We Recommend: A Movie Podcast
We Recommend is a movie podcast where every week Jesse and Jason discuss a movie that they love and recommend you to watch and then come back and listen to their podcast!
We Recommend: A Movie Podcast
The Empty Man
Start with a bottle on a bridge, end with a symbol carved into fate. We took The Empty Man for what it is—a detective story that slowly dissolves into cosmic horror—and followed it down every corridor of cult logic, black posters, and whispered rules. From the Bhutan prologue’s bone-fingered relic to a Missouri that feels half-remembered, we map how urban legend ritual becomes a thought virus and how a doomsday movement turns philosophy into a weapon.
We talk performances and why the lead works so well as an almost-too-normal anchor. Then we dig into the Pontifex Institute, Stephen Root’s unnervingly calm sermon, and the film’s smart critique of repetition, technology, and desire. If thought plus concentration plus time equals flesh, who gets to write the script? The Tulpa idea isn’t just lore dressing; it reframes the investigation, the grief, and the ending. Once you see the town as an echo chamber and the “antenna” as policy, the camp ritual and hospital reveal snap into ruthless focus.
This conversation doesn’t just recap; it probes why the scares land. Silence that drops before footsteps. A crowd moving in lockstep. A file with your name on it already filled in. We compare The Empty Man’s cosmic dread to Longlegs’ satanic flavor, run through the good-bad-ugly-fine (yes, the sauna scene), and pick smart double features that rhyme with its reality slippage and urban legend spine. If you care about cult movies, cosmic horror, urban legends, and philosophy that actually bites, you’ll find plenty to rewind here.
Hit play, share with a friend who loves mind-benders, and tell us: did the ending crown a new god or just prove that belief builds monsters? Subscribe, rate, and leave a review—your thoughts shape what we cover next.
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Music produced by Joey Prosser. X @mrjoeyprosser
Hello and welcome to the We Recommend Podcast, a movie podcast where every week we recommend a movie for you to watch, and then come back here and listen to us discuss. I'm Jesse. I'm Jason. You're our Tolpa, our empty man.
SPEAKER_05:Cause this week we recommend the empty man.
SPEAKER_01:Do you notice on the title screen how it does it have the letter P and empty? Yeah, it's empty. There's no people.
SPEAKER_04:It's nothing. There's nothing. This bladder is empty. You're supposed to stare into the abyss right where that P is. P stands for abyss. Oh. Or P. That makes sense. Nothing made sense.
SPEAKER_01:Jason, what did you think of the movie and the ending? I really liked it. I really liked the I thought it was a cool ass movie, and I really like the main character, James. Yes. He was funny. He is also pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:So it's it's uh James Dale Badge. Badgley is something I think he's always kind of just a side character in movies. He's like an Iron Man 3 and as just like a guy that's there to fight for five five minutes in that movie. And a lot of his movies is kind of a side character. He's a blank slate of almost of a of a person in most movies. And I was like, oh, that's why they get because he's a perfect, he's perfect at just being a person, right? Yes, there's nothing really that special about him or anything. He's just kind of there, like all of us.
SPEAKER_01:I really liked his mannerisms. Yeah, no. He thinks of the bear, he's like, okay.
SPEAKER_04:It's true, it's true. That the line of yeah, no, it's a perfect delivery. It's honestly the most yeah, that's what everybody would think. I'm from San Francisco. When he started saying that, I was like, all right. He's an NPC. When he said it by the second time, I was like, this guy is not real. He's seen some things. I just feel like this is this is weird dialogue for this guy all of a sudden. Because all of a sudden it's just like, oh, I remembered I'm from San Francisco. Let me say it three times in 30 minutes in the movie. And I'm like, there's something to that. You think I haven't seen things? Yeah. Um, yeah, man. This movie, so it came out in 2020, right? Uh pandemic. So this is actually a graphic novel. Oh, cool. Yeah. They took everything away from the graphic novel. I thought I was gonna ask if it was a comic book.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so I guess it was it was kind of like this whole like Doomsday Cult thing in the comic book. And the empty man actually brings like a plague or like disease. Funny that it came out in 2020. Yes. It's honestly kind of a perfect 2022, uh, 2020 movie. I'm surprised I never heard of it. Yeah, well, that's because so it didn't have very good test screenings and it came out with kind of bad negative reviews. And then it had one trailer, they dumped it in theater for like a week or two, and they're like, ah, fuck this shit. And then they're like, it's COVID. Here you go, HBO Max. And then people were like, actually, kind of good. These rules. What happened why did nobody like this? Like, why did critics have a thing? And then it kind of immediately it it's a movie that came out, immediately got a cult following before it even had a chance to have any sort of following, really. And it was like, cool. And so I was so excited to watch it and I didn't know anything about it. And then I was like, oh, this is my shit. As everyone should know now, because of all the movies we've covered this Halloween season, this is my shit. Cults, cult shit.
SPEAKER_03:It's so fun to me.
SPEAKER_04:Um, where was it going? Yeah, but yeah, and it was um it was the last movie made by Fox before under the Fox title, before getting, you know, and then they got bought out by Disney, and then Disney was like, I don't know what to do with this shit. We don't make these type of movies. We're gonna Disney. Here it is, streaming services, everybody enjoy it. So that's why it also doesn't even have like a um a physical copy release. They were just like, it made no money in theaters. It's like there was no marketing. How could it make money in theaters when there's no marketing? And they're just like, uh, there's no reason to even put a Blu-ray out. It's so I had to buy it on Amazon. Uh huh. Because this movie deserves to be bought in everybody's home. Um, did you think the ending was a little too I thought it was pretty rad. Okay, yeah, okay, cool. Like, did you understand the movie like in any way?
SPEAKER_01:Or yeah, I mean, I think it started to pretty well grasped grasped what the idea was. I didn't really get what they were talking about in the cult. It's like nothing exists. Essentially, you can't explain it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, there we all what like everything that we see is just we're essentially floating in abyss, just thinking it, and it becomes what it is. Time thought plus concentration plus time equals flips. That math doesn't math for me, but I get what they're saying. That's true. There's no numbers in it. How could you math it? Um, all right, so I actually want to go back a little bit for our discussion of long legs. Very similar kind of movies, right? There it's like a detective story, uh, but there's like a weird paranormal element to it. And did you like this movie more than Long Legs? And what about this movie connected better than Long Legs? Umbine. I just thought because Long Legs Very Seven like, you know, kind of how we discussed, whereas like very David Venture, this is made by David Pryor, who literally, you know, like the title screens on DVDs and stuff, he like does that behind the scenes stuff for David Venture movies like Fight Club and all that. He did that for it. So I was like, very David Fenture vibe to it. It looked almost like Gone Girl in some scenes. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I was just curious as like what did you find the big or do you just prefer cosmic horror versus hey Satan's in the background, but so good.
SPEAKER_01:I also like the it the cult aspect is is pretty awesome. I know long legs kind of have a cult. It was culty, but a cult of one person. Yeah. Yeah. It's more of like a cult and not just cult. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I'm more a cult, not cult.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Um, I think I do like this movie more than long legs, even though long legs is a little bit shorter, which is nice. That is nice. But I don't know. I felt as I was re-watching it for the second time a couple days ago, I was thinking, man, there's some things that could be cut out, but then like re-watching it this time, I was like, no, it kind of all needs to be here. It needs to trick us, needs to kind of make us a little like invested in the character, just for him to pull the rug out and be like, doesn't fucking matter what this guy had in his past because he didn't have a past because there is nothing.
SPEAKER_01:Are you sure?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I was confused about that.
SPEAKER_04:No.
SPEAKER_01:This man was just manifested by Amanda and her buddies.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, manifestation 14.
SPEAKER_01:But he never had a life, like he never she wrote the script.
SPEAKER_04:I just thought that maybe they just confused him a bunch. So he didn't know Nora or anything. So everything that's happening didn't actually happen to him.
SPEAKER_01:Damn, okay.
SPEAKER_05:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I thought I kind of I know that they explained that, but like I kind of didn't. I thought maybe they just tricked him.
SPEAKER_04:The cool thing with like what the movie's about, which is nihilism, is that if you don't understand it, just be like, it doesn't matter. But nothing matters, I guess. It's the ultimate cop out of a movie.
SPEAKER_01:It doesn't matter. But like the cops, he's like, I used to be a poly uh a private, or uh I used to be a cop in the other state, and then the other cops, like, yeah, I heard about you.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, wasn't happening. That no, no, no, no, I don't think it was happening. It was just holding his head. Or, I mean, maybe it happened, but like maybe he was thinking that it was happening, but it wasn't actually happening.
SPEAKER_01:Did she also so confused? It's kind of what the movie's about. How did he know how to investigate stuff? Um because she made him an investigator?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I mean, it's all was just like the whole entire town is a cult. The whole town? I mean, that's why he doesn't remember whenever he goes for the second time we see him go back to the place, and they're like, God damn it, James, you're not a detective anymore. Very classic hard-boiled detective type movie. Uh, and then he's like, Why don't you just write your whole statement? And then he's kind of looking around and it's like nobody's really there was a group of kids that hung themselves. No one really seems to care that much. And then then he goes to Nord and he's like, You gotta go. And he's like, I think everybody's in this cold. That's that's the vibe I got from it. I mean, I could be completely wrong, but no, it that makes sense. The way I got it's my brain itched. Is that the fact that this guy's in Missouri, Paul, he's an antenna, so they're all he's slowly becoming infected.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's like a thought disease, a thought virus, right? Yeah, which oh man, this movie has so many cool things. You said something and like w just a minute ago, and I was like, ooh, I want to say something too, but I kind of got confused and it's okay.
SPEAKER_01:I'm very confused too.
SPEAKER_04:What are your thoughts on nihilism? I uh no.
SPEAKER_01:Nothing to say.
SPEAKER_04:Should you have any thoughts on nihilism? Is there any point of thinking about nihilism? Is there any point of thinking about anything?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like if you're a nihilist, that's cool. Um I don't think it really makes sense.
SPEAKER_04:You know what like this movie like makes me think like nihilism isn't that bad, you know? It was when it says, to say you are right and I am wrong divides us. And I was like, that hit. I was just like, That's true. I was like sinking into my recliner. I'm like, ugh, should everybody watch this movie?
