Zombie Book Club

The Night Eats the World (Movie Review)| Zombie Book Club Episode 18

September 17, 2023 Zombie Book Club Season 1 Episode 18
The Night Eats the World (Movie Review)| Zombie Book Club Episode 18
Zombie Book Club
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Zombie Book Club
The Night Eats the World (Movie Review)| Zombie Book Club Episode 18
Sep 17, 2023 Season 1 Episode 18
Zombie Book Club

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This week, we're sinking our teeth into the French horror film, "The Night Eats the World." Directed by  Dominique Rocher Based on the novel "La nuit a dévoré le monde" by Pit Agarmen. It had us unpacking SILENT fast running zombies, isolation, and the cathartic role of music in a post-apocalyptic world.

We also talk about the real-life horrors of the Tuskegee experiments and the bullet-riddled welcome sign of Alabama. We expose these raw memories of our time in the South and the often overlooked history it carries. You'll also catch a glimpse of our lives outside zombies, as we share our personal updates - Dan's upcoming seasonal job layoff, Leah's joy of petting puppies, creating art, and even the baby lamb, Finley Foursocks, finding a new home!


Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast! https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub

Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub

Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006‬

Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com

Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io

Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Send us a Text Message.

This week, we're sinking our teeth into the French horror film, "The Night Eats the World." Directed by  Dominique Rocher Based on the novel "La nuit a dévoré le monde" by Pit Agarmen. It had us unpacking SILENT fast running zombies, isolation, and the cathartic role of music in a post-apocalyptic world.

We also talk about the real-life horrors of the Tuskegee experiments and the bullet-riddled welcome sign of Alabama. We expose these raw memories of our time in the South and the often overlooked history it carries. You'll also catch a glimpse of our lives outside zombies, as we share our personal updates - Dan's upcoming seasonal job layoff, Leah's joy of petting puppies, creating art, and even the baby lamb, Finley Foursocks, finding a new home!


Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast! https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub

Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub

Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006‬

Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com

Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io

Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where sometimes the book is a movie, but the movie is French, but the actors speak English, but in an American accent, and the zombies just shut the hell up for a change. Hi, I'm Dan and I'm a writer. When I'm not counting the days until my day job lays me off for the winter, I'm writing a book about the zombie apocalypse, where no one has to go to work anymore.

Speaker 2:

What a dream.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what a dream. I'm going to be working on my life in the next two and a half months.

Speaker 2:

Very soon thankfully, yeah.

Speaker 1:

What I'm talking about, of course, is that my job is seasonal, so in the winter I get laid off, which sounds like something you wouldn't want to happen, because it's laid off is like a bad sounding word, but I assure you it's wonderful.

Speaker 2:

Especially for the season off, and I'm Leah when I am not counting down the days until Dan is off so that he can keep making me delicious soups for lunch, since I work from home, I'm making art, I'm petting our puppies that you can hear in the background here, and I am, oh yes, very. Every time I try and record this, he does this. This is take two folks and pondering the philosophical question of our times do zombies have human rights? Do they Dan? Do they Ziggy? Of course he doesn't bark that time.

Speaker 2:

You can roll in the other one from the early in the recording.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can roll in a zombie, a Ziggy bark.

Speaker 2:

Basically what I've been wondering about. My sleepless nights have been spent pondering our zombies sentient, or are they an evolution of our species to combat the mass destruction of our planet that our species, in its current sentience state, is doing? I don't know. But I'd like to unpack it another day, and today we're talking about night eats, the world suggested by Greg, the writer from the UK. Thank you, greg.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this is a good one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we record this every two weeks on Sundays. That's when we come out.

Speaker 1:

Subscribe Uh life update Leah, yeah, uh, we, we recorded episode zero. And why did we do that? Because episode one is garbage, yeah, yeah. So, uh, you know, we recorded episode one and that was our first attempt at making this podcast. It was very off the cuff. We didn't really plan a whole lot.

Speaker 2:

We didn't know the fuck we were doing. It was kind of like the first time having sex.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was good and there was no room for improvement. No, it was good. No, I don't mean us having sex.

Speaker 2:

I mean having sex in general, to be clear. I meant like I mean you tell us the first time you had sex was a great maybe it was exciting, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you probably liked it.

Speaker 2:

No, actually it was deeply disappointing the first time I had sex.

Speaker 1:

I'm assuming the listener really liked it the first time they had sex.

Speaker 2:

Maybe, and we had a good time making the podcast right. But then we listened to it ourselves and we were like, oh, this might not be anything that somebody else wants to like listen to for the first 15 minutes at least, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And there was only so much that my editing skills could fix. Yeah, so we, we actually it was, uh, we renamed it a little while ago as like the terrible, uh uh, first pilot episode. Yeah, Hoping that people would see that and be like oh, maybe I'll choose a different, a different podcast episode. They thought we were joking.

Speaker 2:

They kept listening to it.

Speaker 1:

They listened to it even more. It's the most listened to episode of our whole podcast. We're like we have to do something about that.

Speaker 2:

And then a bunch of people were like this is terrible and they stopped listening because they didn't take our warning seriously.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we made an episode zero. This is going to be like the landing page episode that people should listen to when they come to our podcast. Also, it's pretty good, so if you want to go back and listen to it, even though you know what we're about, um, there you go. It's going to be like a like a bonus episode.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like a little 20 minute or 15 minute thing yeah.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, Like I've mentioned, we're getting closer to the end of uh of the work season and I'll be off soon and I can write more. So, like, instead of telling you every episode how much I hate my job, I'm going to be telling you how little progress I've made on my book and how great soup he made that week. I mean, there's going to be a lot of soup updates. I make some good soup.

Speaker 2:

That's true, making a lot of good food, your tofu is fucking killer.

Speaker 1:

I'm a. I'm a certified tofu boy. Yep, soy boy. Yeah, I'm a real soy boy over here. Watch out guys, I'm a soy boy.

Speaker 2:

What's your secret Instagram name? Soy boy Cook. It's not. Don't look for that.

Speaker 1:

It's a joke, it is not a cook, but that's the kind of people I'll be a little perceived tofu eaters as cucks, which is actually.

Speaker 2:

This is a great segue to my little short life update because it'll make sense with your disclosure, but I actually rescued a baby lamb recently. My former boss raises sheep and his wife got attached to one that they had to bottle feed and so I said hey y'all, what if your lovely little bottle fed sweet ba-ba black sheep baby lamb with four socks could go live out his life forever with another cute orphan sheep named Lilith Lightfoot? And they said, yes, so he's going to live a super long, happy life there and I feel pretty good about that.

Speaker 1:

Tomten is like if you were an animal. This is the place you would want to live.

