‘Resident Evil’ Absolutely Rips!

0:00Quick reminder, tickets go on sale tomorrow or today, depending on when you're listening to this, for the big picture live in San Francisco. We'll be at ACT's Tony Rambi Theater on Wednesday, October 21st, and tickets will be available Friday, September 18th, beginning at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Head to the wringer.com slash events for all the details. We'll see you there. I'm Sean Fennese and this is the Big Picture A Conversation Show about Evil. Resident Evil. On today's episode, Chris Ryan joins me to discuss one of our most anticipated movies of the year and the official kickoff of horror movie season. It's Zach Craigor's new adaptation of the long-running video game Resident Evil. It's a gory, goofy, and glorious movie and we will break it all down, as well as the history of horror comedy on the show. So, moving news right after this.

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2:04active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection. Do like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trampaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trampayaradio.com. Okay, Sierra. Is that brother? How are you? I'm really good. You're really feeling up for this? I'm still coming out on the post-resonable screening vibe. Like I'm still vibrating off of that. I do want to tell the story of our screening together and apart. But before we do that, I have some news that I want to talk to you about. Some of which I would consider very consequential, some of which feels minor. I think what I consider major, you might consider minor and vice versa. Oh, okay. So, I want to start with Noah Bomback, Noah Bomback, who has been making movies for the Netflix

3:06Corporation for the last eight years, four features and eight years on an exclusive deal. It was announced this morning he's leaving Netflix to go make a movie for clockwork, which is the new indie shingle imprint at Warner Brothers. I mean, at least for now, who knows what's going to happen with the merger? Yes. But clockwork, which is run by Christian Parks, who for years worked at Neon and is a figure in the LA movie scene, they made their mark initially by getting the restoration of Ken Russell's The Devils back in the theaters, which is coming in October. And they've announced a bunch of new projects with a bunch of new filmmakers over the next 14 months. Bomback's the next name on the list. You say what? I'm excited to see Noah Bomback tested by the box office. I think Iron Sharpens Iron in a way. And I have no way care whether his movies make $2 million or $25 million. But there is a Netflix cocoon around a group of directors. And I'd like to see them out on an even playing field and maybe singing for their supper

4:08a little bit more. Does that seem cruel to say? No. The first thing that it's coming in the aftermath of two of Bomback's more elevated productions, I would say, in White Noise and in J Kelly and two movies that were not received as well as a lot of his previous work. I think his first two movies for Netflix, My Roads Stories and a specially married story are very well-liked. Yes. And celebrated. I'm a fan of all four of those movies and I'm really on a short list of people. I think who are really at least interested in White Noise and J Kelly. But this is interesting to me for a variety of reasons because it feels like shifting ties in Netflix when it comes to the movie stuff. This comes at the same time that Bomback's partner Greta Gerwig, there were some new announcements of the Narnia film, which I think I'm an and I will talk about more on Monday. But it feels like Guillermo del Toro and David Fincher are the last two guys. And we're like in-house talent. Yes. And that inner ring, that inner circle of everything that they do comes out of Netflix and that they have a blank check to make whatever kind of a movie that they want.

5:10And they're, they seem content with that. And there's a new film administration there. And then this comes on the heels of news that Skydance Animation, which is owned by Paramount, of course, is now severing its deal or Netflix's severing its deal with Skydance Animation. So David Ellison is dragging that bit of property back after a couple of animated features that didn't totally work. Although they still have another one coming out this year called Ray Gunn from Brad Bird and John Lasseter who runs Skydance Animation. And I don't totally, I mean, I feel like I've been saying this for seven years, but I don't totally know what Netflix film is, right? Yeah. So I think that there's probably like more chapters to be written in this story. I was sounding a similarly concerned alarm about their TV strategy maybe 18 months ago. And I think they've gotten some different folks in there and started to realize that they've left a lot on the table by seating all of prestige to HBO and Apple. And I think that they're starting to do more and more projects. East of Eden is coming out.

6:10In October, it was announced that Zoe Kizan is going to do one some dove for Netflix. I think that they are looking at a lot of like literary projects to develop that seem like what would have traditionally been in HBO's Balliwick. What I want to know about clockwork is like how contingent is this on all of the things that are happening with WarnerMount. I don't know. Before we get into that, I feel like maybe Netflix is doing the inversion of what you're pointing out on the film side, where a lot of the money and time that was spent on prestige on the film side is now being moved toward your programmer style movies. You're whisper men, your people, we meet on vacation, the rip, the forthcoming animals from Ben Affleck, which is more of just like a, you know, it's a programmer. It's not a high prestige. It's a movie that didn't play film festivals. And maybe you can put Narnia in that basket as well. It's unclear to me like what that proposition actually represents for the future of Netflix so we will talk about it a little bit.

7:11But to your point about clockwork, it's really interesting because they've got a bunch of movies now. They've got the Newberry, Mary Broncy movie, Nasty, which stars a reunion with Rose Burn from, if I had legs I'd kick you and Jen Ortagas in it and it's produced by Marco Robbie's lucky chap. Then you've got Tiammo, which is Sean Baker's follow up to Anora. Yeah. Then you've got the Briggins of Rattle Creek, which is some heavy me and you core. Holy shit dude. Which is Park Chanwook's first English language film since Stoker written by S Craig Zoller starring this cast Austin Butler, Matthew McConaughey, Pedro Pascal, Adelex Archopolis in Tangway. Yeah. And Butler and Adele play Mary Couple in this. So, you know, that's four really exciting movies when you, when you tack on a new, no, a bomb back movie onto it. And it seems like all of these movies are coming probably in the next year and a half. What is Warner Mount happening or not happening mean for it? I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, either, I mean, it seems like HBO on the TV side rolls along and covered by nerves about whether or not they're going to be operating out of Nashville in 2028 or whatever.

8:14So I was asking you off off of Mike, like, oh, how much of this is like saber rattling with like the announcement that Ellison, it was essentially looking at office space and Nashville and was like seriously, you know, like filing paper. Suggesting that they're going to move Paramount to Tennessee. Uh, it's just hard for me to imagine a debt-laden company that is consolidating the Hollywood business map, being like what we also want to do is have an indie shingle that is like otor friendly. Yeah. There was one other thing I wanted. Well, I'll make a point about that though, because if if David Ellison is serious about 30 films a year, he's got to get all the not all those movies can be a hundred million dollar event films. Sure. Five million dollar movies that are being run by a studio, but that are getting relatively wide distribution. So you could make the case the clockwork is actually a savvier business model heading into then trying to make four sonic the hedgehog spin-offs in two years to meet some sort of quality that they create. Wait around from Matt Reeves to make Batman movies, right?

9:14That's right. So they've as they sort of are trying to decide like is the reward versus the risk with maybe some of the DC stuff after Supergirl. The only other interesting note with the bomb back thing is that if I read Matt Bell any correctly over the last couple of months, bomb back and Gerwig are currently mired in negotiations to get a really good payday to come back to Barbie. That's a Warner Brothers property. Correct. Uh, now bomb back is back with a part of Warner Brothers, but not doing Barbie with Warner Brothers. It's just interesting. Does one hand know what the other is doing? Is it kind of like usually it does? Yes, of course. Uh, I suspect that there's, I, I, the same thought across my mind and I think there's a little bit to that and it's reasonable to assume. And also no bomb back probably doesn't feel like he needs to make a $50 million proper Warner Brothers feature film. Sure. I mean, most of his movies are relatively scaled down and they fit nicely in this model. So I thought that that was fascinating. And this is also somewhat related to the Netflix film strategy long term, but it was announced

10:15this week that Quentin Tarantino is publishing another novel, a new novel, another cliff booth novel that is coming out on December 8th, which is between the Netflix, I max theatrical release of the further misadventures of Cliff Booth and the streaming release of the film, which is at the end of December. The log line of that book is the swinging 60s are long gone, but Clifford Booth keeps on keeping on War Hero stuntman Bartender, cinema projectionist with the occasional clandestine services for his friends. Oh, you know, I was just talking to Chuck Closterman on the watch about his book, Rock, which is coming out next week and everybody listening should should check that book out. It's awesome. I think it would actually really appeal to big picture listeners. And it's an alternative history of rock and roll if the velvet underground had basically usurped the Beatles in 1967 and become the biggest band. You know what I haven't really been thinking about with them further misadventures of Cliff Booth? Is the ripple effect of Manson stuff like of like whether or not this movie is going

11:16to engage with the idea that that happened at the end of one's funnertime in Hollywood, which is sort of a stupid lore question. Like I don't really care one way or the other, but is this a different America that this movie is made in? It's a great question. I mean, I believe this new film is set in 1977, which is eight years after the events of the first film. And so it's Star Wars coming out, you know, like I don't know in this world. Like it's totally unclear what could be in play. And the same goes for the book, which we don't really know what it's going to be, but obviously, Quentin is content to fuck with history and how we understand it. And so I look forward to that. I really liked the novelization of the movie that he wrote a few years back. Yeah, we did that together. We did. And we spoke with him about it. And that was a lot of fun. And so I will say though, the Cliff Booth thing in general is just bizarre. There's still not a trailer. There's a 12 second teaser that's available on YouTube. Something like that pulled down over the week. I think something that was not meant to be published was published somewhere.

12:17And we are. It's close. Two months out from the movie. I mean, the movie's coming out in two, this is a David Fincher Quentin Tarantino Brad Pitt movie coming out in two months on iMac screens over the Thanksgiving holiday. I don't know anybody who's seen it. I don't really know anything about it, other than who's in it and what the log line is. It's fascinating. I'll just say that based on our experience with Resident Evil, which had a teaser and a trailer, the screenings happening just like 48 hours before the movie is released, that I have changed my tune about like how much lead time I need to get excited about a movie. It's Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher. Completely. If they want to film like water running into an L.A. sewer, I'll probably be like, good movie. No, it's smart. And I'm just addicted to knowing things. I don't know what I don't know what to do about that. It's something that has become a big part of the show and just talking about what we're hearing about what's happening in the world. And I hear a lot now. That's the thing is like, I do, I hear way more now than I did 10 years ago. Yes, I'm wean horsey in, but I'm not a reporter.

