TSOL006 – Lake Mungo

TSOL006 – Lake Mungo

Steve: [00:00:00] Warning, 30 Screams or Less may contain spoilers about movies that have recently been released. If you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it, come back and enjoy the show. Or, if you don’t want to waste your time watching the movie and rather have two random horror dudes, watch it for you. We got you covered as well.

Steve: Welcome everyone to 30 Screams or Less, where we review horror movies in 30 minutes or less, so you don’t have to. So we got some news here. We’re proud to announce we’re part of the Shining Wizards [00:01:00] Network. Jokes on those marks, we’re not a wrestling podcast, but seriously Shining Wizards Network is a collection of podcast spanning various different themes.

So be sure to check them all out at shiningwizardsnetwork.com. Today we’re fucking late to the party on this one. To be exact. What is it, 15 years late?

Corey: I don’t know man. This one came out a long time ago.

Steve: Better late than never, right? Like. 2008. Oh my God. We did say though that we review both new and old movies, but like recently it’s been a lot of newer movies, so we’re going back a little bit, not too crazy, just a pissed off kid in his teens type age, which is fine. We’re just super fashionably late to the party.

Corey: Yeah, I finally decided to, go back to an old movie, which is what we said we were gonna do from the beginning.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, overall,

Corey: lying for six episodes now, so we figured we’d fucking do it.

Steve: Yeah, we’ve been just, like I said, nothing but new movies. So we gotta bring it back to the older stuff. We have to like pay homage. And I don’t think a lot of people actually talk about this movie. This movie we’re doing today is called Lake [00:02:00] Mungo. It’s funny, I always get that mixed up with Mundo.

I don’t know why I keep looking at it and like, oh, Mundo, no, it’s Mungo, but.

Corey: is Mundo.

Steve: I have no idea what Mundo is. It’s just keeps coming up. I don’t know. Lake Broo, lake Mungo, McMichael. I don’t know.

Uh,

Corey: I’m actually, I’m actually shaking my head right now. Wish you could see me.

Steve: I threw in a wrestling reference.

Corey: This fucking lunacy from you.

Steve: It’s always lunacy. So I threw in a wrestling reference there through, Steve Onco McMichael. But that’s a, that’s probably a deep dive.

Corey: He’s a vegetable right now.

Steve: Oh yeah. Carrot top.

Corey: I think he’s on his deathbed

Steve: Oh, well that’s not good at

Corey: And Mick Foley went and visited him the other day.

Steve: Fuck. You know when Foley

Corey: we weren’t a wrestling podcast.

Steve: I know okay, now we’re bridging gaps here. This is what we’re doing. Bridging gaps.

Corey: This is why they asked us to be on the, on the, on the network.

Steve: Yeah, they need us bridging gaps between wrestling and horror and then absolute lunacy. That’s what we’re here for. You know, when Foley visits you, your time is up. [00:03:00] He just visited, Terry Funk, I believe,

Corey: Yeah. But Terry Funks still kicking it, man.

Steve: Yeah he’s friggin kicking something. He looks like he’s about to die.

Corey: He’s kicking out at three. Man.

Steve: Yeah, he’s like 2.99. Nine nine. Just like infinite nines. And God is like, dude, call it a day. Take the fall.

Corey: Just fucking leave Terry Funk out of this dude, please.

Steve: Just leave him be.

Corey: I don’t wanna wake up tomorrow and find out Terry Funk. Shit. The bed. Cuz then I’m coming to you.

Steve: To me?

Corey: Gonna have a conversation face to face cuz you killed Terry Funk.

Steve: I didn’t kill Terry. We can’t talk about this. We’ve done too many podcasts where we’re announcing the future, so it’s not happening.

Corey: Yeah. Edit that out.

Steve: Edit Oh God. All right. Back on track because we tend to friggin go all over the place. But, the movie today is Lake Mungo. It was, released in 2015. Written and directed by Joel Anderson, starring Talia Zucker and Martin Sharp. So this is a movie, it [00:04:00] 2015 or am I.

Corey: Dude, we talked about this like 30 seconds ago. It came out in 2008.

Steve: Fuck, dude. That’s right. It’s not 2015, it’s like 2008 and I see 15

Corey: new cohost.

Steve: I’m done. I resign. I don’t pay attention to anything clearly.

Corey: Listen, Vince,

Steve: Hey, at least I could write background correctly.

