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Overview
If you loved Martyrs (and who didn’t) and are looking for another edge of your seat movie – why not look at another one from Laugier. I mean, Martyrs was such a popcorn thrill fest, who wouldn’t want more?
Oh, did I forget the sarcasm tags around that first paragraph?
SInce we’re revisiting directors, Rhys thought it would be a great idea to revisit the director of our first episode movie. The one we aren’t sure anyone should watch and the one that made us question ourselves deeply. How does this other movie hold up compared to that one? Is he a director you want to view over and over?
You decide for yourself. While there is a lot of Laugier-ness in this movie, it is different from Martyrs, and we’ll tell you all about that.
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Transcript
Stephen: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to a new episode of Whore Lasagna. We are going to talk about a movie done by an interesting director today. If you really enjoyed Martyrs, this is the other one he’s done that we’re going to talk about now.
Rhys: Get ready for the madness that is Pascal Laguillet.
Stephen: Yes, and we’ll compare how it is. Different and the same, or is it? All right. So this movie is incident in a ghost land today that we’ve got, as you said, Pascal Laugier.
Rhys: It is sometimes just referred to as ghost land, depending on where you’re at.
Stephen: Which I find weird.
Cause like within the same year, there was a Nick Cage movie that came out with something or other ghost prisoner in ghost land or something like that. And it was difficult for me because I knew about both movies to understand they weren’t like related.
Rhys: Yeah they’re completely independent.
This was directed by Pascal [00:01:00] Laguillet, who brought us Martyrs.
Stephen: Which was our very first movie, very disturbing. We tell people not to watch it. Let’s give our podcast the best chance to have by putting the movie that nobody’s going to want to listen to about. So let’s go.
Rhys: It’s infamous. So
Stephen: yeah,
Rhys: There’s that hook right there. Oh, they’re talking about the infamous movie. He directed for, he directed both of these films. He’s only directed four movies.
Stephen: And he’s our age. He’s not
Rhys: young, like Tai West. He directed St. Ange. That was his first movie.
And then martyrs and then the tall man and incident and ghost land. He’s done some television in France some music
Stephen: club and,
Rhys: He’s done some music videos and some shorts too. St. Ange is actually hard to find. And the only place that I found the Tall Man was on YouTube. If you had you could rent it through YouTube.
Wow. I’ve seen all four of his films. And Martyrs [00:02:00] is the best of them all, in my opinion. But they all are just a little bit different from each other as you go through. It’s not If you’re watching a Gaspar Noé film, it’s a Gaspar Noé film because they all have that same, this is just like super, super depressing, horrific situation.
All of them are like that. Pascal’s tend to have kind of a different feel as you’re going through them a little bit.
Stephen: And I noticed, there’s some similarities to Martyrs in this one, quite a few but there’s a lot that’s different. And it, overall, I would say this did not impact me as much as Martyrs.
Rhys: No, not at all. Actually. He got his start working with Christophe Gantz on Brotherhood of the Wolf as basically a gopher, he was just running around, doing whatever they asked with, asked him to do. And Christophe Gantz and Richard Grandpierre, who’s A prominent figure in French film, [00:03:00] they both liked him enough.
So they produced St. Ange for him. They were the producers on St. Ange when he decided to actually make his first full length film. So it’s a little bit of a problem if you’re doing research on La Hie because you can find lots of primary source material or interviews and things with him, but they’re all in French and like they’re subtitled in French.
Your French is lacking lately. Oh, certainly not to that level. Out of the
Stephen: two of us, you’re the only one that’s been to France. So the best chance.
Rhys: Yeah. His career was only four movies. It could have been more after martyrs came out, Miramax wanted him to do a Hellraiser remake.
And for some reason he walked away from that. Yeah. He said he wanted to do something that was darker psychological and more sexually based
Stephen: because people wearing leather from hell that invade you. [00:04:00] That’s not dark, psychological or sexual enough.
Rhys: Correct? The studio wanted him to make something that would play for a wider audience.
Stephen: Because martyrs, the three people they wanted to expand on.
Rhys: Yes. After he turned that down, he went on to do his first English language film, which was the tall man with Jessica Beal. And Jessica Beal actually really wanted to work with him. Wow. And everything I’ve heard about The Tall Man, it seemed like a pretty good experience, for, every, all parties involved.
The Martyrs Remake came out in what, 2014? Sixteen. Sixteen. Somewhere in there, yeah. Blumhouse came to him after that came out and wanted him to do the sequel to Sinister.
Stephen: Oh, wow. That would have been different.
Rhys: Yes. He turned them down. And he said, American studios have the ability to hire us for our original vision.
Only to ultimately insist we be just like everyone else. [00:05:00] Oh my god, that he’s not wrong. No. There can only be one person in control of a film, not ten all with different views. I played that game with Miramax, and I had no intention of ever doing it again.
Stephen: Alright, so Lagier just became one of my best directors.
I I want to find out more. That’s, we’ve talked about that. Felt that with not just horror movies, any movie out there, we’ve, I sit at the theater with Brian and superhero movies talking that exact same thing.
Rhys: Yeah. He spent two years from there working on ghost land and the films that inspired him while he was working on it.
Cause you know, sometimes directors will say what did and what didn’t Lords of Salem, it follows and bone Tomahawk.
Stephen: I saw that bone Tomahawk that he was inspired by.
Rhys: Yeah. So yeah, Jessica Biel had seen Martyrs and was excited to work with him on Tall Man. But there aren’t many who leave a Pascal Laguillet production wanting to work with him ever again.
[00:06:00] If you go clear back to St. Ange the actress’s name was Virginie Ladoyan, and she played Anna Juren. And it’s a cool little tie in you had Anna and Lucy. In martyrs and Lucy’s last name was Jaren. So he actually took Anna Jaren from his first movie and turned her into two different people.
When he did St. Ange, it’s also known as the house of voices and I just bring it up. I’m mentioning it to you because I think it would be a good one for us to do for a Halloween special this year. Oh,
Stephen: okay. We’ll track this down and yeah, start looking now. I’ll just call him up and see if he’s got a chest
Rhys: maybe.
Yeah. In a hard shell clam fam showcase. In one of the, in the final shot of the movie, she is sitting there naked nursing, a baby surrounded by children who are pretending to be ghosts. And because of all the makeup and stuff, the actress is blind, [00:07:00] so she couldn’t see at all. The crew had to physically pick her up and carry her to where she needed to sit and set her down.
And it took them all day to film this scene because it had like cranes and everything. It’s like one of those kind of final scenes where the camera pans out, pulls way back. She was so uncomfortable and so disconcerted after the entire day of shooting, she doesn’t even remember how the day ended.
Wow. She’s I had a blank. I don’t remember at all how this day of filming ended. So it was not necessarily a pleasant experience for her.
Stephen: Which isn’t necessarily his. Complete fault. I, when I talked to Armin Shimmerman, he said they always place bets on what actors would come in with all the prosthetics and stuff and last through all the filming, he says, literally, there were several actors, just a couple hours in, we’re like, I can’t take it, ripped it off and ran off stage and they had to replace them.
So that’s part of that biz.
Rhys: Oh, sure. It doesn’t make it any more pleasant of [00:08:00] an experience for them. True. More Jana, a Louie played Anna in martyrs. And when we did martyrs, we didn’t have the format we do now. So this is the first time you’ve heard you’re hearing of these actresses. She’s been in 13 other pieces and she played Anna and Mylene Champanois played Lucy.
She’s been in 35 other pieces. They both said they would never, ever do another movie with Logia. Wow. A Louie fell from a three meter soundstage during filming. And broke three bones in her foot.
Stephen: Ow.
Rhys: Which makes it
Stephen: more realistic. I guess you can look at it like that. Yeah.
Rhys: And Jampanoi said every day after shooting, when I went back to my room, I just cried because I was so physically and psychologically tired,
Stephen: which I understand from that film specifically.