13:19I'm just a person who is told things, not been told much about this one. So very, very curious to see what it's like. And obviously, I'll be there opening day. I was wondering about this because the tracking for digger has come out and it's pretty low. It is. I'm starting to lose my ability to like, I can tell how I feel about a movie based on a trailer. I can tell whether I think it's got it or it doesn't have it. But I'm starting to not really understand like the Resident Evil box office predictions are like crazy good. Yeah. Is that just we'll get into that conversation. But like, I'm starting to lose my ability to sort of the thing that everyone doesn't surprise me. Now, I think one, you've got Tom Cruise unrecognizable to you've got a very, um, or Nate production style that looks very unusual with a tone that's really hard to pull off in a like a strange lovey and satire. And I think people don't totally understand what the movie is about by watching the trailer. They were very circumspect about what the movie was for a very long period of time and confused people a little bit.

14:20Comedy in theaters these days is no sure thing and a little bit of a tough sell that on the posters. And they put it on the poster. So I think there are a variety of factors that are technically working against it. I mean, Inari too is not exactly the revenue notwithstanding a massive box office draw. So you put all that in a stew together and it's not stunning. To me, it's this is actually a movie where word of mouth and reviews really matters. If critics like it and the first wave of people that see it dig it, then you could see it having some likes. If not, it's going to feel like an awards play. You know, our buddy Zach Barron sat down with TC. He did. This week. I mean, what an astonishing get by him. Fascinating conversation. Have no clue what the man was speaking about. But Kudos to Zach for doing his damnedest together. Can you have any thoughts about what TC was talking about with Taylor at the chiefs game on Monday? Um, I mean, I have to assume it's Kenneth Walker's usage, right? And you like what a pullback. Uh, I don't know. I, I, I personally worry about what can happen when those two put their powers together. But I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about it.

15:21Cruise. I think he's banking on a best actor nomination. They might not be there. Yeah. We'll see. We shall see. It's a tough phrase this year. This tip is happening right now. Naming will be on the show on Monday to give us his full report. However, we are effectively the one year anniversary of obsession being acquired by Blumhouse universal focus out of tip last year for $15 million. Blumhouse has bought another movie for $10 million called River. Have you been following any of this? I have been from afar. So I give me, give me the download. Uh, this is a new movie that apparently the independent film company already had and gave up in an auction. It was like, uh, yes. But what was ready for sure? I think it was meant to be a shutter film and they showed it. And now because of some of the response to it, they brought it to the market and it stars Jane Levy and Jessica Roth to horror final girls of some of some note. And it follows three siblings who were stranded on a country boat who were stalked by a faceless killer. Let's do it. Good idea. Yeah.

16:21You're on stock on a boat and there's a killer coming after you. Interesting. Um, apparently this movie isn't getting nearly as good reviews. As obsession was, obsession was a real sensation. And it seems like maybe the programming at the midnight madness section of tip this year is maybe not as strong as it was last year. But um, I'm intrigued. You and I have been victims of a midnight madness, Delirium. Yeah. It's a case that affects many men around our age. We all go a little mad sometimes. You're there one 30 and you're like, that's best movie. I've seen five years. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun answer. We'll never live down the long shot screening or atomic bond or any number of movies we can recall from ourselves. I'm really a atomic fly. Uh, okay. Last bit of news, very CR-coded. John Legg was on mode joins Miami Vice 85. Now I am not really a Miami Vice expert. Um, I'm anticipating the film as a Joseph Kaczynski fan. What does this mean? Who was John Legg was on mode playing? Is this good? I think the fact that it's called Miami Vice 85 is focused on the 85. So Daniel Orie wrote the script.

17:21It is set in the heyday of Coke Miami and also the peak of Miami Vice as a TV show. I, I am venturing a guess that John Legg was almost playing Calderon, who is the legendary drug dealer cartel leader in the first season, I believe. Uh, second season, maybe of Miami Vice got a two part episode Calderon's return. I wonder whether or not they are pulling from that story. I am so excited for this movie on a variety of levels. Is it a, is it a good idea to treat this faithfully as IP? I think that they'll probably pull from it, but I don't think they're going to recreate the two part episode. I think it might just be a drug dealer is targeting Miami Vice cops. Um, I have also heard one more casting rumor that I'm very excited about. And so much like you won't be sharing it. People are coming to be there telling me things, but only about just vice cops.

18:23Yeah. They're vice cops calling you saying, oh, they're like, Hey, you know, you were driving perfectly. I just wanted to let you know. I saw your message through the window through the windshield. And I thought I sure had to see how's about Alden Aaron right getting cast. You can go on with your day. Well, you were right that he's not playing the villain in the movie that obviously he's playing a different kind of part. Um, yeah, I'm looking forward to this movie too. I've seen Miami Vice episodes, but I don't have the facility with that world like that you do or that build us. Yeah, it's a week to we get show. So it's not it. And if I'm really a necessary experience to go through and be like, did, did something happen in episode three that affects 11, but there are some serialized storylines and call it on us is one of the big ones. I still like to also point out there is like evil crock it for a year where he like, you know, like loses it. Yeah, like Bizarro Superman. Kind of. Yeah. I don't know. Hopefully they don't pivot to that in the first film. I don't think so. That would be confusing. Did we get any confirmation on white tubs black crocket?

19:25Like is that in place? That was just a little CR theory. I threw that out. Okay. I hand out winners. And I don't know if that's going to come true. I think we may get. I think we're these are the guys that are playing. Can you really put Michael B. Jordan's name behind Austin Butler's name on the poster? I just may have a more prominent role than crocket or a 50 50 part. Tubs is revenge. Yeah, Tubs is revenge. Okay. Let's talk about Resident Evil. Okay. Let me give you a little primer, primer for the audience at home. So this is the new film from Zach Kregoritz is third feature film as director of the movie's co-written by Shay Hatton. It's based on the 1996 Capcom game for PlayStation called Resident Evil, which is that many sequels and spin-offs. This is the eighth film adaptation of this game series, the first six or Miele-Yovic which Paul W. S. Anderson joins. I love her work. Talented actress, not a big fan of those films personally, but they were pretty successful and over those six movies they made over a billion dollars and have a cult following.

20:27They have a following for sure. There was a film in 2021 called Welcome to Raccoon City that Johannes Roberts made that did not lift off, especially because it was released during the pandemic and people didn't like it. So this is a reboot of a reboot. Steven and Mell, is it that one? Yes. I'm more faithful to some of the core characters from the game than this one is. This one is sort of inspired by not a strong adaptation featuring characters from the game. Couple of notes about it. One, the director of photography of this movie is 70-year-old Derrius Wolski, who is best known, I think recently for his work with Ridley Scott, but who is really in his The Crow Dark City bag in this movie. Ryan and Hayes Holiday are back doing the score. I love the score of this movie. Austin Abrams is our star. He's one of the only people we really see in this film who's not a zombie. Callie Reese, Paul Walter, and a few surprises are also in the film. The logline is as follows. Brian, a medical career, is in the process of making a delivery to Raccoon City General

21:28Hospital when an outbreak forces him to fight for survival. Now, Zach Kregger was on the show last year for weapons. I took a little bit of an attitude with him. I have some regrets about the attitude I took, but I was like, dude, why are you making a franchise movie? You just made weapons. This is incredible to do an original story that we didn't know it at the time, but I knew it would be such a success because I saw the response to the movie the first two times I saw it. What he said is, this is not going to be at all barbarian and weapons. It's going to be a rock'n's, sock'n'm. It's for me to play and turn my brain off and just make an evil dead two-style movie and get crazy with the camera. It's a weird, fun, wild story. I'm doing it because I think this movie is going to be fucking awesome. Now, you and I went to go see the movie at a screening at Century City earlier this week. As they often do, they put us to the two screening rooms, room one and room two. You texted me, you said, we're here.

22:29We're holding a seat for you. You're sitting in room one. Then they handed me my card and they said, you're in room two. I tried to sneak into room one and they said, no, you have to go into room two. They were very strict about it. I thought that was strange. Nevertheless, I had a nice time sat with Mallory and Joanna at the screening. As soon as the movie ended, I walked out of the screening and we caught eyes and we both were wide eyed and we knew we got one. Something had happened. There was a moment of great connection. It's not surprising that you and I would like a movie like this. We've been thinking about seeing this movie for a while. I ask you now, why were you so wide eyed when I came out of that screening? Because I hadn't just experienced 90 minutes of feeling completely present with a work of art. If that's how you want to describe this and maybe Zach Kragger wouldn't because he's talking about it as like a thrill ride, I completely lost myself in this movie. It's so fucking awesome. It made me feel it really did grab that feeling of like youthful, like wonder at being inside

23:33of a movie. And I think I understand some of the mechanics of why that worked. Because I think rather than being IP as in like we're going to adapt the lore and we're really about servicing like all the fans who are out there of this franchise. It's not that, but it's not a Trojan horse. It is not like I kind of pulled a fast one where I went into Sony and talked them into letting me do this, but what it's really about is this. It's not about that either. It's about what would happen for medical career in a zombie with his car and then had to fight for his life through the craziest fucking night ever. And it rules. I want to be like I have so many things to say about this movie and why I think it works. But like do you want to laugh? Do you want to almost puke? Do you want to go crazy with fear? Like do you want to feel every emotion you can feel as a person? Like this movie does it in 87 minutes. It's wonderful. I cannot remember the last time I was in a movie and I see so many goddamn movies, but

