June 20, 2018 • 41 mins
Chuck and Noel both saw Hereditary last week and felt the need to sit down and have therapy about the movie that Noel said "hurt his feelings." It's a new horror masterpiece, so listen in as they disect this very disturbing film. LOTS OF SPOILERS!
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Crush to Judgment edition of movie Crush.
So I went and saw Hereditary last week, and I
thought Noel had seen it. I thought, I remember you
even mentioning it on the show. So I texted you
if he wanted to do this, And what did you say?
Do you remember? I think I said, like it hurt
(00:45):
my feelings, that movie hurt your feelings. I thought that
was such a funny way to put it. Yeah, I
mean really, like not in a bully made me cry
kind of way, like an existentially broken mind kind of way.
You know. So this is going to be loaded with spoilers.
By the way, If you haven't seen the movie and
you want to see the movie, then don't listen. If
(01:06):
you have seen the movie, then hopefully you'll enjoy this discussion.
And if you haven't seen it and you don't want
to see it but you kind of don't want to
know what's up and what all the buzz is about,
then we could probably uh enlighten you here. And if
you think you don't want to see it, you probably
don't want to see it. Well, I just gotta say, dude,
I fucking loved it. No, it's it love is a
(01:26):
weird word. It is a weird word. I know what
you mean. It's not a pleasant movie, but it's great.
It does things to you. Yeah, all right, so quickly,
just business wise. It was directed, written, and directed by
a newcomer named Ari Astor. This like first timer, a
little little smiley Jewish kid, a f I yeah. Like
(01:49):
you look at the guy and you're like that is
in your brain like an arrest development like him. Yeah,
it's crazy so he horror very Yeah. There's one called
some thing about the Johnson's and apparently it's very fucked
up familial awfulness. I haven't seen it and it's hard
to find. But he did do that. Oh, another family thing.
(02:10):
I'm wondering, what's going on there? Go on? There? That chuck?
I'm so sorry. Uh. Starring um Gabriel Burne. Great to
see him back in fine form. Haven't seen him around
them a little while, and doubt in a crucial role. Uh.
Millie Shapiro a young young actress who does a great
job in this movie. Um Alex, oh my god, Alex
(02:32):
Wolfe as the Sun who was also great. What else
is in I don't know, I've never seen him really, Okay,
I recognize it from something. Uh. And then Tony Collette,
who just destroys this movie. She's so great. I mean, like,
I don't know if they give Academy Award nominations for
horror films like this, but she absolutely deserves one in
(02:53):
my opinion. Alex Wolfe was in Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle,
which I also loved, by the way, and see that's
the new one. Very different kind of movie. Yes, it
was with the Rock. It's about some kids sucked into
a video game and become the characters. Anyway, it's good,
it's yeah, it's fun. Yeah right, very different review though,
Uh so yeah, I hope Tony Clett gets an Academy
(03:14):
Award nomination for this that it'd be nice to see. Uh.
And the movie is about a Oh, it's about a
family in Utah and the uh, the grandmother had has
just passed away. It opens the movie with a funeral
of a grandmother who has just passed away. And Tony
Klette is the daughter of this woman, and Gabriel burns
(03:38):
her husband and then her two children, and it is
a she's she's not upset about her mother's death like
she should be. And clearly her mother was a complicated woman.
And then we later find out in a support group,
a grieving support group, that there was a lot of
mental illness history in her family, and one very very
(04:00):
small little line that you almost miss her brother, Tony
Colette's brother, who we don't know in the movie, she
says had killed himself. He said because mom was trying
to put people in me. Yeah. Yeah, and he had
like voices and she described them as being a schizophrenic.
But that ends up being a little bit of foreshadowing
for sure, and you don't know what's really going on yet,
and that line is very easy to let slip by
(04:22):
um until you know you realize the deal later. So
Tony Collette as a as a profession as a miniature artist.
She makes these great little um miniature sets dioramas, I
guess you could call them, you know, doll houses with
perfectly sculpted little people doing very specific things, and a
lot of them are based on her life. So there's
(04:43):
like her mother in the hospital bed, there's other things
that happened throughout the movie that you see her end
up making diorama versions of. So it ends up being
this nice motif motif Also, the first shot in the
movie is a zoom into one of her dollhouses that
then becomes the shot. So the whole movie has this meta,
microcosmic kind of vibe to it where you're like, who's
(05:04):
controlling who? Who? What? What is? What's you know, where
is this taking place? Kind of almost you know, I
was in love with the house in this movie. You know,
they built it from scratch. No ship, they built it
from scratch. I was reading interview with with the director.
They couldn't find one that because they needed the dimensions
for the cameras to be able to move as well.
So they actually built a fucking house for this movie. Wow.
(05:26):
It is a very open house and just gorgeous set
among these what are those like white birch trees, and
then very importantly there's a a little tree house right
outside the house. And uh, from the beginning, it just
has this eerie tone. Um, the family it's not like,
I mean, there's love in the family, but it's not
(05:48):
happy go lucky. Even from the beginning. Um, you can
tell there's some tensions there, and those tensions reveal themselves
through the movie. Um. At one point we learned man
that one scene with Tony Collette when she says that
she slept, walked and almost burned her children alive, and
the son basically is like he never has forgotten that,
(06:09):
nor has the father. Yeah, like was she asleep or
did she not want them to be around? But come
back to that one later too, because I feel like
there's again machinations within machinations in this movie. So her
daughter is um is very uh. I mean I believe
she's in a special ed class, Is that right? Yeah?
I think I don't think she's meant to have a
(06:32):
I'm not sure, like she has a condition where the
bones in her face don't form properly and I can't
remember that, but I don't believe it's any kind of
down syndrome of any kind like that. I think she's
just meant to be a very inward kind of pensive, artistic,
not autistic child, you know. I don't think she's meant
to be seen as having any kind of developmental disability. Okay,
(06:52):
so she's she's in her class, and um, you know,
from the very beginning, this bird flies into the window
and she goes off and cuts the bird dies. She
cuts the head off the bird, and we realized that
she makes these really kind of really interesting, uh found
art pieces, So she's kind of inherited that artistic spark
from from her mother. UM. And she has her little
(07:13):
workshop that's up in the treehouse. That's her little area.
And and her son is sort of a typical UM
disaffected stoner youth who is um not doesn't have any
time for his parents. And the movie really throws you
for a loop um at the end of the first
act when he goes to a party and the mom
(07:33):
makes him take the daughter to the party, which is weird.
It was a little weird. How pushy she is about
that was very strange because it's like it was she
that clueless that she didn't get what a teenager party
would be at that age, as you really think, and
she was fairly too young for that party, young for
the party. Did she really think she was going to
(07:55):
have a good time? Did you really think it was
gonna be good for either one of them? Older brothers
obviously embarrassed, have to take younger sister. Younger sister totally
out of place. Mom seems kind of clueless, like, you know,
there'll be other kids there. Yeah, it kind of felt
to me though, like you know, like this is how
it is in her family. We are a family. This
is your sister, and you take her places and the
(08:15):
sun does. He wasn't a big jerk about it. He relents. No,
he's a good kid. Yeah, he's he's got a good heart.
You can tell he's like and he's a stoner or whatever,
and he but he's like obviously has issues with the
family situation, but he is like there for everybody and
tries to like really take it for the team and
be a good good son. Yeah, which he does. He
(08:36):
takes her to the party and then um, they had
set up previously in the movie that the daughter is
allergic to nuts. She ends up, The boy goes off
to get hind a room. The daughter eats some nuts
by accident and then comes in wheezing, having an allergic reaction.
He needs to get her the hospital, and from there
this movie really fucking just spins out of control. Yeah.
(08:58):
So he's driving down the darkened road, um with his sister,
and it's you know, it's all that already is is tense.
I'm sitting here like grabbing my throne. Music. The score
of this film is I feel like it's almost a
bed through the entire it's like Drone dread, Ye had
Drone e kind of sinister, but not so on the
nose that it hits you over the head. With everything
(09:19):
is it's never like punctuates events. It's more just a
general kind of like tone the whole movie has, so
you never know quite what to make of what you're
seeing because there's always this like inherent dread that something
horrible is around the corner. And boy, is literally something
horrible around the corner in the form of a telephone pole.
(09:39):
When young Charlie, wheezing and gasping for breath while her
brother in the front seat is saying it's gonna be okay,
it's gonna be okay, sticks her head out the window
and he dodges to avert a dog deer or something,
and you don't quite see what happened. You saw you
hear a pop and a bang, and then he stops
the car. And this is when it just shipped gets
(10:00):
insane because he, like, you know, he knows what happens.
He doesn't look back. She's silent in theah. He's sitting
there for a good minute looking in the rear view,
and he can't see her face, because here's my deal is,
I didn't fully understand that there was a decapitation there.
