Stream
We dive into 2024’s slasher “Stream” (now on Amazon Prime), a Kickstarter-finished, Terrifier-adjacent gorefest that played briefly in theaters before going VOD.
We break down its basic-but-effective “game” setup in a hotel where masked killers, surveillance, and scoring drive extremely brutal practical-effect kills, while the real fun comes from a steady sugar-high of horror cameos—Dee Wallace, Danielle Harris, Jeffrey Combs, Tim Reid, Daniel Roebuck, Phyllisa Rose, Tony Todd, and more—plus David Howard Thornton essentially channeling Art the Clown.
We talk about the TV-like cinematography, the two-hour runtime, uneven plotting and character overload, and the bleak ending and mid-credits sequel tease featuring Tim Curry’s voice, while agreeing it’s fan-service done right for horror fans, not the general public.
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Stream (2024)
Episode 482, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Today we dive straight into a selection from Craig, which came out of nowhere for me. Movie I hadn’t heard of at all, but I’m not as in touch with the latest releases as you are. But this one was from a couple years ago, 2024.
I believe it was filmed a few years before that, but it, it took some t- some time and some money to finish up, and I think it was a Kickstarter- Mm-hmm … that provided the last 180,000 or so that they needed to, uh, wrap this up. Released in theaters for, like four days, not very long, and then went straight to video on demand, and has been getting very positive reviews across the board, and is produced by pretty much the Terrifier people.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: A lot of the Terrifier people were involved in this, and I think they went straight out of Terrifier 2 into production on this film. And the film we’re talking about is 2024’s Stream, which is available on Amazon Prime. I had never heard of this before, like I said, and I watched it for the first time tonight.
You, Craig, I think you had seen it, right, before you proposed it?
Craig: Yeah, but I had never heard of it either. Every once in a while, you know, when I have an evening by myself or whatever, you know, Alan isn’t a big fan of horror movies. I, I am pushing them on him less and less because I’m coming to understand that he genuinely doesn’t enjoy them.
Like, I think-
Todd: There’s nothing. For
Craig: the first 25 years of our relationship, I was like, “Eventually I’ll get him on board.” We’ve
Todd: learned to give up.
Craig: At, at this point, unless it’s something I think he’ll really like, in most cases he still is only like, “Yeah, it was fine. I didn’t hate it.” But unless it’s something I think he’ll really like, I, I try not to subject him to it.
But-
Todd: Fair enough …
Craig: I, I do try to keep up with the things that are coming out. But on those evenings when I have time and I have nothing to watch, I will just Google new streaming horror. And this is, this is one-
Todd: This must have come up.
Craig: Yeah, it just came up.
Todd: Yeah, ’cause it’s called Stream. I mean, what were you expecting?
Craig: Right. Sure, right. Okay. So I saw that it was on Amazon Prime, and I was like, “All right. Cool, whatever.” And, uh, I clicked on it, and at first I wasn’t sure ’cause, uh, I- It didn’t take long to get into it, frankly, because the very first person you see is Dee Wallace.
Todd: Your favorite person in the world, yes.
Craig: I… So, so it starts with a killer POV, like, watching this hotel, and it actually does kind of a cool thing where he’s looking at this hotel through his phone, like he’s recording it or something, and he’s got it in profile.
And then he pulls the phone away, but w- it changes, like it’s not his perspective, but the way that it changes is that it literally moves the screen from portrait to landscape. Like, it turns it.
Todd: Yeah, I like that bit. A-
Craig: a- and it’s n- it’s no big deal. Like, that’s… It’s not a difficult effect. I just thought that it was clever and it kind of established that sometimes we’re seeing things through surveillance and sometimes we’re seeing things not through surveillance, which continues throughout.
But the first thing you see is, like, I assumed it was a maid, but I think it turns out, having watched it a second time, that she’s actually the owner-manager of this hotel.
Todd: Hmm. And
Craig: she’s vacuuming. And when the camera gets on her, it’s her back, and I said, “That’s Dee Wallace.”
Todd: You recognized her from her back?
Craig: I… Yes, I knew it. I’m like, “That is g- she’s gonna turn around and that is going to be Dee Wallace.” And it was. And- …
Todd: she’s
Craig: vacuuming and there’s a, like, a scene where the vacuum goes off or something and she- Follows the cord and finds that it’s cut, which I would find far more suspicious than she or the other guy that she talks to do.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And we can continue talking about the plot, but as soon as I saw her, I’m like, “Okay, I get it.” And, and I knew that she was gonna be in this opening scene and that we would never see her again.
Todd: Right.
Craig: And I was f- I was fine with that because you can also tell from the beginning that the movie is low budget.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And it shows in the way this… It, it shows in the cinematography. Now, to counter that, I will also say that I think that they spent their money well. I think that they spent their money on the effects.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And it’s almost exclusively practical effects. Y- you said this is basically the same production team from Terrifier, and it is.
A- a- and not only that, but common actors as well, including the guy that plays Art the Clown is in this movie playing Art the Clown in a different costume.
Todd: Yeah. Yeah, basically. When I saw that, seriously, I was like, “This guy’s channeling Art the Clown.” “It seems like that’s what he’s doing.” And then, and then I looked it up and I was like, “Oh, well that makes perfect sense.”
Craig: Real quick just to wrap up this opener, some maintenance guy comes in and she’s like, “Oh, my vacuum stopped working.” He’s like, “Oh, that looks like a rat bit it.” “No, it does not at all.”
Todd: No.
Craig: And she’s like, “Well, okay, I’ll go down in the basement and take care of it.” He’s like, “No, no, no, don’t go down there.
They’re really big. I’ll set some traps.” So something shady is going on. This guy seems shady. But she’s like, “Okay, I won’t go down there,” and he goes away and then I think she goes down there anyway. And the camera just stays in the room where they were as she walks through the door, like, to go into the basement, and there’s a second of nothing and then her body comes flying back into frame through the door and lands through a table and, and she’s still alive and I don’t know what she’s saying.
“What’s happening? Don’t do this. Ah.” And some figure in heavy black boots and a long black coat grabs her and, and pulls her away.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And that’s how it started. And I kinda felt like I knew what I was getting into, and ultimately it paid off in spades in what I had hoped that it was going to be. That said, I’ll say from the s- from the get-go, it’s not a great movie.
It’s more of just kind of a… Oh, and I’ve read this. It’s not like I’m coming up with this. It’s more like just a, a love letter to horror fans. It’s a fine slasher. It’s, it’s fine. It’s got a, a, a fine premise, not really necessarily anything incredibly original or unique. I mean, we’ve s- kind of seen similar stuff before.
It’s very much The Strangers. It’s very much You’re Next. Y- it’s got a little bit of The Running Man in there. Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: it’s stuff that you’ve seen before, but with that cameo of Dee Wallace, and then the very next people we meet are this family who we’re gonna follow the whole time, and the mom is played by Danielle Harris.
I’m like, “I’m fucking in. I’m in.”
Todd: Right.
Craig: I am so in this movie. And then it becomes a smorgasbord Of amazing cameos. And, and not just small cameos. Like great horror people that you love in, you know, fairly large roles. And, and I say great horror people that you love, Robert Englund’s not in here. You know, there are a lot of people that aren’t in here, and the ones that are aren’t necessarily A-list, but they’re people who are so familiar in the genre that it’s just- Yeah
it’s like candy. Like, it, it just gave me- It is … like a sugar high. It was great.
Todd: Well, to be honest, I would say this is a much better horror cameo movie than, for example, that one that we watched. What was it called?
Craig: It was so disappointing. That prison one?
Todd: That prison one. What was it? The Deep, the, the Death House or some death something.
Yeah, something like
Craig: that. Oh, God. That was
Todd: really
Craig: disappointing.
Todd: That was so disappointing. This one’s better, ’cause it’s not really trying so hard, I think. I mean, all these people… You’re right in that it kinda knows what it’s going for and it doesn’t really have pretenses for anything higher than that, and I think that helps.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: It’s brutal as hell. The deaths in here are extremely brutal, and so yeah, you can tell, like you said, it’s like the pedigree of the, the Terrifier people that… And so that’s good if you’re, if you’re a gorehound, if you’re into that sort of thing. I would say it’s got that going for it. And like you said, it’s definitely the whole these people are stalking these other people, and they’re all masked, and they’re, it’s all part of a game.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s just there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before, like you said, and I think that that probably works in its favor. At least it did with the critics. W- everything that I’ve read about it is like, “Look, this isn’t a fantastic movie by any means, but it’s delivering what it promised, and it’s gonna satisfy its audience, its intended audience.
