Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Hereditary with Puloma Ghosh
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:02Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
- 0:05Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
- 0:08Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, z Ephyn bast start changing
- 0:14Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:16Speaker 1: Hale, Caitlon, Yeah, Hale, James Amon.
- 0:24Speaker 3: It actually works pretty well, a little too well, a
- 0:27Speaker 3: little too well, too well, a little suspicious, I think.
- 0:32Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the Beymon Cast. My name's jaymon Leyman and.
- 0:40Speaker 3: My name is Kymon Deraymon.
- 0:46Speaker 1: Well, yeah, wow, look at us, and this is the
- 0:50Speaker 1: show where we talk about your favorite movies from an
- 0:54Speaker 1: intersectional feminist perspective, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping
- 1:00Speaker 1: point for discussion. But Kaitlyn, what the hell? Cape? Sorry,
- 1:06Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, came on, came on? Came on, Deraimon?
- 1:10Speaker 1: What is that? It's not gonna stop being funny to me?
- 1:14Speaker 1: Buckle in for an episode? Uh, came on, Deraymond. What
- 1:18Speaker 1: is the Bechdel Test?
- 1:20Speaker 3: It is a media metric created by Alison Bechdel. I
- 1:24Speaker 3: almost tried to make Alison Bechdel's name demonic as well.
- 1:27Speaker 1: But she just leave her out of it.
- 1:30Speaker 3: It's not Yeah, I'm so sorry, two days out.
- 1:32Speaker 1: Of Pride Month and you're demonizing Alison Bechdel.
- 1:36Speaker 3: Come on, damn anyway. It's a media metric, first appearing
- 1:42Speaker 3: in her comic Dicks to Watch Out For in the
- 1:44Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. It's often called the Bechdel Wallace test because
- 1:48Speaker 3: it was co created by Alison Bechdel and her friend
- 1:52Speaker 3: Liz Wallace. It was kind of created as a bit.
- 1:54Speaker 3: It appears in the comic as as a bit specific.
- 1:58Speaker 1: Yeah that like more references how few queer women there
- 2:01Speaker 1: are in media. It's always more complicated that it's presented
- 2:04Speaker 1: in the mainstream.
- 2:05Speaker 3: Indeed, and there are many different versions of it. The
- 2:08Speaker 3: one that we use is this, do two characters of
- 2:12Speaker 3: a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
- 2:16Speaker 3: And is there conversation about something other than a man
- 2:19Speaker 3: or about something other than Peymon? If so, it passes
- 2:24Speaker 3: the Bechdel test.
- 2:24Speaker 1: I guess are we to believe? I mean, Peymon is
- 2:27Speaker 1: pretty aggressively gendered. I guess, yeah, yeah, so tell me
- 2:31Speaker 1: about it. We can't like really talk like many like,
- 2:35Speaker 1: we can't be like Paymon is a genderless entity. In fact,
- 2:38Speaker 1: that's part of the whole thing, all right, never mind.
- 2:41Speaker 3: The whole and yeah, we'll talk about it.
- 2:43Speaker 1: Fuck what I was about to say. And today we
- 2:47Speaker 1: are covering a movie that I am pretty sure we
- 2:50Speaker 1: have gotten pretty consistent, especially during like horror movie season,
- 2:53Speaker 1: We've gotten pretty consistent requests for since it came out,
- 2:57Speaker 1: and that is our Asters twenty eighteen movie, Hereditary. And
- 3:04Speaker 1: we have with us not just an incredible writer, not
- 3:08Speaker 1: just an incredible person, but number one Hereditary fan. Let's
- 3:12Speaker 1: get her in here.
- 3:13Speaker 3: Let's she's a writer and author of the short story
- 3:18Speaker 3: collection entitled Mouth, which just came out, so check it out.
- 3:21Speaker 3: It's Paloma Ghosh, Hello, Hi, Hello, come.
- 3:26Speaker 4: So my name actually does start with a pece so.
- 3:30Speaker 3: Pala mon wow, pala, and it has a lot of
- 3:34Speaker 3: the same letters as Peymon. So I kind of fucked
- 3:38Speaker 3: that intro up. So it's Peymon gosh Hello, Hi.
- 3:43Speaker 4: Although as a long suffering Digimon fan, I just I'm
- 3:47Speaker 4: envisioning this as everyone's Digimon names right now.
- 3:50Speaker 1: Oh, it kind of is.
- 3:52Speaker 5: Wow.
- 3:52Speaker 1: I was a Pokemon girl. I was basic. Oh I
- 3:55Speaker 1: was basic. I know. Yeah, And the rivalry begins quick pivot.
- 4:02Speaker 1: So we're re covering Hereditary Caitlin came on is under Duress.
- 4:08Speaker 1: I'm really excited. I feel like we have a real
- 4:10Speaker 1: range of opinions in the chat about Hereditary twenty eighteen.
- 4:16Speaker 1: So let's start with you, Paloma. What is your connection
- 4:20Speaker 1: to this movie? What is your history with Hereditary?
- 4:23Speaker 4: So I am a fan of horror movies and try
- 4:28Speaker 4: to watch like every horror movie that is supposedly good,
- 4:32Speaker 4: even the ones that are supposedly not good. So when
- 4:35Speaker 4: this came out, all of the talk about it was
- 4:37Speaker 4: really exciting. People were like, I left the theater and
- 4:41Speaker 4: like threw up or whatever. So I had to see it,
- 4:45Speaker 4: and I saw it in theaters and it scared the
- 4:47Speaker 4: shit out of me. I had trouble sleeping. I had nightmares.
- 4:50Speaker 4: I had like, you know, wake up in the middle
- 4:53Speaker 4: of the night, gasping nightmares. And I was so scared.
- 4:57Speaker 4: And so I was like, this movie rules, because if
- 5:02Speaker 4: you watch a lot of horror, when something genuinely like
- 5:04Speaker 4: scares the shit out of you, it's exciting and not revolting.
- 5:10Speaker 4: And as a writer, I was like, Okay, this was
- 5:13Speaker 4: successful for me. I must immediately pull it apart and
- 5:16Speaker 4: figure out why. So I watched it over and over.
- 5:19Speaker 4: I have outlined it, I have like tracked scares. I've
- 5:24Speaker 4: tried to figure out like the mechanics of how this
- 5:29Speaker 4: movie fucked me up like badly, and a lot of
- 5:32Speaker 4: people I know as well for a while.
- 5:34Speaker 1: Yeah, whether you like this movie or you don't like it,
- 5:38Speaker 1: I feel like it's almost import you have to be
- 5:40Speaker 1: so hardened to the worlds for it to not fuck
- 5:43Speaker 1: you up truly. But I'm curious about how Yeah, I mean,
- 5:47Speaker 1: we'll talk about it, but like, I'm getting so amped
- 5:50Speaker 1: and terrified to talk about this movie. Caitlin came on,
- 5:53Speaker 1: what is your history with Hereditary?
- 5:56Speaker 3: Okay? I saw it in theaters and it was probably
- 5:59Speaker 3: the the most unpleasant movie theater going experience I've ever had.
- 6:05Speaker 1: I remember, I think you maybe texted me after you
- 6:08Speaker 1: saw this and you were just like, I've just had
- 6:11Speaker 1: I've just had a hell of a night. Yeah.
- 6:14Speaker 3: So I don't seek out horror movies as much as
- 6:18Speaker 3: most other genres. It's not that I don't like horror.
- 6:22Speaker 3: There are many horror movies I love, but I'm very
- 6:25Speaker 3: easily startled and scary movies. Even when they're not very
- 6:29Speaker 3: scary and not very good, they still make me so
- 6:33Speaker 3: nervous and just like stricken with anxiety. And I'm pretty
- 6:38Speaker 3: squeamish when it comes to like guts and gore and
- 6:41Speaker 3: blood and body horror. So the odds are just stacked
- 6:45Speaker 3: against me. So I struggle with a lot of horror movies,
- 6:48Speaker 3: but I still see a lot of them. And I
- 6:51Speaker 3: went to go see Hereditary because I heard that it
- 6:54Speaker 3: was so scary and so well done and like very
- 6:57Speaker 3: well directed, and there were incredible performances. So I went
- 7:00Speaker 3: to see the movie and I walked away from it
- 7:05Speaker 3: in full body pain because I was so clenched up,
- 7:10Speaker 3: just like shoulders to my ears, like plugging my ears
- 7:14Speaker 3: the whole time. It's just so tight and tense.
- 7:17Speaker 1: So it worked.
- 7:18Speaker 3: It worked. It was a very effective horror movie. There
- 7:21Speaker 3: aren't that many jump scares. There's maybe only two or
- 7:26Speaker 3: three things that might startle you, but it just fills
- 7:30Speaker 3: you with well, I won't speak for everyone. It filled
- 7:33Speaker 3: me with such dread such.
- 7:36Speaker 1: I felt fine. I felt fine the whole movie, so just.
- 7:40Speaker 3: But like dread that I've never felt before, Like other
- 7:43Speaker 3: movies will be like, oh, I feel horrible for now,
- 7:46Speaker 3: but here's another scene where I can kind of breathe
- 7:48Speaker 3: a sigh of relief before the tension ramps up again.
- 7:52Speaker 3: This movie was just constant dread and tension and scariness.
- 7:56Speaker 3: So I walked away in pain. But I was also like, wow,
- 7:59Speaker 3: that was like a beautifully crafted movie as far as
- 8:02Speaker 3: like technical cinematography, editing, sound design, all that kind of stuff.
- 8:07Speaker 3: The performance is incredible, Tony Kolett give the woman an
- 8:10Speaker 3: oscar unbelievable. But also I was like, I never want
- 8:14Speaker 3: to see that movie again. I refuse to cover it
- 8:16Speaker 3: on the Bechdel Cast. It's the one movie that I
- 8:18Speaker 3: won't do. I've publicly said this on the show, and
- 8:21Speaker 3: yet here we are, Here we are, and I've watched
- 8:24Speaker 3: the movie two more times to prep for this episode.
- 8:27Speaker 1: It took half a decade, you know. It's like we
- 8:29Speaker 1: slowly wore you down. We covered Midsummer a couple of
- 8:32Speaker 1: years ago on the Matreon and.
- 8:35Speaker 3: Now even we're here.
- 8:37Speaker 1: So what was it? Did you feel any differently revisiting it?
- 8:40Speaker 3: I felt the same because I forgot enough stuff that
- 8:44Speaker 3: everything was pretty fresh upon the rewatch. The jump scares
- 8:48Speaker 3: still scared the hell on me. The dread was still there,
- 8:52Speaker 3: and I feel horrible right now. I just want everyone
- 8:56Speaker 3: to know. Hell yeah, well the listeners out there, please
- 8:59Speaker 3: get me your sympathy. Thank you so much.
- 9:02Speaker 4: I thought on the sixth watch, I was like, it's
- 9:05Speaker 4: not gonna scare me anymore. I've seen it so many times.
- 9:08Speaker 4: It was Hubris. Still last night, I was just like
- 9:11Speaker 4: in the dark, like, oh God.
- 9:12Speaker 1: It's happening again. Literally, I mean, yeah.
- 9:16Speaker 3: Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.
- 9:20Speaker 1: I feel like it's been a while since we've had
- 9:22Speaker 1: an episode like this, but this feels like a classic
- 9:24Speaker 1: Bechdel cast dynamic where I think I'm somewhere in the
- 9:27Speaker 1: middle here where I didn't see this movie when it
- 9:30Speaker 1: first came out, but I saw it shortly after, and
- 9:33Speaker 1: I think came on. I was coming, oh, there's a
- 9:36Speaker 1: cat pull on the cat sighting pull. Him and I
- 9:39Speaker 1: both have a black cat and a gray.
- 9:40Speaker 4: Cat and the hot girls special it really is.
- 9:45Speaker 1: It's a sacred bot. So, yeah, I didn't see it
- 9:48Speaker 1: in theaters. I wish I had. I would like to
- 9:50Speaker 1: see this movie in theaters, would you?
- 9:53Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 9:54Speaker 1: I mean truly, because I haven't seen Bo's Afraid Because
- 9:57Speaker 1: no matter how much I like a director, if the
- 9:59Speaker 1: movie's too long, I'm not seeing it in theaters so long,
- 10:02Speaker 1: I just couldn't. But but ari Astor's first two movies
- 10:06Speaker 1: I think are genuinely really good, and especially with Hereditary,
- 10:10Speaker 1: even though I've seen it fewer times than I've seen Midsummer,
- 10:12Speaker 1: it's I mean, whether you like it or not, it's
- 10:15Speaker 1: a very special, uniquely terrifying movie. The fact that it's
- 10:21Speaker 1: his first feature is absolutely wild. I was watching it
- 10:25Speaker 1: with my boyfriend last night, and it it's almost frustrating
- 10:29Speaker 1: that this, like you know, this like male Otur who
- 10:33Speaker 1: from what we can tell at the time this movie
- 10:35Speaker 1: came out, nothing meaningfully traumatizing has happened to him. He
- 10:38Speaker 1: talks about that in interviews and then he makes this
- 10:42Speaker 1: and you're like, and it's good, Like that's so fucked,
- 10:46Speaker 1: But I think it is. I think it's like a
- 10:48Speaker 1: really special movie. Yeah. The first time I saw it,
- 10:50Speaker 1: I sort of was like, I've seen it all, like
- 10:53Speaker 1: fucking shock me. And it does. And it's like, kind
- 10:56Speaker 1: of in a campy sense, fun to rewatch, where it's like,
- 11:01Speaker 1: you know, on even the first rewatch, it is so
- 11:04Speaker 1: obvious the horrible thing that's going to happen. He hints
- 11:07Speaker 1: at it like a humorous amount of times to the
- 11:11Speaker 1: point where it's like, I think this was my third
- 11:13Speaker 1: viewing of it, and I did laugh when they do
- 11:16Speaker 1: the set of like, and here's this poll in the street? Interesting?
- 11:21Speaker 1: And do you have your EpiPen? Interesting? Everything I like
- 11:25Speaker 1: and dislike about ari Astors in this movie. I've watched
- 11:28Speaker 1: this I've watched it now in three very different emotional spaces.
- 11:33Speaker 1: I was having like a harder time with it this time,
- 11:35Speaker 1: but not because of the movie itself, just because of
- 11:38Speaker 1: sort of like some of the themes of grief and processing.
- 11:41Speaker 1: Like I was having a difficult time with it, but
- 11:44Speaker 1: I also think, Wow, another cat, and that's flee who's
- 11:48Speaker 1: on one? Because Casper is in my bedroom and he's
- 11:52Speaker 1: going to knock things down until he can be with
- 11:54Speaker 1: his brother, until he can be with his other paym on.
- 11:58Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I I feel like this movie has
- 12:01Speaker 1: hit me different every single time. It's always terrifying. This
- 12:05Speaker 1: is the first time I've seen this movie since I
- 12:07Speaker 1: have done a lot of research like Field and books
- 12:13Speaker 1: with spiritualism, we don't read books, not for this show.
- 12:17Speaker 1: But Caitlyn, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I've been cheating
- 12:22Speaker 1: on you.
- 12:22Speaker 3: I've read You've been reading this whole time, this whole time.
- 12:26Speaker 1: Yes, I released a podcast about the history of spiritualism
- 12:29Speaker 1: two years ago and I hadn't watched it since and
- 12:32Speaker 1: so like it was interesting to engage with on that level.
- 12:35Speaker 1: I don't know, this movie is fucking terrifying, and I
- 12:38Speaker 1: it's so it's so hard to talk about for this
- 12:41Speaker 1: specific show because so many things I get to I'm like,
- 12:44Speaker 1: I don't know. On this viewing, I think it's fascinating
- 12:48Speaker 1: and there's so much to talk about about how women
- 12:52Speaker 1: and intergenerational trauma is shown in this story. And I
- 12:57Speaker 1: still feel like it's weirdly a little left something to
- 13:01Speaker 1: be desired and felt like a little trophy on the
- 13:04Speaker 1: on the witch side for me. But the family side
- 13:08Speaker 1: was like, I mean, I feel like that's what ari
- 13:09Speaker 1: Astor does best, is like terrifying family horror dynamics. When
- 13:15Speaker 1: it gets into the witchy stuff, it kind of loses
- 13:17Speaker 1: me a little more. But I'm willing to be swung.
- 13:22Speaker 1: I'm swayable here, Okay, But yeah, I like this movie.
- 13:25Speaker 1: I just but every time I watch it, I feel differently.
- 13:29Speaker 3: Well, I'm excited to dig in. No, I'm not I
- 13:32Speaker 3: want to go watch Paddington instead.
- 13:34Speaker 1: Well, fun fact listeners, Caitlin and I are going to
- 13:38Speaker 1: see a twelve one am screening of Despicable be four.
