The Plague (2025) - Summer Camp (Slasher) 3

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[SPEAKER_01]: An Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, teenage boys in Waterpool, O'Gear, a loan adult asking about teamwork, kids cracking jokes, fit only for teenage boy humor, and of course a drawing of a penis, revealed only when the coach erases his game plans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These are the opening moments of today's camp horror entry, Charlie Polanders, 225, the Plague.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In this film, set in 2003, we don't have a masked slasher, nor do we have a camper taking revenge on others who have mistreated them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, we have the genuine awfulness of a group of teenage boys engaging in the grandal game of toxic masculinity and the zero sum game of power.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The main horror of the film revolves around the plague.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is this an illness that marks Elias and outsider?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Or, is it a marked place on the outsider to justify the terrible acts of bullying that ensue?
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[SPEAKER_01]: In part, the film is asking what happens when our own trauma turns into the desire to destroy others.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What happens when the bullied become the bully?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The camp horror of the plague is quite literally the horror of a camp.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There aren't many four social settings that can turn destructive as quickly, and yet, this is a shared horror to which we continue to subject generations of children and teams.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps the horror here is exacerbated by its inevitability.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, awful things will happen in the suspended social order that is camp.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And again, where are the adults?
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[SPEAKER_00]: In her review of the plague, Tina Cacadellus reminds readers that we have a variety of films dealing with such pre-teen horrors of teenage girls at a lessons, adding, quote, films that center on teenage boys tend to fall to either end of a spectrum.
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[SPEAKER_00]: either comedy or immense brutality.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We have super bad or a clockwork orange and fairly little in-between, which is what makes the plague such an urgent piece of filmmaking.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's bullying and there are moments of comedy, but the film is an anxiety-ridden return to middle school where life exists in the murky middle and quote,
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, grab your speedo and get ready for some water cardio.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to play a game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Water polo with some social and body horror.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There aren't any smartphones here, so remember to bring your favorite CDs along and some quarters for the payphone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Don't stay on the sauna too long, but even if you catch the plague, don't worry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll let loose to feeling so real with you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is Orjoy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Where are you house?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Brandon Eugene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Jeff Stone enough.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're two University professors celebrating the emotional and intellectual joys of horror.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, ins.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We are back, continuing along our camp horror series.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not a slasher today, Brian.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I really, I think, intriguing film, Charlie Pollinger's
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[SPEAKER_01]: summer water polo camp for preteen teenage ish boys and there's also girls on the other side we'll get that later in 2003 so some nostalgia for you and I imagine being the age that we are but also some nostalgia in really bad ways what's the what's bad nostalgia called trauma is that what bad nostalgia is?
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[SPEAKER_01]: with some of the camp elements and the interrelationships of all of the characters in this film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But before we jump ahead long or dive maybe a good metaphor here given that it's about waterfall though into the pool that is the plague.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give a shout out to another local business here in the Central P.A.
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[SPEAKER_01]: area and that is of course our good friends at next chapter
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked about next chapter on the pod before.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They are an excellent independent workshop here in Central Pennsylvania, particularly in Holidaysburg in the historic district on the diamond.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So listeners, if you are a local listener in the Central PA area, make sure that you go to next chapter and support them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can find their link tree for next chapter bookshop at linktr.e slash next chapter bookshop, where you can find all of their social media presences, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, or you can of course use bookshop.org to order your books through bookshop.org while giving some credit to the independent bookstore that is next chapter bookshop.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let us get into the plague.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Brian, we have not a necessarily a camp slasher at this point.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So something you and I talked about in planning for this episode, wondering, do we do it?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You watched the movie for the first time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I rewatched the film because I saw it in theaters when it was out in, I think, the winter might have been January or February when I got around here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just a really uncomfortable movie that I think is really well-made.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is apparently Charlie Poland's first film that he's directed and written.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is a name maybe listeners worth looking out for to see what Charlie has in store for us in the future.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're listening for whatever reason Charlie, please reach out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We would love to have you on the podcast to interview about this movie.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I never went to camp Brian, I'll admit other than band camp, which is like Q American Pie jokes here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of 2003, I'm recognized a little earlier.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think listeners.
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[SPEAKER_01]: everything every reason why I never wanted to go to camp is expressed pretty much in the first 15 minutes of this film and it just makes your skin crawl.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We have our main character Ben who is new to the camp and he is trying to fit into this very Lord of the flies ask scenario where it is the youth controlling everything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is
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[SPEAKER_01]: one character who is an adult, that's Joel Edgerton, who plays Daddy Wags.
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[SPEAKER_01]: His name is Daddy Wags, listeners.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, this is the adult.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What seems to be relatively wealthy people, parents in 2003 entrusted
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[SPEAKER_01]: they're children with daddy wax.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The perfect dual nutrition role, this man plays just these very strange rules like this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But in this movie, he is the adult and he's not very good at adultsing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a really great scene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll maybe talk about later at the restaurant where Ben does eventually try to escape, but just can't.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's brought back because the parents want nothing to do with their kids throughout this movie too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe something we're talking about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's not a slasher like we said and as far as camp horror goes we don't have a body count really Brian instead we just have this sort of ensuing social trauma the body horror that we get with this play whether it's real or not he like who is this eccentric kid and everyone knew and he like or maybe you were the Eli I think academics oftentimes we were the Eli we weren't the weird eccentric kid that was eating paste in the corner or something
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[SPEAKER_01]: Eli has this Betty Boop cut out that he's dancing with at one point.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He does the Lord of the Rings impressions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He seems really precious, but the rest of the kids found out that he's weird.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, they just pick on him relentlessly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And listeners, a few were ever bullied as a child or a teenager.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this movie is going to trigger some feelings of that because it gets it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It gets it really well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to spoil too much more of the film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What happens here at the end, just lead in Brian with this idea that we have a horror that is more maybe psychological, more body horror and a social order horror, if you will.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this is your first time seeing it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd kind of just like to hear your initial reaction to after you finished doing the film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I will say that I absolutely love this movie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that there are these shots at the beginning and throughout of underwater.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it creates this tension and sense of dread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be honest, right, I was really worried because some of the first shots were these like squiggling squirming bodies that you see underneath and the kids are trying to tread water so their heads are above water, but we're seeing it from below and I was like, oh no, oh no, are we going to get some squiggling squirming headless bodies by the end of this movie?
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[SPEAKER_00]: very concerned.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I think we'll keep spoilers to a minimum here until at least we announced that we'll spoil it for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can leave if you haven't seen it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I really highly recommend this movie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So these scenes underwater, creating dread, the music, I think is on point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty minimalist in some ways, but it's just really spot on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: creates is consistent with and I don't know it, this is, I think this is a horror movie and while it's not a slasher, Ben and Eli both rip it up on a dance floor, am I right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a slasher for sure, but I think that shares some aspects of the slasher in the sense that number one, I don't know if this is a spoiler or not the folks, but there's no supernatural element here, this is all grounded in reality.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, there's this kind of always creeping dread of what's around the corner.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously in slasher as we get this transgression of who is and who's not going to be killed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And part of that is based on the morality of the given context in which we're living.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in many ways, I think the plague as the story mechanism for who's in and who's out does some of this stuff, did you break the rules?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you broke the rules in your out, you cannot be in and so you're out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're out, you're dead, you're dead to the.