And so we can’t really find fault with it.” And I think that, that’s sort of my ultimate take on it I would say, you know? Even the twists I thought, “Well, there’s gonna be a twist like this in here,” and there was. “There’s gonna be a thing like this in there,” and it was. So you know, I mean, I, I… It was two hours long too, and that was surprising to me.
Craig: Yeah, it-
Todd: Usually you don’t-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: recommend movies this long
Craig: N- no, I don’t, and I really considered that in, in recommending it to you. But- The reason that I did, I, I, I told Todd, “I wanna recommend this movie, but I don’t even wanna tell you what it is because I don’t want you to look it up. I don’t want you to read anything about it.”
And y- you were like, “Just fucking send it
Todd: to me.” No. I didn’t, I didn’t read a thing. I got it from my shady sources so that I didn’t even have to click on a site to, like, look at the cast. I, I, absolutely.
Craig: Be- because I basically went into it the same way. But when I’m watching these things, and, and I wasn’t even watching this for the podcast, I’m just so nerdy that I do this anyway.
Like, I’m watching it, I’m enjoying it, I get on IMDb and get on– or get on my phone and get on IMDb. And I, you know, I’m 10 minutes in the movie and I’m scrolling through the cast and I’m like, “Oh, shit! They’re in it. They’re in it. They’re in it.” And, and then I click the trivia and, and the very first trivia spoils the biggest cameo that doesn’t even happen until the mid-credits scene.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And I was disappointed that I had spoiled it for myself. So- I didn’t want it, you to be spoiled. So I am curious, like, as these people, and there’s a lot- At the same time as the plot is very basic, it also seems because it’s two hours long that there’s a lot of plot. I don’t know how much of it specifically we have to cover.
Todd: Right.
Craig: But we can get more specific into it. But I’m just curious, like, as people kept popping up, were you surprised? Were you, like, ex- like-
Todd: I was s- Yeah.
Craig: I j- When, when Jeffrey Combs popped up, y- my face almost doesn’t stretch as far as I want it to smile. Like- … he’s always just such a joy to see. Like he’s so over the top-
Todd: He’s a
Craig: lot of
Todd: fun
and
Craig: committed to his roles. He’s so fun, and I was just so excited when he popped up, and he’s a big part of the movie.
Todd: I have to admit to you, I mean, I saw him in the credits, but as we were watching it, I, you know, I haven’t seen Jeffrey Combs in a long time, and this is obviously an older Jeffrey Combs than I’m used to.
And so when he came up, I, I had to double-check to make sure that was him because I… He, to me, was channeling Dabney Coleman. Like Da- he just had that Dabney Coleman look. He’s balding. He’s got the mustache. And I don’t know. So anyway, I didn’t immediately recognize Jeffrey Combs, but like you, as I was watching the movie, I was like, “Is that him?”
And then I went back and I saw, yeah, that’s him, and so that was good. No, and then people would come up just one right after the other, and I loved it. Yeah, to the point where part of the joy of watching the movie is wondering who’s gonna cameo next.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: You know, ’cause they do save a few for almost the v- well, basically the very end.
Some of the biggest cameos come on. And so yeah, so that’s when I started thinking, “This is… Who put this together?” You know? H- how does a person manage to get all of these famous horror actors to sign on to this movie just like Death House or whatever, but in this case, you know, it wasn’t even… Death House had this huge deal built up behind it, right?
Yeah. It was supposed to be this whole thing and, and it was, um, Gunnar Hansen, who-
Craig: The, it was supposed to be the Expendables of horror. Like, that’s what they marketed it as.
Todd: Yeah, and it was a year, it was like a decades-long project more or less where, you know… And then they, they shot scenes where they would just go to somebody’s house and shoot a bit with them that they could- Right,
Craig: right
Todd: put into the movie, right? Whereas this one, obviously everybody showed up for at least a few hours on set to do something, and that was impressive to me. You know, the director is the same guy who was the maintenance person that you mentioned who’s in that very, very first scene. Yes. And he is, um, Michael Levy Uh, he’s one of the writers here as well, and he was involved in the Terrifier franch- He’s actually been producing things since, since like 2012.
So like he’s been around producing random stuff, not all horror. But I think when he stumbled into the Terrifier franchise, I think he was an actor in the first one and later producer for the second and third. He started doing a lot, a, a lot more horror after that. And so I guess through that He had connections with that crew, which kind of led to connections with other people.
They got on board one of the people from the original It miniseries from, from TV who’s in here, and I’m sure that led to our big cameo mid-credits.
Craig: Maybe.
Todd: Maybe.
Craig: I mean, we can just say it. It’s Tim Curry. Like-
Todd: Tim Curry has a- … very brief moment in here. And, and I,
Craig: and I read that they used that in their marketing, which is somebody, quote unquote, “leaked it” like a couple of days before the release that he was in it.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And he’s just in it for a second, and it’s just a voice role. Like, it, it… And they thought that it was gonna be, like, because he plays in this… It’s, it’s a tag scene at the end. It’s a setup for a sequel. He plays a wheelchair-bound person, but he’s fully robed and masked, so you don’t see who it is. So people initially thought that it was really him and this was his first on-screen thing in, you know, forever because he’s unwell.
But I guess he confirmed in his bio- like, he wrote an autobiography, and he confirmed that it was just a voice thing. Who cares? Yeah. I’m just so glad that he’s still working. And, a- and his voice is at least 50% of what makes him so great anyway, so as long as he has his voice and he can keep working, I’m, I’m ecstatic.
Todd: That is a good point, and he did a, a little tag I saw on YouTube, just a little promo for the movie where, where it’s just, it’s really him. It’s him, and he’s like, “Yeah, check out Stream,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Very cool. So yeah, I mean, to me, the movie was more of a game of seeing who’s gonna pop up next and then, you know, how people get killed.
Craig: Well, that’s what I was-
Todd: And, uh, it was more brutal than I expected.
Craig: Yes, especially… I hate to say negative things about it ’cause I want people to watch it, especially people like us who are fans. Like, I think this is a movie for fans.
Todd: Yeah. It is.
Craig: It’s not perfect. In terms of the cinematography, it looks like it was shot for TV.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: Most of it. And
Todd: it’s
Craig: got-
Todd: But, uh- Well, yeah, and-
Craig: Like you s- the effects are gr- the effects, the, the practical, violent gore effects are fantastic. Uh- Yeah … similar in quality, as would be expected, as you get from Terrifier. Now, I would say Terrifier is more extreme. As extreme as this movie is- Oh,
Todd: yeah
Craig: Terrifier, I would say, is even more extreme. But there is- For sure … v- very graphic gore, violence, and effects in this. Shocking, really.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And shockingly good.
Todd: Yeah. Well done. I mean, it’s cl- I mean, it’s obvious it’s not rated, right? They, they would never- Right … put this to a ratings board. And you’re right.
Like, the movie has that- Shot-on-video look, which nobody really cares about anymore because it’s quite common, but it tends to be a lot of television is shot this way. So it’s got that aesthetic, and then everything is heightened with the lighting, so it’s like the greens and the reds and the blues all, you know, coming in from extremes- Right
for no good reason at all. You know, just to up the, the mood of the, of the thing. And so that, that kind of, it, those are the tells, you know?
Craig: There ultimately is a reason for it, but you don’t know that until the very end.
Todd: I see what you’re saying.
Craig: Because it’s entertainment.
Todd: Right.
Craig: We’ll get more back to it.
I don’t know how deep we wanna get into this, but let’s just set it up. Okay, so there’s this family. Mom and Dad. They have names. I’m gonna call them Mom and Dad. Dad is played by Charles Edwin Powell, who has been in a lot of stuff, but I didn’t really recognize him, and I would argue that he’s the weakest part of this movie.
Like-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: his acting is not very good. It’s serviceable, but not great. And then Mom, as I said, Danielle Harris. I have been a fan of Danielle Harris since Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
Todd: Right.
