Funny Games

Funny Games

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Talk about disturbing. Craig’s sister, Kristen, joins us to talk about this controversial home invasion film.

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Funny Games (2007)

Episode 29, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: I’m Craig.

Todd: And with us today we have our special guest, Kristen Kennedy. Hi Kristen.

Kristin: Hello Todd. 

Todd: Hi. And Kristen just happens to be somebody important in Craig’s life. 

Craig: Yeah, my baby sister. That’s 

Todd: true, 

Kristin: I’m here. 

Todd: So are you the one that Craig subjected horror films to growing up?

Were you also into that sort of thing? 

Kristin: I was into it by default. I wasn’t so much necessarily into it as I was just there and he made me watch it. So, uh, many, uh, days on the couch with the pillow to cover my eyes and, and things like that. But, he was definitely into it and, uh, I was subjected to it. No 

Todd: kidding.

You were very forgiving. She didn’t have 

Craig: much choice. I really 

Kristin: didn’t. There wasn’t a lot of choice. I don’t even know what was going on that we were so young and watching these horror films all the time. But it was happening. Regularly. Did he 

Todd: have to watch like romantic comedies or something to compensate?

No. I 

Kristin: was the silent partner. I just was along for the ride and I did what he told me to do. Oh my 

Todd: gosh. And so you wore Troll 2 out. Or Troll. Troll. Troll out, basically. Troll 

Kristin: 2, I think we just watched the once. It didn’t need a re watching. 

Todd: Oh my gosh. Um, so Craig cajoled you into coming and joining us here today.

He did. 

Kristin: I’ve been listening ever since you started and, um, So, I, I like the listening part. He said, do you want to come and be a, a guest speaker or person? I was like, uh, I don’t know if I’ll say anything. But, let’s go watch a 

Todd: movie. Now, did you choose this film or was this, uh, did Craig? 

Kristin: Sort of, kinda. He said, well, what movie would you want to watch?

I was like, I don’t know. I haven’t even really been watching horror movies lately. I married a guy who hates horror movies. It’s horror movies, and so really, I haven’t even been watching, sometimes I can get away with a suspense thriller type film. And since you all started doing this, and I’ve been listening, then I’ll say, okay Craig, send me that one.

I’ll watch it before I listen, so I’ve watched a few that way, but I haven’t been watching too many lately. Right. 

Craig: Right. So, but I wanted you to pick, because, you know, our, intense selection process. We decided to waive that this week. Um, and I really wanted to get you here and you said the types of movies that really get to you are not like monster movies and stuff like that, but things that could potentially really happen.

Yeah. 

Kristin: So I did actually, I did say this title, you know, when he first asked me, I was thinking, well, gosh, what were the ones we watched? We watched, you know, all the Friday the 13th all the Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween, all those types of films that were big when we were growing up. Pet Sematary, really anything Stephen King, we did.

And I thought, but you know, when I want to watch a horror film or a suspense film or something like that, I really I guess I want to be scared or I want it to have some sort of impact on me and these kind of psychological thrillers are things that feel like they could really happen. Those are the ones that stick with me and really get under my skin.

And so for me to feel like it was worth watching, I feel like I need to kind of have that reaction. 

Craig: So, so you threw out the title, um, I didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t even know that you would have ever even heard of this movie. How did you? I 

Kristin: saw a preview for it at some point and thought, Well, that looks disturbing, you know, and I, uh, moved away from small town to a slightly bigger town and, you know, there are home invasions, so I’ve actually avoided this film for about a decade, um, but then I thought, well, I haven’t seen it, I don’t know that much about it.

I saw the preview. I haven’t read up on it. I’ve heard certain things about it, you know, that it’s disturbing and whatnot, but I really didn’t know much about it. So I thought it might be fun to sit down and watch one that I hadn’t seen before, didn’t really know much about beyond the preview and go 

Todd: from there.

Now, I’m in the same boat. I didn’t know anything about it either. It had come across my Netflix queue a couple times, and I’m not sure if it was this one or the The Austrian version, 

Craig: the original. Maybe we should let them know what we’re talking 

Todd: about. Oh yeah, uh, so this movie is Funny Games. Funny 

Craig: Games.

And this is the 2007 remake of 1996? 97 I think. 97? Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it was exactly 10 years. Um, it’s an American remake. It was originally shot in Austria. And, uh, the original filmmaker, what I heard, was that he really wanted this to be set in an American setting and he wanted it to reach an American audience, but the budget constraints didn’t allow for that.

So he made it in Austria and then I don’t know how the opportunity arose, but 10 years later, the opportunity arose, uh, for him to remake it. And he did and he remade it shot for shot. Really? I’ve not seen the original, but everything that I’ve read from people who have seen both say it is literally the same movie, just with different actors.

Oh my God. Um, and, and what I also read is a lot of people really prefer this one. Really? Um, yeah. Well, and maybe that’s just the American audience that I am reading because, you know, we’re lazy sometimes and don’t want to read subtitles or whatnot, but I, I, I had seen this a long time ago and I remember it really having an impact on me, but I only watched it the one time and maybe there was a reason for that.

So I was excited to come back to it too. Had you not seen it before tonight? No, 

Todd: never. No. Oh, wow. I knew nothing. I knew it was a home invasion film, and that was it. Gotcha. Uh, so, and, and I, there are a lot of home invasion films. It’s not really the kind of film I choose. I’m almost the opposite of you, Kristen.

When I’m watching a horror movie, I almost want to see something supernatural. To me, that’s a little more thrilling and exciting. Stuff that could really happen to me. Maybe it gets under my skin a little more. Yeah. And also, you know, where do you draw the line? And is this really even a horror film? Right.

Kristin: And I don’t know. I was reading a little bit. I didn’t want to spoil anything because I hadn’t seen it, but I was reading some interviews with Naomi Watts and she was sort of talking about how she kind of often does films that seem genre less. And how, you know, she did Mulholland Drive, and that was sort of her first one that kind of made her on the radar.

And that felt kind of genre less. It wasn’t really horror. It wasn’t really suspense. Yeah. What was it? I don’t know. I’ve seen it, and I have no idea. I couldn’t tell you what it was. Um, but she said this one’s kind of the same, you know. But she’s known for taking on roles that are really emotionally draining and require, um, just a lot emotionally.

Yeah. And I think this one fit the bill. 

Todd: Yeah, well yeah. No kidding. She didn’t get an Academy Award for this one, did she? No, I don’t think so. None of these movies are up for awards, but holy crap, what she had to go through. Yeah, 

Craig: the premise, I guess, is that, I mean, it’s really simple. You know, usually we spend a lot of time on plot.

I feel like we’re not going to have to do that because it’s a pretty thin plot, really. It’s like three sentences. You can describe it. Right, right. There’s this family, you know, they seem like, Upper crust. Yeah, upper crust. Um, and they’re going to their summer home. Um, they’re taking their boat and it’s a young couple.

