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Overview
The first movie by Gardner we watched – The Battery – is a favorite for many reasons. This movie has many of the same qualities – it feels like a Gardner movie.
Our hero likes his life, but his girlfriend doesn’t – so she leaves. From there, Hanks life falls apart. Wouldn’t yours if a creature attacked you every night?
If you like drawn out shots of a guy sitting on a couch, this is the movie for you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a horrible movie, but how does it compare to The Battery?
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Transcript
[00:00:00]
Stephen: Okay. Something totally separate. Season 5, Episode 3 we’re up to. It’s another Gardner movie, After Midnight. I was excited for this one. And you were about it, Reese.
Rhys: Yeah, I was. And it turns out for starters, I think this is actually episode four.
Stephen: Is it? I can’t count,
Rhys: The movie seemed off to me.
Stephen: Oh, okay.
Rhys: The pacing and everything seemed a little bit odd. So I wasn’t a huge fan of it at first.
Stephen: Okay. Then we’ll get into all of that. Talk about all that today with Season 5, Episode 4, After Midnight. All right. If everyone noticed, we changed things up a bit. Our little video now has a little intro.
We’ll just cut it and keep going. Here’s our normal, listen to this part of it, if you’re interested in the movie before you watch the movie part. Yep, I shortened that’s a little long
Rhys: This is after midnight by jeremy gardner. It’s an american film [00:01:00] and we watched Jeremy Gardner as our second episode, he did the battery in 2012.
Stephen: And it’s been one of my favorites since then. I really clicked and liked it, everything about it pretty much I enjoyed.
Rhys: Yeah. He and his buddy, Adam Cronheim, who is his buddy in the film made the film for 6, 000. And when asked why he said it’s because he didn’t want to have to wait around or have those discussions with people in order to get the movie made, he knew what he wanted to do.
And so he just wanted to do it, got as much money as he needed and went ahead and did the film.
Stephen: Yeah. He seems to like that number for filmmaking. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. That movie ran an hour and 41 minutes. And I think it’s got a very interesting distinction. It is the only film that we’ve covered that has the majority of wins of awards that it was nominated for.
Stephen: Oh, we should, yeah, we should [00:02:00] know that.
Rhys: Yeah. It was nominated for 11 awards and it won nine of them. You have stuff like heredity that was nominated for 150 and they won, they won 45 or something like that. Very impressive. But this was hands down. If he was nominated for it, he was probably going to win it.
Nice. Not unlike La Casa Muda this film was shot on a Canon 5D Mark
Stephen: II.
Rhys: So
Stephen: popular little camera.
Rhys: Yeah, it was shot in 16 days. And to let you know just how wisely they were spending their money in the battery, that Volvo that they were living in, they found it on Craigslist for 600 bucks. And it ran up until it didn’t, but it died when they were done with all the moving vehicle shots.
So when they were done, they just pushed it into someone’s driveway and called for somebody to come and pick it up and tow it away. So
Stephen: nice. Yeah. [00:03:00] He definitely has a low budget. Low time frame to his movies, and I know the battery a lot. He said it was we just winged it and went with it.
This one, I don’t think was quite like that though. There was still a lot of the same fields to this movie as that one. I thought,
Rhys: Yeah, it did have the same kind of feel after midnight is an hour and 23 minutes. It came out in 2021 and it was made for 6, 000. 713. So he upped his budget by 713.
Stephen: And they also needed much more effects for the creature this time. The other one was just some friends with some bloody ripped clothes. This one, they needed something that looked like a creature.
Rhys: Yes. It was nominated for eight awards and it won two. Oddly enough, internationally, it is called something else.
Stephen: Oh, actually I liked that name.
Rhys: And it was written and directed by Gardner. [00:04:00] Now, one of the things that I didn’t like about it when I was first watching it is it’s an hour and 20 some minutes long and some of the shots seemed to be too long or too repetitive and there would be these long sections where it was just the character sitting there, Hank sitting there, remembering good times that he had with Abby.
And there’s a whole lot of that in that movie.
Stephen: That’s very funny. You say that I have almost that exact note right here that there are a lot of long scenes where the cameras just stationary doesn’t move. And you have somebody like Gardner sitting on the couch for minutes at a time. And maybe here’s what I got.
First of all. I think I liked this one better than you did. I didn’t like it as well as battery, but I still liked it. So there must be something with Gardner and his movie making style that just clicks with me. That just seems to be everything right. That type of thing, whatever my wiring is.
But I [00:05:00] did notice all the long scenes, though I wasn’t put off by them. I didn’t feel it. They were too long most of the time. Some of them were the one where he was sitting on the couch waiting for midnight and he’s, just sitting there basically for minutes at a time. That was the longest one.
It’s okay, move on. But I also got the feel of what he was going through, which is when we talk about what the monster represents later is what I think he really wanted was us to feel the despair, the loneliness the life dragging on of the character. So to me, I think, that’s what came across.
Now the long scene with Abby and him later where the doors open and they’re sitting there discussing life. That’s a huge long scene. It’s like a play because there’s no cuts and these two just go about it so well. I was like, dang that’s pretty good. Cause they’re not cutting every 10 seconds or something.
This is like 12 minutes or something.
Rhys: That [00:06:00] scene is why Bria Grant wanted to play Abby.
Stephen: Really?
Rhys: Yeah, that specific scene. Wow. It was good. Yeah. So I didn’t, I wasn’t crazy about it when I saw it because I was like, okay, there’s some repetitiveness. There’s some long shots. And then if you weigh out the actual horror involved and the like, Romance involved.
It’s like the romance is way up here and the horrors down here. And the horror is not like audition where it’s so drastic that it blows everything else away. But I saw in an interview he was talking about, he said, he wrote this as a horror romance and now I’m like, Oh, he’s being experimental. I get it.
And I don’t know that I’m a good person to judge it because we’ll watch horror movies that have romance in them. Byzantium has that little romantic thing in [00:07:00] it, and Crimson peak and those movies that’ll have romance, just a smidge of it in here, but this was actually written as a romance with a smidge of horror in it.
I’m not a fan of romance movies. I haven’t seen a whole bunch. I can’t tell you what their pacing should be like.
Stephen: Arguably, there are people that would say, the rom com movies and stuff. Those are pretty horrific in their own right, according to some people. It’s not too big a stretch.
Rhys: No, but I think it, Once I found that out, I was like, Oh this is actually so much more interesting because he’s like mixing up the genres now. And he was like, he was thinking of it as a life reflection because at the time he was actually in a committed relationship that, he was excited about.
And then he’s and life can be just as unpredictable as this movie or even my career. Where you just don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Stephen: And I think I picked up on that fairly early, which may have changed my whole viewing [00:08:00] of it. I realized that what this was early on, but it also then made me question what the monster represented.
And Gardner even says it later in that long scene. He tells Abby, it’s like you might be the monster. We’ll get to that later. So there’s still question about that. But also if he was being experimental and he was doing all of this it comes across more like a a classic book by somebody like Longfellow or something that we’d read in modern times that were like, Oh my God, just tell me the story.
You’re just going on and on about nothing. There’s a lot of those. 1800s authors that are like that. This movie kind of fits that same type of feel.
Rhys: Sure. He said that neither of the main characters are villains. One is selfish and the other is taking back their agency, but he didn’t see either of them as like the bad guy in this situation.
