Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - It Ends (2026)

Thank you. Welcome back, Midnight Viewers, to Father Malone's Weekly Roundup. I am Father Malone, and joining me in just a moment is my co-host with the most toast, and he's afraid of ghosts, Mr. HP, and we're going to sift through all of the recent news. Of course, we tend to record that at the beginning of the week, so certain things aren't mentioned in our discussion, but I wanted to take the opportunity to mention them here, starting with, we're all fucked.

The only truly decent light in our earthly firmament is now gone. Jolene is in for an afterlife ass-whipping. Miss Dolly Parton is gone. There are certain fixtures in one's life that you count on. I know the sun will rise and the fucking desert is going to be hot, and somewhere in the wilds of Tennessee, designing a new rollercoaster in between dashing off some of the most iconic songs in popular music history was a tiny, big-boobed, bigger-hair ray of absolute fucking joy.

It's like the way I felt about Lou Reed, or Mike Nesmith, or David Bowie. Or Prince. Did I say we're doomed? You know we are. I fell in love with Miss Parton at age seven, seated beside my grandmother at a grimy two-screen theater in Saugus, Massachusetts, in the film 9 to 5.

My grandmother never spoke during movies, but broke that rule to point out that the song I had just heard was by that woman there. Man, remember that murderous fantasy she has where she's cowgirl roping Dabney Coleman? Mm-hmm. The other hotter woman to leave us this week was Tim Curry. I'm talking about Frankenfurter, of course.

Calm down, everyone. What can be said? The man was a sexual awakening for multiple generations, and traumatized an entire other generation as Pennywise, and was a fucking sensational dramatic actor, and could sing and dance like a house on fire, and was one of the greatest villain voices ever. Do you know he was cast as the Joker before Mark Hamill? There's footage out there.

Look it up. He was Wadsworth in Clue. Oh my god, Clue. Now I have flames on the side of my face. My favorite performance of his, aside of The Worst Witch, naturally, is Darkness in Legend.

That massive frame and those horns and those exaggerated features would be just a beautiful but hollow exercise if there weren't the most soulful human underneath it. And that's Tim Curry. He took a literal interpretation of evil and made him the most vulnerable character in that film. And the scariest. He had it all.

Sexy scary. Nothing finer. Anyway, we miss you already, Dolly and Tim. That's right. Now that they're deceased, we're on a first-name basis.

Also on a first-name basis, Mr. HP. Let's get him in here. Sequel news, HP. Are you ready?

I want to get your thoughts. Buckle up. We live in a sequel world. We were complaining a lot about D23 and all the Disney sequels coming, but that doesn't mean that there can't be good sequels, right? Okay.

National Treasure 3, what do you think? I never saw the first two. Yeah, me neither. Who cares? Okay, the real sequel news.

Are you ready? I'm so ready. There's no title yet. However, Jafar Jackson will return as Michael Jackson in a sequel that will confront child abuse allegations and let Michael's voice be heard. All right, let's get real.

Before we go on, let me ask. Did you see Michael? No, I have still not seen Michael. I just can't bring myself to watch it. So I did.

I saw it. I saw it with my wife. And now, obviously, it's a tall order to say, oh, put aside all that child abuse allegation. Because it's– look, I think it's foolish to dismiss that out of hand because it just seems like there's smoke and there's fire. But I will say this, and I told you this after I saw it.

Like putting aside– if it's possible to put any of that aside, I will say that that guy, Jafar Jackson– was basically born to play Michael Jackson. He is so good in this movie. The movie lets him down at every turn, but it's hard not to because they're avoiding anything resembling controversy at every turn. He's really good in it, and it kind of saddens me to see that commitment because you just have to think all of the hours and hours and hours of him doing things the routines, learning the routines, learning how to walk like Michael, learning how to talk like him, learning how to move like him. It feels squandered in the service of a bit of hagiography.

So, I don't know. I'd be interested to see what... I'm happy that he at least gets to continue doing what, frankly, he does best, which is play Michael Jackson. I could see doing a movie about michael jackson the artist and we're gonna do it from this time to this time in his life but and and not forget about but try to put aside at least the personal life and the later person he became sure worth exploring i don't think that i haven't seen the movie but it seems like what you said it seemed like it was going to be more hagiography than anything But to make a movie confronting those allegations as if they're going to just dismiss them out of hand, this one I'm definitely going to go see. I'm just curious as hell.

