Latest / The Kulturecast / "You've got those Abbadon eyes..."

Transcript

"You've got those Abbadon eyes..." · The Kulturecast

0:04
Speaker 1: Weird way, So why do you need a Catholic priest?
0:49
Speaker 2: About two years ago I started investigating the deaths of
0:52
the Carmichael family.
0:53
Speaker 1: The lineage of all these people leads back.
0:56
Speaker 2: To a smash pickup truck along Route one oh three
1:00
nineteen eighty nine.
1:01
Speaker 1: You want to exercise the Carmichael.
1:04
Speaker 2: Our families killed that poor girl.
1:06
Speaker 1: Now we're forced to pay the prize for it. Everyone
1:09
in that truck was eventually hunted down. They're all going
1:11
to be punished.
1:15
Speaker 3: You still haven't told me everything that happened to you
1:18
at the abandon hotel.
1:21
Speaker 1: Whatever is in that hotel, it's up now it's among us.
1:26
Speaker 2: What's this have to do with me? I'm not from here.
1:28
Speaker 1: That one mistake has bonded so many of us for years.
1:32
It's a blood bond.
1:39
Speaker 3: That I help dar In that vanished abode, they're far
1:42
apart on that disused, forgotten road. Night comes the black bats,
1:50
tumbled and dark.
1:52
Speaker 1: By the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who you
1:54
can dine here? They're coming for God the Son commands you.
2:07
Speaker 2: Ay to come. So Ryan, it's come to our attention
2:19
that there is a fifth Hell House LLC, this time
2:23
in a riginal narrative creation control. We don't have found footage.
2:27
We have a normal, linear narrative story presented in a
2:31
multi camera setup. Ah, the scariest thing of all.
2:36
Speaker 4: Did you miss speak?
2:37
Speaker 2: There?
2:38
Speaker 4: Mean a normal lineage story?
2:40
Speaker 2: M I say, when was the last time a found
2:42
footage franchise made it so far down the train tracks
2:46
that they jumped over the fact that they are a
2:48
found footage franchise and went straight to a normal like
2:52
filmmaking franchise. I it's not it's not a frequency thing, right,
2:57
It's happened like a couple of times.
2:58
Speaker 4: Well, it's not free, it's not freak. But the biggest
3:00
one in my mind is reck.
3:01
Speaker 2: Does the rec franchise go non found footage?
3:05
Speaker 4: But eventually it goes footage? Not after the first one.
3:08
I think it's if I remember right, I think there's
3:10
four rec films plus the remakes, of course, and I
3:13
think the third one is half and half, and then
3:16
I think the fourth one is full narrative.
3:18
Speaker 2: The I like the American version with Jennifer Carpenter.
3:22
Speaker 4: Honestly, I like Quarantine.
3:24
Speaker 2: I like I just like the poster of her.
3:25
Speaker 4: It's a good poster.
3:26
Speaker 2: It is a good poster.
3:27
Speaker 4: It's iconic too, Yeah, it really is.
3:30
Speaker 2: Like and it's Jennifer Carpenter too, who not that she
3:32
didn't do a lot or has done a lot, but
3:35
she hasn't. Is like broadly she's done dexter and rec
3:41
and not Jennifer's body. What the hell is the name
3:43
of that movie, that exorcism movie that she was in, right.
3:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, the is a exorcism of Emily Rose.
3:49
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah, it's not the one of Deborah
3:52
Messing or whatever the hell that is now the extasy,
3:57
the exorcism of Deborah Messing. It's rbly a better one though.
4:00
Speaker 4: This she needs an exorcism after this last week.
4:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, she needs something. She needs a time the fuck
4:05
out good god. Uh. We have coincidentally never spoken specifically
4:14
about hell House. We've talked about it on other episodes
4:17
of other things. We were trying to figure this out
4:19
before we started recording, because we've talked about hell House
4:23
a lot, but it's always been kind of like when
4:25
we talk about other things, and so on this episode
4:29
of the Culture Cast, I am still your your host, Christashio,
4:33
much to the chagrin of like three people out there now,
4:36
and I am joined by my good friend all the
4:38
way from Someone's Favorite Productions and the Internet and YouTube
4:43
and his weekly YouTube show on Thursday nights where he
4:48
regales the world with all the happenings in the world
4:51
of physical media. Your friend and mine, Ryan Verel, Yo
4:56
yo yourself, bro go yo other pe and if you
5:01
if you clicked on this episode, we know what we're
5:03
gonna be talking about. We're gonna be talking about hell
5:05
House LLC broadly, but we're also going to be talking
5:09
more specifically about hell House LLC. Lineage, the fifth and supposedly,
5:16
according to friend of the show, Stephen Cognetti, uh the
5:21
final installment in his hell House franchise. We'll talk all
5:25
about Lineage. We'll talk a little bit about Carmichael Manner
5:28
and Lake of Fire and Abdon Hotel and probably the
5:30
original film. We'll probably also talk a little bit about
5:33
the fact that Russell Win, one of the characters from
5:36
Lake of Fire, is also a Target clothing model, which
5:41
is really the funniest part of the entire franchise is
5:45
going to Target and seeing Russell Russell Winn just advertising
5:49
like pull over cardigans. So that's that's a weird kind
5:54
of thing. And what's funny is like it's a very
5:58
specific group of people who know who that is. Everyone
6:00
else is just like that's just the clothing model target.
6:06
So Ryan, I know we've talked again, We've talked about
6:08
it on other things, but let's talk a little bit
6:11
about Hell House LLC As a franchise. Where is it
6:14
in the scope and scheme for you of found footage films.
6:19
The first one came out in twenty fifteen, then eighteen nineteen,
6:22
then there was a bit of a gap in twenty
6:24
three and then twenty five. So franchise been going for
6:28
a decade now, five movies effectively, one every two years
6:32
is kind of what it ends up averaging out to be.
6:34
So I am very curious Ryan, what before we talk
6:37
about lineage specifically, what do you think of the franchise
6:41
kind of holistically?
