527: House (2008)

2h 2m
This week, Amanda Jane Stern joins the guys for an atheist review of House (2008), the story of a hotel. Not a house. And it's haunted or something, but the movie's name makes no sense at all and that's the real issue here.



Check Out Amanda's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-be-crazy/id1450793937

Or check out her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandajanestern/?hl=en



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Transcript

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Ghosts that have to do their research is my favorite genre of RB.

All right, everyone, let's get Insta-stalking.

So, Beelzebub, do you have that file I asked for on the

grad student?

Her Facebook profile was private, but her mom's is not, so I'm looking at a bunch of the likes on there to see if she can find it.

I'm gonna check out Instagram.

I'm doing two-factor two-factor authentication.

It's going to take me a second.

Oh my God, Heath, you're the worst demon ghost ever.

God awful

movie.

Movie.

Movies.

Welcome back to the Gamecast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema because otherwise we'd have to listen to Joe Rogan with Cecil.

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 Time.

Fuck yes, it is.

Do it.

And sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnick.

Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir?

Oh, I'm ready to dig into this one.

Yeah, I bet you are.

But before we do, I'm also excited to welcome in a brand new guest masochist, Amanda Jane Stern, is an actor, writer, and podcaster.

She's the co-host of the Don't Be Crazy podcast, which explores what makes movies good or bad.

And her movie, Perfectly good moment is streaming for free on tubi amanda welcome to god awful movies thank you for having me i as i said before we started recording i think i got very lucky with

just by being on this for halloween month my favorite month at least the movie was a thing yeah yeah and had a plot and characters

it wasn't the nigerian one you watched where someone just started peeing so yes right right well that's the thing is that like normally when we have a guest on, and I'm like, you're actually getting lucky, they're like, no, the fuck, I'm not.

But you know, you've actually listened to the show enough that you know how lucky you're getting.

So, tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today?

We watched House,

the movie from 2008, not the show or whatever.

It's the story of the hell that is couples therapy.

It's an interesting one.

And Eli, how bad was this movie?

Well, if you wish the mediocre horror films of the early aughts had been cast and written by the hair gel of the late 90s,

you will love this movie.

And I do love this movie so much.

There's a lot of reasons to love this one.

If you've ever wondered what the Hallmark movie actors are doing in their offseason,

it's this.

Is that even what they are?

Yeah.

Like, what are these people from?

Other than Betty, who is in Laverne and Shirley and is extremely right-wing now.

Oh, is she?

And Mr.

Blonde.

And Mr.

Blonde was in this.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But this is definitely like the spirit Halloween pop-up of Hallmark activists.

Yeah, right.

There you go.

There you go.

So is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at?

Yeah, I'm going to go with Best Worst trying to make a tin can be scary and horrible.

We'll get to the details of that, but just know that they will try to do that throughout.

They're convinced it's quite scary.

They try to pop scare us with a tin can.

Oh, yeah, it's frightening.

Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.

Scary.

What about a bunch of tin cans?

Yeah.

All right, so I'm going to go with, I stole this one early.

Best, worst, titular building type.

Okay.

The fucking movie is called fucking house.

There's no houses in the fucking, it takes place in a hotel.

No one is ever in a house at any point in the fucking movie.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's a, it's a B and B.

At best, at best, I think it's just a fucking fucking hotel.

But yeah, like, yeah.

It's like they were trying to hide themselves in SEO.

Like, they saw the movie and they were like, what title do we pick?

Best Chinese food, your city.

Is that what they know?

AAA Movie Film House.

Well, that's clearly what it was.

They were like, well, you know, there are several good movies called House Guys.

We could get mistaken for any number of them.

Is the book the same title?

Because it's based on a book.

Is it really?

Yeah, it's based on a Christian horror book by Tim or Ted Decker and some other dude whose name I forget.

Oh, really?

Okay.

He was one of the filmmakers.

Okay.

Did you read the book?

Did you read the source material?

I am a non-religious Jew from New York City.

Anything that screamed Christian to me when I was growing up, I stayed far away from.

Such a hard pass.

Such a hard pass.

And I didn't even have all those excuses.

So did you have any best worst worst, Amanda?

I did.

I had two, and I didn't know where to go.

So, I'll just say them both because none of you went with them.

Best worst character naming?

Yes.

What the hell is Randy Massaro?

Massaroo?

I rewound to pause because what the fuck?

Massaroo?

Yeah.

It felt like people lying, just being like noise masseroo.

Right.

Like, what's your name?

Oh, I'm Manly.

Manly.

How shit, that's the title.

This is how we came up with the title.

But also, I don't know if you noticed when she took out the card for the couples therapist, it didn't say doctor or anything.

It just said Betty Louise.

Yep.

Sure did.

Which I'll get back to Betty because did they just use that name twice?

There's a cop named fucking Officer Lawdale.

Lawdale.

Yummy Lawdale.

That was what came to my mind.

Hi, I'm cop Officer Law.

Police.

I am

the law.

Officer, stop resisting.

Yep.

And I'm going to go with best MacGuffin, or should I say, Masusan?

Okay.

This movie, which has a plot so thin you could use it for a penetration-based magic trick, runs out of itself about two-thirds of the way through.

So they introduce a MacGuffin character who just sort of leads us the rest of the way through the movie.

Just high I'm hears the rest of the film.

Yeah, in the third act.

Yeah.

Hey, magicians should call it not a penetration-based trick as a genre.

They should probably have a different title for that.

I'm not, I don't take that feedback.

Why did you call her Susan?

Again, bad, like it's such a, they could have at least given her a name that fit to the character, yeah.

Directly

something, yeah, but paint her off in some way.

Susie McGuffin.

That would have done it.

Yeah, there you go.

I wouldn't have put it past them to call her Susan McGuffin.

Honestly,

they never asked the last name.

Yeah.

All right, well, I'll tell you what, the metaphors in this movie are so heavy-handed we need to stretch before we attempt to lift them.

So we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back in a minute with all the hotel that is

house.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHope.

Okay, and then one time I was right in the middle of my audition song and they just started taking lunch orders.

Oh, I've had that happen to me too.

Like passing a phone.

No, out loud.

Out loud.

Hey guys, you ready to record the episode?

Yeah, the listeners are waiting.

Sorry, guys.

Me and Amanda were just talking about acting horror stories.

I feel like you need to succeed to have actor horror stories.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

I tried and I failed and that's enough.

Tell him, Amanda.

It's true.

He did fail.

No, the trying part.

You know what?

It doesn't matter because I've got BetterHelp.

What's

BetterHelp?

Oh, now that's what I'm talking about.

Obviously, professional.

Some good, phenomenal performance.

Perfect.

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That's betterh-e-l-p.com betterh-e-l-p.com slash awful.

All right.

Y'all ready to go?

Yeah, let's do it.

I teach acting sometimes.

Why?

Because they let me.

No, it's true.

They do let him.

So sad.

All right, everyone.

Welcome to the second Writer's Room meeting for House.

Now, look, I feel like I might have gotten a little...

carried away at our first meeting when I handed out that extensive list of tired horror movie tropes that I didn't want you guys to use.

I should have let you make your own mistakes.

And I just want to apologize for that.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Sorry.

You wanted us not to write that stuff?

Yeah, we thought that's like what you wanted.

What?

Why would I ask for things like two-dimensional characters and people whose trauma is their fault?

Yeah, that was a weird request now that I think about it.

Okay, well, well, did you guys at least figure out why we're calling the movie house?

I literally wrote, hey, guys, I'm not married to house.

I think it's just a good placeholder.

Oh, we thought you meant that should be the plot.

How would I mean that could be the plot?

Yelling.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

House?

I like it.

Thank you.

Claire.

Thank you.

Positive.

And we're back for the breakdown, and we're going to open up on the Does Two Count Bible quote.

This is John john 1 and i like i want to complain about this quote right because the quote is the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not okay light does not shine in the fucking darkness right because it's not darkness if there's light shining around it light can shine with darkness around it but the very fact that there's light shining means it's not fucking darkness sorry

yeah they're trying to do the like the fish being like what the fuck is water but like fuck you you're doing it wrong yeah yeah exactly so this was the the case where i was like okay is this really going to be a christian movie and then it started with that.

And they went, yep, it sure is.

It is, though.

Amanda mentioned in the intro that this is based on a Christian novel.

So I looked into this and I am so excited because not only have we watched one of the movies that is a sister book to the book that this movie is based on, three.

But we've enjoyed this guy's work in various other forms before.

And I am so pleased to announce that House is part of his fucking podcast diverse, but not part of his main.

This is his side project.

This is his DD minus.

Wait, who is this?

Frank Peretti and Ted Decker.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

Did you say three?

He has something just called three?

Yes, he has another horror book called Three, which was turned into a movie so hard to find that we had to have a listener buy the DVD and rip it to YouTube for us.

I mean, that SEO is even worse than House.

Disney.

Yes.

Who titles shit for him?

Apparently, Ted Decker.

It takes two authors.

Yeah, right, right.

Look, I find titling really hard, but I would never come up with something as shitty as three.

Yes, right.

The.

Yeah.

So, okay.

The.

So now, so we're going to open up on this woman, and she's like hiding in this like mansion.

It's supposed to be real creepy.

And the way that we're going to establish that as creepy is we're going to have a mouse walk in front of her, like a rat, but it's a...

It's the rat is way too cute to be the dungeon silhouette.

It's like a chonker.

It's somebody's pet mouse, obviously.

Very clearly.

Yeah.

so here's the thing i don't like rats but my wife adores rats so any creepiness i was going to get from this movie was immediately ruled out when my wife was like oh

just in my right ear yeah

i was just so confused by the layout of this house because it seemed like she was locked in the basement at first and then i realized she was just behind the banister of the stairs yeah it felt like a cage or something for sure and it wasn't that's how they shot it they wanted us to think that yeah but just then the clock strikes 558

right because we can see the fucking clock it's not six o'clock don't show us that no

lie and be like it's sex and we wouldn't have known or you could move to the fucking yes perhaps right or wait two minutes you impatient bastards but yeah clock strikes 558 we see a tin can i wrote in my notes is that the swear jar it's so much dumber than that so much dumber than this i didn't notice everything it said on the tin can at first So all I read was he who comes.

Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

I saw shotgun shells, a wedding ring, an hourglass, and a tin can that says, he who comes in magic marker.

And I was like, this guy's having a bad day.

This is like a minority report scenario.

I don't know what he's doing next, but let's arrest him just to be honest.

That is all I saw too.

And I was just like, ah, in the can?

Yeah, that's right.

It's the jackpot.

I wrote in my notes, this is what the Trump administration calls proof that he's a leftist.

So, okay, so this woman is like sneaking away from a guy, but he catches up with her and she goes, You can't shoot me.

I'm your wife.

And he goes, No, I could definitely shoot you.

Watch.

Lady, you need to check out the statistics.

I'm worse for you than heart disease.

Oh, no.

As someone who produces true crime TV shows, do you know how hard it is to find a case where it's not the husband?

Well, right.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, he's like, no, it's everything's going to be okay.

she's like is it he goes for me and then he shoots

which is hey can i say if you're in a madness induced murder state and you can do a not joe race i feel like you can choose not to kill your wife i think you might not be in a madness induced state and this might just be you yep exactly

so okay so then we're gonna watch drunken drone operator try to catch a fucking car going down the road.

Like, I don't know if he was just zoomed in too much or what, but I have never seen more nauseous drone footage.

It also felt like it was slowed down almost.

Like, the speed of the footage in that car scene was off from every other scene.

Well, so I genuinely think what happened is that this drone operator was like, guys, you're going too fucking fast.

I can't follow you at 45 miles an hour.

So they've got this thing just coasting down at 15.

And they're like, well, we're going to have to speed up the fucking footage somehow.

There's a dog.

There's a dog running by keeping pace.

Yeah, it was really distracting.

I checked my settings to be if I to see if I was watching on like a different speed because it was just so jarring.

Yeah.

So, but we're gonna meet two characters here.

We have Jack, who is driving recklessly because he's just very upset, and we have his wife, Stephanie, who's had enough of his bullshit.

Yeah, and we get a real cheesecake shot of Stephanie's toes here.

And I was like, oh, I was going to make a Tarantino joke here, but it's a short shot.

And then we we got eight more shots of her feet.

And I was like, okay, it is a Tarantino.

She's like doing her toenails and like at one point she accidentally like gets the toenail polish all over her foot and everything.

I'm like, yeah, this guy's kind of fetish.

Yeah.

But don't tell him that.

No, yeah.

No, no.

Don't tell him that.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

He would never admit it.

No.

And also, this movie was made in 2000.