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[SPEAKER_00]: world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the plague, I think, is set up as a game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I will also say that for me, it remains unclear whether or not the plague is real or not.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, if that's a spoiler, maybe we can cut it, Jeff, you can tell me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, first viewing, I will say just incredible tone was good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: loved the music in terms of being a first-time director really impressive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It got me thinking about plague stories a little bit and I think I want to send it back to you with that question first about what the plague as a kind of narrative mechanism or device.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's it doing here?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously
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[SPEAKER_00]: we have to talk about power and surveillance, I think here, but just at the outset, Jeff, it's called the plague.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is a game that they play in some part.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't it a game we all play in social settings?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, what's the plague doing here?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How does it match up with some other plague stories?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the plague.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What are we doing here with the plague?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Aren't you lucky Brian that your partner in crime here is a medievalist?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Unless there's aren't you lucky that I am a medievalist and here to talk about the plague, the moment I've been waiting for my entire academic career, I'm not going to go too deep into the plague, but I think it's interesting that this is not the first time, nor will be the last time that the plague is used as an narrative device as a way to like move our plot forward.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Listeners, you might be familiar with Picachios, the De Cameron, which is written during the plague, and the story told within the tale is literally like during the Black Death, and so all the characters have moved off into the countryside to avoid urban centers to try to avoid the spreading in the plague.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's not quite the way that it's used here as a neurological device.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, it's just a way to create an in-group in an out-group.
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[SPEAKER_01]: like we talked about in the cold open, it's unclear whether it's real and you said you're still unclear whether it's real or not, but or like is this something that the group is just assigning to Eli so that like they can pretend they have a justification for treating him so terribly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did come across an interview that Polinger did with filmmaker magazine and apparently he says the play is based on a game that he had experienced, like at camp himself as a kid, so there's some precedent there, like in his own autobiographical experience and some of this film is quasi-autobiographical from what he says in the interview.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But here for us for us viewers who don't know that who aren't reading interviews with the director, it's, I think you're right.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think the movie does a really nice job of keeping us anxious about whether or not the play gets real.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So initially you're like, come on.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like you are just making fun of the Chubby Kid, who has like, Xima or something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's,
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's what you're using the Blake for, like you are trying to isolate him because you don't want him around you because for whatever reason he's different and he annoys you and camp social constructs, camp social orders are built that way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like where, you know, the folks who are weaker, different get chopped off side and you have someone who becomes like their own little mini king, which is Jake in this case, the ringleader, if you will, of the group.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then
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[SPEAKER_01]: or XMA, whatever it is.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, y'all, it's the early 2000s.
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[SPEAKER_01]: God only knows what they're putting in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's pools chlorine and other chemicals.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have any type of sensitive skin, you probably have the plague too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then they try to make more to the story, right Brian?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like they
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[SPEAKER_01]: attribute Eli's eccentricity to the plague, the reason that he's like sort of dancing by himself and just being weird.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They say that, oh yeah, that's, that's gone to his brain now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like the plague has begun to affect his brain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it becomes like a borderline zombie movie and it's strange way, at least the way that the characters and the film we're talking about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then Ben, who is such a sweet kid and the actor who plays Ben is such a good actor.
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[SPEAKER_01]: movies as well, really good young actor, hopefully there's good things ahead of for him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Has a speech impediment in Jake picks up on it right away.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He can't say stop.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He says stop instead.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So there's something about like unable to say the S followed by the T. So they call him soppy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's the nickname they give him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I like this is common for kids camps.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The kids give a show they're really terrible nicknames because kids are generally terrible
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[SPEAKER_01]: these kids are awful to each other.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe worse than sleep-away camp, interestingly enough, because they're not just tropes in stereotypes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sleep-away camp, a lot of these characters who tropes in stereotypes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These seem like fleshed out characters.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These kids even jake.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's a little shit, but he's definitely like a little shit with some depth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in some reason, too, which again, I don't want to jump ahead.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll come back to that later.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like some of these kids reflect
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[SPEAKER_01]: the way adults behave around them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So they're only reflecting what they know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, the plague itself and seems like he wants to not be those jerks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to be a friend to Eli.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So like he talks to him and then at one point in the film, he even offers to help put on
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[SPEAKER_01]: the I'm assuming court is own cream of some sort to like help with whatever the dermatitis or exima is and of course Jake sees this and it's there's all sorts of insulations made where he's given him a back rub so obviously there's like you know oh gay but also now Ben has the plague because he's touched the skin so he has the plague too and now we have to isolate him and that like that's horrifying for Ben and then he begins developing
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this eventual outburst that Eli, which will come around too later, I'm sure he's just it's stress it's all this stress that's built into it they torture him like in the the shared bunk space at night they make fun of him for what I assume is a wet dream.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I really don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're left guessing the entire time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I leave the movie and I'm thinking like, no, these kids are just assholes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this is just like some type of dermatitis that was not treated right because the only adult bear who's paying attention to anything is Daddy Wags who sucks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is job is camp counselor.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not really good at it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't answer your question there, Brian, Adal, about what the plague is doing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is constantly driving the movie though.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's that like you said, it's that sense of dread.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think your left this entire movie, wondering, is this next scene gonna be the reveal?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where the plague is real?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Are we gonna go full substance?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And are either Eli or Ben gonna like do the Demi Moore like where their body just contorts and they'd become something else?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And spoiler alert listeners, but that never happens.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like this isn't ruining the movie for you, but it is not that sort of film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just the expectation and the thought and it's like built in and then you start doubting it yourself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It messes with your head honestly, like even as a viewer and you think back to like, oh man, like, if I had like some of our dermatitis, do I have the plague?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, like what's actually going on here?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a it's weaponized for sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: by Jake and some of the other characters who are like his minions, who are somehow worse than Jake, like less likable because they're his toties.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Brian, I guess I guess I'll turn this back to you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you've any more thoughts on how the playcs working in the film, you know, please share them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I want your thoughts on Jake, and I want to know like how you see him functioning as the stereotypical or in that traditional camp bully role and how that's contributing to
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a couple of things that I was thinking about in terms of the plague, you can correct me to here, jump in, if you'd like, in many instances, especially when we tell stories about the plague or tell stories about communities that have a plague, and some way it helps to explain the travesties and the hardships that are coming upon a community, oh, this person brought in the plague,
18:32.290 --> 18:34.372
[SPEAKER_00]: They are being scapegoated, right?
18:34.412 --> 18:36.693
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mechanism for scapegoating in some way.
18:37.054 --> 18:43.158
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's this tension between what, like, Derrieda would call the pharmacon.
18:43.859 --> 18:48.963
[SPEAKER_00]: And this idea is that the pharmacon plays both as potion and poison.
18:49.523 --> 18:52.546
[SPEAKER_00]: It's both the thing that heals in the thing that brings sickness.
18:53.166 --> 19:00.411
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's really partly what's going on is that if you can expel Eli from the group, we can have way more fun.
19:00.871 --> 19:01.692
[SPEAKER_00]: He's so weird.
19:02.072 --> 19:06.115
[SPEAKER_00]: He just ruins the fun, expel him and we can save the group.
19:06.795 --> 19:11.138
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if anything bad happens, we can also blame him for the things that happen.
19:11.599 --> 19:13.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Now when Ben comes in, he's the outsider.
19:14.080 --> 19:16.042
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's not bringing the plague.
19:16.582 --> 19:21.346
[SPEAKER_00]: but he's a new element that they don't know what to do with.
19:21.906 --> 19:30.632
[SPEAKER_00]: And at first, he's like sweet and he's a little bit awkward, but he's not like super awkward, so he sits down and he's joking with them.
19:31.533 --> 19:34.816
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you said, they find out that he's got this speech impediment.
19:34.836 --> 19:37.578
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, stop instead of stop and they call him soppy.
19:38.238 --> 19:44.623
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that plays with that tension too of that farmer kind of both being potion and poison, because at first, it's kind of endearing.
19:45.243 --> 19:46.624
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, hey, Soppy, what's up?
19:46.684 --> 19:47.884
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just your nickname.
19:48.364 --> 19:50.905
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually an indication of being on the inside.
19:51.685 --> 19:55.746
[SPEAKER_00]: And later, it turns into something that is poisonous.
19:56.246 --> 19:58.407
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that marks him as outside.
19:58.847 --> 19:59.847
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they make fun of him.
19:59.988 --> 20:01.248
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no longer endearing.
20:01.628 --> 20:05.989
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that pushes him off as an outsider, as an other, as something that's marked.
20:06.369 --> 20:06.990
[SPEAKER_00]: I am with you.
20:07.170 --> 20:08.610
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, ever plunk.