Because there's no making this movie without the support of the Jackson estate. So how do you confront those allegations and make it real? How do you avoid making it hagiography all over again? I don't know how you do that. I'm not sure it can be done.

No, it's going to be disgusting is what it's going to be ultimately. I'm there for it. I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about, remember that Bob Marley biopic that came out a few months ago? Yeah. And the person on the podcast said, yeah, I went and I'm in the theater.

And then the first thing I see is one of Bob Marley's kids on the screen saying, yeah, we put a lot of thought into this. We want to make it as real as it could be. And the guy said, and that's when I knew. this movie was going to be nothing but bullshit. Yeah, right, exactly. Because there's no way you have an authorized biopic that's going to give you the true warts and all depiction of the person that you're portraying.

It's impossible. In other news, HP, sad news, I'm afraid. Sadder than Michael Wright dying? Yes, way sadder than that. Nicholas Holt has dropped out of the role of Gilderoy Lockhart in the new Harry Potter series to be replaced by Kit Harington.

It's it's it's both it's both happy and sad news. It's happy for the people who are against J.K. Rowling and her despicable stance against, you know, trans people. I don't know how anyone can can be in these these movies or TV shows and not take a stance on that. So but I but I but Nicholas Holt didn't I don't know if he if it's true that he had scheduling conflicts with Superman or.

Maybe it's a little bit mealy-mouthed, the way he's just like, oh, it's scheduling, I have to drop out. I would like to think that he dropped out because he came to his senses and said, I can't align myself with this person. I think they announced it, what, two weeks ago or a week ago? And I'm sure he's been getting a rasher of shit in every direction from everyone he knows, and he went, okay, I can't do this. I can't do it.

Scheduling conflict. But now Kit Harington is the one that now we have to point to and say, oh, Kit, what are you doing? I liked you. Now I can't like you anymore. Sorry.

Sorry, all you Harry Potter people. You know, it's way too out there and obvious. You know, it's not like this isn't Michael Jackson and looking back on his life. This is J.K. Rowling right now is a cocksucker and you're giving her money just by continuing to promote her brand.

The evidence is right there. You just have to look at all of her social media accounts. She doesn't hide it. It's the crazy thing, but she's using her billions to spread hate. So I don't know how any of these actors...

I mean, I was really saddened at John Lithgow, an actor who I've loved forever, since I was a kid. I saw him in The World According to Garp, and I, you know, I mean, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet. As a trans character. Yes. The World According to Garp.

Remember? His Academy Award-nominated performance? Yes. Yeah. And even now, when I think back, it was one of the more sensitive portrayals of a trans character.

He was funny. It was a beautiful portrayal. Absolutely. And could play the fuck out of a football game. Luckily, I'm not any great fan of Kit Harington.

I didn't watch Game of Thrones, so I can't really say that I was totally crushed that he decided to do this TV series, but... Nick Holt, good for him. I like Nick Holt. I can go on liking him because he made the right choice in this case. Maybe this isn't the place for soapboxing, Father Malone, but right is right.

Speaking of right and wrong, Peggy Carter herself, Hayley Atwell, was interviewed recently and they asked her about Multiverse of Madness, said that she thought it was disrespectful that she gets to stand up and give the iconic line, I can do this all day, just to be friz-beat in half by her shield. I have to agree, but when I read that blurb, I didn't read the whole interview, but I read that blurb, it was widely reported, in my mind, if I'm her... And they come to me and say, hey, we want you in this movie. It's a double-edged sword because I'm sure she feels great protectiveness around her character, around Peggy Carter. So do you turn that down because you believe that it's disrespectful to the character?

Or do you take it with the idea that maybe they'll give the role to somebody else or maybe they'll find another way around? I don't know. Hard for me to think what you would do in that situation. Well, I think if you had read the script and looked at the storyboards and then filmed the scenes as promised, then you would have known that there was much more of a fight there. There was more?

