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Overview
Join us today as we have a nice visit to the woods. Tall trees, green, fresh air. Animals with black fungus growing out of them. Mythological creatures kidnapping babies. So relax.
for those of you looking for a more ‘traditional’ scary movie, this one should be up your alley – or forest lane. Based on actual mythology of Ireland, we have creatures that exist, but shouldn’t be part of the modern world. But they are. And this family finds that out the hard way.
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All right, so we’re good. We’re on season three F indeed. Episode three, the hallow Yeah, this is a, I don’t wanna make it sound, more obscure or crazy than it is, but it just didn’t get a whole lot in the way [00:01:00] of press. This is one of those Ireland UK film combinations, which we’ve watched a couple, we have released in 2015.
I believe this one is also a British lottery deal. Yeah. I think that’s what it says. Yeah. I kept wondering if on the other side of the island, there’s some people fighting alien grabbers ironically, they were filmed in close to the same location. Oh, now they should do it crossover like alien versus predator, get the that’s.
Yeah. Hello, gremlins fighting the aliens and see what happens, everybody drunk. Yeah. Grabs was filmed off the coast of Galway. And this film was filmed in county Galway. More inland near a place called letter frack near the Kmar national park. Yeah, that was really just down the road from the last Irish British movie.
We did and it’s interesting. You say this one, didn’t get a lot of press and all that, because overall this one felt like a typical [00:02:00] standard horror movie that we’d see in the theaters here in the states. Yeah. A lot of, and the angles the flow, everything about it, was a horror movie for an American audience.
It just struck me like that. Yeah, absolutely. It was. The first movie written and directed by a guy named corn Hardy he’s British director writer. He began shooting in his youth on super eight, just running around with his friends, some of the best dead Stevens Spielberg did. Yeah. He was a big fan of Ray Harry House and he would make monsters and special effects in his garage.
And he made mention of that at the end. I saw it. Part of the dedication was to Harry House. Yeah. He’s always been a big fan of I folklore and he decided to blend the two genres into one film. And this was his first major motion picture. And this led him to be able to land the nun. He directed the nun.
Oh, wow. Wow. That’s a [00:03:00] much more mainstream. Yeah, but it’s a big, different type of movie. Oh yeah. Wow for sure. He wanted to film in Ireland to get the authentic feel of, where the thing was being based and he was gonna do it on film, but budgetary constraints came up, so he ended up shooting it on an Alexa digital camera.
It’s just another 4k digital camera. So one that’s pretty affordable for us even. We’ve talked about that a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. LA CASAA MUA was shot on one of those, a regular SLR digital camera. And you can see the progression in technology because LACASA MUA had this specific feel about it when you looked at it cuz of the film quality.
And this just looked like film. Yeah. So it did. Yeah. Yeah. It’s gotten better over the years. Apparently. Yeah the stuff in star wars, the special effects, they’re way better from the computers you and I are sitting at right now. Oh yeah. We don’t have anything on this budgetary [00:04:00] numbers.
We don’t know how much was budgeted for this film, but his B box office take on, this was about $14,000 in the us and Canada. Woo. And about 1.8, 6 million worldwide. And I’m sure a lot of that was the effects because I didn’t really see any computer graphics. It looked like it was pretty much all real effects.
Yeah. It looks like a lot of practical effects. A lot of black go. A lot of black too. And they did the creatures, but they never focus. I think that’s a big error and mistake that a lot of the horror movies make they do this creature, but then they focus on it and they leave the camera on it and it sits there and looks at it.
Yeah. And after about half a second, it’s wow, that looks like a fake puppet. He didn’t really do that. They were in the dark, they shadows, they flashed little bits. So it really looked well. Yeah it’s a good strategy, especially when you’re on running on a lower budget. Because then you don’t have to, pay a special effects guy for 18 hours to build some latex monster.
It only has to look good enough for [00:05:00] a quick camera flash, so right. It was nominated for 19 different awards and at one 12. Oh, nice. I can see that. Yeah. At one five at scream Fest and three at the Toronto after dark festival. And it ran the film festival circuit, which is one of those reasons why, it’s like critically acclaimed, but it made no money.
Cause it never did actually end up in a theater anywhere. Oh, okay. That’s why I’d never heard of this one at all. Yep. Hardy was a fan of game of Thrones actor Joseph, Molly. And he wrote the character of Adam in this movie specifically for that actor. Molly had been in 57 different productions, including the 1998 version of Merlin which price is a big fan of oh cool.
The series. As well as the 2009 version and also a Lincoln vampire hunter sensate game of Thrones, and he’ll be on the upcoming Lord of the ring series, the rings of power. Nice. So he’s in that too, it worked out for I don’t know. Don’t wanna say it worked out for him. I don’t know what he got paid for this [00:06:00] film, but core and Hardy became a big fan.
And so the move was kinda written for him. That’s pretty cool. Cause when you get that specific actor, you make the part fit it and usually better it comes across better. It’s interesting to me because typically when you have somebody who like really digs an actor, working with them, you’ll put them in future stuff.
And this guy wasn’t in the nun. Huh? Yeah. You know what I mean? I like you. Thanks. Talk to you later. Yeah. Nova, no Nova played his wife, Clara, not a very Irish name. There
she’s been in 46 different productions, including she was in drag me to hell Sam Remi classic devil. Which if you haven’t seen that, maybe we’ll put that on a list. That is no, I Haven haven’t seen that. It’s a very cleverly done film. She was in shameless Westworld, I, Tanya malicious [00:07:00] birds of prey and the 2021 version of a diver.
Oh, wow. She’s been around to a lot of pretty mainstream stuff. Michael MC eon plays, Cole Donnelly. He’s been in 92 films masterpiece mystery, Assassin’s black creed. He did a voiceover. He was also in game of Thrones. The autopsy of Jane DOE another good one. That’s a, a possible future season.
Final fantasy 14. He did voice over there. He was in monster and Ja Zach Schneider’s justice league. Oh, wow. Michael smiley plays, Garda Davy. He’s been 109 productions. This is the guy. When you look at him, if you’ve seen like any kind of British movies, you’re like, oh yeah, I’ve seen this guy before.