Speaker 2:

It's literal paradise. I mean, I am an animal and I would love to live at Tomten. Yeah, let's move to Tomten. They don't rescue human animals, unfortunately. It's unfortunate, like really unfortunate. Yeah, and I'm also making a lot of art. I'm actually thinking of starting an Instagram page for it. So if you're curious about what I paint spoiler, not zombies we'll share that at some point in the future, would you?

Speaker 1:

paint some zombies at some point.

Speaker 2:

I don't think so, although maybe, maybe as like a special gift for a listener. If we had like some kind of prize or competition, I might do that.

Speaker 1:

It's weird. We did not plan on talking about this, it just kind of came out.

Speaker 2:

No, and I feel like we should move on because it's not the point of the podcast. But I do want to also acknowledge the irony that I talk about eating the rich a lot and Dan has a whole commercial that he made about it. Yeah, I mean, that's different.

Speaker 1:

Shout out, Slea yeah. So I want to shout out to Brookhaven, Mississippi. That's a new city that I saw pop up from the last episode.

Speaker 2:

I've always wanted to go to Brookhaven, Mississippi have you. Should we go who?

Speaker 1:

are you Tell us? I've never heard of Brookhaven, mississippi. I've been to Mississippi a few times. Yeah, been through there, it's nice, it's all right. I mean I feel like it's pretty safe if you're white?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is a horrible reality, yeah, but like, true, yeah, we're safe. Yeah, it was like how I felt when I went to Alabama. I was like, wow, this place, well, that's not true. I didn't feel entirely safe in Alabama, but I definitely was like this is a safer place for me.

Speaker 1:

I have a story about Alabama. When you were traveling on I-20 to Alabama yeah, via Georgia, and you crossed the border. They have a welcome sign that says welcome to Alabama. The welcome sign has bullet holes on it.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God, it's also the place of Tuskegee, where they did like fucking terrible, unethical testing on black men for syphilis.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's. That is a story and a half, that's yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like, really, are zombies worse than humanity? No, they're better. Everyone should be honest about it, you know.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, they shot their own welcome sign, so that says a lot about how you should feel going to Alabama. Do we have any Alabama listeners?

Speaker 2:

Now I feel like I've just alienated like everybody who eats meat people from Mississippi and Alabama. I'm sorry, I lived in Georgia for decades. So did Dan. We're not against the South, yeah, but there are some realities of the South we did leave though.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, speaking of another fun place.

Speaker 2:

You know about the South.

Speaker 1:

If you live there, you know yeah.

Speaker 2:

There's also great things, though. I miss Georgia.

Speaker 1:

Don't pretend like it's not the most dangerous place in the country.

Speaker 2:

Florida man. I wouldn't go West Valley City, Utah super happy to see that on the list because I had a brief stint being a Mormon as a teenager. You know that's just what I did, moving on.

Speaker 1:

Eli Cambridgeshire, uk. Yeah, that one pops up a lot. That's a regular listener right there, so shout out to Eli Cambridgeshire.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then, last but not least, I'm going to butcher this name, so forgive me Thessaloniki, greece, yeah, Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

I wonder if that is possibly the person who illustrated the comic of Brandon Soraki's comic.

Speaker 2:

Avalon, yeah, avalon.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we interviewed last episode.

Speaker 2:

That would make sense. We've had other listeners from Greece, so I don't know.

Speaker 1:

So if you're listening yeah, because Corinth, we have Corinth listeners as well. But if either of you are listening or if it's the same person and you just live in two towns, I was born in Greece, fun fact that not many people know about me. My dad was in the Navy when I was born, my parents lived in Greece. I lived in a little town called Neymakari.

Speaker 1:

I love that name which is just outside of Athens, and that's my fun fact. I had dual citizenship probably until I was 18. And I don't think I have it anymore.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you had to go to join the army, but you just chose the Amaric one instead.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they're like if you want to be a citizen of Greece, you have to join the army. And I joined the US Army and they're like that's not what we meant.

Speaker 2:

I feel like we have definitely overshared this intro. So I think we should just like move on into the night eats the world, because that's what we're here for, that's what you're here for and you know. I just want to acknowledge we really said that episode one sucked because of a long intro. I think this one did too, but we are at the point We'll put in the show notes where you should start this episode. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Or maybe I've edited it down. Yeah, especially this part where I fucked up the word edit, I think you should definitely keep that.

Speaker 2:

But, dan, give us some context for folks who have not watched the night eats the world, which you should, if you haven't and if you have, I'm so curious to hear what you think and any responses you have to our opinions.

Speaker 1:

So the night eats the world. It is a French movie which almost deterred me because I'm like I don't speak French.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and subtitles are hard to pay attention to when you have ADHD.

Speaker 1:

But I was very surprised that the actors in the movie spoke English. Not only do they speak English, but they had American accents.

Speaker 2:

Well, the one hallucinated person, didn't? They had a slight French accent.

Speaker 1:

But the main character had a very good American accent. It like leaked through a few times that he was not American, yeah, but it was. It was rare, yeah, it was pretty good. I was like that's, that's an impressive, impressive accent right there. I wonder and I should have looked this up before we started I wonder if, if they, if they shot in multiple languages because there is so little dialogue in this movie, I feel like you could just do multiple takes in different languages and then reach different markets that way.

Speaker 2:

That's interesting. Not only are the zombies silent, but the main character is very silent.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so let's, let's start off with I like to talk about the zombie type. So the these zombies are fast, they're fast, right, highly motivated, but they are silent. That is the weirdest thing about this and the biggest reason why I wanted to watch it is because I wanted to see what some silent zombies were like, and the result is creepy as shit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, super disturbing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so like they don't announce themselves when they start running at you, like the main character sometimes only sees them because like he happens to turn and see them running at the last second and they are right on top of them and then if they're not like obviously gruesomely bit on their face or missing a limb or something for half a second, you might wonder if it's a human.

Speaker 2:

That's fucking scary.

Speaker 1:

They do seem to learn, yeah, but they're not smart Like they don't. They don't know how to use doors or anything, but they do seem to learn into in some capacity. He has like a pet zombie friend named Alfred. Yeah, named Alfred, that he keeps in the elevator. Later on we find out we realize that, like I don't know either, I don't, I don't, it's not really explained very well, but he doesn't attack him.

Speaker 2:

Well, he has a lot of conversations with Alfred. Yeah, I mean, frankly, alfred should have attacked him because he did at one point throw some kind of liquor in his face and an angry wit. You know, I did yeah, you did no, he did get mad at that time.

Speaker 1:

He apologized, but it seems like Alfred true, maybe Alfred forgave him. Yeah, alfred is the only other main character.

Speaker 2:

That's very true, an alfred.

Speaker 1:

A siren zombie.

Speaker 2:

Alfred is trainable because he lets him out at one point and he chooses. Alfred doesn't eat him, he just leads him into a apartment, alfred walks in, close the door and that's that. They're goodbye. So.

