>> Hi. >> Finally, my suffering on this show has come to an end. >> Oh, was I fired and I didn't know it? >> That's what it should be, but that's not what it is. As we've been doing this show now for almost three years, I have had to deal with incessant amounts of messaging that tell me all the time that Leo is great and Leo's wonderful and Leo's so funny and we love Leo and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. >> All right. >> I don't know who you're paying to do this stuff. I don't know where it's coming from. >> I'm always surprised when you're telling me about this because I don't hear any of this from anyone. I got radio silence, nobody talks to me ever. >> It's just very unfair on my end. But then finally, the tides have changed because we got a message on Instagram the other day from a person named Bran who wrote great podcast. I listened every night before bed and leave it on while sleeping. Steven is very funny, period. >> I think somebody who laughs themselves to sleep has more internal damage and turmoil and trauma than they realize. >> I did think about that. I thought I'm opening myself up for this because they're saying I'm very funny. They're also saying they use it to put themselves to sleep. >> I mean, if you find your voice to be catatonic, well, that's your part. They listen to me and then they're like, oh my God, he's so funny. And then Leo's like, I don't like your next because. And then he's like, dude, I guess that's true. Yeah, there you go. Everybody's got taste. Some of it's bad. That's all I can say about that. Do not insult our listeners that way. Bran, you are now top listener. You get the top listener spot on the world of horror. We're going to send you a big bag of junk from our houses. >> That's right. Yeah, you get the bag of junk now. There you go. Somebody had that. >> Perfect. Yep, exactly. I've got some aluminum cans I've been looking to get rid of. >> That'll take care of your trash problem and all that styrofoam. >> Fair enough. Yes, which they didn't hear about because we set off Mike. I've been having some problems with my neighbors leaving way too much trash in the garbage bin. Anyway, Bran, now it's yours. >> Yay. >> All right, everybody. Welcome to spoils of horror. My name is Steven. >> I am still Leo. >> And this is episode number 139, Lake Mungo. >> What an excellent day for an existential season. [MUSIC] >> Look at me, Damian. It's all for you. >> I'm our number one fan. >> I hope they are watching. There, see, there, see, and they don't know. >> It's pretty nice, you know what's going on? >> I'm scared to close my eyes. I'm scared to open up whatever you do, don't fall asleep. >> [LAUGH] >> I know that this movie has been circling the drain review for actually quite some time. I'm curious why we are talking about it instead of this being an episode of Horror House with Dom, where it seems to fit so much better. >> So this is an interesting little movie. I heard about it maybe a couple years ago. I heard about it before we started the podcast on a really great YouTube channel by a guy named Ryan Hollinger. I recommend he does these very thoughtful video essays on all kinds of horror movies, horror movies that are very artsy, horror movies that are very difficult, and ones that are just fun and goofy, but he's very good at what he does when he covered this strange movie named Lake Mungo that has just a really interesting backstory it was made in I think 2008, did the festival circuit and vanished, and then it started showing up on a box set DVD, one of those like four of the scariest movies of all time, the ones you get at Rite Aid. >> It's like a dollar and a half or four films all squished together on one cheap DVD. >> Right, and it's three royalty free movies, Night of the Living Dead, Two Others. >> Planet Terrors. >> Yes, exactly, a bunch of shit you've never heard of, and then of course this movie was on there called Lake Mungo, and it fascinated people because a few people threw it on and they thought it was real, because it is 100% done as a documentary, and he reviewed it and he really liked it, wonderfully he called it the saddest horror film no one's ever seen. That's a great title for capturing what this movie is going for. So finally I saw it and I really liked it, I really thought it was good, unfortunately the follow up to the movie has been disappointing. I'm glad the horror movie scene has discovered it, but unfortunately has gotten tagged with the thing that you and I talked about off mic, the scariest movie ever made. That is the bolt that you can put in the head of any good horror movie to make sure no one likes it. >> Not everything can be the scariest movie that's ever made, that's a fucking idiotic statement to make and it happens every year with at least two, three titles during the year. Using a horror movie, the scariest movie ever made, all it does is ruin it. >> I gotta tell you, I never really listened to that when I hear it, but when I do hear those words, I already know it's not gonna scare me, not even a little, and that's true of this one. >> And this movie didn't scare me either. I wanna go into it very clearly. I'm covering it because I liked it. I like Resident Evil as well. It doesn't scare me. >> Right. >> Hilarious if it did, though, could you imagine if watching Resident Evil through your fingers? >> No, it's so scary. All those lasers are cutting people in half. >> I hope you get something out of it, Leo. I'm not really sure. This could be too artsy-fartsy for you. This might not be who knows, but away we go. The Palmer family is participating in a documentary about strange circumstances surrounding the death of their daughter Alice. We see family photos and hear the emergency call the night she went missing while picnicking at the lake. After interviews with extended family, friends and neighbors, the documentary reveals that search and rescue found Alice's body drowned at the bottom of the lake. Her father Russell identifies the body while her mother June waits in the car. A few weeks later, strange noises were heard in the house. The Palmer shares stories about strange sightings, noises in the night, and haunting dreams where their daughter stands in the house, drenched in water from the lake. Alice's brother Matthew finds unexplained bruises on his body and takes several pictures in his backyard. In one, the ghost of his sister stands under a tree. After a local comes forward with a picture of Alice's ghost standing near the lake, June, Russell and Matthew believe something strange is happening. Matthew sets up a camera in the hallway and captures someone moving from one room to the next. We've reached a point that I think it's been a while since we've reached with the podcast where I'm not fully invested with what I've watched. Not going to go into the whole thing that I've done before about oh, cerebral this and I don't get what people understand it and all that, people like what they like and we've had that conversation to death. I don't want to do it again. I liked very much the different take on the found footage style that they're doing here. It's much more of a documentary, which is very cool. I liked that they went to the effort of making documentary real. If you didn't know any better, you would think it was actual, I was going to say police footage. That's not right. But one of those channels that does true crime documentary stuff, things like that. So I think they did a very, very good job of capturing that. I think the family being named the Palmer's reminded me of Twin Peaks because that was the Palmer's there as well or a Palmer also found in the water at the beginning of that first episode. I thought that was a nice touch, whether they meant it or not. It reminded me of Twin Peaks in a lot of ways in what they were trying to say behind what was being said. My first, I guess, complaint is that Lake Mungo wasn't actually even a lake. It was a dried up lake bed, more so we opened the film watching people swimming in a dam, but that wasn't Lake Mungo either. So the film is actually misleading from the start. Maybe the lake had the wrong name, he was Lake Dick and they didn't want to move it. I didn't want to call it that. I don't know. It actually is a little confusing that there's actually two different lakes in the movie. There's the lake that the main character drowns in at the beginning of the film and then there's Lake Mungo, which is actually a different lake later on. I found that very confusing. I actually wrote Lake Mungo a thousand times when we wrote the script until the last time watching it that I was like, "Oh, these are two totally different lakes." I found out Lake Mungo is actually a real place in Australia too, which for people who don't know this is an Australian film, which is nice because you all know how I love my international horror. I did think that this family was very kind-hearted. We get to know them really quickly and it was clearly on display how much they love one another because they call the police immediately after Alice goes missing within probably 30, 40 minutes of her going missing while they're picnicking. I thought to myself, if that were my family, it would have at least taken a month for them to call anyone. I was going to make a joke and then I realized how forgotten I would be with my family and I'm like, "Yeah, no, that tracks." Your family still doesn't know that you're missing. I thought that with my own family, I thought to myself because of course we grew up in the '80s too when you were actually allowed to play outside without people watching you for every second of the day or when you could actually walk down to the store by yourself. We invented latchkey, yeah. Right, but I thought that 911 call for me would have been, "Hi, Stephen's been missing for two weeks and he hasn't done a single one of his chores, arrest him, arrest him." That's probably true of my mother as well, it would have been a call of inconvenience. Nobody is here to pick up after me or watch, he'd listen to me bitch about my life. I need some help. I was more of a support animal than I was a child, so it's called a couple of pounds before me. It's just very funny knowing you, Leo, the support animal. One of the things I really like in this movie is that it captures a lot of small details and I do think that there are some disclaimers that are important when you go into this movie. Number one, you nailed it. It looks like a documentary. So if that's not your thing, you're not going to like it. This is a love-it-or-hate-it movie. Number two, this is far more interested in the feelings of the family and what it's like for them to go through a death and a disappearance and a strange set of phenomenon afterwards than it is about the horror of what is happening to them. I'm totally fine by that. There are virtually no horror films scare me anymore. So often I'm more interested in the other parts than I am in the feeling of being scared. It's pretty rare for me. And so I really like the small details here. The movie captures what it's like to have someone in your family go missing. I love the detail about them driving home and they have one empty seat in their car. I think it talks a lot to the film being all mood and atmosphere. A lot of movies from this general time era did similar things. There are movies about grief wrapped around some sort of scary thing happening. Babadu, Corettitary, things like that. So I can see it not necessarily