Ep.#438 - Trap, with Linda Holmes

Hi, floppers.

Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the middle of Flop TV Season 2.

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This time, it's personal.

On this episode, we discuss trap.

Okay, guys,

I'm not supposed to say anything, but you know that guy, the Ripper?

Well, this entire podcast is an elaborate trap because we heard he's going to be on this podcast.

This whole thing is a trap for the rip.

Is he called the ripper?

It's a different guy.

That's a different guy.

There's multiple guys, didn't it?

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

And I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

And with us, we have introduce yourself.

Identify yourself.

You host like Dan McCoy.

Welcome to the guest.

I am Linda Holmes, and I am proud to say that I asked the Flophouse to cover this movie while still sitting in my seat at the theater.

I composed an email.

Please cover this movie.

And here I am.

Yeah, you have to wait so long between your initial screening and

this magic moment of culmination.

It's only gotten better with time.

I'm glad you bring that up, though, because so we always say,

this is a podcast where you watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Now, usually

I hate to interrupt.

That was the smoothest, most professional segue you have ever done on the show.

And I just want to recognize how beautifully done you did.

So you wanted to trip it up.

Yes, I did.

Yes, I did.

I don't like that you're getting too good, Dan.

Threatens me.

But the thing is about this movie is that it was neither

a commercial flop, nor was it particularly a critical one.

People were sort of all over the place, but it does inspire strong reactions.

So we thought that it would be fun to talk about,

even though maybe like, you know, the pedance out there would be like, well, is this, does this fall under your purview?

And I should say, is that in your mission statement?

And where we're like, also, like, you guys, you guys kind of do the shyamalan thing

with movies that aren't necessarily entirely bad.

That's, that's one of my favorite 60s kind of go-go hippie movies, the shyyalan thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But But yeah, Dan is always very nervous that someone somewhere is getting mad about the movies we're choosing.

I want to tell that listener, you can go fuck yourself.

No, you can tell.

It's my fault.

I mean, I was very eager.

As I said, I was, the lights came up in the theater.

I said to my friend I was with, I said, I can't leave yet.

I have to do one thing.

I have to write this up.

And your friend's like, it's okay.

I'm still getting over the experience.

Yes.

And I just want to say, when Linda talks, we listen.

If you had watched, If you watch Susan Kane and you're like, I got to talk to the Flophouse boys about this, we'll do it.

We'll catch that on the show.

What a stinker.

What a stinker.

I mean, it was a box off his flop, so we could technically cover it.

Good to know for the future.

Yeah, well, this is, yeah, as you mentioned, we've covered a lot of Shamlan films,

even ones that are sort of part of his new, like,

I don't know, half the internet loves it, half the internet hates it rather than we have, we've decided to hate him post, you know, his early successes period that we were in there for a while.

Who's doing that?

Is it you?

Elliot's going to be doing a summary onward, but Elliot's like, I need this.

I need this in my life right now.

I need to do it.

Just a peek behind the curtain.

Yeah, I said to Stuart, I don't have enough work to do right now.

I'm not busy enough as it is.

So to put a peek behind the curtain, I apologize for not jumping on that one.

No, no, it's fine.

It's that,

no, this was a fine one to do because it is not the most complicated plot.

It was actually one of the easier ones to take notes while doing the dishes at midnight after i finished my night work which comes after putting my kids to bed after my day work so night work for elliot is where he uh takes people to a home that i guess he's rented and he murders them i murder them and i cut them up to little pieces and scatter them artfully it's it's mainly implied not seen yeah and i say missing by design If you miss anything, I really considered, I didn't do it, but I really considered bringing like a little bell so that when you get to one of the many things that make no fucking sense in this movie, I would just go, ding.

I got a question.

I wish she'd done that.

Linda saw this in the theater.

Elliot saw this washing dishes.

Dan, did you see this one in the theater?

I saw this in the theater as well.

I saw it with Audrey and a couple of our friends, and we all sort of.

Oh, yeah, name them.

John and Mary.

Hi, John and Mary.

Destroy checks out.

Destroy checks out.

And I watched it.

That's made up.

And I watched it in a king-size bed on a laptop at a resort that my wife and I were staying at for our recent wedding anniversary.

13-year-old wedding anniversary.

Congratulations.

Was Was it a waterbed?

Was it heart-shaped?

It got pretty wet.

All right.

You logged into it, dude.

You called for it.

Dan, you can say Beetlejuice two and a half times and then get mad when you ask for orange juice and Beetlejuice shows up.

That's true.

Like the old saying says.

That's the old saying.

Yeah.

So let's talk about trap show.

This, it definitely falls in the line of M.

Night Shyamalan's recent movies, which are, I can't tell if I,

if I don't, if I think they would be better as episodes of a TV show, like an M.

Night Shyamalan anthology TV series, or if I like that he's making these kind of like quick, almost disposable kind of thrillers that harken back to what thriller movies used to be, where it was like, watch this for 85, 95 minutes, have a, have an okay, silly time, and then go do something else.

You know, I can't tell whether I like it or not.

How do you guys feel about it?

About that format that he's been kind of doing.

I hadn't thought about it, but now that you say it, I do think that part of my enjoyment, like I, you know, I cackled my way through this.

I had my problems with some of the details,

but uh, but I had fun.

And I think it probably is partly because you don't get movies like this that much anymore at this sort of particular level or pitch.

Theater level, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's kind of what made me angry about it a little bit.

But if I paid for a ticket to see this movie, I'd be like, uh, we're smoking.

But I mean,

and I don't want to spoil my, I don't want to spoil my final judgment.

So I won't say too much.

But I think that like the, I think the um

i think he is definitely one of the few people who has the talent the juice and the pull

to get this to get like thrillers for grown-ups made right now

and i kind of want him to make them good yeah and that's that's where i ran into trouble with this one you know That's the thing, Elliot.

If I had paid for a ticket for this, I would also have been mad.

I would have walked up to the usher and I would have said, sir, I paid for an entire seat to this movie, but I only used the edge.

can i return some of this ticket can i get the portion refunded to me you wouldn't have gone up to the usher and said excuse me usher can you tell me where you keep all the money and where the key to the safe is because he would tell you and as we've established on the podcast the usher would have said yeah yeah you know i can't believe elliott knows an usher song just the one okay so it doesn't make sense to me let's talk about that's right let's talk about

that me a guy who now fuels his night work by just listening to oingo boingo's discography from the first album to to as far down as I get in it.

Yeah, sure.

And listening to dad rock night moves while you're doing your night work.

Not exactly, but sure.

So, okay, trap.

What happens in this movie?

Well, we're introduced to two main characters who are going to be the main stars until a third character abruptly becomes the hero of the movie.

Like

two-thirds of the way in.

Riley, she's a teenage girl.

She loves this singer, Lady Raven, who's kind of like Taylor Swift with like a little touch of a little touch of some, I don't know, some kind of lady goddess.

Yeah, she's got a little more like juice than Taylor Swift.

I guess

she's not juice.

Well, I mean like she doesn't popular.

But I mean she, yeah,

arguably, although I don't see the butcher going to Taylor Swift.

I mean she's like, you know, there's a little more R ⁇ B to it, a little less country.

Oh, I don't mean, I don't mean, that's true.

I don't necessarily mean the music style.

I mean more in the like the showcase, the way the concert is pop star.

She's a pop star.

So Riley loves this pop star, Lady Raven, who is played by M.

Night Shyamalon's daughter, Selica.

And she and she's being taken by her dad, Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, to a concert.

They're going to see Lady Raven.

It's going to be amazing.

This is a daddy-daughter bonding experience.

Riley's been depressed because her old friends are excluding her.

And so now he's trying to make it up for her.

And I will say this.

This movie started winning me over right away because a few weeks ago, I took my older son, Sammy, to see Judas Priest over at the YouTube Theater in LA.

And the experience we had going to that concert was so similar to how this starts in a way that I could really relate to until the part with Josh Hartnett's murderous secret, you know, until the, until that, but until the trap has good job keeping your own murderous secret secret, Elliot.

Your dark passenger.

There were so many moments of like a parent trying to connect with their kid and looking for the seats and trying to, and what's our safety plan, you know, if we get separate, like that I was like, and being excited that your kid is getting into this music, you know, it's a, uh, so I really related to that, but I didn't relate to anything else Edwards.

During the opening act, yeah.

I think the thing that's the most fun to me about the very beginning of the movie is that the thing that makes the first thing that makes no sense happens like 30 seconds into the movie when they park in a surface lot down the street from the arena with no difficulty whatsoever and go strolling in there.

And then you get the classic Philly.

And you get the apparently ADR line from the daughter about, I'm so glad she added an afternoon show after she sold out.

Because you know how arena artists add a matinee.

They add a matinee.

They'll do two massive concerts with another one.

They're elderly fans.

Exactly.

Anyway, there's a lot of the question, as we'll find out later, this whole concert is a trap.

Well, there's a lot of questions I have about

like at what stage did this become a trap and how much of it is this trap?

Because somehow it was organized to trap someone, but also they set it up as a trap because they knew he was attending the concert.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend.

It was, yeah, it was not organized to be a trap.

They knew he was going to be there.

No, no,

that's their explanation.

But then there are other details that make it seem as if this whole thing has been set up as a trap.

The way that, because the idea for it came from that story years ago about they wanted to catch a bunch of people without standing warrants.

So they mailed letters to their houses being like, hey, you want a boat or something like that.

Yeah, we showed about that.

And that was my problem with the trailer because when I saw the trailer for this, I'm like, okay, wait.

The police have set up.

a concert just for the purposes of being a trap where they're like, let's get this guy in a place where there's the most people possible that he could either disappear into or we could accidentally shoot or whatever.

And like, it's not, it is not that.

I know, I know it is unclear, but like, I think that the movie is trying to indicate.

I sincerely hope that Eric Adams did not watch this movie because I feel like it would give him a good idea.

It would give him ideas.

Not good ideas.

Bailey Joel, you got to come back to the garden.

There's a turnstile jumper we need to catch.

Got a lot of tax cheats.

Yeah.

And I mean, if it was Eric Adams's New York, then yeah, the police would have shot 70 to 50, 70 to 100 people at least.

Yeah, a trash can robot would have shot 100 people.

It is said, though, that Riley, you know, after going through all those inside-out emotion troubles, is going to have to deal with so much now,

learning what she does about her.

Swish, swish, Dan.

Perfect.

Nothing but net on that

on that cross-reference.

So during the opening act, which this was also a realistic thing

based on my experience, is that during the opening act,

the theater is still half full and nobody's nobody's paying attention at all.

During the opening act, your dad notices there's a lot of police officers in the venue, and they seem to be seemingly leading seemingly random men out of the main room.

And there's a brief conversation between Cooper and Riley about whether the word crispy can be used to mean good and how do you do that.

I'm not up on teenager slang.

My kids are not old enough.

Have you guys heard crispy or is that a

shamalon coining?

Dan's going to his junk marks, pulling up urban dictionaries.

Is that real slang or is it from the shama lexicon?

I don't know whether, whether, let's see whether it was put in after Trap swept the nation.

I'll let you do your detective work.

Anyway, Cooper, he leaves, he's the bathroom.

And while he's in the bathroom stall, he uses his phone to check a live video feed of a man imprisoned in the basement.

This should be our first tip off that, not as old as it seems from Cooper.

Again, this is where my experience at the concert and his experience begin to diverge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now,

okay, so this says here's Dan McCoy with a crispy update.

This gives a definition that I would have assumed was the definition for crispy rather than what they say in the movie, which is essentially just cool.

Here it says neat, clean, trim, fashionable, with it, you know, good looking, crispy.

Yeah, that makes more sense to me than

what we get.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, like crisp.

That does make sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's true.

You, one of the things that I think is amazing about this movie is they put it right in the trailer that he's the murderer, which I thought was somewhat odd.

Like maybe you could have let that be a thing that we discover after we get there.

But they put it in the trailer.

So you're just kind of waiting.

If you have seen the trailer, you're just kind of waiting for him to reveal that he's the, that he's the murderer.

So yeah, that's when he goes in there.

He looks on his phone.

You know, they say women take a long time in the bathroom.

