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The film board gathers. The Gang of Thugs is here to take on a movie currently in theaters and this month. What if someone you loved became something else? What if that loved one became something else? After locking you all in Oregon together? Forget full moons and silver bullets. Lee one LL's latest Universal remake, wolf Man, is a story of family drama, generational trauma, and oh yeah, turning into a terrifying Wolfman monster thing. It's part horror, part body horror,
part marriage horror, and part parenting horror. All of it's gone horribly horribly wrong.
Hello, could anyone hear me?
WHOA, we were in an accident.
Daddy, we're gonna die. No, it's my job to protect.
You and we we were at to act.
I think my husband was infected. What daddy, daddy? What's wrong with daddy?
She got sick?
What is happening to me?
Can you understand me? You're you're hearing you're scaring me.
That is me, Hurry, Mommy is coming. I'd beat right in joining me to mark their territory all over this film. Or Tommy meets the Third and Steve Sarmento Hello, gents, Hello, Hello, A rude to you. The transformation from stay at home dad to feral beast raises some questions. Can you protect your family when you are the danger? Does the film's emotional bite match its monster mayhem? Or is the reboot all bark and no bite. It's a real doggy dog World,
don't you agree, Tom, Doggy Dog World. That's right, Doggy Dog Classic.
Uh.
Let's let's get some just opening thoughts. Where where do I feel? I feel like I want to start with Tom because Steve comes into the meeting tonight having renamed himself not Steve Sarmento, but Sad Steve, and that scares me. So I like to start with somebody who I think knows. I think I know where he's coming from on the movie, what do you?
I was not excited about this movie until I found out who directed it, because, as I've mentioned maybe before, I'm not a huge wolf person, wolfman person, or traditional universal monster person but this guy lay one out lay one l I've always said Lee Lee Lee Weel directed the Invisible Man remake, which was outstanding, so that made
me really excited for this. I wanted to see if this would be a sort of a reconstructed, deconstructed horror movie that's really about something else instead of just turning into wolves. So with that, I was looking forward to it. And yeah, that's how I went into this movie. Overall, I think this movie has two really really outstanding ideas, and that's more than some movies have. Is that enough? Is that enough to warrant the entire screen time? I'm
not exactly sure. I think it got some things really right in some things were lacking enough where I was a little disappointed because the parts that were good made me want the parts that were lacking to be so much better.
Yeah, oh so I'm right there. I'm right there with Tommy because I knew this was part of that Lumhouse. We're going to reconceive these universal classic monster movies and we're going to really present them different. I love Invisible Man, so I thought, Okay, I'm looking for this reinvention. I know I'm not going to get the traditional wolf Man, which I was fine with. I do love the nineteen forty one. The wolf Man's my favorite classic monster movies, so I knew I wasn't going to get that I
was going to get a twist on it. So I was really intrigued by what would be that end to that story. What is that twist that they're going to do that's going to allow them to leverage that sort of mythology of that wolfman, you know, dual nature of man. Do something with that. And I there were some there were some parts of this that I really enjoyed. There's some sequences that really, wow, this is I like this direction. I liked some of these things. But ultimately, by the time I left the movie.
I was very sad.
And then as I read a little bit more about what the writers were trying to do with this story, the spin they were trying to take, I got actually angry with this film because I have some strong feelings about what they felt they were trying to say with this, and I have sharp disagreement with that. So I've said and angry about this film. Sad and angry, Yeah, sangry, Wow, angry.
I didn't read anything about this movie, so I'm just skipping around, okay.
I so I went into it. I think maybe I was. I was ambivalent going into it. I wasn't not excited about it. I be in HVISI Man was great, obviously, Leewan l I like and and so I was excited to see what he could do revisioning this this property, just because I've watched a bunch of other Wolfman movies and I tend to be a fan of a lot of more recent ones. When animals dream, ginger snaps, I
like very much, And so I like the idea. And I also like that the fact that that werewolves are just such a easy metaphor for so many different kinds of things. And I think that's where this movie sets up a lot right right that. You know, we have themes of parenthood and family and generational trauma and loss of humanity and identity, and of course we've got survival and sort of the Sophie's Choice, uh kind of stuff
in here in an isolated, sort of confined space. Like I like all of that stuff, All of the intention around those big themes absolutely hit home with me. And I don't know if there's a single one of them that I feel like made good on its promise in the setup of the movie, and that's the disappointment. I don't think I'm sad or angry. I'm not sangry. I am disappointed that I feel like the movie had so much promise and ended up being ultimately a little bit empty.
That it would be a terrible movie if it were not for a few really interesting things that they did with the actual making of it that I loved. Like there, I was like blown back in my seat watching some of the choices that they made. And I know we're going to talk about those in a little bit, but first, if you will indulge me a brief overview of the story. Blake, a writer and stay at home father living in San Francisco, inherits his childhood home in a place I like to
call rural Oregon in name only, Reino. After his estranged father is presumed dead. Blake's having a tough time at home and wants to use this trip to visit his dead dad's place to reconnect with his wife Charlotte and daughter Ginger. They don't think it's a good idea, but narrative propels them all to Roino anyway. As they approach the farmhouse at night, they are attacked by an unseen creature.