Corey: You’re fired.

Steve: You wrote back round. That round back. Okay.

Corey: What is this podcast about? I forgot already.

Steve: Oh, it’s about horror movies and we’re gonna get into it. This movie’s called Lake Mungo. We’re gonna get into it now. 30 Screams or Less starts now. Corey, what did you think of Lake Mungo?

Corey: So this movie’s actually been on my radar for a long, long time. Again, you know, it came out in 2008. I can’t say I even knew about it back then, but I wanted to watch it for a while. And now that we have this podcast here, I’ve decided to go off the watch list. Yeah, this movie was another one of those fucked up movies that gave me kind of the same vibes as Speak No Evil.

Steve: Yeah, it was very [00:05:00] odd, had to do a lot of ghost stuff. And I was weirded out at first because it looks like a documentary. You’re looking at it, you’re like, oh, geez, this looks like just a standard ass documentary, but it’s completely fabricated.

It’s like an actual movie made to look like a documentary. So I’m watching it. I’m like, is this real? Is this a joke? What the hell’s going on with this? It was unsettling at first because, another movie with a kid dying

Corey: Fuck again.

Steve: Again. Oh

Corey: I mean that’s like the whole premise of the movie is this family’s daughter just goes missing for a while the search party gets sent out and they find her floating face first in a lake and she’s been dead for a while at that point, cuz her body’s already started decomposing and everything and, eventually they found her.

Steve: Yeah, dead and bloated.

Corey: Yeah. Yep. So,

Steve: Right? Yeah. Okay.

Corey: That’s the whole gist of it. Basically the family’s trying to figure out what happened and like Steve mentioned before, it’s documentary style. So, they’re interviewing the family and everything. Trying to see where the girl last was, like what they knew. [00:06:00] And that’s sort of about the whole vibe of the movie is the parents, the family of this girl didn’t know who their own daughter was. Like what the shit she was into.

Steve: Oh yeah, some of the stuff that she was into was, uh, a little interesting. I don’t know how in depth we can really go about this without probably putting on a disclaimer on this podcast.

Corey: We’re gonna do it anyways.

Steve: We’re gonna do it anyways. We shoot for constantly getting, canceled or

Corey: tr we’re trying.

Steve: We’re trying to get kicked off all those podcast network. It’s not happening. I guess, uh, freedom of speeches still all right these days.

Corey: Yeah, the The Shining Wizards Network asks us to be on and cancels it after one episode. Please don’t do that. Matt and Tony, please.

Steve: Let’s go. No. Okay. No, don’t cancel us. Not yet. Come on. We just formed this relationship like we’re, I think we’re okay. We’re fine.

Corey: Hey, we survived Screambox, they’re still talking to us, so that’s a good thing.

Steve: That is a good thing. I’m surprised they’re still talking to us because we, uh, well, we didn’t shit on that movie. Too bad.

Corey: Like you said, we did it [00:07:00] tastefully.

Steve: Tastefully. Exactly. We shit on The Anchor tastefully. We’re critics, we offer our opinions. That’s how it’s, not everyone could be amazing, you know, can’t be perfect. Nothing’s perfect.

Corey: We forgot to mention this Movie’s on Shudder. You can watch it on Shudder.

Steve: That’s right. We’re going back to Shudder this time. You can watch this movie on Shudder, so if you don’t have Shudder, get it. It’s like fricking $3 and 75 cents a month or something. Back to my lattes cost less than that, so, Check it out. I highly recommend it. It’s a very cool but yeah, at first I was very, confused on what the hell I was watching.

Actually. I went into it blind. I didn’t watch any trailers. I didn’t even read a synopsis, nothing. I just was like, all right, you know what? We’re gonna review it. I’m gonna watch it. And then I was confused as to why I was watching a documentary. I thought I was watching a movie, but it’s done so well.

As like a documentary, a fake, fakeumentary, a fauxmentary, what do you wanna call it?

Corey: Uh, we’ll go with what you just said.

Steve: Fo

Corey: gonna, you can be the only one making up words on this podcast.

Steve: That’s what I [00:08:00] do. I make up words. I make up things that don’t make sense. Fauxmentary. F A U X

Corey: You could pronounce other names really well that are not in like, you know, English.

