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Episode: Trick or Treat: It’s Our Halloween Special!

Author: The Free Press
Duration: 01:12:01

Episode Shownotes

Need a break from political programming? Well, today we have a special treat: It’s The Free Press’s scary movie Halloween special! It’s that time of year: changing leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, animal costumes with sex appeal and, of course, gory, bloody, nightmare-inducing horror movies. We all remember the first horror

movie that we were allowed to watch—or maybe that we weren’t allowed to watch, but saw anyway: Silence of the Lambs, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, Jaws, Carrie, Halloween, or The Shining. For today’s host Suzy Weiss, it was 20 minutes of the movie It—the TV miniseries from 1990, not the 2017 remake. Suzy remembers seeing Pennywise the Clown on the screen and thinking, This will take me years to get over. She still sometimes checks the drain! Year after year, horror movies are consistently profitable—more so than dramas—but they are snubbed when it comes to award shows and critical acclaim. But here at The Free Press, we value and love horror, so much that we’ve gathered our scariest FP writers—Suzy Weiss, River Page, and Kat Rosenfield—to analyze four new horror movies. River, Kat, and Suzy will review MaXXXine, set in grimy and glamorous 1980s Hollywood, about a night killer who targets a porn star who herself is targeting big-screen stardom. Apartment 7A, a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, about a woman taken in by an unassuming family. Longlegs, a serial killer story about an FBI agent trying to crack the case. And The Substance, about a woman who takes the latest anti-aging elixir, but at a harrowing cost. They talk about what they loved, what they hated, and how they think each movie relates to our current social ills. We’ll also note this episode has spoilers, so let this be a warning! Happy Halloween, folks! If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary

In this Halloween special episode, Suzy Weiss and fellow writers from The Free Press reflect on the significance of horror films and share their experiences with the genre. They review four new horror movies: 'MaXXXine,' 'Apartment 7A,' 'Longlegs,' and 'The Substance,' critiquing their plots while connecting them to contemporary social issues. The discussion emphasizes the cultural and financial value of horror films often overlooked by awards while excavating themes of female representation, ambition, and societal pressures within the genre.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Trick or Treat: It’s Our Halloween Special!) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_05
What are you doing on election night? Yes, I'm talking about the election night from hell. You don't have plans? Don't worry about it, because I have a plan for you. Watch election night 2024 with who else? The Free Press.

00:00:12 Speaker_05
Joining us from our live party in Manhattan is an incredible lineup of guests. It's everyone from Frank Luntz and Frank Rooney,

00:00:19 Speaker_05
to Michael Schellenberger, Coleman Hughes, the girls from Red Scare, the boys from The Fifth Column, Anna Kasparian, Konstantin Kissin, John McWhorter, Andrew Yang, Richie Torres, Ben Domenech, and so many more. It's hosted by, who else?

00:00:32 Speaker_05
Michael Moynihan, Batya Angrasargon, and yours truly. You know what you're gonna get on Fox or MSNBC. So if you want independent thinking, tune in to The Free Press for our live election coverage on November 5th, starting at 7 p.m.

00:00:45 Speaker_05
until whenever they call it. Throw a party, grab some friends, and watch history unfold with us. We'll see you there.

00:01:09 Speaker_06
From the Free Press, this is Honestly. I'm Susie Weiss. Today, we have a special treat in store. It's the Free Press' Scary Movie Halloween Special. Listeners, it is that time of year.

00:01:26 Speaker_06
Changing leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, animal costumes with sex appeal, and gory, bloody, nightmare-inspiring horror movies.

00:01:42 Speaker_06
We all remember the first horror movie that we were allowed to watch, or maybe that we weren't allowed to watch but saw anyway. Silence of the Lambs, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Blair Witch Project, Jaws, Carrie, Halloween, The Shining.

00:01:57 Speaker_06
For me, it was 20 minutes of the movie It, the one from 1990, not the 2017 remake. I remember seeing Pennywise the Clown on screen, my sisters must have been watching it, and thinking to myself,

00:02:09 Speaker_06
This is the worst thing I've ever seen, and it will take me years to get over this.

00:02:13 Speaker_07
Help me. Hello? Is someone there? The clown brought us down here. We all float. Who are you? I'm Vicky Burrows. I'm Matthew O'Connor. We're all the dead kids.

00:02:45 Speaker_06
I actually still sometimes check the drain. Year after year, horror movies are consistently profitable, more so than dramas, but they're snubbed when it comes to award shows and critical acclaim.

00:02:57 Speaker_06
But here at the Free Press, we value and love horror, so much so that I've recruited two Free Press culture writers, River Page and Cat Rosenfield, to help us analyze four new horror movies.

00:03:10 Speaker_06
We watch Maxine, set in grimy and glamorous 1980s Hollywood. The frickin' Night Stalker guy in the loose.

00:03:17 Speaker_09
The Night Stalker. Night Stalker. Night Stalker. She's terrorizing Los Angeles.

00:03:22 Speaker_03
I can handle myself. Close to every bad girl in Hollywood.

00:03:27 Speaker_02
Tragically, another victim of the Night Stalker.

00:03:31 Speaker_00
If I knew three people who were murdered in the 380s, I'd be pretty scared. What are you hiding, Maxine?

00:03:36 Speaker_06
Apartment 7A. You know, when we found you. Whoa! You lost, honey? A prequel to Rosemary's Baby about a woman taken in by an unassuming family. There's something wrong with these people.

00:03:53 Speaker_01
I think something happened to the girl who lived here before me. They did ungodly things to her. And now they've chosen you. What do you mean?

00:04:01 Speaker_06
Long legs. A serial killer story about an FBI agent trying to crack the case.

00:04:08 Speaker_00
I know you're not afraid of a little bit of dark. and The Substance, about a woman who takes the latest anti-aging elixir, but at a harrowing cost.

00:04:42 Speaker_06
I asked River and Kat what they loved, what they hated, and how they thought each movie related to our current social ills. I will also note that this episode has spoilers, major spoilers.

00:04:54 Speaker_06
I've come to understand that the spoiler warning is the last bipartisan warning that's respected by people. So this is your spoiler warning. Anyway, we had so much fun reviewing these movies. We hope you enjoy the Honestly Halloween special.

00:05:11 Speaker_06
Stay with us.

00:05:26 Speaker_05
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00:06:12 Speaker_05
That's CozyEarth.com slash Barry. And don't forget, if you get a post-purchase survey, say you heard about Cozy Earth from the Honestly with Barry Weiss podcast.

00:06:21 Speaker_09
Now, two pigeons bemoaning the fact you can stream DirecTV satellite-free. These humans can stream all the top-rated national news channels on DirecTV, and now with no satellite dish.

00:06:32 Speaker_08
It's just in. Weather, sports, election coverage. DirecTV has it all, but something is missing. The satellite dish.

00:06:38 Speaker_09
What are you doing? I'm reporting the news. Back to you, Bob. Here's some news. You're a buffoon. Stream the top rated national news channels. No satellite dish. Visit directtv.com. Internet required. Top rated news based on 2023 Nielsen ratings.

00:06:52 Speaker_06
Cat Rosenfield and River Page, the three of us, we braved four scary movies to talk about ahead of Halloween. The movies we all saw were Maxine, Apartment 7A, which only came out in streaming, The Substance, and Long Legs.

00:07:08 Speaker_06
And I want to talk about them in that order. So our first movie is Maxine. It's a sequel to the movie X. It's by Ty West. It's meant to be in a trilogy with the movie Pearl. This is the third movie in the trilogy. River, you wrote about the movie Maxine.

00:07:23 Speaker_06
Can you tell us a little bit about what it's about?

00:07:26 Speaker_02
So it picks up where the first film in the trilogy X ends after Maxine's televangelist daughter turned porn star kills her captors and becomes the lone survivor of the Texas farmhouse murders.

00:07:38 Speaker_02
At the beginning of Maxine it's revealed that, you know, several years later she's moved to LA trying to escape her past. She's still working in porn but she wants to break into the mainstream movie industry.

00:07:49 Speaker_02
She finally gets her big break, but then a mysterious killer called the Night Stalker starts following around, killing her friends, and branding them with, like, satanic symbols, or their corpses with satanic symbols.