Because sometimes this movie goes hard on pace. The family foreshadowingly barricades themselves inside together and Blake begins to exhibit strange behavior. Charlotte has just start doing a lot of work around the house because her husband does an increasing amount of sitting about and eventually licking and chewing on himself. That is the story of wolf Man.
That's not bad. You're exactly right, yep, well play.
Uh so, let's let's dig in just just a bit on some of those themes, because I want to hear Steve, what pissed you off so hard?
Oh you want me just go angry?
Holl on it.
Wolf men aren't real?
So wolf aren't real?
Aren't real?
About point of order?
Yes, so it started with so I have to get into the movie a little bit one of the twists, and we can talk about pot points all that, but I felt by the end of the movie we had a sense that Blake had lost his humanity, and Pete, I think you alluded to that, and there's various ways in which that happens, which we can discuss later. But to get to my point about angry. So at the
end of the movie, he's lost his humanity. So that when I read that Whenell said in the story they were inspired by a close friend's battle with als, which took away her mobility and ability to communicate in a long, slow process, it was terrifying to watch, thinking, this is a movie about people with a disease like that where communication can break down, or Alzheimer's dementia, things like that, And to then extend that metaphor to say, oh, when
that happens to you, you are losing your humanity. You are becoming a monster. That is very problematic to me, because if Blake had kept his humanity and had a barrier, he could not overcome. But we lose all sense of who he is. We don't see his perspective anymore, so we don't know what his thoughts are, we don't know what his motives are, so he becomes monster less than human.
And to say that someone suffering from one of these horrible diseases loses their humanity because of their inability to communicate is really offensive to me and makes me very angry.
I think that's really interesting, and it gets to the visual conceit that the movie uses to define perspective that I was so blown away by Oh I loved it, Yes, but it's equally frustrating. So we're at Tom, do you want to describe it? You liked it too, right? We texted about this part.
Yeah, wolf eyes, wolf vision, I don't know what to call it, but yeah, when we start to see from his perspective, he's able to classic Wolfman stuff, like he smells things that no one else is able to smell. All of his senses are heightened. But then visually, his ability to see in the dark is greatly enhanced, and it's almost sort of like this. I don't know if it's infrared, but it's like that you see like light traces, you know. He can There was one time when I
thought it was too much. Was the spider? I thought it was it was too much because it was just like the spiders are too loud, Like it's like someone like pushing over a bunch of paint cans. And it turns out he's just looking at a spider, yeah, with a boombox, so that, you know. But the afilion to see, to hear, see, smell out things is really graphically well played. Not graphically visually in ways that we haven't had a lot.
Usually it's a lot of sniffing and it's a lot of hearing, and we can talk about the sound design for this movie, but yeah, to be able to in one shot, we will see the perspective of what the family is seeing in their limited abilities and what is he seeing in his heightened abilities, And it really makes for a great comparison.
And the transition the first time they used that trick was brilliant. It was suddenly, we're speaking Russian in red October right like. It was a really neat bit of awareness that you didn't know you were in his perspective, and that's why he suddenly couldn't you know, his family wasn't talking to him anymore, even as he was talking to them. I thought that was such a fantastic reveal. The problem I have with it when you talk about promises that they did not make good on, is exactly
to your point, Steve. I would have loved it if we'd had a diving bell in the butterfly experience, where he is trapped in this perspective and he still deeply wants to communicate but can't, and the rage is that metaphor for werewolf, you know, the werewolf monster, because otherwise you're right, he loses everything and the metaphor falls apart. I don't know if I would have been frustrated by it had I not read the same thing you did,
like what they had said. Had I not known any of that, I probably wouldn't have given it much thought other than wouldn't it have been cool? But the fact is that to know that was kind of intentional and not seeing the other side of what that communicates, I think is hard.
Yeah, And that's what made me sad walking out of
the movie at first. Was I put in my notes, I'm like, Blake has lost his humanity apparently, but I don't know when that happens in his transformation, or if we were to assume that, are we to assume that he does maintain his humanity Because of the final moment where the daughter communicates what she senses he is thinking, I don't know if that's accurate or not, And I think maybe I'm to assume that, but I haven't been given enough along the way to really solidify that that
there's a deeper understanding of what he's trying to do. By the daughter and we as an audience have no sense of why he's acting certain ways. If we could get into his perspective, it is that I need to tell you something, or I'm trying to get you to someplace safe, or I'm trying to push you away from me because of these these urges I'm having, you know, to gnaw on flesh or whatever that is, and we don't, we just it just becomes monster versus you know, final
girl and daughter running through the woods. And I don't know why we are given that other than that is the tropes of the genre as oh, you're getting chased by the monster. But I had been built up to expect, oh, this shifting perspective. It was a great balance back and forth of their frustration, his frustration or overcoming this barrier of how do we fix this? And we've got a ticking clock of you know, is this getting worse? We're
in a confined space. All those great moments to come to a boiling point of something and to just cop out.