mimicking them because I believe this came out before that trend started. It would have been the one that they all took their inspiration from not the other way around. It's a lot of talking heads, like a documentary. It's not a lot of scares. It's a movie about grief. It's a movie about secrets. And that's the mindset that they want you to be in as they're also playing with the red herrings and all the other shit they're doing throughout the film. I'm going to ask you an honest question because look, if you disagree with me, you disagree with me. That's fine. My question for you is this. I have actually been pretty critical of what I call trauma drama, which is where the horror film is like the creature is manifesting trauma in some vague way. I don't think that that's what's on display here. I think that this is an on you honest exploration of grief. I can get behind that. I think that's what they're going for at the very least. I agree that that's true, but I think that the movie gets in its own way for telling that story with all of the other shit that it's trying to do. Fair. And I'm saying that loosely because I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but I don't know what I'm talking about. But I do like a lot of these small details here in the beginning. They talk about keeping the porch light on. This is something I've actually heard from other families who have had somebody going missing where they keep a porch light on and just 20 years later, they're still keeping the porch light on or, you know, there's this really great moment after they identify Alice's body where the family talks about how their car wouldn't start properly. And so they had to drive it backwards. And I'll tell you why I liked that moment. There's something about tragedy that when you have a tragic thing happen, then you just have all these like little in, you know, you have all these little annoyances that happen to you that just seem to feel like life is kicking you in the balls. Yeah. One thing after another. Yep. Right. And so that's what I really like about that moment is it's just at their lowest moment, they're kicked a little lower. And I felt that that was very accurate to dealing with tragedy. I get that. I think that makes sense. I feel like this part of the film is where it started to try and become Donnie Darko, where it was fucking with time and the flow of time and shit like that. I don't know if you see that the same way. I think you're you bringing up Donnie Darko and Twin Peaks is really, really astute for someone who I wonder if maybe didn't care for the movie all that much. It's really interesting that you bring those up because I kept thinking about this like I was watching an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. That's where I was coming up. But I think Donnie Darko and Twin Peaks are very accurate. If they had if that car that they were driving, if they were leaving the lake, if it had a giant bunny and a log lady, it would be like an ode. If it had a little person talking backwards, right in a red room, Alice has a point where she describes her dreams. Can you imagine if she described the red room from Twin Peaks? That would have been fucking great because I'm a big Twin Peaks fan. I remember Donnie Darko not to get too far into that film because that's what we're here for and I was confused by it. I've watched it literally five times in my life and have not understood it at any time. And that's okay. It's just not my thing. That's fine. I've come to terms with that. I noticed the time travel quote unquote elements of Donnie Darko. I understood that bit, that shit, whatever. And I see here it looks like it's trying to get into a little bit of that, not in that same way, not in that full extent, but just be like, "Hey, time's a little funky. Things are moving a little weird. Things running backwards." Blah, blah, blah. I agree with you. And I think that maybe the movie is kind of alluding to that when it shows the car driving backwards. I think that that's actually a really interesting interpretation. For me, it was just about grief. It was just about how life kicks you again after you've already been kicked once. Yeah, I didn't see that, but I liked that. Well, I also really actually like your idea too, that it's actually alluding to the fact that this movie is going to be about basically time lapses, about how this girl gets herself sort of caught up in this weird, supernatural time loop. That's the time loop, yeah. Yes, exactly, exactly. There's a lot of describing of the deceased in the beginning, and again, very standard for this kind of mystery documentary where you've got characters that are saying. She was wonderful. She was lovely. She was charming. She was very popular. She was very clever, and it made me really happy that I will never see how people describe me after I die. I'm very curious. All I think to myself is the reporter saying like, "Oh, what was Stephen like in life?" And just watching the people that I know and love to sort of go. He was, and then they sort of like their eyes sort of go back and they just sort of trail off. And at best, I get he really loved his bicocket, and that's it. Leo was short, fat, beaty little eyes, weird sense of humor. Nobody understood him. Nobody cared. He was very popular. Well, not really. He was popular to himself. He was popular. Brand thought Stephen was funny. Oh, that, that one person thought Stephen was funny. That was good. Very tall. He had some height. Yeah, he did. Can you imagine? Just the things that we crack jokes about ourselves on this show, Leo, was so fat. I love the idea that nobody can really think of a good answer, so they just go back to the podcast and listen to how we insult ourselves from each other. He like, he was annoying, he was large, very clever for his thoughts on cabin fever, very clever. Not cabin fever. God damn it. Cabin fever is wonderful. I like cabins on this podcast. Fuck it. Too many cabins. Cabin fever is good. Anyway, what's I did like it was about 10 days after the funeral in this film where all the shit went down and people started really going, hey, now, what the fuck's happening around here? This is a time that they really do allow you to get to know the family a little bit. So you get to know June, you get to know the father Russell, and you get to know their son Matthew, which I thought were all very well drawn out characters. I understood who they were. I understood their place in the story. And for only having 15 or 20 minutes to really get to know them, I think it does a good job. This movie has, it's very character driven. You never really get to know Alice, but I think that that's on purpose, because they do show her a lot in like archival footage. I think that she is always in a negma, which I think was a very smart choice. It's true. They don't do a lot of clarification of how or why she drowned, which I have some theories about later on, what I've been to doesn't really talk too much about her life until later. And even then, it's not, it's a reveal, but it's not like her whole life. It's not what you're talking about is actually accurate where a reporter is like, he was so soft spoken, he was so kind, you know, like what they say about serial killers when they find them, he's always so quiet and just like normal guy. And that's kind of what we're getting from her at this point, because they're trying to keep the big mystery and to keep the big story. I like the idea that your theories about why she drowned are just simply like, you're just making them sound profound. And then you just say, she couldn't swim. She tripped. She hit her head on a rock and she fucking died. She forgot her floaties that day, this fucking arm floaties have door of the explorer on them. A big rubber tube around her waist with a duck head. This movie is so shot like a documentary, they should have shown one of those like sad shots. You know how they always do the shots shots in a documentary where they're like, Alice would missing and no one seen her and they'll show her like shoes by the lake. It's what they should have done. They should have done like she's been missing and then shown her copious amounts of floats. They said her towel was found alone by the lake. You could just impose some rain over the top of that footage. Right. Right. A couple of like SpongeBob Squarepants floaties, we don't know what happened to her. So sad. Oh, that's left her fucking crocs. It's very like naked gun to put like a just put something absurd in there to put like like a like a Paris de Leto shoes. Yeah. But this movie is not without a sense of art because one of the things is is that when it's not shooting as a documentary and you got to give it credit, it's very convincing as a documentary. Even that when it shows you news footage, it looks like news footage. It looks like it was shot, you know, on like a videotape as opposed to digital and it look and the the acting in those spots is different than the acting in the documentary as if the people weren't quite as prepared to be, you know, interviewed on the spot or as if the local, you know, reporter is maybe not the most, you know, they're not like a CNN level reporter. Right. So it's really, really well done. But I also really like they insert a lot of footage of I didn't want to say like the Australian country side because that makes everybody think of Crocodile Dundee. But I haven't even thought about that movie in so long. Crocodiles and Paul Hogan with a with a hat with teeth in it. Oh, yeah, the Australian people must have hated Americans. Sure. They love that movie. I'm sure that that is there. I'm sure that that's your favorite movie. I did love that movie when I was a kid, but anyway, so that so but they do have these great shots of the neighborhood that are just really stunning, you know, these great like, sort of like shots of the street that are very haunting with these beautiful, you know, like street lamps that are perfectly lined up or these great shots of the mountainside. So it is a it's a visually striking movie at some points, even if it isn't really like a, you know, it's like a documentary. I'm glad you brought this up, actually, I recognize the movie opening with a lot of still images of old spirit photography, which the credits are rolling over and their narration is rolling over. And we all, if you are a person of common sense, we all know that spirit photography was a giant fucking hoax and has been forever. So I don't know, like, if it's pointing, if it's using that imagery to point to something within the film itself, about being misled or about hoaxes or about, I don't know, but I think it's really giving a lot of great imagery right away to talk about what is sort of underlying with this film. Yeah, I agree with that. I thought of that maybe the second time I watched it, I thought, Oh, that's kind of cool there that they're using these old photos on spirit photography. Yeah, like it's being haunted by the ghost of tragedy or something, you know, yeah, and a lot of times old movies will not old movies. A lot of times movies that are made on the cheap will just insert a lot of photos because they look kind of cool, or they'll insert a lot of shots that are meant to be almost like pickup shots they were able to get, you know, for free. And so at first, I thought, okay, these are just some old family photos. But then once you've seen it, this movie is better on a second viewing because there are