Steve: You know, I was actually talking to a coworker of mine and, I have a little bit of a lisp and she’s like, you know, you could use that. People have lists like that and it makes them better for saying things in different languages. So maybe that’s how I’m able to say those names and be like, all right, I’m gonna take a stab at it. And it sounds close, maybe that’s why.

Corey: So basically we just have to start watching more foreign films so you can really make use of your talents.

Steve: You’re damn right. Yeah. I need to like shine somewhere on the Shining Wizards network.

Corey: Oh, plug It’s fucking just casual plug now.

Steve: Yep. Just casual plugin. Straight plugging.

Corey: So back to the movie here. Shit really starts hitting the fan. So I can’t remember if it was before or after they found the daughter that the mother starts seeing the visions of the daughter at the foot of her bed, like dripping and water.

Steve: It was very weird hearing that because I’m still in the [00:09:00] mindset of, is this a documentary? So, she woke up, she’s at the end of her bed, she’s seen visions of her daughter like covered in water because obviously her daughter, drowned. Corey, you know what I don’t understand though, is how did she die? I mean, It’s clear that, she drowned. That’s clear. But how did it happen? Was she murdered by someone or I know at the end she saw her own death happening basically. But what caused it to happen?

Do you think she just like went in the water, she couldn’t swim, she drowned, she died? Or do you think she was actually murdered by someone? Because there was a scene we were just about to mention and fuck it. I’m going into it even though we may get in trouble. It was a sex tape between a married couple and, an underage girl in the movie.

Obviously this is. Completely a movie. It’s not real. That’s not something you can just simply release in theaters. It was a scene between the married couple and the girl who died and they were thinking that maybe the husband did it, but I don’t know if that’s the case. C Yeah. Can you clarify here?

Corey: Actually gonna [00:10:00] clarify, the girl was not having sex with her parents. She was having sex with her neighbors who she babysat for

Steve: Yes. That’s way more important to point out. Oh my God. I won’t edit it. You fixed it. I’m good.

Corey: No leave that in there. It’s good.

Steve: Yeah, we’re fine.

Corey: I sort of had the same idea, it’s sort of like it’s left up to the imagination cuz they never explain how she died. All we ever are told is she died in an accident while she was swimming with her family. Now that we’re talking about this, I think it might have had something to do with that tape.

Steve: See, I would think that’s, it was done because of the tape. They didn’t want that getting out there and they murdered her because of it, but nothing was ever conclusive in the movie about that. It was just that she saw her own image of herself dying and buried all her shit in a like a ditch and then a few weeks later she died.

Corey: So why did her brother just randomly start getting bruises all over his body?

Steve: Wasn’t he actually like, fabricating a lot of the footage? Like a lot of it wasn’t. The sister he was almost using it as like a friggin art [00:11:00] project and he was putting like images of his sister in the mirror and stuff like that and making it look like there’s a ghost in the house.

Corey: I guess that can be the way it’s thought of. But so was he giving himself bruises?

Steve: He might have been giving himself bruises to add to that story to make it like, I don’t know, this all-encompassing art piece.

Corey: So, Obviously her brother was obsessed with photography and videography and stuff like that. So then we have that scene where Matthew, the brother, he’s taking the same photo of his backyard for several years from the same angle, and eventually Alice starts appearing in the background of these photos at different spots at the backyard.

Steve: Yeah. So. I couldn’t tell if that was him doing that or if, uh, it was actually happening. This is where the movie kind of blurs those lines of, did it happen? Didn’t happen. Because he did some editing, but I don’t think he did the editing for that one.

Am I mistaken here? Because I feel like I’m getting a lot of that portion mixed up because I’ve watched it twice and I think I was still having some trouble [00:12:00] understanding, the role that was being played in the ghost appearing against, what the brother was doing.

Corey: Yeah, I mean at this point, it’s kind of like the brother kind of fabricated the whole thing. Like obviously the sister died, but I don’t know if he made up everything else, you know?

Steve: Part of me thinks that he did make up almost everything else, but of course this movie contained a seance. Cuz we all know seance is a pretty good idea, right?

Corey: Yeah, fuck it. Why not? Let’s try and bring him back.

Steve: It worked so well in Hereditary, right? So yeah, why not do a seance. Every time I see a seance in one of those friggin movies, I’m like, ah, yep, shit’s about to go down every single time.

Corey: I don’t even remember this,

Steve: You don’t remember the seance part between Ray and the mother and the father and son

Corey: not.