At the end.
It made me very sad because it could have been so powerful.
But he doesn't spend a lot of time just hunting them, right, He's protecting them for mostly from the ogol. Yeah, so I think that's his fatherly, that that's the humanity that's there. I do agree with Steve that it's it's like, at some point it feels like there is a missing part
of this movie. You see him after he's he gets almost pulled under the door by og wolf monster, and then he has some sort of like a weird fit, and then they do a practical thing where all the lights go out and he is Then that's very cool. But then when we're next a lot has happened, and it seems like, why was that off screen? He has now lost the ability to understand any language he is writing that he's dying. I mean that just seemed like a pretty key part to be able to see the warping of things.
I saw it two days ago, Tom check me out on order of things because the og door event happens, lights go down, when he wakes up, he's on the couch he's been sleeping, and then he makes his way downstairs to hear his wife on the ham radio. Right,
is that the next thing that happens? I think that sounds right, Yes, yes, yes, So I walked out with that question of how long was he asleep because clearly, and this is what gets to I think the movie's sort of divergence from lore, which is this it seems to be treating this disease, wolf face disease as a disease or an infection, something that can be spread through cuts obviously, and not through any you know, timey wymy
cycle of the moon stuff anymore. We're just this is just what happens when you get sick in Oregon.
Which I really liked when I said there are two great ideas in the movie. One of them for me is making this a bottle episode that not having you go through days and days of I think I can smell with that Spider's thinking or whatever. Having it sped up so fast made it really compelling to me. Now I know I'm talking outside of my mouth because I said, sped it up so fast, great job. But there also
is a function. There's a part of the movie missing that seems like they Tyler durdin it that like so much happens apparently when he's asleep, that all a project mayhem happens.
Yeah, well I took that as I mean, yeah, we need to cut out some time so that I'm assuming since it all takes place overnight, and I want to say it's it's maybe an hour or two at most
that it could could possibly be. So I took that as, you know, that's the virus acting, you know, so that when he wakes up, we don't have that he's lost that sense of progression of slowly, although we do get a hint of it earlier on when he's barricading the door and he turns and talks to his wife and he talks to his daughter and they're just sort of looking at him.
Right, which we find out later it's because he's speaking Russian.
Yeah, he's speaking. And the other aspect that I thought maybe you were alluding to Tommy about two aspects of this is it's the fact that it's the return to his home and the movie starts with the whole thing with his his father and all that we know he's conflicted, and he has that speech to his daughter about sometimes you know, his parents were so focused on protecting our kids from the things that scar them that we become
the things that end up doing the scarring. About his relationship with his father, the fact that I mean we can get into I don't know how much of a spoiler this is but og Wolf is his father, so everything coming back to where he grew up. The source of this infection is his father. It's all this fear of am I becoming my father? Am I creating this barrier between me.
And my child?
Aspect of that I thought was, you know, before I read about disease things, I thought, oh, this guy is returning to his home. He's becoming more in touch with who his you know, who he was raised to be, his roots. Because we have that friction between the wife and him, which is really ill defined about what that friction is in their marriage. But now that he's back to who he is, he's sort of embracing this is my true identity, which is going to create more in
the marriage. And I thought that's an interesting metaphor, but again I don't have Once he kills og Wolf aka Dad, according to my notes that I took as I was watching this, that's when we no longer see his perspective anymore. We no longer see anything from Break's point of view because he's become his father, fully animal, fully defiant, whatever, and so we don't know what he's thinking, and he's lost that humanity because he's become we're all, you know,
crazy woodsman guy living off the grit. He's fully embraced that by killing the father.
Yeah, there's there's no there's no real functional book of the vampire in this like there's no real exposition dump in the middle that explains what's happening. But I think that's, you know, that comes from sort of internalized lore. Once you actually exercise your new abilities by you know, your first kill really cements it. And now you're a werewolf. We kind of know that, right. Do we have any idea on because there are actually three wolf's men in
this movie. We know our protagonist Blake is a wolfman. We also know that Dad is now a wolf man. But arguably there's a very long yeah, there's a ooh yeah, no o g wolfman from the beginning that Dad and young Blake were out hunting. Who was that?
He was the hiker that went missing?
Yeah, the hiker that went missing in the That's that's what I assumed.
That was the opening title card, right, that was what I was assuming too. But I thought, maybe the movie's getting a little cheeky and it's actually Grandpa. What do they want me to believe? Because it's so circular, right, Like, this comes back to the exact same thing in the in the Deer Blind that happens to the beginning in the beginning happens at the end. But this time she closes the loop, right she does. The werewolf doesn't get away. And when you think about what her taking action, what
does that represent closing the loop? Had dad closed the loop before, the entire family lineage would change in ways. So there's some interesting stuff going on there.
Oh there is, yeah, that.
