm pretty sure we don't have another choice. Wait, hold on. Let me take like four big gulps of my drink. And I guess I'll give us some trigger warnings, although I actually didn't even write down the trigger warnings because it's kind of just basically anything you can think of. I don't know. There's like child endangerment, child death, domestic abuse, self-harm. Really, if you're sensitive to anything at all this probably is not going to be the movie.

Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I don't know if my parents are watching. If you are, hello. I love you, and I think now you should turn this off. Hello. Was what I was going to say. I think if my parents are watching, then now's the time to go. And if you don't turn it off and you choose to keep watching, please understand Karen and Gary that these, I didn't write this.

This wasn't my idea. These aren't my words. These aren't Joel. I'm simply the messenger. Okay, Joel. Tell Henley what the first scene is. Well, there's a little bit to describe before even the first scene begins, and I'm grateful for that. The first thing we see, so the movie's kind of divided into chapters, and each chapter

is like, it's like as if it's been written on a chalkboard in like really kind of chaotic but very cool handwriting with like scribbled sketches and colors around it. And the first thing that you see is literally just directed by Lars von Trier. He's like, I did it. Written on the chalkboard. It's me. It's me. So he's like really putting himself front and center and go, girl. He deserves it, because this is the Lars von Trier show, for real. And then we cut to another chalkboard drawing of the title, Antichrist. And you'll notice that the T in Antichrist is the woman symbol.

I don't know what the word for that is. I forgot it as well. There's a word for it? And I'm a woman. Yeah. A woman. Okay. So is it immediately.

So it's immediately implying that women are the, the devil? Well, you know what? I didn't even recognize it until I watched it the second time in two days. Right, right, right. That's how you want to do Lars von Trrier movies. You just want to mainline them one right after the other, no breaks, every day,

get your daily dose of Lars. And while Joel was watching it for the second time, I was getting a massage. Nice. Women are the devil. Look at what these men are having to do. I was like, this movie, I was like, the amount of times I'm going to say throughout the

course of this recap this was like being a guy is going to break records one of Joel's favorite things to ironically say this was like to be a guy is going to break records tonight then we cut to another screen that says prologue and this prologue is one of the most beautifully shot things i've ever seen in my life it is shot all in black and white all in like super slow motion with this kind of operatic very slow very beautiful uh like a single woman's voice singing over like strings. Oh, I hate it already. And the first image we see, it's like gorgeous.

It's luscious and gorgeous and like beautiful. I'm holding my breath. Like the first thing I thought was like, damn, I got to see this in 4K. So the first thing we see is we're in like a shower and we see hand turning the faucet on. It is in such slow motion that you can see like individual beads of water like beginning to stream out of the showerhead. and we cut to Willam Defoe looking smoldering, really hot. He does look really hot in this movie.

He's hot in this movie. I agree. How old is he's so much of the movie? But I think this is a movie where even... I think it's objective. I think it's objective. I think it's a scientific fact. Willem DeFoe is currently 70, so this was 15 years ago?

He's 70? Whoa, that's crazy. 16 years ago, so he was in his like mid-50s. Yeah, that works. That's hot. He looked really hot. She was 40-ish when they filmed this, I believe, too. So there's kind of like water falling next to him.

And then we cut and we see Charlotte Gainsbourg. Neither of them are given names in the film. It's just he and she. So that's what I'll try to use. Otherwise, I'll use their names. It's giving Genesis in a way that I immediately don't like. Oh, you're going to really hate the rest of this movie thing. Yeah, Henley, literally nothing has happened yet.

And you hate it. Off to a bad start. Henley, how do you think this is going to end? I mean, I have some ideas. I can't think of a movie that you'll hate more. I really can't imagine anyway that you're going to like anything that's going to happen right now. I was thinking

that coming, I was thinking that coming into this, but I'd never expected that you'd be getting sense of Adam and Eve that fast. This movie is a, like a... Just wait. She fucking, just let her cook, man. She knows. Man, she's cooking.

Okay, so now we're, so we cut to in the shower with him is Charlotte Gainsbourg. She's like directly under the faucet so it's like a water pouring over her again I truly cannot express how beautifully this is all filmed. It's like unbelievable.

Then we start to like kind of cut around the room there's like steam from the shower being pulled into a vent. We cut to a window outside of the bathroom and it is snowing outside. And it's gorgeous. Like snow globy

black and white super stark slow motion and there's in front of the window there's a table or a desk of some sort and on the table are three like metallic figurines we see them kind of in silhouette we don't really see much about them and as we're looking at this the wind outside slowly starts to like blow the window open it kind of like creaks very slowly open no screen on it or anything it's just like this like kind of cool old apartment window and we cut back into the bathroom and they are having sex in the shower and we see full on real penetration of a penis into a vagina wait it's actually real real real but it's not them it's real it's like porn actors doubling for them but it's you don't often see full regular real penetration in movies so

it's rather shocking right and full regular real and it being it within like the first 60 seconds of this movie is, is quite a tone setter. Yeah, it kind of made me go like, what? Yeah, I mean, you really don't often see full, regular, real penetration unless you're seeking it out. Sure, sure. Charles died. I just mean, you usually like, know, if you're going to get it.

If you're going to get it, you know, you know. Yeah. So to get it when you don't necessarily know. To be surprised. It's a surprise. That's a really good point. Thank you. Um, and, and it's also like, it's, it's like, one of the pieces of mastery of this is like,

it is very vulgar what you're seeing, but it isn't, it doesn't feel pornographic. It feels like, it's just like visceral. I don't know. It's framed like from a low angle up. He's holding her up, like her back against the wall. He's like got her legs up. So like her knees are probably like on his shoulders. So it's like, she's like kind of folded. And so it's like a, it's like really graphic. I think it's, it's so interesting that you said, but it's not pornographic, and that just speaks to how porn is so a specific thing. Right. It's like it's porn is not sex. Porn is porn is porn. Porn is porn. Exactly. Exactly.

Guys, there's an article called about gooning in Harper's magazine. Oh, I've learned about gooning. I don't know what this is. I don't know what that is. I don't like that. Gooning is what the kids are doing. If only, if only, the kids are gooning. What? The kids are gooning. What? The kids are The kids are gooning. Is it bad? Tell me what? It's stupid. It's bad. It's bad. It's bad. It's related to, it's like basically an offshoot of edging.

Uh-huh. But gooning is basically, correct me if I'm wrong, Henley. You read the article. I've just been exposed to things on the internet. Gooning is just like masturbating for a really, really, really, really long time. Basically, basically all it is is, is kind of like our addiction to screens taken to its logical conclusion when it comes to, like, sexual urges. Are they watching porn when they're, why is, what does it have to do with screens? No, it's like, it's like a thousand screens. They're like a thousand screens.

What's the challenge? How long can you masturbate before you get off? Quite literally, yes. Correct. That's goning. It's like, how long can you go? And so you stop before you ejaculate. Yeah.

And then you like trying to like reset. Well, that's very masculine centric of you. Oh, it's so dark. And I don't think a woman is ever gooned. Women involuntarily gooned, I think. No. Oh. I gooned again last night.

Wait, are Emily's parents still here? I hope not. I didn't come up with gooning. Gooning is not my idea. Joel didn't invent it. It's not his idea. I don't like it. I don't like it.

I know about it too. I know about it too. There's challenges in what sphere? No, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to say a single more thing about gooning because we're about going to go through this whole fucking movie. Yeah, we're not even like two minutes into the movie. Sure.

I literally will die on screen. What I was told as like, oh, Henley's going to hate. this opening scene, we haven't even gotten to the thing. So I do feel like we've got into the thing. No, we're so, so early in the movie. We're really gooning this fucking good. Well said. Mr. Monopoly here,

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This is a pretty. pretty a great sex that these guys are having. They're moving room to room. Room to room. They're knocking shit over. They're like having sex on the laundry machine. They're having sex on a table. They're moving to the bed.

They're knocking their toothbrushes off the wall. It's like for real shit. And so as they're doing this, we then cut to a child's mobile. Okay, great. Yep, here we go. Twisting around in a child's bed. bedroom next to the mobile is like a bear dangling from a balloon

so it's been tied onto this helium balloon so it's just kind of like suspended in the air a little like a teddy bear now we cut back and they're going at it on the bed and in the foreground is a baby monitor and it's like starting to like make noise again you can't hear any audio from

like any diagetic audio classical music like yeah it's just just the opera music and like closest on their faces as they're like wrapped in pleasure of each other's bodies. And we cut, so we see the baby monitor and we cut into the baby's room

and it's like a little boy, I'm guessing he's two years old. Yeah, I'd say two. And he's like bashing his baby monitor with another teddy bear of his, just like whacking it like a little mischievous boy. And then we cut back to those three figurines that we saw earlier, but now we're close up on them. And they're like, kind of like, they're made of metal, but they look like they're wearing

beggars garb, like raggedy clothes, and their arms are outstretched. And on the base of each one is a word. On one, it says pain. On the other, it says grief. And on the third, it says despair. And they're next to this, like, kind of large journal full of notes and, like, clippings and stuff like that. And there's, like, snow begins to glide in from the open window across this tableau. We cut back to the little boy as he climbs out of his crib. He's like lowering his feet down.

We just see his little feet as they're lowering down to the floor. We cut back to our married couple and they're still going at it. They knock over a bottle of water. It starts to just like spill water everywhere. We go back to the little boy and he's like walking in his bedroom.

There's a window and he walks up to it and he holds up his teddy bear to the window so it can see outside and, like, watch the snow. It's very sweet. It's very cute. And the water is spilling in the room. Fuck you, Joel. And...

I know exactly what is about to happen. And the little boy... Unless it's a fake out, which it could be. I was going to say, as pretty obvious at this point. The little boy walks through his room. That's the joke of this whole fucking extended. I'm laughing. I'm laughing.

It's so funny. We're all laughing. Everybody's cracking. up and truly every single frame of this is like 200 frames per second it's like slow it's so drawn now yeah it's true so then he the little boy opens his baby gate he like figured out how to open this um he opens it up we go back to the couple they're just like really having sex still and the little boy walks past the open door of the room and he watches them for a moment and he he sees them and they're just like locked into each other

eyes are closed they're just like in it and the little boy walks away pushes a chair next to the table in front of the window parents are fucking fucking fucking fucking the little kid climbs he launches himself out the window

he launches himself out the window and breaks his neck in slow motion the parents were still having rapturous sex earth shattering sex well it's just what happens in the movie I gotta represent it right their eyes are closed

they're like achieving orgasm let's just say that they're both getting there and little boy climbs up to the edge of the window they're on like the third floor it's snowing there's snow on the ground

the little boy looks out steps out falls out of the window and at this exact moment both of his parents are just nutting they're great they're there

they're busting They've arrived, and he is falling and falling and falling. It is, you know, 20 seconds of this little boy falling through the air. Oh, my God. And as he's falling, we cut to the laundry. It's just like washing sheets, and then he hits the ground, and then the teddy bear hits the ground behind him, and the teddy bear breaks.

Oh. It's just like limbs come apart. And then at the same moment, his parents are kind of coming back to Earth. they're like embracing each other in that like kind of like post-sex glow and we cut back to the laundry just churning away at them sheets and we cut to another title screen

that chalkboard chapter one grief we're inside of a hearse the little boy's casket is inside of it and we're like kind of watching out through the back window of this hearse his parents and the rest of the funeral attendees are following behind it like walking behind it.

Defoe, he is a little bit ahead of her, his wife, Charlotte. And he's like really laser focused in on like staying next to this hearse kind of. And she is a thousand yards stare. Obviously they're both shattered. You know, like imagine the grief that you, in the like regret that you'd, and like weird guilt that you'd be feeling. And it's too much for her to bear and she collapses, overcome with grief. and he rushes back to her

helps pick her up everybody's like trying to get her to like come to and we cut to a hospital room and he walks in with a bouquet of flowers and she's like very out of it in the hospital bed and he asks like how are you

and she says like didn't we just have that conversation and he says that was yesterday today is Tuesday and she's like oh geez I guess I'm out of it like how long have I been here and he says a month

and they're kind of just sitting there dealing with it. She's obviously like, you know, so traumatized by this that physically she is kind of spent. And she has a doctor named Dr. Wayne. And she tells her husband, Dr. Wayne, says that my grief pattern is atypical. And I need some special care and some special treatment to get me through this.

and DeFoe says, yeah, okay. And we cut to DeFoe being like, look, Dr. Wayne is giving you way too much medication, way, way too much. You're like so out of it. You need to like stop. And she's like, no, like, just you need to stop it. You have to like trust other people to be smarter than you.