Steve: Holy Ghost?

Corey: This is gone. It’s not, not the memory anymore.

Steve: No. You lost it.

Corey: Yeah, it’s gone.

Steve: Oh, that’s okay. Uh, it was like a brief part where the father didn’t want to do it, and the son was open to it.

The mother wanted to do it, and so they had this, seances session with that guy Ray. And I think Ray was just a friggin. What were those guys back? Those Oh, [00:13:00] the fake doctors back in the day walking round. Giving their elixir with their frigging, uh, you know, wagon wheel? Yeah, yeah. The snake oil whisperers there.

The snake oil whisperer.

Corey: I don’t know where that came from. Snake oil salesman.

Steve: Snake oil salesman. I don’t know what a snake oil whistler is. I’ve never heard of that.

Corey: Get a fucking Q-tip and listen to what I’m saying.

Steve: My hearing’s fucked. It’s been.

Corey: Hey, you’re the one that finally got me to wear fucking earplugs after going to shows for 30 years.

Steve: isn’t it glorious that now you can hear things and walk out and go, oh, my ears aren’t fucking, straight buzz.

Corey: Yeah, but it’s probably too late now.

Steve: Oh, yeah. There’s no turning back once your hearing’s fucked.

Corey: Yeah.

Steve: I, I know like my hearings fucked. I bet you these hear plugs are fucking like blazing loud at the moment and I’m just like, oh, this is fine.

Corey: No, it’s fine. Our ears are fucked. It’s just, it is what it is.

Steve: Oh no. I fucked our ears earlier when, I turned up the audio to our podcast commercial to 150 decibels.

Corey: Dude, [00:14:00] that was like that Judas Priest concert we went to. So that was the last straw. By the way, what I decided earplugs were necessary is when we saw fucking Judas Priest this summer

Steve: Yeah. Cuz I was wearing them. I’m like, oh, I’m fine. You’re like, what?

Corey: I was like, stone cold all over again.

Steve: Yeah. , no. Another wrestling reference. There you go. Shining Wizards.

Corey: But yeah, earplugs.

Steve: 30 Screams or Less, bridging gaps since, uh, nine. No, since 2023.

Corey: We could say 1998

Steve: Yeah, I was gonna say that.

Corey: Shit. Then this movie hadn’t even come out yet.

Steve: Yeah, you’re right. We would be talking about the future right now, which brings me back to, we always do that. Let’s talk about the future. But yeah, this girl saw her future of her dying, and they went through this whole tape. It actually ended up turning into a found footage thing, towards the end. And they found footage of her, out with her friends by Lake Mungo. And, they got a small glimpse of the image of, the daughter dead

Corey: Dude, that was, that was like the most terrifying part of the whole [00:15:00] film for me was when Alice was walking through Lake Mungo and she came upon herself as a ghost, all fucking dead and mangled and shit. But it was, it was almost like done, like a jump scare. It was like the single jump scare in the movie where she sees herself dead.

Steve: Yeah. You think that’s scary? Try listening to it with headphones on. I’m sitting here, I’m like, oh, I’m just signing something. Oh. Like what? Because like it’s ambient music going on in the background and I’m thinking, oh, whatever. It’s fine. You know? And then all of a sudden that pops up and then my eardrums are fucking blown out.

Corey: Yeah. And the audio gets really loud at that part too, so I can imagine you’re bleeding from the eardrums.

Steve: Yeah. Like more than I usually am. Just every day. Constantly bleeding from the eardrums. What? Just all day.

Corey: So when Alice is walking through the Lake Mungo there and she sees the ghost, is that like, was it at that moment when she decides to bury all her shit in the ground?

Steve: Yeah, I think that was it. She, uh, decided to just bury all of her shit in the ground. Didn’t it make sense to me though? Why bury all your shit? Like, why not just take it with you and be like, oh, [00:16:00] I just saw my future. Uh, help show people your phone and be like, I don’t know what to do with this.

Corey: Not only that, but I don’t remember how they found her phone. Wasn’t there like a bracelet or something too that her parents found after the fact? I don’t know how they knew where that stuff was when it was buried underground.

Steve: Oh, well, they somehow managed to get a video of that night from one of the friends and they saw that she was digging by a tree or like underneath the tree, and that’s where she put all of her stuff. And I guess like on her phone it showed the vision of herself dead. That’s how bad happened.

