what do you think I think we’re dead meat real did meat go ahead let us find the one who passes that mate hey everybody welcome to what’s your favorite scary movie where I talk to people about their favorite horror movies today’s guest is Rhett mcLaughlin of Internet’s rhett and Link hey Rhett hey what’s up James how you doing man I’m doing all right considering everything I hope you are too man yeah as you can see I have fully embraced the quarantine look yeah I wasn’t cutting my hair or my beard before any of this happened for like months but now I just look like somebody who’s been in quarantine for months on my own is that something you’re kind of leaning into well I’ve always been I mean people know this about me I am a little bit obsessed with the apocalypse like I’m one of those guys that’s sort of like a prepper light we got plenty of stuff at our house I mean we took masks to the hospital just to give you an idea this stuff that we that we had in our house because I already had in 95 masks I don’t know why I’m just like ahead of time before viruses yeah yeah now that I’m in the midst of an apocalyptic event I’m kind of ready for things get back to normal yeah at least you’re prepared for it man Yeah right thank you so much for joining me on this quarantine friendly show where I can just talk to people remotely about their favorite horror movie and your favorite horror movie you told me it was the cabin in the woods yes you know it’s interesting because we talked a little bit about this before and I originally thought that I would end up talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre right because when somebody asks you what your favorite thing is a lot of times I and just kind of talking about what’s the most influential or the most significant so for me Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first horror movie that I could remember watching and I was in sixth grade I was at Adam Nicholson’s house for a birthday party and we were all sitting there watching this just completely just heinous and it was sort of like my introduction to horror and it was what hooked me my son and I have been watching horror movies like every weekend my 16 year old and I kind of have like a horror movie night and I was like kind of want to confirm that Texas Chainsaw Massacre was my favorite because I haven’t watched it in many years maybe was just sitting there watching it with my 16 year old kid and I was kind of like to find this movie annoying now like it’s I mean I just forget how annoying the one character the Franklin Franklin is just yeah I couldn’t take Franklin like something about growing up made me not be be able to take Franklin right after that we watched the cabin in the woods and that was when it kind of hit me I was like interestingly it didn’t plan this but there’s so many there’s parallels between the two and a lot of crazy ways but it is I think it’s got to be my favorite for a lot of different reasons did you see it when it first came out in theaters back in 2012 oh yeah and did you know anything going into it when you for know what that’s the thing that that was the key is that I literally knew nothing I just knew that Joss Whedon was involved no one even told me like oh there’s a there’s a twist or there’s some interesting take I don’t know how I would have interpreted it otherwise but because of that I just I was in the perfect state of mind for it me too man I remember going to the theater with a big group of friends and all I had heard was that it was a good movie and that’s it nothing about a twist or anything and I just remember the number of times my mind was blown watching that movie was just unparalleled with any other movie watching experience it was just like how are they doing this not one of those guys that tries to figure out a movie as I’m watching it I like to just get lost in it and just let it happen to me so I remember it being well into like halfway through the movie when I really started to understand what was happening but of course this time watching it and realizing they actually start the whole movie with the engineers I totally forgot about that yeah that opening scene really sets the tone even I mean that’s one of my favorite things about the movie is just how funny it is you know it’s kind of like scream where it’s still a lot of horror elements it’s still scary it’s still pretty graphic but I think even more so than scream it just focuses so much on being funny and is so successful with that ancient one the two engineers oh man yeah Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford without them I don’t know it would have been a completely different movie because there’s just like humor on two different levels right with the kids basically you’re laughing at sort of the art types and the critique of like a slasher film and there’s something in that okay I’m drawing a line in the [ ] sand here do not read the Latin but with them it’s just like good writing it’s just just good funny dialogue between two really funny guys so a huge part of the reason I love it socially called Japan so I’m gonna take the rest weekend off Yeah right there Japanese what are they gonna do relax yeah I mean Bradley Whitford Saul ways been one of my favorite under some comedic actors and I didn’t even watch The West Wing which I think is his biggest yeah yeah it’s most well-known for but I’m just a lifelong Billy Madison fan you know the bad guy that hates Triscuit crackers in the car you should’ve had some well maybe if you told me they were delicious Triscuit crackers I could have enjoyed them with you I’m sorry well sorry doesn’t put the Triscuit crackers in my stomach that does it Carl and his he just has these little moments like I was just rewatching cabin I’m always noticing things that I didn’t before like when Richard Jenkins makes fun of him for betting on the mermen and he’s like what’s that supposed to mean and then Richard Jenkins goes and talks to other people in the foreground into the background you see Bradley Whitford just do like the