I heard the smack and I thought, you know, she's
(10:22):
been horrifically killed. But until you know, they don't show anything.
He goes back home, he parks, he gets in bed
because he can't deal. He's broken, his mind is gone
completely broken. And then they have that one startling shot
the next day of that girl's uh rotting head on
(10:44):
the ground. But that's only after I think it's literally
directly after. You see him this morning he's in bed.
You hear the sound of mom going out, so I'm
going to get some groceries. La da da da da da.
You hear every step of the way her walking to
the car. You see the recognition in his eyes sort of,
and then you just hear the wailing of just utter wrecked, shocked.
(11:09):
Oh god, it's just yeah. But the way camera, the
way that that that Ari what is his name? Ari
asked her? The way he did that though, was so great,
Like it's excellent film. He didn't show anything. You hear
the mom outside discover it, Like the way he plays
that out was just so original. I thought it was
amazing and you know he gives you just enough awful gore,
(11:31):
just that quick shot of the head, but you don't
see your head getting knocked off. You don't see her
body ever without a head bribed later when mom is
describing it to her her friend, who will talk about
in and with the diorama that she builds, like that's
kind of the only time you see that. He's why
it's so smart. It's such fucking smart filmmaking and writing.
(11:52):
Oh my god, it was really great. I mean, it's
like it gets inside your head because you your imagination
runs wild with so many things this movie. It's just
an utter delight is the wrong word, but it's a
masterpiece in a lot of ways because just so thoughtfully
put together. Well that's the scariest thing to do, is
make you imagine that telephone pole scene, like you imagine
(12:16):
it in your brain, but you never see it. Um
which is this even scarier? And the reason this movie
hurt my feelings quote unquote is because it takes these
like these things that we all understand, like losing a
loved one or god forbid, losing a child, the fear
of losing Can you imagine if you I mean this
(12:37):
might sound morbid, but there are times where in the
back of my mind, I think, what would it feel
like if I lost my daughter? Now, I think everyone
goes to the darkest places in their brains sometimes what
would it feel like? And my answer is I don't know.
It would break me well. And not only that, but
to lose your daughter, to her head getting knocked off
and sing and then seeing her decapitated body. It's the
(13:00):
worst thing, one of the worst things I've ever seen
and conjured up in a movie. No, it's true, literally,
and I've said this to friends talking about this the
closest thing and it's not nearly of the same look
level of quality that I can think of. It that
makes me, that reminds me of this movie is pet
Cemetery because it's a similar movie. It's remember, the story
of pet Cemetery is all about horrible family drama and
(13:22):
trauma and death and out twists it into this nightmare scenario.
So into Pet Cemetery spoiler alert, it's been decades um
they lose their young their young son. He gets hit
by a truck in the middle of the road and
it's just like it spirals out from there because the
grief makes the parents do crazy shit. Yeah that's way
more effective as horror than a bunch of friends camping
(13:46):
in the woods to me. Man, Yeah, so much more
behind it. So Charlie's now dead. We lose her in
the first act. It did not see that coming, not
at all, and it becomes the device, the turn of
the key that really pushes things, you know, to the
next level. Yeah. So, um, as this has gone on,
like Tony Collette has seen one apparition of her mother, um,
(14:09):
the son starts to see apparitions of Charlie in the house.
So I'm kind of wondering, like is this a haunting movie?
Like part of the genius of this movie is I
wasn't really sure what kind of horror movie. It was
not leaning hard on genre other than it kind of
has a Rosemary's Baby kind of like exorcisty vibe, shining shiny. Yeah.
But but the thing is though, it's but it's it's
(14:30):
all of those things and none of those things wholly original. Yeah,
he's sort of. He clearly had these influences from sixties
and seventies. Uh, horror dread, Kubrickian h Roman, polanski esque stuff.
What's that one with the girl with the red raincoat. Um,
don't look now right. Another it's it's a slow build,
(14:53):
dread filled romp into the abyss of grief. Because that's
another one. It's about losing a loved a child even
as well. Yeah that that all the craziness and that
one spirals out from losing a child. So yeah, so
Charlie's gone, Um, everyone's just wrecked. Yeah, it's a it's
(15:13):
a household that is completely devastated but not dealing with it. Um.
And there's a great scene at dinner Man where Tony
Collette just finally lets loose on her son and says
all the things she wants to say, because there's even
a sense that like she didn't want to talk to
him at all, because there's a shot where like she
waits for him to leave before she go No, she
(15:36):
waits for him to get home, and then she leaves.
She's sitting outside in her car or something like that.
Like there's a very clear sense that she doesn't want
to talk to him. Yeah. I mean, you never see
them dealing with this grief other than the casket going
into the ground and at the funeral and Toni Collette
losing it um, but it's never they never talked about it,
like what happened blah blah blah, Like that's all just
(15:58):
left off screen until with then you see Tony Coletto
building a diorama of the accident and Dad comes in.
He's like, seriously, like, what if what's the son's name? Oh,
I can't remember. I keep saying, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna,
I'm just gonna say son, Mom, Dad, and I remember Charlie. Okay,
(16:18):
but yeah, it's like, oh, seriously, what if what if Peter, Peter,
what if Peter sees this? She's like, what this is
a very She's like, it's a neutral, neutral view of
the accident. Uh. So she ends up going to this
grief counseling session, uh, which is where we learned about
her backstory with her family. Very important and um. Throughout
all this we had seen her mother, uh like boxes
(16:41):
from her mother and the attic that have like these
weird sort of spirituality spirituality books kind of what seems
like new a g kind of stuff, you know, for
a harmless doesn't really have much of a sinister vibe
to it, um until we go a little deeper, right, well,
and very importantly. When mom is buried, we see she's
wearing a necklace with this symbol and that symbols on
the telephone pole. Uh, that hit Charlie. I didn't even
(17:05):
realize that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, when it when it showed
a close up of the telephone pole, that symbol was
like branded into it. That's why. Yeah, I just got
chills actually thinking of that all over again. That's why,
you know. They Okay, so we gotta get there. We
gotta get there. Um. So she goes to the grief
counseling session and eventually meets and Dowd's character, who rushes
out and says, here, I lost the child. Here's my
(17:26):
number if you ever need me. They strike up this friendship,
um as mothers united through grief, and she says she's
lost her grandson and father and in an accident, right grandson,
grandson and son and drowned. She she really tries to
lay it on thick like mine was almost as bad
as yours kind of you know. Yeah. So they end
(17:46):
up she goes to her house. Um, they talk and
stuff and formed this little bond, and Dowd eventually bumps
into her, seemingly by accident. At a grocery or an
art store and says that she went to a seance
and conjured up the spirit of her grandson. I know,
it sounds crazy, and they play that scene so well
because Tony Collette is so like her disbelief is so real,
(18:10):
but she's so desperate that she eventually goes over to
and Oud's apartment. They perform a little seance and it works,
and it freaks or the funk out, the glass moves
on its own, and Tony Colette all of a sudden
becomes a believer that she can perform the seance at home,
(18:31):
which she eventually does. She gets the kid, the father,
and the son up in the middle of the night
to perform a seance to conjure Charlie back, and it happens,
and Charlie starts drawing pictures of Peter with his eyes
exed out on you know, from the great Beyond in
this notebook, and things are really starting to gain momentum
(18:51):
here in the third hand and get way more sinister um.
And then yeah, it's crazy too, because, like you know,
the friend character Um goes out of her way to
seek her out a second time, like like a mom
is at the art supply store leaving and she just
happens to be there in the parking lot, like, oh hey,
oh my goodness. I kind of suspected right then I
(19:14):
was sure. Well there was another thing too. She had
a m um welcome Matt outside of her apartments that
she's like, huh, my mom used to embroider Matt's just
like this for all of her friends or whatever. Alright,
(19:36):
so um back at the house. Uh, she throws the
sketchbook that Charlie's spirit has been doodling these pictures of
her brother, throws it in the fireplace and her arm
catches on fire. Yeah, it's like a little flame. And
then she, in that moment equates, Okay, I can't see
(19:58):
that's the thing though, Oh I know what it was.
She needed to create a conduit to communicate with her daughter,
Like the friend said, it was her son's chalk her
grandson's chalkboard or whatever, and so for her it was
this notebook that was her like object that gave that
was like the bridge to the afterlife or whatever. So
now she's just in her mind because of this event, thinks, Okay,
this is we're linked somehow, And if I burn this book,
(20:21):
it's gonna burn me. And so she puts it out
and the flame goes out, and the flame goes out
exactly right. Um, and that comes back again in a
little bit too. But then she's really starting to spiral.
She's really really starting to spiral, and she wakes up.