- 13:42Speaker 1: That's right today, So any any dread or sadness is
- 13:47Speaker 1: about to be wiped clean. Your brain will never be
- 13:49Speaker 1: smoother than at two oh one am.
- 13:53Speaker 3: The best palette cleanser. Imaginable, little guys, but no, I
- 13:57Speaker 3: think this will be a very interesting discussion.
- 13:59Speaker 1: I'm excited.
- 14:00Speaker 4: I do have a quick anecdote about the first time
- 14:03Speaker 4: that I saw in theaters.
- 14:04Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
- 14:05Speaker 4: So there is like this very good like it's not
- 14:09Speaker 4: really a jump scare, but like a slow scare of
- 14:11Speaker 4: like something in the background that slowly comes into focus
- 14:15Speaker 4: towards the end of the movie.
- 14:16Speaker 3: Yes, Tony Kollet hovering around the ceiling.
- 14:20Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah that. And when I saw it in
- 14:23Speaker 4: the theaters, around that scene, there is a fly buzzing
- 14:27Speaker 4: through the house and in the like surround sound of
- 14:31Speaker 4: the theater, I literally thought there was a fly in
- 14:34Speaker 4: the theater. So I was looking around being like, where
- 14:37Speaker 4: is this fly? And I missed the first time I
- 14:40Speaker 4: watched it, I missed the initial jump scare, and then
- 14:43Speaker 4: everybody in the theater started gasping, and then I looked
- 14:46Speaker 4: and I was like, what happened? And I was so
- 14:50Speaker 4: mad about that. But I saw it later.
- 14:53Speaker 1: But this is why I want to see it in theaters,
- 14:55Speaker 1: because it's like, you can enjoy this movie and you
- 14:58Speaker 1: can be terrified this movie at home on your humble roku.
- 15:02Speaker 1: But I feel like you do. And I feel like
- 15:04Speaker 1: that that's true of all of his or all two
- 15:07Speaker 1: of his movies I've seen. It's like the sound design
- 15:09Speaker 1: is very much a part of it.
- 15:11Speaker 4: The soundtrack as well. Colin Stepson really committed to that.
- 15:16Speaker 1: Unreal It's so good. Oh, this is like Mammy Trauma
- 15:21Speaker 1: the movie, and I like it.
- 15:25Speaker 3: Mama Trauma. Let's take a quick break and then we'll
- 15:28Speaker 3: come back for the recap and we're back spooky times.
- 15:45Speaker 1: Thank you Kman.
- 15:47Speaker 3: Okay, here's the recap. I will place a content warning
- 15:51Speaker 3: here for every suicide, for mental illness discussions. There are cults,
- 15:59Speaker 3: there's all kinds of scary things. There's lots of graphic violence. Yeah, truly,
- 16:03Speaker 3: everything that might upset anyone.
- 16:06Speaker 1: That is one of the things that this movie also
- 16:08Speaker 1: does that I kind of forgot about because it had
- 16:10Speaker 1: been at least three years since I've seen it. That
- 16:14Speaker 1: always bothers me about Midsommar, a movie I generally really
- 16:17Speaker 1: really like. But just like ari Astor loves to prescribe
- 16:22Speaker 1: a specific mental illness to something that he doesn't know
- 16:27Speaker 1: what he's talking about. He's done it at least twice.
- 16:30Speaker 1: I yeah, sound off if he also does it in
- 16:33Speaker 1: bo Is Afraid, but he does it with dissociative identity disorder.
- 16:36Speaker 1: In this movie. He does it with bipolar disorder in
- 16:38Speaker 1: the first couple of minutes of Midsommer, and I just
- 16:41Speaker 1: wish he would stop stop that, because that's like a
- 16:45Speaker 1: horror trope that is very subvertible that he has not done.
- 16:49Speaker 3: I don't know, well, I mean, I think there's a
- 16:52Speaker 3: much larger discussion to be had around mental illness as
- 16:55Speaker 3: it's depicted in this movie, and how it conflates meant
- 17:00Speaker 3: illness with evil oil. But we'll get there.
- 17:04Speaker 4: Sorr.
- 17:05Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So in this recap, also, I left out
- 17:08Speaker 3: some stuff just because there's so much detail in this
- 17:11Speaker 3: movie that I had to kind of leave some stuff out. Also,
- 17:14Speaker 3: I realized when I was reading a piece about this
- 17:18Speaker 3: movie that's like summarizing the plot, I'm like, Oh, there's
- 17:22Speaker 3: a whole thing that I didn't even understand or that
- 17:24Speaker 3: didn't connect for me, So this recap might be kind
- 17:30Speaker 3: of shitty.
- 17:31Speaker 1: Well, Pulam, You're welcome to jump in whenever too.
- 17:35Speaker 3: Yes. So we open on text on the screen, which
- 17:41Speaker 3: is an obituary of Eileen Lee saying that she is
- 17:45Speaker 3: survived by her daughter Annie, her son in law, and
- 17:49Speaker 3: their two kids. We meet this family at their home.
- 17:54Speaker 3: Annie is played by Tony Kolett, her husband Steve is
- 17:59Speaker 3: gabriel Byrne. Their seventeen year old son Peter played by
- 18:05Speaker 3: Alex Wolfe.
- 18:06Speaker 1: Aka one half of The Naked Brother's Band Pluma. Did
- 18:10Speaker 1: you watch that show when we were kids? No?
- 18:13Speaker 4: I did not.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Oh my god, there was a Nickelodeon tween show called
- 18:19Speaker 1: The Naked Brothers Band starring Alex Wolf and his brother
- 18:23Speaker 1: Nat and my brother and I were so invested in
- 18:28Speaker 1: the Naked Brother's Band. Very weird that they called it that. Yeah,
- 18:31Speaker 1: but it was about like two young brothers and like
- 18:34Speaker 1: Alex Wolf is literally I think like eight or nine
- 18:36Speaker 1: in the series, and he's like, I want to play
- 18:39Speaker 1: the drums. And so that was the only thing i'd
- 18:41Speaker 1: ever seen him in, and then he was in Hereditary.
- 18:43Speaker 1: So he's got range, which.
- 18:46Speaker 3: I know him as kid from Jumanji, the newer Jumanji movies.
- 18:51Speaker 1: Oh see, I kind of forgot about that. Yeah, so yeah,
- 18:54Speaker 1: he's he's got range. She's in all kind I hear though,
- 18:57Speaker 1: based on what Tony Kollett said about working with him,
- 19:00Speaker 1: if I'm recalling correctly, he's an asshole. Oh no, what
- 19:04Speaker 1: can you do? Damn? What can you do?
- 19:07Speaker 3: So that's Peter played by Alex Wolf, and then their
- 19:10Speaker 3: thirteen year old daughter, Charlie played by Millie Shapiro. They
- 19:15Speaker 3: are getting ready to head to Annie's mother's funeral. We
- 19:20Speaker 3: cut to the funeral where Annie gives a eulogy about
- 19:24Speaker 3: her mother, how Eileen was a very private, secretive person,
- 19:30Speaker 3: and the vibes are weird. At the funeral, there's a
- 19:32Speaker 3: lot of people who Annie doesn't recognize and a strange
- 19:36Speaker 3: symbol on a necklace that Eileen is wearing. And it's
- 19:41Speaker 3: also here where it's established that Charlie has a nut allergy.
- 19:46Speaker 4: There's also a lot of adults smiling weirdly at Charlie.
- 19:51Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there are I love this movie is like
- 19:54Speaker 1: so I liked it this time, Like this movie is
- 19:58Speaker 1: so paranoi at every level, and the fact that everyone's
- 20:03Speaker 1: paranoia or like all of the characters who's were invested
- 20:06Speaker 1: in really like they're paranoia and everyone's worst fear is
- 20:10Speaker 1: true and then some and it almost feels, I don't know,
- 20:15Speaker 1: it felt cathartic on this watch to be like, yeah,
- 20:18Speaker 1: the most fucked up thing I could imagine is going
- 20:21Speaker 1: to happen tomorrow. It's true for everyone.
- 20:24Speaker 4: It tells you exactly what it is going to be
- 20:27Speaker 4: the entire time, but then does something a little bit
- 20:30Speaker 4: different than what you think it's going to do at
- 20:33Speaker 4: each turn, right.
- 20:34Speaker 3: It does subvert a lot of horror movie troupes. Like
- 20:38Speaker 3: there's a dog in the movie, Rex the dog icon who.
- 20:43Speaker 1: He makes it?
- 20:44Speaker 3: Survives?
- 20:44Speaker 4: No he doesn't?
- 20:46Speaker 1: Does not? Wait what happened to the dog?
- 20:49Speaker 4: No? Is it?
- 20:50Speaker 1: Viewing number six where you figure out that Rex.
- 20:52Speaker 4: Didn't make it at the very end, And I was
- 20:54Speaker 4: laughing about this when I was watching it last night.
- 20:58Speaker 4: They just like show Rex's body like in like the
- 21:01Speaker 4: last scene, like very in passing being like just so
- 21:03Speaker 4: you know, we killed the dog too.
- 21:07Speaker 1: I kind of do think that, like you're I don't know,
- 21:10Speaker 1: arist he's kind of a real one for that, he's
- 21:12Speaker 1: a fake dog, so I know that whatever. I think
- 21:16Speaker 1: that's kind of funny. I thought that, Yeah, like this
- 21:18Speaker 1: the thing that feels like on the rewatch, you're like, oh,
- 21:22Speaker 1: like all of the normal fake outs of like is
- 21:25Speaker 1: this the creepy person but it's never the creepy person
- 21:29Speaker 1: in the first scene, but in this movie, it is
- 21:31Speaker 1: the creepy person in the first scene. They're also the
- 21:34Speaker 1: creepy person in the last.
- 21:36Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 21:37Speaker 3: Well, it's all many creepy people.
- 21:39Speaker 4: Yeah, in general.
- 21:41Speaker 3: Oh, poor Rex the Dog. I well, I'm glad I
- 21:43Speaker 3: missed it. I did not see the demise of Rex
- 21:46Speaker 3: the Dog.
- 21:46Speaker 4: And there's a lot of other things going on.
- 21:51Speaker 1: There. Yes, yeah, Gabriel Burn is fully engulfed in flames
- 21:56Speaker 1: at one point. That's the Those are the moment we're
- 22:00Speaker 1: going to discuss shortly, and that are the two moments
- 22:03Speaker 1: where I still gasp even when I know it's coming.
- 22:06Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 22:07Speaker 3: Oh okay, So the funeral is weird, and then the
- 22:11Speaker 3: family returns home. We learn that Annie is an artist
- 22:15Speaker 3: who creates miniatures, mostly depicting scenes from her life, her
- 22:21Speaker 3: past and present. That night, Annie tucks Charlie in. They
- 22:26Speaker 3: talk about Charlie's relationship with her grandmother, how Charlie was
- 22:31Speaker 3: her grandmother's favorite, though she wanted Charlie to be a boy,
- 22:36Speaker 3: and this is the beginning of a conversation revolving around
- 22:41Speaker 3: gender and payman, so we'll examine that later. Finally, finally, finally,
- 22:50Speaker 3: then Annie goes through some of her mother's things, like
- 22:54Speaker 3: a book called Notes on Spiritualism, and there's a cryptic
- 22:59Speaker 3: note inside to Annie from her mother about sacrifice and reward,
- 23:04Speaker 3: and we're like, what's this about. Then Annie thinks she
- 23:08Speaker 3: sees her mother's ghost. Then we see this miniature that
- 23:12Speaker 3: Annie made depicting her mother trying to breastfeed baby Charlie,
- 23:17Speaker 3: something that Annie had referenced a few moments before, but
- 23:20Speaker 3: we didn't really know to what extent. And then we
- 23:23Speaker 3: see this dirama.
- 23:25Speaker 1: Basically Anne, I wrote this, Dad that like, if Annie
- 23:30Speaker 1: were a real life artist, I would for sure have
- 23:33Speaker 1: written an annoying paper about her in college, like I
- 23:38Speaker 1: would have been like it would have been some sort
- 23:40Speaker 1: of interesting gateway like miniatures as women experience. Anyone ever
- 23:45Speaker 1: think of this one before? And but I love, I
- 23:48Speaker 1: mean that's like a recurring theme in ari Astro's work too,
- 23:51Speaker 1: is like miniatures inside of miniatures. And I also love
- 23:55Speaker 1: Tony Kollett's like little I don't know, scary magne.
- 23:59Speaker 3: Like glasses, magnifying glasses.
- 24:02Speaker 1: Yeah, her like steampunk I thing I don't know.
- 24:07Speaker 3: Okay. So then some more freaky stuff happens at school.
- 24:12Speaker 3: Charlie cuts the head off of a dead bird. She
- 24:16Speaker 3: will later make a doll type thing with it. Charlie
- 24:20Speaker 3: takes after her mother as far as like being creative
- 24:23Speaker 3: and artistic expression. Charlie has a whole collection of her
- 24:28Speaker 3: mostly disturbing creations in her room. Also, there are creepy
- 24:35Speaker 3: people lurking around at school and in the woods near
- 24:40Speaker 3: their house. Strange symbols and words are popping up on
- 24:43Speaker 3: the floors and walls of the house. The grandmother's grave
- 24:48Speaker 3: apparently was desecrated. There's also this like light shimmer thing
- 24:53Speaker 3: that we'll see now and then that kind of moves
- 24:57Speaker 3: about autonomously. We don't really know what it is at first.
- 25:03Speaker 3: Is it Payman? I don't know. Then Annie goes to
- 25:07Speaker 3: a grief support group. We learn that Annie had a
- 25:11Speaker 3: very strained relationship with her mother, and that Annie's mother, father,
- 25:16Speaker 3: and brother all had pretty severe mental illnesses. Peter then
- 25:22Speaker 3: gets invited to a party and Annie makes him take
- 25:26Speaker 3: Charlie along. It seems like Charlie might have difficulty socializing
- 25:31Speaker 3: with other kids, so Annie is like insistent that she
- 25:34Speaker 3: go and socialize.
- 25:36Speaker 1: Right, She's thirteen, so like, show me a socially functional
- 25:40Speaker 1: thirteen year old.
- 25:41Speaker 4: This is also after she's been like caught just like
- 25:45Speaker 4: following a light barefoot in the yard and Annie needs
- 25:50Speaker 4: to do this like project for this gallery and she's like,
- 25:53Speaker 4: oh my god, why are you outside barefoot? I can't
- 25:56Speaker 4: deal with this right now?
- 25:57Speaker 1: Yeah, like, someone take charge of her. Although every time
- 26:01Speaker 1: with Annie in this seed, I'm like, come on, mom,
- 26:05Speaker 1: where she's she's like, okay, my seventeen year old stoner
- 26:10Speaker 1: son definitely don't smoke weed. And You're like, I mean,
- 26:15Speaker 1: I know it happens, but I'm like, come on, come on,
- 26:19Speaker 1: I mean you know the consequence is outsized, but yeah,
- 26:24Speaker 1: what you know, right, I don't know how she expected
- 26:26Speaker 1: a neutral result.
- 26:28Speaker 3: Right, Okay. So at the party, Charlie eats cake that
- 26:33Speaker 3: turns out to have nuts, and she has a severe
- 26:36Speaker 3: allergic reaction. So Peter rushes her out. He's speeding to
- 26:42Speaker 3: a hospital, and then we get the scene where Charlie
- 26:48Speaker 3: can't breathe, so she rolls down the window and sticks
- 26:51Speaker 3: her head out of the window. There's something in the
- 26:54Speaker 3: road at that very moment, so Peter swerves to miss it,
- 26:58Speaker 3: causing Charlie to be decapitated by a telephone poll.
- 27:03Speaker 1: And then this is the point where everyone in the
- 27:05Speaker 1: movie is like, oh, oh, so it's that kind of movie.
- 27:10Speaker 4: Yeah, the rules have changed, the shift has happened.
- 27:13Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, because these are fake people, I feel
- 27:17Speaker 1: comfortable saying that's fucking awesome, Like you just don't see
- 27:21Speaker 1: it coming, and it's just like it's so no matter
- 27:25Speaker 1: how many times you see it, it's shocking the way
- 27:27Speaker 1: that it's done. I like, I don't know, because I
- 27:30Speaker 1: didn't I've of the three times i've seen it, I
- 27:33Speaker 1: only actually watched that the first time because I didn't
- 27:36Speaker 1: know it was coming. Now I know to look away,
- 27:38Speaker 1: But my memory of it is that it's very it's
- 27:41Speaker 1: like almost campy practical effectie, which is probably the smarter decision,
- 27:46Speaker 1: But I honestly don't know, because when I watched it yesterday,
- 27:49Speaker 1: I was like ah No.