And he says, like, Dr. Wayne is straight out of med school. I've treated 10 times as many patients as he has. She responds, but you're not a doctor. and he says no but i'm proud of that when i meet doctors like him nothing is atypical about your grief you're just in it and so we get we pick up he's a therapist she finds him arrogant he's a bit of a no at all and a bit stubborn but he's scared you know he's going through it too and his wife is really struggling and he's trying to do what he can uh however flawed that is on my my first note is Willam DeFoe? He, what's your grief process? Like, my love?

You're going to see. It's an interesting question. And we'll see some of it. We cut to a later scene. And she's like, this is my fault. This is all my fault. And he says, no, no, no. What about me? I was there too. I was, you know, we were in it together. Like, you can't just blame only yourself. And she's like, no, I could have stopped it. You, this is hers talking. You didn't know he had started waking up lately, like in the middle of the night. And I was aware that he would sometimes wake up and crawl to bed and walk about just as he thought that he was suddenly asleep. Like he was kind of like a sleepwalker.

And she knew that he could open the baby gate and never told her husband, which is a perfectly forgivable thing. Like, who cares? But she's obviously wracked with this guilt. And she's like, he woke up and he was so confused. And he, this happened. And she just breaks down into tears, and he does his best to comfort her. And we cut to another visit. Which, by the way, I will just say really quickly, if that is something that's like weighing

on her, I think it's kind of amazing that she even said it. Because I think most people in that situation, if they literally thought that was the reason, they would just like not talk about it. They wouldn't say it out loud. And so that's kind of immediately amazing. She said it out loud. And her performance is incredible. Like, just scorched earth, like, really powerful.

Wait, is Lars Van Trier the man who can can again? Yes. Oh, he's the man who can can again. Good pull, hen. I forgot about that. The man can can again. Yes, he is. Yes, I forgot that we covered the house that Jack built,

which is another movie that I think is pretty funny. Yeah, are you picking up the comedy of this yet? Yeah, another in addition to this freaking laugh fest. As that whole prologue was playing out, I was laughing. I really was. Why? Because it's so clearly, because you know what's going to happen within two seconds. On the nose.

And it just plays it all in slow motion to like just be like. It's quite over the top. Yeah. Well, it's like manipulating your feelings. It's like I know this is like the most feeling I can make you feel about something. And let me make you feel like drawing out of it is. so extreme like you're in what is like two minutes probably in real time for like 15 minutes so it's like drawn out to be really really long all we can do is laugh but it is also like every piece of

that sequence needs to be there to tell that story it's just he does it in hyper slow mo and like heightens it in a lot of ways to make that joke of like yeah I'm doing this and you know it the whole And he's like, yeah, I know you're ahead of me, and I'm just going to make you sit in it to make it bad for you, which is hilarious to me. It's a huge, funny joke. We cut to another visit. He comes to check in on her.

He reaches out to caress her cheek, and she recoils from his touch. And she says, Dr. Wayne says, you want me back home? And, like, you couldn't just leave it alone. You couldn't let him do it. You had to meddle with it. Like, you had to get in here

and, like, have it be your, operation. And he's like, you know what? I don't like Dr. Wayne. He's treating you like your grief is a disease. Your grief is not a disease. You can't just remove it. You can't just drug yourself out of it. You have to face it and you have to deal with it. And like drugging you forever isn't going to solve anything. It's so awful that that's just like true. Like when something horrible happens, it just, it happened. Yeah. Like you can't make it not have happened. It happened. And that's so brutal. And you can't just like drug yourself out of it. his perspective. I don't know if there are better perspectives. I don't know. Um, but she's like,

but therapists shouldn't treat their own family. But like, you're just so much smarter than everybody, aren't you? Like, it's, you're, it's fine for you to do it because you're so good. And he's like, I love you. I'm just trying to help. I don't think this doctor has your best interest. I don't think he's doing it right. Like, I truly don't. And like, nobody knows you as well as I do. I can, I can help you. Um, and next to her in the bed, there's this like this vase of flowers, um, that are sitting there in a, like, with water. And they've been in there for a while. So like, they're kind of starting to like decompose a little bit. And so the water is like rotting murky green. And the camera just like very, very, very slowly pans into the vase until we're just like right in it just covered in this like murky green. And then we fade, we do like a fade cut into an envelope. and we're at their home and in like the mail slot, an envelope has just been delivered

from the coroner. This is like the autopsy report for their son, Willem DeFoe, takes it, can't bring himself to look at it. And so he folds it and tucks it into the pocket of his coat. And I'm so sorry. This is awful.

Oh my God, it's so awful. Okay. Pretty bad. You're fine. You're fine. None of this is happening. to you. That's right. I'm good. It's a movie. It's a movie. Look what I

have. It's a tomato candle. Oh, a tomato candle. Do you have a bar of soap if you need it? Give it a sniff. Give it a sniff. It's like Lars von Trier's Cryptoite is a tomato candle. Fuck yeah. I'm fucking good. I'm good now. They live in a very fancy house. They're quite well to do and they're in Seattle. Seattle. Pacific Northwest.

But as he's walking, he picks up a toy that has been just out and hasn't been picked up for weeks and weeks and weeks. but he's like you know trying to begin the process of moving forward and he takes the toy and he sets it he enters uh their son his name is nick they enter nick's room which is still as it was something funny to me about a toddler named nick right no that's a good point

take the jokes we can find him nicholas is a baby's name nicky nick is nick is that's that's not right for a toddler yeah no i agree i totally totally agree that there's like calling a baby Mike well it's like in May's class pretty funny there's a Robert there's a Robert May's class Robert full Robert full Robert not Bobby and not Robbie yeah I just there is something to be said about kids being named adult like this is not a name for a child like Diane it's hilarious and or everyone that was watching it's a huge laugh it's a laugh right in at when it played at Cannes and said his name and He was laughing and laughing and laughing.

So I just have a question about, like, what I need to prepare myself for. Are we going to be talking about this just child's death, like, nonstop for the rest of the movie? Is that what this movie is? Yeah, but I would say that for you, Henry, the worst is over. Oh, the worst is over? I think for you. Okay. Maybe.

I agree. And how about for me? No, no. Not for you. Definitely not. Buckle up. so after he drops off the toy and nick's room which is as it ever was they haven't you know why would i don't know what you're supposed to do in that situation um he starts walking and walks past

the bathroom and his wife is now home she's in the bathroom and she has a big huge bottle of pills presumably sedatives of of some kind and as he walks past she kind of very discreetly takes the lid off and dumps them all into the toilet. Oh my good for her because if I was her I would be taking five of them a day. I'd be a handful of a day. I was going to say like, could you just take a bunch

at least for a while? Well, that is the question is maybe she should be doing that. Maybe Willem Defoe was wrong. Like eventually, yeah, you got to deal with your ship but like for a while should you just like knock yourself out? Does that, I don't know. Well, it's been over a month.

Yeah, fair. Yeah, she's been drug for quite some time. I don't want to put a timeline on it, but, like, we're doing it. You know, I feel like I look like just my face and my eyes. I feel like I look like I look like Michael Sheen in Twilight. Oh, my God, you totally do. You absolutely do. Arrow.

R.O. Whatever you say, arrow. You have to do the funny little left. You're like that's the light of light. You look like a Volturi. I look like a Volturi. This is great. This is great for me.

All right. So can we speed through the whatever happens in the next 10 minutes. Just speed through it. Next 30 minutes. Speed through it. It's going to take the time it takes, Henley. I'm sorry to do this to you, but you're getting paid to be here, Henley. So you're going to have to do it.

Not enough. This is your job, bitch. Not enough, my friend. Could be getting paid more. You get an antichrist bonus. Where's my fucking anti-crice bonus? It's my anti-crice bonus. As soon as she dumps her sedatives into the toilet,

we cut to her sobbing in the baby. room you're typically not supposed to go cold turkey on most most things cold turkey on these things yeah you got to like slowly do it and she is just a wreck he's there with her he's holding her he's trying to comfort her and he's like you got to be in it like there's no way around it you got to be here we're clearly like entering his treatment I was gonna say it's like he's pretty annoying for the whole confident movie yeah I was gonna say like like I get where he's coming from in one sense but Well, it's like she's his patient all of a sudden. And it's like, as if it didn't happen to him also.

He's just like, okay, time to. Which is like probably his way of dealing is like to be like, it's not about me. It's his version of. It's his version of the sedatives. Externalizing it onto her. He can make it clinical. Which makes you worry about all therapists. It makes you worry about all therapists.

Are all of them doing this? I'm always suspicious of anyone who's like, you have to do this. This is what you have to do. Because it's like, well, this is what Tim says too. Really know. about religion. He's like, if you are... Give me advice. Help me through it. Certain about anything. You're wrong.

Certainty is death. Okay, so let's speed through. Let's speed through. It's like what, you know, like... No, this is where it really slurs down, Emily. So... So, but I think it's what's like what's really fascinating about his character and you'll see it, this will just like keep happening. Like, the tension between him as a therapist and him as a husband is like, it really goes back and forth. And like, sometimes he's good and sometimes you're like man fuck off but it is all his coping but i don't know how aware of it he is that it's how he's coping but and she's like sitting there he like puts a blanket over her

she's like i want to die too and he's like i'm not going to let you do that and she goes will it get worse and he says yes it will like i'm sorry to tell you but it will but it has to and like And the way that Von Trier kind of like is writing and directing all of this is like as if she is as if we're in the like stuff with train spotting like coming off of drugs like as if she's having heroin withdrawal

but it's withdrawal of love of her child. Jesus, Joel. Joel? Joel. What the fuck Joel? No, no, this is real. This is real. It's so real. Because like it's like she has like tremors.

She can't sleep. She's like seeing things and we cut to later that night, they're in bed and trying to go to sleep and she turns to him and is like, you know what? You were always distant from me and Nick. Now that I come to think of it. My baby.

My baby, Nick. Let's call him Diane. She's like, now that I come to think of it, you were always very, very distant. And he goes, okay, can you give me some examples? Just like very clinical again. And which, like,

she's obviously, there's like this like venom in her that she'll like get occasionally and he sees it as her lashing out in her grief but he won't engage with it as such he engages with it as a therapist and it's like mm you maybe need to engage with it as someone who shares this loss yeah and she goes okay an example last summer for instance as a father and a husband and that was nick's last summer and you missed out on it it's too bad and then she goes i never interested you until now did i now did i now that I'm your patient. Perhaps I'm not supposed to talk about these things. And he goes, there's nothing you can't talk about. And she says, you're indifferent to whether your child is alive or dead.

And he kind of looks hurt by that, but has his kind of mask on. And she says, I bet you have a lot of clever therapist replies to that, haven't you? And he says, well, actually, it was to honor your wish. You wanted peace to write last summer. She said, perhaps I didn't mean it. And he said, what I understood is that you wanted to go alone to the cabin, which the cabin is called, Henley, you're going to love this, Eden, just the two of you, you and Nick, so that you could finish your thesis. And she says, but I didn't.

And he says, you didn't finish your thesis? And she says, see, you didn't even know that. And he asked her, well, why didn't you finish it? It just suddenly stopped seeming important. What was that you called it glib? And he's like, I never called it glib. And she says, well, you, as good as said that it was glib and stupid and trivial. And at a certain point, while I was there, I started to feel the same way.

And it seemed even... I'm just to clarify, he is questioning whether she was able to finish her thesis while being alone with a one-year-old. It was her desire. She was like, I want to go work on my thesis without you. And he said, okay, if that's what you'd like to do, go ahead and do that. Of course, of course. I'm just pointing out.