George is the dad and Ann is the mom and they have played by Tim Roth, right? Um, and Ann played by Naomi Watts, right? And then they have one son who seemed to be what, like seven, 

Kristin: I’d say probably around 10. I have a son who’s almost eight. And I thought he’s, he’s younger than my son. Son, but not enough that it’s not making me really uncomfortable.

Yeah, 

Craig: yeah. And, and a dog. And uh, they’re going to their summer house and when they pull up, they pull up in front of a neighbor’s house and their neighbors are standing outside and with them are these two young men in, I thought they were caddies at first. They’re dressed in like, you know, these preppy white shorts and white sweaters and white gloves.

Todd: Um. But you see them from a distance through the gate. Right, right. It’s a very awkward situation. Scene. It’s awkward. Staging everything about it is awkward. Yeah, right. 

Kristin: Hey, 

Craig: that’s not fair. What practicing’s not fair. 

Kristin: You’re still on for 10 tomorrow, right? Still 

Craig: coming?

Uh, yeah, sure.

We have to launch the boat. Can you give us a hand in about 20 minutes? 

Todd: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll come over 

Craig: in 20 minutes. 

Kristin: Okay, great. 

Craig: See you then. Bye! Um, and when they drive away, Anne, you know, says, that was weird, you know, why were they acting weird? Yeah, 

Kristin: she did. She said, that was weird, and I just wrote, indeed.

Weird indeed. Everything about this film in the 30 seconds we’ve been watching has been 

Craig: weird. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so they, so they go on and they get there and they start unpacking and things. Um, the dad, um, Well, they say, when they were back at the neighbors, they say, we need help unloading the boat. So, um, the male, uh, neighbor Fred comes over with one of these young guys, and they help him get the boat in, and, uh, the dog doesn’t seem to like the The young guy.

Yeah, was that Paul? It’s Paul. We find out later that they’re well We don’t really find out anything. No, we don’t know what these guys names are But the names the names that they go by most commonly the main One or the one that I kind of think of as the ringleader is Paul and then there’s Peter Or 

Kristin: Tom.

Yeah, they call it, because when they said Peter and Paul, I was like, is this the biblical reference? 

Todd: Right. I can’t figure out. Is Mary gonna pop 

Kristin: in here at some point? Yeah, I didn’t know what they were doing because they kept saying different names. I couldn’t keep it straight. Right. Well, 

Todd: and I felt like, too, sometimes they were intentionally flipping their names.

Am I wrong 

Craig: about this? Oh, they definitely were. Especially Paul, it seemed like Paul was intentionally calling, Peter different names. Yeah. It had to have been intentional because everything is so contrived and that’s the thing. These boys we find out very soon are playing games with these people. Hence the title, funny games.

Todd: So they’re not so funny. No, they’re not funny at all. They’re not, they don’t even start out funny. No, and the interesting thing about this movie compared to a lot of films like this is that these boys even from the beginning It’s not like there’s a sudden point in the middle where you realize oh, they’re really nice and really polite deep down inside They’re evil from the beginning.

There’s something off about these kids. They’re overly polite. Yeah, and They seem to fit in with the surroundings because they’re dressed in those golf shirts and they have the the gloves on but they don’t Take the gloves off and I don’t know about you, but that was a little weird, right? Um, and they’re overly polite and well, basically Naomi Watts’s character Anne right is in the kitchen She’s cooking dinner And we’re subjected to these really long domestic scenes.

One take, one shot, camera doesn’t cut away of her talking on the phone and going to the door and chopping, washing lettuce and then going back and chopping things and then The other kid comes in, Peter, who we hadn’t seen before this just in the distance, 

Craig: just in the distance, right? and he shows up and look her son says there’s somebody here and She goes to the door and like he’s super polite, but like oddly like I don’t know There’s just something about them that seems off.

I mean we kind of knew what kind of movie we were getting into anyway Yeah, but But 

Kristin: even the son said, you know, when he came over and they’re helping him get the boat in about the friend, the neighbor that they knew, they said, he said, why is Uncle Fred act behaving so oddly or weirdly or something like that?

They noticed he was off, you know, because he’s being led by these guys who have Apparently been at their house for however many days and who knows what they’ve 

Craig: done to them. Well, and there’s a little bit of foreshadowing. Did you notice there at the very beginning, um, as they’re driving away, the little boy said, where’s Jenny?

And I guess Jenny was, and then he kept saying, Jenny said she was going to be here. She said she was going to be here as soon as we got here. So I’m presuming that was Fred and Eve, the neighbor’s daughter. 

Todd: Um, and I 

Craig: didn’t quite catch that. You’re right. A little bit of foreshadowing, we’ll get, we’ll get there.

Well, he 

Todd: comes in asking for some eggs. He said, Oh, Fred and, uh, Eve. And what’s interesting here too, is he starts calling them Fred and Eve, but then he corrects himself and says, Oh, Mr. So and so and Mrs. So and so. Yeah. So again, that’s a little off. Like he’s faking how familiar he is with them. The whole scene is just filled with dread.

Yeah. Isn’t 

Kristin: it? It’s super awkward, super uncomfortable. I just was thinking It just starts off awkward right away, but then, you know, even when the kid says, Mom, there’s someone at the door, he looks terrified. Yeah. And then there’s this really odd shot where it’s like through a valance or something where it’s kind of white and you can’t see his face.

Yeah. And they’re just sort of staring at each other. No one’s saying anything. And then it’s sort of like, Hi. You know, they have these very eerie, soft voices and Yeah, especially, especially Peter. And it’s just awkward the whole time. And I was thinking, I can feel right away this is awkward, and I don’t know, she invites him in, and it goes on and on with the eggs, and things get weird, and I’m just thinking, I would have just gotten out of there, you know?

Let’s walk outside now, just follow me outside. I mean, it 

Craig: starts out kind of innocently enough. So, how can I help you? 

Kristin: Tell your dad 

Craig: we’re eating in ten 

Todd: minutes! Well, he’s, 

Craig: I mean, Mrs. Thompson sent me. She’s cooking, and she ran out of eggs, and asked if you could help her out. Of course. How many does she need?

Four. Four? What for? Excuse me? What 

Kristin: for? What 

Craig: does she need the eggs for? I mean, what’s she cooking? Oh, I have no idea.

So, are they okay just like this, or do you need the carton? Whatever you want. And he takes them just in his hands, and he goes around the corner like he’s gonna leave. And you hear them drop. And then, 

Todd: she comes in to clean them up. And again, we have, you know, at the beginning of this, whole deal, I don’t, I mean, of course you noticed, we don’t see the, the characters for a while.

The opening of the film has this overhead shot of the car driving down the highway. And we hear dialogue in the car, and it goes, And then, it’s a close up shot inside of the car of just the stereo, and them putting CDs in. I don’t know about you, but I was getting really antsy, like, I wanna see these people!

Yeah. Like, show me these people! And, you finally do see the people, and all that we talked about goes on. But then, even when they come home, there’s a whole long sequence before the kid comes over, where they’re letting the dog out, and they’re walking the dog, and he’s taking his shoes off, and they’re setting things out around the house.

