House of HorroR: Resident Evil

Hello and welcome to House of Horror. I'm Joyner Robinson and joining me today, she's the bravest little girl. It's her birthday. It's Mallory Rubin. Hello. Hello. Hey, Mal, how are you doing? I'm honestly great. I mean, in general, I'm terrible, as you know. Sure. Withering, decaying, steady march toward. So deaf, but delighted to be here with you today for this podcast. I'm really excited. I'm excited to talk about our Resident Evil experience and excited to talk about just dipping my toe into those bloody horror waters. It's been a fun week and a half-ish. It's all still new to me. We have a lot to get into. I'm so excited. My hand has mostly recovered from you clutching it when we watched Resident Evil a couple days ago. I was squeezing it really hard. And we'll get into all of that right after this. So let's get into it. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Definitely. And that's, in general, a vibe we seek to establish. Torture. Yeah. I was thinking, like, sex dungeon. Oh, sex dungeon. You know, you say dungeon. I think sex dungeon. I think torment. Whatever. Why not all of it? Potato, potato. You know. And the red lights. What a surprise that is. My goodness. I'm sure it looks great on the palest person alive. But you know what? You do. You look incredible. You look glowing. I love a bit. As you know, I love a bit. So I love this commitment to the bit. It's great. Thanks to the team. I mean, our team, they're big horror fans. This is a big day for Jacob in particular, I think. It's Jacob's best day, perhaps. I'm hyped for Jacob. I told him I hope I don't let him down. You won't. There's no way you could. We're going to just talk briefly about our experience watching Resident Evil, essentially. This is not a deep dive into the movie, but we're going to talk about this, like, great movie we saw. So good. It was so good. And then we. We got a ton of horror movie recommendations from the Bad Babies, so we're going to go through some of those with you. They're secrets. I don't know what they are yet. I know. I'll be finding out in real time. I know. And I guess just, like, the gut response of whether I think I can handle it or not. I love a spook and a scare and a surprise. Delightful. So love that for you. On the recommendations front, I just want to say, a bunch of our listeners, I was sort of saying, I didn't know what I was going to do while you were gone other than weep and wail and wait for your return next week. Yeah. We will have a Lanterns episode as normal. Yes. So that will come out on Monday. That will come out on Monday. But in terms of the second episode next week, a bunch of our listeners suggested I do, like, a House of Reads episode and do some book recommendations. Wonderful. So that's what we're going to do. Sensational. Probably our most popular podcast we'll ever have. But. People are going to love it. For the readers out there. Bookstagram and BookTok are going to be going nuts. If you are a genre reader, sci-fi fantasy reader, romanticy, hard sci-fi, whatever it is you're into, email us, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. I'd love to hear what your favorite books that you've read recently or are up to date. If there are adaptations upcoming, if there are movie adaptations upcoming that people should be aware of, all that sort of stuff. I started reading The God of the Woods, which is an upcoming adaptation. It's not genre, really, but, like. Mystery. Great mystery. Great mystery. And I got really excited for the upcoming adaptation. So, you know. I was hitting up a thread with you, Dobmob, and Juliet about casting for that because I think wrongly assumed that all three of you had read that. And I was like, my hawk, God of the Woods, let's go. I knew Juliet. I had read it just because, well, only one word is necessary. Camp. Yeah. That's it. Got it. But that book's great. I had a great time reading that. I'm excited to see what you think. I'm only, like, a third of the way through, but I'm having a really, really good time. Well, I'm already enjoying it. So, yeah. House of Reeds episode next week. We will hopefully have a couple guests, and I will give my recommendations. One of the books on my hype meter, Leigh Bardugo's Deadbeat, came out. There you go. Tuesday. I will have read it, finished it by next week for sure. Incredible. So, I'm really excited for that. Lantern's ongoing, as I mentioned. Yes. Like the pod, subscribe, follow at House of R Pod on social media. You can watch us on video. You can listen to us, HobbitsAndDragons.gmail.com, if you have yet to send your birthday wishes to Mallory Rubin. You can do so on social media or via email. Thank you to all the bad babies who sent her well wishes yesterday. You're a star, Mallory, and you're much beloved. Thanks, bad babies. I love you. I love you all. You're the best. Thank you to Joanna and Jomie. Thank you to Jomie and the crew for my birthday surprise on Instagram. That's a Jomie. What a wonderful. That was beautiful. Jomie put it together and then he said. My little Baltimore birthday surprise. Will you do a voiceover? And I said, I will. Can I. I was like, can I do like a David Attenborough voice or like an old-timey radio voice or whatever? He's like, could you just do it normally? And I was like, sure. But I texted you after. I said, you're ready to narrate a documentary, I think, after that. That was my takeaway. A bunch of. Some listeners were like, wow, Joanna must have like Googled the world. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the word canon for arm. I knew that one. That's what I knew. Don't ask what else I had to Google when it comes to baseball, but I did know about warming up the old canon. Anyway, you can watch that video of Mallory's incredible day that she had in Baltimore. That we had. That we had, that we shared together in Baltimore. It was delightful. It really was great. And all the bad babies who were there. And I love that the very scary, spooky sky made an appearance inside of that video. Spoiler warning. Everything. Like, well, we'll do sort of the opening snapshot, but then when we get to talking about the film, we're just going to spoil everything, right? That's right. You know? That's right. We're not doing a deep dive, but we're going to talk about the things that happened in the movie. Absolutely. And I know that this is coming out earlier than our like sort of movie podcast usually do, but we don't know how to talk about this movie without talking about this movie. So spoiler warning for Resident Evil. Go see it. This is a 90 minute movie. There's no reason not to go see it. 90 minutes. 90. Let's go now to the opening snapshot. All right. Quick facts. Directed by Zach Kreger. Written by Kreger and Shea Hatton. A 95 minute movie. Zippy. $75 million budget. Incredible stuff. Really positive reviews. We went to a press screening. The press screening loved it. Yes. Absolutely loved it. And then the reviews have been really positive. We're recording this sort of before the Gen Pop gets to see the movie, so we don't know how they're going to respond. But I have to think that the horror fans are going to love it. The horror fans at least will be thrilled. We were sort of discussing this with, because we, you know, we had the blessed opportunity to see this with our pals. Sean Fennessey was there and then Chris Ryan and his lovely wife Phoebe were in a different theater, but we all got to decompress after. That's right. And I was like, do you guys think this is going to make one gajillion dollars because it's so good and horror is having such a year. And they were slightly skeptical of the sort of goop threshold, I suppose, that people might have. Yeah. It's a very goopy, bloody movie. A lot of exploding bodies. A lot of viscous substances inside of this movie. Yeah. So we don't know. But the box office is tracking very well for it to make between $45 and $60 million off the $75 million budget in the opening weekend, which is very good. Yes. It's the best opening for a Resident Evil movie ever. I was a little surprised because I thought the first one opened really well, but this would be the best opening for a Resident Evil movie. If, in fact, that's what it makes. And just a reminder that Weapons had a similar opening weekend, but went on to make $270 million. So you at home can make this multi hundreds of million dollar movie. You have the power. Go see it in the theaters. Make it happen. Get out there. When did you know you wanted to see this movie and what was your impression of seeing the movie? We already spoiled that we loved it, but what did you think? I think the first trailer. That I saw for the movie. I was like, this looks sick. This looks great. It looked really fun and specific. And obviously at that point, I had yet to see a single frame of any Zach Kreger creation. And as we'll explore shortly, that has since changed. But I've always liked Austin Abrams. Shout out. Shout out Paper Towns. Paper Towns. Formative text. He's great in Paper Towns. He's fantastic. Always been fantastic. Dash and Lily on Netflix. He's just a light. A euphoria star. That's right. Honestly. Yes. Huge standout euphoria for me. No question about it. Best part of Wolves, which is a movie that stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Haven't seen that. And yet Austin Abrams. Stole the show? Stole the entire movie from George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Wow. I'm just like such a huge Austin Abrams fan. I'm so excited for him. He's really wonderful. So yeah, I just thought the trailer looked great. It looked like it was going to be really fun and I was intrigued. And then as I thought about it more and it was time for us to do our fall hype meter. Yeah. And there's more trailers. There's more trailer action to immerse myself in. I thought, I really want to see this movie. I really want to see this movie. I'm going to see this movie. And it was part because the trailer looked fun. The movie looked fun. Part because I know that people love Craigers films. I like Austin Abrams. But more because I increasingly felt like I was just really missing out on this like contemporary horror moment and horror boom. And there are plenty of things in life that I don't mind missing out on. But this, I don't know. It is so in. in our orbit, or at least adjacent to our orbit. You like to have your finger on the pulse. And the pulse is like spurting blood right now. Exactly. It's oozing. And, yeah, so I don't know. It felt like while this was kind of on the horizon and it was very close to my birthday, it was the week of my birthday, my 40th birthday, and I thought that's a time of change in life. It's a time of change. Is it a time of growth? I think we'll see. Jerry's still out. Maybe not. But I thought I'm going to do my toe. I'm going to do it. I'm going to watch a couple things before this, and then I'm going to watch this movie. And you know what? I'm having a blast. And there are still boundaries that I think are going to exist for me as