SPEAKER_01:Should everybody just understand that I wish people would just stop thinking about because it doesn't matter at all. Yeah. So I guess that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04:Or stop listening to people that are trying to divide us, things like that. Yeah. Stop telling people, stop listening to people that are saying that other people are wrong because hey, guess what?
unknown:It really doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_04:But I do think everybody just needs to wake up with this in their ear. Oh no. That'd be awesome. That's what Snake did to me last night. I woke up this morning, Snake says He's just tonguing your eardrum. Just clicking his tongue. All right, I got one more question for you. So we've kind of done quite a bit of uh cult horror movies here. So do you prefer cosmic, satanic, or folk horror? Ooh.
SPEAKER_01:I kind of like all three, so it's tough to answer. I like cosmic and folk more than I like satanic. Yeah. I just feel like satanic's been so overdone. Yeah, it's like so last. It's so last BC. No, I just like I think the other two are more interesting.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, well, it's because, you know, like satanic, it's you know, more of a spiritual thing. Cosmic's more of a space, like you know, yeah. My love crafty something out in the universe, right? And folk is what's comes from the ground in nature. And I think those are interesting ideas.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. I like that.
SPEAKER_04:Oh man, when the empty man said, yo, you ready to see my full form? Just got a tentacle, like that was because the first time I was like, man, this is pretty cosmic horary the first time I watched it. And then when I was tentacle, cosmic core, there's a tentacle. It is 100% cosmic horror now. It's not cosmic horror if there's not one tentacle. Just letting y'all know there must be a tentacle. I love tentacles. Yeah. Uh all right, let's get into some facts because I'm ready to get in this movie. Um, yeah, so it's based on a Colin Bunn and Vanessa R. Del Rey's The Empty Man comic series published by Boom Studios. Yeah, essentially it is about uh the empty man just like infecting people, and then there's like a disease. It's like Wi-Fi.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wi-Fi disease.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, essentially. It's antenna. So um the fictional high school in Webster Mills, Missouri is named after Jack uh Jacques Dierdra? Doda? Jacques. Jacques Dierdra. I don't know. Hey guys, uh nothing makes me feel dumber than reading. And I feel like I failed myself by not reading more as a kid, and it's ultimately probably what's wrong with the entire world. Hey, readers make leaders. Yeah, readers make leaders, and I am a guy who has a podcast.
SPEAKER_01:You're leading me.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I'm leading you. I'm leading you to these fucking good movies. Um, but he was a French philosopher known for his theory of deconstructionism. Many of the uh statements which can be read in the questionnaire handed over at the Pontifix Institute meeting, well, not direct quotation from him, have a clear relationship with the works of Deirdre. So uh yeah, I guess a lot of it. So there a lot of this, uh like all the things he looked up like on Wikipedia Wik Wikipedia. That's a sorry. Well, let me delete that tab. Uh TM TM TM Yeah. Um, but like a lot of the things that he was uh reading in like the Wikipedia search, which is the best Wikipedia search ever put on film for some reason. I don't know why it really grasped me. Uh was a lot of actual real Wikipedia searches. I don't know. Like stuff about the Tolpa was real. Yeah, I guess. Um I know it's like the empty man. Yeah, it's the empty man. It's uh you know what we'll get into in a second. I do know it because I was like, I gotta make sure I fucking know this. Oh uh, but you know, now that I'm in the podcast, I can't think of it. I have it here somewhere.
SPEAKER_06:Um I do not have it here somewhere. What is a tolpa?
SPEAKER_01:I know there's like the tolpa like up in the mountains. We used to call those big fat green worms the tolpa worms, because they they're called they're not called they're called something else. Yeah. Because they live in the tolpa trees.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, so uh uh so the term tolpa refers to being created through intense collective thought and meditation. Uh so for the empty man, a tolpa is created by a physical vessel is to be cre a tolpa created to be a physical vessel for a powerful and ancient entity. The Colt's Tulpa or main character James is constructed uh being with fabricated memories and emotions. Cool. Yeah. Um, so I guess a tolpa is thought is a thought form of being manifested, manifested through spiritual practice and intense concentration. So, you know, you're just like, oh, I'm gonna think something real hard and it's gonna be here. That's the secret. Yeah. It is funny, like listening, you know, watching all these kind of like cult things, like all of them are like, you know, almost kind of a type of religion, right? Like, whether it be the folk movies, the satanic ones, or even like this nihilistic thing, it's like they all kind of say the same shit in different ways, and they all kind of get to the thing of like you'll be happier like this. And it's just like confused, you need to be confused to be happier. And then it's just like, well, if you're just like, I don't believe any of that shit, it's like, well, are you kind of being nihilistic about it? And it's like, but does it matter? You know? I don't fucking know, dude, right? Your boy, it's too early in the morning to think this shit. Uh so the word pontifix is a word used to refer to a high order of priests in Rome. It can also be literally translated to mean bridge maker.
unknown:Cool.
SPEAKER_04:Or a man who negotiates with God. The Pontifix Institute in the film echoes these motifs. They act as priests who call the empty man. They build the legend of the empty man around bridges, and they receive messages from the empty man like he's a god.
SPEAKER_01:It was a strange um it was strange how they went from blowing in cool like wind power, like the little flutes they had to bridges and bottles. Yeah, because um so Yeah, explain it.
SPEAKER_04:They make no sense. So, I mean, the empty man, well, the cre the entity in the cre uh empty man is it's not you don't need the fucking like whole thing, right? It's essentially is you think of the empty man and you believe it so much that you blow in the bottle and he's like, I got you. It's a thought, it's a thought disease, right? It's a thought virus. All right. So essentially that's all it is. Like it doesn't matter what you belie uh blow in, but I think the idea is that Paul, you know, he's as they says a little later by that nurse at the end, is like, yeah, he kind of moved all over the place. So it's essentially like his antenna was there spreading. Oh. And the way, like, I guess the idea is like, oh, we want kids to do this, and what do kids love? Bloody Mary, Candyman, shit like that. So it's like full of bloody Marys. Yeah, it's like kids love Bloody Marys, man. So it's kind of that idea of, you know, it's uh it's like they made it almost a game so they could spread, and the empty man or the entity can get its long tentacle fingers all on you. Fuck that skeleton rolls.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I want one in my house.
SPEAKER_04:You had too many fingers, you had so many arms and too many fingers. God dang it. Got a normal ass head. What the hell, empty man? Wow, I made myself giggle, dude. So in a 2021 interview with Thrillist, David Pryor explained how unexpected connections arose between the empty man and other productions going on at the same time, even though none of that matters. So we had a couple of strange, uh, he says we had a couple of strange instances of synchronicity. There was an old book about a Tulpa, a mythical concept discussed in the movie called Superstition by David Ambrose. And I had been talking to the company that owns it about adapting it, and for whatever reason it didn't work out. But I was fascinated by the idea partway through the writing process, I was almost through the script when the idea of bringing that into it came to me. And I was excited and thrilled by the possibility of it, but was like, oh no, this is gonna make a big mess because if I tell the other producers about it, they're gonna like it, which is going to mean I have to revamp everything that went before. So it created a ripple effect that took a while, uh took a while to settle down. Um, he says my touchstone for it was the book Superstition, which was the first time I'd ever heard about of the word Tolpa. And then when we finished and the movie was almost done, uh the remake or the uh uh uh what do you call it? So the new Twin Peaks season came out, like 20 years after the original uh comes out, and there are a bunch of fictional characters that were Tulpas in it, and then the same thing happened when Hereditary came out. So I saw Hereditary after we locked Final Picture. It came out, we're already finished, and it was just uh dispiriting. It was like it's a very well moved made movie and everything. So essentially, like a bunch of things came out that is very similar to his movie.
SPEAKER_01:So it was all a thought disease.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it just it spread. The empty man spread. Yes, and we covered two of the movies now.
SPEAKER_01:Does that mean Dante's Big and Volcano are also a thought disease?
SPEAKER_04:Uh that is one company hearing another studio doing it, and they're like, Well, now we have to do it, but we gotta get it out faster. Hell yeah. Same with Armageddon and uh Deep Impact. We're like, oh, we have to rush. Uh you could almost say money is a thought disease. Oh wow, yeah, it really is. And that's all it has. There wasn't too many um really facts. I mean, again, like this movie kind of came and went, and people are just like, but wait, we actually loved it.
SPEAKER_01:Here's a fact Friedrich Nietzsche had a cool mustache.
SPEAKER_04:Did he? I don't know about his mustache, but I'll have to look that up. Uh what a great name though. Nietzsche. He's like, yeah, Frederick Nietzsche. Hey, it's a me, a Frederick Nietzsche. I don't think he was Italian. Well, he is in my head. But I mean with a name like that, you have to come up with a cool saying quote, right? With a name like Jesse, you know, it's just like eh. But Frederick Nietzsche, he'd be like, You stare in the abyss, it stares back, bitch. It's like, okay, Freddy. Um, yeah, so you got anything else you want to discuss before we get in the point or a plot? No, let's do it. Let's do it. All right, and before we get into the plot, or you know, like we'll have to discuss the point of it. Um, it's a movie about nihilism, so I guess we'll see what the point of that is, right? Probably nothing. Nothing. Ah, I'm so excited. I did have like a really long paragraph about what the point is, and I was just like, but isn't this also kind of just about nothing? The dude shows up how pointless everything is. All right, Jason, the empty man. Let's get into it. So in Euro Valley, Bhutan, 1995, four friends, Greg, Paul, Fiona, and Ruthie, are hiking on a mountain, spit uh spinning some totems and then crossing a dope ass bridge. Wanna cross that bridge. Bridge looked cool, want to be on it. Like the I like that there's ribbons on it.
SPEAKER_01:That was that was neat.
SPEAKER_04:You you wouldn't go on across that bridge?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I would, but it'd be scary as hell.
SPEAKER_04:I wouldn't have I would have gone one at a time. But then like it, you know, it kind of gives a close close up to the bridge and I'm like, that's a giant ass chain. Yeah, there's the bridge is fine.
SPEAKER_01:I worked really hard on it. Uh sure.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I was like, where did these monks get these chains? Big ass chains.
SPEAKER_01:I thought it was gonna be wood, and like the first guy was gonna just walk backwards and fall through it. Yeah, it looked fine.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So they uh they reach a spot they have been searching for for a while, and then a text reading, day one appears. Very similar to some things David Venture does in his movies. So Paul then seems to hear something calling to him. He walks until he falls down a crevice. That sucks. I love how like you know, before he really hears it, you can kind of start hearing the blowing yourself, like in the score. This the sound in this movie is excellent, right? I mean, the sound of the flute when they're the cult, the whole group, which we didn't even talk about, and that's my favorite part of the whole damn movie. Well, this part and you know, when they're at the camp and they're all step at the same time. Um, oh, the sound in this movie is fucking wonderful. It also looks beautiful. This whole movie does. Like, I look at it, I'm like, yikes.
