Fear & There

Jay is joined yet again by his an obnoxious cohort of childhood friends to review 2022's Justin Long instant classic, Barbarian.

In episode 44, Jay's brother returns to take things down a few decibels with Mike Flanagan's high-concept, home-invasion thriller.

After a long wait, we're finally back with another Fear & There and Friends edition, covering one of our favorite horror-comedies. Tune in if you're into all that macho stuff—what are you, a sociology major?

In this episode, we tackle Jordan Peele's Nope and discuss our favorite films involving extra terrestrials—with a special guest.

Jay is joined by three of his childhood friends to talk about an unconventional comfort watch starring Christian Bale

Asha is back to talk about Alex Garland's immensely uncomfortable film Men

Zach is back! Join us for a very special episode of Fear & There, where we discuss the 2021 legacy sequel Candyman.

In our first episode in a few months (sorry everyone!), we're hitting the pit for A24's gore-heavy indie film Green Room.

In our latest installment of Fear & There & Friends, Jay is joined by his dad and brother to talk about the (not-so-horror) films Ghostbusters I & II. Don't cross the streams!

In our 36th episode, Jay is joined by two High School friends to talk about 2001's campy-yet-creepy Jeepers Creepers.

In Episode 35, Jay is joined by his fiancé Julie and.... the in-laws (almost)! Listen to us dissect the oddly fun and undeniably campy Freaky starring Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton.

In our second installment of Fear & There & Friends, Jay sits down with his old college roommate and OG horror movie friend to talk about the oft-overlooked supernatural Irish film The Hole in the Ground.

In the first episode in a series we're calling "Fear & There & Friends", our dear friend Asha grabs the mic to sit in for Zach, while he's tending to his newborn baby. Join us as we discussed the infinitely disgusting but undeniable capable body-horror film Raw.

In episode 32, Zachary and Jay trade frustrations on the latest installment of James Wan's Conjuring Universe

In this special episode, Zachary and Jay talk about a movie that they... wait for it... saw at a movie theater! Join us for a chat about A Quiet Place Part II, and what makes a good movie theater snack.

His House is a 2020 Netflix film that has substance, style, and more than its share of scares. Listen in as we dissect this modern horror gem.

1BR isn't the best movie, but it certainly isn't the worst. Listen in as we try to make sense of this middling movie

On episode 28, we revisit an old Sam Raimi favorite from 2009. Is it still good? We're... not sure.

A24's latest horror phenomenon is another debut—this time about a devout Catholic who works as a hospice nurse. Listen in as we weigh in on the virtues of Saint Maud.

Marrowbone is a period horror film that aims to tackle grief, trauma, and ghosts. Listen in as Jay and Zachary try to tackle how the hell they feel about this movie.

Unfriended: Dark Web is an interesting sequel in a very singular new genre of POV horror. Tune in to hear what we think of this possibly gimmicky concept.

For our first episode of 2021 (actually recorded in 2020), we're tackling a horror heavy hitter. Listen in as Zachary and Jay don't see eye to eye on one of the genre's most iconic films.

On this special holiday episode of Fear & There, we tackle Black Christmas, one of the few holiday horror movies that's worth digging into.

Hellraiser is undoubtedly campy, but it's also undoubtedly capable. In our 23rd episode, we tackle the first film in one of the most creatively brutal franchises in horror movie history.

Join Jay, Zachary, and their two better halves Julie and Mandy to discuss 1999's cultural phenomenon The Sixth Sense.

Tune in to a very special Halloween episode where we discuss A Nightmare on Elm Street—1984's unabashed supernatural slasher classic.

A true part of torture-horror canon, Audition leads its viewers to a dark, romantic pit of despair. Join us and a special guest for a deep dive into one of horror cinema's most disturbing entries.

The Platform is a movie that some critics claim "we need right now". But, for our 19th episode, we'll try to convince you why it's a lot more complicated than that.

For our 18th episode, we tackle our oldest film to date—1960's medical slasher Eyes Without a Face.

