The Scariest Things

Famous. Last. Words.

If you’re driving down a remote desert highway and are feeling a bit tired, you know the last thing you should do is check into a skeevy motel at the side of the road. It is tantamount to a death sentence! Anyone with common sense knows that. Even a well-heeled hotel stay won’t save you. So, just… sleep in your car. Stay at home. Where it’s safe. Until the home invasion comes looking for you.

Come to think of it, nowhere is safe. You might as well check in. Just make sure to have your luggage nearby, sleep on top of the covers, your car keys in your pocket, and your cell phone fully charged because you never know when you might need a quick getaway. But in horror cinema, even those wise precautions might not save you because the whole situation might just be a time loop paradox or an extraplanar illusion.

Just remember it was your choice to go on vacation. The doom you instigated was a destiny of your own decision. Check out by 10 a.m. and leave your keys in the box at the bell desk. Enjoy your stay!

Hotel and more often, motel horror is underrated as a horror movie trope. It has a proud tradition that includes some of the giants in horror film history and now with the AirBnB/Vrbo home resort rentals, there is a new variant to the trope. There is something about leaving the comforts of home that can make a lot of people uneasy. Add into the mix the potential for the place to be, shall we say, a little worn and it gets your imagination working.

The Scariest Things explores the latent fear of staying in a strange place in Episode 163: Hotel-Motel-BnB Horror!

PS: Two recent indie horror movies that were not discussed at length in the Podcast that Eric highly recommends are The Night and Superhost.

One of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year arrived a couple of weeks ago, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin has been released for a few weeks now. It has garnered mostly positive reviews (66% Metacritic, 68% RT) and has pulled in a very respectable $54 million at the box office worldwide, after a month of wide release. Eric, in particular really enjoyed this and this is reflected in the Scariest Things Review.

For Liz, however, this was a chance to see one of her favorite horror novels of all time, Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World, put to the big screen with a good ($20 million) budget behind it. And… she hated the ending, which is very different from the book. Mike found both the book and the movie enjoyable. So, on what basis do you review a movie relative to its source material? The expectation levels were sky high, and in this case failed to deliver, for Liz.

Eric, coming in cold, really enjoyed the performances, and the fundamental aspects of the movie, as well as the craft of setting up the mystery of these apocalyptic strangers. But there is no doubt that there is a powerful version of the story out there that was left on the writing room table.

The Scariest Things dedicated the whole episode to this topic. SPOILER ALERT: We talk about the ending, and the woulda, coulda, shoulda nature of the screenplay. One thing I think we all could agree on… the title of the book is much better than the movie’s title.

Liz has returned back from Italy, and this week it’s Mike that is away!

In this week’s episode of Spooky Time:

When Mike returns, we’ll get to talking about Knock at the Cabin and (hopefully) Cocaine Bear! GRRRRRRR!!! (Sniff) GRRRRRR!!!

Until next week… enjoy our twenty minutes of insight for this week!

Liz flees to Rome to escape the oncoming hordes of Mardi Gras invaders (and to go on a Dario Argento Pilgrimage), leaving Robert, Eric, and a freshly shaven Mike Campbell sans beard to carry on with Spooky Time.

We’ll get more from Liz about her Giallo excursion in Italy next week, but until then check out the latest we have for Spooky Time! Again, stab that like button… really hard… make it know your wrath! (And your love for the Scariest Things.) If you don’t do it, we won’t know that you want to see more of the YouTube Content!

And, if you are at work or are driving, the audio content is also here, and available on all the regular streaming platforms.

SPOOKY TIME!

You read that right: The Scariest Things is branding slow-burn horror as the mullet of horror movies. It’s business (plot building) in the front and a party (big third-act finish). You can thank Liz Williams for that analogy! The concept of the slow-burn horror movie is not new, but it is a prominent description for many contemporary horror movies. We often refer to the new golden age of horror. This Golden Age has rewarded horror fans by investing in story arcs and character development, instead of the kill count and jump scares.

Slow burn isn’t just about the pace (though they often do exhibit a more deliberate and quieter condition). It’s about how much is revealed about the story.  At its best, a slow-burn movie will slowly turn up that burner gradually and make the anxiety and pressure reach a boiling point that will need a release. Think… Audition. Think… Babadook. Think… The Shining. The endings are nearly cathartic and necessary after all the preparation for the finale.

One of the better descriptions of the style is by Jourdan Aldredge at Premium Beat who notes: “A slow burn is a filmmaking style usually in narrative productions wherein plot, action, and scenes develop slowly, methodically toward a (usually) explosive ending.”

