The Descent with D'arby Rose

have a question. I have a second question. Follow up? Okay, Um, is this cave just like some really long vagina metaphor? If so, I didn't? Yes, yeah, I mean aren't all caves do it? All? Right? Here we go. We are now descending into the cave effortless beautiful. Welcome to the extel Cast. Uh. My name is Caitlin Darante. My name is Jamie Loftus, and we're just gonna We're just gonna, you know, rope on down. I'm like, I'm gonna make it very immediately clear that I've never been spelan king. Uh.

Let's rope on down into the vagina metaphor. That is one of the scariest movies that I've ever seen. I think, yes, this and this is our show, The Bechtel Cast, where we examine film through an intersectional feminist lens. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion, that being a media metric invented by queer cartoonist Alice and Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Wallace. Oh my god, uh Wallace test, And I really just my mouth just

went another place, the Becktel Wallace test. Yes, and that requires our rendition of the test that two people of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two line of dialogue. Shouldn't be that hard. It really shouldn't be that hard. But but some people really, I mean, I don't know if we if Christopher Nolan has really gotten there yet. So you know, it's like we're always pushing for growth. He simply has never seen two women talk to each other.

Our thoughts are always with Christopher Nolan and his quest to get two female characters to speak to each other about. Not Leonardo DiCaprio. But you know, someday, well, today's movie should fare a little bit better, but not to spoil anything spoil away, because today we were talking about The Descent and we have a guest with us who we are very excited about. She is a filmmaker, an artist, and a consultant. It's Darby Rose with you. Yes, please descend.

Let's with us into the vagina metaphor? Which character is it that descends really quickly? And you're like, oh no, but then she's like, I descend all the time. That would be Holly, Holly, yes, And then I mean Holly, she should maybe descend a little slower as we learn. Anyways, this movie is so scary. Thank you for coming. I'm so stoked, and thank you for bringing us this movie.

Oh yeah, I love this movie. I saw it years ago on the interwebs and then again at sin a family and the director actually came and did like a Q and a yeah. It was really rad um and you know, he said a lot of the stuff that you can read on IMDb trivia, which is fairly fascinating. But I loved it and watching it again it was like this moothe is still badass and scared the ship out of me. Yeah, it's like I'm still scared. It's

like broad Daylight. I just got so scared by their own terrors in their own lives and then the terrors below ground that they embark with right that they descend upon on. Yeah, Jamie, what's your history with the movie. I had really no history with this movie at all. I knew that it was a horror movie with an

all female cast, and that is all I knew. And I'm really glad I went into it knowing essentially nothing, because every I feel like I got the two thousand five theatrical experience that I was that I would have because it's so I mean, like our discussion aside like it. It's so scary, it is so well paced, Like there were so many times that I was surprised, and then I had to go seek out the UK ending. I watched a cut of it that had the US ending, and I'm like, I I still don't know what ending

I prefer. I think I know what ending I prefer, but I don't. But I'm but I don't know. There it was really good. It was really good and really scary, and I was I don't know, Yeah, I was very happy. I went in kind of not knowing anything about it. What about you Caitlin. I saw this movie in theaters in two thousand five, depending on what month that came out.

I was either a freshman or sophomore in college, and I went with my best friend j T, friend of the show Twilight, UM, and we saw it together because we had a habit of seeing horror movies, especially together in theaters, and then both being so scared about whatever we watched. We would then have to like just stayed over at each other's apartments for like a week afterward, just to take comfort in knowing that someone else was there to protect us. UM. So that was very much

the case for The Descent. I thought it was one of the most effective horror movies I had ever seen, UM, because a lot of horror movies it's like they're in a haunted house and it's like, Okay, then leave the haunted house, or like the reason that they can't leave will be so like plot device e or ridiculou list.

But this one, it's like they had to keep going forward, yeah, trapped, like there are no I mean, well, I don't want to say there are no story logic issues, because like what about the cave dwellers, but I mean, for what it is like the world building that it accomplishes, You're just like, oh my god, like, oh, it's just so scary.

I feel like it. It does enough kind of early on too that I truly wasn't like, I don't like, there were different moments where I'm like, I don't know if this is going to be a last girl situation, like maybe more maybe no one will get out, maybe multiple people will get out, Like I just have no And I certainly I was watching this movie by myself, and I was just sort of like giving my boyfriend

brief summaries every few minutes of what was happening. Um, but I certainly didn't see a truck full of spears crashing into them at the beginning. That was it was like, just what kind of truck was that? It was a truck full of spears and the spears were on top of the truck and that so it's like borried, but not for long stretches. And then you don't like, I wasn't sure. I knew so little about it that I wasn't sure if there were going to be quote unquote

monsters at any point. And you get like pretty far into the movie without that happening, and so it was like a cool surprise when you're like, oh, there are little little vagina monsters inside the vagina uh and not in this movie to be called the m STDs. They are cave dwellers. But now maybe I will refer to any lady problems as I've got a cave dwelling of

the Sunday. I love I love that the movie does have like it's kind of like two movies in one, because it's not until according to IMDb trivia, fifty one minutes into the film does the cave dwellers do they come out? Like the killing doesn't start happening until then, And I feel like, up until then, it's already like so scary, but it's not. It's just good. It's just

a good time. Every moment that you get scared or jump, it feels so like, yeah, they deserve to do that to me, I deserve that, And it's and it's also like, yeah, sad, and you're getting to know these characters, and I think actually, by the time they start dying, I was kind of like, that's okay, I'm okay, I'm okay with this. Even though I've gotten attached to some of them except for a bitch as do you know I'm okay with this. I have no sympathy for that home record. Oh well, I oh,

I have a whole thing about her. We'll get to it. Man. I feel like I'm weirdly empathetic. I mean, there are some things where you're like Juno, like what, but the dude has a loaded character. There's so much going on there, so much. Yeah, yeah, for sure. My only issue too, though with them doing that to Juno was she was like the only woman of color, and was like, yes, why do you gotta do that to her? Well to

me and we'll talk about this. But just to give you a little niak peek, the movie suggests that women are so petty that they will just kill each other because, like, I understand the anger of learning that your best one of your best friends like was having an affair with your husband, But are you going to be so angry that you kill her or leave her to die? That was that was definitely like her change and you know when she becomes like a little cave dweller herself, like

after death dies. You know, I was like trying to believe this change, but I was like, but you just didn't give me that like anger building up. You gave me a lot of anxiety and hallucinations, but you didn't give me this like anger that burst or she just like snapped, you know, or maybe they did, but I didn't believe it. I kind of was. I I don't know why. Like one of the things I was sure of was that I felt so sure. I don't know.

I just was like, well, I don't think that Sarah is going to kill I just didn't think Sarah was going to kill Juno. I thought they were going to both escape and then have like the most terrifying discussion of Juno's entire life. Like that was kind of what I was hoping for, is that they would both live and then they would just have to coexist with every bit of trauma in relation. Yeah. Yeah, like it's just

every single conceivable imaginable trauma. I was kind of Yeah, I mean honestly in a in a movie that like I really really really enjoyed that. That was like one of the choices where I feel like maybe if I saw in theaters, I would have been like fuck, yeah, you know, like that's so cathartic, But like, yeah, being that she is the only woman of color, and it

kind of like makes Sarah. I don't know. I was like, I feel like Sarah is gonna Also just logistically, I'm like, Juno is the only person that has, you know, been spelunking, Like obviously she fucked this day up, but she she has the skills to get us up in any case. Well, I watched the sequel to Okay. I wanted to because I read a about it and I'm so curious why they took that route. Yeah, what is so? Spoiler alert

everyone for The Descent Part two. Um, it's the same cast sort of where basically it picks up right where the first movie leaves off, where like the authorities find Sarah having just escaped from the cave, but she doesn't remember anything. I guess the trauma has made her unable to remember what just happened. So they're like, well, all of your friends are missing. We have to go back down into the cave to find them. And she's like,

I guess I don't know what happened down there. So she and like some I don't know if they're park rangers. I think there's like a cough, few cops, but they all go into the cave because they don't believe the woman. Well that and she doesn't remember, which I think we we've talked about how like women having amnesia is like often a plot device in movies, and women be having amnesia, Well, women's brains are so unreliable. Um, So they go back down into the cave and they basically find all of

the dead bodies of her friends. They find the cave dwellers again. But guess what, Juno has survived and she wait, she like fought everyone off with her broken leg, with her broken right, with her stabbed leg, and yeah, so she she's survived. And basically the rest of the cast dies except for Sarah and Juno. They are like kind of the two final girls at the end and they sort of reconcile where they're like, we have to protect each other, and they both they kind of both like

martyr themselves for each other. So the second movie kind of it ends. It ends in a way that I like better than how this first movie sounds like how I wanted the first This movie the end was like that they would somehow be what I was hoping. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, maybe this is shooting too high for a movie, a man wrote in two thousand five.