If they really wanted to do a good job, they had to, and man, that’s, yeah.
Rhys: I’m not. I am not attaching this next part to Pascal Lafayette at all. I’m just saying this is the kind of thing that follows [00:09:00] him. He wrote this, he wrote Martyrs while he was like clinically depressed and suicidal.
That, that was the frame of mind he was in when he wrote it. And one of the special
Stephen: effects designers,
Rhys: Benoit Lestang committed suicide just before the film released theatrically.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s it’s just, it’s like this dark tone that follows him with these films. So we don’t want him to do the Mickey Mouse Club.
No. Like I said, there’s no horror stories from the tall man and Jessica Beal wanted to work from him. And Joe Dell Furland didn’t have anything bad to say about him. Not that she’s always saying bad things about people, but I’m just saying no. Good. No, good news is good news. But then you have incident in the Ghostland.
This is a French Canadian joint venture. It came out in 2018, and it’s an hour and 31 minutes very. Very traditional. The worldwide gross for it was 5. [00:10:00] 6 million martyrs. I remember it was in the big theaters. It
Stephen: wasn’t like you had to track it down.
Rhys: Yeah. Martyrs was an hour and 39 minutes. It’s a little bit longer and it only grossed 1.
1 million worldwide. Again, a lot of theaters didn’t want. To have it shown in the theater. The movie was nominated for 11 awards and won six of them. Three of them at Gerard May, including the best film, best feature film, and one for Laugier himself. But we have to remember that Gerard May is a French award.
I’m not saying that they’re necessarily influenced by the fact that he’s a prominent French director, but they’re a little influenced because he’s a prominent French writer. Martyrs got 16 nominations and seven wins when it came out. The movie has, and this is a vaguely confusing part because they did a good job. The movie has two characters, two main characters, you have Vera and Beth. You have them at two different stages of their lives. And this is where I mean it gets confusing because the casting director did an amazing [00:11:00] job of finding people who actually looked like this is Beth.
In 10 years. And this is Vera in 10 years. So it was almost hard to tell when they’d swap back and forth.
Stephen: Yes. I looked at the cast list and I’m like, young Vera, older Vera, I’m a huh. And I went back and looked at some, I’m like, Oh my God, I thought it was the same
Rhys: actress. It’s a different actress. Yes.
Adult Vero was played by Anastasia Phillips. She’s a Canadian actress out of Toronto. She’s been in 32 projects, including some long television runs on Stoked, Bomb Girls, and Moonshine. Plus a lot of other films that, none of this rings a bell to me. Crystal Reed plays the adult Beth. She’s from Detroit and she started as a model before she came disillusioned with being a model and went into acting.
She has 17 past projects including Crazy Stupid Love Long Runs on the Teen Wolf series and [00:12:00] Gotham and Swamp Thing. She has, was also in the recent Teen Wolf movie and has an upcoming project called Dead Giveaway.
Stephen: Wow, not a bad there.
Rhys: Yeah. Emilia Jones plays young Beth. She’s British. She’s been in 23 pieces with her first major film being Pirates of the Caribbean on stranger tides.
A film called Coda and a long run on lock and key. She’s got an upcoming project untitled Brad Inglesby, HBO drama series. So Taylor Hickson plays young Vera. She’s a Canadian from British Columbia. She was born in 1997, started acting in 2015, she’s got 3 long run television pieces, Aftermath, Deadly Class, and Motherland Fort Salem, never seen any of those.
Stephen: I do remember the Motherland Fort Salem came out, it’s Witches, it’s an alternative history.
Rhys: She’s also got [00:13:00] 9 other pieces, including she had a role in Deadpool. And she’s got one upcoming thing called bad genius.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: My lean farmer plays Colleen or is it Pauline? I’m not really sure the name of the mother.
Yeah, because it shows up in multiple things in media either with as a Colleen or as a Pauline
Stephen: You know somebody on the PR team messed up one time and put the wrong name down and it spread and now I can’t tell She’s actually Colleen though in the actual credits.
Rhys: Okay. She’s actually a French musician.
She’s like the Madonna of France
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: She’s got 72 projects, but only seven of those are films or television. 65 are our own music videos, which if you have the opportunity and you want a taste of French music videos. Just go play a setlist by Mylene Farmer. They are ridiculously [00:14:00] French as they go through, they like touch all, there’s the whole classicist surrealism going on.
And then there’s the, she’s doing the whole thing in lingerie. Okay. It’s just, All these different things that really related to me is like a French taste to them, Mylene Farmer.
Stephen: She definitely made a different movie choice than like Madonna with Who’s That Girl and Vision Quest.
Rhys: Yes.
Yes. Yes. I would rate her as a much better actress. Yes. The last two members of the cast I wanted to mention are the fat man who is played by Rob Archer, which I saw a picture of him. I’m like, Oh
Stephen: wow. He didn’t really look like that.
Rhys: Did you read his bio and IMDb? No, it’s hilarious. He’s Rob Archer is a superhero, like in real life.
Cause the guy is six foot eight, 265 pounds of just chiseled mass. Wow. He’s just [00:15:00] huge. He’s been in 33 previous films Bulletproof Monk, Red, The Transporter, Kick Ass 2, Pixels, Ant Man and Wasp, and he has long runs on Lost Girl and Defiance. He’s got one upcoming acting gig called The Dead City as the Mega Zombot and he’s a stuntman in Sunset Superman.
He is the guy. He is the huge end boss bad guy. Of like henchmen that the superhero is always going to have to fight. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. He’s the one guy who, when Keanu Reeves is taking out everyone else, this big guy comes around the corner. This is the guy who’s going to get beat up by Keanu Reeves.
The other guy is the candy truck woman played by Kevin power. He has nine priors, including horsemen and a voiceover for the in the hand of fate video game, which I’ve never seen, but
Stephen: Oh, yeah, it’s a card game.
Rhys: Oh, is that?
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Oh, it makes sense. Hand of fate.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: So this [00:16:00] brings up a sore point for me in the industry.
The horror movies for a long time have relied on that uncanny valley to make people feel uncomfortable and two very easy marks that they do. Are big mentally challenged individuals, developmentally disabled individuals, all honesty and transgender. Cross dressing men dressed as women and it happens all the time like silence of the lambs and What was it insidious?
where the one ghost is actually like a man and it’s it does nothing to quell mistrust of both of those communities And it’s been done for a very long time and I’m not Voting log yay from dipping back into that. But it’s just something that, I think. If you’re a horror director, you [00:17:00] might want to maybe go somewhere else for this just because those communities have been beat on long enough.
You know what I mean?
Stephen: And honestly, and we talk about this all the time. We had that big, long discussion playing cards one night is what is horror, what makes horror and that’s just using the trope of there’s, you got the really big mentally challenged person. That’s horrific. Is it really?
And you get the trans. woman, man that’s horrific. This whole thing, the whole movie was really just a house invasion with mental break a mental psychosis break which neither one of those are my top. Subgenres of horror to go watch. Yeah, there’s, they’re not even the jump scare horror to me.
It’s mostly just you could say making people uncomfortable, but like you said, now it makes you afraid of every. And every very large guy because they’re probably mentally disabled.
Rhys: Yeah. And it’s super [00:18:00] ironic because if you listen to interviews with log EA early interviews, like when St.
Ang or when martyrs came out, he is really big on, and you can tell in the tall man too, he’s really big. I don’t want to say big on he’s actually down on American cinema because, and it’s the same stuff we’ve talked about. They show too much. They make things far more complex and elaborate than they have to be.
And that was one of the things that I loved about martyrs is like the torture of Anna when she’s down there is literally there’s them coming down and beating the crap out of her every day. There, there’s no fancy, this isn’t saw or anything stupid like that. It’s just some guy comes down and smacks you around.