And you’re hearing the voices, but you’re not seeing them. And again, I don’t know about you, but that It’s just like, oh, show me the people already, you know, show me their faces. It’s 

Craig: really stylized, and it’s that way throughout. It’s not your typical cinematography where you’re following characters. You know, a lot, a lot of this movie, the action happens out of frame, and you’re, and, and we are often looking at one frame for a really long time.

Um, and I think that does a lot to build suspense. It makes it feel uncomfortable because you just want the camera to turn just a little bit. You want to see the people, you want to see what’s going on. Sometimes, sometimes you don’t want to see what’s going 

Kristin: on. Never quite know fully what’s going on. I think that’s why it’s unsettling.

You can hear some things. Sometimes it was almost like, I can’t tell exactly who’s talking or get that dog to stop barking. Yeah, It’s nerve wracking right from the beginning. 

Todd: Well, and when he drops the eggs on the floor, there’s this, again, extremely uncomfortable scene that we can all kind of relate to where she bends down to scoop up the eggs, but she only has a couple towels and she’s really bad with it and she can’t quite do it.

And it’s none of the panache of a quick sweep away that normal movies have. It’s a very real scene. But again, it’s lingering so long on there and you really want to see what is, what does her face look like? And what’s this other guy doing while he’s standing there? Is he staring at her? Is he looking around?

What’s going on? It’s almost like we all know That really socially awkward person who just stares just a little too long at you or around, doesn’t say anything. It’s almost like the camera is making us that guy. Yeah, 

Kristin: for sure. And they were. Socially awkward. I think that’s what you would just think. Like, they’re very socially awkward, maybe they only have really rich friends, and they don’t, you know, it’s just like, why is he standing there watching her?

Why isn’t he bending down and helping her clean up the eggs? Or why doesn’t he leave, you know? Why, yeah, why doesn’t he? I got it! See you 

Todd: later! He’s got nothing to say, you know, except this expectation that she’s just gonna get him more eggs. Right. Yeah, and an insistent expectation. 

Craig: Right, and he’s kind of pushy about it, but pushy in, like, that pushy way.

Passive aggressive, polite way, like, Well, I’m just asking you for eggs. I don’t really understand what the big deal is. And so she, you know, she’s irritated, and not only that, but at some point, He knocks her cell phone in the sink. In the water. Yeah, in the water. It’s like, Oops, sorry. And she’s like, Uh, okay, 

Todd: I guess.

Kristin: Yeah. And that’s the point where you start to notice she’s irritated and uncomfortable. And you would be. Right. And he’s just sort of like, Okay. Can I get those eggs now? You said you had a dozen, right? Right. 

Craig: So she sends him, not very happily, but she sends him away with four more eggs in a carton. And he goes out, and you hear the dog barking, and then you hear the door open back up again, I think, and she goes around the corner, and both boys are there now.

Is 

Todd: that right? Yeah, the other boy comes in. Oh, because the dog was barking or whatever. So he’s just standing there. You don’t hear him come in. You just see that he’s inside 

Craig: now. Yeah, and they weren’t invited in. You know, it’s just weird and creepy. And they say, well, the dog chased us up here. The dog scared Peter and he dropped the eggs.

And 

Kristin: Now we need more eggs. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. And she’s like, I want you guys to go. You know, at this point, she’s, she’s starting to feel like it’s uncomfortable. I’m wondering, where’s your husband and your kid? You know, if there are these creepy boys around, although I guess they don’t know they’re creepy.

Right. 

Todd: Now, is this the point where the, no, not yet. 

Craig: No, well it was right around here some well, okay So I think that the the husband comes up and she is trying to get them out like at this point She is not worried about being polite anymore. And she is physically trying to remove them and that’s when the husband comes in We throw them out.

Good that you hear mr. Farber. That’s her name. Isn’t it Barbara? Yeah, Fred. Mr. Thompson told us Oh, what’s going on here? Your wife is under the wrong impression. I’m happy that you’re here because I’m certain that you can help us figure out this misunderstanding. George, 

Kristin: please! Dad, I can’t! 

Todd: Just go, please.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, 

Craig: hey, hey, hey. 

Todd: This 

Kristin: is 

Craig: ridiculous! I can’t believe this! Honey, do you mind? No, he’s fine, he’s fine. May I please explain what happened? Please do. Mrs. Thompson sent me over to ask for some eggs. 

Todd: Your wife gave Peter the 

Craig: eggs, but unfortunately they broke. And then she gave me another four eggs, but the dog jumped on me.

Now, you had a dozen, you’re going shopping on Monday anyway. We just want the eggs, that’s all. Can you tell me what’s going on here?

Todd: Honey, can you just tell me 

Craig: what’s going on? 

Todd: Just give 

Craig: them to him. Can I have them now? Hold on a moment. And if it’s just about some eggs, why are you so angry? Look, I’m not going to justify myself in front I asked you to throw them out. Maybe I have my reasons.

Do what you want. I’ve had enough. Man. 

Kristin: And I was thinking, if I told my husband to get him out of here and he was like, No, hang on a second. There’d be a problem, you know. Obviously, I’m uncomfortable with these boys. But I can understand he’s trying to be polite. They, you know, they were with his friends.

I’m sure he’s thinking, I don’t want to, you know, cause a problem with our neighbors or our friends. It’s, it’s getting more awkward by the 

Craig: second. Yeah, and at some point in there, we kind of skipped over it, one of the main guy, uh, Paul, um, admires the dad’s golf clubs, and asks if he can go out and swing it, and she’s like, I guess, you know.

Um, and he goes out, and the dog is barking, and everybody’s hearing the dog bark, and then all of a sudden the dog stops. We, as the viewer, have a pretty good idea of what’s happened. 

Kristin: That’s a poor dog. As soon as he came on, I actually wrote down, That dog’s gonna die. You know, you just, I felt like, and that was something in the beginning, You were talking about those long shots where it’s just like, Here’s where all the shoes sit.

And here are the golf clubs. I kind of felt like they were giving us the layout. They’re showing, this is where some bad stuff’s gonna happen. And this is where some bad stuff’s gonna happen with the golf clubs. And here’s this dog, he’s not gonna be around It kind of felt like it’s setting it up so that we can get a lay of the land and we can see how everything’s going to go wrong in this film.

And just an interesting tidbit, since we know that, um, they did this move, this remake shot by shot. I actually saw too that they, um, used the, the blueprints from the, the original. And so they made sure that even though the house was Americanized or a little different, the proportions were all still exactly the same and the floor plan was still the same.

Um, 

Todd: That makes sense, because actually the kitchen seemed a little strange, uh, to be right off of the, uh You know, what do I know about Austrian kitchens or whatever, but you know, it did seem a little European ish to me, the way the layout might be. 

Craig: Eventually, you know, when she tries to get them out, um, the husband kind of just says, well, my wife’s really not feeling well, but I don’t have all the facts, so I really can’t mediate.

It’d probably just be better if you leave. And, um, they, they want the eggs. Yeah. 

