You'd be hard pressed to find a more divisive sub-genre of horror than horror-comedy. Those who hate it, really, really hate it. But for those of us who love horror as much as we love comedy, there is something truly special about a film that manages to combine these two genres into a perfect blend.
On the Die Laughing podcast, hosts Bart Shannon, Lindsey Roberts and a weekly special guest, take a tour through some of the best and worst entries in the horror comedy field!
speaker-1 (00:01.55)
Hey Bart, I've got a question for you. What do the Fugees, the Delfonics, and Sierra Ferrell have in common?
Pray tell, Lindsey Roberts, what's up?
speaker-2 (00:12.678)
this is a riddle that I cannot crack. What is it?
Well, they all have the name of the song that is the same name of the movie we're watching this week.
Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. Since we've seen the movie already, I believe it to be true. I believe it to be true. You would, but I would forgive you for it. So it's all good. We also have a guest that is someone that you and I have also worked with many times over the years.
I said it.
speaker-1 (00:34.178)
I wouldn't lie to you, Bart. wouldn't lie to you.
speaker-1 (00:44.45)
Yes, very near and dear to our hearts, a great gal, very talented.
And I think we are going to have a blast talking about this movie with her.
Absolutely. Welcome to another episode of Die Laughing.
speaker-2 (01:13.474)
God dang Lindsey Roberts.
Bart Shannon, hello.
Hey, welcome back to This Here Shindig.
Yep, welcome back. I guess we'll do it again.
Well, I mean, we're doing it. So unless one of us bails or someone's internet goes out, I think we're in the throes of it. Or our guest comes on and goes, this was a bad idea, and then just bails. Any of these scenarios are a possibility.
speaker-1 (01:35.244)
correct, but I don't think that will happen this week. I have a feeling.
I don't think so either. So my natural tendency, because of my age demo, which is way beyond what advertising wants to cater to, unfortunately, my natural tendency is to be nostalgic and go with older films. But I think we've done a good job of not falling into that trap of just covering films that I've been around for a long time. And everybody knows I enjoy being able to especially do a lot of 21st century films, not just 21st century films, but last five years films. And today,
We have, I think it falls right off the cusp of that, but it's more recent and also love our guests today. it's a love a thong. we're limb walking here people. We're limb walking.
It is a love-a-thon. I'm gonna go out on a limb.
speaker-1 (02:22.126)
We're limb-walking here. We're limb-walking? I think this is one of my favorite horror comedies. Wow. Love it.
I am going to reserve my opinion until the end then. Bold statement from Lindsey Roberts. Right out of the gate, right out on the limb. I am heavier than Lindsey by way over a hundred pounds and I'm not as comfortable out on those limbs just yet. we're gonna save that conversation till a little later and I'm closer to the trunk. I'm getting closer to the trunk. I think you and I.
Okay, fine.
I was a pretty bold statement.
speaker-2 (02:55.756)
need to move forward with this shindig and let the fine folks know what movie we're going to be watching today.
Yes.
speaker-1 (03:02.862)
Absolutely. This week we are watching 2019's Ready or Not.
Ready or not. And that goes for you, audience. Whether you're ready or not, this is the film that we will be focusing on today. And Lindsay's already made an announcement. It may be her favorite horror comedy. You know, talk about someone who does not like to bury the lead? Lindsay Roberts.
Robert's doesn't. I'm just gonna tell you like it is. I'm gonna call it like it is.
Old Lindsay, fuck burying the lead Roberts.
the leads are shit.
speaker-2 (03:36.366)
Okay, so ready or not, I am ready and I think we should bring in our guest.
Let's do it. One of my favorite humans. I love this lady so much.
Mine as well. guest today is someone that both Lindsay and I have worked with a lot and have loved her work for years and love working with her and always a joy when we get to work with her. She has probably edited dozens? And I say dozens, mean like, you dozens is always an ambiguous term, but I don't know, three dozen, four dozen? Do even say dozens anymore? Do you say multiples of tens? I don't know, fuck all that.
It's not 25.
speaker-2 (04:12.866)
Whatever, she has edited an enormous amount of short films and feature films. She's directed loads of experimental films as well. Just a huge body of work. And let's stop with the dilly dally and let's bring on our guest, Laura Jean Hocking.
Yay, Lara Jean! Hey, girl! Hi, how are ya? Great. Good. We're so excited that you're here. Is it dozens? Where in the dozens are we? You've lost count.
NNNN
Hi.
great.
speaker-0 (04:42.316)
Newport and the Great Folk Dream is my 10th feature that I've edited. But as far as short films, I have no idea, honestly. I could probably sit down and figure it out. Maybe I could have if I've been pre-warned, but I don't know.
Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (04:51.734)
Right, it's just countless.
speaker-2 (04:58.924)
Yeah, but if you say it, it's just a flex. If we say it, it's appreciation. yeah, you know what? Laura Jean, it's not on you, it's on us. So we're the one dropping the ball on research here, not you. Let's get started with this here movie. Laura Jean, had you ever seen this movie before?
No. In retrospect, I think that maybe I had heard of it, but I definitely never seen it. I'd never seen any of the movies that you sent me, actually.
Well, I'm glad you chose this one. I think this one is a very accessible movie and the directors, they both directed other horror films, know, Matt Bettenell, L.A. Open and Tyler Gillette, they directed 2022 Scream and Scream 6 and 2024's Abigail. So perfect horror pedigree for this podcast. So before we get started, let's go ahead and let's just watch the trailer together so we can kind of get a sense of what Ready or Not is all about. Let's do it. Here we go.
speaker-0 (05:55.726)
can't believe that in half an hour I will be a part of the Lodomus gaming dynasty empire. I honestly can't wait to be a part of your family.
Dominion, prefer Dominion.
speaker-2 (06:09.038)
There's just one more thing. And then you are officially part of the family.
speaker-2 (06:18.606)
So at midnight, you have to play a game. Why? It's just something we do when someone new joins the
A game. What game? Hide and seek? we really gonna play? Well, the rules are simple. You can hide anywhere. We then try to find you. So there's no way for me to win, right? Stay hidden till dawn. No, thank you. Good luck.
You
speaker-2 (06:40.974)
You
speaker-2 (06:50.222)
hell is this? How old is this thing?
And now.
Are you
speaker-2 (07:01.538)
Jesus, you shot the maid. This shit look like she's wearing a giant white wedding dress, Emily. Holy shit! I had to play along so that I can get you out. They think they have to kill you before sunrise. Something very bad will happen to the family.
I'm insane.
speaker-2 (07:20.418)
dead.
Founder.
speaker-2 (07:28.408)
I don't know!
speaker-2 (07:32.6)
Today's video is called Getting to know your crossbow.
Sister Ludomir, I just saw her running-
my god!
speaker-2 (07:49.678)
Just another
speaker-2 (07:58.402)
FUCKING GAME!
Yes, I didn't see. Remember? I wanted to get married. So much fun! No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. sorry.
speaker-1 (08:15.768)
Well, do we need to watch the movie or are we all set now?
I don't think so because they give you the entire movie in the trailer. It looks like a very action-packed movie, but at the same time, do you really need to see the movie at this point?
Yeah, they gave away the keys to the castle. This is the type of trailer that gives trailers a bad name and why people don't watch trailers is because of a trailer like this. I think.
So supposedly Jeffrey Katzenberg is the person who said you need to give every single way in the trailer.
When I was kind of getting notes together for the walkthrough of this, I was like, well, who gives a shit? It's like, if you see the trailer, you know what's happening in the movie and you know where it's going. It's not a who done it and they're telling you who did it at the end in the trailer. So let's get started.
speaker-1 (08:57.614)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so came out in 2019. We've already mentioned the directors kind of took over the Scream franchise. Matt Bettinelli-Alpen and Tyler Gillette. It's 95 minutes. Horror comedy kind of also seen as like a satirical thriller. Budget was about six million and at the box office, 57.6 million worldwide. Jesus. Did pretty darn well this movie.
Writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy kind of described it as Clue meets Rosemary's Baby with a little bit of Your Next. Yeah, so it did really, really well in the box office.
I am stunned that it only cost $6 million.
Yeah, me too. Just the set alone. Well, and I think just these actors probably, you know, were famous enough, but not so famous that there's not like a huge price tag on some of these folks.
Um, I thought all the performances were excellent except for one. We'll get to that later. I had a beef with one, but I loved everybody but this one. Everybody, like you said, they're all recognizable faces, but no superstars.
speaker-0 (10:00.043)
Any doubt?
Andy McDowell is pretty. Andy McDowell is a superstar. I'm sure that she was the biggest price tag, I'm sure.
What's his name? I blanked his name. The guy who played Daniel, the brother. I see him in everything.
my God, I love him, Adam Brody. He's in that TV show with Kristen Bell. Nobody wants this. He's so good in it. And I love that TV show.
Adam Brody.
speaker-2 (10:21.838)
You know what the first thing I ever saw him in was? What? Fucking Gilmore growth.
Yeah, so
I've never saw Gilmore Girls and I think of you every time anybody brings up Gilmore Girls.
Yeah, I used watch Go More Girls all the time. I thought the dynamic between Rory and Lorelai was just magic as a mother and daughter. Writing is so fucking clever and impeccable. Let's just jump right in. So, as the movie opens with these two little boys in pajamas running down this dark hallway in this giant house, and it's all punctuated by a really tension-filled score. And one of the little boys, we found his name is Daniel, hides his little brother in this shifter robe.
