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Overview
You know – it would be nice to be able to move to a country and escape the war ravaging your birth country. Who needs the stress of being shot at. And if you have to jump through some hoops to be a part of the new country, then so be it. If life will be better, take it when you can get it.
Of course, you don’t want to piss the witches off in your old country. That would be bad. They might follow you. And man, if they do, even the run down hole you’re living in will get worse. Much worse.
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Then we’re all set. I’m not even sure what episode number this is season three something episode.
[00:01:58] Rhys: Yeah. I see Episode Zero.
[00:02:01] Stephen: Yeah. Oh, and I even put season two on the link, whatever we’re doing his house. It’s actually season three. So let’s talk about his house, which was a Netflix movie that I have actually seen.
I think it’s the first one we’ve done that I’ve seen prior to us watching it. Really? The first one? Yeah. Out of all of them. Out of all of them? I think so. Yeah.
[00:02:24] Rhys: We had talked about, I’m trying to think which movie it was. That was a Netflix film. Oh, it was Hold the Dark. Yeah. And you had mentioned it was like the first one that we had talked about.
. And one of the big drawbacks to it from our point of view, just people talking about it, is that you can’t get accurate budgetary information on him. His house was a US UK collaboration. It was done in 2016. It debuted at Sundance at the end of 2020. Be then it was bought by Netflix and released in October on the same year.
So this did not have a theatrical release. So you really see what the return is on it, because there was no gate to take in. It makes it a lot harder, like that.
[00:03:12] Stephen: And Netflix doesn’t release numbers and stuff, so
[00:03:15] Rhys: No they don’t. And on the one hand, I can appreciate that because I can appreciate companies that aren’t publicly owned.
Where they don’t have to release that stuff. But still it’d be nice to Yeah. Just for comparisons sake. Yeah. But even, it’d be numbers measuring apples and oranges, though. It’d be hard to do
[00:03:36] Stephen: Yes. But that’s not even a huge problem with a lot of what we watch because Yeah.
We get low budget, we get direct, the video, we get only streamings. It’s all Yeah. Whatever first world
[00:03:49] Rhys: problems
[00:03:50] Stephen: is what it is. Yeah. Man, I was up late worrying about this one, .
[00:03:53] Rhys: It was nominated for 45 awards and it won five of them. Including a bafta for an outstanding debut for awards from the British Independent Film Awards Chicago Indie Critics Awards, and they won something at Sundance.
Won. It premiered. So the story was written by Felicity Evans and Tony ols. They’re married they’re a couple. She’s written three total titles and he’s written four. And it was converted, Converted, converted. Sure. It was converted to a screenplay by the director Remy Weeks. This is his only full length film.
He has two shorts on his resume and an episode of a TV mini series called Fright Bites
[00:04:41] Stephen: which I’ve never heard of. This came out just the last year or two. He may be getting something else, working on something.
[00:04:46] Rhys: Oh, I would imagine he is. Apparently the working title when it was being written was called The Welcome and it was Felicity’s idea.
She developed the story based on a story that she reported on. She’s a reporter for a magazine or, web scene called The Medium. Oh, that one? No. Oh, do okay. Yeah. There was a rural house in Essex that was quote, so beset by frightening and unexplained phenomena, it was impossible for the owner to continue living.
So she started Felicity started to contemplate how a house that is so undesirable is only fit to house undesirables. Because in England and Ireland, probably most island nations, housing is a pro, a super expensive issue. And so here you have a house in Essex that was surrounded by other houses, like up to half a million pounds, but no one could live in it because of haunting, go figure so her mind jumped to refugees and the crappy situation they find themselves in the film is reflective of the actual situation of refugees when they go to England based on her research into the processes and what happens to refugees when they land on the shores of Great Britain. ,
[00:06:05] Stephen: which I thought was interesting because like it may not be exactly a true story, but it’s based on truth and what happens, and that part was almost as disturbing as a horror movie itself.
Yeah. When, you know you’re not used to that and watching some of that. So in, in some ways I was thinking, watching the movie, it’s which part is the horror and horrific stuff going on, , And it could be argued that, one way there and that almost is the culture clash right there, almost the sure.
Horror stuff as opposed to the real stuff. That’s horrible. Yeah.
[00:06:42] Rhys: They had originally wanted to do it as a 1970s period. But another show called The Infield Poltergeist had already basically done something based in the seventies, so they decided to make it current. It’s been described as being trapped between the ghost bureaucracy in the war that they fled from the main characters in this story.
Originally it was posted,
[00:07:06] Stephen: Oh, sorry. I also noticed a lot of this season is questionable, whether it’s something happening to them or mental health, something in their head. It seemed like these culture clashes, a lot of them go around this theme Also, for whatever reason, that just worked out that way for us.
Cause I’m sure we could find 10 that have absolutely nothing to do with mental health, but it just was one of those I’m like, man, again, Questionable. What’s real? What’s Memorex?
[00:07:34] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Actually thinking ahead, we’ll be shifting gears in the next one. Oh, okay. But you already have ambiguity,
[00:07:42] Stephen: your work ahead, life you.
[00:07:43] Rhys: Yeah. . I, yeah I do. Originally it was supposed to be Syrian Muslim refugees, but when Remy came aboard he wanted to make the character Sudanese. And the Sudanese Civil War refugees really resonated with him. And just in case, for those of you who are vaguely interested at all, in Sudan, you had civil uprising against the governing body, and a civil war broke out.