It includes Sean of the dead bleak house kill list. Black mirror, a field in England, the world’s end, Dr. Who? The lobster rogue one. And he was in the nun. The baby in the film was actually a set of twins. And they also had an animatronics that they would use as stand-ins for when things were like, [00:08:00] yeah, I figured a couple times I’m like, wow, some mother’s sitting off set going, oh my God. yeah, no. Most of the shots with the baby were shot on green screen.
Okay. And stuff was dropped in behind him. Okay. So there was a little bit of computer stuff in there, but it’s not really noticeable. Yeah. It’s very tastefully done. Yeah. Like when we talked about campus where the was the buildings, not the NUMs and Craus himself, right? Yeah. That was all practical effects.
And then the yeah, the breath and stuff like that. Hardy has this theory about using good fear and bad fear for making a movie. And his it’s, his concept is basically like you have good fear that you want to use when you’re using a horror movie where the actors are on the edge of their seats, they’re on their toes because they’re not exactly sure what the director’s gonna do next.
And then his, he likes to have that level high. And then the bad fear level is when the actors are scared to do [00:09:00] something, because they’re either scared of what it’s gonna make them look like or a physical, physical fears about what the stunt they’re about to pull off. And so he likes to keep the bad fear levels low, and the good fear levels high.
Not that’s necessarily unique to him, but he’s the first person I ever found who in an interview actually defined it like that. Yeah. That’s interesting to say that. It’s not a big thinker of a film. This is not Martys. We’re gonna sit there afterwards and start contemplating, the essential necessities of the afterlife and humanity.
This is what you get is why, felt, oh, this is like a us Hollywood movie it’s got monsters and it followed the legend and lore pretty close from what I know of it with the changelings and stuff. I, the way he made ’em look, isn’t how I imagined, but it, you can’t make, ’em look like cute little noms.
So it’s a really interesting take on the concept. Yes, there’s a exactly. Yeah. It’s just a nicely done [00:10:00] spooky folk horror film, or fairytale, horror film. It’s also one of those 90 minute films. It’s 97 minutes to be exact, so it’s not too long. It’s not too short. It’s a good kind of sit down date night kind of horror movie.
Really? Yeah. This you, this is definitely one of, people who watch horror movies in October, this would probably be one of the top choices out of the three seasons so far. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s see, hallow has two different meetings. The first would be like an opening in a thickly densely wooded area.
And the other is to honor as holy or a Saint or holy person. And so this is one of those cases where they’re going to use this in the title and you come across this sometimes in horror movies where you have both definitions. Happening at the same time. Yeah. And that’s a good choice of words. It does fit very well, depending on which viewpoint you’re looking at [00:11:00] it from too.
Yeah. There’s also this, it starts off with a quote just white copy on screen that says hall, be their name and blessed be their claim. If you who trespass put down roots, then hallow be your name. And a lot of times in horror movies, they’ll start with some quote or they’ll start with some snippet about this is based on a true story or, this and that 90% of the time, all that stuff is just crap.
just stuff they put at the start to get you into. This really awkwardly done poem is actually legitimate. , it’s probably translated, which may be part of the awkwardness. Yes, it is from the Libro gala era the book of invasions and it talks, it was written anonymously in the 11th century in Ireland, and it talks about the six races who settled I Ireland.
And it does it in poetry and prose. And it’s not. I don’t [00:12:00] wanna say it’s not historical, but it’s like the mythology of the six different races that came through Ireland. And there’s like historic precedence for a lot of these. But, it’s the whole you had, I can’t even remember them all, but basically like you had these things of chaos first, and then you had Lords of order, and then you had these fairies that came in and then you had man who moved in and then you had the Irish who moved in and so it’s this great, big, long kind of mythology written from the 11th century.
That’s they’re actually referencing. Yeah. I like that. And Dean Kos does that a lot. He has his book of counted sorrows that he quotes quite often in many of his different books ties ’em together with that. Yeah. Yeah. The movie starts with that copy with that little PO piece of poetry from the liberal gal and Aaron, and then there’s an opening shot of a prime forest set to some creepy music.
And then the title card. [00:13:00] It’s just a very simple, yeah. Opening, no, somebody running through the woods being chased by an ax or anything like that. Just atmospheric here we are. The, yeah, it’s funny you say it that way because you always get those prequels oh my gosh, there’s a killer.
Of course you came to see a killer movie. Yeah. This one is, there’s a forest. Okay. What’s creepy about that, but on the radio is the rally going on and the free our trees and all of that, even the little things like that thrown in there. Yeah. It sets it up right there.
And I did like that. The music you mentioned, because I noticed throughout the whole thing. They don’t really do much music when it’s normal, but when the creatures are around and the horror parts are there, that’s when the music kicks in pretty much about the whole movie too. So you start off with a little bit of music and then it disappears for a while.
Yeah. The other thing you mentioned the radio, and again what was that one Mo mama, where they used the radio to lay in some discourse about the film. They did this, the same thing [00:14:00] here. And the discourse here basically is telling you why Adam and his wife are moving into the area.
All of Ireland’s forests are owned by. Ireland itself. And there’s a big move. It’s not unlike here in the states where there’s this big push for oil companies to drill in public lands. There’s a big push to allow loggers to come in and cut in public forests. And so it’s interesting to me how he introduces like a political topic, but then never really goes into it.
He’s not, he is not moralizing here. He’s not telling you whether it’s right. Or whether it’s wrong. He’s just saying this is something that’s happening, yeah. Touching upon it. It really is a horror movie. Not so much a political statement. Yep. Yep. Yep. So the credits are running over this shot of a ferry crossing the sea and our main characters are on board.
They’re wistful. They’re excited. And it, you threw me off there when you said fairy [00:15:00] I was like, wait, forest fairies. No, wait, different fairies. Speaking of double meaning for the word, right? Sorry. Yeah. It melds into a shot of a family in their car driving inland. And we hear the radio program discussing the fact that, Ireland is selling off rights to cut into their forests.