some things hidden in the beginning that allude to what's happening later. And I totally agree with you. Although you can, you're right. You can read it however you want. And that's one of these types of films as well. They're not going to spoon feed you fucking anything in this movie. You got to figure it out, which again, don't mind. There's a balance to be had there where sometimes you should explain some of the shit that's going on a little better than you do. And sometimes it's really fun to get in and get those theories and people have different theories from each other, but that doesn't make them wrong because it could all fit the narrative. Once Alice is discovered as being dead at the bottom of the lake, which I, the image of her being drowned at the bottom of the lake is great. Like, you know, for, you know, us horror fans that, you know, there's not a lot of gore in this movie, but the image that they show of her body laying on the stretcher is very cool. It's very well thought. It almost looked like an actual photograph of a drowned person. It was just it's so funny. I just watched some episodes of Unsolved Mysteries before this and they had showed some actual footage of people that were, you know, murdered and dead, you know, with a little bit of blurring. You know, sometimes sometimes they're blurring very little, I don't know a little, especially back then. Yeah. It's like, have you ever seen this? Have you ever seen like a, like a picture that they show you, you know, and it's like, it's this horrific grotesque picture of somebody who's like murdered or dead or maybe it's like gore makeup or something. But what they've, what they've blurred out is the nips. Yeah. Exactly. God forbid we show it, but the guy's brain splattered all over the sidewalk. Not a problem. Watch that. All you want. Right. Right, right. It's a bawling. Great. Beheading. Fine. This, this person had all of their arms and legs cut off, thrown about there and their genitals were cut off as well, but like their whole body show, but their generals that are off in the leaves over on the side is like blurred. They're just a splatter on the pavement. We don't want you to see those, those are fucking countries stupid anyway, but, but you're right. Like, and it looked very real. You know, there are a lot of makeup artists that spend their time looking at dead bodies to understand exactly what they look like. So, you know, it does, it's a pretty striking image. I've always wondered this. Every single time I've watched an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries" or some other crime documentary, there's always somebody that comes forward and says, you know, I realized that back on August 6th, I took some footage of this thing that happened and I went through my cameras and I found it and yah, yah, yah, yah. I don't know how anybody that's in these fucking documentaries remembers the fucking dates of things that happened eight months ago. I can't remember an hour ago. I don't know what day it is today. I have no idea. I have no idea what day it is today. It could be Sunday. It could be Sunday. I have no idea. I don't know if it's December. I haven't been outside much today. It could be any month. I've literally had this experience so many times where I can remember clearly some events that happen when I was fucking five years old, but I cannot remember a phone call I had an hour ago to save my life and the people to your point on these sorts of programs who are like specific dates, specific times, I was in this spot facing West. Fuck that. You don't know all that shit. I don't care. It's a miracle. I know my family's birthdays. It's a miracle I remember my own. It's a miracle I remember to show up for the show on time. Look, I think it's just they say it with confidence. I think they have no fucking idea when they're like, oh, I saw that suspicious person walking out of the woods on June 12. That happened after the murder, right? Like the murder was on the 10th, yes, the 10th. I saw him on the 12th. That date sounds as good as any. That's probably it's a lot of context clues. Everyone in the room is talking about this date or this time. So they just add a few weeks or days to it, a few hours to the clock. Dark Adaptation podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Brianna, and our producer Dyson joins me while working the knobs. Our show explores all things macabre and mysterious. We're talking dark history, true crime, haunted places, you name it. While we typically dive into lesser known stories, we do cover well-known ones too. And for those more, let's say, popular cases, we deliver so much information you're guaranteed to learn something new. And sometimes we're even joined by our guest host, Steph, who brings a cosmic twist to the show. Our other guest host, Paige, joins us every other month to bring us into the world of cryptids and folklore. Tune in every Monday for a new episode full of intrigue and entertainment. Dark Adaptation podcast is available wherever you stream your favorite podcasts. And next Monday, we'll catch you on the dark side. The Palmer's contact of popular radio show psychic named Ray Kamene. He's a down-to-earth, kind-hearted man who counsels terminally ill patients and provides on-air advice. He agrees to help June and Russell contact Alice for the seance, but nothing happens. A few days later, video footage shows Alice standing in a nearby room just behind Ray. Everyone decides to set up three time-lapse cameras to constantly monitor the house. Unfortunately for the Palmer's, another photograph is released to the public. This one shows that the apparition captured at the lake wasn't the ghost of Alice. It was Matthew walking in the woods, wearing her jacket. Matthew admits the photos and video captured of Alice were a hoax to help his mother feel hope that her spirit is still present. Unfortunately, it causes them deep emotional pain and makes them targets in the local media. This starts unraveling some reflections from June. She was never very close to her daughter, a trait that had run through the family. Ray has become a family friend and invites Matthew to join him for a short road trip. While they're gone, the cameras monitoring the house capture another image of Alice that Matthew couldn't possibly have doctored. June and Russell review the previous footage and find their neighbor Brett hiding in the background of one of the shots. Alice's brother Matthew decides he's going to become a photographer. The very first place he goes to take any pictures is his backyard, which is pretty spot-on for literally every amateur photographer on Earth. Meanwhile, his mother turns directly to a television psychic, which is pretty spot-on for middle-class white people everywhere you go. Sure. And the dad goes into becoming a workaholic. I actually do like the fact that the movie goes into how each of the three of them grieve. And I really like the performance of the guy playing Ray. I think he really captures the acting style in this movie, which is quite frankly across the board. Excellent. There's not a bad performance in this movie, but it's hard to notice that because the performance has come off so real. But that's the whole point in my opinion. I really like his performance. I really like all of them. And I just want to say something about Ray that I think really captures something that the movie is going for, which is that his introduction gives him about maybe three or four minutes to do the normal documentary, sort of like introduction to himself. And I really do like the way that this movie allows the documentary style to actually allow you to get to know new characters as they're introduced, makes everybody feel very real. I love the way that the actors are portraying the documentary version of themselves. And I don't know if they all studied a lot to get this as well as they did it or if it's more in the line of Blair Witch, where the director said, "This is basically what you got to talk about. Go out there and do your best." I haven't looked this up. I didn't know which was the right answer to that. But obviously you're indicating the second one is more accurate. It was the latter. Yep. It was the latter. And that tracks. And that actually I think was a very good idea because it gave it that touch of realism that this documentary style needed to make it look as real as it was. And I think that it allows the movie to do something that is very difficult, that is again why some people are going to hate this film. The arc of the movie isn't really about the ghosts. It is truly about the feelings of the people that are dealing with a situation that is beyond their comprehension and their grief and all that other stuff. Even Ray, I think Ray's role in this movie is fascinating because him being a psychic is what gets them to contact him, but his psychic abilities play no fucking role in this movie. I don't know. You barely see any psychic shit out of him for being a psychic. He's just talking to the people like normal people. Yeah, he describes himself as being divorced. You would have think he'd seen that coming. Brimshot here. The oldest psychic hack joke on earth. I feel like this is a good example of what I was talking about earlier though where the movie short changes itself a bit by undermining some of its scarier moments. Talking about Matthew, he starts grieving by "I'm going to go take pictures" and then "I'm going to turn that into video" and then the psychic comes into their lives and I'm going to start filming the psychic sessions and then it's revealed through all of this that if you look at the background, there's these moments where Alice is showing up and she's popping in and these little hints and videos and clips and things of her in the background and it's very, very spooky and scary and what you had said about it's not really about the ghosts. It's about all this other thing with grief and healing and all that. But you both made sounds so stupid and healing and all those things that he's doing. Dizzy stuff. I'm a little torn because part of me is like when you're dealing with a movie that that's your message and that's what you're trying to talk about and that's what you're trying to cover. You should focus more on that in your storytelling angle but then they focus on the ghost thing. They really punch the ghost thing so hard in this first act. Just to have it be revealed that it was all a fucking lie and you're hitting us so hard with something that you want us to focus on that becomes a red herring but then also takes you away from the underlying message of grief and healing and shit and so forth and so on and I feel like you're just getting in your way. So I think there's two things that are happening for me here. Number one is I had a feeling that if there was something you weren't going to like about this movie it was going to be the way that it gets to the middle and then it sort of starts exploring some other things including this hoax created by Matthew. But the second thing is also just the nature of what ghost stories are about. So often vampire stories are metaphors of some kind of addiction. That's the one that usually has worked the best. Have you ever saw the great British television show being human? The vampirism in that movie in that TV show which I recommend don't watch the American show it's fucking campy shit. Americans of UK shows are always shit. It's super fun but the British show especially the first