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little esther, BIG laughs

Yeah, that's an interesting point. Sometimes a horror movie inverts it and makes the protagonist the monster. Sixth Sense doesn't really do that either, but you've mentioned some good examples here.

Ohhh Let The Right One In and A Girl Walks Home are awesome!! If those, and The Sixth Sense, are horror -- I guess maybe I am a horror fan. I tend to think of horror as the bloody murderer disgusting stuff. Like, there's a difference to me between "Scary" and "Horror." But maybe there isn't?

That's a really interesting qualifier that I hadn't considered before but in more recent years there have been some films within the horror genre that have come out where our protagonist is actually the one doing the most damage/the "monster." The three examples I can think of are Raw (French) and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Iranian) and Let the Right One In (Swedish). I would probably say that the middle could be considered not a horror film but IMDB still has that as one of it's two genres. I wonder if this is like a European thing where the monsters of our nightmares get stories where they end up being the ones we cheer for in the end? ETA: OH! And The Others! That's probably a horror movie that can be directly compared to Sixth Sense due to its similar twist ending. I also loved that movie lmao.

Yea. Those drama real-world frights you mention are the real scares in the movie. The actual ghosts are not all that terrifying, really, beyond just their presence (usually as a surprise for the viewer). That's why I wanted more of those scenes -- let Haley go into the scary real world, with ghosts helping him out, and have him confront the horrors of reality. A woman with Munchausen Syndrome where she hurts her children? No match for Cole! Single mother needs encouragement? That's an affecting ghost story if you ask me. (I still think Sixth Sense comes very close to this, but doesn't quite go all the way with it.)

I believe that horror has different subsets just like any other genre has. Not all comedies are the same and neither are all dramas, but I definitely wouldn't put either Crimson Peak nor Shape of Water into the horror genre just because it has supernatural elements to them. But I still would put The Sixth Sense into the category because even in the drama sense of it I still find it rather terrifying. It's terrifying as a mother to not have any clue what's happening to your child and then find out he can see dead people, and it's terrifying that a mother would have the ability to kill her own children for attention. It's not just the ghosts that make this scary in my mind, it's the real world aspects as well. I compare it a lot to The Witch, which a lot of people got PISSED at because they said "nothing scary happens," but in my mind the unnerving aspect of watching this family turn on each other and lose themselves to the witch is absolutely scary. Jump scares shouldn't be what makes something into a horror film imo. But with Get Out specifically, Jordan calls it a horror film so I think that out of that no one really gets to tell the creator otherwise.

(Looks at podcast page) Huh, we’re already up to #195. Hopefully it’s not too late to plan something for #200. The live shows are done so far in advance that the hosts always have to ask when the episode they just did is airing when deciding what to plug. Since the hosts schedules are so busy, then the obvious go-tos would be the relatively easy things: A movie the fans have wanted for a long time, and a good guest. I say they should do Manos: The Hands of Fate and have on someone from MST3K, preferably Patton Oswalt. If it is too late to do something, then there’s always the 250th episode, a quarter of 1,000, in about two years.

I definitely agree that the randomness is convenient. But I would also argue that a lot of the times we are following Bruce Willis or seeing things through his perspective. Usually we only see Haley's perspective when he sees other ghosts. In that sense I would say that if Bruce's idea of things is that he is very much alive then the audiences would be too. Like if he thinks he is changing his clothes then we think he is changing his clothes, and he had his wedding ring on the whole time until the very end when his wife drops it and he looks down to see it's no longer on his finger. I think that a lot of the work to convince the audience that he isn't dead is simply because we follow him around and he has no idea himself.

I hate to be this person so early on but I think this one of the most overrated movies of all time. The fact that it is even in the Top 100 of all time I find incredibly baffling. That's not to say that this is a bad movie. It's not. It's an okay movie with two great performances and there is Bruce Willis. I'm sure I'm not alone on this so I don't want to harp on the twist too much, but to me the greatest flaw of this movie for me is how much it centers on that twist. I agree 100% with Amy that there are scenes like the magic trick scene which are just M Night trying to tell us that he's got a secret and begging us to notice or find out. They are like little self indulgent road bumps along the story. There are so many things like the wardrobe that make no sense when you think about it. He's allowed to change or customize his clothing because of what he touched that night? Why? That's note a "rule" of ghosts. It's not even a rule the other ghosts in the film get. It is a rule created to "throw you off the trail" of the twist. In addition you have other ghosts in the film like the cyclist who have clothes that have blood or signs of their injuries on them. So why are Cole's clothes clean? He's in denial so he can't see it? Does that mean the cyclist has just accepted their death? In addition where is the gore? We see other ghosts in the film with their cause of death wounds visible, so does that mean Bruce is walking around with a bullet wound and just unaware of it? Or is it a denial thing yet everything other ghost is in acceptance? So much of what they allow him to do is entirely to serve the purpose of getting you not to expect the twist despite the film stopping in moment to tell you a twist is coming and you won't believe it. I find it slightly insulting. Instead of putting a twist in a leaving clues for people to figure it out, they go out of their way to muddy the waters and it is not to help tell a better story it is for the sole purpose of pointing a finger at the audience and saying "gotcha!"

