Hello, Internet. Welcome to Nobodies, the horror content podcast where we clean up the ugly things so you don't have to. Our biweekly show features two hosts and rotating guest content experts tackling the nitty gritty complex horror topic. with the hope of making the genre more approachable for frequent flyers and newbies alike.
The goal of this show is to highlight diverse voices and perspectives in horror. This is your reminder that there may be discourse on this show that will challenge the way you look at the genre. So let's get ready to get ugly. I'm the ghost with the blog, Lonely, and I'm joined by my co-host and partner in crime. I'm Susie, a.k.a. Projectile Varmint. And at the time of recording, Susie and I are firmly cemented in what they're calling the polar vortex.
So I don't know if you've had any interesting happenings in the polar vortex. My car door was frozen shut and I had to stick a fork in it to get it open. That's probably not how you get a car door open, but that's been my experience. If it worked, it's okay. I was stuck in the polar vortex with a frozen car. And I use one of my credit cards to chip the ice off of the windshield. So I'm always unprepared for things like this, even though I've lived here my entire life. Same, same.
So if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I usually have obnoxiously long fake nails on, which make a lot of things in my life challenging but we must commit to the aesthetic and winter is particularly hard with fake nails because you like smack your nail on something frozen and it snaps right off and then you bleed everywhere it's a horror film in itself
It's a great time. There are a lot of good frozen horror films. I feel like we haven't explored that topic and we probably should. Yeah, I think we definitely should because horror in the dead of winter. There's so many and not just like The Shining. There's a lot. There's a lot. It's bleak. It's perfect setting. We are talking about something bleak tonight, though. So do you want to take us into that? Yeah. All right. So tonight we're going to be talking about.
kidnapping and here with us we have writer director and photographer connor doyle he is based in the chicagoland area and his work primarily deals with existential drama His work often uses genre to explore challenging topics such as loss, trauma, and uncertainty. He graduated from Hampshire College where he completed The Judgment.
A psychological drama based on a short by Franz Kafka. Welcome, Connor. We're so happy to have you here. Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. Are you also dealing with the polar vortex in your part of the world? We did last week. So I live in Chicago, so it does get very cold, very windy. Yeah, we always deal with the polar vortex every winter. It's kind of inescapable. And the wind makes it worse. You're the Windy City.
We are the Windy City, and yes, the wind does make it much worse. Well, we're glad you're here with us tonight and not frozen solid. So for the listeners, some context. Connor had reached out to me on Instagram to check out a screener for his most recent film and...
I totally dropped the ball while I was doing wedding planning and totally failed on getting the screener reviewed in time for his premiere. So I felt so terribly about this and I thought, how could I possibly make it up to him and somehow. I've convinced him to come on the show to chat movies with us, especially his film In the Flesh. So Connor is here tonight to talk with us about some psychological thrillers focusing on kidnapping narratives, as Susie mentioned.
But he is the director of In the Flesh. So In the Flesh is a 43 minute psychological thriller following Ted, who is one day kidnapped by a bereaved recluse, Jeremy, and forced to play act his dead brother, David. Slowly gaining Jeremy's confidence and embodying the role of David, Ted discovers his captor's true intentions and makes a plan to escape.
But before we get into the intricacies of psychological thrillers versus horror, we'd love to kind of hear from you, Connor. Like, what has your journey been into horror and writing? And did you always think that you would want to direct? something with a darker subject matter? From the onset, no. I've always been interested in psychological thrillers and horror. the possibility of kind of getting into that like within filmmaking really didn't like
my way into later in life in college, surprisingly enough. I was always interested in Hitchcock, also various horrors like The Exorcist. so on and so forth, the haunting. Yeah, I think thrillers are... such an interesting way to capture human drama. It doesn't show the exact reality of your day-to-day reality, but it kind of shows the more darker elements. of ourselves, probably to its extremities. And the subject that
concerning in the flesh and kidnapping thrillers. I guess that idea kind of came a little bit more recently, just delving into like, oddly enough, true crime, just ideas of... forced into certain situations and trying to survive from that without losing their humanity. I don't know if that kind of answers your question. Yeah, absolutely. I was about to say, it's almost like you're reading my show notes without even seeing them. That's exactly where I'm going.
We actually wanted to define psychological thriller and kind of just set those genre expectations because something that Susie and I have talked about on the show often is, you know, does something even count as horror and what counts as a thriller? I feel like this is a conversation in horror all the time. It's so hard to talk about horror in a way where you are putting films into different categories because the lines are often blurred.
So a good horror movie may have some thriller elements or a thriller movie might have some horror elements, but they have different goals for their audience. So the Script Lab offers the following distinction between the two. So they say horror films have the intention to frighten the audience by tapping into their unconscious fears. These fears are primal and typically centered on the body, the unknown, and monsters, and they try and provoke a strong emotional and visceral response.
This could include some graphic scenes designed to shock and disturb the viewers, whereas thriller films use suspense, tension, psychological intrigue, and criminality to increase the audience heart rate. So they often employ a mystery, the central mystery or a high stakes situation that keeps the audience engaged in guessing what might happen next.
They tend to be a little bit more fast-paced and involve a more intricate plot, which you'll see in many of the movies we discussed tonight. And they tend to rely less on blood and gore than horror movies and focus on the building and anticipation of suspense. What do you think of these definitions and what role do you think psychological thrillers play in the overall horror genre?
