SPEAKER_05 0:04

Is it a two-way mirror? It seems like a two-way mirror.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Or if you're feeling spicy, a three-way mirror.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

That's only for the bold. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. Glad to see you're sticking around a bit. If this happens to be your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack. A total joke, a waste of time, or a splash.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Totally killed it, unintended.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood splash enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the super flat space guy Mac, the gore lover Alexis, hey Rewind, the Cowardly Cooper Ryan, Aya, and the Scream Queen Paris.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Hey sweets.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

We're coming at you with another meta classic this week. This time one that was created with hopes of revitalizing the genre, as meta classics tend to hope to do. But first we have some follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

We recently reviewed a movie called Mitsumar. Did you guys watch this? I did not watch it though. I'm still waiting to.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

I'm still debating on if I should.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

You should. It got a universal slash from your three best friends, myself, Alexis, and Chris. So I don't think a better recommendation exists. Um and when you do watch it, let us know what you thought. Uh, but we asked Twitter what they thought, and 69% gave it a slash, which bodes well for the film.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

31% gave it a hack. Um, we also asked our friends on Instagram what they thought. Uh, and we actually have a wonderful comment from our friend Mike Beckman on Instagram. He said, It traumatized my fiance, breathed life into me. And I thought that was just beautifully put.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

That's awesome. Also, I'm surprised that only like 37 or what, 31%?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Around 30% like didn't like it. That's interesting. I thought I would have thought a lot of people, a lot more people would like this movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I thought so too, but that 31% could just be the boyfriends of the 69%.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

That's actually all the people that didn't get it.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

We also just want to give a quick shout out to a couple of our newest patrons, Kat and Shelby. Welcome to the family. We really appreciate your support. Every time I hear that we have new patrons, I'm like, people actually like what we're doing? That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

But we love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Look, we're having healthy casual discussion. That's all it is. And people feel like they know us, and they kind of do a little bit. And I like that, that we have friends out there we've never met. I like that too. And that's our follow-up.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Nice. So let's have some healthy, fun discussion in which our listeners can learn a little bit more about us. This time let's center it around a movie that we're gonna actually travel back eight years for. Um, so back to a movie that the saw the likes of a young Chris Hemsworth collide with star power like Sigourney Weaver before he became Thor. This week's movie follows yet another group of young college kids on their weekend getaway. Probably sounds familiar to, you know, cabin fever. And of course, there's some measure of violence that awaits them. That's right, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, we're talking about the 2012 film, The Cabin in the Woods. Now, I saw this movie when it first came out, and I hadn't heard anything about it before I watched it. I remember watching it when we were out to sea and it was playing on the ship's system. And uh, as such, I I ended up being really shocked. That was the lasting feeling this movie gave me. Uh, I dove into a rabbit hole of research after it because I was just that impressed by it. But I must know who among you had not seen this movie before?

SPEAKER_05 3:26

Feels like I'm being stared at. I'm very familiar with the movie poster for this film, and uh that's about it. I haven't seen it. Well, hadn't. Wow, that's really interesting. So surprising.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

I know. I feel like this is a part of pop culture. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 3:39

Like people who don't even like horror like this, but I I talked to a lot of people about it beforehand, and um everyone was just like, You haven't seen that? I was like, No, I don't know why I'm on the podcast. I get it.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

No, I didn't mean it like that. I just thought it was like, I thought it was maybe me. I just there was so much hype around this movie that I was like, how how has no one seen it?

unknown 4:00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

It's okay. We still love you. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

I didn't see it when it first came out, but I did see it within a couple years. And I think, Chris, you captured it. This movie is going to upset all of your expectations in an amazing way.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

I'm with you, Mac. I didn't see it when it came out. Um, I I want to say I saw it the year after. Um, but knowing me, I actually remembered very little about this movie. I remembered feeling vaguely positive about it, and then I remember there being a reveal that really stuck with me. Um, and then after watching this movie again, I was like, oh, that wasn't a reveal for anyone except me.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

It's funny because I had the same exact thoughts. Oh like I remember being shocked when I saw maybe it's a Capricorn thing. I remember being shocked, right? And thinking, like, oh wow, I can't wait to re-watch this and see all the little hidden nuggets. No, they tell you what's gonna happen literally in the first opening graphics of the film. I'm like, what was I so surprised about?

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Oh. Yeah, I think we were talking about this, Chris, because I would totally have watched this and I got to the end of this movie, I was like, wow, this is not what I thought it was. And I watched it again. I was like, okay, I'm like literally stupid. Um, I did not pick up on any context clues, or at least know how to put those clues together to make something out of it. Which is crazy. I I feel like I was able to pick up on a lot watching this a second time for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

For me, the the thing that was revealed to me was actually just the inclusion of someone, um, because that was something I did not see coming at all going into the movie. Uh, and we will reveal who that was uh after the break.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I just want you to all know that you're not alone. When I first watched this, I did not see the ending coming. Watching it a second time though, you're like, How did I not see the ending coming? How did I not know the story all along? Because watching it a second time, it's so clear every step along the way, like what the setup is. It's like super deliberate too. And I just I'm judging my former self for not picking up on that.

SPEAKER_05 5:58

I think that's interesting because I did see it coming. Um, and this is my first time seeing it.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

You know what it is?

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Because people told you. No, I just I people just said that it was a f uh fun movie, basically.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

When I was going into this, I was expecting something along the lines of Evil Dead or Cabin Fever. Which you got partially so that I think it was my erroneous expectation at the time that set me up to be surprised. And of course, the second viewing I had no expectation as such, but at the time I didn't look at the trailer. I like saw that there was posters, but I was like, okay, like it looks good. It's been a couple years since it's been out, I'll watch it, thinking I'm gonna see something similar to one of those movies. And so I think that's why I was I was set up for uh some self-failure there.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Yeah, I think that's why when I first saw this movie, I was like, Oh yeah, it's okay. Like I never thought it was like this great thing, and I think because it twisted my expectations on what I thought, and I've kind of felt cheated. So at first, like I feel like if we rem uh reviewed this back like when I first watched it, I probably would have been like, eh, maybe a hack, but I don't know. Let's see about this time what I think.

SPEAKER_05 7:09

Yeah, for me, I was actually expecting kind of like a saw house of torture type of situation because somebody was like, Oh, that when all that stuff goes on in that house in the woods, and I was like, I guess. So I'm I went in expecting like people torturing or like different rooms of I don't know, terror, something like that, like haunted house vibes or something. Um, and that's definitely not what I got.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

That's pretty good considering the filmmaker's intent was to not deliver that to you.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, yeah. Uh this may all just be me. When I sat down for this movie, just like Paris, I really just did not expect to be surprised, right? I didn't expect any measure of that. But what I found was that I was shocked and shocked by how I missed that whole thing. I I'm curious to know from our listeners, if you have not seen this movie, please stick around to the second half after you do give it a watch and let us know what your experience was like watching this because there's a certain element that is plainly obvious up front, but I do think there's still an element of a reveal that comes towards the end. But we'll we'll learn more. I'd love to know how did you guys feel this time around giving it a watch?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I was definitely entertained this time around. Um, I felt like it had like a playfulness to it that isn't common in horror movies, um, especially around that time. I feel like that's when we were like still in that like really grungy, crusty kind of phase. Um but I also felt like, does this movie have too much sci-fi for me? And that the jury's still out.

SPEAKER_05 8:39

Yeah, I could see that. Um, I am gonna say the same word. I felt entertained. I also felt so bad for these characters. Like every time someone would something would happen, I would be like, dude, come on. Yeah, it was it was just like so sad. I don't know. I don't know why these characters really pulled on my heartstrings so much. It's not even like they gave us a ton of backstory that we cared about, you know. I just felt like they were good people and they didn't deserve this.

unknown 9:07

But were they really?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

I'm pretty confident that it depends on what side of the coin you're looking at because they build up, right? And they kind of strike this interesting balance because there's two really core sets of characters, and they you go in expecting to feel one way about one group and one way about the other, and then it kind of gets gray for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

Yeah, I definitely am in the gray, I believe, especially towards the end. I was like, what the heck? You know, I know this movie is great, it just makes you think differently about a horror movie and just makes you and even watching it the first time, I totally cut out the parts where that that were intentionally put in the movie. And it makes you think like, did you purposely leave that out because you wanted the movie to be like a certain way? I know I did, so but yeah, I felt like I felt very entertained, just like Paris. Like it was it was very comical, um, especially watching it this time. Um, yeah, I like it was a nice enjoying ride. Did feel like once I hit the point where you're at the sorta end, I was like, oh wow, there's a lot more to this than there was the first time. Like so felt like it was a kind of long, but then I realized it was only an hour and a half, so clearly I was entertained.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

I think it's wild when you go back and consider the era that this movie was not released in but made in. And we have a lot of that super gritty, super tortury 2007, 2008, you know, horror genre, which some people love and and absolutely prefer. But obviously the filmmakers were kind of tired of seeing kids make stupid decisions and be tortured constantly. And I'm kind of happy that something stood out and and was very different. Now it was, you know, released in what was it, 2012, yeah. So I think by that point there had probably already started, you know, to be to be like this little turn of the tide a little bit, but I don't think it was fast enough because I I still think we saw a lot of movies that were just unnecessarily gritty for for a long time. And there probably still are those right now. So I I think it's I think it's great though, because that I definitely don't prefer horror movies from the late 2000s before we made it to the twenty teens. I know Alexis is giving me the eyes right now, but you know, I just I like it when movies don't have to be uh unnecessarily dark and gringy. I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a grunge fan necessarily when it comes to movies. Love it for the music, but not not for my movies. And I I I like that this was well when I was watching it, I like that it didn't feel like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

So what I really appreciate even more, Mac, is the fact that not only was this released in 2012, it was filmed in 2009. So this is it was filmed even earlier, right? And think about the other movies that came out around that time. Like this was a year before the uh Nightmare on Elm Street remake. This is uh you know, around the same time as the Friday the 13th remake, this is Rob Zombie's Halloween era. Um so there's a there's a lot of things happening, and this movie kind of sets itself apart from all of that. When we're in the heyday of remaking iconic slashers.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

To me, it felt I mean, I don't know if it was, like statistically, but it it felt big budget. It felt like a lot of thought and preparation and money and like care went into it while watching it. There was just like a lot of a lot of tight ends, you know, and not a lot of loose ends. They really, you know, tied those strings nice and tight. And I like that. I like a good tight end.

