Barbarian

Weird, all of your previous experience in podcasts, does it matter, met Because it's a different show. It's it's not a different show, but it is a different show. But it's not a different show. But it is a different show, you know what I mean? It is but it isn't but it is.

I don't know. I don't know. I feel like we bring up and talk about movies, and I've talked about like film adjacent stuff on scary stories. We tell not plenty, but we did do Fire in the Sky earlier this year, and like, movies come up from time to time, but no, you and I have never just talked about a movie. As I said, I'm along for the ride, ye do guy be where I gotta go?

I will. I feel like I may have led you astray, though, because this is a movie that I had heard about last year, and I knew that a lot of people really liked it, and I had some friends that were really into it. And we're saying on Facebook and other places like, oh my god, it's so much fun. It's a wild movie, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. It's a horror movie made for contemporary horror audiences.

So plenty of people unfortunately or fortunately however you want to look at it. But but on this episode of the Culture Cast, I am still your host, Christashie, much to the chagrin of many, and I am I am followed no fels. I am joined by my good friend all the way from Scary Stories we Tell where we have podcasted together quite a lot in the last three years. But you've never been on this before. But I know you watch movies, so I was like, let's do it.

Let's watch a movie and record an episode together. Your friend or my friend and soon to be your friend. Emma, I'm already your friend. I'm everyone's front. It's true.

It's true, folks. Yeah, on this episode of the Culture Cast, it's still Horror Tober, which means I've been doing this now for nine years and we're gonna be talking about a horror movie. There's not really a theme this year. It's just kind of whatever. I mean, We've covered kind of all sorts of different things.

Eyes of Fire, I mean, we've which is an older movie, and then we also covered Talk to Me, which is a newer movie, and then there's a couple bonus episodes that are newer movies, So it's just kind of whatever this year. There's a theme sometimes, but I don't think there has to be a theme every year. And Plus, when there's so many good horror movies out recently, can you blame us for wanting to talk about the new ones? No, not really, but we're gonna be talking about a new horror movie on this episode. We're gonna be talking about twenty twenty two's Barbarian.

Critics and audiences are screaming. Barbarian is a masterclass in horror, twisted, sucking and delightfully unhinged. It's one of the best thrillers in years. Barbarian. We did are not playing.

So. The film is directed and written by Zach Kreger, and it stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Scarsgard. Yeah, daddy Wise is here, and and Justin Long who is you know? He's Justin Long and everything that he's in. And I love the man to death, maybe not the character in this movie so much, and we'll talk about it will be yet absolutely there will be spoilers because this movie is relatively new.

So I won't even summarize the plot of the movie because I feel like that is just spoiler territory as it is, so Emma, we just watched this together, so we're essentially talking about it within like the first fifteen to twenty minutes of having watched it. No spoilers thoughts on the movie, and it's on HBO Max. So would you suggest someone go check it out if they're into horror movies, if they haven't already, which seems like they probably would have already. This movie made such a big splash last year that like, even your boyfriend had seen so like, so it turns out he didn't see it. Turns out he just heard about it, And I think that's for do I think other people should watch it?

I definitely think if you are easily triggered by the sensitive topic that is our ape, which will probably be talking about quite a bit because a lot of the movie is about that, then I would not recommend it at all like this, if you have trum regarding that, or if it's a trigger, I would I would stay far away from this. That being said, Uh, the first half was slow, but the second half was was pretty good. It was pretty wild. I definitely think it's it's something worth watching if you're really into like the weird horror movie, not just like the normy horror like ghost movie. Like if you're if you've seen it all and you want to see something that hits a lot of the same beats, but like does it in a way that it's like so surprising in the weirdest way.

I yeah, that I would absolutely recommend it, But it was a lot. It was a lot with you. I look, I had heard about this movie a lot last year, and it was just one that I don't know, wasn't really something I went out of my way to search out. I didn't know it had Justin Longen in it until they did the whole like Justin Long's New Movie trailer, which is a fun little thing that they did where they tried to kind of misdirect the audience into thinking that this was a Justin Long movie and it's, you know, a wholesome Justin Long movie, and then it becomes barbarian. I think, no spoilers, this movie's fine.

I think it's fucking weird movie. But that's fine. But that's okay. Like I think again, like to make big choices and to have made such big choices, and I don't think that they don't land. I just think that this movie is not gonna be everybody's cup of tea, and that's fine.

I think horror movies and movies in general don't have to be everybody's thing. And look, Zach Kreiger made a story that isn't gonna be everybody's thing, especially to your point about people that have a trigger of rape, Like that's a big component of this, but it's also a pretty big component of a movie like Don't Breathe and all kinds of horror, other horror movies, so that's you know, don't Spit on my grave. There's an entire genre of rape revenge movies in the horror genre. So it's it's not I don't know for me. I mean I get it, I get where you're coming from.

But it's one of those things where it's kind of part and parcel with the genre, especially where this movie ends up going like the moment you realize what's happening in the movie, it's like, Okay, if that's not gonna happen in this movie, I'm gonna be more surprised at this point, right, you know. And that's the thing like and Don't Breathe, it was more of a kind of a twist. I guess it's a kind of a twist here, but I am in agreement with you. I want to get to the point where we can talk about spoilers, but to say any more about the movie pre spoilers, I think it's worth checking out, if not just for the novelty of how fucking weird it is and also how hard of a left turn it takes about thirty minutes, in which I think is fun when a movie does something.

But if you have any need to pause this to watch the movie now as your chance. So from here on out spoilers. The movie is effectively a haunted house. You're baited into thinking it's a haunted house movie, and then it becomes kind of a I would say, like a home invasion movie, but again like it's a like a creature movie, like a but the thing is like again like it's a creature feature. But it's like the creature's design is just so it's so what it I don't know, it's so what it is that it I have a hard time being like that's a fun creature in horror.

It's just that's just a deformed human being. It doesn't have that same iconic design that I would hope from a actual Again, like we have we have Bill Scarsguard in this movie, who played a very iconic fucking horror character to the point where it's now integrated into pop culture, to the point where I don't think anybody is unaware of who fucking Pennywise the clown is. And if you know about Pennywise the Clown from the new movie, then you know Bill Scar's Guard is Pennywise, so he is in this movie. So it's not like the people who saw this movie don't understand the value of creating an iconic character. I just I think the weird thing about this movie is it doesn't it doesn't feel like a one consistent thought at any point.

It feels like just a bunch of disparate ideas hung together rather well. But for me, it's just there's so many moments in this movie where I just like sitting here, watch with you what is going on? Because again, like it's not that the movie doesn't tell you. The movie gives you plenty of information. It's just the idea in this movie that we need to like jump around to these different timelines in the different coasts, and then it ultimately is just a like a kidnapping movie.

I mean, it is a creature feature, but it is like, what what would happen if Ariel Castro, the guy who kidnapped all those women in Cleveland, actually like had an incestuous monster that he created by accident, like because he's fucking his captive people, and then he's fucking the captive people's babies and he's probably fucking their babies and down and down and down, like what would that be? And it's like that again, I guess it's a creature feature in the purest definition that it is monster adjacent, but I don't know, like the idea that it's just this incest created humanoid that's running around murdering people, it's like all of that for this you got to this point with that, Like if I honestly feel like it, like what the reveal in this movie isn't good enough?

I agree, right, I do. It's just an incest like mutant person, like okay, the incest baby, Like that's that's what it is. Yeah, And it's like, okay, so we have the Richard Brake character, who is the aerial Castro stand in, who goes and kidnaps women, keeps them in the basement of his house again sexually assaults them. Those babies are then sexually assaulted, and so on and so on and so on. That's it.

There's nothing else, Like there's nothing else and everything else. All the trappings above are just purely coincidental and accident. They're not actively luring people in. This is just this is just happening. And like it to the point where there is another person outside who knows that this is going on and could have gone and told the cops at any point, well, obviously, I mean that it's pretty clear that the cops don't give two shits to the point where it's so frustrating, and if that's what there are, good, it's unrealistically frustrating.

It's unrealistic. It is I think, I think it's safe to say that perhaps not being a person of color, but the main character at least it's just the main character. Tessa is the main character, right, I don't know the fact that this is a I think this is a protagonist protagonist thing where there's like two of them. We spend is just as much time with Justin Long's character, And honestly, I think this movie completely falls apart because that justin long character is just a failure of storytelling. Like it it's such an interesting it's an interesting idea, but instead of actually giving it like some emotional resonance, they go for the whole No, he is as bad as you think, and it's like, so there's no ambiguity.

Then like he's a piece of shit, and he's a piece of shit, and he's a piece of shit, like it's just I she said I raped her? What me? Oh? And then like fifteen minutes later he's like no, she said no, but I'm persistent, like okay, Like great, we got there. Yeah, they really tried to set it up like this guy got screwed over.

They really wanted to make him not necessarily seem sympathetic, but like, you know, his career is getting destroyed, and like this is you know, reflected a lot in the real world right now, and so it seemed like they were trying to perhaps garner sympathy for that. And then they just rather than like that more nuance take, they draw a very hard line the moment he starts talking about you know, like I basically detailing how he coursed her, but saying in like the guys, it's not a big deal, Like the most guys, it's not a big deal with as humanly possible, And just like how how how people like this don't even realize how fucking disgusting they are or they refuse to acknowledge it. I guess it's the only like interesting thing about creating a character like this I and I say that loosely.

Yeah, it's a weird decision because again, like, there's no nuance to it. It's just well, again, there is nuance until there isn't, and when there isn't, there is so little nuance left that it's just like, I don't care what this character does. And there's a moment later in the movie where it's attempting to be like somewhat emotional, and it feels so hollow, and it's I know it's meant to feel hollow, but the performance feels hollow because there's no there's no ambiguity to the character anymore, and we know that this is a complete fucking put on. It would have been a lot more interesting if there was a character there that we go, oh, maybe he actually has changed, because you leave the ambiguity again, the ambiguity of what he did could have been left ambiguous, because there have been plenty of cases in the industry where it is a he said, she said thing, as opposed to no, I definitely did it.

Oh, by the way, no, I definitely did it. It's like, wait a second here, Like the movie would have been I think the movie would have actually worked and been interesting metaphorically if he had just been a character who we don't know if he is being treated as way to a person or not right. And there's that moment in the movie where he says, am I a bad person who does bad things? Or am I a good person who did one bad thing? Right?

Screaming because it gains like, no, you're a bad person, Like end of stories, you'd ran through a therapy session and I can do good thing now. Wow, revelation. It's like, oh, this is so unearned. He finds out that there's a man like a hundred times worse than him, and obviously it's hard to compare rapists to rapist, but like, I think it's safe to say, like one incident versus continuous years and years and years of trapping and kidnapping and stalking and and like taking videos of and then like having sex with the children of the children of the like I think it's safe to say one is significantly worse. And so he realizes this.

He meets like this this fucking old man, old disgusting man, and like he has like the right, rightful reaction of like wow, you're disgusting, and we're like wow, change of heart. And I say that so sarcastically because the entire time I wanted to punch him because like, of course it's trying to say, like wow, he's being shown, like just how bad this is an empathy I kept showing. I kept saying, like wow, empathy like the whole time, because it was like the idea of empathy was like a novel concept to this it was so frustrating, Like you said, it just so much of this movie felt unrealistic. And that was really true for the first half. Well, the thing is the movie is attempting to be realistic best I can tell.