Speaker 1:

I like. The biggest thing that made me want to watch this movie is somebody told me that this movie has silent zombies, which I've never seen before, and immediately I was like that's the coolest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. They must be creepy as hell. So if you're listening to this episode in the future, my book has already come out and my book has silent zombies in it. I absolutely stole it from this movie.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to pretend that I came up with it like oh, what a coincidence, guys. I, you know, I I came up with the idea I hadn't seen the movie. No, I'm not going to lie, I stole it. It's an unoriginal idea of mine. So something that this movie made me realize is that not only do I need a survivor, a zombie type, but I need to think about survivor types of movies too, because this was very different, that's true. The survivor himself was very average, if not dumb. He makes bad choices and he's clearly, throughout the movie, going through a lot of mental health problems from isolation and loneliness. And what's really interesting is that he really likes making music. He makes this like impromptu, like freestyle music, by like tapping on things.

Speaker 2:

He's clearly very talented in his main passion in life before the apocalypse.

Speaker 1:

And I mean they don't outright say it, but it seems like he uses this as a way to like, as part of his routine, to regulate his loneliness and depression.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's the great part of not talking is they really show you the character they literally are not telling you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so this story it's about a guy, a dude in Paris, yeah, or Paris for you.

Speaker 1:

Americans. And the first time we see him he is showing up at a house party in an apartment building and he's, he goes there and it's clear that he's meeting with his ex-girlfriend. We assume it seems like they have that sort of romantic tension between each other, but she's definitely with another guy. Yeah, it's awkward, and he is. He is there not to party, but he is there to collect his box of cassette tapes and she, she doesn't tell him where it is, but later on she's like go wait in the back room and I'll and I'll meet you back there. And he does find the cassette tapes in a box in the back room. But he, after having a few drinks and accidentally getting elbowed in the nose, he sits down for a while and falls asleep. And while he's asleep, the well the night eats the world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, literally, it's a great name for what?

Speaker 1:

happens. He falls asleep and the zombie outbreak occurs during a house party. So like he wakes up and it's quiet and there's blood everywhere and the apartment's empty and he looks out on the street and there are zombies in the street doing crazy things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and there's blood all over the curtains, the floor. Yeah, it's looks like a massacre.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's, it's not. It's, it's not good. Yeah, so the story is basically it's it's about a man dealing with extreme isolation in a world full of dead people. He doesn't know if there's anyone else alive.

Speaker 1:

That's the last person alive, yeah, and not knowing if he's the last person still alive, his mental state declines over the course of the movie, despite the many activities that he does to combat the loneliness. One thing that I think is really important to talk about is because this is so different from so many zombie movies in the past is that this is not a zombie shoot him up. Hmm, this is not a power fantasy. That's part of my part of. I loved it. Yeah, so the the character does find a shotgun. So he finds the tools and the power to dispatch zombies, hmm, right, but he's he's reluctant to fight the zombies. He doesn't even. I mean, this is a spoiler, so if you don't, all of these episodes are spoilers.

Speaker 1:

Everything up until now. If you weren't sold on watching this movie yet, maybe pause and watch the movie. Yeah, but beyond this point we will spoil the rest of the movie.

Speaker 2:

I feel like just know, alfred was a spoiler. Alfred is a spoiler.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so he doesn't even kill a zombie until almost the third act. Yeah, he might even be the third act.

Speaker 2:

No, I think it is actually is right towards the end.

Speaker 1:

There's this family that this, this infected family that in the very beginning of the movie he had to lock inside of their apartment. They all they attack him and he barely gets out. Yeah, and he locks him in and just doesn't deal with it until the very end. Hmm, and those are the first zombies that he kills. Everybody else he does. He does not engage zombies and he, he does get attacked by a few zombies.

Speaker 2:

He does shoot some zombies with a paint gun, which is pretty funny, but the zombies are like completely unresponsive to it and it doesn't harm them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but it he does have fun that way, of course, and this is a big spoiler. So if you're still like, I don't know, I could think I can handle some spoilers Watch it. This will ruin the movie, so cover yours for this one If you're still listening. It's possible that the first, the first kill that he has, is the woman that he accidentally shoots by accident.

Speaker 2:

It's so fucking tragic and it's because, like, obviously he hasn't seen another human being, for at this point I think we're looking at months. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

We don't even know, no. So let's talk about the good things about this movie, and this is kind of a long list, because I really think this is a really good movie.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll start. I think it's the most realistic depiction of a zombie outbreak that we've seen.

Speaker 1:

I agree.

Speaker 2:

Is there one that's better?

Speaker 1:

It's hard to say so like that's. This is why I thought about why we need to have a survivor type, because a lot of times we classify the realism of a zombie movie based on the characteristics of the zombies, that's true.

Speaker 1:

And I think that this was realistic, not just in how the zombies functioned, but also how the survivor navigated the world of the dead. Like he is inside this building, this apartment building, and while he does clear out the building for the most part for his own uses and scavenges the apartment building, he can't leave. He tries to go out the front door once to save a cat. It was a cute cat, he wanted a cat friend and the cat didn't want to come in and he tried to go out the cat was doing just fine.

Speaker 2:

The zombies didn't care about it.

Speaker 1:

And he gets into. He doesn't even get 10 feet away from the front door and he gets into trouble.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a disaster out there. Yeah, he gets scratched. He thinks he's going to get the virus.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my God. He fell, so he gets scratched. He cleans out all of his wounds, but he doesn't know if he's infected or not. So, oh my God, that's right. He. He rests his chin on. He has a double barrel shotgun. He rests his chin on the shotgun and sits in a chair and he's just waiting to see if he starts to turn. And he's just seeing him sitting there for a long, long time and then all of a sudden the gun goes off because he fell asleep and pulled the trigger by accident.

Speaker 2:

But somehow didn't shoot himself. Well, I think like his face like rolled off the side.

Speaker 1:

So it was like I mean they should have addressed the fact that he was probably deaf in that year after that yeah. Or, you know, maybe they should have shown him get his ear blown off.

Speaker 2:

Or just have like a ringing sound, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But anyways, yeah he's, he kind of like falls, falls forward as he's falling asleep in his chair, the gun goes off and then he like kind of has a mental break and just starts laughing.

Speaker 2:

I'm curious what guns laws are in France. I'm sure they're much better than here in the United States, because he did in general just not seem very competent with guns and the only reason he had any competency was practicing with the paint gun, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1:

I think it might be a lot like the UK, where older weapons probably are legal, but like through a grandfather clause. So that's why the only thing that he had available to him was like an old double barrel shotgun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah that he then saw it off at some point.

Speaker 1:

He did, saw it off. It looked pretty rad. It's like a Mad Max gun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. What else was awesome about this movie that you loved, Dan?

