2 Guys And A Chainsaw

We had heard this was a cannibal film. Although technically correct, it’s not much of a horror flick after the first 10 minutes or so. A star-studded lineup only added to the mystery of why we had never heard of this movie before. Is it worth your time? Listen to find out!

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

The Bad Batch (2016)

Episode 358, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: Well, Craig, this week, um, I chose a movie that you had told me you were interested in doing. Um, I think what you did was forwarded me… An article on Bloody Disgusting that listed some lesser known cannibal movies.

And this was one of them. And you said, let’s start with this one. I just think it sounds great. 2016’s The Bad Batch, directed by…

Craig: I just, I just, I just …. Okay, sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean 

Todd: Oh, no, do you want me to read you exactly what you wrote?  

Craig: No, I don’t, but all I want to say is I have absolutely no memory of that.

I have no memory of reading that article, of sending it to you, of saying anything about it. I have no memory of it. I’ll, I believe you. I’ll take your word for it.

Todd: I have an email in front of me dated May 6th, because I thought you might try to deny this. This May? This, 2023, my friend. Were you drunk? I don’t know, it says, I want to do all of these, and there’s a link to an article.

I don’t necessarily want to do them all now, but they all sound interesting. I’d love to start with the Bad Batch, which I can’t believe I’ve never even f ing heard of. Anthropophagus really sounds interesting too, but if you’re up for the Bad Batch for next week, I would say don’t even read about it in this article if you haven’t heard of it.

I think you’ll be surprised by all the people in it. I was. So…  

Craig: Yeah, well that stands. I, that, that’s true. And it is true that I am and was surprised that I, I had heard nothing about it. Like, there must have been little to no ad campaign because I keep my eyes on these things. And that blows my mind, kind of, based only on the star power of the people in this movie.

Yeah, it’s kind of crazy because this filmmaker had done another movie before, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night or something like that, which I’ve heard, I haven’t seen, but I’ve heard really good things about. Me too. So maybe based on the success of that, I don’t know, maybe she’s just friends with these people.

But. There’s tons of big names in it, but I had never heard of it, apparently until May, when I read that article, and, uh, I don’t know, I, uh, I guess, I’m sorry? Both laugh 

Todd: Well, no need to apologize. 

Craig: I don’t know what you 

Todd: think of it yet. You know, when you don’t know, it’s okay. You’ve skewered me before over shit I didn’t know was gonna be bad, but, uh, I agree with you here.

I think that, um, I would have looked at this, especially that article, Bloody Disgusting, and it talks about cannibal movies. And this one here, I mean, I can read from that, too. I mean, when you read the description that they have here, Follows a group of undesirables sent to fend for themselves in a lawless desert.

Arlen has just been dropped off a little more than a bottle of water before she’s captured by a group of cannibals who cut off her arm and leg to add to their gruesome pantry. She escapes before they can harvest more of her flesh and is nursed back to health. By a roaming hermit, played by Jim Carrey.

Hell bent on revenge, Arlen meets a muscle bound cannibal named Miami Man, Jason Momoa. Who coerces her into saving his daughter from a powerful cult like leader known as The Dream, who is Keanu Reeves. Uh, they call it a cutthroat nightmare. Even more upsetting, there may be worse monsters than flesh eaters populating this dystopian world.

It sure makes it sound like a horror movie. It does! By God, watching it. Watching it, I was like… That, like… 

Craig: Shit. That, now, okay, so now… I don’t rem… I still don’t remember it, but I can see why that sounds great! It sounds like a fantastic movie.

Todd: I want to see that movie. Oh my god! I still want to see that movie.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Well, 

Craig: it makes it That sounds really great, but like, you literally just covered the entire plot. So that we don’t have to. In 30 seconds. No, but you, but you covered it in 30 seconds, because that’s how long it takes to explain the plot, because so little happens. Like, this is a long movie, 

Todd: it’s…

Oh god, it’s about two hours long. Yeah. Ugh, and it feels like four. And it 

Craig: is slow, like, slow paced. Ugh. Not a whole lot happens, and there’s hardly… 

Todd: There’s hardly any dialogue, there’s hardly any action, there’s hardly anything beyond a bunch of people staring either at each other or off into space for long periods of time.

Yeah, literally, 

Craig: literally staring off into space. 

Todd: That actually happens at one point, yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, 

Craig: it’s a lot of walking into town. And out of town, and into town, and out of town. Getting captured and taken out of town, and then getting rescued and brought back into town. Like, watching it, like, I just was kind of blown away by some things.

I don’t even remember how it started. Okay, so the main girl… Arlen, played by Suki Waterhouse, who, I hear that name all over the place, but I have not really seen her in anything else, I don’t think. I thought she was fine in this, she’s pretty. Her performance didn’t blow me away, but, whatever, she was fine.

Um, she is tattooed with a number. Behind her ear and then released out of from Bad Batch prison, 

Todd: or well, I mean, this is a big problem It wouldn’t necessarily be a problem But it was annoying me the more and more the movie went on just because I had so much time to think about other things Like what is this?

Is this? today? Is it in the dystopian future? Is the whole world like this? Is this just a desert outside of Texas that we could possibly stumble upon if we were there? I don’t know. There’s just a prison, it looks like a prison, and a big chain link fence and some faceless guards who we never see have tattooed…

BB 006 or something behind her ear, toss her out there and close the gate and say good luck. There’s this big sign that she walks by as she walks out into the desert without anything, just her clothes and a bottle of water and it says outside of here is This is the boundary of Texas. Outside of here is outside of the United States of America.

American laws do not pertain. Good luck. And that’s it. I half expected there to be some M. Night Shyamalan, The Village style twist at the end. You know, I didn’t know. I thought a lot about it, and I still couldn’t figure out. I thought the movie would piecemeal out a little bit more. Information about all of this, and I think it thinks it did?

It does a little bit. Keanu Reeves character has a very slow and boring dialogue with her at some point, where it sounds like he’s hinting at stuff, but I don’t know. I still don’t know. I don’t know. What is it? What is the bad batch? I thought they might be mutants 

or 

Craig: something, but they’re not. They’re just they’re undesirables.