three seasons is infinitely better but the vampire in that show is played as someone who is struggling with sex addiction. Yeah. And it really works. It really really works. I think ghost stories are just automatic grief stories and there are really really really good ones that are just as sad as they are scary. I mean okay this is a little different but poltergeist is just as wondrous as it is scary. Sure. You know it's genuinely interesting the wonder of what it's like to be on the other side or what can be on the other side. And so I don't totally agree that the story of grief and the ghost story can't enter weave in and out but I do get what you're saying in that the hoax throws things off. I enjoyed how it throws things off. I was interested because you find out that Matthew has been doctoring these photos because of the fact that he wanted his mother to feel some sort of solace that her daughter's spirit is out there. But at the same time directly after the hoax and I totally buy it from a character standpoint. I love the actor who's playing Matthew is wonderful acting at a certain point when the documentarian asks did this help or did this hurt your mother more. And like his acting in that scene where he just sort of stutters and stammers because he doesn't really know what to say is just excellent. But then it leads to a section where they explore how the mother was never close to her daughter and you know her own grandmother was never that close. And I think to myself every time I get to that point I know why they need this information but it feels like you're now sucked into a totally different movie. You didn't agree to watch. That's my point. Taking Poltergeist as the example. If we're following the Freelings and we're getting into this point where the psychics show up and it's just before that thing on the stairs with the ghosts and they're all having that conversation about what it's like to be on the other side and the passing on of life and all that. It's very deep and very cool and very character driven. If all of that happened and then something floats down the stairs, trips, tumbles to the end you see it's a guy in a sheet and they'll go oh we fucking lied to you sorry. All of this moving on to now it's a murder mystery because it killed a guy on the stairs. It would throw the whole fucking thing off like you're building to one thing and I see what they're doing I genuinely get it but you're building to this thing you're making a so hard focus on this thing and then you just take it away from us and say here's something else entirely. And you know what it really is you're painting this very well because it really is one of those cases where you're in or you're out right after the scene with us finding out that the mother was never really close to her daughter which I think is wonderfully heartfelt. We are in alignment the acting in this is really good and the emotions are really good. So we are not sitting here and debating whether the emotions if this were a drama are not effective. This mother feels really guilty that she never told her daughter how much she loved her really guilty and that's perfectly reasonable to explore in a movie about a disappearance and in a movie about a death because it's not a murder but it's a you know it's an accidental death in my opinion. But then it has a series of reveals that change the way you look at the story. In total at the end I think all those reveals work to create a very complicated narrative about what people go through when they have some kind of tragedy. I mean you and I have been listening to a crime podcast and stuff for years I mean how many of those crime podcasts end with some fucking psychic you know who's a fucking thief and showing up and you know and then there's like false accusations and then you know I mean you ever looked at like the John Benning Ramsey case I mean Jesus Christ. Oh I'm well aware of that one. The amount of theories and different things that are happening so for me the Matthew switch works especially because it is still going to be a ghost story. But I get what you're saying and I do understand that it's not going to be for everybody. If you make it a ghost story you take the ghost story away and then you go oops it was still a ghost story the whole time that's just a big cock tease that that's just fucking with your audience. Leo's highly against cock tease little known fact that's Leo's biggest political platform. I have had too many in my life I'm tired of it I won't put up with it anymore. I have set boundaries I am a healthier person. I like the idea that you have that as a bumper sticker but it just it has both the elephant and the donkey on it so nobody knows what it politically means just no cock teases 2025. Was that simple for the independent I'll put all three on there. Delibertarians right exactly exactly. I like the series of reveals and when it gets to the neighbor reveal which we will talk about what that actually is in the next section. But what I want to paint for everyone is I do think it's very valuable to go into this not just like you're thinking about a documentary but a true crime documentary when I watch true crime documentaries the good ones you kind of have these like jaw dropping moments where you know the ones that are built for entertainment which you could question whether or not that's ethical but often have these moments where your job drops on the floor and you're like oh my god the whole case is twisted now I don't remember the name of the documentary but of course do you remember that great series of documentaries about the West Memphis three. Yeah so the first one I will never forget watching that documentary and the point where one of the people that they were interviewing gave the documentary you know the people making the documentary a knife saying like hey thank you so much for covering our story and what not and you know in that kind of culture it's not all that weird to give a knife and then they opened it up and they found blood on it and it was blood from the crime scene. And this weird thing that happened where all of a sudden the people making the documentary are now wrapped up in the actual crime at the time like my jaw was on the ground I couldn't believe what I was watching. And so the neighbor reveal which is that basically they figured out that Matthew was was some of it was a hoax he was doctoring some of the photos but then there's several photos he couldn't have doctored and when they look back through there's one that is a I didn't find the movie scary but I will say it is a haunting image of a hallway and there's a man's face like deep in the background hiding in Alice's house in Alice's bedroom and it's her neighbor. As a small aside one of the things we talked about in the past was the detriment of home theater versus going to a movie theater for such things I think this scene was a little ruin for me because we get to the point where like who the fuck is that and they find out it's a neighbor in the background of the photo because you're meant to be looking to the left side of the picture at all this other shit that's going on and then they come back to this photo again later at this point in the film and go haha there's that guy I saw him the first time because I have a big ass TV in my fucking room so I'm looking at the entire screen and I'm like well who the fuck's that over there you're talking about this chick but who's that and then they moved on and didn't think about it and I was like well okay but now we're back to it again and I'm like oh I wish that hadn't got ruined for me accidentally they didn't mean to of course but it just speaks to the the detriment of the home theater system sure I mean we run into that all the time when we're watching these old like 80s transfers and we're watching them on our widescreen TV so we can see the fucking boom mics at the top. Oh god you ever watched Peewee's Big Adventure on like a large television there's so much in that that you cannot unsee and it sucks. Well that movie is so meta it can kind of get away with it but it's true it is true. But yeah and if anybody has followed us on Instagram they'll know that I have apparently a very small TV because everybody loves to comment on how small my TV is so I didn't see any of this I don't know if this is I don't know if this is a personal insult that I'm supposed to be taking more deeply. I just want the audience to know my TV's bigger wink. But I'm glad you brought that up though because first of all there was another shot that did the same thing for me yeah it wasn't that one I actually didn't see his face the first time so I found that to be shocking in all the right ways like oh my god you know I mean like I was I was genuinely surprised and I enjoyed that surprise and I'm recognizing that to be true even though I accidentally killed it for myself right but but there was another one and it gives us an opportunity to talk about something that I think this movie does just really well which is there's a lot of sleight of hand in this movie there's a lot of different points what will show you a picture and show you a picture and I want to I want to wait on some of this because I think it's so well done that I got kind of excited about it. But there's a lot of times we'll show you a picture and then you get to reinterpret that picture later on throughout the movie yeah which I found very exciting but to your point there was an earlier one the shot that happens in the backyard yes that one was one I also noticed the the other image that is hidden within there and we're being a little vague on purpose but for those who want to understand what the fuck we're talking about every picture you see at the first half of the film it comes back again later with more shit to see June opens Alice is safe and makes a shocking discovery she has video footage of a threesome she had with Brett and his wife hidden inside the Palmer's believe Brett snuck inside their house to steal the tape and they take the evidence to the local police because everything on the tape looks consensual there's nothing they can do soon after Brett and his family sell their house and disappear there's another reveal June finds out Ray had met with Alice once earlier to interpret strange dreams she was having he never told the Palmer's to respect her confidentiality but feeling betrayed they cut ties with the well-intended psychic June describes a school trip Alice took to Lake Mungo shortly before her trip a strange cellphone video has circulated amongst Alice's friends for a party that night after wandering into the woods and becoming distant from the celebration Alice buries something near a tree the Palmer's travel to Lake Mungo find the tree and dig up a plastic bag with Alice's watch ring and cell phone inside Ray the psychic apparently knew Alice and had session or sessions with her prior to meeting the family and dealing with this case wouldn't you think he'd just not take the case due to conflict of interest rather than be well I didn't mention anything about it because of patient confidentiality prove that you're not a douchebag and just pass this one off to one of your colleagues maybe question mark you don't know first of all this could have been a small town the only colleague could have had was a crystal healer down the road that's fair you don't know it could have just been him and some reiki person down the street I did think about that and I did think