I continue to explore, but I do intend to continue to explore so we can parse all of that. Has your seat been at all troubled by what we witnessed together? Not at all. I said this to Chris after the screening when we were riding the escalator down to the parking garage. Once again, as always, somehow the Ringer crew wound up in three to four different entryways to ultimately the same. The parking garage. There's nothing quite like the Century City West. I will say, I've locked it in. I always come in the same way now. I do, too, now. I have found my path, and it seems to never be the same as anyone else's, which is a mystery to me. And I said to Chris, you know, I think that there is a benefit for me personally, and this is not a benefit to my life overall. Let me be clear. This is a challenge in my life, as you know. The person other than my husband who hears me complain the most. And maybe Arjuna. That's the top three. About how tired I am all the time. But when it came to saying, is this the moment where I watched some horror at long last after a life of not doing that, for reasons I'll explain. The benefit of being so bedraggled and beleaguered and broken all the time is I'm just like, you know what? You have no sleep to trouble. Or the opposite. As you know, it comes in waves. It comes in pockets. Like, I'm just going to be so tired that no matter what traumatizing experience I have just witnessed. On the big screen. I'm probably going to pass out on the couch with my laptop open on my lap and fall asleep. No matter what. Because I'm exhausted. Then I will wake up in the middle of the night and be like, boy, my back hurts. Well, that's a lot of pain in my hip. Why did I allow myself to fall asleep on the couch again? And that's the routine. And that's the rhythm. I've slept. We're doing really well. I've slept fine after. Weapons was the one I was most like, I don't know how well I'll sleep tonight after I watched that. But after Weapons, after Nosferatu, after Obsession, and after Resident Evil. I did not sleep fine because of my sleep. I was shitty in general, but my sleep was not troubled by the films. And that felt distinct. Some people feel like they love watching horror because it's sort of, they like watching the scariest thing that could possibly happen. That's not my relationship to it. I know. Historically, it hasn't. But I'm just saying, it makes the day-to-day terrors of the world feel more manageable. You know what I mean? Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. My hand's fine. Thanks for asking. I loved this movie. I had such a good time with it. I laughed way more than I thought I would, even though I know that Zach Kroeger has a great sense of humor. Hysterical film. But this was just like magnitudes funnier. And we'll sort of talk about the relationship between horror and comedy in a second. But just had a great, like, just a great time. When we were walking out, I was like, why did this feel like the 90s to me? And I still don't have a great answer. Yeah. Is it because it was, like, just on the verge of the 90s when I saw the first? Is it because it was the first Resident Evil movie? Is it because Tron the Dead came out? Just, like, so early aughts, maybe. Or just sort of, like, the experience of just seeing something that feels, like, well-made, contained, short, like, a visceral, shared experience in the theater. And I'm just sort of, like, this felt like, this is what it felt like to go to the movies every Friday in 1999 with all my friends in high school. Yeah. Getting to see it with you guys, the buds. Like, it was just a really good time. And everyone walked out with a huge smile on their face. People were delighted. Yeah. I was, like, I walked out. You and Sean and Chris and Phoebe were talking to each other. And I was, like, beelining for the parking validation because if I don't do it right away, I'll forget. Same. And Chris was just sort of, like, making meaningful eye contact with me through the crowd to just be like, did you like it, essentially? And I just had this huge smile on my face. And he was just sort of like, yeah, that's right. That's right. This is a great movie. It was awesome to see it in the theater because I think, you know, I have attempted to make my acclimation to the current wave of horror. It's communal by sharing it, obviously, with you. We've been in touch. I've been posting my little hiding under my fleece blanket videos. But I was thinking, like, had I ever seen a horror movie in a movie theater before? I was thinking about that. And, you know, I guess it depends on what we're counting. Because, like, there is some horror cinema that has been a part of my life. Like, I love the 28 movies, for example. Right. And those are horror films. Yeah. Right? I think that that has been a part of the pattern is that horror inside of another genre that I enjoy. Like, zombie movies or alien movies I have been able to tolerate a little bit more. But you wouldn't count zombie as horror? No, I do. It's a flavor. There are certain flavors of horror that you're like, I can handle the zombie bucket. I can handle the alien bucket. Exactly. Like, I love alien. Like, I've always been able to, I think, I don't know. That has been much more something that I personally am able to tolerate where, like, a home invasion horror movie or something like that has not been something that I could bring into my life before. You know, I saw the two 28 years movies in theaters recently. I didn't see Romulus in theaters, though. I was thinking back. Oh, that was a great experience. I saw that at home, not in theaters. So, like, it's a pretty limited set of things I could point to where, like, and I was saying to Adam when I got home, that was actually one of the things I had been nervous about was, like, you know, when we watched Weapons, when I saw Gladys on the ceiling for the first time, I honestly, I just shrieked. Like, I screamed in genuine terror. I was terrified. And he was laughing at me. And, you know, I paused and I was like, how many more moments like that? And he said two to three, which was not the case. But I was like, wow, what if I'm, like, fucking embarrassed to be reacting that way in the theater? But ultimately, first of all, that was not a part of my experience watching Resident Evil. But also you were in the loving embrace of me who would support you always and Sean who would mock you mercilessly. So, like, all of those things were the whole sector. It was quite an emotional support cocoon to be in. Very different flavors. But it was just so fun to, not only, I mean, it was because the movie is so comic and so funny to have the experience of everybody laughing together. But the moments where the air is sucked out of the room and the tension is so high and it's silent. At one point I turned to you and I was like, I'm, like, pretty worried about trying to open this bag of nerds clusters and making a crinkle sound while the room is dead quiet. You helped me out because you're the best. And that candy, it just was, it was delicious. It was great to have it there. I ate it. I ate chicken tenders during the movie. Yeah. I was eating the entire time. You were emotionally fine. I was really fine. Your emotional support tenders. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. But those really tense moments where the action is leading you into a sense of intentional and clear dread, that was a fun thing to share with a room full of people, which I understand I'm saying the most obvious basic shit. Like, that is a part of why people love to go to watch horror movies in theaters together. For me, that felt really new. That was not an experience I had had before. And I honestly, I quite enjoyed it. I feel like we talked about this a bit on. I was on The Rewatchables for Obsession. We talked a bit about sort of like that communal experience in the theater of seeing horror together and how it, like, we talk a lot about how important we think it is that people go to the theater. And I really do think, and how important the monoculture is. And I agree with both of those things. But, like, all together, this idea of going through an emotional experience with, you know, your fellow man, and it does not matter who they are or if you know them, but we are all human together and we can all scream together or laugh together or. Or when I saw Hamnet cry, like, weep together. Like, that emotional catharsis that you feel in the theater, I genuinely think it's good for society. Like, I'm being very serious. And so, you're talking about the fact that, like, it feels like the comedy genre is, like, in many ways dead. The comedy film genre is in many ways dead. Not the way it was, like, even a decade or two decades ago. And I really miss that experience of we're all seeing the same, like, funny movie together. And quoting the lines back and just, like, continuing, like, continuing to laugh and share and have this thing in common that knits us together as a society when so many other things are, like, driving us apart as a society. And so, to laugh that much, you know, because I've seen horror movies, but I haven't seen a horror comedy this good in a really, really long time. And so, to, like, laugh our way through this, it was really fun to sit next to you and have my hand crushed by you. And all that sort of stuff. And then, pal and colleague, Katie Walsh, was sitting on the other side of me. And Katie just said, ew, like, 500 times in the movie. It was really, I mean, she had a great time. But every single time something disgusting happened, which was constantly. Oh, my God. Super gross movie. Compliment. She was just like, ew. Yeah. Ew. That's really funny. Incredible. All right. So, do you feel like you covered what tipped the scales for you this year? Or is there more you want to talk about? No, I think those are the reasons. You know, getting old. Want to try a new thing. Felt like I'm missing out. In terms of the films that I selected. Yes. Well, let me pan back for why this was not a part of my life for so long. I'll keep this quick. I've talked about this many times on many other Ringer Pods before. Formative Wounds. When I was seven years old, in second grade. Yeah. I went to one of my friend's houses. His name was Adam. Different Adam. And I had just a gigantic crush on this guy, Adam. Wonderful. His older brother was there. he made us watch Child's Play yeah And when I tell you to this day I have not recovered from that, I mean it sincerely. Like, I, for a really long time, when I was a very young kid, like, could not sleep because I was so scarred by the experience of seeing that. When, you know, you go to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, this was something I loved to do with my parents, we'd go, we'd pick out a movie or two for the weekend. If I passed, like, if I saw Chucky, it was over. I was done. Like, it just scared the shit out of me. When Chucky would pop up, even, this was when I was, like, a working adult in sports media. John Gruden, a coach who, his nickname