477: Church of Darkness

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Speaker 1 I know, I'm putting them back. Hey, Dave, here's a tip.
Put scratchers on your list. Oh, scratchers? Good idea.
It's an easy shopping trip. We're glad we could assist.
Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 1 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.

Speaker 1 Scratchers from the California lottery. A little play can make your day.

Speaker 1 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play play or claim.

Speaker 1 I was so mad knowing in the pledges that I fresh asked me to put a thing in my butt. I would have been so good at that.
So

Speaker 1 they were like, drink alcohol. And I was like, no, thank you.
And they were like, well, then you lose. And I was like, put stuff up my butt.

Speaker 1 What's this rubric? There has to be a section for me. Exactly.
Yeah, I bet I could have destroyed the curve at putting stuff up your butt.

Speaker 1 That's why they didn't let me in.

Speaker 1 God, awful

Speaker 1 movie, movie, movies, movies.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Gamcast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema because the tree missed my fucking house.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, No Illusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left is my good friend Heath and Wright. Heath, welcome back.
Spook tacular. Let's do it.
Isn't it though? Isn't it?

Speaker 1 And sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnick. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir? Fantastic.
No, I'm glad we got your AI working again. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Speaker 1 You sound fantastic. Yep.
Thank you. And also joining us from 3,000 miles to my immediate west is Science Communicator, TV personality, 9-11 doer, and host of Talk Nerdy, Kara Santa Maria.

Speaker 1 Cara, welcome back. I have to say, I actually enjoyed this one.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 Interesting. This is a different vibe.
This is the first time this has ever happened. And it's this movie? Yeah.
This is a real. I'm tapping into something here that we might be talking about.

Speaker 1 Is it the John Waters thing? Is it the John Waters aesthetic?

Speaker 1 It's the aesthetic. It's the aesthetic.
It's the aesthetic. This was a hard one not to like.
I'm going to go. I'm with you.
So tell us, Heath. It's got a lot of Wes Anderson going on.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think that it does.

Speaker 1 It does not. That's correct.

Speaker 1 So tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today? We watched Church of Darkness.

Speaker 1 It's the story of the epic spiritual battle between good and evil being waged every day by good Christian people. Is it?

Speaker 1 Well, in reality, it's the story accidentally of a kid reading a few pages from the Bible and then trying to murder a guy from the local Rotary Club who like seemed like a demon or something.

Speaker 1 If you think about it, that's more like it. And to Eli, how bad was this movie?

Speaker 1 Well, if you love the films of three three 15-year-olds fooling around with the family camcorder, but you wish they warned of the dangers of the Moose Lodge, you will love this movie.

Speaker 1 And Kara did love this movie. I don't know what that says about her.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So, is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best worst hats? Best worst hats.

Speaker 1 Hey, hey, hat hats.

Speaker 1 Hey, hats. Multiple hats.
Like, multiple times, all of our notes are just hat.

Speaker 1 I genuinely wrote best worst hat, and then I was like, wait a minute. Plural.
No, no.

Speaker 1 There are plural insane hats in this movie. Yep.
Yeah. And they act like it's not happening.
They act like the person who wears the insane hat and is like, oh, this? Well,

Speaker 1 this is my insane hat. Don't worry.
Don't focus on it. It's just, you know, natural.
I've got best worst parental advice.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 We'll get there. Yeah, I know what that advice is.
I'll bring us back. Yeah.
And I'm going to go with best worst. I stole this.
I put mine in early so nobody else could get this one.

Speaker 1 I went with best worst lighting. Because

Speaker 1 I couldn't see the lighting.

Speaker 1 No, you could never see. So what happened is they couldn't afford the lights to do the movie.
And they were like, hey, let's make that an artistic choice. The movie is church of darkness, after all.

Speaker 1 Let's film everything in the dark. And it's so, and the end result is that you just can't see the goddamn movie 80% of the fucking time.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's why I like this movie. Yeah, technically.

Speaker 1 Okay, they have dark scenes. You can't see the movie, though, during like broad daylight scenes.
Yes. It's crazy.
That's also true. Somehow the sepia is unable to be why it's impressive at moments.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to go with best, worst satanic cult. Really?

Speaker 1 all of the satanic cults? Well, here's my thought, right? It's episode 477. We've seen a lot of satanic cults oh yeah we have never seen a satanic cult that uses point of order in their painting

Speaker 1 okay that was the best

Speaker 1 we said the bits that we have written about other satanic cults happen in this movie. I started to write sketches and doodly-doos and then the movie was just like, no, no, no, we got you.

Speaker 1 We're going to sit here and chat about a cookout for a little while after our satanic cult meeting. It's so good.
It's just like, well, now we drink the goat blood of, hi, sorry, just real quick.

Speaker 1 I think maybe we should speak in order of oppression groups.

Speaker 1 Reverse stack? Reverse stack, if you don't mind? Should we acknowledge the Native American land that we're yes? Oh my God, a land acknowledgement.

Speaker 1 The only thing missing from this movie is a land acknowledgement.

Speaker 1 All right, well, I'll tell you what, it's been too long since I got to hang out with y'all, so we're going to keep the break brief.

Speaker 1 And when we come back, we'll dive into the scarcely visible frames that are

Speaker 1 Church Church of Darkness.

Speaker 1 This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. And then he tweeted, no, you're the one who's wrong.
I mean, can you believe that? That someone disagreed with you on Twitter? Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I couldn't believe it, Kara. Hey, guys.

Speaker 1 What you doing? Yeah, it's time to record the rest of the podcast. Oh, I was just getting some free therapy from Friend or Help.
I'm sorry, Friender Help?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know how if you're considering giving therapy a try, people should try BetterHelp? Of course. BetterHelp is entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

Speaker 1 All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. It's great.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So with friend or help, you never pay at all. You just sort of barf your emotional problems onto the people in your life, and they like, you know, do their best to sympathize and listen.

Speaker 1 But then you bring up things that should definitely be talked to to a licensed therapist, and they're kind of like freeze right they freeze it's way better i don't think that's better

Speaker 1 no no it's definitely not better for um for anyone okay mademoiselle and monsieur accusatory what if i can't afford better help huh well better help has financial aid available yeah and you can use your fsa and hsa dollars for it wait really Really?

Speaker 1 Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash awful today to get 10% off your first month.
That's betterhelp, h-e-l-p.com slash awful. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks for listening anyways, Kara. I was not listening.
You were showing me a 345-part slideshow of your Twitter fights. And you listened.
So thank you. Nope.
Just said she didn't listen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did not. I did not listen.

Speaker 1 All right, guys. Welcome to the first Writer's Room meeting for Church of Darkness.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So tell us, Craig, what are you thinking? Okay, so it's about this teen, right? He's Christian, and he shows up at a town where everyone is a different religion than him.

Speaker 1 Like, they're all part of a lodge instead. Wow.
So scary. Yeah, yeah.
So the kid, he starts exploring around town and he discovers.

Speaker 1 Dude, you're good.

Speaker 1 Sorry, what? Yeah, man. Stop drilling.
You have hit oil. We're done.
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I didn't even tell you the plot of the movie. I mean, you didn't tell us every single detail, but we get the basics.
I mean, a whole town that isn't Christian.

Speaker 1 Dude, stop saying you're going to give me nightmares.

Speaker 1 Me too. Wait, wait, wait, but there's like this little demon girl.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, that's it. Yeah, so whatever, you know, whatever makes the town that's not Christian tick, you know?

Speaker 1 Okay, I guess.

Speaker 1 So lunch? Totally, yeah. Yeah.
CPK?

Speaker 1 You can just say California Pizza Kitchen Man.

Speaker 1 It's a nickname. You have a nickname for California Pizza Kitchen? Do you guys want to go or not? I don't understand.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm down.
I'm down. Hungry.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 And we're back for the breakdown and we're going to open up on the unusual combination of the Bridgestone Media logo and a rated 18 plus warning. Ooh.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, that's

Speaker 1 the fucking theme song is microphone hiss in this movie. Yes.
I literally did not react to Heath's bit right now because I went over to my headphone jack and was like, fuck, I hit it with my alpha.

Speaker 1 Ow.

Speaker 1 Did I turn the movie on by accident? Oh, God, I hate it. It's so loud.
Can I ask a question? Why is this rated 18 plus? I don't know. Because the little girl cuts her wrist.
Sure.

Speaker 1 I have to assume that's it. I would guess it's because there's an agnostic, curious character in it.
That'll do it. No, you're right.
She says the word evolution at one point. Everybody gets angry.

Speaker 1 She does. Right, that is pretty scary.
Yeah. Cow skull.
Okay. Maybe.
Yeah. You guys have to tell me about Bridgestone.
Teach me all the things. Oh, Bridgestone.
I thought that was like a tire company.

Speaker 1 Well, it's one of the terrible, many terrible production companies that we have to know about on this fucking show. Bridgestone is like the next thing up from Donald James Parker, right?

Speaker 1 Generally speaking, right? Yeah. And can I say, a lot of people jumped into the game late on Christian movies, right?

Speaker 1 They saw God's Not Dead and they were like, oh my gosh, we have to have a Christian movie label. But Bridgestone was in it to win it.
Looking at you, Affirm films.

Speaker 1 yeah exactly exactly yeah bridgestone since 1976 have been like y'all want to watch a movie that's your grandma's nightmares it's why their logo is like the last thing you see before the stroke wins yeah it's really impressive that's why i was like pretty confused like this movie looked old to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the opening shot looked old.
And then I looked it up and it was made in 2022. It looks like it was made in 1992.
Right. It sounds like it's recorded on a wax cylinder based on this.

Speaker 1 And everything in this shot, this opening shot, is incongruous, right?

Speaker 1 We got this kid on this train, and his clothes don't match the era of the train, which doesn't match the image out the window, which doesn't match the music, which doesn't match the credit font. Like,

Speaker 1 yeah, it was a headache from the beginning. See, this is why there's sleeper genius in this film.

Speaker 1 You will see it builds. I didn't recognize it right away, but it builds.
Oh, there's a payoff to the credits being in MS word art.

Speaker 1 Okay, I like that the kid puts on headphones as if to block the hiss. The microphone hiss

Speaker 1 away. And he listens to like horribly angry metal, and it was like more pleasant for sure.
It sure was. It was actually a happy sounding, I thought.
It was like happy death. It's happy metal.

Speaker 1 It was pretty happy. It was happy death metal.
Yeah. I literally wrote in my notes at this point.
Okay, so we have microphone hiss that transitions into scream rock because fuck no illusions person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right, right, exactly. Okay, this was happy sounding to you, Karen.
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 The screaming metal? Yeah, but it was like upbeat. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I agree. I agree.
It was.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 let the bodies prance upon the floor. So, no, is this why you actually like this movie?

Speaker 1 No. I'll tell you why I like this movie when we get to the parts I like.

Speaker 1 Okay, so we also have to point out that the sleeper genius opening line of this fucking movie is, they say a journey of a thousand miles.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, yeah, no, open on a cliche like all the great writers do. You know, that's what they say.

Speaker 1 Oh, the writing writing is not good in this movie i will give you that webster's dictionary defines bible as other book not this one also how is this kid reading literally the tiniest bible i've ever seen it's so small it's real it's like when they put it's like when they paint on the head of a pin or whatever it's that's the bible it's weirdly tiny yes it's exclusively for stopping bullets in a story that's not true and it never stops a bullet in a story that's not true i like that he's got tiny little post-it tabs on his Bible so that he can, you know, look up answers about life really quick by topic or whatever.

Speaker 1 No, that's a thing people do. Yeah.
Oh, God. That's how you know he's serious.
He's reading Ezekiel and he's like, oh, practical answers about life. Oh, so I just bake it with the poop, you say.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That's in Ezekiel. Yeah, it sure is.
So then we get this blurry 1983-ass looking title screen that says Church of Darkness. I thought thought we were going to play an FMV game for a second, right?

Speaker 1 Like it was going to, hello, detective, left, right, or go to the spooky house.

Speaker 1 I thought that this movie was gaslighting me. Like at first, I was like, is that in focus? And then they cut to them driving in a car at four miles an hour.
Okay, I love this. The whole scene.

Speaker 1 Because everything is green screened in this, and they haven't green screened the background like moving fast enough. So it looks like him and this cop are just idling their way into town.

Speaker 1 They're in neutral on a like slight hill. There are a lot of areas passing them over.

Speaker 1 So now, and what we learned from their exposition is that this cop is this teenage kid's new foster dad. Yeah.
It takes a while to get there, though.

Speaker 1 At first, I think there's like a weird trafficking situation happening.

Speaker 1 Okay, thank you.

Speaker 1 The sexual tension between these two actors makes every scene they're in like the sex got too hardcore, the kink got too weird, right? And then they yelled action. Right.

Speaker 1 So they just like, everyone just like toweled the urine off real quick and they were like, hello today. Normal.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They'll be an angry Protestant couple for the rest of the movie, but it's supposed to be a foster dad and his kid.

Speaker 1 And as they're idling along, they pass this building and he says, the kid, David, says to the foster dad, who is the sheriff, he is Sheriff Rob.

Speaker 1 He says, hey, is that ominous building important to the plot? And he says, Why, yes, that is the lodge where the wheel makers meet.

Speaker 1 And there's this amazing moment where the voiceover goes, Wheel makers? And then the kid goes, What are the wheel makers?

Speaker 1 The voiceover

Speaker 1 is indistinguishable from his voice. You guys wanted that to continue through the whole movie, right? Just

Speaker 1 thinking his thoughts and then saying they just can over. It's Ron Howard in the back seat.
Wheel makers?

Speaker 1 That sounds dumb. Hopefully that's not the name of the antagonist group, the evil chief.

Speaker 1 Yep. And also he says, hey, can I look in your glove box and see if there's anything damning in there? He's like, why, sure, go ahead.

Speaker 1 And the kid looks in the glove box and there's a book there called,

Speaker 1 was it the essentials of life?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And as soon as he sees it, the sheriff's like, oh, don't look at that.
That's porn or whatever and closes it. The transition is actually as clumsy as possible.

Speaker 1 The sheriff says, so what do you like to do? And And he goes, Can I have gum? And I wrote in my notes, I get it.

Speaker 1 Okay, it felt like the sheriff is fucking that book, though, right?