But I was hoping that they would have some sort of like intense cave discussion there in the Vagina, and they're just like, wait a second, Like, you know, it's very I feel like sometimes in these situations it's like maybe her husband was like an total asshole who like misled both of them and all this stuff, and they're like, Okay, well,

good thing, you got stabbed. Let's get out of here, or you know whatever whatever that they have some some sort of like they don't have to like each other, but some some kind of thing that doesn't involve just murdering each other. But I'm glad that that man that's

so is horror sequels never correct things. That's great. Yeah, did you guys read the IMDb trivia because you keep calling it the Vagina And one of the trivia pieces was that so all the caves were obviously not real, they built like twenty one different caves, and that they called that tight narrow one of vagina they would always be like all were going in. Yeah, so I thought that's like you guys were referring to. I thought everyone read the trivia like me, Wait, that's so fun yeah.

Anytime you drop a female cast into a large kavernart space and the movies written by a man, I'm like, well, we know what this is about. Like, yeah, I guess. He So he did Dog Soldiers, which I still haven't seen, and then they asked him to do this and he was like, I don't really want to get like known as a like horror director. And then something changed and he was like, all right, screwt, let's do it. But you know I want to do with an all female cast and a sin a family. He put it better

than and how it's put on IMDb. He was just like, you know, with women, they are more likely to talk about their feelings about why they're in the situation, versus like the men I write don't talk about feelings. I was like, okay, thank thank you, but it's in a family. He was like, he's like, well, women have more dynamic and I was like, yeah, okay, I like that. He's like, I think we need to see more movies with like all cast of woman and he's like, so I asked

all my female friends. I'm like, you know, it's so funny. Is what you should have done? You should have given the movie to a woman to direct and write. It's cute that you wanted to learn to be a woman, John Sweden, But you could just give the project to a woman and then yeah, and then he did it and and then I guess they made them all like have different accents because he had like a primarily UK film. Actually I get the ending of this movie often confused

with the Ruins the genem alone. Basically I don't even remember. She gets stuck in a pyramid or something. It's like a bunch of white people go to like a brown country and they get stuck in a pyramid. But then the pyramid like create some virus or disease and if you leave, and then like the natives they think are like, don't leave your curt But then eventually she gets away and the ending but is infected. So I always get the ending of the Descent in this mixture. Two entirely

different movies, extremely different. But I think the early two thousand's horror films where it gave you that hopeless ending was like kind of a thing. Yeah, for sure, except for the American ending. I like, I like a hopeless ending. I do too, I love a hopeless ending. I don't

care about life. Let's do it. I'm like, you know, like, realistically, there's rarely a last girl in life, you know, Yeah, I kind of when I went back and watched the UK ending to this, I mean, we'll talk about but like, I mean, obviously it's more bleak, but I'm like, this makes more sense. This makes more sense. Yeah, and more likely that that would have would have happened that way. Probably, Yeah, they were all fucked. Ye. Well should I recap the movie and then we can really dive in, we can

really descend into the discussion. Let's do it. Okay, So we open on a group of three kind of like adrenaline junkie women. They are Sarah, Beth, and Juno, who we see like whitewater rafting. Sarah has a husband and her young daughter and they are brutally killed in a car accident on the drive home. But I can't emphasize it enough. A truck with spears on top of it, and the spears are loose. They were like, I think they're just like narrow pipes, which might be foreshadowing the

narrow pipiness of it all. I really did appreciate. I kind of like when like a horror movie cuts to the chase of like, no, this is gonna be a gory one because the second you see that whatever it is go through her husband's head right after she's like, babe, you're distant because he's cheating on her, and then he's like um, and then it's just instant karma piped through the head. Yes. Um. So Sarah is obviously devastated, and

then we cut to one year later. She's still dealing with the grief, but she decides to go cave diving in Appalachia with her friends Beth and Juno, as well as some other friends, Becca, Becca's sister Sam who is a med school student, and Holly, who is the one who's like kind of the most reckless and thrilled speaking of the group. One of the group, right. She descends quickly and then they head for bore Um Cave, or

what they think is bore Um Cave. They arrive at the mouth of a cave and begin there descents right away. When they're inside, some something's happened. There's like a bloody handprint, A bunch of bats fly around and startle them. There was a dead deer right near the mouth of the cave, and We're like, hmm, I wonder if anything bad is going to happen. They start poking at it like a dead body, like and stand by me or something. It's like, you guys want to see a dead body and we

start poking. They're like, come on, we gotta go. We have to have a descent, Okay, So they go further into the cave. They go down this narrow tunnel, which I guess was the vagina is what they called it on set. I mean, yeah, I mean there's a pool full of blood at the center of it. I mean it's very it's a very siss normative situation they're descending into. Uh so they don't know where they're going. It's very dark and scary. And then Sarah gets stuck in one

of these very narrow tunnels. She starts panicking. The tunnel starts to collapse. So I actually had to walk out of the room at one point. I was like, I can't even watch this. That was the scariest part for me. The claustrophobia. Yeah, I definitely have claustrophobia, and that was

my worst nightmare. Like I'd rather deal with the cave dwellers and yeah, yeah, like once you get to the cave dwellers, we're like, okay, this is like this is imagination, but that like moment of horror at the beginning, because at the beginning of this movie, I was like, Oh, I've kind of always wanted to do that, and then immediately you're like, I've had a change of heart. Yeah. Yeah, So Beth helps her get out, but one of the bags of ropes gets lost in the rubble, and then

that way out is now blocked. So did they send it with the last person? Though? Right? Questions? Why? Yeah, that is a good question. Why do we ever find out? This is maybe a plot hole bit? But why doesn't Juno take the book? Like? Is it just because she's like, we're so bad? But it's like if she knew the book that she has is for Borom Cave, but they don't go into Borom caves, so that's why she doesn't bring it. She's like, why bother that makes more sense,

that's right. She is like, we don't need this ship because we didn't even go not even but I'm gonna rush everyone because we've got to get to the vagina. Now there's there's also a there's a female orgasm joke in there, it's how how do you give a lemon an orgasm? You touch it's? You touch it citrus, which is supposed to sound like clitter as it's not a it's not a good punchline. I'm like, maybe that works

better with a Scottish accent. I'm not sure. Okay, So that one way out is blocked and they're like, no big deal, there are two other ways out of Borom Cave, right, And that's when we learn Juno didn't bring them to Borom Cave. She brought them to a different, uncharted cave that no one has ever been inside of before, or so they think shady, but this means that they have no idea how to navigate it, and no one knows they're down there, so if they do turn up missing,

like the rescue team will search the wrong place. Um So, then Sarah thinks she sees something or someone lurking in the distance. Maybe it's a yeast infection that's affecting this. I was I was just like the U T I lurking in Yeah as U T I. Do they make

that sound too? Yeah? You don't very echo yeah. Um So they move onward to find a path out of the cave and they come upon this deep ravine that they have to get across, and as they're doing that, they notice a hook that's already embedded in the roof of the cave and they realize someone's been downe there before, but it's equipment that's like several decades old. So they're like, well, if people have been down here before, why is this

cave still uncharted? And they're like, they haven't touched this equipment in a Hunters that's my also horrible accent, but bear with it. But then they come upon some cave paintings that show that there's another entrance to the cave. But then Holly, who loves scrambling ahead of everyone, falls into a hole and breaks her leg, and while the rest of the group is dealing with her injury, Sarah hears something. She breaks away from the group and sees what appears to be a man or a kind of

humanoid figure. She tells everyone. She tells Juno, and Juno gaslights a ship at us her home wrecker of all people to be gaslighting Sarah. At this time, jess I says, are you shady? So no one believes her, but then they do, because they all get attacked by what turns out to be cave dwelling cannibalistic humanoid creatures. Wikipedia calls

them crawlers. It kind of looks like I mean, I feel like it looks like a variation on so many horror movie characters that at least I'll give them credit for not making the entire head of vagina mouth, which is usually what happens, but it is still just like a fleshy mystery. I like that they actually built it to kind of make sense. I'm saying this because I also just watched A Quiet Place for the first time

and you're just like, oh, vagina mouth, got it. But this one, I mean, I like that they at least like took the time to be like, oh, it makes sense that this creature would evolve the way it did. Like it is kind of like a water bats thing. Like it makes sense enough. It's really scary to look at. I like the mother and child pair, no no, no no, But I mean there's a little they made in this. It's very baffling to me that, like the female cave dweller has long but but the male ones are bald,

and it's like that's not how that works. She also has some cool like body chats going on, Like I saw some like chess tattoos happening. It was like a chess piece that or it was a clothing piece or her skin was very mutually. I thought she has she seems to have like breasts, she's got like cave dweller titties.

It was kind of I mean, I thought that was interesting because I felt like in that it's like a conversation that I feel like we usually have during animated movies where it's like a I don't know, like kind of needless gender coating where you're like, why are you giving this like creature a hairstyle? Like what are you doing? Because I'm just thinking about her, like what what were

the decisions? Like someone looked at her, they put their hand on their other chins, step back, and they're like, yeah, that looks I think this is that you guys, I think we've got it. We've got the female cavedwaller, just the one and her little baby that she protects. Yeah, well, women be raising children without the assistance of the monster father. Yeah.

I'm also just like I guess the filmmakers were like, well, most women above ground have long hair and most men have short hair, so that's how these cave dwellers will also look. They evolved like according to Western fashion, which is how evolution works. But they did say that they were from like a hundred years ago, which was a more traditional time. Maybe I don't know. I don't really want to see. I aren't they supposed to be from?