20:08.810 --> 20:09.790
[SPEAKER_00]: It does a really good job.
20:09.851 --> 20:11.411
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been kale, Martin.
20:12.031 --> 20:12.571
[SPEAKER_00]: As Jake.
20:13.031 --> 20:13.372
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
20:13.412 --> 20:14.032
[SPEAKER_00]: He hits it out of the
20:14.872 --> 20:23.599
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just got that look like innocent kid, but behind it, you know, he's just up to no good.
20:23.619 --> 20:31.705
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's two things that come to mind with Jake, especially number one is the way that power works in any given dynamic.
20:32.830 --> 20:45.554
[SPEAKER_00]: and he takes over the role of a aggressor, the other kids, they just do what he says and for whatever reason, because if you get on the wrong side of Jake, then you're on the outside.
20:46.254 --> 20:57.897
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he fills that vacuum in, but like you said, he's also a kid, he's 13 years old, and it's very likely that he feels powerless in so many other places, so many other contexts.
20:58.377 --> 20:59.317
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's his family.
20:59.337 --> 21:00.178
[SPEAKER_00]: He feels powerless.
21:00.198 --> 21:01.938
[SPEAKER_00]: He talks at one point about his older brother.
21:02.418 --> 21:04.479
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's at school where he feels powerless.
21:04.499 --> 21:05.439
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a good student.
21:05.520 --> 21:05.960
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
21:06.500 --> 21:10.001
[SPEAKER_00]: But he, I think, is trying to assert himself as somebody who has power.
21:10.101 --> 21:10.681
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll go ahead Jeff.
21:10.721 --> 21:14.763
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to jump into a quick, and there's that moment in the film where, like, again, there's this really good writing.
21:14.803 --> 21:17.344
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's some backstory given for Jake's character.
21:17.784 --> 21:22.345
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the other characters I forget to, it might be Julian, it might be TikTok.
21:22.385 --> 21:23.806
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the other guys in his crew.
21:24.446 --> 21:28.068
[SPEAKER_01]: asks, hey, weren't you just here for like the previous week of camp?
21:28.429 --> 21:29.789
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you here for the second week of camp?
21:30.370 --> 21:31.410
[SPEAKER_01]: And he brushes it off.
21:31.470 --> 21:34.873
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, you know, my my dad forgot or something.
21:35.153 --> 21:37.554
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, it's because this dad did not want him around.
21:37.914 --> 21:41.957
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, then it's when to like say that we got that information.
21:42.399 --> 21:42.959
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's right.
21:43.120 --> 21:49.004
[SPEAKER_00]: It does feel either like negligence or just being cast aside as something that's not worthy.
21:49.584 --> 21:55.749
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you get into a context and you can take over and you can be the guy, then you can feel really good about yourself.
21:56.209 --> 22:00.112
[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, like, is Jake the villain in many ways, yes.
22:00.352 --> 22:01.693
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jake is also 13.
22:02.174 --> 22:05.296
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we get daddy wags who's just awful at his job.
22:05.336 --> 22:07.758
[SPEAKER_00]: We can maybe say that daddy wags is the real villain.
22:08.338 --> 22:10.801
[SPEAKER_00]: As hard as he's trying to do a good job, he's awful at it.
22:11.121 --> 22:17.026
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just terrible and allows for all the stuff to happen and we can get to, you know, the consequences, et cetera, et cetera.
22:17.427 --> 22:23.212
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing that I wanted to mention though really quickly, especially with Jake, is the idea of surveillance.
22:23.552 --> 22:26.995
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned the transfer of the plague.
22:27.396 --> 22:31.840
[SPEAKER_00]: So the game that they're playing with the plague, I don't actually think it's the plague.
22:32.380 --> 22:33.580
[SPEAKER_00]: But is it communicable?
22:33.780 --> 22:35.141
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's really the question.
22:35.601 --> 22:40.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Does Ben actually get something that causes his skin to have a rash?
22:41.643 --> 22:42.503
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, right?
22:42.523 --> 22:43.664
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk about the phases.
22:44.164 --> 22:50.966
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus the rash, then you get mental fog or you can't move your muscles right or whatever, whatever.
22:51.947 --> 22:59.729
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know where Jake was or it didn't seem like anybody else was in the locker room to see that happen.
23:02.193 --> 23:04.375
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it seems like they're being watched at every moment.
23:04.875 --> 23:13.782
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only that, but as soon as Ben learns about the plague, he's constantly watching his own skin for an outbreak.
23:14.442 --> 23:15.523
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he have it on his face?
23:15.863 --> 23:16.984
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he have it on his side?
23:17.345 --> 23:18.826
[SPEAKER_00]: And now he's self-survelling.
23:19.346 --> 23:33.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Which again, when we think about context, especially now here technologically, we're always self-surveiling ourselves, are we in or are we out creating power structures, trying to set ourselves up in the vacuum to be something good or not good?
23:34.488 --> 23:38.693
[SPEAKER_00]: and we're self surveilling to make sure that we match up with those standards of here.
23:38.853 --> 23:41.596
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like standards of beauty, maybe a standards of skincare.
23:41.676 --> 23:46.081
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know, but once you stop meeting those standards, you get pushed out.
23:46.621 --> 23:48.363
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I don't know if you have any thoughts.
23:48.443 --> 23:51.827
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you, you know, we've talked about focco and surveillance and
23:52.788 --> 23:53.989
[SPEAKER_00]: power structures a lot here.
23:54.469 --> 24:10.340
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to take it up from there, what you see going on with either Jake or even Eli as the scapegoat at the beginning, what's happening there, any other thoughts about, yeah, about Jake throw it back to you.
24:11.705 --> 24:16.428
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm going to do a quick call back to what we talked about in the sleep way camp episode.
24:17.608 --> 24:32.176
[SPEAKER_01]: I know T talked through a bit, but I think our origin for the discussion of the male gaze was from the notes on sleep way camp essay by Viet Jin in Jovelisa's collection.
24:32.196 --> 24:33.137
[SPEAKER_01]: It came from the closet.
24:34.433 --> 24:48.098
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jean talks about Laura Mulvey, Laura Mulvey is the person who develops this theory of just feminist theorist who comes up with the fear of the male gaze, enter in 1975 as a visual pleasure and narrative cinema.
24:48.578 --> 24:51.779
[SPEAKER_01]: The male gaze, like the listeners, I think we'd talk about it then, but just quickly define it.
24:51.799 --> 25:01.723
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the idea that the camera and every sort of perspective that we get, whether it's artwork or a photograph or a movie in this case,
25:02.463 --> 25:08.030
[SPEAKER_01]: is directed at the ends of the patriarchal male gaze like it is what those eyes want to see.
25:08.430 --> 25:12.395
[SPEAKER_01]: This film does a really good job of flipping that on its head, where we do see that.
25:12.495 --> 25:16.199
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we do get that with these young teenage boys looking at the girls.
25:16.740 --> 25:18.762
[SPEAKER_01]: We're also there for water polo camp or like
25:20.003 --> 25:22.345
[SPEAKER_01]: Synchronized swimming camp or something.
25:22.385 --> 25:34.353
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is, but they're there for a water camp of some sort and and they're sharing the same pool and so the the boys are watching them like like young boys would want to our want to do like.
25:35.314 --> 25:36.476
[SPEAKER_00]: but they're also watching each other.
25:36.796 --> 25:53.937
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that like so at the very beginning I talked about this squirming headless bodies because the girls are doing synchronized swimming, it's flipped exactly so their heads are underneath the water right and it's just this really cool thing where things get fully flipped.
25:54.618 --> 25:57.624
[SPEAKER_00]: And the boys are doing water polo, it's aggressive.
25:58.165 --> 26:02.113
[SPEAKER_00]: The girls are doing this dance stuff, which is just a little bit more graceful.
26:02.534 --> 26:06.001
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to jump in, but like there's a cool flip that happens there.
