Backrooms (2026) & Scary Movie (2026) — "I like it in here. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm..."

Yeah, weird way about a place. It's like the store. I just continue my hair footsteps. Back rooms weeded are should be had. I'm a republishing now, so I'm supposed to be racist.

I think, Oh why people are racist anyway? Oh you have an age to day? You beg's like a million days. That's just many fun. Yeah, your fingers smelt like Jennifer.

I agree. I want you three you move goo. It's sam My pronouns. Are they them? He's stab them?

Scary movie Asian faif. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am your host, Chris Tasher, the only host of this episode. And on this episode, if you clicked on it per the title, you know we're gonna be talking about, well, a horror movie and then a scary movie. Uh, in that order.

And yes, I guess technically they're both scary movies, but only one bills itself as such in the title. So let's talk a little bit first about back Rooms twenty twenty six. So, as some of you who know me know, and those of you who just listened to the show, no, I am not exactly in the demographic for this movie. I had no prior knowledge of the back Rooms franchise Meta Creepy pasta ahead of time. I had heard about it with the Liminal Spaces photos on the Internet, but it was not something that I had kept up with.

On my previous show, Scary Stories We Tell, we talked about Hi, I'm Mary, Mary and the Walton Files and some similar kind of analog horror things, but broadly we and I people my age. I don't think Liminal Spaces is a horror concept that is made for people my age. I want to say it's more for gen zers or younger than that, which is perfectly fine, nothing wrong with that obviously at all. I am very amenable to going and watching a movie made for another group of people and kind of enjoying it through my own lens. And I think for someone like Cane Parsons to take an idea that effectively started as a well done CGI YouTube series and turn it into a full fledged film not only directed by him, but written by Will Sudek and produced by Oh James wand Sean Levy Osgood Perkins.

I mean those names alone are pretty big. It's also an A you know, it's an A twenty four film. So when you layer all of that on top of it, it just becomes a lot more of a thing than it, you know, not to say it wasn't a thing on YouTube again, it's just it kind of it's been able to escape the gravity of planet YouTube and kind of wiggle its way into planet mainstream, which is not a given. It's not even easy in a lot of cases. I mean, there have been plenty of things that have come out recently that have not had any sticking power the way something like a back Rooms has.

I would equate back Rooms in a lot of ways to a Five Nights at Freddy's, where it's it's very well known and very well loved by the people who love it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's hyper mainstream. I mean, I think, obviously similarly to five Nights at Freddy's. Backrooms has become almost unavoidable at this point due to the yellow imagery with the wallpaper that they keep using in the liminal spaces. But all that to say film was not made for someone my age. I would say for most people my age, this would have been a I probably heard about it on YouTube, but again, I don't know how many people my age were searching out this kind of creepy pasta meta horror that was being cooked up in I would say the mid the mid teens, And you know, that's you know, when YouTube kind of started coming into its own as a place to present a narrative story as opposed to just you know, like oh, funny reaction videos or you know, kind of non narrative content, something like a back room similar to Walton Files, similar to Hi, I'm Mary Mary, similar to again Five Nights of Freddy's tells the lore without telling the lore.

It shows the lore and expects that the audience is just going to follow along. That's why the audience is there. And for someone like myself, I appreciate that level of storytelling, but I can completely understand how someone else would be turned off by that in a way that is just completely antithetical to the enjoyment of something. There's a lot of people and I understand the sentiment that if I have to go read about something outside of it, or do any sort of ground work to enjoy something, you lose a lot of people. And I think that's unfortunate because there are a lot of really good things out there that are not necessarily super straightforward and don't just exist on the page you have to go, or on the screen you have to go and do a little bit more legwork.

Midsummer the Witch, Hereditary, a lot of Kubrick's films. I'm not going to say Chris Nolan's film because I think Chris Nolan makes high brow films for morons. I'm again, I don't want to I don't want to be that guy, but I will be that guy because Tarantino and Nolan are two other people that I just can't stand and so I don't look at their films as ones that engage with me outside of the theater, or outside of the book, or outside of the initial experience, because they want to just do all the legwork for you. And it's like, well, I don't really agree with or care with your interpretations of the Odyssey. I just don't.

It doesn't excite me, doesn't interest me. I don't care if anyone has to sit in our lines to buy tickets for a movie. It looks like it's trying too hard. It looks like the kind of movie that makes me. When I saw the preview for it, when I was seeing scary movie, it looks cringe.

It makes me cringe. And I love every single actor in the movie, especially Robert Pattinson, and I just couldn't care less. I don't even care. And it's unfortunate because it's the kind of thing that should get people to engage with the source material outside of the film, and it won't because they think that everything there has been presented in the most optimized format because Chris Nolan knows what he's doing. I would go as far as to say, you don't need to know anything about Backrooms to appreciate the film directed by Kane Parsons, because I think Kane Parsons and will Suitik do a good enough job, if not a great job, at taking what is the backstory and lore of the back Rooms kind of meta horror universe, distilling it down into something that's eminently approachable for people that have no experience with it, while while also creating something that I think lives in and of itself within the back Rooms meta universe.

It's not creating its own new world of the back Rooms. It's more or less just existing within the previously established lore, which I think is really smart because it makes your film almost undeniable in terms of the effect that it will have on the law in the long term. They're not saying, well, this is its own new backrooms thing. This is just part of the pre existing backrooms universe, which is very smart. You make your film undeniable within the framework of the law and the fandom because now this is part of it.