00:08:01 Speaker_02
Eventually, a private investigator shows up and threatens to expose her for killing two old people and inflating the crime. She doesn't come to this mansion on Starlight Drive.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
Chaos ensues, she doesn't go, and then eventually she does go, and it's revealed that Her televangelist father is behind the murders, along with members of this fundamentalist congregation.

00:08:21 Speaker_02
And the reason that they're killing all these people is because they want to make a snuff film exposing Hollywood's sinful and corruptive nature.

00:08:31 Speaker_06
River, you wrote in your piece for us about Maxine, you said, make horror films scary again. You didn't think it was scary?

00:08:37 Speaker_02
No, I didn't think it was scary at all. And it wasn't even campy in the way that Pearl, the sort of prequel to X and the movie that the one in chronological order that came out before Maxine, which was sort of campy.

00:08:47 Speaker_02
Maxine was just sort of corny to me. So like it was set in the 80s, supposed to be an homage clearly to like the satanic panic era.

00:08:57 Speaker_02
But Ty West's proposition was essentially what if evangelicals were the real Satanists or something, which I thought was just sort of like a, you know, dorm room, two joints in sort of like thing to say.

00:09:09 Speaker_02
And there's been this trend in horror recently. where people want to make social commentary, and that's fine.

00:09:16 Speaker_02
There are horror movies that have done that and done that well, but very often, I think this is a good example of it, it comes across very ham-fisted and comes at the expense of any actual horror.

00:09:27 Speaker_02
I mean, the worst is the menu, the movie about the crazy chef who kills people.

00:09:34 Speaker_06
Right. I wouldn't consider that a horror. I thought that was just a satire.

00:09:38 Speaker_02
Yeah. Well, I think it's like technically, like if you look at the Wikipedia, it's like horror or whatever. Right.

00:09:44 Speaker_06
Yeah, if we're going to get technical about it. Kat, what did you think of Maxine?

00:09:48 Speaker_04
I actually enjoyed it. And this just might be a function of my being old enough, unlike the two of you, to remember the 80s a little bit. I was a child to be clear, but still I enjoyed that vibe.

00:10:02 Speaker_04
But I do have to agree, there were things about it that felt a little bit too self-consciously social commentary-like.

00:10:08 Speaker_04
I mean, I enjoyed the 80s aesthetic, but I also think that this movie made a mistake that a lot of movies make right now, where they're very self-consciously, not even woke, but just diverse, you know, where you have this kind of cramped in, like, you're going to have to have the gay black best friend.

00:10:26 Speaker_04
And, you know, when you sense that these characters are being included more out of kind of tokenism or to check boxes than because they're really essential to the plot, I find that a little bit fourth wall breaking.

00:10:43 Speaker_04
And of course, it makes the movie less scary if it was ever going to be scary because once you become self-conscious about the fact that you're watching a movie, you can't really be immersed in the story the way that you need to be to actually be frightened.

00:10:56 Speaker_06
I completely agree, though the self-consciousness for me didn't come so much from the cramming in of a million different identities, which they definitely did, but more from the fact that it was a movie about making movies, and I think people in industries

00:11:11 Speaker_06
highly overestimate how much the rest of us want to see how the sausage of their industry gets made. I think the same about movies about journalists.

00:11:20 Speaker_06
I think unless you're in like the arms business, it's not going to be an interesting movie to make a movie about the thing.

00:11:26 Speaker_06
And it was like really wanting to reference and have callbacks and like deep cut references to a lot of 80s slasher movies that it didn't. It just felt like more of an academic exercise almost.

00:11:41 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's like when the novel is about a novelist or whatever. It's just kind of like, OK, can you write about anybody else?

00:11:49 Speaker_06
I will give it to him that I think Mia Goth is like potentially an amazing horror star. Like she has those big eyes. Her natural voice is like this really almost like creepy, high, treacly voice. But I thought it was very period accurate.

00:12:05 Speaker_06
Like it looked like that thing and like the big shootout scene with the gore felt of that time. But it felt more like an exercise in form. I wasn't sure what the deeper message was trying to be.

00:12:16 Speaker_04
I will give Maxine, an extra half a star just for containing the most graphic, maybe even actually the only explicit testicle stomping scene that I've ever seen. That's true. On film. I forgot that part.

00:12:34 Speaker_04
I have to say, I made the mistake of watching this movie with my husband. I said, I have to watch some horror movies. I let him have his choice of the ones that we were supposed to watch. And he said, oh, I like this one. He liked the 80s vibe too.

00:12:45 Speaker_04
He liked it right up until you saw a testicle explode on camera.

00:12:50 Speaker_06
Yeah, that there were some like sort of gory moments and also the branding and, you know, seeing the bodies like fished out of the lake. I was covering my eyes for that part for sure. But one more beat on the satanic panic of it all.

00:13:03 Speaker_06
It's like we're supposed to be against the dad. Like you're not even allowed to be mad that your daughter's a porn star anymore. That sounds like a weird thing that we're supposed to just accept and be like, what a villain.

00:13:15 Speaker_06
He doesn't want his daughter to perform in porn movies. Like, I was sort of on his side.

00:13:21 Speaker_02
Yeah, no, I mean, they had to, like, it felt kind of, like, completely, like, obvious where it was going because, like, in the first movie, you see sort of, like, the last scene of X is this televangelist that's been playing all throughout the movie, sort of in the background.

00:13:35 Speaker_02
He, like, reveals that his daughter's name is Maxine and that she's, like, gone missing or whatever. And, like, because I knew this was the final film, like, the dad was going to show up somewhere.

00:13:43 Speaker_02
And, like, when it became clear what the plot was, I was like, you know exactly where it's going. I don't know, like, there could have been, like, some sort of, like, redemption for Maxine, but it didn't really feel like that.

00:13:54 Speaker_02
It was just, like, and, like, redemption for her father, too. It was just, like, this guy who's, like, wanting to rescue his daughter or whatever. But they kind of just made caricatures of both of them. Both hers, like, this sort of, like, fame-hungry,

00:14:08 Speaker_02
sort of like sociopath in him as this, you know, Jerry Falwell villainous stand-in. And I don't know, it felt kind of like cheap in a way. Like there's no depth to either of these characters.

00:14:20 Speaker_06
You wrote in your piece that the villain of the movie was like the moral majority, which it's just not that scary of a villain, frankly, or they didn't do a good job making it scary.

00:14:30 Speaker_02
No.

00:14:31 Speaker_04
They also wasted a perfectly good Night Stalker. Richard Ramirez, you know, he always gets short shrift. He ends up showing up as like an extra in somebody else's horror movie.

00:14:42 Speaker_04
I feel like this is actually a trend when it comes to people inserting him into things. And I think that's very unfortunate. So I'm going to take this moment also to just demand a Night Stalker standalone, please and thank you.

00:14:54 Speaker_06
I love that. Okay, fair enough. How many stars are we giving this one out of five? Maxine River, let's start with you.

00:15:00 Speaker_02
I would say three just because I like this. I do like the aesthetics of it all. It is narratively coherent. I'll give it that. Like it knows what it's doing. I just didn't like the plot, but the plot is like well executed. So three out of five.

00:15:12 Speaker_04
Kat, what about you? I guess I'll go with 3.5. Can we do half stars? Is that allowed? Yeah, of course.

00:15:19 Speaker_06
I'll also say that there's like The whole, like, your daughter getting into porn or, like, that is, like, a psychological torture device. There's that movie Hardcore. It was a theme, I think, in the movie Schenectady, too.

00:15:33 Speaker_06
And I think that is, like, a really rich, interesting vein, especially with OnlyFans, especially with, you know, sex workers' work. I think the biggest problem I had with Maxine is that it didn't...

00:15:44 Speaker_06
It wanted to like map on 2024 politics onto the 80s, but keeping like a really kind of perfect 80s form. And there was something that was missing. But there's so much good 2024 political horror to be had.

00:16:01 Speaker_06
So I thought in the end it was a missed opportunity. I'm going to give it a two.

00:16:05 Speaker_02
Wow.

00:16:05 Speaker_06
OK, anything else anyone wants to say on Maxine?

00:16:08 Speaker_02
Watch Pearl instead.

