Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode. And of course, beware of spoilers. Welcome to Attack of the Final Girls. I'm Juliette. And I'm Teresa.
And we are here once again talking horror films. This one, a Shudder exclusive from 2018, a Swedish film called... black circle i think i previously called it the black circle it is just black circle cool this is one that i happened upon in my in my filmatic wanderings uh aka i had the blessed miracle of a free day and was like well
I should watch one of the 80 jillion movies that I've never seen. Like I should actually watch a movie rather than just watching High Fidelity on Hulu for the umpteenth time. Also guilty of that. Also about records. Yeah, also about records. But yeah, I kind of picked this one.
Not necessarily at random. The funny thing is, I had actually watched a prior film that was also like about kind of like cursed media, or in this case, it was a cursed song, and I hated it. And I was real psyched to watch it. And I was like, this is... so boring. And so I was like, well, let me try the black circle. Maybe it will redeem my experience. And it did. I really liked it. So I was I think I was texting.
Teresa, while I was watching it, I was like, ooh, this is good. This is a good podcast film. So here we are. Number one dumb question. When you refer to a piece of black vinyl. Yeah. What do you call it? Do you call it a vinyl or an LP or a record or what's your preferred nomenclature? Oh, interesting question. I typically call it a record. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, I would typically call a piece of vinyl a record. I mean, a CD could also be a record. A record also refers to the content of the piece of media. But yeah, I call them records. Yeah. Same. I feel like vinyl was the hip way.
to refer to it back when there was like that whole resurgence in buying. Oh, well, because the hipsters had to ensure that you knew that they were buying it on vinyl, preferably 180 gram. Yeah. So I... inherited my love of records from my dad and he always called it record yeah so that was how I inherited the media but Juliet and I are from a time when records were not in vogue therefore like
a long while unless you're like part of the club scene or you DJed like pretty much everybody just had like this moldy kind of smelly probably because you know like old record it's got that smell I love that smell. Me too. It's like an old bookstore. It's the candle. Yeah.
Yes, exactly. Juliet has this magical candle that smells like a former head shop in Cincinnati. It's so great. It's my favorite candle on earth. You can't burn it too much. So it's like sacred. It is. Sometimes I just open it up and I smell it. Yeah. But like there for a while, nobody listened to records. Nobody was buying new records. Well, they weren't making them. Right. Like it just wasn't a thing. So when you did listen to it, it was on your dad's system.
had like a thousand Bay City Rollers records and I don't have any of them anymore because I'm not a Bay City Rollers girly but that was like how you listen to it. My dad had the frigging tubular belt. So another formative memory. He had two copies of this for what reason? Tubular bells? Yeah. Oh, nice. I still have one of them. That's awesome. But that was like a formative thing.
He was like, we never watched The Exorcist in my house, but he was like, tubular bells. So formative memory for me was listening to tubular bells. He also had the... cool 70s version of the war of the worlds like re-recording on on uh record so we listened to that too which i also still have but yeah love letter to records there yeah i mean so i grew up with records we
have it's still at my mom's house her beautiful old like console turntable situation that has like it's like built into a beautiful piece of furniture so I would listen to records on that but I also had my own like cool like kid proof heavy duty like in a plastic case like portable record player and I had like
kids records like old sesame street records from the time i was little and actually like the first record i ever owned um my parents bought me a donovan album before i was born which is pretty badass yeah um but we also had like my um Tom's Beatles 45s. Yeah. And I still have those. And so my parents had a lot more vinyl and then they got rid of a bunch of it, which I'm still mad about when I was a baby to like, you know, pay for the.
costs associated with having a small child. But they kept my mom's 45s. And so I've had those growing up. But I actually started record collecting when I was about... 11 or 12 and they were not making records at the time like nothing new was coming out on vinyl this was before the resurgence that started happening when I was in college my dad would take me to all these old record stores and eventually, and it's so funny because I was literally talking about this at work.
yesterday he took me to record collectors fairs and it was so hilarious because it was all these old like white men and then like this weird alternative like middle schooler yeah it was really fun and it was like the thing where At the time when I started collecting, it was a collector's game, but not everybody was a collector. It was definitely like kind of an old man hobby. And so you could find a lot of stuff cheap that you can't find now.
Thank God for – shout out Jeff Berkman at Renaissance Music in Dayton, which is like kind of down the street from where we are now or was at the time. It's a bar now. He – Owned a very cool shop. My partner separately also like hung out there. And Jeff is a good friend of ours. He was also in Day of the Dead as a zombie, by the way. But Jeff was like the guy who, when my dad took me in there and I was looking for stuff, I had very specific things I was collecting.
If he didn't have it, he would tell me like don't pay more than this for this because he's like you're young and you're a girl and like some of these shop owners will try to take advantage of that and they'll charge you too much. If you find this someplace else, do not pay more than this because they're ripping you off. So shout out, Jeff Bergman. Shout out to the ridiculous amount of vinyl in my house right now. Shout out to my friend Gwen, who owns the shop, who I'm going to see later.
