It Follows (2015)

Matt (00:00:21):

Welcome to 1-Shriek Rental. We spend a week with a movie and then tell you everything that we’ve learned and thought about. And we’re going to do that today with it follows. My name is Matt Chokes.

Laci (00:00:32):

And I’m Laci Goth.

Matt (00:00:33):

I’m so happy.

Laci (00:00:35):

There’s a Mia Goth. I don’t want to be her sister. I don’t want to be the ugly sister, just

Matt (00:00:40):

Like it

Laci (00:00:40):

Follows.

Matt (00:00:41):

And I kept saying to Laci, “What about Mia Goth?” And you’re like, “You a goth? What are you talking about?” And I’d be like, “Oh, here we go again.”

Laci (00:00:47):

Who’s on first? I will be stabby. No. I will be –

Matt (00:00:53):

I love Laci Goth. We’ve been doing that for how long? How about

Laci (00:00:56):

Mia Goth?

Matt (00:00:57):

Eight years. Came before Mia Goth. Then

Laci (00:00:59):

I will be Laci Elizabeth Goth, which sounds funnier to me.

Matt (00:01:02):

But it’s Elizabeth who is the bride of Frankenstein. So that’s why. Yes.

Matt (00:01:08):

Yeah. What is this podcast? Well, Laci and I, Laci Elizabeth Goth and I are married. Our skeletons bone in holy matrimony. And so that explains the things that we say about each other. It’s okay. Don’t cancel us. We won’t cancel each other. We love you. We love each other. We spend a week watching a movie, researching it, and then talking to each other and watching the movie multiple times. And then we tell you everything. We’ve learned two components to every episode, the history section, which we record on one day. Then we go watch the movie a second time and then come back and record a movie review. And that’s the second part of the episode. And if that’s the only part of the episode you’re interested in, you can look at the description and skip to that part of the episode.

Laci (00:01:45):

And I’m not judging you.

Matt (00:01:47):

No. No,

Laci (00:01:48):

I’m not.

Matt (00:01:49):

You got stuff?

Laci (00:01:49):

No. No.

Matt (00:01:51):

I think she’s judging you. It follows. It follows. Oh, but Laci did have the great idea. I really think this is a great idea. 2010’s Horror. Coincidentally, that’s when we were around as adults watching movies. To be

Laci (00:02:10):

Fair, we’ve been around for four different decades of things.

Matt (00:02:15):

I know, but we had – We could have

Laci (00:02:15):

Picked anyone.

Matt (00:02:16):

A little bit of disposable income. These movies are old enough where they’re old enough to settle and have a legacy and have people talk about them and fan theories.

Laci (00:02:25):

We can talk about them as have they withstood the test of the time they’ve had. And just did it do anything for horror as a genre? I don’t know. It’s just an interesting time to come out because I feel like horror was really fucking sagging five years before these movies. Where did it hit? I feel like where it hit a bump was when all we had was the…

Matt (00:02:53):

Torture porn.

Laci (00:02:54):

That was a sag time. Yes. Yeah. I guess the saw days were… But was it reinvigorated with the fucking scary stuff? The movie that

Matt (00:03:03):

Was scary? The screams?

Laci (00:03:04):

No, love. The scary stuff.

Matt (00:03:06):

The scary stuff.

Laci (00:03:07):

The married couple who

Matt (00:03:09):

Go around. The conjuring? Yes,

Laci (00:03:10):

Thank you. I feel like it was reinvigorated by

Matt (00:03:13):

Those. I’d say that’s all tied into the blumhouse thing and I think the blum era takes off in 20… Well, paranormal activity was huge. See, when we talk about horror rising and falling, I never know because it’s always like, yeah, but what about this movie? Th movie was great and that movie was great. You know

Laci (00:03:31):

What? Forget it. I like horror

Matt (00:03:36):

Movies. I love horror movies.

Laci (00:03:37):

Got to like it.

Matt (00:03:38):

And these are also movies where we can remember, oh yeah, I remember us watching that movie together on our sofa or whatever.

Laci (00:03:44):

And I was an old enough person in two movies enough to have been like, this was my reaction at the time. Kind of interesting if it changes now because did I change or did culture change? Is it both?

Matt (00:03:56):

That’s

Laci (00:03:57):

Why it’s interesting.

Matt (00:03:57):

And more so with the –

Laci (00:04:00):

My nostalgia isn’t there, but my memory of how I felt about the movie at the time is. That’s what’s interesting.

Matt (00:04:08):

And what’s going on in the world is going to inform how you view a movie. I think that I think of it follows differently than I thought of it when I first saw it.

Laci (00:04:15):

Why don’t you situate us, Matt?

Matt (00:04:18):

The next movie we covered, The Purge is a movie that was very deliberately trying to comment on the era in which it was made and this era that I’m fascinated by, which is the Obama era, which I think is one of the dumber eras when the world was burning, but people like me were like, “No, everything’s good. What are you talking about?”

Laci (00:04:33):

Progress.

Matt (00:04:34):

And you can see it in the movies and we will detail that as we go.

Laci (00:04:38):

Are you saying we had banana time? Are you saying we had time to twiddle our thumbs and –

Matt (00:04:42):

So we were Nero fiddling while Rome burnt, you’re saying?

Laci (00:04:47):

Am I? I don’t know, Matt. Am I? I just mean when people feel like the… What is that? The hierarchy of needs… Who am I doing?

Matt (00:05:00):

When Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is met.

Laci (00:05:04):

During the Obama years, would you not say that we felt that we were up a hierarchy or lower one, whatever one’s the good way?

Matt (00:05:11):

I think we knew that everything was bad, but lied to ourselves and said it’s good because –

Laci (00:05:15):

We were rewarded this thing.

Matt (00:05:16):

The New York Times is telling us it’s good. And even though it’s like, “But I don’t have any money and I’m never going to afford a house.” And like, “What are you talking about? You’re great. Everything’s great.” And we’re like, “Yeah, it is great. You’re right.”

Laci (00:05:26):

We weren’t awake to

Matt (00:05:27):

What they were

Laci (00:05:27):

Doing to us.

Matt (00:05:28):

And what I’m saying, and then by they, I mean just sort of the media blob, the cultural consensus, all of this. I don’t know.

Laci (00:05:34):

All right.

Matt (00:05:35):

This all might be very boring. It follows, though, was very warmly received by that cultural blob. I do remember a sort of divide among people who like horror movies and don’t like horror movies is this was a horror movie that people who don’t like horror movies seem to embrace more than your horror fan.

Laci (00:05:52):

When did Ghost Story come out, a ghost story?

Matt (00:05:54):

2017.

Laci (00:05:56):

And this is 2015.

Matt (00:05:57):

Yeah. If all this comes out in 2014 in film festivals wide release in 2015.

Laci (00:06:02):

I guess I’m trying to figure out where we’re situated in Mumblecorp, because this is a Mumbly movie.

Matt (00:06:06):

This is after Mumblecorp.

Laci (00:06:07):

But it works because it’s very much dipping into 1970s horror. So the way they talk is realistic and it’s not distracting. But these are kind of subdued perform… These kids are, dare I say, low-key.

Matt (00:06:24):

Yeah. It’s very naturalistic both in the way it looks, the way the actress acts. You’re not used to seeing a scene where your main character just kind of looks at some bugs and the flowers and stuff. So it’s kind of Terrence Maliki. I think they’re

Laci (00:06:40):

Saying something about her.

Matt (00:06:42):

Yes, I know, but all of these are things that you’re sort of hoity-toity film critics like, yes, this isn’t like the normal horror trash. I can appreciate this.

Laci (00:06:52):

This isn’t some bimbo. I don’t even see her boobs when she’s having sex with these fellows.

Matt (00:06:56):

That being said, I really, really like this movie. I’ve always liked this movie. It had been a long time. We both watched the end where we really enjoyed The End of Oak Street earlier this year, David Robert Mitchell’s newest movie. Yes. He’s only made four movies total, but – What were the

Laci (00:07:09):

Other two?

Matt (00:07:10):

The first was The Myth of the American Sleepover, Then It Follows, Then Under the Silver Lake, then End of Oak Street.

Laci (00:07:17):

Have you seen the other two?

Matt (00:07:18):

I have.

Laci (00:07:19):

And?

Matt (00:07:20):

We’ll talk about them in the history segment.

Laci (00:07:23):

It’s almost like that’s what we’re supposed to do right now.

Matt (00:07:26):

Yeah.

Laci (00:07:27):

Okay.

Matt (00:07:28):

You and I had seen this movie before in 2015. Did you remember anything about it? If somebody said it follows, what would your reaction have been?

Laci (00:07:38):

I think I mixed it with another movie that also is running away from something that’s spreading, and I don’t know what it is because I don’t think it’s the Smile movies. I would’ve said, “Oh, that’s the movie about STDs or whatever. Your past is following you.” I think I thought it had a very simple metaphor it was going for, and I wouldn’t have thought it was as interesting to watch as the experience was yesterday.

Matt (00:08:08):

It’s deeper. I don’t know. Yeah. If this movie were actually about sex and it’s a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases,

Laci (00:08:15):

It would be

Matt (00:08:15):

The most boring shit

Laci (00:08:16):

To ever. That can’t be what I though at the time. It’s too stupid. Yeah. Yeah. And this movie’s constantly addressing class issues, so I’m still working through it.

Matt (00:08:26):

Yeah. We will give our feelings as to what we think this movie means. That is the thing we like to do is talk about theme. I like that. And talk about the tension between what we think the artist themselves is saying versus the meaning we derive from it based on what we see and experience. And I have a very, very clear idea of what this movie is about. I think it’s going to be different from – I think

Laci (00:08:47):

It’s your favorite idea.

Matt (00:08:48):

Well, I know, but it’s getting at it in a very unique way, I think. So yeah, I think it’s a very successful movie. I think though that it almost might get dismissed from that era of elevated horror. And I pair this with the Babadook, which came out around the same time.

Laci (00:09:05):

Which I also cannot watch because it has to do with mom stuff and things that shouldn’t happen physically. Not from a mother, but because of physics.

Matt (00:09:14):

No mom should.

Laci (00:09:16):

I don’t like when you mix the things that can’t happen

Matt (00:09:19):

With

Laci (00:09:19):

Moms.

Matt (00:09:20):

We won’t be watching Hereditary this morning. We will

Laci (00:09:22):

Not, or The Witch.

Matt (00:09:23):

No. Okay.

Laci (00:09:24):

Wasn’t there a Goat one too? I don’t like that

Matt (00:09:25):

One. That is The Witch. There’s a Goat in The Witch. Old Bill. Black Phillip. Black Phillip.

Laci (00:09:29):

Old Bill.

Matt (00:09:31):

Old Bill. Old Bill. All right. Let’s get into the history of It Follows. Why don’t we? All right. David Robert Mitchell, I think I erroneously said last week that It Follows was his first movie. Wrong. He made a… Wrong. He made a movie called The Myth of the American Sleepover. More on that movie in a second, but this man was born in 1974 in Michigan, grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, as you can tell from It Follows, and the end of Oak Street. So he grew up, as I said, grew up in Detroit, went to Florida State, film school at Florida State, says his favorite movie of all time is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. It is all over this movie, Rear Window. Rear Window and Halloween are the two movies you can’t stop thinking about when you see It Follows.

Laci (00:10:38):

Just looking through your window, looking across to the… Is that the rear window parts where you’re looking across the way and you’re trying to figure out who’s looking in?

Matt (00:10:48):

But what Rear Window does is it’s about a man who’s spying on other people, but then makes you part like an accomplice and it uses the camera and this movie uses the camera. And Halloween does this too, of calling attention to I’m seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing. Like you always like to say, “This is none of my business. Why are we in Micah Monroe’s room while she changes clothes? This is none of my business.” It’s stuff you see in movies all the time, but this movie by using the camera and very, very slowly pulling in on her like the monster would do, is calling attention to the camera’s role in all of this, which is something that Hitchcock does with Rear Window and The Carpenter does with Halloween. Very

Laci (00:11:28):

Effective outside the hospital scene of the different vignettes of people using the hospital in various ways and why would they be there? And then you do not expect what you see when… Because the last shot you have before that is all the family in there around her. I’ll talk about that when we get to that scene.

Matt (00:11:43):

That’s a very rare window sequence because all these people live in their own What do people do in an apartment building? Yeah. So he made this movie The Myth of the American Sleepover on a $50,000 budget with first time actors. It screens at South by Southwest in 2010, gets distributed by IFC in 2011 to positive reviews. The story of this movie, which I watched today, and it’s a good movie. It’s an interesting movie. I

Laci (00:12:10):

Would say it’s a fantastic title.

Matt (00:12:11):

Yeah.

Laci (00:12:12):

Title alone, I want to watch

Matt (00:12:13):

It. A title that tells you kind of what it is, and it’s so much in line with the rest of his filmography, I think, and what he’s obsessed with.

Laci (00:12:20):

Unaccompanied minors.

Matt (00:12:23):

That, yeah. But also – The role

Laci (00:12:25):

Of parenting.

Matt (00:12:27):

Yeah, kind of latchkey parents, but a longing for an imagined American childhood past.

Laci (00:12:34):

I’ll say both movies seem to have a longing for a safe childhood where they can just ride their bikes. They’re like both sets of children seem to have been… That’s been taken from them, but for very different reasons.

Matt (00:12:47):

It follows hand in folks. And a thing I’ve noticed, people, I don’t remember where I first heard… Somebody on Field Twitter or something pointed out how many directors, like O-Tour directors, they seem to not like setting movies in the present.

Laci (00:13:03):

Because

Matt (00:13:04):

They’re working

Laci (00:13:04):

Out something?

Matt (00:13:05):

Not just because they’re working out something and because they’re all nostalgic saps, but I think they don’t like having to deal with phones, both because there’s story reasons, but also it’s cinematically unpleasant to observe people just stare down at phones. And It Follows is so weird because when I watched it a few months ago after we saw End of Oak Street and thought this movie set in the present, but they’re acting like it’s the 80s. They have cell phones. Somebody’s reading a clamshell Kindle, but otherwise they’re behaving exactly like cell phones don’t exist. Their cell present.

Laci (00:13:40):

Yeah. They play board games. They watch old movies on old TVs.

Matt (00:13:45):

They

Laci (00:13:45):

Watch cable. They’re always together. They work at an ice cream shop.

Matt (00:13:49):

Right. And now I realize, oh, I think this is supposed to be kind of a mishmash of all times with anachronistic technology and…

Laci (00:13:56):

Like licorice pizza. No, that’s not a mishmash. But I do mean something like, not running with scissors, the Royal Tendenbaums, how it’s like…

Matt (00:14:06):

Yeah. But unlike Royal Tendenbombs, it doesn’t call attention to that. It’s just the cars are too old.

Laci (00:14:11):

Yes.

Matt (00:14:12):

The technology’s too old, but then she’s reading a Kendall, they’re watching a tube television, they’re watching old movies. It is

Laci (00:14:19):

So interesting to have the next door neighbor kid have an old station wagon because he has to, and then the rich kid that gets an apartment just to fool her into having sex has a reclaimed, remodeled… What am I trying to say? Like a classic

Matt (00:14:34):

Car from the era that looks clear.

Laci (00:14:37):

A classic car that he was able to… What is the word? Restore? Restore. A beautifully restored classic car that would be worth so much money. So this idea of appropriating poorness is interesting. I’m loving the class stuff and I’ve got thoughts, but I don’t know where they lead probably to the end of Oak Street.

Matt (00:14:58):

Myth of the American Sleepover, it has a story like American Graffiti or Can’t Hardly Wait of one Night. It’s one night in the lives of these teenagers who are on the cusp of a big change in their lives and it’s extremely naturalistic. It feels so much like It Follows, except it’s not a horror movie. But because of that, and maybe it’s just because I watched it the morning after I’ve watched It Follows, it feels like a horror movie because you keep like, “What fucked up shit is going to happen to these people?”

Laci (00:15:26):

Have you seen kids?

Matt (00:15:28):

Never seen kids. Very

Laci (00:15:29):

Naturalistic also, and also fucked up.

Matt (00:15:31):

Yeah, and I think that guy is fucked up, but we’re probably going to cover it one day. Mitchell told Indie Wire in 2011, so he’s giving this interview years before it follows, comes out. “I use the spine of American graffiti to tell a story that is a bit more gentle, natural, and intimate. There are small moments that may not seem important, but are actually very important. Sitting with a girl on the slide and wanting to kiss her, inching a bit closer to someone, hanging out on a summer evening with your friends in the backyard. There are bigger moments too, of course, but there are also those quiet and gentle moments that are important. “And those moments are also all over. It follows even when all the horror stuff starts happening of what if I inch my toes closer to this boy? Ooh, what if I’m looking at the bugs on a blade of grass or I’m just floating in my above ground pool thinking about nothing?

Matt (00:16:17):

So later in that Indie Wire interview, he says,” I like horror films and science fiction too, but at the core, what I want to do are stories like American Sleepover, maybe not always about teenagers, but something that is honest, personal and gentle at its core. “But as follow up as it follows is indeed a horror movie.