On episode 17, we dive into 2020's Relic, a supernatural horror film about three generations of a family grappling with dementia.

Join Zach, Jay, and two very special guests to discuss Mark Duplass's manic, oddball, found-footage film Creep for our 16th episode.

Our 15th episode sees us reviewing Candyman, what many consider to be a horror classic. We also welcome a very special guest to weigh in—Robbie from the Straight Chilling Podcast.

On episode 14, we dig into 2019's Dr. Sleep, the endlessly complicated, contextually problematic sequel to Kubrick's The Shining.

Austrian filmmaking team Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (GOODNIGHT MOMMY, 2014) bring us the 2019 isolation-horror film THE LODGE, starring Riley Keough as an ex-suicide-cult member marrying into a family of jerks. THE LODGE battles substance with style and loses, but lessons are learned along the way. In this episode, intrepid friends Jay & Zachary mine this mother for all its worth, arriving at a rubric of sorts for the horror genre: don't do what this film does. Do something else.

Alejandro Amenábar's 2001 Gothic horror tale The Others  is a masterclass in understatement and proof that a small budget doesn't have to collar big ideas. Starring Nicole Kidman as an evangelical mother who can't see what's right in front of her, The Others is an effective ghost story set in an haunted  house on the remote Isle of Jersey in waning days of WWII.In this episode, we argue the merits of the high concept twist, the frightening variables of shadows and creaks, and whether Jay's girlfriend Julie has finally found a horror movie she can stomach (spoiler: she hasn't).

Ari Aster's second film, MIDSOMMAR, is lurid. A midnight sun shines over a remote Swedish village -- a village of visceral iconography and high body counts, of ritualistic suicide and traditional hallucinogenic drink, of faith and of sacrifice. In other words, a perfect spot to vacation for a group of graduate anthropology students and one grieving protagonist. Aster's sophomore film doesn't so much depart from HEREDITARY's brutal and tragic leitmotifs as it does double-down on them and shift them into an alien world of violent, high-contrast coloring. Dani (Florence Pugh) delivers a bravura performance as the grief-stricken survivor of a homicide-suicide that left her sister and parents dead. Join us for a special guest episode of Fear & There as we discuss whether she should have just stayed at home.

In some ways, the horror golden age would inevitably lead to a film like Ari Aster's  2018 debut Hereditary, a deeply disturbing dive into a family's ravaged psyche following the death of a family member. Rarely do we see such assured filmmaking right out of the gate — and Aster's 2019 followup Midsommar quickly dispelled the notion that he was a one-trick pony. Hereditary has all of the marks of a master: thoughtful pacing, deliriously sharp photography, and a career-topping performance from Toni Collette (don't leave home without one). It is an awful, awful ride.For this episode of Fear & There, Zachary and Jay sit down with Jay's older and cooler brother Eric to talk Hereditary — and even get to gauge his fears in real time. Poor guy.

Even though The Devil's Backbone is Guillermo del Toro's third feature, it'd be accurate to paint it as the famed Mexican filmmaker's official debut into society as an artist of great merit. Released in 2001 and set in 1939, during the waning period of the Spanish Civil War, the film marks an introduction to some of the themes and iconography that del Toro would go on to develop in future films, most notably in his second film in the same milieu: 2006's Pan's Labyrinth. In many respects, revisiting The Devil's Backbone  after del Toro's ascent into movie-making royalty is to probe the director's past for the seeds of his ideas. This is a film with visible kinks. That's not a bad thing. For fans of light horror in the desert, Spanish language mytho-poetics, and corny CG.

Oz Perkins returns with his third feature, 2020's Gretel & Hansel, a deceptively intelligent and spooky subversion of the Grimm Brothers' famous fairy tale.  Perkins, who helmed The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), is known for slow-burning, heady films. And while Gretel & Hansel is no departure from the form, it sure is a wicked improvement. For fans of witches and The Witch.

