Apostle (2018)

Episode 264, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week’s episode is Apostle, the 2018 Netflix film by writer/director, Gareth Evans, who is Welsh, who cut his teeth in Indonesia. On several Indonesian horror films, including a segment from VHS 2 called Safe Haven that I think was one of the better of the segments there, which also sort of feels like he’s auditioning for this movie.

He seems to be a guy along with a little stable of filmmakers who moved to Indonesia as a filmmaker and did some movies down there made some pretty good ones. Apparently that I haven’t seen one called the Ray. Yeah. A whole

Craig: series. I think there’s two or three

Todd: of them, I think. Yeah. Yeah. At least two. And after hearing about it, and I kind of want to see that movie.

It’s not a horror movie. It’s, it’s an action movie, but it gets it’s very well regarded apparently. I’ve not seen many Indonesian films. I’m not sure I have seen any. So, but anyway, that, that bit Safe Haven from VHS 2 was one of the standouts I think, and that was in Indonesia. He decided that he wanted to dip his toes back in the horror genre a little bit, started playing with some ideas that he had had.

With a couple of the writer directors, I think, and came up with this movie, Apostle, which pretty strongly hearkens back to like The Wicker Wan and those types of films, but definitely has its own spin on things. And I was not my idea to choose this film. It was Craigslist. So Craig, what made you decide to choose a parcel for us to talk about this

Craig: week?

I feel like the last few movies that we’ve done and I don’t know that may be an exaggeration, but we we’ve, we’ve done a couple silly. Movies, bad movies, not meaning that we didn’t like them. We didn’t enjoy talking about them, but just that we’re, you know, kind of goofy and that’s great. And, and last week after we did leprechaun, you said, should we do something good now?

That’s true. And I thought, you know what? It feels like. Then a little while since we’ve done something that was really good. I really enjoy lists. Um, I, you know, follow these horror movie websites. And so I just started Googling like best horror movies of 20, 21 best horror movies of 2020. Uh, cause I, I also like to do recent things every once in awhile and I ended up on.

A list that was scariest movies available on Netflix. And it was a fun list to go through. Uh, I haven’t really been looking at Netflix a lot lately because I’ve got so many other streaming services now where he usually go to. My horror fix. Um, and as I remembered Netflix, hasn’t always been the best when it comes to horror selection.

But looking at this list, there were actually quite a few on there that, uh, I thought were pretty interesting. But for some reason, this one stood out. I don’t remember why, but I texted you and said, let’s, let’s check this out. And then. It was only then that I went to the IMDV page and saw that it was two hours and 10 minutes long.

Todd: I know I was so shocked when you chose this. The minute I looked at the time, I was like, oh my God, Craig must really want to see this movie.

Craig: No, it was, it was kind of a surprise to me, but we picked it some, sometimes we pick these movies a day or two before we’re going to record. Um, but we actually pick this one pretty early and I thought, well, it’s all right.

You know, it’s a long, but if I want to, I can break it up over several days. But, um, I didn’t, I started watching it and, uh, I was really pretty intrigued and I ended up watching it from start to finish all in one, sitting. It is long and there’s no getting away from that, but I was not bored. This is a very.

Plot driven movie. Um, there’s always stuff going on. Um, new twists and intriguing things happening all the time. You’re right. That it is a lot like The Wicker Man a lot, because it’s about a guy I going into this cult, basically the main character Thomas played by Dan Stevens, who I recognize. Probably just cause he’s hot, but I recognized him and I looked him up and he was the lead in The Guest, which we did a few Halloweens ago and we liked that movie and we liked him in it talked

Todd: about how hot he was in that movie almost too hot, really?

Like, like he’s like a CGI person. He looks so good, but like that movie. Somehow has become our most downloaded. One of our most downloaded episodes. We’ve done over 260 episodes now. And I don’t even understand why the guest, I can’t say at this moment. All right, I’m not going to, I’m not, I’m not going to go back and look at the statistics at this moment, but for the longest time, our S ever since our episode on that came out, that was our most downloaded episode.

And then when I started putting our episodes up on YouTube, That also skyrocketed immediately to be one of our most viewed episodes.

Craig: It’s funny because when we did that movie, I had never even heard of it.

Todd: Yeah, me neither or Dan Stevens to be fair, but, but now. If you’ve seen the Disney beauty and the beast, he was the beast.

It was quite good. I actually enjoyed that one. Somebody else had to tell me he was a long standing person on Downton Abbey. I don’t watch that show. He also, I think, was a little heavier in that role. He didn’t look like so pretty boy that he does now, but in this movie, he, it looks quite good. I mean, his eyes are just piercing.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It dirty them up a little bit. Right. And it it’s, it’s a period piece and he does look, you know, rugged

because it’s a period piece. In addition now, There are definitely shades of Wicker Man here, for sure. But because it’s a period piece, it reminded me of some other things, a little bit of The Witch vibe. Oh yeah. Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of, uh, The Crucible, The Village. Yeah. And, and even The Wailing was not a period piece, but I feel like it was far enough removed culturally from what I’m accustomed to that it almost felt period, just because it felt kind of foreign to me and, and dealing with supernatural stuff and not necessarily really familiar traditional. Supernatural stuff. This movie is, uh, original in, you know, what it’s, what it’s dealing with.

