Why Is Horror Hit-Or-Miss?

"The Podcast is coming from inside the house..."
If you've listened to us before, you KNOW we love horror, Halloween, and all things spooky. We invite you, if you dare, to listen in because, in tonight's episode we revisit some of our favorite (and not so favorite) horror films from the last few years since we've been "ghosted", including new classics like The Substance, Late Night with the Devil, and a little underrated gem called Imaginary. We also chat about what makes a great horror film, as well as a little vent of our frustrations with over-marketed horror film ad campaigns. To be fair, we haven't seen Obsession, but if you've got to tell people that your film is changing the genre...

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Uh hello. Hi. Um so we're back. We are back, episode number two. Yeah, we made it.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Thank you guys for listening. That was great. I am very excited to be back in front of the microphone again.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

And uh and I also want to encourage our listeners to reach out to us. Uh we want to make this an interactive experience. So if you guys have thoughts, questions, comments, please be sure to let us know. And we will be happy to discuss those on our future episodes. And uh just stay tuned at the end of each episode and uh we'll give you all of our contact information on how you can do that. Great. And then for today's episode, we are going back to one of my favorite subjects, horror movies. We um had a guest and did an episode about horror movies, but horror movies are kind of evolving or devolving in some cases. And there's a few that we've seen that we've really liked, and there's a couple that we've seen that we've been really disappointed in.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, I I mean we've talked about horror a couple times on this podcast, I think because you and I are such fans, and I think part of the pitfalls of being such a fan is being not too critical of horror films, but recognizing what we like and what we don't like about horror, especially with a with a film genre that has a um has a tendency to be easy to make, or it's like it's understood to make it's easy to make a horror film, so why not? It's the cheapest. Um, not always true, but I think with that comes a lot of schlock. And what's happening now is uh we're not getting schlock, we're just getting bad horror that's done poorly. Well, it's done poorly, but it's done poorly with a big budget, and it's overly marketed, and it's creating this expectation that we're about to see something that's gonna change the horror genre for all time. If you gotta tell someone. And it's probably not true. Right. So that for me is the like the kiss of death in a marketing for a horror film. I can get excited about it, and then the second I hear something like that, even from just as someone on the street, I'm like, oh, not interested. No. I think I've been burned too many times.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

I think that that's a good point. One of the things about horror movie fans is that we watch a lot of horror movies and we build up, for lack of a better word, a tolerance to the subject matter. So when you sit down to watch a horror movie, you're like, is this gonna be the next great horror movie that scares me? Because I've been scared so many times, it takes a lot to scare me. And then when you start over-marketing a movie and you start ramping it up, you start over-promising and under-delivering. And I think a really good example of that is a movie we just watched called Undertone, where it literally said, changes the horror franchise forever.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

It's that's the new, that's the new thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Right. And and it's sort of like it it likened to the Blair Witch project for me, except instead of it being like cinema verite POV style, it was, oh, we're gonna scare everybody with these sounds, right? And we're gonna kind of mess with this person's sense of reality. Right. But for me, it was so incredibly boring, and not because I need to see, you know, chainsaw wielding homicidal maniacs in order to be scared, but my imagination only does so much. Like I don't want to sit down to be entertained and then feel like I have to sing for my supper or I have to do the work to allow myself to be scared. So when you are marketing, as you said, a movie to the point where you're over-promising and under-delivering, it's a very easy pitfall, I think, for a lot of horror movies to fall into. Totally. I was terribly disappointed with Undertone. And not only that, but if you go back to I think the early 2000s, Michael Keaton did a movie called White Noise, which was the same concept of Undertone, but just done so much better.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah. That's that's the the missing piece, I think. When they when when I hear changing the genre, that just means you're just doing something different. And that's not always good. I think it's a good idea to try something different, and whether that be story or different types of scares, or maybe in um you look at like Shyamalan's early work where the the twist is that something new, right? It's not new. We've always had those in cinema and stories, but the way that he does it, specifically in horror. Um, so with Undertone, there's nothing new. There's nothing, you're not upending the genre. You are taking a new approach to a pretty boring story. Right. Um, and the reason it stands out, I think, especially for I'm not shitting on anyone, but for maybe a younger horror audience uh or a desensitized horror audience, is that they are seeing a typical horror story, nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing different, but it's told through the lens of oh, podcasting, that's trendy. I've never seen a podcasting horror film before. Wow, that's gonna change everything. Yeah. And fuck it, it doesn't. Especially when you have a movie like that that is such a slow burn, which I also appreciate if it's done well. And and that that's a pitfall too. When someone's making a horror film, they're like, oh, we're gonna make it two hours. And it's the length of it that's gonna make people really excited and have to work for it, and and they'll get the the grand reveal or they'll get the satisfaction at the end. By the time I get there, I don't give a fuck. I'm tired of it. Yeah, I don't I don't really care anymore.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