Speaker 1 It felt like the sheriff is fucking everything, literally a line from the movie. Yeah, that's right.
Right, because we see it with Father Edward later. Yeah, it's like he's fucking

Speaker 1 everyone. But he turns to the kid in this scene and goes, I like kids and I like small-town living and I like police work.
And I wrote, yeah, buddy, you don't have to tell us.

Speaker 1 You're clearly a pedophile. Right.

Speaker 1 It's plain as extra. So yeah, you're divorced.
Someone explain this to me.

Speaker 1 What is this book? Because they never come back to it. Not only do they never come back to it.
Oh, they do. No, his role is very confusing to me.
This, he's, he's a good, bad, good guy.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, I did. Yep.

Speaker 1 He's joining the cult, and we'll talk about it, but he's joining the cult at the beginning of the movie. And then at the end of the movie, he's not in the cult.
I was very confused by that.

Speaker 1 Thank you, because now I can re-watch the movie in my head and it makes more sense. Yeah, he's a police officer.

Speaker 1 So he, you know, goes to the first few of the satanic cult meetings and he sniffs out the fact that they're wearing hooded robes the whole time and drinking blood eventually realizes it yeah no

Speaker 1 what they're what they're going for here is that he thinks it's like the moose lodge or whatever and is only slowly realizing that maybe there's something sinister about their blood drinking you know

Speaker 1 it feels also very clan oh yeah it's got deep clan vibes so maybe he was scared by that yeah i almost went with best word choices for who to make the actor of color because for the record, they will go with the priest, the sheriff, and the villain for the bully color.

Speaker 1 It's not a

Speaker 1 great look. Yeah.
So, okay, so then we get to the sheriff's house, which is weirdly unlit, right?

Speaker 1 Like, this is when we were first starting to realize that this entire movie was going to be weirdly dark. And they get into the house, and Sheriff Rob,

Speaker 1 correct me if I'm wrong, explains how houses work.

Speaker 1 He does. I mean, it's a foster kid and he's like, foster kids probably don't know about buildings.

Speaker 1 Dining rooms with rooms.

Speaker 1 This one has a door. You go into it.
What's funny is, and I spent so much of the movie confused about this, so I'll clue in the audience. He mentions that there's a room full of musical instruments.

Speaker 1 And later, we will see this kid go into a building. That's not the room the kid is going into.
He's going into the church slash lodge we saw from earlier. Yes.

Speaker 1 But I kept being like, man, this kid's really dedicated to finding a drunk sex.

Speaker 1 Oh, because it's just outside. Oh, I thought he was going into the like divorced dad

Speaker 1 shed. No.
This is when he said, I'd like to explore the town because I am a human boy. Yeah, exactly.
So I have to just like the dialogue in this movie is clearly like AI generated.

Speaker 1 They speak in non-human form and then they wait interminably to respond to the speech. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The pauses between the dialogue, like if you took all those out, this movie would be half an hour shorter. Right.
It would be 45 minutes long. Yes.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 It's the first in-person Zoom call is what they were aiming to capture with these performances. It's an aesthetic.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's artificial intelligence IQ like 95, 100 maybe something like that. Also, you guys are cool and were probably some level of cooler than I was as a child.
10 p.m. Seems like a late curfew, right?

Speaker 1 No. What? Not at all.

Speaker 1 The kid is 17 years old.

Speaker 1 What was your curfew in high school? I don't want to talk about it. I'm very busy.

Speaker 1 My internet is bad. Imposed upon yourself out of religious duty or something.
My internet is bad. And I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, Mu Dang. So, yeah, but so, and, but then he decides to go to the record store where they also say, he goes to the love interest store to see what's available, right?

Speaker 1 This is the weirdest store. Yeah, it's like it's like a record store, but when you're flipping through the records, sometimes they're books.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like they had one room at the science museum to try to turn into the record store, right?

Speaker 1 Because we've seen a lot of bad set dressing of people's houses into, you know, businesses or hospitals or whatever the case might be. But for some reason, they had a light panel wall available.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, so what's amazing about this is the story calls for a bookstore here, right? Because he goes in and he buys a book.

Speaker 1 But clearly, like between all of them, they didn't have enough books to pull that off, but somebody had a record collection they could use. Right.
100%. What happened?

Speaker 1 And they're like, oh, it could be a records drawer that also sells books. And he's like, that also, and they have like four fucking books in this little book bin because that's all they own.

Speaker 1 And they would have book readings there. Yep.
They'll have book signings there later, too. And slam poetry.
Oh, yeah. And open mics.

Speaker 1 So he picks out a book and he takes it to this cashier girl. And she immediately demands an explanation for why he would be reading a book.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I really want her to demand this exposition from everyone who walks up. Like she checks out the next guy.
Why are you here in town? I live here. You do this every time.

Speaker 1 Now, so this character's name is Zoe. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that about 43 minutes earlier than the movie does.
Yes, I appreciate you. I just call her angsty record store chick.
Sure, God.

Speaker 1 Because she's very clearly, she's supposed to be dressed edgy, right? Like what the movie keeps signaling to us is like,

Speaker 1 she dresses a little different than the other kids in town, by which the Bridgestone Media Group means a black t-shirt and a little bit of eyeliner.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's got hot topic vibes. Yeah.
Yeah, but she's got like, I didn't actually have the money to go to hot topic, but this is what I could put together with what I have.

Speaker 1 right my pastor did a sermon about how hot topic worships satan so i'm allowed to have this black t-shirt from the gap yeah i went to the section of hobby lobby that has one black thing

Speaker 1 right i caught michaels during halloween

Speaker 1 he goes he walks up to the counter he goes so where is everyone church and she laughs at the very thought of people in church right yep and she goes no they all hang out at the springs he goes why aren't you there and i'm like maybe because she's at work you goddamn idiot

Speaker 1 But she's a manic pixie dream girl, so she wouldn't hang out at Claw Springs with

Speaker 1 cool kids.

Speaker 1 She's different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And as he's walking out, he picks up a flyer for Open Mic Night at the records/slash bookstore. Oh, I was so excited.
I was like, oh my God, please show us

Speaker 1 within a Christian movie. I am ready.
It's amazing. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And yes, they actually

Speaker 1 wrote your notes. Please show us Open Mic with Slam Poetry.
And I wrote, Be Careful What you wish for. They do literally exactly that.
That's so bad.

Speaker 1 To get a bad scene of open mic, all you have to do is video any open mic. Yep, yes.
Just go to an open mic. They managed to do somehow a failure of doing the failure video.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought you were going to say you just have to put on a beret.

Speaker 1 That was the direction they took. Yep.
So, okay. So now it's time to go home for darkness dinner with Rob.
And I just, it's such a little line, but but we've all written it in our notes here.

Speaker 1 I think, well, three of the four of us have written in our notes here. As he walks in, he goes, Yum, this smells good.

Speaker 1 As though he's like reading English phonetically for the first time or something. The whole script is that.
I enjoy these odors of aroma smells

Speaker 1 today. They tickle my nasal epithelium.

Speaker 1 But you know, now we know what J.D. Vance watched in prep for the debate, right?

Speaker 1 This was his humaning 101 class.

Speaker 1 factory bliss, whatever works. Yep.
That's how you order donuts. I get it.
So, yeah. And,

Speaker 1 of course, this is where I wrote in my notes. I can't tell if the lighting is an artistic choice or an overdue bill.
It was an artistic choice, ultimately, but I didn't figure that out quite so early.

Speaker 1 And this is where Rob tells him, he's like, hey, I know this is your first night as my foster kid. I totally, it slipped my mind that I'm joining a satanic cult at seven o'clock this evening.

Speaker 1 And so I've got to run. Oh, right that was the meeting because he just said I have a meeting yes who has 7 p.m.
meetings I have 7 p.m. meetings it's podcast

Speaker 1 do cop do cops have 7 p.m. read a cult

Speaker 1 sorry so then we cut to the titular church of darkness where they're going to be just sort of generically sataning yep and we start off with this ceremony that they shoot like the pot smoking scenes from that 70s show

Speaker 1 100 and it's full satanic cult right There's no like, what is supposed to be happening in this scene is the sheriff who's at his first meeting is supposed to be like, I'm not so sure about this.

Speaker 1 But if you were in this room, you would be absolutely sure you were in a satanic cult. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's supposed to think he's joining like the Kiwanis club, but I literally wrote, so Rob is a black Klansman. Like, I was very lost, very lost at this point.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They finished the cult like in Pothani Gothis. And then they cut to, again, the thing I loved most about the movie, the post-cult meeting small talk.

Speaker 1 I love that when he mentions it, he's like, hey, it seems like I was very clearly just in a satanic cult just now. The other guy goes, ah, that's just rob.

Speaker 1 May Satan's wrath and body or soul. Fridays, we're going to go to TGF.
Yeah, right. They sit around afterwards talking like coaches after a little league game.
Go, you guys want to

Speaker 1 grab some food? Maybe a Denny's. How's Carol surprised cancer doing anything better? She's doing better.
She's doing better. Oh, I'm so glad.

Speaker 1 You have an app card. I'm going to use it for me, though.

Speaker 1 Y'all have to get your own, though.

Speaker 1 And now it's time for David's first day of school. Class has a special guest.
It's the mayor of the town. I don't like this.
It's uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 You don't like the whole bit where he starts flirting with his daughter in the middle of the high school class? I don't like the winks. I don't like the winky vibes to the child.

Speaker 1 Guys, why the fuck did that happen in the movie? I don't know. It never makes any sense.
I wrote that. I wrote that in my notes.
Why did the mayor wink at that child? Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 Because we don't know yet that she's his daughter, but that makes it extra weird. It makes it extra weird.
Nothing with her ever makes any sense.

Speaker 1 They keep coming back to her as though she's like the key to everything and nothing ever pays off with her. Well, I thought that the plan was going to turn out to be to sacrifice her.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, okay, that's why he's doing the winks. That's why he wants her to participate in the pageant.
It's like a Wickerman thing, right? Where it's all coming together on her. Nope.

Speaker 1 I cannot emphasize enough. It's not.

Speaker 1 So he's just winking at his daughter about her participation in the pageant. Yeah, about getting dressed up real pretty.

Speaker 1 Yes. For the

Speaker 1 quote, Enshrinement Firelight Festival. Oh, I can't wait until we get to that.

Speaker 1 It's pretty awesome. It's pretty fucking awesome.
But in the middle of his announcement about how his daughter is going to look super hot for the Enshrinement Firelight Festival, David comes in.

Speaker 1 He's the new kid in class. So the teacher introduces him.
Mid word. Mid-word.
He is in the middle of his enshrinement thing. And the teacher's like, hey, shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody. This is David.
He'll be joining our class. Mayor, you were saying.
And this is the only time in the entire movie where there's natural talking over people. Oh, there was

Speaker 1 solid three seconds from question to answer every time. Every time.

Speaker 1 And so he, but so he's taken his seat, and one of the bully kids trips him and another bully kid grabs his teeny tiny little Bible and starts making fun of how Christian he is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She goes, we got a Jesus freak here.

Speaker 1 And the hero of the movie, my favorite character, a girl in the back, literally does boo. That's exactly right.
Literally, one person goes, Boo.

Speaker 1 She's my favorite character.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but so he takes his seat. They make fun of him for being Christian.
The mayor explains that everybody needs to volunteer their time for the Firelight Enshrinement Festival thing.

Speaker 1 And then when he's interrupted by more bullying of David, he goes back to the back of the room, you know, to get in the middle of it. And as he does, he flashes like evil red eyes to David.

Speaker 1 I think they were to Jaden, no? Well, first he flashes the red eyes to David, and then he looks over to Jaden and he chastises Jaden for being a bully.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was an eye flash to david well that's some foreshadowing isn't it except that like david will weirdly never go hey it's it's strange how that guy's eyes turned red and he gave me a demonic never mention it nope oh it happens multiple times in this movie everybody acts like it's totally normal it's also accompanied by a

Speaker 1 which is incredible yes

Speaker 1 it's a sarcastic no no no no everybody and it's amazing and and then the shadow the the mayor's like jaden don't bully the new kid And he gives him back his Bible. And that's the end of class.

Speaker 1 We saw that class from beginning to end. It was two and a half minutes long.

Speaker 1 And so now it's time for like hanging out outside period.

Speaker 1 And David just happens upon a kid. Now, we didn't mention this earlier, but we established at the beginning that David plays the guitar.
And so now he happens upon a kid who's drumming on his bag.

Speaker 1 Right. So he's like, oh, well, this must be the best friend character because we're both music.
Right.

Speaker 1 I have to ask, like, why the fuck they didn't just have him drum on something that would have been like a normal height so that he wouldn't have to like bend over to where his chin is touching his knees to do his drumming i don't know this scene is uncomfortable for me and clearly nobody else noticed but david looks like he had lip filler before the film Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 And his lips are weirdly, because like the film's not color corrected at all, right? It's just dark.

Speaker 1 And in this scene, because of the way the light is shiny or something, his lips are like salmon colored. And it's all I could see.
It looks like he was really fucking cold a lot of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was really uncomfortable this scene. And then the drummer kid is like, you're weird.
I don't want to be friends with you. Gets up and goes, but make sure to take his banana.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm so confused. Taking my banana and going home.
Also, can we talk about the fact that Drummer Kid is 97 years old? He's in his 30s. He's clearly

Speaker 1 so much older than all of these other kids.

Speaker 1 Because David's like an actual teen, right? Yeah, but quite a few of the actors are very old. Well, right.
The Jaden kid is like 24 too, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then also their other friend with the hair. He's he's 49.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So yeah, but the kid doesn't, the drummer kid doesn't want to be his friend, not in act one anyway.
So then we cut to that night where David is going to break into the lodge, the satanic lodge.

Speaker 1 And I do not fucking know what the goddamn fucking hell was supposed to be fucking happening in this goddamn snow

Speaker 1 we're all confused he comes upon a flashback to a different movie

Speaker 1 i don't so so there's two like distinct timelines happening here one in which david is walking around the lodge and another in which a little girl that we'll meet later named elquida is talking to a disembodied demon I think they're supposed to be happening at the same time, just like on the other side of the wall.

Speaker 1 Is it? Yeah, that's what I was reading. I don't like the fact that he's like yelling the kid's name and the kid isn't responding and the fact that he's like not able to find them.

