Speaker 1: On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in best start
Speaker 1: changing it with the beck Del casts. Spring bring Hello, Hi, Jamie,
Speaker 1: it's me the Ring. What watch out? You've got seven
Speaker 1: days before I come and get you? Okay, So it's
Speaker 1: a timed thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the stakes are
Speaker 1: so high, be on high alert. I'll be on highlert
Speaker 1: for I'm about to have the worst week in my
Speaker 1: fucking life. You know what would be really bad? What
Speaker 1: you know? The only way this week could get worse.
Speaker 1: If I've watched a horse kill itself on a boat, Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. So ship the spoilers click. Fine, I
Speaker 1: think that went well. I think that went Oh yeahs.
Speaker 1: Seven Days to Live is one of the most um
Speaker 1: the best, easiest, most iconic. I never get tired of it.
Speaker 1: Jokes available. Every time I see my dog's bottom teeth,
Speaker 1: I'm like, there it is seven days. Just anytime I
Speaker 1: see something that makes me a little uncomfortable, it's seven
Speaker 1: days each and every time. I love it. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name
Speaker 1: is Caitlin Darante, and this is our show where we
Speaker 1: examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel
Speaker 1: test simply as a jumping off point to inspire a
Speaker 1: larger conversation. But Jamie, what about little girls crawling out
Speaker 1: of TV feminist icon? Samara? Samara? Yea, you joke? But
Speaker 1: I'm serious? So am I there? Well? Can I tell
Speaker 1: you what the Bechtel test is? Is that? Love? That? Okay?
Speaker 1: Not to um explain things to you, but well, I
Speaker 1: am the Ring. You are at the Ring. I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm spending precious time of my last seven days
Speaker 1: explaining what the Bechtel test is for the five thousandth
Speaker 1: time two people who know, maybe this is someone's first
Speaker 1: episode that Oh my gosh, that would be this would
Speaker 1: be I think I feel like this would be a
Speaker 1: really fun point of entry for serious discourse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So what's the Bechtel test? Though? Okay? Alright? Um? The
Speaker 1: Betel Test is a media metric created by Quirk cartoonist
Speaker 1: Alice and Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test. Originally
Speaker 1: created as a goof for comic strip that she made
Speaker 1: called Dikes to Watch out For has since become an
Speaker 1: actual media metric that people use and talk about all
Speaker 1: the time, such as the versions of this thing and
Speaker 1: shuch As and we named it the whole show after it,
Speaker 1: and we do that and sometimes people who are like
Speaker 1: lying about listening to the show, they're like, wow, I
Speaker 1: can't believe you talk about that for a whole hour,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, we don't. Um, we talked about
Speaker 1: it for seven days. Gosh, it for seven whole days,
Speaker 1: and then we explode. Our version of the test requires
Speaker 1: that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with
Speaker 1: names who speak to each other about something other than
Speaker 1: a man for two lines of dialogue, and it should
Speaker 1: be some sort of narratively impactful exchange such as ring
Speaker 1: rings seven days click that I would say would count.
Speaker 1: And then the other person says oh, no, oh, ship, yeah,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is that Amber Tamblen says, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, that is Amber tamble In. How did I
Speaker 1: not piece that together? Oh my gosh. There's so many
Speaker 1: two thousand two treats. It's a tracutary board of our
Speaker 1: our generation's luminaries. All right, um so I think that
Speaker 1: that covers our housekeeping. We have an incredible episode today,
Speaker 1: a movie we've referenced many times because due to seven
Speaker 1: days being timeless reference. But today we're talking about The
Speaker 1: Ring gor Verbinski Style two thousand two, starring Naomi Wah
Speaker 1: and a horse and the girl who is the voice
Speaker 1: of Lelo and Lelo and Stitch. And we have an
Speaker 1: incredible guest. I did not look at the IMDb. Oh,
Speaker 1: the facts are fun and there's more to come. But
Speaker 1: we have an incredible guest, We really do. He is
Speaker 1: an author and the creator of Welcome to night Vale.
Speaker 1: It's Joseph Fink. Hi, thanks for having me, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until this watch that I realized the title
Speaker 1: of the movie is a pun ring ring ring, ring ring.
Speaker 1: That is, I guess, I don't know what is the
Speaker 1: other well, I guess the ring on the poster is
Speaker 1: the ring of you being trapped in a well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before you die, you see the ring. That's that's the
Speaker 1: only version I had understood. And it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: was reading I AMDB Trivia that whoever wrote that IMDb
Speaker 1: trivia was like by the way. Also, this movie is deep.
Speaker 1: You're like, I actually did need that. It turns out, look,
Speaker 1: this movie is deep. There's so many layers and and
Speaker 1: and deep like a l now that okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking harder than ever. I love this movie so much.
Speaker 1: And uh, Joseph, I am very excited to hear more
Speaker 1: about your history with this movie because you requested this
Speaker 1: movie specifically. Yeah, a huge mistake on my part because
Speaker 1: it meant having to watch it again and now now
Speaker 1: you're on thin fucking ice for the next seven days.
Speaker 1: Best of, Like, this movie was so deeply traumatizing for
Speaker 1: me as a teenager, Like it genuinely made my life
Speaker 1: worse for like a couple of years after watching it.
Speaker 1: Just I think it was thinking back, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it is it's the first actual horror movie
Speaker 1: I'd ever seen. I think that's probably true for a
Speaker 1: number of people my age, Like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just it wasn't really marketed the way most horror movies
Speaker 1: were marketed before then, Like it was just sort of
Speaker 1: a I went and saw it on a date because
Speaker 1: it was what was in the movie theater kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and then it was just straight up like scary, and
Speaker 1: I had never really watched a straight up scary movie before,
Speaker 1: and I didn't sleepwell for quite a while afterwards. How
Speaker 1: did the date go? It was like a long term girlfriend.
Speaker 1: It went five. Wait, you didn't start watching horror movies
Speaker 1: until you were of like dating age. I mean I
Speaker 1: was like fifteen, maybe fourteen fifteen somewhere, and they're doing
Speaker 1: the math. Um. Yeah, I mean I watched like my
Speaker 1: mom was very into like nineteen fifties movies, so most
Speaker 1: of my childhood I watched. I watched like the original
Speaker 1: Invasions of the Body Snatchers. I watched like a lot
Speaker 1: of the alien movies of like It Conquered the World,
Speaker 1: It Invaded the World. There was there was a number
Speaker 1: that had very similar titles, but I had real strong
Speaker 1: opinions about which we're better. Yeah. It's funny because now
Speaker 1: watching this again, I think if I had encountered it
Speaker 1: for the first time now, I wouldn't have thought much
Speaker 1: about it because now, like of what I watched as
Speaker 1: horror movies, it's kind of the only kind of movie
Speaker 1: I watch anymore. But I as a at the time,
Speaker 1: I had never seen a movie. Um just be so
Speaker 1: mean to me before. Yeah, this movie is punishing. This
Speaker 1: movie does feel like it's hitting you. I feel like,
Speaker 1: given your body of work growing up watching fifties alien movies,
Speaker 1: um it tracks. It makes sense to me. I was
Speaker 1: barely allowed to watch TV and then yeah, when I was,
Speaker 1: it was almost always movies from the fifties. Jamie, what's
Speaker 1: your history relationship with the Ring? I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: I've told the story on the podcast before. I definitely
Speaker 1: told you, Caitlin, this movie ruined my entire life. Uh
Speaker 1: when when I thought this was like definitely the first.
Speaker 1: Like I think I'd seen like spooky movies, but I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen a scary movie. I didn't see this in theaters.
Speaker 1: I would have seen it shortly this movie came. It
Speaker 1: was in like third grades, third or fourth grade, I
Speaker 1: think like third grade, and we we rented a copy
Speaker 1: of it. My older cousin, Tammy, rented a copy of this.
Speaker 1: She and my aunt and uncle like live in this old, crusty,
Speaker 1: terrifying house in Brockton, Massachusetts that is like over three
Speaker 1: years old. A ton of people have died at the house.
Speaker 1: There's all these scary stories about the house. In her
Speaker 1: childhood bedroom and like as an adults, like that can't
Speaker 1: be true. And then I checked with my aunt. She's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's true. There was like a woman who was like
Speaker 1: blocked in the closet and then she tried to get out,
Speaker 1: but she couldn't and she died. And that happened in
Speaker 1: some time in the nineteenth century. And just like all
Speaker 1: these scary things happened at the house, I was afraid
Speaker 1: of the house, sleeping over. I didn't love it. My
Speaker 1: cousin loved living in a haunted house and wanted to
Speaker 1: scare me. And so we watched this tape and it
Speaker 1: was the I think it was the only Did you
Speaker 1: watch it on VHS? The ring? Yes, yes, we would
Speaker 1: have rented this from the nearby blockbuster on VHS, which
Speaker 1: makes me feel nice thousand years old. It was so scary.
Speaker 1: It was the scariest movie I'd ever seen. I was
Speaker 1: crying during the movie. I was begging her to tart
Speaker 1: it off, and she was like just loving every second
Speaker 1: of it. We finished the movie. It's late at night.
Speaker 1: I'm still crying, and then I think Tammy is like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is actually a bad situation for me. Now I'm
Speaker 1: no longer having fun. So then we watched another VHS
Speaker 1: which would have been I remember very clearly, She's like,
Speaker 1: I know what to do for a palate cleanser. And
Speaker 1: then we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, another two
Speaker 1: thousand two classic, because she was like, you'll feel better
Speaker 1: if we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: it didn't work. And um, she still makes fun of
Speaker 1: me because I called my dad at like and I
Speaker 1: was like, you need to come get me. I have
Speaker 1: seven days to live and I need to I need
Speaker 1: to be with my family. UM. Traumatizing movie that I've
Speaker 1: returned too many times over the year. But I haven't
Speaker 1: seen this movie and it does make me uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: watch still. But this time, preparing for this episode and
Speaker 1: also watching I didn't watch the entire original Ring Goo,
Speaker 1: but I watched specific scenes and I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what the differences were between the two movies. But watching
Speaker 1: at this time, I was like, oh, I guess I
Speaker 1: was just ten years old when I watched this. I
Speaker 1: guess It's like I didn't be myself and I slept fine,
Speaker 1: glad to hear it. So in that way, being a
Speaker 1: grown up rocks all right. What's your history with this movie?
Speaker 1: So I was. I saw it for the first time
Speaker 1: when I was a sophomore in college, which would have
Speaker 1: been two thousand five. Friend of the cast, my best
Speaker 1: friend j T was like, you haven't seen the Ring.
Speaker 1: You gotta see the Ring, And so we watched it
Speaker 1: in his apartment because we would do this thing where
Speaker 1: we would watch scary movies together and then both get
Speaker 1: really freaked out and then I would have to like
Speaker 1: stay with his apartment, sleep in bed with him for
Speaker 1: like a week because we were both like, oh no,
Speaker 1: the hills have eyes are going to get us. The
Speaker 1: Ring is out to get you know, so that hill
Speaker 1: is a little too silent for my liking exactly, So
Speaker 1: we did that with the Ring. He knew what was coming,
Speaker 1: so he played a little prank on me where after
Speaker 1: the movie was over, I was like, I feel horrible,
Speaker 1: I'm scared, but also I have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And then when I came back from the bathroom, he
Speaker 1: had shut all the lights off in the room and
Speaker 1: then turned the TV on to like static, so it
Speaker 1: was just like static on the TV. And then he disappeared,
Speaker 1: like I didn't know where he was turns out he
Speaker 1: was hiding in the closet and then he came out
Speaker 1: and scared me. But it was so freaky, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, I saw the movie The
Speaker 1: Ring and now I only have seven days to live,
Speaker 1: and and then I it's so effective. Is there anyone
Speaker 1: who's seen this movie who does not have a like
Speaker 1: trauma traumatory? It truly is like a trauma and dishing movie.