I was dying for an opportunity to say the word Schifferer by the way. just want you to
speaker-0 (11:03.8)
People are googling that right
Google Now
We all know why. But once he's got his brother hidden away, Daniel's startled by this panicked man in a tuxedo who says, know, Daniel, please, they're trying to kill me. And we see that the man is bleeding from this arrow that has punctured his stomach. And Daniel screams, he's in here! And the man starts to run. And then immediately the man is shot with another arrow by a group of masked figures.
We see a woman in a wedding dress. She's been crying. She screams her husband's name, the guy in the tuxedo, and they drag this wounded man, still alive, down the hallway. And this masked figure kneels down in front of the boy, Daniel, takes off her mask and says, Daniel, I'm so proud of you. So that's how the movie opens, so we kind of know what's going on right off the bat.
And also there's board games. Are they in the Shilfer Road? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is. Yes.
speaker-2 (11:53.774)
They're in their credit sequence.
I can't remember if the credit sequence happens right now. No, no, it happened before then because right now we cut immediately to text on screen that says 30 years later. So it's 30 years later, we meet Grace played by Samara Weaving who was in The Babysitter. And I like to refer to Samara Weaving as Margot Robbie Light.
Thank you.
She really is. Thank you.
Thank you very much so.
speaker-2 (12:20.514)
looks very much like her and does a great job, but there's only one Margot Robbie, you know? So it's kind of hard, but there are times it's like, Jesus Christ, you look like Margot Robbie. And other times she doesn't. Yeah, so we meet Grace, she's wearing her wedding dress and she's practicing her wedding vows and sitting by a window. And she says to herself that her husband's uber rich family intimidates her, but she can't wait to be a part of this fucked up family. So we meet her husband, Alex Ladomas, played by Mark O'Brien.
And then soon after we meet Alex's brother Daniel. Huh, Daniel has the same name as the kid at the beginning. Hmm.
Hmm.
Doesn't she say something about his drunk brother? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Always trying to hit on her. Yeah. Brody just does not seem like a drunk brother character to me. And even during the whole movie, it didn't really seem like he was that drunk because he's always kind of clear headed and he's so fun to look at. He just has a really great face. But yeah, we meet Alex and we meet Alex's brother played by the adorable Adam Brody. And we also find out that their family has made their money in gaming. Doesn't say what types of games, just says gaming at this point. And after Daniel leaves, Alex tells Grace that they could just leave.
speaker-2 (13:28.41)
And he tells her that he's giving her an out, but she doesn't choose the out. Which on the surface, if you hadn't seen the trailer, you would think, well, that's a very sweet thing for someone to do. my family's fucked up. Look, if you don't want to deal with it, here's your out.
Can I just say though that that seems like a weird time to do that? He's giving her the out way too late. Yeah. Or he just shouldn't have proposed. If you're there and you're in the wedding gown and it's 10 minutes before the wedding, giving you the out at that time, you're not going to take it. You're not going to even take that he's asking you that seriously, I would think.
It should have been when he proposed.
speaker-0 (14:03.006)
Even if you think, what's the chances of her drawing that card? Your family is still fucked up. you pull chess or whatever.
And we find out later, it's not just a game that they're involved in. They're involved with so much more that you're basically making your spouse commit to or give up for to be a part of this family. So it's a, it's pretty meaty. Right after that, we go straight to its wedding photo time and we meet the patriarch of the LaDomas family, which is Tony played by Henry Cerny. We meet Daniel's wife, Charity played by Elise Lavesque, who I thought was great in this.
And the Laudamus mother, Becky, played by the one and only Andy McDowell, who is still just a gorgeous, gorgeous woman.
She is absolutely gorgeous. That's what I'll say about her.
So we see the mother share a moment with the nervous bride, telling her to stand tall and fuck them, because they thought she was beneath them when she joined the family. After the wedding, Alex and Grace go back to their bedroom, but are immediately interrupted by Aunt Helene, who is lurking in the shadows, and she tells them that everyone's waiting. And so Alex tells Grace that the family tradition is to play a game at midnight when someone new joins the family. You draw a card, and that card determines the game that they all must play at midnight.
speaker-2 (15:17.592)
So let's talk about Anne Helene for a little bit. Let's do that. So I loved every actor in this thing, except I didn't even look up her name because I was so off put by Anne Helene's performance. She was so over the top. My first thought was, why didn't you just cast fucking Amy Sedaris and let her go crazy with this character? If you're going to have one character so over the top in every line delivery, shoot for the stars and get Amy Sedaris to go full Amy. As Jerry Mike.
as Jerry Blank.
So we next meet Stevens the butler who announces that it is 1155. So the father escorts the family to the game room, which he says is reserved for family members only. The room is filled with big game trophies and guns. And this is where they all gather around a large table and explain the night's events as they will unfold. I thought the names in this were mostly weird. Tony for the father. It's like a matriarch of a billionaire family. Tony's an odd choice of a name I thought.
Andy McDowell, Becky. Becky and Tione.
Becky and Tony. So downstairs, the entire family is waiting for Grace. The LaDomas daughter, Emily, and her husband, Fitch, arrive with their two sons. They miss the wedding. These are my two favorite characters in the whole movie.
speaker-1 (16:31.854)
Fetch.
They were the majority of the comedic elements. thought Emily played by Melanie Scrifano and her husband, Fitch, played by Christian Brune were both fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. She Melanie Scrifano, she played, I'm going to butcher the name. Was it Winetta Earp or Winota Earp? There was a multi-year TV show, Canadian TV show that she was Winetta Earp.
I like her, I haven't seen her in a lot of things. I thought she commanded the screen as soon as she arrived.
Yeah, and I thought Fitch was hilarious.
I did too. That guy should be in more. Yeah. I went to his IMDB page. It shouldn't just be a lifetime movie that he has on there. should have. You need to update your media there, sport. I he's not. He's married to an actress. I'm blank on her name. So Tony, the father, explains that his grandfather set up a modest printing shop during the Civil War manufacturing playing cards.
speaker-1 (17:14.126)
I'm out.
speaker-2 (17:33.678)
And he talks of the family's great successes and says that it all began with a generous benefactor and this box. So he explains that their great grandfather was a sea merchant who once met a man named Labelle. They both had a mutual love of games of chance and they played cards together for many, many hours. He explains that the box, which Grace is holding at the moment, belonged to Mr. Labelle. Labelle told the grandfather that if he could solve the box before morning, then he would fund any endeavor
of the great grandfather, Ladomas's, choosing. Since that time, anytime there are new additions to the family, the new person picks a card which Labelle decides the game they will play. So they put a blank card in, pull the card out, and that game they play. And Labelle decides this game. Daniel's sister says she had selected chess and Fitch said he got old made. So they hand the box to Grace.
funny.
and she pulls a card from the box and the card says hide and seek. And you can tell by the stunned look on the family's faces that this is probably the card that nobody wanted her to draw. So they tell Grace that she gets to be the one that hides and the rules are simple. They say she can hide anywhere in the house. And Grace asks the father if there's a way for her to win. And the father says, doubtfully, well, I mean, I guess you could stay hidden until dawn. Like that's just not gonna happen. And then he says, Grace, good luck.
because they know how this goes. So Grace heads upstairs to find a hiding place, not taking any of this seriously because she thinks it's just a game before she becomes in the family.
speaker-1 (19:07.874)
jokingly running and yeah, she's not taking any of it seriously.
No one would.
they'd seen the trailer.
Right, right, exactly.
Downstairs, Father Ladomas arms the entire family with weapons in the game room. Alex's mom suggests that he just stay in the game room since he's obviously distraught because his wife is about to be murdered by his family. Back upstairs, Grace hides in the dumbwaiter as we talked about. While downstairs, the family heads out on their seeking mission while Alex heads through the servants' corridor. So Alex sneaks out through the servants' corridor. Not sure why just yet, but he looks like he is going to do something proactive to try to stop this.
speaker-2 (19:46.114)
Grace gets bored with sitting in the dumb waiter because again, she doesn't know it's a real thing right now. So she's like, this is stupid. And she starts to climb out and starts creeping down the hall. And at the same time, one of the, I guess they're all pairs. Are they servants? Are they all pairs? They're watching the kids, but. Yeah. So we'll call them all pairs for now because they're watching the kids. One of the all pairs wakes up in the kid's bedroom and realizes that one of Emily and Fitch's kids isn't in the room. And so she goes looking for him. Grace gets pulled into a bedroom by her husband, Alex.
who then pulls her down to hide behind a bed while the all pair comes into the bedroom looking for the missing boy. So she steps into the doorway and immediately takes a bullet to the fucking face. So Grace sees the all pair coughing up blood on the floor and this is the first time she realizes this is not a game, this is real, they want to kill me. Thoughts.
Okay, I did not know who that fucking person was when she got killed. Was she introduced before that scene?
Three of them were standing side by side at the wedding. And then there was a previous shot of her reading to the boys in that room when they were still awake. Not a lot of exposition. It was pretty quick. I'm not even gonna say their names, because I didn't even bother to remember their names. They let you save dead servant one, two, and three. So Emily leads her father, husband, and aunt into the room to discover that she has not killed Grace, but she's actually shot one of the hired help in the face.