He's a hostage.

This is what leads to long lines at arenas.

Normally, I'm with you that trailers give away too much, but this is the, this is the essential premise.

I don't know what you would sell this on.

I think you'd have to sell it as there's a dad and a daughter at a stadium and something's going or at a concert and something's going wrong.

And he's trying to get out and they don't know what it is.

And you would leave it as a twitch.

But I don't know if that's enough to get people to get away.

Yeah, I think this whole thing works for me.

Like going in, I knew what the premise was and I was still on board.

Like I was hooping and hollering the whole time.

Not having seen the trailer, I did not know what the premise was.

And so I will say when he looked at it, I was like, Is this guy a murderer?

What's going on here?

Or does he just have weird taste in YouTube videos?

Is he just like a red rumor or something?

Well, we watched it years and years ago, we watched that movie Untraceable, I think it was, where the guy was live streaming his murders of people.

So, there was part of it.

It's like, wait, is that, so did he do that?

Or is he watching some other thing that someone else is doing?

But it's answered pretty quickly.

Anyway, while washing his hands in the sink, he has a vision of an older woman standing there, kind of glaring at him.

That'll happen a couple more times.

Turns out it's his mom.

Cooper runs into another mom, the mom of one of Riley's old friends, and they have an awkward conversation about getting these kids back together.

I think that this performance from this lady, this is like, to me, I'm not, you know, I have no children, but this, this plays out that you know of,

realistically, you know, like a lady who maybe you wouldn't want to encounter or hang out with other than the fact that, you know, your kids are friends.

You know, she's got like this weird energy.

Well, she has very good weird energy.

I don't know if they did anything with this part of the story, but I, but she definitely is, yeah, weird energy.

I like how this is shot too.

Like it's a lot of like straight on close-ups.

Looking right at the camera, like an Errol Morris movie.

And I will say, I got to give, I got to, you know, I have, I've been mean to Josh Hartnett in the past.

He is the star of one of the worst movies I've ever seen, 40 Days and 40 Nights.

But I got to say, he brings it and he's hot.

Like he's a hot dad.

Agreed.

I've liked him a lot more in recent years.

I think he has aged into an interesting actor.

I think if you are, if you are like a young hunk actor and you stick it out in the business long enough, you will acquire the layers that make you into a more interesting actor.

Like the, I feel like that's what the Colin Farrells of this world.

Yeah, in a way, yeah.

And I feel like what people, he's not exactly the same kind of young hunk, but like with Arnold Schwarzenegger, where people are like, you know, 30 years later, like, he's aged into like a, like a pretty good actor.

And I would be like, I hope so.

He's been doing it for a long time.

But like, yeah.

I liked Josh Hartnett even as a young guy, though.

Like Josh Hartnett is one of the, is one of the

people who I associate with the faculty, which I think is like a super fun weird really stylish movie that i super like

um

uh and and you know was just people were just reminiscing not long ago with bb new worth uh on social media somewhere about her being in that movie and and that's one that i really like and i think he's always been like an interesting kind of like weird sleaze ball and yeah i like i think he's good in this i don't think i'm saying is there's this there's a certain sleaziness to a lot underlying a lot of those kind of young hunk guys and when they get older they can play it up in a way that is that stops being a weird subtext that you yeah that is creepy and becomes like oh this is a flavor of this character yeah yeah i'm glad you brought up uh the faculty because that is the outlier for me that is the early heart knit performance i really enjoy and uh he brings a lot of juice to that and it's a fun movie i remember he's got that hair when uh yeah you know like

John, when we were at the Daily Show,

he'd be like down on the faculty.

He'd like bring it up to like, you know, piss on it.

I'd be like, what are you talking about, John?

Like, that's a pretty good movie.

Certainly of your filmography.

It's one of the stronger ones.

I think that's why he brought it up is because it's one of the ones so that it's not as bad as some of the other ones.

So he can like dump on it without people being like, yeah, that sucked.

You know, doing something about architecture or playing by heart or whatever.

Yeah, that sucked.

You know, and I think like, I think Heart Knight is one of the people, and this happens a lot to women, but it also happens to young.

guys who are actors is that they sort of get trapped when they're very good looking and they're young.

They get trapped

in a concert by the police.

They get trapped in a kind of like a pretty

normal person thing.

And if their talent is that they're odd, which is, which is kind of what his thing is, it can take a while for that to sort of open up.

And as they get older, they sort of, you know, grow into interesting,

you know, there are just some people who are like character actors with leading man face.

And that's, that can be something that, you know, it takes a while to get over.

Yeah.

Uh, it's true.

Well, and, and, I, and I actually, I like him in this movie.

I feel like he does do a good job of, of balancing he's

the dad with a secret and the killer with a dad inside.

You know, what I will say is, like, I, I, I find him very compelling in it.

I enjoy the performance, but he is absolutely acting like a maniac from early in this movie.

Like, the idea that he's from moment one that there's something off about somebody up there.

But that's the thing, but that's the thing.

But Dan, think about the dads you've known.

they all feel like there's something weird about them dads are weird like there's something weird about them they don't

he's a dad like like he's had a dad at a concert like i i feel like most of the dads i know are like i got two hours alone i'm gonna pound seven beers

because dads there's the thing about dads are all faking it they're all making it up as they go along they're all faking it and as the generations continue they get worse and worse at faking it because it's harder to just yell at people and hit them when they don't listen to you.

And so, I, so I buy him as that if you're not.

Not impossible, Elliot claims.

No, no, no, yes.

You'd be like, Riley's dad's kind of weird, but you wouldn't be like, This guy is a murder.

This is the butcher.

I thought dads were like weird when, you know, I was a kid.

Now, even though I'm not technically one, I'm of dad age, and I look around at the dads.

I'm like, yeah, this checks out.

Like, and Hartnett still like seemed like when he's like

later on suggesting, like, hey, let's go underneath the stage.

Later when he is panicking, it is the weirdest dad stuff.

Yeah, I'm trying so much.

Anyway, hey, why don't we go get waffles in that waffle stand?

And it's like, you took me to the concert, my favorite musician.

Why are you telling me to leave now?

Yeah, but everyone is like milling around.

There's like eight intermissions in this thing, and everybody seems to just be like hanging out.

That is the weirdest thing.

That is one of the things that kept striking me is as I'm like, Riley's leaving her seat a lot during the concert.

Like, are they taking breaks?

Like, what's because I, because I'll tell you again, my last concert experience was going to see Judas Priest.

The minute our butts were in the seat we didn't get up again for the for two three hours not even to stand up and cheer that's fucked up no that's true we did stand up and cheer that's true

because splash entered the speed zone

um so uh we did stand up and cheer that's true and sammy would be like sit down stop singing along um so cool

stop dancing really cool and you're like i can't help it i got the rhythm in me yeah that's true yeah on stage uh lady raven gives a speech about the importance of forgiving people and meanwhile there's a SWAT and FBI convoy that arrives outside the venue with an older lady FBI profiler who I was very excited to learn when the credits came up was Haley Mills.

I was like, she's what?

From parent trap to M.

Night Shyamalon's trap, Haley Mills can do it all.

Yeah.

No, this is, this is, I mean, I enjoy his casting of her, both for the fact that, like, you know, like, she's, she's still great, but also, like, she's a master trapper.

Obviously, like, a dumb joke.

This is what I, This is what I asked when we covered this on our show.

I was like, the thing I don't know about M.

Night Shyamalan is he the kind of funny who cast her as a pun, right?

Yeah.

And I guess this movie is a parent trap.

It is a trap.

Exactly.

I said to my friend I was at this movie with, I said at the end of it, I said, if she had at the end of the movie, looked at the camera, winked, and said, now that's a parent trap, I would have personally campaigned this movie for Best Picture.

I would have gone.

I would have gone to the little MPAA office in D.C.

and I would have walked around with a little picket sign from now until Oscar nominations.

Trap for best picture.

Jack Valenti, give me a meeting.

Get trap for me.

Give me best picture.

I love Haley Mills, but there's no way that anyone's thinking of casting her if not for the past.

You never know.

You never know.

So probably not, but I'll hearken back to an experience, something I witnessed in person.

There was a screening of Frost Nixon once where Ron Howard and the writer and whoever were talking afterwards and John Waters was in the audience.

And John Waters, they go, there's a question and answer section and John Waters gets up and he goes, I thought it was so amazing that you cast the little girl from the bad seed as Pat Nixon.

Like, what a great touch.

And Ron Howard was like, oh.

Oh, oh, was she a child actress?

He had no idea.

He didn't know how anything had no idea about it.

And I was like, I love that John Waters picked up on that instantly.

But such a different story situation, though.

Or similarly, there's the story that Bob Odenkirk tells about being in the paper with, or no, the Post, whatever that movie is, with David Cross, where Steven Skilberg did not know that these two guys had starred in a TV show together for years.

And when he found out, he was worried that it was going to throw the movie off.

I guess one of the other people working on it was like, this is amazing, a Mr.

Show reunion.

And Steven Spilberg was like, what?

What are you talking about?

So something's too bubble up to the director.

Show?

Bring me this Mr.

Show.

They bring in Michael Schowalter and because through a mistake, you know.

This character, though, is very funny to me because she she doesn't do any particularly good like

serial killer finding during the course of the movie.

She exists only so that once he steals a walkie-talkie, she can provide him with useful information immediately.

Every time he turns it on, it's like when in TV shows where like there's always a news thing related to the story.

Yeah.

And then you turn it on.

They're like, tonight in relevant news to our plot.

I love her partner.

Like,

this is the closest I think a movie will ever ever get to capturing the feeling of playing one of the Hitman games because there's specifically a Hitman level where you get a walkie-talkie and you're just hearing the guys be like, Where is this guy?

He's a ghost.

You're like, Yeah, I am a fucking ghost.

Except here, it's more likely.

My favorite moment of those is when he's about to pull the fire alarm to have a diversion, and she's like, He will most likely now try for a diversion, perhaps pulling a fire alarm, and then he pulls his hand away.

But again,

I do think that, like, I think that these are jokes.

I think these are jokes.

Here's the backstory I'm inventing is that the butcher killed her identical sister and and that's why she wants revenge yeah

um as much as like there are things in here that i think are just sort of like uh clumsy in a way that i think maybe should have been addressed i think a lot of this is like devilish like hee hee hee hee he on the screenwriting part i i think that's fun yeah so cooper's getting suspicious he sees the police taking away more guys he goes he goes riley i'm gonna we're gonna get you that shirt you wanted and he uses that opportunity to befriend a merchandise vendor who is very talkative.

Within moments, this guy has revealed to him that the whole concert is being used as a trap to catch a notorious serial killer called The Butcher.

The only way out past the police is to go backstage.

And the people who work there have a code word.

And Cooper is so clearly the butcher.

Like it's so, I mean, the audience, I don't think it's supposed to be a, oh, is he really?

But even to this merch vendor, it should be clear that Cooper is the guy that they want.

There are two things that like

boggle my mind in this scene.

Number one, how quickly they become the best of friends based on Josh Hartnett being like, why don't we let this other girl have this t-shirt, honey?

We have, you know, she was waiting longer.

And he's like, you're a great man.

We tell you everything.

Perhaps the greatest man in history.

And then also like just like seconds later, Hartnett's like, pst.

come over here.

It's like to get information.

And this busy vendor in the middle of this busy, like, there's a crowd of customers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, I will come over and chat with you about the police plans, Mr.

Hartnett.

Yeah, but if you weird at all.

If you knew they were looking for a serial killer and some guy was like, so tell me who they're looking for and what's the code word?

No way

you'd be tipped off by that.

To defend the character, Dan, Dan just portrayed him as saying Mr.

Hartnett, which he does not do.

That would be a total goof.

That would be a goofy segment with that in the IMDb goof section.

That's the same as Cooper Hartnett, which they don't say that it's not.

I wish that like that Cooper stole like a Dragon Ball Z or like a Spider-Man hoodie off somebody and then the guy's like, oh, I love Dragon Ball Z.

Oh, we're best friends now.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be great.

That's just the kid version of traps.

So

he walks Riley around.

He's looking at different parts of the venue to try to get an exit.