I'm just gently pointing out. Oh, my God, I'm losing my gems left and right. I'm just gently pointing out that this is a common misconception in media, especially media written by men or anyone who's not had a child, which is like, you can't get fucking shit done. You can't get a single thing done. You can't take a shower. You can't poop.

You can't brush your hair. You can't do fucking anything. when you're taking care of a child that young. And this is like a central tenet of patriarchy, which fucks all of us, which is this like general idea that taking care of young kids is like, easy going and a vacation and like time away at a cabin.

I don't think a large one year is like trying to say that. No, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm just pointing this out right now. This is what's going through my brain. Sure, sure. This is just going through my brain. Sure. Which is just like,

you couldn't finish your doctoral thesis while taking care of a one year old by your son. like what's wrong with you it's like fuck you well I think that this is a comment on patriarchy yes yes but that isn't what he's getting at he didn't know that she didn't finish it he's like wait

you didn't finish it right okay but your point is correct yeah he's not judging her for it he's just surprised that she didn't know that that she didn't tell him that and she rightly is like you're surprised like you never asked me if I finished it you fuck an asshole like you don't care

so that's what the argument is rather than, like, him being dismissive of, of, of, of, of, child-rearing. And I just think it's an important, within the context of the strife and tensions of this movie to, like, that isn't his problem. Take that one off the plate, because that's not his, that's not what he's saying. Okay. Copy that. But she does feel belittled by him for her work. And, like, she felt that he thought her thesis was stupid and trite and glib and silly. We don't know what the thesis is yet. We will come to learn what it is, but also, Henley, you are correct. People are very glib about what it takes to raise children. I mean, I was before I had kids. Like, I literally was before. How could you

not be? When my mom was like, oh, Tim will be able to help you when you have a baby that's amazing. I was literally, I was like, eight months pregnant. I was like, I don't need his help. I was like, I'll be fine. Like, what do you mean I'll need his help? I'm a woman, therefore I'm built for this. I was so wrong. I was innate. Deeply wrong. innate abilities to raise a child seamlessly. You go beast mode on parenthood. I'm built different. We'll see.

You are very good at it and your children are sensational. But it's not easy. But she's like, you know, I started to think as I was working on it, that my thesis was basically a lie, that it was all bullshit. And I was not only wrong, I was like the opposite of, I was like worse than wrong. I realized something I did not expect to. And we cut to then from there

and they kind of like go quiet and then they cut we cut to like very very very scary shot of just the woods and like the trees in the woods are all bent like bent over they're like young trees and like branches and stuff like not like big

thick trees. This isn't like CGI or something it's just like a shot of these bent branches and it looks like they're like bowing to something and it is really unnerving and it's like really harshly lit and it's really fucking scary and then we cut into uh like these weird surreal close-ups of a of charlotte gainsborg's body like her eye her throat swallowing a pulse in the neck a trembling hand the back of her head and suddenly she wakes up she was in a job she was having

a dream and she's like waking up in a panic attack and she's like breathing really fast and freaking out and defoe comes up to her and like holds her and it's like Just like slow your breathing, slow your breathing, like breathe with me. Inhale for five seconds, hold it for five seconds. Exhale for five seconds. Like, I'm doing it with you. I'm here with you. Please, like, calm down.

And it's, like, really gnarly. She's really freaking out. He's really trying to calm her down and, like, kind of, like, wrestling her into submission. And she's, like, slowly coming around to doing that. And he's, like, imagine you're blowing your thistle. which is I've never heard of that thistle blooms imagine you're blowing your thistle blooms imagine you're blowing your thistle blooms a universal experience for all of us the thistle bloom I think he's like a psychosomatic therapist honestly you're speak my language yeah baby and so he's

like okay like I want you to imagine you're in with your thistle blooms and you're gently blowing them and so she we flash inside her mind to a memory at their cabin Eden she's with Nick and but like as soon as she realizes that Nick is there like her face in the flashback kind of turns and gets ugly Nick is also by the way every time you see Nick he's wearing a big fat pair of Timbs like Timberlands yeah it's just weird I've never seen a baby in Timberlins in my life

and they're heavily featured in this Lars von Scher movie they are it's giving AI slop that's what that's giving sure so we come back and like she she like comes back into the present and he's like I told you there'd be a change you're still mourning but you're in a new phase and she's like whoa what phase is this and he says anxiety and she says no but this is physical this is dangerous this is something else that I'm feeling and he's like no it's not anxiety is like exhibited in a fast pulse fast breathing hyperventilating it is a physical thing

Yeah, he's like, it is a physical thing, and that's all this is. And then as he's describing, like, the symptoms of anxiety, we, like, cycle back through that, like, dream scenes we saw of, like, her pulse, her breath. Her breasts are, like, exposed in the shot of her breathing, like, clammy sweat, et cetera. So we cut to later in the night. She wakes up in the middle of the night, and she is horny. And so she tries to have sex with him. And it's, like, very, like, feral and, like, desperate.

she's like clinging to him and grabbing at him and he's like hey hey like we we shouldn't do this like the worst thing you can do is fuck your therapist like and if i'm gonna be i know i'm your therapist first and your husband second it's why he's a very fascinating character because he's always going back and forth on being good and awful it's also like in my mind i'm like okay if you were fucking when your son died fucking again is like maybe a good thing? Well, yes, for him, maybe. But I'm also like, it's like a vet. It's healing. Yeah, maybe you

should like do that. We'll get there. Oh, good. Oh, God. They're going to do it. Yeah, they are going to do it. They're going to do it. I hate this. I will say, when he says it, he's like, he's being a little rye and like a little funny. And

sound funny. To who? It's hilarious. It's obviously hilarious. I don't know what is. Everyone at can is laughing. The man can can again The man can can She's like scared and a little embarrassed And she's like do you love me And he says I do

And she says then help me And we cut to another creepy forest shot With this awful lighting And over that his voice says That's what I'm doing No if anything with awful lighting How dare you It's just really harsh and freaky and scary

Honestly if everything you've said Awful lighting how dare you Joel So now she's in the shower and he is in the bathroom with her watching her shower. And he starts to give her a speech on exposure therapy. So normal. We've all been there. He's like, that's the only thing that really works.

And I think her being in the shower is like part of the exposure therapy because they had had sex in the shower sex. And so he's like getting her toes dipped in to exposure therapy. And he's like, that's the only thing that really works. Everything else is just talk therapy. That's what our podcast is built on and it's absolutely true. Yeah. It's based on scientific research. And along the lines of the premise of this podcast

that we've been talking about a lot tonight is he's like you just have to learn to stay in a situation that frightens you and then you'll learn that fear itself isn't dangerous. It is just fear. Except your son did die. Yes, but fear is not... They weren't afraid then.

Danger. Yeah. Fear is not the same as danger. Right. So he's like, I want you to make a list of... And again, we're in his treatment regimen. So he's like, I want you to make a list of things you're afraid of.

like a pyramid shape and at the top put the situation you fear most and she's like I don't know what I'm afraid of and he's like take your time so she thinks and she's like can't I just be afraid like without a definite object and we cut to her just

panicking in the bathroom she can't drink water she's like trembling you can hear her teeth like clicking against the glasses it's like rattling against it and she falls to the ground and is sobbing and weeping on her hands and knees and then crawls over to the toilet and just starts smashing her head

against the edge of the toilet. It's like bleeding, there's like blood on it. God, what an unpleasant movie? Yes. I just, you got it. I just imagine watching this. I know that we're not even close to the worst shit, but I'm just like absolutely not.

We're not even close to halfway through. Okay, Joel. Wait, Joel, you got to speed up. You got to speed it up. Okay, okay. Joel, you have to speed it up. I love you so much, but you must go faster. I'm so sorry.

Okay. he finds her he pulls her off they have sex they have sex great great this is the pastoral let's go let's go let's see all done we know it is

they have sex and she really grabs his butt every time they have sex I don't know if you notice Sammy but she really grabs his butt more than I would have ever imagined somebody grabbing his butt like good bad

it's a good good yeah I don't think I think there's like a low ceiling for how good a man's butt can be there's like exceptions to that rule but a man's butt is generally

not great but his is good it's a good butt After they have sex, he's like, that was a mistake. That was the stupidest thing I can do. I can't fucking believe. I did that. I'm so sorry.

But she's calmer. She feels better. And he's like, you know what? If you can't tell me what you're afraid of, tell me where you're afraid of. What would be the worst place you could possibly be? The apartment, the street that he fell on, the store, the park that you have memories at. And she says, the woods.

I was like, oh, that's weird. That was always your favorite place. You were the one who always wanted to go to the woods. And he's like, what scares you at the woods? And she says, everything. And he says, okay, well, what is supposed to happen in the woods? Is it any woods in particular? And she says, Eden, the cabin.

Well, what do you say we put the woods around Eden at the top of the pyramid? And she goes, no, not quite the top. That's not really what it is. And so he's like, well, so what is the top? And that's going to be like his quest for the rest of the movie. It's like, what is the thing that she is most afraid of. I just need my wife to tell me what she's most afraid of. Yeah.

She tries to have sex again. he's like, no, no, no, no. I just said that was a mistake. And they are laughing here. It's like the like playful, like wrestling, laughing, sexual, like, flirty. Are we, are we not going to kind of vibe? And it looks like maybe they are going to. And then she bites the shit out of his nipple and makes him bleed.

And he like squeals and is like, ow, out, ow, ow. And like kind of like pushes her off. And it's like, God damn. And she's like, I'm so sorry. And he's like, it's okay. It's okay. But he's bleeding. And he's done.

And so he's, it's done. him and they stop. Because now we cut to the woods. They're like flying by it. We're on a train heading into the woods. So it's like trees whipping past you. Kind of disorienting and strange. And the music is always just like

like br- Like that kind of like ugly shit. I mean he's fluorescently lit trees. He'll do anything. He'll do fucking anything. We cut to its night on the train

and they are sitting across from each other and he says let's like let's start working on your expectations i want you to close your eyes feel the seed underneath you feel yourself sinking down into it and folding you isn't that a nice feeling all you feel is a pleasant warmth and heaviness heaviness heaviness heavy deep regular and easy good good good now imagine you're at eden imagine you arrive at Eden through the woods tell me what you see and we cut to this shot

that's like really surreal and weird it's the woods it's all very very very dark but she is walking through them and she's almost like glowing from within she's like this it's like all washed out she's kind of like almost black and white but not quite it almost feels like a shot from like Lord of the Rings of the Elves leaving middle earth

and again hyper slow mo So it almost looks like a still image. And she's at this bridge. And she's like, okay, I'm at the bridge. It's evening. Almost no birds can be heard. The water is running without a sound. Darkness comes early down here.

I walk into it. And then we cut two shots. She's deeper in the woods, moving through like ferns and stuff. Little dears are hiding among the ferns as usual. It's all almost okay. And she goes, in among the trees on the slope is the old fox den. The camera's like inside this like fox den looking at her as she walks past it. And he says, how do you feel there? She says, I can't really tell. It should be easy passing.

And yet it's like walking through mud. And we cut to this like misty area. Again, we're still in this like really wide, dark, strange, surreal shot. She walks past this old gnarled tree that like got struck by lightning or something long ago. And she's like, the trunk, I know this tree. The trunk is thick, but it also smooth and has some strange kind of personality. I've always felt that. And then she steps out to their cabin, which is

like very dilapidated. It looks like the cabin from Evil Dead, basically. A shockingly dilapidated cabin where you're like, these people are rich, this is their retreat, and it is a piece of shit. Yeah. It's like a full size bed inside? Like, what are we doing? Yeah, like it's awful.

