So You Think That Was Good Do You?

[Evan]: Hello, and I'm sorry about this movie, boys.
[Evan]: This is So You Think That Was Good, Do You?, a podcast where I force two of my best and closest colleagues to watch a movie I thought was far more suitable for this podcast.
[Evan]: My name is Evan, and I'm joined by the victims of my hubris.
[Evan]: It's Sam and Carl, boys.
[Evan]: I'm sorry, and how are you doing?
[Carl]: Best and closest colleagues.
[Carl]: What a fucking demotion that is.
[Carl]: Yeah, we've been downgraded, haven't we?
[Carl]: couldn't bring friends to pass your lips could you i didn't think you'd want to be after this i didn't want to assume so evan you think we're friends do you
[Sam]: That's, I mean, we've had a few apologetic episodes, but I mean, coming off the back of, quotation marks, the worst film any of us have ever seen, it says a lot that you're this humbled by this film.
[Evan]: I did warn you at the end of the last episode, I think I still overestimated how much content could be dredged from what we'll reveal soon was the movie this week.
[Sam]: They've read the title.
[Sam]: It's fine.
[Evan]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam]: Dreamcatcher 2003.
[Evan]: It's the first thing they see.
[Evan]: How are we doing, boys?
[Sam]: Oh, I'm good.
[Sam]: I'm good.
[Sam]: How are you doing, Carl, with your still on the wagon, on the coffee wagon?
[Evan]: Oh, yeah.
[Carl]: Good follow-up?
[Carl]: I am.
[Carl]: I am, what, I don't know, 12 days caffeine-free, something like that now?
[Carl]: Did you know they do sugar-free, caffeine-free Coke?
[Carl]: I do.
[Evan]: I've been smashing them lately.
[Evan]: Aren't they good?
[Evan]: No.
[Evan]: What?
[Carl]: Well, yeah, it tastes the same to me.
[Carl]: I assumed I was the only person who drinks it for the taste.
[Evan]: God, we've turned such boring old bastards.
[Sam]: I think I've bought into too many fucking conspiracy theories for this.
[Sam]: I assume everything's going to be irradiating me or giving me cancer or something.
[Sam]: I don't know.
[Sam]: It's like, if it's got nothing in it, if every single one of the nutritional things is zero grams, where's the poison?
[Carl]: What am I drinking?
[Carl]: Where's the good stuff?
[Carl]: How is it zero calories but brown?
[Carl]: There's no calories in brown?
[Carl]: Exactly.
[Sam]: We all know there's calories in brown.
[Evan]: Shall I get us started with the plots and op of Dreamcatcher 2003?
[Evan]: If you can.
[Sam]: I'm glad you said 2003 because there is another one.
[Sam]: There's another Dreamcatcher and it would have killed me to have watched the wrong film.
[Evan]: Yeah, that came out in 2012, I think.
[Evan]: And maybe even one of the last two years.
[Evan]: There were a couple on Prime that were confusing me.
[Sam]: We don't watch anything that recent.
[Evan]: I'm pretty sure we all watch this one.
[Evan]: Okay, so here we go.
[Evan]: It begins with quotation marks.
[Evan]: Dreamcatcher tells of four young friends who perform a heroic...
[Evan]: and are changed forever by the uncanny powers they gain in return.
[Evan]: Years later, the friends, now men, are on a hunting trip in the Maine woods when they are overtaken by a blizzard in which something much more ominous moves.
[Evan]: Challenged to stop an alien force, the friends must first prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians by a military vigilante, then overcome a threat to the bond between them.
[Carl]: I mean, it says the friends must.
[Carl]: They're mainly dead by the time this all happens.
[Evan]: That presumes they're all alive at the end.
[Evan]: Wrong.
[Evan]: 50% of our main characters are dead by the time any of this happens.
[Sam]: Incredibly quickly and with very little fanfare.
[Carl]: There's very little mourning of your closest friends.
[Evan]: There's not time.
[Evan]: There's so many things happening all at once in this movie.
[Carl]: The only person who gets mourned is the military man that he knows for 10 minutes right at the end.
[Carl]: We spend a good 30 seconds just kneeling by him while the world's about to end.
[Carl]: Everyone else, fuck them.
[Evan]: Okay, let's test how unimportant he was.
[Evan]: Do either of you know his name?
[Sam]: Absolutely not.
[Sam]: What Sam said.
[Evan]: Well, there you go.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: Mind you, that's not a great test since you never know who's any of the names are of any of the characters in these movies.
[Evan]: His name was Owen, but it is not important at all.
[Evan]: He is pissing the wind.
[Evan]: I want to begin by going over some of our characters that are introduced, just so everybody gets the gist of what's happening.
[Evan]: So first of all, we're introduced to Henry, who is a...
[Evan]: They're all psychic.
[Evan]: Everybody's fucking psychic in this movie, and he is a psychic psychologist.
[Evan]: And it opens with Henry.
[Evan]: He's talking to one of his clients, and he starts, like...
[Evan]: forcefully reading this guy's mind rather than just listening to him and giving him feedback like a therapist or a psychologist does and then scares him off and then Henry goes to fucking kill himself just as we've been introduced to him and it's not a surprise because if that's the example for how he treats all his clients the fucker's up to his eyeballs in debt so there's no way out at this point
[Evan]: But just as he's about to kill himself, all of this blends together.
[Evan]: He either gets a phone call or hears a psychic thought from one of his other psychic friends.
[Evan]: I can't remember.
[Sam]: Yeah, no, Ginger Bloke calls him.
[Sam]: Ginger Bloke calls him.
[Sam]: I mean, there's a lot of things that are established in the first 15 minutes of the film.
[Sam]: Yeah, we'll be going through them.
[Sam]: And some of them come back, some of them don't come back.
[Sam]: And I would argue, unless I missed something, that him being suicidal is never revisited.
[Evan]: Why is he so depressed?
[Evan]: He fleetingly mentions it on his walk back to the cabin, but that is it.
[Evan]: Well, we never know why he's depressed.
[Evan]: I assume it's because he's psychic, so he always knows what people are thinking of him.
[Evan]: He's scaring other people off.
[Evan]: He knows too much.
[Evan]: But this film does not spend the time to develop characters like that.
[Evan]: For a two and, what was it, eight to 16 minute movie, there is so much happening constantly.
[Evan]: There is just not a minute to be spared on character motivations.
[Sam]: Totally, yeah.
[Evan]: Okay, so next up we have Jonesy, who is the ginger guy who calls him.
[Evan]: Can we say ginger anymore?
[Evan]: Am I going to have to bleep all these out?
[Sam]: Is that a not allowed word?
[Sam]: Is that not allowed?
[Sam]: I think that's fine.
[Evan]: Okay, cool.
[Evan]: He also does not hide that he's a psychic freak.
[Evan]: He's a professor at a university.
[Evan]: A student comes in.
[Evan]: Like, this student looks up to this guy as a mentor.
[Evan]: Not the best student ever, but, like, should feel safe in his room.
[Evan]: And then the professor starts saying things about his life he couldn't possibly know.
[Evan]: And then when the student asks, how do you know that?
[Evan]: He just says, sometimes I know.
[Evan]: Great cover.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: Then we move on to Pete, who is played by the absolutely wonderful Timothy Oliphant.
[Evan]: Oliphant?
[Evan]: Oliphant.
[Evan]: It's an Oliphant.
[Evan]: Oliphant?
[Sam]: I was going to say Oliphant is the Lord of the Rings thing.
[Evan]: He's a car salesman.
[Evan]: A customer comes in because she's lost her keys.
[Evan]: Somehow he knows her name.
[Evan]: He helps her find her keys.
[Evan]: But after he tells her her own name without him telling her, he just says, I guessed Oliphant.
[Evan]: And these cats so far, we're probably no longer than seven minutes into this movie, have been introduced to three separate psychic characters are the worst at hiding their psychic to anybody else.