Kristin: And so they just go up to him kind of with their hands outstretched, like, well, then give me the eggs. 

Craig: Yeah. And he won’t. And eventually, um, Paul, his polite demeanor starts to break, and he starts to be a little bit more aggressive.

And He gets in his face, basically. Yeah, he gets in the dad’s face, and George, the dad, says You need to watch your tone with me, young man, or something like that. And what is, what does he respond? Something 

Kristin: about, you need to watch yourself with me or I’ll break you, or old man, or something to that 

Craig: effect.

Yeah, I’ll break your eggs, old man. Right. So, so George slaps him across the face. Yeah. Um, and Right. Um, Peter, the other one grabs one of the clubs from the golf bag and just hits the dad right in the leg. But again, we don’t see it, right? I didn’t see it. It’s off screen. You hear it and you hear the dad go down.

Um. 

Kristin: And the poor son is right there. Right there. And I think Ann wasn’t right there. No, she wasn’t there. But 

Craig: she comes back. Right. And that is just, I think. That was the point. That’s, that’s when, um. Paul starts talking to them and says something like, we’re going to play a game. And then we are sitting here and there it’s been storming in, in our town tonight.

And, uh, right at that moment when he, it’s a closeup right on his face, he’s looking almost directly into camera and it says, we’re going to play a game and boom, the power goes out. And it testifies to the tense, of this movie because I think all three of us jumped. Oh, 

Todd: we totally 

Kristin: did. I was checking my heart rate on my Fitbit.

I think I just got a mini heart attack. Was that a part of the 

Todd: movie? No. Yeah, it was amazing how the tension could build in this scene that takes place in broad daylight, right there at the entrance to the house where anybody could walk out a door with three With even two guys who are outnumbered. I mean, one of them’s a kid, but still I think the polite society, we try to be somewhat trusting of each other.

We try to, and I think also this upper crust family figures just in the back of their head. I think it’s their default mode that anybody who is here in our gated community is somehow cool and clear and safe. And so. Everything about the movie, except for that weirdness and oddness that gets inserted, says there are 15 ways out of this, and it should generally go okay.

Kristin: Right. They’ve had friends stop by, and I think, you know, you mentioned the gated community, and at one point she said, Ann says, How’d you get in here, by the way? And he says, Oh, there’s a hole in the fence. You know, that might be my first step. Like, so Fred told you to crawl through the hole in the fence rather than calling us to ask for eggs.

Um, so I think, you know, there were some odd things going on beforehand. But, 

Todd: uh, yeah. That she just dismissed, right? 

Craig: She did. Yeah, and from that point on, these boys just play these sick, psychotic games with these people. I mean, I was trying, like, the first one’s a guessing game. And, uh, Paul pulls the golf ball out of his pocket and drops it, and says, what is that?

And none of the family says anything, and he says, come on, you know, what is it? And the dad says, a golf ball. And he says, why was it in my pocket? And you see in Naomi Watts face the realization of what’s happened. None of them say anything, and eventually Peter says, because you never hit it. And Naomi Watts says, where is he?

She knows that he’s used the golf club to kill their dog. And then so Paul takes her outside and plays warmer, colder with her to show her where the dead dog is. And he’s like, Colder, colder, 

Kristin: cold. And really, I think that’s the first time, too, that we get the full on look into the camera. Yes. And we’re seeing, okay, this is not going to be a typical movie.

They’re breaking the fourth wall kind of a thing. And, and I guess it’s kind of subtle at that point because he could be looking back. We don’t know if the rest of the family is there. But it’s the first time it’s directly into camera and kind of a surprise. 

Craig: Right, like he’s direct, right, like he’s winking at us, the viewer.

Yeah, 

Todd: he’s kind of trying to pull us to his side, and I think that’s part of the point of this film is, Isn’t this what you guys want? Isn’t this what you came here to see? Right? So yeah, that was also makes one fairly uncomfortable. 

Craig: Yeah, right. I mean, and that’s the thing, you know, they, this kind of comes up several times, but the guy who directed it also wrote it, and he has said outright in interviews that this is his commentary on the way that we consume violence in art and film and whatnot.

And I think it’s really a criticism of You sick bastards. Why do you want to see people getting brutalized and murdered, you know, for entertainment? Why is that entertainment? And I think that that’s part of the reason that he made the decision not to show a lot of the brutality and violence on screen.

Instead, you just kind of see the aftermath of what happened. Yeah, it’s 

Todd: an interesting way of getting around that because that criticism of a person who’s trying to make that point is always, Yeah, but aren’t you feeding into it? You’re making this movie. You’re including all this violence. I think back to Martyrs.

Yeah, and I feel like that’s a big portion of a point that martyrs is trying to make yet martyrs You have to sit through and watch these people get getting horribly tortured Whereas in this case you never have to see it You just get to hear it 

Craig: and imagine it which doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable.

No, no, 

Kristin: not at all And I think to you know, everyone that I had talked to About this movie too and said it’s so violent. It’s so disturbing But then I wondered do they even remember you don’t actually see it, you know You see some things after the fact, but really you only see one thing and that’s later That it’s kind of erased sort of so right You don’t you don’t actually see it you see the aftermath sort of not really a whole lot But you can hear things and I think it’s worse.

I mean, I think what you can imagine is worse than what it would actually be. Right. 

Craig: I think so too. And I think that it was maybe more effective because we’ve seen that before. You know, we’ve seen these home invasion movies before. We’ve seen the people get beat up. This is unexpected. It takes us out of our comfort zone.

And I think it definitely has an interesting effect. And don’t 

Todd: you, didn’t you Admittedly have that feeling too. Like I wanna see it. Like, no, go back and show 

Kristin: me . I 

Todd: didn’t, I didn’t. I mean, not like I really Oh, show me that. But like, uh, I wanna see what’s happening or I’m not sure what happened. I’m not, yeah.

I don’t know. I have to admit there’s this part of me that I don’t have this bloodlust anything. Right. But I, I did kind of want to just like in the beginning where I kind of wanted to see their faces, kind of wanted to see their reactions. Well, I kind of wanted to know for sure what was going on. 

Craig: Right, and I think that that is probably part of his point, is that why do we have that morbid curiosity?

And I totally know what you mean. It’s like, you know, a car accident. You can’t look away. You look. Um, and uh, this kind of doesn’t allow you to do that. That makes it doubly uncomfortable. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, and, and they even make some comments here that are directed, clearly directed more toward the audience than to us, or at least explicitly stating the theme, right?

Part of their playing with them is also this excessive politeness, and they’re playing Almost pretending like they’re good guys and like they’re being nice to them. And, and not even in that way where if you’re, if you’re good and you cooperate and bad things won’t happen to you, almost in a way that the whole time they’re dangling this carrot in front of them of doubt that maybe we’re going to get out of this.

Okay. Until they turn to them and say, we’re going to make a bet. Right. 

Kristin: And I kept trying to figure out, and I think that’s the point, I kept writing, What are the rules? What are the rules? Because when I would think, I would kind of figure it out, they’d break the rules. Or, um, you know, they, even at one point, One of the guys, and I think it was, um, Paul, said something about they’re doing something to preserve moral dignity.