This isn't redefining it. I think that was kind of my issue with Five Nights at Freddy's is the Five Nights of Freddy's film. I can't get a sense of how is that tied into the original law and mythology unless it's trying to do its own thing, which is kind of a bummer because the lore for Five Nights of Freddy's is already so rich and deep and kind of enthralling and engaging in Scott Coffin has done a good job at crafting that narrative, and I really was a little disappointed when I learned that the film was not going to just be an extension of the narrative. It was going to be a kind of a retelling of the narrative. And I just don't like that as much as just having this be part and parcel to something that already exists, that people already enjoy don't try to stand between the fans and the thing that they like.

Stand across from the fans where they already want to be going to, and they're coming to you. And that's what the back rooms film feels like, at least on the war kind of front of I will say I'm a huge fan of Chueto Lgafour. I think Touweto Lgafour is one of one of the best actors who was in an MCU movie and was not given anything to do. I mean, he's a good, amazing actor, but I mean, just to speak to the kind of mainstream appeal of him, it's unfortunate that he didn't get more time as a character that has seemingly been forgotten in the MCU Mordo, which I guess was killed off in Doctor Strange Too question Mark. It's unfortunate because Tweto Lgafour is great.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of anything that I've seen him in. Obviously, for most people it's going to go back to something like a Children of Men or you know, I guess for a lot of people it's Children of Men. I mean, I don't really know a lot of his British work because I haven't seen a lot of his British work, but I've seen again what you know, he was in Serenity as the villain. In Serenity, I think that's where a lot of other people would have seen him. But Children of Men, I think is the first time a lot of people saw him in anything, and at least on this side of the pond.

And I enjoyed him in that film. I enjoyed him in Serenity, and a film I'm not even particularly a fan of. I just recently was talking about that with Mike White of the Projection Booth. How not a fan of that movie, I personally am, and maybe I should go and revisit it, because it's probably a film that, at least as there's some revisiting. I've never been of the mindset that they need to revisit Serenity or Firefly or any of that, but I know that there's still a huge amount of people out there still kind of yearning for that return to the Firefly universe.

So me personally, I have no interest, but I I know plenty of people that are very engaged with Firefly and Serenity. But back to the back rooms of it all, So the film. If you haven't gone and seen it by now, or if you haven't seen it, is a kind of isolated retelling of the story of the back Rooms in how it's discovered by Clark played by tuwetl lg. For a man who's going through a divorce from his wife, and he owns a discount furniture warehouse, which I'm assuming is meant to be in Wisconsin, because that's where the back Rooms initially took place, was in a hobby town. That's where the original pictures were taken, was in the back room of a HobbyTown in I say somewhere in Wisconsin, may have even been recien Wisconsin.

And so Clark owns this furniture store. He's a failed architect, and one day when he's in the basement of his store checking on a breaker box that doesn't seem to have any any at least three breakers on the box have no outlet to anywhere, They're not going to anything and coming from anything. Clark discovers that there may be something on the other side of the wall from him in his store which he would have never seen. He sees the line of light on the wall and that's the dead giveaway if you don't know what the backrooms are, like I did going into it, the initial mystery of the film is very engaging. The initial mystery of the film is very kind of enthralling.

It's definitely something that draws you in. It doesn't give you a whole lot. The film opens with a kind of Again, I'm assuming it's taking place maybe at the same time or close to the same time as the film, so in the nineties. The film opens with a shaky cam in the back rooms that takes place in the nineties, So I'm assuming the film is also set in the nineties, and it does a good job of capturing that era of that feel. There's a little bit of, at least in my case, a bit of nostalgia for it.

It's very funny that people younger than me have nostalgia for a time that I grew up in that I'm not even sure I have nostalgia for. It's a weird kind of shared pop culture touchstone that we all have this kind of weird liminal space. But it has to take place in the nineties because it doesn't really work otherwise. And I appreciate that because the film feels like it was set in the nineties. They really lean into the nineties of it all.

They make it feel very set in a time and of a place. I appreciate that. I really like that we have chuwetl Lgafour opposite the therapist played by Rene ritzen Vi. She's his therapist, but also ends up being essentially the main character of the movie, because about halfway through the film, he disappears into the back rooms and she has to go look for him. And it's funny because the trailer kind of gives away that the film might pivot halfway through to another character, and I had heard that the film was going to be about him disappearing, but obviously, when you have chuwetl Lgafour in your film, you kind of want him to be the main character.

And I like that we get his story and Mary's story kind of intertwined. We get to see his trauma, her trauma, how her trauma and his trauma commingle an intermix. I will say, for as much as I enjoyed this movie, I think my first kind of knock and maybe only knock against the film really as I think it falls into the trend of horror as x equals y. So in The Witch it was you know, you know, uhich witch witch and being a witch and paganism effectively is standing in for feminism, and in it follows it's I guess STDs is what you know, STI STD whatever you want to call him as a monster in the Babaduk, it's like, you know, being a parent or being a parent of a child, a special needs child is the monster, Like familial issues are the monster.

Like this has been a thing now like over and over again, Midsummer hereditary there, I mean, and you know what, like there's nothing wrong with that. It's just it's I mean, you know, the wolf man, uh you know, the toxic masculinity is the monster, and it's there's nothing wrong with it per se. It's just I wish they were a little less overt with how they're working out their issues on the screen while still being entertaining, because you can do both, it's very hard and rarely does it work super well. I mean, even with something like Midsummer, one of my favorite films, there is still a huge contingent of people who watch that film that think that that film is like a woo girl film because she gets her revenge on a cheating boyfriend at the end.

Actually, by the end of the movie, she's extremely isolated and has been taken in by a cult that's going to force her off of a cliff at the end of the movie effectively, or at the end of her movie in the beginning of someone else's movie. And that's the part that's again, it's sometimes subtlety is needed, and I think someone like ari Astor or Robert Eggers are up to the task of being subtle. I don't think every director can do that. I will say Cain Parsons is probably leaning more towards Eggers an Aster than he is an Eli Roth type or someone who's just, you know, no subtlety whatsoever. You know about his subtle as being bashed over the head with a ballpeen hammer, and by ball, I mean a mallet like Gallagher would use.