Laci (00:16:35):

So he’s a fucking liar. There

Matt (00:16:37):

Are these filmmakers, John Carpenter was one of them. West Craven was another who didn’t want to just be horror movie makers. That’s just where they find all their success and maybe turn their noses down at it a little bit. And I’m not saying he’s doing that, but – What’s

Laci (00:16:52):

His next movie?

Matt (00:16:53):

Under the Silver Lake.

Laci (00:16:54):

And is that a horror

Matt (00:16:55):

Movie? No, it has horror elements, but it’s like a stylized kind of, not Tarantino, but if I tell you Tarantino, you might kind of get sort of the vibe it’s going for. And then into Oak Street, the best parts about it are horror. And when we saw that in theaters, you screamed and jumped a lot.

Matt (00:17:11):

Yeah. 2015 interview with Dread Central after It Follows has become this huge hit. Well, this word of mouth sensation. Mitchell talks about the relationship that It Follows has to his first film. He said, “One of my best friends, he edited both movies, both Myth and It Follows. I remember when I shared the script for It Follows, he finished it and he was like, This is like a sequel to Myth. It’s just this fucked up nightmare sequel. We started laughing about it. When I was working on the script, I had just made Myth because I wrote It Follows in 2011 and I did a similar sort of world in the sense that I imagine characters like the characters from Myth, but a little bit older and in that similar environment, what would happen if they were in the middle of a nightmare? One of my favorite things about It Follows is these characters act like –

Laci (00:17:54):

Their age.

Matt (00:17:55):

They act there. And I feel like 19 years old is kind of an age that you don’t normally see depicted on screen. And Micah Monroe’s great at like she’s basically a kid, but she’s an adult and she’s playing the weird in between world of that.

Laci (00:18:10):

Yes. Well, and she’s drinking, so that’s why I though she was 21. I didn’t know she was 19.

Matt (00:18:15):

Because

Laci (00:18:15):

Hugh is drinking as well. They even say he’s 21, but he’s lying because he’s still in high school or at least that’s how they found him. I guess he doesn’t have to be still in high school to be found in a yearbook then.

Matt (00:18:27):

Yeah. And you can be 21 and live with your parents and 19 years old and live with your parents. And

Laci (00:18:33):

You still have this freedom to disappear for days and you don’t owe them an explanation, but you could also still live with them. That is a weird time.

Matt (00:18:41):

I love that the characters react to horror in a way that’s so unprepared. The girl at the beginning of the movie running out of the house in her heels, all of us would react so stupidly to any actual horror movie things happening to us. We would not do smart things. We would not do the things that we’re yelling at our TVs for the characters to do.

Laci (00:19:04):

What this movie does so perfect is you don’t stay heightened. You can’t. You’re dying for those respite moments of that tiny bit of normalcy or like, well, maybe now it’s really over. Maybe now we can… I just love that they’re constantly trying to sleep when they can and it’s going on for longer than they thought it would. And so they all sleep in the same room, but the girl that’s a friend, she doesn’t go home anymore. They’re just always together finding time to sleep and do not much else. They’re just worried about Jay.

Matt (00:19:37):

And it’s the first time I’ve watched a horror movie and think like, “Boy, these people must stink now. They’ve been on the run for so long from this monster, no time to shower.” And they’re all just sleeping and sweating and stuff and all close together. It must stink in that room

Laci (00:19:50):

In a good way. The only maybe this isn’t the most realistic is gathering all the appliances and surrounding a pool with them. Who’s doing this? I don’t know. They’re just dumb kids. But what is your plan? I

Matt (00:20:00):

Don’t know. You got to do something.

Laci (00:20:02):

What are they going to do?

Matt (00:20:03):

Electrocute? Our electricity went out the other night for two hours.

Laci (00:20:06):

Dude.

Matt (00:20:07):

It was the apocalypse basically for us, but I was truly like, “I just got to do something. Can I go to the store and buy a million batteries?”

Laci (00:20:15):

I just started walking. I didnt even tell you I left the house. I just started walking down the street to just prove to myself that we weren’t the only house. And we weren’t, and we though we were until I did that.

Matt (00:20:24):

Okay. At least that has a practical explanation. I didn’t know that’s why I was doing it. I know, but it’s just the human impulse of I have to do something.

Laci (00:20:31):

But then there’s the opposite where I’m sitting in the hall outside of Sully’s room. He is having a hard time. He’s in between streaks and all I can manage to do is just sit in the hall on the floor and I’m closing my eyes like, “Just come on, just the power. Come on.” I truly felt like I’ve got nothing. I got no ideas. Matt clearly has no ideas because he’s just standing right next to me also waiting for the power to come on in between streaks. And you’re dying to go back to the thing that you were doing before all this started. I was just watching a movie. Can I just be watching a movie? I want to watch. Can I just watch a movie? I was watching

Matt (00:21:08):

Please. We finally started Widow’s Bay like all the TV people were telling us to, and this is how you do us. In 2015, he told Rolling Stone about the origins of it follows, “I’m around 10 or 11 years old and I’m at school playing with my friends at recess.” Oh, sorry. This came from a recurring nightmare he had as a kid, so he’s describing the nightmare. “I’m around 10 or 11 years old and I’m at school playing with my friends at recess. As I’m looking across the parking lot, I see a small kid walking very slowly towards me. In the dream, I just know he’s a monster. I’d run away as fast as I could, then stop after a few blocks. And there was the kid turning the corner and coming closer and closer. Sometimes I’m at home with my family, but it’s the same thing.

Matt (00:21:46):

There’s someone coming for me. I climb out a window, I’m on the sidewalk, and it’s so slow I can easily get away from it, but it’s always there. I just can’t get away from it. “I love the dream logic of it can be different things, but it’s the same thing and you just know it because you’re in the dream and you just know things like that.

Laci (00:22:05):

Yeah. Yeah. And they switch bodies for some reason, but you don’t know why. Why do they take on different forms and other people can’t see them? So these are all dead people already, I guess. There’s no reason for why it turns into another person.

Matt (00:22:21):

Right. This is a movie.

Laci (00:22:22):

Or three people… We need a big person to kick a hole in this door. Done. Now we need a small person to go through the door, done,

Matt (00:22:33):

By

Laci (00:22:34):

The lake.

Matt (00:22:34):

Yeah. It’s just there’s so many… When I researched this movie, I was trying to avoid wherever I could, articles about here’s what this means, here’s what that means. Here’s how this works, because that makes it less interesting. And I’m sure you can diagram all of this and here’s what this represents

Laci (00:22:49):

In yours. I hope not. I hope not. And what happened? I mean, you’re just assuming these people also are, that’s me. I’m assuming these people also were it followed, which is dark because that little kid was a little kid, but they seem to be in the outfit they were in when it happened. So that’s why some of them are naked. Some of them are peeing. Some of them just have a shirt. Some of them are dressed.

Matt (00:23:15):

I never thought of it like that.

Laci (00:23:18):

Because what else? In fact, when she takes off her clothes and then walks slowly into the water and what you can see are the footsteps of the guys that are in the boat and you just see these boats far away, I’m like, “Oh, is she dead? Is it her turn? Is she it following?” I was like, “Maybe we’re going to shift now and we see her just forever being a person that follows.” But no, that wasn’t what it was.

Matt (00:23:41):

Maybe that’s what the sequel is. Maybe that’s what they follow is. Now she’s in they them. As

Laci (00:23:46):

Fuck.

Matt (00:23:48):

But it also takes the Halloween thing, Michael Myers, one of the things about him is he doesn’t run, but he always catches you.

Laci (00:23:54):

Yeah.

Matt (00:23:54):

And that’s terrifying. Right

Laci (00:23:55):

Because there’s only so many places to go, only so many places we have access to. We need to get further away from you, but by the time I’ve gotten you to the town over, does that mean I can go home again? Because I guess you got to follow me here and then there. But what if I’ve gone all the way over here, don’t wait long enough, you’re halfway to my house, then I go back to…

Matt (00:24:15):

It seems like no, it doesn’t have to do that. It’s just like if you go a long way away, it will catch up. It’ll take it a little longer. It’ll take it longer, but not like – Just

Laci (00:24:24):

Enough for you to get a little bit of normalcy back kind of, until you’re driven completely mad by the routine and then you just go out in front of a car and get hit.

Matt (00:24:35):

Back to the Indie Wire interview, he says, “A lot of the elements of the film truly came from that nightmare. I was being followed by monsters. I instinctively knew it was a monster. I saw it, but it would just look like different people. I remember one moment I was playing with friends and the other kid walking towards me and kind of knew that this was some kind of vampire monster. It was walking very slowly and coming straight for me and my friends didn’t see him. I could run away and I could get away, but he would just keep coming. I always remembered that nightmare and always wanted to make a horror film. Much later as an adult, I added the sexual element and a bunch of other stuff. The way I see it is these characters are immersed in a nightmare and there isn’t a logical way you can climb out of a nightmare.

Matt (00:25:12):

If it becomes about them solving the origin, I wanted to avoid that. And there are a lot of horror films that do that and there are some that I like and some that I don’t in terms of what it turns into, of when it turns into that. Oftentimes it could be a really interesting idea and I’m really interested in how the characters would react to this nightmare.

Laci (00:25:29):

Yeah, that’s all Final Destination is, is like trying to prevent the deaths going down the chain. How am I the stop? All you can do is go to… Remember that one guy that survived? Let’s go talk to him.

Matt (00:25:43):

And you have as if you’re learning screenwriting, one of the first things they have it drilled into you is your characters need to solve something. The resolution of the movie, whether good or bad, has to come about as a result of something they do or a choice they make. The audience isn’t going to be interested if you’re just watching a series of events play out with no causality. But I don’t think that’s true. I think a movie like this where you could argue they don’t do anything to stop it.

Laci (00:26:11):

But they’re just like what you said, you got to do something.

Matt (00:26:14):

And

Laci (00:26:15):

They sure do do a

Matt (00:26:15):

Lot of

Laci (00:26:15):

Something.

Matt (00:26:16):

Exactly. Yes.

Laci (00:26:17):

It’s a fucking shit. The only solution that seemed at all ethical and… It’s not even ethical, not even a lot, and not even at all and reasonable was if you did this with a sex worker only because it seems to take about three days before it starts affecting the person, they will have already slept with someone. That person probably will already go back to their wife or whoever and sleep with that person. You need to sleep with the most promiscuous person so that it just goes like 20 down a chain. But then what do you do with that last person? I don’t fucking know because it’s like if they don’t know to be looking out

Matt (00:26:57):

For the it

Laci (00:26:57):

Follows, then it’s just like… That’s them

Matt (00:27:01):

Dying. But then that’s just you putting it out of your own hands of someone dying. You are still responsible for someone else dying.

Laci (00:27:07):

Yeah.

Matt (00:27:08):

Yeah.

Laci (00:27:09):

Yeah. You just killed 20 sex workers.

Matt (00:27:10):

It’s fucked up. In an interview with Yahoo that year, there’s this little exchange. The interviewer says, “I was just recommending this film to someone and as I was giving a synopsis, I realized I’m making this sound like a terrible movie.” And Mitchell says, “You can’t really describe it. When you say it out loud, it sounds like the worst thing ever.”

Laci (00:27:28):

No, it sounds like, “Oh, I know where that’s going, but you don’t.”

Matt (00:27:31):

And the interviewer says, “So it’s not just me.” And he says, “No, no, no. I avoided talking about the story when people would ask me, what are you working on?” I would not pitch it. If you say it out loud, it’s really tough to not have it sound pretty ridiculous. So I would say, “Just trust me and know it’s a horror film.” As far as getting people on board, it was about sharing the script. I put a big look book together. I did a lot to try to get people to understand that it’s about the tone of

Laci (00:27:54):

The film. Yes. Much like Halloween, or at least the beginning of Halloween. I guess the tone goes all the way through, but it’s those real quiet parts that before you know there’s a monster around that

Matt (00:28:05):

Are the

Laci (00:28:05):

Most realistic parts. So this movie starts… It doesn’t start here, but it has this big parking garage moment that you think, oh, this is a fucking escalation. I guess the rest of the movie’s going to be like, whoa, like this. This feels like a horror movie. And even that is dealt with realistically. It’s like, yes, how would you do this? How would you get someone to see so that they can then carry it on and then get someone else to see it? Because it doesn’t do us any good if we don’t know, if the person we’re spreading it to doesn’t know to try to stop it. But the idea of tying someone to a chair after you just had sex with them, chloroforming them, and you’re in a parking garage, you’re just pushing them around.

Matt (00:28:49):

It’s the best he can do given the information he has. And it’s just interesting that what that leads him to do is make a horror movie, basically, is put you in a horror movie scenario. I’m in the movie hostile.

Laci (00:29:01):

And you’re in a situation you can’t explain, right? Because the only tools we have are, well, you were kicked out of a car in your underwear, you’ve collapsed on the lawn, you clearly had sex, you were tied up, but you’re telling me you went on a date with this guy, you had loving sex, it was consensual. Then he tied you up, then he told you weird things, then he dumped you out of the car. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like, but wait, where’s the… Because if you don’t understand his motive, which is to fuck this hot chick, because you don’t know the rest exists. They even show her in the hospital getting a rape kit and it’s like, why are you doing this? She already told you she had consensual sex.

Matt (00:29:47):

Because that’s like he just said, “I heard you say it out loud and that doesn’t make sense. No, no, no.” Right, but

Laci (00:29:53):

We don’t have a process for this. I don’t know his name. You don’t know his real name. All we can do is File a report, which guys, that’s all police ever can do is file a report. And let me officially note down your injuries by taking her to the… She spends a lot of time in the fucking hospital. Their bills must be through the roof.

Matt (00:30:14):

Producer Laura D. Smith, producer of it follows says, “There’s a lot of purposeful ambiguity in the script, but it was also clear that David wasn’t using sex here as a specific metaphor or in the name of some sort of message. I could certainly see why people would question it. However, and I don’t think he’s discouraging audiences thinking one way or the other.” And then Mitchell said, “It’s not a moral film. Obviously you get this through having sex, but you also survive by having sex since that’s what is passing this on. It’s a bit more complicated than just sex equals death.” And she’s not a virgin. She’s had sex before. And

Laci (00:30:51):

She’s casual about it. It doesn’t seem tragic. All the sex she has looks kind of enjoyable except for the allusion to the boat sex. All three major sex moments are sweet. It’s like a super loving thing from this asshole neighbor guy. He’s still an asshole. And the very next scene he’s hitting on a chick and I’m thinking, oh, he’s going to spread it. No, he’s just constantly ogling people. He goes from ogling the little weirdo with the clamshell kindle while she’s climbing up on a thing while they’re trying to find answers, then to kind of ogling the little sister then back, well, I guess I’m fucking the bigs.

Matt (00:31:34):

He’s

Laci (00:31:34):

Not a nice guy, but that was a sweet thing to

Matt (00:31:37):

Know. But he’s not a bad guy either. He’s just a horny teenage boy. He’s a

Laci (00:31:41):

Fucking

Matt (00:31:42):

Guy. A girl’s butt’s in front of me. Even if I’m running from a monster, it’s a girl’s

Laci (00:31:46):

Butt. You

Matt (00:31:49):

Don’t see that every day.

Laci (00:31:50):

So the sex that they have, the relationship, and it’s just kind of cute because whoever she has sex with, she like, well, now we’re b boyfriend girlfriend. Both times.

Matt (00:31:59):

So he says, “A few people have asked me, so what is this thing exactly? But anything I would say would ruin it. There’s no logic to it. You can’t really explain a nightmare. It’s more like you can’t escape. Something is after you. It never stops coming. It never stops coming.” If he came out and said, “This is what it is or this is how it works or this is what the metaphor is,” none of that would count because it’s not in the movie. That’s what I say. If it’s in the movie, the way Laci and I talk about movies is if it’s not something you see on screen, it doesn’t count. So even if he says in a Reddit AMA –

Laci (00:32:31):

Absolutely. And there’s no proof unless he says it before Buzz, before it’s sent out to the public and people have made up their minds and said what they’re going to say. I have no way of knowing you didn’t redcon this. You might just be backfilling because you don’t want it to be some other problematic thing people are reading into it. I think once someone assigns it meaning and it’s cooler than your original idea, you’re like, no, that’s definitely what I was doing.

Matt (00:32:56):

It’s just if an artist says this is what my art is about, that means forever, that’s what it’s supposed to mean. And that sucks. Plus there are people, there are authors of books, there are directors of movies who will change their mind about what their own thing means over time. So it’s like now do I have to… We talked about this in inception. If Christopher Nolan said, yeah, that spinning top stops spinning.

Laci (00:33:18):

Right. It’s like, well, not to leave

Matt (00:33:19):

Him. You don’t have to listen to him because it’s not in the movie. And I’m just saying all of this because I have a read about what this movie is and basically what the It Follows monster is, which is it’s a job. It’s about you getting a job. And I don’t know if he would agree with that, but my opinion is just as valid as his, I say. Do

Laci (00:33:34):

You mean a career? Because the two kids have a job.

