June 9, 2025 • 54 mins
On this review episode, we dive into the 2025 horror sensation Bring Her Back, the sophmore film from Danny and Michael Philippoua. This is a psychological nightmare that blurs the line between grief and the supernatural. Join us as we unravel the film's haunting themes, dissect its most terrifying moments, and discuss how greif can push people to do the worst thing imaginable.
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https://www.slashfilm.com/author/billbria/
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You can find more from us and our other shows at https://www.strandedpanda.com/
@BATTpod on twitter
BillBria@billbriahttps://crookedmarquee.com/author/bill-bria/
https://www.slashfilm.com/author/billbria/
https://billbria.contently.com/
billandashterrortheater@gmail.com
billandashterrortheater@instagram.com
Ashley@AshleyannCoffin https://www.instagram.com/electrical_ash/
You can find more from us and our other shows at https://www.strandedpanda.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome to another horrifying special review episode of Bill and
Ashley's Terror Theater on the Marquis. This week is twenty
twenty fives Bring her back. Join us right after we
get back from losing our appetites all of that after
these ads we have no control over.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm Ashley Coffin, joined us always by my co host
and Terror Bill Bria Bill Darling. How are we today?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm doing great, ash I'm smelling good because I'm just
covered in X body spray.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, before we jump into the film, let's talk about
some news that we have from the Necronomicon of horror
this week.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What do you got for us?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Well, seeing as how we are recording this on June second,
and it is officially Pride Month, I have some Pride
themed horror news for us here today. Tina Romero, the
daughter of the Maestro George A. Romero, who of course
made his Dead trilogy, Creep Show, Dark Half, so many
movies that we love. She's getting into the zombie game
(01:28):
like her father. She's made a movie called Queens of
the Dead, and she had some stuff to say about it.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
The zombie apocalypse is such a rich sandbox to play,
and when it comes to social commentary, I can't be
my dad's daughter without making an attempt at saying something
with zombies. I did want this to be a film
which I'm paying homage to the world and the monster
he created. Side note, I love that she gives him
the credit that he's due about creating the zombie. Yeah,
but I'm also introducing my own voice. It's very much
not a film he would make, but it is using
(01:57):
his vocabulary and is playing by his rules as far
as the queer element. On one hand, I just feel like
the gays need a zombie film. It's time that we
get to have a big gay zombie movie.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So apparently, this story follows an eclectic group of drag queens,
club kids, and frenemies who must put aside their personal
dramas and use their unique skills to combat the brain
thirsty undead when a zombie apocalypse breaks out during their
drag show in Brooklyn. Hell yeah, so I thought that
sounded up are and I mean you and me and
(02:29):
you Ali, So so hopefully it's good. I don't think
they have a release date quite yet. It says it's
premiering at Tribeca this month, so hopefully somebody will pick
it up to distribute it and maybe they can have
it out by the end of the year. But right
now I think they're just probably waiting on a distributor.
(02:50):
But yeah, they have some first look screencaps from the
film if you want to head over to Entertainment Weekly
to check it out, and they're very neon, soaked, very colorful.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well I see some bisexual.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Lighting going on, so yes, it looks pretty fun, So
hopefully it's good. God knows, we got tons and tons
of zombie material out there, so hopefully she can carry
on the Romero name and make it distinctive. Another movie
I wanted to most of my news this week is
about upcoming horror films. This movie released in the UK
(03:22):
just last month, and a guess is going to be
released in the United States here this fall.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's called Hollow Road.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's set on Halloween, and they're calling it a psychological thriller.
It's from a BAFTA winning director Babak and Vari. It
stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Reese, and they are two
parents who receive a distressing late night call from their
teenage daughter who's just accidentally hit a pedestrian. They jump
in their car and they race to get there before
anyone else gets on the scene. As they head deeper
(03:52):
into the night, disturbing revelations threatened to tear the family apart,
and they soon realize they would not be the only
ones driving down Hollow Road. So I don't know, I
don't know what else to expect from it, but it's
got a great cast, obviously, and I always love a
Halloween set movie, and it's fun that it's going to
be releasing in the fall, so right around Halloween time,
so hopefully it'll be worth traveling down Hollow Road. Another
(04:21):
newe that's not ready to be released yet, and I
guess it is only just going to enter production soon
comes to us from director Colin Trevarro, who made two
of the three last Jurassic World movies. It doesn't have
a title yet, but it is an untitled eighties conspiracy
thriller and it's set at Area fifty one. But I
wanted to mention it because it has a connection to
(04:43):
some real life conspiracy lore, which Deadline did say that quote.
Set in the late nineteen eighties, the project follows the
local Las Vegas TV news journalist who first broke the
story of Area fifty one unquote. And this guy that
they're referring to was a guy named Bob laz Are
who supposedly, you know, in the eighties, like you know,
(05:04):
got himself onto the base, spilled a bunch of tea
about it, said that there was nine flying saucers in there.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
There was the name Yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
There was a television interview with a journalist named George
Knapp who spoke to Lazar and I guess this was
nineteen eighty nine, and it just continued to fuel conspiracy
theories about Area fifty one, and you know, the stuff
that still sticks around to this day in terms of
rumors about what that base was and what might have
been there. And when you think about it, you know
that interview happened in nineteen eighty nine, just a few
(05:36):
years later. The X file started a couple of years
after that Independence Day was made, So you know, a
lot of our nineties babies conspiracy thriller conspiracy theories about
Area fifty one really might stem from this guy. So
it could be a fun movie to see if they
make it based in that true story. The next news
(05:56):
I have is something that I didn't know was coming
out until just today when I was researching. Do you
we all remember the Purge, the Purge series, right, So
the creator and the director of the first couple Purge movies,
James Demonico, is going to be releasing another horror movie
this summer.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Not a Purge movie. This one's called The Home. Guess who.
It stars Pete Davidson.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You didn't expect that one, and it is about She
was just in that other horror movie. Oh uh yeah, right,
so that's this isn't the first horror for Pete, I guess.
So it's about quote, a rebellious twenty something is sentenced
to community service at a quiet retirement home. The residents
on the fourth floor are strictly off limits, said to
(06:43):
require special care. As his suspicions grow and he digs deeper,
he uncovers a chilling secret that puts both the residents'
lives and his own engrave danger. They have a trailer
out which I haven't watched yet because I didn't have
time before this recording. So it has a screen cap
of of image that looks like do you know that
(07:04):
it's a kind of famous painting like Echo hall Me.
It's got some weird Latin title where like the face
is kind of melty looking, you know, not the scream,
but like it's like kind of like a weird anyway.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
It looks like that.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So I don't know if these are the people that
are in the home or maybe Pete Davidson's just having
some hallucinations.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But we'll have to see it. We do not have
to wait. We don't have long to wait.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It only comes out on July twenty fifth, so it's
just like over a month from there. And then finally,
I just wanted to bring it home with a little
bit of an update on Send Help, which is the
Sam Raimi directed thriller which is going to be released
on January thirtieth of next year, twenty twenty six. It's
the one that's got a script written by Damian Shannon
(07:44):
and Mark Swift, who did Freddy Versus Jason and Friday
at thirteenth two thousand and nine. So we have a
reunion between Sam Ramie and Danny Elfman.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Danny Elfman's going to compose the score for Send Help.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I guess what was the last thing they did was
multi verse and math, right, uh huh.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
So it's gonna be exciting to see Danny tag along
again for a new sam maybe horror movie, which I
know that we're absolutely going to be talking about the closer.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Gets to it, so I can't wait. I love it.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah. So that's all the news for today.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
All right, Well, thank you so much for bringing all
that to our attention. We have a little bit of
feedback we're gonna read before we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
What you got for us?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, this feedback comes to us from Chris Beatty, who's
a friend of ours. Always good to hear from him,
and he says, Hey, horror fam, just wanted to write
in and say thanks for all the fun content. I'd
never heard of the Prophecy, but the episode inspired me
to check it out and I had a great time
watching it.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yay. Love that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yay.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
The newest episode on the Ghost in the Darkness was
a blast from the past and doesn't get talked about enough.
It's a guilty pleasure and underrated creature feature. My recommendation
from Ghost in the Darkness and a great double feature
would be nineteen ninety seven's The Relic, and that is
a great pick, Chris, because Peter Hyms is the relic
solid Creature future. Thanks again for all the hard work
you too do to bring us horror fans killer content.
(09:04):
Thanks Chris Beatty, Thank you Chris.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Thanks for writing and Chris.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Always good to hear from you, and you got good tastes.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah. I love it when people are like, I never
heard of this movie before, and I checked it out
and I loved it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, that's it's fun. That's that's so fun to do,
because that's part of the reason we're here. We want
to introduce you all to uh, just some great stuff
that maybe you haven't heard of or just hadn't got
around a scene yet, you know sort of stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, that's why I got to meet Joe Bob Briggs
this weekend.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
It's our way.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I just spewed everything that I've ever wanted to say
out him. Was Kim was like, you didn't let them
talk at all. I held his hand the entire time,
and I.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Was just like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,
because I.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Really wanted to thank him for getting me into movies
and all the crazy random things that he's shown, which
introduced them to me, and then I've had the you know,
the privilege of introducing it to other people, and it
was just it meant everything to me. It was so
awesome and he was so nice, and so was Darcy.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
So where was it that you met them? What event was?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
They were at the Colonial Theater, which is where they
filmed The Blob, and they were showing a double they
call it an indoor drive in which I'm just like,
isn't it just a movie? It was a double feature
of Vixen and Super Vixen, So that was interesting. It
was fun to see people with their children there.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You gotta gotta wonder about those folks. But yeah, so
it sounds like a pretty fun event. And they were
just like signing merch and meeting people and that sort
of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, they And that's the one cool thing about Joe
Bob is like they even made an announcement like I'm
not gonna leave until I talked to the last person.
So they they love their fans as much as we
love them. And yeah, he he he, really, it was
every It was exactly what I wanted it to be.
He looks so happy in the pictures and it makes
me happy because we took up My one friend was
(10:45):
Carrie was taking all these pictures while I was talking
to him, and you could just see like he's very engaged,
and he wrote me a cute little thing on you know,
I got a picture signed for him, and it was
very personal. It was just it was it was. It
was like an out of body experience. It was amazing.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
No, of course it was a little drunk, which I
think made it a little bit funnier.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
But hey, you know, you just got to have that
liquid courage.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Do you have any idea how long he was there,
because if he was like making a point to stay
until he talk to everybody, could have been there for
a while.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
We were it was already. I mean it started at six.