They’re criminals. We find out later that Jason Momoa is really not even a criminal He’s just an illegal immigrant. So was that 

Todd: supposed to be a shocking thing for us to I suppose like a political statement I think it was 

Craig: supposed to build sympathy for him. Yeah, I Think it was supposed to make him more sympathetic which Uh, this movie is so weird because he starts out like the bad guy, like he is the bad guy.

Kind of. But then, and I think that’s what the movie, the movie is trying to be like an exploration of the good guys and the bad guys and like there’s really no such thing. I don’t remember, I feel like I read it somewhere, but it follows this notion of the perspective of who the good guy is and who the bad guy is all depends on who you’re standing next to.

Oh, right. And I feel like that’s What this movie is all about, like, they make it seem like Jason Momoa is the bad guy, and I mean, he does capture, kill, and eat people. Right? No question of that. And so I guess, like, that’s morally questionable, but by the end, you’re kinda, I feel like you’re kinda supposed to be like, well, you know.

You gotta eat. Right. 

Todd: I 

Craig: mean, I mean, you gotta eat. Other than that, he seems pretty cool. But anyway, okay, so they, so what I think that it is, is it’s just, they take, you know, prisoners, people who have broken the law, drug addicts, illegal immigrants, whatever, and they just, I don’t know if they have to spend some time in prison, or if that’s just like a processing center, and then they are just It’s dropped into this wasteland where it’s just Mad Max, you know, no rules, no law, no law enforcement, nothing.

Seems like a bad idea. I mean, because these people… Well, I mean, it’s, it’s basically the idea behind Australia, right? But 

Todd: Australia’s an island, you know? Like, these people could actually, like, gather up resources. Cause they seem to have no problem gathering up resources. Oh! That was weird. Yeah, as the movie went on, I found it less and less credible that this is actually a horrible, dystopian wasteland where everybody’s fending for themselves and they have nothing but cannibalism to turn to because they have electricity, running water…

Motorcycles. Motorcycles and cars that there’s no trouble gassing up, apparently. Well, they act like… 

Craig: They act like gas is scarce. Like, they act like things are scarce, but you would never know that. Other than the fact that they insinuate that things are scarce, it doesn’t appear that anything is 

Todd: scarce at all.

Not when, not when Jason Momoa, you know, drives up on a motorcycle to check on a, on an empty thing, and gets off of it, doesn’t even turn it off before he starts poking around. I was like, shouldn’t you turn that off? Isn’t gas supposed to be scarce? Guess not. 

Craig: All, yeah, and all of this makes very little sense, but it just, in the, in the final act, when we get inside Keanu Reeves house, it just becomes ludicrous.

It becomes ridiculous. 

Todd: Absolutely, insanely 

Craig: ridiculous. Right. But that’s later. First, she’s alone in the desert, and she gets chased by people in golf carts, and they, now mind you, this is all in the first five minutes. She gets grabbed by people in golf carts. She wakes up, chained to the ground, like, the dirty ground, in the desert.

In what ends up looking like an airplane graveyard, but it’s where this tribe of people live. This. Um, older, middle aged woman comes and injects her with something and then chops off one of her arms. No, 

Todd: not chops. Saws off. Hack saws. Yeah. Pretty brutal. Hack 

Craig: saws off one of her arms and one of her legs.

And I, I of course had forgotten reading that article and I’m glad because this was shocking to me. I was like, wait. What? Like, this is the main character, and we are maiming her from the get go? Like, if they had just cut off one arm, or even both arms, I’m like, You know, you can get a round on your legs, but she didn’t have a leg!

I’m like, what is going to happen? Yeah. Ugh, it was crazy. And, and the lady sears the wounds with a frying pan to keep, Presumably to keep her alive, so they can keep chopping parts off and eating. And we see that they have a bunch of prisoners. With limbs cut off. Uh, just, you know, chained up around. And so, okay, so this is a bad place.

It’s a cannibal place. And we see that Jason Momoa is there. He is Miami man. And it appears that he’s I don’t even know… He’s in charge, I guess? Kind of? 

Todd: I mean, I don’t know if that’s ever really clear. Everyone’s got sort of places to live, I suppose, and he has a really nice w I mean, nice for what it is, what it’s inside of like an airplane.

Peace or something, but he has a family and we’re introduced to him while he’s painting a portrait of his daughter this intricate Gorgeous. Oh, it’s beautiful. Beautiful portrait of his daughter Who must be what nine years old something like that? Maybe eight nine years old and she doesn’t talk and I don’t think she talks through the whole movie 

Craig: Yes, she does.

She talks at the end. Oh, you’re right. She has the very last line. Oh, you’re right. Maybe it’s not the last line. But she doesn’t talk through the whole movie. They save it until the very last scene. And then she just says the stupidest shit. Oh, like it was such a, it was such a 

Todd: weird choice. It’s all so pretentious.

I think this movie is so pretentious. It is trying so hard. 

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s pretentious or if this person… Omnipur, or whatever her name is, I think she has a vision. I think she has an artistic vision. For sure. And I think that the movie look, like, cinematically, it looks really good. Yes.

It’s just, the pacing is, it may just be too much for me. It forces us 

Todd: to wallow in that for a while. Well, 

Craig: and I’ve seen, I’ve read interviews of her, and she wanted that. She wanted, she wanted us to, to be stuck, uh, in these. Painful and uncomfortable, uh, scenarios. She, she said that she, uh, didn’t want to offer any kind of escape.

Uh, for the viewer. I don’t know exactly what she means by that. Painful 

Todd: and uncomfortable on my ass as it has to remain sitting on a sofa. And it gets scratchy and sometimes a little sweaty. I mean, I was not emotionally in pain or trauma during any of this movie. I’ve sat through movies of intensity. You know, and this was not a movie of intensity.

The first ten minutes or so that what we just, what you just finished describing were intriguing and interesting. And her escape from this. 

Craig: It looks great, like, it’s all outdoors. Almost all of this, next to nothing of this was shot on Sets. Oh yeah. These are all really outside. These are, you know, outdoor Yeah.

Location shots. And it’s, you know, in the desert and it’s hot and it looks really good. But like this really brutal scene of her getting her, her limbs chopped off is underscored with. Ace of bass. Yeah. All that she wants. 

Todd: There’s a fair amount of, yeah, like, 80s and 90s pop music underscoring this. The 

Craig: soundtrack is good, but, like, I really enjoyed the soundtrack, and I actually kind of enjoyed how it kind of discombobulates you.

