Skulking Humanist Monsters: The Tank & Carnifex

How do you judge a monster movie? If it's all about the practical effects, then The Tank (New Zealand, 2023) should slither into your eyeballs. If you want a creature feature with a sense of humor, though, head into the outback with Carnifex (Australia, 2022). Both are on Tubi. Also, a record-breaking Thai flick inspired by The Evil Dead hits Netflix and a vampire movie with the most on-the-nose title in history hits Shudder.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, how are y'all doing?We're great, Marcus.
I'm not exhausted at all after watchingRoz all day and I'm going home and not
going to pass out immediatelyor anything. Well, I'm great.
I'm at a conference and this is totallywhat I sound like and this isn't the
weirdest example of Marcus talking tohimself ever or anything. That'd be weird.

(00:42):
So welcome to Imported Horror.
This is the podcast that brings youthe very best of creepy monsters and
abbreviated solo podcastsbecause my co-hosts are
indisposed and I didn't want to leavey'all hanging for too many weeks without
anything from us. That's okay. Ithink that's going to be great.
So Marcus Grady is a way towork conference in Austin.

(01:05):
Sounds like he's having a lot of fun.
Melissa is exhausted becauseRoz ran her all around the room.
She was babysitting for us this afternoon,
so I figured on weeks thatwe can't do the full show,
I'll still go through the comingSoons and talk about stuff I've seen.
Won't be a full episode,won't be as good, but hey,
it's something for your ear holes ona Friday morning and that's something.

(01:37):
So we've only got two foreign horrorsdropping on streaming services this week,
but that's okay. They're both interesting.They're both worth talking about.
The first today, ifyou're releasing to this,
listening to this on our release day,
the seventh is Death Whisperer
too. And I love whendescriptions start like this.

(01:58):
I can't quite do the voice,
but I'm working on itIn a world shrouded by
Darkness, a relentless forceseeks rich retribution,
undeterred by boundaries or morality.
This is Death Whisperer two from Thailand.
The original is also on Netflix.This one's dropping today,

(02:20):
the original drop sometime last year.
This looks pretty good,
honestly made a lot of money in Asia.
Wikipedia says two has the Domestic
Box office record forsingle day day of release
sales,
and it said both Death Whispererone and two were inspired by the

(02:45):
Evil Dead,
which we could easily have acollection of foreign films inspired
by Evil Dead and I kind of love that asexports go. I think that's magnificent.
The other one is a greatexample of leaving it
all on the field for the title.

(03:05):
This is dropping on Mondaythe 10th of February on
shutter, humanist,
vampire seeking consentingsuicidal person.
It's from Quebec from Canada.
A young woman Vampire is unableto kill her need for blood,
but may have found a solution in ayoung man with suicidal tendencies

(03:30):
and I kind of admire that.
It's all in the title and thereis zero confusion about what
this is about and the trailerreally plays up on that.
And it's kind of a wordy mouthfulof a title and it certainly takes a
lot to type out in threads, whichour threads is back up by the way,
but it leaves it all out there.You know exactly what this is,

(03:52):
and I don't know if it's for me,
I think a lot of, forlack of a better term,
gen Z content about suicideapproaches the topic in
some, maybe cavalier is the wrong word,
but with a franknessthat millennials that my

(04:13):
generation didn't reallyfeel super comfortable doing,
or at least I never did. One of the fewthings I tell my journalism students
that there's a right and a wrong wayto cover is suicide because from a
nonfiction perspective,
they're definitely a whole bunch of wrongways to do it that lead to unintended
consequences. The rules are a littledifferent for fiction fiction and it's,

(04:35):
I suppose only really anissue when it's surprising.
I'm thinking of Lady Gagafans that went to see
Star is Born and were just knowingnothing about it and we're just completely
blindsided by the
pretty blunt on the nose suicide content.