Craig: And those Halloween movies that she was in when she’s a little girl.
Todd: Four and five, yeah.
Craig: And then she was in one of Rob Zom- or maybe two of Rob Zombie’s, and she just got brutally, brutally murdered in those movies.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And she has been a staple in the horror industry. She was in the s- the Swamp Guys movie. Not Cropsey, but… Not, not Cropsey, but I can’t think of the name. Hatchet. She was in The Hatchet, the first Hatchet movie. Huge fan of hers.
Todd: She was a voice actor. She’s Debbie Thornberry- Still is … in The Wild Thornberrys.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And she works, she puts herself out there all the time. She’s always doing stuff. I’m a huge, huge fan of hers. And they, I don’t know, they decide they’re gonna go on a vacation, so they go to this hotel. And even though if you look closely at her name tag in the opening scene, it tells us that Dee Wallace is the owner and manager.
When they show up, the guy acting as manager is Jeffrey Combs. His name is Mr. Lockwood, and he’s silly like he always is. I love somebody who can balance that silliness and not make it so over the top that it takes you out. Like You just kind of believe that he’s a weirdo, like he’s a weird, quirky guy. It doesn’t take you out necessarily of the realism of the movie.
Todd: Right.
Craig: I think that’s, that’s a talent, and he’s very good at it. And he tells them that the Wi-Fi is down and he can’t take credit cards, which doesn’t seem important, but ultimately is. And some young, hot couple checks into the honeymoon suite. And we get introduced to all these different characters and-
Todd: Mm-hmm
Craig: some of the criticism that I read was that there are too many characters, so nobody really gets developed. I, I, I feel like that’s a taste thing. I feel like that’s part and parcel of these types of slashers where you need to establish a lot of people so that a lot of people can get killed. The young teenage daughter, Taylor, played by an actress who I don’t know, and she was all right.
She’s very beautiful, Sydney Muloka. She’s like the bad girl, and she meets a couple of French guys in the bar, and there’s family dynamics, and like the mom and daughter have a moment, and-
Clip: I see you brought your fake ID
Taylor, I know how this goes. You are not gonna have to buy yourself another drink for the rest of your life if you don’t want to. Where do you think you get that power from? Listen, I don’t care if you drink, okay? But I do care if you get drunk or if you try to steal it. I cannot stop you from having fun, and you know it.
I, I don’t want to. I just really want you to be careful
Todd: Okay, I get it, Mom Yeah. It’s about 25 minutes in before things really start to happen. I mean, we do see the owner/manager, the Dee Wallace character, at some point in this first 30 minutes of the movie, where she’s cut up and she’s tied up, and some masked person drills her in the head.
Craig: Yeah, and he’s- he’s robed, and he’s in, like, a plague, like, not a real-looking one, but, like, a plague doctor mask. Like, that’s the style of it. Like bird-like.
Todd: I thought- I looked at that, and I was like, “Oh my God, not this plague doctor mask thing again.” Like, it’s- it’s becoming a cliche, right? Like-
Craig: It is …
Todd: how many more recent horror movies have we seen where people are masked in that thing?
I
Craig: was
Todd: like, “Okay.” But yeah, she gets drilled, and so that- that tells us something creepy is happening at this hotel. And- and then Jeffrey Combs is the guy behind the counter. And when they come in, they’re told, “Yeah, there’s no Wi-Fi here. We’re having issues with things.” There’s that maintenance man you talked about earlier, who they run into a little bit later, who confirms, “Yeah, I’m- I’m fixing things up.
I mean, you know, there’s Wi-Fi for the, for the s- there’s internet for the staff and all that, ’cause we got a business to run. But yeah, we’re still hooking these things up.” So it’s a little weird.
Craig: And then people just start getting picked off. Somebody who works at the hotel who we ha- we don’t… Some woman, we don’t know her.
We’ve never seen her before. She’s leaving her shift, and she sees a masked man off in the distance, like in a field by the parking lot, hanging up a noose in a tree. Huh. He sees her, and he, like, taunts her and, like, points at her and points at the noose and, like, is- is taunting. And then she goes This is actually pretty smartly shot because I didn’t catch it the first time.
She comes out to her car. She unlocks the car. She opens the door. She puts her water bottle and her keys on top of the car to light a cigarette. As she’s lighting the cigarette, she sees the guy in the field. When he starts taunting her and starts running at her, she turns around to get in the car and the car door is closed.
Now, it, when I first saw this, I thought it was a mistake in the filming. I’m like, “Wait, her car was open. That doesn’t make any sense.” But as she’s trying to get the door open and her keys are gone, somebody from inside the car kicks the door open and knocks her to the ground, and then somebody comes and stands over her.
We never see her die, but we never see her again, so I assume she’s dead.
Todd: Yeah, that was like a scene just to… I think it was just to throw in another kill because there, there’s nothing set- Yeah. I thought there was a setup here. I thought she would either be important or that noose thing would come in- Nope
to play later, and none of, none of it does.
Craig: I think a lot of this was probably cut together, and I have a feeling that’s probably why it’s so long.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: It, it seems like… I mean, there’s definitely a through line, but most of the scenes are with three to four actors.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: They could’ve been shot in any sequence.
It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter. And then I, I, I imagine this movie is probably heavily edited. But it, it, I mean, it’s fine. I- the continuity works. And when you’re working on a budget, you know, these are the things you do, and that’s… I think it was done well here. Then a janitor, a maintenance guy comes in And his name tag says Oswald.
Did you catch who this was?
Todd: Yeah, I looked it up. Did you see?
Craig: Was he familiar to you? ‘Cause I knew who it was immediately.
Todd: Oh, I didn’t know who he was immediately, but he looked like a guy I should know, and I, and I … So I did look him up and, yeah, he’s Ozzy from Leprechaun who w- played the kinda slow guy in that.
And then he was in Pee-Wee’s Play- Yeah … Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, right? Yeah. Or was it Toppy?
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Yeah, and a bunch of things like that. He’s very recognizable. He’s obviously a lot older now, but, uh, still very recognizable.
Craig: A lot older, and it’s funny to see him as an old man, and his voice is a little deeper and more gravelly now.
Yeah. And his ears are enormous. I read somewhere some- I, I read somewhere recently that your ears keep growing your whole life, and that’s why- What? … that’s why old men always look like they have great big, giant ears. So- … if we’re lucky enough to, if we’re lucky enough to get old, something to look forward to.
We dump.
Todd: One of the better things to look forward- One of the few things that grows bigger when you grow older,
Craig: I suppose. Unfortunately. Sadly. Uh, yeah.
Todd: No, going back to what you were saying about, um, real quick, about the movie being kinda spliced together, I would say that that affects the believability of it quite a bit, because there’s a lot of stuff happening in this hotel at any given time that is loud and noisy and causing a fuss, that characters in rooms in the hallway-
Craig: Yeah
Todd: do not hear or pay any attention to. You know what I mean? It’s-
Craig: There was one part in particular where that really bothered me. Hmm. Where there is a naked woman covered in blood running through the halls, beating on the doors and screaming.
Todd: Mm-hmm, being chased by people, tossed against- Uh-huh … the walls, dragged down.
By the way, she was naked-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: like, for a long time. Uh-huh. This was the… She alone fulfilled the nudity quotient of this film. There’s a good 15-minute scene probably with this woman running away. I, I give her a lot of props.
Craig: Yeah, and, and a beautiful girl and, and, you know, she’s screaming, she’s pounding on doors, and a killer grabs her and pulls her into a room.
Within the next second, the dad walks around the corner, having just gotten ice from the ice machine. I know. Like, there’s no way you didn’t hear that. Right?
Todd: There’s no way. Well, and it’s especially stupid because the family has been complaining about the neighbor next door making a bunch of noise. Yeah.
So not only, like, the, the film has literally called attention to this fact that the family is sensitive to noise and is making noise complaints. So then later when all this shit is going down, for them to not hear it is really silly.
Craig: Jeffrey Combs, by the way- Takes Ozzy into a back room and, like, knocks him out and kills him later with a drill.