He can't find his way out even after he pushes a woman down the stairs as a distraction.

Totally unnecessary.

Love it.

Totally unnecessary.

It has nothing to do with anything.

His scrambling and trying to find a way out is so funny.

Yeah.

So good.

It doesn't work so spectacularly that the like,

I had to talk to my friends afterwards.

I'm like, what was the plan there?

And they're like, well, they thought that the police would like leave the door and help the woman.

And he can slip through it.

It's so casual that he just wanders by like, whoop.

And I've just done it out of frustration.

Just like, ugh.

But so the movie is the one problem I have with this movie is that.

It does lean into the stereotype that serial killers are masterminds, who are master planners and great at scoping out situations.

When in reality, serial killers are losers.

They're losers.

They can't exist in normal society, and they act out their obsessions and things in ways that they are ashamed of.

There's no serial killer who's really like a super, who's Hannibal Ector.

And if there's a serial killer listening to this, don't use this as fuel to go hunt down Ellie.

No, no.

Just use it as fuel to look at yourself and be like, is this who I really want to be?

But he's not so good that he doesn't keep kind of doing things for no reason or getting stuck, which I do kind of like.

He's the Ethan Hunt of serial killers, where he's like,

he'll get out, but he's going to hit his head a bunch of times while doing it.

Yeah.

If they're good at something, it is masking.

It is pretending to be normal and using their nondescript quality to evade capture simply because like, you know, like most

detectives aren't equipped to

Josh Hart and it just blends in.

Yeah.

That's just part of being a dad, though, is the mask of normality that hides the weirdness underneath that peeks out.

But so he's looking around.

Uh-oh, he he has another plan that comes up.

They go back to their seats.

Later Raven reveals her first surprise guest, Parker Lewis, who's played by, which it's some, it's a musician.

I can't remember which one it is.

And he rises up through a trapdoor near Cooper's seats.

And that trapdoor stays open for a while, trap.

And Cooper just goes like, hey, Riley, let's go down that trapdoor.

Don't you want to see underneath the stage where all the machines are?

And she's like, that's crazy.

He is staring at that trapdoor like it turned into like a fucking turkey leg or some shit.

And he's trying to sell this to her like with such like mania.

Like, wouldn't that be fun?

Yeah.

If I get, if I get really crazy, wouldn't this crazy idea seem less crazy by comparison?

So, and she says, no, understandingly, the trapdoor closes up.

That is the kind of thing I could see saying to my son being like, hey, should we go in there?

And I'm going, no.

And then it's not doing it.

Cooper goes back to the merchandise guy.

And the guy's like, oh, I got to get some more.

more sizes of shirt.

And he goes, I'll help you.

So he just walks with him into the stock room to get more shirts.

And the merchandise guy, it turns out, is obsessed with the butcher.

He's been following this guy's career.

He loves him.

He gives Cooper the secret password.

Employees use to get past the cops, which is what, Hamilton, right?

And he's going to flip when he sees the news later, by the way.

Oh, yeah.

Did you see the mid-credit scene, sir?

The mid-credits.

The mid-credit scene is literally him flipping when he sees the news.

This is amazing.

Here's where it bit you in the ass, buddy.

Oh, wow.

What a shy Malan-style twist.

I should have held off until then.

and Cooper steals the vendor's key card.

He uses it to get into a private area.

Uh-oh, that's where the cops are being debriefed.

He manages to kind of talk his way through it like he's an employee.

He snags the aforementioned police radio so he can monitor their movements.

I want to know, is it typically, do you think, the case that the t-shirt vendor's ID will get you into the secret FBI briefing?

uh area given that i'm pretty sure that when i have participated in live events at the bell house security is tighter than that as far as getting around to different parts of the arena.

Yeah.

I think the arena

would have some areas where you could do an FBI briefing where every vendor, everybody with an ID, because they sell French fries could not walk into the FBI briefing.

I would imagine you would have coded badges because you don't want the merch vendors going back to Lady Raven's green room, you know, but this.

Well, also, there's no photo on the badge, which I think is is highly unlikely.

It's one of those, I mean, like, you get actually, that's not true.

I was just supposed to say my

key card to the offices I'm working at now, but that does have my photo on it.

Yeah, that's that's true.

I will say, like, this appears to be some kind of break room.

I buy sort of like the general idea that he could get into this room.

Do I buy the idea that in the middle of a briefing, they would be letting people do that?

Because he walks through the crowd of people.

He's going to get to the coffee concert.

And a cop's like, hey, where's the sugar?

And he's like, I'll give give you my sugar from the coffee maker.

And he just knows where it is.

He finds it by chance.

I mean, there's a chance that all the vendors are union, and they're like, I do not want to mess with that union.

Those guys do not give a shit.

Yeah, that's very possible.

But he manages to get, I actually miss the moment where he gets the police radio.

Do they show him taking it or does he just walk out of the room and take it?

They show him taking it.

It's very quick.

He walks by and kind of picks it up without and just goes, clip,

you got to understand, Ellie.

I've seen this movie several times.

Okay.

I'm going to keep relying on you then.

On the way back, Riley gets, oh, sorry, Cooper gets stopped again by Riley's old friend's mom, who is very agitated.

And she's like, I've got a dark side, Buster.

Don't mess with me.

Our kids have to get back together.

And he...

I have to say, he does a great job of calming her down in order to de-escalate the situation.

And he listens to the police radio and he starts hearing Haley Mills, the FBI profiler, describing a suspect who looks like him.

She predicts his actions, which again, as we said, dissuades him from setting off a fire alarm.

He's about to do it.

And she's like, look for the guy who's about to set off the fire alarm.

And he's like, ugh, and it pulls his hand away.

Well, she describes him as a man that has like a tattoo.

And he looks down and he has a tattoo.

And I'm like, nothing else about this guy would make me believe he would have a tattoo.

No.

Like, he's so like,

yeah.

Protection.

And it shows how clever he is because he takes someone else's Lady Raven snap bracelet and just puts it around his wrist.

You know, well, and the tattoo is very important because it is the only

main question.

This is another ding.

I got a question.

Yeah.

Is

so there's all these cops standing around.

Nobody's allowed out.

If you try to leave, they're going to stop you.

They will shoot you.

And then what?

When they stop you, what are they going to do?

Say, are you the butcher?

Because their description, typically in a movie like this, I got you, Dan.

I have to finish my mini rant, but I'm a good host.

I'm a period.

I'm a good host.

No, no, no.

We're going to, we're going to, we're just, we're just, uh, we're just, you know, sparring nicely.

It's fine.

We're being held hostage by into the butcher homes.

No.

That's right.

That's right.

Nobody's leaving.

So

they

want to stop everybody,

but you see all the time and, you know, things where like, you know, in a traditional thriller, they'd be like, we're looking for a guy.

He's about this tall.

He's got this color hair.

He's wearing this.

Here, they cut all of that after we're looking for a guy.

Basically, the description is guy.

And so if, he

just went through the security on the way out and he just said, and they said, are you the butcher?

And he said, no, I'm not the butcher.

What on earth are they going to say next?

Other than that,

the butcher says what is what they say next.

Can you look at your phone, sir, and see if you have an app that allows you to remotely release carbon monoxide to kill your victim?

But because

he has this postage stamp-sized tattoo on his wrist,

The thinking is supposed to be if they were to stop him, they would see the postage stamp size tattoo on his wrist, despite the fact that what they say is surveillance footage of people in the general area of where the bodies were found, not good evidence of anything,

showed a variety of different guys, one of whom has some sort of tattoo on his arm of an animal of some sort.

And I would like to know what kind of surveillance footage tells you nothing about any of these guys except like white guy in his 30s, and yet can identify a postage stamp size tattoo on their wrist that is later going to be covered up by a snap bracelet.

I feel like

now I'm done.

Those cops just have to have the best goth hacker on their

team to enhance the shit out of that.

I was going to say, I don't want to mansplain to you, Linda, but two words, computer and hands.

No, and look,

I was not going to spar.

I was not going to disagree.

I just was over-eager in my desire to agree because like the thing is, like, maybe if they had one suspect, maybe if they had one suspect and they're like, this guy has a wrist tattoo, you could be like, okay.

We have two points of data now.

He's going to be at this concert.

He has a wrist tattoo.

We will like clock everyone who has those two things and then,

you know, do further surveillance, do whatever.

Like that's a starting point.

But the fact is, we learn later on, they have like multiple descriptions of multiple people who could be the butcher.

It's either an old man or a young man.

It's either a black guy or a white guy.

It's either a guy with red hair or a guy with dark hair.

It's one of those.

So you're right.

Like this whole movie should just be like Josh Hartnett being like, ha ha ha ha ha, they've got nothing on me.

We're going to watch the concert and then we're just going to walk the fuck out of the concert.

I mean,

they, what, they should have, what they should have had is they say, we have a witness, and he doesn't know that, you know, or something like that.

Like, he learns that or something.

Like, some, yeah, exactly.

Some reason.

See how you came up with something in 30 seconds, Elliot, that made this make somewhat more sense?

You see how that minimal amount of effort

paid off.

That's why they call me second draft Kalen because of time.

Because if they said that they had a witness, then he would also be like, I've got to find that witness to murder him.

Yeah, that'd be a second quest.

Yeah, that's a

side quest.

But then the movie might be more than 87 minutes or whatever it is.

That's true, though.

Let's see.

It is, sorry, it's 105 minutes.

That can't be right.

Anyway, then the movie would be longer, but

it's pretty trim right now.

But that would, actually, I kind of would have loved that if they had a witness there and he not has to, he doesn't have to just escape.

He has to get to the witness and kill him without any seeing.

See, we're making a Hitman level right now.

I guess this is it.

Yeah, this is a Hitman level.

So

even though, so Riley's like, you're acting weird, Dad.

And Cooper's like, let me be weird some more and go look for more exits.

Uh, he manages, he sees an exit.

He manages to distract everyone by creating an explosion in a deep fat fryer.

He throws like cans of something in a deep fat fryer.

Oil.

Explodes.

Bottles of oil.

Bottles of oil into the deep fat fryer.

It explodes and horribly burns a woman working there.

And he's, he, like, snags an apron, snags a hat, and he goes out the door.

Uh-oh, he's on the roof.

This is not any way he's going to be able to escape unless he's...

What's the hits man's name?

Agent 40.

Agent 47, yeah.

47.

And

then some SWAT cops show up.

He convinces them he's a snack bar employee.

And he has another vision of the old woman from earlier.

What could that possibly mean?

Riley, again, is like, Dad, you're acting weird.

But she can't wait to tell him.

Every concert, Lady Raven picks one lucky girl from the audience, and that's her dreamer girl.

And she gets invited on stage to dance with Lady Raven.

And she gets to go backstage.

And he

hears the word backstage and goes, oh, that's what I have to do.

So he goes.

Oh, no.

I was so excited when

this information is revealed.

He finds a Lady Raven employee, which who is played by

M.

Knight himself.

M.

Knight himself.

It's not an employee.

It's,

you work for Lady Raven.

He goes, actually, I'm

her uncle, her mother's brother.

And I think it's so funny that he says her mother's brother.

It's so unnecessary.

Who cares?

It's just like in signs when John Lego Sama goes, it looks like it's going to the town of Princeton.

And it's like, you could just say Princeton.

Like,

that's in the happening, isn't it?

That's in the happening.

Oh, the happening.

Not signs.

In the happening.

That's right.

I actually think, and maybe I'll come back to this, but I think Trap is his most the happening movie since the happening.

That is, that is my feeling.

I don't know.

There's a little movie called Old that I like to find it.

But I will say, I think it's interesting that this movie to me begins getting dramatically worse around the time you actually see him.

You know?

Yes.

And it becomes much worse.

I also think it's funny that he is, in real life, he is the actress who's playing Lady Raven's dad.

But in the movie, he is her uncle.

If I was her, I'd be like, so would you rather be my uncle than my dad?

Like, I don't understand what he's saying.

So he's like, and Cooper's like, hey, that's my daughter Riley.

She just recovered from leukemia.

That's why we're coming to the concert.

Lady Raven's music is what got her through it.

So I just want to say thank you.