And the payoff is not as big as the lead up to the payoff. Like in the Blair Witch project, it was the guy standing in the corner in the basement of the house in the middle of the woods. Like I and and I had you like Blair differ on Blair Witch Project. Yes, we do, but like the Blair Witch project, I started losing sense of time. And so when that happened, I was like, oh, finally, here we go. And then the movie was over.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

I mean, it was one of the biggest hunk of shits I've ever seen, and I was so massively disappointed by it. And I couldn't understand why people were so obsessed over it, why people were so scared of it. Like, are you are you in the woods wherever it took place in Maryland or wherever? Or like, are you in Blair Witch territory where you hear things or think you see things that hearken back to what you saw in the movie that could scare you? No, there was nothing about that that after the fact kept me in an environment where I felt unsafe or uneasy. It was a massive letdown.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

I I can agree with that. And especially in watching it now, I see a lot more of that because I'm I know what it is. I I I'm I've experienced it already. When I first saw it though, that that hits the marks for a good horror film for me. So it has to have a substantial story that hooks and sustains. It has to have adequate pacing to keep me interested while still keeping me guessing. And it has to have a payoff, whether that be impressive kills, interesting kills, or a big enough twist that makes me think differently about something that I didn't expect. Those are the big three for me. I don't care if it's a haunting, I don't care if it's torture porn, it has to have those three things for me. And if it doesn't, I don't, I I've just wasted my time. Yeah. So with Blair Witch Project, for me had the story because I was so deep in the lore leading up to it. So having not seen the movie yet, I knew some of the background and what this story meant and the and the like anthropological part of it.

SPEAKER_04 8:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

And then the pacing for it worked for me because I think without realizing it, I have a fear of being lost in a situation like that. So it's not necessarily woods and it's not really witches that I'm afraid of, but it's the idea of being in a situation where I think I'm in control and then suddenly realizing I have no control and I don't know how I'm gonna get out of it. You get lost in your own neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

And you've seen me panic and start to I'm like, you have driven from this point A to that point B a hundred times before. How do you not know where you're going? You're right.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Now, the the only thing that that movie misses for me now is the payoff. Yeah. Because I know what's gonna happen and it's not satisfying. Yeah, but when I first watched it, the payoff was seeing the emotion, how it was affecting the characters in real time over time. It's completely changed now. I'm still a fan of it as it was. Now I'm looking at it as like that was a movie that did change the horror genre for better and for worse.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I agree with that. And and I think where the payoff of that effort landed was with the paranormal activity series. That was done well. Yeah, you didn't need a motion sickness bag to get through it. Right. And I think it was just a very successful way to scare you because you didn't know why it was happening, but it was in such a normal everyday type of circumstance that it could happen to you. And not knowing why it was happening also made it scarier because you're like, well, right, have I opened a door that I'm not aware of that this could happen to me as well. Yeah. So there has to be a certain amount of relatability to one's environment that sort of invites that fear where it could happen to make it scary.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

You you're absolutely right. For me, the relatability usually comes in the characters, but you're totally right in that the it's important to have setting too. Yeah, if it takes place somewhere or in a situation that I'm not gonna involve myself, yeah, you're not going camping. I know that. Um but you're right. If it's a situation where I can't picture myself in at any point, I can disassociate from it pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Yes. And if there's too much about the storyline that's not revealed, I mean, talk about being lost. Like I don't know where I'm going. And I, you know, for me, I need to know something about the origin of this villain, whatever that villain may be, physical or not, so that I know what I'm supposed to be afraid of.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Right? Like, if you don't know, this is maybe a bad example, but if you don't know that you can drown in water, then going swimming isn't a scary thing, right?

