Too Scary; Didn't Watch - STRANGE DARLING with Allison Williams

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Yes, you read that correctly - the ONE and ONLY Allison Williams joins us today to talk all things STRANGE DARLING!! Check out Allison's podcast Landlines, and see her in Regretting You in theaters October 24th!Movie & Guest Intro @ 19:26Trivia @ 36:21Recap starts @ 39:32TrailerFollow 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.Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee 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. 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 we have a very, very exciting episode this week.

I'm very, very excited. And I can't wait for you guys to hear it, but not just yet. Because first, I mean, I guess this is part of the episode. Yeah, you're doing it. You're already here. Just stay present. Because first we have a little bit of haunted housekeeping, which is that Halecella shirts are still available at bonfire.com slash two hell tochella, spelled as it sounds. You know how to, you know how to spell it.

Do you know how, sorry, there was a little, what's the word I'm looking for? I was going to say kerfuffle. I do think that's hiccup a little, a little. To pick up with the URL, and I'm sorry for anyone who got confused, but it's back to Two Hell Tochella, Bonfire.com slash Two Hell Tochella. Perch your merch, if you would like. And second piece of haunted housekeeping is that we have a virtual live show this Sunday, the 26th of October at 4.30 p.m. Pacific time, 7.30 p.m. Eastern time, where we will be. Talking about Antichrist, finally. I'm giddy. No. I'm positively giddy.

No. How dare you remind me? I'm trying to just forget about it until the moment it happens. Yeah. There's some stuff you're getting really disliked. I know, I know, I know. Yeah. I'm secretly excited, though.

Don't worry. Yeah. I really am. Yeah. There's reasons. to be excited. Yeah. It's going to be, it's going to be as fun as talking about Antichrist could possibly be. Yeah. And we're going to be dressed up. It's a Halloween live episode. Joel will be with us. Joel will be dressed up. We will be dressed up. As a surprise, we don't know

what, although Sammy and Emily have had some kind of. We've spoken to each other in code. You've had telepathy a little bit and you can break the code, Henley. I know, no, I didn't want to. It was that type of thing. It's like When you're like, really thinly veiled code. I kind of like part of me thinks I might know, but I'm trying to resist knowing. I don't want to know. You're black. I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So if you want to join us for Antichrist Live with Joel Jensen, that will be available on our Patreon. And that's all the haunted housekeeping. We have for this fine week. A fine week. A fine week it is. So Emily and Henley, will you tell me, did anything? Scary happened to you?

Well, this fine week. On this fine week, I have been endeavoring to create my Halloween costume for said live Patreon show. And I really wanted to make a costume this year. I was like, I want to like really, my costumes in the past couple years have typically just been like just assembling things, you know? Uh-huh.

Which that's great. That's fine. That's perfectly good. But I was like, I want to like be fucking crazy. crafty this year. And I want to like make my costume. Yep. And you know, I really, I have been ambitious and it's a big one. It may not, time will tell, but it's, you know, things don't always work the way you think they will. So I'm in the midst of, we're just going to have to see. But I'm really deep into a thing that we don't know how it's going to go.

Great. But aside from that, it's been a thing I've been doing outside of my home on my patio. And it's October. It's been nicer and cooler in Los Angeles lately this weekend. It was a little warm, but it's been nicer and cooler. I was excited to be outside, spend some time in my patio. And you better believe I got eaten up by mosquitoes. They are still here.

They are not gone. And so that happened to me yesterday. I got eaten up of my mosquito. So today when I went out to continue working because this is, it's going to take me so long, I decided to spray a bug spray because I was like, oh, I found my bug spray. Great. I don't want to get bit again. Sprayed it directly into my eye.

Oh, no. Like, I don't even know how, like what I was aiming for or how. It went straight into my eyeball. And it's fine. I flushed my eye and it like feels fine. But I did have this moment to be like, oh, oh, oh. no like that's just like 100% what you're not supposed to do um so then when i went back and sprayed it again i kept my eyes closed the whole time which is what i probably should have been

doing to begin with so just a little bit of a you know a warning out there for any of you spraying things near your face pro tip just close your eyes um because again i like don't know how it happened i could not tell you how it happened but it did happen so you're not going to be a mosquito are you i'm not going to be mosquito god you irony that'd be cruel cruel irony no never i would fucking never um can't top ears first of all and second of all just i just don't even don't want to think about them um no but we'll see if i'm going to be the thing that i think i'm going to be because um making a costume from scratch is fucking hard you guys it's so hard it's hard it's so hard there's some people that like are so dedicated to and it's like it's like a full time

situation you have to clear out a lot of time and it's expensive i keep buying more material like it's like I keep it's actually like if I had just done my typical like assembling a few things and kind of tweaking them it would have been much faster much cheaper will I be as rewarded time will tell but um we're in the think of it right now just so just that's what's going on with me oh I can't wait I can't wait to see see the results I feel like I started getting fed videos of parents like making costumes for their children in like August like I feel like it's like If you're going to do it, it might as well be your hobby. Like, you're like, my hobby is making costumes.

Great. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big commitment. Well, because even then I'm like, I'm putting all this. I mean, I hope it would be worth it. And of course, it's worth it for the live show. But then I'm like, well, then it's just garbage.

Like, you know, like, I can, like, absolutely not repurpose this. I couldn't bring myself to part with my Titanic costume. No, that you should keep forever. That makes perfect sense. which again can't be repurposed but it remains it could be reused you could be the titanic again I wouldn't be surprised it's an evergreen costume Henley did anything scary happen to you this week okay something scary happened to me which is that I I bit the bullet I taking the plunge I'm doing something that I have never done before

which is that I am starting a book club. Oh my good! She's finally doing it. She's actually doing it. I did it. I said I would do it two years ago. I have talked about this imaginary book club so many times. No day like today, hon.

So for those of you who have been on the journey with me, know that I am putting my money where my mouth is. Like everything has a saying attached to it. It's just saying over saying over saying. after saying after saying after saying you can find a lot of those in books so many books started that and yeah so I'm finally starting a book club you guys can check back in with me in six months to see whether how it's going but I'm very happy about it I feel like it's going to be fun and what's the deal with this book club have you how often do you meet how do you choose the book do you rotate houses is it our snacks involved I actually do want to know all

of this information. So we don't have like hard and fast rules yet. I love that. It's very new. But I think there's seven or eight of us. And I will host the first one. I picked the first book. One reason why I felt like it was a good moment was because the right book finally came along. We're going to do Heart the Lover by Lily King, which is a very short novel that just came out. So it's really easy for people to read. It's pretty short. And it's by like one of my favorite authors, Lily King, who I love. And it's a beautiful story. And so I was just like, oh, great, this is finally like the right book. And then also I feel like I've met the right amount of people who want the same thing that I want from a book club, which is just a very low stakes gathering of women to

hang out in a living room and drink wine and eat a variety of appetizers and chit-chat about a book. And that's it. You know, nothing more than that. Nothing more in. intense than that. And it's really just an excuse for like a casual hangout, you know. Love that. And so I did it. I've scheduled the first one. It will happen in November. And I really hope that it goes okay. Because it's also, I've invited a lot of people who I really like, but also don't know each other. So it'll be interesting to like see how that goes. But I think that it's, I'm very optimistic. And I'm also like, wow, proud of myself. I'm very proud of you. I had this goal. When I first moved to Greenwich, I was like, I want to start a book club. It took me two years to do it. So sometimes takes time, you know? But that wouldn't have been the right time, you know? Like now you can look forward to it and enjoy it and feel like comfortable in it. I think it's

the perfect time. And it's the fall. Who doesn't want to be in a book club in the fall? Yeah. It's really good. Coase a little wine night with hors d'oeuvres. Lovely. Yes. Oh, I'm so happy for you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, hopefully I, you know, hopefully it goes okay. It'll go great. And if it doesn't, then there's like book club drama and that's pretty fun. That's also fun. Yeah.

My mom has so much book club drama that she's always talking about. Hopefully no one from a book club is listening right now. If so, it's adding it to the book club drama. Just pretend I didn't say that. Yeah. So anyway, so I'm, I'm, I'm, that's my scary thing. and just putting yourself out there is scary. I call it a brave thing.

I like other people to organize things, like other people to be in charge of things. It's like being in charge of something is something that, as a 35-year-old woman, I should probably be okay with doing. Well, you're doing it. And you can't be brave if you're not a little scared. I know. That's so true.

Oh, Sammy, put that on a T-shirt. Why isn't that our merch? We did get a lot of calls for cornbed in such a way. So I think we've got a bit of a cue. That felt like the new CSI show. Every time I saw someone reference it or like saw like you say it, I was like CSI corn. CSI corn. CSI corn. CSI corn. C.S.I Corn Editions. Law and order SBI, S-B-I-S-A-W. Criminal Corn Unit. Joel was like that corn bin in such a week. way thing was like the perfect example of what all of you think is funny. It's like you all think like word things are funny. Of course. I was like, we really do? They're so funny. It's not funny about that.

We really do think word things are funny. Oh, tell me about you guys. Join my book club, A. I would love to. I'll put you on Zoom in the background on mute so you can just listen. Great. Yeah, I just want to eaves drop them. Flat on the wall. Perfect. So me, did anything scary happen to you this week? Yes, it did. I went to Sanford, Cisco this past week and had a lovely time. And one of the things I did, you guys, is I went to one of those interactive haunted houses that are like a... Where they touch your body? They didn't touch my body because I didn't put on the glow stick necklace that told them they could, but they touched some people's bodies. Love the consent of that arrangement.

Yeah. It was smart. And at the end, I kind of wish that I did. wear it because it was pretty funny except they did make one person eat something which I was really yuck no that's fear factor level that glow stick necklace off my neck right then I'd be like absolutely no eat what do you think they eat I take it back they said it tasted like a fruit leather thing but it was made to look disgusting obviously it was like cut up in little pieces in like a slop and they were like eat this slop to prove you're a witch the theme was witches fun that's fun and really fun it was really fun and actually not super scary because it's more like theater theatrical than jump scare there's there were like a

handful of jump scares but it was more just very impressive and fun and the actors were really into it and so you're just caught up in the theatrics and so okay so it was about three witches this the one i went to is called the terror vault and the show is this year is called Hext. And I'm just going to read you the little blurb. It says three witches spread across the globe, each from a different cultural and mystical tradition converge to form a coven so powerful it threatens to unravel the very fabric of humanity.

So you have to go on a journey to stop these three witches from destroying the fabric of humanity. Honestly, if only it was so easy to destroy the fabric of humanity. Really, they did it all for us. It's just three witches. There's no men involved in all? But from different cultural backgrounds, Henley. It has nothing to do with our entire political system. It's just three witches.

The women are extremely dangerous and they have to be stopped, Henley. This is feeling scarcely familiar to something that happened in history a while ago. But I was promised nudity in this show, which I was really looking forward to. It's an 18 and up show. And there was no nudity So I was pretty disappointed Really rude But one part of the storyline

Is that one of the witches Turns her victims into rats And so there was a little rat man at one point And the actor playing this little rat man Was having the time of his fucking life Going like And no, Dan, you have to follow me And she'll get you

Sammy's doing a really good rat She's doing a very good rat. It was so funny. Oh, that's really good. You look just like a rat. He was really twitchy and making a little rat clicky noises. And it was very funny and fun. And I would definitely do it again.

The theme changes every year. That's also very fun. There were a lot of drag queens there and really wonderful outfits. That was like amazing. Wow. Love to see everybody like professionally done up, you know, just like doing it freaking level 10 expert level costumes and production value. I was very impressed. But I was a little scared going in because I, you know, I've heard tales of these

of these places. Was it in like a neighborhood in a house or what was the vibe like when you got there? No, it was in an old mint building. I think it's called the mint. And it is where they used to make money. And so it's like this big underground, like many levels. Oh, that's cool. So it's a spooky building that they... That's cool. Do they not mint money anymore? Do you know what I mean? You have to somewhere. Above my pay grade. But like there's no, no one uses cash anymore. Well, I mean, some people do. The one thing that I agree on Trump with, which I'll, you know, say again here, because everyone should know is that I, that he, he did away with the pay. any, which I agree was a good idea.