Please tell Lady Raven.

I said, thank you.

And M.

Knight wanted to be this uncle, wanting to be a good guy.

He goes, how would you like to be the dreamer girl?

And

that uncle is going to get fucking dragged at Thanksgiving.

Yes.

And the leukemia never comes up in conversation.

So there's never a moment where Riley has to be like, what?

But anyway, she goes on stage.

She dances lady raven to the dismay of her ex-friends in the audience who are so pissed the friend's mom is also pissed and she's like you're horrible you're a horrible girl so i love that it's such a it's such a disney channel revenge but at this point cooper is both the butcher and also the best dad in the world so you got to give him points well and he has like i do think he you know

There are a lot of things I like in this movie.

He gives this look off stage of like very mixed emotions where he is a dad and a a serial killer at the same time where he's like excited to see his daughter so happy but also he's like oh god uh man i'm a bad man who's in a trap i do love the fact that apparently nobody has ever tried the my kid has a terrible disease uh angle on uh on this guy before which means i guess he's never seen the joe nameth episode of the brady bunch

because or it happens every show and later raven is like uncle can you please stop falling for this and he's like one time i'm gonna tell someone they're lying and they won't be lying.

And I will feel terrible.

So I will.

Secretly, every dream girl is somebody whose father said she had cancer.

Yeah.

The profiler is only feet away from him backstage, but he gets past her by helping a girl who collapsed get into the infirmary.

And he's a firefighter.

So he has like first aid training.

And they're like, what a wonderful man you are to help this stranger.

I wasn't sure why this part happened at all.

No, this is, I think, I think just for the irony of people thinking he's a great guy when really he's a monster.

And

you know, look, there's been a lot of talk about M.

Knight's dialogue, like the style of his dialogue.

I think sometimes it's overstated.

Stylogue.

I am not.

I am not one of those who's like,

it's to create discomfort, you know, like, so like, it's stilted.

Like, it's like, yeah, okay, well, that could be true if it's like certain characters, but all of the characters, I, I, I have a problem.

But like, to me, this is like the most stilted where it's just like, this is a good man.

Look at how good he is.

Yeah.

You know, or what.

Not a lot of people would do what you do, mister.

Yeah.

And like with the merch vendor, you don't see family values like that anymore, whatever he says.

You know, I think at a certain point, when someone...

The free thing about this movie delights Stuart so much.

I love it.

I wish you guys could see all the video.

It's just every single thing that happens is just delight and

smiles and applause.

That's the thing.

I feel like if he had just been wearing, if he had just been wearing a sweatshirt with like Goku's symbol on it, it would explain why everyone loves him.

Because Goku's super cool.

People love Dragon Ball that much that's what it is elliot they do love dragon ball i mean i worked with a sunk coast motion picture company in in night in the year 2000 1999 i can tell you they people love dragon ball we had a whole wall of dragon ball tapes so yeah i would be dragon ball was keeping that store afloat if he had a dragon ball thing on i would be indifferent to it well you're a monster you're the one i have no context for any of this yeah it's too bad well it would be like that the famous moment when i was walking through times square and i saw a shirt that said bazinga on it and i didn't really get the reference and it made me so mad.

I was like, just to seeing Jim Parsons' face, and it said Bazinga, and I was like, What the hell is this?

They put his face on it?

That's even weirder.

So, Dan, you know what's actually great about this is that means that you have no frame of reference.

You can just start watching Dragon Ball now and experience it all for the first time.

What a dream.

Learn about Frieza, Vegeta.

Factually, that's correct.

I could do that.

Nothing's stopping you.

Nothing is stopping you.

You know what?

You're right, Stuart.

Yeah, cool.

So anyway, backstage, Cooper, there's a, there's, okay, there's two moments in this movie that I genuinely love.

Uh, one is, not in an ironic way.

Cooper is backstage, and Lady Raven goes backstage for Costume Change and uses an inhaler for a moment.

And I kept, I was like, oh, so this will be like a plot point later.

It is not.

Or maybe it was at one point and it's left in his artifact, but I love it.

I love the idea.

Just this glimpse of this superstar being a vulnerable person for a moment.

I love it.

And similarly, she introduces her other guest star, Thinker, who is played by, what's his name?

Kicking Cody.

And this is my favorite character.

I think he's really a wig wearing Kid Cuddy.

He's wearing a very fake long wig.

He is my favorite character in the movie by far.

He is a very catty

performer.

The first time we meet him, he is saying, you brought me this milk and it has lactose in it.

What do you want me to poop myself on stage?

And it's one of those things where I'm like, I think he's supposed to be presented as like

a, like he's being a prima donna.

But you know what?

If you're lactose intolerant, you should, and you're one of the stars of the show, you should get lactose-free milk.

Like that is on them.

That's on production.

That's good in The Rider.

That should be in The Ryder.

That should be in the Rider.

Yeah.

That's a medical thing.

Anyway,

there's only one song left.

Cooper and Riley go backstage after, and they perform it.

They go back after stage after the show.

There's a moment, again, one of my favorite moments in the movie, Thinker walks by, is very played to Riley.

cruises Cooper so hard.

Yeah.

Is coming onto him silently so hard.

I love it.

I was like, this is the kind of thing that makes a character a person.

And this is the kind of moment that really brings to light in these troubled times when People fucking magazine lists John Krasinski is the sexiest man alive.

Oh my God.

Can you believe I'm here?

Fucking stop fucking with me, bro.

Josh Hardin's right there.

Give it to him.

What the fuck, Dan?

And

the picture of Krasinski is so arm forward, but his arms don't even look good in the picture.

What's going on?

Let's know.

This is a level of dick picking that I'm not talking about a man's body.

Chakrasinski is pretty sexy, Stuart.

God fucking damn.

Turn off the broadcast.

This is a trap for me.

Stuart, there's more than one kind of sexy, you know?

There's more than one kind out there.

Okay.

Listeners, write in and tell me why I shouldn't jump.

No, no, Stuart, you know,

it will give you, you know,

air life to know that, you know, over on Blue Sky, where everyone should migrate away from the terrible place,

there was a lot of what the fuck when that was announced.

Takes the story.

He's pretty sexy.

Well, the thing, he looks like a Muppet with a beard on him.

I mean, sexy, yeah.

Up till this point, it has been objectively the sexiest man alive every single time, right?

You never got wrong, Harry.

I think Nick Nulty was the first of them that they had.

Wow, really?

But not like modern Nick Nulty.

I mean, younger Nick Nulty.

He looked pretty good.

He's not turned into a grizzly.

In a world where Paul Newman exists, Nick Nolte is not the sexiest man.

This is the first time Stuart's been unhappy in this entire taping.

That's true.

He was love and trap.

And he brought it up.

None of us brought this up.

It's not like we didn't ambush.

It wasn't a trap to get him to talk about John Krasinski.

So anyway, I think her cruise is Cooper.

Cooper hears over the police radio that every single man in the building, including employees, is going to be stopped by the police on the way out.

Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave.

But it's a Lady Raven concert, so there's a limited number of men.

They're mostly dads bringing their daughters.

Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave uninspected.

So Cooper, he plays his ace.

He gets alone in a room with Lady Raven and he goes, Hey, I'm the butcher, and here on my phone is my victim.

And I'm going to kill him if you don't have help us leave in your limo.

And at that point, I'm like, well, you got no cards left to play, butcher.

Like you were holding him close to the vest for a long time.

He just threw him on the table.

Let's see what happens.

How do you guys feel about it?

I loved this.

I know that a lot of people think that this movie takes a disastrous turn.

Including Linda, I think,

think that the third act of this movie takes a disastrous turn for the worse.

Other than the fact that, God bless her, I think she's a convincing pop star, less convincing as an actress, centering Lady Raven at this part

is a problem with the movie because

I don't think she's up to the task as a performer.

Understatement again.

I'm trying to be kind to someone who is new to acting.

But I

yeah, and she's really had to prove herself.

It's not like her dad is a famous director who put her in his movie.

Her fault.

Okay.

She fought her way apart, man.

I will say that.

She auditioned under a fake name.

And

she isn't the daughter who directed Watchers, right?

No, that's another.

Oh, man.

That was not a good movie.

I do like that this movie is like, you know what?

Fuck it.

Like, like the that the butcher is like okay well this cat and mouse game has played out uh on a on a large scale as far as it's gonna go we gotta just make it a smaller cat and mouse game now between the two of us and like this is the you know like i have to blow up my life i guess if i'm gonna get out of here like it's a turn that i genuinely didn't expect in the theater and i like that it went someplace new in the last part of this movie and leading us to a second act that's basically just the two of them kind of yes each other.

Yeah.

Uh, well, what do you think?

Linda does not know.

I think,

well, first of all, the fact that she's not an actor is a, is a big problem.

The fact that they haven't developed her as a character at all is a big problem.

I think that's part of the issue for me, yeah, is that like she, for the whole movie, she has been not a really character in the story and now she becomes the central character.

And I think he's going for kind of like a psycho type thing.

She becomes kind of the protagonist all of a sudden, as you said, which I did not work for me.

And I think like,

listen, and I said this when we covered it on the first time on our show, I hope that if I ever had as much pull as M.

Night Shyamalan, if I had ever gotten as good at making a lot of money for myself and other people with modest budgets, if I had ever gotten as efficient with movie making and therefore found myself in that position.

You know, it's like, you know what I would compare to when Mike Scherr was coming off of Parks and Rec, he's talked about how they basically said, make whatever you want.

So he made a show about moral philosophy because it's like, I'm never going to have this much juice again in my whole life.

So I'm going to make the show I want to make about moral philosophy.

And I think if I were M.

Night Shyamalan in the position that he got himself into, I hope that I would undertake incredibly misbegotten projects to the benefit of my family members.

I think that is a, I think think that is a good thing to do.

As a human being, I really believe in it, but I think it hurts the project, right?

Like it's so, the movie is so obsessed.

And, you know, they've talked about this, that the movie was really conceived as a way to showcase her music.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I was saying to somebody the other day, like, let's imagine.

that they do this movie without her music, right?

How's the soundtrack album, by the way, Dan?

Yeah, it's in regular rotation now.

He's

in record mix, right?

Yeah, it's taken over instead of what, the Judgment Night soundtrack.

He's never going to kind of go negotiate with somebody else for music.

So it's going to be public domain songs.

That's my theory.

Make a version of this movie with public domain songs so that when they're, when she gets there and they're booking you at the concert, it's like

you're a grand old flag and all that kind of stuff.

That's the pure version of this movie, right?

Because it all becomes marketing for her music.

And I think it does hurt the movie.

And I think the problem is, and we have, we haven't quite gotten to this part yet, but

go ahead.

I'll ding when we get there.

But okay,

I also, I kind of like that it is, I feel like this is a pretty good capturing of like a pop concert.

I'm not necessarily saying that the music is like the same tier, but in a way, it's also like,

especially like when they get out to sing the finale, you know, the big whatever, the encore.

And I'm like, wow, that's the song they're closing with.

There's like no hook, dude.

Yeah.

I think it does capture that feeling a lot.

And the,

I, I, I'm torn because I don't think the music is amazing.

And I think her performance is not what it needs to be to sell that she is now the star of the show.

But the movie around it is better than it needs to be, I think, if it is a, if it's a movie meant to showcase a soundtrack album.

And there have been so many movies that were made around a band or around a singer that are terrible because they're just excuses for getting that person to sing in front of camera.

So I don't know.

Did I torn?

Like Natalie Torn.

I was waiting for it.

Since I clearly turned the movie off the moment the credits started,

is there like a trap theme song played over the credits that she sings where she like raps the story of the movie?

Not wrap the story of the movie.

So the butcher's butcher's in the stands, and there's a lot of pulling all the mans.

Set him up for that.

There's blood on his hands.

He's a dad.

Oh, man.

I want to hear this one.

I'll work on it later.

So, anyway, but we'll get to the features.

So, because this is where the movie, like I was saying, I think they're trying to for like a psycho type thing where it's like, you thought it was following these people, but really it's following this person now.

But that's that, it's not, doesn't work as well.

I think maybe because in Psycho, they're going from a less interesting character to a more interesting character.