But amidst the Civil War, you had tribal conflicts that were rising between different tribes in Sudan, and there were claims of genocide occurring where entire tribes and villages were just being indiscriminately wiped out. So that’s the situation the characters are fleeing from.
[00:08:30] Stephen: I also find it interesting that we had the earlier movie, The Mouse, with the Serbian Croatian conflict, How you can, that they choose horrific things happening in the world, in real life to put a horror story in the middle of, and then you start questioning, which is really horrific or what adds to the horror, there’s a lot of depth to a story like that.
[00:08:54] Rhys: Yeah, and I think the really cool thing about it using this genre is that it, you and I are now having a conversation about the Sudanese Civil War. It’s not something that we would. Typically sat down and talked about, or, the whole Croatian Serbian war, that’s not something we typically would’ve sat down and talked about
[00:09:13] Stephen: Or even really known much about, what, yeah.
Really gets reported on these things even with our world in that we heard about the Ukraine and Russia conflict, but it is kinda still who’s deeming what’s important to talk about ,
[00:09:27] Rhys: Yeah, for sure.
[00:09:28] Stephen: Is a whole nother podcast discussion, ?
[00:09:31] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. There are I for the cast, I only went over a couple people.
So there’s not a whole lot of people in the film actually, when you think about it. I’m gonna, I apologize now I’m gonna slaughter these names. Sopi, Desu plays Ball, the main male character in the film. He’s been in 34 different projects dating back to 2012, but the only titles you’ll actually know him from was he was in, he’s in Gangs of London and he was in an episode of Black Mirror.
And again, this is not uncommon for us with foreign films. And,
[00:10:06] Stephen: and where’s he, where the cast is from stuff
[00:10:11] Rhys: couldn’t tell you. I
[00:10:13] Stephen: could try though. Hey, real quick. You’re really breaking up. Is the proxy on or something? It’s not. Am I breaking up to you? Cause you I, you’ve paused a couple times.
I don’t want,
[00:10:24] Rhys: I’ve gotten a little bit of a pause from you on occasion. It might, but
[00:10:31] Stephen: in general we’ll keep going. We’ll do the best we can.
[00:10:33] Rhys: There you go. Like Safari as a browser, which I’m not using right now. But Safari as a browser was running so Crappily, I just had to shut it down. So it might be my wifi.
[00:10:44] Stephen: Okay. We’ll just keep going and do what we can. Yeah, I only ask where he’s from because I didn’t think he was actually Sudanese. But his name, his accent I didn’t think he was English either.
[00:10:59] Rhys: And his his co-star wound, Sak plays ral and who I’ve seen before. Yeah, it’s.
Yes you have now, like Sopi, you, he’s not been in a whole lot. I mean he is been in 34 different projects, but like you go to his bio under imdb and there’s just, this is who he is. They, it’s not filled out like a lot of more accomplished actors who’ve been in a lot of stuff. It’s like they were born here this day.
They don’t have any of that stuff under him. I’ll check. Wound me here in a second. As soon as this is done, loading up Wound me, Maaco plays Al, she plays his wife. She’s been in 56 projects dating back to 2006 and you’ll know some of these. She was in and I didn’t even know this was a thing. Law and Order UK cuz there’s not enough law in order episodes as it is.
Yeah. Ah, she was born
[00:11:58] Stephen: in Nigeria’s, Nigeria.
[00:12:00] Rhys: Right.
[00:12:03] Stephen: Sorry. Old joke.
[00:12:04] Rhys: So she’s an i, she’s an Nigerian actress. She was also in Batman v Superman an episode of Black Mirror Fantastic Beasts and where to Find Them, The end of the fucking World, McBeth Lovecraft Country. She was Yes, very
[00:12:22] Stephen: in weird show. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:25] Rhys: At she had voiceover in Horizon Zero Dawn, and a ton of other stuff you haven’t seen
Let me see if I get this next name right. Matt Smith.
[00:12:37] Stephen: The doctor has to be in England, so
[00:12:40] Rhys: He plays Mark S Worth. He’s been in 49 projects, including Masterpiece Classic Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Everyone knows him as Dr. Who he’s been in. The Sarah Jane Adventures Pond Life, Terminator Genesis, Pride and Prejudice, Zombies, The Crown, and in the lightest movie, Morbius, that massive hit. Yeah.
Yeah. The Witch in this film is played by two different actors. He has a voice actor named Cornell John, who’s done 46 projects. Including voiceover work for Fable. He was in Chronicles of Narnia, Prince, Caspian Jack, the Giant Slayer, East Enders, Captain America, Civil War, Fantastic Beasts, the crimes of Grindelwald, and also in the gangs of London.
But the actor who plays the Witch is none other than your friend in mine, Javier Botte, who has 111 credits, also known as Mama. So if you want me to want to hear all the stuff that Javier’s been in, go back and listen to that episode. Cause I’m not gonna listen all Amazing Guy, right? The Charact, the characters in this movie are members of the Dinka Tribe in Southern Sudan.
