• 4 months ago
In this episode, I delve into a detailed and critical review of the movie "Long Legs." I critique it as a collection of horror movie cliches, from killer clowns to creepy dolls, expressing disappointment in the excessive use of jump scares. I highlight the lack of coherence in the plot, pointing out inconsistencies in character development and world-building. Additionally, I explore the deeper themes of single mothers making deals with the devil, drawing parallels to societal issues. I discuss the symbolism of the free dolls and the movie's ending, offering a comprehensive analysis of its thematic elements and character portrayals.

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Transcript
00:00Hey everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain.
00:02So I did go and see the movie, I went to a late night showing of the movie Long Legs
00:08with Nicolas Cage and Blair Underwood and some woman who apparently was told by the
00:14director throughout the entire movie to act as if she was both frightened, frigidly cold
00:20and needing to pee.
00:22Just this kind of uneasy Jeff Goldblum in a skit kind of tension that didn't really
00:25have any characterization to it.
00:28There's going to be some spoilers in this but there's also going to be a real wallop
00:31of insight so I'll keep this relatively brief.
00:34So basically it was just a pastiche of all the cliches you could possibly come up with
00:40with regards to horror movies, right?
00:42You had the killer clown which was Nic Cage in some pancake makeup nonsense.
00:48You had the frightened FBI agent which I guess is a nod to Silence of the Lambs.
00:55You had dolls of course, the creepy dolls with the eyes opening and all that kind of
01:02stuff.
01:03You had improbable lighting where everything's really dark except for the beams of light
01:08coming in from outside with no particular source just to make things look cool.
01:12You had Christian cross axe murderers.
01:16You had terrifying nuns.
01:18You had like every possible cliche.
01:21It's like if AI assembled a jigsaw puzzle of horror movie cliches and jammed it into
01:26one appetizing hour and a half snooze fest.
01:30They had audio assault.
01:33Literally it feels like Trotsky being hunted down with a nice pick by Stalin's goons in
01:37Mexico because the jump scares.
01:39Listen, I don't mind if you earn a good jump scare, right?
01:43I don't mind that at all.
01:44What I do mind is if you have basically a sonic weapon aimed at my frontal lobes through
01:51my eardrums causing them to hurt.
01:54That's not a legitimately earned good goose bumpy jump scare.
01:59That's just basically an audio punch to the nads and it's considered to be some sort of
02:03sport.
02:04So that was pretty terrible.
02:07It had one of the most anticlimactic, you know, the cliche is the serial killer is leaving
02:12all these clues and the FBI has to figure out all these clues and rush to save the next
02:20family.
02:21So the woman finds a picture of the serial killer from her youth and apparently he hasn't
02:27changed his look in 20 years.
02:31And so they say, hey, are you sure you want to put out an APB on just this picture?
02:36And she says yes.
02:38And then the next shot is him at a bus stop with some suitcases and the police are all
02:44closing in.
02:45There's no how did they find him, this guy who's off the grid, how did they possibly
02:49locate him?
02:51He doesn't seem to have a cell phone.
02:52He doesn't post.
02:53He doesn't use social media.
02:54He doesn't use the internet.
02:55So how would they find him?
02:56He kind of lives in a basement in the middle of nowhere.
02:58But anyway, they found him and I thought this was going to be kind of like a joke.
03:01Like, you know, it's just a it's a speeder that they're pulling over in front of him
03:07and it's kind of ironic that the police catch the speeder.
03:09But nope, they just catch this guy and lock him in a cell and then they let a woman go
03:13in with this guy who's a serial killer alone and talk to him.
03:19It's all, you know, crazy nonsense.
03:21The other thing, too, is that unless I miss something, it always could happen.
03:24I remember getting something about Joker wrong.
03:27I could have missed something.
03:28But what I don't recall is they spend the first quarter of the movie setting up the
03:34young FBI agent, this woman, as a psychic.
03:37You see, she just knows, right?
03:39The movie starts out, they go looking for a guy.
03:40She just knows where this guy is.
03:42I don't think he shows up again, again, unless I miss something.
03:47She just knows which house he's in, although they're all undifferentiated, cookie cutter,
03:51copy paste, little boxes on the hillside kind of houses.