And you can hear the sound of protests because, anytime you have public lands that people are opening up for private industry, you can have public people complaining about it. Yeah. It goes from there to the father Adam and his son walking through the woods, their dog. Steve. I know. And that dog, the minute that here coming up, what happens, I’m like I know it’s gonna happen with the dog.
He’s with the dog and these marking cold trees. And these are basically trees that we have I manage our forest for timber, with the state of Ohio, and you’ll have someone who comes out every seven years or so. And they mark the trees that are growing very [00:16:00] well, but they interfere with the actual hardwoods you want, and those are cold trees.
So they mark ’em with an X and you’re supposed to cut those trees down. And when you cut them down, it opens up the forest canopy and lets more light into the more available, the more. Desirable trees and jumping on the dog for just a second. Yeah, it, that was a like border Collie, which is a popular dog in Ireland for the sheep herding and other types of things.
So I, I just thought that was a good choice for a dog for this school. Yeah. Very smart dogs. Oh yeah. Yeah. We had one and she was very smart. Yep. So he’s walking through the forest with his sun. He’s marking call trees. Claire is back at their house. They have a cottage out there in the woods.
It’s actually bigger than a cottage. It’s more like a Manor. It’s two stories and she’s pulling iron bars off the windows of their new two story. Adam’s trying to get the dog to come back. The baby drops its pacifier into a Creek and it’s a focus on the pacifier. That’s [00:17:00] gonna come back right.
And it, it seems like some passing thing where you don’t even really think about it, but he does take the time to actually focus the camera on it, letting you know. Yeah. This is an important little tidbit that just happened. And both of the, what each of the parents is doing. I liked because sh she’s pulling down these iron bars on this house and he’s walking through the forest and marking Oman, looking at the blight he found.
And the, this is one of the difference between some of the American made horror and some of the other horror that we’ve watched and I’ve noticed in other films, The Amer, if it would’ve been American made, they would’ve had a scene with them in the kitchen going well, since I worked for the forest company, I need to go do my job and go out and mark trees to cut down and I’m going to go take down the iron slats, cuz we’re moving into this.
They have to ex Heman, explain it. I always use Heman. Cause there, there was remember seeing one scene of eman where he goes, I will now walk out the door and I’m like, who the hell has to say that? So that’s, the difference you’re [00:18:00] watching it and why you have to think a little bit, it’s not so passive, I guess you could say which I enjoy.
I like it. They don’t treat the audience like they’re complete idiots. But you gotta keep up. I’m with you 110%. It’s one of those kind of things where the fact that he is marking trees. And the fact that I know what he is doing is immaterial to the story, right? At some point in time, he has a conversation with someone where he’s it’s my job to be here.
So you know that he’s there. He is working with trees. The rest of it, who knows? But it’s researched well enough that I can look at it, working in forestry and be like, oh, okay. He’s marking cult trees. And the mom’s at home, she’s taking these bars down. That makes all kinds of sense.
Who wants to have big iron bars across her window? People who live in forests that are harmed by mythological creatures might. Yes. . Yeah. That’s a good plan. He’s trying to get the dog to come back because he ran off and I thought, oh, the dog’s dead already, but no not quite that soon. He finds the dog and the dog has found the ruin of an old man home.
The dog keeps barking. [00:19:00] And Adam finds this dead animal in the room. And I think if it was a deer, yeah. It like a. He’s expecting the corpse and he finds this strange black fungus growing out of the body. And he, of course, like most plant guys. He takes a sample, cuz yeah. Oh look, there’s a dead animal with some weird black fungus.
Let me touch it. At least he didn’t lick it or anything, so I was just listening to us talking about oh, the space horror movie that we did the bonus episode on the event horizon, and the guy finds the black goo and it’s oh, I’m gonna stick my hand in here. yeah, there’s a, you left for dead.
You’ve probably played that game on the Xbox. There’s the one little video at the beginning where one of the zombies and this guy touches it and the muscle guy goes, oh, don’t let that stop you. I’m just smeared it all over yourself.
yeah. Back at the house, Claire sees someone pulling in it’s Mr. Donnelley and his son, and he’s there to see Adam [00:20:00] and Donnelley. Doesn’t seem happy to hear that Adam’s in the forest. And if you’re not paying attention, you could easily assume that this has something to do with the sale of the public lands.
This guy has issue with the fact they’re gonna be cutting trees outta the forest. He’s insistent that Adam comes and sees him tonight. Then he leaves and Adam comes home and basically says he doesn’t want to talk to Cole it turns out they’re both on the same side of the state sale.
Philosophically Adam is not big on deforestation. Cole doesn want the trees cut down, but that’s not why he was there to see. Adam thinks Cole’s problem is what he’s there to do. And he rele to Claire that, okay, fine. He’ll go talk to him. Oddly enough. Adam never really does. No. I Throughout the entire movie, he bumps into him at a hardware store, but he never actually goes over to talk to him.
That evening Adam is investigating what type of fungus he’s found. And he is marking this site location where he found it on a map and Claire is upstairs feeding Finn, the baby. He puts a sample on the slide and he is watching it through a [00:21:00] microscope as the fungal cell attacks, another cell and like a virus.
It takes the cell over and the. The part that I couldn’t get past in this scene is that when the fungus attacks the other cell, there’s the sound of this squishing sound as it pierces the other cell. And I’m like, microscopes don’t work like that, but maybe that was for our audience that wasn’t paying attention and needs that audio cue.
I did. I did the effects though. The tentacles coming out that was some of the best effects showing a contagion like that in edge movie I’ve ever seen. And it was probably lower budget than most other movies. They do all these, the merging cells and all this, and this was these awesome tentacles coming out and piercing it.
I thought that was really cool. That was one of my favorite parts. The other thing that I really like about it is. Needle piecy thing that pierces the cell wall [00:22:00] actually carries on to the larger yes. Forms as this movie progresses in Fin’s room, Claire has managed to get fin down for the night and she discovers something black and slimy on the bedding.
Of course, for those of us who are in the woods, we know she discovers that it’s dripping from the ceiling and she goes to tell Adam that it’s leaking from the ceiling and sends Adam up to the attic to see if he can find where Adam finds upstairs or heads upstairs and finds all kinds of stuff from the previous inhabits.