- 27:50Speaker 3: It's not that camp. I mean maybe, but it also
- 27:54Speaker 3: gets such a visceral, horrific response that it feels.
- 27:59Speaker 1: Well as a horror head. Is it goofy or is it?
- 28:03Speaker 4: I feel like, so this is not the thing that
- 28:06Speaker 4: I also feel like what scares people is really subjective,
- 28:08Speaker 4: So what scares me is not like what scares all
- 28:11Speaker 4: horror people. But this did not scare me. This wasn't
- 28:14Speaker 4: the I was like, oh, but I feel like it
- 28:17Speaker 4: was effective because and I've thought about this a lot.
- 28:21Speaker 4: Why people get shocked, it's because I think you have
- 28:25Speaker 4: so much anxiety from the like allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock,
- 28:29Speaker 4: whatever's happening with the nuts, and you're worried that that
- 28:33Speaker 4: is going to kill her, and you're really really focused
- 28:35Speaker 4: on is she going to make it to the hospital.
- 28:37Speaker 4: The music is also going off, and so this thing
- 28:41Speaker 4: is now like a second not forecasted, well forecasted if
- 28:45Speaker 4: you have seen it, but not otherwise forecasted thing that
- 28:48Speaker 4: just like happens really suddenly. And I think the scariest
- 28:52Speaker 4: part is because you don't see it. You just see
- 28:55Speaker 4: his reaction and you feel like the weight of it,
- 28:58Speaker 4: and then you get to hear and see everyone's reactions.
- 29:01Speaker 4: And then the jump scare is when they show you
- 29:05Speaker 4: the rotting head on the street.
- 29:07Speaker 1: Yes, that does happen too, which is which is somehow
- 29:10Speaker 1: like I don't know why that was like less. I
- 29:13Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe it's because I saw this movie after
- 29:15Speaker 1: I'd already seen Midsommar and it's just like, yeah, he's
- 29:19Speaker 1: gonna do this. He loves fly on head. And they
- 29:23Speaker 1: keep returning to that image too, of like the symbolism
- 29:26Speaker 1: of like a rotting person.
- 29:29Speaker 4: Well also the answer like a paymon thing.
- 29:33Speaker 3: Like there's so much I don't so many references. I
- 29:37Speaker 3: don't get. You do see her head come off, though,
- 29:40Speaker 3: unless I watched like a director's cut or something, you
- 29:44Speaker 3: see like her her head hit the pole and come off.
- 29:49Speaker 4: I thought it was like a silhouette.
- 29:50Speaker 3: I mean, it's enough that you like, definitely see what happens.
- 29:54Speaker 1: Sure I haven't. I haven't voluntarily watched it in five years,
- 29:58Speaker 1: so I cannot speak. I just but I know whatever
- 30:02Speaker 1: I saw the first time was enough that I was like, look,
- 30:04Speaker 1: I can't, I'm not gonna do it. But that's part
- 30:06Speaker 1: of why I like watching card movies is the parts
- 30:09Speaker 1: that are impossible to watch right right.
- 30:13Speaker 3: The point is though, that Peter is in utter shock
- 30:17Speaker 3: after this, and he just kind of drives home and
- 30:20Speaker 3: goes to bed, hoping that it didn't actually happen. But
- 30:24Speaker 3: the next morning Annie discovers Charlie's body in the car.
- 30:28Speaker 1: That's the most horrific moment of the movie to me
- 30:31Speaker 1: is watching that long shot of Peter in bed and
- 30:34Speaker 1: just like seeing him internally count down the moments until
- 30:38Speaker 1: his life is over. Basically, yes, it's just so horrible.
- 30:43Speaker 3: It's so horrible. And then you see the shot of
- 30:47Speaker 3: Charlie's severed head. There's ants crawling all over it. It's
- 30:51Speaker 3: truly like one of the most haunting images I've ever
- 30:54Speaker 3: seen in a movie.
- 30:55Speaker 1: I hope Millie Shapiro, if she wanted it.
- 30:58Speaker 3: Got that head about the prop head.
- 31:01Speaker 1: If I was her, if I was like a child
- 31:03Speaker 1: actor in a horror movie, I'd be like, give me
- 31:06Speaker 1: the head. I want the head.
- 31:09Speaker 4: Also, like that guttural scream is like something that Ari
- 31:13Speaker 4: Astor used again in Midsommar, and it is like so
- 31:17Speaker 4: effective because it touches like the deepest, like animal part
- 31:23Speaker 4: of you that like feels aversion to like the warning
- 31:28Speaker 4: scream of another human.
- 31:30Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean that without Tony Kollett's like ability, Like,
- 31:36Speaker 1: this movie is way less effective if anyone's half assing
- 31:41Speaker 1: that role because it's like she in like however, many
- 31:45Speaker 1: scenes she's like making sounds and expressions that like almost
- 31:51Speaker 1: feel inhuman but also but really human or maybe superhuman
- 31:56Speaker 1: whatever it is, like, it's just it's it's terrifying.
- 32:00Speaker 3: Like again, give her an Oscar such an incredible performance.
- 32:04Speaker 1: She's awesome, and this was an even I mean I
- 32:06Speaker 1: thought of I guess, like you know, Tony Kleett was
- 32:09Speaker 1: such a successful character actor at this time, I think
- 32:13Speaker 1: you would rarely see her outside of TV in like
- 32:16Speaker 1: leading roles. But I think I first saw her in
- 32:19Speaker 1: The Sixth Sense, where she was also playing a horror
- 32:21Speaker 1: movie mom, but very different.
- 32:26Speaker 3: But yeah, she does a great job communicating the just
- 32:29Speaker 3: grief and devastation that she and her whole family are feeling.
- 32:34Speaker 3: She is your mother, She is your mother. Everyone is devastated.
- 32:39Speaker 3: Peter is very guilt stricken. An he goes back to
- 32:44Speaker 3: the support group where she meets a woman named Joan
- 32:47Speaker 3: played by Anne Dowd, whose son and grandson died recently.
- 32:54Speaker 3: She gives Annie her number in case Annie needs someone
- 32:57Speaker 3: to talk to. Annie and Joan then get together and
- 33:01Speaker 3: Annie tells her a story about an instance that happened
- 33:05Speaker 3: a few years back where while Annie was sleepwalking, she
- 33:10Speaker 3: apparently doused herself and Peter and Charlie in paint thinner
- 33:15Speaker 3: and was about to light them on fire while she
- 33:18Speaker 3: was sleeping, but woke up when she struck the match.
- 33:22Speaker 1: I do love how this information is introduced, because it's like,
- 33:26Speaker 1: there's so many critical, horrific pieces of information introduced mid
- 33:32Speaker 1: Tony Collette Ramble, and then she just always keeps going
- 33:35Speaker 1: and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what what
- 33:37Speaker 1: did you say? What did you do? It's great, it's great,
- 33:40Speaker 1: but to her, it's like, so this.
- 33:41Speaker 3: Happened, and she's describing how she was just as shocked
- 33:45Speaker 3: as her kids were, but Peter has held it against
- 33:48Speaker 3: her ever since.
- 33:49Speaker 4: I feel like this movie does a great, like, I
- 33:53Speaker 4: don't know, representation of how like we have our own
- 33:55Speaker 4: family histories and our personal histories that we think are
- 33:57Speaker 4: totally normal and downplay, and it's not until you tell
- 34:01Speaker 4: it to another person that you realize that it's kind
- 34:05Speaker 4: of messed up. And this happens repeatedly that she does,
- 34:09Speaker 4: and the other person is like the viewer who's like,
- 34:12Speaker 4: hang on, but you never get to hang on because
- 34:14Speaker 4: they just keep they roll past it.
- 34:16Speaker 3: They just keep barreling.
- 34:17Speaker 1: That's true part of what I am really like drawn
- 34:21Speaker 1: to about Annie's character. She's like the most extreme example
- 34:24Speaker 1: of that. And you can see so much in her
- 34:26Speaker 1: own art that she is trying to process these things.
- 34:31Speaker 1: But it's not clear if she feels it feels like,
- 34:35Speaker 1: at least to be at different. At most points, it
- 34:37Speaker 1: feels like she is kind of in denial that her
- 34:40Speaker 1: art is a way of processing her life. She's just
- 34:42Speaker 1: sort of like, this is my work and this is
- 34:45Speaker 1: my life, when they're so clearly interconnected, but she's using
- 34:49Speaker 1: her I don't know. I'm really excited to talk about
- 34:51Speaker 1: like women in art as a way of like synthesizing
- 34:55Speaker 1: your life, because I just I don't know. I think
- 34:58Speaker 1: this movie does it in a really interesting way because
- 35:01Speaker 1: in most ways, when Annie's talking about her art, whether
- 35:03Speaker 1: it's to her husband, who's really the only person we
- 35:08Speaker 1: see her talk to about it, she is sort of like, well,
- 35:11Speaker 1: what do you mean this is my work? Like this
- 35:14Speaker 1: is a this is a neutral presentation and just like
- 35:17Speaker 1: the most fucked up thing you've ever seen, and you're like, Annie, Annie, Annie,
- 35:21Speaker 1: this is right.
- 35:21Speaker 3: This happens. This happens next in the story where Annie
- 35:25Speaker 3: is making a miniature of Charlie's accident with the head
- 35:31Speaker 3: on the ground and everything, and her husband Steve comes in.
- 35:34Speaker 3: He's like what the fuck Annie? And she's like what
- 35:37Speaker 3: this isn't He's like, don't let Peter see that, and
- 35:41Speaker 3: she's like, what this isn't about him? This is a
- 35:43Speaker 3: neutral presentation of the accident, and it's like, rip Steve.
- 35:47Speaker 4: She hates therapy, and it shows.
- 35:52Speaker 1: Steve is processing grief honestly, like you know, rip to Steve.
- 35:59Speaker 1: He did his best. He did his best. He was like,
- 36:02Speaker 1: consider our son, and Annie was like, no, no.
- 36:06Speaker 4: My husband and I were talking about at what point
- 36:08Speaker 4: would we have left each other in the situation. Uh huh,
- 36:12Speaker 4: We'll get to it. But there's an outburst that I
- 36:16Speaker 4: think I would have been like, we're going to my
- 36:18Speaker 4: mom's and you need to go work that one out.
- 36:22Speaker 1: M yeah, yeah, like he would have been the tricky
- 36:25Speaker 1: thing is like their kid. But it's like, if I'm Steve.
- 36:28Speaker 1: I also thought that this is like, if I'm Steve,
- 36:31Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, Peter and I. It's tricky though,
- 36:34Speaker 1: because then you're leaving Annie by herself and t'sau without
- 36:38Speaker 1: a support system. But it's like, you gotta It seems
- 36:40Speaker 1: like Steve is trying to do the right thing, which
- 36:43Speaker 1: just think about his kid, but he's kind of thwarted
- 36:46Speaker 1: at every turn when it comes to trying to act
- 36:49Speaker 1: in the best interests of his kid. Not to say
- 36:51Speaker 1: that he couldn't have done better, but he was doing
- 36:55Speaker 1: his best if it was just the two of them.
- 36:56Speaker 1: If I'm Steve, I'm like, I'm going to Disneyland, Like
- 37:01Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm going, I'm going somewhere.
- 37:03Speaker 4: I feel like the turning point really was I think
- 37:06Speaker 4: that she was becoming harmful to the kid's healing process,
- 37:11Speaker 4: and you know, like I feel like it would be
- 37:14Speaker 4: like for the sake of the kid that I would
- 37:16Speaker 4: want to get out of that situation.
- 37:18Speaker 3: The scene which we're coming up on soon. But when
- 37:22Speaker 3: she like forces them to participate in a seance with her,
- 37:26Speaker 3: and Peter's like very visibly upset, It's like, Okay, we
- 37:31Speaker 3: need to maybe not be doing this.
- 37:33Speaker 4: Tony Kolett that was my husband's point.
- 37:36Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean because Steve really does try to, like,
- 37:41Speaker 5: you know, he goes with her as far as he
- 37:43Speaker 5: could go before drawing the line, and by that point it's.
- 37:47Speaker 1: Unfortunately too late. But I don't know, yeah, I you know,
- 37:51Speaker 1: like we're not parents. I can't say for sure, but
- 37:54Speaker 1: it just seems like Steve was trying to do his best.
- 37:57Speaker 1: And there's an interesting like choice in and maybe it's
- 38:01Speaker 1: just like logistical our writing choice from ari Astor where
- 38:05Speaker 1: Steve is like kind of a flat character in a
- 38:08Speaker 1: lot of ways, where we're not led to believe that
- 38:11Speaker 1: Steve has a support system to turn to. It's just
- 38:14Speaker 1: everything is taking place inside of this miniature, and everything
- 38:19Speaker 1: outside of the miniature is a little bit nebulous and
- 38:22Speaker 1: confusing because we're not led to believe that Steve has
- 38:25Speaker 1: family members or friends that he could really go to
- 38:28Speaker 1: or that he feels comfortable going to about this, and
- 38:31Speaker 1: so he's also kind of a prisoner in this dynamic,
- 38:35Speaker 1: which is a real thing, just thankfully not pam on real.
- 38:40Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, isolation is really important for this.
- 38:44Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 38:45Speaker 3: So the next thing is a dinner scene where Peter
- 38:50Speaker 3: and Annie yell at each other and blame each other
- 38:53Speaker 3: for the accident, and no one accepts any kind of
- 38:58Speaker 3: accountability for any thing. This is something that Annie is
- 39:03Speaker 3: kind of lashing out about, and so things are very
- 39:06Speaker 3: very tense among the family.
- 39:09Speaker 1: Tony Collette is so good in that scene.
- 39:11Speaker 4: And it's amazing, I'm your mother.
- 39:14Speaker 1: It's a meme for a reason.
- 39:18Speaker 3: Then Annie runs into Joan again, who had recently met
- 39:22Speaker 3: a spiritual medium who does seances, and the medium conjured
- 39:27Speaker 3: the spirit of Joan's grandson, and so Joan is trying
- 39:31Speaker 3: to convince Annie to come over, and she does, and
- 39:34Speaker 3: Joan performs a seance and summons her grandson again. Annie
- 39:40Speaker 3: gets freaked out and leaves. Then we see a scene
- 39:44Speaker 3: where Annie has some scary dreams. She has sleepwalked into
- 39:49Speaker 3: Peter's room again. She lets it slip that she never
- 39:53Speaker 3: wanted to be his mother, that her mother pressured her
- 39:57Speaker 3: into having kids. Annie tried to have a misc It
- 40:00Speaker 3: turns out that Annie telling Peter all of this was
- 40:03Speaker 3: also just a dream, but it's not clear if that
- 40:06Speaker 3: is actually something that happened or not because it's framed
- 40:10Speaker 3: as a dream, so we don't totally know, but based
- 40:13Speaker 3: on the events of the story, we can maybe glean
- 40:16Speaker 3: that that was true for Annie. Not sure, but anyway.
- 40:20Speaker 3: Then Annie gets Steve and Peter together and performs a seance.
- 40:25Speaker 3: They are skeptical and upset. Peter is very scared, and
- 40:31Speaker 3: it seems like Annie summons Charlie's spirit using something that
- 40:36Speaker 3: belonged to Charlie, which is a notebook that she used
- 40:39Speaker 3: to sketch in and this summoning of the spirit seems
- 40:43Speaker 3: to work, but then things go wrong where Charlie kind
- 40:48Speaker 3: of embodies Annie and it's weird and scary.
- 40:52Speaker 4: My favorite line from the movie is when Peter in
- 40:55Speaker 4: that scene is going can't you feel it the air flexing?
- 40:58Speaker 1: And I was like, ooh, it is like the most
- 41:03Speaker 1: like accurate but also like teenage boy way of describing
- 41:07Speaker 1: what is happening. M h.
- 41:11Speaker 3: And then things really start to fall apart for the family.
- 41:16Speaker 3: From this point on, Annie discovers that notebook of Charlie's,
- 41:23Speaker 3: where her spirit seems to be drawing a bunch of
- 41:26Speaker 3: pictures of Peter with his eyes crossed out. Not a
- 41:30Speaker 3: great omen. Annie thinks she might be able to stop
- 41:34Speaker 3: all of this if she burns the notebook, but when
- 41:37Speaker 3: she tries to throw it in the fire. Her arm
- 41:40Speaker 3: catches fire, as if she and the notebook share some link.