I think it came out in 2008.

I think this might be the last movie that could get away with the we got lost trope without explaining why why they're not just using GPS, right?

Yep.

Yeah, because the iPhone basically came out right around then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then, so they're lost.

He's trying to find the highway and a cop like hits his lights behind him.

So he's getting pulled over.

She goes, slow down.

He goes, I'm trying.

It's the

pedal on the left.

I know that's tricky.

It's a tricky.

This is also the first time we, and look, we've seen a lot of bad pulling over slash movie scenes.

This is the first time where the movie forgets he's being pulled over because he just kind of like shakes the wheel a little bit and then the cop just drives by.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the cop's on his way to an emergency, like a further up.

He wasn't actually pulling him over.

He just wanted him to get the fuck out of the way.

And he was trying, you guys.

He was

trying.

Not very hard, but he was.

Okay, did any of you look at that, the CD cover?

The photo that doesn't even look like her.

It looks like a woman 20 years older than her on that CD cover.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So Stephanie pulls out this, this CD, right?

So she's like, she's like, let's listen to this CD.

And her husband, Jack, is just like, oh, God, not that fucking CD again.

And at first, we're just like, okay, what is it?

And then she's like, it's my greatest hits.

And I'm like, oh, my God.

Okay.

Well, I'm on his side now.

Okay.

To be fair, that is some full-on hovering above your seat level psychosis to be like, what should we listen to on the road?

How about a little bit of me?

Yes, yes.

She phrases it as, don't you want to listen to your wife's greatest hits?

And he's like, no.

I want to listen to like an actual album, not a compilation album, if I'm going to listen at all.

Yeah.

Let me hear some of your older stuff, like a full album.

Maybe she does a cover of Melissa.

Yeah.

Which I did sing several times while watching this movie.

Oh, fuck yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So, but yeah, but he's so pissed about listening to her shitty demo CD that he almost hits the cop car who's pulled over on the road ahead, you know, seeing about some kind of a chicken chasing accident.

Yeah, he violently is trying to turn off the music like he has to strangle the knob to death to get it to turn off, right?

Yeah, so he'd be almost he pulls over, he hits the cops like cones and shit that he's got out on the road.

And we see there's a there's a truck that's got like, you know, a couple of people running around chasing all the chickens that got away.

Yeah, which is just kind of silly and funny for a second until we they try to do a chicken jump scare,

which is fucking hilarious.

Yeah, hard to do a pop scare with a chicken.

It is, it is because a chicken is a comedy prop.

I think we've all agreed.

I mean, Stephanie chickened out at the chicken.

No, that's true.

That's true.

Freaked her right the fuck out.

And then, okay.

And then the cop comes up, and I wrote in my notes, oh, wow, the cop is a poor man's Michael Madsen.

But it's Michael Madsen.

Michael Madsen is poor Mince Michael Madsen.

So how do we think they got him in this movie?

Did he have bills to pay?

Is he secretly weird?

Was he secretly weirdly Christian?

That was my assumption.

Did they not tell him?

Because they could have not told him.

That's very possible, actually.

Yeah.

I would imagine it's both, that he's both, he had large bills to pay and secretly Christian.

And they didn't tell him all of them, maybe?

Oh, it could be all three.

Yeah, no, whenever I see an actor like him in a movie like this, I always assume that this is somebody in his church talked him into this shit.

But it could be, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it was that he just spent too much money on crack cocaine or something.

Yeah.

So I'll tell you this, because this was fun.

I was sort of like, oh, I wonder if he's like been out of work and then he came back to do this movie.

Fun fact, Michael Madsen has been consistently working his entire life in movies.

I have never fucking seen it.

Yeah.

I was going, if you go through his IMDb, it sounds like movies that are on a poster in another movie, right?

2023, The Lurking Fear, Assault on Hill 400, Dark Feathers, Dance of the Geisha, right?

These are all real movies that Michael Manson has been in in the last two calendar years, and I can find no trace of them on the internet except for his IMTB.

Okay.

So I don't see anything about him being super religious, but he did get arrested for domestic assault.

Okay.

So he really, he really registered with the characters in this.

It feels like he's, he's genuinely been just in a fugue state of Mr.

Blonde ever since 1991 and doesn't know he's been in all these movies.

That would fit with everything I've seen ever since.

Yeah.

Kind of a Nick Cage situation.

So, but Stephanie pops out to flirt with Michael Madsen for a little while because she's like, well, this guy, when my husband is a fucking nobody, but you are, you know, Quentin Tarantino.

Let me

out to you he let you be in the hateful eight 26 years after he allowed you to be in his last movie yeah so but ultimately he gives him directions on how to get back to the highway and he lets him get away right

does he well yeah right yeah he gives them two choices he's like you could go this way or there's a shortcut yeah

hey you said shortcut weird you actually literally said yeah after that too

once in one of these movies i want someone to be like you said that funny I don't want to do the thing that you said funny.

Yeah.

So, okay, so they drive away, and now Jack's getting all pissy because Stephanie was flirting with Michael Madsen.

Right.

Because he wasn't pissy before.

Oh, right, right.

Yeah.

He's getting different pissy.

Yeah.

My first note on this movie was like, oh, is this going to turn into...

basically the couple that we saw at the beginning of the movie and that he's going to turn into this murderous asshole because i already buy that right yeah yeah he seems to have it lurking just beneath the surface here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All the couples in this movie will wildly swing from wild jealousy to absolutely hating each other and nothing in between.

You'd think they'd be mutually exclusive, right?

You wouldn't be as jealous if you hate yourself apparently.

Jealousy is the connection maker there.

The movie also has the worst.

Blame the victim.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Truly insane.

It was almost my other best worst because what on earth?

Yeah.

No, we'll get into a lot of that in a minute here.

But yeah, so we learn here that they were on their way to see a marriage counselor, but they've changed their mind.

They're going to head back home.

And her name is Betty Louise.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which I was like, is this Tina Louise's sister?

Yes, they spelled it B-E-T-T-E, like Betty Page, Betty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they spelled Louise.

We see her business card for a second.

Stephanie, the wife here, she holds it up for a second to call and I guess be like, we're not coming now.

It's Betty B-E-T-T-E, and then Louise, L-U-I-S-E,

which is weird.

And then it says family coosling

spelled C-O-U-C-E-L-Y-N-G.

What?

I have a theory that Betty Louise isn't real because

the woman in the house, the spooky lady, her name is Betty.

Is Betty, yeah.

Why would you have two characters named Betty?

No, unless that was some reveal that we were supposed to get,

but it's not.

I think they're the same.

And we never saw them in the same room because we never saw Betty Louise.

We just see the future character named Betty,

who is a very interesting family counselor.

I really think that's what's happening here.

Oh, I do too.

I think this is how she lures them to counseling.

Interesting.

Or, I guess, it's counseling.

Keep that in mind as we talk about this.

Yeah, the kusling, yes.

Yeah,

this is the most creative family kuslinger

in history as we go through this plot.

I think that's an interesting theory.

And it doesn't even say doctor on that business card.

It's just a name.

Yeah.

Just Betty.

So, okay, so they've decided they're not going.

She tries to call to cancel their session, but she has no cell reception out here.

And then he hits something in the road and two of their tires blow out.

Right.

And it's weird to do two near-car accidents as your inciting incident in the movie, right?

It feels like they could have just done the one.

It shows me that Jack's a really bad driver.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Don't tell him that, though.

I wrote in my note, I was like, Jack is single-handedly proving why they say men can't drive.

Because that's the saying, right?

Yeah.

Statistically speaking, anyone who's ridden in my car.

Yeah.

True.

We do drive like that.

It's true.

So, okay.

They blow out their tires.

They don't wreck the car because this movie didn't have wreck the car kind of money, right?

But they see that there's another car on the side of the road with its emergency blinkers on.

Nobody's in it, though, right?

And then there's thunder and it starts raining instantly.

I was saying, if I were lucky, this would have then turned into Rocky Horror.

Oh, there you go.

But I wasn't lucky.

No, none of us were lucky.

So they're sitting in their car in the rain.

He's trying to figure out where they are on the map.

He can't find this road anywhere on the map.

And she's like, Stephanie's like, hey, why don't we check and see if Michael Madsen is up for a threesome?

I mean, he's just back there.

He wasn't doing anything, anything, right?

So they decide to walk out in the pouring rain to go get some help.

But along the way, they come across this mysterious old hotel that they don't remember seeing.

No.

No.

It says the sign out front.

Building.

It says Wayside Inn.

It's a fucking

explode.

And then, and

he goes, well, it looks like some kind of bed and breakfast.

I'm like, no, the fuck it doesn't.

It looks like some kind of inn.

The sign on the front says in.

It's a bungalow.

Don't try to confuse me about what fucking.

It's not done.

Have we stumbled upon a noun?

I think it's a noun.

It's not a fucking yurt.

It's not a fucking tent.

It's not a fucking skyscraper.

It's a goddamn hotel.

We've got to work on it.

You can even say the noun in the definite article if you wanted to.

It's also a building.

A domicile.

Yes.

So they go up to the domicile.

Now, like most, like most houses, it's got a fucking lobby, right?

Yeah.

I love that they just see this like gothic mansion with like demon noises coming out of it and like a crazy wrought iron fence that has like evil spikes going.

Chill.

It looks like you got a bed and breakfast.

Yeah, right.

We'll be good.

What a nice house.

How homely.

There you go.

There's no cars in the parking lot.

And I'm like, well, it's funny that a fucking house would have a parking lot.

Yeah.

But they go into the lobby and they see that there's a guest register and two people have checked in today.

Randy Massaro.

Massaro

and Leslie Taylor or something.

They didn't get exciting with her last name.

No, it's just him.

That's what makes it so much more absurd.

Yeah.

So, and I want to, these people's motives in signing that goddamn guest book just baffled me for the rest of the fucking movie.

But they come down from downstairs and they're like, hey, we found ourselves in this weird, creepy, abandoned hotel and signed the guest book.

How are you guys doing?

oh we're doing it you should sign the guest book too okay okay okay

and then we can talk write a fun message like a nice message that future guests will enjoy

point out your favorite thing about the property don't come here yeah

lost in rain no exit yeah right lots of metal spikes on road fun so well okay so they're like yeah we hit some farm equipment down the road and they're like oh my god that's the same farm hit equipment we hit and i'm like and you didn't move it out of the road you absolute prick.

Jesus.

I don't know if any of you turned the subtitles on while watching this movie, but they kept calling the beamer a bimmer.

B-I-M-M-E-R-B.

Yep, the bimmer.

Also, and I wasn't going to point this out, but they keep spoiling things because they'll keep telling you who's talking when you're not supposed to know, right?

They'll be like, Stephanie, like, we're not supposed to know that's her behind her.

Jack's ghost.

Yeah, right.

The devil.

No, man.

So, oh, they walk into the dining room at one point, and one of the guys, Randy, goes, oh, wow, this is like an Agatha Christie novel, huh?

And I'm like, calm down, Ted Decker, Rob Green, and Frank Peretti.

No, no, your fucking story is not like the second best British author after Shakespeare.

Shut the fuck up.

I would describe this movie as no exit, but except...

the four of us watching it, we were the people trapped in purgatory.

That's the other, yeah, that's the hell.

Kind of like an Agatha Christie novel.

It is.

It's a building, house, maybe.

There's a chandelier in some of her work, too.

Right.

A lot of

candles.

Yeah.

And fucking Leslie goes, well, don't the people in her books wind up dead?

That's not helpful, Leslie, right?

Not the majority of them.

Or Shadow Again.

Who are they?

And then

just as she says that, this thunderclap and the lights go out.

So Randy says, come on, Jack, you girls stay put.

I'm sorry.

Noah, I couldn't help but notice that when you said, come on, Jack, now you just said it one time.

Just the one time.

Oh, cute.

Just the one time.

Is that what he says?

Which was drastically different than what actually happened.

They will exit the scene.

And I guess they like had the audio of him saying, come on, Jack, because they will use it.

And guys, back me up.

Five or six more times, we'll just hear him being like, come on, Jack.

Oh, come on, Jack.

Come on, Jack.

Somebody learned about a soundboard and put just that on it.

Like Eli learned about a soundboard and we couldn't not hear a mystic river for like eight or 10 times every episode.

It was two episodes.

It was two episodes before no one took it away from them.

I made my husband watch this with me and he was like, if you told me that this was a Christian adaptation of Clue, I'd believe you.

There you go.

It's pretty close.

Yeah.

But bad.

Yeah, right, right.

Just like Agatha Christie.

Yeah.

No.

So Jack and Randy go looking for their the generator.

At one point, this is so great.