Speaker 1: We should Yeah, we should just like open a hotline
Speaker 1: for people to call in and say what happened when
Speaker 1: they watched The Rings. But then people will call us
Speaker 1: and the phone will go bring Ring and then we'll
Speaker 1: only have seven days to live again. Tomorrow we'll call yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I never need to see this
Speaker 1: movie again. I'm there's no reason for me to watch it.
Speaker 1: So I went another I don't know whatever seventeen years
Speaker 1: without seeing it, and then here we are talking about it.
Speaker 1: So I had to watch it again. I watched a
Speaker 1: couple of nights ago. As soon as I finished watching it,
Speaker 1: a fly started buzzing around my apartment. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: fly from the VHS tape found its way into my apartment. Also,
Speaker 1: my doors started making creepy, like creepy, creaky sounds like
Speaker 1: my apartment was just like being all weird and the
Speaker 1: fly was buzzing around and now I'm gonna die soon.
Speaker 1: You're you only have a couple of days, but it's
Speaker 1: a good thing that you're done. Um. Spending up podcast
Speaker 1: days a wonderful way to spend my time. And normally
Speaker 1: I watch a movie twice to prep for an episode,
Speaker 1: but I could only stomach this movie once. And I
Speaker 1: was also going to watch Ringu to just kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, Jamie, note the differences and similarities. But
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I simply cannot got you. I'm
Speaker 1: ready to die, so it's fine. My extra credit is
Speaker 1: I started watching the ring To, which I had actually
Speaker 1: never seen. I watched probably like the first twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: It's fine, is it? Is it the same cast? Mostly
Speaker 1: it's Naomi Wats and it's the same kid. Everyone else
Speaker 1: is different. Um, it might have been probably it's the
Speaker 1: same girl playing tomorrow. I'm actually not sure. But it's
Speaker 1: directed by the guy who directed Ringo. They brought in
Speaker 1: They brought in the Japanese director to direct the sequel.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't have that same like intensity of the
Speaker 1: first one. It's a little more like, let's dive into
Speaker 1: so far as background some more and find out more
Speaker 1: about her childhood. And I think I had I didn't
Speaker 1: have a ton of questions. Um at the end of
Speaker 1: the first movie, I will say, the kid from the
Speaker 1: Ring is just not doing it for me. The little
Speaker 1: girl or the little boy. The little girl is life changing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that. The little boy, but we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: The little boy he now works as a lawyer for Congress.
Speaker 1: By the way, he's current shop. I look, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what does he doing these days? And he works as
Speaker 1: like a lawyer for one of the committees. Good for him.
Speaker 1: He's a ranking member of Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia.
Speaker 1: So he lived the seven days and that is encouraging goodness?
Speaker 1: All right, should be Are are you good? Who was
Speaker 1: at your door? Was it someone I don't know? Someone
Speaker 1: was at my door and it was a stranger and
Speaker 1: he told me I have seven days to live. So
Speaker 1: how many times can we make the joke? Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: never get old to me. Should I do the recap?
Speaker 1: We'll go from there. Let's do it. Actually, let's take
Speaker 1: a break. Let's put this phone call on hold and
Speaker 1: then we'll come right back. And we're back. So we
Speaker 1: open on two teen girls flipping through the channels. One
Speaker 1: girl is Becca and she's like, Hey, have you heard
Speaker 1: about this video tape that kills you when you watch it?
Speaker 1: This woman comes on screen, and then when the video
Speaker 1: is over, your phone rings and a voice says you
Speaker 1: will die in seven days, and then seven days later
Speaker 1: you die. And then the other girl, Katie. I think
Speaker 1: that's Amber tam Amber Tam yes, with the chunkiest highlights
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my entire life. So two thousand two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: She's like, oh no, I watched the tape and then
Speaker 1: she pretends to die to play a prank on Becca.
Speaker 1: But then a few minutes later, Katie is walking around
Speaker 1: her house. The TV comes on, there's attic, then we
Speaker 1: see an image of a well and then Katie does die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then when they flash back to show you what
Speaker 1: Katie's face looked like when she died. Scary. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's the thing most people remember from the movie,
Speaker 1: even more than the little girl, is Katie's face. They
Speaker 1: wrecked amber Tamblin, they wrecked her in her Joane of
Speaker 1: Arcadia era and everything past did not like it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we cut to Rachel Keller. That's Naomi Watts. She's
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist. We meet her and her son, who
Speaker 1: has made some creepy drawings depicting his cousin Katie's death.
Speaker 1: So Katie, who died in the first scene is Rachel
Speaker 1: Keller's niece, her son Aiden's cousin m and she died
Speaker 1: three nights ago. Now, which Rachel is stunningly jill about.
Speaker 1: She doesn't give a shit. She grieves quietly or possibly
Speaker 1: not at all. There I want to favorite. I get
Speaker 1: like horror movie tropes as like the teacher who's like
Speaker 1: these drawings, like because it's always just like, yeah, kids
Speaker 1: suck at art, and every teacher knows that kids are
Speaker 1: famously bad artists. But she's like, I don't know, could
Speaker 1: be it could be a sign your son is just
Speaker 1: blowing it at kids doing creepy things in horror movies.
Speaker 1: Is the scariest thing to me of all the like
Speaker 1: subgenres of horror or all the horror tropes, the scariest
Speaker 1: thing to me is creepy kids doing creepy things, and
Speaker 1: it's happening in this movie. So he's making these creepy
Speaker 1: drawings and Katie died three nights ago, but Aiden's teacher
Speaker 1: is like, but Aiden drew these last week. Is if
Speaker 1: I'm like, got a life, lady like students, how are
Speaker 1: you keeping this close track on Aiden? I don't know.
Speaker 1: But also Naomi, Naomi Watts is being super weird and
Speaker 1: that seeing in a way that isn't called back where
Speaker 1: she's just suffered. What is it? Extremely imagine if your
Speaker 1: niece died like that and then three days later you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, She's life happens. She's like talking on
Speaker 1: the phone to her boss and like making a literate
Speaker 1: of comments about like calling him a prick or something
Speaker 1: like that, and I'm just like, your beloved niece just
Speaker 1: died brutally. Anyway, My question about the teacher is did
Speaker 1: she get those drawings, be like wow, these are sucked
Speaker 1: up and then sit on them for a week just
Speaker 1: in case somewhere? What did she know she had a
Speaker 1: special like Aiden scary drawings folder like ready to go.
Speaker 1: Maybe she just had it for every kid and then
Speaker 1: she's like, all right, all these kids are creating absolute garbage.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna wait for it to seem like evidence
Speaker 1: that's I had to check the opsius because it was like,
Speaker 1: Naomi Watts is not acting like she and Amber Tamplein
Speaker 1: were related, Like she's true because she was like my
Speaker 1: she called him my son's best friend instead of her niece,
Speaker 1: which is just like it was very bizarre. Also, I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, this cousin of his who's also his
Speaker 1: best friend. I did not make the connection that would
Speaker 1: have been Katie because Katie is a teenager in Aiden
Speaker 1: is like, I don't know seven, So I'm like, that
Speaker 1: happens with cousins, doesn't What are you talking when you're
Speaker 1: like best friends? Like that age difference thing? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand that they would have been close, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The point is Aiden calls his mom
Speaker 1: by her first name. I don't like that. Yes, I
Speaker 1: feel like that is done. Just that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be scary, right or was that just sort of how
Speaker 1: is that just what Seattle is like, I think we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be like Aiden is creepy, which he is.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going to disagree with the statement
Speaker 1: you made earlier. I think this kid nails it, Like
Speaker 1: he is so off putting in the right, But is
Speaker 1: he trying to be I don't. I mean, look this,
Speaker 1: the kid from the Ring is going to take me
Speaker 1: to court. Now I'm gonna go to He's a lawyer
Speaker 1: who can represent himself. He's gonna suck me up. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So then Rachel and Aiden go to Katie's funeral. Um
Speaker 1: Katie's mom slash Rachel's sister. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: we learn that they're sisters, but I think so. They're
Speaker 1: both blonde. I think we're supposed to. Yeah, So she
Speaker 1: asks Rachel if she could try to figure out what
Speaker 1: happened because doctors can't explain why or how Katie died.
Speaker 1: And then that's when we see the shot of Katie's
Speaker 1: face and it's all disfigured and scary looking, and that's
Speaker 1: like pulled directly from Ring Goo like that the Japanese movie.
Speaker 1: The sections of it I've seen because it's streaming for
Speaker 1: free to to be for all you to be heads
Speaker 1: out there, Uh, you can watch it for free on
Speaker 1: tub right now. And it's also on shutter. Yes, it's okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have if you have money, it's on shutter.
Speaker 1: If you have to be and Shutter has like the
Speaker 1: entire Ringo Japanese series, like all like seven no ways
Speaker 1: or something. Kidding, I still haven't subscribed to Shutter. It's
Speaker 1: like one of my holdouts for for no reason. I've
Speaker 1: got seven dollars. I could do it. Do it. You've
Speaker 1: got seven dollars and you've got seven days, Jamie, so
Speaker 1: make it dollar for each day, baby. And and if
Speaker 1: you've only got seven days to live, this is just
Speaker 1: becoming an ad for Shutter. But if you've got seven
Speaker 1: days to live, you can't blow it watching ads on
Speaker 1: to Be and there's so many ads on two B,
Speaker 1: so I think you get a seven day free trial
Speaker 1: when you sign up for Shutter. Speaking of seven days,
Speaker 1: Shutters should sponsor us. Clearly we are good at it.
Speaker 1: And uh, Joseph introduced it so smoothly into the conversation.
Speaker 1: And when you do watch to Be this um. When
Speaker 1: I was watching Ringo, it was interrupted several times by
Speaker 1: the same Fabrize commercial on a loop for seven minutes.
Speaker 1: So seven is really the number of the episode? Uh
Speaker 1: yeah it is. But the but the the imagery in
Speaker 1: the in the first Ringo movie is so scary, so
Speaker 1: so scary. I got maybe five minutes into Ringo, and
Speaker 1: then I was like, I cannot simply cannot do this
Speaker 1: to my brain and my feelings, so I stopped. I
Speaker 1: respect that. My report from The Ring Too is that
Speaker 1: it repeats the exact same scare of the teenager with
Speaker 1: a fund up face at almost the exact same point
Speaker 1: in the movie. Really, it basically starts the same way,
Speaker 1: and then it like starts with two teenagers, one of
Speaker 1: them gets killed by the ring girl, and then Naomi
Speaker 1: Watts finds the kid and the kid has the face
Speaker 1: very similar structure. Did she care this time or is
Speaker 1: she like still not worried about it? I mean she
Speaker 1: she like seeks it out this time. He's not related
Speaker 1: to her. She like she basically hears there's a teenager
Speaker 1: with a weird face, and she's like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I know this. I will travel. I like that that.
Speaker 1: Gorver Binsky, this is just kind of his like warm
Speaker 1: up lap before he starts directing every Pirate of the
Speaker 1: Caribbean movie, Like less than a year after The Ring
Speaker 1: he's just directing Jeffrey rush as a ghost when a
Speaker 1: whole series of kind of terrible movies starring Johnny Depp.
Speaker 1: Because he went from straight from that to like, was
Speaker 1: it ringo in the Lone Ranger? It was just like
Speaker 1: that was his next fifteen years. Yeah, he which is
Speaker 1: a different kind of course. I would say he did rango.
Speaker 1: He should have been doing ringo. WHOA makes you think?
Speaker 1: I was also trying to make a rango ringou joke,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't get there. So thank you Amy for
Speaker 1: doing the work. I drank some cold brew. I'm good together. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what happens next? Um Rachel now starts trying to
Speaker 1: investigate Katie's death and she talks to Katie's friends. Adam
Speaker 1: Brodie is there and he tells her about this tape
Speaker 1: that kills you when you watch it. He's in it
Speaker 1: for forty five seconds. They just had some downtime on
Speaker 1: the O C or Gilmore Girls, whatever he happened to
Speaker 1: be starring on at the time. And he's like, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll be in the ring for seven seconds. Is it
Speaker 1: allowed to like Adam Brodie? I hope so, because I
Speaker 1: like him. I hope he has not done anything bad. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan, Okay, I just I'm like, if you've
Speaker 1: been famous for more than twenty years and it's a
Speaker 1: chance that, like the chances, just it becomes a kind
Speaker 1: of a scary situation. But I love Adam Brodie. Just
Speaker 1: just never google, just never, never google Adam Brodie crimes.
