Warning, Today's episode contains spoilers for many many horror movies of the nineties and two thousands, which is the topic we'll be discussing today. Hello, my name is Jason Concepsio and I'm mersday Night, and welcome back to ext r Vision of the podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, and comics and pop culture. Coming to you from our podcast where we're bringing you at least three Wow episodes a week, every Tuesday Thursday, with an extra episode every Wednesday.
In today's episode, it is Halloween. So after we recently broke down what we think is the best decade in the eighties for horra you can go and listen to that. After you listen to this episode, we are going to be talking about the most influential horror movies of the nineties and two thousands. As we step out of the air lock and back into our past, our nostalgic, spooky past, and in Who's Who, we're gonna pick our favorite horror directors of all time. But first it's into the airlock.
Let's go, okay, Rosie, why do we want to talk about movies? Horror movies from this era? The nineties and first decade of the two thousands.
Oh, we were discussing how we were going to follow up the best year of horror in the eighties because we just had so much fun with that. It was really nice to just riff on something that we both know so well. And then these movies that really shaped us. And as we were talking about it, we were kind of texting and you were like, oh my god, think
about like Ringu. I was like, yeah, Bower Real, like all these kind of Japanese and then you know, Korean movies like Tale of Two Sisters, which were really changing the way that we viewed horror in the nineties, and the Zeros, and then we were like, Okay, wait a minute. These movise were incredibly influential, so let's talk about how they change the game. And you have a really great thesis on what was going on in this era and how these movies kind of off its up something fresh.
Yeah. For me, when I look at nineties horror, it feels like an endpoint of a cycle that started in the seventies. What I mean by that is by the nineties, really the I think the most impactful horror films were big budget often Oscar bait type films, Silence of Lambs, Cape Fear, Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Thrilla is almost Yeah, horror is, but they do have that more thriller element, far from the kind of schlocky b movie origins of horror.
Yeah, the sixth sense, right, the Devil's Advocate, you know, it's the al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, Jacob's lad Jacob's Ladder. Like it's these kind of like very high concept, very high budget horror movies that I think are fantastic, but had moved horror away from its kind of like gritty,
indie subversive roots. While that's happening, you also have a movie like Scream, which to me is really shows you that we're at an endpoint in a cycle when that movie appears, because it's essentially a parody movie about the tropes of horror and all the kind of slasher films
that had happened in the previous two decades. Then when you get to the late nineties in the two thousands, where's the new energy coming from, It's really coming from Japan, with a shout to the Blair Witch with films like you mentioned it, Ringu Juwan The Curse straight to video, and then the third one in the movie theaters Audition The Cure Pulse.
Yeah, even like Ichi the Killa. Each like these kind of like not necessarily a direct horror, but a movie that was so horrifying that it starts to make American horror look weak, you know, look quite mainstream.
Battle Royal one of this call, and I am of the person like having just seen, you know, preparing for Smile too. By watching Smile one again, I realized that, like, wow, there are so many movies that are the ring right now that are ringing these chain letter movies where the character sees something or hear something or witnesses something, is cursed by witnessing that thing and then has to either pass on the curse to someone else or try and stop it by taking on the demon or what have you.
And that's like it follows Smile. There's a lot of movies like that. So that's where the idea to talk about this stuff comes from it. And also these are just like great movies to talk about.
Oh my god, so many fantastic movies. Well let's start with Ringu. When was the first time that you watched it? And like, do you remember how terrifying it was? I do.
I've had a friend who was big into movies, specifically international movies. This was a period of time when I was working in a movie theater and so I was watching just like a lot, a lot, a lot of movies, also a lot of international movies because the movie theater I was working at had a relationship with a small like art house cinema. And my friend was like, you gotta see Ring You. So I went and saw it and it was like nothing else. And this is also the period where I saw you know, I saw Pulse.
During this period, I saw The Cure, these kind of very eerie I don't even know how to they are horror movies, but then they turn into these other kind of social commentary on loneliness and disconnection, these other Japanese horror movies, and Ring You just blew me away, Like it was such a cool idea, such a cool execution. It was so spooky, you get the classic spider walk, you know, like it's just like it's there's so much of it that is great. And then the adaptation was
wonderful as well. Yeah, so it's just a touchstone film for me. When was the first time you saw it?