26:06.746 --> 26:07.926
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
26:08.227 --> 26:21.991
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is, I don't want to assign intent to anything that the director's doing here, but it seems that when you're making a film in the year 2025, you're likely aware of things like the male gaze.
26:22.412 --> 26:34.396
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're making a body horror film, that's focusing on teenage boys, this is something that the film critic that you quoted in the code open, Tina Kakadela, like she talks about, where we don't get a lot of these movies that deal with
26:35.156 --> 26:41.440
[SPEAKER_01]: teenage boys figuring out what their bodies do, how they work in serious ways, like you get super bad.
26:41.900 --> 26:45.362
[SPEAKER_01]: The example she gives us are the spectrum of super bad or a clockwork orange.
26:46.103 --> 26:53.628
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, super bad is like short of the shared drawing of penises, the Jonah Hills character does
26:54.568 --> 27:08.601
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not a lot in comment between Superbatten and this movie, but there are so many shots in this film where it's the boys watching other boys watch the girls or the boys watching the boys watch somebody else.
27:09.262 --> 27:11.284
[SPEAKER_01]: So, movie made in 2025, set in 2003,
27:15.636 --> 27:31.860
[SPEAKER_01]: We are at the height of domestic surveillance under whatever executive order it was the George W. Bush passed after 911, but it is the idea where the US government can spy on its citizens without any type of warrants for wire taps or anything like that.
27:32.280 --> 27:34.341
[SPEAKER_01]: Patriot Act, of course, the Patriot Act.
27:34.761 --> 27:37.002
[SPEAKER_01]: So why should I be surprised that it's not the Patriot Act?
27:37.082 --> 27:42.423
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always wrapped in some type of gingoistic language when we're trying to take rights away from people with health, the Patriot Act.
27:43.344 --> 27:48.919
[SPEAKER_01]: like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and all of these things, so like, again.
27:50.199 --> 28:01.087
[SPEAKER_01]: As we've done throughout our podcast history, as we've done throughout this campus series, especially, is Paulinger actively commenting on the Bush administration in 2003.
28:01.447 --> 28:02.027
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
28:02.508 --> 28:05.670
[SPEAKER_01]: However, the movie is very clearly set in 2003.
28:06.050 --> 28:12.535
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like that type of surveillance happening is really interesting to me, especially from the focotein perspective that you're talking about Brian, where
28:13.335 --> 28:22.519
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just the idea that we're being surveilled, but we're so then accustomed to being surveilled, like the Stockholm syndrome thing happening here, where then we'll begin surveilling each other.
28:23.119 --> 28:27.281
[SPEAKER_01]: To how that works with Jake and Ben, especially, I want to turn to that quickly and then I'll turn this back to you.
28:27.461 --> 28:27.702
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
28:28.762 --> 28:31.583
[SPEAKER_01]: Jake is always watching Ben at the first half of the film.
28:31.723 --> 28:40.406
[SPEAKER_01]: You see all of these shots where like Jake is just like staring at Ben and this is really underving for Ben and like if you're one of these people who doesn't like maintaining eye contact, I'm there with you.
28:40.426 --> 28:42.347
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate maintaining eye contact with people.
28:42.707 --> 28:43.527
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really underving.
28:44.148 --> 28:45.908
[SPEAKER_01]: That part of the film's little upsetting.
28:46.308 --> 28:55.532
[SPEAKER_01]: After we have this turn where the group has decided that Ben now has the plague as well, we see these shots where Ben is just staring at Jake.
28:56.432 --> 29:20.720
[SPEAKER_01]: as he's like picking his thumb or whatever it is he's doing as a narrative as tick, but he's like just dead-eyed because he has been so traumatized by everything that's happened in this film and this is interestingly Brian where we see this like power shift where Jake is no longer in control because he's gotten in trouble not just once but at this point it this will hasn't happened yet at this point in the film but he will get in trouble a second time and spoiler
29:22.501 --> 29:24.243
[SPEAKER_01]: he's then removed from the camp.
29:24.884 --> 29:29.549
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's kind of when we see that Ben began just staring back at Jake.
29:29.589 --> 29:33.713
[SPEAKER_01]: That seems to be where we see Jake's power again to fail.
29:33.733 --> 29:38.338
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't ever alienate his crew from him.
29:38.939 --> 29:39.780
[SPEAKER_01]: Jake's crew that is.
29:40.320 --> 29:49.205
[SPEAKER_01]: But it definitely makes Ben no longer his target or Ben like somehow gains some type of respect or independence here.
29:49.585 --> 29:50.926
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's something you might never try for.
29:51.346 --> 30:01.232
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask you, because there are moments when Ben and Eli are having their interactions where Eli is eccentric and Eli is being bullied.
30:02.192 --> 30:13.436
[SPEAKER_01]: But he also seems to have like a weird manipulative streak himself, where he does the thing with the finger, where he goes off into the weird different voices and he tells these stories.
30:13.496 --> 30:20.078
[SPEAKER_01]: And he seems to like be trying to either impress Ben or try to like just feel him out.
30:20.098 --> 30:21.199
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he like what Ben's gonna do?
30:21.219 --> 30:22.980
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe that's just because he's gun shy.
30:23.040 --> 30:27.421
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of like when he when he is his authentic self to people around him, they alienate him.
30:27.761 --> 30:29.562
[SPEAKER_01]: And accuse him of having a plague or something.
30:30.122 --> 30:35.426
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I got out what you're saying there with surveillance, but it just strikes me when this movie set.
30:35.446 --> 30:39.128
[SPEAKER_01]: You can pre-selfen because like no one has smartphones in this movie at all.
30:39.629 --> 30:41.150
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so I mean, I'll turn it back to you.
30:41.750 --> 30:44.452
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw like you, you had a thought and want to get back to what you're thinking.
30:45.484 --> 30:48.385
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think the idea that, so they're looking at each other.
30:48.425 --> 30:49.925
[SPEAKER_00]: They're watching each other very closely.
30:49.965 --> 30:51.806
[SPEAKER_00]: This definitely plays into two things.
30:51.846 --> 30:56.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, there's surveillance and two, the competitive nature of water polo.
30:56.627 --> 30:59.808
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're dealing with a clear zero sum.
30:59.888 --> 31:01.789
[SPEAKER_00]: So we mentioned zero sum game in the cold open.
31:02.649 --> 31:04.209
[SPEAKER_00]: And water polo is that.
31:04.349 --> 31:05.810
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a winner and there's a loser.
31:06.310 --> 31:10.071
[SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like the social setting is set up as a competition.
31:10.891 --> 31:12.852
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jake wants to be on the winning team.
31:14.169 --> 31:18.154
[SPEAKER_00]: And to do that, he has to create a loser and Eli is that loser.
31:18.674 --> 31:22.038
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course Ben and part becomes part of the loser team.
31:22.775 --> 31:37.138
[SPEAKER_00]: The one thing that I wanted to jump in with and this coincides with the Patriot Act and surveillance is in 2002, no child left behind was also passed, and this inacts a different kind of surveillance.
31:37.718 --> 31:49.000
[SPEAKER_00]: Children were now put under the thumb of standardized testing, which required them to, again, self-surveille in a sense of meeting the standards
31:52.641 --> 31:53.703
[SPEAKER_00]: matching the benchmarks.
31:54.323 --> 32:02.073
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about somebody like Jake, if he's not meeting those standards, maybe again, he's feeling like he's being pushed out.
32:02.133 --> 32:04.336
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the loser in that system.
32:04.736 --> 32:08.561
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure if that's the case, but like you said, there's got to be a deliberate reason for this being 2003.
32:08.621 --> 32:09.882
[SPEAKER_00]: And Patriot Act 2001.
32:12.180 --> 32:21.337
[SPEAKER_00]: No child left behind 2002, we're right smack dab in the middle of children being especially the subjects of surveillance.
32:22.238 --> 32:24.543
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I read Eli's kind of
32:25.657 --> 32:27.458
[SPEAKER_00]: Quarkiness a little bit differently.
32:28.179 --> 32:35.043
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hear what you're saying in terms of its manipulation, maybe I read this as authenticity.