00:16:09 Speaker_06
OK, watch Pearl instead. I love that. OK, Apartment 7A. This was kind of an interesting movie. This one was also a prequel or sort of meant to be seen in conversation with, I guess, Roma Plansky's film Rosemary's Baby. It's about Terry

00:16:28 Speaker_06
And I'm sure in the next one that's going to become some anagram for something. She's played by Julia Gardner. She plays a struggling dancer who wants desperately to be famous.

00:16:38 Speaker_06
She's taken in by a wealthy childless older couple in I think it's called the Bramford, but it's supposed to be the Dakota on the Upper West Side. And then what do you know? And I hate when this happens. They conspire to have her impregnated by Satan.

00:16:53 Speaker_06
It is an apartment building of Satan worshipers, they all are highly successful doctors, entertainers, executives. But in order to get that way, I have to assume, is because they sold their soul to Satan.

00:17:07 Speaker_06
So I thought, contrary to Maxine, this one had actually scary moments. Like, there's this horned devil who kind of comes out of the shadows in, like, the worst moments and grabs her waist in this really, like, sexual and creepy way.

00:17:21 Speaker_06
There was her bloody devil baby in the laundry machine when she's considering getting her devil baby aborted. What did you guys think of this one?

00:17:30 Speaker_04
I was a big fan. I will say that after I watched this movie, I had one of the weirdest sex dreams of my life. With the devil? Yeah, about the devil. But it was kind of hot.

00:17:40 Speaker_04
And I love a movie that really... I think that this is actually maybe a theme partially of our podcast here. I love a movie that delves deep into and like dwells in the period that it's set in.

00:17:52 Speaker_04
And where I think Maxine used the 80s kind of in this self-indulgent kind of almost like trapping set dressing way, I felt like this film really immersed itself in the world of the 70s, in the world that is recognizable already if you're familiar with Rosemary's Baby.

00:18:11 Speaker_04
And it does have a great aesthetic. It's got a great creepy vibe. It's just, and especially because you sort of know where it's going to go, it nevertheless manages to surprise you.

00:18:22 Speaker_02
I hated it. Oh. I think it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. No. I was watching this with my husband and my best friend, and they were heckling. I was like, you have to shut up. I have to watch this for a podcast. They were just like, boo.

00:18:42 Speaker_06
Take my podcast, guys. You know who keeps the lights on in this house?

00:18:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, right. I'm sorry, Kat. But I did hate it. First of all, I didn't find The Devil scary. I thought it was, like, it gave me, the minute I saw it, I wrote down in my notes, like, bejeweled FKA twigs, because that's what it looked like to me.

00:19:02 Speaker_02
Rosemary's Baby, I think, is, like, way better. And because I had just watched Rosemary's Baby to prepare to watch this movie, I remembered that, like, this character, Terry, is present in Rosemary's Baby. Rosemary meets her in the laundry room.

00:19:19 Speaker_02
And she's like, oh, this couple took me in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're really nice. And then she's found, like, dead on the street, jumped out of the apartment window or whatever.

00:19:31 Speaker_06
Oh, I didn't realize that.

00:19:32 Speaker_02
But Terry says nothing. She says something about, like, she references, like, that she was an addict to Rosemary and Rosemary's baby.

00:19:40 Speaker_02
She but she doesn't say anything about wanting to be a dancer or like any of this other stuff that was just sort of pulled out of thin air.

00:19:48 Speaker_02
And for me, it felt like a weird way, like they wanted to make a they have this character where you, you know, prime for a prequel. Right.

00:20:00 Speaker_02
But instead of making her a sort of, like, desperate drug addict that is, like, taken in by this family, they basically make her Rosemary's husband, where she, like, wants to be, you know, a famous entertainer.

00:20:15 Speaker_02
And she... They sort of square the circle about the drug addict thing by, like, oh, she breaks her foot and then she gets on, like, opioids or something. So, like, to me, I think it would have been better if...

00:20:25 Speaker_02
She were actually just like some street junkie who like found like this family, you know, that she never had or whatever. But that's not really like what it is. It's like she's just like some girl whose family owns a slaughterhouse or whatever.

00:20:42 Speaker_02
So like middle class girl from the Midwest, which Italians in the Midwest, I don't even know what that. And you know what I mean? And then she wants to be famous. And like, it just felt like they wanted to make her kind of like this girl boss character.

00:20:56 Speaker_02
Sort of in contrast to Rosemary who was just sort of this like meek Housewife who eventually she does try to save herself, but eventually she does sort of give in and like, you know it was like I'm gonna raise the baby and she's very naive and like all of this and

00:21:12 Speaker_02
That felt to me, it was like, I think they felt like they had to do that because Roman Polanski is like a rapist fugitive from justice living in France.

00:21:22 Speaker_06
They named the husband Roman in apartment 7A.

00:21:25 Speaker_02
He's named Roman in the first one too.

00:21:27 Speaker_06
Oh, I didn't realize that.

00:21:29 Speaker_02
Yeah, which was kind of, it's kind of creepy too. Like I'm like, oh, so you named the villain after, like, I feel like, say what you will about Roman Polanski, he does know that he's the villain in his own sort of story.

00:21:41 Speaker_04
I'm just, I got to interject here. You guys, Rosemary's Baby is based on a book by Ira Levin. The character's name is the character's name.

00:21:48 Speaker_02
yeah okay so never mind about the name but like yeah the it does feel like the prequel was just sort of trying to you really you really couldn't i don't think make a rosemary's baby now like there's just sort of like naive woman who's just kind of like i don't know what's going on when it's like clear that like she's been raped by the devil and that everyone around her is like exploding her they had to kind of make her this sort of ambitious woman who like in the end

00:22:15 Speaker_02
like takes control of her own destiny by killing herself or whatever.

00:22:19 Speaker_04
You know why else you can't make a Rosemary's Baby right now is because Satan, like all the other men on the landscape right now, is suffering from low T. He can't impregnate.

00:22:30 Speaker_02
He has ED.

00:22:31 Speaker_04
He needs blue chew.

00:22:33 Speaker_02
Yeah, he's watched way too much porn.

00:22:36 Speaker_06
So I agree that there's sort of like, instead of like the damsel in distress in this movie, and I think a lot of the other ones we watched, there's this big like, I ain't going back to Indiana energy. Like, I'll just do what it takes.

00:22:51 Speaker_06
I want to be your special star. And it kind of made me think of like, through like the Me Too looking glass. It's like, Me Too, it's like all about obviously men taking advantage of women.

00:23:03 Speaker_06
But then you kind of have, I think at least in apartment 7A, it's like, well, what are you willing to do as the woman? And what are you willing to put yourself through to get what you want? So in that way, it felt sort of current and interesting.

00:23:16 Speaker_06
I don't know what you think about that, Kat.

00:23:18 Speaker_04
I have a theory actually about why Julia Garner's character is the way she is. I think that maybe filmmakers have decided that the last decent main character in a horror movie was Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs.

00:23:34 Speaker_04
And every director who is now making a movie set in some past era that has a strong female lead

00:23:43 Speaker_04
is basically trying to get the lead actress to channel Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs and trying to set up a backstory as compelling as Clarice Starling's. And instead of trying to say like, okay, as compelling, they're just copying.

00:23:56 Speaker_04
So it's like, you know, you've got the Midwestern-ness, you've got the accent, you've got the hog farm. I guess, you know, in Silence of the Lambs, it's lambs, but still.

00:24:07 Speaker_04
I feel there's a lot of copying of both individual kind of character elements plus character vibe going on. And this is true of a few of the movies we're discussing, actually.

00:24:19 Speaker_06
Right. That's definitely comes up in long legs, which we're going to get to. I think we also I feel like maybe in the past 10 years had a little bit of a break from the occult and ancient demons. I think that's kind of a thing that's coming back.

00:24:33 Speaker_06
I feel like before it was a lot of.

00:24:35 Speaker_06
zombies and then social commentary through the horror, so like Get Out or Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss that I thought was so underrated and it's sort of like what a physical manifestation of gaslighting might look like, but it's very subtle and it's an incredibly good movie.

00:24:51 Speaker_06
But then I think you have Ari Aster with Hereditary, Midsommar, bringing back demons, devils, ancient rites and rituals, the occult, and then maybe combine that with the Clarice Starling character.

00:25:06 Speaker_06
And you're like, I feel like I'm watching a movie that was just made a long time ago.

00:25:09 Speaker_04
Yeah, I feel like everybody is trying to kind of dabble in a lot of different tropes. And the one that people always struggle with, maybe because of feminism and evolving ideas about how women should be or can be, is the final girl.