Corey: All right. That makes sense. She had a fucking Nokia. It was a Nokia phone. How was the video footage? That good?

Steve: I don’t know. Maybe like it was a

Corey: shit was, that shit was in like 4k

Steve: See, it’s bullshit. This is supposed to be a found footage now. Now we’re getting like no pixelation. Gimme a break.

Corey: Fucking bullshit. It’s not even real anymore.

Steve: I know what it’s like to have an LG Voyager. That shit isn’t great. It’s nothing but pixelation. What she had was better than mine.

And, no pixelation and looking like 4K bullshit.

I’m

Corey: you have [00:17:00] an iPhone, so

Steve: I do now. Yeah.

Corey: That’s your problem.

Steve: That’s my problem. I have a little guy. I have the iPhone 13 mini.

Corey: Is that a small phone? I don’t know.

Steve: It is, it’s a very small phone. When I put it up to my, girlfriend’s phone, I definitely get emasculated.

Corey: That’s what does it

Steve: Yep. That’s what does it. Her’s is a brick. Mine is a little dainty flower.

Corey: It fits in your tiny little bitch hands.

Steve: It does. Hey, I’d like to be able to like, move my phone around my hand and reach each side of the screen as opposed to being like, fuck, I need a three foot ruler to send a text.

Corey: Sounds like a personal problem my friend,

Steve: Yeah. I, my hands aren’t three feet wide.

Corey: Ohh God. Why?

Steve: I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re going off the rails here again.

Corey: We should just talk about porridge again.

Steve: Talk about porridge. Yeah, that’s right. Oh God. That was absurd. Why were we talking about porridge? Oh, isn’t it? Because like, we needed money and we’re broken. I was just like, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna feed myself porridge or whatever.

Corey: I don’t know, man, but I [00:18:00] like where you’re going with this.

Steve: Yeah, we need money.

Corey: We’re starting to pour a restaurant.

Steve: Porridge restaurant. Could you imagine? We’d get so many like Oliver Twists coming in.

Corey: Benjamin Buttons.

Steve: Yep. We’re just like, serving our fancy bougie porridge with our friggin steel tabletops and shit looking like we’re Chipotle. And then you got fucking dance numbers coming in, kid me like, please, sir I want more. And I’m like, more what? You just got here. I go, okay, more. And then they break off into the friggin dance numbers.

Corey: So let’s go back to the, the sex tape here,

Steve: oh God, why do you wanna go back?

Corey: So when the mother is, was it the mother that’s walking around their house? Right. She’s where they in bed or something and she hears like noise in the house and she’s walking around the house trying to find out where this noise is coming from. And she finds the neighbor snooping around the daughter’s bedroom.

Steve: Yeah. A little suss.

Corey: And

Steve: a little suss.

Corey: Finds, was it a safe or something in like the fireplace in Alice’s room

Steve: Yeah. It was a

Corey: Tape or something in it

Steve: Yep. In the safe was Alice’s, [00:19:00] little sex tape. My question though is was that like a parting gift? At the end of the session it’s like, You know what? Good show got a tape for you.

Corey: How did even record that like

Steve: Yeah, that’s, um,

Corey: Was this type of shit more acceptable in 2008?

Steve: I guess like I, I would think there would be some sort of consent, but I guess not. I mean, there would have to be some sort of consent because she had the tape, it’s not like she just goes, oh, I didn’t realize you were filming me. Can I have that tape now? They’re like, oh yeah, sure.

They probably make copies. You know, they got like one of those VHS players, where it does the dual v h s thing where you’re just like, oh, cool, I’m playing one and I’m copying onto the other one of those deals.

Corey: Yeah, I guess it’s possible.

Steve: Yeah, i,

Corey: know.

Steve: I, we’ll never know. I don’t know their entertainment stand set up. But it’s very weird. I was just sitting here and I’m like just working on a couple things I just kind of glance over and I see a dude thrusting and I’m like, ah, what the fuck? And I’m like, oh, I missed this part. This is odd. What the hell’s? I actually had to rewind and see what the hell was going on real quick.

Corey: I did too. [00:20:00] Because it’s not too long after you see that particular scene, like they play it back. That you find out what is, what was actually going on.

Steve: Yeah, she basically had a secret life going on.