There's this creepy kid voice, you know, like, daddy, help.

And Jack goes, did you hear that?

And Randy goes, and I quote, house noise.

Sorry.

See, this is spit take.

House noise?

Noise?

House noise.

Yeah.

I actually spit out the tea I was drinking when that happened.

And I had to pause to wipe down my laptop screen because it was so fucking absurd.

No, see, when you got old pipes, they go, follow me, daddy.

you gotta have steam heat.

Yeah, okay.

Just pan over.

There's like a house DJ doing

a turntable.

Foley time.

Yes.

So, and then a ghost kids walks by.

Now, okay.

I'm just going to give you a general piece of advice, horror movie, aspiring horror movie makers.

If you're going to have a ghost kid, don't put her in a bright red tomato-ass-looking jacket, right?

Or at least let us see it very clearly so that we're all not like, is she dressed as the Kool-Aid man for like the first three times we see her?

I thought it was don't look now, is what they were referencing.

Yeah, and what makes it even worse is that she's in a red puffy jacket.

Yeah, so it looks like she had they had like a really fat ghost kid

when they said all you can eat, they should have been more specific.

But it's a normal-sized kid in a puffy jacket, but because we'll only see her out of the corner of the camera's eye, for the first half of the movie, I was like, okay, we're getting Heath's baby pictures as the ghost here.

All right.

I did like to dress up as Santa Claus sometimes and walk around mansions and whisper to people.

It's not good because it's only out of the corner and you're just like, what am I looking at?

I thought it was a specific reference to Don't Look Now.

I don't know the movie, so I can't tell you.

Don't look now is from the 70s.

It's Donald Sutherland and Christy.

It's a classic horror movie with one of

the most notoriously good sex scenes in movie history.

Yeah,

you will miss me on a lot of classic horror movie references.

So this was like an amazing illusion right here.

Yeah, right.

It's a literary illusion.

Cinematic illusion.

Got it.

So meanwhile, back with the women folk, we check in with Leslie and Stephanie and they immediately fail the Bechdel test, right?

She's like, tell me about your husband.

And she says, quote, Jack's a writer.

He's signed and published

a lot of freaking duh for him.

She goes, I'm a singer.

And Leslie says, anything I'd heard of.

And she says, why you got to be a bitch about about it?

Yes, we both work at the same Applebee's.

Perhaps you've heard the last song on the Starbucks album that they used to offer there at the front year of the cashier that nobody bought.

Yeah.

Well, this movie definitely has no concept of how her music career works because she has an agent.

She is signed.

She has a record.

So conceivably someone has listened to this.

You would think, yeah.

You would think.

She has greatest hits.

Yeah, obviously.

Yeah.

Multiple albums.

Nobody puts out an album of greatest hits if they don't have greatest hits.

That's an awesome debut album, though, for

peace.

It's okay, but then the guys come back with they found lanterns, apparently.

And as they return with the lanterns, suddenly a creepy guy appears in the room with them.

This is Pete, the

pervert, I guess.

I don't know.

Uncle.

Yeah.

He's creepy.

And he's creeping on specifically on Leslie.

Yeah.

And then suddenly Betty appears.

A creepy woman appears by setting a picture down too hard.

So we're being introduced now to our horror movie family.

There was also a husband, Stuart, who we won't meet quite yet.

Yeah.

When Betty introduces herself, she says, Betty, just Betty.

And I wrote in my notes, like, share?

Yeah, well, she didn't want to say Louise yet.

I was so too.

She didn't want to tell us that she was Betty Louise.

That this whole thing has been a marriage counseling intervention.

Yeah, right.

Yep.

I'm not a coosler.

Well, see, that's why the card says that, because she's not really licensed.

Right, yeah, yeah, you can't say counselor.

Exactly.

You can't sue her.

Anybody's allowed to do kuistling.

Yeah.

That's not protected.

We're saying marriage coosler.

No, that's true.

So she's like, oh, are you all staying here?

It'll be $20 a night, which is damn reasonable in 2007.

And then, and randy's like does that include food and i was like yeah randy that's such a good question right now love this guy

you could charge so much more for a haunted house people want to stay somewhere haunted right even without food yeah yeah

she says he goes what does that include food and she's like well i guess

yeah i guess jesus it was already pretty good deal but fine she says we'll feed you but you can't you got to go clean up first only pigs wallow in their own muck all right that was another that's like two two super weird.

We're gonna maybe take off.

Should we take off?

I cannot explain how normal absolutely everything else could be.

If someone said that as an instruction to wash my hands, there is no thing that could keep me in the building.

I would be out.

Dive through and

yeah, well, to her credit, Stephanie goes, we don't actually want to be here at all.

Can we use your phone and then leave?

And they're like, well, you can use the phone, but ain't no tow truck coming out tonight.

You're stuck with us.

But then Betty also tells Pete to take Stephanie and Jack to see Ma Belle.

That doesn't go anywhere.

Who's Ma Belle?

They just fully, fully abandoned that.

That's an old-timey reference for a phone.

I just super old-timey phone.

Thank you.

I had no idea.

I was like, what?

That's what Noah?

Noah grew up calling it that.

Yes, no idea.

We did.

Gotta go see Alexander Graham about a horse.

I think it's just like an old-timey.

Drop some kid off at the segregated pool.

Yeah, growing up in New York City, definitely never heard that.

So they all go to leave, but Leslie goes to leave last, and Betty stops her.

Now, we should point out that Leslie is like the temptress.

We know that.

Yes, right.

Leslie is the boobs.

Yes.

That's how the movie sees her.

And Betty stops and she says, you look clean enough.

Why don't you come die first in the movie?

I mean, help me in the kitchen over here, you know?

Yeah.

And the counselor's like

oh yeah so we didn't we didn't mention that actually so leslie is just to make this movie even more confusing a grad student psychologist right so sure

she's learning to be a coosler we would assume

she's she's pre-coos at auburn yeah yes

so wait no no no this does make sense in the okay okay i'm putting it together because we know

that Betty Louise Koosler is actually this Betty in the house who, and her kuistling is luring couples to this purgatory house hotel.

So

Leslie is studying to take over for her.

Oh, interesting.

So she's going to become Leslie Taylor.

Family Koosler next.

Yeah, Family Koosler.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, like maybe Betty Louise wants to move on.

She has the different demon duties that she wants to do.

Yeah, so the things that don't require.

You got to pass on the business.

I'm giving this movie so much more lore than it deserves.

She's like, you know, I'm looking for a position where I don't get my face cracked open by angry dudes as often.

Yeah.

All right.

So they try to use the phone.

Phone doesn't work, of course.

So then we cut to Stephanie and Jack cleaning up for dinner.

Right.

And there's this moment here where like Stephanie is trying to convince Jack that this situation is creepy as fuck and he is shockingly dense about it.

He's like, I don't trust these people.

And he's like, why?

What's wrong?

It's nice.

They tell us about pigs only eating in their own slab.

They let us use their weird unplugged phone and robbed us of a corner.

Did you hear what you just said?

Did you hear yourself?

I did not.

No, I didn't hear anything.

Okay, see, this is why we need to go to couples therapy.

Pete, literally, his first line was, you're purdy to boobs.

So

that's not good.

No, nothing about this is good.

There's also this moment where she's like, she's like, looks away and the faucet turns itself on and then it turns itself back off, like Michigan J Frog style or whatever.

And I'm like, that's the least fucking creepy imagination.

Like, you're not even close when it comes to creepiness.

The faucet turned on?

Fuck you.

Guys, I don't want to blow our load at the start.

Can we just turn the faucet on when no one's not going to?

Okay, that's just for us then.

I don't know why we.

But I also think this movie proves.

the whole thing that white men in a haunted house, they're just going to stay, stay oblivious and pretend that nothing's happening and everyone else is.

No, you're right.

This place is fucking haunted.

There's something wrong.

100%.

Fair.

We're not asking for directions out of the haunted house.

Yes, exactly.

Right.

So, also, but at this point, Stephanie looks in the mirror.

She sees that Tomato Girl is behind her.

And you can tell, I've been doing this god-awful movie's thing too long.

I wrote in my notes, calling it now, that's her aborted fetus.

It's not.

It wasn't.

But close, you were pretty close.

I was pretty fucking sure, but yeah.

All right, well, tell it.

These writers need a minute to look up more generic horror movie cliches, so we're going to give them a break, but we'll be back in a minute with even more

house.

Okay, what about pumpkin spiced sugar bombs?

I mean, sugar bomb is right there in the title.

I thought maybe they bombed the sugar, like got rid of it.

No.

Hey, guys.

What you doing?

Yeah, what's with the menus?

Oh, hey, Noah.

Hey, Heath.

Me and Amanda are trying to figure out how to really go all in on our fall flavors while staying healthy, and it's tough.

tell me about it well why don't you guys try green chef what's

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I don't know, Heath.

Have you actually tried it?

I sure have.

I was a Green Chef customer even before they were a sponsor.

I love how I can stop and start my subscription on my schedule, so I've got a great meal headed to my door whenever I want.

All right, guys, I'm sold.

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That's code 50awful at greenshif.com/slash 50awful.

All right, guys, thanks.

Hey, do you think Starbucks will just sell me the pumpkin syrup?

Probably not after

last year.

What happened last year?

Oh, you do not want to know.

Don't ask.

Oh,

thanks so much for letting us wait out the storm in here.

No problem.

Lots of folks get lost on this road.

I can't believe it just started raining like that.

Insane.

Yes, things can get quite unexpected up here.

Sorry, what's that mean?

I think my husband means a lot of folks find more than they're looking for in these hills.

Right.

But like what?

What do they find?

Like, they find

a a demon house.

I knew it.

I told you.

I said it.

Damn it, Harold.

What?

Nobody has ever asked us a follow-up when we said that stuff.

And I just, I think he's right.

Nobody ever has.

It's true.

Okay.

Well, we're going to go.

Yep.

No, no, don't, don't go.

Don't, don't you want to use the phone?

Is your phone broken?

Yup.

Broken.

Harold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're at.

We're going to go.

Head in the game, Harold.

Need more rehearsal.

And we're back for more of this shit.

We're going to rejoin the action with everybody sitting down for a very awkward dinner.

And now, here's the thing, though, this movie doesn't have enough creepy shit to happen at this dinner.

So they try to like use the cinematography to make you think creepy shit's going on.

Like, oh, we're zooming in real close on that pot roast, you know.

Okay, I have

I just noticed something.

So, my very first note in the scene is pot roast looks good.

Amanda's first note is Ew.

I feel like that those happened independently.

Was that a reaction to the pot roast or the people?

Mine wasn't to the like first shot of the pot roast, it was moving around on someone's plate being cut up really small, and it was just like mushing around there.

Yeah, right.

So, they have somebody just like infinitely cutting the pot roast up because that looks gross.

Yeah,

it didn't look, it didn't make me hungry at all.

That exactly, yeah, right.

Agree, we same, uh-huh.

So, Stephanie.

Oh, so Stephanie's over here fingering her iced tea.

Right.

I also didn't, I thought that was weird, too.

It's weird.

It is weird.

And again,

I just wanted any character to be like, hey, why is your finger in your drink?

That's fucking insane that that's happening.

That's so hard.

Pushing the ice.

That's the thing that just keeps happening.

Big time out.

Big timeout, whole room.

The vibes are crazy here, right?

Like to be honest, guys.

It's insane what's going on in this house.

If you're doing a terrifying thing right now, let's stop.

One, two, three, stop.

Okay, now let's each do one thing and we'll judge if it's terrifying.

Putting my finger in in the pot.

Terrified.

There we go.

See, we're walking back.

I'm just like moving my food around.

Yeah, just moving it around.

I'm not eating it, just cutting it.

Also, also, hey, I'm sorry, but does Jack's hair look like that even after he freshens up?

It looks so greasy.

It's so grappling.

What did he do with the movie?

I would not want to run my fingers through that.

Oh, God, no, you'd never get them back, right?

You'd get four of them or something.

That's a great image for a much better horror movie.

Oh, yeah.

Like, fingers getting cut off and hair.

Absolutely everybody in this movie looks like they did not make it to the cast of charmed.

Yes.

Right.

Like they were in the last running, but

they look like they did their own hair and makeup.

That too, yeah.

So, okay, but this is where we meet Stewart, who is Betty's husband.

He's going to come in and bully Pete a little bit.

And then, so we're supposed to be establishing here that each of these people has a great sin, right?

That they're going to like be paying for here.

And we're about to start establishing that the great sin that Leslie has is her boobs,

right?

Like, we will over and over again establish in this movie that she is a temptress tempting men with all of her cleavage.

How dare she?