But he can’t find a leak. So he heads back down, which not to be truthful here. It’s a husband thing. When your wife sends you on an errand that you really don’t wanna do, you don’t argue, but you kinda futz around for a minute and then saying, oh, I didn’t see nothing. You walk back down, right?
Yeah. But that was another nice effect when they showed that stuff on the beam as he was going back down, it moved just a little bit. And again, it wasn’t completely in focus. It was dark, but it moved just a little bit. You heard the squishy sound, it glistened that’s all you need.
[00:23:00] Sometimes you don’t need those. Some the big over, budget stuff. Sometimes that’s, it’s literally in my notes as he’s heading downstairs, the focus on the camera pushes and we see black fungus growing on one of the rafters. Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah. Claire’s making dinner when Adam returns he’s smoking weed and he is telling her he didn’t find anything which automatically should let her know that he really wasn’t looking
He then begins this whole info dump on cordyceps in ants, whi which is a fungus. If you’ve ever played a the last of us, this is the whole theory behind the last of us. It’s a fungus that infects an ant. And it takes over the T’s neural pathways and turns the ant into basically a zombie, it leads the ant back into the nest, so it can spread throughout the entire nest. He tells her he found some and she tells him not to bring it in the house, which is at the end of the film, quite ironic. Yes. She then figures that he already has. So they start to make out and fin stirs and the pasta needs [00:24:00] drain.
And then fin really wakes up and something breaks glass and the door slams shut. They run upstairs and find a broken window PA panel. And Adam has convinced it’s calm and runs outside. didn’t see anyone. So he calls the cops. And that, and the music kicked in right there. There hadn’t been any real music until right.
Then when the baby screamed it’s not subtle. It does burst in, but you’re so caught up in what’s going on. You don’t notice it right away. Don’t notice it. Yep. Help set the mood. It does the Garda come out and they blow the whole thing over Claire mentions how poorly received they’ve been in the community.
And the officer says, people have certain beliefs and then he starts talking about the hallow. And this is an info dump on the hallow, which is a really, it happens all the time in these movies. You have to have that one, townsperson telling the whole history to get it all out.
But actually with everything else they had done, I was almost surprised that they did this I, I would. Guessed that it would’ve pieced together a little bit here and there, but they [00:25:00] just dumped it all out. The cop was done. He moves on so not a bad choice. I just was hoping for a little more, yeah, no, I agree with you on the one hand, the 97 minute length is perfect. Yes. On the other hand, I would’ve easily accepted another five to 10 minutes if they wouldn’t have just dumped all of the hallow out into this one conversation. But again, we’re not filmmakers, first of all, it’s we’re not attorneys.
But , you went on TV. You gotta balance that too. That extra 10 minutes would’ve been too much and people would’ve gotten bored and whatever. So I understand the choices. Yep. But, and you get it a lot. So it’s not this made the movie worse. Oh, and budget’s always a thing too, it could have just been, it might have just been priced out the most important thing to me because him talking about, the hello and the wee people and the fact that everyone around here believes that there are actually fairies living in the wood and they leave stuff out for them and treat them respectfully.
I was inferring that throughout, [00:26:00] the one piece of useful information that came outta the conversation was that cone Connolly had lost a daughter in the woods. Yes. And he believed that the little people took her. Yes. And so that’s an important piece of information that came outta the whole conversation.
Yeah. to be truthful, we had an idea of the story and mythology and all that. There’s a lot of people that don’t, so you need that in there to make sense for some people. Yeah. Claire cut her feet on broken glass. So Adam’s bandaging them up. He tells her to go to sleep and he heads outside to take some pictures for evidence.
He is using the world’s biggest slowest flash ever. I guess that makes sense. If it’s gonna give up that much light, it’s gonna take a long time to charge, but he’s taking shots outside of the house and here’s a branch snap and turning, he uses the camera to snap a picture in the darkness and there’s this glimpse of a Gollum like man crouching in the foliage.
The dogs growling looking off towards some outbuildings and Adam goes [00:27:00] to investigate when he gets there, he hears what sounds like a baby crying. He heads into the shed and he is looking around and we hear thunder start to roll in. He closes the door and heads back to the house as he’s walking away.
The door creeps back open, and we hear that baby crying sound again. Yeah. And he ties the dog up there and I’m like, oh man, you kidding me? The dog up right there. Oh, I heard something. So let me tie the dog up right there. But the that’s right. The baby crying, that’s a very common thing for the change lanes snatching they lure people into the woods.
It also comes up with the Windigo. If you look into the Windigo, they do same type of invitation to blur people around. But yeah it, the minute I heard the baby crying, I was like, aha, changeling. There we go. Yep. He wakes up on the couch. Claire tells him it’s noon so he heads out. Yeah. He heads out to get some stuff to fix a broken window and takes fin with him and they head into town.
The two of. At home [00:28:00] Claire sweeping up glass, the dog’s sitting on the dog bed and she’s changing the baby’s be, she finds that slimy amorphous mass amongst the sheets, and she just sweeps it into a trash can. The dog has gone out outside and wanders off into the wild. This is, this movie had a whole lot of the dog’s gonna die now or the dog’s gonna die now.
And the dog just keeps hanging on, I was kinda waiting for the dog to have sex and then get killed you or open a beer. Yeah. Like that. Adam arrives in town and gets a stink guy from a bunch of young hooligans. He and Finn head into the hardware store and a guy comes out to look at the glass and the guy’s if you trespass against them, they trespass against you and Adam again, assumes in properly that he’s the guy’s talking about people’s property.
But then he adds, if your wife doesn’t put the iron back up, there’s really no point. And he referenced. Go ahead. [00:29:00] Go ahead. He’s referencing this the cold rot iron myth, which dates back to the 16 hundreds, even plenty of the elder in 79 ad used iron to treat illness. So it’s always been used as ward against the supernatural.
Yeah. And the townspeople are watching them too. You got that whole distinct feeling, Donnel Lee and the shopkeeper here says stuff and I’m going like, okay, wait a second. This guy just moved in. You guys are helping him by giving him cryptic messages about ancient mythologies. And then you stop.