I mean, again, it's a creature feature, but it's not some fucking flight of fancy. It's it's this movie is the equivalent of And I don't know if this is a reference point for you. We've never talked about it together, so I assume not. There's an episode of The X Files where there is a character that is similar, if not almost identical to the concept in this movie, where it's like a character who is being In this movie, it's a character who is the product of repeated incestuous sexual assault. But in that episode of The X Files, there the mother is tied up underneath the bed and the sons are going at it with her and they're having incestuous babies.

Yeah, and so like that's the only thing I could think of in comparison to this. It's like someone saw that episode of The X Files and when let's let's a movie about this, but also like let's make it less interesting because there's no, like you said, with the idea of like, well, justin Long is a rapist and the other guy is a rapist serial killer, or at least a rapist. We don't know if he murders these women. We just know that he's keeping them captive. He's absolutely a serial It's comparing a rapist to a serial rapist, right right, exactly, And so it's not a comparison I ever thought I would be making.

And it's like, you don't even have to make this comparison, because yes, I understand they're both bad, but yes one is clearly worse than the other, but it's they're both already on the scale of like, they're both terrible. We can all agree it's just which is worse, but they both still deserve to be a jail like. And the star acts so so holier than thou when he meets this guy. He sees one of the of the videotapes. And here's the thing I'm assuming he probably saw.

I think the videotape was labeled like redhead at the gas station something like that, right, and so that implies that this was perhaps an adult I'm going to assume that this wasn't one of the incest babies. I'm going to assume that this was maybe a relatively young but adultsh woman. And so he sees the exact same thing that basically what he did, because in that case, it's just you know, the straight up rape. We're not talking. He didn't he sees all of the videotapes, so I guess it's safe to say that, like, he knows that he did this a lot, but he watched the one and immediately went, wow, you did a rape bad like you to toobebuster I just I've I was.

Oh, I mean, I feel like the movie is trying to at least deem itself cleverer than it is and feeling like it has more to say than it does. I don't feel like this movie has as much to say as I think it thinks it does in terms of like the more sensitive topics, because rape is bad period. To compare, Yeah, to compare one rapist to another is to miss the fucking point by a yeah, like, we get it. If you had made this character ambiguous, it would have fixed essentially my big problem with this movie, which is a complete narrative disconnect from the first half of the movie to the second half of the movie. Because you know what, I would have preferred a movie with our two leads being Georgina Campbell and Bill Scarsguard, not Georgina Campbell and Justin Long, because Georgina Campbell and Bill Scarsguard were cute together.

Yeah, and also believe their chemistry ended up being believable. You and I were having kind of an issue with it at the beginning because it, again, it seemed like two b bots interacting with each other like I do not understand human interaction. So he's gonna be fucking weird, like and he's just weird, and then she's weird, and it's like you can't keep you cannot tell me. They're gonna be weird throughout and it thankfully they get out of the noseedive eventually. But like me and and even I was commenting during that part, like I know what they were going for their commenting on how men are very aware now that we as women are there most of us at the very least now have to be very cautious and we're always scared of men we don't know, always like we are always on hi alert, you know, especially in a one on one situation like this, you know with a new man, you never know what's going to happen.

And I don't want to say like the say that like no woman can protect herself, because yes, of course, but like a lot of men now are so hyper aware, like I want to like, you know, the the quote unquote good ones are so hyper aware that they're going to scary woman that he was. He was trying so hard to be so careful, like you can watch me open the bottle of wine. You know, because I feel like you wouldn't have had any if you if you saw that it was opened while you were in the shower, like and it felt really forced. But I do I see what they were making the commentary on, and I haven't really seen that in media yet, not that I watch a shit load of media about stuff like that, but I haven't really seen too much commentary on a guy that comes off like it.

In a horror movie, you see a dude acting off like this, and you're like, he's going to be an antagonist of some sort. That's what you thought for sure. You were like, they say this is the guy, and they kind of they really wanted us to believe that. We were very set up to believe that, and it was really effective, yeah, until it wasn't. And then it didn't need to be though, because yes, and that was fine, And they end up feeling kind to cute together and they don't feel it doesn't feel as forced, And there's that moment where they're kind of like talking after she goes into the basement and he she gets here, she gets him to believe her, and it's like, you have known this person for two days, but you are willing to go into the basement of his house to see what they were talking.

I think, I think the movie really falls apart at the moment Bill Scary's garden gets killed. And it's so unfortunate because again they his death is used purely for shock value. Yeah, it's and it's the grossest and goorious part of the movie period, No, minus the eyes. The eyes was wrong. Yeah, but the eyes thing is like, the eyes thing is like a second compared to the thing with him having his head smashed against the wall.

It just keeps going and going and going and going and going and going and going. It's like twenty seconds uninterrupted. She smacks his head against the wall like ten times. At least. The eye thing is I mean, the eye thing is gross because again, like obviously, yeah, they do the little thing where he's getting his eyes scouched down and then the stuff comes out around the fingers and it looks proper nasty.

Yeah. I had to look away for that. That's the only part I had to look away. They do the reverse shot of his head being split in hat, which is we don't yeah, we don't see anything. We don't see any of a face forward practical effect.

We just see it from behind, which is fine, It's a limitation. Stuff is roughes, I get it. Rough, I get it. But I think, I think that that that kill on Bill Scarsguard is a is a interesting moment because if not, if not for the fact that it really detracts from the rest of the movie for me, which it does, and it makes the second half of the movie infinitely less interesting. I would enjoy that scene because of how brutal it is, but ultimately the kill ruins the movie for me because the second half of the movie, as much as I love justin Long, the second half of the movie feels like a different movie that has an agenda.

And it's not that I disagree with the agenda, it's just that the agenda all of a sudden becomes the most important part because again, like you mentioned, we're now following a character who is a confirmed rapist. It's like, I don't we don't know, I do not care what happens to you, right, And once we realize that he is a confirmed rapist, because he confirms it himself, I lose all sympathy for anything that happens to this character, and all I want is for our actual hero, Georgina Campbell to come back and you know, put one over on the mother, but also the Justin Long a j character, and she does sort of in the end. But I think the problem with the movie is Georgina Campbell is good in this movie.

I haven't seen her in anything else. She is better than the Justin Long character. Justin Long is a fantastic actor. I love him and everything I've seen him, and I'm a huge It was a poorly written character, that's all it comes. And it's not his fault.

I trust your judgment. I'm not great at following actors, but I trust your judgment. If you think somebody is usually a good actor, I trust you on And so all that tells me is that this character is just very poorly, slopply written for the sake of getting a point across that really shouldn't have to be made at this point. Maybe they really wanted to make that point. Maybe they thought that point it was obviously I mean, hey, it's obviously going over horrible people's heads still, and so sure, maybe forcing people to watch it, I guess it is a way to get that message out there more.

But I feel like at this point, ninety nine percent of people know, rape bad, Like it's just you didn't abstained from rape because I have to tell you to should have stained from rape, because it's a fucked up thing to do. Bo Burnham said it best. I was, yeah, no, that's right. And when I think of that, I think of that, it's like, why, well, yeah, it's And here's the thing. If you go and watch the previous for this movie, you know what, it doesn't tell you what the movie's actually about.

You know why, because it's had to know what this movie was about before you went into it. I'm not sure a lot of people would go into this movie and watch it, not because it's like triggering or anything. It's just like, that's it. That's that's it. It's about l Yeah, that's it.

Like okay, it's I don't know, it's like barely even a horror movie in a lot of ways. It's just kind of a it almost feels like an episode for like a TV show like X Files or something in the terms of one shot type thing and in terms of like what we're what we're talking about. So, okay, we haven't really mentioned it, and well you kind of mentioned. But Richard Brake, who is a fantastic horror actor. He has a great face.

He looks proper nasty, which is the point. He plays again a serial rapist who kidnaps women, takes him to the basement of this house, and then again we don't really know, but we see the aftermath, which is this character that is unhinged and mentally unwell. Again, they talk about her being just an upset person, and it's like, no, this is like someone who like again, like they are inbred to the point of unable to like clothe themselves. Really talk in full sentences like it's years upon years upon years of inbreeding, and so Richard Brake is living in the basement of this house, creating incest babies, to create incest babies, to create incest babies, and then one of those incest babies is just this woman, and he ends up living in the basement of this house after he's been a serial rapist for a while.

Because we see this flashback that, I mean, it's a fun part of the movie. In terms of it, it feels different. It feels kind of weird because it's the nineteen what would you say, fifties, Like it's definitely like back in the day. Yeah, well manicured lawns, pastel colors. But it's I don't know, like that that feels like another movie, and like it feels like another movie to the point where we have to be told how important it is, as opposed to just showing Richard break in that room with enough context clues for us to pick up on it, Like I didn't need the baby to continue to clarify, to re clarify on top of clarifying things, because it's like, sometimes a little goes a long way, and I don't need to see Richard Brake going into the house and unlocking the window, like I can imagine that's what he did, because he was a serial rapist who kidnapped clearly lots of people to the point of having this like ridiculously in yeah, this ridiculously inbred human being that lives in the house.

That again, like I don't understand. To what end is my question, because again, this is the thing that I would kind of ask you once the movie ended. It's like, wouldn't this have made more sense of like Richard Brake had been just luring the people to this house, because what is the point of this house when no one is living there? Like what is the mother doing? What is what is that guy doing?

What is the Richard break character doing? Like I don't I don't need it explained, but like the moment I ask these questions, the entire premise falls apart. How did the doors keep locking on their own? That's a really good question, right brin here there was no ghost? Well, I guess, okay, is the is it?

Is it that Richard Brake made it so that you couldn't open the doors from the inside, because I get yeah, that's honestly, the doors like always close on their own, Like yes, we have probably fucking with the hinges right to make it like auto closed that you can't escape. I mean, okay, fine, But the reason that they were doing it initially was to try to bait you into thinking it's a haunted house movie. And again, I think if it had been a haunted house movie, I think it would have been a better movie, because again, at least it would have been supernatural or paranormal or something. This house is in a ratty part of town. The setup of this movie is essentially, don't breathe.

There's a house in the ratty part of Detroit, and something inside that house keeps people away. Now, the people in Don't Breathe knew that, but they went in there anyways because they assumed that there was something for them to take and sell. In this movie, it's unassuming morons on Airbnb, Like I don't understand, Like were the people just like us? Were the people in the airbnb in on it? Like did they not get complaints that people disappear?

Like I don't understand because again, like the premise is so thin and it constantly is zigging and zagging so much it can never give itself a moment to even make sense of what's going on. Not explain it, but just get us an idea of the core lore and mythology here that we should care about because ultimately none of it feels important. How did it become an airbnb? Right? Like without there being people knowing that there's murders going on in the basement, Like that feels unrealistic to me, and like but not even that right Like for me, what it is is, how did you know uh less bad rapist man?

How did he get ownership of this house without like a deed being passed down? Like I guess people assumed it was abandoned and it was like seized by the state or the town or whatever. But like it's just it's I'm assuming, I am assuming that at some point everyone, all in all the ancest babies and horrible serial rapist man just stopped going upstairs. He just got too old and he didn't even bother making the trick up to the house anymore, And so that door remained closed. Maybe the insist baby didn't know how to open the door, like maybe she didn't know there was a door because the homeless guy said that he saw the old woman outside.

Okay, yes that did happen. So then it doesn't even make any more sense. Is she's just roaming the inside of the house during the day, Like it's just it's so weird because again, like it's not it's also accustomed to the dark, right, it's not a horror movie to me. It's just this like weird attempt to bait the audience into thinking it's a horror movie and then just being like, nah, it's just the insist it's a commentary. It's a social commentary, and that's and yes, the second half of the movie feels like the moment we meet the Justin Long character, this actor who's all of a sudden had his career canceled.