He’s real- he’s big into drills. He even has- Yeah …
Todd: a
Craig: dagger that’s like a drill-
Todd: Yeah … that,
Craig: like, he stabs people with and twists around I don’t know what his thing is, whatever. But anyway- … Ozzy’s not around for very long, but it was a fun cameo. But yeah, they check into the room, and there’s no Wi-Fi or phone service, and the bartender who we’d seen briefly who flirted with the mom, and she’s like, “Still got it.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, you do, Danielle Harris. Looking good, bitch.” He, like, is in an arcade, and he’s playing a video game, and he gets killed by a, a huge guy. Like-
Todd: Oh my God, that guy’s
Craig: massive … this, I mean, this guy, like, would be huge in, like, the WWE. Like, he’s- Yeah … enormous, just, like, ripping in muscles, and bald, and hairless, and huge.
Todd: Played by Mark Haines, who was in Glass Onion, the original Glass Onion, Creed II, Knock at the Cabin, Gotham. He’s been in a lot of stuff. You know, not a lot of stuff, but, like, the stuff he’s been in, like, holy crap, you know?
Craig: Well, when you have that physique, you know, like- True … there aren’t a lot of people, there just aren’t a lot of people who have that physique.
It’s, it’s insane. He, he kills the hot bartender, and it, it’s very gory. Like, he… Gosh, I don’t re- He, he, he bashes him around the room for a while, but then he-
Todd: Oh, God …
Craig: does he crush his head or bash
Todd: his head in? Dude, he smashes his head down on the pin, on the arcade machine that the guy was playing, where the joystick goes right in his eyeball.
And I, I marked that down. You know, I, I feel like we should be making a list of creative kills, you know? Because there are moments where we’ll watch a film, and we have seen so many movies, that when you see a way that you’ve never seen before, it’s like, “Oh, wow, I need to mark that down.” And that, yeah, joythick, joystick through the eyeball was one of them.
Craig: Oh, man, yeah.
Todd: But he gets him on the ground, and it’s almost silly, really, how brutal this is because after he’s bashed him a bunch and he’s got him on the ground, he pulls out some clippers. And I thought, “What’s he gonna, like, clip his dick off? Is he gonna clip his fingers off?” He just cuts his nose off for no good reason, just snips his nose off with this thing, and then pulls out a big hammer and bashes his face in.
Brutal. Brutal. And it was at that point- And it
Craig: looks really good. Like, it, I would go so far as to say it looks as real as I can imagine.
Todd: Yeah, it really does.
Craig: It’s wild.
Todd: And it was at that point that I was like, “I’m glad I watched this by myself.”
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And not with the person I was planning to watch it with because-
Craig: Right
Todd: she wouldn’t have
Craig: liked it. No, Alan would not. He would’ve quit. He would’ve been like, “No, I’m out.” And I get it. It’s not for everybody. And I’m not even a huge fan of gore, but when it’s done that well- Yeah … and when it’s done practically- Appreciate it … yeah, I appreciate it. Like, I’m, I’m looking at it from that perspective.
Like, not like I’m enjoying it like- Yeah … a sadist, but I’m like, “Wow.” That, that looks so, that g- that looks so real. Mm-hmm. Ugh. Anyway, you’re, you’re right. The family complains. Well, Taylor sneaks out, and she goes to these French guys’ room to smoke weed, but then she’s interested in one of them, so she takes him up to the roof because they’ve been there before, and she knows how to get up to the roof because-
Todd: That’s her thing.
Sneaking around.
Craig: Yeah, r- right. Well, and I thought that it would be more important-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: because as it turns out, they’re trapped in there. Like, they’re locked. Everybody’s locked in there. They can’t get out the doors. All the doors are locked. But there is a way out because Taylor and the French guy get out and leave- Yeah
for a while. They
Todd: just leave. Well, and they leave, and I don’t even remember how that went down. I just remember seeing a scene where they’re in a car. It looks like-
Craig: Well,
Todd: sh- … I guess they’re going to a concert, right?
Craig: Yeah, she’s like, “I wanna get out of here,” and he’s like, “Yeah, let’s get out of here.” By the way, she’s, like, 16.
Uh, she’s trouble. Anyway- Yeah. … he, he, the, the French guy was going to a concert with his friend, and she’s like, “I really wanna go to the concert. Let’s get out of here. But wait, you only have two tickets.” And he’s like, “Yeah, we’ll just leave the other guy. He’ll get over it.”
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And so they do leave for a while, and then eventually they come back, which all of this is very plotty.
Like, there’s really no reason- Yeah … for them to leave, and then there’s really no reason for them to come back. And then when they do come back, they’re taken out.
Todd: Quickly.
Craig: Mostly. Like, right immediately as soon as they get back. And the fact that there is a way out, like, I thought that that was going to be pivotal.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: Like
Todd: There’s not just a way out, there’s a way in. Because they made it back like it was nothing. It’s not like we had a scene where they were trying really hard to unlock a door or had to break a window or something to get in. They just literally open up a door and they’re in there and they’re walking down a hallway when we see them next.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Whatever. It’s,
Craig: it’s,
Todd: it’s ridiculous. Yeah. And, and this is kind of an issue with a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of things that look like they’re being set up for payoffs, and there’s no payoff at all. Or people who disappear for, like, half the movie and then just pop in much, much, much later, to the point where you forget they were even in there.
Craig: Yes. Like this next kill, which is great, but again, it just feels like a lot of scenes cut together. There is a through line, and I, I suppose this next one is important because it kind of introduces, not introduces, but establishes two of the other players. Now, all of these masked killers are wearing these masks that have lights arou- like, that circle the eyes.
Mm-hmm. And, and they’re, like, blue or red or whatever. I, I don’t, I’m not mad about the costume designs. I, I, I think they’re fine. Nothing crazy original, but fine, ominous, look good, whatever. Sure. But then we come back to the, this horny couple that we saw checking in before the family, and they are banging in the hot tub, which looks great in a movie, but practically it’s just gross.
Todd: Oh, do not do this. And,
Craig: and it d- and it doesn’t even make, like, biological sense. Like- No … that water is messing up the natural things that need to happen for it to be- Yeah … enjoyable. Like, just make out in the hot tub, get out, and do your business.
Todd: Get out of the water. Get out. Anybody who’s ever tried to have sex in the water understands exactly what we’re talking about.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And anyone else, this is just a cautionary tale
Craig: for you. It seems like it’s gonna be hot. It’s just, eh. No, it’s
Todd: not. And
Craig: it might be for a minute or two, but you’re gonna wanna get out. Anyway- … they’re bang- And it, it… Now, again, in a movie it looks great, and these are two very sexy people.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Very sexy people naked.
And it looks great. But they’re banging, and w- two of the killers come in. At first we just see one, and it’s the only female killer, and she is styled, I would almost say like a K-pop girl kind of, like with the-
Todd: Hmm …
Craig: or like Ariana Grande 10 years ago with the big pigtails, the long- Yeah … pigtails on either side of her head.
And she’s gorgeous, a gorgeous woman too, and her costume accentuates her attributes, and she looks good. And sh- they notice that she’s there and kind of freak out and yell at her to go away. And I don’t remember, I think maybe sh- the, the killer girl pulls the girl out of the hot tub. I don’t remember. But then another guy comes in.
Now, I don’t know if this is mentioned explicitly in the movie, but these two killers, killers two and three, are brother and sister
Todd: Oh, okay
Craig: And they kind of work together. Player Three is the busty girl in the mask, and she’s always twirling her pigtails, which I like. I like a good character tag.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And then Player Two, the brother, is played by David Howard Thornton, who plays Art the Clown in the Terrifier movies and in this movie.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But just in a different… Now, now how did you feel about that? Because as soon as I saw his shtick, I was like, “Oh, he’s just doing Art the Clown in a different costume.”
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And like I’m evaluating it in my head, like does that make me mad? Am I okay with it? And ultimately like, okay, whatever, I don’t care.
That’s fine.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: It’s still, it’s still spooky and, and weird, but I mean, he’s just doing the creepy mime thing.
Todd: Yeah. I mean, it was, it was transparent, you know? I mean, I think if we had not seen Art the Clown and had not been so familiar with his shtick, then this would’ve been, oh, like everyone has a character, and he’s got this character, so that’s really nice that they’re all distinct.