SPEAKER_05 12:28

I want to make a football joke, but I feel like no one else here watches football. I played football.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

I wasn't even thinking about football.

SPEAKER_05 12:36

Yeah, I thought that was a butt joke.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

It's interesting that you say that this felt like it had a big budget, Mac, because I actually got the opposite vibe. It felt like this was like somebody that had a really original idea and then like got enough funding to make this happen, and then like out of nowhere pulled somehow some connection or some string to get Sigourney Weaver on board. But yeah, I liked that it felt like almost like homemade. It had that kind of charm to it. Almost like the original saw.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Yeah, so the budget for this was about 30 million, right? So it's not the biggest, certainly, that we see. But do you are you guys familiar with who's behind this movie? The guy from Toy Story, Joss Whedon, uh, who wrote Firefly, he was behind Firefly and Buffy, the vampire slayer. He co-wrote Toy Story, though. I I did find that out.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

I didn't know that. Oh yeah. Toy Story. I'm I'm thinking Firefly and Serenity the whole time. Anytime I think of his name.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

So when looking at this movie, I was again like the rest of you, highly entertained, but I think it's because now at this point I can really appreciate the dialogue for what it is. Uh, when it comes to enjoyable or like memorable quotes, I usually have like one or two per movie. This movie, I wrote down nine, and the majority of them came from a single character. Um I love that how I loved how dense this movie was with things that you can pick apart or or look into or little nods to really just centuries of horror history. And uh for that, it was just a joy ride for me. But when I look at when I look at the actual core of the story, right? You know what's gonna happen before it ever does. Did you manage to find anything in here scary?

SPEAKER_05 14:15

I think there's some level of scariness to this movie, if it if only just for the monsters. Like them things were interesting to look at, and and definitely there's a lot of fear that comes from it. I think um some of like the the gore, the way the deaths happen and stuff like that. There's some scary elements. I wasn't scared, but I I find that I'm getting numb to these things. But I think you could definitely you could definitely be scared of this movie if it's late, it's dark. I definitely had some nightmares from this. Um there's that.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Can we hear some of the about what you had nightmares about?

SPEAKER_05 14:51

Um my mom got sliced in half by uh by a saw, so that was tough. Oh jeez. Exactly. Thank you. You asked. I don't remember that happening in this movie, but no, it didn't, but trust me, in the in the nightmare we uh couldn't control ourselves, and I feel like it was inspired by this. Uh you know, loss of control of things.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

I feel like nightmare, you know, nightmares happening after watching a movie, that's a form of of being scared.

SPEAKER_05 15:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

So that was so it was effective.

SPEAKER_05 15:18

There's some fear from it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I wish I could speak to my first time seeing this movie because the second time around, I felt like knowing what I knew kind of made it impossible to be scared. You know, like I agree. The yeah, they s they kind of set it up in such a way where it was like, you don't have to be afraid because you know this. Um which made it, I feel like it made it skew more towards like the fun, like comedy, dark comedy, entertaining side, and less towards like the I'm scared of this horror movie side.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Yeah, I've completely felt the same way, especially the first time. I'm pretty sure I was scared the first time. I definitely took the like comical route watching it the second time.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

I'm so with you guys there. I even the first time, the first time I was expecting like like proper horror movie, something like Evil Dead, like the first one, not the third one. And what I got was to me hilarious, like a hilarious take uh on on horror uh from people who who seemed like they were probably fans and got a lot of the you know the the horror themes uh and had fun with it. So I I don't think it was scary. I you know, I watched this, I watched it with my girlfriend, and she was entertained while watching it, but it wasn't one of those where she's like gripping the seat, oh my gosh, please don't do this to them, or whatever. It was just kind of like it didn't it just made us have a lot of commentary while watching it.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

I don't think there's any really serious intention for this to be a legitimately scary movie because of the nature of this movie. It's a a love and simultaneously a hate letter to the genre, right? Um, you know, pointing out what's been done and maybe making some suggestions of what can be done differently in the future. Um one of the things that I think really uh takes the place of that fear though, is this movie's originality, which is funny because on its surface you'd think, oh, there's this is all like a retread, right? This is everything we've ever seen before. To be clear, this isn't the first time that we've seen meta horror, even just specifically on this show. Um it's not the first time we've seen intentional nods to tropes and cliches so often f found in these movies. Um, but as far as I can recall, in my limited experience and lifetime, this is the first time I've seen it done quite this way. And I think the closest I can think to is another movie we've covered in the past. I know it doesn't really narrow it down that much. For all you listening there, there's like at least three that that can apply to. Um, but we're gonna put a pin in that and revisit that statement in the second half. For you guys though, did you feel like this was different from what you've seen from other meta horror films?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Kind of like you mentioned, it has a lot of the same ingredients from other horror films. But I think the way for me to describe it would would be with an analogy. If you're playing bingo, obviously you win. But if all you've eaten in your life for burritos is from Taco Bell, and then suddenly someone exposes you to Chipotle, like you've never heard to heard of out or been to a Chipotle, and you're like, this is kind of refreshing. It's kind of like the same setup of you know, ingredients being wrapped into a thing, but this is so much better. That being said, I'm not a huge Chipotle fan. Oh yeah, just saying, but if all you've eaten your entire life are Taco Bell burritos, and then suddenly you can walk in and pick your ingredients and watch it be put together and get carnitas and stuff, you'd be like, huh, I feel kind of refreshed. And that's what it was like. Same ingredients that you would get from other horror movies, but such a different, like just whole arc of the movie, like so, so, so different for me. So definitely win some originality points.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

I don't know if I'm having deja vu or if Mac has used that exact analogy in an episode before I joined this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Um it's the first time I've heard it.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Playing off of that same analogy, I feel like they took all the ingredients, they put them in a bowl, and then they threw the bowl at the wall and said, There it is. This movie stuck to the script so well that at first, like, if you're not really paying attention, you're like, oh, this is every more, every horror movie I've ever seen before. Um but then it really just like flips it all on its head and says, like, hey, but actually, what if you have no idea what you've ever seen and maybe it was this all along? So it did a really good job of like balancing such a cliche surface level experience with a very original uh subversive one.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Totally. You get the tropes that you get in every movie. You even have characters screaming those tropes, like and talking about it in the movie, which you guys know I love scream, so I love this, but it's crazy. You go a little bit in depth, and it's like, yeah, why was there a blonde? Why is there a virgin? And it's like, oh, okay, this is it. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I never got a reason why there's always these kind of characters in movies. They've just always said why. They've always just been like, here, this is your script for a horror movie, but not actually why. And I like that original take on that.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

This movie handles its ending in a very specific way. And um, I just I don't want to get too deep on it because I don't want to ruin anything for someone who hasn't seen this, but quick lightning around here. How do you guys feel about the ending? Cool. Pissed off.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

I have some qualms about the ending. I wouldn't say I was pissed off, but a few qualms. I'm curious to know if you guys would make the same decision that was made. Depends on who we are.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Yeah. Definitely not. Um, yeah, and I was pissed off because of that. I was screaming, I think, at the TV.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

I loved the ending, but with you guys, I didn't enjoy some character motivations at the ending, but I thought it was an amazing ending.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

All right. Okay, so it seems like we have uh some mixed feelings here. I personally really enjoyed it, especially when you look back at just how meta the whole thing is. But I really want to know what that like shouting, that rage from Alexis must have sounded like in the TV, but we'll get there. Um, there's so much to unpack about this movie, folks, and there is there's a lot of meat to this movie that we are just scratching the surface of in order to protect your experience if you haven't seen it. If you have seen this movie, stick around for just a bit. Obviously, we're gonna get into some spoiler territory here, so let's go ahead and start making our way to our rankings. Alexis, how many people died in this movie?

SPEAKER_03 21:21

We have a total of 69 um with an asterisk. Um, and I can't wait to dive into that after a spoiler break. That number is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

That's gaggy.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

And Ryan, what about the animal report? Uh the animal report is good to go. We have no animal deaths. Uh there's some gray area here, as usual. Good luck.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Yeah, we'll figure it out. Enjoy it.

SPEAKER_04 21:49

Just enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

So, this isn't one of those movies where you see a puppy die. So, at least you know you're safe there. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. For the intended purpose of the animal report, I think we're okay. So, with that then, let's Go ahead and get through ranking this movie. The Cabin in the Woods from 2012. Was it a hacker or slash?

SPEAKER_05 22:07

I'm gonna start. So I have a feeling obviously we're only a little bit into the episode. Um it seems like your all of your perceptions of this movie are different, and I think it's probably because I've only seen it once. And I think that you get a really different uh experience with this when you've seen it before. And so I found myself, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was fun, but I didn't like love this movie. And um, my boyfriend was like, oh, this is like one of my like sleeper favorites, and I was like, a favorite, like ever? Sleep?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

No, no, sleep a low-key favorite.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

Like a low-key favorite.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

I thought sleeper was like something I put on before I go to bed. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

In this episode, Alexis learns the kids' language.