It's just like, what is this movie like? Now? Now it's a Now this movie is trying to have a conversation about something that I don't It's not that I don't think we should be having these conversations, like not in this movie, not in this kind. It didn't feel like it was the right setting for that type of conversation. It just felt like an inappropriate setup, like it just did.

It didn't feel earned at all because it comes out of nowhere. It's a hard cut from Bill Scar's guard being killed to then oh now it's justin long for twenty minutes. It's like wait, wait a second here, like I mean again, like I really setting it up, Like oh my god, it's agonizing the way he's like, no, I did, I would never, I didn't. I didn't even touch her to like him having his little baby hissy fits, and then like having to go to the broker and be like what do I gotta sell and like, oh, I'm out of the state. That's a bad thing, like okay, oh okay.

It just I was so uninterested during that whole introduction sequence. I felt nothing for him other than I guess like a shred of like, Okay, they're setting it up in a way that's like maybe he didn't do it, but that was as far as I went. I did not. My my emotions did not dare to get more attached than that, because it was not a compelling character. It feels like a something that has just been talked about, like into the ground.

And so why is like the I feel like the serial rapist thing was. If it was just that, it would have been enough, and maybe I would have enjoyed it more like why do we need less bad rapists to have a moral quandary by interacting with serial rapists? Is serial rapists not rapist enough? Like? Why do we need too?

I feel like that his whole character feels so shoewarned into the movie to make some point that I feel like they could have made without him, unless if they just really wanted to give the bad men of the world somebody to relate to and be like, oh my god, he's right, rape bad, I just a bad man of the world. Yeah, it does feel a little. Uh. I think the word is overdone, overwritten. I mean, I get what they were going for and It's almost like someone saw Tusk and was like, all right, So once Justin Long in that movie gets kidnapped, the movie takes like twenty minutes to get back to him.

So we're just gonna do that. But instead he's gonna be the one that we cut to for twenty minutes and then come back And yeah, I so the original person that they wanted for the role of aj in This Smith was Zach Efron, and Zach Effro turned that. He turned it down, and no, I wonder why. But here's the thing. I think the funny thing is Justin Long has a certain energy that can be mined for again the idea that we were talking about, which is the he's such a lovable guy.

There's no way he could have done Like Justin Long feels like such a wholesome actor, and like the roles he plays, for the most part, are not villainous characters. They are normally like the hero or like the hero's sidekick or somebody who is maybe again like possibly could be a protest it's in his own movie, like accepted. Uh. But I get what they were going for because they want it to be here's the one actor who there's no fucking way you would ever think this guy would do this. So they're literally it's a meta thing too once they got justin long.

I actually think if it had been zac Efron, it would have been more interesting in terms and that, because in terms of if it's zac Efron, you can really play up the sexual assault angle and be like, well you can't, no, I wouldn't. I don't need to. I don't have to look at me, you know what I mean, something something to that effect, And it's like and then you have the ambiguity, and it's a different kind of ambiguity. It's instead of it being the nice guy ambiguity, it's the why would I do something like that? I don't need to ambiguity, which is a different direction but could have been interesting in its own right.

I think this is a me problem. I can't unsee him as he's high school musical. I can't if this is directly a me issue. I high school I grew I grew up with high school musical. I that is like, if you asked me what movies are is he in?

I would say high school musical one through four? Like was he in four? He was? Definitely? I think it was a three.

I don't know. I don't remember watching four point is is like if it was you haven't seen Neighbors, No you should, Yeah, but it's like a comedy. It's like Seth rogen in him, or like Seth and his family own a house and they're like the college kids. He's pretty funny in that. That's like the only thing I've seen him that when he played Ted Bundy.

That's why I say he could have been good in this because like the scene, and I haven't seen him in that, And that's why I feel like if he played bad man rapist but not work or not worst man rapist, I would the hole. It would be such a disconnect because the entire time I'm just gonna hear so bad that's fair. But if you can get over that, if you could get over the point, it's a me pro But to be fair, taking that out of the equation, I would have read so many Joe zach Effron is a is a. The energy that he brings is different than Justin Long, and the role is tailored different if you have a guy who is again a total ten. I'm not saying Justin Long isn't, but it's just different because Zac Efron, I think is like traditionally good looking.

He's ripped. He he looks traditionally good looking, and so it's a different kind of energy that would come to this role. I think what would have actually been interesting. Again, I love Bill Scarsguard in this movie. I think him and Georgina Campbell are the best parts of the movie.

I think if Justin Long had maybe played that character, the character of the guy who's already in the house, and then you can really traffic in the well. He seems like a good guy, and he's normally a good guy in most things that he's in. So there's no way that this guy's a creep, and it's just you're mining the idea that he is being overly like you said, being overly cautious. I mean, that's what they do with the Bill Starsguard character. But I'm just saying the character that Justin Long should have been playing in this movie is the character that's at the house to begin because him playing the like dickhead actor, it just doesn't work for me.

It doesn't work like it's it's kind of unbelievable. In the same way that his character in Tusk is kind of unbelievable because his character in Tusk, he's playing a dickhead podcaster who cheats on his girlfriend, like and like, he's kind of playing the same character here, a dickhead who doesn't understand boundaries and social moras, and that's pretty much the character in this movie as well, to the point where, again, like, if there had been some ambiguity with his character regarding the thing that he did, I think we would have had a much more visceral reaction to where the movie ends up going. If you leave everything the same except for the confirmation of him being a rapist, I think that moment at the end of the movie actually really works as opposed to it now that you mention it, right, yeah, Instead of it feeling like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, this guy's a fucking asshole, it's like, oh, holy shit, Like this guy is exactly what everyone has been accusing him of.

Yeah, because that okay, so when okay, so you're talking about they were on top of the tower and he shoves uh tests off off of the tower to use her as bait. I guess so because he he was like, there's no way we could both escape, but you you can, you can help me by dying like pretty much, which which is obviously the most selfish thing other than I guess rape that he's done for for the entire movie, the most shockingly horrible thing. Yeah, I saw your face when it happened. You were genuinely surprised, as was, because it was just so much. But it's like the the reaction that I had.

I felt that way because I was like two two minutes ago, you were like, I can't do a good thing. I already know, and the whole he was like maybe I'm a good person. I was just like, you're a bad person, bad like Chris I was, and like I was. I was so mad at him for like trying to like be the recontextualize in his mind of like how he can spin this to still come out on top, and like it pissed me off so much because we already know that it's one one hundred percent unearned and it's just like, shoot, I wanted to want hmmm, and like, you're so right that like the shock I felt it would have been the nail and the coffin of his character, rather than hitting it home and laboring it and just doing like the next worst thing they could think of, because that's really all it was, is like, how do we make them even worse?

But like it would have been it would have hit so much harder if there was ambiguity, and it would have been like, oh, he actually is a terrible part, Like actually that would have I I completely see where you're coming from with that. And they have justed long. So it's not like they didn't understand what they were getting. They were getting an actor who most everybody thinks is a wholesome, nice guy who gets cast normally as guy who's been cast as nice guy since fucking first thing. I remember seeing him in Jeepers Creepers, which I can't help but wonder if in this movie him getting his eyes gouged out in this movie is a is a subtle nod to him getting his eyes ripped out in Jeeper's Creepers.

At the end, they think, well, I mean, it's it doesn't it's it doesn't feel like a coincidence. Let me put it that way. Like again, like Zach Kreeger is clearly a student of horror movies. I actually don't. Again, I don't mind the writing in the first half of the movie, but the moment Justin Long's character shows up is when the movie just kind of takes a weird turn, and it's like, you know, if you had just kept making the movie that you were making pre the halfway point, Essentially, it's like forty minutes into the movie where we show up with Justin Long on the Pacific Way singing, if they'd had been just the rest of the movie was just following them in the house, and then he had maybe shown up at some point.

Great, but yeah, every time he on screen, none of the lines that he's saying are believable because the guy saying them is not the energy that he has, doesn't fit the character he's playing. And then when he shows up in the house, all of the ambiguity that could have been mine has been lost because you wanted him to get there as a rapist, not as an ambiguous character. So we know when he's like, I'm gonna kill that bit, it's like, oh, this guy is going to like this guy is a piece of shit, and he is. He's already sending off red flags and I understand that. You know, the idea behind this script is the book The Gift of Fear, which is, you know, the idea that you should trust your intuition and if you have a subconscious red flag, like stick to it, gut feeling right, like I don't know, Like that's a much more interesting idea than this guy's a fucking rapist and there's no red flag to stick to if he's acting this way, that's because he is the way that he is.

And there you go, like it's just like where is the where is the where's the interesting character arc? There? Where's the interesting character anything? If he's just already that from the essentially the moment we meet and not even I mean the second scene, third scene, he's now okay, self admitted, like yeah, like okay, Like I don't care if this guy gets his fucking eyes gouged out. Frankly, I'm just waiting for the moment for a tap, that's what.

Okay. There's no doing it the way that they did it. As soon as we found out that he confirmed rapists. I think you and I probably both I don't remember if I said it out loud. I don't think I did, but I think you and I had the same thought, which is they have to kill him.

Now. Yeah, there's no way that this guy survives, Like, no because they're they wanted us to root for his death, maybe feel a little maybe ish at some point, but for the most part, they wanted us to fucking hate him and so that that that kill feels burned. Yeah, fuck fuck that guy. But like there it didn't feel satisfying because we were just waiting for it to happen, like we knew it was gonna happen. There's a rapist makes it to the final frame of this movie, like it's a horror movie.

These kinds of characters get punished because of the things that they do, especially if you are a literal rapist. Yeah, it's such a it's such a misstep in the writing. It's such a misstep in the script that I'm actually shocked. So many people that I know who saw this movie didn't tell me that it was worse than it was. Like everybody I knew was just like it's fine.

It's like it feels kind of it feels like the movie is talking down to you as an audience member, because it's like, you don't you don't understand. We don't think that you understand nuanced. So one of the characters has to be a rapist, right, character is so clearly good and when character is so clearly bad, Dad, Like, thanks for the subtle here's a mirror, have a mirror, Like it's it makes me wonder, like who was their intended target audience? People are age one hundred But okay, so let's say that that that's like the big pool. But likely do you think the guy is who wrote directed this movie?

Take a guess. You think he's older than me, You think he's older than you and younger than me, or older than both of them, just based on what you see in the movie. I personally the vibe that I got older, older than both of us, but not by much. Yeah, he's a you want to take a guess at his age thirty four, forty two, forty two, so he's like right there, he's like an older like older momiging on gen xer. It definitely feels like some I get like the like you said, like talking down and I feel like this This goes for most media where everything is made by somebody older than you until you reach that age where you're as old as the people making things and like there, if something is targeted towards your age group and you are younger, it will feel like pandering and like because they don't quite get it.

And then especially like when it's written by by man and this whole movie is I'm assuming their target audience was two things. Obviously, you know, under the emb rella of our generation, I suppose, but I feel like the target audience was either like women who are like, yeah, like fuck men men suck, which is fine, especially if you have trauma like that, that's whatever, but like, and then the other half is horrible, awful men that need a mirror shoved in their face. Like, but then these people are watching this movie neither because this movie doesn't because this movie doesn't advertise itself as such. And I will tell you why, because these kinds of things don't advertise well. And that's why this movie is like predicated on this weird twist halfway through, because again the movie stops being a horror movie and starts just being this other thing that feels like it's just like, look at this rapist, He's just like you until he's not, and now he's just a fucking monster dies.