Um is this after she does the seance? We already
said that, yeah, she had done this the seance, but
she with her son and her husband. Yes, okay, so
(20:44):
she uh tony cled um eventually goes to the attic
and this is when she starts to get real. She
goes through, she goes through her mom's things and uh
and finds a photo of them, and sees pictures of
her mother with Ann Dowd's character, and it's all there,
(21:05):
and there are all these other people and it's really
and some of these people we didn't mention at the
very beginning of the funeral um with her mother, there
are these really creepy people, like smiling at the daughter yea,
just hanging back, but like, you know, not really creepy ways,
like smiling at Charlie. And so she finds this, uh,
this photoil I'm linking those two and then this book
where there's a highlighted section of a demon called Paymon,
(21:30):
King of Hell. Yeah, you know, this is where it
takes on the Exorcist Rosemary Romary Rosemary's Babies vibe. I'm
not like, it's not a ghost story anymore. Clearly, it's
a it's a movie about the devil. Yeah, they or
like you know, contract and demons, and you know it's yeah,
they're right because it's not ghosts, it's their demons that
(21:51):
they were summoned. Right, you realize that the things you've
been seeing are much more that. So Payman is this
He's from a particular mythology. It's called the Key of
Solomon that's considered a grimoire Um. We've talked about this
on my other show, Stuff that Don't want you to know. Actually,
they are these texts that are kind of like lost
(22:11):
demonic kind of text. This is one of those, and
it has this whole pantheon of um demons that you
don't really read about in the Bible. They're kind of separate,
you know, um, but yet they're so these are they're
all these different um kings and dukes of Hell that
are like connected to Satan, but they're not the ones
that you would think of from the Bible. Um, So,
(22:34):
Paymon is this one who is seen writing this camel
and he's kind of got a feminine features and he
is like really into the arts. That's a big part
of his character if you read up on him, he's
this is all out there. He's really into the arts. Um,
he can control people's actions. Right. So in this book, Um, actually,
(22:57):
Alistair Crowley wrote it like he was a famous kind
of art magician type. Dude wrote a lot about this guy.
But he supposedly can teach all arts and sciences and
other secret things. This is a quote from Crowley. He
can discover unto the what the earth is and what
holdeth it up in the waters, and what mind is
and where it is, or any other thing val mayst
(23:18):
desire to know. He giveth dignity and confirmeth the same.
He bindeth or maketh any man's subject unto the magician,
if he's so desire it. He giveth good familiars and
such as he can teach all arts. And the whole
deal with him too is if you worship him, he
will bestow upon you great riches. Yeah, that's the key. Uh.
(23:39):
And also another key is we know from that book
in the highlighted section that he will he inhabits the
body of a vulnerable male. Yep, that's important, very important. Um,
while this is going on, well, first of all, she
searches the attic while she's up there, and this is
when things really start to ramp up. She sees a bloated, leathery,
(24:03):
black body like clearly had been decomposed for a long time.
Was it decapitated at this point already? No head? Yeah,
that she believes is her mother. I think she's wearing
her mother's clothes. Flies. Great use of insects in this movie,
by the way, So yeah, like who who is the
insect wrangler on this Flies? Ants and maggots like the
triumvirate for horror films. Because we didn't talk about the
(24:26):
the scene with Peter dream dream sequence or there's fire
ants is what I read Crawling out of it man.
In that awful scene where Tony Collett goes in there
and tells him that she wished she tried to miscarry him. Yeah, Uh,
it's just oh dude, it just hits you in the
gut on so many levels. That was a dream though,
Oh that's true. She wakes she wakes up, and then
(24:46):
it's it was like a double dream. Yeah, yeah, then
where she wakes up and then wakes up again. But
so the body you think this, she's going bonkers at
this point. That is in her head. She gets kind
of wonder about you know, you do, you absolutely do,
because she's been you know, about her her history of sleepwalking,
you know about all this stuff. And the thing with
Peter where she's like choking him or something, and then
(25:09):
he wakes up and yeah, she's like, I just got
in here, and she's kind of screaming at his face.
And that was That was actually right before they do
the seance at the house with the husband where they
kind of conjure Charlie for the first time. Um, we're
jumping all around here, all right, it's fine, it's fine.
It's a it's a it's a it's a weird one. Um,
but so so Peter meanwhile, um, and OWD goes to
(25:30):
his school and is screaming at him from across the street.
He goes into his classroom and smashes his own face
on the desk in a pretty horrible scene. It's and
it's just some acting right there. Let me tell you what,
it's some really good acting. And uh, everyone ends up
back at home. Obviously, Peter goes home. I think Dad
picks him up because, oh and by the way, we
(25:51):
had learned previously too that mom had been a dug
up or the grape had been desecrated. Early on we
we learned this. He gets Gabriel Byrne only knows this,
doesn't share it with the rest because come on, like
like they haven't been through enough, you know. And then
you see an email. You hear him on the phone,
and then later you see an email where it they
follow up and say, like, you know, we're not sure
(26:14):
what happens, and here's money back exactly well, they show
photos right exactly the grave side, So then you think
maybe this is in her head, the body in the attic.
She goes and gets Gabriel Burne. She's hysterical. Um, he's
at this point kind of had it. He's sort of
fed up with like her paranoia and all this stuff.
And he's not and he doesn't he hasn't had any
(26:36):
indication that there's anything supernatural going on. He thinks that
it's just like real family sit Yeah, just like in
the middle of it. Serious grieving and mental illness. Clearly
with her family history, he's probably thinking that's what's going on.
So he goes up there and he sees it too. Yeah,
so he goes up there, Uh, to the attic. There
are flies and uh, you just hear go, oh my god. Right, So,
(26:59):
even so, they make their way downstairs. She's losing at
this point. She wants him to burn the book. He's
also accused her at this point of digging up her
own mother's corpse. Yeah, like, I think he wants to
call the cops even right, He's like he's he's more
than had it. And she's saying this thing about the book,
and he's been kind of he you know, he bought
into the whole um seance thing just to like be
(27:20):
kind to her and like do what he thought maybe
she needed. At this point, he's like, no, I'm not
doing that. I'm not playing any of these delusions anymore.
This is not healthy for you. You know, you need help.
And then she throws the book in the fire. She
throws the book in the fire. Immediately Gabriel Burne, his
whole entire body catches on fire and uh in a
(27:41):
truly horrific shot like that shot is just creepy looking
of him being, you know, burning alive. So right now, Annie,
the mom is seemingly possessed at this point by Paymon,
by this god of Hell or demon of Hell. And
I guess at this point in the movie, all you
(28:02):
know is that this stuff really starts happening for real
when um Annie conjures Charlie's spirit through the seance they
do at at at their home, which we may not
have emphasized, but that's really when things start to get
heavily demonic and crazy. After that moment. Yeah, yeah, So
(28:23):
Gabriel Byrne is dead on the floor, Peter wakes up upstairs,
and you see moms skittering around the wall background. Well
that that this this cinematically, this whole section is the
part where I was in the theater with my I
do a thing where I don't cover my eyes, I
hold my ears, I cover my mouth. I I hold
(28:43):
my ears because I don't like jump scares. And what
does the jump scare for me is the big music stab,
which this movie was too smart to do. Anyway, this
wasn't even effective, which one was that kind of late
the late late in the movie, like she just boom
comes around and chases Peter. That's right, we're almost there,
so so basically like it, but just seeing her skitter
(29:04):
around the background suck the worst. No, it's crazy. But
but even before that, Peter is asleep, he gets out
of bed. It's dead silent the movie. There's no soundtrack
for a good minute or so, probably the first time
walking around the house. Hello, hey, heyy for everybody, everybody,
it's me Peter Um And he gets downstairs and his
(29:27):
dad's burned carcasses there in front of the fireplace and
and over his shoulder, and soft focus kind of as
his mother just hunched up in the corner, like in
the corner of the ceiling, of the ceiling. Yeah, and
then that's when she starts the you know, admittedly a
little cliche Japanese horror skittering yeah thing. No there, that's
(29:48):
the great thing about this movie. There were influences ranging
from the Shining and Rosemary's Baby to like ring Goo, absolutely,
you know, and he drew from a lot of from
a deep well of horror classics. And then Peter she
us chasing him and he does the dumbest movie trope thing,
not only upstairs in the attic. He runs up the
attic ladder and closes it up. Yeah, and oh god,
(30:10):
that one part where he hears the banging boom boom,
boom boom on the attic door, and it's Tony Collette
upside down smashing her head against against And it's only
for a split second that it shows that to you. Um, yeah,
in perfect rhythm and perfect rhythm. So he's up there,
and then then oh god, and then magically she ends
up up there, levitating and sawing her own head off
(30:33):
with a wire. Yeah. One of the creepiest shots I've
ever seen in a movie is her sawing her own
head off. You don't see it fall off, but you
hear the thud. He exits through the window. Correct. Yeah,
and in pure madness, you know, he's just what what
more can a can a human mind take? Not to mention,
(30:55):
he sees these creepy naked people grinning and way they
at him, and I'm sure if I watched it again
we would realize those were the people from the funeral. Well,
that's exactly who they were. Um. And so eventually the
decapitated body of his mother levitates into the treehouse. He's
actually got laughs in my theater. There were a couple
of moments in this movie that got really strange laughs
(31:19):
go with I went with my girlfriend, but it was
a it was a pack theater. It was at the
North Dacab mall Um. There was somebody behind us. I
wanted to do things too. Um they were they kept
they thought they were so funny, they thought they were
so clever, and they would like that Charlie does this thing,
this creepy sound she makes, and these people just thought
(31:41):
it was so funny to keep doing that sound through
the whole movie. And but yeah, a couple of times
it was some weird moments got laughed and one of
them was Tony Collette's decapitated body levitating up the tree
into thee. It was but it it's through me because
I'm hearing these people laughing, and it was just you know,
well my experience. You want to hear something funny. I
(32:02):
saw this movie at ten thirty in the morning. Wow,
Because I don't get a chance I have to the
talent for your day. Yeah, I don't have a chance
to get to movies much. And so I uh took
my daughter to school and I knew I had to
pick her up at one and so, all right, this
is my only chance to go see this movie. I
gotta know what everyone's talking about. And um so that's
when I saw it at ten thirty am. And there
(32:23):
were about five people in the movie theater. I was
sitting kind of closer than I normally do, so I
was basically alone, and I was curled up. And movies
usually don't get me, man, I'm pretty tough when it
comes to movies, horror movies. I found myself with my
legs pulled up in my seat, covering my mouth with
my hand for like the last twenty minutes of this
(32:46):
movie straight. She levitates up there. Peter follows. He's in
a just a hypnotic trance basically, and this is where
we kind of learn everything. There are there's his sisters
ed on a mannequin with a crown on it is
that this this crazy effigy, and uh other members of
(33:09):
this coven headless corpses of his mother and grandmother bowing
to him. Joan greets him as Paymon and Charlie and
Charlie because we realized that Charlie was the embodiment of
Paymon from the start. There's also talk in the movie,
like that from her birthday for the grandmother like wanted
(33:31):
Charlie to be a boy. There's even one of these
embroidered uh place match that we see that says Charles
and and and then we kind of so much in
this with the grandmother really latched onto Charlie from the start.