They cut that short? Yeah. There was a big old Peggy Carter, Captain Carter holds her own forever. And instead, they just sort of played it cheap and just went, bing, bing, bing, let's get this out of the way and go. Which, by the way, I don't blame Sam Raimi for going, okay, we did your thing where we met all of your Carol McQuick characters from other movies.

Can I get back to my movie now? Yeah. Can we get back to the story that I'm directing, please? So, like, I get it. But at the same time, like, what she's saying is, I think, like, I filmed something that was heroic and they made me look like a punk.

Because they make it like a laugh line. Like, I can do this all day. And like, nope, no, you can't. Yeah. Which makes her a joke twice.

I mean, it sells the brutality, obviously, of Scarlet Witch in the moment. But we've already gotten that. She already shredded fucking Reed Richards like confetti. Which is horrifying. It's an awful scene.

Oh, no, I like it because I'm not a big fan of John Krasinski. Not awful meaning like it. I thought it was despicable. It's a horrifying image is what I'm saying. Oh, I'm saying it was a great image because it's John Krasinski being shredded.

Yeah, like I said, I feel for these actors sometimes. We just got through talking about Nick Cage and him doing The Flash in Good Faith, and then they just do something else entirely with his likeness. So much an actor can have control over, I guess. I'm just glad she was able to speak out. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Why not? I mean, you know, it's like she's under an NDA. You can't talk about it. At a certain point, we're going to have to talk about Wonder Man.

I need to watch it, don't I? Yes, I do too. You haven't watched it either? No. Yahya Abdul-Mateen.

He's been very outspoken. He's been very outspoken. So I think it would behoove us to watch wonder man and like maybe talk about it because all i'm hearing is it's the best thing they've done in fucking years and what the fuck are they thinking and canceling. It that's that the director from spider-man. That was his thing oh yeah right.

To me him taking being outspoken about that is it's not a contest but i feel like that's much more courageous than hayley atwell saying yeah i didn't like what they did with my character like that's he he could be impacting his his future employment with with Marvel by saying that because he's basically, he's not, he's not even implying, he's basically saying like, look, they cancel Wonder Man. They never made Blade. You connect the dots. Yeah. I mean, there have been a lot of announced Marvel movies that have never come to fruition and lots of little things, but it does seem a little bit on the fucking nose that Blade and then Wonder Man.

Particularly, it's like the day of or the day after he got nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of the character, so they're getting the accolades. I mean, look, television is littered with the history of idiot studio executives canceling something that was great in its prime, but what the fuck? They had already announced a second season. Everyone who had seen it loved it. If there's a problem with that series at all, it's that it's on fucking Disney and not everyone has Disney.

Yeah. I no longer have Disney. I haven't had Disney for a while because I was just too done with the programming. I wasn't enjoying it. I was spending all this money and not gaining any real benefit from it every month.

So I just said, I'm done. There's only so many times you can watch The Simpsons. Or, you know, maybe once in a while I'd watch a Marvel movie that I had a hankering to see. It was an easy one stop shop. But I mean, they they they had a habit.

They have a habit of canceling things and removing all trace of them from the site. You remember we talked about this in the Spider-Man podcast where they had a series called like Marvel 616 or something where it was basically it was a celebration of of. Marvel properties and things. And one of the first episodes I remember was on the Japanese Spider-Man. It's like, this is great.

It was one of the great... I mean, they dove deep and they actually talked to the actors and the filmmakers in Japan about what it was like to make it and how crazy it was. Not on Disney Plus anymore. It's gone. It's like it never existed.

There were some good episodes of that show. There were. That was the one that came to mind for me. And I watched them all. But that's gone.

That guy who does, um, I mean, this isn't such a, a, a, a big loss, but the guy, um, Dan Lanigan, who's a famous prop collector, he has a channel on YouTube called Cinema Relics. He had a whole series about, he would go like, um, find a prop or something in a warehouse somewhere. And then he would go to talk to the craftsman. He'd, he'd, There was an episode on Nightmare Before Christmas where he talked about the puppetry. Yeah.

And had some of the people who made these things talk about it and show you how they worked. It's kind of a cool series. Like, it never existed, Father. Wow. See?