The movie was at seven, and they were doing the
two films. There was an intermission, and then he was
hanging out afterwards, so he was probably there all night.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
We headed out kind of after I met. I was like,
I don't need anything else right now. I need to
process how amazing everything just was.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
It was.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Hell yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Hopefully you never know, maybe we get big enough we
can have him on our show.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Oh yeah, I would love that.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
All right, Well we will be back with our feature
film after these miss ups from the grave that we
have no control over, and now it is time for
our feature film.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So we have the sophomore film from Danny and Michael
philipp Who did I say it right?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Who?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You got the pleasure of meeting at a screening for
this a couple months ago, and you told me that
you really liked it, so I was very interested to
see it.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, So there's a So, just to be clear, there
was a like a first look event that A twenty
four held where we only got shown the trailer and
two scenes from the movie, one of which was the
melon scene, and that's where I get to meet them
in person. And then like about like a month or
so after that, we were given a screening where there
was like a live stream Q and A, but they
were not there in person. They were in New York
(12:36):
City or something. And then after that I was afforded
the opportunity to speak to the guys both for slash
film and discussing film because I am a freelance journalist,
so there was, you know, lee way just to do
two interviews with the same two guys, and so yeah, no,
I've I've been able to speak to them a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Now, it's pretty great.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I did spill water on both of them as well
at that first look of because I was carrying around
a cup of water in the after party and then
everyone was like, let's take pictures, let's take pictures, and
you know, those guys are so energetic, and I, you know,
that's sort of awkward, like you know, picture taking moment
where it's like what pos are we gonna do?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Like should I put my arm here or there or whatever?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
So I moved, you know when when I think it
was Michael moved and then like I hit his shoulder
with a cup of water and it just like blew
up all over him. It was water, So it's fine,
but like we had to joke about it, and so
if you see the pictures of us, that's why we're
all laughing hysterically because it's just sort of like, you know,
also because I thought I had taken on the chin
and take the rest of the water and the cup
and this port on myself, so you know, I just
(13:37):
I didn't want them to feel left out because I
was like, I got you guys, wet, so I'll get
myself wet too well.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And then who knew that Water would have such a
big like Water is a big part of the movie.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Big time, So it's very fitting, very fitting.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, so we you and I Ash talked about Talk
to Me when that came out back in twenty twenty three,
and I know that we were both pretty impressed with
it in terms of as a debut, but also just
as a concept and as something that you know, A
twenty four of course, as a studio has has gotten
in the business of putting out I hate this term,
but you know, elevated horror of you know whatever, the
(14:12):
art housey horror films that may or may not be
you know, ready for the mainstream, but definitely have an
artistic element to them. And it's been great to see
how these guys have really been able to break out,
you know, and come from their background as YouTubers and
you know, sort of fit in with that A twenty
(14:33):
four esthetic, but also just feel very distinct from it
as well. And so yeah, when I heard about bringing Back,
I was like, I hope it's as good as Talk
to Me. And then I saw it and I was like, oh,
it definitely is what do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, it's all whenever somebody's second movie is coming out.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I feel like pretty quickly after.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The first one, you are a little worried you have
to You're like, are you going to be able to
catch the same kind of fire that that first one did?
Because talk to me was it was kind of like
what you're saying, it's an elevated the nothing new, but
they did do it differently than you're used to seeing
the usual tropes, and this movie could have gone down
all the usual horror movie tropes and they didn't do it.
(15:11):
Especially when you think they're about to do it and
you like, it's not a very difficult like the plot had.
There's a lot of questions that are left on the table,
But because of how they did it, it doesn't take
away from the movie, I think, and where you have
your basic usual setups for certain things that we'll get
into it a little bit more detail later. They could
have gone the one way, the usual trope way, but
(15:33):
then they didn't do it, and I think that's what
made this movie work so well, along with the cast
being really really good. The special effects were phenomenal, Like
it was just it was it was different and familiar
but if that makes sense, but it was, it was.
It was a good story, and you just even though
they leave so many I guess plot holes in a
(15:56):
way up to questioning, it elevates the movie and you're
not upset about it. You're not like, wow, I don't
know exactly what this was or how this happened or
why this is happening. And it doesn't that can take
away from a movie, and this one it didn't. I
think it elevated it. The plot, real fast is two
step siblings find themselves at the center of a terrifying
(16:16):
ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother,
who is dealing with the death of her own daughter.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And yeah, I mean they don't.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I mean from what you tell me, if you think
how did she get the tape? You know, how did
there's no even way to talk about how she knew
to do this ritual?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Right, Well, one of the things I love about the
movie is is its ambiguity. I mean, as I keep
saying on the show, but I'll say in my work
everywhere I can say it about horror is that ambiguity
is one of the engines the horror runs on because
we're all afraid of the unknown, and as much as
as much of the unknown that you can put into
your movie without pissing people off, it's a good thing,
you know, because you want to get that imagination going,
(16:56):
you want to get that you know, fear of like
I don't have the answers to this, and oh my god,
I'm really curious and it's really like kind of bothering me.
But at the same time, I'm drawn to it, you know,
And this is definitely one of those backstories or lore
that like has that power for me, where you know,
it's like, who are these people? Why did they make
(17:17):
these tapes? Were they intended to be distributed to other people,
or was this like a bootleg where it's like, you know,
somebody just said, hey, I can get this for you.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We were never really given any hints about how Sally
Hawkins's character her name's Laura, this grieving mother, gets a
hold of this material. And I think for some although
you know, obviously for some people that really just need
to have all the answers all the time, it might
piss them off, But I think overall, most people are
vibing with it because it does have just a compelling
(17:49):
eerieness to that mystery. And I think that, you know,
what's cool about the movie is that it keeps you
in the main character's shoes. It is very much like
a three hander. It's you know, Sally Hawkins as Laura,
Billy Barrett as Andy, and Sorajana is Piper, his sister,
who both of whom were adopted by Laura. And I
(18:11):
feel like, in the same way that Andy and Piper
are slowly learning about Laura as they're you know, coming
into her world, we the audience are also kind of
kept on that same wavelength where even Laura doesn't have
all the answers, you know, because there's many moments during
the movie when Laura's like is this part of it?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Like is am I doing this right?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Like she's like trying to follow up blueprint without having
the instructions or something like she lost the manual to
the legos or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yeah, you know, and she.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Is absolutely batshit crazy and she her profession was like
a psychologist or whatever, and she uses that stuff to
like gaslight these kids. And there's points where you know,
she's peeing into a cup and pouring it on Andy,
so he thinks he's wetting himself, and then there's the
question of has she been stalking this family? You know,
(19:00):
she makes a comment that their father dies in the
beginning in the shower, which ends up being like an
important scene because apparently a lot of horrible things happened
to Andy in the shower, not just the fathering finding
the father's dead body in there, but there was also
some abuse that we don't exactly have the full details of.
Was it was it like a sexual abuse, was he
just you know, physical and it was all being hidden
(19:22):
from Piper, who's who's blind.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
She can see colors and shapes, but she's pretty much
yeah blind as the actress.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And Andy, you know what, the father dies, he can't
he's frozen, and Piper goes in and she's trying to
give him mouth to mouth and he has all like
this vomit and gross stuff on his face, which I
feel like Andy, when he's sleeping, he always wakes up
with so much drool on his space, and we don't
really like get into that. But CPS right away is like, up,
we're gonna split you up. You know, Laura's going to
(19:52):
take Piper because you have a distorted history or like
a bad kid history, and we find out that he
hit Piper at eight, and I mean, I don't have siblings,
but I feel like kids hit each other, you know,
Like it seemed very dramatic for them to label him
as this bad kid when you see he's so loving
to his sister.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He's always taking care of her.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
They have like words that like they say grapefruit when
they want the other to tell the other the truth.
And yeah, it's just there's a lot of questions about
why they you know, if they were specifically targeted. There's
a lot of witchy stuff going on because at the funeral,
Laura cuts some of the dad's hair and feeds it
to Ali who are going to get to and that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
You don't know why.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
There's no real answers why, but I do love that,
Like you even get to the dad's ghost makes the
guest of parents and he warns Andy, like you need
to protect pipe, you know, keep her.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Out of the water.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
And we find out that the ritual is you have
to get a host, you have to put the demon.
She's saying it's an angel, but it is very obvious
it's a demon. And I love how they do it
because you don't see the demon, but sometimes you see
it through the window when the water's running down you
see horns, or when you take a picture of Ali,
who is her nephew. She said, yeah, well, I can't
(21:07):
remember whether she said it was her son.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Or she made that up as like, oh, it's my nephew.
But really he's a boy from the neighborhood that she abducted, whose.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Name is Connor Byrd.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
But and you right away know that there's something wrong
with Ali because he's trying to strangle the cat to
death in the pool. But so the ritual is you
put the demon into this vessel. The vessel has to
consume the body of the person who you want to
bring back, and then vomit it into the new host,
who has to die the same way that the person
(21:38):
that you want to bring back died.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
It's simple, it's simple. No, it's just simple. Three steps. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
It's disgusting.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It's disgusting, it's really inventive. It's so upsetting. I think
right off the bat we should mention, and I'm sure
listeners that maybe haven't seen the movie yet are already
picking up on it that this movie is very spiritually
close to Ariaster's Hereditary, and I would say that all
the comparisons that people make to you know, between the
(22:07):
two movies are valid. However, I would say the huge difference,
and it is a massive difference, is that why are
Hereditary is a movie about just like the pure like
hatred and rot at the core of a family unit.
You know, like all these people just kind of don't
like each other at the end of the day. You know,
they all have like these resentments and these like deep
seated like you know, hatred or you know, jealousy or
(22:30):
what have you, of each other living under the same roof.
I think bring her Back. You know, all the characters
in this movie are undone by too much love. You know,
like they all love each other so much that they're
willing to go to extreme lengths to protect people or
bring people back from the dead, and you know that
love is blinding them to just how kind of you know,
(22:50):
monstrous they're behaving.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, it's an interesting look at loss. And I believe
that both of their Talk to Me and this one
are both loss dealing with loss heavy movies.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Well yeah, well the reason for that is that the
Philippoo brothers, unfortunately, you know, had a death of their
extended family. I believe it was a child of one
of their cousins, and that happened because they wrote Talk
to Me and Bring Her Back at the same time.
They wrote both scripts kind of simultaneously because they were,
(23:21):
you know, budding filmmakers. They didn't have a deal in
place yet, and they didn't know which one of these
scripts was going to go first, so they were just
working on both simultaneously. And and then you know, at
a certain point, I think, I guess talk to Me
because I had a like a clearer hook of like, oh,
you shake the hand, and you know you can see
people that one first. But you know, these two movies
(23:43):
are very much of a piece. So it's funny that
we were talking earlier about like, you know, directors like
sophomore movie is like The Proof and the Pudding and
all that, and ironically, it feels like their next movie
might be more like of an indicator of like what's
going to be next, because it feels like these really
were like they're not sequels, you know, they're not necessarily
taking place in the same universe, but it feels like
(24:04):
it though, yeah, it feels like it. I even did
ask them that directly. I was like, look, do you
guys want to do like a Tarantino or Kevin Smith
thing where like, you know, you want to make your
own cinematic universe sort of thing. And they were like
they laughed, and they were like, well, not not literally,
but at a certain point they said, well, writing both
of these movies, some characters like shifted between each one,
so like in some cases there was one character who
(24:27):
was originally in Bring Her Back, and they moved her
over to talk to Me and then vice versa or
something like that.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So yeah, so never say never, I mean they did.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
They did also joke, like, you know, they they toyed
with the idea of like you know, making it explicit,
where like they were going to have somebody like and
bring her back like drive by the road accident that
happens at the end of Talk to Me or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So, ah, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
It was close. It was close. They almost did it.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
There's a lot of like startling body horror in this,
especially when I comes to Ali. There's a scene with
a knife that is just really hard to watch. We
actually had two girls walk out of the movie theater
when Ali gets to the point where the demon there's
also like a neat amount of time that you have
to do this ritual in and she's kind of running
out of it, and there's a big white circle around
(25:16):
the house that's keeping the demon in and like kind
of stuck there, and the demon starts kind of like
getting a little rambunctious and starts like eating everything, like
he's eating the table, his teeth a ripping out. He
tries to eat a knife in front of Andy, and
that's when Andy's like, what the hell is going on
in this house kind of thing, and then he he
(25:37):
even bites Laura, and that's kind of what gets her caught,
because there is Wendy, the CPS worker, who Andy goes
back to to let her know what's going on, and
he's like, come back to the house with me, and
she's like, okay, we'll stay in the car. Lara's my friend.
