The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Episode 173, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well Craig, last week you had asked for something a little more contemporary. Yep. I guess you were getting tired of the old movies. Yep. So here we are with a new movie, newish movie. It’s about 4 Little over 4 years old. It was released in October of 2014 And it is called The Taking of Deborah Logan. The director is Adam Robitel and Adam just came out with a movie called Escape Room, which apparently made it pretty huge in the States. I don’t know. I’m not there. Do you know Escape Room?

Craig: Yeah, actually, it’s funny. It’s so random because when we finished recording last week, I was like, let’s do something more contemporary. I watch new movies. And I said, I actually just watched this 1 called Escape Room. And then I recommended this movie just because it was the only 1 I could think of off the top of my head that I had seen semi-recently. Not knowing the connection. Yeah, right. And when I was doing the research, I realized that it was the same director as Escape Room. And yeah, like you said, Escape Room did really well here   and there are already talks of a sequel. I think it’s already in the works and I enjoyed it. I thought it was creative and interesting. I didn’t think it was like blow your mind amazing, but I thought it was pretty cool. And so I was interested to see that it was the same guy who did this 1, which I also thought was kind of interesting and cool. I’m interested to see what you thought.

Todd: Apparently this film caught the eye of James Wan, and he tapped him to do Insidious, The Last Key. Yeah. Now, have you seen that 1?

Craig: No, I’ve seen all of them, all of the Insidious movies except that 1.

Todd: Okay, yeah, this movie almost, well, almost kind of disappeared into oblivion. Apparently, The Taking of Deborah Logan did not test well with his test audience and the director said that it was horrible for him as a first-time director to sit down in front of these guys and they were like yeah basically here are all of the reasons why your movie sucks and they didn’t do any marketing for it They didn’t release it to theaters They just did a video on demand and DVD release and it wasn’t until Netflix picked it up that just word-of-mouth like people   were discovering it on Netflix and passing it around and it got some legs and it got really popular and that thankfully, you know, isn’t that cool? In this day and age that this can happen.

Craig: Yeah, that’s where I saw it. And that seems to happen quite a bit. You know, like I said, I like to watch as many horror films as I can, and I like to see the new stuff that’s coming out and you often find stuff that you maybe have never heard of on these platforms like Netflix or Amazon or whatever. And I’ve come across a couple of gems, You know, another movie that we did, Hell House LLC or ILC or whatever it is, I just happened to stumble upon on Amazon and I really enjoyed that. And this   was kind of a similar thing. Like it just popped up on Netflix and I had time and I watched it and I was pleasantly surprised.

Todd: Well, you love these found footage movies and you know I usually try to steer clear of them. So, you know, I really held my breath watching this 1 this week. I just want you to know the pain that I endured. It wasn’t a lot of pain. I actually enjoyed this movie. I wouldn’t say it was my all-time favorite. Sure. By any means, I wouldn’t even say it’s a wonderful film. I thought it was okay. Like it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t great. It was scary at times, but I did feel like, I just got the sense like   I’d seen most of this before. And I don’t know if it was the found footage aspect of it, like there’s only so much you can do with it, so you end up seeing a lot of the same stuff. A lot of the same buildup in these scenes, you know, just kind of happens over and over again. But there were a few moments in this film, 1 in particular, I think, that was very different from anything I’d seen before. So, you know, it was a mixed bag for me. But overall, I enjoyed it.

Craig: Yeah. I kind of get what you’re saying. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I love found footage movies. I judge them basically on the same merits as I judge any other movie. If it holds my interest and if it’s interesting, then great. I know that the whole shaky cam thing kind of gets to you and I understand why. And found footage movies can be lazy. You know, I think that it can be an excuse to not worry too much about good cinematography. But there are exceptions where I think that they can be interesting   and good. And I think that this is 1 of those. I think that what sets this 1 apart for me is the premise. And I’ll admit that watching it again, I’ve watched it a, no, this is probably the third time I’ve watched it. Wow. I remembered it very fondly. And watching it this time, the first 45 minutes maybe, I thought, oh man, I’ve made a mistake. I’m gonna bore Todd. Because it’s a slow burn, especially in the first 45 minutes. And you know, that’s half the movie. So you’re devoting yourself if you’re gonna get that far   into it and wait for the kind of crazy stuff to start happening?

Todd: Well, I did feel like the movie was stretching a lot. Like even in the middle, even towards the end, I felt like it was really pulling for time. And, you know, there’s, of course, there’s suspense and there’s build and, you know, what we might call a slow burn but then sometimes it feels like it’s just a little too long you know walking down a dark hallway with nothing but a light on your camera it’s suspenseful for a minute or 2 and then when nothing’s really happening okay and then nothing’s really happening and then it turns out   there wasn’t anything, and so then you’re done. Like, you know, like, I felt like there were a number of scenes in this movie that could have been shorter. You know what I mean?

Craig: And I do understand what you’re saying. Ultimately for me, I feel like the setup ends up paying off. The setup is good

Todd: and it’s necessary, I think.