32:35.523 --> 32:40.266
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's just a weird dude and like he doesn't care, right?
32:40.946 --> 32:43.428
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe he doesn't like being bullied who does.
32:43.528 --> 32:44.648
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody likes being bullied.
32:45.149 --> 32:50.932
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, he's just like doing the voices and he's doing the little weird trick with his thumb.
32:51.793 --> 32:51.953
[SPEAKER_00]: And
32:52.693 --> 32:59.596
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all of that stuff, I don't know if that's authenticity or, like you said, it's another way of trying to wrestle power away.
32:59.616 --> 33:11.081
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what I'd like to do is I'd like to say, like, hey, if you've been listening so far, we've had a few spoilers, you know, hopefully that didn't ruin anything for you, but at this point, let's go full spoiler.
33:11.381 --> 33:12.602
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's go, right?
33:12.782 --> 33:14.443
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you haven't watched the film,
33:15.712 --> 33:16.973
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe it's time to take a pause.
33:17.533 --> 33:18.194
[SPEAKER_00]: Go watch it.
33:18.414 --> 33:19.414
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really good.
33:19.634 --> 33:23.297
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the best horror films I think I've seen in a while and come back.
33:23.577 --> 33:26.278
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just want to get into some of the stuff that happens.
33:26.679 --> 33:33.423
[SPEAKER_00]: That shift that you were talking about when all of a sudden Ben is picking his fingers.
33:33.523 --> 33:35.364
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is just staring at
33:37.045 --> 33:37.345
[SPEAKER_00]: Jake.
33:37.785 --> 33:42.948
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I thought those headless squiggling bodies was going to come out.
33:43.208 --> 33:45.670
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I thought maybe we're going full slasher.
33:46.110 --> 34:00.678
[SPEAKER_00]: Ben is going to unleash a rage that would match something like carry if not telepathically in some way the body count that this would result in that whole crew going down.
34:01.638 --> 34:02.460
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what happens.
34:02.840 --> 34:04.984
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, if you see in the movie, you know that's not what happens.
34:05.464 --> 34:11.394
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's important too because in many ways we're not getting Jake as an absolute villain.
34:12.215 --> 34:14.840
[SPEAKER_00]: We're getting Jake as problematic.
34:15.441 --> 34:16.262
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a dick.
34:17.166 --> 34:17.586
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
34:17.746 --> 34:18.546
[SPEAKER_00]: He really is.
34:18.986 --> 34:22.767
[SPEAKER_00]: He draws penises on the board and like the coaches erasing it.
34:23.087 --> 34:27.829
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes all snide comments to daddy wags and daddy wags can't do anything about it.
34:27.889 --> 34:31.789
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy wags is not the top of the social ladder here.
34:32.450 --> 34:33.650
[SPEAKER_00]: Jake is, right?
34:33.710 --> 34:39.071
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy wags is somewhere closer to Eli in many ways, but he also has institutional power.
34:39.111 --> 34:40.912
[SPEAKER_00]: So he sends Jake away.
34:41.432 --> 34:44.792
[SPEAKER_00]: And when his brother picks him up, we get two things.
34:47.873 --> 34:50.314
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did you make me drive out here to pick you up?
34:50.354 --> 34:52.694
[SPEAKER_00]: And number two, at least I'm assuming it's his brother.
34:52.734 --> 34:53.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm wrong.
34:53.835 --> 35:00.116
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what I thought was it was too young to be his dad, and that showed negligence on behalf of his dad.
35:00.636 --> 35:01.797
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that he has a brother.
35:02.157 --> 35:06.418
[SPEAKER_00]: His brother is also in water, Polo, because he was telling Ben about all the tricks.
35:06.438 --> 35:14.580
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to keep your fingernails a little bit long, and you got to keep them rounded, and then like sharpen them before the game, so you can scratch other people.
35:15.794 --> 35:22.756
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, maybe it's his dad, maybe it's his brother, but the way I read it was that it was his brother who was just annoyed at him.
35:23.217 --> 35:25.497
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is much higher on the power,
35:33.920 --> 35:36.083
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe he just doesn't care enough to go get him.
35:36.643 --> 35:38.004
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I don't know.
35:38.205 --> 35:49.796
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that we've gone full spoiler mode Jeff, do you have anything to say about, especially that second half, the turning point where Ben becomes part of the plague cast, right?
35:49.836 --> 35:54.180
[SPEAKER_00]: He's now in the plague team as it were.
35:55.001 --> 35:58.904
[SPEAKER_00]: He turns his rage onto Jake, and at some point they fight.
35:59.404 --> 36:04.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, they fight in the pool, and this ultimately leads to Jake getting kicked out.
36:05.227 --> 36:07.329
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, what does that turn do?
36:07.469 --> 36:10.091
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like, I read this as horror.
36:10.891 --> 36:19.899
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much dread here, but how can we read this second half as horror, as a horror movie, especially given, that there's not really a body count.
36:20.360 --> 36:26.305
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, I'll let you take Eli, the recall of his thumb trick, and see where we go with that.
36:28.812 --> 36:30.314
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good point that we don't have any body count.
36:30.334 --> 36:34.019
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what when we were prepping, I was thinking, like, does anyone die in this movie?
36:34.079 --> 36:35.621
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer is no, no one dies.
36:36.041 --> 36:37.223
[SPEAKER_01]: You're waiting for it, though.
36:37.704 --> 36:44.833
[SPEAKER_01]: The entire time, there's an interesting commentary on bullying with Ben and Jake's interaction here.
36:45.353 --> 36:58.100
[SPEAKER_01]: in playing water pool in the pool where Ben is scratching Jake and like you could just see all of the frustration that he's trying to take out of him and then Jake goes to daddy wags and it's like, calm, blow the whistle, calm penalty.
36:58.360 --> 37:00.982
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just fighting with the the rough essentially at that point.
37:01.342 --> 37:02.223
[SPEAKER_01]: And daddy wags is like,
37:02.883 --> 37:24.964
[SPEAKER_01]: get out of here and then Jacob goes and like just sucker punches Ben right in the face and like yes that's when Jake finally gets expelled from the camp it takes him not literally knocking Ben out in the pool which is highly dangerous I imagine given you could drown to be removed from the camp I'm sorry I'm trying to like inhabit the headspace of someone that's not me but
37:25.064 --> 37:30.206
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm trying to inhabit the headspace of someone who's like, ah, let him be boys, let him fight it out.
37:30.266 --> 37:42.352
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the way that pretty much off most of the adults were around me and my friend group when we were kids just kind of like the Lord of the flies and get up, not quite to this extent, but not super dissimilar either.
37:42.372 --> 37:48.995
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't just because that's the way that we've constantly done social learning and acclamation.
37:50.295 --> 37:51.537
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, that makes it good.
37:52.197 --> 37:56.602
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see these kids, like, they're these really heart-breaking moments almost.
37:56.662 --> 38:04.249
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's the scene where Ben has, at this point, been diagnosed, quote-unquote, with the plague, and he's eating in a classroom.
38:04.610 --> 38:06.752
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's just eating by himself in a classroom.
38:06.772 --> 38:11.577
[SPEAKER_01]: This is after he was been made fun of for Soppy having the plague now.
38:12.037 --> 38:13.638
[SPEAKER_01]: and then also for being a vegetarian.
38:13.979 --> 38:17.882
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets made fun of that as well because he's not eating meat and Jake picks on him for that then too.
38:18.182 --> 38:29.611
[SPEAKER_01]: So he goes to eat lunch by himself and one of the other characters, Tic Tac, who is this little just adorable little kid with a British accent, brings his goggles to him because Ben left his goggles in the pool.
38:30.652 --> 38:32.393
[SPEAKER_01]: But he won't like get close to Ben.
38:32.813 --> 38:36.995
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd like put some on the table and Ben's like, you don't really think I have the plague.
38:37.035 --> 38:37.395
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you?
38:37.795 --> 38:38.756
[SPEAKER_01]: And needs sort of shrugs.