She's like, I'm heading to the cabin and walking up through the tall grass, and he says, don't go don't go in. It's the outside of the cabin you're afraid of. So, like, don't imagine yourself going and look around and I want you to lie down on the grass. She goes, on top of all the plants? And he says, yeah, she does. And he goes, what is everything like around you? Green. It's all very green. Good. Now, will you do what I ask you? Yes. What do you want me to do? I want you to melt into the green. don't fight it just turn green and we're in this like top-down shot of her laying in the grass

as she just sort of like dissolves into the green of the grass and then we cut back onto the train she wakes up and he says to her no matter what happens you already did it let fear come if it likes and remember what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve so now we cut to they're taking a taxi over a bridge into the forest, the music is like don't, don't, don't, don't,

it's like freaky. The forest is like extraordinarily dense. It's visual affected to be like, again, it looks like Fangoran Forest and Lord of the Rings. Fucking drop a ring in the comments, y'all. But one of the effects that will

continue to happen over the rest of this movie is like these distortions and whirls like in nature. So like every camera shot has like these weird twisty distortion is very midsummer I was going to say midsummer does it as well where it's just like warping yeah clearly Ariassar like lifted

that for midsummer and who can blame him and who can blame him and it like makes you fucking queasy for the whole movie watching it and then they so then now we're hiking to the cabin it's very Pacific Northwest like rainy big trees you know the deal you've seen

Twilight Twilight the Cullins are everywhere Edward sprints past her Michael Sheed as they're moving they like they like come to a little clearing and she sits down and it's like God the ground is burning he's like what are you talking about? No the ground is not burning and she takes her shoe and her sock off and there's like a blister

on her foot but it also like maybe is a burn and he's like the ground isn't burning like we'll just keep going like you're fine and so they carry on for a little while longer and then she's like I want to lay down for a minute and she looks pretty bad like again she looks like she's coming off of drugs and he's like okay sure like no problem we'll rest she falls asleep very quickly

and he's kind of watching her and he decides to wander around a little bit and this is where like for the first time I was like okay this is a fucking man who also is processing grief this is like the first free moment he feels like he's had in quite a while in the woods away from his home he's been self glorifyingly self-sacrificing to be sure. But that does not change the fact that he has not been dealing with his shit

for reasons he thinks are just and good. And you sympathize with him here. He's just like taking these deep breaths and he enters this clearing and he sees a deer and it's very peaceful. It's like in this like surrounded by ferns and the light is pretty

and he sees this deer who's like suspicious of him but not scared of him and so he like inches his way closer and watches his way closer and watches it and a kind of a smile starts to come across his face and he's like,

you know, you see how nature can be healing. And as he's looking and he like starts to look a little closer and his smile just starts to fade a little bit. And he squints his eyes to look a little bit closer and we get a close up of the deer in profile now. And the deer at some point attempted to give birth

to a baby fawn. that became stuck in the birth canal and died and is still stuck there. It is not coming out and it is dead. And the deer starts running away and this dead fawn is just jiggling and jaggling as it runs. I knew, Joel, I could tell from the look on your fucking face as you started talking about this that I was like, he's hiding something. I could fucking tell nice lighting yeah right

something's got oh it's a beautiful deer and it's just so nice he's just looking at you had this like you were delighted to reveal this nasty shit

and you really do think it's going to fall out but it doesn't and the deer runs away it's pretty horrifying yeah it's really nasty it's awful I was mouth agape

at this moment like oh no Oh, God. What a thing to even, like, think to put in a movie. Do you know what I mean? I know. What a thing to even think. I feel like there are people who think about it and cowardly, like, chicken out from it,

and he just does it, and then he makes it not come out. Everybody's thought to put this in their movie. They just won't actually do it. We've all had the thought. So he's, and he's, like, watching it go away, and we get a close-up of him, and he's, like, horrified, but also quite transfixed. And then we cut to another title card, Chapter 2, Pain. Chapter 2?

Jesus. Parantheses, chaos reigns. Yeah, there's only three. Yeah, there's only three. Yeah, great. Chaos reigns. He's in the, he's like, remains there just kind of like, fuck, what the fuck did I just see? Holy shit. What the what?

She is woken up. She finds him and she's like, shouldn't we go on? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We should just keep on here. No problem. I'm fine. I didn't see anything. Actually, I'm fucking fine, dude.

And then they come to the bridge that we saw earlier in her, like, meditation exercise. And she's really scared to. across it, but she decides to just, like, sprint across it. And he's quite disappointed by that. He wanted her to, like, really be in it, but she won't. And so we, like, she just kind of, like, keep sprinting. She's going to, like, basically run all the way to the cabin from here, despite him being, like, you got to stay in it. And so he kind of, like, keeps going slowly. He walks past that fox den we saw in her vision, the tree she described, and then he gets to the cabin. And it really feels like he's being watched the way it's shot. It's, like, all from, like, wide shots and, like,

high angles and stuff. Before he goes into the cabin, there's, like, a tool shed and, like, some stuff around. There's, like, a big stack of tree branches left to dry for, like, firewood and stuff. He goes into the tool shed, and there's, like, a bunch of... This cabin is crazy. There's, like, a bunch of old-school

tools in it, like, old, like, hand-crank drills and, like, wet stones. There's, like, a big wet stone for, like, sharpening tools. It's, like, about this, size and weight of if you like cut the ends off of a bowling ball but left like the middle four inches in there you know what I mean just like a big stone wheel I have no idea what I mean

and I saw the movie cut four inches off a bowling ball what are you talking about it's so specific he's a production designer looking at the PA going imagine a bowling ball I was like think of it in your brain I will say no spoilers go to Craigslist go to Facebook marketplace I was like this This wetstone is an important prop. I have to describe its dimensions. But it's like, okay, think about this. The Flintstone's wheels. I'm thinking about it.

I think that's right here. I think that's better. It's like a stone wheel. A bowling ball if you cut off both sides. Let's lose the bowling ball thing. That's what I said. I would think that's what it's not, there's things, there's closer things to this.

A wheel is closer. A stone wheel already has the sides off, so we don't have to describe it as having its sides cut off. But if I'm like, imagine a stone wheel, you don't know how big it is? It's about the second of all. How can we describe how big it is? The bug stops there. I think I'm right. We got there.

Yeah, we got it. Imagine Emily's, um, head. Right. Emily's circle head. If you cut off three. It's like, you cut off four inches from it. And it was stone. I think it's like one of those, you know those exercise rolly things.

with the handles where you lean out and roll back in. They're like a core exercise where you roll in and out. It looks like that, but made of thick stone. That's really good. Abroller. Abroler. I think it's called an abroller. I think that's exactly right.

I think this is an abroller. That's another way to describe it. How you did it? That was great. It was really good, Joel. Actually, a bowling ball with four inches cut off either side is really good. It's just heavy. It's a heavy rock.

Heavy stone wheel. to like sharpen, you know, a honk, a honk, a honk, that's what I should have said. And it's there to like sharpen spades and whatever, you know what I mean? And it's like, it's just like very weird how archaic all the tools in this shed are. Anyway, he goes inside, she's already in there. She's already fallen asleep on their little, like, full-sized mattress. She almost would be a great candidate for the haunting sleep study. I thought like this is so similar to the haunting.

so far so. He puts a blanket over her. He's trying to be caring for her. Later he gets into bed. Next to the bed are some old Polaroids from her last trip to the cabin of her and Nick. And she like never looks very happy

in any of them. She's like kind of weird looking in them. Like expressionless. And Nick is wearing these, those big, fat-ass Timbs. Again, I don't know if I've ever seen a toddler in Timbs, but you see a lot of him in Lars Van Trier movies, which is very funny to me. So he tries falling asleep. It's hard for

him. He's like kind of stressed now. When he finally does, he's later woken up to this like a bunch of like really weird clacking sounds. It almost sounds like it's going to, it's like it's starting to rain or hail or something, but it's not quite that. It's like weirder than that and more alien that and sharper than that. Each like click and clang. And he wakes up and he's like, what is that? And she wakes up too and she goes, it's just the stupid acorns. time we come to the cabin, you hear the trees above, there's like oak trees, almost swallowing

their cabin. And when the wind blows, it knocks the acorns off of them and they fall onto like the tin roof of this cabin. So it's just like a constant clickety clack that never goes away for the rest of the movie when they're inside the cabin. It's just this like constant like psycho click clack sound.

I know this sound. I have heard this sound. This sound happens where I live because they're a long tree. It's scary if you don't know what it is. really scary yeah and like if you're descending into madness even worse even worse not helping so they go back go back to sleep the next morning he wakes up his there's a window right next to the bed his hand has kind of like found its way outside so it's like dangling out of the window and when he wakes up he looks out and he sees it is covered in ticks who are slurping his blood and he like freaks out starts like he picks them all off and like there's blood on his hand

i didn't know what they were at first but there's blood on his head so i didn't know they were But they looked gross, whatever they were. They're gross. The next morning, she wakes up, looks out in the front yard. He's already outside, and he's hauling some, like, pretty big rocks around in the front yard. And he's like, I've got an exercise I want to do. You ran over the bridge.

That's no good. Like, you cheated me on that. Like, I need you to, like, sit in the trauma and, like, deal with it. So I've set this exercise up. I have a rock here. I have another rock here about 10 yards away. You're scared of the grass. so I need you to

I'm gonna put you on one rock and I need you to walk across the grass to the other rock and is she willing she's scared but she's like terrified she's like terrified she's like but she's like treating him

as her therapist but she's yeah she's she's humoring him and trying it I gotta tell you I love you so much so but if you were like here's what you have to do I'd be like you need to shut the fuck

up I wouldn't I wouldn't what I need to do is do whatever the fuck I want and you can go away because that's not right. Well, he does tell her he'll carry her

to the first rock. Does that help? No. He does. And he puts her on the rock and he's like, you're going to cross this. I'm going to do it with you. She's like, I can't. He's like, you can't. I promise you you can. And we're going to do our breathing, five in,

hold it for five, five out. We're going to do this. As she does it, she's freaking. Everything is distorting, doing that twisty, like weird, disorienting shit. and then we start to intercut with these like dark tangles of nasty grass and like somebody walking barefoot

through them. She's not barefoot right now. She's wearing boots. Tim adjacent. Tim adjacent, yeah. She loves that kind of shoe, that style of shoe. She's obsessed with that style of shoe. She's so fucking obsessed with that style of shoe. It's honestly kind of embarrassing. She does make it. She's like freaking out. She like collapses onto the next stone

and she is clearly terrible. terrified, but she's, you know, proud of herself. She, like, did it. And she starts to feel the, like, okay, I fucking, I got that one. Okay. And he's like, you did beautifully. You did so good. I'm so proud of you. And then they hear her, she's feeling pretty good good good. And then they hear a sound from a nearby tree, kind of a rustling. It's Nick in the shape of a bird. Cracking sound. Honestly, I had a pretty good guess. Nick has a squirrel. She sees like an object falling out of a tree And it lands on like a compost heap And we cut to a close up of it And it's a little baby bird Of course And as soon as it hit the compost heap

Dozens of cruel ants Are all over it Oh good good Biting at it Eating at it Decomposing It isn't dead It twitches and blinks

Oh good That's even better Thank you Let's hear it home But the ants are, like, working it. And then you hear a hawk scream. A hawk lands off. And we're laughing.

We're all laughing. Can is tears crying. The hawk grabs the baby, picks it up, carries it to another branch, and starts eating. Ripping it apart. And a lot of people I saw online think this is the parent hawk. Yeah, I mean, this is better than the ants. This is absolutely better than the ants. Oh, you think they're doing it, like, as a favor?

No, I bet you're right. That's very, like, that painting of Saturn eating his children. It's very much like that. I just think it's better to be torn apart quickly than slowly eaten by ants. No, I agree. I have a spoiler alert. We're all being slowly eaten by ants when we die. I'm so sorry.

Well, if I'm already dead, I don't care. If I'm dead, eat me. I don't care. It's pretty graphic. You, like, see blood coming out of the baby while it's being eaten. And to me, it is very funny because it is so, it's like a series of naked gun jokes. Like, heightened, heightened, heightened, height and height. Yes, and.

It's just like rubbing it in their fucking faces. It's like everywhere they look, but also, like, nature is gnarly like this. Fucked up. Yeah. Yes. And so it's not out of the realm of possibility. Wait, I actually think this is, no, this is relevant. And honestly, I'm kind of on board with this movie so far.