Yeah, it's like that WHOA Okay, again, Like I don't need a rapist characterized to me like this in this kind of movie If you want to do that, better make it a movie where you actually have something to say, because I'm not even sure what this movie is getting it, Like what is all just deserve to die? That right, which is fine, But I'm more speaking to the idea of like the Georgina Campbell character and the mother character, Like what is it? What is it saying about rama and generational trauma like anything? Like I don't I don't know what the theme of this movie is. It feels like it doesn't know either, like Jennery if it doesn't have anything about that, Like I don't know, Like it's like incestuous people upon ancestrious people upon incestri's people, and then yeah, like we I don't know, like what is this movie's theme ultimately or does it even have one?

It's just trying to be this weird millannge of like eight million different things. I don't think you think it's a hunted house movie, but it's not. You think of the creature future, but it's not, Like what is it then? Because conservation of expectations until it's not yeah, like that exactly, because at the end of the movie, it's really just once again, like a pretty basic horror movie ending to the point where there were the villain fakes out the heroes three times. Honestly, the only thing about the ending that was like genuinely like not that I wasn't expecting it, but I like it didn't surprise me at like a oh my god, wow, I never would have guessed, but it it was like, oh, okay, wow, that's like that's an that's actually a really interesting way to do that.

And that was when the Mother Monster shields tests as she's falling, like she cushions her fall so she doesn't die. Like the we already knew that there was this obsessive nature of her just being like all all women are meant to be mothers and I have no one to fuck. My father is infertile. God, this is weird. That's what the theme.

That's what's going on. But it's like I'm useless until I have baby, and I don't know what normal babies look like, so anyone's my baby now. And like all she had to go off of was like a single VHS, so like we have to make sure we saw where the BHS came from. That's yes, but like I liked that she really was more than just like a mindless like, oh, I want a baby, and like that's it. Like not, she wasn't just she wasn't obsessive in the way that like they painted her to be in it at first, there was genuine care.

It's just extremely twisted because of her circumstance. I like how they did that. That was probably my favorite part of like the storyline as a whole, was seeing this character who's obviously very confused and very lived more than a sheltered life with an extreme develo mental disord like delays and and uh deformities, and just to to see her start as what you would expect a monster to be and then breathe empathy into her in a way that did not feel forced, that felt earned to me. I liked that, I really did that to me was nuanced. That to me was different.

Maybe I just haven't seen like enough of this type of trope, but like, you're right, I agree with you one underpathe I almost wanted more of that, And like obviously I guess it's a different fuck it movie, like the fact that like you you while we were watching it, like and uh, Tesla slams her into the house with her car and she's like appears to be dying on the windshield, and Tesla gets out and doesn't like watch her or something like. I know, I was screaming, like, oh my god, Like she don't, stupid, dumb ass, don't get out of the car, like, don't like she's obviously not going to die from just that, Like there's not even any blood, Like there's She's obviously a very sturdy person, right, somehow you would think that incest maybe would be very frail.

That's a lot like incest is actually a multiplier of strength, not a not a divider of strength, you know what. I Like, That's what I was saying, Like that's what the homeless guy says. He goes you know, it's a copy a copy, yeah, and like, but yet I was under the impression people who are inbred are not shining beacons of health. That's the point of being an inbred. But I was rooting, obviously, I was rooting for test More than anything.

I was rooting for test. I wanted test to survive, and so in doing so, I wanted the mother to die for Testa's sake, and I was rooting for that death. And yet they still managed to make me feel empathy up until that very moment at the end, like and that was conflict thing for me as a viewer. Those were interesting feelings though. That was the interesting viewing experience, Like you are making me feel so many things for this misunderstood, miserable pioful a horrible creature person like that.

I loved that and I could see, like you know, all the people that so like, yeah, that's it's a good movie. It's a fine movie. That's probably what they're clinging to is the nuance of the actual monster of this story, where the actual monster is honestly her father. That's the real monster. The real monsters are the men.

The real monsters are the raps. That's it. I mean, that's what they really are getting at, is the bad men. You're this this poor inbred woman is not the monster. She can kill people on screen brutally, and she's less of a monster than you like, And that's I don't mind that.

I don't mind. I think again, like I think that that is maybe the interesting thing to say, Like maybe that's what we were searching for with like you know, they're really hammering home like all this stuff about rape. Honestly, I'm going to assume that what they were trying to get at is we are going to present something scary and uncanny and terrifying and aggressive and show you how she is not the monster of this story. And I think that again, anything that's surrounding her character and the way that other characters are presented around her, that's the nuance that we're looking for. The thing is is that we it's not that we don't get enough of it, but there's just so much other stuff that doesn't matter, and like the setup is too much this this it's so unnecessary, and the premise.

I also had issues with the premise as a whole, like you and I were saying, like this is so unrealistic at the beginning, like two people being booked at this airbnb and one of them doesn't immediately say like I'm going to go to a hotel like I'm gonna and like I know they used to like, oh, there's a convention in town. I highly doubt every single hotel is completely booked. Also, hotels are up in twenty four hour, like literally, they have someone at the front desk twenty four hours like that. Hotels don't close, like I don't know how else to put that, but hotels do not close. They have someone who works there overnight as well.

It's yeah, I don't know, I don't know what what would possess someone to take this story where it went. So Zach Kraiger talks about in an interview that I had this idea for what would happen if a woman showed up at an Airbnb late at night and it was double booked, and like, that's a completely different fucking movie. That is not that is that is what this movie starts out as. And it could have been that the entire movie. Yeah, and it could have gone intro directions with Georgia Campbell and Bill Scar's Guard.

But honestly, this movie shares a weird DNA point with Scream because it honestly feels like Bill Scar's guard character is in the movie to be the character that we think the movie's gonna be about with the other main character, and he ends up dying, so we're like, oh shit, the other main character just got murdered. So who's the new main character. Oh, it's justin Long, Okay, he's gonna come save the day. And you you don't always land these kinds of movies that are tonally inconsistent from the first half to the second half, because you're taking one thing and then doing something else, but you're gonna get back to that other thing at some point. That's what this movie does, and it doesn't do it very well, and it's unfortunate because again this is I will applaud Zach Craiger for taking a massive risk, but I will also say if you're going to come out in an interview and say I didn't know what I was doing, so I just decided to throw in this massive twist and see what would hap happened, because the audience if they if the audience can't predict where it's going, then I can take them anywhere.

And it's like, yes, you can. But just because you can go anywhere, it doesn't mean you should. And just because you did go somewhere does not make it compelling, just because it's not what the movie already was, because the problem is you kind of fucked up and made a movie that was compelling in the first hand. The stuff with Bill Scarsgardon, Georgina Campbell is really good, and you could have had him actually be a creep or not or subvert expectations there and she's the creep and he is the he's actually the unwilling one. Like somehow make that work, I don't know, But just all of a sudden having it be a house on top of a massive rape maze is so out of left field that, yes, I understand why Zach Craiger goes.

I wanted to just do something that would completely flip the movie on its head. If that was your intention, I would say, technically you did succeed. However, what's on the other side of that is less compelling than the thing you were trying to just do initially to begin with. And if you had just figured out how to crack that nut, you wouldn't have had to go into this wacky, wild place. But again, it's not even wacky and wild.

It's kind of also unfun. It's not a fun movie in any way, Like because the subject matter is rape. It's almost like we can't have fun. To have fun in a movie about rape, they trivialize rape. So again, I'm not saying you can't do a horror movie about rape.

There are plenty of horror movies about rape or that feature rape, and that use rape in a way that makes it part of the plot. I spit on your grave for fock's sake, as a movie about a woman who gets revenge on her rapists. Uh, And you know what, it's not a horror movie. It's an exploitation movie. But you could consider it a horror movie because it's so bloody and gory.

But in this movie, I don't think you can have fun in twenty twenty three in a horror movie about rape. I just don't think you can do it. And it's not one of these. Like all comedy, it's different now and no one can laugh at jokes that are offensive. Offensive jokes are funny when they're funny.

But the problem is with this movie is this is there's no fun to be had with rape because rape is I don't know how rape is funny if it, I mean, and you're somebody who finds in this, you are the prop. I think you could make a joke about rape if the joke was funny. But the problem is that is such a needle's eye to thread that even I can't figure it out. And I take swings at things sometimes that are offensive, just to see if I could figure out a way to crack the nut. But rape is just so unfunny and upsetting and off putting that I don't think it even I don't even think the darkest of dark comedians could make it work the way this movie wants it to work.

Like I said, I'm not saying you can't do a rape joke. I just don't think this is the right way to do it, because there's no joke here. It's just kind of beating a dead horse. After a while, it's like, we get it, it's about rape, Give it a fucking rest and do something else for five minutes, please. I feel like they went into this thinking that they were going to achieve something, that they were going to make somebody think I like to know like that.

He even says, like I just I made this first scene, and then everything else was just me trying to get out of a bind with my own script. I don't even want to give them that much credit, because if that had been the case, I think they might have actually succeeded. Instead, it's just they kind of don't do anything with it. They just go, he's a rapist, And that's something kind of worse about making an entire story around rape. But the rape was the afterthought.

There's something kind of worse about that, right, Hostly, No, that's not the original idea. The original idea is a woman goes to a double booked Airbnb. That's my point. It's like, you didn't have to do rape. I mean again, I get that.

I mean, look to talk about the first thirty minutes of the movie, which we like, the first thirty minutes of the movie, the entire implication is rape. It's like, I'm not going to drink this wine because if I drink it, I might be raped by it. I don't I could it could be drugged. Yeah, I don't want to drink the tea because if I drink the tea, it might be drugged and you might rape me or murder me. But again, it is the subtext in the movie.

I just don't think just because it's the subtext of the first scene doesn't mean it has to be throughout And it's just subtext in the first scene. It's not outright said. In the rest of the movie. It's outright said multiple times and more or less shown that that's what that. There is characters that are bona fide rapists, and I just cannot, for the life of me understand why anyone would think, like you said, this is the thing that needs to be introduced into my movie this way.

Like, yeah, again, I don't have any problem with raping in movies. You can use it in interesting ways to make certain actions in the movie carry more weight. But there's no weight that this movie is carrying because the movie doesn't even know what it's trying to do. It feels like two movies smashed together, because it is two movies smashed together, three movies. It's it's two movies smashed together plus the prequel movie that this movie was never gonna get, but abbreviate it again, like the whole scene with Richard Brake in the fifties.

I didn't need to fucking see that. I don't need another ten minutes of this movie. I honestly, this movie for me pretty off putting. Frank in the like at the end of the day, like the way that this movie handles itself, it's like, hey, look at me, look at me, and then it's like, all right, I'm looking at you. What it's like, I don't know.

It's like wait a second, like what did you want my attention for so badly? Then again, like like you mentioned about rape like a rape joke. Like normally, like a rape joke, is someone trying to get attention to be shocking, and here it's like, oh, you are shocking, but to what fucking end? To what end is this shocking? To what end?

Am I? How am I supposed to internalize? What is shocking about this? And what you're trying to say? What are you trying to provoke here?

And the answer is kind of nothing, like I don't even I know what you're saying. Like when it comes to like, you know, it's a horror movie. There's fun to be had in many horror movies, right. I think there are probably plenty of horror movies where they're meant to be completely serious. But I think when it comes to stuff like this or they use like a lot of shock and jump scares there there is this slight undertone of you know, jump scares.