SPEAKER_05 22:57

And he's old.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Oh god. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:01

So anyway, um, so yeah, he's like, this is one of my sleeper favorites. And and I've been thinking about that. And then now the hearing the things, just the few things that you guys have mentioned. I think if you haven't seen this, um, it may even be worth watching twice at some point before you really like make a solid stand on it. Um, I'm going with Slash because I think this is a good movie, but I think to appreciate it the way I think that you guys are, I think you do have to see it twice. And so for me, it's not a it's not a hard slash, it's not like a great movie that I'm excited to watch again. Um, but I would definitely watch it if it was on. And I think it's good. I think most people would enjoy this.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

That was me the first time I watched it. I was like, all right, this is okay. Like, it's not the greatest. It's it could be better. Like, and then I'm like watching it a second time like, oh crap, like this, this, and this. Oh, I get it. I think it's like I get it now. And I think it's like the more I watch Scream, the more I like it. Yeah. So, and I feel like that's how it is with this movie. I think this movie was spun me around in so many directions. I wasn't sure. I was upset it wasn't a cabin fever slash evil dead um throughout the whole thing. But I appreciated this whole like turn, and I just loved how they mix sci-fi into all of this, and everything is just like filled with these tropes that people like play on. And I I don't, it was just like such a fun watch. And even watching it with my boyfriend, he likes it, and he let me know, does not like horror movies. So uh and he said this is his uh non-sleeper favorite, like um daywalking favorite. I don't know. Top 10? No, that's what it means. Yeah, okay. But yeah, no, I'm definitely giving this a slash. It's it's worth a watch, it's worth a second watch. I think even a third time I'll pick up on a lot more stuff, and I think a lot of the commentary I'll appreciate as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

I'll I'll go third. This uh this film, The Cabin in the Woods here, uh, has a lot of rewatch value, is a ton of fun to watch, especially with other people, and it pulls in so many tropes from the horror genre that if you're even a slight fan of horror, uh, I think you can get so much entertainment out of it. So total slash from me, and I think other people should watch it. And if you've already watched it, watch it again.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

I can definitely agree that people should watch this movie. Um, I feel like if you are a horror fan, it's almost mandatory viewing for a lot of reasons. But, you know, there's a few things in this movie that I didn't really pick up on the first time. Like I hated the main character. It had a lot of sci-fi elements, which I'm not a fan of, but ultimately it is very original. It did so many things that I didn't expect, and even the second time around, I was still surprised by a lot of it. I would recommend it to people. I was entertained, I had a good time, I laughed. Uh, so it's not the hardest slash I've ever given, but it it does get a slash for sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

You just had us all on a uh facial expression roller coaster over here.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

I literally dropped my jaw.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Oh wait, I missed it. I really was back and forth on this one.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

So far, we have four slashes, and some of you don't seem too sure about that, uh, which concerns me because this is a hundred percent a definitive slash. Like this is a movie that takes decades of rich history, combines it into something new and fresh, and then shines a mirror back at yourself and says, Well, what do you think of that, huh? I haven't felt about another movie the way this movie makes me feel. When I look at the message that's at like the core of this movie and what that means for the f like for the genre as a as a whole, it excites me. It I love seeing this idea of like, hey, let's take these traditional things and poke some holes in it, like Scream did, uh like Wes Craven's New Nightmare did. Looking back on it, there was a couple small things that I didn't enjoy. Um, but those things are so minimal that they're almost not even worth mentioning. Uh so with that, the Cabin in the Woods from 2012 is a universal slash, which might I add, uh last time this happened was what, The Purge, where it's been a universal slash with all five people here. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Add it to the collection.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Very small collection. It's a rarity, it's a rarity. It is a certified slash. So this movie's worthwhile. Now let's talk about where you can find it. You can find it included with your Amazon Prime subscription, should you have one. And if you also subscribe to Hulu, you can find it there as well. Of course, it's you know available in all your typical video on-demand places. So if you haven't watched it, hit pause, go watch it, come back and join us. And if you have seen it, sit back, relax, and join us for this discussion. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

But first, I'd like to talk a moment to let you know about the desperate needs to foster above the monsters. Over 60 homes were zombies, and the smallest are usefully put top and publicly funded shelters. The Chris R.P. Stevenson Foundation is a 501 CP nonprofit dedicated to finding suitable, loving homes for each and every monster out there and teaching new foster parents to love and support their newfound family members. We thank them wholeheartedly for sponsoring this program.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

All right, welcome back. The Cabin in the Woods from the year 2012 somehow earned a universal slash, even if a couple of our friends here weren't that confident about it. Now, we're gonna talk about all the references this movie has. But before we get there, we have to stop at gore.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Alexis, what's our gore score? Alright, so I'm going to say this, and you guys can disagree or, you know, still disagree. Um, but I'm gonna say in general, this movie was not gory. Like if someone were to say, like, hey, I know you're gonna say, I'm gonna say it's not gory.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Disagree.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Because you're when I think of gory thing, it doesn't have this like violent, like, like it's not overly leaving violent. There's a lot of scenes where it cuts off the gory, you just see like blood splatter, this. Now, there are like a few scenes that are very gory, but I think I think if someone's like, oh my gosh, I don't want to watch something gory, I would not like take this off the list. Like, I would keep it on and be like, it's not that gory.

SPEAKER_05 30:03

I agree. You're not crazy. Okay, you're not wrong. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think there are parts of the what would be considered the gore, uh, there are parts of it that are like a little more intense, but generally, like you're not getting like a sliced open head and like things like that, you know?

SPEAKER_02 30:21

But you are you're getting a decapitated head being thrown into a cabin. Like, what do you Okay, but it's you don't see the head get sliced off, okay?

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Okay, yes. In some ways, yeah. Yes. I think where we're at in this podcast, you do need to see it to give it a high gore score. It's medium.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

I think if somebody were like, I want to watch a movie that's not gory, they probably mean I don't want to see a decapitated head. Or a merman spit a huge amount of blood out of its blow. There's just a lot of blood though.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

There's just it's just blood. Like I mean, listen, you guys blood.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

I hear you, and I agree that the the distribution of gore is not consistent. However, I feel like if we take the average of the gore, it is much gorier than normal, and that's hacker slash math.

SPEAKER_05 31:10

Okay. Can we all give it a rating out of 10, in our opinion? Of obviously 10 being terrifier.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

One being Halloween, where she just has like a cut on her arm.

SPEAKER_05 31:19

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

If a one is Halloween with one cut on the arm and a ten is a terrifier, hot dog style, I put it as a six. I put it in a six.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Six is good.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Six is medium, but it's not terribly gory. That's gory as fuck.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

I'm going seven and a half.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

What?

SPEAKER_05 31:35

And it is not I wouldn't it's not how I describe these things.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

There is an entire elevator room filled with blood several times.

SPEAKER_05 31:41

It's just just think of it as coolie.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

There's just several massacres.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Is that how you get by when drinking it?

SPEAKER_03 31:47

And I think because I hit a certain point in this movie where I was like, I I just I just I threw the hat.

SPEAKER_05 31:52

Um is it possible that the amount of blood goriness that happens um when we get to like the whole elevators and everything becomes numbing and you no longer see it as gore?

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Um, I'm gonna tell you that whole scene, and we couldn't even talk about it because I think it's included in the gore and it's where a lot of the gore is. Um, I hated it. Thanks. I hated it. It looked okay, it literally looked like dun dun. And I know it's supposed to look like that, but it looked that's the point.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

It was a circus.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

It looked cheap. It looked so cheap. And I think because you had you what you walked into Aldi's, you had some werewolves, so you had your, you know, honey oats, honey bunches of oats, you had those, but then you had your sugar flakes that were supposed to be frosted flakes, like uh it.

SPEAKER_04 32:42

Like Pennyways.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Yeah, that I was like, no, you're just a ripoff.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, there were a lot of knockoffs.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

That's the whole point. She even says everything in our stable is remnant of the old world. So it's like all those horror movies were actual rituals, and then these monsters are pulled and derived from them.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

I wish they would have paid all these people and actually got the I wish they would have took taken that budget and just giving me actually all those characters. That would have been cool. I'm like, oh my god, they're all in the same universe.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

They didn't have so much expensive work to make these in this insane number of monsters real.

SPEAKER_04 33:20

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Like it would, it took them so long to do this, and they can't just use Michael Myers, you know, they can't get penny wise. Like, think of the licensing costs. And first of all, all those creators would go, no thank you. I don't want to be involved.

SPEAKER_05 33:34

Stop answering the question realistically. Nobody asked.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

I get it. I get it. They can't do that. But and I I think that's just why I was like, what?

SPEAKER_05 33:43

It's cheap. My beef during that scene is that you didn't get enough small, intimate moments of impact. It was just overall chaos. So it's just like numbing. Whereas like I wanted to see each of them, like I wanted to see a lot more of the lot of the things that we saw in the elevators. Um, but as far as the characters, so I was mentioning that like I didn't pick up the same things as you guys. I didn't pick up that these were supposed to be similarly related, the off-brand version of previous um scary movie monsters and stuff like that. I didn't pick up that on that at all. I did think um I was trying to figure out if the werewolf was supposed to be like American werewolf in London. That was the only one where I was like, oh, that reminds me of that.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

But no, it was totally the one off uh the guy who put the mask on. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_05 34:32

Oh creep, it was totally creep. You didn't know that. Oh god, I had purged that from my mind. I forgot that even existed.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Peach fuzz. It came out several years later.

SPEAKER_05 34:41

So yeah, I I just that's one of those things where I didn't even catch that. And so if you've only seen this movie once, you might not like realize that that's the intention in that scene, or I'm dumb. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

I feel like to me, at least, uh as a fan of Hellraiser, it was super obvious when they had the Cenobite effectively. Yeah, holding that thing. Yeah, it was like, oh, that's obviously a Cenobyte, but they can't use one because that would be crazy to get all the rights to these characters. But then when they start flipping through all the others, it's just like, oh, this is you know, this is like every horror icon that we've come to love and expect from from movies just displayed in front of us, like a member, member what you like, member what you live.

SPEAKER_05 35:22

Yeah, so another contributing factor is obviously that I haven't seen all of the movies in the world, uh, or any sometimes it seems like. Um, so I haven't seen Hellraiser, so that I didn't have that like immediate trigger. They just kept showing that dude, and I was like, Well, he's creepy. You would have noticed Candyman though. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, with a hook. It's interesting. Yeah. There's some. And like the clown, I think it's so generic to have a scary clown that I can't say for sure, like, oh, that's Pennywise. You know?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

My boyfriend Pennywise.