03:56So she knows exactly where this guy is.
03:57She's psychic, you see.
03:58And then they put her through these tests and she gets more than, she gets half of the
04:02random questions, like guess a number between 1 and 100 inclusive.
04:07She gets half of the 12 right, which would be statistically anomalous.
04:11And so she's psychic, right?
04:14This is all set up and then it never shows up again.
04:18The psychic abilities are never brought into play.
04:20They're never used again.
04:22And I just don't understand why you'd spend all of this time.
04:26It's like a very rough, I was kind of drunk first draft of a script that they just said,
04:30yeah, that's it.
04:31Let's just go ahead and film it.
04:33Nick Cage is on board and he's going to chew up the scenery like Pennywise on cocaine with
04:38a bad face job.
04:40So that didn't make any sense to me.
04:46The mechanics of the movie don't.
04:48If you're going to create a fictional universe, and of course I've done it in my novel The
04:54Future, which you should definitely get for free at freedomain.com slash books, I set
04:58up a whole world 500 years in the future and knew it down to the last detail.
05:04So you've got to have a world that's believable.
05:05So what is the mechanics of the world?
05:10So basically the story is that a woman dressed up as a nun delivers a free doll to a family
05:19and then the doll causes the father in the family to go crazy and kill the family.
05:24Okay, we'll get into all of that in a sec, what that's an analogy for.
05:29But why?
05:30The devil's all powerful.
05:31The devil can do crazy things.
05:32So why is it that the devil needs to be some smoke in the head of a doll's head?
05:39Why does he need that?
05:41Is it like you have to be invited in like a vampire?
05:43But he's not a vampire, he's the devil.
05:45And of course it's very anti-Christian, as all of these movies tend to be.
05:50It's explicitly crazy anti-Christian in that there's a lot of axe murdering scenes, there's
05:55always a cross around and they're always hyped up as religious people.
05:59So Christianity and slaughter go hand in hand.
06:04And also the fact that it's nihilistic because the mother of the FBI agent keeps saying,
06:14have you said your prayers, your prayers will keep you safe.
06:18And then finally she says, no, I've never said my prayers to her mother.
06:21And her mother says, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
06:22Prayers don't do a goddamn thing, which is of course highly blasphemous.
06:27So they're basically saying you have no defense against the devil.
06:31A prayer won't work and the Christians are just infiltrated without any free will.
06:36They don't fight back, they don't win, so the devil rules.
06:39And I guess maybe that's true in Hollywood, I don't know, but probably.
06:43But the anti-Christian stuff was pretty wild.
06:50Now you could say, well, she came from a church so she'd have to go to Christian households
06:53and so on.
06:54I don't know, man, a lot of people would like a free doll, I guess, for their kids.
06:59So that didn't really make any sense.
07:01And she's got this, I think he's a boss, he's not a partner, I think he's a boss, the Blair
07:07Underwood character.
07:08And Blair Underwood's character, like every time the doll gets delivered, the husband
07:15goes crazy and kills the family.
07:19So eventually it's the woman's mother who's delivering the doll in partnership, sort of
07:26forced partnership with the killer clown guy.
07:32And her mother then delivers the doll to the Blair Underwood family, himself, his wife,
07:37and his daughter.
07:39And so Blair Underwood turns vicious and angry and then he basically says, honey, come into
07:47the kitchen so I can kill you with a knife.
07:49And the FBI agent, who knows exactly how this goes, just stands there, doesn't go in and
07:54doesn't prevent her boss who's become possessed from killing his wife.
07:59Just stands there.
08:05It makes absolutely zero sense.
08:08And there were so many things that just didn't add up and didn't make any sense that you
08:13just kind of give up and say, okay, I'm wandering into an AI-generated montage or pastiche or
08:22sort of quiltwork tapestry of various horror movie cliches.
08:27And that's all that I get to do.
08:30And of course, you know, the dead-eyed, frozen-faced kids is always the same.
08:36And everybody's emotionally dead and frozen-faced and there are these interminable pauses between
08:46dialogue which is just supposed to depress you and make you anxious and awkward at the
08:51social silences and the dead-eyed interactions and the non-existence of people's personalities.