Like No, I think it's there were other like spi lunkers who had tried to explore the cave, but they also got murdered by these cave dwellers who had been there for I'm guessing millennia. Yeah, I guess that's not how humans evolved. Yeah, well, what do you think it was? Like? I don't know this was, don't I honestly wasn't thinking about it that hard. But would it have been like people who got stuck there in like cave dwelling times and that's why there's cave paintings, and then it's like

those people evolved into the cave dwells. Yeah, that's I think where some of the story logic does get a bit muddied, because you know, in the in the in human migration, the humans because they're in Appalachia right, humans didn't arrive to the America's until about you know, there's there's debate on exactly when it was, but that was somewhere around I think years ago is a number that

we know think it was. So it might just be that very you know, early humans had gone into these caves, decided to stay there, evolved, or maybe they got stuck there and they found a way to survive and then yeah, generations of I don't know, like they evolved to the space of like it makes total sense that they're blind like all that. I don't know, And I mean there's I have a whole spiel on like how disability is

treated in horror movies that we'll get into. But yeah, I don't know exactly how these cave dollars came to be there. Yeah, I guess we're not meant to think too hard about it. Yeah, we just have to suspend our disbelief. But I just still want to know why they chose for the female to have long, curly hair and like chest and armed tattoos. And she did not pass the backdel test for sure, she didn't have a name. She protected a man. We never got time with her.

I think she was the one to underserved female of the film Justice, and of the only things we knew about her was that she was a mother. Yes, yes, a loving, heartfelt mother who would die for her own And I think we should take a moment of silence for this lost cave dweller. I know, because she gets stabbed in the eyeball. Oh, I know. So Sarah has spotted one of the cave dwellers. No one believes her. Then they get attacked. Holly gets killed by one of

the cave people. Juno manages to kill one of them, but then she also accidentally stabs Beth and leaves her there to die poopsies. I'll have a whole thing about that as well. We'll get there. Then Juno, Becca, and Sam they're trying to find their way out. Sarah has gotten separated from the group and she finds Beth, who was not all the way dead yet. And Beth is like, don't trust Juno. She did this to me. Also, she was having an affair with your husband, and she's like,

well shit. In my opinion, Beth is really blowing her last moments on earth, like getting into other people's business. It's like, do you have like a family that you would like a message passed on to or are you just gonna like gossip into an early grave? Like what's going on? It's like, well, I have no choice but to just tell you this because fuck everything and bleeds to death imagine why they're dying breath to be like

by the way, um, did you know? It's so bizarre right, Like this is like literally a matter of life and death. Like that's the thing. Like this movie was like women are so petty that in their dying breaths they're going to gossip and they're going to murder each other. Wow, that's real. Which is interesting because they're all like, you know, thrill seekers, and they all knew what they knew it would be like some danger doing this, um, whether it

was charted or uncharted. But the fact that like all of a sudden, they all freak out and have no idea what to do, Like they all just freak out and like, wait, don't you all like to do this? You know? Like parkor over here is just like jumping around and like splits her bone out of her legs and I'm like, what the what are you doing? I feel like you should know you should be a little more conscious and then oh, I love Okay, I don't even think you've gotten there. I'll let you continue. Um okay.

So then Sarah manages to kill a few of the cave dwellers. Then Becca and Sam get killed, and so now it's only Sarah in JUNO. Wait, but Sam's death was I feel bad because I laugh every time because she's like fucking up going to I'm going across and she like starts hooking up and and then she puts the knife in her mouth when the cage dweller comes at her, and I was like, Oh, she's gonna use a knife to like stab it, but then it splits her throat and then she just leads out. It was like, wait,

what was the point of any of that. That's the other fun example of instant karma in this movie that I really thought was fun was like she's about to ditch all of her friends and then immediately it just it just blows up in her face in the worst possible way, and she wastes rope. I'm like, selfish, right, she done goofed? I think I might have misinterpreted that. I thought she was like trying to kind of martyr herself to like get but I don't know. That doesn't

make any sense. She was bailing. She was leaving just like freaked out. It was like I'm over this, I've been over this. She I think her pipe was like I don't really know most of the people on this trip very well, like come on. I think that was like park Or. Also sorry, I can't help but call her Parkor. But I felt like she was also like this dude, just like skirted out. We're like, where you bro, where are you going? She thinks she sees daylight. Yeah,

they're like it's phosphorus in the rocks or something. Fact, now I know that you know which we're gonna do after this. Um okay. So Becca and Sam get killed and now it's only Sarah and Juno. They join up and Sarah is like, hey, Juno, I heard you were having an affair with my husband. Stab kind of stabs her in the leg and leaves her to be eaten by the cave people, which was I thought a more colder move than to just kill her. She's like, bitch, I'm not going to kill you. I'm gonna just let

you fight in fear for your life. Also like why would she leave her behind? I mean, I understand why she was like, draw the attention to you so I can bounce, But it really felt very like Sarah's character was so hard to keep up with because I was like, what's your what is your intention going into this strip? Why? Why? Why? I had to be honest, there's like three blonde women in the cave, and it's so dark that sometimes I'm like,

I don't know which blonde woman it is. I appreciate that they keep saying everybody's name very frequently, because I'm just like, I don't know if this is a protagonist blonde woman or an ancillary blond woman. Well, like you mentioned Derby, the director was like, yes, I gave the women different accents so we could tell them apart. And it's like that didn't work at all. It's like, have

some more women of color in the group, that would help. Yeah, exactly two thousand and five, black people weren't around yet at that point. What happened here, I really couldn't get, like one black British person, get Naomi what's her face? From twenty days later? She's great In twenty days later, I got to rewatch that. That's a good rewatch. I just rewatched very quarantine friendly. Yes, I'm and there's so few Naomi Harris, right, Naomie Harris, Yes, sweet Angel who

she stopped aging. I think after twenty days later she looks exactly the same. Yes, Oh, she's in the new James Bond to Oh that's right. Yeah, um okay. So then they're then the ending in there, Jamie. Like you mentioned, there are two different two versions of the ending. There's the US cut, in which Sarah makes her escape. She finds the other exit, crawls on top of a pile

of bones to get up out of the cave. I also feel like when she emerges through like the tiny little hole, that's going to be like how we all come out of quarantine. We're just like we're like popping out of the ground, seeing daylight for the first time in a while. We're all covered in blood, and gets like a mile away from our homes, then burst into

tears like yeah real, yeah. Anyway, so she she gets out, she makes her way to the car, drives away a little bit, pulls over, vomits, and then she has a hallucination of of Juno being in the car with her, and then we smashed cut to black now that I think the same thing happens in the UK version. But then there's a little bit more. We smash cut back to the toy, back to reality, right where she had

just hallucinated her escape. She wakes up. She sees like another hallucination of her daughter and a birthday cake, and then all the cave dwellers descend upon They dissent upon her, uh and then she presumably dies. I read that the US ending is the US ending because they did a screening in the US of the u K. And they were like, oh hell no that I remember reading quote. It was uber uber hopeless. Yes, because American movie go ours. Really they like a happy ending. We're very fragile. Yeah,

I think I like the UK ending better. Same. I've watched the I watched the whole movie through with the American ending, then found out about the UK ending. I like it better. I like my ending the best, and my ending is Sarah and Juno both live. Sarah doesn't try to kill her friend. She's still mad at her, but she's like, come on, we'll deal with this on the surface. Let's get out of here. They apologize to

the cave people for trespassing on their land. They're like, so sorry, we shouldn't have we should have never come. Are bad? Get them like a year's supply of animals. Open a small business. I want them to open a small business. Yes, yes they do. They start like a diner in the middle of the woods. Yeah. Uh well, let's take a quick break and then we will come

right back and we're back. I want to give this movie props up top for I mean, in terms of the metric we use the Bechdel test, this movie really couldn't fare better. It's mostly women talking to women about surviving the whole cave situation. Um, I think the one but but the one, like, the one male presence looming over this movie is her husband, and I think, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's it's not certainly not the most egregious example of this, and so I wasn't

like extremely put off. But Caitlin, I feel like you already kind of alluded to this, was that the whole element of like the jealousy and the suspicion and that kind of translating to basically leaving Juno for dead at the peak of the movie when we don't really know enough about the husband and I feel like the movie just assumes that the husband was an awesome guy, which is like, well, we don't know that. We see him for two seconds and he's being distant and he was cheating,

and he was cheating on her. So it's like I feel like it was like a slight writer telling on themselves situation where it's like, well, he was her husband, so I'm sure that he was. It was just you know, he was tricked. He was you know, because women, you know, women be tricking men and whatever. One of the oldest tropes in the book. But I didn't think it's interesting that.

I mean, I don't really necessarily want them to burn any time in this movie, like talking about this husband, I don't really care, but it does seem to kind of assume that, like he was a great guy and therefore all of the blame for this infidelity is on Juno. Right. Yeah, I didn't really think about that. He is kind of looming. He is kind of looming over the movie because we

think of it. I mean, I really love how they told the moments, like I feel like it was so to the point, like we did not suck around, we didn't get little lovey dovey moments, but that moment where he walks over to Juno when they get out the raft, I was like, oh, you are so shady. Oh no, And then Beth catches on and I'm like, mm hmm, that that's kind of shady too for not saying anything.

