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Overview
What do you do when there is a global pandemic? You watch a horror movie depicting an ancient virus come back to destroy the world. Of course.
This movie has some questions about it, which we like. It doesn’t answer everything point blank and leaves some things open for your own interpretation. Which we like.
The thing about the cabins being lived in because that’s where the crew stayed, so very cool. Having a scene that does FPS better than the DOOM movie – also very cool.
So there’s a lot to like about this movie and we talk about many things, like usual.
Black Mountain Side (film) – Wikipedia
Black Mountain Side (2014) – IMDb
And as promised – here is a map to the Cozy Cabins where this was filmed:
Trailer
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Transcript
All right, so today we’ve got Black Mountainside, which is not a Led Zeppelin song. Correct. Cuz
Rhys: it’s all one word mountainside. As opposed to the Led Zeppelin song, which is mountainside.
Stephen: Wouldn’t wanna confuse that and get anyone upset. . That’d be a way to meet Jimmy and them, go to court.
That’s how Sheldon meets people, is getting those things what would they stay away from me, 200 meters or whatever. , right?
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. All right. Black Mountain side. Let’s go.
Rhys: This is a Canadian film from 2014. It runs an hour and 39 minutes,
Stephen: which is was a horror average number, it seems.
Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. It’s it’s about 15 minutes longer than your typical slasher, . But it’s not really a slasher film. No. This is a psychological horror film.
Stephen: Yes. And I as. I talk about stories at times, so I can’t really point to, this has a beginning, middle, and end. It doesn’t have a big climax.
It’s more of a gradual build through the whole movie. And a lot of the other movies we’ve watched, this felt similar. The way the progression of the story, it felt very similar to fall into a lot of the other movies we’ve watched like the mouse and things. It just, that progression through to the end without having a big beginning, middle, and end.
Not the typical story, I think
Rhys: more so than the other films. This one doesn’t have, there is no giant payoff in this , right? It builds up tension, and then it’s done, right? So there’s no, there’s even the reveal is from a far distance. So you’re not getting this intense look at whatever it is.
Stephen: And it’s open, is it really this thing or that thing? It could be a couple things. It’s an interesting culture clash because it could be, again, depending on your viewpoint and argument of what was going on, could be one of a couple things as to the culture clash.
Rhys: Yeah. And the basis the canvas this story’s painted on is about anthropology, which in general is, studying cultures.
So this seemed like a good one for a culture clash. Yes. And this is, I think I can say with confidence going to be the lowest budget film we have for this whole season. Okay. I We’ve had low budget films in the past and nothing’s ever gonna touch, like La Casaa Muta that was shot for six grand, the Battery. Yeah. But this wasn’t. Like big kind of money. It was released on July 30th at the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Stephen: Oh wait. Is that big money Canadian or Big Money American ?
Rhys: We actually, we’ll talk about
Stephen: that Okay. Here in a little bit. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. What were you doing?
I interrupted and jumped around.
Rhys: Oh no, I was just saying that it released at the Fanta National Film Festival. It’s frequently compared to the thing from the seventies. It was nominated for five awards and it won two it best, it won best cinematography at the Blood and Snow Canadian Film Festival.
Stephen: really . Oh man, you gotta love that award. Tell me the award looks like dripping end trails hanging off of it or something. That’d be awesome. .
Rhys: And it was the best feature at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland.
Stephen: Nice. Nice. Yeah, and I could see that cinematography. That’s one of the things I said, there’s some great shots of the mountains and wilderness and it’s hard not to win that award when you’re in Canada shooting vast wilderness , yeah.
Rhys: More so than probably almost any other film that we’ve got. This one was filmed in the Manashi Mountains near Lumbee, British Columbia. Lumie is a town of 1,731 people, so it’s tiny. It had been called White Valley and its name was changed to honor Moses Lumie, who died there. He was a government agent.
He died there in 1893. It’s also Canada’s u f o capital. Oh, nice. I love that. Like Roswell. But I was gonna say, this is more so than any other film that we’ve done with perhaps the exception of hatchets. You can actually go to this site because the cast and the crew filmed and actually while they were filming, lived in cabins at a resort place called Cozy Cabins.
, I’ve told you roughly where it’s at. I’ve told you the name of the proprietor. You could actually, if you wanted to, Head on out there and stay in the same cabins. I’m
Stephen: gonna have to put a map on the show notes and embed a Google map. Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, that’d be good. . Just we should go watch it.
All the cabin scenes indoors. Somebody on the crew left their phone or a cup or something in the background and forgot about it. There’s gotta be some little mistake somewhere. ,
Rhys: It wouldn’t have been their phone because there’s no internet or cell service at cozy cabins. Wow. So they filmed all of this pretty much isolated
Stephen: cutoff.
Rhys: Interesting. One of the things that somebody had pointed out was that I watched a bunch of interviews with the director and somebody had pointed out that whoever was doing the set dressing did a great job cuz the cabins looked so lived in. And he said that’s because they were . We were all actually living in those cabins.
Stephen: You gotta love that. That’s awesome. Filming. Yeah.
Rhys: It’s also the first film released by a Canadian film production company called A Farewell to King’s Entertainment Company,
Stephen: which I liked. I was wondering if because they’re Canadian, if they got that from Rush.
Rhys: I almost guarantee they did . They have two movies out right now.
One being Black Mountainside, the other one’s called Arcons, which came out in 2020. Both of them were written and directed by a gay guy named Nick Chota Shataki. He also happens to be the c e o of a farewell to King’s Entertainment Company. So the production company is basically just what Nick came up with to be able to make his films
Stephen: in.
Nice. Yeah, that looks, Hey, that’s today’s world. You can do that.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s written and directed five pieces, three of them being full length films, including icons. and a film called Cankered. It was his first.
Stephen: Oh, that sounds familiar actually. Yeah.
Rhys: It sounds up your alley. It’s a comedy revolving around ninjas, werewolves, and violently angry
Stephen: nerds.
Oh my God. How can I not watch that? ? Yeah,
Rhys: It’s, when you wanna look it up, it’s Cankered with a K. Got it. Not a C. So I’m gonna struggle with his name. I have it written out here phonetically, so there’s always gonna be this pause when I say Nick Shataki. That’s good. Thanks. He was born and raised in Calgary and studied film and creative writing at the University of Calgary.
And he’s worked in just about every aspect of the film industry. And if you go through like his IMDB page, the biggest credits he has is as a boom operator. Wow. He is big into Into sound now. We’ve been doing this podcasting thing for a while, so I’m gonna be a little more professional here and cite my sources.
Ooh. I was watching an interview with him on YouTube channel, the Horror Revolution, and he cites The Shining and Alien is his fav favorite films. Nice. And the Shining, actually, he pays tribute to it in this movie because if you notice, there’ll be times where he’ll be going along. Then suddenly it stops.