08:57And of course this would be dissociation, right?
09:00Like you've experienced a lot of horror, you don't experience it yourself, and therefore
09:04it manifests in the world around you, right, when you've experienced a lot.
09:07And people have tried this in a way, and not obviously to the same degree, I'm not putting
09:11my listeners in these categories, but to a much smaller degree, but along the same sort
09:15of dimension.
09:17My listeners in the call-in shows will tell me the most terrible, terrible stuff like,
09:22hey, Steph, you should improve your posture and sit up a little.
09:25And they'd be right about that, all right.
09:27So they say the most terrible stuff and then they giggle or laugh about it and that's quite
09:30a common thing.
09:32And that's because you're unable to experience your own horror, so you reproduce it in others
09:35by laughing at that, which is appalling.
09:38So that sort of dead-faced, dead-eyed, kids with no expression, staring up at terrifying
09:44clowns, kids with no sense of self-protection, no sense that this is weird and creepy and
09:48dangerous and so on.
09:51That's kind of common.
09:52Now why would a kid have no sense of danger and just stare blank-eyed and hang around
09:57this crazy, creepy, singing, laughing, deranged, over-the-top clown head guy?
10:02Well, because they've been eviscerated.
10:05They've been so tormented and tortured at home that they've lost all sense of self-protection.
10:08So this sort of child abuse radiates out from this.
10:14And the other thing, too, is that we get into the single mother thing, of course, but it's
10:19always the fathers who do the attacks because women are wonderful and only men can be possessed
10:23and so on, right?
10:24Men who are the protectors of the family turn into the destroyers of the family, family
10:29annihilators, I think they're called, and again, that's just sort of a predictable thing
10:32to have people hate the patriarchy and so on.
10:36So it was a complete mess and needed probably four or five more rewrites with some critical
10:44eyes as opposed to just assembling every jigsaw puzzle piece cliche of every horror movie
10:49that's ever made and jamming them all together in one unappetizing meal.
10:53It's sort of like going to, I went once with my daughter to, it was sort of a Chinese food
10:58buffet that had both Chinese food, they had sushi, they had Western food, and it's just
11:03like getting everything, putting it into a blender and trying to drink it.
11:07And, you know, we do this as kids.
11:08You just get everything from the cupboard and try to make some, quote, meal and it just
11:11turns into this unappetizing ketchup-flavored orgasmic mess of culinary hell.
11:19But there was one thing, two things, I think, that were important and they were related
11:23to each other.
11:24So again, spoilers, blah blah blah, but the mother.
11:29So what happens is the serial killer comes to kill a family and the mother says, save
11:38my daughter, don't kill my daughter, and he says, okay, I won't kill your daughter but
11:42you have to help me out in killing more families, right?
11:46So I'll let your daughter live but you have to help me kill more families.
11:52So then the woman who used to be a nurse, crazy, who used to be a nurse, unless you're
11:58a nurse dealing with me in which case you're sane and wonderful, but so the woman who used
12:03to be a nurse, she's a single mother and she saves her own child's life by allying with
12:12the devil or this psycho, this killer clown, he's a hail Satan kind of guy.
12:20So the single mother preserves her child's life by allying with violence and destroying
12:32intact households.
12:34Hmm, interesting.
12:36So this to me is a deep analogy for the welfare state, also known as the single mother state.
12:41So women make bad decisions, they have children with the wrong men and then to quote preserve
12:47their children's life they make an alliance with the state, right, single mothers vote
12:50overwhelmingly for bigger government programs, they don't really care about national debts
12:54and they don't care about raised taxes and so on, in general, lots of exceptions.
13:00So in order to quote preserve their child's life, in the belief that they need to preserve
13:07their child's life, they make an unholy alliance with this agency of coercion and then they
13:15go around destroying intact families, right, because there needs to be a father present.
13:22So this is of course a hatred of the father that comes out of the single mother culture,
13:25right, single mothers and I was raised around single mothers so I know this with deep and
13:30horrifying intimacy, single mothers have a huge amount of hostility towards men because
13:35they blame the men for making them single mothers, they won't take responsibility for
13:38the choices they make.