Craig: Yeah. Well, and you have to kind of get through that. The premise is that this is supposed to be what was meant to be a medical documentary about Alzheimer’s disease, Which is a terrible disease that so many people are affected by. I think nearly all of us know someone or love someone who has been affected by this terrible disease. The first 30-40 minutes of it, it’s kind of true to the narrative in that, you know, it really is just following this poor, lovely lady who is suffering from this disease, Debra Logan, and her daughter, Sarah, who   is struggling to not only care for her mother, but deal with all of the financial struggles that come with dealing with somebody who is ill. And I guess if you’re not willing to devote yourself to the first half of the movie that really could be kind of like a medical documentary, then if you don’t have the patience for that, then maybe the payoff is not going to be good enough for you.

Todd: And I’ll tell you, in my case, as I started to watch this, you had prepped me a little bit. You said, oh, this is 1 of those, is it Alzheimer’s? Is she possessed? So I kind of knew what that was about going into it. I was quite taken by the first part of the movie. I was a little too taken by the first part of the movie actually because I thought it rang quite true. I happen to have a relative right now who is going through dementia and it really it really kind of bothered me to   watch this first part of this movie because you know I mean you can easily put your say anybody who knows somebody who has gone through this or is going through this it is an intensely emotional experience where the person that you knew is slowly just falling away in front of you and it’s just really a Complicated mix of emotions and I felt like they they did this justice on the screen You see the stress that Sarah is going through, the daughter. You know, the moments of lucidity that Deborah has, where she knows she has these problems   and she knows that she is forgetting things and is not quite in control, yet she’s also embarrassed by it, yet she’s also frustrated by it, yet in some ways she’s also in denial and angry, you know? It’s an incredibly complex thing. And I thought the filmmakers did a pretty good job of showing you all those different facets and how it works with everybody. There’s a neighbor, his name is Harris, and he’s an older guy about her age I suppose, and they’re kind of buddy-buddy a little bit, and he doesn’t come into the film a whole lot,   but he does play some roles and you see the sympathetic neighbor character who has a kind of relationship with her and is trying to keep his distance a bit but then steps in when he says, you know, like this documentary thing, are you sure it’s wise to bring them in? I mean, your mom’s got enough going on already. Maybe this is exacerbating and making the situation worse So the primary reason for getting and you know how I am with these foul footage movies I always need a reason for the camera Yeah Their reason for keeping the   camera rolling and for even doing this documentary at the sensitive time is about the money, right? Apparently they’re paying this family and a lot of money to be able to jump in and do this documentary. I didn’t feel that was really, it’s a fine enough excuse when you look at the crew and you look at what they’re doing and you see the documentary that they’re putting together, it doesn’t seem like this would be the kind of thing that they’d be paying a lot of money for. No. Okay, I’ll buy it, whatever. For the movie’s sake, I’ll   run with it. Sure,

Craig: sure, yeah. But that’s 1 of the things, okay, so the money thing, yes, I agree. The filmmakers, it’s just this 1 medical student, Mia.

Todd: Oh yeah. By the way, I loved every minute she was on the screen. She’s very attractive.

Craig: She was beautiful. And frankly, she was maybe not on screen enough, but she is, you know, the lead, I guess, investigator or documentarian, whatever you want to call her. And then she’s got a couple of camera guys, but that’s it. That’s the entirety of the crew. So it does make you wonder. It seems like a grad school pro project, you know,

Clip: it really

Craig: does seem like something that they would have a lot of money to throw behind. But you’re right, that is kind of the impetus, you know, that’s why Sarah is doing this, they’re at risk of losing their house. And that’s why initially, they’re doing all this. Now, eventually, I think that Sarah becomes somewhat reliant on them for help and I think that that’s why she ends up keeping them around even though Harris says this may not be conducive to your mother’s health, but she keeps them around. But 1 of the things that I thought they did very   well is that they presented Harris early on as this kind of help mate for Debra and for the family. And you almost wonder, you know, they’re, they’re older and, and so I don’t like think of them as having some kind of lusty affair or whatever, but you wonder what the feelings are between these 2 people and you wonder what their relationship is. But then in the second half of the movie, I thought that they did a really good job of making Harris seem really shady.

Todd: I

Craig: wondered if he knew more than he was letting on or if maybe even He was somehow Involved In the nefarious things that potentially were going on and I thought that they did a good job of that of establishing Character and then building suspense and and doubt

Todd: yeah, and it’s done in a subtle enough way There is a technique that they’re using in this movie that I haven’t seen in many of the found footage films. Maybe I’ve seen 1 or 2 scenes like this before, but this movie had a lot of them. And that is this from really far away zoomed in on somebody’s private conversation shots Where the audio is so low you can barely hear it, so the filmmakers have helpfully subtitled it for us. Uh-huh. Like you might see in a documentary, and there are like 6 or 7 at least shots   like this. And sometimes you’ll see this, you know Like the person with the camera kind of creeps around the corner of a room and they catch a conversation They’re not supposed

Craig: to write

Todd: or something that people wouldn’t normally be playing out for the camera. But here it’s it’s almost overused Like when I talk about sometimes about how the found footage really doesn’t work, about how sometimes these movies would be better as just straight out movies instead of found footage, it’s when you have to continually rely on little devices like this. I felt it was a bit of a weakness of the movie. But that being as it is, still we do have these moments where we’re able to kind of subtly get into the characters where they don’t feel like   they’re on the camera, the camera’s not intruding on their space, And so you’re getting what you would get in a non-found footage movie where you’re just a little scene of some private conversation that maybe not everybody else is supposed to know about. And that is a little more revealing. And this guy is the subject of most of those, right?