Speaker 1:

So I really liked how different this the themes were than your typical zombie apocalypse narrative. So this movie was about loneliness and boredom. So one thing that I was thinking is, like I was, I was. I was wondering like at some point was this made after the pandemic? But then I remembered it was made in 2018. It's incredible and like this would have been like a perfect, like post pandemic narrative about what it was like to be isolated and quarantine.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there were a lot of similarities. He picked up some hobbies running and music making with random assorted objects that are from the house and also he's just isolated and alone.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he couldn't leave his house.

Speaker 2:

So that's why he picked up weird hobbies, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Made a bathtub out of a fridge. He did. He made a bathtub and filled it with hot water, so he kind of had like a fridge hot tub.

Speaker 2:

It's pretty great. Yeah, let me think about it. The other thing that was, I think, resonated for me a lot because I think a lot of how I would do in Zilean Pocklips not Rick, fucking Grimes, although love Rick or like just how believable the reactions were to surviving and hiding in the very beginning alone, especially alone right, like Dan already pointed out, it was totally unable to kill zombies at first, basically just locks the door, make sure they're not in the building and then secures his immediate location and then be a hordes things. That was his strategy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And then he just like kind of busy himself to to stave off the boredom. He makes like this he makes this weird calendar I like it's hard to figure out, like exactly why he was doing that this way. I'm like, is he counting hours or is he counting days? Because he he's the grime on wind on these two windows to make a grid of exits, those windows so grimy it doesn't make sense it's party house, I guess.

Speaker 1:

so, yeah, so like he started marking off boxes but there was like 11 boxes in a row, so it wasn't like a standard week, like seven days, if you don't know how weeks work. So it was confusing because it's like why is it 11? Why wouldn't you just make a standard calendar?

Speaker 2:

And if you watch this, can you tell us if you also noticed this or we, dan and I just get obsessed with it. It was the first thing I had to do was read and figure out how many boxes there were, because I was trying to understand how long they'd been there, and the first time they show it it's like 36 days in or something like that.

Speaker 1:

It's 11 times 3. I don't know. A fortnight is 14 days.

Speaker 2:

Nothing about it makes sense for hours or days.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and they also don't really show it very often. They show it later on and we see that he's got like 30 something boxes. Yeah, but this isn't a good part.

Speaker 2:

I think we're preemptively talking about the part we don't like. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

At the very end he's like cleaned it, so we don't really know how long he's been there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that doesn't feel realistic, but the rest of it I mean making a place to count down the days makes sense. And then the other thing that I thought was really cool was that his nightmares, like they have a, and it's sort of a foreshadowing moment, but his nightmare about like being in bed and of course you don't know it's a nightmare You're just watching him sleep and then all of a sudden he hears zombies coming and I think they get through the door and he shoots one of them or two of them, and then they're like all over him and it's clear he's going to die. And then he wakes up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean it's a really good depiction of, like, his decline of mental stability, which actually I've written later here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, he's really learned like how scary the world is. It's not safe for him out there.

Speaker 1:

The filmmaker has like, really successfully drawn us as the viewer, into the characters, delusions, in a way that like isn't overt and it's not giving it away. Like we don't. We don't see him like laughing hysterically on mirror or doing some like crazy, weirdo stuff. It's just like every now and then he has a nightmare that he thinks is real, and sometimes he talks to people who aren't there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and sometimes he makes music with weird inanimate objects. I guess I'll make music with inanimate objects, but that's my sidebar. But he also does things like you start to see him get weirder and weirder and weirder with his mental instability too, because he literally decides to attract the zombies not once but twice in the movie.

Speaker 1:

So this yeah, In the second time the zombies go away. And like he's talking to Alfred and he's like isn't it messed up that these that your friends left, that's what I left to say they left and they didn't take you with them, Aren't you mad? And and he's just like looking out at the crowd of zombies or where they were and there's nobody there and like it does make you wonder, like if the zombies suddenly go away, would it make you more lonely?

Speaker 2:

I think it did, but also it was like this is the prime time, like they're not visible for, as far as you can see, he has every single kind of thing he can capture water in on the roof of this building and I'd say the building's probably like six stories high, something like that. It's Paris. Imagine a Parisian building, all very close together. It's definitely like maybe not quite downtown, but close, and he could have used that time to go scavenge, explore, check things out. You just had to be quiet, yeah. And instead he's like you know what I'm going to do? I miss my zombies.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to pull out my old I don't know if it's his or somebody else's, I think it's somebody other kids or something he finds a drum kit and then fucking blast music as loud as possible while he plays the drums and brings them all back and they're like literally climbing on top of a car and they're not that.

Speaker 1:

I guess they're becoming a zombie.

Speaker 2:

Three stories up, or two stories up, and they're yeah, they're, yeah. It's reminiscent of World War Z and they almost get it where they get all the way over that giant wall, except for they're not that smart.

Speaker 1:

I mean to me it seemed like he was having a mental break. Yeah, he was not. He was not in his right mind at that time.

Speaker 2:

Did he want to die Part of? Me was like was he lonely or was he having a death wish, or both?

Speaker 1:

I think both yeah, and then probably seeing the zombie tsunami. Like maybe he just underestimated the zombies, Like he just thought that they'd all come back, but instead they started climbing on top of each other trying to get get up to his window and probably scared him.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true, that's really true.

Speaker 1:

So this movie is like very moody and atmospheric, like there's almost no dialogue we mentioned that before but the music and the overtones of just the in general, like they try to portray like this silence, but it's never really truly silent. There's just like this hum almost in the background and that hum is just really unnerving. There's always this feeling of dread.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if you've watched Hereditary, a fucking terrifying horror movie, it's very much feels like that kind of vibe, like you just know shit's going to get worse and worse and worse until it gets really bad. But the last thing that I want to make sure that I comment on that I really loved about this book was the transformation of the character. I don't even know the guy's name Movie. I have a noun retrieval thing. I don't know what it's called, but it's a real thing.

Speaker 1:

It's a book.

Speaker 2:

now I think it's called just know me.

Speaker 1:

Actually, this is based on a book.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, we should read the book. Yeah, it was good, but anyways, I don't know the guy's name is, because maybe somebody says his name once at the very beginning and then it's just silent. Sam, sam, that's right. He does introduce himself to the hallucinated girl and Alfred, and Alfred. Yeah, we'll talk of the hallucinated girl in a moment, but basically I think that the movie was a metaphor for a real life human experience. One, yes, true, that we experienced. All of us during the pandemic, or most of us, so for you, q and honors out there, and who were immune to it. Yeah, totally immune. They're purebloods, we learned is the thing they're called.

Speaker 1:

We found. We found a thing on a message board today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like a literal, physical message board. Yeah, in a town Reaching out to the purebloods. Yeah, email me. It was so creepy. I was like, is this racist? But then we learned it. No, it's just, it's just an anti-vaxxer. Yeah, maybe also racist, who knows?