That's very interesting. I've been thinking about this kind of distinction for a while, especially starting to make the film in the flesh and also market the film, too. This is just my opinion, but it seems like true horror fans, it seems like there has to be like a... blood gore elements for like really die hard horror fans but that's not true for everyone. I feel like there's definitely a world for both.
But for me, I think thrillers have a more specific psychological intention. A lot of the horror or thrilling elements is definitely based on suspense. without having too much of, like, a supernatural element to it. Like, suspense built in reality. I totally agree with that. Yeah, not to say I'm not a fan of the supernatural. I very much so.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Susie, you mentioned that it's so hard to kind of talk about, you know, horror films sometimes when the genres really do blend and when we think about the influence of psychological thriller in cinema in general. I don't think it's a far stretch at all to consider them at least a minimum horror adjacent, if not fully integrated in the psychological genre. So something that...
had come up while researching for this episode is why are people so obsessed with psychological thrillers? Why are they so popular? They perform very well, you know, with the Academy and psychology. Oh my gosh. Psychology. Psychology Today cites a similar obsession with psychological thrillers as most audiences have with true crime.
stating that psychological thrillers explore characters' innermost thoughts and motivations, allowing us to examine how their decisions propel the plot forward into the extremes of ethics and morality. The genre prompts us to consider the darkness in others and ourselves.
And that is what I would consider is what I think psychological thrillers are scary about, which is, you know, it's that darkness of human nature and the darkness of humanity. This is something you actually mentioned earlier, Connor. Would you say that you agree kind of with this obsession, you know, without trying to understand the human mind? And how did that kind of play into when you were writing In the Flat?
Yes, I would definitely agree with that. And for me, when dealing within the flesh, It's just because the material is so dark. The writing process is a little difficult because you're kind of getting into the mindset of someone who would do something like this and I guess the main intention for that was trying to understand Jeremy despite the fact You don't necessarily want to identify with him, but...
There's like a point you can empathize with him. A lot of the film has to do with ideas about empathy and Jeremy's empathy. What's interesting about writing a character like him is that You can explore these darker elements, but you can also understand some of the things that you're doing without forgiving him. In that case, you can also indemnify the character as well. I might have said the same thing.
No yeah that absolutely makes sense and I know you know as we were kind of talking a little bit about getting this episode scheduled I know there was a couple films that you had mentioned that were. you know, maybe somewhat inspire some of the things that inspired in the flesh. So I'd love to, you know, talk about some of those and kind of go see what, you know, what pieces of them were particularly inspiring to you. So I know one of the films you mentioned was Silence of the Lambs.
Silence of the Lambs 1991 is a young FBI cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims. And Silence of the Lambs and the entire Thomas Harris franchise is like one of my all time favorite horror franchises ever. So super excited to finally get a chance to talk about this film.
Susie, before we turn it over to Connor to hear a little bit more about the inspiration, do you have any opening thoughts on Silence of the Lambs? I don't think we've ever talked about this film. Well, my opening thoughts are I feel like this is a movie
everybody's seen. You don't have to be a horror lover or a psychological thriller lover. I feel like this was just a wildly successful and hugely popular film when it came out and I think that it all like rests on that story and psychological thrillers have stories that like a little bit complicated but not too much so where you are like putting viewers off I feel like
Like an interesting plot, like Silence of the Lambs just kept this movie going and made it interesting from beginning to end and then had this like amazing, like I would say Hollywood ending. But yeah, I love this movie. I guess that was more than an opening thought. Agreed. Agreed. So as we think about the psychological thriller element of this, we do have the criminality. You know, we have the FBI following a serial killer case. And I feel like serial killers are.
you know, what's the word, the buzziest, buzziest true crime topics right now. And we think about, you know, the place that we're focusing on for this episode, which is kidnapping. We have the character of Buffalo Bill, who is kidnapping and then eventually skinning his victims.
And Clarice Starling has to unravel what has happened here. So, Connor, I'd love if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, what do you enjoy about Silence of the Lambs? And where was this piece in your sort of creative journey within the flesh? Oh, of course. I mean, yeah, I also love Silence of the Lambs. I discovered it, I think, when I was like...
10 or 12 of course in a like edited tv version um i don't think i've i've saw like the full full film until like a couple years later Silence of the Lambs was a big visual inspiration for In the Flesh. Something I always go back to just thinking about the direction. It's a unique story just because, well, within the genre, it's not necessarily centered. I mean, it is centered on the kidnapping, but it's more interested in like...
The aftermath around it, Clarice Starling's personal journey along with her journey to find the senator's daughter, save her from Buffalo Bill. Just thinking about the Thomas Harris universe, I was also inspired by Red Dragon as well. But yeah, just kind of delving into the mind, like the psychology of the serial killer, trying to figure out why they're doing what they're doing and like also empathizing with them a bit.
Silence of the Lambs doesn't have as much sympathy for Buffalo Bill's character, at least in the movie version, or at least that. From my perspective, it doesn't seem like they have enough sympathy. I'm so glad you brought up the...