SPEAKER_03:I want to make love to this movie.
SPEAKER_04:I want to make love to these mountains. Oh, true.
unknown:God.
SPEAKER_04:Um, yeah, so then Greg goes in to rescue him and finds Paul sitting down facing a bizarre-looking skeleton while muttering something to himself, then tells Greg, If you touch me, you will die. No. Greg pauses and then says, Fuck it, we ball. Then he gets he punches a finger real close to him.
SPEAKER_01:He's like, I'm not touching you.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not touching the skeleton. We see the skeleton like push him in.
SPEAKER_01:Stop it. Touch him now, bitch. Don't make me pull this mountain over.
SPEAKER_04:And then so uh I guess essentially the empty man is now using Paul as an antenna for himself. And I assume that so and this is kind of proof that you know the whole um kind of blowing into the bottle thing is not like super real. And I feel like so um a little later they're gonna talk about like before Paul became the empty man, it was like entity that was like uh that lasted for 500 years and it's a skeleton. So I'm assuming like the skeleton is essentially an antenna, and then he like transferred over to Paul. But yeah, remember that last yeah. Well, it's just like in the end, it's like because I may maybe he was so close to the actual thing he didn't really need the bottles or anything. Or I don't know. And also, well, we'll learn a little. I got a little bit later. I'm sorry, I'm kinda getting ahead of myself here. I should just follow my notes because I lose train of thought. So the friends carry Paul out and spot a nearby house with nobody in it, so they stay there for now. They find he is holding a flute-like thing, made a boon. Greg checks him for any medical issues and bug bites, and Paul seems fine. We see he used to be a cutter. His girlfriend Ruthie is super scared. Greg thinks it's in his head. It's like, if it's not like there's nothing wrong with him, and it's not his head, it must be in his head. And it's like, god damn it.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't realize that I didn't I must have missed the part where they said he was a cutter.
SPEAKER_04:Uh they kind of he pulls like up his things and there's just a few marks on each uh each hand, and and then like a little later, it's like and then he asks, like, has he been okay? So Yeah, the sorrow.
SPEAKER_01:Because I was wondering uh how did because they said it can only affect people with like deep sorrow.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and he that's him. He's got deep sorrow, which is also why he gets the Manda because her dad died. Yeah, yeah. So um, yeah, if it's not his head, it's in his head. Great fucking line. So uh Ruthie wants to get him to a hospital, but they you know, like hiked five miles. And if you look outside uh Ruthie, uh bunch of snow. Yeah. The pass is unpassable. Not gonna happen, girlfriend. So that night, Ruthie wakes, uh Ruthie makes a great decision to blow into a flute-like thing and then quickly falls asleep and immediately wakes up and hears a sound or hears no sound for a second. So like all the sound cuts out, which this is why I wanted to bring up how good the sound is in this movie. But then it sounds like someone is walking in the house and they are staying, but no one is moving. First, you hear the empty man. Oh shit. Uh-oh. Um, but yeah, it's like I love like makes a great decision to blow into the flute, but I'm like, that's the first thing I'm doing. It's like, I see, like, oh, why do you have this? I don't have a I don't have anything to blow into to make the noise. That's really a bummer. So then day two. Paul's condition doesn't appear to get better as he is just laying around in silence. Greg and Fiona go out to look for help. Then outside, Ruthie looks and uh appears to see a figure in the ongoing snowstorm. She runs to ask the cloak figure for help, but then she realizes uh she might be in danger. It's like, I'm sorry, you see a cloaked thing like that, and you're like, that thing's gonna help me. Well, I mean, I guess. I mean, it is cold. You want something big on here, but I'm just like, eh, no, thanks. I don't care if that person can't help me, they're not getting in this cabin.
SPEAKER_01:Badass when it kind of rose up a little bit. Yeah. Did it float?
SPEAKER_04:It kind of looked like a it feels like it's floating. It's it's weird because it's got that cloak and it's all like billowing. Yeah. And uh so then she kind of steps to it and it steps back. And then she steps back and it steps forward. Unity. Shit. Ooh, they kind of talk about that. Um, and the yeah, so the figure's matching her footsteps before starting to charge forward towards her, but she runs back inside the house and shuts the door. When she hears pounding outside, she continues to block the door until she hears Greg and Fiona, and they're like, What the fuck, dude? And then Rosie asks if they heard or saw someone outside, and they're like, No, that was you, dude. Are you on drugs?
SPEAKER_01:And then she'll like they went to a spirit of Halloween that was right over the. Yeah, it's like, oh yeah, we just bought that real quick.
SPEAKER_04:You know, there's like 10 feet skeletons. You should go outside. We bought one, we put it in a cave underneath the ground. It's got weird hands and everything. Um, but I love like when she freaks out, she just kind of starts screaming, and then it cuts to Fiona and Greg, and Greg's face is just like, we're in a bad situation now. One guy's passed out, the only person that probably calm her down, and then we're just like, we want out of here. So as Ruthie is sleeping later, it appears as though Paul is whispering something in her ear.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like right above her head. That was crazy.
SPEAKER_04:It's honestly, I love those noises. It's kind of ASMR. It is a little. I was like, ooh, this could put me to sleep. Maybe that's why I fell asleep. So the next day, Paul is missing and they go looking for him. Day three. Greg, Fiona, and Ruthie find Paul sitting cross-legged and blowing into a flute. Then suddenly in a trance, Lucy takes a knife out and stabs Greg a bunch of times and pushes him over the buffet. And then Fiona comes running at her and slices her throat and throws her off. And then she stares into Paul, and then she just simply falls. And then Paul is just like, Finally, I can make music and just keeps blowing to his instrument. And then we're in Missouri. And it's just like, we went from here to Missouri out of all places? Who? Why? And then Jason Bateman's coming in. He's like, I gotta run these drug money because it's Ozars, right? Well, good joke, Jesse.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. 10 out of 10 joke. You know, I always got made fun of for wanting to be alone, you know, when I went camping and stuff. I'd be too scared. Scary cat. I was I wouldn't go far. I'd be like, you know, I just want some peace and quiet for fucking seconds, everybody.
SPEAKER_04:Blow on your bone flute.
SPEAKER_03:If y'all know what I mean here.
SPEAKER_04:Well, let me just keep telling really bad jokes. Keep them covered. Yeah. That's what my bone flute said. So jump to Missouri in 2018 where former detective James Lazombra? Is that his is that how you say that? Yeah, Lazombra. Um, is working in a security store. And it's a great little security store, right? I don't know. So he frequently hears a voice saying, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00:Why are we dead because of you? This isn't real.
SPEAKER_04:Since it has been a year after his wife Allison and son Henry died in a car accident, he goes to a restaurant, uses a free birthday voucher, not thinking the restaurant comes back and sings Happy Birthday sale.
SPEAKER_01:It's so good, though. They voucher, and he's like, No, I forgot they sing in places like this. I know. I I think you have to immediately say, Do not sing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Then you have like this little girl looking at him, just kind of laughing at him. Just like, Is she real? I don't know. You know, honestly, when I watched it for the third time, I was like, what does she have to fucking do with any of this? She and the cult. She's the empty match. So it goes home and sees a teenage girl, Amanda, outside. She came to check on him since it's been a year since the death of his family. Amanda's father died a year before. Um, and Amanda came to tell him that nothing can hurt him because nothing is real. She talks about how our thoughts are what manifest the things we see, that we are somewhere else thinking these things and making them appear as we see them. Amanda gets a phone call and leaves. I love that when she gets really into like the cult like speak, right? He's like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01:She did a really good job of not rolling his eyes because I feel like I would have been talking.
SPEAKER_04:Like his little lines in this movie are delivered so well he should have won an Oscar. I'm like, man, you've He's very patient. Well, he's like doing a good well, he's done such a great he does such a great job in this movie by um showing what he's feeling on his face, but also saying things that like are trying not to be too offensive, right? Yeah, he's very thoughtful. Yeah, and it's just like, whoa, this is cool. Yeah, so what'd you think of Amanda when you first saw her? You're like, psycho? What the hell is wrong with this girl? Just weird California teenager. Um, uh, yeah, but when when this scene because you got the whole first 20 minutes, which uh, you know, what one of my favorite openings of movie ever. Yeah, so right. Yeah. You know, teenagers. I couldn't stop saying that. And then you cut to this girl and she starts talking about all this stuff, and I was like, I'm so fucking hooked. Like, this movie is everything I want in a movie so far.
SPEAKER_01:So great. So I just couldn't stop imagining being him and thinking, just leave. Just leave. Just drive somewhere. You don't have to be in Missouri at all, bro. Thanks for checking on me.
SPEAKER_04:Go your wife and kid died, and you have no other family here. Just go. Well, it's got a pool. Just go. He does have a pool. It was gross. It's like, how could he be a nihilist with a pool? I know like damn, every day's a good day with a pool. I guess a pool, you don't have to take care of it if it doesn't exist. That's true. See those leaves? They're not there. All that grime. That's my thought seeing those leaves. So we see flashes of James's family while he sleeps. Uh, more, where are you? He wakes up and takes some doxipin, which is an antidepressant. And we also see next to that a wedding ring. And then he swallows the wedding. Ah, damn it. Again. Oh. It's really hurting my ball pooping this thing out so much. I've been blowing bubbles for a week. Yeah. Yikes. So I was gonna say in an ominous way, day one. I feel like I can't now after that.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry.
SPEAKER_04:So Amanda's mom looks for Amanda in the morning and soon realizes she's running away because you know, the blood on the mirror saying the empty man made me do it. Uh and then Nora calls James for help. It's like, always blaming the fucking empty man. Kids these days never take responsibility. They never. Um, so yeah, the uh after they James comes in, they find the mirror where the empty man made me do it. Uh, after official detectives take on the case, they ask if she had any pants, pets, pants. Do you have any pants? I need a pair. So James decides to do a little investigation of his own because you know, the cops think she ran away to hurt the mom because, you know, dealing with grief about the loss of the father. Very classic detective shit.
SPEAKER_01:When I saw the detective taking the blood sample off the mirror and then she put it in the box she was carrying. Was that like an Amazon like murder kit that she ordered? I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't even notice that, dude.
SPEAKER_01:You know what?
SPEAKER_04:Jason, if that's what you think it is. Oh man. Wow. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01:That's more fun for me. I'm gonna do that. You know what? Yes, it is Amazon.