Craig: Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, you get these little moments of true honesty and intimacy because they don’t believe the camera’s on them. And that is 1 of the things with found footage. Most of the time the characters know that they’re on camera. So they are guarded as anyone is when you know that you’re on camera. But I also thought that that was 1 of the strengths of the movie. I want to talk about the first half because Even though it is kind of slow, I just found the first half in hindsight really intriguing   because I thought that they did a really good job of presenting what dementia can be like. Now It’s different in every individual case. Some people just get a little bit forgetful and that’s on 1 end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, people are completely out of it and unable to communicate. And it’s devastating in any regard. But in this case, you know, I thought they did a really good job of showing that Deborah could be very much herself. And when she was herself, she’s very prim and proper and concerned about appearance and   there was a really funny scene where when the documentarians first come into her house and the camera guys are kind of touching her stuff And it obviously really bothers her.

Clip: Careful with that, sweetheart. I know. That one’s supposed to be there. Got moved. Were you ever in Germany? No, I have not. It’s always been a regret of mine. Mom, you went to Germany. Remember? Well, that must have been a long time ago. It was. But you were there. You loved it. Remember?

Craig: That comes in later when she slips further into her disease and she starts destroying some of her own things. But you see moments where she’s totally with it, and then there will just be moments where you see that she has slipped away. And I thought that the actress, Jill Larson, did a really good job of that. You know, when she was with it, she was very much with it, and then you would just see in her eyes that she would just kind of go blank, or she would fixate on, you know, just 1 particular space with   her eyes. And you could see her getting confused. You could see her going about her daily business and then just stopping. And it was obvious that she had forgotten what she was doing and she didn’t know what to do next. And I thought that she did a really good job of that. And I also love the character of Sarah who tries, you know, when the camera crew shows up, she tries to play it very cool and she tries to be bubbly and fun and nice with them, but over the course of time you really get to   see her as a character too and you get to see that in some moments she’s weak and needy and in some moments when she has to, she can totally take charge. She’s played by Anne Ramsey, who is a really familiar face. She was on the TV series Mad About You. I always remember her from A League of Their Own, which is where she got her first big break. But she’s very recognizable and I just, I thought that their performances were natural and real. I had such empathy for these characters that it spellbound me to some extent   and I was really invested in what was going to happen to them.

Todd: Yes, I agree with you and you’re right. I think all across the board this movie was very well acted. Jill Larson who plays the mother, she’s a veteran of, I’m sure you didn’t know this at all Craig, but she’s a veteran of soap operas on television. Yeah. I mean obviously she’s quite good. Even that neighbor we were talking about, every single movie you can think of, he’s had a part in somewhere. I mean, he’s a very famous face. And even the smaller characters, they all kind of have their moment. And when they do, it’s pretty real   and powerful. I’m thinking about this crew as weird things start to happen, as stuff starts to happen that’s outside of the realm of the mental illness. Yeah, once we start getting into weird things that are going on, the crew gets more and more spooked there’s a guy on the crew and I think his name is Gavin

Craig: uh-huh right

Todd: who flips out like I would you know and it’s pretty real and you know he is dedicated to the film but not so dedicated to the film that he’s willing to stick around and put himself in potential danger.

Clip: Can we just talk about this? No, there’s nothing

Todd: to talk about.

Clip: Fucking leaving is what I am. What? You start projects like this and you just bounce in the middle of them? It’s just about the window. It’s not about the window, okay? It’s just Fucking icing on top of the shitty fucking cake. What about the switchboard, huh? What about the fucking window opening and closing the bitch levitated onto a counter? Gavin trains pulling out bro. Last call man. You need this paycheck as much as I do Fuck both of you

Todd: That was great like it all just felt very real it all came up quite naturally I thought it showed a pretty good writing. Just the pacing of this stuff out. Even like I said, from a scene to scene basis, the scenes individually, I felt, were a little long. The events as they unfolded and what happened seemed to go very naturally. There wasn’t a lot of, oh come on, how did you get from point A to point B? We do have our moment in this film where they do the investigative research. Yeah. But even that’s fine. And   there’s not too much of it and it’s not like it you know it gives them this huge jump it’s all quite natural. In fact that’s the moment in the movie where I was a little surprised I was like oh it’s it’s gonna be this kind of film. Like I was expecting more of an exorcist type possession deal, but there ends up being a kind of murder mystery that goes into the past and an old connection and maybe my mother and our neighbor and everything were involved in something and covering it up. And that’s when I was   like, whoa, the movie really expanded for me.

Craig: That’s 1 of the things that I really liked about it is that it really felt like it progressed very naturally. And the whole thing with Gavin leaving, like you don’t see that in these types of movies very often. No. You regularly see somebody say, oh no, this is crazy, I’m out of here. And then somebody says, no, come on, stay. And they’re like, all right. And they do. And then they get killed, you know? That’s what always happens. And here, I liked it that when things started getting weird, and we’ll talk about the weird stuff in   a second, but when things start getting weird, he’s like, I’m out. And Mia’s like, no, you have to stay. And he’s like, all right, fine, I will stay, but I want double my salary.