Speaker 1:

Oh, I looked him up, he is definitely racist. Oh really, yeah, I know everything about him.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a good time. All right, we can post all of his information. Docs, we would never do that, but anyhow I'm not. I would like to keep my green card.

Speaker 1:

Who wants his email address? I want to submit it to a bunch of scammers.

Speaker 2:

I mean you did publicly make it available. So if you want to read it right now, go for it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to submit this guy's email address to like a spam bot, if you know where to find a spam bot, just you know, like you know what, Find giveaways Submit him to a bunch of giveaways. His name is a***** at yahoocom, that sounds like so much about his generation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, who still has a little account? Boomer, boomer. Definitely not Gen X, you?

Speaker 1:

know I used to have a Yahoo account and then I didn't check it for two weeks and then it was during a time where they were like, if you didn't check your email for two weeks and we deleted it.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I lost mine too. Mine was Unholy Dirty Beautiful at Yahoocom and I love that because it was a name of a song by David Usher that I loved.

Speaker 1:

And I think mine was Audio Rage 1983.

Speaker 2:

That sounds right. Yeah, this is like really a nostalgia time for us. But going back to the show, I hope you love us in our mutual ADHD. We love it. This character, sam, goes from not wanting to really meet any new people Like he goes to this party. He totally isolates himself. In the very beginning you can tell that he sort of lives in his own world and he just wants to continue to do that by getting his tapes back and his love for music is really clear. And then I feel like through this journey that he goes through the zombie apocalypse, he actually really realizes how important connection is. I think you would. Yeah, because humans are a species that really need each other. So he like tries to save the cat. He makes friends with his pet Alfred oh my God save the cat, save the cat, save the cat.

Speaker 1:

If you're a writer and you want to learn how to be a better writer, there's a book called Save the Cat.

Speaker 2:

I wonder if that was a fun little nod to it Super fun. And then like, since he couldn't have a real connection with people, especially the woman that he accidentally killed, because he thought it was his dream already, all over again.

Speaker 1:

He was running around his apartment like a maniac.

Speaker 2:

Okay, zombie survival type of this episode. If you're isolated and you can see another person who's isolated in France, in Paris, in any city in a zombie apocalypse, don't make the choice to ambush them in the middle of the fucking night to meet them while they're sleeping and zombies are silenced who could as well be a zombie that you're approaching?

Speaker 1:

I do have a theory about that, though I wonder if maybe his overactive imagination, because they did show us that he was hearing things when he was in his fridge bathtub Like he thought he heard voices. He thought that he heard people walking around and I wonder if, like maybe, he just heard somebody taking a step outside of his door and, like, his brain just became overactive and he just started hearing the pounding of the zombie footsteps like in his dream. His amygdala took over and then he got scared and pumped around through the door.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was very sad she died, but he decided to hallucinate her into his new bestie named Sarah. She actually had a very lovely French accent. A little bit she's only one, but I do think it's a life metaphor of like. To me he is like a classic example of an avoidant attachment style. If you don't know what attachment styles, look them up. I'm traditionally anxious, but I've been working on that in therapy. As you all know, I'm in therapy in this book club. Dan is definitely secure. I don't know how he got there.

Speaker 1:

I think I'm only secure with you and I'm avoiding with everyone else.

Speaker 2:

Well, that might be true, but basically avoidant is exactly like what it sounds you don't want to get close to people, you shut down because they're scary, and that's been how you've survived pain of loss and betrayal and feelings of victimization before. So I feel like it's a really excellent metaphor for somebody with an attachment style that's avoidant to grow and realize that they need to connection to survive. And it is worth the risk. Because he makes the choice to leave, because, even though he has to cross through a whole city to try and get to the outside, he wants to see if there's other people like him to survive with. He's driven by that need for human connection.

Speaker 2:

And he's like well, I'm not sure if he's going to live. Yeah and yeah, are you living, if you're hiding in your house all the time. Yeah, which, if you're hiding in your house all the time, welcome to the club. I don't judge you, I'm just saying it could. Yeah, it couldn't be so bad to leave sometimes.

Speaker 1:

I think that he might have been like the best personality type to survive what he survived because you know, speaking from somebody that also wants everyone to go away, I would make it quite a long time before I started feeling lonely. Of course, this is not counting you being in my life, of course, but like pre Leah being in my life, I was very much a hermit and I did not leave my house and I did not talk to people. And, yeah, you were Sam, I was fine.

Speaker 2:

Well, you did talk to people, though. You had social connections, that's true, I did have social connections you had a YouTube channel.

Speaker 1:

I talked at people. That's true, they didn't necessarily talk back very often, but I expressed my ideas.

Speaker 2:

Are we repeating this pattern with the book club?

Speaker 1:

Yes, you're enabling me Shit. One more thing I want to talk about is that this one thing that I loved about this this is like a big diversion from other zombie apocalypse media. This wasn't a story about like freedom, like he didn't go out on the open road, he didn't get the band back together, he didn't go find the love of his life and save her from a horde of Well, he shot her. Yeah, he shot her, which is probably worse than like perpetuating the patriarchy. Yes, this is true, but this man more or less, was a prisoner, just like Alfred, who was trapped in the elevator. He was a prisoner trapped inside of the building, and it was a story about loneliness and boredom and a perfect example of a different type of narrative that can be formed within the genre, and that's what I love about the zombie apocalypse genre is that you can tell almost any story with it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's. I agree with you. It's not like people I think sometimes hear zombies, like all of my real life friends who, when I told them I was being in this podcast, I think just kind of like oh cool, yeah, that's cool, cool yeah, I only one of them listen to it. I've raised a child and I'm doing stuff with my life, maybe two.

Speaker 1:

But it's cool that you have a show where you talk about zombies. Yeah, they don't get it.

Speaker 2:

But, like, I think you're totally right, dan, that it is about any story that could be out there, and yeah, and the other thing, like based on what you're saying true too is that it feels realistic. Like, most of the time when I think of the what would you do in a zombie apocalypse, I'm always like why the fuck are you leaving your apartment? Yeah, so I absolutely would have done a very similar thing to him in the beginning of an apocalypse, yeah, and I think it served him well for what it's worth.

Speaker 1:

You know and that's another way that this is different is that, like, I feel like when people write zombie apocalypse stories, it's all about like, what would you do? So they, they like to choose like the smartest thing to do but he made a lot of mistakes? Yeah, and that's realistic. He was dealing with loneliness and mental health disorders and and he made mistakes and he almost died for his mistakes. Even his escape at the end was a really bad move.

Speaker 2:

He got lucky, he knocked himself out. So thank God his rope was tied properly on him.