Matt (00:33:38):

An adult. It’s about joining the adult workforce and how that crushes you, your spirit and makes you have to do evil stuff. Once you start,

Laci (00:33:46):

You are running and running and running. And until you’re in the rat race, the people around you don’t see what you’re running from, don’t understand your

Matt (00:33:54):

Struggle. Exactly. Exactly. Why are

Laci (00:33:56):

You not sleeping?

Matt (00:33:57):

I don’t relate to my friends who are one year younger than me. Now I’m leaving my house and I see a big fucking naked guy on the top. My boss just emailed me on a Saturday. What the fuck, man?

Laci (00:34:06):

Okay. God damn it. I didn’t want to totally, totally agree with you. Well, and just the idea of the constant freakouts or the stress levels. God, you’re so stressed ever since you started at the law firm. Associate attorneys don’t have that much pressure on me. Don’t touch me. No one come in my room.

Matt (00:34:22):

You’re so stressed ever since the fucking It Follows monster started following you. God.

Laci (00:34:26):

But you know what

Matt (00:34:26):

I mean? It’s not that stressful.

Laci (00:34:27):

But you need to take care of yourself. We should go to the lake. I’m freaking out at the lake now. I checked my email. Fuck, fuck up.

Matt (00:34:35):

I have no fucking time for someone telling me to like, oh, you got to practice self-care. Do you do anything for yourself? The

Laci (00:34:40):

Guy getting hit with the chair is like him looking over her shoulder on her laptop and seeing the really passive aggressive tone the boss is using in the email. I believe you now.

Matt (00:34:50):

Yeah.

Laci (00:34:51):

Look at the chair.

Matt (00:34:51):

But you’re never actually going to know until you start working there too.

Laci (00:34:55):

And my solutions for you probably aren’t going to fix your issue because I don’t really understand your problem. So hey, why don’t you give me a job there? Come fuck me, baby. Come fuck me.

Matt (00:35:05):

And that’s also how people get jobs. You think you get a job by sending in a resume writing a nice cover letter? I

Laci (00:35:10):

Just meant the kid at the end finally fucks her and then they’re walking hand in hand home from work because now he gets it. She’s in a little skirt. He’s in a little jacket. They just came home from their jobs.

Matt (00:35:19):

Yeah. See their nice little Detroit suburban family. They’re going to turn on their tube television, but the job is outside knocking on the door.

Laci (00:35:27):

Right. And that job. And it’s just responsibility. Next it’ll be we’re supposed to have a baby. Next it’ll be we’re not taking care of the baby.

Matt (00:35:34):

All in service of the forces of capitalism that have desiccated this area they live in, the deindustrialization of Detroit and its suburbs. And that is also the thing that is following everybody. It’s following all of us. We

Laci (00:35:48):

Still have all the social pressure and none of the tools.

Matt (00:35:51):

And we are desperately trying to just keep away from it and we catch our breath and we look like, God damn it, there it is. It is debt. It’s climate change.

Laci (00:35:58):

Taught our whole life. Don’t go to the poor area of town. Don’t go past eight mile. Don’t do that. Not for any particular reason you’re telling us, but not to do it. And then lo and behold, little white girl does go past eight mile. She gets shot, but she gets shot by her own friend, I want to point out. So it’s true, but you’re telling me there’s boogeymen, but they’re not the real ones.

Matt (00:36:21):

To that point, don’t go past eight mile. That’s the poor area. We know what that means.

Laci (00:36:26):

We know

Matt (00:36:26):

What that means. Oh, also the area I live in turned into the poor area.

Laci (00:36:30):

Yes. And the area that this guy that fucking spread this to us, the fucking company owner, Hugh, whatever his name ends up being, he fucking came down to the slums over here, got me the job, and now I’m his fucking sex slave forever. And then I go to his house, he’s got a beautiful mom who’s present, who knows what he’s up to. He’s got a great car. He has a beautiful house. She’s giving us snacks and inviting us all in. Fuck you, Hugh.

Matt (00:36:57):

But it’ll happen to his family too. This is the economic engine that led to the prosperity. It’s dead. The fruits are, there’s less and less of a each year. And so there’s going to be fewer and fewer Hu families, nice Hu families. And soon just another abandoned house.

Laci (00:37:14):

And the dad being the person that attacks her the worst in the pool, their dead dad, it’s just like, well yeah, him dying is what took away your chance at having any stability in the circumstance you were in. Your mom is completely traumatized by it, assuming that’s what made her an alcoholic. Now you’re orphans because of this tragedy.

Matt (00:37:38):

We’re projecting the sort of tragedy. I mean, it’s a dad who died, so that’s tragic, but they say she has to wake up at 5:15. So it could be as simple as I wake up at 5:15, it’s killing me. I get drunk every night to deal with that. And it’s the only way to get myself to go to sleep with enough time to… And I never see my kids anymore because I have to keep working because it’s following me. That’s

Laci (00:37:56):

Right. She sleeps with her heels on, not because she passed out drunk, because she’s ready to

Matt (00:38:00):

Go work. Efficient. It’s Rocky drinking the eggs.

Laci (00:38:01):

Fucking firefighter.

Matt (00:38:03):

Let’s talk about Micah Monroe as Jamie, AKA J. She’s great. She was 21 at the time of production, an up and coming actress at the time, also professional kite boarder, one of the world’s top ranked kite boarders at the time. There

Laci (00:38:17):

Are seven in the world.

Matt (00:38:18):

She was number 32, so there were at least 32. Her family moved to the Dominican Republic so she could professionally train as a kite boarder. There’s a 2012 article on ESPN’s website about it. It’s like, “Hey, you might recognize her from a movie. Did you know she also kite boards?” And it talks about how she says, “Yeah, I hope I can split my time evenly between making movies and kite boarding.” But no, that was not to be. Get some roles in some major movies like Bling Ring by Sophia Coppola, Jason Reitman’s Labor Day. And then in 2014, she’s the co-star of a great horror movie, The Guest. And then from that she gets It Follows, and she said to LA Magazine in 2015 when they asked her if she is drawn to the horror movie, she says, “No. It was just by chance that these two roles came back to back.

Matt (00:39:05):

My next two movies aren’t like that. The first is a really dark drama that we shot in Iceland. The other is a young adult novel adaptation called The Fifth Wave, but there’s no question I’ll be back in horror if a really amazing script comes along. What I love about my job is challenging myself and finding weird different roles.” And she is in a lot of non-horror stuff. She was the grownup daughter of Bill Palman, the former president in Independence Day two from 2016. She was in a Timothy Chalamet Hot Summer Nights, but she has had the most success in horror movies. 2022’s Watcher, No The, and that huge hit Long Legs from two years ago. So she is a bonafide scream queen. And Laci actually has a very excellent video essay about long legs. Check that out on our YouTube

Laci (00:39:50):

Channel.

Matt (00:39:50):

July. Talks

Laci (00:39:51):

About abortion.

Matt (00:39:52):

Don’t give it away.

Laci (00:39:54):

I don’t remember if that’s my theory.

Matt (00:39:57):

And she’s great in this movie and does a very… I mean she’s in almost every shot. And like I said, the playing the between of I’m a teenager and I’m an adult and I’m kind of neither, 19 years old. It’s a very weird time in a person’s life.

Laci (00:40:12):

It is. And you would think someone who’s got a mom that is absent for whatever reason would take on this role of taking care of their sibling, but they’re in a unique situation, not unique, but they’re in a situation where your sibling’s just as capable as you and has a great friend support system. In fact, you’ve all been friends for a long time. So the kids have kind of built a family and a support. There’s not a dynamic here of I need to take care of my little sister or anything. No, we’re just all being youngish people together in a house using the resources that we have and the routine that we have. It’s not like, “Oh, my sister’s promiscuous, so I’m going to fuck too.” Or, “Oh no, my sister takes care of me. She can’t anymore. Now I got to take care of her.” There’s not any of that.

Laci (00:41:03):

It’s just we’re just people.

Matt (00:41:06):

When they suggest, “Hey, maybe we should-” It avoids

Laci (00:41:08):

Tropes is what I’m trying to

Matt (00:41:09):

Say. “Hey, maybe we should tell mom about this.” It’s almost like not like a normal movie teenager where it’s like, “Oh, she can help us, but it’d be rude of us not to tell our mom about this.”

Laci (00:41:20):

No, no. I mean, they say, no, she will freak out. So they will have to take care of her and she won’t believe me. So that doesn’t help and we’ll be distracted with her. Plus she will be keeping tabs on what we’re doing and we got to run around a bunch.

Matt (00:41:36):

Yeah. She does the sideways mom thing of falling asleep with her shoes on with the empty wine glass and the wine bottle on the dresser. And yeah, It Follows. Micah Monroe became a big star in the horror genre. We’ll be leading the sequel to It Follows, They Follow, which just wrapped filming this summer. Now It Follows was a critical sensation and it was hugely profitable. It was made on $1 million budget. It made $23 million, but I think this movie’s reputation made me think it was a much bigger hit than it actually was. Something like Obsession or Back Rooms, those were also tiny budget movies that made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Laci (00:42:16):

But that model didn’t exist yet.

Matt (00:42:18):

It did.

Laci (00:42:18):

Well, I mean, such a small budget for… I mean, did that huge

Matt (00:42:22):

Ratio? Blair Witch Project, that’s the one.

Laci (00:42:25):

But it’s a unicorn. Nothing followed it for decades.That doesn’t make it a

Matt (00:42:31):

Model. Paranormal activity. Stop

Laci (00:42:33):

Making suggestions. Shut up.

Matt (00:42:36):

I’m just saying I was surprised to see it only made $23 million. But yeah, big hit. We’ll see what they follow is like.

Laci (00:42:46):

When does it come out?

Matt (00:42:47):

Don’t know, but they just wrapped. Timely. It follows. We’re going to go – That’s true. We

Laci (00:42:51):

Didn’t pick this to sync up with anything.

Matt (00:42:53):

Right. Just the 2010s, because we’re at the sixth-year anniversary of it not being the 2010s, I think. So we’re going to go watch the movie again and we’ll return in a few seconds and tell you all about it. It Follows opens on a suburban street. This movie owes so much to Halloween in so many ways. And if I have one complaint about David Robert Mitchell, I think between this and Under the Silver Lake and The End of Oak Street, it’s like a lot of homages. You know what I’m saying?

Laci (00:43:42):

Yeah. Like the Drake of movies, it’s like he doesn’t have really a musical personality, but he will try on lots of them. And at first, it made him beloved because all the things he tried… I’ve never been a Drake person, but all the things he tried, he executed very well until people realized he has no roots in any of these things and he’s just putting on different hats.

Matt (00:44:11):

Movies and music are like… Yeah, there’s no original… Everybody’s just synthesizing all of their influences. It’s just with this movie, it’s so carpenter with Under the Silver Lake, it’s like Hitchcock meets Lynch, meets the Cohen brothers. And then the new movie, it feels like it’s Spielberg and then it swerves and it actually becomes Robert Zemeckis, which I liked. That’s

Laci (00:44:33):

A problem. I mean, just because he’s really good at mashups… I mean, it’s not that it’s a problem, but if I can’t feel the him across all of it, then I don’t think he’s really achieving what autor directors end up having at the end of their career. Just because he does a great impression and a great fusion of two things, I suppose that could be a signature if you’re flawless about it across your whole career, but it’s a weird thing to be your signature. I can really, really impersonate two things at once.

Matt (00:45:07):

All these movies are good. This isn’t a critique. It’s just now that I’ve watched all four of his movies, I’m thinking maybe I’d like to not point at the screen and be like, “Oh, okay, he’s doing that because he loves Hitchcock. Oh, he’s doing that because he loves the Big Lebowski, he’s doing that because he loves the meccus, et cetera, et cetera.”

Laci (00:45:25):

Yeah. Show me something that I can love that’s yours that I will see in someone else’s film one day.

Matt (00:45:31):

Right. And where are we going to get as a film culture if every single director, the only lens they see the world through is the movies they’re obsessed with. But that’s a much bigger problem. Anyway, we pan around this empty street with houses that seem a little too big and like, I mean, so many movies. Barbarian was set in the suburbs of Detroit and you and I have been to Detroit and taken a tour through the sprawl and the…

Laci (00:46:02):

It’s eerie.

Matt (00:46:04):

It is eerie. We also talked about this in the Gone Girl episode, sort of these abandoned McMansions or houses with the lawn where the grass is just a little too high.

Laci (00:46:13):

And in the case of Detroit, because things have kind of been grown over, because it’s been abandoned the longest of these neighborhoods that feel this way, because it would be decades before the 2008 crisis that would have taken over the McMansion issue. It feels a lot closer to the way the neighborhoods that were not focused on after Katrina to be built back just weren’t worthy of coming back. Everything looks like a little place you could make a horror movie.

Matt (00:46:47):

Yeah. And there’s parts of New Orleans that are like that, especially New Orleans East.

Laci (00:46:52):

Anywhere where the Black community was, it was the least prioritized areas.

Matt (00:46:57):

Yes. And that also, and this isn’t coincidental, but it’s also those are the areas that get hit by deindustrialization, by capital fleeing, by opportunities fleeing. And then it’s like in this movie, you have sort of the urban center of Detroit and the sort of evil of decay emanating out.

Laci (00:47:14):

Right, because you can work in the tourism community of New Orleans and make a good living. You can be a professional waiter here. That’s how substantial our restaurant industry is. But if you can’t afford to live anywhere near New Orleans because your community didn’t come back up in New Orleans East, you’re fucked. I mean, it’s not fair. I’m close-ish, but the commute is still… Anyway. And it’s where they grew up. It’s their homes. It didn’t get rebuilt. And if they do get rebuilt now, it’s like they’re completely repurposed, like that high rise hotel that was bought, and I think it’s literally called high rise. And now it’s probably just a posh hotel instead of something affordable in the east. I’m speaking out of my ass, I don’t know, but I feel like, “Oh, look, a big swath of land no one’s done anything with. I’ll make it something neat and not what it was.”

Matt (00:48:06):

When people talk about, “Oh, we need to invest in these blooded communities,” they’re only going to do evil and stuff that’s not going to help anybody. Yeah. That’s the only solutions. What can I

Laci (00:48:16):

Get them to pay for?

Matt (00:48:17):

What can I get

Laci (00:48:18):

Grants for?

Matt (00:48:18):

That’s why I know it probably gets tiring for me to say about every horror movie or every movie we watch like, “It’s about capitalism.” But this movie, to me, it’s so evidently about that. It’s about the creep of this destructive force that consumes everything. And this also feels like a vampire movie, and vampires are such a good – Because

Laci (00:48:38):

It’s a zombie movie, which those feel the same because it’s that slow… I don’t know. Okay. Vampire how?

Matt (00:48:45):

Well, because it’s the person’s responsibility to pass on the curse. It’s like they’re chased by zombies. It’s like vampires who are being pursued by zombies. So you get the curse and now you become the vampire who has to go give the curse to somebody else.

Laci (00:49:01):

Right. And your only two options are you succumb to it and you die and you become one of the zombies, or you thrive and you find ways to step on the people underneath you, but you still remain a vampire because the only real way to succeed is to treat other people poorly.

Matt (00:49:20):

In this opening sequence, we see yet another one of our favorite things to see is just somebody running in a place where they shouldn’t be running and it’s upsetting. It’s a little disturbing. In

Laci (00:49:29):

A pattern that you don’t expect. She’s talking normal enough. She’s responding to her dad. She’s not on drugs.That’s what’s even more unnerving about it is she’s even being polite. A lady asks if she’s okay and she even still cares about manners a little bit. Okay.This is a person with her wits about her, but what she’s doing does not make sense.

Matt (00:49:50):

And what do we see the camera doing in its relationship with her? It’s following her, but it’s behind… It doesn’t catch up to her. This opening sequence kind of gives us the perspective of the pursuing monsters, even if it’s not literally that.

Laci (00:50:07):

The camera’s not on her side.

Matt (00:50:09):

And she’s running away. She runs into the house and the camera moves toward the house and then she runs out of the house and then she gets in her car and she drives away and the camera looks at her to follow her and starts moving in that direction, but the monster is always going to go so slow, can’t actually catch up to her.

Laci (00:50:25):

I just love that she’s in heels and in an outfit that doesn’t make sense to wear with those heels. All she has to do is run two houses down from her own, then into someone else’s yard, then across to another yard, and then just a big giant circle back to her. She just needs enough time in her house to get the keys. That’s it. That person was in her house and she needed to lure them out, get keys and get the fuck.

Matt (00:50:52):

Yeah. And the camera just stays outside. It doesn’t go inside with her. And this is all in a oner, I believe. She ends up on this beach of Lake Erie. Erie. And it is Blake beaches are kind of weird. They’re kind of strange.

Laci (00:51:08):

And beaches at night. Also weird.

Matt (00:51:10):

Calls her dad. And that happens

Laci (00:51:11):

More than once in this movie.