- 41:44Speaker 3: Then Annie goes through her mother's stuff again and finds
- 41:48Speaker 3: photos of her mother with Joan. Turns out that Joan
- 41:53Speaker 3: knew Eileen all along. There are photos depicting them participating
- 41:58Speaker 3: in some kind of ritual. There are strange symbols. There
- 42:02Speaker 3: are books on the occult, and Annie reads a passage
- 42:06Speaker 3: about someone named King Payman, one of the eight Kings
- 42:11Speaker 3: of Hell, and he needs a vulnerable host to inhabit
- 42:18Speaker 3: or possess, specifically a male host, and we're like, hmm, Peter,
- 42:26Speaker 3: question mark. Then Annie goes up to the attic, where
- 42:30Speaker 3: she finds the rotten corpse of possibly her dead mother,
- 42:35Speaker 3: although the head has been removed so we can't really
- 42:39Speaker 3: id her at this time now. Meanwhile, at school, Peter,
- 42:44Speaker 3: as if possessed by some sinister spirit, bashes his own
- 42:49Speaker 3: face against his desk.
- 42:52Speaker 1: This is another case of classic ari astor what's the
- 42:55Speaker 1: most fucked up thing I could think to do right now?
- 42:58Speaker 4: This is also right after he sees his own reflection
- 43:01Speaker 4: in like a cabinet, and the reflection is smiling at him.
- 43:04Speaker 4: That really scared me, I feel scared thinking about it now.
- 43:08Speaker 3: I feel like that was used for the trailer when
- 43:10Speaker 3: they were promoting this movie. Yeah, I kind of remember that.
- 43:14Speaker 1: Oh.
- 43:14Speaker 3: Anyway, Steve brings home an unconscious Peter, and then Annie
- 43:20Speaker 3: runs up and is trying to explain how she thinks
- 43:22Speaker 3: that burning Charlie's notebook will sever whatever sinister connection has
- 43:27Speaker 3: been created. She begs Steve to burn the book, knowing
- 43:32Speaker 3: that she will combust and burn because of this link.
- 43:36Speaker 3: He won't do it. He wants to call the police.
- 43:39Speaker 3: He thinks that Annie is having a mental break, so
- 43:43Speaker 3: she throws the book in the fire again, thinking it's
- 43:47Speaker 3: going to make her burst into flames. But surprise, it's Steve,
- 43:52Speaker 3: her husband, who combusts and dies instead.
- 43:57Speaker 1: I did not see this coming, Oh, and never see
- 44:00Speaker 1: it coming, no matter how many times. And you're just like, yeah, Steve, Steve,
- 44:06Speaker 1: you should have gone to Disneyland. Steve, you should have
- 44:10Speaker 1: taken Alex Wolf to Disneyland, and then you know we
- 44:14Speaker 1: would have been.
- 44:16Speaker 4: But he loved her. You know, it's broke my heart.
- 44:21Speaker 4: This is a love story.
- 44:22Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, no, absolutely where it's it makes me sad.
- 44:28Speaker 1: It makes me sad. Yeah, that like he was trying
- 44:33Speaker 1: to do right by his family by Annie because also
- 44:38Speaker 1: it seems like, I mean, just based on what we
- 44:39Speaker 1: know about this family, that he has had to stand
- 44:43Speaker 1: by her through. Really, I mean, we know that her
- 44:46Speaker 1: kids had a weird to bad relationship with her due
- 44:51Speaker 1: to the whole almost lighting them all on fire thing,
- 44:55Speaker 1: And it seems like he has been put in the
- 44:59Speaker 1: position repeatedly of having to be the like calm, most
- 45:03Speaker 1: calming presence in the room. But it's like dipped so
- 45:08Speaker 1: far that he is, you know, I don't think intentionally,
- 45:11Speaker 1: but like his need to appease everybody and be present
- 45:15Speaker 1: for everybody is ultimately like what brings his downfall and
- 45:22Speaker 1: the downfall of like other people, because it's like he's
- 45:25Speaker 1: never quite decisive. He almost emails a therapist saying she's
- 45:31Speaker 1: a girl. He almost does a lot of things, but
- 45:33Speaker 1: because of his love for his wife and his fear
- 45:37Speaker 1: of hurting her, like, he never quite takes the step
- 45:41Speaker 1: he needs to protect his kids. I don't know, it's
- 45:44Speaker 1: so fucked. I don't know what I would do if
- 45:47Speaker 1: I if I'm Steve, I'll be honest.
- 45:49Speaker 4: I am.
- 45:52Speaker 3: Hard to say when your family is being possessed by
- 45:55Speaker 3: one of the eight Kings of Hell. You just don't
- 45:58Speaker 3: know how to handle such a Wait, you won't know
- 46:01Speaker 3: until you're there, right.
- 46:03Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And and this will happen to all three
- 46:06Speaker 1: of us at some point. This is a part of
- 46:08Speaker 1: the human experience that goes without saying.
- 46:10Speaker 4: I'm alone in my house and all the lights are off.
- 46:13Speaker 4: I might actually stand up to go turn some lights.
- 46:15Speaker 4: And I'm gonna go turn the hallway light on really fast.
- 46:22Speaker 1: This is beautiful.
- 46:27Speaker 4: I I'm back.
- 46:28Speaker 3: Okay, lights are on. We feel safe. So we've just
- 46:32Speaker 3: seen Steve burst into flames and burn to death. Annie
- 46:37Speaker 3: is shocked by this for a brief moment, but then
- 46:39Speaker 3: seems to kind of disassociate. Then we cut to Peter
- 46:44Speaker 3: waking up in his bed. He goes downstairs and discovers
- 46:47Speaker 3: his charred father. He sees a creepy naked man lurking
- 46:53Speaker 3: in a doorway. This is where we see Tony Klet.
- 46:56Speaker 1: You know.
- 46:57Speaker 3: Annie perched up by the ceiling as if she flew
- 47:01Speaker 3: or floated up there. Then she lunges at Peter and
- 47:04Speaker 3: chases after him. He locks himself in the attic, but
- 47:08Speaker 3: then Annie is in the attic with him, sawing her
- 47:11Speaker 3: own head off with piano wire. So that's interesting.
- 47:16Speaker 4: So sick.
- 47:18Speaker 3: Peter jumps out the window, but then that light shimmer
- 47:22Speaker 3: thing that we saw before seems to enter him and
- 47:27Speaker 3: compels him to go up to the treehouse that I
- 47:30Speaker 3: forgot to mention until now, But we have established this
- 47:34Speaker 3: treehouse earlier. We got a Chekhof's treehouse, and now it's
- 47:38Speaker 3: paying off because he goes up there and what's in
- 47:41Speaker 3: the treehouse, Well, it's a bunch of stuff. It's members
- 47:45Speaker 3: of a cult that worship King Payman. It's Charlie's head
- 47:51Speaker 3: on a statue of King Payman. It's the decapitated bodies
- 47:56Speaker 3: of Peter's mom and Grandma Joe is there and she's saying, hey, Charlie,
- 48:04Speaker 3: we've I'm quoting the dialogue here, we've corrected your first
- 48:10Speaker 3: female body and we gave you this healthy male host.
- 48:16Speaker 3: And then she goes on to say, you are payment.
- 48:18Speaker 3: We bind ourselves to you. Give us your knowledge and
- 48:22Speaker 3: your wisdom and your riches. Hail payment the end.
- 48:27Speaker 1: So yeah, cute Joni Mitchell's song, and.
- 48:30Speaker 3: We're like, oh, wild song to end on the part
- 48:34Speaker 3: that I didn't fully get was that that Charlie was
- 48:38Speaker 3: Payman the whole time, and that her decapitation was this
- 48:44Speaker 3: kind of planned out thing from the cult, Like the
- 48:48Speaker 3: accident wasn't actually an accident. They the cult like made
- 48:51Speaker 3: this happen so that Payman could be transferred from Charlie's
- 48:57Speaker 3: body into Peter's body. And so that's the part that
- 49:02Speaker 3: I didn't quite get that, like the accident was not
- 49:05Speaker 3: actually an accident. I don't know if that was more
- 49:08Speaker 3: clear to other people.
- 49:09Speaker 4: But now, if you, I mean later on subsequent watches,
- 49:13Speaker 4: you notice the symbol of the cult is on, Like
- 49:17Speaker 4: on the way to the party, they pass a telephone
- 49:20Speaker 4: pole and the symbol from the cult is on, like
- 49:23Speaker 4: embossed in the telephone pole. Yeah, but on my first
- 49:27Speaker 4: watch or even second, I didn't notice that necessarily. So
- 49:31Speaker 4: it's pretty like I feel like the world building elements
- 49:34Speaker 4: are given really minimally, and all of the stuff with
- 49:39Speaker 4: the cult is happening really backgrounded, and the focus is
- 49:43Speaker 4: really on the family. And maybe this is why you
- 49:46Speaker 4: felt that the the cult stuff was maybe or like
- 49:49Speaker 4: the witchy stuff was maybe less developed, because it seems
- 49:52Speaker 4: to be kind of besides the point and really being
- 49:55Speaker 4: used as an as an engine to heighten this family struggle.
- 50:00Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair assessment.
- 50:03Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, now that we'll let's take a book, Brazer,
- 50:07Speaker 1: let's take a break and come back and get into.
- 50:10Speaker 3: It, and we're back. Where to begin.
- 50:21Speaker 1: I kind of want to start with the witchier stuff
- 50:26Speaker 1: in here, because yeah, I agree plumbit that it's like,
- 50:29Speaker 1: it feels like the supernatural elements of this are secondary
- 50:34Speaker 1: and almost like used to amplify the family dynamics that
- 50:38Speaker 1: are at the core of this. It's weird that this
- 50:42Speaker 1: movie came out in twenty eighteen and because of like
- 50:47Speaker 1: the cultural moment of early twenty eighteen. This is right
- 50:51Speaker 1: after the Me Too movement begins, and so there's a
- 50:54Speaker 1: lot of takes on this movie that feel a little
- 50:56Speaker 1: dated in that sense, not to say that it is
- 50:59Speaker 1: like inaccurate, but that I don't know, like, it was
- 51:03Speaker 1: interesting going through the initial wave of reception, some of
- 51:07Speaker 1: which I think was really insightful and some of which
- 51:08Speaker 1: I feel like was like a little bad faith in
- 51:11Speaker 1: how the material was received, because I think at that
- 51:15Speaker 1: point it's like, oh, so we're saying all women are witches,
- 51:18Speaker 1: and you're like, well, why is that a bad thing. Yeah,
- 51:21Speaker 1: I guess on my end, like just based vaguely on
- 51:24Speaker 1: what I know about spiritualism. What I thought was interesting
- 51:30Speaker 1: is whatever. Spiritualism is a late nineteenth century movement that
- 51:34Speaker 1: went well into the twentieth century. It was a religious
- 51:38Speaker 1: movement that women were at the center of. And there
- 51:43Speaker 1: are so many flaws that came with this religion. That
- 51:47Speaker 1: are the flaws like at the center of a lot
- 51:49Speaker 1: of religions where it was you know, taking and sort
- 51:53Speaker 1: of mutating indigenous beliefs and reclaiming it as if they
- 51:57Speaker 1: understood it, which was not true. You know, this is
- 52:00Speaker 1: very much like a religion that was shaped and put
- 52:04Speaker 1: on display by white women in the late nineteenth century
- 52:07Speaker 1: into the twentieth century. But it is a rare religious
- 52:11Speaker 1: movement that was driven by women, and that was very
- 52:15Speaker 1: threatening to the religious institutions at the time because spiritualism
- 52:21Speaker 1: intersected with all of these progressive movements. It intersected with abolitionism,
- 52:26Speaker 1: like Frederick Douglass like fucked around with spiritualism. Like there's
- 52:31Speaker 1: a lot of history that is like it was at
- 52:34Speaker 1: its core a flawed but essentially progressive religion that women
- 52:40Speaker 1: were at the center of and so there was a
- 52:43Speaker 1: vested interest as this religion sort of continued to develop
- 52:47Speaker 1: to prove that it was made up, which like depending
- 52:53Speaker 1: on how whatever this is like in a very casually
- 52:56Speaker 1: mean way to view religion, it's all made up. But
- 53:00Speaker 1: there was a vested interest in like, no, this religion
- 53:03Speaker 1: is extra made up because women are at the center
- 53:07Speaker 1: of it, and so the heads of and and a
- 53:10Speaker 1: lot of it was made of and I also still
- 53:14Speaker 1: kind of believe in it anyways. But you know, there
- 53:17Speaker 1: were the seance rituals that we sort of see in this,
- 53:22Speaker 1: the idea of like table ceremonies, versions of the what
- 53:27Speaker 1: would eventually become the Ouiji board, but you know, table movements,
- 53:32Speaker 1: glass movements. All of this stuff was very inherent to
- 53:36Speaker 1: what this was in the nineteenth century and a very
- 53:40Speaker 1: mainstream way at one point, like Mary Todd Lincoln like
- 53:44Speaker 1: brought in the creators of spiritualism to try to bring
- 53:47Speaker 1: Abe back, like it was a mainstream movement for a
- 53:50Speaker 1: while that was shut down when it was you know
- 53:53Speaker 1: like oh well this isn't quite you know, actually the
- 53:57Speaker 1: supernatural accessing it as if any religion in the world
- 54:02Speaker 1: has been like, actually we have the ghosts like, no
- 54:05Speaker 1: one has the ghosts, but we all have the ghosts.
- 54:08Speaker 1: That's why we all have the ghost But I just
- 54:11Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that they went in on
- 54:14Speaker 1: this religion that was driven by white American women, specifically
- 54:20Speaker 1: for this generational trauma story. It like, I think it works.
- 54:25Speaker 1: I just I don't know the way it's executed with
- 54:29Speaker 1: the whole payment thing, I don't know. It felt a
- 54:33Speaker 1: little like YadA YadA YadA to me. But also I
- 54:36Speaker 1: know that there are six hour analyzes and a lot
- 54:39Speaker 1: that I missed. I just thought spiritualism was like a
- 54:42Speaker 1: cool entry point, and I didn't super love where he
- 54:46Speaker 1: went with it. I guess I don't know what does
- 54:48Speaker 1: everyone think.
- 54:50Speaker 3: I mean, my one of my biggest issues with the movie,
- 54:55Speaker 3: and I remember thinking this after I left the theater
- 54:58Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen when I saw it then, was the
- 55:02Speaker 3: what felt to me like a conflation of mental illness
- 55:08Speaker 3: and evil demons and kings of hell and that kind
- 55:12Speaker 3: of stuff where I think the movie is suggesting. And
- 55:19Speaker 3: I will just put a disclaimer here to say that
- 55:22Speaker 3: when a movie scares me so badly like this, I
- 55:25Speaker 3: have a hard time thinking about it intellectually and critically.
- 55:31Speaker 3: Just because my brain gets so scared. I feel like
- 55:33Speaker 3: I had a similar problem on the episode we did
- 55:36Speaker 3: on The Ring, where I'm like, well, I don't know
- 55:39Speaker 3: how I feel about this movie from an intersectional feminist lens,
- 55:44Speaker 3: because I'm too scared and my brain doesn't work right now.
- 55:48Speaker 3: But the kind of general thing I feel is that again,
- 55:53Speaker 3: the movie does a very harmful thing of conflating mental
- 55:56Speaker 3: illness with evil and demon And you know, there's this
- 56:02Speaker 3: idea throughout the movie of something being hereditary and being
- 56:06Speaker 3: inherited from your family, and it kind of feels like
- 56:10Speaker 3: the movie posits the question, is it mental illness that's
- 56:14Speaker 3: being passed down through the generations or is it Payman
- 56:18Speaker 3: that's being passed down like you inherit the demon king
- 56:22Speaker 3: that your mother dedicated her life to, whether you like
- 56:25Speaker 3: it or not. And I mean, I think you could
- 56:28Speaker 3: also make the argument that it's not conflation, it's allegory,
- 56:33Speaker 3: like Payman is a metaphor for mental illness the way
- 56:37Speaker 3: that you can read like the Babaduk is a metaphor
- 56:41Speaker 3: for postpartum depression. And I also see a reading of
- 56:46Speaker 3: the specific mental illnesses that Annie describes her family members
- 56:50Speaker 3: as having when she says, like, my father had this
- 56:53Speaker 3: and died as a result, my brother had this and
- 56:58Speaker 3: died by suicide. But what was being perceived and diagnosed
- 57:02Speaker 3: as mental illness in Annie's father and brother was actually,
- 57:07Speaker 3: I lean, trying to put paymen inside them. It was
- 57:10Speaker 3: never a mental illness. It was the demon all along.
- 57:14Speaker 3: And I see those interpretations, but I still can't help
- 57:17Speaker 3: but feel that what the movie is doing here is
- 57:20Speaker 3: very malicious, especially because the specific mental illnesses that are
- 57:25Speaker 3: mentioned are ones that are very often demonized by media
- 57:30Speaker 3: and horror movies, ones that have huge stigmas attached to them.