Todd: That’s right. And the other guy’s like, if he’s getting double, I’m getting double too. Right.

Craig: And she says, OK. And then he stays for a little while longer. But then as things get progressively more weird, eventually he’s just like, no, I’m, I’m out, I’m leaving. And he does, and he doesn’t come back. Like that subverted my expectations too. Like I thought, Oh, well he’ll leave, but he’ll come back. Nope. He just got the French out of there. Like that read as very real to me, which I appreciated watching it again. You know, it kind of felt slow in the beginning, but then as things started to amp up, then I appreciated the   slow build. You know, at first, and I think they do a really good job of showing her progression into this disease, but then things just start to get weird and she starts sleepwalking and like snakes start appearing in the house. She seems to indicate that she thinks that somebody’s watching her from outside and at some 0.1 of the camera guys finds a series of paintings that she’s done of this window in her studio and in every painting there’s this shadowy figure that just keeps getting closer and closer and closer to the window.

Todd: That was a great scene by the way.

Craig: Yeah, yeah it was and weird and like you know they will find her sleepwalking at night and at 1 point they find her standing in front of that window. And then she nails the window closed, which they allow her to do because, you know, she’s out of it, what are you gonna do? But then again, she sleepwalks and they find the window open with the nail sticking out and blood on the nails and her nightgown on the ground right outside with blood on it. And then they find her frantically digging in the garden and all this   weird stuff. And we also get backstory on her that her husband had died soon after her, Sarah, her daughter was born. And so she had had to struggle as a single mother, so she had run this switchboard service out of her home.

Todd: That’s so interesting, isn’t it?

Craig: It is. So unique. Because I know that’s real, but like It seems so antiquated. We don’t think about it really was within our parents and grandparents life that those things happened.

Todd: And some of this is shown through like Super 8 movies of when Sarah was younger. And the dates up there like 1976. Now I was born in 78. And I’m thinking, really? Like we were doing switchboards back then? I’m gonna have to go back and investigate that. I thought for sure by the late 70s we were past that, but maybe not in certain areas or maybe in more rural areas that they were still doing that or maybe we were in a transition phase, but that was unique and it’s neat because then all her old switchboard equipment   is upstairs and I’m thinking, that’s gonna come into play pretty soon. And there’s a moment in the movie where everybody’s sleeping and suddenly you hear the phone ring and these guys bolt up and they’re like, what was that? What was that? And I’m thinking, well, yeah, they’re going to ask what was that? Like none of them probably ever heard a phone beside their cell phone ring. And they go over and the phone is ringing in the house. But you know, Sarah jumps up too and she’s like, well, mom’s switchboard equipment hasn’t been working for years. And   it turns out mom had been sleepwalking again. And this was, to me, 1 of the most chilling moments of the movie. Oh, yeah. She’s upstairs. I mean, eventually they find her. And 1 thing that’s kind of funny too, it’s almost a running gag, is that this house seems to have like 3 or 4 different addicts and 1 of the characters even makes a comment about it like how many addicts does this house have? Yeah. It seems like they just like the writers just wanted that creepy addict feeling in a number of scenes. And so they just   threw different addicts and then made it a joke. So she’s up there, but she’s totally naked from the, you know, you’re seeing her from the back and an elderly person Naked kind of screaming and she’s punching things and she’s saying stuff, and you’re not quite sure what she is truck kind of reworking her switchboard like she used to and Finally her head flops down and I have to say like I we were still we were obviously getting into the more supernatural aspect of the movie by this point, but still, it still could be just a person   with Alzheimer’s.

Craig: Right, that’s the thing. It could be, even with the things that are getting progressively weirder, you could still just attribute it to the disease. It’s odd. It certainly is odd, but you could attribute it to the disease. I mean, in that moment, They’re really going for the suspense here, you know, in the search and trying to find her. Like they may be overplaying a little bit, but when they get up there and they do find her, she starts growling and grunting and speaking in what I thought, I thought she was speaking in tongues, but in a,   in a low gravelly demonic type voice. And, and honestly, you know, in that situation, my first thought, if I were Sarah or the camera people or whatever, my first thought would be, oh my gosh, Alzheimer’s is awful. You know, like my first thought wouldn’t be she’s possessed. But like you said, she’s messing around with the switchboard and eventually it like, there’s like kind of an electric explosion, Like it shorts out and there’s this big flash on the screen and it’s probably 1 or 2 frames but you see this demonic face in the explosion. Of course I   don’t think they see it, it just appears in the camera. But we can see it if we don’t blink. And so eventually, it does turn out that there is something weird and supernatural going on here. And that just continues through the second half.