I thought the one thing you agreed with him on was that mosquitoes are terrible. Do you agree with him about two things? Oh, my God. Three, and I'm not a big fan of paper straws either. Oh, no. This is how it starts. This is how it starts? Oh, yuck.

Let's not even joke about that. No, it's not how it starts, obviously. That's not funny to me. That's not funny to me. Sorry. Sorry. It was a little funny to me. I like funny word things, but I don't like that.

That's not funny. Don't talk about straws. Yeah, no, just because, like, no one uses cash anymore. I do genuinely wonder, like, what... I feel very powerful when I use cash, though, I will say. Like, when I discover I have cash and can use it, it feels really good. Right. Because sometimes it's like you really need cash.

And we'll need it when the grid goes down. Well, we need when the grid goes down. And also when it's like, you know, we were just traveling. And when you realize, like, oh, my gosh, I have cash to, like, leave a tape. I have cash to, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's handy to have cash. So they've got to be printing it somewhere, but maybe not in San Francisco. Yeah. Not in this building anymore.

But yeah, Tara Vault, you guys, check it out if you're in San Francisco. Had a great time. And normally a scary thing I do is watch a horror movie, but not this week. Not this week, baby, not this week. That was all me. I did it. I, well, I also, that's not the movie we were doing this week, but I'll just say I also, I watch Barbarian this week, too.

Because the spooky season, and I was like, well, we were going to watch weapons, but Barbarian's a lot shorter. So we watched Barbarian instead. But I will watch weapons. It was so fun. It was so fun. And I had forgotten about, because it's been a while since we covered it, the. Oh, yeah. Oh, I just kept saying to Mabel all night.

And it was really making me laugh. I really enjoyed it. But that's not what we're talking about this week, okay? what we're talking about this week is another movie that I watched for the first time was a really, really brave. It was one that I'd been wanting to watch, and it was one that I had already been told was not too scary.

So these are the conditions that I need to watch the movie for the podcast. That movie is Strange Darling. Strange Darling came out in 2023, directed by J.T. Molnar and written by J.T. Molnar, starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gawner, Madison Beattie, Stephen Michael Kazada, Ed Bigley, Jr., and Barbara Hershey.

and it is available to stream on your streaming platforms and we have a guest this week who you know for many of our favorite horror movies she has a new movie regretting you coming out this Friday and if you like listening to friends chatting on podcasts you have to check out her podcast

Landlines on Headgum and we are so thrilled to be just another bunch of girls chatting with friends this morning with our guest Alison Williams welcome to the podcast thank you so much for having me, I am also too scared to watch horror movies, and I also make horror movies. We have a lot. A lot in common. Yeah. How do you live with this? How do you live with this?

It is, it is tough. Like, honestly, some of the like merch I get from the movies I make, I find too scary to have around the house. Can't lay eyes on that. Yeah, that's sort of like a good encapsulation. Yeah. Anyway, it's such a plage. Thank you. I'm too shy to listen to the things where you've covered the things I'm in because I'm so scared that you won't like me. but um never i love listening to the other episodes of the many other movies you've talked about and you guys are amazing and funny and you're doing a public service oh thank you i you know i like to think that the movies i've been part of are technically scary but actually survivably scary yes i think i've seen them yeah which i think i am everybody's barometer for scary but watchable exactly usually a pg 13 is a good

indicator, but the ring in Sixth Sense really messed that up. So who knows what's real anymore and the haunting, which really got to me. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm answering questions that haven't come up organically yet because I'm just excited. But anyway, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. We will get into all of that. But first, we do have to know if anything scary happened to you this week. Honestly, in my life, like in my body, things are scary constantly. Like, it's just the way it works if you're like a ruminator. intrusive thinker, you know, catastrophizer. A couple days ago for a video he was making my husband

was climbing a tree and that was like, I could like hear the score under the sequence, but he was fine and confident. And he was having a different score. His score was like, Wimsy and Triumph and Indiana Jones. Childhood nostalgia. And mine was like, death is coming.

Death is imminent. Yeah, this is. I'm watching it happen. This is it. Exactly. So just watching my child move around the world is scary. Everything. Every time I look in the mirror, I'm like, is my mirror self going to do something my real life self isn't doing? You know, just scary. Sorry, Henley. I'd never even thought about that. I just implanted a new worry. Scary things are everywhere. Dark rooms walking into a dark room, walking out of a room, being like what's behind me as I leave this room from the POV of someone across the room. Is there like something crossing my frame? Once you get it in your head that like there could be someone else in here

It is a reality And they're everywhere you're not looking 100%. A couple days I'll be solo with our son For a couple nights and I will Clear the entire house Every night before bed I'll check every room, every closet I will be holding a weapon

I will be completely unprepared to use Like a stick Look something that I would definitely hurt myself with I don't I'm not ready for there to be someone in there. I highly recommend getting yourself a fire poker. Emily got me one for my birthday last year. It's my weapon of choice.

But the staircase, like, you know, was it an owl? Was it a fire poker? Right, of course, of course. There's always a danger to be, yeah, is it bringing more danger or helping room? Do you want to get an owl? Yes, I do. I've wanted an owl since Hedwig, but I have been unsuccessful to get a meal delivery owl.

Now I am the bird of prey Which is terrifying But yeah I don't know It's everywhere Scary things are everywhere And I know the next thing is like The origin stories of fear And I feel like when you're young

And I'm watching our son who's about to turn four It's kind of like starting to be Into the feeling of being scared But wanting to be like in control of it And I find that so relatable I'm like, yes, if I know that this is what I'm signing up for, I have a totally different relationship with it than a jump scare or like an out-of-context scary situation.

But it's hard for me to picture him picking up like scary stories we tell in the dark and being like, yeah, this is my shit, I want to read this, which I did obsessively, which is crazy. Why did I read that book every night before bet? What was I thinking? Just morbid curiosity. Were you scared of it? So scared of it.

Goose bumps, like it was always assumed. Yeah, morbid curiosity, things that were scary. I still think about the story, Highbeams. Like, do you guys, did you guys read this book? Oh, wait. The short stories. Yes. The illustrations were like really scary.

Wait, what's this story? Highbeams is, this girl is driving in her car and someone keeps flashing their brights. Oh, my God. Wait. Yes. This is like urban legend. Exactly. It's a whole book of urban legends.

Got it. And then the most implausible is like a girl who wears a ribbon around her neck every day. And it's because her head is... Her head's cut off. Yeah, she's been decapitated. But, I mean, when you're like nine, you're not like... I don't think the science holds up. You're just like, anyone with a necklace is potentially decapitated.

And now I look at the world differently. And it was a heavy choker era. Like, this is, you know, late 90s early... You had to be suspicious of everyone. Everyone had one of those, like, kind of black scallop. I'm seeing them again, like they're back. Show me your full neck. Yeah, she should take it off.

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Do you remember the first scary movie you saw? Or the first movie you saw that was like... The first scary movie I saw was The Exorcist, which was at like a girl's sleepover. It's always out of sleepover. Always always at a sleepover. I never slept during sleepovers because, again, it's too scary. So scary. To sleep.

Envy the nervous systems of my friends who could just be like, It's bedtime. Good night. Like, honestly, still envy that. Like, my body does not respond. Same. I'm like, I'm not in my bed. It's not happening. I, we watched The Exorcist, and it was like a group of girls pretending not to be scared,

which is a time-honored tradition of laughing at the puking and the whole thing. But it was still scary. But I really think the ones that made the biggest impact were six cents. Of course. Which just, like, you know, Misha Barton under the bed. I was going to say Misha Barton. Martin under the bed. I'm still expecting to see her under my bed.

Misha Barton under the bed. And then, yeah, the ring. I watched the ring a ton. Really? Yes, a ton to try to like make it not scary, but it was terrifying. And then when people were like, it's not as scary as the original, I was like, hard pass on the original bed. It's somehow scarier. But yeah, and then I loved the scary movie franchise.

And so I tried to watch the source material so that those would be even funnier. So then I watched Scream and I know what you did last summer and those movies. And I actually never thought the slasher movies were that scary to me. And then nothing until I had to do research

before Get Out because Jordan kept referencing a bunch of classic horror movies. Like I had seen The Shining, I think, but like kind of. And I'd seen parts of Rosemary's baby, but I like had to watch them because we kept talking about them. And that's when I discovered that watching scary movies on planes, which is a common favorite place to watch a scary movie, is kind of my go-to.

So if there's a movie I need to watch, given my line of work, I try to time it with a flight, because I'm like, there's stuff going on. It's not immersive. I can just watch it kind of clinically. There's so many people around. Yes. Yeah, that's smart. I don't know if we've talked about that before, but we've talked about having it on like a small screen or a laptop. That helps.

But that's a pro tip right there. airplane. I will say that you can see horror movies on planes if people have them like on the back of their care. Oh, sometimes like without your consent. You're like, yeah, which I think it's such funny. It's like, I was this problem. I watched the substance on a plane, which I loved your conversation about with Avatol. I watched the substance on a plane. And then at the end of the flight, I turn around and there's like a seven-year-old on the aisle across like behind me. Locked in, fully locked in. That was formative for that kid. I definitely just like, did some stuff for you. Yeah. Yeah. I like confirmed your sexual identity like forever.

Yeah. 100%. Whatever it was. I feel like if someone was watching it on the plane and I wanted to be like, do I need to cover Salas's eyes? Like I don't think he's noticing that there's a crazy clown trying to murder people like right next to us. But yeah, because you're like, things aren't, it doesn't occur to them to be scared of some things. And then some things are just sort of inherently scary. Like if you look at the face of the clown from it, you're like, I, that's, it's fucked up, I don't, this is scary. But a clown generically, not

yeah, inherently scary for a toddler to look at, see all toddler birthday parties. Like, they just don't seem bothered. But yeah, it's so interesting. I think about that, whenever I think about the real Annabelle, which was like a raggedy and all that like

my, I grew up around raggedy and dolls and thank God I didn't know about this particular one. but how benign it looks in comparison to the one from the movies which is like so the idea that anyone would give that I mean I love James Juan

I work with him the idea that anyone would be like here you go I collect these or whatever is like hysterical to me she's so insane looking but a raggedy and all is like you know pretty normal looking makes sense makes sense

yeah what is so obviously you don't love watching scary movies you have to do do you find that like are you scared on set if you're doing a scary movie or can is that enough for you to like you're working fully separate yeah that's the thing like it's not scary on set it is it just there's no if it's being done ethically like blair which obviously for reasons that were uncool was scary for those actors but if it's and sometimes they'll do it to kids which is very fucked up and i've never been part of something that did that but um by the time we're filming a scene

that's supposed to be scary or suspenseful. Like we've had so, especially if you're also a producer on the thing, like you've had so many meetings about how it's all going to go down and you shoot in pieces. And so I think no. The answer is when you're filming it, it's not at all scary. But it can still be scary, like, once it's been edited together. Yeah, when you like watch it back.

And get out when they hit the deer, for example. It took me a while to get the timing of it because then I was able to, like, warn my mom next to me, like, when it was coming. Yeah, yeah. Or like there's a few, a few jump scares in the movie that I was able to like eventually memorize the timing of it, but still you'd get a little jolt just from the timing not being what you're expecting. Yeah.

But not the feeling of actually like, I'm genuinely scared in this moment. That's pretend. Yeah. Yeah. As we call it to our son. Yeah. Like your mom and I pretend for a living. We do.

Ooh, and you are so scary and get out. I watched it out. It was, it was. Proud of you. so well. I know. That was like one of my first, that was kind of one of my first horror movies that I actually saw. Yeah. Because it was one of those that it was like, you have to watch it. Did you see it in a theater, Henley? No, no, I didn't see it in the theater. I think I did it after we did our podcast. Okay. So you were, you were armed with information. Yeah. I had to wait to hear

the whole thing. You knew the twist. You knew the whole plot. But I mean, it didn't matter. I loved it Anyway, I loved it. I loved it so much. And I've gotten so many people to watch Get Out because of my being scared and convincing people that they can be brave and watch it. If you can do it, they can do it. Yeah. You can do. Yes. I think there's like three jump scares or four in the whole movie. And I was able, I set my mom like an email with the timestamps of the dump scares. Nice. It does help. You know when these are coming and then you can actually just enjoy the experience of seeing the movie. Because the horror is racism. So it's the jump scares are distracted. from the actual the real life for. Yeah. For a jump scare, do you cover your eyes or plug your ears or both?

