Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Crystal Lake (2026), Buddy (2026)

Thank you. Welcome back to Father Malone's Weekly Roundup. I am Father Malone, and I am resplendent in all the spooky goings-on these days. In just a moment, we're going to have HP in to talk about the new horror film, Buddy. But before we get there, I just want to say a thing or two about the new Crystal Lake television series.

Last week, I was laid up with the flu for a few days. The same days that Crystal Lake popped up on Peacock. That's where you're going to find it. And being a captive audience, I burned through all eight episodes. Let's discuss.

There will be spoilers here, so you might want to jump ahead to the puppet talk with HP. Now, I have a thing about prequels. I fucking hate them. Horror is based on mystery, y'all. The unexpected.

So, when you drag every facet of these particular diamonds into the light, they tend to fall down hard. Michael Myers grew up in a white trash trailer home with a series of abusive stepfathers. Okay, sure. Thanks, Mr. Zombie.

Hannibal Lecter was a Russian émigré who was forced to eat his younger sister. Makes sense to me. Is it that the public just needs to know? Or is it that a studio needs to squeeze every fucking drop they can from that particular stone? Or is it some combination thereof?

Probably that one. But Jason? He needs a backstory? Didn't we get it in the first film and all subsequent films? Isn't he constantly emerging from the lake he drowned in thanks to the indifference of horny teenagers meant to mind him?

Yes, yes, and yes. So let's not focus on Jason at all. Let's focus on his mom, Pamela. I don't hate that idea, particularly when she's played by Linda Cardellini, and the trailers looked promising, thoughtful even. Now, here's the thing.

Friday the 13th, written by Victor Miller and directed by Sean Cunningham, was trash. Not to me, not to we horror hounds, but to the public in general. It was a huge success, obviously, spawning sequels annually for the next decade, but it was regarded as the lowest of popular entertainment. So the fact that A24 is doing a measured and layered examination of the events leading up to that garbage film is hilarious to me. It reminds me of the line in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Belloc and Indy are talking in Egypt, You see this?

Worthless. Bought for pennies from a vendor in the street. But if I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless. Even John Waters is respectable these days. So, this begins in 1971, with Pamela the cook at Crap Crystal Lake, where her son Jason is allowed to attend and participate in all those summer activities, like camping and hunting, and unfortunately, swimming.

He's also mercilessly bullied by everyone but a girl named Grace. By the end of episode one, that moment we've seen teased since 1980 is acted out fully, and young Jason has disappeared beneath those lake waters and presumed drowned. This was a really good episode. The production design is on point. The actors are all period appropriate.

The writing is solid, man. The rest of the series takes place the following year. Pamela is the town kook now, going out every day and staring into the lake. We get to see her trying and failing to grieve and move on. We also get her interactions with the town sheriff and a possible romance between them.

This is all great. Watching Pamela slowly unravel in real time as she becomes the monster we met in the first film... is tense and fun. It's the flashbacks that are deadly. Because it's revealed over the course of the series that Pamela is on the run. Has been for nearly a decade.

From what? An abusive husband? That could be. Controlling parents? Perhaps.

Maybe she was part of a Manson-like cult and Jason is the offspring of their psychotic leader. Nope. It's a shadowy pharmaceutical company with all the powers of the CIA, apparently. And Pamela was part of an experiment involving radiation and attempts at making a new evolution of humans. What.

The. Fuck. So Jason Voorhees is now a super soldier. That's why he grew up so strong, y'all. That's why he can't be killed.

It isn't some mysterious force in the woods or at the bottom of the lake. It wasn't a Frankenstein-like bolt of lightning from Part 6. No, he's a genetic ubermensch. Which is a total fucking drag. Because all the contemporary stuff, with Pamela finding her place in the world without Jason, with her mind being pulled in so many directions that it's bound to fracture, is great.

Cardellini is awesome as always, making you love this lunatic from frame one. And giving her pathos and a level of relatability I'm not sure you would have gotten otherwise. Or if it's even deserved, frankly. And then there's Jason. He doesn't go away at all.

He's actually an active character throughout, with frequent flashbacks to his friendship with Grace, and brief appearances, usually silhouetted, out in the forest at night. And let me tell you, every time he popped up, my slasher heart skipped a beat. Oh my god, it's Jason! I was 12 years old again. By the end, he's an active participant, running around that forest in the outfit we first met him in.

You know the one. Overalls and a burlap sack tied around his neck with an eye cut out. Part 2, Jason. It's fucking glorious. And did I mention gore?

This series has more blood and viscera in any random episode's hour-long runtime than any of those films were ever allowed to show. Think about that. Adults paying for this entertainment were denied the levels of bloodshed that the filmmakers intended, but now for free on TV you can see ten times worse. It is crazy to me. If this is a standalone season, I'm giving it high marks.