Todd: And the scene that immediately follows this the aftermath of it and again You know we had that I had we were talking about this with the changeling right about how these crazy things will happen And then it’s like okay It’s the next day and nobody’s really talking about it or life just goes on And this movie doesn’t give you those breaks. There is a definite consequence for everything that happens to her. Either they’re taking her to the hospital again, or they’re calling the doctor again, or they’re getting into some fight. What immediately follows this scene is,   moments later, and they’ve got her in bed, and her daughter is laying next to her and she is like just breathing it’s like clearly like this health thing and they’re trying to calm her down and give her water and she’s kind of moaning and the daughter’s kinda crying and there’s just a bit of chaos as They’re trying to get the doctor on board and I’m my heart is just breaking. Yeah. Yeah It’s really sad because it just hits a little too close to home. It’s very powerful It’s very effective filmmaking in that way, but you’re right.   It does turn out that this is all turning into supernatural stuff and the guy who ends up running Gavin is the sound guy and he says I took what she did and I checked the flux capacitor and I modified the audio frequency I think it was to complete gobbledygook what he was saying but you know it’s it’s shorthand for hey I enhanced the footage and here’s here’s what it actually she was saying and it turns out to be something in French And it’s all the stuff about going down to the water and going down to the   river and all, you know whatever and then they do a bit of interesting investigative work where they’re like she kept putting that Jack into a particular spot on the switchboard and they wanted to know who spot was that and so they went to all of her records mysteriously the page that had that record on it was torn out. 1 of them says, well, get me a piece of charcoal and we’ll put a piece of paper down here and we’ll do that rubbing trick so that we can see the impression. And they find out that it’s this   guy’s name, Dee Hardeen. And they do their investigating online. And well, actually, Sarah knows all about the name Dee Hardeen because he was a former physician in town who was wrapped up in this sort of murder case, ritualistic murders of these young girls. There were 4 murders and they were all somehow connected to this cult type scenario that’s involved with the Native American superstition or practice and some tunnel system underneath the town. I mean, it gets pretty far out there, pretty quick, but at the end of the day, this guy disappeared along with the girls or   whatever, and they never could find him, and there was some suspicion, I guess, that he might have killed them, but all this ended up being unsolved.

Craig: Right, and what it boils down to is apparently this ritual was supposed to grant immortality to the person who completed it. And it required the sacrifice of 5 girls who were just reaching puberty, like their first menstruation or whatever. Like, it gets pretty specific about like, they offer the menstrual blood of these young girls to this demon and it’s 5 of them. And if it’s completed, then the person who completed it is granted immortality. And they say that it would make sense that this pediatrician would do this because he had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease   and so it would make sense that he would want to escape that debilitating disease, which then of course, you know, there’s clearly a connection. Deborah has a debilitating disease also. Yeah. But only 4 girls were found.

Clip: I know he didn’t complete the ritual. Maybe he had second thoughts. I don’t know. Despite a massive manhunt spanning 2 borders, De Jardine is never seen again and his whereabouts will become the stuff of legend. Some say that he fled back to Quebec. Others that he killed himself.

Craig: Sarah, the daughter, approaches Deborah when she’s in a semi-lucid state and says, do you know this name, Dehardin, or whatever his name is? And Deborah’s like, yeah, it kind of sounds familiar and Sarah’s like, oh well, he went missing a little while ago, about 30 years ago, was he a client of yours? And she just says he’s not missing he’s dead he’s murdered. So obviously they’re you know everybody’s tied up in this but the people on the outskirts don’t understand how. But that’s why these things are happening,

Todd: apparently. It’s an interesting left turn for the movie to take, you know? It ties together neatly, thematically, as you pointed out. Here we’re talking about these debilitating diseases and the promise of eternal life or being able to overcome them, that kind of thing, and it even continues with these themes all the way up to the very end. But you know up until this moment of the movie we’re dealing with a creepy and realistic portrayal of Alzheimer’s and is it a possession, is it not? And you’re really kind of wrapped up in that. And then it’s like,   oh, cult sacrificing with snakes and ancient Indian practices with some underground things. And it just suddenly becomes like every other horror movie. You know, in that way. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it just was a bit of a shock to me. I’ll have to say that I don’t know if I could have sustained much more of Creepy woman doing creepy things that could be Alzheimer’s or could be possession I was really actually quite glad that the movie threw something more interesting and intriguing into the mix because then you’re questioning oh, well, is this woman   herself that innocent? Right? Right. And that’s when, like you said earlier, like the neighbor starts to get a little implicated in this. Like now you’re wondering, why does he want that documentary crew out of there so quickly? Right. Right. Before it seemed like he was just protecting her, now maybe he’s protecting himself. And they even bring that up too. And so it becomes a bit more of a mystery. And so it seems a little contrived, but I’m willing to go with it because I really enjoyed not having to do an hour and a half of just,   oh, this woman’s possessed.