24:37I cannot remember the last time I was in a movie and felt God, this is moving too fast. I don't want this to end. Every movie feels too long in 2026. This movie is about 87 minutes and it is a go-go-go machine. I am not a Resident Evil player. So I'm not somebody who is watching the movie looking for lore, looking for Easter eggs, hoping to spot things. I said you have pointed this out to me and this is something that I think Zach was attempting to accomplish and for me it feels like it works. It does give you the feeling of trying to play the game. And maybe trying to play the game for the first time where you don't really know what you're doing. You're not a trained operative. You're not someone who's ever held a gun before. You're certainly not somebody who's ever seen a zombie before and you're terrified of the dark and what might be around the corner. It's such a great evocation of that while also having a regular guy charm and sense of humor to it that is extremely difficult to pull off. Insane. Here's the thing though. I think the reason why the central performance of the movie and the movie itself works is

25:42that what this guy experiences is so insanely traumatizing like by any any factor of the imagination. But the way he reacts to it is the way that you react to it if you were playing the video game where you're like, oh my god, did I just fucking shoot that thing? That's how Austin Abrams reacts to doing it. And it's like you're alarmed. Uh huh. And you're like, that's weird. I just did that. But it's not like now I need to go process what has happened to me and I can't believe that like I thought I was going to be a father and now I'm a killer and all like it has nothing to do with that. It's like that weird. I'm I've had four coffees over the course of the day and now I've had three beers over the course of the night and I'm three cigarettes in and I'm playing Max Payne and I'm unloading on duty. Yeah. But like I feel catharsis, but I also feel shame. And that's what's happening in this movie. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like the experience of playing a video game rather than the adaptation of the

26:44video. I read it a little bit differently than that, but it's it's connected, which is that I found that Abrams is character is sort of it's sort of a coping mechanism because of the absurdity of the circumstances. The way that you would think about if you were just a guy as you are a man who records 2.2 podcasts per day and goes home and then is confronted with a zombie apocalypse. You wouldn't be like you certainly wouldn't be thinking about your own trauma. No. And you probably you being you and your Abramsian, I would say in some ways. Oh, nice of you. Would probably be using your sense of humor to deflect from the horror of everything. And I I feels like this is what this guy is doing a little bit where every time something happens and some wow shit happens in this movie. He witnesses some grotesque bizarre terrifying things and his subject to like crazy violence and all sorts of outlandish gore. But he there's always like it and it's not a Ryan Reynolds style quit.

27:46It's not good. It's not good. But it is funny. And then there's the secondary thing and some of this I presume is you know the Kregger who was in the way as kids you know and is a you know long time comedy person really understands comic timing for not just somebody having a funny line, but the sequencing of a moment or how gore can be comedic versus how it can be terrifying or the way that a body should land and what scary versus what makes you laugh. And then that thing and I talk about this all the time when we do our horror episodes that you know they're the union between those two feelings is so tight and that whenever I see something that I find really scary and disgusting I always laugh at it. I never close my eyes. I never look away. I'm never really even grossed out. It just I have an involuntary chuckle when I see somebody really get that feeling out of me. And at this moment in time he's the goat of that thing. I mean he's the best doing that thing. He's also pushing that that incredible horror tension of like no, no, please don't, please

28:50don't, but actually please do. Yes, give it to me. Yes. You know like I believe we call that the the dean waiters. Yeah. But there is the the moment where you're like there are several moments in this movie where you're like, well, that would be beyond the pale. He can't do that. Right. Like this can't happen. This can't happen. He's not going to go into that room. But I really want him to go in there. And he always goes in there. We'll start waiting at the spoiler territory by getting into this. But this is one of my absolute favorite things about this movie is that it breaks every rule that you know that filmmakers are told when you're making a conventional studio movie that there are certain things that are off limits off limits, animal death, child death, babies, what happens to your hero and how the sense of resolution versus no resolution. All of these big ideas that are this kind of dogma of movie making. This movie is like fuck all that dogma and fuck that dog.

29:50You know, I don't know that there's a selfless act in this movie. No. In fact, every time one of the characters attempts that they pay for it, they really pay for it. I mean, there are gestures towards it. I think that the character of Brian is a good dude, you know, and he does have an emotional arc in the movie that I think pays off really well, but is not, is not, none of that like psycho babble. You're talking about it. It kind of reminded me a lot of people have compared this character and this performance to Bruce Campbell and evil dead. And I think that's a wonderful. He's not as cool and he's not as accomplished with a gun, but he kind of reminded me a little John McClain at times. Oh, interesting. Where a lot of the humor was manufactured out of like this experience. Right. Now, there's a lot more story to die hard and there's a lot more stuff for him to be reacting to and he's obviously like a selfless character, even though he's just trying to save his wife, but like he's also trying to save everybody else and. No, it's true. It like in die hard too. And he's like same shit happened to the same guy twice.

30:51You know, it's like, it's got that same energy to me. The actor that Abrams reminding me of most is Michael J. Fox and back to the future. Now, back to the future is not a horror movie, but that feeling of like, whoa, this little guy who's all so spirited and a little bit snarky, but a little bit sweet. And he keeps finding himself in this ridiculously outlandish situations. But you know what? He's kind of got the gumption to pull it off. And that's that's rare. You know, like to be in the Michael J. Fox conversation. And then the other thing too is I don't know if Zach was thinking about this when he was making the movie, but there's so much Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to me in the design of the movie and the idea of the sort of like slip and fall in there. Do well silent film star who you're rooting for. But he's also got as a as a he is instantly one of my favorite runners in movie history. And he spends most of the movie running. He does. And that's another thing about the movie that is so special is and you can see in that that the comments is actually our last year when he was making the movie. He's just having a ball with what he can do with the camera in a way that I think a

31:53lot of these movies don't usually exploit in ways that I find exciting. Some of it is as you pointed out what's in the darkness and what's in the doorway. And we're like, we're shouldn't we go that we know we're going to go and some of it is. The camera not just being a perspective of a character's eye, but how you what you fear for the character. And the way that the camera moves around the character to make us the most scared we can be while waiting for something to happen. And there are times when he uses very conventional jump scare tactics where you don't see something out of a corner and then it pops up in someone's face. But then there are other times where it's different though. I mean, we could start talking about some of the actual sequences if you want because it's hard to describe this without getting to into spoilery territory. But in one of the first set pieces. Ryan is as hit a woman in that this isn't the trailer. So he hits this woman on the I see mountain road is got a try and help her and a cop comes long.

32:53And the cop is like, did you strike this one? He's just like, yes, but I also have to make a very important medical delivery. So like, can I can we talk about this? You know, a little bit later. And the cop is like, follow me. We're going to go to the hospital. She's going to get help. You're going to make your delivery cops car pretty soon flips over because the woman in the car is obviously is obvious. The ensuing action sequence and shootout that happens. I kind of want to say I've never seen something like this before, even though I have seen so many car accidents and so many shootouts evolving out of car accidents. But the specific way he uses POV and the amount of times in that I'm like, she's on the roof. No, she's not on the roof. Where is she? Did she go back around yet? Wait, she's somewhere like you're just you're so wrong footed 15 times. And also they do an amazing job of being like, he's not like I've never seen a gun before, but he's like, I'm never fired one. He crucially plays video games. So he knows the mechanics. He's like, where the fucking safety knows what is safety.

33:55That's right. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know everything about them. He just knows like the the cliff notes of guns. And it's a movie that nods at all of the notes you might feel while watching a horror movie. No service on your cell phone. That somewhere where a car won't start it. You don't know why. The safety on the gun, which comes up multiple times. These are all tropes that we sometimes dinghore movies for for being like, oh, come on. But because Abrams' character has such a sense of humor about it, it works so well. One of the things that's really cool about playing Resident Evil, lots of people love it for horror, lots of people love it just because like you find some cheat code in the back of a gaming magazine and just get yourself unlimited ammo and just unload on dudes. It's got a lot of puzzles. And that was something I really responded to in this movie is how many times he goes into a house and needs to find the bullets. So where does he look? Or he's trying to get out of a house, but there's a lock and how does he get this lock off? And sometimes it's played for laughs. And sometimes it's actually like this inventive detective stuff.

34:57But in terms of being an adaptation, I thought it it did have some of the spirit of the feeling of playing the game. It does. You know, we watched a playthrough yesterday. Did you? I'd like to just to get the vibe of the game. Yeah. Not the whole thing. I didn't sit for an hour quietly by myself. So clear comes. Yeah. I'm aware of that. And you know, there's some people online who are very mad. This isn't Leon's movie or whatever. I could care less about that. But the thing is, it did remind me of course, I played a lot of games like Resident Evil, which is a third person shooter. Sure. You're in control, but there's sort, there's slow. You know, the pace is only as fast as you can make it by moving through each space in the appropriate amount of time, shooting enough zombies, discovering the right doorway to go into acquire whatever talisman you need, whether it be bullets or some sort of key that helps you go somewhere. The great thing about movies and the reason why a movie can always elevate a video game is because it can go faster.

35:59It can get you more involved more quickly in a different kind of way. In a way that I think is more of a cortisol spike rather than that sort of like, how would you describe the feeling of shooting up a million zombies while playing the game? It's more of a muted experience. It's like a dulled pleasure. Yeah. Whereas movies are... Enter drinky. You know, like, you know it's bad for you, but you're kind of like, I need this to sustain kind of. And the other thing, of course, in a movie is, I want to see what happens next. I can't wait to see where this goes. I'm so curious about this. And yet the movie also dispenses with that in a very interesting way. So let's just put a big spoiler warning around the rest of this conversation. For anybody who doesn't want to hear anything else about Resident Evil, I think it has our highest recommendation, fair to say. One of my favorite films of the year, you should see it as soon as possible. So halfway through the... Well, two things. One, the title credits don't appear until after the 20-minute mark, after that sequence that you described of the car flipping, the police cruiser flipping.