Uh, it's a it's a funny reaction. It makes us, it makes us jump, it startles us, and I think, as you're saying, like having having rape and be what surrounds that experience, it feels weird. It just feels kind of gross, Like how am I? How am I supposed to sit here and be like, Wow, what a fun horror movie. And it feels like it wants to be fun.

It should have been fun like that, there's no reason that this movie shouldn't have been fun. It's just that it is more interested in just being its own thing like so much. Which again, like it's fine that it's its own thing, but what it is is not insanely compelling to me. What it is not just adding anything. Well, there's there's a conversation to be had here, but they're not adding anything to the conversation.

If they're not even attempting to have it at all, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. You can't, don't they say? There were a few and far between times where a director outright says like I wrote myself into a corner and I had a hard time writing myself out, so I just did whatever I thought would be the thing you wouldn't expect me to do. And it's like, wow, I mean, you know what, balls on you for saying that out loud to anybody in this industry. But that's like, good, if you're going to do that, don't make it.

But well, I mean again, pan, if you just use it in a way that doesn't feel like the entire point of the fucking movie. And there is, but you're not saying anything about it. But you're not saying anything new, like rape is. I'm saying, you're not adding anything to You're trying to start a conversation, but you haven't said anything new. You haven't said anything that anybody who is probably watching this movie hasn't heard a million times before and possibly done better in other things as well, more more, undoubtedly done better in other things.

And I wish it wasn't the focus, like genuinely the serial rapist thing, like his character. I think the character, Yeah, that would have been more compelling and less off putting without sticking another rapist next to him to point at him and go, you are a rapist, Like it's just if you're gonna have like a terrifying backstory, like and that is a horrifying backstory. I mean have not only like kidnapping women and assaulting them and trapping them, like but then then to the idea that he just kept having sex with their with the generation after generation after generation, like that is a horrifying, fucking concept. That is fucking terrifying, Like and that in it of itself. I think he's an interesting not not an interesting conversation, but an interesting enough premise that doesn't feel forced.

It feels at least slightly provocative, like it feels like it's trying to do something and then just padding in this other character that we hate and we know we're supposed to hate, and we know we hate him, and we know he's gonna die and we know he's a bad person, and just point point at the serial rapist and go, you're a bad person. It just it's it's that was not good. It wasn't good. No, like having two characters in a scene that are despicable confronting one another can be interesting. Sure, it's just Richard Brake doesn't say anything right.

That was the Other thing that bothered me is like, I get it, he's been down there for fucking decades at this point, I guess I don't know where he shits. I uh, I don't. I don't know how he was able to eat. Don't ask too many questions. The movie has very little answers and get and it's not even answers, it's just common sense explanations because again, like you said, how long has he been down there?

What is any of this shit? Like? What? Don't think too hard? Huh?

Like thanks? And then for him to like not say anything was so painfully unsatisfying. There was no exploration there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I needed it per se, but it definitely isn't like a that's not the make or break for me. It's not, but it doesn't help.

Like you said, I mean, there are other conversations that the movie's having. It's really not interested in having this conversation or or even giving us a characterization for him other than he looks creepy and he has women in his basement, Like okay, so what like to what end? For what purpose? Like can we just infer all of the other stuff? Everything else is inferred, which is fall And I'm not complaining about it, It's just why does any of it matter?

Right? I want to know how this movie might have been different. One if it knew what it wanted to be from the start, and two if it was written by a woman or at least a team of primarily women, Like I'm curious how that would have changed things. And I'm curious to see because obviously this is very much being in the defense of women. They are painting women in only a positive light, which in this context I can absolutely see why there are plenty of horrible women out there.

Women also can be rapists. They did not want to touch on that. They wanted to make women completely one hundred percent sypathetic. And that's fine because I mean, there are plays. It was a moment to be at though, where you could have had an ambiguous female character in the form of the woman who accuses Justin Low.

Yeah, but I have something to say about that. But yeah, I'm not interested in having anything to say. And I feel like weird things like Justin Long being breastfed. I'd rather see that instead of something you're right like right, Sorry, oops, I forgot. That's what horror that all horror fans want is just to be bombarded with weird, icky things to look at, and don't don't give us a script or anything else that actually has any sort of meat to it.

It's all fluff and just gore, gore, gore, engross and gross and weird. I will say the movie was successfully unsettling for me. There were definitely something and it succeeded in that regard. I for me personally, like other than like the few like really jarring moments where as we were saying, like suspension of disbelief is out the window. At the one moment that really fucking got me what.

I was not expecting this the mother character to just start mumbling, but I that caught me off guard. I thought that was really funny. I once now like a by by the end of it, it it feels less funny, but like I could not holbify that really fucking in the moment. It was it was just it was the it was the tone. I don't know, I just it was a something I did not expect to come out of her mouth, and something about that surprised me and delighted me.

And what is the mettextual comment of it being a guy playing the mother? Oh God, I don't know know, Like doesn't that feel kind of like until you should, until you I just I want to know how it would have been different if it was written by a woman. I don't want to say that like only a woman could have written this. Well, I'm sure there are many many male writers that could have done a significantly better job on this, But like, I'm how much of a woman's perspective did they really have in the writing of this, Like we test men are scary, that's the only one. Men are scary.

When when I'm in the house with them by myself, I feel like I am child Like they are trying to pander to me. I feel like I'm I was actively being pandered too, And it did not work for me, as somebody who is scared to go out at night by myself, who my parents start to even say, like, don't go to the gym at night. You never know, like the way that I have to be hyper aware being a short female and I don't know much about protecting myself. Honestly, I probably should, but like it feels like I'm the type of person that they were pandering to. Like look at the strong, amazing female character and she makes it at the end, and look at all these horrible men, horrible awful men, look at what they did to all these poor poor women.

Aren't ment terrible men are awful? And like I just it did not feel successful to me because there's so much more nuance in that there. You can't just say all men are terrible and all women deserve like protection and should be lofted, because if you see the world that black and white. Like, don't get me wrong, there, there's definitely trends because of gender norms and societal pressures and expectations, and that absolutely affects things because there is a difference between how girls are usually raised versus how boys are usually raised, and the types of you know, nature versus nurture. I think this type of thing is definitely more nurture over nature, and that obviously is what creates so many horrible men because of these ideals.

But like to say, men intrinsically are the problem. They are born the problem. That's what it feels like. It feels it, and I guess like the guy at the beginning, like his character, he was supposed to be like the not all men, but he was gone so soon. Well, isn't the homeless gentleman also supposed to be not all men?

I don't know. The way he was like little girl, Well that's I mean, that's just to me, Oh my god. I hate that fucking plot contrivance in movies where it's like, dude, just say what you're trying to say, there's a monster in the house. It ain't that hard. You don't need to get her attention to tell her there's a monster in the house.

Open the little girl stop running, like I'm gonna run, I'm gonna run. Yeah. Same, Like it's just again like those plot contrivances, Like it's when in a romantic movie where the two characters are in a scene together, it's like just say you love her and they're about to and then like the phone goes off or something. It's like, oh, I get it that it's a movie. Like these contrivances have been overused so much that they are they stick out like sore thumbs.

Now. Yeah, and he, I mean, he's an interesting character because he clearly knows everything, Like we have no idea why, which is perfectly fine, but he knows everything. And my question to you is, wouldn't he just go to the cops and be like, there's this thing in this house and I've seen it and you and your response was, well, the cops in this movie, but like the cops in this movie are two cops and they're painted that way to be conveniently bad. I mean, again, we're both white, so I get it. That's good.

Thing, right, is that the Pandery in its own ride, the cops were white and Tess is a woman of color and the a homeless man. I guess I wish I knew his name. I don't want to refer him as the homeless man, but he uh, he's a black man. And so they were really trying to hammer home you know, the all cops are bastards, Like fuck cops. They won't listen.

They especially won't listen to you if you're a person of color. And as a white person, I think that depiction because at first it was like, wow, that's wow. They are really dismissive. That feels weird, that feels unrealistic. And then the more I thought about, I was like that it feels unrealistic to me because I am white.

And I was like, that's a point. That is a little, a little pandery, a little overdone. Yes, but yes, because cops don't react this way to people. They do go investigate things like it's just it's crazy. You'd say, I that's the thing, or do that they got enough if they got enough complaints about this one house, they fucking would.

And that's the movie again, is just playing with It's not even expectations. The movie is just expecting that the audience is going to be wowed by what it's doing and not asking the simplest of simple questions. Wow, this movie said fucko cops. Hell yeah, Like, but but it should be more than that. Oh, all men suck, There's more than that.

Like, ah, there is no nuance at all in this movie. It is one percent just like constantly smacking you in the face with with oh my god, rapist bad, rapist bad, and oh my god, there are men in the world that treat women like objects, Like yes, we know, we know, you're not saying anything that nobody has and heard forever now and again, Like if you just take the rape stuff out of the movie and just have it be a movie about two people in a house that has a monster beneath it, that is a fucking fine movie. And you can do all kinds of things. You don't have to tie yourself into eight knots just so that someone has to untie you for no reason. It's just so unnecessary because it doesn't add anything.

It just gets in the way of the movie being entertaining. And I really do not understand the love for this movie, because it's just there was nothing. By the time the movie was over, I didn't feel like there was anything to grab on. I held on to nothing throughout this movie at all. Yeah, I just know that by the end of it, I was extremely emotionally drained and overwhelmed.

Like honestly, I want I want you to go on rotten to watos. I want you to read to me like some of them, because you said that it was really well received by critics, right, yeah, yeah, for I don't want to know what they're saying. So and are they saying it because they think they have to, because that's my only fear. Are they saying it because they're like, well if I don't say that, the that was They dismiss horror movies all the time. Horror is an easy genre to dismiss, so the critics consensus per round.

So this is so it's funny as we used to do this all the time on the show. At the end of the show show, we would always do like that, what's the rotten Tomatoes? Score dog glad, I'm glad, I got us there. You you well, we haven't done it in years, but it's funny because we're bringing it back. Well, what's funny is I think in this movie it's it's a pretty interesting question to ask because the Tomato Meter score obviously, so it's an aggregate.

So ninety three percent of the critics gave this movie a favorable review or I don't know how. I don't know how they do it, because it doesn't matter when Ron Tomatoes is fucking stupid. But at least we have an aggregate consensus. Here, smart, darkly humorous, and above all scary, Barbarian offers a chilling and consistently unpredictable thrill ride for horror fans. I don't want to sound like that guy, but if you're going into a horror movie to be scared, are you an adult?

You know what I mean? I don't got the horror movies. Looking to be scared is what I'm getting. I kind of do. But critics shouldn't be looking for that.

That doesn't critics shouldn't be That doesn't ultimately matter because you get critics who complain about jump scares, and it's like, well, that's what they're for, Like the part of the reason the jump scares are the fun part. So some of the positive reviews, like the best Whoes, it's about stuff, gentrification, abuse, toxic masculinity, taking responsibility. There's also plenty of jump scares. Four out of five that was a female reviewer in the UK. Here's another female reviewer with stellar performances and a unique premise, a boatload of scares and horror visuals that will be ingrained into your brain for life.

It's one of the best horror flicks to release this year. Okay, sure you'll read one or two more. It is one of the best treats with ample mystery and pure entertainment value. It's what you look at if it's what you're looking for, even if you don't know what quite entails. But the set design, acting and perverse, disturbing twists make it a worthwhile discovery.

Let's read a guys. The set design was good, I think. I mean there's that, but like a movie looking good in this day and age shouldn't be the bar with which we set things. Because now I agree, But I will say the movie it's not bad looking, no, yeah, I mean yeah, as well shot, well directed. But again, the camera is the writer.