SPEAKER_05 35:48

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

My boyfriend and I actually approached this movie and we did something a little bit differently that I wouldn't normally do for a first watch. But the scene where everyone's in the office and they're like looking at the bets of like who thinks they're gonna die by what. Uh, we actually paused it and looked at what those different options were on that list. And then, and there were some great ones. Um, but then when that scene was unfolding, we were kind of like checking them off to see the different ones. Like a few like notable ones included Angry Molesting Tree. Uh, and at one point you definitely get a kill by an angry molesting tree. Oh my gosh. There's witches and also sexy witches. I'll I won't lie, I could I didn't identify those ones, but I would happily go back and try and spot them. Um, there were dismemberment goblins, definitely got that kill. There was a dragon bat, which was highly featured, and then there was Kevin. And I like literally just in the list it said Kevin. And the whole time we were like, which one of these is Kevin though? Um, but one of them that really stood out and was heavily featured was like Sugar Plum Fairy, and we were like, what the fuck is that gonna be? And then it ended up being like that uh little ballerina girl with like the teeth face. So instead of having like applied it to all of these other cultural references, we just kind of kept it within the context of the movie and just like looked at what these different things were named and like how they ended up looking.

SPEAKER_05 37:04

I love that you did that.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Oh, so there was a unicorn death.

SPEAKER_05 37:07

There was a unicorn stabbing someone more than once. And I was like, how did he get white again? Okay, who's cleaning that horn?

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yeah, and it's that's crazy. That's where you get a lot of the deaths in in the count. That's where you get a lot of this, that's where the 69 comes from, but then you get yeah, that was totally intentional. And the asterisk was um, you could cut possibly say, and we'll talk about the ending, is you could say 6.8 billion because everyone was destructive. So I just want to like clarify that asterisk before like uh for our listeners. But with all these deaths and everything, um, did you guys have a favorite out of any of them or maybe like a fairy? Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

The merman. The merman death was amazing.

SPEAKER_05 37:49

That was well, one of mine. I wanted him to be like sparkly and pretty, and he was not a monster. It the blood stuff.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Oh, it was so great because they made the reference to it it being a huge like mess that you know to have to clean up after, and it like delivered so easily. And I think in reality, their merman was actually a huge mess that they had to clean up and it took a long time. Like the the you know, the prop and all the huge amount of blood that they added to it, like it took them a while to have to clean up after that. So huge. I just I just loved that moment where he realizes what he's about to be killed by. Just so satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

I did think that the special effects on that mermaid, that merman was like a little cheap though.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh uh cheap along with everything else on that scene. No, I'm just gonna be able to do that. There were some questionable effects.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Hold on. First off, let's give some respect to Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy, right? Nancy from Animar on Elm Street. She was on this makeup and special effects team, along with her husband, who is the mastermind behind it all. And they are exceptionally talented.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

I mean, they did so much work.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

No, they are great, they're just like the off brand. And I think I'm like, oh, but I want you know, brand name. But you know, they can't do it. But I I get it, I get it. Yeah. Sometimes you gotta go to fucking Aldi, you know? And Aldi's just as good. No, you do.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

It is you think you want name brand until you've had Newman O's. Okay. I don't know if you've tried these yet. I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Are those pop tarts or like curios?

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Like Oreos. So John Gruber um from Daring Fireball and the talk show um raves about these things. Huge fan of this guy. And he mentions it, and then I was like, I'm gonna go buy some Newman O's. So have you ever had like Newman's own? Like the brand? Yeah. Okay. So he makes these Oreo light cookies, or not he, the company makes these Oreo light cookies that are severely better than Oreos.

SPEAKER_05 39:37

Severely better.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

You will buy these things. And they're so sometimes, you know what? The off brand is the right one to get.

SPEAKER_03 39:45

That is true.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Just saying.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Um, so my kill was um jewels. So I just love the you know, the like setup for this. You know something's gonna happen. They're pumping them pheromones into the like fog and stuff like that. So you know something's gonna happen. And you know, there's just so much going on. You get this bear trap on her back, and which I feel like that was the best weapon of this in the world.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Oh, that's such a good weapon.

SPEAKER_05 40:12

Yeah, I think I mean the idea of that being like flung into your back, it just it hurts me. Yeah, because we've seen this bear trap in other things on it.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

All saying low gore. We didn't see it, you didn't see it. You just saw it like you just pushed her back. You didn't know what it did.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

You felt that thing. We saw it a few times. He kept doing that, it kind of got boring.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:35

I don't know how dark your TV was. Medium gore is what we're saying.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

Medium gore, medium, medium high, you know, when you have to like boil something and you just don't want it to burn. Uh you are rubbing off on me, Mac.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

That's not my foot. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

And then it's just and then you get the like chain, like the salt, like salt, which I think was cool. I wish I would have seen it, but for that movie, I don't for the this was done perfectly with the managore. I don't think, I don't think it I think it would have put me off a little bit had it, had I seen it. But I did like that. I love that weapon. I love, you know, the ring hair sort of going on.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

I actually thought that the jewels kill was actu was a a real standout to Alexis. I love the idea of like a two-person saw being used to decapitate somebody because it like just shows a little more effort. Um, but I'll give a runner-up to my Dismemberment Goblins, uh, because they flew right out of that elevator and then tore several people limb from limb. Uh, and you know, you just don't get enough of that in movies these days.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

I think we need to we need to make a movie with that, like somehow. Ryan and I are gonna be the goblins.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

So my my favorite death is the least gory, and it's actually Kurt's death. Because I love that oh shit moment that they have. And my one small complaint about this movie is that they give away that force field so early by showing the eagle fly into it. Forgot about the eagle on the animal report, guys. Sorry, hope you don't like birds. Oh god, so true. But they give that away so early, and then we know what's gonna happen. They don't know what's happening. So I appreciate the approach, but I would have thought it would have been a great thing, kind of like uh in the Hunger Games, uh, in one of the last Hunger Games movies where they kind of figure out that the arena has a force field around it and it's kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_05 42:22

I definitely wish there were times when we knew less about what was going on, but I uh that takes away from the like the point of the movie, but I feel you on that.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

Yeah, that could have been like a oh an oh shit moment for all of us as an audience, too.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

It could have been, but you know what? Here's the thing this movie, when you look at like the violence, you look at the bear trap, the sound design that went into the bear trap, it whether it was hitting people or uh closing in on Jules' back, that in itself created an element of gore there that made my skin crawl. And when you go from there, you go to uh Jules being decapitated, you go to Kurt crashing into the force field, you go to Holden getting the blade through his throat in the camper, which was nuts. You go from this like having this like reserved gore to being outright chaos. And all of that is a commentary on the evolution of horror. When you look at how this movie is paced, right? It starts off it's 44 minutes before the first kill. That's a classic throwback to traditional horror when there was little to no violence, there was just suspense. And then you look at the few deaths that we get, and it's kind of bloody, it's kind of grimy, but it keeps getting more intense. And that's the filmmaker's commentary on like you went from this to extreme, and we gotta just wipe the slate clean. It's it gets getting like it numbs it numbs you to it.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

And that's uh example because clearly I'm so numb that I'm almost giving it a five or a four. But I do like that. It's always you're always like asking for more, asking for more, asking for more, and then look, and then you get it all. At once.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

Exactly. And when you look at this, like the ancient ones, we are the ancient ones. We are the audience watching this. And you know, these two guys in the control room are making this whole thing happen. They are the filmmakers. Uh so I love the way this movie approaches its story. And you look at the construction of a horror movie within it. So we've talked a lot about like the gore element of it and the bloodiness and like the shining moment with the elevator and the blood flowing through. But what stood out to you guys visually beyond that?

SPEAKER_01 44:31

The true horror in this movie, which is the world's ugliest flats.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Always. I didn't even know there were flats in this movie. No one notices feet in horror movies.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

My girlfriend totally noticed them.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

What?

SPEAKER_01 44:43

There were like shiny silver, right?

SPEAKER_03 44:44

Wait.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, there were several scenes that focused like solely on the two girls' hideous flats. And I was like, why is this happening?

SPEAKER_05 44:50

Okay, I'm sorry. I did actually notice. Didn't one like come off towards the end?

SPEAKER_01 44:56

I hope they both came off.

SPEAKER_05 44:57

Something happened towards the end, and now I know what you're talking about. And I was thinking, has she been wearing them baby doll flats the whole time?

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yes, she has. With those little like capris. It was rough.

SPEAKER_05 45:06

Oh, you're the worst Ferris.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Can I say that I don't hate flats though?

SPEAKER_03 45:11

Some flats are cool. Yeah. These are not.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

No. Yeah. I didn't notice that, but but for me, the my actual favorite visual element on in all seriousness was the uh like the ritual temple that had the different like archetypes along the walls that would fill with blood. Um, because it gave me like tarot card vibes, and I liked I liked that as a setting for like a final final scene where like the choice had to be made like is she gonna kill her friend or is she gonna like save the world? Um and I thought that that was like a really good space of all the different spaces we were taken to, like the woods, the cabin, the like office, the sci-fi space where we're holding all these things. I felt like that was like a a really nice like return to like I don't know, like natural, organic, like clay materials. Does that make sense? Like ancient shit.

SPEAKER_05 45:57

Yeah, that's so funny. That was one of my least favorite parts of this movie.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 46:02

I was like, this is some corny, uh, what is it, national treasure? Like, like what is this nonsense? Not Da Vinci's code, you know. We're not going cool, we're going like, I don't know. National treasure is cool, is it?

SPEAKER_03 46:14

Yes, yeah. I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Puzzles are fun.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

I like how it does tie back though, because I mean, so much of modern horror can be traced back to like classical roots. I mean, obviously further beyond that as well, you know, back to ancient mythology and stuff. But I I I like that that this is where it ended up with with Kronos punching through the ground with the titans being released.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

See, that's funny because that was my least favorite visual part. That hand coming up. I was like, that's stupid. I wish it didn't do that.