There’ll be a black card with the date they do that. They did that. Kubrick did that in The Shining as well, where there’d be scenes and then stop and title card.
Stephen: Yeah. And I even made a comment about that. It’s oh, when they are doing the counting of the days and times that as each one comes up, they’re getting closer and closer so there’s more horror and action stuff going on.
Yeah. And that’s what they always do with those. Yep.
Rhys: He wrote the script for this in 2012 and when asked what influenced it, he couldn’t remember anything specific please, but he had a
Stephen: conversation.
Rhys: He he had written the script for this Nick wrote the script for this in 2012, and when you asked him what influenced him, he can’t remember anything specific except he had a conversation with another guy who makes his sound by the name of Adam Paani.
And Adam doesn’t like horror films because they try much harder to be frightening as opposed to telling a good story. So Nick decided he was going to write the good story first and make it frightening second.
Stephen: And that would be an interesting discussion. It depends on the horror movie you’re watching because I do like the horror movies that have that story and have that really gripping element to it.
Not just the slashers, not just the jump scares. They can have that if used correctly. And that fits right with what we said at the beginning. This doesn’t follow a typical storyline. It’s just got a big buildup, which we’ve seen a couple times in some past shows. Yeah.
Rhys: I caught a couple other interviews with a podcast called B and s Awesome.
And one with Cinema Mondo. And he seemed like this really laid back guy. He loves to talk about the industry and like working in the industry, like the actual physicality of it, but he loves doing sound work. . He said it’s actually one of the easiest ways to get into movies because everybody wants to do cameras and stuff.
And he’s if you’re doing sound, you can sign up to be a boom operator. And people don’t care because no one wants to stand in there and hold that stick all day long. .
Stephen: But you get your name known, you get in there and you, and sound is super important for horror, especially, we talk about that all the time, not just the music, but the sound effects.
I remember my cousin when he got a surround sound the first time and they were watching, I think The Exorcist, and she comes skittering down the steps and they heard it behind him and they jumped off the couch. Yeah. The sound people don’t understand. I they get huge tv. and then they just use TV speakers to watch stuff.
And you need something that really gives you that, surround that gives you that full power. The range and the little TV speakers don’t do it and you miss a lot. It’s not just, the same thing with video games. It’s not just graphics, there’s more to it, right? Yeah.
Rhys: He actually in one of these says that he thinks that sound in horror is actually more important than the visuals at times.
I believe
Stephen: that. And look how many shows. Two we’ve watched where they don’t show you the monster, they don’t like focus on it. And, that’s the gor, that’s the blockbusters that’s the jump scare slashers and stuff. They focus on that. Whereas the ones that are even scarier, you don’t see the Mon Cloverfield, JJ Abrams is the biggest example probably of that.
You barely ever see the monsters in three movies, right?
Rhys: Yeah. And JJ Abrams, you don’t have to talk about budget. That wasn’t a budgetary restraint. That was him deciding I don’t wanna show them kids.
Stephen: Yeah. And he made eight Millimeter, which was a fantastic film for a big blockbuster, so you can’t say it’s just, he sucks or anything like that.
He is really good for what he does, he, yeah. And he was part of Star, the New Star Trek and all sorts of stuff. And heck look at all the TV shows, blah. Okay. Sorry. Our movie here, .
Rhys: No, it’s fine. Nick started shooting in his youth with whatever cameras he could get his hands on, and he tried writing screenplays for his friends, but he didn’t like watching other people working on his films, so he just decided he was gonna write them, and stick to doing his own films.
Nice. He didn’t like giving them away. He’s really proud of how little it costs to make this movie. , but he won’t tell you how little it was. . You can’t find out how much it cost to make this movie because he’s purposely let, I a lot of times these interviews, they’d be like when you say small budget and he’d be like small.
He just would not give them an answer. Huh.
Stephen: Okay. Yeah, he’s loud.
Rhys: Yeah. He likes setting it up so the audience questions about whether or not what’s happening is actual, or if it’s just people going crazy. I thought, oh, Steve’s, that’s Steve’s niche
Stephen: right there. Yeah. And there was no dog, so we didn’t have to worry about that.
Rhys: But there was a cat.
Stephen: Yeah, there was. I don’t know if I feel as bad about the poor cat. Maybe they didn’t, we didn’t get close enough to the cat before it. That’s right. So
Rhys: you might be, by the time we’re done with this intro, he enjoys leaving his films ambiguous. So people take the film with them and they can chew over what they just watched.
Exactly. Yeah. That’s about it. Afterwards. Yeah. . He did two stylistic things very, for a very specific point. And one of them is there’s no music in this entire film. Not at the opening credits. Not at the end, not throughout the entire thing.
Stephen: And you can feel that at times,
Rhys: yeah. There are times where it would’ve helped, but the other thing that he also did no wide shots with people in them.
Stephen: Oh, okay. I didn’t, and the reason, except for the very last one. Yeah, the last one was a bit wide with him
Rhys: yeah. , but the reason he did both of these was because he wanted the viewer to actually put in the space with the characters. Okay. Like he wanted it to feel like you were standing in the cabin while this was all happening all
Stephen: around you and I, there were a couple times I even, consciously noticed and thought that, especially at the end when they’re running around.
It’s like a first person shooter game. Yeah. Uh, Going on. Yeah.
Rhys: There’s no point listing out what the cast has been in because they don’t have anything that you or I would ever know. And they haven’t been in that many things. They’re all young actors. Fair. And they’re working they do a lot of television parts but there’s nothing that you or I or our audience would, recognize them forever.
Hi Jack. Hi. Yeah.
So the movie starts with the sound of the wind and a place card announcing where you are, Northern Tie Aga Cordell, cord Del Canada. Yep. How that show seki was hard
Stephen: and they’d spent some time here. And this is where we get a lot of those long range shots showing the vastness, showing the, those wilderness.
For a couple things. I think one, it sets the atmosphere and tone. You’re isolated. You’re out there and it’s not very habitable place to be. Plus the problem we have in today’s society is the cell phone issue. If everybody has a cell phone, get on the cell phone, it solves almost every horror movie.
That’s why so many of them, they get rid of the cell phones. There’s and we’re in a place where you said literally they didn’t have cell phone service. Yeah. So yeah, you get that mood right from the beginning. . Yep.
Rhys: And inters interspersed throughout this, a lot of the cuts are introduced or closed with a shot of just the majesty of where they’re at.
And that’s one of those kind of cases where I think it’s like, Hey, we’re here anyways and it’s stunning, so let’s do something with this. Yeah. So they have a lot of shots of just the mountains or the camp itself, and it’ll be a nice quiet shot of just the camp and then go into whatever the rest of the story is.