I've been working with her for twenty years. I've known her,
you know. And that is where the usual trope of
(25:57):
we don't believe the kid usually comes into place, because
she's doing a half assed job of kind of like
looking around the house and not really seeing anything. But
it's until she starts seeing that Laura is bleeding, and
then Lara falls apart. Usually people talk themselves out of that,
and then you still don't believe the kids. But Lara
starts to fall apart, Andy starts screaming for Wendy takes
her outside, and then you see Alie eating the corpse
(26:18):
of her daughter, which she apparently never buried.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Did she even report that the child was dead?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Like, you don't really know what's going on because she
says that she buried her and that you know, it
killed her to have to put her daughter in the
ground while I was sleeping in a bed. When we
find out that she didn't, she put her in a
fridge to be eaten by Ali. So when Wendy sees this,
you know, everybody's freaking out. They're like, let's get the
hell out of here. And then Laura takes them both
out with her car, which was shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I was not ready for that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And then she drowns Andy in a puddle, and again like,
I didn't see those things coming. And that's usually not
how these movies work. Usually Andy would be the one
who kind of saves the day and gets his sister
out of there and they did and do the usual things,
and I think that, like, and that's what I'm saying
by like it worked.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, no, there's there's it's not so obvious, uh a
zig or zag in a way that like some filmmakers
really have to draw attention to that where it's like, hey,
you think I'm gonna be doing this thing, but actually
I'm doing another, which sometimes that's fun. But I really
like how the Philippo's in this movie do it as
naturally as anything else. You know, It's not it's not
(27:26):
you know, misdirecting you the audience so hard where it's like, oh,
we got you, you thought we were gonna do this
one thing. It's it's really just more about this is
kind of how the story is going to lay out.
This is just kind of what's going to happen next,
and now you you know, take it, you deal with it.
And really that comes back to the way that they
all treat the character of Laura, which I've been saying
(27:47):
to all of my colleagues I've been writing in the
articles that I've been writing about it. I even said
it to the Philippo brothers when I interviewed them. I
really believe that Sally Hawkins as Laura in this movie
is one of the most unique performances in a horror movie,
just for the fact that, like, she never devolves into
what you'd expect in any other version of this story,
which is, oh, once we know that she's insane, once
(28:09):
we know that she's crazy, she just starts running around
the house with a knife, or you know, screaming at
the top of her lungs or being like really obviously
weird it. At no point did I ever feel like
I was watching a character like turn. I always felt like, oh,
that's the same character, Like that's Laura throughout, you know,
and even especially because one of the influences that the
Philippoo's had for this movie was the subgenre of hag
(28:34):
e'sploitation or the my favorite the evil Biddy films as
they're sometimes called Granny Haggs from Hell, Grannie Eggs from Hell, Yeah,
Rabbit Granny's is one. The trouma movie I think the
most famous is probably Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Oh, yes,
Joe Crawford and Betty Davis.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
They took it to another level with Barbarian.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And Barbarian of course, so Yeah, there's been a lot
of examples throughout horror history, but this one is again
pretty unique, where usually in a Haggs blaitation, you know,
the hag becomes a character of fear purely, where it's
just like she's the antagonist in the same way that
Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers might become an antagonist. And yeah,
(29:11):
there's like a history of I mean, Baby Jane's a
good example of like those are very That's a very
character based movie. So even though Betty Davis at a
certain point becomes a threat, you know, it's still the
same character.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So I feel like Laura and Sally.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Hawkins's performance in this movie is akin to that, where
you know it never becomes a caricature of itself.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Well, and she's off putting from the first second you
meet her, and it doesn't like you're seeing behind the
scenes with what's going on with her, where usually in
other movies you're kind of questioning, like is she isn't she? Well,
in this one, from the get go, you know there's something.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Going on here.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Oh, just the way that she's treating They go to
the funeral of the father and she's dressed up in
like nineteen eighties purple and orange, and you know, Allie's
not all Andy's having a hard time looking at his
father in the casket because you know they have that history,
and he even lies to Piper like, oh, he looks great,
and then she outs him for that. She's like, you know,
you can't leave here without looking at your father and
(30:09):
makes them go back in, and then she was like,
you have to kiss your father. It's tradition or whatever.
She kept seeing something very specific. So he kisses him
on the head and she's like, no, you have to
kiss him on his lips. And it's such this weird,
tense scene and then he doesn't do it, but then
she does, and you're just like, this is weird. And
these are what He's seventeen and Piper's fourteen or something,
(30:33):
and she's in they're in the car and she's like,
what do you want to do for fun?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And he's like, I want to.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Get hammered, and they do and they go back and
they're drinking all kinds of alcohol and then you can
just see that it's all part of her gas lighting
plan and it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, but so much of what I love about the
movie and that's I was going to mention that scene too,
so I'm so glad you brought it up. Is not
only is it something unexpected, like you were saying, where
it's just like, you know, oh my god, they do
the thing like they're getting drunk together, which is something
that you know already feels very like taboo and like
what are we doing here? But like, I think one
of the sources of fear for me in this movie,
(31:11):
because this is one of the rare movies that I
got disturbed by, isn't coming from a place of uh,
you know, uh menace. It isn't coming from necessarily a
place of like, oh, I'm scared of this person because
they seem, you know, really physically strong, or they seem
they seem like, you know, they have some sort of
weird superpower, or or you know, they've got knowledge that
(31:31):
I don't. It's more from a place of genuine like
like grief and sadness, where it's like this person's so
emotionally wrecked that like they are capable of anything, and
I that's ironically kind of scary, you know, yeah, And
I feel like it's almost a more relatable version of
(31:51):
a real life scare than necessarily, as if you have
somebody who's super violent or super you know, sociopathic or whatever.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I think more of us have been involved with friends
or family who have been depressed or are depressed, and
then they'll do something very off putting where it's like
I didn't expect you to do that, you know sort
of thing. Yeah, yeah, that's a real big core for me.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
And then takes the fear level up after Andy is killed,
because now you have Piper there who doesn't have her
sight and she's trying to navigate what's going on. And
then Laura just very calmly is like, well, no, honey,
now we're going outside because I have to drown you
in the pool, and she does take her out there,
and you know, the ritual's just about to be at
its peak, and then Piper just says, mommy, I think
(32:35):
and that just ruins.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It for Laura.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
She can't follow through, which to me was a little shocking, like,
we got all the way here and you're right, you
almost have exactly what you want, and then you choose
not to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That to me was shocking. I didn't I honestly thought
it was going to be a.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Very bleak ending where she got everybody and she got
her daughter back, which for her would have been great,
but or if it was very pet cemetery where the
daughter came back and then killed her, Yes, but she
ended up not being able to do it in the end.
And then you have Piper trying to get away from
Ali the demon, who's like, I'm going to like finish
(33:10):
this ritual so i can get out of here, and
she runs through the uh the white line, and he
follows her through and then I guess the demon leaves
him because he got through. Now, explain to me how
that kid's alive? Yeah, right, because he ate most of
the corpse and had like a you know, you see
this like ten year old with a nine month old
(33:31):
or not, like like a pregnant belly. It was really
gross and crazy and just the things that this kid
went through with biting on the knife and ripping their
teeth out on the wood and ripping his own armskin out,
and that's when the girls left that You're just like,
how did this kid survive?
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, I know it's it's extreme, but I love when
horror goes to such extremes. I mean, I just happened
to see a special screening that a friend of mine
hosted Peter Jack Instead Alive last night, and it makes
me think, as does every zombie or like, you know,
(34:08):
infection movie where you know, by the end of the
movie the protagonists are usually like covered in blood and
it's obviously infected blood.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
So it's like, how do these people not get infected? Right?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And I think that's one of my favorite tropes in
horror films, which is that you know, some people do
have this this just you know, luck of the Irish
or what have you, where it's just like they're able
to survive to the next day or something somehow. And
I guess you gott to chuck it up to the
supernatural element, right, you know, it's just going to be like, yeah,
maybe maybe whoever is chosen as a vessel for the demon,
(34:42):
you know, they because in the same way that like
the soul could be kept in a physical vessel and
then purged out and given to someone else. Maybe once
the spedal is broken, he's not going to get ill
from consuming human flesh.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, and it was a lot of it, or
all your teeth out, all your skin's apart, my god, Yeah, yeah,
it was. It's a it was a rough watch. I
cringed a lot, and it takes a lot for me
to be like a little. I don't like skin stuff,
I don't like teeth stuff like, but they and they
do it so naturally and so real that it, like
I said, two girls got up and walked down.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And that's the thing is that this is getting a
reputation already as like a gorefest and it's kind of not.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
But what is there is?
Speaker 3 (35:26):
So it's so impactful because and I think part of
it is obviously the tone of the movie, the look
of it. This is a really gorgeous looking movie, I feel,
and it's not a flashy one. It's not you know
where it's like look at our camera moves and look
at earth lighting and blah blah blah. But if you
just you know, take it as it is, it is
a very attractive looking movie. And it's also it feels
(35:50):
very down to earth, you know, even as crazy as
things get, there's a real grounded, visceralness to it at
all times. And I think that only serves how disturbing
it gets, you know, because it just the thing I
keep saying to people when I talk about that moment
you just mentioned of ripping the skin off, you know,
this teeth like you're you know, getting like a piece
(36:10):
of gristle off a chicken or something that. I mean,
obviously it gets to people because it's just so inventively gross.
But for me personally, I have a history with skin
stuff because when I was in the second grade, we
were still using number two pencils. This was like the
late eighties early nineties, so digital wasn't around yet, so
(36:31):
we were still having to write things down physically, and
then we'd be using these number two pencils that you'd
sharpen with those like rolling those sharpers.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
So one of my things that I'd used to do
at my desk during the day when I was bored
is I would bounce the pencil off the desk with
the eraser, the rubber part, the rubberrant, and I would
keep sharpening and sharpening, sharpening so that I would use
like the whole pencil, so it would get like really teeny, right.
So one day when the pencil was this teeny, you know,
(36:59):
enough to like if I was holding it this way,
it'd be the tip would be in the palm of
my hand. I was bouncing it and I noticed it
stopped bouncing. I'm like, why isn't it bouncing anymore? And
I opened the pall in my hand and it was
the lead was like sliding through the first layer of skin,
but not the second, so it was embedded in me,
but it wasn't bleeding, and it was just bizarre to
(37:20):
look at. And I freaked the fuck out, sure, you know.
And so that image of like my skin being you know,
stretched and distended, I saw right away reflected in that moment,
and I was like, ah, so.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, the that scene, the melon scene is really rough
to watch because anything with your teeth and this kid
is just going to town biting this knife. But what
was interesting is, you know, Andy lets him out of
the room. He's like, hey, Bud, you're hungry. Let's you know,
let's talk.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Let's say.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
He's like, you don't talk. Here's a pen and paper
right down something. And in that moment, Connor kind of
pushed through a little bit and started writing his last name,
because his last name was like bird, sin er, birds, something,
just bird, and he wrote bird and you obviously Andy
doesn't see it because by the time he turns around again,
he's deep throating that knife and just chewing on it,
(38:08):
which is just really hard to watch. But you see
it later and you still don't make the connection until
you see the picture of the missing child at CPS
and he's like, oh my god, that's him because at
this point his head shaved And I wanted to ask you,
what did you think that thing on the little it
looked like a pathmark on his face was because he
didn't have that in the pictures, right, It's another little
(38:29):
detail that they don't explain that.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's fine, but it's fun to kind of like be like,
what was that?
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
I think you can either interpret it as like maybe
there is a mark of the demon when someone is
possessed with it, or you know, just like a general
like distention or discoloration, burst, blood vessel of like all
the trauma physically that he's going through.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, but as the demon starts to come out, his
eyes get real.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Wonky wonky read Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, by the end, Ali's looking messed up.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I had mentioned too, with the melon scene and the
chewing on the knife, Freakin' Danny Philip, who evil bastard
that he is. They were working on the sound design
for the movie, and they apparently were just not finding
the sound of chewing on the knife, like they were
trying like sticking it into various melons and that wasn't
sounding right.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
They were like crinkling paper over it. That doesn't sound right.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
So eventually Danny was just like, just put the mic
over here, I'm gonna chew on the knife.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
And he chewed on the knife.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Oh my god. Well it was for your own heart.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
But you know, but still it's like, you know, so
all the like teeth on metal sound in the movie,
like that's just teeth on metal and.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
It sounds like it and it's loud.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, I think the run time in this movie's perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Again, if you know, you're like, oh, I could use
a little extra information about what's going on, but you know,
you really don't need it. And I feel like my
attention was never taken away. I was never thinking about
anything else. My mind wasn't wondering, like you were very
invested in what's going on. And they'd like the run
time was perfect.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, and yeah, it's it's a well paced movie. It's
it's something that it's weird because, like we were discussing earlier,
it's not a fun movie in the sense that you
don't go to it being like it's a party, like
you're gonna see some crazy gore, you're gonna have a blast.