And he’s good at it. And he’s great at it, but it was so blatantly Art the Clown that it felt a little, you know, eh. Well, I didn’t give a shit because this isn’t the kind of movie that you’re really gonna give that big of a shit over. But yeah, you’re right. It, it… I mean, I get maybe that’s why they cast him in that, you know?
So that he could be that.
Craig: Well, I mean, they all knew each other. They had worked together and, and- Yeah … you know, you said it, they just came off that movie. I mean, what a-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: I mean, if you’re good at something- It’s
Todd: fine …
Craig: whatever, milk it. Who cares? They kill both of them. He drowns the guy. I thought that was a little anticlimactic ’cause that guy was really hot, and I wanted him to get out of the water.
Todd: You wanted to see as much of him as we get to see of that woman, which is-
Craig: Right. And, and then this is when she is all bloody, and she runs out in the hall, and the, he grabs her at the last second and pulls her in, and the dad comes around the corner. And then they’ve already complained about the people next door, and they’ve met the people next door.
I don’t know what’s going on next door. There’s this very effeminate guy-
Todd: Right …
Craig: and these two super horny girls. I don’t know what is happening-
Todd: Hmm …
Craig: in that room But they’re having a good time, whatever it is
Todd: I didn’t know either. They’re just making… Yeah, they’re making a lot of noise, and when, earlier, when the family comes by to knock on the door, whatever, the girls look like they’re kind of making out on the bed and-
Craig: Yeah
Todd: I’m not sure what he’s doing there either. Like- I
Craig: don’t either. Like, I wondered if he was, like, a pro- like, if, if, if he was, like, a producer- Producer … like, if he was filming a porn in there.
Todd: That’s what I thought.
Craig: Because, look, I, I don’t like to stereotype, but it didn’t really seem like they were his type. I don’t know.
No.
Todd: 100%.
Craig: Okay. But anyway, they, they realize, because they’ve been woken up in the middle of the night, that the daughter is missing, so the dad takes the son down to the lobby to see if he can find where the French guy’s room is. But there’s nobody in the lobby, and they find out that all the doors are locked.
Todd: Mm-hmm. Meanwhile,
Craig: Mom’s in the room.
Todd: Oh, I didn’t expect this.
Craig: I know. She hears a knock on the door, and she looks through the peephole, and killer number one is out there. Now, all of these killers have very distinct personalities. Two and three are, like, the weird feisty brother and sister who seem to really be kind of relishing in it.
Four is the big brute, like, he’s the muscle guy. One seems like the savvy, sadistic one.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And he’s standing outside the door, and she’s like, “You stupid kids, you better go away or I’m gonna call the front desk,” or something. But he leaves, and then there’s a scene where the dad is going around knocking on mo- hotel rooms in the middle of the night.
“Fuck you, dude. I don’t care where your daughter is.”
Todd: Who does this?
Craig: That sounds like a you problem.
Todd: Who does this? And, and you’re gonna knock on random hotel room doors in the middle of the night and ask if you’ve seen my daughter? Like, how many people wander outside their room and run into folks at a hotel?
Like, it just, just doesn’t
Craig: happen. I would be terrified if somebody knocked on my hotel room door in the middle of the night. Okay, and so while they’re out there, they also run into a guy named Kevin who is played by Tim Reid, who played the adult Mike Hanlon from the miniseries Tim Curry It.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: And he looks exactly the same.
Todd: He does, and imagine this: this guy is a- he’s in his 80s. This man is in his 80s, and he doesn’t look any different than he did back in the ’80s. He looks exactly
Craig: the same.
Todd: Holy crap. It is
Craig: insane.
Todd: Holy crap. I can’t believe this guy’s still working. He’s in great shape. He looks fantastic. It’s incredible.
Somebody needs to drink what he’s drinking.
Craig: I know. Gosh. Ugh. Okay, so then the unexpected part is I feel like the mom, after the knock on the door, she hears something else, and she gets up and she sees that her door is open. And, and she thinks- that her husband and son have come back, but when she calls for them, they don’t come.
And when she goes and she sees that the door is open, she looks around, there’s nobody there. She closes the door. She goes back and she sits in the hotel chair to read, and from behind the chair, we see these hands come up behind her, and they grab her and start struggling with her, and she’s fighting and she gets away, and she runs, and killer number one pulls out a huge knife and throws it into her back.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: And then I’m surprised by that. I’m like, “How are they gonna get Danielle Harris out of this?”
Todd: Right. They’re not.
Craig: They’re not. He comes up… Not only is it Danielle Harris, you know, I would argue one of the biggest stars of the movie.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But-
Todd: It’s the mother …
Craig: the mom of the family, and she typically is a final girl.
I mean, not always- Yeah … but she’s a, she’s a tough bitch.
Todd: Well, and she’s one of the few characters that they have taken pains to develop.
Craig: Right. Exactly.
Todd: Like, this whole deal with her and her daughter. Like, again, when we talk about set up with no payoff, r- they have a whole scene where they’re talking about their relationship.
I thought surely later this is gonna come into play. Mother and daughter are gonna have to go together against these people somehow. It’s gonna bring them closer together. There’s gonna be some character arc.
Craig: Right.
Todd: Holy shit, no, not at all, ’cause, ’cause she gets
Craig: killed. He saws her head almost completely off with barbed wire.
He makes a loop out of barbed wire, puts it around her neck, and, like, strangles, and then starts sawing with it. And I think that it shows it sawing- Oh, gross detail … all the way to her spine, and then- I- … she drops to the ground.
Todd: It’s easily, I think, the most brutal kill of the whole movie. It’s really… It’s almost tough to watch.
It’s that, it’s that gross.
Craig: And I was sad that she was dead, but I also think as an actor, a performer, how fun it must be. I don’t know. It, it, it may also be grueling and a pain in the ass, but I would love to see my head get sawed
Todd: off. Put it that
Craig: way. That would be the coolest.
Todd: Right.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t know, but she’s dead.
I was, was shocked. I
Todd: was shocked.
Craig: And we see that Lockwood, Jeffrey Combs, is watching from, like, a surveillance room with a bunch of monitors, and he’s keeping score. But I also thought it’s funny, he’s constantly, like, typing on, like, a keyboard or a, like, calculator pad. Either this is a choice or this man has never typed in his life because-
he’s just randomly punching keys every time he does it, and it’s hilarious. But this establishes that there’s something going on. Like, he’s obviously a part of it. It’s all under surveillance. There are cameras set up everywhere. All of these deaths are being filmed. The killers are numbered, and I don’t remember when all of that comes out.
I, I feel like he’s in a chat room, and it seems like there’s a lot of action in the chat room, which kind of foreshadows stuff that we see later. Like, we don’t really know the scope of this at this point. Right. We kind of have an idea of what’s going on. It’s, it’s some kind of sick game. And that leads up, you know, the dad finds the dead mom
Todd: So that’s weird, right?
Like, he finds the dead mom, and then just like in all these movies, what they don’t do is try their best to get the police involved. You know? Yeah, well, the- Like, if I were him, I would be trying to bust out of this hotel. I’d be, like, breaking windows or something. Right. Get out of here, get the cops, get some backup.
Craig: Well, he’s concerned about finding the daughter, I think, but there’s also nonsensical things that happen. Like, they just leave the little kid alone in-
Todd: Oh, that was so dumb …
Craig: David. David is the guy, the older Black guy from It. They, they just leave him alone in his room, which is-
Todd: Kevin. You mean Kevin the kid.
They leave Kevin the kid alone.
Craig: It… Right. In, in, in David’s room.
Todd: Right, right, right. In David’s room. Yep, mm-hmm.
Craig: David and the dad are walking around. I, I think they’re looking for the daughter, but I’m not really sure.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And they’re kind of walking through an at- it looks like an atrium in a hotel.
Todd: Yeah, it’s like the pool area, isn’t
Craig: it?
Yeah. Is that what you’re
Todd: talking about?
Craig: I think so. But it looks like, I think it’s like an, but like an indoor pool area, like with an atrium and with, like, concession stands around. Oh, it’s indoor? Whatever.
Todd: Okay.
Craig: It’s an open space, but some of the rooms, like, open up into that space.
Todd: Right. Right.
Craig: They bump into a drunk guy who they’ve bumped into before, a big drunk guy.
Todd: Yes, played by Daniel Roebuck.
