Hey, everyone. This is Chris Ryan from The Ringer. As many of you have heard by now, we lost a treasure colleague and friend over the weekend, Jonathan Charks, passed away on Saturday. John was 34.
He leaves behind a wife and a son, and we are obviously mourning his loss and sending all of our love to his family right now. If you go to the Ringer.com slash Jonathan Charks, that's J O N A T H A N T J A R K S, you will find a memorial page for John, which has links to his GoFundMe that benefits his family and the amazing writing he did throughout his experience. I encourage you to go there. And if you can, please support the Charks family.
Briefly, I will just say that John was among the first people that we hired to work for the Ringer. So he was instrumental in defining the voice and perspective of the site. He has as much to do with what this place is as anyone else. And throughout his experience with cancer, John communicated eloquently about the challenges he was facing, both through his writing and his podcasting.
You could never stop John from talking about his passions. Some of the things I loved about him over the last few months, you know, whenever we would talk whenever I reach out to see how he was doing, I would try to keep it very John focused. And the next thing I knew we would be talking about James Harden or better call Saul. He really loved this stuff.
He loved talking about it, celebrating it, debating it, illuminating it. We're going to keep putting out our pods and writing while we grief, but we wanted to let folks know that John was in our hearts and that his family was in our thoughts. Thanks for listening. We have asked Amanda to sit here and observe us.
We count this absolutely deranged film. Yes, you have not seen an in all likelihood we'll never see. I will say I would have seen it had I the time and this was a little bit of schedule rearranging to accommodate certain requirements of me and various head injuries. Do you want to share what happened?
Sure. I'm okay. I did sustain a minor head injury at work yesterday. So I finally goes really nervous right now.
I'm okay. And so we had to rearrange a few things until I couldn't go to the movies last night to see Marbury. Here's the thing. Yeah, we're not sure that Amanda's head injury didn't reprogram her brain to become Mandy the horror freak.
Okay. That's just loves Halloween and is just like midnight movies. Let's go. I want to see some slasher.
It's gonna make making this pond October so much more fun. You're catching up on the entire history of horse cinema. I have seen a couple at your request. So if you want to give me some homework, you know, I get mad.
That's the thing with the horror movies. It's not like I respond with glee or even fear. I just get pissed off. And then that's not an attitude.
Yeah. Yeah. I do like getting a little bit angry at horror movie, but I was not angry one time in barbarian. I have been heavily hyping this movie since I first saw it.
I strongly encouraged you, Chris, to see it. I knew that you would respond favorably to it. What do you think? I did a wonderful thing.
I just knew, you know, I knew I was going to like it based on like the recommendations and the enthusiasm other people are showing for it. And I went into it as blind as a bat. So you never saw the trailer? I saw the poster and I was in a movie theater with my wife a couple of weeks ago.
And the barbarian trailer was on and she was like, I don't want to know anything about it and close her eyes and put her hands over ears. And I was like, good idea. And we just sat there with our hands over our ears and our eyes closed in the middle of a movie theater. And then I feel so I was so elated to have gone into this like, I mean, everybody should listen to this podcast after they've seen this movie.
Or, you know, or Amanda. Or the real life version of reading the Wikipedia or or page. But it's almost like I don't think it does it justice. You know what I mean?
I think it does this movie does not do it justice. And this kind of just really reminded me of like the kicking or like scuttling around culture in the 90s where you're just like, I heard this movie is really good, but I guess I'll go see it. And then you go and you kind of are like, I need to like go get a coffee in a cigarette and talk about this movie for two hours after we're done. Yes, I was really relieved that at the screening that I attended there was a Q&A.
A lot of times when there's a Q&A after a film, I'm like, I gotta go. Let's go see my kid or whatever. In this case, I had the same feeling. I was like, I just want to hear everything about this as soon as I can.
You're right that we can't talk about the movie without spoiling it. I mean, we can probably spend another five minutes kind of softly recounting our feelings about it. But part of the reason the movie works so well and part of the reason why I think Chris is responding so excitedly to not knowing anything is because the movie shifts a couple of times. And the marketing for the film, I think on the one hand has misserved what the story is, but on the other hand has helped the movie because it really wrong foots the audience's expectations going into it.