unknown 11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

If I don't know what this villain is capable of bringing into my environment when I suspend my disbelief, there's nothing for me to be scared of.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

It's it's why classics like Nightmare on Elm Street are so successful and the reason that there are so many sequels, now not all of them are great, but the story is always there because the lore is you don't know when he's coming, you don't know what he's going to do. Everyone sleeps, but everyone dreams you cannot go to sleep. Right. And that is the one thing that our body does automatically is goes to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

And I think with movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, um, there's also uh oh, Child's Play, there's an arc where the first couple movies, it's all about scaring you. And then around the third or fourth movie, the the villain kind of becomes the hero. The anti-hero. Yeah, you start rooting for Freddie Krueger in in Dream Warriors, which is the third one. You you get excited for the kills, you're not scared that this person is going to get killed. You're you are looking to see how cool, how fascinating, how interesting is this kill sequence going to be for this person. Yeah. And then you start rooting for the villain. And I think that especially happens with Freddie Krueger. And then you get into remake territory where they try to bring the scary back. And I think more times than not, it just doesn't land well.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

They're often just trying to reinvent the wheel or the villain completely in a way that takes away any nostalgia. Yep. Takes away any efficacy in the character design because we already have the image in our head of what that person or thing should look like. Right. And then ultimately we just end up bored or dissatisfied with what someone has tried to do because someone's already done it. Yeah. We don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And remakes don't upset me. I don't understand why people get so biggity over a remake, like, oh, you can't remake this movie. It was so good. The remake does absolutely nothing to the original, it just gives a different perspective to possibly a new audience or a refreshed perspective to an existing audience. Yeah. So at worst, a remake is disappointing. At best, it's like, oh, if I ever want a palette cleanse from the original, I can watch You know, like with Psycho. Yeah. The remake to Psycho by Gus Van Sant came under so much fire because it was like a frame-by-frame remake. We talked about that before. Yeah. I love the original Psycho. Nothing will ever replace the original psycho. But every once in a while I like to watch the remake. And then the next time I'm in a psycho mood, I go back to the original and I have a newfound appreciation for the original. So people like to get upset and they like to be a part of things, which also I think is what drives marketing for scary movies. Like if all of the marketing and the snapshots of the audience members getting scared tells you that this is a scary movie, there's a huge portion of that audience that is going to be afraid to say, I didn't find that scary because no one wants to be the cheese that stands alone.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

I can see that, especially uh in a in a pre-internet age. I think now people get excited about being the one that stands alone, so to speak, but they also are afraid to stand alone and standing alone. Yeah. Like not only do they they want to be part of that bandwagon that is shitting on it altogether. And I I don't think that that's right either. Like when it comes to remakes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, but when it comes to just like a new horror movie, oh well, yeah, right. Oh, this is so scary. Look at all these audience members who got scared. Right. Oh, if I'm not scared by something that I'm being told is scary, something might be wrong with me. And if something's wrong with me, people won't like me. So I can't say that this isn't scary to me. And then that's how a lot of not so scary movies get momentum.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

And we've talked about those, like we we talked extensively about Mother and how that dissatisfied us.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Mother was a horrible, horrible movie.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

That was probably one of the first times where I realized how impactful marketing can be misleading. Yes. Uh when it comes to promoting a film like horror, because you you innately don't want to give too much away because that would potentially ruin the story. But they use it deceptively so, so that they don't have to explain how not great it is. Yeah. Or how it's for me missing those three things or anything really. Um and and we still see it today. Yeah. Uh with uh what's what's the new one? Not unburdened. Uh there's obsession. Obsession, that's what I'm thinking of. Which we haven't seen yet.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

I want to see that one. I haven't heard great things about it, but the trailer is fascinating to me. I'm not going into it thinking this is gonna be the next great horror movie. Right. But I do want to see it because I'm interested in it. I think that's true. Um, one movie that we recently saw that um surprised me was the Faces of Death movie.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

That surprised me too, especially now you and I are also very different horror film viewers. Like you can you can put up with a lot more than I can in that. Uh maybe it doesn't affect you in the same way, or I think I'm just as you guys know, I'm still relatively new to horror compared to Girl, it's been 19 years.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