6:42
Speaker 4: I had seen the first one fairly early on and
6:46
liked it a lot. I think it is a overall
6:49
very effective film. For me, the last forty five seconds
6:54
make the film dip in quality compared to what was
6:58
feeling like a near perfect, like standalone debut feature for
7:03
a what I never thought was going to be a
7:06
franchise at first. So yeah, I like it quite a bit.
7:09
I thought the definitely some effective scares. I don't like
7:14
the immediate end of the very first film.
7:17
Speaker 2: The kind of twist ending quote unquote yeah, like the
7:22
part I like, even I'm kind of being Higgley Piggley
7:25
about it, Like it's not really a twist ending.
7:28
Speaker 4: Right, it's the park that basically confirms like this is
7:31
oddly like we know that there's supernatural elements to it,
7:34
but the ending is like we're confirming their supernatural stuff
7:38
that we're throwing in there, and that I've never appreciated
7:41
the immediate end of the film.
7:43
Speaker 2: It's not really just supernatural. It's like supernatural things that
7:46
can take place outside of the house, which also kind
7:48
of like changes the entire scheme and scope of the franchise,
7:54
because if it's not about the house so much, the
7:57
title of the movie and the stakes of the movie
8:00
are a lot less, is what it feels like for me.
8:03
Speaker 4: And yeah, fully agreed. I don't know, it loses power
8:08
with that moment. I feel like, yeah, I would agree.
8:11
Then the second film comes and I put this one off.
8:16
I think just for I don't know, lack of accessibility
8:20
to like a great version of the movie for a while,
8:23
this was really only super available on DVD until it
8:26
was picked up on Shutter years later when the first
8:29
one got kind of cult status. The DVD was not great,
8:33
so I just never picked it up, assuming that it
8:35
would get a better release later, And when I finally
8:37
saw it, I was definitely underwhelmed by it. It was
8:42
an okay follow up, but it was clear that it
8:45
was just like, well, we know what we did right
8:47
in the first one, so let's just do that again,
8:49
and just maybe not quite as good as the first one.
8:52
I think there's definitely two or three scenes that are
8:54
still quite effective in the sequel. This is where it
8:58
really started to trouble me that we were like, you
9:00
know what, this this what is now a franchise really
9:04
needs it needs lore. Let's make all of this story well,
9:10
let's make everything that we've ever alluded to be some
9:14
of this massive ongoing story that we could build and
9:17
build and build. And then that was really really damaged
9:21
by the third one because they essentially said, oh, we
9:24
made two of almost the exact same film, let's just
9:27
do it again, but make it very concluded and much
9:30
less effective, and it totally loses all power. So I
9:35
had essentially no confidence in a fourth film, and then
9:40
the fourth film came out and I went, oh shit,
9:42
like this is actually quite good. The whole Carmichael Manner
9:45
move was an exact, like an exact shakeup that the
9:49
franchise needed, and you know, not taking the fand footage
9:53
aspect away, not taking the iconic costume away that is
9:57
now synonymous with this franchise was a good move. I
10:00
think it had some effective scares. I think the at
10:03
this point, like we knew that the lower was a
10:06
part of it, so when they kept building, it was
10:07
just like, yeah, okay, Cognandi feels like he has to
10:10
do this, so whatever we knew it was going to happen,
10:12
and it just keeps happening. Then the fifth film comes
10:16
and I'm sure we'll get deep into that one in
10:18
a minute, so I'll let you talk about the first four.
10:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. The first one, I think for me is a
10:22
movie that I really like a lot. It's a movie
10:27
that I think really works. Even now I rewatched it
10:30
last week and it just kind of works. I think
10:33
a lot of it just still because it came out,
10:37
because it came out when it did in twenty fifteen,
10:39
it still has a little bit of that like mid
10:41
teens handheld camera funk to it that I think works
10:45
in its favor. You know. I think once you kind
10:48
of get to Abaddon Hotel and then Lake of Fire,
10:50
it stops working so much. But that first one, I
10:52
think it really works in terms of it being like
10:55
a low budget horror movie. That and as you know,
10:59
found footage allows you to be low budget and get
11:01
away with the low budgetness. The low budgetness of it
11:04
is kind of an appealing thing when it comes to
11:07
found footage. So the first movie, I mean, yeah, it
11:11
wasn't necessarily like a massive hit when it came out,
11:14
but it moved the needle enough that we got a
11:17
second one, and a third one, and a fourth one
11:18
and a fifth one. So I really like the first one.
11:20
I actually really liked the second one as well. I
11:23
like the I like the early scenes where they're kind
11:26
of like recontextualizing the hotel. I like that a lot.
11:30
I think once it kind of starts getting into the
11:33
like lore lore of the Andrew Tully of it all
11:35
and all that, I think it kind of starts chasing
11:38
its own tail a little bit. I think to your point,
11:40
the third one really is doing that, like we have
11:44
to explain everything now.
11:46
Speaker 4: Like okayez, that's a nice.
11:48
Speaker 2: And look, we revisit a fair amount of the third
11:50
one in this movie, Like, you know, we get a
11:53
lot of the third hell House movie in this movie
11:56
because the main character from the third movie returns here,
12:00
which is not anything anybody wanted because her character was
12:04
really underwritten in the third one. And so it's like,
12:07
you know, when the movie opens and it's like, oh,
12:10
it's been a couple of years since the incident at
12:12
the Avadon, it's like, who are you again? Like you know,
12:15
like it's been six years since I've seen you, you know,
12:20
like you're not at the forefront of my mind in
12:22
this franchise. So I enjoy the franchise as a whole.