00:25:25 Speaker_04
It's hard to make a good final girl, but you need one if you're going to make a proper horror film.

00:25:29 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:25:30 Speaker_04
What's the final girl? The final girl? The final girl is the one who survives to the end. It's Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween movies. It's the one who plays Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street. I'm so dating myself right now, by the way.

00:25:42 Speaker_02
It's Maxine.

00:25:43 Speaker_04
It is Maxine.

00:25:44 Speaker_02
Yeah, I think in addition to all that, another thing that people are doing a lot of is like, quote unquote, like body horror.

00:25:51 Speaker_02
So just like gore and like saw and the substance, which we're going to talk about and just like this like nasty kind of what is it like Cronenberg sort of like blood and guts.

00:26:03 Speaker_04
We went through a torture porn period where Eli Roth was doing his thing. Green Inferno, I think Wrong Turn. But yeah, the intersection of torture porn and body horror obviously is pretty potent.

00:26:16 Speaker_04
But we are now moving more into the Cronenbergian, I think, phase of things, which I appreciate.

00:26:24 Speaker_06
Do you feel like it is a coincidence that these movies about women who want to succeed despite the costs are happening during an election year where we might well elect our first woman president?

00:26:38 Speaker_04
No comment. You know. No, I mean, I do think it's coincidence, and I'm glad it's a coincidence. Who could have predicted?

00:26:47 Speaker_06
Both of these movies, Apartment 7A and Maxine, they're kind of an attempt at feminist horror, and maybe horror was like most guilty of being an anti-feminist or misogynist genre. I'm not sure.

00:26:58 Speaker_06
But yeah, I think we're seeing an attempt to stab at feminist horror.

00:27:02 Speaker_04
What do you guys think? Oh, I completely disagree that horror was a misogynist genre. Horror is the originator of the strong female character who survives to the end because she can outwit the killer using her brain, which I think is crucial.

00:27:16 Speaker_04
Right now, a lot of times, if you're gonna have a strong female character, she's basically a man with tits. She's masculinized. And the final girls of classic horror, classic slasher films, the franchises that defined the 70s and 80s,

00:27:32 Speaker_04
They survived because they're smart, they're resourceful. They're not super strong, they're not superheroes, but they're strong female characters in the original sense of the word. What would you guys give Apartment 7A out of five stars?

00:27:47 Speaker_04
I give it a one. I'm going to give it a four. I enjoyed it.

00:27:51 Speaker_06
I'm going to give it like a solid three and a half. And I also love Julia Garner. I think she's really talented and I'm excited to see more of her. After the break, we get into the substance and long legs. Stay with us.

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00:29:09 Speaker_06
Who's ready to talk about The Substance? Ugh.

00:29:13 Speaker_02
You know, I had to go all the way to Alabama. Apparently this did not get a very wide release or at least AMC, which is all we have in Pensacola, was not showing it because I had to go all the way to Alabama to watch this movie.

00:29:27 Speaker_06
You crossed state lines to watch The Substance?

00:29:28 Speaker_02
I crossed state lines, which was, I mean, it's actually only like 45 minutes from here, but yes, I went almost all the way to Mobile, Alabama to watch this movie.

00:29:37 Speaker_06
Well, there was something about seeing it in theaters that I thought was great. But before we get into it, Cat Rosenfield, what's The Substance about?

00:29:43 Speaker_04
I would cross state lines for The Substance itself. I would not cross state lines to watch The Substance again. So, The Substance. Substance is about a woman named Elizabeth Sparkle.

00:29:57 Speaker_04
She's an aging actress, but I'm putting aging in kind of big scare quotes because she's played by Demi Moore, who does not, in fact, age at all. I mean, white Halle Berry. Yes, yes, exactly. And Elizabeth Sparkle is a former Oscar winner.

00:30:12 Speaker_04
She was a big star. She's got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which comes into play later. But as she's gotten older to, you know, the advanced age of 50, she is now kind of a Jane Fonda character.

00:30:25 Speaker_04
She has like an aerobics show on some kind of daytime network television. I have to add, just kind of as an aside, that I'm not sure what world or what era this movie is supposed to take place in.

00:30:37 Speaker_04
It has contemporary technology, but it also has this very kind of 80s aesthetic. It feels very rootless.

00:30:45 Speaker_04
So after being fired from her job as an on-TV aerobics person because she's too old, she comes into contact with a very intriguingly beautiful young man who suggests to her that she's a good candidate for the substance, which is basically a one-time injection that splits her into two different people.

00:31:10 Speaker_04
So you take the substance and you split. You end up with your current self, you know, old, decrepit, horrifying at the age of 50, and then you get a younger, better, newer self.

00:31:23 Speaker_04
In the case of Elizabeth Sparkle, she births out of her back, this sort of like vaginal proxy, a full-grown, I would say roughly 22-year-old woman named Sue, who is played by Oh God, help me out. Margaret Qualley. Margaret Qualley.

00:31:43 Speaker_04
And the two of them share a consciousness and the way the substance works, the rules, they're very, very firm about this, is that you can exist as your younger, better, improved self for seven days, then you have to switch off. So you each get a week.

00:32:02 Speaker_04
And this is supposed to work, but because the substance alter ego, Sue, is 22 years old and selfish, as all 22 year olds are, she starts stealing time from Elizabeth Sparkle. And every time she does, Elizabeth Sparkle wakes up

00:32:22 Speaker_04
a little bit more decrepit, a little bit more wrinkled with arthritic knees or other things. Anyway, long story short, this is a sort of a picture of Dorian Gray meets the fly.

00:32:37 Speaker_04
As Sue continues to steal more and more time from Elizabeth, Elizabeth lying in the dark comatose grows monstrous, just like the Dorian Gray portrait does in Oscar Wilde's book. And eventually, there's this big confrontation between the two of them.

00:32:55 Speaker_04
Sue, not really thinking about what she's doing, tries to kill Elizabeth, even though the two of them have to both be alive to mutually, or well, rather, Elizabeth has to be alive for Sue to exist.

00:33:07 Speaker_04
And then in a panic, realizing that her body is falling apart, Sue runs back to the incredibly beautiful apartment where she has been cohabitating with Elizabeth, and she takes a second injection of the substance, which transforms her into this monstrous creature that's sort of like

00:33:28 Speaker_04
It's like Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, if they were both, I was gonna say, if they were both inside sloth from The Goonies.

00:33:37 Speaker_04
And, you know, there's a whole onstage portion where this creature goes and tries to host a New Year's Eve show and ends up vomiting a human breast out of one of its several mouths and then starts to kind of decompensate onstage and sprays blood all over the place.

00:33:56 Speaker_04
This last part that I'm describing went on for, I want to just estimate, about seven years.

00:34:02 Speaker_04
And then eventually, as the monster kind of falls apart, the last little bit that remains of Elizabeth Sparkle, which is Demi Moore's face, kind of crawls out of the wreckage of this monster body, goes onto its Hollywood star, and dissolves into goo.

00:34:24 Speaker_04
the end. So that's the substance.

00:34:27 Speaker_06
That was really great. I think there was also like someone pointed out a Cinderella element because she has this big blue dress and it's all kind of leading up to midnight this New Year's show or else she turns back into the pumpkin.

00:34:39 Speaker_06
But Kat, I'm picking up that you did not like the substance.

00:34:42 Speaker_04
I did not like the substance. I think I could have if the movie had been maybe a half an hour to 45 minutes shorter. It is too long and this denouement full of, you know, body parts falling off or, you know, blood spraying all over everything.

00:34:59 Speaker_04
It just goes on for a really long time. It's much too on the nose. If you're going to make a movie like this, I think it needs to be concise. The great thing about, for instance, Cronenberg's The Fly is it's nice and compact. It doesn't dwell.

00:35:13 Speaker_04
You don't even catch a really great glimpse of a lot of the stuff that's happening until the very end when he appears as this kind of fly monster creature. So yeah, I think the movie was very self-indulgent in that way.

00:35:27 Speaker_04
But the other thing that bothers me about this movie, I would say that it's one of the most misogynistic films I've ever seen, but actually it just like hates everybody and everything. And that can get a little hard to watch after a while.

00:35:40 Speaker_06
River, did you feel similarly about the substance?