And the vast majority of the movies in English, but there are sometimes when they speak in Dinka to each other or it’ll be in the village. Sometimes it’s subtitled, sometimes it’s not, depending on what the director’s trying to kinda communicate there. Yeah.
[00:14:18] Stephen: And once again, we get a movie that uses the not understanding the language to help set the mood.
Yeah.
[00:14:27] Rhys: One of the cool things for me about this movie is how it depicts two different views on it depicts way more than two, but it depicts the two different views of the refugees
be you have ball who is here and is ready to be here and just wants to be part of society. And then you have real who is at times looking back and wanting. Her old life in Sudan, Beck Pre-War,
[00:14:59] Stephen: which there’s reasons for that, not just moving away from home, which I made some notes on, we could talk about when we hit that spot.
[00:15:08] Rhys: Yeah. The movie starts with a man carrying a child, holding a doll across the desert in Sudan. Then the pair and a woman are getting into the back of a truck, and this is the introduction to real the woman ball, the man and Niac. The girl Riel leans down and tells Niac and Dinka that she will protect her, and there’s a cut from this harsh, bright desert shot to a very dark scene on a boat.
The boat’s overfilled with passengers crossing the water. There’s a bang from the engine direction, and suddenly there’s people in the water and Niac is crying out for her mother, and then suddenly there’s a shot of ball lying in bed. The whole thing was a dream. Yeah.
[00:15:52] Stephen: Nice quick introduction though.
[00:15:54] Rhys: Yep.
Remember that
[00:15:57] Stephen: it comes back .
[00:15:59] Rhys: Yes, he does. He doesn’t linger on the storytelling.
[00:16:04] Stephen: Like a lot of those movies we’ve watched that opening sequence tells a lot about the whole movie, but you don’t realize it and it’s not as lingering and long as a lot of quote unquote big blockbuster movies either. So another thing to set the mood for horror movies.
[00:16:22] Rhys: Yeah. And they do a lot of getting the information across, but there’s still like this awesome twist that you don’t see coming until it hits, which I think is very well done. So this was a dream Real is sitting next to him and asking him in English what he was dreaming about. And he says, Our wedding day.
And she says that explains the screams, because apparently he was screaming in his sleep. The camera pans back and we find that the pair are in a small room. He’s lying on a cot. There’s a second cot in there with some other guy lying on there. The door opens and this guy just comes in really briskly and he is You’re wanted in the gym?
And just, boom, he’s gone. Just there and out. The couple get dressed and as the other man sits up and says, Don’t get your hopes up. And then he says they will send you back to die. The bastards always do. They leave the room and they’re screaming and cursing and fighting as they’re walking down the hall.
It’s obviously an overcrowded, not overly pleasant place to. Yeah.
[00:17:26] Stephen: And that guy that’s yelling and screaming, they never really explain it, but considering it came right after they were told they’re gonna send you back, I would guess that guy was just told he’s going back and it really sets the mood for, these are the consequences with the stakes are raised.
[00:17:45] Rhys: Yeah. They find themselves sitting in the gymnasium in chairs about a million miles away from a group of officials with stacks of papers. It’s a very nice way to show the isolation. Yeah. Yes.
[00:17:56] Stephen: The woman whisper, Bowl has as a, that JC Penney fake smile plastered on his face trying to get that Yes.
Imitate the, what he thinks people, would. Exactly. Again, we get a really good director that has these subtle little things that aren’t focused and pointed out, but they all add up to, what he’s trying to say. The more we do of these, the more of those types of things I seem to be seen and picking up.
I’m elevating myself. . There you go, man. To fish.
[00:18:27] Rhys: Yeah. A woman whispers to the man next to her asking about a child, and he informs her that they lost her last year. And one of the men informs them that they’re being released from detention. That day ball is so happy, he starts to the man then tells ’em that they’re on probation and they have a set of rules they have to follow.
If they mess up once, they’ll be sent back to detention with the possibility of being sent back to the Sudan. Yeah. Which does not look and the. No. The first rule is they have to come in and report personally, weekly second, they’re given 74 pounds a week and they’re not allowed to work or supplement their money by any means.
Third, they will be sent ho. They will be sent to a home that they have to live in. Ro real tries to point out that they’re good people or bull tries to point out they’re good people. The guy doesn’t care, he doesn’t care that you’re good people. He’s just check you’ve been told. Nod your head, let me know that you heard what I said and you understand it and get out.
So they leave the detention center. Oh yeah. They leave the center in the dark in the rain. They’re on a bus. The driver won’t even acknowledge that they’re on there. He doesn’t even, they try and have talked to him. The guy just completely ignores them. They drive through the night and as they knew near their new home, the sun rises on their new lives.
They’re holding hands. You see how much they matter to each other. They care about each other. Then the screen cuts to black and the title screen comes up. No, no producer, no director, no actor. We’re not wasting any of your time with that in this film. At the start, they’ll put all that stuff at the end cuz they have to, but they’re not gonna sit there and tell you whose production this is.
So he’s giving you everything weeks has given you everything you need to know for the rest of the movie in the next. In the first five minutes. And it wasn’t just like some dry data dump, it was like a story. There was like emotion involved and Yeah, very much so the bus stops next to a mo, a maze of rowhouses, and the driver just un unceremoniously tosses their belongings on the ground and drives off.