Matt (00:51:12):

Yep. Calls her dad, gets the worst phone call you could ever get if you’re a parent of a young man or young woman. Put

Laci (00:51:20):

It like that. Yeah. Ouch.

Matt (00:51:22):

Hey, I love you so much. I’m so sorry for ever hurting you. No, nothing’s wrong. Talk to you later. All right. Love you, bye. Life pulls up Life360. And then smash cut. She is dead with her leg in this weird angle. Dead in the wrong way.

Laci (00:51:39):

Well, it is implied that her car hits her, but she’s just looking at the car because the person’s…

Matt (00:51:46):

Why do you say that?

Laci (00:51:47):

Because what she stares at is the car, but she doesn’t seem scared of it to run her over. But she is scared of something in that direction. You just don’t know yet at this point in the movie that she’s seeing an invisible person.

Matt (00:51:59):

I did read –

Laci (00:52:00):

So when you see her body mingled like that, you’re like, oh yeah, car did that. But I mean, really what –

Matt (00:52:04):

Never thought that it was a car.

Laci (00:52:06):

But what else would put your leg that way?

Matt (00:52:08):

A really strong ghoul. I don’t know. I don’t know what they like to do.

Laci (00:52:12):

Yeah. We’ll never know.

Matt (00:52:14):

The director did say like, “I’ll give you this hint. Think about what this girl’s relationship is to our main characters or try to figure it out and that will unlock a lot of things.” I did not think about that. I did not try to figure that out. But if maybe she’s down the chain that leads to Jeff/Hugh, some guy had sex with her, now she’s getting killed. I don’t

Laci (00:52:39):

Think that’s what he means by relation. I think he means she’s a similar age. She can drive. She can come and go. She pleases from her house. That probably means she’s not in high school. She’s of that age.

Matt (00:52:50):

She’s the

Laci (00:52:50):

Age of, “I need to figure out what I’m doing.”

Matt (00:52:52):

The monster’s only infecting older teens. Well,

Laci (00:52:56):

But I loved how you phrased it as this is people for the first time seeing that they’re going to get swept up into adulthood that they did not understand what it was, and they’re going to start acting in a way that they didn’t expect and feeling a sort of panic and almost the same feeling I had when I had my first kid, which was like I felt this feeling of infinity that I did not… Oh, I just locked in a commitment for 18 years and I’ve never had this certain of a locked in anything in my life and I’m fucking terrified.

Matt (00:53:26):

Plus, as we’re now just a few years away from that 18, we realize that – God,

Laci (00:53:29):

You are fucking with me today. You

Matt (00:53:31):

Don’t ever want to get that phone call. No, it’s not going to be 18. It’s going to be like 29 to 37 year commitment.

Laci (00:53:37):

That’s what’s good about the timing of this movie is that in 2015, it wasn’t totally locked in that these people are never moving out of their parents’ house.

Matt (00:53:51):

So we meet our hero, Michael Monroe, as Jamie, AKA J, inner pool, this above ground swimming pool.

Laci (00:54:00):

I’m obsessed with it because it can’t not mean something. An above ground pool is a social marker of not having a lot of wealth. It’s some weird lower middle class marker. Well, you’re maintaining it. It looks nice. It’s pretty big. She uses it.

Matt (00:54:21):

This is the best looking above ground pool I’ve ever seen.This looks like a fun place to be. This looks like a good time.

Laci (00:54:27):

And it’s appropriately dirty because she’s surrounded by trees, right? So there’s still likely

Matt (00:54:31):

Splits

Laci (00:54:32):

On dirty.

Matt (00:54:32):

Yeah. So to me, the final showdown takes place at the community pool and it’s like we chose to abandon the community and just kind of recreate a simulacrum of it in our backyard.

Laci (00:54:47):

Again, a

Matt (00:54:47):

Comment. A shittier version.

Laci (00:54:49):

Again, a comment on class, right? Because I’ll just put a pool in my backyard, thank you, but it’ll never be as nice as this pool because I can’t fucking afford it.

Matt (00:54:57):

Let me

Laci (00:54:57):

Spread my means further than they need to be just so I can show you how apart I can be.

Matt (00:55:03):

And just talk about the sort of individual instinct to have a pool in your backyard despite you look at your life and think all the fun times I’ve had swimming have been in community pools, at neighborhood pools, at hotel pools. They’re with other people.

Laci (00:55:19):

They are an occasion. They made me get out of the house to go do a thing.

Matt (00:55:23):

And the American dream of having your own house that’s your own little plot of land that no one else can bother you on. So I have now this pool I use by myself. Don’t you dare come over here.

Laci (00:55:37):

It’s a luxury item. We’ve been convinced by marketing that it means something to have a pool in your backyard. To be the house you can have a pool party, hell yeah, but you never end up wanting one.

Matt (00:55:50):

And it being an above ground pool is like, well, we couldn’t afford the in-ground pool, so we get this simulation of a simulation.

Laci (00:55:58):

Well, and you end up identifying yourself as someone with a very specific budget because you have such a visible acknowledgement of your limitations. Oh, that’s above ground.

Matt (00:56:08):

I

Laci (00:56:08):

Actually know exactly how much that costs because anyone can look up the price of an above

Matt (00:56:13):

Ground

Laci (00:56:14):

Pool. An in-ground pool, that’s a mystery. That’s 10,000 to 50,000. If it’s in the ground, it just depends on how you got there. What kind of pool is it? Well, I can’t see it right because it’s in the ground. I can’t see your pool. I’m just saying there’s just so much more mystery. All I know is that thing was 10 times more than that thing I can see over there.

Matt (00:56:34):

And these in-ground pools, because we used to live at a house with an in-ground pool. We moved into it and we didn’t know anything about taking care of a pool. So we called a pool guy and he came over and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ve taken care of this pool a bunch of times since the 70s. This is a real deal pool.”

Laci (00:56:49):

Well, and this pool will be forever. You guys are just

Matt (00:56:53):

Borrowing

Laci (00:56:53):

It.

Matt (00:56:53):

Yeah, absolutely. And he was right. Yeah, that was a long time ago. My pool? Yeah. Don’t have that pool anymore. That’s a

Laci (00:56:59):

Gunite pool. And that’s when we started to have to learn terms, and I still don’t know the difference.

Matt (00:57:02):

Nope. But it did make us feel good when he said, “This is a real deal pool.” Yeah, it is. Yeah. Fuck

Laci (00:57:07):

Yeah. We’re rich.

Matt (00:57:08):

So this movie is like, it’s set in the present, but not. It’s not set in the present. It’s set in all times. Or this is the writer director not wanting to deal with what kids are like today, which is always staring at phones. So if it is set in the 2010s, then we don’t…

Laci (00:57:28):

The phone call to the parents in the beginning of the movie are maybe as close as we get to. Okay.

Matt (00:57:34):

Yeah. I mean, that at least means it’s in the 2000s that she’d have a cell phone. So it could be any time. Even then, these are teenagers who hang out on the front porch, playing cards, drinking soda out of straws.

Laci (00:57:47):

And I did that though. I mean, I guess that was 2000, 02, up until 2006. Whatever it is, I got a serious job and couldn’t go hang out at my friends and play drunk games on the porch. But I loved doing that. We still have game night, but yeah, there’s just something so folksy about… Well, especially when you pair that with, we’re all going to watch a movie. You want to come? Then you go inside and it’s just a movie on TV. It’s black and white to boot, and it’s a smaller working TV, tube TV on top of a broken big TV. It’s just like, yeah, this is a little different. And yet still I want to hang out with them

Matt (00:58:25):

Because

Laci (00:58:26):

It’s what we think we want and we don’t want.

Matt (00:58:29):

Very economically, this movie is telling us a lot about this family. We have this older sister, Jay, her younger sister, Kelly, but they seem like very good friends. Kelly’s got her two friends, Yara, this girl in glasses. If you watch his first movie, The Myth of the American Sleepover, there’s a girl who looks just like this girl. It’s not the same actress. It’s just the type of the girl with the big glasses. I don’t know. It’s clearly a core memory for him of I need a girl like this in my movie on her clamshell Kendall.

Laci (00:58:58):

And he immediately lets you know that this is a tight-knit community too. I mean, everyone who knows each other on this block and wherever it is those other two kids live, they’ve been around since they were little kids. So this is roots.

Matt (00:59:12):

Yeah. You can’t just

Laci (00:59:13):

Pick up and move because the factory down the street isn’t hiring or isn’t existing anymore. This is where we were born and live and our entire support is here. You don’t just move.

Matt (00:59:25):

Yeah. And I think the sort of idea of she’s the older sister, but she’s friends with her younger sister’s friends, but maybe they were all one group when they were younger and now they’re kind of becoming one group again as age becomes less and less important the older you get. I think that’s a neat little detail. It certainly happened with me and my brother with groups of friends and then it was like, “Well, this is my friend, not your friend.” And then eventually comes back to we’re all just friends with each other. And then this mom who’s in the scene at the kitchen table, never in focus in this movie. You never get a shot of her face in focus, got her wine glass out, got pictures on the wall showing parents who Seem a lot older than the kids.

Laci (01:00:02):

No, I didn’t take it that way.

Matt (01:00:03):

Or maybe they were grandparents. But we got a dad who’s not there.

Laci (01:00:07):

Right. We don’t know why.

Matt (01:00:09):

And these pictures maybe seem like they’re from the 50s or something. What’s up with that? And then there’s those neighborhood kids who are always spying on Jay.

Laci (01:00:18):

Yeah, that is interesting too, because you expect that to come back around. It doesn’t. Just her looking out of her fence at one point to see who’s looking at her like, “Oh, it was the neighborhood kids. That was at least cute. Now it’s probably that dead thing.”

Matt (01:00:32):

Yeah. You don’t have to have it and it follows Monster after you for people following you and paying attention to you. And in Under the Silver Lake, he has people spying on each other with drones, doing a rear window where I’m just piloting my drone around and looking in people’s houses. And that’s just a normal factor of modern life. And if you thought about it, it would drive you insane. You’d be like, “I know there’s a drone outside. I know it. I know it. I know a drone spying on me.” Just

Laci (01:00:56):

Usually they’re not owned by your neighbors. Is that what you mean? Anyone could do it?

Matt (01:01:01):

It could be happening to you at any moment. It’s best to never think about it ever.

Laci (01:01:05):

I think about that whenever I walk by our sliding glass door because the lights are always on on the inside and I can’t get the curtain to go all the way. So I just know that’s a place in our house we can’t be naked because it’s just a big TV to whoever’s outside. I don’t know those people yet. True. Even if I did. I don’t know that they don’t love looking at naked people.

Matt (01:01:30):

Or it’s a nice thing you could be doing for them. I

Laci (01:01:34):

Think of it as community service.

Matt (01:01:35):

Like Olivia Wilde in the invite. I think if I

Laci (01:01:38):

Bring over a piece of paper, they’ll sign off on it.

Matt (01:01:41):

Two

Laci (01:01:42):

Hours of service.

Matt (01:01:43):

Jay’s getting ready for her big date tonight. You go date with that guy? Yeah, I like him. Oh, cool. It’s

Laci (01:01:48):

Also chill.

Matt (01:01:50):

And she’s in her bedroom getting ready and we’re in there watching her. Why are we watching her? This is none of our business, but we’re watching her.

Laci (01:01:56):

She’s already dressed. This is kind of funny because she’s hot, it does kind of seem like we should get to. Take off your clothes.

Matt (01:02:03):

Why hiding from us? Come on.

Laci (01:02:05):

What you got under there? There’s something about like, oh, it’s a horror movie and there’s a hot blonde. I shall see the goods, please.

Matt (01:02:13):

She goes to her date with Hugh at the movie theater and it’s either a throwback cinema, it’s showing charade from 1964 or I guess the year is 1964 and they’re seeing charade. And she’s with this guy, Hugh, and they’re playing the trade places game. What is this?

Laci (01:02:34):

It’s just a game that her and her sister made up that when they’re standing in line or just doing something, they need to waste some time because they’re out and about and don’t have any control over when they leave. They each take turns scanning the crowd and picking a person that they would want to trade places with. They have to have a reason for why they do it. And the other person gets two guesses or three to figure out who it is and also guess why.

Matt (01:02:59):

They must have been doing that because their dad killed himself or was abusive or whatever. And they wanted to think about better lives they could be leading.

Laci (01:03:07):

Oh my God, his choice makes so much more sense now. This guy’s about to die. Yeah, he likes being picked up by the water fountain with his dad. I was like, that’s the stupidest fucking answer I’ve ever heard in my life.

Matt (01:03:18):

Sorry. I want to be that little kid. He can go to the bathroom wherever you

Laci (01:03:21):

Want. And they have a little funny little back and forth. They seem both kind of blase. I guess I didn’t realize how new this relationship is, but it’d have to be only a couple days old. It is an interesting approach though. You do kind of wonder like, well, who did this to you? I’m sorry, what is his real name?

Matt (01:03:40):

Jeff.

Laci (01:03:40):

Jeff. Because you’ve put a lot of thought into this for yourself because you want this to stick. Maybe he’d been fucking other people, maybe he fucked the girl in the high heels, who knows? But that just hasn’t been sticking. He needs to find someone a little bit more sturdy, a little bit more like, definitely has a car. We need that. I don’t know, but he picked her, rented a house. I mean, when you think of the elaborate things he went to to pretend to be someone else –

Matt (01:04:11):

But he didn’t rent that house. That’s an abandoned house that he went into.

Laci (01:04:15):

When the mom’s going through what the cop said, he apparently rented a house in a fake name.

Matt (01:04:22):

How do you do that? I guess it has to be the ’70s.

Laci (01:04:25):

It’s an Airbnb maybe. Maybe she thinks rented means… But yeah, it was abandoned.

Matt (01:04:30):

So now he has to guess who she wants to be and he’s like, “That girl over there in the yellow dress.” And she looks and this is so creepy. She’s like, “What girl in the yellow dress? I don’t see it.” And he’s like, “Oh fuck, we got to get out of here.” This is a movie that I do wish I could go back and see again for the first time. And watching it, now I’ve watched it three times this year. That’s too many to watch close together. Because when I watched it again for the first time in 10 years, I was like, “I don’t remember anything about this movie. It’s all working awesome for me.” When you know everything that’s coming, it does lose a little… It’s still very good and it’s very fun and it’s very impressive. It’s just so much of this, this movie builds so well the mystery of what the fuck is going on.

Laci (01:05:13):

And that’s an art. That is a kind of movie watching I fucking love. It’s very like sixth sense kind of like this is building to something. I mean, it shows you right away. It’s different in that way. It’s not a twist, but it’s so much about the atmosphere. It’s atmospheric horror

Matt (01:05:32):

And

Laci (01:05:32):

Perspective horror and that the actress we’re following and her brothers and sisters and the mom aren’t heightened. We’re watching a horror movie and so we’re like, “What’s he doing? Why don’t you care what he’s…” But she’s not watching a horror movie. And even when she knows that something bad’s going on, they’re still using human pacing because for them it’s days and hours and days. For us, we’re like… So watching a horror movie where the people aren’t heightened the whole time, it’s an interesting way of forcing us to just lock in and take a breath with them. I don’t know.

Matt (01:06:13):

Which is also the trick Carpenter does in Halloween is you’re watching these girls just walk to school and just talk to each other. They don’t know they’re in a horror movie, but you know you’re in a horror movie so you feel the doom. And also you see, oh, that guy’s following them. Michael Myers is right there in the edges.

Laci (01:06:29):

But once Jamie’s hyped, she’s fucking hyped the whole time. And this movie’s so realistic and if I drive far enough, it is supernatural, but they aren’t super human. Then I have time to just sit here and think, which is kind of horrible.

Matt (01:06:48):

Yeah.

Laci (01:06:49):

Maybe this is the driving as symbolizes the weekends. Well, I guess I’ll sleep.

Matt (01:06:56):

I wonder if somebody’s ever crunched the numbers. Horror movies always seem to take place over a pretty short period of time. I’d like to see. What’s the horror movie that’s taken place over the longest period of time?

Laci (01:07:04):

The others.

Matt (01:07:06):

There we go. I guess we don’t… Asked and answered. Then they go to a little dinner date and things are going fine. Next day Jay is talking to her sister. It’s the Halloween scene. They’re just walking on the streets. Although they’re dressed in sort of wintry or autumn clothing, even though she’s also swimming. What’s going on?

Laci (01:07:25):

Okay. And that’s why the whole time I’m thinking this movie’s telling me she’s on the spectrum. All the stopping and staring at nature, all of the interior stuff that she’s got going on, swimming because that’s her favorite thing to do. She’s clearly loved it for forever. It’s something she needs so much that they put a pool in her backyard. She’s doing it at the wrong times of the year.

Matt (01:07:45):

She’s very sensory and sensual.

Laci (01:07:48):

She seems very tuned in while being very tuned out, which is our son. She’s tuned in on select what she wants to be. But yeah, the more I watch, the more I’m like, “I don’t think this movie knows. I don’t think it’s doing that.” But the swimming in the winter, odd, interesting choice.