38:39.696 --> 38:41.097
[SPEAKER_01]: And says no.
38:41.537 --> 38:43.298
[SPEAKER_01]: But then what still won't get any nearer.
38:43.318 --> 38:44.378
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know he thinks that.
38:44.838 --> 38:47.940
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can see like these kids are trying to come to grips with this thing where
38:48.560 --> 38:53.846
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gotten so far out of control and no one is stepped in to say, hey, like this is this is a bad joke.
38:53.986 --> 38:59.533
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we need to stop doing this and we need to like treat each other well, Jake seems to get away with that.
38:59.793 --> 39:00.594
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's interesting.
39:00.914 --> 39:05.760
[SPEAKER_01]: I assumed probably maybe wrongly that it was his dad who picked him up.
39:06.400 --> 39:08.322
[SPEAKER_01]: because I think it's like the guy's driving a beamer.
39:08.802 --> 39:12.604
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did not think in a teen year old would have a beamer, but it could be wrong.
39:12.684 --> 39:22.410
[SPEAKER_01]: Plus also not the stereotypes for if any of our listeners out there are the MW drivers and or if the MW like the sponsor who are joy, we would surely take your sponsorship.
39:22.911 --> 39:24.092
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a...
39:24.832 --> 39:31.938
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain stereotype of a Beamer driver, at least in the early 2000s, and it's generally a douchebag.
39:32.378 --> 39:44.168
[SPEAKER_01]: So that Jake's dad pulls up in a Beamer, and is annoyed that he had to end his vacation or leave whatever he was doing in the C-suite, surprises me not at all.
39:44.408 --> 39:47.531
[SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly what I would expect it, and you feel bad for Jake at that point.
39:49.012 --> 39:55.117
[SPEAKER_01]: Swiftly goes from villain to us having some sympathy for him, despite the fact that he has been the ringleader.
39:55.677 --> 40:01.682
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not to excalate all the other boys who are at this camp who just gladly go along with him.
40:02.462 --> 40:07.746
[SPEAKER_01]: You see Daddy Wags, the one time where he's trying to call out some of the boys for their bad behavior.
40:07.766 --> 40:10.268
[SPEAKER_01]: He's yelling at, I think the character's name is Logan.
40:10.629 --> 40:14.431
[SPEAKER_01]: This is when all the boys are watching the girls swimming.
40:14.972 --> 40:15.893
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Jake,
40:16.473 --> 40:23.654
[SPEAKER_01]: This is that surveillance thing, again, turns and looks at Eli, and Eli apparently has an erection, and they all make fun of him.
40:24.474 --> 40:27.795
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to like further make fun of him, and that's what sort of leads us into discipline.
40:28.375 --> 40:31.756
[SPEAKER_01]: And like that might be the beginning of the end for Jake's reign.
40:32.436 --> 40:41.297
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems that, you know, they're fondly ours from repercussions for all of the stupidness that he's doing at least during daylight hours, because the rest of the bad things seem to happen at night then.
40:41.617 --> 40:45.618
[SPEAKER_01]: Ben gets so like drawn into this, though, that he tries to defend
40:46.398 --> 40:49.600
[SPEAKER_01]: what they're doing when he's talking to Eli about it.
40:49.700 --> 40:51.021
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's saying, this is what friends do.
40:51.401 --> 40:58.285
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like he just unleashes this greed on Eli, where he says you have to grow up.
40:59.245 --> 41:05.349
[SPEAKER_01]: You, in that moment, like that is one of the hardest hitting lines or moments of the intense scenes of the entire film.
41:05.909 --> 41:08.211
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he heard that from an adult.
41:09.091 --> 41:14.835
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not make that up himself, some other, some adult figure in his life has yelled that at him.
41:15.495 --> 41:20.138
[SPEAKER_01]: And now he is just replicating that, inflicting it on Eli.
41:20.178 --> 41:22.440
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what then leaves Eli to what you were talking about.
41:22.780 --> 41:23.801
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the magic trick.
41:24.081 --> 41:26.182
[SPEAKER_01]: He actually cuts his thumb off.
41:26.582 --> 41:28.544
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know what that's supposed to symbolize listeners.
41:28.584 --> 41:34.408
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we could, we could spend the rest of the episode, the rest of the next five episodes trying to
41:35.328 --> 41:37.589
[SPEAKER_01]: analyze what that cutting the thumb off could mean.
41:38.569 --> 41:39.690
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it about control?
41:40.290 --> 41:44.351
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it just like taking a magic trick and killing all of the magic and joy in it?
41:45.032 --> 41:48.153
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like becoming literally a gushing wound.
41:48.173 --> 41:51.534
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Daddy Wags has to run off to the hospital with Eli.
41:51.954 --> 41:58.797
[SPEAKER_01]: What triggers Ben, interestingly, is not Eli like just being weird in the quarter by himself.
41:58.837 --> 41:59.757
[SPEAKER_01]: He's dancing with a
42:02.498 --> 42:22.530
[SPEAKER_01]: and having fun, and that seems to be what triggers Ben, that Eli, despite being so aligned, despite being so picked on, despite having the plague, is still able to somehow have a good time and Ben cannot have a good time anymore, because he's so desire to be accepted and that he was outcast as well.
42:23.370 --> 42:33.437
[SPEAKER_01]: And like man, like there are some scenes with Vivienne Monnie, a black swan, I think it's the picking of the like the cuticles around the fingernail, but then he's also picking a skin so much of these bleeding in the shower.
42:33.997 --> 42:39.621
[SPEAKER_01]: It's horrific in that poor kid, I just feel so bad for him, but then like he does what kids do, he lashes out at somebody else.
42:39.821 --> 42:41.962
[SPEAKER_01]: He picks on someone who has less power, he punches down.
42:42.182 --> 42:42.803
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is like.
42:44.023 --> 42:49.665
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to get into like how this is like the right politics on the right, but it is helps the politics on the left at this point too.
42:49.785 --> 42:52.825
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to punch left instead of punch right.
42:52.965 --> 42:54.046
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I don't know.
42:54.066 --> 42:54.466
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
42:54.506 --> 42:54.946
[SPEAKER_01]: What's this?
42:55.226 --> 42:56.266
[SPEAKER_01]: What's this bleeding thumb?
42:57.006 --> 42:57.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a couple of things.
42:57.807 --> 43:05.188
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, that scene where Ben goes to Eli and is like, you have to grow up and he's drinking at juice box.
43:05.408 --> 43:08.489
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just taking sips out of the company sun.
43:09.069 --> 43:09.950
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that because
43:12.217 --> 43:14.878
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not him, he's heard this from somewhere else.
43:15.438 --> 43:22.599
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't point Ben, walks out of the camp, walks down the street to a cafe, and uses the phone to call his mom.
43:23.180 --> 43:24.360
[SPEAKER_00]: His mom doesn't come to get him.
43:24.920 --> 43:27.060
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy Wags comes to find him, all right?
43:27.080 --> 43:29.761
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy Wags is there to try to get him back.
43:30.541 --> 43:32.642
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom doesn't come, mom doesn't come out to get him.
43:32.802 --> 43:38.663
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think there's something about that scene that shows how childish they all are.
43:39.183 --> 43:40.964
[SPEAKER_00]: The last two things that I want to talk about.
43:42.044 --> 43:50.581
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to maybe hold this as a question for you in a lot of possession films and
43:51.925 --> 44:12.224
[SPEAKER_00]: in something like carry, like menstruation, like the bleeding out of one's body, even the abject, like we've talked about in terms of Kristava, the outside becoming visible, the invisible stuff becoming visible and coming out, is this in some way a demonstration of rage,
44:13.047 --> 44:22.333
[SPEAKER_00]: a demonstration of like some turning point that we don't actually get because I don't know you like never, never takes power.
44:22.834 --> 44:31.779
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like you, you like gets anything out of cutting his own thumb off, except that earlier in the film, he shows
44:32.882 --> 44:38.064
[SPEAKER_00]: Ben that he picks or stabs himself, and he's like, oh, it feels kind of good.