And it sounds better how you just did it than I think it was portrayed. I think one of the things that's missing is some pretty serious chemistry with this family that usually you not do a bottle episode until you have really defined all of your relationships because then by definition, you can sit them down in a room and have them all talk. To your point. You already said, we don't know nothing. We don't know nothing. We don't
know anything about this marriage. We do so little about I mean, she says, I don't know how to talk to my daughter. Okay, so thanks for telling us that and not showing us. They have no chemistry. Husband and wife has almost no chemistry. There's not a lot to root for in this story about families falling apart in generational trauma. That one scene with him and his daughter when he's like, I'm sorry, I don't want to be my dad, Like, it's pretty telegraph. There's a lot of
telling in this movie. Yeah, for as quick as it moves, sometimes there's also a lot of time just sort of spent, and it needed to be more. I think maybe this movie was potentially miscast and I don't know why, but there's just not a real There's no electricity between all three characters. I believe that they're a family, and I think the daughter's lisp gets stronger and stronger at different times of the movie. At the end, she says, is daddy thick? And I was like, you didn't say that
in the first half of the movie. Daddy is not thick.
I had no comment on a child's lisp, but I'm going to let that go. Carried that, but I will say, I think you're exactly right. Even though I found the Ginger adorable, I thought she was she was great as
a kid. I never once felt like she was the child of her parents, and I most of the time felt like Blake was some sort of an opair care person for the child, and that he had barely met his wife, like when she walked in, they looked so wrong for each other, Like I would have been the friend saying, don't ever marry the don't ever marry right right, like they're just they should not they they shouldn't have
been been together. And I struggle with that now. Neither of them are people that I know too much about. The only thing I've seen Julia Garner in is the Delvy show that she did. Do you remember the Oh my gosh, you guys and a Delvi She was in what was it called? Well, she was in Martha Macy, Martha Barcy May Marlin, which was terrific, terrific, terrific. Apartment seven A apparently was pretty good. But the thing she was in Inventing Anna was Oh.
About that woman that had the talk crazy and just sort of made up a life.
Yes, she made up a life, and she's now out of jail. And I think she was on Dancing with the Stars. I could not bring myself to watch it because it was such a it just felt dirty. But apparently she was very good. Julie Garner was very very good as this horrible woman. And so that's the only thing I really knew about her was I liked her as a cultist and that i'd heard she was very good.
And they're both both husband and wife were both in Martha Marcy May Marlene. So maybe that's how it all came together. I don't know. I didn't think that they were a good fit. And I know they're not supposed to be a great fit, but you're supposed to at least have the feeling of there was such a spark that is now gone. This was there a drag And even before he becomes a sad wolf man, he's already kind of a sad sack. He's a writer to what end.
She's a journalist who cares like they don't see their life does not feel real.
No, we we know that is when he shows up at you know, she's walking out of the office building, right he's sitting there and they sit down to have lunch, and it's like, oh, we haven't done this in a while, like done what spent time with each other? He had lunch together steps but I don't know or even when when they're in the apartment, she comes on the phone and he's asking her to take that, you know, take
that call someplace else, Like, why, what's the issue? You know what, there's there's clearly some friction there, but in a working couple and comes home on an important call like okay, that it wasn't disrupting anything he was trying to do. I don't see what what was rubbing him the wrong way? I was never given enough information to know why they rub each other wrong so much? And why are they so different? And if they are so different,
what was the magic that brought them together? What was that little meat cute that brings them together that they Oh they had this and it's now gone and lost? If it was something to have to do with the woods of like, oh, that's the reason to go back. But I don't see the draw for him, because clearly he got out of there as soon as he could. What's the draw to go back other than the pack up dad's stuff? But what's so valuable that he needs to go back there to reclaim? Do they need the money?
There were so many things I thought, what's the I don't understand the reason for going there? Just do weekend get away to revisit your traumatic childhood? Yeah, I just too many unknowns.
I actually I'll disagree on the scene where he asked her to stop or to take the call elsewhere, because I felt like that in and of itself was a little capsule of marital strife that you know, they're in the middle of some sort of law term relationship struggle, and he has asked her in an air of disrespect. Right, he is saying, quite loudly, please leave. He's interrupting the call to ask her to leave the kitchen, and she is with great disrespect, completely ignoring him, which is a
sign of a marriage in trouble. It's like a little like it's a bluepill for marriage and trouble or red pill. Yeah, it's a red pill for marriage and trouble. I didn't mind that. I think it would have been more It would have carried more weight if it had been between two people that I could ever believe liked each other. But because I never really got that point, I felt like it was a relationship that was like there was
no believable faith in a backstory between those two. I think that's where it kind of fell apart from me.
Right, this movie thinks that if a man and a woman are together at some point, they deserve and should be together no matter what, and that's just not true, right, people should be together.
Yeah, yeah, so that's okay. So that's interesting. That's that's relationship dynamics don't don't play very well, and that's problematic for the movie if you want to believe that there's any sacrifice at the end, especially because there's.
No one else in the movie. Yeah, you need to have rock solid characters if you're not going to have my she's not going to go to lunch with her friend and be like we used to be so great, you know, like all of those ways that you get information without doing flashbacks. They haven't given themselves the keys to do any of that, which I like because it speeds it up, but you gotta meeel it.