I think I saw it at sleepover. It was definitely that kind of movie. We were really lucky. The neighborhood where I grew up in Hackney, there was I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but they had a video store that was an independent video store that was just called the Film Shop, and they had such a fantastic selection of international movies, old movies. I have a really distinct memory of like me and my friend Dona getting rope from there and stuff. So I'm
pretty sure Ringu would have come from there. And when I was growing up, the tail end of me being in primary school, and I mentioned this on the eighties episode, was kind of this huge threat of Freddy Krueger, right, Like there were assemblies about like don't let your kids watch Nightmare on Elm Street, Like they're not going to go to sleep because they're gonna be telling everyone about
this guy who comes in your dreams. This was like that, but for TVs, everyone was so scared to sleep in their room after they watch this because they thought Sadiko was gonna crawl out of their TV. Also very important movie for me because this is probably the first time that I ever came across hero Yuki Sonada, who is one of my all time favorite actors, and he's so fantastic in this. I think also this establishes something that becomes really important in the horror genre going forward, which
is the horror mystery. But outside of the kind of and then there were none mystery of a slasher movie, who's the killer? This was There is a mystery to solve, but supernatural entities want to stop you. I mean, we don't get paranormal activity without this movie. And like you said, the Curse movies like Smile especially does not exist without the Ring.
It follows as well as it's basically the same, It follows kind of core, and I mean this in a positive way. Yeah, you know, this is not a negative. Like slasher films are essentially the same kind of formula, and this formula, which was really generated by Ruu, is just so vibrant and cool, and it allows stories to explore technologlogy and platforms as vectors for spreading evil and horror, which.
Feels so like new and modern at that time. It's a different kind of.
Haunting totally, like it's much more meta and deep than say in Poltergeist where ghost comes out of the TV. But that doesn't feel as if that feels very localized and different and specific. The videotape from Ring and RINGU feels like something else, and like the techno horror of Pulse feels like something else. Yeah.
I also think as well, like this thing that's so scary about Ring is as you watch it, you become a part of the law where you're like, well, i've watched it, so will I die in seven days? You know, that's how you feel as a kid watching it. It manages to open your mind to that. So this is also like a very interesting era in cinema, So in England, and I do think some other places around the world,
but I can't talk for sure. There was a movie Imprint called to an Asia Extreme which basically put out pretty much all the gory horror action to Kashi Mi k like kind of movies, and I was like obsessed
with it as a teenager. And I lived really close to Forbidden Planet, the English version, which used to be on New Oxford Street, and they would put up all the posters, you know for these kind of crazy movies like the Happiness of the categories, which if you haven't seen it is a movie that is a musical zombie movie inspired by the sound of music. And they were
really sweet and they would give me the posters. So this was definitely became like one of my special interests of things, and it was really I would say, like Ring is the start of it, but for me, I would say one of the most and I think equally influential, but interestingly to a different genre was Battle Royal. Oh yes, like me, me and my friend we watched it and then it became the perennial like you rewatch it, you rewatch it. I did Battle Rayal for Halloween like probably
three years in a row. I had a boyfriend who screen printed me like a battle It. It was like a white shirt and he screen printed me like the girl getting shot on the side that they kind of
do the slow motion shot of. And that movie is essentially it's based on a book that was then turned into a manga that was then turned into a movie about near future Japan where teen delinquency has gotten so high and there's two there's overpopulation, so they decide that they're gonna do a raffle where every year they will pick out a random class and they will be sent to an island and they have to kill each other. Hold on, Rosie, and people watch it on TV.
This sounds like the Hunger Games, Oh doesn't it?
Just yeah? Ironically, the book was incredibly controversial in Japan, and it was seen very much as like an adult thing. But I do think this then became an incredibly fundamentally important book and movie that influenced kind of American YA for decades going on. Of course, Hunger Games doesn't exist without this, Divergent probably doesn't exist, Maize Runner doesn't exist, like a lot of those formative American YA novels of that generation.
For I go further, Yeah, I think that the influence of Battle Royale and these kind of zero sum competitions squid Game, for instance, would not exist without Battle Royal. Oh true, But I think the influence of it is a lot more pervasive than you even think about. Like, for instance, I personally think that these kind of battle arena games like Fortnite, oh or Call of Duty war Zone in which you drop fifty sixty one hundred players on one battle map yeah and have them fight it out,
are essentially the philosophical children of Battle Royale. It's the same kind of setup. It's also just like such a compelling metaphor for the world that we live.
And they even call them Battle Royales.