- 57:34Speaker 3: So I think the movie is conflating mental illness and
- 57:39Speaker 3: evil in a very harmful and stigmatizing way.
- 57:45Speaker 4: I know what you mean, but I almost feel like, So,
- 57:48Speaker 4: there's there's two places where I feel this, and I
- 57:53Speaker 4: absolutely see what you're talking about.
- 57:55Speaker 1: Here.
- 57:56Speaker 4: Is one in like the family History of mental Illness,
- 57:59Speaker 4: and they really get very specific with the types of
- 58:02Speaker 4: mental illness, but then don't really go into too much
- 58:05Speaker 4: detail aside from like the few tidbits that like Tony
- 58:09Speaker 4: spits out in like a ramble of hers and it's
- 58:14Speaker 4: like a very classic horror trope. Slash like thing that
- 58:18Speaker 4: happened in real life, that when people are mentally ill
- 58:23Speaker 4: or struggling with mental illness that is like affecting the
- 58:26Speaker 4: way they interact with other people. That like, historically people
- 58:29Speaker 4: have been like it's satan or like it's the devil.
- 58:33Speaker 4: And also this comes up over and over again in
- 58:36Speaker 4: horror movies about possession, where they initially think it is
- 58:40Speaker 4: a mental or physical like illment, but it's satan that's
- 58:44Speaker 4: like hysterical or like exactly exactly.
- 58:47Speaker 1: That's a lot of like I felt like the most
- 58:50Speaker 1: effective moment for me every time, even when you know,
- 58:54Speaker 1: like it's hard for your heart to not be with
- 58:56Speaker 1: Steve where he's like what like, but because he is
- 59:00Speaker 1: so thoroughly convinced of what is going on, he is
- 59:05Speaker 1: not able to believe his wife about what is going on.
- 59:09Speaker 1: And she is right, like right, you can argue with
- 59:13Speaker 1: her methods all day long, you know, but she's right.
- 59:17Speaker 1: She is telling him what is happening, and he doesn't
- 59:21Speaker 1: believe her. And I think that that is like a
- 59:24Speaker 1: running theme throughout this movie of I mean, that is
- 59:27Speaker 1: part of why Charlie is gone. She is trying to
- 59:30Speaker 1: advocate for herself she's trying to say, like I don't
- 59:33Speaker 1: want to go to this party. I don't want to
- 59:35Speaker 1: be here. I'm sick, and like by the time someone
- 59:39Speaker 1: takes it seriously, it's already too late. And like, I
- 59:44Speaker 1: think the same thing. You kind of see the same
- 59:45Speaker 1: thing happen to her mother where they are both suffering.
- 59:51Speaker 1: And I agree that like the way that already asked her,
- 59:56Speaker 1: you know, deals with explicit mental illness in general, I
- 59:59Speaker 1: think is just like really messy and I just personally
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: don't like it. But what I thought, I don't know, plumber,
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: let me know you. I think that like what he
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: was trying to do, and I am kind of on
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: like how effective it is, but like what he's trying
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: to do is almost like a comment on like hysteria
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: and how women are so often told like no, you're
- 1:00:25Speaker 1: not telling the truth. Something bad isn't happening, something is
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: wrong with you, and there is a name for it.
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: And the problem with that is like that does invalidate
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: a lot of mental illness and talk around mental illness.
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: But the core of what he's saying I don't disagree with,
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: and there is especially because he's talking about spiritualism, it
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: feels like grounded in some historical precedent too, of just
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: like I just don't like what you're saying, and so
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: I need it to go away, and I need it
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: to go away by any means necessary. I don't know,
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: I don't know.
- 1:01:02Speaker 4: Yeah, what I was thinking about with that is that
- 1:01:06Speaker 4: I wonder if the movie is trying to be like
- 1:01:11Speaker 4: what if it was the thing that you were afraid
- 1:01:14Speaker 4: it was, or what if the uncanny thing? What if
- 1:01:16Speaker 4: it was real and it was not explained by the
- 1:01:19Speaker 4: mental illness, And it's kind of like interacting with the
- 1:01:25Speaker 4: history and the tropes in that way. But I agree,
- 1:01:28Speaker 4: it's kind of like it's a little half baked. But
- 1:01:31Speaker 4: I think the aspect that kind of graded on me
- 1:01:35Speaker 4: was Charlie specifically, who exhibits like maybe having some issues
- 1:01:42Speaker 4: like socially that might like need some like therapeutic intervention potentially,
- 1:01:48Speaker 4: but it's because she's a demon. That's like where I
- 1:01:54Speaker 4: was like, Okay, well, you know, just because someone has
- 1:01:59Speaker 4: trouble making friends with kids their age and like she
- 1:02:02Speaker 4: has like a very stilted way of talking, doesn't mean
- 1:02:06Speaker 4: that they are an incarnation of like the ninth demon
- 1:02:09Speaker 4: of Hell or whatever.
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: Socially awkward thirteen year old girl. If all of them
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: are pam On, we're fucked.
- 1:02:20Speaker 2: Right.
- 1:02:21Speaker 3: I was reading different people's writing about this movie through
- 1:02:25Speaker 3: the lens of disability and ableism. The movie doesn't say
- 1:02:29Speaker 3: anything specific about Charlie, but some people were reading Charlie
- 1:02:34Speaker 3: as being autistic based on various traits and behaviors she displays.
- 1:02:40Speaker 3: And then separate from that, the actor who plays Charlie,
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: Millie Shapiro, was born with clydal cranial dysplasia, which affects
- 1:02:49Speaker 3: a person's bones and teeth often affects their height and
- 1:02:52Speaker 3: facial structure. So to characterize Charlie in this way, that
- 1:02:58Speaker 3: can be read as being neurodivergent. And this character is
- 1:03:02Speaker 3: played by an actor who has a facial difference, and
- 1:03:06Speaker 3: that's the character who has a demon living inside them
- 1:03:10Speaker 3: and has had this demon in them since, like right
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: after they were born. Has very ablest implications. But I
- 1:03:18Speaker 3: also saw examples of people with autism saying they felt
- 1:03:21Speaker 3: represented by Charlie, regardless of the implication that her atypical
- 1:03:27Speaker 3: behavior and vocal stemming, for example, are actually a demon
- 1:03:34Speaker 3: displaying these behaviors. So again open to many reads and interpretations.
- 1:03:41Speaker 3: I also wanted to point out that there is ablest
- 1:03:44Speaker 3: language surrounding Charlie, not directed at her exactly, but that
- 1:03:51Speaker 3: scene where Peter's crush says Charlie drew a picture of her,
- 1:03:56Speaker 3: and then this girl uses an ablest slur to describe
- 1:04:00Speaker 3: how Charlie depicted her in the drawing, which I feel
- 1:04:04Speaker 3: is still a veiled ablest insult toward Charlie. All this
- 1:04:08Speaker 3: to say, there's a lot happening in this movie regarding
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: implications surrounding mental illness and disability and neurodivergence and whether
- 1:04:18Speaker 3: or not those things are actually a demon inhabiting someone's body,
- 1:04:24Speaker 3: and none of it sits well with.
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: Me, right, Yeah, Like that's I feel like where the
- 1:04:30Speaker 1: issue is. It just kind of like interrupts I don't know,
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: it interrupts part of what I like about this movie,
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: which is, you know, it's a little absurd and like
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: way over the top because it's fucking hereditary. But the
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: idea that like this line of women have been far
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: more powerful than anyone ever gave them credit for because
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: of the way that people kind of systemically dismiss women's
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: con concerns, women's ideas and I also feel like it
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: kind of ties into you know, like the fact that
- 1:05:08Speaker 1: Annie is an artist, and that is like doesn't seem
- 1:05:12Speaker 1: like it's taken super seriously by anyone in her family
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: or anyone around her. And I don't know. I like,
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: on its face the fact that like, you know, these whatever,
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: three four generations of women have been you know, dismissed
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: as very sick, when in fact they were extremely powerful
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: and misunderstood. I like that theme. I think it gets
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: very messy. I don't think ari Astor, a first time
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: male director, is the one to be able to present
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: this in a nuanced and thoughtful way. But I like
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: the core idea of it. But that's all a little
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: like interrupted by having Charlie be the demon, like why why? Yeah.
- 1:05:59Speaker 4: But at the same time, I keep thinking about what
- 1:06:01Speaker 4: you had said earlier, that like what if your worst
- 1:06:04Speaker 4: fear and like the worst thing you're thinking is actually true.
- 1:06:08Speaker 4: This is like what if that child who's behaving oddly,
- 1:06:12Speaker 4: it's actually because they're that like worst fear, like they're evil.
- 1:06:16Speaker 4: So it's like that over and over again with all
- 1:06:18Speaker 4: of these different things.
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: I also don't think that Annie, like I, you know, whatever, narratively,
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: Annie is not a great parent, Like she's not, and
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, her mom was also a
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: pretty like horrifically bad parent, and there is like I
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: mean hereditary hat like has to do with this paymon shit,
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: but it also has to do with behavioral patterns like
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: Annie was. It seemed like went through I mean, we
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: know went through a lot of really traumatic stuff when
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: she was a kid, and the attitude in the house
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: is we don't talk about it. And we see her
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: repeat that pattern when she loses her mother and then
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: she loses her daughter. She never talks to Peter, and
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: I think, you know, like you can go any which way,
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: but like in this family, Steve is the more emotionally
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: intelligent parent and he's not great, but he's trying. And
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: you just see Annie for all of these reasons that
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: are understandable, but in terms of showing up for her kid,
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: she doesn't. And like that scene between Peter and Annie
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: at the dinner table is so gut wrenching because you
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: can just feel ugh, like it like makes me feel
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: sick when I watch it because you can just see
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: like both of these characters want it to be someone's fault.
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: And the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: why it kind of bugs me. Bugged me, and I
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: think still bugs me that at the end we're kind
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: of given a prescriptive answer as to why what happened happened.
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: It did surprise me that we were given such a
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: clear cut answer, but I sort of I guess, just
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: like personally, I kind of preferred the stomach churning uncertainty
- 1:08:14Speaker 1: of like why did this happen? Sure Annie's choice is
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: contributed to it, and Peter's choice is contributed to it,
- 1:08:22Speaker 1: but there's no clear answer, there's no clear fault. But
- 1:08:26Speaker 1: the end of the.
- 1:08:26Speaker 3: Movie, ultimately it was the cult.
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: Well that's why. That's sort of why I don't like
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: the witchy stuff towards the end, because it like it
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: gives you. I thought it just kind of gave me
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: more answers than I wanted in a way that felt
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: almost like a little bit less haunting at the end
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: to be like, oh, it was actually, you know, like
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: the scary Treehouse cult that this was predetermined many moons ago,
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: and like so now, I mean, not that it ends
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: great for Peter, but you know, he can whatever rest
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: assured that it wasn't his fault, which I feel like
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: is almost a worse punishment than becoming the devil himself.
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: Is always wondering like was this my fault? Like that's
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: one of the most I think like horrible actual things
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: that can happen to a person is having to wonder that.
- 1:09:17Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, there's so much about blame in this movie,
- 1:09:21Speaker 4: and I have in my notes. I have the word
- 1:09:24Speaker 4: blame in big letters with a square around it because
- 1:09:27Speaker 4: it comes up over and over again and how like
- 1:09:31Speaker 4: blame can like distort relationships. But sure, I kind of
- 1:09:36Speaker 4: feel the opposite of you on the committing to an answer,
- 1:09:42Speaker 4: like a clear cut answer that there was a cult
- 1:09:44Speaker 4: and there was a demon and all of this was
- 1:09:46Speaker 4: I feel like so much horror that like is allegorical
- 1:09:52Speaker 4: or like trying to represent or talk about things like
- 1:09:56Speaker 4: commits too hard and the metaphor is like too neat clean,
- 1:10:01Speaker 4: and this one is like messy a little bit, and
- 1:10:05Speaker 4: like none of the none of the representations, like feel
- 1:10:09Speaker 4: are like one hundred percent. We can't definitively be like
- 1:10:13Speaker 4: this is about grief, or like this is about inherited trauma,
- 1:10:18Speaker 4: or this is about mental illness or anything like that
- 1:10:21Speaker 4: like all of that stuff is like in the soup,
- 1:10:24Speaker 4: and what makes it cohesive is that there is actually
- 1:10:28Speaker 4: a plot and a reason rooted in like the reality
- 1:10:33Speaker 4: of the movie for all of these things to be happening,
- 1:10:37Speaker 4: and ultimately, like all of the characters are kind of
- 1:10:43Speaker 4: helpless in the face of the larger powers. And I
- 1:10:46Speaker 4: think that's where I enjoy horror is just like when
- 1:10:50Speaker 4: it lets go of the notion that we as like
- 1:10:54Speaker 4: little people with our little dramas, have any sway on
- 1:10:59Speaker 4: these like huge, old, supernatural things that are happening around us.
- 1:11:05Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes I wish I could be like, yeah, the depression,
- 1:11:10Speaker 3: I'm constantly feeling that's just the seventh King of Hell
- 1:11:15Speaker 3: weaseling his way into my brain.
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: Maybe that's a personal thing because I would rather blame
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: myself and my mom for those things.
- 1:11:26Speaker 4: But that's like in a family drama, it's like it's
- 1:11:29Speaker 4: yourself and the mom is the problem. And then that's
- 1:11:33Speaker 4: like the lovely thing about horror, just like genre in general,
- 1:11:36Speaker 4: it's like, but actually, there's like this third, sinister, magical
- 1:11:39Speaker 4: thing that has nothing to do with you guys.
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's personal. I just wish that there
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: was maybe. I mean, I don't even object to like
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: the inclusion of the cult. It's like you almost kind
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: of get a second movie out of it. But I
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: just wish maybe there was I don't know, Yeah, this
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: is strictly a personal thing, but I wish there was
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: a little more like leeway left for You're not totally sure,
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: because cults are created by people, but this movie would
- 1:12:05Speaker 1: have you believed because you see, like whatever spiritualism had
- 1:12:09Speaker 1: sound off. You see that Tony Collette checks all of
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: the classic spiritualist tricks. She looks under the table, she
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: looks for this, she looks for that, and so if
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: you've seen any seance rig, you know it's clear that
- 1:12:23Speaker 1: like this is real, and that is like confirming the
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: existence of this magic. I just I don't know, Yeah,
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: I wish that that door was kind of left open
- 1:12:33Speaker 1: a little bit. I've found myself like really drawn to
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: like horror stories that let you have a little bit
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: of both. I read a book recently, The September House
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: by Carissa Orlando. It's a really good haunted house book
- 1:12:50Speaker 1: that I feel like kind of like lets you have
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: your cake and eat it too, where it is like
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: a story that is grounded in a woman going through
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: a mental health crisis and also ghosts surreal and like
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: both of these things exist. I don't know, that's it
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: was my ideal horror story where mental illness is a
- 1:13:11Speaker 1: real and present force and also the supernatural is fucking
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: with us at all times, and if you combine the two,
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: you're fucked, which is maybe just like what I was
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: looking for more from the conclusion of Hereditary then than
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: there is. But yeah, again that's like a personal thing.
- 1:13:30Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:13:31Speaker 3: I mean, if the like cult and payment stuff and
- 1:13:35Speaker 3: all the magic and mysticism is taken out of this movie,
- 1:13:39Speaker 3: it would just be a really effective family drama about
- 1:13:44Speaker 3: grief and generational trauma.
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: You gotta have the goals.
- 1:13:49Speaker 3: Yeah, But I do like that there is a lot
- 1:13:52Speaker 3: of emphasis on blame and trust too, where like the
- 1:13:58Speaker 3: families having troubled each other and where they can't trust
- 1:14:03Speaker 3: each other, they are throwing blame around at each other.
- 1:14:06Speaker 3: So and these are like things that are very familiar
- 1:14:09Speaker 3: in a lot of family dynamics, So I think it's
- 1:14:12Speaker 3: interesting that the movie explores those and I think that's
- 1:14:16Speaker 3: why this movie has like a longer lasting legacy and
- 1:14:21Speaker 3: is beloved by its fans more than a pretty like
- 1:14:25Speaker 3: straightforward ghost story movie that fails to kind of dig
- 1:14:29Speaker 3: deeper into you know, a character's internal struggle and you know,
- 1:14:34Speaker 3: complicated family dynamics, which a lot of horror movies fail
- 1:14:38Speaker 3: to do just because it's like it's a ghost story
- 1:14:41Speaker 3: or it's a monster story and you know, not really
- 1:14:44Speaker 3: digging deep into anything actually like interesting or thematic about
- 1:14:48Speaker 3: the human experience or the human condition. I want to
- 1:14:52Speaker 3: talk about payment and gender because.