Stephen: It’s like [00:09:00] exploration rather than a antagonistic story.
Rhys: Yeah, right. There are, there’s a television in the film and there’s two shows that show up on the television. One is the strangers which I have seen the other, I’m thinking we should do for this year’s horror fest. It’s called Jennifer help us.
I can’t find it anywhere, so it would be a good thing for you to hunt down again. Yep. And I’ve. I’ve heard people say it was a well-written story with horrible acting. So, kinda looking forward to that. The reason he used it was because one of the guys who worked on the film with him in in this film was a producer on that.
So they get, were allowed to use it for free. So
Stephen: I I was I made the note. I’m like, huh, were those movies on the tv? One of his older ones that I haven’t seen, .
Rhys: The other funny thing is this was the second one we ever did. And it took us about three or [00:10:00] four episodes to get up and running on the format of what we were doing.
So we, I didn’t really look into Jeremy Gardner that much. Aside from, the occasional interview he’s acted in 17 movies.
Stephen: I did see that. I saw that he was a few of them. I’m like, oh, I’ve seen that movie. Now I need to go figure out where he is.
Rhys: He’s got one upcoming called Dorothy, but he’s only directed three.
Yeah. He directed, yeah, he’s directed this and The Battery and something called Tex Montana will survive.
Rhea Grant plays Abby. She’s from Texas. She’s been in 87 projects that she acted in. She has directed nine really and written 11. Wow. Yeah. Pretty good talent there. Yeah. She was on Friday night lights, which being from Texas, that makes all kinds of sense.
Stephen: I recognized her from that.
Rhys: Yeah, she was on Max Payne.
She had a 17 episode run on heroes, but I can’t remember who she [00:11:00] was.
Stephen: But I, those shows get confused in your head sometimes the super info and stuff. So I might be able to picture her.
Rhys: She was in the 2009 version of Halloween too. She appeared in three episodes of the guild as herself.
Stephen: Wow. I’m going to go rewatch those cause those shows.
Rhys: Yeah. She’s she’s also in four episodes of Dexter. She was in Looper. Uncredited she was in Pitch Perfect two.
Stephen: I remember that. I, that’s what I recognized her from actually, initially.
Rhys: Okay. She was also in holidays which has come up a couple times with us. Oh, man,
Stephen: I just watched that last year.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Wow. Yeah. A lot of things we’ve actually seen.
Rhys: Yeah. She was in the art house film ghost Story if
Stephen: that had a, you’ve ever
Rhys: seen that one?
Stephen: Affleck, right? Casey? Wasn’t it?
Rhys: It had a guy wearing a sheet for 90 percent of the movie, so yeah, it might have been, and she has an upcoming short that [00:12:00] she directed and she acts in, it’s called Why 2 Kevin.
I don’t know where it’s going to be, but yeah. So she loved the dramatic nature of that door frame back and forth that they were in. It took them about 12 takes to get it down. Wow. She thought that it felt like an accurate and rare representation of a woman as a person.
Stephen: I can see
Rhys: that. She said it’s very rare as an actress to find a part like that written for anyone who’s over the age of 35.
And I thought first of all,
Stephen: I would not have guessed she was over 35 first of all. But I can definitely see that because I, she had a strong part in that scene.
Rhys: It was a single shot with no cuts. When she came to audition, they gave her stuff to read for the audition. She came and did all of that.
And then she did that soliloquy from that film, from that scene, cause she liked it so well.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: So I thought that was cool. [00:13:00] Henry Zebrowski plays Wade. Now Jeremy Gardner loves Henry Zebrowski. Apparently he’s hilarious to have on set. He just thought that, he thought that Henry’s performance was just spot on.
He thought it was great.
Stephen: I love the character. I always liked those goofy oddball sidekick characters.
Rhys: You’re going to like him more in here in a second. He’s he is a Florida born actor, which, considering the character he was playing, that seems to seem to track, he also has an award winning horror, true crime podcast.
Stephen: Called
Rhys: the last podcast on the left.
Stephen: I know that one that, oh man click. Wow. Okay. I know that one.
Rhys: Yeah, that’s him. He’s acted in 76 projects, doing a lot of television. He had a short stint on college humor. He was on the Wolf of Wall Street. I think he’s the second person we’ve had who was on Dirty Grandpa.
Stephen: Oh, really? Yeah. Maybe we’ll get Zac Efron or De [00:14:00] Niro. That’d be great.
Rhys: And he did voiceover for Battlefield 2042, which wasn’t like well accepted, but still, I’m sure it had nothing to do with his voiceover.
Now this guy. This guy, Justin Benson, he plays Shane, the police officer, Abby’s brother. He’s from California. He’s acted in 13 pieces. Okay. The ones I recognize he was in VHS viral, he was in contracted phase two, which I’ve never seen. I didn’t even know there was a second one. I saw the first contracted and it was good.
So I’m curious about the second. He was in the endless. And he was in an episode of Loki. Oh, okay. Okay. Now he’s also directed 13 pieces. He likes that number. He directed VHS viral, at least one of the pieces he directed at the endless. He directed two episodes of moon [00:15:00] night. Oh, wow. Four episodes of Loki.
And he has one directorial upcoming piece, which is 18 episodes. I’m thinking an entire season of daredevil born again.
Stephen: Wow. Yeah. Wow. That’s funny you say that. Cause I’m like, so his character throughout the movie, I kept watching him and I’m going, okay, either this guy is a great actor because he’s coming across very stiff.
And sometimes seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Or he’s a horrible actor and he’s struggling and that’s why it is that way. So I’ll lean towards the, he’s a great actor part.
Rhys: Yeah, he was he was the, it’s hard to say whether he was the weakest actor of everyone there, or if the character was just written as like this closed off, non emotional.
Individual, which you know, would, you would think would fit for some Southern cop kind of thing.
Stephen: It’s the original Star Wars movie, [00:16:00] everyone’s ah, Luke, he’s annoying, blah, blah, blah. But you watch it and you’re like, you know what, Mark Hamill’s doing a fantastic job acting like this whiny teenager.
Whereas Harrison Ford is very stiff and not doing that so well in a few scenes. And the funny thing is
Rhys: if you look at the future of the Star Wars films, that whiny Powerful kid is something that Lucas apparently embraced because Anakin’s the same way and you’re like, oh my god, it’s so annoying.
But you’re like, oh, okay. So this is like a trait. I see it. And then
Stephen: Kylo, then they tried to do that, but didn’t come across quite as well.
Rhys: The last actor we’re going to talk about is Keith Arbuthnot. And Keith plays the monster. Ah, good for Keith. I always like to throw a little something to the people who play the beasties.
He’s played 11 pieces mostly as monsters, including five episodes of the X Files.
Stephen: Oh, as monsters and stuff.
Rhys: Yeah. Nice. He had a long run on I don’t know [00:17:00] if you remember this series falling skies.
Stephen: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s the planes fell. If I remember right, he had a
Rhys: long run on that. He had an appearance on the magicians.
I think as a mummy, he’s got two upcoming projects, something called Mr. Sandman and the Spiderwick Chronicles,
Stephen: which I think actually got held up or canceled maybe, unfortunately,
Rhys: but yeah, that’s that’s like the pre production notes on this. It it was pretty well accepted when it came out.
