The 10 Best Horror Movies of 2025 and ‘Black Phone 2’

27:48And Weapons is a great example of that where, what are there, like three jump scares? Three scares. In that movie? Yep. And people are mesmerized by it. Sinners, you pretty much see what's coming. I mean, that's also a reliable horror thing is like, yeah, I know what I want and I know you're going to give it to me and I know there's going to be a vampire siege in about two hours. Play some music. I'm fucking here. Yep. 28 years later, completely amazing ideas about grief and loss and parenthood and childhood. And as long as you get an iPhone halo running around a naked zombie alpha, we're down, you know, we're down for whatever.

28:27So I think we've been advocating for really interesting filmmakers to get involved and it's still a reliable place for me at least to discover new voices and new filmmakers. But there's something strange about when that upper tier, that top end of the genre is getting almost sucked up by some of the best filmmakers we have alive. And then that middle part that I think is the reason why you and I became fans of it in the first place is so that we can watch Sleepaway Camp or we can watch Shocker or whatever. is it's just not reliably as entertaining it's like i'll still go see it and i still get cheap thrills out of some of it and i i find that like now i'm almost like exclusively being entertained by like the lower rung independent low low budget stuff that i am the like the drops or the megan's or the um night swim or what was the pool movie that was night swim yeah that was this year wasn't No, that was a couple years ago.

29:27Yeah. Was it? Yeah. Anyway, that should be a fun movie. Yeah, this year it was like Until Dawn came out. Oh, right. That was just not very good. It was a video game adaptation from Sony. Did you really? I thought it was okay. I thought it was really bad. I think studio horror is in this weird place where you don't just need like a solid filmmaker. You need a great filmmaker at times, with some exceptions. One of the key exceptions for me is Final Destination Bloodlines. That was IP. That's exactly what we're asking for though. Yes, but that is something that had sat on the shelf for a while. people had forgotten about.

29:58Told this story a few times, but when we saw it at CinemaCon, I was like, oh shit, yes. They actually are letting them do crazy stuff with this movie and take chances. And it was a relatively modestly budgeted movie that went on to be a pretty massive hit this year. You know, you've still got The Conjuring Last Rites, which I didn't think was very strong ultimately, but I think may turn out to be the biggest movie in The Conjuring franchise. I'm sure it is, but it suffered from a lot of the same stuff that I thought Black Phone 2 did, which is just like endless, endless amounts of exposition. Yeah, and baggy and long.

30:31Osgood Perkins is an interesting character in this discussion. Yeah. The Monkey is one of the most successful horror movies of the year coming off of the success of Long Legs. I like Long Legs more than The Monkey. I do too. He has another movie coming in a month called Keeper. I do not know why Keeper is coming out on November 14th and not October 24th. I wish we could... We need to have an intervention with the studios. why are we putting horror movies in November I know you're competing against each other but please please in October when I'm obsessed with seeing horror as many horror movies as I can let's try to put them there yeah it's like avoiding shark week if you're a shark you know what I mean like we gave you a whole month it's very strange Oz fits into the Kugler Kregger mold you know he is an auteur he's a writer director he's on like his he's sticking with horror he's on like his eighth horror movie at this point Wasn't he also in the Texas Chainsaw Sweepstakes?

31:26He was, yes. And he was not ultimately selected, right? It was J.C. Molnar. J.C. Molnar, yeah. I really like Oz as a filmmaker. I think it's basically like story dependent for his movies. And those are kind of the big fish this year. The smaller stuff has been a bit more of a disappointment to me. I've tried to watch a lot. I think it's been... I haven't been as adventurous, I would say, in terms of what I'm finding. I remember a couple years ago, a number of films I saw that were just posted to YouTube. And I haven't gotten that deep this year with new stuff. But I don't have as much huge passion projects.

32:13And the other thing that I think is that Shudder has kind of continued this dominance of acquisition where most of what you'll want to see, if you're a big fan, ends up on that service. Eventually. Eventually, in any given year. And there's this interesting thing happening where I think in the aftermath of In a Violent Nature and Late Night with the Devil and those movies doing pretty well theatrically, they have sort of started pushing more of their films into theaters. Yeah. Which I think is great. Hell House lineage, I think, is in theaters. Having a theatrical run. Yeah, which is kind of unheard of, you know, for Hell House.

32:44I mean, I'm sure it had brief appearances, but not like this movie is out for like three weeks before it gets to shutter after Halloween or like October 30th. Yeah, Good Boy is currently in theaters right now. The dog horror movie, Dangerous Animals had a stretch in theaters earlier this year. So there have been a few. I have another point that I'd like to just throw out there. I don't know if you've noticed this. I did a little bit more cramming this year, but my wife and I have kind of kept up the usual rhythm of like one or two times a month. I just go to some reliable review sites. There's a really good columnist, Eric Pippenberg, in the New York Times, who does five horror movies to stream right now every month.

33:29And that's a really useful tool. But she and I, my wife and I, still watch like two horror movies a month. It has been a bad year. And one of the reasons is there's two. One, I think, is production-based, where you're still seeing the after effects of COVID and strikes and stuff like that, where a lot of the setups, but a lot of the executions just feel very barren. Like, so it's really, really relying on isolation, one or two handers, creep over actually being able to show anything scary. So a lot of like, something went bump in the night, but you don't really see the bump unless it's like in a shadow somewhere.

34:10And furthermore, I think the long tail of Hereditary has really started to affect a lot of the movies that I usually would enjoy where it's just way, way, way too much about the trauma of the characters instead of the scares of the movie. I'm really down for the balance. But I think we've really over-indexed for like 90 minutes of somebody mourning their dead mother and five minutes of finding out that their mother is a ghost. I always point to The Strangers as the best example of this, of the complete mystery of the terror of that movie. And that's part of the reason why it's so effective. And now we find ourselves in 2025 with The Strangers Chapter 2, which features a huge origin story about how the strangers came together to begin killing people.

34:56And it's like, I don't want that. Right. Let those strangers kill people and be strangers. Be a stranger to me. Don't be a friend to me, stranger who kills. And there is like, there's just a little bit too much explanation. And I'm trying to figure out what it is. I understand certainly the huge impact that Hereditary made and a handful of other movies. And like the elevated horror idea. That whole run, we've talked about that before. Every year we talk about this, that comes up because you can feel it kind of baked into the premise where you can almost feel the filmmaker in the room with the executive and saying like, so this happened because of this.

35:33And I reflected on this in my personal journey. And I thought it would be important. And all of those feelings are valid. Respectfully keep it out of my horror films. Yes. And this is what happens. is like part of the allure of this genre is that you can fit so many different things. You can Trojan horse them in because you're like, I have scares every 15 minutes. Yes. These movies don't actually have scares every 15 minutes anymore. Like I think we've really gotten away from some of the reliable rewards of this genre. So I remain obviously steadfast a fan. I've probably watched more horror films than any other kind of movie this year.

36:09But I just found it a little bit more difficult to find some hidden gems for you. Let's get into the things that you did like. We can do some obvious stuff to start. You know, VHS Halloween is out. One of the best of the series. This is one of the only reliable things in my life. That every year, Shudder gives us a new VHS movie and has a new sub-theme every time. They're hit or miss. You know, I wasn't as crazy about VHS Beyond as I was VHS 94. VHS Halloween's pretty good. Did you have any favorite segments? Kid print. Yeah. Alex's is very fucked up. I know we're going to talk to Alex, but I wanted to ask you, I was listening to you and Amanda talk about Roof Man.

36:55Does kid print go into Girl Dad movie of the year contention? How do you fucking feel watching that? For whatever, well, it helps to know Alex. Sure. It helps to know what lights him up. It makes it a little easier to disassociate from some of the horror of that film. And that is a very horrifying film. And it exists inside of what is otherwise, I would say, a fairly antic and at times colorful and playful VHS installment. Some of the earlier films I found to be really dark and fun. More like faces of death. Yeah, they're really, really intense. The franchise attracts a lot of different kinds of filmmakers.

37:37international filmmakers, men, women. And this one in particular, because you've got Halloween parties and trick-or-treating and candy and Halloween music. Like those are all components of this movie. And so it feels a little lighter and brighter. And we both love Halloween. There's nothing better than just like wandering around Los Angeles in October and just taking in the vibe. It's just so, it's really great out here. But Kid Brin is fucked up. And Alex went for it. And I salute him for that. What else? Within VHS or just in general from this year. Sure, if you have any others you want to cite.

38:09I liked the Kuchiku one. That was a really good setup. Yeah, there's some Girl Dad stuff in that one too.

38:20Yeah, but this was a really great effort on this series. I have a couple that I bet you and I, I think these, I think Dangerous Animals and Bring Her Back are probably, aside from like the big box office ones that we talked about, are probably the ones most people have seen or enjoyed. So Dangerous Animals, a Sean Burns, really sadistic shark movie. Now, shark films don't always have to be horror films. They can be thrillers. They can be survival movies. I felt like this one was much more of a serial killer horror film that happened to feature sharks. 100%. And was diabolical. And really, if you think you like shark movies, I dare you well it's it's one of the first I couldn't think of another example I'm sure this exists somewhere in the history of shark movies but I'd never quite seen a movie where a killer utilized as a tool a shark as the weapon yes as his machete or his axe or his you know knife glove yeah and Jai Courtney is just on one in this movie I think I'm a little more mixed on this movie than you are but I think Jai Courtney is incredible and is a great villain.