13:40They will often worship their fathers but hate the fathers of their children, it's a
13:44weird kind of split.
13:46So the fact that a single mother makes an alliance with a coercive beast that's indicative
13:53of a larger issue, he's not just an individual, he's like demonic or satanic or he's a larger
13:58sort of agency.
14:01And so the single mother, in order to preserve the life of her child, makes a deal with the
14:04devil and then as a result she destroys intact families.
14:09Well, of course, the redistributive coercive redistributive nature of the welfare state
14:13means that money is taken from functional families and given to single mothers which
14:18swells the ranks of the single mothers and destroys the two-parent household, right,
14:26because they don't have enough money and single mothers can be quite toxic and single women
14:32keep women single, right, it's sort of an old Kevin Samuels thing.
14:35Well, I think it's quite true.
14:37So the predatory toxicity of the single mother brigade, again, I'm talking collectively,
14:44there's individual exceptions, of course, but what happens is they ally with the government
14:50to gain resources through force in order to, as they believe it, preserve the lives of
14:55their children or the future success of their children and they then destroy intact families.
15:05And that, as you can see, the sort of two-parent family, the rise of single mothers is coincided
15:09with the destruction of the two-parent family and this is a result of socioeconomic things,
15:16of toxicity in the media, of a coercive redistribution of resources through the welfare state.
15:24And so that, to me, would be the analogy that this single mom allies with the state and
15:31destroys two-parent households in order, through hatred of the men, in order to get
15:41resources for her own child, in this case, the resources being her own survival.
15:45And of course, the woman's gone crazy, the mother, the ex-nurse, she's gone crazy and
15:49so how does she live?
15:50Well, she must live off the welfare state because she's got a decent-sized house, she's
15:55obviously a hoarder, well, she is a hoarder in the movie.
15:57So how does she live?
15:58Well, she lives off the welfare state, right?
16:00So she's got disability, some government pension or just welfare as a whole.
16:06So the other thing, too, though, the question is why is it an analogy or why is the story
16:16in the movie that the single mother dresses up as a nun and then offers a free gift that
16:23she says, oh, you've won this big doll from the church, right?
16:28You've won something from the church.
16:30And then people say, oh, great, lovely, come on in and bring this creepy doll with you
16:34and so on, right?
16:36So why is that the case?
16:37Well, I would say that it is the pretense of charity, of generosity, but it is actually
16:47coercive and destructive.
16:49So this would be, of course, everyone thinking that the welfare state is about helping the
16:52poor, it's a kind of charity, it's niceness, it's kindness and this is a Christian charity
16:58and niceness from the church and you get something for free.
17:01And people would say, of course, they would say, well, I didn't enter any raffle, I didn't,
17:05like nobody called me, like why would I, I don't want to take this doll, right?
17:10This could be drugs in the doll, there could be a bomb in the doll, there could be creepy
17:14stuff in the doll, it could be recording me, it could be any, like why would you, if somebody
17:18says, hey, it's a beautifully, perfectly made doll, probably worth $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000
17:26and somebody comes and says, oh, here, I want to bring this doll into your house and you
17:31won it in a church raffle and it's like, well, I didn't enter any church raffle, like what
17:34the heck is going on, right?
17:38So the fact that they just, oh, I'll take something for free without examining it and
17:43I will assume that it is nice and kind and charitable and Christian when it is in fact
17:49turns out to be coercive and destructive, well, that's people thinking that the welfare
17:55state which is founded on coercion is nice and charitable and so on and so there's this
18:03mirror, right?
18:04So the woman makes a deal with the devil to preserve her own child but other people think
18:09that it is Christian charity to take the unearned, right?
18:13So they didn't earn these dolls, they don't know where they come from, it doesn't make
18:15any sense why they'd just be getting a free doll from a church and of course if they don't
18:22go to the church, it makes no sense if they go to the church and they've never heard about
18:25this doll raffled and that wouldn't make any sense either.
18:27So they're taking something for free because they're greedy and they don't examine what
18:31appears to be for free which turns out to be coercive, right?
18:35So this is false morality.