It’s a long time between this and the battery. You’ve got nine years between the two, but he did have that Text movie wedged in there in between. So along
Stephen: with some acting stuff.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s acted in a bunch of stuff. So, and not unlike the battery, this movie starts out really ambiguous.
You have Abby she’s walking in the middle of a desolated, overgrown area all by herself. And it could be a zombie movie for all we know, [00:18:00] looking at it.
Stephen: And my first comment was, Oh, he likes to have people walk through big fields. Again, there’s quite a few similarities between this and the battery.
Yeah. And if anybody hasn’t noticed we’re on the section three, so time to pause and watch the movie first.
Rhys: For sure. If you don’t want, if you don’t want to worry about spoilers,
Stephen: walking through the field, isn’t really a big spoiler. So we’re all good.
Rhys: Yeah. There’s this kind of static eat noise, this playing over stuff, which kind of builds a little bit of tension.
And then he jumps out a little jump scare. If you didn’t see it coming.
Stephen: Which I think is great because it’s a boyfriend scaring his girlfriend. So the jump scare is a comedy thing. It felt to me like he was almost poking fun at that in other horror movies.
Rhys: Could be. Then, so there’s this thing that he does with this film where the time’s kind of fluid.
Yes. He moves around. So like she’s standing [00:19:00] outside and then he jumps and scares her. And then they’re sitting down and he’s talking about. Cosmic background radiation, which is the static she’s hearing on the radio. And they’re hanging out in this abandoned house. It’s in pretty good shape and it’s Hank’s house.
Stephen: Was it the same house they used at the beginning of Battery? I was wondering. I didn’t go check. I don’t think so.
Rhys: The battery was shot in Vermont Connecticut, this was shot like down Alabama way kind of thing. So it
Stephen: looked like Louisiana or something, but yeah, it was similar. So again, he definitely has a type that he likes to do.
Rhys: Yeah, she didn’t this house belongs to him. It belonged to his family. She didn’t know he owned the house. And she’s is this my birthday? So you find out it’s her birthday. And he’s no, your birthday present is experiential. And it’s all this romantic, sexy thing. But I don’t know that it was, see, this is, this was the part that threw me.
I don’t know that [00:20:00] any of this opening, even when they start fooling around, felt like any different from any other horror movie, yeah. You could have a horror movie that starts this way and then go on to be a standard horror film.
Stephen: I think what sets this one little apart for him was like you said, the fluidity of time where it’s flashbacks.
And flash forwards, because we started in the past but it’s not necessarily like loop or something, it felt like it needed to be told in that order. And I did appreciate the fact that you could know what time period you’re in based on his beard,
Rhys: his facial hair. Yeah, that was a good idea.
Stephen: I think
Rhys: I’d have to go back and actually watch another time and actually time it, but I think that the amount of time he spends. In the past at the start of the film is more. So you’re jumping from the past to the future and then back to the past. And then when you get to the second half of the film, it’s all the [00:21:00] future.
And there’s. A few jumps back. Yeah,
Stephen: and those felt more like flashbacks. It was really like we’re hearing a story at the beginning with a few hints at what was coming And then it felt more like we’re in the now with a few flashbacks. It did have a distinct feel I felt
Rhys: Yeah, and it transfers over somewhere around the middle of the film.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: They’re messing around And then all of a sudden there’s this quick cut and the quick cut goes to Hank. He’s got a beard so you can tell time has passed. He’s shooting a shotgun at these closed doors which are barred by a couch. He looks a little bit on edge. And then he moves the couch and opens the door and there’s nothing there except a hole in his door now.
Stephen: I love the hole throughout the whole rest of the movie.
Rhys: Yeah. We go back to her birthday. He’s making jokes about being a serial killer. She’s I bet you bring all the girls up here. And he’s they never left.
Stephen: That’s why I liked it,
Rhys: yeah, she’s a wine aficionado and he bought her [00:22:00] this bottle of what’s called peanut noir.
Wine. It’s a Pinot Noir from made in Georgia. And she’s yeah, he’s do you like it? She’s yeah, he’s I bought a case, so you better like it. Then she pops open the cassette section of the boom box that was there. And there’s a mixtape in there for Julie and he’s all flustered by that.
And it’s 10 years old and we don’t actually get to hear what’s on it until later. We don’t even get to hear what’s actually on the tape. We get to hear him perform what’s on the tape, but then we jump back to the future again, and he’s sleeping on the couch. There’s another set of doors on the opposite side of the room that’s blocked by a giant old cabinet television set.
Abby’s nowhere to be seen. He goes out into the kitchen. It’s looking a little rough. There’s a note on the cupboards that says she’s sorry, but she had to go away for a while. Then he goes outside and you can see the door with a hole in it, but there’s scratches all on the outside.
Stephen: Big scratches and I love the nebulousness of the note because you can interpret that [00:23:00] In many ways, what did she mean?
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: what happened? But the way he looked at it, it was one of those Oh, that note’s been up there a while and he just can’t bring himself to pull it down.
Rhys: Yeah You the cat food is still full. So he goes walking down the lane, calling for the cat named Darby. And then we go back to the past and it’s when he gives Abby that kitten for her birthday, ties a balloon around it.
And he’s here’s your birthday present. You like a birthday present. You have to be responsible for the next 20 years. And there it’s funny to me because a lot of times when he’s doing this, when he goes back to the future, it is a hard jarring edit.
Stephen: It is, but there was just some subtle difference between it.
For example, I always point out The Witcher, the first season. I got so lost and confused watching that show because they would be in different time periods with no indication that they were in a different time period. It got so confusing. The past stuff always seemed [00:24:00] brighter and happy with the filming.
And I know that’s weird to say about filming, whereas you then jump to the now and it was always a more dark and somber feel.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s getting his mail and he shoots at some passing pickup truck. They hit their brakes, but then they drive off. He goes back to the house. He’s just tossing the mail around.
He calls Abby and gets her voicemail and he’s pointing out how hopeless he is without her. And he’s if you want out of this relationship, you’re going to have to tell me sometime. Then he hangs up, then he goes back and calls again. And he’s there’s this thing that comes out of the woods every night.
It’s scratching at the door. I think it ate your cat. He hangs up the phone,
Stephen: so he’s obviously going through ups and downs of emotional distress. Yeah. Yeah. Wishing she was here being mad at her for not being here on and off because wow, that’s enough. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. That was a really good yo scene right there.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: The cops show up at his door, just one [00:25:00] cop. And the cops there, because he shot at the truck and they were complaining about it. And he’s there’s something that’s attacking my house and Shane’s it’s a black bear. And he’s pointing out it’s not a black bear. It walked past all that trash and this cat food and a black bear and have shit in its mouth just to have something in there.
Stephen: Have you ever seen a black bear around here?
Rhys: Yeah. It turns out that Shane is Abby’s brother and he firmly believes they should have been married by now because they’d been dating for 10 years. Shane suggests, and this was, once you were already on the decline of how much you appreciate a movie, you like start to nitpick stuff.
Shane suggests you take a picture the next time he comes around. And I was like, put a trail cam out. Yeah. He’s a hunter. He tries taking pictures with some digital camera, but yeah, just put a trail cam right there by the door and you get to see what it is. He’s got this record. It’s playing the music [00:26:00] in this.