And with that attitude now four films later, he makes a film where again, the villains are over the top, they’re garish. Very American, actually.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: Maybe that’s
Stephen: why I didn’t care for it as much as martyrs.
Rhys: Yeah. It seemed like a departure [00:19:00] of his personal philosophy.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: But there’s a radio station out there, 98.
8 K I S out of Berlin, Germany, and I found an English language interview with log EA because apparently he doesn’t speak German and the German guy didn’t speak French. So they were doing it in English. There is a scene, an incident in Ghostland where Beth, no Vera, is sitting there beating on a glass window.
Stephen: I heard about this. Yes.
Rhys: Yes. Taylor Hickson actually broke the window and when it did it came out and it sliced her face open to the tune of 70 stitches.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s a big cut.
Rhys: Yes, which again, these kind of calamities following LaGuiere from film to film. To make matters worse, and I didn’t know this part, but in this interview, the guy from Germany was talking to him about it.
[00:20:00] She was being like on social media, like just hounded because people in France were saying it was actually a publicity stunt that she, he put her up to doing this and she was saying that this happened and it was just a way for them to sell more tickets to the movie. And that’s not really the case at all.
It was like a serious cut. And 70 stitches on her face for moneymaker to make sure it leaves no scar.
Stephen: And I think she did a fantastic job acting, but obviously her age and her looks are one of the biggest draws for her to get a job at the moment. Yeah, whatever.
Rhys: And she’s still working and you can’t, I couldn’t see where it was or anything like that and seeing modern pictures of her.
Hey, I didn’t see it either. The surgeons did a great job and I’m glad it all worked out. But it was just like one of those kinds of things like, Oh, it’s a Lafayette film. Somebody has to get hurt. And Oh how horrible is society when they’re just going to start [00:21:00] beating her up because they’re convinced that she was just, Acting
Stephen: well, actually, maybe that’s why horror movies aren’t as scary anymore.
Cause honestly regular culture and regular people seem to be a way more scarier in today’s world. To me,
Rhys: actually said in 1 of the interviews that he does not find. The horror he actually finds reality TV more horrible than horror movies because in horror movies, people are just acting, but in reality TV, the things people are doing to them, to each other, they’re actually doing to each other,
Stephen: but even worse is.
They purposefully script a lot of that and make them redo parts of it to make it even more over the top. And the even worse part is all the people that are just engrossed in it and eating it up and shaping the cultures that’s how it is because it’s reality. Yeah, that we could have a whole we should get lucky on here and have a whole discussion [00:22:00] on that aspect.
We need the horror movies for the break from the real horror of life. It seems.
Rhys: Yeah, really? That’s the intro for,
Ghostland
Stephen: chunk. All right, everybody go watch the movie. Cause we’re going to talk about, we’re going to tell you everything there is to know about it. Except you look at us and say the pretty girls that were in the movie.
That’s true.
Rhys: Not unlike the podcast. This film is broken up into different sections. Yeah. We’re so
Stephen: professional now.
Rhys: We are. It’s got basically three different sections. You have the introductory piece. Which includes a home invasion. Then you have a shot from the future. And then you have back to the past for the resolution, and there’s a little future bump there in that part.
But, it’s so minor. I don’t even bother counting,
Stephen: but, let’s just throw it all out. The future doesn’t even really happen. It’s not even actual. It’s all her psychological break in the 10 [00:23:00] microseconds of. Actual time correct for that. So it just, you got to be aware of that a little bit because it’s because the first time that happened, I’m like, oh, it was all just a dream.
I’m like, come on. That’s the worst trope ever. But it wasn’t all just a dream in the sense that we’re used to. It was a little twist on it. I will give it that.
Rhys: Especially if you’ve seen Laguerre films, you’re going to go into this thinking, okay, I’m going to watch for the twist because there’s always a twist.
And so I’m watching it and you get through the first part and you’re like oh, hey, look, it all worked out here. We are in the future. And then you’re like, oh, wait, there’s still stuff going on. Where’s the twist here? It was the mother, some sort of psychotic monster now, blah, blah, blah. And then you’re like, oh, It turns out the future doesn’t exist at all,
Stephen: right?
Yeah, the whole movie really takes place over 12 hours or maybe a day or something.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: but it makes it seem like it’s decades and the impact that it had, but it’s really her fantasy. And I have a theory on that. I’ll save to the end. Excellent. [00:24:00] Also, which I was like, huh, I wonder,
Rhys: The film starts off with this quote by Elizabeth that just talks about how great HP Lovecraft is.
Yes. Okay. And it’s written, like it’s a quote and you’re like, who said that it’s like Elizabeth, she’s like the character of the story.
Stephen: Yeah, I was actually, I made a note to go look up that author to see who said more about it Oh, nevermind.
Rhys: It starts off with some tense music right off the, right out of the gate.
You’re in a horror movie, car muted tones or music playing in the background. Yeah. And then just to top off that feel you have in this isolationist feel you have a little children of the corn kid come running up to the road with whole Amish hat. It just lets you know that they’re in a very rural isolated place.
It was
Stephen: a bit of misdirection to
Rhys: a little bit. Yeah, which I just as an aside. And feel free to cut this out. [00:25:00] You don’t have to leave this in. We recently did a phone upgrade, got HBO max thrown in with it. And so I went through and made a list of all the HBO max movies that I watched before you
Stephen: lose it.
Rhys: Yeah. And there’s 49 of their horror movies that I haven’t seen. So I was like, made it into a list and I’m like going through and I’m like, Oh man, there’s a lot of children on the corn in here. And one of the things that I’ve realized you’re much better at this than I am. I never see sequels to these things.
I almost never got to watch it. I’m like, all so I just sat down and for the past three days I’ve been watching nothing but Children of the corns. I’m like up to number seven, which is the last one HBO has. Wow. And then I think that’s a reboot remake one, isn’t it? No, it’s not. It’s the one just before the reboot.
Okay. Seven children of the corn, seven revelation. It’s
Stephen: called somewhere in there. There is Genesis. That was another one that was hard to find.
Rhys: I think that one is [00:26:00] after the reboot.
Stephen: Okay. Okay. Okay.
Rhys: Yeah. But yeah, so I’m very children of the corn coated right now. And you’re getting such quality cinema with most of them.
I think it was the fourth one. I’m like, when I wrote it up in the list, I’m like, this is actually the Rosemary’s baby of children of the corn sequels. This one’s actually not bad. What was the
Stephen: fourth one? The urban one where they were in the abandoned
Rhys: That was horrible. Yeah. Okay. Good. ? This one had the girl from the ring in it.
Oh, okay. Okay. That’s actually the best thing about it is seeing who’s in them. Like in one of them, Kane Hodder has a pro another one has Uma Thurman’s first appearance on film. She’s uncredited. She’s just like some follower, but yeah. Weird little stuff like that, but yeah.
Stephen: Number 27.
Rhys: So children, the corn kid sets the mood.
There you have it. Yes. You have this car ride and it, [00:27:00] the, Basic point of the car ride is to establish the differences between the characters involved. So you have Vera and Beth. Beth is in the Beth is constantly seeking her mom’s praise and her mom is happy to give it to her. Vera, on the other hand, has reached that stage of her life where she’s cynical and hates adults and she’s moving to some remote place.
She doesn’t want to, it’s rebellious that her mom who has a thick French accent, says something in French and she yells at her mom for speaking French, no French mom,
right? Just
wow. Okay. And this truck comes up behind them, flashing as lights, being their horn. And it’s like a candy truck.
Stephen: Yeah. And this was a problem for me personally, because I’m also watching the twisted metal series on paramount. So it’s got sweet tooth in there and then there’s this candy truck. So my little synapses, we’re getting things like wait, hold on. What, which candy truck am I looking at right now?
Rhys: [00:28:00] Yeah. It comes up and they’re waving that whoever’s driving the truck is waving at them, they’re waving back.