37:03And most of the trailer is drawn from that first time. That's right. We saw a tease of the movie at Cinemacon in April, and they showed us about five minutes from that part of the movie. And what I thought of with that scene was sort of like if they had shown us the crime that happens at the very beginning of Fargo, that Marge Gunderson arrives at, it almost is like he's recreating that. So I wanted to ask you how you feel about this being a snowbound raccoon city story. If that means anything to you, if it matters, because I guess it's not similar to how this begins. I think it... I'm sure it had some storytelling value to Craig or beyond this, but blood just looks awesome on the snow. That's right. Snow horror is cool. That's why we wet down streets. You know, that's why sometimes we just do things because they look good. Yeah, it seems like it would have been a motherfucker to make this move. Sounds like this was for as much as he's like a rock and sock. I'm good. It sounds like he was awake for seven months in a pod. Yeah, yeah. It seems really challenging. He pointed out an interview with THR that once you step in snow, how do you erase those

38:09steps so you can redo a take? Yeah. I don't know. I guess you can clean it up in digital. But yeah, I mean, the movie also gives you a confrontation with a character. And Abrams' character does get bit about halfway through the movie. And when he gets bit, I was like, okay, this is a nihilist paradise. Yes. Like, this is not going to be a happy movie. And I felt a great sense of relief about that. I find it quite annoying on horror movies. They're like, but everything's okay at the end. I don't think that that's actually what the genre is really about. It doesn't mean that, you know, Laurie Strode can't overcome Michael Myers, but at the end of it, she's usually pretty destroyed. I mean, he can't be the final girl if there's only one guy, you know what I mean? Like, it made sense to me that there's the body count can only come from one place as far as we know. There's like a great, when he gets bit, he gets bit by a little girl.

39:09And there is like a brief second when Craigur shows us that this person is human and it's like, there was a quick second. I was like, is this going to be fucking well, from Cub again? Is she going to get on the journey with him? He's going to spend the entire movie like taking care of a seven year old in a zombie apocalypse. Like, that's not what I was told, you know, and he does the exact opposite. Yes, he does. He blows that fucking girl's head off. I wanted to stand in a plot as the father of a daughter. I salute that choice because whatever these sacred cows are with it's a fucking resident evil movie. Like if you're going to do it, do it. Well, they also, they were a real of the girl. So she's like hiding in a RV's bathroom stall. And he's just like, oh, yes, like you can even tell like he's like another human being. This is amazing. Yes. And then the camera pans down and she has a genetically mutated lizard foot that is basically tentacles swirling around that eventually leap out at Austin Abrams as does this girl who turns into the dog from the thing.

40:11And you're just like, fuck, yes, brother. Like you did it. Like you, you, you completely tricked me on that. Like I thought that that was like probably where the movie is like jumps up even into this. Elevator. I agree. It's the first thing that happens in the movie that is an indicated in the trailer that you're like, oh, so that's what you had in your bag. Yeah. In the previous sequence, after he evades the zombie woman who he hits with his car, and the police officer has been killed, he goes to a farmhouse. And there he looks for he finds a shotgun. He finds an old man who's been infected who attacks him. There's a very violent, explosive moment with the shotgun. Then the woman who he's hit comes back to life. We see this incredible. What I'll call a Craig or S shot of a racing down a hill with no shoes on in a dress ferociously coming toward the house as fast as she can. While he is scurrying to find.

41:13We hear her shot gun shells. Shotgun shells. Sound design in this movie is excellent. The sense of, again, the sense of pace, the sense of like the ticking clock is always going against Brian. That whole sequence is really, really exciting and I like it a lot. However, it is not really anything new. It's not really anything you have been seen before. You can see the homage to Carpenters, the thing in all this part, the same goes for the dog that he encounters at the barn. All of that stuff is really fun and really well executed. But it's just like, it's just table setting. I think because that's the only stuff we had seen through the first 25 minutes or so, I was like, okay, cool. What else you got? You're right. When we get into Abrams character who thinks he's going to be able to drive through a gate that is padlocked. The car hilariously gets caught in the gate, the giant truck, the first of many padlocks that stymie him throughout this movie. Then he has to walk through the tunnel into that RV that you described. The movie, you know, at about the halfway mark, it goes to another place.

42:14And it really takes off. It takes its safety off and it gets really fucking crazy. And yet the whole time I was laughing and I feel like people were starting to feel like they could laugh at this point because it's not just that scary horror laugh. It is actually funny as well. In the screening room that I was in, full theater, mixture of like, you know, I, you know, people critics and probably like fans and folks who had gotten invitations. When he comes across the little girl in the RV, she's adorable. She's like scared kid. Someone shouted out, kill it. And that like broke the seal in the theater. And I think everybody was just like, ah, that's what we're doing today. It just was like people laughing. And I think that the thing that makes this movie so good, I can't wait to see it again. I also can't wait to watch it alone because I want to see how it plays when I'm not

43:16being encouraged to laugh at certain things. Like for instance, Abrams, a couple of times this movie lets out like basically a scared squeal. Yes. He screams like a girl. Yeah. Kind of purposefully. It got laughs. But I was like, I'd probably scream like that too. You know what I mean? If I had to shoot an old man in the head and then his body went into the body of another woman I had killed and they formed a giant snowball of monster, I'd probably be pretty nervous and screaming and squealing. So it's interesting to watch it in that group format and kind of be like, what are we laughing at versus what's just like and terrifying? Well, I had this really funny experience of watching it because I watched it with sitting right next to Mallory. And it was like four movies deep on her horror experience. She just started watching horror movies. And she's only really been watching movies that have been made in the last few years. And there's something so funny because this movie, you know, you've already mentioned Bruce Campbell, Craig or Sites Evil Dead 2.

44:17It's very obvious the way that Carpenter looms over a movie like this. And there are a lot of other strands that you could pull. You could pull the Romero Zombie movies. You could pull 28 days later. You could pull. Alien. The tentacle stuff has some possession in it. Like there's a lot of Kronenberg bodies. Body horror. It's extremely disgusting at times. And that's a fun way to watch the movie. Like to me, and it didn't feel like it was homage for homage to sake. It wasn't blenderized. It wasn't a synthesis of stuff. But it was acknowledging that it's part of a lineage of something. But Mallory doesn't know that anything's done. So like, I'm kind of cracking up at the dog in the beginning of the movie. And she was just devastated. And at the same time, that dog killed at the beginning of the movie, it gives you license to accept what kind of movie it is. If you're not on board with it, I would say if you didn't like that scene, she may be walk out of the movie. It's not going to be for you.

45:18Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a couple of scenes. Look, if you're scared of something, he's going to find it in this movie. Like, I don't like rats. And there's about one of the more gross rat scenes I've seen in a really long time in this movie. The whole sequence is absolutely disgusting. I don't know how much in, you know, when we talked about Barbarian on the pod, we very famously just recapped it from it. Recapped the whole movie for Amanda. And one of the magical things about an 87 minute movie is that you can really remember everything that's happened. And you texted me immediately after the movie and you just sent me 12 beats. There's just the 12 scenes from the movie. And I was thinking about the exact same act on the way home to prepare for our conversation. And I wouldn't say it's the most sophisticated movie analysis to say, and then this happened and then this happened. But he makes movies that make you want to think about the movie that way. And I really feel like that's a compliment to his work because weapons operated very similarly. And it was harder to do because of the way that he chopped the story into different perspectives.

46:20And he told it through different characters eyes across the timeline. This movie is as linear as they come. It's just through this guy's eyes the entire time. Honestly, I started by just trying to write down my favorite sequences and then I realized I think I can write down the whole movie from here. It reminded me of trying to prep for the bookie nights rewatchables. Or I was like, most rewatchable scene is every scene, you know, like there's just not, there's no fat here. But there's like, you know, suicide jumpers, maternity award, barf man, rat got you know, like rat guy, it's like the things you're writing down are not. And this is when Brian realizes that the only way for him to survive is for him to help other survive. Like there's no, there's no story. Yes. There's one expository scene with Paul Walter, how's there? There or yes, too, because if you count the end and there are two scenes of Brian trying to communicate with his girlfriend who he's having an argument with at the beginning of the movie over the course of the, over the course of the phone. Rather than that, you were asked to draw as much or as little out of this film about what

47:26it's about as you want. And honestly, why are more movies not like this, especially genre movies? Why are we so worried about psychologizing our characters and having them reckon with what's happened to them or what they've done? Yeah. There can be a little bit of it in this movie and there's one sequence near the very end of the film before he waiting outside of an elevator where he literally records a voice note and reflects on the one thing he did that he regrets. And he's done some heinous stuff in this movie to stay alive, but the one thing that he regrets, which is personal and sincere and specific and feels rooted in some real life experience. But the rest of the movie is just incident. Also, that confessional moment is immediately played as a joke because the intercom starts and is like, hey, dude. Yeah. I've been watching him. Yeah. Crying guy. Can you, can you, can you see intercom? I'm curious how you feel as somebody who is more familiar with the games. When the movie starts to sort of acknowledge its resident evilness, when Paul Walter

48:29Howeser and Kelly Reese's characters show up, when it becomes clear that the umbrella corporation is responsible for this outbreak, when it becomes clear that the package is in fact not say a child's heart or an older woman's liver, but is part of a potential antidote to that? Yeah. Did you like that stuff? Yeah. I thought I did not go back through and play any of the games. So I don't want to call myself any kind of scholar. I have played resident evil over the course of my life a couple of times. I happened to really like the one that's set in Spain where the guy is trying to rescue the president's daughter from a cult. That one's cool. Right. I was reading about this last night for, yeah. But you're always about special ops. Yeah. Well, I just love travel. I love Spain. I love legal. You know, you've been to Spain. I have, yeah. But I was a legal. There was like a cool cutaway when he's going through the house.