If it continues and we have to endure more shadow government bullshit, well, I'm still going to watch. I don't get giddy very often, and young Jason did that to me several times. But I'm not going to be happy. And it is inevitable. Both the renewal and the continuation of that boring fucking explanation.

As it is, I am tentatively recommending Crystal Lake. But you know who I'm not going to recommend it to? HP. He's never been a fan of horror. Here, I'll show you.

Let's name an upcoming horror flick. H.P., Clayface. Yeah, I'm not going to. It doesn't interest me. We're going to talk about this in context of Buddy, but I'm not really a horror guy.

Body horror doesn't interest. Me at all. It seems to be all the rage these days. Correct, and it's not really a thing. The thing about the Clayface trailer to me is it doesn't seem like I know anyone in the trailer.

I don't like anyone. And it just seems like a middling, not even body horror. It just seems like, I don't know what, it just seems like a nothing of a storyline. I mean, I could be totally wrong. Who knows?

I don't know. I give them points for expanding the horizons of what you can do with the comic book property, but it really ends there for me. It's something that I don't have any interest in seeing. And maybe that makes me close-minded, but it's just not, I mean, I like what I like. James Mangold's Swamp Thing is still on, though, at DC.

And that's supposed to be straight horror. I would see that, because I love James Mangold, so that would, I would be able to get past my biases to watch that Swamp Thing. Oh, your biases against horror, not Swamp Thing. Because if you're Swamp Thing, man, we're going to rumble. No, I don't have a bias against Swamp Thing.

I just have a bias against, you know, a lot of horror. I mean, you know, you know me. The listeners don't know you. We're recording right now. Sure.

We're talking about trailers. I didn't know if you noticed. You didn't hear me put on my Father Malone voice? Come on now. So, yeah, a horror movie for me has to have a little special something in it.

I've never really been a fan of slashers beyond... like the original Nightmare on Elm Street, let's say, or some of the Friday the 13th. So I really, it has to pull me in with something unique about it. Like I really liked, and I know we disagree on this, Father Malone, but just as a side note, I really liked Late Night with the Devil because I loved the conceit that it's Halloween at this Tonight Show style talk show. And All of these supernatural or maybe not even really supernatural happenings going on and how it's this lost episode of this TV show. That to me was a very clever conceit.

And that's part of the reason why it was probably one of my favorite horror movies of the last five years, let's say. I too liked the conceit and I enjoyed the performances. And I just thought as a viewer watching a found document that half of that movie would never have been filmed. Agreed. You have to really suspend disbelief.

Just fucking set the movie in 1970, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, just show us the movie. I mean, come on. Sure. Yeah.

I agree with you that if there's any criticism, it's that you're really, the premise is stretched very thin by this notion that they're recording backstage in a way that they really couldn't have. So just the fact. OK, so let's say that they were for that night. There was a student crew who were filming a documentary on how this talk show was made. OK, that could be their conceit.

Nevertheless, there were conversations happening that they would never do on camera. Agreed, agreed. You know what? It's actually, I just thought of this. It's very appropriate that we're talking about this because we're knocking on the door of Halloween.

It's right around the corner, Father Malone. I know. You don't got to tell me, brother. It's safe to say this historically has been your favorite day of the year. Yeah.

I mean, well, as a kid, it was the one day where I felt normalized as a horror fan and everyone sort of came up to my level, but now it's everyone everywhere. I mean, for Christ's sake, we've technically been celebrating Halloween since the beginning of September. Right. And it gets earlier and earlier every year, which is a little bit confounding. Not in the wake of the consumerist portion of it, which is what's really driving it to start that early.

It's just the Christmas phenomenon, but cool, finally. Sure. Although I will say this. I don't know if we've talked about this, but as you know, Father Malone, my mother lives in Salem. And from the end of August through the end of October is the bane of her existence.

She is not, you know, a killjoy by any means. But as a resident of Salem, somebody who just wants to conduct their business and live life, it's a very trying time to be a resident of Salem this time of year. Well, you know, I lived in Salem in the late 1990s for a year about, and then it wasn't any problem at all. It was actually just a sweet little festival going on in the town. But, you know, I come back every year, every couple of years, and just watching it grow and grow, I don't want to go anywhere near that fucking town.

It's really, it's bad. Like I said, she just wants to live her life and do her daily activities, and it's hard because parking is an issue in Salem. It's impossible to get around. And the roads are incredibly narrow, everybody, and confusing. Exactly.

Let's not forget that there are some roads that are essentially cobblestone still in Salem. So it's not the infrastructure of Salem is not built to handle this kind of influx of tourists every year. And it is tourists for the most part. And let's not forget, everyone, that when they were saying Salem, they meant the Salem colony and not the city of Salem itself. It was actually technically in Danvers that all of that stuff happened.