Speaker 1:

If you've seen it but don't remember, or if you just decided to listen to the spoilers.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, he throws a grappling hook to a building across the street, yeah, ties the rope around his waist and jumps and he just swings full speed into the side of the building and knocks himself out and it's like, as soon as I saw him, like that's a bad idea and I love that, the the that the writer had had the foresight to like to, to, to write the bad decisions correctly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I wouldn't make this heroic move. It's not like trained to Busan, where they had to have a fight scene with the boss zombie at the end while the carpet zombie was being dragged behind the train, and like they did a whole bunch of ridiculous stuff where they like wrapped a chain around his neck and then did like some some moves to maneuver around him and then they had to throw their whole body and the zombie off the side of the train at the same time and it's just just push them, just push them off. Anyways, that's my, that's my rant about train to Busan A good movie, but that one part I was like this is fucking stupid. And the end of this movie was great because they showed him doing a bad idea. Yeah, and he got knocked out for it and you thought he was dead for a little bit, and then he thinks he was dead.

Speaker 2:

We thought he was dead, I think he's dead. Yeah, I thought he was dead, which honestly could have been a great end.

Speaker 1:

They could have just left him hanging, yeah, but you know he climbs. He climbs up to the roof and you see that the building that he's swung to has zombies in it. They're clawed out the windows and you realize that, like he swung, he escaped one building and entered another. So like he is beginning the same process that he was in in the previous building. So he's going to have to find his food again. Yeah, he's going to have to, like do these routines to keep himself sane. He's going to like try to look for that fucking cat.

Speaker 2:

See, I thought that's not how I interpreted the ending at all. I saw it as like they showed that huge expanse of roofs. Yeah, and it was more about the hopefulness of him because his hallucination, sarah, told him that. By the way you say it, sarah, all right, that's not quite right, even. Anyways, we are rusty today, folks, just forgive us. This is edited out. But she says to him, sarah, the hallucination says to him like we got to get out of here, we've got to find other people, there's got to be sanctuary somewhere. And basically she tells him that she's been surviving by going from roof to roof and we see him at the end on the roof of the building he just got to and it just shows the expanse of the roof to the edge of the city. And for me it felt like it was a hopeful end off and being like he's going to keep going and try and get out.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's also this almost limitless expanse. You don't see the end. It's as far, it's so far ahead that you cannot see the edge. But it is hope. I think it is hope. But it's also showing like he's going to have to do this over and over again and it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard, but he's like, since he found his will to live and do it, it's going to be worth it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a really great ending. At first I was like, oh, I want to see more, but then I thought about it. It definitely feels uplifting and hopeful, which you can't say about every zombie apocalypse movie, but this one made me feel hopeful for the world and about all the terrible things that we're doing, like we just got to keep trying and pushing.

Speaker 1:

So now that we talked about all the good things that we loved about the movie, let's talk about the bad things. They're right, the many. What do you think it's in France? That's so rude and I will never forgive them for the Charles de Gaulle airport in their terminal layout. That is true, it is not good. I've got a story about that, I won't tell it now.

Speaker 2:

I will say as an American it's very American of you to be like anti-French, yeah Fuck them.

Speaker 1:

Go back to your country, Charles de Gaulle.

Speaker 2:

Go back to your country. You go back, dude, you go. That's true. I could go back to Canada, but then technically I should go back to the UK.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So another thing and I think that this is something that resonates with you, Leah is that, since the theme of the movie's boredom and isolation, it's a very slow and very quiet movie and there's almost no dialogue and almost nothing happening most of the time, and there are long scenes with little to nothing happening and no talking other than just a slight hum. Yeah. Just standing out for the distance and seeing somebody losing their mind slowly, and it might be hard for someone Leah with ADHD to stay focused. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I might have played a few games as snooze, but for what it's worth, I think, like I don't think it was actually poorly done. Even though it was quiet and slow, it kept my intention like 90% of the time. I just needed to be like moving and doing something else.

Speaker 1:

Well, that quietness and slowness is very intentional, like it's not an accident?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just if you have ADHD, like doodle or something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or like take you know, you know, we eat edible. That is what I did.

Speaker 2:

I'm about halfway through. Oh, that's why I'm not doing. Well, I'm high, yeah, maybe, hi everybody, leah's high.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, say hi to hi, hi.

Speaker 2:

This is what happens when you eat an edible and you don't know what's going to kick in.

Speaker 1:

You know what she said this won't kick in until we're done. And then we recorded episode zero, and then we took a break, and then we did some writing.

Speaker 2:

I only moderately high. Yeah, you sound really high yeah.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Just what you need to hear.

Speaker 1:

So here's here's my last criticism. It's it's hard to make this a criticism because it's it really makes the character relatable and interesting, but the main character is sometimes very stupid and makes bad choices. And while that's something that I think makes the writing very good. It also makes it kind of hard to follow this character through a story when you know that he's unreliable and that he's not going to make the right decisions.

Speaker 2:

That's like, yeah, it makes him kind of lovable. You're rooting for him to get better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and he doesn't really know. He does marginally better. Yeah, baby steps. The ugly, yeah, the world's pretty ugly. Our bad was a pretty short list. It was that's a lot. The ugly is the world.

Speaker 1:

They did this. This is actually really great. They did a really great job of making one street in Paris look like an absolute disaster. They made it look like Detroit. Oh God, you know they're. They're like how do we make this look bad? And they're like have you seen Detroit? It's unclear how much time passed. We don't know what the deal is with the 11 day per week calendar. Is they don't really? It's hard to sit there and count them all. All we know is that he's filled them all up and erased them at some point. Oh damn. And they showed a change of season, so it's getting colder, the leaves are changing. He's wearing coats, so like it could have been a few months. We don't really know. Something that bothered me is that when he went to go get the cat after he unsuccessfully does not get the cat and almost gets killed by zombies and then all killed himself accidentally, he gets mad and fires a shot out the window. Did you shoot the cat I, or did he just scare it away?

Speaker 2:

I really don't want to think he shot the cat. I, my little heart can't take that. That makes me feel really mad.

Speaker 1:

But maybe he's just scaring it away I hope so or maybe he shot the zombie that the cat was licking the bloody leg. Oh yeah, he was just kind of like hanging out licking his bloody stump leg.

Speaker 2:

He was indeed, he was indeed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, um. Another thing that I feel like should have been addressed a little bit better was the food scarcity. They really only talk about it at the very end, when he's hallucinating. Sarah, or Sarah, sarah, she's Sarah.

Speaker 2:

We're in America, All right America.

Speaker 1:

So he goes through all of the apartment buildings and he collects all of the non-parishal food foods that he can find A lot of tuna, a lot of spaghetti, a lot of canned veggies yeah, canned veggies. Got some beans in there, some sardines. You had a pretty good haul, you had a great haul, but did he have like a three or four month haul? I have a hard time believing that.