Yeah. She intentionally juxtaposes music that makes no sense in this context. Later, Jason Momoa puts on earphones and listens to Culture Club. Mm hmm. While he butchers somebody. Like, uh, it’s funny. Then, like, I guess to kinda introduce us to this tribe, it’s basically Muscle Beach. This group is, like, a bunch of super, super buff guys and some women in, like, speedos just working out in the desert.

They’re all buff. That’s all they do. And Jason Momoa is their leader, I guess, and he has a family. He has… I don’t know if he, she’s a wife, a partner, he has a, a partner and a, a daughter. And while we’re on the subject of Jason Momoa, Jason Momoa is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life.

I was telling Alan, I was telling Alan last night, I’m like, it’s not an objectification thing. It’s like looking at art. Like, he’s just so, he’s such a stunning specimen of the human. I could just stare at him, and he doesn’t wear a shirt in this movie at all, if I recall. Thank you. That was worth the price of admission for me.

Um, but, we also find that our little Arlen is pretty resourceful, because in the night… She covers herself in her own waist, and then the next morning, like, the cook woman comes, and obviously, that’s problematic for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s gross. Secondly, it could infect her wounds. So, this lady unchains her to, to clean her up, and Arlen beats her to death with rebar.

Yeah. Then escapes by scooting herself. through the camp and through the desert on her back on a skateboard pushing herself with her one leg. Oh my god, nobody, nobody noticed. 

Todd: Like she’s even ducking around a corner, acquiring the skateboard is kind of a thing, whatever. And then the next shot is just her pushing herself on one leg across the desert.

Like you can see for miles, this is a problem I had throughout the whole movie with everything that happens. It is flat desert land, you can see, we’re not up in the mountains, you can see for miles in any direction, and she can just scoot away from this camp that people are presumably keeping watch over, going in and out of, now she’s out in the middle of nowhere, and happens to run into the guy that everyone happens to run into over and over and over again.

The only single guy out wandering in the wilderness, uh, Jim Carrey’s character, who is a mute, I’d like a hermit, more or less, scavenger. 

Craig: Yeah, see, that was another thing that blew my mind, like, Jim Carrey… At one point in time, was among, if not the highest paid actor in Hollywood. Yeah, he took a retreat.

He’s also very eccentric. Yeah. So, I could see him, you know, taking jobs that don’t pay very much just because he wants to. I, I, I totally can see that. I have no idea how much he got paid for this. But it’s, it’s crazy, you know, this huge, huge superstar, you get him in your movie, you make him virtually unrecognizable, and don’t have him say a single word.

Just don’t 

Todd: have him do anything that he has usually paid millions of dollars to do. And on top of it, I watched the credits, you know, and I was looking at it like, oh, Keanu Reeves, oh, Jim Carrey, I’m gonna have to look out for him. Totally forgot. It was about three quarters of the way through the movie when there was a scene between him and Jason Momoa’s character.

Momoa, yeah. And suddenly, I don’t know, just maybe the light hit his face the right way, and I was like Holy shit, that’s Jim Carrey. 

Craig: Right? I didn’t, it took me a while too. It was about halfway through before I figured it out. Yeah, that was kind of fun. Cause he’s filthy, and in the first part, he just scoops her up out of the desert, puts her in his shopping cart, and pushes her to this other community, um, which is, what’s the name of the town?

Comfort. Comfort. It’s this like, outpost called… Comfort and he just wheels her there and drops her off there. I don’t even think we see his face in that scene. I think he’s so shrouded in like his, yeah, his clothes or whatever, but he just drops her off and the people of comfort like gather around her and then it goes to black and says five months, five months later, she’s healed.

And somebody has given or made her a prosthetic leg. And she lives in this community that seems to be perfectly self sufficient. Not luxurious. 

Todd: No, it looks like, you know, people need to clean the streets up a little bit. But there’s a cool, silly bi play with The noodle lady who has a noodle cart and there seems to be some sort of currency because people are pulling papers out There’s merchants.

Yeah merchants and people are kind of allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody’s really bothering anybody else Even the crazy man is walking down the street going on and on about Well, you gotta remember the one thing. There’s one thing, if you just remember this one thing. THIS IS THE ONE THING! THE 

Craig: ONE THING YOU MUST NEVER FORGET!

GIVE ME SOME F ING NOODLES! One dollar! Demon! One dollar! She’s a goddamn demon! You no pay, no noodle! No noodle for you, no pay! Thank 

Todd: you very much. Huh? 

Craig: Hey, what’s the thing? How should I know? Find out for yourself. You find out for yourself. No one is going to tell you. You have to figure it out for yourself.

You have to 

Todd: figure it out. And then, kind of wanders off. Right, 

Craig: well, and, and that, like, that’ll surely come back, right? That’s what 

Todd: I thought. That’s what I thought. 

Craig: There’s, there’s going to be something to that. That’s mysterious, that’ll come, no. This is partly 

Todd: why I think it’s just so pretentious. There are so many of these little moments.

That I think, Oh, they’re trying to say something. Or this is the beginning of a riddle that’s going to be answered later. Or this is something profound that, you know, this is the beginning of something profound that is going to reach its conclusion as the plot develops. Like, no. I was so frustrated by things 

Craig: like that.

Well, and that crazy guy, that crazy guy is Giovanni Ribisi. Yeah. And, like, and again, that’s, this is all he does. He has these lines here, but later, I don’t, I don’t know, maybe he talks a little bit more, but he basically just walks around, he just walks around looking crazy. Kind of in the background. 

Todd: That’s it!

Yeah, that’s it. 

Craig: And he’s filthy too, you would barely know it was him. 

Todd: Was this before or after the rave? I can’t remember. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is before the rave. So, she gets a pistol. Walks out into the desert just walks 

Craig: out like we have caught up with her on the exact day Right that she decides to get a gun And walk out to seek her 

Todd: revenge?

This community has, uh, like, it’s like three, um, shipping containers tall. Wall. I guess all around it. We only see the gate, but that’s what we see. Some guy standing guard on the top of that wall. A kind of like, uh, opening in the middle that I can’t remember if there’s a gate or not. And then there’s this sort of unguarded hole in it.