So the camera was a little disorienting, butthenetic it was. But the thing is is that being disorienting during the parts that you that they want you to be disoriented is one thing, but being disorienting like throughout the whole thing because it won't stop is fair. So here's another woman from the UK. As a filmmaker, Craiger seems conscious of embracing and then twisting an audience's expectations, leaning into certain tropes of the genre before forcefully pushing towards something far more realistic. Sure, sure, yeah, totally realistic.

I'm going to read a negative these kind of summaries. Ultimately, Craiger takes on an unconventioned takes an unconventional route down a familiar path. I left you this is a YouTuber. I left Barbarian as a sad, empty shell of a man who wonders why he even wasted his time. You're still is kind of funny.

Houston Press, The unpleasant mundanity of the reveal and necessary suspension of disbelief both at the main characters and the climax torpedo many the good feelings that may have been engendered in the first Here's a top critic, Adam Graham from Detroit News. The social Horror of Jordan Peel is felt as an influence, but Barbarians thrills are more than more of the throwaway b movie variety than those of get Out or Us, in its attempt to elevate itself, have the opposite effect and knock it down a notch. Big secret here is that it sadly is not very good, is Benjamin Lee from The Guardian. The people who have the negative opinions have essentially the opinion that we have, it would seem, which is funny because I was expecting maybe not a different negative opinion, but them to have like, oh, there's too many jump scares and the jump scares.

I was expecting more of that, which is like the generic what you would expect for a horror movie negatives right here. I'm kind of glad that they say, oh, you know, the movie tries to elevate itself and it fail because it does. I mean it can mark. Yeah, yeah, you have the topic of rape at the center piece of your movie. I mean, get Out is a movie about racism, which is just as unpalatable as rape is in a lot of ways.

And guess what get Out does navigate that so seamlessly. It's a perfect movie. It is a genuinely perfect movie from front to back. It will be the movie that Jordan Peele is remembered for for the rest of his career unless he makes a movie better than get Out, which would have to be again like, get Out is a perfect movie, and it's a movie that will have a place in the pop culture zeitgeist forever because it genuinely speaks rather succinctly to what is clearly a widely accepted and commonplace feeling of African American people in this country. And this movie does not speak to, in my opinion, the real life experiences of people have been sexually abused.

Why do I think that, Because none of this feels remotely nuanced or remotely subtle. It just feels like someone who read about what people say about it and go, I can do a story about that. You can, but you didn't do it well enough for anybody to other than some. Again, I mean, some people really like this movie. But I feel like the people that like this movie over are overlooking certain parts of it intentionally because because it's easier to do that than go, oh my god, you know, this is actually a movie where it's just more or less about rape, rape, and more rape.

Fucking Christ. It's just too much. It's too much of one thing that is never a thing in a like it's never a thing that I'm like going out of my way to watch movies about, and I know a lot of other people are either. But if it were a movie that tackled the subject in an interesting way, I'd be more inclined to watch it and maybe even watch it again, than I would be to watch a movie about a monster who ends up being a rape monster. This is literally you know, we've talked about other horror movies where X is y like you know, no one can save you as aliens as trauma monsters.

Talk to me is demons as trauma monsters. This movie is rape as a monster. Like it's a rape monster. I mean it doesn't. It does force itself of rape, right, but it also forces itself on one of the characters.

Like yeah, but like that's that's what Daddy dearest always did, right, So like there you go, like it's a it's a you know, the generational trauma. I bet he always said it's because I love you, right, And that's the thing. It's like the generational traumas passed down, Like there are interesting things to be said here, you just don't give a shit about saying them in a way that anybody else hasn't already said it. Yeah, and again, there was such a good movie at the beginning here, I wish you had just done that movie and not taken a right turn into again the land of rape, where it's just like, oh, that's all we have to think about for the next hour, in minutes, it's oh, it's just yeah, it's I don't understand what people weren't seeing here.

It's really hard for me to see it. Like maybe I'm just sensitive to it like you are, but like it just you ruined your movie by doing something unnecessary. I mean, they set up the premise really early on the way that they were having it with, you know, like the guy who's afraid to come off as a creep and is hyper aware, and the and the woman who was rightfully afraid to be alone in a house with a guy she does not know, and it's already we're like, okay, sexual assault a very real possibility. We are thinking about it from literally within the first three minutes of the film. We are already thinking about the possibility of sexual assault.

And then it never goes away. It kind of does, though it does in the in the later part of the first act when the two of them are actually kind of cute together and there and he's kind of doing something to you know, protect her by going down guess base. That actually feels like the moment where the movie starts to pick up, but it's such a passing, fleeting moment that you would not be I'm not gonna give you a hard time for missing it, because it's it's like that. It's literally you get like a ten minute respite and then it's back to Yeah, yeah, terrible men being terrible constancarate. Yeah, we watched this movie, but I don't.

I want to make it really clear that I did not hate it. I just don't think it did anything special with what it was trying to say. If it was trying to say anything, it because of the seriousness of the implications, not even implications, it's very clear, but because of the series of the nature of the premise, you want it to at least say something like, if you're gonna make me sit through the rape movie, at least make it mean something. And then it didn't. Really it just again the same conclusion of repe Well, that's my question to you, what is the conclusion of the movie?

How are we supposed to interpret our main character killing the mother character who is comforting her in the moment before she's murdered. Like, what is what is the implication there? Because again, if this director is trying to say something, she's like petting her head and like genuinely don't think that the mother knew what the gun was, right, I genuine what is the implication of our main character, who has had so much negative male energy perpetrated against her, both personally and through this course to kill a woman forced to kill the other woman? Yeah, the only other like the only other woman in the movie. That's not just in one scene and it's not like, oh we it ends with just her pointing the gun, like you see it right before the movie ends.

It cuts through it. I don't know what it's supposed to mean. That's why I'm asking you, Like I have my druthers, but like those explanations are just supposed to mean, let me think women have to attack one another to overcome abuse. No, I don't know, Like I don't, I just but I know, Like, but like where I just don't know where else that they were going with it, because it just seems so again like it's attempting to be pointed. But the things that attempt to be pointed and fail stick out worse than the ones that don't try.

Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, I think it's safe to say that the mother was living a miserable existence and now with her father having committed suicide, there is nothing left for her. And I think it's pretty safe to say, you know now that airbnb man, less bad rapist, Airbnb man is dead, Like nobody's going to be staying there, right, Like, at least the assumption is nobody's going to be going back there. At least that's what you want to believe, is that nobody's going to ever be going back there, And there was nothing left for the mother. Nobody was going to stay behind and make sure that she had a semblance of a decent life. There's no way it was putting her or completely just out of her misery.

And the violence perpetrated against women by men is so awful sometimes that the men are able to move past it almost easily and women cannot, and that because they shouldn't have to, Because sometimes trauma is so deep that it needs to be excised like a cancer and cut out, and that in the way of going to therapy, Like that's you know what I mean, like going and doing something specifically about it. And I guess that's like in in this scenario, in this world, in this universe, one character who has been so inbred, there's no hope for you because of the amount of violence perpetrated against you by one singular human beig who is a biological male. It was sad that she had to die. The what other choices there is what the movie is saying, And it's like, I don't know what there is one and it was the right thing to do, Like the movie makes you question, what is this the right thing to do?

Because she is so sympathetic in those final moments, But honestly, like it it's akin to me to like fucking of mice and men, like look off into the distance and think of bunnies and like that's the same vibe, like yes, caress your baby, have that last final moment and right right, and like, honestly, the thing that really does get me about the mother character as a whole is that she is distilled down into what oppressive, toxic masculinity society thinks a woman needs to be functionality wise, like All she is is a nurturer to a fault, obviously to a very aggressive fault. But like she is the she is a nurturer on steroids, and like that is her purpose. All she knows is that women's bodies are meant to be used, and they're meant to make baby, and they're meant to care for baby.

That's all she knows. And that is sad to imagine that being your entire fucking existences. And that's an interesting thing to say, is like this is what a woman would be if you distilled her down truly, just to that this is a point where that's the character's name is just the mother, right, Like that's interesting. That's more nuanced than I think the movie deserves. I don't, I mean, I don't I see where I could see you even to go further with that idea then, you know, in a lot of ways, like one could look and you know, we'll go there with this episode in a lot of ways.

And you see it now with certain content creators. And I've said it. I don't know if I've ever said it to you, but like I genuinely believe and I didn't know that this was a thing I genuinely believe that if women did not have the right to vote already, you would have women right now being on the side of women don't deserve the right to vote, which is so fucking insane to say out loud. But yet there are literally women now who make YouTube content who say those kinds of things. Oh.

I don't know if they're being genuine or not, but like, yeah, it's weird because it is like, are they just trying to be controversial controversial to get the views? Yeah, and that's the question. Then in something like this or maybe what they're getting at is this idea, like you said, maybe not the actual death of the woman, but the death of the ideal woman at some point in and in society's change, right, that the contemporary woman has to kill the old concept of what a woman used to be. That's interesting. I don't know if that don't there.

I think we got there, but I think us getting there is a lot different than anybody else getting I want to. I wish that there was an interview question that we could find from from the main guy that wrote this and have the interview would be like, what did it mean when Tess killed the mother? And I want to I want to hear it. I want to hear it because if that's the case, I am less angry about this, because think the problem is I could we could. This movie was literally I just didn't know what I was doing, so I just did whatever I wanted.

Like there's your answer. And I hate that because if there was more intention, because like that's actually and like we just watched this. We have not really had time too. We had fifteen minutes for like a bathroom break in between like watching this movie and sitting down and talking about it. So like I'm I have been said to Chris before we started, like I'm still processing what I just saw, and so I haven't really had much of a chance at all to decide what that meant to me and what that could mean.

We were just sort of throwing stuff at the wall and deciding what's stuck in the moment and seeing where we're both at, you know, feelings wise. But like now that I've gotten to that conclusion that it is a vision, it is an a metaphor of the death of the traditional woman. It could be I don't. I just don't. I just don't held off by the contemporary woman.

And I and it's just the best just well, I'll go I'll go one further on you, emma, despite all the best attempts of different generations of men to oppress and repress the modern woman, because you see three different generations, including the old man. Then you have Justin Long, and then you have both guards guard who's like the only one who isn't But again, because he's the most contemporary right right now, you're right exactly interesting. Yeah again, like I feel like we're doing the heavy lifting here. I do too. I know, I know you're like, I don't you read that article.

You're like, I don't want to give him any more credit than he's than he's worth. Well, I sort of, it's not. It's just I don't like. I don't like the idea of us doing the heavy lifting when you just stumbled on a good idea, and again, you can't. There's it.

Now that it's out, you can't. The director of the movie is the writer of the movie, and he's not going to say no, that's not what it is, because it doesn't want to seem like he didn't think of the thing that he stumbled upon in his own movie. Ah yeah, yeah, we had to do a little bit of mental gymnastics there, and you know, for it to be two am for me, I'm pretty proud of that. Does this movie at any point live up to what it's trying to do or does it fall so short that like it's so obvious how poorly you handled what you were getting. I wish it wasn't so like what hand fisted?

Is that? Is that? The hand fisted? Oh yeah, I just wish it wasn't so that. But like it's like there's a difference between like being viscerally uncomfortable, like we're shoving this in your face to make you viscerally uncomfortable, right, versus just or trying to make a woke point, like and whoa, I mean, I mean, bro, I'm with you.