pistol like head turn away a little motion like that was so funny to me well and then the the payoff of the Merman is just yeah it is oh come on yeah there’s a lot there’s a lot to love in when you first saw this movie that sounds like it immediately struck a chord with you yeah you know it’s funny because as you know I’m a horror fan but not necessarily a slasher genre fan I’m more supernatural thriller the idea of somebody being possessed or there being a ghost or demon around is more personally scary to me than like a dude with a chainsaw yeah I said it just feels weird Lee more unrealistic to me I don’t know why so I think that it allowed me to articulate a bunch of problems that I had with the slasher genre that I would not have been able to actually articulate if you ask me why don’t you like it but it was like oh actually it’s because it feels like the characters are usually being manipulated into making really bad decisions for the sake of the plot and there’s these conventions that always end up happening and you’re just like why are the characters so stupid but then the way that they translate that into oh they’re actually being drugged that’s why they’re making bad decisions and why does this couple think it’s a good idea to screw in the woods oh because these pheromones got released you know it’s like so many of those pieces coming together as a satire as a critique on the slasher film was like he was saying something that I wasn’t able to articulate myself I think that’s why this is also one of my favorite horror movies because like you said it’s so perfectly lasers in on the problems with slashers and even kind of offers an explanation like I know that those characters were real dumb but maybe they were just being manipulated into doing that they even have the idea at first okay we have to stick together if we want to win this thing and then they just pump a more full of drugs and they’re like no we should we should split up we should definitely split up this is right yeah good idea really it’s funny because I think that the moment where they’re about to have sex in the woods and you know that her tops about to come off and then it cuts to the engineers and all the dudes are just sitting there looking just waiting was like such a relatable moment I think about being a teenager watching a horror movie and just even though no one’s talking about it all the dudes in the room are just waiting for this moment with that same sort of mouth a gate look on their face and the way that they were able to capture that with a bunch of adult men was just it’s a beautiful moment yeah it’s exactly that moment when you’re watching a horror movie with your friends when you’re younger and you’re like oh it might happen and nobody says anything you’re right they just capture it perfectly look Tori chick shot and even I love how Bradley Whitford in that moment kind of revert to like a teenage boy I think he’s like okay baby show us the boobies and yeah I think a lots been said about how the engineers kind of function as audience surrogates I mean there’s even a shot of Bradley Whitford eating popcorn and yeah I just think that adds to the brilliance of this movie it works on so many different levels being able to understand these five art types that exist like we watch them back-to-back we did a double feature of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then cabin in the woods and same set up is five people three guys two girls obviously Franklin is the fool you don’t really have the virgin but you have who kind of represents the girl that’s good you know is gonna make it to the end and it just made me start thinking like Oh bliss Texas Chainsaw Massacre one of the first times that it was done in this formulaic way because I don’t know enough about horror history but I know that Texas Chainsaw Massacre was so groundbreaking for its time but then you really notice it when you watch it back just how cheaply made it was which is one of the things that makes it such an incredible accomplishment but it just set the tone for so many things and it made me think I’ll kind of want to do like a study of how many movies have followed this exact formula since that time and I love that cabin in the woods has someone who we all know and respect and is kind of a legend of the genre Sigourney Weaver coming out and being that authoritative figure and explaining it all to everyone oh yeah I mean first of all I heard that they wrote the screenplay in three days which seems absolutely ridiculous that that’s possible but it’s one of those things that you could just imagine Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard like breaking the story and they’re like oh and the director is Sigourney Weaver and you’re like well yeah of course if we can get her it’s one of those things where you know that they got their first choice in the second we said okay well who is the top of our list and there’s the list is one and it’s Sigourney Weaver in that moment you’re like oh man they were actually able to pull this off I don’t know how but they did we were and interestingly also wasn’t I mean I’ve always respected just whedon but I like I’m not a Buffy fan that wasn’t really I kind of missed that wave I wasn’t a huge Buffy fan it’s just strange that it can i connect it with us so much and since you know that was Goddard’s like directorial debut I’ve enjoyed a lot of stuff that he’s done since then I wasn’t anticipating it and I think it’s one of those moments where Ellis people were like oh we should go see this people are saying that it’s good that was all that was it that was all I knew so I was in the right headspace I think that’s sometimes the best way to see a movie is just oh that’s good okay don’t tell me any more I’ll see it exactly all right so obviously the movie is pretty great start to finish from that opening hilarious scene where they’re just nonchalantly talking about the kids safety mechanisms on Bradley Whitford cupboards at home did the upper cabinets it’ll be 30 before he can reach I’m assuming to