Okay. So I think there's a couple of ways to talk about it. I think we should talk about specifically what happens. In a way, I almost want to read you that Wikipedia summary beat by beat so that you can respond to it.
Do you want to read it or do you guys? I would like you to perform it. That's my request. There are some truly ghoulish things in here that I think maybe we shouldn't replicate in front of you.
Yeah, but you know a dramatic reenactment, I guess, to the best of your abilities. And if you want to tell not show at some points, that's fine with me, whatever your comfort level. Okay. This is a great bit.
We should do this for a second. It's like you, I don't go see the movies and then you come to my house before I'm in it. We should do it with Empire of Light. Yeah.
That one seems particularly problematic. And there's like a shot and it's the screen. And you're saying that's like you have not done this for me multiple times. Especially with Predator movies.
Okay. So one more time. Spoilers here on. Boilers are short.
Okay. So barbarian is written and directed by Craiger and he is a guy who's got his start in the comedy troupe the white as kids. You know, I don't know if you guys experience any of the white as kids. You know, stuff, but you know, they're pretty popular in the late, like late, early 2010s.
And the cast of this movie is fairly small. All you really knew going into it was that Georgina Campbell who appeared in some British television. She appeared in a Black Mirror episode kind of a rising young star and Bill Skarsgard who played Pennywise in the clown in it and has played kind of the villainous figure in a handful of movies. And Justin Wong was in the movie and the film opens and Georgina Campbell is a young woman who is arriving at an Airbnb because she has a job interview.
Okay. And it's raining. It's nighttime. Hold on.
What kind of Airbnb are we working with? That's a very good question because it's the central location for the entire phone. Great. So the Airbnb at night when she arrives seems fine.
Okay. Decor like very basic Airbnb. No, no, no, no. It's like a single home.
It's like a two bedroom residence. It's very modest. What can you do for being an Airbnb? Like there's no personality.
There's no soul. It's not like you're taking somebody's house for the weekend. It's like this is a property made for being. Okay.
And it wouldn't be like a design. It wouldn't be like Airbnb plus. No, no. And I know you're going with this.
I think it's important that Amanda is focusing on the Airbnb thing not only because it's very Amanda, but because this is now one of several post-sharing economy post Airbnb rental is the rental is one. What was the one that was a shutter last year that we really liked about like the travel vloggers? You remember that? No.
Oh, there was one. I'll look it up later. And then there's this. It's like so people are starting to really understand how to like ring horror and ring terror out of like these very modern sort of setups.
Yeah, I think it's a good point. I think actually Chris and I often like once talked about the possibility of an Uber driver horror movie. Yeah. One of those actually came out a couple years ago called Sbrey, starring Joe Keery.
And then Dashcam. And then Dashcam came out earlier this year. So that the whole share economy horror has come around to it. And the film, both the trailer and even just like the poster in the general set for the movie is leading you into what seems to be a movie that is very contained about a woman who is terrorized in an Airbnb.
Okay. And super host was the other one I was thinking of. Super host. There you go.
Let me ask a couple more questions. Yeah. You're gonna get all your questions before you. I mean, there's like 300 things that happen in the movie after this.
That's fine. But you already said that the location is important. I am like a production design is important to me. And we got to set the scene.
Sure. Because it's how the movie starts. Okay. Do we know what city Detroit Detroit?
We don't learn that until the following morning, I think. Yeah. But it is Detroit. Talk to me about the lighting in Airbnb.
Fluorescent like stylish land. IKEA like I like I like I kind of like fairly dim, not very aggressive. It's not a modern style in the home. It's a very like it's like a replication of a 1980s home, but it's clearly been sort of rebuilt.
Okay. And then Georgina Campbell. Yes. Her character age.
What's the 30? Okay. Talk to me about apparel and luggage. Pretty basic like stepped out of a little catalog.
Okay. Great. Great. Roller bagger over the shoulder backpack and a roller bag.
Okay. What color is the roller bag? It was dark. So it's hard to tell.
Also doesn't play a huge part of the movie. Yeah. Very. No, I just say the details.
I know this. I did not know we asked Bob what we're doing here on today's podcast. I feel like I'm a January 6th. Sit here and ask questions.