Hell yeah. The cool thing, because I was very young when they started starting to produce it again, but immediately prior to that... And in the years before, the cool thing about it was that it was a dead media format. So there was no new stuff.
hitting the shelves it was all just like oh this person's getting rid of their collection this person's grandma died so they're liquidating all of her stuff and so it was just like trading you know like you were buying it but you were basically just trading dead media back and forth and you could find cool
stuff at thrift stores and now you can't yeah now it's been very picked over it's very picked it's basically like all at least here in the midwest it's all like appalachian gospel yeah or like all of the sort of like Not even novelty records, but all of the like, the, you know, Joe Schmo orchestra performing the standards of this. group yeah it's stuff like that not interesting stuff yeah it's unfortunate i mean but now we do get new stuff or like re-releases of albums where people will like
do a cool pressing of it or something. Like that's happened. I know Mondo does a lot of those. Waxworks with the horror scores. Right. Exactly. Which is cool. In this particular movie, I know that we've kind of gotten off. This movie isn't. actually about loving records. My dad also used to call them albums.
Yeah, that's a legit name for them, too. Yeah, which I think is like even older than referring to them as records. Albums like harkens back, I feel like, to like the 60s. Yeah, well, and also like... When an artist makes a body of work, you typically could, you could call that a record or an album. Yeah. This movie has literally nothing to do with loving albums, except for the fact that...
Honestly, it is kind of surprising that Celeste still has like a setup for it. But maybe in Sweden, because this movie is Swedish, maybe people like to collect slash listen to vinyl. records more than we Or maybe it's just contemporary because this movie was released in 2018. Well, and you can tell that Celeste is definitely a person who would probably be inclined to be into old media just based on the posters in her apartment and the shirts she's wearing.
like that you know she has like vintage like horror film posters like old school like 50s like you know like atomic era monster movie posters on her wall so i could definitely see her as being a record girly alongside like all her other interests. Maybe. We didn't get to see any of the other stuff that she listens to, except for the fact that she went to that bar. But who knows if that was even for the music. This movie is actually directed by a Spanish director.
His name is Adrian Garcino Bogliano. He also wrote this movie. He is... Also famous, if you have seen these other movies he did, Here Comes the Devil, which is really good. I've seen that one before. And then Penumbra. I also saw parts of that one. So I'm familiar with the director, but this is actually my first watch. Juliet watched it.
told me about it. So I was like, well, of course, I'm down to watch whatever, because we have a podcast about horror movies. So let's watch it. The premise of the movie is that these two sisters living in Sweden, they have a distant relative grandma's cousin I think they said who has passed away and in one of the things that he gave to them including his house there is this record and Celeste is having some
some trouble. She's struggling. She's supposed to be writing this paper, but she's apparently having no success at it. And her sister, Issa, who is now very successful just within the past two months, is like, hey, I know you're struggling because I was struggling. Here's this record.
Listen to it while you sleep and it will change your whole life. And Celeste is like, OK, you know, reasonably skeptical of a massive change in somebody's life over two months with a record. But she does it and she is very surprised. to learn because it's about magnetism, not hypnotism, very similar, but decidedly different. She's surprised that it works on her. She listens to the record and the magnetism works on her.
And she listens to it as she goes to sleep for several days. And then stuff starts to go wonky. And it leads her on this wild adventure. Yeah. And some stuff happens. Yeah. And magnetism was a real... practice, a real pseudoscientific practice that...
Had, you know, different bubbles of popularity, you know, just like the Victorians with their seances. And then you would find renewed interest in things like that a little after the turn of the century. And then, you know, popping up at different points in history. That was a real.
thing. I actually and I'm going to try to dig it out and take a photo of it to accompany this episode on social media. I have I got it in an antique store years ago, an old like pamphlet about practicing magnetism. Oh, very cool.
From the 50s, I believe. So I'll try to get a photo of that. I think I know where it is in my house. So it's a legit thing. It's a legit... practice you know in terms of they didn't just make up this concept for the movie that is something that people espoused and practiced and had interest in yeah and it seems like separately, although Issa, you know, kind of like stumbles into this.
Celeste, it does seem like she already has an interest in this. Yes. Based off of the very brief sentence that we see of her paper that she's supposed to be writing. So she's already into the metaphysical. She's... studied it as far as we are aware it's she studied it and so this is interesting to her and something that she's willing to try if not for the reason of like i think this will change my life she's more just curious like
how does it work? You know, which is cool. Like it's fairly common. We see it a lot in horror movies where it's like, Hey, this like strange thing that is like sort of in my wheelhouse. I'm fascinated by it. Let me. investigate and see how it goes yeah it happens kind of a lot although specifically magnetism i would say no but hypnotism occurs like
Semi-frequently in horror movies. So whether it be the focus of the movie or a tool that is used to try and deduce what's happening, i.e. the insidious movies. Yes, absolutely. I love a movie about... hypnotism and magnetism because i'm really fascinated by that idea of like being able to look inward and then being very susceptible to other people yes i think it's a really interesting like topic absolutely and the kind of
Interesting thing is we don't know a lot about Issa. We are definitely made to understand that she was also having some rough times. Both of their parents are dead. we don't know i and maybe this is me just sort of putting things on the movie if isa maybe had trouble with like drugs and alcohol or something like that we're definitely made to understand that
Issa was struggling in some way, shape or form, and that the place where we first meet her in the movie is a pretty radical change. Whereas Celeste... It's kind of just meandering. Like she's had a breakup. She's trying to get.