49:30He looks in one room and I think there's a typewriter on the table and it feels very much like when you're looking at a screen in resident evil or in any of these kinds of other person shooters, like the light will be a little bit different over an object that you're supposed to go over towards. Yes. And so there are like little visual keys and I thought that this movie played with that a lot. I thought that when Paul Walter Houser says we were going to raccoon city, the crowd cheered. I did it. No recognition. Maybe I was just with RE, RE heads. You might have been in the RE room. I thought he's seen was very funny. His character is hilarious. His character is, it's just like he is like we did this. Like I am responsible for this and we need your help. So it's kind of like a funny, like almost like it was sort of exposition and sort of IP service, but also kind of like taking the piss out of that. And I think that's the whole movie, right? The whole movie is, I really enjoyed that aspect of it and this is true of the finale

50:32of the movie as well when you get into that space where everything is. It's just a little bit, and sometimes a lot bit tonally comic. And so you're not worried about revelation about whether they're going to get something right or they're going to teach you something about this story that you didn't already understand. There's some acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of the premise of the game and the kind of person who would be responsible for an outbreak of this sort. Also it just helps that Paul Walter Houser is very funny. He made that scene. The two of them talking in the car when Caliere's goes to go look for whatever she's looking for 45 minutes, I would watch. Yes, because it's both a funny load of machine gun while like the nozzle is pointed at Paul Walt, Walter Houser's face the entire time and he'd be like, no, turn it, no flip it, flip it. That's the other one. It's really, really good. The other thing too is the Caliere's character getting out of the car is one of those classic, like what the fuck are you doing moments in a movie where you're just like, there's like 14 zombies there.

51:33Where are you going? She's really lighten up. Like she's great. Yeah. It's so unusual for, I think this is what she would have wanted. It's so unusual for a movie to have so much confidence to be able to lean into the Caliere's of the genre and like, evil dead too doesn't really do that. That's not exactly what it's, it's comedy is about fusing comedy history. It's not about upending horror history. It does have some nods towards horror history, but it's working in a different register. And so making comparisons to the movie, I think it's fairly difficult because making fun of horror usually leads you down the road to scary movie. It doesn't lead you down the road to an actually funny movie that is also actually scary. And I mean, we can talk about this after we get done talking about Resident Evil, but I'm kind of amazed by the tonal miracle of the movie. That's the thing that I think is the my major takeaway from it. If he had missed five degrees to the left or I just would have been maybe not a disaster,

52:37I think it's like a really fun watch, but you would have been like, oh, that was cool, but he played it. And the thing that threw me off was going into this. One of the few things I had read about the film in interviews with him was that he was like, I took a lot of jokes out. So I was like, oh, I wonder if this is going to be he tested the movie with audiences and he felt that it was played too much like a comedy. But the movie is a comedy, it is a comedy. It is a gross scary comedy, but it's a comedy. And it's not being sold that way too. I do wonder a bit about the general audience reaction to it with that in mind. I don't think the people are going to be mad that it's funny, but there is some wrong footing on that way too. I think the comedy is like essential to the movie because it is the release valve for the blood. It's a release valve for the Gore. It's a release valve to the terror. You have to have this balance because otherwise it's like you're watching Green Room, you're watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You're just like, I'm terrified. Get me out of here. I think you're so upsetting every single incident. I wanted to ask you a little bit about what I thought was some, I don't know if it's pacing

53:42or structure or dynamics, but I found it really delightfully unconventional in that I more or less found each set piece in each scare or each level of the game. Pretty equally terrifying and involving. It wasn't like we were building up to something. The skybridge at the end, the kind of like massive thing that happens at the end is certainly like, it feels more chaotic and crazy. Yes. And I think he ups the Gore, but there was something kind of fascinating about the boss at every level kind of feeling and you're going to have your favorite depending on maybe what you like snow, you like sewers, you like heights, what are you scared of? But what did you think of like the construction of the film as a series of tasks that he had to do? Well, it almost feels like he's checking more boxes very knowingly about these spaces that we find to be scary in horror movies. The lonely road where you have no service and you might get into an accident, you know,

54:49get out very famously, more or less opens with an accident like that on a lonely road on the way to it that sets an ominous tone. So that's one. A haunted farmhouse is another one, a terrifying tunnel amidst a zombie apocalypse, you know, all the way up to scaling a die hard style haunted building that has like, you know, all kinds of sort of like the more elevated later Romero movies where it feels like an entire city has been taken over. He gives you that sensation. So I it felt like he's kind of going through this various stages of expectation through those movies, but never kind of gives up on his tone. I do think that the sewer one is particularly accomplished because him going into the sewer is just so stupid and he keeps doing things that are just so stupid. And it's not just that he he doesn't find himself trapped with a hundred other zombies. He finds himself trapped with the most disgusting zombie of all time that can't move, but then explodes into hundreds of rats. The only thing that so much that the rats did not become a king rat, but they were going

55:53to yeah, and then he he mercilessly if they if they had formed a king rat, I honestly you would have fell out. I think I might have needed to like take a quick sec. Let's talk about your rat fear. Yeah. Where does it come from? Um, two unfortunate mouse infest not infestations, but apartment buildings like you're really at the mercy of what you're at in New York. Yeah. And I just just just gross mice, you know, and like not being able to stop them. Is it the disease that they carry? I just don't like the idea of them being everywhere. I don't like the idea of like it just being like this unseen force, you know, do you think there's ever been a time in your life when you've been asleep in your bed in a mouse's crawl across your face? Not me. It did happen to my wife back in New York. And one time in Boston, I woke up and now it sounds like I'm just like a tribe of mice have been following me up and down the eastern seaboard. Uh-huh. But one time in Boston, I, what are their names? I think I was pretty high. I woke up or was trying to fall asleep and a mouse was on my turntable.

56:56And I was just like, I got it. Like, what about a Boston? What was it? Was it actually Wu Tang? What was it? What was he get into? It was. It was spring. Very emergency. It was an emotional mouse. Yeah. He was wearing a cardigan. What did you think of the suicide jumper scene? Um, God. It brings a tear to my eye. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. I thought that the, my favorite element of it, this might actually be the part of a movie where people are like, this is 2 CGI for me or it was like, it was almost like a painting rather than a visceral experience. I thought it was incredible. He turns around when he's sort of run through this canyon of people leaping off of these tall buildings and exploding near him. I think they're trying to hit him, obviously. And he goes, oh, so you can die. Like, and you think that that's going to be this important piece of information. Um, there's a couple of, uh, revelations or, or, or, or discoveries that this character

57:58makes that serve him no purpose whatsoever. They really don't like it. It's, it's a really interesting storytelling style. There is not a lot of check offs. Anything in this movie. It's more like, he, there's runner jokes like the padlock. There are, um, frustrations that he has that are recurring, but like when it's like, who's the rat king guy in the sewer? I don't know. Why is that guy just like a giant white fat guy who's like sitting on his ass? I have no idea. Why do those people jump off the buildings and seemingly to their deaths rather than reconstructing into a giant zombie running after him? I have no idea. So I thought it was just completely operatic and amazing. It kind of wish it hadn't been in the trailer. The, the suicide jumper specifically. Yeah. It's an interesting point you're making though about the accrual of information that doesn't matter. Yeah. And maybe we can use this as a way to talk about the kind of final set piece where after he escapes those suicide bombers, he eventually arrives at the raccoon city hospital laboratory

59:01space that Paul Terhouser's character is attempting to get him back to. And the, my favorite part of the movie, the elevators don't work. And so he has a moment of reflection. We know that his girlfriend is pregnant, although it's not super explicit. It's clear what's happening in their relationship. And they're, he sends her a voice note to apologize for the way that he talked to her about what they should do. And then he's like, hey, dude, you have the package. Yeah. Come on up. Don't take the elevator though. Please take the stairs. Takes four flights of stairs. He's like, fuck it. It's fucking exhausted. And somebody who recently climbed four flights of stairs can relate. So he decides to get on the elevator. And a movie that is extremely gross gets that much more gross. And then he's like, what's that? A movie that is extremely gross gets that much more gross. And this is really where a lot of the alien and aliens stuff starts to come in because we have a giant barfing. Zombie. Zombie who keeps vomiting down the elevator shaft.

1:00:02Acid. Vomiting acid. Acid that is melting the elevator all around him. Coming up in the other direction is this. Snowball zombie. Yeah. A zombie that is comprised of what looks like a dozen or more bodies that have all. The land is strong together. All these people. Yeah. Surviving non survivors. And so it's it's just like a classic group goal goalberg machine where he's like got to try to find a way to get to the top. He veiled the barf not get caught by the giant snowball zombie. And find his way to the top of the lab. It's all now this is I'm usually pretty hard on CGI heavy sequences like this. And I thought it was pretty effective and well done. Because every single thing matters because he's got it's very video gamey, but it's like he can only he's got the floor of the elevator. He's got the corners of the elevator. And once that stuff goes, he can't be on the elevator anymore. So he's got a certain amount of time to do that. Then he has to use the barfing guide to kill the other zombie.

1:01:02Then he has to throw the barfing guy off the entire. A scent up to the top of the skyscraper is as laid out for him. Like you have to go up to floor 24 then go to a skybridge then cross the skybridge. It's exactly like it is in video games. And his reactions to these obstacles is exactly what happens when you're playing a game the first time where you're like I did it. I fucking dude. And then you're like, wait, what the lights are off now like what happened? It's so invigorating to kind of experience it. It's cinematically rather than like my controllers and really responding the way I want to. But the you have that wonderful die hard nod where his shoes are starting to melt and he has to take his shoes off. I held my fist a lot. I loved it. I was just like if you walk some broken glass, we've achieved it. Not only that, but he enters a maternity ward. Yeah, I want to talk about this. And what I will call one of the most audacious things I've seen in a horror movie.

1:02:04It is a maternity ward that is strewn with red blood. Every single baby bay is full of clearly a zombie baby of some kind or some sort of bird like birthing. Yeah. Bubble that also recalls alien and the sort of the pods. And Austin Abrams' character of course has to move through the maternity ward to get to the skybridge, to get to the lab, to deliver the package so that they can develop the antidote and finally stop this. And save him. That's the thing is that as he's going his arm is getting more and more infected. And honestly, as someone who loves gross stuff, I was like this is so fucking gross. The maternity ward. It is gnarly. And the giant bubble which you compared to a rising sourdolo, which is a very funny visual. Is foul. And this is the most sacred and beautiful place in human life.