was Chucky because he looked like, they'd flash up Chucky during an NFL broadcast and I was like, oh, no. Like, still a, just a scar. This is, like, when we went to see Labyrinth the other day and you saw me sinking down on my chairs when some puppets came out and were singing. And it was just sort of, like, because they scared me so much as a child, because the Banshee and Darby O'Gill and the Little People scared me so much as a child when I still see it, no matter, like. How janky the practical effects look or whatever, like, it just, it sticks and it moves you. Yes. And so for a long time I was just like, this is not a thing that I want to even attempt to experience because it made me feel really bad. There was also another movie, I have no idea to this day what movie this was, but there was some movie, it was a, like, it might have been a theatrical release, it might have been, like, a made-for-TV movie, I have no idea. I turned it on, like, at 1 a.m. When my mom was out, a babysitter was with me, you know, not paying attention. And it was some, like, you know, killers in the house, body in the closet when you open the door kind of thing. And it just was, again, destroyed my sleep. I was really fucked up after for a while. So then when Adam and I started dating, he loves horror. He's a huge, he loves movies. He's a huge horror fan. And it was one of those things where, like, when you're in a relationship with somebody early, it's. It's kind of nice to have different interests, but also there are certain things where you're like, what will it mean if we, like, never share this? So he pitched, what if once a year for, like, I think it was actually his birthday, we watch a horror movie together. And I said, you know what? I'll try. I will try. The first movie that he picked, and actually in the comments on these Instagram videos I've been posting, a lot of people are suggesting this movie. I have seen The Descent. And it was another setback. Because now, actually, though, it's interesting because that's one now where I'm like, I wonder if I'd be okay with that if I watched it now. It's so good. And I could appreciate that it was a great movie. It scared the shit out of me. It really unsettled and disturbed me. And Adam was just such a dickhead. I love this man. We've been together for a long time. He's a wonderful partner, friend, husband. He could not have violated my trust more in the wake of watching The Descent where I said, The thing I need you to agree to do, I will agree to watch the movie. The thing I need you to agree to do is not scare me after. And he was like, cool, cool, cool, cool. And then I was, the movie ended, I was a wreck. Yeah. I got into bed. Yeah. This was when we still lived in New York. Uh-huh. Little apartment. Uh-huh. I'm in bed. The door is to my right. The lights are off. And I see moving toward me in the shadow, you know, he's doing one of the, like, Descent monster things. Yeah. Moving toward me. And I was just like, well, I'm never, I'm never doing it again. And guess what? Until a week and a half ago, I didn't. Yeah. That's a very, that's such a Mallory Rubin move because you're like, listen, we had a deal. We had a deal. You broke it. You violated it. And fuck you for a very long time. Yeah. I'm not going to suffer not watching horror movies. You don't get to share this with me. My journey to horror is, like, came in a couple stages. In high school, I think I've talked before about, like, the group of friends. That I hung out with in high school and how we watched movies all the time. And this one guy in a group was sort of, like, responsible for the curriculum to a certain degree. I don't know who elected him. He just sort of took this on. And he had really good. Self-appointed? Yeah. He had really good taste. And so, like, a lot of my sort of, like, unusual stuff that I watched in high school came from him. So, like, we watched the Sam Raimi movies. We watched, it's why I'd seen Peter Jackson movies before Lord of the Rings came out. Like, he was just sort of, like, giving us that sort of New Zealand or, like, you know, interesting. A lot of campy B-horror kind of contemporary fun stuff. And then in college. And so, you know, and then the 90s, like, you know, like, Sixth Sense or, you know, all this sort of stuff. And I've seen Sixth Sense. You're alive. I watched Get Out when Get Out came out. You're a human in America. Like, you've seen these movies. That feels, even though, again, I know those are horror movies, that feels different to me somehow. Sixth Sense scared me. Sixth Sense is scary. I didn't see it when it came out in 99. We were not a horror movie household. So, like, I wouldn't have gotten it at home. So, it all had to, like. And then when I went to college, I think over a couple summers, but at least one summer, a bunch of us were there for summer session. It was a gajillion degrees in Davis, California. And we decided to, like, set ourself a curriculum of, like, classic horror. So, we would get together. And we watched. We had watched The Shining on campus. That scared the bejesus out of me. One Halloween, we watched The Shining. But, like, The Omen or The Exorcist or, like, you know, all of the, like, classic 70s horror. We just wanted to sort of knock them out and sort of. Oh, it's Mary's baby, et cetera, et cetera. Had a great time. And it was, like, the perfect way to watch it on, like, sweaty summer nights with your pals. It was great. And then, you know, and then I've just sort of tried to educate myself across the genre. I would not say I'm an expert, but I am. And I do not like. I don't like torture horror at all. I don't like the Saw movies. I don't like The Hills Have Eyes. You know, like, all that sort of stuff like that. But I don't like. And I don't really like the. I don't like a lot of the, like, I don't know, found footage movies. Anyway, this is. Yeah. And then on this sort of, like, scare you afterwards front, I think I've told you these stories. But, like, I've got two of those, which is, like, when I went to go see The Blair Witch Project. Yeah. I mean, I. That's a great story. I got. I got sick. That's its own thing. I got motion sick from The Blair Witch Project. That's its own side thing. Also an incredible story, though. But my friends. My friend's grandma or mother or grandma had, like, read. Or had someone tell them to, like, stack rocks and sticks outside of the bedroom door when folks woke up in the morning after seeing Blair Witch. And then The Ring, which I also watched in college. I was talking to a friend of mine, told him we were about to watch it, hung up the phone with him. He looked at the runtime and then he, like, called me, which is, like, a thing inside of the movie. He called me, like, right when the credits were rolling. Cruel and unusual. I was in my. I was an RA in my dorm and a bunch of my residents were watching with me. And then the phone rang and we all just, like, jumped a mile high. And then one of my residents, like, everyone left. And one of my residents sneakily, like, stayed behind in the dorm room. And then he crawled on my. Like, I thought I was alone in the room. And he crawled on my lofted bed like the girl from The Ring, like, doing his whole impression. Anyway. It's a no for me. It's part of the joy of horror is, like, how can we prolong the chills and the thrills as we go forward. And as you know, I love a vampire. I love a witch. Yes. I also love a vampire and a witch. I do. Chris did. The closest I got. The closest I got after Resident Evil to any, like, something from the film carrying over was Chris did a little tentacle pinch of my spine as I was walking. No. It was pretty funny. Okay. Didn't scare you? Maybe jump a little. There's a lot of tentacles in this movie. A lot of tentacles. So you mentioned all these classic films, the rooting yourself in the history of the genre. I have done none of that. Sure. Does that await? Maybe. So you mentioned Sean was in a row at the film and, you know, he was like, wow, here you are at this movie. Incredible twist. You know, I've been following your journey. And I think he was simultaneously very proud and happy that I had watched Weapons. No Sferato obsession. Was there to watch Resident Evil and also said to me in no uncertain terms directly. You can't watch those movies without watching the foundational texts. I mean, do you want me to right now read the text that Sean sent me when I asked him for recommendations for you? I did text our resident ringer, Scream Queens, Sean Tennessee and Chris Ryan. Right. To see if they had recommendations for you. And Sean said this. I think it's very funny that she's watching contemporary stuff to start out because the genre is so iterative and homage laden that he said the exorcist is, I still think, the scariest movie ever made. So I suggest starting there. I think I'll do. It feels to me like the next wave should be a few of the classics. The exorcist. Well, we'll see. We'll see if I'm inspired by the bad babies and the recommendations at the end. There is one. One clear winner in terms of like volume of nominations. And it makes sense to me. Oh, interesting. OK, I have no idea what it's going to be. I'm excited to find out. The reason I started with the contemporary stuff is very simple. The movies that the three movies I picked fell into three buckets for me. Right. Weapons. I wanted to see something from the director of Resident Evil. I had not seen a Zack Greger film. I wanted to. I understood that weapons was something that was adored by all. Do you agree? I thought that movie ruled. Yeah. Do you agree? It got the shit out of me. Amy Madigan deserves her Oscar. Oh, yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, look, I would swap. And this is obviously, I realize, not a new opinion. Many people have this opinion in real time. I would swap weapons for F1 in a second for Best Picture. And I'm an F1 obsessive. The sport, not the film. Film was fun. Have some notes on whether Sonny would have been kicked out. Check out the Ringer F1 show for my thoughts on that. I didn't think I could start with Barbarian. Jacob was like. "Barbarians" is hysterical, you should watch barbarian that's good and now that i've seen resident evil i'm a little bit more inclined to believe jacob that it's funny but it also does seem just it seems terrifying so i'm a little bit scared still weapons felt like the this zeitgeist animating thing i had clearly missed i wanted to see it that was an obvious one nosferatu i had wanted to see this at the time i didn't necessarily feel like this was going to be so scary that i couldn't see it but it did seem like maybe it was just a degree too much horror for me but i love a vampire we've spent a lot of our time with vampires recently on the podcast it's very horny super horny and it's monster horror so i felt like okay monster horror heading into resident evil great right that felt appropriate we're a nick holt podcast we are and i like us to be an aaron taylor podcast as often as possible we're working on it uh and