That’s all you’re doing. That’s not really helping him. yeah. You might wanna help and do a little more. It always is always interesting dynamic to me. And I don’t know that I know of anyone who actually does, but there are people in the United States who live right on the edge of a national forest.
Yeah. And hikers and visitors and things can be walking right through what looks like their backyard, but it’s actually still part of the national forest. And this was of the same way where I can see where he would [00:30:00] assume these people think that he’s trespassing. And technically he’s not because he’s still on, the government land.
He’s getting close to their house, but I’ve always, but when they talk about trespassing though, it’s not the towns, people that he’s trespassing against. So it’s our culture clash. Claire is hanging laundry in the kitchen. And as she’s pulling it up so she’s hanging it on a low line and then she hot pulls it up to the ceiling, which I thought was a great idea.
I’m like, that’s awesome. yeah. As she’s pulling it up, comb is revealed in the background. where the, hell’s the dog now. He’s telling her she didn’t listen and asks her if she thinks he’s crazy, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out what has to be this crazy expensive antique book, sets it on the table and leaves.
And it seems to be bound in some kind of leather looking vaguely like the Necro noon or something like that. Yeah. Because acting crazy, talking crazy and leaving some weird ancient book is going to convince them. good plan. [00:31:00] Adam’s driving home. Finn drops a toy. I don’t, how many parents put up with this where the kid drops a toy and won’t has a fit.
Adam reaches around to pick it up. And he almost hits comb who appears to be crossing the road with a shotgun. Then he just drives off. Still doesn’t take the time to talk to him. Yeah. As his vehicle enters the forest the tape player in his car eats the tape. It was playing and really interesting in 2015, someone was driving around in a car listening to a tape, but I thought yeah, not even to CD player.
Then something happens to the transmission, the entire car, just in general. And it. Loses control manages to get it stopped, but then it won’t stop again. Start again. That’s a very mal would understand that. There, so there, the very first episode of XFiles their car loses power and he marks the road.
Yeah. He opens the hood and discovers black slime all over the engine block. As he’s looking, he’s hearing noises in the woods, [00:32:00] he opens the trunk and is reaching in to grab something and something pushes him into the trunk and closes the lid. He’s now walked in the trunk sometime later. Cause it’s kinda dark out.
He gets knocked out. It’s did they hit him over the head first? That was a little confusing, but right. He’s in there. The baby starts to cry and you hear these monstery noises outside, like claws on metal. He finds a tool and just basically digs his way through the back seat. Yeah. Which if you’re ever locked in your trunk, I guess most of them now have a release, right?
Yeah. You’re supposed to, that, yeah. Shows maybe that he’s playing a tape cuz that’s the only vehicle that they had. So yeah. Could be he digs his way through the seat. He crawls out and finds black slime all over the place he grabs. Fin gets out of the car, only defines the driver’s side as what looks like three talent claw marks and some slime that run the entire [00:33:00] length of the vehicle.
Here’s a dog barking off in the distance and armed with a flashlight and his baby. He runs back to his house. So at this point, you found the slime car got attacked. I’d be thinking about, going into town in a hotel or moving out or something. At this point, take the hint folks yeah.
It like the whole end of horror thing. But kids get possessed. He doesn’t make rational decisions. Adam still completely in control at this point. Yes, he is. Claire, when he gets back to the house, Claire ask where he is been and says that Cole was in the house. He tells her to call the police and grabs a shotgun and some shells.
And he says, it’s just until the police arrive, but he loads the gun anyways. And then the power’s cut. He heads downstairs and tells Claire to stay in the room and lock the door. And you can hear what sounds like someone ripping open the. He yells out that the police are coming and he calls out to comb and says, whatever happened to your daughter has nothing to do with us.
[00:34:00] He opens the door, not quite far enough and shoots at some moving shadow and it just blasts a hole in his door, but the kitchen is trashed. Claire comes downstairs and he’s pissed because he’s sure that it’s calm and he is cleaning up a bit. And he finds the book that calm brought, and Claire lets him know where the book came from.
Yeah. Once he opens the book. Being a designer and, having art history background, this part disturbed me a bit because the book is not some original ancient text. It’s lithographs of pagers, of illuminated manuscripts and wood cuts. It’s a really odd compilation of things from multiple errors, all crammed into some leather bound cover.
It makes no sense from a book construction standpoint, maybe it was like a journal compiled over years, various people putting it together, perhaps I suppose but it does, it looks like it was merch almost maybe we can [00:35:00] order a copy, that, that would be super cool if you could.
Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna hear I’m like the art and copy page is not even from the same period. I don’t have any computers to complain about in this one. So what’s your that’s right? Yeah. Claire says they need to leave now. Adam loads up the gun and they head out on foot. Once they get outside, they hear the dog barking and the distance and start to call for him.
They find him in the shed with a chunk of slimy stuff in his mouth. Adam does a check on the dog and notes that he doesn’t really look that good. No poor dog. He’s good enough to keep moving. So on the way, the dog starts barking at something in the distance and then takes off for it. There’s sounds of the dog fighting.
And then there’s that canned hurt dog squeal . And Adam shoots in that general direction. Apparently not caring if he hits the dog, but he just lets a round fly. Maybe if the dog, take him out before he suffers too much. Nope. Oh, there you go. Do that. Yeah. But yeah but you gotta give the dog credit, man.
I’m [00:36:00] assuming that chunk in his mouth was cuz he attacked whatever it was protecting him. So yeah. Good dog. A lot better than a lot of the dogs who die in these movies, you get blown up by landmines or eaten by space aliens. This one actually did some damage. Did his job before going out. Yeah. They get to the car and they open the hood to find what was a little slime on the engine block is now this giant massive organic tissue.
That’s pretty disgusting looking. Yeah. Claire gets in the car and he starts to pull a bunch of this stuff out and has Claire try to start it and it doesn’t work. She sees something or someone behind the car that keeps getting closer. And then she sees two and then a bunch and it vaguely reminded me of attack the block when the girls in the police car.