Uh, and, and I liked that, um, yes, it is a cult, but it’s not a Satanist cult. There’s, there’s something entirely different. And I found it to be pretty unique, uh, going on. So overall, I I’m glad that, uh, We stumbled across it because I don’t know that I would have watched it otherwise. And there’s some really good stuff going on here.

I think first and foremost, I would say that the quality of the filmmaking, oh, it’s, top-notch like insane. Like this cinematography is beautiful. Um, the set pieces are large scale and realistic looking for the most part. There’s a lot, you know, shot in these great natural landscapes. You know, there are some silly anachronism, some silly mistakes that are made as far as the time period is concerned, but they’re few and far between.

And for the most part, it feels. Uh, pretty authentic and, and yeah, I don’t know. It it’s, it’s a hard movie to qualify. I did like it, but it’s so different that I, I don’t know it’s going to be, it’s also going to be interesting to talk about because I watched this movie and I thought, oh my gosh, there was so much going on here.

And the quality is so good. I can’t wait to read about all of the behind the scenes. Nothing.

Todd: Right. So weird. Right? It’s like four years old. This movie. It was on Netflix and it’s by this filmmaker who was well acclaimed and respected for the previous films you’ve done. And there’s like no trivia. And I stumbled across a couple of interviews by him.

People interviewing him about this movie and they inevitably end up talking about the raid and the. Two as well. So there’s just not a lot, except for what was kind of going behind his mind when he decided to put this film together, which was basically like, Hey, I had these little nuggets of ideas and I kind of bounced them around.

And over the years, I just pieced them together into this. It gives the impression of a movie that has something deep to say, perhaps about religion, faith in the faith and stuff. But actually, you know, when you see these interviews with the director, he’s like, I was really, wasn’t trying to go that way at all.

He said, I was really just playing those, this basic theme of men who just kind of corrupt something. And, and, and, and how does that end up playing out? He in fact was really trying to avoid any direct criticism of religion in general, simply because, uh, he said, you know, he has a lot of religious family and, and all that.

Yeah. And he said he really wasn’t interested in going down that road. And I, and I can kind of see that in a way, because I think the film was way more nuanced in that regard than we typically get from this kind of religious cult horror. One thing that the film did for me anyway, quite well, was it started out and you said two and a half hours and it’s long.

And I will say it all. It feels long, but also it’s never boring. And so I didn’t care, right. There was always kind of on the edge of my seat. Almost every scene sort of ends and in more mystery to unravel, you’re never quite sure exactly what’s going on here. And that extends through so much of the movie and so many shocking things happen.

Over that time period. It’s just full of surprises and it’s, it’s quite nice. But one thing that it did really, really well for me is that I started out feeling like, okay, evil call, terrible people at the beginning, trying to get ahead. And by the end of the film, I at least had some degree of sympathy. Uh, at least a more nuanced feeling for the perpetrators or whatever of the bad stuff that’s going on.

Then I had at the beginning of the movie, that was impressive

Craig: as it turns out, you know, there is a bad guy in the end, but he’s

Todd: almost kind of comes out of left field really. Right. He

Craig: does well. And it’s almost as though this character. Who ends up kind of being the bad guy. I mean, he just kind of loses it at the end.

It’s not really

Todd: like, he was a horrible guy from the beginning scheming.

Craig: Right, right. He just kind of loses it at the end and, and the people that you believe to be the bad guys, and you could argue that they are because. They’re doing is, is pretty bad, but ultimately they’re, well-intentioned, they’re trying to provide this cult, these cult leaders, they’re, they’re trying to provide for their community and they’re trying to establish a safe Haven and avoid, you know, persecution and, and, and they just want to be independent and it, you know, like they’re, they’re trying to.

It’s set in what? Like 1905, I think. Is it England or Wales? I don’t remember this community. This small community goes to this island. They want to be independent. They don’t want to be reliant upon. They’re national government and they don’t want to be burdened by their national government through taxation and all those kinds of things.

So they’ve established themselves as this independent colony and they are self-sufficient or at least that was the plan, but things are not, it seemed like things were going well, initially, everything was going great. And now things aren’t going well, things are actually going very badly. The, um, the crops are.

Growing the animals are dying and not reproducing. And, and so there’s a mystery there of, of why all of this is happening. The thrust of the plot though, is that this guy, Thomas, who we’d mentioned before Dan Stevens is told by, I think it’s like the manager of his fathers. We only see his father from the back, like sitting in front of a fire.