Yeah. I, yep. So yeah his beginning starts with the wind and then there’s the title card tells you how many people are living there, and then it’s interspersed with these amazing shots of the mountainous region. And it ends with a shot of the camp, and then the film’s name comes up in red letters, and then you.
Brand new title card with a date November 1st
Stephen: day after Halloween.
Rhys: All Saints Day. Yeah point. It opens into a shot of the four characters playing poker around a table in a very look lived in looking cabin again, if somebody left their coffee cup out it’s because somebody left a coffee cup out.
Yeah. . Yeah, it looks like it might be cold in the cabinets at play and they’re discussing the virtues of staying up north or heading south for the winter. This is the kind of conversation they’re having. This movie, especially for a casual viewer if you’re trying to actually keep track of stuff, suffers from what I think of as a very kind of racist trope where all of the guys in here are white.
except for one, they all have facial hair and they’re all wearing parks. And I literally would have to go back to keep track of who was who cuz they all look the same. .
Stephen: I had that in one of the earlier movies last season. I remember. Yeah. Following. Yeah.
Rhys: So I had to keep going back and forth.
The scene cuts to one of the first guys that we meet who becomes a main player. His name’s Jensen. He’s in an office. He’s kinda like the office manager of the place. He’s the one who handles the radio. He’s playing a video game on his laptop and helicopter’s coming into land. He has to cut his game short.
Stephen: It didn’t look like that interesting of a game, so it’s probably okay.
Rhys: But funny you say that because the game was actually developed by, Kiski back when he had to do it, like for some project for school. Beautiful. I love that. School projects. Yeah. . So he tells him he is coming out to meet, the helicopters are landing, they’re bringing in an archeologist, professor Olson.
And they bring him into the room where they’re playing poker. And this is where we get a lot of exposition as to what’s going on. And we get introdu introduced to all these players. You had Francis Monroe, he’s the project director. Drew McNaughton, the equipment technician Robert Giles, the field supervisor.
And Dr. Anders, who is the actual medical doctor on
Stephen: site. Yeah you’re right. Cause after those names I lost track of who was who. I was just, yep. It’s one of the guys. They all became generic people in the movie. They
Rhys: did. They did. Once Jensen in introduces him to everybody Monroe, the project director, takes him on a tour.
Francis takes it over the tour. He introduces Olson to Steven Wells, his assistants, and we find out that Olson is there to evaluate this, find that they have that they’ve come across and maybe write a grant for them to get more funding. They have found some Clovis culture artifacts from about 10,000 bce.
They found a pot which Olsen identifies as about 11,000. Just looking at it, only to be told that it’s carbon dating makes it 14,000. And if you look at it, it looks more like it’s mezzo American. And this begins to justify why he might be there because they’re in the far northern parts of frozen Canada, and they’re coming across Mesoamerican stuff, which is Central America.
Northern South America and Southern North America. So it’s a long way from home. Yeah. On top of that. It’s also super, super old. It’s older than it should be.
Stephen: Yeah. And they, and at one point they mentioned possibly like 20,000 years, but that’s the oldest date I caught throughout the whole thing. And they lowered it down to 10,000 later.
But we’ve had discoveries like that in real life where they discover some humanoid or some animal. It’s what is it doing on this continent? They’re from this other place and this first time we’ve ever found. That’s real type stuff that’s happened, explaining
Rhys: our knowledge. . And just as you’re having this conversation about whether or not this was worth Olsen’s trip, they say they’ve unearthed the structure and that becomes really big because Clovis culture did not build structures.
They were strictly nomadic. This could be huge. Yeah,
Stephen: I’d be excited if I was them.
Rhys: They keep referring to it as like the find of, the find of a lifetime. They cut to the dig site as Giles takes over the exposition now. We find out they’re using natives from a nearby reserve by nearby.
Its a hundred miles . To help with the dig. The days are getting short and the knights are deadly cold. And it’s funny that he says that because when they did, when we recently did the first one with the dark hold, the dark, we found out how cold that was. Yeah. They actually filmed this in the spring and they had to like, keep trying to avoid where snow is starting to melt.
So they talk about how cold it is, and it actually wasn’t, it was, probably in the mid thirties for most of the shoot. But,
Stephen: And the whole thing about being cold in the movie and what they dug up, that’s important because of what happens. Yeah. It, under there the, it’s even colder and keeping things frozen, which is why it was so in such good shape.
And me I’m looking at this, Shaq, they dug up and I’m like, yeah, that’s a hunter. Shaq, that’s a predator. So , this is gonna be a movie with predator in it. That’s what you’ll kill ’em all because that’s a predator hunting shack, like some guy ice fishing. Yeah.
Rhys: Then there’s of course the mention about how little sunlight they get this time of year, and it’s just getting shorter and shorter.
After sundown he gets a tour of the site and finds out he’s in the loft of the cabin, which is actually nice cuz it at times, depending on what’s going on, gets really warm up there. So it’s really not that crappy. And that night they’re playing cards and we’re introduced to the camps.
Cat Gibson, who belongs to the Cook Ramos. If you look at the credits, the cat is listed in the credits and he’s listed as the credits mostly because he’s actually sho Kiki’s cat. Oh, cool. So that wasn’t some trained animal or anything? It was just Nick’s Kat. He put it in the movie. So when you look at the I M D P page, it’s got the cat listed under the credit un under the cast.
That’s awesome. Yeah. There’s a brief mention that they’re outta eggs. Jensen needs to call some in on the next order. Title card. November 7th. So now we’ve gone, we’ve moved ahead six days. Francis and Olsen are walking the site and they’re discussing how there’s several of these sites every a hundred miles or so, but this is the only one with the structure.
And then they’re talking about the symbols on the side and these imagery pictographs. And it’s always interesting to me that throughout this they never showed
Stephen: any of them. I was going to say they that. The first times I’ve ever thought that they didn’t focus on it and show what it looked like. It left to your imagination.
It
Rhys: did. And I think it actually works better for the authenticity of the film because, If you were to like, do this, are you gonna have an anthropologist there who’s gonna just make up some sort of mezzo American Clovis culture hybrid? By just saying that it’s there, then, we can imagine it in our heads and you can’t have people nitpicking it like they do with, their
Stephen: roper report.
A great reason not to do it. .
Rhys: Yep. Jenssen’s back in the radio room, finds out the next delivery is in three days on the 10th. And that night Olsen’s typing up his notes and the staff is celebrating whiskey and porn, which is apparently how they spend their winter. And they rejoice finding the greatest archeological finding in history.
They ask Olsen about the find and he says It probably is in a temple. He guessed it’s from about 20,000 bc, which should be impossible. And one of the other guys says he thinks it’s there. Thanks to the aliens, a little prescient.