And then Vera flips them off, she’s waving and then she’s eh, cause I’m a teen. And then the title card comes up and so then it goes land. And when it comes back down, we’re in a gas station. Beth is buying a gas station sandwich, which is not something I typically recommend for people.
It’s better than gas station sushi. There’s this whole discussion and exposition about where they are and where, why they’re there with the gas station attendant. But. And they’re off to Aunt Clarice’s house because she’s passed away. And the gas station tenant’s Oh, I think I know who that is.
And then she spills some fingernail polish and heads back to the bathroom to clean it off of herself. And Vera comes in. A little bit of talk. Beth notices that the candy truck is sitting in the parking lot off around the corner. And then again, [00:29:00] Loggie, stick to your guns because you have the candy truck and it drives off and, to make that link.
Where your poor American viewers, she finds a newspaper article about the family killer. And it talks about how these guys come in and they kill the family, but keep the young girls alive and prisoners in their own house. And This whole you have it. That’s the
Stephen: movie this whole opening sequence felt flat to me I was like this has been done like every other horror movie that has some home invasion or You know some psychological this is like the just scripted opening It’s like here just plug in your names and your setting and just use it.
It’s the same thing over I was a little disappointed in this opening from him.
Rhys: So I think yes because of who he is You expect more out of him, right? This is literally the first 15 minute throw away of every horror movie that you ever watch. You go in to watch it, you’re not here to watch that [00:30:00] 15 minute piece.
And so you just vaguely pay attention to it. You’re getting popcorn or opening a beer or whatever while it’s playing. And then you sit down and wait for the good stuff to start. And that’s exactly what this was. Which again, doesn’t necessarily make it bad. But coming from somebody who does such amazing things with his first three films, it’s
Stephen: how is this much different than the opening of the hollow?
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. At least in mama, like they broke it up with like radio and kids pictures. There was like all this different ways to get the discourse out there, as opposed to just, I’m going to talk to this gas station lady, I’m surprised she didn’t warn him not to go.
Stephen: Considering that the house they’re about to get into look just like the Texas chainsaw massacre house, it’s like, what, how many more tropes can we throw in there?
How many more? Scenes. Have you already seen in every other movie?
Rhys: Vera refers to it as it’s Rob Zombie’s house when she pulls in the parking lot. And then when she walks in, she says, it smells like old ladies in here. [00:31:00] Sure. Mother informs her is just the smell of must. Which is interesting
Stephen: considering that when the big guy shows up he’s smelling so it’s interesting.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Beth loves typing with a typewriter, an old, big, heavy ass typewriter. Yeah. Which she’s carrying around, then they find this Chinese puzzle box mirror, which isn’t a thing. I was going to say
Stephen: who the hell makes one with that big of a doll in there. And how come they didn’t see it when they first opened it?
I saw the shadow. Because I was looking it up. I was like,
Rhys: I’m not familiar with this, cultural phenomenon of the Chinese puzzle box mirror. It’s just not a thing. It was something he made up for this. It’s just a mirror that opens.
Stephen: Yeah. Cool. And then try and make it Hellraiser ish.
Yeah.
Rhys: But yeah, and then there’s that stupid, spooky, noisy doll in there. If it had been me and that had jump scared me, I’d have just ripped it out of there. Yeah, I would have saved myself a lot
Stephen: of trouble later in the film [00:32:00] here. Oh, thanks grandpa for the spooky doll in the mirror. That’s going to keep my kid up all night.
We love it.
Rhys: Yeah. Beth starts her period. It’s very Carrie esque like she had no idea this was coming and Oh my gosh, she’s freaking out and crying about it. And of course Vera doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the fact that her sisters on her period and their mom comes out. Vera’s outside to say you could have been nicer to your sister.
And fear is no, I don’t have to, you like her better than me anyways. And then she’s, she points out and here’s the first little hint of things to come, she’s you know what I found the other day, she actually has written out interviews between herself and someone on TV, like she’s some famous author,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: And the mom’s just give it a rest. She’s. She’s still nice. She’s a nice kid. Just let me enjoy that. And then Vera’s I know you love her more, and then she bends down to pick up something she dropped, and while she’s bent down, she headlights in the driveway.
Stephen: And this whole [00:33:00] reaction of Vera I was hoping for more of a character arc with her because she’s very rebellious.
She’s very angry towards her mother and her sister and then she like breaks down. Cause she’s, it really, it’s bugging her. It’s upset. You could tell that, but really that’s her whole character arc right there. It stops at this point and doesn’t continue into the movie, which I was a little disappointed.
I’m like, cause it, It seemed like he was trying to do something bigger, stronger, but it never developed. It once the invasion started, it was all just, let’s confuse you with what’s real, what’s not. I, yeah,
Rhys: for sure. That. We’re going to confuse you about what’s real and what’s not. I think this whole thing so what happens with Beth, they’ve laid the groundwork for it here.
With the, she’s creative, she makes up her own world, she imagines what her life’s going to be like and the whole thing with Vera here. If you’re going to take any takeaway out [00:34:00] of this, throw away 15 minutes of the film is that Vera has attitude. She’s a fighter. She’s got the skills necessary mentally to keep herself alive and functioning for what’s to come.
So yes, it would have been nice to see some sort of arc to her character because that’s what like a good story does. This sets you up to here’s where they are. You know going into the conflict, but it there’s no growth Except for beth kind of grows a little bit over the course of it but
Stephen: yeah, but I mean I even made the note I over I felt overall that the movie was Not so much telling a story As just home invasions, scene after scene psychological break in reality, scene after scene, alternate, but without any real story to push it.
I’ve seen other home invasions movies that have more [00:35:00] of a story. I just didn’t feel there was a story here. It was just
Rhys: scenes. Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s not uncommon. Necessarily in new French extremity either. If you watch tension, high tension, it is literally just, home invasion, fighting back home invasion, fighting back like the entire movie, the first 10 to 15 minutes, literally throw away the material.
It does not make any difference at all.
Stephen: So maybe I’m just being too American.
Rhys: Not necessarily because Americanism has really embraced that. Yeah, to the point that you have cabin in the woods where they basically are making fun of that with the first 15 minutes of the film and they’re like, Oh, hey, the guy at the gas station is going to warn us not to, that kind of thing.
And then they make it all meta. Yeah, I just. I don’t want to say I find it bad in this film. I just find it disappointing because it doesn’t raise to the level that, the guy’s capable of, there’s a noise [00:36:00] downstairs, a thump, the girls play it off, whatever. It’s an old house.
And then mom is downstairs moving boxes. There’s no cell service. She establishes that with her phone. She gets a phone call and it doesn’t work. And then out of nowhere, the fat man comes running in, basically just picks her up and runs her directly into a wall. And I have in my notes I’m not really sure that wouldn’t have just outright killed her.
Yeah,
Stephen: he was moving.
Rhys: Yeah. And he’s huge. So that’s a massive amount of force crushing you into a wall. He’s holding a baby doll. He finds another one. He’s instantly preoccupied with the baby doll. Just stops. Whatever he’s doing is looking at the baby doll. The girls see him. And then you have this.
Yeah. Chase that happens between the candy truck woman who comes in because the fat man’s just sitting there playing with the doll. Candy truck woman comes in and sees the curls and runs after them. But the whole chase is done via Foley, which I thought was an [00:37:00] interesting choice. They’re not going to show it to you.
You’re going to hear it happening in the background. The chase must’ve ended because you see the fat man come running by walking by dragging both girls by their hair, pretty effortlessly.
He’s dragging them by their hair. And as she goes past, as he’s dragging Vera past the candy truck, woman flips her off. So now you’ve made that connection. It was the same person who was driving the vehicle.
Stephen: And that’s so obviously, which one is more mentally disturbed? That’s a interesting discussion.