SPEAKER_05 46:44

Wait, so you were cool with all the nonsensical mythical stuff until the hand reached up.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yeah, because the hand was truly reaching. It was too much.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Did um everyone like I mean, visually, I had like a few things that stood out, but like two of those things. One was the black room that was actually completely dark, which I loved. Like I I couldn't see what was like when the lights were off and they didn't have anything lit. You know, it was cool to see just everything so dark, and then these lights come on, and you're like, Oh my god, it's a torture room. It's crazy. Like, this is so like interesting. And going along with that, I just love this cabin. Like, there's so many things that remind me of so many other different movies. And I know Matt can relate because that Evil Dead, like freaking cellar, you know, not to go in this cellar, but you do. But I I just love the look of this cabin, you know. It it reminds me of home. And when I mean home, it reminds me of like the other horror movies that like I hold dear to my heart. So I think that's like why visually I'm like, oh, it feels like home.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

I was really concerned for a brief moment.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

It reminds me of where I live right now, where you guys are.

SPEAKER_05 47:55

So right before the world ended, I went to Nashville and I stayed in an Airbnb. And it was really fun. Uh it was a house, as you do, and there was a door that was locked, and it had like um it looked like a door that went outside, but I didn't I knew that it didn't because it was in the middle of the house, but it had like like uh you know, seal and everything around the edge so that like air wouldn't come in, stuff like that. So I go, oh, this is a this is a like a a basement, but it's really creepy and locked. Um and obviously six girls stayed in a house, so uh somebody decided it was a good idea to go down. So one person gets a door unlocked, it's locked from the inside, to be fair, unlocks the door, goes down, there's no light, anything, and then we have like a significant amount of time where they came up, ran up, and they're just like, there's a noise down there, and we're like all trying to figure out what the noise was, what was going on. Somebody went outside, the basement like went down to like an exit door, and they're like, Oh, I can hear something from over here, and all these things going on. All I can tell you is that I have never gone into a basement that I don't belong in ever, and I will never, and I did not support my friends doing it, and it's because of movies like this. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

The best thing would have been like meadow-wise, if it had been a boiler room.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

I just want to say that violates Airbnb's terms and conditions. We probably violated the terms and conditions.

SPEAKER_05 49:25

Listen, all I'm saying is if you're out there and your friends think, hey, we should um do this like slightly creepy thing, it'll be so fun. Like, you've seen this in scary movies. Scary movies are real and you should not do those things. Okay, you shouldn't have gone into the cellar. Don't be picking up stuff, putting necklace. Who puts necklaces on in in cellars? But we have to do that. Can't because we all die if we don't do it. Alexis, this is why we can't go anywhere together.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Yeah, and if your friend picks up a diary with some sort of ancient or dead language in it, specifically Latin, slap it out of their hands.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yes, be Marty. Yeah, be smoke more weed. Shout out to Marty. I'm drawing, I'm drawing the line in the sand right here. Do not read the Latin.

SPEAKER_03 50:08

That was like one of my favorite lines because I could totally everyone says that in their head. Don't read the freaking book.

SPEAKER_05 50:14

And he said it. I have to tell you, I am that person in person. Literally, I was like, why are y'all going downstairs? This isn't a good idea. I'm here. I don't want to be involved with going downstairs. This is not what I want to do. And then there was a tornado watch and COVID was happening. So actually, it was a very scary time.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

So it almost was.

SPEAKER_05 50:30

I actually almost had a panic attack.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Oh, maybe a tornado bunker.

SPEAKER_05 50:34

Yeah, it could have been considering there was this was right after the the tornadoes that went through Tennessee. So it happens. But regardless, not a cool move. Locked door should stay locked all the time.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Did anybody get like Monsters Inc. kind of vibes here?

SPEAKER_05 50:48

Yes. Like adult monsters ink?

SPEAKER_01 50:50

Like we scare because we care. Yeah, exactly. Like Monsters Inc. all grown up.

SPEAKER_05 50:54

When they were saying, um, do you know how many people are watching when sh we were waiting for her to pull them boobs out? I was like, that's what I was thinking about. Like, are there people that like subscribe to this on like some weird dark website? What's happening?

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Is it us?

SPEAKER_05 51:08

It's us. It is us, actually. Plot twist. And they were not wrong. I we were waiting for that. I was waiting to see if it was a true horror movie. And it was. So this movie gave you exactly what you wanted. More or less. Uh there's I could have gone with less sci-fi. I'm on that, I'm on that parish train.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Like what part of the side?

SPEAKER_05 51:27

Like the whole gods thing? Yeah, that whole thing, like uh, it doesn't, it just doesn't really like do it for me. I get it. Like, I I get it. It's not really meant to be taken seriously. Um but it I just wanted So Gourne's Weaver's in it. She's the director. Like, it's supposed to be taken seriously. No, I'm messing with you. I could have just done with less of the like mythical gods are unhappy.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Well, the titans are not gods, but whatever they are.

SPEAKER_05 51:55

Same, I mean, what what what what are we getting serious here? You getting technical on the on the Titans, whatever it is. Um, I did really like though at the end when they were like, eh, the world could use a restart. You know, our boy, our boy Mar Marty Our boy Marty was like, you know, I mean, it is what it is. It's cool.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

We can just we'll just restart everything, no big deal. Yeah, shout out to his quote in the beginning of the movie uh society needs to crumble, we're just too chicken shit to let it.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Oh, coming full circle.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Oh, I didn't even pick up on that.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yep, all he had to do was wait till 2020. Would you guys have killed your stoner friend to save the world?

SPEAKER_05 52:34

Yes. Yes. I wouldn't have acted like I was going to if I wasn't. That's the thing that really threw me off.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Yeah, why don't you point the gun at someone else? And then when he's like, see, she's not gonna just boom, done. It's game over, the gods are pleased.

SPEAKER_05 52:48

Or just if you're gonna do it, do it. But like, don't act like you're gonna do it. Because what if you do live? That's not your friend.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

You know what I was really waiting for? My other small complaint in this movie is the fact that the archetypes don't really line up. I was waiting for her to die and Marty to be revealed to be the virgin.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Ooh, that would have been so great.

SPEAKER_03 53:09

I thought that was gonna be the twist at the end, but uh never happened.

SPEAKER_05 53:12

That would have been good. But Chris, wasn't kind of the point that the archetypes weren't really right. Oh, yeah, because she said, Oh, we're gonna go to the world. We work with what we have, gotta make do. Yeah, she was like the virgin.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

That one time in college, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

But I would have loved like a like an oh shit moment, like a panic, like they think everything's fucked up because she died, and then all of a sudden Marty's alive and they realize, oh, the world's not ending. I wouldn't have been mad at that.

SPEAKER_05 53:36

Oh yeah, I I definitely would have loved that. But I do kind of like how they were talking about like um they were saying, like, but Kurt's not a jock. Kurt's Kurt's like a psych major.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Yeah, I thought he was supposed to be there. I was like, yeah, I'm like, okay, jock, smart one, like Jules' pre-med.

SPEAKER_05 53:52

I think the point was that he looks the part rather than actually being the part. So like the and he's dating the blonde, of course. And like they they they're supposed to be these certain things, but they're not really.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

I feel like once they got to the cabin, they started like behaving more and more like the roles that they were supposed to play, and that could be like whatever they were gassing them with.

SPEAKER_02 54:10

Yeah, it's that gas. Yeah, I mean, they even they even specify that they're gonna slow down her cognizance by like the chemicals that are in her dye, like making her blonde.

SPEAKER_03 54:20

I thought that was great. That was amazing. And then they supposedly put stuff in his weed, but it only made him like smarter.

SPEAKER_05 54:28

They were like, he has a different stash, he's been smoking that the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

I love all these little details that they put in there. Um, another one that was really great to me is when she had the knife in her hand, it just emits like a tiny little electrical shock that makes her drop it without really paying attention to it. And I'm like, that shit always happens in horror movies where it's like, why did you drop the weapon? And it's like, oh, maybe it's just like tased the bitch. And she's like, Oh, it's so true.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Yeah, see, that is my favorite visual. Like that little, like the little nugget, and then the uh slow turn of the knobs and the pheromones uh raising up from the ground. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

The last thing I'll say for visuals is a pet peeve that I have in really all movies, but horror movies do it a lot. And I'm sure this is probably a universal pet peeve, but this movie did it twice where you're basically looking at a very dark scene almost completely black, and then it cuts immediately to a blinding white light. Can we just cancel that? Can we all stop doing that in movies?

SPEAKER_05 55:19

I am on board with that. When you're when you're in the theater, that drives me nuts. I've complained about it on this on this podcast plenty of times, and everyone else is like, What are you talking about? I'm like, What?

SPEAKER_01 55:29

I'm ball sensitive. Yeah, maybe it's like it it for a second it takes you out of it because you're like fully closing your eyes and being like, Oh, what the fuck, get this out of my face, and then like you adjust again. You're like, oh yeah, I'm still at the movie.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

I do understand that because usually I'm watching these like earlier in the day, so I can remember them. But I've realized like now I need a few days to actually like process the movie. So I watched it late on Friday night and everything was dark, so I could totally see that blinding light like on Friday. I was like, geez.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Something I am okay with uh with canceling would be the first jump scare of the movie being the damn title card. The title? Oh my gosh, the worst. But I will say that I know I got down on 13 ghosts a few weeks ago, you know, for their approach to the ghost design and stuff like that. First off, the ghost that represents 13 ghosts and the specters in this movie, superior to what we saw in that movie. Uh, but the containment cubes in this movie were badass. They looked better to me than the glass rooms for the 13 ghosts.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

Yeah, when they pulled back on that scene and you could see all of them. Yeah, it was like structurally great, and it was just like infinity. You're like they just have so many.

SPEAKER_05 56:41

Did y'all see the giant tarantula that took up the whole entire container? I don't think we saw him again. Again, it's Eduardo.

SPEAKER_02 56:49

Oh my god. The one tarantula who gets all the jobs.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

He's still getting work. Did you see the giant kitten?

SPEAKER_03 56:54

I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

I missed the kitten. I need to go back.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

Go back and watch it.

SPEAKER_03 56:58

I wonder where he's from. What movie?