12:27
I think The Carmichael Manner was an unnecessary film that
12:31
ends up being rather good, which I think is not
12:35
the expectation. I think the expectation for something like Carmichael
12:38
Manner was for it to be like this and to
12:41
be kind of an unnecessary entry into the franchise, because
12:46
for me, lineage is wholly unnecessary, and to go one
12:51
step further, taking the found footage nature of your movie
12:56
franchise out of your movie. Franchise doesn't work for me,
13:00
and I think it could have worked maybe, but this
13:05
movie lineage is boring. It doesn't do a thing with
13:09
the change of perspective going from found footage to like
13:14
traditional multi camera narrative, Like they don't do anything literally,
13:18
Like I don't understand, like Carmichael Manner was such a
13:21
return to form for the franchise and this is just
13:25
getting out into the fucking weeds as far afield as
13:28
humanly possible. I don't think the changing to a traditional
13:32
camera narrative is the real downfall of this movie. I
13:36
think the real downfall of this movie is like, let's
13:38
make a lore hell house movie, a total lore hell
13:42
house movie, right, It's like that that was never what
13:45
drew me to the franchise. What drew me to the
13:47
franchise was the interesting story that they were telling and
13:52
then the lore kind of being hinted at throughout. But
13:56
it was never about like, let's learn the lore of
13:58
the Carmichael Manner in the Abbadant Like that for me
14:00
is not that that is not the appeal, That is
14:04
not the draw of this franchise. So when when it
14:09
was announced that this movie was going to be a
14:10
traditional camera narrative without the found footage. I was like,
14:13
I don't really know if I have any interest in this,
14:16
and you know, kind of wills out. I think that
14:19
lineage is the worst of the five by a substantial margin,
14:25
and it suffers from being an overwritten lore based mess
14:31
that kind of just spins its wheels and then by
14:33
the end of the movie goes see See and it's
14:35
like what, I don't even remember, Like, what does this
14:37
have to do with anything?
14:39
Speaker 4: You know?
14:40
Speaker 2: I went and read on the the I went and
14:42
read some like Reddit reactions to the film, and a
14:44
lot of people were like, who was that at the
14:46
end of the movie? What the hell was that? And
14:48
it's like, yeah, I mean I had to go and
14:50
remind myself what the hell was going on at the
14:53
end of the at the end of this movie, and
14:54
who who they were talking about and the characters that
14:57
they bring back like this, This movie I think maybe
15:00
takes not for granted, but I think it gets a
15:03
little ahead of itself in terms of how memorable its
15:06
mythology is as a franchise.
15:09
Speaker 4: In many ways, I think that they are trying to
15:14
make I don't know they're trying to take certain scenes
15:18
and make something out of nothing, or like something out
15:20
of a sliver of an idea, and it just it
15:23
feels like retconning to the max, and that doesn't work.
15:27
I Mean, the main reason why, you know, things like
15:29
Breaking Bad work is because Vince Gilligan had stuff planned
15:33
from day one. You know, he's got that new show
15:37
place like, yeah, he's got that brand new show on
15:40
Apple called Pluribus with ree Isshue Horn again, and he's
15:44
already saying like, yeah, I see this going four seasons,
15:46
and I have an arc for all that stuff. Cogneti
15:48
had no clue that this was going to be five
15:50
films and the last one would be narrative, boat focused
15:54
and all that. So yeah, it just comes across as
15:57
somebody desperate to make something work. And overall, if.
15:59
Speaker 2: A lot of things have retcon like that, even the
16:02
second movie is literally conning the first movie, third movie's
16:06
reht conning the first two. The fourth movie reht CON's
16:09
like almost the entire franchise. And then this movie is
16:13
more you know what, this movie feels like. This movie
16:16
feels like sand in between the cracks, like I've already
16:20
seen the major picture here, I've already seen all the
16:23
big pieces. This just feels like the sand filling in
16:27
the spaces, and I'm like, I don't know if this
16:29
needed to be in a movie unto itself.
16:33
Speaker 4: And honestly, I could have seen with this getting popular
16:37
over the course of four films. I could have seen
16:40
this doing semi well as like a comic book, sort
16:45
of a dendum at the end to be like, hey,
16:48
if you loved our lore that we've done for this,
16:51
check out our exclusive digital comic. That's twenty four pages
16:55
and that's it, and it tells all of these pieces
16:57
that they put in this film that didn't need to
16:59
be there, and it just fills in some more info
17:01
and they would have saved a lot of money and
17:03
not got a shit ton of terrible reviews, because man,
17:05
this movie did terribly this year.
17:07
Speaker 2: Which I think, for me is the worst part, because
17:10
this this film franchise exists because of the fans. It
17:14
exists because the people that like the movies, and this
17:18
movie is yeah, is even being panned by the fan.
17:21
The fan reaction is that this is not a good movie,
17:24
that this is not a worthwhile, worthy entry into the franchise,
17:29
and you know, I've watched this movie three times now.
17:32
I'm gonna agree. I don't think that this movie is
17:35
very good as a hell house movie. I think as
17:37
a movie movie it's not great either, because it's again,
17:41
it's it's concerning itself with mythology that it thinks is
17:45
super important. And I'm not saying it's not important. I'm
17:48
saying something different, which is, I don't think the mythology
17:51
is particularly interesting, and when they explain what the kind
17:56
of big twist is, it falls super flat. So let
18:01
me explain the mythology here, because I'm sure people listening.
18:05
Some people listening are fans of the franchise that are
18:08
listening to this because we're talking about this, but some
18:10
people who are listening to this may not know the mythology.
18:14
So there's a hotel in Abdon, New York, called the
18:16
Abdon Hotel and host to say Lewis Tully, not Lewis Tully.
18:21
Andrew Tully had a cult and he practiced black magic
18:25
in the hotel, killed people in the hotel, started a
18:28
death cult to gain power, while at the same time,
18:32
in the Carmichael manner, the Carmichael family suffers a tragedy
18:36
and the son in the Carmichael family goes and kind
18:42
of becomes buddies with Andrew Tully and they work together
18:45
to satisfy each other's needs, one being killing people, the
18:49
other being getting revenge on the people that killed the
18:52
sister of the Carmichael family. And in this movie it's
18:57
revealed that there were other people in the car the
19:00
night of the accident that's described in Origins, and those
19:03
people are also being killed in this movie by the
19:07
Abdon Hotel exteriorly to the hotel, because in the third
19:11
movie the hotel gets burned down. So how much of
19:14
this am I? How wrong? Am I? How right?
19:16
Speaker 4: Am I?