And here they are, all in their white, and they never curse, and they speak very politely. And they are very polite the whole time, even when they’re brutal, they’re very polite. And if, if they, if the Anne, or George, or whoever, It doesn’t act polite, that’s when they’re sort of brutalized, and so it seems like they’re trying to have a sort of commentary on that.

Well, and 

Todd: I think he even says, like, because I wrote this down, it’s easier when things are polite. Right. 

Craig: I wrote that down too. I was like, oh, it just gives you the willies. Yeah. Um, I, I mean, and, and from this point, really they’re just torturing these people. I mean, uh, the dad’s leg is broken, they are, you know, they’re Killed the dog.

They killed the dog. At one point, the little boy gets away and runs to a neighbor’s house, but they’ve already killed the neighbors too. Paul, uh, finds him and brings him back. I mean, there are so many times, you know, the kid gets away, and you’re like, please kid, just run, just keep running and never stop.

I mean, it even 

Kristin: made me write down, I need to tell my kid, just run, run as far as you can if anything ever happens. And, you know, I work in an elementary school and we have to practice intruder drills. And we tell the kids, run, run until you can’t see anything, run. We will find you wherever you end up. It’s better to find you far away in a bush somewhere than to, you know, have you here with the bad people.

And so it just made me think. These are things that you have to somehow, as a parent, not really scare your child into, you know, talking about those kinds of situations that hopefully you’ll never encounter, but Man, I want my kid to know, don’t worry about me. Yeah. Run. You know, you could see this kid struggling with my mom and dad are in there.

Should I climb the fence? Should I stay close? What should I do? 

Todd: So you’re saying it would be instructive to show this film to your children.

Well, it is interesting and you are sitting there going, climb the fence. No, don’t, don’t come back down. Don’t, don’t go back in. No, don’t go in the corner. No, don’t do everything. Uh, but you kinda know that he’s not going to make it anyway, simply because these guys he’s so unconcerned that he’s taken off.

Craig: You, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I expected, I guess I expected him to get caught even though I really didn’t want him to, this cute little kid, and he was so scared, and that little actor did such a good job. And that’s heartbreaking. I know, and that, what Naomi Watts I think talked about how difficult it was for her, who is the lead actor, the dad?

Oh, 

Todd: Tim Roth. Yeah. Yeah, 

Kristin: Tim Roth. Yeah, he, I mean, I was reading about, he said that it was so. horrible making this film that he will not watch it. It has not watched it. Really? Naomi Watts really said, you know, I’ve done a lot of difficult films that were really emotionally demanding and I just find ways to take myself out of it.

And the director was really great. We would find moments where we needed to escape. Sometimes we just had to get off set for a while. Sometimes we would just make a really inappropriate joke or you know, we would find ways to deal with it And she said, you know, I can go home and not take it home with me But it doesn’t seem like Tim Roth could do that.

I mean, he has not 

Craig: watched it Well, and and he has said that part of the reason was because the actor who played his son Reminded him very much of his own son. Oh, yeah, and I can see how that would be terrible You know, they they bring the son back and of course, this is after you said that thing about preserving moral old or something like that.

That was when they put a pillowcase over the kid’s head and they made the mom take her clothes off. 

Todd: You don’t want to hurt the kitty cat, right? Leave him alone. 

Craig: Exactly. Daddy would like to play too.

What are we waiting for? Tell your wife not to be shy. It’s silly. I’m sure she doesn’t have jelly rolls. Please leave 

Todd: him alone. 

Craig: You just have to tell her to take off her clothes. Please. Take off your clothes, 

Todd: honey. 

Kristin: God, that was the most horrible for me to watch, seeing that poor kid struggling to breathe under this thing, and I, I remember thinking, cause the husband is there sort of looking at her, and she’s looking to him, and he’s saying, you know, take off your clothes, they’re sort of making the husband tell her, and I was thinking, nobody’d have to tell me.

You know, as a mom, I’d be stripping my clothes off, whatever I could do, and I had to, you know, I kept thinking over and over, Of course, you never know what you would do in that situation. But I kept thinking, someone messes with my kids. I’m going to do everything I can to get my kid out of that situation.

And that was something, too, that Naomi Watts had said. She said, you know, I wanted to believe that I could have got my family out of that situation. But you don’t know. You just have no idea what’s going to go on and that kind of thing. Well, 

Todd: they were so paralyzed throughout the whole thing. And I think that comes forward toward the end, when the husband is talking with his wife, when the killers have ostensibly left.

Unfortunately, the kid has been 

Craig: killed. Yeah, they kill the kid first. Which is so weird. It is. I mean, it defies convention. You always think the kid is going to make it. But I think that that’s what they were going for. I think he was trying to defy convention and Peter, no, Paul, the main guy, even comments on it.

He said, what are you doing? You don’t kill the, you don’t kill the kid first. Uh, don’t you know anything about timing or something like that? Um, and it’s like, he’s playing this thing out. And he says stuff like that a couple of different times. Um, after they kill the kid, They leave. They say, Oh, time for us to go.

We gotta go. We’ll put the pups away. See 

Todd: you later. Door shuts and they can hear the car drive off. 

Craig: And that is where you just see, again, it’s one of those still frames of just the room, and you see blood on the TV and on the wall. You see the husband’s legs on the floor coming out of one side of the couch.

Everything’s kind of obscured by the couch. Naomi Watts is, uh, kneeling. She’s bound, hands and feet are bound together. In her underwear. 

Kristin: In her underwear. You couldn’t get more vulnerable 

Craig: than she is in that moment. And you see the, you know, the kid’s legs over by the TV and that’s where the spray of blood is.

Now at first, I remember seeing this the first time. It appeared that they shot the kid and I couldn’t believe it. But then I also thought that maybe they had killed them both. 

Todd: I thought so too. It plays some games with you by showing you the father’s legs, but you don’t hear him and he 

Craig: doesn’t 

Kristin: move. And there was only one, you know, we only heard one shot 

Craig: fired.

There was only one shot, but then you heard kind of what it sounded like. That’s kind of disgustful. Which I can only imagine is the parents doing whatever they can. I mean, there’s nothing that they could do. I mean, the dad has this terrible broken leg. She’s completely bound. You know, her hands are together, her feet are together.

And it’s 

Todd: That is a long scene. 

Craig: And it’s so painful. 

Kristin: And the TV has been on. It had been very loud the whole time too. So there’s all this extra noise and it’s just It’s hard to watch on many levels, but then too you feel so aggravated by the noise and everything and you almost feel like, you know, one of the first things Naomi Watts does is she sort of tries to maneuver herself over to the TV to just turn the darn TV off so there’s not that extra noise.

Craig: And then there’s that horrible silence. 

Todd: You know, when the camera is away is when the physical pain happens. But the emotional pain is what the camera lingers on, and it forces you to be a voyeur and to stare and, and live through this pain, watch these people go through this pain. That was a terrible scene.