Rhys: The whole concept of mental health is huge in this film because There’s not a real well adjusted character in any of it. That’s true.
Stephen: Yeah maybe the mom which even
Rhys: yeah the mom on the one hand, you can say the mom just like puts off stuff that she doesn’t want to deal with because she does that with Vera a lot.
But then again, she’s a mom. She’s might have been dealing with this a lot. Yeah. And she’s just like [00:38:00] tired of it after a long trip and she just doesn’t want to. But you have Vera, who’s all antisocial. You have Beth, who turns out is delusional. And then you have Candy Truck Woman, who is Gender dysphoria and super co dependent on his big brother.
And then you have the big brother. Who’s completely he’s not bright. Easily distracted. And then he has like auditory hallucinations all the time.
Stephen: Yeah. It has his violent outbursts, but honestly, he’s the least scary because the rest at least understand reality. He’s just not part of reality.
Yeah. There’s a lot of different mental health aspects in this movie over to the top at times, but yeah, you get that in movies most of the time. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. They take her, the girls down to the basement. The fat man starts by sniffing Beth’s crotch. He picks her up by one leg. She doesn’t weigh anything, sniffs her [00:39:00] crotch and then throws her down, presumably because she’s menstruating, I would guess.
Then he switches to Vera. He’s holding her by her throat, picks her up and he’s sniffing her crotch while he’s holding her up. I don’t know about the survivability of that either. They do it a lot in movies. But I’m pretty sure if I just, if I’m strong enough to grab you by the throat, lift you like that.
You
Stephen: got to do some squeeze effect to maintain that.
Rhys: Yeah. And I’m either going to break your neck or just crush your trachea. One of the two, I would think, but now
Stephen: the one interesting aspect of this that he didn’t do, which I was glad of with the giant, the big guy, he wasn’t there trying to sexually molest and rape them.
That wasn’t even his thought. He was. Baby dolls. He was yes sexually perverted. I’ll give it that.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: it didn’t go into the well We’re house invading and we’re gonna rape you, you know Which would be like every 90 every other one of these movies now again, maybe
Rhys: that was endgame, but it never [00:40:00] actually gets to that.
He does drag veera off to a different part of the basement We don’t know what happens We hear her yelling again, nice work with the fully work where you’re getting some vague description of what’s happening elsewhere, but Beth. Takes a second to try and get away, but my sister here,
Stephen: which in all reality, that’s what every cop and every EMT or whatever would tell you to do, because you’re not going to help any matters to stay in the house.
You got to get out to get somebody else there to actually help. So I’m just a 14
Rhys: year old girl, which you’re going to do anyway,
Stephen: a six, eight, 285 pound guy.
Rhys: Yeah. She tries to get out of here. Candy truck woman smacks her down to the floor, points back down towards the basement and says, we just want to play with dolls.
And this is, I think probably the first time you might’ve had hints that you thought it might’ve been a transgendered individual, but when he talks, he’s got a voice like this and you’re like, Oh, okay. I get it. I understand. [00:41:00] Then out of nowhere, the mom comes up and she attacks the candy truck woman. She is.
And that’s one of those kind of things where you talk to people who like get into fights kind of thing and they’re like, Oh, I’m not scared of the big guys. It’s the thin ones who are crazy who just like, because you never know what they’re going to do. I thought the same thing.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: that’s exactly her attack strategy.
She’s just going to launch herself on top and just start. Going to town and see what happens.
Stephen: And she actually is smart. Something breaks. She grabs it to start stabbing them. And she does more than just one stab, which we always talk about. Hit them multiple times. Yeah. And Beth here does something she does throughout the movie that I’m like, oh my God.
It’s okay, nobody’s around me. They’re all distracted. I’m free. So I’m just going to sit here and be cowering and scared.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: She does that throughout the whole movie. It’s oh my God, I wanted to yell at her.
Rhys: Yes. She, she withdraws a lot in this movie in one way or another. In the long run, I, again, I was like, I’m pretty sure [00:42:00] there’s lots of points during their fight that would have actively killed both of them.
It’s a movie, they fight through it somehow. It looks like the mom finally wins. She crawls over to Beth and she tells her to go and run and get help. Vera doesn’t do cause she has to cower.
Stephen: Vera screams from the basement. Mom goes down after her and she has some stamina to be able to get up and do that.
After both attacks, she just had,
Rhys: yes. She doesn’t just go down. She doesn’t just go down there. She attacks the fat man with a piece of crockery, just start stabbing him over and over with it. And then candy truck woman sneaking up behind her and Beth screams and mom turns around and does this perfectly executed jab straight to the throat.
Yeah, that was pretty impressive. Yeah. So the guy dies. Apparently Beth wakes up screaming and falls out of Beth, but it’s false out of bed, but it’s not the Beth we know. Although, the actresses are so close, you don’t recognize it. She’s actually Beth [00:43:00] from 10 years in the future. Her husband.
Yes. That’s what you’re supposed to think. Her husband comes out and when I first time I saw this, I did think I was like, okay, so there’s like this supernatural thing that’s going to take over now,
Stephen: right? Yeah, I will give him that. He doesn’t at this point. He doesn’t use what you would think. It is a bit of a twist.
I’ll give him that.
Rhys: She’s had these, she has these nightmares. Her husband knows she’s got these nightmares. After you’ve watched this a couple of times, you’ll note, there are certain things about it that like hint, like the whole thing flows like a dream. There’s this whole time kind of thing where, Oh, I fell out of bed.
My husband’s instantly here. He’s holding me now. I’m going to instantly transition. To writing, it’s like a dream where like time flows weird and you don’t care.
Stephen: It definitely had a bit of an uncomfortable feel to it.
Rhys: Yeah. All of them
Stephen: did, but I didn’t recognize it quite at the time.
Rhys: And the first time I didn’t either.
It’s the second time, second and third time going [00:44:00] through watching that. It’s Oh yeah. There’s a scene where she’s on TV and when you look at her on TV through the screen and. Playing in her living room. She looks real pale and her makeup’s really bright, almost like she’s a ceramic doll. And I was like, Oh, okay. I should have picked. Obviously I didn’t pick up on it. The first reality
Stephen: invading her psychosis.
Rhys: Yes. Yeah. In this fantasy life of hers, she’s gone on to become a writer in real life. She’s a successful writer. She’s still using that crappy old typewriter.
And she’s done five or so bestsellers from the looks of things. She keeps a framed photograph of H. P. Lovecraft on her desk. And then she gets this phone call and it’s just like the publishing house. Life is so great. We’re selling a million books. Everyone’s coming to your interview because we all love you here.
Stephen: Real quick comment, H. P. Lovecraft, which is an interesting choice for an author. Not only is he the Grandfather of modern horror in a lot of ways, and [00:45:00] inspired a lot of people. He was also very mentally unstable and had issues mentally. Oh, for sure. Himself. So it’s a really good choice for her to choose him.
Rhys: Yeah I mentioned HP Lovecraft here a little bit later on. She’s being interviewed about her newest bestseller. It’s called incident and ghost land. And the interviewer is is this based on real life? And, it kind of transitions from her being in the studio to her being on her couch, watching it.
This is where she looked kind of doll like. And she’s like cuddling with her husband and her kids over there wearing some Harlequin costume.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: And that’s his name. His name’s Harlequin. Which I thought was weird, but okay. And you find out later why, then she gets a phone call and it’s weird sounds and it’s Vera screaming.
She’s Beth, please. You have to come back. Don’t leave me alone, Beth. And Beth’s like his mom there. And then the line goes dead and her mom’s not answering. And I’m [00:46:00] like, Oh, okay. Now here comes, here we’re moving to the second section of the movie. So she heads back to her old house.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: And it’s so creepy that even the drivers like are you sure you want me to drop you off here? Which
Stephen: I was like, really over 10 years. This is what they’ve left it as. Cause it’s cozy.