Unfortunately, now the only other character we get is what a childhood friend Derek, when they're on the way there, and clearly she's uncomfortable letting this strange man who's got a gun in the car, and Blake's like, no, no, it's going to be okay. And again it's the to PE's point, it's showing the you know, the relationship is in trouble that he's going to move forward with something,
knowing that it bothers her. He doesn't really make an attempt to like allay her fears or concerns of like, oh, no, I grew up with this guy. I don't really remember him that well. But there was nothing, just like he's going to get in the car, moved to the back and thought, oh, here's an interesting opportunity to really play out the dynamics of this relationship, give us a little bit more about Blake or what is going on? You know, who is this guy? He's playing nice? Okay, what's this
going to do for the family dynamic to introduce this outsider? Nothing, because we're just going to kill him off in the next two minutes.
So that was fast. Again, this movie goes hard on pace sometimes.
But I loved the crash though. The crash the way that was filmed, that was the other standout for me. It was just the spinning, twirling camera that really disoriented, but I still had a sense of I wasn't confused. I just was like rolling and moving and twisting with things in a way that I hadn't seen before that I really really enjoyed visually for.
That, and you stay disoriented with that set piece for the duration of the movie. The fact that it's a moving truck sideways in the trees was so cool. I thought that was really cool. And having to go back to it, the fact that they introduced the wolf face crawling on the side of the truck in that first like minute after they reached the forest was I thought really great and threatening and propulsive, and I thought, this is I'm feeling like I'm in pretty good hands. It
was a surprise. Let's talk about the wolf Man. There's been some consternation about the Wolfman, that he is diseased and doesn't always look like a wolf. What did you think about the wolf Man? Did it bug you?
No? No, I was fine. I mean I was grossed out by it, which I guess is supposed to be the point. But no, I thought he was wolf and doggish. Wait, what are people? Maybe? I don't know. The complaints that they're not all like hairy and like actual wolf like.
Yeah, well, that he's not more wolfy than he is.
He los his hair rather than gaining hair. He has a big underwright, you know, I mean that dislocating the jaw. There was a lot of a lot of Kronenberg. The nails, those things, which I thought, oh, perfect, we're going practical, we're going with this, and it's it's it's it's more realistic than like, oh, my entire face is going to transform into something then revert back. So it's something that is like, yeah, you could have some physical alteration like that.
That seemed reasonable, somewhat realistic. So I didn't really you know, knowing that this was sort of a deconstruction, you know, unraveling of the wolf Man tail, I didn't expect a traditional same thing with the Invisible Man, right. It wasn't like, oh, we got the magic formula. So I I know some people may have been upset that it's not about the moon and all that, but again, if we're gonna reinvent it, let's tie it into something. So I was I was
fine with that. There was good practical stuff. I didn't need him running around on all fours, you know, we do get a little bit of that, but yeah, yeah.
I gotta say I thought those were some great choices, and that was some stuff that I had never seen in a movie like this, where he's injured, he's caught in trap and he chews off his own foot to get out. Of the trap, very wolfy he is. You know, he gets his arm is cut and gets grossly disgustingly infected, and you realize, oh my god, she needs to put a cone on his head so he doesn't live a century. That's what is missing in this movie. That would have
been a fantastic thing. You gotta know, there's going to be a lampoon of that scene. And she puts a cone on his head.
She's putting his antibiotics like a piece of cheese.
Yes, I found that stuff really fun.
I prefer the disease. I mean, I know that we were upset understandably about some of the aims of the filmmakers, but I prefer the idea of it being more of an infection than a supernatural, lee controlled, lunar controlled kind of a thing. It resonates more.
Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you can do a lot more with that because of things that could be pasted or transmitted that way of that, and it is it does make sense for then a ticking clock. It's not like we have to wait till the next full moon. It can be a rapidly progressing disease that's going to
transform and have physical effects within you. Know hours, So yeah, I was fully on board, but that even the disease aspect separate from you know, writer's intent, you know, yeah, made sense for a way to reinvent this particular type.
To not go back to man, right is really the thing that separates this from every other one that I remember seeing is there's no coming back. There's no regression, right.
Right, which is to say this isn't a mood right right, yeah.
Which makes sense with the idea of generational trauma, which makes the idea of these things that you can't I guess, I mean you can sort of escape that if you try hard enough. I don't know. Again, I brought up the lack of character development originally to complain and be a real b word about that. I didn't feel like the generational trauma played enough. I was told what it is. I didn't feel it.
There was a lot of telling. As you said, there was just so much telling and not following through on things that we were given and hinted at. Coming back to the spider thing, very cool, but then we get when they're on the little garden greenhouse thing and the staples are popping out, I'm like, that should be like bullets ricocheting in his ears. He should know that, like, she's in danger of this plastic fallowing through because the staples are pulling out, and I thought everything should be
triggering those senses. Unless we get a sense that, oh I can, like Peter Parker, I can control it. Right, we don't get that. We just know that this spider sounds like someone he was hearing the spider.