Then over by a pile of trash outside one house is Mark who asks if they speak English. He acts like they’re moving into the greatest house ever. Yeah. And it would be typically smaller with twice as many of refugees living in it. But this is all just for them. and he seems to have a little trouble opening the door cuz it seems to be sticking in its frame cuz it’s such a p it
[00:21:05] Stephen: about his son screwdriver.
He’d be able to fix all that up, but whatever. That’s
[00:21:10] Rhys: right. Yeah. No, the doctor would not be nearly the prick. This guy, I, this guy’s not bad.
[00:21:18] Stephen: No he’s not. He’s pretty ambivalent. I’ve done this before. You’re not the first people. I do wish you luck, but what’s the point? Because I’ve got 70 more right behind you.
I’ve gotta do the same thing over and over. This is, I’m so dead to this happening. I just can’t muster any enthusiasm anymore. That’s what I got from him. That’s
[00:21:40] Rhys: a really good point. Cause I. I, I was al I was always trying to put my finger on it cuz he is not a bad guy, but he’s certainly not overly supportive.
But like you said, it, he does seem like a guy who’s given up. I’ve seen so many times that this has happened and I’ve been emotionally involved before and then just been disappointed, so I’m not even really going to Yeah, no clue. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good way to. Once they get inside, the electric’s not on, he runs through a list of rules for the house.
It’s extensive. There’s flies buzzing around, some kind of fights going on outside. Reality wants to confirm with Mark that the whole house is for them. And he like picks up on that and he’s Yeah. Cuz before he seemed embarrassed by the whole place, he was almost apologetic, but as soon as reality’s this is all for us, he’s yeah.
It is all for you. And he didn’t seem nearly
[00:22:31] Stephen: as, and there’s part of that culture slash coming in because he’s used to something and to him this is a dump. But they’re used to something way worse to them. It may not be the greatest, but this is an improvement in their lives. Yeah. Except I got a question.
They’re not allowed to play board games. What the heck is that? Is that subversive? Like they’re gonna take over the country cuz they’re playing risk,
[00:22:56] Rhys: monopoly, they’re not allowed to supplement
[00:22:57] Stephen: their income. That’s true.
[00:22:59] Rhys: It basically tells them he thinks they’ll do. Just keep your head down, that kind of advice. Stay in your lane, you’ll be fine. Ball says they’re not going back. Mark replies. That’s a good attitude and they should strive to be. And here you go. Strive to be one of the good ones, which is yeah, that’s just a little two classes for me.
A little
[00:23:21] Stephen: condescending, yeah.
[00:23:23] Rhys: Then Mark’s gone and ball heads upstairs looking out a window. He sits on the bed and laughs and cries and he is overcome with the emotion of actually having made it here he is. He’s actually in England. No one’s trying to kill
[00:23:37] Stephen: him. Now I, I’m gonna point out at this point, the wife isn’t against any of this.
Doesn’t seem to be, she maybe not super happy, but she’s, this is where they wanted to be. This is where they tried to get to. And that’s important because of how her character arc is throughout the story and what changes to come. He’s extremely more emotional than she is. Yes. But they’re both willing to do what they need to do and fight to for this new life.
Yep,
[00:24:09] Rhys: for sure. We cut to real on the bed alone. She’s having a little different kind of emotion. She’s looking at Niac stall and she takes the beads from the bottom of it and fascist them into a necklace of sorts. Then there’s a cut to a shot of them sitting together on the floor of their new home.
And ball says they will be new here and real confirms that they will be born again. They are new people, English people. It’s dark outside now, and ball gets up from the floor. He’s picking up what looks like a sleeping bag and he hears people outside. All of a sudden there’s a girl inside with him and he looks and there’s no one there.
But the sounds also milled together to form screams and cries like that of the people on the boat from earlier. And he has to cover his ears once the sound goes
[00:25:00] Stephen: away. So he. He seems like he has PTSD going on. Yeah. That’s, Start getting that what’s real, what’s in his head thing, which keeps coming back more and more, right?
[00:25:12] Rhys: Once the sound goes away, hears the girl’s voice again and puts his ear to the wall, since that seems to be where it’s coming from. Then something hits the wall and it makes him recoil. He follows these scuttling sounds and ends up on the floor next to an open air vent. When he knees to investigate it, there’s a figure behind him, wheezing on the floor, and he turns and it’s gone, and then he turns back and a bird flies out of the wall.
He says, Strange country
Now, Steve points out that this could all be in his head Which is a possibility, however, Eventually Al’s going to be seeing this stuff too, right? And now it becomes the mass hallucination situation, or is there actually something to it? We cut to the next day and Al finds ball working on the door amid the box of belongings.
She picks up Gacs doll. Then they’re upstairs watching an older woman walking around outside. They joke about how she’s their, how she’s the queen. Bull TRAs takes the trash out and tries to wave to his neighbor, but she basically ignores him.
[00:26:24] Stephen: Okay, So here’s the question. They’ve been there one night.
They have no money. No, they can’t really do anything yet. He’s got two bags of trash already. What are they doing? ? was wondering where those two bags of trash came from. Where’d the trash bags come from?
[00:26:38] Rhys: I’m hoping the trash bags were in there, cuz while they were touring the house to start with, there was like a pizza sitting on the table that’d been there forever, right?