Speaker 1: So then Rachel pokes around Katie's room and finds a
Speaker 1: stub for photos that she was getting developed. So Rachel
Speaker 1: goes and picks up the photos looks through them. We
Speaker 1: see Katie, her boyfriend Josh, and two other friends all
Speaker 1: on a camping trip. Everything seems normal, but then Rachel
Speaker 1: comes across a photo that shows all of their faces
Speaker 1: really blurry and distorted. So Rachel continues investigating and discovers
Speaker 1: that Katie, Josh, and the two other friends have all
Speaker 1: died on the same night and at the same exact time,
Speaker 1: ten PM. So scary, very scary. Yes, it's scary. Yes.
Speaker 1: So then so then Rachel goes to Shelter Mountain Inn
Speaker 1: where the teens stayed on this camping trip in a cabin,
Speaker 1: and the inn lends out VHS tapes and she notices
Speaker 1: one tape in particular on the shelf with no case,
Speaker 1: so Rachel snatches It's menacing. I wonder if people who
Speaker 1: did grow up with VHS is understands the menacing nature
Speaker 1: of an unmarked VHS tape. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's ask gen Z thoughts. I mean, we can get
Speaker 1: to this in the discussion. But I just am fascinated
Speaker 1: by how much of this plot is built around technologies
Speaker 1: that not only are defunct now, but they went defunct
Speaker 1: within like two years of this movie coming out. Right,
Speaker 1: everything this movie depends on is gone two years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this maybe the last, the last movie that I
Speaker 1: remember having a VHS related plot point, and they really well,
Speaker 1: then I guess it because this movie isn't as scary
Speaker 1: if it's a blue right, it's a due right though.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a ring in and of itself. That's
Speaker 1: a different kind of ring hunted DVD menu like the well,
Speaker 1: isn't there that horror movie called VHS that came out?
Speaker 1: What year did that come out? There's a whole series
Speaker 1: of them. Their excels there. I love, I love those.
Speaker 1: I feel like those are a little more like banking
Speaker 1: on like VHS nostalgia if I'm remembering, because now I
Speaker 1: feel like gen Z does know what VHS tapes are
Speaker 1: because everything is a nostalgia machine now, So like there's
Speaker 1: VHS is on what that's I'm like on Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: like the kids are watching, but this movie has it
Speaker 1: has VHS, it has photo developing, like the whole plot
Speaker 1: point of the photo developing. She works for a newspaperine,
Speaker 1: she gets answering machine messages. She takes photos with a
Speaker 1: digital camera like it's everything in this movie is gone.
Speaker 1: So soon after it comes out, she does Google. Something
Speaker 1: she doesn't but the interface, but then she's like, I
Speaker 1: gotta go. I actually the encyclopedia is more efficient. She's like,
Speaker 1: I need to go to the library and find a
Speaker 1: book called America's Lighthouses, and that's what leads her to
Speaker 1: the information she needs. Anyway, this is maybe right up
Speaker 1: there with one of my favorite research scenes in all
Speaker 1: of cinema, because she'd uses Google for exactly one second
Speaker 1: and then she bails on Google, and he looks at
Speaker 1: a book full of lighthouses and gets the information she needs.
Speaker 1: It rocks. I love it. So she has gone to
Speaker 1: the end. She snatches the VHS tape with no case.
Speaker 1: Then she checks into Cabin twelve, which is the same
Speaker 1: cabin the teens stayed in. She plays the tape in
Speaker 1: the cabin. So we now as the audience see the
Speaker 1: entire tape. There's static, there's a ring of light, a ladder,
Speaker 1: a chair, a creepy girl with long hair, Mommy looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror and then saying hello there. I hadn't
Speaker 1: rewatched the video itself in a long time, and it
Speaker 1: did give me some comfort that watching it back as
Speaker 1: an adult. Um, it's goofy as Noah says, well, we're
Speaker 1: about to meet Noah. But he's like, it's very student film,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, it is. It just feels like
Speaker 1: a little like a kid's haunted house. It's like, here's
Speaker 1: separate fingers. Yeah, it's very like here's some scary stuff.
Speaker 1: You watch it in line for like a roller coaster
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh no, what's gonna happen? I like that.
Speaker 1: I I did crack up when the mom is looking
Speaker 1: at the mirror and then she turns around and then
Speaker 1: it cuts to like new scary thing. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of scary, vaguely menacing b roll Um. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of mostly disturbing images. I still found the tape
Speaker 1: a little scary, but I'm a big old baby. So
Speaker 1: she watches it and Rachel is freaked out, and right
Speaker 1: then the phone rings in the cabin. She picks it
Speaker 1: up and it's a young girl's voice saying seven days.
Speaker 1: That passes the back dol test, caitalen, it passes. She
Speaker 1: responds with gasp, that's a meaningful and is there a
Speaker 1: more meaningful exchange ring seven days? Click? Come on, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, not to get ahead
Speaker 1: of ourselves, but I think there's an even more meaningful
Speaker 1: scene that passes the Bechtel tests in this movie. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll we'll get there. But is it it passes?
Speaker 1: It passes a bunch with Amber Tamblin as well. But okay,
Speaker 1: but we'll get there, I mean literally the opening lines. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So we cut to Thursday, a k A. Day one.
Speaker 1: Rachel has noticed that pictures of her face are all
Speaker 1: blurry and distorted the way the teens faces were in
Speaker 1: those photos. And then Rachel goes to her friend Noah
Speaker 1: played by Martin Henderson for help and she tells him
Speaker 1: about the tape and the four teens who have died.
Speaker 1: He wants to see the tape and he watches it,
Speaker 1: despite Rachel telling him not to then the phone rings
Speaker 1: for him, but no one picks it up, and Rachel
Speaker 1: deletes the answering machine message. Um. She wants to know
Speaker 1: who made the tape where it came from, and Noah
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, make me a copy and I'll help
Speaker 1: you figure all this out. So she makes a copy. Bake, mistake,
Speaker 1: big mistake. You're not going to want to make a
Speaker 1: copy of the ring tape. Well, if you see it,
Speaker 1: you do want a copy, I know, but I'm on
Speaker 1: Samaraw's side, So that's where I'm coming from. Sure, don't
Speaker 1: make a copy of the Ring. I also love Um
Speaker 1: here's a useless comment. Martin Henderson's hair is so funny
Speaker 1: to me in this movie. He's got a bit of
Speaker 1: a bob going on. He's got a bit of a
Speaker 1: bob and he's got He's also has some kind of
Speaker 1: chunky highlights. He and Ever Temple and have sort of
Speaker 1: the same stylist. Yeah, yes, I think it's nice. It is.
Speaker 1: It is nice. So then it's Friday day two. Rachel
Speaker 1: gives Noah the copy she made of the VHS tape
Speaker 1: and he's like, why are the time code numbers all
Speaker 1: messed up? That's what's going to tell me where the
Speaker 1: tape came from, and now I don't know, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what are you talking about? None of that
Speaker 1: made sense to me. So he's like trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where who made the tape and where it came from.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how he would have been able to
Speaker 1: do that based on the time code. Anyways, I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought very hard about that. Then Noah's assistance slash girlfriend
Speaker 1: comes in. Rachel's like, I gotta leave, and so as
Speaker 1: she's leaving, she sees a ladder propped up against the wall,
Speaker 1: the same ladder from the tape. Question. I love his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: She's she's a bit of a she's she's a little
Speaker 1: hot topic. There's a little hot topic flavor going on there,
Speaker 1: and Nan, we wats it like, I have to get happy.
Speaker 1: So a question to think about, excuse me, moving forward
Speaker 1: through the rest of this plot is at this point,
Speaker 1: she has copied the tape and shown it to someone.
Speaker 1: So a question is, why does anything else in this
Speaker 1: movie happen just given what we learned at the end.
Speaker 1: It's a really really good question. I see your point,
Speaker 1: thoughts my thought. I mean, at this point even though
Speaker 1: the movie should end here, it can't end here because
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten to Brian Cox. So unfortunately the movie
Speaker 1: does have to continue for that reason alone. It does
Speaker 1: have to go on. My in world theory is that
Speaker 1: Samara does actually want someone to dig into her story
Speaker 1: and kind of recognizes that maybe this person is able
Speaker 1: to do it. Um. That's sort of how I justify
Speaker 1: it to myself, is that it kind of keeps happening,
Speaker 1: not because she hasn't fulfilled the curse, but because Samarrow
Speaker 1: is like, he come visit my island and talk to
Speaker 1: my dad. Yeah, right, Like she's she's changing, She's making
Speaker 1: the rules. She can change the rules as she goes,
Speaker 1: and she I mean, ultimately Samara wants she's just trying
Speaker 1: to go viral. You know, she's as gonna say she
Speaker 1: wants a mummy, but yeah, she's trying to She's an
Speaker 1: influencer and she's trying to get followers. I believe it.
Speaker 1: I I this movie does work for me on the
Speaker 1: on the mommy horror front. I feel like she just
Speaker 1: she just wants to be a understood by an adult
Speaker 1: woman who's not going to push her into a well
Speaker 1: for example, fair Yeah. Um, Okay, so now it's day
Speaker 1: three Saturday. Rachel scrubs through the tape again does something
Speaker 1: that I also don't understand, but she kind of moves
Speaker 1: the recorded image that she's able to see on screen,
Speaker 1: kind of moves it to the side where there's another
Speaker 1: image of a lighthouse in one of the scenes. So
Speaker 1: she has discovered this lighthouse in the tape, and then
Speaker 1: just not, that's not how tapes work, right, Like the right,
Speaker 1: I literally wrote down, maybe that is how that works.
Speaker 1: Like I just like, I mean, maybe if the if
Speaker 1: the original footage was shot in like Pano vision, but
Speaker 1: the aspect ratio and the t V is only like
Speaker 1: four three, maybe you can do a film buff. She
Speaker 1: had really high tech, she had great gear, she's shooting
Speaker 1: in six nine, but the TV's only four three. So
Speaker 1: I was like maybe, but I do not understand, and
Speaker 1: I think the like the movie is just like relying
Speaker 1: on the audience to assume, yeah, I guess this could
Speaker 1: maybe be a thing, or just be like so focused
Speaker 1: on their own mortality that by that point they're like, sure, great, fine,
Speaker 1: I don't have time to ask these questions, right, I
Speaker 1: have to call my mom. So it's Sunday, day four.
Speaker 1: Now that Rachel has seen this lighthouse in the tape,
Speaker 1: she's trying to figure out where this lighthouse might be
Speaker 1: via a library book that I mentioned earlier called America's Lighthouses.
Speaker 1: I want that book. She finds what she thinks is
Speaker 1: this lighthouse on a place called Moesco Island, and then
Speaker 1: she starts to piece some other things together. Um a
Speaker 1: photo of some people standing in out of this lighthouse
Speaker 1: includes a woman named Anna Morgan, who is also seen
Speaker 1: in the tape. So this is scary, Mrs Scary. Rachel
Speaker 1: then looks through some newspaper archives and discovers that Anna
Speaker 1: was a horseback rider, but a bunch of horses on
Speaker 1: this island died mysteriously, and then Anna Morrigan started having
Speaker 1: hallucinations and then died by suicide. Then we cut to Monday,
Speaker 1: day five. Rachel has a scary dream where she sees
Speaker 1: the little girl with dark hair. This scene, by the way,
Speaker 1: points to my theory about what's happening here, because what
Speaker 1: Samara does in this dream is she shows her the
Speaker 1: hospital that they put her in. It's she's kind of
Speaker 1: pushing her in a direction of information rather than just
Speaker 1: haunting her here. I mean, that's how I've understood the
Speaker 1: movie that like Samara wants people to and like, you know,
Speaker 1: you survive by making a copy, because you know, she
Speaker 1: wants the spread of this information to happen. She wants
Speaker 1: to go viral, as you said, she I do. I uh.