00:35:43 Speaker_02
No, I loved it. I felt like Ken and I can never go to the movies together. This is what I'm learning. No, I loved it. I thought that the aesthetics were sort of, weird in a way, like Dennis Quaid plays sort of like the...

00:35:58 Speaker_02
head of the network or whatever that Demi Moore's show is on. What's his name? I don't remember.

00:36:03 Speaker_06
It's Harvey.

00:36:04 Speaker_02
Harvey. Oh, Harvey Weinstein. I didn't pick up on that. But yeah, he's like a very like 80s character, like openly misogynistic, like smoking inside, you know. The aesthetics did sort of feel not of the moment. I saw somebody say that like it was,

00:36:25 Speaker_02
in a smart way. And I think, like, maybe that's the best way to put it. It was sort of, like, campy and ridiculous, but I kind of liked it.

00:36:36 Speaker_02
Like, it was just kind of, like, something about, like, her sort of, like, conception of herself just sort of splitting into, in, like, this sort of weird sort of mirror image of yourself, like, your actual reality coming into conflict with your...

00:36:53 Speaker_02
the sort of ideal version of yourself, like the ego or whatever. Like, I think it is like sort of prescient in a way, because like, especially online, like people have this kind of like image of themself that exists like on the internet.

00:37:06 Speaker_02
And this is like definitely true of like more so of like Instagram culture, maybe than like Twitter or something like that, or just like Photoshopped, like beautiful, like best version of yourself that exists out there. And like,

00:37:18 Speaker_02
it's you but it's not really you and it can sort of like come into sometimes like reality will like hit you and it's like actually like this isn't who I am and like I don't know they're like felt there's something to that that maybe I'm not articulating very well but like it did feel like it was like saying something about society but in like such a stupid kind of like fun goofy

00:37:42 Speaker_02
way that I liked it. I wouldn't say that it's like the best movie ever but I feel like it was engaging and memorable and sort of like memeable in a way that a movie has to be now. Like I've already seen people like

00:37:59 Speaker_02
you know, taking clips and like setting it to like Charlie XCX, like music, doing fan cams and all of this sort of thing.

00:38:07 Speaker_06
It did feel current too, like just the themes of like the Faustian bargains we make to keep ourselves young or to keep ourselves beautiful. I mean, I would set it at the top of this recording. I feel like, isn't Ozempic just the substance?

00:38:23 Speaker_06
First of all, I think that the whole movie was almost like a customer service horror. Like, she's calling them, trying to get more of the substance. Her prior authorization's not going through. Like, she's panicked.

00:38:33 Speaker_06
She's out of birth control and her ear's falling off. It's like, this is basically how I feel whenever I have to, like, extract a drug from the pharmacy.

00:38:40 Speaker_02
I do wonder, like, I have to look up, like, the director. Who's the director of this?

00:38:46 Speaker_04
A French lady.

00:38:47 Speaker_02
Do we know? It was a woman.

00:38:48 Speaker_04
A girl director.

00:38:50 Speaker_02
Interesting. Well, because it felt very gay in a way. Like I felt like I like maybe why maybe I like it because I'm gay. I don't know.

00:38:57 Speaker_02
But there's something like very gay about like seeing someone who looks like a slightly hotter, like younger version of yourself and feeling is sort of like. dual attraction and, like, revulsion towards them.

00:39:08 Speaker_02
It's like, actually, like, do I want to sleep with you or do I, like, hate you? Like, it's like, that's, like, the core, like, conflict of... Oh, I love that. ...being gay. And, like, I don't know, like, that felt sort of, like, resonant to me.

00:39:22 Speaker_02
So I thought maybe it was directed by a gay guy, but I guess not.

00:39:25 Speaker_06
It was directed by Coralie Farge. That's a dangerous last name. I'm not going to try and pronounce that again. She's a 48-year-old director.

00:39:32 Speaker_06
I think it was a production between—it won Best Screenplay at Cannes, and we had Paula Froelich write about the substance for us. I'm just going to read a little bit from her piece, and then, Kat, I want you to react to it.

00:39:45 Speaker_06
Okay, the substance, quote, depicts the bind in which women find ourselves, the pressure we're under, the ghastly battle we wage daily with ourselves, and the horrific ways in which we torture our bodies and our minds in the search for youth, success, and acceptance, all to end with the inevitable death.

00:40:02 Speaker_06
Kat, is that what you think the substance was about?

00:40:05 Speaker_04
I think that's what my life is about, but maybe this is why I hated The Substance. It was too real. I think that, yes, you know, here's what I'll give The Substance. It wanted to be that. It wanted to be that movie that Paula described there.

00:40:20 Speaker_04
And I think that there was buried in this other movie that I did not like, a movie I would have liked very much. It just, you know, was like, you know, surrounded like Demi Moore's character at the end by this monstrous kind of,

00:40:34 Speaker_04
overweening, lumpy, bloated, self-indulgent body. But it is true that, yeah, I certainly understand what this movie wanted to do insofar as making a social commentary. I just, I think that it failed. I think that it failed to do that.

00:40:52 Speaker_04
And a big part of the reason why is that it is, it does linger endlessly, not just in

00:41:00 Speaker_04
these moments of body horror where the camera's roving over Demi Moore's decrepit, misshapen, lumpy figure as she emerges at the end, having had her life essence stolen by this younger woman. And the The thing is big on boobs.

00:41:21 Speaker_04
It's actually, I mean, I wondered too, like who directed this? Because there's like all of this, you know, there's disembodied boobs. There's like these kind of pendulous pancake boobs.

00:41:32 Speaker_04
And they're like very explicit about making sure you see these bad boobs all over the place. And then like when Margaret Qualley is on screen, you know, making sure that you are looking at her young, taught boobs and the camera rose- Prosthetics.

00:41:46 Speaker_04
Yeah, rose endlessly. What? Her boobs are fake? Yeah, she wore prosthetics for the movie. Oh, well, good for her. They looked great. I would like a pair of those.

00:41:55 Speaker_04
But yeah, the camera rose endlessly over, you know, like her skin, her ass, her, you know, her bikini line in this bizarre one-shouldered pink lame leotard that I also actually would like to have myself.

00:42:10 Speaker_04
But it's very male-gaysy, and I understand that it's supposed to be doing this in an ironic way or in like a self-critical way, but I think the fact that it does it so much and for so long, it just ends up failing.

00:42:22 Speaker_06
Maybe one of the reads of the boobs is like, like the substance that gives you life, but you know, you got to wean yourself off at a certain point. I don't know exactly why the obsession with boobs. I didn't notice that in the movie.

00:42:36 Speaker_06
But definitely, I think probably what they were trying to get at was just like the physicality and like fleshiness is my guess. Like I think the creepiest moments of the movie were when like the body horror that wasn't actually

00:42:52 Speaker_06
supernatural, like when Dennis Quaid is eating these shrimps and he's dipping it in sauces and you see the yellowed of his cigarette stained teeth or when Demi Moore and her like older witch self is kind of like making a disgusting meal and like just being really gross with food.

00:43:10 Speaker_06
I liked it. I thought that was kind of the most upsetting part because it kind of made you think like, oh my God, is that what I look like when I eat?

00:43:17 Speaker_04
Well, I will say I think the best scene in the movie, and Demi Moore is incredible in it, takes place before she's actually started to fall apart. She has like one gross finger because Sue stole a couple extra hours for her and her finger got weird.

00:43:33 Speaker_04
But she still otherwise looks like Demi Moore, which is to say, you know, a woman in middle age who looks amazing. Resplendent. Yeah.

00:43:42 Speaker_04
And she is supposed to go on a date with a guy who recognized her on the street, somebody she knew from high school who said, you know, oh, you're still the most beautiful girl in the world. And she's called him and he's so excited to see her.

00:43:57 Speaker_04
And she's trying to get ready for this date, but she

00:44:01 Speaker_04
is confronting herself in the mirror, you know, the body she has, which now lives in conflict with this other self who's like, you know, asleep in a closet while Demi Moore tries to live her life for a week.

00:44:19 Speaker_04
And she goes through as the, you know, the time that she's supposed to meet this guy, it gets later and later. And she keeps taking her makeup off and putting it back on and changing her clothes, you know, putting on gloves, taking them off.

