Hey, how are y'all doing? We're great, Marcus. I'm not exhausted at all after watching Roz all day and I'm going home and not going to pass out immediately or anything. Well, I'm great. I'm at a conference and this is totally what I sound like and this isn't the weirdest example of Marcus talking to himself ever or anything. That'd be weird. So welcome to Imported Horror.
This is the podcast that brings you the very best of creepy monsters and abbreviated solo podcasts because my co-hosts are indisposed and I didn't want to leave y'all hanging for too many weeks without anything from us. That's okay. I think that's going to be great. So Marcus Grady is a way to work conference in Austin. Sounds like he's having a lot of fun. Melissa is exhausted because Roz ran her all around the room.
She was babysitting for us this afternoon, so I figured on weeks that we can't do the full show, I'll still go through the coming Soons and talk about stuff I've seen. Won't be a full episode, won't be as good, but hey, it's something for your ear holes on a Friday morning and that's something. So we've only got two foreign horrors dropping on streaming services this week, but that's okay. They're both interesting. They're both worth talking about.
The first today, if you're releasing to this, listening to this on our release day, the seventh is Death Whisperer too. And I love when descriptions start like this. I can't quite do the voice, but I'm working on it In a world shrouded by Darkness, a relentless force seeks rich retribution, undeterred by boundaries or morality. This is Death Whisperer two from Thailand. The original is also on Netflix. This one's dropping today, the original drop sometime last year.
This looks pretty good, honestly made a lot of money in Asia. Wikipedia says two has the Domestic Box office record for single day day of release sales, and it said both Death Whisperer one and two were inspired by the Evil Dead, which we could easily have a collection of foreign films inspired by Evil Dead and I kind of love that as exports go. I think that's magnificent. The other one is a great example of leaving it all on the field for the title.
This is dropping on Monday the 10th of February on shutter, humanist, vampire seeking consenting suicidal person. It's from Quebec from Canada. A young woman Vampire is unable to kill her need for blood, but may have found a solution in a young man with suicidal tendencies and I kind of admire that. It's all in the title and there is zero confusion about what this is about and the trailer really plays up on that.
And it's kind of a wordy mouthful of a title and it certainly takes a lot to type out in threads, which our threads is back up by the way, but it leaves it all out there. You know exactly what this is, and I don't know if it's for me, I think a lot of, for lack of a better term, gen Z content about suicide approaches the topic in some, maybe cavalier is the wrong word, but with a frankness that millennials that my generation didn't really feel super comfortable doing,
or at least I never did. One of the few things I tell my journalism students that there's a right and a wrong way to cover is suicide because from a nonfiction perspective, they're definitely a whole bunch of wrong ways to do it that lead to unintended consequences. The rules are a little different for fiction fiction and it's, I suppose only really an issue when it's surprising.
I'm thinking of Lady Gaga fans that went to see Star is Born and were just knowing nothing about it and we're just completely blindsided by the pretty blunt on the nose suicide content. This obviously, you're not going to be surprised, it's literally in the title, so I think either you're up for it or you're not.
The trailer also mentions that it's from Drafthouse films that the Alamo Draft House had a hand in producing it, and I could see that it's got sort of that weird Austin that was historical fiction vibe to it because Austin, the Austin that I went to grad school in high school and doesn't exist anymore.
And I don't know the last time I was there for a conference, it felt like a very different city, one that was a whole lot less weird and a whole lot more corporate and tech growy, but this I'm sure still has that old school weird artsy fartsy, south Lamar movie vibe to it. The one art house, or excuse me, draft house film that I haven't seen that I want to that is very much at my alley is spring, which is, I mean I want to spoil anything but love crafty.
I've seen the trailer enough and read enough about it to know, yeah, this is something I'd probably be interested in. I just have never actually gotten to see it because other stuff always pops up on my list first. This one Humanist Vampire. I don't know about that. That may not be for me, but if it's for you, that's cool. Email us, tell us about it. So we don't have Melissa here who is still short, but I figured I would talk a little bit about one of the movies I saw recently.
I was in a monster mood and I wandered onto Tubi because that's what you do when you're in a monster mood. And I saw the tank from New Zealand and it really made me wonder how to best evaluate a monster movie because if you're looking purely at the creature effects, then the tank is 10 out of 10, maybe 12 out of 10, no notes, fantastic, magnificent, super creepy monster, all practical effects. The suit, it was made by the same folks in New Zealand,
the Weta Workshop do a whole bunch. They, I think really first made it big with Lord of the Rings, but they've done a ton over the years and these folks know practical
effects and so that's really cool. And when you actually do see the monster, they clearly spent a lot of time on this costume and they worked really hard on it and it's surprisingly creepy and that's great, but the rest of it, the plot is a little ridiculous and the monster not in a fun way, it takes itself a little bit too seriously. You're supposed to care about these characters in a serious kind of borderline somber way, and I just didn't.
And there's silly, like the whole concept of the tank, this big water tank underneath this house that's also connected to a cave. None of that makes any sense. And if you're making a silly, campy monster movie, that's fine. If you're making a serious monster movie, it's a little bit bit more difficult. It's harder to bridge that gap.