- 1:14:58Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I guess there's something.
- 1:15:01Speaker 3: There's something here in the text of the movie. So
- 1:15:05Speaker 3: we learned we hear early on in a conversation between
- 1:15:10Speaker 3: Charlie and her mom Annie. It's right after the grandmother's funeral,
- 1:15:15Speaker 3: and Charlie says, Grandma wanted me to be a boy,
- 1:15:20Speaker 3: and we don't really get any context for that or
- 1:15:23Speaker 3: any other information aside.
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: I feel like we're just like left to play on
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: the classic successor thing.
- 1:15:30Speaker 4: I don't know, Yeah, I feel like having grown up
- 1:15:33Speaker 4: in a really patriarchal like family that my grandmother also
- 1:15:39Speaker 4: was like I wish you were a boy when I
- 1:15:41Speaker 4: was first born, So I like totally like breathed past that.
- 1:15:45Speaker 4: I was like, oh, that's normal patriarchy stuff.
- 1:15:49Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it could definitely be chalked up to that.
- 1:15:53Speaker 3: And then as the movie goes on, and especially by
- 1:15:55Speaker 3: the end, you find out why the grandma won her
- 1:16:00Speaker 3: to be a boy because of the whole payment thing.
- 1:16:05Speaker 3: And when Annie is kind of rifling through the book
- 1:16:08Speaker 3: about King Payman, there's this passage that I paused on
- 1:16:13Speaker 3: and wrote down as much of it as I could,
- 1:16:16Speaker 3: but it's basically explaining that there's some text because if
- 1:16:20Speaker 3: you look up payment on you know, scholarly journal Wikipedia,
- 1:16:25Speaker 3: this is a thing Like this isn't an invention for
- 1:16:27Speaker 3: the movie Hereditary, there's lore.
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: I think a lot of horror movies have like encountered
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: different versions of these guys.
- 1:16:35Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's apparently some text called the Goaisha or something,
- 1:16:41Speaker 3: and the book that Annie reads from says the Goisha
- 1:16:44Speaker 3: itself makes no mention of King Payman's face. Then there's
- 1:16:48Speaker 3: like text that's cut off other documentation describes him as
- 1:16:52Speaker 3: having a woman's face, while something something some other text
- 1:16:56Speaker 3: refers to him using strictly masculine pronouns. As result, the
- 1:17:00Speaker 3: sexes of the hosts have varied, but the most successful
- 1:17:04Speaker 3: incarnations have been with men and it is documented that
- 1:17:08Speaker 3: King Payment has become livid and vengeful when offered a
- 1:17:12Speaker 3: female host. For these reasons, it is imperative to remember
- 1:17:16Speaker 3: that King Payment is a male, thus covetous of a
- 1:17:19Speaker 3: male human body. So we find out, okay, this Payment
- 1:17:24Speaker 3: worshiping cult needs a male host to put Paymin into.
- 1:17:31Speaker 3: And then again through some things that are implied throughout
- 1:17:37Speaker 3: the movie, we realize that Payman has been inhabiting Charlie,
- 1:17:42Speaker 3: or had been inhabiting Charlie, but King Payment wasn't happy
- 1:17:47Speaker 3: about that. He wants a male host. So that's why
- 1:17:53Speaker 3: they orchestrate this whole thing to put Paymin into Peter's body.
- 1:17:59Speaker 3: I don't know why that didn't just happen originally.
- 1:18:02Speaker 4: Oh, they they explained that there's a part where I
- 1:18:06Speaker 4: think it's in the in the like grief group therapy
- 1:18:09Speaker 4: thing where she talks about how she wanted to distance
- 1:18:14Speaker 4: herself from her mother because of like their toxic relationship,
- 1:18:18Speaker 4: and she didn't let her go near her son at all, right,
- 1:18:23Speaker 4: but then she felt bad about it, so she quote
- 1:18:26Speaker 4: unquote gave her Charlie.
- 1:18:28Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay, got it. So that's why they use
- 1:18:31Speaker 3: Charlie's body for king Payment to inhabit, but it's not
- 1:18:37Speaker 3: quite working out because Payment is a misogynist and he
- 1:18:41Speaker 3: hates women or something. I don't know what to make
- 1:18:45Speaker 3: of this exactly.
- 1:18:48Speaker 4: Or he's just like very like secure in his gender.
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: And wants present body being put into their wrong body. Yeah,
- 1:18:56Speaker 1: it's like we gotta decapitate this body. I don't like. Yeah,
- 1:19:01Speaker 1: I didn't know what to make of it either, but
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: I yeah, when I was reading back on criticism of
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: the time, I feel like I didn't quite agree with
- 1:19:11Speaker 1: the genter, like there's like a clear desire for a
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: male leader. I don't know. I don't know because I
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: think I like, ultimately what I decided is I don't
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: know or understand enough about the underlying like.
- 1:19:26Speaker 6: Satanist demonology, demonology. Yeah, it's like spiritualism, I get. But
- 1:19:32Speaker 6: towards the end this movie pretty severely takes a left
- 1:19:37Speaker 6: from that and gets full on into demon shit.
- 1:19:40Speaker 1: And so this movie I feel like, lures you in
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: with kind of like more friendly like women are in
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: charge spiritualism, and then it takes a turn to demonism
- 1:19:49Speaker 1: at some point in a way that like I felt
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: out of my depth and it feels like and this
- 1:19:55Speaker 1: is just like strictly based on observation, it seems like
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: the demon shit is a little more patriarchal. Yeah, I
- 1:20:06Speaker 1: just felt like a departure from what we were seeing
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: before because spiritualism is historically driven by women, and demon
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: shit seems like it is not. So I didn't know
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: what they were doing.
- 1:20:19Speaker 4: Demon stuff is for boys, like church church adjacent, which
- 1:20:26Speaker 4: traditionally I think.
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: Right, it gets more patriarchal. Yeah, it was just confusing.
- 1:20:31Speaker 1: I wonder how much like ari Astor knows about this
- 1:20:35Speaker 1: shit and how much of it is just like this
- 1:20:37Speaker 1: is what I need to happen. What do I need?
- 1:20:39Speaker 1: Like what horror tools could I use to make it happen?
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess not that we're talking about it.
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: It feels like there is kind of like a fake
- 1:20:46Speaker 1: out with like leading with like spiritual practice that is
- 1:20:52Speaker 1: both troubled and women of historically been leaders, and then
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: kind of pivoting at some point to like, actually it's
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: a more patriarchal demon thing. I don't know.
- 1:21:06Speaker 4: I feel like the spiritualism part was actually a trick
- 1:21:10Speaker 4: that the cult was playing on Annie, being like you're
- 1:21:15Speaker 4: a medium and we can contact your child, and this
- 1:21:19Speaker 4: is like, this is a spiritualism thing, but really they
- 1:21:23Speaker 4: were like read this incantation that summons the demon and
- 1:21:28Speaker 4: summon's your child. And by your child, I do mean
- 1:21:30Speaker 4: the demon that was inhabiting your child, right, and like
- 1:21:33Speaker 4: using the grief, like grief drove a lot of spiritualism stuff,
- 1:21:38Speaker 4: I think, which I learned from your podcast actually, and
- 1:21:45Speaker 4: this is like capitalizing on that for like other nefarious
- 1:21:49Speaker 4: demon cult needs and it's all Rosemary's Baby from there.
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: It is truely. I mean, it's like and Doud's performance
- 1:21:57Speaker 1: is so clearly pulled from Raspberry's and like I mean
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: that as a compliment, but it's like you can see
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: how like interacting those movies are. I yeah, I don't know.
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: And and again it's like I guess it's everyone's my
- 1:22:12Speaker 1: life is going to vary for like ari astor landing On,
- 1:22:15Speaker 1: Like it's actually this scary patriarchal thing that ended up
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: being kind of the internal truth of what's going on.
- 1:22:23Speaker 1: It does explain how most women in this world seem
- 1:22:29Speaker 1: to be absolutely fucked or beholden to this system. But
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, the supernatural stuff in this movie,
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: it's very possible that I just don't know enough, but
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: it never quite connects for me. The family stuff really connects. Yeah,
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: it just seems like a family of people who are
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: all genuinely doing their best and are undercut by either
- 1:22:52Speaker 1: mental illness or the work of the devil, and sometimes.
- 1:22:56Speaker 3: Both, sometimes both. And I think ari astroposits one of
- 1:23:02Speaker 3: those two things are the same thing, mental illness.
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: And that devil.
- 1:23:06Speaker 3: But maybe I'm just overthinking it.
- 1:23:09Speaker 4: But uh, I don't want to. I don't know. I
- 1:23:11Speaker 4: don't want to feel like that's the general way that
- 1:23:15Speaker 4: or like the thesis of the movie. But I think
- 1:23:18Speaker 4: it is like the what if of the movie, Like
- 1:23:20Speaker 4: not that like mental illness and the devil are the same,
- 1:23:23Speaker 4: but like what if they were? And that's like a
- 1:23:26Speaker 4: weird place to land sometimes, right.
- 1:23:28Speaker 3: I also think I'm influenced by something that we bring
- 1:23:31Speaker 3: up on the podcast a lot, which is that early
- 1:23:34Speaker 3: scene in Midsommar where there's a character who is explicitly
- 1:23:39Speaker 3: stated to have bipolar and then she murders her whole
- 1:23:43Speaker 3: family as if her bipolar drove her to murder.
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: I was just I was just about to bring that
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: up where that still is always gonna bother me more
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: because Midsommar is not a supernatural movie. It's a cult movie.
- 1:23:57Speaker 1: Like these are both cult movies, but Hereditary is also
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: a supernatural movie. Midsummer is explicitly like in that world,
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: we do not see magic shit happen. Any of the
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: visions that happen in that movie are brought up by drugs.
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: So like, I'll always be and I love Midsummar, but
- 1:24:17Speaker 1: like I will always be bothered by him. That feels
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: like the worst like explicit conflation of she is this
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: and therefore this happened where at very least, and I
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: still don't like how like it doesn't quite connect with
- 1:24:31Speaker 1: me how the the two are connected. But at least
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: it feels like there's the possibility of a what if.
- 1:24:38Speaker 1: But in Midsummer there's it's just like text like bipolar
- 1:24:42Speaker 1: people kill their families.
- 1:24:44Speaker 4: You're just like in general, I like I like Hereditary
- 1:24:48Speaker 4: better than mits Sommer because of I think the supernatural.
- 1:24:52Speaker 4: Oh and I think it was just scarier period.
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: It is scarier. But they both love rotting aheads and
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: lighting people fire. He is like it's his strange addiction
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: is doing that. But yeah, I don't know, I at
- 1:25:08Speaker 1: least I don't know. While I find the supernatural stuff frustrating,
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: sometimes it does temper some of the stuff that. Yeah,
- 1:25:17Speaker 1: I don't think ari Astor like, I don't think enough
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: bad things have happened to him.
- 1:25:23Speaker 4: I mean, we don't have to talk about his short films.
- 1:25:28Speaker 3: I couldn't. I haven't seen them.
- 1:25:30Speaker 4: Yeah I've seen, I just know about them. I shan't
- 1:25:33Speaker 4: be seeing.
- 1:25:34Speaker 1: I saw, I saw the Big One, and yeah, No,
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: I just think that ari Astor is like I should
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: in general, keep specific mental illnesses out of his mouth
- 1:25:48Speaker 1: and his writing until we understand why he's doing it,
- 1:25:52Speaker 1: because sometimes there does feel like a shock jockey, you know,
- 1:25:58Speaker 1: which feels weird to say of an like an indeed
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: horror director. But it does sometimes feel like, what's the
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: most fucked up thing I could present in a way
- 1:26:07Speaker 1: that you could still present something really really really fucked
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: up and not be like bipolar made her do it,
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: you know, or I don't know. In Hereditary it feels
- 1:26:18Speaker 1: like there's a little bit more purpose, or at least
- 1:26:22Speaker 1: an argument for purpose behind it. But it's this first movie.
- 1:26:26Speaker 1: There's stuff that doesn't quite work.
- 1:26:29Speaker 4: No, I think it succeeds for me on like a
- 1:26:34Speaker 4: horror level. The other stuff I think is good, better
- 1:26:38Speaker 4: than a lot of horror movies and like more thoughtful
- 1:26:42Speaker 4: and like the character the acting is really good. I
- 1:26:44Speaker 4: think really helps in the character work is interesting. But
- 1:26:48Speaker 4: why I love this movie is like really more because
- 1:26:52Speaker 4: the scares and the tension and it is just such
- 1:26:56Speaker 4: an effective horror movie.
- 1:26:58Speaker 3: Yeah, truly, Yes, it's so.
- 1:27:00Speaker 1: I mean it's like impossible not to get completely sucked in,
- 1:27:03Speaker 1: Like it's there's no movie I've seen that. I've seen
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: movies that explore the same themes, but it's like uniquely
- 1:27:13Speaker 1: like punishing and engrossing. And the performance, like there's not
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: a bad performance in it. Everyone is like going at
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: a ten the entire time. It's it's awesome.
- 1:27:24Speaker 4: And the soundtrack, oh does work. I love to this
- 1:27:28Speaker 4: is some of my favorite writing music is the soundtrack
- 1:27:30Speaker 4: for this.
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: It's so and I mean Poloma just like speaking to like,
- 1:27:35Speaker 1: I love your books so much, and it feels like
- 1:27:39Speaker 1: you are able to work in the supernatural into family
- 1:27:44Speaker 1: dynamics and into friendship dynamics like so uniquely, but I
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: think you do it better than mister Astor. But also
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: he's great at it. But I just if anyone listening
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: has not yet read Paloma's work, I think it does
- 1:27:59Speaker 1: with this movie does better.
- 1:28:01Speaker 4: Oh thank you, it's really it's really nice of you
- 1:28:05Speaker 4: to say it's true.
- 1:28:08Speaker 3: Going back to the conversation about gender, so when ari
- 1:28:12Speaker 3: Astor was asked in an interview with Variety, is there
- 1:28:15Speaker 3: ever a Charlie or is she paym on from the
- 1:28:18Speaker 3: moment she's born? Ari Astor responds, from the moment she's born.
- 1:28:23Speaker 3: I mean, there's a girl that was displaced, but she
- 1:28:26Speaker 3: was displaced from the very beginning. So we have this
- 1:28:29Speaker 3: male demon that inhabits the body of someone who was
- 1:28:33Speaker 3: assigned female at birth. And some writers have discussed a
- 1:28:37Speaker 3: trans masque read of this movie. I want to pull
- 1:28:40Speaker 3: from a piece in the publication Them by Sasha Geffen
- 1:28:45Speaker 3: entitled trans Horror Stories and Society's Fear of the trans
- 1:28:49Speaker 3: Masculine Body. What the film Hereditary reveals about society's moral
- 1:28:53Speaker 3: panic surrounding trans masculine people. This piece points out that
- 1:28:58Speaker 3: most trans horror story to date have stoked a fear
- 1:29:02Speaker 3: in the trans feminine movies like you know, Silence of
- 1:29:06Speaker 3: the Lambs and Psycho, but Sasha Geffin points out that
- 1:29:10Speaker 3: in general, in horror movies, a prevalent trope is the
- 1:29:14Speaker 3: idea of quote, one gender swirled up into another creates
- 1:29:19Speaker 3: a monster. The piece goes on to say, quote. Millie
- 1:29:24Speaker 3: Shapiro's performance as Charlie abused the character with a deep
- 1:29:27Speaker 3: pathos and clearly conveys that she feels alienated from her body.
- 1:29:32Speaker 3: During a phone interview, film critic Caden Mark Gardner tells
- 1:29:35Speaker 3: me he recognized his own childhood gender dysphoria in Charlie's
- 1:29:39Speaker 3: on screen presence. This is now a quote from Caiden
- 1:29:43Speaker 3: Mark Gardner. When I was growing up, even though I
- 1:29:46Speaker 3: didn't realize I was going through gender dysphoria, I was
- 1:29:49Speaker 3: in these baggy hoodies and genes a lot of the time,
- 1:29:52Speaker 3: sort of the way Charlie was dressing, he says. Together
- 1:29:55Speaker 3: with film critic Willow maclay, he publishes Body Talk, a
- 1:29:58Speaker 3: series of conversation about films that speak implicitly or explicitly
- 1:30:03Speaker 3: to the trans experience. Many of these films are horror movies,
- 1:30:07Speaker 3: as horror is one of the only genres where the
- 1:30:10Speaker 3: sanctity of the body is regularly disrupted, where the distress
- 1:30:14Speaker 3: of something akin to gender dysphoria is expressed legibly on screen.