Some of it was really good and some of it was and this was
Stephen: yeah, it didn’t strike me as profound for the whole music soundtrack as battery, but I did like most of the music and the choices. They were unique.
Rhys: Yeah, this is Just a duet, it’s a guy and a girl, they both have a guitar. There’s sameness.
I think they’re called the hummingbirds. I might’ve made a note of it later, but they’re playing on the record player. He goes into town and goes into this bar and it turns out he owns the bar and the musicians are there playing in the bar, which is interesting. I can’t imagine being a musician, getting paid to perform it.
What looked like two in the afternoon. So he goes in and Wade is sitting there and he’s at the bar telling some story. And to the bartender, I think her name’s Julie and Hank sits down and he’s talking about this deer, this stag that Hank got. And I counted, I think it’s, I think it’s a 10 point buck.
[00:27:00] And it’s named Valentine’s and he’s what happened to old Valentine? It’s Oh, he’s in the closet. And he’s like, why is he in the closet? And he’s cause Abby doesn’t like dead things on the wall. So you get the impression that while he’s sitting here, with wade that wade doesn’t know that abby’s gone wade says you need to hang it up because it wards off evil spirits.
That’s the indian said or vikings or somebody. Yeah Thank you, wade Yeah, apparently wade will drink The runoff that collects in the bar mats.
Stephen: Yeah. I was thinking, okay, Wade, buddy, you really need to move past college years.
Rhys: Yeah. And so the bartender pours it out while the bartender and Hank drink this 150 year old scotch.
And after Wade drinks it, Hank’s what’s it taste like? He says, it tastes like going blind.
Interesting. Interesting bouquet, now he’s sitting out on the porch in the rain with his gun. He goes inside and he’s looking at pictures of abby on his phone. It’s I don’t think it’s [00:28:00] his phone I think it’s the digital camera actually And he’s sitting on the couch and there’s this whole there’s this hole in his life and it’s sitting right there over his shoulder constantly As he’s flipping through these pictures of these romantic flashbacks of them hanging out together
Stephen: So watching all these flashbacks and the pictures and he obviously cares for her His problem is he had everything he wanted and didn’t realize she didn’t so yeah Really selfish as you said of him, but this is one of those scenes that’s just sitting there really long You And I thought Gardner did a good job of expressing how this despairing.
He was.
Rhys: Yes. And we’re going to jump a little bit here because I think this is. I don’t know if it was like his intention to get this point across, but this happens so much to people. You watch the entire movie and you’re with Hank and you’re like, I get it, man. Like she left and how horrible that is.
And you go through the whole movie and then [00:29:00] she shows back up and you’re like, almost like pissed at her for doing it. But then she explains why. And you’re like, Oh, wow. He’s. Been a shit for a really long time and she’s been really patient. So there’s a lot of times, and I mentioned it in here when it shows up, I’m like, you go into the argument thinking that, you’re in a position up here, you’re winning this.
And then, five minutes in, you’re like, Oh my God, no, I’m way down here.
Stephen: And you mentioned this earlier about understanding the romance and what the, my exact notes on that here is says he explores the human interaction over the veil of a horror. And we’ll talk about this here in a minute and keep it in mind.
My question was, what really did the horror have to do with it? And that’s where the question comes in is what the monster represented or was. And that’s near the end. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. I’ll wait till we get to the end to talk about it more, but
Stephen: it’s hard not to want to talk about it. That’s what, like the [00:30:00] big,
Rhys: it’s the
Stephen: gist
Rhys: of the movie.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: The thing comes snarling and beating on the door and he tries to take a picture of it and he can’t because he’s using a little tiny digital point and click and he’s aiming at a hole this big.
Stephen: No, if he was a hunter, he was really freaking out. It’s dude, do you just hunt squirrels?
Rhys: Yeah.
And this is, again, that nitpicking thing, the thing only ever comes to that door. Yeah. So he actually goes out to the kitchen out of back door, walks around the porch to flank it and the thing’s gone. I’m like why doesn’t the thing, while he’s sitting there, just go busting in through the back door.
Stephen: So here’s. Here was a thought of mine, and again, we’re jumping a bit cause he mentions later. Abby, I don’t know. You might’ve been that creature. So when he’s thinking about her the most and despairing, that’s when she, It comes back. It’s like drawing if it was Abby, let’s say drawing Abby to them.
But then when he confronts it in a way that’s [00:31:00] not wanted or expected, meaning shooting it with a gun, it runs away and disappears again. So to me, you could take that whole metaphysical thinking and apply it to their relationship with how he treats the monster. That’s, again, I think I was trying to draw more out of it than Gardner actually was putting into it.
Rhys: So I don’t know that’s necessarily the case. I think he was just a little clumsy in doing it.
Stephen: And maybe that’s so too. And maybe that’s why I got all this out of it. Cause maybe he and I are wired similarly. So it just spoke to me.
Rhys: Cause you can have this monster representing stuff, blah, blah, blah, this and that, but like also give it a reason.
Stephen: Yes, that was the one thing. There wasn’t that. There’s no purpose to
Rhys: it. Yeah. And have it think clearly if it’s going to be that sentient where it would just go do a different door.
Stephen: Window right next to it.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. The pictures don’t come out [00:32:00] of course. Because anytime you’re trying to take a picture of some sort of cryptid automatically inserts cryptid filter and it turns out all blurry.
Stephen: And another thing is maybe the monster at this point, the monster really doesn’t exist. It’s all in his head as compensation for her not being there. His door was scratched up though. Shane could confirm that. Shane did see it. Yeah. That disproves that. But maybe he’s like a tulpa.
Maybe he creates the thing out of the ether just from his strong emotions.
Rhys: It at this point in the movie, I’m thinking, Oh, Abby’s dead.
Stephen: That’s yeah, that’s another thought
Rhys: I
Stephen: mean, and this is the what resulted from that
Rhys: some sort of guilt manifestation. I didn’t think that I just thought that she meant to leave and she went out somewhere like sneaking out in the middle of the night and it just killed her.
And he’s going to find her body by the end of the film
Stephen: or she’ll be in the freezer and he pulls her out that. Sticker in the microwave. It
Rhys: was a wrong [00:33:00] movie. There’s cat food all over the porch the next morning. So it didn’t even eat the cat food, which was his point. Why it’s not a bear.
It just knocked it over as it ran away. Cause he scared it with the flash. The next song that came on while he was I don’t know what he was doing. But it was a lot better. It was called the places we bled and it’s by a band called the parlor. I enjoyed their songs quite a bit.
Yeah, that was a good one. He’s getting Valentine out. He’s going to hang him up. Valentine’s kept in this like closet laundry room thing. And there’s some flashback to them having sexy times in that room. And then he’s passed out on the couch, dreaming of this time with the tire swing, more of this romance stuff thrown in there, but it’s And part of me, when I was disliking the film before I knew that, he’s trying to like experiment a bit, I’m like, he’s just doing these long to fill in for time because the movie’s an hour and 26 minutes.
And, if you [00:34:00] drop another 10 minutes, you’re reaching that the den level, where you’re like, Hey, is this really a movie or just an hour long TV special?
Stephen: Keep in mind, the old black and white and non talkie movies were quite often an hour and 10 minutes. And that was acceptable.
