Here we go. Flarragon. Flarragon. Welcome, cocks to the Flannosvere.
We are your Sigma hosts, Dan and Rob here to discuss the alpha. Yeah. Mike Flanagan, Catholic alpha, Mike Flanagan. Yeah.
Isn't there now a higher ranking than alpha? There's like. I think Sigma is thought of as higher. I probably should have flipped it.
OK. So Sigma is like the ultimate man. Yeah. It's sort of like your, yeah, it's like a more evolved alpha, I think.
I don't actually know because I want no part of it. Oh, you don't look into all this stuff and try to figure out which one you are? No, I don't. I don't.
Despite by the way, what do you think of your rock and new bod in the artwork for? I know. For Flannosvere. I just thought you took a regular old picture of me and put it up there.
The amount of yellow I had to make those pictures of us. Like the color correction on those is insane. I'm sure. Yeah.
Yeah. More yellow than I look in this light here that I can't figure out how to make normal. Yeah. Is that like one of those seasonal effects where it's like, I know you've been sad all year, but what if you shine this light in your eyes?
Does that help? What if you were blind? Yeah. You know, I had like a bluer light, which was great for this, but pages like I can't live like this.
I feel like I'm in a morgue. I understand it's horrible. It's horrible. Of course.
So horrible. You need warm lighting. Yeah. Am I going to have to get a ring light?
Ah, you're going to be a ring guy. I could be like a ring. Ooh, but a ring guy. I could wear a bunch of gaudy rings on my fingers.
Ring guy. I am going to be a ring guy. My new place that I'm moving into has one of those horrible Amazon ring doorbells. Oh, yeah.
Wait, so everyone get me around applause. I'm now complicit in the police state. Oh, who am I kidding? We all are.
Hey, what are you doing? Oh, talk about police. Police state. This part is a police state.
Who's cats? At fascist. Right. So we're talking this are Flanagan series.
Rob's Rob is left to go pet his cat. So I'll just OK. This is our Flanagan series. We're running through.
I guess most of it we skip the student films. We're doing all the studio, you know, the wide releases. The wide releases. That's the term.
And we're this week, we're talking about a big one. This is a film people love. I would call this his breakout. I guess.
I guess people are quite partial to 2013's Oculus. First appearance of his wife. Kate Siegel. He's such a wife guy.
He's such a wife guy. His wife Kate Siegel, the most Irish looking woman of all time, as Marisol Chavez. Oh, it's not her name. That is her name.
It's a real hilarious Baldwin situation over here. But they were not married at this point. No, they were not. No, they were not.
Oculus, people talk. Have you seen that? Have you seen that? Oculus or Oculus?
Or Oculus? Dan. No. As I said, I'm glad we didn't name the series that not only because it's a terrible name that requires you to know that the show is called King Me.
Also, King Me Presents the Flanos Fair, AKA Oculus. But also, this is a bad movie. It's not very good. Yeah, it's man.
So yeah, I remember when this movie came out, I remember seeing commercials for it. And I kind of wrote it off as a conjuring knockoff movie. Which it does feel like that. And man, having watched Mike Flanagan produce things and directed whatever, I was kind of excited to go back and see like, oh, what's he doing with him here or was haunted?
Yeah, right. And oh, man. The things that people complain about with Mike Flanagan now, I think are not problems now, but are glaring problems in this movie. For example.
Well, for example, just how much exposition everybody is just spilling it all times. Everybody is so over. The exposition monologue? That was on it.
Geez. Yeah. And it feels so forced in this where people fucking complain about Midnight Mass and how everybody has a monologue in there or whatever. Where I think in Midnight Mass, it's more of this sort of poetic thing.
This, it just feels like vomiting up exposition. Totally. Yeah, right. Midnight Mass, you're doing, it's like, it's character.
It's rooted in character. It is. It's always rooted in character. I think it also helps that like the cast in Midnight Mass is very talented.
Uh oh. And by the way, I do think this is the first time Karen Gillan used an American accent on screen. Because it is. It sure feels that way.
This is her first American film. I'm the way her first American production period. I am going to steal the evil mirror. I'm going to eat an American hamburger.
I've got apples to eat on the hour. Yeah. It's rough. Yeah, this is her first American role.
And that's pretty clear. I think Karen Gillan, well, honestly, I'm not sure. The only other movies I've seen are the Guardians movies. The first two, I haven't seen the third one.
And then I did see her when she was on Doctor Who before this, where I thought she was like charming. Yeah, she's perfectly charming. But on what is effectively a children's television program? Yes.
Right. A bunch of silly sci-fi stuff. And she's like, she plays the part of like, what is the other person that travels with the doctor called? It's like, I think it's like their pet human.