then obsession i was gonna try to do obsession and back rooms but in the time a lot obsession was the clear choice because that was obviously that's like the thing this year right and i know you want to have an opinion about indy never ready being cast that's right in the x-men that's right yeah instead of just nodding politely you know yeah as we talk about the x-men casting and i have nothing to contribute on that front uh i had been warned by some you arjuna a couple other people who i know care about me deeply the world at large that the cat stuff was really not gonna work for me and i was gonna have a genuinely hard time with it there were a couple other people in my life who shall remain nameless bill who were like you'll be fine didn't mention the cat and uh the cat stuff was deeply deeply traumatizing for me and um very challenging i still thought the movie was was really good and i understand why it has become such a thing obviously like i i thought that of those three weapons was my favorite i would rank the weapons nosferatu obsession um i think that what obsession does to play with the careful what you wish for idea really fun and cool but it's a little bit less weapons felt more original than me well and something we talked something we talked about in terms of like what sean is saying about horror being iterative something we talked about is like how much obsession feels like an episode of buffy vampire slayer a two specific very violent sort of like smashed together right and like i'm not i'm not undercutting like a brick into a face and that face into a steering wheel um that was a compliment to say it reminded me of a buffy vampire slayer episode but i wasn't like this is the most original thing i've ever seen because and like careful what you wish for is like you know a fine term of the genre i would say of those three and i really loved weapons but i would say of those three uh nosferatu is my favorite like nosferatu is one of my favorite movies that year i watched i remember like i watched it at home it was one of those things where like you know i get like award screeners and i got it i think i got it early so it wasn't out in theaters yet and it just people start drifting in and they're like what are you watching what is this movie yeah oh my god nosferatu visually astonishing oh god so beautiful i mean and robert eggers is like his stuff is incredible are you gonna say see werewolf of course absolutely hell yeah no hell yeah on the sort of like does the dog die.com front i will note that one of our beautiful bat babies who wrote in wrote in bold red warnings on the movies that and like specifically what happened to animals on certain movies i appreciate it usually i just ask chris does something bad happen to the animal in this movie and he tells me um i knew i knew enough to be on my guard an obsession so briefly let's talk about the resident evil franchise right there is and and zach gregor has said this uh in a way that i think some resident evil cert a certain slice of the resident evil uh fandom did not appreciate but basically there's zero barrier uh of entry to this film like you don't have to play a single second of the video game you don't have had you don't have to have watched any of the movies this isn't a continuation of a story it isn't an adaptation of a story it is set in the world um and so it's it's maybe if you know the world it's fun and certainly there were a couple times in our screening when uh people in the theater laughed with recognition about something yeah particularly there's a typewriter in the house well the the office yes yeah was one yeah but another was when he passed by a car and there was a plant there were plants inside of the car huge reaction in our theater and i was like yeah guess that's a reference you could definitely tell from the reaction the crowd the moments that were good the gaming easter eggs for sure yeah um but uh the video game history is long and storied and absolutely insane when you put it all together but starting starting in 1996 there have just been so many iterations of of the not a huge gamer you have you live with a gamer what is any any awareness or experience with the resident evil game franchise awareness yes i've never played a second of any of these games i know that people love them i mean i know i know this year that resident evil requiem is one of the like best games of the year and so there's a yet another uh uh boom here um but yeah i haven't played any of these i think maybe you know like if this were uh a television show that we were covering regularly or something yeah i would i would dip in and you know that's it's just the that there's so much here it's overwhelming yeah i wouldn't even know where to but i know how i know that people obviously love these games not a part of my life my relationship to the films is that uh i think the first resident evil movie is like quite bad i did re-watch it i enjoy it and it's even worse than i remembered i have a great time with it mila javovic is like incredible red dress like the whole thing so impractical for the the needs of that moment so impractical for the needs of the moment practical garment um but yeah so this is the first this is the first thing that i really am like boy resident evil hive let's go but i know how much it means to so many people so it's exciting to now have a a part of it that uh that i love as well i i have i feel like i've seen maybe three resident evil films but the first one is the only one that i have that is like stuck with me in any way um but yeah james purifoy michelle rodriguez mila jovovich by the cast paul ws anderson they made a ton of them uh there was a failed sort of failed reboot in 2021 uh welcome to raccoon city and that was just like maybe the worst received of the entire franchise and so they're like let's try it again and let's do it with uh zach crager all right so we're going to take a quick scamper through raccoon city that's what we're doing not a deep dive but resident evil here we go uh as we mentioned this movie is so funny it's hysterical the premise of the movie yeah is that austin abrams plays a plays a guy named brian he's a he's a medical courier uh what does he call it like essentially a post maze driver is what he says right and he has a something to deliver yeah deep into the heart of raccoon city that's right and uh it's a dark and stormy night very snowy and as you observed uh when we got out of the movie the movie takes almost is almost entirely done in real time um that was part of what i loved about it yeah it was not only because you know the overall runtime as noted is just very tight but the way that we are just journeying we're just with one guy yeah we're with one guy this is austin abrams movie oh yes entirely yes uh you might recognize a few other names in the cast they are barely in this movie yes his movie so he uh hits something someone with his car yep and then it just goes from bad to worse from there um spoilers from here on out yep here we go let's like dig into it a little bit deeper slightly deeper and say here's a jordan peele quote when he was on the daily show he said the difference the difference between comedy and horror is the music and there's much much has been said about this current era of comedians sketch comedians maybe specifically like transitioning into horror so jordan peele obviously like a vanguard of this but like curry barker who made obsession like started with a short-form comedy um josh rubin um you know shout out josh rubin i love him um uh danny and michael phillip who uh and zach crager all have uh comedy backgrounds bill hater is making a horror movie that's supposed to come out next year that i'm with um the great linda cartolini that i'm very excited about so um here's something that zach crager said uh in an interview the anatomy of a joke and the anatomy of a scare are the same you're using timing and tone to create a surprise and to elicit a physiological reaction it's all about subverting expectations and then here's what he said to the hollywood reporter which i find completely wild yeah uh given how hilarious we thought this movie was a shock quote i learned that people really liked the movie this is in test screenings i learned that people really liked the movie but they thought it was too funny so over the course of my testing i stripped out as much as much of the jokes as possible i then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more but i also liked the movie a lot more a little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie and there's not a single joke i took out of this movie that i missed so somehow fascinating it was jokey err yeah and i i'd like we were laughing the entire time it was very funny so i i don't know where there was room for maybe it would have been a longer runtime who knows but um sam ramey he notes uh as as a clear influence like bruce campbell stuff and in the evil dead especially like the way that like a you're rooted in ash's perspective and in the evil dead and b um like the muttering to himself, Like, all this sort of stuff that Austin Abrams does really well, but the sort of, like, I can't fucking believe this, blah, blah, blah, like, all of that. Or, like, I don't believe this is happening. This isn't happening. Like, you know, I didn't just do that. Like, all of that stuff is really, really good. Yeah. And then he hasn't mentioned Edgar Wright specifically, but I was thinking a lot of Shaun of the Dead, an excellent zombie horror comedy situation. Yeah. Yeah, I love Edgar Wright's movies. It's funny because I think of them as comedies that have genre elements in them. So I wonder almost with the Craig or quote you just shared about the, like, ratio, the balance of horror, if that felt like a thing that had swung too far or became a comedy instead of a horror movie. And it's like a funny horror movie is not the same thing as a horror-laden comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought the movie, to me, the horror. Or the comedy in the film was, like, the great delight and surprise. Like, I knew Austin Abrams would be really compelling in it. That was a satisfying part of watching it, but not a surprise to me. I don't know. The humor manifested in so many different ways. That quote about, like, volume and just kind of, like, tonnage is really interesting because I do think I could see how it could shift. On the one hand, I'm like, I don't know. Every joke landed, so I would have taken more of them. That's so funny. But on the other hand, like you said, maybe it is just runtime bloat. And the fact that this movie is so tight and it makes it so propulsive because we're with Brian as we journey deeper into Raccoon City through the storm, through the, you know, we escaped the homestead, the farm, right? And just this sense of, like, the urgency as you understand the clock that is ticking as the outbreak spreads. But also, we said spoilers, right? Spoilers? Like, our guy's got a bite. So that's a clock. There are a lot of