done with this paper it doesn't seem like she's actively struggling but just that she's more stuck and isa sort of approaches her with that fervor of somebody who has found whether it's recovered whether it's religion, whether it's some kind of self-help movement of like, you know, like this transformed me and it will transform you even if you don't feel like you need transformation.
Here it is. And I think that dichotomy is interesting, especially the way we eventually see the whole movie play out and learn about Issa's situation as it relates to this record. turn was very interesting. The thing that was like very, it drew me in on this movie is the dichotomy between the sisters specifically. I love movies that have to do with siblings and like the bond between siblings. And especially in this case, it seems like.
They were close at one point in time and maybe have estranged themselves over time or just like haven't made each other a priority for a while. And that's created sort of this strain so that when. Celeste sort of wanders back into Issa's life she is not aware of any of these transformations that have happened in the past two months but also she didn't tell Issa like she lost her job she broke up with her boyfriend so it's been a little while since they've been close
In fact, Celeste didn't even know that her grandma had a cousin, let alone that he had died or left them anything because he left him a whole ass house. I don't know if in Sweden that's a big deal, but in the United States, it's a really big deal if somebody leaves you a whole ass house. So that was. sort of interesting to me there are so many movies especially horror movies that deal with not only siblings but specifically like the power of sisters like oddity which we just watched yeah
Paranormal activity has to do with sisters, you know, Katie at first and then her sister, but who I can't remember her name. But, you know, over time, she becomes a bigger character. We talked about Evil Dead Rise, which that movie is all about sisters and like. strong bond between them.
We're meant to understand that they don't have this bond anymore, but it comes out through the course of the movie that that's the most important thing that the two of them have and like the way that they're going to be able to overcome this thing. Not only that.
not only between isa and celeste but also between lena and her sister yes i'm not sure if we ever find out what her sister's name is i don't think we do but the so the premise of the movie obviously they find this this vinyl it's been bequeathed to them They listened to it. But along that adventure, they're led back to the person who created the record. Her name is Lena. She worked for this sort of Magnetism Institute of Sweden.
Which was founded by her father. Right. Founded by her father. But she was the one who developed this record situation and distributed it. But she also knows that that was a mistake because... Her sister fell victim to what happens, which is you listen to this record, all of the bad energy and bits of you get sucked out into like this doppelganger that also exists and follows you. But it is convinced that it is the original and it wants to be the only one. So it's like.
If you don't get this thing back, then you'll be divided forever and you will be a shadow of yourself. You'll basically be invisible and you'll be doomed to walk behind the other for the rest of your life. And that's what happens to Lena's sister. Yes. But also Lena is a super powerful psychic. Yes. Which is very cool.
Like in the coolest possible, like older woman way where she's a badass. She's such a badass. Like she definitely owns her mess up. And she's like, no, I fucked up and, you know, have probably created a lot of issues for lots of people. who have just randomly disappeared, who all they wanted was help. But I'm taking care of my sister. I'm trying to help people. Because I mean, randomly, Celeste and Issa come like out of nowhere.
And they're like, hey, so we listened to your record and now we need help. And Lena's like, cool, let's go to this extremely large abandoned, mostly abandoned warehouse where we used to do this sort of work. And I'll help you there. And she I mean, she devotes herself and also recruits some weird teenagers who have broken into her sister's house. It's a whole thing. Which we'll talk about. To help rescue the psychic plane. Yes. By the Supreme. Yes.
Not the Supremes. Right. Just the Supreme. And not the Supreme from whatever season of American Horror Story that was either. Oh, I don't even remember. I don't think I watched that one. It was the witch's one. Oh, yeah, yeah. With Stevie Nicks and the woman who imitated Stevie Nicks. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, only reference point for that. She annoyed me. Like, I don't think I can watch her in other stuff because I feel annoyed by all of her characters. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't like her.
I have mixed feelings about American Horror Story. Controversial take, but you know. No, I feel that. Like, there are some seasons where I'm like, wow, this is really good. And then there are some seasons where I'm like, I never want to see Sarah Paulson in anything else. I'm so sick of her. Anyways.
Like, that's a hot take. That's a hot take. But yeah, so the dichotomy between Celeste and Issa and Lena and her sister, I thought was really... like a cool driving force because I don't think it would have been as powerful a connection and like as powerful in terms of meaning if they had used any other sort of. like familial connection. I think the sisters was like a good way, a good parallel story to have. Yeah, I agree.