She breast feeder. Yeah, that's right, I forgot about that.
That's one of the creepiest shots ever, is that diorama
(33:52):
of the grandmother trying to breastfeed, clearly wanting to breastfeed
her granddaughter's anything. They used those dioramas to do, and
in lieu of flashbacks, which is really clever, they used
them to kind of tell the story. Yeah. So at
the very end, there's this creepy cub in up in
the attic and this is where it goes straight up
like Rosemary's baby, headless corpses bowing down, uh fig thing
(34:15):
and because they have their vulnerable male finally and uh,
the spirit of Paymon enters Peter, and like the last
shot is like him being crowned and everyone basically hail Satan. Yeah,
and then and then and then they zoom out in
a very similar micro kind of is this dollhouse kind
of shot to the very beginning of the movie, and
(34:37):
there's this sound of much larger applause than would be
the people in that room, So, which is like the
sound of like humanity bowing to paymon or whatever. Man. Yeah, dude,
it's it's wild. This movie blew me away. And here's
(35:01):
a funny reaction I had. Um So, I had this
weird reaction at the end from the moment uh it
goes black and that Judy Collins song, the happy song
both Sides Now comes on is. I started giggling, and
I giggled for ten minutes all the way up the
movie theater through the parking lot in my car. That's
because you had gone a little insane chuck sort of.
(35:24):
It was a reaction that I can. I giggled because
I was just like, that's one of the best horror
movies I've ever seen, and that director was so off
the charts great at what he did. I was just like, Bravo, dude, bravo.
I understand that reaction for sure. I I I had.
Have you seen The Witch? This is very much in
(35:47):
line with The Witch to me. It's also movie has
a similarly bonkers ending. Very similar actually, where you kind
of are following the path of a single character and
then then ship goes down. Um. Great horror movies, great
horror both all from they're just just destroying it. But
(36:08):
I had a similar reaction at the end of The Witch,
where I kind of laughed because I was like, what
did I just see? Like, I got I gotta process this.
It took me a little. Those are my favorite kind man, Like,
I love that they've moved moved. I mean, I'm sure
that these movies are still being made, but they've moved
beyond this like Eli Roth thing of just torture porn
and let's just like shock people and in the horror
(36:29):
movies like it follows in The Witch in this are
these really really creative horror films. Yeah. And I was
reading an interview with the directory on this one again
and he said, what I really wanted to do was
a family drama, but I knew it would be a
lot easier it's a horror movie drama, right. So he
when he was like trying to set out to write something,
(36:50):
and he even says he has like nine other things
ready to go, ready to go, and he was like,
this was the one that I knew I could probably
sell the easiest because it was like it had had
all that family drama stuff into him if that was
first and foremost in his mind. But the horror aspect
was almost like a way to make it more bankable,
kind of which is but that that that that sounds
(37:11):
like I'm saying it cheapens it. It absolutely doesn't. And
it's interesting because in Hollywood you gotta be smart and
you gotta think like that in certain ways. But yeah,
I mean, he just he crushed it. The acting is great.
He he does he teases everything out and just the
right way. It's not a movie just like it's not
into in Gore and Shock. It's just really creeps into
(37:33):
your bones and into your mind in a way that
like I haven't seen in a long long time. Um,
I just I thought it was great. But again it's
like it's hard to recommend it. Yeah, I mean, I
was getting to is. I did not sleep that night.
I really didn't, really, I didn't. I I had a
lot of other stuff on my mind too, was some
big work stuff coming up. But I stayed at my
(37:54):
girlfriend's house and she was asleep and I just kind
of laid there awake until about five of them more
because the flashes of this movie kept popping into what's
your girlfriend? She liked it, but she didn't see how
it hit me quite as hard as as it did.
And for me, it was because of the family stuff
that hit really close to home for me personally being
a dad and men having gone through some family lost
stuff in the past, and so that really uh yeah,
(38:17):
that really did it for me. All right. Man. Uh,
I know that this was all over the place everybody,
but um, I think I don't know. This movie just
really affected me in a lot of ways. Yeah, same here.
So we don't have a rating system. Oh wait, it
is thumbs the thumbs out of thumbs, it out of five. Well,
I think for me, for what this movie is supposed
(38:40):
to be a horror film, I'm giving it five thumbs,
five thumbs all the way, all the way. Like I
don't I can't imagine it being any better, uh than
it was or more effective as a horror film. Yeah.
And it's like it's one of these things too where
I don't even feel the need to poke at any
holes or anything like that, because it's just it didn't
(39:03):
hit me as there being any glaring ones. First of all,
I'm sure if we dug we could probably find some.
But it's just so arresting and so effective, and the
way it was written and put together, just like I
couldn't ask for anything else. Yeah, a horror, A new
horror masterpiece. I want to see it again, but I
also don't really, but I know that I'll see things
because it's there's so many little easter eggs. Yeah, because
(39:23):
it's so smartly plotted that, like everything is kind of
I didn't even think about the payment logo. It's along
the telephone pole. Yeah, because that's another thing we didn't
even mention. This cult orchestrated all of these events, all
of them to get this, uh, to make Peter vulnerable. Yeah,
like that's why all this happens, is to make him
(39:44):
an acceptable host for payment, like presumably laying the groundwork
for this for years decay since the birth of the child.
I hope they don't sequel this, just leave it now.
This guy doesn't strike me as as he would like.
I think he's he'll just get another one of his
pictures made because he's you know, obviously hope the hereditary
(40:04):
to Like, I don't want to see that it would be.
Let listen, stand on its owner. I mean, yeah, that's
the thing, Like I don't the Rise of Payment the movie.
I mean, that's exactly what it will be. Yeah, yeah,
but that I just he strikes this guy strikes me
as smart and savvy enough that he's going to take
the cash at of the success of this and and
(40:24):
and and you know, take that funck you money and
go straight to the bank and just be like now
I can do whatever I want. So good for him, man,
to actually see such such a bold first outing like this. Yeah,
he looks like a nice week guy. You know, I
expected I don't know, Marilyn Manson or something. No, they're
never They're never that way. They're never what you expect.
All right, everybody, So that long one, but this I
(40:47):
think we both had feels about this one. Shuck. Yeah,
we needed to therapy this out. So thanks for commiserating
with us, um and we will see you next time
for another crush to judgment, or you know, Friday for
a full episode in Monday for a mini crush. See
you all next time.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Crush to Judgment edition of movie Crush.