Rhys: But once you realize he’s doing that, a romance, like it seems to me that a large part of a romance really is. Yeah. Repetitive scenes of romantic stuff.
Stephen: Which is why I probably am not a fan. Hence the reason that this is a horror movie podcast, not a romance movie. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Wade wakes up as his bottle falls over.
Cause he’d been dreaming about that tire swing and there’s this low growl from outside and this claw reaches through the door and he smacks it with a gun butt. Oh, and then he shoots. Yeah. Hey, smacks her with a gun button. Then he shoots and Wade stops by the next morning and he’s yep, that’s a lot of blood.
There’s a bunch of blood on the porch. Wade’s like it’s cats and he goes on and on about horrible cat. You know how horrible cats are. [00:35:00] It’s a panther documentary. Yeah. Then he thinks, Oh, maybe it’s Abby’s cat. Cause it’s missing and it’s mutated into some monster and it just wants to come home.
And Hank’s
Stephen: No, I saw it. It had a hand. Some of those theories that Wade threw out crossed my mind because I wrote that down.
Rhys: So they’re going to go out in the brush and hunt it down. He’s you got your gun, Bubba? And he’s next scene you have Wade walking along with an axe. Yeah. He’s not happy.
He’s thinking about aliens. He saw this documentary on how horrible they are and it wasn’t, it was on Discover Channel during the day. And Gardner’s you watch way too much TV. He’s I don’t think you have to worry that we’re going to find it. You talk enough to clear the woods. And then I really wonder if Gardner hunts, because his character turns around with some really bad gun discipline, like that gun was poised to take Wade’s leg off if it accidentally went off, right?
If you were actually out hunting with somebody who’d been hunting for a while, [00:36:00] they’d smack you in the head for doing that kind of crap,
Stephen: right? He’s an actor and a director. So maybe you’re right.
Rhys: He tells Wade that Abby left, and we now find out that this is the first that Wade’s heard of this.
He knew something was wrong. He gets back and he sets out a black mountain side size bear trap.
Stephen: Wait, I love how they end that scene. It’s you’re ready to go get drunk. Yeah. Let’s go get drunk. And that was,
Rhys: yeah, but he gets this bear trap and sets it out. And the first thing I’m thinking about at the end of black mountainside.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: It runs his chain through the hole in the door and fastens it somewhere else in the house.
Stephen: I was wondering why he didn’t attach it to the couch.
Rhys: Yeah, it goes off, you hear the thing screech, and then the next morning he’s at Shane’s with this bear trap, and he’s look, it got caught in it, and it pried itself out.
This is not some animal, it didn’t chew its leg off. And Shane’s come on in, I’m making breakfast
Stephen: And I’m thinking here, it’s okay, so [00:37:00] this could be a manifestation of his own thoughts, creating this because he doesn’t want it to be caught and seen because it would signify the end of his relationship with Abby or something along those lines.
Again, there’s a lot of nebulousness to the reason for the creature throughout the movie.
Rhys: Yeah. Shane is the representative
Stephen: breakfast. Yeah. It was bacon, specifically making bacon.
Rhys: He also had grits, but
Stephen: yeah, but it was the bacon that they were focused on.
Rhys: Shane is the personification of people who don’t believe in anything.
Stephen: Really?
Rhys: And he’s talking about, every town’s got this one guy who saw something and there’s lots of people who see UFOs and there’s just no such thing. And people are just making this stuff up. Hank calls Abby’s voicemail, but he doesn’t leave a message this time. He just goes out, takes a couple of bottles of a peanut wine.
There’s a raccoon in the weeds watching him and
Stephen: he said, [00:38:00]
Rhys: sets the peanut wine up on a log and starts blowing them up. And then we have a flashback and if you note, it’s been a while since we’ve had one there at Abby’s birthday party and Wade lets it slip that his girlfriend’s pregnant, you can tell Abby wants kids as the conversation goes on.
And Hank. If it’s, if it came out eight years old and ready to play ball, then he needs to be okay, but he doesn’t want to do diaper changing and stuff.
Stephen: Yeah. He’s obviously, he obviously cares about her, but he’s clueless about who she really is and what she really wants.
Rhys: And as, as the
Stephen: audience,
Rhys: this is our first hint that, Oh, you know what?
Maybe her running off wasn’t just some, knee jerk reaction because this was a year ago and
Stephen: It just was good movie that you feel one way at the beginning and he uses the movie to shift your viewpoint and your feelings by the end, like martyrs when we’re like, we’re bad people for feeling this way.
That’s the movie making.
Rhys: Yeah, we’re back in the present. He’s getting drunk at the bar with Julie, his [00:39:00] bartender. He’s hitting on her. Apparently the original script had him actually driving her home and being a little more like pushy. But he cut that she’s out cause her rides there and he just stays there and continues to drink.
Stephen: I’m glad he cut that out. I don’t think that would have fit the movie and his character. Yeah,
Rhys: yeah, I agree. That reinforces Abby’s whole thing about him and his hunting personality. But if that’s not in there, then you can question whether or not, that’s a legitimate complaint.
Stephen: And I think two of the things that weren’t so strong in the movie that it wasn’t like a, Oh, moment for me was number one. He’s a hunter. She it’s mentioned, but I never got that. I’m a hunter field from him. And it seems a lot that he’s a hunter and he owns a bar and they have a great. Arbor with grapes that they’re making and that just came up and it’s not just we like grapes We have a whole field.
We’re making wine and stuff and yeah, I don’t know it just [00:40:00] It never seemed part of his whole character until suddenly they were in a great thing It’s like I need something for this scene. Oh, i’ll do this, Yeah,
Rhys: she’s into wine that kind of
Stephen: yeah.
Rhys: Yeah, he gets back home Remember, he’s been drinking.
His door is wide open and it looks like something just blew into the house You So he heads in, it gets all suspenseful, he grabs his gun he heads to the kitchen and he can hear it upstairs. And as he heads back to where the stairs and the door outside are, it goes rushing outside and he follows it.
Cause he’s a hunter now, this finally someone does the flashbulb trope without a flat, without a camera and like reasonable because he goes out and fires his gun and you get the light from the shotgun blast, which is just a brilliant way of doing that.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It
Rhys: was
Stephen: pure dark. That was good.
Rhys: Yeah, then you hear the cat and he’s like Darby and then the cat starts fighting and the cat [00:41:00] yowls and he fires again and we can see the creature and it looks a hell of a lot like a predator.
I thought,
Stephen: Yeah, a little bit and I questioned why the thing attacked the cat right then because the cat had been there for weeks at this point and suddenly it’s getting the cat ignored the food. It was in the house, but now suddenly it’s attacking the cat. I didn’t Get the reason why that was right then.
Rhys: Yeah, aside from story, it works well for the story. Then he starts heading back to the house after he’s seen this thing. He shot at it. He’s freaked out by it.
Stephen: And I love that they didn’t focus on this creature. They showed it in a flash. That always works so much better, especially with a 6, 000 budget.
Absolutely.
Rhys: When you watch this movie watch it once and the creature holds up. The more times you watch it, the less it holds up. Yeah, it did look a little rubbery. By the time you get to the third, you’re like, Oh, okay. I get it. But I really love his framing after he’s done [00:42:00] shooting. He starts walking back and his house is just destroyed.
