The Portland Horror Podcast Massacre
Three Portland horror trivia hosts discuss horror movies new and old, as well as people and happenings within the horror community of Portland, Oregon.
The Portland Horror Podcast Massacre
Episode 007 - Interview with the Creators of "Nurture"
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Our hosts interview local Portland filmmakers Nick Snyder (writer/director) and Sam Snyder (producer), the creators of the dialog-free folk horror film Nurture, which won "Best Short" at the 2026 Portland Horror Film Festival! They discuss the film in detail as well as share thoughts on folk horror and recent viewings.
Written and hosted by Heather Alexander, Jeff Dean and Willy Greer.
Music composed by Willy Greer and performed by Portland band Hemogoblin.
Produced and edited by Botch the Crab.
Recorded entirely on location in Portland, Oregon.
Hello and welcome to the Portland Horror Podcast Massacre, a round table discussion on the topics of the horror genre from the perspective of three very different horror nerds. Welcome to episode seven. My name is Jeff Dean, and I'm joined tonight by my two co-hosts. Willie Greer.
SPEAKER_00Heather Alexander.
SPEAKER_01And we're coming from you from Portland, Oregon. We're doing something a little different tonight. Um usually we start off with movies that we've seen, but we're gonna uh save that for the end of the episode. Uh tonight we have two special guests. We are sitting down with Nick and Sam Snyder, the Portland filmmakers behind the short film Nurture, the winner of this year's best short film at the Portland Horror Film Festival. Welcome, guys. Hi. Hi.
SPEAKER_00Hi, nice to be here.
SPEAKER_01Our very first podcast guests.
SPEAKER_00We can't wait. Yeah. It's our honor. Absolutely. Um, so you guys, let's let's start off by for the listeners who haven't had the pleasure of seeing your film, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about it?
SPEAKER_05Well, the pitch at the moment is what if A24 produced a live-action Pixar short? That's kind of the joke. But it is a dialogue-free folk horror film set in the Willamette Valley about a uh miscarriage and a nature curse.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm. About a grieving couple who uh takes a little too much from nature.
SPEAKER_05Takes from nature. Uh there's themes of uh sacrifice and nature magic and grief and and love. But ultimately it, you know, it's it takes place in in the realm of the folk horror, which is in nature, it's away from the city, it's and it's entirely dialogue-free, so it's a visual storytelling only uh piece. But it has heart to it, and that was kind of our our biggest intention for this one.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Kind of blend all the gore with heartfelt little tidbits. Contrast, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What was the influence for making this film? Did you have certain films that inspired you or an idea, or what was it?
SPEAKER_06You you go for you wrote it. Uh I'm the writer-director.
SPEAKER_05Um this is Nick here.
SPEAKER_06And I'm the producer, Sam.
SPEAKER_05I mean, it came from a lot of different places. Uh this film is kind of the culmination of many years. Like, I work in visual effects and motion graphics, and I went to film school and I made a bunch of short films before, and this is my return to directing after many years kind of obsessively watching movies and talking about making another movie with my wife Sam. And the references the short answer is it came out of limitations. We had access to this farm. My friend Nolan, he he and his family live on this actual this farm in St. Paul, Oregon. And when we visited him for the first time there, when they moved there, um and we we learned that we could possibly film something there. My, you know, the cogs started turning of like, okay, this is interesting. Because it it was a sprawling landscape that just had not it's not just a farm, but it has a forest. These beautifully manicured paths in the forest, and lots of places for cars to park. And so it kind of came from like a production standpoint, at least initially. But, you know, I'm super inspired by what Jordan Peel and Ariaster and A24 have been doing the last 10 years and what where horror has come. And I love classic horror, I love Spielbergian horror. We're gonna talk about wholesome horror later perhaps, but it came from a place of inspired by both working within genre, an intention to work within this specific genre of folk horror and create a tale that could work dialogue-free, because that's another thing that I wanted to do the first time.
SPEAKER_06You really wanted to do no talking.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, this is something that you know you learn in school and you you try to carry with you, but you don't always put into practice. But dialogue-free is really hard.
SPEAKER_06And well, and I think part of that oh sorry, was also you said you wanted to branch out and make a movie that could like address uh people across the world, like as we pitch to festivals.
SPEAKER_05So having no dialogue kind of It's always a plus, but honestly, it's about the challenge. I think the challenge as like just an artist or a filmmaker of like making something without dialogue felt really attractive. And all of my film like favorite filmmakers do that sort of thing. And who who better in at least in the last like 20 years of visual storytelling is Pixar? So it's really inspired by the Pixar shorts. And in particular, the first 10 minutes of Up. So if you watch Nurture, you'll get a real sense that it feels like the first 10 minutes of Up, but kind of fucked up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I I do want to come back to that. Um, but you got um the actors Travis Balensky and Kaylee Rhodes for these um roles, and they were phenomenal. Um they portrayed emotion without uh without speaking, um, and they did it so beautifully, and I can imagine it's really easy to overact in a situation like that because you're trying to, you know, portray um not only emotion but just kind of um a conversation, right? Um between two people. Um so did you just happen upon these actors or did you was it a long process of finding them?
SPEAKER_06We we definitely put out a casting call. So we cast a wide net and um, you know, Nick and I had our selects and we coordinated with our DP because um there were a few that really stood out, but ultimately once we um got people, some of them were remote, but Travis and Kaylee were actually in person um and we held the casting call in our loft uh kind of community room in our community room.
SPEAKER_05Our building. Um yeah, we know we did a traditional casting call uh and it was a mix of in-person and remote or video.
SPEAKER_06We had a lot of great people, but I I think um just talking with them in person and then we had really like Travis because it's especially hit home for him because he has a kid, and so I think he really, really wanted that role and um connected to it, and then Kaylee too, she really liked uh the empowerment of Rose because you did a great job, Nick, in balancing the softness that a man can have and the strength of a woman and like balancing that dynamic, and then they got together, which is really cool.
SPEAKER_05Yep, yeah, we did a uh chemistry read um as well. So, like once we had callbacks and we decided who who these two people were gonna be, it was it was a mixture of like them responding to the material, but also because there's no dialogue, but I had to come up with like some stuff for them to read essentially. So it was it was the goodwill hunting uh monologue that Robin Williams gives uh for for the for the for Ren. For the characters that yeah. Well the characters are named Wren are Wren and Rose, which they don't say their names. You can kind of hear it at the very end. She sort of says Ren.
SPEAKER_00I was wondering if because it I it sounded like a word. It didn't sound just like a you know um a vocalization uh of grief or whatever in it, but I couldn't quite figure out what she was saying, so that makes more sense, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what was the uh script writing process like for doing a dialogue-free film? Was it did you storyboard or oh yeah, for sure. I mean I wrote it traditionally.
SPEAKER_06That's your bread and butter too, because you are an animator storyboarder illustrator.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's what I've been doing for the last like ten years is is more animation than live action. But um, so I brought some of that to it, but we wrote it traditionally first. And I just you beat it out in the same way that you would a regular story. It's just the prose, it's just the action, it's just what the characters are seeing and doing and interacting with. Uh but it's everything that every visual you see, you can describe it in words, so that's what I did first. And then I storyboarded it, and then we cut an animatic together with one of my collaborators, and then we did that again after we got access to the locations, and the actors actually drew the likeness a little bit. Um I'll eventually put the I think the full final animatic online because what's what's really interesting is how similar it is to the finished film. And that was the biggest uh one of the biggest things I've learned over the years is just you know, I've made a lot of mistakes over the years on on biting off more than I can chew, and I wanted to make sure, both with the story and the writing and the production, that we can achieve everything, that we can shoot everything.
SPEAKER_06And the storyboards were per so pertinent to the structure of the film, I think. It was essential.
SPEAKER_05And it was a way to see if the movie would work too. And because my biggest concern was this magical flower element and how much magic do we need, how much what kind of a performance do you need as far as like to sell all of this? And um the biggest thing that I learned, and actually what I took from the first ten minutes of Up were repeated visuals I found to be very important. Uh and in the film, every single location is visited twice. Pretty for the most part, some are more than twice, but the hallway, the the the bedroom, the the preparing of the tea, the the very wide shot on the on the hilltop, uh the various t uh sc scenes in the forest.
SPEAKER_06And the magic, like how he touches the flower and you know, little special effects and making sure that lands with the audience.
SPEAKER_05For sure. And then also how how much music to include, and we like we brought this the the music and sound effects. We brought a lot of sound effects into the animatic from that from the early stages as well, but we then decided, and a good friend of mine did the score, how much music to include too, and brought him in earlier as well. But yeah, storyboards that was the f probably the final draft.
SPEAKER_02Is he a cello player or was that all digital?
SPEAKER_05It was it was a he did a kind of a mix. Okay. It's like a hybrid, but he's got he's got some a lot of keyboards, he's got some guitars.
SPEAKER_02The main melody lines in the romantic bits sound very organic for for a cello.
SPEAKER_05They they I think they were they were used. There's some sample packs. Yeah, we didn't use a like a an orchestra or anything like that for this one. I wanted to use a choir. I eventually would we would love to work with a choir one day first, but we felt like it was just it was good enough as it was.
SPEAKER_06I think for the sake of time, because we spent like almost what almost a year, a little less than a year in post-production, just more than it was like a year and a half.
SPEAKER_05Year and a half, yeah, you know, nights and weekends, and we were like, oh no, we gotta move forward. There's a lot, it's it's 13 minutes and 20 seconds long, but it there's a lot of scenes. So just it took a long time to to color and to finish some of the effects and stuff like that. But but yeah, it's very detailed, and we put a lot of work into the pre-production.
SPEAKER_00I think that's it really paid off. So, like the title cards that kind of pop up. Did you do the illustrations on those or was that because that that really just was such a beautiful um I don't know, it felt very polished, you know, and it felt very like you were watching and and I say this with respect be like I like short films, but this felt like a a real film that you know was longer than just 13 minutes. Um there was so much in there visually, emotionally, um, store the storytelling-wise, and and the title cards just kind of like really, I don't know, just sold it. And it was just from from the beginning to literally the the um credits, you know, it was just very polished, very like special.