Good question. Oh, well, so the other thing I was going to say is like from making horror movies, the one part of it, I know I was saying that immersion therapy doesn't work, but it does help in one sense,

which is like I can tell when a frame or a score is preparing me for something scary to happen. Yeah. And so it's kind of both. I it's definitely eyes I cover my eyes but I also close them like I can still kind of see right now you leave a little peak yeah yeah I leave a tiny bit but I'll kind of keep parts of the frame like I'll be like I think the thing is gonna happen in like this part of the frame so you look down there yeah yeah also I do that for gore like you know anything that's bloody or body horror I like truly can't watch the substance was I did other stuff like I could there was so little of that movie that I could actually watch I loved it but but but I was like, this is crazy. I can't watch any of this movie.

But yeah, so I will cover, it's much more eyes, but I will, like, turn the sound down or muted completely if there's, like, screaming or gross sound effects or, you know. Yeah. All of that stuff. Yeah. Okay, so then with Strange Darling,

was this your first time seeing it? It was. And Willa, who is the lady in this movie, is a friend of, mine from college. Like we were in plays together in college. And then when regretting you came along, Josh, the director was like, what do you think of Willa Fitzgerald for your sister? And I was like, um, a thousand times yes. Like we have known each other since we were the ages and the flashbacks. In this movie, I was like, like, she sort of reminded me of you in moments and I was

like, I could see you guys as sisters. Yeah. Like slightly sociopathic, you know. Yeah, it was all personality. I was like, wait, I think this is exactly who I'm going to talk to our energies and the way we behave and treat other people. All your choices. For sure. And hairstyle. I was like, that braid. What's that braid doing?

She's confusing braids. She's so, she's been talented. She played Thomasina in Arcadia. She played Thomasina when we were in college and was like so good then. And then it's still just so good and it's gotten even better. And it was so fun to get to work together again after that's so cool. Really a long time and to play sisters. And people kept talking to her about this movie.

Funny thing about our cast, I don't remember if Scott Eastwood had just had done horror recently, but like for Dave Franco with Together, which you just covered, and McKenna Grace and Mason Thames, like, we've all like done horror. We're mostly known for the scary things that we've been part of. And here we are doing this like romantic family drama together. But everyone kept talking to Willa about strange jarling. And the big debate was if I could stomach it, if I can handle it or not. And they were right. I could handle it. I was like able to There were a lot of things I didn't watch super closely, but Dave does not think I can watch together because he's like, I don't, I couldn't watch the part of the trailer. So he's like,

based on this reaction, I think probably you shouldn't. Right. This one, this one was, I agree that like, this is very manageable. There are some things that are not fun to look at, some moments that are not fun to experience. Yeah, for sure. But it is like if you want to get a little scared, if you want to it's like more of a thrillery yeah yeah and your mind's going like yeah there's a there's some light math because it's out of sequence yeah i was trying to predict i was like i bet the order will be this this this this like i was like i bet they're gonna go this chapter next and then so we'll get into it um but yeah will is amazing so good in this movie so everyone is amazing in this movie but yeah everyone's great she is like who she's extraordinary yeah worth seeing worth seeing for that

a lone friend or not. She's very, very good in this movie. I'll give us a little bit of stats about it. Great. This movie has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Damn. Well deserved. Yep.

And 80 on Metacritic, also quite high. And a 7 on IMDB, which is essentially 100. It's a plus. On IMDB, that's 100%. That's an A plus plus. I love this curve. Yeah, it's a 6 to 7 curve. Six to seven curve.

The budget was somewhere between 4 and 10 million, according to Wikipedia. Okay. box office was 4.8 million so hopefully the budget was four and they made that point eight I'm surprised to hear because people loved it yeah I thought like maybe the word of mouth was I saw it in theaters and everyone was having a great time it's it's kind of is like it feels like kind of a small like a movie lovers movie even though I do think like it has very wide appeal I can see why it maybe felt a little more niche to people like going to the theater yeah it'll It'll get a cult following in VOD.

Yeah, for sure. And also being shot on film, that's like, yeah, that makes things so much more expensive, but so beautiful, like right off the bat. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, truly, truly beautiful in it. And the only trivia I have is that it was shot by Giovanni Rubisi. It was his debut as a cinematographer.

Oh, I forgot about that. Yes, I did know that. And it is truly, truly gorgeous. Yeah, it looks great. Good job. Giovanni. Love to see you. people being good at their jobs.

Yep. And I have requested that Henley not even try to guess where this movie is going. She's too good at it. She's too good at it. And, you know, I got to zip it. This is about the journey. I'm zipping it. That's hard. Yeah, it is hard. I'm going to keep my goddamn mouth shut.

Okay, you guys. I promise. Yeah, Henley, don't mute yourself. That way. Don't say anything. You can do it. It's just, exactly. We're like, she got it. Too much. Henley's saying something. No, I'm letting it wash over. me. I'm just here for the experience.

That is not, I really, like, aspire to, it's not possible, but I admire the effort. Burn your brain off. Click. If only. We're going to try. This movie is asking you, though, like, from the beginning, it's asking you to try to... It's giving you, yeah, like puzzle pieces.

Exactly. She's, look, we all know that Henley's going to figure it out in the first, like, 10 seconds. But she's not going to tell us. I'm going to do that thing. Do you guys remember in Malcolm in the middle one of the brothers could turn his brain off. Do you remember this? I like thinking about this all the time. Like there's one brother. No, but I can probably guess which one it is. I feel like, I don't think I've watched a single second of Malcolm in the middle. Me neither. Not one. It was on the television when like, before I had cable, I watched all of Malcolm in the middle, I think. And there's one brother who would

just turn, he would just turn his brain off. He'd be like, I'm turning my brain off. And then he would just either the oldest or the youngest. It wasn't Frankie. No, it wasn't. It was not Frankie communities. It was one of the other ones. And anyway, I like, once a week. I'm like, what if? What if? Anyway, I'm going to attempt. Okay, good luck. And we're going to go in blind. We're not going to watch the trailer because, again, I think we're just going to let it wash. Fun and twisty. Wash over us. So the movie begins. Gorgeous black and white shot. We're on a man's faces of Kyle Garner, smoking a cigarette, and we're hearing a woman's voice asking him. She says, so I'm going to have to ask you a question.

Are you a serial killer? Smash cut with a loud like, the loud sound of that same man looking like out of frame he's choking someone. Then we get text. Red text on a black screen, also being narrated, which is like, interesting,

says between 2018 and 2020, the most prolific and unique serial killer of the 21st century went on a calculated multi-state spree. It began indebted. Denver, Colorado continued through Grand Lake, Michigan, ended in Hood River, Oregon. This is a dramatization of the true story of the final known killings in that rampage. Oh, boy.

Then we get really bright, vibrant, open field. A woman, this is Willa Fitzgerald in bright red scrubs, bleach blonde hair, running, looking terrified. Through this field, as we get our opening credits, we see notably, we see kind of Kyle Gawner as, and then in quotes, the demon. Willa Fitzgerald as the lady. Then we get our title credit, strange darling, a thriller in six chapters. And then title screen, chapter three. Can you help me please?

This is fun. I like this. It's fun. Already we're having fun. I'm having fun. But I did love that being like, ooh, chapter three. Okay, this is interesting. So we're on a road

It's this seemingly remote wood-lined road Somewhere in Oregon We have a little red vintage car Driving down the road being chased by a big pickup truck In the driver's seat of the little red car Is the lady we just saw I'm going to call her the lady for the rest of the movie And I'm going to call Kyle Garner the demon

Because that's what they told us to call them And so she's driving He's pursuing her She keeps looking back behind her seeing him we noticed she's got like blood down the side of one side of her face and we also do notice a little braid just one little one little braid obsessed of this braid the braid is a really fascinating choice um and we see Kyle Garner in pursuit he has honestly really cool orange sunglasses as he's driving he's also constantly like snorting coke doing a little coke doing a little coke

and like swerving a little coke at the wheel a cook at the wheel not advised um we don't We don't adorce the coke at the wheel. We don't endorse the coke at the wheel. She's driving away and he eventually stops his car, stops following her, gets out, gets in the back of his truck bed with a shotgun, aims, shoots out her back windshield, she swerves, her car flips. She's a ways down the road from him, though, but he sees that he obviously got her in the car flipped. So he gets out to pursue her.

She manages to, like, run into the woods off the side of the road. doesn't, we see that he doesn't really see which way she went, but he attempts to follow her. She is running through just the most gorgeous woods, like ferns. It's so green. She's wearing these bright red scrubs. It's like lights peeking through. It's like twilight. It's like gorgeous. Twilight, the movie, obviously not the time of day. And she comes upon this sort of like makeshift tent in the woods that inside she sees like a sleeping bag. She sees a big bottle of vodka. She grabs it. We see, meanwhile, the demon looking around for her, still in pursuit, got his shotgun.

She leans against a tree. She has a bandage over, like, the bloody side of her face. She, like, braces herself and rips it off, and we see her, like, contain a scream. And she, like, goes to feel, and we assume there's, like, no ear there anymore. She's a big, dark, bloody spot. And she's, like, crying silently. she takes a swig of the vodka that's when I stopped watching

yeah she takes me the vodka and you're like oh that's nothing good is happening now I'm not watching from now and I was like Alexander just tell me when I can start watching this is why it's important to watch with somebody and be like tell me what I just missed

because I'm not looking at it because then yeah she takes her shirt balls it up and puts it like the bottom of her shirt in her mouth and then you really know something that's happening and she dumps the rest of the vodka on her ear and is like really holding back a screen and trying not to make any sounds. Ooh, it's, it's really tough.

She's in a lot, a lot of pain. Side note, can I just ask, do you guys think you would have the fear of infection and wherewithal in presence of mind to douse a wound with alcohol if you were in a scenario? I don't know. I think after talking about this many movies, yes, prior, no way. Yeah. I've done it in a movie to my now husband. actually. I doused his a wound with alcohol.

How every true love story starts. Of course. What a mean, cute. But I don't, I don't, I don't know. I just don't know if, I don't know. It would also hurt so bad. And it already hurts. It already hurts. And you're like, you're sort of like, well, I'm sure I'll get to a hospital in time. They don't actually have to do this. I think that's what I would be thinking is like, I'll just let them deal with it later at the hospital, which I'll definitely get to. This is why we have antibiotics. Like, Put me on an IV of them at some point, but like right now, yeah.

There's also something about alcohol where, like, in my head, putting vodka isn't going to clean anything. Do you know what I mean? There's something that like goes against, even though I know technically that it is alcohol, it will, like, sanitize the wound. There's something in my head, like, that's for a cocktail. It's not for my skin. Someone's mouth was on this, so now it's disgusting and dirty. Exactly. True. This needs ice and lemon, and that's it. Um, yeah, I don't know. Is she supposed to be like a, is she supposed to be like a nurse because she's in scrubs? We don't know.

We don't know. We don't know. Okay. It's a mystery. Yeah, at this point, you're just like, she's in distress and she looks like she's in a ton of pain and being chased by the demon. Yeah. What she chooses to do next was baffling to me, given the chase scenario.

Yeah. So then she, she's done. That's done. Ear is cleaned. And she leans against tree. and she pulls out a cigarette, smokes a cigarette for a minute, which I also, I turned to Joel and I was like,

well, this is a crazy thing to do because it's, first of all, no time to relax. And a huge smoke, a gorgeous, I mean, the shot, again, beautifully, catches the light. But it's like, here I am, here I am smoking. But then I guess if she thinks she's about to die, why not enjoy a cigarette? Sure.