Craig: Well, yeah, and ultimately the reason that Harris wants to get them out of there is because there is a secret that they are trying to protect, and that comes out a little bit later. I understand whether you wanna call it a criticism or just commentary, whatever, you saying, then it just kind of goes to, oh, okay, well, here’s where we kind of get into your typical horror fare, which is a fair comment. But what I liked about it so much was that the characters, particularly Sarah and Ramsey, the actress, reacted to everything that was going on   in what I viewed as a very realistic way. Like you know she’s already dealing with her mother’s illness. On top of that she’s a lesbian and her mother doesn’t approve of that and so she’s kind of she’s got a girlfriend back at home that she’s trying to shelter from all of this and she’s trying to medicate herself through all of this through alcohol and she’s clinging to the friendship and support of these strangers you know

Todd: yeah it’s true it’s really all she has

Craig: it but ultimately you know she’s the 1 who has to deal with all of this. She’s the 1 who has really no choice but to deal with all of this. And I just felt like she did a really good job of portraying the fact that she loves her mom despite the fact that her mother doesn’t approve of her relationships. And at 1 point she says she tells them after she’s been drinking a while that her mother caught her when she was 10 kissing another young girl, you know, just innocent child, right, innocent children stuff, and that   she got sent away to boarding school because of that. And it seems like she has some resentment because of that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she still is going to be there to take care of her mom. Now we find out much later, maybe there was a different reason for her being sent to boarding school. But she doesn’t know that and I was just, I don’t know, I was so invested in her character because I can only imagine, and God forbid, that I would ever have to imagine my own parent struggling with their mental   health in that way. And regardless of how awful and how weird it gets, you’re in it. You can’t just escape it. You have to deal with it.

Todd: It’s

Craig: true. And she does her best to deal with it as best she can. And she gets scared and frustrated. You know, like when the guy says, oh I enhanced the footage or whatever and he’s like, she’s speaking French and here’s the weird stuff that she’s saying in French and and Sarah’s like, my mom doesn’t speak French.

Todd: And he says, well, I don’t

Craig: care if she speaks French or not. This is French and this is what she’s saying. And eventually Sarah just says, just turn it off. Just turn it off. I can’t listen to it anymore. And there are several moments like that and her dealing with the doctors at 1 point after they talk to Debra about the day Hardeen guy She initially reacts in kind of a benign manner, but then they also show her the footage of her frantically digging and she freaks out and she runs into the bathroom and she vomits soil, earth and earthworms, living earthworms.   And they take her to the doctors and this male doctor who I feel like is somebody new That they’ve brought in she’s been working with this female doctor before that. This male doctor is like

Clip: She’s back in the garden. She just goes up some side

Craig: she puked fucking earthworms

Todd: that was my favorite line like

Craig: like are you kidding me like she’s just done with it like I need some real help I need some real explanation I so felt her fear and her frustration, and that kept me in it.

Todd: No, I’m with you on that. I think this is a horror you can’t escape from. It’s not like just sell the house and leave,

Craig: you know?

Todd: Right, right. It’s not like run out the front door. It’s, no, you are forced to contend and deal with this because this is your mom and this is her illness. You can’t run away from this. And it’s interesting that the documentary, most of the documentary crew don’t run away from this either and that they stick around and film it. Now, at some point when Deborah’s in the hospital now, again, they’re thinking maybe she’s got this multiple personality thing going. And there are a couple times when she just disappears like this is like the worst hospital. I   know. They just cannot keep track of her. Only through like the the security camera footage can we see that she got up and she left. And man they just need to turn the lights on whenever they investigate. Like they never turn the damn lights on, even when they’re walking through a hospital. But they track her down and she has taken a girl, a young girl who has leukemia. And of course, you know, those parents are freaking out. They find her sort of Blair Witch style. Both of them are just staring at a wall for some unknown   reason in a dark room. And they end up pulling them back in. And at 1 point, I don’t know, man, This didn’t really go anywhere, but I thought it was an odd thing to throw in there. There’s a priest who we never saw before. Am I right about this? Who just is talking to Sarah and is like, hey, why don’t you consider exorcism? And she’s like, well, I don’t know, I’ll think about it. And then that’s the end of that too. What was that about? Did I do something there?

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t even remember that.

Todd: You don’t remember that scene? Yeah, it was like a 3 minute scene. It just felt really tacked on. I kind of wondered if it was like the director’s cameo or something like that, because I thought, wow, are we going to go into exorcisms now too? That’s what I would have really lost respect for the movie. But no, like he just disappears and you never see him again.

Craig: Yeah. It’s funny. I honestly don’t even remember that happening. All I remember, and I say all I remember, I just finished watching this like 45 minutes ago. She’s in the hospital and Sarah and Mia and the 1 remaining camera guy are…

Todd: They go to see the anthropologist. Now this was like, oh come on, I was kind of groaning at this 1 too. I was groaning for a couple reasons. First of all, this is such a trope. It is such a trope. I mean, okay, you did your investigating on the internet, that’s fine. Okay, you enhanced the footage and you got that information, that’s fine. But then they go to see the expert who’s sitting in his office who conveniently knows everything about this particular ritual and is able to fill in all the blanks and connect the dots for   them right then and there. And of course it’s all supernatural stuff and you know he seems to completely 100% believe in it too. And so he gives them direct instruction on what they’re supposed to do. But his direct instruction to them is, well this is very similar to what happened in my personal experience with a tribe somewhere else and this woman couldn’t get over the death of her son and there was some spiritual permutation he said he called it spiritual parasites that can possess and anthropomorphize or whatever a person and the way that they dealt he   dealt with it in that situation was this woman just could not Let go of her son’s corpse They burned her son’s corpse and that freed her or the spirit or whatever, right? So it’s like this is what you need to do. The other thing that bothered me about the scene is it just proved that these are the worst documentarians ever. Like whoever is funding this documentary and giving this family so much money is gonna be really upset when they get all this footage back because they walk in there with 1 cameraman and they don’t actually sit   down and do an interview setup. This guy is just like pacing around the room, getting interview of this doctor and the other people. And I don’t know, maybe as a filmmaker, I was just, I felt like this whole notion that they were shooting a documentary kind of fell by the wayside.