Something like that. Yeah, it's not that. I don't know what they call it. It's like a co-pilot or whatever.
It doesn't matter. Nurse? It's a physician's assistant. Scribe.
But yeah, I just. Like the other thing too. So Rory. Rory Cochran.
Cochran. Yeah. I said, Colkin. But Cochran.
Rory Cochran. He's an old one where I'm like, I've seen him be good in movies. Katie Sockoff. I really liked her in Battle Circle, actually, which I think a lot of people did.
And I don't think they're the problem in this movie. I really think it is the writing. It's a bad. The dialogue sucks.
The dialogue sucks. The dialogue sucks. It's bad throughout. Yeah.
And listen, I completely get the complaints with the Midnight Mass type stuff, where it's the overwritten, sort of like, sophomore philosophy kind of that style of writing. I have more sympathy for it because I think thematically, it makes a lot more sense. But this is something else entirely. I don't really.
It's not great dialogue. And I think the fact that I don't think Karen Gillens is a good actor, in general. Well, that's the thing. I honestly don't know.
Like I said, I saw her on Doctor Who, and I thought she was charming enough in this. I think she's bad. And the Guardians movies, I think she has one thing to do. And it's, I think that it's, yeah, I kind of think she's bad in those Guardians movies.
She's pretty bad, dude. She's just playing her robot. Or a cyborg person, whatever. But her like a ton of makeup.
And it feels like a very stilted performance. Totally. And I think to the very, very cockering point, he's not in good stuff. He does a thing.
And it's not like emotionally weighty or petty or anything like that. Yeah, I guess I am thinking of like Rory cockering movies from the 90s. Yeah, where he's confused. Yeah, I'm like, exactly.
And don't get me wrong. Like I like him in those movies. I like those movies. But it's not the, like not the guy I would call on for this assignment.
You know? So like because this feels like a conjuring, I mean, this feels like he got made because the conjuring was popular, right? Like the conjuring happened and everybody, you know, studios are like, give me all of these like haunted ghost story movies that you got. And in the conjuring, the dad is played by what's the guy?
Ronald. Office space, Rob. Oh, Ron Livingston? Ron Livingston, yeah, yeah.
Ron Livingston. And like Ron Livingston has like he can do like sort of like sad guy kind of shit. I didn't realize he was in that. That makes casting Rory cockering that much fun.
Like that's funny. Yeah. To get his count Ron Livingston. Exactly.
His point is life. Yes, exactly. But like Ron Livingston, I think, is better than Rory Cochrane. Yes.
It becomes, yeah, kind of clear here. But I don't know. What do you, what say you, Dan? I think the, I think like the big mistake here is like casting, like what we know about my finding it now.
He does like, he loves this sort of like literary, heady, not like horror movie, not conventional sort of like approach to horror, right? Very gothic, very sort of like simmering, not heavy on what we're going to say. Well, all these stories, they always feel very like sort of personal, you know? And so to cast, even in the case of like Katie Sackoff or something, it's like you're casting all these people who are in like genre stuff.
And I think that's the mistake is like everyone's trying to play it like it's like a straight horror movie. When in fact it should be more like, you know, I can't, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but like, you know, there's a movie about a trauma. And it should be treated accordingly, you know? It should be part of it too is just the story.
It's like, it's confusing and it doesn't mean anything that it's confusing. You know what I mean? Like, it feels like it's not confusing on purpose. Right.
Which sounds maybe weird, but you watch movies that are like, wait, I can't tell if this is like present day or past or if these people are real or ghosts or what is happening. And that's sort of the point is still like, as the viewer to be thrown off and like constantly guessing, you know, second guessing what you're seeing here, which is, you know, this movie does. And I think it's like a huge problem and a huge reason that the ending doesn't work at all. 100%.
The ending also, it doesn't even by the rules it sets, like where it's like the same, or no, you know, I guess we can give it credit where it's like, I don't think the ending works, but what I was gonna say is like, it's like the same thing playing itself out again. But the sort of like, I think what's supposed to be the clever twist is like, they actually, they actually already got out of it in the first place. Like the dad broke out of the spell to shoot himself. And in this one, the mirror just wins outright.
Sure. In the actual ending or whatever. But like, yeah, anyway, I think for me, the thing that bugs me is like the device of a mirror is like, it's a good, provocative sort of jumping off point. What if there was a haunted mirror?
Great. And like, which feels like a Stephen King thing. It does feel like a Stephen King thing. It also is just like, but like the idea of like a mirror reflecting back and then like the thing with like the shot of the cameras pointed at each other, that felt like foreshadowing of like, oh, it's just like infinite.