But anyway, we'll just push that aside because it's the witch city and it's the most haunted city in America. Very true. I think you need to be elected mayor of Salem or something, Father Malone, so you can actually set people straight. That would be the worst thing they could ever do. For tourism, maybe.

Go away. You're wrong. We're closing our borders. Speaking of spooky seasons, HB, speaking of horror movies, I know you love them. They're your favorite.

It's my favorite. It's why you're so frequently on Midnight Viewing. That's right. We are talking about a brand new film, a 2026 film, released on August the 28th, 2026. This is the trailer for Buddy....

Thank you for calling the National Missing Child Hotline. Our offices are currently closed. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911. If you have any information about a currently missing child. Please leave a message after the tone and we will get back to you.

The show with the orange unicorn. I've searched everywhere. And there's no mention of it. It's just some forgotten show from the 90s. Yeah, but there's nothing.

Written by Casper Kelly and Jamie King. Directed by Casper Kelly. Starring Kristen Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Clint Howard, and Topher Grace. With the voices of Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt, and Keegan-Michael Key as the eponymous buddy. I saw a trailer for this a million years ago and it completely left my mind.

And then. And then it was last week or something. I was going to see it. I said to Father Malone, have you seen this movie Buddy yet? Or maybe I'd already seen it.

And I was saying to you- You had already seen it. Yeah, you said. And he said, no, I don't even really know what that is. And I remember seeing the trailer like you did a million years ago. But for me, I've been a huge fan of Casper Kelly insofar as Too Many Cooks is still a work of enduring brilliance.

If anyone hasn't seen, and I can't imagine too many people listening to the roundup haven't seen it, it's on YouTube, Too Many Cooks, Casper Kelly from Adult Swim. It blows my mind every time I see it, how great it is. And also he did another thing called Final Deployment 4 Queen Battle Walkthrough, which not a lot of people know about, but it is almost equally as good. as Too Many Cooks. So anyway, when I heard that he was involved, that he was a co-writer and a director of this movie, it became must-watch cinema for me. As I just got through saying, I'm not the biggest fan of horror movies, so it has to really come with an interesting twist or conceit, and that's what this movie showed me when I watched the trailer.

So after I said to you, hey, have you seen it? You said, no. I said, see it, because I'm dying to talk to you about this. I'm always a little bit nervous when I do this exercise with Father Malone because sometimes he'll come back and say, yeah, I didn't like it. So I'm really curious how he's going to respond here.

For the first time in a long time, did not do any research at all before sitting down to watch the movie. For the first 30 minutes or so, I kept saying to myself, God, this is so fucking Adult Swim. When I saw the trailer initially, and I vaguely remembered the trailer, what I remembered, the takeaway for me from the trailer was, are we really kicking Barney again? Has it not been 35 goddamned years? Like, are we still, like, there was a death to Smoochie.

Do you remember that fucking movie? Oh, yeah, with Ed Norton and Robin Williams. I think Danny DeVito directed that film. I think they used to advertise it as being from the demented mind of Danny DeVito, which this was pre Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So that was kind of, I don't know, it seemed a little.

Well, he had made a movie called Throw Mama from the Train. From the Train. And he had done War of the Roses. So I guess for a studio, yes, that is twisted. Right.

So twisted. Look out. Look out. What a creep. You see what he likes?

He likes these sorts of things. Just a funny voice. I don't require much, Father Malone. That's all I need. So I agree with you.

It seemed like low-hanging fruit, something silly like punching down at a show that's been off the air for decades. And let's face it, it was a good thing for little kids. There was nothing inherently wrong with Barney. For little kids, so... Yeah, it always felt.

Like too much sturm and drang for a fucking kids' show, you know what I mean? It seemed like the punchline of every stand-up comedian and every late-night talk show, and, you know, there were, like, animated jokes about it on, like, The Simpsons and stuff. It was just like, okay, we get it. It's annoying to have to watch this, but it's really not for you adults. Right.

So... That was my attitude coming in, and that melted away almost fucking immediately because I realized that they were going for something way, way broader and way more specific than Barney. Can I ask you one thing? Are we going to put the spoilers flag out there for people right now? Yeah.

I don't know that we're going to– Do you want to try and not spoil for a while here? Well, I want to, I don't want to give away the whole movie, but at the same time, it's hard to really talk about it without giving some of it away. Like there were a couple of surprise, not twists, but things that I was surprised by in it that I wouldn't want to ruin it for someone else coming into it. Like you did or me cold and say, you know, so I guess light spoilers may follow, but nothing that should ruin the movie. I think we should say.