Stephen: Yeah, I was gonna say, which are all, some foreshadowing of what could be possibly of what’s coming and it’s probably, yeah, accurate, just not in the alien predator way.
even though, there’s a lot of this that you could say there’s alien, there’s predator. It, it could have went a whole nother direction with a bigger budget there.
Rhys: Yeah, it could have. While that little party’s happening, two of the other team members are going over files, and this is where you can tell, I can’t tell who’s who.
I’m like, one of them is asking about where certain files are and the other guy is illustrating how well organized the files are. I couldn’t tell who was who in this scene. . One of them’s expressing some frustration about whatever he’s trying to find. The other one’s you should just go to bed, title card.
November 10th. This is when the eggs are supposed to arrive. Yes. Giles calls Jensen and asks him to come down to the site. We cut to the site and we find Ramos’s cat is lying. Basically turned inside out at the base of the temple Excavation.
Stephen: See Predator.
Rhys: There you go. Jenssen’s back in his office.
He’s questioning the indigenous work crew if they know what happened. And they said it was Mc Noden. They don’t know why, but he says he saw him do it. Jensen sends a guy back to work, then he calls McNaughton on the radio and asks him and McNaughton denies him. And he just tells Jensen, I got Faith in you.
You’ll figure this out. Title card, , November 15th. Olson’s sleeping and he hears this commotion downstairs, someone is on the radio calling midnight to the cabin. When Olsen comes down and Magnon shows up, we find out that three of the workers are missing, the other two are looking for them. And as the mystery unfolds, we find out that they left in the middle of the night, which we’ve already established is like dangerously cold.
So it must have been pressing that they left. There’s some discussion about how superstitious they’re as a people, they think maybe. A combination of Ramos’s cat and some wild animal passing through. They see animals as portents of spirits. Regardless of why they left, they can’t work more without these guys.
So they’re contemplating an early winter break
Stephen: And it’s also a really easy way to keep the budget down. .
Rhys: Yeah. Fewer people. Yeah. Why they’re contemplating this. Wells just suddenly vomits black stuff all over the table.
Stephen: See, I was waiting for the alien to burst out of his chest. It just keeps pointing to like being some Cloverfield version of aliens versus predators.
Yeah.
Rhys: The doctor helps him up and checks his temperature. It seems normal. So he is taking him to the infirmary. I’m not a doctor, but that sounds like an ulcer to me. A bleeding ulcer. It was pretty dark black. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very tarry jenssen’s back in the radio room trying to get ahold of the supply station, but they’re not responding.
They decide there’s nothing to do, but go back to work until they can get ahold of somebody. And there’s a new title card for November 18th. The next morning finds Jensen and Giles taking a rifle and they head off into the woods. Jenssen’s, making sure to remind the guys to keep an eye on the radio.
Wells is still in the infirmary and he feel he’s feeling crappy. And the doctor goes over his stuff. He finds out that Wells hasn’t been sleeping. The doc checks his throat and we get a good look at wells and he does. He looks like crap. The doctor diagnoses him with the flu and gets him some meds and sends him to bed.
Stephen: No, Jensen, here’s so I’m throwing out all these references, other movies. This could also be the first stop for the 30 days of Night vampires before they move on. They could have been here wiping everybody out before they move on to their, it’s just all these fan fiction crossovers with this movie.
Rhys: Oh, yeah. , it could be 28 days later. This could be the
Stephen: origin of the plague. It’s everything. Yeah. We could really tie a whole world into this.
Rhys: Yeah. Jensen and Giles are off walking through the woods. They’re looking for signs of the workers, but the tracks they’re following are going the wrong way to the north.
They’re heading like up into even colder places. Giles said that if they went that way, then they’re dead. So there’s a scene with Francis and Olsen sitting at its table as McNaughton fiddles with a piece from the dig site. They’re just, they’re talking about how remote the site is. Francis finally yells at McNaughton for playing with the artifacts.
He’s put that down, and they keep talking about how archeologists ended up picking up these sites, and they’re just about to talk about why they decided to build their camp there. When Francis yells at McNaughton again for playing with the artifact, tensions are definitely the high going
Stephen: up, and I do like that it’s not, digging up in the desert that’s just, every archeology movie they’re digging in the desert.
Yeah. This is in the cold wasteland, which has to be so difficult when you think about it. And, yeah it’s a nice change of pace, a nice setting of the mood for this story. I like that.
Rhys: And again, cultures up there didn’t build, so finding anything of theirs is much more difficult as far as digging goes, as it does, down south right.
Where, people have been building for millennia. Magno McNaughton points out that it’s just stupid old shit, the stuff he’s playing with. So he doesn’t know what the big deal is, but. That night they’re refueling the gen generator and they find out that they’re starting to run low on supplies.
Jensen guesses, they’re down to two or three weeks worth of supplies at most. And we find out that the delivery from the 10th with the eggs never showed up. And then there’s a lot of picture X shots of the
Stephen: area and, there’s the beginning of their complete isolation and no contact with anybody, but there’s no mention of it.
Nothing. Yeah. Literally that we could have wiped out the world right here. . Yeah. Everybody else could be dead. Yeah. We
Rhys: don’t know. McNaughton brings, Jensen is radio after checking. They make sure it’s working. They run through the channels, they find no one there. But when they try the local channel, the radio comes through fine.
So obviously the radio is functional, right? But there’s no one else. I never even, that never even crossed my mind, Steve, until you just said that. So the helicopter lands drops off, Olson, the guy gets infected. Leaves, all of the culture has collapsed. These guys don’t even know it. Don’t even know it. And when they’re trying, that’s why they’re not getting a hold of anybody.
Holy cow.
Stephen: Yeah. This could that’s slightly a different movie. It could be like Cloverfield. He could do, another movie with the people that, the natives that left and what happened to them or this base and the guy landing on the base and it’s spreading out. Yeah, it could be a very, yeah.
And then we’ll do a space station just like Cloverfield, very similar. Yeah.
Rhys: I should look it up sometime. There were two movies that came out. They’re probably about five years apart. They’re African horror movies and I don’t remember, maybe Kenya. But it’s rare to come across African horror movies.
And it was a zombie horror movie. And again, I’m sorry, I can’t remember the title, but you want, I watched it. I was like, this is really pretty good. And it takes place. It’s basically this guy trying to survive, zombie apocalypse in Africa, which is, a completely different twist. We’re used to seeing everybody out here, he came out with a sequel later and I was like, oh, it’s gonna be more of this guy who survived. And no, it’s not, it’s just told from a different part of Africa. So it’s somebody else. And how they’re trying to survive through the same problem. It’s, you were talking about K Cloverfield, where it’s like, Hey, here’s these three movies, and it’s the same basic story, just how different
Stephen: people are dealing with it.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons I like Cloverfield because the second movie, the first one’s run away from Monsters, and the second one’s crazy Psycho , it’s two different fields and the third one’s a sci-fi yeah. So I like that. Personally, I like the change.