And she looks in the rear view mirror and sees the alien. It’s a common thing. Somebody’s trying to do something. And then the monsters are creeping up and somebody else sees ’em and is, that’s a nice common thing. It does have some good suspense in this one, because again, they don’t [00:37:00] focus on the monsters.
You see ’em in flashes and stuff. Yep. Then the car, which would never, ever actually happen manages to start if you open your car and there’s black slime all over the place, removing the slime is not necessarily gonna just suddenly make your car magically begin. But the car starts, Adam closes the hood.
And when he does, you can see that the car is completely surrounded by these things. Claire starts to drive off and she’s doing a decent job of trying to get back on the road. And she does, then the things start to launch these slime balls at the car, breaking windows and things. And then this girl in a dress shows up in the headlights and Adam pulls the wheel to miss her and we get a good but brief reveal of the creature.
You can see. It’s really not a girl. I’m sure this is a reference to Cole’s daughter. This is what remains of Cole’s daughter. Yeah. Yeah. That causes the car to slide outta control and into a ditch. The funny thing to me about this movie just in general [00:38:00] is how many times it feels like they’re in the middle of nowhere.
But they always managed to get back to the house. Yeah. And they showed the big the like more or whatever at one point where she’s on and it’s man, you guys are like miles away, but Hey, we’ll just cross every field and forest. Yeah. Flying to get back to the house. Cause that’s where they’ll get us.
Yeah. Adam grabs Finn, as Claire sees creatures all around and they start running off to get back to the house. Adam’s trying to rationalize what he’s seen. And Claire shuts him down just saying they’re real and pointing out. They both saw the same thing. He heads over to the door and he’s peering out into the darkness through a keyhole and a needle shaped thing, pokes through the crack and directly into his left eye.
Yep. Flashbacks to earlier. Yes. There’s that? There’s that right? The things you’re trying to get in, and we get this long shot of slime dripping through the keyhole. He heads over and shines [00:39:00] his light out the doorway. And we get another quick, but good. Look at the creatures outside just before he pulls the door shut.
And this is one of the things after watching so many horror movies, this is one of those things that I started doing. I’d watch the movie, then I’d go back to the scenes and I’d pause it and like frame advance it. So I could actually see the creatures, for that one brief second that they were there very clearly.
He and the family head upstairs and he sends Claire and Finn up into the attic and he’s gonna head outside. Good idea. And start up a generator claiming that light hurt seems to hurt them. And it’s also amazing to me how all of these movies seem to have a pool generator. You know right next to the house.
Do you have one outside your house, Steve? No, but actually I almost just bought one recently. yeah, I don’t have one, either my neighbor across the Street’s got one, but I don’t. So I guess if my house gets attacked by fungal fairies, I’m outta luck. You don’t never make a video game out of you cuz you gotta have that mission to go [00:40:00] start.
The generator start the generator. Claire manages to get the baby into the attic where it seems to settle down and Adam makes it out to the shed and there’s this nice long atmospheric shot to the house. And it bounces back and forth between the couple in the edit between Adam and Claire.
Adam opens a fuse box and finds its all full of slime. The door to the attic is seemingly rotting away right in front of Claire’s eyes, which is a really great effect. I really like that. Yeah. She uses the baby monitor to let Adam know, but she really doesn’t tell him anything. So he just keeps going.
He’s trying to get the power on this claw breaks through the attic door and things start punching holes in the roof. The damage to this house is already astronomical. Adam’s trying to get the generator started. The thing in his eye just suddenly seems to take him out. He’s like having these convulsions, this pain in his eye, and then this [00:41:00] hand is reaching in.
It’s got a needle it’s trying to poke Claire’s eye just before it does. The generator starts up lights come on and scare the things away. A nice tension filled. Yes. Kinda scene right there. Yes. Once the lights are back on, we see that the lights are affecting Adam too. He sees the iron window bars and reaches out to grab one only to find that it burns his skin.
So well, Adam, that’s what you get for not take care of the dog better. Yes, that’s right. This is your punishment. Like some old vampire tale. He is actually turning into a FA hello, you dropped for a second. I did, but I okay. I’m back. Okay. Go on. Claire and Finn exit the attic and Adam collects as much iron into a wheelbarrow as he can.
Before he stumbles into a bathroom with a mirror to watch his own gradual transformation. He starts to bandage himself up, coming back into the kitchen, looking like some sort of makeshift pirate, [00:42:00] and then the couples start to hang iron bars and any other iron thing they can across the windows.
Yeah, the pots, the pans the poker from the fireplace. Yeah, that was pretty good. There’s a nice little jump scare in there where something tries to come through and then it recoils. So it like serves as a jump scare and to prove that what they’re doing is actually effective. So Adam puts fin in a closet with a baby monitor.
Saying that the generator will die, but he’ll be safer in there than with, and Claire, which was like the worst decision of the movie. I’m just gonna chalk that one up to the things affecting his brain. I’m like really? Let’s put him in there out of sight when we know they’re getting through the wood and everything else, come on.
The thing affecting his brain is actually a great theory. I never thought of it might have very well been the fungus telling him to do that be because it made absolutely no sense. And the only iron was like 2 million things [00:43:00] put, around the lock, forget all the like really thin wood, around. Yeah. We’ll keep him out. Adam is now pouring over this book. He’s decided my house is being attacked by fairies. I’m gonna take, sit down and read. Yeah. Get a good book. Maybe it’s supposed to be the book of invasions, but again, annoyingly, some of the pages have copy and F work, which is, not anything like ancient Gaelic.
So I don’t know what the, what the hell they’re doing there. But Claire knows something is up with Adam and she really wants to check on Finn. So she sneakily opens the cupboard only to discover that the wall is hollowed out. And one of the, she has him, one of the fairies has him. Adam takes off after it and follow it to the attic where they attack him through the roof, taking him out and he’s lying on the floor and clear heads out after the fairy and Finn And so like the walls of this place are just utterly laced with this fungus.
And I think it was like that from the minute they moved in. I think it, this stuff’s been there for a while. Or has it, or taking down the bars cuz the [00:44:00] bars, they, pretty much said kept them away, which I didn’t quite understand cuz okay. The bars are over the windows, but the roof and stuff that they’re coming through now didn’t have any, so it, I don’t know.