But she smokes out cigarette. She does put it out pretty quickly and continues on trying to get away from this. She finds a fence at the end of this clearing, hops it, discovers that it's surrounding this house kind of in the middle of nowhere. Big, like, lovely craftsman house with speakers planted all through the yard blaring out like Sasquatch conspiracy theory radio. Okay. This was very like lost to me. It was very confusing. This was the moment where I was like, oh, so 100, and I, I do love when movies do this, but I was like, okay, so the thing about this being based in a true story is like, well, that's just a fake movie thing that they did, because this, there's no way. Oh, I did not make that leave. I mean, these people do exist, I suppose.

Alexander was like, one squash, and I was like, I think Sasquatch. Yeah, they do keep calling him squash. Squatch. Which I love giving him a nickname. But she's like sort of creeping around the house, aware that she could still be being pursued, trying to find a way in or are people here. She goes up to the door and just starts banging on it, banging on it for help. And the door is opened by Ed Bigley Jr. and Barbara Hershey, Barbara Hershey's holding a bear spray like up to her face. And the lady says, can you help me please? And collapses. Chapter 5. Here, Kitty Kitty. Cut two, we now see the same lady. She's in some sort of dark hiding place. She's got her little lighter on. so we're like just seeing like her face

and some dark area that she is supposedly hiding in and we see in this house the demon he's made it into the house stalking around he's got his gun shotgun going up to different rooms this house by the way beautiful very strange but like gorgeous

wallpaper like some of these rooms are completely tonal there's like a felice chartreuse room like rug wallpaper curtains couch i was like that's fun pretty cool pretty cool house. And he's going up, like, every room has, like... Yeah, there's one very consistent design element. Yeah. They love... And what would you call... What do we call this? Just a trunk? What is this? Just like a coffin shaped thing at the end of every bed. Yeah.

Oh. Basically, they're playing with the idea that you know she's in a box of some sort from the first shot of her. Very human-shaped box. So he's going up to all the human-shaped boxes in the... Which is... There's one in every room. and spraying it with bullets after saying here kitty kitty and then opening it to find just bedding blankets yeah oh okay yeah and he's getting like progressively more like every time he's like what you gotta love the confidence he comes up to when he's like here kitty kitty like he's like I found you shoot open nothing he's getting more and more upset like god damn it doing more and more coke yeah that always helps always when you're feeling when you're feeling

angry do what you got to do you know you got to stay alert um and yeah he's wandering through the house. We see in the kitchen of this house face down in a pool of blood at Bigley Jr. So he's dead. By the way, another little braid. Oh, there's a very, there's a great little braid, a little rat tail braid. Yep. On Ed. On Ed. And his bride in a braid. Oh, I just want to see a collage of all these braids. Well, we'll definitely show you the braids. You know who else has a fun little braid? Orna from couples therapy. Henley, you're watching that, right? Oh, she sometimes gets a fun little braid. I love a fun little braid.

Anything Orna does is sexy and beautiful. I'm obsessed with her. She can do you know wrong. That sells me on the little braid. Now do we all need a little braid? Tomorrow we're all going to have one little brain. Hold on. Maybe I like that now.

By the end of the podcast, we all have one little bit. And so, yeah, the demon, you know, frustrated. He leaves that he's shot out open all these little human trunks. Human coffins. And he walks outside. He goes out to the yard. There's a bunch of little chickens in the yard running around. He goes to light a cigarette and he looks around his feet and there's all of these like

wrapped up honks of meat like a like a like a like a rotissory chicken like vibe and like a leg of you know just put in the white like wrapping like like from a butcher paper yeah okay okay but meat cuts so someone has been butchering in this yard honks a meat a honk of meat is the technical. I don't know how much clearer I can be. It's a bunch of honks. Of course. And he sort of has this light bulb moment and reenters the house. We see him walk back into the kitchen and look at a human-sized meat locker, fridge thing. Looks just like all the other trunks only is the refrigerator. And he looks at it, he stares at it. He gets excited. He says, here, kitty, kitty, kitty.

And he shoots into it. We hear the lady scream. He opens it. He did get her in the shoulder. We see a top-down shot. He looks in, punches her in the face. Chapter 1. Mr. Snuffles. Oh, boy. All right. We see that same truck that we saw him in in the beginning.

Pull into a motel parking lot. It's a night time. Demons in the driver's seat. Ladies in the passenger seat. we've seen her blonde hair and her little braid and notably in this scene she has dark red hair

with like straight across bangs but it is still her they are sitting in the car they're smoking cigarettes they're flirting we sort of gather they've met at a bar they've decided to come to this motel

they make out she says oh that's relief that you're good at that and they're like okay we're like kind of getting feelers for each other he asks her if she wants to go and get a room and she's like, why don't we just, like, hang out for a little bit. He grabs some beers from a cooler he has in his back seat, and we see the camera pan down to that same shotgun under his back seat.

So they've got their beer, they're flirting. She tells him, she's like, you know, this is going to sound like a cliche, but I don't really do this. She says, I have no problem doing this. I just have to really want it. And we learn that he's maybe married, but that his marriage is not in a good place. He's like, you know, I wouldn't be here if she's like,

I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to do this. And he's like, I wouldn't be here if, you know, my wife cared at all basically is the vibe. And she's like, your business is your business. Like, I'm not judging you. This is recreational and I fucking deserve it. And so that excites him. He opens a glove compartment. He pulls out a bottle of Jim Beam.

They each take a swig. They're laughing at how terrible it is. We're like back in a good rhythm. But the vibe is like, somewhere between organic and transactional and it's like and you're just like who's in charge of this transaction right you know like from the moment you see them interacting you're kind of like who's in power but like we all have like an implicit answer a reflexive answer to that question because there's a man and a woman so you're like obviously she's he's driving yeah he's in the driver's seat

brought them there he's supplying all the alcohol and yet there's something about it it that feels like she picked him up also like I'm like is one of them a sex worker is this like it's just you're like I've seen this scene before but with different asterisk so it's hard

to orient yourself in the power dynamics of this scene it's not obvious yeah I think too that like is one of them a sex worker and is it maybe her like the wig too I feel like that we also have a thing about like if a woman is meeting someone in a wig yeah like there has to be he has a wedding band on he's talking about his wife like it just feels but he's also nervous he's like asking if he can get her number and

she makes fun of him for that like we that's like like nobody really does that anymore yeah oh that's confusing we gather from the little nuggets they're giving us in conversation at least the narrative i've put together at this point is like they met at a bar and like quickly decided we want to have sex with each other let's just go do it now kind of vibe whether someone was hired to do it or not But it's like that we, this is not like a budding relationship. This isn't a date. This is like, we're going to go have sex here and now. And we're just sort of getting to know each other a little bit before we do.

She mentions like, I sobered up a little bit on the way here. I need to get a little more drunk to like be ready for this. My main question is she says I deserve it. Like, what do you think she meant by that? Like deserve some fun. She's basically like, this is like recreational for me. Like I'm not judging you. You're not judging me.

I should get to fuck you if I want to. Hashtag feminism, you know? Exactly. Which is like kind of the hashtag of the whole movie. But she does say to him, she goes on to say, you know, like, you know, the real issue is safety. Do you have any idea the risks a woman takes every time she agrees to have a little fun? Men think we don't like casual sex. We do.

We just don't want a little bit of murder served on the side. You know, there's also plain old risk of disappointment, which is the most common. But like, violence, that's no joke. and she's like staring him dead in the face as she's saying this and he's clearly a little uncomfortable and it's like, oh yeah, I've never thought of it that way. She's like, yeah, of course you haven't because you're not a woman.

And she says, you know, you seem like a nice guy. You really do. But you never really know. So I have to ask you a question. Are you a serial killer? He laughs and he says, what? She says, I'm going to need you to look me in the eyes

and give me a real answer. no no what no i'm not a serial killer he does not hold her gaze for his entire delivery of this he does not noting for henley's purposes you're a little bit like hmm yeah he looks up into the left or whatever the like you see his fingers are like crossed behind the back it's not convincing it's not convincing yeah it's basically like no i'm not a serious killer. Why would you ask me that? Yeah, it's not, not that.

But she says, okay, okay, now can we talk about all the things I want you to do to me? Smash cut, back to that choking shot. He's over her on a bed. He's choking her shirtless, still wearing his pants and shoes, which I was like, shoes on the bed, okay. But he's choking her and we get really dramatic music. And we go to her face. She looks like she's really being choked.

But then she says, harder. Trying to choke her some more. Harder. And she's like getting visibly frustrated. He's trying to choke her. And finally she's like, stop. She's handcuffed to the bad frame. And she's like, can you just take these off?

So takes the handcuffs off. It's a little awkward, a little disappointing. She's like, you know, maybe it's you. You know, maybe it's just not working with you. Wow. He's like ego a little bruised, but he says, well, maybe it's better that we don't need that, like, right at the beginning. And she kind of, that, like, brings her back to him. And she's like, oh, at the beginning, like, it's just like leading somewhere.

They get back to kind of being flirty. They start making out again. He leans her back on the bed. We see him grab for a condom. She pulls back and puts a hand to his chest and says, aren't you eager? he sits back pissed again. He's getting a lot of stop and start signals. And he is getting more and more frustrated.

We see him sort of, he's getting frustrated with her and he decides to kind of go forward again. So he leans over her. We see him with one hand he's like grabbing her earlobe. And then on the other side of her neck, he's like nibbling at her ear. And we've seen her ear. So we're a little scared. And she sort of is telling him, she's, like, what are you doing? Stop. He grabs her wrists. He grabs the cuffs. He starts cuffing her again.

She's like, stop, like trying to push him off of her. He is not stopping. Cuffs her wrists to the bed again. And she says, take these off of me now. Just because I asked you to put them on before doesn't mean you get to decide to do it again. And he slaps her across the face, demands she refers to him as sir. is grabbing her mouth and he's like, I'm in charge now. I'm in control. Now here's what's going to happen. First, you're going to take my foot in your mouth,

toes first all the way to the fucking heel. Yuck. No thanks. She screams. He slams the wall. He says her, shut the fuck up. You're a sick woman carrying around shackles trying to get fucked.

You know you asked for this, right? She's crying now. She says, yes. He says, yes, what? She says, yes. And he leans in her face He says, I'm going to take my knife And I'm going to cut you from one set of lips to the other

And watch you bleed to death. Oh, no thanks. Ugh. She starts hyperventilating, freaking out, and she finally screams, Mr. Steffalephygous. Smash cut. We're back in the car.

We're like flirting again. She's like, I can't believe you're into this. She's like, I'm going to need to really believe it when we're in it. Like, I'm going to need to really believe it. And he's like, I did some acting. I did a holiday in commercial. And she's like, oh, my God. You might, like, be really good at this.

And he's a little uncomfortable. He's like, you know, you're kind of fucked up. And she's like, okay, well, like, men will do anything to get to have sex, basically. So, like, I know you're going to do this. And she says, don't tell me when you're going to turn. You just do it. And if I say no, you push harder. Even if I'm crying, you keep going.

And he's like, I don't know if I like that. She's like, I'm giving you very clear consent. Like, there could be no clearer consent than this. So he's like, okay. And she says, okay, well, what does no? mean? He says, yes. And what is the only thing that actually means no once we're in that room? And he says, Mr. Snefulpicus, cut back to the room. He backs off of her. He's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. He starts undoing the cuffs. She's crying. He's like, I'm sorry. Was that too far? She's crying.

She's like, how could you say such awful things to me? He, like, grabs her to, like, comfort her. And she starts laughing. And she was like, you were fucking amazing. Oh, my God. I've never been more turned on in my life. Whoa. He's like, well, then why did you, why did you say Mr. stuff like because she was like, well, I just needed a break. Like, I just wanted like a drink. Maybe like a cigarette.