Craig: Yeah, it did. But I don’t know, it didn’t really feel weird to me. I felt at this point that they were so invested in it that…

Todd: They were just doing it for fun now?

Craig: It made sense to me that they would keep filming. Like they knew it had gone off the rails, but they were so invested in what they were doing that they kept filming.

Todd: Yeah, but they should stay professional about it, you know? They should hook them up to a mic and sit them down and get a nice, I mean, you’re just, you’re gonna do, aren’t you gonna do an on-camera interview with this guy? Do a fricking on-camera interview for your documentary.

Craig: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I get it. I disagree. I feel like at this point, it’s more about like, holy crap, what is going on? And they are just almost just capturing it out of habit more than anything else. But around this time too, we also get the resolution of the whole Harris thing. Because we see him on the surveillance footage come into Deborah’s room, and I was listening really closely. I think he leaned down to her, and I think that she whispered, kill me. Now, that might not

Todd: be true.

Craig: Did you hear it too?

Todd: Yeah, that’s what I heard.

Craig: Okay, good. Well, then I don’t think I’d ever noticed that before the other times that I’d seen this. But he grabs a pillow and tries to suffocate her and things then are obviously supernatural because the TV starts shaking and like flies off the window and hits him in the head so Deborah is okay. And then he is in critical condition and Sarah lies and says that she’s his daughter and gets in to talk to him for a second and he tells her that she was going to be Desjardins fifth victim but that somehow they found out   about it and she said, oh so you killed him and he says no your mother did She stabbed him with her gardening spade, and then we buried him in the garden. He tells her where they buried him, and so she and the camera crew frantically go looking for him, and it’s all very frantic and takes a while but they eventually find him and having spoken to that guy whoever he was they believed that they need to burn the bones and they try to but they can’t for whatever reason like they they just won’t Well

Todd: they can’t find the body first. Yeah, they end up finding the body in the house.

Craig: Oh do they? Oh that’s right, in the attic. In 1 of the attics.

Todd: Yeah, It’s just in 1 of the attics. That’s why they didn’t find it before. Shoot, it was next to the old comic books, you know. Nobody been up there in years. Yeah, they can’t burn it for some reason. Well, they start the fire and they run out of the house and it’s almost like it’s a giant explosion that throws them back and there’s a face in the window briefly that Mia sees.

Craig: It’s all very chaotic at that moment, yeah. And it’s very shaky cam so you’re only getting just brief glimpses of the things that they’re seeing.

Todd: But then I think they get a phone call and it turns out that her mom’s left the hospital again and this time she’s gotten out even further because she took a big bite out of the security guard’s neck who tried to stop her. So she’s out again.

Craig: And he’s in anaphylactic shock due to snake venom.   Yeah.   So apparently she has snake venom now. And She took that girl again. But Sarah and Mia know where to look for her in those underground caverns that they heard about.

Todd: They do, and they go out with 1 cop, I think, at that point.

Craig: Are they

Todd: with the cop at

Craig: that point? The sheriff, Yeah.

Todd: I was really wondering at what point they were actually going to involve the authorities again. It seems like the authorities get thrust upon them. They never actually call them. But yeah, so they go out and it’s just this big kind of chase sort of deal where they’re going through the woods and it turns out, hey, we’re in the neighborhood where all those killings, those girls were found. And oh, now we’re in this big shed type building which leads down to the underground caverns and the sheriff, the kids killed. The last, I don’t know what, 5 or   8 minutes of the movie is them going around in the dark with just the camera light for light.

Craig: I thought that this finale was really scary. It was. I really liked it. I really thought it was scary. I mean part of it was the shaky cam and that they could only see By the light of it and at some point, you know They had to turn it off because they knew that if Deborah saw the light that she might get away. So some of it’s shot in night vision. And again, I think that it was the reality of the performances. They were, they were all scared. They were scared to death of what they were   gonna encounter and what they were going to find and I felt like that that read very true and so I was scared too. At 1 point they see Debra and the little girl just kind of like you said before just kind of staring off into nothing. The little girl turns around and chants in a very mechanical way.

Clip: Yeah? You hurt? No, it’s nothing. He’s a nice man. Hi, Deb. He’s gonna watch me. Deb, let’s go.

Todd: Jesus Christ.

Clip: We can get back down this

Todd: mountain, okay?

Clip: No sudden movements from anybody. Real slow, Deb. We’re gonna do everything real slow here, okay? He’s gonna watch me and be like, hang on.

Craig: And then eventually Deb runs away with her, and that leads up to what I think is the most shocking moment of the movie. And if you were to Google this movie and do an image search, this would be the image that you would find. And it would be unfortunate if you hadn’t seen the movie, because it’s the most exciting part.