Now, I'm so glad you've seen Red Dragon and you're a fan of that as well and that you've read Red Dragon because that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you and ask Susie is if you both have read Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs because I saw Silence of the Lambs.
at a young probably too young of an age right and then I read Silence of the Lambs the book and it just took this to a whole nother level and I'm glad that you brought up the point on you know empathy because when you look at the two kind of ends of the Thomas Harris universe you have red dragon you have manhunter with will graham who
Will Graham's whole thing is being able to empathize and relate to serial killers in such a way that he can pin them down to a point, psychoanalyze them, and then find out their crimes. So whereas Clarice... She's almost burdened by her empathy in a lot of the film. You know, she is a deeply emotionally driven person, but not in a way that makes her weak.
And gender plays a really cool role in Silence of the Lambs as well, because you have Clarice, who seems to be one of the very few female FBI agents in this arena who is doing what she's doing. But Susie, have you read Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs? I have not, no. I would totally recommend it. I actually think Silence of the Lambs makes a wonderful audiobook as well. It is so, so cool. My only thing is, well, I mean, there's some dated commentary on...
I guess that's the easiest way to say it. There is some very dated commentary on gender when it comes to Buffalo Bill and everything happening there. And it's much more prominent in the book. So if that's something that you're easily upset by the viewers. How do you think they handled the issue of Buffalo Bill? wearing women's clothing making a women's like dress out of skin and you know because they do make mention that he has had a relationship with a man in the past
And then I almost feel like the fact that they're having him wear women's clothing, they almost made it like a little bit comical and like poked fun at it a little bit. And I don't know how I feel about that watching it now. Yeah, I would. It makes sense. Yeah, Susie, I would have to agree. Suns of the Lambs definitely has a lot of flack in terms of its representation of trans women. Thinking back to the book, there's a little...
And I might be wrong, it has been several years since I've read the book. I feel like we get a little bit more of Buffalo Bill's interiority, which is needed. But that's like completely lost in the movie. And yeah, the character does seem like... Like over, like a little bit too extra. Two extra, not enough. There's not enough access to what they're thinking.
Right and it kind of it's a what you're leaning towards Susie it almost because we don't get anything else other than the crime it kind of feels like a caricature and that's where it becomes Then for people who don't access the film or the source material beyond that, there's not a lot of nuance. So that's when you get some of the more problematic ideas around, you know.
gender and identity issues being associated with mental illness in a negative way when in reality, you know, people who are experiencing gender identity queerness are actually more likely to be victims of crime than to perpetrate crimes themselves. And you're absolutely right, Connor. In the book, you do get a lot more of Buffalo Bill's story and how he gets here. But I think... There's still a very deep undertone that is kind of problematic.
I wish Thomas Harris had done an interview on this nowadays, but I'm sure he never would. It's still very problematic in the way that they talk about the whole gender thing. They definitely treat it as a joke in the book as well and definitely something that's very taboo and strange. And they really use that to excuse some of his crimes. So it's definitely a point in the film that has not aged well. And since there's no, at least from what I can remember.
In the Will Graham story arc, which follows Red Dragon and a few other of the books, there's not a lot of other commentaries on gender that would really dig this deep that would kind of redeem Thomas Harrison anyway on this, but it is a good conversation and it comes back to that idea of empathy that we keep bringing up, you know, when it relates to psychological thrillers and how it keeps the audience engaged.
And you take it a little deeper and you look at the character who played or the actor who played Buffalo Bill. If you read some of his quotes about how he you know researched for the character and how he thought the character What the gender was with the sexuality was is really interesting because it makes me I'm like reading it right now and it's making me like dislike this actor and the director of Sounds of the Lambs that even was like, yeah, that's a great idea. Uh-huh. That makes sense.
yeah there's a very interesting history um with jonathan jonathan dem got a lot of flack by his depiction of buffalo bell just even with the part of saving face with, oh, Buffalo Bill is not a real transsexual, and what does that mean? And yeah, there's like a lot of speculation that he made Philadelphia afterwards as an apology. And the last thing I'll say, because I could go on forever about Signs of the Lamb. So...
If you know me in person, you know I have one of my most prominent tattoos on my sleeve. I actually have a death's head moth on my arm. And what I think is missing. so deeply in the film that i wish brought was brought forth a little bit more and also relates to buffalo bill's story is this whole metaphor with the moth and
The idea that moths, you know, they have a much different chrysalis, you know, cocoon period than butterflies. And they are almost dead during their time when they form the chrysalis. So Buffalo Bill, like going through these extreme acts is, you know, in some way relating to the moth, like he must kill everything he was before to create what he believes is his true self.
It's just very interesting. And I feel like the moths are kind of just uses as a symbol throughout the movie. Like you just see them. She goes to the museum. Exactly. And in the movie, or excuse me, the book, there's so much more there and there's so much more about why the death head moth in particular is like so prominent and why buffalo bill
Because something else you don't get into in the film is that Buffalo Bill was a seamstress, so he had a lot of experience with fabrics and silk, which is why he has all these moths. But yeah, a lot of stuff that was missed, but I still think this is incredibly...
strong film it is in my top 10 and it is one of the only horror films to win the big three at the oscars pretty sure that's my final answer i've researched that fact many times and i've messed it up a couple times but that is the only one I wonder how this next film did in the Oscars. So we have a film from 2013 called Prisoners.
Kelly Dover. Is it Dover or Dover? Dover? Dover. We'll say Dover. I'm pretty sure it's Dover. I was actually just watching the movie a few minutes ago to prepare for this. Keller Dover is, what a fucking name. I know. Keller Dover is facing every parent's worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her friend, Joy. And as the minutes turn to hours, panic sets in.