And I think a lot of slasher movies have the same issue because we've seen so many ridiculous corny slasher movies and Scream was practically a parody of itself and then Scary Movie came along and did parody it, but had a hard time doing it because it was already so close to parody. And I love Scary movie and I love Spring, but I love Scary Movie and I love Scream. I haven't seen Spring, but there's not that much wiggle room for a serious slasher. It's hard to do.
I think it's the same with Monster movies. It can be done. The Monster is a good example. Godzilla minus one is another good example, but it's tough. It's really kind of hard to thread that needle and I don't know that this one did a fantastic job of it, but at the same time, if you spend all that time on the Monster Effects, you've got a really creepy monster. It feels like a bit of a waste to just throw it away on a corny comedy horror. So I don't know. I don't know.
I really wanted to pair it with heart effects from Australia that I watched a couple of months ago and that did really lean into the camp and it had a sense of humor. The characters, like somebody quotes Jeff Goldblum and you know the quote, you already know the quote, you already know, you can see it coming a mile away. I laughed out loud when the character said it, really enjoyed it.
They filmed it out in the outback and had all the natural sound and all the animals screeching and howling Koalas sound. Not at all like you'd expect a cute little animal to sound. They sound horrifying, but even with all that sense of humor, then when you finally do see the creature, it's mostly CG and that feels like a letdown. And I saw a lot of the reviews really dunked on the movie because of that. I don't think that's completely fair, but at the same time, I can see the point.
So I wound up giving both Carnifex and the Tank three stars on Letterboxed, even though they both basically excelled at different parts because I would much rather a practical effect monster than cg. But if it's late on a Friday night and I'm watching Tubi, I mean let's have a sense of humor about it. Let's not take ourselves so seriously that we stop having fun and I worry the Tank kind of did that.
I also don't know why Canada does this. Australia does this, New Zealand does this, but the movie is set in Oregon and that's fine, but y'all don't need to pretend like it's set here just for our benefit. Don't tell us this is an American horror movie. We don't need to be coddled. And if the fear is that we won't watch a movie that we know was shot overseas. Well if that's true, and maybe the data suggests that, I don't know, but if that's true, it's only accurate because we keep seeing it,
we keep doing it and we don't know how many are from overseas. And two, there is sort of a, they do mention in the tank part of the hook of the monster, the Fox Mulder moment, which wasn't super well done if I'm being honest, but was a big giant Cascadia earthquake in the year 1700. And that did really happen. And I went down a fun Wikipedia rabbit hole reading about it, about how they know it happened, all the science and evidence and everything.
And part of the reason that they know it happened was because they've uncovered some of them relatively recently, these ghosts ghost what they call ghost forests, which are basically when an area of forest falls into the ocean because of a big earthquake, the tree trunks, most of them, a lot of 'em are still there. They're just buried under sand and mud and muck and water and something happens to release them.
Then you see these huge submerged forests of little trees that come up to maybe knee height maybe, and that is super creepy and that would be such an awesome shot for a horror movie with practical effects and a monster running around and everything. And that would be really, really fantastic. The problem is those ghost forests are literally on the other side of the world from where this movie was actually filmed. So you can't do that.
You can't really appreciate the New Zealand scenery, which is stunning. This is Lord of the Rings, that's middle earth, but if you don't tell people that's where it is, then you miss something. But IMDB in the little trivia thing for the tank did mention that the suit for the monster, let me look up her name, but the main person who was in it is also going to be in Megan too, which I think is fantastic.
And partly because she was super creepy in this and a lot of that, as you can tell, it's flexibility, her IMDB page doing some ballerina stuff, which is great. And if you're going to be a monster, you need flexibility helps a lot. But yeah, her name is Regina Hegemann Heman, sorry if I'm mispronouncing that, but she's going to be in Megan 2.0 and yeah, the main picture of her on IMDB is she's got one leg one way and one leg the other way really stretchy.
And I like that because usually we think a monster's like the guy from Prey who's this gigantic dude, played college basketball and then wanted to be in movies and that's awesome. Doug Jones is also huge, super tall guy, and I love Doug Jones and I love the guy from Prey. I hope he's in a lot more. But those of us that are short, I say I'm five six, people have told me I'm five five, maybe they're right, but a Short Kings and short Queens, we can be in monster movies too,
and I think that's awesome. But the only other person, according to the IMDB trivia that would fit in the suit was the director's kid and kid comes to the set and said, dad, can I get in the monster suit? And the answer to that question is objectively yes, absolutely, let's make that happen.
So I don't know which shot it was, but one of the shots of the monster in the tank, that's the director's kid in the suit, which I think is magnificent, and the movie gets bonus points for it. So if you're in a creature feature mood, which why wouldn't you be then if you're looking for something more serious with cool effects, the tank is great. If you're looking for something with a sense of humor, but the creature effects might be a little more CG oriented,
then car effects is where it's at. Either way. Monster movies are great, and if you're thinking if I want something really serious, but also really fantastic Godzilla minus one, especially minus color, just know that you might cry at the end. I did. I'm not ashamed to admit it. So anyway, we will talk to y'all next week.