And we hear the father say, why'd you shoot her in the face? She needs to be alive for the ritual. So we learn that there's gonna be a ritual of Bruin at some point. they're not just gonna kill Grace, they're gonna maim her and bring her to the ritual. Which makes sense when you think back to the beginning of the film and they're dragging the man down the hallway with two arrows and him. I guess they were doing the same there. So they drag the servant's body out of the room and while still hiding in the room, Alex tells Grace she pulled the one bad card and that his family
speaker-2 (21:45.176)
thinks they have to kill her before sunrise or something very bad will happen to the family. Alex tells her that he had an uncle who refused to play the game when he got married and he and his bride died the next day. there's still a lot of doubt at this point of if this is a real thing. There's a lot of doubt in the family about it, but as far as they know, it's real that if you don't play this game, the whole family dies. There's no proof at this point, but we get a little deeper discussion later.
We do, yeah, we do. There's another family that this has happened to.
So Alex takes Grace down to the servants' corridor while Emily snorts more cocaine. And I love that not only she snorts the cocaine, licks it off her lip, and then licks the gun.
will say the kills though are impressive. They shot that girl in the face and the blood and the gargle and the sound and the shock of it is so startling. The kills are very gruesome. There's a lot of violence in this film, a lot of blood, a lot of gore.
Yeah, they're violent,
speaker-0 (22:48.632)
So then, yeah, so he goes through a secret hallway, right? Yes.
Yeah, the servants corridor. Alex takes Grace down to the servants corridor while Emily comes in, snorts a little cocaine, gives herself a pep talk in the mirror, like, you got this, and licks the cocaine, licks the gun, and then storms out of the room. While in another part of the house, Fitch is YouTubing how to use his crossbow.
I about it.
was funny! I thought it was funny!
No, I loved everything Fitch and Emily did in this movie. Every single thing. was totally on board. Alex tells Grace to follow the corridor to the kitchen and that he will go to the control room and try to unlock the doors of the house because they're all locked. All the security cameras are turned off. The lights are all out. So he's going to try to get up there to the control room and turn it all back on. So he tells her, you you know how to get to the corridor. And she's like, yeah, yeah, down the corridor. I think she said to the left or right or whatever. But when she gets down to the corridor, there's two doors.
speaker-2 (23:42.862)
She's not 100 % sure which door to take. And then the very next scene out in the hallway, it's Daniel and his father dragging the dead help down the hall and the aunt joins them and the father asks sister any sign of her and she says, she could be anywhere. And as soon as he says that, the door opens into the hallway and it's great. She's taking the wrong door.
So she steps out in the hallway, they see her, and then Emily arrives and shoots at Grace, but misses. I thought she was going to shoot a family member here, but surprisingly she did not. And then Grace takes off running. There were plenty of clever moments in this film. Yeah.
See, that's why I feel like it would be better with an audience because seeing this movie with an audience, feel like somebody would say, open that fucking door. Or the right, you know, you should have listened when he was talking to you. I feel like it would be a good movie for because I hate when people talk during movies, but when people are talking to the screen that they think they're in the movie, then you've got them. That's a good audience member because they're like totally invested in this world.
Yeah
speaker-2 (24:48.31)
I like those at horror comedies, but when I'm going to see a horror film, I like it when the audience shuts the fuck up because I want to be scared. I don't want somebody screaming or talking right before it happens to ruin my scare. I paid for those scares. I don't want you to ruin those, but horror comedies are comedies. know, yeah, it's participation.
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Anyway, back to the movie.
back to the mood. So Grace hides in the study and while she's hiding in the study she's surprised by Daniel. He's got a gun in his hand but he just says, just came in for a drink. But he does tell her, he says, you know, I have to call the others but I'll give you a count to 10 to get a head start. And after a very long 10, he drags it out. You can tell he doesn't want to kill her but he's also part of the family. So Daniel yells that she's in the study.
in here.
speaker-2 (25:32.11)
After she's long gone, his wife Charity arrives and he reminds her of their wedding night and how eager she was to sign her soul away, he says. So this is kind of the first time it's like, are they speaking metaphorically or are they speaking realistically that they have signed their souls away? But she reminds him of where she came from and she says that she'd rather be dead than lose all of this. So we see what she has at stake in this. It's his family.
It's starting to feel like since he's seen as the fuck up, he could take her to leave it, but she's all in on the family. Everyone arrives in the study and sees the graces eluded them. Emily walks in and does she say, cuck, I forgot my gun? Could be wrong. I'll look it up later. Her husband, Fitch, says here, just use my crossbow, hands her the crossbow. She immediately accepts it and looks down at it and.
I don't know. That's interesting.
speaker-2 (26:26.784)
Accidentally pulls the trigger just as another hired help steps in the doorway and the arrow goes straight into her fucking mouth
Yeah, and the person is getting ready to say where she is. She has stumbled upon Grace, and so she goes in the room to tell them, I just ran into her, she's in the... And she literally gets an arrow into the mouth.
The fact that there are these three people killed to prove that they're killing people, I just wish there had been just one. I mean, the deaths are all funny and gory and I just felt like, can we just kill somebody who I know?
It always feels like when in movies, none of the main characters are dying, but only the secondary characters. It's like, come on, let's divvy it up a little bit and have some of the main characters die. But when it comes to them all dying, I wish Emily had accidentally killed all three. Yeah. Keep a comedy of threes and she would have like, oh shit, I did it. And I was a little disappointed when she didn't kill the third one. But I love the fact that she accidentally killed the first two.
Right.
speaker-1 (27:19.394)
Right, right, right, right.
speaker-1 (27:25.432)
Yeah, I mean, I think it allowed for more murders, which we wanted to see. You don't care about these people. They're throwaway anyway, so when they die, you really can take in enjoying their death because you don't care about them. You don't know them.
This was a funny scene though, because when she shot her in the mouth and she's laying on the ground, the family's trying to have a discussion about what they do next, but the woman on the floor is gurgling and wheezing so much that it's interrupting our conversation. They keep trying to continue. She interrupts them, they'll stop. Finally, the aunt walks over, picks up her axe and chops her head off. Okay, they all decide to...
It's very funny.
turn on the security cameras to make it easier because they're like, okay, this has gone on far enough. We've lost two servants. So we're going to turn the security cameras on to make it easier to track her down. So they head back out to find Grace and she finds a bare rifle and a bandolier of bullets. And again, Lord Jane, I think this is one of those storyboard ideas of the shot of her in her wedding dress with a bandolier on holding that bare rifle.
looking at herself in the mirror with those converse all-stars. Alex makes it to the control room. At the same time, Grace makes it to the kitchen. And while in the kitchen, Stevens the butler arrives to make some tea and Grace crouches down behind the kitchen island with her gun hiding from him. He comes in.
speaker-1 (28:47.086)
Cumming 1812 Overture Tchaikovsky, so good.
So Alex, while she's crouched down, Alex successfully unlocks the doors to the house and Stevens the butler walks to the door because he sees the doors to click open and he walks over the door and he's followed by Grace who now has that bare gun pointed at him and turns around. tells him to move. He won't move. So she pulls the trigger and click. And Stevens tells her the ammo is display only, takes the gun from her and she immediately grabs the fresh.
and smashes him across the face or on the head with it and burns his face with the scalding water. She takes off running just as Daniel and his father arrive at the control room where Alex has smashed the controls so that the doors stay unlocked. Alex starts choking his father to death, but eventually lets him go. The whole time Daniel's like, you know, very calmly like, you know, you don't have to do this. You don't have to do this. And I'm like, stop, stop. Just like, I mean, I'll let you do it if you want to do it, but you don't have to do it. And then...
but Alex finally lets go. And while Alex is begging his brother for help and getting Grace out of the house, his father knocks him out from behind. And then Daniel and his father drag their brother away. We'll talk about this more later, but a lot of people get knocked unconscious in this movie. It's just a personal gripe of mine with movies. Like I start doing, instead of a body count, it's like a knockout count. Like it's not incredibly easy to knock someone out. Just cause you bonk somebody in the head, we don't live in a cartoon.
Having never hit someone on the head with something enough to knock them out, is it not also possible to fracture their skull? That's probably a really fine line between knocking them out and just
speaker-2 (30:24.741)
sure.
speaker-2 (30:29.484)
I think I was 30 before I realized that the cartoon trope of every time you hit someone they had they have amnesia and then you hit them again and they don't they do they don't they do before I realized that that wasn't true
We haven't gotten there yet, but even when she punches out that kid in the barn, it's a pretty significant punch. And I get it, he's a kid, he's probably out for the count. But he was out for the whole time that she was in that pit in the barn. That kid didn't wake up for who knows how long when Daniel and Emily come into the barn to dispose of the dead people.
That's in the brain damage realm.
speaker-1 (31:08.864)
and he's like, mommy, and I'm like, that kid's been out. I don't even know if he'd be able to say the word mommy at this point.
And also, I know it's a movie and this is not real life, but it's very hard to knock someone out when you don't punch them in the jaw. Socking somebody in the eye, even when it's a child, typically knock them out. Not that I, hey, let me just say, not that I have ever struck a child. I'm just saying it's the logical to say that it wouldn't happen that way. But I have no personal experience.
Yeah, but I will say for people like me who Bart knows, I have no interest in boxing. I hate boxing. I don't want to watch it. I don't want to be involved with it. I don't really know what's going to knock somebody out.
You know what turns out? It's whatever mama said. It's nothing new. It's been in movies for a hundred years about hitting someone in head, knock them out, and then it keeps the story moving along because that person is incapacitated, but they're not dead because you don't want to kill all the characters. I get it. It just gets a little bonky after a while.