Physical media. And what's more, what's worse is he had started to put clips of it on his YouTube channel because he figured, what's the harm? I mean, they don't want it on their channel anymore. Yeah. Did they get threatened?

Oh, yeah. So he had to take them off. Wow. That's fucked. It's a damn shame.

It's his fucking show. Well, you work for the mouse. You work for the mouse. You take the good with the bad. Not the biggest loss, but, I mean, it doesn't matter.

It's like rewriting history. It's a little scary. Yeah, well, them's the times we live in. Them's the times we live in. Don't do it.

White lines. They're just dreams of passion. All the while I think of you. There's one word he keeps saying, but he uses nerd on it. It's like he's talking about politicians and something.

Governerds. Governerds rejected. The sad part is I almost as often think of the Duran Duran cover as Which is absolutely atrocious. And I like Duran Duran a lot. That is steaming garbage.

That whole album was real bad. It's terrible. The bass player, John Taylor, over COVID. I don't know if I ever talked to you about this. Why would I?

Because you wouldn't be interested. But he, you know, everybody during COVID was doing like. You know, I love Duran Duran, by the way. Go ahead. No, I do too.

I think they're severely, especially John Taylor as a bass player. So I was thrilled. during COVID when he would like, every week he would have like a thing. He'd like, he'd be like, let's focus on the baseline from the reflex. And it was him like in his room with a bass. And he's like, the first thing I did was I went to, to, to, to, and you know, then he'd play it.

And I'm like, wow, this guy is a really good bass player. I totally underrated. The guy can really play. And he was the prettiest one in the band. Well, Nick Rhodes might, Nick Rhodes had makeup to back him up, and he was more feminine looking.

I'm saying as far as a guy in the band. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's based on androgyny, then obviously. Exactly. He was like the Rob Lowe of the band.

That's perfect, yeah. Somebody who maybe his good looks held him back to a certain degree from being appreciated for the excellent musician that he is. But I just love these little vignettes. He'd do the bass line to Rio, and he'd do the bass line to this, and Guy would just jam. It was just him and his bass, and he was smiling all the time, and you could see how much fun he was having.

It was one of those bright lights during a really dark time. Duran Duran. You remember from Barbarello? Yes, exactly. Another movie that they did a sequel in comic book form.

Several, I think. And they keep threatening to remake Barbarello. Usually with Rose McGowan. But now I believe it's. Rose McGowan.

She's way out of that running at this point. Oh, yeah, yeah. But this is when she was also... She was going to be Red Sonja again, or Red Sonja there for a while. Anything Robert Rodriguez was involved in, he wanted Rose McGowan to be in it.

You ever get the feeling, and I don't want to impugn the man's character. I don't know him from Adam. but you ever get the sense that maybe there's some kind of Me Too thing that might come out about Robert Rodriguez someday? Like maybe a little bit of a creep? I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, I think he is. I think he's probably a real creep. Just a vibe I get. He's probably the nicest guy in the world, and I respect. Him, but I can't say while he was married he had sex with Salma Hayek and then Rose McGowan, but I'm pretty sure he had sex with Salma Hayek and then Rose McGowan.

It's kind of what I'm getting at. And the association with Tarantino around that time, it just seemed. All the news that's foot to feet is going to Tarantino. Did you ever end up seeing, when they re-released Kill Bill, they finally put it out as a single movie, did you watch the edit? You know.

I turned it on, and I believe it was on Amazon Prime or something like that, right? Okay. And Amazon still has ads. Sometimes they'll just do it at the beginning and the end, but you're going to sit through four minutes of ads to get to it, right? And I got about a minute into the ads, and I thought, I don't think I want to watch three minutes of advertising to watch this fucking movie that's just stitched together in the middle, and they've taken off the black and white filter.

I don't think I need to fucking sit and watch one movie moment of advertising. Because just like two or three years ago, I made an earnest effort to watch both those movies and enjoy them. And I think there's a lot of charm in the first film. And I think there's some good stuff in the second film. But the second film is garbage.

