The Fear of God: A Horror Movie Podcast

We're nearing the end of our series in a couple of weeks about the filmography of the late David Lynch. We turn this week to his final feature film, a wildly experimental and divisive film called INLAND EMPIRE. An exercise in cinematic experimentation to its core, Inland Empire is one of Lynch's most difficult films to figure out. It has a stream of conscience, non-linear narrative structure that often sees the same perfor...

The next installment in our series on David Lynch was made shortly after the booming popularity of the premiere of Twin Peaks. WILD AT HEART, based on a book by Barry Gifford, tells the story of Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern), two exuberant and impulsive lovers who set out on a cross-country trek fleeing an array of strange characters who are all trying to kill Sailor on behalf of Lula's mother Marrieta (Diane...

We're happy to present you this week with another special interview episode about a haunting, subversive revenge western that is newly released to video on demand as of June 20th.

FALL IS A GOOD TIME TO DIE tells the story of a quiet young ranch hand named Cody (Joe Hiatt), who learns that someone who devastated his family years ago has been released from prison. Intent on serving up justice he believes was never delivered,...

We're continuing our series on the films of David Lynch this week with what is arguably his most unusual entry: THE STRAIGHT STORY. Lynch had built a reputation on bizarre works like Eraserhead and Lost Highway. His films were often filled with graphic sex and violence as in Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, or even Wild at Heart. So, when his gentle, elegant, G-rated Disney film was released, it turned more than...

We have something a bit unique for you this week. For the past few months, our Patron subscribers have been listening to us make our way through the classic series TWIN PEAKS, seasons 1 and 2.

This week, we're presenting brief selections from those chats, currently only available in their entirety to our Patron subscribers. We share our variety of thoughts on the mystery of Laura Palmer, the quirky inhabitants of Twin Peak...

Continuing our journey through the work of the late David Lynch, we finally arrive at what is often considered his finest film. MULHOLLAND DRIVE brought Lynch some of the largest and most universal acclaim of his career. Its Los Angeles-centric mystery traverses the territories of dream logic, identity, ambition, envy, and the elusive way we all try to find ourselves. It featured a star-making performance from Naomi Watts ...

We continue our series examining the films of the late David Lynch by tackling one of his most elusive and bleak visions of sex and violence: LOST HIGHWAY. We're joined by special guest Matt Cosper to unpack the surrealist fever dream of a man trapped between two lives, two minds, and perhaps even two souls. It's a compelling portrait of the inability to cope with who we are and what we've done, traversing through wishes a...

We arrive in our series on David Lynch at what is widely considered to be one of his greatest films. BLUE VELVET acted as a creative and cultural palate cleanser for Lynch following his strong disappointment and frustration with Dune. It sits quite effectively at the intersection of Lynch's more eccentric qualities and his more accessible qualities, offering up a story that it both elusive and coherent. We're joined this w...

Frank Herbert's landmark science fiction novel has become more culturally central thanks to the recent blockbuster films by Denis Villeneuve adapting the story. But as we make our way through our series on the late David Lynch, we had to stop by Arrakis and grapple with his much-maligned adaptation from 1984. Featuring a massive budget (which came with lots of production demands as well), a star-studded cast, and classic 1...

Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds... fire walk with me.

When David Lynch's megahit series Twin Peaks was cancelled after two seasons, people eagerly awaited the announced feature film. Responses were decidedly mixed, however, on the finished film, controversial as it was for missing lots of key series regulars and for focusing almost exclusively on the last wee...

In January 2025, the iconic visionary filmmaker David Lynch passed away. His films invite numerous interpretations about humanity, creativity, dreams, fears, and they seem to have given entire generations of people open permission to be weird. Since we had never covered him on the show before, we decided to make David Lynch's films the centerpiece of this year's creator profile.

We start with his first feature film, ERASERH...

We have another special interview for you this week, this time with director Felipe Vargas, whose new film ROSARIO hits theaters on Friday, May 2nd.

Rosario is a richly textured paranormal horror story about a woman who, during a severe snowfall, must spend the night with her deceased grandmother's body while she waits for the ambulance to arrive. But when she discovers a hidden room filled with religious, ritualistic items...

Sometimes you just have to face your worst fears, like public speaking, or flying, or rapidly replicating creeping, crawling spiders. Infested is a French horror film about residents in a tenement building who suddenly find themselves facing a massive quarantine inside their building as it is overrun by countless arachnids with swift, predatory, lethal power. Although the film offers up lots of squirming terror, it also sm...

We have a special surprise for you today, an interview with award-winning author Adam Cesare about his novel Clown in a Cornfield and its forthcoming film adaptation, which will be exclusively in theaters on May 9th.

Clown in a Cornfield is a remarkably thoughtful and accessible book while also being scary, provocative, and an insane amount of fun. Director Eli Craig of Tucker and Dale vs Evil fame has adapted Adam's book w...

We have something a bit different this week that we hope you'll enjoy. For more than two decades, a community known as Arts & Faith have been writing about and curating films (and other media) of great spiritual significance. On at least six different occasions, the community put together a Top 100 Films list, with the most recent endeavor taking place in 2020.

This week, Reed is joined by friend of the show and host of...

It's the first installment of The Fear of God: Ghoul Scouts Edition! This week, Reed and Nathan are lost in the shadows as Vera Goudie and Jess Fischli take over the show with a discussion of the infamous thriller from Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody: JENNIFER'S BODY.

Starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer's Body tells a subversive and darkly comic tale of codependency, possession, and good, old-fashioned reve...

We close a loop from last year this week by covering the concluding chapter in Ti West's provocative horror trilogy that started with X and Pearl: MAXXXINE. We invite back friend of the show JR Forasteros to help us unpack our decisively uneven feelings about a trilogy which started strong, proceeded to get even better, and then possibly completely fumbled the ending.

Also featuring a Patron-only segment where we play Six D...

Keeping an accidental trend of looking back at some of the most unconventional horror films of 2024, we offer you a conversation about Tilman Singer's CUCKOO. We're joined this week by two friends from Van Ryder Games, AJ Porfirio and Julie Ahern, to discuss this strange and occasionally befuddling examination of exploration of fractured relationships and twisted scientific exploitation. While opinions on the film were dec...