The Frightgeist

This week we celebrate Halloween with Michael Dougherty's Trick 'r Treat. From deadly traditions and mischievous monsters, we explore the tricks, treats, and zeitgeist behind this modern Halloween cult classic.

Alyson and Jennifer dive into 'Promising Young Woman', exploring it's candy-colored revenge story and the culture of complicity, victim blaming, and "nice guy" mythology beneath it. Along the way, we find a film that still feels so uncomfortably timely.

A brutal murder, a blind psychic, a cursed wooden man, and secrets that need to come to light. This week we're discussing Damian McCarthy's 'Oddity', and explore the cultural anxieties lurkings beneath the scares.

In this episode, we're covering Tales from the Crypt's "Death of Some Salesmen" (1993), all about a con man selling plots in a cemetery that doesn't exist and knocks on the wrong farmhouse door. Tim Curry plays three roles in this episode of Tales from the Crypt: Ma, Pa, and Winona Brackett. We also pay tribut to the late-great, Tim Curry.

Wes Craven's 1991 house of horrors about landlords, gold, and the people underneath. We break in for the Reagan-era satire, the calendar coincidence that makes it feel more like a documentary, a leather-clad landlord with a shotgun, and more.

Contains discussion of child abuse, racist violence, and the 1992 Los Angeles uprising.

Madres (2021), Blumhouse's most under-seen social horror entry. A pregnant journalist, a farm town where none of the women have living children, and the real case buried underneath it.

A grieving family, a drowned girl, and a documentary that keeps giving you evidence you can't trust. We explore why Lake Mungo (2008) is one of horror's quietest gut-punches, and why it hits even harder in the age of the digital afterlife.

Camp Nightwing, 1978: a possessed counselor, an axe, and a town everyone agrees is just cursed. This week we head into the woods with Fear Street: 1978, and dig up what that "curse" is really covering for.

Santa Carla, 1987. It's motorcycles, mullets, and a saxophonist who refuses to wear a shirt. We break down The Lost Boys scene by scene, spill the chaotic behind-the-scenes story, and unpack the AIDS-era, milk-carton, MTV-soaked anxieties hiding under all that leather. Plus trivia!

On this week's episode, Jenn and Alyson get into Brian De Palma's Carrie from 1976.