He takes the he puts his coat on and he walks off and he heads to a barber who gets his haircut. When he asks where they are, the barber says, High Street And Ball tries to clarify by saying in London, and the barber says, Eh, why not? Turns out this was all shot in Essex. Whether or not it was supposed to be London or not, who knows?
But the whole thing was shot in ess. As he leaves, he passes a church where there’s this guy who whistles at him and asks if he’s one of them refugees. And at first I’m like, Oh, there’s gonna be some problem here, right? And here the guy just has a box of, welcome to refugees, like Church Aid for him.
[00:27:26] Stephen: Which again, so it takes is that whole, here’s a guy that is with the church, they wanna help it, but his whole attitude is, okay, whatever. I really don’t care about you, but I’m told to give you this type thing. It’s that condescension feeling. Again,
[00:27:44] Rhys: the intentions there, but the heart is not
[00:27:47] Stephen: exactly, this is just my job.
I’m just doing it.
[00:27:51] Rhys: Yeah. He takes the box to a pub. And so he is sitting in this pub, they’re watching a football game, soccer game. Sorry, American viewers. Yeah, . And he’s flipping through the box. And they’re singing, they’re doing like your typical British thing. They’re singing some song, making fun of some guy on the screen, and he starts singing along.
And, the other people like glance at him, they don’t really seem to give him much of a second thought, but he is overjoyed to be part of this group.
[00:28:19] Stephen: Yes. He’s trying he, he’s doing what he can to try and fit, be one of the good ones. And I’m Good point out that the song they’re singing is essentially the very same song that the vision sings to The Joker in a Night’s Tale
That’s the same one that, that they sing the same tune about. What’s his face, His character in the Night Tale. I just picked it up this time watching it
[00:28:44] Rhys: you. You could actually pick a tune out of there, huh? Yeah, I remember they weren’t necessarily the best musicians.
[00:28:50] Stephen: No. Yeah, and the singing was not exactly up to par with my singing, but it wasn’t bad.
That’s true. .
[00:28:56] Rhys: When he gets home, his wife is humorously poking fun at the song. She says Maybe she’ll go out tomorrow and he encourages her to go on out. They’re trying to sleep and there’s noises outside that keep bowl up. Then he hears what sounds like footsteps coming up the stairs. He gets up to investigate, goes downstairs to find a light on, and he can’t turn it off.
Then a strip of wallpaper just peels off the wall to reveal black mold and a massive hole in the wall. Ball finds his sleeve of wire hanging down and starts to pull it out. And as he does, the lights go out. Then the wire turns into rope, wet rope out of focus. Behind him. Yeah. Out of focus Behind him, we can see a tall figure approaching, and at the end of the rope is ni a’s doll.
He’s holding it, wondering what’s going on, and then a hand reaches out from the hole in the wall, snatches it back from him, and disappears. He turns and looks behind him and the tall figure is gone, and when he looks back at the wall, the wallpaper is back in place.
[00:30:02] Stephen: And we’ll point out with this, like many of the other movies we’ve watched, the other two and a half seasons, it’s a lower budget movie and they don’t do a lot of digital effects.
There’s a lot of practical effects in here, which I think makes them more disturbing and even scarier. But they’re, they try and limit what they’re doing. It’s not the big blockbuster horror movies with all these special effects and things going on, which I think we’re almost immune to that aren’t scary.
So when this guy is, changing his life and he’s seeing these visions and they’re, it’s not over the top. What he is, what’s happening at this point it’s not so much horror as disturbing and it just sits with you like you ate something bad.
[00:30:45] Rhys: It’s subtle. Yeah.
Riel gets up the next day to find that he stripped all the wallpaper off in that room, leaving her to clean up the mess. He’s nowhere to be found . She starts to sweep it up and heads to a closet to get more cleaning supplies, but when she opens the door, she instead sees the caged in back of a Toyota pickup truck with refugee children in it.
So now we see it’s not just bull who’s having flashbacks. She is as well,
[00:31:14] Stephen: and hers seem much more vivid as a memory flashback. His seem like a a scary dream based on reality where Allison Wonderland mixed up type of visions and stuff. Hers are, Yeah. And hers are brighter. I noticed that too.
His always happened, like when it’s dark, hers happen when there’s sunshine. And honestly, I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. It just seemed to stick out.
[00:31:39] Rhys: I think if you look at it she is here and she is mourning the loss of the child that she met in the deserts of Sudan. He is struggling with the guilt of what happened in the dark in the ocean.
[00:31:57] Stephen: Okay, I could see that. Yeah. Good explanation.
[00:32:00] Rhys: Turns out Paul was going to the store. He’s buying construction supplies, including in brand new Hammer. Real decides she’s going to the doctor’s office. She’s entirely intimidated by the new world as she’s nervously locks the door and checks Mark’s map.
She’s walking down the street. Some young guy comes up saying hello, and she just ignores him until he goes away. She glances back over her shoulder just to make sure that he’s left. . And we get this great thing where we see how claustrophobic and similar everything is, that she’s walking along. She quickly finds herself lost.