- 1:30:19Speaker 3: Hereditaries transition allegory involves not only the violent death of
- 1:30:23Speaker 3: a girl, but also the torture and eventual evacuation of
- 1:30:27Speaker 3: a CIS male body. Parentheses Peter that Charlie's transition requires
- 1:30:32Speaker 3: so much physical violence speaks to a lingering anxiety among
- 1:30:36Speaker 3: sis people, that transition is at best a form of
- 1:30:39Speaker 3: mutilation and at worst a kind of death, a sloughing
- 1:30:44Speaker 3: of one body in exchange for a new, different one.
- 1:30:49Speaker 3: The piece goes on, I think the whole thing is
- 1:30:51Speaker 3: worth a read. We will link it in the description,
- 1:30:54Speaker 3: But I thought this was just a really interesting interpretation
- 1:30:57Speaker 3: of that aspect of the movie.
- 1:31:01Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: Yeah, I do feel like it's like another demonstration of
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: how open to interpretation kind of this story remains. And
- 1:31:11Speaker 1: I feel like that's been a conversation around a lot
- 1:31:13Speaker 1: of horror movies that we've covered, and how many of
- 1:31:16Speaker 1: the horror movies we've covered are made by ariastrotypes of
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: you know, like white GUYO Tours. And it doesn't make
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: the movie less good or less impactful, but it does
- 1:31:29Speaker 1: make it that guy again.
- 1:31:32Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I feel like I feel this. A lot
- 1:31:35Speaker 4: of horror is like women centric and then also made
- 1:31:38Speaker 4: by men. Yes, and it is so like steeped in
- 1:31:42Speaker 4: this like fear of womanhood and like things that like
- 1:31:49Speaker 4: in this movie, like women are in this, like they're
- 1:31:51Speaker 4: part of the secret, and like men are kind of
- 1:31:54Speaker 4: inert and like I feel like that is present in
- 1:31:58Speaker 4: this movie and in a lot of movie that puberty, pregnancy.
- 1:32:02Speaker 4: It's like all of these things that happen to women
- 1:32:04Speaker 4: and that women experience are horrific and like unfathomable to
- 1:32:10Speaker 4: the men who are creating these pieces.
- 1:32:12Speaker 3: It's the topic of so many horror movies the class.
- 1:32:17Speaker 4: And in this one, it's motherhood in a way.
- 1:32:20Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't quite get into this, but yeah, the
- 1:32:23Speaker 1: idea of like, I don't know, the idea that like
- 1:32:26Speaker 1: this is a mother who is an artist and yet
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: her like her art is conflated so much with her
- 1:32:33Speaker 1: family life, and like her dysregulation in some way is
- 1:32:37Speaker 1: connected to her art. I don't know. I just say
- 1:32:40Speaker 1: there's so many different entry points to this movie, to
- 1:32:43Speaker 1: the point where I truly don't know what ari Astor
- 1:32:47Speaker 1: is trying to say. I just know that the viewing
- 1:32:49Speaker 1: of this movie feels very individual where I've always come
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: at it of like my read of the movie has
- 1:32:57Speaker 1: always been like, women are far more powerful than people
- 1:33:00Speaker 1: give them credit for. Mothers are far more powerful than
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: people give them credit for. But because of all of
- 1:33:07Speaker 1: this various nagging, like that kind of all goes unseen
- 1:33:12Speaker 1: and that all you know compounds to what I think
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: is kind of like a dissatisfying conclusion. But like what
- 1:33:19Speaker 1: you just said, ploment is just as valid to read
- 1:33:21Speaker 1: of like the fear of like what generations of women
- 1:33:26Speaker 1: are doing, and an anxiety around women and being kind
- 1:33:31Speaker 1: of subjugated and defeated by them in like Steve's case.
- 1:33:36Speaker 1: And I don't know, there's just like so many inns
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: to just seeing this movie, and I like that there's
- 1:33:42Speaker 1: not a definitive one, and that's probably why people still
- 1:33:46Speaker 1: love it so much.
- 1:33:47Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's part of why I also really like
- 1:33:50Speaker 4: this movie is the is that there are so many
- 1:33:54Speaker 4: interpretations and so many things being represented and played with
- 1:33:59Speaker 4: throughout the movie. And it is not like this like
- 1:34:03Speaker 4: one to one metaphor for anything in particular, and that's
- 1:34:07Speaker 4: like what is so what makes it such good horror
- 1:34:10Speaker 4: is that you can find something to fear because there
- 1:34:13Speaker 4: are so many things, as you said, entry points, and
- 1:34:18Speaker 4: that's why I think it hits for so many people.
- 1:34:20Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there is also something to be said
- 1:34:23Speaker 3: for the fact that we know Annie's character far better
- 1:34:28Speaker 3: than we know her husband.
- 1:34:30Speaker 1: We know next to nothing about him other than he's struggling.
- 1:34:34Speaker 3: He's struggling and he's doing his best. But yeah, we
- 1:34:37Speaker 3: see Annie working very often. We see Steve at work
- 1:34:42Speaker 3: one time, but we don't know what he does and
- 1:34:44Speaker 3: it's not relevant to anything. He's sidelined. Steve is for
- 1:34:49Speaker 3: many chunks of the movie, and that's feminism.
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: Well, it's like at least attempting to explore or like
- 1:34:57Speaker 1: has you I don't know, I don't know. I feel
- 1:35:00Speaker 1: like this movie is weirdly a step forward. But speaking
- 1:35:03Speaker 1: to what you were saying a little earlier, Plobo, like,
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: I always get hyper agitated when you know, regardless of
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: how much I like dislike whatever, good, bad, and different
- 1:35:13Speaker 1: in the movie when a like Oteurs burst onto the
- 1:35:17Speaker 1: scene is a guy centering a woman's experience and being
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: like I wrote this, I got it, I figured it out,
- 1:35:24Speaker 1: and like, often it's horrible, Often it's awesome, But I
- 1:35:28Speaker 1: just like I get into like a looping thing of like,
- 1:35:31Speaker 1: but they'll always get another chance. It doesn't matter if
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: they nail it or not. And like, do people ultimately care?
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: Why is Ari Aster centering women in his piece? I
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: don't need the answer, but sometimes I just get conspiratorial
- 1:35:49Speaker 1: and I'm just like it felt like, especially in the
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: late twenty tens, a lot of men And you can't
- 1:35:54Speaker 1: say this for Astor because this is his first feature,
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: but in this time there are a lot of men
- 1:36:00Speaker 1: who were suddenly centering women in their pieces to be like,
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: buh the no no no no, Like in disregard everything
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: I said before, I actually have always cared about women's
- 1:36:12Speaker 1: internal lives, and like I just took me til twenty
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: nineteen to like do it, and then you watch it
- 1:36:16Speaker 1: and you're like, well, this fucking sucks, and like, so
- 1:36:19Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that I also bring an
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: inherent anger to Yeah.
- 1:36:24Speaker 4: I also feel like it's just like maybe semi unrelated
- 1:36:29Speaker 4: pang about like how difficult it is to be a
- 1:36:34Speaker 4: woman doing horror. It's so like male dominated, and yet
- 1:36:39Speaker 4: the stories are all so frequently about women, and so
- 1:36:44Speaker 4: I feel a bit of resentment about that.
- 1:36:47Speaker 3: I have several theories as to why that is why
- 1:36:52Speaker 3: men fixate on like women in horror stories because they're
- 1:36:58Speaker 3: afraid of them.
- 1:36:59Speaker 4: Well, they're scared of women.
- 1:37:03Speaker 3: Let women's bodies do and I'm speaking like cis normatively here,
- 1:37:09Speaker 3: I realize that. But as far as like pregnancy and periods.
- 1:37:14Speaker 1: Yeah, like pussy monsters, have we covered on this fucking shell.
- 1:37:18Speaker 1: They're like the scariest in the world, and it's like
- 1:37:21Speaker 1: a vagina.
- 1:37:22Speaker 3: So that's one thing. I also just think that because
- 1:37:27Speaker 3: men tend to see women as weak and jostile and fragile,
- 1:37:33Speaker 3: and we need to be protected and we need to
- 1:37:34Speaker 3: be We're so delicate that the things that happen in
- 1:37:40Speaker 3: horror movies, you know, the horrific imagery and and the
- 1:37:43Speaker 3: stalking and the chasing and the killers stabbing, it's I think,
- 1:37:49Speaker 3: perceived to be more horrific when those things happen to
- 1:37:51Speaker 3: women than if, oh, if these things were happening to men, Oh,
- 1:37:55Speaker 3: they'd be able to fight off the stabby killer or whatever.
- 1:37:59Speaker 3: I think I think that part of the horror of
- 1:38:02Speaker 3: so many horror movies is this is happening to a woman,
- 1:38:06Speaker 3: and doesn't that make it so much scarier?
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: Right, I agree, but I also like, I don't think
- 1:38:10Speaker 1: that that's really what are a astro, but it's all
- 1:38:14Speaker 1: of that to this movie too, like it's impossible not to.
- 1:38:18Speaker 4: And also, like with Possession, like so much possession movies
- 1:38:22Speaker 4: are about possessing women or children because of the corruption
- 1:38:27Speaker 4: of innocence, and like, even if like this isn't the
- 1:38:30Speaker 4: thing that our astor like went to the desk thinking about.
- 1:38:33Speaker 4: When you write in genre, you bring everything to the
- 1:38:37Speaker 4: table because like inherent in doing genre is you have
- 1:38:42Speaker 4: to interact with everything that's been done before because of
- 1:38:45Speaker 4: tropes and trends and things like that. So you know
- 1:38:48Speaker 4: it is worth talking about for sure.
- 1:38:51Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Men be bringing their biases too.
- 1:38:57Speaker 1: I mean we are too, we just don't get to
- 1:38:59Speaker 1: do it as.
- 1:39:01Speaker 4: And women write fantastic horror, so I mean and there
- 1:39:06Speaker 4: are Again, It's like, even since twenty eighteen, I feel
- 1:39:10Speaker 4: like there has been some shift in terms of like
- 1:39:12Speaker 4: who gets to tell mainstream horror stories.
- 1:39:15Speaker 1: But always room for more movement because I was, yeah,
- 1:39:19Speaker 1: as I was getting all worked up talking to my
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: boyfriend about like why first time directors centering women regardless
- 1:39:29Speaker 1: of genre, even when I like the movies. I'm still
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: like slightly side eyeing it, which is not fair of me,
- 1:39:36Speaker 1: but is how I feel. But in any case, you know,
- 1:39:40Speaker 1: the real kind of stress test of like, is this
- 1:39:43Speaker 1: genre being meaningfully diversified? Isn't like who gets to make
- 1:39:47Speaker 1: one movie, but who gets to make three? Because I
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: think in the last you know, five, like half decade,
- 1:39:53Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of people get to make their
- 1:39:55Speaker 1: first movie, but we have not seen a lot of
- 1:39:58Speaker 1: people get to make their second movie. And so I
- 1:40:02Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like the landscape for especially genre
- 1:40:05Speaker 1: film is shifting, but it's a lot of people making
- 1:40:09Speaker 1: their first movie. I want to see a more diverse
- 1:40:11Speaker 1: group of directors make their third and fourth movies and
- 1:40:15Speaker 1: like have the same sort of freedom to explore that
- 1:40:21Speaker 1: the ari Astors of the world do. We're getting off topic,
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: but I.
- 1:40:25Speaker 4: Mean, yeah, I will say ari Astor and also Jordan Peel.
- 1:40:30Speaker 4: I think they made like two great horror movies and
- 1:40:35Speaker 4: then we're like, but I'm not a horror director, and
- 1:40:38Speaker 4: then made like a third movie that's not horror and
- 1:40:42Speaker 4: I haven't seen bos Afraid, but they might be like
- 1:40:44Speaker 4: good movies. But I want like people to commit to
- 1:40:48Speaker 4: the genre and keep making scary movies.
- 1:40:51Speaker 1: I don't know, and that's why I will be seeing
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: every m Night Shyamalan movie for the rest of my life.
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: And that's that is my sacred voalve. I mean, I
- 1:41:00Speaker 1: guess sometimes what he does is more thrillers, but still
- 1:41:04Speaker 1: they're cousins.
- 1:41:05Speaker 3: Is close enough.
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: I'm really excited for the new m Night Chamblin movie.
- 1:41:09Speaker 4: I'm always excited for the It's like, you know, even
- 1:41:13Speaker 4: if they're not good, they're great, or even if they're
- 1:41:17Speaker 4: not great, they're good.
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: They're always like confident, big swings. They're firmly comfortable in
- 1:41:22Speaker 1: the genre they're in, and it's just like a riot.
- 1:41:27Speaker 1: It's a riot. Oh. The first movie I saw after
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: I got the vaccine for COVID was Old, and I
- 1:41:35Speaker 1: was hoping you'd say, Old, what an amazing return to
- 1:41:40Speaker 1: the movies, What an amazing They're just high concert? What's
- 1:41:43Speaker 1: the new one?
- 1:41:44Speaker 3: The new one is like, oh, I just saw a
- 1:41:45Speaker 3: trailer for it.
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: It looks awesome. It's like there's a they're at like
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: a stadium concert and there's a serial killer, and then
- 1:41:54Speaker 1: you find out it's the protagonist that's the serial killer.
- 1:41:57Speaker 1: It's because mister Shimelan loves his twists.
- 1:42:02Speaker 3: What's his name, Josh?
- 1:42:04Speaker 1: I can't wait.
- 1:42:05Speaker 3: Who's the Josh in the movie?
- 1:42:08Speaker 1: I don't know. I know the Josh of which you speak.
- 1:42:11Speaker 3: Yes, it's Josh Hartne.
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, I guess the moral of our Hereditary episode
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: is go see Trap in theaters on August second. I
- 1:42:21Speaker 1: am genuinely a trap. Thirty thousand fans, three hundred cops,
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: one serial killer, no escape. Yeah, I'm going. Wow, I'm going.
- 1:42:29Speaker 3: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to say about
- 1:42:32Speaker 3: the movie Hereditary?
- 1:42:34Speaker 4: I could go on about the scary stuff for a
- 1:42:37Speaker 4: long time, but I'd love to let you sleep tonight.
- 1:42:40Speaker 3: So I mean, well, we'll be up late anyway watching Minions.
- 1:42:46Speaker 4: So healing, healing, up late, healing?
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: Yes, is there? I know that you said there's like
- 1:42:51Speaker 1: a lot of technical stuff that you were impressed by
- 1:42:54Speaker 1: and research. Is there anything in particular that's stuck out
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: on that end because we don't really cover that stuff
- 1:42:59Speaker 1: as much in the show.
- 1:43:01Speaker 4: So I definitely was tracking, like I went through the
- 1:43:05Speaker 4: movie and was tracking like the progression of fear with
- 1:43:10Speaker 4: a two step of like uncanny and then scary, and
- 1:43:14Speaker 4: just like I think it was really effective how those
- 1:43:19Speaker 4: two things were balanced throughout the movie and then heightened
- 1:43:22Speaker 4: to like an eleven in like the third act. Also
- 1:43:27Speaker 4: the way that he played with the viewer's anxiety around
- 1:43:34Speaker 4: what was going on on screen and then use the
- 1:43:38Speaker 4: momentum of that anxiety to subvert, like to give a
- 1:43:43Speaker 4: new twist. Like an example would be when Peter is
- 1:43:47Speaker 4: going walking through the room, as we talked about, and
- 1:43:50Speaker 4: then Tony's in the corner, and then you think that
- 1:43:54Speaker 4: he's going to interact with her, but then it turns
- 1:43:58Speaker 4: and it's something completely different, and that happened with the
- 1:44:02Speaker 4: head lobbing off as well. And then also in the attic,
- 1:44:07Speaker 4: when you know that the body is there and you're
- 1:44:09Speaker 4: expecting the thing for him to encounter to be the body,
- 1:44:12Speaker 4: and you're bracing yourself for the headless, dead body, but
- 1:44:16Speaker 4: he turns around it's something completely different and totally terrifying.
- 1:44:20Speaker 4: And that just like relentless, like feeding into someone's fear
- 1:44:26Speaker 4: and then using that fear as a jumping off point
- 1:44:28Speaker 4: on something even scarier, I think is really great. It is.
- 1:44:34Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, like a lot of what made
- 1:44:36Speaker 1: this movie work for me, especially for the first time
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: but also like it is a movie that very much
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: rewards on reviewing because it is like playing on what
- 1:44:45Speaker 1: you expect to happen with a jump scarre. It is
- 1:44:48Speaker 1: playing on like tropes and like, I don't know, it's
- 1:44:52Speaker 1: like many Bechtel Cast episodes. I end by being like, well,
- 1:44:55Speaker 1: I talked a lot of shit, but this movie fucking rips,
- 1:44:58Speaker 1: and I will be watching it again.