a little bit about how Ray comes across I think the actor this is nothing against the actor that's playing wonderful but I did think a little bit about how he comes across to the public because there's some debate amongst people throughout the documentary about whether Ray really has psychic ability or whether or not he's just stealing people's money you know just the kind of normal debates that you see in these documentaries and Ray is played very genuinely he's played as someone who believes in what he does and believes in what he can do but there's a whole sequence where him and Matthew go on a road trip and he goes to these various motels they're all terminally ill so they are basically getting some sort of hope of life from beyond and then they're going out crying but to the public it is just people randos wandering into a shitty motel room and then coming out sobbing their eyes out I had a opportunity once a friend of mine who used to take me out with them to go to these ghost hunting things has some sort of psychic abilities or some sort of interest in you know powers or whatever I never quite understood fully but then I don't have them so why would I anyway long story short one of those TV shows like a hunting had an episode that involved something she was involved in and they wanted to meet with her and a shitty CD little motel somewhere just outside the city and I went along obviously because that sounded sketch and the entire time it was absolutely this guy just hitting on her like he was he was fully like she would do it but she wanted to be in disguise and she wanted to be in a shadow like they do and they go oh we don't do that on this program then we watch this series later on they do it they do it a lot he just wanted her to be on camera so he could see her again over over it was the scummiest fucking thing I had ever experienced I thought to myself if I were a prostitute this would it's the what the aftermath would look like like just people walking out and being like I spent so much money on this it was so disappointing that's how it's sex with me is generally they go up they see me they walk out crying that's right that's right that's how that goes that's that is that is that is what sex is they walk in they see you they walk out crying and you and you go I just had sex that's it is exactly that point I've had lots of sex you've had so much so there are a couple of big reveals here obvious the one with Ray is probably the one that interests me the least I think it mostly exists for him to have to kind of take a step out of the narrative he he serves the purpose of well I'll get to the purpose I think he serves a little bit later because I think it is more about the end of the film and also just gives us access to some of these tapes with Alice describing her dreams and different things like that the one that I think is more interesting is the reveal about Alice and her neighbors yes so they found footage that basically shows that their neighbor Brett was hiding inside the house because he was trying to steal a tape that Alice had but he didn't know that Alice had it in a safe and that tape is of a threesome he had with Alice and his own wife and they show you a bit of this threesome because I think they want you to understand sort of what's happening here and I want to be I want to tread very carefully here because I want to I want to get at a very complicated point that I think the film is trying to make Alice is only 16 when she died which means she was younger when this happened so number one there is 100% a story of her being abused by these neighbors but there is also another story that they're trying to tell which is that none of them really know Alice here's my metaphor when I was in seventh grade I had a crush on my seventh grade English teacher I just thought she was the best I had a crush on her perfectly valid story to tell you could also tell a story about her having a crush on me but those two are not ethically the same my story of having a crush on her is okay hers is not but you can be telling you could tell a story about both of those things at the same time correct yes that's what this movie is trying to do here it's trying to both explore in a very it's a very complicated moment that both Alice was treated badly by these neighbors but also the family is trying to contend with the fact that she chose to do this as much as any 16 year old can choose to do this it would be like if you found your I don't that your kid had some sort of fetish or something like that is a furry right something like that we're not even saying that as a joke you know there are whole sections of this film right afterwards where the family is exploring the idea of like was she in love with Brett or was she in love with his wife how long had she been doing this what when did she start doing it like they're definitely wrestling with the fact that she would even choose to do something like this again however much of 16 year old can make you know a choice like that and her boyfriend they interview Alice's boyfriend and he says I would have never been with her had I known something like this was happening I think there's a very easy read here to say oh he's just shaming her for being abused that's not what he's trying to do at all he's tried he's looking at it like she was having an affair I understand that there'll be some people listening to this that will be very offended at the idea that there's even anything gray here to explore I'm not necessarily saying it's a gray situation I am just saying that the movie is trying to explore both things at the same time I personally don't have a lot to say about this section I understood what was going on and that in Australia this is age of consent to your point whatever 16 year old can make that decision she's allowed to and I move the fuck on I understand your point of view that there's more to this than just the surface level and it's okay to talk about more when there's more presented and yeah couldn't get hung up on the moral righteousness or the social justice or whatever else and just be like okay there's something else here to talk about as important if not more so I suppose if it was a footage found of her daughter with a couple of classmates having a threesome it would be a whole different conversation and in that conversation this part would still be the same as we're talking about a family learning something about their kid that they never knew before which is causing the magida and wondering why there's so many secrets and what led to this and how did we fail his parents and blah blah blah blah all of that is still there around the threesome video regardless of who the other two partners were and just the added element of is this somebody did they kill her over this was there this other level of abuse like I think it's just bringing into a lot of questions I just I have noticed in the conversation that it's been heavily focused on how the neighbors treated her badly I do think there's also this other element of people exploring and going hey we didn't know our daughter we didn't know our sister we didn't know our girlfriend and we didn't know the secrets that she was keeping and for me it's the mystery around her death that fascinates me this is just colombo near a wolf one of those extra steps along the way in a monk episode that's like oh she also did this okay let's add that to the puzzle pieces meanwhile it gives us a new red herring or it gives us a new lead or a new angle was it Brett the neighbor that fucking drowned her in the lake did he have something to do with it at all did they just realize that the media and the social world around them was going to vilify them and they fucking packed up their house and ran or was there something more sinister going on to me that's the more interesting stuff here I think the entire film is presented in this very understated mockumentary if you will style for the drowning of a 16 year old girl vacationing with her family I think that's the right move as we mentioned before to put it in this style and as the movie goes on we come to realize that this girl's life has more twists than a Shyamalan film there's something for a twist in the film for me not strictly but it has to follow a certain pattern to be successful in a film I think your twist also has to add to the film and there's a rolling question whenever any movie does a big reveal plot twist does it actually work is it actually functional is does it belong here all that sort of stuff that's really what my mind is in all of this I think that's why I find the reveal with Ray to be less interesting than the reveal with the neighbor because quite frankly the reveal with Ray doesn't really tell us anything new about Alice other than the fact that she had some scary dreams and yes those play a role later on whereas I don't think I maybe articulated myself really well while talking about the story with the neighbor but what it comes down to is the neighbor story tells us a lot about Alice it tells us a lot about who she is and the fact that she had the secrets that she was keeping just like we learn from many other different parts of this movie we learn things about her we learn things about who she is and we learn that she has a side of her that is something that she has kept from other people and that really matters and that's really important I agree with you but at the same time I do think this movie is trying to explore what it's like when someone in our life goes missing or dies and then we find out a lot of things we didn't know about them you know Leo we this is not our first movie that falls into the found footage genre and at the end of this section there's a part where there is a reveal another reveal reveal reveal reveal that there is a video that's been circulating amongst Alice's friends of a party that they had out at Link Bongo we have talked so many times about who's holding the camera and when they're holding the camera when something scary is happening I think this is the opposite I have never seen someone's inability to hold a camera steady when literally nothing's happening I give this movie credit for digging up if you're part of the pun an old 2015 cell phone to film this section on like good job perfectly well done if you're going to use old grainy camera equipment you have to hold the fucking camera still it's hard enough to see that shit as it is was there an earthquake happening I was unaware of in this film because that phone goes everywhere it points at everything I think make Lake Mungo was close to Cloverfield and they were just experiencing a lot of aftershocks my god they can't aren't you supposed to point people's faces generally speaking yes I'm wrong that when you are taking video footage of a party that you are supposed to point at people's faces and out of their shoes and up into the sky and around in the background and in the I understand that it makes it look spooky but Jesus Christ what was this for I think what you're missing here is the evolution of the selfie this was early stages they still didn't quite have it down yet they weren't sure of what they were doing they hadn't invented the stick to help them so everyone was just Wild West on this oh hi hello it's Dom and along with my co-host Amy we are the hosts of Horror House true crime and the macabre if like us you have a morbid curiosity with true crime the paranormal cults and more than our show may just satisfy your