That people can just literally walk in and out of and she just walks right out of it Out into the empty desert with a pistol. Uh, doesn’t have a backpack I think she has a jug of water. Does a jug of water kind of magically and appear in her hand later? I’m not sure but it’s just like what and literally we just see nothingness It is just flat nothingness and she’s just gonna walk out into the nothingness to seek her revenge I don’t know how she thinks she’s gonna find this community again, or what she’s planning to do.

No, I 

Craig: have no idea. But she, fortunately, stumbles upon, in this vast desert, Jim Carrey, this dump where, uh, Momoa’s wife and daughter are scavenging. 

Todd: There’s a golf cart. It was similar to the golf cart she was picked up in, probably the same one. Uh, she 

Craig: notices it. Right. And coincidentally, Five seconds before she arrives, the mom, Maria, falls and breaks her leg.

Yeah! 

Todd: And… So 

Craig: convenient. So, so Arlen… comes upon them, and they have a philosophical conversation where the mom is like, we’re the same, and she’s like, no we’re not. And the mom’s like, yes we are, we’re the bad batch, we’re just trying to survive. And she’s 

Todd: like, but you eat people. 

Craig: Yeah, right, but you eat people, so that makes you worse than me.

And then, right in front of the daughter who is standing seven feet away, shoots the mom. In the head. Right. 

Todd: And the daughter does not react the way I would think the daughter should react. 

Craig: I don’t know, I found it hard 

Todd: me either, like I know I was supposed to find this heartbreaking, or I was supposed to find something deep and almost depressing about this whole thing, about how the daugh Like what, the daughter has just seen so much violence in her life that even when her mother is shot in front of her, like, she’s so hardened to it.

She just kinda like, walks up, sits down next to her, pushes her shoulder a few times, trying to wake her up. No tears, no nothing, uh, and then this woman just, Arlen just takes her away. Back to the 

Craig: place. Back to the place. And like, I have no idea what anybody’s motivations are here. Like, if she just wanted revenge, like if, I guess she can’t kill the little girl cause kids are innocent or something, so now she’s gonna be her mother?

Like, I don’t know. So, uh, so she takes her back and like they have like cute little mother daughter moments where the little girl like puts makeup on her. To get ready for this rave. Can 

Todd: we say one thing here? How did she even know that this woman, She just saw the golf cart. Like, she didn’t see this woman before.

This woman isn’t the one who saw it off her arms or her legs or her arm. 

Craig: No, I think it was just because she is one of those people. They call them the bridge people. Right. Um, just because she’s one of those people. You know, she, she gets it or whatever. And I don’t, I guess that’s good enough. Like, well, I got one.

So go back home. I 

Todd: got their kid, you know, 

Craig: I guess. Right. I guess. So she, the kid, they have a cute little, like, I don’t like, it’s so weird. Mother, daughter, sister bonding thing where like the little, and like the little girl doesn’t seem particularly upset and you don’t know. If Arlen even said anything to the kid, the way that it’s shot, it seems like Arlen just turned around and started walking away, and the kid just followed her, because what else is she gonna do?

Right. So the kid follows her, they, you know, have this little makeup moment. Arlen buys her a live rabbit. Mm hmm. From a rabbit vendor, who I assume is selling those rabbits for food. But they’re perfectly tame. Yeah. And, and this little girl carries it around. During this rave. This is so weird. Okay. So like it’s obvious that things are amping up and like it seems kind of like Ren fair kind of and the energy energy’s getting high and then there’s like a dj and a whole Like, movable DJ booth, it’s like, it looks like a giant party bus.

Yeah. Yeah. It looks like a giant boom box 

Todd: on wheels. He’s got a disco ball in there and everything. 

Craig: It’s insane. And a DJ like with in a window and 

Todd: LED lights around the whole thing, chasing around and changing color. And 

Craig: it looks like Coachella. Yeah. It looks like a bunch of hipsters. And I think that I read that.

These 

Todd: extras were just from Coachella. They didn’t even 

Craig: costume them. Well, they were from that area, and they were like, you know, just wear 

Todd: whatever you want. Just wear every day. Come on out. Yeah. 

Craig: And they didn’t put them in makeup or costumes. 

Todd: Bring along your LED glasses while you’re at it, because… 

Craig: And your battery powered strings of lights, and your glow sticks, and like, it looks like Coachella.

And a rave, and then… You know what, I think 

Todd: at least a couple of those giant containers, shipping containers that they’re using for the walls around there must have coincidentally been filled with AA batteries. They must 

Craig: have. Yeah. I have no idea. It makes no logical sense. Like seriously, some of the places in the market have signs outside that say, yes, we have air conditioning.

What? Yeah. Like, where is the power plant that is 

Todd: running all of this? All of the unnecessary lights and things as well in this place. It’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty ridiculous. They 

Craig: have indoor plumbing, which Keanu Reeves will make a huge deal out of later. What? They need a whole infrastructure. This makes no sense.

Okay, alright, so they have this big rave, and everybody is trippin balls, including Arlen, which leaves the little girl whose name is Honey to her own devices, and she drops her rabbit, and it gets away, and, oh, but not before Keanu Reeves comes out, and I don’t even remember, I have no memory of what he said.

What is, what is he saying? I just said he 

Todd: addresses crowd. It’s generic shit. It’s like, exactly what I expected him to say. I’m just paraphrasing, but it’d be like, You’re all here because we are the Bad Batch. We’re the undesirables of society. I’m one of you. But here we are, together as one, and we’re not that bad, are we?

All of us here. 

Craig: We weren’t good enough. Smart enough. Young enough. Healthy enough. Wealthy enough. Sane enough. Freaks.

Parasites. This

here is the bad batch. 

Todd: Goodbye! Enjoy your LSD. Trip balls. 

Craig: Yeah, exactly. And there’s like, signage all around. says stuff like you can’t enter the dream unless the dream enters you. Ew. And later, like when he comes out, there’s one woman with him and she’s pregnant as it turns out, he has a whole harem of pregnant women who wear white t shirts that say the dream is 

Todd: inside me.

They’re nice t shirts too, I mean they’ve got like screen printing facilities. 

Craig: They have a copy machine in the outdoor markets! They have a Xerox machine! You’re right.

For public use, Xerox machine. In the middle of the desert, outdoors. Right. Okay, so, um, After… So, he’s obviously, like, their guru. Like, almost god like. But, it turns out, you know, he’s the one keeping them, I guess, providing them everything that they have. He’s the one that’s doing that. Out of the kindness of his heart.

How? We 

Todd: don’t know yet. We don’t know. I don’t know how he got all that fancy European furniture out there in the desert, all these marble columns and shit. 

Craig: Well, that’s later. We don’t know that yet. We just know that he has this compound, which, the Okay, so the lost rabbit hops right up to Keanu Reeves feet, and honey is right on its tail.

So, he’s like, is this your rabbit? By the way Keanu Reeves, I think, is doing an affect here intentionally. Yeah. It kind of just seems like bad acting. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it’s intent, I really do think it’s intentional, but it just kind of comes across as bad. And also… Like, Keanu Reeves is a good looking man, and he looks terrible in this movie.

Yeah, he really does. Like, I have a feeling either he intentionally put on weight or he just stopped not, or like, I just have this, I have this idea that famous actors, like, that’s part of their job, like being beautiful is part of their job, so, you know, they have to… Workout and stuff like that. Maybe he just stopped doing that because he’s just a little soft around the middle It was 

Todd: between john wick filmings, you know, it’s probably 

Craig: Anyway, it doesn’t matter all the the point that i’m trying to make is he’s very smarmy looking Yeah, um, and he’s got like a porn stash.

It’s weird and a bad haircut 

Todd: You want to hate him you look at him and he just looks like a 

Craig: slime ball Exactly, and he what does he I don’t even remember what he says to her But he gives her back the rabbit and then he takes her in To his compound and that’s the last time we see them for ever What’s her name while she’s tripping balls realizes that she’s lost this kid So she starts looking for her But then she gets distracted and she’s talking to herself in her head and she’s like I don’t like this place I want to leave this place and she walks out again alone into the desert And literally stares off into space for five minutes.

Oh man, this is so slow. And it’s all like trip, trippy, fast motion photography of the stars moving across the horizon. While she’s slow motion 

Todd: in front of it. It’s the most generic somebody tripping on acid stuff you could possibly imagine. I mean. It’s in 10 other movies with way lower budgets than 

Craig: this.

And that’s, it’s not to say it looks bad. No, it’s just, no, 

Todd: not. It’s typical. It’s typical. There’s nothing, I mean, just like Keanu Reeves’s character. I mean, the rave felt to me like the rave from the second Matrix movie. The Matrix, yeah. Especially with Keanu Reeves there, that didn’t help, you know, and then him coming out and having his big speech, like, I’ve seen ten other movies like this where the guy who’s in charge of the misfits out in the middle of nowhere that, you know, is kind of like holding them together, comes out, gives them a rousing speech that says nothing, that, like, what, does he do this every night just to remind them?

You know, I don’t know, was tonight a particularly special night, I don’t think so, it’s just The movie’s gotta have a scene like that. And then he has to be kind of mysterious, but clearly, I guess there’s more to it. He’s got to be kind of evil. But anyway, but what we didn’t mention was that Jason Momoa, uh, but while all this was going on, goes out looking for…

His daughter and wife because they haven’t come back yet. Right. And he gets out on his motorcycle and happens upon the golf cart and finds the wife dead there. Jim Carrey’s character, who saw the whole thing happen previously, is there again and he tries to get him to talk but he doesn’t talk. He asks if he’s seen the girl.

He’s got a notebook that he’s done sketches in, so he’s got sketches of his daughter and all kinds of stuff in there. 

Craig: I like that he’s an artist. I think that’s cool. That was a cool bit. And he’s a good artist, um, you know, we’ve already seen that, you know, he can paint beautifully, but, um, he also sketches, and Jim Carrey, he barters for information.

He wants the guy to sketch him. Yeah. I thought that was cool. And so he does. And this is the moment, this is the moment where, He gets just the tiniest bit Jim Carrey. You know what I mean? Like, the way that he poses, like he kinda sticks his belly out and sticks his chin up in the air. And I’m like, there’s Jim Carrey.

There he is. It’s true. But it’s just for a second, and it’s really not out of character. 

Todd: No, this guy’s a little quirky dude anyway, yeah, it’s just kinda… Yeah, 

Craig: and and so Momoa sketches him and gives him this nice sketch and and he tells him, uh, look for He writes, cause he doesn’t speak, he writes, look for comfort.

So he knows that that’s where she supposedly is, but before he even gets there… Clandestinely, he runs into Arlen while she’s trippin in the 

Todd: desert. So Arlen, tripping, can wander out the gates of Comfort and run into Jason Momoa, somehow, out in the desert. Yet, I guess she’s far enough away from Comfort… Or from any view of that three story tall wall around Comfort that Jason Momoa needs her help to find Comfort.

Well, 

Craig: he said that he, like, he can’t go in there. I have a feeling that they know who he is because I do think that he is the leader of the other camp. So I don’t think that he can go in. Right. I think that they would shoot him at the gate. So he needs… to send her in to fetch the girl and he says you have to if you don’t I’ll kill you now how he’s gonna get his hands on her if 

Todd: she just she just goes in there that’s kind of hard to understand but 

Craig: that’s the deal I mean he has her leg while he’s making this deal so there’s not a whole lot she can do but I 

Todd: mean how is oh god I don’t know how they’re so far away because they have to camp out on the way there and stuff like she walked Out and wandered and tripped in the desert.

And he found her in the middle of the night. I, I, I just don’t know why this journey back was taking so 

Craig: long. No, she shouldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred yards away from Where, yeah. No, I don’t know. And, and there’s, there’s a scene where they are approached He’s still on his motorcycle, she’s, you know, riding behind him.

But they’re approached by Oh, maybe they don’t have the motorcycle at this point, I don’t remember. They don’t, for whatever reason. I never knew what happened to his first motorcycle. Like, he just had it, and then he didn’t anymore. He just left it. And then later, they stumble upon it again. I guess there’s just, you know, I guess people just leave their motorcycles in the desert.

You find one, you use it. But they’re walking, but they get approached by this big guy on a motorcycle. And he’s got this small tank of, like, a small gas can. And Momoa, I’ll trade you this for that leg. And it looks like, like, Momoa hardly ever talks because none of them do, like, literally, I was, the first 35 minutes, there is no dialogue.