And it seems like he wants to do like a hall of mirrors thing where they get lost and never come out of it. Sure. But it never feels like it goes more than like one layer deep. And that's what makes it like, that's where it gets confusing.
It should feel like you're going deeper and it just feels like you're kind of like, I don't know, moving to different rooms in the house. Yeah. You know, like, and I think it's also the fact that it's like the same device over and over again where it's like, oh, you thought that was real? That was fake.
You thought that was real? That was fake. You thought you were outside? You're inside.
Yeah. So how do you want to talk about this? Because half like the movie does feel like it's split down the middle where it keeps jumping between like the past and the present, like right up until the credits, which is kind of annoying in and of itself. Yeah.
That seems like it's so much is dedicated to the past and I don't know. Yeah. It's frustrating because I feel like there's something in here and it's just too heady of an idea to like execute. Like this idea of like the past reflecting back in the present or whatever, like there's something there.
This just is not. Right. I mean, the fact that like it feels like there's almost a symmetry to everything that happened in the past and that is present, like the way that they keep, you know, it keeps going from like, you know, a present day shot of like, let's say the Tim, is that the boys? Tim, yeah.
Like a shot of him like looking towards the camera, right? And then the reverse shot is like of, you know, him as a little boy or, you know, Karen Gillins' character as a little girl. And then like, you know, now we're in the past again, right? And, you know, the past sort of like past characters or ghosts or memories or whatever are coming to the present, not in a real way, but in like these visions.
And it keeps like shifting perspective, but it does feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But it just, it's again, I think it's kind of, it's pretty confusing as to what is going on.
And I also think that the rules of the mirror are dumb and... Well, I think like, OK, that was something I kind of liked, which is like, again, this is like, I think something that's cooler as like an idea to throw out than something to actually put on screen, which is like the exposition dump ends up not mattering because the rules are Kaylee's assumptions about what the rules are. It's like her trying to like, you know, the sort of... It's clever.
Like it's all clever. It's just not a good movie where it's like, Kaylee, you know, like, we start out more like Tim is, Tim's, Kaylee's like kind of right. Tim has been like brainwashed by his therapist. There'll be brainwashed.
But like, he's basically been, he's convinced himself that the supernatural stuff they saw was like his, his flawed memory or whatever. Right. Kaylee on the other hand is taking this very like clinical approach to like, luring the ghost out and then dispatching it or whatever. And she's doing the same thing.
She's like applying rules and logic to this thing that they can't possibly understand. Right. So that's like a cool idea. But to have a spend 10 minutes listening to Karen Gillan in her bad American accent, explain what the cameras do, all the different timers she has set up.
Like at a certain point, like I get it, but it's diminishing returns. Yeah. Right. This is the part where, so, okay, Karen Gillan has a fiance.
The two of them, they go to an auction and this mirror, this haunted mirror from Karen Gillan's childhood, that is responsible for her father killing her mother and then himself. You know, they buy the mirror. She doesn't tell, you know, she does not tell her fiance what's going on here. Just, you know, that she wants this mirror.
So he's kind of, he's really out of the loop. And she's like, I found it and I'm going to destroy it. I have big plans on how I'm going to defeat this mirror. I've been thinking about it my whole life.
Whereas, right, Tim has been what seems like in therapy or in like a clinic for his entire life. Right. Yeah. So like the thing that we come to find out is like, after their parents died, Kayleigh was just kind of like put into the foster system and Tim was given like special care because he was holding the gun and presumably pulled the trigger on his father.
Right. When his father was shot. They think that, that right, Tim killed his father, that shot his father, right? Is that when crazy?
Shot his mom and then Tim shot him, which we come to find out is that like Tim was holding the gun to his father and his father like squeezed the trigger. Right. He like reaches out and takes, yeah, points the gun like directly at his heart and squeezes the trigger with like the boy, you know, young Tim's hand essentially. And then we seem like taken, taken away by like police as like a 10 year old and presumably put into right, like a.
The loving care of the state. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah. So there's this whole thing about like, you know, Tim had this, you know, he's been getting therapy for the past 20 years and you know, he's, you know, he's dealt with these things and he's had a support system where Karen Gillan has not and she's just been obsessing about this and all whatever, right.
And you know, Karen Gillan believes that these supernatural things have happened and he does not. He thinks that his father just snapped one day, killed his mom and then himself. So when, you know, Karen Gillan, you know, picks up Tim, gets out of the hospital, picks them up, they go out and she's like, I have them here and you know, you promised to, you know, come back and help me destroy it. Very similar to Stephen King's It as well.
You made a promise, we have to go back. Yeah. And then right when they go to the house and what is her name? Kaley.
Kaley. Yeah. This is weird. The main character in absentia is Kaley.
It is, right? It is, right? Kaley. Yeah.