SPEAKER_06We really appreciate that because we put in those title cards breaking out the chapters at the last minute because we were like Nink and I both were like, okay, we gotta make sure the sense of time and place is there. How do we do this? And we loved his little glyphs that he um did for the poster. Yeah, that's from the poster. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Or one of the post I did two, I designed both the posters, and one of them is a screen print poster.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And those little glyphs are from like a triptych or what's the what's the word? Like a tapestry style um nine-panel thing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so that means a lot because we we do see a potential feature for this and are working on a feature script for it as well. So knowing that it felt full and whole like that um mean means a lot because in our heads we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_05For sure. And it means a lot you say that too, as far as it it's sort of adding that final polish, because that's exactly why we did it in the end. And some of the feedback we got, namely from some of our elder uh relatives, yeah. About the passage of time. And it's just sort of their we didn't get that at all from anyone else, like being it being confused, like after the um the the baby room scene that leads to the kissing down the hallway into the bedroom, and then the cut to nature once again, and then uh Wren walks in the door again. They didn't really quite grasp that a lot of time has had passed, or any sort of significant amount of time had passed. So that's why we did it in the end. And that's also like that's a staple of Folk Hore too, of that sort of look. Like watching this is not a Folk Horror film, but the Testament of Anne Lee we were very impressed with that earlier this year, or was that last year, I forget, but their titles are awesome.
SPEAKER_06Such a good movie. What is that movie?
SPEAKER_05The Testament of Anne Lee.
SPEAKER_06I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Uh it's it's not a horror film, but it's kind of it kind of dances in that territory. I think it's A24.
SPEAKER_06It has that cultish vibe with yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's about a fanatical religious For the Shaker movement. The Shaker movement that come to America try to establish uh a presence in New England. Or just title cards. Title cards, yeah. They use of like the use of supers. Yeah, it's common and it it's that was just sort of a choice of the last right. Yeah, it felt right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you had talked about the um well you you implied about the hot air balloons, um, especially when you're talking about up and it just feels like it's intentional. Um did you so the hot air balloons are on the the baby's door and was it the the the mobile the mobile as well, yeah. And then of course you have that beautiful shot in the sky. Like I was that digital or nope.
SPEAKER_05We looked out. We looked out really yeah, we looked out and you and the DP Evan went off. Evan had that mobile that we used above the cradle or the above the the crib, and then we purchased a the thing for the door, the little the decoration for the baby room door to signify baby room, and that became kind of the theme. And then we were out shooting at dawn, shooting nature shots of Mount Hood in particular. We wanted to get some of these sort of passing of time shots, and they just they're just so happened to be hot air balloons.
SPEAKER_06I remember you like ran up to people like, oh my gosh, there's hot air balloons, we gotta go. That was shoot.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that was not a comp shot.
SPEAKER_00That's kind of a blessing right there, you know, just like the serendipity of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The filmmaking gods were with you. Yes.
SPEAKER_06Yes, and it's funny because a couple of people thought that it was digital. Um you're very good at comping, Nick, because that was a real shot, but then Mount Hood was a real shot, but you comped it into that scene. Um and so blended.
SPEAKER_05Or where they you know, that the sort of very wide shot where they run across the hilltop. You can see Mount Hood there too, where that one's comped.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_05But the other Mount Hood shot, the two other Mount Hood shots are not comp.
SPEAKER_00That was real, yeah. So some of it we just lucked out. What about the one of my one of my favorite moments is when he goes and he finds the clearing for the first time and he's looking around and he looks up and the flock of crows leave the the treetops. Was that real as well?
SPEAKER_05That's VFX.
SPEAKER_00That's effects. Yeah. Because I was like, holy shit, that's like it's so Pacific Northwest, you know, like it just like these little elements that you know, yeah, it's nature and it happens everywhere, but it feels so Pacific Northwest because, you know, the obviously the mountains and the the hot air balloons, um, and then the crows, and I was like, man, this is really just I don't know, it's magical, really. That's it.
SPEAKER_06Makes us so happy because post-production took forever.
SPEAKER_01Is there any significance in the color of red for the flower?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well, definitely um alluding to miscarriage without um trying to I mean for me personally, from a producer standpoint, like it's a very obviously it's a very sensitive subject matter, but without trying to like be too disturbing, because it because it is a really sad experience. Um Nick and I ourselves, like we're trying to have a kid, and we know a lot of friends and family who struggle with that. And I think I mean from my opinion, having the red flower not just wasn't just blood, it was very like metaphorical.
SPEAKER_01Vitality and life, um life and death and passion. Yeah. I thought um, because what I'm reminded of was like don't look now. The color red is very significant in that. And it's dealing not with miscarriage but with the death of a child. So I just kind of that's what I thought of that one. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean that's one of the best grief movies of all time. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh but yeah, I I'd say color was definitely taken into account the whole way through. We did that's another sort of thing we did in pre-production, was a color story. Talking of Pixar again. Yeah. They're very known to do that. And we we wanted to have a color progression for both the color, not just the color grading, but but where we could shoot too, if possible, and using the color red wherever possible. We lucked out with that room, the bedroom, having those red walls. That was there in this Airbnb that we rented to shoot at. Wow. Where Ren he stands up and then we're gonna get a flower there.
SPEAKER_00He's like it was already set.
SPEAKER_05That's exactly why we we yeah, it was amazing.
SPEAKER_00So the outside of the house was your friend's farm that they just bought, but the interior shots were uh something that you rented? Yep.
SPEAKER_05No, the the outside of the house was the same as the inside of the house. It's the shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all the forest stuff and the chickens and the hilltop, all this all this the major scenes outside are on my friend's farm. I see.
SPEAKER_06But we rented a lot the main final scene too, in the woods, yeah. Yeah.
unknownOkay, I understand.
SPEAKER_06But yeah, there were some elements that were outside, like under that special like giant tree with the picnic that was at the Airbnb. Um when she's getting better, and they fixed the fence again and the house, yeah, it was all rented, and we we did do a lot of research into Airbnbs, and um we just kind of fell in love with uh Barb Barbara's house, her name's Barbara, and um I think she was also really excited because her husband had passed away, and it seemed like he would have really enjoyed being part of that too, because we had Barbara like on set just watching some of the in-action moment and she did the clapper board then.
SPEAKER_05And it was just the perfect look. It's classical, it's like a hundred-year-old house that they'd fairly recently remodeled to look like it used to look. So it was pristine.
SPEAKER_06But it kept that charm, you know, that old-fashioned charm.
SPEAKER_05Creaky old boards and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Was the plan um in the movie to always make the flower into a tea? Um, was that all was that always written?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that always felt like that was the administering that in that way was the most visual because there was a process of preparing it. Um pretty much, right?
SPEAKER_06I don't think there was it we were definitely like, how can she ingest this? Like so tea seemed like the right answer, but it also affected which flower we chose because for any like you know, flower nerds out there, because I love tea, and we're like, okay, we need a flower that's actually not poisonous, because some people might realize like we might try this. Yeah, definitely. Different kind of horror story. But yeah, yeah. So we chose the Gerbera flower because
SPEAKER_05um mostly for VFX purposes because you said you know the hypnotic center, the black center, and not having like too many prickly leaves and stems and the stem is just perfectly straight. It's easy to sort of mount and like put into the ground. You can we put um these skewers on the bottom and because they're the ground was like pretty firm and dry in that forest clearing so we had to we had to use like a stick to help sit set them in the ground. So they're all real flowers except for the last shot though there there are some there are a lot of digital extensions in that shot but in all of the other scenes they're all real.
SPEAKER_06Yeah we we went to several Trader Joe's in the neighborhood because flowers were out of season um so even though we were working with a couple of local flower shops and florists they just couldn't guarantee the color which is of course super important um and particular particularly black center versus yellow center to save on the VFX work. And um Trader Jozeville places every morning would get an import of Gerberas assorted but they uh were very nice after seeing us a few times come every morning at 8 a.mys and we told them we're making a film and of course they were super supportive and like oh well just every morning like we'll just pull them out for you. So about a month leading up to the shooting we kept having to go back and grab flowers which is really hard to keep flowers alive for that long but we just didn't know like how many like sometimes it was two stems sometimes ten and um so yeah we just like baby like baby trim the stem like every couple of days.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah right leading up to the shoot yeah yeah some of them died but we had hundreds of flowers in our home yeah almost the receipts it was like almost five hundred flowers probably overall probably then we had some fake ones too to in the mix like the scene with the wheelbarrow it was all fake underneath and then all just real on the very top yeah yeah when he places um when the husband places the the first flower um in the water glass next to her bed to kind of you know cheer her up um and he knocks into the the nightstand and the flower turns and then um and it's that moment where he decides that he's gonna make her a tea out of this and I thought it was you know the first time I watched it I was like that's a weird reaction to like I knocked into the flower and now I have this idea that I'm gonna make it into a tea. But I loved the um you know the the what is it the mortar and pestle you know the the grinding of it and the the water shot was really beautiful um and just kind of like the the sound of it all you know because like every because there's no dialogue all of the sounds are so amplified and so present you know it's it's not just what he's doing it's like what the film is doing in that moment and so you're very there for it. So I just really love that process and then when he goes crazy with all of the flowers and you just have all of these like stems and petals and everything is just like in the cabinets and it's it's so evocative of someone who is almost doing a desperate act um is almost kind of crossing the threshold of what is normal and what is abnormal and and it's in that moment you're like oh he's probably going a little too far isn't he speaking to there's there is a question I'm I I'm I'm desperate to ask but I it's a spoiler so maybe I should wait until after we could do a spoiler segment at the end I guess yeah I was gonna say like I loved this when you mentioned the wheel wheelbarrow scene because like one of my favorite kind of tropes in horror is like the EC comics Twilight Zone where you realize oh humans they're gonna get greedy right they get something magical but that's not enough.