Like I got the feeling that he was like mentally incapacitated in some way. Thomas’s sister has been abducted by this Colt who is demanding a ransom and they demand that the father come to them. Island their colony with a ransom. They want him to come by himself. And if he brings any kind of law enforcement or anybody else with them, they’re going to execute the daughter.

But because he’s incapacitated, they’re sending Thomas and they think that this is a good idea because everybody believes that Thomas dad, they won’t be expecting you stay hidden. The money’s flock. But do not pay the ransom they seek until you see a lie. If these people plus femurs cult a disease, careful,

this movie. Together like a puzzle. You know, all of these little things are revealed to us over time. So we don’t know this initially, but we find out that Thomas has been off and correct me if I’m wrong here. I got the impression that he was off doing missionary work, Christian missionary work, but he and his fellow missionaries were tortured.

And. Many of them executed. Is that kind of the feeling that you got in

Todd: China,

Craig: right? Which leads to a crisis of faith with Thomas Thomas was devoutly Christian, but now doesn’t have faith in God anymore because of the terrible things that he’s been through. But because everybody thinks that he’s dead, they won’t be expecting him.

Um, and so he’s gonna go and kind of infiltrate this place. And so he does, he goes and he in, and he has to take a boat to get there because it’s an island, obviously he’s smart because as he’s in line and the boatman is. Taking tickets. I don’t know if Thomas gets suspicious or what, but he, with, through some trickery, he switches tickets with another one of the passengers and they’re both welcomed onto the boat, but when they get off the boat, the guy who he switched tickets with is.

Taken away by a bunch of men. And eventually Thomas sees him brought into the village unconscious. And eventually, as it turns out Thomas’s ticket, which he switched, had been marked, they had been expecting him. And so. They torture this poor guy who has no idea what’s going on because they think that he must have the ransom on him, which he doesn’t.

Um, but at that point they also know that they have been infiltrated and one of the other people, cause it’s a whole boatload of people, probably 20 people or something that they bring over and right away. We just kind of get introduced to this village. There’s a creepy statue of what appears to be a shrouded woman.

And it appears very much to be a religious icon, uh, right in the middle of the village. And, uh, we just kind of start to get to see village life and we’re introduced to a variety of characters. There’s a guy named Malcolm, who’s the leader of their. For lack of a better word church through backstory. We also find out that he and two other men, they refer to themselves as brothers, but I.

Ever figure out if they are actually biological brothers or if they’re just talking about, you know, like brothers spiritual. Yeah, exactly. So there’s these three guys, Malcolm is the leader and he’s like the preacher and he’s even written a book like their religious text is written by him and everybody has a copy of it.

And we see kind of, uh, their religious, uh, ceremonies, which. I say ceremony. I mean, it’s basically just a church meeting. It doesn’t really seem like anything that out of the ordinary. And we start to meet some other characters in the village and I don’t know what you want to talk about. I don’t know how much you want to get into it because cause there are, there’s probably, I don’t know, five or six characters who we are interested in.

Like all, all three of the men have children, so Malcolm’s daughter. Is Andrea and she’s this very beautiful red headed girl who almost seems out of place in, in this village because she is, you know, she’s all dolled up. Her hair, you know, is done and she’s in makeup and beauty. Dresses all the time. And she seems well liked and respected, and she kind of takes care of medical needs for people and, and whatnot, young.

Beautiful. And then Frank is one of the three men and he has a son, um, named Jeremy. And then the last guy, I feel like. Quinn. Yeah. Quinn and Quinn has a daughter named pheon and as it turns out, Jeremy and pheon are young lovers. And so there’s this young lovers plot going on behind the scenes and all of these, you know, like I’m just mentioning them, but all of these characters are intriguing in some way.

Like I was in interested and invested in their stories, but. What it comes down to is Thomas has to infiltrate and investigate without being discovered because they’re look either they know somebody there, they know that there’s an outsider in their midst. And so they’re keeping their eye out for him.

So he has to. Lay low and do everything very incognito. And then there’s just bizarre stuff going on. Like at one point, um, I feel like it’s the very first night, there’s a nighttime bell, like a, a curfew bell. Like everybody has to go indoors at the same time and they’re not allowed to be out, but, uh, Thomas does go out and through a window, he sees a family.

Uh, a father, a mother, and a child going through some kind of weird bloodletting ceremony when he returns to his room, it’s like a hotel or a dorm. Every room has. And he was given a jar when he, uh, came onto the island and every room outside the room is the jar. Full of blood. Um, like everybody on the island has to do this and he loves this.

He just takes his jar and like skims a little off of a couple of other people’s jars to fill his up. But in the meantime, he accidentally cuts his hand on his room key and it bleeds onto the floor. And after he goes into his room, We see the blood kind of moving towards a crack in the floor. And then we just get a quick shot of some kind of freaky person under the floorboards, like slurping up the blood.