The only lead is an RV that had been parked on their street. And I get this film confused all the time with the lovely bones, the lonely bones, whatever that movie is. And I feel like in the 2000s, we just had this like, slew of kidnapping psychological thrillers that were everywhere like Mystic River, Along Came a Spider, Murder by Numbers, The Bone Collector, they were just everywhere and they were hugely popular.
In Prisoners, this film ended up being hugely popular. And as I was re-watching it, I was like, oh my gosh, this movie is like two and a half hours long. But it didn't seem like it when I was watching it. And that's the thing that these... psychological thrillers do they just keep this plot going and going and then they send you on like this path and then that path and you're like no it can't be him oh maybe it is him and i think this movie the plot was
The only thing I wish we had taken out of this is the mother. I feel like the mother, like, slogged down the film a little bit. But what are your opening thoughts for this one, Connor? Well, I'm a huge Denis the Louv fan. I was very attracted towards the visual style this film has, but also just the way that we explore Hugh Jackman's character, Kelly Dover.
I mean, this kind of is another interesting kidnapping thriller because one of the kidnappings is like... the center of the film but it's more interested in how the kidnapping of the two kids affects the entire community, it affects the family, it affects Hugh Chapman. Are spoilers okay on this show? Yeah, we're full spoilers, so just go for it. Fantastic. All right, Hugh Jackman. There's a big suspicion that Paul Dano's character kidnapped the kids.
The main detective in the show, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Detective Loki, talking about like crazy names. He lets him go because there's not much evidence against him, but he kidnaps Paul Dano because he's convinced that he knows where his daughters are. It almost becomes a kidnapping thriller centered around Hugh Jackman. But his motivations are like... more obsessed towards trying to find his daughter, but it's also motivated by his feeling of ineptitude and failure.
of not protecting his family, of not providing for his family. Also thinking back to In the Flesh, like I said before, this was a huge visual inspiration just in terms of the lighting, the color palette. I gave this film to our cinematographer, Fat Ewan, just in terms of getting the lighting style similar. But in hindsight, I think... Jeremy's character was very much from the same cloth as Hugh Jackman because Jeremy, while a very different person and has a very different personal dilemma.
His motivations are more centered on his own personal failures to take care of his brother in his most desperate time of need. so just to have the listeners understand what we're talking about the lead character in connor's film in the flesh is a man named jeremy and connor you brought up this kind of You know, moral dilemma, question of moral dilemma. Like, did Hugh Jackman's character, is the kidnapping he did...
just as bad as the kidnapping of his children? Or is he allowed to do that because, you know, he's a father trying to help his daughter, which I feel like was a bigger, broader theme in this movie. When is it okay to do something horrible? And I just want to know if either of you are in a position like this. do you think you would leave it all to the police? Or if you really thought in your heart, in your gut, you knew who did this, would you take things into your own hands?
You can go first, Connor, about whether or not you'd commit vigilante justice. No, I would not commit vigilante justice. Just on the record. No, I don't think Hugh Jackman did the right thing. But what if... What if that guy was the one who did kidnap his daughters? Then would it have been okay?
No. So I'm always on the fence. I'll jump in here. So I think the conversation about because we keep bringing up empathy, which I think is super such an interesting thread through these three films that I did not think about until we started talking because.
I don't know about anybody else, but I, when I was watching this film, I did not feel any, I'm sorry. I did not feel any empathy for Hugh Jackman. Like, I'm like, sorry, I'm really sorry this is happening to you, but you are off the freaking rocker, my friend. Also, side note, I am not a Hugh Jackman person, so the whole time I was watching this, all I could think about was Jean Valjean and Les Mis, but whatever.
I felt the most empathy in this film for the kid, I believe his name is Alex, who he abducts and locks in a freaking empty house and tortures beyond any means of... It's one thing if you... think somebody's done something to wrong you and you punch them in the face in a parking lot it's another thing if you lock a what is presumably a mentally disabled individual
in an abandoned building and physically disfigure him beyond belief. And I guess there's a point in the film where we're not really sure if he's kidnapped these children, but... Does that I don't think there's a point where that becomes justified. You know, I don't know. I guess there is that moral dilemma. I don't have children. So I think maybe.
If I had a child, maybe I'd feel differently about that answer. That's why I like this film. I think this film is brilliant in that way, though, where even though the outcome, you get the kids back. this guy's life is like ruined yeah it's just terrible and the guys and what we find out in the film is that the guy's life was ruined before jean valjean came in the picture here he was already messed up and
it's just so sad there's a lot of sadness in this film and i think another character who's really interesting so i'll i will say my first time watching this film i hated it i thought it was such a freaking slog to get through it's so long and i'm so glad you like this director connor because In these parts, we are not. We're like the worst fans of the Spider movie. Also with Jake Gyllenhaal. What is that movie? I was and I liked that one anime. Oh, and a mutant giant spider.
Jake Gyllenhaal talking to himself. But anyway, so I'm so glad you like him and found some value in it because I did think on my second watch, Prisoners was better. but mostly because of Jake Gyllenhaal's acting. I thought he was pretty good in this film. He makes a really good job. You don't think so? No. The fact that they had him eating...
I hate when, okay, he's got the name Loki. You made him quirky enough. He doesn't need to be eating sunflower seeds as his quirky trait and blinking his eyes as maybe... Some kind of neurodivergent trait. I hate when they make these cops like.