Like there's no subtlety. With Elira, Ariaster and others, they utilize subtlety. They utilize a lot of visual imagery and visual and visual cues that they don't sit and focus on. The camera doesn't focus on him, it doesn't linger on him. It just kind of they exist within the space.

And that's you know that's it. I appreciate that more than you know beating me over the head with don't you get it? Childhood trauma is the monster, and it's like, Okay, I get it, Steve, and Jesus Christ penny Wise is everything and nothing at the same time, like, all right, we get it, Steve. Fine. So on all accounts, in terms of how they utilize the back rooms and the creatures within and what does the back room mean, I think they leave enough on the table to go interesting places with it.

I think based on the amount of money that the movie has made, it made twenty times the initial investment. It was a ten million dollar film. It made two hundred million dollars. I think based on the initial investment, they will probably making some more of these movies. And I'm assuming the more that they make, the more that they will explain of the back rooms, and the less ambiguity there will be with the world and lore that they've created.

I think you run into some real bad problems doing that ultimately, because for most people, myself included, ambiguity is actually a good thing. Ambiguity is actually healthy in a narrative because ambiguity brings you back for more ambiguity allows you to have some room for interpretation within the narrative. I'm not saying it needs to be, you know, spontaneous in terms of like, well, you know, I'm really going far afield my extraneous interpretation of Bill and Ted's excellent adventures that it's actually about Negro league baseball. I'm not saying something to that kind of ridiculous extent. Like directors and writers don't lead that much whiggle room, but a good director and screenwriter will leave enough ambiguity within the story so that you, as the viewer, can enjoy it through your own lens and not so strictly within their narrowly defined viewfinder.

I mean, Jadie Salinger famously did not want Ketcher in the Rye adapted into screen, either TV or film, because ultimately, the moment that it's adapted into something by someone else, that kind of sets the tone for how it has to be interpreted by everybody else moving forward. You know, you cast a character, and you have that character, and then any time anyone reads the book, they're gonna imagine the character as played by the actor in the film, as opposed to the way that the author had it written. And you know, kill the author is a very important conversation in twenty twenty six. I mean, it's really hard in a day and age where some of the biggest franchises are no longer helmed by the people who made them, and in some cases the people who made them are long gone.

I mean Star Wars, which was famously a George Lucas endeavor that he was directly involved with at every level, is no longer involved involving him at all, and he has nothing to do with it anymore. He just enjoyed the bounty of money that he got from selling it to people that have taken it further. So there are arguments to be made for the source material, you know, source material, be damned, do what you want with it. But also allowing the people that have enjoyed it before to enjoy it now in another format I think is important. And I think that with something like backrooms, it really treads a very fine line between being something new that people that have seen the original source material and have inundated themselves with backrooms lore and backrooms, video games and backrooms this and backrooms that are now able to go.

I'm going to go to the theater and watch a backrooms movie on the big screen, which must seem pretty crazy to anyone who watched Kane Parsons videos back in you know, the mid teens, when they were coming out, when that was becoming a popular thing. I mean, you know, twenty twenty two is when the original kind of backrooms videos came out. But I mean, these kinds of creepy pasta things have been around for a while. Slender Man was the thing. I mean, the slender Man murders was a thing that people ended up making a big deal out of because again, like you know, you have a internet thing driving people to do bad behavior.

I mean, ultimately, it's really just you know, once again, mental health parading as something else is the real horror story of it all. Like no, it wasn't the guns, it was the mental health all along, Like yeah, no shit. And that, for me, I think is probably the issue with something like back Rooms is when you when you take something and you're adapting something that's so beloved by a large group of people that don't really have a lot of representation right now because of their age. It's it's really weird to see things that they love on the big screen. As someone who has no prior jumping endpoint, because I for the first time feel like, oh am, I missing something, which is weird because for a lot of people like myself, you know, someone who watches a lot of film, or the other people I work with, like Mike White or Father Malone who watch a lot of film, normal, it's we're not the ones feeling out of sorts with And this is one of these times where I'm like, Okay, I am stepping into the world of the gen Z a little bit, and the gen Z horror world, which I'm not super inundated with the way I am with kind of the elevated horror and the other things like there's a whole subworld of horror on YouTube that exists kind of outside of the mainstream.

And you know, David F. Sandberg, the guy who directed Shazam one and two, that's where he got his start with directing short form horror on YouTube. And I applaud that Hollywood and the mainstream quote unquote are taking it upon themselves to really search out new places to find horror creators or just film creators in general. Obviously, horror is a very profitable thing in terms of low cost, high margin people love to go watch a horror movie on a Friday night with their date. It's just one of those things.

People like to laugh, people like to be scared, people like to see people get shot, people like to like that's Those are the emotions that filmmakers will mine if they're good at what they do, and horror is a very easy one. And this movie leans into horror, both the gen z of it all, but also it wears its kind of influences on its sleeve. Well, I don't think it's unobvious to those who have never seen the movie. I think anyone who's a horror fan is at least seeing pictures of the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of the subsequent redos of that scene in remakes and other material. We once again get a dinner scene from Hell as it Were, with chuetl Lgaafour cutting up a person or a kind of representation of a person and beating him to himself.

It's it's insane, it's unsettling and creepy. It's as unsettling and creepy as Texas Chainsaw is. Dinner scene is as off putting and gross, And I think It's very funny that gen Z horror it's not about being scary so much as being unsettling and creepy, an off putting and kind of causing the hairs on the back of your neck to raise up. Maybe not because what you're looking at is just terrifying, but maybe it's just because you can't tell what it is you're looking at. What you're looking at is amorphous or undis you know, you can't discern what it is because it's just, you know, there's a face kind of peeking out from around a corner at the end of a hallway.