And also like big shout out for casting Christina Lindbergh as Lena, because not only is she a badass in this movie, the actress is a badass in real life. She sort of fell off the face of the earth for like 25-ish years, but she was in a lot. of like Grindhouse and sexploitation movies in the 70s. And she was a super, super cool badass. Like there's a movie called Thriller from the early 70s she was in. It's super cool. She's got an eye patch and a shotgun. That's all you need to know.
You should go watch it if you can. It's interesting also to see her as she's changed because she's I mean, she's an older woman now. And I think she was this is 2018. So she would have been close to 70. She's born in 1950. She's the central figure in the movie, but she's not a badass like, I've got a gun. I'll shoot your ass. I'm mad. You know, she's a badass like.
You can't pull one over on me because I'm a psychic and I'll boil your brain. Yeah. Which is super cool. Yeah. I love that. It's a really great example of how to. And this is funny because this has been a theme we've been talking about over the past few episodes, like how to use an older actress and still give the character like agency and power, but not.
you know, demand that it hinge on like physical prowess or sexuality or anything like that, but really like taking that like kind of divine feminine badassery and using a great... performer to channel that and I feel like she does this so well in this movie like I loved her character so much yeah absolutely like she is a badass but she did mess up and she's owning it she's taking care of her sister and she's also answering for your mistakes now
She's a super badass because she goes into her sister's house. I don't know if they share the house. Who knows? It doesn't matter. But there are these two teenagers there and she's like, what the hell? And the teenagers are like, oh, you think you're so scary? And they start reading her mind.
and talking to each other without words and she's like oh you think that's scary and then watch this and she forces the girl to go into the corner and then she starts talking to the boy telepathically and it's very cool because the boy's like Oh, I'm scared. I'm like very scared now. But also...
Like, what a way to turn it on its head. This kid's like, oh, we can talk telepathically. I can read your mind. She's like, I can boil your brain. Like, get out of here with that. She ends up recruiting them because these two kids, these teenagers. end up working as sort of like these psychic megaphones for her where she can talk to them and they can like amplify the psychic message to the sisters which ends up happening in the culmination of the movie Although Lena like very nearly.
actually does boil their brain. Yes. I was reading through some discussion around this movie, some essays about this movie. And there were people who were like, who sent these teenagers? And I was like, you know what, I think this is a cool part of the movie to just like leave it alone.
I agree. Like, we don't really need to know more about them. They said that they were sent by the Supreme. We figure out a little bit more about the Supreme, which I do think that that's actually also a real thing. Yes, it is. meant to guard the realm of the psychic over, you know, the corporeal. And it's like the final law, but it's also not emotional. Yeah. Like, I think Lovecraft talked a little bit about it's not like the old ones.
But yeah, it's a similar like mythological through line of like this sort of like arbiter of. sort of I don't even want to say law or fairness but like just this sort of arbiter over like another realm like that this being you know that there may be many beings that inhabit this realm and they in this movie refer to them as the ancients which again i think follows that mythological through line but that there's this one being that
is the arbiter and they have like the final say and they might be very dispassionate in their judgment, but they are the final say and they will sometimes use others as tools or go-betweens or agents of that. justice or that say. Yeah, because Issa and Celeste are now messing with that realm, with this other realm. So the Supreme sends these two teenagers to meet. with Lena and get the kind of spiritual energy of the person who has the record so that they can stop them.
from doing this. So that's kind of their psychic charge is to do this. I wonder if it is also a form of justice for Lena's... failure with her sister. I think so. You know, is that, okay, here are these sisters, here's this parallel. And in a sort of cosmic justice sense, like... I'm going to use these agents to give her the opportunity.
to create a balance or create justice for this wrong that was done so many years ago. I think that you're right. That's an interesting thing because this movie could have just not had that, like that aspect of it could have just not been in the movie at all. And we could have just... just concentrated on the magnetism part of it. I find that really an interesting sort of like chaos to sort of inject into the movie is like, oh, wait.
There is a higher power here, though, that is participating in this. So this is not a horror movie that I think American audiences would embrace. very much because there's no shock value there's very little gore and guts it's not traditionally scary it's more atmospherically scary it's more atmospheric and like psychologically scary because
In Insidious, we have like this demon and we have like these scary moments and there's like shocking song and, you know, scary parents situation happening. And in this movie, it's more like. Yes, it's scary what's happening, but it's more like you're drawn into this story that doesn't always play out literally. Some of it does not play out literally. Some of it's figurative. And also there's not gore. Like there's no jump scares. Yeah. I think the scary part is.