Matt (01:08:10):

And he’s obsessed with water plays a big role in, not in the end of Oak Street, but in the other two movies as well.

Laci (01:08:16):

But there is the pool scene. They

Matt (01:08:18):

Lay in the – Oh fuck, you’re right. Yeah.

Laci (01:08:19):

It’s one of the biggest highlights of the trailer.

Matt (01:08:22):

Oh fuck. Yes. Of course. Okay. Yeah. Fucking call him Aquaman.

Laci (01:08:27):

Done. Ask me, Aquaman.

Matt (01:08:31):

So we see that we get our first look at this hunky neighbor guy, Greg, restoring his classic station wagon or whatever. And they’re like, “Hi, Greg. Not restoring.

Laci (01:08:38):

This is important. He’s washing it. This is another detail that he’s got the car that his parents could afford.” It’s a shit car, but he appreciates it. He appreciates it so much and values it that he would wash it.This is not an entitled neighborhood. Each house has a signifier that they’re all very in the same class.

Matt (01:08:58):

Yeah.

Laci (01:09:00):

But yet look down on each other because him and his sister or him and whatever

Matt (01:09:04):

Girl he’s with – That’s what you do. That’s what you do in neighborhood. This

Laci (01:09:06):

Family’s a mess.

Matt (01:09:07):

Those people, ugh.

Laci (01:09:09):

You mean the two people that you’ve already slept with? Because the sister also was the one kind of flirting in the beginning when they passed by on the walk. She’s the one that’s like, “Hi.” And

Matt (01:09:19):

You

Laci (01:09:19):

Think the little sister’s got a crush because yeah, he’s the hot old neighbor across the street.

Matt (01:09:26):

And their mom probably looks at him washing his station wagon and thinking, “Does he really need a station wagon? Come on.”

Laci (01:09:33):

Nope. Maybe, maybe. But their mom probably looks at him and goes, “Oh, he’s such a slut, treated my daughter like shit.” I mean, that said that he was not good to her when he broke up with her, and that was after he slept with her. She does not lock eyes with him. She doesn’t say hi to him. She does not like him. She’s surprised when he goes to the park to see if she’s okay.

Matt (01:09:56):

But she also says they slept together once in high school. It wasn’t a big deal.

Laci (01:10:00):

I know. I know. But then he’s like, “I guess I should have been better to you, huh?” Man, you watched it two days in a row.

Matt (01:10:05):

Yeah.

Laci (01:10:07):

It’s all there. He was not a good boyfriend, but he’s just a regular shitty teenage boyfriend that you happen to live across the street from. That’s awkward. Every time you pass by, you go, “Hey, Greg.”

Matt (01:10:16):

I never though of them as being boyfriend and girlfriend.

Laci (01:10:20):

But think about it. If in high school you sleep with someone, especially if they’re your neighbor, that’s a thing. She can say it wasn’t a big deal. She’s trying to tell the guy that’s in love with her, “He slept with me to fix this issue. We had already slept together. It wasn’t like it was this magic moment.” She was trying to tell him that in that moment.

Matt (01:10:41):

The present one wasn’t a big deal. Okay.

Laci (01:10:42):

Yes. So that he understood this is different, this is special.

Matt (01:10:48):

Jay goes on another date with Hugh and they are smooching.

Laci (01:10:52):

I’m sorry, sorry.

Matt (01:10:53):

Yes. Smooching at Lake Erie and then she’s like, “Let’s go back to the car.” And so they have sex in a car near an abandoned tower, the most romantic place that there is. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of cool.

Laci (01:11:04):

An abandoned tower?

Matt (01:11:05):

It’s like an abandoned car garage.

Laci (01:11:08):

It’s Lake Erie. Does Lake Erie, is it surrounded by broken down structures?

Matt (01:11:11):

No, they drive. They leave the lake and drive to this abandoned structure. Sh says,

Laci (01:11:16):

“Let’s go to the car.” She doesn’t say, “Let’s go to the car and drive to an abandoned structure.” I’m pretty sure that was him doing that after he chloroformed her, but it doesn’t actually matter.

Matt (01:11:25):

No. When they park, they’re right next to that building.

Laci (01:11:28):

Oh, you’re right because they kind of zoom out.

Matt (01:11:32):

Yeah. And I do think it’s significant that… Well, okay. So they have sex and as you pointed out, it’s some quiet ass coming if either of them does.

Laci (01:11:42):

I’ve come.

Matt (01:11:44):

Which does raise the question that this movie begs of us is what is sex anyway? What counts in this world?

Laci (01:11:51):

Yeah. Can it just be a one pump and do you just have to lock the thing in the chamber?

Matt (01:11:59):

Does

Laci (01:12:00):

He have to come?

Matt (01:12:00):

Is it only heterosexual sex pussy in vagina or a penis and vagina? Can

Laci (01:12:05):

I drive by finger someone

Matt (01:12:07):

Real

Laci (01:12:08):

Quick?

Matt (01:12:08):

Yeah. Can I drive by finger someone’s anus like blowjobs? What if we just make out? Do we have to come? Do we have to exchange fluids? All these are good questions.

Laci (01:12:19):

She seems to have exchanged fluids all three times, four times. I have no evidence of this. Proceed.

Matt (01:12:30):

But they do it. Whatever it is they need to do, they do it. And the movie will later say that she’s not a virgin, but just watch the scene. It’s clear this isn’t her first time having sex. She’s cool. She takes it very casually and afterwards looks at a nice bug on a flower like, oh, that’s nice. Yeah. And

Laci (01:12:48):

Then says the most boring shit ever. I’m like, stop talking.

Matt (01:12:51):

Oh, I love it. She’s like, “When I was young, we would talk about when we were old enough to go out on dates, hold hands – Drive around. Listen to the radio. Trees change colors.” Never about going anywhere, just having some sort of freedom, I guess. And he’s listening to her and he’s kissing her back and stuff. He’s

Laci (01:13:09):

Not. He’s still in the back of the truck getting the chloroform. He knows he’s about to do a

Matt (01:13:13):

Heinous ass thing. So he’s doing all of that. You hear him doing stuff and she’s still monologuing about driving around, nowhere to go. And then she continues monologuing. He gets on top of her, starts kissing her back and stuff, and then chloroforms her.

Laci (01:13:28):

Right, because otherwise he’s just a weirdo on top of her back. He

Matt (01:13:30):

Has

Laci (01:13:31):

To subdue her.

Matt (01:13:31):

Work his way up.

Laci (01:13:33):

I do think he genuinely likes her.

Matt (01:13:34):

Yeah.

Laci (01:13:35):

Yeah.

Matt (01:13:36):

Yeah. Chloroform bag to her face and it takes a long time. You know who’s

Laci (01:13:40):

Crappy? You know who knows how to get shit done?

Matt (01:13:42):

Jeff.

Laci (01:13:43):

A sex worker. You did all this with her. It tied her up. So you could have just as easily done this and then had that conversation with a… They would fucking have a plan so fast. They live needing to make a plan for the next move, figuring out how to survive, how to make it through the next day.You’re fucking the wrong people. These are entitled people. They don’t know what to do.

Matt (01:14:11):

There’s a movie full of dumb people. They don’t know. And we wouldn’t know either.

Laci (01:14:14):

Sex workers.

Matt (01:14:15):

We’d be so stupid. And everything he says… Well, so he chloroforms her and it takes him a long time and the movie does not cut. It makes us sit there and watch the lengthy amount of time it takes for him to make her pass out via the chloroform.

Laci (01:14:30):

I like that they don’t tell us why he has that, but okay.

Matt (01:14:34):

And she wakes up inside of this abandoned parking car garage. And I think that it’s significant that that’s what this place is, is once upon a time there were jobs here that necessitated this huge building where all the people who work here had to go. Because it’s a

Laci (01:14:47):

Factory, right? That’s what it’s next to?

Matt (01:14:49):

Because there’s

Laci (01:14:49):

A smokestack. Yep. And it’s not just a fence anymore. It’s like a barbed wire fence.

Matt (01:14:55):

Right. She’s in a wheelchair. She’s in her underwear tied to a wheelchair and he’s like, “Hey, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re not going to believe me, but listen, I need you to remember what I’m saying. This thing, it’s going to follow you. Somebody gave it to me and I passed it back to you in that car.” And so this is the one time in the movie we get the rules. Watching it again, I realize he could be so totally wrong about all of these rules. I think I figured I’ve noticed a pattern, but how the hell would he know?

Laci (01:15:24):

Well then up comes this naked woman and he can see her and she can see her.

Matt (01:15:28):

Right, but –

Laci (01:15:29):

He notices and he’s already proven himself right because we don’t know how far away his real town was. He drove to… It’s not like he had to get a girlfriend by not being from a nice place. He had to drive away really far to buy him some time. So I think he’s already figured out that the further I go away from this thing, the longer it takes for it to coach up to me.

Matt (01:15:52):

I pass it back to you in the car. It can look like someone you know, or it could be a stranger in a crowd.

Laci (01:15:55):

You’re right about the sex part though. Why does he know that it happened because of sex? Is it because everyone that’s trying to approach him looks like they were in the middle of sex?

Matt (01:16:05):

I’m not sold on the idea that you have that all the forms it takes are people it’s killed in the past. Okay. But yeah, I mean, he at least had to make that determination that that’s how it’s transmitted is via sex. I guess he could have had sex with a woman and then she died and he’s like, “Oh, fuck.” Although he would’ve had to have been told about this.

Laci (01:16:29):

Right. So maybe this was told to him.

Matt (01:16:31):

Yeah. So it could all just be a fucking chain letter. Chain letter. Yeah. Coffee pasta thing. It could take the form of anyone, someone you know or a stranger, whatever it takes to get close to you. Sometimes I think it looks like the people you love just to hurt you. And then he runs over to one side of the car, of the garage and he’s like, “Oh fuck, I see it.” And so he pulls her over to the edge of this building and they look out and they see a naked woman approaching over these decommissioned railroad tracks. So you got to go find somebody, have sex with them, and if you don’t, it’ll kill you and then it’ll come back after me.

Laci (01:17:07):

And never enter a place that has only one exit.

Matt (01:17:10):

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s very slow, but it’s not dumb.

Laci (01:17:15):

He looked up how to make chloroform or how to access it, but what he probably didn’t do was figure out how long it takes for someone to be mentally ready to receive information because she does a really good job of slowly waking up from it and clearly her head hurts. She’s confused, she’s scared, but she’s foggy. So it’s like you’re being pretty confident that she’s taking in all this after you drugged her into unconsciousness.

Matt (01:17:42):

And he says a lot to her and then she’s like, “What?” Yeah.

Laci (01:17:48):

What? And why is this lady naked? Right. She doesn’t know that she’s the only one that could see that lady besides him. So to her, it’s just, “What did you do to her? Why is she mad at me? What did we do to her?”

Matt (01:18:00):

And what if she dies? Is that how they solve the smile curse? I don’t remember the smile movies.

Laci (01:18:05):

What if who dies?

Matt (01:18:06):

What if she dies while she’s cursed? What if she kills herself? Does it end there?

Laci (01:18:12):

Unknown. I’m sure it just goes… Well, who knows, but it apparently goes to the next person.

Matt (01:18:17):

So she goes home, her sister and her friends are playing cards on the front porch. This friend keeps reading passages from the book she’s reading on her kindle, The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I

Laci (01:18:28):

Though it was the Iliad.

Matt (01:18:30):

That’s the idiot. It’s about somebody who has to accept their fate. Death. Death is coming for us all. This girl’s very into the fact that she’s reading it and is telling… It’s kind of like me with Moby Dick right now. I’m telling everybody, “Guys, I’m hundreds of pages into Moby Dick. Are you proud of me?”

Laci (01:18:45):

Okay, there you go. Glad. It’s like you’re not just telling people you’re reading it. You’re also asking them to be proud of

Matt (01:18:50):

You. You’re proud of me, yes? You’re not. You’re not proud of me. Nope. I

Laci (01:18:54):

Think it’s a waste of time.

Matt (01:18:55):

You think that?

Laci (01:18:56):

Me?

Matt (01:18:57):

You?

Laci (01:18:58):

Especially

Matt (01:18:59):

Me. Laci thinks reading is a waste of time. Wow. I do not think

Laci (01:19:02):

Reading’s a waste of time. I think you reading Moby Dick just because you think it’s hard is a waste of time.

Matt (01:19:07):

Why is that a waste of time?

Laci (01:19:10):

Loser.

Matt (01:19:11):

What? Fucking love. All right. You heard her hear from Laci? No.

Laci (01:19:14):

If it’s really that important to you.

Matt (01:19:16):

Oh okay. Wow. No. This is what she actually thinks though.

Laci (01:19:20):

Love? Until you picked out that fucking book and went shut up about it, I had no idea you were dying to fit. It was something you just really needed to… It’s your Everest. I didn’t know that. How could I know that? You’ve never said it before, ever.

Matt (01:19:32):

It’s the great American novel and I never read it. And I’m sure I said it to you. It’s kind of like the

Laci (01:19:37):

White whale – Why would you have to both fuck you plus fuck you on that one? It’s the great American… I fucking know that I care. What does that mean to me? It means nothing to me. You have to explain what it means to you prior to you starting for me to care while you’re doing it.

Matt (01:19:51):

Well, I did. I just

Laci (01:19:51):

Needed time.

Matt (01:19:52):

When I said, “You should be proud of me, here’s why.” And now you’re mad that I had to explain all of that.

Laci (01:19:58):

No, I’m mad. I’m just mad.

Matt (01:20:00):

You’re just jealous. Jay drops her off and just dumps her out of the car and he’s like, “Hey, sorry. See you later.” And her sister’s like, “What the fuck?” And so next scene, we got the cops coming over and we see this from the vantage point of the neighbors across the street and this snotty sister saying, “Those people are such a mess, always getting assaulted and stuff.” And the cop is asking her questions.

Laci (01:20:24):

The questions available. We talked about this yesterday. It’s like really, what do you do? And really, what does she say? I mean, she probably didn’t even call the cops and she still doesn’t know that he didn’t do something to that other woman. She doesn’t know.

Matt (01:20:38):

Yeah. Or to her when she was passed out. Presumably she would feel it, but she can’t definitively know that.

Laci (01:20:45):

It’s kind of fucked up. It’s like, “Look, I was chloroformed and then taken to another location and tied up. I was kidnapped by a person that I just had sex with consensually. Yes, we were dating.” So I’m very confused about the second part, but for some reason, the second part isn’t enough of a crime for them to not… They still have to focus on the sex part. I don’t know. It is weird.

Matt (01:21:08):

It’s like marital

Laci (01:21:09):

Rape.

Matt (01:21:10):

But it’s a relief that the movie doesn’t have her… She says, “Yes, it was consensual, so this isn’t going to turn into an annoying plot of… She lies to the cops about that because it’s like this movie doesn’t have fat on it like that. She tells the truth. Exactly what would happen is what happens. She goes to the hospital, they’re like,” I don’t know. Well, you can sleep in this bed if you want.

Laci (01:21:31):

“Well, if he’d given a real name, then they would’ve at least gone and got him. But as soon as they’re like,” Fake name, rodents here.

Matt (01:21:38):

“Yeah. Now, sometime later she’s going to class at this very sad commuter college class. I don’t know what makes it sad. It’s just…

Laci (01:21:48):

She’s able to attend it. I think they’ve already given us enough signs that this isn’t some important university, and it just looks kind of like a… It actually just looks like an old school.

Matt (01:22:00):

Well, it’s like a perfectly nice…

Laci (01:22:03):

Right, but the prestige isn’t there.

Matt (01:22:07):

The room is too big and she’s listening to a lecture from this English teacher, just like in Halloween, and I’m sure the teacher is saying stuff that is relevant to the plot of this movie. And then, oh damn, there’s a woman walking in a white gown diagonally across the quad toward me. And so she gets up, leaves the class.

Laci (01:22:26):

This is when we first understand that only she can see it. We also don’t know that, but this woman’s in an outfit that doesn’t make sense in this environment, and she walks through two people on the quad that are sitting and talking, and that’s already kind of weird, but then she walks right through this conversation these two girls are having, but so did Jay. So it’s like, oh, they’re just not faced because people keep walking between us for some reason. And then she hollers back and says something about –

Matt (01:22:56):

Hello?

Laci (01:22:56):

Yeah, hello. And then they both look at her because they have no acknowledgement of someone that she might be talking to who’s closer to her because they don’t see her. And they go, “Yeah.” So that’s how you know. And that’s how she knows.

Matt (01:23:08):

It would be funny if one person elsewhere in the movie could also see them and be like, “Oh, fuck.” Maybe that’s what the sequel’s about. I don’t

Laci (01:23:17):

Think it would be funny. It’d be

Matt (01:23:18):

Hilarious. It could be confusing. So she goes to the coolest looking ice cream shop, and all this is filmed in real places in and around Detroit. You can go to 12 Mile Road, the intersection of 12 Mile Road and Tyler to visit this place in real life where her brother, her sister, and her friend Paul work. And she tells them about the creepy old woman. And I like that there’s this disconnect here where her sister’s like, “So did she say anything to you?” Because nobody knows what questions to ask. Nobody knows how to respond to this.