- 1:45:00Speaker 4: Yeah, it's definitely a horror fans horror movie, I think,
- 1:45:04Speaker 4: because it kind of knows your psychology of having seen
- 1:45:08Speaker 4: a lot of these movies.
- 1:45:10Speaker 3: For sure.
- 1:45:11Speaker 1: I hope that ari Astor makes more horror movies. I
- 1:45:15Speaker 1: was about to say I will watch Bo's Afraid, but
- 1:45:18Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna temper that. I actually don't know
- 1:45:20Speaker 1: because it looked it's so hard to like. It takes
- 1:45:23Speaker 1: a movie with a very long run time to dissuade
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: me from watching a movie where Patti Lapone and Nathan
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: Lane play the parents. But oh yeah, I know, like
- 1:45:34Speaker 1: two Broadway legends playing the parents of the psychological movie.
- 1:45:40Speaker 1: But it's three hours long, So what are you gonna do?
- 1:45:42Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna see kinds of kindness?
- 1:45:44Speaker 1: You know, it's three Hours Long.
- 1:45:46Speaker 3: Didn't care for it.
- 1:45:47Speaker 4: I am looking forward to like Long Legs.
- 1:45:52Speaker 1: I heard it's so scary.
- 1:45:54Speaker 4: I'm hoping it will be the next Hereditary for me.
- 1:45:58Speaker 4: That's that's why I've been thinking about it and this
- 1:46:00Speaker 4: because that movie. I went to see it in theaters
- 1:46:03Speaker 4: and I was like, yes, I have been utterly frightened.
- 1:46:07Speaker 4: And I've been I've been chasing that high and longing
- 1:46:10Speaker 4: for it, and I want to go and see Long
- 1:46:13Speaker 4: Legs and be utterly frightened. I hope all these people
- 1:46:15Speaker 4: talking about how they like left the theater crying are
- 1:46:18Speaker 4: not exaggerating.
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: I have not seen a an Oz Perkins movie yet,
- 1:46:24Speaker 1: so I am I'm really interested.
- 1:46:26Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'll see it.
- 1:46:27Speaker 1: That's the kind of nepotism I can get behind.
- 1:46:30Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'll see it and then probably have
- 1:46:33Speaker 3: just full body pains all over again.
- 1:46:36Speaker 4: Yay.
- 1:46:37Speaker 1: Yeah, I will be saying I'm excited to see Long Legs.
- 1:46:40Speaker 1: I'm excited to see Trap.
- 1:46:43Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:46:43Speaker 1: Those are the two horror horror entries I'm excited to
- 1:46:46Speaker 1: see coming up. Yeah, and whenever, whenever the next Saw
- 1:46:50Speaker 1: movie comes up, because that's where Caitlyn and o oh yeah,
- 1:46:54Speaker 1: baby eleven that's the slasher horror franchise that Caitlin and
- 1:46:59Speaker 1: I are fully on the same page about.
- 1:47:02Speaker 4: Oh oh baby, Like some months ago, I watched every
- 1:47:05Speaker 4: single Saw movie.
- 1:47:06Speaker 3: I'm working my way through.
- 1:47:07Speaker 1: What's your favorite.
- 1:47:09Speaker 4: Let me tell you. When you watch every single Saw
- 1:47:11Speaker 4: movie within a span of like two weeks, watching like
- 1:47:13Speaker 4: one sometimes two a night, they really blur together. I think, like,
- 1:47:19Speaker 4: and some are really just so bad. But I love
- 1:47:23Speaker 4: the commitment to like the twist that doesn't make sense.
- 1:47:26Speaker 4: The twists, it's like it's like soap opera levels. It's
- 1:47:29Speaker 4: like a ton noveloped by the end of it, Like it's.
- 1:47:32Speaker 3: Like you never see them coming.
- 1:47:34Speaker 4: No, You're like, oh. And then the music every time
- 1:47:37Speaker 4: the music is like it's like so so extra. I
- 1:47:43Speaker 4: love it entirely.
- 1:47:45Speaker 3: It's the best franchise.
- 1:47:47Speaker 1: It really is in every I mean, you know, say
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: what you will about his methods, but he does want
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: to play a game, and I celebrate that.
- 1:47:56Speaker 3: I mean, feminist icon Jigsaw.
- 1:48:00Speaker 1: It's true, he loves his wife.
- 1:48:05Speaker 3: Hereditary does pass the Bechdel.
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: Test, Yeah, I mean at many.
- 1:48:10Speaker 3: Points, Oh, Joan and Annie, Oh they're talking about seances. Oh,
- 1:48:16Speaker 3: they're talking about grief et cetera. Annie talks to Charlie. Yeah,
- 1:48:23Speaker 3: there's there's numerous passes our nipple scale, though.
- 1:48:28Speaker 1: I don't know pass past.
- 1:48:32Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's I don't know how to
- 1:48:34Speaker 3: sign it. So a scale of zero to five nipples
- 1:48:37Speaker 3: where we rate the movie, examining it through an intersectional
- 1:48:40Speaker 3: feminist lens. I have no freaking idea for this movie. Again,
- 1:48:43Speaker 3: my brain ceases to work for movies this scary, so
- 1:48:48Speaker 3: I can't really think about them.
- 1:48:49Speaker 1: I would probably if I'm making a stab at it,
- 1:48:52Speaker 1: I would probably fall somewhere in the middle here, or
- 1:48:55Speaker 1: maybe maybe a little on the generous side of the middle.
- 1:48:58Speaker 1: I don't know. It is really tricky one. You know,
- 1:49:02Speaker 1: this movie certainly centers women, but also I mean this
- 1:49:06Speaker 1: specifically the case of Charlie goes out of its way
- 1:49:09Speaker 1: to demonize girl for a reasons that I'm still like
- 1:49:16Speaker 1: not clear on outside of in the terest of a twist.
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: Why that decision was made, I don't know. I really
- 1:49:23Speaker 1: don't know. IM My instinct is somewhere down the middle.
- 1:49:27Speaker 1: But even that feels a little nebulous.
- 1:49:32Speaker 3: It almost feels like, I mean, this is something I
- 1:49:36Speaker 3: probably should have brought up earlier. But all the women
- 1:49:40Speaker 3: or girls that we see on screen or that we
- 1:49:45Speaker 3: know about but don't really see because they are dead,
- 1:49:49Speaker 3: I e. The grandmother are like harbingers of a scary
- 1:49:55Speaker 3: cult and like, you know, evil witchy types, and then
- 1:50:00Speaker 3: all the men are just like, don't do they're boring?
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: Well, see that I don't hate is all women are
- 1:50:06Speaker 1: witches and all men are boring. Like that's a kind
- 1:50:08Speaker 1: of like prescriptive thing I could get complete.
- 1:50:13Speaker 3: That's one view of it. But I also think that
- 1:50:16Speaker 3: there would be people who walk away from this being
- 1:50:18Speaker 3: like women are evil and men are just innocent bystanders.
- 1:50:22Speaker 1: Well I don't.
- 1:50:23Speaker 3: I don't read it that way, but I think there
- 1:50:24Speaker 3: are people who would.
- 1:50:26Speaker 1: But even so, it's like, ultimately they are still serving
- 1:50:29Speaker 1: the patriarchy. That's what I find more frustrating, is like
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: they have a lot of agency, but still they're like, no,
- 1:50:37Speaker 1: the devil is a man, the devil is a sis man,
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: and we feel that that is certain.
- 1:50:43Speaker 3: I don't know where's Queen payment.
- 1:50:46Speaker 1: They didn't want her, we had her, they killed her.
- 1:50:49Speaker 4: I know.
- 1:50:50Speaker 1: So the answer is I don't fucking know. I don't know. Paulavi,
- 1:50:53Speaker 1: do you do you have a feeling on this, you.
- 1:50:56Speaker 4: Know, I would also like probably put it on like
- 1:51:00Speaker 4: the middle to like higher middle. I don't know, it's
- 1:51:04Speaker 4: hard to there's definitely a point five in there somewhere.
- 1:51:08Speaker 4: Is it a three point five or is it a four? WHOA,
- 1:51:13Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
- 1:51:14Speaker 1: I would go I would go three maybe three pot
- 1:51:17Speaker 1: because it's like there's clear intent two, Like there is
- 1:51:21Speaker 1: intellectual curiosity about what women are experiencing in this book,
- 1:51:26Speaker 1: which maybe is like the bars on the floor for
- 1:51:28Speaker 1: a lot of that, like that's true, but this movie
- 1:51:31Speaker 1: is like deeply interested in what Annie is going through.
- 1:51:35Speaker 1: It is clearly like we know that Annie, well, actually
- 1:51:40Speaker 1: we don't know. I feel like it's almost maybe a
- 1:51:41Speaker 1: litmus test for like who are you gonna believe here?
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: But like Annie is ultimately right about perceiving what is happening,
- 1:51:50Speaker 1: but she is struggling with mental illness. It's not all
- 1:51:54Speaker 1: like the answer is a little bit in between, but
- 1:51:57Speaker 1: ultimately it's like it's not like a lot of horror
- 1:52:01Speaker 1: movies I've seen have led to like it was all
- 1:52:05Speaker 1: in her head and that is the tragedy of it,
- 1:52:07Speaker 1: But it's not all in Nannie's head, like It's part
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: of the tragedy is that people don't believe what she's saying,
- 1:52:12Speaker 1: and the same is true for Charlie, even though her
- 1:52:16Speaker 1: being a demon yeah kind of muddles that a little bit,
- 1:52:19Speaker 1: which is why that choice never makes sense to me.
- 1:52:21Speaker 1: But like it's not like the movie is disinterested in
- 1:52:25Speaker 1: what she's experiencing. I just feel like the results a
- 1:52:28Speaker 1: little all over the place.
- 1:52:30Speaker 4: Kind of in the opposite direction of the feeling of
- 1:52:34Speaker 4: being too afraid to process this. I think I enjoy
- 1:52:38Speaker 4: the fears that this presents, and it's like tilting my
- 1:52:42Speaker 4: bias maybe like more in favor that you know. It's
- 1:52:46Speaker 4: I'm like trying to separate like what I love about
- 1:52:49Speaker 4: it as a horror movie and like how I would
- 1:52:51Speaker 4: assess it as from like the Bechdel cast perspective, right.
- 1:52:57Speaker 1: I Mean, it's a tricky one for this show because
- 1:52:59Speaker 1: I don't think this movie is trying to be overtly
- 1:53:01Speaker 1: feminist or not. And that's fine, but yeah, when it
- 1:53:05Speaker 1: comes down to like how are the women of this
- 1:53:08Speaker 1: world and story treated? I guess for me on my
- 1:53:11Speaker 1: personal like how much I enjoy it, rating gets higher
- 1:53:14Speaker 1: in this specific world that we're talking about I would
- 1:53:19Speaker 1: probably have downed it about a three, three and a
- 1:53:22Speaker 1: half on a good day.
- 1:53:24Speaker 3: Oh see, I think, and maybe this is just my fright,
- 1:53:31Speaker 3: but I would give it like a two. I think
- 1:53:33Speaker 3: because of my perceived conflation of mental illness equals evil,
- 1:53:43Speaker 3: demonic possession, and because our Astra has kind of a
- 1:53:48Speaker 3: checkered history with that, and in two of his movies
- 1:53:54Speaker 3: there's some questionable stuff happening regarding mental illness and conflating it.
- 1:54:00Speaker 3: It's like, you know, violence or demonic possession or whatever
- 1:54:04Speaker 3: it is. I really struggle with that, So I think
- 1:54:08Speaker 3: I'll land on a two. But I also acknowledge that.
- 1:54:11Speaker 3: And again, I think this is like a very well
- 1:54:14Speaker 3: directed movie and the production design is incredible, the cinematography,
- 1:54:19Speaker 3: the performances. But I will never watch it again because
- 1:54:23Speaker 3: I'm just too scared.
- 1:54:24Speaker 1: And this time you mean it, and this time I
- 1:54:27Speaker 1: mean it.
- 1:54:27Speaker 3: If someone if someone else says come on to my
- 1:54:30Speaker 3: podcast to talk about hereditary I'll say no, thank you.
- 1:54:33Speaker 1: If someone says come on to my podcast, I will
- 1:54:36Speaker 1: say no.
- 1:54:37Speaker 3: I will normally say yes, but not if it's a
- 1:54:40Speaker 3: hereditary thing. Anyway. So yeah, two nipples, and I'm giving
- 1:54:44Speaker 3: them both to Rex the dog, who I think in
- 1:54:49Speaker 3: my memory survive.
- 1:54:51Speaker 1: Tell yeah, yeah, I guess I'm gonna go three point
- 1:54:57Speaker 1: two five, and I I get to give one get
- 1:55:02Speaker 1: I would give one to Annie. I'm to give one
- 1:55:06Speaker 1: to Anne Dowd's performance when she's pretending to not know
- 1:55:11Speaker 1: about the doormat, because I just think it's a really
- 1:55:13Speaker 1: funny moment where she's like, Oh, your mom made these,
- 1:55:16Speaker 1: that's weird. I really enjoy that moment every time. Give
- 1:55:21Speaker 1: one to Charlie. She did nothing wrong. She didn't ask
- 1:55:25Speaker 1: to be born for crying out loud.
- 1:55:26Speaker 3: She didn't have to have a payment demon put inside her.
- 1:55:30Speaker 1: I know. And I'll give point my last point two
- 1:55:33Speaker 1: five to Steve. He did his best.
- 1:55:35Speaker 4: I think I would be swayed down to like a
- 1:55:38Speaker 4: three because, if I think about it, everything we've talked about.
- 1:55:42Speaker 4: I have also had my critiques about how how those
- 1:55:46Speaker 4: types of things landed in this movie. Do I have
- 1:55:49Speaker 4: to give these away?
- 1:55:50Speaker 3: You don't have to.
- 1:55:51Speaker 1: You don't have to. You can keep them for yourself.
- 1:55:53Speaker 4: I don't know if I want to keep those in
- 1:55:55Speaker 4: my house. I think they'll bring some bad juju.
- 1:55:58Speaker 3: You can put them in the treehouse if you.
- 1:56:00Speaker 4: Want yeah, we can put the space heaters on for
- 1:56:04Speaker 4: them to keep them warm as well.
- 1:56:06Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well, Paaloma, thank you so much for joining us.
- 1:56:10Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me and talking about this
- 1:56:13Speaker 4: with me.
- 1:56:14Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And before you go, tell us a
- 1:56:16Speaker 1: little bit about your book and where we can where
- 1:56:18Speaker 1: we can find it.
- 1:56:19Speaker 4: So my short story collection is called Mouth. It is
- 1:56:22Speaker 4: a collection of eleven dark, weird, surreal stories that are
- 1:56:30Speaker 4: mostly centered on women. So if you liked Hereditary and
- 1:56:34Speaker 4: you like weird stuff and want to feel uncomfortable while
- 1:56:38Speaker 4: reading or watching something, maybe check out my book, which
- 1:56:42Speaker 4: is wherever books are sold.
- 1:56:44Speaker 3: As I say, we'll link to it in the description.
- 1:56:48Speaker 1: Of this episode wonderful it fuck it rocks and.
- 1:56:50Speaker 3: Uh where else can people follow you on social media?
- 1:56:54Speaker 4: Maybe you can find me on Instagram and a very
- 1:56:59Speaker 4: infrequently to Twitter at Polo mioo.
- 1:57:08Speaker 3: And you can follow us on Instagram at Bechdel Cast.
- 1:57:12Speaker 3: You can subscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com
- 1:57:16Speaker 3: slash Bechdel Cast, where there lives an episode on Midsummar.
- 1:57:22Speaker 3: So if you want to check out our thoughts on
- 1:57:26Speaker 3: ari Asta's other horror movie from this era.
- 1:57:29Speaker 1: Yeah, don't, don't hold your breath on the bow as
- 1:57:32Speaker 1: Afraid episode, but uh, you got your aster episodes, you freaks.
- 1:57:37Speaker 3: Hope you're happy, but yeah, go over to our Matreon.
- 1:57:43Speaker 3: It's five dollars a month and it gets you access
- 1:57:45Speaker 3: to the entire back catalog of our over one hundred
- 1:57:50Speaker 3: bonus episodes and enjoy a fun, goofy little theme that
- 1:57:55Speaker 3: we conjure up every month.
- 1:57:58Speaker 1: And you can get merch at tepa slash The Bechdel Cast.
- 1:58:02Speaker 1: It's later polohoma is. I'm gonna let her go to
- 1:58:04Speaker 1: bed and uh, don't let payment bite. Bye bye bye.
- 1:58:16Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
- 1:58:19Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
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