And everything good about the first film is from Lady Snowblood. I would agree with you there. And actually, I had a very similar experience. I remember really enjoying it, I think when I first saw it, but thereafter, I think I just would watch like isolated fight scenes or what have you. Right.

But I never really sat down to watch it. And I was going to try to watch the, the final, the big extended cut, but I just kind of said, I'm, I can replay the movie back in my mind. And I, I'm not really like, why, why am I spending the time doing this? I already know the movie by heart. So do I want to watch her try and punch her way out of that grave again?

Really? Yeah, it's just... I don't know. There's something about it that... Rankle isn't the right word, but I just was...

For the same reason that I wouldn't watch the special edition movies in the theater, I just said, I've seen this. I've been here before. It's not like it's going to be an incredibly different experience. It's just some color changes and some edits. Yeah, maybe some more blood or something.

Who knows? Who cares? His most rewatchable movie was... may end up being, for me, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That's about the only one I could ever think, oh, I want to go back and re-watch that. I saw Reservoir Dogs one fucking billion times because I was showing it.

And I wanted to watch it then. So I watched it every shift, three times a day, basically. So that's not a movie I want to go back and re-watch, but then I wouldn't want to re-watch anything that I had watched in... That much. In profusion, yeah.

Yeah. So... I would say that because I do think it's still a brilliant little work of youth. But as far as a movie maker goes and a career of making films, yeah, it's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. You get the feeling that he was born to make that movie, honestly.

That's exactly it. It's kind of the culmination of everything he'd been working up to. And he had the right cast, finally the right... filmmakers around him, it just sort of works for me. I don't know. In a way that the other ones just don't anymore.

Maybe Inglourious Bastards, but that, I don't know. Again, I don't really have a strong urge to watch that either. No, and it feels now like just a warm-up for this movie as well. Like, he figured out in that movie, oh, I can do a big epic story, and I can change history if I want to, if I feel like doing it. Yeah.

No, we're in agreement there. I was going to mention, I don't know if you heard this, Michael Wright, the actor, passed away last week. Did you hear about that? No. Do you remember who Michael Wright was?

His most prominent role was, he was in that movie, The Five Heartbeats. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he played the, what do you call it, the Eddie Kendrick role. He was the member who had all this talent, but he was seduced by, you know, all the dark, the dark side of fame. And he had substance use problems, the character in the movie.

Right. Anyway, when I, when I heard that this, cause I remember him and I thought he was, that to me is the definitive Michael Wright role. Cause he's so good in it. So I went back and I was, I rewatched a little bit of five heartbeats. When's the last time you saw five heartbeat in the theater?

The last time you saw the movie was in the theater. Yeah. You haven't seen it since then. you never watched it on home video. It's good. It holds, it kind of holds up.

I mean, it's, it's written. I think it's a very naively written at times. Uh, I think Robert Townsend was, I don't know. It, maybe the budget wasn't what it could have been for, for something, a scale, you know, give it a scale, but it was, the music's great. Uh, Michael Wright's probably the best thing about it.

He's so authentic in this movie. And now he's gone. Rest in peace. I blame you. That was one thing that was on my mind this week.

What's been on your mind? What's going on in the world of Father Malone this week? Battlestar Galactica still, man. You're still knee-deep in silence. I am four episodes away from finishing the entire series.

The original or the newer one? The newer one. Four seasons. Yeah, it's been a lot, but It's the first time in a long time I've watched an entire series and not felt like, okay, what are we doing? Like, you know, I didn't feel like there was any wheel spinning or any excess fat on this particular thing.

So, yeah, I've been doing that a lot. It's crazy. Like, you know, look, I fucking, I'm a monster four days a week now. So that takes up a lot of my time. Everything else I seem to do for fun has to coincide with a podcast.

So I'm like watching movies to review and then TV shows to review and then I'm recording podcasts and none of this can go on the show because this is boring behind the scenes podcast bullshit. It doesn't leave a lot of time for fun stuff. To be honest, I've been treating the, like Battlestar Galactica has been the fun stuff, you know. Again, this is a series that I'm recording next year. So I'm going to have to come back and do this all again effectively, but I kind of compulsively can't stop.