Craig: I didn’t recognize him.
Todd: You didn’t recognize him?
Craig: No.
Todd: Oh, God. I, I feel like this guy’s been in every movie since the, like, mid-’80s. He’s, he’s just a character actor. He was in Final Destination. He’s in US Marshals, The Fugitive. Oh, my God, he’s been, like, in everything, all over television.
Craig: I mean, I should’ve known.
Todd: Yeah, he’s been in Three from Hell. He’s been in Rosewood. I mean, God, Agents of SHIELD and stuff, Transformers movies and-
Craig: He bumbles around, and then-
Todd: Cursing and swearing. He’s kinda funny, actually …
Craig: and he, he calls for his wife. I don’t remember why, but he calls for his wife, and his wife comes out, and her name is Donna, and it’s Phyllisa Rose.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Again, probably in a cameo that she shot in an afternoon.
Todd: Sure. But she’s only in this scene.
Craig: Yeah, she’s only in this scene, but-
Todd: And she’s from sl- the Sleep- Sleepaway Camp series.
Craig: Yeah. M- I think just the first one, unless she came back for one of the- Of course.
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: much later ones, but- Yeah, like, uh, it’s not like she’s a, a superstar or anything, but in the horror community she’s, you know-
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: Well-known … she’s somebody, you know?
Todd: Done a couple movies with her in it recently,
Craig: actually. Yeah. She, and she do- you know, mostly these days she does these kinds of cameos. I think she was in Death House or whatever that- Right … terrible one was. She does a lot of cameos, and she cameos in this, and she is kind of like a New Jersey housewife kind of.
Right. Like, she, she maybe has a couple of lines. She just yells at her husband.
Todd: Yeah, that’s all.
Craig: Lockwood comes over the PA and explains that it’s a game.
Clip: We are running a game of sorts, a game that each of you have unknowingly signed up for when checking in to this fine establishment Gotta read those terms and conditions.
Ha
Craig: ha ha. Like okay. And most of the guests are gathered in the atrium, and the power goes out, and when the lights come on, Donna and Howard, the married couple, have both been violently killed, and we just see the aftermath. He’s, like, kind of impaled on a light post, and I, I don’t even remember what happened to her.
Todd: I don’t
Craig: remember either. She’s
Todd: all
Craig: messed up. And killers one and four are there, and they attack. And there’s another old man who’s just there for a second, and I saw… His name’s John. At first I thought that he was- Oh, gosh … the famous director. The director.
Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Cronenberg. He looks so-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: like him.
Yeah.
Craig: I thought it was Cronenberg, but it’s not.
Todd: No.
Craig: But he’s been in other stuff, too. He gets his head just crushed. Like, number four, the big muscle guy, just picks him up by his head and just totally crushes his head.
Todd: Squeezes him. Yeah. It’s cool.
Craig: And I don’t know. Uh, there’s an Asian lady there who we met.
Th- she was the one who got her door knocked on in the middle of the night. She just pops up to… I don’t even remember if she gets killed. We never see her again.
Todd: No, we don’t.
Craig: And then Kevin, the kid, is into computers. Okay, whatever. So with his iPad, he hacks into Lockwood’s system and watches- … number four kill the other French guy.
I didn’t realize that was the other French guy the first time
Todd: I- Oh …
Craig: watched it, but it was.
Todd: Okay.
Craig: And then Lockwood sees that somebody’s, like, surveilling him and he hacks into Kevin’s iPad and taunts him, and he’s like, “What you should really be worried about is your mother.” You’re horrible. His mother, who’s dead, like, in the next room.
And then two and three, the brother and sister, the sadistic brother and sister, take on the naughty, weird threesome.
Todd: Yeah. They basically kill the girls in the hallway. One of them-
Craig: Well, no, they
Todd: kill the blonde girl … I think one of them gets away. They kill the blonde girl. The other one runs away. But then they grab the guy, and this was a long, drawn-out scene that I thought was kinda dumb.
They pin him up against a wall. They, uh, actually nail him to the wall somehow with his hand, and then they, they open up his chest and they carve a tic-tac-toe board on there, and they start to play tic-tac-toe on his chest, and I thought that was a little drawn out and kinda-
Craig: It was a little drawn out.
The practical effects looked good.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I mean, it was gross, and I felt like it kind of highlighted their-
Todd: Kookiness …
Craig: depravity. Yeah. And kookiness. Right. I mean, they’re having fun. This is fun for them And, and I kinda like that. Even, I, you know, I- one of the biggest complaints that I’ve read about this movie is that there are so many characters that there’s not time to really develop them.
I also read that it feels, and, and I thought that this was actually kind of an intuitive take on it, it feels like video game adaptation in reverse. The, these killers feel like the killers that you would choose. Oh, yeah. You know? Like you, like you’ve got a menu of killers, and who are you gonna choose?
You’re gonna choose the big muscular guy, and the sadist, and the one who’s, you know, the badass or whatever. Or
Todd: they’d be the boss characters you fight at the end of each level.
Craig: Right, right, right. And, and I, I see that. That makes sense to me. I do think that I, I, I would be more interested in learning more about these killers.
There’s just not time.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And, and I, I don’t think that’s what the movie is really interested
Todd: in. Yeah, for sure. They want them to remain anonymous, ’cause nobody ever gets unmasked.
Craig: No. And, and it’s, and it’s fine. It’s fair. It’s a fair approach. But I do understand the criticism that the characters maybe feel a little bit underdeveloped.
And, and that’s fine, but again, typical.
Todd: Right.
Craig: Oh, gosh. I, I don’t even remember. Uh, okay, so they kill that guy. The bru- the brunette who got away who ran away, she runs into Kevin in the hallway, and they run away together for a while But they get pinned up against an elevator. Sadistic number one has them, like, pinned there, but the elevator door opens, and number three, who’s the girl, grabs the girl and drags her into the elevator.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And, and, and takes her to the basement where they fight. And I- the brunette fights, like-
Todd: Yeah, she’s not
Craig: gonna- She doesn’t go down easy. And in fact, as she’s being kind of held down on this, like, kitchen cart, she reaches down and she grabs a fork and stabs number three girl killer in the neck and kills her.
Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: I was surprised.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: She’s, she’s done.
Todd: She’s great, but then she climbs out the window to make it outside, lays down, like s- like an idiot,
Craig: lays down like- She barely… Number two, the brother, number two, the brother comes in and almost gets her, but she makes it out the window. And I mean, I kind of anticipated what was gonna happen next, but even in anticipating it, it kinda made me mad.
Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: she got out. That seems like that should be the rules. Like, if you can get out, you should be okay. But she’s not. She gets killed by the guy in the plague mask.
Todd: Yeah, just a shovel to the head or something like that. So yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a little disappointing to see a person fight off and kill someone and all that.
I mean, not, not that it’s atypical for horror films, but I don’t know, this girl has lasted longer than almost anybody else in there, and she’s really put up a good fight, and she gets out, and it’s almost anticlimactic how she gets it, right?
Craig: I know. Like, and I al- I would almost rather it be just let her get away and we never see her again.
Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: just, just let her get away. I don’t need to know what happens.
Todd: She’s the one who called the cops who came too late. You know? That could be the way. Right. Sure,
Craig: whatever. Or we just never see her again. I don’t know. But- But whatever. I mean, it’s, i- it’s, it’s part and parcel for the movie. I expected it, and, and that’s what happens.
Todd: Well, Roy and David end up fighting Thing 4, and they take him out with a gun.
Craig: It’s… A- and it’s a big act- I- you know, it’s an action fight, you know? Like- It’s good … that, that big guy is throwing the dad around, and Dad is getting the shit beat out of him. I mean, in real life you… I don’t know that you could just get up and walk away from that.
Right. I certainly
Todd: couldn’t.
Craig: I can barely get up and walk out of my chair- … and then I’m gonna be thrown around.
Todd: Right.
Craig: Oh, gosh. And then the little boy is pursued in the kitchen in what they had to have intended to be a Jurassic Park tribute. Oh,
Todd: God, yeah. ‘
Craig: Cause he’s crawling around, and the guy is in pursuit, and it’s just like that raptor pursuit.
But unlike the raptor pursuit, instead of a reflection helping the kid, it’s actually a reflection that gives him away.