They're going from Janet Lee to Anthony Perkins.

Whereas here, they're going from the butcher to a pop star, you know?

Yeah.

So Cooper, he wants Lady Raven's limo to take them to their car so they can escape.

They get waved right out.

Lady Raven is untouchable.

Anyone in her orbit is immune to is immune to inspection.

Even some random.

She's like super close right on the street.

Their part's like half a hundred.

It's not even that big of a hassle for me.

I will say, perhaps he did what I did at the Judas Breeze concert and pre-booked a parking space and just paid a little extra.

It's worth it, everybody.

You save yourself so much hassle.

You know, just go ahead and do it.

Maybe you're right.

And she's this Raven takes tea.

He's like, just drop us off at our car.

It's right next to the stadium.

And she's like, no, I want to see your house.

And Raven Riley is like, really?

When, if I'm in the car with a serial killer who has explained to me that he is someone who has dismembered, I don't know, 14, 12, 14 people.

If we're in the car and he says, I'm going to get out up here at the corner, I'm going to say, okay, bye,

as opposed to, no, let's go to your house.

This is what separates you from a true hero.

That's the thing.

I think it was around this point where it's revealed that he has a wife at home.

And I'm like, what?

I mean, he had such like single dad energy at this point.

Yeah,

you know what?

This is a this is a plot hole of the many that that that I did not think about.

But even if she wants to save this guy, you're right.

Like, let him get out.

You know who this man is now.

Call the cops.

You let him out.

You can't get his name in his face.

Let him out.

Call the police and say, hey, he just got out of my car.

She's got a phone on her.

What are you going to do when you get to his house that you can't do now?

That's my question.

Well, I think I wonder if it's that.

I mean, my assumption is she wants to go to his house so that she can tell.

the police where he lives.

Like they can go right there, you know, as opposed to him escaping, disappearing into the crowd potentially.

But if you say he's the dad of a girl named Riley who's this age, you know, and looks like this, then they could probably track him down.

I thought he was just on stage in front of a lot of people.

Yeah.

But the other, but the other answer is, because the movie doesn't can't end right there.

You got to keep the movie going.

So they get to their home.

Cooper's family is so excited to have Lady Raven there and his wife and his son.

He has a younger son.

His wife is Allison Pill.

He was very excited to see that.

It was nice to see Allison Pill.

Yeah.

And she gets her scene later on, you know.

So the, and she's like, hey, you know,

weirdly enough, it's kind of a pill-based scene later on.

Oh,

that's why the casts are going to create.

Probably.

It's all pun-based.

So Josh.

Well, they were casting a net to catch his heart.

This is a good theory.

I like it.

This is great.

This is great.

So she's like, hey, Cooper's family.

You know what's interesting?

The whole concert we were using as a trap to catch the butcher because he was going to come to the show.

And Cooper's wife.

She explains why.

She does give a little bit of background here.

She explains why they were.

They found one of his

old crime spots.

Because they found a torn ticket there.

Up to then, you have no idea why they would know that this butcher loves this music.

Allison Pill, like the wife, you know, her reaction is restrained, but enough that you're like, okay, well, she knows something, you know, at this point.

Why

did he, because what they say is that a part of a receipt

was found in his safe house.

Yes.

What in 2024, how did he obtain a concert ticket and wind up having a receipt he was carrying around in his wallet?

Did he buy it at the Modega?

Yeah, he got it.

He got it from CVS.

He said, I don't want to pay that.

$3, $10 ticket master charge.

I'm going to the box office.

And

I know that the gas I'm using to drive to the box office in the heart of Philly.

I live out in the suburbs.

I know

it's more than the money that I'm spending on the ticketmaster charge, but you know what?

Gosh darn it.

I just don't want to pay that.

I don't think they deserve that money.

So I'm going to go and I'm going to buy it at the box office.

I bet that's what he did.

And they gave him like the little receipt and he said, and they gave him like a little wall exactly.

And he said, I'm going to keep this in my wallet to remember this special day with Riley.

I mean, I feel like this is in Philly, so he could probably buy a concert ticket at like a Wawa or something, right?

Yeah,

probably.

Probably, yeah.

Yeah, put that on top of my sub.

And then I got to go run up the steps of the Museum of Art.

Yeah.

If you said sub in Philly, Dan, they would beat you up.

They would beat you up.

I'm sorry.

You know, I'm from the Midwest.

We call things what we call them.

Yeah.

A hoagie.

Is that what the correct?

Yeah.

I didn't pronounce it correctly, but Wawa did not.

Wawai is the good shit.

I will say that.

I grew up going to Wawa.

So she's like, hey, anyway,

it's my concert's all about Trappin' the Butcher.

Hey, can I play a song for you?

And she plays a song and Hooper is recording it.

And then she's like, How about a selfie?

And she just takes the camera and then runs into the bathroom.

I don't want to take over.

Takes the phone and then runs to the bathroom.

Some a great camera move, like a legitimately funny camera move that where she's like, hey, you want me to play a song?

And she points over, like the camera just pants over to the piano.

Swoosh, there's the piano.

I loved it.

I'm like, yes, you made the right choice here.

And I love that while she's playing this song, Josh Hartnett stands right next to them, filming filming it, and they keep cutting to him filming.

And it's such a weird angle and shot.

Obviously, it's a setup that she's like clocking where his phone is so she can steal it.

But it's just a really funny, it's very funny.

This whole thing is funny.

This whole part scene right here is very funny.

And I think it's supposed to seem suspenseful.

Like she's stalling for time.

She's doing the only thing she knows how to do to do it, which is perform music.

And Riley doesn't know what this is all about.

So she just thinks this is the greatest day in her life.

But it comes off as a little silly.

Anyway, she grabs Cooper's phone, goes into the bathroom, locks herself in, uses his serial killer app to get in touch with the victim, and is like, tell me anything you remember about where he took you.

And he's like, oh, there was a broken statue of a stone lion and a blue door.

And she goes onto Instagram and she's like, hey, all my fans.

Hey, I love you so much.

Peace and love.

Peace all over.

You know, freedom in the Middle East or whatever.

And hey,

there's a, I have this guy.

I need you to help him.

Does anyone live near a broken stone lion and there's a house with a blue door?

And she manages to crowdsource where the house is.

And she's like, go to that house, which is bad advice to tell her fans.

Don't go to the house that the serial killer has a guy at.

Call the police.

Tell them to go to that house.

She could have called the police.

Maybe she could have called 911 when she got into the bathroom.

And said, I'm at the butcher's house.

I'm at the butcher's house.

Here's his address.

This is the treaty lives on.

It's like, this is the clever thing for her to do, but it's not the smart thing.

Yeah, I do like this as a device.

There would have been a better, like, there are a lot of things in here where it's like, there would have been a better way to implement it, you know, even though the basic device is fun.

If you had built this up with Lady Raven as more of a character, then you could have, I think you could have had her, you could have made a little bit more about this, you know, but uh, and the way she relates to her fans and all that.

But anyway, Cooper is getting increasingly loud and angry on the other side of the door.

And I do like, it reminds me of my favorite scene in the movie, Phone Booth, no, Phone Booth, where he's talking on the phone with a sniper and these other people want to use the phone and they're banging on the door.

And he's like, there's just too much stuff going on at once.

It's very stressful.

I'm like, it is, I know this stress to be on the phone with somebody and someone else is yelling.

Usually a child in my case is yelling at you on the other side.

Usually, not always.

No, sometimes it's the butcher.

And she yells to the door, your husband is the butcher.

And that's, you know, that's, she thinks that's checkmate.

And then I will say this.

This is the scariest moment of the movie to me.

And I think the movie does not earn it, but I think they have it, is

the noise stops outside the bathroom door.

And then when Cooper gets that door open, his family is gone.

And we don't know at first where they are.

And that one moment where i'm like did he murder his whole family in that like that's the scariest moment in the whole movie for me and it turns out he locks them in a very easy to escape room so it's i feel like i feel like if if they're if they had like paused for a moment with that and like maybe even done like a close-up on like a single bit of blood like yes like something while she's like searching for trying to figure out what exactly happened yeah yeah or even like if he or if it if it did happen and she's and he's there and there's just like a little blood on his shirt or something like that then i would would be like this movie just jumped up a whole like a whole level you know um

but it didn't it didn't do that so he's like hey anyway let me check my phone he goes give me give me my phone he checks it his victim is gone uh oh he's been rescued already and he's like you're gonna be my hostage to escape let's get in my wife's car because they're gonna be looking for my car and raven they get in the car and raven starts i guess using what the profiler taught her before the movie started and she starts talking to him as if she's her mother as if she's his mother And, you know,

why are you being a bad boy?

Or I don't remember what she says.

Did this scene work for you guys at all?

Because it did not work for me at all.

It seems so ridiculous, this whole section, you know.

Yeah, I they tried to make something of this mom thing, but it feels so extraneous to the movie.

Like it doesn't actually have an effect.

And she's like doing it so obviously and clumsily

that I don't, I don't know.

In terms of serial killers with relationships with their moms, this is not the best movie to have that.

I can think of four of them.

Yeah, I mean, I think you could do something with this theoretically.

I mean, it's a, it's a direction to go down, but I think,

you know, for me in a movie like this, I think any effort you make to explain why he's a serial killer is completely unnecessary.

It's not that kind of movie, right?

And so it's one thing like, yes, I mean, first of all, as I think Dan's alluding to, it's been done a lot.

The whole like, it's the mom's fault.

But also, I don't care.

Like, it's not like they're going to get to some place where you're going to be like, you know what?

And I totally understand why he decided to start cutting up people's bodies and leaving them in piles around various places.

Like, now that really makes sense to me.

Like, now I get it.

So, I just don't care why he's a serial killer.

It's, I just want the, I just want the thriller part.

I don't care why.

I don't even think they're saying it's the mom's fault, though.

Cause like later on, uh, you know, Haley Mills says, you know, probably early on,

you know, no one could have noticed that, like, they're very good at disguising it.

The only person he probably noticed was his mom.

So the idea, I guess, is just that, like, he had this relationship with his mom where she's like trying to keep him in line.

Like, I know that you have the serial killer urge within you, but don't kill people, please, you know?

But maybe it's not enough.

Like, I don't, I, like, I, I agree in the larger sense where it's just like, I don't need the psychology of it.

Like, it's, this is such a silly movie that nothing's going to

be worth it.

I think it's meant to be like a deepening of the character, but it feels like padding.

It feels more like filler, you know, because you're right.

This is not the kind of movie where we're going to get inside the head of a dark soul and see what things tick.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is time that would have been better spent doing more like tense thrill ride crap.

Yes.

But that's not what happens.

And then this stalls him just for a little bit.

He opens up the garage.

His family is standing there blocking the car.

and that unmans him.

He can't move against his family anymore.

He loves them too much, I guess.

And she takes the family away in her limo as the SWAT cops descend on the house.

Have they caught the butcher?

Did they finally catch the notorious Philly butcher?

No, there's at least two more twists.

No, there's an escape tunnel.

He escaped.

What I think is they're like, we found a tunnel.

It leads to the neighbor's yard.

And I'm like, then he can't be that far away.

Like, just don't hit that asshole.

What the fuck?

He just gave up.

Well, he can also teleport.

We didn't talk about that.

Yeah, there's that too.

It's like, oh, we thought he was here, but he's actually 100 feet away.

Sorry, I guess he's out of our jurisdiction when he's in that yard.

Yeah, maybe if Lady Raven had called 911 instead of gotten on Instagram, they would have been there sooner.

Maybe

to get the social points.

I was hoping that we were going to have like a serial killer home loan situation, kind of like in the recent season of Fargo, but we didn't get that.

We can't chase them across property lines.

No.

We have no jurisdiction.

No, we can't go there.

And so

Cooper has an escape tunnel, and he gets the drop on Lady Raven again.

She's in her limo.

He handcuffs her to like a railing inside the limo, which is that a thing that limos usually have is like a handicapped railing or something?

A rail.

I mean, they have that thing that you like hang stuff on, right?

Like the towel rack?

No, like.

Like an oh shit bar.

Yeah.

Like the suit, the suit.

Like the thing where you hang up clothes and stuff like that.