He's like, okay. Like, like the amount of times he's having a like flip back and forth. Yeah, I have to say like I never like identifying more with the dude in these situations. No, it's awful. It's not to be like a really misandrous, but I just am like, it's not. It's not my reflex, but I do have to say that I was like, I, this guy, like, even if you've done, even if you were the person doing the sexual assault presentations at your college, like, and you did one a week or something, this is a lot of whiplash. And it would be very hard for me to keep up with the signals she's sending. Because to say, I've never been so turned on in my life and then be like, but let's, I want, let's get a drink or have a cigarette or something. Like, we're not in a rush is like, yeah, he's just trying to, he's trying to keep up. A lot. Yeah. We're literally here to have sex. That was what we agreed upon. Yeah. He's really, yeah, he's really trying to keep up. I also, I did have a moment where I was like, oh, I, I, you, there has to be so much trust involved if your sexual kink is like violence related. Like, I'm just. You have to know someone for a while probably. Yeah. It's because it is fucking scary. Yeah. But, yeah, he's going through a lot in this moment. But they start making out again. He's, he's. like okay i guess we're like we're getting back somewhere she pulls back from him and looks at him and we see we're just on her face and we see her get this like look of terror in looking at his

face like that's all we see next chapter title card chapter four the mountain people so that was just chapter one that was chapter one okay yeah so we've gone three three five three three five one four 35, one, four. This is the math. This is what I'm saying. And also hard for me to like keep track of. I was like, do I, I might need to write these two. Yeah.

Even just as someone who was like determined not to take notes during the movie, I was like, I might have to make an outline, I think. Yeah. Charted out. Yeah. I did look up. I like, I rewatched it last night to take these notes and I did like Google. Sometimes I'll be like, well, is there just already like a detailed summary out there?

And I, I googled it. And there was, I think it was on my computer, something that was like, it's told out of sequence, but here's what happens, chapter one, chapter two. And I was like, no, that the whole point of the movie is that it's not told like that. Anyway, chapter four, the mountain people. We see Ed Bagley Jr. and Barbara Hershey braids out, sitting at a little breakfast table together, just sipping their coffee, looking each other deep in the eyes and chuckling. They just are sitting back and we're just going, just really delighting in each other's company he makes breakfast i've got to tell you the full details of this breakfast yes this is like disgusting it's the craziest thing i've ever seen he so okay the grossest part of the movie it is i think it is weirdly so we're like we're a sort of like top down shot over the stove and in one pan we see him put in a whole stick of butter and in that pan next to the butter, six eggs. In another pan, we have eight sausage links. Takes the sausage links out, puts them on a paper towel, moves the sausage pan over, still full of grease,

flips the eggs, adds into the grease pan pancakes. Now I'm making pancakes. Take them all off the stove. We make our plates. He puts down on two plates a pancake, a big pile of eggs, sausage links, squares of butter, more squares of butter, big ones, thick, like full squares, not slices, squares. Why does they are tall? Cubs. Cubs, the cubes you call them. Honks.

Hanks. Hanks. A full jar of jam split between the two plates. Two more pancakes. Maple syrup. And all the whipped cream on planet Earth.

Ew. The whipped cream. It's the wettest. It's the wettest plate. It's so wet. This is what's like horrifying. So I was hot. From the first,

the first thing that you said, see is an entire stick of butter. And I was like, my cholesterol levels, like, changed watching this scene. I just was like, my arteries are stopping. Like, this is so much butter. And I love butter. I love butter. But it made me, like, take, have to take a minute from butter. Like, honestly, this scene, like, really fucked me up. Yeah. It's, it's, and then the wetness is, it's so, and the whipped cream is, like, all melt. Ew. It's really, it's so much liquid. I'm going to like gas. I don't know why. This is, like, worse than he. human centipede for some reason right now.

Well, just imagine if this became human centipede, that would be even, that would be the worst after eating this breakfast. Oh, my God, I can't go on. I can't go on. It's been great. Everybody have a great day. So he puts the two plates down in front of each of them at that same little nook. He sits down.

They go, mm. Looking at their plates, there's a bowl of strawberries in the middle of the table. and Barbara Hershey grabs a strawberry and she places one at the very top of his whipped cream one at the very top of hers he says Bon Appetit and they sit down and they dig into their little breakfast and they start taking bites they're loving it

we see at the table they've also begun doing a puzzle they've got a little who is this puzzle of I was like it's not Scott Bayo Scott Bayo Scott Bayo thing I was like not Johnny Osmond Scott Bayo and so it's the funniest possible choice It's like a bright orange just like full body shot

I'm sure they tried, like, multiple people and needed to get their sign off and their rights or whatever. But however they got to Scott Bayo, whether it was always going to be him or became him, it was the perfect choice. So funny. No, no, it's perfect choice. Incredible. They're doing this puzzle and they're, like, have a little game going. She's like, how many pieces ahead of me are you? And he says three.

And she's like, okay, well, don't let me win. And she's, like, excited to, like, put her little get. She's like, oh, there's one. Are you guys, like, aware that there's competitive puzzle doing? Like, I was like, not until this moment. I'm kind of into this. My family likes to do puzzles together on family trips, and they can make anything competitive. So I will say, like, I am aware of...

You're familiar with this dynamic. I'm familiar with the vibe, if not a structured game. It seemed like each person gets half the pieces, and whoever gets to put more of them into the puzzle wins, I guess. Oh, you split them out evenly and whoever can, like, more quickly. That was my thinking. That would make sense. I think. Interesting.

That would make sense. Going to have to try that. Going to have to try. I'm going to have to try that. Not with the breakfast, but with something else. Something else. Yes. To eat.

So they do really, really seem to be enjoying themselves. They're doing this puzzle, just loving their lives. Two people very well suited for each other. And they see out that window, the lady at their front door, banging on the front door for them. And Ed Beagle Jr. says to Barbara Hershey says, we don't ever get their character names. I'm just going to keep referring by other legal names. They're Christian names. He says to her,

get the bear spray. Cut to, they've brought the lady into their house. They've bandaged up her ear. And she's sort of telling him, this man, he's following me. And they're like, oh, no, that's so awful. She notices, like, leftover breakfast on the stove.

And she's like, oh, my God, is that? They're like, oh, yeah, that's our Sunday breakfast. Have some. It's delicious. It was like, they eat this every Sunday. I eat this every Sunday. amazing and they're incredible we need to study these people yeah like they're thriving something's working and so she's like really just shoveling she's like clearly starving shoveling this food into her mouth

and they say we should get you some some pain meds and we learn they have some percassette upstairs and she's like yes please like i'll take the strongest stuff you have barbara goes upstairs to find the percassette ed bagley junior is like we should really call the cops like we we need need to get the cops in this. And the lady's like, please, no cops, no cops. Like, I'm telling you, like, let's just wait a little bit. No cops. He's telling her, they had said to her before that they were old hippies. And Ed Biglin was like, I'm actually an old biker. And he's like telling her about his biking days. It doesn't really serve the plot in any way other than it's, this is a very charming, weird little scene. But the tension is the phone. Like, how, like, at this point,

we're kind of hoping the cops will be called because she's running away from someone, but she doesn't want the cops to come, which just feels like it doesn't make sense. Right. Yeah. I feel like for the first instinct to be like, let me give you some percocet versus like, I need to call an ambulance. Call an ambulance. Get me somewhere safe.

Yeah. So yeah, we're on, we're immediately like, strange. It lends more, we're like, okay, was this like a. Is this all part of the plan? Or like, maybe that's illegal or like with the drugs that they've done. Like, there's just something is like, what, what's going on with this woman that she wouldn't want cops? because we're like, yeah, absolutely tell people

that this man is out there with a gun. But he really wants to call the cop. She's like, please, please don't. We cut upstairs to the bathroom. Barbara's found the percassette. And we hear from her vantage point in the bathroom sort of muffled commotion downstairs. She grabs the percassette, walks downstairs

to find Ed Begley Jr., knife stabbed through his stomach, head bashed in by we see the lady there holding the phone. So it was the lady Bash his head in That bad lady And he sort of mumbles a little bit And then dies in front of her On the floor

Ed Begley Jr., you weren't with us long enough Not long enough Not long enough Really delightful The lady grabs the knife Holds it to Barbara And she's like Despite how this might look

I really don't want to kill you But I am gonna have to tie you She's seeming like flustered And she's like I am gonna have to tie you up Do you have anything here That I can tell you up She's like, do you have any guns? She's like, no, we don't have guns. I have bear spray. She's like, okay, what do you have that I can tie you up quickly? And she says, there's a storm shelter and there's chains there that you can use to, like, lock me in. She does tell her, she's like, we're doomsday preppers. So, like, there's food in there. I can be safe forever. Just, like, leave me down there. So they walk outside. The lady leads her at knife point to, like, go to this storm shelter. And as soon as she gets a little bit out the door, Barbara, her

She just runs into the woods away from her. Okay. And in the distance, I think we see the lady recognize that the demon is coming. So she runs back into the house. She's looking around for a place to hide. And she sees this meat locker. Opens it up. Start chucking those honks out the window to make space for her.

Goodbye honks. Farewell to the honks. Chuck and honks. Chuck and honks. Chuck and honks. That sounds like a porn hub category. And I do somehow think that, like, breakfast meal is involved in that category. Ew, stop it.

Sorry. That day on set, they're like, what are you doing today? And she's like, just chucking honks all day. Checking honks. I'm a honk chucking coordinator. I'm here to help you honk your chucks. Honk your chucks. Honk your chunks.

Okay. We see her. She unplugged this little, like, meat. fridge. She sees Ed Bailey Jr.'s biker jacket up on the wall grabs it, puts it on, because this meat lockers can be cold, you know, even if she unplugs, it's cold in there, grabs that biker jacket,

puts it on, grabs the bear spray off the counter, brings it in with her and we see her shut herself into that locker. And just as that's happening, we see outside the demon has entered the yard, he's got his gun. Title screen, Chapter 2,

do you like to party? We're back in the hotel room. the lady gets off the bed and she grabs a little baggy of coke out of her backpack. And she's like, come on, we should do this. He's like, oh, it's been a long time since I've touched that stuff. And she's like, me too. But, you know, this stuff makes me really horny, which of course excites him because he's like, something's got to give at this point. I'm really trying to have sex with this lady. And she's really giving me mixed signals. And she also tells him she's like, also it's my birthday. I'm like, you know, I want to celebrate.

Oh, celebrate in a different way. And he's like, well, I can't let the lady be alone on her birthday. And so she gets really excited and she goes over to the little like desk in the motel room. And we have this gorgeous shot of him on the bed behind her. She's up close to the frame. He's in the distance behind her. And we see her out on a little like, you know, metal tray pouring out one line of coke from her baggie, and one line of white powder from a little vial.

The split diopter shot. Yes, that is. It's very cool. That is what it's called. Yeah, we all knew. Yeah, we all knew. I never heard that, never heard that phrase in my life. Actually, no, Joel did know.

I was like, what a cool shot. He was like, it's a split diopter. And I was like, okay. I need to Google that. I did a few of those in a movie that actually reminded me of this one a little bit that I did called The Perfection, where... I was too scared to watch that, Allison. Oh, you were?

I wasn't going to watch that. It's very similar to this, actually. Like, there's chapter. Like, it really reminded me a little bit. And it's the same exact level of scary. Okay. We need to do it. It is watchably scary, my brand.

Okay, great. Honestly, this is now my new guidepost. But anyway, we did some shots with split diopters, and they're really complicated to do from an acting standpoint because you're being held in focus on two different planes. So basically, it's something you put onto the lens that means that someone in the background can be in focus at the same time that someone in the foreground is in focus.

but the middle of the frame is blurry. So you have to pick a framing where that's not distracting. And for both people, you have to stay very still on that plane. Like, you have to maintain a really fixed distance from the camera or it becomes, you go out of focus. Like, it gets blurry. So it's a hard shot to get, but they're very cool because. Very cool.