It’s vaguely problematic in that like any construction is gonna have iron nails, like all throughout everything. Yeah. So it’d be really hard to like slide through the wall and not make contact with that stuff. Now we’re getting way off the rails too literal. it’s a horror movie. Get that’s right.
Adam does come too, and he manages to get himself to his feet. Claire is wandering through the forest, using the baby monitor to try and track her baby. And Adam can feel himself succumbing to this infection. So he puts a splint on his leg. So he’s at least mobile. Yeah. His leg seems to be broken. Yeah.
We’ll just, splint it. I failed to mention that, but he’s gonna splint it and walk on it and it’ll be just fine.
Claire. See something floating out on the surface of a [00:45:00] pond and dives in after it coming up with a baby shaped bundle. So she takes Finn air quotes here, back to the house and finds Adam sitting on the floor. She doesn’t seem to trust him anymore. He wants to see Finn. So she hands him to him. And tells him he needs to be dried and changed.
Adam believes it’s a change line. And at this point we’re not exactly sure. If he’s right or not, and we don’t know whether to trust Adam or not, whether he is telling the truth for other means. Yeah. So I like that, that uncertainty. Yeah. And the way they shot it adds to it. There’s this kind of like uncertainness to the camera movements and things makes the whole things through Adam’s eyes and things look different.
And yeah. Yeah. Claire tries to get fin back. There’s a scuffle. He knocks her down. Then he grabs a piece of iron and threatens to touch fin with it, unless it shows itself he touches it on the forehead and it looks to him like a FA and [00:46:00] then Claire plunges, an iron spike into his shoulder, grabs the camera and the baby and takes off.
Yeah. And really well. Okay. You think your son’s insane? You think your husband’s insane, but it really wouldn’t hurt to just put a piece of iron, next to the baby. She, that’s not hurting. Yeah. He LIS out after her she locks herself in the shed with the baby and she’s looking around for something to use as a weapon.
Maybe that’s what she’s doing. Adam’s standing outside telling her it’s not Finn. He points out that they want the whole family. So he breaks in and she threatens him with a side. That’s a legitimate thing to be threatened with. Yeah. Yeah. You might be, you gotta watch it. yeah. He collapses on the floor and spores start to erupt from his face.
She grabs the camera and manages to get away from him and runs off into the. Adam continues, this kind of metamorphosis. And that even seems to embrace it. Yeah. He [00:47:00] stands erect. He turns to this, he turns this sigh into kind of a torch and walks off into the night after Claire and Finn or not Finn, whatever.
Whatever she’s carrying with her . So do things are one he reminded me of the big, bad from resident evil three that morphed into the whatever creature. But the video game, not the movies. Yeah, but why is. Fire light. Okay. Light where his other light is not okay. Light. I didn’t get that.
That’s a really good point. When he actually does confront them with it, they recoil from it. Yeah. But so maybe it’s not okay. He recoiled from the light coming through and hitting his skin at one point. So I didn’t quite get that other than we just wanted to look cool. , it’s funny that you mentioned rein evil three, because for me, the scene has vague feelings of what’s his name?
Jack Torrance and the shining. Yeah. Yeah. Would Jack Nicholson starts to wander off through the house, looking for a, it had that kind of feeling to me just with [00:48:00] more monstrous looking special effects. Yeah. He follows the sign, follows the sounds of the crying child out into the dark. And he comes to that abandoned structure.
He had found earlier heads down in the basement, which is full of. Fungus everywhere. Finds remains of his dog and a few more beasts. And just then it cuts away to Claire running across the field. But the worst part, the dog wasn’t dead. It was slowly being consumed. Man, come on. If you go kill the dog, don’t make him suffer more.
We go back to the layer and we see several more of these creatures. Adam is holding them at bay with the flaming side. Apparently either the fire or the light from it is enough to keep them at a distance. Claire makes it to the house. To a house, not to her house. She’s beating on the door asking for help only to be greeted by comb with a shotgun.
And he tells her to get away. He can’t help. They took Cora his daughter, and there’s nothing they could do about that. He tells her to go before she brings the beasts to [00:49:00] his house and she heads off and we see that Cole has a whole lot of dogs, a and lights it’s way lit up. It’s like a football stadium.
yep. Back in the layer, we see this thing that used to be Cora and it’s holding a baby. Adam recognizes her as Cora and she’s holding the pacifier that fin dropped earlier on in the film that damn pacifier. Yep. And apparently they needed it to make the change link from maybe the little bit of saliva or something like that.
Yeah. Something. There’s a lot of these monsters in here. He secures his grip on the side. She shrieks at him and he swings at her and we cut away. So we don’t actually know the result of that battle. But Claire is alone in the woods. She’s using the camera flash, like some kind of gun. There’s that old camera.
Flash trope. Yeah. And she’s walking backwards. There’s the walking backwards trope. And it feels like the battery and the flash is about to die and she manages to squeeze off a few more shots [00:50:00] and it’s just evident. There’s too many of them, but she backs herself off of a small cliff and falls all the way down.
Yeah. Now there was something I thought I saw and had the look, the one perched in the tree looked like it reached down and spiked the baby’s head. Oh, now I did not. Think it spiked its head. I think it just reached down and got close. It, it was hard to tell that’s why it was like, but I was like, okay, if this really is the change link, why would it need to do that?
That’s a really good point. was, just wondering what that was. Maybe it was some thought they had and left that scene in, even though things changed, maybe it really was just grabbing for it. It just kinda looked like that. I’m not sure. Yeah. Where the fungus is really advanced and it was a fake out to make her think she was holding the actual baby yeah.
She gets her bearings lying at the bottom of this little cliff and we see this creatures coming for her. She’s aiming with the flash. It’s not working anymore. And then she [00:51:00] hears Adam say Claire, and he’s standing there holding the real thin. The creatures try and approach him. And he squawks at them with this certainly not human sounding noise and they retreat.