SPEAKER_06That was my question basically would they have been okay if he hadn't yeah cut them all in one swoop would they have been able to sustain things a little longer you think I th I I so my thought process with that, because we did leave some of it open to interpretation I was like if he doesn't do this then Rose is gonna have another miscarriage that was what I thought from it was like it's a temp it's like putting a band-aid over a bleeding wound, you know it's just not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_05Um what did you think as director for sure I mean this is all very cool to hear because this was the most challenging aspect of the short was the magic and how much to take and how much to show and how much to to to show to convey that he's like being greedy and then he he has to pay a consequence for for all of these things. So my intention all along was to show as little as possible what can we get away with showing that will convey all of this. And that's where the animatic really came into play was like just enough of these visuals, these repeated visuals to make it feel like emotionally like he had gone too far. And the intention was always taking a lot was what that's where the line was essentially. If you take one he probably would be alright but if he just takes a lot and he hoards it or just one a day maybe and you show hoarding but yeah that's where that's where it gets tricky with stuff like this. Like if for the feature version we're we we would we're going to have to establish a stricter rule structure I think for that and possibly have the stakes even higher and it go on longer he possibly even sells them or something.
SPEAKER_06But but like one a day is a group is a good call out because like naturally nature would replenish itself and he does like one of my favorite moments in the film is uh Nick worked with Travis to make it a little more sinister and when you when you directed him to get that smirk with the wheelbarrow like that little little grin you're like oh he knows what he's doing you know like yeah that I mean to sort of I to actually answer a question from earlier about the performances of how to get those kind of performances without dialogue that was that's a good example.
SPEAKER_05It's moments like that where you have to really focus on reacting to what you're seeing and to s to make sure that the inner life of the actor is coming across with their expressions alone. So it's a lot of but it's a lot of looking at tape on the camera. You know it's a lot of like kind of green screen ty style acting which you know can be a little bit challenging for actors but you so working with the actors to understand the story and have them having seen the animatic too I think really helped.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um because it's a lot it's a lot of face but but is I mean to answer then the question about the flowers I think it's he took one flower there was one flower in the forest in the beginning and then he comes back there's a ton of flowers he takes all those flowers. So that to me when we arrived at that it felt that felt right like he takes all of them each time um that way you can kind of communicate all of this stuff quicker and the passage of time is quicker. Just like you don't see him slashing any of the flowers you just cut right to the wheelbarrow full of flowers. We were constantly doing things like that of just sort of compressing time.
SPEAKER_00Audience assumption cuts yeah yeah and for context for our listeners um the uh the the reason why he goes and you know decides to cut all these flowers is because when he made the first flower into a tea his wife who was suffering from depression from this miscarriage ha you know it had appeared that she had been in bed for a long time and sleeping and very um depressed and so he gives her this tea and when she sits up in bed to drink it the first time you see this like grimace on her face of like I don't want to be awake I don't want this tea but like you know the the steps that you go through when you're not feeling well to like I'm gonna make an effort and so she drinks she sips the tea and you can see her face uh shift to like oh what what what is that you know and she has this like little hopeful like look on her face when she when she really understands that you know what this not understands what the tea is but she you know is ingesting it she might feel something she might taste something um but something clearly shifts on her face um and then you know you see her get better essentially um and I will admit my first association with those flowers was like opium poppies but that probably just says something about me so she's feeling better and you know he is essentially wanting to keep that going and so he you know goes and gets all of these flowers which is why he goes and takes all of them to kind of keep her happy and healthy and like on the road to recovery for our listeners.
SPEAKER_05You nailed it yep yeah totally and the cut on his arm that's yeah the cut on his arm for it heals his arm first.
SPEAKER_00Oh right oh at the very but she doesn't know that she he yeah he keeps that from her yeah yeah the magic um so when he uh sees the flower it kind of like little stuff comes out of it and like turns his eyes red. You know and then he um yeah so that was like a little part of the magic the healing of his of his cut and then you know the kind of the healing of her um was was the the magic that you were talking about like you know doing too much of or too little of I think it was the perfect balance um for me personally.
SPEAKER_02And I love how uh some of those kind of like symbolic stand-ins can still be every bit as visceral. Like I don't know if you guys have have uh checked out any movies by like Alejandro Hodorowski but uh there's a scene in Holy Mountain where um like a student group is getting massacred by a police squad and it's all done like with complete artifice so like the cops are like disembelling people and they're pulling like flowers and fruits and vegetables and birds out of the victims and it still just feels like you're watching gore. It's kind of amazing.
SPEAKER_00Wait why are they pulling all that stuff out of the victims? Because art movie all right on my list. That's how I think I think I've tried to show you once it's it's out there she can handle over the night I that makes there's also a little bit of animal stuff in there which is not which is not fun but but you gotta you gotta take the the bad ugly good bad ugly all of it yeah yeah I loved the um in the beginning of the movie it kind of set the right tone which I thought was a really um because it is more of a subtle horror movie when he um is cut is chopping wood um it's the perfect opener to set a a tone of dread because I immediately felt dread you know just the swinging of the axe that editing and the foley on that yeah exactly like you know the the sound that of that axe hitting wood and then the chickens just like clucking and being very chaotic and it just kind of set the tone for dread and I was like fuck what am I what is happen what's gonna happen here like I do not feel safe like automatically so happy to hear that too because he got like burned by the electric fence a couple times trying to always have like a electric fence yeah but you really wanted that chicken shot.
SPEAKER_05Yeah the chickens were in from the very the very first draft because those chickens are real and they're there on that farm.
SPEAKER_06Yeah it was great I I loved that opening scene because it just really set that that mood yeah thank you that was a huge one is how to build that momentum because I remember you're like you were very specific with your storyboards.
SPEAKER_05You're like I want chopping the I want to build build this tension and and like kind of plant those seeds of the farm and the chicken coop and fixing the fence where kind of too generic of like farm stuff. You can get away with a little bit more generic in a short but I wanted to make sure that there was some kind of specificity to the actions he was doing. Like when he's fixing the fence he's splicing the fence he's actually doing a real thing that some farmers will do.
SPEAKER_06You know um but that's great to hear thank you so what's the festival experience been like I think humbling it's been birds. Well I mean you won so we're well it can it's humbling until it's not it's well there's so there are so many you know rejections and then you finally get your first acceptance and and then to win the first and then yeah this was our first festival that we got into.
SPEAKER_05Oh okay and and really starting it's really the start of the run too because the film wasn't fully finished when we were submitting to the other ones. Yeah we finished like early spring end of winter but it it was incredible and it was we love Brian and Gwen and the Portland Horror Film Festival it it highly recommended.
SPEAKER_06The talent level it was just talent level was super high everyone was super nice it felt like coming home and it was at our home theater you know at the end I always tease we love horror and metal fans because they're just they're the nicest nicest yeah I feel like because they they can let it all out.
SPEAKER_05They have a they have a an avenue in which they can just express themselves. But it it was it was such a joy to see this on the big screen with everybody and then to to for people to say that they felt something that was the biggest like big validation compliment. Because that was our aim and you know that's that's what I love most about just this medium of filmmaking of film is like it's an empathy machine.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yes. And I think truly like I think we made some lifelong friends at the festival and um I think just the gratitude and the compliments we got was just like um like you said the fact that people could see the heart behind it and like know like we like the gore we like the blood but like really wanted to cultivate that kind of family dynamic and tension and um and so much support you know one of our now friends uh you know when we met them but he called it poetry and we were just blown away because this guy's so talented and was in the festival you know and um I think that just that made that actually made me cry. It was it was a lot of emotion for sure.
SPEAKER_05And for me after so many years of like like kind of you know not doing this. I and getting back into it and and then sort of being recognized it it felt very valid.
SPEAKER_06You're modest he's been pounding the pavement you know to do it again but it takes like when you're just trying to ground yourself like life wise to to spend so much money and effort making a film I mean it just for sure takes years and it takes years and it it took it took you know getting over some anxiety and like a a lot of self-doubt and and to to do this just meant the world.
SPEAKER_05To and to feel validated and like motivated and motivated for more and we're very excited for the run the festival run to come it's gonna be a couple of years now probably yeah so that's the future basically to keep yeah to keep that's the idea. Okay. Yeah and we got into the Portland Film Festival as well. Yeah that's amazing this fall which we got that to look forward to and we're waiting to hear back from like 12 others.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah things I got some advisement from one of my old film school uh festival advisors and he recommended a whole bunch more to recommend to or to to submit to and we got a bunch of recommendations. Yeah this could be going on for a couple years but we we are already writing uh uh the next short which we're hoping to film next spring if I mean maybe too ambitious but that's exciting like just we're like okay if if we can make it out if just a handful of people like it let's keep doing it let's keep yeah and approach it in the same way as this one working within genre because I love we love genre we love horror but we love genre too we love sci-fi um we love monster movies but I love the confines of genre of working within like a playbook and then you can sort of you know you you sort of carry on the the tradition of filmmaking within this playbook but then your style emerges out of that I just I find that very freeing. I find those kind of limitations very freeing.
SPEAKER_02Constraint is the mother of creativity.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely and earlier in my career or in school I always felt like I had to reinvent the wheel or something like that but like to anyone listening out there that's in school that wants to do this like like carry the torch of tradition. Really study it and really do it because your style's gonna come out of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah no AI Nick threw a a title card on there no AI yeah that's true I I was wondering that um when I was watching the movie because so many elements they didn't it didn't look like AI but so many elements were just like wow that if that was real that was serendipity like the um the airb the hot air balloons and things like that. So when I saw that I was like holy shit that that is impressive so you know yeah yeah we're pretty firmly against AI I feel like fighting the good thing I hope it I hope it goes away forever.
SPEAKER_05I don't think it will but hopefully it reduces in in its sort of cultural significance for sure at least in filmmaking.
SPEAKER_06Well I think some of the people we look up to too it's like if I don't know from for me it's like because I also like to write on on my own time and and obviously we work together but Nick and I we love like all those hours like going to shout out to horsebrass like we go all the time to bra brainstorm at the pub.