1:03:06A room full of newly born babies and his girlfriend's pregnant. And the movie has a series of motifs like this. Obviously him being confronted by any year old girl is a manifestation of his girlfriend being pregnant. Him being confronted by all of these babies in the maternity ward is a manifestation of this fear. It's got like lots of cragger tropes that are quickly becoming like kind of signatures for him. The terror of a doorway. The weird anxiety of why is this person running at me? Uh-huh. There's somebody once ran at Zach Kregger and it's never forgotten it. That's a dream. It's a memory has. And it's the same thing with the don't don't don't don't do that. Don't stop. Go the other stop. Wait, don't do that. Like he goes towards the why is he walking towards the bubble? Is he an idiot? Like what do you mean though? Is like because he's like I think it's kind of like that video game thing of like but the bubbles glowing. Yeah, what's it? Yeah, I want to see what's inside.

1:04:07When this bubble bursts though the entire room turns basically into a log flume of blood. And yes, although it did remind me quite a bit of all of the xenomorphs coming out of the wall and aliens where it's like everything is kind of descending upon him. He has to race full speed out of the maternity ward across the skybridge. However, there are some issues there. Yes, Skybridge is falling apart and the giant snowball human conglomerations. Somehow he has returned. Yeah, climbing up the side of the building in epic fashion. And he eventually gets his ass all the way over there. Um, after landing one of the more epic video game scores against the giant snowball. Yeah. And he gets into the lab and it turns out that there's a bunch of scientists in the lab. And one of them is Zach Cherry. Very funny actor from Severance. And the movie again kind of shifts back into a kind of clear comic register. And then one of them is Griffin Newman, our friend. Yeah.

1:05:07Art Deco is a blank check. And unfortunately for me I knew Griffin was in this movie. And so I did get that. I was waiting for him to show up. And I knew a little bit about what he was doing in the movie. And I really wish I hadn't. But for those of us who were in the movie podcasting world and enjoy movie podcasts, there's a little bit of extra pixie dust on this sequence watching him get involved in this final scene. What did you think of a big finale in the movie? It's the most surprising gear shift in the movie. Of course, like the entire lighting scheme changes. It's in this completely antiseptic white lab, bright white lights. It's for scientists like for bookish nerdy not not like wanting to get down and fight people. But what they really need is this antidote. And Austin Abrams has now crossed over into a mutating territory. And I think he's holding out hope that they can make this cure. And he can be the first test subject. And he gets so close.

1:06:09And it's right around here that I was pretty certain I understood why Zach Kregger was like, I'm never making another one of these because I was like, because you're going to shut the fucking door. You're going to fucking burn it down behind you. Somebody wants to make another raccoon city movie. You guys want to have Claire show up and look for something. Go for it. Leon can show up. But he was like, I'm done. And we're going to make we're going out in an absolute blaze of glory. It's such a good choice. It's such a relief. It's the final like broken rule of like, there's no redemption. There's no safety. It does set up some obvious opportunities to retail the story and to bring in a lot of the canonical characters to enter raccoon city and it kind of fight their way through. It feels like the story is mostly taking place simultaneously to the events that are transpiring in the first few games where like the outbreak is starting. Doesn't the first game start with like a cop is late to work one day. And he's got a he wanders into the station.

1:07:11There's a lot of fucking zombies there. You could probably make Resident Evil 1.5 off of this. Right. I have a question for you about that based on what it looks like to be a huge box office success for this film. Yeah. I love the ending. I thought it was a tremendous amount of fun. It all slips into like science lab horror. And you get a little bit of like reanimator. You get a little bit of a freaked. Like actually when he becomes the monster near the end, it looks like Alex Winters is monster from freaked. And there's just some great creature design. Again, Abrams giving a really good monster performance. I thought he was so good. Yeah. It is heartbreaking. You really feel for him. There's like a little bit of. Even as a little man there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the great choreography of the antidote kind of slipping away just out of grass, like I just thought it was just not connecting like all that stuff is so great. And that also is that feeling of a video game where you just like can't quite jump through the loop or crossover the bridge or that being consistently steamy in a moment when you're trying to achieve something is a great.

1:08:11A major thought of. Oh, how many movies have I watched in my life that sold out their third acts? Because they weren't sure if they were going to make another one or like what they were worried about. What people would feel about the. And what they had done if they ended it in a certain kind of way. And you've seen so many movies where a guy gets blown off the top of a building or as a massive car crash or you know, it blows up the bomb so that everybody else is saved but then walks out of the rubble and is just like, well, looks like another one for us partner. Like so many films are just like in the last 10 minutes you're allowed to completely suspend your disbelief. Yes. We just want a happy ending. And the happy ending in the movie is that like no, like this is a fucking horror movie. Like there is no escape for this guy. Like even if he had gotten the cure, how the fuck are they getting out of recurring cities? Absolutely. And it's like, what like do you think they would have let this guy out if he knew the truth anyway? Like there's something. What's even the science corner on you have six other human bodies attached to your body and you take it in the end to do it?

1:09:16Yeah. They just get expelled. It completely dispenses with that, which is wonderful. I thought it was a great choice. I completely agree. It is, it's one of the greatest get in and get out IP jobs in the history of movies. And to have the goal just be like, I'm done. One of the great cuts of black last shots of a horror movie and recent memory of like this guy waving his tentacles in the air screaming as the National Guard helicopter is bearing down on him. Bang out. That's great. It's so awesome. It's great. It's fantastic. This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling. Long day, good meal. You finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, romcom, period drama, psychological thriller. But some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. It's there based on rating plans that vary by state. Covered options are selected by the customer.

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1:11:17Or visit TremphayaRadio.com. Every game day you show up for your team. Now, it's your time. We go deep. We go deep. Ask your prescriber about Wigovie, some Maglatide Injection 2.4 mg, a GLP1. Call 1-833-4Wigovie or visit Wigovie.com to view the Medication Guide and to learn more about Wigovie. Why wait? We go deep. This movie is a huge success. I'm curious to see how huge of a success a movie like this can and will be. Yeah. It is a guest tracking for an $80 million roll-wide weekend. Which is a huge weekend for any horror movie. It is also a video game adaptation. And it's a well-known video game. It's one of the very few video games that has been adapted multiple times over the years. I feel like they're kind of undershooting how well it's going to do over the weekend.

1:12:22I also think just the word of mouth is going to be extraordinary because it's not only is it going to be, you really got to go see this. I feel like it's going to be like a really, you got to go see this now. You got to go see this before. You don't want anything spoiled. I can't tell you anything about it because I don't want to spoil anything for you. There's not much more they can really advertise about this movie. I know. It's a length that's such a benefit too. It's so easy to get in and get out. And most movies where you're like, oh god, I've got to carve out four and a half hours and I got to get a sitter and all that shit. The question is one, Mallory aside, can you in good conscience recommend this to people who don't like horror movies? Would you tell Amanda to go see this? Which is going to be interesting and we will talk about it on Monday. Okay. I think it's a real test of her new open-mindedness because it is so gory. I think she'll think it's funny, but I think that there are parts that she might not like. Because it is breaking some of those rules, you know, and it is disgusting in a way that many movies are not. It's different from your typical slasher where someone's throw to slit or they're stepping the hard.

1:13:22It doesn't even have eternity word stuff as much as it's just really fucking gross. It is really gross. As far as like, can you recommend it to just like moms on the playground? I think it's maybe like a good comp for me at the stage of my life. And I don't really think you can. I think you need to be an avowed fan of this genre, but here's the thing. That doesn't matter. Everyone's a fan of this genre. Yeah. I mean, look at obsession. Obsession is also disgusting at times and it is a huge sensation. So I don't really think that that limits its ceiling. And then when you start thinking about the movie and you're like, okay, can this movie like realistically make $300 million in America? I think it can. And if something like that can happen, we're in an extremely rare territory for Craig. I mean, this is not, this has only been happened four or five times in movie history where somebody who's making material, this intense and raw and gross and fun is at the absolute center of the business. I had been thinking about his career in terms of PTA's early career. I don't know how useful that is anymore.

1:14:22Because this would be his punch drunk love. And I don't really know. Like punch drunk love was like a complicated movie that I don't, did it do well? Like I am a sailor, but did it work? People are like, what is this? Yeah, I think it was a bit of a curiosity. I think that's a movie that he made maybe similarly to why Craig or made this, which is like. Just a stripped out. I did Magnolia and now I want to try something a little bit more direct or a little bit more. And you know, you can, you can hear him talking about this. And, and you know, you can, you can hear him talking about weapons that there's so much personal feeling in weapons. And so much that he brought to that movie about his own experiences and lost that he experienced. And, you know, I think a lot of the stuff about addiction is really fascinating in that movie. And it's Craig or a dad? I think so. Okay. But I don't know that for sure. I do think it's fascinating though that there are still components. He does not have any children. No children. Okay. This film explores that. If you're like what's what's resident evil about it's it might be like parental anxiety.

1:15:24For sure. There are still ideas in the movie that's your point, but they're not. It's not weighed down by the thing. And a punch on glove still feels a little weighed down by some feeling. I was not trying to think of the comp for is it is it what's Tarantino's third movie is it. It's Jackie Brown. Jackie Brown. And this kind of like Jackie Brown. Yeah. It's more stripped down. Yeah. You know, you can go do a do a Elmer Leonard book more tightly focused. Yeah. Yeah. There's source material. I think that's a good comp. But, you know, I. This this dude now is like his own business. Like what I will be really interesting in discerning the. The success of this film is how much of it. First of all, he's already done what Nolan did, which is apparently just like smashed through the like. Fake, consert control online. Like they don't they don't respect raccoon city. Absolutely love how he's handled that. Or he's like if you're trying to place everyone you're placing no one. That's absolutely the right attitude. It's like this is the movie I made you guys should come see it. But now that if you don't want to just don't see it.