Speaker 1: The forthcoming twist that it's like, even when people know
Speaker 1: Samara's story, that does not quench her rage. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: now you know, unfortunately, um I still want to kill you,
Speaker 1: but thank you for hearing me out. They like something
Speaker 1: like about Samara getting you all the information and then
Speaker 1: killing you anyways is just so incredible. She's like, I
Speaker 1: gave you all the clues, Mr. Police, but also you
Speaker 1: have to share. Yeah, this is a reporter, but also
Speaker 1: you have to share the clues with other people. The
Speaker 1: thing is like Samara needs to at least wait for,
Speaker 1: you know, Rachel to get to press, like come on,
Speaker 1: and that takes more than seven days in two thousand
Speaker 1: two probably, um okay. So then Rachel discovers her son
Speaker 1: Aidan watching the tape, the phone rings, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh no, now my son is going to
Speaker 1: die in seven days. And then she calls Noah and
Speaker 1: she's or Noah calls her I think, and she's like, oh, Noah,
Speaker 1: he watched the tape and he's like who did, And
Speaker 1: she's like our son, and we're like twist alert. Noah
Speaker 1: and Rachel made a baby together. Completely missed that. I
Speaker 1: think both times watching this did not realize he was
Speaker 1: the dad. It's such a useless twist that I also
Speaker 1: forgot when I want but um, I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: good for that creepy lawyer kid. Like well, prior to that,
Speaker 1: you see some scenes where Rachel and Noah have kind
Speaker 1: of weird interactions based on what you understand their relationship
Speaker 1: to be, which is like friends and maybe like colleagues
Speaker 1: or former colleagues. But then they like have these conversations
Speaker 1: where it's like you think I'm a bit and I
Speaker 1: think you're blah blah blah, and just you know how
Speaker 1: I talked to my colleague. Yeah, and then like the
Speaker 1: scene where his girlfriend walks in and it's a problem
Speaker 1: and then and then she she she's like, grow up, Noah,
Speaker 1: and then she storms out and it's like, what is
Speaker 1: this relationship? And then you find it he sired her.
Speaker 1: Creepy kid, maybe that's what happened. He got her gregnant,
Speaker 1: and now she has a Greg. She's stuck with this
Speaker 1: little Greg, this creepy Greg who calls her Rachel, Oh
Speaker 1: my god for the Yeah, this little Greg who won't
Speaker 1: stop first name assaulting her at any given opportunity, Like
Speaker 1: it's just okay. So we get that twist. Then it's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: day six the time, and and we still have an
Speaker 1: hour left of the movie at this point. So Rachel
Speaker 1: goes to Moesco Island where the lighthouse is. On the
Speaker 1: ferry to the island, a horse gets loose and jumps overboard. Um,
Speaker 1: which is obvious watching it back, but I think I
Speaker 1: did not know that was a c g I horse
Speaker 1: when I was ten, and I was so sad and scared.
Speaker 1: And that's the image more than some are crawling out
Speaker 1: of the TV or amber Tamblo scary head. The horse
Speaker 1: jumping off the boat was where I was like, I'm done,
Speaker 1: I need to go home, traumatizing. My wife joined me
Speaker 1: for this watch, and um, I actually I warned her
Speaker 1: ahead of time because there was just no way she
Speaker 1: was watching that scene, no scene for her. It's upsetting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's and and It also establishes gor Verbinski
Speaker 1: boat lore. You're like, now this guy knows how to
Speaker 1: shoot something on a boat. Soon there will be ghost
Speaker 1: pirates on boats. Wow. Wow. Okay, So on the island,
Speaker 1: Rachel goes to speak to Anna's husband, Richard Morgan, who's
Speaker 1: played by Brian roy Oh my gosh, what a tree.
Speaker 1: This is definitely the first time I've watched this movie
Speaker 1: in a post succession world, and it's so fun to
Speaker 1: watch Lighthouse Logan roy Um whatever acute himself. I do
Speaker 1: feel like he's kind of playing the same character both times.
Speaker 1: A fun fact from the IMW trivia is that he
Speaker 1: did not audition. They wrote that role for him. Brian, Well,
Speaker 1: he knocked it out of the park as usual. What
Speaker 1: what a weird role to write for someone specifically. You're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you would be great at, Brian Cox
Speaker 1: being samaras lighthouse stab right, you know what. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to watch. But but he does that scene always.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that seems really really scary when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, but I didn't know that it was
Speaker 1: one of our greatest actors doing it. Okay, So Rachel
Speaker 1: tells Richard Morgan that she thinks the video tape is
Speaker 1: a message from his his wife, but he's not having
Speaker 1: any of this and he shooes Rachel away as lighthouse
Speaker 1: guys are wont to do yeah. Meanwhile, Aidan is back
Speaker 1: home being completely neglected by his parent parents under he
Speaker 1: calls her Rachel. He barely knows her um. He's drawing
Speaker 1: some creepy pictures over and over again, and Rachel calls him,
Speaker 1: and he tells his mom over the phone that this
Speaker 1: little girl talks to him and shows him things, apparently
Speaker 1: this little girl being Samara. So Rachel then goes to
Speaker 1: a doctor on the island, Dr Grasnick, who tells Rachel
Speaker 1: that the Morgan family adopted a daughter, Samara, after which
Speaker 1: Anna Morgan started hallucinating seeing things and she thought that
Speaker 1: Samara was making her have these hallucinations. Shortly thereafter, Anna
Speaker 1: dies and Samara was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Noah is like back on the mainland investigating and he
Speaker 1: discovers more info on in a Morgan and finds the
Speaker 1: cover of a different VHS tape, but it's empty. The
Speaker 1: tape is missing, so he goes to look for it
Speaker 1: back on the island. Rachel goes back to Richard Morgan's house. Um,
Speaker 1: the door is open, so she just like goes in
Speaker 1: and snoops around. She finds the missing tape that Noah
Speaker 1: was looking for, and it is of Samaraw. So much
Speaker 1: tape antics deep in the second act, and it's all tapes, tapes, tapes.
Speaker 1: This movie people researching things. Yeah, most of the plot exactly.
Speaker 1: And once you're not scared of the movie anymore, you're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a lot of busy work that they're doing.
Speaker 1: What was that high risk busy work? What was that
Speaker 1: movie where they work at the Boston Globe and they're researching,
Speaker 1: they're like investigating priests. Yes, Spotlight, Yeah, this movie is
Speaker 1: basically Spotlight. Okay. So she finds the missing tape and
Speaker 1: it is of Samara in a hospital room being questioned
Speaker 1: by a doctor. Samara is saying that really aggressively to
Speaker 1: the doctor. I love. The doctor is very unprofessional. He's like, Samaraw,
Speaker 1: we're here trying to figure out what's wrong with you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's not how you talked to a kid
Speaker 1: at a children's psychiatric hospital. I hope I know. I
Speaker 1: was like, is this doctor a cop? Like, what is happening.
Speaker 1: He's blowing it. So Samara tells the doctor that her
Speaker 1: dad doesn't love her and wants her to go away,
Speaker 1: and then, which I'm sure helps, Then Richard Morgan is
Speaker 1: right behind Rachel as she's watching this tape, and she's like,
Speaker 1: you killed Samara, didn't you? And then Richard hits Rachel
Speaker 1: over the head. And then he starts kind of carrying
Speaker 1: on about how Samara is still showing him images whispering
Speaker 1: in his ear, tormenting him, and then he electrocutes himself
Speaker 1: today I mean the performance he makes a meal of
Speaker 1: the electrocution scene. When they had to bring this movie
Speaker 1: from an R to a PG thirteen, apparently this was
Speaker 1: one of the scenes that they have like cut this
Speaker 1: is a PG thirteen movie, it is, and that was
Speaker 1: like a big thing. This and then later the murder
Speaker 1: at the well, we're both radically cut to hit PG thirteen.
Speaker 1: I do remember this is definitely one of those movies that,
Speaker 1: like when it was released on like DVD, there was
Speaker 1: like uncut versions right like there were other I vaguely
Speaker 1: remember that, but I also definitely did not watch it again. Yikes. Um, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a joke because like
Speaker 1: rings have gems on them, uncut ring, uncut gems. Thoughts,
Speaker 1: We're with it. If we're on our way, We're on
Speaker 1: our way. Thank you, thank you so much. I think
Speaker 1: I didn't see this movie when it came out in
Speaker 1: theaters in two thousand two because Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: was coming out and I was like, that's the only
Speaker 1: ring I'm interested in. How badly do you think this
Speaker 1: movie suffered from ring exhaustion of right? People like, we've
Speaker 1: we've had enough down from Lord of the Rings. That
Speaker 1: is very funny. Yeah, um okay. So Richard electric cutes himself.
Speaker 1: Then Noah shows up at this house on the island.
Speaker 1: He and Rachel go into the barn on this property.
Speaker 1: They discover a room where Richard apparently kept Little Samara
Speaker 1: while Anna was having mental health issues. And then under
Speaker 1: the wallpaper in this room, they discover an image of
Speaker 1: a tree that was like burned into the wall and
Speaker 1: Rachel recognizes the tree. She's like, oh, it's at Shelter
Speaker 1: Mountain Inn, where Katie and her friends camped and watched
Speaker 1: the tape originally. It's also definitely just the tree from
Speaker 1: the six ft under opening credits. I have no idea
Speaker 1: if that's true. It's just looks exactly like it. It
Speaker 1: feels like it. Tho, yeah, they copy pasted. We have
Speaker 1: six feed under would have been on already at that point, right,
Speaker 1: don't remember. I think it looks like the White Tree
Speaker 1: from Gone Door from Lord of the Rings, Return of
Speaker 1: the And we've got our ring head over here. So
Speaker 1: then we cut to Wednesday, day seven. Oh, it's the
Speaker 1: last day. The stakes are high and it's hump day.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is um all right, that's the end of
Speaker 1: the job. Rachel and Noah go to Shelter Mountain Inn.
Speaker 1: They go to Cabin twelve, where they discover a well
Speaker 1: under the floorboards. Then Rachel is knocked into the well
Speaker 1: by some supernatural force. Noah goes for help, and while
Speaker 1: he's gone, the heavy stone lid kind of slides over
Speaker 1: the top of the well to trap Rachel inside. The
Speaker 1: well from this movie is on the campus because of
Speaker 1: this movie was shot between actual Seattle area and a
Speaker 1: few locations in our area in southern California, and it
Speaker 1: was shot the well itself is from California. It's I
Speaker 1: think season chel Islands, okay, and one of our nation's
Speaker 1: worst boyfriends drove me there once, um, and it was
Speaker 1: really exciting. And and I don't know if we're going
Speaker 1: to go on a field trip there, Jamie, maybe take
Speaker 1: some pictures put them on Instagram. I'm well, I'm willing
Speaker 1: it to What if we peed in some are as? Well?