It's really good. And, you know, going back and looking at Ronald D. Moore, he wrote the miniseries for Battlestar Galactica but wasn't around for the filming of it because he was the first-year showrunner on Carnival, that HBO series. Did you ever watch that? No, but I remember you speaking very highly of it.

I think you might want to give it a look sometime, if you would. Dust Bowl, Mystics, Clancy Brown, Amy Madigan. Clancy Brown is the thread that weaves through all of our geekiness. He is the spine. There was a video game called Detroit Become Human.

It was one of these sort of interactive. I know, you made me play that game. And he is sort of a washed-up detective in that, Clancy Brown. So you get to play as Clancy Brown. It was a really interesting game.

Oh, well, I mean, I guess here's something I watched, and you won't hear it here on Midnight Viewing because it's for a whole other podcast, but I rewatched Cast a Deadly Spell. Oh, with Gus Grissom from Right Stuff. What's his name? Fred Ward. Fred Ward.

The perfect rumpled noir detective. Such a great actor. Yeah, man. Great in everything. Every fucking thing he was in.

Crazy. Crazy. We miss Fred. Yeah, I remember that. That was an HBO thing.

That was on HBO a lot when I was a kid. When we were kids, I should say. Yeah, well, they spent six million on that budget, so they were going to show it a lot. That much? Really?

That was a lot. That was like, we're talking like the mid-80s, the early to mid-80s? No, that was 91. Cast the Deadly Spell was 91? Get out of here.

No, it was 91. Are you serious? I'm totally serious. Okay. I just watched it.

I just recorded a show about it. I thought it was earlier than that. No, sir. Okay. The script was written in 81, but it didn't get made till 91.

And it was supposed to be a feature and apparently was budgeted at 25 million. And then HBO said, we'll give you six. And they said, and then they said, we could never do that. And then Gayle Ann Hurd said, I was a Corman girl. I'll make that happen.

So looking back on it, it's actually pretty remarkable because it is a fucking period piece with magic and shit and monsters. All the monsters are terrible. Like, there's a lot of that movie that's just garbage, honestly. Yeah. But, you know, I'm trying to think what else I've seen.

I haven't really seen it. Well, let me ask you a question. Have you seen this movie, It Ends? No, not yet. It sounds very intriguing to me.

Tell the people what it's about, Harris. Tell the people what it's about, H.P. I'll tell you what it's about. And this is kind of following in the tradition of, like, Obsession and Back Rooms, these movies. And all of a sudden they realize that the woods becomes sort of a liminal space where they drive and drive and drive and they never get anywhere.

They can't get out of these woods. And if they stop for too long, these crazy people come out of the woods to attack the car that they're in. So they have to keep driving. But as they're driving, they realize that the car no longer needs gas. They no longer need to eat or sleep.

So they're in this strange place. purgatory if you will and they have to make a decision essentially whether they want to just stop and let things happen or just keep driving and driving and driving and just essentially do they drive forever or do they stop and take their chances against these crazy attackers coming out of the woods there's a lot more to the movie than that but that's basically the stakes of the movie and it sounds It's another one of these deals where I think they had a very low budget. I think the budget was less than $ 100, 000. But because of the creativity and the premise, and I'm sure these are all unknown actors, they're able to take that and stretch it and make it seem more expensive than it is.

And it doesn't need to be an expensive, big-budget movie because it's such a straightforward idea for a movie. It sounds interesting to me. No, it sounds fascinating. I'm fucking down to watch. I feel like, though, a lot of times in these reviews, Father Malone, you zig when I think you're going to zag.

And I think, oh, this is going to be in Father Malone's wheelhouse. And then you review it and you're like, no, didn't like it. Squandered the premise. So we'll see. Let's find out right now.

What the fuck is this place? Sorry, did James distract you? Are we fucking lost? Don't put that shit on. I am not saying that you killed us.

I'm saying that you crashed. James, do not blame him. Don't fucking blame him, okay? We never crashed. We don't need to be worried about what or what I've caused this.

I am being practical. Yeah, this is not real life anymore. It was a fucking test. It was a fucking test. So then just this?

Just here? Forever? What if we're supposed to suffer here? What if that's the point? I mean, the people, the dead end, the gas, the fucking car's still working.