00:44:34 Speaker_04
And you can see her just spiraling as she's, you know, she wants to go out, but she doesn't feel like she's good enough to have a life anymore by comparison to this other self that she's created. And she ends up just standing up this guy.

00:44:52 Speaker_04
And that's really where things, I think like, this is the moment where she breaks and it's so well done. And there's no body horror in it at all. It's just, It's just bleak. It's just real. And it's terrific.

00:45:04 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:45:05 Speaker_06
She wears the gloves, and then she covers her décolletage, and then she adds a little more blush, and then she—you can tell that she thinks, I'm a clown.

00:45:13 Speaker_06
Like, in my effort to look younger, I'm a clown, and everyone's going to laugh at me because I look like a clown, which is even worse than looking old.

00:45:20 Speaker_02
I mean, I think it like works for the same reason that like it's clear, clearly, as Kat said, inspired by a picture of Dorian Gray.

00:45:30 Speaker_02
And it's like, the reason that Dorian Gray works to me is the same reason that Substance works is that it's like a universal sort of message or theme that is like present in like

00:45:41 Speaker_02
all like ancient myths and stories and religions which is that like nothing comes for free like there's always a cost to your sort of sins and your narcissism and that you can you know you can never really escape the consequences of your actions they will always come back to like manifest in like this sort of like monstrous way

00:46:03 Speaker_02
Like, in the end, or whatever, to, like, use, like, a Christian metaphor, it's, like, everybody pays for their sins. Like, you know, there's always a judgment day coming, right? Right.

00:46:13 Speaker_02
And the judgment day for Elizabeth slash Sue is sort of, like, Carrie-like, you know, standing on the stage and just, like, exploding spring blood everywhere all over the sort of horrified audience. And she's sort of become, like, the...

00:46:31 Speaker_02
It's like her own personal hell, the thing of her nightmares, which is just like being, you know, seen as like, as revolting and like losing the sort of glamour that she had, which is all that she ever cared about in like the sort of the most spectacular way possible.

00:46:48 Speaker_06
I think I agree with Kat in that I saw what it was trying to do in that last scene, and I feel like it was a missed opportunity.

00:46:56 Speaker_06
Because something I like so much about this movie, it's like, you know, you kind of can't tell what time, like, in what era it takes place. There's these, like, huge billboards, almost like, have you seen that movie Paris, Texas?

00:47:09 Speaker_06
There's a lot of, like, these weird billboard scenes and, like, you know, washes of color. And the movie, I thought, was so taut. Like, it was so tight. Like, every moment, every interact—she didn't have a human, normal interaction the entire movie.

00:47:24 Speaker_06
Everything was transactional from the cleaning lady to the executive to on the phone from the guy who she's buying the substance from. I mean, I really think it's a movie about isolation.

00:47:35 Speaker_06
and self-isolation and self-hatred more than it is about unrealistic beauty standards or aging.

00:47:40 Speaker_06
But the ending, which was just sort of like explosive, gross, indulgent, gutty and fleshy and bloody, I thought it was like, no, you built up all this amazing tension and you kept it so taut and tight just to like spill out, like throw up or something, which I guess

00:48:00 Speaker_06
maybe was on purpose, but I don't know if it achieved what it was trying to, or maybe I just don't know what it was trying to achieve with that.

00:48:06 Speaker_02
Did you guys, this is a total like non sequitur, but did y'all notice that the guy, the twink who, like the nefarious and beautiful twink that gives her the substance has the exact same voice as Lex Friedman? I could not get past it.

00:48:19 Speaker_02
I kept thinking about it. I was like, that is Lex, they have imposed Lex Friedman's voice on this like creepy twink.

00:48:25 Speaker_06
Today on the Halloween episode.

00:48:27 Speaker_02
Substance. Hello friends.

00:48:31 Speaker_06
No, I didn't notice that. But I like he was sort of like more beautiful, like it was sort of hilarious. It's like that guy would never be a PA at whatever urgent care she was at.

00:48:41 Speaker_06
So it was just like it was another one of these almost like surreal, like, OK, now we're going to put a Calvin Klein model in scrubs to tell you about this drug. It was weird.

00:48:50 Speaker_04
Yes. I mean, he looked like. They had done something to his skin. He looked like he was made of not flesh. He looked like he had diamonds in his pores. I think that that guy, that actor, was the most interesting person in the movie.

00:49:04 Speaker_04
I just want to find him in real life and be like, do you really look like this?

00:49:09 Speaker_02
What's your skincare routine?

00:49:11 Speaker_06
Oh my God, I love this. River, would you take the substance?

00:49:15 Speaker_02
Um, I was, honestly, my twinkiers were not good. Like, I, a beard saved my life, as the case for Minimoom. So, even a younger, hotter version of myself, this very, like, round, Scotch-Irish sort of face does not work well.

00:49:32 Speaker_02
It just tends to look better as it ages. It doesn't look good without a beard. It doesn't look good super skinny. So, you know.

00:49:40 Speaker_06
Well, that was another, I think, great theme of the movie. It's like Sue, the younger one, she'd barely even enjoyed her gorgeous looks and her youth. I mean, you kind of see her like— She was working all the time. She was working all the time.

00:49:52 Speaker_06
You see her sort of like reveling in her thick hair and her full lips and her like taut ass. But it's like Demi Moore went through all of this so she could get her old job doing like a YouTube jazzercise show.

00:50:03 Speaker_04
Yes.

00:50:04 Speaker_06
It's like— This is insane.

00:50:05 Speaker_04
Probably the most offensive part of it to me. It's like, please have bigger dreams, Demi Moore.

00:50:11 Speaker_06
Yes, it almost reminded me, I don't know if you guys watch the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Show, but it's like the stakes are so high. They care about this so much. They perform their girlishness so hard. And it's like, let's zoom out for a second.

00:50:27 Speaker_06
You guys aren't even getting paid that well. All of this to go on whatever the substance version of James Corden was, it's like, come on.

00:50:36 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:50:37 Speaker_06
Kat, would you take it? And if you did, what would your first act be? What would your Margaret Qualley self, what would you go and do?

00:50:44 Speaker_04
You know, it's funny, when I was watching The Substance, I kept thinking, like, you know, she just went off the rails immediately. She didn't even make it, like, two weeks, you know, before she started stealing time from the other.

00:50:57 Speaker_04
And I was feeling very confident at first. I was like, I would not do that. I would follow the rules. I would be the best substance taker. I would be A-plus substance student. And then I started thinking about it, and I was like, no, I wouldn't.

00:51:10 Speaker_04
I would absolutely do this thing. And so I'm going to just, in the spirit of self-awareness, say no, I would not take the substance. I love that. But ask me again in another 10 years.

00:51:22 Speaker_06
Demi Moore clearly didn't build herself a life that would work as an older person. She doesn't have a relationship. She doesn't really have a family. And she takes a substance and does the exact same thing.

00:51:35 Speaker_06
It's like Margaret Qualley should have been trying to get in a Jake Paul music video and set herself up. We didn't have to do this again.

00:51:42 Speaker_02
She should have been hawking makeup on TikTok or something. Yeah, exactly. She could have gotten rich.

00:51:50 Speaker_06
And I also loved the lines that kind of kept getting repeated. One of them is, you are one.

00:51:56 Speaker_06
And then the other was Elizabeth and Sue both had the sort of catchphrase at the end of their punishing exercise videos that was, take care of yourself, which I kind of liked. It was like a little wink to self-care, the self-care regime, maybe.

00:52:13 Speaker_06
I'm going to give Substance a solid four out of five stars.

00:52:17 Speaker_04
All right. I'm going to give it a two, but I think this conversation about it made me like it more. So.

00:52:23 Speaker_06
OK. That's always good. That's always good. Long Legs, the horror movie, maybe the indie horror movie of the year. Let's talk about it.

00:52:35 Speaker_06
This movie, Long Legs, it's a movie about an eager young detective, much like, you know, Kat alluded to in Silence of the Lambs, who is trying to stop a serial killer. She gets swept up in the plot, so does her boss. Longleg has got dolls.

00:52:51 Speaker_06
It's got overbearing parents. It's got Nick Cage doing his best Manson, by which I mean Marilyn and Charles, sort of at the same time. It's got nuns. It's got code-breaking. It's got demons.