Speaker 1 I had no idea what they were going for with that. I thought maybe it was all in the same room and they just can't see because there's no light.
Ignoring each other. Because it's dark.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because what I took. Wait, tell me if this is wrong.
I'm going to name a lot of names here. Not possible, Carol.

Speaker 1 The little girl with bags under her eyes is playing with a ghost named Kevin. Yes.

Speaker 1 And a demon named Holio is talking to her. Yeah, Holio or Holo or something.
But because at one point, David's like, Kevin, where are you? Yes. So clearly he can hear Olguida.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 He can hear what's going on. Playing with a ghost named Kevin.
But he can't seem to find them as though they're apparitions.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, I don't know. I think it's just dark.
Yeah. Right.
I thought. She was like a memory or a flashback, but then later in the movie, she'll just be a character.
Yeah, she's just a real person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that he's never met before. Also, I want to talk about her and Holyo's conversation because she's talking to Holyo.
He fixes her cow skull for her, which is very nice.

Speaker 1 And then she has a ceremonial dagger and he says, hey, show me how it works. And she immediately slits her wrist.
And I feel like that's not how you test a knife sharpness. No, right? Probably not.

Speaker 1 But this is also like, again, she's not going to have a slit wrist later. No, true.
Right. So what's going on? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So anyway, so that happens, all of that and literally the kids like that was weird and just kind of walks yes right that's the other thing yeah

Speaker 1 i don't know this and the guys i just turned in red ice there's something about this town i don't think i want that to be part of the movie after this and then he walks away

Speaker 1 so then we cut to the mayor's house that night the maid of rosalita is setting the table Cool. Only Hispanic character in the movie is a maid.
That's well, also her kids are Hispanic. Yep.

Speaker 1 One of them's a demon.

Speaker 1 Can I say

Speaker 1 having a maid, I know this isn't, but can I, but it's just for my own place. Having a maid in a town this small feels weird, right? Okay.
Because you're just like,

Speaker 1 well, there's 10 of us and one of us is my servant. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 I think the backstory, though, is supposed to be that their, their mom died or something or left. But their mom left.
That's very important. The housekeeper

Speaker 1 was taking care, like helping around a lot.

Speaker 1 And so so then he was like you can stay in the guest house yes and he had a guesthouse that's the that's the backstory yes and so she has two kids old guita yes she has two kids gomez who is the drummer kid and elguida who is demon girl and they're all gonna have pizza together tonight right so it's the mayor dad with evil red eyes it's this daughter that he molests and that yeah that he was winking at this is going to be jaden the bully's girlfriend later yeah yes and then and then the housekeeper housekeeper and her two kids, Olguita and Gomez.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so Gomez goes to eat the pizza, but Rosalita stops him and says, we haven't said grace yet. So she says grace and that pisses the demons off.
Okay. So they start having the pizza and on the,

Speaker 1 they show us the pizza box and it says wagon wheel pizza on it. Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 So I was like, okay, wheel makers, I guess part of the evil satanic cult plan is like demonic demonic pizza poisoning possession or something like that. And they're about to start eating.

Speaker 1 And Rosalita's like, we got to say grace. And I was like, okay, well, that is going to cancel the demon magic.
And it's going to be like the saving moment at some point. And then the music kicks in.

Speaker 1 And it was like, yes, Heath, it canceled the demon magic. Now a demon is angry, and there's a swarm of satanic flies.
There's a swarm of the cross turns upside down on the wall.

Speaker 1 I am very confused about what the arrangement is between

Speaker 1 mayor-possessed guy

Speaker 1 and the devil, right?

Speaker 1 Because I feel like if this happened in my life, if I'm sitting down for pizza and my maid says grace, and then all of a sudden my house is full of flies, next time I talk to the demon, I'm going to be like, hey, man, like we're on the same team.

Speaker 1 They're like, oh,

Speaker 1 I don't like it when people say grace. He's like, yeah, me neither.

Speaker 1 It's going to be like, yeah, get rid of that. Control the flies, though.

Speaker 1 Just control the flies because that was really like catching people. What are you embarrassing yourself on what would you do? Relax, okay?

Speaker 1 But Mayer also seems like unbothered by the flies. He kind of like does a little air swap move for a second, but he just keeps eating his pizza.
And there's literally like a million flies. Right.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, those flies are his coworker. I imagine this is very similar to how, you know, Noah and Heath feel when I'm at a meal.
Right. Also, he's hungry.
Sorry about him. He doesn't like grace.

Speaker 1 And we should also point out, of course, that there aren't any flies in the scene. This is just a really sloppily added filter that they put on later, right?

Speaker 1 So everybody's just, the flies are all the same size, the same distance from the camera and shit. And everyone is doing their best to mime.

Speaker 1 I like that Rosalita starts hitting everybody with the fly swater first. Yeah, some comic relief there.

Speaker 1 I also, I was wearing headphones while I watched this movie, and I had to stop because they did exactly the thing I hate where they put a fly sound right into my ear.

Speaker 1 So I had to like throw my headphones across the room. I'm just saying, everyone should use the Sean Penn sound.
Right. Well, there's probably copyright problems or advertisers will get mad.

Speaker 1 You know, there's all kinds of cowards there. Cowards over at Brookstone.
Oh, and speaking of comic relief, this is also where the little girl burps up a fly at the end, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's really demonic and then she burps and she's fine. Okay.
Feels like she's a demon, right? Like nobody's going to address that the little girl burps a demon fly. They're just like, yeah.

Speaker 1 She's very clearly. No, they're not addressing the flies.
And at one point, the daughter goes, ooh, it's cold. And then you can see her breath.
Like, and nobody seems bothered by that either.

Speaker 1 Well, and the daughter goes, like, I'm leaving. This house is clearly possessed by demons.

Speaker 1 And the dad is like, don't you leave here just because there's demons or whatever, because they've had a bad relationship. Yeah.
So then we cut to her.

Speaker 1 She's making out with her boyfriend, Jaden, the bully from before in a car. Like, I know that from context clues.
It's fucking dark. You can't goddamn tell in the movie.

Speaker 1 Also, these actors weren't allowed to kiss.

Speaker 1 So they just have very clearly leaned into each other, right? While both of their parents stand there with guns on the other one, I assume, and then they leaned backwards again.

Speaker 1 They just like move their faces around a little bit. Wrong.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then there's the daughter has this amazing line.
Her name is Leanne. And she has this amazing line where she's like, I swear I'm never going to get out of this town.

Speaker 1 It's just because it's my 18th birthday, which just so happens to fall on Halloween and a full moon.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Her birthday falls on. on Halloween this year, and that's a bad coincidence.

Speaker 1 And also, okay, so everything eventually this will also be the anniversary of when the lodge started it'll also be the other david's birthday as well there'll never be a reason for any of this it's just everything has to be coincidentally on this same day no there is a reason that they have the same birthday oh that's right that's right there is it yeah

Speaker 1 you'll never guess

Speaker 1 i know why would they have the same birthday yeah what so but then she's like you know but clearly my house is haunted because all the flies jaden's like there was just fucking flies in your house.

Speaker 1 That's a thing that happens. Let's keep making out.
Yeah, he's like, it's not haunted. You guys are just gross.
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The most realistic performance in this movie is the teenage boy who doesn't care about the horrifying things he's being told because it means he's not getting kissed anymore.

Speaker 1 She'll be like, yeah, and then blood runs down the walls and he's like, yeah, that sucks. Anyways.

Speaker 1 Then we get the first of Heath's best worsts. We get the mayor waking up in the middle of the night with like a demonic

Speaker 1 realization that he has to write down. Oh, do you mean when we see Ebenezer Scrooge, the character, wake up? All tiny Ebenezer Scrooge sleeping cap.
I love it. It's so silly.
I really like it.

Speaker 1 I thought I clicked on a different movie somehow and I was watching him in Christmas Carol. The one other thing I want to point out about this is when he wakes up, right?

Speaker 1 So he's like possessed, I guess.

Speaker 1 And so the demon will occasionally give him dream messages. And so, what we're supposed to be seeing is him wake up and write down one of the dream messages from the demon.

Speaker 1 But they've decided because, you know, it's spooky that he has one of those big ass candle factory just-for-decoration candles next to his bed.

Speaker 1 So we have to watch him wake up, fucking hulk this, you know, monster energy can-sized candle over to his bed, light it with a stove lighter, and then write down the demonic message.

Speaker 1 Kind of kills the vibe. Right.

Speaker 1 Stupid fucking movie couldn't use all the light of the lamp. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 And what's happening here is Satan, the Prince of Darkness, delivering a message. So that means Satan like showed up in this guy's dream slash nightmare and was like, hey, Satan here, do you have,

Speaker 1 do you have, well, do you have a candle, first of all? Do you need to go get grab that from across the corner? Just keep your phone by your bed if you want and use the notes app.

Speaker 1 Are you signed up for Trello yet? But the message is important, right? What's the message? It is, and I quote, sun must find sacrifice, 18th birthday, full moon.

Speaker 1 What could it mean?

Speaker 1 All right. Well, now that we've been given an insight onto how the script was written, I suppose we can take another break, but we'll back in a minute with even more Church of Darkness.

Speaker 1 Hey, podcast listener. I'm Heath Henright here with an important PSA about wasting money.
Why, you might ask? Because Because I'm a coworker of Eli Bosnik. Hey!

Speaker 1 Eli, would you care to tell the folks at home what you wanted to spend the company money on this week? 8-bay network attached storage. Yeah.
And why did you do that?

Speaker 1 Because I didn't know that you and Noah had backups of our podcast. Did you know the podcast is on the internet?

Speaker 1 Yes. Exactly.
And while you might not be wasting money as actively as Eli here, you might be wasting money on subscriptions you don't use.

Speaker 1 Most Americans think they spend about $62 a month on subscriptions, but the real number is closer to $300.

Speaker 1 And that's why there's Rocket Money. What's Rocket Money? Really, Kara? I couldn't do last month and Cecil took my point.
Fine, fine.

Speaker 1 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

Speaker 1 See all of your subscriptions in one place and know exactly where your money is going. For For any you don't want anymore, Rocket Money can help you cancel them with a few taps.
It's true.

Speaker 1 Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you, sometimes by up to 20%.

Speaker 1 They automatically scan your bills to find opportunities to save. Then you can ask them to negotiate for you.
They'll deal with customer service.

Speaker 1 Plus, Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when they use all the app's features.

Speaker 1 Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies.
That's rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies.

Speaker 1 Rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies. I could also use it for time machines sometimes.
Buy one $11 external hard drive. I don't want to have to plug it in.
Can I have a third of the company?

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely. Oh, also, yes.
Don't

Speaker 1 we're gonna. I need it,

Speaker 1 dudes. I can't believe we're joining a satanic cult.
I know, right? So awesome. So awesome.
Greeting, brothers. Welcome to the Wheel Makers.
The Wheel Makers! Yes.

Speaker 1 Let us begin by calling this meeting to order. Nice, yes.

Speaker 1 Brother Blood, will you read last week's minutes?

Speaker 1 Indeed, Dark Star. Meeting was called on the 24th of February at 8.06 p.m.
Members present were...

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 What are you guys doing? I'm reading the minutes.

Speaker 1 What are the minutes? What is that? They're like a summary of the last meeting. Oh,

Speaker 1 okay, but that's boring. Well,

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 That's point of order. Sorry, point of what now? It's point of order.
It's like the universally recognized system. for running meetings.

Speaker 1 Sorry, this satanic cult has a system for running its meetings? Well, you have you're gonna have a system. Okay, I thought we were gonna like sacrifice goats and summon demons and stuff.

Speaker 1 Well, we are. You'd know that if you let me finish the minutes.
Sorry, right? Sorry, fine. Yeah, okay.
Go ahead. Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 1 Meeting was called on the 24th of February at 8.06 p.m. Members present were Darkstar, Bloodfinder, the Unholy Most High, the Library of Forbidden Knowledge.
Chris was also here.

Speaker 1 Hey, sorry, quick thing. Dude, seriously.

Speaker 1 Can we like vote to skip this part?

Speaker 1 Well, you would have to make a motion. I make a motion to skip this part.

Speaker 1 Someone needs to second the motion. Oh my God, I second the motion.
Okay, can we skip the talking now? No, we don't have a quorum. What the fuck is a quorum?

Speaker 1 It's the minimum amount of people needed to vote on something, my God. I hate it here.

Speaker 1 So I'm just never going to read my minutes then, huh? Are you guys almost done? I've been in the summoning circle for like eight minutes. Not now, Mephisto.
Sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1 And we're back for more of this shit. And as a reward for sticking around, this movie is going to give us our first fully lit scene in the form of breakfast at the mayor's house the following morning.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the mayor grabs the maid's ass in this scene, right? So

Speaker 1 he argues with his daughter for a little bit, and then she storms off.

Speaker 1 And they have this moment where this actor very clearly does not want to put his hand on this woman's butt, whether it's because he's not attracted to her, or because he's gay, or because he doesn't want to harass this poor lady.

Speaker 1 He really, like, the script calls for him to do that, and he touches it as though he's testing hot bath water. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It really feels like, is the stove still on touch rather than sexual harassment? I find it interesting that all of y'all's notes focus on this like situation with the mayor.

Speaker 1 And I cannot like the tension between, or sorry, the mayor and the housekeeper, but the tension between the mayor and his daughter is so uncomfortable in this scene. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, he's like, when did you come home last night? You're a bad girl. I should punish you.

Speaker 1 And it's just like the kind of porn that people watch who have like really dark shit in their heads. Like, this is a very uncomfortable scene.
Yeah. And Heath didn't speak for the rest of the month.

Speaker 1 Guys, was Heath on episode four of Time 27?

Speaker 1 And we're back.

Speaker 1 Noah's back for vacation. That shit's staying in, baby.

Speaker 1 You even understand the concept?

Speaker 1 The tooth fairy? So it's so, okay. So, but now it's evening, so that the scenes won't have to be lit anymore.
And Rob is leaving David to go to another meeting, right?

Speaker 1 He's like, sorry, I got to leave you again. I got another one of these important meetings.
So he leaves. Well, wait, before before he leaves, we have three tight jump cuts of them wiping their mouths.

Speaker 1 I think that's necessary to say.