I know, but still you've been watching horror for almost twice as long. Since I the first scary movie I saw was Creep Show, and I think I was five or six when that came out.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Yeah, my first scary was Scream, and I was 18. So I uh and I still had a lot of problems with that. Um, but I I think It's okay, I won't let you fall out of the sky. I thank you. I I can be uh very sensitive with specific themes or things that are happening, sure, whether it's extremely graphic or not.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

I have a very wide range or scope when it comes to scary movies. There are two things that set me off. The first one is any kind of violence towards animals. I find it to be gratuitous and just sort of amping it up because you know that the content that you have isn't doing the job. So you start poking the bear in a different part and it's unnecessary. Like if you can't scare me without animal violence, then you're not doing your job properly. Yeah, kill whoever you want, but leave the dog alone. And the other thing that I don't like is seeing people who are being uh physically, especially sexually abused. Um, rape scenes I have a very difficult time with. Um, I mean, even the Melrose Place episode where uh Dan Cortez beat the crap out of Daphne Zuniga. Like, you didn't even see it. You saw her run into the bathroom, he ran after her, slammed the door, and you just heard it. That was one of the most disturbing things that I have seen. Yeah. Because I think the cardinal sin in humanity is to take away somebody else's ability to choose for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

That's I I'm I feel the same way. I feel very uncomfortable in those moments, whether I'm viewing it or know that it's happening. And so I do try to disassociate for the sake of story if I can. But sometimes that process too just takes me so far out of it that I'm just really upset.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

And that's one of the smart things that movie horror movies do well is they create characters that have flaws that are inherently not innocent. So there is a bit of oh, I hear a little click clack. Yeah, he left us a little surprise just now. Oh, great. Thanks, Dekes. Thanks. Glad you're enjoying the podcast. This is what I think of your content. Um, so I think that they they do it well and and there's sort of a comeuppance. And, you know, it's why we all yell like, don't go in there, don't go in the house. Okay, well, if you're gonna be stupid enough to go in the house, then you're gonna get what you deserve. Um but most importantly, I don't want to be bored and I don't want to have gratuitous things thrown at me just for the sake of scaring me because the concept of what has been created is not doing that job.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Mother in particular actually, before we get to mother, because we were talking about um We were talking about mother face we were talking about faces of death, and then that came into like Okay, well thanks for keeping me on track.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah. So the problem that I had with mother was that it was incredibly boring, and then there was this extremely gratuitous, unnecessary scene that was graphically filmed with a baby. I did not like that with faces of death, and why I think that's different than mother. Now I'm this is called full circle moment. So I know what I'm doing and where I'm going. Thank you. I I should know that by now. Is the fact that A, by the time the remake came around, the urban legend was proven to be just that. It was an urban legend. The original Faces of Death movie is not real. And we know that this movie is not real. So there's it's easy for me to kind of get involved and let go in the process of somebody that's in a situation where they're having their choice taken away from them. And the characters that played the victims in the new faces of death movie, like I kind of like the influencer. Like, I wanted to see something bad happen to her because she represents everything that's wrong with our culture and society within social media right now. Oh, you don't like influencers? No, they're horrible. I know. It's it's it's just it's it's it's we don't that's a separate episode. I think we've already discussed that. But there's there's a difference, and I think that faces of death took something that could have been very trite, and they they redid it in a way that was very smart and sophisticated, and they chose a wonderful actress that really nailed that character. There was there was a full arc of humanity and struggle within this person, and you wanted her to be victorious. And and I appreciate that. That's something that I think was done really well.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah. It was something that I was not expecting to enjoy and was pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. And it had the story, it had the unexpectedness, it had amazing payoff and kills and in story and flipping the conversation a bit on what that could be. So I was I would definitely recommend that one if you're looking for something new.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

And the plus is that the monkey brain scene was filmed with the person being a victim rather than an innocent monkey being the victim. So that was a big plus too. Um well like we're we're watching what we're watching an interview with the vampire right now, right? We watched season one, we fell off during season two, now we're getting back into it. And it's like Louie's whole struggle with not wanting to kill humans. And when the movie came out in 1994, I was 17. I was like, okay, like I I would love to be a vampire, like eternal youth, the vanity, all of that stuff. I totally am into it. But oh my God, how do I kill people? Like how and now at 49, I'm like, no, I would absolutely not feed on rats and chickens and birds. I would just go and find these miserable people. So great, problem solved. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