I'm investing. The thing I want to tell you is that when she arrives, it's night and it's raining. Okay. And it captures a very real thing that sometimes happens when you rent an Airbnb and you arrive in a strange neighborhood at night, which is that you kind of can't really get your bearings.
You're looking for the address. You probably have it up on Google Maps or something like that. You're very, you're very like, it's just oriented focused on getting into the apartment or the house, but you're not like, Oh, and a coffee shop and I'll be going there to check out the, you know, whatever. Okay.
You're just like, okay, I got to get into this thing. She gets up to the door. She tries the code on the lockbox. She opens the lockbox.
There's no key in. She's trying to figure out what's going on. She's confused. It's late.
It's raining. It's Detroit. And then a light goes on inside of the house. Okay.
So a light goes on inside the house. She rings the bell a couple of times. No, you got to run away. It's the middle of the night and a man opens the door and it's Bill Scarsgard.
And he's like, what's up? No, let's just take a minute to talk about Bill Scarsgard at this exact moment because he is, of course, the younger brother of Alexander Scarsgard, son of Salonsgard. And is now I think world renowned for being Pennywise and he's a very handsome man. He has a very haunted look.
And if you arrive at an Airbnb and you're supposed to be in the house and Bill Scarsgard is in the house, it's tough because both Scarsgard's the younger are like scary hot, you know, but there is, like, there's sort of like, this is dangerous. But the film leverages that sensation because as soon as Georgina Campbell's character arrives, she is very frustrated by the circumstances and it becomes very clear that this home has been quote unquote double booked, that she has used one service to book the house and that he has used a different service. And then they show each other evidence of the fact that they have been double booked. Now, everything that Bill Scarsgard's character does from this moment through the, basically, the next 15 to 20 minutes of the book.
Is simultaneously reassuring and uncomfortable. Yeah. He's trying to make her feel safe and at home. He's trying to get to the bottom of this issue, but he's also doing things like giving her tea, but she hasn't watched him make the tea.
He's saying, like, let me help you with your bags. Let me get you your stuff. Let me run out of the car to help you out with things. All things that a woman in this circumstance, who was talking to a stranger, it's late at night, would be made to feel deeply uncomfortable.
And the film is working very hard to make you feel like this is a movie about a guy who's going to disnumber a woman who comes to this house. Okay. And it continues to play out. And then as the night goes on.
And so she decides to stay there. It's basically like she tries to, he's like, look, it's raining. Come on in. You can look for a hotel.
She goes in, she gets cleaned up. She like starts looking for a hotel. Everything's booked. There's a convention in town.
According to this guy, he's like, oh, there's a convention here. I bet you're gonna have a heart attack. Which is one of those lines that sounds fake. It almost sounds like he has created the scenario in order to ensnare her.
Right. Even though we learn, in fact, it's likely true. Yeah. And he is who he says he is and that he is.
It turns out as the night goes on is that she's in town to interview with a documentary filmmaker. And she seems to be somewhat of an obscure documentary filmmaker. But like the guy is like, have you ever seen something that she's made? And she's like, probably not.
There's this jazz documentary. And he's like, oh, yeah, that was great. He starts describing scenes from the movie. And she's like, charmed by this because he's cool guy.
And that she's going to make a movie about artists who have moved to Detroit and started buying up basically like free houses to start art collectives. And he's like, you should interview me. I'm one of those artists. And it turns out like he's this major like Detroit artist, like underground artist who's going around and like rehabbing houses.
And the reason why he's in this neighborhood is because he's like scouting for new places. And the film goes from being very quickly being deeply uncomfortable and menacing to having like shades of potential romance, but also underneath it. Like at the bottom of my heart, my feeling was like, this is actually one big scam. Like this is actually, he is really working her to get her in the most vulnerable position possible, even though it's sort of become like a meet cute and they're sort of starting to hit it off.
And ultimately she decides to say at the house overnight, he gives her the bedroom. He takes the couch. She has her big interview the next day. He has something to go to the following morning.
Smash cut to her sleeping overnight. And she wakes up in a fright and the door is open her bedroom, which we had clearly seen previously that she had closed and locked. Okay. She comes out of the room.