Speaker 1 Some more of that, that subtle genius of this film. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, but David's going to follow now. The cop is in a car and David's on a bike.
So good luck with that. But he's going to follow.
And I just love this scene because the...

Speaker 1 The filmmaker clearly did not know how to film bike coming towards us. Nope.
Right. So he's just clearly running away from the bike as fast as he can.
And he's going, Crock, slow down, man, slow down.

Speaker 1 Right. And the bike's too fast.
So he's having to pedal too slow to maintain the bikiness. So he's almost falling over.
It's fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 So, but yeah, but he follows along. And then we cut to the lodge where, okay, so they wanted the portraits of the three guys that are the main guys in the lodge.

Speaker 1 They wanted those portraits hanging on the walls, but they didn't have portrait money.

Speaker 1 This was almost my best worst because someone's the most talented artist in this very small town drew these portraits and they are amazingly bad.

Speaker 1 Like they're they're bad in the ways that talented young people who don't work on art enough are bad, right? You're like, oh, that's a pretty good drawing.

Speaker 1 You should go online and learn how to draw eyes. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, and the best thing about them is that two of them, clearly, this artist had plenty of time with.

Speaker 1 And then the third one, it was like, fuck, that's today right so the bald guy is just clearly just last minute pencil and the other ones are like done but none of them have any color to them or anything they're all drawn on apparently brown paper bags or something yeah so we see those we cut across all of those and then we get the cult leader the mayor guy explaining the benefits of cult membership as though they had just bought a timeshaw it's the satanic cult career fair yeah because they're all they're all like high school children.

Speaker 1 Guys, it's a demon cult. Definitely like goat blood and stuff, but it's more about college admissions and networking than anything else.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 A guy literally, an actual line is the wheel makers got me into Tufts undergrads,

Speaker 1 but not graduate school. No, I'm just going to go.
Let's be realistic here.

Speaker 1 Also, no, they didn't.

Speaker 1 You didn't get into Tufts.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so they, but they explain all the great benefits of membership.

Speaker 1 And then Rob, who is now a member of the satanic cult, goes over to Gomez, the drummer kid, who is apparently also in the cult. And he says, hey, you know, you're a new member of the cult.

Speaker 1 I'm a new member of the cult. We should chat.
Right. Are they all already in the cult? Are they being recruited for the cult? I think they just were initiated into that.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know that Rob is already in the cult, which is, but he's like not taking it that seriously. Right, right, yeah.
Because he doesn't wear the robes and shit. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It seems like they're both pledging to the cult. They're rushing the cult right now, but they're not sure.
That's what I thought about all the children, yes.

Speaker 1 But Rob was clearly already in an initiation ceremony. That happened at the beginning of the movie.
Yeah, but it feels weird because he sort of takes 45-year-old drummer aside here to be like,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I mean, they say the network opportunities are great, but you got to live in the house.

Speaker 1 It just seems weird. I don't know if the pods aren't off.
I never pictured this being part of my college experience. How many grapes do you think you can fit?

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like it's going to be a good thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 1 I was so mad knowing the pledges that I fresh asked me to put a thing in my butt. I would have been so good at that.
So

Speaker 1 they were like, drink alcohol. And I was like, no, thank you.
And they were like, well, then you lose. And I was like, put stuff up my butt.

Speaker 1 What's this rubric? There has to be a section for me. Exactly.
Yeah. I bet I could have destroyed the curve at putting stuff up your butt.

Speaker 1 That's why they didn't let me in. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's probably what it was. Then we get this downright cartoonish 6 p.m.
That was my current raising when it was 6 p.m.

Speaker 1 In college. So then we get this downright cartoonish later that night title card, and we cut to them full-on Sataning at the cult, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But like their version of full-on Sataning is just like the sacrament in every Christian church. Well, right.
Like that's the funny thing. They're not that creative.
Almost exactly the same.

Speaker 1 Right there. Let's symbolically drink blood.
Ooh. And we're like, well, you guys are Catholics, though

Speaker 1 and as acknowledged at the ad break that everyone just listened to they are literally using point of order he calls the meeting to order and then proposes drinking a chalice of goats yes yeah he calls the meeting to order and they're all supposed to say hail ho as their like response thing to that and so most of them say hail ho and then one guy forgets is like hello sorry sorry

Speaker 1 well and also i love how the altar is covered in like the most satanic looking thing that each of these Christians could find in their kitchen.

Speaker 1 Okay, they keep their blood, which we find out is goat blood, inside of a cheese grotto, which

Speaker 1 I found interesting. Can't be good for you, right? Can't be good for you.

Speaker 1 Don't let it get to room temperature. Because somebody looked at that cheese grotto and they thought, well, that looks pretty satanic, though, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 It does. That could be like the blood holder.
I have a cheese grotto, it does look kind of satanic,

Speaker 1 Margaret. Can we use your tablecloth? I'm not saying you have a satanic tablecloth, please don't start.

Speaker 1 She's crying again.

Speaker 1 So, the mayor goes at this point, he goes, I shall pass the torch at the appointed moment. And like fucking guy number three or whatever, he goes, Oh, so you found your long-lost son?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, That's a good, subtle way to bring that point into the plot, guys. Well done.
Well, very subtle indeed. Okay, Mayor Frank here, the actor is pouring sweat off.
So sweaty.

Speaker 1 Sweat, Frank. Just so much all over his upper lip.
The other actors are not sweating. So this guy is just a sweater.
No, it's not hot in that room.

Speaker 1 Why is he the only one who has to talk fancy in the meeting too? Right, yes. Because he's like, thou comest for the darkened age of blood.
Yeah, sure, Frank. I'll have some blood.
And I feel like

Speaker 1 he needs to have a post-meeting meeting where he's like, hey, guys, when I'm doing sort of the heightened language thing, I need you to yes and that, okay?

Speaker 1 Because yeah, sure, can't be the response to my challenge.

Speaker 1 That's not a big ass. He kind of does that.
Yeah, no, we'll try to formal that up. Hey, you're really sweaty.
Do you want to lose like the heavy cloaks with the hoods? Because it's

Speaker 1 part of the thing. Like you're having a lot of trouble there.
Eli, he does that in the scene. He literally is like, I need total, unquestioned

Speaker 1 PDF. Yep.

Speaker 1 And I'm Gatorade.

Speaker 1 So, but there's also this moment where he's like, and at the appointed time, we will do the human sacrifice. And everybody else is like, okay, we're going to do it.
Fucking what?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're like, you mean that figuratively, right? Right? Figuratively.

Speaker 1 Total obedience.

Speaker 1 And then they end it by going, so mode it be. Yes.
Yeah. What? So might it be? It's just like, and so it must be in like Freemasonry.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. It's very clearly what someone thought the fancy version of must or might was.
That's not what mote means. It's, I'm embarrassed to say it.

Speaker 1 It comes from a 1390 document that is the oldest known document in Freemasonry. And that's how it ends.
And so that's how all the Freemason shit.

Speaker 1 And so, and a lot of the Wiccan and pagan, neo-pagan stuff picked up on that. So so mode it be is like clearly like the one satanic-y sounding thing they knew.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 I did research for that. That's interesting.
So mode it be. Yeah, no, I just researched that now, Kara, and certainly didn't dedicate like 11 years of my life to that dumb shit.

Speaker 1 That's certainly not how I know. Do you guys know why you're not allowed to be an atheist if you're a Mason? Why is that? Why? Because the big secret they tell you is that God's not real.

Speaker 1 So the reason.

Speaker 1 So you can't be like, yeah. You can't start as an atheist.
You can't start. Because then when they do the light thing, they're like, there's no God.
And you're like,

Speaker 1 you're like, fuck it. How many times did that happen before it became? You have to do formal language in response to my formal language.
You got to say that.

Speaker 1 It's my favorite thing thing about them. So and then we get maybe the most sloppily introduced scene in the entire movie, right? Because we cut to David and he's being woken up by something on the TV.

Speaker 1 We don't see it. We just see him watching it and we hear it.
And it's Lady Olivia, the occultist, who has a new occult book called The Supernatural and You.

Speaker 1 And she's going to be at the records slash bookstore signing copies of it tomorrow. What to expect when you're expecting a demon, baby? It's a weird title.

Speaker 1 So, okay. So then we cut to Robin and David having darkness breakfast together again.
They're having toast.

Speaker 1 Okay. This was the like Protestant couple moment for me, the most Protestant couple.
It was just like, oh, hello today breakfast. Hello today, break.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're going to, you're, you're going to go first with the butter? Okay. Okay.
Okay. And we get like 10, 15 seconds of scratching butter into toast so loudly in complete silence.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's the best. This is why why you need aftercare people.
Okay. You can't go from a hard scene to breakfast.
Okay. You need some puddles and everyone needs to take a bath.

Speaker 1 Okay. It feels like this couple had bad sex, right? Like they had really, really

Speaker 1 something awkward happened last night. I feel like Heath just flew right over your car.

Speaker 1 He sure did. Sure did.
Sure did, Heath.

Speaker 1 This is also where the my best worst comes in. This is when he says,

Speaker 1 How have you been doing since you got to this town and became my foster son? And he goes, I don't really fit in with the cool kids. And so new dad says, keep trying.
Keep trying. Keep trying.

Speaker 1 He doesn't say, well, hey, man, you're fine just the way you are. He's like, oh, well, obviously you're not cool enough.
You better keep trying. To be fair, he's talking to David.

Speaker 1 And based on what we know about David so far, that is honest advice.

Speaker 1 I know a lot of people would tell you to be yourself here, but you carry around

Speaker 1 a thumbprint-sized Bible and say that you're not the kind of person who likes hanging out. So, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and want you to give it an old college try.

Speaker 1 Also, by the way, were they having toast with butter and then syrup? They poured some

Speaker 1 pour syrup on the bottom. They did pour syrup on their toast.

Speaker 1 Nice. Because they are human.
They are

Speaker 1 right. Yeah, exactly.
We've seen that you put the butter and the syrup on the things for breakfast. We are not French, so we did not use the eggs that you are all so familiar with.

Speaker 1 So then what?

Speaker 1 He's a French toast joker. He just did land as well.

Speaker 1 I just speak fluent, Eli, so I know. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Noah's there catching my cake jokes, catching my French toast jokes.

Speaker 1 The flow's there. I'm the only one bad in a thousand over here.
That's right. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 A little bit over here, a little bit over there. No illusions right in the center.

Speaker 1 So then we get David, he's out walking, and El Guida, the demon girl, decides to demon at him as he walks by the lodge. So she starts teleporting around yelling demon words.

Speaker 1 This is like where this movie turns for me, and I start really vibing with it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. When he like runs into the, what's his name? Gomez, the drummer kid.
He runs into his like practice space and he's like, holy shit, there's a demon out there.

Speaker 1 And he's like, this is just my sister. Yeah, and he goes, I mean, what I meant was, I heard you were jamming and playing drums.
Would you like to be in my band?

Speaker 1 And I think the 47-year-old drummer Gomez is the best actor in this movie. Sure, oh, for sure.
By far, sure. Well, he has 25 years more experience.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 It's a low bar, but yes, he is. Absolutely.
And there's this great moment where he's like, Fine, we'll be in a band together, but don't try to save me, okay?

Speaker 1 And David goes, Listen closely,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, but then we cut to, it's time for the supernatural book signing with Lady Olivia. Now, Lady Olivia is dressed like she's about to turn a kid into Tom Hanks.
Oh,

Speaker 1 fuck yeah. With all of the fucking cultural care that you would expect out of a 1963 Disney cartoon.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. So she's got her little, her little fucking salt crystal candles.
I'm like, oh, God, I feel like I'm back in Sedona already.

Speaker 1 And she signs a few books. And then David comes up and she stops him.
And she goes, oh, I have some special things to say to you. You have main character vibes.
Let's talk for a second.

Speaker 1 You must be the protagonist. Yeah.
She can sense that there's some shit going on with David. So he goes to leave.
And then Manic Pixie Dream Cashier stops him. Right.

Speaker 1 And she goes like, what's with you and all this spiritual stuff? That's two whole things.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I love this scene.
I love everything about this scene.

Speaker 1 It's such a vibe. It's giving John Waters.
We've got like a housewife in Robin's egg blue. We have like the psychic in her lace, the goth chick looking forward.

Speaker 1 We've got main character energy. He's giving like freaks and geeks main character energy vibes.
Like throughout this whole thing. John Francis Daly.

Speaker 1 My Carasanta Maria vision board is just starting from scratch this episode. I got to tell you, I'm really, I'm this, this puzzle is really coming apart on me.

Speaker 1 But this is the point where he finds out that the cashier girl, Zoe, is a singer. So she can be in his band.
Right. Yeah.
She never will be. That never happens.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They exchange number because he hands her his phone and she touches it once and she's like, there you go. That's my number.
My number is 164. Yes.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so then we cut to him jamming. Him and Gomez

Speaker 1 are going to jam a little bit.

Speaker 1 And this is where we finally see that, you know for a Christian David rocks pretty fucking hard he does and Gomez is confused by this and says a very human quote he says good Christian boys like you only play easy listening joyful like choir music yeah

Speaker 1 to which David responds Jesus can rock Gomez he does

Speaker 1 He absolutely fucking does. Jesus actually rocks pretty hard, just for your information.
That's like actually a line in the movie. It's pretty fucking dumb.

Speaker 1 And then, so they rock out, and what he's doing is he's playing the exact same lick over and over again, which I believe contains three notes. And he just does that over and over again.

Speaker 1 And the scene fades out to them post-jam going, wow, we really jammed pretty fucking hard.

Speaker 1 We know more than three notes, I'll tell you that. Dude, do you remember when you did one, four, and then five right after it? Oh my god.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 music.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 so, but yeah, so, but David's like, yeah, I want to start a Christian band. And Gomez is, well, it's like, well, I'm not a Christian.
And I made that very clear to you.

Speaker 1 He's like, doesn't fucking matter. Nope.
Doesn't fucking matter. Yeah, he's got this moment.
And it never matters to the movie, which is so weird. He's like, I was in a band called Adramelech.

Speaker 1 And he's like, oh, what's that from? And he's like, the book that you're the religion of. And he's like, oh.

Speaker 1 You're holding it right now. Yeah.
You're thumbing. I didn't get it.
I didn't read the whole thing before I dedicated my life to it. The whole whole thing.