18:36This is people who say, well, the welfare state is, even though it's based on coercion,
18:41is in debt, right?
18:42The enslavement of the next generation to foreign bankers.
18:44They say, oh no, no, it's nice, it's charitable, it's wonderful, it's kind and so on, right?
18:48It's Christian charity when it's not.
18:51It's a desire for the unearned which is the desire to, quote, help the poor without actually
18:55having to interact with the poor which is the mantle of virtue rather than the actual
19:00virtue.
19:02And so the single mother aligned with the state to preserve her own child which results
19:08in the destruction of the nuclear family.
19:10That's very clear in the movie and the fact that people are so thirst for the unearned
19:16that they will never question where it comes from or what its nature is or why it's there
19:20and so on.
19:21They just let people come into their house and bring big boxes of creepy dolls because
19:25why?
19:26No particular reason.
19:28And so, and the ending was a real letdown.
19:30There was no twist.
19:31There was no reveal.
19:32There was nothing, right?
19:33I mean, the movie literally ends on the repeated click of an empty chamber in a gun and I mean,
19:43that's really, they were out of bullets.
19:46So again, like metaphorical bullets, right?
19:48Out of impact, out of, and so yeah, a couple of jump scares, Nicholas Cage doing his usual
19:54coked up scenery chewing stuff and everybody else was understated, right?
19:59So all the emotional energy and creepiness and focus and demonic power is in the bad
20:06guy and all the good people are like weird, half-frightened, constantly, you gotta, this
20:11is how actors act.
20:13Male actors act by clenching their jaw.
20:15Like once you see that in Tom Cruise movies, you just realize he's basically, his whole
20:18acting lesson is chew gum, jaw clench, jaw clench, jaw clench.
20:23And the women do it by being cold and their neck tendons, you know, this makes men sympathetic
20:29and so on.
20:30Oh, let me get you a coat.
20:31You must be scared, right?
20:33The whole thing was the woman being cold and going like, I just need you to be in an ice
20:37box and breathing hard.
20:39That's your whole acting audition for this role.
20:42So that's what the women act with the neck tendons and men act with the jaw muscles.
20:46It's all very sad and predictable.
20:50But yeah, the movie ends with this nothing burger of an ending and then the credits roll
20:55backwards.
20:56Isn't that weird and eerie?
20:58And so yeah, the world doesn't make much sense.
20:59The physics don't make much sense.
21:01The logic of the movie doesn't make much sense.
21:03The fact that they spend so much time trying to set her up, well, they set her up to be
21:06psychic which is never used again.
21:08The fact that she doesn't save her superior even though she knows that he's been possessed
21:12and is going to kill his family.
21:13She doesn't save the wife.
21:14She doesn't save the husband.
21:17None of it makes any particular sense except for there was this deep thematic thing about
21:21single mothers and deals with the devil and the destruction of the nuclear family out
21:26of the single mother's desire to preserve her child.
21:29That was something that was like a core that could have been really, really worked on and
21:32made just perfect.
21:36I mean, I edit quite a bit of my own books but I guess they were just, well, we've assembled
21:43all the jigsaw puzzle pieces of all the famous horror movie cliches.
21:47Let's just jam it into a narrative and fire it at the screen.
21:51It's like watching somebody paint by throwing buckets at a jet engine against a splatter
21:55wall.
21:56But, you know, I wouldn't recommend it except if you do watch it, you know, it's not the
22:00end of the world, just watch it where you can control the volume because otherwise it
22:03is.
22:04I have to go to movies with like ear protectors because they've just become so loud, especially
22:09the scare stuff.
22:10It is an assault.
22:12It actually makes me angry.
22:13So that's why I put the ear protectors in.
22:15I'll give up on some of the dialogue to preserve my hearing from the ear punch jump scare bullshit.
22:20But I think it's worth watching.
22:21But when you do, sorry, it's not a great movie but if you do watch it, look for that single
22:26mother theme and let me know what you think in the comments below.
22:28I really appreciate your time, effort and energy.
22:30Thank you so much.
22:31FreeDomain.com slash donate if you'd like to help out the show, I'd really appreciate
22:35it.
22:36Lots of love.
22:37Bye.