Like most people rightfully so are coming out of the
movie going, oh my god.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
But at the same time, I have to say that,
you know, as a sick of myself, you know, as
someone who comes to the horror genre for catharsis for understanding,
for for seeing myself in the plight of others, you know,
sort of idea. It's really it was really invigorating for
me in the sense that it because it went as
(40:40):
these places and it committed to that bit, and you know,
it didn't pull its punches where it's like, oh, we're
not going to show you this, or oh we're gonna
you know, pussy out on that or whatever.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I was.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I was enthralled. Afterwards. I was like, you know, I
was jazzed, so I was kimeing. I came out of
the theater for the first screening, is like, man, that
was great. Meanwhile, all of my colleagues and friends are like, oh.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
My god, I don't know, man.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But then we say I don't have kids, and they
did so it's like it's a different you know, totally.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, we went out to dinner after it and we're
talking about it, and like we're even still kind of
bringing things up to talk about it today. And that's
my favorite thing is when there's a movie that you
keep talking about because they leave so much out of
it and it doesn't take away from the movie. And
it was just really surprising to see, like their second film,
they did it again. And I'm really interested to see
(41:30):
what they do next. I don't know if I need
to talk to me too. I know that that's coming.
We can't stop doing it, so go ahead. I trust
them after seeing this, but I'm more interested to see
what their next.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Thing's going to be.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Apparently, as they told me, their next is actually ironically
a documentary about the wrestling world or like MMA or
something like that. Oh so, but it has something to
do with you know, you can see there's a connection
in terms of just like brutality or visceral violence or
something like that, which which is there is there? There's
a connection there, don't forget. I don't know if you
(42:04):
knew this or not, Ash, but they were developing a
street fighter movie until it fell apart, so they were
they were gonna reboot Street Fighter, which still may happen
if whatever happened with there, the you know, gets worked
out or something. I think it was a scheduling issue
or I don't think it was a rights thing, but yeah,
something about it made it stop. But at the at
(42:25):
the event that I spilled water around them, they were
telling us about working on researching that and how like
Michael like went to find like a monastery where like
these monks, you know, learned as agent marchand martial art
or something like that. And I was like, all right, damn,
you literally went to the ends of the earth to
research this. Okay, guys, that's great. But yeah, so apparently
(42:46):
they are going to diversify, They're not going to stick
strictly to horror as filmmakers. But but I think, yeah,
the strength of these two movies is so much that like,
hopefully they're going to come back, and apparently they are
with a sequel, so well, we'll hope that it's got
the juice.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Do you think that Laura had something to do with
the uh, the father dying because there's this one scene
all she's doing is driving Andy insane, right, and there's
this one scene where he won't he doesn't want to
get a shower, which understandable because apparently the other stuff
besides just finding the father's body in there. But she's like,
you know something something something, I killed your father something something,
And he was like, what'd you say?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
And she's like I said something something something, yeah, yeah,
and you're just like, what what just happened?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Huh what? And it's great too because it is so
casually dropped there. We don't get like a huge dut
dut dumb reveal or anything. It's it's just more like
did she say that?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
And then you know, we're just left with this eerie,
unsettling feeling of like, maybe that's true.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Is this all part of the ritual? Is this all
set up?
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Her order was also blind and drowned in the pool
out back, which that pool was really cool looking too.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It was like a triangle yea.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
And part of the ritual working is that the rain
was supposed to come for days and days and days,
and that's why the father's ghost all it says to
Andy when he's in the shower, is you know, keep
her away from from the rain or something like that.
But I did think it was funny that, you know,
she goes to drown her in the pool and it's
like waist deep. But then at the end, you know,
after it all doesn't work, Laura goes and gets her
(44:14):
daughter's body out of the freezer and then they lay,
you know, kind of cuddling in the pool, and now
the pool's only a foot deep, A little thing I noticed.
But it's a really powerful shot because like all the
police are coming because a piper managed to make it
to the road just while a car was going by.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yeah, And again I think it's a great note to
end on because of the character of Laura, how she's written,
how she's portrayed. I just feel such a consistency, even
with all the ambiguity surrounding her, even with this idea
that's planted that we just talked about, where it's like,
is she diabolical enough to have stalked these two kids
and like, you know killed the father somehow? You know,
(44:57):
probably not with anything, so like she didn't stab him,
she didn't shoot him, but it was like poison, you know,
maybe hence the stuff on it so much. Yeahah, you know,
so it tracks for me still where it's like I
can buy a character like that doing these atrocious things,
convincing herself like, oh no, he's an abusive father.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
He deserves to die. It's just poison.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
He's not I'm not going to like strangle him with
my bare hands, you know, uh, this anty kid, Like
I'm going to try to like push him away psychologically
so he's not gonna get hurt. But if I have
to ill hit him in my car, you know sort
of thing, And I feel like, yeah, it's it's a
it's almost that classic. It's almost like a crime movie
trope almost where you know, you think about movies like
(45:41):
a civil Plan or something where it's like you have
ordinary decent people quote unquote who when tempted with you know,
in crime movies, it's usually a bunch of money. In
this movie, it's you know, the love of her daughter
and wanting to the chance that she might be able
to bring her back. You know, you can see how
that drives them to such extremes where it's just justification
after justification, and then at a certain point it's like
(46:02):
it's too much justification, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, And there's things we never talked about, like where's Laura,
Like where's the husband where? And where is the step mom?
And what happened to Andy's first or what happened to
Andy's mom?
Speaker 4 (46:15):
Right?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
And then where is the step mom?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Because Piper's Asian and they never really get into it,
but again, like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's just it's all there. And what's
cool is that I did make a point of asking
the Philippos, Look, I understand the reason why this information
isn't in the movie, and I don't want you to
tell me because I like it that I don't know everything. However,
I want to know if you guys know, or if
you when you were writing it deliberately left it vague
for yourselves as well, And they said, oh no, we know,
(46:45):
Like we made sure to like write complete distinct backstories
of like who Laura is, who ideas, who Piper is,
where they all come from, how they're connected, how the
ritual works, exactly who the people are that came up
with the ritual, blah blah blah. Because I do feel
like you get a sense of that from just watching
the movie, where it's like we're not being given the answers,
but the answers are somewhere there.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah, these are all very broken, traumatized people, and even
Piper is traumatized even more because she doesn't exactly know
what's going on at all, even to the ritual part.
But she also found her father's dead body the same
way that she found her brother's both. You know that
the whole time, I was like, why does this kid
have braces? And it was just for that one part
(47:27):
at the end when she's feeling his face to see
because Laura, of course takes his body into the bathroom again,
which is where Piper finds it, and she touches his
teeth and realizes that's her brother, and it's just a
heartbreaking and you're like, God, this kid has.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Been through it.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yeah, I know, it's totally.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Enjoy that padded room, Laura.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, right, oh man. But that's the thing is, I
know it's weird to say this again, but it just
it has such a depth to it, even in this
bleakness that it just I guess it's because it feels, like,
like I said earlier, one of the reasons I come
to horror is catharsis. I think the richer and deeper
(48:13):
that you have a character a subtext, a plot, all three,
you know, any combination thereof. The more it feels like
a cathartic experience for me, you know, And as bleak
as this is, as unfun as it is, it just
has enough of that depth to really feel like a
fulfilling experience. It's not one that it's like I got
(48:35):
to see this every week, like, you know, yeah, I
can take a break from it. It's fine, But at
the same time, it's really Yeah, it's commendable.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
My theater was completely silent when it was done. Nobody
said anything. Everybody just kind of sat there for a
little I think we were the first ones to sit up.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Wasn't a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
Okay, so it was also a.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Sunday night, but everybody just kind of sat there in
silenced for a second, just like because it does kind
of end a little abruptly, and you're like, wow.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I don't know how I feel. That was rough. It
felt like a rough experience. But I applaud them.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
I really think that they're doing good things their strives,
you know, staying away from the usual norms that you
have in horror movies that can make your movie cheesy.
And as long as they keep doing that. I think
that they're going to keep putting out really great stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Me too, And it's great that, you know, the narrative
surrounding them when Talk to Me was coming out even
a little bit now has been like, oh do you
guys know you know, these used to be YouTubers like Racareca.
Isn't it great that YouTubers are getting a shot at
being filmmakers, And like I understand why that narrative exists
and why people wanted to bring that up as like
(49:42):
a media thing or a press thing or like a
cultural thing of like, you know, hey, YouTubers can make
movies too, But I've love that their work speaks for itself.
It doesn't matter, you know, it's not about that. It's
not like it would have been a different thing if
they made their first movie and it was about YouTubers
making a movie or some bullshit like that, you know,
where it was like right, you know, it's like we're
just going to like write what we know and it's
going to be a bunch of YouTubers, you know, stuck
(50:03):
in a house full of zombies. It's like it could
have been a fun thing, but like that would probably
be like just some bullshit, you know whatever. We've seen
that a million times. These feel like movies that no
matter their background, like whether they were YouTubers or influencers
or kitchen cooks or you know whatever, like you know,
construction Workers, doesn't matter. Like these movies just are that
(50:25):
good that they are so personal and heartfelt.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, and again miss Sally really brought it. We brought
up Hereditary as well, and it kind of reminds me
like Tony collect she should have been nominated for an
Oscar for that.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
This while not equal to what Tony did, I don't
want to like compare apples to oranges here, but she
did such a good job and I don't know if
anybody else would have been able to bring the realism
that she did. So I agree that, like it was
just perfect casting. They did a great job. Everybody did.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Oh yeah, absolutely, ravo everybody.
Speaker 4 (50:57):
Do we have recommendations for folks? I do.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
It's the one that I've been saying to you since
I saw the trailer, and I'm going with twenty sixteen's
a dark song.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
I don't want to give too much away about it.
It is on shutter and try to look for it.
It is a hard watch, kind of like this. It
has a pretty interesting ending and it follows a lot
of the same tropes of loss and what you would
do to avenge some you know, a loved one, or
to like feel like you have a closure that you
(51:27):
can live with for something horrible happening to you and it.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, it's a it's a rough watch, but I really
liked it.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
It's not I'm not going to stay here to say
it's the best movie that's ever been made, because it's not.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
But it was so different.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
I loved the ending, and I felt that there was
a lot of similarities between those two films totally.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
I think Dark Song was directed by someone who's a
Irish descent. I might write about that.
Speaker 4 (51:49):
Yeah, get the name.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
All right, just because I wanted to get hit their
name on the on the record. Here is Liam Gavin.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Liam Gavin.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, yeah, I've written and directed. Yeah, it's pretty it's
pretty solid. I remember distinctly watching it for the first time,
and I don't know if I've seen it since it
came out, but it was like it stuck in my
mind because of just some of those images and that.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah feel it's a Welsh Irish British independent horror film,
and I'm like say that three times.
Speaker 4 (52:15):
Boom boom.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Well my recommendation is also foreign, but we're going over
just a little bit across the pond to France with
Julian Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Inside Luntier Okay from two
thousand and seven. It is a very similar tone movie
to both Dark Song and Bring Her Back in terms
(52:38):
of just exploring what extreme grief and loss might do
to certain characters and how how far they might go
to either change that loss or take revenge for it
or what have you. I'm not going to give you know,
anything away, because of course part of the fun is
discovering it's just talk.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
She's pregnant, right, okay, and the baby's like that.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Uh, it's actually pretty fun too.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
But but this is uh yeah, this is this is
something that's part of the new French extremity movement of
the two thousands.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
And uh, the way that gore is used in this
movie is similar to uh, you know how it's used
and Bring Her Back. So if you if you sign up,
if you line up Dark Song, Inside and Bring Her Back,
you've got a hell of a gory bleak triple feature
right there.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Yeah, I want to come out of there film real weird.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Bill and Ashley's part of the Stranded Pana network. You
can find my work in the show notes links below.
