Grave Tone: Horror Podcast

Godzilla Minus Zero is here, and it is a gorgeous, brutal, sometimes exhausting kaiju sequel that hits harder on the human horror than the monster fights. Our Godzilla Minus Zero review goes spoiler-free first, then dives deep into spoilers.

Takashi Yamazaki's follow-up to Godzilla Minus One picks up in 1949, just two years after the last attack. Koichi Shikishima and Noriko are trying to build a family when a meteor brings something new: Ghidorah, a hydra-meets-chimera creature that every attempt to kill only makes stronger (until it becomes King Ghidorah). The plan? Lure Godzilla in and let the two monsters tear each other apart.

• Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero picks up only two years after Godzilla Minus One, with Koichi Shikishima and Noriko trying to build a normal life.
• The title explained: Minus One meant post-war Japan pushed below zero; Minus Zero is a country (and a cast of characters) clawing its way back toward zero
• Returning cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Hidetaka Yoshioka as Kenji Noda and Sae Nagatani as Akiko; new faces include Min Tanaka and Masami Nagasawa

• Our Threads followers and Letterboxd both say yes, and the disturbing imagery seals it for us
• The MPA gave it an R for violent content and bloody images, making it the first R-rated Godzilla movie ever
• DIGGS verdict: Fun and Wild, Solid Scares. Arthur 7/10, Meaghan 7.5/10

• A meteor brings Ghidorah, a hydra-meets-chimera creature that evolves into the three-headed King Ghidorah every time humans try to kill it
• Meaghan's pitch to Fourth Wing and House of the Dragon: this is what a dragon should look like
• The Godzilla arm-tearing fight is gooey, gnarly, and very big-screen

• The kaiju roars were Showa-era sounds that were played through speakers at a dam and re-recorded for scale
• Godzilla and King Ghidorah each get distinct music cues inside Naoki Sato's epic score

• Min Tanaka's Professor Kanji Murakami lost his family in Hiroshima, and his grief curdles into full Willem Dafoe Green Goblin energy
• The trailer's Statue of Liberty sequence is not what you think
• The film refuses to look away from post-Hiroshima devastation, and that is where the horror really lives

• The Shikishima family storyline runs long and pulled Arthur out of the movie
• Mothra next? Fan theories about what King Ghidorah's anti-gravity attack may have woken up
• Next week: Victorian Psycho, starring Maika Monroe

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Friday the 13th movies ranked worst to best, all 12 of them, and then we get into what Crystal Lake just did to Jason Voorhees. Happy Halloween weekend, campers.

Finishing Crystal Lake sent us straight back through the whole Friday the 13th franchise to see if the new lore changes how the movies hold up. Arthur and Meaghan each rank every film, from Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th Part 2 to Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, and the 2009 remake. Some picks line up perfectly. Some really do not (Jason in space gets defended, loudly). Along the way: Crispin Glover's dance in The Final Chapter, Ted White standing up for a freezing castmate, costume designer Ellen Lutter becoming the only woman to ever play Jason, and how close he came to being called Josh. If you want the best Friday the 13th movie settled once and for all, this is the closest we'll get.

• Arthur's list, 12 to 1: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Part III, Jason Takes Manhattan, The New Blood, A New Beginning, Jason Lives, The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th (2009), Freddy vs. Jason, Jason X, Friday the 13th (1980), Friday the 13th Part 2.
• Meaghan's list, 12 to 1: Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes to Hell, The New Blood, Part III, A New Beginning, Friday the 13th (1980), Jason X, Friday the 13th (2009), The Final Chapter, Freddy vs. Jason, Part 2, Jason Lives.
• The only places we agree: A New Beginning at 8 and the 2009 remake at 5.
• Freddy vs. Jason is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. We both said it. Fight us on Threads.

• Jason Voorhees was almost named Josh in Victor Miller's early script.
• Ted White was 58 when he played Jason in The Final Chapter, and threatened to quit when a castmate was left in freezing lake water.
• Costume designer Ellen Lutter's legs are the first shot of Jason in Part 2, the only time a woman has played him.
• Camp Crystal Lake is really Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, a Boy Scout camp in Hardwick, New Jersey, open since 1927.