I can't figure out what's going on.
That spider's because he can't put stuff in his ears, like get the cotton.
Someone gave that spider a drum kit the the Actually, the interesting thing about that is that there is some supposition that they that characters can hide from Og dog Man, and the movie had already taught us that that is functionally impossible, because he can hear a spider in a closet in a room upstairs. So the og dog Man who's chasing them should have been the one to hear all the staples and the plastic and everything. I mean,
I don't know car starting the works. It should have been, but but the movie can't handle that kind of stress testing. That's not the kind of movie this is, right, So at least they didn't turn into giant wolves and you know, glisten in the sun vampires like that. It's it's more grounded than that. And and I think that's that's fine. Uh it's this movie was not filmed in Oregon. As an Oregonian, I just have to say that was filmed in New Zealand. And there's a lot about New Zealand
that we and Oregon would love to have. And so I just want to say, hats off to you in New Zealand. You're doing great.
That explains the world's giant spider. Yes, right, that's the much more of a New Zealand Australian.
Thing than because it was wearing a hat and hell yeah, uh Lee one L, what have we What have you seen from? You know we've already dropped Invisible Man? What else do you love about Lee one L? If anything?
I honestly, if I'm being completely honest, I get him confused with what he has done versus what James Wan has done, because I know that they are co conspirators a lot, right starting with us aw.
Yeah, yep, yep.
So I don't know, but I think I like enough of what he's done. And I loved Invisible Man one thing about this one. I didn't think this movie was very scary. And this movie also had like big jump scares that didn't work, and I couldn't figure out why, like thumps that came out of nowhere, or you're waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, and you see the breath over the deer blind and then the scene there's a big crash, but it doesn't work.
Something about it. When there was some really good stuff in Invisible Man that worked as jump scares and stuff, this movie just wasn't very scary, which I was surprised by.
Yeah, agree, I think it. Yeah, it failed to deliver on scares. It had a little bit of the gore with that, but yeah, I never felt even you would think with the ticking clock in a confined space that I would be really on the edge of my seat, some tension and all of that, and I just never got wound that tight. And I don't know if that was a choice to not do that because of the
story trying to be told that. I don't know, but I knew that it wasn't what I expected overall, you know, in many ways, And coming back to Lee wentel because I'm not a big fan of like horror and all that. But I know his first the first or second film he directed, Upgrade from twenty eighteen is a great movie. I've heard great things about that and saw that it was like, oh, this is really really creative. Loved that movie. So yeah, that Invisible Man, I felt like, yeah, I
like you know the projects he's directed. So this was a bit of a stumble for me. You know, overall, I was expecting something that was going to push some boundaries, or reinvent some things, or take familiar turf in a new direction, and it just didn't get there this time.
He I like everything this is he's one of the rare directors right now that I maybe it's not rare. I don't know. I've never done the study. I've seen everything he's directed, I haven't seen everything he's acted in or written. But Insidious Chapter three was a fine entry in the Insidious story. Upgrade was great Invisible Man and Wolfman, and he's got Upgrade the TV show, which it looks like he's directing at least some of and the Green Hornet and Cato coming at some point, which could be
interesting and maybe as racist as the original. Who knows You're Crost, So I really like what he's going for. And I think if you go back to Upgrade, you see exactly the kind of propulsive direction that he's capable of. And I think that plays in The Invisible Man and in this movie. It's it may be weirdly inconsistently applied in the pacing of this movie. Sometimes it really does,
but you're right. Sometimes there are these action choices or these choices that are that are imbued with threat and fear and they're neutered for lack of a better word.
There's one fantastic scare and unfortunately the uh trailer give it away, which was a real drag because he does the three different times. This movie is very big into that West Late with Wes Craven open up a thing so you can't see behind you, and they close it but there's no one there. That was the new that he really brought in with like scream and stuff. After so many people, you know, there was always someone on
other side of the door. During the entire charging up the car sequence that happens three different times, and each time you're like I that was when I was leaning forward. I was like, I have you, you have me in the palm of your hands. Shoot, I saw the trailer and I know as soon as the car starts the it's the Winshield lifer. See, that's the thing that was missing with the other jumps. Jump scares aren't just jump
scares anymore. This is like things like in Smile and Smile to the jump scare also does something to break your brain. It can't just be loud and there. It has to be loud and there and upside down, like you can't immediately identify what you're seeing in the direction and the physics involved. That's how jump scares have progressed. The idea version of that is three hidden things and then it being revealed from outside of the car but
through this dirty windshield. That's a brain breaker. That's a really exciting time for jump scares. But this movie needed to bring that more. Just having a real loud thump after a couple seconds of silence, I think unfortunately we've moved past.
That now I can I totally see that, and I think that is one of those sequences in this movie that I think is a real highlight in terms of pacing of a scene. Because you're right and it and it still got me, even though I knew it was coming.
It's still right.
Yeah, it's right. It's really really great.