That scene was at least five minutes long. Oh, it was long. Of her struggling and getting out, and it’s not just of her physically struggling, but it’s of her mentally getting the will. To get up, and to do these things, and to move around, and then getting her husband up, and Right. You know, another scene shortly before the kid was killed, when they track him down, is this look of terror in his face when he’s cornered with the gun.

And the tears are streaming down his face, and that lingers for so long on that. It’s super uncomfortable. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s like, okay, you like to go pay movie to see people get killed. Now we’re gonna make you consider the actual ramifications of something violent like this happening. Try to feel what they’re feeling.

And that is why that scene, you know, I don’t have kids, but I can only ima What could you I think you turned to me and said, at that point I 

Kristin: said, well for one thing I noticed right away, as she’s struggling to get to the TV, as she’s struggling to get to her phone, Feet because her, I mean her feet are taped together.

Mm-Hmm. really close together and you know, her arms are behind her back. She never once looked at the kid. Mm-Hmm. . No. And I thought, there’s no way you could Mm-Hmm. if you were going to get outta that and stay conscious. Mm-Hmm. , um, you couldn’t look. And I, I just really, I think I was holding my breath that whole time and she was trying to stand up and she’d fall down and she’s, you can tell she’s trying to fall in a way that she’s not gonna see the kid or.

I don’t even know if she knows if her husband’s alive at that point. 

Craig: Right, right. And then he gets himself set up, and then I feel like he kind of starts sobbing. And it’s, you know, it’s that kind of sob where you just, you don’t even have the breath for it. And, um, she runs back in, we, you know, we presume, we assumed she was going to the kitchen to get a knife.

take her tape off, which she had, and she runs back in, and she just gets down on the floor with him and embraces him, and they’re just holding there in that embrace for a good thirty seconds or longer, and it’s just agonizing. I mean, you just can’t even imagine what they must be feeling or thinking in that moment.

Todd: Yeah, and it, this whole sequence really conjures up these conflicting feelings, right? You have the feelings of guilt, you have the feelings of sadness, you have the feelings of putting yourself in their shoes, and the, you know, vicariously living this grief through them. But then there’s also this, this nagging part of you that’s like, you guys need to get 

Kristin: out!

Get out there! And I, but I remember I did, I turned to Craig and I said, you know, as a parent though, We assume that’s their only child. That’s the only kid that was with them. And in a way you’re sort of like, what does it matter now? You know, we just watched that kid get killed in front of us. Oh, well, whatever happens to us, you know, that’s kind of when you’re a parent, it feels like very much your life is living for your kid a lot of the time.

And so it would be very hard to just think, okay, well, we need to run now. But at the same time watching it, I was thinking, get out, get a move on. I know your leg hurts, but you would think you could get out. Walk on 

Craig: it for a little while. And, and that’s, you know, that’s what they do. They, they start to get up and start to get ready to leave.

And I felt like this part, you know, the whole time I’m thinking, Get out, get out, get out. But at the same time, I’m thinking, If I were in this situation, I might be doing the same things that they were doing. 

Kristin: Well, and he told her, You gotta go. You know, his, his leg, he’s realizing he’s too hurt. He doesn’t think he can make it.

He’s gonna hold him back. You know, there’s a whole bit about the cell phone, they try to get the cell phone to work that’s been dropped in 

Craig: the water. Well, and like it comes on and so they keep trying to mess with it. And I can imagine that I would do that. Like if, if I got that cell phone to work and I thought there was some hope that it might actually work, I might have lingered a little bit longer 

Kristin: than I should have.

But he says to her, you know, you’ve got to go. And I remember thinking, I don’t want to be the one to go. You know, you’d be, I know they supposedly left, but they’re probably out there. They came before. I don’t want to run out there and be by myself. 

Craig: And you can, I felt like I could see that in her face. The reluctance, like she didn’t want to go by herself, but there was no other choice.

Todd: She ends up, uh, leaving. After, after the struggle with the cell phone, he’s propped up on a chair. He manages to drag himself, meanwhile, and I think put a blanket over the kid. And then she goes out by the, she goes to the next door neighbor, and she yells through the gate, and they’re not there, and she’s struggling down the road.

It’s the middle of the night at 

Craig: this point, yeah. Mm 

Todd: hmm. And, uh, a car starts to come by. And again, you’ve been in this situation a hundred times before, when you’re looking for a car and you’re not sure it’s the right one. Cause you, every car looks the same when just the headlights are barreling straight towards you.

But she hides behind a tree, because it could be them coming back. And as soon as it passes by and it’s not, she runs out, and of course she can’t flag him down. Then another car comes, and just when we’re about to see whether it’s them or not, it cuts to the guy. And 

Craig: you can see, God, I just think she did such a good job, and I’m sure the direction and the cinematography had something to do with it too, but you can see that conflict in her face.

Do I take the chance? You know, the last one was safe. If I had taken that one, I could, you know, be out of here. Do I take the chance? And, and I’m sitting here thinking, I don’t know either. I don’t know what you 

Kristin: should do. I don’t know either, but I’m, I’m a baby. And so I think I would have still hidden and then just kept running for houses or something.

But it just goes to show you, you know, we have these gates, we have all these security systems to keep people out. But then, you know, that’s kind of her biggest problem is she can’t get in anywhere to get help. There’s There’s so much security and she can’t get somewhere. She should have 

Todd: taken those wire clippers with her and cut the neighbor’s fence.

Yeah. Right, right. What was she 

Craig: thinking? Well, it was them. In the car. And they, and they get her. And they bring her back. And I mean, this is really, this is endgame. I mean, the, the main guy, Paul. Basically says, you know, they do the counting off thing again to see who’s going to go first. And Peter, who is doing the counting, messes it up several times and has to start over several times.

So again, you know, it’s just this long, tense moment. But eventually it comes down to it’s going to be the husband, George. They tell Anne. Now we get to play a game again. It’s called The Loving Wife. Otherwise known as whether by knife or whether by gun Losing your life can sometimes be fun. Come on. Don’t fall asleep.

You have to play the game Otherwise, I have to gag you again, and you don’t like that. Do you? And the game is you get to choose how he dies. Do we shoot him or do we stab him to death? And like as they have been doing this whole time You They force these people to participate and there’s part of me That almost just wanted her to just be defiant and just refuse.

But again when she refuses We don’t see it, but we hear it. One of them stabs the husband, and he’s moaning and clearly 

Kristin: in agony. And she did refuse once, I think, in some way, and they ended up punching her in the stomach, and it was kind of the first time they had been violent to her. And so I think it was kind of sh And they kind of threw the kid on them, and so it was showing, all right, they’re not gonna just beat up the dad.

Right. You know, that’s It’s anything goes, kind of a deal, and we didn’t mention this, but at some point, and I think it was before the son even died, or no, no, no, it was right after they shot the son, you know, there’s kind of this scuffle, and you know, Paul is saying, oh, what’d you do that for, what’d you do, the boss is going to be so mad.