Todd: Like it’s so weird. The other thing I didn’t quite understand is, so everybody’s got this bloodletting ritual and stuff, but nobody clued him in on it. Nobody visited his room with a knife saying, Hey, a time to collect your blood tube. There’s a lot of this week and stuff that’s going on. And so you’re constantly just wondering, and in his sneaking around, he sees that, um, Malcolm, uh, has a secret trap door in his yeah.

His place. And so he, you know, moves a table and flips up a rug and opens up a trap door and Malcolm’s house is kind of on stilts. So he goes to this trap door, but then it leads into this underground something. And we even see that Malcolm goes through this trap door, through some passage under the ground and comes up in the woods to a large box.

That’s overgrown with things and he goes there and somebody opens the door and lets him in. And then, you know, something freaky must be going on inside. It’s super intriguing and you do wonder what’s going on. And at the same time, you know that this guy. Is in trouble. And he’s made a little map on a piece of paper of the whole compound and made notes on that as well.

And at some point later on, they have a big ceremony, right? Uh, not ceremony, some kind of big festival, and they’re getting a little more desperate to find the guy who’s infiltrated it. And so then they search all of the rooms while the whole festival is going on. Malcolm and a couple of, you know, his two brothers basically.

And, uh, they go searching, they’re trying to find who’s their guy. And he almost gets by except they notice this map and that’s what Malcolm’s in trouble on. So they kind of chase him and he goes into the tunnels again. Thomas. Yeah, Thomas. And so he goes into the tunnels again and, and then while he’s in the tunnels and he runs a Malcolm is at the end of the tunnel.

He’s written a horse out to the barn and he’s standing above that trap door with a gun, just waiting for this guy to come through. But he’s a little smart about it. And he doesn’t quite come through at the same time. They’ve sent who’s the other, your guy, uh,

Craig: you’re killing me, not a Frank Frank through

Todd: the tunnel.

Thomas here’s Frank coming down. And so he evades this by sort of going into a sub tunnel, like a there’s like a little God. It was like, um, like a creative it’s like, yeah, there’s

Craig: like water running underneath and he’s able to get under there. And

Todd: it goes under that. So Frank completely bypasses him practically gets shot at the end.

At the meantime, while Thomas. I mean, and he’s on his back in this water, it’s a tiny, tiny little space, right?

Craig: There’s only like inches, you know, of air, like he’s, he’s basically submerged, right?

Todd: He’s backing himself up, backing himself up and suddenly a woman. Which looks a lot like that freaky person that we saw under the floorboards and probably was appears out of the water and starts just creeping after him and in this intense scene.

And you’re like, it’s just like, what in the hell is going on here? You know? Like, there are just so many layers to this, even by the end of the movie, I don’t even understand.

Craig: I think I do now. You probably just skipped like, oh, I skipped over 1,005 minutes. Yeah. Um, which is, which is fine, but like key things that happen when he’s in that underground underwater tunnel.

This is not the first time that Thomas has seen this woman. When he was in church, he saw her like walking past the windows outside. Um, and Malcolm seemed to take notice that Thomas saw her. Thomas has also caught glimpses of her in the woods. And, and she’s very strange looking. I mean, the best way that I can think to describe her as like in.

American mythology when you, especially a period mythology, when you think of like witches of the woods, like, you know, they’re creepy looking, but there’s something almost like they are a part of nature. Like, I don’t even know how to describe it, but like a wood, which, or a wood Nim for something but old and creepy that he’s seen her stuff.

Times. Meanwhile, he’s also, Thomas has recruited Jeremy to kind of help him. Jeremy is the young boy Frank’s son because Thomas caught Jeremy and pheon coming back from their boat lovemaking. So basically blackmails him. And he, he tells him who he is and why he’s there. And Jeremy knows. Uh, Thomas shows him a picture of his sister and Jeremy knows who she is and why she’s there.

But as it turns out, We eventually get into this barn and we see that this woman, this weird woods woman is like imprisoned, I guess, like she’s grown into this giant vine system. She’s kind of like reclined into it and it’s all grown into her. Like she’s stuck there and we see Malcolm feed her. His blood.

He cuts himself and feeds it to her. And she seems reluctant to take it at first. But when she does take it it’s as though she’s starving for it. And when she does take it, the vines. Surrounding her start to flower as though it, you know, her drinking the blood is, is bringing life to things. Now there’s a whole lot of when you said when they figure out it’s Thomas, because they find his map.

I was super surprised because I looked at the time and there was still like 45 minutes of the movie left. Yeah. Wow. They know who he is there on this little island and there’s still 45 minutes left. How man, but there’s still so much that goes on. Um, and a lot of it is, is, is running around and being chased.

And, but as we’ve both said, it’s never boring. There are always these little revelations, some important things, I guess, to mention Andrea. The really absurdly made up and pretty one clearly has taken a liking to Thomas and eventually starts helping him. Pheon and Jeremy though, they’re unmarried and very young find out that they are pregnant, which they’re concerned about because this is a very religious community and they don’t know how, uh, you know, They’re going to do, and they’re so sweet.

Like they’re the Romeo and Juliet of this movie. They’re, they’re so cute. And Jeremy also seems maybe a little bit simple, like just very naive and innocent. And they’re these cute young kids. Like I was rooting for them and horrified that something was going to happen to them, which it does, but, and like you said, there’s this big celebration, you know, but at the same time, Constantly reminded that the village is basically dying.

They, they have no, that’s why they need the ransom because they need to keep bringing food and supplies from the mainland because they have nothing. They, their, their crops have failed. Their animals are dying. We see a scene of a sheep giving birth and it gives birth to a lie. Uh, what are baby sheep calls a lamb?

It gives, it gives birth too alive lamb, but it’s gross. And like they kill it right away. Cause it, it, it, there’s obviously something wrong with it. And so all this stuff is going on. The, one of the things that weirded me out the most that I definitely don’t understand is that the woman in the woods now at first I thought that this was her servant, but I don’t think ultimately that it is, I think that it’s somebody there that’s.

Guard and care for her, but it’s a fricking gimp. Yeah,

Todd: it’s weird. It’s got, I mean, you never, never see what it is. It’s just a, a big Hawking.

Craig: Gotcha. Listen, man. Shirtless bully seems to be covered and yeah. Dirt and blood and wearing this whole thing over his head. Like, it looks like they’ve wrapped vines or thorns or so

Todd: it’s like a beehive or something

Craig: lately encapsulates his head.

Like there’s no openings for eyes or nose or mouth or anything. And he’s just there apparently guarding

Todd: her garden. And grinding up body and feeding

Craig: her. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we don’t see that at first. At first we see that they’re, they’re like slaughtering like rabbits, um, and stuff and feeding her, the blood.

And, and again, it usually turns out that it seems like she doesn’t want to take it, but she, she always does. But eventually, um, once Tom. Makes his way in there. He sees corpses and his sister is there, uh, tied up and hung in a sack with. A couple of other people, I don’t know if they’re supposed to be living or dead.

They they’ve also tried to taunt Thomas out by wheeling his sister into town and chaining her up, you know, in town for a little while. But you know, he’s strong and doesn’t reveal himself, I guess he thinks he’s going to find her later. I feel like there’s no getting around. Just kind of jumping to what’s going on.

As it turns out, these three guys discovered this island and they discovered this woman. Now, I don’t know if she’s a spirit or a witch or some sort of goddess or something,

Todd: somehow a protector of the island or something. Right.

Craig: They discover her and they in trap her. They, they capture her and they, you know, at first it just seems like she’s this goddess that they’re worshiping and maybe, you know, this is what she wants.

They have to feed her the blood or whatever, but it’s not, she is a prisoner. And, uh, at first, um, by feeding her the blood of animal. It made everything thrive and everything did thrive for, for a long time, but then things started to go south. And so they thought, well, the animals aren’t working anymore.

What do we do now? And so they started feeding her. People now, I don’t think that that was Malcolm’s idea. Um, Malcolm, I think thought that if he fed her his own blood, that that would be enough to sustain her, but because it wasn’t the other two, especially Quinn. Decided that they should start using people.

And I not, I’m not really sure where they got these people. I, I assume that there were abducting people from the mainland. Um, cause it doesn’t seem like they were using their own people. It seems like their own people would have caught on if that were the case. Um, and they’re continuing to do this even though it’s not working, which is.

Odd to me, but, uh, all of this is revealed to us and that’s when everything. Just goes to hell really there there’s a big turning point. And I feel like ultimately this big turning point is the climax of the film. Now a lot of stuff still happens after it, but I feel like there’s a major turning point.

You’re

Todd: talking about when Quinn discovers his daughter Thomas early on seized it Quinn’s daughter and another boy. Jeremy are getting it on secretly. I’m having this little love affair, this little tryst, but it’s kind of forbidden. She’s young. I don’t know her dad doesn’t like him, whatever. It’s just this sort of like a, keep my daughter a Virgin kind of.

Right. And when Quinn finds out that his daughter, uh, is pregnant, well, she finds out she’s pregnant. She there’s this whole subplot and she kind of figured it out. Asking around and all that. She finds out she’s pregnant and there’s this actually really touching love story between the two of them. Yeah.

It’s very sweet. It’s you know, this, this movie does a great job of character building, I think. And, and especially like you really, you like these two kids, like, you know, they’ve got this sort of forbidden romance and, you know, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but, you know, she ends up pregnant.