And the movie does this really well on her outing. While she’s walking through the streets. She is constantly coming across unsupervised kids. Every person she interacts with on the street is under the age of 18. She finds a tree of teenagers. They’re all they’re not African American cuz they’re British, but
So she feels
[00:32:56] Stephen: more comfortable talking. Those were some of the extras from Attack the Block. They couldn’t make it in that
[00:33:01] Rhys: one. So they . Yeah. She feels more comfortable talking to them as opposed to the first guy who came up behind her, he was white. So she start tries addressing them in Dinka and they start making fun of her, of the way she talks.
Then they can’t seem to agree on how to get where she’s going, but eventually they do.
[00:33:20] Stephen: I totally took that scene. Not that they didn’t agree, but that they were purposefully making fun of her and making her feel bad and stuff that they were joking with her, telling her all these different directions, knowing that they were lying to her.
So
[00:33:38] Rhys: at first I thought that too. Okay. She says Thanks in Dinka. And then they start to make fun of her and tell her to go back to Africa. But the reason I think they were actually debating it is one kids don’t ever call anything by its own name. It’s always, Hey, you know that place over there by that pink house?
It’s not what that street is. And then two, they actually give her real directions. Okay. Because she does end up where she needs to go.
[00:34:06] Stephen: That’s true. That’s true.
[00:34:08] Rhys: If they were just being complete pricks, they would’ve just made something up.
[00:34:12] Stephen: Yeah. True. Okay. Thi
[00:34:13] Rhys: this is a really good movie to watch after you’ve seen Attack the Block.
Because on the one hand you can look at all of these kids running around and being jerks and be like, Wow, what? Complete jerks. Or you can look back and attack the block and be like, No, that’s just them existing in their world,
[00:34:30] Stephen: very much. And these kids obviously go to some school cuz they’re wearing a school uniform.
You
[00:34:36] Rhys: know, school uniforms are very big in England,
[00:34:39] Stephen: even if you’re not in the school really? ,
[00:34:44] Rhys: I assume they’re out smoking on the lunch break or something.
[00:34:46] Stephen: Ah because you’d never get American kids voluntarily wearing a school uniform. ,
[00:34:52] Rhys: That’s true. We find her at the doctor’s office now, so their directions weren’t bad.
She’s getting her blood pressure taken. The doctor seems nice and asks about her necklace. She informs her. It was an iacs. And the doctor says, if she’s your daughter, she should come in and take a look at her too. She then begins to ask about her decorative scarring and she tells the doctor how she gave herself one set of scars because the scars mark your tribe.
And if you have the wrong scars or the you are not the right scars, you will be killed by members of the other tribes. She points out that she’s survived by belonging nowhere.
[00:35:34] Stephen: Yeah. And this, it’s a good scene. It really tells a lot about royal, but this doctor is really the first person that seems to gen, genuinely care and treat her like any other person and is interested.
And there’s, a different side of the culture clash. Someone that has no idea this person cross from and what they’ve gone through but is interested. But then she lays it on really thick about her life and the doctor is like shell shocked by that. Just, Yeah. Can’t comprehend this life at all.
So it’s, yeah, it’s just another face of the culture clash that we’ve had this whole season showing the two different sides.
[00:36:13] Rhys: And her pointing out that she survived by Belonging Nowhere is like Al’s whole theme throughout this whole movie. Yeah. She’s not a member of One Tribe or the other.
She’s now not Sudanese, she’s not British. She’s a person without any kind of roots. Yeah. And in the scene the scene ends, she tells the doctor, and this is like the first actual confirmation, solid confirmation that they lost Naac while they were crossing the sea. We know that we took that for granted, but this concretes it for us.
She gets home to find some girl walking back from school just peeing in her backyard, which is nice. She heads back into the cleared room and sits on the floor and hears a voice and it. Come as fruit spills out from the kitchen and one apple rolls across the floor to the hole, the voices continue to murmur and she looks at the hole concerned, not terrified, but she’s concerned.
When ball comes home later that night, Real is prepared, a traditional din of food and has it laid out on the floor with a candle, like they would be eating it in Sudan and she’s eating it traditionally with her hands. He gives her silverware. He’s all about integrating, and she is seeking comfort from her traumatic day by turning back to old traditions.
Right.
[00:37:36] Stephen: So they have their own culture clash going on between the
[00:37:39] Rhys: Exactly. Yep. He’s optimistic about the future. Mentions starting a family and she tells this story, and in this story you have an honorable poor man who’s looking for a home. Then he starts to steal from other people to get to the point that he can buy a home, and he accidentally steals from an a path, which is apparently Sudanese for a night witch.
Once the house was built, the, A path lived in the house as well, and the A path would whisper from the walls and the dead would come. She claims that an A path has arisen from the ocean and followed them there. She mentions that it spoke to her, and something in the background falls making a noise instead of blowing her off, which I love about this movie.
Ball isn’t like You’re crazy, he says. He asks what it said and she said, We don’t belong here. If they leave and repay their debt, it would guide them back to Niac Ball. Reminds her that NI’s gone and the conversation Dees into shouting match from ball’s point of view. He says that a path don’t exist.
Even if something in the background breaks, she’s not intimidated by it and she calls him a liar. And I think that’s a really interesting thing where Real is not scared of the monster in this movie. It doesn’t scare her at all. In fact, it gives her hope.
[00:39:15] Stephen: She interprets it ball on the
[00:39:17] Rhys: other.