SPEAKER_04:The empty Amazon package. So James notices a poster on her wall that is completely black with a slight visual of a man sitting cross-legged, kind of like a Namaste pose, right? Um Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, I want that poster. I want to stare at it. I'm gonna do mushrooms and stare at it. I feel like you need a bigger poster. Well, so the poster is completely black and it's the abyss that they stare into. Ooh, okay. Yeah. So James uh then finds a flyer for the Pontifix Institute with the word Topa on the back. So then James goes to visit the high school to find Amanda's friend, Devara Walsh. She explains the empty man. It's where you go to a bridge, uh, blow into a bottle, and this calls the empty man. She sits in his car while telling the story, tells her about a couple nights ago when she and Amanda, plus friends, Brandon, Julian, Meyer, Lisa, and Duncan, were walking across the nearby bridge where Amanda decided to summon the empty man. Herbage Legends, that takes three days to appear. Um, and then, like, while we're seeing hearing all this, while sitting in her car, she sees an empty man behind some of her friends. I don't know if you noticed. Like when she constantly is looking out the window and is like legal eyes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the empty man's kind of like I just noticed that everyone was there are fewer and fewer people every time. Yeah. They looked around.
SPEAKER_04:It's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_01:It was weird. Then they're all sitting there cross-legged.
SPEAKER_04:The thing is, like, I it feels like a movie where the people in the background are purposely placed constantly.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't notice it the first two times, and the third time I watched it, and I'm like, anytime someone just randomly walked by, and I was like, the fuck is their deal? What are they doing here? What is this? Um, we also get a glimpse of Amanda's life. She was uh while she was on the bridge, you know, she was very lost, emotionally hurting and thinking about death and everything, obviously. Um, a perfect person to join a cult.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And being a conduit for an empty man. It was when she made the comment about if I would have cut myself, I would have done it long ways. Yeah. It's just like off edgy, edgy, sad kid with no direction.
SPEAKER_02:Shut up.
SPEAKER_04:Obviously, the uh obviously the father figure in her life was a big important thing for her, and she lost that and she became, I guess, lost, right? I mean, that's what I feel like the point of like the empty man grabs onto these type of people. Yeah. Um and on people, uh, we hear that on the first day, those who summon him will hear him calling to them. On the second day, he makes his present known to them. On the third day, he finds them.
SPEAKER_01:You have a call from you accept charges. We had a baby, it's a boy.
SPEAKER_04:You have a call from your local state penitentiary. Ah, nah, keep him locked up. He ain't ready. Um, so the teens, so we see the like the whole scene of the teens there, you know, it's just pretty typical teens. I actually thought the scene with all the teens are pretty good. You know, they're all kind of assholes to each other a little bit, but it wasn't funny. None of the kids overacted. And I thought it was a really good job. Um, Devara, the girl that he's talking to, you know, kind of makes fun of the girl and the guy that comes out and he's like, hey, you got a little bit right there. And that was like the whole reason she blew into the bottle because she's like, Fuck that bitch, I'll blow into this thing. She's like, I just want to leave. Yeah. And I just thought it was like a really, you know, just like just some lost kids, you know, just searching for something and they find it in the worst way.
SPEAKER_01:And then didn't turn into vampires. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Man. It's like, damn it, I got empty man, not vampired. So the teens all blew into a bottle as per true edition. After a man does it, they suddenly well, Amanda does it, and she's like, I'm doing this shit. I'm doing this for real. Say it three times. Candyman, you know, Bloody Mary, things like that. Um, and where did I get? And after a man does it, they suddenly hear someone at the other end of the bridge that they can't see at first. Um at first, you hear footsteps.
SPEAKER_01:I thought I was a homeless person. I was really hoping it was gonna be the craziest.
SPEAKER_05:I'm the empty man, we I'm the troll under the bridge.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, so yeah, they do it and suddenly they hear footsteps, then a blowing sound, and then they're like, oh man, there's probably nothing wrong, and then running, and they're like, ah, that is crazy. All the yeah, there's nothing there. Okay, yeah. Um, I paused it to make sure. All right. Um, the scares in this movie are great. There is one I don't like, but um, yeah, they do a great job with darkness in this movie. I do like all the psychological horror stuff. And it's just like all the great scares. There's this one, it's the sauna. I don't like the sauna scene. Yeah, that was dumb. Yeah. Uh Devara also remembers seeing Amanda whispering in Brandon's ear, similar to how Paul whispered to Ruthie. I hope that comes up after I edit, and it's not just like very like. Devara thinks she's seeing the empty man in the woods before she leaves James's car. Then she sees some kids sitting cross legged and then staring straight and then looking to her. It's almost like the empty man has really spread into this town, don't you think? So James is gonna go check all of Amanda's other friends. Uh he goes to their houses, they're all missing. At Lisa's house, she sees that the same black poster in her room, but this time he can see something kind of moving in it. It's like this blue almost kind of wave in it. It's really cool. That is cool. Then he spots the Pontifix Institute flyer, then finds a dead dog drained of blood in the back. And that's what she used to put on her mirror. That was gross. Because like they asked if she had any pets, and Nora's like, Why'd they ask if I had pets? And they're like, uh, the blood lady. She petted it to death. It's like, I love this dog so much. Um she petted the wrong way once. Yeah. And I love the the fact that like the doors just open at this house and he just walks in without any issue because there is no issue for him in this movie. All he's gotta do is just walk on the path he's walking. There is no spoon. There is no door. Shit. There is no closed door. It's just the thought that we closed the door that's there. Damn. Bom, bum, bum. Um so James tells Nora that he can't find any of her friends. Um, and then I love that so when the detectives are talking to Nora, the mom, they're uh they're all kind of just asking these like vague questions and just looking at all the stuff in uh Amanda's room, and like Nora's just seeing them do all this and like kind of shows her something or like the other detective something, like right in front of Nora, and they're like asked random questions, don't say anything about it, and just kind of walk out. And then right here, James is kind of doing the same thing. Don't worry or anything. I can't find any of her friends. She's like, There's probably nothing to worry about, don't worry. And then she's Nora's just like, why does everybody keep saying things and not explaining anything? I'm like, You guys are being real shitty to this girl that is not experiencing any of this problem.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I feel like the um the cops are just like, she's an adult, we don't care. Like they said earlier. It's very classic, uh um, you know. It's not a lot, it's not a lost child anymore.
SPEAKER_04:Very, very classic idea of, you know, like when the worst things happen to people and then you learn, like, oh, the cops just didn't give a shit. Yeah, you know, type in all those true crime things. But uh, I think it's because they're in on it. They probably doesn't matter. Probably none of it matters. They're all just like going in there, it's like, man, Amanda did a really good job of this cult stuff. So later, James goes by the bridge to continue looking to Amanda's disappearance. He finds the bottle that they were using and he blows into it. Come on. You just heard the story. Uh, then suddenly, because what when he goes there, you hear all the cicadas and all the bugs and the rustling of the leaves. And then after he blows, he walks a little bit and suddenly all of the nature's noises disappeared. Yeah, that's cool. And the wind blows the leaves a little. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. It's like dead silent now. James then walks down a ladder that leads underneath the bridge where he comes across the hanged corpses of Brandon, Julian, Meyer, Lisa, and Duncan. Same message from Amair, Amanda, Amir's. Amanda's mirror is also written, The Empty Man Made Me Do It.
SPEAKER_01:It's great. Do you think the day before they're like, hey, we're gonna kill ourselves tomorrow? We already wrote the sign. Well, the empty man came Kenny was like, hey guys, I have this cool idea.
SPEAKER_04:Have y'all ever heard of dying at the same time? Y'all should do it. It's a new trend. It's gonna be rad. Ooh, you know what would be really fun? Doing the bridge where you first met me. Um, love it though, going down there and it's just like, uh, James, uh, James, great reaction from this really great.
SPEAKER_01:It was a cool reveal. Yeah. Although you think you would have seen it faster. Uh, because he looks like this way, he looks that way. Yeah. It's like, oh shit, four dead teenagers.
SPEAKER_04:It's like, wait, I should make this a little bit more suspenseful since there's a movie here. I love like his like lack of reaction to almost.
SPEAKER_01:He's probably seen a lot being a crime scene investigator or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:And it's like, you know, he's almost kind of empty inside, I feel like. Yeah, he's dead inside. The empty man, should we say? Um, and then we cut to like a shot on the bridge, and it has all the cock cars lighting up and is a great fucking shot. Loved it. Um, he pulls out the flyer and then he gets a nosebleed.
SPEAKER_06:Why?
SPEAKER_04:Because of the height? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:There's a tall bridge. I guess because uh the empty man's coming. I'm I don't think I've ever had a nosebleed. Yeah. I got hit in the face real hard once, though. I don't I don't think I really had a nosebleed either. Have you ever been around someone who just my wife's had a nosebleed. When they just start gushing. Not gushing, but God, that is horrible. That was one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_04:Brain's like, you got too much blood up in here.
SPEAKER_01:Just empty the faucet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's like, damn it, I have nowhere to put this blood. So, meanwhile, while all this has happened, Devara enters a spa and uh she gets naked, she gets in there. Once it gets really foggy, the empty man attacks, stabbing her with a pair of scissors, uh, but making it look like she was stabbing herself. It is officially ruled as a suicide.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but you don't die if you just stab yourself in the face bones, right?
SPEAKER_04:She did it a lot. She died. It was a few stabs, bro.
SPEAKER_01:It might have hit the brain. No, it was just scissors. It she was just like right on her cheekbone. It just would have hurt a punch.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think it killed her. It did. Before it killed her. Um, so the reason I don't like this scene is um the empty man's uh hands and robe. Yeah. I kind of wish we didn't see any of that. Yeah. Right? Because it just makes this appear as just kind of like, I don't know, it's kind of a lame little, you know, like Slender Man type thing or whatever. But I mean, this is the only time where I'm like, oh, the empty man's kind of lame. But uh, I just don't think it's a very well seen done scene. I mean, it they need it to explain the fact that like these people are killing themselves because the empty man's making them kill themselves.
SPEAKER_01:Would have been better if he just like just hotboxed her in the sauna.
SPEAKER_03:She's like, uh, shit girl, take a take a pub of this, and it's just like too high, dead.
SPEAKER_04:Can't think about nihilism, gonna die.
SPEAKER_03:Stop what I was talking about. Okay. I know. I know. Dungeon. Like lock her. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's like the empty man won't stop farting. Um, but so actually now that I said that, the reason I think that the empty man hadn't physically come in and like stabbed Devara is maybe that because she was more resistant to it and didn't take the blowing into the bottle as serious, but it was still attached. Maybe he had to come in and like do it himself. I guess. Right.