But Kaley is like, yeah, I check out my setup here. I have two computers set up, hooked up to two cameras. I have these cameras over here. I have a dog that I'm going to try and sacrifice to lure the mirror out or the spirit from the mirror, whatever.
And then I have this fail safe that if we don't check this timer, you know, turn this timer every half hour or something, this huge like sort of pendulum with a spike comes swinging down from the ceiling into the mirror. Right. And the idea is like, what we come to learn is that as far as Kaley understands, like the mirror can control electricity, like lights went out in the house while they were living there. And then the fail safe, because it's just like a mechanical device that doesn't, it's just like a kitchen timer, right?
It's just clicking away because there's no electronic component. There's nothing the mirror can do to influence it. And it can also influence people one time when they were kids, they tried to break the mirror with golf clubs and the mirror made them miss it. Scary.
Yeah. But that's the other thing too, is like, yeah, you said it, like she feels so certain, I guess, of these like rules of the mirror. And like, you know, you can possibly understand, like, what the rules are without, you know, something much more well established. Right.
But again, I like, I don't mind that idea. I don't mind that jumping off point at all. Sure. Cause she's just like, she's, but we do need rules established at some point.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. No, I mean, to me, like, if you're going to, if you're saying, okay, this mirror is haunted, right?
You either need that. I am saying that. Right. We are saying that.
You need to establish what the rules are of the mirror. If you don't, then that becomes the point is that, you know, it's completely unknowable, which I also don't think that this movie goes for, or at least not hard enough in that direction if that was getting up. I so, okay. Just real quick sort of plot points here.
The mirror drives the parents, Alan and Marie insane, particularly Alan. It like, he is like the Jack Torrance of the movie, right? It's very constant. And it's a very conscious thing where like in interviews, Mike Flanagan is like, the mirror, he literally calls it a portable Overlook Hotel.
Sure. Which again, fine. That's, that's like a cool idea or whatever. It's like this portal to hell or whatever.
I'm good with the portal to hell. I liked it in absence. Yeah. Sure.
But in this, yeah, I, the Overlook Hotel is like this unknowable thing. It's like, these, these, like, it's not like one horrible thing keeps happening in different ways. It's just like you, but the rule, I guess, is just like, there are ghosts. Yes.
The past is like bleeding out of this building. And there are like, I think it just takes too long to get to the point where you're like, Oh, this is an unknowable horror of unknowable power. Sure. Like, in a, again, in absentia, we spend 30 seconds on that when Callie is just like listing her different theories on what's happening.
Yeah. And ultimately, you're just like, okay, I, like, that seems true based on the information we have. But by the end of it, you're like, something vast and terrible is happening here. Right.
Yes. Yes. Right. She spends right.
Maybe that's the problem here is that like, Karen Gillens is so certain of it. And ultimately proven wrong. But maybe, you know what also at the end, it still is this unknowable thing, right? This the mirror is unknowable.
We don't know anything else about the mirror, which is like, it also doesn't hint at a bigger picture, if that makes sense. Like the way that absentia is like, all right, Callie is like, she looks into the history and these people have gone missing and you know, there are there stories throughout time of people like just sort of disappearing and whatever, right? And then we come to find out that like, like when Callie is in that tunnel, and she's saying trade trade or whatever, right? The sound design and everything, it sounds like these tortured souls sort of swirling around, like hinting at a much bigger sort of thing.
Yeah, there's like a whole like macro cosmic hive of silverfish devouring people for all eternity. Correct. Right. Yeah.
Where this it's like, this thing is haunted as hell, man. And I think I know what the rules are. And then it's like, actually, you don't know what the rules are. The end, you know, yeah, totally.
All you get is just like, all you get are the like haunted visages of the people who've been killed by mirror. Yeah, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like in other movies where, you know, what's like the none or what's Annabelle and and Ouija, which we're going to talk about Ouija the sequel, because that's a flan jam. The Squeak Wall. Yeah.
But they're all like, Oh, here's the backstory of this thing, where like, you know, some sort of tortured soul and comes back and whatever, or they made a deal with a devil or the thing, whatever, we don't really get a backstory for this mirror, right? We just sort of know that it is responsible for killing people and other people have fallen victim to it. But that we don't know anything else about the mirror. I think that's a major problem in a movie where it's a haunted mirror is the antagonist.
Yes, I think it leans because again, like the idea of just like, we also we are on record as complaining about having too much back. Like that can be a killer for a horror movie. No, absolutely. But you gotta have what you gotta have is something to suggest that what you don't understand, like, you need a keyhole view of what you don't understand.
So that yeah, so that you're left to tease out in your own head, like, what could this possibly be? Right. Not knowing anything about it. Having Karen Gillens say, these are the rules.