But it's so low down.

That's not where you would hang it.

Yeah, no, I don't think there's any pool on the ground.

Okay.

No, I don't think there's anything that makes this make sense.

And so he handcuffs her to this to this rail, and he's driving around.

He's driving through Philly with her in the back.

He's like, he's in the front as

the...

as the chauffeur.

And he's like, you know, I don't like that when I saw you on stage, you seemed like you were whole.

I don't like people who are whole.

You know, he likes people who are half, you know, incomplete.

You know, it's more trying to create a philosophy for him, which does not need to be there.

He's a, he's a cipher, you know.

Well, he should have just been talking about all the sights and sounds of South Street and Philly.

Well, and here's the thing: I don't know why he decides to take her through apparently the busiest part of Philly because it's crowded with people.

And she rolls down a window and she's like, Hey, I'm Lady Raven.

And they all crowd around her car.

And once again, she has weaponized her fame to stymie this brilliant serial-killing monster.

And the fans run the car, and it buys time for her to finally rip out the railing and escape.

She manages to remove it.

I would sue her limo manufacturer or something, or at least ask for a refund.

That it shouldn't be, it shouldn't break that easily.

The police show up, they shoot out the tires.

Sorry.

So, but now, finally, finally, they caught the butcher, right?

I mean, he's in a car.

They're surrounding his car with friends.

Like he is, finally, after two traps, he is finally trapped, right, guys?

You can't trap the trap master.

Well, I just, I just think of the trapster, a.k.a.

Pacepod Pete.

Let's envision the car surrounded by fans of her.

who want nothing more than to get into the car and see her, who now sort of understand that she was in trouble because she indicated she was.

There's a swarm of people around the car.

He

does what exactly?

In slipping away?

He.

So we can't, we have to assume he does not open the door or else people would, he'd have to move people out of the way.

They would see that happening.

So I guess he has an escape tunnel in the limo that didn't belong to him.

But he goes out the bottom into a manhole.

Yeah, what happens is he starts running around in circles and then the bottom half of his body turns into a drill and he drills through the bottom of the the car oh he did the old drill spin yeah it happens they got a hole in the bottom of the car have you ever seen the documentary about the toynbee tiles which are the um those things there are these tiles that are in the street in the pavement in philadelphia and some other places that have a little weird secret message and nobody knew like how they were getting embedded there are some in new york too and you're in new york yeah you can still occasionally see them they have a weird they're like a mosaic they're like mosaics they're like made of yeah piece of glass and stuff and there's a whole documentary about these guys who went out to try to figure out where in the hell these things came from and who was doing it.

And it turns out that the person who was doing it was dropping them out of the bottom of a hole in a car, like driving over the pavement and dropping the tile out the bottom of a hole in the car.

It is a great documentary and it has, it's called Resurrect Dead and it has.

The best Philadelphia accents you will ever hear in your life.

So that's just a little note about that.

And so I figure he has that kind of little hole in the bottom of the car.

Drop it out, drop himself out, crawl away.

That's possible.

I mean, I just thought maybe he took his one last ghost pill, which allows him to turn invisible and intangible and he could walk through everybody.

But the point is, your way is better.

He's loose.

He does what

every good criminal does, goes back home.

Yeah.

Lady Raven, being a saint, goes and comforts the freed victim of the butcher.

He goes back home to his wife, who has deliberately stayed at home.

The profiler was like, you can come with us to safety.

And she's like, nah, I'll stay at home.

And Cooper shows up because she has to be there to reveal that she suspected he was the butcher and set him up by going to his kill house and leaving the receipt torn so it looked like it was a mistake.

And the police would know he would be at the Lady Raven concert.

And he threatens her with a knife.

And she's like, wait, before you kill me, can you at least have some of this lie that I made?

I think you are ignoring my favorite thing, which is he goes inside and immediately starts taking his shirt off.

Yes, there was a moment where I was like, so it's another thing.

I missed the moment where he took his shirt off.

So I was like, suddenly he was shirtless.

And I was like, wow, I don't understand.

So isn't he wearing a shirt?

It goes with this part of the explanation.

The explanation that they give is she, he was being like distant and strange, and she thought maybe he was having an affair.

But then she smelled cleaning products on hospital.

Great cleaning slop products.

Yeah.

And so when she smells the hospital grade cleaning products, her first thought is, he must be that serious.

Well, it well, and she also does a little sleuth thing.

It's an intrusive thought that gets in her head.

And so she does this test for him.

And so she, so she starts talking about, I smelled it on your clothes.

And that's when he starts taking his shirt off.

Oh, I see.

That's why.

That I think there's supposed to be a connection between she starts talking about your clothes were incriminating.

But yeah, and the best part about the torn receipt, when she says, oh, I tore it so that it would seem like a mistake.

No, you tore it because a real receipt for a ticket would probably have some kind of identifying information that would mean that they would not have to go about it in this way.

That's because they wouldn't be able to have like a credit card number or something.

And there's not really any reason why a torn receipt would look more like a mistake than a whole receipt left behind in your hidey hole.

Yeah.

It's this is where I think it just starts getting real goofy.

I mean,

that doesn't make sense.

I mean, I do think that like

I look the the I'm not saying that this is good.

I'm saying that the idea that the movie is putting forth is like, I didn't want to believe it.

So I'm doing this like circuitous thing.

And like, maybe it'll prove me, maybe it'll disprove me.

And I enjoyed watching the scene because, you know, again, God bless her.

Lady Raven, not the actress that Allison Pill is.

Like, you've got like two people.

really like tearing into the scene here, which helps it paper over the fact that this isn't making any sense.

Like, if she suspected her husband might be this killer, then maybe call the police.

Call the police.

They can look into it.

Don't do something about your kids.

Maybe she's just like, I want to see what kind of crazy trap they come up with.

Maybe this is their sex game, their cat and mouse play, where it's like, I'm going to set up a trap and see if he can get out of it.

It's going to be

so hard.

There was a brief moment when they were going to the house, and I was like, is his wife in on it?

Yes, that would have been awesome.

I was worried that was what it was going to be.

That was a bit of a matter of time.

going to be like, you almost got caught.

You've got to get better, you know.

But

she's, the silly part for me was when she goes, wait, before you kill me, can we have some of this pie that I made?

I went to all the trouble making it.

He eats a whole piece of pie before we realize that he's drugged.

She drugged the pie.

He hallucinates his mother being like, that's the pill that I mentioned earlier.

Yes.

And he hallucinates his mother being like, I love you.

And the cops come in and tase the shit out of him.

They just keep tasing him.

And they arrest him.

They bring him outside.

They let him pick up Riley's knocked over bicycle, which was lying on its side.

He's a good dad, you know.

Riley comes out, gets to hug him one last time.

And then just to speed through the end, he's in the back of the police van and he pulls out from his sleeve.

He's handcuffed, but he pulls out his sleeve.

He palmed one of the spokes from Riley's bike.

How you could pull the spoke out of a flight wheel and slip it in your sleeve without anybody noticing

the police always give you a quiet moment to yourself off in the corner with a piece of equipment before they take you into the police van.

Yeah, this guy who is probably, let's say probably a suicide risk.

Like, yeah, let's just leave him alone in the back of the van.

And so he takes out that spoke and it takes more time than I thought it would.

He unlocks his handcuff as he's laughing as if he's going to get away.

And it's like, when they, it's not like when they open the doors, is he going to run for it?

Like, he's going to, it's never supposed to be like, this guy is about to escape.

As soon as he, as he as soon as he leaps, just going to shoot him.

Elliot, you're wrong.

He's going to escape.

You know, he's like he's going to escape.

I know he's going to escape because it's a movie.

But I'm saying, and there's nothing, other than his supernatural escaping abilities as a serial killer, there's nothing that would lead us to believe he is that much closer to escaping.

If there was one more shot, maybe in the middle of the credits, it would be a shot of them opening up the back doors and he would be like that.

He would be gone.

His clothes would be there and they'd be like, what the fuck?

Yeah, that's true.

ABB out on a naked guy.

Hole in the bottom of the truck.

Now, it's possible that would have been the more, the mid-credits scene that would have made more sense instead of a sequel.

Instead, as we mentioned, we get the mid-credit scene of the merch vendors just watching TV and they say, this guy, Cooper, did this thing, and he goes, he has the biggest comedy reaction to it.

He flips out.

He goes, I'm never talking to anybody at work again.

He's going, whoa, whoa,

I helped him.

I helped him.

It is like the,

it is the live-action equivalent of someone just flipping backwards at the end of a bazooka joe comics.com.

I'm not going to watch it again.

I was going to say,

I cannot believe that he missed it.

You guys could be making this up.

No, and that's the moment where I'm like, oh, they knew they were making a silly movie because this is not a creepy you know, thing.

This is just a big joke and it's so silly, you know.

Yeah, well, let's get into our judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, our final judgments, in fact, a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

And I have to say, look, it's a movie I kind of like.

And I will, I will say after that, that there's a sucks or rocks mentality that I think the internet has only made worse, where it has to be like bad, terrible, or it has to be like amazing.

Every choice was right and i don't think every choice was right i think that there's stuff in here that is like silly thriller mechanics that i like because i like the manipulation i think he's having fun specifically being like goofy and manipulating things and

and it might be outlandish but it doesn't matter and then there's stuff in there where it's like no This legitimately makes no sense.

And maybe if you gave it a little more thought, you could make a better movie with the same elements.

Likewise, some of the dialogue.

Like, I don't have the problem that some people have with the dialogue, but I am also not going to be out there defending it as, like, no, this is exactly the dialogue he wanted to do.

Like, you could have made some dialogue that sounded a little more like human beings.

That being said, like, it is a movie that I think is having fun, being a silly, trashy thriller, and I, and I enjoyed it.

Stuart.

Yeah, I mean, to touch on, like, I feel like

I've been critical of Shyamilan in the past of being, of like being not really an actor's director.

And I think a big part of it is that he writes dialogue that, you know, you have to, you have to be a good actor to sell.

And

I mean, at least that's kind of how I feel with it.

I would say this is a movie that I kind of liked.

I mean, it is very silly.

Large chunks of it don't make sense.

Particularly the final third doesn't make much sense.

But I had a lot of fun.

And I really just love, like, I just love that first act of him just like desperately trying to sneak his way out of there and like being very funny about it.

Like it's just, and then like, just like upping the ante to the point where he's like, oh, I guess I got to go backstage.

Like, I loved it.

Love that stuff.

But yeah, yeah, the final third's a mess.

And I feel like, yeah, they're trying to clean up for homework.

Like, it's like they're trying to finish their homework on on the bus on the way to school

yeah it does feel i and i i kind of feel similarly i think that like this is i don't think it's a good bad movie and i don't think it's so bad bad but i don't it's not quite a movie i kind of like but i feel like it is a there are things i like in it you know but i'm i think i'm grading it on a curve to be honest because this is the kind of movie you don't see that much of in in wide release anymore the same way that like when i watched the net in 1995, I was like, this movie is bad.

And now when I watch it, I'm like, this is a fun movie.

I kind of like this movie.

So I think that's, that's the curve I'm grading it on because there's a lot in the movie that doesn't quite make sense and is very silly and is not as it never reaches.

I think what it gets me is it's never, it never reaches the moments of thrill or suspense that it is going for.

I don't think.

You know, it's trying really hard.

Spills it gets.

You know, that woman falls down the stairs.

I mean, she's pushed down the stairs.

That's a spill.

But Linda, what do you think?

You loved it, right?

I, this is not just a good, bad movie.

This is like my exact idea of a good, bad movie.

And I had, I, I absolutely, I had a great time at this movie.

I saw it with my best friend in the world and we were at the theater and it was a great time because as I said, at the end of this movie, I turned to him and I said, you know, if they said us something about the parent trap, this would be the best movie I've seen all year.

Right.

However, the reason why it kind of irks me is that I, I fucking love thrillers.

Like I love like what I tend to refer to as trench coat thrillers.

Like,

you know, the whole in the 90s in particular, you had both like really high-end ones, like the fugitive.

And then you also had like these really goofy ones, like, uh, double jeopardy and stuff like that.