Yes. Yeah, she sees it as another chance. Later that night ball
[00:39:24] Stephen: is still pulling down. Sorry. We start getting the sense that there’s some guilt there. And it seems they feel guilty about leaving their country, but considering the circumstances it’s not that, and definitely that they feel guilty about naac and losing her, but there’s more to it that we’re about to get to.
But this is where the guilt starts showing on both of them, and they’re dealing with it in two completely different ways. Which then leads again to are they really seeing what’s going on with this witch in the house? Is it really there or is it all just in their head and considering their shared experience, their shared thing that, he’s talking about it, so now it’s in her head.
You could argue that at this point. Yeah.
[00:40:11] Rhys: Later that night, ball’s still pulling down wallpaper. He hears something moving behind him, and then he hears a female voice, the same one he had heard some days ago. It ends up being joined by a male voice, and we see something through the doorway moving.
There’s a noise in the kitchen sink, someone running past the door. He shines a flashlight and we see a childlike figure sitting on the floor. It has a knife and it’s stabbing into the ground and is asking mama. Then it stabs at him and he scurries away. As it moves across the room, it begins to grow taller and it basically just drives him out of the house into the backyard.
His neighbor catches him out there and he nervously smiles and waves again. She ignores him. He does pluck up the courage to go back in and. Real is on the steps and tells him that he saw it. He opens the closet and finds Nagas doll. He starts to grab stuff saying they’d been marked and they must destroy everything, and he takes it all into their little backyard and burns the doll real’s necklace some of his clothes.
All of this much to real’s, dismay, must purge it
with
[00:41:27] Stephen: fire. He, again, he’s trying to get rid of the past and ignore it and she’s Trying to go back to it. Embrace it. Yeah. Go back to it. Yeah.
[00:41:36] Rhys: The next day he goes to the store. It’s a really nice subtle thing they do. Store security instantly starts keeping an eye on him.
I thought it was gonna be an issue, but it’s not. It’s just his way of pointing out that this kind of crap happens to these people all the time.
[00:41:52] Stephen: Yeah. And it’s subtle in the background, which makes it much more realistic and Yeah and we’ve seen scenes. I say bi, every movie has a scene like this where the security guard gets in his face, confronts him and stuff.
We don’t need a scene like that again. We know it. Seeing that guy in the background put his coffee down and just stand up to follow him, you know what’s there and it, yeah, again, the subtleness of it makes it more powerful.
[00:42:20] Rhys: Yeah. You don’t have to actually be confronted by the guy to still be being profiled by him.
Yes.
He returns to the living room. He’s actively removing wall panels now down to the studs as he does something, cuts his hand, he’s bleeding on the floor. He’s roaming the house, checking lights and catches real whispering to someone who is not there saying stuff like perhaps if you spoke to him. While they’re eating, he’s pushing her to get involved in the community.
She asks if he wants to know what it says. She then points out she’s not afraid of ghosts. They can’t scare her, and she says it told her she can get yac back and that she should be afraid of ball
the camera. Then zooms in on ball as he eats and it pans back and we find he’s alone at the table and the table’s floating in the middle of the sea. This was such a nice little surreal. Yeah, scene.
[00:43:16] Stephen: It was probably the most surreal and almost most disturbing scene because it, a lot of hers are like, she traveled into this memory.
A lot of his are just little parts of things in the house, but this one was no like a non-existent memory. Not in the house, Partly in the house. And yeah, it was, it is. Yeah. Speaking of Alice Wonderland, this was that, you know the Alice Wonderland scene?
[00:43:45] Rhys: Yeah. Real travels into her memories and balls.
Memories travel into his house.
[00:43:51] Stephen: Yes. That’s a great way of putting it.
[00:43:54] Rhys: When he looks up, he notices that he’s on the sea and he sees figures moving through the mists all around him looking down. He feels a hand on his knee. It belongs to some disfigured person, and he falls in the water and there’s figures rising all around him now.
And then he wakes with a start on the floor of his living room. You might be like, Oh, it was a nightmare. But then there’s a figure in the shadows and the corner opposite him. So the nightmare’s not over. Apparently, he turns on the light and the figure disappears. What footprints appear on the floor and a voice says, Help me.
They approach and he turns the light off to see a figure standing next to him turns the light back on and the voice and other voices are added to it, reminding him of what was said by the people who drowned. All these whispers go away, and he hears clearly ni G’s voice in the other room asking Mama, there’s more whispered voices get added and he walks to see what’s up.
He gets up, the light goes out, and there’s a ghost in front of him, and when he turns to head back to the light switch, another stands right in front of him, but the light comes on anyway. Over by the switch is the disfigured ghosted ni gac, but she’s not really disfigured. She’s wearing a mask. And again, tribal communities, masks are like a very important thing, and it actually does a very good job of making her unsettling looking.
Yes. The mask itself, you can tell it’s a mask, but just the mask that she’s wearing is a very unsettling piece. Yes, Her hands on the light switch, he calls her name and she turns the light off, and he’s covered with ghosts. Some of them have knives. They all want to kill him. He manages to hit the switch behind him and they all disappear except for one behind the walls.
It’s niac. She’s squiring her on the walls on this hole, and he starts on this hole. This is my house, and takes a hammer to the walls.