[Evan]: They're just coming out and doing it.
[Carl]: I mean, you say that.
[Carl]: I forgot he was a psychic.
[Carl]: I was like, well, why did he get the shit end of the stick where his power is just pointing at where things are?
[Carl]: He does a little whirly with his finger and then he knows where a thing is.
[Carl]: I feel like that's more established as his power than reading minds.
[Sam]: That is his main kind of established power.
[Sam]: That's his thing.
[Sam]: And yeah, we'll come back to this.
[Sam]: But the main thing that bugged me about this right at the beginning that I assumed would be explained, but it never was.
[Sam]: First guy, therapist guy.
[Sam]: Okay, he can read minds.
[Sam]: So he became a therapist.
[Sam]: Fair play.
[Sam]: Other choices would have been magician or detective.
[Sam]: This guy can locate any object or person.
[Sam]: So he became a car salesman?
[Carl]: For a bunch of psychics, they've got the shittest jobs.
[Carl]: And they're not doing very well.
[Carl]: Yeah, he could be a bounty hunter.
[Carl]: No.
[Carl]: He could track down anyone.
[Carl]: Track down anything.
[Sam]: He could just try and woo-woo-woo point at fucking buried treasure if he wants.
[Sam]: Do what you like.
[Sam]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam]: He could do that, couldn't he?
[Evan]: He could take over the Find My Phone app.
[Evan]: They would be gone.
[Sam]: Apple would shut down.
[Sam]: Look, these may not be the best ideas, but they're off the top of our head and they're better than car sands.
[Evan]: Yeah, way better.
[Sam]: He must have been over the moon for the first time in his life that he's been able to use his power in his job to find the car keys of a woman that had lost them.
[Sam]: But sell her a new car.
[Evan]: And then he's super creepy around her, so obviously she doesn't go on a date with him.
[Evan]: He does not nail that.
[Sam]: Wagging his little finger around didn't help.
[Evan]: And then finally we have Beaver, who is played...
[Evan]: I don't know the actor's name, but he's the guy from My Name Is Earl.
[Evan]: He's the guy whose name is Earl in that.
[Evan]: Jason Lee.
[Evan]: Oh, that's who he was.
[Evan]: Jason Lee.
[Sam]: Okay.
[Sam]: I just had him down as Discount Ryan Reynolds.
[Evan]: I guess so.
[Evan]: He doesn't look like that now.
[Evan]: He looks a bit... No, no, no.
[Sam]: Not in looks, just in his attitude through the film.
[Sam]: Oh, okay.
[Sam]: He's kind of a bit of a nasally wisecracker.
[Evan]: Oh yeah, he's certainly the comic relief.
[Evan]: Removed as the, well we'll get to it, but yeah, him dying is like the point where this film just completely changes its entire identity.
[Evan]: So yeah, but Beaver, it's alluded to that he has kind of psychic powers.
[Evan]: He phones up Jonesy and gives him some sort of vague warning that something is gonna go wrong.
[Evan]: but you quickly realise that he's the least talented one of this group because that sort of vague feeling of danger actually turns out to Jonesy instantly being mashed by a car, seconds within having spoken to Beaver.
[Evan]: Why does that make him the least talented?
[Carl]: Jonesy didn't know he was about to get fucked by a car.
[Evan]: I was going to say that maybe that makes him the most talented, having known that that was going to happen.
[Evan]: But are you really psychic if you can't predict exactly what's going to happen?
[Evan]: Like, I could phone you tomorrow and say, I feel like something bad's going to happen.
[Carl]: You already phone me and say that every day anyway.
Yeah.
[Evan]: Yeah, because I'm always right.
[Evan]: And at the end of every day, you throw me back and you say, yeah, if you were right today, we're shit.
[Evan]: I got hit by a car.
[Evan]: Again.
[Evan]: And then I throw your car keys back in the puddle every day.
[Evan]: Yeah, so that's...
[Sam]: Carving all his finger.
[Evan]: That's our ragtag team that we're heading into the next 40 minutes of this movie with.
[Evan]: That will radically shrink as we exit 40 to 50 minutes, but now we're aware of who everyone is for now.
[Sam]: The only other thing about this entire establishing section is that Beaver, his introduction is he's in a bar and he's got his classic toothpick in the mouth.
[Sam]: And he takes a shot while he's chewing on a toothpick in his mouth.
[Sam]: And it's the most uncomfortable thing to watch.
[Sam]: You're like...
[Sam]: God, that just looks so...
[Sam]: I feel like I've got to cough up a toothpick now.
[Evan]: Yeah, there's two things that can happen there.
[Evan]: Either the shot just comes out of your mouth because it's open, because you've got a fucking toothpick in there, or you swallow the toothpick.
[Evan]: In no scenario does that work.
[Sam]: Incidentally, his whole toothpick thing, I don't think it was ever explained either.
[Sam]: Was he like a, I don't know, recovering addict to something?
[Carl]: I don't think that toothpicks have addictive qualities, but this man dies for his toothpick addiction.
[Sam]: His toothpicks are laced with meth.
[Carl]: It's the point where...
[Carl]: The story is pretty much, yeah, it's the point where the story falls apart.
[Carl]: It's the point in the movie where Sam and I both messaged Evan because we hit 50 minutes at about the same point.
[Carl]: We're pretty much just going, what the fuck?
[Carl]: Because the movie takes a big turn, but he's infuriating to watch.
[Carl]: Big left turn.
[Carl]: There's a shit snake in the toilet trying to get out.
[Carl]: He's holding this thing in the toilet.
[Carl]: His toothpicks are falling on the floor.
[Carl]: And he can't quite reach one.
[Carl]: And he's desperate to reach a toothpick and ends up dead because he stretches away.
[Sam]: He's chewing on toothpicks the whole film.
[Sam]: He's got a toothpick in his mouth.
[Sam]: And yeah, like I said, it doesn't get explained.
[Sam]: It's just kind of a thing.
[Sam]: It's his thing.
[Sam]: And he dies for it.
[Sam]: And it was, again, infuriating to watch.
[Carl]: You can't even assume they swapped out a real addiction for toothpicks to keep the rating down, because there's no way that you're putting a shot glass around a cigarette and then swallowing that down.
[Carl]: That works even worse.
[Evan]: You just ruined a cigarette.
[Evan]: I suppose the only other character we need to mention for now, because he's going to come up a lot, is... Yeah, we all know.
[Evan]: We have to.
[Evan]: Big sigh.
[Evan]: Is Dudit.
[Evan]: Who, as I will explain in a moment, is the character that embodies just a massive plethora of Stephen King tropes.
[Evan]: So he is a rolled up version of many characters we've seen in all the movies we've watched.
[Evan]: He's mentally challenged.
[Evan]: He's a psychic child.
[Evan]: He's from fucking Derry.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: and space he is also from space it turns out he is the one who gives these other boys powers they happen to save him in another trope of stephen king's stupidly long flashbacks where your main characters are children and they stand up to bullies and the bullies they always look the same they're clearly kids that picked on stephen king when he was younger and there's a face off they even pick up stones to throw up the bullies like exactly the same as they did in it
[Evan]: They're the same kind of...
[Evan]: I always forget what they're called.
[Evan]: Greasers.
[Evan]: That's what the bullies look like.
[Evan]: They've got their fucking sporty Letterman jackets on.
[Evan]: They're cool as fuck.
[Evan]: And they're trying to shovel shit into this...
[Evan]: poor boy's mouth and uh as i was watching that i felt kind of like gratefulness that we watched this movie now and not at the beginning of this podcast because if this had been chosen in those early days i would have just done what i did at that point when trying to find my place on this podcast which was just say fuck shit and going for those easy jokes because man i'd have fallen hook line and singer for this little fucking wronging of a boy
[Evan]: This, the actors, both the actor who plays the child and the actor who plays the adult, who is Mark Wahlberg's brother, do not hold back in their illustration of what this boy is.
[Evan]: I'll explain it through the words of a character.
[Evan]: So these aren't my words.
[Evan]: This is in the movie.
[Evan]: In referencing Duditz, one of the boys says, he must belong to that retard academy.
[Sam]: Whatever's done here is the podcast equivalent of seeing a trap in front of you on the floor, pointing it out, and then deliberately stepping on it.
[Sam]: But yes, that is how he gets described.
[Evan]: Well, that is an actual quote from the movie, so I feel like I've gotten away with that.
[Evan]: He said, walking away with his foot in a trap.
[Sam]: He's an interesting character.
[Sam]: There's got to be a trope, like a TV tropes page dedicated to characters like this.
[Sam]: He's kind of similar to Job in Lawnmower Man.
[Evan]: I would say he isn't simple Jack in this.
[Evan]: This doesn't feel like a spoof like Job did.
[Evan]: I mean, it still feels ridiculous.
[Evan]: But I think this feels too real.
[Sam]: It's still absurd, the Scooby-Doo obsession.
[Carl]: It feels like bad writing, where they go, well, how do we make him come across as a special needs child?
[Carl]: Well, we'll just cut the first letter off of every word, and he'll just twist.
[Evan]: Oh yeah, that, definitely.
[Evan]: Okay, maybe what I meant is, I think the actor, actors, because two actors play in this, did a better job than the guy who did Joe.
[Evan]: Yes.
[Evan]: The writing, awful.
[Evan]: I think now, then, is a good time to go into why...
[Evan]: this turned out the way it did.
[Carl]: You mean why this movie's a fucking nightmare?
[Carl]: Yes.
[Evan]: As we move into this, as the movie changes, but we'll hit a couple of plot points more now, but maybe this will explain why Stephen King wrote the character this way.
[Evan]: So Sam, as you will know, because he writes it into the story of the Dark Tower, in 1999...
[Evan]: He was walking down a road in Maine, just not far from his house.
[Evan]: He just crossed the bridge.
[Evan]: He was almost home.
[Evan]: A van came speeding over the bridge and absolutely mulched him into the floor.
[Sam]: I don't think I knew that was a true story, but okay.
[Evan]: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[Evan]: That happened to him in real life.
[Evan]: That's why he wrote to him.
[Evan]: He is God to himself, Sam.
[Evan]: Yeah, he totally is.
[Evan]: And he was taken to the hospital.
[Evan]: He was in there a long time.
[Evan]: And as he came out, he was on a lot of Oxycontin, which is a drug they love to give out in America, just for anything.
[Evan]: You don't need to be hit by a van to get it.
[Evan]: You can go in there with a headache and you'll get that shit.
[Evan]: He was on those for a long time and happened to be writing this book as he was taking them.
[Evan]: This book came out in 2001.
[Evan]: So well within that time period.
[Evan]: And then this film came out 2003.
[Evan]: So the screenplay would have been done well before then as well.
[Evan]: So this is, there is a plague of not straightforward thinking in this, which everybody is about to find out.
[Carl]: Stephen King and hard drugs.
[Carl]: It is a fact that makes you go, oh, okay, now this story makes sense.
[Carl]: Because one of the things that really bugged me as we were, well, as I was watching was just, why are there so many farts and stomach bubbles and things bursting out of arses?
[Carl]: And I'm pretty certain that one of the side effects of taking very hard opiates is constipation and horrific shits.
[Carl]: So I assume he was just laid up in bed with his stomach going nuts going...
[Carl]: I'm going to write this in.
[Evan]: Do you think that was his solution?
[Evan]: Like, when you really need a wee but can't go, so you have to trick yourself into going.
[Evan]: He was, like, constipated.
[Evan]: He's like, if I just write about someone taking a shit, I will at some point take a shit.
[Sam]: A toothy worm exploding out of a guy's ass.
[Sam]: That'll get me going.
[Evan]: Right, okay, so to get us where we're going, let's get from everyone we've just described to this massive twist in the story.
[Evan]: So these guys, they all meet up to honour this guy, Duditz, and they go to a hunting lodge somewhere out in Maine to go on a hunting trip.
[Carl]: They meet up to honour Duditz without Duditz, and they have done this for years without ever inviting Duditz, their special needs friend, along.
[Carl]: We love him, but we can't be around him.
[Sam]: I don't know if it was meant to be a reveal at the end, that I was spending the whole film...
[Sam]: Being like, okay, so when do we find out how Duditz died?
[Sam]: Because this has got to be a significant part of their childhood is how this kid died.
[Sam]: Because there's no way that they would meet up every year and talk about Duditz constantly if he's still alive.
[Evan]: He's next door.
[Evan]: He's down the road.
[Evan]: Yeah, yeah.
[Sam]: You could just go to his house for fuck's sake.
[Evan]: Just go say hello.
[Evan]: Next door, they're cheersing to him.
[Evan]: Cheers to Deditz, boys.
[Evan]: To his memory.
[Evan]: He's peering in the window.
[Carl]: Do you know how many forms you have to sign if you want to take Deditz with you?
[Sam]: It's baffling, the idea that they, yeah, all meet up and talk about him non-stop, get drunk and ignore him.
[Sam]: And that's their thing.
[Evan]: I'm not sure if it's just a victim of the writing because like then this blizzard hits and nobody can join them at the cabin.
[Evan]: Things start going wrong.
[Evan]: They all kind of split up.
[Evan]: Two of them are out on a hunting.
[Evan]: Two of them have gone out in the car.
[Evan]: And then as the blizzard hits, one of them, which I think is Jonesy, spots this hunter who's been lost in the blizzard.
[Evan]: and helps him.
[Evan]: He's been lost all night.
[Evan]: They help him back to the cabin and this guy's not right.
[Evan]: He's got like some sort of weird mark they think is frostbite on his face and his chest is fucking massive for some reason.
[Evan]: They get him down and after he's eaten something the bulge moves from his chest to his stomach and this is like this is the Stephen King stuff to get you thinking about what's creepy right now.
[Evan]: This is like supposed to be the horror factor but it looks ridiculous on both ends when he's got the massive tits and then the big fat tummy.
[Evan]: And they even point out in the dialogue, like, I swear that bulge was in his chest just now.
[Evan]: I don't know how it was in his tummy.
[Evan]: And I would have loved it if the explanation was, well, he just had some of the soup, so he's washed it down.
[Sam]: They brush it off the same way.
[Evan]: yeah oh yeah there's no worry about it and then he's not concerned he goes upstairs uh they get distracted a little bit but they come back in and then they they find a big trail of blood leading from the the room they put the guy into the bathroom and this is where the movie takes the big turn yeah the thing they get distracted by is all the animals are leaving the forest yes and the helicopters come over the top and they've all got that weird red stuff that's on the
[Carl]: fat man's face with the big tits.
[Carl]: And this was the point...
[Carl]: Slash tummy.
[Carl]: Slash tummy.
[Carl]: Where I thought, oh shit, this movie's getting quite good.
[Carl]: I'd messaged you saying, decent but a bit boring.
[Carl]: Things started to pick up.
[Carl]: We're about to get big fucking toothy worm come out of his ass from the big trail of blood.
[Carl]: All good stuff.
[Evan]: and then well and then everything else then the rest of the film happens yeah the rest of the film is awful so this scene let's talk about so the guy they burst into the toilet where he sat himself down he was just replying to them i did actually quite like this where he was replying to them and he seemed okay and then they go in and the guy is clearly dead and has been dead for a while does that mean the snake was puppeting him
[Evan]: is creepy yes yeah i think you're supposed to assume that but then immediately that sort of like ripped away from you the the classes pulled out from under your table and all your glasses go flying everywhere because the guy shits in the toilet which is this note of comedy you didn't expect you've had one guy joking about the entire time that's fine that's like a character maybe that will learn a lesson at some point but then this guy shits in front of you in the toilet
[Evan]: which is so odd.