Yes. And I’m wondering, who 

Todd: is the boss? I know, yeah. They dropped the eggs on the floor or something again. He said, oh, the boss is going to be mad because we’re supposed to He stressed that we need to keep the carpet clean. 

Craig: He was talking about I think he was talking about Peter. Or no, Paul. That was Peter that said it.

I think he was talking about Paul. Really? Because Paul had said when he walked out, he said Remember, because What’s his name? The other one was getting ready to kill somebody and he said, don’t know. He said, if you get bored with them, when he ran off to chase the kid, um, when Paul ran off to chase the kid, he said, if you get bored with them, just dump a bucket of water over his head, but careful not to mess up the rug.

And then later, uh, Peter drops the eggs and he says, Oh, he specifically said, don’t mess up the 

Kristin: rug. But then I thought it was kind of the, the ringleader guy who said the boss is going to, 

Craig: Oh, maybe you’re right. Maybe I missed it. Like it was, I 

Kristin: couldn’t figure out then. Who is the boss? And, and I don’t think.

Tony Danza. Yeah. As soon as I said that, I was thinking, who’s the boss? Um, oh, if only Tony Danza were a part of this film, it would have been very different. Um, but I couldn’t figure it out. And I, maybe we’re not supposed to, maybe it doesn’t matter. And 

Craig: well, cause they’ve been lying through the whole time.

I mean, they, we don’t know if these are their real names, but Paul tells, you know, all these silly backstories that are totally conflicting. And he, he even says, I’m lying. All of that was a lie. So we can’t believe anything. 

Kristin: They say addicts and then, or that, you know, the one guy sleeping with his mom, he’s actually white trash.

And there are all these different backstories he gets. And sometimes they’re funny. It’s kind of a nice. Relief for a second, an uncomfortable laugh, I 

Craig: guess, but I almost skipped over it because we were talking about they were making, they were forcing her to make the decision and he’s kind of, he’s playing with her, trying to get her to make this decision and for the first time.

We see some violence on screen and it was, it happened so quickly while he’s playing with her, talking to her quietly, Naomi Watts, and really super fast jumps down to the coffee table where the shotgun is laying and pulls it up and shoots. Right through the chest, he, we see this, this is the first overt violence we’ve really seen.

He flies up against the wall, um, and he’s clearly dead, um, clearly dead. And I’m thinking, no matter what happens, thank God, you know, one of them’s dead. At least she got one of them. Um, and then, this I think is the most controversial part of the movie, and a part that people, um, Complain about really yeah 

Todd: That’s when Paul was running around and he finds the remote control.

Where’s the remote? Where’s the remote? Mm hmm picks it up hits the back on and it literally rewinds the film in front of us To the point before that happens so that they can replay it and he grabs the gun just in time before she does it. 

Kristin: Right. And he says to her too, you’re not allowed to break the rules right after that.

He’s 

Todd: broken the rules, yeah. And you know, I actually really thought that was ingenious. As far as trying to get your point across. Here was the violence you really wanted to see right and that is denied 

Craig: to you. Yes. Uh huh. Yeah Yeah, and but it is frustrating because you you want her to get away and again it’s kind of defying formula because usually There’s one person, no matter how much they go through, even if they don’t necessarily overcome their pursuer, they get away, usually.

Kristin: Even if they’ve lost everything. Right. You’re still holding out hope that, that one person’s gonna make it. Yeah. They’re gonna have a really screwed up life, but they’re gonna 

Craig: make it. But instead, you know, he forces her, well I, I don’t, at that point I think that he just shoots her. Yes, but before, before that, when he was toying with her again, we got another one of those shots where he looks directly into camera and says, you guys want, uh, a good ending, right?

With plausible plot points, right? And then he goes back to her again. It’s like, this is what you want, right? This is what you want. And it’s, it’s creepy. 

Kristin: And you know, he, right before that, right before when she grabs the gun, it’s like what finally sets her off is they, they keep, Messing with her, you know, they say say any prayer say it perfectly and you get to decide what happens and she’s like I don’t know any prayers, you know, and and so they give her this really short easy one And so she says it and then they say, okay, that was just practice now It’s like she did what you said, it doesn’t matter It doesn’t nothing’s gonna matter and I think she realizes that and that’s when she grabs the gun and of course that doesn’t Matter 

Craig: for us, right?

Yeah, they shoot him and then this is pretty much the end of the movie. It’s morning by this time. And, uh, we see the three of them, the two boys and, and, and rain slickers going down to the boat where the boat is docked and, uh, they get in the boat. Um, again, there was a red herring kind of planted early on.

The dad had needed a knife for working on the boat and it had gotten left there and she gets sat down right where it was. Um, and she does pick it up and start to try to, uh, cut the knife. But. They see her right away and just take it away. Like it’s like they give you, Oh, there may still be a shred of hope.

No, 

Kristin: no. And they even commend her for her effort. So that’s Olympic spirit or something. You know, they’re look at her sweet little thing, but it’s 

Todd: not going to work. Yeah. And then he says, come up next to me, but come over here, sit next to me. It’s safer up here. And so she’s sitting between the two of them and they’re just having this thing.

It’s a random conversation. About reality. Reality. Yeah, it’s not terribly random. Right. Uh, it definitely fits in with the theme. And, uh, he just, uh, Paul just looks at her and says, ah, see ya later, goodbye, and unceremoniously knocks her over the edge. Yep. There’s no splash, there’s no shot on her, you know, body floating down slowly into the ocean or anything.

She’s just gone. 

Kristin: Yep. That’s it. She’s gone. And then, you know, I knew what was gonna happen, because early on in the film, a friend had stopped by, and, you know, very creepily, this young man said, Hey, which house is yours? Like, you know, just very odd, and she sort of describes her house, and so you know, that’s their next stop.

And sure enough, that’s their next stop. They just keep on rowing right, or sailing right to their house. They’re back with the egg routine. Yep. And they need some 

Craig: eggs. He, uh, he gets into their house, the main one, Paul. And, um, the woman goes to get eggs. And again, he kind of looks around the house. Then he looks right at us in the camera.

And, boom. Freeze frame. Freeze frame, loud music, cue credits. 

Kristin: Yeah, and this loud music too, they, they use that a lot. And I thought, you know, It’s kind of clever. I wonder does he just carry the CD around because the music just sounds like people screaming Yeah, and they play it when they’re murdering people, you know, so it’s disturbing on many levels well I 

Craig: think that Conversation that they have is meant to be pointed and I think it may even be a little bit heavy handed the conversation that the two Boys have in the boat.

Yes one. I don’t even know what they’re talking about I don’t know what they’re talking about movies books comic books but the simpler of the two Peter is talking about something that he saw or read where you A guy got trapped in an alternate reality and was trying to communicate with his family in the real reality, but then he realized that his alternate reality was fiction, and, um, uh, Paul says, Okay, so where’s your hero now?

Is he in reality or is he in fiction? His family’s in reality and he’s in fiction. But isn’t fiction real? Why? Well, you can see it in the movie, right? Of course. Well, And it’s just as real as reality. You can see it too, right? So isn’t that just as real as real reality? Uh, and I think that’s kind of what he’s getting at too.