I love thrillers and I love silly thrillers.

However,

it is, it is, yeah, sillers.

It is possible to spend 30 seconds making it make more sense than this.

And when it is so in your face that like, there's no indication of like why his wife would if she really thought he was a serial killer go about this like i think you might be a serial killer so i'm going to give the police a very unhelpful clue that will set you up to be confronted while you're with my daughter at a concert

that's the other thing i'm gonna i'm gonna set it up so that you are potentially picked up by the police or killed by the police in front of our daughter in front of our daughter there's not really any kind of effort to explain what this police operation even is what they're going to do if they, like what they're doing to all these people.

There's no effort to get around like this would immediately be something that everyone in Philadelphia knew about, as opposed to the fact that the concert's kind of going along and everybody seems to not be paying that much attention to it inside the concert, even though everyone is being held by the police.

No, there's like not, and it irritates me because.

I sort of agree with something that Dan was saying about the

sucks or rocks thing.

But my version of that is that I think there is a pedantry about unimportant details that has resulted in a backlash where anytime you say, this doesn't make a fucking bit of sense, people are like, you don't get it.

You don't get it.

It's supposed to be fun.

It can still be fun.

In fact, I would argue, and I hate, this makes me sound so much like the person where like, if you're responsible at the party, it's more fun.

It can actually be, I think, more fun when it is put together in a way that everything kind of fits and clicks.

And that's what I love in thrillers.

That's why I maintain that if they had given Die Hard an Oscar for screenplay, I think that would have been absolutely appropriate.

Everything in that movie, everything in that movie is either setup or payoff of a specific thing.

The thing with the bare feet, it is so, it is all so tight.

The same thing is true of

speed.

The same thing is true of the fugitive.

And I'm not saying you have to be as good as like my favorite thrillers, but like he is good enough to make good thrillers.

And this feels a little bit like, who gives a shit?

He is like, he is good enough to make like the Philly thriller movie.

Right.

And I, it just, it irritates me.

Yeah.

It irritates me that we have wound up in this situation where if you ask for anything,

there's this kind of like, you just don't get it.

I promise you, I get trap.

Like, I don't not get trap.

Now,

we might be jumping into recommendations, but you're talking about, uh,

thrillers from the past.

I feel like if I'm looking for like an adult thriller movie, what I'm hoping for like Fincher to make another one of his paperback thrillers, like what?

Yeah.

Where else should I look for this, Linda?

I need, I need direction for thrills.

Well, this is the thing is that there aren't that many.

And that's what irritates me is he's sort of the guy who should be making them.

And when they happen, they're sometimes on,

they're sometimes on streaming now, like smaller, smaller ones.

There's one that Julianne Moore was in called Sharper that was on, I think, Apple.

And it's not great, but I thought it was fun.

And

a lot of them are kind of getting into that space.

I think also there's a lot of horror thriller kind of,

you know, blurring of that line where you don't get as many non-horror

political trench code thrillers like the Grisham stuff and all that kind of stuff.

It feels like that's what a big part of what's happened.

Yeah, is that horror has eaten up the oxygen that used to go to thrillers and the kind of movies that of the kinds of movies that Alfred Hitchcock used to make, there's a lot of psychos now, but there's not a lot of like notoriouses, you know?

No, that's a good point.

Right.

Yeah, I'm like, I'm thinking of like, I don't know, like Fresh.

Did you see that one on Hulu with Sebastian Stan?

The

I heard

it.

Yeah.

I heard that.

There was a lot of like U in Danger Girl movies that all all came out where it's like women going off into the woods with strange men.

You're like, I don't know why you're doing this.

And every once in a while, there's one that I really like that I don't expect to like that's more on the horror side, but pulls some of those same strings.

The one that Caitlin Deaver was in that has no dialogue almost.

Yeah, with the aliens one.

Yeah.

I thought that was.

fun and scary as hell and and uh and and and bleak as fuck which i kind of enjoyed about it in the end um so anyway i think i get mad mad about this movie because

it's yeah, for one character.

I think opportunity costs kind of got me with this movie because I think Hartnett is like, look, the more I've,

the more I've watched Trapped, Trapped, the more I've watched Trap, the more I do really like the Hartnett performance.

And at the end, when he's like explaining his weird sadism to his wife, I think it's like quite effectively creepy.

I'd watch that movie, but got to make it make just a little bit of sense.

Sorry.

I know that's a long rant, but those are my trapped feelings.

It feels like the frustrating thing about this movie, yeah, I think what you're saying is there's a better version of this movie that they could have made, and they just didn't, they didn't get to that.

They were kind of more focused on the concert, it feels like, and less on everything else.

Yeah.

Somewhere in an alternate universe where Hollywood is smarter.

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Of course, every week, the Flophouse is sponsored by listeners just like you who have become members at maximumfun.org.

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And

in more flop house

specific news, we are still in the middle of our Flop TV season, our series of six six one-hour live streaming shows.

You can get tickets at theflophouse.simpletics.com.

This is our second flop TV season.

So we made this season all about sequels on our most recent episode.

We talked about Caddyshack 2.

And along with that movie discussion, there's also My Ode to Mediocre Films that used to play in HBO in the 80s.

And Stewart interviewed the most iconic star of Caddyshack 2.

So that's the sort of thing you can get.

What delights are in store for our next episode when we discuss Highlander 2 the quickening?

Well, you'll have to watch to find out.

That one debuts on December 7th.

And I say debuts because that's when you can watch it live and chat along with other viewers if you like to do so.

But it will also be available to ticket holders until the end of our season, which comes at the end of February 2025.

Tickets, again, can be gotten at theflophouse.simpletics.com for $7 per individual show, or you can get a season pass for $35, which is the equivalent of getting one show for free.

And also,

new news.

That's what makes it news.

It's new.

If you prefer seeing us, the Flophouse, truly live in MeatSpace, where you can smell Stewart's various cardigans and track suits, good news.

The Flop House is coming back to San Francisco Sketch Fest in 2025, January 2025.

We were thrilled to be asked back.

And honestly, with how busy Elliott is these days, this might be one of the only in-person live shows we can squeeze in for the next several months.

So if you are interested, do not sleep on it.

We will be back at Cobbs Comedy Club on Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 7 p.m.

And if you want tickets for that, go to sfsketchfest.com and you can sort yourself out from there.

Back to the show.

Let's move on to letters from listeners.

We got a couple of them.

This one is from Matt LastName Withheld, who writes, I was recently perusing a record tent at a local flea market when I stumbled upon an incredible gem, a pristine promotional copy of the Cobra soundtrack.

Wow.

I don't recall if you mentioned it at your live show, but the soundtrack is back-to-back bangers, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner impersonations, Jean Beauvoir, and Gary Wright deep cuts, sorry, and some fantastically fantastically emotive work by prolific 80s soundtrack composer Sylvester LeVay.

As this album both rules and is not available on Spotify or presumably physically anywhere else on Earth, I plan to cherish it forever or at least until I finally watch the actual movie.

This leads me to ask, Are there any movie soundtracks that you currently own or have owned in the past?

R-O-C-K in the USA, Matt?

I mean, that's a wide open.

I don't know about you guys.

As a movie person,

I own a lot of soundtracks.

Yeah, your apartment's lousy with them.

Lousy.

You can't walk anywhere without.

Please

don't step on my soundtrack.

But I feel like you've also gotten, like, even recently, I feel like you've gotten soundtracks before you saw the movie, right?

In a couple of cases.

I got the

I saw the TV Glow soundtrack before I saw the movie because I'm like, I am pretty sure I'm going to like this.

And it is, you know, like there are a lot of limited pressings of these things these days in terms of like getting it on

vinyl.

Got a new Draft Majesty song.

It rules.

I was gonna highlight a couple things.

I mean, that's a, that's a good one.

I was gonna say I have,

I love the guest soundtrack specifically.

Oh, yeah.

A lot of sort of synth wave-y sounds and alt

pop and rock from a certain period.

And I have the house, houseu soundtrack, which is a great melange of like, you know, what you might expect out of a horror movie, but also like this, I, this Japanese idea of what like a blues song sound

is on the soundtrack.

And then there's like a lot of really like peppy, jazzy sounds on there, too.

It's just a fun one to yeah, it's your go-to doing it mix.

Elliot, do you have any soundtracks you like?

Yeah,

there's a, I mean, there were two soundtrack compilations that I got when I was a teenager that I listened to over and over again and I I can and I and have stuck with me all the time.

One was a compilation of Neo Moricone songs that I got it because it had, I already had the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack, and I had the music for the first two Man With No Name movies, and then just random songs from other movies, and then also the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack was in there.

It was a lot of tracks, and I loved like just hearing a title song or a random song from one of his movies and just be like trying to think about what the movie was that went with this.

I think they were all Westerns, but what this was about.

And then similar to that Hausu soundtrack, there was a disc I had that was Godzilla movie music from the first movie until, I think, the early 70s.

And it was great to hear in each movie, it's kind of like, okay, now here's the kind of jazzy number.

Now here's the torch song number that's about King Caesar of the monster.

Like here's the, like there's all the, the, having all these different styles.

in Japanese applied to songs about monsters.

And they're just very, it just was like, oh, there's so much you could do with this stuff.

It doesn't all have to sound like the same thing over and over again.

So those are two albums I listen to a lot and just kind of would make up my own kind of movie stories to go with them.

What about you, Stuart?

Oh, I mean, you know, I was a teenager in the 90s, which I think was like the heyday of like

soundtrack CDs, you know, your tank girls, your Menace 2 Society, your aforementioned Judgment Night,

The Crow.

Oh, wow.

Empire Records.

You were a big fan of the Empire Records soundtrack, right?

Front to back.

Let's see.

But yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of like, like re like, obviously, one that I listen to regularly now is

To Live and Die in LA, all Wang Chung, baby.

Let me see.

I mean,

like, I've listened to a fair amount of like the various like Johnny Greenwood and the Trent Reznor scores, though I guess that's a little different than soundtracks.

Linda, what about you?

I will just say we did an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour where we talked about best soundtrack albums ever.

And

it was fascinating to even try to figure out what we thought that meant.

And I will just say the four that we picked, I picked O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Aisha picked Waiting to Exhale.

Steven picked Purple Rain.

And Glenn Weldon, my beloved friend.

chose Superman the movie.

So we talked about, so we talked a lot about kind of all the different things that go into them.

But I also, like Stuart, just owned a lot of like random ass soundtracks, especially in the 90s, because I would hear something and I would like the music and I would get the CD.

I listened a lot to the League of Their Own soundtrack, which is, uh, which has a lot of like

classics, like takes on classics, um, like kind of up to some of which are really garbagey, but I listened to it a lot.

Uh, I listened a ton to the sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, stuff like that.

Um, a lot of rom-com soundtracks.

The like Tales from the Crypt Demon Knight soundtrack, Dan.

Oh, man, that's hard rock and roll on there, boy.

You got it, you got it, buddy.

One that was played a lot in my house growing up, not by me, was the Forest Gump double CD soundtrack.

It was as if they took, they like reached their hands into my dad's head and just pulled out two CDs.

Like, and so I think for him, it's like, how did they do it?

They're all my memories on disc.

There are a lot of those compilation ones, like the uh, I also talked about the American graffiti one.

That's exactly what I was about to say.

The American graffiti one is, is just like just endless hits and bangers and all hits, no skips, pretty much, if you like that era and that type of music.

I mean, I feel like the big chill is mostly remembered today as like, oh, all your Motown favorites.

Okay, well, this next question is from Tom, last name with Held, who writes, as a longtime listener, some of the Flophouse's unique phrases have made their way into my everyday lexicon.

Sorry.

This came to a head when one of my young children, in a fit of anger, called me a bad dad soccer dad.

Got him.

I was taken aback by this because I don't listen to episodes with my kids.

That's something a bad dad soccer dad would do.

And I don't recall ever using the phrase around them.

Since then, the phrase has continued to evolve within my family.

My wife has been accused of being a bad mom soccer mom, and I was eventually redeemed and earned the title of Good Dad Soccer Dad.

Oh, thank goodness.

Yeah.

Are there any odd or obscure phrases from a movie or other other forms of media that have made their way into your households?