So I went and saw Hereditary last week, and I
thought Noel had seen it. I thought, I remember you
even mentioning it on the show. So I texted you
if he wanted to do this, And what did you say?
Do you remember? I think I said, like it hurt
(00:45):
my feelings, that movie hurt your feelings. I thought that
was such a funny way to put it. Yeah, I
mean really, like not in a bully made me cry
kind of way, like an existentially broken mind kind of way.
You know. So this is going to be loaded with spoilers.
By the way, If you haven't seen the movie and
you want to see the movie, then don't listen. If
(01:06):
you have seen the movie, then hopefully you'll enjoy this discussion.
And if you haven't seen it and you don't want
to see it but you kind of don't want to
know what's up and what all the buzz is about,
then we could probably uh enlighten you here. And if
you think you don't want to see it, you probably
don't want to see it. Well, I just gotta say, dude,
I fucking loved it. No, it's it love is a
(01:26):
weird word. It is a weird word. I know what
you mean. It's not a pleasant movie, but it's great.
It does things to you. Yeah, all right, so quickly,
just business wise. It was directed, written, and directed by
a newcomer named Ari Astor. This like first timer, a
little little smiley Jewish kid, a f I yeah. Like
(01:49):
you look at the guy and you're like that is
in your brain like an arrest development like him. Yeah,
it's crazy so he horror very Yeah. There's one called
some thing about the Johnson's and apparently it's very fucked
up familial awfulness. I haven't seen it and it's hard
to find. But he did do that. Oh, another family thing.
(02:10):
I'm wondering, what's going on there? Go on? There? That chuck?
I'm so sorry. Uh. Starring um Gabriel Burne. Great to
see him back in fine form. Haven't seen him around
them a little while, and doubt in a crucial role. Uh.
Millie Shapiro a young young actress who does a great
job in this movie. Um Alex, oh my god, Alex
(02:32):
Wolfe as the Sun who was also great. What else
is in I don't know, I've never seen him really, Okay,
I recognize it from something. Uh. And then Tony Collette,
who just destroys this movie. She's so great. I mean, like,
I don't know if they give Academy Award nominations for
horror films like this, but she absolutely deserves one in
(02:53):
my opinion. Alex Wolfe was in Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle,
which I also loved, by the way, and see that's
the new one. Very different kind of movie. Yes, it
was with the Rock. It's about some kids sucked into
a video game and become the characters. Anyway, it's good,
it's yeah, it's fun. Yeah right, very different review though,
Uh so yeah, I hope Tony Clett gets an Academy
(03:14):
Award nomination for this that it'd be nice to see. Uh.
And the movie is about a Oh, it's about a
family in Utah and the uh, the grandmother had has
just passed away. It opens the movie with a funeral
of a grandmother who has just passed away. And Tony
Klette is the daughter of this woman, and Gabriel burns
(03:38):
her husband and then her two children, and it is
a she's she's not upset about her mother's death like
she should be. And clearly her mother was a complicated woman.
And then we later find out in a support group,
a grieving support group, that there was a lot of
mental illness history in her family, and one very very
(04:00):
small little line that you almost miss her brother, Tony
Colette's brother, who we don't know in the movie, she
says had killed himself. He said because mom was trying
to put people in me. Yeah. Yeah, and he had
like voices and she described them as being a schizophrenic.
But that ends up being a little bit of foreshadowing
for sure, and you don't know what's really going on yet,
and that line is very easy to let slip by
(04:22):
um until you know you realize the deal later. So
Tony Collette as a as a profession as a miniature artist.
She makes these great little um miniature sets dioramas, I
guess you could call them, you know, doll houses with
perfectly sculpted little people doing very specific things, and a
lot of them are based on her life. So there's
(04:43):
like her mother in the hospital bed, there's other things
that happened throughout the movie that you see her end
up making diorama versions of. So it ends up being
this nice motif motif Also, the first shot in the
movie is a zoom into one of her dollhouses that
then becomes the shot. So the whole movie has this meta,
microcosmic kind of vibe to it where you're like, who's
(05:04):
controlling who? Who? What? What is? What's you know, where
is this taking place? Kind of almost you know, I
was in love with the house in this movie. You know,
they built it from scratch. No ship, they built it
from scratch. I was reading interview with with the director.
They couldn't find one that because they needed the dimensions
for the cameras to be able to move as well.
So they actually built a fucking house for this movie. Wow.
(05:26):
It is a very open house and just gorgeous set
among these what are those like white birch trees, and
then very importantly there's a a little tree house right
outside the house. And uh, from the beginning, it just
has this eerie tone. Um, the family it's not like,
I mean, there's love in the family, but it's not
(05:48):
happy go lucky. Even from the beginning. Um, you can
tell there's some tensions there, and those tensions reveal themselves
through the movie. Um. At one point we learned man
that one scene with Tony Collette when she says that
she slept, walked and almost burned her children alive, and
the son basically is like he never has forgotten that,
(06:09):
nor has the father. Yeah, like was she asleep or
did she not want them to be around? But come
back to that one later too, because I feel like
there's again machinations within machinations in this movie. So her
daughter is um is very uh. I mean I believe
she's in a special ed class, Is that right? Yeah?
I think I don't think she's meant to have a
(06:32):
I'm not sure, like she has a condition where the
bones in her face don't form properly and I can't
remember that, but I don't believe it's any kind of
down syndrome of any kind like that. I think she's
just meant to be a very inward kind of pensive, artistic,
not autistic child, you know. I don't think she's meant
to be seen as having any kind of developmental disability. Okay,
(06:52):
so she's she's in her class, and um, you know,
from the very beginning, this bird flies into the window
and she goes off and cuts the bird dies. She
cuts the head off the bird, and we realized that
she makes these really kind of really interesting, uh found
art pieces, So she's kind of inherited that artistic spark
from from her mother. UM. And she has her little
(07:13):
workshop that's up in the treehouse. That's her little area.
And and her son is sort of a typical UM
disaffected stoner youth who is um not doesn't have any
time for his parents. And the movie really throws you
for a loop um at the end of the first
act when he goes to a party and the mom
(07:33):
makes him take the daughter to the party, which is weird.
It was a little weird. How pushy she is about
that was very strange because it's like it was she
that clueless that she didn't get what a teenager party
would be at that age, as you really think, and
she was fairly too young for that party, young for
the party. Did she really think she was going to
(07:55):
have a good time? Did you really think it was
gonna be good for either one of them? Older brothers
obviously embarrassed, have to take younger sister. Younger sister totally
out of place. Mom seems kind of clueless, like, you know,
there'll be other kids there. Yeah, it kind of felt
to me though, like you know, like this is how
it is in her family. We are a family. This
is your sister, and you take her places and the
(08:15):
sun does. He wasn't a big jerk about it. He relents. No,
he's a good kid. Yeah, he's he's got a good heart.
You can tell he's like and he's a stoner or whatever,
and he but he's like obviously has issues with the
family situation, but he is like there for everybody and
tries to like really take it for the team and
be a good good son. Yeah, which he does. He
(08:36):
takes her to the party and then um, they had
set up previously in the movie that the daughter is
allergic to nuts. She ends up, The boy goes off
to get hind a room. The daughter eats some nuts
by accident and then comes in wheezing, having an allergic reaction.
He needs to get her the hospital, and from there
this movie really fucking just spins out of control. Yeah.
(08:58):
So he's driving down the darkened road, um with his sister,
and it's you know, it's all that already is is tense.
I'm sitting here like grabbing my throne. Music. The score
of this film is I feel like it's almost a
bed through the entire it's like Drone dread, Ye had
Drone e kind of sinister, but not so on the
nose that it hits you over the head. With everything
(09:19):
is it's never like punctuates events. It's more just a
general kind of like tone the whole movie has, so
you never know quite what to make of what you're
seeing because there's always this like inherent dread that something
horrible is around the corner. And boy, is literally something
horrible around the corner in the form of a telephone pole.
(09:39):
When young Charlie, wheezing and gasping for breath while her
brother in the front seat is saying it's gonna be okay,
it's gonna be okay, sticks her head out the window
and he dodges to avert a dog deer or something,
and you don't quite see what happened. You saw you
hear a pop and a bang, and then he stops
the car. And this is when it just shipped gets
(10:00):
insane because he, like, you know, he knows what happens.
He doesn't look back. She's silent in theah. He's sitting
there for a good minute looking in the rear view,
and he can't see her face, because here's my deal is,
I didn't fully understand that there was a decapitation there.
I heard the smack and I thought, you know, she's
(10:22):
been horrifically killed. But until you know, they don't show anything.