It's that for me, gen Z Horror is really understated in a really fun way, for as brazen and brash and overstated as David Gordon Green's Halloween Trilogy remake. Is these kinds of gen Z horror movies I resonate with way more because they're they're metered, they're slow, they take their time. It's very much psychological leans into the psychological horror, doesn't beat you over the head with the psychological horror, and I really appreciate that about this movie particularly. I haven't gone and seen Obsession yet, but I think the thing for me that I would say is kind of a good primer for something like back would be. And again, this is a controversial take, and I know that there are people out there that are going to scream at me the moment I say this, but they're wrong.

Is Skinnamrink. It's a film that I think uses liminal space, uses creepy imagery, utilizes analog horror the way this film does. I mean it commits to the gimmick in a way that this film never could commit to the gimmick on a big screen, at least not with a actor of Chueto Lga for standing, or any of the actors in this film really, including Mark Duplas, who's in here for two scenes. I enjoyed Skinnamrink so much versus all the other films I've seen probably in the last twenty years in terms of horror, because it taps into something that is harder to do than making a successful horror movie. It created a world and a vibe and a place in a way that is hard to do.

Organic. You have back lit tcrttvs, you have stairwells and staircases to know where, you have noises off in the distance that are very muffled. You have a eye, an eyesight and line of sight that's one or two feet off the ground, which helps again lean into the unsettling of it all because in that when you're a child and so you're kind of already unsettled in the analog space, but then it's you're also defenseless in back rooms. They lean into that there's the defenseless unknown getting lost in the back rooms and there's no handsling retyl breadcrumb to get back out. That's how they kind of lean lean into the helpless horror of backrooms is getting lost in the back rooms.

But I would say that that's maybe the one thing about it that they kind of don't make as scary by the end of the film is having to see a Mark duplaus character and the Asink Research Institute, which is part of the lore of back rooms. Showing all of that takes away some of the horror that, oh, well, there's another door that people are going in and out of at will. Like, yes, I understand it's part of the lore. I appreciate it, but that doesn't feel like something you'd need to reveal movie. Frankly, the cutaway to Mark duplash at and seeing you know, Clark's Ottoman Empire, which is a very funny name, Clark's discount Automan Empire on the TV, and realizing that he's seen that monster in the back rooms as well.

It's a it's a it feels like it's from another film. And then his inclusion at the end of the film feels kind of unnecessary. I feel like there were better ways to do it, or other ways to get to that same point where Clark is gone, where she the therapist Mary could also die. Possibly it's not made clear. It's left open to interpretation, which I think is very fun.

I think there were ways to get to that point without having an outside character from a low organization step in and kind of go, well, here I am with the lore hat and I will I will. I will honestly kind of rail against this on any recent horror film that I've seen, because another one that did it that really was kind of off putting was heretic. Also, so Long Legs did it where it's like the movie pauses, the entire momentum of the film is arrested and we just go into exposition them, and this movie kind of does it right at the end, it's like, well, here's what this is and here's what we are. And it's like, you know, you're sending people out the door on kind of a crappy note. You're sending them out on a low note, and you can send them out on a low note any day of the week.

It's just this is not the kind of low note you should send the audience out on, which is not to say a low note as much as just a like the wagon has pulled into the station like it should be with a film like this, like it comes out of nowhere and that's the end. In this, it's like the kind of telegraph that it's the end of the movie. And I didn't need that as a viewer. I was enjoying Mystery of the back Room so much. And then they kind of rob the movie of the mystery right at the end.

And it's not a twist, Like there's no twist to the ending, and I don't need a twist to the ending. The twist is the back rooms are the a physical representation of people's memories, but they're being degraded over time, and so the back rooms are aren't perfect. They're kind of a degraded memory in living form. And so that's why when Clark is in the back rooms, he sees a giant, pirate version of himself because someone in his past or even him, remembered or misremembered a giant version of himself based on the billboard or the kind of lights on the front of his business, and so there's a giant version of him stalking the back eating and killing people for who knows what reason. Who knows why the things in the back rooms are violent.

That's more interesting to me of a concept to mine, which is why are the things in there sentient and violent? I don't really care what the backrooms are. It's kind of hinted at that it's a space within the space, and it's an MRI company that discovered it. So you know, again, maybe they'll lean more into that in the next movie. I just personally, it's not something that interested me at any point in the movie.

I was not like, well, I want to know what the back rooms are. Once they start answering those questions, there are more questions that have to be answered, There are more things that have to be accounted for, there are more things that they have to go out of their way to explain, and for me, I don't think explaining everything all the time makes things better. I think frankly it ended ends up robbing things of their mystery and ends up making something less interesting, opposite of what their intention is. I would think that when you explain something so that you can close some doors and open others. But when, for the most part a filmmaker explains things, it just leaves doors open that should never have been opened to begin with, often because they don't think things through completely in reverse, and some things just don't make sense.

And I worry with something like back Rooms that the more that they reveal, the further into a corner they'll paint themselves, and they'll be kind of unable to give it a satisfying landing, conclusion, explanation, what have you. Because we're getting more of these movies gen Z Horror with Obsession and back Rooms both coming out back to back weekends making more money than the Mandalorian and Grogu did with one tenth of the budget or one sixteenth of the budget, and made more money. I think we're gonna see a lot more of this. I think we're about to get a glut of gen Z horror, and I don't think it's all going to be very good. I think it's all going to be kind of varying degrees of success.