SPEAKER_00 56:59

I don't know, but it is entertaining. It's from Pet Cemetery.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

Yeah, they they grow actually in the ground that big when they go.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

Yeah, what if they put fertilizer in Pet Cemetery? That's what it was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

Something that I really appreciated was when you're talking about how Marty is impervious to everything that's happening because of the weed he's smoking, and clearly it's the chemistry, it's the chem department's uh fault again, like it was in 1998. Not Mac, but Paris, Alexis, Ryan. What movie happened in 1998 where a bunch of teenagers survived? I obviously have no idea. Based on something chemical.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Why are you doing this to us?

SPEAKER_02 57:36

I couldn't even name a movie from 1990. The faculty? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Oh, yeah, because of the cocaine. Dang Alexis. Nice Alexis.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

I love that movie. So that'd be the US failed ritual. Well done, Alexis.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

I love that one. How did I this suck? I just can't tap into things. No rapid-fire questioning for me.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

But when you look at the breakdown of these characters, obviously they're made to fit the archetypes, not like they did in the faculty. But something that I think this movie does exceptionally well is make you feel things for them, right? Whether it be the young college kids who don't deserve them, or it be uh the team of folks who are making this whole thing happen, who you first see as a villain, at least I did, and you kind of come to see things from their point of view, right? Like you know a little bit more about them, like that that guy and his wife were trying to have a baby. Um, you know, like Truman, the security guard, is like hearing all these conflicting things and like questioning, you know, the ethics and morals behind everything. What did you guys think of the characters?

SPEAKER_01 58:39

Honestly, I hated the main girl. Um, didn't like her face, didn't like her outfit, didn't like anything she said or did. Uh, so it was hard to root for her. I was like, okay, she's obviously our final girl, so like I guess I'll get on board, but it was very reluctant. Um, and honestly, I wasn't really rooting for anybody. I felt like, and this isn't because he's hot, but I felt like Chris Hemsworth was the most like lived in with his character, and he kind of like brought the other characters to life around him. So I was like, okay, at least like that's happening. Um, but the moment Sigourney Weaver came on the screen, and this is the reveal that I was only a reveal to me because I had no idea Sigourney Weaver was going to be in this movie the first time I saw it, but when she came on the screen, I was instantly like, oh, I'm on Team Sigourney. Whatever happens, I need her to come out on top. And unfortunately that didn't pan out. And it might have been her ugly gray suit, but I really wanted her to like get the job done and just like coming and being a boss bitch.

SPEAKER_05 59:29

Can I ask a quick question? Where does everyone's attachment from to Sigourney Weaver come from? Aliens. Sorry, Heartbreaker. Definitely Max. I just wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Okay. Yeah. And Galaxy Quest.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

I just don't attach to people in this way. I just appreciated her as a strong and powerful woman.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

She's also the voice in um the aquarium of Finding Dory.

SPEAKER_05 59:51

Uh, that I'm a fan of. No, I was just curious. It was just a curious question. That's all. For me, I don't know why you hated everyone so much. I felt like they were really likable characters. I feel like when Dana was getting the break speed off of her on that deck, I was like stressed. Like I felt sad. Like that that bear trap in her back like 10 times. I was like, dang, she is getting torn up. See, I laughed at that part. Oh, you're such a mean person. I guess. It's like you weren't like on board with them. Like when they like get into the camper, well, first off, like, as with everything else in this movie, they've showed us everything. They showed us that somebody was in the camper. But then they're like going and they're just trying to get through. And I really thought they were gonna make it out, honestly. And then the whole thing blows up, and then they come out and he tries to ride the you know, all these different things. They tried so hard, you know. I feel like they made smart decisions, except for, you know, when uh Kurt was drugged and he's like, we should uh split up. I was like, dang it, Kurt.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Yeah, that was a cheap shot.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:49

Yeah, but I feel like I don't know, I really like these characters, and and the guys at the facility, like, okay. Uh that's kind of like neither here nor there on them. I felt like it was cool when they died. I did really like like the uh the banter of like them betting on what would happen and stuff. I thought that was cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:09

But overall, I was cool with the characters, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

I think maybe they were just like too much of a blank slate for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

See, I thought they were really well developed more than they would be like in other movies. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:19

I have no blankness in it. Paris, you're weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

Oh they really they honestly they they earned those characters with their portrayals. Yeah, I feel like when we watched a lot of movies, they were like, okay, I'm the jock, act like meat head and do jock things. Like, we didn't get that in this film. We got someone who like felt like their character and you know had facial expressions that matched their characters. I think all the way through. I think my favorite characters though were the were the guys in the control room. They were the most fun to watch.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

Definitely agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:50

Did you like the scene when the the speaker phone? They were on the speakerphone.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

That was that was one of the funniest things.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:56

It was so funny. It was so funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:57

Yeah, I I don't know. I really liked them the most, but I think like our main characters are are our young kids, our teenagers who would make stupid decisions. Like they were okay. I actually, I mean, they were fine, but I I didn't focus on them as much because I knew they were gonna make stupid decisions. Whereas the guys in the control room, like you don't know what the agenda is if this is your first time watching. You just know like to this, to them, this is their job, and they seem to be pretty good at it so far.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:24

So I will I I just thought of something that I do think maybe it goes to Paris' point. When they got to the cabin and they were playing Truth or Dare, and like um in those moments, they were doing things, and I I couldn't quite tell if they were doing stuff that they wouldn't normally do because of the gas or whatever. Um, but I think that they made it seem like we knew these characters a little bit more than they did. So like I didn't know if she was out of character dancing like that, you know? And then they were playing Truth or Dare like playing that wolf. You're yeah, and like you're always like this. And like there will there were some things in those, there was a few moments there where I was like, I don't really know them. Um, but I it didn't take fully away from me. But I I think that might be where Paris is coming from a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:10

It definitely is, Ryan. I appreciate you helping me to articulate this because I'm alone here.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:14

It's okay, we always are.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

Another another element of that was Holden, his character. For the first like five scenes he was in, he literally didn't say anything. And I was like, what are we doing? Like he's from Grey's Anatomy, he should get lines. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:27

He's just good to look at.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

There's the scene with like him in like the mirror with the painting, and I was like, okay, so like you kind of get a vibe for him as a character, like, oh, he's he's a guy, but he's got a good heart. Um, and then at some point in the cabin, he literally just like puts on glasses, and it's like, oh, he's supposed to be the nerd, he's the scholar. And I was like, putting on glasses like doesn't make you that for me.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:48

But it's the gas making him because that's not really him.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

Yeah, but there's always that character in and especially in like a cabin setting where they're like, I'm the good guy, I'm gonna do right by women, I'm gonna treat you right until I don't, as they always do. Exactly. Yeah, but there's like always the one that's like, I'm smarter than the other guys here, and I'm decent, and I'm the white knight here to help everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

Yeah. Okay, I kind of get that energy from it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

And Doug Holden.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

You did?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

I was a fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:16

I loved how he was like, Yeah, let's just trade rooms, and then like immediately exposed himself to her through that window because I was like, This is exactly what I would do.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:24

I was gonna say, wouldn't you?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

Just like, oops, you better put that painting up, bitch, because I'm getting naked over here.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:30

Wait, but then he went hard and was taking the pants off too. Like he didn't know she was there.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:35

Like, okay, of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Kind of put it on her to decide.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:39

Yeah. And it it's crazy though, because like you're clearly rooting for them at certain uh like at that point, and you're like, okay, these people, even though it's their job, like they have to do that, like it, they they're they're still crappy. And they're like betting, and yeah, you're doing it to pass time and everything like that. But it was so crazy how easily it flipped for me. I was like, all right, please die, please die. Um, oh my god, like I was like, no, they can't, like, why are they letting them out? They they shouldn't be letting these monsters out. Like they that that was like at that point, everything flipped for me. I was like, all right, I'm rooting for technically the bad guys, I guess you'd say. Um, just so there could be a positive ending where no one died, which is weird because normally I want everyone to die in some sort of horror movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:25

Well, also like the concept of pushing the well, okay, first and foremost, the concept of a giant red purge button. Ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:33

Yeah, that unleashes everything.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:35

Yes. But also it's intentional to be the MacGuffin. Exactly. The idea of pushing the button to let all the monsters out when you're trapped inside of the same place as the monsters truly threw me for a loop. Like I was like, what? And then one broke in, so they had to go out. I was like, the why would you do this? This is not a good decision. So I'd take back my time when I said that they were making good decisions, but like, who does that? Why? That's what makes you read for the other people is you're like, Really, you're gonna purge? Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

When it comes to these characters, I mean, I I get that flip-flop, right? I respect that because I think once it gets to the point where it's just Dana left, and I mean I l I love Marty and I wanted Marty to make it through. Um I don't want him to make it make it through on the expense of humanity, but um I didn't really care for her so much. There's something about her that I didn't find particularly likable, but when you look at Jules, right? And even when Jules and you see Jules and Dana for that first time, and she's like really excited about how fabulous she looks with her blonde hair, and then Dana doesn't really say anything. She's like, hurry up with the fabulous, I'm getting insecure about it now. Like that was just such like a rich little moment for her character. Um, and then even like Chris Hemsworth is current when he like is breaking down um a book that she should read, and he's like, And you have no pants, and just walks out. That was so good. But then you have these moments with the team behind everything where like knowing how all it all of it ends, it it's cool to look back and like see how deeply these characters are developed with just the brief exchange at the beginning of the movie. They're doing catastrophic work, but it's so perfectly normal to them. And Drew Goddard, who's one of the writers of this movie, took inspiration from his hometown where you had all these guys who were working on like nuclear bombs, and when they went home, they had ordinary lives, right? But they could end humanity in the blink of an eye.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

That's powerful stuff. I I did like Jules as a character, but I feel like that was pretty obvious. Um but can we talk about in the the scene with Chris Hemsworth in the book? He literally pulls a book off of her bookshelf and then recommends it to her. If that's not the definition of mansplaining, I don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:45

Yeah, I love the first scene too. It gave me very um, like I know what you did last summer and like scream two vibes, or many, I guess, many other horror movies where you have all your friends getting together and everyone's packing up for like a cool weekend somewhere.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:00

So uh I will not let this podcast go on without mentioning that coffee cup bong. Just because it's hilarious, and I'm usually not like uh that like paraphernalia type of person, like it this is not my vibe, but that was hilarious, and when it came into play in the rest of the movie, I loved it. And it was real strong, evidently.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