44:38.444 --> 44:47.107
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this a psychoanalytic thing where he's grounding himself because of all the picket, you know, all the ways that he gets picked on?
44:47.868 --> 44:51.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this about being able to feel his own body, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
44:52.109 --> 44:54.770
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, so there's two things there.
44:55.190 --> 45:01.913
[SPEAKER_00]: The last thing that I want to talk about maybe we can get to joy is the way that masculinity works
45:02.753 --> 45:18.923
[SPEAKER_00]: like you said he's a vegetarian so Ben is a vegetarian and I think that reads for the other kids whether or not the plague is a stand in for homosexuality or AIDS or whatever right this is not the you know we're in the early 2000s.
45:20.464 --> 45:26.751
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I play basketball, one to the locker room and there are times when, you know, if you get too close to the other person, they would be like, oh, AIDS.
45:27.071 --> 45:28.072
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that was the joke.
45:28.132 --> 45:29.173
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, not a joke.
45:29.213 --> 45:29.774
[SPEAKER_00]: It's terrible.
45:29.854 --> 45:33.357
[SPEAKER_00]: But, like, I don't know what the plague stands in for in any way.
45:33.497 --> 45:38.322
[SPEAKER_00]: But, Ben, being a vegetarian, strips him of some masculinity.
45:39.243 --> 45:43.225
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if that puts him on the other side, even more than he already was.
45:43.746 --> 45:51.470
[SPEAKER_00]: But, too, once Jake is gone, and even once Eli is gone, and he's like, holy shit.
45:52.191 --> 45:54.212
[SPEAKER_00]: Eli just cut his own thumb off.
45:54.932 --> 45:55.713
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm going to do?
45:56.495 --> 46:00.958
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna go out there and cut it up on the dance floor.
46:01.358 --> 46:06.022
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm not sure whether or not that fits standards of masculinity, et cetera, et cetera.
46:06.462 --> 46:11.546
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not he's just like this social system is broken, we're just doing whatever we want.
46:11.906 --> 46:15.768
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna dance because I fucking love dancing or what he's doing.
46:16.289 --> 46:24.935
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are the, those are the couple questions that I have at the end here about how masculinity shows up through dancing, through things like being a vegetarian,
46:25.618 --> 46:31.524
[SPEAKER_00]: And even the way that Eli kind of bleeds out, finally, this is the most blood we get.
46:32.004 --> 46:45.076
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, there's one, the last thing, just a quick aside thought, I think that there's no body count in this movie in the sense that nobody dies, but I think that Jake getting expelled is like a death for the camp.
46:45.597 --> 46:48.719
[SPEAKER_00]: He's now existing in the afterlife of not camp.
46:49.400 --> 46:53.964
[SPEAKER_00]: And Eli, in the same way, cuts off his thumb, has to leave camp.
46:54.585 --> 46:58.669
[SPEAKER_00]: He's committed suicide, and now has to leave camp.
46:59.149 --> 47:06.356
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, in the context of this very narrow social structure, very narrow camp structure.
47:06.856 --> 47:10.380
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I want to send it back to you for some thoughts, and maybe you can get us to joy.
47:11.004 --> 47:19.410
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really interesting to think about Jake leaving as a type of death and then Eli like taking off his thumb as type of death because he's removed too.
47:19.950 --> 47:23.173
[SPEAKER_01]: And at that point, Daddy Whyx has also gone because he's with Eli.
47:23.993 --> 47:28.577
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not clear who's chaperoning the dance at that point, but it's shared between
47:29.337 --> 47:32.118
[SPEAKER_01]: the male students and the female students.
47:32.518 --> 47:35.580
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they're all planning for throughout the event.
47:35.920 --> 47:39.321
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting to think about how like this, because they're gone.
47:39.341 --> 47:40.482
[SPEAKER_01]: They're functionally not there.
47:40.522 --> 47:43.643
[SPEAKER_01]: That is in its way a sort of death or a body count.
47:44.204 --> 47:49.046
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the movie, I don't remember this from watching it in theaters when I was rewatching it.
47:49.446 --> 47:53.948
[SPEAKER_01]: As Ben is dancing, dancing off by himself, just like a whirling derbish.
47:54.768 --> 47:55.509
[SPEAKER_01]: It's frenetic.
47:56.409 --> 47:57.990
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like he's lost all control.
47:58.630 --> 48:01.772
[SPEAKER_01]: He is letting loose in a way, but like it seems like there's something more to it than that.
48:01.792 --> 48:02.892
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's finally broken.
48:03.252 --> 48:08.075
[SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of scream at the end of the movie and like it just then it just cuts.
48:08.255 --> 48:08.635
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
48:08.755 --> 48:09.195
[SPEAKER_01]: It's over.
48:09.876 --> 48:12.157
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't I don't know what to do with that.
48:12.217 --> 48:19.881
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't know if we're supposed to say that Ben is free and that he has like freedom self from these expectations or that he literally has finally snapped because
48:20.801 --> 48:45.226
[SPEAKER_01]: Frankly, after Daddy Wags, who's the only adult apparently doing anything in this entire school has left with Eli, Ben just wanders, wearing a shirt, soaked in blood back to the dance, no one pays him any mind until he just starts, like you said, cut and loose to, you know, I'm not going to get to joy yet, but to Moby's feeling so free from from the early 2000s.
48:46.086 --> 49:00.285
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this another yeah so is this carry in a sense that right so so Eli bleeds he is now the bleeding person transfers that rage to Ben who then takes it to the dance.
49:01.146 --> 49:04.969
[SPEAKER_00]: and like you said, it ends and it feels like rage.
49:05.149 --> 49:07.091
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels violent.
49:07.531 --> 49:10.914
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what happens after the cut.
49:11.154 --> 49:14.296
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what happens after it it it fades out.
49:14.736 --> 49:14.957
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
49:14.997 --> 49:18.159
[SPEAKER_00]: So could it be that tragedy follows?
49:18.419 --> 49:18.719
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
49:19.620 --> 49:20.381
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we have no idea.
49:20.401 --> 49:28.767
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to like call props for the idea that I think about how there's like maybe some homosexual undertones, some queer reading that we could
49:30.425 --> 49:31.926
[SPEAKER_01]: the idea that people would say, oh, AIDS.
49:32.067 --> 49:33.147
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's such a millennial thing.
49:33.228 --> 49:34.909
[SPEAKER_01]: We would say stupid things like that all the time.
49:34.989 --> 49:36.651
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, oh, AIDS get away from me.
49:37.091 --> 49:39.193
[SPEAKER_01]: When in reality, like, it's not funny.
49:39.473 --> 49:46.439
[SPEAKER_01]: But like Eli is clearly characterized as if not quote unquote gay.
49:46.560 --> 49:47.701
[SPEAKER_01]: He's definitely, like,
49:48.261 --> 49:59.248
[SPEAKER_01]: theater kid, because he talks about how much he wanted to see Le Miserob, and how he was bullied on that bus trip, where one of the other kids gave him X-Lax or something, and there was no toilet on the bus, so his mom had to come and get him.
49:59.668 --> 50:05.172
[SPEAKER_01]: He clearly is immersed in nerd culture, because he is talking about Lord of the Rings.
50:05.992 --> 50:13.577
[SPEAKER_01]: His ideal woman is a cartoon, Betty Boop, so like there's some stuff happening here that like he's definitely so different in eccentric from the
50:15.267 --> 50:18.988
[SPEAKER_01]: that Ben gets like covered in his blood at the end.
50:19.368 --> 50:21.148
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like a sacrifice type thing.
50:21.768 --> 50:23.509
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's in type of rebirth renewal.
50:23.589 --> 50:25.369
[SPEAKER_01]: I love this idea of it's the object.
50:25.429 --> 50:30.390
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it is literally the interiority that Eli was trying to share with Ben.
50:31.110 --> 50:33.331
[SPEAKER_01]: He could not share with him because Ben rejected it.