Sound design out of seas apart from apart from this Spider just for me personally, apart from this Spider drum kit, this movie begins, it lives in sound, and there's actually it seems like dramatically little amount of music, and even so much so that when it did show up sometimes I was like, oh music, And usually I don't feel that way, but there was so much just creepy crawling,
I mean whenever. That was also big in the Wolf Vision, for lack of a better phrase, things that you would he would be hearing and feeling, the entire forest just come to life. I thought that the sound design was incredible. It seems so dense without seeming just loud. I loved it.
I absolutely agree. I think Stevid Waalfish did the did the score for you know, it's an austere score. I want to pile on the Wolf Vision stuff. Stephan Douccio did the cinematography, and I think just lighting camera was absolutely better than competent. Like, I think the film looked really good, and particularly in contrasts like when You're going from the incredibly lit wolf vision to what they were experiencing in the dark was haunting. I thought it was great, like you can.
Get so close to them and they have no idea.
That barn sequence at the end when he was right there sitting on that bear was incredibly cool.
I'm so glad that it that it feed that way because I was like, oh no, they forgot to light this entire sitnin and like maybe like a robe, and I was like, this isn't working. And then it's purposeful to show that. I when we were texting Pete, I brought up Pitch Black, the when we all met in Diegel where he had those like his night vision kind of things. The big difference that this movie does really
update that idea. Ay, it looks better, but then be showing both in one uncut shot I've never seen that much before, which was again one of the two to three really outstanding ideas in this movie. It makes sense that he'd be like, oh I cracked it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely one night wolf vision spider trope kit, let's go, well this I'm I am.
I'm gonna say. I know Steve is sad and angry, but I think this movie is better than what we talked about last month.
So well, so I'm going to talk about first Shot, Last Shot for a second because they really please with how I felt about this movie. Because first shot you get out we probably not yes, lots of lots of noise, lots of noise in black, and then you get the wasp that's being just attacked and swarmed by the ants. So but I thought, okay, what is that telling It's okay, we're in the woods, but there's something else If you're gonna do something like that, what is that telling me?
Like the big thing being taken down by the little thing something? You know?
Is it?
Is it metaphor for virus cells attacking something? You know? I thought, okay, there, what am I to make of this? I thought, that's a compelling image. That's gonna I'm gonna try to make some meaning out of give me something to wrestle with. In the contrast that with the end, which is we're told you know earlier on oh yeah, we're gonna go to Oregon.
It's this not.
Far from the farmhouse I grew up on. There's this valley. You can go stand there and just know everything's gonna be okay, and so what is our last shot? Mom and daughter are standing there looking at the valley. Everything's gonna be okay. It was just to do on the nose. I was like, come on, you, you open with some intrigue, with something compelling, enigmatic, and end with just like, let me hitch you with in the head with this a little bit harder.
That's so funny. That's not what I got from the last bit at all. Uh, Like, I guess there's a certain sort of maternal everything's going to be okay. But man, when they pull back and you reveal that giant New Zealand earthscape, all I could think about was you were ill equipped to go from where you are to where you need to be. You are, Like, what you just dealt with was a just a microcosm of what the
earth can do to you in this sport. You don't belong here, mother and daughter, and I guess you're about to be tested. So for me, it was a deeply morose ending.
Oh oh, I have to agree with Steve that we were shown that exact view twice and both times I'm sorry. And the first time, yeah, you're shown that this is a place of comfort, this is a place of but wait, no, you're not. He literally says, everything's going to be okay. Yeah, and this is the daughter and yeah.
And everything's not okay. Hey, you guys like he lies to his son. He says everything's gonna be okay, and then the earth destroys them both. He turns into Dogface Man and then his son turns into dog Face Man and they're both dead. Everything was not okay. That's the metaphor of this movie. You don't belong here, you'll be dead. And I think that's what is so morose about it. The circularity is not hopeful, it's hopeless.
Okay.
Sure, when the character says, when you stand there, you have this feeling you know that everything's gonna be okay, and you put characters there, then they've endured this and that they've killed the monster. So mother and daughter have now magically bonded and all of that, and they're there. And when the character says, when you stand here and look at this, you know everything's gonna be okay. I have to take that at its word with this film, so.
And its word is bogus. That's what everyone had.
Just stayed and looked at the view.
They would have exactly.
Yeah, I if I had to tie a rope between the two and say what it is, it's two different versions of nature. It's beautiful gracefulness and then a complete lack of grace, the beginning being just the monstrosity of nature, and the ending being the beauty that nature can present. But I don't feel good about that because I didn't even see the first image. But I was able to see it just enough. But like, I'll give it that, but no, I don't think it terribly works.
The only thing that's hopeful about it is the fact that they broke the cycle, right, that that she did kill the the their predator, And so if I'm giving it any grace that it could be hopeful, it's because that's the one thing that's different this time, right, Yeah, oh maybe, but I still think they're both dead.
Well how do they get out of there?
Yeah?
I don't They've got.
And the magazine she apparently writes for is Shotgun Monthly.
She's immediately good at a lot of things, That's true.
While we're in mom Jean's like she adapts, well, yeah, all right.