This is like such a fucking woe ass movie, Like no reason, like you've got you did the thing. You made a woke movie to the point where like there are even people like me and you who are pretty I'm not like I wouldn't say we're woke, but like, I mean, that's probably what other people would say. Like, but it's because it feels so pandery. It almost feels like it's one thing to make a woke movie that feels genuine, Say the gift, Say the gift, Hello, my fellow kids. But that is it really is.

I'm woke too, And it's like, are you like, I'm sorry, it's just a caricature of wokeness? Is this just what you think our generation wants to see? Like, I don't want to make it sound like all of the fucking toxic males out there and all the fucking uh maga people being like, no, no, I'm gonna take a joke, No woke woke media, because like, there is nothing wrong with shedding light on real issues, Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and making an interesting, compelling and entertaining story around real issues. There's nothing wrong with that, And like harder to do tho hard to do in a way that does not feel forced. Right and right now it just feels like everybody's hopping on a bandwagon without having a lot to say.

And that's what's bothering me. That's the disconnect, because there are there's so many interesting avenues here. Obviously we talked about like a lot of the symbolism and like what it could have meant if they really explored this in a more nuanced way, But it was just it feels so hey. Our target audiences millennials and gen Z, what are they like woke stuff, Right, we'll make a wolk horror movie like that. And it's like yes, but no, like sure, but like you don't get it, and like that's what it feels like, and it's trying so hard to convince you that it gets it.

I'm looked too. No, I'm looked too. I promise, I promise. Yeah. It's like, you know, you don't have to be so loud, and you know, I want to be woke to say rapist.

Yeah, Like, and I wonder if I don't know, you know, I don't want to get bogged down and like generation generationalism, but it's a big, big part, plays a big role. Yeah, I do wonder if Zach Kraiger had been a little younger, if maybe it had, it would have been a little bit more nuanced. And look, this movie clearly resonated with some people. I don't think it resonated with a lot of people, because again I knew a fair amount of people that said this movie was just fine. It wasn't this Again, Like the movie got such good reviews.

It was being touted as like the biggest horror movie of the year. It's like, yeah, fucking fine, but to what ends, because you know, another big horror movie can come out, like Scream six, which has nothing to say about anything other than it's scream movie and let's have some fun, folks. Doesn't have to have this generational trauma bullshit constantly being forced down our fucking thrones and no pun intended. Like like, it's funny because when you say generational trauma, like the first trauma in general, I guess trauma as an umbrella is now the horror we raise on detra of the moment. Horror movies are how we deal with our trauma.

Like fine, but god damn it not everybody's trauma. Is that exciting when you when you bring up generational trauma, like specifically, the first thing that comes to mind and this is a left turn for sure, but like the first thing that comes to mind isn't conto, Uh, that's the entire premise of that fucking movie. But like that's the thing, right, It was the premise of the entire movie. But it had something to say, right it. Yeah, it's that's the theme of the movie.

It was written by the people that were affected by these types of issues. It was the It was written by people from this culture who deal with the older generations being dismissive of everything and keeping up appearances and being strong, and how that affects everyone in a family emotionally, and how you would rather shun a family member than try to understand them if they go against you, know, the what you are trying to portray as a family, and the head of the family must be a certain like there is a lot to unpack there, and they unpack it in such a beautiful way, and it had a resolution that mattered, like again, like with this movie and like he points at a rapist man and goes, you're a bad rapist man, like where as in Encanto like uh, the the aboila like comes to terms with the fact that she hurt people.

It took a while, but it was earned. And then like that coming together at the end did not feel forced. It felt like a true cathartic understanding connection. And then so many people who grew up in similar situations and dealt with similar issues wanted to drag their parents and their grandparents and sit them down in front of this movie and say this, this is how I feel this is what I wish we could be and like that is when something Yes, they had an agenda, they had a premise, they had they said, this movie is going to be about generational trauma. We're still going to make it entertaining, We're still going to make it compelling.

But that's what this is going to be the whole time. And obviously that is for children and adults, but it's the target audience is obviously significantly younger than what we watched tonight. But I think it's important to mention that, like having something like that be the theme throughout and how that like woe agenda, but it meant something. And this just did not feel like they were trying to say anything like would you if you had a friend that was a misogynist? I know you would not have a friend if they were a blatant massagist, but let's just ear least I hope not.

Well, let's just say that you had a friend, a male friend, who's a bladant misogynist. Would you think to sit them down in front of the movie that we watched tonight thinking that something would come from it. No? And that's the problem. Well, that's the problem that it makes of it.

It makes it its own problem like that it's its own fault like and that's the thing. It's so frustrating because the movie just does it to itself, like this is not like it's talking about Donald Trump or anything of the time. Right now, you're talking about a thing that's a timeless thing to talk about. It's a time, right Well, if this had been an Airbnb, can you imagine it's just been like an AIRB and B horror movie first, that would have been better than what we got. At least it would have been something weird and fun.

Like I feel like all those reviews that I read are just people going, oh, it's so cool that it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. And it's like if you ordered if you ordered a roast beef sandwich at a restaurant and they brought out dog shit soup and you ate it and went, this is what I thought it was gonna be. That's so good. It's like, wait a second, just because your expectations were subverted doesn't mean there's quality behind it. And that's that is My entire problem with this movie is just yeah, can't keep subverting expectations and expect that that is good enough.

And I guess for some people it is good enough and fine whatever. I don't want to yuck. You're fucking yum. But uh, I don't understand how this movie got as many people behind it as it did unless people really just are so sick and tired of seeing something that makes sense. They just want to see something that makes very little to no sense at all and still attempts to make sense.

Like it's not like it just makes doesn't mean it don't for no reason. It's like, oh, by the way, it's actually about rape. No, no, no, no, just make it a fun movie about this weird ass situation of a woman and a guy being double booked in an Airbnb and you could still have a monster in there and it could still be fun. But no, it's about fucking rape. And holy shit, man, we've said rape so many times.

I wish we had a counter. You should go when you're editing this, you should keep a fucking counter. Good night. It's it's so bad because like it it's like I'm making up for the fact that the movie didn't want to say it, like once it said it. To what I don't even think it said rape.

It said rapist. Oh no, I guess it did say rape. He did? She say I raped her? And then they said, yes, they're saying you raped her.

They said it twice, which is like one fiftieth of the amount that we've said it in this episode. Not even thanks Barbarian. I can't wait to watch the next Zach Kraiger movie, which is gonna be about aboreshit. I feel like we've said it like one hundred and fifty eight times. Yeah, this is like the r episode on barbar is like the is the equivalent to Goodfellow's usage of the word fuck, like four one hundred and fifty one times one time and every minute.

Like at this point we've said rape two times in every fifteen seconds. Literally. But I feel like if if that's what's happening, there's an issue here. I just because what else is this movie about, Like it revels in the fact that it's what that's what it's about. You know, we need to be honest with what this movie is about.

Because this movie is not honest with what it is about. It should have sold itself aside. Again, this movie just feels like a fucking massive bait and switch, like all the way down, Like, oh, look at this movie. You think it's gonna be one thing and then it's another. And if it was just a fun lark, I think I would have had way more enjoyment out of it.

But because you want to just constantly keep beating us over the head with sexual assault, I'm just like, man, there better be something good that comes out of this. Our main character better not just walk away from everything at the end unchanged, because she's not the one who needed to change to begin with. And that is exactly what happens. You're so right about that too. There, what did she learn?

Like, what did she learn? Nothing? Just because she didn't have to. She's just traumatized, just just supremely and utterly traumatized. Right, Yeah, And I mean, which is fine.

I mean that's fine. That is a horror movie thing. But again, the whole rape subtext is so serious that it's like, god damn it, can you just do something there, please final thoughts and skip it or watch it since you asked it, Sure, then let's just say that. Will We'll take people that would be utterly triggered by the concept as a whole out of the equation because if you are triggered by this type of content, like then absolutely you're not seeking this kind of content out if you are a sexual abusive correct, So let's just we'll take that out of the equation. I want, I want to say, skip it.

It feels unnecessary. I feel like all that really came from this for me, Like at the end of the day, Wow, that sure was a fucking weird thing. Chris had me watch What a great bonding experience I made. But that's if that's all that you're getting, Like you could have that with probably one hundred much better movies I did earlier this year was skin of a Right. Yes, I definitely think that it is unnecessary.

Like so even I was saying, like I was messaging my boyfriend during our little fifteen minute break and I had thought that he had seen it. I wasn't sure. It turns out he had only heard a lot about it. And would I tell him to watch it? No, he does not need to see this.

There's no reason. And it's not just because like it would mean nothing to him, or it doesn't pertain to him, or he would be bored by the concept. It's just too much. It's just too much and to what it and like I just the only reason why I would want someone to watch this would be like you think this is really fucking weird too rite like and just like validation, I would want to share the insanity with someone. But that's not a good reason to watch something I would watch like if it was to some BITI is to some people, but it might not be to you, which I do appreciate, and I'm with you.

Sometimes just seeing something new and fun that's not enough for me. Sometimes it's not enough. And as we go further in our lives and we see more and more things that we haven't seen before, and less things seem new to us, we will get to a point where it's like I have seen all this, It's like I watched it with you. I feel validated. I don't need to watch it then show this to three other people and say do you do you?

Do you get it? Do you see why I feel this way, because like, I already feel validated enough in my opinion, I don't need anyone else to go through this on my behalf. But if you find somebody that's already watched it, you can at least have an interesting conversation with them, And that's it really feels like. I watched it so you don't have to That's what it feels like. I watched it so you can live the rest of your life without the knowledge of everything, in every detail of what goes on in this movie.

So yeah, I guess ultimately skip it. I don't regret watching it. I had a great time watching it with you. I wanted to watch at least one more scaring movie for the Halloween season, so I'm glad I got to fit something at hole of days? What the fuck you got four days?

You want some suggest you wanted to watch another one? Right now? It's two ams. I mean it's only one am here and everybody knows it's horror. Movies are meant to be watched at night.

Are you watching these things in the middle of them day? What is this? I absolutely am gonna have to watch the finaf movie. It happen, well, I mean, it can't be any worse than this. I mean I guess it could.

But you know, there's a there's like a zero chtandering well, and there's like a zero percent chance that there's any rape in the Five Tights of Friends. There's none of that, like, oh, look at Fridday basbar over there just sexually everybody like, uh no, thank god, that's not what it is about. No, it's just about murdering children, which is I guess better I can I mean, can you say that. Can you say that rape and incest babies is better and or worse than murdering children? I will say murdering children has seemed more off limits for a long time until recently, and movies now are starting to do it more often, which gets again, like for me, sometimes it's a groaner of a thing, and sometimes I'm like, well, you used it effectively, and some I mean you can use it effectively, just like killing an animal in a movie can be used effectively.

I'm advocating everybody do it in every single movie. But it does work when it's done right. So to be fair, once the once the children are killed, they stay a part of the story, like their souls, like that is integral to the story. So like it's not like I'm just killing off children for the sake of it. Yeah, but I mean again, you can just kill off kids for the sake of it if the narrative makes it work.

But again, that's it's like, if we're talking like level of complexity to get to that point, make it work. Like the reason it doesn't happen in a lot of movies successfully is because the only people that can do it well are people that know what they're doing season screenwriters, not just freed Bergen Celtzer making epic movie and date movie over and over again. Cool. I mean there's no nuance there, and that for me is I think the thing I'm you know, to bring back something just for a limited time offer, because again, this is the ninth year of doing this, so why not bring back a little moment of time? Skip it?