Giovanni just going in. Exactly. I was like, I was like, it's. You know, like your first time being a cinematographer, like you're going to want to do the split day after. Yeah, exactly. And it pays off. It's really, it looks great. It works perfectly. Does the, it like is unnerving in a way where you're like, it just like is a visual that we're not used to seeing. So it automatically like heightens the moment. And yeah, we do see these two lines. They're coming from two different sources. She got a little straw. She turns around to him. She does one line. He does a second line. He does a second. line and they start making out again and pretty quickly she backs away from him staring at him she sits on the desk she puts her she's wearing just a bra and underwear at this point she puts her red doc martin boots on she's like just lacing her boots up and he's like what the fuck at this point he's i think he finally is like what's going on he's like i thought you said he's wearing his

he's wearing his pants and shoes he is also wearing his pants and shoes to be fair it is just like And she's like with like Vim and Vigor Like lacing up her boots Like pulling them like an angry figure skater Just like tight And tight and tight Like tight and tight

Like Unlike his shoes Which are just you know Regular guy shoes in bed Kind of situation Sure And he looks at her doing this And he says

Are we And she goes Are we gonna fuck? Oh no And she laughed Oh no Oh, no, oh no. And she laughs at him and she says, tell you what, if you can still fucking five minutes, sure. Oh, no. And he says, I thought this stuff made you horny. And she says, maybe I lied.

So he at this point is like, fine. He starts gathering his stuff. He's getting ready to leave. She grabs her backpack and goes into the bathroom. Sits down on the toilet. The bathroom is really red lighting, which is a cool choice and also like would be the scariest possible motel bathroom. like if it if there is red lighting in your motel bathroom like do not stay there um but she sits in the toilet opens up her backpack pulls out a switchblade and a big taser and she sort of like goes like she like starts the taser up so it goes like zzz he's like great puts her bag down gets up goes back into the room and we see the door is open he's not in there she walks down the hall he is collapsed on the floor in the hallway she grabs him drags him back in puts him on the bed.

He's, like, foaming at the mouth. Ew. She pulls his shirt back off and shows him the taser. And it's like, I'll only use this if I have to. She's, like, wiping the foam from his mouth. And he's like, cocaine, cocaine. And she's like, no, no, no. I did cocaine.

That's cocaine right there. And they're pointing to the bag in the desk. This right here, and she goes in the vial, is ketamine. Oh, shit. That's a different experience. And he's on the bed He's just laying there But he's like basically

Passed out Semi-conscious And she grabs his face And she's like I didn't want to do this man I was just trying to have a good time And she seems genuinely like Frustrated

That she's like This was not the plan But she She gets off him She turns the radio on It's right at the You know when you turn the radio on And it's right at the start

Of a perfectly Thematic song. Love Hurts is on the radio and she's like, oh, I love this song. She starts singing it while unlacing one of his shoes, taking it off, pulling off one of his socks. She gets back on top of him, shoves that sock in his mouth. Second grossest thing in the movie. A sock in your mouth. You're nasty sock in your mouth. I'd rather it be mine. I would rather be mine. Or my sons. His feet are magical. But that was such a little sock, too.

I know. Tiny sock. All I need is a little sock and a little braid. And she climbs on top of him. And she pulls out her switchblade. And we see from behind her back, basically, we know that she's taking this knife to him in some capacity. But we're not...

Mercifully a tracking shot on her back. Yeah, we're not seeing it. And then we cut to a black screen with red text that says, one minute dot dot two minutes three minutes five minutes seven minutes eight minutes cut back to her in the bathroom we're like hearing his muffled kind of screaming by the way over that like count of how many minutes it's taking cut to her back in the bathroom red lighting and she's just wiping her hands clean with like a washcloth and now she's looking through his wallet in the bathroom she opens it up looks for the cash in there is like

Oh, it's actually like a good amount of money in there, cool. Wads it up, puts it in her bra, keeps slipping through his wallet, and she sees a police badge. Oh. And she has this moment of like, oh, damn it. Dang it.

Dang it to heck. Shoot, shoot, shoot, darn. And so she gets up again. She grabs her switchblade, goes back into the hotel room, climbs back on top of him, is straddling him on the bed, and we do see his chest is very, very bloody and this is a nasty part she like puts her hands over like is wiping the blood from

his chest and we see she carved an e and an l into his chest and she like presses it oh yuck oh it's bad anyone like pushing into a wound is like oh it's be nauseous so rough stuff for me that's like unwatchable didn't watch this yeah and it's like couldn't really like she carved in pretty deep and it's very Very bloody. To the part I was like, oh, I guess that is, yeah, I guess that is how much you would bleed if that, like, his like whole, oh, oh, oh, gross. Really bad. And she's saying to him, I've never put one there before. And she's, like, very wistful about it.

Then she raises her knife up above his throat and she says, now sleep. And she goes to lower the knife. And we see him raise a gun that we had earlier seen he had a handgun, like, tucked into his ankle. shoots at her catches her in the ear we get that like ringing sound that you get in movies when someone's hearing is affected

and she's like stumbling back shocked that he's managed to do this and also like in pain so stumbling away from him he tries to shoot at her again misses she opens the door runs out like hops over the balcony

of the motel and just starts running random guy sees her random guy sees her she says he has a gun and the guy says, I do too. Shut the fuck out. This is a perhaps a seedier motel where people are not all that concerned.

Again, she's still in her bra underwear combat boots, like just bloody ear running down the street. Oh, she's taking her wig off at this point. So we see her little braid. Great. And she runs, flees on foot, runs through a parking lot

into like an office park of some sort. We see her run past that same little red vintage car we'd seen earlier. runs into some sort of office. Do you know what sort of office this was, Alison? I was like... It felt like a bank lobby. That's probably...

But like the part where you'd have like an appointment with someone to talk about financial planning. Yeah. There we go. A financial planner's office of sorts. Something with a reception. Yeah, there's a woman... A woman working there at reception and then a woman speaking to her

in red scrubs. These red scrubs we saw earlier. Oh, okay. But the lady runs in what a sight to see and she says to them can you help me please we cut back to the demon and the motel room

he has managed to like pull himself off the bed and like pull himself over it's like how I run in dreams where I'm like pulling with my hands you know right right right he's like pulling himself gets to the baggie of cocaine

and just pours as much of it out as he can and it's just like snorting it as quickly as he can and like putting it in his mouth just trying to like bring himself back And we realized, like, I realized that's what he was saying earlier when he was like, cocaine, cocaine. He, like, knew the cocaine would fix whatever was happening with him. We go back to the lady. The woman working at the reception desk, like, comes around and is like, oh, my goodness, let me help you. Tell us the woman in the scrubs, like, call the police. And as she approaches the lady to be like, come down, we're going to get you help. The lady just stabs her in the throat. Oh, boy. That woman dies. Lady in the Scrubs is like, like don't do anything to me like it's fine it's fine it's fine and once again the lady's like I don't want to kill you she's just having a bad day I'm just having a bad day and yeah you need to help me out yep she is seeming like very frazzled like like for lack of a better word like kind

of manic she's just sort of like okay here's the deal like everything's fine she's also doing like willa does an incredible job through the whole movie but in this part she's constantly going like, which you think is cocaine related, but also because she's getting used to whatever sensation she's feeling from her ear being gone. So she's like constantly like moving her jaw and also like, yeah, anyway, it's just very like, it's someone that you're just like this person is not, every, it's a neon sign of unwell.

Yeah. And like everything she's doing is not what you would expect anyone. Like it's like this is not the behavior of some. who is in pain is like she's just like she's like feral just like kind of an animal like yeah yeah um but she tells this woman like i don't want to kill you but i'm gonna need the keys to your car and take off your fucking clothes chapter six who's gary gilmore we're all wondering we're wondering who's gilmore gilmore who is he with a long lost member of the gilmore girls clearly the gilmore gairs um the gilmore gairs um the gilmore gare's um we're

But back to the lady is in the meat locker. She's knocked out. The demon has punched her in the face. We see the demon now. He like stands up. He looks over her. He pulls out his handcuffs. Real handcuffs this time.

Like police handcuffs. Cuffs her to the like handle on the metal handle on the outside of the meat locker. So she's stuck there. He walks upstairs to the phone. The one downstairs has been, you know, ripped off the wall to smash up. Bigley's head in, and it goes upstairs, makes a call, presumably to a fellow police officer,

is the vibe we get. And he basically just tells him, like, I'm going to need you to come down here. I've gotten myself into some trouble. And, you know, Sammy, you'd have to rewatch to tell me if you agree. But in these moments, there were a couple glimpses where he was reminding me of, Kyle Garner is so good in this movie, he was reminded me of Tim Robinson. There's like a way, there was a way he was like, I've gotten myself into some trouble. It was like a kind of face that I was like, I could see Tim Robinson being like, well, I love that version of this movie, by the way. That is just Tim Robinson was like, I got it over my head.

Honestly, so Henley, to answer your face, at this point in the movie already, you're kind of like, okay, everything's been inverted. But in this moment, my theory had been disproved, which was I thought he had been, undercover like trying to catch her. Yeah, trying to catch her.

And clearly that phone call, you're like, nope, no, that's not even, this was just because I got myself into some trouble is not what you would say if you were part of like an undercover operation that your whole office knows about. You know what I mean? Right, right.

Thank you for clarifying because I had that exact question in my brain, right? I was like, what's the game here? Maybe we'll talk about this when you're done like when you guys realized that it was her that it was her yeah yeah well we'll get there i think that conversation in the car almost was something i was like i started to be like what's going on here it's a little too perfect to have asked him are you a serial killer and and he is one yeah but i still wasn't sure sure what was going on for a little longer yeah but okay well who's gary

Gilmore. Well, okay, we're going to find out. We're going to find out. Who are the Gilmore Gers? Gilmour Gers? The Gellonstein Gers? The Gellonstein Gers. I was going to say, it's a Bernstein Bears thing where we go back and we watch Gilmore girls and it's been Gilmore Gairs the whole time. Oh my God. I can't

I can't with the Berenstain Bears. It's not a mother-daughter. It's two Gairies. So it goes back downstairs. The lady is awake and he sits down. He's got a chair positioned staring at her in front of the meat locker. She's like sitting in it with her little arm handcuffed outside of it.

And he says, I got you. And she says, checkmate. And he says, yeah. And then some. She says, there's nothing more than checkmate. It either is or isn't, you fucking philistine. Okay. And she asked, he's like, why am I still alive?

And she realized, it's like, oh, you couldn't do it. And he's like, she says, you're going to be in trouble. she says something about like oh should I call your sponsor so we gather that that's why he was like oh I'm in some trouble he's presumably sober and has done a lot of cocaine at this point and he's like a little troubles better than a life sentence she says you know I always thought I always thought I'd be like Gary Gilmore he says who's Gary Gilmore we all want to know and she says he asked for the firing squad I always thought I'd be like that but I'd rather believe about the rest of the of my days in a tiny little cell on a cot than face death. And like, she's sort of like talking to herself really at this point. It's like, I can't believe it. Like, I can't believe I would rather fight for my life, even if it's in prison, then die. As a person who kills a lot of people, she was just like, wow, I can't believe I would,

I would fight to stay alive. And she tells him, like, for a moment tonight, like, we were in love. Like, that was real. And every time you hear love hurts now, you're going to think of me. me, which is true, of course. Of course it's true. That's really true, fair. Of course it's true.

And she's just sort of like taunting him with this and he is perhaps letting his guard down a bit too much and she pulls that bear spray out, sprays him in the face. I mean, so much bear spray. It's just like shooting. It's like a fire hose of bear spray in his face. He gets up. He's stumbling. He stumbles close enough to her for her to.

to grab him, she bites his neck, takes a, you guessed it, honk out of that neck, severing that artery, that big one. Ooh! He pulls back, I mean, he's a goner. He is bleeding out, falls to the ground, starts dying. We see, we cut to her face, she's standing up,

she spits that hunk of me out, her mouth. this all bloody. Oh, too many honks. Too many honks in this movie. And he collapses and we watch him die. Okay. A couple things. Oh, yeah, please. She had taken all the percassette they had left before she got into the locker. Correct. Which felt smart. And also helps with like the amount of bear spray that would be in the air. I would imagine that percassette is helping survive that experience. Although, I think it would still be like, I don't think you'd be able to see your Your eyes fully open. Yeah.