He goes back home, he parks, he gets in bed
because he can't deal. He's broken, his mind is gone
completely broken. And then they have that one startling shot
the next day of that girl's uh rotting head on
(10:44):
the ground. But that's only after I think it's literally
directly after. You see him this morning he's in bed.
You hear the sound of mom going out, so I'm
going to get some groceries. La da da da da da.
You hear every step of the way her walking to
the car. You see the recognition in his eyes sort of,
and then you just hear the wailing of just utter wrecked, shocked.
(11:09):
Oh god, it's just yeah. But the way camera, the
way that that that Ari what is his name? Ari
asked her? The way he did that though, was so great,
Like it's excellent film. He didn't show anything. You hear
the mom outside discover it, Like the way he plays
that out was just so original. I thought it was
amazing and you know he gives you just enough awful gore,
(11:31):
just that quick shot of the head, but you don't
see your head getting knocked off. You don't see her
body ever without a head bribed later when mom is
describing it to her her friend, who will talk about
in and with the diorama that she builds, like that's
kind of the only time you see that. He's why
it's so smart. It's such fucking smart filmmaking and writing.
(11:52):
Oh my god, it was really great. I mean, it's
like it gets inside your head because you your imagination
runs wild with so many things this movie. It's just
an utter delight is the wrong word, but it's a
masterpiece in a lot of ways because just so thoughtfully
put together. Well that's the scariest thing to do, is
make you imagine that telephone pole scene, like you imagine
(12:16):
it in your brain, but you never see it. Um
which is this even scarier? And the reason this movie
hurt my feelings quote unquote is because it takes these
like these things that we all understand, like losing a
loved one or god forbid, losing a child, the fear
of losing Can you imagine if you I mean this
(12:37):
might sound morbid, but there are times where in the
back of my mind, I think, what would it feel
like if I lost my daughter? Now, I think everyone
goes to the darkest places in their brains sometimes what
would it feel like? And my answer is I don't know.
It would break me well. And not only that, but
to lose your daughter, to her head getting knocked off
and sing and then seeing her decapitated body. It's the
(13:00):
worst thing, one of the worst things I've ever seen
and conjured up in a movie. No, it's true, literally,
and I've said this to friends talking about this the
closest thing and it's not nearly of the same look
level of quality that I can think of. It that
makes me, that reminds me of this movie is pet
Cemetery because it's a similar movie. It's remember, the story
of pet Cemetery is all about horrible family drama and
(13:22):
trauma and death and out twists it into this nightmare scenario.
So into Pet Cemetery spoiler alert, it's been decades um
they lose their young their young son. He gets hit
by a truck in the middle of the road and
it's just like it spirals out from there because the
grief makes the parents do crazy shit. Yeah that's way
more effective as horror than a bunch of friends camping
(13:46):
in the woods to me. Man, Yeah, so much more
behind it. So Charlie's now dead. We lose her in
the first act. It did not see that coming, not
at all, and it becomes the device, the turn of
the key that really pushes things, you know, to the
next level. Yeah. So, um, as this has gone on,
like Tony Collette has seen one apparition of her mother, um,
(14:09):
the son starts to see apparitions of Charlie in the house.
So I'm kind of wondering, like is this a haunting movie?
Like part of the genius of this movie is I
wasn't really sure what kind of horror movie. It was
not leaning hard on genre other than it kind of
has a Rosemary's Baby kind of like exorcisty vibe, shining shiny. Yeah.
But but the thing is though, it's but it's it's
(14:30):
all of those things and none of those things wholly original. Yeah,
he's sort of. He clearly had these influences from sixties
and seventies. Uh, horror dread, Kubrickian h Roman, polanski esque stuff.
What's that one with the girl with the red raincoat. Um,
don't look now right. Another it's it's a slow build,
(14:53):
dread filled romp into the abyss of grief. Because that's
another one. It's about losing a loved a child even
as well. Yeah that that all the craziness and that
one spirals out from losing a child. So yeah, so
Charlie's gone, Um, everyone's just wrecked. Yeah, it's a it's
(15:13):
a household that is completely devastated but not dealing with it. Um.
And there's a great scene at dinner Man where Tony
Collette just finally lets loose on her son and says
all the things she wants to say, because there's even
a sense that like she didn't want to talk to
him at all, because there's a shot where like she
waits for him to leave before she go No, she
(15:36):
waits for him to get home, and then she leaves.
She's sitting outside in her car or something like that.
Like there's a very clear sense that she doesn't want
to talk to him. Yeah. I mean, you never see
them dealing with this grief other than the casket going
into the ground and at the funeral and Toni Collette
losing it um, but it's never they never talked about it,
like what happened blah blah blah, Like that's all just
(15:58):
left off screen until with then you see Tony Coletto
building a diorama of the accident and Dad comes in.
He's like, seriously, like, what if what's the son's name? Oh,
I can't remember. I keep saying, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna,
I'm just gonna say son, Mom, Dad, and I remember Charlie. Okay,
(16:18):
but yeah, it's like, oh, seriously, what if what if Peter, Peter,
what if Peter sees this? She's like, what this is
a very She's like, it's a neutral, neutral view of
the accident. Uh. So she ends up going to this
grief counseling session, uh, which is where we learned about
her backstory with her family. Very important and um. Throughout
all this we had seen her mother, uh like boxes
(16:41):
from her mother and the attic that have like these
weird sort of spirituality spirituality books kind of what seems
like new a g kind of stuff, you know, for
a harmless doesn't really have much of a sinister vibe
to it, um until we go a little deeper, right, well,
and very importantly. When mom is buried, we see she's
wearing a necklace with this symbol and that symbols on
the telephone pole. Uh, that hit Charlie. I didn't even
(17:05):
realize that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, when it when it showed
a close up of the telephone pole, that symbol was
like branded into it. That's why. Yeah, I just got
chills actually thinking of that all over again. That's why,
you know. They Okay, so we gotta get there. We
gotta get there. Um. So she goes to the grief
counseling session and eventually meets and Dowd's character, who rushes
out and says, here, I lost the child. Here's my
(17:26):
number if you ever need me. They strike up this friendship,
um as mothers united through grief, and she says she's
lost her grandson and father and in an accident, right grandson,
grandson and son and drowned. She she really tries to
lay it on thick like mine was almost as bad
as yours kind of you know. Yeah. So they end
(17:46):
up she goes to her house. Um, they talk and
stuff and formed this little bond, and Dowd eventually bumps
into her, seemingly by accident. At a grocery or an
art store and says that she went to a seance
and conjured up the spirit of her grandson. I know,
it sounds crazy, and they play that scene so well
because Tony Collette is so like her disbelief is so real,
(18:10):
but she's so desperate that she eventually goes over to
and Oud's apartment. They perform a little seance and it works,
and it freaks or the funk out, the glass moves
on its own, and Tony Colette all of a sudden
becomes a believer that she can perform the seance at home,
(18:31):
which she eventually does. She gets the kid, the father,
and the son up in the middle of the night
to perform a seance to conjure Charlie back, and it happens,
and Charlie starts drawing pictures of Peter with his eyes
exed out on you know, from the great Beyond in
this notebook, and things are really starting to gain momentum
(18:51):
here in the third hand and get way more sinister um.
And then yeah, it's crazy too, because, like you know,
the friend character Um goes out of her way to
seek her out a second time, like like a mom
is at the art supply store leaving and she just
happens to be there in the parking lot, like, oh hey,
oh my goodness. I kind of suspected right then I
(19:14):
was sure. Well there was another thing too. She had
a m um welcome Matt outside of her apartments that
she's like, huh, my mom used to embroider Matt's just
like this for all of her friends or whatever. Alright,
(19:36):
so um back at the house. Uh, she throws the
sketchbook that Charlie's spirit has been doodling these pictures of
her brother, throws it in the fireplace and her arm
catches on fire. Yeah, it's like a little flame. And
then she, in that moment equates, Okay, I can't see
(19:58):
that's the thing though, Oh I know what it was.
She needed to create a conduit to communicate with her daughter,
Like the friend said, it was her son's chalk her
grandson's chalkboard or whatever, and so for her it was
this notebook that was her like object that gave that
was like the bridge to the afterlife or whatever. So
now she's just in her mind because of this event, thinks, Okay,
this is we're linked somehow, And if I burn this book,
(20:21):
it's gonna burn me. And so she puts it out
and the flame goes out, and the flame goes out
exactly right. Um, and that comes back again in a
little bit too. But then she's really starting to spiral.
She's really really starting to spiral, and she wakes up.