Rhys: This is one of those cases where I’m trying to think of We, we talked about this previously where you’re like, Oh, it was the black coach daughter where you’re like, man, I got this whole problem with the girls looking too much and I’m going to keep it straight.
And they’re like, Oh, okay. It makes sense. Cause it’s the same girl, it’s the same kind of thing here where it’s like, Oh, the house is still going to look that crappy. It is. Cause yeah, no time has really passed another hint. Yeah. She goes up, she knocks on the door, the music’s ramping up and then her mom comes from around the backyard and she’s surprised to see her.
And her mom’s everything’s fine.
Stephen: And
Rhys: the scary
Stephen: dog was another hint, but it wasn’t [00:47:00] used enough throughout the movie, really. And I wonder if it’s something that actually got cut. Could be. Yeah. It might’ve
Rhys: definitely. Yeah. It doesn’t show up until later on in this fantasy.
And then eventually you see there’s a painting of it in the house, which is where she gets a lot of her augmented reality from yeah, we are over, over dinner. The two of them are eating dinner. She can hear Vera whimpering downstairs. It elevates to a scream. She’s taken to walking herself in the basement.
She hides down there. When she starts screaming they react like mom sends Beth just automatically just go get the first aid kit. Like it’s something she does all the time. Vera bursts out of this closet and tackles Beth and she’s crying and whimpering and screaming, help me. And they put her into a padded room, which is an odd thing to have in your own house.
But okay. After things start to settle down, Beth and her mom end up back [00:48:00] on the couch watching an old interview with Beth on it. And she’s it’s tough to, it’s tough seeing her like this. And or the mom’s I found her last week tied to a radiator in my bedroom. She just keeps reliving that day over and over again.
Beth is asleep now. She wakes up to some banging noises and she opens the Chinese puzzle box mirror. And the creepy doll that was in there is out and it’s standing by itself near the door and then hands reach out of the puzzle box and pull her in. And she wakes up. It’s another dream, dream within a dream.
She’s there’s an alarm clock ringing next to her bed. Help me is written on that mirror. In like lipstick or something. She heads downstairs to see Vera and find some empty shackles and no Vera. When she turns the lights on, it reveals that Vera’s cringing in the corner. And she’s are you going to let me die alone?
They’re making me pay when you’re not there. Please tell them I’m not a bad girl. And [00:49:00] now it’s okay they, she’s referring to the, as them. So it’s not her mom. Cause my first thought was, this is like her mom doing some kind of weird thing. Them, so it’s not just her mom, it’s something else.
There’s footsteps from upstairs, and then you hear her truck, and Vera starts freaking out because of the truck. Beth goes upstairs and catches a glimpse of the truck as it pulls away. And as it pulls away, she goes out to find her mom, and there’s where the growling dog comes in.
Stephen: Oh, okay.
Rhys: Her mom comes out and shoots the dog away and she asked if Eugene came and left her bill.
So the truck wasn’t anything spooky. It was just Eugene doing whatever for whatever bill. Mom and Beth both had this nice evening together. The moms had a little too much to drink. And she’s says, the flesh of my daughters, which is a really weird phrase to be coming from a parent’s mouth. You know what I mean?
Yeah. It’s a weird French [00:50:00] thing, perhaps. She’s I don’t know where your creativity comes from your capacity to create your own worlds. And she claims it incident and ghost land is the best of her novels that she’s done so far. Vera is still in the basement asking Beth why she left her all alone.
Beth goes upstairs and puts her mom to bed. And when she she’s looking up, help me is written on another mirror. She heads out to another bedroom and finds Vera all painted up and chained to the bed like her hair’s done. She’s got all this heavy cake makeup and stuff on. She’s trying to get the shackles off.
She leaves the room to look for a key or something to help get the shackles off and the door slams and there’s the sound of Vera screaming and someone being hit and then it just goes quiet and Beth crawls up to look through the keyhole and there’s a jump scare.
Stephen: Yeah. Again, her reactions are let’s just stand around and not make noise and let’s not [00:51:00] do anything.
Rhys: Have you ever found a door with a keyhole that you could actually look through?
Stephen: Yeah, it happens in movies quite often.
Rhys: Yeah I’ve never, I don’t know that I’ve ever come across that.
Stephen: No, we’ve got some old doors that are close to that, but not quite.
Rhys: Yeah, someone on the inside of that room is knocking on the door and it turns to pounding.
Beth goes to get her mom to find the bedroom key. Her mom’s there is no key to that bedroom. And Vera comes running out into the hallway, only to be assaulted by this invisible force. And right about here is where I’m like, okay. Now I’m not really sure what’s going on. It smacks her around quite a bit.
It breaks her fingers. That was pretty disturbing to look
Stephen: at.
Rhys: Yeah. Beth tells her mom to call an ambulance. She comes back with a pillow and a blanket to treat her for shock. I would assume. The mom comes back and says, I know what you want from your sister. She says this to Vera then she leaves [00:52:00] to go stand out by the end of the road to make sure the ambulance knows where to pull in.
Beth chases her down and asks her what she meant and her mom tells her not to listen to Vera. Again, he’s not overplaying his hand. It’s just actually getting more muddy. And you’re like, I really don’t know what in the world is going on here.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s almost exactly what I thought. I’m like, I know he can string along stuff to confuse you a little bit.
And I know his stuff’s very powerful, but I’m losing it here. The grip of what’s going on and what I’m supposed to be. Interested in and understand it’s a little like you said muddy.
Rhys: Yeah. Beth goes back to where Vera had been and she’s gone. She finds her in the basement. The basement door is closed and locked and she can hear Vera whimpering downstairs and then something smacks on the screen of the basement door.
And you hear the candy truck woman’s voice and it says, we broke your sister. Now it’s your turn. And [00:53:00] see, after seeing it a couple of times, I’m like, who was that statement for? Was he telling that to Vera or was he telling that to Beth? Cause now we know that Beth, was just completely, basically sitting there catatonic there’s a flashback of the fat man dragging Vera off. Beth sits on a chair by the door and the clock shows us two hours have gone by. Now you have no Vera, no mom, no ambulance and Beth’s napping on the counter. That dog is outside barking at the window. She sees somebody and she’s like mom, but candy truck woman grabs her from behind.
And then there’s a quick cut to a record playing the teddy bear’s picnic of all things
Stephen: It fits with the doll theme probably it does,
Rhys: Yeah, beth wakes up on the couch, but something’s wrong. She’s in pain She struggles to a mirror. She’s been smacked around apparently and she’s a little girl again, right?
This is not adult [00:54:00] vera this not adult beth. This is Little girl beth she’s locked in the house You Can’t find her mom. She starts to break down and heads to the basement and asks Vera, what she did to her. She’s going to slap some sense into her. Then we get this flashback to what really happened with her mom.
Her mom was killed. In that fight, it didn’t go the way that Beth seemed to think it was Beth’s been living in this fantasy in her head this whole time,
right?
Vera asks her if she’s back and embraces her since she’s not alone anymore, essentially. So
Stephen: they all recognize when Beth’s checked out and not really there.
And that’s the big man leaves her alone. That’s not what he wants. It’s almost like. He wants the doll, but he wants some of that interaction
Rhys: when she
Stephen: checked out. It’s not of interest to him. So it saves her, which I can see Vera, like you, being upset.
Rhys: Yeah. Her husband and her child were the fantasy were paintings that were down in the basement of some swarthy [00:55:00] guy and a kid in a Harlequin costume.
The help me was written on the mirror down there. Vera has been living off candy this whole time. She’s really thrilled. She’s shoveling it in her mouth, having a good time eating it. Yeah. And Beth hates her for bringing her back into this hell out of her little protected life. And Vera doesn’t seem to take that personally.