19:16
Speaker 2: Ryan? I'm pretty close. There's also dressing up like clowns
19:20
as part of this.
19:22
Speaker 4: Yes, as far as I can unweave through everything that
19:27
Cogniti has built, Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate. But I
19:30
guess the timeline gets a little blurry through a few
19:33
scenes that they showed through some of this, and then
19:36
there's decades old things happening affecting things. There's I don't
19:40
know that there's just weird, weird lower pieces.
19:43
Speaker 2: Well, and this reminds me a little bit of a
19:46
movie that we talked about recently with Final Destination Bloodlines,
19:49
where it's like there's there's this whole familial thing going
19:52
on that we haven't been privy to that's been an
19:56
underpinning of this entire kind of ordeal with the A hotel.
20:00
But none of this has anything to do with the
20:03
first movie. No, No, like it is this this movie
20:07
is more or less about the last movie.
20:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if anything, the only thing that you can
20:12
attach to it is the cloud mask. And like, sure
20:14
it's iconic at this point for those that have seen
20:17
it and loved it, but you know, even like this
20:20
scene that they focused on in the trailer so much
20:23
at the carnival, where he's at the end of this
20:26
little walkway thing, it's it's not even an effective scene.
20:29
Like what I what I feel like this fifth movie
20:34
feels like now is Cognetti had what is the best
20:38
way to say this, like ideas for some cool scenes
20:41
that he wanted to do and put those together, and
20:43
if anything, it feels like a mishmash, like an anthology.
20:46
Speaker 2: Essentially, he didn't have anywhere to put these these desparate scenes. Yeah,
20:50
I I mean again, like that's why I was saying,
20:52
it feels like the sand in between the cracks, Like
20:54
it doesn't feel like any one solid, unified idea. It
20:58
feels like you're trying to like tie up loose ends.
21:01
And I don't again, like those loose ends didn't need
21:04
to be tied up, right. They're not loose ends in
21:07
the sense that I was wondering what the explanation is.
21:10
They were loose ends in the sense of like you
21:12
just kind of left it hanging, Okay, you know, I
21:14
don't necessarily need you to explain in some of these things,
21:17
Like sometimes the explanation is not nearly as good as
21:20
the ambiguity.
21:21
Speaker 4: David Lynching, Yeah.
21:23
Speaker 2: David Lynch knew that, like John Carpenter knows that. Like
21:27
horror directors who direct films that have cliffhangers and open
21:31
ended endings know that because that's part of it, Like
21:34
it's part of it, Like you're not going to explain
21:37
something intentional, and this this movie's like no, no, no, no,
21:41
we're gonna explain everything. It's like, wait, no, you don't
21:43
have to, like you don't. It's not a requirement to
21:46
explain anything, and lineage just over explains everything. It over
21:52
explains why. Here's the thing, though, do you and you
21:56
tell me, do you get the sense that this explains
21:59
the Abodon Hotel at all? Does anything in this movie
22:01
explain the Abodon Hotel other than the character from the
22:04
third movie being the main character in this movie, Like,
22:08
I don't understand what does this have to do with
22:10
the Abdon. This is pretty much just a movie about
22:13
the last and in it trying to once again connect
22:17
the Like the fourth movie was such a fun movie
22:21
because it was like, Okay, the Abdon Hotel is gone,
22:23
so now we have another building in this city that
22:27
also has weird things about it. Let's talk about that
22:31
and move on to that. And this movie is like, no, no, no,
22:33
Abodon Hotel still, And it's like we've established at the
22:37
Abodon Hotel has been burnt down, move on, and this
22:40
movie does not want to do that. So I am
22:43
curious in your opinion, does this movie even need to
22:47
be a hell house movie in terms of like the
22:50
Abodon Hotel or should this have just been another Carmichael
22:53
Manner thing found footage moving the franchise forward in a
22:57
different direction, not trying to Like, I don't even understand
22:59
why we're trying to end the franchise here. You rebooted
23:02
your own franchise with Origin. Just keep doing that, right.
23:06
Speaker 4: The anials they needed to do that. I gotta be honest,
23:09
I mean.
23:09
Speaker 2: I agree with you, but with how surprising Carmichael Manner,
23:14
and it did take things in an interesting new kind
23:17
of fresh direction. Why not continue down that line? Why
23:21
when you're going right do you try to then turn
23:23
the wheel back left as hard as you can even
23:25
though you're already going right. Like I, it doesn't make
23:28
any sense to me. Carmichael Manner was not poorly received.
23:31
Carmi Kamphaner was well received, like rather well received, about
23:35
as well received as the first hell House movie was
23:37
in terms of like critical appraisal. Once the right people
23:41
saw it.
23:41
Speaker 4: I agree, Yeah, all of that checks out on my
23:45
end as well. I don't think that they made any
23:49
good choices here. I mean again, like nothing about this
23:55
film worked. I don't even think that there was repe
23:58
scenes like even Part two and three, which I didn't love,
24:03
but I appreciated certain parts of them. They had memorable,
24:06
like well done scares. This movie has nothing. I found
24:11
literally nothing of substance in this film.
24:13
Speaker 2: And what I what I don't really understand with with
24:17
this this last movie is if we're gonna do this
24:20
kind of like post mortem as it is, like you
24:23
know again like trying to like tie these disparate ends up,
24:26
try to get all these kind of things that were
24:29
maybe hanging over the franchise settled away, squared away. I
24:33
mean this movie literally walks right into the Scream three,
24:37
like you know, Jamie Kennedy rehtconning of it all, like
24:40
in the third movie, we're gonna recontextualize what happened to
24:42
the first film, Like yeah, literally like that this franchise
24:47
didn't need it the first three movies and what those
24:50
first three movies are talking about was so interesting on
24:53
its own that to go here and be like no, no, no,
24:56
there's like a connection to something else and there's a
24:58
deeper there's a deeper story that's going on. Like again,
25:02
it could have been interesting. I'm not saying it. It
25:05
couldn't have worked. It could have worked. I just don't
25:08
I don't think this movie coming out in this order helps.
