Too Scary; Didn't Watch - WEAPONS

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Video episodes available on our Patreon!Movie Intro @ 14:00Trivia @ 18:28Recap starts @ 29:44 TrailerFollow 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.fm.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

And it is Hellchella Week 8. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. And I am so freaking excited for today's episode. This is a big one. This is a big one. Much anticipated one. Yeah.

And we are going to get all into it. We're going to get all into it. We're going to get deep into it, deep into the depths of this film that we will not tell you what it is yet. But if you want to know, there are timestamps in the show notes. Because first, just a little touch of haunted housekeeping. We are reminder. Well, I guess I should say first reminder that all held chella episodes are available as video episodes on our Patreon. If you want to see us as well as hear us.

And we are in, I believe, the second one. week of Alien Earth Recaps also available on our Patreon. So just a lot of good stuff happening on the Patreon. A lot of stuff happening over there. And that's patreon.com slash TSDW podcast if I didn't

say that yet. I don't think you did but now you did. And that's it. You know, really exciting stuff. Now only one question left to ask, which is

did anything scary happen to you guys this week? Well, I'll just say this is the thing that you guys know. So, sorry to tell you again. But I, so eight years ago, I got an IUD. I do need an update on this, by the way, because I haven't been updated in a few weeks. Yeah. So I got an IUG. I got the Morena, which at the time was supposed last five years. And then as I had it, they were like, oh, just kidding. Now it's affected for seven years. And I was like, great. And I'm like, oh, just kidding. Now it's affected for eight years. So I've just been like, wow, I have so much time. And I went in last summer to get it being like, okay, I need to get it replaced. It's because I was like, it's been eight

years because I know my inspiration for finally getting it was Trump getting elected. So I was like, okay, 2016, I have to get my eye. It's been eight years. He got elected again. I need to get my IUD replaced. But it like had taken a little while. So I realized it was actually August of 2017. So I was like, oh, I have a whole other year. Right. But then in that year, I got a new job. So I got new insurance. My gynecologist that I had been using, like, started her own practice that, like, doesn't take insurance. So I had to, like, switch all my doctors. I, of course, was like, great. Okay, August. I'll, like, really start thinking about this in, like, May. It has taken, I procrastinated. I'm going to give you that. But it is also taken me so. I have a fucking HMO, which, like, don't even get me started. through work I should have I got an HMO one time in my life and was like never again but if I could do it again but now for real never again it's a lot cheaper it's a lot cheaper especially when you're doing for two people and so it was like yeah the I can either pay a thousand

dollars a month for this HMO which is still fucking crazy or like 1700 a month for the PPO for me and Joel and I was like that's fucking insane I'm not going to do that yeah we'll just do the HMO. But so it's been so hard to find a primary care doctor. I've selected some through my insurance. But then when I actually call the practice, they're like, oh, yeah, we don't actually do HMO anymore. And it's like, okay, great. You're still on my fucking insurance's website as taking my plan. I've done that three times until I finally found a doctor. But it takes a while for them to, like, get in your insurance plan system as being like, because they have to be assigned to you because it's a fucking HMO. So you can't book with them until the insurance has them assigned.

And I finally fucking did. And I finally found a doctor. So she put in an order for the IUD because first has to put in order with the insurance, the insurance then has to approve it. I'm a woman with a uterus. Like, what else do? Like, I'm a fertile woman with a uterus. Give me birth control. Like, what the fuck is there to approve? We live in bad times.

So I'm waiting on the approval before I can then make my next appointment. I can't even make the appointment until it's approved. So I'm also just like sitting here on my hands fucking waiting. And I keep looking at like going into my insurance website and seeing like, has it been approved, has been approved. And I looked up my insurance today and I saw that my, we're recording this episode, again, sorry, guys, timing is weird. But on August 10th, 2025, and my first IUD was inserted on August 15th, 2017. So it's like, we have hit the eight years. And don't worry, I have enacted other methods of birth control.

But it's just really fucking annoying. And it's also like, I don't want to do this thing. Like, this is going to suck. it's going to hurt i don't it's like annoying that i as just again a person with a fucking uterus that can create life that i'm not interested in i have to like do all this fucking shit i do i do the person with the uterus and again joel would if he could but he fucking can't and it's just like it's making me so crazy i'm like stressed about it all the fucking time and i you've been stressed about it for months it's been honestly going on for

almost years at this point because you've thought you needed to get it out. It's been like years. Like, God damn it. I should have just done it a year early. Like, that would have been fine. But, you know, no doctor's trying to make you go through like a bit. So they're like, yeah, you got time. Don't do it now. And it's like, yeah, of course. Why would I do it now? I could wait longer. This is why. Oh, Emily, I'm so sorry. You're going to get that thing out of your body. You're going to get it replaced. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. I actually have like, oh, I have a. I have an. insurance thing, too, I want to talk about. But is it going to be too much insurance talk? Because I have a lot of things to say about my insurance situation. You know what? These are the times we live in. Mine's really silly. Okay, great. Mine's really silly. So it'll be a palette cleanser at the end. Perfect. Stay tuned. So this, so maybe everyone knows about this already, but something just happened to me with my insurance that I was just like, I can either choose to be enraged by this or I have to let it go because there's quite literally nothing I can do.

So first of all, we have insurance through Tim's job. So it's through the Episcopal medical network or whatever. So that means technically we have Cigna, but then it's through the Episcopal medical network who like partners with quantum health. Yep. So automatically. There's your insurer. There's your medical group.

And then there's quantum health. And then quantum health also doesn't do claims. So there's a different company that does claims called. allegiance. And then they also don't do like pharmaceutical stuff. So like any kind of prescriptions is a different. So automatically we've got five different things that I have to have like a username and a password for. Like I don't even, you know, it's like logging into a gazillion different things. So for my therapist that I was seen, she was like really expensive, but my insurance supposedly covers like 70% of out of network costs for mental health. So I was

only supposed to cover 30% and I like checked with them like a chat bot online being like okay so I'll only be responsible for 30% of this cost and like the chat bot online was like yeah because like to talk to a person takes they're like no no no no no please no no no please no don't talk about stuff not this right they're also never on the same page I feel like even if you are talking to a person it's kind of just like at their discretion so they're like oh yeah like totally like they have to know what's going on with four other fucking medical groups and it's also like it's because it's too it's too stupid well they're also probably looking at the same information i'm looking at which is like i look at my plan information online literally what it says

is out of network like mental health costs like you're responsible for 30% and the deductibles waived that's what it says in my plan so like okay so first of all just doing the claims has taken fucking forever because of the fact that I have to like manage a gazillion different whatever. So I basically have been getting these checks back for my reimbursement claims. And they have been like wackadoo. Like they are like all over the map. They make no fucking sense. So I was like I can't deal with this until finally I dealt with it.

Sat down. Had a conversation with what seemed to be a real person over chat though, not over the phone. Basically being like, can you explain to me what? is going on here because, like, I'm supposed to be covering 30% of the cost. So this is a thing that everyone should be aware of where apparently if you're doing an out-of-network provider, your insurance can decide to do a discount. They should say that the rate that they're charging you should actually be a different rate. And the way they call it a discount. Discount sounds good, right? Well, it's really a discount for the insurance company. So

the insurance company is basically like, we're just going to discount that rate. That's too high. For us. So we reimburse 70% of what we deem to be reimbursable. Yes. Yes. So it's actually whatever the fuck they want. And the discount, quote unquote, has been different every month. The discount they're giving themselves, there have been a couple months, they didn't give themselves a discount. But then there's been a few months where they were like, no, we deserve a hefty discount this month for no, apparent fucking reason. It's crazy. And I was basically like saying to this person, I was like, how was I supposed to know this?

And he was basically like, I don't know. Like I was like, this is horrible. And this is just for like therapy, which I'm like, I don't even need to do therapy. Like there are so many people out there. Yes, you do. Everyone does. I know, but I'm not going to die if I don't do it. Anyway, so just like triple check.

If you're worried that if you're thinking. your therapy bill is really high and you're then like no it's okay my insurance will cover it just triple check that your insurance is really going to cover it the way you think it's going to be covered just like also even if you triple check like you still might be wrong it's just like it kind of it kind of is of like you said out of our control in some way they like are specifically making it extremely confusing like on purpose yeah we yeah we've really gone we've really gone off track somewhere. And also, I want to apologize. I'm recording this on my phone. I'm sorry, you guys. So if the quality of audio is terrible, that's my fault. And then also, if you hear

children screaming or, like, slamming doors, that's my family in the background. Because I'm at the beach. Sammy, save us. Give us something silly. Sammy, tell us our silly thing. Mine is short and sweet and stupid and not even really scary, but my algorithm, it's the algorithm again. Oh, it's the algorithm again. On Instagram has taken to feeding me because I keep clicking them because I love them. AI videos of aliens stealing cats and getting into spaceship and taking them out to space. Oh, my God.

You need to, wait, have you sent those to us? I haven't specifically because I was like, I want to talk about it, but I'll post some. What do the aliens look like? Like kind of your standard grays, little green gray guys. Are they going into people's homes and taking the cats? Yes. Oh, my God. What do they do with them once they're in space?

Well, the videos end there. Okay. But there's also one where they're stealing like a little parakeet and the parakeet starts screaming and its mouth turns into a human mouth. Oh. And then the spaceship makes a little like blue, blue, blue, blue, looo, noise as it like floats away. they really crack me up and AI is you know complicated but but I really like this thing that it's doing if it makes you you know this particular thing makes you happy it can't be that bad you know yeah

this particular thing I'm pretty fond of so I can't wait to see these I'll post some of those they just keep coming and they get me every time I generally speaking it get I get pretty frustrated by how frequently it is difficult to tell if something you're seeing on your phone is real or AI Gen. I mean, that one I feel that one I feel like this one's pretty obvious. Yeah. But I'm glad to know that it's bringing you joy and I would I would like to share in that joy. There was one AI video that really got me, which was all the bunnies on the trampoline. Did you guys see that? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've seen one that's a bunch of raccoons. Yeah. And I was like, look at all those bunnies. Oh my God. Yeah. The raccoons got me. The raccoons got me.

Yeah. Imagine being 75 years old. You just don't fucking stand a chance. No. And that's, oh, we can't. I mean, this is supposed to be short and sweet. We're going to move on. Let's stop there. We're going to move on. Let's get to today's movie. Speaking of things being stolen from their homes and disappearing into the night.

Oh, my God. You guys, I don't like this. I don't like it one little bit. We are talking about weapons, the new movie from writer-director, Zach Kregor, starring Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden-Aren Reich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, and Amy Madigan. It is in theaters now. And boy, oh boy, did I love it.