I'm sure we'll get some successes in there, because like anything else, broken clocks are right twice a day, and people shot gunning at a wall are bound to hit the target from time to time. But I don't think anyone is gonna nail it as much as back Rooms did or hit the high notes, because there are some high notes in the movie that I really enjoy. I really enjoy the initial, you know, finding of the back rooms to what lgfour going in there and walking around. I like those these VHS analog horror moments where we're seeing through the video camera. I think that's fun.

I don't think it's overused. I think it's used just the right amount. I think it's scary enough, and I appreciate those moments where we are just seeing through the viewfile, and I think it really works. It's maybe the best part of the movie in a way. I think that if those other outside if you finder ideas could live up to the ones that they're utilizing inside of it, I think I think you have something really special.

Clearly, with back rooms as a concept, you don't have to have the same characters. You can just have people going into the back rooms. I mean, Kane Parsons himself technically those videos were created as he is the one going into the back rooms, at least the character that he's pretending to be through utilizing the viewfinder similarly to the footage we see in the film. So the footage in the film has kind of a real world inspiration, which is those initial back rooms videos kind of being shot from found footage POV which I mean, again, I think it's smart that we have an intermingling of that because I think if this was just a found footage movie, I don't know, maybe it would have worked better.

Maybe you wouldn't feel the need to, like Hue so close to the narrative storytelling like exposition dumping beats, because you know, blair Witch, the film really could have been like And I think that this is maybe kind of the point to pivot to scary movie is this could have been like a blair Witch, where it is just a complete found footage movie, but it has that same feel, that same level of dread, that same level of you go through a wall in your house and you disappear. Oh god, what next? You know, that episode of The Treehouse of Horror where where Homer goes behind the bookcase into the three D world was also at the top of my mind. It's one of my favorite tree House of Horror segments. But also I remember it's very scary to just go behind a bookshelf in your house and disappear.

That concept is terrifying. To go into an area where you can see the other people but they can't see you, or you go into a wall and then you lose how to get back, which is I mean legitimately terrifying, And I think they kind of maybe in over explaining they kind of miss what makes it so scary. I mean, the initial video of back Rooms is Kane Parsons falling through the floor in a random spot in the concrete that they can't see. Like that is that concept is pretty terrify. The back rooms and where they are, you know, whatever that is.

You can kind of go and any number of directions to mine that. But the idea of wandering into an area by accident that you may not ever be able to come back from of no fault of your own is terrifying, and I think that leaning into that and really mining that for me, I think is the smartest thing that they can continue to do. And I mean the exposition in the movie needed or not, I think they really could have created something found footage heavier, and I think it's still really would have really worked more so than the film already did. I enjoyed it a fair amount. I would definitely suggest I wouldn't have seeing it in the big screen is necessary.

I don't think I gained anything from watching it in the theater other than no longer having a free ticket at Marcus Theaters that I had been given like over a decade ago. They never expired those diamond passes, so thankfully I didn't have to pay to go see the movie. But I don't know if you should either, because it was good. But I don't think seeing it on the big screen added anything other than saying I saw it on a big screen, which for those of you that are going to see The Odyssey, okay, I mean again, I think the democratization of being able to see content anywhere is much more important than having to see a movie on the big screen, Because I don't gatekeep there's nothing to gatekeep. So if you say to me it has to be watched on x Y or Z platform because the creator said it, I'm going to watch it in the other thing intentionally because I really detest that that sentiment.

It's like, you know, I don't care how somebody watches it, as long as they're enjoying it, or at least as long as they're resonating with it in some capacity, good or bad. So, speaking of resonating with something good or bad, Scary Movie Wow twenty twenty six. Huh, it's been a long time since I saw one of these kinds of movies in theaters. So the original film came out in July of two thousand, when I was ten years old, and they have come out subsequent when I was eleven, thirteen, sixteen, twenty three, and now thirty six. I did not see Scary Movie five.

I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I know that Charlie Sheen was on the poster, and that's about it. I've stayed away from these films since Scary Movie three because Scary Movie three was the last funny one, and I know some people will fight me on that. I think even the people who made this movie would agree that Scary Movie Three is probably the last funny one if they were to be asked which one is funny outside of the ones that they made, because that's kind of one of the things about this movie that they really lean into is the Wayans uninvolvement after the second movie, which you know, again the producers of the original films and them didn't get along. The Wayans thought that they were the important part of the franchise.

I'm not necessarily sure that they are, because for me, Anna Faris has always been the Anna Faris and Regina Hall's chemistry together has always been very funny. The two of them have always been very funny together. Scary Movie three, I think is very funny because the two of them with Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex is very funn The Wayans brothers in the first movie are fine, but Shorty is just a one joke character, and honestly, same with Sean Wayns' character. Ray and Shorty are literally one note character. And I mean, sure, if you want to involve these fifty year old men in this franchise cool, I get what you're getting at with the scream five of it.

All, and I do appreciate where this film goes by the end when there is the kind of twist ending reveal, and I'll talk about it kind of towards the end of this, But a bad comedy is for me one of the worst things to have to sit there, because a bad comedy is a film that does not succeed at being funny. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do when something is not funny other than sit there and feel uncomfortable that I'm not giving you what you want and I'm not going because you're not earning want at all, and you're trying really hard, and the harder you try, the more you flail. And the flailing is what makes it worse. And there's moments in this film that are genuinely unfunny in a way that a big budget, thirty million dollars studio film.

And by the way, what universe is putting Miramax at the beginning of a movie ever going to do anything other than give me a level of ick that I have to kind of wash out of my system for the first five to ten minutes of the movie. I just that name should cover carry no cachet anymore. There should be no benefit to putting Miramax on the front of anything, genuinely, like put Happy Madison up there for God's sakes, Like put anything up there, but don't put Miramax. Just Jesus fucking Christ on a cross, like it's to me, we've we've not really learned a goddamn thing in ten, ten and eleven, twelve, thirteen years since the Me Too movement, like at all. Like I can't believe anyone like Miramax should hold no credibility, for anyone should hold no water.