Speaker 1 This isn't the fucking terms and conditions on a goddamn piece of software, man. It's the fucking word of God.
You carry it with you everywhere you fucking go and you haven't read the whole thing.

Speaker 1 How far into it did he get before he committed his life to Christ? Yes, right.

Speaker 1 You gotta pray. You gotta get way in there before you get to the Jesus.
He's like, okay, it was good. Sounds great.
I'm in. I'll do murders if need be.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 To be fair, I bet by the time if I had gotten around to Jeremiah and they had been like, hey, you can either read Jeremiah or just change religions, I'd have been like, oh, yeah, change religions, please.

Speaker 1 I don't want to see any more visions. I'm bored.
Yeah. So, but then they start talking about how demonic the town is, right?

Speaker 1 And they have this amazing exchange where David says, I don't know, Gomez, do you ever feel like you're not alone? And Gomez goes, no.

Speaker 1 His answer is no. I'm like, what about when you're not alone, Gomez? Do you feel alone? How do you feel right now?

Speaker 1 Poor Gomez. Maybe he's never alone.
Like, there's like 17 people living in his house. That's true.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's probably fair. Yeah.
Are you counting the flies? Yeah, exactly. So then we cut to Zoe rocking out the record shop.
Right? So, oh, sorry. Sorry.

Speaker 1 Then we cut to David wearing the douchiest goddamn hat.

Speaker 1 Hey out.

Speaker 1 Hat is always in all caps in our day. Yep.
That's the only way to write hat.

Speaker 1 Oh, this hat. Yeah, this hat does not have a lowercase version.
No, no. It's so good.
So he's doing his like bike ride to the record store slash bookstore, whatever. Slash open mic, yeah.

Speaker 1 Slash open mic venue. Hat.
Hat. And

Speaker 1 the music is like sad Christian bike ride in the dark or whatever. But then you find out, oh, no, that's actually the band that's playing.
That's gyroject.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And he walks in, and I wanted so bad for this band to just completely stop and be like, we hate your hat.
Why do you want that?

Speaker 1 And it's Zoe, and she's written the, and I promise you, the actor who plays Zoe wrote this song. It's nonsensical.
It's so bad. You know what it feels like?

Speaker 1 You know when people speak in tongues, and then after a while, they just start saying the same thing.

Speaker 1 It's that, but with English words, right? It's the speaking in tongues of actually having English words.

Speaker 1 In this actor's defense, songstress's defense, if I may, she has to write a love song, because it is a love song, from the perspective of someone whose family is involved in Christian movie making.

Speaker 1 Is that what this is? So she's like, I wanna

Speaker 1 It is literally, if you jump, I jump, then we'd jump.

Speaker 1 There's a line in it that says, come and join me in a pond made of make-believe. It's so fucking dumb.
Everything about it is, and it gets, it's going to get worse.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so also I love, because there was, like, I had the subtitles on as I'm watching this. And over and over again in this song, the subtitles would go, like, I don't fucking know, man.

Speaker 1 I'm going to my garage and I'm starting music.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm done. I'm fucking done.
And everybody starts clapping for the song like a second and a half before it's over. Oh, that was awesome.

Speaker 1 That felt like just a group think where everybody was like, if we start clapping, they'll pretend they're done.

Speaker 1 And so they like applaud them off.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't play them off when they're the band. Yeah, it's tough.
Yeah. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 But it works. So then David goes to flirt with Zoe after the show, right?

Speaker 1 He just walks up, interrupts the conversation she's having with another girl, walks her away from her admiring fans and starts talking to you. He's like, I'm the main character.
We'll talk about me.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I don't know if you noticed, but my hat is the most important thing in the universe right now.
I literally have, I have no notes on this scene. How do you have a hat? My notes are hat, hat,

Speaker 1 fedora. He's wearing a fedora hat.

Speaker 1 So he actually gives some like exposition that's kind of necessary here. But before he does that, the MC makes this really weird joke.
This was insane. Do you guys remember that? Half of a joke.

Speaker 1 What was that? Yeah. So the MC does the punchline, apparently, of a joke that he started before the music and then landed after the music in his head.

Speaker 1 And then he introduces a slam poet, and we get to hear a slam poet. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 The very talented Danny. Danny is the reason people hate poetry, y'all.
Yep. Actual line from this fucking Vogon.
She says, quote, Tick Tock as the moon fully glows.

Speaker 1 There's only a few of us who truly know.

Speaker 1 Can you please join me in this pond of make-believe?

Speaker 1 I was going to say, no wonder they thought Zoe's lyrics were deep. Yes, right, right.

Speaker 1 So, and as she's doing her poem, David goes, do you want to not be here? And Zoe's like, oh, God, yes. So they leave.
You want to go for a walk? I have a hat.

Speaker 1 The hat gets taller in this scene. It was fluffed between scenes.
Be fluffed. Oh, my God.
Yeah, they get outside and he's like, Abe Lincoln with this fedora. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 But before they go for a walk, he's like, I have to give you some exposition. And she's like, okay, go ahead.
And then he says, my mom has schizophrenia. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 And she explicitly warned me not to come to this town because I might be sacrificed. Yes.
He goes, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 She said something like, whatever you do don't go to mission point before you turn 18 or something like that maybe ryan did that or something that's his actual line is he's like he says she said something like don't go to mission point before you turn 18.

Speaker 1 he's 17 in the movie yo yeah so i yeah right tension tension so then they decide they're gonna hang out next to this random bonfire and then the movie's like right there's not random bonfires this is probably a satanic thing right right also i have to point out that in this scene while they're expositing at each other, she points out that Jayden, the bully, is her older brother.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then the movie pauses because Jayden's black and she's like, he's adopted.
And he's like, adopted, right? Yeah. Adopted.
Because you could see David being like,

Speaker 1 hold on. Like, calculating.

Speaker 1 Black.

Speaker 1 Is it just in your clothes? Can it sometimes just be clothes?

Speaker 1 If you do enough good deeds, does it just go to your clothes? Does he just become white and delightsome?

Speaker 1 So, but then as they're wandering around, they happen upon some cultists. Now, I don't know why the cultists are outside.
They've got a perfectly good lodge, right?

Speaker 1 Do you also notice at one point, before actually, before they find the cultist, he flips out on her because they look at their watch or something? Yes. Well, that's as they find the cultist.

Speaker 1 Oh, as they find the cult. Yeah.
And he's like, What time is it? And she's like, Oh shit, it's 10. And he doesn't say it's past my curfew, by the way.
What does he say?

Speaker 1 He says, Crap, it's past my bedtime

Speaker 1 to the girl he's trying to fuck. Uh-oh, I'm a sweepy boy.
Shuckers, bedtime. Bye.

Speaker 1 And also, he says this as they are happening upon a demonic cult doing a satanic. It's like, is that what you're worried about right now, man, missing curfew? Yep.
No, he's bedtime. Not curfew.

Speaker 1 Bedtime. Oh, right, right.
Yeah, exactly. It's going to take me so long to put this hat away and then

Speaker 1 I'm not going to make it to bed by till 4 a.m.

Speaker 1 into three dimensions and everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. But then they hide as the satanic cult comes out to do a demon summoning of some sort.
As they're doing that, David says, we should move closer. I'm like, I don't think that you should, man.

Speaker 1 What are you fucking talking about? Okay, I have a question about this moment that's going to happen here.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, they're doing their satanic bonfire out in the woods, and they have a ritual dagger moment, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 And so, main guy, Frank, he's the leader and the mayor, he stabs, kind of, you know, etches like a satanic symbol in the arm of one of the other guys.

Speaker 1 And that guy,

Speaker 1 he screams out, but it's like, Owie,

Speaker 1 which was, was funny to me, just the noise of it.

Speaker 1 And then Zoe, who is hearing that, says, that sounds like my dad. Yep.
Yes. Yep.
That, that scream in. I recognize that scream.

Speaker 1 The scream after getting stabbed with a dagger is recognizable to me as my father. Yeah.
Yep. You don't know what's going on in their house.

Speaker 1 And the best part about that is David's follow-up because she hears this, what's supposed to be this blood-curdling scream, and she goes, oh, that sounds like my dad.

Speaker 1 And David goes, come on, let's go.

Speaker 1 All right. You want to fucking go? Oh, so.

Speaker 1 And then when they get where they're going, back to walk home, they literally both go, well, that got weird. Yes.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 That got weird.

Speaker 1 Best scene in the movie. Okay.

Speaker 1 But to be fair, I think we've all been on a date where someone's done something psychotic and you have to play it off like it wasn't a bad time so that they don't get psychotic to you.

Speaker 1 So you're like, yeah, no, I mean, that was

Speaker 1 crazy when you tried to fight the waiter, but like, this is fun. That was a fun time.

Speaker 1 And to be fair, not two scenes ago, he was asking one of the, he was asking Gomez if he sometimes feels like he's being watched all the time.

Speaker 1 And then he told her that he has a mother with schizophrenia who told him not to come back to the town or he'd get sacrificed.

Speaker 1 So i'd be a little concerned as well yeah no a little bit a little bit so but they had fun stumbling into a satanic meeting together so they're good they they make plans together to do some stuff again tomorrow oh and wasn't rob was also watching the satanic meeting yes he was from the other side of the woods or he was watching he was also watching the girls singing at one point it looked like i it was the way it was cut it was really hard to tell where he was supposed to be so then we cut to that it's the next morning david and rob are having darkness breakfast again Again.

Speaker 1 Yep. This is like the fourth fucking scene we've had where these people eat breakfast.
Rob forgives him for staying out past curfew. I like Rob here.
Rob's growing on me. Yep.

Speaker 1 I think we're starting to see that he's a good guy, though. Yeah, right, right, exactly.
They're starting to reveal that now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because he's checking up on the cult and he's not so sure about this anymore now that he's drank the blood or whatever. And he's like, you need to stay out of the woods.
It's scary in the woods.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That way for my son.
He's slowly sniffing out the synthetic cult because he's like, hey, did you notice like a satanic bonfire type thing by any chance?

Speaker 1 And Dave is like, I did notice that. I sure did.
I did. I heard the man be cut.
Yeah. So, okay, but this is the actual line, though.
This movie is so poorly written.

Speaker 1 Rob says, did you hear or see anything last night?

Speaker 1 I mean, you pretty much had to, man.

Speaker 1 I get to see because of the way the movie's lit. Maybe he didn't see anything, but he heard stuff, I'm sure.
Microphone hiss, if nothing else. I couldn't hear or see over my hat.
So no.

Speaker 1 I saw her Fedora hat.

Speaker 1 That was my night. Yeah, but in answer to the question, did you hear or see anything last night? David goes, yes, what was that?

Speaker 1 And Rob says, I don't know. I'll figure it out.
But stay out of the woods until I do. So then we cut to Zoe.
She's leaving her house and her big brother Jayden is bullying her.

Speaker 1 And this is where he realizes that she's hanging out with David the Jesus freak.

Speaker 1 This is a weird scene to me because this whole movie is kind of like dark and creepy and everybody lives in like shacks.

Speaker 1 But then they cut to this house and it's a beach house in Miami for some reason. Yes.
You guys notice that? There's like palm trees.

Speaker 1 And also like it's, it's so weird because

Speaker 1 now they're going to try to enact this plan to break up Zoe and David, but like the stakes of this movie are demons and human sacrifice.

Speaker 1 You can't like this late in in the movie go, and his relationship is on the line. And who knows if him and Zoe will go to the summer dance.
Yeah, right. He doesn't even go here.

Speaker 1 Also, this doesn't matter to the movie, but I do have to point out this sort of mini half scene that happens at the end here.

Speaker 1 For some reason, they now put popular girl, Mayor's daughter, and demon little girl together. And demon little girl shows up and she's like, hey, I got a knife.
And Leanne's like, give that to me.

Speaker 1 You're a kid. And she's like, uh-oh, okay.
This is my my favorite scene. No, I love this scene.
Okay.

Speaker 1 This is the scene where everything clicked to me that the aesthetics of this movie are just, are there, it's like sleeper brilliant.

Speaker 1 Is this because I'm

Speaker 1 yep, because of Leanne's phone. Yeah.
It's the old-timey phone. It's the feathers in her hair.
It's like the weirdly bright costuming. I'm so glad I brought this up.

Speaker 1 There's like, it's giving like John Waters at a baptism, like Zelennial noir. Like there's something really sexy about the scene.
I'm loving this.

Speaker 1 And the little girl has this like decorative letter opener. And she's like, don't have that.
That'll poke your eye out. Yeah.
Yeah. She does take it from her.
Right.

Speaker 1 She's like, that, I'm pretty sure that is my dad's blood athemae. So I'm going to take what it is.
Sacrificial dick. But really, really, let's be clear.
It's a fucking letter opener. It's a drop it.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
Drop it. And it was the most satanic looking thing in the kitchen, which was a letter opener.
Yeah. Okay.
Things Kara likes. Zennial Noir John Waters vibes.
Zelenial. And

Speaker 1 Scream Angry Metal. That's what we've learned.
Yep. yeah.
So she just said that was upbeat. She didn't say she liked it.
Oh, no, I did. I kind of liked it.
Well, I mean, but you didn't say that.

Speaker 1 So there you go. So now it's all coming together.
So then we cut to the library. This is the movie's second fully lit scene.

Speaker 1 The library where Zoe and David have decided to spend their date researching the town's mysterious past.

Speaker 1 Okay. This is

Speaker 1 such a great red herring, right? Because what they're supposed to find is that Dad Mayer was engaged to someone who's going to turn out to be David's mom. Right.
That's the spoiler. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But because they can't reveal that now, because the movie's not over yet, it's smudged in the electronic reader. So she says, it looks like he was married to someone named Sue Cucumber.

Speaker 1 And David reacts like his mom's name is Sue Cucumber. That's what I wrote.
I was like, oh, no, they're going to find out his secret identity. David Cucumber.

Speaker 1 He's actually been a cucumber this whole fucking time. They never correct that.

Speaker 1 So I guess we are supposed to believe that his mom's name is Sue Cucumber. Of course, and he's David Cucumber.

Speaker 1 She says it looks like a Sue cucumber, and he looks at her like, come on, take the movie seriously. And she goes, I'm just kidding.
It's smudged. I can't read it.