I am so, sorry, Henley, but I am so excited. I am so excited. People have loved this movie. Emily, I think you could see it. And I think you should see it. I mean, you'd be scared, but I feel like every time I've gone to a scary movie with you, you're, like, mad that it's not scary enough. And I feel like this one would scare you, but it's also super fun and, like, just like really

well directed the acting is incredible the music's incredible it's like worth going to the theaters for i would say it's a very fun theater experience i'm going to be going to the theaters to see it again so okay maybe i'll go with you to see it again yeah although our other friend really was mad about it but i'm braver than her who was mad about it didn't kim get really upset that she saw this oh uh she was going back and forth i feel like she was upset but then she also admitted that it was really good okay okay and yeah i did just see that it's like outdid sinners and final destination bloodlines at the box

office it's going it's doing well it's doing really well people are loving it's also i mean i guess we'll get into it we get into trivia and stuff but like a sophomore release is like really hard to nail i am very i am very impressed um that zach has been able to pull it off again Yep. With like, it feels like it's almost going even more gangbusters. Even more gangbusters. Even more. Even more gangbusters.

Can you believe it? He doesn't have any children. Does he? Does he have any children? No, I don't think so. Yeah. But. That motherfucker.

Yeah, I mean, the kids are gone for most of the movie, I will say. But it's that you're not going to like the end. Yay! Yay! I'm so mad. I'm so mad. But I'm also very curious, of course. I was just telling you, okay, the other thing that I have to apologize for in addition to my audio is that I wasn't there for bring her back and I just want to do a public apology. This is your punishment. This is my punishment. The only reason I'm not there for bring her back too. I just want to be clear. It's not because I was too scared. It was because I'm on a family. No, no, no. Let's be clear here. Okay. Okay. Because it's only because of on a family vacation. And I would have to record two podcasts in one day and it's the first day of the family vacation. It would be really crazy if I was gone literally the entire first day of the family vacation. We're like everyone's flown here and is like here to like be here together. You're like, I'll be in the room podcasting. Everybody keep it down. It was a happy accident that the movie you happened to be doing today was bring her back. And you guys have talked about it so much or Sammy you've talked about it so much that I...

think that I probably will be Wikipedia in the plot. So even though I'm missing, I think you probably shouldn't. I have to know. I do this podcast for a reason. Yeah. Doing, yeah, I mean, I do think because, yeah, we are recording a double today and I do think doing weapons and bring her back in one day would maybe kill you. I think your whole vacation would be ruined. Okay, so I really shouldn't. See, this is where self-control comes in. Yeah, don't, don't look it up now. No, you know what I'm going to look it up. I'm going to look it up in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. Here's the thing. I have no impulse control, you guys. None. Yeah. Okay. Well, now's an opportunity to work on it. That's going to be bad.

Well, not when you don't have a therapist anymore. You're going to spiral back down, down into darkness. Why we need therapists? Yeah. Sayonara. Mental health. Sianara. Okay, Sammy, tell us about this freaking movie. Okay. Weapons has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Wowy. 82 on Metacritic and an 8 on IMD. that's basically like 200% on IMDB. The budget was $38 million. We are recording this on August 10th of Sunday of opening weekend. So far it has made $42 million.

Geez. Really, really good. That's good, you guys. That's really good. You love to see it. Some trivia. There was a very contentious bidding war for this movie. I heard about this at the time when it happened

This was like in the trades Like public drama Because Jordan Peel and Universal We're really trying to get this movie And They lost in the bidding war to New Line New Line bought it for $38 million Wait, I remember this because I think this was happening

When Joel and I were seated next to Jordan Peel and Chelsea Pready at dinner and we like thought they were maybe talking about it Yes And so prior to this Jordan Peel and Zach Crager had the same manager and because of this Jordan Peel fired this manager because he was so fucking pissed about this

just real dramatic stuff and the yeah the like intensity of these negotiations where compared to M. Knight Shama on second movie after six cents of people just losing their

fucking minds for you got to get the movie you got to get anything at L cost and I mean seems like it's fucking paid off. Yeah. I mean, the way that Zach, when we had him on for Barbarian, described the writing process, I was like, okay.

He was like, I just sat down in my garage and I wrote it from the beginning to the end. And he doesn't outline. He did it again. That's kind of how he did this one. It's really, really nuts. I guess you're a genius? Like a horror screenwriter prodigy? Because that's a crazy way to write anything.

Sit down and just. I just sat down and wrote the whole thing. Yeah, I listened to it. It's like kind of infuriating. I listened to some interviews with him, and he's like, yeah, honestly, I just turn my brain off when I'm writing. And I'm like, what? See, that's, that's like the dream. He's entering flow state immediately.

He's tapping into flow state in a way that's just churning out, like, the best horror movies is possible. This is what you want writing to be. Like, writing is like a fan, that's a fantasy of writing. For him to actually be living that fantasy, I mean, good for him, man. I mean, good for him. good for him uh i will say he wrote it following the death of his close friend and collaborator from widest kids you know trevor more died unexpectedly at uh in his like early 40s um zach said that was like a really dark time for him obviously and this movie was him kind of processing the grief

and like someone suddenly being gone from your life and so that was some context of when he was writing the movie. He also has said that he took a lot of inspiration from Magnolia, and we love Magnolia. That was kind of the first thing I heard about this horror movie was that it was going to have multiple characters and points of view and perspectives all culminating into one big finale, and that was very exciting to hear. and I think he pulled it off really well. Some casting what ifs. This movie was originally, people have probably seen there's like one headline going around

criminalizing Pedro Pascal. The writing of that headline is so fucking stupid. It's basically... It's clickbait. Yeah, during the strikes, a lot of shuffling had to happen. And Pedro Pascal was cast in this movie and had to drop out because of strikes.

And then it pushing into... a conflicting contract that he had with Fantastic Four. Which I'm sure is a contract you cannot fuck with. Right. So Pedro Pascal got replaced with Josh Brolin. Rooney Mara, I think, was also cast. Or I can't remember, but Rooney Mara and Elizabeth Olson were also considered for the role that ended up going to Julia Garner. And like with all, movies.

movies, which, well, maybe not all movies, but just always feels like this was the right, this is the way it was supposed to happen. I love Josh Brolin. I'm excited that he's in this. Obviously, I love Pedro Pascal, but he's in a lot of things. But yeah, these articles were like, Petro Pascal dropped out of weapons throwing the movie into chaos. And it was like, he really did.

It was like not his personal fault. Like, there's a real interesting internet smear campaign happening against Pedro Pascal right now. And he's going to be fine, but it is like, it's happening. And let me add to that smear campaign. So, excuse me Henley. So Silas was sick last week. And he wanted to watch this movie that they'd shown him like a clip from at Camp for some reason. And it's called We Can Be Heroes.

And it's one of those like shitty Netflix movies that they made it. They turned out a gazillion of these in like 2018, 2019 when like they just had so much money they didn't know what to do with. And they made this movie called We Can Be Heroes. and it's such terrible quality, terrible classic Netflix film quality, kids' movie, children, dressed like superheroes, like looks like put together by the PTA. Like, it is so poor quality. And Pedro Pascal starts in it. He's like the dad who stars in it.

And it was such a jump scare. I was like, what is Pedro Pascal doing in this horrible movie? He didn't become massively famous, I feel like, until, like, the last couple years. The last couple of years. Like, he was just kind of a regular guy. He was just getting his head smushed in Game of Thrones. And we were all like, we don't know that guy. We don't know that guy.

He was good. I don't know him. I think it was just, it was a reminder. It was a reminder that, like, yeah, you're absolutely right. He used to just be a guy. He used to just be a guy who would be in movies, like, we can be heroes, not anymore. Not just a guy anymore. Women let him touch them as friends, and we hate it.

So, yeah, I'm glad that I think Josh Brolin is perfect in this. And I don't think Pedro Pat. I mean, I'm sure he would have been great. But this was the right call in my book. And that's all the trivia I have. Should we watch this trailer? Have you guys seen this trailer? I haven't seen it.

I'm really excited. I don't think I have. I just feel like I've seen that image that's behind you. I've definitely seen the little kids running with their arms spread out. Oh, I really don't like this. This is a teaser, so it'll be fast, faster, but it is scary. Let's do it. Let's look.

This is a true story that happened in my town. So this one Wednesday is like a normal day for the whole school. But today was different We fucking hate this shit Every other class had all their kids But Mrs. Gandy's room was totally empty And you know why?

Because the night before At 2.17 in the morning Every kid woke up Got out of bed Walked downstairs and into the dark. And they never came back.

I don't understand at all. Why just her classroom? Why only her? Where are our children? We have a lot of emotional parents here. I think it's best if you keep some distance from this place. Matthew, where are you? Matthew, where are you? Where did you go?

This is where the story really starts. Whoa. Crazy. You think I can see this? Oh, my God. I kind of do, yeah. Only because I feel like you're, you haven't had a satisfying cinema experience where you actually get scared. Like I think there are things in this movie that.

that will scare you. But I think it is, the tone is a lot funnier than the trailer suggests, like, similar to barbarian, Zach started as a comedian. And so I feel like there's a lot, there was like a lot of laughing in my theater, which actually I listened to an interview with Zach. And he was like, I'm pretty, like, I did not write this one as to be funny. But it just seems like it kind of came naturally. And like, we've talked about horror and comedy go hand in hand because it's both are like a

release. Yeah. Sometimes you just need to laugh because you've been stressed. Yeah, exactly. Henley, how you doing? I feel like it's so hard because there are like too many real things that I have to just put out from my mind when I'm thinking about this movie. Do you know what I mean? That's that's horror. That's what it's playing on. Yeah, there's too many. And right now I'm having, I'm like really trying to like gather, gather myself together in order to properly disassociate. I'm like, I'm like, you got to, it's go time. You got to fucking disassociate right now. You should be getting kind of good at it by now. I feel like I think. Got a lot of experience. I know, I know. I just, you know, you never know. It's like you're when you're an athlete and you just, you got to just let your body take over on the fields. Yeah. It's just like when you're an athlete. You got it. You can't overthink anything. Yeah. I am scared, really scared. I'm really scared.

But here he is. And also, it doesn't help that Silas is obsessed now with asking me to play weapons with him. He wants me to play weapons. He calls it weapons. Man, it doesn't sound like a great game. We should maybe be discouraging that game. Oh, there's nothing I can say to get him to stop. Or maybe lean in and, you know, firepoles.

Poker's a good one. Make it a training session. It's all, yeah, I know. Oh, you want to play weapons? All right, let's talk about it. We're talking about it. Yeah, anyway. So, okay, all right, I'm ready.

I'm ready. I'm fine. All right. Oh, my God. Let's do it. Let's do it. Ah, microdosing, the classic American pastime, at least within the past, you know, a few decades. So this episode of Too Scary Didn't

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Oh, yeah, I saw that too. Town kid. This opening, I think, is very Magnolia-esque. If you have seen Magnolia, it starts with kind of a separate chapter that is just led by narration. This one is pertaining to the story very directly. She says, you know, this is a true story about my town. A lot of people died in a lot of really weird ways, but you won't hear about it on

the news because the police were so embarrassed that they couldn't solve it, that they covered it all up. Story starts at my school, Maybrook Elementary, and the day started just like any other, except this day, first year teacher, Mrs. Gandy, Justine Gandy's third grade class, none of her kids were there. Oh, you guys rot. And then this surprised me because they hit it in the trailer, except for one. And the camera pans from behind her, and you see that one kid is in. in the class quietly sitting with his head down. His name is Alex Lilly, and he's the only child in a class of 18 that came to school. So the other 17 are missing.