SPEAKER_00My husband and I also go all the time to horsebrass. It's good vibes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah it's we were literally just there yesterday so it's so welcoming and then yeah and um we're just constantly like if you don't want to take the hours to to write and edit and you know cry over like the next revision and and then also meet people and like we we met so many amazing talented crew and at the festival and it and now like there's talks with other festival filmmakers of like oh how can we scratch each other's backs and you know there's a whole you know collaboration behind not using AI. It's like if you if you don't crave that it's like why are you doing this? Like that's the whole heart of the story is to get in there.
SPEAKER_05I think human human effort is what we respond to in art. It's it's that sort of level of craft and expertise and passion and blood and sweat and tears that they put into these things. And you really lose that when things are easy they're not gonna be they're not gonna feel as special even if they're hitting all the marks it's like a paint by numbers. It's gonna feel vacant.
SPEAKER_02I love uh cane Kane Parsons uh has been very very very vocal about that we're big fans of backrooms said uh you know art is how I process life yeah and if I detect generative AI in somebody else's art I immediately just check out yep I feel the same way I think it's gonna devalue are you kidding me like we also love what was I doing when I was twenty I know don't get me stuck I'm significantly older than him uh I I love working I love making this stuff like the title you mentioned the titles the titles were made from real flowers too yeah wow we shot those on a blue screen from above uh the buds and then the blooming flowers potted garberas in like brunt bunches and then singles all lit from the same side and then I did composite those pieces together over a plate of of soil but that's those all those are all real flowers.
SPEAKER_00Wow very cool it was fun to like get outside though we we worked with our DP and we just like rolled up our sleeves and got outside and in the dirt touched some grass you know yep yep Sam have you um is this your the f first film that you've been a producer on or do you have other producing um credits?
SPEAKER_06Yeah thank you um first film I've produced definitely um because I I didn't come from a filmmaking background like Nick did but I am a producer in the motion design world and um I've I've done uh everything from 2D and 3D animation and I I've worked with so many incredible studios and um I've been doing you know producing uh on-site commercials as well and um kind of just more on that side of things so to kind of pivot finally into the filmmaking component was so rewarding and I absolutely loved every minute of it. So um that's why we're already working on like film number two because uh you know my producer brain is like Alright, let's keep the momentum going. But I I'm I'm hooked. I'm like, I if I could do it full time, I would. And I think that's you know, the goal is for us to just keep making more and more films, as many as possible, God willing, in our lifetime.
SPEAKER_02So your first instinct in response to uh how this one is doing so far and like getting jazzed about to pick another one. Are you thinking like, okay, next one may go bigger or next one may go smaller? Like what's more exciting?
SPEAKER_06I'm looking at the numbers. Um I've worked uh in my professional career, I mean, I've worked with projects that are $5,000 to $500,000, like um, you know, small like you know, smaller businesses to clients like ESPN and Google and Netflix. So um being able to kind of pivot in that way and apply the same dynamic to professional uh creative filmmaking is really rewarding. So yeah, so right now my brain is already like we're already scouting our next location, and I have handwritten notes going to like drop into people's mailboxes that we, you know, in case we want to use their property. And um I did I learned a lot about licensing and um made sure to have all the you know insurance policies in case you know someone gets injured on the farm, um, you know, because we actually used a real machete. Um you know, so things like my brain is just kind of spinning it in the best way possible. But um I I'm so happy and proud of Nick and um you know just like love of my life, you know, if we could keep doing this together, that would be the most rewarding thing possible.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, high tide raises all boats too. Like we love making films in Portland, we love working with Portland filmmakers and artists and craftsmen and vendors and just felt such support here.
SPEAKER_06So sorry, so much support, but also um your studio that Nick's has his own studio and all the funds basically from um his studio, Snaggletooth Creative, it it just pours back into our films. So trying to set that aside and manage it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's kind of a one for one for them, one for us model at the moment until maybe we can find a way to scale it and fundraise. Maybe the next project we don't have to pay for entirely ourselves. But to answer your question, next project, we kind of want to approach it like this. In using the same kind of limitations approach. Scale, you know, a little bit bigger here and there, learn from some of the things that we could have done a little bit better um from the last project. But you know, understand what things cost. And it's after all these years of s of like obsessing over filmmaking, obsessing over short story like creation too, is this like I see it as like a puzzle, you know, uh as like this sort of I I started with the ending with nurture and kind of worked backwards, but like a really good short to me feels a little bit like a puzzle, a puzzle and a dream. I mean, I guess there there someone has a quote or whatever. Film is either like a dream or it's a documentary or it's a I'm misquoting it, I'm kind of rambling at the moment.
SPEAKER_06No, I get it. But we're feeling good. We're feeling good about it. We we were very fortunate. Like, shout out to Pro Photo Supply, they gave us a huge discount on all the camera equipment. Um, so keeping that local energy too, or you know, really pushing the indie forefront, super important. Um, we did have incredible crew that volunteered their time, and others like um, you know, I think our um makeup effects artist Chris Walker, I mean, absolutely incredible job, and we're already coordinating with him on the next one to to get back into you know planning those effects months ahead of time and uh Yeah, we want to pay local keep it happy everyone we can essentially.
SPEAKER_05But it's indie film, so sometimes you gotta scratch backs here and there, and uh but yeah, the goal would be to to keep making stuff.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, you know. So in our first conversation, um, which happened at Powell's where I work uh I got this text from a friend of mine who works in the coffee shop, and he said, Um, there's somebody here that I think you really should meet. They just won the short, uh the best short at the Portland Horror Film Festival. And I was rushing to work late as always, and I was like, Cool, cool, you know, whatever, like give me their contact info. So I got there and he had already left, and somebody else had come up to me and said, Oh, you know, this connection, whatever. And I'm just doing my work, and then I get a page at the front of the store, and I was like, Okay, they came back. Um so it was really fun to have you guys just like pop in and um talk about because you know, part of the thing with um the podcast and and most um more relevant um trivia is um you know, we're we're trying to build a community here in Portland. And and you know, it's the community has it's not like we're building it, the community exists, you know, we're just trying to um bring it all together, you know, bring this little um community over here with this one and that one and you know, and kind of like have the tendrils out and make it bigger and and better and you know, connect people with each other that um you know are having creative endeavors or or even just kinships and all of that. So um it's really important for us to um continue that work with um building the horror community here in Portland. And so um I was really happy that you guys reached out and came over. Um and you know, because I was at work, I wasn't able to talk that long, but we we had started talking about folk horror and wholesome horror, um, which I could have just, you know, sat there and talked all all day about. Um and you had mentioned that nurture felt like um a wholesome horror movie. Um you know, I want you to talk a little bit more about that because I looked up the definition for wholesome horror and while or what the internet thinks the the definition is, you know, we all make our own definitions. Um, but um it's essentially, you know, um horror that it focuses on atmosphere and and dread without a lot of uh scary moments, without a lot of gore, um without a lot of high stakes, you know, um or at least the high stakes uh don't really result in catastrophe. So the the important thing though that I took away from is that wholesome horror generally has a happy ending, and nurture does not have a happy ending. So I'm wondering how you marry the two ideas of having a horror movie that you know has atmosphere and dread but isn't very scary, but it ultimately ends with even more grief and more devastation. Um it doesn't for me it didn't really it hit the wholesome horror, you know. I I felt like it was more kind of folk horror in a way without because there is that, you know, magic there, um which feels you know, it's a nature magic, so it who knows how old it is. Um but where do you sit on that?
SPEAKER_06Definitely, um well I'll definitely defer defer to Nick too. Uh we also I think are honestly trying to define that because we've had such um mixed feedback from like how touching this was for people and how heartfelt and they really, you know, connected with the piece. Um and there's glimmers of hope, but obviously it does end in tragedy. And I think for us we we were considering it was like, oh, this is kind of like a heartfelt horror when we talk about the first ten minutes of up and um kind of like you know, obviously in in up spoil spoiler, Ellie dies, and you know, it's really, really tragic. Um but yeah, I think there was elements more of like us trying to hit a person's heart strings and and focus on contrast, yeah. So I I do agree actually. I don't think it really slots into wholesome horror the way we initially thought, because we we also researched more about that with the mixed feedback that we got and received. And definitely it's definitely folk horror for sure.
SPEAKER_05Um Yeah, we've been debating this all week.
SPEAKER_06And it's because it's like what lane do we It definitely ends in tragedy.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, it wholesome horror is not I wouldn't def I would not categorize it as wholesome horror necessarily. Maybe horror with heart. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But I I don't know.
SPEAKER_05I guess it's sort of an instinctual thing. I always wanted contrast in the story. I wanted a little bit of sweetness and the horror. So the structure, the construction of the story is definitely a horror film. It's a definitely it's a tragedy. Um but we want that heart, we want that emotion, we want that love to contrast with the horrors of the film. That was and some of my favorite films have that sort of thing. And there are some that I think are in that sort of wholesome category, but it's really hard to define. And I think my my favorite wholesome horror film is Poltergeist. And I think it's because the family survives. There is horrors that they're dealt with, they're tested with, but they all make it out alive essentially in the end. But it dips into really horrific visuals, really cool creatures, a very scary notion that you can get sucked into the TV, that so many kids were just like nightmares for years with Carol Ann and the TV. Just the image of her hands on the TV like that. But you're totally right. But there's so few like that.
SPEAKER_06Wholesome.
SPEAKER_02I made a connection like that's there's a similar quality in forget what year it was from, but that movie porno. Oh yeah. Um someone does get their junk ripped off, but he he's he's apparently fine, and all of our lead characters survive at the end. It's like, wait, nobody died in this?
SPEAKER_01It's weird. The definition of what wholesome horror is, it's really hard to define it. Like for me, I think it's something that's kind of fun and doesn't have anything too offensive in it. So it's usually like the films of Tim Burton, like Beetlejuice, um, Monster Squad.
SPEAKER_00Sleepy Hollow.
SPEAKER_01Sleepy Hollow and The Lost Boys.
SPEAKER_00Like films that uh uh you can show your 12-year-old kid or something.
SPEAKER_06But like I had a friend tell me, oh, maybe you guys are leaning into horror mance, like horror romance. I was like, yeah, but it's not really romance either. Not really. Horror romance?
SPEAKER_02Not my horror romance.