Todd: It is. So if you still want to see this movie and you’re this far along, you should probably stop the podcast, watch the movie before we spoil this bit for you. So, yeah, they just swing their camera around and there is Debra with the little girl. She’s standing over her and she is swallowing her head. Yeah. Like a snake. It’s like the lower part of her jaws come unhinged like a snake does when it’s swallowing something big and it is starting to swallow her. And it is creepy as hell. Yes. The director, apparently the whole movie,   the whole script is basically built around this scene because the director had a bit part in 1 of the X-Men movies and Bryan Singer was directing those X-Men movies. Bryan Singer is a producer of this movie. We’ll forget about that for now. But he was helping him develop that and Bryan Singer had asked him, he said, give me the 5 images you’re gonna show us that I’ve never seen before. And this was the first 1 he thought of was an elderly woman’s jaw becoming unhinged and trying to swallow someone like a snake. He said everything else   from them from in the script kind of got built off of that 1 singular image. I guess that’s where the snake idea came in and all that other stuff. Yeah, It earns it. I think the movie earns that moment because again, everything, you immediately know what’s going, I mean it all relates to the snake cult and the snakes we had seen and the ritual and all that, but it is freaky as hell. And they manage to yank the girl away and they have a lot of chaos with the mom but there are these shots where she   spins around and just opens her mouth and her jaw is just huge. It’s really gross and spooky.

Craig: Right. But then they are able to sedate her. They get her away and they get the little girl away and the little girl is okay and I didn’t even realize that Sarah had been toting around those remains. The body. Yeah. I know, right? But apparently she had just been carrying them around and they burn them and they explode and seemingly the whole ordeal is over. And then you get news footage where they, obviously it’s a sensational story, this kidnapping and the sheriff got killed and it was a big deal. But they show the news footage and   they say that Deborah was deemed too unhealthy to stand trial. And we just get a very brief glimpse of her where she looks awful, but she’s still alive. And then they do an interview with the little girl on her birthday and the little girl has miraculously recovered from her leukemia and the interviewer asks her, well what do you want to do when you grow up? And she’s like, I don’t know. And then he’s like, well you need to make a plan. Yeah and and she looks right into the camera and she’s like, well I kind of   have an idea And that’s just where it lingers. And so you’re left wondering, has she been possessed by whatever this entity or demon is or whatever? I felt like it was a satisfying ending. What I found most effective about that shocking image of Deborah trying to swallow the girl was that it was so fast. You know, it’s Like the light pans to her and you see it for maybe 3 seconds before the chaos happens again. But in those 3 seconds, you get a clear look of what is happening. And it is shocking, it’s disturbing, it’s scary   as heck. I don’t know. I just thought it was really cool ultimately I really enjoyed the movie you know I think that the ending was satisfying but sad yeah but you know what else could it be really I mean you don’t recover from Alzheimer’s, you know? Yeah. Unfortunately, there is no cure yet. Maybe someday there will be. I certainly hope so. But you know, there’s not going to be a happy ending for Debra and Sarah. But I still thought that the ending of the movie was really satisfying. And just ultimately, again, watching the first 30 minutes,   I was like, oh no, it’s kind of slow, it’s kind of boring, Todd’s not gonna like it or whatever. And then after I had gotten through it, I’m like, no, I remember why I like this. And I still do. I think that it was well made. I think it was really well acted. I really want to give mad props to Anne Ramsey as Sarah because I think that she really did a lot to carry the gravitas of this movie. And I would still recommend it. I think it’s a well-made movie.

Todd: Yeah, I completely agree with you. You surprise me all the time with these found footage movies. Every time I say, oh okay, well this 1 actually wasn’t too bad And this I’m gonna have to put in that same category. I still think, quite honestly, it would have worked really well as a non-found footage movie. I think it would have been just great. And maybe even a little stronger that way, but who am I to say? At the end of the day, I agree with you on everything you said. The performances are strong. It’s unique. You know,   it’s a really unique subject matter in a way. Even though there are a lot of little tropes in here, this notion of dealing with all sides, it’s kind of like the fly where we’re kind of adding a horror element to something that’s very real to us that we all have to deal with. It’s really quite sad in real life. It really reaches down and gets you emotionally in a way that your standard horror movie doesn’t always get. That was a good aspect to it as well. I’m looking forward. I should probably go to my sources and   check out Escape Room.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. There’s a movie that I know you hate, would you rather.

Todd: Oh, god.

Craig: And Escape Room remind, didn’t remind me of that exactly. Escape Room really, and I feel like I said this when I talked to you about it before, they could have just called it Saw 8 or Saw 9 or whatever number that they’re after. They could have just called it that.

Todd: Now that I would enjoy actually.

Craig: Well, then I think that you would enjoy it. It’s kind of saw meets cabin in the woods. But I really enjoyed it. And my partner, who I forced to watch horror movies, even though he doesn’t like them, he didn’t hate it either.

Todd: And that’s about as good as you can get from him.

Craig: Yeah, he thought it was alright. So I do think you would enjoy it. So maybe when you can get your hands on it, you should watch it and maybe we can talk about it.

Todd: Yeah, it’s a good idea. Maybe we will. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook, just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw, or you can find us on our website, 2Guys.Red40Net.com, where we have streaming and downloading of all of the episodes. And let us know what movies you’d like to see us cover next. Until next time, I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.