Hello scream. Yes. He tells her to take Finn and leave the changeling and he is becoming more animalistic and violent. He kills two of them with the side, as they approach him. He turns to address Claire and one comes up from behind and kills him. And Claire’s trying to decide between the two and she takes the real fin and runs through the forest just as the sun comes up.
Now, my whole thing is, I don’t know why she labored over it. She could just take both, I say there’s stories about raising the changeling child along with yours. I know there’s some of that and the, the Oman thing, one turns evil and stuff, yeah. That was my same thought too.
But, also would they then have kept pursuing her. You know if,[00:52:00] if she had the changeling baby, but probably not because that’s the whole reason they give them the changeling baby is. So they, I dunno, take them into there’s multiple things that could have been the reason for that, yeah. As she’s running away, the sunlight comes up, it chases creatures away. Adam’s not quite dead. And he watches the changelings start to smolder and melt. Yep. So that would’ve answered it for pretty quickly. yeah. Yep. There you go. It does so pretty silently boiling up until it erupts into this pile of spores.
And then Adam dies pretty gruesome. Yeah. Claire’s walking back across the field, back to her house, which is covered in black spores because that’s where you would go. Let’s go back to the house. Yeah. She has some flashbacks to her previously happy life and cries on the floor with her baby telling him, oh, he’s so beautiful.
The book is on the floor and the wind turns the pages to one where you see a mother and a child and a Fay figure, almost like their family. Exactly. You can have [00:53:00] this family. And I was wondering, what was the meaning of that? Was it this is how the family would be, or should be, or this is what you really had, that it’s a little open to interpretation from that picture.
It is. But it’s interesting that they chose to end on that. Yeah. So you sit there and you mu over, what was the point of that picture at the end? The credits play and you start to see the inevitable deforestation that takes place when forests aren’t federally protected anymore.
And the credits are playing over as the trucks pull away. And you have evidence as the trucks pull away that there’s this black fungus still viable and growing on the wood as they’re driving away. And then there’s this little jump scare of one of the creatures at the end. And it’s one of those rare occasions where like the post credit tag ending has important story information in it, right?
Yeah. Yeah. It almost never happens. LACASA MUA had the whole, like truth about the girl at the end that [00:54:00] happened after the credits. Martyrs had the scenes of the happy girls, before life turned to crap. And then here, you’ve got, oh, Hey, this thing’s spreading. And they have a little I like how they have the music stuff, all the sounds of the logging.
Then when they get to mostly just forest in the frame, you hear some of the creatures in the movement. They’re not happy and some shit’s still gonna go down. Yeah. They’re still spreading and, not happy creatures at all. It, this could have very easily gone on to be a second movie if like the budget had been there and the reception had been there.
Yeah. Start to build houses with this wood, and then see what happens. Yeah. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out there is a big budget American film from 2009. So it predates this by six years, it’s called the new daughter and it stars Kevin Kosner IRO, who was the little girl from Pan’s labyrinth.
And it [00:55:00] ran an hour and 48 minutes. And it had that same similar kind of feeling because you had these strange natural forces in this case like aunt things that like kidnapped the daughter and he has to go rescue her. It wasn’t done nearly as well. And I think I glitched and lost you and I should be back now unless we don’t recover.
Let me look at my Facebook thing. Oh, there we go. Oh, there you are. All right. So you were saying in the 2009 episode? Yeah. It’s called the new daughter at stars. Kevin Costner. Niana Baquero who’s the little girl from Pan’s labyrinth. Oh, cool. And it has the same kind of feel where you have this dad and his daughter living in this house on the edge of the forest.
That’s mysterious. And they’re these like ant like creatures that kidnap his daughter and take them back to the nest. And he has to go in and savor it. [00:56:00] It had the same kind of feel and the same kind of tonality it wasn’t done nearly as well. And it was also like an hour and 48 minutes.
It was just too long of a film, but it is the same kind of kernel of story that makes me wonder if it was actually an influence could have been on the director when he could. There’s also in a seventies movie called the changeling with that’s also on. On a future list. That is one of my absolute, like top 10 horror movies.
We’ll have to make sure and get that one in there. I was gonna say, if you have not seen that one, then we’ll put it on a list for sure. It I think right now it’s on the list with movies that have famous people you didn’t know were in it. Okay, good. But yeah, I love that movie, but, and then the remake of it too, sometime I thought I then remake everything.
Yeah, of course. yeah. We’ve watched a few. Yes, indeed. So yeah, the cha the [00:57:00] hello, good movie. I enjoyed it. Yeah. I thought so, too. And especially for, the little budget thing that it was. I thought it did a really nice job of marrying the whole folk art thing together. Yeah. And, unlike some of their movies, it wasn’t trying to push boundaries and tell a political statement or anything like that.
It was a horror movie, plain and simple it’s monsters creatures in the culture clash, our world in the theirs. And you could look at it from a certain point of view that the creatures have been there longer, and it’s been theirs. We just started taking it from ’em. So I guess you could say that’s a little political from that viewpoint, but uh, that could be, yeah.
You could also look at the culture clash of someone coming from England, from modern society, moving into a place of rural place where they actually respect what’s there. Yes. And the kind of culture clash that you have there too. They respect what’s there, but don’t ask them to really help you much. No.
People out in the country, we’re all a bunch of isolationists who [00:58:00] like to hunt down city people on the weekend who just have to be camping in our woods or something. Why do you think all the farmers have 600 pound hogs? That’s right. all right. So what’s next? Next is absolutely love air Astor’s Midsummer.
Yes, which is a bigger name one. At least it was a couple years ago around here. It’s been on my list to see and I have not yet, okay. Okay. I look forward to talking about it. Nice. Great. All right. There’s episode three. It’s a wrap. There you go. You have been listening to horror, lasagna to see all of our seasons and listen to all of the movie reviews with all the themes for each season.
Check out horror, lasagna.com. And if you like the podcast, like the movies and reviews, please give us a share with a friend, subscribe to our Facebook page. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Pass it along. Let people know, tell us, Hey, I liked it. That was a good movie. [00:59:00] Thank you. We would appreciate.[01:00:00] [01:01:00] [01:02:00]
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