Check us out on social media. You can find this
show at strandedpanda dot com and everywhere else you get
your podcasts. If you have questions or comments, please feel
free to write to us at Bill and ash Terror
Theater at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
We're dying to hear from you and see you in
your night days.
Welcome to another horrifying special review episode of Bill and
Ashley's Terror Theater on the Marquis. This week is twenty
twenty fives Bring her back. Join us right after we
get back from losing our appetites all of that after
these ads we have no control over.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I'm Ashley Coffin, joined us always by my co host
and Terror Bill Bria Bill Darling. How are we today?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm doing great, ash I'm smelling good because I'm just
covered in X body spray.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, before we jump into the film, let's talk about
some news that we have from the Necronomicon of horror
this week.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What do you got for us?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Well, seeing as how we are recording this on June second,
and it is officially Pride Month, I have some Pride
themed horror news for us here today. Tina Romero, the
daughter of the Maestro George A. Romero, who of course
made his Dead trilogy, Creep Show, Dark Half, so many
movies that we love. She's getting into the zombie game
(01:28):
like her father. She's made a movie called Queens of
the Dead, and she had some stuff to say about it.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
The zombie apocalypse is such a rich sandbox to play,
and when it comes to social commentary, I can't be
my dad's daughter without making an attempt at saying something
with zombies. I did want this to be a film
which I'm paying homage to the world and the monster
he created. Side note, I love that she gives him
the credit that he's due about creating the zombie. Yeah,
but I'm also introducing my own voice. It's very much
not a film he would make, but it is using
(01:57):
his vocabulary and is playing by his rules as far
as the queer element. On one hand, I just feel like
the gays need a zombie film. It's time that we
get to have a big gay zombie movie.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So apparently, this story follows an eclectic group of drag queens,
club kids, and frenemies who must put aside their personal
dramas and use their unique skills to combat the brain
thirsty undead when a zombie apocalypse breaks out during their
drag show in Brooklyn. Hell yeah, so I thought that
sounded up are and I mean you and me and
(02:29):
you Ali, So so hopefully it's good. I don't think
they have a release date quite yet. It says it's
premiering at Tribeca this month, so hopefully somebody will pick
it up to distribute it and maybe they can have
it out by the end of the year. But right
now I think they're just probably waiting on a distributor.
(02:50):
But yeah, they have some first look screencaps from the
film if you want to head over to Entertainment Weekly
to check it out, and they're very neon, soaked, very colorful.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well I see some bisexual.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Lighting going on, so yes, it looks pretty fun, So
hopefully it's good. God knows, we got tons and tons
of zombie material out there, so hopefully she can carry
on the Romero name and make it distinctive. Another movie
I wanted to most of my news this week is
about upcoming horror films. This movie released in the UK
(03:22):
just last month, and a guess is going to be
released in the United States here this fall.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's called Hollow Road.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's set on Halloween, and they're calling it a psychological thriller.
It's from a BAFTA winning director Babak and Vari. It
stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Reese, and they are two
parents who receive a distressing late night call from their
teenage daughter who's just accidentally hit a pedestrian. They jump
in their car and they race to get there before
anyone else gets on the scene. As they head deeper
(03:52):
into the night, disturbing revelations threatened to tear the family apart,
and they soon realize they would not be the only
ones driving down Hollow Road. So I don't know, I
don't know what else to expect from it, but it's
got a great cast, obviously, and I always love a
Halloween set movie, and it's fun that it's going to
be releasing in the fall, so right around Halloween time,
so hopefully it'll be worth traveling down Hollow Road. Another
(04:21):
newe that's not ready to be released yet, and I
guess it is only just going to enter production soon
comes to us from director Colin Trevarro, who made two
of the three last Jurassic World movies. It doesn't have
a title yet, but it is an untitled eighties conspiracy
thriller and it's set at Area fifty one. But I
wanted to mention it because it has a connection to
(04:43):
some real life conspiracy lore, which Deadline did say that quote.
Set in the late nineteen eighties, the project follows the
local Las Vegas TV news journalist who first broke the
story of Area fifty one unquote. And this guy that
they're referring to was a guy named Bob laz Are
who supposedly, you know, in the eighties, like you know,
(05:04):
got himself onto the base, spilled a bunch of tea
about it, said that there was nine flying saucers in there.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
There was the name Yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
There was a television interview with a journalist named George
Knapp who spoke to Lazar and I guess this was
nineteen eighty nine, and it just continued to fuel conspiracy
theories about Area fifty one, and you know, the stuff
that still sticks around to this day in terms of
rumors about what that base was and what might have
been there. And when you think about it, you know
that interview happened in nineteen eighty nine, just a few
(05:36):
years later. The X file started a couple of years
after that Independence Day was made, So you know, a
lot of our nineties babies conspiracy thriller conspiracy theories about
Area fifty one really might stem from this guy. So
it could be a fun movie to see if they
make it based in that true story. The next news
(05:56):
I have is something that I didn't know was coming
out until just today when I was researching. Do you
we all remember the Purge, the Purge series, right, So
the creator and the director of the first couple Purge movies,
James Demonico, is going to be releasing another horror movie
this summer.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Not a Purge movie. This one's called The Home. Guess who.
It stars Pete Davidson.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You didn't expect that one, and it is about She
was just in that other horror movie. Oh uh yeah, right,
so that's this isn't the first horror for Pete, I guess.
So it's about quote, a rebellious twenty something is sentenced
to community service at a quiet retirement home. The residents
on the fourth floor are strictly off limits, said to
(06:43):
require special care. As his suspicions grow and he digs deeper,
he uncovers a chilling secret that puts both the residents'
lives and his own engrave danger. They have a trailer
out which I haven't watched yet because I didn't have
time before this recording. So it has a screen cap
of of image that looks like do you know that
(07:04):
it's a kind of famous painting like Echo hall Me.
It's got some weird Latin title where like the face
is kind of melty looking, you know, not the scream,
but like it's like kind of like a weird anyway.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
It looks like that.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So I don't know if these are the people that
are in the home or maybe Pete Davidson's just having
some hallucinations.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But we'll have to see it. We do not have
to wait. We don't have long to wait.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It only comes out on July twenty fifth, so it's
just like over a month from there. And then finally,
I just wanted to bring it home with a little
bit of an update on Send Help, which is the
Sam Raimi directed thriller which is going to be released
on January thirtieth of next year, twenty twenty six. It's
the one that's got a script written by Damian Shannon
(07:44):
and Mark Swift, who did Freddy Versus Jason and Friday
at thirteenth two thousand and nine. So we have a
reunion between Sam Ramie and Danny Elfman.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Danny Elfman's going to compose the score for Send Help.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I guess what was the last thing they did was
multi verse and math, right, uh huh.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
So it's gonna be exciting to see Danny tag along
again for a new sam maybe horror movie, which I
know that we're absolutely going to be talking about the closer.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Gets to it, so I can't wait. I love it.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah. So that's all the news for today.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
All right, Well, thank you so much for bringing all
that to our attention. We have a little bit of
feedback we're gonna read before we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
What you got for us?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, this feedback comes to us from Chris Beatty, who's
a friend of ours. Always good to hear from him,
and he says, Hey, horror fam, just wanted to write
in and say thanks for all the fun content. I'd
never heard of the Prophecy, but the episode inspired me
to check it out and I had a great time
watching it.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yay. Love that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yay.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
The newest episode on the Ghost in the Darkness was
a blast from the past and doesn't get talked about enough.
It's a guilty pleasure and underrated creature feature. My recommendation
from Ghost in the Darkness and a great double feature
would be nineteen ninety seven's The Relic, and that is
a great pick, Chris, because Peter Hyms is the relic
solid Creature future. Thanks again for all the hard work
you too do to bring us horror fans killer content.
(09:04):
Thanks Chris Beatty, Thank you Chris.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Thanks for writing and Chris.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Always good to hear from you, and you got good tastes.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah. I love it when people are like, I never
heard of this movie before, and I checked it out
and I loved it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, that's it's fun. That's that's so fun to do,
because that's part of the reason we're here. We want
to introduce you all to uh, just some great stuff
that maybe you haven't heard of or just hadn't got
around a scene yet, you know sort of stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, that's why I got to meet Joe Bob Briggs
this weekend.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
It's our way.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I just spewed everything that I've ever wanted to say
out him. Was Kim was like, you didn't let them
talk at all. I held his hand the entire time,
and I.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Was just like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,
because I.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Really wanted to thank him for getting me into movies
and all the crazy random things that he's shown, which
introduced them to me, and then I've had the you know,
the privilege of introducing it to other people, and it
was just it meant everything to me. It was so
awesome and he was so nice, and so was Darcy.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
So where was it that you met them? What event was?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
They were at the Colonial Theater, which is where they
filmed The Blob, and they were showing a double they
call it an indoor drive in which I'm just like,
isn't it just a movie? It was a double feature
of Vixen and Super Vixen, So that was interesting. It
was fun to see people with their children there.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You gotta gotta wonder about those folks. But yeah, so
it sounds like a pretty fun event. And they were
just like signing merch and meeting people and that sort
of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, they And that's the one cool thing about Joe
Bob is like they even made an announcement like I'm
not gonna leave until I talked to the last person.
So they they love their fans as much as we
love them. And yeah, he he he, really, it was
every It was exactly what I wanted it to be.
He looks so happy in the pictures and it makes
me happy because we took up My one friend was
(10:45):
Carrie was taking all these pictures while I was talking
to him, and you could just see like he's very engaged,
and he wrote me a cute little thing on you know,
I got a picture signed for him, and it was
very personal. It was just it was it was. It
was like an out of body experience. It was amazing.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
No, of course it was a little drunk, which I
think made it a little bit funnier.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
But hey, you know, you just got to have that
liquid courage.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Do you have any idea how long he was there,
because if he was like making a point to stay
until he talk to everybody, could have been there for
a while.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
We were it was already. I mean it started at six.
The movie was at seven, and they were doing the
two films. There was an intermission, and then he was
hanging out afterwards, so he was probably there all night.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
We headed out kind of after I met. I was like,
I don't need anything else right now. I need to
process how amazing everything just was.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
It was.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Hell yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Hopefully you never know, maybe we get big enough we
can have him on our show.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Oh yeah, I would love that.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
All right, Well we will be back with our feature
film after these miss ups from the grave that we
have no control over, and now it is time for
our feature film.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So we have the sophomore film from Danny and Michael
philipp Who did I say it right?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Who?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You got the pleasure of meeting at a screening for
this a couple months ago, and you told me that
you really liked it, so I was very interested to
see it.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, So there's a So, just to be clear, there
was a like a first look event that A twenty
four held where we only got shown the trailer and
two scenes from the movie, one of which was the
melon scene, and that's where I get to meet them
in person. And then like about like a month or
so after that, we were given a screening where there
was like a live stream Q and A, but they
were not there in person. They were in New York
(12:36):
City or something. And then after that I was afforded
the opportunity to speak to the guys both for slash
film and discussing film because I am a freelance journalist,
so there was, you know, lee way just to do
two interviews with the same two guys, and so yeah, no,
I've I've been able to speak to them a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Now, it's pretty great.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I did spill water on both of them as well
at that first look of because I was carrying around
a cup of water in the after party and then
everyone was like, let's take pictures, let's take pictures, and
you know, those guys are so energetic, and I, you know,
that's sort of awkward, like you know, picture taking moment
where it's like what pos are we gonna do?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Like should I put my arm here or there or whatever?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
So I moved, you know when when I think it
was Michael moved and then like I hit his shoulder
with a cup of water and it just like blew
up all over him. It was water, So it's fine,
but like we had to joke about it, and so
if you see the pictures of us, that's why we're
all laughing hysterically because it's just sort of like, you know,
also because I thought I had taken on the chin
and take the rest of the water and the cup
and this port on myself, so you know, I just
(13:37):
I didn't want them to feel left out because I
was like, I got you guys, wet, so I'll get
myself wet too well.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And then who knew that Water would have such a
big like Water is a big part of the movie.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Big time, So it's very fitting, very fitting.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, so we you and I Ash talked about Talk
to Me when that came out back in twenty twenty three,
and I know that we were both pretty impressed with
it in terms of as a debut, but also just
as a concept and as something that you know, A
twenty four of course, as a studio has has gotten
in the business of putting out I hate this term,
but you know, elevated horror of you know whatever, the
(14:12):
art housey horror films that may or may not be
you know, ready for the mainstream, but definitely have an
artistic element to them. And it's been great to see
how these guys have really been able to break out,
you know, and come from their background as YouTubers and
you know, sort of fit in with that A twenty
(14:33):
four esthetic, but also just feel very distinct from it
as well. And so yeah, when I heard about bringing Back,
I was like, I hope it's as good as Talk
to Me. And then I saw it and I was like, oh,
it definitely is what do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, it's all whenever somebody's second movie is coming out.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I feel like pretty quickly after.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The first one, you are a little worried you have
to You're like, are you going to be able to
catch the same kind of fire that that first one did?