SPEAKER_00Horror romance. Like romance and fantasy is romantic, and so horror mance is horror and romance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06But I was like, yeah, no, it's in the we really like it's definitely folk tale, but you're a thousand percent right. Like, we agreed, like this whole week we're like, it's not that wholesome, but it there's a soft spot that's there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like and kind of um perhaps well, no, it was around before that, obviously, but like maybe it ramped up like post-9-11. There was a very cynical nihilist vibe going through a lot of horror for a while. That for me got old pretty quick. Yeah. Torture porn era. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just think it's good writing, you know. I mean, I I honestly think it's just good storytelling to have to have your audience connect with the characters, and the characters connect with each other, you know, and then whatever stakes there are feel higher because you are there feeling it with them and you're rooting for them, and they're you can see that they love each other and that they're going through something, and you just want what's best for them. And then when shit goes south, it sucks. And you know, it's at like I okay, so I'm not a weirdo. I'm not a weirdo. Of course not, of course not. But I've seen this movie like 14 times now because my husband just watched it last night or yesterday for the first time, so I like watched it with him. That is pretty weird, actually. It's kind of weird. Um well, I I watch it so much because I like to analyze movies and I like to have thoughtful discussion on movies, and you know, um, I have a really shitty, you know, uh midlife brain right now that has a lot of uh lost thoughts and uh rambling moments. Um so I need to kind of really, you know, soak that stuff in to focus my my thoughts on it. So I watched it a lot to analyze it and and kind of really, you know, get in there. What was I I was there was a oh why I'm talking about this is because I've cried like five times during this movie. Like at the end when she is, you know, when she finds him, I just like I feel so I feel for her, you know, because she's gone through this the the in this the initial loss that she went through and she was going through a deep grief and depression, and then she's feeling hopeful again and joy, and you can tell that they love each other, and he loves her, he's obviously willing to do anything for her, and then and then what happens happens, and I there's a tear every single fucking time that I've seen that dumb movie. Not dumb, god damn it.
SPEAKER_06I'm just yes, anyways, viewers can't see, but I I'm getting choked up because it life it is hard, and I I think that was really important. Um, you know, for us is to like just be honest with life because um, you know, sometimes things really do suck and you don't always get what you want um from it. Um and yeah, like we personally really do want a baby, and it we've we've known a lot of people, and it it seems I don't think it's the numbers necessarily have grown with miscarriages, but I think more women are talking about it and men too. Um, you know, because I I also think it's important for the men to have the spotlight sh shown on them because uh, you know, usually it's about oh my gosh, you know, how your wife must be feeling, but it's also your husband who's suffering greatly and um just kind of making cry was very important. Having them cry. Like there were so many moments on set, like Travis and Kaylee nailed it, but there were a lot of moments where we had to pause or take a breather where we would, you know, step aside and talk. There were a couple moments like you know the crew, you know, had to step away so we could have a private moment together too and discuss how to hit home with everything. And um yeah, like you said, it's it's okay I think it's okay to show that things don't always have a happy ending. Like Rose gets what she wants, but to what cost kind of kind of situation. And um would it have been better to just like kind of accept what life gives you?
SPEAKER_05Um I always wanted a tragic ending though.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean something satisfying about that. When the story concludes, but it's it's happy sad, we call it. I need that. I think it's one of the best formulas in music as well.
SPEAKER_06That's our genre. Nick and I always are like that. We love happy sad.
SPEAKER_05It's the best feeling.
SPEAKER_02I'm a huge showgaze fan, so I'm right there with Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05But there's a lot of uh radio head in the in the music um sort of cues that I gave him. Um I was getting some built to the Mitsumar vibes from the score as well. Midsumar very much too. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Um when you mention um Happy Sad, I think of the descent, which kind of I mean, it's grief, horror, and um fulcore, I would say. Um, but that ending, the original UK ending. The real ending, not the American ending. Have you guys seen the It's been a number of years?
SPEAKER_05Uh uh. Forget the difference. I obviously remember the claustrophobia and the monsters, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01The ending is um she is basically trapped in the cave and she sees her her escape with the hallucination of her daughter. Yeah. But she's kind of at peace. That's her she's hallucinating. Oh yeah. But she's at peace. But you know, eventually she's gonna die. Right. But there's like this or mutate into one of those things. Yeah. Could be, yeah. Yeah, but but the point is we don't know, but it kind of has us like, okay, this character who's been through so much through the whole movie, this one part of the film at the end, she seems yeah, like she has mental peace. The UK version, they have this whole add-on thing which Yeah, she escapes. She escapes, and it's just like, yeah, it's ridiculous. Or it takes the power of the movie away, I think.
SPEAKER_00That's a good one. So that's the UK ending, is the the escape one?
SPEAKER_01Uh no. I thought that's the one. That's the American one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the UK is the birthday cake one. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be an American choice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was like, that's um, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I think it goes back. We like we've been talking about that question too, is like, why do we like horror? Like, we do, we love it. And we mentioned this in the bookstore too, talking to you. It's like, why do people gravitate towards horror, towards fear? And I think it's just the raw emotion, like you like you're you're kind of just forced to face it. Like you can't run, it is here, you must have very like paradoxical combination.
SPEAKER_02It's escapist and confrontational, you know? Yep.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, me too.
SPEAKER_01So you you both have loved horror your whole lives.
SPEAKER_06Is it like I think I've been afraid to admit that I've loved it my whole life. Um I remember writing a very space. Yeah, I wrote a very gruesome story once at like six or seven years old, and I think I scared my parents, and then I just like it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you were probably er into it earlier than I was. I was attracted to, but I was terrified of horror movies as a kid. But at a certain point something's clicked. And honestly, I think it was poltergeist. That was the that was the key for me that got me into horror films where I wasn't like terrified. I wasn't frightened by it.
SPEAKER_02It's one of the last holdouts of when a PG movie could get away with a fuck ton of stuff.
SPEAKER_06Well, and I know the moment I think I gravitated towards horror because I remember being in a haunted house and I I was very scared and I got lost, but then Dracula appeared behind me and like grabbed my shoulders, and I was like, you know, like you know you're touching brains and everything, but then he like held my hand and led me out. And uh, oh, vampires, yeah.
SPEAKER_05But then when you yeah, when you meet people that like horror films, you connect with people that love them so much and they're your favorite people, that really pushes it over the edge too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did a um at the um Seattle CryptoCon, um, which is a horror convention every year up in Seattle, uh, we the three of us are panelists. Um I've only done it a few years, they've been doing it for like ten years. Um, but I did a a panel called the science of horror, essentially looking at um physiologically like why our brains and yeah, and why we we keep going back to horror when really we should be like all the fear responses that what that we have in our body should be, you know, telling us not to do that anymore. Um and it was a really fascinating. I read a couple books and um and yeah, I think it I think the why we love horror is so complicated because it's there's literally a a physical reaction that we have when we watch horror a lot and it it changes us and it changes our responses to um to scary things and to um to uh things that make us make our heart races and you know give us clammy hands and you know w makes us want to run away, we have a physical reaction that actually feels good. Um and so we keep going back to that. So there's that physical reaction, there's that safety element that, you know, um I'm scared, but I'm safe. Um, and then there's so many other things, you know. I mean, like you generally a lot of people watch horror movies together, and so there's a social a element to that. Um a lot of horror movies are funny, you know, and so there's like you can start associating laughter and the feel-good of, you know, friendships and communities with horror. Um, you know, and some people like to be scared. I love to be scared. I've loved I like to be scared since I was a really, really little girl. And I kind of, you know, foster my environment and my life around the macabre and around that feeling of like there's no place safer than I feel than in the dark. You know, and um so I think that it's such a multi-layered, you know, responses like, why do we love horror and it's gonna be different for everybody? Um, but I do think that when I do e encounter people who are like, Oh my god, how how can you watch that spooky stuff and you're just like, Oh honey.
SPEAKER_06It's a fantastic point though. It does, it gives you that physical sensation too, of like you know, you're I'm okay. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's electrifying. Some combination of like cortisol and dopamine, I guess. Yes, totally.
SPEAKER_05But then there's a toughness that you you get to when you're not frightened by them any longer, like I was as a kid.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That feels like an accomplishment.
SPEAKER_02And when you like, and then like in our jaded ass older age, like if something does come along that can nail you, it's like, oh my god!
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, a slow walking guy with a knife behind you, that'll be fine. But working within horror is you can you can express the full wit like spectrum of the human experience. Yes. And I find that very empowering.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I mean, that's kind of um I think why horror in film makes such interesting stories to tell, because like you were saying, you know, there is a structure, there's, you know, um there is this framework to build your story around, but there's also a window, and you can open that window and you know, go outside that that constraint, and that's when the weird shit really happens, um, which is really fun. Um but yeah, there's like like to your point, uh you and your film is the point, is that there's dread, there's love, there's grief, there's you know, drama, there's levity, there's all of these things that can be told, and and and listeners, their film is 13 minutes long. I mean, it's not an hour short film, it's a 13-minute short film. So there's just so many opportunities within horror to uh to tell that such multi-layered human experiences um that it it is ultimately the best genre out there.
SPEAKER_01So is uh folk horror like one of your favorite sub-genres? Or was it Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06A hundred percent because we I mean we both love reading uh lore in general. Um like Junji Ito is a big you know, we're huge fans of the author, and um I think Miyazaki also pulls from lore, and there's I mean, I don't want to speak for Nick, but for me, I have books upon books of Russian lore and Nordic lore, and I think folktales do a great job of like teaching the balance of life and death and yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_05Uh I definitely love both folk tales and folk horror as a genre and film. But folk horror I love especially because you can do it for relatively cheap and it looks magnificent because it has to take place outside for the most part. Um you can you often you'll have like you'll have to construct villages or things like that too, or or a a man made of wicker.