Now, can I say this about Leslie, and we'll talk about it when it comes up to the movie.

She is very quick to advise other people to murder.

Yes, you know, that should be her sin.

Can I I speak from an open heart yeah I was cool with most of her murder recommendations though no that's true

she goes straight to it she goes straight to the murder yeah I've heard Noah make that advisement for like Irish airport security and they weren't

she did politics the right way at that

exactly yes but she did kusling the wrong way unfortunately

yeah that's why she had to go

So basically, so Stuart sits down and he goes, so I see you two aren't married, but I bet you're fucking aren't you?

You know, oh no, he says, Are you gonna violate your woman in our bed?

That is what he says.

Yeah, it's even worse than I made it sound, God.

It's really bad.

Yeah, and this is just how I imagine Noah feels whenever he chooses to eat with me and Heath at the same time.

You're gonna fuck upstairs.

You're pretty sorry, Seth Andrews.

I'm so sorry.

They work here.

She goes, Pete goes, I want her, Ma.

And Betty turns to Leslie and she says, you got to forgive Pete, quote, his saps are bubbling.

Terrifying.

Yeah.

That's what the tin can is for, Pete.

Leave Leslie alone.

That's why there's a hole in it.

I was wondering why.

That's why.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

It is ribbed for his pleasure.

Oh, my God.

I thought the ribbing was for her pleasure.

No, not when it's a tin can.

When it's in the can, can, it's for everybody's pleasure.

So, but Randy's like, because Pete keeps saying that he wants to, he wants to fuck Leslie, and Randy's like, hey,

she's with me, man.

I thought it was clear that we were together, but no, okay.

Yeah.

Can I say, though, like, hey, man, if a guy is across a dining room table going, can I have her, ma?

He's probably not going to be like, oh, I'm sorry.

I thought you guys were in like an ethical monogamy situation.

Like, I don't think Pete understands the subtlety of relationship dynamics.

Nice try jack i get it

i don't think he cares

yeah yeah

so but meanwhile stephanie is flashing back to an ice related trauma and betty keeps trying to put more ice in her drink even though there's already enough ice in it Yes, and what you can tell in this, this is a weird meta moment, but what you can tell is that they did a shot of this scene where she puts too much ice in the drink and the drink overflowed.

And they were like, well, that looks extremely silly.

So, we need you to just kind of be blocking the box while she tries to put ice in the drink, right?

So, yeah, but so, but that freaks Stephanie out.

She runs away from the table, and Jack pursues.

At this point, Stephanie turns to Jack and she goes, They know about the accident, right?

So, you know, a little foreshadowing going on there.

But Stephanie goes to leave, but when she opens the door, there's a shotgun silhouette dude standing out there.

This is the bad guy, this is the tin man who they will spend the rest of the movie hiding from, right?

Okay, I have a question.

Why does the tin man arrange for there to be a slightly unpleasant dinner party to enact his long con haunting?

He likes formalities.

I guess,

okay, yeah.

The relationship between the tin man and these three other characters is baffling to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so Betty sees him and she goes, oh, you brought the tin man.

We're all in for it tonight.

And so she starts locking the doors and pulling like special barred gates over them and everything.

I think you have to look at their relationship like this is their kink, and they're just forcing other

people

play thing, like he's the bad boss kind of thing.

Okay, oh, I like that.

I thought it was like a sometimes we're at an American atheist conference and they have to pretend that they know us,

right?

Like, you know, Nick Fish is out there trying to do advocacy, and I'm wearing a shirt that says baby's favorite daddy.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, you gotta,

this is a classic, right?

They are.

We gotta lock Eli out of the building now.

As usual,

I'm so sorry, Seth Andrews.

So, but just then, Stephanie notices a big wall of exposition in the form of news clippings, right?

This is where we learn about Officer Law Dale.

Fuck yeah.

Because Officer Bad Bad Guy Cop was two on the nose and nothing else was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is when they refer to the hotel as a farmhouse.

Okay.

They say, you know, Officer Laudale and his wife went missing in a farmhouse.

And Jack goes, Is this the farmhouse?

And I went, well, it's not a fucking farmhouse or a house.

It's a fucking hotel, so it can't be that.

And Betty goes, maybe it is.

But doesn't she say, I reckon it is.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I reckon it is.

So, but everybody starts running.

Randy demands backstory.

So she explains, like, well, some folks call him the tin man.

And everybody's like, really?

I would have thought it would be something creepier than that.

And she goes, Come on, the Joker.

Some people call him the Joker.

Like,

that's a Batman villain.

Scarecrow.

You had to know about the Wizard of Oz.

Come on.

Did someone else write out the lyrics to some people call me the Joker?

But because I did in my notes.

and I just started singing it.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Some folks call me the tin man, some call me the joker.

Oh, and at some point, Pete just shouted something that sounded like mamnet.

Mam, ham net.

Yeah, I don't know what that was.

Mamnet.

Sorry, some people call me mamnet.

Because I speak with the shotgun of love.

She also says, Betty describing the tin man, she says, he only goes after the guilty.

Yes.

And then Leslie, this is my favorite moment in the whole fucking.

I laughed so much.

Leslie's like,

she means us.

Yes.

So perfect on the timing.

I laughed so much.

It's the pause.

It was like, it was like Kanye when he was like, I don't like this.

It was a Jewish doctor.

I'm not going to say what religion the doctor is.

He's a Jewish doctor.

It's incredible.

Yeah, amazing.

I think I missed that.

That was one of his crazy things.

I have it on my soundboard that Noah took away from me.

I'm not going to brag.

But I may literally have it on a soundboard that Noah took away from me.

Okay, so now

we have to introduce the menacing can of beans.

Amazing.

So the tin man drops a tin can.

Because he's tin man down the chimney or whatever.

Hey, man, do you have a prop that rhymes with your name as a bad guy up there at the top of the chimney?

Is that why this is a tin can?

He's just doing prop comedy over here.

Yeah, right.

He took his first UCB class and then thought, yup.

No,

I give you a sick out of killer.

This is, I've got it.

Read it.

It's scary.

Yeah, right, right.

So he's written three rules online.

Are you reading it?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, we're reading it.

So, rule one.

What's it say?

I'll say it.

I was reading it.

I was saying what it said.

Rule one,

I killed God.

Hey, man, that's more of a statement than a question or a rule.

Rule one's not really a rule.

What am I supposed to do with that?

What do I follow?

Right, yes, right.

No running in the pool.

Rule two.

Rule two, I'll kill anybody that comes into my house just like I killed God.

Wait, is this your house?

Is that really a rule or like a direct statement?

Is this a house?

It's not really, it's more of a hotel.

Hey, man, do you want to drop another one down with like clarity?

Rule two B.

Did you do okay in English class?

Rule three.

The third rule.

But no, so here's the, but here's the rub, right?

Here's the moment that these idiot fucking writers thought that they had a whole movie from rule three:

if they kill one person, well, so they, if they present him one dead body before morning, he'll let everybody else live.

Right.

So what they're trying to set up here is this convoluted, if you guys decide amongst yourself who dies, that everyone else can live.

Otherwise, I kill everybody, right?

Yeah.

Now, I want to be clear that we will eventually get to those stakes, but it's like the movie, like an elderly person sort of wanders away from those things because we'll spend the next 60 minutes not with those stakes.

And then like grandma trying to clean up before everyone comes over it'll be like nope those were always the stakes in the movie everyone will be separated for like the next hour of this film yeah oh yeah no i thought we were getting some couple swapping action going on when

it comes up yeah you know when you go to someone's house and they've planned an activity but the night just sort of carries naturally and you eat and you talk and you have a good time but then that person sort of stops everybody at the natural point of the night where everyone would go home and is like we're playing macarena

Oh, I thought we were just, you know, we're having a moment.

Let me go put my coat back on the bed.

I thought we forgot about that.

Yeah,

okay, you want to play the game of prisoner's dilemma now?

Yeah, right, yes.

Yeah, okay, putting my coat back.

So, yeah, so, but then Stewart goes and gets a shotgun, and Randy's like, well, if you have a shotgun, I want a shotgun.

And Stewart is like, no,

the guy who gets the gun first wins the getting guns game, right?

That's just a

gun.

No,

you don't get to have a gun.

I like that there was a question that this might be some kind of sick prank for a second.

And they were just like, Yep.

No, that's stupid.

That's stupid.

We're going to dismiss that for now.

The most logical answer.

No, no, no, not at all.

Definitely not.

They entertain that for way too long.

He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, guys, what are the chances this is a shenanigan?

And they're like,

seems like he had a gun and he shot it at us.

Guy with a leather mask.

He's like, there's a camera there and there.

Oh my God, look at your face.

I'm Ashton Kutcher.

It is a game, just not for these four.

It's a game for the other people.

Okay, I do like that Leslie jumps in here and she's like, okay,

it's not a sick prank.

That was stupid that we thought about that for a while.

It is a game, though.

We've got to figure out the best strategy in the game.

And I was like, yes.

Team Leslie, this is awesome.

She's going to figure out how to talk everybody into

strategy prisoners to

Kussel them.

Podcast Podcast listener, I cannot emphasize to you how quickly Heath would have shot me after reading that tin can.

I don't think, here's what I'll say: I'm kind of a slow reader.

I don't know, I would have made it to the end of the tin can.

Oh, my God.

Well, I can tell you one thing's for sure is that Heath would have read it in his head first, right?

He wouldn't have like read it out loud for everybody.

He would have said, Oh, it doesn't say anything at all.

And he would have crumpled it up.

So, yeah.

Tin Man's at the top of the chimney.

He just hears one pip right away and he's like oh ah somebody just okay somebody just killed themselves right away now we can all watch dancing with the stars if you guys want to catch him you've seen i'm a i gotta admit i'm rooting for andy

it's adorable are you coming down the chimney

so okay so but now stewart and betty and pete decide that they're just gonna lock these couples in the walk-in refrigerator that houses have

uh-huh yes your house doesn't you it doesn't have one well no,

of course it does because it's a house.

How would it even be a house without a walk-in fridge?

Every house.

Yeah.

So they take him to the to the walk-in.

They go, these are the sorriest bunch of sinners I've ever seen.

And then Randy starts having a dad was a dick flashback.

Can I give a weird note?

I feel like from what we're about to learn, they didn't let dad be established as enough of a villain, right?

Yes, yeah.

I mean, we'll get to what happens next in a second, but dad's sort of like, shoot that deer, and then he doesn't, and he's like, fuck you.

And I'm like, okay, that's like 90% of our listeners.

That's better than 90% of our listeners.

And at least he took him hunting.

I didn't even understand this as a bad dad character.

I was like, oh, is it

supposed to be a good idea?

He's a normal dad.

He probably wanted him to get good.

They were, yeah, they wanted us to, they did not, but Leslie's story.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

So we'll get, we'll get in there.

But while Randy is having the first inklings of his flashback, Jack says, hey, guys, we don't have time for fucking flashbacks.

And so he starts fighting to get the gun, to get the shotgun.

Randy stands there like an idiot and he goes, hey, Randy, there's an axe next to you.

He's like, right, axe.

I'll get that.

But Betty gets to it too fast.

I thought that Randy's backstory, based on what we got of that flashback at the beginning, was actually that his dad, like, bullied him for perceiving him to be effeminate or queer, and that this was going to be some real, like, gay shaming shit going on.

Yeah, the movie didn't have the guts to actually do much of anything with anybody, which again would have been bad because then that would have been blaming him instead of the actual abuser, right?

Which, don't worry, they do.

Yeah, they do.

Yeah.

So, we've got Jack fighting with Stewart over the gun, and now Betty's attacking with an axe.

Randy punches her square in the face.

Okay.

Betty with the very large axe was fun for me.

I enjoyed.

Like, she looked like

in Soul Calibur.

You remember Nightmare had the giant shirt or like Siegfried with the huge.

Also, can I say she definitely accidentally tone shifted there, right?

Because they're sort of doing like a welcome to a house of horrors.

And she comes in like,

okay, oh, no, I killed the.

Okay, that's not the vibe.

Seth Andrews, I'd I'd like to apologize.

There are several moments in this movie that should be good or creepy.

And they're not.

They never get there.

They never get there.

Never.

So they crack her head open, and then Stephanie gets a meat hook into the back of Stewart's head.

And I'm like, okay, like by the technical rules of the tin can, they're good now.

That's a body.

Right.

You just push Stewart out and you're like, there you go.

There you go.

We get to go now.

Can you call us a tow truck?

No, we'll call call it a tow truck.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Right.

But no, Leslie at this point, by the way, too, Leslie runs away.

She gets away as they're all fighting and just fucks right on off, right?

She should not be bothered with anyone else in that room ever again.