Yeah, they can call them Battle Royales. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. A tremendously influential film. And then to me, it's Ringu Battle Royal. And then I think the third for me movie in this triptich of very influential pieces of culture horror movies of this era is Blair Witch, which essentially creates the found footage genre that is still going strong. You know, we don't have paranormal activity without it.
I mean, it's essentially like now they were like cannibal holocausts and stuff was like essentially posed as a found footage movie Texas Chase of Massacre. You have like these are the real but this is the first one where you're like you really felt like you were watching the videos.
I mean, and they marketed it as if it was real, which when I was how they market when I was eleven, we all believed it and we were all like drawing.
The little Blair Witch Project sign on our like school books, and we wanted to see it and we believed there were these documentarians who had gone missing. It was such a cultural phenomenon when it came out.
I had a friend who somehow got a preview vhs of The Blur Witch, like maybe two weeks before it
hit theaters. This might have been like gorilla marketing. I'm not sure how this happened, but he was like talking about it, and we didn't have the language to explain what he was trying to, like, oh, it's a horror movie, but these people went into the woods and then they died, and somebody found their videotape and this is it, and they released it as a movie, and we were very unclear at that time whether it was real or not.
Yeah, so I know it's very unclear, but it's I guess in a way.
It kind of becomes very influential on like YouTube horror as it is now with the back rooms and these kind of creepy pasta esque stories where it's like, are you really watching something that happened to someone? Is it an urban legend or is it real? And it did feel like that when we watched it, like we didn't know.
Yeah, he was trying to explain it, and it was like very not clear. So we watched it when I was with all our friends in one room, and when I would later see it in the theater, I realized that the VHS was much lower like fidelity and quality than the actual movie when you watch it on the screen, which I think just made it even spookier and sari or like it. It looked legitimately like a VHS that
you might find like somewhere. And I remember a friend of ours came in in the middle at the scene where you know, it's just the cameras on Heather's face. She's in the tent.
Of course I wanted to hear something out of the woods.
And she's like, what is it? A baby? Is that a baby crying? And her friend then like, you know, he came in and just quietly sat down and was watching it for like ten minutes and watched that scene and then stood up and went, what the fuck is this? And that was that was truly the feeling, Like again, I don't get scared by movies really, and even at that time, I don't think I was particularly most horror movies and scary that one was. It was such a
cool experience. I did not know what was happening, and the end scene where you see the friend standing staring at the wall. I mean, that's another image that I feel like has been recreated again and again and again in horror movies since. Just an incredible experience and kicked off the genre.
Yeah, it really did. And so I'm gonna go because you did an American movie. I'm gonna mention Scream because I do think it is one of the most influential movies from this time. But I will say that is both in good and bad, because I love Scream. I love the Scream movies. But while that movie was essentially, as Jason pointed out, like a parody satire of what had come before, and it was Wes Craven kind of expanding on what he'd done in a New Nightmare, it
was not influential in that way. It was influential in the way that it essentially encouraged studios to make slasher movies because they saw them as a cheap way to make films, and it did create a new slasher era. But ironically, all of the things that was even was critiquing became the tropes again, So it was very white casts. It was you know, the black person always dies first. It was subversive in itself, but the influence it had
was not subversive. The influence it had was to encourage more studios to make movies like I know it did last summer, another franchise I love, but again playing into these same tropes, adapting things that we had seen before. But it did spark a new slasher era in America, which I do love. I love Valentine's Day, I love the Clown at Midnight, I love all those weird slashers.
But it was not necessarily a positive influence because what Scream did so well, other studios didn't necessarily try to evoke unless you get a scary movie where the parody becomes the central figurehead, and then that also in itself becomes a way of showcasing and spreading influential movies like of course Blair Witch Project gets parodied in their Scream
gets parodied in there. Interestingly, The Haunting, which I love, which is like a great PG thirteen movie, very influential on scary movie too, which I find really funny because it's such a specific thing. But yeah, so I definitely think Scream needs to be in there. But another movie that I love that I think is deeply influential, but that had kind of unknowingly ended up sparking an annoying
film trend was Takashi Mike's Audition, which I love. I think is like such a vibrantly important film about a guy who's auditioning me.
Off putting movie. He's very off.