clocks. It all made sense that the movie was really compact in terms of how the actual plot plays out. And frankly, I think just an element of, like, how quickly people die. To the cast point, you see all these great performers who we love who are in it, and then they basically all have, like, one, one and a half scenes before they're dead. You know, or eliminated in some capacity. The fact that a lot of the horror, some of it came from, so Brian hits the woman. Who was infected, who has been exposed in the street. That was the first real, oh, my God, this is going to be funny in a way I didn't anticipate reveal. Because a lot of it is, like, how she'll turn her head or growl or the fact that she wants to bite him, but she's, like, belted in. She's got a seatbelt on and can't, right? Or his car won't start because there's a bullet hole in the engine and then he realizes he's the one who did it. Like, that whole sequence and set piece really unlocked what the tone of the film was going to be early. For me, it was, like, when he was, like, talking to her, he's like, you're okay. Or here you go. Oh, ma'am, you're so great. When they, like, hold her head when they put her in the cop car and they're, like, holding her head so she doesn't hit her head. That was all so funny so early. And then, you know, a lot of what Brian just, his responses and the way that humor manifests in real life in uncomfortable or scary or sad situations because you are just trying to, like, navigate something that is deeply traumatic and terrifying. That worked so well in the movie. I wonder if that's the thing that people. People were, like, would our guy be, like, this quippy in the face of this much mortal peril? Yeah, he's not quipping. He's, like, muttering and coping. Yeah, and that felt right. I wonder if that was some of the stuff that was stripped out, but I don't know. I feel like the only time he tries to quip is in a moment that you really hated, which is when he throws the ladder at the dog. Not a fan of that. Not a fan of that. That was really, that was, like, such a funny Mallory Rubin experience. Again, spoilers, I guess, for this movie, which we've already talked about. We've said it. I'm just going to keep saying it. Yeah. We don't really talk about shows and movies on this pod without getting into the plots. I know. I think it's okay. It's not what we usually do. It's just sort of, like, we also don't usually put out movie pods the day the movie comes out. So just making sure that everyone, we're setting expectations. But, like, the dog attack that happens on the farm. Yeah. And there's a dog going after him. And Mallory's like, oh, that poor dog is just probably hungry. I thought he might just be hungry. Literally, like, a nanosecond before the dog's face exploded. Put it into tentacles and, like, came after our guy. Split right open, like a plant. I did think it was possible. Looks like a demogorgony. Very demogorgony. Yeah. Yeah, I thought, well, we know the woman who Brian hit has wandered from this abode. We can assume. Yeah, that felt clear because there's just nothing anywhere else around. And so I was like, man, you know, the people in this place are compromised. What if our guy just hasn't had a meal in a minute? Our poor pup. And he just wants Brian to feed him. And that was not the case. It turned out that he was also a bioweapon. Full of tentacles. That was upsetting. Yeah. So, but the shock of that. And I think just, like, the way in which, you know, we'll talk in a second about sort of, like, what makes a good video game adaptation. But, like, the way in which we are, the camera is so rooted in Brian's. POV that, like, we see things. So, like, we hear the dog. Yeah. And then as he turns, you know, like, the camera turns. And it's not like a gimmicky POV camera, but it's just very much or, like, you know, he'll look down, then the camera will look down. There are ways in which the camera is just sort of, like, mimicking his movements. And so when those, like, reveals happen. Yeah. It's funny. It is. Because, you know, we're seeing some he's seeing something and reacting. And Austin Abrams is, like, very funny. Yes. And then, like. We're seeing it at the same time. Yes. And that's just, like. And it's so funny. I just saw a movie that I can't talk about yet. But, like, I was so frustrated by how far ahead of the main character I was. It really bothered me. Yeah. This didn't bother me at all. Like, we come and we know essentially what happens in a Resident Evil movie. Or at least what happens in, like, a zombie movie, you know, and stuff like that. And so when this woman is, like, going out into the road. Like, we know what's happening. We know more than him. Yeah. But it's never frustrating. Because he's not, like, dumb about. Like, how would any average Joe. And, like, Austin Abrams' cast. There's a moment later in the movie when he's sitting there with his shirt off. And it was, like, really funny to me. Because, like, a similar thing happens in Wolves. Where it's just, like, a really, like, not vain appearance of a leading man. Sure. He's just, like. Sitting there. He's got, like, just, like, a little bit of a tum. It's just, like, actually not what Austin Abrams usually looks like. I feel like they were just, like, can we make him look even a bit more average than. Yeah. Regular guy. This very, like, you know, handsome actor kid looks like. I say he's a kid. They call him kid all the time in movies. He's definitely an adult now. But. Very boyish face. He's got that energy. Yeah. And you're kind of reminded consistently throughout the film that, you know, he's part of the plot. The beginning of the film is that he's receiving this news from his girlfriend, who is a character via phone only, Michelle, that she's pregnant. And he is confronting what it would mean to grow up. Right. And then, obviously, that is heightened, as is often the case in a genre story, by, like, what is the state of the world that I might live in and I might bring a kid into. Yeah, absolutely. So that's all interesting. I think to the where he's looking and how that heightens the comedy. I mean, it does a couple things. It heightens the comedy, the yelps, the screams in the homestead. You know, when the other member of the home very suddenly emerges and reveals himself to be present. Like, that was one of the scarier, you know, jump scare moments in the movie. But Brian's reaction is so funny. Yeah. Great tonal blend. The other thing, though, that I think the camera angle. That's just. That's the video game. Yeah. That's what I said. Yeah. Like, that's just like. And it's very. I think it's a very effective way to channel. But not in a give me away. There's like a couple times when the scope of the rifle. Yes. Is in the shot in a way that feels very first person shooter. But otherwise, like, it never feels uncinematic to me. Yeah. The way in which it has framed very video game perspective. Yeah. And I think it does root you effectively as a viewer in one of the experiences that you have, obviously, when you're playing the game, which is like there is actually a choice you have to make. You enter a new space. You know, because of the premise of the game or the premise of the film, that there's going to be some peril in there. Something awaits. You have to look left or you have to look right. And like whichever way you go first, whichever drawers you open or door you check behind, there's another area that you haven't vetted yet. And so I thought that the, you know, channeling, porting that perspective from the games into the movie, it gives you that sense of play in a way that I thought like honors the kind of core canon and just gaming is like an enterprise very, very effectively. That's a play. I've played like and I've talked about this before, but I played like a few video games that involve like wandering through the house. And like trying to find things, find letters, find whatever. Very narrative based games. And so, yeah, the rifling through drawers to find ammunition. Yes. So familiar. Or when he's in the tunnel. Yeah. Like it encounters the RV and he's like, it's very like he looks to the left. The RV smashed up against the wall. He's like, can't go that way. Looks to the right. RV smashed up against the wall. Can't go that way. Again, to your point, that's very like, you know, we're the player. We're trying to figure out a way. I got to go through this. Yes. I was waiting for him. Honestly, to like try to go under. Yeah. But like he's like, OK, I got to go through. And we all know as an audience, there's. something in that RV that is going to be like horrible and scary the way that the film also uses but but he has to go through it anyway and and we know what's coming and it's still really good the way that the the movie uses sound design yeah in that RV sequence or when the the woman that he hit with his car who we see come running from very far away and the snow arms out really funny but when she gets in the house and she's just sort of like we just hear the pounding of her footsteps and her just like banging into wall after wall to wall we don't have to watch it yeah we're with him but we can hear her coming it's like it's incredibly funny yeah it's like really really good um okay so making a very good video game adaptation a notoriously difficult undertaking the internet is just like overflowing with articles and listicles about like all the ways in which Hollywood has failed to make a good video game adaptation and it's funny if you go on Rotten Tomatoes a flawed metric you go on Rotten Tomatoes and you look at the video game adaptation list yeah uh currently and it's like too soon to tell but like currently this is sitting way at the top 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes right now who's no who knows what's going to happen in the next few days but that's where it is right now and then you jump all the way down to like 70 something percent and then it rapidly falls into like the 60 50 percent range you know what I mean you're like occasional like sort of Sonic the Hedgehogs yeah uh Mario Brothers you know like these are these are movies for kids and they're like they're like they're like they're like they're kids that are just sort of like set in this world that are not trying to be a video game but like the Last of Us we've obviously praised uh when it's at its best yeah does a lot of this sort of we talked about this a lot in season two the like the locked gates how do I get through these gates which is something of course that this movie plays with as well the various locks that you have to get past um Fallout of course is a is is a world that a lot of people enjoy that adaptation and especially the first season I would say yeah but like yeah your Mortal Kombat's your Street Fighters your Minecraft's your Tomb Raiders like there's just so many things that people I mean Minecraft a lot of people loved it's not really for me but that's okay a lot of people loved it like fun movie great um a certain section of the fandom I