And do you know why they're missing? Because last night at 2.17 a.m., they got up, got out of bed, went down the stairs, walked out of the door, and into the dark, and never came back. We see images that have been on the posters of kids running into the night with their arms down almost like airplane arms, but a little lower, like a little upside down V. Just disappearing into the night, the town kid tells us that, obviously, everyone's upset, parents are upset, they closed the school for investigation, they talk to Mrs. Gandy a lot, they talked to Alex a lot, they talked to all the other kids in the school, seeing if anyone

had heard them making a plan, if there were any popular children. TV shows where kids did a similar thing. Nobody knew anything. And eventually they had to reopen the school. But before they did, they held a big kind of town hall type meeting with all the parents and teachers and counselors to try to work through how to feel and how to be sad together. And this is where the movie or excuse me, this is where the story really starts. Okay. I like that that teaser was literally just the first like, I was surprised by that. I was like, okay. Yeah, exactly. It is great. What happens now? So we get some full frame text that says Justine. Justine is Julia Garner's character, the teacher, Mrs. Gandy. We are now in the auditorium with this town hall meeting

happening. Someone is at the microphone talking about how it's okay to feel angry. And Josh Brolin gets up, his character's name is Archer. He's yelling. He's like, yeah, I'm angry. Like, why aren't we talking to Miss Gandy? She's here. I want to hear from her. Why is it only her class? And so Justine gets up. We see Justine is looking like so shell-shocks, just like devastated. I feel like it's pretty clear that she has nothing to do with this and is also just completely devastated that this has happened. She gets up to the mic and she says, I want answers just as bad as you do.

But there's really no, you know, solace to give these parents. And so everyone's still just screaming at her and yelling where are our children. Benedict Wong is the principal of the school. His name's Andrew Marcus. They call him Marcus. And he's kind of shielding her from angry parents

as he walks her to her car, tells her to know, go straight home and just kind of lay low. There's a lot of really emotional parents. And she gets in her car. She drives to the liquor store, gets two big handles of vodka, and then goes home. She's very anxious, looking over her shoulder, scared that she's being followed, that some, like, parent is going to, there are, like, they're really, angry so it does feel like the threat of violence is possible so she runs inside locks the door makes herself a real stiff drink and then there's a knock at the door she stands up calls out hello who is it nobody answers she goes and looks out the peephole nobody's there

sees like nobody in the street she goes back to her drink and then the doorbell rings she says fuck this goes into her room grabs some pepper spray opens the front door walks out again

nobody's there she's yelling out into the darkness like who's there what do you want like come on I'm right here you want to talk to me and there's nobody there but she notices on the side of her car someone has painted

in red paint which the next day we see her at the school in Marcus's office and Marcus tells her we think it's best if you take the rest of the year off Alex can go into the other third grade class and you're not fired feels crazy that they wouldn't have done that anyway she's teaching a class of one kid who's like where all my friends surely we can find another classroom for this one child. Yeah. And she says, how is Alex? I would love to talk to him.

Like, we're the only two that are left. And I would, like, it would really make me feel better if I could have a conversation with him. Marcus says, I'm going to stop you right there. That's to make you feel better. It's not to make Alex feel better. And, like, what's good for Alex right now is to just, like, be in a classroom with other kids and try to be, like, as normal. as possible, make things as normal as possible for him.

So she's essentially put on leave, I guess, and not allowed to talk to Alex. And so she goes to the police station to file a report about her car being vandalized. She's talking to a cop making the report when another cop walks through the parking lot. And they lock eyes, recognize each other, kind of wave. awkwardly. That guy walks away. We cut to Justine later that night sitting alone at a bar and that cop walking in to meet her for a drink. His name is Paul, played by Alden Erin Reich. And they have the vibe of like they used to date. They're being awkward around each other, but clearly like have a history and he's apologizing for not having reached out sooner. Obviously, she's going

through a really hard time. He's like, I should have called. But he's also like pretty condescending to her because she's getting a little drunk and saying, you know, everybody hates me. And he's like, you know, not everybody is thinking about you all the time. And like maybe you need to not have a little pity party for yourself and it's like um i think actually like she has a right to have a little bit of a pity party at least a little one and so then she says does donna know you're here and he mumbles we're actually not happening right now and justine's eyes light up and she's like really Wow. And so he previously said no to a drink and was just like, I'm just here for just a second just to catch up. And then at this moment, she, hearing that Donna is not in the picture right now, she's like, have a drink with me. Come on. Like, seriously, have a drink with me. Turns up the flirting. Cut to next morning. Obviously, they've had sex the night before. He has slept in late and he's like, fuck, I have to be at work. She's like, I'll drive you. So they get in Justine's car, and she's asking him, like, how is work going?

And he says, you know, it's fine. It's whatever. She's like, fine, whatever. Like, I hope that's not the attitude at the whole police station because there's 17 missing kids and, like, what are you guys doing about it? And he's like, first of all, I'm not a detective. Like, that's not actually my job. And they get in, like, a little argument. And basically, she'd drive. drops him off at his car and is like, all right, whatever.

Like, it was nice seeing you, bye. But it doesn't end on the nicest tone note. And then she drives to the school and just sits outside until the kids get out of school. And she watches until she sees Alex walking out. Justine. Yeah, not great. And then she slowly follows him home. or no, he gets into the bus and she follows the bus

and sees where it drops him off and she's parked you know a half a block away just watching as he walks into his house and then she gets out of the car, walks up to the front door, rings the doorbell and nobody answers and we're noticing that the house is looking a little creepy.

There's newspaper all over the windows The lawn, like, hasn't been mowed. It's looking a little disheveled. There's a pile of newspapers that haven't been taken inside. She's looking suspicious. Like, okay, what is the deal here? Rightfully so, I think.

Yeah. And so she goes through the side gate to the backyard of the house. And this was one thing where I was like, I think I actually would do this. You know, when you see people in horror movies doing something, and you're like, well, nobody would do this. that. Like, I think you would. You're, like, concerned for the safety of a child and I'd be like, okay, I am going to, like, kind of snoop. And she sort of, like, got nothing to lose seemingly. Right. And she can't really, like, call the police because they'll be like, what the fuck you're doing in this person's house? Yeah. So she sneaks around back and she finds a section of

window where the newspapers aren't all the way together. So there's a little crack that she can look through. and she's scanning the room. All the lights are off. It's really dark in there because there's coverings on all the windows, even though it's the middle of the day. And all of a sudden, she sees a man and a woman

just sitting motionless on the couch in the living room. She screams, she falls backwards, she knocks over a shovel, makes a loud noise. Her eyes go wide thinking, well, obviously they heard that. They know I'm back here. She looks back through the crack. They're still just sitting completely still.

Ew. Oh, what the fuck? What is going to? She runs back to her car. She calls Marcus. She says something's going on at Alex's house. He's like, I told you to leave Alex alone. She's like, I don't fucking care.

Like, you need to do like a wellness check. Something is wrong. You need to figure it out. And he's like, like, okay, fine. I will. And then she- All right, that was the right move. Yeah.

She goes back to the liquor store, and this is my favorite shot of the movie, I think. She's winding down the aisles, and she's in focus, but there's someone following her that's out of focus, and just as she's turning corners, the person behind her is like clearly following her, but going in and out of frame, and she is completely oblivious to this person following her. And so it's like this scary but kind of funny shot where there's just like a boogeyman in the background type of thing and she gets to the liquor aisle and the person catches up with her and it is Donna played by June Diane Raphael who is her makeup is smeared. She's obviously been crying. She calls Justine a whore and pushes her down and grabs a bottle of liquor and you

think she's going to like smash her over the head with it but she just opens it and like pours it all over justine makes a big scene and he's like like fuck you stay away from stay away from us um pretty pretty tough and then donna leaves and so it's just like a humiliating scene for justine nobody that's a that's a salt though nobody at the we don't really see anybody at the no we don't really see anybody i don't think so also it's like was justine like he said you guys weren't together. He said you weren't together. Yes, I think so, and I think she just says you're a liar type of thing. Believe women. You may have heard of HelloFresh. They send chefcrafted recipes and fresh ingredients to your home, but this summer they made their biggest menu upgrade yet. This isn't

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islands. All the little treats are so cute. And my favorite part is when you line up three of them. The phone gives you this satisfying little buzz, lets you know you're doing a good job. I don't know. It just feels nice and I am all about finding things that lower my stress levels and make me feel good. You deserve a treat. Join over 100 million match three players and download Cookie Jam today. So she goes home after this, makes another stiff drink, strong, strong drink is just getting drunk into the night and we see her like stumbling to bed. and falls asleep, and then we see what is obviously a dream scene of her walking down the empty hallways of the school and into her classroom. And in her classroom, it's like nighttime and all creepy, and all the kids are there with their heads face down on their desks.

And she turns, she's looking at all of them, scared. And Alex, in the back row, lifts his head up and he has this dramatic makeup, like, kind of clown-clowny makeup on his face, like lipstick and eye shadow, and he has this, like, wide-eyed grin. That's really scary. And Justine shoots up in bed, wakes up, like, freaking out, like, freaking out. Oh, thank God. It was just a dream. And she thinks she hears something in her house, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night after a bad dream, you're just like on edge. And she's looking through the hallway, but you don't really see anything. And she's like, okay, whatever I lay down and go back to sleep. She lays down. And on the ceiling above her is a woman with the same makeup that we saw all. on Alex in the dream.

This woman has, like, crazy, curly. And you just get, like, a quick glimpse of her, but she, like, looks like a clown. Crazy curly red hair, crazy makeup, big smile. She's wearing, like, a lime green jacket. Really confusing, but a big jump scare. What? Just on the ceiling above her bed. Yeah.

And she sees her? Yeah, she's, like, floating. Looking down at her. Looking down. Yeah, yeah. She's not like Spider-Manning up there. No, she's just floating. That jump scare got me pretty good.