Then we cut to a scene of him sitting in front of Mark the next. He’s asking him if they can move and Mark says he can look into it, but he needs to know why. And ball claims, there’s vermin, there’s something obviously off with Ball. Mark can see it. The other guys in the office kinda resentfully. Point out that Ball’s house is bigger than theirs.
Right? Mark then points out that it’ll raise a lot of questions, and Mark says, Finding yourself somewhere you didn’t plan on being is life, seeing what kind of man you are. He says they can find him a new house right after the inquiry because balls in a poor state. He points out the people are gonna ask why he’s biting the hand that feeds him and basically gets him to say that it’s not about rats.
Ball tries to explain during the conversation, ball’s upset enough, he crushes the glass that he’s holding and basically runs from the office
back at home. Are you still there? Nope.
[00:46:59] Stephen: There you are. Hey. Okay, now we’re back. Was that reset thing you said happens every now and then? Yeah. Okay. So Ball was in front of the doctor and talking , Mad Smith was telling him about the, we got, inquiry about this
and we were talking how Mark. Seemed ambivalent, didn’t really care much about him. Now I got the feeling here that he still really doesn’t care, but it’s almost like at this point he’s weeding out the bad ones per opposed to the good ones. And now that bulls there, he’s become a bad one. Hey or he was like giving him that wink, wink nu nudge hint, look man, you can do this, right?
Because we gotta go through all this crap. If not, and you’re not gonna make it. You, are you sure that’s what really happened? There’s a little bit of both of those feelings in this scene.
Yes,
Yeah, , he’s trying to, he’s trying to live there and he like knocks the window things off to open ’em and it’s wow, now you really can’t get out. And you made the house a little bit worse.
Maybe it’s from Lovecraft Country.
Yes.
And you notice their whole. What they have to go through is no different than everything we see in a zombie apocalypse movie. They’re on the roof to avoid wanderings on the street. They’re walking at night and staying away from people. Really their war torn life is no different than a zombie apocalypse That really, comes out the way he filmed this to me what they’re doing, the roof and all that.
Yeah, though everything going on is stemming from the guilt of what they did to get there. But hi, he’s still in character from this movie. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get out of that country and to start a new life. And he’s willing to suppress the guilt and the actions that he had to do to get there.
And she is even more overwrought with guilt and kind of wants to go back to what she now considers a better life before the guilt. And so again, now it brings up everything happening. Is it real or is it cause because of their guilt, or is it just things in their head? You go with. These spirits exist, the witch exists, The bad juju follows ’em, that it was caused because of their guilt and all these things are really happening to them.
It totally this is one of those things where this movie could be looked at different ways, but there’s, that seems like the most plausible now that we know what they did to make, get, make all this happen. And does that make them any better in their own country than these white English guys putting ’em on probation to live in their country?
You get this culture thing that we looked at the, these people in England as, Oh, they’re crap people because of the way they’re treating the refugees. But what did the refugees do to their own people to get to where they’re at? To, I quote unquote improve their life. There’s a lot of philosophical discussions on this one,
But arguably too, like if nothing would’ve happened on the crossing, she would’ve maybe been going to a better life, so would that have been as bad? Or we’ll leave this kid here to deal with the war torn country and get shot and raped and everything else, Or we’ll kidnap her and take her with us and she’ll have a better life, just not with her mother, which is better , yeah, we’ve had some good ones on the movies we’ve watched, so she, she’s made a choice.
Right.
And one thing to point out when the inspectors are there, that, sorry, that the the one inspector saw a rug in the kitchen over little burn marks or something on the edge. So now we get like a lot of these movies, Oh my God, that was real. It didn’t just happen in their head. There’s physical proof to other people.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I understand his guilt about grabbing the girl. And if he hadn’t done that, yes she would not have died, but more than likely she would’ve died in the country anyway. And his not saving her absolutely feel that guilt, but would he have been able to save her or would he had drowned with her?
Or would his wife have drowned? Cause he didn’t help her. It’s really a ton of, not necessarily worse choices, but horrible situations. And what would you do? That’s really what it comes down to. Not trying to judge this man. He judged himself much more harshly than any movie watcher would probably do.
Yeah.
Yeah. And arguably did he make bad choices? We’re judging it as we’re sitting in our comfy chairs in a house that has a roof. You know what I’m saying? They literally were getting shot at
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure it was clear, anyone listening, not judging us, that we’re not judging that, making commentary on it, that it, the situation sucked more than sucked
But that wouldn’t have worked.
Yeah. Yes,
true. But then again, in that situation, would you,
Right and in that situation, would you go, Oh, me and my wife will stay here and die so you and your daughter can get on the bus and live and screw being a saint, Yeah. Yep.
Right.
And songs are written about those people cuz they’re now dead . Again, it goes back to great. You now have songs written about you, but you’re dead. Arguably, people have done worse than what he did to not die.
And it really kinda shows what good people they are to have such guilt about it.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. And so it’s a good movie on the human nature, on some history of the world some political type statements, all using the horror medium to get that message across. It’s a nice blend there. Yeah.
Season six, three hundred and seventy five movies.
be like a Dragon Ball Z episode thing. . All right, so what do we got next up?
Okay, I haven’t seen this one. Don’t know it. So cool.
Ooh, all that, that sounds intriguing. All right until then, I will talk to you later, sir.