Um is this after she does the seance? We already
said that, yeah, she had done this the seance, but
she with her son and her husband. Yes, okay, so
(20:44):
she uh tony cled um eventually goes to the attic
and this is when she starts to get real. She
goes through, she goes through her mom's things and uh
and finds a photo of them, and sees pictures of
her mother with Ann Dowd's character, and it's all there,
(21:05):
and there are all these other people and it's really
and some of these people we didn't mention at the
very beginning of the funeral um with her mother, there
are these really creepy people, like smiling at the daughter yea,
just hanging back, but like, you know, not really creepy ways,
like smiling at Charlie. And so she finds this, uh,
this photoil I'm linking those two and then this book
where there's a highlighted section of a demon called Paymon,
(21:30):
King of Hell. Yeah, you know, this is where it
takes on the Exorcist Rosemary Romary Rosemary's Babies vibe. I'm
not like, it's not a ghost story anymore. Clearly, it's
a it's a movie about the devil. Yeah, they or
like you know, contract and demons, and you know it's yeah,
they're right because it's not ghosts, it's their demons that
(21:51):
they were summoned. Right, you realize that the things you've
been seeing are much more that. So Payman is this
He's from a particular mythology. It's called the Key of
Solomon that's considered a grimoire Um. We've talked about this
on my other show, Stuff that Don't want you to know. Actually,
they are these texts that are kind of like lost
(22:11):
demonic kind of text. This is one of those, and
it has this whole pantheon of um demons that you
don't really read about in the Bible. They're kind of separate,
you know, um, but yet they're so these are they're
all these different um kings and dukes of Hell that
are like connected to Satan, but they're not the ones
that you would think of from the Bible. Um, So,
(22:34):
Paymon is this one who is seen writing this camel
and he's kind of got a feminine features and he
is like really into the arts. That's a big part
of his character if you read up on him, he's
this is all out there. He's really into the arts. Um,
he can control people's actions. Right. So in this book, Um, actually,
(22:57):
Alistair Crowley wrote it like he was a famous kind
of art magician type. Dude wrote a lot about this guy.
But he supposedly can teach all arts and sciences and
other secret things. This is a quote from Crowley. He
can discover unto the what the earth is and what
holdeth it up in the waters, and what mind is
and where it is, or any other thing val mayst
(23:18):
desire to know. He giveth dignity and confirmeth the same.
He bindeth or maketh any man's subject unto the magician,
if he's so desire it. He giveth good familiars and
such as he can teach all arts. And the whole
deal with him too is if you worship him, he
will bestow upon you great riches. Yeah, that's the key. Uh.
(23:39):
And also another key is we know from that book
in the highlighted section that he will he inhabits the
body of a vulnerable male. Yep, that's important, very important. Um,
while this is going on, well, first of all, she
searches the attic while she's up there, and this is
when things really start to ramp up. She sees a bloated, leathery,
(24:03):
black body like clearly had been decomposed for a long time.
Was it decapitated at this point already? No head? Yeah,
that she believes is her mother. I think she's wearing
her mother's clothes. Flies. Great use of insects in this movie,
by the way, So yeah, like who who is the
insect wrangler on this Flies? Ants and maggots like the
triumvirate for horror films. Because we didn't talk about the
(24:26):
the scene with Peter dream dream sequence or there's fire
ants is what I read Crawling out of it man.
In that awful scene where Tony Collett goes in there
and tells him that she wished she tried to miscarry him. Yeah, Uh,
it's just oh dude, it just hits you in the
gut on so many levels. That was a dream though,
Oh that's true. She wakes she wakes up, and then
(24:46):
it's it was like a double dream. Yeah, yeah, then
where she wakes up and then wakes up again. But
so the body you think this, she's going bonkers at
this point. That is in her head. She gets kind
of wonder about you know, you do, you absolutely do,
because she's been you know, about her her history of sleepwalking,
you know about all this stuff. And the thing with
Peter where she's like choking him or something, and then
(25:09):
he wakes up and yeah, she's like, I just got
in here, and she's kind of screaming at his face.
And that was That was actually right before they do
the seance at the house with the husband where they
kind of conjure Charlie for the first time. Um, we're
jumping all around here, all right, it's fine, it's fine.
It's a it's a it's a it's a weird one. Um,
but so so Peter meanwhile, um, and OWD goes to
(25:30):
his school and is screaming at him from across the street.
He goes into his classroom and smashes his own face
on the desk in a pretty horrible scene. It's and
it's just some acting right there. Let me tell you what,
it's some really good acting. And uh, everyone ends up
back at home. Obviously, Peter goes home. I think Dad
picks him up because, oh and by the way, we
(25:51):
had learned previously too that mom had been a dug
up or the grape had been desecrated. Early on we
we learned this. He gets Gabriel Byrne only knows this,
doesn't share it with the rest because come on, like
like they haven't been through enough, you know. And then
you see an email. You hear him on the phone,
and then later you see an email where it they
follow up and say, like, you know, we're not sure
(26:14):
what happens, and here's money back exactly well, they show
photos right exactly the grave side, So then you think
maybe this is in her head, the body in the attic.
She goes and gets Gabriel Burne. She's hysterical. Um, he's
at this point kind of had it. He's sort of
fed up with like her paranoia and all this stuff.
And he's not and he doesn't he hasn't had any
(26:36):
indication that there's anything supernatural going on. He thinks that
it's just like real family sit Yeah, just like in
the middle of it. Serious grieving and mental illness. Clearly
with her family history, he's probably thinking that's what's going on.
So he goes up there and he sees it too. Yeah,
so he goes up there, Uh, to the attic. There
are flies and uh, you just hear go, oh my god. Right, So,
(26:59):
even so, they make their way downstairs. She's losing at
this point. She wants him to burn the book. He's
also accused her at this point of digging up her
own mother's corpse. Yeah, like, I think he wants to
call the cops even right, He's like he's he's more
than had it. And she's saying this thing about the book,
and he's been kind of he you know, he bought
into the whole um seance thing just to like be
(27:20):
kind to her and like do what he thought maybe
she needed. At this point, he's like, no, I'm not
doing that. I'm not playing any of these delusions anymore.
This is not healthy for you. You know, you need help.
And then she throws the book in the fire. She
throws the book in the fire. Immediately Gabriel Burne, his
whole entire body catches on fire and uh in a
(27:41):
truly horrific shot like that shot is just creepy looking
of him being, you know, burning alive. So right now, Annie,
the mom is seemingly possessed at this point by Paymon,
by this god of Hell or demon of Hell. And
I guess at this point in the movie, all you
(28:02):
know is that this stuff really starts happening for real
when um Annie conjures Charlie's spirit through the seance they
do at at at their home, which we may not
have emphasized, but that's really when things start to get
heavily demonic and crazy. After that moment. Yeah, yeah, So
(28:23):
Gabriel Byrne is dead on the floor, Peter wakes up upstairs,
and you see moms skittering around the wall background. Well
that that this this cinematically, this whole section is the
part where I was in the theater with my I
do a thing where I don't cover my eyes, I
hold my ears, I cover my mouth. I I hold
(28:43):
my ears because I don't like jump scares. And what
does the jump scare for me is the big music stab,
which this movie was too smart to do. Anyway, this
wasn't even effective, which one was that kind of late
the late late in the movie, like she just boom
comes around and chases Peter. That's right, we're almost there,
so so basically like it, but just seeing her skitter
(29:04):
around the background suck the worst. No, it's crazy. But
but even before that, Peter is asleep, he gets out
of bed. It's dead silent the movie. There's no soundtrack
for a good minute or so, probably the first time
walking around the house. Hello, hey, heyy for everybody, everybody,
it's me Peter Um And he gets downstairs and his
(29:27):
dad's burned carcasses there in front of the fireplace and
and over his shoulder, and soft focus kind of as
his mother just hunched up in the corner, like in
the corner of the ceiling, of the ceiling. Yeah, and
then that's when she starts the you know, admittedly a
little cliche Japanese horror skittering yeah thing. No there, that's
(29:48):
the great thing about this movie. There were influences ranging
from the Shining and Rosemary's Baby to like ring Goo, absolutely,
you know, and he drew from a lot of from
a deep well of horror classics. And then Peter she
us chasing him and he does the dumbest movie trope thing,
not only upstairs in the attic. He runs up the
attic ladder and closes it up. Yeah, and oh god,
(30:10):
that one part where he hears the banging boom boom,
boom boom on the attic door, and it's Tony Collette
upside down smashing her head against against And it's only
for a split second that it shows that to you. Um, yeah,
in perfect rhythm and perfect rhythm. So he's up there,
and then then oh god, and then magically she ends
up up there, levitating and sawing her own head off
(30:33):
with a wire. Yeah. One of the creepiest shots I've
ever seen in a movie is her sawing her own
head off. You don't see it fall off, but you
hear the thud. He exits through the window. Correct. Yeah,
and in pure madness, you know, he's just what what
more can a can a human mind take? Not to mention,
(30:55):
he sees these creepy naked people grinning and way they
at him, and I'm sure if I watched it again
we would realize those were the people from the funeral. Well,
that's exactly who they were. Um. And so eventually the
decapitated body of his mother levitates into the treehouse. He's
actually got laughs in my theater. There were a couple
of moments in this movie that got really strange laughs
(31:19):
go with I went with my girlfriend, but it was
a it was a pack theater. It was at the
North Dacab mall Um. There was somebody behind us. I
wanted to do things too. Um they were they kept
they thought they were so funny, they thought they were
so clever, and they would like that Charlie does this thing,
this creepy sound she makes, and these people just thought
(31:41):
it was so funny to keep doing that sound through
the whole movie. And but yeah, a couple of times
it was some weird moments got laughed and one of
them was Tony Collette's decapitated body levitating up the tree
into thee. It was but it it's through me because
I'm hearing these people laughing, and it was just you know,
well my experience. You want to hear something funny. I
(32:02):
saw this movie at ten thirty in the morning. Wow,
Because I don't get a chance I have to the
talent for your day. Yeah, I don't have a chance
to get to movies much. And so I uh took
my daughter to school and I knew I had to
pick her up at one and so, all right, this
is my only chance to go see this movie. I
gotta know what everyone's talking about. And um so that's
when I saw it at ten thirty am. And there
(32:23):
were about five people in the movie theater. I was
sitting kind of closer than I normally do, so I
was basically alone, and I was curled up. And movies
usually don't get me, man, I'm pretty tough when it
comes to movies, horror movies. I found myself with my
legs pulled up in my seat, covering my mouth with
my hand for like the last twenty minutes of this
(32:46):
movie straight. She levitates up there. Peter follows. He's in
a just a hypnotic trance basically, and this is where
we kind of learn everything. There are there's his sisters
ed on a mannequin with a crown on it is
that this this crazy effigy, and uh other members of
(33:09):
this coven headless corpses of his mother and grandmother bowing
to him. Joan greets him as Paymon and Charlie and
Charlie because we realized that Charlie was the embodiment of
Paymon from the start. There's also talk in the movie,
like that from her birthday for the grandmother like wanted
(33:31):
Charlie to be a boy. There's even one of these
embroidered uh place match that we see that says Charles
and and and then we kind of so much in
this with the grandmother really latched onto Charlie from the start.