I like that. And this, I could see this being something like that. Definitely you could do more stories with this
Rhys: happening. . It’s funny you say that cuz at some point in time they mentioned an A plane crash and that plane crash that they mentioned is the basis for the, his other movie that came out called Arcan.
Stephen: Oh, interesting. I like that too. So there is
Rhys: This tie in but the second movie’s kind of a prequel. So Olson and Francis are out looking at piles of stones. It can be found for about a mile or two away from the dig site. And Francis is explaining they’re about five to 600 years. The current theory is they mark burial spots for hunting places, areas of, great importance to the people who live up here.
It’s also mentioned that they’re embarrassed in the area, but they’re not too worried about them because they’re bear traps littered around the places and they’re really nasty
Stephen: and it’ll really mess you up, which this whole scene has layers to it for me. So they say it’ll really mess you up, as opposed to what’s about to happen to them.
That really messes ’em up. But the bear thing does come back at the end. Just, I know , but also those stones are real. There are cultures that use that all over the place, but it’s not, in my opinion, it’s not hunting or anything. It’s stay away. Don’t come here. This is a lot of times it’s the morning.
Yeah. Yeah. And the stones probably might be older because of that.
Rhys: There’s actually, precedence for this in modern culture too. And. You’ll find this, like you go up to Lake Erie, there’s a lot of stones that wash up. Lake Erie has a lot of rocky beaches. There will be just piles of stones that people have built for, whatever reason they have built them.
But Hawaii is like that too. You go down the south side of Hawaii and there are basically these shrines just made out of people’s sunglasses and a pile of stones that, they just did this thing and you’re like, wow. That’s, sometimes they have meanings, sometimes they don’t.
Stephen: I’ve been finding weird structures with the branches in my woods oh.
Maybe this virus got loose up there. Oh, Blair Witch living up there. Yeah, could be. I don’t, I haven’t camped in the cabin because of that . Yeah. Good
Rhys: plan. You end up standing in the corner. They had this little mini debate about the people who live up there. Had they developed a way to thrive that north at the end of the ice age.
where did they go? And Francis says he thinks they went South. Olsen points out that if they were gonna go south, they would’ve done it earlier when things were really rough. So maybe them adapting to it being that cold when it warmed up, that’s what screwed them up. And they have this kind of conversation and this is the kind of debate that, we can be having about global warming.
It’s some people are like, yeah, let it warm up. Okay, but what happens when winners not here anymore? That kind of deal. It’s basically that kind of done in a microcosm between these two guys about some ancient civilization, right? Closer to Camp Mcn is throwing a baseball against one of the cabins and catching it on the rebound and throwing it again, just bored kids stuff.
As annoying as you think it sounds, Giles agrees with you. Comes, he comes out and yells at him. Aught says he’s bored. And Giles you’re still on the clock. What about the radio? McDonald’s like, it’s working. It must be on their end. And then the aisle and Giles is I don’t care. Just quit it with the ball.
So McDonald turns and just launches the ball out into the woods. Just throws it
Stephen: out there. And I like this scene because they, you hear the echo of them yelling and it really enforces the, we are isolated, we are nowhere. You don’t hear that echo if you’re in a city or something. So again, you mentioned he, he does the boom, the sound.
That was probably something, he did very, you don’t have the music, but that echo with them yelling. You got him yelling and you got this isolation field coming in. Really good choice in this little scene here.
Rhys: I also, it’s really subtle and it probably only hits like if you’re older or like a parent, but the scene was very stressful for me because he was probably four feet from a window when he was throwing that against the side of the thing
And I’m just like, oh my God, he’s gonna hit that window. Were you going to get glass to replace it? That cabin will be useless. It’s freezing cold . It was just like this added layer of
Stephen: stress, for So do you think they have like double or triple panned windows or
Rhys: ? Yeah, I’d hate to think.
Olson and Francis are looking at the symbols on the pottery chard, and it looks stylistically earlier, but more basic meso American kind of writing. He says it doesn’t follow a traditional syntax. He thinks it’s more like a hieroglyphic style of communication as opposed to actual writing. He’s guessing it might be depicting hunting rituals.
Francis Hypothesizes that they were a pre ice age civilization who built the temple and attempted shelter from the cold, but just didn’t make it. Pre ice age, that makes them really old. That’s a ways back, but,
Stephen: and I like some of these talks they have in here. You get a little bit of history, a little bit anthropology, it’s got.
Enough in there to give you some real life information. And I like how the movie is really based on that and it, it uses that for the story itself. So yeah, there’s little pieces in here.
Rhys: Then we get wells and he is sitting alone in his bed, smoking, looking isolated and miserable. And he sits up long enough to look out his window and he’s tapping his fingers almost like he’s waiting for something.
Then we get a title card. Welcome to November 21st. Monroe goes into the cabin in the morning and knocks on McDonald’s door, and when he doesn’t answer, he opens the door to find McDonald’s just sitting there in his bed. This is one of those really creepy, this is like a guy who’s about to go shoot up a mall or something kind of thing where he is just sitting there
Stephen: looking.
But it also was a bit like somebody with Alzheimer’s and Oh yeah. Something that affects your brain, something that alters the way your brain works. So that, that’s another one of those this is an argument for one case of what could be happening.
Rhys: Yeah. And it’s really interesting that you said that cuz you, Monroe points out, Hey, you’ve missed two meals in a row and McDonald’s like, I’m fine.
And Monroe says, okay. And then leaves. But yeah, it’s that kind of thing where like you just, I forgot to eat. Yeah. Kind of meal. Yeah. Olson’s lying in his bed and we hear over the radio, someone’s calling for Jensen saying Wells is screaming. It’s night. Doc heard the screaming and we go into Wells’s Cabin and find just chaos.
There are guys holding him down on the table. He’s screaming, and then there seems to be something crawling under the skin of his
Stephen: right forearm. This is definitely an homage to the thing in here. Yeah, this is a lot like that right
Rhys: here. Yeah. And I don’t know that this would necessarily be where I jumped to, but they just cut his arm off with an ax
Stephen: like in three seconds.
They must have been watching Walking Dead.
Rhys: Yeah. Th there was no debate. There was no nothing. Just someone grabs a ax and three wax in his arms off and they cau our eyes. The wound with a red hot fireplace. Scoop shovel, . Great. Think. Really, then they give him the, then they give him the morphine.
Let’s do this to you first, and then we’ll give you the
Stephen: painkiller. But the like you said, they jumped to that immediately. So why would they do that? The only thing, I can say is every, it’s already affecting them too. They’re not all thinking clear and straight, but what do they do?