1:16:25Like to what extent is a phone by Zach Kregger now like the business card. It's the call. It's the it's the sell it in and of itself. It's so interesting because obviously weapons is now going to be a franchise because they're making the gladdest prequel which he is not making. And this movie. There was an interesting interview with the guy who runs Constantine films, the German film production company that owns the rights to Resident Evil on the town last week talking about. You know, I mean they hit the jackpot. Zach Kregger came to them was like I have an idea for Resident Evil movie and they were like, oh word. That's amazing that that happened for them. And we can talk about video games and what their viability is as movie properties in a moment. But he's now making a giant sci fi action movie with the flood for Warner Brothers. That's his next film. And then he says he's like doing a reset. Yeah. Right where it's like after that movie. These are all the things I had been thinking about for a really long time and then I'm thinking about what's next. The thing that it reminds me of the most is Jordan Peele. I mean what he's doing now reminds me a lot of the first three Jordan Peele movies. Yeah. Which came in a pretty short window of time is about five years he made three movies all of which were increasingly more ambitious than the next.

1:17:29Accomplishing different things kind of gliding between horror genre with huge carpenter influence. But also a lot of social and personal emotional ideas inside of them. And then I just remarked this to you last night. Kregger's released three movies since Peel's last movies come out. It's been four years more than four years since people put a movie out. And so. And their two careers are someone intertwined. I mean comedy and horror. But also Peel wanted to produce. Was it weapons or barbarian? I think it was weapons that he wanted weapons. He changed his management company because he did not get that opportunity and. Two guys who come from sketch comedy. Yeah. Who bring that those tools to making horror movies. And that's where we're not falsely like linking them in some sort of competition. Oh, but just in the arc of horror they're totally connected to each other. I mean they feel almost inextricable right now and they're kind of both jockeying for. You know, I think because in the aftermath of the slasher movies in the 70s and 80s movies, we started to identify Craven and Carpenter and Hooper and you know a handful of other filmmakers.

1:18:35And you're like, well, these are the masters of horror. And then there's the masters of horror anthology series. And then you're like, well, there are these like 10 guys. And so you start to think of horror in a way the same way you think of baseball trading cards. And so my brain just naturally ends up doing that. Of course. Craig is in such a unique position here where there's a part of me that wants to like elevate and take on a big movie like the flood, but there's another part of me that's like, because you make 12 87 minute movies. I think in a perfect. That would be awesome. He would be what we imagine it was like to be like our age when Carpenter was putting out a movie every 18 months. And that you would just be like, I just can't believe I get to see another fucking haunted house at this guy. I think that's what I'm I'm thinking about is sort of like the consistency over 12 15 years. I respond very strongly to his films. Like weapons is one of my favorites of that year. And I do. I know. And I found for all the what is weapons is not about anything.

1:19:38I was like, you're completely wrong. I couldn't understand that criticism at all. I'm not a ton of stuff. And it's not explicit, but it's there. It's very, I think clear what it's about. I support his right to like do four movies and take a beat. And you know, of course that would be probably like for Quentin. That would have been like the kill bill. And then the stop down after that. Right. That's right. Good comparison. But I am fascinated to know what he wants to do outside of this genre because he is tiger when it comes to making shooting some of this stuff. Yeah. You know, you're like, if you can hit a six iron like that, would you ever stop? Like it's the other reason why I really link he and peel together is I just think they both have such strong visual imaginations of what they want to show us that I really, really enjoy. And that's something that I don't always have the right vocabulary to communicate what it is that they're doing. But I know how it makes me feel. Well, that's one of the reasons why I'm so happy he made this is because I could imagine after weapons a guy

1:20:40torturing himself to be like, how can I top that? What can I do that feels like a bigger tapestry or a more important movie or saying something? And instead he was like, what if I blew up a baby? It's a great shit. It's a great movie. Video games. Yeah. I wrote about this today in the newsletter. Thanks. Yeah. I'm trying to figure it out, you know, because I'm a little bit behind the eight ball on this one where I don't know really any of these games well at all. So I don't know what is and is not viable. It was funny. I know what you mean when you were writing about this in productions where you're like, I kind of can't do it because I I can either be a completionist or I can be a passive like observer, but I can't have three games. Well, I made a joke on House of R like a year ago about how like I will play Elden rain. And people are still like, good fucking love, buddy. How dare you think you could ever try to do anything? You fool man. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I would like to try, but I genuinely don't really feel like I have time.

1:21:43I usually had a console so that I can play FIFA historically. Like so I, for most of my adult life, I've had a PlayStation. Were we friends when I was still playing PS2 at my apartment? Where was the apartment? Or was it? I mean, no, because you were coming to the place uptown. Yeah. And I had a PlayStation at that time, for sure, because I played Madden everyday in college. But I don't remember if like when did I really kick the habit? Was it just like adult life started and I'm stopping? Yeah, I don't remember ever playing PS anything at your Brooklyn place. So it was probably sometime earlier, early issue in New York for you. So then were I had one and you would have played it given it to Zach. I remember, yeah. And you would talk about, you would talk about playing PlayStation. Yeah, I had it with it. That was like early on in my relationship with the woman who I would go on to marry. We would just like sit around and I would play Max Payne and then she would be like, can I play crazy taxing?

1:22:43Right. I remember this very well. Yeah. And you know, I've heard you speak of Red Dead Redemption, you know, a game that many people talk about should be adapted and is so cinematic in the first place. And that's a real challenge with a lot of these properties. And it's like, you know, biopsych or mass effect or all these games, you know, we've got fallout as a TV show. You've got a lot of TV shows that are coming out of this work right now. We can talk about some of those things. No, Holly's making far cry. Yeah. Right. So there's going to be plenty of that stuff going around. I've talked about it a few times over the years on the show. I talked about it with Ben Lindberger a couple times. Just what a, what a sorted history of video game adaptations there are. And it feels like Hollywood is kind of figured it out or at least one component of it. Which is that Sonic and Super Mario and Minecraft is video games for kids that have a little bit of that nostalgic feeling for parents. If done well can be a home run. Sure. Everything else creatively and for the most part commercially. Is kind of a coin flip and I see this movie as a huge breakthrough.

1:23:45I see this movie as it is the last of us four movies where it's like this is going to be a huge movie that's going to be a huge movie. That's going to have like whatever a 92 on Metacritic. Like which is crazy. I mean, it's just like never happened. And you know, it's not going to win awards probably despite Craig are getting a little nearer to the awards race with weapons last year. But in it does a similar thing to weapons where like that's a movie where at the end a bunch of kids tear the flesh off of a witch. Yeah. And made it respectable. And this is like going to kind of make movies like this respectable. And I'm it's just an interesting turning point. So what's what do you think the lesson is going to be this is going to what's going to happen to also is I think I don't think it's going to come out until 28 but Garland directed Alex Garland directed Elnery. So on one hand, a lesson could be give great filmmakers creative license to adapt these things the way they see fit and you might get a baseline of very interested people like to prop this movie up commercially.

1:24:47And then also like this, you know, who knows what the artistic and critical ceiling of these things can be. So that's one way. Now there is make these things hard fucking ours because people want to see their imaginations fulfilled when they watch them. So especially for stuff in the more of the horror genre like resident evil is. A lot of the bigger games over the last decade. This is like a very, very general statement. So please don't hold me to this. Feel to me like part of the popularity is based on their explorability. So GTA the red dead movies games. I play red dead to ride my horse around. There is a story. But I like riding my horse and I like getting off the horse and being like, do you need water? You know, like you can play that for hours without engaging in a gun fight. I think this is a huge part of the successive back rooms and the idea that Kane Parsons was hugely inspired by portal, which is another game that is like that where you are moving through space kind of at your own pace.

1:25:58And you're not bound by the conventions of at least movie narrative storytelling. Resident Evil again, kind of by breaking movie orthodoxy. It also nods to but it also ignores video game orthodoxy. And so I, I think that first thing that you suggested I think would be a great outcome. And it's the thing that I always hope for. And you know, when what's the example that you and Andy have always cited for. I make his and or sort of like that's the the potential upside of exploring valuable IP is a strong creative goes down an unusual path and gets to build something that is, you know, defined by genre and a little bit outside of the expectations of the commercial sphere which it operates. Craig did both you know he was like I'm making a mainstream down the middle genre movie that also has lots of craft and art in it. And I think that this movie only exists because he wanted to make it because he pitched it to them sure there has to be creatives and we're going to see you mentioned Garland Garland loved Eldenring and that's why he's doing the movie.

1:27:08Michael Sarnoski is adapting death stranding that's a thing you know Peter Berg say what you will about him is doing call of duty Taylor Sheridan's ready to scream play. There's never been a call of duty movie and I don't you know I'm not above enjoying a call of duty movie director by Peter Berg like he made loan survivor I like that movie like that totally seems credible to me and he does have a strong artistic vision no matter what you think of its politics or whatever so yeah I think that there's a. There's a world where it can be that but it's more likely going to be. Trusted studio hand comes in on the $200 million movie five assassins creeds for every one resident evil maybe the ratio will be even worse than that but I don't think I thought what you wrote about today with the. The sort of calcification of the process of DC and Marvel where they're like we're we're 10 years out we know what we're doing it seems to take Matt reefs five years to make a movie we've got the gun verse we're ramping up to X men there's not a lot of room for surprises and experiments right now so maybe the video game adaptations and this is like it dwarfs comics it's.

1:28:23In terms of its. The relationship it has with an audience already so if the idea with comic book stories was like well people already know they know Superman they love that man that was the point that I mean fucking love red dead redemption right you know like they love well think about the amount of hours that you poured into that experience that's the thing that makes this such a unique gambit and it and in a way I mean video games for the last 20 years this has been true maybe even for the last 30 or 40 years but I mean it's been just been putting movies to shame in terms of the. Cultural import that it has the value it has financially to the entertainment industry I mean it's just operating a totally different plane so you can't compare the two but I genuinely think. That this is so helpful to the resident evil brand and it makes it I want to play resident games like I I and you can play remakes for for different consoles or you can play kind of like the old school versions of them the more capcomy versions of them but.