Next day, she is following Alex home again. Wait, so she saw her or she didn't see her? She sees her, and yeah, she screams and then it's a, you know, blink and it's gone type of thing. But she was awake. But she was awake. Okay, okay. So she's following Alex after school again. And this time wants to catch him.

before he goes inside. And so as he gets out of the bus, she walks up to him as like, Alex, hey, like, can I talk to you? I just want to make sure you're okay. And he's got his head down and trying to ignore her. And he's like holding his books and just like quickly walking to the front door of his house. And she starts to follow him. And he turns around and says, don't follow me. And we see him get to the front door.

and the front door just opens seemingly on its own, and we just see darkness inside, and he goes inside, and the door closes behind him. Oh, no, what is going on at Alex's house? Who is Alex? So, Justine stays in her car outside of Alex's house, and she's just, like, doing a little stakeout type of thing, just seeing if she can see anyone going in and out,

what the fuck is going on in this, house, but she's there for hours and she falls asleep. And so we see her asleep in the front seat of her car and we see Alex's house. Again, the door just open into darkness. And then someone comes out and it's a woman whose hair is all crazy, not like the one that we saw on the ceiling. This woman is blonde, but it just looks really disheveled, and she's walking with her arms down in the little airplane position and kind of hobbling over to Justine's car in a very unnatural way. And we're, you know, the audience being like, oh, my God, Justine, wake up, wake up. She's not waking up. This woman walks to her driver's side window.

peers in at her, we see that she has scissors in her hand, and then she keeps walking past the window out of sight. And we're like, what the fuck? And then we hear the back door just open, unlocked. Oh, my God. The car. We hear her climbing into the car, but the camera is still on Justine, so we can't see her. Oh, my God. And. And then her hand with the scissors come forward into the front seat, and she snips off a chunk of Justine's hair, cut to black. Okay. Okay, they're voodoo dolling in that house. Full frame text, Archer.

Wow. Okay. Now we go to Josh Brolin's character. We see him sleeping in his son. He's bed. It's obviously very depressed. His wife comes in and says, like, I'm going to work. It's clear that they are not each other's like source of comfort in this time. And he gets up and gets out of bed and goes to watch the ring camera footage of his son running out the door. That's part of how they knew it happened at 2.17 was a lot of the cameras captured the kids running out at exactly the same time. And so he's one of the families that did have footage of his son, Matthew, leaving. And he's just watching it over and over and over and just replaying it and staring super hard, seeing if he can find any information.

But again, it's just a boy running into the night out of sight. he goes to work he works in construction he's like the lead on this construction site someone comes up and says they got the order wrong and they gave us red paint instead of green paint he's really angry about this it's like i'll take the red paint to exchange it for the right stuff throws the red paint in his car he did which he did which he did he did the witch which by the way is a compliment So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I am a witch. Then he goes to the police station and goes in to talk to the chief of police. It's clear that he comes here a lot. Chief of police is saying, you know, nothing has changed. I will obviously tell you if anything changes. And he's like, well, what are the feds doing? Like, what's the FBI doing? And like, like, he's clearly just, like, desperate for answers, obviously.

and the chief of police is trying to calm him down just saying like I'm like we're we're literally doing everything we can like I promise you we're doing everything that we can then we see him at the town hall school meeting from his perspective now so just quickly shows him like getting up and yelling like why her class why only her class like I want to hear from Justine and then we again see Marcus ushering Justine out and we see see Archer following her home in his truck. And yeah, we see, like, the camera shows us the bucket of red paint has been opened. And so just closes that little question mark.

It was him fucking with her. And then he goes back home, gets in his son's bed, falls asleep. and wakes up also into, like, what's pretty clearly a dream right away. The, like, coloring is different, and he thinks he hears footsteps running down the stairs, and he says, like, Matthew, and he gets out of the bed and then looks back in the bed and sees himself still sleeping in the bed. And so he follows the sound of footsteps, and it's kind of like, Matthew's just out of sight around every corner, like as he's going down the steps and out

through the front door, he's retracing Matthew's steps into the night. And as he disappears into the darkness, there's like a woods type of thing in the middle of town. So he's in these dark, dark woods, can't see anything following Matthew through to the other side where it's their house again, which, you know, doesn't make physical sense. But, He sees their own house, he looks confused, and then he sees above the house a huge floating AR-15, just like circling above the house, like looking like a video game almost. And it says in it 217, 217, 217, 27, and he's just looking at this, puzzled, doesn't know what to make of that. I still don't know what to make of that. and oh well 217 well yes because of that's when they left yeah like why they are why yeah it's just a little

I don't yeah I don't really know what to make of that one he has Zach has said like this is not about school shootings but a lot of people have kind of put some of that onto it which makes sense I mean there is children disappearing from classrooms for school shooting reasons as well but that he says that's not that wasn't his intention attention. So he follows Matthew into this little duplicate house and runs up to his bedroom, finds Matthew bundled up in the bed. Archer is super emotional. He gets on his knees at the side of the bed. He turns Matthew over, and we see Matthew just has like an empty blank face. He's expressionless. eyes are open and he's just looks like he's gone. And Archer is just saying like, where did you go?

Where did you go? Matthew talked to me like, where did you go? And he's kind of crying. And he's saying, saying, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll let you down. And I never told you, but I should have told you because I feel it. I feel it all the time. And I don't know why I didn't say it all the time. But I love you. And then it cuts back to the bed. And it's the red-haired clown lady again with a big smile wrapped up in bed in Matthew's place and Archer screams awake, pops up in Matthew's bed for real, and it kind of scrambles up, his eyes darting around, and then he just goes, what the fuck? Got a big laugh.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. He gets up that morning, again, seems like a routine to just watch the footage of Matthew over and over and over. And then he kind of marks a spot where, like, the spot on the curb that Matthew ran off. And he grabs a kind of map of the city type thing that you might have. If he worked in construction, like shows all the lots and stuff and how it's all laid out. And he basically plots the closest point and the first. this point that he can see Matthew in the video and says like kind of assumes if he's running in a

straight line where would he have gone and it leads to this radio tower and so he drives to this radio tower and is looking around no idea I mean there's no there's not kids there it's just don't know really what he's looking for but he's just you know uh trying anything he can think of to find his son and so he drives to another parent's house and it's clear it we kind of realized that no one has seen each other's footage like they just had to show the footage to the police and so yeah have any of these parents like interacted with Alex's parent, like, I feel like if they're all blaming Julia Garner, you'd also want to be like, what, what didn't, like, what does this kid know? Why didn't he run away? Yeah. Yeah, that's a bit of a blind spot in the movie. All right. I mean, it's fine, Zach. Don't worry about it, but I'm, you know, now I'm curious. Yeah. So he goes to this house that he knows that these parents also had footage, but he hasn't seen the footage. And so he basically asks to see it, to get more data. And these parents are played by Sarah Paxton, Zach Kreger's real-life wife.

And Real-life wife, real-life wife. And Justin Long in a fun little cameo for barbarian fans. Yeah. And it's just a pretty quick little scene, but it is funny. Justin Long is just, you know, how you can just kind of make any little line funny. Yeah, he's really charming. He's very charming. And Archer basically convinces him.

them to let to show him their footage and he does the same thing with their daughter plots the closest point and the furthest point in the footage of where she ran the direction she was running which is not towards the radio tower but he does the same thing

where he draws a long line if she was just running straight where what would the path have been and sees where these two lines intersect ooh smart math smart again it's a totally random spot he drives around

he's like I don't know what I'm looking for but you know he's trying something and as he's as he's driving he sees justine filling up at a gas station and he's like oh this bitch and he turns

into the gas station to confront her causes a scene he goes up and starts like yelling at her like I think you have a lot to say you have a lot to explain and And she's like, oh, you are you threatening me? You want to threaten me?

So they're just like getting into it when she notices someone running towards them with their arms out in an airplane shape. This is the middle of the day. And as this person gets closer, we see that it is Marcus, Benedict Wong, looking absolutely crazy. He's covered in blood. His eyes are bulging. there's like black goo around his mouth and he's just charging straight towards Justine and she like sees him and he's like Marcus

and there's no time to react he like knocks her down Archer is also like completely shocked what the fuck is going on tries to like pull Marcus off of her she crawls under the car Marcus crawls under the car after her he was just like full speed trying to get Justine like pushing Archer off, but it's clear that Justine is his target, but Archer is fighting him, like keeps grabbing and pulling him off. Justine kind of kicks him, but he is seemingly

like almost supernaturally driven. Supernaturally driven. And Justine gets a little bit of a a little bit away and is like running towards the the store part of the gas station just to like get away from him and Archer is like pinning Marcus down. But then Marcus gets the upper hand and is strangling Archer now. And you see Archer's eyes kind of fluttering and cut to black. Oh my God. No.

Really fun, really fun structure. Oh, I'm stressed. Now we get text that says. Paul. Who's Paul? Paul's the cop, Alden, Aaron, right? And we're seeing him at the police station, like locker room, getting ready for a day of work. He's talking to Donna on the phone.

She's out of town for the weekend. He's like, okay, I'll see you. I'll see you on Sunday. He gets to his patrol car, and we see this is the moment where he sees Justine filing the police report and they wave at each other. And he gets in his car, he starts his shift. his patrol shift and pretty quickly he sees kind of a junky looking guy that we've seen a little bit before played by Austin Abrams and the first time we saw him, I'm like, he's going to be in this movie because that's a famous actor. And this is a Magnolia type movie, so he's going to

come back. But we see this guy looking like he's trying to break into an apartment in an alleyway and Paul gets on his little loudspeaker from his car and says stop police this guy turns and looks at him wide-eyed fuck he's caught and just like darts darts away running Paul turns on the siren chasing him we're getting you know Paul's driving down the street this guy's running through the alleyways but eventually he corners him gets out of the car the chase continues a little bit but he eventually tackles him to the ground pretty hard. And this guy's saying like, please, man, I live there. I just didn't have my keys. And Paul is saying, like, I don't want to hear it. He cuffs him. He says, uh, this guy's name is James, by the way. And he puts him against the car, like on the hood and is frisking him and

asking him, do you have any needles in your pockets? Do you have any weapons in your pockets? Weapons. Weapons. And he says no. And he's like, are you sure? Because I don't want to get poked if I'm reaching into your pockets. And James is like, I don't have anything, man. There's nothing in there. He reaches into his pocket and immediately gets poked by a hypodermic needle and is bleeding. And he looks down at his hand. He's so mad. He's like, what the fuck? And he just punches James. knocks him out just like as kind of a reflex almost like so mad that he's just been stabbed but not a good reflex to have when you're not a good reflex especially when you're a cop also like then

maybe don't reach into a why did you have to reach this maybe was not the best way to do it put a glove on or like wait till you get to the station like what the glove wouldn't have mattered I think he does have a glove on but it's it's like a latex glove so it doesn't well don't just doesn't don't do it if you suspect big needles in a pocket like make him take his pants off and shake it out turn him upside down shake him upside down and shake him oh my god obviously so he's freaking out panicking he about to make a series of bad this is that yeah gets into the car like get some sanitize a hand sanitizer out of the glove compartment buddy it's just like pouring that on like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck that

then notices the dash cam recording everything he's like fuck fuck fuck unplugs the dash cam and then it's trying to like get his head on straight he gets up he's doing some deep breaths he goes he shakes james wakes him up and he's like hey man i'm gonna let you go i way i see it you did me wrong i did you wrong like let's just leave it at that and like uh just don't come around here again okay and James is like, okay, and he's like, he's like, if you come, if I see you again, we're going to have a problem. James like, all right, man, like gets up, runs off. Paul goes back to the police station. He goes right and tells the chief, which I was a little surprised by. He's just like, this is, this just happened. Chief obviously looks very disappointed. It's kind of like,

oh, it's like, all right, well, as long as he doesn't file a complaint, that footage never needs to see the light of day, but if he files a complaint, like, you're fucked. And so Paul's super upset having a really bad day. And that's when he gets the text from Justine. We see kind of quick images of the scene we've seen play out already a little bit from his perspective, kind of picking back up after he gets dropped off by Justine the next morning and...