39:35It's a really great idea. There's a also like a, I thought effective, but probably maybe this is what you're talking about is the main character is this girl, American girl wandering Australia, surfing, kind of like finding herself. And it's like 30 minutes of her like kind of hanging out. I don't know if that maybe bothered you or was it just all the stuff on the boat? It's a little slow going. I mean, I had seen the trailer for this movie. I too love all shark films. and the setup, the cold open of the film, of the couple, the tourist couple that gets on the boat and encounters Jai Courtney, that sequence is in the trailer.

40:13Oh. And when I saw that, I was like, this is going to be fucking sick. This is going to be a movie where a guy keeps inviting people onto boats and feeding them sharks. And it's not really, it's more of a survival, it is more of a serial killer survival final girl kind of film. And it just is a little bit, I found it to be a little bit baggy, but I thought Jai Courtney was amazing and the general conception of it was really cool. Now, speaking of shark films, have you seen Beast of War? No. Okay. That's apparently like Australian soldiers stranded in the water. Sharks come from them. But I've heard good things about that.

40:44That's like my uncle's Portuguese man of war story. Yeah. Yeah. That's you don't want that. What you don't want to be is on a boat and stuck in a place where there's creatures in the sea and they're interested in you. I just rewatched Creepshow 2. Do you remember? Have you seen Creepshow 2? Not in a long time. You remember the raft where the four kids swim out to the raft and there's like a... something. It looks like an oil slick. I do remember that. Yeah, it's a good one. Bring her back. Has it grown, shrunk in your memory since you've seen it? I'd like to rewatch it. I think I went in with not the best headspace after Talk to Me.

41:15I really like what the Philpos are about as filmmakers. I just thought they took an incredibly dire energy into the movie. And I think some people like that and sometimes I like it. So maybe I'm being a hypocrite. I think this is representative of what I was talking about with like the sort of long tail of Hereditary where I thought Talk To Me had some of the what a great fucking time this movie is. Like plenty of just absolute misery in that film too. Yes. But had a lot of like kids at a party fucking around going too far. And just a lot of like cool shit until it gets really, really, really dark.

41:56Bring Her Back almost instantaneously is an absolute slog. Now it's got a really good Sally Hawkins performance. It's very well made. Incredibly disturbing scenes. But had the promise of being like a woman finds a resurrection method on the dark web and is trying to bring back her dead child by basically fucking around with foster children. And I was like, this is twisted. It's the rare movie where I wanted to see the prequel more than the movie. The prequel about the development of the rituals. You know, what we see on those VHS tapes in the beginning, which that stuff is so effective and so unsettling.

42:35And the movie itself is, you know, it's a character study about grief with kids in peril. Yeah. And it just isn't what I was hoping it would be, but I should return to it because I do think those guys are really talented. You've got Strange Harvest on the list. Yeah. I thought this was a cool movie. I don't know if it was a scary movie, even though it is very clearly horror. Explain what Strange Harvest is. So it's pretty much a note for note. True crime doc. Like if you put it up against Netflix's Night Stalker doc, you wouldn't really notice that many differences. This comes from one of the guys who worked on Grave Encounters, which is kind of a legendary, not legendary, but a very well regarded found footage franchise from like 2011, 2012.

43:32Stuart Ortiz, and he made this film where essentially it's straight to camera to the detectives who worked on a case of a serial killer over the course of several decades in the Inland Empire in California. A lot of the Inland Empire stuff is really good. A lot of the visual language of the movie is essentially taken straight from true crime docs. So a lot of drone shots, a lot of body cam footage, a lot of, you know, interview style, talking head exposition. And the thing that makes a difference is like the suggestion of like a supernatural occult kind of power of the serial killer that is beyond the comprehension of the detectives.

44:17but if you it never breaks it never breaks its character as a film it's always this true crime doc so I I enjoyed it I think I thought it was going to go up to a crazier level than it did yeah it kind of holds it holds the tension but never releases it yes and that's an interesting choice for a horror movie that ultimately feels more like an exercise than a movie yeah but is really pretty well executed considering it's budget savvy. You know what I mean? I think that you can pitch this as two different things. You can make it probably effectively on a low budget. I thought that the casting of the detectives especially was like, I can't really tell if these are actors playing detectives or detectives.

45:07Yeah, and they have to do so much work because they're essentially explaining the movie all the way through and that's a tough gig. I was pretty impressed with this. I would really want to see what Ortiz does next. because I think it's not easy to do something I haven't seen before in the genre, and I just have not quite seen this in that way. I wanted to talk about this in conjunction with Shelby Oaks, which is coming out this week, which is a new horror movie from Chris Stuckman. Chris Stuckman is a very well-known YouTube movie reviewer, and Beloved has been doing it for a really long time, and he has long had aspirations of making a movie, and he raised, he crowdfunded financing for his original horror movie, which is also about the disappearance of a series of people, in this case, a series of sort of ghost hunter, supernatural investigator YouTubers.

46:01Okay. And I ultimately didn't think the movie was all that successful, but one of the reasons why I feel like I need to see it again in part because it uses a somewhat similar convention to Strange Harvest in that in its opening segment, it presents as the making of a true crime documentary about the disappearance of these YouTubers. And it's really clever because they're YouTubers. So there's a lot of footage of them and a lot of footage of their investigations, which the true crime documentarians can utilize to help tell the story. And then, and where the movie kind of breaks, very unfortunately for me, is that it transitions away from being a true crime documentary.

46:42There's a late in the film title sequence and you get like 28 minutes in and it's like Shelby Oaks yeah and then it just becomes a traditional narrative horror film where you're following the sister of the girl who has disappeared but is believed to be alive okay and that stuff just doesn't doesn't work as well also like so he made a micro budget version of this and then I think was it a studio came in and was like we're gonna give you more money to like kind of it seems like there was some reshooting so Neon acquired the film Mike Flanagan came on as an EP you can see I mean Stuckman if you watch his videos like he really understands movies he loves movies he really has a huge affinity for horror he talks about horror all the time he'll talk about the smallest horror movie in the world on his show I have a lot of respect for what he does it's actually kind of a fascinating testament to how hard it is to make a movie especially an independent movie because even if you have a good idea following through on it making sure you have the right cast and then trying to do something different that's why I think Strange Harvest is a fascinating achievement because it is trying to do something different and it holds it it accomplishes what it wants to do Shelby Oaks is worth checking out, but I don't know what happened because the movie was recut since it played, I want to say, Fantastic Fest last year and was picked up out of there and was re-edited and maybe there were some things added to it as well.

47:58Interesting experiment. I can't wait to check it out. It's a cool movie. The next two on your list I have not seen. Okay, so there's two I want to recommend that I can't really talk about because if people have any interest in seeing, part of, I would say, without giving anything away is the plot twists. So one is Night of the Reaper, which is a movie from Brandon Christensen, which is kind of a riff on House of the Devil and Scream, I would say. And Babysitters, Serial Killers, really awesome opening segment. Has that, I think Shudder has been making a lot of, or acquiring a lot of stuff that is 80s retro.

48:33And has that kind of beginning of Halloween, Suburban Streets synth score. The John Carpenter font. Night of the Reaper is... Is it self-conscious about all of those things? I think it's self-conscious about the aesthetic but the story itself is a different beast and I enjoyed this quite a bit and then another one that is somewhat plot dependent so I can't really talk too much about is Marshmallow which is from Daniel DiPurgatorio and it's a comedy horror set at a summer camp where something is wrong with the and I will just let the ellipse go there something is wrong with something at this point.

49:14Where is Marshboard? Can you watch that? That is also on Shudder, I believe. So both of those are available on Shudder. The one I'm most excited to talk to you about, though, is Invader. So this is Mickey Keating's new movie. I haven't seen this. This film is produced by and features heavily as a performer, Joe Swanberg, and was made with the Swanberg ethos of run and gun. We're just going to go out there into the outer rim Chicago and make a movie. Mickey Keating has made a bunch of really interesting horror thrillers, Carnage Park, Psychopaths. Off Season was his most recent one, which is a much more comparatively stately film about a woman who gets trapped on an island off of the coast of New England, I think.

50:03Yes. Starring Jocelyn Donahue from House of the Devil. Right. This one, Invader, here's the premise. a Mexican woman is arriving in Chicago on a bus. She is supposed to be visiting her cousin. She keeps calling her cousin. Cousin's not picking up. She goes to her cousin's house. Cousin's not home. Goes to her cousin's job. They're like, she didn't show up for work. She's fired. And then everything goes from there. It is 70 minutes. And Mickey Keating has talked about this film in relationship to like the Dardenne brothers and Michael Haneke and Cousin. Harmony Kareem way more than John Carpenter or Wes Craven or anything else.

50:46I will say that if you turn this on and you get about five minutes in and you feel like you need to throw up because of the camera work, stop the movie because it doesn't get any better. It is a punishing experience. It's like Greengrass with the steadicam turned off. And I say that knowing Greengrass is not used steadicam. It is swinging the camera around. There's one scene where Joe Swanberg plays a character who you were supposed to take as invader. He is the invader. And he is swinging a hammer at the floor of a house and the camera follows the hammer. So it's basically going in a giant circle.