It should be a name that we cast to the dust spin of history and forget about. I don't give a shit if the Weinstein brothers parents were named Mirah and Max. I don't give a shit. Harvey Weinstein's name has forever tainted all of it, and throw it all out in the dust. Bit fuck them, fuck them, and fuck Miramax.

I just I can't believe that we're trading in Miramax still in twenty twenty six. So that was just beyond for me having to sit through that at the beginning of the film, outside of having to watch the Mirror Max the updated Mirramax title credit scary movie six is a completely unneeded movie in twenty twenty six. I don't think anybody is going to sit here and say, well, the world was really clamoring for a return to parody horror. I wish I could say the movie was funnier than it is. There are some funny moments.

I did laugh several times at some of the jokes, but overall, I think the movie validates its its unexistence. Nothing about the movie when I was watching it caused me to say, well, man, these movies being back is going to really push horror to take a look at itself and not be so goofy, or this is going to cause elevated horror. Like no, No, it didn't do any of that. Like it honestly had an opportunity to really lean into the parody of it all, the meta parody. And I think the best parts of this movie are the leaning into the meta parody.

And again I think the ending is is part and parcel with that. But the parts of this movie where it's just a return to the stupid, unneeded family guy esque cutaway jokes like a GERMANE Jackson parody trailer, like that's not gonna age. Well, the original Scary Movie I think as stood the test of time for the most part because the movies that it's paroting are still part of the zeitgeist. I mean, it's you know, it's kind of funny. Scream seven's released the same year as Scary Movie six.

Like Jesus Christ, these franchises are still going twenty plus years later, and they both have a sequel only one number off from one another coming out the same year. That's parody alone. That's ripe for parody. That concept of like times haven't changed that much now have They don't even really lean into that as much as they should, as much as they could, as much as anyone who's looking to really make a horror movie that's adapting these kind of horror movies in this day and age would because again they even say it themselves, elevated horror. The audience who's watching elevated horror wants something that's more than just surface level.

And guess what, people that are watching comedies now not maybe elevated, but these kinds of movies fell by the wayside for reason because the formula became tired. Epic move not another what the hell there's like to fast and furious. There's a fast and furious one. Meet the Spartans. I'm sorry that I slept with your forty year old virgin daughter.

I mean, all these like wild absurd. Trevor Gumbelo would love me bringing up the Friedberg and Seltzer of it all, Like those guys and their movies are diminishing returns. After the first one, it was just essentially back to zero. There was not even like, oh, it's like the seventy five. Say no, it's a fifty and twenty five, Like no, no, we're just at zero.

We went from one hundred to zero. I love Naked Gun. I did an entire series with Mike White and Mark Begley all about Naked Gun. Then became a Chevy Chase podcast. You can go listen to it on the weirding Way Media podcast network.

Those movies, after the first Naked Gun, it barely The second and third Naked Gun are fine. I enjoy the second one for some of the long kind of the long burn jokes in the movie that they kind of really slow burn to get to. But the first one is a classic. Beyond that, the second and third one take it or leave it. The new one pretty funny.

However, again, it's it's doing its own new thing, and so if it had just tried to be Naked Gun all over again, I don't think it would have been as successful. And I think that's what made that movie so funny last year and so successful, is that it actually understood that the times have indeed changed, and the movies that have come out since, like john Wick, like all these things that it was taking upon itself to parody have actually pushed people who watch those movies to expect a little bit smarter of a take, a little bit more nuanced or refined or interesting of a take when it comes to parodying those movie and Scary Movie just it hits those notes from time to time. It's a remake of Scary Movie.

It's a parody of Scary Movie. Five direct. We have the ghost Face coming back to kill the legacy characters, and there are new characters involved. That's very smart. We have them hanging a lantern on the fact that most of the characters in this movie died in the first movie, and then they're just like, ah, well, who cares.

I love that, Like I love the irreverence that they show towards their own franchise. I appreciate that. I find that very funny. However, there's no payoff. I mean, they're kind of is with the twist ending, but they don't really do as much with it as you would hope that they would.

I don't know why they don't do that, because Scream Scream five did what they're doing better than they're doing it, and they have the opportunity to one up Scream five, and instead of one upping Scream five, they kind of just fart and piss and in their own and kind of play in their own mess like it's it's not as funny as Scream five. Like Scream five is actually funny in those moments where they're kind of poking fun at the franchise. This doesn't get it. This hits every other note, but it's not hitting the notes consistently in a way that you would really expect from a movie at this point. This kind of like this just it feels almost like Morbius in a lot of ways.

Like Morbius felt like a superhero movie that was made with two thousand and one Spider Man as made by Sam Raimi sensibility, This feels like a comedy made in the mid two thousands with scary movie three sensibilities. But sometimes because they're making fun of stuff that elevated horror, it forces them to be a little bit more creative with their parody. Like there's a parody of weapons in the movie that's kind of funny. There's a parody of the stuff that's kind of funny, there's a parody of and again, the whole movie is a parody of Scream. So anytime they do kind of the scream stuff, it doesn't really work anymore because they're doing all these other things.

The scream stuff just kind of the ghost face of it all feels really forced. And I wish that they had just kind of leaned more into the Scream five if they were gonna do it, like, don't try to incorporate other stuff. Just make it like really meta and silly and goofy, and have the characters really winking at the audience, like we know that you can do that now. Deadpool did it over and over and over again, like audiences are not stupid, and this movie acts like audiences, And you know, I do find it very funny that Regina Hall plays Ma from the movie Ma essentially, like that's her whole thing, and that's very understated. They don't beat you over the head with that one.