• Bellflower experiments on Pamela during her pregnancy, then on young Jason, which finally explains why he survives drowning and grows up so fast.
• Linda Cardellini gives Pamela Voorhees real depth, and we'd watch her do this for six more seasons.
• Our Threads poll: 76% said the new lore adds to Jason rather than killing the mystery.

• Levon and Briana Brooks bring great sibling chemistry and a real reporter's drive.
• Crazy Ralph gets a survivalist backstory that makes him a person, not a punchline.
• Legacy names return: Dorf, Enos, and Claudette, and Barry, who get way more than two minutes this time.

• Eleazar from Nightmare Echoes podcast loved the kills and Dorf's growth, but isn't sold on explaining Jason's immortality. 
• Nelly and Antony from the Horror Roulette podcast praise Cardellini and the 1970s atmosphere, with a few too many subplots.

• Bellflower ran other experiments (that kid in the burlap sack), which is plenty to build on.
• Peacock hasn't announced a renewal yet. We think money talks.

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Our Fresh Meat review is in, and honestly? Dead Meat's horror anthology is a lot better than the cranky online ratings say.

James A. Janisse and the Dead Meat team took more than 500 short film submissions, whittled them down to 13, and wrapped them in "Sate the Screen," a butcher shop story about a little girl and a TV that has to be fed (fresh meat, get it?). We caught the one-night-only screening on October 12 with a packed theater that gasped, laughed, and yelled at all the right moments. Fantasia Festival energy, basically.

After that: Below on Netflix (sea creature horror in Newfoundland, with Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton doing the accent), Crystal Lake on Peacock with Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, and two Brooklyn Horror Film Festival screenings, the slasher Slay and the folk horror comedy Mountain King. Meaghan breaks down Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, and we close on Hallowarrior on Shudder and Clayface.

• Dead Meat turned a short film contest into Fresh Meat: Volume One, 13 horror shorts picked from more than 500 submissions. 
• The wraparound, "Sate the Screen," is written and directed by James A. Janisse, who plays a butcher whose daughter is hooked on a screen that needs feeding.
• Our one-night-only theater crowd was loud in the best way, and that's how an anthology like this should be seen.
• Shorts we keep talking about: Jinx, Dagnabbit!, Tchotchke, Why Did You Stop Me?, Earworm, You'll Be Fine, and Vape Glow.

• Summer H. Howell is excellent as Carrie, and Samantha Sloyan makes Margaret White uncomfortably reasonable.
• Alison Thornton gives Chris Hargensen actual motivation; Amber Midthunder, Matthew Lillard, and Tim Bagley round out a strong school staff.
• Our Mike Flanagan TV shows ranking: The Haunting of Hill House on top, then The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, Carrie, and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

• Crystal Lake on Peacock: Linda Cardellini's Pamela Voorhees, real gore, and a lot of franchise lore.
• Friday the 13th tangent: Part VI's zombie Jason, The New Blood's telekinetic showdown, and why Jason Takes Manhattan is mostly boats.
• Below on Netflix brings sea creature horror to Newfoundland and Labrador, with Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton.

• Slay: high school seniors, a cabin, and a killer somewhere in the group. It gets better once they reach the cabin.
• Mountain King is a funny Scandinavian folk horror rom-com with great practical makeup, starring Hannah Deale and Carter Sirianni.
• Carter Sirianni also leads Chat; our interview with writer-director Ole J Hartmann is coming soon.

• Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer: a trad wife influencer, a farmhouse, and something in the well. 
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke takes the trad wife trend in a more psychological direction.
• Kirby Heyborne's narration of Whalefall by Daniel Kraus is up there with Ray Porter's Project Hail Mary.

• Whalefall in theaters: Austin Abrams carries almost the whole film.
• Hallowarrior on Shudder: Milly Shapiro in a post-apocalyptic Halloween movie that's perfect for a party.
• Clayface, co-written by Mike Flanagan, is DC going full body horror.
• Anthology picks for October: The Mortuary Collection and Trick 'r Treat.

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Clayface review time: DC Studios finally made a real horror movie, and we walked out of it with a 7 and a 4.5. Full spoilers and the ending explained.

James Watkins' Clayface, based on a story by Mike Flanagan, follows Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood star whose face is carved up by a Gotham mob boss's henchmen. Desperate to get his life back, he signs up for an experimental regenerative treatment that isn't ready for human trials. It works. Then it keeps working. Arthur and Meaghan break down DC Studios' first horror movie, from the plastic surgery and aging commentary to body horror that goes further than you'd expect from a comic book movie (it's no Cronenberg, but it isn't shy either).