She runs out of the kitchen.
speaker-2 (32:13.506)
Yeah, Grace runs out of the kitchen, goes back to the dumb waiter again, opens it up, but this time the sole surviving member of the hired help Robert Palmer music video staff is hiding inside the dumb waiter, and she immediately starts screaming that Grace is over here, Grace is over here. So the servant, while during this panic, it was a little bit of a clunky at it. She accidentally closes the dumb waiter and...
doesn't have the wherewithal to get out of it and keeps her body just hanging out. So the dumb waiter crushes her to death.
Yeah, I couldn't figure out why she couldn't pull her head back in.
Sort of like your father when you've left the door open, are you in or out? Are you in or out? Either you're in or out. Make up your mind, in or out, in or out. So she couldn't make up her mind, so she just stays hanging out halfway and gets crushed by the dumb way.
blood running out of her mouth again.
speaker-2 (33:09.154)
Yeah, kind of just pumping out of her mouth. So Stephen sees that she's been crushed. He goes to the bedroom where we see that the father has handcuffed Alex to the footboard of the bed. And Stevens comes in and tells them that the final of the female Robert Palmer band help is dead. And then he's got this massive burn on his face and Daniel's like, Jesus Christ, man. So my first thought was, okay, he's been doing this for a long time. I'm sure he gets like wedding pay.
You know, it's like it's a wedding. you know, make an extra 50 grand tonight because there could be a murder.
that you're gonna have to clean up.
Yeah, so that's why he endures having a third degree burn on his face for the rest of the movie. The aunt tells the story of what we saw in the opening of the film, which was that she was the bride that was witnessing her husband being dragged down the hallway with a couple of arrows in him. it was Daniel had ratted out the location of her husband. And she says it was the only man she ever loved. And she wished she would have been the one to kill him herself instead of fighting.
So she's all in on the family. She also says that Alex is the only one of them who's ever seen Mr. LaBelle in the chair and he's the future leader of this family. something is different and special about Alex.
speaker-1 (34:28.502)
Right, and something that we hear sort of before this throughout is that Alex, they are excited that Alex is having his wedding here because he has been sort of out of the fold and they want him back in the fold and they are hoping that this will kind of bring him back in. So you understand, you know, sort of throughout the film that Alex has been on the outskirts from his family for a while.
It really wasn't until the second viewing of this film that I realized there is a lot at play here psychologically that I really dove into in this viewing of it. It made the film so much more enjoyable for me because I feel like there's this layer in here that you're like, well now that's really interesting. So like I think maybe this is one of those things. You realize it's Helen.
that is at the beginning of the film that's the distraught bride because she was in love with this man. And he just happened to pull this card, right? But we know it's not random. We know that Mr. LeBael orchestrates them pulling the card, which means that Mr. LeBael had faith in Helen that she would break the curse and she didn't. So Helen represents the woman who folded and
Grace represents the woman who fought, right? He chooses Grace to pull back hard because he believes in her heart that she's the kind of person that can break the chain, that can break this chain of murder.
So, but can't LeBel break the chain himself just by never selecting hide and seek and then it's over. He just never chooses hide and seek forever and he just picks old maid always and no one dies. So it's his decision to see people die.
speaker-1 (36:23.704)
but then the family won't ever be in true horror. I just feel like these people are greedy and they wanted the money and they want this lifestyle. And so they have to be horrified every second along the way that you could pull all made or you could pull hide and seek and you have to decide. If it's always old made, there's nothing to horrify the family. Does that make sense?
Yeah, there's no threat of it. And if there's no threat of it and it's always just old maid, then LeBel just gave them all this gift for free, other than one person, a couple of people died in the last hundred years. Back to your other point about Alex going away and kind of leaving the family. You know, they cover that three or four different conversations in the movies. Like the very beginning, you don't realize it at the time, but later you realize like when Grace, right before their wedding says, they're 18 month courtship. And she goes, mean our 18 month, the bone fest.
Right. Right.
he didn't want to get married because he was okay with just leaving the family, never getting married, just living with her forever and not having to deal with this possibility. And so when the mother thanks her for bringing him back to the family, she's basically saying, you know, thank you for bringing him back into our cult, but you have no idea what you brought him back into because now we have to continue this game. But he knew as long as we don't get married, we're happily ever after, but she wanted to get married. And he said, okay, I'll give you what you want.
but also internally, but also it comes with the possible price of you dying. It's mentioned a few different ways and then you're not until the end of the movie, you're like, that's what he was talking about. He was trying not to do it, but he also was torn with like, she wants to be married. I know I want this woman to be my wife, but also I know what comes with
speaker-1 (38:08.3)
there's this sort of this ever permeating thing of like, is it really real anyway?
Yeah, and I did like that aspect that they really drug it along not knowing if it was real or not even the family doesn't know if it's real or not then they start having doubts
Kids are all like, we've never seen it happen, right? We don't know that this thing is really real.
I like that aspect and that aspect plays great into the ending, which we will obviously get to where like, this real? Grace jumps from the second floor window to the ground.
So funny, this was another lap out loud moment for me.
speaker-2 (38:45.326)
And it's always Fitch. Always. She jumps past the window as Fitch is on his phone Googling whether Packs with the Devil or real or bullshit.
After he texts his friend, his friend's like, up man? And he's like, oh, know, regular family shit. shit. Also, what is that text screen? That's not 2019 text screen. What's that, Come on. I mean, what is that text screen? It's the most antiquated looking text screen in a film. He's searching and he's sitting by this huge window and he's looking down at his phone and you just see this blob of white go behind him silently, very quickly. And it's very funny and it's done really well.
And then she stands up into the fryer, but it kind of sneaks off behind him. Um, so she sneaks off to the goat barn. She gets to the barn and I got excited here because we see this door to a cellar in the barn. And I was hoping that we were about to get a supernatural element in that cellar.
yeah.
to bother you or get out.
speaker-2 (39:42.326)
Yeah. Get out. Cause I started to get a little bit of cat and mouse fatigue at this point.
I understand.
I wrote much chasing as my one line for the last 20 minutes of the movie.
I think we're probably 45 minutes in right now. So we still have another hour of chasing to go. Maybe not that much. I don't think it's that long. But yeah, so I was hoping that that was gonna be some, know, the Satan in the cellar or something that's gonna be another element. But while she's in the barn, sees that quickly, Georgie, Fitch and Emily's son from earlier shows up and foolishly on her part, she's like, Georgie. First of all, she wouldn't know who Georgie is because they met at dinner and then the kids went immediately to bed.
and then that's she never even saw it.
speaker-1 (40:26.156)
Yeah, I guess you just always assume there's like a scene in there that's left out, right? Like they would have gone around the table at dinner and introduced the kids and she would have shook, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.
Or Alex would have said Daniel and his kids Georgie and blah blah and his wife
I'll give them that. But she says like, Georgie, you shouldn't be out here. Help me. They're trying to kill me, which again, foolish decision to say that. So Georgie pulls out a pistol, pointed at her and shoots and shoots a hole right through her left hand, stigmataing her. Yep. That's for board killers. Painful as fuck.
Sorry.
speaker-0 (41:00.439)
natural born killer.
speaker-1 (41:05.996)
And it was so cool. She like lifts her hands and like, I mean, her scream, she must have lost her voice a thousand times making this movie. She must have. Her screams were so intense and I was like, you're not using your diaphragm. That looked so fucking painful.
I thought she was great in this role. She would freak out later, kind of almost cracking up and her laugh. I loved that at the very beginning she snorted to kind of show that she wasn't blue blood before the wedding. She laughs and snorts and then later when all the shit has hit the fan she starts laughing and snorting a lot.
She was, she was fantastic.
speaker-1 (41:45.023)
She was fantastic. I thought she was great. I loved watching her in this movie.
I think I can always call her Margot Robbie Light until she wins an Oscar as well, but she's not. But I think she was excellent. So she gets shot by Georgie and then she cold cocks Georgie, punches him in the eye, knocking him unconscious. No shocker there. But immediately is frightened by a goat and the goat startles her to fall backwards. She falls back through the cellar doors of the goat cellar, landing in a pit of discarded goat bodies.
She's not going to.
speaker-2 (42:16.022)
and also sees the skeleton of Aunt Helene's husband with his arrows in his stomach there.
think there's also more human bodies in there.
bodies down there.
Because there's been plenty of weddings.
I loved this, this sequence, I thought it was great.
speaker-2 (42:29.059)
I like that they drug it out a little bit too because she climbs up that cellar to gets up to the top of the goat cellar.
The ladder falls underneath her, her legs are just dangling.
dangling, she's hanging up by her one good hand. So she has no choice but to just throw her bad hand up to stab to grab and she just slams her stigmataed hand down on an exposed nail that's sticking out and pulls herself up basically with that nail as an anchor.
One bloody hand, her one good hand.
speaker-1 (43:00.088)
looking amazing and you can feel the pain and you're like I mean it's so good what she's been through all night now she's down with a bunch of dead bodies she's trying to get out she's lost the ladder she's been shot in the hand and now she's literally pulling herself up through the leverage of the nail that has gone through the hole in her hand I mean it's just so good and she's
He's already survived the foster system by the time.