the last shot of the Elder Gods reaching up through the earth and ending the world but what are some of your favorite moments in the movie that really stand out to you one of my favorite things about the whole film is the fact that they in the process of sort of skewing the idea of the slasher film they also did what no slasher film would ever do and that is your protagonists just kind of give up at the end and smoke a joint you know the fact that they’re sitting there and they make a decision to get high when all they have to really do is make a super easy a simple decision to save all of humanity they don’t do it so it’s almost like the giant hand of the ancient one coming up is just kind of giving you the middle finger it might as well be yeah might as well it would have betrayed everything that they were trying to say if they hadn’t ended it like that the genius of that really didn’t hit me until watching it again I remember leaving that theater that first time and being like I can’t believe that they actually did that and I think now you know were eight years out from it we’re used to media that is really self reflective and meta and comments on itself and the tropes around it everything’s kind of self referential and interconnected but I don’t think that was quite as much the case back then when I saw this for the first time I was just astounded by how self-aware it was yeah yeah that’s a good point though that it’s become more common this is also the kind of thing that you can bring anybody to feel like oh I’m not a hard fan oh it doesn’t matter you a comedy fan are you a satire fan because you would enjoy this he’s what are you doing with these okay I get it who gave you these you taught you about these learn it from you okay yeah but it was also there’s parts that are actually legitimately scary especially the first time I watched it I was like oh this is I’m totally being shown the curtain is being pulled back for how I am being manipulated as an audience member but yet I’m still fighting this scary this just kind of crazy they were able to pull that off yeah I actually think that the Buckner family is kind of like an under sung part of the movie because I think especially when you get to the end and you see all the the zany creative monsters that they have in store some people who watch this movie are like well why couldn’t we have gotten the unicorns or the mermen running around for the whole movie but I think the reason the movie works is because it takes such a standard a zombie redneck torture family and it puts them as the main antagonists a winner [Applause] maybe zombified pain worshiping backwoods idiots but there are zombified pain worshiping backwards a bit but it does them so well like Mathew Buckner the big bike real wet Slipknot booking guy he is a scary mofo man it’s yeah definitely and I love the fact that even before you know the elevator system sort of reveals all the different options you kind of know what they are because of the betting board help me recognize the interchangeable nature of the antagonist and a horror film it’s like this is sort of a paint-by-numbers thing and you could have just put anything in there and it’s super smart that they chose something that’s been done a lot but then you still got to enjoy when the mayhem kind of breaks out at the end you got to see a unicorn kill somebody they had to make all these monsters and they had like a team of 60 people I think that we’re working on costumes at the time because they basically had to create an army of monsters and I think that’s probably one of the reasons that people were initially hesitant because it’s just like yeah yeah it’s it’s really about these zombies but we have to make like every single monster that you could imagine possibly being in a horror movie okay yeah it’s just for like the last 20 minutes that they really all get shown but man right I don’t think anyone who watches this movie is gonna forget those last 20 minutes oh no there’s always something that you can find wrong with a movie and it seems like the most common specific criticism I see if this movie is a single shot it’s the shot of the bird flying into the force field when they first go through that mountain pass and I’ve seen so many people comment oh why’d they have that it would have been more entertaining for Chris Hemsworth to ride his motorcycle into that without us knowing that and for me I’ve never really questioned it you know they’re dropping throughout the movie the guy on the roof and cutting back to Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins just these little like bread crumbs starting to lead you to what’s actually going on and to me that’s always been a part of it so it never bothered me but if you had creative control would you take that shot out you know like I was saying earlier when I watch I don’t tend to be the kind of person that’s thinking about things on that level and even though I create things for a living I still a lot of times don’t get super critical because I just like to be an audience member so at the time no not a problem at all now that you mention it I do realize that the moment when Chris Hemsworth character runs into it with a motorcycle would have been more surprising without the bird for sure even though it’s still surprising cuz you kind of forget that that’s what happened or if you’re like me you’ve kind of forgotten that by the time you get to that point and you’re like oh yeah there’s a wall okay I remember that now I actually think that speaks to how good the movie is that the most common criticism I hear of it is so specific and narrow and it’s just like that’s just one shot you know like it’s nothing on a bigger level it’s nothing about the writing or the acting it’s just like yeah man that was a great movie that one shot there is one thing but I’m we gonna turn it into a question for you what oh when we go through what I try to stump you okay is a problem that people have pointed out that and when I thought about I was like oh yeah but we’ll see we’ll see if you can figure it out I’ll give you some hints I’m so curious all right so I’ve asked you to come up with a couple of trivia questions to try to stump me about your favorite horror movie and I just gotta let you know you have a little bit of a disadvantage here because I did cover this on a kill cow and it’s I think my second longest kill count because I went so hard in the research because there was so look out for this movie so I’m curious to see how deep these questions go okay all right I’m up for the challenge okay here we go all right do you think that the coffee mug telescoping bong featured in the movie that Marty’s character uses so aggressively is a real product like could I go online and purchase it yes I have not looked at it to purchase but my editor Zoran when I was making the kill count for this movie messaged me and said hey I have the telescopic bong if you want to put it in the background so because it has been in my apartment I’m gonna have to say yes you can get that product yes you can get it at not a sponsor coffee mug pipe comm and it is sold out they also have a Rasta version what does that entail just colors yeah exactly you have fully-functional I imagine it says so but of course it says very clearly on the website that it is a tobacco pipe tobacco products only so keep that in mind I wonder how much longer companies will have to keep up that ruse you know so okay so I walked into that one well if you’ve done that level of research then you’re gonna know this one so what videogame had a tie-in with the movie Oh left for dead yes which I actually didn’t mention in my coverage of the movie because I don’t really play that game and so I didn’t include it in my script but boy did the comments let me know that what the the the boomer and the the which character I guess they were included in in the little boxes yeah so it was originally planned to be a more specific tie in and there was gonna be basically downloadable content in the game based on some of the different settings in the movie oh but they scrapped that basically because of MGM’s financial problems with the movie getting delayed and so they couldn’t time it out so what they ended up doing is they ended up inserting those characters at the very end so those left 4 dead characters which I wasn’t familiar with the franchise so I didn’t even know that’s where they came from that’s interesting because I know that a lot of people would be interested in playing a video game version of cabin in the woods where you get a randomly assigned monster although it’s kind of like have you ever played the board game betrayal at a house on the hill I know it’s a board game where it almost functions as the same kind of thing with cabin in the woods because you’re you’re going through and you’re kind of building this mansion and then a heart will happen at some point and there are like 50 different monsters that depending on the circumstances you look up in a book and then it’s like each of them have different wind criteria alright so you’re two for two okay now this goes back to what I handed out before what is legitimately the biggest plot hole in the entire movie oh no oh man a plot a plot hole and I’ll give you your first tent it has to do with Marty’s character plot hole with Marty the stoner who’s weed immunized him from the effects of their their drugs it’s not that because that’s great yeah yeah no that’s awesome Oh oh man you know I was so excited to finally have a perfect score on one of these trivia runs but I’m gonna have to give up I don’t know the answer okay so of course when Judah Buckner kills Marty it you know in the first third there’s an earlier shot in the movie where the engineers are monitoring everyone’s vital signs so if Marty lived through that initial attack and the engineers would have known that he it would have been a surprise but at the fact that it was a surprise only when he comes out of nowhere at the end kind of betrays the idea that the engineers at least somebody watching those vital signs would have known yeah and that’s never addressed that totally makes sense because they have all that information on the screens in front of them and you know you would think that when they pulled that in it shook which I imagine isn’t what it’s supposed to do they just write it off as I think they’re like oh they’re getting a little Riley down there it doesn’t make sense that they didn’t find out until they got a call from I believe the director telling them that yeah the director let them know something that they already revealed that they would know which a little strange in it yeah in an otherwise perfect movie yeah exactly I think once again that speaks to just the quality of the movie that you don’t really think about that yeah and honestly I don’t really care you know having been informed I’m like [ ] you know what I don’t care yeah it doesn’t matter you know I did all right yeah yeah I’d say I thought I was gonna get you on two out of three but you’ve got two out of three so well done one day I’ll get a perfect score though fingers crossed man thanks so much for joining me for this right it was a pleasure to talk to you man yeah it’s always good to connect with somebody other than your immediate family that you’re sharing a home with during these weird times yeah you start to forget about other people and wonder if they’re even real right exactly thanks again for joining us a while back on the podcast you and link that was a great conversation mmm I encourage anyone who didn’t already see it to check that out now and yeah I hope that you and yours are all weathering this okay you know as best as you can yeah you too man whose we’re all kind of living through our own version of a post-apocalyptic movie so yeah we’re all doing our best well thanks a lot man I appreciate it yeah thanks for having me and thanks everyone for watching I think we have more episodes coming up I forget because I’m filming these out of order and I don’t know what order I’ll release them in so maybe there’s more ahead stay tuned be good people