I feel like a good friend should say something personally, you know, like if someone if one of my best friends in this trio knew you were cheating or my husband was cheating on me with other friends, mit, you better tell me. You know, you gotta tell each other things, and you have to believe each other and not not system. So I'm on life system. Juno is clearly like, I mean, it takes two to tango in this situation and the friend betrayal, Like that's the worst, that's a horrible thing

to do. But I do. But but I don't think that this movie really recognizes the two to tango situ vation unless Sarah is so like Galaxy braining her own grief, which we know she isn't that She's like, well, I can't hold my husband accountable at this point, so I'm

shifting the blame. I don't. I don't know what's really coming again, like I understand Sarah's anger and feelings of betrayal when she finds out that Juno was having this affair, but to the extent that you're going to let her die and be eaten alive by these like cannibalistic cave dwellers, Sarby you were saying, and like I do kind of I'm kind of assuming that this is what Neil Marshall is going for, is that like this experience has like hardened Sarah so much that it's like, you know, you

have wronged me, and like this is a game of survival, and like I don't need you to survive anymore, and you've wronged me, so you know, fuck you. I'm leaving to steal your car. I guess, yeah, but yeah, I

don't know. I mean, it's I'm kind of I was kind of glad that like that was I mean, it is definitely a thing, and it also I feel like it's compounded by the fact that Natalie Mendoza is the only woman of color in this entire movie, and she is like the villain of the story, and she is like this temptress and she is you know, I mean, it's a lot of negative stereotypes like all foisted upon

this one character. She's also the only American character, but American people are horrible and they'll probably steal your husband. But I mean just also the fact that she was the one to like trick them, like, we're not going to the cave where we're like safe and that's actually been charted. We're discovering this nuke and her what she tells Sarah is that you know, I was doing this

for you. We were going to name the cave after you, Like this whole thing is so that you can help get over your grief or I don't even know what logic was. I will say that line made me laugh a lot because I'm like, imagine naming a cave Sarah, Like what, welcome to the Sarah Cave. You're just like

his name sucks. Let's let's pick another. But yeah, yeah, I was looking into and we sort of talked about it already, but like the casting process for this movie, because I was curious of like, wow, was this a movie that was written for women specifically? And it wasn't originally, which which I think is kind of interesting and like harkens back to stuff we've talked about before. Where it was supposed to be a cast of men and women.

But then Neil Marshall's business partner said, hey, horror movies never have all women, so marketing, and Neil Marshall was like, okay, and then and then it says and again this is we're about to give him like a trophy for the bare minimum. But it does. It was said in a lot of press at the time that after deciding Okay, I'm going to cast you know, all women in this movie, he talked to women. He knew, I know, like the

thing that male screen writers never ever do. He's like, I asked for their advice, and I asked, you know, what are things that they say and talk about. I'm like, what, We're like a creature you've never delved again, Also, give the damn movie to a woman's direct and to write and to oversee, like how many men were behind that camera making that movie. That's I want to know. I'm saying. For the for the sequel, the editor, the male editor of the first movie directed the sequel, which is like,

come but but I do. I mean, it's like, I mean as far as I mean, Kittlie, and you've talked about this before. In terms of like your classes of Like, if you are a male writer that wants to write about women, the least you can do is do your homework, like and talk to women. And I don't know, the interactions with women, especially like the hanging out at the beginning and stuff like that, like it felt pretty authentic.

I don't know. I was like light impressed. I was like, all right, Nel Marshall talked to a woman about this, just imagine. Yeah. I like that they were all hungover too, Like yeah, I like that they all got like wasted and smoked weed, low key and all that. And I was like there were moments I was like, these are a women, but I really didn't think deeper on. Yeah,

it's like that we're going to make them petty. Like Sarah's character was just so much more of a tool than an actual person, Like she was just there to like help set shut up and make things happen. Because I'm like, you know what, if you are the type of person to just go and kill your friend that your husband cheated on you with, you know, a bitch, maybe you deserve to be cheated on. I said it.

I just don't like, I mean, I like that you have a depiction of like these complicated female friendships where like one of them is doing something wrong and like going behind her friends back and having this affair. Like people are complex, people make horrible mistakes, people do really bad things. But like again the movie, like the suggestion that she's like, well, I know we were best friends up until five minutes ago, but now I'm going to

kill you. Um, I just the thing for me. Like the first half or maybe even the first like sixty minutes of this movie, I think are like really good for looking at it through our lens of Like women are shown being very capable. We see them having physical strength, we see them being athletic, like all this stuff they're doing, I like that. Um it seems like there was care taken.

And like each woman in the in the group has um like specialty that is not like Mary Sue, that is like established in their character that is able to

move the action forward. Where there's like someone who's a medical student and so she's able to do first aid when someone's like gets busted, and like everyone has some knowledge that is able to assist in moving forward, which is like good right, And you know women don't always get there for sure, and like we see them like have to fight off the cave dwellers in a way that is not sexualized, like one of the like one of the major tropes of horror movies and especially like

slasher movies is women being sexualized and then also being shamed for being sexual so you don't get any of that. They have like outdoorsy skills. We see Sarah like she figures out that there's like I think, what's kerosene in an old lantern. She uses that to light a torch, which she has to do like a flint kind of like that was cool. I was like, oh, that's where I would have died. I guess right exactly. So we

see that. We see Becca is the one who crosses like the ceiling of the ravine and like all that upper body string she needs to and you can tell how much she's struggling, but it's still like you believe that she would be capable of that. Then it's Beth who like notices the cave painting and like interprets it because everyone else is just like this is nothing, and she's like no, wait, like let's read this. Let's like

look at these clues. The first yeah, the first chunk of the movie, it's all this really cool stuff that you see these women do, and I was like, oh, I and I and I didn't exactly remember how things ended, so I was like really getting all geared up to be like this is like a feminist masterpiece, Like definitely there's not enough diversity. It's five of the six women are white, ry heteronormative, in spite of seeming to like suggest I thought something was being suggested between Holly and Juno,

but then it's kind of dropped. I don't know, Yeah, I did the moment, yeah, And I was hoping that they would just make it explicit of like oh, these are two either gay or bisexual characters. Awesome, but but then they kind of just drop it and they're like no, no, no, no no. And then Holly like even it's like no no no, no, no, no no no, I want to have a lot of hetero babies, and you're just like okay, Holly, Like, um, so, I think there's like some really cool subversions of the

horror genre that we're seeing in this movie. But then man gets fridged. Man Yes, yeah, he and the only man we see, or at least the only man right gets killed almost instantly, so it's it's a lot of like cool subversions. But then like by act three the script, this writer was like, oh wait, I forgot that women are really petty. I have to write this into the movie. They're also in a huge vagina there. I'm sorry, I

just can't say it enough. I like, I just feel so just I don't know, like I think this is a very inventive, subversive horror movie, but like men making horror movies, they literally cannot help themselves. Like they can't help themselves. There's a huge vaginal metaphor in every single one down to that. I mean, the pool full of blood at the heart of that. I mean it's just like it's like that's the ter we get it, honey, Like just call your mom, like I don't know what

to tell you, to tell you. I also feel like usually when we see women who are hallucinating in films or like you know, are seeing things that we the audience are also seeing with her, that usually it's men like you're just crazy, you're making it up, or it's like some old or a woman mother character who's like, yeah, I know you're just seeing things. But I think seeing everyone doing that with her was also kind of breaking that stereotype of like sometimes people just don't believe people,

like I think that. I kind of like that we were seeing everyone, well Juneo gaslighting her, but even Beth is like, you're just seeing things. It's okay. But I was like, it's why don't they They should believe her. I feel like they shell also be more sympathetic because she just lost her child and her husband, which in the griefing process, a year is like a second, Like that's really not a lot of time from like what

your life was going to be. The rest of it then turns into nothing, which I was also like, they don't spend a lot of time on the grief. I was like, yeah, yeah, that thing that happened, right, You get like flashbacks of her having kind of like dreams or visions of like the accident and stuff, but we

really don't know. We don't learn anything about her daughter or her husband before they die, so it's like, okay, I thought that that I don't know, like that is kind of in terms of how she is gaslighted by her friends. I also thought it was like they were dismissive of her because of her grief, and also because they're like, well, you're just you're just being like on edge because a cave just collapsed on your head two seconds ago. And I'm like, well, that's a great reason

to be on edge. But like you know, there, that was one that was another subversion. There's some I mean, we haven't gotten to the parts of this movie that I don't love so much, but that was a subversion that I thought was fairly effective of I don't know. I was thinking at the beginning of this movie, where something deeply traumatic robs a woman of her family. Instantly I went to Midsummer uh movie that I think couldn't handle that plot point any worse if it wanted to.

Like I just the opening sequence of Midsummer and this is like some of the most irresponsive, bull like treatment of mental illness I've ever seen in movies period. But I think this movie toes the dealing with grief as plot I think better than a lot of horror movies tend to. And it's like, I'm not a huge horror efficient out of there. I'm sure there's other movies that deal with it well, but I feel like there is

maybe a tendency and correct me if I'm wrong. But a tendency to treat grief as like a hindrance, where like I think that you know what Sarah is going through, actually ends up kind of serving her in this situation. It motivates her need to survive even though you know she's dealing with it. It doesn't prevent her from handling the situation at hand, even though her friends seem to think it is. We find out almost immediately like no, she is not, you know, like she's not being unreasonable.