So it’s like this lonely guy in the dark, wandering his way back to his broken home. Yeah. And he walks in and he closes the door and he throws the couch around so much. I’m like, how much of a barrier to entry was that? It obviously doesn’t weigh anything. But then you have the whole symbolism of that couch has been his safety barrier and then he sits on it and it breaks.
So even that’s letting him down and then he just gives up. He goes upstairs and goes to bed and dreams of times running around a vineyard with Abby better times. Yes. Now he’s realizing better times. Yes. This movie surprised me twice. And here’s the first one. Abby comes back. I really didn’t see that happening.
You know what I mean?
But again, I didn’t realize it’s a romance. Romance has to have some resolution.
Stephen: You gotta have that.
Rhys: She [00:43:00] comes back. She’s not dead. So now I start thinking, and this is me thinking, before he says anything, I’m like, Is she the monster? Is she?
Stephen: Yeah, she left. It came.
And now, he saw it, but now she’s back. Is she connected and controlling it? Are they one person that she morphs like a werewolf? Several things.
Rhys: Have you ever seen Abby and the monster in a room together? Exactly. I haven’t. That’s right. I’m trying to think there’s a movie like a gaiju movie and the monster is actually being controlled by this woman who lives on the other side of the world.
Like when she falls asleep, it comes around.
Stephen: Yeah. Did you see that? Maybe I think there’s actually a couple books and movies I’ve read or seen with that similar type of thing.
Rhys: Yeah, that’s, that was what I was thinking here.
Stephen: Right. Maybe she was using it to get him to realize that’s pretty impressive way to do it.
I’ll get this monster and control it and make my boyfriend [00:44:00] really miss me.
Rhys: Yes. She goes in the kitchen, just automatically starts cleaning up. She’s doing dishes. She’s going through the mail. The song starts while she’s doing that. And then Wade’s Wade, Hank’s sitting upstairs and he hears the song.
Stephen: And I was like, okay, I, based on my background, what you know, I was like, yeah, so here’s the manipulative woman going. Yeah. You come to me.
Rhys: That’s funny that you saw it that way. I saw it as she’s going to come back and just automatically start doing what needs to be done to get back to where they were before.
Stephen: Yeah. Taking care of him. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. The record is actually playing in the record player.
He comes down and sees her cleaning in the kitchen, doesn’t say a thing, just takes the needle off the record. She’s Hank, and then they go outside and he’s burying her cat.
Stephen: This was my least favorite scene. It did not seem strong in dialogue or the acting, maybe it was a weak scene. I thought.[00:45:00]
Rhys: So if you’re looking at it from like a story directorial standpoint, you have her being in there in the kitchen doing listening to the music. He takes the record needle off the record player, great scene. And then. Them sitting in the framed doorway, another great scene. They had to get from point A to point B and that’s what this felt like.
It was like just a this will bridge it kind of thing.
Stephen: Yeah. It was almost an afterthought thrown in. It seemed.
Rhys: Yeah. She’s it’s your birthday tomorrow. He’s I know. And she’s we’re having people over. He’s no, you can’t because the monster. She’s you’re a hunter. So kill it.
Is it coming tonight? When it gets here, just fucking kill it. Can you please fix the front door?
So we get a shot of new doors. And they’re sitting in this frame doorway. He’s sitting there with his gun. She’s sitting on his right. This is their home. She points out that Valentine’s back up and he says, it’s good luck. And they both [00:46:00] realize how ridiculous it was because that was Wade talking.
He’s drinking this wine. She’s what is it? He is I don’t know, do your thing. And she’s I don’t feel like doing my home sommelier thing that she does.
Stephen: And this
Rhys: is, I
Stephen: think they should have used her in the menu.
Rhys: Yes. This is where you get to that thing where he’s like, where did you go?
And she is she went to Miami and he is oh, you went to see your old boyfriend? And you’re like yeah. You went to see your old boyfriend. And she is I went to the school reunion that I asked you to come to. A long time ago. And you say you didn’t want to because those people are all snobs.
You remember, it’s oh, okay. Maybe that’s not a great argument. And then he’s what did you see him? And she’s yeah. And you’re like yeah. You saw him, didn’t you? Yeah. He left early with his wife to go pick up their two kids. Okay. And he’s that covers like nine hours and what’d you do for the other four weeks?
Yeah, and I have honestly seen this same [00:47:00] conversation destroy relationships
Stephen: And that’s why this was such a good scene because you could it was back and forth you could see it But it started off with her very supportive sitting right next to him in this craziness that she knew nothing about until an hour ago, but she’s right there, so really she’s pretty fantastic in the relationship.
Rhys: Yeah. He likes to nestle into his mundane small town life and she wants so much more than that. And I’m not going to name any names, but I had no someone who was like in this relationship with this fantastic woman. And they broke up and it was because she wanted to see the world and he didn’t want to leave his corner bar, and it was like, Okay. That’s
Stephen: what
Rhys: it’s going to be.
Stephen: I know you’re not talking about me, so no, I’m not. Cause you said fantastic woman. So yeah, he’s got the first one. [00:48:00]
Rhys: Nice of you to clarify that.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Turns it back into how rough this last month has been on him. And it’s not very fair of her.
So I’ve done that and this month has been really hard, but when you look at it, she’s been feeling this way for much longer than a month, years, and she’s just quietly been putting up with it. And so we’re taking a month off to see the world and then come back. Yeah. Yeah. It’s impressive. He’s been taking her for late granted lately.
And she doesn’t say this, but life does have this way of taking off. The sharp edges of all these shiny things in our lives when they’ve been around for a long time. So you’re just used to them being there.
Stephen: Yeah. And she even says, you used to look at me like I forget exactly what she said, but like she was the only thing in the only woman in the world.
And you couldn’t believe that we were together, but then she relates it to, but as a hunter, you got it, you trapped it and now you’re moving on.
Rhys: Yeah. Wow. That’s [00:49:00] harsh. She’s he’s a hunter. He’s just looking for something to chase. I’m looking at all those things I gave up just for a spot on your wall.
And I, especially since he cut that scene out with the bartender, I’m like this might be the point where she’s making some assumptions. And I, he definitely has this fear of commitment and he won’t pull the trigger no matter what, yeah. And all she wants from him is to actually do that.
Yeah, she’d like to see the world but she’s gone through all this time without it if he could just like I don’t know, get engaged at least, or something
Stephen: she wants him and his world and to be in his world, but also to be herself. And that’s what she did for this time. And she wants something better.
As being together, I think that’s typical, that’s what everybody want. Everybody’s looking for
Rhys: that.
Stephen: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. That’s my neighbors.
Rhys: In my notes is like, this is a great example of going into an argument, being convinced you’re right. Only to find out you have [00:50:00] no idea what the real problem actually was in the first place.
Stephen: But again, and I’m not saying he’s right looking at from his viewpoint. They didn’t have a bad life. They had this wine vineyards. They were growing wine, making wine. They had the nice house. Now he never fixed the bar. Yeah, and they have the bar, but she was tired. She didn’t want to be in a bar.
She don’t want to be a barmaid even as part owner or whatever it was, so from his thinking and viewpoint. I’ve given you all of this. You could argue that he may be wrong and he may needed to open up a little bit, but it shows a little bit there. I’ve given you all this.
Rhys: And her point is I never wanted any of it, right?