She’s just Whatever, I’m gonna eat some candy, you’re back, I’m happy. Yeah. Kind of thing. Even that dog was a piece of artwork in the basement. So this is, now you’re to the third act, basically, in my mind. The first act is the home invasion, the second is the fantasy, and then this third act. This alarm goes off and Vera’s we need to hide.
And she tells her if they take you upstairs, don’t move and don’t cry, it will go easier for you. Vera hides her in this closet type thing, footsteps approach. There’s a knock on the door. The whole shave and a haircut kind of knock and the door reveals, opens to reveal the candy truck woman, Beth [00:56:00] tries to fight, no point, just basically gets knocked out and comes to his makeup is being applied.
I mentioned this before when we were doing martyrs, how he likes to get the camera in, he does that here too. There’s this closeup of her eye. They’re really gentle about putting the makeup on, which is in contrast to how violent they are in everything else they do.
Stephen: Yeah, they really want that their own fantasy of the dolls.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: and I also made note that yay likes the dual girls in jeopardy theme At least these
Rhys: two movies. No, all of his movies are about girls in jeopardy and at one interview I saw he is like I actually can’t wait to do a movie where I get to do it with men for a change And he still hasn’t done it.
So
Yeah, he gives her this big swig of beer and she can see her mom’s dead body just lying over there on the other side of the room. He takes her upstairs and positions her in a room full of dolls in a [00:57:00] loft that has its own closed door. He positions her just and when he leaves, she grabs a hairpin or a pair of scissors and hides it in her hair.
The fat man comes in she hears Vera’s advice in her head about sit still, don’t cry. Fatman’s going through these dolls. He sits them on the lap. He grabs them by the crotch. If it makes any noise, He acts like he’s breaking its fingers. This is with a regular doll. And then he pulls out this butane torch and burns up the doll’s arm.
He notices Beth. He goes to grab the doll next to her as she goes limp. He throws her to the floor and then does that whole one handed pickup thing and sniffs her crotch again. And then he starts the process with her, starts sniffing her neck, working his way down towards her crotch. And she’s struggling and she cries.
And he smacks her a couple times it happens again, and he pulls out the butane torch, but just before he has a chance to use it, [00:58:00] another doll makes a noise, distracting him momentarily. And about now is where I start to get this whole, maybe there’s some sort of supernatural element here, where the dolls are trying to save the girls.
Yeah, but it’s so weak, it’s very, yeah it’s super subtle and everything. It’s actually a, yeah, this is actually better than you just coming out and saying you’re making up Dave’s ex machina to save them. Yeah,
Stephen: that’s exactly what I thought. Yeah.
Rhys: Instead there’s some spirit inhabiting the dolls.
That’s trying, I’m trying to justify it. She takes the scissors out of her hair and stabs the guy in the shoulder. And he starts to groan and cry and he falls into a bunch of dolls who start talking. We can hear what he hears and they’re telling him he’s ugly and he’s dumb. They want to kill him.
Which
Stephen: I was, that was the first part that I’m like, Oh, we’re getting something a little more thick and like mashed potatoes and gravy here. It’s got a little bit to them. They didn’t do any more with him. And I was. [00:59:00] As even who are we supposed to be empathizing with and feeling sorry for the girls or the big guy?
You could argue either way. Neither is really stronger and again, like you said earlier it is muddy as to what they want
Rhys: Yeah. She, he starts destroying the dolls cause they’re saying bad things about him. And she just sits there on the floor. Yup. Hey, there’s my actions. Let’s scream and cower.
She does eventually crawl out of the room, gets to the door that’s locked because the big guy has the key for whenever he’s done. He gets to leave. Candy truck woman’s on the other side, beating on the door. She turns to leave and the fat man grabs her by the hair and drags her off shackles. One hand.
And smacks her a couple of times. Then she claws him in the face. And as he recoils from that, she grabs that huge ass typewriter and cracks him in the head with it a couple of times again, that could kill somebody. Those things are damn heavy. Yeah. It’s all [01:00:00] metal usually. Yeah. She grabs the key from him and heads to the door.
When she hears something on the other side. And here’s your shining tribute as the candy truck woman smashes through the door with a sledgehammer. So she takes that typewriter and smashes a window before he gets in. And then she hides herself. So when he comes in and he sees the window smashed, assume she went out, but she’s in the puzzle box mirror.
So the candy truck,
Stephen: you’ve been clown thing.
Rhys: Yes. The candy truck woman has gone outside to look for fat man’s up, but then that doll starts laughing again inside. When she looks out, Fatman’s not sitting on the floor. So she heads through the door and down the stairs, there’s a close call. She pulls back as Candy Truck Woman walks past this way, and then she goes on, heads downstairs to get Vera, and the two of them head out.
Candy Truck Woman
Stephen: This was another one. It’s like her actions are standing at the top of the steps, loudly whispering, [01:01:00] Fira! Fira! It’s really, that’s your
Rhys: best choice? Yeah. They do make it out a back door, over a fence, across a field. You have this sudden music change where it’s almost pastoral at this point.
Yes. They go through this copse of trees. How far out do they live?
Stephen: Because they run forever. It’s like a whole night they’re running. It was night when they left and it was morning when they end up at the field. That’s a long scene. They’re running through the woods. They’re running through the field.
They’re running over a hill. They’re running more. It’s like they probably met the Hobbits somewhere in there.
Rhys: The police are there. Police are driving down the road. They start screaming and the police car actually stops. Cause a lot of times in these movies, you’re like, Hey, they drive off, which means the cops are about to die.
Yes. They both head over Vera’s gone feral. She’s don’t touch her, and the man heads back to call it in and the female policeman who stays with them says, tell me who did this to you. And Beth says, a witch [01:02:00] and an ogre. They mentioned aunt Clarice and two men in a candy truck. And so the whole time the one cop on the radio is there talking, you can see a vehicle approaching and you’re like, Oh shit, it’s a candy truck.
Oh shit, it’s a candy truck. And it just goes by.
Stephen: Yeah, I was like, really?
Rhys: So the cop calls it in and that’s basically when, as soon as the cop calls it in, it’s done. That’s basically the end for these guys. Yeah. And it didn’t have to be. Not that I’m, proponent of the bad guys getting away.
I’m just saying it didn’t have to be the cops walking back after calling it in, he gets shot twice, falls down, dead. The other cop gets shot twice, falls down, dead. This is one of those few horror movies that does a good job of, Hey, guns are a thing. So candy truck woman doesn’t have to kill them with a scythe or like a drill or something.
Candy truck Romans just pull out a nine millimeter and shoot people, but
Stephen: with a [01:03:00] slow reaction and it is incompetent as the cops were. I was like, is this one of the fantasy scenes? Cause the long running through the woods, is this all fantasy?
Rhys: So the girls never had much agency in actually being able to kill these two.
They’re just too powerful, too quick, too used to doing this kind of thing. It’s, you’re not going to be able to do that if you’re like a 16 and a 14 year old,
right?
But shooting the cops is what actually stops them because they had already called it in. The cops were eventually going to track this down.
The best thing that candy truck woman could have done was leave the girls in the field, get fat, man, and just go, you could have shot them there in the field and let them there to die. But taking them back to the house was the wrong move.
Stephen: That’s, even in reality that’s what happens.
The criminals. Get that [01:04:00] I’ve done it before. I know how to do it. I’m impervious.
Rhys: Yes. This whole feeling of, I can’t be stopped. Kind of thing. Texas chainsaw again. Yeah. So they’re in the candy truck. They’re heading back into the house. Beth is slipping away into her fantasy life. And as Vera is being taken away, Beth finds herself at a fancy holiday get together.
See, it’s a Christmas movie.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: I will watch this at Christmas now. There you go. And
Stephen: now the male cop is a guest. Yes, that’s great. I’m glad he survived being shot seven times or whatever.
Rhys: Yeah. Her mom is there and saying your world is perfect, honey. And then she introduces her mother to some perfect example of a sophisticated man.