Like, I don't hate it as much. I'm shocked to hear. Other movies. No, I actually am, because I do feel like there has been. thought like significant thought at least put into what he's showing which i can't say for a lot of the films that we see and i think that one thing is like i don't know man i mean it's violent out there and this shit does happen and we have to face it at some point my first viewing of this movie was like the conclusion was like nature is evil but i don't think that that's the i'm not saying

that that's like the truth, but I felt like that was maybe what was trying to be said. Well, so that's, but that's what's tricky about it is that I don't think that that's, I don't think that's true. Like, I don't think nature is evil. But it hasn't evil. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I think that nothing in nature can be good or evil. It's just nature. It's like a separate thing. That's not operating by good or evil because those are like human. Let's talk more about this at the end. Okay. What happens next? we're like so close to right we'll get to conversations

one might say that nature is Satan's church maybe one might say that nature is Satan's church that's what I think that's what I think someone might say that no we'll get there she's freaking out of course she's freaking out she just saw baby bird get eaten by its own mother after falling well after falling a long

a long fall too it's like and it like hits every branch oh Joel what if it did it in the slow mo way of the opening scene So now we cut to her crying in bed She's like I miss him so much I miss Nick so much And again he's comforting her as best as he can

We cut to later he pours himself a big glass of wine As Johnny Depp would say a Megapint Megapine Why no forever They are talking again And she's like calm down a little bit And she says to him I don't like Johnny Depp by the way

No nobody does But Megapine is just one of my favorite things in the world. It's funny. It's funny. She's like, I've been afraid up here before. I just didn't know it was fear. And he's like, okay, that's very interesting. That's very interesting. All the while acorns are just like clattering on the roof. And he's like, okay, like, tell me more. Like, go into that. And she's like, well, I became afraid and I stopped writing her thesis, which is why she didn't finish it. She got scared. And he's like, okay, well, what was different about last time? She says, I heard a sound. And we go,

into a flashback. And this is that summer. She's there at the cabin working her thesis with Nick. She is cutting an image from like a printed page of like a 1600s type book. It has like there's text on it, but it's like the era when S's were Fs. Do you know what I mean? Of course. And it's an image of three women who are being hanged. And there's a bunch of like frogs cavorting around their feet as well. There's nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was quite funny. Two of the frogs are having sex. Like it's a rich text. A rich text. There's just so much to be gleaned.

To be gleaned. And we see her notebook. She cuts this image of these women being hanged and like adds it into her notebook. And this is her thesis, like the notes for her thesis. The cover is like this painting of that she also printed out of these like old women being depicted as witches. and the title of it is gynicide, or is it gynoside? I believe it's gynocologist, but I've had the same thought where I was like, gino, gino, oh god, oh god, oh god.

Gynoside, which I looked up and it is the definition is the systematic murder and killing of women and girls. So she was basically writing a thesis about the Salem witch trials and like the way that women are targeted for murder through these systems of language and law.

that is embodied in like the witch hunts and how that maybe can be like extrapolated out to like things that are happening in modern day like all these excuses that a patriarchal society has for killing women that is largely rooted in their connection to nature basically that women's bodies are the are where humanity is most tied to the natural world therefore they should be punished and killed for it um is kind of what her thesis is getting at sounds interesting which by the way I so agree with. Yeah, yeah, she's right. She's 100% right.

But it's mostly because it's not about them being rooted in nature. It's because women can make life and men can't. Correct. And they're jealous of that. And I mean, we all know this, but we all know. They're jealous of it, so they have to kill us. Here's the thing is like, I don't want to throw us off into a tangent, but is it that men are jealous or is it that they can control the means of creating life? They're jealous, so they force the control.

I don't think it's because they're jealous. I think it's because they feel inept. They're like not important. Right. Like it makes you feel... No, I think it's because they can. It's the most powerful thing there is and they can control it so they do.

George, just admit you're jealous. It's true. I think it's darker than that. I think it's far more sinister than jealousy. I don't know. I'm sure the comments are... I think we should get to the bottom of why men hate women and I think that we can.

I think we should do it right now. Okay, okay. Because I think that we can. I think maybe we table it. And get to it at the end of this three and a half hour episode that we're about to be dropping on people. No, no, you're perfect. You're perfect. Continue. She's pasting this image of the women being hanged into her notebook. She starts to hear a child screaming, Nick. But it feels like this screaming sound is coming from everywhere. She rushes outside. Nick is nowhere to be found. She's moving around the woods. The fox den, the bridge.

The audio of the crying is not changing at all. It's just like, the same exact sound, no matter where she goes. It's just like, is it in her head? And she runs back to the cabin. She goes into the tool shed, and there is Nick. He's in the tool shed. Playing with some logs. With some, like, medieval fucking tools.

Playing with these old tools. He's playing with a big log, like a hand crank drill. And I think those are the only things he's playing. And she's like, oh, well, he's fine, obviously. Yeah, but it's also, like, the audio of the crying is not sinking up to him. He's not from him. He's fine, but she's still. still hearing this thing. So she's like, okay, he's fine, but she like keeps looking for this

horrible sound. And then from there, it's sort of like, she like looks out and we kind of like pan up into just like a huge wide shot of the woods around forks, uh, around forks. Forks, Washington. I just, I just really perked up. I went, where are we? 360 shot. Where are we? The soundtrack changes immediately. We crossfade from that shot into like, basically like her hair. And now we're back into our time. she's twinkling she's sparkling the skin of a killer um now we're back to our time the flashback is over and he's like you didn't hear nick screaming that's not what that was and she goes like apparently not but he says because you experience something frightening that you couldn't explain and you

experienced that here you placed eden very highly on your pyramid chart she's like not really wanting to hear this this is like very annoying for her because he is you know mansplaining her the way I mansplained you why men are jealous of his biological agency. And, um, because I still think they aren't, but we'll get there. I think it's worse than that. I think it's far worse. Okay, we'll get there. I hear you on that. Eden, he says, was a catalyst that triggered your fear. You jump to conclusions and tied the emotional event with the place. When you feel threatened, it's natural to react. And if the danger were real, the adrenaline that you're getting pumped through you because of the fear would save your life because you'd go into fight or flight. But because you don't have

that option in this situation, it just becomes panic. Nothing more. That's all it is. The scream wasn't real. It's just your mind playing tricks on you. He goes and pours himself another big megapine of wine. And she like kind of looks at him and just fucking attacks his ass. She like jumps on him, wrestles the wine glass shatters on the ground and they're just like grappling with each other. She's like scratching at him. He wrestles her to the ground, kind of gets her into submission and like pins her down pins her hands down and he's like on top of her and she looks at him and she just has this like she starts smiling at him and says you shouldn't have come here you're so damn arrogant but this may not last ever thought of that and she just like smiles at him quite

sinister that night they're in bed acorns are fallen they're kind of like cuddling again in bed they like keep making up no matter what happens and she says you know i learned recently like last I was here, I learned that oak trees live for 100 years, which means they only have to propagate once in 100 years. And I don't know, that may sound dumb to you, but it was a big realization for me when I was here with Nick, and it, like, brought me comfort. But at the same time, I realized these acorns keep falling then, too. Falling and falling and falling and dying and dying. And I understood that everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. now I could hear what I couldn't hear before

the cry of all the things that are to die and it's a very terrifying thought of like hearing the death screams of everything being born whether it is seed or child or baby bird the minute they enter the world you hear their death screams horrifying and he looks at her and he says you know that's all very touching if it was a children's book acorns don't cry you know that as well

as I knew. Is his exact tone? Not exactly. He's like, you know that as well. But that's what fear is, right? Like thoughts distort reality, not the other way around. You're just scared.

And she turns to him and says... And he is minimizing everything. He is. And she turns to him and says, nature is Satan's church. Oh. Not coined by me. Not Joel Jensen.

And he goes, he goes like, wait, what? and like a big gust of wind blows through this open window and she goes well there you have him that was his breath and he gets up and shuts the window goes to his pyramid chart chart the top is still like a question mark he still doesn't know what it is the highest thing that he's written is the word nature but he's also crossed that out already so he's like maybe it was nature but no it's not that so then he writes satan above that thinks about it and then crosses that out so he still isn't sure what it is she's most scared of. This chart reminds me of the whiteboard in a quiet place where it's like, what is the

weakness? It's just the most simplistic. If I write it down, I'll understand it. Could we not be doing this in our heads? They're all Christopher walking. You gotta write this down, okay. We're back in bed. Again, we've kind of like, we've kind of like come back into like a more intimate, like

they're having an actual conversation moment. And she kind of talks about when she was here before with Nick, how she actually kind of resented Nick while they were there. for not paying her as much attention as she wanted him to. He was, like, running around the woods, kind of like doing his own thing, and it made her feel bad that he, like, was living his own life

and, like, not quite her baby the way, you know, she wanted him to be. And we, as she's saying this, we go into that, like, surreal mode. It's of Nick now running through the woods with his teddy bear, but he's kind of, like, glowing from inside in that hyper slow-mo,

and he, like, runs into this deep, deep darkness inside the woods. So then we wake up, and it's the next morning. And Defoe is getting the fire going again. It's cold because the fire went out, and it's morning, so he's wearing his coat. And as he's, like, getting the fire going, he realizes, oh, shit, that coroner's report envelope

is still in my pocket. And I need to, like, do some facing of things, so he opens it and he starts to read it. And as he's reading it, he sees something perplexing. We see on his face he's, like, rather perplexed by something. But we don't know what it is. And then he looks side and the camera just sort of like zooms out, like pulls away from him into this like wide shot of him kind of like thinking inside the cabin.

And then he has this vision of himself standing outside the cabin as just like a million acorns are falling around him in slow motion like the snow was when Nick died. And then we cut back to, uh, he's sitting on the porch and it's morning and we're drinking coffee and now I'll hand it to Sammy. Oh no. So she comes out smiling, looking different than we've seen her before. She says she slept really well. She, I think, puts her arm around him and says, you know, I just want to say thank you

for being here with me. I love you so much. And also, like, I think I'm cured. He's seeming like he's not buying it, but kind of curious, I guess. Again, she's his patient, not his wife, and he's observing her in a non-husbandly way, I think. And so they grab their coats and they're going out into the woods, just a new day. We're cured. We're feeling good.

She's absolutely dancing through the grass. She's passing the foxhole, reaching her arm into it, like, oh, look, I'm not even scared anymore. I'm so cured. Like way over the top, I'm good. Yes. Like, not normal. we've crested, we've gone somewhere else. Yes, but also, like, these were things that were sending her into, like, crippling fear

yesterday, and so it is, it's bizarre. And he's thrown off by it, and he's not fully, like, celebrating with her because it is a complete 180. And she gets angry, and she says, oh, you can't even be happy for me, can you? And she storms off back to the cabin, I think. and he's left in the woods and he sees the ferns shaking. Something is nearby and he gets closer and like parts the ferns and sees a patch of red fur, some sort of animal, and her reaches and touches it, which I think is pretty crazy.

And as he touches it, it jumps up and we see it as a fox. this is in like slow motion he recoils startled the foxes you just went and pet fur in the woods yeah you're not you shouldn't do that i don't think so the fox is growling at him and then he gets a better look at the whole fox and we see that the fox is eating its own intestines it is slowly ripping out its innards we see will i'm a foe's face and we see the fox looking at him and the fox opens its mouth and says chaos reigns and that's the tattoo that I'm going to be getting from this movie is chaos rains oh fuck yeah yeah I think that's a good one it's a really good one and I love it fate to black title card

Chapter 3, despair, parentheses, gynoside. Here we go. Oh, no. Okay. It is raining now. He goes back to the cabin, finds her sleeping. He uses this time while she's sleeping to, like, investigate her work that she was doing for her thesis. He grabs a ladder, goes up to the attic. I guess she was working in the attic. There he finds all these drawings and images of. women being tortured and killed looks like a lot of witch trial type things, just like really upsetting images, like just really hammering home that this thesis was like a really ugly place to be by yourself in the middle of the woods for an extended amount of time. He sees in her work there is a drawing of a constellation. It's like a star map with the animals in it that, you know, normally we've seen like tourists and Scorpio and stuff.

This has a deer and a fox and a crow labeled as grief, pain, and despair, and then a three-star constellation labeled as the three beggars. Willem DeFoe's like, these aren't real constellations? Oh. Table that for now. I know all the constellations.