And if it goes that route, You can cut it. How about that? All right. Well, now you've heard our process. There you go.

Selfishly, because I want to talk about certain plot points and things that happened with you and see what you thought of them. Here's what I thought overall, though. Yeah. I fucking loved this movie. Oh, yeah.

I want to say this is the best. I haven't seen a good horror movie in years, but I just saw Resident Evil, the Zack Craig movie, and that was fucking awesome, too. So there are good horror movies to be made. There are good horror movies to be made that are thoughtful and about certain things and can have subtext without it just being, we've got to get over this trauma. By the way, you know, liminal is just a transition space, right?

It's just like a hallway, you know? It's become like kaiju. It's the new, you know, word du jour for any kind of, you know, creepy pop culture detritus. I see people posting pictures of just like a creepy place and it's like liminal. Like, no, that's just a fucking scary area, you know?

Anyhow. Anyhow. Well, I mean, look, you heard it in the trailer. The conceit of the movie is that this Barney-like children's television show, the characters are trapped there and figure out that they're trapped there. And their host, Buddy, is way more malevolent than would appear.

So that is not really a spoiler. No, they give that away in the trailer. That's the... You don't go into it without at least knowing that part of it, because otherwise it just looks like a movie about a Barney-type character. But I thought overall, I thought the direction was super solid and fun.

Look, this isn't necessarily a scary movie. This might be why you enjoyed it, H.P. Well, yeah, because if there's one word that I really would use to describe it, it would be unsettling. There were moments in this movie, and not in a violent or gory sense, because there's not a ton of real gore in this. That's a lie.

Don't listen to him. But for me, well, at least for me. It was comedic gore. That's the thing. This is a dark comedy.

This isn't a horror movie necessarily. This isn't like going to see Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer or something like that, which is probably one of the more horrifying movies I've ever seen. This is. Very broad, comedic, black humor with some violence sprinkled in. But there's moments in this that don't rely on any sort of gore or violence that are very troubling to me.

Now, not giving too much away. We know, as Father Mullen just said, the idea is that these kids are trapped in this television show. With no way out. Now, they have to be, the means in how all this happens are broadly, it's not really explained, but there is some attempt at explaining them. Essentially, they're pulled into this program.

But a parallel story to this, at least for a while, is we cut to the real world where there's a family in California, and it's a mother and a father and two kids. This is Kristen Milioti and Topher Grace. Topher Grace. Yes. And they're just kind of going about their day.

And the mother starts to feel like there's something missing. There's something that has unsettled her in this. And there's a scene where they're sitting down to dinner. No one else has betrayed any notion that there's anything amiss. This family of four.

They're sitting down to eat dinner. And the mother looks across at this empty chair at the dinner table. And the way it's directed and the way the sound design works, it sort of pulls you in. And then the next thing you know, she lets out the most blood-curdling scream at the camera as if you're watching her have a breakdown right there. There's something about this idea that this mother, and the idea is that it's one of her children has been pulled into the show, but no one knows about it.

No one's going to do anything about it. This is the only inkling that she has that something has gone wrong. There's a hole in her heart that she cannot articulate what's happening. When she gives that scream, I don't know, it really, it just sent chills through me because this notion that this child has been lost and she has no, she doesn't know if she's going crazy, but she knows that some big part of her is missing. That I found deeply unsettling, Father Malone.

Well, that is a horrible notion if you actually contemplate it, which is what they're forcing us to do here with her character. It's the entire arc of her character, actually. Right. And, yeah, as soon as we cut to them and we started to see the dynamics going on, that, you know, the movie had been kind of a trifle up until now. Like, even as dark as it had kind of become...

Like, it was still like, well, we're still playing in this, we're in this fantasy world. These are just characters who have woken up. But these aren't characters who have woken up. These are children who have been rested into this character's domain. But when we get to the family, you know, she has this moment where, you know, she freaks out and they have an aftermath scene in their bedroom.

And she says, he says, so what was that about? And she says, well, you know, I'm going to look up therapists tomorrow. And he's like, great idea. And then that's the end of the conversation. And I thought, who is this cocksucker she's married to?

Well, it's not exactly the end because he says, oh, that's great. All I care about is that you're feeling better. And she says, yeah, you know, I'm not feeling better. Like you kind of expect her to go, yeah, you know, it's nothing. I'll feel better.

But she just freely admits that nothing has changed. I still feel awful about whatever it is I'm going through. And One of the wonderful things, there's a lot of homages played in this movie, but one of the ones that I was tickled by, and I have to assume it's intentional, is before she can really articulate that it might be a child that's missing, she has a paranormal investigator come to the house, this sort of woman, hippie woman, who comes in and lights candles and walks through the house humming and stuff. What I was reminded of, Fadmal, I don't know about you, it reminded me so much of poltergeist when the little girl is you know carol ann goes into the tv and they bring in the the paranormal zelda rubinstein yeah zelda root that's thank you for coming up with that there was a little touch of that like this sort of weird something happening in suburbia that you don't know what.