That one's very funny if you've seen that movie, which I you know, I guess some of the movies that they parody. I'm kind of surprised day parody because I'm surprised that that's a movie that people are like resonating with that. I'm surprised that they don't talk about a Haunted House at all at any point unless I missed it, which ends up being the reason we have Michael Tittis as the director of this film because he worked with the Wayans Brother Entertainment Organization in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, and probably twenty sixteen as well with Fifty Shades of Black, Like those are parody movies that are I would even go as far as to say A Haunted House is cheaper than this movie and has made more money in terms of budget than this movie.

Like this movie's a thirty million dollar movie. Why for what? For whom do you need thirty million dollars to make scary movie? When A Haunted House came out on a three and a half million dollar budget, that's it's It's not on the screen. I don't know unless they're just paying you know, Carmen Electra and Tianna Taylor cameo, you know, SAG minimum million dollars a day.

Like, I don't know why you'd be spending this much money on this kind of and if you were gonna do, you're gonna do something that was really affects necessary. Sure, but it's just this movie. These budgets three times the budget of back Why. That's kind of the thing that really bugs me about Scary Movie is I saw Scary Movie the weekend after I saw Backrooms, and I know they're going to try and parody Backrooms. If they make another scary movie, They're gonna parody Obsessions, and they're gonna parody Backrooms.

I wouldn't be surprised if Backrooms, and mark my words here, I wouldn't be surprised if Backrooms ends up being the framework of the parody for the next scary movie. For Scary Movie seven, maybe I don't know if they're gonna call it Scary Movie seven or Scary Movie two, because who knows, they might just do that given that this is just scary movie. I mean, I get it is scream you know because of screen so it'll probably be Scary Movie seven. But I wouldn't be surprised if the framework for Scary Movie seven is backrooms, the way the framework for this movie was Scream five, the way the framework for Scary Movie three was signs like. I wouldn't be surprised because the backrooms can be used for a lot of things.

You can have people walking out of the back rooms into other films, other kinds of wild, weird came of things if you wanted to get fun with it and interesting. But more than likely it's just gonna be lazy. And what I don't understand is the Wayans know how to be funny. The Wayans are not unfunny broadly, the Wayans are funny. I've seen interviews and podcast episodes with some of the Wayan brothers, and they all seem very smart, and they seem all very like in tune with like filmmaking and their place in the world of filmmaking and what they can do to be successful and how they've been successful.

I just don't understand why that didn't translate here. It doesn't. The movie doesn't feel like it has teeth. It feels very much like it's unable to bite and have any sort of commentary or sharp edge, and it feels very toothless, and I don't up until the ending, which I think is probably the funniest part of the entire movie. I just don't understand why the movie is so unoffensive.

And I'm not saying like the movie needs to offend me, but the movie needs to kind of push the line and be a little bit subversive. They showed a preview for the final Jackass movie before this film, and that looks more subversive than this movie. And that's a movie about a guy where they're gonna reshow the footage of a guy going up and down in a porta potty and having shit thrown all over. And that's from the nineties as well. There's a lot of stuff in Scary Movie One even that's subversive compared to where this film kind of gets to.

And you know, this film does a sort of Trump joke, and it does a sort of chat GPT joke, more specifically the chat GPT joke that it makes I think will age very poorly, which is another thing that this movie does over and over, which is make it so that it exists in a time of a place, which, as we all know, is a great way to make sure your film feels super outdated more or less the day after it comes out. Oh it sounds like it was written by Chad Gpt. Oh my god, guys of the times of the times. As I sit and rolled my eyes in the theater, like I thought about it for a second, I thought, oh, this is funny, but it's not funny. It's just it's about as low hanging as as the fruit can get.

And I this point want my comedies to do a little bit more than that, because even comedy action movies like a Deadpool did more than that. They didn't just go for the easy joke. And going for the easy joke it's just for me, it's just not engaging. It's not interesting anymore. And the easy joke is like where they go to over and over again with this movie, and it's it's smacks of scary movie.

You know, four and five, which I mean I've seen, I don't like, but i've seen I didn't, you know, I guess, maybe I guess I haven't. I've seen four, maybe i've seen five, but I know i've seen four, and it just it's smacks of those kinds of movies, like it's just it's lazy, it's uninteresting, it's just trying to be topical. I remember when Craig Bierco at the end of that Scary Movie four, he's jumping on the couch recreating the scene with Oprah and Tom Cruise like that that, oh, how topical. Like if you watch Scary Movie four now you won't get the reference, and that that's not great. When we talked about Airplane Is many years ago, like one of the jokes in the movie that doesn't land anymore is the joke about coffee.

It's like, oh, that's not how he takes his coffee. It's like, who is this reference for? Oh, this was a reference for someone living at the time, based on a ad that was on the TV about the way you know, someone is taking his coffee. The joke has you know, for the one or two people you know, percentage wise, one or two percentage of people watching that movie, now, that get that joke. Cool, But for most people who watch Airplane.

Now, if anyone's watching Airplane now, that joke's gonna go completely over their head and it's it's like one in the movie, it's still a classic because it doesn't go to that like topicality well over and over again, including a fake parody trailer of the Michael Jackson movie in your movie is not topical. All it does is like and that Michael Jackson movie I don't even think is like zeitgeisty enough to matter. It's kind of already out of the conversation by the time this movie's come out, and they came out the same year, They come out within a month and a half of each other, and nobody's talking about the Michael Jackson movie anymore. So I think if someone watches this movie a year from now, they're gonna be like, oh, yeah, I remember how Michael Jackson movie came out.