Because talk to me was it was kind of like
what you're saying, it's an elevated the nothing new, but
they did do it differently than you're used to seeing
the usual tropes, and this movie could have gone down
all the usual horror movie tropes and they didn't do it.
(15:11):
Especially when you think they're about to do it and
you like, it's not a very difficult like the plot had.
There's a lot of questions that are left on the table,
But because of how they did it, it doesn't take
away from the movie, I think, and where you have
your basic usual setups for certain things that we'll get
into it a little bit more detail later. They could
have gone the one way, the usual trope way, but
(15:33):
then they didn't do it, and I think that's what
made this movie work so well, along with the cast
being really really good. The special effects were phenomenal, Like
it was just it was it was different and familiar
but if that makes sense, but it was, it was.
It was a good story, and you just even though
they leave so many I guess plot holes in a
(15:56):
way up to questioning, it elevates the movie and you're
not upset about it. You're not like, wow, I don't
know exactly what this was or how this happened or
why this is happening. And it doesn't that can take
away from a movie, and this one it didn't. I
think it elevated it. The plot, real fast is two
step siblings find themselves at the center of a terrifying
(16:16):
ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother,
who is dealing with the death of her own daughter.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And yeah, I mean they don't.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I mean from what you tell me, if you think
how did she get the tape? You know, how did
there's no even way to talk about how she knew
to do this ritual?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Right, Well, one of the things I love about the
movie is is its ambiguity. I mean, as I keep
saying on the show, but I'll say in my work
everywhere I can say it about horror is that ambiguity
is one of the engines the horror runs on because
we're all afraid of the unknown, and as much as
as much of the unknown that you can put into
your movie without pissing people off, it's a good thing,
you know, because you want to get that imagination going,
(16:56):
you want to get that you know, fear of like
I don't have the answers to this, and oh my god,
I'm really curious and it's really like kind of bothering me.
But at the same time, I'm drawn to it, you know,
And this is definitely one of those backstories or lore
that like has that power for me, where you know,
it's like, who are these people? Why did they make
(17:17):
these tapes? Were they intended to be distributed to other people,
or was this like a bootleg where it's like, you know,
somebody just said, hey, I can get this for you.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We were never really given any hints about how Sally
Hawkins's character her name's Laura, this grieving mother, gets a
hold of this material. And I think for some although
you know, obviously for some people that really just need
to have all the answers all the time, it might
piss them off, But I think overall, most people are
vibing with it because it does have just a compelling
(17:49):
eerieness to that mystery. And I think that, you know,
what's cool about the movie is that it keeps you
in the main character's shoes. It is very much like
a three hander. It's you know, Sally Hawkins as Laura,
Billy Barrett as Andy, and Sorajana is Piper, his sister,
who both of whom were adopted by Laura. And I
(18:11):
feel like, in the same way that Andy and Piper
are slowly learning about Laura as they're you know, coming
into her world, we the audience are also kind of
kept on that same wavelength where even Laura doesn't have
all the answers, you know, because there's many moments during
the movie when Laura's like is this part of it?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Like is am I doing this right?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Like she's like trying to follow up blueprint without having
the instructions or something like she lost the manual to
the legos or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yeah, you know, and she.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Is absolutely batshit crazy and she her profession was like
a psychologist or whatever, and she uses that stuff to
like gaslight these kids. And there's points where you know,
she's peeing into a cup and pouring it on Andy,
so he thinks he's wetting himself, and then there's the
question of has she been stalking this family? You know,
(19:00):
she makes a comment that their father dies in the
beginning in the shower, which ends up being like an
important scene because apparently a lot of horrible things happened
to Andy in the shower, not just the fathering finding
the father's dead body in there, but there was also
some abuse that we don't exactly have the full details of.
Was it was it like a sexual abuse, was he
just you know, physical and it was all being hidden
(19:22):
from Piper, who's who's blind.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
She can see colors and shapes, but she's pretty much
yeah blind as the actress.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And Andy, you know what, the father dies, he can't
he's frozen, and Piper goes in and she's trying to
give him mouth to mouth and he has all like
this vomit and gross stuff on his face, which I
feel like Andy, when he's sleeping, he always wakes up
with so much drool on his space, and we don't
really like get into that. But CPS right away is like, up,
we're gonna split you up. You know, Laura's going to
(19:52):
take Piper because you have a distorted history or like
a bad kid history, and we find out that he
hit Piper at eight, and I mean, I don't have siblings,
but I feel like kids hit each other, you know,
Like it seemed very dramatic for them to label him
as this bad kid when you see he's so loving
to his sister.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He's always taking care of her.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
They have like words that like they say grapefruit when
they want the other to tell the other the truth.
And yeah, it's just there's a lot of questions about
why they you know, if they were specifically targeted. There's
a lot of witchy stuff going on because at the funeral,
Laura cuts some of the dad's hair and feeds it
to Ali who are going to get to and that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
You don't know why.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
There's no real answers why, but I do love that,
Like you even get to the dad's ghost makes the
guest of parents and he warns Andy, like you need
to protect pipe, you know, keep her.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Out of the water.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
And we find out that the ritual is you have
to get a host, you have to put the demon.
She's saying it's an angel, but it is very obvious
it's a demon. And I love how they do it
because you don't see the demon, but sometimes you see
it through the window when the water's running down you
see horns, or when you take a picture of Ali,
who is her nephew. She said, yeah, well, I can't
(21:07):
remember whether she said it was her son.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Or she made that up as like, oh, it's my nephew.
But really he's a boy from the neighborhood that she abducted, whose.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Name is Connor Byrd.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
But and you right away know that there's something wrong
with Ali because he's trying to strangle the cat to
death in the pool. But so the ritual is you
put the demon into this vessel. The vessel has to
consume the body of the person who you want to
bring back, and then vomit it into the new host,
who has to die the same way that the person
(21:38):
that you want to bring back died.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
It's simple, it's simple. No, it's just simple. Three steps. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
It's disgusting.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It's disgusting, it's really inventive. It's so upsetting. I think
right off the bat we should mention, and I'm sure
listeners that maybe haven't seen the movie yet are already
picking up on it that this movie is very spiritually
close to Ariaster's Hereditary, and I would say that all
the comparisons that people make to you know, between the
(22:07):
two movies are valid. However, I would say the huge difference,
and it is a massive difference, is that why are
Hereditary is a movie about just like the pure like
hatred and rot at the core of a family unit.
You know, like all these people just kind of don't
like each other at the end of the day. You know,
they all have like these resentments and these like deep
seated like you know, hatred or you know, jealousy or
(22:30):
what have you, of each other living under the same roof.
I think bring her Back. You know, all the characters
in this movie are undone by too much love. You know,
like they all love each other so much that they're
willing to go to extreme lengths to protect people or
bring people back from the dead, and you know that
love is blinding them to just how kind of you know,
(22:50):
monstrous they're behaving.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, it's an interesting look at loss. And I believe
that both of their Talk to Me and this one
are both loss dealing with loss heavy movies.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Well yeah, well the reason for that is that the
Philippoo brothers, unfortunately, you know, had a death of their
extended family. I believe it was a child of one
of their cousins, and that happened because they wrote Talk
to Me and Bring Her Back at the same time.
They wrote both scripts kind of simultaneously because they were,
(23:21):
you know, budding filmmakers. They didn't have a deal in
place yet, and they didn't know which one of these
scripts was going to go first, so they were just
working on both simultaneously. And and then you know, at
a certain point, I think, I guess talk to Me
because I had a like a clearer hook of like, oh,
you shake the hand, and you know you can see
people that one first. But you know, these two movies
(23:43):
are very much of a piece. So it's funny that
we were talking earlier about like, you know, directors like
sophomore movie is like The Proof and the Pudding and
all that, and ironically, it feels like their next movie
might be more like of an indicator of like what's
going to be next, because it feels like these really
were like they're not sequels, you know, they're not necessarily
taking place in the same universe, but it feels like
(24:04):
it though, yeah, it feels like it. I even did
ask them that directly. I was like, look, do you
guys want to do like a Tarantino or Kevin Smith
thing where like, you know, you want to make your
own cinematic universe sort of thing. And they were like
they laughed, and they were like, well, not not literally,
but at a certain point they said, well, writing both
of these movies, some characters like shifted between each one,
so like in some cases there was one character who
(24:27):
was originally in Bring Her Back, and they moved her
over to talk to Me and then vice versa or
something like that.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So yeah, so never say never, I mean they did.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
They did also joke, like, you know, they they toyed
with the idea of like you know, making it explicit,
where like they were going to have somebody like and
bring her back like drive by the road accident that
happens at the end of Talk to Me or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So, ah, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
It was close. It was close. They almost did it.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
There's a lot of like startling body horror in this,
especially when I comes to Ali. There's a scene with
a knife that is just really hard to watch. We
actually had two girls walk out of the movie theater
when Ali gets to the point where the demon there's
also like a neat amount of time that you have
to do this ritual in and she's kind of running
out of it, and there's a big white circle around
(25:16):
the house that's keeping the demon in and like kind
of stuck there, and the demon starts kind of like
getting a little rambunctious and starts like eating everything, like
he's eating the table, his teeth a ripping out. He
tries to eat a knife in front of Andy, and
that's when Andy's like, what the hell is going on
in this house kind of thing, and then he he
(25:37):
even bites Laura, and that's kind of what gets her caught,
because there is Wendy, the CPS worker, who Andy goes
back to to let her know what's going on, and
he's like, come back to the house with me, and
she's like, okay, we'll stay in the car. Lara's my friend.
I've been working with her for twenty years. I've known her,
you know. And that is where the usual trope of
(25:57):
we don't believe the kid usually comes into place, because
she's doing a half assed job of kind of like
looking around the house and not really seeing anything. But
it's until she starts seeing that Laura is bleeding, and
then Lara falls apart. Usually people talk themselves out of that,
and then you still don't believe the kids. But Lara
starts to fall apart, Andy starts screaming for Wendy takes
her outside, and then you see Alie eating the corpse
(26:18):
of her daughter, which she apparently never buried.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Did she even report that the child was dead?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Like, you don't really know what's going on because she
says that she buried her and that you know, it
killed her to have to put her daughter in the
ground while I was sleeping in a bed. When we
find out that she didn't, she put her in a
fridge to be eaten by Ali. So when Wendy sees this,
you know, everybody's freaking out. They're like, let's get the
hell out of here. And then Laura takes them both
out with her car, which was shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I was not ready for that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And then she drowns Andy in a puddle, and again like,
I didn't see those things coming. And that's usually not
how these movies work. Usually Andy would be the one
who kind of saves the day and gets his sister
out of there and they did and do the usual things,
and I think that, like, and that's what I'm saying
by like it worked.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, no, there's there's it's not so obvious, uh a
zig or zag in a way that like some filmmakers
really have to draw attention to that where it's like, hey,
you think I'm gonna be doing this thing, but actually
I'm doing another, which sometimes that's fun. But I really
like how the Philippo's in this movie do it as
naturally as anything else. You know, It's not it's not
(27:26):
you know, misdirecting you the audience so hard where it's like, oh,
we got you, you thought we were gonna do this
one thing. It's it's really just more about this is
kind of how the story is going to lay out.