1:29:23You know I think the fascinating thing with video games is that like a lot of the fun for me of playing them are not narrative based and they're not lower based like it's kind of interesting I think last of us was a real revelation because it has so much story I'm I'm not too proud to me I'm a big skip the cutscene guy you know yeah sure I was doing I play games like I want to get back to killing people yeah I didn't care either and so. So that's that's I think most gamers now are the options maybe it's generational so it's kind of funny to me to be like did we honor the umbrella corporation properly it's like I did that it never occurred to me while while playing resident evil you know and the tension between games that have a lot of story and a lot of lore and how that translates and what. What what liberties you allow people like Alex Garland to make take versus somebody who might be a little bit more of a lunch bail director who's like I don't have the pole to take over and make assassins creed you know a weird black comedy you just made me realize though I think why it was so easy for me to shed video games which is that.

1:30:37My entire life. I'm always worried about control that's a hang up of mine as you will know and. I think about it and everything that I do except on the movies. In the movies somebody else's I don't want to dominate it I do that's what this movie does it does and I wouldn't want to spend my free time my free leisure time being in control of the character the way that I am when I play a video game yeah and maybe I'm intellectualizing it but I think it's probably the truth. And a movie takes you away. And it frees you from that concern in a way that is very special now. There are some most video game fans I imagine they want to be in control they want they like that feeling because maybe they feel powerless and and part of their life is your point about how they watch the cut scenes I think maybe it's a hybrid I think it is it it's like I get to control what feels like cinema it's almost going back to putting a dollar 75 into dragon slayer and being like I'm playing a cartoon right like a real.

1:31:39Real cartoon for a second and then die you know like yes but you know you think about like why didn't Halo work why didn't Assassin's Creed work why didn't some of these bigger answer yeah yeah and maybe it is just they were good and maybe it is that there's this tension between I don't want to watch him be master chief I want to be master chief like I don't know like the coolest execution for some of this stuff would be to your point. Backback rooms ask explorations of the old west or you know GTA like by city and and just being like what if this character just like walked around for a while that's the giant. White polar bear looming is the GTA 6 comes out in two months yeah and when it comes out it has a chance to kind of blot out. What you and I spend a lot of time podcasting about for huge segment of the audience for a while yeah because there's only so many hours in the day and it this seems like the most anticipated movie of all or excuse me most anticipated game of all time.

1:32:47There's never been talk of a movie a GTA movie and playing GTA I have played GTA so I certainly was playing various iterations of that game over time into the 2000s. And I I similarly was like not super interested in the cutscenes but that felt like a more novel execution of control because you could just fuck around so much yeah. But there's a part of me that deep down thinks within the next 10 years we will have a GTA movie I don't know what you think about that. I don't know why we don't already. I mean I think probably people who really play games and you know if you if you if you like playing Fortnite you're probably like Fortnite is bigger than the movies you know GTA is bigger than the movies. It's not did the movies finally dain't to like make a movie out of this thing is rock star game. Star say final okay we're going to see if this will work and we'll let you know just Ryan Kugler want to make GTA let's make it you know.

1:33:48Would be interesting yeah. Can you just tell me a little bit about horror comedy since we talked so much about it just just very briefly. Because this is something I have always loved and it's a big part of my gateway into horror and I think when you're when your kid of our generation. You get a bunch of movies like gremlins and monsters squad and ghost busters that hold your hand into the world of horror I was the kind of kid who would go to the library and like look at books about like monsters and myths and just read about them all the time but I think I got those ideas from seeing these movies. And there's two versions of it there's movies like that that are for kids to make them laugh that adults might like to if they like Dr. vancman. And then there's like this movie is for adults but it's funny sure. The latter I think is impossible I think it's like there's what resident evil is yeah there's like five movies like it that are like actually great although I will say. One of the things that made me so elated while watching this movie is that I have been feeling the same thing that I know you have been feeling which is horror movies are becoming a drag and I still will go watch almost anything that is a horror movie but I am more often than not sitting through 45 minutes of ponderous like self examination and sadness rather than is this scary and fun like we could.

1:35:13We have like a fun genre experience I agree and the pendulum is fully swung like when I started watching horror movies I didn't really like watching Joe Dante movies I didn't really like watching like goofier kind of horror right I wanted to be scandalized and terrified and then. The sort of however you want to describe elevated horror I think that the long tail of that being this is like a haunted house movie or a possession movie or. Scary guy in the woods movie but we're like talking about like why is he scary though why is this guy in the woods the sad and dark tone why were you in the woods in the first place did your mom died like probably pretty sad about that's talk about that family history intent all of those things that I'm just tired of it it's it's. Nothing against any individual film it's just like we have now hit like a breaking point where I think they're just filling out movies with like lots of really wrote kind of introspection so to have this and to have this maybe be like.

1:36:15Is a change a come in you know are we going to get. Back to like spring blood everywhere and just you know maybe having like an amazing mindless time at at a movie that would be kind of cool if that swung because I think it would only make the elevated stuff that much more powerful. If it was less dominant well there's just so few examples though of. Combining the Gore with the comedy in a way that is effective yeah like to me it's an extremely short list like it's like Friday and American were often London. It's a lot of the dead evil dead is too far in the other direction no I think evil dead to is a masterpiece I think army of darkness is awesome I and I like the original evil that of course landmark movie. I think those movies have been like ripped off so many times that it's almost like possible on the point you know it's so foundational that franchise is really illustrative what I'm talking about and they fuck completely fucked it by making it so serious but you know I liked. Rise enough I like to rise as well but burn is a real drag sucks and it has like some good.

1:37:20Shinnon it but it is like real good but yeah the tone of the movie is way off and it is exactly what you're describing. There are like a lot of examples of horror movies to me that I think are fun and funny but are not great horror comedies you know what I mean like Texas James I'm ask her to is like a super funny movie and very effective and a great zag away from the original you know 20 years later. Same for like the return of the living dead or creep show. Um or I mean barbarian is kind of like this you know barbarian is like the hard cut to Justin long singing along in the convertible after one of the like the biggest like what the fuck is about to happen scares in a movie in some time is brilliant yeah but sustaining that feeling for the long time is really tough like I find cabin in the woods very clever and amusing but I don't know if I laughed while watching it you know what I mean I think what I think I laughed at the twists and I think I laughed at especially on rewatch when you know what you're seeing there's stuff that's funnier because you know it's like playing a trope kind of and that they're not really in control.

1:38:25Yeah I mean like I rewatched like placid recently I wouldn't necessarily call that like a horror movie but it is something that is like every scene is basically written comically. Yeah but it is there's a lot of goren I mean like people get eaten by a giant gator you know. Yeah I never know how to put my arms around the genre because there's obvious stuff like I've been trying to figure out if Alice can watch Abby and Costello meet Frankenstein whether she would enjoy that we're like get it and I'll follow up with you about that soon when another movie comes out okay just related to that but you know Frankenstein is no longer like really scary to little kids the original Frankenstein but I don't know if young Frankenstein is funny to people either now and so kind of that's the other thing is that obviously comic sensibilities really change over time and I could imagine a 20 year old hearing I say the words fright night and watching the original being like. This junky old thing you know like I really don't know it involves a young call and ferrule remake of for it is actually if you're like maybe that earlier comic sensibility is not for you like that one struck me is more serious but it's still it's look at some some jokes yeah I mean you know like look.

1:39:39I think I think it's a balance I think weaving it together is the hard part in scream trying to think scream to probably is the. Among the funnier ones I suppose I think it's more joky but not as funny as one like one Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard in one actually making you laugh right to you can feel Williams and leaning into. The kind of clever right like laugh lines to his all of fun yeah and right okay. So you know it's a really I mean little shop of horses maybe another movie like yeah is like kind of funny is kind of horror certainly was scary to me when I was in third grade and saw it. But it's a it's a very unusual territory and so it's so funny for a huge video game adaptation from one of the most talked about directors of the last five years. That also happens to be horror is also one of the funniest movies of the year yeah very unusual any any closing thoughts. I was wondering what you think the backlash against this movie would be or not even the backlash but what's the what's the I mean for everything we do it'll be you guys oversold this.

1:40:48But what's the first real like the problem that's not even like the problem I don't even want to do this I was going to say like let's like let's let's let's I mean there was a sharp backlash to weapons that seemed like very online and not very real world to me. And I think some of it will just be about like I thought it was too gross or I didn't think it really there was anything to really hold on to yeah I've seen people like there's no characters you know and again I think it asks an interesting question about that very concern which is who cares yeah can you name a single person in like these 10 horror movies like what what did they want not really the point you know it's a ride this has been a ride you feel good yeah I feel like this is going to be in like. My top five like probably I mean that's not surprising because I know it's like it's the most it's the most take-tack to a movie the year for me yeah where I'm like you need a laugh out loud funny movie that is utterly disgusting with incredible craft I say it just because I don't remember the last time a director has had

1:41:53one of my favorite movies the year after year success years. I mean it's just as bad as TV where you have to wait 24 months between seasons I know most of these people are not working that fast but that's the other upside of moving quickly and making your movies not two hours and 42 minutes. See our thank you thank you for having here the goat thanks for producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support next week Adam Naiman returns the show to break down everything that he saw at the Toronto International Film Festival that of course augurs the start of the best picture power rankings here on this show which a man and I will do Adam you better like resident evil. No promises there you know what maybe is that cragger will stop by on Monday to we'll see you'll have to just tune in and find out see you then. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market now this is a player in the food space that is champion winning food standards and quality since 1980 that means no added growth hormones or antibiotics and their meat.

1:43:10And no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in their deli meats hot dogs or sausages plus all their seafood is responsibly farmed or wild caught they've even banned some ingredients store wide to make sure there's nothing to mess with the flavors you want shop Whole Foods Market and store or online. This episode is brought to you by chat GPT hey it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast have you guys heard about chat GPT work it's the new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi step projects and when you need more than just answers. You've chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets slides and structured reports get started at chat GPT dot com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans.