2 Guys And A Chainsaw

We're just two die-hard horror fans presenting new thoughts and takes on both favorite and obscure horror films from yesterday to today. We watch and review one horror movie a week from the perspective of fun, with a lot of film criticism thrown in.

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episode 276: A Classic Horror Story


This week’s entry comes straight from Netflix. One of those rare Italian horror movies that Craig himself suggested, which starts out as an homage to classic horror movies and takes a sudden left turn.

We both loved the movie! So you should go to Netflix, watch it right away, and then come back and listen. Because we got a LOT of spoilin’ ta do…

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

A Classic Horror Story

Episode 276, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: I don’t even know how to start. Don’t have any themes. It’s not a request. It’s purely from our own imaginations.

Todd: You take full responsibility for this one.

Craig: Yeah, I do. I don’t remember why, but for whatever reason, I was just kinda looking through, like I subscribed. Pretty much every streaming service that there is now. And so I was just looking through all of them at their horse selections and seeing things that looked interesting. And I came across a bunch of stuff that actually looked interesting, but something that stood out was from Netflix.

Uh, it’s a Netflix exclusive it, I don’t think it’s a Netflix production. I just think that they got the rights to it. It’s actually an Italian film called A Classic Horror Story.

Todd: Big surprise there, you choosing an Italian movie. I almost dropped my computer. What I said.

Craig: I know. Well, don’t think that I didn’t have it in mind that you would appreciate that, 

Todd: But it’s a modern Italian film.

Craig: It is. And that’s the thing like you love old stuff and I do too. I really do, but I also really like keeping up with new stuff. And this is a 2021 film made in Italy. The version that I watched, which I assume is the one that you watch, correct me if I’m wrong was the one that is available on Netflix and it’s dubbed or subtitled, 

Todd: you can choose.

Craig: Oh, see. And I didn’t even know that, like, it just popped up dubbed for me. And so that’s what I watched. Usually when I watch foreign films, I prefer to watch them in the original language with subtitles, just because. Kind of prefer to see the actual performance, but whatever. I mean, it was dubbed and, uh, the dubbing was not amazing, but, uh, it was fine.

Todd: Well, it’s for the course, really, as watching an Italian horror movie, that’s dubbed into English, you know, when does that ever happen? That’s true. 

Craig: But it’s, it’s also been a while since we’ve done a foreign film. I feel like the premise, even though, you know, all I did was I read the little blurb on Netflix and I did the same thing.

I went to MDB and read the blurb and it sounded fairly interesting. And so I thought, you know, why not? You know, apropos of nothing, why not pick this movie? And so I did and we watched it, I really had very few expectations going in. I had seen some of the images, I watched the trailer, but I was really just kind of intrigued by.

The title, really a classic horror story. I mean, if you’re gonna, if you’re going to name your movie that that kind of set some expectations and, uh, I wanted to see what it was all about. But apart from that, I knew nothing about it. I had never heard of it. I just happened upon it, scrolling through Netflix.

And so I watched it and here we are the, I, I assume. You had never heard of 

Todd: this? Well, you know, me, I mean, aside from what happens to pop up and get recommended my Netflix queue, I don’t really stay on top of, I guess I shouldn’t admit here that we’ve had a long running horror podcast. Uh you’re right. I tend to gravitate towards the old stuff and not the new stuff.

I don’t keep up really, as much as you do with all the latest news and horror movies, I like to kind of wait and see if they’re proven before I’m going to sit down and take my time with them. Except unless there’s some buzz around it, you know, like the newest, whatever Jordan peals, putting out, um, Ari, Asher, those kinds of things.

So, no, but, uh, just like you, as soon as you proposed it and I pulled it up and I saw that it was an Italian production and also that a classic horror story is written in that font. That looks like a throwback to horror movies from the seventies, which was kind of a golden age. I think of horror films, one of them anyway.

So I got kind of excited about it and I feel like starting to watch the movie, there was a lot of clearly intentional Amash, both to Italian films and to classic American horror films from that era. So I had a lot, I really went into it with a pretty open mind and pretty excited. I actually watched the subtitled version with the original Italian.

I don’t think, I don’t know what kind of a difference that really makes, but, uh, so yeah, no, I hadn’t heard of it before. And thanks for putting me in the direction of it, Craig, I think we’ve got a lot to talk about here. It, you know, One of the reasons why I liked the older horror movies is that a lot of times they’re just kind of goofy and they don’t put me in a sad, depressing state necessarily.

Obviously there are exceptions, especially from this era, honestly like the seventies for horror tended to be FA fairly bleak nihilistic films. A lot of times with these Grindhouse productions, which mirrored, what was kind of going on with the indie world at Hollywood at the time, really, and the Vietnam war and just the world was kind of a sad place.

This now being a kind of a, I don’t want to make it sound too depressed. I don’t always feel the best every day. You know, what’s going on in the world now and just, it’s kind of a weird time. And so I like to see those old, goofy eighties horror films, because I know they’re going to be silly and I know I could laugh at them.

And then you got to go and throw another bleak sort of nihilistic movie at me that by the time I’m done watching it, I’m like, oh, now I feel like I need to take a shower and I’m not. And my stomach’s going to be turning knots for the next day or two until till we finished talking about this and I get it out of my system.

Craig: Thanks a lot, Craig, you say that if you read the synopsis, it will tell you that it’s this group of people on a road trip and they get stranded and they end up in like this Backwoods kind of. Area and they kind of run into what ends up being a cult. And that is, is fairly typical. I mean, we’ve seen these movies, whether, you know, whether it be a Colt or hillbillies or deforms people in a nuclear, nuclear fallout space or whatever, 

Todd: you know, 

Craig: it’s Timmy.

Yeah. Right. A group of people, whether they be, you know, a group. College kids or high school kids, which is very typical or a family. I mean, this definitely has to me. And like, like you said, I think that there are a lot of throwbacks, but it had some very Hills have eyes kind of vibes to it 

Todd: is wrong. Turn Texas chainsaw, massacre, bunch of people in a van tripping across the country kind of thing.

Craig: And so when I got a little bit into it and I saw that that was kind of what it was going to be, like, I thought, okay, you know, you did this to yourself. It called it a classic horror story. And that’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be typical though. I thought it was good. And though I was entertained and know I was invested in some of the characters I thought, oh, Man, I kinda missed an opportunity.

I could’ve picked something a little bit more unique. You know, this is, you know, it is what it is and it’s it’s well done. And I will say that for the movie and like the cinematography and actually the cinematography is quite 

Todd: beautiful. And especially for a director that really hasn’t done much before this just a bunch of shorts.

Craig: Really? Yeah. I looked at it. It’s directed by two men, Robert to fail and Palo stir poli. And you’re like you said, both of them have very limited resumes. So for people like this, it’s certainly an impressive outing. It’s largely filmed outdoors in. This beautiful mountainous forest landscape and the cinematography looks great, but the story I thought was typical.

You know, like I’ve seen this movie before little, did I know that that was the ruse and that’s what ultimately, ultimately I walked away from the movie thinking, you know what? That was pretty clever. And I don’t want to, you know, I’m sure we’ll get into the plot here in a second. So I don’t want to give anything away, but there is a, there’s a major twist, a huge twist that honestly, even though it is projected, like in hindsight, the twist is projected.

I didn’t see it coming at all until about 10 seconds before the reveal, about 10 seconds before the reveal. Wait a minute.

Todd: Exactly. So our standard warning goes out to everybody. If you’re at all interested in seeing this movie now, after hearing us tease it a little bit, then turn off the podcast right now, go out and watch it. Cause we’re about to spoil everything 

Craig: for you. So I guess, uh, you, you know, honestly, my, my favorite thing to do.

On the show is to look up stuff that I like behind the scenes stuff that we can talk about and share. And because this movie is so new, I just, I couldn’t find much of anything. You know, I could find, uh, viewer reviews and I enjoyed reading those. And, and I didn’t look at them before I watched the movie, but, you know, I read them after and it was fun to read those.

And I agreed with many of them. But beyond that, I couldn’t find a whole lot about the production or anything like that. So be ready for maybe kind of plot heavy episode, but we’ll see, I guess, you know, we don’t play on this stuff, so we’ll see what happens. Um, we’ll see how much we have to say about the plot.

Cause, cause it is fairly typical kind of until the end, but oh, the other thing that I wanted to say to you is. That I really not still entirely sure what was going on. So maybe you can enlighten me when we get near to the end. Oh, funny. I had the same 

Todd: feeling. Well, hopefully we have to the two missing pieces to this puzzle in each of our hands.

We can put it together. 

Craig: The opening scene. Opens in your fairly typical, what looks like the interior of maybe a cabin, very cabin in the woods, very evil, dead with, you know, a deer head on the wall. And then it pans to this table where this girl is strapped down, you know, with these heavy leather straps, she’s bloody clearly in distress.

And then we see these boots walking towards her, dragging the primitive looking heavy mallet looks like it’s made out of like a tree stump or something with terror in her eyes. You know, she lies there as this masked figure raises the mallet above her head and swings. No, we don’t see what happens. We don’t see the impact.

It had immediately cuts backwards. And I don’t remember if it gave us a timestamp or anything like that. Cuts back. It 

Todd: does. It just cuts back, but also there’s an eyeball that’s. You can kind of see through a knot in the wood that seems to be working in it. What’s going on. It looked like a, kind of a throwback to black Christmas or some of the Lucille folchi movies where he seems to be kind of obsessed with this kind of thing with the eyes and whatnot.

Craig: So, but, but the, I looking through the wall also appears to be watching in horror. Like the sense that I got was that somebody was hidden. Presumably another quote, unquote, good guy. Hidden. Yeah. Watching this happen to somebody they know, but that’s all we get. And then it cuts back and we’re introduced to our main character, Elisa, who is in a diner.

She has a phone conversation with, I presume her mother. Well, first of all, we see her throwing up in the bathroom and like, oh, she’s pregnant because that’s how movies tell us women are pregnant 

Todd: cinematic language for pregnancy. You’re absolutely right. Actually it just, just spans all genres. Cause I was just playing the last of us two on PS4 and exactly the same thing happens.

There’s a twist that is projected a mile away because one of the characters keeps throwing up, 

Craig: especially, you know, like we’re both men feel like they have to project that to men. Like women only vomit if they’re 

Todd: pregnant, otherwise they do not vomit. They do not. This doesn’t happen. They don’t sweat either or smell.

Oh 

Craig: man. Alright. So she throws up and then she has a conversation with her mom, I guess these are you okay. It’s the second time I’ve thrown up. You need to eat something. Sweetheart. Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. At two, the doctor says you have to be in good shape. It’s tomorrow. Why do you want to wait?

You’re on trial at work, at least as your can’t afford to have a baby. Yes, I know. It’s the best thing to do. And it seems like Alisa is a little bit hesitant. But this is the plan. And then she gets a text on her phone from her rideshare driver. Yeah. It took me a second to figure this out, but that’s what it is.

She’s traveling to the town where she’s going to have her abortion, presumably where her family lives and she’s doing a ride share. And then we are introduced to the other people in the ride share. And Fabrizio is the driver. But he’s also an aspiring filmmaker and he’s goofy. He’s the chubby kind, you know, like not stereotypical Hollywood, good-looking guy, not an ugly guy per se, but you know, sets him apart from, you know, you have to.

The chubby silly 

Todd: guy. Yeah. He’s, he’s the stereotypical, chubby, silly, goofy guy who you see in all the horror movies who usually dies about halfway through, 

Craig: but you know, who also typically has insight, the cinematic knowledge and insight. Right? Exactly. Very typical. And he’s making a video and he’s intrude, you know, he’s videoing all of these other people in the ride share and getting them to introduce themselves.

He says that he’s making this like for a travel blog for Instagram or something. And he does this, this, this, his thing. So we’re introduced to Sophia and mark who are a young couple who are on their way to a wedding. Sophia. I didn’t write down any of these actors names because they’re all Italian actors who I have no familiarity with.

I didn’t recognize any of them from anything. Yeah. Yeah. Only 

Todd: mark has been in much. Uh, and he was, he’s been into quite a bit of TV. Gotcha. 

Craig: That’s it. Sophia is stunningly beautiful in the girl next door way. She’s petite and has long blonde hair and maybe the most striking blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Like, just like they they’re like sapphires, they just glow they’re 

Todd: gorgeous.

Yeah. But to be fair, Elisa’s brown eyes are just like glass, like big glassy, gorgeous brown eyes. Both of these women have incredible eyes. I couldn’t 

Craig: believe it. Yeah. And there, you know, big surprise, beautiful girls in a horror movie. Yeah. And mark is, you know, a good looking guy. He’s a red head and, uh, he’s kind of, he’s kind of goofy too, but likable and they’re cute little cup.

Todd: So because you watch the dubbed version, you might be interested to know that mark is the only one who speaks English in that group. I don’t know if that came through for you, but yeah, everyone else is speaking in Italian and he’s speaking in English because he’s actually from. Was he from somewhere in the UK?

I believe his girlfriend Sophia was from oh, some island country. What was it true? She said she was studying in Italy for something, she met mark while they were studying in school somewhere. I can’t remember what, but yeah, so he’s actually speaking English in the movie and trying out his Italian, um, the guy, when they do speak with him, they do switch to English every now and then to kind of help him out.

So, uh, there’s, there’s a little bit of English being spoken back and forth as well and Mark’s presence in tomorrow. 

Craig: Gotcha. Well, and again, like he’s kinda, he’s kinda goofy. It’s one of those things where like, he seems kind of like a project boyfriend, like she’s maybe a little bit too good for him, but he has charm, you know, maybe she can fix him.

I don’t know. Anyway. And then there’s also Ricardo, uh, who introduces himself as a doctor. And he says that he’s traveling to see family and he looks just like, I think his name is Dermot Mulroney. The guy from, um, my best friend’s wedding. Is that his name? I don’t know, looks very much like that. American actor, um, in consequential, he’s a doctor.

He looks a little like he’s got stubble. He looks a little rough. He looks like he’s going through something. Uh, 

Todd: Pissed off, you know, he’s the guy, you know, when you’re feeling that, that feeling, when you call an Uber and you get in the car and you really are not in the mood to talk with anybody, but the Uber driver is ultra chatty and wants to start talking with you.

And you’re like, you just want to say, God, can you please just shut up? That’s like this guy in this ride share group, I think he doesn’t want to be chatting with anyone. He just wants to get where 

Craig: he’s going. So me too, like I haven’t done a ride share and forever, like, do people still do ride shares? Like does, does Uber even still like in the, in the time of Corona, like, it just, it just seems so crazy to get into a car with a stranger who there’s a good 75% chance they’re going to be drunk.

Todd: Well, you know, Didi actually, which is the Chinese version of Uber fun fact used to have a ride share option, carpooling option. They called it and they had to stop it because there were a couple high profile cases where personal. Getting murdered. So they quit that whole program entirely. 

Craig: I’ve only done it once or twice.

I mean, I live in a small town and have a car, so there’s no reason for me to use Uber. But when I’ve traveled into larger cities, I’ve done Uber and I’ve done ride share, but I’m the Ricardo, like I’m not here to make friends 

Todd: or because it’s cheaper.

Are you like that at the table? To what? Applebee’s where the guy’s like, Hey, I’m Jimmy, I’m going to be your server today. Can you start you off with anything? Or you just like, get me my 

Craig: ice tea and Timmy. Super super friendly with, uh, service providers, because I worked in the food industry for a very long time.

And so I’m the guy who is super, super overly friendly to, to servers because I know that they deal with a lot of what their goal shit and, and Fabrizio ass Elisa where she’s going. She just says, she’s going to see family. Arguably, it’s true, but it’s not, oh, I’m on my way to my abortion. How are you? And then there’s a bunch of little stuff along the way, just on the ride.

Like somebody looks at a newspaper and it shows that a mother and her young daughter have gone missing in the area and they have some talk about the mafia, I guess this is Southern Italy. And this is where the mafia originated. And I don’t know, there’s a whole thing about like these three groups or three families or something, which apparently is real, I don’t know enough about, but one of these three entities ended up being the coaster Nossa, as we know, as the mafia.

And there’s another picture in a magazine or a newspaper or something of this woman who I guess is a head mafia figure or something. And like mark makes fun of her or. Does this for me? Oh, she’s the mayor. Okay. Yeah. 

Todd: He’s 

Craig: the mayor and it’s all just very quick and you don’t think it’s necessarily going to be important, but at the same time, me having seen these movies a million times, I’m like, why would they show us this?

If it weren’t going to be something, but you know, it’s, it’s tossed away and they, they pull over. Point so that a large Eliza can puke more cause she’s pregnant. And at that point, mark takes over the driving. Now Fabrizio had invited them all to have beers and mark was like, awesome. You just got your five stars, you know, which is cool.

And that’s a thing, you know, these drivers for these companies, they do rely on their ratings. Yeah. And, and so, you know, I’ve seen all kinds of crazy stuff online where they offer all kinds of like water and snacks and like all kinds of 

Todd: things, which they’d offer me beer. That would be great. We right. 

Craig: I know.

So, so they, they all have beers, including Eliza, Eliza, because. Mark basically forces her to, it appears that she doesn’t want to, I guess, because she’s pregnant. I don’t really know why she’s all that concerned about whether she’s going to have an abortion anyway, but whatever, or maybe she just doesn’t want to drink and friends out there and internet land don’t force people to drink.

If people pass up drinks, they have reasons respect

Todd: exactly. This public service announcement brought to you by two guys, niching also don’t drink and drive. Right. And what happens here I believe is that mark is insisting. He’s going to dry, but for ratio doesn’t want him to right. You can do, 

Craig: we’ll get to the wedding and there’ll be grandparents already.

Okay. Look, this company is, my mother is okay. She never lets anyone drive it. If something happens, she would smash my head and I’m taken over. Maybe you’re drunk. I drive better when I’m drinking, but Hey, you can take the weather. If you don’t feel safe, dog. I don’t have my driver’s license with me. Okay. No, my ass problem solve the problem.

Not solved is that clear.

Todd: And as they’re driving down in the middle of the night, the road, they’re both sitting there drinking beers when suddenly there is a dead goat in the middle of the road, which mark looks up and Fabrizio freaks out and leans over and yanks the wheel so that they avoid hitting this goat in the middle of the road.

But instead hit a tree. And at that moment I was thinking you are an idiot. Yeah. You don’t yank the car off the road because there’s a dead animal in the middle of it. I mean, yeah, you can bump on it. If you’re going fast, you could, you could damage your car, but so much better to run over that thing or partially run over it.

To swerve and cause a bigger accident, which is exactly what happens. Right. 

Craig: They hit a tree and you know, they got going full speed, but then it cuts to the morning and Elisa wakes up and hears commotion. Um, it turns out mark has a broken leg, which Ricardo being a doctor splints. Of course they have no cell reception.

But the biggest thing is somebody says, well, first they say call 1, 1 8 or whatever the equivalent is of nine 11 in Italy. And of course they have no cell reception obviously, but then Ricardo says, well go flag somebody out on the road. And Elisa looks out the window and said, There is no road. Yeah. And they go out and explore and there isn’t, they are nowhere near a road and this is just totally unexplainable.

They have no idea what’s going on, but they find this strange house. Like, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost like kind of like a modern Hansel and Gretel alley thing, or kind of a cross between a house and a church or something. It’s just really, that’s kind of a 

Todd: weird star shaped roof in a way that doesn’t it with a, with a very prominent window up at the top.

It’s always glowing, right? Like there’s light coming from inside. 

Craig: There are big like telephone poles with loudspeakers outside, but there’s nobody there. Uh, and Ricardo and Fabrizio go looking for the road, but they don’t find anything. They try to get in the house, but there’s nobody there. And so basically they just go back to the camper, they 

Todd: find three scarecrow type things in the woods 

Craig: though.

It’s a Strine of some sort. Obviously it 

Todd: looks like Blair witch project type stuff, or, you know, any one of these cult movies that are in the woods, sort of ancient cult type stuff where putting together things with sticks and, and twine and stuff. Yeah. 

Craig: Actually, I mean, it, it ends up being obviously significant, you know, there are these three like large straw figures somewhere.

Human shaped effigies, but then underneath them are five pigs heads on Spears and there are five of them who 

Todd: it’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, what’s interesting about this movie is that they’re calling. I like the fact that they’re actually calling out to our expectations in this movie directly. Like when they find the five pigs heads, they go back to the cabin and somebody actually says, please tell me there weren’t five.

Heads on those Pikes. And they’re like, yeah, they were five. Like they go ahead and make the connection for us. You know, the same thing when those two are walking through the woods, I think it’s for Bree geo who brings up one. 

Craig: I saw this America movie, right about these people who end up in a sort of limbo and they are not aware of it.

So they are liking a trap, you know, and they are doomed to repeat the same things. For example, they wake up and it’s always the same day or they go downstairs and it’s always the same floor, you know? 

Todd: And it’s so funny. Cause he was speaking what I was thinking. I’m trying to figure out what happened, you know, with this movie it’s obviously super mysterious.

Did they all die in the accident and are they in like purgatory limbo now? And so, you know, again, being a classic horror story. For Brizo continues to bring up these notions throughout the film makes these connections between what happens in classic horror movies. And what’s happening to them now kind of like a what’s his name and scream.

Right. So as soon as he brings it up, I’m thinking, okay, well then that’s not gonna. You know, and, and it kept the mystery alive for me a little bit. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And this, this is totally typical. There usually is that guy who can make these connections. Eventually somebody notices the door was locked on the house originally, but at some point they see that the door is open and Elisa goes in the house and she hears things in the house.

And she ends up in this one room that has all of these lit candles and everybody joins her in there. And there are all of these pictures, like weird culty pictures of people in masks. And there are these pictures of these three frightening hooded, masked figures, and Fabrizio being from that area knows that it’s a reference to a piece of folklore from the area.

And he says that they are the three nights of. He says, uh, the first has no eyes that even, even in the dark, he will find you, the second has not ears, but he will surely hear you. The third has no mouth to speak, but if you see him, don’t say a word, the wing it horse by their side is the song of death. And he says, it’s the legend of some Italian words that I don’t know, all 

Todd: stroke Matoso and Cognos or something like that.

Craig: Good for you. 

Todd: You know, a fun fact. I think that means bone, middle bone and heel bone, 

Craig: I think. Well, and I, I, like I said, I guess that there is some truth to this legend. Now I 

Todd: supposedly I think it’s an urban legend that, you know, it’s like a historical. It’s like a historical, probably not true myth of how the, the three Italian mafia family started, which is that somewhere in the 15th century, there were these three brothers and their daughter, their sister got raped by some guy.

And so they enacted revenge and went and killed this person. But then they got in trouble for it. So either they were exiled or they escaped to an island near Sicily. And while they were there, they devoted themselves to God and put together rules for a society like a new society they wanted to create.

And each of them kind of had their own. Spin on it, I guess. And then years later, once they left there, each of them took these rules for society and started each of the Italian mafia families. The three most famous ones are the three big ones. Probably not actually there’s no, I was, I was looking this up cause I really knew we had to address this, but there’s absolutely no evidence that this is actually true.

It’s mostly folklore and mythology, but, uh, it sounds cool. 

Craig: And when I say there’s some truth to it, I just mean that like, this really is a legend. Oh, right. Not true. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But also again, similar to kind of the Wicker man, um, even one that we watched recently, uh, apostle 

Todd: yeah. Strong apostle 

Craig: vibe.

And in that movie, yeah. They, you know, they made their own society, made their own rules. I’ll all that. The 

Todd: village. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, then I don’t know, he says that, um, these three brothers came from another world and they came to this village that was starving and they offered to help them, but they required a sacrifice.

Um, and so the village, I guess, very, um, Shirley Jackson’s the lottery style, like picked somebody to be the sacrifice and they cut out that person’s tongue and ears and eyes, and these brothers did rid the village of hunger, but then those people that they saved, he says they became like a flock there, flock.

And so, okay. So they see all that they’re spooked out, but there’s really not much they can do. So they plan to sleep in the camper and leave in the morning. And when they’re sitting in the camper, Fabrizio says, He like, he, he, he recaps everything that they’ve done. We crashed into a tree, a few feet from the road and we wake up in front of the house of SEM, Rahimi.

There are severed animal heads, pictures of crazy farmers. We are isolated. The phones don’t work.

Why isn’t anyone steady yet? This is the set up for classic horror. Go to sleep, man. 

Todd: And then the title card comes up. No, I’m just kidding. 

Craig: And then as tends to happen, he goes into the woods late at night, the foggy woods with, you know, the Moonlight shining through the trees to P. And he hears something and he sees these two hooded, mast figures in the woods, the people in the RV here, what sounds like a child’s scream coming from the cabin.

So the girls first go to check it out, which I thought was interesting. Like the guys are like, yeah, that’s cool. Go ahead. So much for chivalry. Keep in 

Todd: mind, mark. Can’t leave because he’s, I mean, he’s hot. He’s his leg is broken. He would be hobbling if he tried to leave the 

Craig: camper and eventually, I mean the breed CEO and Roberto or whatever is Ricardo, whatever his name is follow right behind and join them.

And as soon as that happened, I’m like, Mark’s phone. 

Todd: Yeah, me too. 

Craig: He’s disabled. They left him a load in there. He’s well, for 

Todd: Brie, geo comes in quite urgently, right? I mean, he’s like, Hey, there’s stuff in the woods. We got to get out. We got to get out. And the doctor’s kind of reluctant to leave. He’s like, no, man, no, man, we gotta go.

We gotta go. We gotta go to the house. So he kind of forces him out of there. That’s a little important, right? I don’t know Mark’s asleep or 

Craig: something. I don’t know. Yeah. He’s he sleeps from the time he’s injured, which probably is probably really pretty realistic. I think that when your body is in pain, sleep is like a natural instinct to try to, you know, ignore or he’ll be unaware of the pain.

Right. So they’re all in there. They go up into the attic and they find a kid, a young girl, like in cased in this weird kind of haystack and her tongue has been cut out and is in a jar right next to her. And then all of us. These red lights come on outside. And the sirens sirens start blaring through those loudspeakers.

And the little girl is scared and crying and all of this looks great. Light. The red light looks fantastic. It’s very spooky. But it’s also still, the cinematography is still very clear. Like it’s not dark it, you know, you see everything very clearly it looks, I was really impressed. Well, 

Todd: you know, and there’s like a siren sound and then a Lisa, for some reason, she’s kind of like backed up against the window.

And she’s a little terrified by all this juices staring on and she’s sort of illuminated for behind by this bright red window. And it starts kind of slowly zooming in on her. And I mean, I was just getting total Suspiria vibes there. Yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely a call back to, um, Argento his work in Suspiria.

It was very much that stark red, this girl standing there kind of terrified. It was, it was very other worldly, a little abstract, uh, very colorful. It was, it was really cool actually. I mean, this movie does that a lot where it just hits you with these throwbacks to classic horror film. I liked that it did a really smoothly, 

Craig: yeah.

I didn’t make that connection, but you’re absolutely right. Um, and now I have all of these images of, and it’s not just Argento either. I feel like, well, maybe it was his signature and maybe we’ve watched more than one of his movies, but I’m thinking of that movie where somebody shot somebody through a keyhole.

What was that? Oh 

Todd: yes. Oh God. Which one was that? I don’t remember which one, but yeah, I don’t remember. 

Craig: It’s very much that one had a lot of the bright colors illuminating people too. So yeah, I hadn’t thought of that, but it definitely is reminiscent of that, but they look out the window and they see these masked people.

Dragging mark into the house. His girlfriend is screaming and wants to go down and try to help, but, uh, Ricardo, uh, holds her back and won’t let her. And so they all just silently watch as these people strap mark to that table. I guess I should’ve mentioned this is the cabin that we saw. Opening scene.

They break both of his legs with mallets, misery style, 

Todd: very close up and very 

Craig: brutal. And then they drive spikes in his eyes with a turn screw that my goodness, I mean, this, an apostle had to be made around the same time, but this scene was almost exactly the same really was that scene 

Todd: from apostle. I was pretty shocked at, is it a coincidence?

I don’t know, but I 

Craig: don’t know. I, I don’t think they copied it. It’s I, I D I imagine it’s a coincidence, but they are strikingly similar. 

Todd: Yeah. And it takes its time with it though. And it goes through the eyes instead of his head. And there are these close up shots of where they crank this thing down. And these spikes are just millimeters away from this guy’s terrified eyes.

And it lingers there for a while. And the camera shows a several angles. Again, very reminiscent of full to you. Remember. When we saw that spike coming at that girl’s eye. And he does that in a number of his movies. He loves a sort of injury to I kind of stuff. It’s really shocking. Um, our gender does some of it too, where you get these closeup.

Craig: Oh, well, gosh, I, I feel really stupid cause I can’t remember any of these movies, but what was that, that movie where the killer would, um, like pry their eyes open opera? Yes. Yes. But. I don’t even think as an actor that I could do this. And those spikes were still close to his eyeballs. His eyelashes. You could see his eyelashes touching the spikes.