[Evan]: And then he falls forward, pretty creepy.
[Evan]: And then there's an alien trying to escape the toilet.
[Evan]: But then I had to pause and knowing he was on Oxycontin at the time, you're just thinking all Stephen King has done is watch Alien whilst he was on drugs.
[Evan]: and then think, that's not how aliens would come out of you.
[Evan]: They would just take the easiest route.
[Evan]: Why would they burst through your pretty solid, hard rib cage when they could just go out your bum?
[Evan]: And then he thought, fuck, this is such a good idea.
[Evan]: I should write an entire book about it.
[Evan]: And it's so far.
[Evan]: from a good idea i cannot believe it made it through a publisher i'm genuinely angry that it's so easy for this man to publish a book and then two years later they make a film which clearly a lot of money was spent on because it looks pretty good the aliens look good all the practical effects of the blood look good it's got an amazing cast even for the time these are like lesser known stars then i guess they're a great cast and it's all wasted
[Evan]: on fucking alien but they come out of your bum instead of your chest and they reference it they call the aliens ripley's in this so it's not even fucking pretending like it doesn't know alien exists he's just gone hey you know that film everybody fucking loves well here's it but better it does seem that he was writing a sort of stand by me like book about a bunch of kids who get psychic powers from the yeah from the what's the word again evan
[Carl]: Retard Academy.
[Carl]: Friend.
[Carl]: Was that what you were looking for?
[Carl]: Just say friend, I think.
[Carl]: And then he got hit by a van, took a load of drugs, like you say, watched the movie Alien, and just maybe forgot that he hadn't had the idea for Alien.
[Carl]: just so odd it feels like he just started writing the sequel to a book he hadn't finished almost like you could chapter one chapter two sort of thing where you get to see them as kids and then as adults and he just kind of had a bit of a brain fart and just went adults now
[Sam]: well yeah it's it's hard to say but I don't think given how much of an iconic part of this film slash book this hard left turn is crazy pretty confidently can say that it wasn't the intention from the start of writing the book
[Sam]: You could probably assume that he started writing this book, wrote these four characters in a very similar kind of dynamic as it, and then realised, you know, either realised, fuck, I've done this already, or just got bored and went, ah, fuck it.
[Sam]: Maybe that's at the point.
[Sam]: He was a few chapters in, and then he watched Alien.
[Sam]: And then he thought, yeah, I'll do this, actually.
[Carl]: I much preferred the kids bit of the whole thing.
[Carl]: I really wish there was more of it.
[Carl]: I quite enjoyed that.
[Carl]: I mean, it kind of...
[Carl]: There's one flashback where they meet dudits and they're established as, once again, they're these really wholesome kids who always do the right thing, who still grow up to be fuck-up adults for some reason.
[Carl]: That's just it.
[Carl]: Yeah, that's just it.
[Carl]: You like that because it's it.
[Carl]: Yeah.
[Carl]: But then we only get one more, like, half flashback to them as kids, which is just them getting given powers to find a special needs girl who fell down a well, I guess.
[Carl]: Yeah.
[Carl]: And where was she from, Carl?
[Carl]: She was from the local academy.
[Carl]: Friends!
[Carl]: Yeah, she was from the friend academy.
[Carl]: I did love that they found dudettes by just following the trail of clothes and bags and then found her by doing the exact same thing.
[Carl]: As if when you're near the school, you just need to follow a trail of clothes and you will find one of the kids.
[Evan]: Every morning they sit them down at that school.
[Evan]: If anybody ever gets lost here, just immediately drop your bags.
[Evan]: Eventually somebody will find it and come looking for you.
[Sam]: Start shedding items in a trail of bullshit for someone to follow.
[Sam]: Or wait for that waggly fingered kid.
[Evan]: Fucking cut to kids at the end of the year really worried that they're going to get lost so they're coming in with 50 items every day so they can leave a proper trail.
[Evan]: Six lunch boxes.
[Carl]: Derry's quite a small town.
[Carl]: How messed up is everyone that you need an academy for friends?
[Evan]: I truly do not know why this had to be based in Derry.
[Evan]: It has no relation to anything else.
[Evan]: But it's not even a tenuous link.
[Evan]: There is no link to Derry.
[Carl]: Pennywise is in the book.
[Evan]: Right, yeah, because they go to the sewer.
[Evan]: The girl is in the sewer.
[Evan]: So I thought, oh, this is going to be a reference, definitely.
[Evan]: And no, she just, she fucking, for some reason, fucking walking through the barrens, that's what they're called, isn't it?
[Evan]: And slips into a fucking open sewer crate.
[Evan]: Sorry.
[Evan]: It's funny because she's so friendly.
[Evan]: Shit, I'm going to have to bleep all of that.
[Sam]: This is a minefield.
[Evan]: I'm already in the trap, guy.
[Evan]: I can't get any more trapped.
[Sam]: I'm going to bring us slightly back to the film.
[Sam]: Please.
[Sam]: Another thing, big thing that annoyed me about this is that the premise here that runs throughout the film is that Duditz gives them these powers so that they can defeat this monster.
[Sam]: evil that is now arising okay yeah we should talk he gives them the powers of like foresight and telepathy and finger waggling finger waggling find my iphone but but the only reason that this bad guy can even get to the fucking interstate that he was trying to get to is because of little finger waggly it's the only thing he ever does is direct the bad guy to where he wants to go and then everyone else just has to mop up the shit using their telekinesis it's
[Sam]: It doesn't benefit anyone.
[Carl]: It's more than that.
[Carl]: I mean, the guy that he possesses, he can only possess him because he has these powers.
[Carl]: So if Duditz hadn't given them any powers, there never would have been someone for him to possess.
[Sam]: He's got his mind palace.
[Carl]: His memory warehouse, thank you.
[Evan]: Don't make sounds like that.
[Evan]: That is awful, isn't it?
[Evan]: We'll get to that.
[Evan]: So also, the only reason that Mr. Grey, who is... Yeah, let's explain who his enemies are.
[Evan]: So aliens invade Earth.
[Evan]: No, they crash land.
[Evan]: We haven't touched on that at all.
[Evan]: Aliens crash land.
[Evan]: They crash land, but they are going to take over.
[Evan]: Their plan is to very much...
[Evan]: It's not like the thing at all.
[Evan]: They just want to fucking spread their little wormy boys everywhere.
[Evan]: The wormy boys lay eggs.
[Evan]: They'll create more wormy boys.
[Evan]: And they eventually grow into big wormy boys that can also transform into your classic grey style alien.
[Evan]: But they're fucking massive.
[Evan]: But then they can also turn into red dust that can possess you.
[Carl]: incredibly vague set of powers crazy amount of stuff going on it's whatever he feels like because at one point you assume that they have to be inside a human host to spawn because that's how we're introduced to them and then five minutes later he walks into a bedroom and one of them's just wrapped around a bunch of eggs so they lay eggs now
[Sam]: there's just eggs they fly now yeah their life cycle is that they get into a host burst out the arsehole and then just lay eggs anyway why don't you just lay the eggs anyway just do that don't come out of the arsehole that means that it's a choice the arsehole thing is a choice they could have laid eggs it's a kink at this point it's not a choice if you do all of them if you do everything no choice has been made
[Sam]: They're having their coke and eating it.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: They.
[Evan]: Stephen.
[Carl]: And drunks.
[Carl]: No pages got thrown into the fucking tissue bin, did they?
[Carl]: It was full.
[Evan]: Yeah, so when Mr. Grey is trying to read Jonesy's mind, he eventually possesses him in order to start doing his part.
[Evan]: I don't know why, but he needs to be in a human form so he can get to essentially what is just sewer access so he can throw a bunch of these eggs in the fucking water.
[Evan]: And as you say, he can't read Jonesy's mind for some reason that hasn't been revealed yet.
[Evan]: And then he asks Timothy Oliphant where the highway is.