25:11
I think this movie might actually work a little bit
25:15
more if it had come out after Lake of Fire,
25:18
just because again, like it would force the movie to
25:20
focus on the abod On Hotel of it all. As
25:23
opposed to the Carmichael Manner stuff, which, again, like the
25:27
Carmichael Manner stuff when it was in its own movie
25:29
worked but now that it's like part of another thing
25:32
and these things are kind of intertwined, it works a
25:34
lot less. That they're trying to connect it to the
25:37
first three movies. I want them to. If you're gonna
25:40
do this new direction, go in that direction. Don't start
25:44
like backtracking, because, like you said, the thing with the
25:47
clown mask, I like that the clown mask was recontextualized
25:52
in Carmichael Manner to be something else. However, in this
25:55
movie it kind of undoes that once again, and I
25:58
don't get it, like, why did you undo the thing
26:00
you did in the last movie?
26:02
Speaker 4: Agreed, Yeah, I think that that worked pretty decently, and
26:05
not even in a way that I expected, because again,
26:08
when they when they first moved away from the abdon
26:11
at all, I was I was on the surface into
26:14
the idea, but I was like, well, do we really
26:16
need this move? Do we need to connect it in
26:18
any way? And then he surprisingly because he showed in
26:21
the past he can reckon. Well for some of these things,
26:23
you did it once, you didn't do it twice. This, uh,
26:27
this part five does not get any of that magic
26:29
attached to it whatsoever.
26:30
Speaker 2: No, and and the you know, I thought it was
26:33
smart in the fourth one to have the clowns being
26:36
in the Carmichael manner and it not necessarily being something
26:40
that is explained early on. But by the end of
26:43
the movie, I think the explanation that they give for
26:46
why the why the clown masks are or the clown
26:49
mannequins are in the Carmichael and end up in the Abdon,
26:52
I think that that fourth movie gets me there. In
26:56
this movie, it's like, remember how we did that in
26:58
the last movie. We're just gonna have that like now
27:00
out in the real world. And it takes Yeah, it
27:03
takes all the magic away from the the the iconic
27:08
villain of this franchise quote unquote. That's the other thing
27:11
I don't understand, Like when did the clown become iconic
27:14
in the last movie.
27:15
Speaker 4: I mean he really, honestly from the very beginning he
27:18
was kind of there, like he wasn't.
27:20
Speaker 2: This He's on the poster in the Carmichael manner thing
27:23
is what I'm talking about, you know what I mean? Like, yes,
27:25
in the second and third movie, he's not on the poster.
27:28
In the fourth movie, he's on the poster. In the
27:30
fifth movie, he's on the poster.
27:32
Speaker 4: And that makes sense because after the first one became
27:36
kind of a cult classic, he eventually like, obviously he's
27:40
not on art the Clown status or anything like that,
27:42
but he got so iconic that people that love this franchise,
27:45
they essentially are demanding that they see that clown. A
27:48
part of everything.
27:49
Speaker 2: The clown needs to be explained is what happens in
27:52
Carmichael Manner, And I'm just like, what's It's not something
27:56
I needed. It works in that movie, but here the
27:59
clown again and feels just kind of like an idea
28:02
that doesn't work. It's almost like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare
28:05
on Elm Street too, like you're breaking your own rules
28:07
by having the clown be out in the real world
28:10
unless it's a and again like this is me explaining
28:13
for the movie, like because the Abadon Hotel was destroyed,
28:16
the clown is now just free to roam the world.
28:19
I guess like it's not explained, and I'm not asking
28:22
for it to be explained, but it doesn't make any sense.
28:25
Is more the problem the the stakes of the Abadon
28:28
Hotel being destroyed are never explained, like why that is
28:32
a problem, why that matters that the Abdon is no
28:35
longer here is never really explained. And I think for
28:39
me as someone who if and I think you would agree,
28:42
I don't need you to explain anything, like you don't
28:45
have to. You don't have to feel obligated to explain anything.
28:48
If you're going to explain it, though, which so many
28:50
things do, you better fucking nail it because otherwise what
28:55
I was going over and creating in my head is
28:59
ultimate going to be much more interesting most of the
29:02
time than whatever it is you're gonna come up with. Now,
29:06
there are writers and directors who do come up with
29:10
pretty clever and interesting twists in their movies. This one, however,
29:14
is not. This is rather pedestrian and and it's ironic
29:19
in my mind that we talked about not a week
29:22
and a half ago, Final Destination, and this movie is
29:25
trafficking in some of the same things a Final Destination
29:28
would in terms of the there's been a there's been
29:31
an under underlying familial connection this whole time that nobody
29:35
knew about. And all the people in this car are
29:38
all cursed. It's like, Okay, great, so I'm not. I'm
29:43
being introduced to a bunch of new characters that I
29:45
have no connection to, that I have no stakes in
29:49
caring about, and I'm supposed to now care about them dying. No,
29:53
Like it's just it's it's I'm not. It just doesn't.
29:55
It doesn't get me there. It just doesn't not.
29:58
Speaker 4: Only care about them dying, but all also apply at
30:01
this point, a decade worth of feeling towards a franchise,
30:05
to the fascination with this story that he's building. And
30:09
none of that it none of it pays off, None
30:11
of it works in a story level, none of it
30:15
even draws out like the emotional pretext that I'm supposed
30:18
to care about this.
30:19
Speaker 2: And you know what's funny about this movie? I would
30:21
say that the scenes in this movie that work in
30:23
terms of like the couple somewhat interesting moments, they work
30:27
because the angles and shots that Cognetti is using are
30:30
reminiscent of found footage, like close up, close up, first person,
30:36
if not third person POV shots just make a found
30:40
footage movie. I understand why he didn't, though, because at
30:43
some point the found footage framework can become hampering in
30:50
a way. It can hamper your ability to do certain things.
30:53
I get it. You can't tell period piece stuff with
30:56
found footage. That's always been a concern, Like pre you know,
31:00
read the creation of the video camera. It would be
31:03
hard to have a found footage anything. You could have
31:05
found footage civil war film, it's like not a thing
31:08
there's there, weren't cameras, So you can't do that. So
31:12
that is a limited time travel movie, right, fair, that
31:15
is the limit. Well, how do you charge it? How
31:17
do you charge the camera?