Right. Right. But mechanically, I have so much sympathy always for the actors making scenes like this because fake blood is so horrible. It's like sticky and viscacy. And once it gets established, like you can't wash your hands or move it or whatever. You have to like leave it where it is. So just like picturing Willa like breaking for lunch with blood on her.

She had to be in her mouth. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And blood and the fake blood that goes in your mouth is like so nasty. And then the special effects makeup for the neck thing, like I have seen enough tests of them that that's something I can look at in a like horror movie because they always, it's always too much blood.

And there's always like, with a smaller budget movie, you only have like one or two goes of it because like the reset takes too long. And so you're always like, I hope this is good. And then the special effects person has put like a fire hose amount of blood into, this ring because it's the most exciting version of it for them is the one that has the most blood. But I was like, this is a very well-calibrated amount of blood. So either they did it

multiple times or they just have a really talented sort of special effects person. All of the, like, wounds in this movie did look really well done. Yeah, really well done. I mean, like, and they do a close-up on this neck and it's like, oh, it's so gross. And you see his neck like moving, oh, it's so. Like pulsing. Yeah, it's really well done. It's really well done and it's really gross. Yeah. I really hated it. Yeah. Um, she gets herself out of the locker, but she still handcuffed to the handle. So she like climbs out and handcuffs. I just wore handcuffs for like a huge chunk of Megan too. And they are so uncomfortable. Like I was having such sympathy wrist pain for Willa like during the next sequence. She's also really like moving around and like yanking at her

wrist and yeah. I was just staring at her rest the entire time. She did a very smart job of it. But it's it's so painful. If you actually like, pull on your wrist like that it's excruciating oh yeah oh yeah she is very very good at acting out pain yeah like she really seemed to be in a lot of pain and in this moment she's trying to reach at his body and like pull him to her so she can get the keys for the handcuffs but it she's got a shoulder shot a head wound she's absolutely falling apart fucked right now and she's like screaming and She's, like, trying to pull him. He's heavy, he's dead weight.

She can't quite get him close enough, but she does manage to get the gun, the handgun that was on his ankle. She gets that. She puts it in her jacket pocket. Just as she hears people entering, the reinforcements that he called, and she hears them enter.

She lays on the ground, pulls her sweatpants down to her knees, and starts crying for help. Fuck. and believe women normally that's right I hate seeing this kind of thing Feminism

Usually don't well this I would say that the odds of this being the situation This is probably the literal only time This ever would Has or will happen again So I think still it's safe to say

Believe women because the odds of it being something real are much higher than the odds of it being this But you better believe she's playing This situation to her advantage And the cops come in and it is Two police officers, an older man and a younger woman, and they are being like, what the fuck? There's two bodies on the floor. One of them is this cop's friend, presumably, goes over, checks his pulse, he's dead.

The lady is screaming, crying, help me, oh, my God, he left me like this. Just really, she's like, he's coked out, check his pocket. He is full of drugs. The older male cop is like, we need to call this in. Like, this is a crime scene. We don't know what happened here. like we need reinforcements the woman female cop is like we need to get this woman medical attention like we know what happened here look at her she's been tied up here for who knows how long and they

have this sort of power struggle back and forth of like he's like I know protocol I've been doing this longer than you've been alive and she's like I'm a woman I know this woman needs help and just as they're he's saying like we're going to have to call her back before we do anything the lady starts like convulsing as if she's like having a seizure and that flips the switch of them being like, okay, fine, like, we'll take her in, and then we'll call for backup. So they uncuff her, put her in the back of the police car. They start driving away with her. And as they're driving down the road, Barbara Hershey comes up to their car and they're like,

what the fuck? The male cop is driving. He stops the car. He looks at the window and she's like, she killed us, she killed us, looks in the backseat, sees the lady, has this moment of recognition, shot, bullet wound to the head, dies, the cops turn around. The lady has the gun pulled on that. and she's like, give me your guns

right now. The male cop looks at the woman like, you've got to be fucking kidding. That it's her fault that they got into this mess. And they both hand over their guns to the lady and the lady cop, or the lady

says to the lady cop, which is how they like to be referred to. And she tells her, she's like, I don't want to kill you, just get out of the car, run away. And the cop is like, please just turn yourself in. Like, This is only going to make things worse. And the lady says to her,

I'm the electric lady. And at that, the woman's like, okay, and like opens the door and like runs into the woods. It's like, I'm getting the fuck out of here. The lady trains her gun on the male cop and she says, drive motherfucker. Title card, epilogue. See the police car driving down the road and it pulls up to a stop just in the middle of the road.

And the cop's like, Where are we going? What do you want to do? And the lady's like, I just need a minute to think. And he asks her, are you really the electric lady? She's like, she's not looking great, by the way. Like, she's really fading. And he says, why'd you kill all those people? And she says, she has this term where she, like, looks genuinely, like, scared and sad and confused.

And she says, sometimes I don't see humans. I see devils and meets his eyes in the rear view and gets that same look of terror we had seen her have earlier in chapter four, three, four, two, when she looked at the demon and had that like, like, we now recognize to be this moment of like something has entered her field of vision. We've seen also at one point earlier in the movie, like a flash of red as that happened and like maybe a something that we couldn't really see. but so she kind of has that again as she's meeting the cop's eyes in the rear view cut to above outside the car gunshot blood splattering the windshield she gets out of the car starts walking down the middle of the road and we see an old pickup truck pulling up stopping the car seeing her a woman gets out oh my god oh my god the lady like collapses in the road i'm like oh my god let me help you come here honey oh you're going to be okay what happened to you gathers her up brings her around to

the passenger side of her truck opens the door, like, come on, get in here. You'll be safe, you'll be safe. Lady sits in the passenger seat. She looks at herself in the side view mirror as the woman's like coming around to get in the truck. And that same like music cue, like, I haven't really been doing it because I'm, you know, not music.

But there's this like, roams sound. And she's like looking at herself. And we see the clearest flash we've seen so far of like dark red and like a black. figure or something and she's looking at herself in the mirror and it comes back to her seeing herself and she's like starts like sort of crying but also sort of smiling having some sort of realization moment with herself and then the woman gets in the driver's seat starts driving the car we see the lady pulling the gun slowly out from the leather jacket going to point it at the

driver or or like I'm thinking she's going to point it at herself like what's she doing with this gun she's again like very injured very incapacitated in many ways so she's moving pretty slowly doing this pulling this gun out we don't know what the deal is going to be but before anything can happen the driver shoots her in the stomach what and it's like oh my god oh my god we stay close up on the lady's face with this look of like shock and all that also, I mean, her final moments, we overhear the other woman's voice. She's calling an Eminem one. She's saying, oh, my God, I just shot a woman.

I didn't have a choice. She pulled a gun on me. I'm taking her to the hospital now. And for the next two-ish minutes of the movie, the shot is so intense. We are on the lady's face as she's just looking at this woman and dying and just like, like gasping. It's like a fish out of watching. It's like horrible to watch

She did She did such an incredible job It's phenomenal and it is So this movie has not been too scary This whole time This shot This was one where I had to I stopped watching

I looked up and I trained my eyes on the ceiling For the rest of the movie It made me feel like physically sick Watching this final shot In a way that I was like very surprised by Joel was very surprised by it and he was like because the movie and this happens and you're just on her and it's and you can hear her breathing and her like and you just basically watch her die again I'm assuming because I stopped watching movie ends that's the end of the movie I immediately started sobbing wow and was like not but I don't know I still don't know why I was Googling like did anybody else have this specifically actually the end of strange star because I was like what what like I felt like sick and overwhelmed, and I just like, I think it was just like, she did such a good job of looking like she was dying and also like...

Well, part of it, too, is that the, they faded the color grade slowly. So it's a shot where the car is driving. Either they were on like a volume and it was an LED screen or they were driving in real life. And so you see the car driving and it starts out in the kind of like overexposed, very saturated color of the whole movie. But then as the shot goes on, it starts to fade. So it looks like she's just getting pale. And I was like, how the fuck did they do that? And then it fades all the way into black and white.

Oh, wow. And so the shot takes its time. It's a long time. And she is doing such a good job. Honestly, I think the part of the performance that makes it the most emotional to me is that her, there is a, she looks like a little kid. Yes. She starts to get scared.

And there's been such a hardness to her performance for the whole movie. But at the beginning of the shot, she starts to get genuinely scared and kind of wide-eyed. And to me, that was the most moving part is that she got very vulnerable and, like, little for, like, for her final moments. And it's just horrible to watch someone, like, choke on their, like, asphyxiate, basically. I feel like we've talked about this before where I, like, find myself having sympathy for people I shouldn't. anytime they're like having this level of vulnerability and fear like I feel like we talk about I have I have it in the jinks when Robert Durst is like I'm like oh he's just a little old guy like he's scared he's just burping in the bathroom what else he's supposed to do with some belches in the

and then I'll be like well but it's Robert Durst and he's a murderer but there's just something inside of us it's like really like it's really hard to see people suffering and and I'm talking now more about this performance and like dying and and we talk about the labored breathing a lot too being really difficult to watch and i like felt it it just like i like it felt watching it felt like the equivalent of when like when you're like have a bruise but you press it you know like it was like it's really it was like i was shocked by the way this moment affected me also because you've just found out too more information about her situation which is that she's clearly mentally Yeah, exactly. So you're like, so she's having these experiences where she looks at a human face and then suddenly she sees something demonic, like superimposed on it and believes that she has to like kill that person because it's the devil. And then she sees it in her own face. And yeah, so you're like, we're dealing with someone with some kind, I don't know, I don't know, she's not her neural transmitters aren't functioning as they should. Yeah. You know, so it's like,

Yeah, that makes it particularly tough. But it really does feel like she's, like, sucking for air. I think that's the part that's the most visceral. It's like her color, she's become, her pallor is changing. But then also, like, she's just, yeah, fish on land is kind of the best way I can describe it. It's really visceral and long. Really long.

One sustained take. And I think must be hard to do as an actor to, like, I feel like you can make yourself. pass out from from from hyperventilating there's like two schools of thought basically my husband and I are on opposite sides of this fence I am capable of doing the hyperventilating without fainting I don't know how I can't do it for a long time and honestly in this shot it almost works if it if you get that kind of blotchy vision it almost helps and I have to ask willa if that happened to her he can't and he has to do

he has to physically exert himself but the funny well he's like very in really good shape and like strong so it actually it takes him a while to like he just become weaker I could do like one star jump and I'd be like okay I'm on the verge of death

and he has to do like two minutes of cardio and then he's like I'm still not there but anyway like it always reminded me when we were doing this movie together and we had to be hyperventilate I would just start hyperventilating and he'd have to do like push-ups for two minutes and I always reminded me of that apocryphal or maybe true story with Lawrence Olivia

and Dustin Hoffman where Dustin Hoffman had to be out of breath and he ran like a gazillion miles or whatever and Olivia it was like try acting it's much easy. But for some people you like you really does make you faint if you're doing that kind of breathing. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking after the fact like I hope I hope she didn't have to do this that many times because it would be right it would be a lot to do that that shot and again it is just like there's no cut we're just on her face while she slowly dies for like two minutes because the other thing I was thinking which is clearly not what happened but I was wondering if like the demon thing maybe was real and then it got transferred to this woman in the car do you know what I mean like there was like a supernatural

just because she like shot her so quickly it's just like gun country yeah Like there's those two bystanders both in cowboy hats, like both armed. Like we're just clearly in a part of the world where this is a thing. Yeah. But also it's she's a real. So we've seen the lady like kind of pretend to be the victim of this kind of violence just a couple scenes ago. And then we see a person who is actually calling 911 because she is the victim of violence like this.

And she's like, you know, so right after, in the believe women of it all, I thought this was a really smart choice because immediately after we see the lady kind of destroy that mantra, we then have this other woman who really does need us to believe her because we saw what happened and she really was going to probably be shot or killed by this by the electric lady. I'm going to text Will and ask her how many times she did it. Maybe she'll answer before we're done. Oh, that's exciting.