And this is why the rules on the can should have been, well, I mean, for one thing, only one of them is actually a rule.

Right.

Yes.

They should have been rules is what they should have been.

Yeah.

But it should have specified that you have to kill one of each other and not the inhabitants of the house.

If you were

an idiot fucking writer, then yes, that's like obviously what you would have said up, that one of the four exactly, because it says one body.

Well, that includes these weirdos who live in this house tell.

Yeah, he drops another can that says like footnote one, and then a third can and then a list of footnotes.

See above school book.

The week after Heath visits the house, he drops down like a six-pack, and he's like, read,

read the whole six-pack before you respond.

Just go to the cemetery and dig one up.

That's not obviously not what I meant.

Not the spirit.

It's not the spirit of the game.

It doesn't have to be a human body.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

It's a fucking cockroach.

It doesn't have to be a dead body.

It just says a body.

Oh, you're mad.

Here you go.

Fantastic.

Two points just now.

Love that.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Like a doll could be a body.

A mannequin could be a body.

You could lie down and be like, hi, I'm a body.

Yeah, right.

Anybody would do.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, okay.

An antibody, technically.

So, okay, so so now we're gonna go, we're gonna check in on Leslie.

She's getting nabbed by Pete, right?

He's gonna kidnap her.

We'll see her later on in the movie.

Meanwhile, Stephanie has gotten away and she's decided to see if screaming and shaking the padlocked gate over the front door helps.

It's usually a good move.

Yeah, that seems to be her number one strategy.

It always works.

That's the best way to go about things.

It's going great, but then all of a sudden some water starts flooding in from below the door, which is the most terrifying thing that can possibly happen.

Yep.

Yep.

That That was my note.

Scariest thing in the world while they're under a door.

Why would you be like, it's not your, like, if it was my tile and I was like, oh, fuck, this is going to cost a fortune.

Like, that would be one thing, but it's not even your place.

Yeah.

And I think the movie was going for that scene where the water starts to pour in and then like slowly rises up and the character's afraid of drowning, which would have made sense and been scary in relation to the movie, but they only had the budget for it ever to be sort of bottom of your shoes level water.

So what we're watching is a woman just like really freak out about what it's going to do to the carpet.

Yes, it's just a really bad icebreaker game.

That's

horrible.

Icebreaker, icebreaker, nice.

So, okay, so so, but she's scared that her socks are going to get wet, and that's going to be very uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, Randy and Jack have gone down to the basement in search of guns.

Now, I love this exchange because Jack goes, We have to save the girls, and Randy goes, Guns first, then girls,

guns before huns, guns before huns

the redneck credo i think that's a book by mike huckabee explodes before hoes

ammos so okay but yeah so they're looking for the guns we we cut to stephanie she's decided now to hide in a closet but then scream for jack loud enough that he can hear her from the basement so like i don't know why she's hiding that doesn't seem helpful They hear her, they hear her screaming.

I so wanted Randy to go house noises, man.

House

sometimes the house screams jacket stephanie help me it's just a when the when the wood settles you know the wind it's the wind in these old houses it's the noise in my house am i right

this guy gets it women but okay so now so we're in the closet with stephanie and she sees

calm down it was randy in the closet actually

so but she's in the closet and she sees the red tomato jacket.

And then there's also, there's this great moment where she's looking at the jacket and the door, like the door handle for the closet starts to turn.

And we're like, oh, they're coming in.

But then nothing happens.

Yeah.

And then it starts to open again.

And then again.

And then nothing happens.

Yeah.

Is there a ghost on the other side being like, oh, nope, it's a pole door.

Nope.

Okay.

It's like a USB stick.

I'm going to to kill you.

I'm just, I just, I really want to make the entrance good.

And I feel like if there's like a bustle, it's going to ruin.

Hey, were you the one who was doing the water earlier in the like a was that you?

I thought it would be scarier, but you weren't.

Because I didn't.

I thought you would be.

So that was nothing.

Hi, sorry.

Just the lock, Smith.

I'm here to fix the door.

I don't have any complaints.

This work now?

Read the tin can.

So as you,

I guess the ghost decides to give up on the door and then like water starts pouring in from the floor.

We're like, oh, the scariest thing again.

But now it's also flooding the ceiling.

So she's going to get caught in between the water, I guess.

I don't know.

We'll come back to it.

But first, we have to check back in with Jack and Randy because this is where they come across the satanic symbols on the wall.

Okay, these were almost my best worst in the movie.

I want you to imagine that, like,

I want to say like sixth graders had to draw satanic props on the set.

But like, and no one's mom is like crazy Christian, but there are Christians in the neighborhood, you know, so you can't get like crazy with it because it's just like a goat's head, but he's smiling.

Some Latin-looking letters,

it's easy to get Latin-looking letters, yeah.

So, but the whole basement is an infinite maze of locked doors and satanic symbols.

I love when they see the first one, Jack just says, and I quote, oh, God, it's black magic.

It's so good.

They just walk walk up to a wall and they're like all right let's look behind this curtain i don't know why yep it says this is a satanic house in spray paint oh

yes every satanic house must announce they are

those are like the rules of satanism well obviously yeah so there's also a great moment where he goes oh my god this mirror we have no reflection in it and and Randy, Mr.

House Noises, goes, yeah, it's a trick mirror, man.

Like, how do you think a trick mirror works?

Glass?

Are you describing

that pretended to be mirror, but it's not.

So,

so now, okay, so the so Stephanie is in the closet, and the water's filling up, and the water starts to freeze, right?

And we go back to her ice flashback, and we see that her daughter is caught under the ice,

and then she falls through the ice.

So, okay, I do have to, because I know now that none of you see, don't look now, how much this is a reference to that.

She is in,

it might be a yellow,

no, I think it is a red coat.

And she, the daughter, who's a little blonde girl, dies by, in like the pond by her parents' house when they're not looking.

Look, okay, look.

There is not a single original thought anywhere in this movie.

No.

Right?

Yeah.

Literally nothing.

That's why, except for their spelling of the word counselor, there is nothing original that happens in this movie.

Oh, God.

But it is a very original spelling of the word counselor.

Yes, it is.

That carries a lot.

I've never seen that before.

Yeah, I've never seen a coucler.

So, okay, so we're back in the basement.

Betty and Stewart are hot on Randy's tail, right?

So Randy likes hides.

Randy boy.

Yeah.

Oh, God, they call him like Betty.

Over over and over again i laughed every time because it's it's in the in this voice and it just goes like this randy boy and i'm just like okay this this movie is like so trying to do some kinky stuff in it but it's also christian Also, maybe I would just rather it be a horny movie.

So that's me projecting because you got to do something, right?

Old Dark House.

But also old dark house movies are so often steeped in queerness and sexuality.

And that's why it's so good for Rocky Horror because, like, even the history of the old dark house is so queer and horny.

Well, I think this movie was like trying to rescue it from that, like, like, right, I think that might just be this.

This movie might just be some, somebody going, like, too damn gay on those horror houses.

Too damn gay.

We need one that's straight.

Man, fuck women.

Damn, James Whale.

Yeah.

This movie walked right up to some sexuality that could have been interesting.

And then they were like, no, panic.

And then they don't do it.

And then the one time they do, walk all the way across.

It's fucking terrifying yeah it's no good yep so and the action of this scene is kind of stupid but but i have to i have to walk us through it at least a little bit so randy like sneaks past betty and stewart and he goes out through this tunnel where he thinks he can get out but when he opens the door to get out he accidentally lets the tin man in that it's the evil bad guy with the mask that throws down the cans which can i say is not nearly as terrifying as it is like your roommate has a cat that they haven't given you enough warning about right?

Ah, fuck, it's inside.

Okay, I don't know what I do.

What do I do?

Hey, man, your tin man got into the house.

Is he

cool?

Do we open all the windows and hope they run out?

Well, and then they're like, the movie is like, ah, now he's in the house.

And we're like, there were already people in the house trying to kill them.

Yeah.

And he already said that they could like kill one and like we would wait till morning.

This changes nothing from our perspective.

Nope.

Okay.

So now we check in on Leslie.

Oh, God.

I guess she was unconscious for some amount of time.

And in that time, Pete dressed her up like a doll.

It reminded me of a Criminal Lines episode.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I definitely had that reference.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was a serial killer who had abducted petite women.

I just remember this one freaking me out because I watched it as a teenager and I am five foot two.

So

I felt that way about the fat guy in seven.

I get it.

I'm feeling a seven.

Oh, god

can't have a spaghetti o without being judged by kevin spacey well what did you do kevin spacey turns out kevin spacey had a lot to learn from me and my spaghettios really bad things he did some some pretty biological

pound of flesh thing i was like i would go for love handles first yeah

all right so hey and can we acknowledge okay look Pete overdid the blush.

He overdid the eyeshadow, but he was on point with that lipstick, right?

That was pretty spot on.

It was too much, but like he was on point.

He didn't overline it.

Yeah.

No, it was good.

Yeah.

So, So, okay.

And then we get like the beginning of her flashback.

Now, her great sin, correct me if I'm wrong, guys, is getting molested as a child.

Yep.

Yep.

It's her fault.

That's what this movie is saying.

She, as a child, a child-ass child, tempted her uncle.

I guess.

Or didn't fight hard enough against her uncle?

Uh-huh.

So I think what the writer would tell you is that that was just like he was just trying to set up the character in a way here but like yeah the way it reads is that like she's a foul because because we're gonna establish over and over again that she is a foul temptress right oh yeah tempting Pete with her with her sinful cleavage and whatnot so yeah it's really hard to watch this and not come away with the idea that the writer is saying how dare she get molested like some kind of slut Yeah, it's like, you know how a church guy just went to jail for the time he molested a child and all the Christian media outlets are like, but it was so many years ago.

That's what it feels like this movie is doing.

It's like,

sure, she was molested by her uncle, but she was a real slut about it.

We're telling you.

Yeah, but also watching this movie, because I was a teenager when this movie came out.

Not that I saw it when it came out.

Obviously, I watched it for the first and only time two weeks ago.

But that level of slut shaming of not necessarily children.

And obviously I'm not coming from, you know, fundamentalist Christian land or anything.

But even in liberal New York City, that level of slut shaming of teenage girls, oh, well, you're just, you know, the amount of times that me as a teenager got told, well, you're just so mature for your age.

And you internalize that in some real fucked up ways.

And then you get old and you're like, yeah.

Uh-uh.

No, no, wait, wait.

That's

nope.

And so like, that really was this, this pervasive idea of, yeah, no, it's her fault for being booby.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, how dare you grow tits?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and we're going to get, we're going to dive deeper into that in a second, but then we have to go check in on Jack, who's wandering through the infinite flooded basement when he hears creepy child whispers and laughs because this movie is just a big fucking box of horror movie cliches.

They bought the whole scary movie sound effects CD and they were going to use it, damn it.

So, and this is where the tin man says, Busy, busy Jack.

And we all wrote, oh my God, is his sin being busy?

And it is.

Yep.

It is.

Yeah.

He was too busy to go out and watch his daughter ice skate and make sure she didn't fall through the ice and die.

So it's his fault.

And look, here's the thing, right?

If you're writing this movie well, not well, but if you're writing this movie better, right?

He's so busy that he tells the little girl to go out on her own and ice skate and she dies.

But the mom is with her.

His sin is trusting his wife with their child.

Yeah.

She was the one who wasn't paying attention.

But also, if you're writing this better, then it's not actually that these are their sins, but that this is the trauma that they are still blaming themselves for when it's not their fault.

And it's about learning to, you know, move on from the things that have been done to you or mistakes that you've made.

You know, for Jack, yeah, he was busy and he wishes that he just put his fingers down from the computer and gone ice skating with her or told her, don't ice skate now.

And, you know, Leslie easily blames herself for what happened to her and has to move past that and realize none of it is her fault.

But nope, nope, that's what a real Koosler helps you move from.

Yeah, yeah, no.

Yeah,

that's the thing is that, like, maybe that's even what they were going for.

But the fact is that we constantly refer to these people as guilty as sin and they have these sins, et cetera, et cetera.

And by the way, if you thought to yourself, busy, busy Jack, wow, that sounds like a real ripoff of

the shiny.

He's typing at this point the whole time.

Yeah, it does get more explicit.

yes exactly i literally thought i was like is it going to turn around and be all work and no play yeah

it's the same bit but less clever right because he like picks up the paper like ghost him picks up the paper that real him is typing flashback him is typing on and all it says is you know she over and over again it says she let melissa die

My description for Jack is all mope and no quips makes Jack a dull character.

Yeah, right?

Right.

So lead in.

Okay.