00:53:03 Speaker_06
I could get into the plot, but it's really — there's a lot of twists and turns. But basically, a young, eager, again, isolated female FBI detective from the Midwest is trying to stop a serial killer, and then she realizes that

00:53:17 Speaker_06
both her and her mother are implicated in the crime. In the end, she gets him. She cracks the code. She gets long legs. But almost by that point, it's too late. So, Kat, what did you think of this movie?

00:53:29 Speaker_04
I loved it. I thought it was as close to a perfect horror movie as you can get. Wow. OK. Say more. Like you said, it's twisty. It maintained the tension. It went to interesting places.

00:53:43 Speaker_04
I thought also that the central performance by Maika Monroe, who I love, I've loved her ever since I saw her in It Follows. She, I think, is the scream queen of, I don't know if she's a millennial or a zoomer. I hope she's a millennial.

00:53:59 Speaker_04
I want to claim her. But this generation of young folks, she is it. She is the icon of horror. And her performance in this is so terrific. And I do also love, yeah, it has this very kind of Silence of the Lambs, 90s vibe.

00:54:16 Speaker_04
She does, I think, the best job I've ever seen of somebody channeling Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs while also being sort of something different and unto herself. And then there is the question of Nick Cage being present in this bizarre form.

00:54:32 Speaker_04
And a little bit of trivia, I learned that he apparently is like basically bankrupt and so he's making all of these movies because he just desperately needs to pay his bills. But I'm so glad that he made this one because it's so bizarre. I don't know.

00:54:47 Speaker_04
I mean, it's, you know, you have this great creepy antagonist who ends up being not, you know, spoiler alert, but not actually the central antagonist. Yeah. Like you said, you have creepy dolls. I just, I think everything about this really worked.

00:55:02 Speaker_02
I agree and I think that Nick Cage was so… Every time he came on screen, it was just unsettling. His face was just unsettling. I felt like… It's like you want to look away when he's on screen, which is like…

00:55:19 Speaker_02
I think like something that I haven't necessarily felt like in a horror movie before where it's like shot you know a character who is shot in broad daylight that you just don't want to look at and it's not because he's like a monster necessarily like he is like human but he's just so his voice that like here's the birthday girl like it's it's so weird and like it doesn't

00:55:42 Speaker_02
Like I did not he did not register as Nick Cage, which I think is like an achievement because Nick Cage is like such a fantastic kind of like recognizable actor.

00:55:51 Speaker_02
But I did not like if you told me somebody else played the long legs, I would have believed you.

00:55:56 Speaker_02
The best way I can describe like the feeling of this movie is like, you know, when you're like in the dark and you like feel like there's something in the room with you and you're afraid to like turn your head and like look across the room because like you don't want to see whatever it is.

00:56:11 Speaker_02
like that's kind of like how long lights felt like the whole way throughout like there was some it felt always felt like there was something in the room and there was and it was like satan and you could see like if you look closely like you can see like you know this sort of shadowy nefarious figure kind of like reflected in like the windows or like whatever like in the shadows sort of hovering above

00:56:34 Speaker_02
was it her name, Harper, the FBI agent?

00:56:36 Speaker_06
Lee Harker.

00:56:37 Speaker_02
Yeah. And so it was very, very unsettling.

00:56:40 Speaker_02
And I do think it was kind of funny that they were like, because clearly they were trying to make like a Silence of the Lambs, like analog, not just because Lee Harker is an FBI agent, but also because Longlegs is sort of this like

00:56:53 Speaker_02
bombastic, like, cross-dressing sort of figure, which they made sure to be like, he, he, like, because I think they wanted to avoid sort of like, understandably, but like, Sons of the Lambs, which did a real number on relations between, you know, trans women and fat chicks.

00:57:12 Speaker_06
Yeah, that really set him back. Now it's like he externalizes it.

00:57:17 Speaker_06
He makes these creepy dolls that he whispers incantations into this like steel energy ball that he puts in the head of these Lifesize dolls, which Lee's mother then delivers to these families, which causes the fathers of the families to murder everyone.

00:57:34 Speaker_02
Yeah and I think like there's two scenes that I really stuck out to me and kind of like kept me up at night a little bit which is like the scene where Lee is in her house and like

00:57:46 Speaker_02
there's just sort of rustling outside and she's like kind of looking around and she like I think she like goes to her porch or something and looks back and then she comes in and there's like a note from Longlegs and so like it was like she's in he was in the house with her the whole time but he's never seen it's never you don't even know necessarily who Longlegs is at this point like you have a pretty good idea but and it's

00:58:11 Speaker_02
that just like suspense and just like tension was like really creepy and then the scene where it's a flashback to her childhood and Longlegs is basically you know recruiting her mother into the service of Satan or whatever and like Longlegs is like strangling her and then Lee is like in the in her bedroom little girl sitting on her couch and you just sort of see like the devil it's like sort of this

00:58:38 Speaker_02
ethereal, like, dark, shadowy horned creature just kind of, like, emerge behind her and, like, put his hands on her shoulder.

00:58:46 Speaker_02
And it's just, like, so... Normally, like, when they try... What I liked about the depiction of Satan in this film, as opposed to Apartment... Of course, now I'm gonna fuck it up. Apartment 437? Apartment 7A.

00:59:00 Speaker_02
I barely remember my own apartment number, okay? You never really see... Satan, like, in his entire... He's always kind of like a shadow, or like this reflection in a mirror, or whatever.

00:59:11 Speaker_02
He's never three-dimensional, and, like, that kind of makes it scarier in some way, because it gives the idea that he can be everywhere and anywhere all at once. Like, you can't, like, actually... You can't kill him. you know, run from a vapor, right?

00:59:24 Speaker_02
Mm. That can just sort of, like, emerge out of nothing. Especially, like, growing up. I mean, like, I'm not religious anymore, but, like, growing up super religious where, like, you know, I was raised in a family where, like, the devil is real.

00:59:35 Speaker_02
Like, don't use the Ouija board. You'll get possessed. Like, that, like, type of thing. It was kind of, like, did fit with, like, a sort of, like, religious conception of Satan as just this sort of, like, figure that is, like,

00:59:48 Speaker_02
weaves itself into your life. And it's like always sort of like ever present and like almost like inescapable in a way.

00:59:55 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think this movie absolutely cemented in my mind that when it comes to depicting Satan, less is more. You may be tempted to do a bedazzled Satan, like in Apartment 7A, but that's the wrong move. It's too much, it's too extra.

01:00:09 Speaker_04
You need shadowy, just like the barest implication of Satan. And that's much more frightening. Guys, this was not a good movie. Oh, no. Why?

01:00:20 Speaker_06
It was not. Okay, first of all, if I wanted to see Nick Cage fly his freak flag for everyone, I would have sat down and watched Pig. You know what I mean? Like, there was just no... And it was like, he was creepy. Like, I'll give it that.

01:00:35 Speaker_06
And there were moments where I was spooked, but there was nothing that, like, really stuck with me. And it just felt like it was a grab bag. It was like, it's code-breaking. It's the evil dolls.

01:00:46 Speaker_06
The evil dolls, by the way, were inspired by JonBenét Ramsey, who apparently was murdered 15 feet from an early Christmas present her parents had bought her, which was a life-size doll of herself in her pageant wear.

01:00:59 Speaker_06
So the director was like, I'm going to use that again. But like, make me a JonBenét Ramsey horror film. You know what I mean? Like, the idea that these devil children are going to come.

01:01:11 Speaker_06
I mean, there was something interesting about, like, you know, this seemingly innocuous, you know, sweet object becoming the thing that takes the entire house down, which has sort of like the final girl. vibe to me.

01:01:26 Speaker_06
But even that, it's like, what was this movie about? What was it trying to tell me? That parents can be overprotective? That, like, the biggest act of love you could do for someone? Like, why is that so often evil? Is it that the body keeps the score?

01:01:39 Speaker_06
Like, what was the point?

01:01:40 Speaker_02
No, it's that the devil is real. And that's what I loved about it, is that there was no social commentary, really. There was no real conceit in it. It was just like, the devil is real and you should be afraid of him. And I kind of like that.

01:01:53 Speaker_02
I mean, we haven't really seen that in a long time because I think people are too... I mean, we're not a religious country. People, they sort of want something more, but I think that's really just what it was. It was like, the devil is real.