And the part that might turn some audiences off is like, to quote I Hurt Huckabees, how am I not myself? You know, is that is the scary part of this movie is when you're thinking about it afterwards and you're like, ugh. What if I do? What if all my negative energy could be embodied? And what if that took me over? And what, you know, like that is.
terrifying, if I'm being quite honest. But it's not happening in the moment. You're not getting grossed out or shocked in the moment. It's the way this movie stays with you afterward. And also, is that something that actually happens?
happens but rather than having it embodied into a separate person into a double it is just embodying you right you know like talk about being depressed I mean what if depression is the bad parts of you taking over and then your good parts your better self is smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until maybe it's invisible right and you can't come out of depression like That's what I was thinking when I was watching this movie is like Issa, you know.
grabbed at this opportunity you know and was like oh this is what will change me this is what will fix me and she had these two months where she was really good she's having sort of this like manic you know episode because celeste listens to the record and she does have a doppelganger. But really, the story is Isa, who has a doppelganger who's more fully formed and has existed for longer. So the division is more powerful between the two of them.
And her doppelganger actually is like wearing clothes and driving a car and following her. But we've come to find out that during the course of the story, we are not able to determine who is the original and who is the doppelganger. And that's sort of the whole crux of the movie is that Celeste is able to be mended fairly. easily. I mean, through the psychic process that Lena leads, but Issa is not.
It's much more difficult. The two teenagers are like really struggling and having a hard time. It's not as easy of a situation. And also like 95% of the way through this process, Lena tells Celeste, hey, so this has happened one other time. to my sister and it didn't work out yeah and my sister is a shadow of herself and she is the original is doomed to follow her wherever she goes through the rest of her life then that might happen to your sister so
We got to keep going. Yeah. It's interesting to me that that's what it seems like is that Issa was terribly depressed and then she thought she had it figured out and then she didn't. And the double... starts to take over and you don't know who is who what I love about that in particular is I feel like that could have been very cheesy and it wasn't and they didn't
I feel like if this was an American movie, they would have made a really big deal of the twist of the like, oh, no, I'm the real one. She's the real one. You know, like, but I feel like the fact that they just kind of like introduce that. And then they move on from it. And the struggle is not like... The shock of like, we've been living with a double the whole time. Whoa. But the shock is more, these are now two beings that want to exist and are struggling.
for survival on a like psychic emotional plane and like what does that do like it becomes very powerful and i think it could have so easily not been but just the way that they
The sensibility with which they handle that, it's very nuanced, but it works so very well. Like, if you had told me that going into this movie, I would be like, well, that's going to be stupid. And it's great, actually. Well, and they don't... quote unquote the bad one as like an evil to be killed right the way to quote unquote fix isa is to reunite her two halves not to banish one forever or send it to hell or whatever
The way that they hope to fix her is to reunite the two halves and like have them meet. Yeah. Because that's what's supposed to happen. And in the metaphoric. plane when they're trying to get them to reunite the guidance is you have to go back to your waters of origin you have to go back to the place that you're from like your most inner peaceful, neutral essence is where you both have to go back to. And you can't stay in this plane as much as you would want to because...
There are some tricks that are involved. You know, her parents are there and she wants to stay with her parents. She wants to be there. But her sister is calling her back and they're saying like, OK, here's this music. We're guiding you towards the waters of your origin. And you have to reunite those two halves of yourself because that is what makes the whole, not just the good parts of you, but also the bad.
And that also could have been very corny, like they have to destroy the evil one. Yeah. They have to destroy the shadow person. But we see when both of them are next to one another, we see that they're both. very much real and not weird. Like they're not both like, you know, cloaked in black or anything like that. They're real and they have to be reunited. That was really cool. Yeah. I love the editing of this film. It's another thing that I think if you're...
Only experience or your wheelhouse in horror is more of a traditional narrative slasher. You might be thrown off by this one with the way that it's edited, but I love it. It reminds me of like... all of the like experimental films and like European films. I took an Eastern European cinema course in college and it reminds me of the editing of a lot of those that sort of off kilter editing.
the interweaving of the sort of like... educational promotional films from the magnetism institute along with the sisters experience along with the narrative along with sort of the psychic experience they're having it works beautifully it's just trippy enough It's not like Mandy balls to the wall. Like, am I on drugs thing? It's just enough to make you feel.
off kilter and to get into that like off kilter headspace where you're like wow something is not right here and I can't fully put my finger on it Yeah, I thought that the info film was awesome. It was very authentic. It felt it did not feel like...
part of the movie, it felt totally separate, which I think it was supposed to. But being that it was supposed to be from the 70s, it totally called back. And I know I'm going back to records, but it totally called back like satanic panic, like back masking. You know, like this, like almost like the info film was the B side of the movie that where it was like kind of getting you in that sort of like headspace. So I thought that that was really cool. Records.
can play a really big role in movies. It doesn't as much in this one versus just like listening to it. But it did bring me back to that like back masking, like listening to Stairway to Heaven backwards, you know. Which that was the first, my first experience with backmasking was listening to Stairway to Heaven Backwards and here's to my sweet Satan and all that. Yeah, yeah. Which is so cool. Like, oh, if you listen to this really slow backwards, then it'll tell you to like kill your parents.