Putting, unsettling film. He's auditioning wives. He finds a wife in this young woman called a Sami, and as the story unfolds, we get some very terrifying sequences. And I love this movie. It's super unsettling, super terrifying, one of the best movies of the era. But it is essentially almost unknowingly. I'm sure Takashimiki did not see this coming, as the movie was had very little response when it
was a really released in Japan. It was when it was actually released in America that it became a huge kind of cultural phenomenon. But it essentially inspired torture porn, yes, which I think is really interesting. Yeah. Also, Eli Roth is the one. He you know, he said that audition was the reason that he wanted to make Hostel, And then Takashi Mika is even in Hostile he gets like a cameo, and that sparks off like one of the nastiest, glorious,
and depending on your view on it, most exploitative. I personally, as much as I don't love the Hostel movies, I do have a soft spot for Hostel too, because it has such an unbelievable cast and it does some really interesting,
strange stuff. But yeah, that's one of those movies where the first time I saw it, I was like, this is such an incredible movie and such a scary movie and such an unsettling movie, and I knew it would change the way I thought about film, And I love Takashi Miki is one of my favorite directors in the world, but it is another one of those movies where it's influence is positive or negative depending on what you think of movies like Saw and The Devil's Rejects and Wolf
Creek and that kind of torture porn movement, even like American Mary by the Soscar Sisters, which I do love, but definitely in that same vein, and that was very audition influence. So I'm putting those two up there as movies I love that are influential, but also like depends on what you like, yes, do you wish that torture porn didn't exist? Maybe you do? It was a tiring era.
I like the first song.
Yeah, I'm a sare Superstan. I love the Saw movies, but like, it is definitely an interesting place because also when you watch the movie, it's kind of like rewatching Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's not actually a lot of gore. It's like this very specific, unsettling horror rather than Saw and Hostel and those kind of movies where it's all about seeing the grotesquery of what comes next.
Did I ever tell you my head canon that Evan from Home Alone is Jigsaw?
No, but that's like the best and most sensible headcannon of all time because who else could be making those? Yes, I'm like James Wan and Leewana come on the podcast. We want to know is Tobin playing Kevin? We just need to know.
I'll pick one that I think has a very similar thing going for it as Audition, which is it kicked off reinvigorated? I would say, a genre but also maybe did it in a kind of annoying way, And depending on your tastes, you might not like twenty eight days later, Well, do we have the modern zombie movement, do we have the Walking Dead, which is obviously the more classical slow walking Romero styles on. And yes, it was a successful comic book story also, but zombies were going nowhere before
twenty eight days later. The movement had kind of like lost its drive. And I remember seeing twenty eight days later, and first of all, the fact that it feels so evocative of a post nine to eleven world, despite the fact that it was filmed like before nine to eleven, with all the papers taped up, empty streets, papers taped up saying have you seen my loved one? Like all these kind of like images that felt very post nine
to eleven. It felt like a moment in time. And then the fast zombies of it all felt like it just evoked anxiety.
Yeah, because we'd never seen running zombies at that point.
And it was a movie that I absolutely loved. When I saw in the theater, I was like, Wow, that was awesome. And it's just lean and mean, and it also gets at that, you know, the central thing of every single zombie movie, which is actually it's us. We're the bad ones. Yeah, the humans are the evil ones. That said, like audition, I think It kicked off an entire movement, which, depending on your taste, if you're not a zombie person, then you don't care and you don't
like it. But it was very influential in that regard, brought zombies back to the four and then you have a whole host of other zombie content, some parody stuff. You have a reimagining of Dawn of the Dead with fast zombies. You know.
Yeah, which, by the way, is I will say that is my favorite Zack Snyder movie, written by James Gunnon.
I actually like it a lot as well. A big fan of that movie. It's a great movie, and you get Shown of the Dead, you get all these other things. But yeah, twenty eight days later, Yeah, hugely influential film.
It is really exciting to kind of look back at this era because there is so much that the time was almost overlooked. Like I think a lot about nineteen ninety eight, right, you have Bride of Chucky. Now that might at the time have sparked off some huge movement.
But now in twenty twenty four, we just had a three season successful queer horror series, a chucky series on sci Fi that very much was influenced of the law of Bride of Chucky, this kind of late stage Chucky sequel, which added Jennifer Tilley playing his wife Tiffany, and it becomes this kind of queer staple movie that I think
something that is interesting about this era too. And obviously I can't talk to this because I did not grow up in America, but my understanding is from my friends who love horror and stuff, a lot of these movies became like perennial on like Stars or Cinemax or USA, so they kind of build their own cult following there.