She sees Bill Scars guard sleeping on the couch and he is clearly having a nightmare and screaming to himself. And she is so disturbed and she wakes him up and he wakes up and he's frightened and he doesn't understand what's going on. And there's this sense of tension, but he says that he had been sleeping on it. He didn't open the door and she goes back to bed and then smash cut again to the following morning.
Yeah. And so she goes off for her job interview, but like he has left her a note that's like, great meeting you, great hanging out last night. See you later. Just leave me the key.
Good luck at your job interview. She goes. She has this great job interview at the end of the interview where she's gotten the job. It seems like, right?
The documentary filmmaker says, oh, where are you staying? She's like, oh, an Airbnb in this neighborhood. She's like, you should not be staying there. There's one and one key detail we learn when she leaves the house the following morning on her way to the job interview is that since it's daytime, we see that she is the home itself is very nice, but the surrounding neighborhood is completely decrepit.
It is like truly abandoned. Yeah. And it has been effectively destroyed. There's clearly no one else living there.
It looks like a hurricane except for this one house. So she gets back to the house and as she's going up to the house, what looks like a vagrant starts running towards her screaming, get out of that house, get out of that house. Okay. So she gets into the house and is freaked out and calls the cops and they're like, basically, like, well, is he still there?
Are you in really any danger? We don't really have the people to send. So she doesn't really know what to do. So she gets her things together and she goes to use the bathroom.
She sits down in the bathroom and she realizes there's no toilet paper. She's all alone in this house. She's like, where's the toilet paper? She starts wandering around and now the film is getting very ominous.
So she looks in one closet, one cabinet, no toilet paper. She sees that there is a door to a basement. Oh, good. Great job.
She goes down to the basement. Okay. This is my favorite. He sees the toilet paper down.
We're only like 15 minutes. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm sorry, but like a number of situations where it's a whole stand that this is the point.
But don't you get mad? This movie is entirely about don't go down there. Okay. That's the whole movie.
And it's about like what? What are you tempted by? What are you curious about? And what are you scared of?
And the way that those things overlap? Okay. But now I'm angry. Don't whatever.
Everything that has happened to this point, including this moment in which she goes into the basement and the door, of course, closes behind her and locks is all cliche that the filmmaker is messing. He is leveraging your expectations for movies like this. Some of the things that happen are so obvious to the point of idiocy. Right.
Sure. Now the door slams and she's down in the basement and she's looking around and I think she does, in fact, find the toilet paper, but she gets trapped. And when she gets trapped, she starts scanning around and she sees a number of items and then she's like in a skate room kind of situation where she's like, what can I use to get out of here? What can I use to do?
You got a skate rooms? No, but I understand that the logic of them kind of like, I understand like when you walk into an escape room, like your whole thing is supposed to be like, you're basically scanning for like clues or like tools to get out. Right. So she's we should do an escape room and record it.
Okay. Yeah. You'd be really good at it. I'm a little concerned about being in a skate room with you.
Why? Because I think you get a little tense. No, I think you could. I could see you being like a puzzle person.
Right? Well, do you not get a little tense? Am I wrong? But in the escape room, I know I'm not actually in jeopardy.
I think we should buy a home together with three of us and rebuild the barbarian home. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Because here's what happens.
Okay. She does discover theoretically a way out. It's not through the window. It's through a hidden door.
Of course, it's always a secret door. And she pushes that door open and she finds a corridor and to the left, there is another door. And in that door, we have a white room with a very old bed and a very old mattress and a chair and an old school video camera set up. Okay.
And it's clear that this is a this is a prison. It's a murder hut. Yeah. This is a place where like a sex dungeon murder.
There's a bloody hand friend on the wall. Okay. It's a very disturbing vision. Okay.
And she's really getting freaked out now. And she's really upset. She races out and she starts banging on the door to get out of the basement. She comes back and stares and bang on the door.
The lone bull Bill Scarsard comes back and he returns to the house. Okay. And on the one hand, we're like, holy shit, he's here to murder her. He's here to put her in this prison room.
And on the other hand, maybe he'll save her. We don't know what's going to happen. He comes here, she's her bang on the door. Okay.
He opens the door and she starts explaining what's happening. She's really upset. She wants to get out of the house. He's like, Hey, hey, slow down.