Speaker 2:

I don't. That building was huge and he went through all of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, it was narrow, like it was tall, but like there was only the one stairwell, so it was only like one apartment per floor. Oh yeah, good point, that's how it works. So there was the one floor that was just zombies. There was Alfred's apartment, there was his apartment, oh, and then there was the couple's apartment, the couple's apartment that was below him and the office manager's apartment.

Speaker 2:

All these people were talking about were dead.

Speaker 1:

to be clear yeah, the couple below him is where he got the shotgun, because the guy blows his head off after shooting his wife in the face.

Speaker 2:

It was a lovely love story it was. I'll do that for you one day. I mean, honestly, she had been bit. He tied her up and then put a. She probably had turned or started to turn and put a sheet over her and then shot her and then killed himself and honestly, like it feels a little bit like the Frankenbill story of the last of us. I think sometimes death by suicide is the right choice, but we're going to have a suicide warning now, to be clear in apocalyptic scenarios. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think, that's fair. I think this is something that we probably will talk about a lot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1:

You know what I just realized? One of your favorite moments of this we haven't talked about. What's that? So at the end, all the zombies come into the building and one chases the main character all the way to the window where he's trying to escape, and he throws the curtain over her head. That's right, she just stops.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

She can't figure out where he is because she has a. She has cloth on her face. It made me laugh. I'm not going to lie, so this made me think. The man below him that blew off his head. He put a sheet over his wife's head.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, he made her docile.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But I really think that he must have waited for her to turn, because how would he? There's no way that he could have gotten her tied down like that without getting bit. Maybe If she had to fully turned, I think that she had been bitten and he. That's the. That's the way. That was their agreement, and they probably stayed alive together until that's my fantasy. This is how, if I was going to die in his zombie apocalypse, this is basically like how I wanted to go down, dan.

Speaker 1:

Food scarcity is what I was talking about. All right, so he loots all of that food and I feel like it should have been something that would have should have been more addressed, like maybe showing him his system for rationing. He did have like a spreadsheet that he was making, but we didn't see it until like the very end, yeah, and we didn't see him like how, if he was eating like meager amounts of rations and they didn't show him like depicting like a hunger battle?

Speaker 2:

No, but he was. They had a moment where they pulled his shirt up and you could sort of like see a little bit of concaveness underneath his ribs. I mean, we've been watching the show survivor, so maybe we've lost perspective.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, maybe now we just think, everybody's emaciated.

Speaker 2:

But I feel like there might have been some emaciation happening.

Speaker 1:

But I feel like especially like when he, when he lost his, lost his mind and started playing drums like maybe there would have been like a moment where, like he, he lost his inner inner battle and just like I'm going to eat a lot of spaghetti now and play drums. Yeah, they didn't really show that Like a moment where, like he's, he's like fuck it, I want to die now and I don't want to die hungry. Yeah, they could have shown something like that instead, instead of like not really addressing it, because I feel like that would have added a little bit more dimension to the survival aspect and like, yeah, the necessity to get out of there.

Speaker 2:

I don't know that I fully agree, but just because, like we see him for a long time, he has access to hot fucking water, he has access to electricity, which means he can eat food from people's fridges, which you know that's not going to last a long time, and I think that he lasted for a while in relative I mean, if they apocalypse relative apocalyptic comfort.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he did. He's definitely thriving by comparison to all the people in their apartments that were being attacked by vicious cannibals, this is true. But I feel like that should have been something that should have at least been addressed. But, like, maybe he could have just like they could have just shown something that showed that he was concerned about the levels of food, other than, like the very end where he's just looking at like a little a meager pile of cans, like he doesn't really run out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of and I don't know if this is a French cultural thing or a choice specifically for this movie, but when I think about it it does feel for a zombie movie. Understated, like for a long time you can't really tell how he feels, and they do. They do like, show you images of his food stash, you show. They show it like once that it's less, which is when he's having the hallucination of Sarah. Sarah was telling him to get the fuck out. But overall, like it's a show that requires your own imagination maybe, and so I think there could be some of that's up for interpretation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's not bad? No, but it's. It could be clearer. Yeah, let's move on. Leah, does this pass the Bechtel test?

Speaker 2:

It does not pass the Bechtel test, the veto Rousseau test or the race test, rousseau, plot, zombie, it does not count, it's got to pass the Bechtel test or the race test. You can insert woman or just basically not a man and person of color into either of these slots, but essentially you have to have two or more people of color, or women, or non binary, somebody who's not a cis man, talking to each other about something other than a man or, in the case of race, but something other than a white person. I mean, I can't fully blame this movie for not passing out of these tests because there are no people and it's France, although I do think that France is more diverse than what they showed by a lot, by a lot, a lot based on, you know, its imperial history and a lot of folks moving from colonized places, french colonized places to France, france. So there could have been more diversity even in the zombies. Yes, there were a few zombies that were black, but very few, and there was only one female speaking role. Well, I guess two. One was his ex-girlfriend at a party. Maybe there could have been something shown there just briefly to give some color, of two women talking and then obviously Sarah only talks to him.

Speaker 2:

So it fails that. It also fails the Vito Russo test, which is basically the same rules, but it's just anybody talking to actually slightly different rules. I should say. It has to contain a character that's identifiably viably queer, trans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, etc. The character must be not solely defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity or as being intersex, which is what happens a lot, particularly by to trans folks, I would say in our day and age, unfortunately. That needs to change. And then the character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have like a significant effect on the plot but also your emotional well-being. And as far as I know, there were no folks from our beautiful rainbow, but I don't know for sure. But I think I can't like judge it too harshly because the whole movie was about isolation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it probably was just one person. Yeah, but in a movie about one person being isolated. I want to point out that two of the speaking rules of the total three were women, even if they didn't talk to each other.

Speaker 2:

The main character was still a man and actually Sarah could be the racist ambiguous.

Speaker 1:

now that I think about it, I was under the impression that she was Arabic. Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't know. So that's true, but there wasn't like, honestly, in a movie like this, the best thing that you can do for representation is like zombie representation, which also is fun. Give me some fun zombies that I can kind of learn a little bit who they were as a person before they died.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean we see his ex-girlfriend as a zombie. Later on we see his, we see her boyfriend as a zombie right at the beginning. We see him walking around. Yeah yeah. Not a whole lot of opportunities for diversity, but I guess there could have been a little bit more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I definitely think so. But having said all of that, mostly we love this movie, yeah, so I want to hear from you how many Zeds oh, out of 10?.

Speaker 1:

Yeah God, this is hard because I want to give it 10. But I don't feel like I can. Why, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

You're allowed to. It's your show, honey. Nine and a half, Okay, what's the? I guess the point half is the, all the shit we just talked about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I have very few gripes about this and I don't think I don't think it makes it a worse movie that I have some gripes. Yeah, I mean, you know what I think? I think the the point five is that I want a sequel now.