Well this was a treat, but you know what we have to do now? This is where things get serious. This is where we have to uh, we have to carve our opinions in the stone that is letterboxed. We are at letterbox letterbox dot com, slash the next real That's where you can find our HQ page, and we are gonna out of five stars half stars count, We're going to say what we think of this movie. Steve, would you like to start at the bottom because I'd like to know if I have more stars to work with for mine.
Oh, you probably have a lot for stars to work with on your end, because I am gonna say it just gets worse.
And we're supposed to have booied it, now.
Booied it by saying it's it's horrible and it details in so many ways that I'm now Yeah. I debated because I had to look back at what we did last month and how I felt about that film and where this compares and all that, and I'm I'm gonna go with two stars and no heart on this. Two stars and that's it. That's a generous two stars. There
was almost one and a half. But I do have to give some credit for the technical aspects, because if we didn't have that wolf vision transition, the sound design, some of those things, the way the crash was filmed. I thought those really saved this film for me from being a complete mess.
So two stars, all right, and we did y two k last month.
We also know, I know this was this was worse than that.
That's stunning to me right now that that's this is the conversation we're having Gladiator too. Before that. You remember, we didn't love Gladiator too, No.
I know, and this was that was too. I give that two and a half stars, and I think this is worse than that because at least there was a flamboyt Denzel and his scarves and see that.
I guess just sort of repeat what I said in the beginning. It has real problems, and it has enough. The sound design is great, the creature thing is great. I love the idea of generational trauma. I do not believe it paid off, but I like that idea of trying to how Invisible Man was actually about domestic abuse. This is actually about passing down sicknesses. I didn't read what Steve read, and so i'm I don't like that idea, but I didn't see it. I never would have thought
of it that way. With that, and so with all of that, then I will give it a three. I'll say a three, and maybe it should be three point five. I'm not sure, but I think that maybe I'll be a three, because I'm grumpy enough to say that if you're gonna put your people in a real small area for a long amount of time, you've got to nail the characters first and then start thinking about how you're going to get the moving truck on its side, and
then go from there. Because I just there was an unfortunate, real emotional hole in this movie and it's character development. But that being said, there's a lot that is strong and I don't like wolf Men, and I watched this whole movie and I was glad that I saw it, So three three in.
A art I stand with you, Tom. I feel like this movie has more going for it than going against it. And while I wasn't necessarily scared, I don't think the movie had to be scary to actually execute on its metaphor. That unfortunately is the challenge for me. That it's set up so much, it aspired to do so much that it didn't make good on all of its promises. But it looked good. It sounded great. It did some really interesting things with camera and production that I thought were
just wonderful on screen. And the cast is actually quite good, right. I think Christopher Abbott is great. I think that they are miscast together as a family, but individually they're really very good, talented people. I think this was a good swing for Lee Wan l. I don't think he lived up to necessarily Invisible Man level of reboot, but I am excited to see what comes next. I think, give give them more. Let's see what he can do with
something with something else. So I'm three stars in a heart on this movie, which I know Tom and I are kind of the island based on what I've read. Others don't like. The others are sad stems.
Oh really, I haven't looked.
Oh okay, well, let me just tell you the text I had told our you know, our friend Andy. I'd said, hey, Andy, I don't because he told me he was going to see the movie yesterday even though I had seen it on Friday, and I said, I don't think you'll regret it. And he writes back to me after he saw it, this is it. One line? Wow, period, that was terrible good.
He needed to go check out that view.
Yeah, I can't believe he gave him one point five stars.
Wow.
Yeah huh yeah, So I you know, I am. I'm excited about it. Now we have to talk about what we're talking about next month, and I think because of your predisposition to these kinds of movies, Tom, I think you should introduce what we're talking about next month.
Oh, this is one that I was not on my radar, but I think that the trailers have been very good and they make it seem like this is a genre that is not for me, but every once in a while, like how Guardians of the Galaxy was more like a big group comedy and Civil No, Civil War was a great, big group thing, and Winter Soldier was more like a seventies paranoia film.
Yeah, comedy, buddies.
We are going to be seeing Captain America. Now it's me, I don't know what's the family is Captain America. Now it's the.
Brave New World.
No, it's Captain America, Brave New World. And the trailer it has Harrison Ford in it and some red guy shows up in the trailer. I don't know what that's about. I honestly do not, but it looks like it could be really good. It looks like they're taking us a real swing and sort of bringing it down, giving it the right things to write people, and not just trying to put butts in seats. So I am surprisingly interested in seeing Brave New World with Captain America. I think I got the name wrong.
You get totally. You did great, It's absolutely fine, and you got a month in practice. That's our February pick. We're excited to be there. Don't forget to do all the things you love to do for podcasts. It really helps us if you head to you know, if you share the show with people you think will like it. That's that's the bread and butter of all of our podcasts. So you know, like share sing praises from roof to ups,
anything that works for you. And thank you Steve, Sad, Steve and Tom for doing this movie with us this month. We'll see you next month. Everybody meeting adjourned.
Oh I