will say and I already said this before but like Zack Greger has talked about this like took exception in some of his pre-release comments about the movie that he wanted to make and how it was not a straight adaptation of any of the stories they might be familiar with from the game he's gotten really good at talking about this um in a way where he's like I really like this movie I really like this movie I really like this movie I really understand this he's like let's say someone was adapting a book I loved yeah and they were like it's set in the world but it's not any of the characters he was like I probably at home would be like well then don't call it the book just call it something else he was like but this was like he was I think a lot of people have wondered if this was like a different story that has been re-skinned as Resident Evil just to like get it into the franchise or something like that but he has said and I believe him that like when he was making Barbie and his first feature before it even came out he was asked sort of like what horror franchise would you want to work in yeah maybe one of his producing partners and he was like oh Resident Evil and they were like okay go ahead and write a write a treatment why not just like see write a treatment for it and so he did and he's what he has said is like he had no expectation like this is before Barbarian came out so this is before he was like ever considered right a feature film director and so he's like I felt so free because I had no expectation that this would actually happen so I felt incredibly free to write whatever was fun and interesting to me and like if you think about Barbarian which you haven't seen but like Weapons which you have Weapons operates as like a bunch of different vignettes together yeah right we're in different POVs and it's sort of and it's told slightly out of out of sequence and it all comes together he talked about how he had this idea for this Aunt Gladys character and she was sort of like floating off in space an idea he had about children missing and then he like he was like oh but he had no idea how or why and then he sort of like put them together or similarly Barbarian which I don't want to ruin for you in case you want to watch it but like Barbarian starts as very much one kind of horror movie that we think we're watching yeah and then it like a long ways into the movie becomes something completely else and it's because he wrote that first part and then he was like I couldn't think of any way to continue that story that felt exciting and fun for people it just like felt like we've seen this story too many times there's no way for me to surprise and delight people and then he was like but then I just sort of basically wrote a different movie entirely and that movie also you're following a couple different people's perspectives and so like I feel like you can see the DNA of all this like what he talked about for for video game movies for video games in in general is this idea of hyper subjectivity in his movies so for Weapons for falling Alden Abrams character like you're or Josh Brolin's character you're in a hyper subjective space inside of this larger story and here he's like I just took that hyper subjectivity of like the camera is Brian essentially we are just with Brian all through Resident Evil and dialed it up to 11 and that's that's how he got this like very video gamey feeling without feeling gimmicky I was just talking about last this this week's episode of Lanterns and how there's sort of like a video game section that I was just a little like I was just like I was just like I was just like I was like it felt a little like that was a negative to me that it felt like a little video gamey this I think captures that experience from like someone who loves playing it without losing something that feels like cinema yeah you know yeah absolutely I mean I think it's interesting that a lot of the gaming adaptations recently obviously like our our buddy Ben Lindbergh has talked about this a lot on button mash he's written about it for the site Sean actually has a his projections newsletter this week is on the the the gaming adaptations a lot of the ones that have been really well received you mentioned fallout you mentioned last of us but like even something like arcane like those are television shows yeah you know so a lot of the oh we're doing prestige I remember Lindbergh's for the first piece Lindbergh wrote about last of us was like can gaming adaptations be prestige that's happening in the prestige tv space on the streamers right um you know you've got an HBO show you've got a a prime video show you've got a Netflix show etc uh it's you know I think the the a lot of the films that have listeners just perked up because you said the word arcane and they were like I are okay I mean that's the first season I really really enjoyed it first season was wonderful yeah yeah I think we're just both behind on arcane yeah there's just a lot out there to just try to stay current on um I quite enjoyed season one of arcane the you know the a lot of the um to your like and then the score falls off a clip and and dips to here when we get to the like movie movies you know three four five etc I mean a lot of those movies that have maybe less uh critical uh adulation are movies that still did well at the box office or have some sort of like contingent of of fandom but they're not gonna appeal to everyone they're not taking all the boxes of quality and popularity yeah they're not indicating necessarily that something has shifted in the nature of the adaptation maybe quite the way that this this is a part of that and that some of the television shows have um but certainly like so Sean's piece today which again subscribe to projections if you haven't yet is about broadly he's exploring the idea of gaming adaptations kind of moving into the superhero spot it's like this is just what this is what this is now right yeah so that's obviously a a moment that we're in and we've we've had blips there before um you know I don't know in terms of what the key is to making a video a game adaptation work I don't necessarily like think I I don't feel best equipped to the ones that and in general I think when we talk about adaptation it's like something that feels like it honors the experience for people who do love the core text and also something that then is accessible to a new audience you know and I think the it's interesting because the thing you're saying about Zach Krieger's comments or or his positioning of this is like in the world and him understanding how how you'd feel if if the book comp part of it though is volume like if this were the first time anyone had adapted a Resident Evil game um I don't know I don't know if it would be the first time anyone had adapted a Resident Evil game maybe people would not be as receptive and open to that but because we have legions of prior adaptations that hue a little bit more closely to rendering a game and possible it's possible that because those other adaptations hue more closely and weren't very successful yeah sure yeah like is it good it's obviously always gonna be part of it is it good is it good uh and this was good so that's exciting there's also like a couple things that I'm sure um Lindbergh and and fantasy who know way more about video games than I do like have have addressed this more eloquently but like there's a couple things going on together there's um there's people who grew up playing video games being old enough to make the movies not that like adults couldn't uh play video games at any time but like if you grew up playing video games and you're just sort of like dipped in the world a bit more and then you become a filmmaker or someone who makes television it's like almost just like a generational thing and I think that's a really good point I think that's a really good difference the same way that like people who grew up with the internet or people grew up with uh youtube or all this other stuff like that is influencing the way in which uh film and television are being made and then there's the way in which the art form of the video game has deepened to meet the moment so like when you talk about something like the last of us or gone home or like you know a bunch of other like narrative games the way in which storytelling inside of that world is has has become richer richer and more profound yeah you know what I mean so like you could well I was about to say you could adapt GoldenEye GoldenEye of course like an adaptation of a of a film franchise already but like there's not much there there but like when when you're talking about and obviously there's like a ton of lore in the in the resident evil space all right anything else you want to talk about in terms of making this a successful video game adaptation no i mean i think you know the i i've lifted my gun that i found and i uh uh have put my cell phone camera under it to try to navigate this stuff like that was just very clever the the the recurring uh bit through the film about the lock you know the which pathway is going to be are you going to get and you think you finally found your path through and then fuck there's it's i can't the way it's shut uh that was all really great and really uh an effective way to render the the gaming experience on screen and then i think just also the the fact that the movie leaned in to celebrating its gaming roots and its gaming yeah fandom there are multiple moments in the film where the words are shouted he's like i'm from playing video games yeah and then the kind of celebration when that returns video game having like achieved it and done it and landed the shot that he he needed to land that was just that's just very smart there's also the like and like i don't think the the the film is ever to your point in terms of like the way in which our attitudes towards video games have shifted somewhat in the culture i think there are some video game adaptations that are like embarrassed to be a video game adaptation it's similar to the way we talk about superhero movies i feel like there was a time when like comic book movies were afraid to be a video game adaptation and then afraid of being comic book movies right and then you know kevin feige is like actually wolverine's hair should be that big you know what i mean like and and that that changes um so when you have there's like a number of moments that feel like cut scenes inside of this movie and i would say specifically like when paul walter hauser's uh scientist character shows up and he's giving like exposition and it's kind of cheesy and clunky but in a way where you're just sort of like this is what happens when you meet a character and you're like oh my god this is what happens when you meet an npc in a game and they're like explaining the state of affairs to you or when um when he's made it all the way to uh the hospital and he's in the parking garage and over the intercom you hear zack crager's voice playing this um scientist who we never see but like uh who's like you should really play it safe and take the stairs you know like you could take the elevator you could take the stairs he's like you should it's like such a like winkingly like that's a video game moment um and then also uh when callie reese shows up as this uh character maxine the the quote-unquote enforcer i love that moment because like she's just such a like video game babe and she shows up and she just like headshots everyone and she's just like that's who you would expect yeah at the core that's your laura croft that's your whatever and it's just sort of like she's here and gone very quickly because she doesn't make it because she's not the main character of this story it's poor hapless brian let's talk about poor hapless brian austin aprils we've already praised him a ton we should say speaking of uh chris ryan's wife phoebe phoebe riley wrote this incredible wonderful honestly incredible profile of austin abrams for gq uk um i was so dazzled by it because basically what happened is that austin abrams is a guy who is reluctant to tell her anything about himself and what you're looking for in a profile like this about a guy who's about to have a big year he's making whale fall and resident evil and he's been around a while but this is sort of like this is who this guy is and he was like reluctant to tell her and she made that the premise of the profile and it was just like really clever journalism from her really really good um and so really really great piece i really recommend you read it um but this this is what zach kreger said in to phoebe in that profile he said first of all i like that he's not a giant movie star he's not a jacked action star he's not a dweeb that's the kind of person that i want to watch go through the gauntlet of hell that is resident evil and he's not a giant movie star what i love about brian the character this is the only time i took my little notebook out to write a note was just sort of like he's such a medium good medium good guy right like we meet him and he's like forging documents kind of squirrely not saying the right things to his present pregnant girlfriend like all that stuff but when he hits a woman which he is like horrified by yes tries to help he tries to help her so like the way in which we like find the exact right middle line of like the way in which we like find the exact right middle line of like the way in this is such a medium good guy you know what i mean and something that zach kreger has said in a million different interviews is that like the moment he knew he wrote this role for another actor in mind he won't say who that was uh and he never should but like he wrote the role with someone else in mind but when he made weapons with austin abrams and especially the sequence in weapons when austin is like breaking through a fence and like muttering to himself and sort of like taking his little victory lap over the fence and then you like see that he didn't have to go the way that he went and there's just this comedy beat he was like that to me was what i wanted to make that was resident evil a miniature yeah and that's what i wanted to see and that's how austin abrams got uh this gig but i just think he's like when i when i saw what he did in weapons uh and again i was already like a huge fan when i saw him in weapons when i saw what he did in weapons i was like this is like the kind of role that i feel like timothy chalamet would have taken like 15 years ago sure like that he's scooping up these roles and i don't know that i could ever see timothy chalamet as the star of a resident evil movie but like there are these he's just got this sort of like the the word that phoebe uses in her profile squirrely this sort of like squirrely energy to him um that is like quite endearing and often endearing against all odds yeah and um i just i find him mesmerizing and perfect for this yeah he's amazing i mean i think the fact that he the the the average joe aspect of it the fact that he like is behaving badly in certain stretches but but also then an extension of that like he's like he's like he's not hyper great at everything you know makes him a more relatable avatar for like what would it be like if you suddenly found your yourself in the in the center of the apocalypse you know and like you had your own shit you were trying to figure out which was i have a job and i'm supposed to get paid more if i complete this task but also like i've really fucked things up with my girlfriend and that's weighing on me and uh i can't get through to 9-1-1 i actually was able to leave for a message and she did call back and i couldn't answer because oh my god i'm under attack you know like all of that stuff is obviously in some ways part of what's fun about a game or an action movie or some sort of like dystopian plot is watching somebody who is exceptional at something navigate what should be an impossible circumstance that's like a thrill this is also a thrill in a different way i think the fact that he was like not to your point earlier not immediately like zombies huh but kind of got there with a quickness and is like monsters something has gone really wrong i'm not you know and like you get even the oh the gaming i'm bad at guns like you kind of get the sense that this is like a dude who is uh doing okay in certain ways and not great in others and probably has put in his time with some movies and some games and is like i feel like if the zombie apocalypse broke out i'd be able to clock it you know i'd know what was happening i wouldn't be like how could this happen i'd be like yeah i've been waiting for the zombie apocalypse since on some on some level the whole time um he gave all of that quite effectively you know the the other thing is that he just in addition to the comedy and the like level of proficiency that allows him to stay alive as he's working into raccoon city but like dipshit oh god i shot my own engine fuck ups and i've dropped all the bullets and like you're the noise you made as he was like just shedding shells as he was running away and you were so upset he's just dropping it on the ground it's like stop and pick him up but you can't stop the moment that he like thinks he can hop over the electric fence and we're all pretty sure he can't and he like and it's very like charlie chaplin chaplin like buster keaton sort of like energy if he's just sort of like gearing himself up to do it and then just sort of like like he's like zapped in the balls fucks it up yeah that was so funny and it's like that's the kind of thing where it's it's a normal i mean yes it's electrified but it's like you know he's taller than the fence right the thing he can do is put his hands on the beam to try to hoist himself up you're not he's not even attempting he's not scaling a skyscraper later he will have to try to traverse the sky bridge as it is crumbling under him but like we build to that but like that's it's part of the like it's it's both a like i'm a player at home yeah i i think i understand the move that i need to do to get over this fence without taking any damage yes i understand it it's like these you know keystrokes or whatever i will do it oh i fucked it up yeah or like came and you're like we're all watching you're like buddy you're not gonna that's not gonna work out for you you know and so like we're we're in this like fun anticipatory like how is this gonna go wrong yeah for this guy yeah using in that same stretch the ladder to talk his shit yeah instead of thinking yeah we're all like no you need that yeah the anticipation of just one step further maybe you're gonna need that to get down out the other side like that stuff was all great and then yeah like to you know to your point i think the fact that he has a decent heart is really crucial like if he were he's not going to be able to do that he's not going to be able to do that he's not perfect but if he were a complete piece of shit he's got like a little bit of a of a of a edge to him which feels appropriate but also like he has a a certain level of like care inside of him for other people uh strangers in the road as you noted or you know someone in his own life where like he's erring but then he's attempting to rectify and that feels important and somebody that you need to be able to root for and watch fail and you know i guess that's that's the thing i think at them. to say spoiler even though we've already spoiled it like nine million times but like he gets his bite yeah because but there's real tension he finds a girl in the rv she's got tentacles four feet she's whimpering and upset and he's like oh they're there you know it's like all very funny but you have this moment where you're like is he gonna shoot her is he just gonna leave her there like what is he gonna do because he is that medium good guy where like he you he's conflicted and we're not sure which way it's gonna go and then he kind of tries to help her and that's what gets him dead you know at the end because big time spoilers yeah he doesn't make it through this movie yeah you know big old blob big old monster really good really good big old monster blob goes splat i think the like the fact that the courier bag you know uh the second that became a popcorn bucket you're like something's in that that is not just a heart oh you know um um help but this is this is a recurring you're better at tracking popcorn but i do like the popcorn bucket boom is you know the this is a recurring thing obviously the the ingredients to to try to whip up the cure and um you know that that is a fun aspect of the film to the fact that like on his person he is carrying something that could save him and into the final moments really wants things to be okay doesn't want to succumb doesn't want to do monstrous things like wants to help wants to find a way to help himself and to help other people yeah um and so that was dramatically i think quite uh quite compelling there's the mcguffin of just like the vial will it be intact that was i mean the anyone could drop it it's slippery in there like also just hysterical so funny always just great um but yeah he falls on that bag like so many times so whatever the cushioning mechanism that was inside of that that bag for that vial active very good yeah very good um all right in case we haven't hit it is there anything i mean i said this in the notes without majorly playing but it's too late that ship has sailed um that that virus is out there is there anything that we haven't any set pieces that we haven't shouted out that you wanted to like particularly call out i think the this you glimpse little glimpses of both of these in the trailer but i think the i'm in the sewers and something is waiting in the distance um i think the i'm in the sewers and something is waiting in the distance we can see it we can see it we can hear it uh that was absolutely revolting stretch the explosion of skittering critters um i think without question in the theater in real time the thing that got the biggest response from everybody assembled was the maternity ward oh that was all time all time stuff that was just incredible oh my god so much goop what and so and so just sort of like we're not we're gonna go there we're not afraid that was gnarly yeah really really well done i think the uh vomit elevator vomit elevator disgusting the water balloon bodies the throwing themselves off the the roofs these are two things i want to say and i'm always just like always happy to do this which is how much how many practical effects are used in this movie so the the sort of big white bloated guy that's in the sewer that is say it with me now a puppet they could have done it uh with cg but it was a 2 000 pound puppet i believe that was made in california and shipped to eastern europe where they filmed this uh movie i think legacy is the are the people who made it there's a ton of digital effects in this movie what uh did a lot of digital effects so like shout out the digital effects team they look really really good all the tentacle stuff looks really really good but the way in which they like tried to do it practically when they could so the body's falling down yeah those were blood bags that they dropped like those that was practically done like you can really tell it's great it's just incredible this like gauntlet run this is very um very fast and furious but like very very good um anyway i just love this movie i love that there are puppets involved i had the best time thank you so much for pivoting to horror i'm really proud of you i'm having a great time what should i watch next okay shout out the bad babies the number one recommendation from our listeners was cabin in the woods oh adam's been adam's mentioned this multiple times because of your buffy watch that's happening right now okay so drew goddard and joss whedon like wrote that movie and it is very buffy coded okay and like a young chris helmsworth etc etc but like okay it is it is uh the bad babies really think that you would like that okay all right a lot of our listeners um thought you should get into the mike flanagan verse of television but that's i think mostly because they know how into the mike flanagan verse i am but i do think that like both hill house haunting of hill house and midnight mass um are like so thematically and emotionally rich that like i i really think that you would enjoy them do you think you can handle them ghosts ghosts and i think so a lot of bloody adam try adam really likes those shows he tried to get me to he really tried to get me to watch midnight mass and i didn't but maybe i'll maybe i'll do that one a little a little maddie saris that's right that's right um our listener bronwyn uh inside of her like mallory should should uh should join the planiverse um knowing especially that there's like an upcoming carrie adaptation tv show that he started for amazon in addition to his work on clayface um bronwyn said speaking of carrie on the film front i'd recommend anything in the quote good for her genre of horror the original carrie is a classic for a reason and the vovovich the witch mid somar are fantastic more recent entrees and although it's not technically a good for her film the stepford wives another classic that apps continues to absolutely rip i'm personally i'm thrilled to welcome horror into my life and any sleepless nights i've suffered have been well worth it so glad that mallory has decided to join the spooky party so okay um intriguing mid somar you made a little a little note no yeah maybe i like pew obviously pew hive sounded like that was pretty scary not really i don't there's there was this era of horror that was like it's like eerier than it is horrifying do you know what i mean okay where you're like i'm not there's like this folk horror i'm not sure what's happening right now sort of aspect to it yeah okay that i would say that i like i'm a fan of all right brian brian put together a horror movie starter kit for mallory rubin let's hear it instant modern classics get out which you already saw and the conjuring yes the conjuring i've not seen indie darlings this was one of jacob's recommendations and i really co-signed it it follows right yeah hugely hugely uh endorsed that the baba duke adam was asking me about that this morning yeah yeah okay back rooms which you've already already considered art house darlings black swan oh i've seen black swan okay yeah you would not consider that horror i think they're skin peeling yeah psychological psychological okay yeah hereditary uh that seems that seems upsetting that one and you watched frankenstein last year we talked about it i did watch frankenstein classics we've already mentioned the shining the exorcist the omen jaws you've seen frankenstein last year we talked about it i did watch frankenstein jaws oh yeah yes yes yeah evil dead texas chainsaw massacre alien i don't i will not i will not endorse you watching texas chainsaw that's a no uh damn good times obsession you've already seen crimson peak gemma del toro would you charlie hunnam tom hiddleston jessica chastain a lot of spooky ghosts and uh mia wasikowska and and gorgeous costumes yeah goth spooky gothic horror i've have you seen it i've seen i know every detail of the plot of that movie so i i've either seen it or i've been exposed to enough of it to know everything to know that it would fit in well with this summer uh it was yeah certainly okay ready or not uh super good okay smart weaving that's about a a girl who marries into a rich family and they've got like a weird ritual that comes with joining the family and so it's just like a normal girl weird rich family okay uh how do i the bride um navigate this interesting really really good that one's really fun um cabin the woods we already mentioned companion which came out last year robot horror ex machina-esque no maybe yeah maybe bodies bodies bodies gen z horror okay yeah yeah i like the cast of that movie you seem uh unconvinced tension dramas 10 cloverfield lane train to busan have you seen train to busan you like zombies i do like zombies that's one of adam's do you like zombies i do like zombies i like zombies i like adam's favorite movies it's so good yeah that's maybe one of my favorite i think maybe my favorite zombie movie yeah train to busan yeah so good the descent we've already talked about you are scarred and then actually a number of people wrote in for this one i'm gonna i'm gonna find the the best email about this um so this this email came from cory who's the one who put together some very helpful uh animals die in these movies okay dr sleep yeah okay this is the description yeah your boy obi-wan sure plays a little boy from the shining all grown up and walks his sexy ass all over new england to protect a girl from rebecca ferguson playing a life-force sucking vampire a beautiful yet terrifying film i mean dr sleep in the flanagan verse yeah uh your wife rebecca ferguson is there Great, my husband and my wife are there, geez. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I've heard enough. Zahn McClarnon, who we really love, is in that movie. It's a great movie. Okay. Suspiria, either the original one or the remake. Yeah. Kai? How are you feeling about any of these? What feels most likely to you? I mean, I think I'll keep exploring the Eggers stuff, and I got a lot of Vich nominations previously. Captain in the Woods seems like something I'll do. I'll certainly try some of the classics. I don't know. I think I'll take it three or four at a time. In terms of body horror, in terms of Clayface. Yeah, I'm not worried about Clayface. No, no, no, I know you're not worried, but would you want to watch, have you seen The Fly? No. Okay, maybe that's a good one. Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, very sexy. I mean, there's many different versions of The Fly, but that's one I would recommend. In terms of body horror, you've seen The Thing. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yes. A lot of The Thing. In Resident Evil. Yes. Because of, for sure, all the tentacles stuff. The mashing together of things. A lot of, and I was going to say a lot of, I was going to make a joke about a lot of Stranger Things Season 3, which, of course, is about The Thing. Okay. Any other questions you have? I, about horror? No, I think this is a good list of things to try next. Maybe I'll do, maybe next I'll do, well, since Clayface is soon, maybe the body horror stuff, makes sense to do next. And then maybe after that, I'll dip into some of the classics. Yeah. Some of the formative texts. Maybe some universal monster stuff in front of Werewolf, or some 60s, 70s classic horror. That sounds great. But Werewolf, it might be time for some of the old classics. That would be fun. Would love that. Yeah. I would love that. I'll make room for it amid my rewatches of Kraven the Hunter. You know? Great. Your constant Kraven the Hunter rewatches. I mean, when my guy is starring in a film, what am I supposed to do? Not watch Kraven the Hunter? I've not seen that again, to be clear. I'm just going to shout out two more vampire movies that I love. Which is Only Lovers Left Alive. Seen that? Tom Hiddleston. No. Mia Waskowska. I've not. Lovely title. Yeah. There was this era when a lot of, Tilda Swinton, obviously. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston playing vampire rock or vampires who have been together for a very long time. Anton Yelchin, my beloved. And Mia Waskowska. There was a time, a stretch. Jacob and I were talking about this when like a bunch of movies, horror movies, It Follows, Barbarian, Only Lovers Left Alive were all set in Detroit using just sort of like the crumbling edifices of Detroit as this like setting. And then Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is another great vampire thing. Okay. Let Me In. Did you see that? I've not seen that. That I've actually watched. Let The Right One In. I've wanted to see. I'll do those. I will do those. Okay. For sure. Yeah. I'm really proud of you. Great. It's great. Happy birthday. Thanks. You really did it. You know, I feel, I feel both like 27 and 95 at the same time and maybe that's what being 40 is. I don't know. Thank you to the entire team who's here. That's right. What a squad. A whole cadre. Carlos Yerboga is enjoying a very like well-deserved vacation. Yes. Yes. And Arjuna Ramkapal is here. Scott Lee is here. Jamie Yinkish is here. Jacob Burnett is here. Alayah is going to be working on this pod for us. I don't know what she's doing, but shout out to Alayah. And Jamie had done her own social. What a crowd. And thank you to you, Mallory Rubin. Thank you to you. And thank you to the bad babies for sharing this journey. And if you listen to all of this without having seen Resident Evil and listened to a spoil of the whole thing, I just would still urge you to go see it because it's like fantastic. Excellent film. And you can handle it. I really believe in you. We'll be back with more Lanterns. And don't forget to email hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. for your book recommendations. And we'll see you soon. Bye.