Speaker 1: Is what I want to throw out there? How hard
Speaker 1: would it be to pee in the well? Is it
Speaker 1: like I remember it being? It's a bit, I mean
Speaker 1: it has to be. It's like not. You can't see
Speaker 1: a building, you know, watch YouTube video. I don't think
Speaker 1: you can get to it. It's behind a lot of fencing. Um.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned to you when we were talking about
Speaker 1: this episode, I grew up ten minutes from that campus
Speaker 1: and so near one of the filming locations. Did not
Speaker 1: help things. Right, That you lived and the well no
Speaker 1: les the where the ring originates. Shocking that you lived, shocking,
Speaker 1: and you're still with us. So, so Rachel is still
Speaker 1: in the well, and while she's down there, she sees
Speaker 1: Samara in the well with her. She grabs Rachel and
Speaker 1: shows her like a vision of Samara's mother, Anna Morrigan,
Speaker 1: throwing Samara into the well. And then the last thing
Speaker 1: that Samara ever saw was this ring of light right
Speaker 1: before the well was stealed shut with like the heavy
Speaker 1: stone lid. Then Rachel finds Samara's skeleton in the well
Speaker 1: and she's like cradling it. We cut to Rachel out
Speaker 1: of the well. Apparently Noah went to get help and
Speaker 1: saved her, and then Rachel realizes that some was in
Speaker 1: the well for seven days before she died, hence the
Speaker 1: you have seven days to live. And it seems like
Speaker 1: Rachel and Noah will not die because discovering the truth
Speaker 1: about Samara set them free. But then you check the
Speaker 1: rent on and you're like, oh no, there's still twenty minutes, right,
Speaker 1: So then Rachel and Noah go back home. Rachel talks
Speaker 1: her son Aidan in and it seems like maybe Rachel
Speaker 1: and Noah are going to rekindle their romance. This was
Speaker 1: just a long elaborate parent trap from Weirdday Kid. Aiden,
Speaker 1: Oh love it. So the next morning, Rachel tells Aiden
Speaker 1: that she helps that little girl, and Aiden freaks out.
Speaker 1: He's like, you weren't supposed to help her. She never sleeps.
Speaker 1: This will keep going. God. That line is good where
Speaker 1: he's like you, you don't get it. She never sleeps
Speaker 1: and you realize what he means. That is just I
Speaker 1: genuinely think that's great writing. It's very scary. So then
Speaker 1: we cut to Noah's place, Static comes on his TV.
Speaker 1: There's a shot of the well. Then we see Samara
Speaker 1: crawling out of the well and then crawling out of
Speaker 1: his TV. Meanwhile, Rachel is rushing to Noah's place because she,
Speaker 1: you know, realizes they're still in danger. She burst in
Speaker 1: and finds Noah dead as hell, Static on the TV.
Speaker 1: She's freaking out. She burns the tape, but she's like, wait,
Speaker 1: why didn't I die? Why did he die? And I
Speaker 1: didn't What did I do that Noah didn't do? And
Speaker 1: then she realizes she made a copy of the tape
Speaker 1: because Samara, you know, she just wanted to be heard.
Speaker 1: She just wants people to know her story. She wants
Speaker 1: to go viral. So then she has aiden make a
Speaker 1: copy of the tape so that he won't die. And
Speaker 1: then he's like, but what about you know, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do now? We have to show this
Speaker 1: to someone such a VHS based thing. You have to
Speaker 1: make a physical copy of the physical media and that
Speaker 1: will save your life. And that's how the movie ends
Speaker 1: with like now they're like, oh my god, we have
Speaker 1: to keep spreading the story the end. So that's the movie.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we will come back
Speaker 1: to discuss. And we're back. While on the break, my
Speaker 1: wife ambushed me with like, I have a bunch of
Speaker 1: thoughts on the ring. I have some thoughts do you
Speaker 1: want to share um? Well, she immediately was like, I
Speaker 1: think it's about motherhood, and I'm like, I think they already.
Speaker 1: She's onto something, but she her interpretation, having we went
Speaker 1: through this whole thing last year when we had a kid,
Speaker 1: is Amanda's first few months are rough, and so she
Speaker 1: thinks the the idea of having a daughter and having
Speaker 1: her not be who you think she's going to be
Speaker 1: in putting terrible images in your head is a metaphor
Speaker 1: for postpartum depression and postpartuming sieting. I like that there definitely.
Speaker 1: I am glad to hear that because I was like,
Speaker 1: it was like this, motherhood is definitely a theme in
Speaker 1: this movie, but it's like the way it's treated as
Speaker 1: kind of I couldn't make heads or tails of it
Speaker 1: in certain moments. I like that, like with Anna Morgan specifically,
Speaker 1: but I feel like maybe that's why we needed the
Speaker 1: ring too to give us more information. And then they
Speaker 1: made a third movie, Rings, which was about the birth father.
Speaker 1: But Brian Cowhouse dad, we don't have to get into.
Speaker 1: I read the Wikipedia summary and I now there's an
Speaker 1: entire story to her birth that like is why she's
Speaker 1: an evil child? Whoa this is what where she? Is
Speaker 1: she from the Seattle area or is she from hell? Um?
Speaker 1: It's a not not to bring down the mood. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a bummer of a story. And she's
Speaker 1: like born because the priest sexually assaulted the mother and
Speaker 1: then tried to kill her, and they gave her like
Speaker 1: a whole traumatic birth story. Well, if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that movies like to do, it's over explain why women
Speaker 1: are traumatized and revel in that trauma and be like,
Speaker 1: isn't it So doesn't women's trauma make for such a
Speaker 1: good scary movie. There's a lot of money in that
Speaker 1: turns out okay, So the so, I mean, maybe that's
Speaker 1: a good place to start. I just the background on
Speaker 1: this movie, as we've already said, it's uh pretty close
Speaker 1: remake of a Japanese movie from Ringo, which was based
Speaker 1: on a novel by Koji Suzuki which was influenced by
Speaker 1: a bunch of scary Japanese folk tales. It's like to
Speaker 1: let me and and in the all of the Japanese
Speaker 1: versions of the story, it's her name is Sadako Yamamura,
Speaker 1: which was rather lazily anglicized into samaraw morgan Um. She's
Speaker 1: also an adult in the Japanese movies, which seems like
Speaker 1: a major difference. Yeah, which I mean it's she's also
Speaker 1: very scary. I do feel like it's scarier when she's
Speaker 1: lie Low from Leelo and Stitch with her hair all
Speaker 1: messed up and what's her name from Spirited Away? Wow,
Speaker 1: she really was on a terror there for a while. Now.
Speaker 1: Should a small white girl have been performing those roles?
Speaker 1: Probably not, but probably not this. I mean it is
Speaker 1: like the question with this remake is why does it
Speaker 1: need to exist when it's very very close to the
Speaker 1: Japanese version, and it because it is just a completely
Speaker 1: whitewashed version of a famous Japanese story in English, when
Speaker 1: it's like you could have just released Ringo with the
Speaker 1: subtitles and it would have worked just as well. Yes, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a movie so normally for episodes. I have
Speaker 1: like pages of notes and thoughts that I've a key umulated,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's just because this movie
Speaker 1: freaks me out a lot and just makes my brain
Speaker 1: not work as I'm watching it. But the only thing
Speaker 1: I wrote in my notes is Aidan calls his mom Rachel,
Speaker 1: and that was my big takeaway, which is a little scary,
Speaker 1: and it also just feels like kind of, um, no,
Speaker 1: no disrespect to Seattle, but I'm like, I could just
Speaker 1: see kids in Seattle kind of just doing that and
Speaker 1: having that be a normal thing to do up there.
Speaker 1: They're just on like very curt terms with their parents. Um,
Speaker 1: they're peers, They're peers. I think there's a lot to
Speaker 1: talk about with this movie. I mean, especially around the
Speaker 1: subject of like motherhood. I feel like this movie and
Speaker 1: this franchise, or at least Ringo as well, like kind
Speaker 1: of um manages to subvert a lot of horror mommy
Speaker 1: tropes by giving Rachel a really so I mean, like
Speaker 1: a really strong connection to the story because it's like
Speaker 1: she's investigating the death of her niece, which she does,
Speaker 1: which I keep forgetting because I don't know if Naomi
Speaker 1: Watts was told just like I was not seeing the grief.
Speaker 1: But whatever, everybody are differently. Sometimes you have to If
Speaker 1: this movie was remade now, it would be a podcast.
Speaker 1: It would not be Um, she Naomi wants to be
Speaker 1: playing a podcaster and um, we would have to watch that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess I wanted to talk about how
Speaker 1: motherhood is explored because I feel like in a lesser movie,
Speaker 1: sometimes in horror, anders in movies in general, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: of course she needs to like figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on with Samara, because that is what a mother does.
Speaker 1: And like there's this in this little mommy alert that
Speaker 1: goes off inside you and you have to, you know,
Speaker 1: do the mommy thing. I feel like we see that
Speaker 1: all the time in sci fi. Uh see it in horror,
Speaker 1: you see, I mean you see it kind of across
Speaker 1: the board. But the Moofy, I feel like, explains really well,
Speaker 1: why just doing what she's doing. And also she's like
Speaker 1: she's you know, she's a single mom, and um, she
Speaker 1: and Aiden around a first name basis, so she's not
Speaker 1: necessarily mother of the year. And um, I liked that
Speaker 1: that's important representation. Yeah, I mean I appreciated that Rachel's
Speaker 1: character is an active participant in the story in the
Speaker 1: way I mean, it depends on what sub genre of
Speaker 1: horror you're examining. I think slasher movies are maybe the
Speaker 1: worst at this as far as like, well, there's just
Speaker 1: gonna be a bunch of horny teen girls and they're
Speaker 1: going to have sex and then they're gonna get murdered,
Speaker 1: and we do we do, uh, lose a horny teen
Speaker 1: right at the top of the movie. We do, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then yeah. Female characters in slasher movies are just
Speaker 1: usually not allowed to be very active in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, figuring out a way to escape or to
Speaker 1: fight back or anything like that, with of course the
Speaker 1: exception of The Final Girl, which is obviously very characteristic
Speaker 1: of the genre. But at least Rachel is, you know,
Speaker 1: actively investigating the mystery and choices she makes and discoveries
Speaker 1: she makes push the story forward and ultimately, well, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say resolve the conflict, because there's the conflict is
Speaker 1: she doesn't sleep. She doesn't sleep, But what Rachel does
Speaker 1: allows her and her son Aidan to survive thereby you know,
Speaker 1: resolving that conflict. So yeah, I you know, she's an
Speaker 1: active participant in the story, which makes sense. She is
Speaker 1: the protagonist. That is how stories work, I know, but
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily how horror moms are always dreaded. True.
Speaker 1: One of my notes that I wrote down was, I really,
Speaker 1: just overall, I think this is actually a very well
Speaker 1: written movie. Um. Just objectively, I think this movie does
Speaker 1: a lot of things right. Um. And one of the
Speaker 1: things it does is it does a structure that horror
Speaker 1: movies almost never do. And I it's a really good one,
Speaker 1: which is it's like, um, it's a p I movie
Speaker 1: mixed with a horror movie. Like it's about a person
Speaker 1: solving a mystery, which is a super interesting way to
Speaker 1: struck Like usually a horror movie is about something coming
Speaker 1: to a person, but this is about a person coming
Speaker 1: to a thing. After the Yeah, the only other one
Speaker 1: I can think of is the very good movie The
Speaker 1: Empty Man. Oh, I don't know that one. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it kind of got buried. Um, but it's on HBO
Speaker 1: Max question Mark. But it uh, I mean it it's
Speaker 1: a movie that starts out feeling like a direct rip
Speaker 1: off of the Ring because it's about a similar like
Speaker 1: you something happens in three days later you get killed
Speaker 1: um and a guy starts investigating, but then it ends
Speaker 1: up going a very very different direction, but it has
Speaker 1: the same thing of like totally it's a horror but
Speaker 1: structurally it's just a straight up private detective solving the mystery.
Speaker 1: Yeah that works for That worked for me for this movie,
Speaker 1: and yeah it does mean that. Like I guess when
Speaker 1: I when I was back on the legacy of of
Speaker 1: horror mommy's it's usually like, yeah, like things are happening
Speaker 1: to them and they are trying to avoid things happening.
Speaker 1: But she, I don't know, she's She's doing all this
Speaker 1: stuff for so many reasons, like she's trying to avenge
Speaker 1: her niece question Mark, although I am still convinced she
Speaker 1: doesn't care. She's on the clock, she's trying to save
Speaker 1: her son, she's trying to save her baby daddy, she's
Speaker 1: like trying to save herself. There's all these different sort
Speaker 1: of factors and and there's not a ton of like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess when she goes into the lighthouse, you're like,
Speaker 1: probably don't go in there, But there's not like the
Speaker 1: typical like don't go in there because you're acting irrationally
Speaker 1: in a very horror movie way like she's I don't
Speaker 1: remember feeling that way, or or on their rewatch either
Speaker 1: because you're like, well, yeah, she needs to she needs
Speaker 1: to go and she has to pursue the bad thing,
Speaker 1: or yeah, I do appreciate that there's a compelling reason
Speaker 1: for her to investigate and like go into scary places
Speaker 1: and because she's like trying to all of the mystery.