That's so exciting. Yeah. She was truly, truly incredible in this movie. Kyle gone or two. It just was like it's really mostly them. It's mostly her. But to play with our understanding of who they are of what's happening to have like his, the way he answered like, I'm not a serial killer and have us think like maybe he is, but maybe he's not. It's just, it's very impressive. It's really worth watching. It's not too scary. It is. It might make you absolutely break down at the end of it. But I'm fine now. Was it a cathartic sob? Did you feel like? No, I felt really bad. Oh, okay. I felt really bad. It was, Joel equated it to, he was like, he was just so surprised because I thought, and I did really like this movie, but everyone was like, oh, it's fun, you'll really like it.

Right. And he was like, I haven't been this surprise since I told you you'd like killing of a sacred to. Fun is, I guess fun, because based on our description, like Henley, you're probably like, what about this is fun? But part of it is because the power dynamic, I thought that is, part of what was so, like, deftly handled in the movie was like, both the gender dynamics and power dynamics, like, gender dynamics broadly in our society period, and then also the power dynamics scene to scene between these two and sometimes even within the same scene. Like,

that, that was just done so well in this movie, I thought. And yeah, the playing with the form having to be out of order. I was going to say, I think the fun part is the structure and just the like mystery of it and trying to piece things together, not necessarily the content of what happening in each chapter but just i think it's always a fun experience watching a movie i mean like oh i have not seen this before and i feel like off kilter and disoriented and so it like feels like it involves the the audience in a way that we're not necessarily used to and so that feels fun to me even if what's happening on screen is not necessarily fun oh yeah watching her yeah one thing i was wondering and i'll ask will about this as well is like in the perfection we added the chapter

device later, it wasn't in the original scripts for the movie. And it just was like a helpful organizational structure to put into the, put into the movie. And it, now anytime I see it in a movie, I'm like, was this a note? Like, is this something they added later. But it is hard to picture this movie, although it's possible that it just, they did it without the chapters initially, and it was just too confusing and jumping in it out of time. And then they added it later. I'd be curious to know. Yeah. But it is always so tempting to tell stories out of sequence because it's just so interesting. And, but it can also be like really confusing, especially if you don't have a ton of costumes and different days and, and, you know, right. That's true. It'd be hard to

keep track. The ear really helps differentiate pre, pre year, pre year post year. Right. It's important. Pre year. The wig. Yeah. Scrubs. Yeah. There are a good few smart little choices in there that little clues. It's also just, it's so fun to watch a movie and I have them tell you at the start, this is going to be told in six chapters and then have them go chapter three. It like does a little, like, that was the moment where we all were like, ooh, like that's exciting. What's this going to be? Also, the time thing I liked when she was carving into his chest. Didn't love the carving into the chest, but I did like the way that they noted how time was passing. Right. Oh, right. Eight minutes of someone carving into your body. No, thank you. While you are high on ketamine, absolutely not.

this is why after after I do this podcast and my family's like or I go downstairs my in-laws are here and they're like what's the movie about what happens in the movie and like my kids are running around and I'm like I don't let's not talk about it now there's the chapters in it like like any of the books we read yeah yeah I suppose apparently some people were upset about this movie being you know the believe women of it all of like oh the punchline is like women actually are manipulators and evil and I am pretty strongly disagree

with that take of this movie yeah um also like you know we from just a horror movie perspective and how many we watch and talk about as much as we do love to see a badass final girl like go apes shit on the person who is enacting violence on her it's also really nice to see

the woman not be the victim and for an actor to get to play that role and, like, it doesn't have to be about responding to violence. I do, yeah, I did genuinely. Well, I also think, like, it's very subversive to watch someone weaponize that. Like, as someone, like, when I played Rose and Get Out, who at the very end, when the cop, she thinks,

or in the original ending, shows up, and she's, like, suddenly switches back into victim mode. Obviously, that was weaponizing her whiteness against Daniel or Chris's character. And in this case, I think it just makes her even more villainous. Like, I think that's the point, like, how monstrous to weaponize. She knows exactly. Exactly.

She knows exactly what she's doing. And the cop in question is non-white and older and a man. And he's going to feel pressured to do the right thing by societal standards and believe her, even though his instincts and decades of experience are setting off alarm bells. And so I do think that is just what makes her villainous. And I think it's not like we're all too dim to understand. understand the nuance of like, just because you see someone do it on screen doesn't excuse it. Sometimes you see stuff, like, I think the most effective movies are where you watch someone fuck something up or do something wrong on purpose. And I think this is sort of a textbook example

of that. And as I said, having the last person who calls for help and is victimized by something, having that be legitimate and also a woman, to me, sort of proves that the movie is in charge of what it's saying and isn't accidentally making any kind of regressive points. Yeah. Totally. Believe women, obviously, you fucking idiots. Yeah. If you think that it's ever going to be this, like, that's on you.

Like, this is not normal. Thank you so much for picking this one. This one is a really good one. I was going to say, Alison, thank you for being brave. It was such a good excuse to be brave and watch this movie that I've been wanting to watch ever since I saw Willa because, like, I now understand the way people talk to her about it because they were like this movie is so good but they always had this like kind of haunted look in their eyes like when they were talking to her but yeah I was so happy to have

a reason to watch a movie that I was like kind of too scared to watch but I actually think it is comfortably in that zone of like yeah psychological thriller rather than like capital age horror I would say yep yeah agree um wait can you tell us a little bit about your podcast on Headgum and also and also the movie that you're reading you anything else yeah extremely different tonal world okay great great horror abounds the horror of being a woman and just it's everywhere you look being of a certain age so basically my two friends from for one of them have known since I was born the other one I guess we met in kindergarten so 30 plus years of friendship amazing one is a therapist one is a early childhood educator

And it's basically like taking three members of our group chat from elementary school and just like putting it into a podcast. So basically we are just talking about the shit that we are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. It's not just motherhood, although we are all moms, but it's also like partnership, pelvic floor, hormones. Like what stage of reproductive stages are we in? Turns out probably late reproductive stage, which is not a stage I'd ever heard of until we talked to an endocrinologist on our. our show. Yeah, people don't talk about women's body, stages, hormones, et cetera. Why should we? It's just most of us. No, that's, yeah, the amount of times I say Patriarch are on our show. I now, like, by the end of the season, I started just like mumbling through it because I was like,

this is boring. But yeah, so it's, it has been so fun and so rewarding. Our whole goal was, like, realizing how lucky we are to have this resource of our group chat and our friends, our friendship in this stage of life and realizing that without it, we would feel like, and we already do find ways to feel shame about things that aren't at all shameful, but that without it we'd feel at tenfold. And so we were like, maybe we can kind of put our group chat into an audio format and then invite strangers into it. And that is what we've attempted to do. And the response has been pretty phenomenal. So, yeah. It's the best. Also, the men in my life that are listening to it are getting a ton

out of it. So I wouldn't say it is just for women listenership, although obviously we have centered ourselves in our own experience because, you know, as the lady says, we deserve it. But yeah, it's called landlines, which is the medium in which our friendships were built is long phone calls on the landline, occasional conference calls, occasional prank calls. Oh, yeah, three-way call. Oh, the secret three-way call. I was going to say, do you ever get the secret three-way call, the dreaded. Oh, yeah. She's on the line and she's heard everything.

No one is spared. No one is spared that three-way call, I don't think. But yeah, available wherever you get your podcast. Yeah. Also from Headgum, our shared parentage, I guess. I know. Mommy, daddy. This is my ideal podcast.

I'm about to have such a parisocial relationship with you. You don't even want to know. I'm so excited. Make it an actual one. You can literally just text me. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Don't tell me. I'm so excited.

Yeah, we're already, and we're dreaming up what we want to keep talking about, so let me know if you have any suggestions. But yes, there's that. And then regretting you is an adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel, and it's like a family romance drama, which is a genre I've never been in. And a lot of us haven't been in, honestly.

So we all were actors. So when do we seem scared? And they're like, never? It's not about that. And it was like, the, it was the dreamiest experience. Like, Willow was my, everything felt like Kismet. Like Josh Boone and I first met a million years ago to do a movie that we didn't end up doing together.

But then he had stayed on my mind as a director. Obviously, I was obsessed with the fault in our stars, like everybody. And I had stayed on his mind, I guess. And when they were talking about casting this movie, it just sort of like, I don't know. It just all like congealed in the best possible way. And it's the story of kind of three relationships that the. core. It's my relationship with McKenna Grace who plays my daughter. My character had a baby at 17 and is like now watching her daughter go through like her 17th birthday and is just sort of like

both hoping she won't make the same choices she made while also not regretting the choices that she made to have her because that's fucked up. And also her relationship with like a long time best friend of hers, a platonic friend of hers. And then her daughter is falling in love with this guy from school at the same time. And it's just sort of what happens to this group of people in the wake of a car crash that kills my character's husband and sister. So anyway, that's not a spoiler. It's like what that's the central. Yeah, it's the central thing that happens. And then they're all reeling from various elements of it. Ooh. I mean, that's scary. It's an ugly cry and a happy cry and a laugh and people weirdly in all of the screenings we've had, the audience has been like vocally, like

participatory in the movie, which for this genre, for horror is very normal. But for this one is like very unusual. So I'm loving it. They're just used to reacting that way to all of your faces. They're like, oh, this is the part where I talk back and I say, talk to them. But I'm like, how fun is that that like eventually when it comes out really soon, people are going to be able to go to a theater and have this like very communal experience for the movie. And this genre is super unusual. But yeah, I really like people feel very involved in the movie from from the jump so great people love calling hoover too like she is like people she's such a huge following makes it intimidating to adapt because people have such strong relationships with these characters and she

writes from alternating points of view like this book is written from my point of view and mckenna's character's point of view and so you spent half the book like in one person's shoes and then to be like go be that person. It's like, I'm terrified. But I do feel like we did justice to the book and the characters. And I hope that people who love the book agree. I feel like having McKenna Grace in it too is so perfect because she's been acting since she was so young. So even me seeing the trailer, I was like, she's kissing somebody. Like she's five years old, but she's a small little baby. And so she's like all of our daughters. I'm like, yeah. She's 18. Crazy. Like she's an adult. Yeah, I know.

It was, yeah, she's so talented. She and Mason are both so good in it and together in real life, which is, you know, obviously beyond, beyond. That's really, I felt that right in my chest. That's so sweet. I know. It's, we love it. They're incredibly sweet. Well, I can't wait to see it and talk to you on screen and.

Yeah, we'll be talking right at you. I'll be having a full conversation. Yeah. We can hear you. We're being piped into all the theaters. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Thank you guys for having me. This was a delight.

Thank you. It was so fun. So fun. Yeah. No voices, really. Yeah, usually we end with a voice, but we can just say. From all of us here at Too Scary Didn't Watch, goodbye. Goodbye.

We did it. We made it. Thank you all for listening to another episode of Too Scary Didn't Watch. If you enjoy the show, please remember to subscribe and rate us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, five stars only, or we will. haunt you. And if you simply can't get enough of us, we have good news for you. We have lots of bonus content available on our Patreon at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. You'll get access to video trailer reactions, two bonus episodes a month, the power to vote for upcoming episodes and more. And last but not least, you can follow us on social media at TSDW podcast. We'll be back next week

with a new episode. We love you. That was a HeadGum podcast. What's up, everybody? I'm Kyle Mooney. And what's up, everybody? I'm Beck Bennett. And, man, ooh, we got something to tell you. Oh, yeah, we definitely do. Yes, it's a brand new podcast on HeadGum. That's right. And it's called What's Our Podcast?

Yep, and that's because we don't have a single idea what our podcast she'd be about. Yeah, we don't. So we actually have guests come on and they tell us what they think our podcast should be about and then we try it. Yep, guests like Mark Maren, Jack Black, Bernie, Bruny, Bruny, Rowsky, Kaperland, Bobby Moynihan, Meg Stalter, and Tim Balls, Landon Axler, Jory, Joni McGreeze, and Dender.

And Dender. New episodes release every Wednesday, so subscribe to what's our podcast. On YouTube, or any of your favorite podcast platforms. Yeah. I'm going to go do it right now.