31:18
Speaker 4: Uh, we've not gotten that far at writing.
31:21
Speaker 2: I'll get get back to you. He has a magic
31:25
battery charger thing. He pulls it out of his pocket
31:28
and plugs it into the camera and there you go.
31:30
If he can time travel, they've thought of a way
31:32
to fix the battery problem. That's the correct answer. That's
31:35
the correct thing. Yeah, if they can time travel, they
31:39
don't have to worry about Yeah. Hello, I think if
31:43
you're gonna change your style of storytelling, you have to
31:48
you have to by the end of the film, justify
31:50
why you've done it. We never we never even get
31:54
get here with this movie. Like this movie feels like
31:57
I never called into question Cogniti's a bill as a director,
32:01
and I'm still not I just think that this was
32:03
a misstep because this, I think film shows his limitations
32:07
as a director right now. And that is not to
32:10
bemoan or you know, you know, give someone a hard time.
32:14
I wouldn't want to do that. But I don't think
32:16
that this movie works as well as the found footage
32:18
movies because I don't think that there's enough going on
32:21
here to be like, well, that was a good enough
32:23
reason to not do found footage, like I found footage
32:26
ness and the mixed media nature of the last three
32:29
four movies I think was what was most interesting for
32:31
me was, to be fair, the hell House movies weren't
32:34
necessarily found footage. They were kind of like mockumentary almost.
32:39
Remember the first movie opens as like a pseudo documentary, right,
32:42
the second and third movie are.
32:44
Speaker 4: That the mogumentary?
32:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, All of the entire up until this point, the
32:50
entire franchise has been that it's it's almost been Poughkeepsie
32:53
Tapes adjacent. Which has been the thing that's worked so
32:56
well for me is that it was trying again, not
32:59
trying to fool anyone into thinking this is real, but
33:02
trying to hew as close to reality as possible so
33:05
that we can use that as another kind of tool
33:08
in our arsenal of things to do. All that saying
33:11
that you don't get to use any of that in
33:13
this movie. You don't get to use any of those
33:15
tricks in this movie. And I get it. There's no
33:17
way to do a mixed media version of a film
33:20
with a traditional narrative component. That would be kind of hard.
33:26
You could do it. Movies have Cannibal Holocaust does. Cannibal
33:30
Holocaust has a round footage and then a narrative component,
33:33
but the framing device there is people watching the footage
33:37
and then stepping away from it, so you could. You
33:39
can do it. It's just this movie just doesn't do
33:42
anything other than just the one thing, which is also
33:46
weird given that this franchise never just did one thing.
33:49
Speaker 4: The most difficult part of doing it, though, is you
33:52
have to take a moment to justify it, and they
33:55
don't even attempt in this And.
33:56
Speaker 2: Now they just pull out someone filming at the beginning
33:59
of the movie, which is like, okay, so you're just
34:01
hanging a lantern on it, Like, who is this moment
34:04
for if not for the omnipresent audience, not the character
34:07
right himself.
34:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's essentially just a waste at that point.
34:11
Speaker 2: Well, and if you're gonna do this, you only get
34:14
one chance to do this, to transition away from found
34:17
footage to a traditional narrative. I guess the question becomes
34:21
a couple things. So Cognetti has said, I am done
34:25
making Hellhouse movies. This is the last one, possibly the
34:29
last one. I you know, having sat and watched this
34:32
movie three times now, Ryan, I'm gonna go out on
34:34
a lemon say that this is not going to be
34:36
the last hell House and I will tell you why.
34:38
I'll tell you why. I don't think Cognetti leaves it
34:40
on this because I think this movie is Again. He's
34:43
someone I've interviewed. I've kept in contact with him since
34:46
I talked to talk to him all these years ago
34:49
about Hellhouse LLC. I got the sense that he is
34:52
very much a well like in tune with himself guy
34:56
who gets what he knows what he's trying to do.
34:59
I think this movie is just a bit of a stumble.
35:01
I think he will probably do one more movie to
35:04
kind of redeem the franchise and there's five movies. Do
35:07
a sixth one, make it a make it an even number.
35:09
I don't think this movie is the end of the
35:11
franchise because I think this movie, I think this movie
35:14
more or less justifies there needing to be a final movie,
35:17
because this movie kind of falls so flat that you
35:20
need to redeem this movie now and and redeem your
35:24
franchise in a way like you gotta tie everything up
35:27
now and not because there's a cliffhanger at the end
35:30
of this fucking movie. By the way, can we mention that,
35:32
like a completely unnecessary and totally out of left field
35:37
cliffhanger that doesn't do anything for me anyways, I mean
35:42
does it? What does it do in this in the
35:44
in the scope of the franchise, one of the characters
35:47
that we thought was dead comes back.
35:49
Speaker 4: I don't even know what to say here. There's there's
35:52
so much just I don't know, audacity with the choice
35:55
of most of this movie. But yeah, that's that's what happens.
35:59
Speaker 2: I don't understand who the twist at the end of
36:02
the movie is for. Like, if you're a fan of
36:04
Hell House two and that movie, which has nothing to
36:08
do with this movie other than the twist at the
36:10
end of the movie. It's it's they really try to
36:14
like tie everything back together, and it's like, Oh, one
36:17
of the characters from the other movie is her secret
36:19
secret twin brother. What does that mean for the franchise? Well, well,
36:24
the thing that's weird to me is if this was
36:26
in fact the last movie, what does that twist matter?
36:30
Like why if this if this was the last movie,
36:33
why are you leaving it on a cliffhanger? Like what? What? Wow?
36:36
Is that? Is that twist?
36:38
Speaker 4: A great question?