It is absolutely but it would be as if the father in poltergeist was at the same time going what the fuck is this bullshit Who is this fucking human? Okay, we done here? Are we done with our hippie bullshit? He's a real, Topher Grace plays a great douchebag in this movie because you want him to be the supportive husband who maybe tries to help his wife through this. But instead, he's just kind of on the level of, let's just, what the fuck?

You're scaring me and you're scaring the kids. Get your shit together. It's kind of the message of the husband in this. There are villains in two realms here. Yeah.

All right. The other thing that I want to just mention is that we talked about this TV show that takes up a lot of time in the movie. That's all you see for almost the first half hour of the movie is they essentially give you two episodes of the buddy show during which the plot is kind of kicked off. Three. Three episodes you're holding up.

Which is really interesting to me because you've gone almost a third of the movie until you finally get a glimpse of the real world. I think that's really clever because you're immersed in this weird fantasy realm where you know something is up. I was ready to continue in that fantasy world. I was ready to tumble down that 90-minute well of madness where the show keeps starting every 10 minutes. And it is a feeling of madness because as it's going, you're kind of picking up on the rules of this weird hellish place that only looks candy colored.

Like, well, I don't want to ruin it. I won't go into the rules. But there are, some of it's explained, some of it is not. I presume some of it is they're leaving room for a sequel, which all my fingers are crossed. I hope they decide to make.

But yeah, it goes for it in so many ways. Like I said, it's not overly graphic in a real world violence sort of way, but it is over the top. And I didn't even know that it was Keegan-Michael Key doing the voice of Buddy. I was just about to mention the voice cast because I was baffled to read the list of names at the end of the movie. Each of them is so well just suited to their character.

You know, each one is just a children's character, you know, come to life. Like, I didn't know it was Patton to Oswalt as the Backpack. He's so good. And these characters are in it a lot, these animated characters. They're puppets.

Let's just say they're puppets. A lot of this owes a debt to, for example, Pee Wee's Playhouse. The house that Buddy lives in with these kids is very much indebted to the look of that. There's a clock on the wall with a face, and there's a couch that's singing. And at one point, there's a locomotive that comes in, which is a little bit like Thomas the Tank Engine, to take kids to this place called diamond city that but yeah the voice casting is awesome Patton Oswalt is really good and he well I won't get into.

All right well let's talk about Michael Shannon here for a second everybody this is a really good movie we love this movie go see the movie it is incredibly well made like everything the production design is perfect the the fucking... The scares are... No, there are no scares. But there are... There's plenty of good horror stuff for horror fans.

And if you just like a twisted version of something and a way to look at a children's television show from a little more jaundiced point of view, you can get there. The forced frivolity... of children's television is sort of like really in the crosshairs with this movie. Yeah the songs there's a lot of they sing these songs about being brave and the stuff you would see on Barney or Blue's Clues and it's all they re-released the movie in theaters in September in a sing-along version with the follow the bouncing ball thing I don't know how successful it ultimately was but the music is great and it will in its own way it sticks with you after even after you've watched it But I really want to talk about Michael Shannon because I had no idea that was...

That was one of the places where I thought they really went for it. Yeah, look, at a certain point in the movie, these kids escape. We're spoiling everybody. These kids go on the lam. They're going to run to fucking Diamond City.

They have a mailbox who has his mouth ripped off so he can't talk. On his pole... They have Strappy, who is the backpack, and there are three kids, and they get to the edge of the sort of jungle that surrounds the buddy's lair, and they get to a Western-themed area where they meet two other characters who have been kicking around since the 1960s, I guess, the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s. It's like Howdy Doody. Yeah.

So it's basically Howdy Doody and a child from the peanut gallery who has grown and is a crazy old man. Clint Howard, everyone. And he's still like he's still dressed as a like he doesn't even have new clothes. He's wearing the same clothes he wore as a child. And as soon as he walked in and I saw that outfit, I went, oh, fuck, they're really going for it now.

They're tying this back to every sort of generation's childhood, like entertainer, television entertainer. Yeah, Buddy has clearly been at this in some form for decades and decades. And they too have escaped his lair, but they've been wandering this weird wasteland for probably, you know, 40 years at this point or more. Yeah, it's really frightening at that point. That whole sequence, yeah.

And you just know that they're trouble, these two. Yeah. The puppet and Clint Howard. Clint Howard is basically like a babbling fool. I mean, he's, you got to figure he's been talking to this puppet forever.