Laci (01:23:51):

And all she’s saying is she was creepy.

Matt (01:23:53):

That’s

Laci (01:23:54):

Not super helpful, but they do a good job of showing how traumatized she still is from what had already happened. She’s not the most useful version of herself.

Matt (01:24:03):

Yeah. She

Laci (01:24:03):

Probably barely could pull herself to go to school, and then this happens. She was probably looking for normalcy for the first day, and then this happens.

Matt (01:24:12):

And so she explains to her sister and Paul now, “Here’s what Hugh told me.” And her sister says, “That’s bullshit.” She goes, “I know. I know all of this sounds insane. I know it’s bullshit, and I’m not going to fight you on that.” And be like, “No, I believe it.” So Paul – It’s a

Laci (01:24:28):

Relief though, when not too, too far into the movie, they do see physical –

Matt (01:24:33):

Oh yeah.

Laci (01:24:34):

Yeah. Especially even just the scene where the window breaks in the kitchen. So it’s like Paul at least sees that even if he doesn’t. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (01:24:44):

And that’s why I say this movie has no fat. It has none of the annoying false sort of – Everything

Laci (01:24:51):

Has a reason. Yeah.

Matt (01:24:53):

But it doesn’t have the annoying, no one believes me part of the movie.

Laci (01:24:59):

Right. Because I do think at some point, if you know someone enough, love them enough, it’s kind of beside the point. You just got to figure out what’s going on even if you can’t understand what they are saying.

Matt (01:25:13):

Which is why he, Paul, is immediately like, “Well, I’ll sleep over at your house tonight and protect you.”

Laci (01:25:18):

Yeah, you’re in distress, and it’s clear that you just feel very alone. I’ll just make you not alone.

Matt (01:25:24):

And do I maybe have ulterior motives or do I have a massive crush on you and just want to sleep in the same house as you?

Laci (01:25:30):

One year before me too, right?

Matt (01:25:32):

This was three years.

Laci (01:25:34):

Okay. So the toxic nice guy thing wasn’t really something we were acknowledging yet.

Matt (01:25:40):

But he’s not a toxic… He just is a nice guy.

Laci (01:25:44):

Okay. Except for that he’s offended that she would have sex with the guy across the street when I like you too, without any consideration of does she like you back?

Matt (01:25:57):

Yeah. So I think those are all feelings that he has that don’t make him toxic. Yeah, he’s never

Laci (01:26:05):

Ugly toward her.

Matt (01:26:06):

Yeah. It’s the, how dare you not have sex with me. It wounds me.

Laci (01:26:13):

He’s pining. He can’t

Matt (01:26:14):

Help it. Yeah. Yeah.

Laci (01:26:15):

You’re correct in that. I misspoke, nice guys.

Matt (01:26:19):

Thank you.

Laci (01:26:21):

You know exactly what to show me. Wait, he didn’t have pants on in the movie though.He had a big swinging dick.

Matt (01:26:28):

Oh, this must be a promo image that I got of the enormous man.

Laci (01:26:33):

And he comes back. He’s used twice.

Matt (01:26:37):

He’s who kicks the- They know what they got in this guy. Wow. For this big guy. So the score is by the artist disasterpiece. It’s great. I’ve listened to it a million times. I know I say that all the time about movie scores. I do love this score. It does get extremely Halloweeny. It’s crazy. So Kelly and Jay are brushing their teeth dutifully, and their other friend at the sleepover is sitting on the toilet with a twizzler in her mouth and she’s kind of watching them brush their teeth. And that’s just a nice little detail of people were raised differently and they have different hygiene habits. Interesting that the two girls who had to raise themselves were like, “Well, now it’s time for bed, and so we go brush our teeth.”

Laci (01:27:15):

Well, they had a mom and dad for a long time and then they didn’t. We don’t know how recent this tragedy is.

Matt (01:27:20):

“Maybe mom won’t be so sad if we show how good we are at brushing our teeth at night.

Laci (01:27:23):

Don’t think it’s sad. I think you get used to falling asleep with toothpaste in your mouth or you get used to falling asleep

Matt (01:27:28):

And not in your

Laci (01:27:28):

Mouth. I can’t.

Matt (01:27:31):

I can’t go to bed without brushing my teeth. I can’t believe people can. I can’t

Laci (01:27:35):

Go to bed having just brushed my teeth. Toothpaste is such a signifier to wake up that I’m fully awake.

Matt (01:27:44):

It’s the same with me and taking my shoes off, which I do at the end of the day are like symbol. Now things are done.

Laci (01:27:50):

Yeah. Body cues. Cues to your wake cycle.

Matt (01:27:54):

Yeah. So it’s brushing my teeth at the end of the day, cue, and now we’re powering down. We’re going into low energy mode.

Laci (01:28:02):

You were so high energy before.

Matt (01:28:04):

I know. I know. But she can’t sleep. Darn it. Jay cannot sleep. So Paul is downstairs. He’s determined to stay awake all night.He’s popped himself a bowl of corn. He’s watching a black and white movie and she goes, “I can’t sleep, Paul. I can’t.” And he’s like, “That’s okay. Come sleep here.” And she gets on the sofa and she does a little bit of toe flirting.

Laci (01:28:24):

She does not.

Matt (01:28:25):

She does some stuff with her toes.

Laci (01:28:27):

Her toes are just there.

Matt (01:28:29):

She moves them a little close to his feet.

Laci (01:28:32):

Yes,

Matt (01:28:32):

She does.

Laci (01:28:34):

I paid close attention.

Matt (01:28:35):

Oh yeah? So what does she do?

Laci (01:28:37):

She just wiggles her toes, Mac. She’s always in tune with her body. I mean, she knows what she’s doing in

Matt (01:28:46):

That

Laci (01:28:46):

Sexy Afghan.

Matt (01:28:49):

Yeah. And he’s like, “I haven’t spent the night here since we were little kids.” And she’s like, “There’s a reason for that, Paul. You know you were my first kiss.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I know.” And then you kissed Kelly. You kissed two sisters. That’s kind of gross. I mean, she is…

Laci (01:29:07):

Yeah. I mean, she’s thankful he’s doing this. She’s feeling a kind of way.

Matt (01:29:12):

You don’t think she’s doing a little flirt? Not heavy flirting, just a little… I

Laci (01:29:17):

Think she’s appreciative of him and she thinks she’s careful because she knows how much he likes her. So I think she’s respectfully not leading him on in their relationship before now, but now that she’s super vulnerable and he’s doing this gesture, she for the first time is like, “Well, maybe it’s okay that he likes me. Maybe I kind of like him.” So there’s something,

Matt (01:29:38):

But

Laci (01:29:38):

It’s cautious because she’s cautious.

Matt (01:29:41):

And I though that she’d want to be doing this both because of what you said and just it’d be nice to have something else to think about something else other than all the dread I have in the world, then the glass shatters. It’s very scary. And he’s like, “Oh, fuck. I’ll go get your sister,” and just leaves her there.

Laci (01:29:57):

They’re like, “Well, this is the time. This is the hour. This time.

Matt (01:30:00):

And she’s in the kitchen and she gets approached by the monster in the form of a woman pissing herself with one boob out.

Laci (01:30:06):

It’s unsettling.

Matt (01:30:08):

And so she locks herself in her room and the others knock on her door.

Laci (01:30:11):

So ghosts can piss.

Matt (01:30:12):

Yeah. Ghosts can still piss in the afterlife.

Laci (01:30:15):

We’re assuming they’re ghosts, but yeah.

Matt (01:30:17):

And the other kids come in, they try to comfort her. The idea of talking to their mom is not broached at all. No, we don’t need to wake her up. And then their other friend Yara knocks on the door. They open it up and she’s like, “It’s just me. What?” And then the enormous naked guy is standing behind her.

Laci (01:30:34):

Can we please get this little swinging dong image? I didn’t imagine that, right? That is what happens behind her is just the biggest dick.

Matt (01:30:43):

I don’t know if the big dick is right there.

Laci (01:30:47):

It stayed with me because a man with just a shirt on is a look and you don’t see it very

Matt (01:30:52):

Often. That’s true.

Laci (01:30:54):

Porky pig in it.

Matt (01:30:55):

So Jay flees out the window, gets on her bike and rides to the playground and then hunky neighbor Greg saw her and she goes down to the playground, sits on a swing, retreating into childhood. This movie’s about the curse of adulthood and she’s like, “I reject it. If I sit on this swing long enough, maybe I’ll be a child.”

Laci (01:31:13):

I like that she’s constantly taking on to herself because it is just a threat to her. And it’s not totally that she doesn’t want to involve them, but it’s like, I don’t have time for you guys to feel this urgency that I do. So I’m just going to fucking go. I’m going to hope I’m not alone for the rest of my life and that you find me. And every time you do bother to come find me, I’m going to be so relieved. But it’s like she just understands this is a problem only I can handle. You guys can’t help me, especially not kids. If you’re applying the capitalistic thing that you were, it’s like, you guys are my network right now. You can’t get me out of this. We need to go to the suburbs.

Matt (01:31:53):

And I like the scene later where Paul is like, “I like you.” And she can’t even care to hurt him anymore. She’s like, “I’m so beyond a place where I can even think about something like that.”

Laci (01:32:06):

Right, because he’s still not where she is, even though he’s watching her go through it.

Matt (01:32:14):

And it’s this disconnect when your life circumstances change and you talk to somebody who doesn’t have a job or who is still in school or doesn’t have kids. Yeah, that kind of thing. And they ask you like, “Hey, so you going to do anything Friday?” What the fuck are you talking about?

Laci (01:32:26):

He’s a parent, but doesn’t have a special needs kid. There’s just all these different things that box you in, in ways that you don’t expect and just change your normal, drastically different from most other people’s normal.

Matt (01:32:40):

So her friends track her down at the playground and then Greg, the neighbor tracks them down and he’s like, “Hey, do you want me to drive you home?” And she say, “No.” He says, “Well, where do you want to go?” And she says, “I need to find him.” And he’s like, “The guy that did that to you?” And s says, yes. And he’s like, “All right, I’ll go get my car.” So he’s now part of the gang. He’s going to drive them around on their little mission to find Hugh, drive around this empty desiccated suburban sprawl, abandoned stores and houses, empty churches, empty warehouses. The it follows curse has gotten this city. It’s killed the buildings of this city.

Laci (01:33:18):

All those people that she can see, they all each live in one of these buildings.

Matt (01:33:22):

Yeah, maybe that’s it.

Laci (01:33:23):

And her looking behind her and this woman’s walking around in her own backyard. So people do still live here. And that’s what’s interesting about Detroit is every seventh house, there’s someone who still lives there, probably the house they were fucking born in.

Matt (01:33:37):

And you and me recently moved and we looked at lots of neighborhoods in our city and tons of neighborhoods never noticed before, some nice, some not so nice. And it’s just interesting like, oh, I never knew anybody lived there or I never knew this was a neighborhood people lived. I don’t know. It’s suddenly starting to take a second look at all this stuff you never thought about before.

Laci (01:34:00):

But she’s always looking, so we’re always looking and there’s just a woman, she just walks by the fence post. She’s just in her backyard and it’s just like, oh, that’s definitely going to be the it.

Matt (01:34:08):

It’s

Laci (01:34:09):

The follow guy. It’s a guy.

Matt (01:34:13):

Well, Under the Silver Lake is all about starting to get thinking paranoid, thinking you’re in the middle of a conspiracy. And one of the movie’s points is like, well, everything that you encounter in modern life would make you think you’re part of a conspiracy. Every advertisement that you see, which is everywhere, it is trying to do something to you. And so you look at it with a certain valence and it all looks sinister and scary.

Laci (01:34:39):

Well, and once you’re in that frame of mind, that’s what I thought that this movie is a metaphor for awakening. I don’t want to use the word woke, but that is what I mean. Once you start seeing the government for the role that they play, America for the role that they play, institutionalized racism and what it does, once you are awoken to these things, you see it everywhere because it is everywhere. It’s not a conspiracy. You’re not paranoid, you’re burdened.

Matt (01:35:06):

It’s annoying what’s happened to the world because it’s a very useful word. I fixed

Laci (01:35:11):

It. I’m awoken.

Matt (01:35:13):

And John Carpenter’s Day Live is all about that. You put on the glasses and suddenly you see through the veil of everything, you see what everything actually means.

Laci (01:35:21):

That explains the poster with the news guy that looks like a fucking crazy person.

Matt (01:35:26):

And you look at the McDonald’s billboard and it’s just the word consume.

Matt (01:35:32):

So you could see that movie as like, I’m waking up and now seeing what is actually going on in the world. So they go to this abandoned house, which is where Hugh said he lived. And I guess she said she saw the outside of it, but she never went into it. And it is this sad old abandoned house. You wouldn’t think anybody lives in there. They go inside and there’s all these makeshift noise makers. And I like that the movie doesn’t tell you that that’s what they are. It’s like you could just be like, huh, I guess people do drugs here and that’s what drug people do. They love to hang up stuff.

Laci (01:36:06):

No one’s thinking that.

Matt (01:36:07):

I though that.

Laci (01:36:08):

But you weren’t a dumb child.You’re a dumb adult.

Matt (01:36:13):

Yeah, but I’ve never done drugs. And so when I see this kind of stuff, I’m like, maybe people on heroin love to hang up Coke bottles from the ceiling and stuff. Or maybe

Laci (01:36:20):

They’re paranoid that they’re going to get broken into all the time because people when they’ drugs

Matt (01:36:23):

They want to take them to the – Yeah, but I didn’t make that connection until later on in the movie. Like I said, I’m not sometimes… Up in the loft bedroom of this house is this mattress with a bunch of playpen magazines and all these jizz balls of tissue on the ground. And inside one of these magazines is a photo of Hugh at high school with a jacket and they’re like, “I know that jacket. That’s whatever high school.That’s Riverdale High School.” And I noticed that girl in that photo, it’s Laci Roth.

Laci (01:36:51):

She’s definitely fucking.

Matt (01:36:52):

I actually said Riverdale because I was thinking of Josie and the Pussycats. I forgot that that’s your high school.

Matt (01:37:00):

Go to Riverdale High School to find out this real guy’s name. And there’s a very, very long shot where they’re in the office of this very ordinary looking school. The camera is doing the 360 pan thing, swooping by somebody outside who’s very clearly coming toward the camera, but it doesn’t stop and focus on her and just brings us back to Jay and Greg who have found Hugh and his real name is Jeff Redmond. She doesn’t call the police. She just wants to go find him and talk to him. We notice in the car, there’s a little intro group 10. Seems like Greg now is kind of all buddy buddy with Jay and maybe Greg has taken charge of this mission and Paul’s not so happy about that.

Laci (01:37:40):

You’re throwing around names and I got lost, but now I’m back. I’m back.

Matt (01:37:44):

Do you agree with me?

Laci (01:37:47):

With the obvious thing

Matt (01:37:48):

That’s happening?

Laci (01:37:49):

Yes, I do.

Matt (01:37:49):

You made your I disagree face.

Laci (01:37:52):

Well, it’s about capitalism, right? And this guy is a little bit older and he has more pretty privileged than Paul and he has a car. So yeah, you’re supposed to feel it. You’re supposed to be like, okay, I guess she’s going to look to him. That’s why I said these aren’t your peers anymore. These are babies. When you flee, you flee without them because they’re just going to slow you down. You’re going to have to explain stuff or you want to take care of them. You don’t want them to get hurt. But this guy’s an adult. He sits in the fron seat. I sit in the front seat with him. We’re doing adult things now.

Matt (01:38:27):

They go to Jeff’s house.

Laci (01:38:28):

And they all sit in a circle like children.

Matt (01:38:31):

Love it. Well, his mom answers the door and is like, “Oh, you want to talk to my boy Jeff? Oh Jeff, he’s got some friends coming over.”

Laci (01:38:37):

And not paranoid at all. She’s been totally fine her whole life. These are some weird shifty kids, but my Jeff, he’d never do anything wrong. You want to come in? Yeah. And your friends? Yeah.

Matt (01:38:52):

I’ll bring y’all some sodas. Go sit out there by the golf course, dear.

Laci (01:38:55):

Who doesn’t want grape soda with a straw?

Matt (01:38:57):

Ew. And so they’re sitting in the circle and he’s like, “Listen, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Someone did this to me too. Remember I met a girl in a bar. It was a one night stand. I think that’s where it came from. I think.” He says, “Wherever you are, it is walking straight towards you. It’s always walking. If you drive somewhere far away, you can buy yourself some time, but it will catch up. But the others, or at least Greg, he doesn’t actually believe. Something’s going on, but I don’t believe the story I’m being told. But hey, I’m a nice guy. Let’s go to my mom’s lake house.”