• Mike Flanagan came up with the Clayface story and co-wrote the screenplay, but his slate (the Carrie series and The Exorcist: Martyrs) kept him from directing.
• James Gunn never planned on a Clayface movie; Flanagan's pitch and script changed his mind.
• We never expected to review a DC movie on this show. Here we are.

• Think The Fly meets The Substance, comic book edition.
• Meaghan's tagline: keep going with plastic surgery, and this is what we'll all look like in a decade.
• R-rated gore that mostly doesn't cut away (we still want that mace shot).

• Tom Rhys Harries' uncanny, chiseled-but-soft face is perfect casting for a man made of clay.
• Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice, Mickey 17, I Love Boosters) plays Dr. Caitlyn Corr.
• Eddie Marsan, Max Minghella, David Dencik and Joshua James round out the cast.
• George MacKay, Tom Blyth, Jack O'Connell and Leo Woodall all read for the role.

• Scare Factor: Creep Me Out / Solid Scares. The eye stuff got Arthur.
• Arthur gives it 7 digs. Meaghan gives it 4.5: a strong first half, then the comic book villain origin took over.
• Find your next watch with the Horror Movie Picker.

• The makeup and reconstruction work on Matt's face looks mostly practical, and it's great.
• An old-school Warner Bros. logo and older songs make this Gotham feel like it could be any decade.
• The nightclub sequence where Matt flips through identities is the fun comic book stuff done right.

• The bow from the man on the street, the boiler room, the kiss: we walk through the final scene.
• Our read: Caitlyn is never really there. Watch the feet. It's all clay.
• Some people in our theater saw it very differently, so we break down why.

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Woodstake is the vampire graphic novel that sends a Dracula-style predator to Woodstock 1969, and we sat down with the man who made it. Shawn Hainsworth (who writes as Darin S. Cape) joins Meaghan and Arthur to talk about how rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula alongside Michael Lang's The Road to Woodstock turned into a pun, then a screenplay, then five years of work on the Woodstake graphic novel.

The elevator pitch is simple: hippies vs. vampires. What's underneath it is a lot more interesting. Shawn wanted to take one of the most cynical creatures in horror (a centuries-old predator who knows human failings better than anyone) and set it loose on a generation that honestly believed it could change the world.

• Shawn Hainsworth's elevator pitch for the Woodstake graphic novel: a vampire descends on Woodstock in 1969.
• The idea hit while he was rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula and reading Michael Lang's The Road to Woodstock at the same time. The pun came first; the scenes followed.
• He didn't want it to just be campy, so it took a while to find something bigger inside the concept.

• A cynical, centuries-old vampire who knows human failings better than anybody, set against people who believed they could change the world.
• Three kinds of hippie: Nina, the true believer; Artie, who might sell out and become a yuppie; and Jon, chasing his own career.
• The Vietnam War divide runs through the villains, including a vampire who argues about the war while trying to kill Artie.

• Shawn and Felipe Kroll watched the Woodstock documentary on repeat to get the details right.
• Every act appears when it actually played, and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising lands right as things come to a head.
• Michael Lang makes a cameo, and the story ends with a conversation between the vampire and Jimi Hendrix.
• Shawn's dream backstage passes: Richie Havens stretching his set into Freedom, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Arlo Guthrie, and Hendrix.

• Woodstake started as a screenplay; the whole prologue was added after the first two issues were written.
• Felipe Kroll's painted art style looks nothing like a typical comic book, and he repainted pages to get them right.
• Woodstake took about five years from idea to finished graphic novel.

• Shadow of the Vampire, Willem Dafoe and the Max Schreck legend from the making of Nosferatu.
• Meaghan's festival pick Los Vampires, about the Spanish-language Dracula crew that shot at night.
• Shawn calls vampires the Swiss Army knives of the horror world: What We Do in the Shadows, Interview with the Vampire, and even Star Trek's salt vampire.

• Woodstake '99 concludes the story at Woodstock 1999, with darker art and a vampire who is back for vengeance.
• Issues are named after songs: Going Up the Country, My Generation, Freedom, Bad Moon Rising and Purple Haze. There's a companion Spotify playlist too.