I know all of them. Don't be dismissive, dude. Yeah, exactly. And then he finds her notebook that she's been using for her studies and opens it. And at first we're seeing her writings, getting little glimpses of words like women and gynaecide and patriarchy or whatever. And then he's flipping through it. And the writing starts getting more and more unintelligible until it's like completely

indecipherable. It's just like scribbles. Not great. Kind of hate to see that. yeah we're feeling pretty uneasy while we're watching this we're feeling bad and then he goes downstairs and she wakes up and he pulls up and they're still at eden they're still at eden they're in this cabin we're not leaving it we're yeah we're gonna be here we're staying in eden and he says okay I want to do another exercise with you my wife let's do an exercise pull up a chair it'll be a

role-playing type exercise, I'm going to be nature and you be rational thought. She says, okay. And he's like, Emily and I do this all the time, actually. We do this exercise all the time. I love it. This is music from my ears. Yeah. Yeah, pretty normal stuff. It's kind of our vibe. You have like things on hinge or bumble or whatever. It's like, first question. It's like, I'll be nature. You be nature. You go first. You go first. What do you say? So he says, you know, I'm, I'm nature and I want to harm you and I'm evil and bad. And I'm Satan's church. I'm Satan's church and I'm your biggest fear.

And she doesn't look scared by this. She's saying nature can't hurt me. It's all the greenery around us. Nature's just nice. And he says, well, what about human nature? the things that make us kill each other and hurt each other. And she says, oh, that kind of nature. That kind of nature was featured heavily in my thesis.

And she kind of reveals that through her studies, she's absorbed a lot of the negative messages about women that are in these older texts about women. and she says if human nature is evil then that means women are evil and women don't control their own bodies nature controls their bodies and that's like the nature of like both tree nature

and man nature right and if like if we're going to flatten all of that into nature then we are telling a very horrifying story that is hard to refute yeah And Willam Defoe gets very upset by this. He's like, oh my God, you were reading all these texts.

You're supposed to be studying them as the way that, like, people get it wrong and, like, find evil and women that isn't there. You're supposed to be critical of these texts. How dare you glean something from your reading that I don't think you're supposed to have discovered? He's, like, finger wagging and being like, no, you're doing that wrong. You're doing reading wrong. But also, it's a horrifying thing to glean from, like, a horrifying takeaway. If you were like, I'm going to write a thesis on the unjust persecution of women, and you came to me and were like, actually women are fucking evil and they should have all been hung and killed, that would bother me. Sure.

But I feel like up until this point, and I think, again, this is where it gets interesting because I feel like everybody has like different takeaway. Like, there's no part of me that likes anything that Willem Defoe does in this movie. I don't think anything that he does is like noble or good. and I think that's interesting because I'm sure people put their own perceptions on things and so at this point he's like my enemy

yeah yeah he's terrible yeah but he's trying like again it's why it's a really good movie is that he is despite his best intentions is fucking everything up and is stupid

like he's not evil he's just doing a bad job and he's arrogant and he thinks he's smarter than everybody as has been established and like and that's his fatal flaw and that is what makes drama interesting is like people who despite trying

their best still fuck everything up because they're idiots. But certainly one of us landing on the perspective that like well yeah, gynosite is what else can you do? What else can you do? It'd be bad. I wouldn't love I wouldn't love it. It'd be tough thing to be like wait a minute no granted I didn't pay attention to you writing

your thesis at all in the first place granted I don't actually care about you but Now I'm hearing that you are pro-guides. That's the thing is, I guess it makes me feel like it's worth a deeper conversation than him just being like, hey, no, you're wrong. What are you doing? You silly girl, you silly thing. Right. And there is that tone.

It's like, you silly girl. What are you talking about? That tone is present where it's like you're getting the wrong message. You did it wrong. You're doing this wrong, which I think is. And I know that because I know what's right. Exactly. Dr. Kelson would not respond in that way.

No, definitely not. No. So then cut two later, they have sex. Sure. Rip roaring, too. It's always rip roaring. It's always, I like the word Joel used feral. It's like, it's grabby and moving around.

It's like, I can't be even word for it, but it's really animated and intense. And so they're having sex. and she asks him to hit her and he says no and she's kind of crying a little bit and she says please hit me so it hurts I need it to hurt he refuses and she says like I can't stand this I can't stand it if you won't hit me you don't love me and he says well maybe I don't love you and she runs outside naked and lays down on the grass and just starts, like, vigorously masturbating, just, like, so aggressive. Well, she's, like, laying in the roots of a tree. Yeah, the roots of a tree.

And, like, self-penetration and masturbation. Like, it's, like, it's, like, really crazy to see. I did read some trivia that Charlotte Gainsberg on the first take of this did, like, a more kind of what you would think of as a woman masturbating. And Lars von Schroo was, like, it's going to need to be, like, a lot crazy. more pornographic it's like it reaches pornographic level this is the shit about acting that like obviously not every acting job is this but it i mean it's so wild to be like just a woman at work showing up to your job in front of so many people being like so the thing is you're going to have to fuck yourself like crazy style yeah yeah in front of everybody in like the throes of grief and angst and like insane like it's it's it's is an insane job to do. This movie in particular, I think, is probably... Not all things are this, but pretty much the furthest end of that spectrum.

But truly, like, your body being your job is, like, really... It's really insane. It's, like, it's absolutely mind-blowing that anyone could do this. Well, I feel like her... As I was watching it, particularly in this moment, I was like, oh, this is a performance that transcends, like, a transactional acting job. This is, like, an artist really at work, really doing something that she believes in.

And it's, like, really intense to see and also, like, really special. Like, thank God we have people who, like, take their art that fucking seriously. Yeah, there are interviews with her where she was like, I didn't feel weird and didn't feel ashamed. Like, I was, like, in it.

That was, like, what this required, this art that I was doing. Yeah. Because I'm not doing that. I'm not doing this I'm not doing this. I'm not doing it. So she's masturbating. He

comes outside. Again, they're at the base of this tree. C-O-M-E-S. Thank you, Joel. For now. Thank you, Joel. He gets on top of her. They start having sex. He hits her. She says again. He hits her harder than she says the sisters from Radisbon could start a hail storm and we see a brief image of some of the like witchy imagery with a hail store like witch is conjuring a hailstorm essentially

and then the camera zooms in we are again seeing her really grabbing Willem's butt she really grabs he's like thrusting and thrusting and thrusting and then it zooms into the back of his head and as it pulls back out to reveal like all these limbs and arms and legs tangled in the roots of the tree. So it's kind of like breathing with them as they're like having sex. This is the

cover of the movie for a lot of the stunning. It's an incredible image. Yeah. So we cut back to inside. He's lecturing her again. He's saying like, oh, your obsession with evil is this is no good. It has to

stop, obsessions never materialize, and that's a scientific fact. Oh, well. Wait, your obsessions never materialize? Nobody's. Obsessions in general never materialize, and that's a scientific fact. I thought that was a really interesting thing to say, not in a good way. Like, sir, what? Are you talking about?

I don't even know what that means. Me neither. But yeah, he's basically, again, just kind of talking to. down to her, shaming her, and at this moment, she finds the coroner's envelope. Oh, God. Says, what's this? And he's like, ooh, ooh, you. Steam comes out of his collar.

She opens it. It's the autopsy report. He says there's nothing really in it that would... Don't even look at it. There's something in there. Barely, yeah, it doesn't even barely matters. I didn't even freak out at all when I saw it. And I just threw up in my mouth a little bit

And the only thing that we see in the coroner's report is that there's a slight deformity of his feet And we see x-rays of his feet Just a little bit the wrong shape It says there's like an old injury That is not related to anything to do with this It's just like they're like We did a full body x-ray

because that's what we do and we also we noticed this weird little thing no worries irrelevant but we're pointing it out no worries but FYI but just so you know no worries his feet were weird but it doesn't matter that's not what this is about but I think they were weird something shattered his feet in his two years of life but don't care about that don't care about that right that ain't what killed him brother that ain't what killed him so she you know is upset by this and he at this moment grabs the Polaroid we saw

earlier of Nick in his Tims his Tims he's like he's in the boots and Tim's fucks up his

feet and we look we get a closer look and we see that they are on the wrong feet

they're on the opposite foot and she shows he shows her this photo and says

did you see that you put Nick's shoes on the wrong feet this day and she looks like

oh How weird I must have been in a Like that must have slipped my mind that day So she was hurting him this whole time She was trying to mildly hurt him By putting his shoes on the wrong feet this whole time Because she was angry that he was frolicking in the woods

Without her Yes Henley Not to get ahead of ourselves But yes So we go to him He goes to the tool shed Where there are more Polaroids That he remembered seeing earlier

He flips through them And he is indeed Nick is wearing shoes on the wrong foot in every single photo across like multiple days and he's got his drawing of his fear pyramid with him and he's scribble in his notes like oh this is so interesting my wife my patient feet feet feet that's her number one thing I think she's most scared of his feet oh my god she has feet phobia pyramid by the way fear amid this this I don't like so it was her fault ultimately well I think that is the surface level reading of it, yes. I think that this is what a lot of people negatively

reacted to, or not just this. There's more to come. But I think at a glance, yes, that could be a reading of this. I don't think that is the least interesting reading of it. Well, so we, do we have any backstory on her or her like life or her childhood? Nope, only that she has been knee deep in gynoside research for years. I think it's also really important that we don't, get more information about her. It's the first woman, first woman, first man. I agree. Yeah, we're in Eden after all.

I, you know, I think it's like, I'm really fascinated by explorations in the psychology of young motherhood. And obviously this is bad. Don't do this, and most people wouldn't. But this reminds me of when I watched one battle after another, and I guess I'm about to spoil like just a little bit of one battle after another.

So sorry if you don't want to hear it just freaking plug your ears. But Tiana Taylor's character talks about being like jealous of, there's like a voice over her like being really fucking jealous of her baby when she's first born and being like,

like I just think it's a really fascinating I don't know that's what this movie is trying to do but just like just the layers upon layers of like what it does to you to to create life and what that can feel like

and what your life ends up looking like right it's not one thing it's not one one one experience across the board so much of culture and has always been like well a mom becomes this when she has a child and she feels this way and that's just the one way to be

and like again obviously it's like not good to do this but and I capable of having this conversation looking like this I'm covered in iodine but I just think like the idea that like just because you inherently can create life means that you're a certain kind of person, mother being in this world is like inherently I feel like it like flattening from human experience.

It like becomes this like black and white diminishing it like allows no room for what the actual experience is like. and I'm like deeply fascinated by it and I don't think that culture talks about it enough. I agree. Anyway, that's all I'm trying to say. No, I just a big eyeball.

I, you're such a huge eyeball. I'm just an eyeball. I completely agree. I just think it's like, again, this is why this is a good movie. It's like, it is probing at these things. It's provoking, it's very provocative, but it is, these are questions worth asking.

Yes, 100%. Which is, I mean, this is something that happened to me when I had kids, which is it like kind of opened up this like area in my own brain that was able to suddenly see myself as a kid in a way that had been like totally calcified. Like I previously was just like alienated from that part of my brain like before I had kids. And like I think that that's not necessarily true of anyone. Like I think anyone can still access that. I'm just saying this is what happened to me.

and like that is like can fuck you up like it's like it can fuck you up in a variety of different ways like it is not one note it totally depends on who you are it totally depends on what your childhood was like totally depends on what happened in your childhood with the people who were in your childhood like there is no one size fits all for that experience yeah and so like I agree like this is at least starting that conversation, which I think is useful. And I think also, yeah, this just popped into my head that it, this movie feels a little bit, I feel like we talked a little bit about this, like it almost feels like a terror reading

or like astrology where it's kind of just like, it's not saying, yeah, it's like you're looking at it and thinking deeper about things on your own time. Like it's not saying, here's, I think, what we're saying. The only thing that's dangerous about it is that. like realistically, if you look at what we're, like the realistic structures we live under, you have to look at power and how power exists in our life. And like power has always been with men. And I mean, there are so rare, there are so few and rare examples of that not being the case. And so to have a man starting this conversation is immediately like, no, uh-oh. But I'm still willing

to be like, okay, I'm interested. But then for it to be like, oh, but it's the woman who's the problem. And again, you're like, oh, I don't know. It's like uncomfortable. I'm like, I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it just like sparks in my own brain, like, like alarm signals, you know, like. And I think that's totally fair. But at the same time, I want to be engaged.