I know every psychological profile is neurodivergent. Yeah. There's no, there's no, and that could be fine, but it's always like, because i think at least you know give it to thomas harris i think he or actually i strike that from the record it might have been brian for fuller who made the hannibal series he was like oh yeah will graham's definitely autistic And that's great.
they never it's always like this dancing around the point and maybe it's because everyone's trying to always be clary starling they're always looking for that in another character but i was just gonna say this is star-studded cast viola davis is also in this and she is ridiculously underused in this script because viola davis is a freaking powerhouse and she should have been the cop in my humble opinion but whatever yeah connor have you seen the movie the the vanishing or sport loose
I have, yes, yes. So did you think, like how do you think that movie may have influenced the last You know, the final act in this one. Do you see any connection there? Because there's a point where the Keller Dover goes to the house and the woman who kidnapped the kids is like, if you want to know what happened to your daughter, you need to drink this. And that's exactly what, I think she said the key to see your daughter is to drink that. Is in a bottle or something. Yeah, is in the bottle.
Wow, I never made that connection before. But yeah, that totally makes sense. Sporloose... Also a kidnapping film. Also a kidnapping film. Also very frightening, very crawling under your skin. much more depressing i think in comparison to in comparison to prisoners because both deal with like These inadequacies of their male characters, yeah, I think the answers for Sporloose are much more pessimistic.
What we can finally get into now. So we've talked about it and now we're going to get into it, which is your film in the flush. So in the flush filmed in Chicago this past December. and has gone on to be featured in The Thing in the Basement Horror Fest, where it was awarded Best Extended Short Film and Best Performance for Chad, playing Jeremy. So I know we've talked about your creative process already, but something that I was interested kind of looking at the press for the film is in...
the press packets, you know, you reference your experience in the COVID-19 lockdown and how that also informs some of the choices that you made in the storyline. So we've had actually other writers and directors on our show who had similar experiences while navigating the lockdown and how that impacted them as creative professionals during that time. So I'd love if you could speak a little bit more about how that experience of lockdown informed the major themes that you brought in this film.
Well, I think during the time, so the lockdown happened, I was working on a different project, a different script, but that would have evolved. a bigger cast, several locations so that was completely off the table. So I kind of had to narrow my expectations for myself.
But also kind of revisit simpler ideas. And yeah, I guess the kidnapping thriller... did come back into mind because I was exposed to like a fair amount of these types of narratives especially like narratives of forced domestic life So narratives about like women being kidnapped. forced to playact their kidnapper's wife or children being kidnapped and forced to playact the children, which kind of happens in prisoners too, now that I think about it.
And I was just very interested in what this male-to-male dynamic could play out like. So with that idea and the potential of shooting this at my house, employing just a few crew members, a couple cast members, I only really needed two actors. And also just thinking back to like. The more socially conscious and like heady hoarder, I think someone had called it at one point during the 2010s, like from Ari Aster and Jordan Peele. thought about giving it a go.
And yeah, I guess the first iteration of the script was going to be completely different. It was going to be one guy kidnapping another and forcing him to... be a part of like affluent community or posh community and that didn't really go anywhere. But then the idea about like brother to brother dynamic kind of played in. And then afterwards... It took a while to get to the final point of the film. I had various iterations of the script.
A terrible, terrible ending. I'm so glad that I forfeited because it just would have been. really bad. But I guess when thinking about the script and the process of writing it, like, For screenwriting me, I always kind of run into questions about, like, how much do I put myself into the script?
the people i'm writing are real true characters or if they're just like extensions of myself and that really helping me figure that out is just identifying what the characters want But in a way, that also played into the dilemma between the main characters, Jeremy, Ted, and the flesh. Oddly enough, they're filmmakers in their self. I mean, Ted's playing a character, David. Jeremy's writing scripts for him and video recording him. So it's kind of like. a weird play performance.
movie installation at the end of the day. But that kind of really informed of what the characters needed to think about in order to get to the ending it goes to. So Susie, do you want to just jump in here with some of your opening thoughts on your experience watching the film? I liked how I was trying to figure out what the reasoning was and it wasn't like an obvious reasoning.
for what the intentions of the characters were. And I was thinking of different things it could be and what it actually was was something completely different. And I'm not going to spoil that. so this your movie definitely kept me like wondering and when we're watching the videos of the brother the like flashbacks through the videos um on the vhs player i thought that was like the best one out of all three of them.
The brother? Oh, Declan Shannon, yes. It seemed like real home videos. Like, those seemed legit just like real home videos. I mean, they all did a wonderful job acting, but that definitely stood out to me. And then towards the end of the film, who's the one who's kidnapped? That would be Ted. He's played by Tanner Goldberg. When Ted at the end of the film is. you know, embodying the brother who passed away from cancer.
I was like, wow, he is on his game there and really was starting to mimic the mannerisms and mimic the facial expressions that the brother had. So, yeah. I agree completely. So and I think it's interesting that you have sort of this multifaceted It's almost like a meta. There's multiple things being filmed here. There's multiple acting happening. I mean, you have the actual actors who are acting in a film and then you have them acting, as you mentioned, Connor, the different parts of.
the script in the home videos and ted as a an entity in the story becomes an incredible actor in this whole piece by the end of the the story which i thought was really impressive because when you first meet him You have this sense like, oh man, this is going to be a long 40 minutes with this character. But then... It starts to get interesting and then he starts to play along and there's a lot to unpack as you move through the story. And I think also I mentioned the multimedia approach.