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Our Other Mommy review, fresh from the theater: Jessica Chastain plays a mom and the thing wearing her face, and it should have wrecked us. It didn't.

Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman) directs this adaptation of Josh Malerman's 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, produced by James Wan through Blumhouse-Atomic Monster. The cast is stacked: Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass, Arian Moayed, Dichen Lachman and Karen Allen (yes, Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark).

• Other Mommy gets 4 digs out of 10 from both of us; a stacked cast and great visuals can't fix a story with no build.
• Scare factor: Fun and Wild, with Light scares (and yes, we argued about it).
• Meaghan's tagline for the movie: "Don't lie to your children."

• The novel is told entirely from eight-year-old Bela's perspective, which Meaghan compares to Emma Donoghue's Room.
• In the book, the entity is tall, boxy, and wrong (eyes on its chin), and it stays in Bela's closet far longer.
• The book's ending is much darker than the film's, which Meaghan refuses to spoil on mic.
• Want the full book breakdown? Our friends at Drawn to Darkness are covering it.

• The Other Mommy movie reveals its entity in the opening minutes, before we know anyone in the family.
• One throwaway line explains why the entity can suddenly leave Bela's room.
• There's almost no ambiguity between Ursula and Other Mommy; the novel's impersonation scenes are where the real fear lives.

• The melting face and the seven-foot entity land some genuinely creepy moments.
• The ball pit to bedroom to ocean transitions look great (and feel very James Wan, very Insidious).
• The upside-down party sequence with babysitter Kelvin is Meaghan's favorite scene in the film.

• Jessica Chastain is grounded as Ursula and deeply unsettling as Other Mommy; her glued-on smile made a kid on set scream.
• Arabella Olivia Clark carries a hard role as Bela, and Jay Duplass makes Russ easy to root for.
• The film keeps the book's honest take on parenthood: you can love your kid and still want your own identity.

• Next week: Whalefall, Brian Duffield's adaptation of the Daniel Kraus novel.
• We're catching Fresh Meat, Dead Meat's horror shorts anthology.
• Not sure what to watch? Try the Horror Movie Picker at gravetonepod.com.

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V/H/S/Mixtape review time, and this one is cuckoo nuts bananas. The ninth V/H/S film turns sound, music and heavy metal into the horror, and we came out of it with our jaws on the floor.

Arthur and Meaghan break down Shudder's newest found footage horror anthology, starting with GWAR's deranged MTV-style wraparound and moving through all four main segments: Renee Zhan's Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance (killer puppets from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, plus Barbara Crampton), David Moreau's Heartbeat (two urban explorers, a soundproof chamber and the sound of your own body), Ernest Dickerson's The Music of Mr. Sze (a film student, a violin and something cosmic living in the attic) and RZA's Death Tone (Neela Jolene, a dead producer's tape and a very literal hunt for the perfect sound). We also get into the two music video interludes, Flying Lotus's stop-motion Another Cabin and Tobias Forge's Premature Burial.

• The ninth V/H/S film, streaming on Shudder October 9, 2026, builds every segment around sound, music and heavy metal.
• Spoiler-free verdict: gory, wild, and easily one of the most unhinged V/H/S movies yet. Arthur compares its sound-horror focus to Undertone.
• How it stacks up against V/H/S/Beyond and V/H/S/Halloween, the two entries that got the franchise back on a roll.

• GWAR host a deranged, metal-only music video show that sets the tone in the first five minutes (don't eat dinner during this one).
• Flying Lotus directs Another Cabin, a stop-motion nightmare about a boy, his awful grandmother, and a 30-foot monster in the woods.
• Tobias Forge of Ghost directs Premature Burial, a metal music video about revenge and being buried alive.

• Renee Zhan's killer puppet segment: Jim Henson's Creature Shop builds Muppet-style monsters, Barbara Crampton plays the studio exec, and the song is a genuine earworm.
• Watch for the V/H/S/Halloween Easter egg in the warehouse and the post-credit scene.
• David Moreau's Heartbeat (from the director of MadS) traps two urban explorers in a soundproof chamber where their own bodies become the horror.

• Ernest Dickerson's The Music of Mr. Sze: a film student, a forbidden violin piece, and a cosmic entity in the attic. Lovecraft fans, take note.
• RZA's Death Tone: a dead producer's tape, a step-by-step recipe for the perfect sound, and a descent into madness carried by Neela Jolene.