Eli, if you're being honest, at this moment, did you think Jack was going to go out on the ice and yell, is that my daughter down there?

After she fell through.

So, all right.

Now ghost Melissa is beckoning Jack upstairs.

He's done with his flashback, right?

And we meet a ghost character.

Oh, no, she's not.

Oh, yes, she is.

This is where he comes across Susan.

Now, Susan will at first react like

a shy cat, right?

Like kind of looking at him around the corner, but not meeting his eye or whatever but ultimately he's like wait are you melissa and she's like no i'm not melissa i'm somebody else and he goes are you sure she's like i'm absolutely sure it's like no shit yeah she doesn't look like melissa nope yeah no different hair color different age and i had this moment where i was like oh interesting it's not going to be melissa let me spoil it for you now podcast listener she's not going to turn out to be anybody anybody nope nope she's literally like okay you know when you're playing a video game especially one of the video games that's sort of meant for the mass market and you die too many times, so a character comes up and is like, I wonder what's over there in that cave.

That's what she is.

But for a movie.

Yeah.

And it's not like the name Susan is an anagram of anything.

USSA Navy?

Well, I don't know.

I think I actually wrote down, Susan is the easy mode of the movie.

So she's like, she's like, here, I'll help you out.

Let's Let's go this way.

And he goes, hey, can you explain?

She's like, hey, there's a psychotic killer guy trying to kill us right now.

Why don't you shut the fuck up?

How about you shut the fuck up?

He's like, okay.

So then we check in on Randy, who's elsewhere in the infinite basement.

Randy Boy.

Yeah, Randy Boy.

Now Tin Man is, yeah, Tin Man is over top.

Every time.

He just keeps going Randy Boy.

Randy Boy.

I lost it every time.

So now we get the rest of his flashback, right?

So his dad was taking him out hunting, and his dad made him murder a deer but he wasn't good at deer murdering so his dad hit him so he killed his dad with the shotgun which again feels like an overreaction to the dad being like you missed well yes

well yeah again a better writer would establish this of as as something that like you would understand but you know we're supposed to do all of that work ourselves as the viewer does they really want us to infer that his dad was fully abusive, but they don't know how to write it.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

They don't know how to establish that.

So, so we're all writing in our notes: wait, did Randy kill his dad to save the deer?

I wrote my notes when he shot him.

Sure, hope he deserved that.

Yeah, yes.

Oh, and this is he comes out of his

flashback, and now suddenly there's a whole hallway filled with tin cans in front of him hanging off strings.

Rule number four: no doing really long flashbacks, you're just all

and here's a gun.

I mean, a whole bunch of tin cans are really scary if you're an alley cat, I guess.

Sure, sure.

Or if you're trying to take an old-timey childhood phone call on one of them, but you can't tell which one's just so many.

Yeah.

Wow, I think I saw a scene like that in something that was horror for children.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah.

So, okay.

But so Randy, like out of the flashback, shoots the tin cans with his shotgun.

He found a shotgun.

I'm sorry, I didn't even mention that because it's just such a stupid thing.

Like, he basically found a shotgun, like, under a box with a like a stick holding it up and a string of it.

With like a rotating hologram in a video game being like, here's a gun you could use now.

Right.

Because easy mode.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So Tin Man, to be clear, first of all, he just like, he's hanging out this whole time and he's just doing like taunty whispers every so often being like,

not really doing anything else.

He's just kind of like verbally harassing people once in a while.

Still in the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then while Randy was doing this long flashback of murdering his dad for no reason, Tin Man set up, like, he's like, I'm going to do some mobiling with Mike.

I guess.

Was that already there?

Yeah.

It's really Randy, but Tin Man is he's the only one he talks to the whole time.

Really?

Yeah.

I like the idea that he just got bored, right?

That like he was like, oh, I thought we were kind of doing the killer's detente thing.

Okay, well, I'm going to work on my crafts.

Clearly.

But he shoots the tin cans.

I feel like you've got limited ammo.

Maybe you preserve it, but he shoots some tin cans.

Jack, who's walking now with Susan, this hastily introduced teenage character, he says, oh, we should turn back towards where those gunshots came from.

And Susan's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

It'd be so stupid when all these people are trying to kill you.

And he goes, no, no, you can trust me, Susan.

It's like, it's not that I don't trust you.

It's that it's fucking stupid.

It's a bad idea.

It's a dumb thing to do.

When Noah wrote that in his notes, it's not that I don't trust you.

It's a bad idea.

I wrote next to it the Eli Bost Bostick story.

Me and Noah have had that fight a lot.

Yeah.

So then we get, we check back in on Leslie again.

She's sadly eating pie.

And this is where like Pete comes in wearing a corsage and they try to do this thing.

I think they're trying to go for like, I don't know, she's got her like pie all over her face and it's kind of got a gross sexual thing to it.

And I was not comfortable.

They were really, really confused with the pie metaphor, but I'm fairly certain that the cherry is supposed to be like the hymen cherry.

I think so.

So that's why they did that.

That's what they were doing.

That's what they were, but they also really did not.

Yeah, and she ends up with like white cream all over her chin and her lips and stuff.

Yeah, that.

It's all kind of gross.

Yeah.

There's a weird moment here, which I really enjoyed because we've all seen horror movies use like the threat of sexual assault or sexual assault as like a dramatic foil.

And it's gross and we hate it and it's bad.

But I will say she did kind of change the mood when she was like, so how did you meet Stuart and Betty?

I was like, okay

yeah

I thought she was gonna do Friday the 13th part two to the to him yeah another reference you're gonna lose me and I'm sorry

Amanda I got it Amanda

she's the psychology student and she tries to you know psychoanalyze him by pretending to be his dead mom who he's killing for i got you so there's it's a it's a there's a funny moment here just from an acting perspective right where so pete's trying to slut shame her for because i guess she killed the uncle that molested her good right that's her great sin yeah and she he says something he talks some about that your uncle did politics the right way yeah right yeah

but this poor actor has to deliver this line she goes i used my life experience to help people you pig that's the dramatic line this poor actor had to deliver oh oh she is one of the only only one of like three actors in this movie with a Wikipedia page.

Yeah.

Oh, well, then go her.

So, yeah.

So, meanwhile, so we check back in, we're back in the basement.

Jack hears Leslie crying and screaming or whatever, and he's like, Stephanie?

And I'm like, can't you read the fucking subtitles, man?

It says Leslie.

He can't.

A lot of house noise.

Yeah, that must be it.

Yeah.

All the house noise.

That DJ, he's really

got some weird records.

Yeah.

Yep.

So then, so Jack breaks into the room where Pete is about to molest Leslie or whatever, about to, whatever he's planning, and does nothing with a surprise advantage, but it's okay.

He's significantly bigger than Pete, and literally every time they fight anyone in this movie, they win and kill that person.

Yes, they ignore the cardinal rule of horror movies, right?

Which is like, you never show anyone fist fighting Freddy or Jason or anything because it just kind of loses its vim and vigor, but they will just constantly kick the shit out of these ghosts and then run away from them, which is a very odd choice.

Well, yeah, and so we're also going to introduce a very important character at this point, which is Leslie's bloodlust, right?

Now, I get it in this moment, right?

Like, so Jack gets the best of Pete and starts beating his brains in with this candlestick, right?

And she's like, kill him, kill him.

But then she starts getting really explicit.

She's like, beat his brains in more with the candlestick.

Wait, keep, keep hitting until I finish.

Keep hitting until.

Yeah.

And can I say I I hate when women micromanage like this.

It's just like my life.

And I write my

and then Susan's just like, no, don't.

And I'm like, why?

He's really bad.

Right.

Don't.

Yeah.

What the fuck are you doing, Susan?

In fairness, Susan comes in and says that.

And Leslie's like, who the fuck is this?

I'm sorry.

I'm the tutorial.

You guys were doing bad in the horrible.

Jack has to be like, oh, that's Susan.

Clippy.

She's kind of like.

So, yeah, and as they're trying to figure out who Susan is, Betty, who is apparently hiding in the closet with an axe this whole time, just runs out of the closet, axe swinging.

Okay, so for those not paying attention, that means that Betty has entered now two scenes in a row screaming with an axe.

Okay.

I just expected like the end credits for her to run through.

It would be like the clip reel of her just running with the axe.

Ah!

But then, but Jack hits her with the candlestick, like it's his fucking signature weapon now, and kills her.

It's like clue.

Same

thing, right?

Jack in the creepy pedophile room with the candlestick.

There you go.

So, but, but black smoke starts pouring out of her brain.

So she's a demon or something.

She'll be fine.

All right.

Well, every single time the good guys have fought back, as we've said, they've prevailed easily.

So we need to give this movie a minute to rethink its fucking strategy.

But first, let me give Act Three the hard sell.

Will the Tin Man have a heart?

How sick do you think he gets of explaining why he didn't start being the aluminum man around the late 50s, early 60s?

How many bad guy names that he thought of had to have been taken before he settled on Tin Man?

Find out the answers to pretty much nothing when we return for the after-school special conclusion of

House.

I was going to be Stannam Man, but I don't think people would get it.

And then it just becomes its own category under YP.

That's so neat.

Right?

Hey, guys, what you doing?

Oh, I was just showing Amanda Rocket Money.

The last time, Eli, we can't big heist Elon Musk.

His money isn't real.

No, no, Rocket Money is a personal finance app that lets you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions.

It monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

Well, how do they do that?

Well, Rocket Money shows you all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions that you might have forgotten about.

If you see a subscription you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it.

Rocket Money will even negotiate lower bills for you.

The app automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save and then goes to work to get you better deals.

They'll even talk to customer service so you don't have to.

But will it actually save me money?

It sure will.

Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features.

Okay, but have you actually tried it?

I sure have, Noah.

Now that my son is exclusively on a diet of 12 to 15 strawberry yogurt pouches a day, I need to create a yogurt pouch budget.

All I did was tell Rocket Money to make it a category, and I was set to figure out my spending.

That's why I, Eli Bosnik, personally endorse Rocket Money.

All right, I'm sold.

Where do I sign up?

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Go to rocketmoney.com rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies today.

That's rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies.

Rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies.

So, does he eat different flavors?

No, Amanda, he does not.

Got it.

This is strawberry.

And now that you are trapped in here, we evil spirits will manifest as your trauma.

Oh, no.

Um,

uh, Nothing is

happening.

Yeah, nothing.

Give me a second.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

Jesus, do you guys not have any trauma?

What?

Yeah.

Yes, we do.

Yeah.

I think so.

Okay, what?

Sad.

Sad stuff has happened to us.

Sad stuff.

For sure.

Thank you.

That's not trauma.

Well, what's trauma then?

Like scarring, shocking experiences.

Have you guys not read The Body Keeps the Score?

Ah, I've been meaning to get that.

Yeah, you should really, you should check it out.

I know, I will.

I will.

Totally, totally.

I'm going to read it too right after

Audible.

Right.

Well, shall I just chase you around with knacks or something?

Oh,

yeah, that might work.

Wait, wait.

Sometimes women didn't want to date us

in our past.

Is that trauma?

Does that count?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

No.

no, no, that, no, that's not trauma.

Okay, well, the action thing is great then.

Sure.

You're sure it's not traumatizing.

I'm really sure, Jordan.

Nope, heard.

It's hard for me.

And we're back for still more of this shit.

We're going to rejoin the action by suddenly remembering that Stephanie is in this movie.

She's crying and wet.

in the basement again.

Yeah, to be fair, the other one was dressed up as a little girl and being assaulted.

So when we get back back to Stephanie and she's just crying about the shoe-length water again, I can see why the movie forgot about her.

Yeah, no, that's fair.

That's fair.

Yeah, but she's listening to her dead daughter's ghost voice or whatever.

Meanwhile, Jack and Leslie have lost Susan, right?

They were all walking together and they're like, where's Susan?

Because they had to write that character out for the next few scenes.

No, it's okay.

You guys are doing okay in the movie now.

I thought I was- Who the fuck is Susan?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, keep asking that question.

But this is also where Leslie's like, by the way, I murdered my molesty uncle.

Just wanted to clear that up in case the flashbacks didn't do the trick.

And Jackie's like, yeah, I wasn't really involved in those scenes.

So that's a buckwild thing for you to bring up with me right now, just so you know.

That is true.

Yeah, he didn't hear any of that.

Nope.

Yeah, no, he comes in, stops Pete from attacking her, saves her.

They run out of the room.

And then I guess, according to the timeline of the movie, we're supposed to believe she was like, I murdered my uncle.

And he's like, okay, cool.

Yeah.

Sorry, what?

I didn't realize we were shocking.

Are Are we almost kissing her?