I want to be thinking about these things and I want to be talking about them. And however we're talking about them, I appreciate. So. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I'll hold my rest of my thoughts. I'll continue on. But so he's now, he's got these polaroids.

He's feeling like, oh, my God, pulls out his notebook, his pyramid, and crosses out Satan, or maybe it was already crossed out, and writes at the top of this pyramid, me, as in herself. But as he's saying, it's also kind of like him. And then just as he's finishing that thought, bam, he's. He is whacked in the head by her. She runs in with a log, slams him in the head. He collapses to the ground. She's scream, big lock, knocks him down.

She's screaming, you bastard, you're leaving me, aren't you? You're leaving me. Because we've seen her, like, little shifty eyes before. She, like, knows that he's putting it together that she's been putting the shoes on the wrong feet this whole time. And she's, like, throwing yourself out of him, like hitting him. yelling at him for leaving her and then they, what do they do? Have sex.

They start fucking. Great, great, great. They're having sex. He says, I love you. She says, I don't believe you. It's like the sex is like, prove it, fucking prove it. It's like a fight.

Yeah. But it's sex. And it's cool because the movie like it makes sex communicate so many different things outside of just what, outside of sex. it's but it's not even about like power dynamics is sex nature is sex nature and everything else is natural sex is part of nature for sure but i think it's like representative of part of the

violence of nature it's like natural yeah yes yes yes the violence but going back to like good and evil okay i'm getting ahead of myself um honestly let's do a full seminar on this i need four more classes that's the thing is i could think and talk about this movie forever so honestly honestly same honestly i'm gonna have two weed gummies right now mark Okay, you're like crazy. Whoa, Mama Mia. So she says she doesn't believe that he loves him and she gets off of him and she grabs that log again

and she smashes his dick so hard that he passes out. Now, can I just say this is something that when I watched this, I was like, okay, finally I'll be able to speak authoritatively on a subject on this podcast. To be hit with an erection. by a log of that size at that force it does make him as Sammy said pass out from the pain he he passes out and it is deeply unconscious after this

I had to pause the movie and I like sat as if I was nauseous you had to be mindful you had mindfulness now and it was this was this someone else's penis we don't see this is like just ever so slightly off out of frame so you don't see the actual smush. And so it's, it's, it is erect. Yes. And they were just, right after that. She basically squishes it. She squishes it. This is the single worst nutshot I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen

people get like, you know, commonly you see men get bitten the nuts by dogs. This is worse than all of that. Or shot in the penis. I do you feel like that's a common thing lately. She shot in the penis. He was, he hit him. He hit him. He hit him. But like, also like his penis is. out. It's out. It's like not in pants and she hits raw dick, raw hard dick with log. No layers between it and law. Out. Out. And like square on and you hear just go like, I would argue the executives at the top were having more of a conversation about this scene than the penetrative sex at the beginning or like anything else. They were like, can we show this?

Can we show the people that this is possible? Let's not show them. I'm really curious who the executives are on Lars von Trier movies because they're not the regular type of executives, I don't think. They're not the regular type. I'm not like the regular executives. They're not like a regular executive. They're cool executives. It's just a really square on, like one of the all-time great

nut shots in all of cinema, I would say. I think the next shot is worse as someone without a penis, but she's kind of pacing around for a second like freaking out and then she squats down and starts jerking them off. Now here's

The thing, though, now here's the thing, is it takes a really long time because he's gooning. Wait, wait. His penis is still, like, active? Wait, what's going on this? It's still fully erect, yeah. Active. Were you going to say his penis is still active? Like, it's still active.

After being hit? But what's it like? Is it like bruised? Well, it's huge. And it's also the smaller one that they used because Willem Defoe's is bigger than this one. So this is, okay, so this is the other penis. This is the other penis and it's really big.

Wait, so she starts masturbating like something that's mutilated. Yeah, is it like, does it look fucked up? Uh, Joel? No. I don't really think it does. No, it looks pretty normal. I was going to say maybe swollen, but I think it's just big. It's big, it's a big wide dick.

But it probably hurts. So it took a hit, but it's totally fine. It's ready to be masturbated. Well, not psychologically. She jerks it off and eventually it ejaculates lots and lots of blood. Ew! Okay, this is what a lot of people wanted my Halloween costume to be. I got this from a lot of people

Okay, but a lot of people also did a Sizer emoji and we haven't gotten there yet Yeah, we're not there yet So now she walks over to The side of the tool shed She's still unconscious, yeah And it's like a big spray Of blood, pure blood

So she's bottomless now for the rest of the movie And you're seen full frontal on both of them, I think But her more because his dick is Really hurt, so they're kind of so she's wearing her like button down shirt that's now stained in blood come and just naked from the waist down it's really upsetting and I just feel like I have to tell you I have to tell you that so you know that it's an iconic look iconic Charlie XX next summer should have been our costumes but so now she walks over to what can only be described as a bowling ball with four inches cut off of each side of course of course of course I picture it perfectly in my mind's eye. A grindstone is what I heard it called, which it's like what you sharpen knives on type of thing, right? It's like it spins and you sharpen a knife on, but it's a big honk of stone.

And she grabs a wrench, she unhooks it from the thing. She's doing all this, like, so, like, she's got a plan and we're really nervous about whatever this plan is. she grabs it pulls it off there it's heavy and then she goes back to his body has like a hand cranking screw like a drill bit with a hand crank and just starts drilling through his leg his like calf essentially she's hand cranking drill drill drill drill drill he's unconscious he's not reacting he's staying passed out he's got hitting the nuts so hard he got hit the nuts so hard yeah but i feel like you wouldn't wake up from the pain i mean That's how surgery used to get done.

That's how they used to do surgery. They hit you so hard than us first. That's just behind the scenes and the neck. Only men got surgery for a long time. Wow. And she then used her finger and like after she's drilled this hole in his leg, she's like using her finger to like feel around it and finger inside of it. It's really bloody and nasty.

And she takes the grindstone, which has like a metal pole through the middle where it's it's axis, I suppose. if it's a bowling ball like the hole that you put your finger through imagine that there's a metal rod through that part and she jams this metal rod through the hole in his leg

and uses a wrench to tighten bolts on either side of it so he is now weighed to the ground won't be able to move it's very saw yes and she goes outside and with the wrench and tosses it

underneath the cabin We see him a little while later coming to Wowy, wowy, wowy, wowy, what a horrible way to wake up. He looks down. He's in obviously excruciating pain. He got him in the dick so hard, and there's a big heavyweight drilled into his leg. I don't know where she is at this point. She's kind of running in the woods somewhere.

She's like really not. not well in this moment. And he knows that he needs to get away. So he just starts crawling, even though it's extremely painful. He's dragging himself out of this shed because she's completely unpredictable at this time. And we don't want to be here whenever she gets back. So he's dragging himself out. He somehow makes it all the way to that foxhole at the base of the tree.

And now we're hearing her screams, where are you? So she's gone back to the tool shed, sees that he's not there. She's infuriated. She's screaming out into the night. You said you were going to help me. Why won't you help me? Where are you? He crawls into this foxhole.

He's hiding there. And she's getting pretty close to him now. But the ground kind of drops a layer where the foxhole is. So she's, how do I describe this? She's like above him. but there's a little like cliff edge kind of where the foxhole is. So she can't see him even though he's right underneath her. And he's staying really, really quiet.

And then he finds a matchbook in his pocket, lights a match because he like sees there's something like bloody in this foxhole. And he's like, what is this? He lights this match. And feels around in the dirt. rocks and there's black feathers and suddenly this crow kind of pops to life that was seemed to seem to have been buried alive in this foxhole and it just starts squawking and squawking and this is obviously going to be giving away his position and so he doesn't know what to do and we see her she looks like completely like animalistic in this point she's like like like slasher movie yeah yeah she's like hunting for him

She's like, like hearing all the sounds, like tracking him. She really is feral at this moment, and you're scared. And he's like, fuck. And he just starts grabbing, he grabs a rock and just starts smashing the crow. He's just like, this crow's got to die. He's hitting it and hitting it and hitting it, hitting it, hitting it. Finally, the crow shuts up. She's still screaming through the woods.

And he's like, oh, a few, like, is this going to be okay? It's all going to be fine. and then the crow comes back to life and it's like I feel like he kills it and it comes back to life like over and over and over this crow is not dying and eventually it's making noise for long enough that she's able to find him in the foxhole she tries to drag him out by his feet he crawled in head first but he's too heavy especially with this freaking bowling ball on his leg can't get him out And so she goes above him where she was standing earlier, and she has a big shovel with her now.

And she just starts, like, digging into the ground, basically coming at him from above and is, like, screaming title card, chapter four, the three beggars. Sorry, I thought there was only three, it turns out there's four. You said there's three. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I'm going to go through it. I would go through it so fast. So now it's nighttime. We see Willam Defoe's face. like covered in dirt in the place that she had been digging we're not sure if he's alive or dead she's crying now she seems to have like kind of return to her previous self a bit and she's saying I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry she's pulling him out and he I don't know if he's like completely forgiven her or if he's just like placating her but I say that because he does like forgive

literally everything she does always he's always like oh yes it's okay everything's okay you don't ever have to be like sorry about anything that you do it's okay um and so at this point honestly i was like is he not mad but i think at the same time he's also like it's probably scared of her so he's just like speaking calmly to her and he's like okay we got to get this thing off my leg and she's like oh yeah i'm sorry let's do that let's get that she runs back to the shed looks under the cabin can't find a wrench anywhere wherever she threw it she can't find it she comes back and they just have to kind of crawl dragging him back she's like lifting his leg while he's kind of bouncing on the other leg it's all very um looks very painful and

difficult but they do eventually make their way back to the cabin he kind of collapses on the floor He's really, he's hanging on by a thread here. He's, he's not doing great, as you could imagine. And he asks her if she wanted to kill him. And she says, not yet. And he's kind of like, Not what you want to hear. And she says, when the three beggars aren't here yet,

when the three beggars come, someone must die. And he says, I see. then she says some kind of cryptic witchy things that could be dissected further i didn't write them all down but at first she's like crying at his side and she says she kind of gets this glossed over look she says a crying woman is a scheming woman and then she says a couple more things and she gets up and goes to the side of toolshed grabs a pair of scissors a big old pair of scissors Uh-oh, uh-oh. And we're feeling pretty stressed.

She lays down next to him. How big? How big? Big. Kind of as big as they get. As big as a conventional scissors to get. Unless it was like a cartoon pair of scissors that was made to be silly big. As long as his dick.

As long as Defoe's dick. As big as Defoe's dick, the real one, not the prosthetic. Or, excuse me, stand in. The other guy. So she lays down. next to him. She grabs his hand, puts it between her legs. It's kind of trying to masturbate again or trying to use his hand to, they're like getting, she's rubbing it and then has a flashback to Nick's, the opening sequence, and we see Nick at the window and her looking and seeing him at

the window as she's having an orgasm, basically. She knew she was watching it. She loved it. Joel. Wait, wait, wait. She was watching Nick fall out of the window as she orgasmed. Yes. That's right.

On purpose. Wait, so it was, is it implied that Nick falling out of the window is causing her to orgasm? I don't think so. Again, I think it's kind of like, it's just like an unfortunate simultaneous event. The way that I read it, which again, is completely up for interpretation, is that that's just what happened is that she looked over in that moment and saw that he was about to die. And now, like, orgasming is inextricably linked with the death of her son. But there's also details that, like, there's a teddy bear that's tied to a balloon that, like, floats toward the window.