(04:58):
This obviously, you're not going to besurprised, it's literally in the title,
so I think either you'reup for it or you're not.
The trailer also mentions that it's fromDrafthouse films that the Alamo Draft
House had a hand in producing it,
and I could see that it's gotsort of that weird Austin that
was historical fictionvibe to it because Austin,

(05:20):
the Austin that I went to grad school inhigh school and doesn't exist anymore.
And I don't know
the last time I was therefor a conference, it felt like a very different city,
one that was a whole lot less weirdand a whole lot more corporate and tech
growy,
but this I'm sure stillhas that old school weird

(05:41):
artsy fartsy, south Lamar movie vibeto it. The one art house, or excuse me,
draft house film that I haven't seenthat I want to that is very much at my
alley is spring, which is,
I mean I want to spoilanything but love crafty.
I've seen the trailer enough andread enough about it to know, yeah,

(06:02):
this is something I'dprobably be interested in.
I just have never actually gotten to seeit because other stuff always pops up
on my list first. Thisone Humanist Vampire.
I don't know about that. That maynot be for me, but if it's for you,
that's cool. Email us, tell us about it.

(06:24):
So we don't have Melissahere who is still short,
but I figured I would talk a little bitabout one of the movies I saw recently.
I was in a monster mood and I wanderedonto Tubi because that's what you do when
you're in a monster mood.
And I saw the tank from NewZealand and it really made me
wonder how to best evaluatea monster movie because if

(06:48):
you're looking purelyat the creature effects,
then the tank is 10 outof 10, maybe 12 out of 10,
no notes, fantastic, magnificent,super creepy monster,
all practical effects. The suit,
it was made by the samefolks in New Zealand,

(07:08):
the Weta Workshop do a whole bunch. They,
I think really first made itbig with Lord of the Rings,
but they've done a ton over theyears and these folks know practical
effects and so that's really cool.And when you actually do see the monster,
they clearly spent a lot of time on thiscostume and they worked really hard on
it and it's surprisinglycreepy and that's great,

(07:31):
but the rest of it,
the plot is a little ridiculousand the monster not in a fun way,
it takes itself a littlebit too seriously.
You're supposed to care about thesecharacters in a serious kind of
borderline somber way, and I just didn't.
And there's silly, like thewhole concept of the tank,

(07:52):
this big water tank underneath thishouse that's also connected to a cave.
None of that makes anysense. And if you're making a silly, campy monster movie,
that's fine. If you're makinga serious monster movie,
it's a little bit bit more difficult.
It's harder to bridge that gap.
And I think a lot of slasher movies havethe same issue because we've seen so

(08:15):
many ridiculous cornyslasher movies and Scream was
practically a parody of itself and thenScary Movie came along and did parody
it,
but had a hard time doing it because itwas already so close to parody. And I
love Scary movie and I love Spring, butI love Scary Movie and I love Scream.
I haven't seen Spring,
but there's not that much wiggle roomfor a serious slasher. It's hard to do.

(08:38):
I think it's the same withMonster movies. It can be done.
The Monster is a good example.
Godzilla minus one is anothergood example, but it's tough.
It's really kind of hardto thread that needle and
I don't know that this onedid a fantastic job of it,

(08:58):
but at the same time, if you spendall that time on the Monster Effects,
you've got a really creepy monster.
It feels like a bit of a waste to justthrow it away on a corny comedy horror.
So I don't know. I don't know.
I really wanted to pairit with heart effects from
Australia that I watched a couple ofmonths ago and that did really lean into

(09:19):
the camp and it had a sense of humor.The characters,
like somebody quotes JeffGoldblum and you know the quote,
you already know the quote, you alreadyknow, you can see it coming a mile away.
I laughed out loud when thecharacter said it, really enjoyed it.
They filmed it out in the outback andhad all the natural sound and all the
animals screeching andhowling Koalas sound.

(09:41):
Not at all like you'd expecta cute little animal to sound.
They sound horrifying,
but even with all that sense of humor,
then when you finally do see the creature,
it's mostly CG and thatfeels like a letdown.
And I saw a lot of the reviews reallydunked on the movie because of that.
I don't think that's completely fair, butat the same time, I can see the point.

(10:03):
So I wound up giving bothCarnifex and the Tank
three stars on Letterboxed,
even though they both basicallyexcelled at different parts
because I would much rather a practicaleffect monster than cg. But if it's late
on a Friday night and I'm watching Tubi,
I mean let's have asense of humor about it.