She hardly even knows what that is or what that means or whatever, but. They meet, they decide they’re going to do it. They’re going to make it work. But her dad finds out her dad has been kind of lurking and has been a little suspicious about what’s been going on and he bursts in to her just at the top.

The Jeremy had run out to get a gift that he’d been making for her. Oh God, it’s so horrible, right?

Craig: Yeah. He, he, you know, they, they make love on this abandoned boat and they talk about how they’re going to use parts of the boat to build their own home. And he has, you know, broken up the boat and has made this carving to like, hang over them.

Her or whatever. Um, and yeah, hope and they, they’ve also this sheet. She is only now just told him that she’s pregnant and he’s nervous because he knows because they’re not married, that this is going to be looked at as sinful. However, his dad is one of the three brothers, like the founding fathers of this community too.

And his dad. Has decided that he is going to take his son and leave that the society is failing. You know, it, it’s not working. And while all of this young lovers stuff and what’s coming. With her dad while that’s happening up at the village. Frank Jeremy’s dad is actually down at the docks talking to Malcolm.

I was happy following you when this was all a bit award of your heart. Come on, fuck. This. This is how an island. We built this with our own hands. You mean? Quinn tell a Potter Tice. Nope. It’s sort of hail and I’m dragging the boy doing with me and you you’re under no, no, no, no. You’re wrong. Frankly. We have homes.

Yeah. We have families.

We have a gourd and chains poisoning us from the inside out. We have an innocent man’s blood on her hands. We have a kidnapped Gettel held for ransom. I go to my grave, washing the blood of that. We sold from my aunts. Let’s please. This community it’s broken, but basically Frank tells him no, I’m, I’m taking Jeremy and we’re going.

And so when pheon tells Jeremy that, uh, She’s pregnant. He says, come with us and she’s a little bit hesitant, but I think that that’s the plan. So everything’s planned out, they’re going to leave the island. They’re going to go to the mainland. They’re going to make a family together. And so he just goes to get this gift that he’s made for her.

And this all happens. I remember thinking as I was watching it. Life happens so fast. Sometimes like in one moment they are celebrating the fact that they’re going to be together. They’re going to have a family. He leaves for a brief moment and everything changes. And, and then when he, I just can’t imagine because he comes back.

With this gift for her and what he comes back to is just an absolute nightmare. Yeah.

Todd: Quinn has killed her. He was so angry at his daughter and she’s begging him. She’s like for the judgment,

Craig: that was actions. Oh no, no, no,

not him. He followed only what I asked.

That’d be a whole  to my eyes.

I’ve no idea. I want monstrosity.

It’s just an abomination. I busted Munga lights breed to be born in lumps of twisty

child.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. And he’s like, no, and I thought, oh God, what’s he going to do? But he ends up killing his daughter

Craig: brutally killing. Now I will say that. I feel like the movie established that. Fear is not irrational because he was the one that delivered that gross lamb.

And so he says to her, your baby is damned it’s going to be a monster. Um, and so I think he really believes that to be true, but I also think in this moment he just loses his dad. Right. He

Todd: does. He completely loses his damn mind and he and Jeremy have a fight and that spills out into the front yard, but he kind of yells out and frames Jeremy for killing the girl.

And he’s got a cut in his neck. So it appears that, you know, to everybody that Jeremy is the one who did this and is trying to kill him too. He says, uh, bring out the, what did he call it? The, oh God, I know it’s the name?

Craig: It w it’s not like the salvation table or the purification table or something like that.

Todd: God. And now, apparently this is something that’s supposedly only Malcolm can do based on the laws of the, of the town, but he’s taking it into his own hands. And I love, by the way, I love that he yells up at the guy at the bell up top. He’s like ring the bell and everything make an announcement. Everybody bring out the salvation table.

And at that moment I was thinking we’ve seen that guy, but that bell a lot. Does this poor man, just stand up on that platform all day long, just waiting for opportunities to ring that bell. What he’s got the shittiest job on the whole.

So they bring out the salvation tape. At the foot of this statue that they have in the middle and everybody’s gathered around. And of course, it’s this horrible torture instrument and they strap him down on this thing and it’s, it’s basically vices around his legs. Arms and, oh my God. One of the most brilliant and unsettling scenes I’ve ever seen is then his head to his head is in this vice and they’re cranking this vice and suddenly we see a POV through his eyes of him looking kind of up at the sky, but off to the side a little bit.

And we hear this vice cranking and as it’s cranking, suddenly. The view shifts a little bit because his eyes look straight up and then suddenly there’s a crunch and there’s a little bit of redness, like blood in his eyes that come over. And I was like, oh my God, it was brilliant. And it turned my stomach.

I haven’t had my stomach turned like that since like the first time I saw saw in the movie. And that it doesn’t get any better because the way this device works, of course, he says some words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this guy’s an asshole. He says this words, you know, this guy did this thing to my daughter, yada, yada, yada.