SPEAKER_01:It also kind of took away the psycho hor psychological horror part of it, like where he was physically doing it, but then he just kind of shows her is she lifting herself up in the air and stabbing herself in the face?
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. Thought plus concentration plus time equals flesh. I don't know, dude. Yeah, that's all I know is that algorithm. Okay. So uh James finds the circumstances of the uh well, the officials ruled that it's a suicide. He's like that. Uh no one's just fucking stabs themselves in the eye. Well damn girl a freak. The detectives tell James about a woman feeding her baby to a pack of dogs because she believed the toddler was whisping to her and wrote the empty man on the floor. Um, there's a great line. Um, because the detective's like, I mean, we could put her in jail. And but will that really do anything? You can't indict the cosmos. Hell yeah. Put that on my wall or something, put that on my tombstone. That'd be cool. Oh, it's like someone's like, Man, that guy must have been hella metal. They go back and listen. It's like, this guy's just a fucking nerd. So later that night, while listening to his recordings of Devara, we get the greatest Wikipedia search on TV of all time. In the search, he learns that the Pontific Society is what it's actually called, is a doomsday cult. He learns that the Tulpa is uh essentially thought plus concentration plus time equals flesh, as in think hard enough and you can make a person, I guess. Yep. Um, or that we are we're out there somewhere in the abyss and just thinking and creating the life that we see. That's kind of what I was kind of taking and what it was saying in the Wikipedia.
SPEAKER_01:And then I guess it's a very very uh willy wonka way of thinking about it.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, you know, you just like if you kind of think about it, I mean everything we come up with, we just kind of think of.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, are you real?
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. Am I any of the rules I follow real? No. Do we even need rules? No. Do I need to go to that job? I do, because then I'll be homeless.
SPEAKER_02:But you can just stay here.
SPEAKER_04:Am I stuck at my job because I just can't think of a different way to get out, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Kind of those type of things. Like uh be with some butthead and make yourself so fat that you can't be evicted because you can't go through the doors.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, get me out of here, dare you. Wherever you put me, gonna have to stay there. So you better put me in the right spot. Um, so he reads into a cult called the Pontifix Institute, uh Esplice, originating from places like Bhutan, which would explain uh how the four friends came across the empty man there. Um, um, and then we see that they're a doomsday cult. He also reads that I don't think I put that in my notes, but yeah. They're considered a doomsday cult. Uh, and we'll get more into that later. So um Nora comes over and we see that they are more than friends, but there is some sort of guilt with it because they're obviously like, oh, we can't do this, though we want to penetrate. Uh we also get flashes of his family's accident and an empty chair in a tunnel.
SPEAKER_01:Uh every time that kid was clicking the quarter on his teeth, uh very similar to the I swallowed an I was I swallowed a nickel one time. I thought I was gonna die.
SPEAKER_04:I think I remember you telling me that. Yeah. Get uh uh uh some sort of poisoning, I feel like, from that, right? No. Or definitely some germs. I don't know. Who knows what was on that coin? Mom, I did it. Your mom's in the other room, payday. All right, it is now day one for James. He wakes up to a noise, he checks it out, and at the end of the hallway, and first we realize that uh I'm gonna set up the scene. So he lives in this house. Pretty much there's only pictures on the wall, and there's not a lot really in his house that much. Uh we'll be less in it later. Um, and his hallway, there's a light switch on one end and a light switch on the other end. Great filmmaking about to happen here, right? Okay, so he wakes up to a noise. He checks this is where he's in his house and he's about to go to he wakes up from a dream, and then this is where he first hears the empty man. Yeah, and he gets the bat. Yeah, so he checks it out, and at the end of the hallway, at on his side of the hallway, he turns the light on. So you can see the hallway, and suddenly the light turns off. Cause on the other side, there's a fucking light switch.
SPEAKER_01:Turns it on again.
SPEAKER_04:No, this is like, ooh, no, your light bill's gonna be very expensive. Um, no, but when I saw the scene of like, Jesus, I will never get a hallway, a house with a hallway that has two light switches on either end.
SPEAKER_01:Because I'm like, if I turn on a light on one end and it goes off on the other end, and it's super annoying because if you want to like if someone does the the switch the wrong way, you have to go up to turn the light off and down to turn it on. It's insanely annoying. That's true. We have those.
SPEAKER_04:It is bad if there's an intruder, an empty man, or just in general. So yeah, he checks it out and uh he turns on the light, but something turns it off on the other side. He grabs his bat and then looks under the door as we hear footsteps coming up to his door and he sees shadows. It's great. That was cool. I love it. Great scare. And it just wonderful. Oh, that's later.
SPEAKER_01:Fuck. That's when he sees the empty man. Oh, I thought it was the same scene.
SPEAKER_04:No, this is just him hearing it. Because you remember night one.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's not day two yet. At first he sees you.
SPEAKER_04:And then when he opens his bedroom door, his front door is now open. It's like did the empty man have to use doors? Yeah, were you was he born in a barn? Jesus. Which I think all this is actually just the empty man weakening him more and more. And raising his electric bill like crazy. It's like, damn, he's gonna have to work an extra shift at the security store we don't really see anymore. And then day two, James goes to the institute's location where he's immediately being watched by a figure. Um, then a weird secretary lady gives him vague answers about the place and weird uh weird questionnaire. Um, they kind of act like they expected him, and it's obviously very Scientology-like. Yes, I thought that a lot about this movie. Immediately he walked in, and I was like, Scientology. Does your brain itch? Yeah. Now it does. Yeah. And uh this is also we learn he is from San Francisco. It's like, no, we're this organization. He's like, I get that. I'm from San Francisco.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've seen this shit. Woo-woo woo.
SPEAKER_04:So he goes to a room where leader Arthur Parsons, Stephen Fucking Root. Yeah, I love him. He is one of the best character actors we've ever had. He's so good at being the really weird guy. And I'm watching King of the Hill, and he's he's Bill and he's just fantastic. He is Bill. Yeah, he's fantastic. Oh, I never thought about that. Well, I mean, that's why he's in Office Space. It's Mike Judge. Yeah, yeah. So he's kind of in all his things. Oh, he's so funny. He's a great performance in Barry. It's probably like the best performance in that whole thing.
SPEAKER_01:He's so good at that.
SPEAKER_04:He's in anytime he pops up, he's like, it's Mike Judge. This is gonna be a good movie. There's something so I don't know, calming about his presence, but then also you're like, he's gonna go either way with this guy.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Because he's also in another movie. I can't remember. I think he's in True Bloods. Yeah, I think he's in True Bloods. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, great. He's like just kind of a kind, nice vampire in that. It's like shit. So he speaks before a whole crowd, and there's like a people in suits behind him, so it's like, wow, this is kind of a weird organization here. He essentially says, Everything all comes back. They get up, empty man. He and sky. Um, so he essentially says, Everything all comes back to the great unity of nothingness, and that our want for more leads to our struggles and unhappiness. Nihilism.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:That's essentially. Um, let's see. Let's see. I also had some more. Uh yeah, so you know, there's this like I think he's kind of saying he's preaching his philosophy of self-completeness and unity with nothingness, suggesting that the struggle and the desire for more are the source of unhappiness. Claims the pontificus institute's message of no struggle and no distinctions comes from the empty man, an entity that provides what follows desires as long as they follow its bidding.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I liked how he said that you should think instead of how much space you should take up, how less amount of space you should get a smaller pickup truck. Not a tiny house. Yes, that takes up three fucking spark parking spots. Priest Jason.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, let me put my hand up.
SPEAKER_01:Those pavement princesses gotta go.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Uh, and then there's a line in a speech where it's just like, uh, what is it? Um, yeah, there it's like uh it's like what you think is right, or if you say that I'm wrong, all it does is divide us. Guys, I'm gonna say it again, right? Let me actually get the actual fucking thing. I just feel like the entire world needs to hear it, right? Uh to say you are right and I am wrong does nothing but divide us. Everybody hear that? But we are right, though. No, nobody's right. What's right to you might not be right to someone else. But ultim ultimately it doesn't matter. We just made up what we think is right and wrong. Yes. But be kind to people. Subjective morality. Yes. Like, what do you think is right? It could be wrong. Or what someone is telling you is right. They could be wrong because they're just trying to trick you. Of course.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Preach. Yes. Yes. I just as soon as I heard that, I was like, Jesus Christ, I am I'm nihilistic. Uh but yeah, they're just like, it's essentially just saying, like, hey, we're all nothing. We're all we're all one entity, we're all unified. If you just like get rid of your ideas of what you think you should have and not have, just get just be small, be a group. You know? Is this our first cult meeting? Uh yeah. I don't know. Like, I was thinking I would never join a cult, but man, this one I'm kind of into it. I don't know, just staring at a dark poster all the time. Yeah. So afterwards, though, um, uh what's it yeah, Arthur Parsons, he talks to James and references the empty man, referring to him as an entity that provides his followers with what they desire as long as they do his bidding. He says it was good having him back. And he's like, it's my first time here. But before I do that, I just kind of want to read the whole Parsons quote. You cool with that? Yeah. Let's do it. So he says, the empty man is a meditation, a focal point for the targeted manifestation of hidden energies. James is like, right, and already you're starting to lose me. Great. Arthur says, just as a man feeds and is fed by the biosphere, the atmosphere, so it is our thoughts fed and are fed by the noosphere, the sum of all conscious thought, transmission from which can be stimulated through the application of certain vectors. He's doing his little hand motions, very much like a virus, thought virus. You can't see it. James, like, well, what is it? And then Arthur, the veil between form and flesh and the means by which it can be pierced and the two allowed to commingle. We're each of us blind in our our way, distractions rob us of focus, technology robs us of memory, repetition robs us of comprehension. You know the child's game. If you say your name enough times it becomes gibberish. Never played that or heard of it. That's what that is. That holds true for whole concepts, even entire bodies of thought. For example, take what it was Nitchke's Nietzsche. Nietzsche, sorry, I can't read guys. Nietzsche's old line, if you stare into an abyss, it also stares into you, right? Well, that has been rendered meaningless through repetition. It's a refrigerator magic, magnet, it's a cliche, it's harmless. But when was the last time you really thought about that? What is an abyss? And if you stare into it, why? What about it calls you? If it stares into you, it stands to reason something in you must also be calling to it. And that, my friend, is anything but harmless if you really reflect on it. So the question becomes if profound meaning can be robbed of something by so simple a task as repetition, which is more fundamental, which is more true, your name or the gibberish? That is the empty man.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I like about a good abyss? What? You're throwing a rock into it to see how deep it is. Yeah, and then you don't hear anything. And it's like or if you hear a sploosh, oh man, I love that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Oh I do love the idea of um whenever it says like repeating the same things over and over until it becomes meaningless. Because of the internet, that's yeah, that's fucking how everything is, right? Don't take away my TikToks. It's just like we'll take it into like a more political thing right now. I hate being political on the podcast, but you know, like when Donald Trump's just like constantly like, uh, Democrats are bad. Democrats are bad. They're the root of all evil. Eventually, it's just like, what the hell are you saying anymore? And then it just becomes gibberish, but like we're not taking it serious. But there are the people that are taking it serious and it's meaningful to them. Yeah. So it's just like, I don't know. It just depends how you find your meaning in life and who you listen to and what your thoughts are. But really, we should all come together as unity. I'm gonna break my phone after this. Yeah, you'll never see what our text um no, but it's just like really cool. And you know, I think there's a lot of stuff like technology robs us of memory. That was cool. Yeah, it's a great thing. It's like, yeah, man, we're you know, using your phone to take a picture whenever you're at like Disneyland or something like that. People who record fireworks, yeah. And it's just like shit, all I remember is recording. Yeah, I don't remember actually seeing the fireworks, right? And then you you'll have the little part at the end where he like kidnaps that one guy and everybody's on their phones. Like, yeah, nobody was everybody was looking at their phones. It's like robbing us of the memory of that moment. Wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I thought maybe it was just because it was like New York or something and then nobody shit. I mean, yeah, that's that's yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Which I mean, they you know, St. Louis, Missouri is a big city.