Speaker 1 But he's like, hey, hold on a second. And he runs away.
He's like, I can't tell you what this means yet. It's too early in the movie.
And he runs off. And then we cut to a complete goddamn darkness.

Speaker 1 And there's like a flashlight that starts shining around. Eventually, we figure out that this is Rob, the sheriff, and he's looking through some old fucking Satan notebooks.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So to clarify, the narrative of the movie is David goes, I'll be right back. And then a different character is doing something.
Yes, right.

Speaker 1 A different character is looking at something through a flashlight. Right.
So, but Rob is looking through, I guess, the cult's old notes or whatever, and he sees something in a note.

Speaker 1 We don't see what he sees, but he looks directly into the fucking camera afterwards and goes,

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 That's why I got the 18-plus warning. There you have it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's reading like journals from the satanic cult. It's weird that they have like an archivist who keeps their journaling for them.

Speaker 1 Well, what else would be?

Speaker 1 They'd be doing the minutes. What else would you do with those? I guess

Speaker 1 doing decimal and everything. Yeah.
So

Speaker 1 Sheriff Robb reads out loud to himself from one of these journals. And one of the journals says, like, Satan told me to get into journaling like I am right now.

Speaker 1 And he flips the page and there's a drawing of a wheel. And he's like, wheel, wheel, wheel makers,

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ. Yes.
I said out loud to myself also.

Speaker 1 And that's the end of the scene. All right.
Well, now that we're all intrigued, or at least mildly confused, I guess we can take another break. But first, let me give Act 3 the hard sell.

Speaker 1 Will Leanne's plan to break David and Zoe up be successful?

Speaker 1 Who the fuck cares about shit like that when there are demons about?

Speaker 1 Did David just forget that the mayor's eyes turned red and Alguida teleported around yelling at him for being a servant of the Most High God?

Speaker 1 Find out the answers to these questions and more when we return for the colligionous conclusion of

Speaker 1 Church of Darkness.

Speaker 1 Wake up.

Speaker 1 Jesus, you guys, what are you doing in my room? Oh, good. Kara, you're awake.
Perfect. Hi.

Speaker 1 No, I wasn't awake. You woke me.
What time is it? It's 4 a.m. But now that you're awake anyway, it's the perfect time to go pumpkin picking.

Speaker 1 Pumpkin picking? What the hell are you talking about? There aren't any pumpkin patches around here.

Speaker 1 Wrong again, Kara. There's actually an adorable little pumpkin patch just five hours away from your apartment.
Five hours. If you beat the traffic, yeah, which we will, if we leave now.

Speaker 1 Why are you doing this? Because it's fall, Kara. Thank you.
Fall. Yes, it's awesome.
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Speaker 1 That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com/slash awful to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com/slash awful.
All right, Cara. Well, I guess we don't need to go pumpkin picking after all.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm still going pumpkin picking. You are? Yeah, what kind of white woman do you think I am? Awesome.
Hooray.

Speaker 1 Dude, you gotta stop. What? I breakfast time.
At four?

Speaker 1 Slow it down.

Speaker 1 Kara, Kara, we need you. You have to stop him.
Hey, guys, is everything okay? You look like you've been crying. Yeah, so Eli found our weakness.
Your weakness? Yes, Kara, our weakness.

Speaker 1 If you throw a sports guy a baseball, we can't help but exposit the most traumatic moments of our lives.

Speaker 1 You do? Yeah. Oh, damn it.
Here he comes. Eve, you in here, buddy.
I want to hear more about that middle school dance. You have to stop him.
I got this. I was a theater kid, too.
Give him this.

Speaker 1 Oh, all right, all right. Eli, here, take this.

Speaker 1 What's this? What is that? It's the lyrics to Little Fall of Rain from Les Miz.

Speaker 1 You monsters.

Speaker 1 Wow. Just the lyrics, huh? All it takes.
She says you make the flowers grow. I know she does, buddy.
You got to to be careful where you point those. Oh, sorry.
Sorry. Sorry.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 And we're back for still more of this shit. We're going to rejoin David getting home early and swiping that mysterious book from Rob's Glove Box.

Speaker 1 To say I don't understand the timeline of this movie is an under. I don't understand the timeline of this movie the way I don't understand quantum physics.

Speaker 1 I don't understand why his car's there if Rob isn't there, right?

Speaker 1 But at any rate, so he breaks into the car, he gets that mysterious book, The Essentials of Life or whatever it was, out of it, and he goes inside to read some of it to see what's going on with all this Satanism in this town.

Speaker 1 And then Father Edwards shows up to most definitely not molest David. Yes, right.

Speaker 1 So now we haven't met Father Edwards, but they've referred to him a lot. He is the priest that set up this foster care situation, that arranged the foster care between Rob and David.

Speaker 1 And he shows up for the first time in the movie. He's a very large man.
He is. Very large man.
They go to sit on the

Speaker 1 porch to talk. And I love this little moment when Father Edwards is like, oh, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to take the porch swing.
I thought I would take the porch.

Speaker 1 That's fine. That's right.
I'm a lot bigger. You're a very narrow butt.
Maybe, I guess I'll just rock back and forth in my chair. My butt is much

Speaker 1 wider. This hurts.
So

Speaker 1 he goes, David goes, it's weird that you're here. And Father Edwards goes, how's so? He goes, well, it's just really plot convenient for me to have you to talk to.
I'm seeking answers. Do you

Speaker 1 specialize in answers? I found this weird book. And he shows the father the essentials of life, which is, I guess, the wheelmaker's like evil Bible.
Right. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 So the way this is supposed to work out is that the priest reads this Bible and reads something that's very non-biblical. But what he's reading about is proper sacrifice, which is very biblical, like

Speaker 1 Super biblical. Yeah, but not the way they do it.
Well, yeah,

Speaker 1 so I mean, it's better prose, right? Like the Bible has better prose than the. We use a pewter bowl, not a copper bowl for the blood.

Speaker 1 You gotta be careful. There are all idols over here.

Speaker 1 He reads the human sacrifice portion, and I'm not kidding, but or exaggerating. He reads the human sacrifice portion, and then he goes.
So how's school? Yes,

Speaker 1 so you want to talk about your mom? He's like, no, nothing on my mind except, you know, the satanic cult is taking over this town. He goes, oh, all right.

Speaker 1 Well, if you ever want to talk again, I'm, I'm just a train ride away. Oh,

Speaker 1 that was rough. You gotta buy your priest in person.
That's how he's gonna respond to my memes from now on. Yeah, if you ever want to send me some more memes, I'm just a train ride.
Flight away.

Speaker 1 Another train, maybe an Uber. I don't know.
I'll probably be there.

Speaker 1 Also, this line is like, it really shows the depths of the fucked uppery that is like Christian thought when he's literally like, how's my mom? I miss her. Like, you know, she's got, she hears voices.

Speaker 1 She's schizophrenic. Is she on her meds? How's she doing? And the priest is like, her faith is getting stronger.
Yes. That was

Speaker 1 that the thing that you thought I would be concerned with, you piece of shit. What?

Speaker 1 How's your schizophrenia? That is not how you cure schizophrenia. Who's too sick to take care of you? Well, she believes in my God more than she used to.

Speaker 1 So I think if I got your answer, you're welcome. If you need me, I'm just a trader.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, that's the other thing. He's going, well, if you ever want to talk, I'm just a trader.
He's like, I clearly want to talk right now.

Speaker 1 I just said it was nice to have someone to talk to, and now you're leaving.

Speaker 1 Well, it's nice for you to have someone to talk to. You didn't ask me how nice it is for me.

Speaker 1 I find you boring.

Speaker 1 And you took the fucking swing. I'm 8,000 pounds heavier.

Speaker 1 So, so then we check in on David at school. So, Jaden, now they've got to enact the plan to break him and Zoe up.

Speaker 1 So that plan begins with Jaden striking up a conversation and promising to not bully him anymore

Speaker 1 if he'll be friends with him now.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm not setting up a prank.

Speaker 1 Come to my house alone in my car. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think I missed the whole prank setup thing because all I got from that conversation was that Jaden wanted to start like a group thing.

Speaker 1 A group thing?

Speaker 1 Is that not how that scene read? Thang.

Speaker 1 Like a group thing. All right.
All right. Like, that's totally how that conversation.
I like the movie you were watching better than the one I was watching. I want you to know.

Speaker 1 Really good movie I watched, you guys. I would happily spend the rest of our podcast with Kara saying a group thing in different tones of voice

Speaker 1 while Heath pretends to understand what those tones of voice mean.

Speaker 1 Sing, you know, like

Speaker 1 aftercare group thing.

Speaker 1 Like a 40-year-old trying to speak Ebonics. Oh, Jesus Christ.
That would be. It's a show show, Kara, Santa Maria.
A group.

Speaker 1 Heath, it would be part of the group thing. It would.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm learning stuff. Not for Heath, apparently.
Heath would just do it. He sure.
He wanders out into the dark

Speaker 1 after his group. Let's save each other some time.
We're all cool and we're all cared for. Great.
We're doing it. Let's just affirm that concept.

Speaker 1 Let's also not like do callbacks to stuff that happened when we weren't recording. So

Speaker 1 i learned what aftercare means so there you go everyone's caught up yeah there you go also by the way okay small tiny thing in this scene it starts next to the lockers in the high school i'm so glad you said in this scene yeah i really thought you were going to take it

Speaker 1 after care no no no no it sounds great so in this scene they're at the lockers and there is first of all the first thing i noticed there's a can of la croix the sparkling water on top of a locker and i was like ooh the cross, LaCroix.

Speaker 1 Maybe they're going for a thing.

Speaker 1 They were. There was just a LaCroix there, maybe.
It was Pompamouse, which I like. I like that flavor.
Okay.

Speaker 1 But also, there were two posters that struck my eye. There's a poster for the football team, and

Speaker 1 their mascot is a goat demon silhouette. Oh, nice.
Little on the nose. It is a little on the nose.

Speaker 1 Also, there was a poster for the Spanish club, and the people who made this movie were like, what's Spanish?

Speaker 1 What's what's spain and they came up with sombreros and the flag of puerto rico puerto rico which was an interesting choice for the spanish club yeah i think it's a great choice i don't know why you're questioning that spanish comes from mexico which is in puerto rico nailed it there we go

Speaker 1 as the poster we didn't want to get sued by taco bail right

Speaker 1 So after school, David goes to Jaden's house to volunteer to be bullied, I guess.

Speaker 1 And ostensibly, he's there to help them work on the float for the Enshrinement Firelight Festival.

Speaker 1 But no one who made this movie has ever seen a float before. Nope.
So they just gave these kids some glue and some scissors, and they're just waving them around.

Speaker 1 They're like... twinkle dusting with glitter the ground.
Yes. Right.

Speaker 1 There's no floats.

Speaker 1 There's no thing that could eventually be a float. float.
Yeah, but to be fair, later on at the festival, there are no floats. There are no floats.

Speaker 1 There's no festival at the fucking festival, as it turns out.

Speaker 1 Spoiler alert. No, this is a great.
He goes, so this wheelmakers thing, is this a religion or a club? And they're like, I don't fucking know, man. We didn't write it that well.

Speaker 1 He goes, but do you guys believe in God? And everybody's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we believe in God. And then the little sister.

Speaker 1 chimes in who we haven't even met this character she chimes in and she goes actually i've been kind of toying with the idea of atheism myself. It's the best.
You know, science and evolution and such.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 science and such. And they're all like, shut the fuck up, Gabby.
Anyway, come on.

Speaker 1 Anyway, we're making a float for a probably not satanic cult that has a handbook right here. Yes.
Put this paper-mâché on that chair.

Speaker 1 And Jayden's so odd here because he's like, Again, like being a human boy, he's like, we don't know anything about anything. We just do it because it's tradition and our parents make us and whatnot.

Speaker 1 right. And we're supposed to go, you're doing that for the wrong God.
It's okay if you do it for ours, but you're not supposed to do it for the other ones, and such, and whatnot, and whatnot.

Speaker 1 That's where they get you the whatnot,

Speaker 1 that's where the aftercare is.

Speaker 1 I don't know what that is either. Oh, he sure doesn't know.
I'm gonna, I'm in, I like this. Now, it's good, it seems good, it seems like a good idea.
Stop disagreeing.

Speaker 1 It's worse than when you didn't understand it. I like it.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 1 I'm Heath Enright, and I approve this message about learning about aftercare

Speaker 1 concept.

Speaker 1 So, but then Leanne shows up, and she's got to do this, this like breaking up with, she has to fake fight with Jaden in order to enact the plan because, like, the plan is they're supposed to start fighting.

Speaker 1 David's supposed to go, this is awkward, I'm leaving. And then she leaves with him and like seduces him along the way.
Yeah, I did not get any of that at first.

Speaker 1 It's well, the reason we didn't get it is because these actors are bad actors. And it's bad acting within the Marishka doll of bad acting.

Speaker 1 I'm not a, there's no differentiator between the acting they do and the acting they do within the acting. Right.
Okay, you guys are picturing Marishka Hargate in Nesting Dollar Scenario.

Speaker 1 Trying to get me fired.

Speaker 1 But yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 That's her name.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 she does a lot of aftercare. I bet.
Because SVU. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So, but, but David Lee.

Speaker 1 That's my favorite. I'm sorry.
I just, I've never been on an episode with all three of you.

Speaker 1 And now you know why.

Speaker 1 And my favorite part of this whole show. is Noah going, but, but, okay.
I'm saying,

Speaker 1 this is a reference to the thing that the audience is.

Speaker 1 He cuts those parts.

Speaker 1 He cuts those parts. You can't reference them.
It's how people think there's a podcast.

Speaker 1 He puts it together into a flowing, beautiful narrative, Tara. You can't rip back the curtain like this.
I hope he leaves all the time. I eat a soy dog in between each commercial break.

Speaker 1 You can't tell people about that.

Speaker 1 And it's raw. It is.
It's a raw soy dog. It's so gross.
All right. I'm hungry.

Speaker 1 So hungry. Have another apple cider donut.
So now Leanne and and David are leaving together and she's like, I know a shortcut through the creepy woods.

Speaker 1 And he goes, I'm not allowed to go into the woods. My foster dad told me they were creepy, even though I'm 18 years old.
What time is it? Like seven? It's seven.