What she's seeing is there. She's telling the truth, and it works against the friends to disbelieve her because they think that she is just like in a bad place. So I thought that that Platfoin was was kind of cool, of like she's going through this very heavy, horrible thing, but it's not, you know, it doesn't make it impossible for her to survive. It actually kind of helps her survive.

Everyone else is kind of like I don't know, we don't really know anyone else's backstory except part of Juno's only because of the husband and other than that, like even Sarah's like trying to find out like what everyone else like has kind of back home, they like have very small talk like so, what man do you have back home? Which I was like, are you just assuming everyone has a man back home? What if they have a couple of partners? What if they have a same

sex partner? What if? What? And also why is everyone identifying as this year? Like there was like obviously no diversity, but I'm suial. Marshall's like, div who what, I don't know what. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. Asked me in fifteen years and I'll say I've been doing it all wrong like everyone else. But yeah, I agree, I think think that it definitely is. It's cool, like if I were to put aside, like my deeper thoughts that we've discussed about, you know how, it's kind of

weird that she kind of lippd at you know. At one point it's like, wait, so now you're now you're a total badass. He's like, you know, covered in blood and you're kind of a cavewoman who has no words anymore. I'm like, I don't know. I guess if I was grieving and this was just where I was, It's like, alright, no time to fucking play anymore. Let's fucking do this. Do you know, get out of my way, Like, yeah, I can't make a whole lot of sense of it.

I guess my main thing with that whole scenario is I wish that when Sarah did reveal that she's like I saw someone I thought I saw before, and now I definitely saw it and I'm not making this up. I'm not imagining it. And they're all like, nope, the

dark place tricks on you and there's nothing. You didn't see anything, And I just I really wish like even if they were incredulous, they should have still been like, well, what did you what did you see or what do you think you saw or what did it look like? And like, I just I wish that we had seen just them making more of an effort to believe her.

I mean that is that's almost like a story bump too, because it's like, at this point, aren't they all aware that they are in completely uncharted territory, Like it's it's kind of like the counterproductive to assume that anything you would see is not there if it's like, well, what do you know, no one's ever been here, you know, Like but they also like no one knows how to deal with anxiety and I hate to bring that piece of ship movie back up again, but mids Omar was

just like that, like they you know, her boyfriend had no idea how to deal with her anxiety disorder or she bipolar in the film, but like in this it's like no one knows how to deal with it, which I think spoke to something it's like as someone with anxiety, like often people will just assume that I'm being dramatic or being sensitive, or I'm just seeing things. So I felt like when they were like, no, no, it's fine, I'm like, that's really real. I mean, the conversation has

changed a lot now, just in time. Regardless off that film really happened, could happen in real life, like I think, you know, as a kid, or even up until a few years ago, people still will like, you know, just assume I'm yeah, being dramatic or overreacting. But now there's so much more compassion I think in the world, or in at least in our world. And and so I think that now if that movie is written, I think there would be more like, well, wait, tell us what's

going on. But I think it kind of it seems very real that they were all just like no, No, you're just seeing things, you know, regardless that Yeah, like you said, like they were in uncharted territory, So it's like, I mean anything goes out here, like fucking Cageweller, Sasquash, anything you name it, which they do make a joke about earlier though, like it's probably Sasquatch, and I'm like, girl, don't play because cuts to like sixty minutes into this film.

You're gonna be a lot You're not gonna be laughing about that. I just yeah, I mean, like they at this point, I think it's before this that they find the cave painting, and they had found the old equipment, so it's like, well, things aren't what they see. You thought, no one's been done here before, and you've were proven wrong, So why don't you listen to your friend? Why don't you open yourself up to this possibility, open yourself up like you've opened up this vagina of a cave and

just embark with it. When I was watching this, I actually have like a game I play internally in movies with myself that sounds really dirty, like I try to guess like the character's zodiac sign, And so I felt like, what you know. I was like, she is a stubborn, relentless tourists with a Gemini moon because taurus Is are historically stubborn. As someone who dates a Taurus, I am a Tauris. Really, yeah, I gotta know more about your virtue because if you don't, are you a stubborn person?

You're stubborn? Yeah for some things. Yeah, I can be pretty, I can be chill, and I contain multitude. I wonder what your moon is. Yeah, what's your moon? I don't know what that means. So we're gonna have to look it up. I'm going to find your birth chart. We'll do this after UM. But then with Sarah, I was

trying to figure out what everyone's signs were. And then also as I feel like it's the equivalent to like, you know, when people want to know my race, for example, it gets like them trying to like box me into like what they know about them. So I try. I'm very like, um, discriminating with zodiac signs. I'm like that bit just for sure, or Scorpio. She's got the loving edge, you know, the loving edge, but at the same time

she will cut you very fast. Um. But some of them were you know, a couple of them are definitely sagittarius a is, So I just was like, don't let them lead. You know, they want to be adventurous, but they're also going to be really indecisive and just be on their own. I think Sam was definitely a sadge.

They want to be out there, but she was just a scared little shit at the end of the day and was like indecisive and was keeping her feelings or was like letting her feelings overrun everything else without seeing like logic. Anyways, that game can go very deep in my brain and then I'm like, what movie am I watching right now? I could listen to this for every movie that's ever come out. If we need a spinoff back delcast Um, Zodiac or I don't even know, just

the full like movie character, what's your placement? Yeah, um, well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for more discussion and we're back. So another thing kind of along the similar lines of what we were talking about in terms of kind of like women being pigeonholed as being petty. That ties into a horror movie, the convention of the horror movie kind of justifying why people die or get killed right. So like in a lot of slasher movies, it's like, if you're a teenager who's

sexually active, you die. The classics. The classics, I feel like a lot of time men having too much hubris or I just won't bring a map. People who won't bring a map in general, they get they get killed right. Excessive pride, recklessness that will get a man killed. Um. I feel like oftentimes a woman being kind of oblivious or maybe even like to nurturing or to trusting, or just a failure to exercise logic overall will be what

gets a woman killed. And this rang true especially for Beth beth death scene where Juno has just fought off two I think it's like two different cave dwellers. She kills one of them by stabbing it several times, which is really cool, right, and then someone sneaks up on her and it's Beth. But Juno doesn't realize this until it's too late, and she turns around and stabs Beth in the throat. Timmy fair, isn't that like an art

student or something? I mean, she's she's the one who knows what the cave paintings means, so I was assuming and like, oh, so she's kind of like she's an artsy type. She's not a survivalist, but she's like she was whitewater rafting. She she's lunking. Like all these women are like seem to be very competent at these like

extreme sports that they're doing. So for me, like Beth, what, like wouldn't she have just witnessed Juno killing these like cave dwellers and like, wouldn't she approach with caution and like exercise some logic and not just sneak up on someone who would be very easily startled. I agree, but I just didn't interpret that as gendered. I mean, I don't think it was like a very informed or thoughtful decision,

but it didn't. I don't know, I didn't read I read that as like thoughtless but not gendered, especially because I think it would be one thing if if many of the other characters were men and they died in a way that wasn't so like they're oblivious. I would have read that as more gendered. But it's still But I think it is a gender trope in other horror movies with mixed casts. So I was disappointed to see

a pop up in this movie. I mean, I guess, I guess that to me, like that kind of certain I mean, that certainly serves to further villainized Juno, even though like when I saw that, I'm like, oh, well, that's like really unfortunate. And of course she's going to lie about it because you don't want people to get mad at you, and they're already mad at you for

bringing them into an unmarked cave. But like, and so I don't know, I feel like that's that ultimately, that decision like further villainized Juno where I don't know, I just didn't care about Beth and then and then and then and then when she was dying, she was just

you know, gossiping to the grave. So she was hanging in there though, because a while passed when she came up and she was like, I was like, oh you're still around, Like how did you still literally drowning in your own blood for the last Like so this isn't and that you can still speak enough to gossip with your friend. Yeah, part of me has to admire it, but that was a very bizarre choice. Yeah, I do agree, though, Caitlin. You made a good point about how it's like, yeah,

there was a lot of um and derby words. There was a lot of cool ship that happened with the characters up until the Cage Dwellers came out, and then the writer was like, oh ship, yeah, women are let's

do all these things. And who knows because I'm sure what you know as the writer listens to this episode, that they're gonna feel very defensive And no, I didn't think that, but it's like, but there's something to be said and that you know, the same conversations happening about white supremacy and the covert and overt behaviors that we all harbor, I as a black person harbor, and that you know, it's like we harbor a lot of sexism.

And I think the writer maybe thinking like, well, this is you know, women can keep it cool until she goes down, and then they're gonna turn on each other. They're gonna gossip to the bloody grave, They're gonna stab

each other in the leg with a pick. But I think that, like if I hope that the writer hears that, and that Neil Marshall hears that, and it's like, well, why why is it that when women are saving and protecting themselves like that, they actually just fully abandon all the rules, right, they were like rule number two, don't leave each other, and then they all left each other.