This is just kind of what's going to happen next,
and now you you know, take it, you deal with it.
And really that comes back to the way that they
all treat the character of Laura, which I've been saying
(27:47):
to all of my colleagues I've been writing in the
articles that I've been writing about it. I even said
it to the Philippo brothers when I interviewed them. I
really believe that Sally Hawkins as Laura in this movie
is one of the most unique performances in a horror movie,
just for the fact that, like, she never devolves into
what you'd expect in any other version of this story,
which is, oh, once we know that she's insane, once
(28:09):
we know that she's crazy, she just starts running around
the house with a knife, or you know, screaming at
the top of her lungs or being like really obviously
weird it. At no point did I ever feel like
I was watching a character like turn. I always felt like, oh,
that's the same character, Like that's Laura throughout, you know,
and even especially because one of the influences that the
Philippoo's had for this movie was the subgenre of hag
(28:34):
e'sploitation or the my favorite the evil Biddy films as
they're sometimes called Granny Haggs from Hell, Grannie Eggs from Hell, Yeah,
Rabbit Granny's is one. The trouma movie I think the
most famous is probably Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Oh, yes,
Joe Crawford and Betty Davis.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
They took it to another level with Barbarian.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And Barbarian of course, so Yeah, there's been a lot
of examples throughout horror history, but this one is again
pretty unique, where usually in a Haggs blaitation, you know,
the hag becomes a character of fear purely, where it's
just like she's the antagonist in the same way that
Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers might become an antagonist. And yeah,
(29:11):
there's like a history of I mean, Baby Jane's a
good example of like those are very That's a very
character based movie. So even though Betty Davis at a
certain point becomes a threat, you know, it's still the
same character.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So I feel like Laura and Sally.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Hawkins's performance in this movie is akin to that, where
you know it never becomes a caricature of itself.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Well, and she's off putting from the first second you
meet her, and it doesn't like you're seeing behind the
scenes with what's going on with her, where usually in
other movies you're kind of questioning, like is she isn't she? Well,
in this one, from the get go, you know there's something.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Going on here.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Oh, just the way that she's treating They go to
the funeral of the father and she's dressed up in
like nineteen eighties purple and orange, and you know, Allie's
not all Andy's having a hard time looking at his
father in the casket because you know they have that history,
and he even lies to Piper like, oh, he looks great,
and then she outs him for that. She's like, you know,
you can't leave here without looking at your father and
(30:09):
makes them go back in, and then she was like,
you have to kiss your father. It's tradition or whatever.
She kept seeing something very specific. So he kisses him
on the head and she's like, no, you have to
kiss him on his lips. And it's such this weird,
tense scene and then he doesn't do it, but then
she does, and you're just like, this is weird. And
these are what He's seventeen and Piper's fourteen or something,
(30:33):
and she's in they're in the car and she's like,
what do you want to do for fun?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And he's like, I want to.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Get hammered, and they do and they go back and
they're drinking all kinds of alcohol and then you can
just see that it's all part of her gas lighting
plan and it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, but so much of what I love about the
movie and that's I was going to mention that scene too,
so I'm so glad you brought it up. Is not
only is it something unexpected, like you were saying, where
it's just like, you know, oh my god, they do
the thing like they're getting drunk together, which is something
that you know already feels very like taboo and like
what are we doing here? But like, I think one
of the sources of fear for me in this movie,
(31:11):
because this is one of the rare movies that I
got disturbed by, isn't coming from a place of uh,
you know, uh menace. It isn't coming from necessarily a
place of like, oh, I'm scared of this person because
they seem, you know, really physically strong, or they seem
they seem like, you know, they have some sort of
weird superpower, or or you know, they've got knowledge that
(31:31):
I don't. It's more from a place of genuine like
like grief and sadness, where it's like this person's so
emotionally wrecked that like they are capable of anything, and
I that's ironically kind of scary, you know, yeah, And
I feel like it's almost a more relatable version of
(31:51):
a real life scare than necessarily, as if you have
somebody who's super violent or super you know, sociopathic or whatever.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I think more of us have been involved with friends
or family who have been depressed or are depressed, and
then they'll do something very off putting where it's like
I didn't expect you to do that, you know sort
of thing. Yeah, yeah, that's a real big core for me.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
And then takes the fear level up after Andy is killed,
because now you have Piper there who doesn't have her
sight and she's trying to navigate what's going on. And
then Laura just very calmly is like, well, no, honey,
now we're going outside because I have to drown you
in the pool, and she does take her out there,
and you know, the ritual's just about to be at
its peak, and then Piper just says, mommy, I think
(32:35):
and that just ruins.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It for Laura.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
She can't follow through, which to me was a little shocking, like,
we got all the way here and you're right, you
almost have exactly what you want, and then you choose
not to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That to me was shocking. I didn't I honestly thought
it was going to be a.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Very bleak ending where she got everybody and she got
her daughter back, which for her would have been great,
but or if it was very pet cemetery where the
daughter came back and then killed her, Yes, but she
ended up not being able to do it in the end.
And then you have Piper trying to get away from
Ali the demon, who's like, I'm going to like finish
(33:10):
this ritual so i can get out of here, and
she runs through the uh the white line, and he
follows her through and then I guess the demon leaves
him because he got through. Now, explain to me how
that kid's alive? Yeah, right, because he ate most of
the corpse and had like a you know, you see
this like ten year old with a nine month old
(33:31):
or not, like like a pregnant belly. It was really
gross and crazy and just the things that this kid
went through with biting on the knife and ripping their
teeth out on the wood and ripping his own armskin out,
and that's when the girls left that You're just like,
how did this kid survive?
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, I know it's it's extreme, but I love when
horror goes to such extremes. I mean, I just happened
to see a special screening that a friend of mine
hosted Peter Jack Instead Alive last night, and it makes
me think, as does every zombie or like, you know,
(34:08):
infection movie where you know, by the end of the
movie the protagonists are usually like covered in blood and
it's obviously infected blood.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
So it's like, how do these people not get infected? Right?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And I think that's one of my favorite tropes in
horror films, which is that you know, some people do
have this this just you know, luck of the Irish
or what have you, where it's just like they're able
to survive to the next day or something somehow. And
I guess you gott to chuck it up to the
supernatural element, right, you know, it's just going to be like, yeah,
maybe maybe whoever is chosen as a vessel for the demon,
(34:42):
you know, they because in the same way that like
the soul could be kept in a physical vessel and
then purged out and given to someone else. Maybe once
the spedal is broken, he's not going to get ill
from consuming human flesh.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, and it was a lot of it, or
all your teeth out, all your skin's apart, my god, Yeah, yeah,
it was. It's a it was a rough watch. I
cringed a lot, and it takes a lot for me
to be like a little. I don't like skin stuff,
I don't like teeth stuff like, but they and they
do it so naturally and so real that it, like
I said, two girls got up and walked down.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And that's the thing is that this is getting a
reputation already as like a gorefest and it's kind of not.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
But what is there is?
Speaker 3 (35:26):
So it's so impactful because and I think part of
it is obviously the tone of the movie, the look
of it. This is a really gorgeous looking movie, I feel,
and it's not a flashy one. It's not you know
where it's like look at our camera moves and look
at earth lighting and blah blah blah. But if you
just you know, take it as it is, it is
a very attractive looking movie. And it's also it feels
(35:50):
very down to earth, you know, even as crazy as
things get, there's a real grounded, visceralness to it at
all times. And I think that only serves how disturbing
it gets, you know, because it just the thing I
keep saying to people when I talk about that moment
you just mentioned of ripping the skin off, you know,
this teeth like you're you know, getting like a piece
(36:10):
of gristle off a chicken or something that. I mean,
obviously it gets to people because it's just so inventively gross.
But for me personally, I have a history with skin
stuff because when I was in the second grade, we
were still using number two pencils. This was like the
late eighties early nineties, so digital wasn't around yet, so
(36:31):
we were still having to write things down physically, and
then we'd be using these number two pencils that you'd
sharpen with those like rolling those sharpers.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
So one of my things that I'd used to do
at my desk during the day when I was bored
is I would bounce the pencil off the desk with
the eraser, the rubber part, the rubberrant, and I would
keep sharpening and sharpening, sharpening so that I would use
like the whole pencil, so it would get like really teeny, right.
So one day when the pencil was this teeny, you know,
(36:59):
enough to like if I was holding it this way,
it'd be the tip would be in the palm of
my hand. I was bouncing it and I noticed it
stopped bouncing. I'm like, why isn't it bouncing anymore? And
I opened the pall in my hand and it was
the lead was like sliding through the first layer of skin,
but not the second, so it was embedded in me,
but it wasn't bleeding, and it was just bizarre to
(37:20):
look at. And I freaked the fuck out, sure, you know.
And so that image of like my skin being you know,
stretched and distended, I saw right away reflected in that moment,
and I was like, ah, so.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, the that scene, the melon scene is really rough
to watch because anything with your teeth and this kid
is just going to town biting this knife. But what
was interesting is, you know, Andy lets him out of
the room. He's like, hey, Bud, you're hungry. Let's you know,
let's talk.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Let's say.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
He's like, you don't talk. Here's a pen and paper
right down something. And in that moment, Connor kind of
pushed through a little bit and started writing his last name,
because his last name was like bird, sin er, birds, something,
just bird, and he wrote bird and you obviously Andy
doesn't see it because by the time he turns around again,
he's deep throating that knife and just chewing on it,
(38:08):
which is just really hard to watch. But you see
it later and you still don't make the connection until
you see the picture of the missing child at CPS
and he's like, oh my god, that's him because at
this point his head shaved And I wanted to ask you,
what did you think that thing on the little it
looked like a pathmark on his face was because he
didn't have that in the pictures, right, It's another little
(38:29):
detail that they don't explain that.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's fine, but it's fun to kind of like be like,
what was that?
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
I think you can either interpret it as like maybe
there is a mark of the demon when someone is
possessed with it, or you know, just like a general
like distention or discoloration, burst, blood vessel of like all
the trauma physically that he's going through.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, but as the demon starts to come out, his
eyes get real.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Wonky wonky read Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, by the end, Ali's looking messed up.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I had mentioned too, with the melon scene and the
chewing on the knife, Freakin' Danny Philip, who evil bastard
that he is. They were working on the sound design
for the movie, and they apparently were just not finding
the sound of chewing on the knife, like they were
trying like sticking it into various melons and that wasn't
sounding right.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
They were like crinkling paper over it. That doesn't sound right.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
So eventually Danny was just like, just put the mic
over here, I'm gonna chew on the knife.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
And he chewed on the knife.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Oh my god. Well it was for your own heart.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
But you know, but still it's like, you know, so
all the like teeth on metal sound in the movie,
like that's just teeth on metal and.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
It sounds like it and it's loud.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, I think the run time in this movie's perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Again, if you know, you're like, oh, I could use
a little extra information about what's going on, but you know,
you really don't need it. And I feel like my
attention was never taken away. I was never thinking about
anything else. My mind wasn't wondering, like you were very
invested in what's going on. And they'd like the run
time was perfect.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, and yeah, it's it's a well paced movie. It's
it's something that it's weird because, like we were discussing earlier,
it's not a fun movie in the sense that you
don't go to it being like it's a party, like
you're gonna see some crazy gore, you're gonna have a blast.