I I think Anne Rest knew what she was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

I think so too. Um, now to go back a little bit, there's a couple movies that have happened that I don't think we talked about during our our little hiatus. Um, the first one being Late Night with the Devil. It is one of my new most favorite scary movies for a myriad of reasons. I think it's extremely smart, it's well done, the attention to detail is amazing. David Desmalchian is brilliant in it. It's good old-fashioned scare with a new, modern, and contemporary take on it. And I love the fact that I can just put it on and I feel like I'm watching a late night talk show. There's like commercial breaks, and we'll be right back. And brought to you by the Cavendish group of people. Like it's and the detail is incredibly brilliant and it immerses you in the environment so that when the scares come, you can't escape because you've already committed yourself to this environment that you're watching. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

I I agree with you. I feel like this is one of those movies that could have easily fallen into the trap of going to change the horror genre forever because it is something relatively new. We've seen things like it, like the the Halloween special or the um, there's the British one fright night or something like that. I can't remember exactly what it's called. Where people actually thought it was real or were crying they're giving the perception that this is a uh long-lost tape of a televised once-in-a-lifetime moment that they've never shown again. Yep. We've seen tropes like that before, but this is done in, like you said, it's such a loving way when it comes to attention to detail, especially with a time period that a lot of us didn't really experience. This is late 70s, right? So we either didn't experience it or we think of it in a like fun, cheesy retro way. And this was done in a fun, cheesy, thoughtful way. Yes, yes. And um some excellent scares, some really unique uh takes on uh ideas behind uh cultism and exorcism and those those things that we've seen time and time again, but in a really cool, exciting way. I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

And and and the ultimate struggle between good and evil, and I think with this particular movie, it speaks to human nature and those that are just so thirsty for fame and fortune. How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to sacrifice? And do you even know what you are signing up for when you make that deal with the devil?

SPEAKER_02 26:22

It's interesting because there are those Faustian undertones, and we know it well into the film. Like we know what's happening, but even just to watch it unfold while David's main character watches it unfold, you and David at the same time are thinking, oh, oh shit, this is happening. I know exactly why this is happening, and and I it's coming for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Totally, totally worth it. Great payoff, entertaining from start to finish, highly recommend.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And then another movie that came out that same year, which sweeped the awards and is, I think, amazing, is The Substance with Jimmy Moore. Absolutely wonderful, a crazy ride from start to finish again, just spectacularly done. And I think that it really does speak to, you know, it's marketed as speaking to the lengths that women go to with beauty standards, but we see this with men now and predominantly people, both men and women, in the social media genre trying to keep up. And I think that they just become blind to some of the efforts that they're making in order to capture engagement because it's that thirst for engagement that makes them feel relevant and validated.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

And there's so much more to this human experience than just the external and just what other people can witness from you.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Yeah, it it uh it's interesting. I I I feel like I'm always thinking about the marketing now, which I I don't intentionally do, but it just it kind of happens as as it's happening, right? Like that whatever. Um, but I remember with this movie specifically seeing the trailers for it and being really excited about it being Demi Moore, like looking gorgeous. Haven't seen her in a lead role in a really long time that I felt really connected with. Um but also just the nature of the trailer itself, it again didn't give too much away, which could be like death for a horror film at this point. But it presented enough of the story to understand oh, okay, this is some sort of like body horror potential. Like something's happening where she's not happy with herself and all of a sudden she is, but it's not really her. But I also really love that they introduced the um the substance. This sounds tropey, but the substance as a character. Like in the trailer, you get that booming voice where he's like, it's it's you ever wanted a better version of yourself, exactly. Like that's that's a character. Yeah, that becomes that moment where you're like, you're listening to, and whether it be chorus or exposition, you're listening to what that person that has to say. Right. But also it's instantly ominous. And then the way that it was presented with that stark black and white, with that pop of green, it was very like Russian propaganda in a way, and it just very visceral, very scary before even knowing anything was happening. Yes. And that feels to me like very vintage horror film trailer. Yes. Like we're not gonna tell you what's happening, but you've got to see it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I agree. And I also like the the secondary subplot, which is the battle that she has with herself, both as Elizabeth and Sue.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Because a lot of people I think were really confused. Like, I don't understand it. Is it the same person? Is it a completely different person? Well, it's the same person, but I think two things happened. The first one is the substance unleashed a different part of her DNA. So in the very beginning, I think it's her in this new body thinking, holy shit, this is insane. But then that second body's DNA takes over and it sends messages to the cells to go left, whereas before in her old body, it's said to go right. So it's like you have identical twins, they're not truly identical. The DNA doesn't replicate itself down to every little last cell. So you can have like a mole on one twin that the other twin doesn't have, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Well, that was that was made very clearly in the trailer too, where you have the egg that's injected and it and it breaks into a beautiful egg and a kind of wobbly, not so beautiful egg.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