Now he has to be purified and he leans into him and whispers in his ear. I’ve been wanting to do this and he, thanks, God. It’s so bad. He cranks this, uh, it’s like a screw. It’s like a screw and then attached to the screw is it’s a drill attachment, you know, that cuts like a hole,

Craig: a hole, right? Like you would use to like cut an opening for a door knob, like a circular.

And basically, you know, it drills right into his head, but then that part drills, the hole, like it like a fist of fist size section of his head out. Um, and, and he’s alive. I mean, not for long, obviously, but,

Todd: um, and cranked, that was, and it was sad. Like

Craig: I felt cause this kid, I mean, he, he’s a nice kid.

Anything wrong and to just be brutally murdered publicly at the hands of this guy who we know is villainous and, and crazy at this point. And then Frank and Malcolm, who I said, had been down at the docks, they arrived to the scene it’s already happened. Um, and it’s Frank son. So of course. Freaks out and Malcolm approaches Quinn and says you had no right to do this.

And Quinn basically says, well, you’re not in charge anymore. I’m in charge now. And, uh, he says that the only way at Thomas and Andrea have all, they heard the bell. So they’re also, they’re witnessing all this, but Tom Quinn has had a couple of his goons, um, restrain Thomas. So Thomas is restraint. He tells Malcolm the only way.

You can prove yourself is to kill the intruder. And Andrea is begging him not to. She’s already said to Thomas, you know, I know my father, he wouldn’t kill anybody, which is dumb because we’ve seen him kill somebody before. But, uh, Malcolm is, uh, you know, he’s, he’s reluctant, he’s hesitant, but it looks like he’s going to do it.

But then Frank comes back out. He had run into. His house or a house and he comes back out with a gun and he fires the gun and then it becomes a big chase. They all end up back at this barn. Thomas is there first Quinn and Malcolm have a confrontation outside Quinn shoots Malcolm, but in the shoulder and he falls back into the pit that we had, you know, Thomas was crawling through before.

And then Thomas gets his sister out of the sack that she’s hanging in, but then he has a really violent fight with the gimp. Whoa. And there’s a whole big like person. Grindr and Thomas, this almost gets pulled into it. Like he like his hands. Does he loses three fingers on one of his hands? Yeah. Is still able to fight.

And eventually I feel like he gets the gimp into the grinder and then the gimp is dead. And then he goes over to the, the woods woman and she speaks to them in a different language, but apparently he can understand her. And she said, I’ve been waiting for you for so long, my son or something like that.

And God, I don’t even remember what comes of that.

Todd: He sets her on fire right at that point. Yeah. Burns up the whole freaking thing. He releases her, sets her free.

Craig: She indicates that he wants her to, um, it like he’s freeing her. I mean, it looks like she’s burning, but apparently he’s freeing her. Meanwhile, Quinn has.

Uh, Thomas’ sister and Andrea, uh, chained up to a wall in the church and he tells them, and I, I was like, oh my God, is this movie just going to keep getting more and more gross? Like he tells them that he’s going to impregnate them both and then feed their babies to them. Woods woman, and that will make everything good again.

Right.

Todd: I, I don’t understand where that came from, honestly. And that’s, that’s a pretty long-term solution. I mean, it takes nine months to have a baby. Yeah.

Craig: While the village is burning, I guess, because the woods woman is burning. Now, the village is burning. Everybody in the village is freaking out. I think.

The village people realize that Quinn is crazy. And so they just want to get the hell out of there. So they’re all heading down to the docks, uh, to try to get away. There’s a big fight between Thomas and Queens. Thomas wins, uh, eventually.

Todd: Okay. Oh my God. Yeah, that’s an intense scene. Every fight scene.

They’re really well done. Like the bit between Thomas and the gimp, the bit between Thomas and Quinn and the girls, and they kind of get the best of them. Finally, at one point, like the girls. Get the gun, but they decide that they should shoot themselves out of the, you know, the wall that they’re chained to, which they do.

And I’m like, yeah. Now put that chain around his neck and they do. And I was like, yeah, that’s so freaking satisfying and they’re grabbing them. And then Thomas Lee comes over with a knife, stabs them in the chest and then the guy just gets gutted. Yeah. As he’s dragged by the girls in one direction and his knife is right there in his chest and the other it’s so.

Unbelievably violent and gory and yet so satisfying. Yeah. But

Craig: really well choreographed

Todd: and well choreographed and just. On. I was just on the edge of my seat the whole time for most of this, me too. It was so

Craig: good. Me too. Me too. Well, Thomas is gravely injured. Uh, they start to make, you know, the, the girls are free.

They start to make their way towards the docks to the boat, but they get, well, first of all, while they’re still in the church and everything’s burning, he’s like, okay, you’re free. Bye. No you’re coming with us. So he tries, but he only gets about halfway there. They end up kind of on these cliffs, overlooking the sea.