Speaker 1: This won't be any spoilers, but I recently saw Barbarian
Speaker 1: and in that movie, the main character, who is a woman,
Speaker 1: keeps going back into the scary place, and you're like,
Speaker 1: but why she loves going into the scary place. I
Speaker 1: had so much fun at that movie. He just it
Speaker 1: was so fun. It's literally the first movie I had
Speaker 1: seen in the theater since January. It was the first
Speaker 1: one that I was excited enough about to be like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll go on eleven A. I'm on a Monday. Truly,
Speaker 1: that's that's so fun I had. I had such a
Speaker 1: blasted Yeah, no, no spoilers for listeners, but highly recommend
Speaker 1: she does. She is addicted to going down to the
Speaker 1: scary place. But ultimately, when Bill scary guard answers the door.
Speaker 1: In a movie, you aren't supposed to go into the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: haven't you seen it? Of course? Well, I also like
Speaker 1: have a huge Bill scars Gard crush. I love I
Speaker 1: knew it, penny Wise, are you joking there? Yeah? There,
Speaker 1: Look Bill's cars guard. I'm going to show up. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna show up at the movie and I'm gonna love
Speaker 1: every second of it. There's also okay, last barbarian comment.
Speaker 1: There's a scene in which one of the actors, even
Speaker 1: though the movie takes place in between Detroit and l
Speaker 1: a inexplicably, one of the main characters wears a hat
Speaker 1: from a Boston based pickle company. Um, and I cheered
Speaker 1: Grillos pickles. Grillos Pickles. Where in the world of this
Speaker 1: movie did he get that pickles the supermarket? I mean,
Speaker 1: I Grillos Pickles a Boston institution. Ultimately, when the big
Speaker 1: one hits, that's how That's how my my my city
Speaker 1: will be remembered, is where Grillos. We're howking I used
Speaker 1: to get Like this makes it set me sound like
Speaker 1: I'm actually a hundred years old. I used to buy
Speaker 1: They used to sell Grillos pickles, like near the Park
Speaker 1: Street stop and you could just get fistful of pickils
Speaker 1: and then get on the train to some loose pickles
Speaker 1: on the train. That's disgusting. Okay, I'm learning so much.
Speaker 1: I also got excited about the Gorilla's hat. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad I was. I was like, it doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: for a character who's going between Detroit and l A.
Speaker 1: But um, look you a grillos hat. It can be.
Speaker 1: It can be anything you want. It's first to go
Speaker 1: back to the motherhood thing. I think there is something
Speaker 1: really important to the fact that there's the twist that's
Speaker 1: Tomorrow just is evil, that there there is no thing
Speaker 1: you can do to make her not evil, that she
Speaker 1: just wants to hurt people. Because I think there is
Speaker 1: this just going a bit off personal experience here. There
Speaker 1: is this some of this horror to being a parent
Speaker 1: of there's only so much you can do to help
Speaker 1: shape someone, like you do your best and you try
Speaker 1: not to suck it up, but ultimately they're going to
Speaker 1: become the person they become. And um, I know somebody
Speaker 1: who's a parent who was like her older kid. She
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, he just is, Um, he's an asshole,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what to do about that. Like
Speaker 1: he's just he's just a huge dick, and like I
Speaker 1: don't think I think that's just who he is. And
Speaker 1: so there's this horror that like, yeah, this person becomes
Speaker 1: part of your family, but you you only have so
Speaker 1: much control over what kind of person you're bringing into
Speaker 1: your family, and it's I just want to clarify, but
Speaker 1: that my daughter seems great, My daughter seems very cool.
Speaker 1: So far so good, so far, so good, so far,
Speaker 1: so good. But like, yeah, this idea that yes, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of problems with the way she mothered Smarrow,
Speaker 1: including throwing her in a well, but Smarrow also sucks. Smarrow,
Speaker 1: does we have some parenting notes. I do feel like
Speaker 1: there is this um and maybe this has just been
Speaker 1: on my mind because there is inexplicably been another entry
Speaker 1: into the Orphan franchise recently where it's like kids secretly
Speaker 1: old um. But there is this uh sort of anxiety
Speaker 1: in movies around adopted children, um, and like, oh, what's
Speaker 1: which I am not adopted? I can't imagine if is
Speaker 1: super fun if you're an adopted kid watching The Ring
Speaker 1: to be like, oh no, like I brought this kid
Speaker 1: into my home and something. It's the most wrong child
Speaker 1: that's ever existed. Um, and like drives her adoptive parents
Speaker 1: out of their minds and must be killed. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So what wasn't clear to me was if tomorrow was
Speaker 1: like turned out the way she was, where she was
Speaker 1: like imprinting scary images into her adoptive parents minds because
Speaker 1: like her dad, Brian Cox was like not wanting to
Speaker 1: have her because he says something like my wife was
Speaker 1: never supposed to have a baby, you know, and she
Speaker 1: had all the Ani Morgan had all these miscarriages, And
Speaker 1: I was like, was he like doing like abusing his
Speaker 1: wife and like forcing her to miscarry? Like I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure exactly what was happening. And then when like this
Speaker 1: baby did get adopted, was he abusive towards the baby?
Speaker 1: And that's why Samara, I wasn't sure how much of
Speaker 1: like a nature or nurture thing it was to me
Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily clear enough in the movie. I don't
Speaker 1: even know how much it matters for this specific movie.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily operating on a lot of logic as
Speaker 1: most horror movies do not. Is this a ring two thing? Joseph? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess. The sequels make it clear to me.
Speaker 1: To me, it's obvious that she's evil, just she's evil,
Speaker 1: Like that's sort of that's sort of the ending twist
Speaker 1: is there's nothing you can do. She's just a monster.
Speaker 1: The sequels make that more literal, like they specifically like
Speaker 1: her birth mother tried to drown her because she was evil,
Speaker 1: Like there's she was evil from birth, like I think
Speaker 1: that's a There's the scene where she's being interviewed and
Speaker 1: he's like, UM, you don't want to hurt people, do you?
Speaker 1: And she says, but I do, and I'm sorry and
Speaker 1: it won't stop. And I think it's a very clever
Speaker 1: bit of writing because the first time you hear I
Speaker 1: don't you don't want to hurt people, do you? And
Speaker 1: she says but I do, and you interpret it as
Speaker 1: but I do keep hurting people. Um, And then in
Speaker 1: the end you they show her face and you realize
Speaker 1: she's saying, but I do want to hurt people, um,
Speaker 1: because she's bad to the bone. I really Okay. So
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this recently for an unrelated reason.
Speaker 1: Have a book with me right called Lady Killers. It's
Speaker 1: about female serial killers, but more so like the the
Speaker 1: media narratives that tend to form around them throughout history. Um,
Speaker 1: and I do want to cover more women murdering uh
Speaker 1: and being evil kind of movies on the show, first
Speaker 1: of all because they're fun to watch it, but also because, um,
Speaker 1: there is like I think it's like interesting that the
Speaker 1: Ring franchise sort of goes into this territory of like
Speaker 1: needing to over explain the evil because around most actual
Speaker 1: quote unquote evil women who have you know, killed, murdered, burned,
Speaker 1: et cetera, there is always this kind of compulsion to
Speaker 1: be like, but but why and like connecting it to
Speaker 1: motherhood or connecting it to like a kind of feminine
Speaker 1: explanation for why she would be driven to kill. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that is there is some truth to that, but
Speaker 1: sometimes people are just fucking evil, and um, there is
Speaker 1: not a highly like you know, socialized reasoning for it.
Speaker 1: And so I like that after like being kind of
Speaker 1: entrenched and stuff like that, the twist that Samara is
Speaker 1: just evil super worked for me because you get that
Speaker 1: whole narrative of like, this kid had a really difficult life.
Speaker 1: They were abused, they had like their parents were way
Speaker 1: out of their depth. They were murdered by their own mom.
Speaker 1: All this horrible stuff, and but uh, and yet two
Speaker 1: things are true. And she's also just evil and like
Speaker 1: wants to kill people and can't explain why, and that's
Speaker 1: just like the reality of the world. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I thought it was cool that it's like, I like,
Speaker 1: this is not a fully formed thought, and so by
Speaker 1: the time this release releases, I might feel different already.
Speaker 1: But I do think it it's like fun to see
Speaker 1: a character like allowed to be evil without there being
Speaker 1: this like really intense trauma background explainer. It's fun when
Speaker 1: people are just evil sometimes when you're watching a movie,
Speaker 1: I think, especially because in horror movies centering around men
Speaker 1: being the evil killer, sometimes there will be like a
Speaker 1: backstory where it's like this is how he got evil,
Speaker 1: and other times it's like, no, Michael Myers was just
Speaker 1: born evil. Well, there's there's some that's explored, right, Michael
Speaker 1: Myers is origins I don't remember. I think I think
Speaker 1: you're right though, that it's kind of even when they
Speaker 1: explore it, like he's just he's very similar to Samarrow,
Speaker 1: Like they're both these kind of faceless entities that are
Speaker 1: just born evil and kind of want the world watching
Speaker 1: this again. I think this is a really well done
Speaker 1: twist in a movie that is never talked about. When
Speaker 1: people talk about very good movie twist, this one never
Speaker 1: comes up. But it's the only one I can think
Speaker 1: of where the twist is the thing you think for
Speaker 1: most of the movie, Like for the most of the movie,
Speaker 1: they're like samaras evil, and then they're like, actually, she's
Speaker 1: just misunderstood, and then the twist is actually the first
Speaker 1: thing you thought was right. Um, It's just I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to. I just think the writing in this
Speaker 1: movie is very clever. The structuring of it is just
Speaker 1: very smart. And if you're trying to like scare your audience,
Speaker 1: that is like such an effective way to do it.
Speaker 1: Is like to get you all the way around to
Speaker 1: like empathizing with some are early sympathizing with her and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this poor kid, and like I was
Speaker 1: trying to put myself in the ten year old brain
Speaker 1: and as scary as the story of the well in
Speaker 1: the Seven Days and all that ship, like it's really scary,
Speaker 1: but it is sort of comforting. When you have the
Speaker 1: explanation and she's holding the skeleton, You're like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: samar is not going to be scary anymore. But then
Speaker 1: guess what, bitch, She's gonna be scary forever and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it's like, Okay, if you had considered leaving
Speaker 1: this movie without being absolutely like afraid forever, yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, just like that. The takeaway is that
Speaker 1: some some evil is just like truly unstoppable and irrational,
Speaker 1: and that is the scariest thing in the world. It
Speaker 1: is just that people are irrationally evil and want to
Speaker 1: hurt you, and they can't even tell you why you
Speaker 1: can't therapy them out of killing you. To be fair,
Speaker 1: I think that that doctor did a real bang up
Speaker 1: job of Samara. Yeah yeah, he's like Samaraw, what the
Speaker 1: funk is wrong with you? Why doesn't Brian Cox like you?
Speaker 1: You're like all the question Like it was that just
Speaker 1: one of the more realistic scenes in the movie, right right,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's also not to be like Brian
Speaker 1: Cox is. I'm just like, what what year are these Samara?
Speaker 1: Like what year does this take place in? Um? I
Speaker 1: know that like it takes place in the current day
Speaker 1: in the main narrative, but it just seems like Samaraw's
Speaker 1: story is so old timey and all of the videos
Speaker 1: are so old timey, and Brian Cox is like old.
Speaker 1: And then you're just like, and Anna Morgan always kind
Speaker 1: of dressed a little old timey, like almost Victorian era.