curiosities we released episodes on Fridays and bonus episodes every other Wednesday you can listen to us wherever you find your podcasts and you can also find us on instagram at Horror House underscore pod so all that's left to say is until next time my friends stay spooky video on Alice's cell phone shows her walking through the woods at night someone is in the distance walking towards her narration of Alice meeting with Ray plays under the visuals she feels that death is approaching when the figure is close enough to see it's a haunting image of Alice drowned looking exactly as she did after she was found in the lake the Palmer's try to reconcile the footage they believe she saw a premonition of her own death at Lake Mungo this brings a strange sense of catharsis to the family with Alice's secrets revealed the house feels calm again and everyone moves on with their lives June and Russell reconcile with Ray Matthew goes on a date and everyone starts enjoying each other's company life moves on they sell their home pack their things and decide to start a new life June's final consultation with Ray is intercut with an interview from months earlier where Alice in describes a dream she had about her mother their stories weirdly mirror one another creating an unexplained bridge between time the movie ends on a final photo taken of June Russell and Matthew in front of their home the camera zooms in on the door and we see Alice watching from inside as the credits roll images seen earlier in the film reveal new secrets and a film fades to black I want you to picture a scenario where you're doing whatever a typical day in Maine is outside at night and there's trees and ambiance and spooky shit you hear a twig snap you see somebody coming towards you and it's some sort of zombified version of yourself what do you do I would compliment it for being so handsome you really struck the jackpot I wonder if Alice had any thought go through her head about what kind of mushrooms she was having at the party or how much she had to drink to see this vision stumble towards her in the dark of heights yeah I think that there is a lot here that is left unexplained but I have my own interpretation of what's happening I think she feels pulled by this premonition that she's been dealing with for a couple months now she's been having these strange dreams she has been for seeing her own death which all comes together on the night of this party so I think that there are people that could criticize and go why does she walk towards her own image why does she not run away and I think it's a sense of compulsion I think that she feels pulled that's just the way I interpret it but this image is interesting I didn't put it as the thumbnail on this episode because I do think it's a great surprise for what the movie is going for I think it's a pretty big home run whether it scares you or not is that's up to you but this movie and this part has really had an impact on people it's the part where YouTube channels are dedicating 20 minute videos to why this part is so scary I get it in some ways this type of scary does work for me the scary of the unknown and unexplainable like snuff films that just really works for me like that that is a type of scary that can get to me I watched it just find the first time I felt a little tingle on my skin and I was like oh they landed that that was great then you know I I moved on with life what you see is very much a 2005 Nokia phone video do you think that Nokia like do they you think they did like sponsorship for this movie and they're like this movie's gonna make us big if they did they buried it as well as she buried this phone but I think what works is that since they don't build up the footage all that much this footage we don't know about yeah so we don't know about it from the beginning and I think it wouldn't work if they had built it up from the beginning I agree because it would have been too much build up but once the phone is unearthed then there's curiosity what's on the phone and then when you see the video I do think it's haunting I'm not totally sure why it's terrifying people I think the idea is scary of seeing your own dead self but I'm curious what you make of this as someone who is approaching this realizing that there's an audience saying that this is the scariest movie ever made as someone who is maybe more scared by the long-winded talking heads or or the terror that we might be covering say Lake Mungo 2 next week I think I harken back to a conversation we had at a previous episode who which episode is fading for me now it doesn't matter where we talked about just because it doesn't scare me doesn't mean I don't recognize the idea of what's scary and I can see why this would scare some people who are not as hardened by horror as you and I have become over the years people who are maybe new to horror and haven't experienced such a thing before or that very old school I want to say 1950s style horror where the terrifying zombie demon whatever you want to call it just emerges from the shadows slowly stalking towards you that's a terrifying image I can see where that would freak people out again there's nothing about this movie that I found scary I am regularly intrigued if not confused by how something like this can scare people because what little I've known about this movie the few things that they're pointing out as the scariest parts of the film I'm looking at it going it's it's either mundane horror stuff or it's things that I've seen a thousand times before and sometimes a lot better well let me ask you this do you do you think that this image works for this movie for this movie and the style that they're creating and the story that they're telling yes I thought it was a home run again for what they're going for the look on her face the way her eyes are puffed up the way her lips look sealed together and the way that that dead character that is merging from the shadows of the the use of the Nokia 2005 phone what looks fucking fantastic for what they're going to one of their most brilliant moves in this genuinely I said it to be a little funny earlier but I swear they found an old phone and filmed this section with it because it came out exactly as it should have and if they weren't making this documentary style film it wouldn't have worked but it blends perfectly to the narrative yeah and I do think that there is something that is haunting of the idea because the movie is playing so much with this concept that Alice was predicting her own death which I think she just died I think she just died in an accident I don't think that she was killed by her neighbors I don't think that she was murdered by her brother that's a theory that's on the internet for some reason is it yeah I think that that's nonsense I don't think that fits that I don't like when people come up with theories that don't fit literally anything the movie's actually trying to say interesting I gotta be honest with you my theory heads in that direction well I I think that the movie is about grief and I think the movie is about the idea that this family comes within inches of something that is just unexplainable to them that is just unfathomable to them and so that's why and I like this many people aren't going to like this I love the fact that they see this video they can't explain it and they just move on for some reason they feel that they understand Alice they understand her secrets they understand things that people didn't know they understand that she saw Ray about these dreams that she was having these premonitions they understand what she saw at Lake Mungo and that she understand that she was having this relationship this affair this threesome with the couple next door and all of a sudden they just kind of go you know what it's time to move on we have gone as we've gone as close to the void as we can we don't totally understand what happened but the secrets have been revealed and it's time to move on with our lives I get it I get the angle of we're looking at it through the window of grief and the window of loss and trying to pick up where things left off I've lost a family member I've lost a few people in my life I get it and I like what we said earlier about everyone's doing it in their own way and their own thing I'm intrigued now that there are other theories about the brother out there because I would never claim that I invented a brand new thing or that I came to something that nobody else has but I didn't know that that was true and it's fascinating that I ended up going in a similar direction well I think what this does is I think the way the movie ends without really trying to solve that mystery of her death it focuses the movie on the Palmer's which I think is the point it is a movie about them it's not actually a movie about Alice right and I think that's where I got to the brother in this and we'll cover that and I think the recap is going to be the place to do it but I genuinely was focused a little more on Matthew because I was focused on the family and what he was doing and how he was doing what he was doing took my interest enough to make me go what the fuck's going on there and I like the fact that the ending is explained to you through the lens of how the family sees it I actually don't think the ending is that ambiguous I don't think that it is unexplained we don't know how it happened but basically there is some kind of time loop here somehow Alice predicted her own death and had a horrifying moment where in the forest of Lake Mungo she literally saw her own dead body walking towards her and it ends on a pretty fantastic scene a couple fantastic scenes in my opinion that really explore this concept which is that number one we intercut between Ray and Alice talking about one of her dreams and June the mother having her last consultation with Ray and this is very hard to explain but basically what's happening is is that in Alice describing her dream and June describing kind of like a little hypnosis she goes into she kind of closes her eyes and sort of imagines this last time that she's walking through her house these two stories that these women are telling eight nine ten months apart actually coexist perfectly and they actually tell a really sad story of the story's co-mingle to show the mother walking around the house recognizing that no one's there anymore but Alice's interpretation is that she is still there her mother can't see her insinuating that Alice's ghost has not actually moved on and is actually stuck inside that house that was another one of those I'd mentioned before my big screen TV shit going on kind of taking some of the surprises from me there's this moment at the end of the film very comically almost like them walking off into a sunset where the family is posed nicely on their front lawn and it's a picture of the three remaining family members and if you look off to the right and zoom back a little bit which the film does you'll see the vision of Alice standing in the window behind them to your point as if she's trapped in the house and can't move on or did move on as now saying goodbye or whatever the hell it may be I did actually notice her there on the first pass because same issue but I don't think that took away from what it was trying to say in this one like the surprise of the guy hiding in the corner was a little taken aback but this time the message is still there first of all how fucking big is your TV Jesus Christ 60 inches it's not