I mean, what was he supposed to do? He had a really bad day. He was he not supposed to not have sex? That would help. And him feel better. And Donna's not here this weekend, which basically means we're not in a relationship. If she's not here,

he could have had sex with her, but she wasn't here. Which is her to feel better. Like, I didn't. He didn't tell her to leave. It's her that left. So I mean, he had, again, a really bad day. So he gets into his car and drives home.

He doesn't, he's not working today, I guess. And goes into his apartment and Donna's there. Mm-hmm. Ooh, baby. She does a test. Donna knew. Donna says the conference got let out early. someone was sick so they canceled it where have you been and paul's face hides absolutely nothing he's

like you hear it's basically him going like uh uh oh oh where was i where was i fuck fuck where was and she just knows and she says you piece of shit and she storms out presumably to go confront justine and paul is like really fucking upset now and he's getting in his car he's like god damn it oh my god he drives back to the station and he sees james right outside the station on his cell phone and he's like yo motherfucker and like turns on his alarm and starts pursuing james again or his siren or whatever and don't want this guy to do a complaint are you going to kill him is that that's the only option It's kind of the implication.

I think he does, like, unplug his dash cam again. Like, he's maybe going to fucking kill this guy. Oh, my God. James looks like, oh, shit, and runs off and cut to black. So many cliffhangers. Full frame text, James. All right. Oh, boy, oh, boy.

We meet James smoking crack in a tent in the woods. he is gets out he's he has a cell phone and he's calling seems like a family member asking for money he's clearly like a homeless drug addict that uh is yeah he's on the phone asking his i think a brother sister for money because he's like yeah no i i'm going to talk to mom i will talk to mom and as he's walking down the street is clearly like cracked out and he's trying every door handle on every car as he walks by it, which is, it's like done in a way that I thought was kind of funny. And he eventually one of the car doors opens. He finds like a child's iPad and like drawing pad type thing.

I don't know. It's like clearly a child's electronic toy. He looks like he's just had a huge come up. He goes to the pawn shop and is like, this has got to be worth at least 50 bucks. Pawn shop guy's like, no, I don't, I don't want this. And he's like, come on, man, like 30 bucks, 20 bucks, 10 bucks. He won't give him anything for it. And James notices a poster on the wall with photos of all the missing kids that says $50,000 reward for any information about these kids.

Oh, he's going to say it was James. No, it's James. He's going to say, who's, what's he going to do? This is James, yeah. No, he doesn't, he actually doesn't like really, he doesn't seem like he really clocks it that much. but we just notice it, yeah. Then we see him leaving the pawn shop and he's just kind of roaming the neighborhood. And then we see him trying to break into the apartment that we saw from Paul's perspective earlier.

Again, it kind of gives us a few snippets of that interaction again, picking back up with Paul saying, I don't want to see you around here again. If we see each other again, there's going to be a problem. Then we see James after that continuing just. walking around town looking for places to rob or things to steal presumably and he sees Alex's house with all the newspapers on the windows oh no that's not where you want to go and all the overgrown lawn and piles of unpicked up newspaper and he's like oh hell yeah like these people are obviously out of town out of town as whenever we go out of town we do we definitely make a

way to cover all the house. You've got a newspaper the windows. You've got to cover them with newspaper. Well, because we're not in town and we need everybody to know. Yeah. So. You don't want things to get sunlight on them when you're not in town. It'll bleach the furniture. It'll bleach the sun bleach when you're out of town. Because when you're

in town, the sun goes into you. Right. When you're not in town, the sun absorbs into your furniture and everything gets bleached white by the time you get home. Exactly. So he breaks into Alex's house. And He is searching. I am very excited to find out what he sees inside this house, though. What's inside? He's searching around for what to steal. He sees a video game console by the TV. Hell yeah. He's going to take that. He starts trying to unplug it. And then we see in the reflection of the TV the two people just sitting motionless on the couch still. And it's adults. It's two adults. And they're aligned. Like a mommy and a daddy? Seemingly like a mommy and a daddy.

And is the mummy the lady we saw before? Yes. Okay. That cut Justin's, a chunk of Justine's hair. But this is before that happens in the timeline? I think so. Okay. But what's his name?

James. I wanted to call him Austin. It's the actor's name. He sees them. They really startle. He falls over backward and is like, shit, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was lost.

I like, I'm sorry. I was lost. I was lost and I just accidentally like stumbled upon your video game console. They don't react. They're just sitting there still. Blank face staring straight ahead. He's confused by this but kind of quickly like

all right. I can just like keep stealing stuff. Not my problem. He goes to the kitchen. He starts filling a pillowcase with their like fancy silverware. And he. notices a door. And he's like, I guess I'll check this room too.

He's just kind of checking every room. This door goes down to the basement. The devil lives down there. Have you not seen long legs? Also, like, I mean, I guess I get it. He's desperate. But it is to the truly wildest thing in the world to see that couple then be like,

I guess I'll check every room. Yeah. Well, he's obviously, like, also very high. Like, he's... Yeah, sure. Perhaps not processing reality correctly. Yeah. Okay, I'm really excited about this basement because shit got crazy in the basement barbarian.

And I'm not saying that he's going to be like a basement guy where his whole deal is like, uh-oh, when you go to the basement, crazy shit happens. But maybe he is, maybe he's a basement guy. Maybe he's basement guy. Well, James goes down just the first couple steps. He's peeking in the basement, turns on the light. There's 17 third graders just standing there motionless. Wow, Crager's a big basement guy

Oh my God, Craigger, what happened to you in the basement? Oh my God, just blank face staring. And they're just staring. Yes, yes. Same way as the parents are. They should have checked in on Alex. This, what is up with Alex? Yeah, what were the police doing?

Just wait. There will, I mean, probably not enough. Benedict Wong would come do a wellness check and he's going to get fucked up. Not enough answers. Well, that would be the. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We're going to get there. We're going to gather. He, James is extremely freaked out by this, runs out of the house. Two adults, not scary. 17 children. It's scary. And he's right about that. Yeah. But again, kind of quickly forgets about it and goes to the pawn shop to pawn off the silverware. Amazing for you to be able to put that out of mind. Yeah. I mean, you're just like, Drugs are the only thing that mattered to James.

And so he's pawning this silverware, and now he sees this reward sign with a new set of eyes, because it's like, oh shit, I've seen 17 children. Reward for these 17 missing kids. And so he calls the number, and he's like talking all speedy. He obviously sounds like completely insane. He's like, I know where the kids are. They're in this basement. I can show you. but like the $50,000, are you going to give me the $50,000?

Because, like, I don't really want to come to the police station. I don't really like police station. So if someone could, like, meet me and give me the $50,000, and I can show you where they are, but, like, I just don't want to come to the station. And as he's on the phone, he's, like, near the police station. And this is the moment where Paul sees him and is, like, you motherfucker. Yeah. Oh, God.

And James, hangs up the phone, runs. running away from Paul again and runs into the woods and gets kind of in the middle of the woods in a way that he seems like he gets lost, like he's high and like can't figure out where he is. And he's kind of like spinning around, like breathing heavily, like what's going on. And then he sees a clown-looking woman just so mildly. I keep forgetting about her. I think she goes back and I'm like how did I forget about this lady but I've really liked every time she's new to me yeah and she's just smiling a big smile at him she like miss frizzle like kind of yeah she yeah has like she is like miss frizzle horror it's a little miss frizzley and he runs he's like

it's not real it's not real that's not real he finds his tent he's really scared he like closes the zip in his tent. He grabbed some of his needles as a weapon. He's like just like holding weapons. He's holding them up like he's going to stab whoever comes in the tent and we hear footsteps approaching the tent. He's going, it's not real. It's not real. Tent unzips and James just lunges and stabs. Paul. And it is Paul. He gets stabbed in the face with three more needles. He's just like, he's like, what the fuck man you fucking stabbed me again i mean to be fair probably whatever was on those needles the first time was enough but i mean yeah you don't want more yeah so he grabs james cuffs him again throws him in the cars like you're under arrest this time and james is saying wait wait wait

but i know you know those missing kids i know where they are and paul doesn't believe him but is like, what are you talking about? He's like, they're in a basement. I can show you where. And I feel like, Paul is kind of having a moment of like, well, if this is true, like this could kind of redeem my career. And as they start driving, he's like, okay, I'll let you show me. But like, you're obviously crazy. And that's like, you're not, whatever, but let's just go see just in case. And I'm not calling back up. I'm not calling back up or telling anyone where I'm going. And he at one point, turns back to him. And he's like, do you have AIDS? And he's like, well, What? He's like hepatitis, anything like that? James is like, shit, man, I don't think so. And he's

like, oh, all right. Yeah, Paul, you should have gone to the, like you should go to the doctor. You should get some blood work. And so they drive to Alex's house. I go to the doctor's heart, so I guess I actually really get it. Right. The medical system. It's too difficult. It's too complicated. Intentionally so. So they get to Alex's house. Paul, tells James you're staying in the car. I'm going in. And James says, how do I know you're not going to take the $50,000 for yourself? Oh, James. And Paul walks up to the front door, which just opens as we've seen it before. Paul goes inside, door closes behind him. We see James in the car watching from the, like, backseat.

of the cop car cut to hours later it was daytime now it's night time James is still in the back of this car Paul is still in the house and he's James is like what the fuck is going on come on because he's probably like handcuffed

and can't get out of the cup car you can't get out of the back of a cop car yeah and so then the door opens and out comes Paul with his arms outstretched and he just walks quickly

towards the cop car opens the back door James can clearly tell something is not right and he's screaming like no man please don't do this Paul grabs James drags him

screaming into the house closes the door cut to black okay full screen text Marcus wow

we see Marcus and his husband at the grocery store, grocery shopping. Marcus is on the phone with Justine, the call we heard earlier, where she is asking him to please do some sort of wellness check on Alex. And he's saying, okay, I'll do it. I'll call his parents in. I'll make sure that everything's okay. And she says, please, like, I think you need to do that.

Damn. So we see him in the office the next day. Receptionist comes in, says, your appointment is here in walks clown lady miss frizzle oh clown lady again

another jump scare wasn't like a real regular lady I mean she's pretty crazy but yeah she's a regular lady she's looks like smeared lipstick big like blue eye shadow again wearing like lime green her hair is like bright red

big earrings, big glasses. She's just like, you know, she might just be a character. This might just be like a lady with, if you saw her in the world, you'd be like, whoa, she's a little kooky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But you wouldn't be like, there's a clown. Right. You wouldn't be like this is, yeah, like a murdering clown.

Or like this is like a problem. Locker up. Yeah. Right. Locker up. Locker up. You wouldn't start chanting lock her up. Yeah. Yes.