The odometer's past a million. I'm getting tired, I'm hungry, no sexual arousal. Let's just start from the top, then. I mean, what are we doing? My brain immediately goes to some sort of lucid dream.

Maybe we crashed. They were dead is not processing. It kind of is now. This is not real life. Okay, so then what?

How does that change our situation? I don't know, which is why I'm driving. Check out this gas I cooked up last night, man. I never should have smoked that shit now I'm on the endless road. Okay, he's gone, so it ends.

You should see it, definitely. Not at the theater, maybe, unless it's at a local art house. They need your business anyway, and then you know that the reporting is going directly back to the filmmakers. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It feels, for all intents and purposes, like a 90-minute night gallery episode by the author of Groundhog Day after he watched a bunch of Back Rooms videos.

It's an odd duck of a movie, as HP described. Four friends are in a car. Three are returning from college. One, the car owner, has come to pick them up. They're driving through heavily wooded areas, and there's just no end in sight.

If you stop for more than a minute and 30 seconds, swarms of people come loping out of the forest and try to commandeer your vehicle. You never get hungry. The car never needs gas. It's all fucking intriguing. And it's a remarkable achievement because the movie is 90% inside that car with these characters, and it never devolves into melodrama.

It never feels underwritten. It's never boring, is what I'm trying to say. The young cast is all mostly solid. One is kinda too much, I don't wanna be mean. It's clearly his first film, but relax and just be yourself.

Jesse Eisenberg already exists. The other three are definitely solid, anchored by a stoic, without being stony, performance by Phineas Yoon. The time in the car is never wasted, and it's good that we've finally gotten to the point in horror movies that we understand that everyone has seen horror movies and know all the tropes. This film is in no way a meta-depiction of horror films, by the way. What I mean here is that as soon as things go south, the characters begin running down possibilities in a sincere way, rather than wasting a third of the film arguing that it's actually happening or not.

All the scenarios are disgust, purgatory, hell, other dimensions. Are they cursed? Did they cause this through inaction? Yoon's character is a philosophy major and filters the events and possible meanings through that viewpoint, and thus is given a bit more drive to continue the journey than his fellow passengers who each take it more personally and begin to slowly give in to the endlessly oppressive nature of their situation. There are problems.

Some of the dialogue ends up being a whole lot of subtext as text, although, like I said, the script is actually pretty decent overall, and sidesteps the usual traps of let's get these characters bickering and petty and all the usual stuff that bogs down so many independent films with no real ideas. It's the right kind of claustrophobic and it's the right kind of oblique. It's not really interested in giving you any answers beyond what you can see in front of you, and that may be the point. I'm sure people will lump it in with other recent breakouts like Obsession and It Follows and Long Legs, but personally, I think it's way better than those. It's more thoughtful and more trusting in the characters and the audience.

And the fact that you never get camera fatigue while constantly shooting in this SUV is an achievement. It is not better than Barbarian or anything Zack Craigers is doing, but I think these filmmakers can bridge that gap easily with their next. And that is the end of the roundup. I hope you're all doing well. I'm still scaring weekly and talking to you twice weekly.

HP can be found at his shows Night Mr. Walters, A Taxi Podcast, and Noise Junkies. And also here on this show. And you can hear his music. HP does all of my music.

He does all of the music for the network I'm on. And he's wildly talented. So go check out his music. He plays all the instruments. He records it.

He produces it. And you can find all of it at hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com. As for me, patreon.com slash fathermalone. We'll get you these shows a bit early and we'll give you access to exclusive shows like Step Off, The White Rapper Show, and Vault 702, The Fallout Podcast. And a new show called Airlocks, Sensors, and Ray Guns, which is a sister show to one you'll be hearing here in the main feed in the coming weeks.

That show is called Buttons, Switches, and Consoles. where brand new co-host Laura Grillo and I take a look at tech films from the thrilling days of yesteryear. Films like The Net with Sandra Bullock. And yes, hackers. Of course, we're doing hackers. Calm down.

Look for that real soon for me and HP and Ripley and, well, hell, Laura. Try to enjoy the daylight. Thank you.