And I think that for me, a movie like Bride of Chucky or even like Halloween h two, oh, Like, these are movies that at the time were sort of derided as like, oh, this is a late stage sequel, and Halloween h two is no Bride of Chucky, but it does have just Shartner and is incredibly bad Bangs,
which is still very influential. But yeah, I just think it's a really interesting period to look back on because you also have something like The Faculty, which should have been more influential than it was because it was Robert Rodriguez trying to inject a different genre into the teen slasher movement by doing like a body possession, body snatchers alien movie. And I think that movie still stands today as a really brilliant entry into the teen horror cannon.
But it didn't necessarily spark off a ton of other movies in that vein You.
Know what killed off slashers in my opinion, yeah, guns, it's why the zombies kind of came back too.
I think that's a really great and depressing read.
It's sadly very depressing, you know, like one of the here's like I love zombie movies. That lover may Yeah, I love twenty eight Days Later. I like the Walking Bed for a couple of seasons. I love the Walking into the Coming Book. That said, I think it's also become a touchstone type of story for a type of person who can't wait to shoot their neighbor.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, And I.
Think the pervasiveness of firearms in life and in culture makes it tough to countenance like a slow walking, knife wielding assailing exactly like logging towards you. I understand that Jason and Michael get up after you kill them, but.
Like that still kind of why Yeah, because you have to have them be supernatural.
Yeah, because otherwise you ask why don't they have a gun. It's one of the things I actually think is most powerful about the most recent scream movie, Scream six. They had ghost Face with a gun and it was this kind of brutal, horrible, real world kind of extension and you go, oh, this is like awful. This isn't fun to watch when you put it in that space. But yeah, I think you make a great point. Guns essentially kill off slasher movie, you know what. Okay, So I'm gonna
go for a really bleak pick. Do not watch this one if you are not feeling brave or are feeling slightly depressed and you don't want to go into a hole.
I am gonna pick Funny Games because you could pick three pnickies right here.
Yeah, exactly. This movie came out in nineteen ninety seven. You could argue whether it's a horror movie or a psychological horror thriller or whatever you want to say, but I think it is one of the most horrifying movies of all time. And it is about a family who are on holiday and somebody asks to come in and
he says, yeah, can we borrow some eggs? Like we're friends of a local family and they're at kind of a beautiful lake, and the family lets them in and they essentially go on to torture and kill the family in this very psychological way. And it's part of Hannake's trilogy, kind of spiritual trilogy about violence on TV and violence and movies and how it impacts sas this is. I remember being like one of the movies that fucked me up more than any other movie when I was left
thinking about this movie's really off putting, really off putting. Also, I will say, in a rare twist, he made a shot for shot remake in two thousand and seven of his own movie, which has a complete English casting crew, and I think it is really also incredibly good, which
is rare for a remake. But I will say the reason I think this is so influential is because pretty much every modern home invasion movie doesn't exist in the same way without this, yeah, which is somebody breaks into your house, but they're using the things that are in your house to torture you. Your home becomes the place that is the horror rather than the safe haven. And that can be any movie from the Strangers, the Collector these kind of huge popcorn movies about people breaking into
your house. Hush by Mike Flanagan, which I know is having a resurgence right now. I think this is the seminal starter point of that, because it's not just about a slasher like Black Christmas, where somebody's in your house and they're waiting to kill you. This is about somebody who turns your house into the place you are terrified to be. Even The Purge takes a lot from this movie,
the first Purge movie, Strangers. Oh the Strangers. Yeah, this is such an influential scary film, so that one's definitely up there for me.
I want to give special mention while we're on Hannicky to the kind of ahead of its time and very very disturbing Benny's Video Yes, Michael Hannicky, nineteen ninety.
Two, part of this spiritual trilogy.
It's about this young boy, Benny, who is obsessed with his video camera, obsessed with violince, obsessed with the violence he sees on TV and finding violent images. He becomes fixated on this footage of a pig on a farm being slaughtered with like one of those air guns, and he watches it again and again when his parents leave, he invites a girl over and he kills her after
watching it. And it's a fucking disturbing movie that has notes of like a school shooter, and very much in the Hannicky vein, which is the horror is the things at home. It's the child that you're not engaged with enough. It's the child's interests that you don't understand and you think are innocent but are really quite dark and disturbing.
And I think it speaks to a specific kind of anxiety, which is the gap that happens between kids and their parents with the march of technology, where kids are just like they're naturally adept at technology, and in that gap where kids are just like technological natives, their parents don't quite understand what's going on in those digital spaces. And
Benny's video is that. I just want to mention that, and then I will talk about another influential movie that I think is kind of in the same vein in that it talks about technology. It's about technology as an isolating factor and as a vector for horror and strangers, and that is Pulse.