• Digs: Arthur 8/10, Meaghan 7/10 (huge highs, a little less cohesive overall).
• Arthur's top two: Death Tone and Heartbeat. Meaghan's top two: Heartbeat and Death Tone.
• Plus favorite segments from past entries, including Mike P. Nelson's V/H/S/85 work and Kate Siegel's V/H/S/Beyond segment.

• Black Zombie, Maya Annik Bedward's documentary on the Haitian roots of the zombie. 
• Other Mommy hits theaters, Dead Meat's Fresh Meat anthology is coming, and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival coverage is on the way.
• Find your next watch with the Horror Movie Picker Quiz at gravetonepod.com.

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Our Beware Boiúna review is here, and this giant snake movie does not care who it eats. Spoiler-free first, full spoilers after Gary's warning.

Meaghan and Arthur review Beware Boiúna, the new creature feature from director Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn, Silent Night, Deadly Night), shot on location in the Amazon rainforest near Leticia, Colombia. A team of doctors on a medical mission heads upriver, an illegal gold mining operation is tearing up the jungle, and the Boiúna (the colossal river serpent of Amazonian folklore) wants every last one of them gone.

• Mike P. Nelson's Amazon creature feature was shot on location near Leticia, Colombia, and it shows: sweaty, gritty and fully immersive.
• A stacked cast: Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), Kiana Madeira (Fear Street trilogy), Logan Marshall-Green (Upgrade), plus Juan Pablo Shuk, Will Close and Jackson Bews.
• Meaghan's tagline keeps it simple: stay out of the jungle.

• The Boiúna is the giant river serpent of Amazonian folklore, here roughly titanoboa-sized and grounded in that legend.
• An illegal gold mining operation sets the stakes, and the snake plays more like nature restoring balance than a monster looking for lunch.
• Real-world context: Indigenous communities are confronting illegal miners destroying the rainforest.

• The snake is digital, but the explosions, the collapsing structures, and a character getting flung into the air were done for real.
• From our interview: a flash flood wiped out a set and forced a reshoot that Mike P. Nelson now prefers.
• Huge credit to the stunt team, and to Kiana Madeira for that mud pit.

• Not silly snake fodder in the Anaconda mold; we're measuring it against Jaws and Jurassic Park.
• The snake hunts in the water, in the jungle, and in a machinery yard, by day and at night. No safe rock like in The Devil's Mouth.
• A midway twist (spoiler section) flips the movie in a direction we did not expect.

• Scare factor: Fun and Wild. Scare level: Solid Scares.
• Meaghan gives it 7.5 digs; Arthur gives it 8.
• Best seen in a theater with friends on a weekend.

• Mike P. Nelson is directing the next Saw film after reviving Wrong Turn and Silent Night, Deadly Night.
• Coming up on Grave Tone: Whalefall (October 16) and more Shudder drops.

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Beware Boiúna director Mike P. Nelson is back on Grave Tone, and this time he brought stories from the Amazon. Floods, a jungle blessing, a poison dart frog on set, and a giant snake that does not care who you are.

We sat down with Mike P. Nelson ahead of Beware Boiúna hitting theatres October 2 to talk about how this giant snake movie actually got made. He almost turned it down (giant snake movies come with baggage, and he knew it). What changed his mind was finding the link between Titanoboa, the real prehistoric snake discovered in Colombia, and the Boiúna of Amazonian folklore. Add a structure borrowed from William Friedkin's Sorcerer and a lot of respect for how Alien, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Tremors hold back their monsters, and you get a creature feature built on dread instead of camp.

• Producers Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt, with Tony Giglio, wanted a giant snake story. Mike P. Nelson almost passed because of the stigma the subgenre carries.
• What won him over: tying Titanoboa, the real prehistoric snake found in Colombia, to the Boiúna of Amazonian folklore.
• Why William Friedkin's Sorcerer was his main comp (one movie at the start, a different movie by the end).

• Asking permission to film near Leticia, then a blessing ceremony (chicha included) where a healer told Mike to be "the father of your team."
• Heavy rain floods the location of the opening gold mining siege, so the whole sequence gets shot from the other side.
• Mike's favorite days: shooting aboard the Hermes, moving down the Amazon River with the cast.
• A poison dart frog lands on a chair right across from Kiana Madeira. The snake wrangler handled it.