That's right. She's an orphan. guess we didn't. Right. We've never said that yet. But yeah, Grace is an orphan. And so that's kind of what you what you learn about her. That's why none of her family members are at this wedding, right, which would be totally convenient.
Take a walk at that point.
This is a cake.
speaker-2 (43:45.034)
And why she's so eager to be a part of this family. But I will say this, if she does make it to the end, old Grace, she is most assuredly going to die from an infection at some point because that open wound in those goat entrails and that rusty nail, she's toast. She's totally, she's at least going to lose the hand.
Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1 (44:02.318)
Because she could have lost a lot more.
Sepsis is in effect. So Grace runs from the barn across the yard. Charity is outside. She takes a shot at her with her crossbow, misses her. And she tells Stevens that she's outside running towards the north fence. So Grace manages to get through the fence. I know they were trying to show that she was being cut by the pieces of the fence as she drug her body. I don't know why it didn't work for me. just did.
Yeah
speaker-1 (44:15.381)
kills a bird instead.
speaker-0 (44:29.794)
Yeah, that felt like I didn't we didn't need that. She's already got a big fucking hole in her
And unless you're gonna give us like a massive wound out of it, you know, it's like, yeah, I know it's tight. She's getting scratched up. She's fucked up enough. There's no tension building by more cuts on her body. Unless you're just into cuts.
didn't bother me. She couldn't get over the fence. She had to get through it.
She manages to get through the fence, gets out onto the road, and a car comes by and stops, and you think it's gonna be of help, but they just say, get out of the fucking road, and they take off, and she has her first mini meltdown, which I thought was really good.
It is very good. It was very Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation.
speaker-2 (45:10.04)
lot of ranting and cursing, all culminating in fucking rich people. back in the house, the family finds out that she's breached the gate and the father reiterates that if she lives, they all die. And the father says, you don't fuck Mr. LaBelle, Mr. LaBelle fucks you. So reiterating that we are going to die if we don't get this woman back in this house for the ritual people.
And I think Daniel says, come on, how do you know that? You know, it's like, how do we even know it's real? And that's when he says, you know, it happened to this other family. That's kind of when we learn it's happened to another family. And they were like, well, I thought that that house burned up. And they're like, well, that's what they told the public. But, you know, you don't want to know what really happened to this family. So does that mean that there's another family out there that made a similar quote unquote deal with the devil?
I thought they were all related, but then there was one stray sentence that confused me in that way, like it was a different family. But Alex calls that his uncle, and I assumed that's who they were talking about when they said that they died the next morning in a house fire. But there was some stray line that confused me about that is somewhere in the scene too.
The question then is why wouldn't they have all been together if it's an uncle? So then this section of the family was given the same curse by Mr. LaBelle?
Yeah, how far does this branch out?
speaker-1 (46:32.438)
Right. So that was the part I didn't understand is that a second family, that was the only thing that was a question mark for me.
It was a little muddy, I agree. While they're still in the game room, the mother, played by Andy McDowell, tells Emily and Daniel to take the maid's bodies to the goat pit. And Daniel says, clean up duty for the fuck-ups. And so he and Emily take them out there. But in the bedroom, Alex has begun to use his handcuffs to try to saw his way free through the post of the footboard of the bed. And he's screaming for his brother for help. And then we go right straight to the goat barn.
where Daniel and Emily are dumping the maid's bodies in the goat pit and he picks up the hired help and drops the severed head into the goat pit. But they do have little conversation here where they have this discussion of Daniel says we're bad people and we should all die and Emily said, did you want my kids to die? And then immediately we hear mom. And that's when we find out Georgie has come too from his.
The
speaker-2 (47:32.206)
20 minute unconsciousness from a punch to the eye socket. And so he tells Daniel and his mom that he followed the lady here and you shot her with that gun. And Daniel says, why would you do that? But then immediately Emily tells her son that she's so proud of him. So we're starting to see that Daniel is a good guy here. They painted him as this alcoholic at the beginning, but you could tell he's got a good streak in him. Grace is out on the outer lawn.
I'm so proud of you.
speaker-2 (47:59.666)
And I guess that's what it kind of feels like the woods, but I think that's what it is. It's just sort of a more of their property beyond the road. And Steven spots Grace and tries to run her down with his car. And he gets out of the car, climbs on top of her. He's got a gun pointed to her, but she claws his already burned face. So she's able to roll him off of her while he's screaming, rips off a part of her wedding dress, wraps it around his throat and starts choking him to death. And then.
she hops in the car and takes off in the car. But again, he raises up into frame. So someone else has been this time, not knocked unconscious, but choked unconscious. You just let go too early.
This one I understood, She's like, too early. But if you have a lack of oxygen, it is going to knock you out. Even if it does for just a few seconds like it did him.
Yeah, totally. She just gave up too soon and took off, jumped in the car. I think we're at three, three pass outs, three knockouts so far. She's driving in the car. She punches the help button. The voice on that was a funny exchange too, because she's, she's saying someone's trying to kill me and she's cursing and he's like, oops, we're having a little problem with the computer here. Hang on a second. Just hang on a second. And he tells her that the car is reported as stolen, which we assume is Stevens because he was not dead. And so they shut the car down. And so the car comes to a stop.
she's like fuck you Justin or fuck yourself Justin or something
speaker-2 (49:19.854)
Anything else I could be of assistance with? Thank you so much. sitting there for like two seconds before Stevens shows up way too quickly because she's been driving at a high speed now for, I don't know, five minutes, three minutes. And then Stevens has made up all of that space and punches out the window right next to her and shoots her with a very, very, very short acting tranquilizer dart. These darts must be a
designed for ferrets because
Well, he can't kill her and she's not a big lady.
That's true, but my God, you want to talk about a stun dart, not even a tranquilizer dart. It's just a drowsy dart is what it is because while he's driving back to the house from their yard, he
Calls the family to let them know he's got her.
speaker-2 (50:08.974)
FaceTime's with it.
The whole family is just in that one frame.
Yeah, so FaceTimed the family and he's telling her, I'm on her way back, got her. They're all happy, but he leaves the phone on and the whole family sees that Grace has woken up in the backseat after this very
He's pumping the overture of 1812 again because he's super pumped and got that volume all the way to 11.
Yeah, no family's like screaming, hey, turn the music off, fucking dumbass. So he doesn't realize it. And so she comes to and she, I guess, smacks him and then she kicks him and then he overcompensates with the wheel, turns it hard left and the car just rolls.
speaker-1 (50:45.122)
I think with her foot.
speaker-0 (50:52.556)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The best because you see the whole family reacting to it. They're just like in that one single frame going, it's really very, very funny. And so they're watching them turn upside down and this and again, this is another one of Samaro weaving, screaming through the whole thing. I'm like this poor girl screaming through the whole movie. God bless her.
No kidding. So as the car comes to a stop, the call ends. So the family gets disconnected. Grace climbs out of the car and is met once again by Daniel. And he tells her that he is weak and that he can't let his entire family die just because of her. So he knocks her out with the butt of his rifle. Another knockout. She's got to be really groggy after this because, you know, tranquilizer dart, then getting hit in the head with the butt of a rifle.
episodes is probably setting in.
Exactly. So now I think dad shows up and says we have an hour till dawn to prepare for the ritual. So clock is ticking, hour from dawn, they gotta get this done. So we go back to the bedroom and Anna McDiall as the mother comes in and talks to Alex who's still handcuffed to the bed. And this is where they have the conversation about another glimpse into why he left.
speaker-2 (52:09.748)
He said he needed to leave because what they did was starting to feel too normal. Like he was talking about slicing a goat's throat. And so he wanted to escape and she said, well, you don't know this woman that you've been known for 18 months better than you know your family. And he tells his mother, if Grace dies, I'm gonna...
I do think that this conversation is pretty integral because I think a seed is sort of planted here in Alex.
Yeah, I do too.
speaker-2 (52:37.622)
It definitely was. think the first time I saw it, my takeaway from this was if you hurt her, I'll kill you. And the second time I saw it, it was I need to decide who my allegiance is to. So I think I missed it the first time. So the very next scene is the family preparing for the ritual. Some excited, some nervous, some overacting, Aunt Helene. So they're all getting prepared. The family gathers around the table in the game room.
Grace awakens strapped to the center of the table as the father is reciting this chant in Latin. The family passes around a chalice of blood, each one taking a sip from the cup. The grimace on Fitch's face makes me think it was blood. Maybe it was wine and he was grimacing because of what comes next. So yeah, whatever they were drinking. Fitch thought it tasted gross. Maybe that was because of what was put in it.
letter was that wine
speaker-1 (53:26.062)
Boons Farm.
speaker-2 (53:31.962)
The father raises a knife overhead about to plunge it into grace while the family's chanting and the father says, hail, and then starts vomiting out blood, which I assume was blood. I guess it could have been wine, but it looked like their own blood, but I guess.
thought that maybe they had drank wine, had poison in it, and it made them throw up blood.
I don't know. Hey guys, hey filmmakers.
Hey filmmakers, let us know. Leave a message in the comments.
And again, like we said last week, there's no such thing as computers, so we'll never know what the answer is. It'll just go unanswered forever and ever. So Daniel, while they're all puking, everyone but Daniel, Daniel gets grace off of the table and there's sort of a line he says as he's escorting her out. says he took the bottle from the maid's quarters and later says he Googled it and that they'll all be fine. They'll just shit.
speaker-1 (54:00.398)
That's right.
speaker-1 (54:04.896)
Ever and ever.
speaker-1 (54:22.72)
Which was funny, I thought that was still a funny line.