So I know you can't let that go. What I can't let go is why in horror movies have they not heard of like underwear that has a color and a pattern.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:31

Bro, those are the ugliest underwear I've ever seen in my life. And I had a whole thought process about do people, do humans are there women that wear these? Are there? I don't think there are. Actually, maybe it just occurred to me they had the same underwear chooser as uh Sigorny Weaver and Alien, who was also wearing a terrible contribution.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:54

That's matter.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:55

She's like, I want her to wear the exact same underwear I wore. Actually, I have it right here. I take them with me everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

To Chris's point, sort of, I did really enjoy the juxtaposition of like nightmarish horror creatures being somebody's like mundane, boring office job. Um and I I really enjoyed the way that they kind of showed what other countries were doing in their attempt to fulfill the ritual. Specifically, shout out to that classroom of Japanese girls who like tamed that ghost. Um and I realized that that's where with happiness. Yeah, with like a beautiful little song after they were being tormented. Like that mini story was a really nice vignette. But I also realized that that was the origin of the meme that's like the little girl holding up a thing and it says the evil is defeated. And I was like, oh, that's where that meme came from. So if a movie is good enough to birth a meme, props to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

And this is where I'm confused though, on sort of like the ending per se, is okay, maybe there are there different titans that like each like country is it's like a hot spot where the where it's underneath. Because I was confused because there's these gods here that need to be fulfilled and have you know the virgin, the jock, the and then there I I can't imagine that they're all like all those kids, there's one of those in each of them. I thought so I was so confused, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:16

So from what I gather is the ancient ones are all together collectively, and at least one country just has to fulfill the ritual, and the rest of them, it's like you're just enjoying the show. But as long as one ritual is fulfilled, then the whole world is safe. If it makes it to the end and the last country fails, then the titans walk the earth because there's no sacrifice made for them. I think they're really counting on you not asking questions about that part.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:44

That's the only thing I was like the thing I asked, like at the end of the watching it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

But then remember that those titans are us being pissed off about horror movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:53

Like, why are these kids ruining it? Like they're supposed to be massacred. Like, oh my gosh, I'm so horrible for wanting seven-year-olds dead. What the heck is wrong with me?

SPEAKER_05 1:11:02

The other like logistical thing is like the whole cabin, uh elevator, downstairs, monsters, mythical dirt room, and then the facility, like it's all a very strange layout, and I I'm I kind of it's one of those other things where you're just not meant to question it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:23

I figured it was like all underground. It was like a parfait, like a Westworld kind of thing. Sorry, a parfait?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

Yeah, it had different layer.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

And then at the very bottom of the parfait was the Titans. Thank you, Donkey.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:35

It was a strawberry.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:36

Is it the strawberry that's on the bottom? I'm just saying there was a lot of monsters in there, and it was a lot of elevators, and there's like uh it's just I'm unsure.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

It's a theme park for ritual sacrifice. That's what we need to look at.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:50

Also an office building underneath, yeah. They have a control room nearby. Yes. Do you hear your tone? It means you don't believe it either.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:57

I just figured it was like a like a like an ant colony underneath. Like there's all these different like things.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

I mean, not a bad comparison.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

I didn't question that, but I questioned that other thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

I have no qualms. I mean, it's like uh it's kind of how you look at horror horror movies, you wonder how to like how did a villain get from one side of the area to the other, and then like Jason Voorhees has like tunnels under Camp Crystal Lake. It's like that. So you don't really need much more of an explanation. It's like, okay, here is here is the lore. You know, before the break, I mentioned how I feel like this movie takes a very original approach and it comes close to only one other meta horror movie that we've covered. That was Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Paris, Ryan, Mac, have you guys seen that?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

I thought you were gonna say Tucker and Dell vs. Evil.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:42

No, no, no, no, no, no. That's so funny that you mentioned that because I was thinking like, I would love to watch these two side by side, like during the yeah, it was like just to see the difference.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

So to give you an idea, Paris, uh Ryan, it really what it does is it shows you the making of a horror movie, but it's set in a world where Jason, Freddie, Michael, they're all real. And a documentary a documentary crew is following this guy who's gonna be like the next slasher, and he's revealing all the tricks of the trade. So he's showing you how to stage a house so that like kids can't escape, and he it creates the plan for his story and things like that. It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

Like magician's secrets revealed, but for killers.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:23

I actually love that energy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:24

It is brilliant. You should watch it. I'm pretty sure it's on Amazon Prime or Hulu.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:28

Yeah, it's great. And it's it's kind of to me, it was like it, you know, it it gets kind of scary because you're like, this guy's cr crazy, clearly.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:37

So we we've talked a lot a lot about so far about like the visuals, you've talked about the monster stuff like that, and the richness of the characters, but uh overall, did you guys have a particular scene that was your favorite?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

I like the basement scene, the cellar scene because we get to see all the possibilities that we could have had in this film. And each little object in there like corresponds to one of the monsters we see in the flying cubes later. Each little object that could have summoned any number of monsters, which would have been a ton of fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:09

Yeah, that's when it definitely like I I figured it out and I figured it out watching the second time. I was like, Oh, that's what he meant, like he was touching the conch. Like yeah, I loved it. Like when it like pan uh like it zooms out and you see all these things and you knew all those things were in that room. And I was like, Oh, that's so cool. Like I never thought of that um when I when they first went into the cellar. Do you think the merman trigger would have been blowing into the conch? Oh, I would listening to it. I love the idea of listening to it and be like, I hear an ocean, and but you don't, you hear like a voice or something that's like suddenly.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

And then like the mermaid hand comes out and like rips your ears out.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:47

There we go.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:48

Like a Freddy tongue from Never and Elm Street.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:51

Or the cellar starts to flood as soon as you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:54

I really liked the the premature celebration of the office workers. Um, because one, you kind of got to see them in like a lighter context where they're like, Oh, we did it, yay. Uh, and then you got a couple little like mini scenes where they kind of develop those characters a little bit, and then the whole party's ruined when Sigourney Weaver gets on the phone and she's like, uh, you guys fucked up. The stoner isn't dead. Get back to work, quit popping bottles and finish this thing before I have to come downstairs and do it myself.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:21

Yeah, that was good. And and mine's pretty similar. Mine was the uh the betting and like them having all the names written on the board, and like the woman's like, Ah, but I said zombies, and he's like, No, you said zombies.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:34

They said zombie redneck torture family.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:37

Zombie, yes, zombie redneck torture family. They're two different things, and it was just like, that's so good. And I wish I had paused it on there because I tried to read a few of those, and I love that you did that, Paris, because some of them were so funny, and like that was just like the charm of this movie for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:51

I honestly want to watch it a third time and then pause during that scene to write all of them down. Uh, I associate them with all of the items in the basement and try and figure out like what was what, and then obviously match them up with all the creatures as they're released and get their kills off.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

That would be amazing. Lots of work, but amazing. I won't ruin your fun by linking a video in the show notes that actually does that very thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:12

Oh my god, do exactly that. You know I'm lazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:14

There's a video that does it? Yeah, there's a guy who who actually identifies every reference. So we're not as smart as him. We'll just link that and give you a good resource. Thank you. I would say my favorite scene was looking back on it, it didn't stand out to me that much the first time I saw, but this time it was great. When Marty is allegedly killed off-screen and the earth shakes, and it's because the gods are pissed that he was killed off-screen and they know he's not actually dead. Because in a horror movie, if you don't see it, it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

Oh, I definitely caught that he was killed off screen. I was like, mm, he's coming back, even though I'd seen this before.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:47

That's interesting. I like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:49

The gods were displeased.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:50

They're always displeased. We were very hard to please in general, but I think one of the other things that this movie did really well was pace itself. Um, when it starts, it doesn't stop. And I know that sounds really stupid and unintelligent to say, because obviously it doesn't stop until the end, but every moment they're like just genuinely no lulls that you're not getting something out of it. Uh what about you guys? Did you feel bored by anything, or did you feel like it was a pretty smooth ride?

SPEAKER_05 1:17:15

I agree with you. I don't think any I didn't have any pacing issues with this movie at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:19

Yeah, I definitely thought it was l longer than it was. I was like, oh, this movie has to be like oh close to two hours. And it was like an hour and 35 minutes or something. But yeah, no, I thought it was I think you're getting some sort of information, or in anything, you're like trying to decide what the the person just said what it meant, or like what the heck, especially if it's your first time, you're like, what the hell's still going on? I'm still trying to figure out what the bird flying into the you know vortex or whatever meant, like the shield.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:48

This movie's definitely dense with like attention to detail and like content and little Easter eggs. Um, I feel like the pacing, while it had a bit of a slow start, it accelerated exponentially. So by the time things did pick up, they like didn't let down and then bore you for a little bit before picking up again, which I really appreciated.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:08

I I do love that they were able to squeeze in a ton of small references and and big references without like making it painful, like other movies like uh Ready Player One, where it's more about like look at all the references I can make, and we made it into a book and then into a movie. And isn't this fun and nostalgic? And it's like stop hitting me over the head with references. I I love that they were able to throw in all these tiny little details you can pick up along the way, but it never slows down the film, it never makes you feel bored, it never makes you sit there and be like, Oh yeah, I love DT. Uh it just it does it in a really fluid way, and that acceleration that Paris mentioned, I loved. Like it accelerates all the way until the very end. And then it like boom, there's nothing left. You you've hit the brick wall with the car, it's done.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:52

Yeah, I'm pretty much on board with everything you guys have said. Um, I think there is something about this that makes it unique, even though it's a lot of elements we already know. Rather than continuing on that, I'd like to propose how I think this movie could be better. Okay, hear me out. You know that episode of Black Mirror that allowed you to pick your own destiny on Netflix? If you could choose at the beginning of this movie which monster, like out of like 10 of them, would that not be the coolest thing ever? And also give you this really creepy moment where you're actually the person in control instead of them. Wouldn't that be amazing?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:27

They shouldn't read like they should do like a sequel, maybe?