Todd: I felt this was a real cheat, too, because the Thing, uh, Thing 1 or whatever, I think it’s Thing 1. I c- I was calling him Thing 1, Thing 2. Yeah, yeah. Thing 1 gets him pinned up against a wall, and it looks like he’s a- he’s got a knife up to his throat.
It looks like he’s about to get him, and then Mr. Lockwood comes over the intercom and says something like, “Hey, all the players need immediately to report to so and so place because there’s been some disturbance.” A security breach. And so this guy, like, leaves. And I thought, “Oh, okay. They’re all gonna assemble in a place?”
No. Like, nothing happens. The movie just continues the way it’s always been going, with more scenes of people being chased and killed. Like, this wasn’t a thing. It just felt like a cheap and shitty way of getting the kid off.
Craig: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, it… How long does it take to slice a kid’s throat?
Like, just do it and then go. Like, it doesn’t-
Todd: Right. And then, but then this thing, this security breach thing led to nothing. Like, there, it wasn’t like suddenly all these people came together again, and so that they could kill some more folks. Like-
Craig: The security breach was that the daughter and Frenchie had come back and gotten back in.
Oh. That’s what the breach was.
Todd: Oh, is that what that was? Uh-huh. Except there was no big d- I, I didn’t make the connection-
Craig: It wasn’t a big deal … ‘
Todd: cause there’s no big deal. It’s like they walked in the door. That’s it.
Craig: They walk in the door. They see some bodies and panic, and then immediately- Thing 2 pins them to a wall with a spear
Todd: Mm, is ru- abrupt, very abrupt.
Craig: I knew what was going to happen here too.
Todd: Right.
Craig: It appears that he spears through both of them and pins them to a wall, but I knew, I was like, “She’s not dead. She’s not. I just know she’s not.”
Todd: There’s like a close-up on her head as she kinda closes her eyes and mo- and, and rolls her head to the left, and I was like, “That looks like not real.”
Yeah.
Craig: And, and, and they go away from her and, and come back later to reveal that she just wakes up and pulls the spear, like, two inches out of her abdomen and is fine.
Todd: No, no issues at all for her. But then some weird thing goes on, right, where now Roy is fighting Thing 2 out in the hallway, and he’s with David.
The dad. Yeah, the dad. And they’re up against a wall or whatever, and it’s this point where David can come in and save them, but then he decides he’s not going to. He goes, “What? No, I’m not gonna help you out. I guess you can put a price on life, but in this case the price is pretty high,” and he runs off. And I’m like, “What?
That’s weird.”
Craig: All right. So it took, it took me watching this twice to figure this out.
Todd: He’s part of the game
Craig: He’s part of the game only because he had said, and I meant to mention it earlier and it went by, he had mentioned to the dad earlier this has happened before. All these people got trapped in an apartment building, and they got killed and it was never figured out.
He also says that he was an ex-cop. He was on the force for, like, over 20 years or whatever. It turns out he was the cop who investigated that when it happened the first time. I guess he was kind of tracking it, and when he saw that it was happening again at this hotel, he checked in so that he could be a part of it.
Now, I don’t really understand this because the way that it plays out, it seems like the hunters can win, but also the victims can win, like, if they’re the last one standing or something.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: So that’s why he allows Number One… Like, he d- he doesn’t save the dad from Number One because he thinks at this point that if the dad dies, he’s the last one.
Todd: Oh, gotcha.
Craig: So he runs away, and he runs to the control room, and he’s like, “I’ve won, I’ve won.” But then he sees that the dad and Number One are still fighting, and we just see it on the screen, and he’s like, “Come on, Roy, just give up. I wanna win this or whatever.”
Todd: Like, he’s put bets on it, right? So-
Craig: Yes … or something
Todd: like that?
Yeah.
Craig: Yes. N- and, and Number One throws the dad out of frame and walks out of frame towards him, and you hear a scuffle, and then Number One walks back into frame. And again, like, I don’t consider myself to be particularly insightful about things. But some of these things just felt so obvious. I’m like, “That’s not him.
That’s the dad.” The dad-
Todd: Put on the- …
Craig: bested Number One and put on his costume.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I knew it. I knew it. And, and it, it’s, it’s right. That’s what happens.
Todd: Well, because the dad would’ve deserved an actual scene
Craig: Right. They would have killed him on screen
Todd: They would have killed him on screen because they didn’t.
It’s obvious that, okay, they’re, they’re keeping something secret and that’s probably because that’s him.
Craig: Yes. And then while, while Dave is in that control room, there’s a scree- not scream, a Saw tribute-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: where there’s supposedly a dead person under a sheet, but it turns out not to be a dead person. It turns out to be the guy in the plague mask who then kills Dave, who’s like, “No, but I won.
I’m the sole survivor.” He’s like, “No you’re not,” ’cause Kevin, the kid, is still alive. And so he kills him.
Todd: And it’s Mr. L- He takes
Craig: his mask off. It’s Mr. Lockwood. That’s- It’s revealed,
Todd: right. Was Mr. Lockwood… Okay, so he spent a lot of time monitoring things, typing on keyboards and things. At what point did he decide, “You know what?
I think I’m just gonna throw a sheet over me in case somebody breaks into the control room so that I can do this surprise scary thing on them.”
Craig: Well, he’s watch- I mean, he’s watching all of this so I, I would imagine that he would see that-
Todd: Oh, that
Craig: Kevin ran off … Dave was coming. Yeah, right. Everything is under surveillance.
Todd: I guess so.
Craig: I guess.
Todd: I guess you’re right. I guess that would happen.
Craig: Anyway, okay, so he kills him, and then he gets on the intercom and he’s like, “Okay, there’s only one victim left and two killers left, and whoever kills the boy will get triple points.” So one and two are both loo- wh- I mean, what we’re supposed to believe are one and two are looking, and they meet in the hallway.
And two, the Art the Clown one, like, gestures to let number one pass. It’s then that we find out that Taylor isn’t dead and she releases herself.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And number one finds Kevin in the kitchen, but then he, he’s, like, holding him and Kevin’s fighting and he pulls off his mask and it’s really his dad. And then two arrives in the kitchen and the dad is like, says to Kevin, “How long can you hold your breath?
I need you to play dead.” And then he tries to carry him out. Kevin does a terrible job of playing dead. But they don’t address that. But Lockwood, like, rewinds the tape five minute or five seconds and sees that one is actually the dad and alerts number two to it. So dad and number two fight, but Kevin stabs number two in the leg, and then the dad fights number two and gets his face pushed down on the gas stove and looks at Kevin like, “You have to do this.”
Now, Kevin is maybe 10.
Todd: Right.
Craig: This kid is going to have trauma because he has to turn on this gas stove and set this man on fire. And he does, and then his dad hits him over the head with a cast iron pan, and he’s dead.
Todd: Ugh. Then
Craig: Then Lo- okay, so then Kevin and the dad go to the lobby and they’re trying to get out, and they can’t get out.
Lockwood meets them down there and monologues at them for a while. He’s like, “Whether it be fish or bears or people, what difference does it make? Games are as old as the world,” and it’s, it’s some s- ridiculous stuff. And he wickedly taunts the dad and, and Kevin about the mom, a- and he thinks that Taylor is dead too.
But the dad somehow just gets him on the ground and seemingly beats him to death with his fists.
Todd: Right.
Craig: I swear, I swear, these effects are fantastic.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: It’s wild. I don’t even know how they do stuff like this. I, I don’t know if it’s edited, because his face just keeps get- it, it, it seems like it’s kind of a consistent thing where he’s just hitting him and hitting him and hitting him, and his face is just getting more and more pulverized.
But it looks great He appears to be dead. So the dad, like, kneels in front of Kevin, and he’s like, “It’s over. We can finally get out of here.” And then his daughter spears him from behind because she thinks he’s one of the killers.
Todd: Ugh.
Craig: And she’s like, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s gonna be okay.” And he’s like, “No, it is okay.
Just take care of your brother.” And then he dies.
Todd: Oh my God. I thought this was so lame. I mean, I, you know, they’re trying to make it bleak and add this moment in here, but come on. This girl comes up from behind. They’re… He’s having a moment with her. His mask is off.
Craig: I anticipated this too.
Todd: Oh, you did?