SPEAKER_06We were just talking about wicker man too.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but no, I I love I do love Folcore. I love the texture of it, I love the feeling of it, I love the uh when I first saw Wickerman for the first time that I was I was more blown away than I'd think I'd seen any other movie. It was just it just I had no idea what was gonna happen. Yeah. It I was young and I, you know, they we sort of threw it on. I forget the context, but but I just love the texture of it. I love the design of the world of folklore, you know, the the way the posters look, the way the the glyphs and like title cards can look, um, the tapestry art. I think it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_06Um, it's like fun to learn about cultures, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And yes, you learn about the history of a lot of weird. And every place has a history like that. Every place in the world. I would love to see a great folk horror film from every corner of the globe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's what makes folk horror so interesting is is because you have like if you tap into something, you know, that we haven't seen before, it can it's unsettling and really creepy, you know, and just like it can go places that that you are not expecting. Um because yeah, the all the rituals and the weird masks and the you know, it's just it gets strange.
SPEAKER_01It really seems like we've been kind of going through like a renaissance of full core the last decade. It's kind of having a moment right now, yeah. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Well, and of course, like you guys mentioned, Midsummer was was a big inspiration for this. Um just with her grief, right? She loses her family, she you know, becomes like queen of this village.
SPEAKER_05Um Well, the flowers too.
SPEAKER_06The flowers, of course. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They use flower titles.
SPEAKER_06But it's like like you said too, Heather, it's so weird. It's just weird and wonderful, and you learn so much about other people and their perception of the world and the little details uh in Midsumar that upon re-watch you get to you can sort of anticipate the ending.
SPEAKER_05I love that kind of stuff. And in Fulcore, you can really embed that into the production design and the art of just everything that's being represented on screen and what the runs mean.
SPEAKER_06It's funny because the glyphs stood out for us too, and and we're so thrilled that you guys felt connected to those too, because he made a poster for it and we're like, ooh, should we have glyphs in every movie now? Yes. That's a tapestry of sorts. Kinda.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I do want to for the the next short, possibly like the next several, you know, if we make a feature in the next like three to five years.
SPEAKER_06What do you mean if?
SPEAKER_05When well, when when for the I I see all these shorts in this like this particular kind of slate of films kind of having the same branding too. So for sure, having like a screen print poster and a graphic poster, maybe doing the same kind of tile style.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and pull pull inspiration from, like you said, all over the globe, different kind of lore and styles and it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it depends on the story. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I had mentioned this when I met you the first time, uh, a movie called Starve Acre. Um I really think you guys should watch that. Um it's a folklore uh from um somewhere in England where this couple loses a child and um they live in this isolated farm. And there's something about the tree. There's this tree out in the backyard, or something about it, I forget what it is, but ultimately this hare, this rabbit um hare comes into their lives and they think it's their son reanimated. Um and they they, you know, treat it as though it is their child. It's that's cool. It's a weird movie, it is so good. It's one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_01Shapeshifter has Matt Smith in it, right?
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_06Oh, Nick just wrote it down. Like, we are down because we're also reading the book he recommended, The Fisherman, which is so good.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I want to throw an oddball at you then. You might have already seen it. Uh I believe it's Turkish. It's called Born Born of Fire. It's about a classical flautist who gets gets the call to battle uh an evil djinn through music.
SPEAKER_06What? That sounds great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02It's it's basically if uh the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia were adapted into a movie by Hodorowski.
SPEAKER_06Oh, fantastic. Yeah, we've been doing a deep dive, so it's like there's so many movies that we could just yeah, these two would be next. Because we also watched a Slavic folklore called V.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. That was so good.
SPEAKER_01Um one of my favorites of the last couple of years was Lamb.
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that that's Naomi Rapace.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, it's uh that's on my list. Yeah, it's it's really good.
SPEAKER_00It is really good. It's very strange. The ending is Don't just be prepared.
SPEAKER_06Be prepared. I like it. We also watched an interesting one called Uh Celia, which was about Australian lore and the hobby.
SPEAKER_05Speaking of hair, hairs, yeah. It's about rabbits as well. Okay.
SPEAKER_06That was fascinating.
SPEAKER_05A little bit less of a horror film, uh, but horror in its construction, for sure. In that in sort of just the the ruthless nature of Australian youths bullying each other. I hate that. During the surge of communism. Yeah, it's during the Red Scare, and this this kid this young girl is not allowed to play with her neighbors because they're communists, and she also has a rabbit that gets taken from her because there's this sort of crackdown on this overpopulation of rabbits within Australia during that time period, like late 70s, I think.
SPEAKER_06Which I was like, we have to research because I know nothing about that.
SPEAKER_05But throughout the film, there's all these magical realism moments of this what's it called? The hobby?
SPEAKER_00The hobby.
SPEAKER_05The hobby. Or these like goblin-like creatures, these blue kind of goblin creatures that she has these visions of that make their way into the story, into its sort of kind of surprising ending.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh it's a bit more of a magical realism in that way, but it's very interesting. A lot of it takes place outside, the kids playing in the forest and this like local quarry.
SPEAKER_06I love these recommendations because like there's just so much out there that we could we don't know about. It's a bit overwhelming. That was amazing.
SPEAKER_05To shout out uh um Severin, there they did this box set release, All the Haunts Be Ours. Oh, hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
SPEAKER_05That's we've been making our way through. We've been renting that for Movie Madness. We've rented three of the discs so far, and that was one of our favorites. V was on there, Eyes of Fire was on there. Yeah, yeah. Have you guys seen that one?
SPEAKER_01One of my favorites on there, The White Reindeer. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06No, we didn't see that one yet. We start started that one. That's a finish one. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. That's really good.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. Yeah. And also, like when you were saying doing research, um, there's a lot of you know, Korean films that have come out. And sometimes you watch them, you're like, Oh, yeah, a lot of references go over your head. So it's like, there's the one that came out a couple years ago called um Exhuma, I think it's called. And that is deals with a lot of Korean folklore. So like I saw it and then I'm like, I kind of am not getting like what it they're talking about. So I went back and like read a lot about it, and then when you watch it again, you're like, okay, now I understand kind of what they're talking about.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, absolutely. Is it more like paranormal? Paranormal.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of yeah, it's like it's almost like three movies in one.
SPEAKER_06Excellent.
SPEAKER_01And it's like there's a lot of a lot of information in there, but the movie works. At least it worked for me. I thought it was pretty spectacular.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we were gonna mention Tale of Two Sisters, too. Oh yeah, it's based on a folk tale as well. Beautiful film.
SPEAKER_00That movie's scary to me. I don't know what it is, but I've I've watched it a couple times and every time it's scary.
SPEAKER_01That wardrobe scene, man, that is that's a killer. Yeah, that uh box that you were talking about, they came out with a second one, too. And the thing that's nice, I mean it's it's a hefty price to buy it, but it comes with with books too. Like almost no, we just rented it, so it's we just get the discs. Yeah, so it comes with and the books have a lot of information kind of about some of the folklore and the inspiration. Yeah, yeah, movie madness Portland, baby.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_06Best video rental store. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, all right, so I think now is a good time to transition into any of the recent horror movies that we've seen um lately since the last time we uh recorded. Um and uh yeah, is there anything uh before we get into that, is there anything you want to add or um say in regards to the film or anything coming up for you guys?
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, I mean, we'd love to connect with local people. Like you said, it's so important for us to connect with the community and Portland, you know, first and local local first. So um I think snaggletooth.tv, that's Nick's studio.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and snaggletooth underscore TV on Instagram. Okay and then Nick W. Snyder is my Instagram handle. But yeah, we'd love to connect with people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05We love to you know, anyone who wants to collaborate collaborate and and and talk shop and hang out. And we just we just love this. We love living here, we love making stuff here. And we're also trying to grow the business too, the snaggle tooth client business, you know, making projects and doing different creative creative things for for brands as well. But but yeah, we we love to connect.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, just connect with us, we're gonna make it.
SPEAKER_05And then you can also follow nurture on Instagram too. We have an Instagram uh nurture.film. Awesome. Cool. And that you'll be able to get information about what festivals it's accepted. Yeah, for sure. And uh we're posting a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. Uh recently posted how we made the flowers on there um on the website. There's there's a pretty extensive breakdown of some of the behind the scenes, but we'll we'll be doing more of that.
SPEAKER_06We'll be sharing sharing stuff from the festival circuit and and funding more future projects like we talked about. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_05We might be doing some special effects um pre-vis and tests for for the next project too that we might be sharing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So thank you. I'll come back. Um doesn't CryptoCon have a um a film contest? They do, yeah. They do. Um so they are the first weekend in May. Um, so they they just happened um and they'll come around again in May. But yeah, you might want to look into that because it's um yeah, it's a really big part of the event there.
SPEAKER_06Amazing. Yeah, for sure. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Um, okay, so as is my way, I have a lot, but I'm not gonna talk I'm not gonna talk about them endlessly. I'm just gonna kind of talk about a few in depth, but um, so I saw the new movie Kraken. Um, you know, I I haven't done a lot of IMDB deep diving into like directors and all of this stuff because I've been busy. Um but Kraken came out and um essentially it's you know this small fishing town um and the fish are dying and there's somebody sees uh something weird um and they go to investigate and there's this giant tentacled monster living in this little I don't know what it is, lock maybe. Um and yeah, it wasn't it was okay. It it was like it was a good movie. I just wanted more monster. Um I I I I came for the Kraken and and I and I got just a bunch of interpersonal drama and I didn't get the Kraken until later, and I was like, well, you know, it was it was good.
SPEAKER_02You've seen the character's inner kraken.
SPEAKER_00I know, yeah. It was good, but it wasn't my favorite. I was hoping for uh a little bit more of a big monster movie, but um, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that is a display. I I'm a big monster movie fan, and I I mean I love it, you know, Godzilla and Gremlins and yeah, and it just it when you don't really like get the full. I don't think they had the budget.
SPEAKER_00I I just really don't think they had the budget for it. You know, it was uh it's like Swedish or something. It's not an American movie. Um and I and I think that they had a really beautiful location and they had, you know, a good story and some good actors, um, and they were like, How are we gonna do this monster? And they're like, I don't know, just like throw a big shadow in there sometime and figure it out.
SPEAKER_05Sometimes that Jaws approach goes a long way. But you do gotta show that sharp at two.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure, a little, yeah. Jeff, do you have any new movies?