Speaker 1: They look like they're like pioneers. Yeah, like, but but
Speaker 1: then you're like, well, Brian Cox, isn't that old? That
Speaker 1: seems maybe a little mean. They figure out at some
Speaker 1: point that Anna Morgan died twenty eight years ago, I think,
Speaker 1: is what said, So it would have been in like
Speaker 1: the sixties or seven early seventies. I can't math right now. Also,
Speaker 1: has Brian Cox just not aged since this movie? Or
Speaker 1: I had the same thought, isn't that But like that's
Speaker 1: kind of a good scenario if you're an actor, or
Speaker 1: you're just like, okay, I'm in my old era, so
Speaker 1: let's just try to like hold this, let's hold the
Speaker 1: line and like not look. And then at some point
Speaker 1: I feel like, in a couple of years he's allowed
Speaker 1: to look really old, and that's the final act. Is
Speaker 1: just like great actor, objectively crusty at the edges. So okay,
Speaker 1: So but this all the summer stuff happens sometime in
Speaker 1: late sixties or early seventies. From what I understand, I do.
Speaker 1: I do agree with you Joseph that like the I
Speaker 1: mean of of what i've like child psychology, Uh, certainly,
Speaker 1: and the further back you go, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: blame me, shame, weird stuff that goes on. So it's
Speaker 1: not like unfortunately it's just childhood psychology. It's like adult Yeah.
Speaker 1: But like especially if you're little Samara, I just she
Speaker 1: could have she could have used a gentler touch. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: you're asking for it. You're asking to like die in
Speaker 1: seven days. Quick aside, I am seeing on the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: page that Chris Cooper appears in this movie as child
Speaker 1: Murder uncredited. Those scenes were cut. I have him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did you read about this? I I have information
Speaker 1: on that. Please please give me the rundown on why
Speaker 1: esteemed actor Chris Cooper appears as child Murder uncredited. His
Speaker 1: character existed entirely to answer the question. It was like
Speaker 1: the main question my wife had, which is, wait, who
Speaker 1: did they give the tape to at the end that
Speaker 1: the kid made a copy of which the movie just
Speaker 1: doesn't answer. But originally the movie opened with a in
Speaker 1: which Chris Cooper playing this creepy child murderer is like,
Speaker 1: I've found God and I'm good now and you have
Speaker 1: to help clear my name, and she's kind of ignores him,
Speaker 1: and then he doesn't appear for the entire rest of
Speaker 1: the movie. And then at the end when they need
Speaker 1: someone to give the tape to, they give the tape
Speaker 1: to him because he deserves it. They cut it. That's
Speaker 1: kind of satisfying. Test audience has had the reasonable question
Speaker 1: of we don't understand why Chris Cooper is in this
Speaker 1: movie and then not in it for the entire rest
Speaker 1: of the movie. It is weird because it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I and I do like when movies do that when
Speaker 1: they just bring in like a famous act and this
Speaker 1: is kind of like pique Chris Cooper to like American
Speaker 1: Beauty came out a couple of years before. This is
Speaker 1: also the year he's in adaptation, like he's he's really
Speaker 1: in his bag, and he also happens to be child
Speaker 1: Murder uncredited, which like, I mean, I I do appreciate.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, he's not he's he's not too
Speaker 1: you know, there are no small roles, there's just child
Speaker 1: Murder uncredited. And then part of the viral I did
Speaker 1: a lot of IMDb a trivia reading. I'm sorry. Part
Speaker 1: of the viral campaign for this movie was they made
Speaker 1: a fake website that was like by this guy telling
Speaker 1: the story of the ring from this character who they
Speaker 1: ended up cutting from the movie. Well, what a waste
Speaker 1: of time. But that's so fun. I love that. I want.
Speaker 1: I know, actually I don't want a whole movie about
Speaker 1: Chris Cooper being a child murderer. I take that back,
Speaker 1: but I like, I like that he was, that he
Speaker 1: was technically in this movie. That's that's a treat. That's
Speaker 1: comforting to know. Yeah, I don't again, this movie just breaks. Normally,
Speaker 1: if I'm watching a movie for the podcast, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I turn on my analytical brain and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: have so many thoughts and but not not today. I
Speaker 1: don't know this this movie. There is what I like
Speaker 1: about this movie as it does it has a lot
Speaker 1: of things that a lot of horror movies has, but
Speaker 1: it just does it well and in a way that
Speaker 1: makes more sense to me than usually, Like you have,
Speaker 1: Like I guess Naomi Watts technically counts as a final girl,
Speaker 1: but she's also got a final son. She's not like,
Speaker 1: like you said, just if she's not running from something
Speaker 1: the entire time, she's actively pursuing it. And it's like,
Speaker 1: not in an irrational horror way, it's in all these
Speaker 1: ways that makes sense. Way you do have like the
Speaker 1: creepy child, but you get kind of like a two
Speaker 1: punch of like you understand why the child is creepy,
Speaker 1: but also you don't have to really understand why the
Speaker 1: child is creepy. She's just inherently creepy and that's her
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um, and then creepy child number two in
Speaker 1: aiden right, and then the ultimate twist is that he's
Speaker 1: going to work for the US government and that's a
Speaker 1: bit scary. And then we don't have to feel great
Speaker 1: about that. I don't know. I don't you know what
Speaker 1: are his politics? I couldn't. They're not listed on his
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page. Who's he voting for? We don't know that?
Speaker 1: Should that should be on everyone's Wikipedia page because it's
Speaker 1: a lot of what we want to know. It's just like,
Speaker 1: who's this guy? I'm just like, should I bother? Should
Speaker 1: I get it? Should I care? Me? There? I did
Speaker 1: find out here's a jump scare. My favorite cast member
Speaker 1: of the Chronicles of Narnia movie is now a huge
Speaker 1: influencer in the in the Conservative Party in England, do
Speaker 1: I know, I mean, given Chronicles of Narnia, that doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me, I know, but I was really rooting for
Speaker 1: scan Dar Keynes or whatever. The fund is not Scandar,
Speaker 1: you know, but indeed Scandar. Anyway, my last thought on
Speaker 1: Samara that, um, this is another thing I didn't catch
Speaker 1: back when I was being terrified at fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: whatever it was, is what she's actually doing when she
Speaker 1: kills people, which seemed kind of vague the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, but I realized this time they actually
Speaker 1: pretty clearly lay out the mechanism of how she's killing people,
Speaker 1: because her whole thing is she just puts scary images
Speaker 1: in people's heads and they die of a heart attack.
Speaker 1: So that's just she crawls out of her TV and
Speaker 1: she makes you think of scary things until you have
Speaker 1: a heart attack, which once you think of the mechanism,
Speaker 1: it actually becomes a little less scary. But especially and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, it's on you if you when you
Speaker 1: when you rewatch the tape, I'm like, well, if you're
Speaker 1: that's if you're so scared of that tape that your
Speaker 1: heart explodes. I don't know what to tell you, buddy,
Speaker 1: It's it's mostly b roll um. I don't think I
Speaker 1: even can made that connection. Oh because yeah, Rachel's sister
Speaker 1: question Mark Slash Katie's mom is like the actual grieving one.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, She's like, yeah, Katie died from a heart attack,
Speaker 1: but she was seventeen, like in good health otherwise, like
Speaker 1: why did this happen? I did not connect that either,
Speaker 1: And the creepy face is like I guess them being
Speaker 1: scared to deaths at the end with the like right,
Speaker 1: both times we see her doing it, they flash every
Speaker 1: frame from the cursed tape as they die, which I
Speaker 1: think is supposed to be like her implanting those images.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just was like way more logistical
Speaker 1: than I think I remembered it being where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: they like laid out how she's killing people. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did not make that connection. No no trace she It's
Speaker 1: all psychological torture um. And then it's on you. It's
Speaker 1: still very scary to me, even though you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: you thought about a ladder too hard? And then he died,
Speaker 1: but it's still scary. Um yeah, does anyone else else
Speaker 1: have um thoughts on the Ring expanded universe? I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean again, since I came in with broken brain,
Speaker 1: too scared to have you know, thoughtful analysis, but upon
Speaker 1: you know, reflecting, and you know from this discussion it's
Speaker 1: a it's a female character at the center of a
Speaker 1: horror movie in which she is are more active than
Speaker 1: female characters tend to be in the horror genre. You
Speaker 1: have a female character who is the antagonist who doesn't
Speaker 1: have like a gendered back story the way that that
Speaker 1: like kind of revels in like girlhood or woman whood trauma,
Speaker 1: at least not in this installment apparently, right right, Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that gets explored further. But in in this
Speaker 1: if you just isolate the first movie, it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: a female character who is evil in the way that
Speaker 1: male characters are allowed to simply be evil without any
Speaker 1: kind of gendered back story. So I guess that's good
Speaker 1: question mark. I don't know how I feel about it,
Speaker 1: but you know, a subversion. I guess it's also kind
Speaker 1: of like ready to go into it being like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like because I sort of always forget that
Speaker 1: Noah is a character in this, but I'm not mad
Speaker 1: about it. He doesn't like I. I sort of whenever
Speaker 1: a new male character is introduced in the same job
Speaker 1: as like the woman protagonist, I'm like, oh, no, now
Speaker 1: he's just gonna start doing things and she's not gonna
Speaker 1: be allowed to do any more things, because that will
Speaker 1: happen in movies sometimes, but that doesn't happen here. Like
Speaker 1: they're just sort of, uh, there's a lot of clerical
Speaker 1: work involved in this investigation, and she needs another set
Speaker 1: of hands, and uh, you know, like he he dies ultimately,
Speaker 1: so I was like, you know, and she had the
Speaker 1: foresight to be like, Noah, don't watch this tape. You
Speaker 1: might die, and he's like, pish posh, I'm watching it.
Speaker 1: It's like, what am I a scarity cat? And then
Speaker 1: he thought about a ladder so hard as hard exploded.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a conversation to be had
Speaker 1: around how did other people feel about the reveal that
Speaker 1: like Rachel and Noah were like former lovers and they
Speaker 1: had a son together and then they start to kind
Speaker 1: of recon their romance towards the end. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think you could argue that that feels kind of
Speaker 1: wedged in, or maybe that's just an appropriate piece to
Speaker 1: the story. I don't really have a thought about it
Speaker 1: one way or the other, because again, I'm too I'm
Speaker 1: too busy being scared about the ladder. I mean I
Speaker 1: literally did not notice, right, right right, I think I
Speaker 1: was so focused on the scary bit. I totally did
Speaker 1: not notice that aspect of their relationship. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: very yeah, I think it's like, I think you're right
Speaker 1: that it could very easily be cut and changed basically nothing,
Speaker 1: because the kid doesn't seem particularly affected by it, Like
Speaker 1: just no one seems affected by that revelation, and then
Speaker 1: the movie just keeps going. So it just in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm like, was that just like a studio and then
Speaker 1: they're just like, but we're not changing the rest of
Speaker 1: the script. Would just have to say that Noah's the father,
Speaker 1: but he's only got like two days alove anyway, So um, well,
Speaker 1: in the way that like female characters, it's rare to
Speaker 1: see a female character existing in a movie, especially as
Speaker 1: the protagonist, if she's not also in evolved in some
Speaker 1: kind of but there's not a love interest. But again
Speaker 1: it's it's barely noticeable for some members of the audience,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's not a big deal. An interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the gender dynamics here is that in the novel
Speaker 1: this is based on, which I have not read but
Speaker 1: I just read the Wikipedia of it, most of the
Speaker 1: roles are gender swapped. It's the protagonist is male, the
Speaker 1: Noah character is female, and instead of a son, he
Speaker 1: has a daughter. Interesting, so everyone swapped. And then Sadako
Speaker 1: is actually intersex in the novel. Interesting. Okay uh. I
Speaker 1: don't know what any of that does to the meaning
Speaker 1: of the story, but it is just what it is, right.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like, I mean, as much as I
Speaker 1: would like more intersex characters in movies, I feel like
Speaker 1: Samara is maybe not an excellent candidate, especially because she's
Speaker 1: the villain. Extremely I think that could owed some rough
Speaker 1: meanings to this movie. Yeah, I I am. I think
Speaker 1: that the this movie's primary crime is that it was
Speaker 1: made kind of to just whitewash and existing Japanese movie
Speaker 1: that is so similar, Like it's there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of shot for shot moments between the two movies. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: gor Verbinski persisted and that's feminism. Baby. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have no. I think that's it for me. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there, it's this movie is hard to talk about
Speaker 1: because we're all afraid of it. Um is what I
Speaker 1: learned today because I've like objectively, I'm like, okay, listeners
Speaker 1: are going to be like no, but there should be
Speaker 1: a shoehorned in romance are like yeah, but I was scared,
Speaker 1: as my response, and it's like, okay, the horny teenager
Speaker 1: died immediately, I'm like yes, but in my defense, I
Speaker 1: was so scared when that happened, and so I can't
Speaker 1: possibly have a cogent discussion about it because it was
Speaker 1: scary to me. Yeah. Um to advertise shutter again, they have.