And, you know, speaking of harrowing stuff and stuff that you wouldn't normally go for in a studio feature, like there's some lascivious shit here with these puppets. That's where I was kind of going to. We won't get into it, but let's say it's, but it's preceded by they're sitting around a campfire. The kids have built this campfire, which has attracted these puppets. old characters from the 50s or 60s. And they give these characters some of their food that they've smuggled out of Buddy's lair.

But then one of them, Clint Howard's character, I think his name is like George or Willie, I think. Yeah, Willie is the puppet. They start picking the leaves off of these flowers that are around them. And they say, the puppet says, hey kids, you know, eat these flowers. It tastes just like butterscotch.

So the kids start eating it and they're like, oh yeah, it does taste like butterscotch. And as they're doing this, the puppet is telling his tale of woe about how they escaped and whatever. And then he starts singing them a song. And while he's singing, it becomes clear that these leaves off of this flower are actually psychedelics. And the kids start basically tripping while they're listening to this song.

And the song morphs into this like dubstep version of the song. And The Clint Howard character is basically howling in time with the music and it becomes this weird cacophony of... It's really hellish and just troubling. Because again, these are children dealing with all of this weird... And this whole lasciviousness, let's say, that preceded this is deeply disturbing.

Very disturbing. Very disturbing. Well, look, yes, on two levels, because Clint Howard leans into one of the little girls and says, you've got a pretty face. And then the puppet is like, whoa, I'm right here. And then they just start making out like.

They've been lovers for 40 years now. He says, ain't I been enough for you? So yeah, as soon as Clint Howard starts to talk to this girl, I was already at like DEF CON 2. I was like, whoa, this is getting really nuts. And then the puppet starts talking about how their love for each other.

And then it goes up another notch. And then they start making out. Clint Howard and this puppet voiced by Michael Shannon. This is, again, this is, like you said, this is a studio picture of, that really has the bravery to go to these places. This isn't horror in the traditional sense.

This is just unsettling on so many levels. And that was really the scene where I said, take me anywhere. I'm yours, Casper Kelly. It's one of these, you know, the cliche that everyone keeps fucking repeating is, oh, they couldn't have made that movie nowadays when they're talking about movies from the 70s and the 80s, you know, the sort of, out there craziness of it all. And I'm just like, yeah, we can make other crazy shit.

Here it is. Like, this is the movie they're going to be saying that about, you know, the, the parallel plot going on is Kristen Milioti. Like when the psychic is there, it shows it, the television comes on and the, and the kids and it's buddy, the, the kids show is on for just like a second. Tover Grace turns it off. And then she does research and finds out you, the show has never existed.

How is that possible? And then, After she's been dismissed and written off as crazy, she wakes up to fucking Buddy on the other side of the television beckoning her closer and puts his hand to the screen. She puts her hand to the screen and then he pulls her in. And now that's just sort of standard stuff. We've seen people pulled in through the television or out of the television before.

But this becomes really Cronenberg-like where she has her arm in a flat screen that she's dragging around. And then it's half her body. Oh, my God, man. What a bravura comes to mind. It's nuts.

And she stumbles into the bedroom where her husband is to say, like, help me. Don't you see? But somehow the way this works. Because she's now half in his world. When these kids get pulled in, everything gets forgotten.

So, like, reality switches. But he can't see her. And then when she gets sucked in all the way... you immediately see the room change. And this is how they can, however this works supernaturally, when a kid disappears or an adult, because we didn't really mention this, but there are adults in this world, Buddy's world. There's a mailman who's your typical, hey kids, and he comes and delivers the mail.

There's a nurse. Now, so adults do get pulled into this world too. And that really is why she gets pulled in is because Buddy, spoiler alert, has brutally murdered nurse Betty, the delightful, sweet nurse that comes in because one of the kids has said to her, they catch wind that Buddy is not what he seems to be. So they go to this nurse for help. And as she's talking to him, Buddy brutally murders her.

So now Buddy has to pull in another nurse. He pulls in this Freddie's mother, basically. And she now becomes the new, she's Nurse Grace because that's her name in the real world. And now let's bring it back to the lasciviousness conversation we were having because Buddy, who's all fucked up because they burned him and half his body is completely charred and you can see his innards, needs the nurse to help him. Nurse Grace, yeah.

And as she's like putting bandages on him, he's feeling her up and licking her. It's really awful. Yeah. This is what I'm saying. This is not traditional horror as maybe most of your listeners would think of it, Father Malone.

But these are the moments that really grabbed me and just really, it just gives you the icks. But it's just so well done because it's all being rendered as you would a child's television show. Oh, buddy. Oh, let me help you here. Are you okay?