and shit like that. That's what it reminded me of. That info film definitely reminded me of like... The self-help kind of revolution in the 70s where people are like, this will fix you this thing. But, you know, people are getting into cults and stuff like that from specifically those films. But also like.
parents' fears about their kids and how they... are going to they're going to be brainwashed right by listening to records that's what it made me feel like so i liked the info film in that in that regard i thought it was very realistic yeah i also just love a good like pseudoscience institute i mean that's why
I'm such a big fan of like Tannis and the black tapes and the X-Files and things like that. I love any kind of story that can do well the sort of like... institutionalized, organized study of like psychic phenomenon or something that feels like it can't be institutionalized. To me, that is like one of my favorite like worlds in which to place a story. And I always just get sucked right in. I mean, having it be in an abandoned building also helps, admittedly. But to me, that's just like...
And again, I didn't know that that was going to be a part of this film going in. But when it got introduced, I was just like, oh, yes, this is this is the thing I like. Juliet's heart lies in a FBI basement. It's true. You're not wrong about that. You know, there are other movies that use records sort of like more, I would say more prom. Eminently, I was just thinking about Evil Dead.
you know, the wax cylinder that they read from. A Clockwork Orange is another one where music on, specifically on a record, is important. I was also thinking of Ghost World. Yeah, because Steve Buscemi's character is like obsessed with those like 78s or but they're like pressed a certain way or on a certain material.
Yeah. And he's like, oh, they don't make these anymore. Like, I'm obsessed with them. But you can never find them unless you go to, like, garage sales. I have such mixed feelings about that film. Watching it as an adult. That's when it's hard now. I haven't seen it in a long time. I remember really.
loving it when i was younger but i loved um oh shit what's her name thora birch thora birch i love thora birch so much and i feel like i definitely borrowed bits of my personality from that film for like At least a couple of years. No, that's totally fair. Yeah, same. I'm like, I'm going to wear t-shirts and mini skirts and go-go boots all the time. I'm going to get weird glasses. Yes. Still with that. Yeah, that's true. That's true. We do have weird glasses.
Another example of that, though, not on record but on tape, is the movie I always mention, Trick or Treat. Oh, yeah. The OG. Because the whole thing is predicated on... playing the last cassette. Right. You know, doing the ritual with the piece of media to then summon the demon. You know what that makes me think of?
I don't know if you had this when you were a kid, like if you ever, you know, used one of them, but like the books that came with the tape where the tape read to you and then. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like what if that was a. What if that was a thing that like indoctrinated kids like Halloween 3 style? Oh, that's fun. Where you like get the tape and then you read the book and then it like turns you into an agent of evil. Dear.
producers of the VHS series. Call us. Yeah, that'd be hilarious. I had one. It was Aladdin. I had several. I think they were mostly Sesame Street, but I also had records like that too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the gatefold would fold out and it would be the storybook. Oh, okay. I have some Disney ones and there were a couple of like...
Sesame Street ones. I know they're still in my basement somewhere. Where you'd open up the gatefold and it would be like a game that you could play along with the record. That's cool. Yeah. It also turned you into an agent of evil. I mean, the Muppets are good for that. That's why everybody's gay. The Muppets were actually the agents of evil in Sesame Street. So...
Another cool thing that I noticed as we were watching the movie is that, so first of all, the soundtrack is great. It's very atmospheric. Yeah. Very cool. I liked the sound editing. At first I was like, oh, this sounds kind of amateur, but. As we watched the movie, I came to understand that that was on purpose. And so I liked that, the sort of like crinkly, like old school, like maybe they actually recorded it on tape.
And then replayed it. Yeah. I liked that. And I really appreciated that they used. a lot of music from swan lake yeah like specifically i don't know the names of the songs like i've seen swan lake before but i don't know the names of the songs but specifically the times when the black swan and the white swan are sort of like fighting You know, not fighting, but like dance fighting. Dance battle. They're dance battling.
But for real, they are in the musical. There's a lot of Tchaikovsky because there's a little bit of Nutcracker and some Sleeping Beauty in there too. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought those specific... choices musical choices were very cool and like meaningful in the course of the movie like the fact that at first we're thinking sister v sister and then we're thinking oh it's like
the two parts of Issa sort of fighting and then having to come together. Yeah. So I thought that was cool. It's very intentional. That was a very fitting choice for the overall feel of the movie. I... also really enjoyed the scene where isa is sort of on her like This is a metaphysical. This is in the other plane where she's on her way towards the realization of herself, where she sits down in the movie theater and like sees.
scenes from her life it reminded me and David Lynch is on the brain right now because not only did we do Eraserhead I also saw Wild at Heart earlier this week first time I had ever seen it so David Lynch is on my brain but it reminded me of the scene in Mulholland Drive where it's like like the turn of the movie. Yeah. Where you realize like both of the people are like, spoiler alert, this movie is 22 years old, I think, but.