51:26And it's pretty disorienting. That's out of the Jack Torrance swinging the axe, what Kubrick does with that. And they apparently had a 90-minute cut and they were like, we kind of can't do this to people. you know so it is I think it's 70 minutes but it is incredibly punishing but really really really cool I'm very excited is that VOD? yeah okay yeah I didn't see it streaming anywhere I'm gonna check that out that's very exciting you always you always have you always have a couple even in a down year if you want to challenge yourself and see like a really cool movie I would recommend this couple movies we haven't mentioned Presence Steven Soderbergh's ghost story, which we talked about earlier this year on the show.

52:12Steven was on the show actually for that film, which I think is quite good. I don't know if it's scary. I think it's the inversion of a ghost story, yeah. What do you mean by that? Because it's about the ghost. It's a ghost POV and it's just about watching people scare themselves with their emotions. I've been talking to my daughter about just kind of various monsters, because when it's Halloween time, you're getting a lot of the iconography. and we were putting some decals up on the windows. Ghost must be hard. Ghost is a tricky one to explain. Right. Because it's like, ooh, cool, boo. But like, what are they?

52:45I think Casper is a pretty good gateway to ghost culture because he's friendly. He is a dead boy. Yeah. You kind of have to think about the fact that Casper is a dead boy. He got grabbed. Casper got grabbed. But ghosts are not, it's not easy to make that work. Yeah. storytelling wise I like presents a lot Companion I feel like Companion should have made like 80 million dollars yeah and speaking of 99 out of 100 and like would you want to do over and if Companion was coming out in a week would people be like what is this I'm so down for this it definitely is it was a weird release date it was like January 10th yes and we could have used Companion this month and had a lot of the movie in the trailer that is very true yeah that wasn't ideal but I like Companion quite a bit me too Goodboy is pretty nifty I thought better as an experiment than as a movie.

53:36This is a movie about about a killer through the eyes of his dog and the dog incredible dog performance like one of the great dog performances you'll ever see in a movie. It's a little inconsistent with his rules about the killer and is the killer like a supernatural being or not? Should we get the dog from Good Boy and the cat from Caught Stealing? To have sex? What do you want them to do? And just make it make Lethal Weapon 4? You know? I thought you were trying to match them. just like put them put them out in the world Good Boy is cool Good Boy is also only 73 minutes and I believe will be on Shudder very soon it's in theaters right now you haven't seen Descendant no so Descendant is the new movie from Peter Salella and it's kind of in the Benson and Moorhead oh family okay I believe I believe they produced this movie is it kind of sci-fi it's more sci-fi it is also in the Girl Dad Hall of Fame for all the wrong reasons.

54:36It's about a guy who plays a security guard in LA and he has had some sort of trauma in his childhood. We don't know what it is. And one night he wakes up and he goes outside and a beam of light from the sky hits him. And it seems as though he's being called to by aliens of some kind and that extraterrestrials are drawing him in and invading his world. His wife is pregnant. And that is a component of what is distracting him. It is a big allegorical stew about that. The filmmaking, though, is really, really good. And it stars Ross Marquand and Sarah Bolger, who I believe have both been in other Benson and Moorhead movies.

55:22And I think that's also streaming on Shudder right now. Pretty solid. Descendant. All right, I'm going to check that out. The other thing I just saw on a plane seated beside my child was Jimmy and Stiggs. Jimmy and Stiggs is the new Joe Bigos movie. And it is fucking crazy. It is actually kind of similar to Descendant in that it's about a guy who's a filmmaker, kind of a thinly veiled Joe Bigos, played by Joe Bigos, who returns home to his apartment one night, has a few Jack Daniels, smokes a blunt, gets super high, watches a movie, goes to bed, wakes up, and discovers that aliens are in his apartment.

56:01and he has to murder the aliens. And it is an 84-minute splatter core neon head fuck. I think I saw the trailer for this. I wish I'd seen it in a movie theater because I think with a crowd, it would have been a lot of fun. It's very zany and jokey. Did Alice like check it out every once in a while? She would turn her head. She was pretty locked in on Vampirina, which is a big hit this Halloween season, Disney Plus streaming show about a little girl vampire. that is utterly fine. I wouldn't say she's ready for Jimmy and Stiggs, which is also a movie about this friendship between these two guys and getting to a certain stage of your life and not quite being who you want to be.

56:43But the alien kills are very funny and very gross. And then the final 20 minutes is an incredible descent into craziness. I thought it was pretty cool. What else? What else is from this year? I thought I'd shout out Bleeding, which is a really unique kind of uh it's a vampire movie but it's really just an allegory for opioid addiction and uh the vibe of it really reminded me of jeff nichols's shotgun stories uh and early jeff nichols stuff and it's like way way better than and the performances are way better than i like you you would need to make but it's basically like what if vampirism and blood was like a drug addiction and there were addicts out there who would like rob each other's stashes and od and stuff like that and it's a pretty like abel ferrari did this he did that's the addiction that's one of the greats yeah uh but this is pretty cool um what else there's a couple that i think are really like especially as we roll into the home stretch of halloween and maybe you can't go full cannibal holocaust with your with your partner and you want to watch like something kind of fun.

57:55I can, for example. Right. Yeah. There's a few that I think are pretty entertaining. I thought Fear Street Prom Queen was like serviceable. Yeah. Pretty, pretty, pretty decent. I mentioned Marshmallow. Clown in a Cornfield is like a fun enough kind of like whodunit slash slasher movie with a good clown killer. It's an interesting companion with the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot. Yeah. Because they're both movies about Gen Z. Yes. In slasher town. and I actually think Clown in a Cornfield is much more successful maybe because it's lower stakes and it's having much more tongue-in-cheek too.

58:32I think I know what you did last summer thinks it's really clever and it's not that clever. Clown in a Cornfield is a little clever. It's got some good kills. It's got clowns. Kind of a good example. Killer clowns just works. I know what you did last summer might have been 10 times more entertaining if they didn't have to do all the work to connect previous iterations of the movies to the film that they were making. They had just done like a straight remake and Jessica Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze had nothing to do with it, I think it would have been pretty entertaining. Yeah, I tend to agree with you because they cast that movie really well.

59:03They kind of nailed all the young stars. Right, because the dude from him is in it, right? Tyreek Withers is in it. Yeah, you've got Your Girl from Outer Banks. You've got, what's her name? Come on, that's your favorite show. I know exactly what you're talking about. You've got Chase Huey Wonders. Yeah, that's right. Is it Madeline Klein? Madeline Klein. Thank you, Jack. Yeah. She's not in your power rankings? She's not. Doesn't rate. Okay. I haven't seen a couple of these movies. Okay. I haven't seen Bone Lake yet, which I think is another in a long line of... That's the one of like... Whoops, we double booked the Airbnb.

59:35Oh, yeah. Which, you know... And there's like a really like... A couple who's at the Airbnb. A couple arrives at the Airbnb and there's a couple that like to like do a lot of PTA. PDA? They do a lot of PTA, meaning Parent Teacher Association or Paul Thomas Anderson? PDA. Public displays of affection. Yeah, I think there's a suggestion in the trailer of some partner swapping, maybe, potentially, which obviously we know you're a big fan of. Witchboard? Have you seen the remake of Witchboard? I haven't. Have you ever seen the original Witchboard? I haven't. I watched it for the first time. I'd like to tell you about Witchboard.

1:00:12The original film is from 1986. It's directed by Kevin S. Tenney, who made Night of the Demon.

1:00:23Tawny Katane is the star of this movie. yeah can you explain who Tawny Katane is she was a big supermodel who appeared in the White Snake music video Here I Go Again the video is largely a performance piece by her a dance performance writhing on a car yes and then she was also the romantic interest of the actual David Coverdale of the front man I believe they were married yeah David Coverdale also one of your guys so this movie it's about a college student who becomes obsessed with a Ouija board and it starts to possess her and she's eventually possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. And her boyfriend and her boyfriend's frenemy go on a journey to discover the actual history of this serial killer.

1:01:11I love boyfriend and a boyfriend's frenemy is like a setup. Yeah, and they're like riding around in a 1980s convertible being like, I loved her first! Genuinely terrible movie, but also a great film. Okay. There's a remake, and I bring the remake up, even though I haven't seen it, because it is directed by Chuck Russell, who directed Dream Warriors. Oh. He directed The Mask, starring Jim Carrey. He's a super talented film. He directed The Blob remake, which is also great with Kevin Dillon. Yeah. He's an awesome horror movie director, and he hasn't made a horror movie in a while, and so I'm eager to see this movie, but I was wondering if you had seen it.

1:01:44I had not. No, I didn't even know about it. The only other ones, I'll say along those same lines of, like, fun for the whole family, Hell of a Summer, which is Finn Wolfhard. He co-directed this movie that's basically like Meatballs meets a horror movie. Fred Hechinger is in this. Quite a year friend. Yeah, really I found to be a completely entertaining way to spend a night watching this. And then on the far other end of Absolutely Depraved is Looky Lou, which is a really fucked up found footage first person horror film. Where is that? Stalking, I believe that is on, And you got to do VOD for that one, I believe.