And then for the movie to say no, they're not, but not to give you anything else to say like no, she was wrong by like, I that's like, I was left with like, oh, that wasn't scary at all, because I it's the same sort of thing. She got Bugs Bunny into getting an axe through her head, basically, like, yeah, just like a clever trickster got her. Yeah, like you think about like, you know, as a viewer, right, you watch the movie like Candyman, which is like silly in its own way. But there is that thing that you leave with and you're like, I'm not gonna say Candyman in the mirror five times.
That's crazy. That is not silly, by the way, that movie is scary as hell. It is scary. It's like silly in the way that it's like a horror movie from the early 90s about about a guy in a cool coat.
Yeah, and he's like, yeah, he's got a hook and he's like, be my victim. Be get it. It is the E. But you know, what I mean, like, it's there's like a lasting sort of horror with that where you're like, I know that Candyman isn't real, but why take that risk?
And it also like, I think it doesn't weird. This doesn't play on anybody's fears. Also, it's like, you're scared of like, oh, like, you know, like some weird old doll that you were like, wait, did I just see that move out of the corner of my eye? You know, like, that's the kind of shit that your brain like plays tricks on you, right?
Wait a second. Did that none of sharp teeth? Yeah, was it so? Actually mean?
Yeah, I got it. And what's funny too, is like, you would think like the object, like the scary thing being a mirror would be like, Oh, I have mirrors all over my house, like we all have like, mirrors, right? And it yeah, it just doesn't play on anything real. I think even the fact that it's like a big or nate old mirror makes that is another layer of like, I can't relate to this.
And again, I'm thinking about absentia when like, there's that first bathroom scene, right, where Cali's like, she's like brushing her teeth or something. And you hear like the frickin skittle Scatl. Yeah, buzz buzz in the in the shower, whatever. That's so much more affecting.
And that's all like shot from the mirror, right? Yes. Yeah. It, it implies that like, there's this other, right, like the mirror world or like, there's like, it implies stuff.
And frankly, the fact that it uses like a builder grade shitty bathroom medicine cabinet mirror makes it scarier. Like that house that was something I did really like about that movie is like, the house is not set designed like at all. It feels like they went into someone's house. Yes.
And that shot. It felt like, all right, this is Mike Flanagan's actual house. Yeah, truly. Like that, um, I don't know if you caught this, but there's like this big wall thing in the living room of that house, it's like this metal, it's like black boxes, it's like this.
You know what I'm talking about? Mike Ant has that in her house. Like, it is like, it's just like it feels real and like big, scary mirror just doesn't do it for me. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I don't know.
Like, I don't know. Again. So feels like, it feels like this, he needs to spend more time working on this one. Yeah.
Yeah. So, uh, Kelly, right? She like sets up all of these like, uh, say traps and ways to document the, yeah, right? She's got, she's got plants in every room because in, when they were kids, like the plants started dying mysteriously.
The reason they have the dog to sacrifice is because their dog went missing. Yeah. Um, presumably the dog went missing in the room that the mirror was in the mirror is in their dad's office, their, his home office, and there's like a, there's like a door to that office. So the mom locks the dog in the room with the, with the mirror, and then it presumably eats him.
We never see the ghost of the dog. No, we should have. We should have. And it should have barked once.
Like, you know, like when a dog is clearly doing it on command in a movie, it just like sits there for a second, then barks. It should. I mean, how fun would it have been if, you know, uh, I mean, well, talk about flantrobes here, uh, the glowing eyes. Ah, those frigging eyes.
The first appearance of moonlight. Yeah, glowing eyes. But if the dog also had glowing eyes, and when it did its bark on command, the bark was maybe in like a pitched down tone. Yeah.
Where it was just like, whoa, and like maybe slowed down a bit. Well, you know, wrap burp. Oh, what if Rick Sanchez was in the mirror? Okay.
And again, you refuse to watch any of the new seasons since that guy left the show. Yeah. Out of shame. Justin Royland Justin Royland.
Say his name. You put some respect. What nastole that guy's a real piece of shit. Of course he's a piece of shit.
He was on it from the start. Of course. Of course. That was like part of his thing was that he's like, I'm kind of a piece of shit.
And I get to make this whatever. It's like, yeah, oh, you are handpicked by Dan Harmon. What could go wrong? So, uh, Karen Gillan, right, she talks to a brother tries to convince him to come help her.
This was another thing that kind of irked me is that like the brother doesn't believe in the mirror having powers or whatever for such a what feels like a large portion of the movie. It goes on maybe a little too long of him denying it, you know, yeah, right? Yeah, we have to go through. This is yeah, we talk about the flannant intro of overwriting and like shoe hoarding in some sort of like theory he read about.