You realize that Naomi Watts and the other actresses are not actually two separate people and they're one? Yeah. That's what it reminded me of. I don't know if it meant... to evoke that scene, but it definitely did for me. And I thought that was a really cool choice too. Yeah, it's funny. You know, I see a lot of influence of Maya Darin.
on this movie and Maya Darin David Lynch credited Maya Darin as being an influence on him so I think even if it wasn't a direct like one-to-one like Mulholland Drive influence I think there's some shared cinematic sensibility that's kind of when we were talking about this at the end of our last episode, why I said that this movie to me reminds me of Damien Ruggna's work is that I feel like there's some just shared like storytelling and cinematic sensibility there.
where, again, even if it's not a one-to-one, I feel like maybe all of these filmmakers were watching and pulling influence from some similar things and then taking, you know... taking their storytelling in their own direction, but you see that kind of shared.
imagery or style in there for sure i wouldn't say that this movie is like fully experimental but i do see a lot of like experimental influence on it um i don't think that this is a movie that's so far in the like outer realms of movie making that that a regular you know person can't watch and understand it i do think it could be off-putting for some people especially if you're used to a more traditional horror experience like traditional american horror experience anyways um but
It's definitely got Jallo in there. Yeah. Lots of like very sumptuous red, some good like blue lighting that happens too. But a lot of the the camera work is very symmetrical. And I appreciate that, too. Especially there are some scenes where Lena is like command or she's. projecting through both of the teenagers it like the way that that shot is lit is very very cool and there are some parts where it's a little bit more messy but
in this weird peanut butter and jelly sandwich way, very cohesive. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that the narrative thread throughout, once all the threads kind of come together. it is way more straightforward. Like there's, it's...
It works very well that actually like it's very choppy at the beginning and then sort of everything comes together, which is like the whole point of the film anyway, toward the end where like kind of we're all in the same place trying to achieve the same goal. Yeah. and so you know lena prefaces this whole transformation sequence with celeste she's like hey
This is probably this might not work because I did it before and it didn't work. And my sister is doomed to be the shadow person who follows her second everywhere. But. Considering we were talking about depression earlier and how it could potentially be what the horror of it all is, is the depression. I think that that makes sense, especially in the culmination of this movie, is that...
You know, we see this like what we think is a reunion and that Issa is back and she's with Celeste. And they're like, I don't know who she is, but. She's the only one. Yeah. And then we see like as she's hugging Celeste that there is the shadow person behind her. It makes sense if we think about like depression and.
sort of living with that shadow self that that is really the horror of it all yeah is that you go through this like soul rending process where you're literally divided in two and then reunited by you know, visiting the waters of your origin, visiting your, your sole purpose and your calmest and most neutral self, but you still are a passenger, you know, in your own, in the.
vehicle that is your body you're still a passenger and you still have this darkness behind you and you are never going to be able to escape it you will literally be doomed to do that your entire life sort of a depressing like ending to it but also like that's what it's like to live with depression yeah i thought the choice at the end where victor doesn't tell them
Was very interesting. Because he has also just been through hell. Nearly had his brains fried out. From this psychic experience. Along with Selma. And. That moment of hesitation where they're like, what do you see? He's like, nope, everything's fine. But then we see through his eyes, no, everything is not fully fine.
Yeah. And Lena knows that her sister is like that, but presumably nobody else knows because Victor has this power where he's able to see that without being in a trance or without any other stimulus or drugs or whatever. Victor makes the decision to say like, nope, this is how it is. Because even if Victor like ruined everybody's day and they were like, you know, hey, all this shit was for nothing.
What are they going to do? They literally can't do anything else. They've just been through this like potentially deadly situation. Yeah. And it didn't work. So. No. They can't. There's nothing else that they could do, because if there was, then they would have fixed Lena's sister. Right. And like the 40 some years since it's been that she was broken apart. So I thought that was interesting.
I like that choice. I like, you know, leaving it sort of dangling. I do wonder what the fate of the record was after that, like if they destroyed it. Well... remember lena sets fire to the copy oh that's right but there might be others out there because that and that that is um Something I wanted to bring up. I think Martin is a really interesting character. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but there is something very interesting about him. We first meet him. He's sort of the...
caretaker or the custodian of this abandoned institute. And we first meet him watching these old films, you know, in his sort of like little hidey hole within the institute. And, you know, he is readily willing and able at Lena's beck and call, even though obviously they haven't spoken in a long time. She said she hasn't been there. She doesn't want to be back there.