She breast feeder. Yeah, that's right, I forgot about that.
That's one of the creepiest shots ever, is that diorama
(33:52):
of the grandmother trying to breastfeed, clearly wanting to breastfeed
her granddaughter's anything. They used those dioramas to do, and
in lieu of flashbacks, which is really clever, they used
them to kind of tell the story. Yeah. So at
the very end, there's this creepy cub in up in
the attic and this is where it goes straight up
like Rosemary's baby, headless corpses bowing down, uh fig thing
(34:15):
and because they have their vulnerable male finally and uh,
the spirit of Paymon enters Peter, and like the last
shot is like him being crowned and everyone basically hail Satan. Yeah,
and then and then and then they zoom out in
a very similar micro kind of is this dollhouse kind
of shot to the very beginning of the movie, and
(34:37):
there's this sound of much larger applause than would be
the people in that room, So, which is like the
sound of like humanity bowing to paymon or whatever. Man. Yeah, dude,
it's it's wild. This movie blew me away. And here's
(35:01):
a funny reaction I had. Um So, I had this
weird reaction at the end from the moment uh it
goes black and that Judy Collins song, the happy song
both Sides Now comes on is. I started giggling, and
I giggled for ten minutes all the way up the
movie theater through the parking lot in my car. That's
because you had gone a little insane chuck sort of.
(35:24):
It was a reaction that I can. I giggled because
I was just like, that's one of the best horror
movies I've ever seen, and that director was so off
the charts great at what he did. I was just like, Bravo, dude, bravo.
I understand that reaction for sure. I I I had.
Have you seen The Witch? This is very much in
(35:47):
line with The Witch to me. It's also movie has
a similarly bonkers ending. Very similar actually, where you kind
of are following the path of a single character and
then then ship goes down. Um. Great horror movies, great
horror both all from they're just just destroying it. But
(36:08):
I had a similar reaction at the end of The Witch,
where I kind of laughed because I was like, what
did I just see? Like, I got I gotta process this.
It took me a little. Those are my favorite kind man, Like,
I love that they've moved moved. I mean, I'm sure
that these movies are still being made, but they've moved
beyond this like Eli Roth thing of just torture porn
and let's just like shock people and in the horror
(36:29):
movies like it follows in The Witch in this are
these really really creative horror films. Yeah. And I was
reading an interview with the directory on this one again
and he said, what I really wanted to do was
a family drama, but I knew it would be a
lot easier it's a horror movie drama, right. So he
when he was like trying to set out to write something,
(36:50):
and he even says he has like nine other things
ready to go, ready to go, and he was like,
this was the one that I knew I could probably
sell the easiest because it was like it had had
all that family drama stuff into him if that was
first and foremost in his mind. But the horror aspect
was almost like a way to make it more bankable,
kind of which is but that that that that sounds
(37:11):
like I'm saying it cheapens it. It absolutely doesn't. And
it's interesting because in Hollywood you gotta be smart and
you gotta think like that in certain ways. But yeah,
I mean, he just he crushed it. The acting is great.
He he does he teases everything out and just the
right way. It's not a movie just like it's not
into in Gore and Shock. It's just really creeps into
(37:33):
your bones and into your mind in a way that
like I haven't seen in a long long time. Um,
I just I thought it was great. But again it's
like it's hard to recommend it. Yeah, I mean, I
was getting to is. I did not sleep that night.
I really didn't, really, I didn't. I I had a
lot of other stuff on my mind too, was some
big work stuff coming up. But I stayed at my
(37:54):
girlfriend's house and she was asleep and I just kind
of laid there awake until about five of them more
because the flashes of this movie kept popping into what's
your girlfriend? She liked it, but she didn't see how
it hit me quite as hard as as it did.
And for me, it was because of the family stuff
that hit really close to home for me personally being
a dad and men having gone through some family lost
stuff in the past, and so that really uh yeah,
(38:17):
that really did it for me. All right. Man. Uh,
I know that this was all over the place everybody,
but um, I think I don't know. This movie just
really affected me in a lot of ways. Yeah, same here.
So we don't have a rating system. Oh wait, it
is thumbs the thumbs out of thumbs, it out of five. Well,
I think for me, for what this movie is supposed
(38:40):
to be a horror film, I'm giving it five thumbs,
five thumbs all the way, all the way. Like I
don't I can't imagine it being any better, uh than
it was or more effective as a horror film. Yeah.
And it's like it's one of these things too where
I don't even feel the need to poke at any
holes or anything like that, because it's just it didn't
(39:03):
hit me as there being any glaring ones. First of all,
I'm sure if we dug we could probably find some.
But it's just so arresting and so effective, and the
way it was written and put together, just like I
couldn't ask for anything else. Yeah, a horror, A new
horror masterpiece. I want to see it again, but I
also don't really, but I know that I'll see things
because it's there's so many little easter eggs. Yeah, because
(39:23):
it's so smartly plotted that, like everything is kind of
I didn't even think about the payment logo. It's along
the telephone pole. Yeah, because that's another thing we didn't
even mention. This cult orchestrated all of these events, all
of them to get this, uh, to make Peter vulnerable. Yeah,
like that's why all this happens, is to make him
(39:44):
an acceptable host for payment, like presumably laying the groundwork
for this for years decay since the birth of the child.
I hope they don't sequel this, just leave it now.
This guy doesn't strike me as as he would like.
I think he's he'll just get another one of his
pictures made because he's you know, obviously hope the hereditary
(40:04):
to Like, I don't want to see that it would be.
Let listen, stand on its owner. I mean, yeah, that's
the thing, Like I don't the Rise of Payment the movie.
I mean, that's exactly what it will be. Yeah, yeah,
but that I just he strikes this guy strikes me
as smart and savvy enough that he's going to take
the cash at of the success of this and and
(40:24):
and and you know, take that funck you money and
go straight to the bank and just be like now
I can do whatever I want. So good for him, man,
to actually see such such a bold first outing like this. Yeah,
he looks like a nice week guy. You know, I
expected I don't know, Marilyn Manson or something. No, they're
never They're never that way. They're never what you expect.
All right, everybody, So that long one, but this I
(40:47):
think we both had feels about this one. Shuck. Yeah,
we needed to therapy this out. So thanks for commiserating
with us, um and we will see you next time
for another crush to judgment, or you know, Friday for
a full episode in Monday for a mini crush. See
you all next time.
Movie Crush News
Host
Chuck Bryant
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