Slow down. You're you're talking crazy. I can't understand you. I let me let me go look at what's downstairs.
Like let me understand what you're talking about because I don't understand what you're saying to me and I want to better understand what's happening for you. How did she get out of the window? Oh, okay. I remember he's like, you push, you pull and I'll push.
Okay. So he decides he wants to go down to the basement. Okay. We're 20 minutes in right now.
Pretty much. Yeah. Half an hour. So basically, there's a really great scene between the two of them where he is doing the same thing he was kind of doing last night, which is like, I don't believe you and I don't really care.
But at the same time I'm using all the language of like, Hey, understand this must be scary for you. I understand this must be weird for you. But I think it's really important. I just need to check out and make sure that what's going on down there.
So of course, doubling down on your anger. He not only goes, but he seems to truly disappear. Like she hears his voice once and then he's like not responding to her anymore. So she then sets up.
Oh, she does the lighting thing before, right with the mirror. There's a really cool strict. She does where she like balances a full length mirror against overhead light so that the light shines down the star call, which is just sort of like a very key visual motif for us in movie. But it's very cool.
And it turns out that there's another passageway after the murder room. Oh, and that is just a basically looking like a cold storage basement that goes down. And it is a true subterranean cave like experience that has like 30 steps going downward. It is horrifying.
Okay. When she discovers that Bill Stars character has gone down even further. Okay. Into this.
Help it. Okay. And she can really only faintly hear him yelling and we are surrounded by darkness and she's using, I think the light on her phone or maybe a flashlight that she's had to light the way. And so the only thing that we can see is whatever lights the way that's in front of her.
And at a certain point, she's walking. We don't really have a sense of our own geography. She turns a camera or she turns a flashlight to the right and we see cages, like almost like dog panel cages that have been abandoned and have clearly been there for decades. And she's getting very upset and scared.
Yeah. And we hear Bill Stars guard in the deep distance screaming at this point. Okay. And finally, his voice is getting closer and closer and closer and closer.
And finally, those haunted eyes. And he's almost dragging his body. He says that something is something is something bit me. Okay.
Now the movie is getting extremely scary at this point. All right. We don't know what's been here. We don't know where they are.
Three pages. Yeah. It doesn't matter. I mean, if there were 50 cages, that would matter.
Perhaps true. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning, as they are trying to gather themselves in escape, something grabs Bill Stars guard's head and starts smashing it violently against the wall. And all like that.
And the thing that is doing it, and this is really where the movie turns, is a giant naked middle aged woman. Okay. Who is deformed in some way? When you say giant.
She may not be like seven feet tall, but she seems monstrous. Literally, literally monstrous. Okay. And so they smash it's Bill Scars guard has been killed.
He's dead. There's one shot of Georgina Campbell reacting to this and then we get. Was the funniest cuts ever? A smash cut to Justin Long driving in a sports car down the PC singing along to Donovan's Ricky Tiki Tavi word for word.
Yes. That's really funny. It's an amazing cut. It's really good because the whole audience at this point has been 30 consecutive minutes of like Jesus Christ.
What is going to happen? And then something happens. You don't expect which is the ostensible villain of this movie is killed by a giant naked middle. Okay.
Can we do just like a second about this movie, not plot? Just I want to say like, so when this happens, obviously, it's this super disorienting moment as an audience member because you're like, is this movie a comedy now? And you're also thinking like, is this movie just an anthology? Or we in California now?
Like, what does this guy have to do with what I just been going through for the last 30 minutes? And, you know, I think that in a weird way, like, this is the most Tarantino moment of a movie outside of Quentin Tarantino that I've seen in a really long time. And it kind of reminded me of some of the stuff that he would do on the margins of the movies that he would do like when he would write for Dustle Dawn. And you would kind of be watching that and you'd be like, I have an idea of who these people are and who's important in this movie.
And then that person would be a vampire and get killed or something like that. And this movie plays with audience expectations and crucially casting in that way. So Justin Long is a TV actor, it seems like. And he's doing like a conference call on his speakerphone on his car.
And it quickly turns out that he's being me, too. You know, that he is finding out that he is being accused of sexual assault by his co-star. And he showed it as just a pilot has just been shot and it was going to be picked up. And he is on the verge of breaking through.