We have one scene between the two of them where she's burning the record and the conversation was very interesting where Martin is kind of like, hey, like... You're still capable of doing this work and these kids are here now and maybe this is a sign and maybe we should. And Lena's just like shutting that down. And she's like, no, we're not doing that. Like if I never have to come back here after this.
great you know and she's like and i won't come back here unless another record is found yeah martin's like bring the x-men back together and lena's like I'm Professor X and no thank you. Yeah, yeah. No, she sees that the harm that was done, you know, and hopefully there's not that many records in there. But she also definitely knew the grandma's cousin. Yeah, they said he worked for them. The Lundstrom, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And she said, I didn't know he had a record or that he had kept a record. So it sounds like perhaps they went on a process of trying to get these records back into their possession and destroy them. But there are still... a questionable number out there. Fascinating, though, that Martin is still there now, that the work in the Institute is important enough that one person is still there all the time. Yeah.
like maintaining this area maintaining these like not records but like the the film and things like that that they have yeah like just in case yeah wild and he's still doing it yeah So it's a cool, that's a really interesting like little setting that they've created that we have no additional information on. Right. Which I like that though. I do too. Don't.
beat me over the head with exposition. Like, I literally just sent Juliette this article that I found on Substack yesterday about the occult in movies. Yes. And how sometimes it's okay to not tell us too much. Like... Don't tell us too much. Well, and I have said on this podcast over and over again, I mean, quite frankly, what I love about movies like this, and I know not everybody... likes this and not everybody wants this in their viewing experience.
I love watching this movie and then spending like a good chunk of a week afterwards like thinking about like the Magnetism Institute and the people that worked there and how many records are out there and like imagining for myself kind of finishing the story. myself I adore that experience in film like to me that is very stimulating it's very exciting I know some people want like
To sit down and watch a movie and have everything explained and then walk away from it and be done. And I get that. That's a valid experience too. But for me, like not over explaining it is fun because then my imagination gets to do the work. Yeah. And this movie got extremely mixed reviews. It has a solid 5.0 out of 10 on IMDb. So it is literally split down the middle of people who did like and did not like this movie. If you care about other people's ratings, which I typically do not.
But I think that it falls in the midline of like so weird that people can't do it and not like acceptably weird so that people can understand it. And also. explaining a certain amount through the info film and not explaining so much that you're... Like you have all of your questions answered. Right. Because I agree with you. I think that the really cool part is where your imagination can take you afterwards, because that that extra space that that takes up in your brain is where.
new ideas and new creations come from and maybe that is so that you can explain all of those answers and then you're like wow I'm satisfied shut the book on that and maybe it's to make something totally new right Exactly. And I think that that's a really, really cool. Like if if a movie can leave you asking questions that you want to answer, that's a really cool. That's a good movie like that for me. That's like.
that's that's a solid experience like oh yeah you watch captain america and you like okay start and all of the questions are answered and like we have a very linear story That's a certain movie watching experience. This is something totally different. Yeah. Well, and you and even if you.
This is kind of the flaw of the Marvel movies, at least for me, who has a background with comic books. And even if the movie doesn't explain it, well, you can go read how many decades of Marvel history right now and piece it together yourself. Right.
As opposed to something like this where there is no precedent for this. So you get to decide on your own. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. And I like, there's something about a movie that's subtitled too that kind of forces you to pay extra attention. Totally. And I appreciate that. Like I feel like all too often I feel myself drifting and maybe this is just like because I have a short attention span, but I can feel myself drifting sometimes and I'm not.
you know, fully immersed in the movie. And with a movie, the subtitle, you can't do that. So maybe, maybe if this movie was in, in english i would not have paid as close attention so i kind of appreciate that i had to focus yeah with the subtitles i would highly recommend folks who are fans of like 70s exploitation folks
Who are fans of movies that don't answer everything for you. Like this is a movie for you. Yeah. Speaking of comic books, we're doing a movie that heavily features comic books next. Yes. I'm Madman. 1989. This one has been highly recommended to us by my partner basically since we started this podcast. He's been like, you guys need to do iMadMan because I think you would really, really like it and you would have a lot to say.
And so we're finally getting around to it. We finally put it on the schedule. I'm really excited about this one. I have seen tiny bits of it, but I have not seen the entire thing. Yeah. So I like I remember. My partner also has seen this one and he was like...
Yeah, I think that you would like it, but you have to pay like you need to like actually pay attention and watch it. And I'm a person who chronically falls asleep during movies. So it's hard, especially at nighttime, because my brain is just like, oh, you're vertical. I mean, you're horizontal. The opposite. Must be vertical for film consumption. Yeah, pretty much. And like in a theater with a soda. Yeah. I need the movie to surround me. Maybe I should just start wearing like headphones.
pipe the sound into my headphones. I don't know, but I am excited to watch this one too. Yeah, I am as well. Side note, we mentioned Substack. We're on Substack. We don't know what we're doing on Substack, but we have one now and you should follow us there. And that way you can be apprised of all of the things that we will do when we figure out how to do them. Yes, exactly. It's attackofthefinalgirls.substacks.com. Yes.
Thanks for listening to attack of the final girls. Find us online at attack of the final girls.com and hear bonus episodes at patrion.com slash attack of the final girls. We're Attack of the Final Girls on Instagram and TikTok. Our theme music is by House Ghost and is available on Rad Girlfriend Records. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode and rate and review on Apple Podcasts so more... I'm Juliet. And I'm Teresa. Until next time, stay scary.