Episode #193 – War of the Worlds (2005)

What this episode covers

In the crowded alien-invading wastelands of horror podcasts, where every third microphone appears to be broadcasting from a basement illuminated by Halloween lights and unresolved childhood fears, there exists the delightfully unhinged institution known as My Bloody Podcast. It occupies that rare cultural space between a graduate seminar on horror cinema and three friends arguing in a video store that no longer exists. This week, for Episode #193, Bryan Kluger, Preston Barta, and Chelsea Nicole point their flashlights skyward toward Steven Spielberg’s 2005 alien panic attack, War of the Worlds. With Spielberg’s latest blockbuster, Disclosure Day, currently vacuuming up box-office dollars, the trio revisits what may be the director’s meanest film in a post-9/11 nightmare disguised as a summer popcorn movie. The conversation wanders through Tom Cruise’s spectacularly flawed dad, Tim Robbins’s bunker-dwelling chaos goblin, the terrifying alien tripods, and the film’s surprising appetite for violence. They also tackle America’s preferred method of first contact, which apparently involves yelling, explosives, and enough military hardware to invade Mars twice. As always, the real attraction isn’t whether the movie succeeds. It’s listening to three horror obsessives dissect why it lingers in our brains long after the credits roll. Because horror fans are a peculiar species. They are people capable of passionately defending killer dolls, haunted videotapes, and vampires who look as though they were discovered behind a Hot Topic in 2003. You can find My Bloody Podcast wherever podcasts lurk. It’s a reminder that great horror can be transcendent, bad horror can be fascinating, and arguing about both is often more entertaining than the movie itself. My Bloody Podcast iTunes My Bloody Podcast Spotify Thank you for listening. WRITTEN BY: BRYAN KLUGER Bryan Kluger is an entertainment critic, writer, and podcast host with a deep love for film, horror, and pop culture. His work has appeared in outlets such as Arts+Culture Magazine, High-Def Digest, Screen Rant, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, Fark, and Boomstick Comics. He hosts My Bloody Podcast and Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, along with a weekly radio show, where he brings sharp insight, humor, and an unabashed passion for movies to every conversation.

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