MT.
Two thousand and one's Pulse, which is it's a weird movie in that it starts as this ring New style ghost movie in which it's also like a wonderful depiction of Internet one point zero, where like people are there's like a really funny in retrospect scene now where like in a computer lab, this kid is learning how to like book bark websites.
That's like, yeah, But also I have to say this is very influential in that way specifically because this essentially sparks off an era of Internet horror where none of it necessarily ever made the impact that Pulse did. But I love watching movies where they're like, somebody is watching you on your webcam, but they really have no idea how terrifying the Internet would become because they can only specifically visualize it in this very small kind of slasherish way.
Whereas we know now the horrors of the Internet far more than we could have haven't perceived.
Yeah, but it does. Specifically, the first half of the movie really predicts that you know, creepy pasta copy pasta you know, weird shit on the Internet, scary images on the Internet kind of vibe where these various characters are coming into contact with unexplained images and videos that they find on the Internet that are very, very spooky and strange.
The back half of the movie, where it widens out and it becomes like a global phenomenon of like ghosts invading Earth, gets a little too out there for me. But the first half of this movie is so spooky and good. Yeah, and touches something that type of scariness and creepiness that is still really on the Internet.
Yeah, I totally agree. I love that movie. I think that's a great Paul, great one to rewatch this spooky season. I have to bring up a movie that for me was like a traumatizing experience as a child, and I also do think is one of the biggest influential movies from this era. That is Vincenzo Natali's Cube Cue the Canadian horror franchise that as it went on became very
out there lots of interesting sci fi horror notes. But the original is about a group of people who wake up in a room and they don't know how to get out of the room, and as they venture into other rooms they meet other people, but some of the rooms are booby trapped. It's a fantastically made movie. I
think it's incredibly influential. I think Saw doesn't exist without this movie because it is the notion of basically filming in one room, even though here they used lighting to make it look like they were in multiple different rooms. But the deaths in this were so scary. I felt
like the character felt so real. I was really going through it at this period of my life when I was like eleven or twelve things were not great for baby Rosie, so like it sparked like an existential horror in me, and it took me a long time to
be able to go back and rewatch it. But I truly think it's like such a vibrantly, brilliantly made indie horror that then influences so many movies going forward, whether it's Saw or really any trapped room horror, especially the kind of era that we got about five years ago where everything was about escape rooms, the escape room geology,
which I actually really enjoy more of a PG. Thirteen horror, But basically any of those movies like Puzzle or whatever, there were so many where it was about people being stuck in a room and you have to solve puzzles to understand why you're in the room and to get out of the room, and that basically all goes back to Cube, and I just think this movie is still
really terrifying. There was actually a really great Japanese remake in twenty twenty one that I recommend people watch too, and I'm sure now it probably looks kind of dated and strange, but it has a cost of people I didn't recognize, which I think was so terrifying to me because I couldn't connect them to oh, this isn't real. Also, this sets up one of the things that I think is scariest about Saw and other trapped room horror, which is you wake up and you don't know how you
got there. Yeah, that for me was really scary, Like you could go to sleep, or you could be going to school, and then you could just wake up and be somewhere else. That was very unsettling. So I think Cube is definitely up there, not only as an influential movie for horror, but also an influential movie for me because it terrorized me for like two years.
These are all really great picks. I think this is a lot for folks who are looking to delve into horror, and specifically like a lot of non American horror, which I think you know, American horror. I feel yeah, listen, I love all horror. American horror specifically is like very, very over the top, and there's something eerie about a lot of the interes national horror picks we've picked here.
But let me ask you, so, as we look at these movies and we look at the horror that's coming out now in the theaters, where do you think horror is going in the next decade?
I love that question. I think we are going to move towards more of a movement that is equivalent to the nineties, but I think could be more fruitful here of that high budget potential Oscar nominated horror. Now we talk a lot about the Oscar's not really giving a lot of nods to your traditional horror in the nineties that was a little bit different. You know, you did have your Silence of the Lambs, your Miseries. Now you know we had Get Out, which kind of broached that
for the first time in a while. But I think that with the consistent success of horror as a low budget, high reward space, I think we are going to get more Jordan Peel's, more inventive horror, more investment in horror I mean, look at a movie like Talk to Me that was such a huge hit, five million dollar budget. I think a lot about The Invisible Man by Lee
wannl which I bring up all the time. Go watch It's Fantastic, a terrifying domestic horror thriller that cost five million dollars and made one hundred million in its opening weekend. So I think luckily the controversial days of the term elevated horror are kind of behind us, which really was just the start of studios like A twenty four investing
in new horror spaces and new horror directors. I would love to see someone like near DaCosta get that big investment, you know, the Marvels director who directed Candy Man, who was also a brilliant indie horror director. So I think we're going to get more diverse horror that pushes outside of the boundaries. Horrors I loved recently like Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, So funny, such a real good subversion of slasher movies,
and our expectations. Also even movies that we're getting on the ila I would have loved to see in theaters.