SPEAKER_01:It's still a big city, but like yeah, usually you don't look, you don't you're not supposed to care what happens around you. Yeah. Because then you'll get involved in it. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04:Maybe that's what was happening. But yeah. I would love like we do this whole thing and like someone just leaves a message, wrong. Everything you thought about this movie's wrong, Jesse.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, obviously.
SPEAKER_04:I feel like I'm yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter. You know? It's like you're right and I'm right. If we both agree that we're right, we're not divided. Yeah. Yeah. Can't wait to someone talk to me about politics at work and be like, it doesn't matter. It's just dividing us. Here's one hair for you to remember me by. Um, cool, let's get going. So then uh uh James, he's like, uh yeah. So he's like, All right, I'll see you later. Steven Root, I'm out. And he's like, it's good seeing you again. He's like, I was never here. And it's like, oh, must just be a memory then. Must be something about you. Yeah, and it's like, what does that mean? So then James goes out, he gets a drink, he's talking to a random guy there who's doing like a 1950s. Uh what did he say? He said Neil Cassidy. Yeah, I didn't recognize it. Uh he asks if he's seen Amanda and he says no, but James is like, fucking liar. I love James. I do too. He's such a great like this guy. So uh James starts snooping around the church or whatever it is. He goes into a room where people stay and learn. Nobody's following him. People just seem to let him do it. Deeper and deeper into the like it's almost like what do you call that? Like barracks almost, like you know, almost like military type place where you stay. Then we see a group of bald ass men staring at a black poster and doing the weird voices.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like the poster should have been bigger. Maybe a tapestry, not like a plastic poster that's gonna reflect like that's gonna draw your attention away from it. It needs to be something else.
SPEAKER_04:If you have the right thoughts, it's all you need. You don't need to take up more space, Jason. What did you not just fucking listen to him? Yes. Damn, learn the lessons of this movie. Next time you see you come over for the podcast, I'm just gonna be staring in here just at the black uh uh blanket I have on the wall.
SPEAKER_01:Is that why my cat stares at the corner of the wall all the time? Maybe. Maybe they're the empty the empty kitties.
SPEAKER_04:Dude, I mean, yeah, cats I feel like are the ultimate dialysts, dude.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:They see you like you don't matter. They don't give a fuck. Until they decide you matter. So James then walks past some fly uh files where we see one called Manifestation 14. He then goes into an empty room, bum bob, where a woman is talking to a few people discussing their philosophy. While listening in, everyone hears a noise from James. The woman leading starts to telling the presence to show itself. It's also doing like a little stopwatch. I have no fucking idea why. Yeah, that was strange. So James can see it, and then the group blows into a bottle. Suddenly the lights turn on and James is actually. Yeah, it's just like just says, hey, everything you're worried about doesn't matter. Somebody bring your bottle. Okay, thank you. Um what is he oh yeah, one of the turnal lights? He's like, uh, how you doing?
SPEAKER_01:Does anyone else have nothing to share?
SPEAKER_04:And they're just like, uh oh, exit? Yeah, that way, okay. Free coffee. Yeah. I love it. So James finds the guy he showed Amanda's picture to. The guy says Amanda has been there. He's like done up like in a 1950s fucking like cool guy, and it's like just like use old timey words a little bit, or like what does he call them? Like cat or something like that. Yeah, these cats. Yeah, and it's like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, it's you can't quite figure that guy out. Yeah, I don't I don't really know. He might not even be real. I don't know. He isn't. He was manifested by James, who is also a manifestation. Let's not talk about it. So the guy says Amanda has actually been there, and we'll later know she was in that little group. Um, he says she is at Camp Elsewhere. It's where they have their great release. I saw that movie.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, I'm gonna release that camp elsewhere.
SPEAKER_01:Boy, that was what was that place called?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Rewatch that movie. You know what movie he uh isn't as good as you remember? That one. Except for the end with the Ben Stiller, though, is so good. He's funny. He's just doing like I'm doing my Ben Stiller thing, and it's funny. I will say some of the kids are pretty funny, in it. Yeah. There's some good parts, but all this is like, ah, this is old.
SPEAKER_01:They do horrible push-ups. If you watch when they do the competition. You know, they're struggling, man. Who the fuck is watching them do push-ups? I don't know. This is a military camp, right? The empty man. No way, I'm thinking of something completely different. I'm thinking of major pain. Never mind. Yep.
SPEAKER_04:So uh James then goes to the place called Camp Elsewhere, where we see the cabin from the Wikipedia search where they're talking about that there was like some murders there or whatever. Uh from the Colt. He is able to get inside a cabin and he finds files for Amanda and her friends. Then he finds a red folder with his name, but it's empty. Why is it empty? Uh it's not because he's the empty man. And I love his like, yeah, okay, that is funny. You guys are funny. It's like this is this is good. All right, I'm being played here now.
SPEAKER_01:He just opens it up and says lol.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Well, because now he knows, like, oh, that fucking guy sent me here on purpose to see all this. Because he's curious, like a cat. So he goes to the cabin from the wiki search. It is filled with bottles and a single teddy bear. He then finds VHS tapes and one titled Manifestation 13. We see a group of people doing a ritual. Then they stop and we see a deformed man gasping for air and scratching at his stomach, opening a wound, and drawing a symbol of the empty man. The tape cuts off, and the teddy bear is gone from behind him.
unknown:Eek!
SPEAKER_04:Here comes all the eeks, baby. And then he sees a light outside and he goes outside and he hears chanting. He walks and sees a large group of people running around a giant fire. Are they naked? No, they're they're dressed as the empty man. I couldn't tell. As we've seen, they got their like hoods and stuff on. Um, as they're dressed as like the empty man, they they're in lockstep with each other. James sees a fire, it rises into the sky, and then he looks into the sky himself and it kind of blurs. That was cool. Almost. And then James looks like he may faint. James decides to walk away, and suddenly all the noise goes out. The fire is gone. He sees the whole group looking at him, and then the spotlight goes out as he moved, as they as he moves, or they kind of move towards him, towards where the little bridge is across the water. Um, and they move together in unity. That was weird. And then uh he sees that and he's like, Yeah, no. The greatest horror movie line ever muttered. Yeah, yeah, no. It was perfect. It was like, I've seen enough. Yeah, no. Uh then they suddenly run after him because they do that, like he steps forward, they kind of step back, he steps back, he steps back, and they step forward and they step forward. Um, and then he runs away, and they're all suddenly attacking him, they're throwing bottles at him, jump on his car, then he drives off. He's like, What the fuck was that?
SPEAKER_01:It's the big group of the bottle kids for so um hell yeah. This scene. Yeah, that was about so good, right? They're all jumping on his car and shit.
SPEAKER_04:It's just it's just the the eeriness of them all like imagine being out and going to this camp and seeing this group of people huddled around a giant bonfire, just running in circles, stopping, running the other direction. Fire goes up, then you're like, I'm out of here. And then you turn around and the fire's gone, and then all of a sudden the they're all staring at you, and then it's gone.
SPEAKER_01:How do you think they put the fire out so fast? They peed on it, right? Empty man, man. They had to surround it and all pee it on.
SPEAKER_04:Whatever it once. Whatever empty man was in the sky at the part. Even though the empty man, I keep calling the entity the empty man, just easier to call it that. But the empty man is not the entity that's entering it. Yeah. Um, we don't know what that thing's called, I guess technically. Um, but yeah, great scene. And then him just being like, what the fuck? twice was just like that's the appropriate reaction. His the dialogue they give this man is perfect, but uh just the stepping forward and stepping back as a giant group and the sound of the thuds is so good. First time I watched it, I was like, greatest movie I've ever seen. So uh then we cut to James giving the files over to the detectives. The other detectives chastile Jane chastises James for getting involved in the case when he is retired. The cops don't seem to care, and James starts getting the idea that they may be a part of it. That's what I took from that scene. Because they're just like, Yeah, you've done everything wrong, and they did they're seem to like be pissed that there's any sort of lead in the case, right? Like, we didn't want to do shit about this. We only got like a bunch of dead children showing up, and we don't seem too worried.
SPEAKER_01:We're so busy not solving that case.
SPEAKER_04:We have four people in the office not doing anything. Um the best job ever. And then so James goes to a security store to lock and load. He later visits Nora, who's still worried about her daughter. He tells her Amanda is a part of a cult. Nora then gets a call and it's the call. And he's like, Yeah, we're getting out of here.
SPEAKER_01:I thought it was funny when he uh he's like, I didn't mean I don't want to scare you, but well, maybe I do want to scare you.
SPEAKER_04:It's time to start officially scaring you. So there's like, all right, we gotta get out of here. They drive to a hotel. He's like, No one's found you. Then he James asks her if Amanda knew about the two of them apparently being together. But Nora says no. Nora's asked if they have have punished themselves long enough. We see more flashbacks to Nora and James hooking up while the accident happened. His kid was tapping on his teeth and sounds similar to So that night at the end of the hall, we see the uh we just see it's like a dark hall, right? You can see the white of the door, and there's it seems like there's a little lump, you know. There's a lump there's a little lump. You're like, am I gonna see anything? And then it stands up and it runs at him, and he's like, And it looks like it puts his hand over his face, and then uh we see it, and the entity is gone. Um, and I just believe all this is just kind of weakening him, weakening his spirits even more. Yeah. Uh and then he goes, he opens the door, he and then he hears like knocking at his own door. He opens it, and it's the teddy bear left his doorstep and he lifts it up. I got it. All right, I see that you're here.