that big of a deal if anything sounded like a big dick metaphor it was you think 60 inches and saying it's not a big deal I'm also very observant with horror movies I've learned to be over the years I'm always looking for something in the background I'm always looking for the plot twist well my TV is five inches and that's very average there's nothing wrong with that right exactly it's how you use it that's what everybody always tells me it's how you it's how you turn it on that really what you got is where you're sticking right exactly no I totally understand where you're coming from and I do want to come back to these pictures a little bit even though we are kind of wrapping up the episode because when it pulls in on these pictures it looks like if your friend has ever pulled out there a smartphone and been like look I got a picture of a ghost and you find yourself looking at nothing for five minutes and then see a slight glare on the glass that's kind of what these look like yes yes but I think that's to the film strength because it is always trying to make you question everything it is always trying to make you ask yourself where you know where is the ghost what is the ghost is there a ghost you know so on and so forth which leads to the final scene that happens over the credit roll which I just loved I absolutely adored this final credit roll which is that as the names of the director and the writer and all this other stuff are coming up it will cut back to photos that you've seen earlier in the film especially the ones that were the hoaxes and it will show you that while you were looking at the hoax on the left there was another photo picture on the right that you missed because of the slight of hand that was actually Alice standing in the background and there's three of these and if you go and you watch the film a second time you will notice that she is in the background of those photos during this time and I thought that was very well done I thought that was very clever there's a great one where they show a random video of a birthday party you know you know how documentaries do that where they just want to show like life of the family and so they'll show like a little picture of a birthday party there's one I think in there that's pretty brilliant where whereas the camera pan pans over to the cake it's a blink and you'll miss moment that she's hiding in the background just sort of staring off into space I found these to be actually I found these in some ways to be more haunting than the picture of the dead body coming forward through the darkness there was just something I really really enjoyed about these hidden images in these photos we had already seen I think they did a good job with it I think it wraps things up I agree with you I don't want to repeat everything it just said I agree with what you said I think for the style of the film as we said before and what they're going for this is probably the best way they could have done it I do admit some of those I didn't notice her in the first time because I fell for the misdirect you know I'm looking over there she's over there so well done well played any movie at this point that can actually get my attention off of what I should be looking at is nice because as I said I try to pay attention that shit is fucking sick sense that did it to me ever since that movie fooled me I really pay attention what's going on around me in these movies now which might to be to my own detriment because that could be why I'm not really just sitting back and enjoying the shit I'm analyzing it too much who knows Alright Leo so we've gotten to the end of the episode what did you think of Lake Mongo? I'm not going to lie to you the first time I watched this I fell asleep the second time I watched this I fell asleep but a little bit later and then I did before and for a shorter amount of time so I really had to focus on that third watching and it's hitting all of the buttons that other films like this have hit before where I'm like ha and I don't get it and why and again maybe I'm over analyzing some stuff I'm curious if you would agree with the notion of a plot twist and how it plays into a film I feel like it should be surprising I feel like it should be hinted at but never really revealed until the right moment or the end or whenever it should be I think it should be along the lines of something that's either devastating or terrifying or some notion like that so it really grabs the audience and I feel like it has to move the plot forward in some way I certainly agree with everything you said I think the disagreement will be whether or not this movie does those things or not for me I don't know that every one of the plot twists did because they had plenty to choose from taking the larger ones the more focused ones a the footage is fake I get that some twisted logic applies here that this was done to help his mother to feel less guilty and all that sort of thing but I'm not sure why that was still the motive after the body was exhumed and that threw me off from that twist it's not the biggest surprise that it was all made up but I feel like if you're insisting that this is a ghost angle or even scared by the haunting this kind of negates that and leaves you feeling a little bla Alice isn't gone another plot twist oh she's still there it's still a ghost after all which goes back to this about was it real was it not are we focused on the ghost are we not during I like the session with her mom and her and how it combines in the two different parts of life where so many years or months or whatever apart and yet the past and the future are combining together it's I don't want to say ambiguous because I don't feel it is that I feel like it you whether it actually has a deliberate thing to say at the end or you interpreted this specific way you're getting something solid out of it there's no mystery to it and that brings me up to my take on Matthew it makes sense to me given what clues I picked up along the films path whether this is controversial a lot I don't know that there was some weird thing happening between Matthew and his sister a lot of little evidence is pointed in that direction for me where there's footage of her screaming at him to get out of room could just be brother and sister sibling shit he had these sudden strange bruises on his body that could be accounted for and nobody knew why or where they came from he was acting really super weird after that happened sometimes seeming a little obsessed with his sister in one way or another he kept fucking with the footage and the pictures to throw people off you know wearing her clothes outside like some sort of a weird Bigfoot I feel like for some reason Matthew might have murdered her and tried to cover it up with all the ghost shit to try and get away with it why I don't know could only infer that he did something that some way assaulted her based on the scene where she woke up saying she felt drugs she knew something was wrong she stood at her parents bedside wanted to tell them but couldn't and that could also imply then that if she was assaulted maybe that caused her so much distress based on everything else going on her life that she took her own life and it wasn't murdered and he felt guilty about it and was covering it up with the ghost stuff it's all just theory my best guess under what was going on based on clues that I picked up on again interesting I will now actually go and look through this to see what other people had to say about it because I wasn't aware of other people leading to that theory so I don't know I'm paying attention the third time I'm picking up on these things I'm putting it together the best I can I can't say I hated this movie I can't say I loved it last movie I remember falling asleep through with 2001 and you know that wasn't a bad movie by most people standards either so who am I to judge feels like I might be standing alone on that decision based on how many people are screaming about how great and scary and terrifying this movie is that's fine if I'm dying on that hill that's cool I can deal with it I feel like if we can get through the time loops and the weirdness of movies like triangle and the weird POV problems that we had with the killer in high tension then this movie isn't really that strange or impossible to get behind so there's that during the pandemic I started rewatching old episodes of unsolved mysteries you would watch these stories about a woman whose daughter had gone missing and the daughter would you'd find out that she had some kind of secret life she was she had a boyfriend that nobody knew about and she had money you know under a rock somewhere and she worked at a topless bar and the mother followed all the clues and brought everything to the police and then she would sit there you know with the laser print you know background behind her and a big frizzy 80s hair and she would say I just know that one day Sarah is going to come home and the episode would end with a no update mm-hmm the reason this is a big deal is if you don't know unsolved mysteries actually still updates their old episodes isn't that wild it is wild which means if there's no update there was no update mm-hmm and so when an episode like that would end with the mother or father or whoever looking hopefully with with so much love and and desperation in their heart and say I know she's going to come home and there would be no update 40 years later it would just make my heart sink that feeling is what this movie is going for mm-hmm I don't think this movie is deeply trying to scare us and if you're scared by this movie that's that's your that's your problem no no people are allowed to be scared with why what scares them you know there are things that there are things that get under my skin that don't get under other people's skin and so on so and so while I didn't find this movie terrifying I didn't find it very effective and I easily watched it all three times that I watched it easily I enjoyed watching these characters struggle with their grief I thought it was a very sad film I thought it was a very powerful film I thought it captured what it was like to go through a tragedy and I thought the acting was really good I thought the whole thing was put together very well and I was just deeply drawn in by every single moment that the movie revealed some new set of secrets so I agree with you completely about plot twists but here's where I disagree number one we've talked about horror movies that try to trick us somewhere halfway through the film that they're not a horror movie which I've always thought was incredibly lame because either you tricked us into coming into a horror movie only to find out that Jason isn't real or Michael Myers is actually somebody else which would be an absolute asinine plot twist so I don't have a problem with the fact that this movie plays a little game with us where it says oh plot twist these photos were largely a hoax because it still explores what that means to the characters it still explores how it hurts the mother how it upsets the father how desperate Matthew is for whatever reason he's desperate it still explains how this family just has to go through tragedy after tragedy after tragedy that happens to people all the time when they suffer it's not just one tragedy they go through it's 10 it's 12 as people play games with them or use them so I think that these bait and switches work I think that the the neighbor is the best one because it allows the parents to both question whether their daughter was hurt but also who their daughter was and how she was involved with these people in a way that they were completely unaware of despite the fact that it might have been happening for a long time and it allows Alice's friends and Alice's boyfriend everybody begins to question what they know but I do think the ghost parts interesting I adored every single time they showed us a photo and they showed us a different perspective on that photo than we had seen before I thought that that was fascinating and I really enjoyed it and it allowed me to every time I rewatched the film to look around and try to see if there was things that the movie wasn't even revealing to us having watched the whole thing are there images of Alice in that story that they just never even show us and I wouldn't put it past them so that's the one thing even though I made the theory that Matthew was the killer sound really fucking stupid that's the one thing that I'll give you is that I would put it past a movie like this to have more secrets that it just never revealed not to cut you off but the idea of the Blair Witch style thing that they're doing of making this look so real is one of the things that led me to that as well because I agree with you they would do that with this kind of film to get people involved to get them they would make a website they would make a fake missing ad that sort of thing and I like that I like that they're going for that in this I like that they're doing it as strong as they are it reminds me of a movie that was called Cashay if I'm remembering correctly that was a really neat little movie about a family that finds a videotape left on their porch and when they watch the videotape all it is is a long stagnant like eight hour shot of their own house and people desperately wanted that movie to be about who sent the tape the movie has no interest in that the movie is about what the tape does to the family who all have secrets that they all start to unravel because they all think that the tape is somebody trying to blackmail them and is about them I thought the movie was great and every time it shows another one of these videos because there are several of them the videos do reveal some secrets sometimes you can't really figure out how they were actually able to tape it and sometimes it actually reveals characters in the frame that shouldn't be at the house you know it reveals little secrets it's a cool little movie it's a really cool movie it's neat but you can't get caught up in the answer because the answer is never revealed sorry guys spoiler alert answers never revealed you'll never know who did it but with so I guess I'm reminded of that film when I think about this I get a lot less caught up in how Alice died to me she just died in an accident and there was just some rift in time or she was more sensitive she had the tragedy of touching the void for some reason and being aware of her own death and while I can get behind that this is maybe not the scariest film ever made and boy oh boy what I do I wish people would stop saying that yeah I do think it's an interesting film nonetheless and I really enjoyed it I think it's worth watching I think it's good I'll actually nod to that I think people should see this I definitely do I don't love it the way everyone else does I don't give it the same title everyone else does but I think it's definitely worth sitting down to even if you fall asleep through it like I did I spent a few years as you know living face to face with my own mortality and I guess part of me feels like with everyone saying so much about this movie is so much about that I would have connected to it better and I didn't maybe I'm a little disappointed in that or in myself or something I don't know but I stand by it watch the movie God I just hope that I don't ever have some sort of vision of my own death only to find out that it's a really stupid death that would be my luck straight down death by I don't know inhaling like when you're drinking a coke and you inhale that one little bead and then I just die yeah right like just holding a chicken wing in your hand right and having the like it beatles you so like having the little choked like the joke piece of meat in your throat and being like not only is my scare because I'm seeing my own death my death was stupid holding holding like a match in one hand and assigning other says do not light match gas gas could cause explosion that's about a bag of marbles that says do not swallow that's me yeah I see that's where I lost my marbles done there we go all right everyone will thank you for listening to the episode we hope you enjoyed it and I didn't so I want to I usually do a plug at the end of the episode but I want to do something else I wanted to come back to a point that we made in our toxic Avenger episode because you and I made the point that people who like politically incorrect humor need to start defending it yes and boy oh boy I'm so happy because an example presented itself we don't need to do reveals and this is not a horror film but you had the chance to see Deadpool versus Wolverine correct oh yes I did have you had a chance to follow the news afterwards because people are not happy with this movie that was wrong with you people like yep I'm gonna say this before you get to your point just because you brought it up it's the same thing I said before about a Godzilla movie I go into that expecting to see large creatures hit each other and have fun watching the fight that's all it's there for Deadpool pretty much the same fucking thing you go in to expect Deadpool to be a weird little asshole in a red suit and I got that I was happy so to share with everyone what's going on number one first of all I fully support that people do not have to like jokes and I fully support their right to be defended offended by them number one number two I think that Deadpool is kind of a movie where you can expect that sort of thing but you still don't have to like it that's totally fine but what happened was is that there are a couple of people that have said that number one there are too many gay jokes number one the number two there is there is a slur in the film if you like squint and you know sort of like cock your head to the side and number three it does not have enough diversity equity and inclusion now I want to be clear I also have the opinion that it is totally okay for a movie to be about politics I am not one of those people I do not support the idea that horror movies or superhero movies or whatever can be about identity I think they can be that's fine I fully support they can make whatever movie they want and I really like movies that are about those things so I'm not one of those people that's like no politics my movies and no identity politics in my movies but you'd have to be a fucking idiot to think that that that that that that movie does not diverse first of all it is about as much as you get yeah it's pretty diverse yeah the three leads are white but one of them is a woman I think Deadpool's sexuality is very questionable so I mean honestly it's not as diverse as the bus full of people in chainsaw massacre but it's as close as you're gonna reach and you could make an argument that Wolverine is a gay bear but right though many people have but that movie had maybe four jokes in it that were politically incorrect and boy oh boy are people going after it and they are calling it homophobic and they're calling it sexist and they're calling it misogynistic and if you like Deadpool Wolverine but but you're not willing to defend politically incorrect humor it's time to start mm-hmm I got to tell you I came out of that film I was talking to a friend of mine about it and they were like did you notice the homo erotic scene and I'm like the fuck are you talking about and their opinion of it was that the fight they had in the Chevy or whatever it was the car in the woods and they're literally trying to kill each other in this car which I thought was very well choreographed and funny as fuck oh yeah it was hilarious they were like the co-exist sign on the back of the exactly exactly and the entire time they're like that was the gayest thing I've ever seen in a movie in a hundred years they were all trying his ass was in his face he laid down on top of him and he had the blood in his teeth and all this shit and he was just trying to they were they're so hard to fuck each other and I'm like you're seeing the movie the way you want to see it you're you're putting your own shit into something that wasn't meant to be there or as you said Deadpool's sexuality is highly up in the air so maybe it was maybe it was but here's a thing didn't give a shit it wasn't the focal point for me so well let's be clear there have always been a lot of jokes like that in Deadpool movies I mean there's a lot of you know sort of like ass slapping and you know he he has a very funny joke early on where he says you know this was in the trailer so where he says you know pegging isn't new to me but it's new to Disney which is very funny it was a very very funny joke and so and there they're always like I'm not saying that this is like me putting my own sexuality on this film they have done that with Deadpool across three movies from the same whether I don't even like calling him a bisexual character because it makes it sound like I'm like obsessed with Deadpool for that reason I'm like finally but I mean it was like okay actually if I'm gonna give the identarians like their own thing I actually did enjoy that he was a bisexual character and that he was so fun like I did I did enjoy that you know usually bisexual characters are fucking insufferable right so where's the representation appreciation for somebody who's actually a wonderful character yes of a fun character look I don't he's not like my moral compass he's not who I want to be when I grow up but but you know but it was fun but so so I'll give it that but then and do I think the movie had like a lot of it did have a lot of like homorata jokes I didn't like that only because it was the same joke over and over and over again right and it was a very small thing about a movie that I really liked that I liked a lot I just was like okay I wish I did just find a few extra you know pick the best ones keep them and unlike the ones that aren't as good you know find some other jokes but that was very very very minimal and that was about joke repetition more than anything right look my point is is that if you were somebody that saw that movie and I understand you're not here to hear about Deadpool you have ever you look there are jokes that have offended me like that's I have there's nothing wrong with being offended by a joke where I have a problem is when people try to take that and then they try to use force to prevent those jokes from happening and yes I do also think that forms of like you know putting a joke out on Facebook and then calling that person's workplace yes I think that that is part of the problem I think that's threatening people and I think that should be a condemned and ridiculed as much as humanly possible yes the amount of times that I would find that to be acceptable is so minimal that they're barely worth even mentioning honestly fuck you guys for doing that shit anyway we will see you next week for Hell Knight looking forward to it yep all right bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