And she's being gentle and they're singing a song. And as they're singing, you see this big monstrous tongue from inside of Buddy start to lick her face. And he's feeling her ass as they're doing this. And she's, I mean, she's, she doesn't know what to do. She's just completely flummoxed by all.

She's the character at this point. She's not even thinking she's, she has no memory of her former life either. It should be pointed out. Like when people come into this world, they become part of the world. Exactly.

So she is for all intents and purposes, nurse grace at this point, she doesn't remember her past. life as a mother and part of this family. So she's freaked out by it. Has anyone... I don't know. It's just.

I don't know how anybody thinks of this stuff and writes it down and makes it so compelling. Like I, but I should have, I already came in loaded for bear because like I said, I loved everything I've seen of Casper Kelly. So I just, you know, if there's any downside to the movie and there's not many, but for me, and I've read this from other critics and things, I think the pacing is not perfect. There there's, it does sag a little bit in the middle. Especially, like you said, when they leave Buddy's lair.

Much like the characters, you're wandering a little bit. But it all comes right back to reset. Because the kids end up, through various machinations, get pulled back into Buddy's world. And that's really Act 3, where everything kind of comes to a head. And, you know, it's fantastic.

It's funny to say this movie sags to the middle when it's got a 95-minute running time. Right. Yeah, you know, but they do what they have to. I mean, the fact that they invest so much time up front in essentially showing you three episodes of Buddy's television show, I think is the smartest thing they could have done because you really need to be immersed in that to feel the shockwaves happening as Buddy kind of loses control. Speaking of great voice characters, didn't mention him up at the top, and that's my fault, Eric Bauza, who...

We've talked about, or I've talked about here with Coyote vs. Ugly. Coyote vs. Acme. Coyote ugly?

Coyote vs. Ugly? Somebody mash those up immediately. Eric Bowser, who does all of the Warner Brothers characters now, is the voice of basically every other thing. He's the guy who did all Mel Blanc's voices.

Okay, I knew that he was in it. I didn't know that he did everything. Well, he did the mailbox. He did The couch, he did the worry well, he did trashy. Right, right.

And the little bit of the mailbox that you hear before his mouth is ripped off. Just somehow horrifying, even though there's no blood, it's just a mailbox. Yeah, and I kept looking at him thinking, oh, that poor mailbox. It's sad, but the kids carry this mailbox on a pole through the whole movie, basically. Oof.

There's a moment, by the way, just one last thing and talk about things that really stuck with me. There's one moment where the backpack does something very brave and kind of helps the kids out of a tight jam. And then subsequent, the next part of the scene is basically the backpack hyperventilating and saying, I can't catch my breath. It was so sad, Father Malone. And so it's hard to call a talking backpack realistic.

But if you're thinking about somebody who's had a traumatic experience like the one that the backpack just had, the fact that it's essentially hyperventilating because of the horror of what it's just experienced, a lot of it is Patton Oswalt doing a bang-up job making you feel for this animated character, essentially. But that stuck with me more than the violence and the gore, I think. Although there is a moment with it where Buddy... tries to go down the well and finds that he cannot go down because he's so fat. And then he comes up with a very unique solution to get down that well, which I found very, that was just so creepy what he had to do. Oh, see, now that was that as a, as an aging gore hound, that was just like, Oh, here we go.

Like I knew what he was going to do as soon as he found himself stuck in that well, he takes a knife and he slices off each of his sides, which is funny because you only need to really slice off one of your sides. One. Right. And, But, and it's only, this is just a costume. It's not as if you're seeing, there's nothing realistic about it, but the idea that.

Well, no, let's point out when you slice him open, you see his innards inside. I mean, there's still felt and fur and such, but like, you know, he goes a portion of this movie where his one eye is bulging out and his skull is completely visible. Like when that tongue comes out of the mouth, you see the tongue long before because half of his face is missing. No, I don't mean that he is a costume. I mean, like in real world terms, it's just the guy in a costume and they're rendering this idea that he's cutting, he's slicing pieces of his flesh off.

But it's really one of those things where you think about it, someone who's doing that. The idea of it is more unsettling than the actual like rendering of it on screen. But I really sincerely hope they make a sequel to this because I think there's a lot of room for expanding this weird universe that they get into. Yeah, let's talk about the ending. Now, this is super duper spoiler portion, so if you don't want this spoiled, then get out now.

I won't give away any of what leads us to the fact that our lead character, Freddie, who has been the... She's been the crux of the entire movie. She does escape. But unlike Back to the Future, where you come back to a world that's even better than you left it, she comes back to a world where she's... completely unknown to anyone and she doesn't know anyone. She's not even in the right country apparently when she emerges.