Speaker 1 It's almost my bedtime. I'm a sweepy.
Oh, you weren't in that scene, but I told my kind of my lady friend that I'm a sweepy little bear.

Speaker 1 So I also don't go in the woods because it's a little too teary. Yeah.
I just, I, I've like, I wrote in my notes, I bet this is what seducing seducing Heath is like, right?

Speaker 1 She's like, she's trying, she's like, Hero, you want to smoke a joint? And it'll take that anxiety down a notch. And he goes, I don't know if I'm allowed to.
The joint is so

Speaker 1 big and funny. It's amazing.
It's also the wrong drug for somebody who clearly doesn't do drugs to reduce

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 1 You won't be looking for niches behind anything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because she goes, would you like some weed? This really helps with the anxiety you have. Yeah, no, it helps with the anxiety I have, but not this.
You won't be paranoid at all.

Speaker 1 Are you anxious about where your arms are? Smoke this joint for the first time.

Speaker 1 So, but as he's smoking, as he's succumbing to the peer pressure and smoking the drugs, somebody's hiding in the bushes snapping pictures of him. Why are they not? They're not using a phone.

Speaker 1 She's using a fucking goddamn camera from 1938 or whatever for some fucking reason. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 She's using a cell phone with a with a case that looks like a phone oh is that what it is they're trying to it was really dark so i understand yeah yeah just like every other goddamn thing in this movie yeah kara had to use like a government friend to zoom and enhance for her

Speaker 1 so she's taking the pictures and this is where leanne tries to sort of like force kiss him so they have pictures of him kissing another girl right but they weren't gonna let these actors kiss each other so she just kind of high fives his chest

Speaker 1 And he runs off. He goes, no, I have a girlfriend.
I can't lean. I can't have my chest high-fived by another girl.
Okay, does he have a girlfriend?

Speaker 1 That's exactly the question I was about to ask. No.
Well, he took one walk with Zoe. Well, they went to the library together.
Based on how Zoe reacts later, maybe. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 We don't know what happened off camera.

Speaker 1 But so then we get a quick scene where Jaden and his buddies are all sitting around admiring the compromise they got on David. And there's this weird fucking moment.

Speaker 1 I have no idea what this is doing in the movie where they're like, we should post this online. And then somebody's like, well, you know, we don't want to embarrass him in front of everybody.

Speaker 1 Why don't we just DM it to Zoe? And they're like, that would be the more responsible thing to do. Let's just do that.
That is better. Thank you.
And that's what they do.

Speaker 1 We should do ethical cyberbullying, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 Hey, Craig, I always want you to feel comfortable to give notes like that because that was really great.

Speaker 1 That was really great. You're welcome.
Can we do snaps for Craig, everybody? Oh my God, she's back.

Speaker 1 You're welcome. Do you notice how also like there's weird, like,

Speaker 1 like at times that don't make sense in this movie, like at non-scary moments? I'm sorry, I was capturing that audio to make it my phone ring forever and ever.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is that good though, right?

Speaker 1 That was exactly like they knew there was like a certain number of jump scare sounds that were supposed to accompany a horror movie, but they didn't know where they were supposed to go or something.

Speaker 1 Or they just told the sound guy, yeah, just litter him in anywhere.

Speaker 1 And he's just doing it sarcastically now yep so yeah so now it's it's the next day at school zoe has seen the compromising video of him getting his chest hi-fi by another woman so she breaks up with him i guess to the extent that they were together yeah how dare he stand still while a girl tugs on his shirt yeah he starts to go explain to her and drummer boy stops him and he's like hey hey hey let her cool down plus we need this to still be a misunderstanding for the rest of this action the plot if you explained what happened in any way.

Speaker 1 So, yeah.

Speaker 1 He says, let her cool off for a minute. And I'm like, yeah, no, stewing in our anger before the explanation is always the best strategy.

Speaker 1 Always good in a relationship misunderstanding to let that misunderstanding drag out. For a while, yes.

Speaker 1 And this is just for days on end. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he's like, hey, but let's hang out and jam some more after school, him and Gomez. They're best friends now, I guess.
So we cut to them hanging out after school.

Speaker 1 This is where the interstitial comes in because this is the part where they're tossing the apple back and forth.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like it's the conk shell from Lord of the Flies. You get to talk if you have it.
And weird. They just have like this awkward pause.

Speaker 1 And then it was like, hey, do you want to bond over being troubled youth together? I do want to do that. I'm a troubled youth too.
And they give their backstories about.

Speaker 1 mom's schizophrenia and Gomez's dad ran out at some point. Why the fuck did they think that we needed his goddamn backstory? We have been giving David's backstory 11 fucking times now.

Speaker 1 Well, we needed Gomez's so he could say the line, my mom is super religio. Religio.

Speaker 1 Whatever it took to get to that line. My mom's atheo.

Speaker 1 Atheo. My mom's agnosto.

Speaker 1 It also starts off with Gomez going like, hey, man, why don't you stick up for yourself when people bully you?

Speaker 1 And he's like, because all the other high schoolers are like nine or 10 years older than me, man. It's really awkward.
It's very difficult for me. I just got this Botox.
I don't want to fuck it it up.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you hit me in the lip at this point, oh, man, it's just over. It splits wide open.
So, yeah, but we hear them explain their backstories back and forth with an apple.

Speaker 1 We learn that Gomez used to be very religious and used to teach Sunday school, and then he eats the apple because that scene is over. Right.
He eats the apple. That is so germy at this point.

Speaker 1 Can you imagine tossing an apple back and forth with a friend? and then biting into. Oh, you can do some weird stuff to Heath's food and he'll still eat it.
It's a game that we play behind his back.

Speaker 1 So long as there's aftercare, you know? Yeah, like more.

Speaker 1 So you're just, okay, I just thought you guys were throwing me food sometimes. You just thought

Speaker 1 we are. You didn't notice how it wasn't a little weird that everyone dropped the cookie on the way over to the couch at Patreon.

Speaker 1 He always goes just that far. People are classy.
So, okay. So then we watch David read the Bible for a little bit, huh? That sounds fun.

Speaker 1 And Leanne comes up and she's like, hey, I'm really sorry about that time when I

Speaker 1 high-fived your chest in the video and made your girlfriend break up with you. Yeah.
And he's like, well, I don't, I don't forgive you. And she's like, well, that's not very Christian of you, is it?

Speaker 1 And he's like, I don't fucking care.

Speaker 1 And she's like, what if I trauma dump for exposition? Yeah, right. Will you forgive me? We're going to turn out to be related at the end.
Maybe we won't ever make that too explicit. You forgive me.

Speaker 1 You do. Right.
Forgive me. Yes, I get the feeling that you're the main character.
My mom ran out on me when I was very young. And he goes, oh, that's funny.

Speaker 1 My mom ran out on somebody when she was very young. What weird.

Speaker 1 Wonder when your birthday is. My mother is a woman? Yes.
I don't know how to get this riddle done.

Speaker 1 She goes, and I quote, not having a mom is the only truth I've ever known.

Speaker 1 Yep. What?

Speaker 1 And this whole scene ends with her going, also, my house is is possessed. You should come check it out.
She's like, I thought.

Speaker 1 Oh, but you know what? I meant to mention also my house is possessed by demon. You should come by while we exercise those demons this afternoon.

Speaker 1 And his fucking response to my house is possessed by demons is, and I quote,

Speaker 1 what kind of demons?

Speaker 1 What kind of demons?

Speaker 1 Question. That felt like it was about race, right?

Speaker 1 Because if there, he like does the gesture on his arm, I don't want to do the like demons like Jaden or like

Speaker 1 is it like uh

Speaker 1 adopted demons?

Speaker 1 I don't love hip-hop.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 so interestingly, that is quite consistent with the sort of Christian vibe that we often see in these films. But what's not consistent is this kid is supposed to be like the Jesus kid, right?

Speaker 1 Why is he obsessed with the occult?

Speaker 1 Well, I guess he's trying to save the town from it but yeah great question in the epic battle between good and evil character yeah oh so but he's like yeah i'll come by your house and so then we go to the house where lady olivia the supernatural chick she has been called upon to smudge away the demons And look, I'm not here to be picky because smudging is nothing, but she's not smudging.

Speaker 1 She's waving a feather. She's waving a feather with candles.
But thank you. He also walks into their house without knocking, which is weird as fuck.
He does. Who does that?

Speaker 1 He doesn't even know these people. I wanted him to have a much bigger hat here, but sadly he doesn't.
Yes.

Speaker 1 He's wearing a larger and larger fedora until he's having to roll it on sort of as a celebration. Until he's in Boulder USA.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Kurt Reynolds and celebrity jeopardy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that, but, but he turns to Gomez at one point and he goes, this isn't going to work. And I'm like, yeah, not because it's bullshit, but because it's the wrong kind of bullshit.

Speaker 1 And then he interrupts everything. He stops Lady Olivia in the middle of this and he says, this is, you guys are the wrong religion.
This is stupid. You guys have a stupid religion.

Speaker 1 And she challenges him to a banishing the spirits dance battle. Yes.
Which is a great move. Yeah.
Well, he dances back, right?

Speaker 1 He gets the feather and he throws it down because he doesn't know a fucking feather. And he says, Jesus, I call upon you to get rid of all the demons in this house.
And nothing happens.

Speaker 1 And there's a long pause. And he says, sorry, did you not hear me? I just did.
I got God.

Speaker 1 I I look like an idiot. He was probably busy like curing cancer or something.

Speaker 1 I should warm up with something small. Sorry, it's hello.
Hello. Take the demons out of this pencil.

Speaker 1 Hey, J-Man. I don't say that.
I don't know why. You're all making me.
It's hot. It's so hot.

Speaker 1 Sat on my own pen.

Speaker 1 He goes, amen. And then he keeps going afterwards.

Speaker 1 I'm like you're not allowed to keep going after you no yeah that's like a string bat and poker you can't you can't say that you can't go like i call your five and raise you 10.

Speaker 1 and wait you didn't let me finish

Speaker 1 when he said did you not hear me after oh my god i laughed and at exactly the same time all the kids in the room

Speaker 1 yeah no we were all bullying David at the same time. We all laughed at him together.
He leaves. He's all embarrassed.
He leaves and Gomez follows him out.

Speaker 1 And he's like, oh man, that was really embarrassing. He's like, yeah, your family's really embarrassing.
He goes, no, I meant you. You.
No, for you.

Speaker 1 You were, hey, hey. No, you remember when you were really embarrassing for you.
And then you do nothing for like eight seconds. He said, did you not hear me? Just now.

Speaker 1 To be fair, I do that to Heath after social events sometimes. So, you know, I get it.
Doing the Lord's work. What do you think he was hoping would happen physically?

Speaker 1 Like, if you believe that you can summon God to, quote, clean a house of a demon spirit,

Speaker 1 what does that look like as a success to you? It probably just looks like the last scene of this movie. Oh, right, yes,

Speaker 1 the last scene, but rips rope ripping open. Yeah,

Speaker 1 someone belches open some flies.

Speaker 1 So then we cut to we cut to Rob and Father Edwards chilling on it at an incredibly dark table.

Speaker 1 And we have this amazing conversation where Rob is saying to the priest, he goes, you know, there's something not right about this town.

Speaker 1 I think it might be connected to the satanic cult that I joined.

Speaker 1 And the father's like, hey, not worse than what you were. And he's like, ah, it's true.

Speaker 1 I did do a lot of satanic

Speaker 1 people to the devil back in my day. I did a lot of that.
Yeah. We all go through phases.

Speaker 1 Heath had a soul patch and Rob sacrificed people to save me.

Speaker 1 Heath had a soul patch every day. No, he did.
I have photos.

Speaker 1 You'd like some aftercare, please.

Speaker 1 You can have the aftercare after I show all the people who listen to our show show the photos of you at the summer. He's catching on.

Speaker 1 So, and then there's also a line in here that's just so fucking sad where Rob says,

Speaker 1 you know, it's just, I'm so lucky. I have my dream job.
I'm a cop in a small town. Yeah, it's sad.
Really, that's what you were shooting for, huh? Woof.

Speaker 1 Have you guys ever used the word spooky unironically? I don't think so. No, I don't think that's how that works.
They do that a lot in this movie. They talk about how spooky the town is.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And, but just then, just as they're trying to like figure out if maybe there's something a little off about this satanic cult, David shows up all dejected because God's magic spell didn't work.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like, God, abandoned me and made me look like a fool. And I'm like, no, it was the lip fillers, David.

Speaker 1 But I had a group on them. Not working for you.

Speaker 1 And Father Edwards is like, now, now, hey, did you pray to rid those demons because you wanted the demons out? Or were you trying to look cool in front of all your friends?

Speaker 1 And he goes, oh, I was just trying to look cool. was he goes father edwards says and i quote do you remember when jesus was on the cross

Speaker 1 oh yeah i thought that was weird i don't think he remembers he wasn't there no no he wasn't there also why would you bring up this scene because first of all it's only in one gospel also it's the second weirdest moment of christ's myth right where everyone's like hey if you came down right now and we're like

Speaker 1 we would all believe in you and he's like i'm gonna shit myself and die instead yeah but that's the part he brings up. Right.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, Father Edwards is saying, like, hey, remember when Jesus died on the cross? Was he putting on a show? Yes. He's

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 show in the history of the Christian world. He put out the sun.
There was an earthquake and the walls came crashing down and the sun went out. While he is saying, did he put on a show?

Speaker 1 He gives him a cross as a

Speaker 1 ship.

Speaker 1 He's like, was it iconic?

Speaker 1 And also, he goes right from scolding him to the cross. He's like, he's literally like, and it's not to please some ego.
I have your birthday gift.

Speaker 1 So good. So, all right.
So then we cut over to the festival of enshrinement. And this is like, because we've seen a lot of times where like they've tried to make a small group look like a big group.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's ever been as sad as this one.

Speaker 1 They have a CGI

Speaker 1 bonfire. Yep.
Yep. And like 12 people standing next to them.
Gift that. And no floats.
And they're trying to clap. And they're all going

Speaker 1 no floats. No signs of festivities whatsoever, except that all 12 of them are all

Speaker 1 at all at the same time. So that feels like a bigger crowd.
It doesn't feel bigger. This is also where they announce that the founder of the town was Frank P.