There is some talking in the background, like background talking, but no dialogue on screen at all for the first 35 minutes. And then after that, I would say, in total, Jason Momoa maybe has like, Five to seven lines in the whole movie. Same for her. They just don’t talk. Nobody talks! It’s so strange. 

Todd: When they should be talking, they don’t talk, yeah.

They’re just like, they stare at each other and just not answer each other’s questions for a while. Right, this bad 

Craig: guy says… Trade ya this for the leg, and Momoa doesn’t say anything, he just kinda looks, and the bad guy’s like, I’m being nice, um, I could just kill ya and take em both, and he pulls, like he has a big chain that he starts wrapping around his hand or something.

And so Momoa still doesn’t say anything, but like, makes the trade, and she’s screaming, and uh, Momoa’s walking away, but then he turns around and throws a hatchet into the guy’s… Wordlessly, like, Jason Momoa did not speak a word during that whole scene. I mean, it’s a stylistic thing, and I think that it’s a bold choice, and, and potentially an interesting choice, 

Todd: but…

I thought it was pretentious. It’s, 

Craig: it’s one, one of my favorite… Musicals, there’s a line where they’re talking, uh, the, a guy in the story has never heard about the concept of musicals. And so somebody’s trying to explain it and he’s like, you know, they sing everything and sometimes you just wonder, Why aren’t they talking?

Like, like, why? That’s what I was wondering through this whole movie, like, Why aren’t you talking? Like, things could be facilitate, facilitated 

Todd: so much easier. And faster as well. Cause this was, uh, But anyway. Oh man. So I 

Craig: guess this is supposed to show us that he’s not a, Bad guy, but really it doesn’t because he needs her.

Like, she’s a commodity. He’s not just protecting her out of the goodness of his heart. Of course. Ugh, whatever. All of this is drawn out over the course of like an hour and a half, but Ugh, yes. It literally feels like nothing happens. So they go back to Comfort, she makes photocopies. Literally, of the sketch of the girl and starts handing them out to people for no purpose because then she just happens to be sitting somewhere and Keanu and his harem walk by and she’s with the harem.

So… Uh, Arlen goes and knocks on his door, and they 

Todd: let her in. Why didn’t she just, right then and there, go up and take the kid, or ask the, the lady for, or explain the situation, or whatever? Like, my god. I just watched her watch the kid go by and was like, Uh, uh, uh, there she go, go, follow her? What, what are you doing?

Right. Are you biding your time? What, what, what? I don’t understand. I don’t 

Craig: know. I guess this guy is, is powerful. But like, that really hasn’t been as… It hasn’t been established that he’s bad. Like, you get a… I mean, he’s smarmy and you get a bad vibe off of him. But it hasn’t been established that he’s a bad person.

If anything, you would be led to believe that he’s philanthropic. Yes. He’s taking care of this girl. Yes. Because then, we get to see… The way that she’s been living, and she has been living in Abject luxury and 

Todd: comfort. Gaudy comfort and luxury. Like, she’s in, the next shot of her is in a bubble bath. In this, like, uh, big, uh, European style, uh, tub.

With black marble all around it, and, uh. Faucet shaped like a swan and their house has just big, heavy, gaudy European furniture all inside of it and lamps and things. Uh huh. Then he’s got an indoor pool. Uh huh. That’s like an in ground thing with mar looks like the Roman baths. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say, like a Turkish bath or something.

And the girls are just like walking around in and out of the pool, just wandering. He’s in the 

Craig: pool, he, he gets out and somebody towels him off and puts a big terrycloth, white terrycloth robe on him. It is insane. The little girl, you know, she takes a bubble bath and then we see her eating dinner, which is like spaghetti and meatballs, in this wasteland hellscape.

What? 

Todd: I don’t understand! Where did all this stuff come from? 

Craig: And she’s sitting in this giant room, um, surrounded by toys. So this girl is living her best life, but Arlen feels the need to rescue her. So Arlen comes over and Keanu Reeves talks to her. And first of all, he comes out and just the way that he comes out and they put the terry cloth robe on him, like it so fits the stereotype of like the drug kingpin, which it turns out that he is because you see tons of weed and pills that they are like, I don’t even know what they’re doing, counting them, putting them in containers.

I don’t know what they’re doing. Where do these things come from? Like, okay, fine, I could potentially buy that they could grow weed. I could, but where are they getting these pharmaceuticals? Like, haha! 

Todd: They’ve got an LSD lab somewhere, like, I’m just. I just 

Craig: don’t get it. They’re, see, that’s the thing, like, they’ve got to be connected to society in some way.

Yes, this is why I thought There’s no other explanation. 

Todd: This is why I thought there would be some big reveal at the end, or there’d be at least, maybe it wouldn’t be as big as a reveal, but at least like, oh, okay, now we get what’s going on. Or maybe the government is actually secretly, like, using him to make, keep order in the place and Right.

Keep the prisoners satisfied. Like, we can speculate all we want. Because the movie doesn’t even hint at it. But we’ll never know. Look, I almost felt like, if I were to confront the director of this movie, that I bet she would tell me, Oh, well this is all supposed to be a fairy tale. The desert is the woods, and people go in and out of the desert, like they go in and out of the woods, and this is the king in the high castle, and it doesn’t need to make sense, you know, why, that we’re just, it’s all metaphor, and it’s all, You know, linked to storytelling and, you know, but it just, it’s not that deep.

Right. And 

Craig: unlike, unlike a fairy tale, it’s totally morally ambiguous because nobody, nobody in this guy’s compound appears to be there against their will. Now, if you want to get into like power constructs and stuff, obviously these women are probably. Trading something for this luxury that they live.

They’re trading their autonomy and, and, and their freedom and stuff. However, they seem to be very comfortable and not in any big hurry to like, rebel or anything. Nor does 

Todd: anyone outside of this palace seem to… Be jealous. They’re not climbing the wall. That’s what 

Craig: I was gonna say, like, it doesn’t seem entirely ethical that there’s, you know, this kingpin and his minions who live in complete luxury, whereas the people out there are, they’re not, I don’t know, they seem pretty comfortable, that’s the thing, like, everybody seems to be cool with the 

Todd: arrangements.