[Evan]: But to me, they have the same powers.
[Evan]: Dodit, or whatever his fucking name is, Mr.
[Evan]: Friendly, has the same powers.
[Evan]: He is an alien who is just hiding in a human guy.
[Evan]: They have the same powers.
[Evan]: So this alien who's looking for the highway could just waggle his finger and find it.
[Evan]: And besides that, something that is even more...
[Evan]: obscures me you'd think that these four guys being special and also you know coincidentally being here at this time the thing that would stop the alien from reading your mind is the fact that you're psychic and you could keep them out and it's the battle between your minds but it just so happens that jonesy can keep this alien out of certain parts of his mind because he was hit by that fucking car oh yeah because he died and came back
[Evan]: He can hide one part of his mind off.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Carl]: He also had to die and come back.
[Carl]: We really have to believe that he has an actual fucking four-story library in his head for a good portion of this movie.
[Carl]: It's not a metaphorical memory warehouse.
[Carl]: He has an actual warehouse in his head.
[Carl]: full of files that are all his memories and he actually burns them and then there's a room where only he has access to in his own head he's set aside a safe room in his own brain boxes around yeah i hated the storage limit thing he was at the start of the movie they forced this in when they're all cheersing did it's is that his name
[Evan]: and he says that every time he gets a new thought he has to go in find one of his files in what i posit could be a much more well-organized warehouse because there's a lot of fucking space there and it's not like he's just got stuff piled up on the stairs like there is in my fucking house i know there's more space bloke he's just got like random file cabinets here and there and he has to go and burn one memory so he can put in a random new thought just
[Carl]: Every time he gets asked something, he just takes 50 minutes of searching through his own fucking head.
[Evan]: What can I bin?
[Evan]: Anytime this guy uses Google, he's got to have a fucking aneurysm.
[Sam]: Oh, fuck.
[Sam]: I just deleted how to breathe.
[Evan]: Quick, let me Google that.
[Carl]: You mentioned Timothy Oliphant when he gets used to find the way to the I-95 or something before he gets killed.
[Carl]: And he just starts twice, I think, before he's killed.
[Carl]: He does this whole, I think that it's is from another world and was preparing us for something talk because nobody watching could ever
[Carl]: ever figured that out there's a couple of instances throughout this movie where they've gone we're just gonna have to say it because we have not shown it what the fuck is happening just get get him to say that this is what we were preparing for the whole time and after that we'll kill him off because apparently we didn't prepare him enough because then no one can ask any questions
[Evan]: no you were spot on with that just out of nowhere and he's not even talking to anyone he's talking to a corpse opposite him that he's been charged with looking after and also he's he's the alcoholic for this movie we had to have one and here's a guy who was drinking from 11 a.m till the fucking end of the night he's just blabbering at this corpse
[Evan]: And then we get the whole scene where the worm comes out of her.
[Carl]: It bites his dick.
[Carl]: You notice how it can bite through four fingers, but not a man's dick?
[Sam]: No, he manages to keep it.
[Sam]: Four fingers are gone in an instant.
[Sam]: Nothing else to say.
[Evan]: Oh yeah, by this point, my name is Earl is dead as well.
[Evan]: He's been killed in the bathroom.
[Evan]: This is the scene you were talking about.
[Evan]: He was sat in the toilet.
[Evan]: He tried to reach for a toothpick.
[Evan]: He gets absolutely fucked up by the worm.
[Evan]: Jonesy, by this point, is possessed by the...
[Evan]: Alien.
[Evan]: God, just fucking explaining this.
[Evan]: I know we've had a few unstable ones so far, especially with Dark Tower.
[Evan]: Explaining that out loud was hard.
[Evan]: But this one, this really takes the fucking cake.
[Evan]: It is all over the place.
[Evan]: This is on another level.
[Sam]: It's impossible to explain.
[Sam]: This is the only film where you can say there's four main characters and they're all psychic, but forget that.
[Sam]: That doesn't matter.
[Evan]: Does not matter.
[Evan]: It does not come into play at all.
[Carl]: Never relevant.
[Carl]: Wait until we tell everyone that the military are involved and Morgan Freeman's around.
[Carl]: Holy fuck.
[Carl]: We've skipped all that.
[Evan]: So, it turns out they're in a quarantine zone and the military are here.
[Evan]: Also, Morgan Freeman is in this 2003 when he's very famous movie.
[Evan]: I...
[Evan]: So they've been fighting these aliens for a long time.
[Evan]: Morgan Freeman is kind of like gone insane by this point, I think we're being told.
[Evan]: Although we're told that after he's been very reasonable throughout.
[Evan]: Like he's just doing his job.
[Carl]: Just at the end they say, oh, he's insane by the way.
[Carl]: He keeps killing the aliens that are trying to take over the world and he's quite stressed about it.
[Carl]: Fucking nutter.
[Carl]: They've just spent an hour showing us a very dangerous...
[Carl]: This man belongs in a very friendly school.
[Sam]: The reasoning that they give for him having gone insane is that he walks them through this, I don't know what you call it, building with bunk beds in it where they are housing...
[Sam]: It's a concentration camp.
[Sam]: That's fine.
[Evan]: A bit of a camp, yeah.
[Evan]: There's a pile of shoes in the corner.
[Evan]: Use your imagination.
[Sam]: Sure, okay.
[Sam]: He walks them through this camp and all of the people that are being contained in there have these red splotches on their face, which we've now just had established means they are dead.
[Sam]: They are hosts for these worm things.
[Sam]: And then they leave that camp and he says, basically, we've got to kill all those people because they're all going to explode into worms out their arse.
[Sam]: That's it.
[Sam]: That's his... That's him being insane.
[Sam]: I, as the viewer, I'm like, he's right.
[Sam]: I just saw it.
[Sam]: Yeah, and they try...
[Sam]: It happened to that guy.
[Carl]: They try to be like, no, he is insane because only like one in four will actually have an arse worm.
[Carl]: And you go, what, just let them all go and... Just some guy says that.
[Carl]: Kill one in every four then and just hope that the ones we don't kill don't have arse worms, I guess.
[Evan]: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
[Sam]: Then the rest of the film contains this subplot of the conflict between a guy that we don't know the name of who's in the military.
[Sam]: This guy, Owens.
[Sam]: Owen?
[Sam]: Owen.
[Sam]: Owen and Morgan Freeman.
[Sam]: They're fighting against each other.
[Evan]: There's no reason for it.
[Evan]: They have the same goal.
[Evan]: He retires tomorrow.
[Sam]: Their goal is go and kill this alien.
[Evan]: Yeah, this is all very odd.
[Evan]: So Owen was supposed to take over from Morgan Freeman.
[Evan]: I feel like we've been here before, you know.
[Evan]: I'm having some massive deja vu.
[Evan]: I don't know if it's just because we're on our fucking umpteenth Stephen King movie and they're all blurring together at this point.
[Evan]: But Owen is supposed to take over from Morgan Freeman.
[Evan]: They all seem to be on the same page.
[Evan]: And then is his name Henry?
[Evan]: He shows up.
[Evan]: displays very overtly his psychic powers to Owen.
[Sam]: For some reason... Oh, he stands there staring at them for like three hours.
[Sam]: Yeah.
[Evan]: Henry starts telling Owen that there's a hitchhiker out there.
[Evan]: So that's a term they use for when an alien turns into that red mist, jumps in a human and manages to merge in with the rest of the population.
[Evan]: And whilst trying to convince him to let him go, he's clearly displaying what are clearly psychic powers.
[Evan]: And I don't understand why Owen's first thought is, oh my God, this guy is a hitchhiker psychic alien that I'm literally just talking about.
[Evan]: But instead, he immediately believes this guy, Henry, and turns on his boss.
[Carl]: Yeah.
[Carl]: Yeah, yeah.
[Carl]: I assumed that's what he would think.
[Carl]: Summarised it.