We saw the baby monitor in the first scene was turned off. So there are, like, questions. They're sprinkled in things that are, like, did she kind of want that to happen? it doesn't answer that but I think it's like intentionally like maybe Also those three figurines were the three beggars

and they're at the window that she's like when the three beggars appears somebody has to die they're there and she knows they're there and she watches it all happen and she could have stopped so back to the floor

of the tool shed she starts sobbing writhing around throws his hand off, takes the scissors. She asks him to hold her. He's kind of out of it. He puts his arm around her. And then she, I'm so sorry to say.

No, no, no. Reaches down and cuts off her clitoris. Full frame. Close up. It's close up, like full frame clitoris being cut off. really really crazy I was pleading with my computer screen

no no please don't please don't do this yeah oh my god it's really tough the image keeps flashing through my mind it has all fucking day oh no

it's really really really tough and really really really clearly really clearly shown yep leaves nothing to the imagination here.

You wish it left something to, for the first time, you'd rather see, you'd rather not see the monster. Oh my God, wait. I, I, I'm sad, I'm ready to hear more. I'm like, what is going on? Whoa. Staggering moment. I've never seen anything like it.

Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. Whoa. We've all thought about putting it in a movie. Only Lars Vonjure actually did it. We've all thought about it. Every single one of us. Obviously, everybody thinks about it.

No, everyone's too much of a coward to do it. It's the universal thought. I'm thinking about it all the time. So she obviously screams in pain. She gets up, kind of stumbles out into the night, falls into the grass. Willem DeFoe is looking up through, like, the window. He's really out of it. And he sees the constellations of,

pain, grief, and despair, and three beggars. And he's like, they're not, those aren't real constellations. And then it matches back to the shot of Nick falling out of the window with snow falling. And the stars kind of match the snow, I thought, where it's just this like little pins of light, pins of white. And she comes back in and drops down next to him and says, none of it is any use. And then it cuts to another version of her that's like darkly lit and scary. And he goes, none of it is any use.

And then it scares her in the cabin and she starts screaming. And then this like dark version of her starts screaming. This is, I think, like a really scary moment. It really freaks me out. She's screaming and screaming and screaming. And then it starts hailing. And then she collapses in the corner of the tool shed. We see a deer walk in, the deer, I believe.

Yes. And then the fox comes in. And then Willemdiffo's watching this confused. And we hear the crow cawing. And he hears that it's coming from the floor below him. So he uses his elbow to like punch down into the floor boards. And from the space under the tool shed, the crow flies out. And right in that spot is where the wrench was to take the bowling ball.

off his leg and he grabs it and he starts like trying to crank this thing off his leg but it's on there really good so he's he's turning and turning it and we see each of the three beggars each of the animals lay down or I mean maybe they're not the three beggars but maybe there's three of them I don't know I just got nervous in this moment oh my god am I stupid um they all lie next to her and are kind of looking at willam defoe as he's trying to get this thing off and she comes to again kind of hearing him trying to escape and again lunges at him as hitting him she's oh she's got scissors still so she stabs him in the back with scissors doesn't look like a fatal these scissors yeah yeah the same scissors the very same it doesn't look like a fatal stab but

he's got a lot of other wounds happening. So, you know, he hate to see it. And he hasn't been able to get this thing off yet. So he's kind of like trying to fend her off while unscrewing the thing from his leg. But he's not able to do it. So eventually he just fucking pulls it raw with the nut on the other side. And we're all laughing, hysterically laughing in camp. he gets it out they stare at each other they just give each other this like kind of empty look

that you can read however really you want really a blank canvas you know and he gets up and I can't actually remember Joel does she lunge at him again or he just has a moment of him he lunges at her for kind of the first time is how I recall but maybe I'm misremembering no I think she lunges at him okay so he grabs her by the throat pins her up against the wall and he is squeezing her throat like in a way this is one of those things and I'm like how do they do this like it just looks like he's like breaking her windpipe her eyes are bulging he's for sure killing her and she He dies. What?

Yep, she dies. He kills her. Okay. And now it's Dawn. He makes himself a little crutch to be able to walk a little. He drags her body to burn it, burns her body. He hikes out of Eden back down through the woods. We see again one of those long, slow motion,

really desaturated shots of him walking down the path through the woods and then fade superimposed like just tons of dead women's naked bodies in the earth below fade to black epilogue don't worry it's only like two seconds we're now in black and white again it's that same song that was playing in the opening, except now we're with Willem Defoe, slow motion as he's walking through the woods, he's eating berries, he's going to survive, he's going to make it. He looks and he sees the deer, the fox and the crows, ghosts looking at him, and then he's walking down the hillside when he notices walking up towards him just hundreds of faceless. women. It's just like women with blurred faces moving their way towards him. And we pan out to see

women descending on him at like from every angle fade to black and that's the end of the movie. Whoa. Whoa. Wait, I am like fascinated. I want to be in a 10-part seminar about this movie. I think I think it might exist I think it's I think it could sustain it I'm not saying that Lars van truer is worth a 10 part seminar but I'm saying like the text is worth a 10 part seminar I think that so often what we see in horror movies and in culture in general is like how far can we push the limit how far can we like torture women or torture children or like how much can we get away with? And like, let's just see for fun. And it feels very shallow or surface level. And this, at least, is engaging with some questions that are on a much deeper level. And I'm not

sure I would agree with what it's trying to say at the end of the day. But like, I think that this is a person who is seriously trying to grapple with those questions. And I appreciate that. I do appreciate it. I also think it's worth noting that people are not inflicting violence. upon her. She inflicts violence upon others and then upon herself, which is just to slightly contrast it with like some

torture porny things where the point is just like torturing women, which I don't think is the point here. I also like I need to like grapple with my own feelings about all of this but I am inclined to be interested by

portrayals of women and mothers as complicated and as like I'm not saying this is good or I like it but like I don't know something about like even she's the one

doing all these things and it's like her she's like doing some really gnarly awful shit she's like in it she is like in motherhood she is in grief she is in like she has no choice but to be like in every aspect of this where he is like able to be detached and I think there's

something to that as well like no matter what he is not as affected by any of it right and I'm like intrigued by that that is such a good point that is such a good point and part of that extends to her own research in the beginning where it's like the initial part of her going crazy is like she goes to this cabin by herself with an infant already don't do that don't do that don't go to a cabin alone with an infant don't do it don't do it to begin with but then especially don't do it if you're researching the history of women yeah don't do it at all because the history of women is just rife with like the most horrible things happening to women and it's so easy to I think what I don't know whether this is on purpose and again like I could be misreading it but it feels like

what happened was that she must took like the history of what's happened to women as being like natural as being like nature right right and there's a difference and like true and true yeah and avoidable and inevitable right and that is not necessarily the case but she believed it and because she believed it it became true for her and for wonderful right right and like that's history repeating itself over and over and over and over and over again and man that's fucked up it's fucked up um i also think it's like not by accident that she has a son and like i think her being like immersed in a study of the ways in which men have been violent towards women might make her like really angry at men and perhaps want to hurt the men around her

and you know i don't support it but i also think that that's kind of an interesting we don't support it Obviously, none of us support it. Don't drill a bowling ball into the men you know his legs. Shoes are meant to go on the feet that they're assigned. Not even if you cut three inches off of each side. Do not do that. We all believe it. We all believe all of this.

But, yeah, I just, it's, I love this movie. Joel, I'm very excited as you here that you are a Lars von Trrier, that you're interested in exploring further. Yeah, I mean, I was really moved by this movie. I think it's a horror movie about internalizing patriarchy told in a way that is like really provocative and effective and but also like challenging and flawed but in ways that are like well that's the whole fucking point of art

is like art isn't necessarily supposed to get it bull's eye right it's yeah it's there to get you talking about it so that somebody else can get a bull's I write. And that's, I feel like what, for me, how I like, what my takeaway of this is is like being grateful for somebody like throwing up a ball and going like, I don't know, this, maybe this is this it? Yeah, and then somebody else being able to go, and somebody else being able to connect with it and continue the conversation. But yeah, I mean, and like there's part of me that like I really liked when it, when I felt. like it was turning from this like really art house movie

into this more like conventional movie about witches but then I also but then it like subvers itself on that because it goes like yeah of course you want that dude of course you want something as simple as like women are witches and nature is scary and so the solution is patriarchy and capitalism and mechanical conquering of things

I think that's like what this movie is saying right which is why I really like it that's all Joel I agree I agree completely I want more I just want to engage more with things that are questioning are like fundamental ideas about human nature to begin with like I don't think there's enough of that out there I think that for me I think we take for granted a lot of ideas we have about how humans are we just assume a lot of things and we should be questioning those assumptions yeah and talking about them in a different way. I'll say this, too.

I feel totally fine. Amazing. I'm like 100% fine. I watched this movie and it like really it really rattled me. Yeah, I mean, I think seeing it, I would never want to see it. I would never want to see this movie ever. Never.

But it was, but it's like, oh man, it's so cool when a movie can just like get you. And like really provoke you and get his hooks in you the same time. Yeah. So I'll be watching all of Lars Runcher's movies now. I think go with Melancholia. Finish out the Depression trilogy.

Will do. And I can't remember a lot of the other ones. I got recommended. There's Dogville. Dogville. Yeah, I need to rewatch that one. Yeah. More tough than this.

But something I read was that Lars von Trier said that this was his attempt at a horror movie and dancer in the dark was his attempt at a musical. And so all of his movies just kind of end up like this of just like, well, we just feel bad. It's just to feel bad. Just one has music and one doesn't. Right. I also think that also just to like keep on the topic of him coming out of like a rehab right after this or being treated for depression, that moment of her, That's super scary of her saying, like, it's all inevitable or like, it's all going to be this way.

That's depression is like the part of you that's like, no hope. Like, it's bad. Right. And that's so scary to show that depicted in this way is like very scary of the outcomes of no hope. Yeah. I don't like it. Yeah. I don't like it one little bit.

At a very basic level of like why I like to feel bad, it is like when movies capture that feeling. I'm like, yeah, I feel that sometimes. And, like, it's nice to, like, feel less alone in that. Yeah. And know that other people feel that way. Even though it's not a great place to hang out, but it is sometimes, like, nice to see when, yeah, just that it makes you feel like less alone when you see art that reflects your darkest states of mind. See, I wish that I had that reaction. All my reaction is, like, proof it's real.

Right. And so it's like, I wish I could be like, your mileage may vary. Right. I'm like, oh, no. yeah that's just true oh no this is real oh feel this way yeah i'm not alone oh no i'm not alone we're all here everybody's here like literally like there's no escaping it let me escape why else would i be watching a movie except to escape this feeling i have wow joel thank you for agreeing to this and yeah i'm just really glad that you guys

really did a great job. You don't hate, that you don't hate me, that neither of you guys hate me. I could never. Love is unconditional and we're all still friends and there is hope and life is good and everything's going to be great forever. We're never going to die. Yes, exactly right. Yeah. Fuck yeah. And you know, the thing that I also just want to say is Momentumori. Remember that we all must die as Dr. Kelson teaches us. We're not going to, but yeah. Kind of the opposite of we're never going to die, but sure. We won't, but for those who will, I understand

the concept. For those who will, and if you have a, also, now here's a question, who has a bigger, who has a bigger Dick, Willem Defoe or Samson from 28 years later? Oh, great question. We'll never know, I guess. Defoe played Samson from the waist down.

He was the stand-in. Did Dick defy DeFoe? Chaos reigns, y'all. Defoe defy to Dick. Chaos Rains. We love you all. Happy Halloween. Thanks for sticking with us for 30 hours. It happens sometimes, you know? It happens. And we hope you had fun. We love you so much. And send us pictures of your costumes, especially if you dress up as us. We'd love to see it. We love you.

If you haven't figured out of a costume, iodine is very cheap. Are you okay? Wait, how are you feeling? Let's check in. I do keep getting nervous that it's. It's going to be like that... I've never felt better. Old Wives tale of the James Bond movie where they painted that lady gold and she died. She suffocates.

So we will check in. We will check in to make sure everything. I'll let you know. Jill keeps insisting it washes off so easy. So we'll see what happens. We will see. I love you guys. I love you guys.

I'll do the Fox Voice. Chaos reigns from all of us here at Two Scary. Didn't Watch. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. We didn't. We made it.

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