Keep on flopping in the free world, Tom.

Can I do mine?

Yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

I was one of a very tiny number of people who actually watched the Fox show Married by America in the early aughts, in which a bunch of people were thrown together

and supposed to get married.

Nobody got married.

It's a, it's a whole dark chapter in the history of reality dating shows, but there was an amazing moment in this show.

And I wrote recaps of it, which is why I watched the whole thing.

And there's an amazing moment in this show where this woman, this guy comes out to this woman he's supposed to marry, comes outside and she's sitting in the garden.

And he says to her, what you doing?

And she says, eating an apple, because she's eating an apple.

And there are at least two people in my life I can think of.

where if I today said to them, what you doing?

They would say, eating an apple.

And it's not funny outside of the context of Married by America, but in the context of Married by America, absolutely amazing.

This is a tough one because I feel like, honestly, most of the way I communicate is through esoteric references.

So then it's hard to then think of a specific one whenever

asked.

But to harken back to

I just say skip to Maloo McNuggets all the time.

Yeah.

A large percentage.

This is not actually so much a specific line reference or anything, just like

a reference to a movie title.

But Audrey and I have taken to calling, you know, if one of us is like going to go out and do something on our own during the day, like have a day, we call it a baby's day out.

Oh,

you know, you can take a baby's day out.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's a million of these that my wife and I share lately.

So

I won't try and remember all of them, but lately, a lot of it is me just randomly doing, you know, anytime we're watching the news and hear a particularly good New York accent, it makes me have to do my best.

The penguin impression.

Just being like, you're a good kid, Vic.

You're a good kid.

I think we have a lot of them in our house too, but I think the one that comes to mind most is the, is

something that Laserwolf says in Fizzle on the Roof, where he's talking about how he doesn't have any bad blood between him and Tevia after Tevia broke his agreement to marry Tevia's daughter.

And he goes, what?

It's done.

And he mimes a butcher's knife chopping off his fingers is done.

So sometimes we'll talk about something that can't be changed.

I go, what's done?

Shh, it's done.

And I'll mime a butcher's knife chopping my fingers off because that's,

I think it's so funny because he's like, he's a butcher.

Everything he knows is butcher stuff.

And it ties into today's movie.

It does.

Trap.

It does.

Because he was trapped in the schedule.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Although then they were trapped by being kicked out of the shuttle.

Yeah.

Let us do our final segment of the show, which is recommendations.

Would you say tradition is a trap, Elliot?

Well, it's interesting you said.

Let's get into it.

Let's get into it.

Tradition, in some ways, it's the boundaries you can't pass beyond.

In some ways, it's the structure that holds you up.

Tevya, in the beginning, he's saying tradition is what helps them keep their balance.

But what happens when the world takes the roof away?

How do you keep your balance then?

You have to build new traditions.

I think that's what's going to happen in my sequel, Tevya in America.

Tevia goes west.

I mean, it's basically an American tale.

Yeah.

He's got his little six guns.

Oh, man, it's great.

Go, Dan.

Even though.

This is literally something I, I mean,

and the Frisco kid is a different version of this.

I have literally wanted to do something for years

where a Jew goes from that palo settlement to the old West,

but it's Herschel, like the legendary, you know, clever Jew who can outsmart demons and things.

And I'm like, I want to see that guy dealing with cowboys and stuff, but someday I'll have to write it someday, you know.

Even though we, you know, may not give you a hard side eye if you decide to spend some time watching Trap,

this is the part.

It might give you a hard cider and say, enjoy yourself.

Yeah.

Kick back.

This is the part where we recommend movies that, you know, also maybe check these ones out.

I actually have a quick double recommendation.

Two movies I saw lately that struck me as one's maybe good to watch right now.

Not going to get deep into like the political landscape, but there are reasons why I was like, oh, you know what?

These are, these make me feel a little bit better right now.

One was, I'm going to take a page from Elliot's book, recommend Daisy's, a check new wave film.

What a movie.

Which, you know, there's a lot of other stuff going on there, including like political levels that I'm not smart enough to tease out.

But on its very pleasant surface level, a lot of it is just two women being goofy and having fun.

I think it is so funny that you say on its very pleasant surface level, because that is an assaultive movie.

Like that movie is assaulting the viewer often.

It is, but in like, you know, I would say that the thing that...

You know,

it's very much its own thing, but the thing it reminds me of most is, say, like a Richard Lester movie, like Hard Days Night, that sort of stuff.

Like it's anarchy, but it's a lot of fun anarchy and a lot of beautiful anarchy.

It's, it's, it, it looks lovely.

A lot of tinted

film experiments and doing different things with stock.

Um, but it's nice to see a movie that has a lot of sort of like joyful silliness with a couple of women at the center.

Also, uh, last night, I saw at uh the New York uh documentary film festival, our old friend and co-worker, uh, Trayvon Free, from The Daily Show, was in town because he executive produced

a documentary called All God's Children, directed by, and I apologize if I get the name pronunciation a little wrong, Andi Timminer, who did Dig was what I'd seen her do before.

And this documentary is about a rabbi and

a minister from a black church working together to sort of bridge

racial divides within the two communities in Brooklyn and

just sort of inviting one another to like their respective worships.

And it's a movie that is all the more sort of powerful because it doesn't make, you know, bridging those divides look easy.

There are parts in the movie where people get very mad at each other and hurt each other's feelings and

say things that they don't see why it's hurtful, but the other person is hurt.

But it is ultimately joyful and affirming because it shows that these are people who are committed to understanding each other, committed to learning to love one another

and to overcome sort of external racism and anti-Semitism.

And

so it, you know, it

made me feel good at a time that I needed to.

So those are the two, Daisies and All God's Children.

I'm going to recommend a horror movie called Azriel.

It is set in a like a post-apocalyptic, post-rapture future.

And the characters all basically all belong to a religious cult who have taken a vow of silence.

So there is no dialogue in this movie.

And

yeah, it's about a couple that try to leave this community, but then get pulled back in.

And there's like monster zombie things running around

that like get drawn by blood or noise or something.

I don't really remember.

It's fun and exciting.

The lead is played by Samara Weaving, who is always great.

She's always great, very captivating performer.

And it goes to some pretty nutty places.

So if that kind of a thing sounds up your alley, check out Azriel.

I'll go next.

I'll go next.

I'm going to recommend, I'm going to, because Dan mentioned daisies and seeing two ladies having fun being goofy, I'm going to re-recommend very quickly Celine and Julie Go Boating, which I recommended, I don't know, like a month or two ago, and which I think of all the movies I've seen this year, that's probably the one that sticks in my, sticks on my ribs the most and has kept meaning the most to me.

But I'm also going to recommend a very dumb movie that I enjoyed recently, which I think I mentioned on a mini I had been watching, but I can't remember, which is Toby Hooper's Life Force from 1985, which is

should it's based on a novel called The Space Vampires, and it should have been called The Space Vampires.

It is a very,

at times lavishly made, at times somewhat cheaply made science fiction horror movie in which astronauts find a spaceship full of vampires in a comet, and the lead vampire is a naked lady, and she forms a sort of sexual psychic mind meld with astronaut Steve Railsback, which leads to essentially a remake of Quatermass in the Pit as London falls under a brainwashing spell.

And it is a movie that part of the fun of it is watching it spin off the rails and really like get too big for its britches.

There's a certain point where they're just like, oh, by the way, London is under martial law and we're blowing things up in it.

And you're like, this movie got escalated fast.

And, but there's some very,

there's very fun moments in it.

There's a lot of great kind of gross special effects in it.

It feels like what it is, which is Toby Hooper being given.

more money than he should probably be playing with at that moment without a full story.

And for those of you who, like me, are heterosexual men, there's a naked lady in it who's naked for a lot of the movies.

So that's life force.

That's life force for you.

Yeah.

All right.

Christmas decision time.

Would you rather have one minute on red one where The Rock and Chris Evans save Christmas after Santa is kidnapped?

Or would you rather have one minute on Hot Frosty on Netflix where a woman might fuck Frosty the snowman?

No, Frosty.

Hold on.

Got to be the second one.

I need clarity, though.

Are you recommending Red One?

That's that seems out of

real.

Yeah, we talked about it.

Yeah, we are.

Yeah,

it's very, very silly, but I had a great time.

I had a great time.

The rock acts like he doesn't know it's a comedy.

I feel like it's going to end up on our roster eventually.

Oh, it very well might.

It very well might.

It would be.

My kids, when I took them to see the wild robot, which they thought was so-so,

all they could talk about was the red one trailer for weeks afterwards.

They brought it up the other day.

They're like, can we see red one?

And I I was like,

the big red one?

Like the Samuel Fuller movie?

Like, no, no, the one with Santa.

And I'm like,

take them, take them to see it in 4DX.

They'll get thrown around and breeze blown in their face.

It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had, but I had a great time.

Anyway, all right, hot frosty.

On Netflix, Lacey Shaber, late of Party of Five, but also Mean Girls, plays a woman who puts a scarf around the neck of a hot snowman, played by Dustin Milligan, who played Ted on shit.

Yeah, he's been sculpted like a Greek god.

He comes to life.

He is a innocent.

He is an innocent

because he has never been in the world before.

And she's very embarrassed by him because he doesn't know anything.

And she has a snowman following her around.

He is also on the radar of the local police for when he was first brought to life running around with no clothes on except his scarf.

So he is being pursued by local law enforcement, Craig Robinson, and Joe Letrulio as the local police.

It is exactly what it should be.

They made it exactly correctly.

They cared about all the right things and none of the wrong things.

And it has a great and warm-hearted Lindsay Lohan joke, which I appreciate it.

Hot Frosty on Netflix, absolutely recommend.

Okay.

Hot Frosty.

Well, Linda, thank you for kissing.

Hot Frosty, weirdly enough, also my Wendy's order.

Okay.

Well, I was saying the other day, it kind of sounds like what they call it when somebody kisses you with a slushie in their mouth.

Stuart is slowly turning into Johnny Carson, very slowly.

Linda, thank you for catching us in your trap of telling us to do trap and then saying yes when we asked you to be on the guest for trap.

We will be caught in such a trap anytime.

We're delighted.

Whenever you find out, Dan, are they paying by the word trap?

Yeah, sponsored by traps.

Literally for anything.

Happy to come back to be the defender of red wine.

Oh.

Well, that's a good idea.

All right.

So, yeah, thank you very much for being here.

Thank you also to Alex Smith, our producer.

You can find him by the name Howl Dotty

on Blue Sky, for instance, a place that's more pleasant to be than other places.

And thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

Go to maximumfun.org for a lot of other great podcasts on the network.

A lot of funny ones, a lot of informative ones.

Check them out.

But for the Flop House, I have been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

I've been Elliot Kalen, and we've been joined by Linda Holmes.

Okay, bye.

Don't get trapped.

I'm going to say that

every time someone leaves from now.

If you do, shred your receipts.

You want to hear a good story?

Yes.

Yesterday was my birthday.

All right.

My parents, that's not the good story.

My parents are both not in a position to remember my birthday anymore and do not call me.

But yesterday, for the first time ever, my 26-year-old nephew spontaneously called me on my birthday.

Wow.

Which was like, he's just like a young dude who recently ran a triathlon.

Wow.

Yeah.

Upsetting.

Well, you know,

let the youth have their triathlons.

I got to get

birthday wishes and discuss hydration.

How to keep enough salt in your system.

That's one thing I've heard about like long hikes and shit is that if you don't have enough hype, if you don't have enough salt in your body, your body all

well,

apparently Iron Man, this is an actual Iron Man triathlon.

Apparently Iron Man made a controversial change to the energy drink that they hand out on the course.

It used to be Gatorade, and now it's some bullshit.

He said it made him sick.

Prime.

What I'm telling you is, this was super fun, this phone call.

I just ate half a focaccia panini with mortadella, burrata, and pesto on it.

And I'm like, this is all the salt I'll ever need to eat.

Okay, guys.

Elliot has a heart out, she told me, right?

This is all good stuff for Helen Simpson.

I know.

Let's do our buttons.

I only just started recording on my side.

Let's do a

count.

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Of artists-owned shows.

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