Speaker 1: I haven't watched this yet, but they have in Japan.
Speaker 1: They made Sadako versus and I don't remember her name,
Speaker 1: but the girl from the Grudge. Um, so it's a
Speaker 1: straight up like a Freddie versus Jason movie. But it's
Speaker 1: the Ring girl and the Grudge girl, very little girls.
Speaker 1: And I read the Wikipedia, it's like them fighting over
Speaker 1: who gets to haunt a house. It sounds incredible. I
Speaker 1: haven't watched that rules I still haven't um seen the
Speaker 1: Grudge because my Yeah, I was just like, no, you're
Speaker 1: not doing this to me again. I refused to be
Speaker 1: a part of this scary little girl narrative as a
Speaker 1: scary little girl myself. Um, I feel like the scary
Speaker 1: little girl community has been absolutely decimated by Samara and
Speaker 1: the Grudge Girl. Yeah okay, yeah, as as a as
Speaker 1: a ten year old who did not brush her hair.
Speaker 1: We were really in the trenches during these years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these movies. But I do want to watch the Grudge?
Speaker 1: Is that? Does the Grudge hold up in any way?
Speaker 1: Show I've never seen. I've never seen it. Yeah, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: wait come back next year. And after the after the ring,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. I was like, absolutely not. Well,
Speaker 1: I love when we have a guest that comes on
Speaker 1: the show, like once a year for a very particular
Speaker 1: kind of we have a guest who comes on the
Speaker 1: show specifically to cover the Santa Claus franchise, for example,
Speaker 1: Grace Freud. Uh and she's gotten so good at talking
Speaker 1: about So come back next year with another scary little girl.
Speaker 1: Oh god, not the nation I want to end up in.
Speaker 1: And then that will disappear in your Wikipedia page one. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's all I have to say about the
Speaker 1: ring um. This movie does pass the Bechdel test, and
Speaker 1: as you prayed it out earlier, Joseph immediately between Becca
Speaker 1: and Katie who were talking about a videotape, well, first
Speaker 1: they're talking about like how many television rays passed through,
Speaker 1: but they have a really interesting conversation about like being
Speaker 1: afraid of TVs, just like right off the bat. And
Speaker 1: then they do talk about Katie's boyfriend Josh and like
Speaker 1: if she if Katie fooled around with him or not,
Speaker 1: so they have to establish that she's she's a horny tectually,
Speaker 1: you don't feel bad when she does, right, that's just candy.
Speaker 1: And then they talk about the tape. And then later
Speaker 1: on Rachel and Dr Grasnick speak about Samara and Anna Morgan,
Speaker 1: and then also Rachel talks to her sister about Katie's death,
Speaker 1: like there's it passes, and Rachel talks to Samara and
Speaker 1: Samara's scary images. And then in the biggest win for feminism,
Speaker 1: I believe the mother murdering a daughter scene passes the back. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: this is actually a feminist text. Now that we're now
Speaker 1: that we're getting down to the nitty gritty women are
Speaker 1: talking about all sorts of you know, women murdering women,
Speaker 1: mothers hating their daughters. Um, aunt's actively not giving a ship.
Speaker 1: What happened to their niece when her heart exploded? Earlier
Speaker 1: this week, question of market Like, it's just there's a
Speaker 1: lot of women. When women were talking to each other.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look as we've talked about in the last
Speaker 1: years that this show has been on the air. It
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be a pleasant pass. It can be
Speaker 1: a mean, aggressive, evil pass. Ring Ring seven days click gasp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the ring feminist text. How about our nipple scale though,
Speaker 1: where we rate the movie on the scale of zero
Speaker 1: to five nipples, nipples being kind of the same shape
Speaker 1: as a ring when you think about it. Um, I guess,
Speaker 1: uh and and uh. That scale, of course, is based
Speaker 1: on how the movie fares when examining it through an
Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens. Um. I truly don't even know where
Speaker 1: to begin rating this movie, because again, I had no
Speaker 1: analytical thoughts. I only had I don't like that this
Speaker 1: movie is making me feel scared, screaming and crying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna go like two and a half I'm
Speaker 1: just like, oh, let's just go down the middle. Why
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe even three. I don't know why
Speaker 1: not three? Um? And the answer is I don't know,
Speaker 1: answer is ring, ring, you have seven days to live.
Speaker 1: I think I'll go two and a half, just to
Speaker 1: split down the middle, because that's what rating I give
Speaker 1: a movie when I have no idea how to analyze it. Um. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: as we discussed there, there's there's interesting things that the
Speaker 1: movie seems to subvert, but all I also I don't
Speaker 1: know how to, Like, I don't know how to analyze
Speaker 1: a movie that doesn't operate on logic the way that
Speaker 1: horror movies tend not to operate on much logic. So
Speaker 1: it just kind of breaks my brain. I don't really know.
Speaker 1: The movie isn't doing anything like overtly like reductive or
Speaker 1: harmful as far as I can tell, or maybe it is.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I feel like, ultimately, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the if we're pitting this movie against other movies of
Speaker 1: that era, like the early two thousands is such a
Speaker 1: fucking cess pool, and so so this movie like managing
Speaker 1: to effectively subvert some stuff and just like have a
Speaker 1: really like strongly motivated central character that is like is
Speaker 1: a mother, but is not like strictly defined by motherhood,
Speaker 1: which I feel like it's kind of hard to find
Speaker 1: in this genre a lot of times. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: only a handful of scenes where you even see her
Speaker 1: interacting with her son. She's mostly out investigating. I would
Speaker 1: argue she's like not an awesome mom, but also we're
Speaker 1: not parents, and she's a single mom, and she doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot going on. Yeah, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like this I don't know, and and this movie just
Speaker 1: does the smart thing of just having a lot of
Speaker 1: different women who are a lot of different ways, and
Speaker 1: so it's like not making any sort of I feel like,
Speaker 1: prescriptive statement. It is saying something about motherhood, but honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it isn't know what. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like this is going to be one of those
Speaker 1: episodes where our listeners are like, I can't believe you
Speaker 1: didn't talk about this obvious thing while we were scared.
Speaker 1: We were too scared. Then that's my real defense. We're
Speaker 1: screaming and crying and we only have and we can't.
Speaker 1: We won't get your message, we won't get your emails,
Speaker 1: because we'll be dead because um um yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to reach me, give me a call, ring ring,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it three nipples and and and
Speaker 1: and five rings and no seven rings seven, which is
Speaker 1: an Ariana Grande song. What is that? Everything is connected? Um? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give us seven rings, three nipples. I'm giving
Speaker 1: all my apples to Samara because I'm honestly rooting for
Speaker 1: her to get Naomi Watts's ass, and she does. I'm
Speaker 1: rooting for Samara to go viral and get one million
Speaker 1: followers or more. I will give the movie two and
Speaker 1: a half nipples and seven days. And I'll give all
Speaker 1: of that too. Becca, the other teen from the opening
Speaker 1: scene who is hospitalized because of the trauma of seeing
Speaker 1: her friend who explode died. Yeah the end, Joseph, Just
Speaker 1: what about you? Um? Well, On one hand, I think
Speaker 1: this is a very good movie, Like, I think it's
Speaker 1: well written and well made. On the other hand, I
Speaker 1: hate it and it ruined it, like made my life
Speaker 1: worse for several years after watching it in a very
Speaker 1: real way. Um So I think I'm also a solid
Speaker 1: three nipples. Um just like very good movie, I loathe
Speaker 1: it and wish it hadn't been made. Yeah, Gore Verbinsky
Speaker 1: unnoticed for for this one and not well whatever, we
Speaker 1: don't have time to talk about Gore Verbinsky. Also behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, it is worth saying there are it's mostly
Speaker 1: men behind the scenes, mostly white guys. There is a
Speaker 1: female producer on the movie, but that was about all
Speaker 1: I was able to find. And uh, you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta Docket for being a whitewashed remake for no reason.
Speaker 1: Right that said, this movie ruined. It sounds like everyone
Speaker 1: on the Zoom calls life and I used to do.
Speaker 1: And this is why horror is the genre I engage
Speaker 1: with the least. I do not like movies that that
Speaker 1: I feel punished by watching them, and I feel very punished.
Speaker 1: I do. I hate I do not like to be punished.
Speaker 1: I went through all this and then yeah, now, like,
Speaker 1: the reason I bring up Shutter is because it's the
Speaker 1: only three service I use basically anymore. Like I almost
Speaker 1: never watch a movie unless it's a horror movie anymore fascinating.
Speaker 1: I've been really horror pilled in the last five years.
Speaker 1: I am excited for Malignant, which is coming out on
Speaker 1: the Matreon very soon, or maybe just came out. It's best,
Speaker 1: the best, undisputed genius him so much so, Joseph, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us, thank you for for
Speaker 1: having me, you know, solidarity and in all of us
Speaker 1: being tormented by this movie once again. Um, where let's
Speaker 1: check in in a week? Seriously? Where can people follow
Speaker 1: you and check out your stuff online? Plug away? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I make a podcast called Welcome to Night Fail, which
Speaker 1: is Welcome to Nightfail dot com. And there's also in
Speaker 1: fun about We make a bunch of other shows, um. Most.
Speaker 1: I also write books and I have a number of
Speaker 1: books out that you can find at bookstories, most notably
Speaker 1: for this season. I don't know when this episode is
Speaker 1: coming out, but I have a novel about Halloween called
Speaker 1: The Halloween Moon um that actually takes place. It takes
Speaker 1: place in Cameria, where the Ring was filmed partly, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a middle grade novel about a little
Speaker 1: girl who loves not a little she's thirteen year old
Speaker 1: girl who loves Halloween until when year Halloween doesn't end
Speaker 1: and it just is Halloween forever. Um. So that can
Speaker 1: be found at bookstores and is a good read for
Speaker 1: the season. Cool check that out for for the Samara
Speaker 1: in your life. Ah, thank you so much for coving
Speaker 1: God Joseph, Like, I just such a big fan of
Speaker 1: all of your work and it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do podcasts. Um So, in a way,
Speaker 1: you've committed a crime. Dare you? And yes, come back
Speaker 1: for the grudge next year? Do I have to? This
Speaker 1: is the curse we place on you. Yeah, you are
Speaker 1: doomed to return to the Becktel Cast every year to
Speaker 1: cover a different scary kid movie and then you can
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter and Instagram at becktel Cast. You
Speaker 1: can check out our Matreon at patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: betel Cast, where we cover two bonus episodes a month
Speaker 1: and you also have access to the entire back catalog.
Speaker 1: This month we are doing Malignant, as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: Final Destination three Baby, the scariest one, the one that
Speaker 1: I liked the most and apparently you like the most
Speaker 1: because our matrons voted for that. You can also get
Speaker 1: some merch over at t public dot com slash the
Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast. It's beetle Juice season. Tis this season to
Speaker 1: talk about if beetle juice comes wet scabs or dry
Speaker 1: scalps something to always be having on your mind and ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think our most impactful um contribution to the discoorse discourse.
Speaker 1: Indeed so And with that ring ring, ringing hello and goodbye,
Speaker 1: Click perfect stuck the landing, Bye bye,