Yeah. Uh, I think I could do it. We’ve talked about this before. It’s been a while. I was teeth, you know, like there are just things that we just make us cringe, and this was definitely a cringe-worthy thankfully, but they kill him, 

Todd: show it right up, close out, goodness, getting broken. That was a nice bit of restraint there.

I appreciated 

Craig: that. And the feet getting broken, that was so fast. Like it was a split second, but it looked great. It really did. I have absolutely no idea what the budget was on this movie, but it had to be pretty darn high because it looks really good and the effects are good. There’s not a lot of major effects like that, but what’s, there just looks really great and they drag his body out and then the lights and the sirens go off.

Um, in the morning they get the little. Out of the straw and she clings to Eliza and or Elisa. I don’t know how her name is pronounced regardless. Like, she’s your responsibility now? Oh, okay. 

Todd: After he prized her out 

Craig: and Sophia is pretty despondent, as one would be, I would think after watching a loved one, get brutally murdered, but they take off through the woods with the little girl in tow and they find a car graveyard, which is so Hills have eyes it’s happened in other movies, but especially the remake of Hills have eyes.

I vividly remember when the one character finds the place where these cannibalistic mutants store, all of the cars of their victims. There’s some infighting going on actually for a while. I thought it drug out a little bit long, Ricardo and Sophia. Fighting for a while. And it’s not really important. The little girl weave, she can’t talk, but I guess she pulls a notebook out of her car.

Now I assume that this little girl is supposed to be the little girl from the news clipping that we saw in the beginning. I think so. Yeah. And her name is Kara and she gets a notebook journal kind of thing. She shows, um, Alyssa, some things in there and Elisa asks her, is there a way out of this forest and Kiarra writes in her notebook, it’s not a forest.

And I, I don’t know, like, it’s not like that. You know, the guy had already said for Brie, two had already said, you know, I’ve seen all these movies where, you know, time doesn’t seem to matter. And they just keep reliving the same experiences in the same days over and over again. It’s not like this is unique.

I’ve seen them too. But that, that one line, it’s not a forest. It just had my mind going everywhere. What is, 

Todd: I know then what is it then? And then, and Eliza kind of asks, well, what do you mean by that? For about a minute? And then they get distracted by something else. And then they never do never come back to it again.

And I’m like, please go interrogate this girl. You got to ask her what she meant by that. 

Craig: What, uh, they get, they end up back at the house again, like three, two is like, I swear to God, we were going south the whole time I was watching the sun and they ended up back at the house, but the campers gone, they decide.

That it’s safer. Even if the people come back, they decided to be safer to be inside than outside. And Fabrizio is like, oh, well, at least they look like he finds a beer on the ground. At least they left us this one beer. So they go inside and sundown comes and they share this beer and there’s lots of talking and the doctor tells his sad, sad, backstory, boring, and then it cuts to black and then it comes back up and the red lights and the sirens are.

Going off again, Alisa kind of slowly wakes up and I was like, why these sirens are loud? Like, why wouldn’t they immediately wake up? But as it turns out, she and Fabrizio are the only ones in the house she goes outside and there’s a huge cult of masked P like a huge Wicker. I hesitate to say Wicker, man.

Cause it doesn’t really look like the Wicker man from the movie, but it’s on a big straw. Yeah. Like a bonfire thing, but kind of shaped like a person and Sophia and Ricardo are tied to stakes. And the little girl is in the middle again in Cayston straw. And Elisa is standing there looking. At them. And all of the cultists are just staring at her.

Fabrizio grabs her, drags her back inside the cultist, do this weird clicking stuff with like super weird, have no idea what that’s all about. And then they cut off Ricardo’s ear. They cut Sophia’s eye off. They put it on like a weird face thing. They already have the tongue from the little girl. And then they host this face up to the top of that straw man.

So, and then they slit Ricardo and Sophia’s throats. And I was so sad because Sophia was so pretty. And not just that she was pretty, but she was really cool. Like, yeah, I really liked her and I didn’t, I figured she’d get it, but I didn’t want to, then it’s just Elisa in Fabry too in there. And he’s like, oh my God, what’s happening?

And she’s crying. And he’s like, do you mind if I hug you? And as soon as he said that, In my notes I have is for breach seal in.

Todd: Yup. 

Craig: And then immediately, like I said, I figured it out 10 seconds before it was revealed because Alisa’s like, why didn’t we wake up when all of this was going on? Obviously it had to be a big production for them to put all this together. And she realizes that the beer was drugged and that Fabrizio hadn’t drank any of it.

And when he hugs her, she hears something and it turns out he’s wearing an ear piece and the person in the ear pieces like bring her out or something, bring her up, 

Todd: put her under the, put her under the. The deer antlers on the wall or something like that, move her, move her over there. 

Craig: And so she, she calls him out and he tries to cover for himself.

But eventually he says, you know, he calls her some nasty names and she, he says, you ruin it all. And I have, in my notes, is he making a movie? Because he has said, he said that he is an aspiring. Filmmaker. And at this point, this is where I got very confused because I didn’t know what was real and what was not, but he says, you know, he calls out, just take her and this mask, the guy comes in and drags her out.

And then she wakes up in mid-summer.

Have you seen Midsummer yet? Oh, don’t spoil it for me. I won’t spoil it for you, but this exact festival happens, nailed down. She’s nailed to a chair. And the mayor of the town that we had seen in the picture in all red is sitting at the head of the table, opposite her at the other end with all of these rural collectivists in between.

And there’s a weird disfigured boy singing a song about. You know, the three brothers or whatever the mayor is obvious, like the leader of this cult and they all start eating. And when Elisa starts crying, they all mocker. The mayor goes to her and this woman, I mean, she looks she’s classic, great older Italian woman, you know, decked out in a complete red suit, heavy makeup and okay.