1:02:23Okay. Wow. You're just... I do the work. You never cease to amaze. I scout. You really are the man. The number one person that I usually hear from when you go through this run of movies is our next guest, Alex Ross Perry. He always texts me and said, CR came through again with three or four wrecks that I had not heard of. So let's go to our conversation now with Alex Ross Perry.

1:02:50Alex Ross Perry is here. Alex, we're going to talk to you about horror anthologies. The streets have been clamoring for your appearance on a horror episode, but unlike in previous years, you actually have horror content in the world. You have a horror installment in VHS Halloween, which is called Kidprint, which many people are saying is the most depraved film of the year. Can you tell us about where it came from? His facial expression didn't change at all. People are talking. You know, you have to adjust now. The facial expressions can't just be. But you were just like blanked in when he was like, it's depraved.

1:03:22And you were like, yes. Yeah, it'd be better if I was like reacting like, I mean, I like I like people responding positively to it. And I think you might even, as you like to say, to use a Sean phrase, listeners of this show might remember in years past. I feel like I often speak very highly of the VHS franchise. guys. And I know last year when we did the episode at the offices in Manhattan, I had just watched Beyond and I was like, man, these things are good. Like what a, what a, what a thing they've got set up here. We watch these every year. And is that, is that how you came to be a part of it?

1:03:59Sort of. I had a meeting with Shudder about something else that was going nowhere and is still going nowhere really. And I just said it a straight to Sam Zimmerman programmer, shutter and VP. How do you guys put those VHS things together? I've always, when I finished those movies, I always think I should try to be involved with this. Then I forget about it. And the next thing I know, there's a new one that I'm not involved in. And I always think like I should, I should throw my hat in the ring. And he was like, Oh, we're putting this years together right now? Why would you like to be involved?

1:04:33And it was really one of those things where it's just kind of as simple as that. And he said, well, here's our theme. It's Halloween this year, last year of science fiction. We'd like things to be very back to basics, no spaceships this time around. I said, this sounds right up my alley. That's the thing I'd most want to do anyway. And I had this idea as the Sean, you've seen my, my essay film, Video Heaven. I have in Video heaven, we unearthed this commercial featuring John Walsh from America's Most Wanted advertising a service at Blockbuster where you bring your kid in to have a videotape made of them being interviewed called Kid Prints.

1:05:11And I've always found this fascinating. And when we found this commercial, it went right in the dock. You can look these up on YouTube. If you just go on YouTube and you search 90s Kid Print, you'll see hundreds of people have uploaded wavy, liminal videos of themselves really being interviewed. And I think a very creepy way. Yeah. Uh, even though the questions are, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite food? Uh, what do you like to do after school? It's just that weird level of quiet combined with analog video hiss and tracking that plus 30 years makes something feel creepy. And I said, I've always wanted to do something like that.

1:05:49Like nineties kidnapping scare. He was like, sounds great. Write up a treatment. that was January. We shot it in May and delivered in July and it came out September. Sometimes it just works out. Let me ask you a pointed question because I had some friends over over the weekend. Chris was among them. And I would say half of these people are interested in horror films and the other half are definitively not. And we started talking about kid print and some of them know you and some of them know you. You have a family, you have a young child. and you know this is a this is a this is a child kidnapping and a brutal film in some ways and the dissonance between being a parent you hear some parents say like i can't watch anything now about kids in peril because of the feelings that you have it appears that you have really just gone the other way on that on that one it depends i will i thought you were gonna say i mean have you revealed in other parts of the show the other thing you and chris did at this party that you've revealed.

1:06:48What was the other thing? I could just read your text message. Tell me. I believe you said I had a birthday party from my wife over the weekend. Chris and I did a tight 10, your phrase, not mine, on a Grabber Vance 2028 ticket. That's right. We didn't even bring this up on the Black 4th 2 party. Not because we were afraid of the political ramifications. I think if Vance really wants a chance in 28, he needs a strong second. And I think Grabber, the Grabber, you know, Black Phone 3 will probably be out by then. You could immediately put the Grabber in charge of child trafficking because it would be like, who would know this business better than the Grabber himself?

1:07:29Is this what the tight 10 consisted of? We're expanding on the material now, but thank you for prompting that. I totally forgot. Comic relief style banter of, yeah, you know, who's going to be better at getting kids out of the country than the Grabber? That's literally what he does. I do really think of this show as like, we are the Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg. So I appreciate the comic relief. Everybody says that about the three of you. It's very much what people say. So, I mean, I'm curious what the rest of the conversation you would have had was. But essentially, the answer to your question is somebody says to me, you want to make a 20-minute horror piece.

1:08:04You love horror. You watch hundreds of horror films. We want it to be grounded. And my first question to myself is, well, what scares me? What do I think is upsetting? Because that's what I want to make. I don't, I'm not saying what I'm about to say isn't a movie I would want to watch or like, and of course some of the other segments in the film are this, but like, I don't find demons upsetting because I view the risk of encountering one as being very low. I enjoy a film with demons in it. I don't view the risk of like encountering some sort of mutation. I enjoy that as a narrative conceit. It doesn't really upset me because it has yet to happen in my life or in anybody else's.

1:08:44My thought was just like, as a parent, this is upsetting to me. And if I'm going to make something that is designed to get under your skin, my starting point is what upsets me? And this goes back to being like 13 years old and watching Halloween, probably 11 years old, watching Halloween. And it's like, you know what's upsetting to me is the idea that a guy could just like walk into my house and kill me right now. Like, that's very upsetting. It's very upsetting that a guy could just like enter my home with a knife and murder me and my family. That's much more upsetting to me than a great many other things that I also enjoy, but my own fears are grounded.

1:09:18And I think this shows in the VHS franchise, obviously multifaceted. everybody gets their own voice there are six segments in this film including mine the only one that takes place in our world every other one takes place in a world where humans have manifested into other beings giant babies yeah magic exists in some form or supernatural and this is all great i love i watch these movies every day um but that's not i couldn't come if i came up with if they said pitch 20 ideas i wouldn't get there when you push through to the other side and you're like okay what's upsetting to me that's what I want to make a movie about when you're actually in the process of writing and making the film do you almost then like fully dive into like do you push past like any like oh this is creeping me out to even be writing this or making a film about this and then go fully into like how could I upset Alex the viewer as much as possible I think it's just kind of shooting from the hip you know the script on the you know your script is 25 pages long.

1:10:20You don't have real estate. And it's not like I want every moment to be calibrated for maximum. It's just like my whole criteria on this is I've seen every one of these films. And this is now the fifth in five years produced by the same team of producers shepherded by a guy named Josh Goldblum. And my criteria is just, you watch these films. I watch them every year. A segment ends. I turned to my wife and I say, that one was really good. Yeah. Or I turn to her and go, I really couldn't wait for that one to be over. And my only criteria was like, I just need to make the thing that when it ends, I'm turning and I'm saying that one was great.

1:11:00And that was all I was really thinking of is like when this ends, whether it's the first or the last or somewhere in the middle of the whole piece, I just want to be able to say like, if I hadn't made that, I would think, wow, that one, that was it. That was what I wanted. And I don't know. I mean, I really just didn't think that much about it. It's a very boring answer, but it's like, this is what was great is conversations kind of took place in February and March. And I was finished the script by April. Like you're not fine tuning. Yeah. You're just kind of like, yeah, it'd be fun. You know, this location is appealing to me.

1:11:31Oh, we get to do practical gore effects. Well, let's like remove some faces that feels within reach. And, you know, I'm wearing a Hellraiser hoodie or not hoodie, just a crew neck they're called today. and you know just like just have some fun it's a very it's it's unfortunate now that the the kid print is considered so grotesque and repellent by people because it reflects poorly on me when i say like my intention is just to make something fun and gross i thought it was fun my wife turned to me midway through kid print and went oh holy shit you know like in a really impressed way so i i definitely enjoyed it but it is it is definitely like it we're putting you uh we're opening a file on you.

1:12:15Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think so. And I think that that's, by the way, there is a place for you in the Vance Grabber administration. Maybe Treasury. Secretary of War. Of Homeland Security or Health and Human Services, perhaps. I mean, you're just a stone throw away from like, you know, like the meme or, you know, pre-meme of like, it'd be, you know, Scarface and Corleone sitting and playing poker. You know, like you're just a stone throw away from like the guy in the movie, the character is called Bruce you know with the kids mask on sitting there with the grabber and Vance and whoever knows who else but Horror needs great villains Alex Yeah but it was just really to me like as a fan just an opportunity to have fun and just mess around with something and again we'll talk about like the very restrictive format of an anthology the time allotment and all the rest is like okay you could say of Kidprint like there's seven characters in the first five minutes it's not a surprise where this is going my answer is like no i shouldn't be a surprise where it's going it should be a surprise how how awful it is like it's obvious where this is going because this is a 20 minute segment in an anthology where four out of five of these every single character is dead by the end of the segment but what you should what you should be surprised by is like oh that went that went exactly where i was going but it also went further than i would have thought because these things don't tend to go that far.

1:13:40Yeah. The, the mixed company on Saturday night felt just based on my description that you went too far. Um, I don't, I think you can go further in kid print too. I mean, keeping in mind, I'm having these conversations with people at playgrounds who I barely know. And they're like striking up a conversation, uh, like kids teacher, I was wearing my shutter sweatpants that they gave me the other day and I dropped her off and she was like, Oh, I love Shudder. And I was like, I wonder if she'll just like watch this and not know. I was at the doctor recently had a Shudder hat on and she said the same thing.