I say, one hundred percent skip it. There have been better movies that have come out since this movie. Talk to Me is one of them. I mean I would even advocate watching It Lives Inside over this movie or No One Will Save You, because at least at the end of that movie, you're like, well, this was just fucking dumb, and the movie kind of revels in how dumb the premise ends up panning it. This movie kind of wants to be serious and like, oh you're you're no fun.

Like it's it comes down to like a PREMI that has so much fun and the first act that promises something that it so fails to deliver on that I almost advocate, like, just watch the first thirty minutes and once the guy dies in the basement, just turn it off. And and what do you need to know beyond that? Do you need to know if she survives or not? No, because there's not much of a characterization there enough for it to really matter. Like you just you see a fun little short movie and that's it.

Watch the first thirty minutes and then like the last fifteen minutes. Yeah, but you would have no idea who the fuck that justin long character is. Yeah, but like I don't really care ke dies anyway, that's fair. I will say the moment we didn't mention, and this is the moment that I will say, if you can find it on the internet, is pretty funny. So this is the caveat here.

Search out the moment when the creature busts through the wall behind Andre the homeless man, when he goes, I've lived here for fifteen years and she's never come outside. Motherfucker bursts through the wall like the kool Aid man from Hell and pulls a more combat for and rips his arm up and beats it. Yep, Darius and quan Chia for Mortal Kombat did that as fatalities. And then I've seen it in a movie, and you know what, it's stupid in video games, and it's stupid in movie. It is such a it's so dumb to sing.

Yeah, it's just a dumb thing to see. It kind of smacks of when Jason murdered those two women in a sleeping bag by slamming them against a tree over and over again. But at least that's a funny visual. This is just like, I don't know, like it didn't. It has never worked because it's so goof, it's so silly.

But and you know what, that's the thing. If this movie had been silly and fun, I might have enjoyed it. But yeah, it kind of is this weird amalgamation of too many ideas and not enough focus. And you know what, maybe Zach Cregger's whatever his next film is. I hope that it's a little bit more focused.

And it's not just I had this great idea and then I wrote the script and then I didn't know what to do, so I did whatever, and it's like, Okay, this time, that worked. Next time it might not right right. So and that's and that is where we leave this movie. And I hope to god I never have to watch it again, like for real, like it was yeah, like to maybe like let the veil drop for a moment, like this movie, guys just did it. I might have it.

I might I might rewatch the hoop hoop beat. There. There have been far between movies that I'm like, I have no interest in revisiting it for any number of reasons. This movie's now on that list because, like, I've seen it fine, it was less than fine. It sure thought it was better than fine, And boy, everybody else were outliers in a camp of people that really like this movie.

This movie is in the conversation for other movies that have come out, like it follows The Witch. Talk to me, all these high profile horror movies that come out that people are really high on and often under deliver, and ninety percent of the time they're a twenty four movie. You know, as much as everybody else liked Hereditary, it wasn't my jam as much as everybody else, like Midsummer wasn't my jam. But there are plenty of those movies that came out that weren't anybody's jam And this movie has its defenders and it has its fans, and I aren't one of them. Where I Emma, I will ask you to close this episode.

Is there something that you do watch at this time of the year, specifically year to year? Do you have traditions like that? I do. I have one one. I have one specific one, and you're gonna think it's so silly.

I'm glad I asked. That's all I will say, because I was more worried you were going to say, uh no. I was worried you're gonna say no. So no, I do have one, and that is I almost, at least almost every Halloween, in order to make it feel like Halloween, I will watch The Scary Godmother Special. Oh.

I thought you're gonna say Halloweenut no, I told her you're gonna think it's silly. I don't think it's silly. I love it so much. It's so and honestly, like quality wise, it has not necessarily aged well. There are some parts of it that are pretty good and hold up.

There's a lot of parts of it that are really funny looking. Now it's all but it's just so wholesome and so fun and so quotable, and the characters are so iconic, and it just embodies the spirit of Halloween for me without making it about much else. Literally, the entire premise of the first special is I'm scared of monsters. Now I'm not scared of monsters, and I get to party with them. That's it.

I love it. I love it. It's all it needs to be. It's perfect. It encapsulates Halloween in my opinion.

It doesn't try to be some like there's been a curse. And don't get me wrong, like I love that shit, like that's great too, But there's something so it is Halloween distilled. You know. It's just it's just Halloween, nothing more, nothing less. It's not trying to say anything big.

It's just trying to be if Halloween was a forty five minute special, what would it look like for kids? And I love it so yes, I watch the Scary Godmother special every year. I mean, I watch Halloween Town. So I don't think it's silly. I think.

I mean, I think, like a lot of holidays, a lot of the holiday movies for Halloween are geared towards kids and the ones that stand out are the ones that still hold up as adults, and not just because they are geared for adults. It's just because they still kind of hold up. Like Halloween Town is not for adults at all. There's very little of it that's for adults, but it still holds up because it's still well made. Yeah, and you know, like for a holiday movie, that's often all it takes.

It doesn't have to be some amazing, like you said, groundbreaking movies. Sometimes it just has to have a lot of heart and be well made. It's so much heart, it's burst sting with heart. I mean, just like Halloween Down, like it like the uh yeah, like I get it. I don't think it's silly at all.

And hocus Pocus is great too, but it's not a tradition. I know for most people it's either Nightmare before Christmas, Halloween Town, or hocus Pocus. Like those are the big three. I think in terms of like Halloween movies, it's Charlie Brown too, but again, like that's a little older. Yeah, if we're gonna say like relatively contemporary, I think those are like the big three.

I would would you add anything to the like I mean there are things that I could add, but again, like like more horror, like Trick or Treat is one that I think people would make a pretty hard case for Monster House. Yeah, Monster House was good. I mean again, like it just depends on what you're definitely like the problem is, I think like there's a difference between a horror movie and a Halloween And yes, in October, I want to watch Halloween movies. I watch horror movies all throughout the year, but in October I want to watch Halloween movies, just like in November, late November, early December and all through the month of December. Frankly, people want to watch christ I mean, people are gonna watch Christmas movies in November because there's some more hot Thanksgiving.

Well what about Thanksgiving? Me? Like, you know, like that's my point, Like Christmas and Halloween have their own seasonal fayre that you can watch, And I would rather watch Halloween movies in October than watch horror movies specifically in October, because you can watch horror movies anytime. So I mean, that's my take on it. I like a mixture of both.

From April, right, But like I'm saying, like people like there's this whole thing of like I would watch horror movies in October. It's like you can watch horror movies anytime of the year. Watching Halloween movies all year round maybe a different question, Pete. There are people that watch Christmas movies all so that they can feel in the spirit. And I totally get it, and I'm poo pooing it or yucking you're yum.

But in October, yeah, watching Halloween movies is where I'm at. And I don't necessarily want to watch horror movies. I want to watch I mean again, I'm not super big in a hotel Transylvania. I know a lot of people are like that Goosebumps movie that came out that ad Jack Black in it. That's fine, Jack thought, who makes everything better?

The Adams Family movie, I think is a good option. Halloween three isn't too scary, and it's about Halloween and a company that sells Halloween masks to children that they're going to try to kill the children with the Halloween masks. Like, if that's not a Halloween story, tell me what is right? And you know, Maggie and I covered Earnest Scared Stupid, which has horror movie moments, but it's also fucking earnest movie, which means it's essentially for kids. So that's the thing.

It's like, it's hard to escape Halloween stuff being for kids, but the best stuff is both for kids and times also just for kids at all, but based at Halloween time, like this little thing called Halloween. Have you seen the Scary Godmother Special? No? I haven't, but I'm going to watch it this season out just for you. Yes, tell you what I think.

There is a second one, fine, Yeah, there are two, and they're short. The second one is not necessary unless if you decide that you love it so much. The second one is adorable too, but the first one is absolutely necessary. I'm a soft spot for mid early two thousands children's programming. I mean, I was thirteen when that came out, so I wasn't too far outside of like a realm of possibility, just like it's a Halloween thing.

It's Halloween th so fucking cute and so fucking stupid and so fucking wholesome, and it does not take itself seriously in the best way. I love it so much. I want to you let me know when you watch it, because I absolutely want to hear your reaction. I mean again, I have a soft spot for Halloween programming, regardless of how good or bad it is, because Halloween is my favorite holiday and I don't know, yeah, like I mean, I yeah, like Halloween is the holiday that I want to think about, I prepare for and celebrate weeks in advance. Well, I just want to live in the all time constantly, this time of year right now, when the weather is the way that it is.

And now it's I mean, we're supposed to get snow over the weekend for the first time. My god, there you're right, like, there you go. Yeah, us, it's gonna be like in the seventies. Yeah, no, we're supposed to get snow over the weekend. So like it's risingly, I'm I'm warmer.

Yeah, it's it's crazy. It's uh. The season is starting early. Yeah, we're fucking planet the season starting early. So we'll we'll see.

No, I'm I like I said, I'm more of a Halloween movie guy at Halloween time than I horror specific. But again, I watched I watch horror movies all the time. Oh, I have a new horror movie comes out more than likely, I'm gonna watch it once I can watch it. You know, we haven't covered the new Extorsist movie. Maybe we eventually will, but I watched that the moment I could, Like, I just the movie going experience, going to theaters is so still exactly what it is and hasn't changed even though the pandemic happened.

I'm I don't go see new movies, so I see them when I can't. So and like, no new new Halloween movies come out anyways, Like that's not a thing. Halloween movies don't come out every year, and if they do, they're good enough to revisit the next year or the year after. That's the reality of holiday movies is you got to do a lot to be a movie worth revisiting every year from the year you come out. Like that's a weird thing that holiday movies have that so many other movies don't have.

It's like the expectation is you're gonna revisit it every fucking year until you probably don't it. It evokes a feeling. That's the thing, right, yeah, is that when something becomes a tradition, it does not you tend to not feel whole without it, Like I would not feel whole during Hanuka if I did not like them Anura, you know, right, Like, how how could I? That's just a tradition, just I mean yeah, like watching horror movies and Halloween movies at Halloween time is a tradition the same like how can I have a Thanksgiving without apple pie? Like there's just there are staples.

Yeah, and I absolutely think that movie because there are a time where people that you care about can all sit on a couch and just enjoy experiencing something together. Like obviously you don't have to watch it with other people, but like it's a bonding thing. It brings people together. Iconic movies are shared experiences like beyond just like your family or your friends, Like you can talk about them with so many people because so many people have seen them. Like it's just it creates an atmosphere, it affects the season.

It's I love it, I really do. I'm right there with you. And again, I'm glad we got to I mean, I'm glad we watched this again. I am glad we watch the movie because it was insane. It lived up to the it lived up to being a weird movie.

If you want to watch something that's weird, I mean, and then just want to be like, what the fuck, what the fuck? Like, yeah, the go for it. It's absolutely that. Yeah, it's rapid fire ridiculousness, but again of like a horror movie variety, so it was an experience. If you want to find more episodes of me talking about non horror movie stuff with Emma, you can find us at Scary Stories we Tell doc, which is the place where the two of us are normally talking about, well, things on the Internet, things that have happened in real life, all kinds of stuff, Weirdingwaymedia dot com, Scary Stories we Tell dot culturecast dot com for this show obviously, Patreon, dot ten, twenty, and fifty.

Those levels you can get in at if you want to support the show financially, but like rate and review the show wherever you get it more than likely I do. And well, thank you so much for joining me. This was fun, Thank you so much for having me, and as always, we'll catch it on the next episode. As state