So then that that takes over, right? Yeah. And and then with that taking over, her thought pattern starts to change and she branches off into a different person. But it I also liken it to my drag character. And yes, my drag character is me, but there are things that I do as Jared that Nomi would never do. And there are things that I would do as Nomi that I wouldn't dare do as Jared. And there are times where I've been in drag or getting into drag, and I'm pissed at myself because last week I overindulged in food, and now the outfit I was planning on wearing isn't fitting the way that I wanted it to fit. And I'm looking at myself from outside of myself, being like, what is wrong with you? How could you do this? Or I have a bender of a night as Nomi, and I have to work the next day and my alarm goes off, and I'm thinking, oh, goddamn you, Nomi. Why did you have to stay out so late? Why did you do this to yourself when you know I have to be at work? Yeah. Yes, we're the same person, but I think it speaks to the duality that all of us feel at one point in time. And as their experiences or as her experiences differ from one body to the next, it it separates them even more into almost two different people.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

So once I was able to wrap my head around that, it it just opened up so many more doors for me to be able to enjoy all the layers that that movie had to offer. Yeah, agreed. Um, and then we've also recently watched a couple movies that were new that one of them totally checked the box that we were talking about earlier. Like, is this gonna be the next great scary movie that's gonna scare the shit out of me? Is this gonna top all the other movies that I've seen? And that was Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Yeah, that's I that was hard.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

It was so good and so well done. There are things about that movie that still not haunt me, but I still think about because what is happening in the film is just so tragic. Yes. Um and yeah, I like I I almost don't want to say anything about it, and not in a like, oh wait until you see. It is a movie that I'm glad that I didn't know anything about it to go through and know, okay, it's about a mummy and there's a girl in it, and I'm gonna let that play out. Um that that experience is really important to me when it comes to something like this. Um, so I I loved the way that the story was told. It was uh a new take on something that we again we've seen before in a really unexpected way. And you just feel for all of these characters as you're watching their life be torn apart, each one of them in different ways, but at the same time, and they're all at their at the end of the rope, and it's just it's it's heartbreaking and ultimately so satisfying, and really just it's fucking fun to watch. Like it was a good, fun movie.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

It's it was a lot of fun to watch. It was really scary. It was one of those movies where the horror so subtly creeps in because it's one of those stories that's that uh the catalyst is a tragedy. Yeah. So you're dealing with broken people whose defenses are down, they're mad at the world, they question what they're doing and what they're going through because of this tragedy, and it's the perfect invitation for another energy or entity to come into play. Yeah. And this in no way, shape, or form is related to the mummy universe with Brendan Fraser. This is specifically Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