But the emails. So Marcus looks, you know, confused at this lady. have we met before? She introduces herself as Gladys. She says, I'm Alex's aunt. His parents aren't feeling well, so I've been taking care of him. Yeah, you don't love when you're doing a wellness check on a kid

for a lady coming in looking like this being like, yes, and he's fine, and we're fine. Marcus says, what's wrong with his parents? And she says, oh, you know, just a touch of consumption. he's like consumption she's like just a touch and he's like well I really

need to speak with them and it's actually not negotiable like I need to speak with their you've in fact made this worse his legal guardian and you can see Gladys getting a little irritated by this and she's like well that's not going to be possible and he's like well it's not again it's like not up for debate

like legally I have to speak to his legal guardians. There's been a wellness check requested. And she's like, who requested it? I'm not at liberty to say. So she's like, oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear. This actress, this is Amy Madigan. I didn't really know her from anything. She's married to Ed Harris. And I just am so obsessed with this performance. It's absolutely incredible. She just bounces back. between, like, kind of aloof and silly and, like, so sinister, just, like, so quickly. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Hmm. So you can see this, like, sinister bubbling when she's like, who made the complaint? Oh, I don't like that at all. But then she'll be like, okay, let me, I'll go talk to his parents and how about they come in and, like, I'll figure it out. And he's like, that's going to, yeah, that'll be best, like, I really need to. see them. And she's like, okay, I'll figure it out. And she leaves. She's going to put him on airplane mode. That's what it is. Airplane mode. And so we see that evening, Marcus at home with his husband, they are watching a documentary notably about parasites, specifically the ones that I think

the last of us was kind of based on, the ones that like go into the brains of ants and grow like burst through their head while keeping the ant alive. We're kind of clocking that. And And also, I didn't notice at first. I forgot that was a thing. That's so fucking horrifying. It's so horrible. But they were also, there were, there's also, uh, on the whiteboard at in Justine's class.

They were like learning about parasites in school. So we're kind of, and the parasites went, hmm. They manifested the parasites. Somebody talking about me? Someone called? Seems like a really good timing for me to come in and kind of be messing around. Now that they know. Now that, do they want to know about the biggest parasite of all?

because we can show them. We can show them. We can show us. We see nothing yet. So they're watching this documentary and knock, knock, knock at the door. It's Gladys. She is all over the place, rambling. I tried to catch the bus and I missed it.

And I'm so, I walked all the way here and I'm exhausted. She seems like she has this kind of technique of just overwhelming people and kind of being disarming in that way where you're just like so like. Like, what are you doing here? How can I get this woman? Yeah. Like, I don't know. Yeah. And she's like, please can I come in for some water.

I just need a little bit of water. I'm so exhausted from the whole walk over here. And Marcus is like, I don't think that's a good idea. And Marcus's husband comes behind him. It's like, don't be ridiculous. She's like an older woman. And he's like, she just needs a glass of water. Let her come in for a glass of water.

And he's like, okay. Don't do it. So they go into the kitchen and he grabs a cup. And she says, a bowl, please. Oh, no. Because I'm a parasite after all. And he gives her a look. She says, I know it's a peculiarity of mine.

I don't even bother trying to explain it. But yeah, a bowl if you don't mind. Okay. Gives her a bowl of water. How does she drink it? She doesn't yet. She says, I have great news. Alex's father has agreed to come in first thing Monday morning so there will be no need to call the authorities.

He's like, that's great news. And she says, you haven't called them yet, right? He's like, no. She's like, great. And she pulls a prickly stick out of her bag. A prickly stick. A prickly stick, sharp little pointy edges. And she uses it to slice her palm open.

Uh-oh. This is now bleeding everywhere. Marcus and his husband are like obviously shocked by this. And she's playing it up like, oh, silly me, can you believe what I've just done? Oh, my God, that's really bleeding. My goodness. and she's rubbing blood all over the stick. And then she cuts a piece of,

I think she just like strolls up to Marcus's husband and cuts off a piece of his hair. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Raps it around this stick. And they're just dumbfounded. They're just like. They're just dumbfounded.

It happens really quickly too. It's not like, yeah, yeah. It's not a lot of time to process what's happening. And they're at first like concerned for her. They're like, oh my God, like do we need to get like, first aid kit for your hand. And she's like, no, don't be silly. It's fine. And just throwing them off with confusion. And she cuts off some of the hair, wraps it around the stick. And then she picks up a little bell from her purse and rings it. Dingle-ling-ling. And something shifts in

the room. And Marcus goes completely blank. His husband is looking at him. Marcus... But she cuts the husband's hair. She cuts the husband's hair. And Marcus is, like, clearly under some sort of spell now. And she snaps the stick in half, and Marcus turns to his husband and attacks him, knocks him to the floor, vomits all this black goo all over him, and then just starts headbutting him over and over and just like, absolutely pulverizing his head. It's interesting that you would think... It would think...

You would think both would get pulverized. You would think... Right. How does only one get pulverized? I don't know how that works. I've always honestly been confused about headbutting. Because it's like... Yeah.

It hurts. It should be... But don't you think... You'd think it would be equally painful for both. It would do equal damage. But maybe if you have momentum on your side, Yeah. Or just the knowledge that you are doing the head buddy, knowledge that you're the aggressor.

The knowledge. It's the knowledge and your brain protects itself. It's for sure the knowledge. No, I think it has to be the momentum, right? But it has, yeah, like maybe it's like the energy is like moving in the direction of the budding. Right. That, that tracks to me. That makes perfect sense to me.

Not the knowledge? The knowledge I think is part of it. Yeah. The knowledge is part of the momentum because intention is everything. And also, I mean, I've head-bedded a few soccer balls in my time. And, like, it hurts. Well, I do think it always hurts. The ball has momentum.

You're right. The ball is heading-butting, heading-butting you. The ball is heading-budding you. Your head-butting together. When May head-butted your collarbone, she was fine. She was completely fine. And you maybe fractured your collarbone. My collarbone had a big old bump on it for like two weeks.

So it's the, it's an object in motion. you know, it's like, you know? Yes. Yes. Well, and also it's clear that Marcus is not like in his body. So he's potentially feeling, would be feeling a lot of pain as well, but that doesn't seem to be. I'm not saying that I think when you head butt, you don't feel pain. It's just surprising that it's an effective means of causing more damage to another head.

Yeah, it is. It's interesting. It's really interesting. It's really interesting. And we could keep talking about it, but I guess... But we also could move on. We could move on. Let us know in the comments if you are a big head-budding person.

If you are into head-budding, if you use it in your daily life as a way. I mean, I imagine you get trained on the right way to do it when you do like a little... That's probably true. There's like punching and stuff. There's like a good and a bad way to do it. Well, also similarly, I mean, in the same category of conversation is just the concept of like hitting someone in a way. that knocks them out immediately, but doesn't cause, like, more long-term damage, which happens all the time in TV and movies, if someone just, like, hitting someone, they get knocked

out, and then maybe their head hurts a little bit later on. But it's like, how do you... I mean, they probably have a concussion. They must have a concussion. Yeah, they're real, a lot of movies play real fast and loose with this stuff. But also, I'm no expert, so maybe it's all real. No, me either. Anyway. Okay. So it's clear that Marcus's husband is dead. Gladys is just watching all this pretty even keel not surprised just kind of yep and then she drops the broken and half stick into the bowl of water and then marcus stands up so he just was continuing to headbut until this stick was dropped in water so it's clear that the water is kind of like off switch then she reaches into her purse and she pulls out that chunk of justine's hair also

So, by the way, Julia Garner's hair is so incredible. She's just got the fucking best hair. Her hair's really pretty. I was really admiring it in this movie. And it works well because you really do recognize it when it comes out. She has this, like, platinum blonde curls. It's also like, you know, Josh Rowland is, I guess, safe from this kind of attack. Because his hair is not a cutable length.

You know, what do you do? What do you do? He's got some hair. I think he could. Okay, but okay, but okay, but say he didn't. When I was picturing him, I was picturing him with like a buzz cut. So, but yeah, I guess you could take something else, but like, it's interesting that it's hair because what if you're bald?

I think there's answers for that. Okay. Or you have alopecia with no hair at all. Yeah. I mean, I think there are, I think there are like even like, yeah, fully bald. Yeah, fully bald. Yeah. So, she wraps Justine's hair around this stick.

and snaps it and Marcus just darts out of the house with a new airplane arms mission new mission airplane arms going boom boom boom boom thank you propeller sounds we catch up with him again at the gas station seeing this attack on justine play out a little bit again uh we follow justine now into the store part of the gas station as she's like screaming at attendant for help like help me help me we see you know we had left archer as he was kind of being strangled unconscious by marcus and so marcus does knock archer out i guess and like gets up and chases justine into the store and just as he's about to get her like archer had regained consciousness and like nails marcus into the glass freezer and shatters and then justine runs out and

The guy that works there is, again, like, doing nothing to help and is just like, get out of my store. And she's like, fucking hell of me. And she runs out. Marcus is still hot on her tail. Archer is more like he's injured from the falling into the freezer. Marcus is obviously not reacting to pain in the same way. So he just keeps on going. Justine gets into her car.

Marcus is punching the windows, trying to get her, but she's able to start the car and drive off. And he just chases on foot. Oh, my God. With the arms in the position. Archer kind of gathers himself, gets to his truck, and starts following them as well. And he's, you know, muttering like this motherfucker. He's like following Marcus. And we see as Marcus is just running in the middle of the street, gets fucking plowed down by a

car in an intersection, Marcus dies. We see his head basically explodes. Whoa. And the poor woman that hits him is like screaming and screaming like, oh my God. And his head is just smeared all over the concrete. You see a lot of his like teeth. Ah, Sammy. So we see later Archer and Justine.

Does Archer pull up to the lady go? Okay, he was being really mean. He was being really, really, really bad. You did a really good thing, actually. I actually what you did was really, really good, really good. He deserved it. We pick up with them at the hospital, Archer and Justine. They've like, archers bandaged up his wounds from the fight.

And they sit down together and have a moment of realizing, like, okay, Archer is now like, all right, so it's not Justine. Something else is going on. So now we can kind of team up. And so he's like, I have something to show you. Oh, because they're talking about Marcus. And she's like, I never like, what the fuck was that? I've never seen anything like, I have.

And he's like, I need to show you something. He shows her the video of Matthew running. And he's like, they were running in the same way. Their arms are in the same position. And I talked to this other parents and their daughter was running the same way too. Pulls out the map. He shows her. And he's like, this is like, if they're both running.

in a straight line like this is where they would have intersected but it's like just in the middle of a neighborhood I don't know what that is and she goes that's Alex's house wait I thought it was in the middle of nowhere it's like in the middle of neighborhood yeah there's just like no landmark as far as he could tell oh okay um again I'll say pretty nuts that they didn't check in Alex or at least crazy that the police didn't know his house looked really weird Well, we'll see. Oh, my God, we'll see. Full screen text, Alex.