Oh, yeah.

She's really down to fuck.

Yeah, because again, we have to establish that she is a temptress, though.

So, but then Randy is wandering around still doing his thing, and he sees Stuart, but when he looks at Stuart, he sees his dad, and so he shoots Stuart and kills him.

Then he talks a little shit,

and then he walks off.

So, once again, every time they confront the bad guys, they win and murder them.

But, you know, he's full of demon smoke, so he's coming back.

So, okay.

So, now Jack is filling Leslie in on any plot points she might have missed vis-a-vis Stephanie's backstory, because that's just what this movie is doing now is just having characters explain the movie to themselves.

Hey, I'm really hoping that this movie is on like ABC in the middle of the day while grandmas are falling asleep.

So, I'm just going to sum up where we've been so far.

So, Susan doesn't come back.

Oh, god damn it.

Here's Susan.

They call it folding laundry TV so that yes can tune in at any minute and not be lost.

Yep.

Yeah.

So, and then so Randy at this point, he's talking about and he sees some sunlight and he's like, oh, maybe that's a way out.

And I'm like, well, it's night, so

maybe not.

So he goes towards the light.

The demon smoke is following him because that's cheap as fuck to animate.

And this is where he comes across Stephanie.

So now we've got Stephanie with Leslie's boyfriend and Leslie with Stephanie's husband.

And this is where I said it's couple swapping time.

Yeah, right?

Seemed like that's where they were going.

Yep.

And in case we didn't dislike Randy yet, so here's the exchange.

She turns to Randy and she goes, oh, I fell through the closet.

I thought I saw my daughter who died falling through the ice.

And Randy's like, oh, cool.

I just killed Stuart.

So.

That's pretty good.

I'm going to win in this game over here.

My body count is really high.

Have you killed anybody yet?

Because if you killed Betty, we're good.

We're game.

So he takes her.

This is where he finds that hallway that he was in earlier where he saw the tin man and he tries to get out of it again, but now there's a cage over it.

Yeah.

You have a shotgun, man.

The force of bullets also works on metal cages, and it apparently works on ghosts, but he realizes he's trapped.

That's a blocked off level in whatever this video game is.

Susan's like, it won't work.

Not even the gun.

Don't bother.

Just look at the tin can again and read it out loud, please.

Yeah, right.

Press L1 to activate your hawk vision or whatever the fuck.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Can I be picky about one moment here when he's emerging into the cage?

So they're in that hallway and the actor who's tall, handsome, charmed, reject, kind of has to duck a little and do like a little bit of a crab walk.

And it's just such an odd choice for them to have him do that.

Cause like, he's this tall, handsome, hair-jailed guy, but we watch him be like,

Oh, no, it's weird.

I don't know.

It's weird.

If you watch along with us, please watch that scene and let me know.

It felt like weird to you.

I scraped a little bit.

Handsome people shouldn't bend over.

I got a little cut.

So, okay.

Who has Neosporin?

There's also a great moment here.

We cut back over to Leslie and Jack, and Leslie's still trying to find a logical explanation for everything.

And at one point, Jack is like, Hey, hey, I cracked the lady's head open and black demon smoke poured out of it.

And she's like, right.

Yeah, no, good point.

We should, we should move on from the you know, non-supernatural explanations.

But this is also where they realize they're in the boiler room and it's too hot.

And then even these writers are like, wait, that can't be the conflict.

It's too hot.

It can't be that it's a little warm in here.

Come on.

Oh, no.

Is this when Leslie puts out the theory that maybe they, as in the demons in the house, got their case files from their real-life therapists and therapy sessions.

Yes.

And can I say, demon ghosts that have to do their research is my favorite genre of RB.

All right, everyone, let's get Insta stalking.

So Beelzebub, do you have that file I asked for on the

grad student?

Her Facebook profile was private, but her mom's is not.

So I'm looking at a bunch of the likes on there to see if I can find any.

I'm going to check out Instagram.

I'm doing two-factor authentication.

It's gonna take me a second.

Oh my god, Heath, you're the worst demon ghost ever.

I Lexis Nexus turn, and guys, it looks like that she got arrested once for stealing lip gloss from a Sephora.

Oh,

quite a sin.

Quite a sin?

Well, I'll turn into a Sephora later.

Okay, so though they're running from the boiler, right?

The boiler's attacking them with steam.

It's movie's so fucking dumb.

And as they're running with the steam, Jack gives Leslie his jacket, right?

So the steam won't burn her.

So they escape out into a room where it turns out that Randy and Stephanie were.

And immediately, Randy starts slut-shaming Leslie for accepting the jacket that kept her from being burned by the steam.

He's like, why are you in his fucking jacket?

Tramp, tramp.

Yes.

Yeah, give him back his tracket, you tramp.

There's nothing worse than being a sexy woman.

That is the greatest sin of all.

Obviously, obviously.

Yeah.

But, and, and also, like, Stephanie is like, yeah, why are you wearing my fucking husband's jacket?

Or so, okay.

So, but then Randy is like, hey, you know, this all gets super easy if I just kill Jack, right?

If I shoot him in the head, and then we'll, when we'll win the movie, the rest of us get to get out.

But just as he's saying that, this is so fucking dumb.

A second Jack appears out of the demon smoke.

okay

okay they all

see this happen okay i just need to emphasize yes they all see this happen they all watch the smoke turn into jack which one's the real one and then they do which one's the real one it's the one that just turned into a person out of smoke yes right but also but also randy was about to kill the real one Right, like that's what he was about to do when the second jack showed up.

So it makes it doesn't make sense squared at this point because yes i would guess that the one that just appeared out of demon smoke is the fake but also it doesn't matter if you wanted to kill the real one anyway what is the demons game here

yeah and then to make it even more confusing susan who i will remind you two of the characters in this scene have not met steps into the room and she's like guys don't fall for it Fall for fucking what, Susan?

Yes, fall for fall.

No, she should have been like, just shoot both like Noah just said in a podcast.

That'll do it my favorite part of this scene though.

This is so fucking good the the writing just the the moment in the writer's room with this happened I want to be a fly on the wall for this shit right because Jack goes look look look I can prove that I'm the real me right because evil shit has black smoke pouring out of it, right?

And everybody's well, no, it does evil stuff does have black smoke pouring out.

He's like, right.

So let me cut myself.

It's a movie, so I'm going to cut myself in the fucking palm because every goddamn movie since Robin Hood has somebody cutting themselves in goddamn palms.

Just do a little cut somewhere else, just do a little bit of

anywhere else would be better.

Yeah, my carduro diary.

Yeah, let me cut my junk or look cut my penis.

So, yeah, so he cuts his fucking palm and he's like, see, I have blood coming out of me, not demon smoke.

But then demon smoke comes out of his fucking hand, and he's like, fuck, fuck it.

And I like how these guys have no concept that, wait, we're in a demon house.

Demons are tricksters.

Yes.

Maybe they're tricking us.

Right.

But I will say, this is incredible because I want to say what I think happens next.

And I genuinely want you to correct me if this is incorrect.

The smoke comes out of his palm.

And then all the characters in the movie go, well, I guess that's a bad test then.

And move on.

And I believe there are two Jacks for the rest of the day.

Okay,

no, one of them.

You're right.

We never

establish what happens.

Like, I wanted an after-credit scene where the other Jack was still going, no, shoot him

there.

He phased through a wall.

Okay, they're gone.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

What happened to the other jack?

Like, where did he go?

Did he just poof?

Yeah,

we don't know.

We don't even see him poof, if I recall correctly.

Yeah.

So, okay.

So, but then just then,

Michael Madsen shows up, right?

The door opens upstairs, and it's a cop going, hey, I'm a cop.

Come run towards me.

And they're like, wow, you know, the bad guy is a cop, but let's all run towards him.

I'm Officer Lawman, not Lawdale.

The two totally different guy.

Totally different guy.

Yep, we're not the same.

I protect the law.

He yells from the top of the stairs, I'm an officer of the law.

Exact words.

His last name is also Lawdale,

allegedly.

And I was like, come on.

That feels like those fake text messages from that killer.

Nobody talks like that.

Absolutely not.

Your vehicle.

Your vehicle.

My vehicular accompaniment

so mr blonde officer mr blonde directs him to the garage right to make their escape but then when they get into the garage stephanie's suspicious because remember that truck that was wrecked that they were chasing the chickens around well that truck is in the garage so she realizes michael madson is in on it with the demon people Well, that's just clucking crazy.

Who could have foreseen that?

Yeah, right.

But like, it doesn't function as a twist because we never thought the tin man was someone else right we like there's no reason for there to be a twist so much of this movie feels like they just took a movie trope and inserted it randomly and they were like no justify it motherfuckers right no the smarter thing is that one of the people in the two couples is actually like the mastermind behind all of that yeah not right like randy is the tin man yeah

not the only like vaguely famous actor in the whole movie well right that that's just the thing is that like it what to whatever extent this could have been a twist that you it up with the casting because obviously michael madson isn't just the cop they happened upon in the first scene and we're never gonna see him again just look straight into the camera you should have done the thing that amanda just said on the podcast instead that would have been something this was nothing And this is why I am a writer.

You can hire me, people.

I will not write Christian movies.

But hey, but if you did, you'd automatically be the best Christian movie writer in the world.

You're right, exactly.

So you jump right to the top of the thing.

You're right.

How do you feel about Riyadh?

This time?

Oh, God.

So, okay, so, but yeah, they have this big moment where, like, it turns out that he's not Officer Lawdale.

He's the tin man.

And Officer Lawdale was the guy at the beginning of the movie that killed his wife.

And now they killed him.

None of it fucking matters.

It none of it fucking matters.

The twist,

honestly, the oh shit moment for us is, oh shit they thought they were doing a twist right yeah like that was the moment of realization that we had yeah the best twist in this movie is when the credits rolled and i was like so they're not going to explain susan

so he makes him go back inside this movie isn't called yard damn it it's called house

so they go back inside where michael madson can monologue for a little bit oh yes he has to put his skin mask back on before he does his evil speech he's got to earn that paycheck yeah sure Yeah.

Yeah.

And like the other thing about his weird little tin mask is that it, there's like a reason why Jason doesn't talk, right?

Because when you put, he's like, let me tell you a thing about my.

I want to be like, hey, sorry, we actually, we genuinely cannot understand you.

Do you want to write it on a can?

Because we can't hear you.

There's a bunch downstairs.

You put so many, you hung them up.

I ran down when I was doing a decoration earlier.

I don't know if you saw.

Can we explain to you first what a rule is?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

I don't think you know what rules are versus just statements.

You playing with some knives?

What are you doing there, buddy?

Right, yeah.

He's got his little kitchen knives.

They don't even have like scary knives, just fucking kitchen knives.

And he's playing with them as he's walking around.

And he's supposed to be doing the like, now I'm going to lay out all of your sins before you.

But they kind of...

They kind of lose track of that halfway through.

They turn to Leslie and they're like, you're only fucking Randy for his money and I'm like okay I feel like the jawline is factoring in right the rock and but like like Randy's pretty fucking hot right I would fuck him pour as they're doing this they are also dressing the set I have to be clear they're not like mysteriously placing down weapons they are making up the set for the ending of this movie well that's because this movie did not hire an art director or a production designer so they just had the actors do it while the camera was rolling.

While the camera was rolling,

so yeah, so he goes all the way around and he declares that they're all guilty as sin,

but then he reminds them that they still have a chance to just kill one of each other and then they all don't all have to die, right?

He sort of reminds them, you guys remember the stakes of the movie originally were this, and we kind of lost track of it, but that's been it the whole time.

There were stakes.

This movie had stakes.

Yeah.

This is also when we get the best self-correction moment of the movie because she goes, well, wait, didn't the officer kill his wife and you didn't let him go?

And he's like, no, he was a little, a little late.

Two minutes late.

Remember when the clock struck 5.58?

Yeah.

It was after sunrise.

Okay,

here's the thing with them set-dressing all the weapons.

They're placing weapons out on the table with the idea that someone at the table will grab a weapon and kill someone else at the table, but they're all tied up.

He doesn't untie them.

He never unties them.

So like you're supposed to pick a knife up with your fucking mouth, scooch over, and then cut somebody's throat over it?

What was his plan?

How did he see this working out?

Yeah, so, okay.

So he's doing all of that.

Susan shows up and she's like, hey, guys, he's not going to play by the fucking rules.

I don't know if you, why you would trust him.

Susan, get out of my murder sketch.

Okay, I'm out.

You're going to fucking Susan.

Yeah, this is what happens whenever I introduce a board game that's not very good and Noah decides not to play, but just sits there in the room being like, obviously, you just play defense the whole game and then everybody is.