They never show the hands or the arm against they don’t, like there was something crawling under it and they don’t bother cutting it open to see what that, what if there’s a bug under there or something, they do nothing with it, and then they just leave the body to decompose on the table. People in those climbs put dead bodies outside because
Rhys: they freeze the doctor, but the doctor does do tissue samples on it.
Stephen: Y yeah, a little bit. It’s just one of those things you would’ve expected them to have a better scene for it. Oh
Rhys: yeah. Yeah. You get a title card now it’s November 26th. Happy Thanksgiving. Giles is sitting on the front. Of his porch smoking. He’s left his door wide open, which is ridiculous. I’m seeing how little firewood is left on the porch.
Olsen’s writing notes saying he is gonna put the incident in his report, which pisses off Monroe and the others cuz they just want the money to keep the dig going. That night Francis is sitting in his bed and he hears this body list voice, ask him if he sees it. And this is the first we’ve heard this voice.
It’s very gravelly, very deep. Yeah. And Francis is looking out into the empty camp at night. He doesn’t seem to see anything, but he also doesn’t question the voice in his head. He doesn’t like stop and be like, am I going crazy? Who said that? It doesn’t. So I’m start you get this feeling like he’s had this voice in his head for a bit now.
Stephen: Yeah, . It’s just a thing.
Rhys: We switched to the morning shot as Giles is splitting wood and I gotta give him kudos. He’s using an actual Hudson ax. He’s not using some fancy double bitted ax or something. Nobody who splits wood would ever actually use , so kudos to them for that.
Stephen: And he’s splitting it pretty hefty there.
He is bam and done.
Rhys: Yeah, the yelling wasn’t necessary. While he is splitting it I don’t yell
Stephen: when I’m splitting. But that’s, a symptom of what’s going on with him too, possibly. Oh
Rhys: yeah. It’s the insanity
Stephen: anger seems to be part of it too. So that’s, letting off his anger.
He’s still a little bit under control. The, it also reminded me a bit of the black oil was X-files cutting off the arm and stuff. So we’ve got a lot of, we’ve got a lot of crossovers. If anybody wants fan fiction, there is .
Rhys: Jenssen’s walking across the camp he’s carrying looks like a massive extension cord.
He goes into the kitchen slash dining cabin and he finds McNaughton sitting at the table with a knife in his left hand, and his right hand is severed, just lying there on the table. When Jensen goes to approach him he pushes him down and Jensen gets on his radio calls for help, and MCNs just mocking with repeating everything.
Janssen says he’s like a four year old
Stephen: Now to cut your own hand off through the bone and stay conscious. That’s pretty incredible. That’s, that takes some work and some but you could argue again, he’s not controlling himself. It’s whatever. Yes. Whatever is actually. So there’s all sorts of little subtle things.
And as go ask, have we had another movie where we hear guttural, scary voices? I don’t know if we’ve had another one where we got the spooky voice talking to people. The
Rhys: disembodied, spooky voice in your head. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think we
Stephen: have, I think it’s the first time for that Trump. So if you’re playing hor lasagna, bingo.
Check that one off. . Yeah.
Rhys: Comment the comment below if we have, and we just out about it, right? . Jensen gets close enough to grab the knife and he throws it away. McNaught tries to get the knife back. As everyone else comes rushing in, they pin him to the table and he starts to calm. We cut to the infirmary.
Wells is on the table under a blanket and doc’s looking him over. Giles asks how he’s doing and Doc informs him he probably won’t survive. And he’s put Mc notten on antipsychotics. Man, I’m thinking, wow, this doc is pretty well tripped, tricked out with medicines up here. .
Stephen: Yeah, it’s so weird because they talk about not having enough supplies because you had to use a shovel to cauterize, but then they seem to always have everything and then later he like does tissue samples and he knows that the cells are, it’s yeah.
Where did you get that equipment to know it’s a possibly fish cephalopod type cell as opposed to a hu Where the hell is this equipment coming from? . Yeah. Yeah. .
Rhys: Francis is lying on his bunk at night just staring up at the ceiling. It’s a long shot of him just sitting there. We cut to the outside and he’s out walking in the snow and the voice is speaking to him and it says, good.
This way, follow my voice. Open your eyes. Good. I can see you Jensen. Behind it all, there’s this kind of nine inch nails yelling in the background, like screaming you’d have in off downward spiral. You can’t make out anything. You just know it’s there and it slowly fades out. And then there’s these two figures blur, literally standing there in the woods.
You can’t tell who they are. There’s two figures standing in the woods and you get a title card. November 28th, .
Stephen: That’s the jump scares those title cards come up. . Yeah.
Rhys: Jenen gets to see the doc and tells him he is tired and that he sleeps okay, but when he wakes up, he can’t fall back asleep. And Doc says it’s just stress.
Jensen says he’s been having a dream, but claims it’s not a nightmare. And when he’s asked, he says the dream, he sees these people who are like him, but they’re not. And they’re watching him. So he has this nightmare of being the other basically.
Stephen: Yeah. And this is, all these things going on. After the whole movie, was this real?
Was this not real? Was it part of the infection? And all that. There’s a lot of good spots that are left open to really discuss
Rhys: what you think. Nice, big, ambiguous pieces. Yeah. The midst of all this chaos, this is the part that I find a little crazy. Olson and Francis are still trying to decipher the markings on this thing.
By this point I would be like, okay, we’re in survival mode. The rest of this
Stephen: doesn’t matter. Now, to be fair, how many hours did we spend deciphering the Ultima map just to find out it was the names of the towns that we already knew? Yeah, but
Rhys: like Eric didn’t cut his arm off in the kitchen while we were doing it.
No,
Stephen: but I think we cut up a wooden spoon in the blender. That was close.
Rhys: All the artifacts are within 30 feet of the structure and the animals are all God-like entities. And there’s this deer creature that seems to be the head entity. They have a shard that has figures that are disfigured in some way, missing limbs, lumpy, bent, and Olson thinks it’s showing a disease cuz as the ice thaws, it’s releasing diseases back into the population.
It wasn’t the cold that killed him, it was the cold that was protecting them. Francis Theorizes,
Stephen: which is. Which is something we’ve had talked about. When they Oh yeah. Did ice core samples, they found bacteria that doesn’t exist. You know what, if it gets out, we have no immunities to it.
So again, there’s, with the history and the anthropology, and now this science bit it’s a very plausible, almost Michael Kreon type story. And it is. So now here’s the culture. Is it the people against bacteria. That’s two different cultures and is the bacteria alien culture? Ah, that’s a good, yay.
We got a double meaning going on. Culture clash. Oh, good one. And the’re so funny still you could say, is the bacteria alien? Did it come from out of our earth? Or is it just an old bacteria? That’s what killed these people off. Again, very well done in that it leaves a lot open for discussion and it’s very, what is going on?
Is it the bacteria that’s making ’em all crazy? Or is there really a dear God? And, yeah. Doing all this.