Speaker 2:

That's fair. I do too, but probably kind of ruin it Kind of an art movie.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I feel like it was meant to end in that like ambiguous place of hope. You never know what way things will go. Well, I think nine and a half is generous. I was going to say an eight, but I don't actually have a reason. Maybe just. Yeah, it could have been slightly faster paced and there could have been more representation, like, of what the French population actually looks like and feels like, and that's about it. But it was really good. Yeah, or a nine. I'm going to put to a nine because I don't think there's a lot of things I've watched that are this good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, I mean we watched Train Do Busan. We're like this is the best zombie movie. And now I'm like I watched this. I'm like, wow, train Do Busan was a piece of shit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah because this show, this one, had subtlety and depth and texture.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, everything about it was satisfying as far as like a zombie apocalypse story, like it's exactly what I needed to watch.

Speaker 2:

But like all zombie apocalypse stories, not enough sex, as in none. And I have no idea where he went to the bathroom. I think in the beginning actually the toilet. But that moment where the shower stops working, I think was the end of that. Yeah, I want to believe that he went over the railing.

Speaker 1:

He just like perched his butt over the railing, over the zombie tsunami.

Speaker 2:

I want to know where would you poop in the zombie apocalypse? We need to have a strategy for this. Where would you poop this?

Speaker 1:

is an important survival strategy.

Speaker 2:

Poop is the number one spreader of disease.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. You know, One day, I'd like to do an episode that's all about movies or TV shows that feel like zombie apocalypses but aren't, and one of those is called the Last man on Earth.

Speaker 2:

Or is it just the last man? I don't know.

Speaker 1:

It's a comedy, but it's basically just a virus kills everybody and only presumably one guy is left. He meets other people, Of course, but in episode one they show is like daily routine and because there's no running water he he went to a neighbor's swimming pool and he cut a hole in the diving board to use as as a toilet seat and he calls it his poop pool. That's fucking disgusting. It is, and he's a disgusting person Also.

Speaker 2:

that's like a wonderful source of water. What the fuck are you?

Speaker 1:

doing Well. Like everybody has pools, so it's not like every. Yeah, the only person left on earth and everything is just left sitting out. Sitting around like nothing is rare.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure I've ranted about this before in this podcast, but it's fucking stupid to poop in water. Ok, our system of dealing with waste is dumb. Why would you fucking literally shit in your water source and then put it in a fucking septic tank? We should watch that show.

Speaker 1:

I think you'd really like it. It's funny.

Speaker 2:

I'd probably get upset about it, though, and then rant about this.

Speaker 1:

Why does he poop in the pool? It bothered me. Yeah, the main character is dumb like this guy.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to tell one more fun story for the end of this podcast. That's more of like a personal story, but just to round it out, about poop, because I am. I'm like a dog with a bone with this topic.

Speaker 2:

Poop. So once upon a time I was friends with my sort of friendly, I should say with my ex's friend who had a wife who I fucking hated and I tried to like her, tried really hard, but didn't go well. And the clinching factor of deciding that I hated her was we were all going to the lake together. We got some food, we had a lovely barbecue, we hung out and we're like let's go swimming the water, this will be so lovely. We brought our dogs, they're playing on the beach, and then I go out, this person goes out with me and we're swimming together, whatever, and then we come in and she says that she's shit in the lake.

Speaker 2:

Also, there was another option. There was an actual bathroom, not even an outhouse, a bathroom with a flushable toilet, a real bathroom, which I'm still not saying. That's a good idea, but it's, you know, it's normal to people. So I, why the fuck did she need? And she was like I need to take a shit. And then she was like fish, shit in the lake. So I can. I was like I was beside you and this is Georgia and this fucking lake is basically a bacterial cesspool already.

Speaker 1:

Fish don't shit in the lake like humans.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that's my shit story. Tell me yours.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, do you have any shit stories? Tell us, tell us all about it.

Speaker 2:

Where would you poop in the zombie apocalypse? Where would you do it? In the lake? If you do in the lake, stop listening now I don't want to talk to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So there we go, guys, we're going to read. We're reading a book. Dan, read the book. I haven't read the book. Yeah, leah is going to read the book. I'm going to read the book the Girl with All the Gifts by MR Kerry. I think this is a really good one. I read it already. It's fantastic. You should read it. We're going to talk about it on episode 20. In fact, if you read it and you like it, you should also read the sequel. The Boy on the Bridge kind of ties it all together, especially right at the very end. It's like, oh, now everything makes sense and it's a one concise story. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Well, could this come in a double feature? If you're feeling it, read both. We'll see if I get there or not. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

You know when most of the books that I read do have, like our part of a series or have a sequel, and I feel like if we just read the first book, people can take it upon themselves if they want to read the rest of the series. That's true.

Speaker 2:

So I won't.

Speaker 1:

I won't be like we're going to read the second book now because people might be like I read. I read the first part of that book and I fucking hated it, so I'm not going to read the second book for sure. But anyways I digress Make sure you rate and review wherever you devour your podcasts, because that's that's the best way to help support us, because when you leave a rating or review, that's that's. That's how we grow, that's how people find us. Yeah, we need the horde to grow to eat all the billionaires. We need to spread this disease. And if, if you do leave a review, leave us your best zombie survival tip. We're going to share it with people. Help. Help people survive or get, help them get bit, yeah you could get bad advice up to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, give them bad advice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and come chat with us on Instagram and threads. Yeah, it's always fun to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm usually on threads just about every day. You know, sometimes I don't have time, but I try to at least check it out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're around on the Internet sometimes and that's really a folks. If you choose to share with me where you would shit in the apocalypse on either Instagram or threads, I'm going to make a post about it so you can answer. We'll read it at the end of the next episode. Yeah, we'll let the world know where you will make sure to use your handle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so everybody first and last name and where you live and also where you like to poop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't only like body humor, poop humor, but I don't know what it is about the apocalypse it makes it acceptable to me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, these are the things that we have to figure out.

Speaker 2:

They're logistics.

Speaker 1:

Yes, there we go, Everybody. Thanks for listening. Yeah, we'll see you in the next one.

Speaker 2:

And next time you listen, also eat nettles, so we can be on the save wavelength.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, have a great day everybody.

Speaker 2:

I will, I will be, you will be, yeah, ok.

Speaker 1:

Bye, bye, did it go great.

Zombie Book Club and Life Updates
Alabama, Tuskegee, and Fun Facts
Realism in French Zombie Films
Psychological Decline in Silent Horror Film
Zombie Apocalypse Transformation and Connection
Discussion on Zombie Apocalypse Film
Discussion on Zombie Movie Critiques
Zombie Movies and Survival Tips
Discussion on Apocalypse Toilet Options