Like most people rightfully so are coming out of the
movie going, oh my god.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
But at the same time, I have to say that,
you know, as a sick of myself, you know, as
someone who comes to the horror genre for catharsis for understanding,
for for seeing myself in the plight of others, you know,
sort of idea. It's really it was really invigorating for
me in the sense that it because it went as
(40:40):
these places and it committed to that bit, and you know,
it didn't pull its punches where it's like, oh, we're
not going to show you this, or oh we're gonna
you know, pussy out on that or whatever.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I was.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I was enthralled. Afterwards. I was like, you know, I
was jazzed, so I was kimeing. I came out of
the theater for the first screening, is like, man, that
was great. Meanwhile, all of my colleagues and friends are like, oh.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
My god, I don't know, man.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But then we say I don't have kids, and they
did so it's like it's a different you know, totally.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, we went out to dinner after it and we're
talking about it, and like we're even still kind of
bringing things up to talk about it today. And that's
my favorite thing is when there's a movie that you
keep talking about because they leave so much out of
it and it doesn't take away from the movie. And
it was just really surprising to see, like their second film,
they did it again. And I'm really interested to see
(41:30):
what they do next. I don't know if I need
to talk to me too. I know that that's coming.
We can't stop doing it, so go ahead. I trust
them after seeing this, but I'm more interested to see
what their next.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Thing's going to be.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Apparently, as they told me, their next is actually ironically
a documentary about the wrestling world or like MMA or
something like that. Oh so, but it has something to
do with you know, you can see there's a connection
in terms of just like brutality or visceral violence or
something like that, which which is there is there? There's
a connection there, don't forget. I don't know if you
(42:04):
knew this or not, Ash, but they were developing a
street fighter movie until it fell apart, so they were
they were gonna reboot Street Fighter, which still may happen
if whatever happened with there, the you know, gets worked
out or something. I think it was a scheduling issue
or I don't think it was a rights thing, but yeah,
something about it made it stop. But at the at
(42:25):
the event that I spilled water around them, they were
telling us about working on researching that and how like
Michael like went to find like a monastery where like
these monks, you know, learned as agent marchand martial art
or something like that. And I was like, all right, damn,
you literally went to the ends of the earth to
research this. Okay, guys, that's great. But yeah, so apparently
(42:46):
they are going to diversify, They're not going to stick
strictly to horror as filmmakers. But but I think, yeah,
the strength of these two movies is so much that like,
hopefully they're going to come back, and apparently they are
with a sequel, so well, we'll hope that it's got
the juice.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Do you think that Laura had something to do with
the uh, the father dying because there's this one scene
all she's doing is driving Andy insane, right, and there's
this one scene where he won't he doesn't want to
get a shower, which understandable because apparently the other stuff
besides just finding the father's body in there. But she's like,
you know something something something, I killed your father something something,
And he was like, what'd you say?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
And she's like I said something something something, yeah, yeah,
and you're just like, what what just happened?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Huh what? And it's great too because it is so
casually dropped there. We don't get like a huge dut
dut dumb reveal or anything. It's it's just more like
did she say that?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
And then you know, we're just left with this eerie,
unsettling feeling of like, maybe that's true.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Is this all part of the ritual? Is this all
set up?
Speaker 4 (43:46):
Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Her order was also blind and drowned in the pool
out back, which that pool was really cool looking too.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It was like a triangle yea.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
And part of the ritual working is that the rain
was supposed to come for days and days and days,
and that's why the father's ghost all it says to
Andy when he's in the shower, is you know, keep
her away from from the rain or something like that.
But I did think it was funny that, you know,
she goes to drown her in the pool and it's
like waist deep. But then at the end, you know,
after it all doesn't work, Laura goes and gets her
(44:14):
daughter's body out of the freezer and then they lay,
you know, kind of cuddling in the pool, and now
the pool's only a foot deep, A little thing I noticed.
But it's a really powerful shot because like all the
police are coming because a piper managed to make it
to the road just while a car was going by.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yeah, And again I think it's a great note to
end on because of the character of Laura, how she's written,
how she's portrayed. I just feel such a consistency, even
with all the ambiguity surrounding her, even with this idea
that's planted that we just talked about, where it's like,
is she diabolical enough to have stalked these two kids
and like, you know killed the father somehow? You know,
(44:57):
probably not with anything, so like she didn't stab him,
she didn't shoot him, but it was like poison, you know,
maybe hence the stuff on it so much. Yeahah, you know,
so it tracks for me still where it's like I
can buy a character like that doing these atrocious things,
convincing herself like, oh no, he's an abusive father.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
He deserves to die. It's just poison.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
He's not I'm not going to like strangle him with
my bare hands, you know, uh, this anty kid, Like
I'm going to try to like push him away psychologically
so he's not gonna get hurt. But if I have
to ill hit him in my car, you know sort
of thing, And I feel like, yeah, it's it's a
it's almost that classic. It's almost like a crime movie
trope almost where you know, you think about movies like
(45:41):
a civil Plan or something where it's like you have
ordinary decent people quote unquote who when tempted with you know,
in crime movies, it's usually a bunch of money. In
this movie, it's you know, the love of her daughter
and wanting to the chance that she might be able
to bring her back. You know, you can see how
that drives them to such extremes where it's just justification
after justification, and then at a certain point it's like
(46:02):
it's too much justification, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, And there's things we never talked about, like where's Laura,
Like where's the husband where? And where is the step mom?
And what happened to Andy's first or what happened to
Andy's mom?
Speaker 4 (46:15):
Right?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
And then where is the step mom?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Because Piper's Asian and they never really get into it,
but again, like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's just it's all there. And what's
cool is that I did make a point of asking
the Philippos, Look, I understand the reason why this information
isn't in the movie, and I don't want you to
tell me because I like it that I don't know everything. However,
I want to know if you guys know, or if
you when you were writing it deliberately left it vague
for yourselves as well, And they said, oh no, we know,
(46:45):
Like we made sure to like write complete distinct backstories
of like who Laura is, who ideas, who Piper is,
where they all come from, how they're connected, how the
ritual works, exactly who the people are that came up
with the ritual, blah blah blah. Because I do feel
like you get a sense of that from just watching
the movie, where it's like we're not being given the answers,
but the answers are somewhere there.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah, these are all very broken, traumatized people, and even
Piper is traumatized even more because she doesn't exactly know
what's going on at all, even to the ritual part.
But she also found her father's dead body the same
way that she found her brother's both. You know that
the whole time, I was like, why does this kid
have braces? And it was just for that one part
(47:27):
at the end when she's feeling his face to see
because Laura, of course takes his body into the bathroom again,
which is where Piper finds it, and she touches his
teeth and realizes that's her brother, and it's just a
heartbreaking and you're like, God, this kid has.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Been through it.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yeah, I know, it's totally.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Enjoy that padded room, Laura.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, right, oh man. But that's the thing is, I
know it's weird to say this again, but it just
it has such a depth to it, even in this
bleakness that it just I guess it's because it feels, like,
like I said earlier, one of the reasons I come
to horror is catharsis. I think the richer and deeper
(48:13):
that you have a character a subtext, a plot, all three,
you know, any combination thereof. The more it feels like
a cathartic experience for me, you know, And as bleak
as this is, as unfun as it is, it just
has enough of that depth to really feel like a
fulfilling experience. It's not one that it's like I got
(48:35):
to see this every week, like, you know, yeah, I
can take a break from it. It's fine, But at
the same time, it's really Yeah, it's commendable.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
My theater was completely silent when it was done. Nobody
said anything. Everybody just kind of sat there for a
little I think we were the first ones to sit up.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Wasn't a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
Okay, so it was also a.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Sunday night, but everybody just kind of sat there in
silenced for a second, just like because it does kind
of end a little abruptly, and you're like, wow.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I don't know how I feel. That was rough. It
felt like a rough experience. But I applaud them.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
I really think that they're doing good things their strives,
you know, staying away from the usual norms that you
have in horror movies that can make your movie cheesy.
And as long as they keep doing that. I think
that they're going to keep putting out really great stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Me too, And it's great that, you know, the narrative
surrounding them when Talk to Me was coming out even
a little bit now has been like, oh do you
guys know you know, these used to be YouTubers like Racareca.
Isn't it great that YouTubers are getting a shot at
being filmmakers, And like I understand why that narrative exists
and why people wanted to bring that up as like
(49:42):
a media thing or a press thing or like a
cultural thing of like, you know, hey, YouTubers can make
movies too, But I've love that their work speaks for itself.
It doesn't matter, you know, it's not about that. It's
not like it would have been a different thing if
they made their first movie and it was about YouTubers
making a movie or some bullshit like that, you know,
where it was like right, you know, it's like we're
just going to like write what we know and it's
going to be a bunch of YouTubers, you know, stuck
(50:03):
in a house full of zombies. It's like it could
have been a fun thing, but like that would probably
be like just some bullshit, you know whatever. We've seen
that a million times. These feel like movies that no
matter their background, like whether they were YouTubers or influencers
or kitchen cooks or you know whatever, like you know,
construction Workers, doesn't matter. Like these movies just are that
(50:25):
good that they are so personal and heartfelt.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, and again miss Sally really brought it. We brought
up Hereditary as well, and it kind of reminds me
like Tony collect she should have been nominated for an
Oscar for that.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
This while not equal to what Tony did, I don't
want to like compare apples to oranges here, but she
did such a good job and I don't know if
anybody else would have been able to bring the realism
that she did. So I agree that, like it was
just perfect casting. They did a great job. Everybody did.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Oh yeah, absolutely, ravo everybody.
Speaker 4 (50:57):
Do we have recommendations for folks? I do.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
It's the one that I've been saying to you since
I saw the trailer, and I'm going with twenty sixteen's
a dark song.
Speaker 4 (51:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
I don't want to give too much away about it.
It is on shutter and try to look for it.
It is a hard watch, kind of like this. It
has a pretty interesting ending and it follows a lot
of the same tropes of loss and what you would
do to avenge some you know, a loved one, or
to like feel like you have a closure that you
(51:27):
can live with for something horrible happening to you and it.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, it's a it's a rough watch, but I really
liked it.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
It's not I'm not going to stay here to say
it's the best movie that's ever been made, because it's not.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
But it was so different.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
I loved the ending, and I felt that there was
a lot of similarities between those two films totally.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
I think Dark Song was directed by someone who's a
Irish descent. I might write about that.
Speaker 4 (51:49):
Yeah, get the name.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
All right, just because I wanted to get hit their
name on the on the record. Here is Liam Gavin.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Liam Gavin.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, yeah, I've written and directed. Yeah, it's pretty it's
pretty solid. I remember distinctly watching it for the first time,
and I don't know if I've seen it since it
came out, but it was like it stuck in my
mind because of just some of those images and that.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah feel it's a Welsh Irish British independent horror film,
and I'm like say that three times.
Speaker 4 (52:15):
Boom boom.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Well my recommendation is also foreign, but we're going over
just a little bit across the pond to France with
Julian Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Inside Luntier Okay from two
thousand and seven. It is a very similar tone movie
to both Dark Song and Bring Her Back in terms
(52:38):
of just exploring what extreme grief and loss might do
to certain characters and how how far they might go
to either change that loss or take revenge for it
or what have you. I'm not going to give you know,
anything away, because of course part of the fun is
discovering it's just talk.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
She's pregnant, right, okay, and the baby's like that.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Uh, it's actually pretty fun too.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
But but this is uh yeah, this is this is
something that's part of the new French extremity movement of
the two thousands.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
And uh, the way that gore is used in this
movie is similar to uh, you know how it's used
and Bring Her Back. So if you if you sign up,
if you line up Dark Song, Inside and Bring Her Back,
you've got a hell of a gory bleak triple feature
right there.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Yeah, I want to come out of there film real weird.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Bill and Ashley's part of the Stranded Pana network. You
can find my work in the show notes links below.
Check us out on social media. You can find this
show at strandedpanda dot com and everywhere else you get
your podcasts. If you have questions or comments, please feel
free to write to us at Bill and ash Terror
Theater at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
We're dying to hear from you and see you in
your night days.
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