But like Netflix released a movie this October called It's What's Inside That was very much in that space of like a body's body's bodies or a talk to Me had this crazy swift editing that definitely felt like and I'm going to sound old saying this, but it felt like it was influenced by like TikTok and that kind of speedier way of taking an information, and that was about a machine that could switch people into each other's
bodies and kids are playing it at a party. I feel like we're gonna keep getting more strange, new inventive approaches to genre, but I think we're also going to get the sto warts like Leewan Or has a new Wolfman movie coming out for Universal, which looks really, really great with Christopher Abbott, who's amazing. James Wan just released Teacup, which is like a new show on Peacock, certified fresh, very scary horror TV show. Also, you know, working on
continuing those big franchises. So I think it's gonna be a mix between big budget and indie. But I think it's just going to keep becoming more successful. And I feel like third movie in Jordan p probably gonna finally get the Oscar love he should of Nope is one of my all time favorite movies. I think that should have been a sweep. But I think that whatever his next movie is, we're probably gonna see that Oscar recognition for genre and for horror really coming to the forefront.
What do you think.
I think some of the most exciting stuff is gonna be like internet and video games and creepy pasta influenced horror. I think the success of Five Nights at Freddy's I think hints at this and Babe, I think that that is a really rich space for creeps, and it's also a place where, to your point, you can make a dollar go a long, long, long way. Exactly need a lot of money to make this stuff.
And I do think like they have a lot of horror that's actually on YouTube now, like the backrooms and yeah, people who are just making stuff and putting it up there, and it has that, and I think for a lot of kids, like you say it is these it's not even necessarily the movies. I love Five Nights at Freddy's. My nephew's a big Five Nights at Freddy's fans, so is my niece. But for them, they actually love to watch YouTube content that's inspired by those movies but made
by other people. So I think almost this like democratization of horror on the internet. You make a great point.
I think with the ongoing unavailability of affordable housing, you're going to see a resurgence in the bad roommate type or single white female Oh interest horror films. Those kinds of stories where you end up a roommate with someone who is terrible are kind of interest in scammers and
people who lie. Can add to this, you know, I expect to see something like that, And I think other stuff that's been really speaking to me is this kind of like folkloric like hereditary, you know, this like ancient folkloric kind of horror that feels really vibrant in a technological world specifically where I don't mean to say that like Paranormal Active and what's the other one over zoom
host host really fun one. I don't mean to say that those movies are done, but it also feels like a kind of endpoint, like, Okay, what's next for this kind of specific approach to horror? And so I think that there's gonna be a resurgence of these kind of like ancient knowledge old folklore. Witch's tales, scary comes out of the woods kind of stories.
I think you make a great point because folk horror is it can be a response to technology, and there has been so many great ones. There was The Devil's Bath, which was by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. That was this year. Also The Adams Family, that kind of blend of YouTube horror. They all make horror together as a family, super low budget. But Hell Bender that was another breakout one. I love folk horror. I would say everyone go and watch The Wickerman.
I think it's my favorite horror right now. Yeah.
Also Husarah the Bone Woman that was another great one. I think that is such a good point because it is this kind of response to we've done Internet, We've done this. So what are the horrors that used to scare our ancestors? What are the.
Horrors forgotten knowledge? Horror?
The horror that kind of what does it mean to us to be human and what separates us from the animals, you know, like Shelly Jackson's fantastic story The Lottery, one of my favorite stories of all time. Oh The Ennis Men that was another really brilliant recent folk horror. Yeah, I want to see more of that, and I want to see studios investing in that kind of straight midsommer
also fits into that. Actually, speaking of Ariasta, Oh. Also, probably my favorite movie horror movie that I've seen this year that was like unexpected to me was Jang jay Hun's ex Huma, which is a Korean folk horror movie, and it is so good and it's all about that
social commentary of like the old and the new. And also I think that you raise a great point that we're probably gonna end up not only in an era of like single white female and stuff, but also movies about more movies about poverty like People Under the Stairs or obviously you know, Get Out has social commentary, but I think we could be going to an era of
even more like that. Like there was a movie called The Platform a couple of years ago about people who are on this platform and you can only get food that's left by the other people as the platform comes down. Squid Game obviously another great one that kind of deals with that. I think as that space grows, we're going to get more social commentary about the horrors of being poor, the horrors of not being able to buy a house,
the horrors of not being able to afford your groceries. Like, I think that's sadly, we'll probably inspire a great era of horror.