Speaker 1 Ballspawn. Ball spawn, yeah.

Speaker 1 Subtle. Yes, very subtle.
But they're here to celebrate the beginning of the Wheelmaker's Lodge 100 years ago this day and also Halloween and also Leanne's birthday and also David's birthday as well.

Speaker 1 That's what they're there to celebrate. And also the membrane between the evil dark world and the regular

Speaker 1 finish.

Speaker 1 Is anyone not in the climax of their movie right now? Okay, it's all of us. I was just checking to make sure.

Speaker 1 Oh, for fuck's sake.

Speaker 1 Okay, so, but Leanne and and her friends they don't want to hang out at all this boring enshrinement satanic stuff so they go out into the woods to to drink beer and smoke weed and engage in risk behaviors right

Speaker 1 so at one point leanne has to wander off by herself to go pee and get more beer and while she's doing that we cut to david who is breaking into the lodge to try to i guess exercise the demons from it

Speaker 1 he literally just goes there because that's where the end of the night i guess yeah right right aren't they looking for Olguita? I don't think he is.

Speaker 1 The mom and Gomez are looking for El Guita because they do say Olguita is missing. Where is she? Oh, probably in that creepy church where she lives.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 We're going to find out that she's missing and probably there in a second. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The mom, the mom comes up to Gomez afterwards and says, you know, where's your sister? And he goes, I don't fucking know.
She's like, well, it's almost the finale.

Speaker 1 So, oh, now you guys care about chronology of this movie.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 I have to talk about this one moment. They have Gomez, the 45-year-old drummer, putting out the fire, but the CGI smoke is not bonfire smoke.
It's smoking rubble smoke.

Speaker 1 So the CGI fire just instantly turns to like a billowing cloud of signal flare smoke. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 1 But the mayor shows up at the lodge now where David is, and he's there to sacrifice David, which was the plan all along. Right, because the mayor's the bad guy.

Speaker 1 The mayor with the red eyes loving this cape. Oh, yeah.
He is doing so much cape work in this scene. He's flipping it around and spinning it, doing the Dracula face hide.
He's fucked.

Speaker 1 He's never felt more free. Yeah, absolutely.
I feel like he was mad about David having so much good fedora work that he was allowed to do. He's like, I'm doing cape stuff.

Speaker 1 I think that's why he's so sweaty in that earlier scene is they were like, hey, man, we know you did a lot of cape work, but we still have some more shooting to do.

Speaker 1 And he was like, I thought I was going to get to go home and shower i wouldn't have done that cape

Speaker 1 i wouldn't have done that cape wheel that's a cartwheel while you're ran

Speaker 1 for my face it's fine i'm sure no one will notice

Speaker 1 so yeah right so but leanne at this point she runs into zoe in the woods and she's like oh hey sorry that i faked like your boyfriend was making out with me but that was just a fake thing and you can forgive him now uh the plot actually demands it and zoe's like oh he's in trouble he's at the lodge and they're like oh it's almost a finale let's all go there.

Speaker 1 Right. I love that, though.
I love the gender reversal here. The women go to save the boy.
Well, except that they never do any single thing to help save him. They just stand at the edge going, no.

Speaker 1 But that's more than the fucking adult men do. Okay, no, they're layers.
That's true.

Speaker 1 When there's

Speaker 1 a first icon church of darkness,

Speaker 1 Kara's making a good case. Is this a good movie? Nope.

Speaker 1 It's not. I don't know.
Friedream tomatoes and church of darkness are essential safe viewing. I always say this.

Speaker 1 No, but there's okay. So we go to the church.
The mayor/slash main demon, red-eyed man, is like, no, I sacrifice the son before he turns 18.

Speaker 1 And the two guys who are there, who are like the core, you know, trio members of the cult. The other guys with the portraits, yeah.
They're like, oh, he's serious. Let's get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 1 And they just leave. They just leave.
They run away. They leave David there.

Speaker 1 And the girls start to run in to save him. And they're like, no.
And they keep the girls from saving him. They're like, that kid's going to die regardless.
We should just get out of here.

Speaker 1 This is like a family thing. They literally say, this was not in the brochure.
Yeah. So, right, Mayor Frank, now he's a demon, I guess.
He's like, accept the holy sacrifice.

Speaker 1 The guy says, wait, this was not in the brochure. Like, you hadn't known.
First of all, he literally said we're doing a murder. And you were like,

Speaker 1 wait, did you say we're doing a murder? And he's like, yes, I said we're doing a murder. Then he barked total obedience.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 But these guys are like, I thought we were just like getting into Tufts underground.

Speaker 1 I do wish more henchmen would quit, though, right? I would love for all supernatural thrillers and movies to just have one guy in the cult who's like, hey, I actually want to bail.

Speaker 1 This is getting really shitty. I thought this was just going to be weird fuck stuff, so I'm going to

Speaker 1 go.

Speaker 1 Do you guys know if I'm can participate in just the fuck? Oh, you know what? I'll ask later.

Speaker 1 You guys see him in His sword clangs to the ground loudly. Sorry.
Hey, point of order. Are we stabbing this kid? I feel like we're really close now, and I'm thinking no.

Speaker 1 Anybody second? No?

Speaker 1 So, and there's also this incredible fucking line here where David says to the mayor, because the mayor's got his little atheme, right? His letter opener, and he's trying to stab him with it.

Speaker 1 And David says, that puny dagger is nothing compared to the sword of the spirit. And I wrote in my notes, I'm like, please let Jesus throw this kid a sword.
Please, oh, please.

Speaker 1 This movie was 100 budget dollars away from him being like,

Speaker 1 would have been so good. And we should point out that while this fight is going on between the two of them, we're getting the just the worst imaginable CGI.

Speaker 1 There's a rift to hell opening up in the floor around them. I mean, the best worst.
Oh, yeah. So good.

Speaker 1 See lemmings climbing around in science

Speaker 1 64 pixels.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it would be impossible to fully express how amazingly bad this looks. So, but now Rosalita, the housekeeper, she's had enough of all this satanic bullshit.

Speaker 1 So she storms in and she starts praying as hard as she can. Yeah, because remember, she is religio.
Religio?

Speaker 1 It's in Spanish, and Jesus has to get out the little app and do the translation thing. So it's not a Spanish.
And

Speaker 1 Jesus does it in Eglitz. Yeah.
So, but yeah, so we get the mayor choking David. Rosalita's yellow, like Gomez is trying to help.
Rosalita yells, stay away from that chasm.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, yeah, I think he thought of that. Thanks, Ball.

Speaker 1 I feel like. But then David gets the god power and he picks the mayor up.
He grabs him by the throat and picks him up the fucking Darth Vader style, apparently. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Where they like, they crop the bottom of the frame off so you can never see that he's just on his tippy toes

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 you know he showed that shot to everyone he was like pretty good right everybody was like ah you can't do that with a home camcorder

Speaker 1 call me steven spielberg but not jewish if you know what i'm saying

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 Yeah, but he picks him up and he kills the demon part of him. I guess I think he kills the mayor.
I think he just kills the guy, right? No, he doesn't. No? he's in the final scene.

Speaker 1 I wasn't sure either. Yeah, I think he just exercises the demon out of him.
Okay, I didn't notice him in the last scene, so I wasn't sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he puts his wooden crucifix on his forehead and burns a cross into his forehead, which is conveniently gone in the next scene, also. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 I wanted him to still have it in the next scene when he sits down with a hot dog to, hey, David, how's it going? Yep, still healing.

Speaker 1 Still healing. He's got full Manson vibes.

Speaker 1 So then, yeah,

Speaker 1 so everything fades out, and the voiceover shows up trying to explain what the fuck they were going for with all that sloppy ass CGI. The title card tells us it's one year later.

Speaker 1 And the voiceover tells us that he's finally found his real family now, and now that he's driven the demons out of the city of Mission Point.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay, that VO is fucking weird because he's like, yeah, God magic is the best.
You can murder your secret dad who's a demon.

Speaker 1 End of list.

Speaker 1 One year later. Now there's a food truck.
That's fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. The bearded chef.
Yeah. And they go, and he says, Zoe says to him, because I guess they're together now.

Speaker 1 She says, well, you know, it looks like you're leaving for more adventures, but will you come back for the one-year anniversary of the thing that just happened?

Speaker 1 And he's like, didn't the title card literally just say this was one year later? And she's like, we have already forgotten that, apparently.

Speaker 1 And then this is where the mayor comes over and he's like, oh, I'm so hungry.

Speaker 1 Not filled with demons anymore. Just clarify.
In case Noah's curious. Yeah, I guess

Speaker 1 some of you. I probably have to say that a lot when I introduce myself to people because it's probably gotten around in the remaining year

Speaker 1 that I was at one point filled with demons. And to clarify also, no more demon mayor is David's dad.
Yes, right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are they like living in a house together as if that didn't all happen? I don't know. I don't know.
Well, hopefully we're able to explore that in the sequel, right?

Speaker 1 Well, I feel like definitely going to be a sequel. If you're living with that guy now and he's supposed to be your dad, like every time you're in an argument, you're throwing it in his face.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, of course. A demon who tried to kill you for a while.
Oh, young man, you're 45 minutes late home. Oh, yeah, dad.
At least I'm not filled with demons. Okay,

Speaker 1 sacrifice a goat to Satan. Yeah, but then what we see that they are planning a sequel, we see the little girl, she's still got the demon dagger, and she's still like an all-demony.
So, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the red eyes transferred to her. Little girl's demon just got to hang out.
Like when a bad thing happens to a co-worker, just like, not my circus, not my monkeys. I've actually been doing

Speaker 1 kind of doing my own thing through O'Clean.

Speaker 1 Didn't get the attention I was hoping for, but I'm working on it. You know, it's a slow but steady wins the race.
That's what they say.

Speaker 1 Got a good review. Well, that's

Speaker 1 that's the movie. Gara, thanks again.
Normally I have a much more florid thanks to to give you, but apparently, you enjoyed this one.

Speaker 1 So, I'm just going to say thanks again for suffering alongside us this week. Sure.
More teens with lip filler. You got it, Kara.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's what you took. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And while that's going to do it for our review of Church of Darkness, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to lure ourselves back next week.

Speaker 1 So, Eli, tell us what's on deck.

Speaker 1 A dysfunctional family of three stop by a mansion during a storm. Father, stepmother, and child.

Speaker 1 The child discovers that the elderly owners are magical toy makers and have a haunted collection of dolls. We'll be watching the weirdly Christian 1986 film

Speaker 1 dolls. All right then.
So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 477 to a merciful close. Once again, a huge thanks to Kara for all her help.

Speaker 1 Be sure to check the show notes to links to hear more from her on Talk Nerdy. And an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors to help make the show go.

Speaker 1 If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, you can buy a per episode donation to patreon.com/slash guy lawful and thereby earn only access to an ant-free version of every episode.

Speaker 1 You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms.

Speaker 1 And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check our sibling shows, the Scathing Atheist Citation Data DD Minus, and the Skepticrat, available wherever podcasts live.

Speaker 1 If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions, you can email GodAwlMovies at gmail.com. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media.

Speaker 1 Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slotton, and Beavil Drafts on Mars. All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission.

Speaker 1 Thanks again for giving us a trunk of your life this week for Heathenrate, Neli Bosnick, I'm no losers, promising to work hard to earn another chunk next week.

Speaker 1 Until then, we'll leave you with a breakfast club close.

Speaker 1 Atheist Curious Girl is the only person who actually left that town after graduation and can name one sentiment.

Speaker 1 David and Gomez went on to become the founding members of Creed.

Speaker 1 Don't worry about the timeline. Kevin the Invisible Demon swears he meant for the kid to just test the knife on a piece of paper or something.

Speaker 1 Ball found it much harder to get a foothold in town as a Hispanic child than he did as a middle-aged white guy. Really opened his eyes to some inequality.

Speaker 1 Did you guys start recording or no? Yes.

Speaker 1 I hit record and stopped saying my idea. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 One, two,

Speaker 1 three,

Speaker 1 four, four, five. Five.

Speaker 1 What kind of sex have you never had, Heath? I was going to say, do you want sex and a sex? I've never had a sexual experience where I felt like any of the people involved needed, quote, after care.

Speaker 1 I think that's maybe good. But if you're into stuff where that's needed, I guess that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 I feel like anytime that you're inside someone, there's probably

Speaker 1 care during. So, like,

Speaker 1 and you need care after. I need to have a talk with some of your partners, Heath.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's get Anna. Is Anna in the house when you get angry?

Speaker 1 Listen, I like to multitask. I do during care.

Speaker 1 By the way, you're fine after this.

Speaker 1 All right. So, very awkward.

Speaker 1 We did the five count, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah.
We get to count. A lot of people are afraid to say, Am I right during sex, but not even for eight.

Speaker 1 This gentlewoman knows what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 I five.

Speaker 1 So, as always, Elay, who am I in interstitial one?

Speaker 1 You are generic. Craig the writer.
Yeah, Craig, the Christian movie writer, in one.

Speaker 1 Okay. Can I just have my voice? Sure.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Do a Craig. I'm going to do it with Craig.
No choice.

Speaker 1 You can have your choice, Karen.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm going to make a choice.
I'm going to be Craig. All right.
All right. Interstitial one.

Speaker 1 Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com.

Speaker 1 I guess that's in the must-read. So, yes.
Yes. God damn it.
You don't want me to take off the mask. You want me to take off the mask? Can't help.

Speaker 1 You don't even fucking know, BetterHelp.

Speaker 1 Every time I see it, I'm like, you don't mean it, better help.

Speaker 1 I love this.

Speaker 1 I'm like 90% sure Eli actually has an apple cider donut over there.

Speaker 1 That was really good. Acting.

Speaker 1 I just love the idea that we just did an ad that's like, you can be as stylish as Eli Bosnik if you want to get close.

Speaker 1 And Caribbean, like Mongolian cashmere sweaters. 50 miles.

Speaker 1 I just ridiculous. I was in the middle of the term.
I think it was another dress term.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we should stop pointing guns at her head during the ads. I think it would really.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's hard.

Speaker 1 Don't fix what ain't. Yeah, exactly.
No, exactly. Right.
Oh, wait, we're supposed to stop, right?

Speaker 1 The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in a Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2024. All rights reserved.