Craig: I anticipated that she was going to kill him because she- he’s in the costume.
She was gonna think that was one of the killers. But the, the scene with Kevin and the dad is so intimate, and it’s just like, b- you know, they’re in profile, they’re looking at each other, and he’s talking to him. I thought she was gonna blow his head off. That’s what I thought we were gonna see. Oh. Like, I thought they were just gonna be having this intimate moment- That would’ve been awesome
and his head was just gonna get blown off.
Todd: That would’ve been awesome.
Craig: But no, she spears him.
Todd: Yeah, and then, you know, like that often happens in here, they have a brief moment with the dad, but then they’re over it, and they run off. Yeah. Because Mr. Lockwood comes back.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: And he starts a fight with Taylor, and he’s shaking his…
I think they were trying to do a thing with the dice that didn’t- Yeah, it was dumb … really carry through. Yeah, because of the editing and, and everything. It just, it wasn’t consistent enough. But he’s like, “House always wins, bitch,” and blah, blah, blah.
Craig: That was kind of funny.
Todd: Yeah, it was funny. And then she leans o- what…
She says something to him before she takes his head off. What does she say? I can’t remember.
Craig: I don’t remember.
Todd: But she has an ax. She, she’s pinned against the wall. There’s an ax next to her from earlier.
Craig: She kicks him in the nuts.
Todd: Mm-hmm. He falls on the ground. She pulls the ax out and says something funny and then, uh, slices his head right off.
And then we get the end scene, which is very typical of these movies- Yep, yep … where suddenly they’re sitting out in the back of the ambulance, and the cops are all over the place. And we see cops and, and people walking by who actually have the stream on their phones
Craig: L- right, like it’s an app
Todd: So it’s, it’s like it’s this mainstream kinda thing that everybody has access to.
Craig: And th- this leads to the whole end cap, which I think is kind of interesting, but again, just feels underdeveloped, and it feels like they had a day with these cameos, and they just had to film something, and they kind of tied it together. We cut to y- yes, we s- you know, a very friendly orderly gives Taylor a blanket or something, and then he walks away, but he’s looking at the outcome on his screen, and he’s won some things.
Like, he bet that the kids would survive, and they did, so he’s won on that. But it just kind of establishes that this is ordinary people. Then we cut to a car, which is like a town car, like a black town car, and there’s a driver, and in the passenger seat is Tony Todd.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And he’s talking to a webcam, and he is also Mr.
Lockwood, and he’s talking directly to the camera, to the people watching, and he’s like, you know, in his great Tony Todd voice It’s all a game. Like, I can’t do Tony Todd. Nice Tony Todd. I
Todd: love it.
Craig: I’m, I, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not nearly masculine enough to pull off Tony Todd.
Todd: It’s all a game. Yeah, it’s hard.
Craig: That’s better than me, but still not great. Still, still. But anyway, he, he says something like, “So let it continue,” and he sets the car on fire. Why? I have no idea.
Todd: I don’t get that at all.
Craig: He… They’re, they’re, like, they’re parked in front of what looks like a hospital or something, and, like, they show us the name of the hosp- Like, it seems like it’s supposed to be important.
They’re in this car. He douses the car in lighter fluid and he sets it on fire. “Let it continue.” I have no idea what that’s all about. Mm-hmm. Then it cuts to credits. You know there’s gonna be a mid-credits scene because Amazon doesn’t immediately prompt you to go to the next thing. So I’m watching the credits, and it cuts to a theater lobby, again, seemingly kind of under surveillance.
In this theater lobby, a robed and masked killer, in a different robe and mask than we’ve seen before, so clearly a different person, is hacking people up. And then Weekend at Bernie’s shows up outside the door. I didn’t write down his name, but the guy that plays Bernie-
Todd: Uh-huh …
Craig: the, the guy that was in Tammy and the T-Rex-
Todd: Right.
Craig: shows up outside the door like he’s, I don’t know, trying to help whoever’s inside or I, I don’t know what’s going on. And then you hear first what I thought was just going to be over a speaker, you hear Tim Curry’s voice. He identifies himself as Lockwood. And then you see Bill Moseley as, I guess, a killer, though he isn’t masked.
Todd: Right.
Craig: I don’t know, but I think one of them says… I, I mean, this happens so quickly, but one of them says, “The street…” I think it’s Curry who we then see a character in the plague mask in a wheelchair, and it’s Tim Curry’s voice and he says-
Clip: I am the ringmaster of this circus, the big boss of our little game.
But you, my dear, can call me Lockwood. Your life is online, and it all can be taken away by the click of a mouse. What do you take me for, a fool? I am no clown
Craig: And then he says something else, and then he laughs ominously like Tim Curry, and then Bernie is in, like, an electric chair and he gets electrocuted, and Tim Curry laughs again, and then that’s the end.
Todd: Oh my gosh.
Craig: It’s wild.
Todd: It’s crazy. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it. I- it wasn’t, again, like I said, I- it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before.
It was, I mean, quite honestly, a lot like of stuff I’d seen before, but the kills were surprisingly brutal. I loved seeing the cameos. I was just waiting for the next cameo, and up through the credits you’re getting new cameos. So that part was fun. And when, by the time I was done, I was like, and again, I guess it’s just because of all the cameos, but I was like, “That was a hell of a lot more fun and so much better than Death House.”
Yes. Why I wanted to compare it to Death House, I don’t really know. But oh my God, yeah. And I, so I can see why it’s gotten all of the love. Yeah. But I think most of that love is because of horror fans and because of the cameos. Yes. Because the reality is the general public is not gonna be impressed by this movie.
Craig: I agree.
Todd: Yeah. So it’s, it’s us talking to you guys. You’re horror fans. You’d probably really enjoy this movie. Don’t bring your friends into this. They’re not gonna like it. Right. Probably.
Craig: Right. It really does, it feels like a horror movie that’s made by people who love horror movies. It’s, it’s almost exclusively fan service.
But I am a fan.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And I like to be serviced.
Todd: Don’t we all? But- It’s fan service done right, I think
Craig: Yeah, these are actors that I genuinely enjoy seeing on screen. It makes me happy, not only just to see that they’re still working, but I genuinely enjoy them and I enjoy their presence and their performances, and I had a lot of fun with it.
Uh, the special effects are really, really good. In terms of cinematography and story, fairly typical, but we’ve seen far, far worse. Far worse. So yes, I, I imagine those of you who actually take the time to listen to our silly little podcast will really enjoy it, and for that reason I highly recommend it.
But even, you know, when I was texting with Todd and he was like, “Just send me the movie,” and I, and I sent it to him and he wrote back, “I’m excited,” and I wrote back, “Temper your expectations.”
Todd: Thank you for that. It did set me up. That was a good, that was a good call.
Craig: And that’s my advice to you. I- if you’re going in looking for some sort of m- cinematic masterpiece, you are not going to find it.
Right. But if you are a fan of horror who watches all of these things and keeps up with the people who have devoted much of their career to this genre and to these franchises, as I think I suggested in the beginning, the payoff of that for me was more than worth the price of admission. I, I, uh, I really liked
Todd: it.
Well, thank you guys for listening to this, and thank you for Craig for recommending this movie. If you guys have movies you’d like to recommend, you can find us, chainsawhorror.com, or just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast. Find us on any of our socials. Send us a movie that you want us to do, and then what we do is we take those requests and we put them in a big pile, and then we put a poll to our patrons.
We have a Patreon at patreon.com/chainsawpodcast where, uh, our patrons get to vote which is the next request we do. The other thing the patrons get to do is they get our complete unedited phone calls that lead to this podcast, so all the stuff that we leave out of here, all the personal stuff about us.
If that interests you, that is available for access as well on our Patreon. And we have a book club there. We throw up some, like, extras every now and then. It’s, it’s a lot of fun. Five bucks a month gets you that.
Craig: We’ve done more than, like, 50 books or something like that. I couldn’t believe-
Todd: Oh my God. More than 50 books.
We started out as a Christopher Pike book club. We did a bunch of books by him, and then we just started doing other horror novels and we went into, like, detective mystery things. We’re back to young adult horror. It’s been a lot of fun. So yeah, check that out if that interests you.
Patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Uh, just five bucks a month gets you access to all that and our undying gratitude. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
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