I think the videotapes are super cool because it really speaks to this wave of analog horror that we're seeing coming out recently. It's very... in no way is this film comparable to skidmering but that was where my brain went because it was very you know you had like the very classic retro videotape feel on the screen compared to the isolation of the basement so i thought it was very very cool I definitely enjoyed the film and what I would say.
is the strongest part of the film is that i think it's wonderful that it is 45 minutes i think that's great i hate when people try to fill that hour and a half with nothing and i think that this film does not do that it has its pacing it carries it to the end and it was a good fun good fun watch but i know so you're screening this film right now connor do you anticipate this film ever reaching a wider audience anytime soon
We're still working on distribution for the film. I'm hoping to figure something out by the end of this year, but we're still... shopping this around festivals, showing this around Chicago, we're planning a few screens in Boston, and I guess anyone who will have us. But yeah, going off of just a fun fact about the family movies. So we actually shot those in actual videotape.
like with a real camcorder and everything with a real camcorder and everything um i think the most important aspect of that was Shooting it on videotape just kind of has a better tacticity to it. Just thinking about like other films like Videodrome and films relating to videotape and but looking back on memories there's an interesting way that's like the messiness of that kind of plays in with the messiness of memory or that definitely goes into jeremy's own memories and his
but fleeting attempts to try to remember his brother and stay true to him. It's like all things fade. Absolutely. And grief is a huge part of this film. But Susie and I will not say more about how or why and what the outcome is, because we definitely want folks to check this out once you finally get somebody on board for distribution. We cannot wait.
So now me and Lonely are going to talk about a buzzy film right now. A lot of people are watching it and talking about it online. And right now I think it is kind of a deep cut. It's about a model who becomes obsessed with a high profile murder trial. And that is like literally the most simple synopsis you can have for this film. Overall, I was like, I really don't like police procedurals.
especially when a lot of the time is spent in the courtroom. So that kind of like threw me off a little bit. I shouldn't have read the reviews of this film before I watched it. Cause people were giving it like eight nines out of 10. And I'm like, I don't think it was that great. I don't think it's as great as everybody's saying it is. I think maybe it had like an interesting idea that hasn't really been explored that much. But is that enough to make a film good?
So I agree completely. I was kind of like, I mean, so I saw folks reviews of these and a lot of people that I saw reviewing this film did review it quite high. Like I think the lowest I saw for this film was a seven. And. A seven out of 10, I should say. And I went in with really high hopes and I didn't know. I just knew it was about somebody obsessed with a serial killer. I did not know that it was going to have this dark web element.
Anything to do with the dark web has such potential to be incredibly fucked up. And this film kind of goes there, but not really. It doesn't go there enough. i can't tell whether i hate it or not though because that particular element of it not going there because The cases that we see in this film, they're all young girls who are murdered. And I don't know, I feel like if it went there, it would have been way too exploitative.
But I do think that this film, so I agree with you that when I, as I was at like the three quarter mark of this film, I was like, first of all, this is way too long. And I was feeling really let down where it was going because I didn't know we have Kellyanne, who is this model who what we assume to be just obsessed with technology up to a point, but we're not really sure why she's at this murder trial.
we're not sure what she's doing here we have the other girl clementine who is obsessed with the serial killer in a different way and they sort of kind of i guess i wouldn't even say they become friends they start hanging out and that takes up the bulk of the middle of the film So what's going to happen? What brought those two together?
That just seemed like a match that didn't make sense. When I was watching this film, I was like, okay, this is like a take on gender because what we find out about Kellyanne at the end totally flips the script on what you would think. Their intention would be and I don't want to give anything away because this is like a new film Clementine's intentions are like pretty obvious
She's one of those people who is obsessed with a serial killer. That was pretty believable. But then like the fact that those two found each other and at one point, weren't they like living in the same space? for a while right yeah kellyanne invites clementine into her space at one point why
So I connected this. So Kellyanne is the main character in the film. We know this. And Kellyanne makes a comment about the fact that she plays online poker. That's one of her main sources of income is online poker. And Clementine makes a comment about how how do you not lose all of your money playing online poker? And Kellyanne responds that you can't play emotionally and you have to take advantage of emotional players.
So that's I thought saw that as like foreshadowing of her taking advantage of Clementine, because once we get farther into the film and we realize. The lengths at which Clementine will go versus Kellyanne are very different. And Clementine is actually the one we'll say backs out.
when it gets to a certain point where Kellyanne keeps going. My take on this whole film is that, and I mean, you can take this however you want, but my take on the film is that this... whole thing was a commentary on the true crime obsession. and the way that people absorb this content and make it their entire personalities. You have Clementine, who, like you said, is a very believable example of someone who is absolutely obsessed with a serial killer. They don't care.
about what proof they've been presented or what people have been harmed. They are obsessed with some reason. Yeah, they're brainwashed. They're obsessed for some reason about this idea of someone being victimized. You know, in cases like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, you had people saying like, oh, well, they couldn't have done it. They're so attractive. And those are the things that brainwash people. And then you have Kellyanne who has this.
absolutely sick obsession with what I thought was solving one of the pieces of the case And she takes it so, so far. And I saw it as a commentary of how far people have taken it. Because in the last 10 years, we've seen this uptick of people. I don't even know what to call them. couch investigators like people who go online and sleuth all of these details and they think they're gonna solve the case like they think they've found the the crack in the cold case
It's going to break the case open again. And they're absolutely crazy. When you look at Kellyanne, too, you're like, she's an attractive, well-off female. She couldn't be capable of the things that she's capable of, like knowing how to work her way around the dark web, trying to solve a mystery. And I thought it was more of a take on life. you don't know what a person is actually capable of. just by their gender, their appearance, their anything.