SPEAKER_01I only saw one.
SPEAKER_00Only one?
SPEAKER_01I only saw one. I was gone for a week. Um this was a movie that came out earlier this year. I know you saw it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, I don't even know why I watched this, but Forbidden Fruits. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I can only imagine you watching Forbidden Fruits.
SPEAKER_01Well, I was like, okay, it's basically it's kind of a modern-day craft. Mean girls.
SPEAKER_00It's very mean girls. Heathers.
SPEAKER_01Um, all those movies were done better than this one. Um it's basically about a bunch of kind of vapid girls who work at a clothing store in the mall who just happen to be in a coven, and um I kind of hated it. And then I and then and then I kind of loved it, and then I ended up hating it. Because it was just like, oh, this is gonna be really trashy, but it's not trashy enough. And then and then it's like it takes a long time to get going. I was like, ah, when is this w witchery gonna start?
SPEAKER_00It doesn't.
SPEAKER_01And there's something about female relationships and friendship going on, but I I couldn't catch any of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And they're trying really hard to do that, but and it only turns into like any kind of semblance of horror in the last 10 minutes or something like that.
SPEAKER_06What's it like cliche, like the seances, the sister blending, and a little bit, but I also realize I'm not the target audience for this movie.
SPEAKER_00I think it's probably for I'm barely the target audience at all.
SPEAKER_01I think it's for like 17-year-old girls, is what I think who the target audience is, and maybe 17-year-old boys, because they're all dressed like you know, they're in a strip club or something like that. Oh my god, yeah. And they work at the mall. But um, yeah, so I'm like, and plus a lot of the dialogue, I'm like, hmm, what are they saying? I'm just at the malls. They have to go out of your way to get the customers in. Like, like I'm gonna vom for vomiting. I gotta I gotta catch up on all the lingo for this button. Yeah, it dropped on a shutter. Uh-huh. Whatever the case. So I'm like, oh, the you know, it looks like there's some appealing parts, but no. No, just didn't do it. No, no. I'm 57. It's not gonna, you know.
SPEAKER_06There's some really great witch movies. I I mean, I can't think of a recent one though that so it's kind of a bummer that it didn't really land the plane because like some of our favorite art, you know, they're they're years ago, like The Witch and stuff with Anya Taylor Joy. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's been a hell of a decade for witch movies, man.
SPEAKER_06There's been good shit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05There are a lot of witch movies at the Portland Horror Film Festival this year, too.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, a lot at the festival. They were great.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, a lot of very good ones.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think uh the last ten years for witch movies has been kind of like what uh the aughts were for zombie movies. It seemed like there were so many zombie movies. You know, from the year 2004 to like 2012 or whatever, and then now it's like witch movies. I'm here for it.
SPEAKER_02Umes, I guess I could talk about. Uh I did finally catch up on Hokum.
SPEAKER_00Okay, nice.
SPEAKER_02And I really did like it. It's probably my my second favorite in in the McCarthy trilogy. Um not a whole lot to say that you guys haven't already said, but Adam Scott was fantastic. Yeah. Does a really good job of being unlikable but very watchable. You know?
SPEAKER_00That's a good way to put it. Yeah, very watchable.
SPEAKER_02The story I I don't I don't know if I want to say it's a flaw, but I I did notice it. It's a little disjointed, you know, like elements don't totally tie together. Like Adam Scott's arc kind of seems to be like a subplot, and the the witch character is almost a Deus Ex Machina, but it all kind of works. Um I am really curious if um McCarthy can or plans to keep pulling films off in this format with like one rural location, four characters, murder mystery, and there's a ghost. Right. You know. If if he can, more power to him. Um, you know, create uh constraint as the mother of creativity, but that is a very narrow box to paint yourself into. Um I loved uh the what is his name? Jackie Jackass was an amazing character.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_02He's the the monster that appears on the TV.
SPEAKER_00Oh okay.
SPEAKER_02And the canopy the canopy bed scene reminded me a little bit of the wit of the tent from from Oddity.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's true, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And there's one death in there that is profoundly creepy.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02It's the last situation you'd want to be tripping in.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02And then um, I guess this one's from last year. I caught a movie called Rabbit Trap.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I haven't seen that yet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh reminded me a little bit of a McCarthy joint.
SPEAKER_00Was that the auditory one where they're like listening to like Nature? Or what were they listening to?
SPEAKER_02They are doing like field recordings. Okay. And that was the thing that like the first act like totally sold me because like our protagonists are uh a married couple who make electronics. Music. So she's kind of the musician, and he's like her producer, engineer. And she's an amazing character. Like I think she was modeled after several of the early lady electronic pioneers. Her character's name, I think, is meant to remind us of like Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Orim. And then her personality, she's got like this kind of like nature goddess energy that reminds me of like Suzanne Ciani a little bit. So the first act where we're kind of watching them being this like couple that's very much in love, but also clearly dealing with some problems. I was totally like seduced and hypnotized, and uh they come afoul of a fairy ring while making field recordings. Um and then this weird little kid shows up and ruins everything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02For them and for the movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's kind of why I hadn't seen it, because the trailer I was in it for a while, and then that little weird kid showed up, and I was like, oh, this doesn't look like a character I that would resonate. I don't know. Yeah. Second act was kind of a slug, I thought. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um it does redeem itself a bit towards the end. It gets a little more psychedelic. Um but uh yeah, just being a fan of synthesizers myself, I was really wanting it to be mostly about them as musicians. And I was like, oh, maybe they'll use sound to battle the evil forces or whatever, but I was yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02That was that was a pipe dream. And then uh other than that, yeah. I I have seen a lot of movies, but they were the same movies. Uh I saw Obsession for the second time and backrooms for a second and third, and I'm going back for a fourth tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Of course.
SPEAKER_02Nice. You're obsessed. Little bit, little bit. It's a it's a cultural moment that I'm really enjoying living through, and it it feels like it's been a long time since I I almost forgot what that felt like.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Milking it for all it's worth.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it just set another record, I think like this week or today. Oh, that's 500 million.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Really?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
unknownWow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, you guys can join the segment uh if you would like. You know, obviously, like I watched just too much to even, you know, talk about. But um, do you guys have any movies that you saw recently that you want to thank you?
SPEAKER_05We've been watching a lot to prepare for this. So a lot of the lists, you know, the things you mentioned of these different genres. We've so we've been watching a lot of old movies. Yeah. We've been work making our I I think the biggest shout out is the all the Hauntsby hours box set. All those little gems, those little folklore gems. My favorite probably on that list was Eyes of Fire.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05I'd never heard of it. Never seen it for sure.
SPEAKER_06Um it's yeah, I guess But the lore was so eerie and I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so it's it's what is it? Uh it's uh 1983.
SPEAKER_06Um it's when it was filmed, yeah, about uh colonialism and settlers being.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, right before America became America. It's these British settlers, these British colonialists that were being persecuted for their religion. This like this religious figure and his followers make their way into the woods and try to find a settlement essentially to to sort of set up shop and the forest punishes them for it. Oh wow in very elaborate i in insanely psychedelic ways.
SPEAKER_06And w uh there's a witch in their party that they don't r they think she's just mentally unwell.
SPEAKER_05There's witchcraft, there's forest magic, there are faces in a tree, like human faces that are coming out of a tree. Terrified. There are mud people that are reminiscent of the Urukai from Lord of the Rings kind of being bred out of the mud of the base of this tree.
SPEAKER_06But the special effects are not gonna make you like jump necessarily in that way, because of the way it was filmed, but it it is kind of eerie with like oh lightning, like that really uh charming lightning bolt technology. That sort of 80s uh style animation lightning that you saw all the time.
SPEAKER_05It's just super charming. It's one of those things to throw on at on at a party can have on in the background, or sit down and watch it fully, which you probably should. I should recommend that first. But really charming, really interesting. Um the special effects in particular are some some of the things like the practical effects is stuff, some of the stuff I've never quite seen before. So that was a that was a really funny.
SPEAKER_06Well, and we both really liked Weapons, which came out a couple years ago. So that was last year. Or last year in 25, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah, last year was a good year. Yeah. Last year was a really good year for free.
SPEAKER_06And then of course backrooms this year and obsession, of course, is very scary.
SPEAKER_01You know, when you mentioned uh Eyes of Fire, um that was like really nobody could find that. It didn't get a DVD or even Blu-ray release until that on that box set. For the longest time, like at Movie Madness, you just had to rent the VHS and it was like so dark that it's like it was sometimes hard to see all that stuff. It looks beautiful. Yeah, the Blu-ray looks the transfer or whatever they did back to the creatives.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, um and then also digging into really old ones, like um shamefully, I hadn't seen Rosemary's Baby until recently. Oh wow. Yeah, and I was I'm like, I can't believe I put it off for so long. So um oh, so sorry, Nick's guiding me to the mic. Um but yeah, of course, that really hits home and you just like feel for all the characters, and I love the monster the idea of it, you know, with this demonic baby. I was like, ooh, this is great inspiration.
SPEAKER_05But um masterclass in filmmaking, yeah. Stay away from anybody giving you chocolate. It gets into that sort of not wholesome horror, but like it's it's not that scary until the very end. It's just sort of the build-up.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah. Well, and then the excellent filmmaking. Excellent filmmaking, alluding to all the social dynamics, like of how little women had any ownership of their lives, um, you know, back then, and you know, it wasn't that long ago, where you know, yeah, you were just there to give birth and be a housewife and do your job.
SPEAKER_01And it's wonderful like who the villains are. Yeah. Somebody anybody would trust.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I knew. I was like, as soon as husband got mad at her, I was like, oh, he's gonna get it.