It's really horrifying. It feels almost sort of mean on the filmmaker's part to just do that. Well, I was hoping against hope that it was going to be a Back to the Future style ending where she'd be back with her family. But A, I wasn't a bit surprised that they went in this direction and B, I just think they were being true to the tone of the movie. It would have been a cop-out for her to be reunited with her family and all would be well.

I kind of like the grimness of the ending because she emerges and she thinks she's back in her own house. And they even show people that they're kind of glimpsed through like windows. It looks like her parents and she's happy. But the first thing that makes her unhappy is is she's come through with the backpack and the mailbox. They've made it through this harrowing ordeal.

These two characters that we love are fine. Mailbox is going to get fixed. He's going to get fixed. And she is, by the way, she's covered with blood. I mean, she just is a mess.

But she's come through all this, and she joyfully says, we've made it, we've made it. And she looks, and now in the real world, the backpack is just a regular backpack. It's not animated. The mailbox... And.

They're both coated in blood. I mean, you would hope at least the filmmakers or the writers would at least have given her friends the only things that even know who she is in this new world. But no, they're I mean, and it makes you think like if she tries to describe to anybody what she had just gone through. She'll be locked up immediately. Yeah, because she's clinging to these inanimate objects.

She's covered in blood. She can't explain where she's been or what she's done. What would anyone rationally think she's done? There is no explanation. There is no explanation.

It's really terrible to do. And yes, if for no other reason than for that girl to find some happiness, I would like them to make a sequel. Right, because we don't even know how long she's been in this world. I mean, we know it's been long enough that, you know, who knows how long she's been there for. Yeah, I mean, and the show itself is supposedly from the 90s.

Or, you know, if you look, we see the credits a bunch at the beginning. So it's from 1999. And I expected the movie to take place in 1999, but it doesn't. This is a contemporary film because they mention it at one point. It says, like, some old thing from the 90s.

Yeah, some old show. Yeah, we do get obsessed with it over and over. And they do, again, we're in spoiler territory, but once the kids get past the jungle area and wherever, like we start to see where all of this is taking place, like how these kids are getting pulled in. And it all seems to take place in what appears to be an old style high school or some sort of school with an auditorium. And there's monitors set up where you can see kids on their couches reaching up to kind of try to touch things.

Buddy's hand, like we saw Chris D'Amelio do, it never really explains exactly what's at play here. But I think that's kind of tantalizing in a way. Absolutely. It's one of these, what's going on behind the scenes. Like there is this place in this school gymnasium where all these monitors are set up, which we're seeing from the other side of this world.

Yeah, it's fairly fascinating. I just, you know, you know me, HB. The less you explain things, the better. Sure. So, if this is it, I'm good.

Because that's a great Twilight Zone ending. You know, not every ending has to be happy. You know? You got away from the murderous fucking creature, but, like, you have to now live in a world where no one knows you. In a funny way, now that I think about it, it kind of, without thinking of it at the time, it kind of reminds me of the end of Time Bandits.

Remember? Absolutely. Such a grim, and I don't want to spoil it, but it basically is... The main character survives, but he emerges in a world where his parents are gone, his friends are gone. We don't really know what's in store for this poor kid.

And that's it. It's not a happy ending, it's an ending. It's an ending, and that's kind of what we... This is a little less happy than that, but I agree. It's true to the spirit of the movie, though.

That forced frivolity thing, I think, is really... like you know at the heart of the of what what drives this movie like the fake kind of behavior and getting away from that world and then giving us just like a happy ending would have been sort of antithetical to that Yeah, exactly. And if this is all we see of Buddy and everything, I would be fine with that. I mean, this is... Every movie doesn't need a sequel. I think maybe we exist in a time where there's too many sequels.

But part of me really wants to see... Go further into the rabbit hole that is this weird character and what it's all about. And they do leave room for a sequel. So, I don't know. Apparently, this is a sizable hit.

So... Fingers crossed. I hope so. And it deserves all the accolades. It deserves all the money.

These people obviously are fabulously talented. I was one that was watching it kind of hoping this was a movie from a couple of scrappy youngsters. But I don't really care where it came from. I'm just glad it exists. I'm thrilled.

I'm really happy that you liked it as much as I did, Father Malone. That's great. Yay, we finally agree on something. You and I. I give it five yellow lights, Father Malone.

Oh, get out of here with your Mr. Walters business. This is the roundup, my friend. And I guess that's going to do it for us this week. H.P., tell people where to find you elsewhere.

Sure. As I just alluded to, I co-host the Night Mr. Walters taxi podcast alongside Father Malone here. I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast and Last but not least, I have a Bandcamp site, hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com. As for me, you're listening to it.

It's the Roundup. Every Monday is a fest or a computer thing or a fucking anthology horror thing. And every Friday, it's the Roundup. Until next time, everyone, try to enjoy the daylight.