[Carl]: Yeah, this hitchhiker thing is another... Oh, shit, we haven't really explained or shown very well, so we're just going to have to say it as Morgan Freeman's just like...
[Carl]: My biggest fear is what the audience have been watching when we're not on the screen.
[Carl]: If it took over someone that shouldn't exist because we don't know psychic powers are a thing, that would be the worst thing that could happen, he says after it cuts from the psychic guy being taken over by the aliens.
Yeah.
[Carl]: So that we, thick as fuck, can sit there going, oh, that would be a terrible thing.
[Carl]: And it's happened.
[Evan]: Oh my God, Morgan, it's happening.
[Carl]: You fool.
[Evan]: I do love the contrast, though, of Owen believing this guy wholeheartedly.
[Evan]: Like, betraying his boss.
[Evan]: He's called the regular army in.
[Evan]: They've taken over, so they can't do anything.
[Evan]: Morgan does manage to escape.
[Evan]: We'll get to that.
[Evan]: But then as Owen is driving Henry to...
[Evan]: Doddits?
[Evan]: Doddits?
[Sam]: What's wrong with you?
[Evan]: What do you mean, what's wrong with me?
[Evan]: What kind of name is Doddits?
[Evan]: How am I supposed to remember that?
[Sam]: It's not his name.
[Evan]: Doddits.
[Evan]: Doddits!
[Evan]: God, Doddits!
[Evan]: That's the same name!
[Evan]: It's just one vowel different!
[Sam]: Is it meant to be Douglas?
[Sam]: Is that what it is?
[Carl]: I think.
[Carl]: But even his mum calls him fucking Doddits.
[Carl]: At which point, you're just abusing your own friendly child.
[Carl]: You're just mocking his speech impediments.
[Evan]: starts calling him daddy it's like well we know he is but you know you don't have to say it to him well on that very same vein owen trusts this guy henry believing he's psychic and you know the saver of this whole situation and then as he they get in the car they drive towards daddy's house and he tries to
[Evan]: He tries to communicate with Jonesy, who is currently possessed by this alien, and tells him to call him.
[Evan]: And very literally, Jonesy picks up a phone in his little mind office and calls Owen.
[Evan]: And then Owen, as he's currently holding a gun, puts it to his ear like it's a fucking banana phone in front of this very serious military dude who's just risked his entire career on that this guy isn't actually insane.
[Evan]: I found it such a funny fucking scene to see him talking to Jonesy on it.
[Evan]: Because you put yourself in fucking Owen's shoes, like, oh, fuck.
[Sam]: It's like, oh, shit.
[Sam]: I can't believe I just sabotaged my boss that I've been working for.
[Sam]: I've been working for a decade to get here.
[Sam]: I just threw it all away on this guy.
[Sam]: And now he's talking to his imaginary friend.
[Evan]: On my fucking gun.
[Carl]: Do you know what we haven't touched on yet?
[Carl]: Is...
[Carl]: So much.
[Carl]: Mr. Grey, who is the alien that's taken over him, is an extremely posh British man.
[Carl]: So the actor's constantly switching between being posh British evil alien to just his normal self.
[Carl]: So why is he a posh evil British man when he's a human, but Duditz is a friendly, you know...
[Carl]: He's so friendly.
[Carl]: Why is Duditz so friendly when he's a human?
[Carl]: That's a very good question.
[Carl]: But when Mr. Grey's a human, he's just posh and evil.
[Evan]: Well, I can explain one, but I can't explain the other.
[Evan]: I think maybe Duditz was friendly before he was possessed.
[Sam]: He was a friendly alien before he became a friendly kid.
[Evan]: I cannot for the life of me explain why Mr. Grey chose to have a British accent because he's an alien and wouldn't have any accent that we would know.
[Evan]: So I can't explain that.
[Carl]: Why does Mr. Grey have to take over a host and that it's going to just turn into a person?
[Evan]: Well, I assume that Deditz did possess a boy.
[Evan]: You think he possessed a friendly boy?
[Evan]: I think, yes.
[Evan]: I think, you know, being an alien, you know, if he's the first kid you see... What if that thing they were trying to feed to him wasn't dog shit?
[Carl]: And you think, oh, they're all like this.
[Evan]: They're all friendly.
[Evan]: What if it was a worm?
[Evan]: I think, regardless of what they put in front of him, he's an alien, yeah?
[Evan]: If they put a hot dog in his mouth, he still wouldn't have wanted to eat it.
[Evan]: It's just lucky that they were holding dog shit to him so he looked normal.
[Evan]: four boys had strolled up and three greasers were trying to force feed a friendly boy a hot dog.
[Evan]: You'd probably just walk past, wouldn't you?
[Evan]: They're just trying to look after him.
[Sam]: Just drink this water.
[Evan]: It's from your Scooby-Doo lunchbox.
[Evan]: Oh my God.
[Evan]: I don't know how much of this I can keep in.
[Sam]: This is, it's agonising going through this because with every stupid thing we point out, there's like five other things that's like, and also this is bullshit and also this is bullshit.
[Sam]: But you can't mention it all.
[Sam]: You need to do, someone could, Mauler or someone like that on YouTube could do a long form nine hour breakdown of everything about this film that is baffling.
[Evan]: I don't think anything we will have said will make sense to the listener.
[Evan]: I could listen back to this and not know what we're talking about.
[Evan]: What fucking shit movie is this?
[Evan]: Dad has a phone.
[Evan]: Why have they written that in?
[Sam]: So this culminates with they get to the reservoir, right?
[Sam]: Which is the water source for the kind of surrounding area.
[Sam]: And the alien's plan is that it wants to get into the water source and infect everyone.
[Sam]: It doesn't matter the logistics of that or how that works.
[Sam]: Just, it's getting into the water.
[Carl]: That it said it would work, so it would work.
[Sam]: Again, yeah.
[Sam]: Yeah, someone explicitly said to the camera that it would work.
[Sam]: That's what his plan was.
[Sam]: That's how it would work.
[Sam]: Just like everything else in this film.
[Sam]: And then again, we get this kind of return of Owen versus Morgan Freeman, where Morgan shows up in a fucking attack helicopter and starts gunning this guy down.
[Sam]: And again, you're sitting there watching it like, you both just want to do the same thing, right?
[Sam]: Why are you fucking...
[Sam]: Why is this conflict happening?
[Sam]: What does this add?
[Evan]: You know why that's confusing, though, don't you?
[Evan]: Because nobody immediately after tells us why they're fighting.
[Evan]: Because we've been handheld all the way through.
[Carl]: This also left me miffed.
[Carl]: We needed a Shawshank Redemption voiceover from Morgan Freeman where he explains to us what he's doing and why.
[Evan]: Every single plot point.
That would be great.
[Carl]: Owen was my friend.
[Carl]: That was a very good Forrest Gump impression, Evan.
[Carl]: Well done.
[Evan]: Thank you.
[Evan]: That's my doddits.
[Evan]: Doddits.
[Evan]: Yeah, he shoots it in for a bit.
[Evan]: They both fucking die in this very scene.
[Evan]: They just both die.
[Evan]: Meanwhile, Jonesy, who's currently possessed, is trying to get this sewage grate open, which we know any human can because humans work in that facility.
[Evan]: Sorry, not sewage grate, reservoir grate.
[Evan]: And he's struggling for a good 10 minutes to get this open, forgetting that he could transform into his massive alien form.
[Sam]: Massive alien version.
[Evan]: The lid.
[Evan]: The lid.
[Evan]: Never does that.
[Evan]: By the time that Henry finally strolls into the room with his fucking MP4, he's on the ground.
[Evan]: He's lying down knackered from trying to lift this fucking grate.
[Evan]: Henry has never even seen a gun, let alone fired one, because fucking hell, he hits everything in the room but the thing he's intending to hit.
[Evan]: This is a very long scene now for how little happens.
[Evan]: They have a bit of a face-off, then Dudit strolls in.