1:14:13She's like, I just watched this great movie on Shudder. And it's like, you know, these people are out there. Yeah. But every day, like you just, well, you might pass them in the grocery store and that person is like, you know, actually grab you at any moment. Alex, did you know how much insight are you given when you're making these about what the other segments are about? Like what the batting order is going to be necessarily yeah i was fascinated by this and i'm happy to talk about it because as fans you probably watched all these and the answer is like nothing okay uh it's all kind of done in a vacuum and kind of for the producers sake i worry for them it's all done concurrently essentially uh just the limited window of like when the the movie is operational into when everything has to be wrapped is like six weeks wow um we shot here we shot partially upstate and partially in Brooklyn.

1:15:02And then the others were shot in California and Paco Plaza's was shot in Spain, obviously. And the wraparound Diet Phantasma was shot in Scotland, but the three California ones were kind of blocked together. And at some point, Sam Zimmerman, again, who lives near me and we're at the playground again, like picture me and Sam Zimmerman from shutter at the playground while our kids are doing whatever. And we're just like talking about kid print, um, you know, for like the last seven months, this is a great country. yeah that's just what we're we're just you know no one knows that's what we're talking about this is what Grabber and Vance are trying to save for us just like a safe space for all people is I think what the Grabber administration that's right yeah for creative souls but yeah at some point he listed the names of everybody and other than Paco none of them connected for me I think other than Anna Zlakovic who made a one feed I think maybe you know I don't think the others have made features unless I'm forgetting something.

1:16:00So, you know, but he's like, oh, Casper Kelly, who did too many cooks. I'm like, okay, well, I know what that is. Yeah. I have no idea what he's doing in this space, but I'm sure it will be strange. It sounds like you did not see his Yule Log films. No, I never did. No. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty cool experiments. They're very, very similar to the segment that he directed for the film. Yeah. But, you know, that's a name that I was like, oh, okay, I know who that is, but they don't know the sequencing until they get the edits. I learned there is no master plan. And even throughout talking to the producers or seeing Sam at the playground, it was like, yeah, we're kind of figuring out where yours might go.

1:16:36But then I learned, and you guys might not even notice this, it's kind of subconscious when you're watching the film. Leave the wraparound aside, because that's obviously the wraparound, made as the wraparound, is that segments one, three, and five all involve trick-or-treating. And then Paco's and mine don't. So they were like, we kind of immediately realized that Coochie Coochie Coo and Fun Size and Home Haunt could not be next to each other. And in that, all three of the LA movies, coincidentally, we give filmmakers the prompt of a Halloween horror short. All three of them went to like, so we're on the street and they're trick-or-treating.

1:17:12And then this thing happens and yours and Paco's don't. So it was very easy to just think like, so is Kid Prince second or is it fourth? and I thought this was fascinating and also ultimately quite correct. And yeah, it's like, I don't know, like what accounts for the fact that you give people the prompt of make a 20 minute Halloween thing. And in my mind it was like, so we're not going to do trick or treating because we don't have the money to do it. And I don't want to do a bad version of it because what you want, I mean, I could go shoot this right now and it would look like half a million dollars worth of production design, but you do it in may and it would look terrible and i was just like i don't want to bother with that so there has to be some narrative justification why there is no trick-or-treating which is great because that's consistent with the story i'm telling which is just a micro version of overthinking how do you calibrate a story in 20 minutes that has its own prehistory the story has been going on since before the movie began the story also then justifies why we're not going to have 90 extras we're not going to have five houses lined up trick-or-treating and i sort of lightly joked with the other filmmakers who do show exterior trick-or-treating scenes like i was like i'm glad that you guys did it but i'm glad you didn't do it that well because it would have made me really jealous if you'd figured out how to make this look great in may for no money yeah like in home haunt um rh and micheline they you know put it all into one house and i'm like we could do one house, but one house doesn't look like trick or treating.

1:18:47And, you know, we all love Halloween, the classic, like, it looks like nothing. It was shot in like the middle of some other season and there's like six people out and that's great. But I just was like, we just need a reason that that doesn't happen. Fortunately, if child killings have been happening for a month in this town anyway, we'll just like, yeah, we don't have the money to do it, but also the story shouldn't have it happening. And it was fascinating to kind of get the insight of how these things are made because I think these guys are great at what they do. Like, I think that the producers have created an annual event in the streaming space.

1:19:22And I'm just seeing like in three weeks, the amount of logs VHS Halloween has on Letterboxd, you know, it's like already way more than pavements. And that movie is like a year and a half old. And it's just like, you know, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people are just clicking on this every single day for the rest of the month. And it's a really reassuring business model to be making something knowing like, well, I'm not going to be subjected to any notes or scrutiny of this. They're just going to make this as good as it can be and then release it and hope it doesn't cause people to turn off the movie before it's over, which I'm sure has happened, or maybe you just skip ahead, but it's pretty casual process.

1:20:03And again, just shooting with a release date because they were like, October 3rd is when this comes out. I have such an uncomplicated relationship to this series, to this franchise. It's exactly what Alex is describing. There is no like, I wonder if this one's going to be up to snuff this year. It's like, I hit play. I get excited when the theme clicks. I was curious, Alex, whether or not, did you get any inside info or would this ever appeal to you to do the wraparound? Because the idea of making a coherent story that also gets interrupted five times is like really fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, it didn't come up.

1:20:41I think I would probably be bad at it. It's hard enough to make for my brain like 20 minutes is, I mean, Brian Ferguson, like all credit to him, like what he did with it, I think is super fun. But that was the one creative thing I asked at some point because we had this whole opening sequence that we cut entirely out. and it was a news report, which is now just shown on the TV like five minutes later. And it had a lot of table setting and this and that. And we were like, how do we start? Did we start with this or that? And they said, oh, so the wraparound, every segment of it ends with a super gory kill.

1:21:17And we were like, oh, okay. So like we should not start with like a lot of violent information. We should start with the kid print montage rather than starting with like, ever since his head was found, you know, 10 feet from his body. I was like, just give people 60 seconds to reset. And that was all the, the only question I ever asked was what happens in the wraparound? Because some of them just build slowly to one big conclusion. Whereas Brian's notion of doing a repetitive series of failed experiments was, I thought very funny, but no, that never came up. I guess they just assigned him, or again, that's a mystery of the VHS world that we'll never know.

1:21:55This is the kind of logical problem solving that we can expect from Vance Grabber. I feel like the way that you explained how you arrived at your decisions. That's why he's the secretary of transportation. It's really exciting. It was very linear in a really refreshing way, but also just like fixating on my obvious core obsessions of like media infrastructure and distribution during my lifetime. but grounding it in again, like this is just me in my head is like, again, I say Anna has made one other feature, which I think is on Hulu. This is just me in my head is like a producer where I'm like, we're getting this amount of money and I want to build this electronic store as many pages as possible should take place in this store because we're not going to build it for four pages.

1:22:46We only have four or five days to shoot this thing. and that's the best we're going to get. So we should make this our key location and as much as possible should take place here. Let's talk about horror anthologies. I have always been really fascinated by these structures and I also echo your feelings about VHS. It is just genuinely comforting to have this coming every year. And, you know, they're born out of the original film and the sequel, which then also spawned, you know, Southbound came out around this time. XX came out in the aftermath of this. There was this kind of like rebirth of the horror anthology, but it has become a streaming gambit for the most part.

1:23:29But there's a long history of theatrically released horror anthologies going back to really the 1940s. And some are good. Some are not so good. Alex, from your perspective, like what do you think are the things that define a good horror anthology? Well, it's interesting. like I was looking at your at your list you know which combined with a little bit of help from my old colleague Michael Ferrari from Kim's video has grown to well over a hundred a hundred films like I will share that list after this episode publishes it's quite long and what you mentioned the initial two VHS films and then that sort of mini boom of Southbound and XX and others like I think those were all released by Magnet or Magnolia back in the earliest days of kind of what was then just called day and date, where it would maybe play in a few theaters.

1:24:21And yeah, obviously we love this franchise and gave me this opportunity to tell a pretty grotesque story on a, for, you know, lots of people. But like, I think that the theatrical version of this, much like many theatrical things just seems gone. Like there just can't. And why would you, why would you not make it a streaming thing when you can just drop it on the first weekend of October and have your entire audience watch it for a month, right? Like what's the benefit of trying to get people into theaters? It's not going to be an event. I wonder, you know, Chris and I were just talking about how the Odyssey is going to have a trailer in December, I think.

1:24:54And Chris has been saying for years that he wants Nolan to make a horror movie. It would be interesting to try to make a theatrical event out of three real heavyweight filmmakers take their crack at a 30 minute horror movie. But that's the, that's the rare instance where you might catch an anthology in theaters now it makes the most sense of anything right like wouldn't it just make sense to kind of have these things getting made the risk is low i think most people like to work i just feel like tv and other factors have kind of teamed up to decimate that as even a realistic possibility and for whatever reason like historically a lot of them were always european anyway uh i don't want to get into it here but there are there are union um questions um which is a a great thing about VHS really is that the whole franchise, you may be interested all non-SAG.