And he's a dickhead. Like, he's like, he's like, he's like, like a real asshole. And you're just kind of like, what is going on? What is going on?
And for the next 10 minutes, you know, it's basically getting dropped by his agency's gets dropped by his accountants. He's getting, you know, basically like, really increasingly canceled out of existence. He's in a lot of trouble. His lawyers are really concerned.
He's kind of like, what's happening? And then finally, as he's trying to figure out how he's going to pay for his legal role. And he's going to pay for his legal fees and his, his burn rate of his income. It's mentioned, well, you do have those properties in Detroit.
Oh, okay. Yes. So Justin Long very quickly returns to this home in Detroit, which he owns, which has been the scene of this issue. And in fact, he arrives fairly shortly after the incident that we saw in the first 30 minutes in the movie.
And he shows up at the house and he sees other people's belongings. And he's really confused. Because the property manager is like, do we rent this place out? And she's like, no, I mean, like nobody is supposed to be in there for another two weeks.
Which of course is bizarre because in fact two people are saying they're simultaneously. Right. They were double booked. And he's trying to figure out what's really going on against the bottom of this.
But because he's this overt asshole, this real know it all, this real kind of chauvinistic, you know, dickhead, he's sauntering around the house with none of the fear that Georgina Campbell's character had, or even Bill Scarser's character had. He's like, this is my house. I own it. And every time he discovers something that is part of the scare of the movie, whether it be the basement and the basement locking or the secret corridor and the murder room or the subterranean dip downstairs into the cage.
Every time the movie effectively works as a comedy where he thinks that this is great for the property. He's going to say, he's like, square footage. I have more square footage. And he literally gets out of tape measure and he starts measuring room to room.
He's literally measuring wall to wall in a room with a bloody hand print on it, not even realizing played very well. I think Craiger's comedy timing is really funny and very funny. And he's effectively carrying the movie by himself. He's having phone calls by himself in the shot.
He's moving all through this house all by himself. He goes past a room that's purple lit by a TV that's playing. And he looks into the room and on the TV screen, this is like a room in one of the basements, is a breastfeeding video, instructional video. Looks like it's probably for you.
Yeah, sure. Cool. A vintage one. Would you learn?
Well, breastfeeding is really important part of this movie. It's true. Literally. Jesus Christ.
Okay. There's a part of me that really wants you to just stop listening to the movie. I also don't think it would be good for you to say. No, yeah.
It's too soon for me to be doing all of the kit stuff. So, okay, continue. So at this point, I don't say all this revealed, but a lot is revealed, which is to say that the monster returns. Captures Justin Long's character and throws him in a pit.
Okay. Georgina Campbell's down there. Okay. Stop right.
He's like, what the fuck? He has a knife because he brought a knife with him down there, but they haven't knife. And sooner or later, this monster comes along and sticks a bottle, a baby bottle, into the gate above them. Okay.
And is just like drink. Okay. And she says, if you know what's good for you, you'll drink. Yeah.
So don't. You're gonna be really upset. Yeah. So Georgina Campbell drinks from the bottle.
This is a very disgusting oversized bottle of milk. Okay. Yeah. And Justin Long refuses.
Yeah. And this beast jumps into the pit. Okay. Okay.
And as she takes Justin Long away for advanced breastfeeding, I guess, Georgina Campbell escapes. Okay. Justin Long's character is literally dragged back into that purple lit room. Okay.
And this gigantic nude monster woman that we come to learn is known as quote unquote mother. I mean, force is Justin Long to breastfeed. Okay. And the movie has completely shifted from pure bone chilling thriller horror.
Yeah. To absurd comic horror. Okay. Way more in the kind of Sam Raimi vein of horror storytelling.
And so like, like Craig or talked about that has talked about this interview. Like the first 30 minutes in the movie is pure like Takashi Mika. Like it's like deeply unsettling. Right.
Japanese horror style. And then the next 30 minutes is this really ghoulish outlandish kind of creature effects movie. That we're not totally sure. Like, I will say the movie.
I was a little nervous. It was gonna like slip through its own fingers when we got to this part because it's very silly and it's very funny and very gross out. But we don't really have any understanding of what's going on with the monster. We don't understand the motivation journey.