[Evan]: Hmm.
[Evan]: It's very sad, like his character, because he has leukemia somehow.
[Evan]: The alien has leukemia and he's like, he's not looking good.
[Evan]: You know, he's friendly and also dying.
[Evan]: He gets stabbed by the alien as he's just walking in and then transforms into like, you know, the good, like if there was a good and bad alien, he clearly is the good one.
[Evan]: The one stabbing him is the bad one.
[Sam]: He's got like blue or green eyes versus the red eyes of the baddie.
[Evan]: He's got like pink skin rather than grey skin like the other aliens.
[Evan]: Zero calorie.
[Evan]: And then stabs the other alien from behind after transforming into his alien self.
[Evan]: A sort of skin forms around both of them.
[Evan]: And then Dudit fucking explodes.
[Evan]: He self-destructs.
[Evan]: And that is only set up earlier on in the movie by four aliens crawling into a ship being bombed by Morgan Freeman that implodes in the same way.
[Evan]: But...
[Evan]: One does not link to the other.
[Evan]: One is like a spaceship, which I would imagine has a setting to self-destruct, just in case.
[Evan]: And then this just dude can.
[Sam]: There's also, Jonesy gets kind of, I mean, it's really weird and nothing actually makes sense.
[Sam]: But the alien appears in full form in front of Jonesy earlier in the film.
[Sam]: Then its head pops and it gets all red powder on him and he breathes it in.
[Sam]: Oh.
[Evan]: Oh, yeah.
[Sam]: But that's pretty fucking tenuous to call that an explanation.
[Sam]: I didn't think that.
[Sam]: That's just another confusing thing that also happened that looked a bit similar to this.
[Evan]: Again, it wasn't explained to me, so how am I supposed to know?
[Carl]: How many of these fucking films have ended with weird floaty red shit at the end?
[Evan]: Yeah, a lot of them.
[Evan]: Surprising amount.
[Sam]: Children of the Corn.
[Sam]: The fight between the two aliens was a bit like...
[Evan]: Very quickly.
[Sam]: You know, occasionally in Marvel films, there'll be a final fight, which all comes down to just throwing lights at each other.
[Sam]: And you're kind of watching it like...
[Sam]: don't really know who's winning because it's just lights and and then always it's one guy with like the powers and then just a villain with the same powers sorry to interrupt you yeah but it's the exact same except one of them's green one of them's red yeah and they're kind of people
[Sam]: pow pow pow off each other and you're watching it like was that a hit are you dead now no he seems fine so like the aliens have speared each other and then they pop and it's all red and you're kind of sitting there like is that a good outcome and we have to assume that it is because then it cuts to the credits and that's it
[Evan]: Yeah, it's also, it's really odd because the movie ends like that and that's confusing enough.
[Evan]: But then during the credits, there's like 20 seconds of like the guys hanging out in the cabin again for some reason.
[Carl]: It cuts back to minute 40 as if you're going to be like, hey, do you remember when you had hope for this film?
[Carl]: Do you remember before this film went to shit and you thought this might be good?
[Carl]: Do you want to watch that again before you go?
[Evan]: No, we've gone too far.
[Sam]: It feels petty to be picking on this at this point, but everything in this final, I don't know what to call it, final chapter of the film, I feel like everything gets resolved way too quickly.
[Sam]: Because all these issues pop up, like Morgan Freeman's there in an attack helicopter.
[Sam]: Never mind, he's dead now.
[Sam]: He's dead, yeah.
[Sam]: They go in and there's one of these worms with teeth.
[Sam]: Never mind, he shoots it straight away.
[Sam]: That's fine.
[Sam]: There's another worm.
[Sam]: Doesn't matter.
[Sam]: He stamps on it.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Sam]: The guy's an alien.
[Sam]: Duditz is here.
[Sam]: He calls him Mr.
[Sam]: Gay and kills him.
[Sam]: It's like fucking everything is solved within about five seconds of you finding out that it's happening.
[Evan]: Yeah, it does make you feel you could have done this, could have dodged this an hour earlier.
[Evan]: Yeah, it's a rough watch.
[Evan]: I am sorry.
[Evan]: That is the end of the movie, though.
[Evan]: Let's move quickly into bad reviews.
[Evan]: Let's see what other people thought about this before we have a chance to discuss this.
[Sam]: The bad reviews, weirdly, this was a weirdly mixed one in terms of reviews.
[Sam]: Like I think some people genuinely really like this.
[Sam]: It sits at about a 50% average.
[Sam]: I got three bad reviews.
[Sam]: So first one, two and a half stars.
[Sam]: This is pretty average.
[Sam]: This film got bang average reviews.
[Sam]: Sydney says, okay, so you know how I complain about movies by male writers or directors that obviously have no idea how women talk or interact with each other?
[Sam]: This script is like if a bunch of women had to guess how men talk to each other.
[Sam]: Which is, like, in the first 40 minutes of this, when they're all sat around at their cabin, they're talking in this, like, weird, generic way.
[Sam]: Like, they just keep saying fuck, and everything's fuckery and fuckaroo.
[Sam]: Yeah.
[Sam]: And you're like, no one actually talks like this.
[Sam]: And they're all just talking about, like...
[Sam]: Sex.
[Sam]: Erections constantly.
[Sam]: Like, the guy says, like, five times how he's always hard.
[Sam]: Yeah.
[Sam]: And you're like, who thinks that men talk like this to each other?
[Carl]: I think that's because when men aren't around, women talk like this and they think we're the same.
[Sam]: Talk about how constantly horny they are.
[Sam]: Yeah, that's definitely true.
[Sam]: The other reviews I just added because they're so weird.
[Sam]: Avery Daly, two stars, says, this movie was not very good and was very bad.
[Sam]: That's it.
[Evan]: That sums it up.
[Sam]: pretty bang on to be honest and actually quite a good review here nick angelo i got these off google reviews which is always a treasure trove of weird shit nick angelo five stars i recently went on a king movie binge and watched a ton of king movies i couldn't even name them all off the top i mean i went a month of quarantine watching steven king movies
[Sam]: I don't know how this movie slipped past me until just now.
[Sam]: I've seen almost everything.
[Sam]: I love them.
[Sam]: I read the Dark Tower comic books based on the movies.
[Sam]: The only book I finished from the master was Pet Sematary when I was 10.
[Sam]: I'm 38.
[Sam]: Lol.
[Sam]: I'm a fan of the work, but I'm not a fan of the work.
[Sam]: Why is that five stars?
[Sam]: I have no idea.
[Sam]: It was such a fucking OxyContin trip of a review.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: I also grabbed one.
[Evan]: Not that it's particularly funny, but I think it sums up a lot of the ways we've felt about all the Stephen King movies we've watched.
[Evan]: So it's a bit of a long one, here we go.
[Evan]: Given the slam dunk of making a movie that was better than the flaming turd of a book, the makers of this movie somehow slipped, burst the ball, and set the entire stadium on fire.
[Evan]: In the desperation to cram in as much crap as possible, the cuts between scenes were disturbingly abrupt.
[Evan]: there was an all-star cast that somehow was abysmal casting all round, somehow making Duditz an even more offensive character than in the book.
[Evan]: The one noteworthy achievement was making the ending of the movie even more Stephen King than the ending of the book.
[Evan]: Period.
[Evan]: King-ception.
[Evan]: Period.
[Sam]: Terrible ending.
[Evan]: A nice way to round off.
[Evan]: Well, this is my last selection of Stephen King films.
[Evan]: And yeah, I think up there for terrible endings.
[Evan]: I think maybe discussing the books of The Dark Tower, that was worse.
[Evan]: The ending of the film was meh, but the books themselves, awful.
[Evan]: But this.
[Sam]: This was something else.
[Evan]: Quickly sweep everything under the rug, like he said.
[Evan]: Here's everything we set up, and there it all goes.