SPEAKER_05 1:19:31

I don't know how that goes, but I like that. A Netflix sequel, right? Give you some options, just like some of the most popular, most fun ones. You know how the one guy is obsessed with uh Merman? Just go, just give us some options. I thought that would be the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:44

My boyfriend and I did think that this would make a great mini-series where they just kind of explored every route.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:49

It's kind of similar to when we saw 13 ghosts, where it's like we just kind of like to know more about the monsters, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:55

Yeah. I think if you want to know more about the monsters, there's so many of them, and they're like all from other horror movies that you can just watch.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:02

That's true. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't uh I guess in this instance, I don't want to know more about them. I want to see them kill people.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:09

That's yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:10

Which I'm I guess I could also still go watch another movies.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

Seriously, I I was looking through there, like we're we're exposed to several monsters, let's say. There's some that were really bad in the you know, the movies that they're drawing their influence from, and some that I truly loved.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:24

I agree, Ryan. I would love to see that. I would think it'd even be cool if like on episode 100 I was talking about like a VR game. I would love this movie to be a VR game with those kind of decisions made into it. Yeah, that would be really cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:37

I did think that that painting on the wall was actually cute, and I think that would be a fun kind of painting to have in your house. Hello?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:45

The wolf dismemberment?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:47

Yeah, like amongst like some normal art, you just like slip that in there too and be like, oh yeah, my grandfather painted this or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:53

Goodbye. You're a crazy person.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:55

Every house needs a haunted painting.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:57

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

That painting reminded me of the murals in Parks and Wreck. Yes, very that.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:01

I would go for the creepy see-through mirror. One-way mirror, one-way mirror, two-way mirror, whatever that's called. I'd go for that in my house, but in a very specific place for a very specific purpose. I bet, you weirdo.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:16

Yeah. Which you have to elaborate on now.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:18

I literally won't.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:21

She's really into watching people make food, so she wants it in the kitchen, I think is what she's saying.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:25

I stand in the pantry and I have a one-way mirror into the kitchen.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:28

Yeah.

unknown 1:21:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:30

Is it a two-way mirror? It seems like a two-way mirror.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:33

Or if you're feeling spicy, a three-way mirror.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:35

It's only for the bold.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:36

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

So that that moment, right? That that painting, that mirror, window, weird thing reminds me of like all that time spent in the cabin before things really popped off. And there are a few quotes from Marty and a moment where I actually realize I owe my girlfriend a huge apology. Uh, there's a point where he's sitting in the bed and he's reading little Little Nemo in Slumberland. Have you guys ever heard of this book?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:03

I think I've seen the movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:04

No, not finding Nemo.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:05

No, no, no. There's a movie of like a little boy who like there's like a movie of like a little boy on a bed and then the bed flies around.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:11

Is it anime style?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:13

That okay, that is the movie. So back when my my girlfriend and I first met, and it was right after our first date, we were talking about like specific styles of animation that we liked, like Secret and Nym. She mentions, have you ever read Little Nemo in Slumberland? And I was like, That sounds like it's code for you're falling asleep and you'd like to say goodnight. And she was like, No, it's actually a book, and I just did not believe her. Wow, you're so horrible. I never saw this movie, I'm like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:39

It worked out well for me, I guess. Yeah, it did. She was not trying to get off the phone with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:43

Not at all. Not at all. But now, Paris, you are the second person I've heard of who has seen this movie, so that's great. I'll let her know.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:49

It was around the same time as like a troll in Central Park, if you remember that. It had that same vibe.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:54

Yes, yes. That's a fun little enlightening moment. So glad I now know that this is a legitimate piece of literature. But I think we do have a lot more to learn with Max Fact or Fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:03

Perhaps we do. Let's talk about the wolf makeout. Was anyone else into that? No. Yes. Or just Alexis.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

It definitely was like, oh my god, she did this. I was mortified for her.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:15

So that real life wolf tongue that she was like licking all over had to be like sanitized with antimicrobial microbial spray every time they did the take.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:26

I'm gonna say fiction. She seemed like a nasty bitch who didn't care. And I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:30

Can I say fiction because I know something else about the tongue?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:33

Yeah, let's leave it at that.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:35

Then I'm saying fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:37

But also You're gonna wish you hadn't.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:38

I don't care. It seems like not something that they would uh need to clean after every single time, as if there's some large amount of time in between, but what do I know?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:47

Whatever. It was fiction. You guys know they're not gonna have her make out with the real life. Wolf wolf tongue. In fact, it was made out of silicone and was removable, and they had to spray it down with some powdered sugar to make it look dusty and gross and make it a little bit more tolerable to uh lick upon.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:04

Yummy.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:04

It's actually one of those sex toys that you can get in a store. It's like the flapping tongue.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:09

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:09

That sounds fun. Are you being funny? I'm kidding. I am 100% kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

Oh, Alexis already started the Google search.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:15

Alexis, did you notice the powdered sugar? Is that what you're No, no, no. I was uh like reading and saw that and I was like, that's interesting. Okay, girl, if you know something, answer last. Oh, okay. So sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:28

That's gonna be the new rule continuing forward.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:30

Okay, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:31

Let's move on to number two. The coffee mug bong was fully functional.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:35

Oh my god, I love that. So uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh true. Facts. You're welcome to Yeah Fiction. Yuckity yuck. Don't talk back.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:45

I'm gonna say fact. I spent a few years of my life as a dedicated stoner, and there are so many creative paraphernalia items like that out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:53

I want to think that if this is a part of the movie, it's because they went and found something that actually works. I hope.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:00

So you're going with fact?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:01

I'm going with fact.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

Yeah, it's a fact. And the prototype cost $5,000. That sounds about right. Fully functional. Let's talk about fully functional. Uh Fran Kranz, Mr. Marty in the film, remained fully dressed during the little uh like lake scene because he wasn't comfortable filming around the other uh buffer dudes.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:20

Mm-hmm. Fiction. That's so random, especially that you bring it into this. So I'm gonna say fact.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:26

I'm gonna say fiction only because he was very unattractive to me until he was all like wet and sweaty and bloody, and then I was like, oh, you're actually kind of cute under there.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:35

Yeah, so this is fiction because the dude is actually ripped. So he's he was just as in shape as the other guys, if not more in shape than the other guys. But the filmmakers didn't want to ruin his image as the Stoner Marty. Um, but yeah, they also described him as ripped like a muscular Jesus.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:52

Oh, he's actually quite muscular and not skinny at all. I mean, he's skinny, but like he's not skinny.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:58

So he was like too hot for that role.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:00

I need to see this.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:01

Commence Googling. You should definitely Google this. But honestly, how hot can you be with the name Frankranz?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:07

Okay, let's talk some more about Frankranz. Um, so he had to go through training to fully portray the stoneress of Marty.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:14

Ooh, does training mean he had to smoke some weed? Cause yes, true fact.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:19

I'm gonna say fiction. Again, citing my history as a stoner, he was not very believable in the role. And I would not be surprised if he'd never smoked weed before in his life.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:29

Yeah, he did seem a little bit off. Because uh every time I maybe have engaged in that, I was deathly silent. Like, and also thinking cops are around everywhere. So yeah, but he is paranoid. And he's gonna be a good one. Yeah, but he then he forgets forgets he's paranoid. So maybe also, but uh fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:47

It's a fact. He spent hours with consultants, professional consultants, learning how to roll a joint and to light a bong.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:55

Professional consultants. That was the worst joint.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:58

Okay, that joint was loose as hell and was actually embarrassing. So he needs to get his money back from those people.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:04

You should watch one when you watch the the your third or fourth time, look for all the different like weed paraphernalia he has because he actually has different types of joints in the film.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:14

I did see a stack of well-rolled ones, but then the one he held up to camera, I was like, no, you did not roll those joints if that's what you got.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:20

It was so bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:21

The prop department made them their own like brand of rolling papers for this film. Ooh.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:26

This is this is the type of commitment that I enjoy in a film, okay? Yes. Get make it happen. Don't give me like some you cut up some loose leaf, okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:35

The details are really fine here.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

Yeah, yeah. So talking about fine details, let's talk about Sigourney Weaver, because she's fine though. Yes, she was excited to be on set because she was looking forward to working in a film that had a werewolf.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:47

She's odd, so yeah. Fact. Yeah, I'll go fact.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:51

I'm going with fact, because just like fuck yeah, Sigourney Weaver.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:54

I just want to say she's a perfectly normal human being.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:58

And a bad bitch. She is perfect. And normal.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

Into werewolves.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:02

And it is a fact. She was really looking forward to it, and she was disappointed when it was lunchtime and the werewolf actor, like fully in costume, was sitting on his own.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:11

Fun fact, it was also her idea to have the wolf makeup scene.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:15

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:16

I'm totally fucking with you, I though. Oh Chris, good fiction.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:20

I was like, this is leading me to believe that maybe Sigorni Weaver has a werewolf fetish.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:26

Don't we all? Just kidding. And that's the end of Factor Fiction.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:29

Thank you so much for that education. So glad I am at least not leading you guys astray too far. The Cabin in the Woods is a wild ride. Uh it somehow managed to become a universal slash, and I'm quite proud of it for that. Good job, guys. This movie has a ton of rewatch value, and I'm so excited to hear in the future if uh if Ryan, you end up giving it another watch at some point, if you feel differently or similarly to the way you do now. But we have to hear from our listeners because this movie's been out for a while. It was pretty hot stuff back in the day, and we know a lot of people have seen it, so we want to know what you think. Uh, there are a number of ways you can reach out to us. First at our website, hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:07

And on our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:11

If you feel like there might be a force field around your house in the woods, you can hit us up at our Hackerslash Hotline. Our number is 757-606-0128. You can text us, call us, leave us a voicemail, or an audio message.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

And if you have stayed in a creepy cabin in the woods, during which nothing ever happened, everything was normal, send us an email to feedback at hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:30

If you've enjoyed listening to our podcast, consider becoming one of our patrons like Shelby and Kat. Check out patreon.com slash hacker slash where you can earn cool perks for as low as one dollar a month.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:40

We'll see you next time.