SPEAKER_05But they're like the nicest, sweetest people ever. Yeah. Ruth Gordon. It's Ruth Gordon. Ruth Gordon.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh. All right, I'm gonna um rattle off my list here. Um There's a movie called Find Your Friends that just dropped on Shudder. Um, I have not hated a movie like this in a very long time. Um, these women are vapid and terrible, they're just terrible people, terrible friends. Um they essentially go into this, um, they like run an Airbnb in the desert to party, and the local folk um, you know, want to take advantage of the fact that they're young women out there by themselves. Um so yeah, there's a redeeming um penis ripping scene in the end, but that was about it. Um that was a hard pass for me. It was very, it was just un very not enjoyable to watch. Um there's a new movie, new uh new movie called Chum, uh, which is a new shark movie. Not very good. Uh it was very like the CGI shark was terrible. It might even be an AI shark. I don't even know, but it was fucking terrible. Um this like uh what is it? This Well its teeth are in the wrong place. Yeah, exactly. There's uh um a wedding party that goes out on this boat, um, and the boat catches fire, so this fisherman picks him up. Um, but this fisherman is hell-bent on revenge of this one shark that killed his wife like years before. So he's using strangers to chum the water to get this shark to attack so he can try to kill it. It's a really dumb movie. Um there's a movie called Deep Water that I actually enjoyed. Um, it's a aircraft um uh crashes in the ocean, uh, and it's basically a shark attack movie. So there's all of it.
SPEAKER_01It has uh Ben Kingsley, right? Did you watch it? No, but I saw the trailer for life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it has him for a little while. He doesn't last long.
SPEAKER_01Oh, spoiler.
SPEAKER_00Uh I know. So um, yeah, it's all of these survivors, um, and it's pretty brutal. Like they kill a lot of people, like people that you're following for a while, you know, like, oh, I know this guy's story, and we're watching him, and we think he's kind of a main character, and then he dies, and it just kind of goes like that for a long time. Um, so that was pretty fun. Uh, movie I loved was called Saccharin. So this is the second um uh what do you call eating not eating disorder, but like uh diet pill um horror movie that has come out this year. The first one was called I think it was called The Nestrin, um which was it was pretty decent, but this one, Saccharin, um, was really, really good and it's essentially a diet pill that is created out of the ash of people. And um this woman who is uh taking the pill starts to get haunted by the person that the pill is made out of, and so and she's losing weight like so rapidly, but she also has an eating disorder where she, you know, just binges all the time. So she's taking this pill, she's losing all this weight, she's binging, which uh, you know, they make to to it's a very it's very horror food driven, and then you have this ghost that that is anyways, it was really good. Um there was a movie called Pitfall that was okay. Um this like serial killer is making these giant pits in the woods, and this um uh group of friends are camping and one of them gets trapped in there, and then they all have to battle it out. Um I watched the new faces of death remake. Uh I had absolutely no interest in it, and it was it was pretty decent. Um it was about a serial killer who was essentially recreating the faces of death scenes um with real people, and this woman who's um a web content moderator um thinks that they're real while everybody else thinks that they're fake, and she kind of goes and investigates and tries to find this guy. Um so it was it was decent. I did not think I was gonna like it.
SPEAKER_02That's a very interesting take on a remake.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was, and it was well done. Um one of my favorite movies of the last couple of weeks is called Frankie Maniac Woman. Um this is about a woman who is um a singer and she goes to Hollywood to kind of um, you know, make it big. Um, but she isn't um she's not conforming to the beauty standards that would make somebody um, you know, a pop star. Um and she essentially goes on this murder rampage and she just starts killing all of these beautiful girls and all of these like producers and um and she does it with gusto and she is a really good serial killer. Um it was just a really fun slasher. Uh very it gets really weird. Um but highly recommend that one. I I watched it on the festival website um and I paid like it was like when the festival movies move digitally and then you can like kind of rent them um that way. So I I rented it. If you go to um the movie, the website called Just Watch and um type it in, you can probably find it. I think it's still there. I rented it for like $15. Um, I watched the movie Hungry, which is uh hippos, killer hippos in the bayou. Um that was a really silly movie, but I had a lot of fun with it. It was just um yeah, don't don't go in expecting very much. It's what you want from a hungry, hungry hippos movie. Exactly. It is what I wanted from a killer hippo movie. Um I watched a movie called Hold the Fort, um, which was a um horror comedy that the trailer w just looked like it was gonna be a no-brainer for me. And the uh it didn't it didn't quite hit. Um this like new couple moves into this um neighborhood and every year on the certain day, I don't know, like solstice or something, there's a help that opens up and all of these monsters come out and so they all band together in like this community house and battle the monsters, and then when the monsters when they win, you know, they're safe for another year and it's a very idyllic neighborhood. Um it w it it it wasn't very good. Uh last movie is a movie I watched last night and it was from the uh 90s called Mosquito about these uh mutant giant mosquitoes. There's like a alien spacecraft that crashes to earth, a mosquito lands on the alien and sucks its alien blood and becomes this big giant mutant of itself, and then it like ha lays all these eggs, so now there's like hundreds of them, and these um people in the woods, like these campers and forest rangers and stuff. Gunner Gunner Hansen with a chainsaw. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I remember this movie I saw it and it's like very goopy.
SPEAKER_00It's very goopy, it has some really good practical effects. The the mis the like CGI mosquitoes aren't that great, but the CG or the practical effects of the dead people are pretty good. Um, but and it was a lot of fun. But I went to essentially this is a shout-out for Cult Classics. So Cult Classics um every Sunday does a horror movie massacre, or not it's not a horror movie massacre, it's just a movie massacre, because sometimes they show like action movies or kung fu movies or sci-fi movies. Um, and some of them are horror. So they do a movie massacre every Sunday. It's free. You go in, they give away free popcorn, their special cocktails, and it is so much fun. And I go maybe once every couple of months when there's something that I haven't seen that I really want to see at, you know, with a group of strangers. Um and last night was the perfect movie. Um, so yeah, Mosquito was a really fun bar watch. Um we met some new friends at the bar, you know, because we're all just there heckling and um the movie is what you're there for. It's not just like the movie's on, you know, it's like it is a movie night, um, which makes it really special. But yeah, so that's my list. The takeaways are Frankie Maniac Woman for sure, Hungry is fun, Faces of Death was surprisingly good, and Saccharin was one of my favorite movies of the year. I love it.
SPEAKER_02You uh mentioning hate earlier did remind me like, oh yeah, there was that other movie that I watched or almost watched, but I got about halfway through um They Will Kill You.
SPEAKER_00They Will Kill You. I can't believe you didn't like that movie.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00Ah, so good.
SPEAKER_02It is rarely has a movie been less than simply the sum of its parts than this movie. This is Kill Bill Meets Ready or Not with a little bit of Sam Raimi camera work, and that is all it is. And it doesn't really know how to Tarantino. I was like, if I watch one more goddamn slow-motion villain entrance to some fucking hip-hop needle drop or whatever, I'm gonna kill this protagonist myself just to get this goddamn movie over. Sorry.
SPEAKER_00Um, anyway. Yeah.
unknownOh man.
SPEAKER_00Um, all right.
SPEAKER_02The perspective of three very different Horner.
SPEAKER_00So true.
SPEAKER_05Can I shout out one more thing? Absolutely. This is a few years old, but I had never seen it. We didn't see it until last night, actually, is Annihilation. Oh, damn, yeah. And speaking of backrooms, I don't know why we waited. And Je it it's phenomenal. I was so impressed by it. I forget why I I was like hesitant to watch it or whatever. I guess I something about like the depression angle just seemed very heavy. But man, is it interesting, and it unfolds in this very beautiful way. It treats um like an alien invasion or some sort of quarantine zone in a way that you've never seen before on film. It affects the psyche, it reflects like like what reality is like, and it's you know, Backrooms does a similar thing as far as like the subconscious and um but the splitting of atoms and the duplicate self and the dark version of yourself that you have to destroy. I thought the conclusion was phenomenal. It was so well written and interesting. Such an interesting monster, if you want to call it that at the end, um, but just beautiful all around.
SPEAKER_02And that fucking bear is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_05The echo effect of the last is so interesting.
SPEAKER_04Spoiler, but yeah.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, I just wanted to mention that because it does touch upon some of the folk horror elements with nature, nature horror, um especially grief. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's like folk and cosmic horror kind of thing.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, oh, it's very Lovecrafty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Very the um the film is based on um Jeff Vandermeer's novel Annihilation, so that's the first of the trilogy. And I mention it because he um he moved to Portland uh, I don't know, maybe six months ago, maybe a year ago. Oh wow. He lives in the neighborhood um and comes in to Powell's on Hawthorne specifically to sign his books like every month. Amazing, yeah, and we basically, yeah, we'll we reach out to him and be like, Jeff, we need more, you know, autographed books, and he'll come in and just sign everything that we have so it's on the shelf. Um, and and they're not, you know, we're not charging for the autograph, they're just on the shelf.
SPEAKER_06Um that's a great tip because I literally said last night when we watched it, I was like, Oh, I gotta pick up the book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So I'm a fan of Alex Scarland too. Yes. I know he's uh and he's been very prolific as of late, too. I was a big fan of uh 20 years later last year in The Bone Temple. Oh yeah. Um he wrote that, right? It wasn't just Mia DeCosta was the director. Yeah, I think XMACA and that's one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Alright. Anything to add, anyone? Are good? Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_06Great recommendation.
SPEAKER_00Um something coming up for us. Uh the Portland Horror Trivia Massacre will be at the Drive In 99 West on July 16th. Um they are showing the thing and virus 1999, which I don't know that movie. It's not very good.
SPEAKER_02Oh, Jamie Lee Curtis, I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that virus, the Jamie Lee Curtis virus? I think it's I didn't think it was called 1999 at the end.
SPEAKER_01It's not, that's the year it came out.
SPEAKER_00Like pre-Halloween. Oh, I see. So okay, I got you.
SPEAKER_01It's in Don Donald Sutherland.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02I think it was pre-H2O, I think. Oh, oh really? Oh, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So after. So we'll be hosting trivia um quote me out. July 16th. Excellent. Yeah, nice.
unknownSuper.
SPEAKER_06We also love your trivia nights, by the way. Nick and I had so much fun.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we look forward to the next one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Yeah, we'll be at Cult Classics next Tuesday.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_01Thank you guys very much for joining us.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we're we're honored. Thanks for taking an interest in a couple of indie filmmaker kittens.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for making a good movie.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. We can't wait for uh.