Here’s where I start to get confused. So correct me if I’m wrong. Apparently the cold. Is the mafia and this is how they have to sustain themselves by sacrificing people. I 

Todd: don’t think so. Cause you’re right. She does mention while the mafia is not what it used to be. And then she walks away from that whole table thing to awaiting police car.

So you can kind of see that the police are in on it too. No, I think what it is is Fabrizio is making these movies, these snuff films, basically, but they’re being funded by the mafia because only the mafia could like drag up the resources to pull this off and then later, you know, distribute it and make money from it.

I think that’s, what’s actually going on. And the mayor, because the mayor is connected to the mafia, then she has the ability to kind of make sure all this happens there inside, inside her city 

Craig: and figure it out. Like I thought that this that’s what it turns out. Eventually, um, she gets put in a room with a bunch of monitors that show all of what ended up being, it turns out they’re all set pieces.

The cabin is a set piece. The shrine was a set piece. Everything was a set piece and he’s making this movie, but I thought that that whole table scene, including the mayor, I thought that was the scene from the movie that he’s making. I think, yeah, 

Todd: that’s, that’s a little odd. Right. Cause when you think through it, it, that wouldn’t make sense that it would be included in his movie.

Cause then it kind of gives away what’s going on, you know, to like the real police or something, you know, that’s 

Craig: the thing like I, because I questioned, I don’t think that woman. Was really the mayor. I think that she’s an actress. I think that could be that, that showing that him having that picture for them to see and comment on, I think that was all part of the setup.

I think that that was still part of them making the movie. I could be wrong. I don’t know. But this is the part that kind of blew my mind because Fabrizio, like she sees on this set of monitors, all of these set pieces, but then the monitors all go blank and his head pops up on all of them, not individually, but like his whole, like it forms a composite of his face and he explains what he’s doing.

And I felt that this was really. Social commentary. That was a little too real and too scary. Yeah. Um, you know, he talked about how people like horror movies, but they’re not really impressed and they’re not really scared, but then they go home and they watch the news. And that is all the, all the news shows is the horrors of humanity, because that’s what the consumers want.

Right. They want to see pain and misery and murder and horror. And that’s why that’s all the news focuses on. And he says, so I’m making this movie, this is going to be the new. You know, this is where entertainment is going. And basically what he’s talking about is snuff films, where, you know, he, he really kills people in his movies.

Cause that’s what people want to see. 

Todd: Yeah. Uh, that’s crazy. It’s definitely social commentary. The movies brimming with it, by this point, I 

Craig: honest to God did not see it coming. And frankly, up until the point of that reveal, I thought the movie’s fine, but I’ve seen it before. Yeah. I was actually, you know, I was, I was thinking, oh God, Todd’s not going to like it.

Cause it’s pretty typical. Blah, blah, blah. And then this happened, I was like, wait, oh my gosh, 

Todd: it’s cool. But it’s also a little bit like martyrs in that respect. And it’s also a little bit like funny games, right? A little bit in, in, in it’s thematic material. You want to see violence. All right, we’re going to show you violence kind of thing.

And now how do you feel about it? Did that entertain you true? 

Craig: Right. Pointing back at the audience. It’s not like this is a new idea, but, um, 

Todd: but it’s a new, different execution. 

Craig: It, and it surprised me. And as he’s talking to her, she laughs in his face and says, your movie, totally sex. It’s just a carbon copy of other movies, which is 

Todd: true, which is true, 

Craig: of course, but this is him off.

And he says, well, this, this is how the story goes from now on. And she says, not my story. And he says, We’ll see. And, um, then he, he cuts out and the screens go blank. She pulls her hands off the nut or off the nails that she’s nailed to the chair by, which is gruesome, but looks great. Um, she goes out of the trailer that she’s in and ends up on what I describe as a backlot it’s not a studio backlot, but it’s clearly like the back lot of a film set with lots of trailers with all of the props and all, you know, everything’s a prop, the dead goat was a prop.

Um, they’ve even kept all of the bodies of the victims, I assume in case they might need them later for reshoots. And the only thing that she’s concerned about is finding the little girl and I loved this twist to it. The little girl was in on it. Yeah. In fact, I’m not even sure if she was really a little girl that she and the Gritti or talking and kind of arguing with one another and one of the trailers.

And at one point he calls her a dwarf. Now she doesn’t look like somebody with actual dwarfism, but I wondered if she was actually a young adult who just looked very young and she’s totally in on it. She’s been playing it the whole time, 

Todd: callback to Wicker man there too. And she also does need. Isn’t she his sister.

Yes. 

Craig: And like, I think there another is the producer 

Todd: or producer slash mafia person. Yeah. 

Craig: I, I, it’s a little bit ambiguous unless it’s not, and it just went over my head. I don’t know. Um, but eventually Kiata puts her costume back on because it was just a costume all along and opens the trailer door and Elisa is standing outside.

She has costumed herself as one of the townspeople and put on one of their masks and she’s standing there with a shotgun and Kiata is like, oh, shit or something. And Alisa blows her away. And then Fabrizio comes running out and she sh she shoots him in the knee and he starts. Crawling away. And she is filming this, she set up a camera and he, uh, pleads with her, not he’s like, I, I can make this good for you.

You know, all kinds of things. And eventually she flips him over on his back and points the shotgun right at his head. And she says, don’t worry. It’s only a movie. She blows his head off. And then she walks back to the camera and says, there, you have your ending. And then again, I’m still a little confused.

She walks into the forest, the sirens go off again. The little deformed boy who is singing before is not deformed. It was just makeup apparently. And he’s there in swim trunks and water wings. And they look at each other for a while and he turns off and runs and she starts chasing him and he leads her through a fence, which has a sign that’s like no trespassing, military establishment, but I couldn’t tell if they were going into the military establishment or out from it, out from it, I think.