Rhys: Yeah. Olson thinks that the disease that you see on the artifacts is what’s happening to wells.
Stephen: Considering he cut off his arm and it’s depicted on the structure. Yeah. Maybe
Yeah. So let’s play with it some more, yeah. Maybe somebody should lick it.
Rhys: Giles and Jensen are in the dining cabin and Giles says someone was creeping around outside the cabin. He tells him they’re speaking words right outside his window, and Jensen says, everyone’s hearing stuff. Giles says, whoever it is taking all their supplies.
He doesn’t come out and accuse Jensen, but he wants him to look into it. Francis again is in his bed listening to the voice, which is telling him to look as hard as you can. Don’t look at the trees in the mountains. Look past them. And when he does he, this time, he actually sees the Dear God monster thing.
Yeah. Now this is the part, this is the part that I find, I don’t know whether it’s incongruous or whether it was done purposely, but it’s the next day. No title card. Yeah. It just bleeds into the next day. Everyone’s in a cabin. McNaughton has untied himself, taken Giles rifle and blown his own brains out.
Maybe
Stephen: he was just trying to get the bug creature out.
Rhys: Maybe Jensen wants an autopsy to see if the doc can figure out what was wrong with him. He and Giles takes the body to the infirmary. Doc asks if he’s staying and he really doesn’t seem like he’s all that interested in sticking around for the autopsy
Then the doc is reporting in his next scene. Apparently wells had tumors under his skin and they weren’t human. They resembled cephalopods and yeah, if you’re gonna find a hole in this movie, this is it right here, . The cells are changing into this new tumor cells. He found similar cells, MC, Notten and doc likens syphilis where it starts in the nerve cell works through muscles, tissues until it reaches the brain,
Stephen: which fits some of their symptoms.
And very much and I just thought of something actually go interspersed. Maybe they are getting through on the radio. , but they’re like crazy minds aren’t hearing what’s coming back through. They’re hearing the responses. Yeah. Could be. That’s another aspect that could be, but I like the other one because that means the rest of the world is all going crazy and it leads to some good stories.
Yeah.
Rhys: Olson wants a whole site quarantine. Jenssen’s not happy about it. Olson says they need to do a survey of the wildlife. Jenssen’s this will take years, and Olson doesn’t care. He’s this has to be done. Everybody Francis is walking. Yeah, Francis is walking around in the dark later and he hears the voice.
It beckons him. He heads into a cabin and there’s what looked like it might just be a mounted deer head, but it almost seems like the voice is coming from it. It tells them that the others thinks he’s crazy. They think he’s got a disease. He walks over and grabs a knife from the kitchen block, and Jensen comes in just before he does anything and starts talking to him about starting the quarantine in the morning.
We hear this voice telling Jen Francis to kill him and Jenssen’s just talking about sending someone out to hike to get help. And then Francis manages to refrain and Jensen leaves, even though he had the knife in his hand, Francis manages to leave him go keeping the night knife. However, Francis walks out into the night, Olsen’s on his computer.
He goes to get something that he’s out of. So he ventures out into the dark. When he heads to the infirmary, he finds Francis by Wells’s, newly slain body. He claims that Wells was suffering, so he cut his head off, but he wouldn’t
Stephen: die. Yeah, this is a pretty intense scene. He wanted me to do it. He was screaming.
I didn’t, I didn’t wanna do it. I didn’t wanna do it, but I had to. Definitely craziness. Yes.
Rhys: Olsen does, I thought brilliantly. He pulls the fire alarm. Yeah. And so everybody comes running and they take Francis to his quarters and lock him in there.
Stephen: Because you know there’s no way out of these cabins.
Rhys: Yeah. Inside his room, the voice says he did a good thing. And he sits on his bed and we see his reflection in the mirror. There’s a flower on the edge of his mirror, which I thought was a nice touch. But again, people are actually living in these cabins. Who knows what that flower is there for? Title card.
December 1st, Merry Christmas. Doc is doing blood work on Olsen to see if he’s clear when he gets a call for help, moving stuff, leaving Olsen with the bodies. And Olsen hears a voice growl and he asks who’s there. So Olsen is hearing the voice for the first time, for sure. The voice says us and Magnin’s body is speaking.
It’s talking about a parasite that lays its eggs in human flesh. Like the eyes, Olson gets upset and bashes his head in with the butt of a gun. Just as the doc shows up, he says it was speaking to him and he had to stop it. Doc says, when’s the last time you slept? He doesn’t know. Doc says it’s the hallucination and gives him a pile of pharmacologicals, tells him to go get some sleep.
Stephen: Now here’s the one thing with this. So they’re all hearing a voice and it’s all pretty much telling ’em the same thing. So if arguably if they were just going crazy, they might hear different things, but they’re all hearing pretty much. So is the parasites the bacteria actually a God that’s now controlling them and taking ’em over?
It’s an argument. With some basis in the movie, you could say this points to these bacteria. Maybe they’re intelligent bacteria or something too. It’s a lot of possibilities. Alien,
Rhys: dear God, crash lands in Northern Canada. It releases bacteria from itself that allows it to command and control local life forms.
Stephen: We’ve got the zombie fungus that controls the ants. Yeah.
Rhys: The next day, Francis is sitting stewing in his bunk. Jensen brings him some soup and he tells him they’re hiking up to the reserve tomorrow. Francis asks him if he sees him, because he’s there watching him. He’s behind you.
Jensen checks and doesn’t see anything, but Francis says he’s watching him and touching him. He’s touching you. Yeah. Now he’s watching Francis and he is angry with him. He tells Jensen it’s a deer, and Jensen leaves probably about three steps later than I would have
Jenssen’s packing up when Gil shows up at his cabin with a gun. He asks where he is going and he says he’s headed up to the res and Giles basically accuses him of taking all the food and leaving behind. Jensen insists that’s not the. Giles calls him a sociopath. This, if he touches any of his stuff, he’s gonna shoot him and then kill him.
That’s
Stephen: right. .
Rhys: Then he leaves dead. The cabin dead. Yeah. Giles is sitting right next to the wood burner. Jensen says he is gonna take over for him watching McNaughton. He brought him food and Giles says he doesn’t want it. Giles says to worry about themselves and let him die. He’s fine. Title card, December 4th.
Stephen: All this movie really needed was Ash. He should have been here, . There, there’s another crossover. What? Everybody in it, it’s gonna be the ultimate horror movie after this.
Rhys: Giles is out walking around at night, singing a little song. He’s got his gun. He walks into a cabin, opens the door, and shoots the occupant in.
Does
Stephen: that , if you’re gonna do it, that’s how you do it. No monologue. Open the door, see him, shoot and walk on. Yep. There
Rhys: he is. Yep. Then leaves and heads to another cabin. Opens door and shoots stock, then Ramos and leaves the cabin, still humming his happy little song and giggling as he’s walking to another cabin.