• A stunt performer was yanked 40 feet into the air with foliage blasting out, all in camera.
• Real TNT brings down the lumber camp structure while the leads run down the ramp.
• Mike's rule: if there is a VFX snake in the movie, something real has to go along with it.

• Kiana Madeira as Lena: soft-spoken between takes, fully switched on in the mud and the viscera.
• Logan Marshall-Green pushing buttons during the bar scene with Jessica Rothe, then checking in on her after the cut.
• Why Mike lets his actors play: if a moment surprises him, it will surprise the audience too.

• Is Boiúna the jungle's guardian or just a hungry snake? Mike wants you arguing about it after the credits.
• The opening illegal gold mining siege reflects a real fight Indigenous communities in the Amazon are in right now.
• The viral poster campaign that fed internet animals like Moo Deng and Jimothy to Boiúna.

• Boiúna vs. Shardik from Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a matchup Mike first chewed on with Eric Vespe on The Kingcast.
• Boiúna vs. the original King Kong (1933), the movie Mike grew up on.
• Mike's rule for the genre: every creature feature needs a character who doesn't deserve to die.

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The IT 1990 miniseries is the reason Janine of Graeae Horror spent more than a decade unable to look at Tim Curry. She snuck downstairs at six, caught Pennywise taking Georgie through the banister, and the nightmares followed her home from school for years.

Childhood Trauma is back, and this might be the most traumatic entry in the series so far (that is saying something). Janine joins Arthur and Meaghan to revisit the 1990 ABC adaptation of Stephen King's IT, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, and to explain how one TV movie turned into a real phobia, a mid-screening exit from Burke & Hare and, eventually, a Pennywise tattoo. We go through the Losers Club casting, from Jonathan Brandis and Emily Perkins to John Ritter, Seth Green, Annette O'Toole and Tim Reid, and we have strong feelings about Bill Denbrough's ponytail (it is not okay).

• Janine was six when she snuck downstairs during the miniseries premiere and caught Pennywise taking Georgie; recurring nightmares of Pennywise waiting outside the local sweet shop lasted for years.
• The fear spread to everything Tim Curry touched: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Legend, Muppet Treasure Island, and a mid-screening exit from Burke & Hare.
• A forced VHS rewatch in her late teens, IT (2017) in a theatre with a dozen friends, and a Pennywise tattoo later, she is fine. Mostly.

• Jonathan Brandis carries young Bill Denbrough's grief; Richard Thomas's ponytail does not survive the rewatch.
• Emily Perkins (Ginger Snaps) and Annette O'Toole (Smallville) give Beverly Marsh the most emotional weight, and the miniseries gives Bev's marriage far more time than IT Chapter Two does.
• John Ritter is a better Ben Hanscom than we remembered, Seth Green has had the same face since 1990, and Adam Faraizl plays Eddie Kaspbrak as the kid everyone wants to protect.
• Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid, Marlon Taylor) and Stan Uris (Richard Masur, Ben Heller) still get overlooked, in every version.

• The miniseries jumps between timelines like the book; Andy Muschietti's films split kids and adults, which made the story easier for a new generation to get into.
• Kicking the spider to death vs. bullying Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise into nothing: two endings, both a little funny.
• Mike Hanlon's lore is the backbone of IT: Welcome to Derry, and the Black Spot fire makes a lot more sense with that in mind.

• No Ritual of Chüd, no turtle, and very little cosmic mythology (think Terry Pratchett's Discworld, but horror).
• The spider loses its eggs, and graphic content gets trimmed for ABC network standards.
• A 30-year time jump instead of the 27-year cycle, plus a ponytail moment that might be a quiet nod to the book scene nobody wants adapted.

• The skeletal hand grabbing Ben in the Barrens, the I Was a Teenage Werewolf transformation, and the exploding library balloons still look great.
• Tim Curry's accent slipping when the mask drops is one of the scariest choices in the whole adaptation.

• Pennywise shows up every few decades; Henry Bowers is there every day after school.
• An abusive father, zero outlets, and a monster happy to use him as its Renfield.

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Check out her horror movie festival: Shared Sight Film Festival

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Background music by: Steve Swisher from the Producer's Chair Podcast

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