In Fabric: In which British director Peter Strickland tackles giallo cinema by way of A24 pastiche horror film-making. But don't let the pretension of the preceding line fool you: this is a silly film about a silly dress that kills people in silly ways. In Fabric  wasn't the best film either of us saw last year, or the scariest, but it may have been the most absurd. Though the gorgeous cinematography, clever score, and some much-needed realism from  actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste doesn't quite make In Fabric a movie worth seeing--it definitely makes it a film you should listen to us talk about.

In 1990, an unstoppable Rob Reiner set his directorial sights on his second Stephen King adaptation: Misery. Featuring a canny performance by James Caan as the bestselling novelist-turned-hostage, and a legendarily bravura turn by Kathy Bates as his psychotic "number one fan," Misery is a tense, compact thriller with equal measures of silliness and horror. In this episode, we argue and agree as usual--but really you just want to hear us talk about *that scene*, don't you? You know the one. 

The Nightingale is perhaps 2019's scariest film, but not by the genre metrics you're used to. As horror fans, we're often called upon to suspend our disbelief. Take, say, the films of Ari Aster, which are founded on bedrocks of emotional and psychological verisimilitude. Despite this, they still ask us to accept demon princes and Scandinavian supernaturalism as almost pedestrian realities. Not so with Jennifer Kent's followup to The Babadook. In this episode, J & Z stare through the void of realism and the void of realism stares back. The Nightingale is as horrible as its premise remote: taking place during the Tasmanian Black War of the 1820s and 30s, the film repeatedly subjects its viewers to representations of explicit, sexual violence. It's horrible, but is it horror?These two friends come at the film from opposing opinions but land in the center--a bit worse for wear.

2019’s Netflix-stamped release In The Tall Grass may be doomed to a quick and just obscurity in the depths of endless streaming schlock, but that doesn’t mean that we’re above it. Well, sure it does, but we’ll watch it anyway. For this week’s by-the-numbers horror film, Vincenzo Natali (Cube) adapts a 2012 novella by Stephen King and Joe Hill about people who get lost in tall grass. Patrick Wilson, of The Conjuring fame (and HBO’s adaptation of Angels in America – remember that?), does a villainous turn in a movie that blends supernaturalism, time-travel, eternal life, and super-strength into a rancid bathtub gin. 

Episode Three explores David Cronenberg’s (The Fly, Videodrome) 1979 Freudian gross-out classic: The Brood. In the last episode, a self-described Big Fan attempted to initiate a neophyte—in this one, the tables have turned. Will the conversion take?To be sure, this is a doozy of an initiation: The Brood finds Cronenberg at his angriest and most psychodramatic. At the heart of this mystery is the advent of a vanguard therapy technique known as “psychoplasmics,” in which a patient is coerced into physically manifesting their past traumas onto their body. Daddy issues turn into seeping pustules. A film that Cronenberg wrote and directed while going through an acrimonious divorce, The Brood is as explicit as a candidate’s attack ad. On fully display: critiques of marriage, women, child-rearing, therapy, the patriarchy—you name it.

In which a seasoned veteran of the franchise attempts to initiate his friend into the Paranormal Activity universe by making him watch its fifth installment. The Marked Ones is Christopher Landon’s (Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U) turn in the director’s chair after having contributed only writing and producing credits on the preceding three PA films. Among the many burning questions our fearful friends tackle is whether a film like The Marked Ones can stand alone in a mythology-filled franchise, or whether the film requires context for optimum enjoyment. The answer they find—one they disagree on—is whether this film is enjoyable in any context. Mileage may vary.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is artful, relentless horror—a deeply subjective experience of terror which offers its viewers no reprieve. Though the film spawned a wave of slasher-film lookalikes, it persists as the genre’s crowning achievement—a 70s film, complete with all of that decade’s period trappings, that warrants revisiting—or, in our case, a first-time look. As long-distance, longtime friends based in Ohio and New York, we come together to dissect the films that we love—or hate—and to bicker ceaselessly with each other while bragging about how unafraid we are. Fear and There is a testament to our friendship and to our love of and frustration with the horror genre.