Yep. And then all of a sudden he gets shot by Jensen. He shoots Jensen back, who shoots him again twice. .
Stephen: And it’s, that’s what, it’s a first person perspective, so you really feel it. And I thought this was actually done better than the Doom movie with the Rock in the first person. I thought this was done pretty good.
Rhys: It’s actually pretty accurate too. Like when people are shooting at each other, they fire a lot of rounds before anybody’s actually, taken out. He and also go into the cabin and check on everyone else, and they’re all dead. So now we’re really are just down to Jen Jensen and Olsen.
Olsen’s trying to patch him up, but it looks bad. Jensen wants to go to the reserve. It’s 90 miles, but he’s not gonna make it. So he gives Olsen directions on how to get there. And Olsen heads off to get a map and supplies in Jenssen’s Cabin Jensen now hears a voice, the deer telling him to stop. Olsen.
Olsen in the meantime, is running around packing stuff up. Jensen heads off into a closet to grab a box. He’s struggling cuz of being gut shot. And at first I’m like, what’s in the box? And ah, there in
Stephen: sevens brought in now.
Rhys: Yeah it’s not Grath Paltrow’s head, it’s explosives and there’s a partial can of gas Olson’s out on the trail.
Jenssen’s laid the line of gasoline up to the cabin and he’s carrying explosives elsewhere. And then Olson sees the dear God on the trail and he tries to shoot it. He argues with them . He does. And. It took me probably three minutes into the scene before I actually got what was going on, because I thought it was just Olsen talking to him.
But it’s not, it’s him talking to Olsen and him talking to Jensen at the same time.
Stephen: Oh yeah. Because they’re in different spots, right? So yeah, I was like, oh, that’s interesting because they’re getting different conversations from the same thing at the same time. So again, is it the same thing at the same time or maybe these bacteria have like a communication in Hive mind network.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. He asks what it wants and it starts this whole thing about ha animals look at the night sky and see tiny points of light. But when man does, he sees stars and galaxies and each one of those has planets. Then he asks Olsen if he wants to know what it sees when it looks. and it claims to have created the stars space and time.
And it basically says, you don’t deserve to know what I want. , you’re too far beneath me for me to bother explaining myself to
Stephen: you. I’m just toying with all of you. It’s like a cat. Yeah. He should have been a cat. God.
Rhys: Yeah. Olsen is we’ve done nothing to you. And I’m leaving and it then it switches and this is where I didn’t get it until I was like watching it the second time it switches cuz it’s talk.
Now it’s talking to Jensen and it’s do you think I’m bound to this temple? Because that’s where Jensen went with the explosives, right? It says, you can’t possibly believe that I’m omniscient, omnipotent and not omnipresent. And that, and by the fact that it’s having two conversations with two guys miles apart lends itself to its
Stephen: argument.
Right? Absolutely. I thought that was interesting. I’ve not seen that type of thing before. I thought it was an interesting thing to do. Yeah.
Rhys: As it’s having this conversation, we see where Jenssen’s taking the explosives. It is the temple. He’s at the temple, and we see like I said, it’s having this conversation with both of them.
Jensen tells it to go fuck itself, lights the dynamite, and in the meantime, Olson is off trail trying to hunt down this. Dear God, when he hears the.
Stephen: Now I made a comment about this earlier when the guy was walking in the cabinet and shooting people. I was like, that is the Olympus shotgun I have ever heard in my life.
He goes pop. I’m like that. And now you tell me he was a the guy who did the movie was a soundman. That should have been a little louder. And then this explosion, he’s a box of dynamite, and it goes, boom. That’s a, it should have been almost rattling but arguably, if he would’ve done that, now I may, I put a jump scare in.
So he might have done it on purpose. So it doesn’t feel like a jump scare stylistically.
Rhys: Yeah it’s interesting because a lot of times if you’re firing a gun outside, unless you’re the one firing the gun, it doesn’t make as much noise as you would think. So I can see where the shotgun going off.
It wouldn’t make that, but if you fire a gun indoors, , it’s 10 times louder than you think it’s right. So if you’re in the cabin when that thing goes off, , it would’ve been a really big boom.
Stephen: That’s what I would’ve thought. Yeah.
Rhys: Title card, December 5th, and Olson is still alive in the morning walking through the snow.
He’s no longer hearing
Stephen: the voice. Now. How did he survive during the night in the woods with nothing. They said he gets 20 below or whatever. 50 below? Yeah. 50 below. It kills you. Yeah. So maybe that’s from the bacteria also. Maybe they kept him alive.
Rhys: Could
Stephen: be so they could spread it. Yeah.
That’s, you know how Earth is going to evolve.
Rhys: Yes. He looks cold, but he is down the mountain and he is crossing this big open clearing and then snap. Remember those bear traps? Yep. And a few scenes back
Stephen: bear traps. He’s got one down his right leg and they will mess you
Rhys: up. They will end, end of the film.
There’s the titles right there.
Stephen: I was looking at it going really? I said I like that because you didn’t expect it. And that’s a great way to end, but wow.
Rhys: There’s another indie film that I love, it’s called Yellow Brick Road. And I think they shot it in New Hampshire maybe, but it’s along the same kinda lines.
And it’s based on a true story of a bunch of guys who went hiking out into the mountain and disappeared, never came back. And they’ve gone out in the mountains trying to find these people. There’s no sign of them except some of their stuff loans strewn about, but like no people or anything like that.
No signs of attack. And that’s what the movie is based on. And it was, I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t recommend it to most people because when you get to the last 15, 20 minutes, they ran outta budget. And so the end of it is just this kind of ambiguous, like nothing, ugh. And you’re like, oh man, it is such a sh because when it was done, I was like, what was up with that?
And I looked it up and yeah, they just ran outta money. They couldn’t finish the film, but they didn’t wanna just leave it. So they put something on the end and I. This, on the other hand, at least had this feel of completion. You know what I mean?
Stephen: Yes. So it’s, it was an interesting movie. It did have the feel of a lot of the movies we watched that independent feel, that slow buildup, it’s definitely not for the go see the latest horror movie at Halloween Crowd.
Rhys: So no. If you want something you’re gonna be thinking about for a while, though, this is a good one. Yeah, it is. You’re gonna go through and then you’re gonna even after seeing it several times, Steve mentions, oh, the rest of the world’s dead. Wow. I never even thought of that.
Stephen: That’s brilliant. Yeah. So it was interesting. Good one. Sorry. So what’s our what’s our next one? The
Rhys: Autopsy of Jane Doe a British film from 2016. Love this film. Can’t wait to get into it next time.
Stephen: Nice. All right. Autopsy of Jane Doe. I remember hearing about that one. Don’t know anything about it.