Corey: Like I said, I think in the beginning here, that’s like probably the most terrifying thing in the whole movie is the family had no idea who their daughter was and their daughter, she was 15 years old.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Corey: Like, I don’t remember if they alluded to her doing drugs and all that shit, but like she was definitely rebelling against her parents, I guess.

Steve: Oh yeah. And that tends to be the case. Usually when you’re 15 years old, you’re rebelling, you want to do your own thing. You’re like, fuck you mom, fuck you, dad. And you’re just doing that bullshit. I think we’ve all done it At some point. I’d like to think I was okay, but I definitely had my fucking moody moments.

But uh, but yeah, I think we all do as teenagers we’re just pissed off. We’re all filled with frigging, I don’t know, semen and whatever, and then we’re just all hopped up. But yeah, I think, that’s what happened. She probably just had that crazy side, of doing all those things. And obviously as a teenager, you’re gotta [00:21:00] fucking tell your parents that you could be like, Hey mom, guess what I did today? I had a threesome with a married couple. Yep.

Corey: With the neighbors

Steve: Yeah, listen, so funny story. I was babysitting the kids and then all of a sudden my clothes are off.

Corey: Just started banging the kids’ parents,

Steve: It sounds like a weird little adult film.

Corey: We filmed the whole fucking thing and the tape is in the fireplace in their bedroom.

Steve: Yeah. So weird. But you know, kids do that, they do crazy shit. So sometimes it’s best to be like, yo, keep it in the house. Don’t bring the frigging married couple in. And then it all is good. I guess

Corey: That was, that was really the most fucked up part of the movie.

Steve: Yeah, I think that was the most fucked up part. Okay, so now Cory. Kids dying and a sex scene. We just got both

Corey: That’s like the, the common theme of this podcast. I woke up the other day to a text with my friend Ryan and just said, no dead kids. Finally, I forget what episode it was.

Steve: Oh, it was about The Menu because I said finally no dead kids, let’s [00:22:00] go. That was a good episode. I mean, they were all, they’re all great episodes. I like doing this, but it’s funny that we just constantly have this theme of kids dying. Okay, let’s say we review a bunch of Jason movies.

He’s just killing kids left and right. That’s common for him. So we’re gonna have to be like, we’ll review, Friday the 13 movies and be like, ah, shit. Okay, well a bunch of kids die in this one. Not just one, but fucking eight of them.

Corey: Yeah, Jason didn’t give a fuck.

Steve: No, he definitely didn’t. But also all those kids looked like they were in their friggin mid twenties, early thirties.

Corey: well, he died when he was like, how old was he when he died? Because camp counselors were too busy banging.

Steve: God, I think he was like eight or 10 years old. He was a young boy. Real young.

Corey: Again.

Steve: Yeah. Kids dying. The whole movie starts with kids dying. So the, but this is a common theme with our podcast. Sex Kids Dying and Rock and Roll and Wrestling.

Corey: I feel like we said in the very first episode that kids dying was something you don’t see often. And here we are six episodes later and I think only one of ’em hasn’t had kids dying.

Steve: You’re right. [00:23:00] The only movie that like we’ve reviewed was The Menu and it was like that was the only one where kids weren’t dying. Yeah. Here I,

Corey: to the audience.

Steve: I’m always lying to the audience. God, I’m sorry, audience. But this movie? I liked it. I thought it was very stylish. I think it was, ahead of its time. Honestly, if you look at it, it’s different.

It’s a mockumentary almost, no, not quite, because a mockumentary is like making fun Dewey Cox story. That’s a mockumentary. But this one it’s a Fake documentary, actual movie, a fauxmentary. I don’t know. I’m making up words again.

Corey: I just assume they’re all real at this.

Steve: Yeah. Just assume that every single movie we watch is reality and nothing’s fake. Everything’s real. Like all those kids dying, all the ghosts we’re seeing. That’s real. Everything’s real.

Corey: Sounds about right.

Steve: Sounds right. Sounds legit. But, what’d you think about the soundtrack?

Corey: There wasn’t a ton of music. I don’t really recall be there being a ton of music in this film. Do you.

Steve: No, I heard some ambient stuff, but nothing that could really go home and be like, oh fuck, that was good. Maybe I’ll check that out on, Spotify or whatever.

Corey: That’s another thing [00:24:00] I think that really contributed to this film being so, troubling or tragic like that there wasn’t music. So you’re really focused on the daughter disappearing and what we think is this really tragic death.

Steve: Right. You know what, I did wonder about the movie, all the footage in it, because this was, obviously, it’s not a real movie. It’s a movie made to look like a documentary. And, you’re thinking, you’re watching a documentary the whole time. All the footage that’s in there, we’ll say like the divers and the police, the newscasters and all these, different types of scenes.

You have to make those, you have to fabricate all of those. You? Or is he just like, the directors just going on there and he’s just grabbing all sorts of stock footage and just throwing it in and making it look all grainy, like it’s shot on a VHS tape.

Corey: It’s almost like that’s exactly what he did for this, you know, get a bunch of actors or a bunch of fucking nobodys and you know, act out these scenes. And I’m gonna do all the work, all the extra work with those, whatever film lenses they [00:25:00] use, all the editing that they use to just make it look like a documentary.

Steve: Right, because the movie didn’t have a ginormous budget. It did have a bigger budget than most. It had a bigger budget than Terra two, that’s for sure. The budget was 1.7 million in Australian. What does that equate to, uh, US dollars? Us.

Corey: 1.2 million.

Steve: Wow. What did you have that like, you had that really quick

Corey: I knew you were going, so I already hit the Google machine before you even finished a thought.

Steve: Great minds man great minds. Geez. Um, box office $29,850. I’m assuming that’s not good. I’m assuming that’s a ginormous bomb.

Corey: um, probably.

Steve: Yeah, I’d say so shit, movies that only make like a million more are considered bombs. I’m like, I’ll take the fucking million dollars. You kidding me? Shit, little return on investment. You’re breaking even a little bit, but you getting a few bucks. But overall I thought it was a great movie.

There were a lot of questions left unanswered, I feel, but I think that’s the whole point of it because a lot of documentaries,[00:26:00] let’s say your unsolved mystery type deal, those are all documentaries on something happening and there’s never really a clear ending.

So I think it’s meant to be like that because that’s what a lot of documentaries are like. Overall I give it a 3.7 out of five. What do you give it, Corey?

Corey: I actually ended up giving this a four.

Steve: Four. Okay. I was leaning more on that too, but I don’t know why I decided to be so like, I’m going to do a 3.7. You know? You know what? I’m gonna revise that because I like where you’re going. I’m gonna undercut you by a point again, 3.9.

Corey: God damn it, Steve.

Steve: I always do it. I don’t know. It’s like this is the prices, right. Rules, it’s whatever. It’s fun, the thing is it was a great movie. It was very unique, very stylish, and I was convinced that it was a documentary at first. It’s convincing. It’s very convincing. Oh, okay.

Google timers getting mad at me. Okay. Okay. Jeez.

Corey: That was 30 minutes already. Damn.

Steve: Yeah, it’s been 30 minutes. It happens [00:27:00] quick.

Corey: See, when you like a movie and you have things to say about it, it goes quick.

Steve: Yeah, though there were more questions asked during this review than the answers because the whole movie leaves a lot, up to speculation. And that’s because it’s kind of a documentary style, and all documentaries are like that.

Corey: Yeah, and I gotta say something about this. So, I rewound on this part a couple times actually, cuz I didn’t see it. But the very end of the movie, when the family is moving out of that house and they’re driving away and someone looks back and you can see Alice’s ghost standing in the window.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Corey: That was pretty cool. But was she like actually there, or was this just like symbolism of her family kind of moving on?

Steve: Yeah, I think it might have been, symbolic to, them leaving her at the lake and she dies and then they leave her again and she’s still at the house. So it’s almost like kind of coming full circles and it’s like the worst way to come full circles for Alice because. Either way, Alice is being, left by her family, which sucks.

So maybe that’s just a common theme is that her [00:28:00] family just keeps leaving her and she just feels isolated. Like she had that life that she couldn’t tell her parents about. It almost felt like maybe she was disconnected from them and this kind of just solidifies that by them driving away.

Corey: Yeah, maybe that’s what it meant too, like maybe she wasn’t actually there and it was just her feeling like she was always alone.

Steve: Yeah. And I could see that. I could be wrong. Like I said, it’s very up to interpretation. This movie.

Corey: Yeah, I enjoyed it and like I said when I wrote my review on Letterbox after this movie, I remember sitting for quite a while after the credits rolled, just kind of digesting what I saw and trying to, put it all together so we could talk about it on the show.