1:25:45So you watch these films, you've seen, you see performers you've certainly never seen before because it's a lot of fresh faces or people who have not worked in a high profile way, which I think is cool. It lends itself to the films, obviously, because then it feels like you are watching found footage. Absolutely. Which is always what I liked about them. I didn't realize like, Oh, that's just, they're just non-SAG. You just cast them non-SAG because yeah, I don't know. I guess it's just hard to say like, yeah, we're releasing a movie. It has 75 characters in it, nine writers, nine directors, like who knows?

1:26:16That's a newbie. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't envy the people who untangled that, but yeah, the horror omnibus thing, like, I think like we were watching, I forget what we watched recently. Kind of embarrassing. I should probably at least vaguely remember which one of these we fired up in the last couple of weeks. But I think it was a night where we were kind of tired and I was like, well, the thing about this is like your brain doesn't really lean away from the film because every 15 20 30 minutes you're kind of pulled back into a different uh visual narrative like this keeps your brain awake very much so do you do you have a preference if it's one filmmaker or multiple filmmakers for these well this is something i brought up after after consulting your list i think this really is the biggest um i think this is the biggest dividing line and i can't tell you as we sit here promoting a new omnibus listing i can't what what is the last one that was one filmmaker is i mean the nhs ones it was trick or treat i think trick or treat is maybe the mike daugherty one right is like the last big one i can think of is that not an easy answer for the greatest like at least post creep you know obviously you have your creep shows and yeah it's definitely one of the best and anybody would say that i mean that movie is now iconic yeah i think it gets re-released it's kind of gotten to like once a season like once every halloween i pretty much watch that put that on yeah it's a great halloween vibe movie yeah yeah it is and it looks great and it's cohesive because it's one person making it and it has what i think and i hope vhs halloween does and certainly the producers and other filmmakers can imagine is like you can just rewatch it because it has the vibes and you know you can count on it but and maybe trick-or-treat which i guess is an easy answer for if not the number one for most people certainly top five aha romney buses yeah there's a few i mean there's a few that are single filmmaker uh tales from the hood is one that i think is really beloved and you know has a consistency dark side is not right I think that's Omnibus.

1:28:26Yeah. Tales from the Dark Side is multiple. And Creepshow, obviously, and Creepshow 2 are both single filmmakers. Tales from the Dark Side is just directed by John Harrison. Oh, okay. That's, well, there you go. Could that be true? I think it's possible. You know, like Cat's Eye, Lewis Teague did all of Cat's Eye, the Stephen King films. There are definitely plenty of examples, but for whatever reason, in the last 20 years, it has shifted entirely to this multi-filmmaker style. and I don't know. I mean, I like Creepshow more than most movies ever released. I don't know if it's like one of the best movies ever, but it's just a movie.

1:29:00Actually, I feel like you and I and Phoebe and Eileen watched it like five or six years ago together just hanging out one October. It's just, it allows you to kind of have, to Alex's point, like you can tap out but kind of keep an eye on a segment if you're not interested in it. You know something new is coming. It's a great, generally all of these share, and the VHS movies really do. I think like a pretty decent job sticking to a thematic vibe for each one of the films and yeah, I think that these are like great kind of like if you're even throwing a Halloween party you can have one of these on in the background and somebody could be like oh, I love this one, hold on, you know?

1:29:38Yeah, I was confused. There was some either review or something of VHS Halloween that was like Kid Print destroys this movie's party vibes. I wanted to have this on with my friends. and this i was like is that what these are for like to me like i i didn't like i thought like we're not 13 years old and it's not 1997 i had to throw a party where we only show kid print on a loop you guys like maybe you guys it sounds like have like parties where your friends come over and you watch a halloween movie but uh apparently we ruined someone's party and i guess that's cool it's more it's like uh but that is you know i i guess i just don't relate to that way of viewing but I didn't think until I looked at your huge list, what is the difference between the multiple filmmakers or one filmmaker?

1:30:26And it does seem to be kind of an interesting division. Well, if you sort it by highest average ranking on Letterboxd, the top five is as follows. Qui-Don, the Masaaki Kobayashi movie. Dead of Night, the original British film, which is omnibus, has five different filmmakers. Did Tracy Letts say you could watch Qui-Don in multiple sittings or did he... He said multiple sittings. Okay, good. That's confirmed? Yeah, but Berlin Alexander plots you need to watch in full consecutive place. Tales from the Hood, Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, which is one filmmaker, and Creepshow. And then after that, it's Three Extremes and Trick or Treat and Tales from the Crypt and a handful of others.

1:31:05So quite a few individual filmmakers up front. Yes. And I would welcome, I mean, I would certainly welcome Alex Ross Perry's full-fledged anthology movie. I do think Like that could still be theatrical to me. I don't know if you said from the mind of Jordan Peele, three short films collected together so he can get out of the doldrums of whatever script he's writing and just get something out into the world. I would dig that. Can I just give away a billion dollar idea? I'm sure that they thought of... Maybe. But I mean, to Alex's point, like this is getting routinely like thousands of logs on Letterboxd, just like casual physicians and teachers who are wearing Shudder sweatpants and are just like, I'm out here?

1:31:47Yeah. Hang on, those are my sweatpants. Those are your sweatpants, but it's your community. They were complimented by my daughter's teacher. A couple of weeks ago, my wife was up in Portland, Oregon and went to go see The Nun at a drive-in. And the aspect of this that's unique is that they had people dressed up as characters from the movie, but also just other monsters like run up to your car and scare you at various points. in the, so it's kind of like Haunted Hayride meets a drive-in. Would you enjoy that? Would I enjoy that? I'm just like, why is Shudder not making their own drive-ins and having like VHS sites?

1:32:25I think they did. I think Clown in a Cornfield was widely distributed at drive-ins throughout the summer. Okay. Were there clowns approaching the cars during those screenings? I think there might have been some, I didn't go to one, but I think there was some maybe interactive outdoor element, but like, I mean, I can say like from a production standpoint, it's not efficient to say like we're making four movies worth of sets four casts four you know like that that is not an efficient way to make anything yeah they're usually single setting pieces every time like I just watched Creepshow 2 and all three of the segments were all single setting stories because of what you're describing where it's like we need a house we need a raft you know we need like one place to go to shoot for 20 minutes of the film.

1:33:11Is Creepshow 2 only three? Because I feel like Creepshow 1 is six segments. I think Creepshow 2 is only three and the rapper is honestly not even very good because it's animated. Okay. Which is the one? Danson is which one? That's in one. That's one. Danson is in the first one where his head ends up in the... That's a great one. I love that one. The tanker. Head ends up underwater. And Leslie Nielsen. Yeah, that's an incredible one. it's an interesting thing that I'm glad you're giving an opportunity to kind of shine a light on. But like the weird thing is I love these movies and I would watch, I'd watch them all the time.

1:33:41Nobody would be like, I'm going to a marathon of three omnibuses. That's true. Like that would be, that would be too much information for the brain to handle in six hours, unless it was maybe Creepshow and Creepshow two, but I feel like it would just get exhausting. And I will say I did the same thing here. I ranked your list. I've weirdly seen quite a few from the bottom of this list and very, and beyond the ones you listed, there's like a big range in the top of your list of movies I've not seen like you know beyond the top like 10. Yeah I mean part of it is because of your the help that your friend provided I mean I think there are some kind of 80s standbys that are outside of Creepshow that like waxwork and nightmares and movies that will crop up when you're pillaging you know trying to get into the depths and then there's also a bunch of like Corman made one of these.

1:34:36Nightmares is all one director It is. It is. It's a fine film, but even within that is like wildly uneven in its attempt to sort of swallow up various 80s tones. Yes. I mean, you've also got a handful of movies that it felt like the filmmakers didn't have an idea strong enough for one movie. So they teamed up with a close friend like Body Bags, which is Carpenter and Tobey Hooper from 93. I also didn't know that two counted as an omnibus until I looked at your list. Well, I guess you could debate whether or not that's true. You're two evil eyes is like that too. I think it's correct. I just, I never thought about what the limit was.

1:35:12If it's, because there's not very many movies that are like, this is two movies. I mean, both Body Bags and Two Evil Eyes are made by four of the greatest horror filmmakers ever. Carpenter, Hooper, Argento, and Romero. And none of them are even close to the best work of any of those directors. I know, it's strange. Those do just kind of feel like somebody was offered a chance to like work and make a few bucks. Yeah. And they were like, yeah, sure. Yeah. It's interesting. Did you, looking at your, again, this is imperfect science of letterbox user ratings. A couple of things to jump out here. I'm incredibly surprised that Trick or Treat is number 10.

1:35:45I really would think that would be top five. Especially since it tends to overweight, I think, more recent stuff like that. I'm incredibly surprised that Trilogy of Terror, this isn't numerically ranked, but it's right in the middle. I feel like that is most people's answer for easily top tier of all time. That famously, though, was a TV movie and not a theatrically released film. I just feel like in the last 20 years, that reputation has just, I don't know, again, maybe that's just me. And then I'm quite surprised. I've not seen All Hallows' Eve, the origin of Art the Clown, who really could be on the Vance Grabber ticket.