Stephen: Her fantasies get less and less realistic.
Rhys: Yes. Yeah. And Harlequin in his costume, which he always is wearing and the husband somewhere over there and no one, none other than HP Lovecraft comes over and sits down next to her. Sure. Why not? And you can [01:05:00] tell that it’s a fantasy because HP Lovecraft would never attend a party where black people were guests,
Stephen: right?
That’s true. He
Rhys: tells her that was intentional. Yeah. He tells her book is amazing and she shouldn’t change anything and he admires her, it’s just like this cherry on top of the Sunday of how perfect could your life possibly get. And then she’s looking through the crowd, young Vera just goes through the party.
And she starts following her and there’s this door where she’s beating on glass on the other side of it. I think this is where the accident happened. Her mom calls her over and tells her not to listen because Vera’s world is an ugly place to be and Beth’s like she’s my sister and I’m going to choose her over this perfect life and she goes through the door into reality.
Stephen: So this is almost the character arc for Beth and it seems like she’s getting more in tune with reality and accepting what’s happening. But I got a theory about that in a minute when we get to the end.
Rhys: Okay. [01:06:00] She goes into reality and Fatman is smacking her around again starting to throttle her.
I’m thinking, oh, she’s going to die here. And then that doll starts to cry and it distracts him again with the Dave’s ex Dolema. Or is this the spirit of her mother, doing whatever it possibly can to make her life a little bit better. Should have
Stephen: had the guy that played mother, be a doll spirit or something.
Rhys: Yeah. A little Javier Botet in there. Yeah. She leaves. Him up there because the doll is distracted. And finds a candy truck woman attacking Vera. And then she bites it. This is the effects on this are very loggy a like stringy skin coming off as she bites him. It looked. Painful. And it’s not flashy.
She’s not drilling into him with some auger or anything. Like she’s just using her
Stephen: teeth, like that Tarantino grind house with Rose McGowan, where the blood spewing or Tarantino with a kill [01:07:00] bill with all the blood going everywhere. Just
Rhys: Tarantino.
Stephen: Yeah. Okay. Tarantino. We’ll just leave it at that.
Rhys: Yeah. She bites him and she bites him a lot. She’s doing a really good job. Yeah, he’s going to die of infection. If nothing else. Yes, being a 14 year old girl, he’s just too big. He smacks her Batman comes in carrying that doll’s head over his head and then bang, and he just falls down dead and the candy truck woman starts to cry and he gets up and there’s a cop standing there with a gun.
He’s don’t do it. Don’t do it. And Kenny truck woman gets up at the cop knows, this lunatic’s not gonna so as soon as he flinches, he just basically puts him down to bang. And it’s over the wig falls off. Candy truck woman, not so scary now because it’s not this weird amalgam.
Oh, it’s just a bald guy kind of thing. Cause the threat’s gone. He’s a dead body on the floor and the sisters are weeping and consoling themselves, [01:08:00] they’re being let out on a stretcher and the house has all these mounted heads as they’re like being wheeled out just to make it seem a little creepier, the gas station woman is there. Once she gets outside, yes, there are dolls in cages around on the outside. She looks over at Vera on another gurney and mouths. I love you. As they’re being loaded into the ambulance, she looks up in, in a window. She sees her mom looking down at her. That’s. That’s like the whole spirit thing that I was trying to use to justify the
Stephen: but I think this whole end is more fantasy.
It’s still her overlay of fantasy on what’s really happening in reality. She’s closer to reality, but not quite.
Rhys: The funny thing is she gets in the ambulance and as it starts to drive away, the EMT is making small talk and I’m like. This is gonna be bad. There’s gonna be something bad here. You want to see something really scary.
Yeah, I’m expecting something like that The melody the music stopped and he [01:09:00] says, we’re 30 or 40 minutes out from the hospital until then you’re stuck with me And then he asked her it’s like I bet you play sports and she’s no I like to write stories and then she stares straight down the barrel of the camera and roll credits.
Yes, that’s the end of an incident in ghost land.
Stephen: So here’s my take on that whole thing. We talked about all her break from reality, her fantasy, writing about the future, which they talked about earlier that she wrote these interviews already and that and you could argue. Okay, that’s what kept her saying.
That’s what saved her in this whole thing going on. I think Beth set the whole thing up. I think she. Actually got this all to happen so she would have that cachet to become the horror writer that she imagined the whole time.
Rhys: Wow. Wow. That’s an interesting plot for a 14 year old girl in the new area.
But
Stephen: okay. Yeah, it’s just when she said that the way she said it, I’m like, It’s like she knew everything was going to happen, and she’s glad it happened, and [01:10:00] now she can make her dream reality the reality. Wow, that’s pretty dark, even for LaGuerre. Yeah, it does put a different spin on the whole movie. It makes it Much more interesting.
I thought I was like, wow, if that’s what he really intended applause to him.
Rhys: It’s It is of his four movies. It’s the only one that actually has a Happy ending.
Stephen: Yeah I was thinking about that too texas chainsaw and all these, if we have many other movies where you have a hero the focus protagonist If they aren’t the ones that save themselves and end the whole plot It’s not considered a good story good movie, but so often in horror the final girl the people getting attacked or having the horrific stuff happen They don’t save themselves.
It’s some outside force that has to come in and save them. They just have to endure Yeah, which, when I thought about that after this, I’m like, nah, I got to think about that a little more because that’s a whole different way of telling a [01:11:00] plot, a story than what is advised and what people want and what makes blockbusters and blah, blah, blah,
Rhys: I think there are times like in Halloween where you don’t think twice about the fact that a cop shoots Michael and it slows Michael down enough. That Jamie Lee Curtis actually gets away to come back to do something at the end. But when they remade the silent house, the fact that her uncle does something that distracts her father to help save her, that bothered me because she had done so much on her own up until then.
I think it, it’s one of those things where like La Casa Muta or the quiet house, it’s a restricted set. With only so many members of cast. So it’s not like you’re out in the wild world. Halloween took place in a neighborhood,
right? And
that’s always been, they are with slasher films or they are what they are, but that’s always been my [01:12:00] thing about like Halloween.
Michael Myers is going to walk around from house to house and kill people in a crowded neighborhood on a, important night where everyone’s out in the streets and no one’s going to notice this until like way too late. I think that’s why that suspension of disbelief allowing that to happen is the same thing that I’m okay with the fact that the cop shows up and, happens to shoot the guy at the last second, as opposed to an intimate setting like La Casa Muda, where it’s just you and the bad guy.
If somebody else were to show up out of the blue in some abandoned house somewhere, that would just really be Adam.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: absolutely. Absolutely.
Stephen: All right. There we go. Incident in a ghost land. Yeah. Yeah. Fairly new movie for us recent couple of years.
Rhys: Yeah, it was 2018, 19, something like that.
We’re going to, we’re going to change gears really hard. We never do that. And we’re going to look at Jack Clayton’s [01:13:00] something wicked. This way comes something from childhood. I saw it in the theater when it came out. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I, have you ever actually read the book? I haven’t. And the funny thing is.
As we’ll discuss more next time, Bradbury wrote it as a screenplay first. Oh, really? And then adapted it afterwards. So I would be interested in reading it because so often times it goes the other direction.
Stephen: Yeah. And I must say, I read the book not too long ago. Within the last seven years or something like that.
But his writing is definitely not everybody’s cup of tea. And it would, if you like Reacher or, something like that, this is not going to be something because you have to think a lot more reading his stuff than just having it handed to you.
Rhys: It’s not uncommon for the further back in time you go, the more you’re going to have to [01:14:00] work to read the book.
Yeah.
Stephen: Very much so cool. All right. Something we could, let’s, yeah, that’s it. What he said. Yeah. I’ll do it again. Let me say that three times fast. All right, man. Talk to you later.
Rhys: All right. Take care.