Emily, this is where it's going to get really hard. This is what was upsetting, even for me. Someone with no children. Oh, I really don't want to know. I really don't want to know. We see, before the children have disappeared, Alex just in his class says normal. This is where we really see that they're learning about parasites. We see he's being bullied.

at school as the class gets out there's other kids bullying him this kid is sorry so cute by the way stop it stop it stop it no that it matters but he is really cute we see him being picked up by his dad who is randomly

played by Whitmer Thomas for those of you who know him that'll be kind of a funny I'm sure he's friends with I figured he's probably friends with Zach yeah his dad is just like kind of a doofist but like really loving goofy guy and he they drive home to their house looks normal go inside mom is normal we recognize these are

definitely the people that we have seen in the house after the disappearance but here they are normal loving parents and they're getting Alex ready for bed and he hears them talking about how his mom's sister is coming to town. No, it really is his aunt? No, it's not his aunt. I don't think it is, but it's not really made clear. But they are saying, like, we don't really know her that well. I didn't grow up with her.

I haven't seen her in... Could be like a the visit situation. Yes, that's what I was kind of thinking was it's an impersonator. I want to be the aunt. Yeah. And so it's like, she didn't even come to our wedding. Like, why do we have to... Why is it our responsibility?

and she says like she's really sick and like my mom's not around anymore and so I'm all she has I'm like it's my responsibility so Alex no it's miss frizzle yeah Alex watches as later that night a car arrives and outcomes we don't really see but yeah obviously it's clown lady miss frizzle she's looking extremely frail and kind of wrapped up so So we don't really get a good look at her right now. She has a big potted tree with her. And they bring her in and bring her into the guest room. Alex goes to sleep.

And next morning, it's time for school. His parents are calling up to him, time to go to school. And he creeps through his room and the guest room are connected with a bathroom. So he kind of like goes through the bathroom and opens the door and gets a peek at her looking. one million years old different from what we've seen her looking like she's yeah she needed the elixir of youth this miss frizzoless motherfucker and so he's startled by her she's just staring at him she's not smiling but she's awake looking at him and he he runs out and he goes with his dad to school and he's saying is asking his dad how long is she going to be staying with us and his dad is

says, you know, she's, she's really sick. So, and Alex says, so is she going to be with us forever? And he says, no, I wouldn't, probably not for more than a month or so. We brought her here to die. I thought that'd be good for you. You do hear the night before, like, after she arrived, you hear the parents having kind of a hushed argument of the dad being like, we're not a fucking hospice. Like, what the, like, what are we supposed to do? And so it's like, yeah, yeah. This situation is not great, obviously, all around. Nobody's happy.

Except Ms. Prissel. Mm-hmm. But he drops Alex off at school and says, I'll see you at two. I'll pick you up after school. After school, of course, nobody picks him up. We see as every other child gets picked up and one of the teachers offers him a ride and he's like, no, I'm fine. And he walks home. And he walks inside his house, and his parents are just seated across from each other at the dining table, blank and motionless, as we've seen them before.

Gladys is at the head of the table, looking slightly healthier than last we saw her. She tells Alex to sit down. Alex is really scared and trying to, like, shake his parents. He's like, what's wrong with my parents? And Gladys is like, they're fine. Don't worry about them. Have a seat. Like, have your dinner.

And Alex is really like, like, this isn't right. And he throws a glass of water on his dad's face. He's like, Dad, what's happening? And Dad, like, doesn't react. And Gladys loses her temper and kind of like slams her hand down. She's like, that's enough. Alex, no dinner for. for you, go up and go to, go to bed.

And. Oh, my God. Alex runs upstairs and, yeah, just like the helplessness of children is really upsetting. And he wakes up the next morning, goes downstairs. Parents are in the exact same spot. Of course, they have not moved. And Gladys is again at the head of the table. She's like, sit down, have your breakfast. And before you go to school, I need you to promise that you're not going to tell anybody

about me or about your parents being like this. Alex is looking at her suspiciously and just not making any promises. And she's like, I need you to say it. He's not saying anything. She's like, okay, I need you to watch something. Oh, God. No. No.

No. And she pulls out a stick from somewhere wrapped in hair and snaps it in half. and Alex's mom and dad both immediately pick up their forks and start stabbing themselves in the face over and over and over. Alex is screaming. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Gladys eventually puts the stick in water. They stop. Their faces are like bleeding and filled with fork holes. And Alex is crying and Gladys says, so now you see what I can do. I can make your parents hurt themselves. I can make them hurt each other. I can even make them eat each other if I want to. So now I need you to promise me that you're not going to say anything at school. Oh my fucking God. And he says, I promise.

Oh my God. Oh, it's so devastating. And you see him going through the school day, like just so scared and afraid to say anything. There's a couple times where you see Justine like, no noticing that something is up and saying, like, you know, you can tell me anything, right? Like, if anything's going on, and he's like, I'm fine, I'm fine. Everything's fine. And he's taking the bus home because Gladys obviously doesn't drive him to school. He gets home and now his parents are sitting on the couch and the windows are now taped over in newspaper. Gladys is taken over his parents' room. She's got her tree in there.

She's kind of just laying in front of it, almost like worshiping it. We're not sure really what that's about. And she notices him, like, walking near the room, and she just says, you'll need to feed your parents. There's soup in the cabinet. And you'll get more soup tomorrow. And he goes downstairs, and you see him, like, struggling to open this can of soup and, like, sloshing it around and feeding his catatonic. parents just like a chicken noodle soup and they don't their mouths aren't moving so it's just

like dribbling down their chin oh my god I hate this and there's just a kind of montage of this going on for sure yeah we need to see more of it we definitely need to see more of it and you see like going to the grocery store and just buying bags full of chicken noodle soup oh my god and then there's another moment where he's like talking to gladys in the room and she says you know I'm still sick. I thought your parents would make me better, but I'm still sick. And I think there is something that could make me better, though. And Alex says, if you get better, will you leave?

And she's like, gives him kind of a dirty look. But then it's like, yeah, if I get better, I'll leave. Oh, no, Alex. And he's like, okay, what do you need to get better? and she says, I need you to bring me a personal belonging from every kid in your class. Oh, my God. No. Okay, so it doesn't have to be hair.

Hair is just an easy, easy thing to wrap her out a stick. Oh, no. Yeah, so you see that he... I don't know. Also, I'm thinking, like, how do you prepare a kid for something like this, you know? No, I mean, you don't. There's no way. There's no way. How do you prepare? What do you do? What do you do? I just don't think you can. I don't think you can. I don't think you can. I think there's some things you simply can't

prepare for. No. Oh boy. At school the next day, he is looking around and sees that they all have their little cubbies where they have decorated their name tags. Like everyone has drawn their own name tags for their cubbies. And so after class, he just peels, peels them all. off. Pretty smart. And brings them home. And we see Gladys like soaking them in water so that they're able to mold around a stick. And he's going to bed that night or he like wakes up in the middle of the night and hears her like muttering something and sees her with the stick.

It is just before 217 in the morning. and she snaps the stick right at 217, and we see little shots of each of the kids waking up. She says, here they come. You see them running through the streets just straight into the house. Alex is watching all of this stunned, doesn't know what's happening. They all just, yeah, run into the house. And we cut to the next day. Alex is the only kid in class.

Oh, my God. And so she's not doing this to Alex because she needs someone to help. She needs like a little messenger. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, because she doesn't want to, she doesn't, they'll die if they don't have food and water. They need to be kept alive. And she doesn't want to have to fucking do it.

Yeah. So, yeah, get a eight-year-old to do it for you for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So we see Alex. being questioned by the police. Gladys is with him, with makeup. And she, or no, with her, with, she's brought in Alex's dad.

She's put makeup on his face, made him look kind of normal. But he is, again, catatonic. And she's like, he's had a stroke. I'm in town taking care of, of Alex. And the police are like, that's like, there's, he's so lucky to have you taking care. Like, she's like, they're like, no follow up. No, they do. They do say, we're going to have to, like, check out your house. And so they're back home. She says, she makes Alex clean the whole house. And he's like, they're going to

come looking here. And so everything needs to be pristine. They take all the newspaper off the windows, they clean it all up, make it look all nice. She uses the stick somehow to get all the kids out of the basement and they like go and hide in the woods for this one little check and so everything's the cops come everything seems fine oh my god and they're like okay great uh she's also cut hair from each of the kids now and made another little stick i was having a little trouble keeping track of the sticks so sorry if this is actually incorrect but uh the kids are like back in the house now back in the basement. And we're getting a lot of montages of Alex's day to day.

So we're going through the whole span of like the whole, I think it's been a month or two months of the kids being missing at the start of the movie. And she says at one point, you have to feed all the kids too. And so it's just like montage of him like feeding soup to all 17 kids. Oh my God. And we see the scene we had seen earlier. where Justine is trying to speak to him outside of the house, and he's saying, like, don't follow me.

Like, don't leave me alone because he knows that. It will be bad if she does. More time is passing. And then we catch up to a day that he comes home. And inside the house are Paul and James, just standing motionless in the living room. Gladys is looking really angry. She's like, look what I have to deal with now. like this is a big problem and I can't remember really what she says but she's pissed oh presumably

james came in to steal when she was like having the meeting with yeah maybe benedict Wong yeah and she says to Alex don't step over the salt and we see that there are little circles of salt in various places Alex goes upstairs to his room and and sees his parents guarding their room or Gladys's room now. And in front of them is just a stripe of salt. Okay. So that night we see Alex in bed and he hears a car pulling up outside. It is Justine and Archer who have put together that the kids were going to Alex's house.

So they are there to investigate. oh god justine is like something really weird is going on here what do we do do we go out do we knock like what i don't know what we're supposed to do and yeah i mean there's no way to know justine before they can decide what to do the door front door opens out steps paul and just kind of beckons to them like like come come inside and a normal thing a person normally does normal very normal and justine and archer look at each other like this what the fuck is going on but they go inside it's totally dark it's nighttime uh justine once she gets closer like recognizes that it's paul and she's like i this is i know this guy like this something's really wrong this

is not right and we see archer like scoping the place and he sees the salt circles and is kind of like trying to piece things together. And we see Justine approaching Paul, like calling to him like, Paul, Paul, what's going on? And Archer turns to see she's about to step over one of the salt circles. And he calls out, wait, but it's too late. And she has stepped over it. And Paul lunges at her. Ah.

And Archer goes to try to help her, but steps over another circle. Oh, God. Oh, my God. And activates James. And so James is now attacking Archer. So those two are fighting. We see Alex upstairs hearing all of this and his eyes are kind of darting around. He's trying to figure out what to do.

And he's looking at his parents who are also like behind a salt line and he kind of walks up to it. And he's like trying to decide and he doesn't know what tonight. Oh, no, no, no, no. We see Archer and James fighting. And Archer is a big guy. I mean, Josh Brolin's a big guy. And so he keeps just like easily flinging James away or like knocking him down. But James just like keeps getting back up in a very comical way.