Um, and he basically stops and tells his sister, you know, he has a whole monologue. You know, this, this is about how this journey has restored his face. You know, uh, his experiences in China had robbed him of his faith, but he said, the one thing that he always held on to was her. Uh, and, and now that he knows that she safe, he can be at peace and she needs to let him go.

And. She does, you know, I was a moment like I would be dragging that guy down the hill. Like I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave him behind alive, even though it was obvious he was going to die. She goes on. And then he has a moment with Andrea too, you know, obviously. There was something between them, but nothing’s gonna come of it now because he’s clearly dying.

And he says to her, pray for me. Um, and she says that she will, and they go off and they get on the boat. Um, and, and it seems like there’s a ship waiting for them. I don’t know if they were expecting that ship. I have no idea, but the villagers are all gone and it’s just Thomas left on this cliff, but then.

We see Malcolm approaching him. And I knew Malcolm wasn’t dead because he had only gotten shot in the shoulder. And so he approaches and they kind of stand there and they look at one another and then Thomas. Kind of lays back into the, well, he notices blood is dripping from his hand or some part of his body.

And he notices that where the blood drops, the grass or weeds start growing, um, from where his blood drops. So he lays back and the grass around him. Growing up and it starts growing into his skin. Like it had been in the woods woman, and it almost seems kind of like he’s at peace and he’s just looking up at the sky and it cuts to black and it goes to credits.

I’m not really sure what to make of that ending. I don’t know if that’s meant to suggest. He’s going to somehow live on, on this island or

Todd: a replacement. I think it means he’s like the replacement for the woman, honestly. Yeah. Maybe like the Island’s got to have a guardian and he’s the new one and fitting actually, I, I liked it.

Yeah.

Craig: There’s I mean, yeah, I was sad because I really liked him. I would have much preferred that he got on the boat and got away too. But, you know, it’s, it’s the, the hero sacrificing himself to save the ones he loves, you know, that’s, that’s very common. So I understand and it’s fitting, but there there’s just so much going on in this movie.

I mean, of all of the plot points that we tried to hit, there’s a million other tiny little moments, um, that are worthy of discussion. We just don’t have the time for

Todd: it. Dense jam packed full of stuff and satisfying. I loved it. I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t watch it over two hour movie as voluntarily, but if you listen to us, talk about it and hear us more or less gushing over the movie.

I mean, I don’t know. It’s not like it’s the best movie that I’ve seen in my life. It doesn’t even make a lot of sense in a lot of ways, but. I was entertained thoroughly through the whole thing. And I, I was, it had emotional moments and it was well-made and it hit the gore factor if you’re into that sort of thing and, and, and queasy, touching sad, uh, exciting.

Um, you know, there’s a big mysteries to unravel here. God, like what, what, was there an emotion I didn’t go through while I was watching this movie, you

Craig: know? Right. Well, and, and there are certainly some. You know, it’s not like we’ve never seen a cult movie before. It’s not like we’ve never seen a period piece before, you know, so there are some typical, some typical things, but I just felt that it was approached and handled in such a unique way.

Um, it, it was it’s, it’s kind of like, uh, stumbling across a really good book. There’s just so much. Going into it. And I really, I was invested in the characters. I cared about the characters. I no pun intended, but I was gutted when those young lovers got killed. Like I just, I thought it was horrible. And, and this poor, this poor girl, I mean, she’s probably meant to be, I have no idea how old the actress.

Probably to be 15, 16 years old. And she’s just begging her father to love her and to protect her. And instead he kills her and, and then blames it on the, the boyfriend who did nothing wrong. You know, he loved this girl. He treated her with kindness and love and, and they were both innocent to see them to see them both.

So brutally. Killed. Uh, it was, it was rough. I, I liked Andrea. I wanted to know more about Andrea. I wanted Andrea and Thomas to be able to have a little love affair there. There’s just, there’s a lot going on. Um, it’s really interesting to watch. I may have gotten up once to use the bathroom, but other than that, I was just glued to it.

And that with my attention span, that says something. So yeah, I recommend this. I recommend this movie. It’s different. I had never heard of it. Apparently when it came out on Netflix, it was in their top 10 for quite a while. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did. So if you missed it too, I would really recommend it.

It’s a good movie. Agreed.

Todd: I completely agree with you. I’d recommend it. It’s good. It’s different. And it’s fun. Sometimes not fun, which is muscle, how good movies are. All right. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us online, just type in two guys and a chainsaw.

Podcast into Google and you’ll find our Facebook page. You’ll find our website and you’ll find our Twitter feed. You can leave us a message at any one of those places. Let us know what you thought of this episode. Let’s know what you thought of this movie. If you’ve seen it and recommend some requests for us to do a film for us to do in the future

Until next time I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.