SPEAKER_01:I really wish he would have hit it with a baseball bat.
SPEAKER_04:I fucking hate this thing.
SPEAKER_01:Or just like golf, like punts it off the porch with the bat. Yeah. That would have been great.
SPEAKER_04:And then Jason, day three. James doesn't uh James doesn't take his pills and puts on his wedding ring. James starts following people associated with the institute, like that Neil Cassidy guy. He is led to a hospital where an older Paul from the beginning is sitting in a vegetative state, but the people entering his room appear to bow all at the same time. Great and chanting something to him. Uh then later outside, James Pepper sprays one of the guys, guys from before, Neil Cassidy guys, and throws them in the car. He looks around. Yeah, and then everybody sits on their phone not paying attention, and it's just like, huh? Yeah, technology. Technology taking away our memory. So he says, uh, he says, uh, then he's like the guy's explaining that Paul's an antenna where they receive stuff. It's like we go there, he weep.
SPEAKER_01:He gives, we receive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's like, and then like you've got mail.
SPEAKER_01:Kill your family. Opens up the mail.
SPEAKER_04:It's just like ah, I should have known it was that many. Another spam mail from the empty man. Um, so the guy says, Thought is transferable. He says the entity needs an empty man to enter, and then essentially the end of the world will happen. He says that he is coming down with him and that Janes has the itch in his brain. He then punches the shit out of him a couple times while he laughs like a maniacal villain. Um, great little scene. Love the little laughter, like his red eyes. He's like, I'm just thinking this is happening.
SPEAKER_01:Then he just leaves them there, handcuffed. It was great.
SPEAKER_04:So it's like the guy's like, probably then after he leaves, like, oh shit. I don't know actually how to get out of this situation now. Hey, I'm in uh the middle of just like it's a little rundown part here. I don't know who's around me, and I can't see with pepper spray.
SPEAKER_01:It doesn't it doesn't matter that I'm handcuffed in an alley. Yeah, it really doesn't matter, but it sucks.
SPEAKER_04:So James goes to the pontificate institution to break in that night, but the lock is already kind of broken. He walks in, grabs manifestation 14, he sees a picture of Paul, then case files again, this time filled with stuff about his life, medication, the birthday voucher. And he's like, How the fuck did you get this? Pictures of the family, how much the teddy bear cost. Then him sitting in a chair in the tunnel, like we saw in his visions earlier. That was wild. What does this mean? It's pretty obvious. He is a manifestation. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And then uh we kind of cut and he drives off and we see flashes of his past and the fact that he and like the hospital and him driving in the hospital, which is kind of like trippy.
SPEAKER_01:I like the idea of Amanda and her friends manifesting him, and she's like, but give him a great body and make him handsome.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Make sure we take a picture of him with his penis out. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. It's gonna be a dang, dang hammer down there, please. If he's gonna be like, you know, imagining like laying pipe to my mom, at least let her enjoy it. You're welcome, mom. Too bad she'll never know. Happy mother's day. So yeah, he's back at the hospital. He asks a nurse to tell him about Paul. The nurse says she can't. Seems normal at first, and then she gets weird. We learn that Paul has been being transferred a lot all over the place. Then the nurse starts getting a little culty. James holds his hands like the skeleton. I don't know, it cuts to his hand, he's holding it exactly like the skeleton. She says, Paul has a visitor right now, and then the nurse lets him in. James walks in and finds Amanda in the room with Paul, who's acting under the influence of the cult and empty man. She tells James that Paul is just an antenna that they receive messages from. And she's like cutting his hair and shaving him, you know, just like right before he's about to die, you know. James calls Nora to tell her about her daughter, but Nora has no idea who's on the phone. She's never heard of James before. And this is where it's like, Shh, let's go, baby. We're about to get weird up in here. We've already been pretty weird. So we learn that Paul is dying because he can't handle the power of the entity anymore.
SPEAKER_01:He's like they unplugged him from the wall.
SPEAKER_04:The last antenna was uh before Paul lasted for 500 years. It was the skeleton. And that was this kind of the last of its like antenna, like broadcasting a signal, but you have to be like close enough and just you know, sad enough or you know, cutty, cutty enough to hear it. Yeah. Uh they just really need to get a Wi-Fi extender out there. Um oh crap, where'd I go? Uh yeah. So they decided to make one. It's like we can't just keep doing normal humans, they're just gonna die after a few years, and then we have to do all this process again. So he's like, we decided to make one. She explains to James that an empty man with nothing to lose or gain is the perfect vessel vessel to project empty the empty man's messages. She says that she is the one who created him. She wrote all his memories and put them into his head. He is the Tulpa, the empty man. Damn. She says that the empty man can only enter him if he has sorrow and fear. She starts repeating, Where are you? Where are you? to James.
SPEAKER_01:She made him to have those memories. Yeah, they wrote his whole like uh backstory and biography.
SPEAKER_04:It's like a film.
SPEAKER_01:That really sucks for him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, he's like, damn it, you couldn't give me one good one. I guess he got to have sex in one of his memories, but it was completely tainted by the death of his family. Unless he had that. Um and I so she's repeating, where are you? as he is forced to relive the trauma that has been haunting him. Then we flash back to after he found the red file at the institute. We see him walking up to the same group of people from earlier, and we learn that uh that Amanda was also there, and we learn that he was the noise that he heard while the group was calling for the empty man. He then is teleported to the chair in the tunnel, then to the cave from the beginning where the skeleton now moves and vibrates and disappears, but moves in the wall and comes out and chases James. He gets caught by the empty man and it enters through his mouth, tentacles in awe. That was awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Cosmic horror. That was sweet. Yeah. So I know you have a question. No, I don't really know what I'm just had my mind is kind of How could he be at both places at the same time? Yes. Was he just was he born the moment that he walked into the room? Is that what they're saying? Is that what she's saying?
SPEAKER_02:The group of people, were they the ones summoning him? That doesn't make sense to me. I have a little lizard brain.
SPEAKER_04:I want to say yes. But what about all the stuff that happened before this? Well, no, is it all just memories? There were the three days ago. Um, yeah, it was hold my hair out right now. It was all put into his brain. So yeah, it's all just thoughts, man. Nothing's actually there. That's cool. It's just thoughts for him. He is the walking like incarnation of nihilism. Um, yeah, man. Well, those tentacles popped out. I was like, let's go. Yes. I know.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, oh, more.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, I wouldn't see in the sauna did he not have one damn tentacle. That would have made the whole scene way better. Yeah. Um, just the whole like vibe where it's almost like melted uh plastic kind of covering the empty man. It's so good. Um, and just getting like a bar. Hands coming out of hands coming out of his chest. And it says, like, oh, that's right. He had so many hands. Skeleton. Um, yeah, uh, I guess all I can say is uh cosmic horror's metal, baby. Uh and then we flash the night of the accident while James runs into the house and finds nothing in there, just an empty house for an empty man. Oh, the night that Allison and Henry were killed, he was engaging in an affair with Nora. He has since blamed himself for not being there to have prevented it. James now, fully drained of his consciousness and humanity, goes into the hospital to Paul's room, he unloads his gun into Paul's head, creating the symbol of the empty man. The doctors and nurses, all members of the cult, look to James as their new empty man and bow. That was fucking rad. That's why I like the I think I like all the police. I think the entire world now is completely under the control of the empty man because he's a doomsday cult. And the guy in the alley was just like, get ready to watch the whole thing burn, baby.
SPEAKER_01:It was so cool. He just blew his head to smithereens. Yeah. I think he shot him like five or six times.
SPEAKER_04:Unloaded his clip, man. And it like perfectly makes the little, you know, like the little symbol of the ultimate. It's awesome. Yeah, so uh good movie. Yeah, I like the movie. It gets better the more you watch it, too. It's the fun part. Once you know everything, you like you can kind of see all the details. And like, like I said, the third time I watched it, I was like, I'm pretty sure everybody in this town might be a part of this cult, or it's they're not, and it's just like the cult's already kind of taken over, and what we're seeing is just these memories to put in his head. I mean, it can kind of be a little wonky at the end, but I think with like the premise of the movie where you know our thoughts are what's happening, it's kind of what the movie's about. And it's like, well, if we put thoughts in someone, he has all these thoughts. Like, is it real or is it not real? You know? Or is it just you know, it's all it's kind of is there's smoke coming out of my ears right now? Well, you know, like when people think of it's like it's almost like the thing when people are like, are we in a simulation? Yeah. And it's just like, well, I mean, this might like our thoughts might be our thoughts might be the simulation. I mean, who knows? You may be in an abyss out in space, this thinking up your own version of what's happening, and like the version I'm seeing of you is not there, it's just what I'm perceiving.
SPEAKER_01:Right, but like the the only thing about hard solipsism is that it doesn't really mean that much because this is the only reality that we have proof that exists. So we could all be brains in a vat making all this up, but there's no proof of it. So we just have to use the reality that we have. Yeah, but that's what kind of breaks.
SPEAKER_04:But what if it's my thoughts that made you say that? And then in your own uh brain glass tube that you're in next to mine is like having this same conversation, but slightly different. You just don't know it. That's what in my reality, but in your reality, you're completely you're acting insane. In your reality, you're the one doing all the notes and like reading this off. And then I'm like, what do you what does this mean, Jason? And then you're like yelling your thoughts at me.
SPEAKER_01:I do love the Futurama heads and the things. Yeah, it's great glass bottles. It's one of the best parts.
SPEAKER_04:It's got Walt Disney's and everything. It's great. So, Jason, I know we kind of talked about the point a little bit, but uh, what's the point of the movie?