You know, we crave why, why do we want to watch these horrible, horrible things that do happen in reality and we pay a bunch of money to go to a movie theater and watch it play out. While we 

Kristin: eat popcorn and candy. Right. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know the answer to the question. I think it’s an interesting question.

Especially for somebody like me and Todd who watch these things all the time. 

Todd: Maybe get judged for it occasionally. Right. Kristen. 

Kristin: No. I’m just kidding. I don’t judge. And I, you know, I like supernatural movies too. For me, this one, it got under my skin, but I’m not gonna, well, I say this now, I’m not home by myself.

I may lose sleep over it those nights, but it helped me that they did break that wall, that they looked into the camera because then I could say, this is goofy, you know, this, thank you for breaking that because now I don’t feel like it’s so real and I just could breathe a little better once they started doing that and I didn’t feel so tense.

So for me, that helped. And, and maybe that’s Maybe the director wanted to do that. 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Well, it had the opposite effect on me. It felt like I’m part and parcel to this. You know? That, uh, breaking that fourth wall means there is no separation between the reality of us and the TV. And therefore Yeah, I don’t know.

I mean, obviously I didn’t literally think that. Right, right. But I, it did kind of give me that sense. And it did cause Caused me to question, why am I watching this? Yeah. Right, right. Um, we could have turned it off at any point. Right. We wouldn’t have for the podcast, but you know, it’s, it’s, it’s very true.

This is something that bothered me a lot about Martyrs. Uh, that is a movie that I have very conflicted feelings about. You’ve seen it, I presume. I’ve seen it, yeah, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that sometime later, but I felt like it was, in some ways, making a similar statement or attempting to. Mm hmm. I thought this film was a little more skillful 

Craig: at it.

Yeah, I don’t know. I saw that movie once and it was really, um, brutal. I mean, it’s just really, really, I mean, it’s torture and it’s just, you see everything and it’s the worst kind of torture you can imagine, like flaying and I mean, it’s just awful. I think you’re right. I think it was commentary on, on graphic violence in art as well, but I don’t know.

I felt like the message of that one got muddied a little bit. Oh yeah. Especially 

Todd: by the end. The ending is a little 

Craig: strange. This one, I don’t know that I necessarily agree. With his message, but I think that it’s something interesting to consider. I think that he’s also maybe making the suggestion that because we Glorify is not the right word, but because we celebrate this in art, that that may lead to people wanting to celebrate it in real life and maybe acting these things out when otherwise they wouldn’t.

And that’s been a debate forever, you know, do violent video games, you know, cause teens to be violent? Um, and I don’t know what the answer is, but I, I, I wonder if he was maybe kind of digging at that question 

Todd: too. Well, thankfully he made this so uncomfortable. Yeah. That it would be harder to, you can’t really say he was glorifying the violence in this film in any way.

By not showing it, of course. He denied us everything that you normally see in these movies. He even denied us the nudity, you know, of Naomi Watts. But we got to linger on her face as she’s experiencing the, uh, humiliation of that scene, which is ten times worse. Which, I mean, if every movie were like that, and every movie truly showed you the real power of violence, it would no longer be entertainment, you know?

It’s hard to imagine where you could draw a line, how you could possibly have bad things happen in art without encountering that kind of a question. 

Craig: I don’t know, it’s pretty heady for, it’s definitely a, a bigger, uh, philosophical question than we had last week with Haosu, so. Oh 

Todd: yeah. 

Kristin: Well, just another, just to make it even darker, the original I was reading that there’s, there’s sort of a, um, a curse on this film and people weren’t sure if they should remake it because, Three of the four original actors from the original film are dead now.

You’re kidding! No! Yeah, three of the four. And, um, you know, one was in his fifties, I think, one like thirty six, thirty seven. I know that the, the husband and wife were actually a couple in real life. I can’t remember now. I know two men. I, I don’t remember if it was the woman, but three of the four are now dead.

That’s wild. In a decade. Crazy. So they, there was just all around bad vibes sort of surrounding this film. But, um. You know Naomi Watts kind of spoke to the The violence piece and she said it was it was very artfully done. And I think that you know people were Questioning how violent it was and I think she was trying not to give too much away.

Right. By saying, you know, you may be surprised. Well, 

Craig: I agree that it was artfully done. I think it was a well made film. It was uncomfortable to watch, but I think it was really 

Todd: well made. You alluded to some controversy earlier. Did we cover all that, or? Um 

Craig: Gosh, I don’t think people are mad about that. I think people 

Kristin: are mad about the rewind scene, about the looking to the camera, about, you know, they’re all about these rules and yet they keep breaking rules.

That’s, that’s kind of what I kept hearing 

Craig: from people. I hate it when people say things like this because it’s so pretentious, but honestly, The people who are complaining about that, I don’t think they got the purpose of it. No, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. And I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound pretentious, I get really irritated when people say stuff like that, but I really think that you kind of missed the point if, uh, those were the complaints that you had coming away from it.

Or 

Kristin: perhaps didn’t even see the film. You know? Yeah. Right. They could have just heard about how brutal it is. And stuff like that. Because I certainly had heard it is so brutal and I watched it and I thought, what? We really didn’t see. Mm hmm. I don’t know how it did. Do you 

Craig: guys know? It didn’t do well. It only got a very limited theatrical release.

Um, it lost money. I don’t think it made back half. It was on like a 15 million dollar budget and I don’t think that it made that back. Really? Yeah, I don’t think it did. It was really 

Kristin: limited. I could see people walking out of this film, you know, at the theater. I think It’s, it’s so uncomfortable anytime you have, especially, I could see a lot of people leaving when that kid is dead.

You know, you don’t see him get killed, but it’s just kind of like, alright, I, I didn’t sign up for this. You know, we don’t expect to see that. And, um, but in a way, you know, psychos are just psychos, you know, and people try to figure out what, what they’re thinking, but you 

Craig: know, there isn’t, there is no rhyme and reason behind it.

Right. 

Todd: These games aren’t as funny as they thought they were going to be. Yeah, right, right. Not funny. Well, thank you again for joining us for another episode. Thank you, Kristen! Thank you. 

Craig: I’m glad you came. So great to have you. Did you have 

Kristin: fun? Sure! Yeah. I don’t know that I, uh, I had any insightful input, but 

Craig: Yeah, you did!

It was a lot of fun. It 

Todd: was a lot of fun. It was fun. A very serious subject matter, but fun to chat about. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Please check us out on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend. Check out our Facebook page. Leave us a comment. We’d love to hear what you have to say.

And your thoughts about this movie as well. Did you agree with the controversy? Did you not? Did you get it, as Craig said? Or are you going to admit that you didn’t? Until next week, I’m Todd. I’m Craig. And I’m Kristen. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw

2 Responses

  1. Jim Higgins says:

    Wow, what a disturbing movie, of all the horror movies I have watched which are a ton. This one really disturbed me. Todd, Craig and Kristen did an excellent job in the review of the film

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