There was no like, you know, Juno couldn't be in leadership anymore for everyone, which I thought made sense for her character because she was obviously like going through her own ship. She's like, I can do this cave trip with Sarah. Oh my god, no I can't. I'm a horrible person, but I just need to like make up for it. But everyone else it was just it was just weird. It was like all the character strengths were abandoned as soon as the Cagewellers, which I think obviously

what happened. No one's going to do it perfectly, but yeah, I guess when I think about it now, that was obviously when the movie shifted, but the characters greatly shifted and the writer like abandoned, and it like it does imply that, yeah, like women at their like core or whatever, like when you're down to that survivalist core, that these are like inherent behaviors where which sucks. And it's like, I don't know, I feel like, yeah, more often when

you have like a majority male cast. It's like the hero jumps out when you're like brought to your you know, Revenant Survivalist. I haven't seen that movie, but like whatever you get inside a bear and you live man, because that's what you do. That is that what happens? I don't know. But more like like I just and it does seem like I I don't know. I would be surprised if Neil Marshall was like explicitly thinking, like you're saying Derby like, well, women are like this, so I'm

going to write that. But but it is just like another weird example of someone kind of telling on themselves, possibly unintentionally. Men men be telling on themselves. Man, all the stuff they get me a hat that says men be telling on themselves, come to smirch. The next big thing I wanted to touch on, and I foreshadowed this a little, is the demonization of disability in horror movies. We've talked to some extent in past episodes about how

mental illness is demonized in horror movies. A lot. We've talked how aging tends to be demonized, especially as women age. It's often included as like right and the and the vivich um An Old women will be a part of the horror imagery. What we haven't talked about really yet is how disability is also demonized in horror movies. Um Where because in this movie, the cave dwellers are blind. This is a pretty I mean, you see it in

a few other horror movies. The quiet Place comes to mind, and you know, any any number of disabilities will be used and ascribed to the killer or the monster or whatever it is that is causing terror for the protagonist, which just goes back to the I mean, part of why so many horror movies seem so horrifically dated when you watch them back later is because the villain is very often just what is the example of the other that the writer and the filmmaker is threatened by, which

is I feel like there's a lot of racially motivated villains that we've seen in horror movies over the years because that is what the white writers thinks is going to be scary to people. That's where vagina mouth comes from.

That's like there's there and and yeah, I think, um mental illness and disability in general kind of goes into that general like you know, it's the writers iming like, well, people aren't comfortable with this, and I have no interest in normalizing it, so let me basically weaponize people's own prejudices and affirm them through creating this monster. Yeah. I have a few quotes from a piece I found on medium by Laura Elliott. It's entitled What's so Scary about Disability?

Laura discusses how there are recurring tropes and horror movies that basically say disability equals evil and disfigurement equals morally bankrupt, and how a lot of these tropes and horror films are are rooted in and date back to a lot of old literature, religious texts, folk tales, fairy tales, things like that. She says, quote. Perhaps you might think that these stereotypes are no big deal, but the fact is that the horror genre is the only genre in which

disabled people are regularly represented at all. In a report by the Media Diversity and Social Change Initiative found that of the top one movies that year, only two point four percent of disabled characters spoke or had names, despite the fact that one in five people around the world

are disabled. So there's so little visibility and representation of people with disabilities in movies, and it's so rare that you see any kind of respectful or responsible representation because disability is so often again ascribed to the villains and horror movies, and that's really the only visibility you get.

And then another quote from this same article says, quote, it's worth remembering that while horror entertainment frequently depicts disabled people negatively, there's essentially no other popular media to counteract these depictions. While there are countless disabled and disfigured people portrayed as killers and villains, we rarely ever get to be the heroes, and frequent negative representation breeds ongoing stigma and prejudice. End quote. So I mean, historically and film,

this has just been unequivocally true in film. I mean, this movie came out fifteen years ago, movies like a Quiet Place about two years ago. I've been lightly encouraged in recent years of their being more representation of disabled people that are played by disabled actors as well. And it isn't just I mean, I think there's it's basically a trope of of a very famous actor playing a disabled character in order to get an Oscar nomination like,

that's a pretty common trope. But um, I will say in a quiet place, and I literally I literally just watched it for the first time last week. But um, the daughter in that movie is deaf preteen played by a deaf actress, Milicent Simmons, And that character, I mean, is like one of the central characters. Her disability isn't played for evil or jokes, and it ends up actually kind of being something that she is able to, you know, work to her and her family's advantage in the story.

So I am gent other And this is an example that is in let me be clear, not a very good movie, but one that I have seen before. Did anyone watch Unfriended Dark Web? Yes? I did not see it, so I've seen them both. I really enjoyed the Unfriended franchise. It is so silly. But um, in the second Unfriended and it is the worst one Friended twist, everyone's to hack her. But but there is a lead character that is deaf. She is a romantic interest. She has a

whole arc. The part is played by a deaf actress, and her disability isn't leveraged against her. She is a character that exists in this story and yeah, I mean we don't need to get into it too much, like she and her boyfriend are kind of like there's a communication issues, but I thought it was dealt with pretty respectfully and so even in bad movies, you know, like there, but but I don't, you know, I don't think The Descent really qualifies as a movie that is handling this

well at all. And yeah, I think, well overall, I'd be interested to hear from our listeners with disabilities on how because I think this movie isn't the absolute worst offender of demonizing disability in the horror genre. And yeah, I just i'd be interested to hear our listeners perspectives on that just kind of in this movie. And then as a whole um friend of the cast. Kristin Lopez has done some really great writing on this as well,

and we'll we'll link some of her articles. It's definitely not a lot of solid ally ship from the other woman with her in this, and I think that's like, I mean a big part of what we're seeing in like the BLM movement is like how important ally ship is because like disabled people in this specific converse station can continue to like advocate and fight for the rights, But at the end of the day, it's like, how is everyone going to show up? How are they going

to help make space? How are they going to help learn? And so on? And I think that, yeah, this movie, I think it's like a d and not an F and effort for ally ship. And I think Beth is the only reason why the greed went up in any sort. Um, even if she does get you know, chatty Cathy at the end and wants to get um. I wanted to bring up this book that um. Actually Alex Jacob's Got Me Once, House of Psychotic Woman and Autobiographical Topography of

female neurosis and horror and exploitation Films. And it's a really dense and a really interesting formatted book. But I really like it because I've also thought more not so much on the physical disability side of it, but more of like the like mental disorder side of things, Just like as I explored my own anxiety and depression and mood swings through my twenties and seeing in movies and like my friends did that to me, I would be

so mad, why are they treating? And then they cart you know, the protagonist still stands with them at that and I'm like, oh, bit, you should have my back when I'm having a panic attack. Don't demonize me and

like isolate me in this um. But the book like dives into yeah, different films, mostly horror films, and you know, like Rosemary's Baby is a great fucking example of a time where we totally isolate someone who's like experiencing all these like you know, legitimate things within her female body. But then also you know, I as being possessed at

the same time with the demon baby. Um. But I think, you know, I think movies like that, and like Ginger Snaps is a great example too of like talking about like teenage girls coming into their own and everyone's like, oh, you're just having your period. I mean they become awarewolf but also you know, having that, and so I think that I like when movies do that, Like you were saying, Jamie at the Quiet Place, how that ends up working to the families benefit. Um, we're actually like works with

the story. But you know, like Midsummer, you know, I know that guy tries to fucking talk about mental health stuff, but like god, he sucks at it, and I it's just it's for me. It's like it's a lot of like what I've experienced, you know, I think what I I paid a lot of attention to good intention shitty impact a lot lately, and that guy is the epitome of yeah, good intention, he wants to bring awareness to this,

but then like, horrible fucking impact. So I think that when people want to write about disabilities, I'm glad you brought that up. I think people need to think about like, hey, do you are you really the person to speak about this,

like is this your place? Are you really gonna, you know, not further villainize this and further isolate this from the conversation of inclusivity and allyship and like be yeah, are you just gonna bring you know, the awareness to it that needs rather than just using it as like a tool, because it's exhausting watching it as a tool. I hate being seeing people like who are like me or people who have you know, physical disabilities, and they're just being

villainized for that. So yeah, I don't think we see in nearly enough of you and just intersectionality in general, Like we'll see you know, white people and a disability, We'll see you know, black people and poverty, and then we'll start to see more and more layers. But I feel like the more layered intersectional films come more with like the indie films, they get the lower budgets and

like the lower marketing and distribution ceilings. So I'm like, I would be so curious to see these films, you know, as we like, you know, layer up these identities and these oppressions and privileges, but like with the bigger budgets, and I think people you know, can explore that a lot more with the bigger budgets that they get. This

guy kind of had an opportunity, any uh. He caved in wish and the and the and that also will come with allowing black, indigenous people of color to make their own movies, people with disabilities to make movies about themselves, queer people to make movies about themselves. Yeah, God please.

And since we're talking about horror this month, I mean, it's it's a genre that is so open, two different characters and and and so it's kind of I mean, it's frustrating to look back, and this is fifteen years ago, but it's frustrating to see a genre that's uniquely qualified use its power for bad basically by by demonizing people instead of you know, representing them and lifting them up. And yeah, yeah, you get a lot of freedom with horror movies. I mean I feel like the marketing for it.

