We discuss:

Film as a gratifying experience, a roller-coaster ride!

The value of shared or collective experience

Wanting to extend the film by talking about it

Classical narrative

Chains of cause and effects (and also effects before causes!)

The film’s will or the “filmind” (applying a philosophical concept from Daniel Frampton’s book Filmosophy)

Cinematography by Larkin Seiple

All stylistic elements working together for maximum affect

Blurred distinctions between reality and dreaming

Being programmed to fear, but this being mixed with unusual, rescuing moments of humor

Ideas and representations of quintessential American community

American communities representing types of people, and as previously imagined in westerns, or Classical Hollywood films by John Ford or Howard Hawks or Alfred Hitchcock

Non-diegetic music as a form of thinking (especially in connection with the child protagonist, Alex)

Music that honors the power of a child

The importance of rationality in the face of terror, but also the limits of that

The fragility of a stable community in America (even going as far back as the post WW2 era)

The ending as a payoff for the anxiety we lived through the film!

Possible social statements on police brutality, the commonality of gun violence, and specific threats to children in schools

Bruce Kawin’s concepts of “good” and “bad” horrors (i.e. horrors with a sense of moral purpose, or not)

The genesis of the film in some of the director’s Zach Cregger’s life—his living with an alcoholic parent, and his dealing with the sudden tragic death of a friend

Genre mixing: combing the western, horror, zombie movie

George Sanders, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”

Drawing on Sanders’ teachings, the story as a structure or a framework upon which we can hang our ideas

The film allowing critical distance and time to process its own extremities

Connections with John Carpenter’s original Halloween

Tonal complexity, bravura performances, and a knockout final sequence!

NOTE: this episode includes mature content, including many references violence and thematic content unsuitable for children

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