This town is the last place I wanted to be. I just came back to get some stuff and to save up some money and you wooed me. And so now here we are.
Stephen: So he did make her happy. There was some effort at least for that much. Yeah.
Rhys: He sets the gun down and right here, I thought the monster is going to, touch, but it doesn’t.
[00:51:00] And she’s I don’t think your monster is coming. And so they get up and go and I’m like. You know what? I think this monster’s been with him the whole time. Like the monster’s like a part of him. Yes. And again, that might be the case. It could have. Question that out more.
You know what I mean?
Stephen: Yeah. And like you said, if he’s experimenting with a different way of telling the story seeing that from our viewpoint is difficult when you’re in the midst of it, I get that, but looking at it now, I totally agree. That’s how I felt about it too. One thing, other thing about this scene that I thought was great though, it opens with the doors opening and then it, it ends with the doors closed, doors
Rhys: closing.
So yeah,
Stephen: it re kind to me, it represented. Okay, we’re going to open up about the relationship and, oh it’s closed down again.
Rhys: Here’s the discussion. Discussion’s over, yeah, back to life. And there’s this party. We do get this one more flashback about that tape. We find out there’s one song on the tape [00:52:00] recorded over and over again.
Stephen: No, I didn’t do that. When I made mixed tapes, it always had more songs on it.
Rhys: My father in law would do that. Really? He would fill an entire tape with one song, like 60 minutes of it. And he would go out in his garage to do stuff. And he’d play that tape. And he’d have a different tape for different songs.
It was, wow. Yeah. It took me a while to recognize it, but I’d be over there using his tools, work on my car and stuff. And I’d be like, is this like the 12th time we’ve heard house of the rising sun? Cause it seems like it is.
Stephen: It sets a mood. He wants to keep
Rhys: that mood. I guess. We’re now at the party and people are singing karaoke.
Speaking of the house of the rising sun, that’s what Shane singing really badly. Oh my God. It was horrible. He must be not even close to the
Stephen: tempo. It makes my singing when we were in the band seem good.
Rhys: Yeah. Wade is much more on your line where he’s at least with the music, not on the right pitch. He’s singing the [00:53:00] song of the recently defeated, which is a callback to the battery.
Yeah. That’s rock central Plaza. Abby’s singing something, I didn’t recognize that one. And then Abby’s friends Wade and Shane’s dates are singing Happy Birthday to Abby. And that’s it for the for the karaoke section of the night right now. Abby has made some wine, she calls it Sauvignon Braune.
Because it’s brown. And that happens if you’re making wine and it doesn’t get tightly sealed, the fruit oxidizes, it turns brown. It’s not necessarily anything wrong with it, it’s if you peel a potato and you leave it, sit out in the air, it’s going to turn
Stephen: brown. There’s just. I took this as a representation of their whole relationship.
She was trying something and it didn’t quite go right the way she wanted, but she still wanted the result.
Rhys: And
Stephen: it’s not
Rhys: pretty, but it’s still serviceable. Exactly. Cause people are still drinking it. Yeah. Wade thinks it’s spoiled, but
Stephen: I love [00:54:00] his girlfriend and her wife at this point, whatever tells him basically to shut up.
Rhys: Yeah. And then here’s where you start to get this feeling that conversation actually had an impact on Hank because she’s do you know that steps and tasting wine and he answers, he’s see swirl, sniff, sip and savor. And it doesn’t, it, she doesn’t miss that. She notes the fact that. He’s actually seemed to have taken an interest in something that she’s interested in,
Stephen: right?
And he’s realizing, Oh, this is the type of thing I should have been doing. You can see it in his face. Jeremy’s actually a fairly good actor. Yeah. Getting this stuff apart. I’ve enjoyed these movies.
Rhys: Regardless of what, we had to say about the movie or, weak spots here or strong spots here, you can’t berate his performance at all.
It’s great. They make a joke about Johnstown because everyone’s drinking it because, Johnstown, everybody drank the Kool Aid. They all
Stephen: died. So [00:55:00] there’s another reference to the relationship. Everybody’s getting engaged and married. Maybe you should drink the Kool Aid. Yeah. I wonder if that was intentional or just happened.
Rhys: Then Shane starts to be a dick. There’s no other way to put it. And, this kind of thing happens when people have been drinking too much. He’s that monster you’ve been talking about, everybody let’s talk about the monster. What an idiot. You believed in this monster.
And, his girlfriend’s I believe in UFOs. He’s there’s no such thing as UFOs. Just, You’re I deal with cold, hard facts. I’m a police officer. And you guys are all just foolish. And the camera pans on onto Jeremy Gardner. And I’m like, this looks like it’s going to be a kill list kind of dinner.
You’re really pushing it to go in a different direction. Yeah, but he doesn’t, he apologizes to Shane and he’s you know what? Cause Shane brings up, they aren’t married yet. He’s I shouldn’t have married Abby a long time ago. I’m not going to apologize about saying I saw the monster because I did.
And what kind of fucking ego do [00:56:00] you have, you backwoods podunk deputy sheriff in a town that hardly anybody even knows exists? Which is, a really good point. Considering where we both live.
But it looks like he might go on being a bit of a dick to Shane, which I was all for. That’s cool. But he doesn’t, he’s you know what? I have been a dick and I’ve been selfish and he’s admitting it in front of everyone, which is just the kind of apology that your girlfriends out there want guys.
If you’d have to make one, if you make a big and obvious in front of lots of people, they’d like it even more.
Stephen: Yeah. Listen to Reese. He’s been married quite a while. And
Rhys: he’s you know what? Let’s just get rid of everything. We can go to Miami, we can go to Milan, we can go to Madrid, wherever you want to go.
Then he goes out and brings back the karaoke machine and we get to hear what was on that tape because he’s this is for you. And Julie. And it’s Lisa Loeb’s Stay, which is a good song. Yeah, he doesn’t do a [00:57:00] bad job singing it. No, I was surprised at what a good singer he was. And, nailing the lyrics and stuff.
His enunciation’s good. And I think that’s one of the nice, the cool things about that song is that it’s very variable. It’s not one, it’s not one thing with a bridge or anything. It’s got these ups and downs.
Stephen: The lyrics are quite difficult when you actually try and sing it. I didn’t realize that until I was mouthing, singing the words along.
It’s been a while since I heard it. And I’m like, Oh, wow. This rhythm is a little difficult. As the kids say, you’re spitting bars.
Rhys: Yeah. We’re so hip. Here’s surprise number two. A lot of times in this movie, he has these romantic scenes and he lets them run long and you’re just like, and again, I’m not a romance guy.
So I can recognize that someone in a romantic audience, that’s what they want. They want to see these long scenes and he is singing through the song and I’m like, Oh, okay. And he gets like towards the end of the song [00:58:00] and out of nowhere, the monster comes in from stage left and just takes him out.
That way. Oh, because he set you up all this whole movie for these nice, long, romantic shots. So you’re not even thinking anything about it. And then boom, there
Stephen: it is. But what was the reason? That was the thing that got me. That was what, this was the part I did disliked about the movie the most. It’s Okay, what was the reason for the creature to come into the house at that point and attack him at that point after nothing?
You know what I’m saying? It was, and I hate to say this about Jeremy. If he ever hears this, he’s going to hunt us down or something, but it was juvenile story and movie making that, Oh, I’m just going to jump the monster in and there it is. There wasn’t a good reason for it.
