Quiet Little Horrors

The last in our mini series of episodes about doppelganger films is one about a little known Roger Moore gem: The Man Who Haunted Himself, from 1970. The swinging sixties are never over if you’ve got a reckless, hard-living double of yourself running around town causing trouble. We discuss the tension of determining what is reality and what’s in one’s head, how much we enjoy a solid psychological thriller, and why emotional repression is probably not the way to live one’s life (even if it doesn’t result in an evil doppelganger).

We’re still on a tear about doubles, so this time we talk about one of the most direct, recent horror films on the subject: Jordan Peele’s Us, from 2019. We discuss real-world parallels, social antiheroines, unsettling endings, and, of course, The Twilight Zone.

Quick note: Our apologies for the delay with this episode—Jen was moving and has been even more scattered than usual.

We’re working our way through a series of episodes about films featuring doppelgangers and doubles, and for this one we reach back to classic Hollywood: Hitchcock’s Vertigo. We discuss the meta machinery of making the “perfect” woman, how women end up participating in the same machinery themselves, and how much we love Midge.

And we’re back! We took a brief break and have returned with a long stretch of movies on a favorite theme: doppelgangers. We begin with 2010’s Black Swan and discuss how it holds up over a decade after its release—especially these days, when the psychological horror film landscape is crowded with more unhinged women than you can shake a stick at, if that’s your sort of thing.

You know what’s really scary? Songwriter’s block. And also maybe ghosts. But also maybe not? The Strings is one of the quietst and most subtle films we’ve covered, almost entirely about interiority, isolation, and the prices people pay for creation. But also maybe ghosts? Who can say.

This month we’re delving into sound and music and all of their meta cinematic potential, beginning with the extremely meta Berberian Sound Studio. We discuss the practical art of sound effects, the tremendous performance of Toby Jones, and how one of our favorite movie endings is the dissolution of reality (we’re very normal, that’s why we have this podcast).

We go deep into the Irish wilderness for a found footage folk horror romp full of cults, secrets, and annoying young people with 2016’s Crone Wood.

We go back to our roots with this overlooked gem of classic British folk horror, Robin Redbreast. Contains some progressive perspectives current society seems to have retreated from and enduring the life lesson that you should never sleep with boring men, however pretty they are.

We get experimental with one of our favorites from the past year, Enys Men, and discuss the wide range of folk horror, the deadening repetition of women’s lives, and being unstuck in time and space. You know, a nice, normal start to 2024.

Happy New Year! With 2023 in the books, we take a look back at our favorite films from the past year, new and old, and what we’re looking forward to in 2024.