Where's like, do you know about the fuzzy brain theory or whatever it's called? Yeah, it's the fuzzy brain theory of psychology. What is it actually though? Do you remember the word fuzz?
I don't know something. That's all right. Yeah. Yeah, man, I got like the first half hour.
I was just like so sort of like what what's Karen Gillan gives us huge like rundown of her whole setup, which she does a true podcast for 15 minutes. Yeah, it feels like forever. At that point, I'm like, all right, that was kind of tough to watch. But all right, maybe after this, it'll start like really picking up, which honestly does it.
No, not at all. Yeah, this is for a little perspective on that scene if you haven't seen the movie, I need to be as two of those listed in the famous quotes section or whatever. Yeah. This is one of them.
Go for it. The next case of note is Alice Cardin of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 1943, neighbors reported hearing screens and loud bangs from the house. The police found the children drowned in a lot sister and Alice herself in Alice herself is in the nursery and both of her legs are completely shattered. Her left arm is broken in four places and six of her ribs are crushed.
And in her right hand is the large hammer she's been using to break her own bones. They find her justice. She's going to work on her skull. Her right arm though is completely unharmed because she needed it to wield the hammer.
They do I don't know, five, six of those a lot. Yeah. And there's no like the point is that she's being very like she's trying to be very clinical and objective and like outsmart the mirror or whatever. So there's no flourish to any of it.
And the only like punctuation for any of this is Tim being like, but this is ridiculous. Right? Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. So I think maybe they couldn't do this because it would have been too similar to other movies coming out at the same time. But it feels like this movie really should have just been like the story of them as kids. And you know, completely eliminate the whole grown up.
Destroy the mirror a bit. Yeah, that whole thing, that whole, you know, major, you know, the whole movie essentially, it should have been that the past it should have been like if Mike Flanagan wanted to tell a story about like a father going crazy because of this mirror and being tempted by, you know, sexy, what's her name? Marisol Chavez. Marisol Chavez.
Can you just imagine? Sorry. Sorry. The whole day.
Like once they revealed that her name is like Marisol. Yeah. And they kept like there's a you know, the wife Marie finds like a piece of paper that the dad is obsessively scrolling the name Marisol on. Yeah.
It's this movie is all work in No Play Makes Jack-a-Dole Boy moment. And it is not good. Yeah. But can you just like imagine someone like showing up to a Halloween, like a Halloween party in 2013, dressed like that character and someone's like, Oh, what are you supposed to be like?
She's like, Oh, I'm Marisol. Yeah. I'm Marisol Chavez. I'm Marisol from Oculus.
And I was like, who? But you know, we're like also Marisol cosplay at the Hark and. Sure. No, it, I don't know.
It, I think this would have been more effective as like a shining knockoff. If they just went like, you know, it's clear that he that's what he was going for, right? He says it in the interview with that the mirror is a portable over the hotel. Yeah.
Okay. And it drives the dad crazy and and the mom it gets to the mom and what if the movie was just the kids like having to, you know, they're locked in house with two parents who are trying to kill them and you know, they have to smart the mirror and parents and whatever else. Right. And at that point, it's like, a bit of like a shining gray matter mashup.
Sure. Right. Like I was thinking of gray matter because like the house just gets more and more like there's no food in the fridge like the power goes out. It's like this dereliction of parental responsibility, which again is like interesting too, because like then it is like instead of just having Tim have false memories of like, Oh, dad was cheating and abusing mom and that's what happened.
Like, then it's real, it just has like a supernatural component to it, which again is the shining, but at least it's not this. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think if they went in that direction, it could have been like, Oh, I could see where you know, he's getting influences from the shining word everybody also could have made it his own thing. Totally.
I mean, the the mirror thing alone, like makes it like that device, that's a good device. That that is the thing unto itself. If he if he feeds the dog to the mirror, like there are ways of just like, and hey, talk, talk about flanigan trope feeding a dog to an evil entity or something. Sure.
I guess in the I guess in absentia, they're feeding it to Doug Jones. Yes. More like dog more like dog Jones that guy's Jones and for a dog to eat. So yeah, the present day stuff.
So, Cali also has, she set up several different like alarms, you know, alarm goes off, you have to drink water, you have to eat something every hour on the hour her fiance calls her, right, which like, I don't know, the at one point, she's like, you know, you can't make phone calls inside the house because, you know, it could just be the mirror fucking with you. And you're not actually talking to the person that you think you are. And then she immediately talks to her fiance and she's like, there's only 50 50 chance that that was actually him. Yeah.
So like your, all right, well, that fails if that alarm, that thing is already, you know, void, that void, that's that's heard to say it. Yeah. Right. Like, why not have the skeptic be like, right?