So he helps Grace escape just as Alex breaks free upstairs. Body count's finally about to increase here. yeah. Lori Jean, you're about to get your wish that it's not just maids that are dying. You know, they even said that when the third maid died, I forgot this, the father said something like, she's picking us off one by one. It's like, well, no, none of you have died. It's just your help.
That's right. That's right.
speaker-0 (54:45.652)
I think some one of them should have died early.
Yeah, I do too. Just one.
Like how in the Oscars they give supporting actor awards first and then they go through everything else and then they give actor and lead actor.
I don't know. I don't agree. I guess it's just because you kind of love to hate this family. And I kind of want to see what's going to happen to them all. I want to see them get their comeuppance.
I'm gonna say this line and I hope it's never taken out of context, but we should have just killed a kid. Yeah. But yeah, I kind of felt the same way.
speaker-1 (55:14.222)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (55:18.648)
Alex has escaped the bedroom.
Yeah, Daniel and Grace get to the hallway and they're confronted by Charity, Daniel's wife, who's got a gun. And she says to her husband that you don't care if I die. And then she shoots him. She shoots him right in the fucking throat, like without hesitation. doesn't say anything harsh or contradictory. She just shoots him in the throat, falls to the floor, gurgling blood.
Grace struggles with her gun firing. They both have their hands on the gun going back and forth. And then no surprise again, Grace gets the gun, hits Charity, her unconscious. A lot of people just losing consciousness in this house.
He does smack the shit out of her with that gun though.
She does. Now this is, well, yeah, heavy gun like that. I can see where that would knock somebody unconscious. So Daniel's choking on his own blood on the floor. Grace kneels down to him and he tells her to go. About 60 seconds later, after knocking Charity out with the gun, the father shows up and says, you know better than a goat. And Grace knocks him unconscious with a lantern. Look, I mean, come on. I know we can be nitpicky about movies sometimes, but you can't knock.
speaker-2 (56:29.102)
two people out in 60 seconds. You just can't, that's, come on. I know. Two human beings knocked out in 60 seconds, that's a little gratuitous, but she knocks him out and then throws the lantern on the floor and then a house fire starts. A very quick burning, yet also slow burning house fire. The fire has a mind of its own. Alex finds his brother dying on the floor, the mother shoots an arrow at Grace but misses her and then she attacks her. Yeah, exactly.
She says, I'm a little rusty.
They fight on the floor while she's choking grace grace pulls the table runner from the table and with it comes LaBelle's box she gets a hold of it and knocks the mother unconscious and my first thought was god damn what's wrong with you filmmakers three humans knocked unconscious in 90 seconds and then thank God above she
bashes her fucking brains in with it in Kill Curl. was like, yes, finally a fucking kill and not just somebody getting knocked unconscious. Just hair stuck to that box. was brutal. Chunks of meat stuck to that box. Smashes her fucking skull. RIP, Andy McDonald.
I wonder if that was like one of the things that Andy McDowell said, like, I just got to get killed gruesomely. Like, I'm just tired of being this pretty thing.
speaker-2 (57:54.956)
It just kept going and going and going.
She was just yelling at her the whole time.
It's kind of like when Samuel Jackson was cast to be Mace Windu in that Star Wars movie that was, he said, please don't let me die like a bitch.
Alex steps into the door, seeing his mother dead on the floor. Either he witnessed Grace beating his mother death or just stepped in right at the
Did you say that he also walks in to see Daniel?
speaker-2 (58:21.454)
Yeah, he downstairs, when Alex comes out of the bedroom, he first finds his brother dying on the floor and he dies pretty quickly choking on his own blood. And then we cut to upstairs. he comes in, he said, Daniel's dead. That was one of the first things he says when he comes in. And they start walking to each other. And then I think he reaches out his hand and Grace kind of recoils and says, I'm sorry, like, we're not there. And Alex says, you won't be with me after this.
and puts his hands on her face, you think lovingly first, and then he starts to squeeze her face and she says, you're hurting me. And then he screamed, she's in here. So he's done a complete turn. He's decided to become a part of the family.
The first time I watched this movie, I thought that this kind of 180 for Alex, I thought it was too abrupt. I thought it came out of nowhere. I didn't follow it. I didn't like it. I thought it was a huge flaw in the film. Again, it was not until the second viewing of this film when I realized they have this layer in this movie that if you're not really paying attention, you're going to miss.
And it is this philosophical sort of psychological layer that continues to go through and weave through this film. I thought, okay, there's a few angles here. One, it could be that he thinks that Grace has killed Daniel because he doesn't see it, right? So the moment Alex sees Daniel dying, he walks in and sees Grace covered in blood. He could have pieced together
what he thought is the absolute worst version of events.
speaker-2 (01:00:08.384)
even think about that. Of course, why would he not assume that she had killed Daniel? Never even considered that.
So Daniel was the one person that Alex truly loved in the family. Losing him shatters him completely. And from his vantage point, it looks like Grace did it. So the sense of betrayal primes him to snap back towards the family. He's just had this conversation with his mother where his mother says, I know my own son. You've basically had a fuck buddy for the last 18 months, but I know you. Then there's this fear of abandonment, right? So Alex says that quiet part out loud.
that you're gonna leave me anyway. So even if they survive, Grace is not gonna stay with him. So he knows it's over. He knows he's failed her. Suddenly the family he claims to hate looks like the only thing that he might have left. So it's ugly, but it's human.
Just like you said, I missed it the first time. didn't even dawn on me till you just said it, that of course he would think she killed Daniel. Of course. I just assumed that he knew, but he wouldn't know. So from his perspective, you just fucking killed my brother, you just killed my mother, and now you're confirming that we will not be together. You have to die. So the first time I saw it, I didn't get that because I didn't get the layer of the conversation he had with his mother earlier either, which was kind of the crucible of what set all this in motion.
Yeah, I mean, and so even if the curse isn't real, right? Even if it's not real, his decision makes sense either way. Because if the curse is real, then Alex would literally rather die with his family than live without Grace. If the curse isn't real, he assumes his family is gonna survive the night and he knows he won't have Grace. So he reverts back to the only identity he's ever known and that's being a lodomus. So the movie plays both readings at once to me, which is why it works really well.
speaker-1 (01:01:56.62)
And so now he can sort of return to the fold, right? Alex's whole character arc is basically, I escaped my toxic family, but I never actually detoxed from them. So he wants to believe that he's better than them, but he's not done the work emotionally or psychologically. The stress peaks, he collapses back into the system. He swore he had left. His mother plants that seed with that conversation. He's just the least committed villain.
Well, and also if he had fully recovered from being a family member, he would have told her, look, there's this fucked up thing that happens when you get married into my family. Let's just live together or let's go elope in Reno or something.
That's the thing. That's how you know that he's probably not going to do the right thing this entire film. Because he would say, listen, I love you. I don't want to get married because frankly, I know it sounds crazy, but I don't want you to die. But there's a chance while we're in the middle of our vacation when we're retired and Turks and Caicos that I might implode. You know what I mean? Just because I'm a member of this family. I think he starts going down some of those paths that maybe he hadn't before.
when he starts to really realize in the middle of the game that this could be real. And what would this mean for the rest of my life? Like I said, the first time I watched this movie, I was like, well, that was dumb. They just totally ruined that. I don't buy his turn at all. I didn't buy it at all. And then the second time I watched it, I was like, it's actually brilliant. I think he's done really well.
Still the same way. I thought it was too abrupt the first time I saw it. And then the second time I got the conversation with the mom, which set the whole thing up. And I'm like, okay. He had to make that decision, her versus the family. then just like you said, now that he thinks she's killed his brother and his mom, was like, well, the decision's made. Alex has ratted out his wife. And the next shot we see the house is burning and it's very slow yet also very quick way.
speaker-2 (01:03:53.678)
as it doesn't seem to be impacting any other part of the house other than the shots that we see. But it's burning really fast in the shots we see. They strap Grace to the table once again. This time Aunt Helene is running the show and she gives her a shout of hail Satan. And this time it's Alex who is holding the knife and he raises the knife over his head and says, hail Satan. The next shot is to me a couple of quick confusing shots.
Right.
speaker-2 (01:04:21.742)
So I had to rewind it like, what just happened there? So Grace squeezes Aunt Helene's hand too hard. So she releases her grip, which gives Grace just enough leverage to roll onto her side and get stabbed in the shoulder instead of the heart. I had to rewind it, was like, whose hand was that? What just happened there? But so she rolls off the table, pulls out the knife and then holds the knife on the family. And a very good crack up scene here too.
And I love all those hail satans, the way. So, Rosemary's baby.
Absolutely. Ooh. Mm-hmm. Just in case we weren't 100 % sure if they were speaking metaphorically throughout the film or if they were being honest and they were being honest. So, hail Satan. Mm-hmm. So she rolls off the table with the knife, holding it towards the family, and the family just stands around looking stunned for a minute. I guess they've already put away all their weaponry. There's no backup plan.
Like, wait, what do do now? Attacker?
But Samara weaving at this point just like, ha ha ha ha. She gives out this guttural animal sound when she holds the knife towards them. But then Aunt Helene notices that the sun is rising and goes over to the drapes, yanks open the drapes, and the room is filled with sunlight.
speaker-1 (01:05:34.894)
and they're cower like vampires.
Yeah, they think they're gonna get burned like vampires. This was the, thought the funniest scene in the whole.
So they're like, no.
funny.
So they all just freeze expecting to get their comeuppance and they're they're all just frozen and then like one of the time they start like looking around what? wait nothing's happening. So then they all just kind of stop and then Fitch says I fucking knew it. It's bullshit But then they all look at grace and then he says so what should we do about her? And Anne Helene says to LaBelle's empty chair. I know it's too late, but I will not fail you again. The girl still dies
speaker-2 (01:06:13.87)
grabs her axe, lunges towards grace, and then... she blows the fuck up! she blows up real bad
fucking impl...
Explode. Her shit goes everywhere. Yeah.
Just blood everywhere. Covered with pieces of her body, of her flesh, just soaked in blood. A very Scanners explosion acceptance that had all body. So as the flames engulf the house, the Victrola starts playing the hide and seek theme as each family member.
in trails.
speaker-1 (01:06:47.63)
the Victrola, the record is burnt. yeah. So it's playing this very warped, creepy version of that song.
I forgot about, we didn't mention that at the beginning of the movie, that when they start playing the game, they play that song.
yeah. Hide and seek. It's real creepy.
Yeah, the butler puts it on.
speaker-2 (01:07:09.486)
So yeah, so the Victrola starts playing hide and seek again, and one by one, each family member starts exploding. It is fucking awesome. I think that next to the last one to explode is the father who's holding the box saying, I did everything right. I did it all right. And then he explodes.
awesome.
speaker-1 (01:07:26.306)
do respect the fact that when they start exploding one by one that Emily grabs the kids and runs out so that you don't see.
See them blow up on screen? But we saw them blow up in the hallway.
You see the, you hear it, boom, boom, Out of the door and into the frame. So I don't think I could have stomach watching the kids blow. We've been fine.
and blood comes out of your
speaker-0 (01:07:50.996)
you would have been fine.
Yeah, it was a very conscientious decision on their part. she rushes the kids out of the room and then they'll blow up on them. We're gonna kill them. As filmmakers, oh, don't get me wrong. We're gonna fucking kill those kids. You just don't have to see it. It's just gonna be Alcicrete. So yeah, the flames go off the house. Alex is the last one who has not exploded. And he looks at Grace. This is when she's snorting with laughter, just... Which made her so much more endearing again.
Yeah.
speaker-2 (01:08:21.277)
Alex says that he gets a do-over. Obviously, look, look, I'm not dead. I'm not blowing up. So I get a do-over. And she tells him not to fucking touch her. She takes off her ring and says, Alex, I want a divorce and throws the ring at him. And as soon as the impact of the ring hits him, explodes.
He explodes. All the fuck over her.
All the fuck over except I always love this in movies is like all the fuck over except around her eyes Yeah, can I see your pretty eyes gotta keep that makeup
except around her eyes, we gotta see her pretty eyes. He literally has to like wipe his entrails off of her.
She actually goes, and then wipes it off. It's like, it's in my mouth. He's in my mouth. There's a great shot of her standing, a wide shot of her standing in the room as little bits and pieces of body parts fall from the ceiling, landing on the table. And then fireplace roars and Grace sees a glimpse of Labelle sitting in his chair. I did too. It gives her a nod, like you are free to go, madam.
speaker-1 (01:09:01.89)
He's in my mouth and not in a good way.
speaker-1 (01:09:17.814)
I love that.
speaker-1 (01:09:22.734)
I think it's a good Anya nod. Yeah, so too. I think he is saying somebody finally somebody beat the system.
I think
speaker-2 (01:09:29.196)
Who knows, maybe that's part of his curse too. Not only is it the family's curse, but this could be interwoven with a curse that he has upon him. So somebody breaks up. The house is burning. Grace grabs mother, LaDomas's cigarette case that she had head mired earlier. She exits the burning house as love me tender by stereo Jane plays.
Yeah, I thought about that too.
speaker-1 (01:09:49.122)
That version of it was made specifically for the film. I was wondering wow.
She goes outside, sits on the steps of the house, smokes a cigarette.
Harry Heathers, cops arrive, fire department arrives, and as she's sitting there just staring off into space smoking cigarette, off camera we hear a voice of one of the first responders say, Jesus Christ, what happened to you? And Grace says, in-laws. The end.
the end.
Great ending, I must say. Totally relatable.
speaker-1 (01:10:18.188)
Yeah, totally relatable line, yeah. And funny, you know, very funny. I thought she was just gonna like keep walking down the stairs and keep going. And then, you you'd see the cops arriving in the background and you would watch her sort of well in the distance walking towards the gates to get out. And they would never see her, but she doesn't. She stops and she sits and smokes a cigarette and they say, you know, Jesus, what happened to you? And so I'm sitting here thinking about
Does Grace get put in a mental institution at the end of this movie?
She's got a lot of explaining to do.
What do we think happens to Grace?
Does she get all of the money? She's the only surviving member of the family. That's it would be a really, really, really nice mental hospital.
speaker-1 (01:11:00.11)
That's a good thought. I like that thought.
speaker-1 (01:11:05.258)
It would be. you know, part of me wonders too, if there is another family that this has happened to and they say, the media wanted everyone to think that it was a fire burning, but we know kind of what really happened. Is that her alibi? The same thing has happened to this family. And I know that, you know, this is going to sound crazy, but I didn't murder all of these people.
So let me get this straight everyone died, but you and you didn't start the fire
Why you didn't start the fire? It was always burning. Sorry.
Scrapped down to a table, hell Satan!
Would that have been your ending? Would you have kept her on those grounds? Should she have kept walking? I don't know.
speaker-0 (01:11:49.422)
like the idea of that like shot of her walking towards the camera and everything, you know, and like maybe the fireman rushing in and she's walking off. But that's such a great ending line.
No, it's, then you lose the in-laws line, you know.
Sometimes the storyboard looks so good that they're like, we're not changing that image in the storyboard. And it stays there because everyone loves it. I'm never able to shut that part of my brain off either, too. And things like that. I'm like, oh God, the headache she's gonna have. It's almost like a cop movie. Like, oh, the paperwork. She's gonna have to go through weeks of interrogation and a trial and all of that.
Exactly. Ready or not to the trial, know, mean, seriously. And she doesn't even look, she doesn't look sad about any of it, right? Not that she would because she has experienced this, but she looks like a serial killer who doesn't give a shit about a bunch of people that she just killed. You know what I mean? So.
think it's a scary movie though. I think it's gory and I think there's a lot of tension in it but it's not like, whoa, scary movie to me.
speaker-1 (01:12:57.366)
Okay, well let's dive into that. So then maybe that's kind of a good segue into one of our basic questions, which is, know, our comedy horror meter on a scale from sort of straight up horror to full on comedy. Where does ready or not land for you?
comedy goal.
speaker-0 (01:13:13.39)
I think it lands definitely closer to comedy. It's not really scary to me. So I think it should have been funnier. I felt like there was some parts of it that were not quite baked all the way. Like a little undercooked. It wasn't an unenjoyable movie at all though. I mean, I enjoyed it. It was fun to watch. It looked great. had a great, obviously had a great production design team and all of that. It's comedy gore.
Okay.
speaker-0 (01:13:42.22)
I mean, think a horror movie needs to be something where I'm like on the edge of my seat and something makes me jump.
Lindsay, do you want to take this one or do want me take this one? I felt no elements of horror in this film and I looked at every description everywhere and they call it a horror film, a horror slash whatever, every description everywhere. I thought this was a suspenseful thriller. I wouldn't call it a horror, which I think you're not alone because every person who writes their descriptions for them calls it a horror comedy.
I think it is.
speaker-1 (01:14:13.614)
Yeah, I mean, I kind of harken to maybe a little Return of the Living Dead when some of the horror that you are experiencing in that film is the horror of them dying. It's not necessarily something that, like you're saying, the suspense of what they're feeling and what they're going through, right? Like a rosemary baby.
your tongue.
speaker-2 (01:14:35.118)
There are a lot of films that don't land to me as a whore that are considered a whore and this one is considered a whore and just didn't check the boxes for me that a whore film does.
This was not creepy. Unless you're completely innocent to the fact that the Uber rich are fucking horrible. Then you might be like, my God, I had no idea that rich people were so evil.
I don't know who the gatekeepers are who decide if something is considered horror or not, but here is the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of horror. Horror is a strong feeling of fear. You felt fear in this movie, Lindsay? Mm-hmm. Dread. You felt dread. Mm-hmm. Or dislike. Felt dislike. Mm-hmm. As well as the quality of inspiring those emotions. So I did not feel fear, but I did f-
feel dread and dislike. according to Merriam-Webster definition of horror, I would call this a horror film. There you go. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay.
chat GPT. And I just asked is Labelle or Mr. Labelle an anagram? Yes, Labelle is absolutely an anagram. It's a near direct rearrangement of Belial, which is one of the traditional names for the devil demonic forces in folklore, literature and theology. So Labelle is Belial. The filmmakers have confirmed this wink in interviews. It's not meant to be subtle. It's their classy old money way of saying yep,
speaker-1 (01:16:05.314)
This family literally made a deal with the devil, but in a tuxedo. So while the movie never says Bill Ile out loud, the symbol and the nodding ghost in the chair pretty much seal the deal. Mr. LaBelle isn't just a bitter factor, he's the bored game magnate version of Satan.
Also the name of the brother in basket case is Belial. What else you got, Linz?
So let's go into elevator pitch. If you were trying to convince a friend to watch it or you wanted to get it green lit, what would your hook be?
just lean heavy on the on the in-laws aspect of it. I'm really bad at pitching things. You think your in-laws are bad or something along that
lines. right. Yeah. What would you say Bart?
speaker-2 (01:16:47.948)
I would say a modern day reimagining of the most dangerous game, heavily involving class warfare, relationship struggles, and some really funny characters.
Yeah, that's good. I would say maybe it's knives out if the family tried to murder the bride at midnight. It had a knives out kind of feel to me. Or maybe it's clue meets you're next with a satanic trust fund twist and a bride has to survive her wedding night while her in-laws literally hunt her throughout the mansion. So would you recommend it?
And if you would recommend it, what type of person would you recommend it to? I assume that there's maybe a group of people that you wouldn't say, yeah, spend your evening watching this.
think the comedy horror lovers would love this. But I think especially if you're in a room full of people that you have people to feed off of and different people's reaction. Like I didn't jump at anything, but if I was in a theater and somebody jumped, like when somebody got killed or something, then you get that sort of energy. So I feel like that you should definitely watch it with some friends who are sick of hearing about your serious ass fucking French movies and they just want to watch something funny with you.
After I watched this movie and during the movie, I felt like this movie probably had a great pitch and had a great pitch deck. It probably had a really great storyboard, but I felt like it sort of, didn't gel. And I feel like some of it was that it feels like they were afraid to go full Monty. I felt like it needed to be either more horror or way more comedy. And they were just stuck in this kind of middle place.
speaker-1 (01:18:29.662)
I think that everything that you said to me is what makes the movie successful. And the reason I say that is because that fine line is sort of, think what makes it sort of in the background feel like a horror is that you never really know what to take seriously. I mean, even Mr. LaBelle, is he real? Is he not real? You know, these are things that as an audience, you're trying to also figure out.
back to what you said about the storyboard of this, I guarantee you the storyboarding of this was pitched and sold on the storyboard and the three images that were the ones that stood out in this storyboard, one was her and her converse all-stars with her wedding dress, her and her torn wedding dress with her bandolier of bullets holding the shotgun, and then the third one was her covered in blood and the wedding dress smoking the cigarette at the end. Those three images sold this movie and got the film made, without a doubt.
And maybe with this we can also answer kind of what you had mentioned before, Lara Jean, which was would I have watched it a second time if I had not had to, you know, watch it for the podcast.
The question was, would you watch it again? Mm-hmm. I don't think I'll ever watch this again. I didn't dislike it. I thought it was okay. I got joy out of it because of Emily and Fitch. I love those characters. But, yeah, I'll never see it again. Life's too short. I've gotten this one. I will recommend it to specific people who I know would like it, but for horror fans, it won't be a film I recommend for horror fans.
I wouldn't recommend it to everybody. I think the gore alone is too much, I think, for a lot of sort of more casual moviegoers. You know, but I think if somebody is the type of person that loves the scream movies or You're Next or Cabin in the Woods, if I know anybody that has like a sharp kind of satire, sort of they like those types of films that are also wrapped in bloodshed, then this is, you know, definitely a movie I would recommend to them. I liked it.
speaker-1 (01:20:26.688)
I liked it a lot. liked it upon the second viewing. I don't know if I would have watched it again. I really don't know how to answer that. I hadn't thought about this movie in a while and maybe that's why, but I am really glad that I watched it again. And I loved the aspect of them exploding at the end. So there's an alternate ending where Grace escapes before sunrise and no one explodes. wow. And it tested poorly because audiences wanted the family to blow up.
There you go.
Did you say where you thought it fell on the horror comedy meter?
I didn't do a meter. just said, don't think it's a whore, but let me finish that out. Since it does match the Webster's definition of a whore. And even though it's suspenseful, I will call those suspenseful elements whore for the sake of this meter. I would call it 70 % whore, 30 % comedy.
Interesting. Really? I was saying six out of 10, maybe leaning towards comedy. I don't think it ever gets kind of too goofy. doesn't lose its bite, but it never kind of goes so dark that it stops being funny, if that makes sense. I think it's, you know, the horror kind of makes the violence sharper and makes kind of the jokes land because the stakes are real. So I thought it had a nice little sweet spot, maybe self-aware without winking at the camera.
speaker-1 (01:21:46.35)
which is harder to pull off, I think.
I don't think I'm ever gonna go something like 50-50 unless it's a movie like Tucker and Dale versus Evil where it's a fucking comedy but made in this little horror universe. So I think I'm always gonna lean more towards the horror. I don't know what I said about Shaun of the Dead. Yeah, I probably was, trust me. Shaun of the Dead is such a great horror film but also hilarious. you can, depending on what mood you're in, I think you could fluctuate either way because it did both of them so well.
Whatever I said, I was wrong.
speaker-0 (01:22:16.022)
So what's the best comedy horror movie?
We have talked about this. think we have agreed that Shaun of the Dead is probably the pinnacle as for it works up for both. It's a great horror and it's a great comedy. My personal favorite is Return of the Living Dead, which was Dan O'Bannon's directorial debut. He wrote Alien. Just a great balance of horror and comedy. Lindsay, you said this may be your favorite of all time?
I like it a lot. like it so much on the second viewing, but I think Shaun of the Dead is probably my favorite.
That's good one. That's ready or not. Whether you're ready for it to end or not.
You are not. Good job gang. Yay. So now's the part where we get to talk about you, Lara Jean. Tell us what you got going on.
speaker-0 (01:22:57.326)
The most recent movie that I have worked on is called Newport and the Great Folk Dream. I'm the editor and one of the producers. It's directed by Robert Gordon. It's about the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 to 1966. It's all archival footage. It's about the music, but it's also about civil rights. It's about the simmering of the upcoming horribleness of Vietnam and
all these things, so it's really a moment in time and a moment in culture. So we premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, which was really incredible. Never been to a festival even close to that big. Also, I'd never been out of the continental US. wow. So it was my first trip to Europe. The other film is called Come On Boy, which is a short documentary that I'm...
I'm co-directing and editing. I'm co-directing with Sarah Fleming, a long-time collaborator. It's about a trans singer in Memphis, Alex DePonte. Yeah. Sarah and I made a music video for Alex pre-transition. Alex transitioned sort of during the pandemic and approached us about doing this. And we thought, this is really great because he hasn't had a performance or anything.
really come out as a performer, as in is coming out after transitioning. So it's been really great. Well, hopefully we will be in festivals in 2026. Take it to the people.
And when does this come out?
speaker-2 (01:24:38.83)
Take me to the streets. Lord Jean, thank you for doing this.
That was really fun.
We're so happy you were here!
This is the fun part. This is my social life.
Lardine, thank you so much for doing this. Sure. Just hanging out with us.
speaker-0 (01:24:54.988)
Yeah. Yeah. I'll do it again if you come back around.
Absolutely. Alright.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, G. Okay. Thank you. Good conversation, talking to good people.
Thank you.
speaker-1 (01:25:08.106)
Absolutely. I knew she wouldn't disappoint. She's so great.
Yeah, I really want to see the movie she edited and produced Newport and the great folk dream Robert Gordon directed that have you ever read it came from Memphis his book
I have not, I have not. Yeah, the movie sounds fantastic. I mean, it's doing great too in the festival circuit. It's so fun.
I either recommend.
speaker-2 (01:25:28.406)
I will definitely have that on my list.
And I'm looking forward to Come On Boy. That's a great project. Good stuff. Good stuff.
I like that the movie that we talked about this week, we differed in opinions. I think that's important that we don't always see eye to eye and that you won't be angry at me, but you will just go home and angrily text other people about what an asshole I am. okay.
I did that during the recording. Good. Yeah, yeah. No, I, you know, I just, was something about this film that when it hits at this sort of psychological and philosophical level that I can really appreciate, when my brain can go in all of those different directions because of the film that you made, I really do value that in a film experience, especially when it surprises me.
because it kind of takes you down this path that to me is more interesting and thoughtful.
speaker-2 (01:26:18.71)
I still think had, when she goes into the goat barn at about 45 minutes in, had there been like the embodiment of Satan living in that goat cellar or some other creature living in that cellar. it was a total reversal of the movie and everything got flipped on its head. And we were now totally in a different direction. I would have been hooked. Like I said, I was glad she got outside because I was getting a little cat and mouse fatigue. So I was looking for another element. And when I saw those doors, like, yeah, here we go. And it was just dead goats and dead.
It hearkened the ring to me. You're wondering if that weird girl creature is gonna crawl out like when she crawled out of the well.
Funny you said that because while I was perusing Adam Brody's IMDB, he was in the American version of The Ring. What? Yeah, how about that? Well, that's a good thing about this, Lindsay. We can agree to disagree. We go away. We pick another episode, another guest, and we come back and we do it all over again. And everything is hunky-dory. Favorite boy.
You're a liar, Bart Cheney.
speaker-1 (01:27:15.51)
and I love every second of it. This is the best part of my week, hanging out with you.
I'm here Lindsey. You wanna do it one more time?
Yep, lots more times please.
Awesome. See you very soon.
Sounds good, have a good one.
speaker-2 (01:27:28.846)
All music for this podcast is provided by MKE. To hear more of his music, visit his band's website at DetectiveMusic.com and Detective on Spotify.