36:39
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't. I don't. Is that twist like so
36:41
ground shattering in the in the in the context of
36:44
this franchise that you can end this franchise on that twist,
36:48
and by ending it on that twist, you can use
36:51
that twist to recontextualize the entire franchise. No, there could
36:54
have been those moments, but there's not, because that's not
36:58
what this twist is. Like, Oh, the character from the
37:00
second movie who who sacrifices himself so that the other
37:05
people can get away, is the secret twin brother of
37:09
the woman from the third movie that she didn't know about. Oh, okay,
37:14
all right, Like, I just I don't know what it
37:16
matters if you're not gonna make another movie, I guess
37:18
if you're not gonna make another movie, why does it matter?
37:20
And so that's why I'm like when he was, you know,
37:22
on these interviews that I've read him saying like this
37:24
is the last movie. I'm not doing anything else, I'm like,
37:27
why you literally left us with a cliffhanger here, like
37:30
you you kind of can't leave it hang in here
37:33
like this matters to you. It's so out of left
37:35
field for the rest of us that you kind of
37:37
need to explain almost in a way, it's like you
37:39
kind of need to explain yourself at this point, Like
37:42
you need to explain what what this choice was that
37:45
you made, because you clearly think it's very important. Now
37:49
you need to get us as the audience over that
37:52
over that line as well. And that's why I think
37:54
we're gonna get one more hell House movie. Because you
37:56
can't end this on a cliffhanger. That's just it just
37:58
doesn't It makes no sense to me.
38:00
Speaker 4: Really explain yourself, Stephen before we land this plane. One
38:06
thing that we should probably mention is the fact that
38:09
this film, and I think this is the first one
38:13
got an actual theatrical distribution this year it played I
38:18
think it was like July in theaters for literally like
38:22
less than a week. It played like three days. And
38:25
do you remember the controversy surrounding this being released in
38:29
theaters and what Cognetti did in response?
38:31
Speaker 2: I did, I did not. I did not hear about it.
38:33
I didn't even I was so out of the loop
38:36
with this movie. I didn't realize that this movie had
38:38
come out until like a week and a half ago.
38:40
Speaker 4: So people lasted COGNETI because this movie about and was
38:45
getting dreadful reviews. And Cognetti came up on letterboxed so
38:50
that other people had a chance to want to see it,
38:54
so that they would go to the theater and not
38:56
look at letterbox first and go, oh, everybody's giving this
38:58
one star. Now I don't want to go see it.
39:00
And you know, speaking of audacious decisions, that's a pretty
39:04
terrible pr decision to put behind your film that you're
39:08
asking people not to review it because of how bad
39:10
it is.
39:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not good. That's I mean, either you stand
39:17
by what you make or you don't. And you spend
39:20
a lot of time and effort to make this movie.
39:22
You spend a lot of money, you spend a lot
39:24
of time. I mean being again, the thing I come
39:26
back to, I don't I don't understand why you would
39:29
do that. That's so strange.
39:31
Speaker 4: Bad bad decision. That is a.
39:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a that is a bad That is
39:36
a very poor decision. I mean, look, we all make missteps,
39:39
and I hope that I never make one. You know
39:42
that's as public as that one given the product that
39:44
it was being released. But I mean, look, the movie
39:47
isn't great, So I wouldn't say it's one of the
39:50
worst movies I've ever watched, Like I wouldn't say that,
39:53
but I would say it's definitely up there for one
39:56
of the more disappointing movies I've ever watched in terms
39:59
of what it could have been versus what it is.
40:02
Speaker 4: It's not even the worst movie that came out this year.
40:04
It might not even be bottom five from this year.
40:06
Speaker 2: No, not even for horror. It's I guess the thing
40:09
that's more disappointing is just it's not like we get
40:11
a Hellhouse movie everybody, you know, like we're we're not
40:15
getting hell House movies all the time, Like this is
40:17
the last fifth hell House movie. So what are we
40:20
supposed to do, Like, Okay, it's not great, all right,
40:22
I guess we'll get another one. Maybe not.
40:24
Speaker 4: Like that's probably the last thing I need to say
40:27
about it is I feel like this one feels rushed,
40:30
and I almost feel like he had pressure from Shutter
40:33
to capitalize on the like the immediate cult fandom that
40:37
it had gotten, and Carmichael Manner got this great response
40:40
and the like, yes, we want you to make a
40:42
fifth one. We'll finance some of it. However, it has
40:45
to come out in twenty twenty five, so you got
40:47
to get this done. If he had let this idea
40:49
cook for a little while, he might have been able
40:51
to bake some bread. Instead, it's not done. It's it's
40:55
not set up in the middle at all.
40:56
Speaker 2: I would Yeah, I was gonna say, like he maybe
40:58
should have gone away and done something else, like done
41:02
a movie or two of another stripe and then come
41:05
back to this, like you said, like, let let the
41:08
interest build back up, like you did a lot of
41:10
good with Carmichael Manner like that. Again, I think a
41:13
lot of people, myself yourself included, like we're surprised by
41:16
how good that movie was. It was a good new
41:20
entry into the franchise in a new and interesting direction.
41:23
I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna joke. Just
41:26
the next movie. Just continue with what you were doing
41:28
in the last movie and ignore this movie, like really,
41:30
like I mean, I know you're not gonna ignore this
41:32
movie per se, but this movie not successful enough to
41:36
be a founding a column holding up the rest of
41:40
your franchise if you continue it. Let this be a
41:43
lesser movie. Focus on the other thing. But yeah, I'm
41:47
this is not like Marvel, where we're getting five movies
41:51
a year, so one of them can be bad and
41:53
the other ones are okay. This is the fifth movie
41:55
in the hell House franchise and it's not good. There's
41:57
a possibility we don't get any more hell House movies.
42:00
I don't see that being the case really, given that
42:02
we have until Stephen Cognetti is not working anymore for
42:06
that to be the case, which is probably a long time.
42:09
So I don't think that this is it. But this
42:11
is not a good entry into the franchise. And for me,
42:16
if I were too and I think, you know, speaking
42:18
of landing the plane, I think for me, a new
42:22
ranking for this franchise with this film having come out
42:27
is one, two four, three gap gap gap gap gap
42:33
gap gap five. I mean this is I mean three
42:37
is my is up until this movie coming out, Three
42:40
was the most overwritten film in this franchise because of
42:44
the lore and the mythology and all of the lore
42:47
and mythology that they introduced and then they had to
42:49
tie up in them. This movie is worse than that
42:51
because this movie is doing like eight million different things
42:54
and it's not found footage anymore. This is my least
42:57
favorite film in the franchise by a substantial gap between
43:00
the third and fifth. So I'm curious, Ryan, what about you?