Right. If his goal is to get her out of the house, like, when you want to attack it from the angle of like, well, what you're doing by the rules, you're setting, you're not even yes, right? Because like, that ends up being true. And again, part of the sort of like thing that the idea that he's playing here playing with here is like, each of them is kind of doing the same thing.
And like, he ends up, like he's right to tell her she's wrong. And she's right to tell him he's wrong. Yeah. So like really lean into that.
I don't know. Yeah. So like you said, there's so much of this movie that bounces back and forth between present and past, right? And we see like little bits of the past and then present day that, you know, Tim is like explaining the things away, right?
Like you said, he says that, you know, dad was cheating on mom and abusing her. And then we see like, maybe like maybe a perspective from the past where that could be true, right? Like the time the Kali as a child, like looks into her dad's office and sees a woman in there that's not her mom. But like, then she's gone.
And nobody knows where the fuck she went. And then, which that in and of itself too was like kind of a crazy thing. If Katie Sackoff is in the house with Rory Cochran and the idea that there's also a woman in the office, I don't know, sort of, you know, I have this woman in the house. Who is this woman?
You know, when Katie Sackoff before there's any supernatural elements in her mind, she's like, he's cheating on me with a woman in this house while I live in the walls. Yeah, like what are you talking about? Also, like the, I am kind of not convinced when Tim tries to explain it away and they show like his idea of what's happening where it's where the dad's like, Oh, shit, she's here. Go stand in the corner.
Yeah, you know, right? It's like, but I don't know. Maybe that's the point is to be like, he's wrong or whatever. But what is that?
I don't know. There's no point here. There's no real point. And then once once their mom sort of gets possessed, taken over by the mirror and starts chasing the kids around and like trying to kill them.
And then the dad comes out and like puts her in a chokehold and fucking passes her out. Like his so she's sort of like possessed by the mirror, right? And he's also been like, I guess he's not possessed by the mirror, but he's like, entranced by the mirror. He is that point.
The mirror is familiar. Yeah. So he like, I don't know, to me, I'm like, well, aren't you guys on the same team, man? Like, if the mirror wants Katie Sagg off to go, you know, not so and kill her kids.
And the mirror also wants to sort of entice Rory Cochran to be on its side. Aren't you both working for that mirror at that point? And then like, well, I when Rory Cochran like chains up his wife in in the bedroom there, and she's like completely feral. And like her teeth are all fucked up and she's eating like broken plates and shit like that.
A lot of broken porcelain in this movie. I'll say I'll say broken plates and what runs in the family, you know, yeah, I don't okay, so that all feels totally unearned. I think there's like a version of this where part of it, okay, okay, so you know how one of the things that Stephen King hates about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is that you can tell that Jack Nicholson's a piece of shit from Jump. Yes.
And that like he obviously broke his kids arm like, you know, it's like it's not subtle. I feel like Flanagan being a king guy. Yeah, wanted to honor like it feels like he wants to honor that original vision of The Shining here where Rory Cochran's character is like, he's not a bad guy, right? He's like kissing his wife's C sections, go on telling her she's so fucking hot.
Yeah. And like, you know, he's just like a he's like a computer programmer. He's not like a tortured writer or anything. He's I've made a new app that lets you know if all work and no play makes Jack but he yeah, yeah, there's the marital strife more like Marisol's strife.
It's all because he it's all because of the mirror, you know, there's no like, the only tension seems like totally one sided where just like Katie Sackoff's character is feeling down on herself because she's extremely thin and beautiful. That was like a major fucking problem for me. And maybe that's like, you know, maybe that's like male privilege or something. But when she's like, Oh my God, I feel like a grotesque monster.
I feel like an elephant man over here. Yeah, because of my, you know, C section scar. But otherwise I am absolutely gorgeous. Yeah.
So, so it feels unearned when she gets reduced to that because like he's not domineering in any way. Right. So for for him to be the one who doesn't like it doesn't ring true at all. And it doesn't like this the sort of like there's no like emotional weight to that like of the kids seeing that because what that should be in like I think the this sort of like vision of this movie that Mike finally probably has in his head.
Yeah, like it's it is about it's a story about kids growing up and like dealing with the shit from their childhood. Sure. And realizing that Oh God, our parents are like in their own weird fucked up power dynamic with each other. And they like kind of hate each other and dehumanize each other.
Right. Like if it's a bad marriage, let it be a bad marriage. Yes, yes. And that just doesn't really happen.
It things just go from like great to impossibly bad. Yes. With like I just don't buy the idea that like the mirror sort of like amplifies these things they don't like about themselves and each other. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I agree. Right. Right.