We're with Georgina Campbell. Like we're rooting for her. She is the heroine truly of the movie and she's hopefully starting to escape. But we don't know what's happening.
And then I think it's at this point that the film goes to flashback. Does it happen before she escapes or after? I can't remember. It's right around the same time.
Basically there's another smash cut and we're in the early 80s Detroit as Reagan's elective. Right. And we're with a guy who is an older like in his 50s 40s white man who is on his way to the grocery store. He's driving away from what is obviously the home we've been in the whole time.
But it is a picture perfect suburban neighborhood. Wait, wait, pick it first. Yes. Yes.
It's before everything has been raised in the town. Goes to the supermarket and all the things he's getting are for a newborn baby. Oh, no. Yeah.
And what it basically turns out is that this guy is the sort of architect of all this. He's architect of all this evil shit. Okay. And he is not only got something in his house that requires all this baby stuff, but is also driving around looking for women to be the mama in the house.
He stalks a woman at the supermarket, follows her back to her home, puts on a uniformed indicates he works at the electrical company, enters her home as though he works at the electrical company. And locks her windows, right? Locks her window so that he unlocks her window so that he can enter the whole way. That's right.
He's clearly kidnapping people, kidnapping women and detaining them, drugging them, raping them, impregnating them. And they're having children. Yeah. Are you seeing all of this?
It's very, you know, this is an odd word. I think the homest guy tells him that. Yeah. There is the homeless guy who had chased Georgina Campbell's character eventually becomes kind of like an explainer.
Yeah. And so he helps get, when they, when we go back to the present day, so they're going to see a lot of this, goes back to the present day, the homeless guy helps her get away. And there's a real like crisis of like, should she just run or should she go back to help Justin Long? Justin Long, who we know is a piece of shit.
So there's like a little bit of like, don't go back to help that guy. Right. You know, but you know, also, like she doesn't know that and she's gone back. She goes back to help him.
And in fact, I think one of the clever aspects of the story is she, while she's escaping and she's, you know, she looks completely ravaged and she in many ways resembles a homeless person, somebody who might live in this neighborhood and she gets to a gas station and she encounters two police officers and she explains everything that's happened. And she's like, take me back to this house. There's someone trapped in this house. We need, I need you to help me.
And they drive her back to the house, but they don't really believe her. I mean, knock on the door a few times and nobody answers and they treat her like a vagrant. They treat her and she's not a white person and they treat her like shit. And they abandon her.
So she breaks back into the house herself. And when she goes back in, she attempts to make a valiant save of Justin Long's life. What happens after that? She gets back down to the basement.
Yeah. I mean, they, they, they're, they're, there's a whole thing with when she gets back to the house, she goes into her car and as she's about to either drive away or she's clearly like trying to decide what to do, she sees something off screen that we don't see in drives her car into this mama character. Right. Okay.
So basically like impaling the character, like the monster throwing it into the house and then goes and gets Justin long and as they come out, she's like shit. The monsters. The mother has disappeared. She's no longer impaled on the house.
Right. So they run off. Okay. Oh, fuck.
I forgot. There's a whole thing where she goes down as she goes down into the basement to get Justin Long. Justin Long has confronted the old man who's still alive. Oh, the original, the guy from the flashback.
He has escaped from mother's grasp. Okay. He's roaming through this corridor that he can't find anything. He discovers a door.
He hears a TV. And here's this man 30, 40 years later. Okay. You know, in feebold in bed.
All right. Can't speak. There are hundreds of video cassettes in the room, which are quickly learned and captured every terrible thing that he's done to these women over the years. We don't really see any of that, but it's very strongly implied.
Justin Long at first thinks that he needs to save this man that he has is having a problem. And then he quickly realizes where he is, which is that he's really in this man's pain then. Right. And the old man keeps gesturing for something on a side table, keeps gesturing and gesturing and gesturing.
Finally, Justin Long brings the table over to him, reaches into the drawer and pulls out the old man pulls out a gun. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Justin Long thinks the guy's going to kill him. It turns out that the guy can it's just because it's just because it's just because it's just because he's done or whether he's just on death's door. It's unclear. Yeah.