I feel like a lot of people will make horror movies unless it's going to be like a quiet place or something like generally they're like, we know, we're gonna like stay within this pool of money and demographic and audience and YadA YadA. Yeah. I love horror movies because you get to explore these types of topics. I think, for me, Midsummer and Hereditary, which I so uh you know words. Um, I'm just like they were so disappointing at the end of the day because I'm like, you

had such a fucking opportunity. You had such an opportunity and yeah blew. And people won't stop congratulating you regardless, Like yeah, like, yeah, Tony Collett was fantastic, but Tony Collett is always fantastic as an angel, Like what do you expect. I don't expect anything less from her. Yeah, I hate ari esther and I don't like his movies, and but people just can't stop requesting them for us to do. They will be fun to cover when the day comes. But like, but I'm not in a rush

I do I'm maybe I'm inventing this. I'm pretty sure that this is something that he said where he's like, I'm not going to direct a movie for a while. I'm just going to fund other people's projects. And it's like, yes, do that, um, and don't and you I better not see you funding the project of siss hat white guys. Oh god. Also, okay, the irony of most horror movies being made by and being about cissht white people and marginalized people being the people who actually experience most of

the horrors in their lives. And and like horror movies are usually allegorical, right, the monster is never really a monster. The monsters in allegory for something. But I feel like even so, like there aren't that many allegorical films about like racism or queer phobia or classism or anything like that, at least not ones that are are in the mains like us in the whatever that what is considered to

be the horrican. And because I'm sure, I mean, we know that these movies exist and that we're they're out there, it's just they're not brought to the forefront of the way that they should be. Yeah, I'm in a weekly quarantined movie club with some with a friend and then he has a bunch of other friends and so we

meet every Sunday at five on zoom. We watch a movie every week, and I've really enjoyed it because it's like the first you know, Caitlin, I met you in a very white world and uh, and I felt like talking movies as much as I love those sweet Gems, it was always like I felt like I was always coming with this yeah, kind of intersectional angle that you know, if you or Catherine weren't there for the night, then I was like, dude, I'm like out here like drowning,

just trying to talk about I'm just trying to talk about the movie. Right. It's like I think all women can relate to, Like people want to ask us, like, how is it being a female comic, How is it being a female writer. It's like, I just want to talk about being a writer. I just want to talk about being a filmmaker. And so I feel like when I talk about movies, there's so much more of the layer of like having to talk through like the issues

of it or like the lack of intersectionality in it. Um. But in this group, we're talking about movies YadA YadA, and we I feel bad because I actually missed it so I haven't watched yet. But we watched Tales from the Hood, which I had yet to see. Yeah, I haven't seen it either. Yeah, and we're trying to watch like sometimes we dive deep into like yeah this this white head like movies whatever. But they were also trying to you know, we watch like The Watermelon Woman, which

was like the first out black lesbian made film. UM. But yeah, we're like trying to explore movie more movies like that, and I, you know, it goes back to like how I see it as though, you know, like Jamie were just saying, you know, it's like, yeah, how

many movies don't really get out there? And it's like, well, it's like anyone who's marginalized, Like we might not get the meeting, but if we get the meeting, how much do we get to pitch in the meeting once we're in the room, once we like get the movie greenlit, Like how soon do we get to do the movie once we get the movie? Like, you know, we're kicking into production. Is it going to happen on our timeline?

Are we going to get the budget we want? Are we going to get to hire the people we wanted, how much to produce? YadA, YadA, YadA. The ceiling is always there, and I think that, you know, a quiet place. My biggest issue with it is like, why why this movie? Now? I love John Krasinski, fine, Emily Blunt, whatever, but like why did we need this movie? And I think get Out to me at that get Out in to us, We're going to be these like perfect like gateway to

like black films. And then I've heard from friends who you know, are like pitching movies out there, like, oh, we already have get Out, you know. They're like they're like when we already have like the Black Horrors. And I'm like, are you serious? Like what are all of the movies that we call classics, Godfather's, Goodfellas, Casino, Like, it's all the same ship over and over. We're still letting Scorsese, you know. So I'm like, why why do

we get the ceiling? Why do black filmmakers get the ceiling? You know, I could go deep, that could be a whole other episode one, but I think that that is something we said, we think that there's not as many out there. It's like, you know, people are like there's no female filmmakers or like excuse you, hello, No, that's why that's like the most frustrating fucking thing in the

world to hear that. Just it's like, unfortunately, so unsurprising of how it's just assumed that people want to see the same his head, male white stories told over and over and over, and that's why they're made over and over and over and why the bar is so low. This is um, I was Caitlin, I feel like maybe I was talking about this with you not too long ago.

But there is a moment that Emily Yoshida, friend of the cast, pulled out of other friend of the cast, Karina longworths, we have so many friends have I mean, listen, our our show has been on for five years, um, but it's true for for as long as the cave

people have been developing their wall climbing abilities. In any case, um Emily pointed out this part of Karina's most recent podcast season and you must remember this where she mentions that Wes Anderson, when he was developing Bottle Rocket his first movie, the way he got that movie produced was that he wrote a nonsensical sixty page treatment treatment, didn't even format it like a script, didn't know how to

format it like it's a script. And then instead of someone saying, uh, this is not a script, go learn how to do this, they said, we love it. You seem to have a lot of potential. We're gonna buy it.

We're gonna teach you how to write a script. And then they like taught him on the ground, because that is I mean privilege firing on so many levels of like yeah, I don't know, and and just how you're eating That example is and to so many filmmakers that have no I mean truly no choice but to come knowing their ship and are still turned away when Wes Anderson is like what is what is the script? How

do I do that? And they're like you're hired? Like it's just such I mean going back to kind of the horror conversation, like so many horror movies are about like zombies and vampires and werewolves and any number of other creatures that are not real because like the cistert white men who are making these movies have to invent things to scare them, whereas again, marginalized people live every day in fear because they're so often the victims of

discrimination and oppression and violence or worse, they're they're taking marginalized, oppressed people and turning them into into the villains. So like, yeah, yeah, does anyone have any other thoughts about The Descent specifically or yeah, um, I think it needed some more black people. Yeah, and by some more yeah, I think they could use

some more black people. That's my real of my final thought hard degree the Descent because because you know, there are some great there are some great black actors, you know, one or two out there that you know might have been around, they didn't come around still twenty Um. Yeah, I think that was like something that was sitting with me. But also, honestly, I'm fucking used to it. I'm so used to like some of some of my favorite movies

are not black lead and created films. But then also it's like, you know, the ways in which I allow that to just be okay, And I've tried to boycott, like watching white movies. It's fucking hard, dude. It's like it's super hard because our ceiling is just so so low and even if there was a black actor on that.

They probably would be coming out with a story now about how you know, other they felt, and there was it was an entire white male cast, you know, on this and that, which I'm really carrious how many women were involved, and that we're not in the hair, makeup or producing department, because that's typically where we are on set or often where we're hired the most and people want us. You're organized, so you're so together, like let me be dirty and be a grip, come on now,

you know, but I want to be the best boy. Yeah, yeah, I didn't see any I didn't see any women in at least high up behind the scenes roles in the Yeah, I definitely want to watch it with the commentary because when I was reading all the trivia was like five minutes into the trip or commentary and then they would

say certain things. So I'm really curious about I want to hear their tone because I feel like you can always like I can start to you know, sherylack Holmes my way through tones and commentary or like wow, they really hated the process, Like Naomi Watts talking about um maholland dry and her audition is just so sleazy and disgusting. Like David Lynch like told her she came in and then she had no makeup on because she wanted to

seem natural. I think she was new to l a very similar to the character she hands up portray, and he said, come back with makeup, and so she's like and when she talks about it, she sounds sort of brain rush like, so, you know, I left and I put on makeup and I came back and he was like, oh, this is better now, you know, And I was like yeah, and I was like, man, but it's those things that we allowed to not be, you know, the canceling factor or something that we think not worthy of bringing up

about someone. And so we I mean we you would all just have to unlearned the like really harmful things that we learned living in this like patriarchal structure. It's like, I'm so curious if if The Descent had a bigger turnout and was more like I think it's like a like, I think it's got a good following, but I think I've had a more mainstream following that it seemed like

they were kind of hoping for. I'm curious if some of those actresses would be coming out now and saying like, you know, we could have done more, we should have made it more diverse, because it's when I'm watching a lot of like high supposedly high up like white women do, They're like, I should have done more. I'm like, yeah, but you should have done more. Why were you just sitting there because your privilege wasn't being tested? Where were

you fifteen years ago? Exactly? So I think it's like, you know, I think low key this movie did speak to like the white supremacy that like definitely boils within that. And I'm like, you know, obviously this was a good movie to take a chance with an all female cast. You had to throw a sister and there is something so absolutely I don't know, I mean. And it was

a commercial success. It had like a three point five British pound budget and made yeah, I don't know, but um but and then in in US dollars it made somewhere around I think fifty five to sixty million at the box office, So it was a box office success. And honestly, this is one of our most requested horror films to cover on the podcast. We've been getting this request for long time. You're welcome, everybody, You're happy. It's a solid film man for what it was when it was.