Okay. I think so, too. Yep. And then she ends up on a crowded public beach. Yes. Apparently just filled with tourists who are, because she looks terrible. She’s bloody and they’re all filming her with their cell phones and she just walks into the sea. And then that’s basically the end, except for there is a credit scene.

Did you stick around for the garden scene? 

Todd: Sure. Did boy. That was something. 

Craig: Metta because the credit scene is this guy watching, what was it? Blood flicks or something like that, not Netflix, but like blood flicks, FLI ex configured. Exactly the same as Netflix. Like it’s obviously Netflix and he’s just clicking through horror movies and he clicks on a classic horror story and he S uh, scans through and watches a little bit of the early part of the movie.

And then he scans through and watches just the scene where Elisa shoots for greets you. And then he closes it out and clicks the thumb down and then goes to have dinner with his family. Like, yes, like he he’s clearly us, you know, we’re, we’re watching this. And the suggestion is this is what really happened.

And now we’re just watching it on Netflix. Yeah. Uh, I just, ultimately, I thought it was really clever now that it takes a while. You have to get through that first hour, which is, which is apparently the very, you know, what to expect, you know, what it is. But when the twist comes, I did not see it coming. And I thought that it was very clever.

And in total I ended up thinking it was pretty cool. 

Todd: Me too. So here’s my theory on the movie. I think that this woman was really the mayor, but also in heavily involved with the model. I don’t think we ever know the name of the town, do we are fictional anyway. And so they’ve set up this millet, this fake military installation, just to keep people out the sirens and lights come on to hide the screams and stuff from everybody else in the town, because it would be obvious otherwise that they would hear what’s going on when the murders are happening.

But because it’s a military installation, it just sounds like military exercises or something like that. Yeah. That masks that. And then of course, when she, when she pops out of there and ends up right there on the beach, this is total social commentary where, um, of course it’s the horrifying thing. It’s like, it’s like the village in a way, isn’t it.

Right. But then she pops out and instead of anybody rushing to help her or whatever, like she’s obviously bloodied and distress and holding herself and walking around. Everybody just takes out their camera and starts filming. Like again, this spills into real life that we’ve been so desensitized to violence, perhaps through media movies, whatever, or through the cameras on our phones, that our first instinct and we’ve seen this, right.

It’s just to film what’s going on around us, even as bad as it is. Gosh, there was a, there was a news article the other day about somebody who was getting raped or something like in the middle of the street or whatever. And I don’t remember if it was New York or where it was, and there were more people filming it than helping.

And so this is, yeah, it’s pretty sad commentary. She walks into the water and I want to think everything’s going to be okay. A part of me thought, oh, did she just like drown herself in sadness? Or was this a kind of baptism? Is she deciding she’s going to keep her baby because she kind of starts holding her stomach as she goes out.

We don’t really know. I want to think that she’s fine. And then of course, like you just said to wrap up the meadow of the whole thing, it’s like, even this movie that we’ve just seen, ah, it was okay. Give it a thumbs down, whatever, seen it before. All this brutal stuff happened and we don’t even give it a mind.

Yeah. I mean, it was a great movie. Like I just said, you make me watch these things, that a point an uncomfortable mirror up in front of me and then make me feel sick for the rest of the day. You’re welcome. Yeah. Thanks. I want it next week. Let’s just do another goofy eighties slasher, right. But no, I really did enjoy it.

I really enjoyed it. Just like you. I thought it was super clever. I love the meta part of it. I thought it hit all the right notes. It was, the pacing was great. The filmmaking was great. I loved the callbacks to classic movies. I think if you’re a horror fan, you’re going to enjoy this even more than just your more casual viewer.

Cause you’re gonna get a lot of this stuff in. You’ll probably get it more and appreciate it more if you are simply because you’ll get the point they’re trying to make. I remember watching a cabin in the woods with my dad and he hated that movie. And I’m like, why? Oh my God, this is one of the most clever things I’ve ever seen.

And I realized it’s because he didn’t know the tropes. He’d never really seen many of these horror movies and didn’t understand what they were poking fun at. And so I think that if you’re a horror fan, you’re going to get this immediately. Maybe more so than somebody, some casual viewer. Oh, appreciate it all the way.

Craig: I totally agree. Uh, another example, my mom, who’s not a fan of horror films. Uh, wanted to indulge my dad on Halloween. And so they watched Halloween kills together and she absolutely. Hated it. And I understand why, because that whole movie, the substance of that whole movie is throwbacks to all of the rest of this series.

And she’s not familiar with the rest of the series. So whereas my dad and I reveled in. I didn’t think it was an amazing movie, but I reveled in those things, you know, she had no context for it. And so the same thing here, I don’t think, uh, yeah, if, if you’re not a fan of horror, I don’t think you’re going to like this, but if you are, I think you’ll really like it.

Todd: And it’s going to push your buttons. Just like, again, like martyrs did for me, like funny games did for me, you know, as horror fans, there is this sort of inner tension where you’re thinking, God, why do I find. So entertaining when it should be so horrifying. And, you know, it’s a, it’s a hard thing that we have to explain to people and also to ourselves from time to time.

And then to have, like I said, does mirrors thrown up in front of you and God, another movie that’s sort of pointing that out and making me feel guilty. Well, fair point fair point, indeed. 

Craig: All right. Well, if you haven’t seen this movie, I hope you didn’t listen to the podcast because it’ll be spoiled for you.

And the most fun for me was the surprised I was. It’s so rare in these types of movies that I don’t see the twist coming, and I really didn’t. Regardless. If you do watch this movie or have watched this movie and you have anything to say, or you have any insights that we missed because we do miss things a lot.

We’re not all that smart really, 

Todd: really, 

Craig: uh, feel free to let us know on Facebook or you can direct messages or comments on our web page or whatever. And, uh, if you enjoyed it, please share it with, uh, friends or your friends. You can find us everywhere. You can find podcasts anyway, as always thank you very much for listening.

And until next time I’m Craig, and I’m Todd, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.


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 November 12, 2021  1h2m