A podcast about films of quiet horror
It’s the end of the year and so it’s time for some reflection. We look back on our second season, discuss our favorite episodes and list the goals we have for the podcast next year.
This is also a great opportunity to send us feedback or suggest a future film to cover! Email us at hello@quietlittlehorrors.com.
Thank you for coming along with us! Happy New Year!
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We’re ending 2021 and our second season with a big one: Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. It’s dazzling, twisty and maybe a little thematically muddled, but talking about what works and what doesn’t is a fun ride.
This episode’s related recommendations:
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We kick off this month’s pairing with a classic of the psychological horror genre: Repulsion, directed by Roman Polanski in 1965. Isolation, untreated trauma, the downsides of moving through the world as a woman and also why people should maybe just leave women alone already.
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We continue our Candyman discussion with the sequel/reimagining from 2021, directed by Nia DaCosta. Spoiler alert: we’re a little mixed on this one, with one half of the podcast warmer on it than the other. We cover the threads picked up from the original film, what has happened to Cabrini-Green and Chicago in the meantime and how this film takes on themes of historical racial violence and segregation more deliberately than the first.
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In which we forget to determine ahead of time if the “say Candyman five times” rule still applies if you say it over the course of a podcast episode. If so, we’re doomed. But, before our doom, we discuss 1992’s Candyman. Topics include the history of Chicago’s structural racism, this story as gothic horror and the awesomeness of Tony Todd.
Strongly recommended reading: Steve Bogira’s 1987 Chicago Reader article about the real-life case that might have inspired parts of Candyman‘s storyline, “They Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror.”
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We continue our month-long cult discussion with Karyn Kusama’s 2015 The Invitation. We talk about the patterns of imprisonment, overwhelming grief and how this film’s cult deals with grief differently than the one in our earlier mini episode. Also which cult we would prefer to join, just in case we ever have to make that decision (you never know).
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We kick off a month of cults and grief with 2019’s Midsommar and discuss emotional catharsis, the humor of dark absurdity and inventive ways of dealing with horrible boyfriends.
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We continue our Suspiria discussion by taking a look at the original 1977 film, which we overall like better than the newer version. We talk about the context of giallo, the film’s visual and audio flair and the mysteries of the connections between women.
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This month we take on both incarnations of the Italian horror staple Suspiria, beginning with the 2018 version—of which, spoiler alert, we are not terribly fond. We’ll discuss what the new one adds and what the new one is missing, with a detour to praise performances and a couple of set pieces.
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Hallucinations, apparitions and doppelgangers, oh my. Director Robert Altman’s only foray into horror film is a rich psychological landscape where Susannah York battles fears, insecurities and reality itself. We discuss the various layers of theme and metaphor, the stunning contributions from the filmmaking team and the complex woman at the heart of the story. This is the kind of film we made this podcast for.
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