But again, very, this is like the Now Justin Long's got a gun. He's running through the halls trying to get out of there. Georgina Campbell is trying to get to him to help him. She plays character in his test, by the way.
She's trying to help him. They finally are like getting closer and closer. And he accidentally shoots her. He's like, you know, so then he drags her out of the house.
Okay. Okay. They're walking, but you know, he shot her, but at least he like helps her get out of the house and they're walking and walking and walking and they finally happened across the compound of this homeless guy living in this neighborhood in Detroit who goes on to explain a little bit about the like this guy. He's the monster.
She's the monster. She goes out at night. You know, but he suggests not only is she the daughter, but she is like the daughter of the daughter. Like there has been in breeding.
It is like an awful gnarly history of destruction and awfulness. And the movie, I think, totally again kind of flips again because then it becomes like a pure creature feature where mother arrives at the homeless person's den. He rip the mother rips off the homeless man's arm and kills the homeless man with it. Yeah.
And you can argue that he probably died with the arm ripping off. Right. Yeah. With his own disbody.
There's basically a chase sequence that goes up to the top of a water tower. Okay. And in the moment of truth where it's like Georgina Campbell's injured just along there. He reverts back to form and is like you I basically have to sacrifice you so that I can live.
The mother is so infatuated with Georgina Campbell who's been this, you know, very willing participant in the breastfeeding process. That he sort of shoved Georgina Campbell off the top of this water tower and the monster goes diving after her baby. Okay. The monster falls to the ground.
Georgina Campbell lands on the monster. Great. Justin Long goes down to investigate and is kind of like saying like, you know, I'm sorry I had to do it. I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Injured but still alive. And then the mother wakes up and crushes Justin Long's skull.
Oh, okay. They're pretty satisfying death. I guess it's mother wakes up and literally grabs his head and squeezes his eyes out with her thumbs. Yeah.
All right. It is a real like. Thank God. Like everyone cheering in the audience.
Okay. Got it. The thing with Justin Long character is and you know, I guess you could call this social commentary. He's clearly a rapist in the first part of the film where we first are introduced to him.
There is a little bit of ambiguity about whether what he actually did and the idea that he said she said in Hollywood. And there is some sort of like it's unclear and we like Justin Long right as an actor and so like in some ways were with him even though he seems like kind of a dipshit. And the more he talks about this incident, the more it's obvious that he's a piece of shit. He's done something really terrible.
At one point, he meets up with a friend in Detroit and the friend is like, Hey, man, you can tell me just just me and you like what really happened and he's drunk and he starts describing what happened. And it's clear that he's like a co-worker and he's done something terrible. Yeah, he took some convincing. Yeah.
And then when he gets home later that night and he calls her and leaves a voicemail and he like is drunkenly apologizing effectively for what he's done. And so as time goes on, he becomes a worse and worse guy. The more we get to know him. And the movie culminates in this ending.
Where he we learn like he would literally kill a woman to save himself in the face of monstrous death. And in fact, you know, he gets his justice. Like he is truly punished. Yeah, Georgina Campbell's character is still alive.
Mother is standing there gazing at her baby. Okay. This grown woman that she has come to adopt as her child and she wants to take care of her, but Georgina Campbell's character has the gun. Right.
And she puts mother out of her misery. And then it's a wide shot and will you still love me tomorrow starts playing? Stop it. Yep.
And the credits are going. Okay. That is Georgina Campbell, not unlike some of the great final girl shots of like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stuff. Dragging herself down the road as the sun is coming up.
She's been shot. She's been thrown off a water tower. She's been forced to suckle from this one's breasts. Sure.
And she survived. And it's just a whole lot of fun. It's a really, really fun movie. Okay.
Can I just, I want to ask you something really quickly. Yes. This is, this has been a really weird movie here. Yes.
Yes. This might be a top four movie, top three movie. Once we get to the end of it. Yeah.
I think this movie was incredible. It's been a really cool summer of this and nope and coming out of these movies and just being like, what the fuck were they trying to say with that? There's so much reference. Like it's not over.
It's not explicit. Nobody talks like they're on Twitter, but there's obviously stuff about gentrification about white flight, about toxic masculinity, about all these different things happening in this movie. And they are all under the surface. Like they're never like hitting you over the head.