Just each time you think like, oh, he's knocked him out now. But he just keeps me like, bah, bah. It's like seven times in a row. It's pretty funny. We see Paul strangling Justine. And she's like like, like, her face is like getting red. Her eyes are bulging. she's like trying to like hit him but can't he's not loosening his grip and she reaches they're in like the kitchen and she's like scrambling reaching for things on the counter and she grabs a vegetable peeler and she peels the whole side of his face and he just does not react and she does it again and he does not react and we see just like two

peeled off pieces of skin and then we see that she's like scrambling around what else can she reach and she unbuckles his gun from its holster and she shoots him I think in like the shoulder or something and it doesn't he doesn't stop and so she shoots him in the head and that doesn't She kills Paul. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Alex upstairs, here's these gunshots and is, like, looking desperate. Like, we're not sure what he's thinking yet, but he's got like some, we can tell he has, like, some sort of plan that he's trying to do, but it involves stepping over the assault line.

And so we see him put his foot over the salt line, tap on the other side. His parents immediately lunge for him. He runs back to his room, closes the door, locks it, but they're, you know, just, like, break, in the process of breaking it down, it's, like, not going to hold them for very long. But remember, his room is, like, connected through the bathroom to the guest room, which is closer to the parents' room. And so he is, like, one step ahead of the, like, they keep breaking through just as he's able to, like, get to the next door and lock it. And so he's finally able to get to Gladys' slash his parents' room. We see Archer and James, like, still fighting. And James has, like, knocked Archer into the basement door.

And Archer falls, like, halfway down the basement stairs, sees all the kids. But then James is, like, on top of him, strangling him. And then bang, Justine appears and has shot James. the head as well, kills James. Nice. Great, great, great, great, great. And then Justine, after that, like, runs back to Paul

in a way that, it's not meant to be funny, but she's like, Paul, Paul. And, like, she shot him, like, right through the head. Like, he's definitely dead. He's dead. But she's traumatized, obviously, and is just, like, kneeling at his side crying. And Archer runs downstairs into the basement

and he's calling like Matthew Matthew and he's turning each of the kids around looking at each of their like blank faces he's got his like iPhone flashlight that is shining because it's completely dark down there until he shines it at a corner and we see gladys just going like another big jump scare cut back to justine hearing some like hearing someone approaching behind her turns and sees archer with his arms in a little airplane And now Archer is attacking Justine. Oh, my God. Gladys is falling behind him going, that's good, just like that.

Like, you're killing her real good. We cut back to Alex in his parents' room. He's searching for something, searching for something. And she finds the stick with all the kids' hair on it. Okay, good. Again, the sticks are not fully explained, so I might be getting this wrong but he finds one of the sticks that seemingly controls all the kids and he cuts his hand open because he's seen her do this before and so he bites himself and rubs his blood on this

stick and then he because gladys wears a wig her like red hair is a is a is a wig and underneath her she has like just like these tiny little strands of of blonde hair and he finds a strand of her hair in the wig and he wraps it around the stick and he snaps it in half and there's you see gladys like immediately feel the shift and she's like no and we hear like bounding of footsteps and the 17 kids run from the basement and gladys just books it gladys like knows what's happening and she runs through the neighborhood she's running like through houses, just like so panicked, like running through people's front doors and out their back doors. And the kids are just spread and like crashing through windows and doors

and fences and just, it's so crazy. And it goes on for a long time of just the kids just bursting through things, chasing her. And eventually they catch her. They knock her down there on like a front lawn of someone's house. Oh my God. I'm so. I'm so glad this is happening. And they just start ripping her apart. Oh, my God. As they should. Ripping her limb from limb.

They do the thing where they grab her by the top teeth and like rip off the top of her head. Oh, my God. Gladys is dead. Gladys is really dead. She's dunzo-bunzo. Yay. The crowd goes wild. Okay, but now as she dies, we see Archer come back.

comes back to and like drops Justine and oh really brutal scene for these kids to come back to and sees and sees like the path of chaos that has been wrought by this chase and so he's like following trying to find Matthew he's calling out Matthew Matthew Matthew he eventually like finds the kids at this gruesome scene he's just stunned looking at them for a moment we cut back to Justine, who runs upstairs looking for Alex and finds Alex in the bathroom of his parents' room with his parents kind of hugging them, but we don't really get a look at them.

And they seem still kind of lifeless. They're not moving. He's kind of like the one actively hugging them. Oh, no. Oh, my God. And Justine finds him there. and also just looks stunned, but is like, you'd see that she's, like, happy that he's alive, at least. Alex is okay.

You know, right, right, right. And then the little girl voiceover, town kid comes back and says, Alex's parents still eat soup, but he doesn't have to feed it to them anymore. They now live at a place where they're taken care of. Oh, that's so sad. And Alex now lives with a nice aunt. We see Archer at the scene of Gladys's death, finding Matthew, picking him up. Matthew's face still absolutely blank, empty behind the eyes. And he's like sobbing.

He's like, I found you. I found you. I found you. And the shot is just like behind Archer with Matthew's like blank face leaning over his shoulder. We hear the voiceover saying all of the kids were. return to their families. And this is, I think, a year later that the VO is happening. She says, all the kids are we returned to their families.

And some of them have even started to talk again. And that's the end of the movie. Oh, you guys. Oh, you guys. Henley, let me tell you, it's still nothing compared to bring her back. Yeah. So you still dodged a bullet. I know it doesn't feel like it right now.

No, no, I get it because the thing, I mean, the worst part is the Alex part. Yes, it's really tough. The thing that's like the saving grace in a weird way is you like hope that the kids were just like, like, didn't know what was going on. Do you know what I mean? Like just didn't. I mean, I don't think that they do. I think that's probably the case. Is the implication that like the longer you were under that spell.

I think so. So that's why like archers. Okay. Also, they're young and they're more vulnerable. That's what I thought, but the parents are also, like, not. They're still, like, catatonic. But they've been the longest. Yeah. So there's, like, you know, an ambiguous hope of, like, maybe it'll wear off eventually,

but also maybe not. Yeah. Is it, like, a metaphor for, like, extreme trauma in general of just, well, I think. How does that change a person? I mean, it's, yeah, it's interesting hearing him. Zach talk about it because I feel like Yeah, what was he

What has he said about it? The way he describes it is he's like He's not writing with a metaphor in mind Metaphor in mind. He just writes what's scary to him And a lot of people have said that that's refreshing that it's just like a horror movie where it's just scary and it's not like

And the real scary thing was the trauma that was lurking here the whole time. Right, right. I love a heavy-handed trauma metaphor. Don't get me wrong. But it is getting to a point where it is a little overdone. I think, well, I think the thing that's, it helps so much to have the context of when he was writing it because your brain does crazy things when you're grieving. And like one place it can go to is like what would be like the worst possible reason for like this person to have died. And like one is if there's literally just a parasitic entity that's like, I need you so I can live. And like what a. horribly nihilistic, pointless thought. And I feel like a thing of when someone, you lose someone, you go down a path of like, well, what if I got them back? Like, what if they're not really dead? What if I got them

back? And this thing of like, well, they're gone. Like you found them, but they're gone. Back to back with bring her back. This is, yeah, two different explorations of the same sort of thing. And it reminds me of Pet Cemetery, too, where it's like, sometimes dead is better. Yeah, yeah, death is really fucking hard and scary and sad. And, yeah, I, well, you know, I'm glad that it was, it wasn't a fully happy ending, but it could have been a way more demoralizing ending than it was. Yeah. There was something cathartic with the kids getting their final revenge. Yeah, and it's a really fun scene to watch. Yeah, I want that, like.

I would like to see this movie, if only just to see these kids fucking tearing through houses. Yeah. It's pretty incredible. It's great. Just thinking about being on set for that too. And at the moment where they're like action and all these fucking kids just like running. I'm really curious how they filmed the ripping her apart scene because you see the kids with like blood on their mouths and pieces of flesh. but I imagine they did it in a little bit of a way

where it kind of hid the full reality of it from the child actors, but it's also like how. Yeah. Really interesting. Pretty. Now I get to go and hang out with a bunch of children and a lot of them are aged similarly.

Great. I hope they don't rip you apart. And everyone, it's funny, after I do this podcast, obviously, you know, my family members are always like, what was the movie? Tell us about the movie. and like it's like I can't I literally I can't even no listen to the episode when it comes out

because I'm not telling you and well and also because like I'm not going to say this is a friend of children yeah right right right right right I'm not going to say this is a fun time it's just a fun time it's just a fun time can you put me an extra large glass of but it is it's a really I thought it was a really fun one I was texting someone and I said Emily and Henley are going to hate that I said this. But that was the first thing coming out was, damn, that was so fun. Yeah, honestly, I get it. I understand.

I understand. It's the structure is really cool. It has all these little cliffhangers. It keeps you on your toes. Keeps you on your toes. The pacing is great because you're just. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was not guessing the parasite thing at all.

Which is similar to Barbarian, where it's just like really, really satisfying twists and turns where you're just truly guessing until the last. minute and another thing that I mean I just I think everybody should see it but uh I know I understand that not everyone not everyone can but um if you can you should and one other thing that I loved about it was the score and Zach was part of the he composed part of it himself but each character has kind of a noticeably different score like that's cool James's section very Peter and the wolf. Oh, wow. Yes. Like James's section, for example, his is very like, cracked out kind of like frenetic and his score is like plucky and and weird in that way. And so

each person's section feels like the music changes a little bit to complement the character and what's happening in that section in a way that I thought was really cool. And so Yeah, I loved it. Really cool. I love you guys so much, Sammy. I got to go lay down. Sammy, you nailed it. You absolutely nailed it.

I need to take some deep breath and do some yoga stretches. That's a really good idea. Let's all breathe and stretch. Yeah. Let's all breathe and stretch. I like that. I like that. Maybe I'll eat a piece of fruit.

Oh, my God. Yeah, perfect. Fruit sounds good. I love you guys. I love you listeners. Love you. We did it. We did it.

We did it. Zach Cracker is directing a... Resident Evil. Resident Evil next. Oh, that'll be fine. I'm very curious about... Scared me so much as a kid. I don't think I've ever seen it.

I haven't either, but I saw the fucking video game. Right? That's the one? Yes. Yeah, scared the shit out of me. Yes, and Zach has said that he has not seen any of the movies, but he loved the video game, and so... The game's fucking scary.

I think I've already talked about this, and I guess my friend's older brother would play And I remember being a sleepover I'm being like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, that's so scary. Oh, my God, oh, my God. But, yeah, so I think some people are a little, like, bum that he's doing an, like, IP thing rather than an original idea. But I listened to him and talk about it. And it sounded like he's like, he's like, I get it.

And I wouldn't have signed on to it if I didn't feel like it was, like, a really cool story. Like, a really cool opportunity for a fun story. Let the man make that IP money. We'll see. We'll see. does. I trust him. Great. So.

Exciting. Yeah. All right. I love you guys. I'm going to be running around with my little outstretched arms for. Airplane mode. Yeah, I'm going to be an airplane mode. So fun.

So fun. And we'll be back next week. Helchella is not over yet. Not even close. Alchella for life. So I guess I'll do like a child voice. Yeah. So 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.

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