SPEAKER_01:Um that I guess that nothing matters. Do what you want to do. Yeah, your life was what you make it. You like to see homo's naked. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um Homo's where you make it. So at first, I you know, I just kind of usually when I do this point, I just kind of type out stream of consciousness, right? Yeah. So at first I put, does it have one or need one? Kind of the point. There's no point. Nihilism. But then I was like, then I just kind of sat there and thought, and I was like, I guess the point of the movie is that there is no point, it's all meaningless, and everything we create is just that something we created for the sake of creating something to make us feel happy, but all it leaves us is unhappy because we want more. We're just not able to comprehend how to get it. Makes me want to read Nietzsche. And when you let go of the idea that anything has meaning, that you can truly be happy because nothing matters and what I disagree that nothing matters. Well, I don't think that like actually. Right. But I think that's what the point. Yeah, maybe uh their whole cult is it's just like if you think about not wanting to have more, you'll be happy with what you have. That's true. Um But we gotta have more. Or we're all this empty vessels just uh hearing thoughts and people's opinions and uh it becoming what we think. Which is kind of what you know, like Reddit, YouTube. It fills your body with cortisol, makes you angry. Instagram and die faster. These people we decide that are important and we should should they should have power. We should just listen to them and just, you know, just take everything they say for as fact and you know, believe what they believe, even though we have our own personalities and thoughts, and uh, we shouldn't just let people tell us what to think.
SPEAKER_01:Hell yeah, Dusty. This is where the rebellion begins. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Dang, our podcast getting taken off the internet because it's too much truth.
SPEAKER_01:We're too woke.
SPEAKER_04:Um, but yeah, I didn't expect like this movie to make me think this much.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is great.
SPEAKER_04:And like I feel like a different person. Like, you know, usually like I'm I'm gonna edit this and like play like my little handheld video games. So I'm just like, maybe I should just stare. No, I'm not. I'm probably gonna play a video game or clean the house while I'm editing. Gotta make sure to uh you know block out all the bad thoughts, right? With video games. Um, so uh let us know what you think the point of the movie is. Uh did Jesse nail it? Did Jason nail it? Uh are we handsome? Does it matter if we're handsome? What's the point of being handsome, right? Um, but yeah, in the description, we'd love to hear your thoughts, even though I just kind of rattled off why your thoughts don't matter to anybody but yourself, so don't give your thoughts. But uh just we'd love to hear that, right? Cool.
SPEAKER_01:I want to hear your thoughts so I don't think about my own.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um so yeah, Jason, let's talk about um some of the things we thought about this movie, like the good, the bad, the ugly, fine. It's where we discuss the good of the film, something we like, the bad, something we didn't like, the ugly, something that didn't age well, the fine something that did age well. So, what do you got for the good?
SPEAKER_01:The good I like the bone fingers.
SPEAKER_04:No, I really like the for real, the bone fingers, dude. Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That skeleton. The skeleton was so good. Skeleton's in my good too. I really liked all the psychological, just the horror and the the tension. I don't know. It was just it was really good.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And it being so trippy, it's like it's kind of frustrating that you're not it's like, am I understanding this? Which just kind of makes it more suspicious.
SPEAKER_02:The moment to moment was so uh just what's the word?
SPEAKER_04:Satisfying, I guess. Yeah, and it's just like beautifully shot. So like all of like the scares are just so good and they're so smartly done. And like the only time that the scares aren't the best is when you see almost too much of the empty man, which is in the sauna because it's so bright. That was my bad. Yeah, that's my bad too. Um but I I said uh cosmic horror. I really love it. Uh in movies, there's not a lot of great ones, it's like when I think of cosmic horror, I just like usually I'm just like, I don't know, they're fine. Like this was just kind of better. It's like a s it's a because this movie is just kind of a slasher, a cosmic horror slasher. That's kind of all it is. Uh which might be the reason the sauna killing scene is kind of the bad scene, because I'm like, so it's a slasher.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I wanted to be alone. Just like pour he's like, pour some more water on the rocks. Yeah. Uh yeah, we said our bad sauna killing scene. Just doesn't work. Um, the ugly, the fact that this movie just got dumped. Yeah, that's for sure. Uh should have had a huge marketing. It'd been great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I was really surprised that I never even heard about it. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, there was a lot going on that year. Like what? I know.
SPEAKER_04:Like the empty man happening and having this whole COVID. The mask thing. And miss those masks. Hate smelling everybody's breath, man. Smelling my own breath. We didn't know what we had with those masks.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you could uh you never knew what was behind it. It was very intriguing. Yeah. It's like living in the world.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, every like, you know, when we got like the rush of like new employees, and it's like, I have no idea what any of these people look like. Oh, it's so it's it's just like then once everybody took off their masks, it was like, how long have you worked here? Put that mask back on. Put that mask back on. It was more fun when I didn't know anybody.
SPEAKER_06:Um so what do you got for the fine? You know what I think psychological horror?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Yeah, that works. Cult. Cold things is uh I fucking love cut cult movies, man. They're always good, even when they're bad. Um I must put the fact that it actually came out during COVID was kind of a perfect time. It's a little frustrating that because you know, around then it's just like shit, we can't do anything. Nothing to do, nothing matters. You realize that like a disease could like just take away everything that you like. Damn. And it's just like kind of a perfect film to come out because it's like or maybe it's a bad time to come out because people are like this.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone was so scared all over.
SPEAKER_04:But I feel like we could have fine could have kind of found comfort in the fact that, you know, maybe nothing does matter for a little bit. Yeah. You know? Yeah, hell yeah. And just the line of like, you know, be small. You don't need to go to the theater or go do all this stuff. You can be happy with just you and your wife in a house. Which I was. I was happy. Good. All right. Right answer. Yeah. Um, we are going to do our next category, which is double feature, a movie that goes well alongside this movie. Jason, what'd you pick? Black Swan with Natalie Portman. Nice. Very much about like what is reality?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I have me guessing the whole time. And beautiful dancing. Natalie Portman's awesome.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's also got um It's not Natalie Portman, it's Naomi Watts. Is it isn't it is Naomi Watts? I swear to God, I thought it was Natalie Portman.
SPEAKER_04:No, the movie I'm recommending has Naomi Watts. Your movie has Natalie Portman and Millie Coonis in it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My bad. I got it was rad. I was thinking of the movie I'm about to recommend, which now everybody knows. Um, yeah, I I need to re-watch that movie. It's been so long, and I remember watching it just being like Take some mushrooms before you do it. This is great. Got an Eli. Got an Eli meow. Um, Jason, the movie I chose is the ring. Nice. I chose it based off of the seven days thing, and then like, you know, horror comes and gets it.
SPEAKER_01:That was one of those when I saw that as a kid, like that was one of the scariest fucking things I'd ever seen.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I love just yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It was great. I was never really super scared of the ring, though. It just didn't do it. Well, just the like her coming out of the TV. Like that was cool. The visuals of the ring, like, just forever. Well, if especially when it came out during our generation. It's just like we have the visuals of the ring in our head. Like it's just a great idea. Like the one thing that you're watching the ring on could be the one thing that something comes out and kills you. Yes. That's great. I'm out with choice. I should watch the ring tonight. It's got that great video in it. Oh, it's so good. And then the scary movies three spoof of it. It's so funny. Oh. So good. Um Jason, so before we get into um our what our next movie is gonna be, we actually got a really nice and very sweet um YouTube comment. Yeah, yeah. And I hope the person's still listening. Uh it's on YouTube. It's at at con one ball X K-A-N-N-1-B-A-L-X, right? Um says, How do these not get views? It's a better podcast than a lot I've listened to. You're damn keep it up. They also said we should you guys need to market. Well, con, just to let you know, the algorithm on social media is no longer uh support small podcasts. No, it's all bullshit just to let you know, unless you're saying something controversial or political or showing people dying in video, or just being a jackass, nothing supports you. Or you have to be uh someone with a big butt dancing on TikTok, apparently. That's the only thing. If you're not dancing on TikTok, you don't get views, or if you're not saying some weird conspiracy shit, or a cat doing all the news, or just uh really bad podcast just saying stupid shit just so they can get views. Yeah, yeah. That's the only thing that gets views. Um, so what I've chosen to do is not really market that much, uh, keep it small and stay happy that way. And you know what? It's made the podcast a lot better for me. But no, seriously, thank you for the comment. That's like so sweet. Uh, any little comment that just says we're doing great just makes us want to do it harder and better. Harder, best and stronger. Uh con or whatever, how you say your name. Uh Empty Man be with you, man. Empty Man be with you. All right, Jason. So I hope you guys aren't tired of cult movies because we're doing the ultimate cult movie. It's probably the masterpiece of cult movies. We're doing the original Wicker Man. It is on Tubi and Pluto. Nice. I'm going to rent it or buy it and watch it that way because it deserves it. It is a great little masterpiece. It's one of those things you can see things in the background. It's a lot of weird folksy horror stuff, and it's got a fucking fantastic, scary ending. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Um it just goes. Is it good for kids?
SPEAKER_04:I don't think there's I mean, it just depends what uh how they do with people burning live. Oh, that should be fine. Yeah, it should be all right. I don't think there's like too much nudity or anything in it. There might be some because it is full core. I mean, when I say kids, I mean 12 and 14. Yeah, it's nothing they haven't seen on probably YouTube, the internet, TikTok, whatever, you know, right? So yeah, join us for the Wicker Man. It's a masterpiece of Folkore. I just feel like, you know, as we just kept picking movies, I just not realizing I keep picking cult movies and just being like, well, it's too late to stop now. If we're gonna do all these cult movies, might as well pick like the masterpiece cult movie, right? To end off Halloween because there's only one more week of Halloween, even though there's technically like two or three for us right now.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, so yeah, join us for the wicker man. And damn it, that's the end of our discussion of the empty man. There's so many men made of wicker, made of empty. So yeah, uh, join us next week for that. This has been a great discussion, Jason. Thank you. It's been very fun. Yeah, it's been you're welcome. Snaces like, Jesus, dad. Uh, I'm a dog. I don't really think like Colts. So can you just end this so I can go outside? He's been really calm and chill. Have you been empty, man? Yes, he's awakened. Um, yeah, join us next week for the weaker man. Leave us some comments uh in YouTube or through our description. If you're on certain platforms, there's a link, and you can just text us straight from your phone or at the end, bottom of the description. We recommend mailbag at gmail.com. You can send us whatever you just want to send us through there. Um, you can follow us on social medias. We don't really say anything or do anything. Maybe when we get bigger, we'll post things so y'all can be more informed about us. But I don't think anybody that listens actually follows us on social media. Um, it's all good, right? I'm dragging this out. But this has been the We Recommend Podcast. Thank you, Joey Prosser, for our intro and outro music. You can follow him on X at Mr. Joey Prosser. I don't think he uses it. Who wants to use that shit? Um, thank you for listening. This has been the We Recommend Podcast. I'm just saying things over and over. I've been Jesse. I've been Jason. At first, you hear our podcast, and then you see our podcast, and three, you fucking listen to our podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Bye.
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