Laci (01:39:30):

Well, I mean, when you’re a kid and your parents are constantly talking about bills and they kind of abstract things and that you’re like, “I know they complain about it a lot, but I also feel like my mom and dad are always kind of fucking cranky and complaining.” So it’s like, “Yeah, I’m sure it’s not what you think. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Things always do seem to be fine.

Matt (01:39:49):

And it’s

Laci (01:39:49):

Just like, so until you see it and feel it and are harmed by it, you’re just like, “I think it’s okay.”

Matt (01:39:58):

I like his logic about the lake house. My mom won’t freak out about it because she won’t even know we’re there.

Laci (01:40:04):

Right.

Matt (01:40:04):

I think Bart Simpson literally says that, “My parents won’t mind because I won’t tell them.” So they go to this lake house on Lake Erie. Jay is setting up all these noise makers in the house and then they’re sitting… I mean, imagine why would you want a vacation house? How much time do you spend getting to that house and getting it to feel not shitty and musty and sad and livable again? It’s

Laci (01:40:34):

Another one of those indicators though, right? He’s just a little bit better from his across the street neighbors because he has a house he doesn’t need. Why does he have two properties?

Matt (01:40:43):

Yeah.

Laci (01:40:44):

You have it because you have it and not other people don’t.

Matt (01:40:50):

We can go hunting.

Laci (01:40:52):

For fish?

Matt (01:40:54):

So they’re sitting on this sad beach in mismatched

Laci (01:40:57):

Chairs. I like it. I love the way it looks.

Matt (01:41:02):

All right. It’s not the beach that’s sad. It’s the circumstances.

Laci (01:41:05):

Yeah.

Matt (01:41:07):

But I like the mismatched chairs. Whatever chairs they got, they’re sitting in.

Laci (01:41:12):

Listen to you, Mr. Mandeville. He only ever sits in chairs that match this fucking guy.

Matt (01:41:18):

That’s a good eye for production detail that this movie has.

Laci (01:41:22):

Why would they all match, Matt? Why would there be seven blue chairs?

Matt (01:41:28):

They’re not all beach chairs. It’s just like we got to sit on something, just grab something and bring it out there to the beach. Like real people is what I’m saying. And they’re sitting there on the beach and then a girl approaches and it’s just what happens a lot in this movie. The camera just sits there stationary. Someone approaches from behind. No one notices it. You notice it.

Laci (01:41:50):

Right. And the first time they show her, you have not yet seen the friend that looks just like her.

Matt (01:41:55):

Yeah.

Laci (01:41:55):

She’s in the water, so you don’t know that. And then all of a sudden it pans and’s like, “You guys should get in the water.” And that’s when we’re like, “Oh shit.”

Matt (01:42:02):

And that’s

Laci (01:42:02):

When it happens.

Matt (01:42:03):

And this evil girl approaching her picks up her hair, but now we don’t see her. We just see hair floating up, seeing it from Paul’s perspective. And oh my God, they freak out. Paul hits it with a chair and then he goes flying, but now they know. Now, okay, she wasn’t lying. There’s some sort of ghostly apparition. So they go into the house to get the gun and Jay just starts shooting it. And I love how reckless and stupid these kids in this movie are with the gun. It only does bad stuff. Right,

Laci (01:42:33):

Because she’s shooting at something that she can see and no one else can. And in the meantime, she’s hurting real people or could.

Matt (01:42:39):

Well, because Greg’s like, “Stop shooting, please.” She

Laci (01:42:44):

Does end up shooting or Paul does.

Matt (01:42:46):

And she shoots it right here in the head and it just gets knocked down and then gets immediately right back up. It’s changing forms. It’s a creepy little boy. It’s a big man. It’s like a woman. It’s all three different things and it knocks a hole and then she gets away and she gets into the car and just drives away and her friends chasing her like, “What the fuck? My God, that’s

Laci (01:43:05):

My car.”

Matt (01:43:07):

And then she just crashes into the cord field very lightly

Laci (01:43:11):

And

Matt (01:43:11):

Passes

Laci (01:43:12):

Out. And almost dies of cruel intentions disease.

Matt (01:43:16):

Yeah, that’s what you called it. Which

Laci (01:43:16):

Is a brief cut, just the lightest cuts.

Matt (01:43:20):

We’re

Laci (01:43:21):

Going to need a plastic surgeon for this.

Matt (01:43:23):

Which is also a detail I like. It doesn’t have to be a big dramatic car accident. She drove really fast into the cornfield. That was enough and that would be enough.

Laci (01:43:32):

Well, and it’s like what I always say is I feel this constant panic of I need to go, go, go. And sometimes the way that I stop is by going to the hospital.

Matt (01:43:43):

What do you mean?

Laci (01:43:44):

Well, ever since we bought the house, our most recent, not the one we just moved into, but the one before.

Matt (01:43:51):

The one we just fled from. The

Laci (01:43:52):

One we fled from.

Matt (01:43:53):

Change our names. Don’t tell anybody.

Laci (01:43:56):

It was so at the outside of our… It was at our limits of a budget and then everything to do with it was more than we anticipated. And so I just had this constant feeling of say yes to every opportunity, go, go, go, work every weekend. And I was already kind of like that because before that house, we had started a business. So the beginning of that felt similar.

Matt (01:44:18):

You’re naturally inclined toward that. So now it’s also…

Laci (01:44:21):

I am. But now there’s a panic, not just like a idle hands. And maybe three years in a row, one time I had signs of a stroke and so we went to the hospital and it was exhaustion, stress, dehydration. One time before it was due to my vertigo and just different things that are invisible, but they’re usually after a big conference or an even more stressful event. And it’s like, I need a little bitty break. Maybe I should fake a heart attack real quick.

Matt (01:44:59):

I

Laci (01:45:00):

Don’t mean to. I don’t think that that’s what I’m doing, but anxiety’s weird and I do have vertigo. When you experience vertigo for the first time, you do think you’re dying.

Matt (01:45:10):

But it follows. You’re trying to live your life and you got this fucking menace following you at all times, whether it be anxiety, be some sort of you’re not taking your physical or mental health seriously and your body’s going to be like, “Fuck you. I’m going to paralyze you today. You think you can see with your eyes? Not anymore, fucker. Go to the hospital.”

Laci (01:45:27):

Use your eyes.

Matt (01:45:29):

She wakes up in the hospital. She’s confused. She’s got a broken arm. Everyone’s asleep in her room. All of her admirers, including her mother, are in there and they’re all asleep except Greg. He’s opened his eyes and she locks eyes with Greg and she’s like, “I know what I’m going to do with Greg. We’re going to have hospital sex.” She

Laci (01:45:46):

Doesn’t talk him into that. It’s his idea.

Matt (01:45:48):

When did he say it? He said it, right? At one point?

Laci (01:45:51):

Yeah, Matt. I mean, she’s in a hospital bed. I don’t think she’s the one doing the negotiating. And she has already shown to not be a person that’s okay with this. She’s always had the option of going to have sex with someone and she just can’t bring herself to do it. He would have to insist.

Matt (01:46:08):

But her seeing him, that is movie communicating to us. She now decides, “I will have sex with him.”

Laci (01:46:14):

No. No. She sees him. She sees the look on his face and she remembers that she likes him, and then all of a sudden she’s softened to it, but the exact same thing is happening from his perspective. He’s looking at her like, “I kind of care that this is happening and I feel stronger than her right now. Let me do this.” It’s him. I mean, that’s how I take it in. Obviously, you think she’s a fucking black widow or something.

Matt (01:46:40):

No, I think that earlier her sister says, “Have you given any more thought to having sex with somebody?” And she’s like, “No, I don’t want to.” And I think now after all this, after what she went through at the lake house, she’s like, “Yeah, I think I have to.”

Laci (01:46:54):

Great. That’s not said. I’ll

Matt (01:46:54):

Do it to that guy. Nope. Yeah. I know it’s not said. It’s said with her eyes.

Laci (01:46:58):

It’s not, because she’s really appreciative of him. He’s sitting there worried about her and he’s looking to her and thinking, God, I’m worried about her too. They have a moment together, but it’s mutual. He decides to do it out of an act of taking care of her. She’s feeling appreciation that she wouldn’t be like, “Hey, can I give you this curse? Thanks for everything you’ve done.” That doesn’t make sense.

Matt (01:47:22):

No, I think later when she say – It’s a

Laci (01:47:23):

Loving act from

Matt (01:47:24):

Him. When she says, “I thought he would be okay,” I think she means it. We’re both just reading. We’re doing exactly what we talked about at the beginning of episode. No, you didn’t. We’re saying the same thing. They have sex anyway.

Laci (01:47:36):

No, they are not. Okay.

Matt (01:47:38):

They have sex because now it’s Halloween too, hospital sex, hospital sex. Y

Laci (01:47:43):

Said it was rear window, right?

Matt (01:47:44):

There is a rear window moment where you see into other hospital rooms. Everyone’s living their own mood. But

Laci (01:47:49):

Not just rooms, right? Well, it is rooms in a hospital, but it’s like the staff. It’s staff who are doing their job, ones that aren’t, people who are getting off of work. Then I thought it was interesting.

Matt (01:47:58):

What’s that man doing playing piano with her in the smocks? Greg visits Jay at the hospital and holds her hand after they’ve fucked. And we do see the fucking, and once again, a quiet coming sex. Very quiet.

Laci (01:48:12):

Very subdued.

Matt (01:48:14):

But Greg’s back at the hospital holding her hand. Wow. Hey, we’re good. We’re good pals now. Why

Laci (01:48:19):

Have you been here for three days, Jay? Why are you still here?

Matt (01:48:25):

And Paul looks on in Fury and she’s like, “So Greg, now that we’ve fucked, any ghostly apparitions been after you or anything like that?” And he’s like, “No, I think I’m fine. I think it’s good. I think it’s over. Yeah. Okay.” I

Laci (01:48:41):

Think it’s all about his mentality. I think he’s not awakened. He did the thing, but he never saw any of the evidence that anything was happening to her. So he’s just trying to take away her delirium. And so when it comes to him, he’s not looking for it. He wouldn’t even know what to look for.

Matt (01:48:56):

Right, right. So she’s later swimming in that above ground pool again this time with her cast, and she has a little rabbitier tube TV on just somewhere where she can watch.

Laci (01:49:09):

Pointedly, she does not get the cast wet at this time. She’s swimming this way. Just want to point that out. No disgusting soggy cast yet.

Matt (01:49:17):

So Callie and Paul and Yara are in the front yard. They’re playing hopscotch or whatever, and Greg comes over and he’s like, “Hey guys, hey, cool cats and kittens. What’s going on?” And they’re like, “Greg, have you seen any ghosts yet?” And he’s like, “Guys, I don’t think that’s real.” I’m like, “You don’t believe her?” He’s like, “I believe something weird’s going on, just not that. I think she’s wrong or something.”

Laci (01:49:38):

This chair real. I really got hit and we all saw it and you just didn’t.

Matt (01:49:43):

And he’s like, “Well, just tell her I came by, okay?” And they’re like, “Yeah, okay.” And then that night, Jay is staring out her window at Greg’s house waiting for a killer goblin to come over, and then one does. And she’s like, “Oh, fuck.” And she calls Jay’s house, no, calls Greg’s house and gets no answer. And so she runs over and she goes upstairs to the hallway and there’s a woman knocking on Greg’s door.

Laci (01:50:06):

It’s his mom, right? I don’t

Matt (01:50:08):

Know. I don’t know either. Because he opens the door and he says, “What the fuck, mom?”

Laci (01:50:12):

And their tits out, and then she fucks him.

Matt (01:50:14):

But it’s like he could be saying that because he thinks it’s his mom knocking on the door. And is it

Laci (01:50:18):

Not him? It is him outside in his…

Matt (01:50:21):

I don’t know.

Laci (01:50:21):

It’s him because she’s like, “Jay? Jay?” Greg. Greg. Greg. And then he’s trying to open his own door, can’t open it, and then breaks his window

Matt (01:50:33):

And goes in. No, I don’t think it’s Greg.

Laci (01:50:36):

It looks like him. She’s acting like she knows him.

Matt (01:50:40):

This is where my face thing fucks me.

Laci (01:50:43):

The hair though.

Matt (01:50:45):

So this boob lady kills Greg, jumps on top of him and fucks him, like fucks his juices. And she’s like, “Ew, gross.” And so she flees in the car and –

Laci (01:50:58):

This movie’s exhausting.

Matt (01:50:59):

And it’s after her again, because now Greg is dead. So it’s following her. So she goes really far away and falls asleep on top of her car, wakes up the next day by Lake Erie, and she’s like, “Oh, I hear some boys having fun out on the water.”

Laci (01:51:11):

How far away is this lake? She keeps going to it.

Matt (01:51:15):

30

Laci (01:51:16):

Minutes.

Matt (01:51:16):

She lives in a computer program where there’s only two biomes. There’s town and lake. So she sees these bros out on the water and she’s like, “Yeah, okay.” And takes off her clothes and just walks into the water. Wha

Laci (01:51:28):

Happens if it’s the gang bangs? Is it the first one to enter or the first one to come?

Matt (01:51:31):

Well, it’s a good question. I mean, and does she have sex with all of them?

Laci (01:51:35):

I’m thinking,

Matt (01:51:35):

Yeah. And they all just watch in turn? Yeah, man. Of

Laci (01:51:39):

Course, Matt.

Matt (01:51:40):

Of course.

Laci (01:51:41):

Anyone that owns a boat is going to be that kind of bro.

Matt (01:51:45):

Okay. And it just cuts. It just cuts. And now she’s driving home. She’s crying. Well, no, the first thing we see is her driving home and she’s still wet. She’s crying.

Laci (01:51:54):

Yes.

Matt (01:51:54):

I just saw water on her face. The above ground pool at their house has been damaged.

Laci (01:51:59):

Yeah. It’s just, well, we can’t have anything nice. We don’t know why. We don’t see it happen.

Matt (01:52:05):

Did the monster come looking for her? And I know how much you love this pool. I’m going to destroy it. She’s laying on the floor. Kelly and Yara are asleep in the bed. She’s laying on the floor, now getting a sense like time is passing and it really sucks. A lot of times going by while I’m miserable and I smell like the lake and I’m not showering and we’re all in this room together sweating and it’s gross. She’s

Laci (01:52:29):

Really focused

Matt (01:52:30):

On the lake. Well, lakes are disgusting. And then Paul comes in and he’s like, “Hey man, you had sex with Greg. You could have had sex with me.” And she’s like, “Yeah, but I though Greg could handle it.” And he says, “Well, you could pass it on to me. You already did it once.” And she says, “I shouldn’t have.” And so he holds her hand and then tries to give her a kiss and she moves her face away. I love the way that Micah Monroe’s playing this. I’m like a different species from you now. This isn’t a game. It’s not like a Paul, no, we shouldn’t. It’s like, what the fuck?

Laci (01:53:06):

Right. I’m having adult fucked up life and death shit going on. Why would you even want to play over here? If you really knew what this was like, you would not be trying to kiss me like a little boy right now.

Matt (01:53:17):

Right. So he says, “I want help.” And she says, “Do you?” And then he looks over at her wall and sees a photo of her swimming. He’s like, “Say swimming. That’s the answer to swimming at the pool.”

Laci (01:53:27):

What is his big idea?

Matt (01:53:29):

Is we’ll go to the pool and electrocute the fucking monster in the water. You got to do something.

Laci (01:53:35):

True.

Matt (01:53:36):

They get into the car to leave for the pool and there’s the giant naked man standing on top of Jay’s house.

Laci (01:53:44):

He was this close to getting her. She narrowly escaped that.

Matt (01:53:48):

Yeah.

Laci (01:53:49):

They were all inside, had to get everybody outside. He was on the fucking roof. That means he’s going to just what? Swoop into the window?

Matt (01:53:56):

Swing by his giant cock. And I do think that that’s the email that your boss sends you on the weekend. I can’t fucking escape this thing. It’s ridiculous. I’m trying to drive to the pool.

Laci (01:54:09):

Son of his dick.

Matt (01:54:09):

So they’re walking to this community pool, which is inside. It’s a big indoor pool. And the exterior that they shot is the Detroit Waterworks building, a decommissioned sewage plant.

Laci (01:54:21):

Whoa, that’s

Matt (01:54:22):

How it feels.That’s not where the actual pool is. I know, but all those

Laci (01:54:24):

Pipes, man.

Matt (01:54:25):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you heard that they’re going to an indoor pool, you’re like, “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” Not

Laci (01:54:30):

Gross.

Matt (01:54:30):

So much business water. It’s terrifying. So much business water, you said.

Laci (01:54:34):

It’s all business. And

Matt (01:54:34):

They’re talking about how the pool, which is a place they always went and had fun as kids, but their parents were a little frightened of it because it’s past the border.

Laci (01:54:41):

Past eight mile.

Matt (01:54:43):

That’s where Detroit proper begins and the suburbs end. So you got to be careful when you’re going there.

Laci (01:54:49):

I’m confused. They are in a car, right? When they leave or they bike.