Up next, our favorite horror directors. Rosie, here we are. It's time to talk about our favorite horror directors. We just do you want to do like our top three all time?
Yeah?
All time? Three?
Why not?
Let's do it Top three all time? Okay, you go first, Okay.
I am gonna pick. And this is very specifically for really one movie. But I love Bill Gunn, who made Ganja and Hess. That's like one of the most influential movies in my life. I think it is also the origin of slasher movies. It's the origin of the Final Girl. It's so experimental, it's so cool. So he is always up there for me, even though it's really just for ganderin Has.
My picks are gonna be pretty boring, I think. But John Carpenter Halloween, The Thing, the Fog, the Mouth and Manness, YadA, YadA, YadA, goes on and on and on Assault on Pre six thirteen, which is more of a action thriller, but it's still really fun. Like I like almost all of his movies, and obviously Halloween is a touchdown.
Yeah, I'm also gonna jump in then and say John Karpito.
Because I just love him so much.
He's my guy, He's my babe. Yeah, you know, it's hard for me because I just love so many of those like classic guys. But yeah, John Coppet is definitely up there for me. Yeah, probably the director who's movies I watch most in a year. I will always keep on any John Carpenter movie if it's on TV. I own most of them on physical media. I think he is a trailblazer. I think he's a multi talented guy.
I also think he's just really cool. And yeah, I'm a big, big carpet of fan, So I back you up on that one.
Next one again, very boring pick, but Georgia Merrow Iconic kicked off the zombie genre mix of action, horror and trenchant social commentary. I've said it before, I said again, Donna the Dead is a great film period, not just like a horror movie. Georgia Merrow the father of modern zombies.
Truth, and I'm gonna go this is I wouldn't say it's necessarily like a cheat, but he does have movies outside of the genre that I just love so much, and he's definitely one of my all time favorite directors. So I'm gonna go for David Cronenberg. Nice body horror legends. You know, he made Crash, which is one of my all time favorit films. David Cronenberg's Crash, look it up,
not the weird oscar bait Crash. Yeah, Like I always have to specify that because everyone's like, you like that movie, and I'm like, it's a different movie, guys, and you're actually gonna be more shocked by this movie. But yeah, Body Horror trailblazer, deeply trenchant social commentary, unafraid of terrifying people, making super cool, rad, weird indie movies in Montreal and
then becoming kind of this global phenomenon. And as he's grown older, his work is just evolved and become even stranger. And he has a great taste for casting and storytelling, and so often is telling something that's way deeper than it seems, like Videodrome or even like his newer movies, so much about grief and bodily autonomy and just I just love him so much. So that's gonna be my last pick. But I could honestly go on for like ever.
Yeah, I could go on forever as well. I'm gonna pick Jordan Peel.
Yes, good, good, get for.
Bringing a and much needed perspective to horror. Obviously, the kind of like slow rolling terror, not the kind of jump scares that you're respecting, but this kind of like suffocating feeling of something's wrong that combine themes of race and privilege and lots of social commentary. Jordan Peele is you can't go wrong.
Yeah, he's just I think he is the most influential horror director working right now. I think get Out, and I think that's get Out inspired an entire cottage industry within the studio system, though have they ever been able to reach the peaks of that fantastic movie? Probably not. And also Us is just such a brave follow up,
an unbelievably strange, weird, brilliant movie. And I think, no, that's alongside like Jaws, Like that's one of the greatest monster movies we have, and it's like a fantastic summer movie. And I just can't wait to see what he does next. I think Jordan Peele's a legend.
On the next episode of X Ray, Vision. We're sharing our reactions to the finale of Agatha along and our overall season thoughts. Plus more more Penguin, we Gotta we Gotta Do, guys like us from the East.
Side, Rosie, we Gotta Dot Do, we gotta talk about Wantin.
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. Bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Kenspsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Lareng and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi Our discoord Moderato