43:03
Where does where? Does your ranking? Why?
43:05
Speaker 4: Now?
43:05
Speaker 2: With this movie having come out?
43:06
Speaker 4: For Chiz, I would say I agree with what you
43:08
said about the overwriting part, but I would also add
43:11
in that I think that has happened increasingly with every film.
43:15
The only Yeah, literally like two over wrote one, three,
43:21
over wrote two by a long shot. Four in my opinion,
43:24
over wrote three even and then five came in and said,
43:27
you know what, we're writing a damn novel and it
43:29
didn't work. So mine, I would say one gap four
43:34
gap two gap gap gap gap three, seventeen gaps five.
43:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, this, you know what this feels like. This feels
43:44
like Stephen Cognetti said, I'm done with the franchise. Someone
43:48
else come in and make a movie.
43:51
Speaker 4: Yeah I'm not.
43:52
Speaker 2: And that's not a knock at Cognetti, Like this doesn't
43:55
feel like his level of quality of work. And I,
43:59
having seen the movies that he's done before, know that
44:01
he can do a hell of a movie, a film
44:04
that I genuinely come back to frequent with the original film,
44:08
and this one, I may never watch it again after
44:12
having watched it the several times I watched it. For
44:14
this episode, Like, that's how unmemorable, uninteresting, and kind of
44:19
unengaged I was every time I watched it.
44:21
Speaker 4: I agree. The only thing that I think we should
44:24
say about that I gotta I don't remember is pugnat
44:27
He's done nothing else but hell House Films, right right,
44:30
So what I think is I still think he has
44:32
to prove himself as a filmmaker in general.
44:35
Speaker 2: Well, I guess no, he did.
44:36
Speaker 4: He's not even come out.
44:37
Speaker 2: He did eight two five Forrest Road.
44:39
Speaker 4: I have no idea what to excuse me, what that is.
44:42
I've not heard of that at all.
44:43
Speaker 2: It came out earlier this. It came out earlier this year.
44:46
It was written and directed by him. It is a
44:49
also a traditional narrative storytelling film. Yeah, I didn't know
44:53
that this was a thing either.
44:55
Speaker 4: What the hell, I gotta see this.
44:56
Speaker 2: It has it has u it looks like it has
44:59
kind of like fifty to fifty reviews. So I mean, look,
45:02
I again, if if it is a good movie and
45:05
it's just that hell house and and like traditional narrative
45:10
storytelling don't mix, that's one thing. But if it's like
45:14
they're both not great because they suffer from the same issues,
45:16
then you know, maybe it's just like a this style
45:20
of storytelling is in Cognitti's strong suit versus on footage.
45:23
There's nothing wrong with that. Like, you know, some people
45:25
you make their bread and butter where you can, and
45:27
you don't worry about the things you can't do because
45:29
if you could do something really well, some people can't
45:32
even do one thing really well, for fuck's sake, Like,
45:34
you know, if you could do one thing really well,
45:36
like take advantage of it, there's a guarantee that any
45:38
you know, other people can even do that thing. So
45:41
it's you know, it's the.
45:42
Speaker 4: Not to mention there's huge fan bases, just a fan footage.
45:45
You could live in that environment and make a full career.
45:48
Speaker 2: I say, like it's the it's the Gulliver's Travels of
45:51
it all right, like the idea of like you know
45:53
the person who it's like, you know, the idea of
45:56
like it's it's harder to make audiences laugh than anything else,
45:59
And it is. It's hard to make audiences laugh, right,
46:02
you know you making audiences cry and be serious is
46:05
one thing, but like, it's hard to make audiences laugh.
46:07
It's hard to be good at one thing, and he's
46:09
good at one thing. I'm not saying just do that
46:11
one thing, but like there's nothing wrong with leaning into it.
46:14
There's really not so right. Who knows Hell House LLC
46:19
six coming soon? I bet, I bet before the end
46:22
of the decade we get another one. I bet by
46:25
are you a betting man, Ryan? Because I would wager
46:28
it's it's more than fifty percent chance, and I would
46:31
say that that's probably higher than that just given the
46:34
kind of poor reception.
46:36
Speaker 4: I think this got such a bad reception, it's going
46:38
to be tough to pull off.
46:39
Speaker 2: But I mean it's either going to be tough to
46:41
pull off or it's going to be more or less
46:43
necessary to redeem the poor reception of the movie. So
46:46
that's kind of my that's kind of you know, my
46:49
my head canon as it were.
46:51
Speaker 4: So yeah, understand So.
46:52
Speaker 2: Ryan, when we're not talking about our shared love profound
46:55
footage films, Where can people find you and the things
46:57
that you work on?
46:58
Speaker 4: Uh, check out Someone's favorite dictions dot com. Everything that
47:01
I do is linked there and happy to discuss it
47:03
all with you if you need to reach out.
47:05
Speaker 2: And yeah, you can find me at Weirdingwaymedia dot com,
47:08
where all the things that I work on can be found,
47:10
like this show and Scary Stories We Tell, which is
47:13
the show I used to do, and The Projection Booth,
47:16
and The Feminine Critique and Eighties TV Ladies and Twisted
47:21
and Uncorked. Most of those shows don't even have me
47:23
on there. So if you don't like me, well, why
47:26
are you listening to this? So I don't know, go
47:28
listen to those shows. Even if you don't like or
47:30
if you do like, go listen to those shows. Go
47:32
support the network because everybody's doing really good work over there.
47:36
So like this show on iTunes, giving a good review
47:39
on Spotify, give it a good review on iTunes as well,
47:43
and come back for the next episode. When we talk
47:45
about more movies, it'll probably just be me thoughts, cont
48:06
brings from the books of the books from the books,