(10:24):
Let's not take ourselves so seriouslythat we stop having fun and I worry the
Tank kind of did that.
I also don't know why Canadadoes this. Australia does this,
New Zealand does this,
but the movie is set in Oregon and
that's fine,
but y'all don't need to pretend likeit's set here just for our benefit.

(10:46):
Don't tell us this is anAmerican horror movie.
We don't need to be coddled.
And if the fear is that we won't watcha movie that we know was shot overseas.
Well if that's true, and maybe thedata suggests that, I don't know,
but if that's true, it's onlyaccurate because we keep seeing it,
we keep doing it and we don't knowhow many are from overseas. And

(11:09):
two, there is sort of a,
they do mention in the tankpart of the hook of the monster,
the Fox Mulder moment, which wasn'tsuper well done if I'm being honest,
but was a big giant Cascadiaearthquake in the year
1700. And that did really happen.
And I went down a fun Wikipediarabbit hole reading about it,

(11:30):
about how they know it happened, allthe science and evidence and everything.
And part of the reason that they know ithappened was because they've uncovered
some of them relatively recently,
these ghosts ghost whatthey call ghost forests,
which are basically when an area of
forest falls into the oceanbecause of a big earthquake,
the tree trunks, most of them,a lot of 'em are still there.

(11:55):
They're just buried under sand and mudand muck and water and something happens
to release them.
Then you see these hugesubmerged forests of
little trees that come upto maybe knee height maybe,
and that is super creepy and thatwould be such an awesome shot for
a horror movie with practical effectsand a monster running around and

(12:16):
everything. And that wouldbe really, really fantastic.
The problem is those ghost forests areliterally on the other side of the world
from where this movie was actuallyfilmed. So you can't do that.
You can't really appreciate the NewZealand scenery, which is stunning.
This is Lord of the Rings,that's middle earth,
but if you don't tell people that'swhere it is, then you miss something.

(12:41):
But IMDB in the little trivia thing
for the tank did mention that
the suit for the monster,
let me look up her name,
but the main person who wasin it is also going to be in
Megan too, which I think is fantastic.

(13:03):
And partly because she was supercreepy in this and a lot of that,
as you can tell, it'sflexibility, her IMDB page
doing some ballerina stuff,which is great. And if you're going to be a monster,
you need flexibility helps a lot.But yeah,
her name is Regina Hegemann Heman,sorry if I'm mispronouncing that,

(13:25):
but she's going to bein Megan 2.0 and yeah,
the main picture of her on IMDB is she'sgot one leg one way and one leg the
other way really stretchy.
And I like that because usually wethink a monster's like the guy from
Prey who's this gigantic dude,
played college basketball and then wantedto be in movies and that's awesome.
Doug Jones is also huge, super tall guy,

(13:47):
and I love Doug Jones and I love the guyfrom Prey. I hope he's in a lot more.
But those of us that areshort, I say I'm five six,
people have told me I'm fivefive, maybe they're right,
but a Short Kings and short Queens,we can be in monster movies too,
and I think that's awesome.But the only other person,
according to the IMDB trivia that wouldfit in the suit was the director's kid

(14:11):
and kid comes to the set and said, dad,
can I get in the monster suit? And theanswer to that question is objectively
yes, absolutely, let's make that happen.
So I don't know which shot it was,
but one of the shots ofthe monster in the tank,
that's the director's kid in thesuit, which I think is magnificent,
and the movie gets bonus points for it.So if you're in a creature feature mood,

(14:35):
which why wouldn't you be then if you'relooking for something more serious with
cool effects, the tank is great.
If you're looking for somethingwith a sense of humor,
but the creature effects mightbe a little more CG oriented,
then car effects is whereit's at. Either way.
Monster movies are great,
and if you're thinking if Iwant something really serious,
but also really fantastic Godzillaminus one, especially minus color,

(14:58):
just know that you might cry at theend. I did. I'm not ashamed to admit it.
So anyway, we will talkto y'all next week.