You know, I think if they made that movie now, like even the movies I see coming out now, I'm like, are you fucking serious? What year is this? Why is this movie half inning right now? But I think for two thousand five, for them to do a bunch of women diving into caves with the budget that it was, like, I think, what, like, there's not many other films like that, Like I think, you know, like Twenty Days Later, Oh my god, Nami Harris, I don't know. There's so many

Naomi actresses. I get them all mixed. Um Nami Harris, like I think she to me when I saw Twenty Days Later, I was like, skirts, excuse me, this black woman with this like kind of short pixie flat ironed haircut is just like kicking ass and saving this like sad little white boy. Okay, I am here for this. But I feel like we only get those every so often, and then we got you know, not get Up. I didn't like US. I thought US was horsha, to be honest, But I love Lupita. That Lupita like blew me the

funk away. So it sucks as a black mixed person. Like every so often I get someone I'm like yeah, but then most of the time you're like, no, there's not really anyone. Oh she is anxiety, I have anxiety. Well I guess there's that, you know. Yeah, yes, Um, Well does this movie pass the Bechtel tests? Oh? It

sure does, almost constantly, almost exclusively. Yeah. And it's interesting because I didn't like check this to the to the hilt, let's say, But I feel like even when they are maybe the subtext is about her husband, they don't really

say his name, and they don't really mention him. It's all kind of like subtext, and it's more they're talking about grief than they're talking about him, except for like that one line where I'm like, Juno, what are you doing where when she says she's not the only one who lost someone in that accident, I'm like, why are you telling him yourself like this? You're like what? Um? But outside of that, yeah, they men aren't really mentioned

at all. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's true. Actually, And now I think about like every time a man was mentioned, You're like, oh a man, Oh I forgot about them? For a second, you know, like yeah, because Sarah asks a couple of them like, so, do you have a man back home? And then yeah, we do talk more about the grief of the husband and the daughter rather than him. That's fine by me. It was a nice

little break. Yeah, there were way too many questions, like they almost like went around the circle do you have a boyfriend or husband? Yeah? That was ridiculous, which was like too much, But at least they also talked about like, yeah, I like spelunking, I'm in medical school, and here are some of my interests. But it did sort of feel like, Okay, what do women talk about when they're not being killed by or and also when they are being killed by all the men and the movie are killed. Yeah, and

that's fine. The sequel also kills a lot because there are it is a cast of men and women, and um, all the men are also killed spoiler allergy. I'm curious to see that one. Now. I got a damn it. It sounds pretty good. It's it's not well, it's it's the first one is a better crafted and like better structured movie, and I think a more effective horror movie.

H The second one, I think course correct some of the issues and has another woman of color as one of the lead characters, who, Um, and I won't spoil this, but you know you're not unhappy about what happens really with her. So it's a little better is her storyline, Like she walks up to the cave and it's like, oh, hell, I'm not going in there. I'm out. I wish but it's like, I'm going to break the stereotype. No black person is saying this. She black kind of latin X. Okay, okay, great,

I'm gonna watch it. Yeah, but really looks like horseship, but I guess I'll watch it. So as far as our nipple scale, UM, examining the movie from an intersectional feminist lens zero to five nipples. Um, Again, there's a lot to appreciate about this movie, and there's there's there's a lot to be upset by about this movie. Um. It almost feels very equal. I'm almost inclined to give it like a two point five, like a split down the middle because you see very capable, physically strong, outdoorsy

athletic women who you almost never see. Um, they aren't sexualized. It's just a group of friends doing extreme sports until the cannibals, until the cave dollars come, and then you have, I mean, the only woman of color gets vilified, the pettiness, the petty behavior of some of the women. At the end, it all sort of cancels out. So yeah, I guess I would give it like a two point five. It

is very much a movie of its time. And this is a rating of of the film through an intersectional lens, not as a film as a well, I want to say is a cinematic piece, but I think we should start evaluating films through an intersection. So our our yeah, our rating is based on like the lens. The only reason I'm I'm torn in this is because I feel like I typically rate films through this lens, but now there's other people doing it, and I'm like, am I in the real world right now? You guys do this too,

and this is way better? Okay, Because people will be like, oh, no, I just thought it was a good movie. I'm like, oh, were you not uncomfortable by it? Like I was, Oh, that's so nice for you, and you're cute little privilege go over there. Yeah, I think I would give it. I think I would give it three nipples out of five. Yeah, I'll split the deaf. I'll do two point seven. Very

I love to get the decimal zone here. Um No, Yeah, I think that, like, given the fact that it was fifteen years ago and it is there is a lot that this movie is doing in this genre that no

one was doing in this genre unfortunate. As as infuriating as I find it, I do feel like there is I don't know how to properly phrase this, but like there is kind of a like a tendency maybe in movies of like once a male director proves, oh there can be a you know, a horror movie starring all women, then it unfortunately kind of does get the ball rolling to maybe let a woman direct a horror movie about women.

But cause I feel like there's a lot of moving in the right direction in some ways and then in other ways than complete like stagnation. But there is a lot happening here that isn't happening really anywhere else in this space at that time. So I'll give it a stew there. And it's really cool to see Sarah come out of the the period pond and get all stuff. I don't care what anyone says, it is it is a men being afraid of Vagina's thing again just also

very says normative get a life like anyways? Um yeah, two point two point seven five. I'll give one to Sarah. I'm gonna give one to I give I'll give one to Juno because I said, I don't know why. I was like, you know, Juno made mistakes, But who among us hasn't Who hasn't who among us their friends to certain death on purpose? And I'll give the last three quarters to Beth because I did think if it was funny that she was gossiping when she's dying. You know.

Oh well, Darby, thank you so much for being here, remember having me. What a treat that we are, just the fact that we all descended into this conversation together and now we're crawling our crawling over the bones of people to get out. Yes, um, where can people check out your stuff? Following nine, et cetera. Yeah, so um. I'm pretty active on Instagram at Darblazy, des and Delta asan alpha RBS and boy l easy y Um. I've been doing a lot of customer service calls lately. Have

to spell my name out in letters like that? Um, what else? Do you do in quarantine but fixed problems you don't really have? UM, And yeah, I'm a filmmaker, artist consultant. I consult folks and film. I used to run a collective cult Color Film, where we provided resources and tools and education for the community of marginalized filmmakers. And now I'm doing it on my own. So if you need a consultation to get through a work situation. UM,

I do monthly live streams. And I have a patriot on patreon dot com slash Derby rose d a r b asy rose Um. And yeah, I do monthly live streams. I talk about intersectionality at work, how to be productive during this time that we're in, and um, all the other things. And I do want to recommend a couple of movies anything by Karen Kassama, Jennifer's Body, The Invitation, other horror thriller films, Ginger Snaps, Um although co written by a woman, fully directed by a man, fantastic More

Lady Bits and uh comparisons all that in horror. Our friend Alex recommends that we covered that movie on this podcast almost on a daily Baby. It's a fantastic film, and I feel like I'm forgetting others. But there's a lot of incredible films out there by marginalized filmmakers. So support the horror, support anything that we and they need, because why America don't care? So yes, and and uh, listeners hired Derby for her consultation work, and subscribe to

her Patreon and give me money. We had a capitalist society still and and covid took my work away. Yes, thanks for having me. This was really fun. I feel like I've been waiting to have this conversation. And I'm a big fan of what you guys have been doing with Bechdel Castle. I'm so happy to see it, like still where it is and where it's going. It's so cool. Onward and upward baby, Yes, I love it. Yea, thank you for being here here everyone, it's a future Damian future.

It is us. We wanted to address something that we talked about during the episode and that we got feedback on from a few different listeners regarding our discussion that we had about the representation of disability in horror movies.

And yeah, we we basically at the feedback that while that's an important discussion to have, this was not the appropriate movie to do it for, and so we just wanted to acknowledge that we have spoken with listeners and we just we want to continue having this discussion, but this wasn't the movie to do it for. And um, so we apologize, and you know, as always, our lines of communication are open to you, and um, yeah, we will continue to have this discussion in movies that makes

more sense for us. So our apologies for um, misfiring on when to have that discussion. Yeah, it was pointed out that because many like species of animals who dwell in caves are blind, it wasn't as though this movie was necessarily demonizing blindness. For me, I was just like, oh, this would be maybe a good opportunity to kick start that conversation. But as people pointed out, this wasn't the right movie for it. It just wasn't the right match right.

But it's still a very important discussion for sure. So yes, thanks for those of you who gave feedback. Like Jamie said, we encourage that. You know, sometimes we're you know, we're not always going to get things exactly right every time, so it's it's helpful to receive feedback from people. And we're always wanting to learn and grow, so thank you for that. We love you, Love you, Future Jamie and future Caitlin signing off, And you can check us out

on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon at patreon dot com, slash pecktel Cast. You get to bonus episodes every month, it's only five dollars, and you get access to the entire back catalog. And if you're a horror fan, we've covered a number of horror movies on that, including including Jennifer's including Jennifer's Body and Teeth and Get Out and The Babba Duck Who Can't Forget The Babba Duck Who Could Forget? Yeah,

among many many others. And you can get our merch t public dot com slash v back til Cast we have we have recently got masks to the store with all of our classic Birch stuff, so you can get those if you so choose. And yes, stay safe, help people, and we love you. And now we have an US sent out of the Cave Rave. Bye bye