Yeah. It's like, you know, oh, it's the mirror shining. You know, you looking into the mirror and it's showing you like the ugliest parts of yourself. Yeah.
Right. And it's like it's not even I don't know. It ain't doing that. It's not doing it.
Hey, instead of their shining, they could have called this thing the reflecting they could have and they should have and they ought to have right. Yeah. So things. What'd you like about this movie?
Good question. Our answer. Kind of man. There's like bits.
It's tough because like, okay, in the present day, right, the fact that they never know what is actually real or happening, I think is kind of interesting in this like sort of fun house haunted mirror way. Okay. That like, okay, what's real? Like when Cali takes a broken piece of the plate and stabs her fiance in the neck with it, right?
And then like a second later, he calls and asks, you know, and says, all right, well, I'll call you in another hour, whatever. Okay, what's real? What's not real? You know, what are we doing here?
Kind of a fun idea. And like, like, like, you know, fun house haunted haunted fun house kind of way. That's that could be interesting. But again, it's not with the ending, having like, having Tim finally like sort of be convinced.
All right, the mirror is real. I, I have a chance to, you know, kill this mirror, basically, right? And he and he takes the timer and cranks it down to zero, and that the axe swings down and into the mirror, but Karen Gillin is standing in front of it. And it hits her in like the back of the neck, killing her.
And you know, and then he's like sort of left with like, Oh, I didn't like I didn't see their essentially. And just like, oh, clumsy. Yeah, but you're like, but everything has been like a question of whether or not it's real or not. And then like, like really up until, you know, the screen cuts the black and it says to written and directed by Mike Flanagan.
I'm like, wait, I don't know if this is actually real and happening or just sort of a figment of. Right, because there's also there's also that final shot where it's like, it's Karen Gillin's character, either as a girl or as an adult. Yeah, watching Tim played by Brendan Brenton Thwaites. I'm not gonna be saying that name.
That's too much. That's a mouthful. Yeah. Um, watching him as an adult be taken away in the cop car.
Yeah. But he also sees her as a ghost in the house. Right. So like that, it seems like it's supposed to be ambiguous where you can't tell if it's her as a girl or her as an adult.
But it wouldn't be but she just she did die or she didn't die. Right. Also, that final scene also, it's it's playing slightly like they keep cutting back and forth like symmetrically with, um, you know, president past and like after, um, you know, their dad shoots himself using, you know, his son's hand on the gun. Um, you know, the cops are all there and they're they're talking to young Callie and, uh, and then they're taking Tim away in the cop car, right?
They're like dragging away and he's like crying and screaming and saying like, no, you have to believe me. It was the mirror. It was the mirror and and it's, you know, uh, parallels with the present day where he's doing the exact same thing. No, it's the mirror is doing this and it's whatever.
Um, but then young Callie keeps, you know, you know, yelling out to him like, um, you know, like, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, whatever, I forget exactly how she says it, but it's like, um, you know, I promise we're gonna, you know, fight this thing and like whatever, you know, she keeps like promise you'll come back here and like all this stuff, right? I don't understand what the point of that is. If, if the ending is just like young Callie saying like, you promise, you know, you promised me that you would come back here and fight this thing when we get older and, you know, bigger. And then like in present day, he killed her with an axe to the head and he's being taken away.
And you're like, what is the point of him promising to come back and do this? Right. Because he is so not the focus of the movie. Right.
And that's really probably what the issue is. Like, yeah, yeah, we're with, we're with Kaylee from the beginning. And then she's the one who dies and he goes, he's seemingly having this whole journey, but none of it's from her fucking his fucking perspective. His perspective.
Right. And like, yeah, it's, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. If it was all from his perspective.
And it's him, like, okay, all right, like, you know, another fix for this movie, right, is, okay, you know, okay, we don't even, we don't get a bunch of the past stuff and we're focused on the present. And it's all from Tim's point of view. And if it's all from Tim's point of view, somebody who's been through a decade plus worth of therapy about all of this and come to terms with that, you know, it's not supernatural. And it's all, you know, it was all real, you know, it's bad cracks and kills them up.
So when he gets out, his sister is so convinced that it was supernatural. Yeah. And that, you know, and he like, the whole time he just doesn't believe it. And it's him trying to deal with his incortations, crazy sister, who is completely obsessed with this mirror.
Right. And then it ultimately, it shifts into like, Oh, it is actually real. And I don't even know what my own reality is now, because I've been convinced that it was right. Yes.
Right. Like, like, whereas with Kaley, the journey is like, I was, I've been right the whole time. I've been wrong about the particulars. The thing I was wrong about was like, that I thought I could beat this, which is like, also kind of interesting, because like from Tim's perspective, I feel like that's like more of a an established kind of story arc, a proven one, I'll say, like that works.