01:02:06 Speaker_02
He will destroy your life. The world is like a scary place where you have no control. And I think in that sense, it is a pure horror film. It's not trying to be anything else. And that's kind of what I liked about it, to be honest.

01:02:21 Speaker_04
Yeah, same. I appreciated that there basically was no message.

01:02:25 Speaker_04
I think a lot of the best horror movies actually are gripping in the moment, they're intriguing in the moment, they're frightening in the moment, and then you leave the theater and you don't really think about them again, but you have that feeling of having been somewhere exciting while you were there in the dark watching the screen.

01:02:45 Speaker_04
That I love.

01:02:46 Speaker_06
It's almost like going on a roller coaster. Yes. Like it's a physical thing to go to a horror movie. And that part I loved. And like the whole idea that he was living in their basement the whole time making these creepy dolls. I mean.

01:03:00 Speaker_06
I thought it was like, oh, that's so scary, like that idea of like a bolted door in your own house that your mom tells you not to go.

01:03:06 Speaker_06
And oh, yeah, Satan lives down there, or like, you know, the handmaiden of Satan or whatever the Nic Cage character was meant to be. But I just felt like it was such a missed opportunity for like a real, true crime.

01:03:20 Speaker_06
Like you said, the Night Stalker who got short shrift in Maxine. It's like, just give me the Zodiac Killer. Just give me Son of Sam. We don't need to dress it up with, like, a mom who pretends to be a nun, who pretends to be delivering a gift.

01:03:34 Speaker_06
I mean, it just was a little far-fetched.

01:03:36 Speaker_02
Yeah, but I think that's, like, you have to sort of suspend your...

01:03:42 Speaker_02
your sort of like beliefs or whatever because I mean it is like a supernatural horror and I guess like the with him being in the basement the whole time I mean it does I guess maybe it's like very Christian in some ways like a Christian conception of the devil is like this

01:03:57 Speaker_02
sort of like ever present sort of force in like the moral universe or whatever. And so it's like, Lee is not like, it's not like she encounters the devil and she has a chance to get away with them.

01:04:08 Speaker_02
It's something that enters her life at some point or whatever. It's like something that was always there underneath. And then eventually it just comes to above, it comes above ground and like, she can't really escape it.

01:04:19 Speaker_02
And there's a sort of like nihilism in, in that, but I think that sort of adds to the horror of it all. This was, you know, this was the only of one of the movies that we watched that I found actually genuinely scary.

01:04:32 Speaker_02
Like the other ones, it was like maybe they're like a jump every once in a while, but like not actually something that was like, oh, if I like, when I leave the theater, if I'm like walking alone to my car, am I going to be like looking over my shoulders type of thing?

01:04:45 Speaker_06
Totally totally so what would you guys give long legs solid five stars loved it Wow five stars I'm a hater. I'll give long legs two stars Maybe two and a half. I thought Kiernan Shipka had a small role.

01:05:02 Speaker_06
There's no such thing as small roles, but she did she did a great job with her bit. And Nick Cage, I think, is just really dynamic and you can't look away. And his suicide scene, like there were scenes that were really interesting and beautiful.

01:05:16 Speaker_06
And then like sort of the classic horror things of, you know, Lee Harker's kind of squinting her eyes, looking outside. She doesn't see anything.

01:05:24 Speaker_06
She walks out of frame, and there's, like, you know, there's long legs kind of standing in the clearing outside of her house. And, you know, the thing of her mom always saying, are you saying your prayers?

01:05:35 Speaker_06
Like, there were cool different elements, but it never came together for me, like, hereditary. might have, which was sort of on similar themes. But I respect that you guys like it. You know, it's making me like it more.

01:05:50 Speaker_06
But to me, Substance was the winner of this group. What do you recommend that, honestly, listeners rewatch? Or maybe it's one of these four to really give themselves a real spook before Halloween?

01:06:02 Speaker_02
I think the first Conjuring movie is very spooky. I haven't seen it since I was like a teenager, but I do remember being scared in the theater. Long legs, I was scared. The Witch is excellent. I would say actually scary at like a couple points.

01:06:17 Speaker_02
It's more like cheap jump scares, but like just very cool, like aesthetically very cool.

01:06:21 Speaker_04
The Witch.

01:06:23 Speaker_02
The Witch, yeah, Robert Eggers, The Witch.

01:06:26 Speaker_04
Black Phillip, also one of my screen crushes. He's just such a great, such a great goat. I'll take this opportunity to recommend my favorite scary movie of all time, which is The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, starring Naomi Watts.

01:06:41 Speaker_04
And it is, I think, from 1997. It is a very analog era movie, and I love how rooted it is in this kind of pre-digital moment that we got in the very late 90s, when people were starting to kind of make their own media.

01:06:59 Speaker_04
There was this DIY thing that you could do, but it wasn't ubiquitous the way it is now. Everyone has a smartphone. Everyone has like a video camera on their phone. And it's harrowing. It's got a great twist ending.

01:07:11 Speaker_04
It's visually one of the most unsettling, but also like kind of beautiful and aesthetically coherent movies that I've ever seen. And I just, I think it's wonderful. The Ring?

01:07:23 Speaker_06
I don't even know if these count as horror movies.

01:07:24 Speaker_06
The movies that have scared me the most, if we're going to go by that metric, Taken, I stand by it, and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky, the most haunting, upsetting, it's body horror, it's psychological torture. I mean, it really like

01:07:42 Speaker_06
I think there should be a class action lawsuit against the guy. I mean, it upset me for a decade, and especially the last scene. It's grotesque, so I would recommend Requiem for a Dream if people really want to be upset.

01:07:55 Speaker_06
I do feel like we need to give a little bit of a shout out to M. Night Shyamalan, who has been hustling. I don't know if he has private school tuition to pay or what the deal is, but has anyone seen his trap?

01:08:06 Speaker_06
I think it's about like a mass shooting plot or a knock at the door. Did anyone watch any M. Night Shyamalan this season? You mean Knock at the Cabin?

01:08:14 Speaker_04
Knock at the Cabin. Yeah, exactly. I've seen them both. And M. Night Shyamalan, if you're listening to this, I love you, but you need to stop.

01:08:22 Speaker_02
Is Knock at the Cabin the one with the gays who adopt that Asian girl and then it's the end of the world? Yes. Okay. Yeah, that sucked. I watched that one.

01:08:32 Speaker_02
He has a new one out called Caddo Lake, which I do want to see only because I grew up near Caddo Lake in Texas and I am curious as to what. He has Cook in there.

01:08:42 Speaker_06
I saw about 40 minutes of Old, and I was like, there's, this is crazy. I mean, it's a movie about time, and you're like, you really, you make me like, you feel, I'm like aging watching this movie.

01:08:54 Speaker_02
Shout out to, we should give a shout out to It too, which I think is just, I think everybody, It scared everybody, both the original especially, and the remake kind of freaked me out. Oh yeah, the Austin Butler remake?

01:09:06 Speaker_02
Clowns are just unsettling, for the same reason I think that like, Nick Cage's character is and like Buffalo Bill is to a certain extent too.

01:09:15 Speaker_02
Like just that sort of like weird makeup, like obscuring the face, it creates a sort of like uncanny valley kind of thing, which is also I think why people are like so afraid of like drag queens now, like drag queen story hour.

01:09:28 Speaker_02
It's because they're not good drag queens. Fair enough. You know what kind of drag queen's doing a show at like 8 a.m. on a Saturday? A girl that didn't get a gig on Friday night. So the makeup isn't going to be good. It's going to be very Pennywise.

01:09:41 Speaker_02
It's not going to be fun.

01:09:42 Speaker_06
Yeah, drag shows are the original campy horror films.

01:09:46 Speaker_02
Exactly.

01:09:47 Speaker_06
River, Paige, Cat Rosenfield, thank you so much for joining me to talk about horror movies.

01:09:54 Speaker_02
Thanks for having us.

01:09:54 Speaker_06
Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for listening.

01:09:58 Speaker_06
If you liked this episode, if it inspired you to watch any of these movies, again, those were Long Legs, The Substance, Maxine, and Apartment 7A, or if it made you run for the hills, share this episode with your friends and your family who you think would enjoy it.

01:10:12 Speaker_06
And if you wanna support Honestly, there's just one way to do that. Go to thefp.com and become a subscriber today. See you next time.