And there have been a couple because when I got to the end of the film, I very much was like, OK, what are you supposed to be telling me? So I did read a couple other reviews at that point to see what other people had taken from it. And one of the more popular takes. is that at the root of it all, Kellyanne is just a sadist. And she is just obsessed. She's becoming obsessed with the reality of the Red Rooms.
when she gets her hands on I don't want to spoil it but she gets her hands on a piece of evidence at some point in the film. And it's a very important part of it. And when she finally sees it and has this piece of evidence in her possession, her response is almost one of ecstasy. And then you wonder, what's she going to do next?
Like, what is her after the close of this movie? What's her character's, you know, character arc? Like, where are they going? Right. And so we won't spoil the ending, but... Did you think that's what Kellyanne was going to do by the end of the film? And that's why this was decent at holding up the mystery, which a lot of these psychological thrillers do. But do I think the amount of like.
courtroom drama, explanation, the grotesque way they're describing what was happening in the red rooms. Was it worth it to me? This movie was not worth it to me.
I will be giving this a four out of five because I think it is such a clever and layered commentary on true crime and that's one of my major soap boxes on the internet is the sensationalization of true crime and the fact that Victims and their families are essentially re-traumatized when these people on the internet feel the need to read case files. on a podcast or make a whole show about it and
I think it was very clever in the way that it did that, but do I think it was a successful horror film? Definitely not. I think that it loosely fits in the category we're talking tonight, which is a psychological thriller but i don't even know if you would call it a thriller i wouldn't say it's particularly thrilling i would say maybe it's a drama yeah i think this was more of a drama have you you're talking about like the couch case solvers. Have you watched Don't Fuck With Cats?
No, my mom loves that documentary. Yeah. They actually solved the crime. Yeah, that's an example of chaotic good, like at the best of it. But I'm thinking more so of, I think something, and we talked about this when we had our pals Ted and JJ on last season. but how fucked up the Dahmer series was on Netflix. And you have this public outcry from the victim's families.
From the people in the community. Where these crimes were happening. And they were very adamant. This was fucked up. This was a horrible. terribly exploitative explanation of what happened to these crimes and especially in a population like Jeffrey Dahmer preyed upon.
queer men and preyed upon queer men of color this is already a population that's exploited and this show just took it to a disgusting place it didn't need to go to and then you still have people in the comments who are like oh well f evan peters played jeffrey domers like that's so hot like that's fucked up like you really should evaluate that but that's also like what people were saying of the real Jeffrey Dahmer.
I know. And if somebody's going to say, oh, Susie and Lonely, like you said Nosferatu was was hot two episodes ago. That is a fake vampire. That is a fake vampire character. You did. You can take that heat. I said that there was sexual appeal. I did not like Bill Skarsgård's mustache. But anyway.
All right. Well, we're done talking about these movies. Let's move on to our deep cuts and surface wounds segment. As a reminder, if something has 5k or under reviews on IMDb, we're calling it a deep cut. And if it's got between six and 10 reviews. On IMDb we're calling it a surface wound.
And here's our lineup for tonight. And I'll start us off with a movie called Hide and Seek, but it isn't the Hide and Seek with Dakota Fanning and that weird imaginary friend this one's from 2000 and it's about a Desperate childless couple who kidnap a pregnant woman and lead her husband to believe that she is dead
And this has Jennifer Tilly. It's fun. It's a fun movie. And I have less of a fun movie. So this is actually a documentary, but I thought it felt interesting in this category. So it's Kidnapped for Christ. made in 2014. It is a very deep cut, not as deep as Susie's, I think, but it is 1K on IMDb. It follows a young evangelical filmmaker who is granted unprecedented access inside a controversial Christian behavior modification program.
So this is a documentary. It is all true. And I think what's interesting is that it has this kidnapping element and it has this true crime element that we've been talking about. But all of the people involved in the crime were involved in the documentary. So it really does feel... Yeah, they go down to this.
behavior modification camp in the caribbean and shit goes down and they're you know we're talking running with cameras and shit to not get killed by the crazies it's it's a really interesting documentary i would definitely recommend checking it out it reminds me if um the sacrament by its high west was like a documentary that's what that's the vibe it has
And our next one, I haven't seen it, but it's been on my watch list for so long I had to put it on here. So maybe one of you will see it and then report back. it's hippopotamus from 2018 ruby has been kidnapped but her kidnapper doesn't want a ransom he wants her to fall in love with him let us know how it is And now we're moving on to surface wounds. So I've got Whisper from 2007.
Sinister things begin happening to kidnappers who are holding a young boy for ransom in a remote cabin. It's pretty much just like that Abigail movie, but the boy is not a vampire or something else. It's fun. It's silly because it's like kind of bad funny. But I think you've got one a little bit better than mine.
I have Boy Behind the Door from 2020. After Bobby and his friend Kevin are kidnapped and taken to a strange house in the middle of nowhere, Bobby manages to escape. But then he hears Kevin screams for help and realized he cannot leave his friend behind.