I was wondering why that's what it was. Like I'm wondering, I was wondering why why is it so important to have your name in front of it? But I think that that little element helps to distinguish what could easily have been misunderstood as oh, it's just another mummy movie. Or, oh, mummy's a girl this time. Right. Who cares?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Right. But it's not. It it it's it it's the title is the mummy, and the mummy aspect plays into it in a very smart way, but it really is a possession movie. Yeah. And the collateral damage of the idea of what demons' purposes are when they possess somebody, if you believe in that. Um, and then also just having learned something fresh about The Exorcist, which is, I think, my all-time favorite scariest movie. It it is the movie that continues to scare the bejesus out of me because the villain is invisible and intangible, yet the effects of what this villain is doing to this poor little girl is so visceral and haunting. And you don't want to see this happen to this little girl. But we were watching a special about it, and there's one scene. For those of you who are familiar with it, uh, it's the scene uh where they find out that uh Burke Dennings has died. And in the director's cut, it's right before she does the spider walk down the stairs. And Chris, the mom, comes home, phone's ringing, lights are flashing, you get a glimpse of the demon face in out of the corner of your eye, and she goes up to check on Reagan and the windows open, the blankets are off of her. And like any other mom, you're seeing a mom check in on her daughter sleeping. She closes the window, she puts the blankets on her, and then she leaves the door open so that, you know, the heat from the house comes and cools down the room or warms up the room. But unlike every other shot in the movie where the camera maintains its focus and movement on the action, in this particular moment, the camera stays in the dark bedroom with Reagan, and you are seeing Chris, the mom, run back and forth in the hallway looking for her assistant. And in this special that we watched, it was brought to our attention that in this moment, you are in the devil's POV. It's not Reagan being possessed standing next to the bed. She's asleep in the bed. This is the devil in his invisible form standing in the darkened bedroom, watching the mother frantically look for somebody to help her understand what's going on in this moment because she walks into such chaos after receiving such bad news. And it goes back to my comment about how these types of movies create so much horror out of the collateral damage that is caused to the ancillary characters next to the one being possessed. It truly gives me chills. And I just recently went back and re-watched The Exorcist just so I could see that scene with the knowledge of that POV. And it truly added another layer of horror to me.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Because I've had dreams where I've been in that dark room not understanding what I'm doing there, what my POV is, feeling an incredible evil danger in that room with me. And and it's haunting, and it's uh it's a brilliant way to scare your audience. And I think that William Freakin just did an amazing job.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

It's uh it's funny. I never thought of the exorcist as being maybe your favorite because I've always known Halloween to be your favorite, but I think I think there's a distinction, right? Um, and I'm also I'm reminded of over uh I think last summer when you when you started reading again and you picked up the exorcist and you voraciously reading. I read it in three days. Yeah, it was insane.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

I read the Amityville Horror in one night. Like I think I read it in like four or five hours. You just sat there and read the I sat down, I read the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Yeah, you that was that was funny to watch.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Now, now uh this is interesting. The Amityville horror book is scarier than the movie. It is a terrifying book to read. As I was reading it, I was hearing things that I didn't think our apartment made sound, and it's it was freaking me out, and I was getting scared. The Exorcist, however, the book is not as scary as the movie, if even as scary as the movie. And this is the distinction that I made. And I think that um not uh Peter William Peter Blady said he never set out to write a horror movie. The movie distinctly makes it known that this girl is possessed by the devil or a demon, right? And in the way that it visually manifests itself, we are along for that ride. In the book, we don't know that Reagan is truly possessed. It is a book about a crisis of faith. And throughout the entire book, Reagan's possession is being questioned because these little things keep popping up in and around her that give us the reader the idea that maybe she's making all of this up because she cannot handle the trauma of her parents' divorce.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

And so I found the book to be an incredibly fascinating and interesting read, but a very different tone than the movie that was clearly made to scare the ju out of us because we're watching these horrible, horrible things happen to this little girl that clearly is not being done by her own physical choice. Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

So I would recommend both The Exorcist and the Amityville Horror books. I think they're both phenomenal. The Amityville Horror scared me. The Exorcist I thought was just an incredibly fascinating read.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

I would recommend the books when it comes to horror, regardless. Especially with like Stephen King. All of those books are just so good. Some of them are a little more difficult to get through because they're so big. But you're ultimately going to get so much out of carry the book than you are carry the movie.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

And Carry the Movie is great. Yep. Rosemary's Baby was another book I read last summer. Really good. That one is very much in line with the movie. Yeah. There's not a lot of uh disconnection, I think, in the tone there. Right. Um, and then this I don't know that this is necessarily a possession movie, but the the last movie that comes to mind that we've recently watched was Imaginary with the Teddy Bear. Oh, yeah. I don't. That one is not a possession movie. That's more of like a demon acquisition movie. Like the demon wants this soul, but it doesn't possess in order to get the soul.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