That the topicality is going to torpedo this movie's longevity as anything other than, you know, another scary movie. And that's about it. Like, there will be people that like it. There will probably be people that you know, grew up with Barbarian and weapons and these other elevated horror movies that watch this movie and go, oh, well, this is you know, this is really funny because it's you know, making fun of weapons, or it's making fun of the witch, or I guess not even really making fun of the like it follows or you know, scream Scream five, the first scream I ever saw. I was like a twelve year old, like, I can appreciate that.

And again it's the back rooms of it. This is somewhat being made as a reboot, rebookal I believe is what the movie calls as a rebookual for scary movie as a franchise. I don't think we needed more scary move type move This is like really low hanging lazy humor and comedies. Now, if it's gonna do something like this, you gotta be smart about it, and you gotta be a little bit more intentional with what you're doing. You got to really make sure that what you're doing has a unified purpose an idea, And they hit on it here.

And so the end of the film, the reveal is, oh, well, the killer who is the obvious killer of the whole movie, her boyfriend, the Jack Quaid stand in who is even named Jack in the movie, who's been essentially revealing himself to be the killer over and over again. Him and the Micah Munroe character from Scream five, they are the killers. And then it turns out, No, they're not the killers. There are, so there's four killers Shaq, Anthony Anderson, Sean Wayans, and Marlon Wains. And that twist at the end of the movie is they kill the you know, the characters that they're handing the torch over to.

They kill them and say, no one's ever taken over our franchise, and they leave them in a burning building at the end of the movie, like at the end of Scream when the or I guess Scream seven beginning of Scream seven, when the house burns down, they leave the new characters in that house to die, which includes Regina Hall's kids and Anna Faris' kids and technically Marlon Wands's niece and nephew to die because they're like, you know what, they're never taking over our franchise. That's funny comment that's funny meta commentary that the old actors can't give it up and let it go on to the new like the new franchise characters. That's funny, that's smart humor. Lean more into that. Having Anthony Anderson come back was funny.

Having Shaquille O'Neal in place of Kevin Hart because Kevin Hart didn't come back was funny. That's a callback to other scary movies. They did a callback to Scary Movie too, with Chris Elliott as Shorthand, which is meant to be a play on long legs, Like that's funny. Those are funny because it's it's leaning into the mythology and Lord that this franchise is already created and kind of is adhering to while also doing something different and kind of being clever. And I'm just I feel like if they had not been so concerned with parroting the movies of the day and just trying to make a funny horror movie, that's probably the way to do these now.

Stop trying to parody things directly and instead create a parody horror movie that parodies things less directly, like Their's State. They didn't touch Midsummer, they didn't touch Hereditary, they didn't touch a lot of they didn't touch the Witch. They didn't touch a lot of things that are ripe for parody. And you know, maybe the world doesn't need Scary Movie seven. I guarantee you we're gonna get it, because that's the way of the world and that's the way things are.

But for me, this movie doesn't justify its existence. The twist at the end is funny and fun, but it doesn't It doesn't get the movie over the hump. Frankly, I found the twist of Scary Movie six that the franchise characters come back to reclaim the franchise to not give it over to the new Blood. I find that to be a funnier and more interesting twist and a more meta twist than what Scream seven was trying to do with its metacommentary question mark my god, Scream seven, Just Scream seven was actually fun until the reveal at the end and then it completely derails as a film. This Scream seven could actually learn from this movie as to how to do a double twist, and not really because like, there's no twist with who the killers are in this movie.

It's very obvious if it's parrotying Scream five, it's gonna be them. But then to have a double twist on top of it with Anthony Anderson, Shaq and the WANs brothers coming in and being the murderers and technically Anna Faris and Regina Hall are murderers as well, is very smart, very funny, and I think it's a very well earned twist and a meta twist that speaks to the nature of horror franchises and franchises in general, and this idea of passing the torch like there's room for both. No one has to pass the torch to anybody, you know how we know because within a year we're gonna have seen Iron Man Tony Stark and Captain America Chris Evans come back, and they've passed the torch already, but they're coming back.

So passing the torch is a fallacy, like passing the torch is not something that needs to happen in film or otherwise. You and the other people either age or what have you that are not like you can coexist and commingle and there doesn't have to be a you know, the old veteran and the young rookie like they can exist simultaneously. They're not mutually exclusive, and this movie I think kind of says no, the expectation is they have to and I think that's funny to disassemble that expectation and do something. That's where this movie shines is disassembling the expectation and putting it back together in the shape of the Middle Finger. As opposed to in the shape of you know a square and I would love to see a more nuanced take on scary movie moving forward.

I know that's not the expectation with the movie like this, but ears to hoping a girl can hope. So I would suggest back rooms. Yes, scary movie, you know, wait for it on vod or Amazon Prime Video or whenever it comes to streaming, more or less in the next month, because in this day and age, you can get everything more or less right after it comes out in theaters, at least within a couple of weeks. So as for me, if you want to hear more of my without just me, head on over to Weirdingwaymedia dot com where you can find this show and all the other shows I work on in eighties TV Ladies, which I've been on a couple of times, the Projection Booth, which I've been on a couple of times, Midnight Viewing, which I used to co host with Father Malone and Mike White.

There's a lot of stuff, so you can find all those things and more Overwirdingwaymedia dot Com. Like rate and review this show on iTunes or Spotify. That's where it helps me out the most helps the show out, helps the networkout. And yeah, Patreon is also a place you can go if you want to for bonus episodes, a bonus content, and the end of the James Bond Show, which is coming to a very quick conclusion here in the next two months, so go there. Help us out.

If you don't want to help us out financially, just like rate and review the show wherever you get it, and make sure to come back for the next episode of the Culture Cast. Steps from the books, from the boats, from the books, from BS, from the books, from St