Maybe it’s sort of a, meant to be a commentary on sort of modern class dynamics, where, you know, it’s not like everybody is out peasants working the field right now, We just don’t know how bad we have it because we don’t have a glimpse to see just how good the rich who claim that they’re providing for us and indeed are providing for us to a certain extent, nevertheless are taking a gross amount of it for themselves.

Um, and that’s just hidden behind the walls. Maybe it could be interpreted that way. I 

Craig: suppose it could be, but it also doesn’t seem like there’s a, well, it doesn’t make 

Todd: a difference to the story. That’s the point. It doesn’t make 

Craig: a difference to the story and it just doesn’t seem like. Ugh, it doesn’t seem pointed, like, if there’s gonna be a message, like, just slap me in the face with it.

Like, I don’t know, I would criticize it 

Todd: if it did that, too. Just make it a clear, that’s why, it’s just a lot of loose ends, they’re just uncomfortably loose. I don’t mean that you have to absolutely explain everything. If you’re trying to build a world… And you want it to seem full and lush and lavish, of course you’re not going to be able to explain everything, nor should you have to.

And we can just all accept this is the world everybody lives in, and they all accept it, and, and so whatever. Like, if there are reasons behind this, we just know there are reasons, and that’s good enough. But there needs to seem, there needs to feel like there’s some underlying logic here. And to me, it just feels sloppy.

I don’t feel like there is any underlying logic here. If it is, it is so far removed from what we see on the screen. I don’t know, 

Craig: Todd. I worry that I worry that we’re just being too dense about it. I don’t know. I, cause it doesn’t seem this it’s maybe it’s because it’s pretentious. I’m led to believe that it’s smart and I, and I, and I, and I’m lulled into thinking, no, this is smart.

You’re just. Stupid. Which I guess is what pretension is all about. Well, 

Todd: is his name The Dream? Is that what we’re led 

Craig: to believe? Well, I think that’s what he goes by. Yeah, that’s what they refer he’s like 

Todd: a prophet. But he even says to them, to her at one point, he says, you know what the dream really is.

It’s life. He whispers that to her. Am I wrong? Was that the 

Craig: line? I don’t remember what it was, but he gives her this whole big, long, pretentious speech about shit. Literally about shit. Literally. Some misbehaving human’s been making hamburgers out of my sons and daughters. But we are not cows. We don’t stand in our shit.

The reason we don’t… is because I won’t let that happen. I got each and every toilet and comfort taking that shit from all your little asses… and sending it down the pipes till it reaches a place where… no one thinks about it… and no one smells it. Ain’t that nice of me. I feel like that encapsulates the tone of this movie so well.

Yeah. Like it’s, it’s so, like, here, I’m gonna make a metaphor about indoor plumbing and it’s gonna enlighten you. Like, oh my god. Sadly, 

Todd: it’s a poor choice, because as soon as he said that, I thought, my god, how in the world did he get indoor plumbing to this place? How did they drop the lines? Where did they do the pipes?

And then he Exactly. Where does it go? Who processes it where it goes? He just says It just goes somewhere. Who 

Craig: maintains it? 

Todd: Yeah, like all of this requires maintenance, right? I mean, 

Craig: yeah Regular daily maintenance. Uh huh. Oh, geez So he talks to her about Going through the sewer and not you don’t have to smell it and walk in it cuz you’re a human being and little like uh And then yeah, he’s talking about the dream and he asked her what she wants And she’s a sailboat at sea with no wind.

I’m like, what? Um. Oh, you’re aimless. And he’s like, what do you, what, if you could have anything, what would you want? And she says she wishes she had a time machine so that she could go back and change things. And he’s like, no, that’s not what you really want. And she says, okay, well then I really wish that I could be the solution for something.

I don’t remember how it gets there, but then she finally says that she wants what. They have and she points to the harem and so he turns to one of the harem and says Okay, well, let’s make her up a room. So they do they give her this Opulent, enormous 

Todd: bedroom. I was like, how many rooms do they have in this place?

It sure didn’t look this big from the outside. I 

Craig: know. It was huge. And she’s in there, I, I, I don’t know, like, what is supposed to be happening. Like, is she supposed to be preparing for him to come put the dream inside her? I don’t, I don’t know. That’s what I thought. But anyway, so she takes off her leg and turns out…

I guess this whole time, she’s had a great big gun, uh, shoved up in the foot of her leg. And she uses it to take one of the pregnant women hostage, uh, barter, er, gets honey. She says, you know, I’m gonna take the go kart, and as soon as we get out the gate, and we’re far enough out, I’ll let this pregnant girl go, I promise.

And she just leaves and the dream and all of his harem just stand out on their porch and like watch her go And she does exactly what she says and let’s the pregnant girl go I in my I was thinking this pregnant girl is gonna want to go with her, right? I thought that yeah, this was gonna they were gonna present this as an opportunity to tell us that they are enslaved Yes that given the opportunity they would choose freedom.

Nope. No She just 

Todd: turns around goes back and smiles 

Craig: Arlen and honey Uh, ride a hundred yards into the desert, and immediately run into Miami Man. Oh my god. 

Todd: As soon as I saw them drive out, I was like, how did they arrange this? Like, why would she think she’s gonna find him? But no, just, he’s there. 

Craig: Yeah, he’s there, and they have a little reunion.

Honey is excited to see him, and runs up and hugs him, and they’re super excited to be reunited. And then, she And then, oh my god! She 

Todd: The little girl asks for spaghetti. And 

Craig: Wait, not before, not before Arlen, like, of course, Momoa doesn’t talk, so it just looks like he’s getting ready to go. And she’s like, wait a minute, and he turns around and she’s like, what are you doing right now?

You wanna hang out? I shit you not! I shit you not, that is a, that is a line in the movie. What are you doing right now? You wanna hang out? 

Todd: How romantic. 

Craig: Oh my god. And so then she says, she wonders if Everything happens for a reason. She does, she says it in a more convoluted way than that. She’s like, Everything that’s happened has led to everything that’s happening.

Or, pfft, whatever, who cares. It’s garbage. And so she takes his hand in, like, a romantic gesture, but the little girl comes in and, like, grabs their hands and rips them apart. And then demands spaghetti. I want spaghetti. The other man gave me spaghetti. So the dad takes her pet rabbit and cooks it. And pretty much the last thing we see is all of them sitting around.