I love the semantics. It's like I'm not possessing.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

I'm just I'm trying to uh get this girl to do stuff for me.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah, and it and it was surprisingly good. It was entertaining. I mean, you know, a lot of times you and I will find movies to watch on any number of streaming platforms. There's the like the red box issue, like, oh, is this just gonna be another red box movie? Right. Um, that's gonna be trite and superficial and boring. And this one, it surprisingly was not. It was very good. And it um it had some twists and turns, didn't wait until the end for the payoff. So you were you were entertained, you were along for the ride, kind of like a choose your own way book. Like there was multiple points along the movie where it slowly started revealing itself.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

And you were getting bits and pieces to put the puzzle together, and then the ending was really good. Yeah, I was getting multiple payoffs from this film.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

I agree. Like as the story continued to progress and I was beginning to understand one character, it would shift. And my understanding of that character's uh goals were completely not what I thought they were gonna be. Um, and as it continued, I got more and more invested in what was happening, which I I wasn't expecting from a movie about a stuffed teddy bear. Yeah. That could have just been really, really bad.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Well, and the focus of your attention is on one character, and then it flips. The movie shifts your focus to another character, and then you realize, oh my god, this is the character all along. Yeah. This is who this story is about, not this person. And it was refreshing not only to have that, but in the way that they did it, it felt respectful to us as a horror audience. Yeah, it was pretty smart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

There were there were I there were some moments where I could see watching it and being like, uh, whatever. uh in the way that some horror films are made now. Yeah. Where like the scares are to be expected, or um maybe the writing wasn't great in moments, but as a whole, the story was there. Uh and there were some really cool moments in it that I that I I would watch it again for sure.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

I agree. I agree. I uh I think that kind of checks the boxes for my recent horror movie list and how the horror genre is continuing to ebb and flow. I think that there's a lot of really great stuff out there. And I think that there's a lot of stuff where the creators and storytellers could have done a lot better rather than just trying to cash in on what you as you had mentioned is sort of an easy genre.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah, I think so too. I also want to say I think something that's helped us as horror fans discover new and old horror have been the In Search of Darkness series. And I know we've mentioned it before um but it's also been many years since we've mentioned it and there have since been new iterations. Yep. So we just recently watched I believe the 90s version of that and and it's broken up into two parts so 90 through 95, 95 to 99.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

And then there's an 80s version that was the original the three parter which was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

And now they're working on a 70s version. I'm so excited for that. So it's if you're unfamiliar with it it's uh an amazing not an anthology film it's almost like a documentary but it's also uh served as like a um you're getting a a education on horror exactly yeah it's like a it's like a visual audio textbook yep of horror through the ages and it gives you a really quick glimpse some of them longer than others but on the most part like five or six minutes of each of these films you get to see what they're about often they'll bring in the actual actors who were in the films to talk about them and why they were so special to them. And um it feels like a love letter from horror films from horror fans to horror fans. Yes. Yeah that allow you to safely discover new horror without necessarily having to invest two hours of your time with potentially being dis dissatisfied. I mean we we got a whole watch list every time from watching that every time we've watched one we get at least 12 to 15 new movies that we watch that we ultimately became and shutter's a great resource for those movies as well as the platform specifically those movies because you can't find a lot of them on Amazon or HBO or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

You have to find them in they're too old and too niche but they're fantastic representations of what the horror genre I think truly is at its core.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah. So seek those out in Search of Darkness.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

And then before we wrap up we have some exciting news and our last podcast we had our last episode we had talked about possibly changing the name to represent our new fresh attitude and to maintain a little bit more authenticity in the tone of this podcast.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

And we have landed on you know what's funny I thought we were going to sit with it for a bit and be like oh it's gonna be hard to guess but no you're right why are we like this?

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Why are we like this?

SPEAKER_02 47:23

Well of course we know what we're gonna name it because it's gonna come right to us. Why are we like this? That's exactly what happened.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

So uh I am really excited about the new name I'm excited about the energy that we're bringing to this season and other seasons moving forward. And I would just like to thank you for tuning back in to Why Are We Like This and we will have new episodes every Tuesday at 6 a.m Pacific Standard Time so on that note we will see you next Tuesday.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

All right thanks for listening bye