1:36:23I feel like he's kind of a shoo-in, but I've not seen that. But then the bottom three, VHS Viral, which is openly despised, and I have seen it. I don't remember it being like that bad. I don't remember it being that bad either, actually. I was really surprised to see it so far down the list. I guess there's a segment or two in it. People like Creepshow 3, which I've never seen. I haven't seen it either. And Glenn Danzig's Veronica, which I have seen. How is that? I haven't seen that. I don't know if I would say it's the bottom of all of these. It's, you know, I think your mileage might vary. I really respect and admire the work of Glenn Danzig.

1:36:55I was just going to say, you're a Danzig guy. Has Glenn Danzig gotten to direct multiple films? Yeah, he has, right? He has two or three. One of them is like, one of them is, so Veronica is an omnibus of stories I think adapted from his comic. One of them is a Western that is called here Death Rider in the House of Vampires. That could also be worth a watch. It does. Yeah. Has a 2.3 on Letterboxd. Sean, is that good or not good? That is not good. Okay. I'm not familiar with this film, which it takes a lot to get a movie like this past me. In the Wild West, the mysterious Death Rider enters a dangerous vampire sanctuary where the price of admission is one female virgin.

1:37:34This film stars Devin Sawa, Julian Sands, Danny Trejo. Really? And Eli Roth. No shit. Not familiar with this film, Alex. You haven't seen it? I haven't, no. But I mean, for no reason, I watched Veronica. And again, consistent with the Glenn Danzig project, it's probably not at the level of a Rob Zombie making his movies. But I wouldn't look at 100 films and say Veronica is the bottom. them but maybe i don't know maybe these other ones are all great it feels like rob zombie would have made one of these it really does he could have at some point just thrown together but sorry go uh go ahead oh no i was just gonna ask like do you find that most of your at home watching especially around this time of year is dedicated to this stuff and if so how long does it take you to like decelerate and be ready to like watch caught by the tides or whatever it's a great question.

1:38:27I don't know what that film you referenced is, but... It's a Zha Zha Zha Zha's new film. Okay. Yeah, that one's probably not going to get around to that one. That is also kind of an omnibus movie because it's about... It's lots of footage captured over the years from various Zha Zha Zha films. Anyway, I digress. Well, that sounds a little highfalutin for a guy like me. I will say, this is very specific, Chris, and a very, you know, regimented. It's basically by September 15th, we're watching horror movies. Me too. Every one a night. I don't know about you guys. Sean seems to have more time than most people.

1:38:58I watch one movie a day. We watch it when our daughter goes to bed. Starts around the 15th. It ramps up and up through Halloween. But we have, I think what's called in the horror community, a horror hangover, which starts after Halloween. Yes. So the ramp down is actually a very important part of the programming. But horror hangover, for us anyway, way we tend to put off a lot of things that we want to watch but we know now that we're like in October 20th like we're not going to watch a supernatural thriller now but on November 3rd a supernatural thriller that's not really a horror movie might be just the ticket it's a great step yeah we always watch a lot of universal monster movies in that time like things that are in the spooky mood but like they might not satisfy you on the 26th 27th and we watch a lot of like that's when we watched Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein a few years ago okay that's when we watched things that are like uh yeah I mean that's like a spooky movie but you get to the point in October where you're not going to watch it you know we Chris and I were talking about this earlier I there's something very weird happening it feels like a post Nosferatu success thing.

1:40:17But this year, after Halloween, we're getting Keeper, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, and Five Nights at Freddy's 2 after Halloween. That doesn't seem, well, that's not very helpful for Halloween Hangover, first of all. I don't know what you're going to do about that. Yeah, I'll look and see it other, because in years past, we've definitely really planned out. I feel like this has been happening, and it's always confusing to me, but there's nothing more confusing than the like November horror release. Well, I get it because for studios, these are very reliable movies, right? They know they can continue to get people to show up to these movies.

1:40:52So I understand it from that programming perspective, but just from a vibes perspective, Keeper is one of the most October 7th movies I've ever seen. They were just clearing out for Blackphone 2? I guess so. Anyhow, that's needed to go there. I don't have a theory on this. This is much more your wheelhouse. It just is another, I guess, is there too much good product to release? like this doesn't exist and it's not like um well we'll release these these christmas movies in january but i guess the i guess like last year was it heretic that came out like november 5th it was yes and you were like not you but one was like that's weird and then you watch it and you're like well this isn't really like this isn't a horror movie this wouldn't have this wouldn't have played any differently a month ago than it plays now this is fine it's kind of perfect for what you were describing, the hangover, the hangover, the come down.

1:41:42I feel like that's allowable, albeit slightly confusing, but, um, the, these are, these are the vulgarities of the industry that you can nitpick better than most. I'm much more suited towards scrolling through this insane list of omnibuses and just wondering, like, I wonder what this is. There's a couple of other things that I think contribute to this. When I was a kid, um, one, I was obsessed with books that did this scary stories to tell in the dark was a huge book for me when I was like nine and was a major glide path to getting obsessed with horror. But at the same time, the Goosebumps books, and then...

1:42:17Those are all R.L. Stine. That's the R.L. Stine book. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was a different author. But then... What was the name of that show? Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yeah, yeah. Which was a television show on Nickelodeon. that gliding into Tales from the Crypt, the TV show on HBO, and then getting comfortable with, and then getting interested in the Twilight Zone and the Twilight Zone movie, also Omnibus, being like comfortable with 28 minute installments of horror storytelling at that age. And I don't know, and maybe we're not as comfortable with that as we are now. Like what's the best horror TV show?

1:42:57Channel Zero. But what that's on right now. Oh no, but like Channel Zero is probably, like the best one. I don't even know what that is. It's, it was on, I think it was on sci-fi and it was an anthology series so each season would be a story and they were definitely, the first two are really good. Whatever, No End House, whatever season that was. But they were like, those are pretty, pretty effective. The third season, Butcher's Block is directed entirely by Arkasha Stevenson who made the first one. interesting i don't know about this at all it feels like this is again like a production thing where what you're describing this boom that we grew up with this was almost like the easiest thing to do yes because you didn't need to have standing sets or a cast who you paid for 15 episodes and now it's like the hardest thing to do yeah because you'd have to renegotiate the uh the actor deals for 15 different cat like it just seems like this could not have been easier at the time it was like i don't know just put on a different goosebumps every week for children and then the parents can watch Tales from the Crypt or The Outer Limits reboot or something that just kind of scratches that itch.

1:44:07And every time they try to do this now, it fails. And it doesn't just fail, it fails spectacularly. Yeah, Jordan Field did reboot Twilight Zone and it didn't take off. Yeah, and there's like Black Mirror, obviously is basically this, but seems to have like some nebulous source of BBC Netflix money that allows it to exist in this way. And, you know, really talking about Omnibus, it's like runs the gamut from like one of the best things you've ever seen into something that is so unwatchable you have to turn it off. They're also, those are basically all bordering into feature length films. Yeah, that's the other problem.

1:44:36Every Black Mirror is like 78 minutes now. Yes. Absolutely catastrophe of decision making. But like truly, some of them are things I've rewatched and some of them I cannot get through. Yeah. And that's, I guess, I guess what you want from an omnibus. But a lot of the horror books behind me that you're upset aren't 4Ks. I read a lot of short stories, especially this time of year. and on your list here is Clive Barker's Books of Blood film, which I've never seen. Also Netflix. Inspired by his work. She had nothing to do with. And I love those books. But it's funny, like I don't remember short stories except for, you know, if I read a collection that has 10 to 20 stories, I might remember two of them.

1:45:17But I remember like the sum total of what that book felt like. And I think Film Omnibus is kind of similar except there's obviously fewer of them. There's very few that have more than five or six. I remember reading the King collections and feeling like Skeleton Crew like made a real impression on me. Which one's the body in? I think that's in... I can't remember. I think that's in four seasons. That's in the seasons one because that's like isn't that like the summer of the summer? Different seasons. But you're right that usually you're finding these like longer collections of stories. I mean, you know, there's some of these are Poe, right?

1:45:53Like Corman did a Poe movie. there's a handful of Poe adaptations here. Hammer, I think, did a Poe adaptation. It's right there. And I will say I'm pretty far down this list, although I saw it recently, screened a print of it basically by myself at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, where, as I said, you have a standing invitation to go and select some films. As soon as I get to Rochester, I'll be there. Present yourself. But Night Train to Terror, quite fun. Series of different shorts that I guess maybe debatably were abandoned features that were then retrofitted into an omnibus. You know, I've never seen this.

1:46:27It's great. Highly, highly enjoyable. But again, I think if you believe what I read online that this is like three or four movies that got abandoned or that financing ran out. And I think some of these segments are 15 minutes and one of them is like 45 minutes. Like it really feels very uneven. Sporting a 2.6 on Letterboxd, just so you know. I would debate that. If I was ranking on a scale of one to five, I'd give it a four. Okay. it largely you know it's God and the devil playing chess on a train that's being sort of like energized by a disco punk band and a bunch of dancing people in leotards and then every once in a while God and the devil will be like so what about this girl and then it just goes to this story it's a story yeah it's pretty insane but I think very good and you know it's just kind of right down the middle, but it gives you a lot to enjoy.