That's it.

That's not what Susan.

She's like the Duolingo owl.

Yes.

Incredibly sexy.

What's happening, Duoloo?

That's not what you were going to do.

No, sorry.

You were talking about

the teenage actress.

So, okay.

So there's a point.

She's not a teenager.

She's a grown-up.

Okay.

Is she

dressed like a teenager?

Wait, really?

That looks like her.

duo lingo joke to work.

Hey, podcast listener, you're not going to hear me for the next 48 seconds.

It's because I'm Googling super hard how old that actor is.

You're not even going to find out because they're such nobodies.

Yeah, right.

So, okay, but okay, there's a moment here where Michael Mess Susan comes in and starts saying, like, he is not a trustworthy agent.

And he throws a fucking knife at her.

She dodges it like Neo,

right?

She literally just duck dodges it and it sticks into the wall beside her.

And she looks at him like, Come on, man, you know, I'm fucking magical.

I could get through that.

Okay.

Google tells me that Alana Bale, who played Susan, was born in 1991.

So she would have been 17

to 16 or something.

17.

17.

We have a lot of southern listeners, a lot of southern listeners.

Shitting on their heritage, not making it any better.

So, all right.

But Randy is like, so Leslie is like, hey, Randy, just kill somebody who isn't me already, okay?

And Randy, like, so, you know, it does make sense to kill somebody at this point from a logical perspective, but Randy has been way too into it the whole time, right?

So he's like trying to break free of his bonds so that he can kill somebody.

And in so doing, he knocks everybody over.

Like everybody falls over together.

Including himself.

Yep, including him in the silliest way possible.

And at this point, this is where Stephanie becomes selfless.

She says, hey, if one of us has to die, I want it to be me because I did let our daughter die.

I wasn't even looking in the direction she was in when I set her out on the ice that I hadn't tested.

I wanted Jack to be like, Cool.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I knew

she did.

That is really bad.

No, that is what happened.

I was actually just getting out of the chair.

I was planning to shoot you, but I appreciated that person.

We were all just hinting that you should kill yourself this whole movie as the clearly guilty because you killed your daughter.

She's the only one who actually has a real, like, bad thing they did right yes yeah exactly

yeah so yeah but leslie wants randy to murder the teenage ghost because at one point susan says i'm the one that the tin man is really after and leslie's like cool kill her then why we don't even know who the she is right which is why this movie needs to end is she an angel is she actually god does god like the name susan also that opens up a lot of questions about god and gender so let's go there.

Yeah, right?

Right?

More interesting than staying with this movie.

Do you think of Clippy as like a gender in particular?

Oh, he's definitely a guy.

I think of Clippy as God.

Of course.

Do you think of Clippy as a guy?

Yeah.

Really?

He offers you help when you don't want it and there's no way to dismiss him?

Come on.

Well done.

Yeah, no, that's fair.

Yeah, that's definitely like, that's the guy at the bar.

Hey, I noticed you're reading.

Clippy would go up to you at a bar when you were reading and be like, I noticed you're reading.

Want to talk about it?

Yeah.

If you didn't want to talk about it, why'd you wear that shirt?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why'd you bring Driscoll?

Did you kill your uncle?

I know about spreadsheets, stupid.

That last part is how I would be clipping.

What?

You know about spreadsheets?

So Randy goes to shoot Susan, but just as he does, Jack kicks the table out from under him, so he accidentally shoots Michael Madsen.

This elicits nothing but another bad guy monologue yeah he's does it count does it count do you think that michael madson had in his contract that i will only do these scenes once and there's no retakes like eric roberts did with a talking

question mark exclamation point question mark yes which if you don't know about that movie it's a movie oh yeah where the premise is there's a cat and he talks but it's kind of like He only says a few things and he can only say the same thing once.

And Eric Roberts said that he'd do it, but he'd only record every line once.

Meta.

We have spent a lot of time with Eric Roberts on this show.

Let me talk to you.

I'm sure you have.

It's okay.

At this point though, they've now broken out of their bonds or whatever and Leslie kind of freaks out.

She's got her knife out and she kind of freaks out and she stabs Randy.

Yep.

Because she just turns around and she's like, ah, Randy.

And she stabs him to death, which Randy has had no redeeming qualities within this movie.

So I feel like we're good.

You know, we've established, we've done everything we set out to do.

But Randy then shoots Leslie for stabbing him.

I just want to point out that all of the characters in this movie are so unlikable that every time someone has gotten shot or stabbed, we as a podcast have been like, good.

Yes, that's fine.

It's true.

So, okay, so, but Randy and Leslie kill each other, and Susan is very bummed about the double homicide, but now Michael Madsen is going to kill her.

I don't fucking know, guys.

I just, I, I didn't write the fucking thing.

So, this is where he should have like broken out into song about being the devil, but that would be a more fun performance.

And that's not what we're getting in this movie.

Yeah, that would have been nice.

Be bold, be bold, movie.

So, and then there's this moment where the movie wants to be super clear that they're never going to tell you who Susan is, but it's not Melissa.

Melissa is safe and she loves you.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Because they're like, not you, mom.

Susan, wait, are you, are you Melissa?

And she goes, no, I'm not Melissa.

I'm different than that.

But also, why would they think she was Melissa?

She doesn't look like Melissa.

She's got jet black hair and Melissa was blonde.

I know.

It doesn't, yeah, right.

But again, I think this is probably something that was like added afterwards, after they showed it to the fucking test audience, and everybody went, Who the fuck is Susan?

She's supposed to be Melissa.

And I don't know.

I think she's supposed to be Jesus.

Oh, Jesus.

So Jesus is a girl.

And this one, yeah, yeah.

Son of God.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, exactly.

So, okay, but here's the thing, though.

So Michael Madsen shoots her, and then she dies.

Yep.

But she glows.

But she glow dies.

Right.

She's got this light coming out of her bullet wound.

Well, it goes back to the quote at the beginning.

Yes, yes, the light shines in the darkness or whatever.

so stephanie's like hey you know what i'm good at what we've established i'm good at is fingering things so she fingers the wound a second susan is like hey you got to do the light she's dead so she can't tell you this but you probably have to use that light and stephanie get in there with your finger

terrifying moment oh god so and this is when jack remembers why he loves her apparently it was her glowing finger that he'd forgotten about she takes the she takes the jesus light they do the et Yeah, it's like the E.T.

thing.

Stephanie takes the Jesus-y light like it's peanut butter.

Like you would take peanut butter

out of a jar for yourself.

Well, I just feel like the screen readers of this movie have watched the like TV edits of a bunch of movies.

Not the full movies, but you know, like the TV edits.

Okay.

Yeah.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the one that's like five minutes long.

All right.

So, yeah, but so they touch their fingers together, Xanna Jaina style, and that unlocks the power of the light.

And so they glow finger Michael Madsen to glow death.

They had a moment where they were like, okay, well, we did the fingers thing.

It's like a, do we smear it on his face now?

Will we heal him if we do it to him?

Finger blasting.

Really, really in the woods.

That's what that means, right?

That's finger blaster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Totally.

That's all it means.

Yep.

So, yeah.

So, but, but, no, but they unleash their light powers against him.

He gets sucked into the wall because he is the house or something.

Oh, yeah.

He's like a wall pussy.

I did write in my notes, wall loosey.

So, yeah, he gets turned into a wallusy, and then the whole house starts coming down around him.

So, they run to safety.

There's one point as they're running away, Jack goes, don't look back.

And I'm like, why?

Do you know this is a Christian movie?

What are you?

Okay.

Turns to salt.

But they run out of the house.

A car is driving by right then.

So they try to wave down the car, but the car doesn't stop because they're ghosts.

And instead of stopping the cars, they walk on and they find that the cars are responding to a terrible accident where two couples were killed in a car wreck.

And it takes them so long to figure out it's them.

They're walking around and they're like, oh, my God.

The bimmer.

They had the same car as we did.

like no god damn it susan you want to get out of here so yeah right right

so but leslie and randy i guess are all are all the way dead we see them like all burned to a crisp well they like we see one of their arms yes they chose death they killed each other in the the purgatory space right so the the the message of this movie is is if your loved one died in a car accident it was their own damn fault you know they chose that right it was it's because they made bad choices in the haunted house run by marshmallows Exactly.

You get a shot in purgatory to be cool with each other.

And if you don't, you actually die.

I think that's what I was saying.

And I think that's

at first I was thinking it was purgatory for all four of them.

And it would be who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

Right, but it's not.

It's who just dies and who gets to go back.

to the

being alive.

Yes.

Yeah.

Jack and Stephanie just come back to life.

And also, there's a lot of like, they're like, oh, everything's fine.

We're back to life and Melissa's safe and there's an afterlife.

And I'm like, hey, you guys did just kill two people in a car because Jack was driving in a SNP.

But yes, but other than that, things are going great.

Yeah, but those two people wanted to die and that's been borne out now in all the time.

No, that's true.

That is true.

So it's not.

I think they were already dead before the other car hit them.

They were just dead driving down the road.

Yeah, right.

They did 30 years ago this very night.

Like they hit the farm equipment.

Oh, I see.

flipped over

and the car blew up and they died and then

stephanie and jack hit the farm equipment as well all right well we'll go with that didn't flip over

kusler had a very long con scenario going on

laughing parts and pulled it off but then like but my last like five notes are like okay but but they ran into michael madson before the car accident so is he really satan and then they show michael madson kind of to

so yes, he is.

Right.

It's like a game.

It's a game that people driving down this road that he set up.

I guess.

Like he's just a regular serial killer whose like way of getting people is by putting things in the middle of the road.

And being supernatural.

Yeah.

So yeah, my last three notes were, what about the family?

Who are they?

Who the fuck was Susan?

Fuck me, I guess.

Right?

That's all we get.

That's the end of the movie.

We can only tell it's it's over because the credits start running.

So, Amanda, thank you so much for helping us get through that and for like some theories that give this movie, I think, way more credit than it is due.

Hell yeah,

Clippy is an obnoxious man.

I think you're right.

I think you're absolutely right.

It was a blast.

As I said, I definitely got lucky because this was at least an attempt at a movie.

Yeah, no, this is the, yeah, yeah, I'd say top tier as far as the gam spotter goes.

Don't get me wrong, I would totally come back and do one of the other things that you watch also.

But you'd also probably get a man of like,

why the fuck did I do this to myself?

Yeah, I was going to say, well,

be careful what you wish for.

Yeah.

And hey, speaking of which, if our listeners don't feel like they're done with you, remind them where they can go to hear more.

Yes, I co-host the film podcast, Don't Be Crazy.

Just a general film podcast.

We've only ever covered one Christian movie, and it was Saving Christmas.

And it was because we were doing tops and bottoms, Mom.

If you're only going to do one, man.

Yeah, exactly.

But I talk a lot about har film noir and my love of Roadhouse, the original.

Do not come at me with the remake.

You can find me on Instagram and Blue Sky at Amanda Jane Stern and Letterboxd at Witchy Wanderer.

And you can watch my not Christian movie, Perfectly Good Moment, on Tubi.

Awesome.

And of course, most of that will also be linked on the show notes.

And while that's going to do it for a review of House, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still still need to step on this same fucking rake again.

So Eli, tell us what's on deck.

In 1986, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren traveled to Pennsylvania

to vanquish a demon from a family's home.

Damn it.

We're headed back to the theaters for the conjuring last, right?

Because they can't stop making them.

Fuck.

All right.

So with that to let's say look forward to, we're going to bring episode 527 to a merciful close.

Once again, a huge thanks to Amanda for all her help today and a reminder that you can find her show linked on the show notes, and an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that helped make the show go.

If you'd like to catch up among their ranks, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash godawal and thereby early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms.

And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, The Skid the Galaxy Dated Dnd D Minus, and The Scapacrat, available wherever podcasts live.

If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions, you can email GodAwlMovies at gmail.com.

Tim Robinson takes care of our social media.

Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slotting with the drafts on Mars.

All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer, Morgan Clark, and was used with permission.

Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week for Heathen Wright and Neil Abosnick.

I'm Nollus, promised to work hard to earn another chunk next week.

Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes.

Stephanie and Jack were very disappointed with their next Couples therapist.

Couples coosler, Betty Louise, stopped practicing couples counseling after all of her patients kept getting lost on the drive over.

She now runs a wellness retreat.

Pete Sapp is still a bubbling.

Ew.

Susan continued her job as a kind-hearted real estate agent in that part of southern Florida.

Oh, she's the surreal estate woman.

That's wait.

Actually, that is the name of the lead on surreal estate.

That's who Susan is.

This content is canned-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025, all rights reserved.

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