Aldredge points out the following elements that make the style powerful:

My add-on to Aldredge’s description is that it extends the traditional three-story arc. It fills out and adds detail to the story and allows texture and nuance to build. And, when executed at its best will, in the end, be more satisfying. That’s not to say these films are devoid of dramatic peaks (or gory fun), but the intent is to build your story, layer by layer, each layer providing more meaning and consequence. Consider the use of Charlie and the telephone pole in Hereditary. That shocking scene would seem like a climax, but it is a halfway point upping the story’s stakes and a major diversion of your expectations. It’s all about the pressure.

It isn’t just horror movies either.  Most Romance films are slow burners.  Don’t kiss until the final scene.  In comedy, it’s the joke’s construction and the punch line’s delayed gratification. Mystery films are dependent upon the slow burn.  There can be peaks and spikes to the plot, but you need to hold on until the very end; otherwise, it’s a film that peaks too soon. Action movies are almost never slow burners.  Batman doesn’t exactly burn slowly.

Slow Burn films layer new plot elements and add new characters to deploy wrinkles and complications (challenges) into the plot.  For example, it makes sense that ghost movies typically are the most common slow-burn for horror movies. Psychological horror films are also almost always slow burns. These types of films are builders. Hillbilly horror? Not so much. Conversely, sometimes horror wants a direct approach. Bring out your chainsaws!

Set up the pins, one by one, and then knock them down.  But don’t be hasty! If you it too early, too many of the pins will remain standing. Instead, ratchet up the burner slowly, and gradually ramp it up to achieve maximum impact.

This is also the home to what has been called “Elevated Horror. “So-called, for the trend of plot-heavy and character-arc-heavy horror films of the last twenty years. We recognize that the more deliberate pacing of these films can be a bit frustrating and off-putting to some, but for those with the patience, the rewards pay off in powerful, more emotionally forceful, and intellectually stimulating fare. That said, you may want to get some coffee first.

So get some rest. Grab that coffee. Listen to the Scariest Things and ponder the power of the horror movie Mullet.

This Podcast and Post is a Patreon request special for our contributor, Kelleigh Ledgerwood! We would love to thank Kelleigh again for her generosity, and the least we could do is take a request from the Bandstand. If you, too would like a podcast or a post dedicated to a topic of your fancy, please go to our Patreon Page, and join our family! (One of Us! One of US!)

As always, we have provided a broad roster of slow-burn films for your consideration, in addition to our official podcast discussion topics. Forty films in all, worth watching and absorbing… slowly. Like the Blob. Which is not a slow burner.

As the Beatles sang “It’s getting better all the time!”, the same is true with SPOOKY TIME! Our weekly roundup of horror musings from the world of film, TV, books, and games has now hit its third week, and I have to say… we’re getting better at the YouTube thing!

In this week’s Episode:

As always, here is our YouTube Stream. And please, if you want to keep seeing video content, like and subscribe to the YouTube links.

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

Well, we put it off just a little bit. Just to let the smell die down a bit, I suppose. But not all was great in the genre in 2022. In fact, there were some fairly significant STINKERS. We already told you what we thought was the best. Then we told you what we were looking forward to in 2023. And, that leaves us with having to throw some shade and recount what we didn’t like so much in the year 2022. And, to be fair, some of these movies aren’t so much poorly made than disappointing.

We are spreading the blame this year. The big studios and their underwhelming sequels and reboots seem to happen every year. To be fair, there were some really impressive reboots and sequels in 2022, so the big studios did reward us with films that impressed us. The indie films had a fair share that couldn’t find good enough actors or cohesive plots. This too, is a common occurrence: Inexperienced and untested filmmakers with limited budgets. Unfortunately, there are also a couple of movies that proved to be well-made, but reprehensible given the times we live in.

It can be fun to bag on bad movies. But remember, we had to sit through these for you so that you won’t have to! We can laugh about it now, but if it were not for our duty to watch as many horror movies as we can to get you some good advice, we have to take it for the team on occasion. These movies, at a minimum, disappoint greatly, and at worst will make you turn off your TV, and make you wish you could get that time back.

Consider yourselves warned. You may be intrigued by our commentary because you may be hoping for a “so bad it’s good” film. I don’t think we’ve got any candidates here for that. The good news? There were a LOT of horror movies released in 2022, and more of them were good than bad. You can check out our recommendations of the best movies TO SEE in Episode 159: The Best Horror Films of 2022.

Spooky Time continues! For those who have missed the first episode, we have taken it upon ourselves to be more active in our streaming media posts this year, with a weekly snippet to catch you all up on current happenings in the tropes and trends of the horror genre.

In Episode 2:

Check out our YouTube feed as well… and you can watch four middle-aged horror fans figure out how to create a video format! I do feel like we are getting better at this. We now have a video feed from Robert, and we are now feeding the audio back through our mixing board, allowing for a clean Podcast feed as well!

If you like seeing us regularly, updating you weekly with a quick video feed please go to our YouTube site and smash that like button like a kaiju with a bad attitude!