1:47:22I just don't really know what happened to these. I mean, I feel like the success of VHS should imply that there's more of these. And I see so many things on your list here of these like recent-ish Christmas ones. Seems to be a lot of those. Like, I just don't really know why there's not... You know, you were mentioning the TV stuff. And I, you know, I was talking, I think, I mentioned Channel Zero, but there have been two Stephen King adaptations or explorations. One was Castle Rock from a couple of years ago that was on like Hulu. And now they're doing it colon Welcome to Derry on HBO Max. I think the first episode is this weekend.

1:48:02And I definitely think like, I was just looking - Goodbye to Delco, Welcome to Derry. I know, exactly. That's the HBO way. But I was thinking like, you know, he's got so many collections of short stories that would make great antholic. You could just do Night Shift. I mean, Lawnmower Man and Children in the Corner and Night Shift. Yep. But I always wanted a little bit more of a choppier kind of like short story version of rather than like the let's get to the bottom of what's wrong with. Yeah, that's what's great about Creepshow is that it's like. I mean, Creepshow is definitely the closest. Yeah, that's why it's so special because it's King and King is so good at those like funny fucked up little mini stories.

1:48:38It's a really weird thing that this is so obvious. And when these are good, even, you know, good on the level of a black mirror, good on the level of VHS franchise, like this is people want this. They just enjoy it. And yet, as we've seen with these multiple failed Twilight Zone reboot, like why can't this just be gotten right? This isn't rocket science. And again, I give great credit to the VHS producers for just finding filmmakers who they like, who they say, we're going to give you this much money, no more. Do whatever you want with it. Here's your delivery date. We're going to give you a handful of notes, but really not that many.

1:49:11And, you know, it's my opinion as a fan and now a partner in these films. Like, people like these. Like, that model results in many people saying, well, that's one night of October that I will watch. And, yeah, real quick, XX here. Maybe fifth to last on this list in terms of ranking. I saw, so I was at Sundance for the premiere of Golden Exits, which was at, like, 5 p.m. was over at, I don't know, let's say 7.30. Party was at 8. At 11.30 I was back in the theater watching the world premiere of XX. So I left the party. Sounded really great to me. I wanted to see it. I was excited and the programmer was like, I've never seen ever a filmmaker attending a movie the night of their own premiere.

1:49:58That's my relationship to XX. One thing that's wonderful about that is that Golden Exits, I think, augured your first appearance on this show. Yes, as I recall. And it's been many, many since and hopefully many more. I wanted to give a very quick shout out to Freddie Francis, who I think holds the title of the most horror omnibus movies. Freddie Francis, actually in one of our text chains, Alex, I've cited many times as maybe the most fascinating career of all time in the movies because he was the cinematographer. I was saying like the Lawrence of Arabia guy? Well, he shot The Innocents. He shot Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

1:50:37He became David Lynch's preferred DP who shot Dune, Elephant Man, Straight Story. He shot Glory for Ed Zwick. He shot School Ties. You know, he was one of the core kitchen sink British cinematographers. But he was a director in his own right and almost exclusively horror and hammer horror movies. And he directed in a very short period of time the original Tales from the Crypt, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. He directed Torture Garden. He directed Tales of Witness Madness. many other movies. I think he's directed at least five, maybe more, omnibus horror movies when not shooting masterpieces for other filmmakers.

1:51:16Yeah, it's interesting. I got, after a viewing of Creepshow a few years ago, I got very into, like, the weird history of Tales from the Crypt and his 70s one, which has just an amazing poster art image. It's really good. It is really good. Really solid stuff. And yeah, he has an intro. I have a tape of it over there. Quite an interesting filmmaker. I did remember the omnibus we watched recently that I said this will keep us awake was Cake of Blood, which I didn't test you, which I don't see on this list, which is in the Severin, if I can high counsel it for 30 seconds. Please do. In the Severin Gothic horror Spanish set, not the Gothic horror Italian.

1:51:55Danzo Macabra, I think volumes one through three are Italian and volume four is Spanish. Hell yeah. And in my mind, the basement of Italian Gothic horror is rock bottom and the basement of Spanish Gothic horror is like mid-tier. Oh. So I bought the Spanish box set because I could imagine how unwatchable some of those Italian films might be. And Cake of Blood has nothing to do with cakes or blood omnibus in this box set which was quite sufficient. One truly unwatchable segment. One that was like awesome and then two that were like that was fine. That's all you need. This is like one home run. From a set like that, yeah.

1:52:32You'll take a strike out and two singles. Yeah. The second segment in Cake of Blood is a just super literal retelling of Frankenstein in 20 minutes. And it's like, I wish Del Toro had done the same. It's just like completely. You're like, why is this the choice? Why is this what we're watching? Are you seeking an invitation to the next high council session? I'm always a little jealous. Are you a little worried about how big can the high council get? Well, I mean, we know that he's gearing up for his work in the federal government. So maybe this is a good way to start working on a team. But the VHS series, when one of these passes me by, I think, what do you have to do to get involved with that?

1:53:09And yeah, I don't know. I'm not flying to LA with a suitcase full of stuff. Well, then you're not invited. I think that's the number one prerequisite is to come with doubles to give to Chris Ryan. The funny thing about that is that, obviously, that's a legendary flex on the part of Mr. Letts to fly across the country with a briefcase full of 4Ks. like presumably handcuffed to him in like a very, you know, classic noir sort of way. But then like, I guess somehow I like figured out or like the timing realized that I was like, oh, so he was like in LA for the Emmys. Yes. Where his wife is like multiple nominated.

1:53:50It was up for White Lotus, but I think might as well have been up for Gilded Age too. Yeah. So I'm like, okay. So like, I guess if HBO was flying me like first class, I would bring a bunch of suitcases. Okay, so our next act is to get you nominated for an Emmy this year so you can come participate in the High Council. I just want to be the plus one of someone who's being flown first class. You can be Mark Ruffalo's plus one for his task Emmy. Yeah, and I'll bring some stuff. Were you a Delco advisor on that show? I wish, I wish. You know, Chris, my problem with this, and maybe you've covered this, is like, this is now the second one of these Delco crime shows, where about every 16 to 25 minutes, someone shows up with a cup of Wawa coffee.

1:54:28Yeah. Wawa is all over this on social media. They've never set foot in a Wawa in a single frame of filming. We don't even get an establishing shot of someone leaving the parking lot carrying the coffee. They reference it all the time but they don't go. It's really weird. I don't understand why this is. They're obviously signing off on the logo. But they gave, Rita's has like a beautiful, like they could use the Rita's stuff in task for like commercials for the next 20 years. Yeah, they got into Rita. I don't understand why they're not filming in Wawa's. I haven't seen the show. can't say anything this is like one of the only yeah I mean I'll just I'll watch it I'll watch a Delco crime show but yeah they got to get into a Wawa at some point it's not enough to show up with the takeout Alex thank you for your time on this thank you for Kidprint thanks for hitting up your friend to expand this list I want to see it the list yeah I mean it's it's an interesting collection of movies that have been devastatingly rated by mean letterbox users but that I think are valuable and worth everyone's time It sounds like Alex agrees.

1:55:28What do you got? When are you coming back? What's coming up next for you? I don't know. I mean, it's really not productive as a parent to just waste all of your time making passion projects that pay you nothing. Okay. Yeah. What are you going to do about that? I, you know, chain myself to my desk and do some actual WGA insurance qualifying screenwriting for the indefinite future. Do you, I heard that the Fast and the Furious might need a polish the next installment. I think they're doing great. I think they're in great shape. Yeah, I think the script is, I think the script's probably diamond cut.

1:56:03Ethan Hawke has already said that he wants to do Blackphone 3 and he wants the Grabber to go to hell. I think this is, this is tailor-made for Alex. I mean, I have my, Sean knows this is a favorite of his as well. I have my Jason Goes to Hell button here. Jason Goes to Hell is atrocious. I don't know when I'll get around to Blackphone 2, but I would skip straight to Grabber Goes to Hell. Grabber goes to hell I feel like makes more sense than Blackphone 2 it does no offense but leave the kids in the terrestrial land and go to hell with Ethan Hawke or just you know go as long as Hawke is involved go like the Grabber election year the Grabber the Grabber anarchy that's right purge Grabber crossover anything's possible wow now we're talking uh okay you know I think the Blackphone was a short story like a Stephen King or maybe his son's short story yeah Joe Hill yeah I would have watched that in an omnibus oh that might have actually improved the black phone the original film they should have combined black phone too with Frankenstein I just had like Guillermo del Toro's 20 minute Frankenstein I would welcome Guillermo del Toro's Stephen King adaptation that would be exciting alright Alex thank you so much thanks guys we'll see you next time you get nominated for an Emmy and you're out in Los Angeles I'll bring a suitcase full of discs and thanks for watching VHS Halloween thanks buddy thank you to Alex Ross Perry Thank you, of course, to CR for his contributions on this episode.

1:57:26Later this week on the show, we have another 25 for 25 candidate. It's number eight. I am quite certain that you've seen this movie. Thanks to Jack Sanders, our producer on this episode, and we will see you later this week.

1:57:57refresh your good vibes with tic tac with the right vibes will oh man to

1:58:17Now try! The different TikToks from mint-y-frish to fruct-y-sues. TikTok. Refresh your good vibes.