Rhys: So I’m going to play devil’s advocate here.
Okay. And if what I say is right, he still could have done a better job of portraying it.
Stephen: If what you say is right, Jeremy’s going to attack me at [00:59:00] a fan convention and not you.
Rhys: Not me.
Stephen: That’s it. Yeah.
Rhys: It seems to me like the creature was there thriving on his pain and agony. And that’s its whole purpose for being its whole raison d’etre.
Now, I think one of the things is it looks like predator. And so everyone’s thinking alien, but it could have been something more supernatural, something that was like emotionally tied to him and it realizes at that moment he is on the verge of a breakthrough. He’s not going to be miserable. What’s it going to do?
So it takes a drastic measure again, if that’s what he was thinking. Awesome, but he could have done a much
Stephen: better job of portraying. Yeah, exactly. It’s like talking about some of the George Lucas Star Wars movies. Okay. I get what you’re saying, but let’s make this a little better. Yeah, I agree.
And I think you could be totally right. That’s the only thing that really makes the most sense in this part based on the rest of the movie.
Rhys: [01:00:00] Yeah. Cause there’s never any. So if you go that route, like that’s why it keeps coming to that door. Cause he’s just on the other side of it. It won’t go anywhere else because it’s sensing him there.
It’s drawn to him. That’s, yeah. Why did he eat the cat? Because he could sense that would actually disturb him. That would upset him because he could hear, it could hear the care it had, he had for it in his voice while he was calling to it. I think there might be something there. I don’t know that, we’re necessarily ever going to get an answer to that, but.
But the ending here does get a little hokey. Yeah, it reminds me a bit of get out. Oh, yeah, somebody with deer antlers. Yeah,
but that was really like the whole scene where he’s fighting with it. And it’s just down there and he’s hitting it with the horns. I didn’t like that scene very much. It was too much of one thing. You could have bounced off to some B roll, but then you have to pay for the special effects of the thing getting hit.
But when it was done and he killed [01:01:00] it, it was like the movie is like this. Oh, there’s this scene where he’s fighting it. Oh, and then it finishes about here. Yeah, it bounces right back Yeah, it’s a resiliency thing he and he killed it just like she asked him to and she’s like Hank and he like Looks and he holds up this bottle of wine for, and there’s an engagement ring at the bottom of the bottle line,
Stephen: which he had the, from years ago, it fell out of Valentine’s head.
So the question is why he never, I’m comfortable in my life. I don’t want to screw it up is the feeling I got,
Rhys: but it’s, it goes back to that thing where you think you have this argument. He had this argument. She was going to Miami to hook up with her old boyfriend. No, that wasn’t the thing.
It was all on you. And she’s you’re just selfish and can’t commit. No, he’s had this freaking ring forever. Ever it’s sealed in a bottle of wine that he bought in your birthday last year, right?
Stephen: And if we go with the creature being like the external representation of their relationship or something, he breaks the horns off, which is.
probably [01:02:00] not good luck with the deer anymore. So that was representing his life that he wanted that was pushing against her life. And he destroyed it to kill the creature, which represented all his despair, his
Rhys: pain and agony,
Stephen: the problem, and he killed it to move on and get the thing. And that.
Taking that and evaluating it that way, it all makes a little bit of sense. It just didn’t necessarily come across that way in the right.
Rhys: Yeah, it, the more we talk about it, the more I’m like, yeah, that’s gotta be what he was thinking. And it does. It’s 1 of those kind of things where. I think that’s brilliant.
You just could have done a better job of getting it across.
Stephen: And I can just imagine Jeremy Gardner ever listened to this and he was like, Oh, wow, that’s a great idea. I should have thought of that. Yeah. I didn’t mean that at all, but okay. Good. The conversation would be like, who
Rhys: the fuck are these two dweebs?
Listening to this shit.
Stephen: Yeah. That’s probably more what it would be. Yeah. Hey, we loved the [01:03:00] battery. Yeah, don’t forget that. And my other comment was the creature. I’m glad he didn’t focus and do long parts of the movie with the creature. There were just a few quick scenes because my comment was zombies are much easier for special effects.
Rhys: They are 110%. Yeah. Yeah. So that is after midnight. I, again, when I went into it, I’m like, Oh, this movie’s bad. And then I’m like, Oh, wait, no, it’s just not what I’m used to. It’s something different. And again, now we’ve come up with Oh, this movie might’ve been even better than we thought, but we have both seen it multiple times.
And we’ve been talking about it for an hour to get to that point where we’re like, Oh, so obviously it could have been a little clearer. We would have known this right from the start of our conversation.
Stephen: Yeah. Again like I mentioned once before about the music we used to play in the band, if we got a song that I didn’t care for that’s what the band voted on.
That’s what we’re playing. But by the time I played that baseline on that [01:04:00] song, 150 times, I started. Feeling the song and the nuances of it and appreciating it. Same with some of these movies. If I had just looked at this movie before this podcast, I would have thought, okay, and forgotten all about it. But when you sit to really evaluate it and engross yourself in it, you get much more out of it sometimes than you would have just, running in the background and forget about it.
And I think that’s a big problem with our American cinema with people sometimes.
Rhys: I was gonna say, unless it’s the
Stephen: nun, which is
Rhys: we can sit here and talk about it for an hour and a half and still be like, yeah, it’s still not a good movie.
Stephen: That’s true. There’s a couple of movies I’ve seen more than once.
And I’m like, yeah, I still haven’t gotten anything from this.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: All right. So after midnight, thank you, Mr. Gardner. Appreciate it.
Rhys: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Stephen: All right. So Reese, what’s on our next hit Parade agenda,
Rhys: With trepidation and shaking hands, we go back to the feet of Pascal [01:05:00] Loger as we watch incident in a ghost land
Stephen: incident in a ghostland.
I remember when this came out, you mentioned it to me and I was confused because there was a Nick Cage movie with Ghost Land in the title. It came out about the same time. It was confusing. Yeah,
Rhys: I, I will say right out the gate. It’s not martyrs. It’s no, it’s nowhere near as good as martyrs, but the production notes on this and the additional production notes for martyrs that we didn’t talk about.
Cause again, we’re feeling out the format. You got to wonder about Mr. Loggie is mental health.
Stephen: All right. So I’m sure that’ll be a discussion for next time. Yeah. Mix it up with how the movies come across. All right. Till next time. Talk to you later. All right. See ya. All right. All right. Go ahead and also that’ll just be the end of it.
So cool. Later, I’ll look at your I’ll look at the shirts this weekend. Oh, okay. Yeah. That’d be cool. And let me know sometime [01:06:00] nebulously when you can, if you think you get that day off and I’ll tell them that, yeah, we’ll be over for that. I can get that day off. I don’t, that’s not a problem. It shouldn’t be a problem.
It looked interesting from last year. So I think she seemed excited. It’s oh yeah, I’m sure we’ll be able to figure this out. Yes, we’ll get something for, she was like, oh The the production is becoming bigger than they envisioned it. Even I think,
Rhys: is that a Friday?
Stephen: Yes.
It’s Friday. That’s it’s the 13th.
Rhys: Yeah. Nice.
Stephen: All right, ma’am. Talk to you later.
Rhys: Have a good one.