[Sam]: This is, I think, not to preempt my opinion too much, but we all love Stephen King's way of writing when it's kind of weird and trippy and erratic in things that happen.
[Sam]: This goes too far.
[Sam]: He went past the bloody tissue stage and straight into whatever this stage is.
[Sam]: yeah whiter lips i imagine and it just it loses too much structure it loses too much i think but with that so ev you think this was good do you that is the name of the podcast um
[Evan]: Look, I weirdly... You think that was good, do you?
[Sam]: There we go.
[Evan]: I did enjoy this in a weird way.
[Evan]: So I watched this slightly later than the both of you, and I'd seen all of Carl's messages beforehand.
[Evan]: You said you were bored up until the 15-minute mark, Carl.
[Evan]: I found I was having a really good time up until then.
[Evan]: I was really interested in everything that was going on.
[Evan]: I had seen this once before, but I didn't remember the grand majority of it.
[Carl]: I said it was good, if a bit boring.
[Carl]: I didn't say I was bored.
[Evan]: Yeah, but nobody uses the word boring if it was good, if a bit boring.
[Carl]: I was waiting for them to have a psychic powers adventure, which hadn't happened yet and still hasn't happened yet.
[Evan]: Never will.
[Evan]: I was having fun.
[Evan]: The cast was really charismatic.
[Evan]: They were getting on.
[Evan]: I was enjoying that if the dialogue was a bit shite.
[Evan]: The twist I enjoy just the existence of.
[Evan]: It's not good, but I like what a fucking right turn it takes for no reason at all.
[Evan]: We did not need the alien stuff.
[Evan]: It wasn't set up.
[Evan]: We already had something going on, and I...
[Evan]: I find a kind of masochistic enjoyment in that, in watching movies like this, where it's like, I was enjoying it, but I actually really enjoy the psychotic break it must have taken to get from A to B. I enjoy any movie like that.
[Evan]: This is a bad example, and I did mention it at the end of the last episode, but Dusk Till Dawn is very much like that.
[Evan]: That is the epitome of that.
[Evan]: That's a good execution of that, but very much the same.
[Evan]: You start with one movie, all of a sudden you're in a completely different one.
[Evan]: The problem is, they didn't know where they were going after they took the turn.
[Evan]: The turn was the good part of the movie.
[Evan]: From here on out, everything is fucking wank.
[Evan]: Even if you've got Morgan Freeman in it.
[Evan]: I absolutely believe...
[Evan]: what I said about Stephen King having just watched Alien and thinking he could just do it better.
[Evan]: That is very much just...
[Evan]: The high point was Alien coming out of the bum, regardless of whether or not you like that, that was his grand idea.
[Evan]: That's all he had.
[Evan]: He just did a bunch of the stuff he knows beforehand, before then.
[Evan]: Psychic people in Maine, weird childhood stuff, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
[Evan]: Alien come out of bum, big idea.
[Evan]: And then rather than just ruining the ending, he ruined the entire second half of the second act and third act of the book and film.
[Evan]: Was it good?
[Evan]: Absolutely not.
[Evan]: Do I want people to watch it?
[Evan]: I don't think anyone would enjoy it.
[Evan]: Did I enjoy it?
[Carl]: Yeah.
[Evan]: Carl.
[Carl]: Did I enjoy it?
[Carl]: No.
[Carl]: Absolutely god-awful, mate.
[Carl]: I just...
[Carl]: I think I would have preferred a story about a bunch of kids who get super psychic powers and do a thing with them, for one.
[Carl]: But it never feels like it knows what it is, genre-wise.
[Carl]: Is it a horror story?
[Carl]: In the start, it feels like it might be heading there, but then it sort of touches on sci-fi, but then there's a bit too much comedy.
[Carl]: And then it's not a comedy anymore, but then at the end, he's shooting at the snake, and when he misses all of his shots, it jumps and just latches onto the end of his gun.
[Carl]: And he does some weird comedy-like head nod, and then just shoots the snake to death.
[Carl]: It's just odd.
[Carl]: And...
[Carl]: yeah it just it's got so much stuff going on that it never really establishes anything really like the memory warehouse i was willing to get on board with to some extent yeah when i thought it was going to be some sort of psychic jewel sort of thing because there's a there's a section of it where he sneaks back into his own brain as you do
[Carl]: and steals all the files on dudits and it's so that the alien can't see them and know about dudits but i thought there'd be stuff in there that was going to help him fight this alien because they said dudits must have been preparing us for this the whole time i thought he was going to search through his brain files and find some of the prep they've been given but no it's just never touched on again he's just got them in a room with him for the rest of it
[Evan]: We didn't have time for that in this two hour movie, Carl.
[Carl]: And you think you're going to get this story about a bunch of kids just taking place like it, just cutting in every now and again, but you get one big flashback and then a little flashback and then you're done.
[Carl]: You never see him again.
[Carl]: But yeah, shocker, shocker of a film, mate.
[Carl]: I enjoyed the twist.
[Carl]: I was fully on board, but nothing that happened after the twist felt worth the twist.
[Evan]: That was the peak, maybe.
[Carl]: Like I said, it's why they showed the 40-minute mark in the credits.
[Carl]: Remember when you had hope?
[Carl]: Sam?
[Carl]: Samuel.
[Sam]: This film was friendly.
[Sam]: Yeah, look, we could go on.
[Sam]: I think I could go on for hours about all this stupid shit.
[Sam]: People have said that maybe it would work better as a TV series.
[Sam]: Maybe they have the space to... Nobody allow this to be longer.
[Sam]: ...to elaborate on this, but I don't think there's enough there.
[Sam]: There's no substance behind it.
[Sam]: It's just...
[Sam]: kind of half-formed ideas thrown at a page and then thrown at a fucking script.
[Sam]: No, nothing came together.
[Sam]: I kind of enjoyed watching it, but I enjoyed watching it with kind of the promise that some things would be resolved.
[Sam]: It was a bit like Game of Thrones where all these things are being built up and then you get to the end and you're like, oh, I take it back.
[Sam]: I didn't enjoy that.
[Sam]: I've been saying all this time that I was enjoying that and I take it back.
[Sam]: I hated it the whole time because none of that stuff gets resolved.
[Sam]: Yeah, SSDD being the fucking crown on top of this.
[Evan]: Yeah, what was that?
[Sam]: Nothing of a film.
[Sam]: It means same shit, different day.
[Sam]: Oh, okay.
[Sam]: Which doesn't mean anything.
[Evan]: No.
[Sam]: It's got no relevance to the film.
[Evan]: At all.
[Sam]: No, bad film.
[Sam]: I accept your apology from an hour and twenty...
[Evan]: three-ish minutes ago hey accept this one i am i am sorry boys i truly believed even after last week with the lawnmower man i thought we might find a tiny little slice of uh of enjoyment in this i thought that twist would be enough i'd forgotten damn you evan you friendly boy that um
[Evan]: Actually, the second half fucking sucks.
[Evan]: So I am sorry.
[Evan]: I'm still glad I chose it because I forced you to watch it at least.
[Evan]: I'm not sure how many people have actually seen this fucking movie.
[Evan]: It was an experience.
[Evan]: Yeah.
[Evan]: But that wraps it up, boys.
[Evan]: So thank you so much for joining me.
[Evan]: Thank you all for listening.
[Evan]: Please do leave us a five-star review wherever you're listening if you can find...
[Evan]: find it in your heart, I guess, afterwards.
[Sam]: If you've made it this far, I'll give you a five-star review.
[Evan]: Follow us over on Twitter and Instagram at SoYouThinkPod, and fucking join us again next week when we will be watching Carrie, a much more well-known film.
[Evan]: How has it taken us how many fucking Stephen King episodes to get to an actually well-known movie?
[Evan]: It will be Carrie.
[Evan]: It is Carl's pick, and hopefully that will be fucking good.
[Evan]: Until then, boys, goodbye.
[Carl]: Goodbye.