50:33.671 --> 50:34.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Like now it becomes blood.
50:35.471 --> 50:41.073
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's the pound of flesh to paraphrase badly merchant of Venice from Shakespeare.
50:41.113 --> 50:42.453
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what it takes for
50:43.193 --> 50:45.595
[SPEAKER_01]: for Ben to be satisfied with all of this.
50:46.356 --> 50:47.677
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it ends with him dancing.
50:47.978 --> 50:49.920
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not anti-climactic.
50:50.000 --> 50:50.781
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us put it that way.
50:50.881 --> 50:54.224
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, listen, there's a few not seem this movie and you've made it this far with us.
50:54.404 --> 50:56.586
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are okay with all these spoilers, you should see it.
50:56.646 --> 50:58.548
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that ending is a site to be hold.
50:58.568 --> 51:02.032
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when it ends, like, and just like that, I don't know what to do with it.
51:02.392 --> 51:03.773
[SPEAKER_01]: It's maybe the most unnerving,
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[SPEAKER_01]: ending for a movie since mid-Summer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It just sticks with you and I don't know that there's anything that can be fixed there or it's a commentary or anything but I do want to transition to joy and I mentioned Moby, man.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the songs like they're that are in this movie are just awesome from the early 2000s that takes me back and nostalgia wise.
51:27.969 --> 51:42.960
[SPEAKER_01]: I know in the court open listeners to give you a little bit of how the sausages made some of the some of the court open that was critiquing the terrible behavior of adolescent boys that was that was me that was Jeff like writing that was my voice talking about how
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[SPEAKER_01]: teenage boys are awful.
51:45.522 --> 51:51.087
[SPEAKER_01]: I taught ninth graders at one point in my life and that was terrible probably about the age group of these kids were.
51:51.467 --> 51:56.132
[SPEAKER_01]: But like the stupid would you rather jokes these kids did were hilarious.
51:56.172 --> 51:59.195
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I remember being that age when we would ask dumb questions like that.
51:59.275 --> 52:01.897
[SPEAKER_01]: And just like to see some of these kids with these reactions on their faces like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I don't know, I just probably a lot of joy.
52:05.880 --> 52:13.643
[SPEAKER_01]: It took me back to being that age, one of like the happier parts of that rather than all of the issues these characters are having with bullying and whatnot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The acting's great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This ensemble, man, from what I've been reading on the internet, most of them were, first time actors, a lot of these kids, like other than, of course, Jill Lettershin and Everett Blunk, a lot of these kids were just pulled out for this film specifically.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And apparently, they're really great kids.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's what some of the interviews suggest that these kids, some of them had trouble playing awful characters like they are meant to act at times.
52:40.655 --> 52:44.777
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it comes back to the fact that kids aren't awful.
52:44.797 --> 52:48.299
[SPEAKER_01]: They just project the awfulness that is inflicted on them by others.
52:48.559 --> 52:50.860
[SPEAKER_01]: The awfulness is a learned trait.
52:51.000 --> 52:53.362
[SPEAKER_01]: We might say, rather than an inherent trait.
52:54.082 --> 52:59.424
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's not joyful, but, you know, the film itself hard to watch really well made.
52:59.504 --> 53:01.665
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're right, the tension is really great.
53:02.145 --> 53:03.265
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a satisfying movie.
53:03.465 --> 53:12.768
[SPEAKER_01]: And like when you can watch a film that is independent and satisfying in the year 2025 slash 2026, I think that's a win.
53:12.928 --> 53:14.649
[SPEAKER_01]: So like that's a lot of joy to be had.
53:14.989 --> 53:22.232
[SPEAKER_01]: Lister's, I do hope that you will go out and see this if you're well rented on video on demand at this point or if there's a blue ray, get yourself
53:23.512 --> 53:24.633
[SPEAKER_01]: copy of something these days.
53:24.673 --> 53:25.933
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't let you face those on you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Brian, joy.
53:28.114 --> 53:29.274
[SPEAKER_01]: And then maybe just take us out.
53:30.595 --> 53:35.397
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mentioned a couple of things early on, but I absolutely love the soundtrack.
53:35.737 --> 53:42.120
[SPEAKER_00]: I was unsettling and perfect for, especially those underwater scenes.
53:42.720 --> 53:51.064
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that they kept coming back to these underwater scenes, I just absolutely loved because again, it just creates dread and tension.
53:51.764 --> 53:56.450
[SPEAKER_00]: I just kept waiting for something really horrific to happen.
53:56.971 --> 54:05.362
[SPEAKER_00]: It never really does, but I was held in that state of tension, the whole movie, all the way to the very end when Ben is dancing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we talked a little bit about the dance party at the end.
54:09.807 --> 54:28.306
[SPEAKER_00]: but there's this scene kind of in the middle where all the boys sneak out into an alleyway somewhere and they've got this CD playing boombox and somebody takes like a mix tape that they made and pops it in and everybody's just dancing like dummies and it's awesome.
54:28.906 --> 54:44.656
[SPEAKER_00]: and Eli's there and he's dancing like a dummy and it's at that point that somebody I can't remember if it was Ben or not runs into him he's got a like bathe in the water that's spewing from a broken pipe that one of the kids broke there's just something
54:45.977 --> 55:10.610
[SPEAKER_00]: both, I don't know, rebellious and joyful about those times that kind of era may be a little bit late for me in the 90s running around with people playing music and causing a ruckus like there's something about that youthful aspect that is in some ways destructive but also it really seems like nobody cared like they were playing music.
55:11.070 --> 55:12.531
[SPEAKER_00]: They were banging on the walls
55:15.955 --> 55:16.615
[SPEAKER_00]: Colin Cops?
55:17.175 --> 55:17.695
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are they?
55:17.795 --> 55:18.496
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea.
55:18.596 --> 55:19.456
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's daddy wags?
55:19.876 --> 55:20.236
[SPEAKER_00]: No where?
55:20.676 --> 55:21.576
[SPEAKER_00]: Who knows what he's doing?
55:22.217 --> 55:23.017
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know.
55:23.037 --> 55:25.237
[SPEAKER_00]: There was something really joyful about that for me.
55:25.617 --> 55:35.500
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in this movie necessarily, but Paulinger has been tasked with making Mask of the Red Death Next, which follows along the plague.
55:36.607 --> 55:37.207
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of thing.
55:37.507 --> 55:40.448
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is one of my favorite short stories of all time.
55:40.808 --> 55:41.889
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Edgar Allan Poe.
55:42.349 --> 55:45.610
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's your favorite author, Jeff.
55:46.090 --> 55:50.351
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as I understand, he is making mask of the red death.
55:51.032 --> 55:57.654
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like it has some people attached that means that this might be a wider release.
55:58.294 --> 56:24.231
[SPEAKER_00]: Benedict Wong is in it, Mikey Madison isn't so there's some there's some seemingly pretty cool people that are going to be in this movie and I am really excited to watch Mask of the Red Death if it keeps any kind of similarities tone, tension all of that that we we see here in the plague so I don't know those are my final thoughts Jeff any final thoughts from you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's all I have for listeners, go out, watch this film, it's great, you'll enjoy it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 100% agree, I really enjoyed this.
56:34.057 --> 56:37.760
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to see it in theaters and get a chance, and I'm really glad that we came to it today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not a slasher, but definitely a camp, movie, camp horror, summer camp, all that stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good movie, highly recommend it, Charlie Pallinger.
56:48.902 --> 56:49.482
[SPEAKER_00]: really well done.
56:50.043 --> 56:50.823
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the movie.
56:51.124 --> 56:51.804
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As always folks, remember, sick joy, even in horror.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This has been an episode of Horror Joy, produced in conjunction with Axis Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining us.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We want to hear from you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can find us at Horror Joy Pot on Instagram or at Horror Joy Pot on YouTube.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can also email us at horrorjoypot at gmail.com all one word and you can of course find us wherever you get your podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Give us a like, subscribe, leave a review.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, remember.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Take joy, even in horror.