Eating the rabbit while the little girl cries. And 

Todd: that’s the end! 

Craig: I don’t know what to make of this movie. I think that there’s something there that I don’t see. I don’t know. Like, I read the reviews. Like, from the time that it came out, apparently, the reviews have been completely divided. Like, people either think it’s brilliant or they think it’s…

Todd: The dumbest thing they’ve ever 

Craig: seen. Uh huh. And I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. I don’t think it’s great. I don’t think it’s that terrible. I, I, I would really be interested in seeing this lady’s other movie that I’ve heard such good things about. Um, I think we’ve talked about doing it on the show before.

We have. I’d like to. I’ve just never gotten around to it. Because I’ve, I’ve just heard such good things about it. But this movie literally came and went in the blink of an eye, and it was only because of that article YEARS later that I even knew that it existed. Well… Um, but that being said… Unless you’re just interested in watching it for its stylistic choices, or unless you’re just interested, uh, in watching Jason Momoa run around shirtless for an hour and a half, which, no shame.

I get it. Um, I, I, I can’t recommend this movie. Like, I don’t know who I would recommend this to. No, I, 

Todd: I just, I don’t know who this movie is for, honestly. Because it really does start out like so many horror movies we’ve seen. And then it, it just becomes quiet and slow and contemplative. And then it seems like it has something, like, like it’s again, building this world and these intriguing characters that then you never see again.

And then you just have to sit through a lot of just staring off into space and not talking to each other. And this woman wandering in and out of the desert, in and out of the desert. People coming in and out of the desert, mostly not talking. Happening to meet up with each other in the middle of nowhere.

If this movie is truly smart, I really think that more people would be able to pick up on it. Because ultimately, it’s the filmmaker’s job to communicate something. And, I mean, it doesn’t have to be direct. But, I don’t know, almost the definition of pretension sometimes really is, I’m making it so oblique.

That I am hiding everything under so many layers here that I, I guarantee you’ll never be able to find it and Ha ha, that makes me so clever and you’re such an idiot. I put it under that camp. I’m sorry. If there is something profound here, it is hidden under so many layers of just head scratching nonsense that if it’s not obvious to you, it’s not obvious to me, it’s not obvious to half of the people who watch this at least, then um, I don’t think uh, I think the best thing you can say about it is It’s beautifully 

Craig: shot.

Yes, and I, you could, first of all, I would, I would say it’s a total stretch to even call this a horror movie. The most horrible thing that happens is in the first five minutes when she gets her limbs sawed off. Beyond that, it does not feel like horror at all. And it’s kind of a retread, like it kind of feels like a Mad Max retread.

Um, there’s like, uh, I don’t think you’ve seen it, but the Melanie Griffith Cherry 2000, which is another future dystopian, desert, wild, wasteland kind of movie. I’ve kind of seen it before. Um, I’ve even kind of seen the limbs thing before in that, the Grindhouse. Whatever that Grindhouse movie was, the 

Todd: Robert Rodriguez.

Oh yeah, the Planet Terror or whatever. Planet 

Craig: Terror? Yeah, so I’ve kind of seen that before. Um, one other good thing that I will say about it is that apparently this director is committed to using practical effects as much as possible. And one would think, I certainly thought, that all of the shots of Suki Waterhouse with her arm and leg amputated.

I would have thought that that would have had to have been achieved digitally, but it was not. It was, um, accomplished through camera angles, and that’s impressive, because it 

Todd: looks real. That’s pretty amazing, and I didn’t, I’ve never seen, I don’t know, I’ve probably seen this actress before, but I don’t keep up on things, you know, very, very much, like, not as well as you do anyway, so, uh, I hadn’t seen this actress before, I thought she was new, and I thought, oh, this is nice, they actually found an actress without an arm.

I could see, clearly, how they could fake the leg thing and you could just do it digitally or whatever, but it’s impressive that that woman has both arms intact. Uh huh. 

Craig: Because it looks very real. 

Todd: Yeah, it really does. That is hard to hide. And they did a fantastic job of 

Craig: hiding that. Yeah, and and the cinematography looks good, but but honestly like I can’t I can’t go out of my way to praise the acting Even though I don’t think I think everybody did what they were asked to do.

I just think it was so bizarre like They didn’t talk You know, 

Todd: what’s funny on imtb I I almost never do this I think you do this more than me, but I went down to the user reviews I was like, please somebody’s gotta explain this to me and the first one up on the page for me. Anyway Said, I strongly recommend everyone watch this.

Uh, he said, is it good? No. Is it coherent? Ha! Is it the worst movie ever? Quite possibly. So why would I recommend it? Is to come back and read the IMDB reviews after. It says, there’s something cathartic about seeing the immense anger of all the other poor viewers who survived this experience. Oh, that’s funny.

And it’s truly uniting. Ha ha ha ha ha! 

Craig: That’s really funny. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe. I did, that was, Not even a full interview, it was just like a snippet where he, the interviewer asked her about the divisiveness of this movie, how people either loved it or they hated it, and she said, of course, you know, a filmmaker wants people to like or connect to their work, um, she said, but My hope is always that, uh, my viewers will walk away from my movie with strong feelings and strong opinions.

So, I suppose one way or the other, it’s a win. 

Todd: What a great cop out. Well, uh, thank you, Craig. Maybe we’ll do another cannibal movie to follow this one up. Something that feels a little more horror than this one. If you enjoyed listening to this, please share it with a friend. If you have decoded this movie far beyond our ability to, please let us know exactly what we’re missing by just reaching out to us here online.

Just google Two Guys in a Chainsaw podcast, and you can find our Facebook page, our website, our Twitter feed, our Instagram channel. Just find us in one of those spots, leave us a comment, and tell us how dumb and thick we are. You can also request your own movie for us to watch. And if you want to vote on the next request, that we do.

You could become a patron by going to patreon. com slash Chainsaw Podcast. Patrons get to vote on the next request we do. They get to hear our complete unedited phone calls that lead to these episodes. They get minisodes, little mini reviews that we do, and a lot of background chatter, uh, with us. Check that out if you’re interested, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. We love your support, whether you are a patron or not. And the best thing you can do for us is just recommend this podcast to a friend or write up a review for us on anywhere that you, uh, can write reviews about podcasts and let the rest of the world know what you think, as long as it’s positive.

Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.