Matt (01:54:53):

They’re in a car and then at a certain point they’re like, “We’re walking the rest of the way.” I don’t know why. I guess because this place is abandoned, but it’s not abandoned. But they have to sneak in so they can’t park right by it. So they do drive, but then at a certain point they’re walking. All

Laci (01:55:07):

Right.

Matt (01:55:07):

Because the movie’s a nightmare. Nothing makes sense.

Laci (01:55:09):

Got it.

Matt (01:55:10):

It’s got that logic. A lot of history at this pool, you know? We

Laci (01:55:14):

All used to indoor swim all the time at this wonderful place. It looks like the most fucking depressing place to spend a summer. No, thank you. I hate it. I hate an indoor pool, especially one like this. Only thing worse than this is that one school that has the pool where you open up the gym floor and it’s underneath.

Matt (01:55:32):

From It’s a Wonderful Life.

Laci (01:55:33):

Sure. It’s in lots of movies, Matt, because it’s the only school that has a pool like this.

Matt (01:55:37):

Yeah. It’s a Wonderful Life. Wait, sorry. You saying a set keeps getting recycled of a –

Laci (01:55:44):

No, it’s a real school where the gymnasium floor opens up and underneath it is a pool.

Matt (01:55:48):

Sorry, that’s what I meant. They keep filming at the same location.

Laci (01:55:52):

Yes,

Matt (01:55:53):

Because it’s

Laci (01:55:53):

Meant for a horror movie. And so it’s been used in at least three things because it is so fucking terrifying, the idea of the floor opening up underneath you or closing after you’re in it.

Matt (01:56:05):

Yeah.

Laci (01:56:08):

Never do this.

Matt (01:56:09):

So tell me about their big plan to defeat the monster.

Laci (01:56:12):

Well, this is when it becomes Stranger Things and they just all brought all kinds of appliances from expensive to non-expensive, from yes, that produces a lot of energy to what the fuck are you thinking, Paul? They’re just lining up. There are sure a lot of sockets, electrical outlets, because they brought at least 30 things to plug in. And I think they brought some strips. I think I saw strips

Matt (01:56:39):

And cords. Oh, they brought strips, but it’s not like we see them pulling a wagon with a television set and a microwave.

Laci (01:56:44):

Yeah. How are they walking with all this? Okay. Yeah.

Matt (01:56:47):

No, they need a fucking U-Haul for all of this.

Laci (01:56:49):

Yeah. It is a full thrift store.

Matt (01:56:51):

But I love the way all of this looks. The director talked about people are very… Maybe don’t read too much into the water thing with me. I just love the way water looks on film and it’s very evocative for people watching it because they know exactly how it feels. And when you see the ripples of the water reflected on the walls, it just all looks very cool and evokes a very specific feeling in the viewer. And he’s right, this is a very moody, cool place to have the climax of your horror movie. And

Laci (01:57:16):

While it’s still, it creates this perfect force field around her where at least we could be sure nothing is going to touch

Matt (01:57:23):

Her. Yeah.

Laci (01:57:24):

We would have to hear a splash. She would have to hear a splash. She is safe because there’s a reason why she’s in the center. The

Matt (01:57:30):

Center.

Laci (01:57:31):

I knew that you would do that. But then once it’s disturbed because she’s kicking around and the other thing’s kicking around, then it becomes the most scary thing ever because then you cannot see inside of it and you don’t know it and you’re moving like molasses and the worst thing ever is something catching your foot. I mean, I really enjoy how fucking scary and violent these giant objects are being thrown at her and hitting her. And all she can do is jump back and get a little bit of water between her and the stuff. But I mean, that dad is fucking hurling these giant things at his child.

Matt (01:58:06):

I’m so glad there wasn’t like a… When Jeff is talking to them, he’s like, “I noticed it’s afraid of electricity,” or anything like that. They have no reason to think this plan is good.

Laci (01:58:16):

Right. We already know shooting it in the head does nothing.

Matt (01:58:20):

Yep.

Laci (01:58:20):

What were the odds you were going to get it in the pool and not her? I guess because it follows in a straight line, which that’s not true either. So it’s going slow and she gets out and it goes in and it’s like, “Well, but that’s not true because that dad is fucking great swimmer.”

Matt (01:58:39):

Right.

Laci (01:58:40):

They thought

Matt (01:58:40):

It should be so

Laci (01:58:41):

Slow.

Matt (01:58:41):

The plan is get in the water, Jay, you lure it into the water, quickly get out of the water and will electrocute the water. Yes. Thus killing it. Now, she’s not able to get it into the water. Also, it is now throwing the electrified objects into the water and it’s not electrifying the water. At all. No part of their plan is working, which I love. I love the idea. You assume, “Oh yeah, if I throw a toaster into a pool, everyone’s fried.” No, it does nothing. Nothing wi happen. It

Laci (01:59:07):

Will in

Matt (01:59:07):

About time. Try it

Laci (01:59:08):

Out, everybody. It will in about time don’t do it.

Matt (01:59:12):

And what ends up killing it or stopping it in this sequence is they just shoot it in the head. Which…

Laci (01:59:19):

Right. I guess they got the side of its head last time.

Matt (01:59:22):

I don’t know. And I love Paul takes the gun, starts shooting at it, immediately shoots his friend by mistake. No,

Laci (01:59:28):

They shoot it in the head and he just goes in the pool and then he gets her leg.

Matt (01:59:31):

Right. Gets her leg, and then she gets away because they shoot it again. They shoot it again, so he lets go of the leg and she’s able to escape. And they’re like, “Is it dad? Look, look, Jay.” And

Laci (01:59:43):

It’s just fucking pain.

Matt (01:59:44):

Pilling up with carry blood. CGI blood, not a fan. Also, it’s their dad. “What form is it taking Jay? Tell us.” And she’s like, “I don’t want to tell you. It’s too traumatic for me.” And it’s their dad. It’s very sad. I don’t like – It’s

Laci (01:59:58):

Played much better than

Matt (02:00:00):

It is a little better than I just described, but it’s one element I don’t like.

Laci (02:00:04):

Except for that it goes to your theory of this is a big signal of why you had to grow up faster, why you guys don’t have any money to start with, why you’re going to community college and not some fancier college. I am dead. Maybe I had substance abuse issues, maybe I never got over my factory closing, but whatever it is, I did not set you up for success. In fact, I’m physically trying to fuck you over. So I think it matters that it’s the dad.

Matt (02:00:31):

No, I know. I guess it’s like I’d be mad if they laid it on really thick and they had a million like, oh, if only dad were still around, you’re right. And that’s why it works. I know.

Laci (02:00:42):

And it points to back, she is a thoughtful person. She is not a person that wants to spread this. So it’s like if you could find a person who’s the least likely to be affected by what capitalism does to you, she’s it. And yet she still can’t help but pull in those around her. She doesn’t want to burden them with the fact that it’s, I will just know what a dead dad looks like who’s throwing microwaves at me. You guys don’t have to know that. Yeah,

Matt (02:01:10):

You’re right. She never

Laci (02:01:10):

Tells them. They never revisit it.

Matt (02:01:12):

Oh, that’s a good point. Yeah. She does not say, I don’t want to say and she doesn’t. Yeah. And there’s no reason for her sister to ever know that. I’ll just carry this knowledge. That is

Laci (02:01:24):

An adult thing and now I have it in my adult brain

Matt (02:01:27):

And

Laci (02:01:27):

I am forever not a child anymore, but you can still be one for a little bit.

Matt (02:01:31):

And why are we harping on this adulthood equating with getting a job? And it’s not like – Not

Laci (02:01:36):

Just a job, a career.

Matt (02:01:38):

A career or just I have to work to survive. It’s not an option anymore.

Laci (02:01:42):

Yes, yes, yes. It’s whatever kicks it into now I need to support myself. I don’t have a house or a car if I don’t do these things.

Matt (02:01:52):

And so freedom as we understand it, that part of my life is over

Laci (02:01:57):

Because

Matt (02:01:57):

It’s not a choice. I will never again have the choice not to work.

Laci (02:02:00):

And we thought we were so trapped as kids and we were in a sense, but that was the only time it was ever acceptable to not have a job. And then if you’re a certain kind of person in a certain kind of class or just a certain kind of bootstraps kind of thing, when you’re 15, when you can get a job, you should. Ethically, morally, you should. You’re a certain kind of scrappy startup gal, guy, whatever, if you get into there and start working early as possible. Babysit when you’re 10, ladies. It’s also encouraged.

Matt (02:02:35):

It is and it’s ingrained in my head too. Make that money, baby. If you’re a 16-year-old with a job, that’s good. Good. You should know how shitty life is once you’re an adult and you have to do this. Well,

Laci (02:02:44):

You should start practicing with what it feels like to have your own money. Let’s see how bad you are at this. You’re going to be bad, but are you a saver or you spend all of it once you have it? Are you spending more than you actually have because you think you’re going to make more than you actually will? I think these are important things to find out. And I found out immediately what I was.

Matt (02:03:03):

A saver, wise investor. Spend

Laci (02:03:06):

It all on VHS and DVDs.

Matt (02:03:08):

Me too. I worked very hard in high school at the laser tech place. I got paid every two weeks, immediately went to Best Buy, spent every single, planned out for the week ahead. Here’s what I’m going to buy. I know exactly how much money I’m going to make. I knew that sales tax on every DVD I was going to buy.

Laci (02:03:22):

Mine was much like I do thrift stores now. I knew I was going to the bargain bin, the giant literal circle bin at Blockbuster and I didn’t want to buy anything I’d already seen. It’s all blind buys. And the deals I find there, that’s unknown, that’s the exciting part for me. And I only ever spent the money I made in tips, not the money I made in a paycheck. So if it was a good day and I made like 80 bucks, that is what I’m spending exactly that, except for minus money to get Wendy’s. Wendy’s, because they’re right next to each other. Wendy’s and Blockbuster and I’m going home and I’m drinking my mom’s boxed wine. I’m still 19. I can’t buy wine. So she hasn’t touched it. I’m going to throw up on the carpet and go to sleep.

Matt (02:04:10):

Because me and my friends didn’t drink when we would hang out on a Friday night and all we would do is drive around. When we finally got hungry, it was exciting. It’s like, oh great, we have some place to go now, a place we can go get food at Wendy’s. That’ll kill some time.

Laci (02:04:24):

We were so alike and so different.

Matt (02:04:27):

And when you get a job, it will turn you evil. That’s just a fact. There’s very few jobs you can get that aren’t evil.

Laci (02:04:33):

Sorry. It will turn your priorities different. It’ll take what you do in your free time and change that, what you prioritize there, what you do when you get home, what kind of mood you’re in when you get home. What kind of coworker are you? Are you helping people around you or are you looking for ways to get one up on somebody? Yeah, you learn a lot about yourself.

Matt (02:04:57):

Jay and Paul, now that it’s over, it’s like, Hey, let’s have sex now. Why do you think they have sex?

Laci (02:05:02):

Because it’s not over. It’s never over. And now Paul’s shot a person and he shot his friend as well. He’s been growned up and whether he’s seeing what she’s seeing or not, he’s no longer who he was. He’s not a kid. He’s not going to think about the ice cream shop the same way. It’s like, just fucking bring me into your club because I’m already fucked. He’s more marred than the girl that got shot. She’s just innocent, eating her fucking sandwich and I’m still reading her little buck and slipping on some jets and he’s just sitting there like, I fucking shot you and then ignored you for like 20 minutes

Matt (02:05:44):

And in

Laci (02:05:45):

The leg.

Matt (02:05:45):

As you sat there silently like – No, it

Laci (02:05:48):

Wasn’t silent. She’s in the background the whole time breathing and no one can come to her aid because of adult shit happening. The things we don’t notice when we’re adulting in the pool.

Matt (02:05:58):

I mean, I think that, all right, so they have sex. She asks him, do you feel any different? No. Do you feel any different? No. The camera pans up, looks outside the window. We don’t see anything coming, but we cut pretty quickly. And then we see Paul by himself purchasing the services of a sex worker or two. And Laci at the very beginning of the movie is like, Just hire a sex worker. And then they’ll go and fuck all kinds of people and then chain, the chain moves.

Laci (02:06:25):

Right. And not against their will.

Matt (02:06:27):

Right. Not against their will, Jan Brady.

Laci (02:06:29):

Because it’s a numbers game. It’s like just get it far enough away from you for a little while.

Matt (02:06:34):

But yeah.

Laci (02:06:36):

But then you are killing everyone in that chain.

Matt (02:06:38):

You’re killing everyone in that chain. And for the rest of your life, you’re like, when’s it getting back to me? When’s it coming back to me?

Laci (02:06:42):

And how many people did I kill because

Matt (02:06:44):

I don’t know how successful

Laci (02:06:44):

That chain

Matt (02:06:44):

Was. So it’s almost like it’s better to just have it be after you. That’s the ethical thing to do.

Laci (02:06:49):

Yeah, that’s the most

Matt (02:06:50):

Ethical thing. Put yourself in the

Laci (02:06:52):

Stocks on the leftovers.

Matt (02:06:54):

Exactly. Yep.

Laci (02:06:55):

Another big giant dick moment.

Matt (02:06:57):

Now I think you can, maybe Paul doesn’t even tell Jay that he’s going to go do this. I don’t think so. You don’t know if this is part of their plan or not, or he’s just freelancing here. Maybe it’s still after me. The last shot of the movie is the two of them walking in their suburban neighborhood together, holding hands. Wow, what an idyllic place. They’re such a nice little couple. Oh, there’s a fucking monster following them. They don’t know it.

Laci (02:07:20):

Dressed like them. They’re all wearing this little corporate outfit. There’s sweats underneath. There’s the dress she wore on her first date or it’s like it, it’s like it, but they put these little coats on and then behind them is someone also in a white shirt and a coat. It might as well be the scene of everybody walking to work in New York.

Matt (02:07:42):

Or everybody on the Google campus. We work for Google and we just left our Google loft and we’re going into Google HQ and we’re dressed in our Google clothes and a Google monster’s following.

Laci (02:07:51):

Googly Maldives is fun.

Matt (02:07:53):

And that’s it follows.

Laci (02:07:54):

Yeah.

Matt (02:08:11):

The final thoughts. I like this movie a lot. Like I said, I think that my final evaluation is it’s an excellent horror movie that I think benefits from not watching it a bunch of times in a row. The only reason I feel not as excited and jazzed by it as I did when I watched it two months ago is that I’ve watched it three times. But check this movie out if you’ve never seen it. And if it’s been a few years, check it out.

Laci (02:08:36):

And if you’ve never seen it, why the fuck did you listen to this entire thing? We’ve ruined everything

Matt (02:08:40):

Cool about it. But I know people do and they say, “Matt, Laci, you make me care. You make it interesting is what they say. They say that all kinds of people are saying it. And if you’re one of those people, say it please on iTunes leader review. Give the podcast five stars. I give it follows four stars. Out of five, that is my rating. What about you, Laci?

Laci (02:09:03):

I had it at four and a half. It was between the two.

Matt (02:09:07):

Cool.

Laci (02:09:08):

So who knows? Let me get to Letterboxd, see how I feel.

Matt (02:09:11):

So.

Laci (02:09:13):

So.

Matt (02:09:14):

Welcome to October. Boo. Next week we’re talking about The Purge from 2013.

Laci (02:09:20):

The Purge.

Matt (02:09:21):

Tonight, everything’s legal. March 21st, one day after Laci and I’s anniversary is The Purge from 7:0 PM to 70 AM.

Laci (02:09:32):

Wait, your birthday just happened. How is there also our anniversary?

Matt (02:09:35):

Things are happening. So tune into The Purge next week. Hey, we have a Patreon. We just put out a Patreon episode where –

Laci (02:09:41):

Would you like to see your name in lights?

Matt (02:09:43):

Yeah. If you sign up for $2 a month, you can see name and lights. Where else can you see your name?

Laci (02:09:49):

Fine.

Matt (02:09:50):

You can hear our latest Patreon episode where we give our 10 favorite… We react like little drones to the New York Times Top 100 TV shows. We saw

Laci (02:09:59):

Words on paper and then we

Matt (02:10:00):

Said that

Laci (02:10:00):

They made us feel.

Matt (02:10:01):

We watched that show. Remember that show actually? I can’t believe

Laci (02:10:04):

It. I love that show and I can’t believe other people have never seen it. I think I’m better.

Matt (02:10:08):

And then you can hear Laci tell the terrifying and chilling tale of when she nearly got in trouble at the movie theater for smuggling wine in her butt. And you can find – Is that on that

Laci (02:10:16):

Episode?

Matt (02:10:17):

Yeah, I put it there behind the paywall because it’s too scandalous. Oh, it’s

Laci (02:10:20):

Sexy too. And I couldn’t get it in my butt. Have bigger butts.

Matt (02:10:27):

You got to pay the $2 folks to hear why she couldn’t get it in her butt. Right. Patreon.com/1weekrental. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, leave a review, Row Route nine, social media, TikTok, et cetera. Thank you. We love you ghouls. Goodbye. No, that’s Laci’s line.

Laci (02:10:48):

Silent orgasm.