Hmm that's really interesting, and not one I'd considered. But, no, I don't believe in ghosts, so that could be why I want and look for those 'rules'. Regardless, I still think some consistency there would help from a storytelling point-of-view. There may be different ghost rules across different ghost stories, but within one ghost story, I think it needs to follow some ghost logic.

I have to add, as a wild ghost enthusiast, that the inconsistencies is actually really appropriate and most life like. Not every apparition will have the same amount of energy and will be able to communicate the same, even to someone that is considered a medium. Apparitions can make themselves known by temperature change, voice, moving objects, shadow people, or even full bodied apparitions. Now this all comes down to whether or not you really believe in this, but let's argue that you do because I know I do and once I could swear I smelled my grandmother's perfume as I walked down the hallway of a house she had never been to before she died. A friend of mine has always claimed that she is more sensitive to these things and has seen multiple full bodied apparitions, and sometimes just feels the presence rather than sees it. Once she told me she felt someone sit on her bed and lie down next to her but when she looked there was no one there. So in my opinion Cole's difference in who can communicate with him and how is rather life like based on other's irl that claim to see things themselves. Basically I think that there aren't any established rules in the movie because there aren't any in real life either.

I was in the middle of writing something but I stopped just so I can say how much I agree with your 4th point. This is not a horror film in my books. Like Paul was talking about dramas having moments of levity, we sort of exist is this world where some people don't like mixing of elements or tones which is silly. You can use whatever tools you want to tell the story the best it can be told. Does Hamlet become horror because there is a ghost? There are witches in Macbeth while we are at it. Clearly that's horror. This is a character drama. Yes there are ghosts in it, yes some of the moment may give you the chills, but at the end of the day this movie was not made to scare you. It may have some moments and elements but it is trying to tell a character based drama.

i say we post any college newspaper articles we've written in hopes of them getting read on next week's pro version. i'll start: here's a review of "the life of pablo"

I'm still finishing the pod, but I wanted to react to Amy's comment about Willis' acting. She mentions that he had some emotion in the first scene, but is too stiff for the remainder of the film. Is this not because he's no longer human from then on? I sort of took this as a conscious decision, and not bad acting. He's supposed to be distant and sort of odd, right?

In the late 90s, I handled the artwork and marketing materials for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which is north of Philadelphia. Greg Wood (Mischa Barton's dad) and Janis Dardaris (that terrifying woman in the kitchen) were in the repertory at the time, and it was a kick to see local actors I knew in a movie like this. They were the best!

okay kiddos, check it out. in a move that surprises no one coming from a podcast listener/a kevin, i got overexcited and bought an extra ticket to HH live in brooklyn this sunday (early show) without checking if my one friend who is also a fan was available (it was late). SO, if anyone is in the NYC area and needs a ticket, get in touch somehow. (tickets were $25 with fees, but if you can't afford it, we can work something out.)

Funny you bring up nWo, because I remember Alex Jones losing his shit about them. He basically said "THEY'RE DOING THIS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!! They make a group, call them the New World Order, and they put Hulk Hogan in it to make everybody like them! They want you to like the idea of a New World Order! It's happening folks, it's happening, and they're showing you exactly how they're gonna do it!" One little caveat that Alex didn't understand... they were the bad guys. It was also around the time when they introduced Zeb Coulter as Jack Swagger's Tea Party Lunatic manager. "They're making the Americans the bad guys, they're making the American guy look stupid, and have the Mexican beat him, it's to make people look at America like we're the dopes, and to embrace globalism!" One little caveat that Alex didn't understand... Swagger, despite being the villain, was supposed to be dominant, but the idiot got caught in a DWI and a car full of weed 2 weeks before WrestleMania, and they just wrote him off. Swagger and Coulter later became good guys when there were "Russian" villains. But, it was hilarious, how the WWF made up the nWo for people to like the idea of a one world government, when the WWF didn't have anything to do with it.

Would be such a hoot if Sean and Hayes did a popcorn gallery this weekend for american labor day, would qualify as some of that irony stuff they do that I can pick up on every single time 100%

That makes sense. I had forgotten that she had said that so that does put another question mark on top of it. Maybe, in the same vein as what I mentioned, Chazelle tried to really pass it off as this super original concept? When again Mamma Mia really leans in to what it is?

Every Frame a Painting is a great series. I think I heard he's working for Filmstruck now.