Steve: Yeah, and I watched it twice and I was trying, to do the same. I was having a little bit of trouble trying to uh, formulate an opinion because it’s a very subjective movie. You can do your own take on it. I think this, or I think that.

Whereas let’s say you watch a slasher, it’s definite, it’s like, oh, okay. So-and-so killed those people. And then at the end, the heroin, prevailed, This was what caused her to see herself as a ghost and, or see her [00:29:00] death and, why was she the only one that actually saw her death?

Why didn’t her friends, have the same issue because they were in the same spot? Was she picked out for some weird reason? The whole thing is just pretty much open-ended.

Corey: Oh yeah, definitely open for interpretation. Everyone that watches it’s gonna, formulate a different opinion on it. Think something, something else happened like you and I both thought something different happened.

Steve: Yeah, you and I we’re talking about this the whole time right now, and we’re just like, I, I don’t know. I mean, we knew it was good. We knew like, we were watching a very like unique and stylish movie, but we just, don’t have a definitive end to that movie. Really.

Corey: Nope, and I’m okay with that. I’m, I’m okay with having an open-ended movie because like we were saying, formulate your own thoughts and your own opinions on it because it’s, everyone’s gonna think. The ending was different.

Steve: Absolutely. I love open-ended movies. I love open-ended ending movies, and, movies actually where the bad guy or whatever, prevails. I’ve seen a few, and I’m just like, [00:30:00] yes, damnit, finally give me a bad ending. , you know,

Corey: Yeah. Just like Voldemort.

Steve: Yep, exactly. Oh, there was one movie Arlington Road, and this was a thriller like way back in the day where, the bad guy prevailed and it was such a fucking gnarly ending. And I saw that and I was like, yes. The bad guy prevailed for once.

You know, it’s like Arlington Road, with Tim Meadows. Wrong. That’s not who I’m meaning. Tim Arlington Road movie.

Corey: Tim Robbins.

Steve: Tim Robbins. Yeah.

Corey: Joan Cusack.

Steve: Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s a deep dive. Yeah, it’s a deep dive. It’s a 1999 film.

Corey: Jesus Christ. We are never gonna talk about that on this piece of shit

Steve: No, no. I mean we have a list. We have this whole friggin crazy list, I’m sure of movies. We gotta see. That one is gonna be far from now, I’m sure. But who knows? You know what this kind of transitions into, if there’s anything you wanna see us review, If there’s anything you want to hear us review, I had to fix that there because they ain’t seeing us yet.

We don’t have video. Uh, if [00:31:00] there’s anything you want to hear us review, please be sure to reach out to us. We’re all of a social media now. We’re on, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. All of it’s. 30 screams or Less. Also if you go to a website, 30screamsorless.com, we’re putting up all of our past shows up there with transcriptions, everything like that.

So be sure to check that out. Corey, I think we can actually start wrapping it up here because we’ve hit our 30 minutes. We’ve gone past our 30 minutes. I

Corey: I was gonna say.

Steve: Yeah, we could keep going, but I think we’ve got our point across. We gave our review. We can take the pin, fall and get outta here. Call it a day.

Corey: I’m ready to kick out. I’m done. No, I’m ready to let, I’m ready to put the shoulders down. That’s what I’m doing. I’m not kicking out from this one.

Steve: No. No. Until next episode will kick out. But yeah, this one we’ll take the three count. We’ll move on and everyone will see us again. Once again, everyone, thank you very much for listening to 30 Screams or Less. Be sure to check us out all over social media again, and if you listen to us on any of the services like apple Music, [00:32:00] Spotify, whatever, be sure to leave a glowing review so that way, it bumps our numbers up, people get to see us more, all that good stuff. So if you do that, that’d be fantastic.

Corey: Yeah. Be sure to go tell the Shining Wizards Network guys that you’re so pumped that they picked us up too.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah. Check out the whole network. Shining wizards network.com. And they got, a bunch of programs up there. There’s like the Shining Whizzes podcast, radioactive metal wrestling night in Canada. All sorts of things. A lot of it’s wrestling based, but they’re branching out. You’re gonna get a bunch of other podcasts.

Our logo’s gonna be up there soon, you’ll see. But All right, everyone with that in mind. Thank y’all for listening to 30 Screams or Less. I’m Steve

Corey: And I’m Cory.

Steve: and have a good night.