So this is an excellent example of a psychological thriller because the tension that you have between the two characters and what's going to happen is really, really intense throughout the entirety of this film. I feel like it's often overlooked because it's kind of... similar in a way to black phone but
But I would recommend it. And then I've got anything for Jackson, and this is 2020. A bereaved Satanist couple kidnap a pregnant woman so they can use an ancient spell book to put their dead grandson's spirit into her unborn child. but end up summoning more than they bargained for. This movie is so much fun. And it was just over 10K, but I had to include it because this movie, like, it brought a smile to my face.
I hated anything for Jackson, but I do really like the next film that you're going to mention. All right. The next film is The Chalk Line from 2022. A couple temporarily adopts a young girl that they found wandering around at night. This movie is also a foreign film. I believe it's Spanish, correct? Yes, I think so. Yeah, just an interesting storyline. It's nothing new, but I don't know. It's like it kept me guessing.
I liked this film because it took a police procedural approach in a way that I didn't expect it to. It doesn't follow the police procedural in a formulaic way that it usually does when they try to figure out how this girl was kidnapped. So I was pretty interested in this. I didn't think it was bad at all. And I just didn't like how they made the woman, the mother, like, she's crazy. She's a crazy woman. Crazy. Of course. But I do have one that is like.
huge like on over 100k but nobody ever talks about this it's i think it's gonna be like an overlooked gem it's the chaser from 2008 a disgraced ex-policeman who runs a small ring of prostitutes finds himself in a race against time when one of his women goes missing this is a south korean film and i never hear anybody talk about it it's fast paced it has a great mystery and it is non-linear lonely so that might bother you but this is like
I love an Asian police procedural, so I'm very interested. But we shall go into closing thoughts for the evening. And I have quite the thinker for you. Actually, you almost asked this exact same question when we were talking about prisoners, which is... As we think about some of the more common tropes in psychological thrillers, including cops, detectives, the suspect, the victim,
What character do you think you would align most closely with if you found yourself in the middle of a psychological thriller? Vigilante Justice. Are you sure? Final answer? Vigilante Justice. Yes, for the record, if I knew where my kidnapped child was and who was responsible for it, I sure as hell would do everything I could to get her back, even if it meant kidnapping somebody and putting them in a little wooden box. And dousing them with boiling water.
I mean, you do have children, so I will give you a pass on that. Like, I feel like that is a reasonable response when you do have children. You'd probably be the one kidnapped, huh? Is that where you would be? Is that who you identify with? I personally identify as the morally gray detective. What would your quirks be? The OCD isn't a big enough quirk. I need more. I need more than that quirk. Definitely a visible quirk, though. What would your visible quirks be? I would only drink black coffee.
Out of a red solo cup. You're killing yourself. I'd be drinking straight red dye 40. shoot it up like snort it off the dash and the cop guard just red tie 40. but i really relate to that scene in um prisoners where jay chillin hall like he absolutely fucks up the case and then he because the guy david delf malshin BFF, he kills himself in the exam room because of
And he gets so mad and he knocks everything off his desk and just cries like, yeah, that'd be me. That's it. My career is over. And then they're like, oh, just brush it off and go back to work tomorrow. And he walks in and like throws the printer off the desk.
Yeah, that'd be me. I would be the morally great detective. I don't feel like you'd cause a scene now. You'd like, you know, like push your pencil caddy off the table. Well, that means that you haven't seen me sobbing outside of the Starbucks. But not in front of your coworkers. It's happened once. It's happened once. I cried in an elevator.
I guess that's a lot in front of the coworkers. So what we're gathering here is for me to be a morally gray detective, I really have to step up my public displays of insanity in my red solo cups. I need to invest in those. And Connor, Connor, what do you think about this? Somebody kidnapped Connor. He doesn't even have a closing thought. Oh, no. I guess we're going to have to just find Connor at his Boston screening of In the Flesh.
And hopefully he will be there and not kidnapped. But we really so appreciate you coming on the show and chatting with us. So when you are not directing films and touring on In the Flesh, where can the listeners find more of your work? Well, you can definitely check out updates about the film on our Instagram, Hard Rhyme Productions. My personal work, let's see, I do have a YouTube channel, Connor Doyle. I think you had mentioned
by a college film based on the Frog's Kafka short story, The Judgment. You can find that on YouTube if you're interested in seeing it. It's a very different film, but I'm sure you would get a kick out of it. I just so happen to... act in it so uh see my terrible performance but um yeah if you are interested in following the film um Hardbrain Productions is the place to go on Instagram. Perfect. And we will include all the links that Connor just mentioned in our show notes.
And when I'm not here, you can find me on Filmstram at projectile underscore underscore varmint. I did post. Two things last week, gave myself a little pat on the back. Lonely where can listeners find you? You can find my horror reviews and rants for lonely souls over on Instagram at lonely horror club. I try to post reviews at least once a week and cause problems on film scram whenever possible. You could also find my writing on my website, lonely horror club.com.
Thank you, dear internet, for tuning in to episode 50 of No Bodies. As always, sources, additional reading, and all that fun stuff will be in our show notes. call us. If you want to leave us a message, you can give us a call at 617-431-4322 and keep up with our antics on Instagram at But especially not least, we would love if you could like, subscribe, or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.