The Beach House (SPOILER-FREE)

It's your killer host. I'm Caroline Scarity Scream Queen. I'm Ian, Scary Movie Skeptic. And welcome to What's Your Favorite Scary Movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time. Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours. Hey friends. Hi. Today is a really special episode because Parker has left the kids home alone and we are taking control of this very special episode. Um training wheels are off. Ian and I are on a tandem bike, and we're just rolling with this episode, and it's gonna be great. Training wheels. Yeah, are you like a bajillion of these episodes? Not by ourselves. Okay.

Parker was the training wheels. He knows what he's talking about. But we have how do you feel about being training wheels? We have made the journey from children of the corn. The lamb. Children of the corn. Silence of the lambs. You're way off. Never mind. We need the training wheels. Come back, Parker. Um okay, so what did we watch, Ian? We watched The Beach House. And this is an exclusive spoiler-free review because it's not out yet. Well, actually, if you're late listening to this episode, it probably is out. It comes out on spoiler. It's set at a beach. Don't give away too much. Um, if you are listening to this on the day that this episode is released, um, you can stream the beach house on Shudder starting on July 9th.

Get out of the beach house. So we're bringing you some summer fun, summer loving. Sand in your toes today. Oh, there's sand in your toes. Don't know what that means. Alright. Um, so you want to dive in? Woo! Or that's my sound effect for dive in. Go for a swim. So obviously, this movie came out in 2020. Um it was obviously. It is 2020. It should just be a year with an asterisk. Alright, so The Beach House was written and directed by Jeffrey A. Brown. This is actually his feature debut. Congrats, Jeff. Yay. Um's like one of those radio stars that just pushes the buttons for sound effects. Thank you for that. We have Liana Liberato as Emily.

She was in The Haunt. No, not The Haunt, Haunt. Just Haunt, Singular from 2014. And also the Hulu series Light as a Feather. Which I have not seen. We also have Noah Legrosse. You know that potato salad. That's uh Le Grosse. Maybe it's Legrosse. I don't know. G-R-O-S, you look it up, see how to pronounce it. Um Noah plays the role of Randall. Randall. Which I can't think of that name outside of the context of Monsters Inc., you know? The lizard. His name is Randall. Is it the husband or is that the No the Boyfriend. Le Boyfriend. Um Noah was in a score to settle from 2019 and the Netflix series The Get Down. And really, I mean, these are the two most important characters.

Debatable. There are a few others coming and going. I won't give away too much, but that's really all you need to know. And take it away with a summary. Here's a summary quote A romantic getaway for two troubled college sweethearts turns into a struggle for survival when unexpected guests and the surrounding environment exhibit signs of a mysterious infection. The Rotten Tomatoes, as of this recording, it may have changed by the time you listen this, critic score is 80%, and the audience score is a 71%. Wow, that's high. And the critic's consensus is quote Oh, no critic's consensus. So you'll just have to listen to us. Are we the critics now? We've made it! First reactions. Those were the actual reactions recorded in real time.

So you heard it here first, folks. I without giving away too much, there are some similar scenarios in this movie to what we are going through right now as a global population. Ooh. AKA Don't spoil it. You know, just uh virus a da da da. That's I can say that. I don't know. I'm just I'm there there are some similarities to what's going on in the world right now. And I'm I'll just leave it at that. So it was timely that you know this movie was in production way before anything was happening, but everything that is happening right now way before had to have been way before. Yeah. Ian, talk to me about the quality of this film.

I don't do you know the budget on this film? Um well it is an indie film, so I'm assuming that it's pretty small. It's it's pretty good quality. I mean, for in my opinion, when going into it, I knew it was an indie film. I was like, all right, I'm here for it. You know? And I think honestly, the quality of the the shots were pretty good. Uh I even thought the acting was pretty good. Yeah, I thought we would get some like BC role actors. Mm-hmm. And it was like B plus. Yeah. So uh kudos to them, whether they're star actors or not. Um they did a pretty bang up job. Yeah. Now this isn't I had to remind myself multiple times, like this isn't your commercial high production going to a movie theater movie, which I appreciated.

I when all was said and done, I told Ian, I think that it was very artistically put together. Yeah. Uh great performances by the actors. The only thing that caught me off guard, and I can say this because they show it in like the opening credits, there were these sequences where they would like film close-ups of like water or like sand, just like wiggling. And I think it was supposed to like simulate like science, like little microbes or like middle little there are just some interesting shots of like nature things where you don't really know what you're looking at, and then they fade together. I think that could have been done a little bit more seamlessly.

Like it seems like they were just like fading in and out. Yeah. I don't that I don't know. That was the only thing that I really think that they could have improved upon. Um, they also I feel like they were putting a layer of horror on top of something that is non-horrific. There was one moment where it was just these like scary sounds or like scare like ominous music over just like normal shots of like B-roll, which I think worked, but it was almost like they were sitting here telling you like this should be scary, but it's not. I can tell you one thing without spoiling it. From the first few minutes, I thought it was going in a completely different direction.

Same. Yeah. I thought, yeah. I I don't know how to talk about this movie without spoiling it, but um, I definitely didn't think what happened happened was gonna happen. Yeah, I was a little I was very caught off guard. Um but I think that's because of the lead up and like I was saying about like the the music over just the b-roll, it's like, oh, I know something's gonna happen. So the whole time I thought it was gonna be a lodge scenario. Or like not the lodge, but like similar ass like similar vibe. I mean they show up to this like beach house, obviously, and like the first thing that you think is oh it's haunted, oh someone's gonna like break in.

Yeah. Cause we've seen this scenario a lot, right? Yeah. Like stories revolving around just the house. Yeah. So yeah. Quite a plot turn in here. Turned. So the movie is an hour and a half. I personally feel like it I wasn't paying attention to time at all. I'd like sometimes when we're Parker, sorry to tell you this, but sometimes when we're watching movies, I just move my mouse a little bit on accident just to see how much longer there is. We didn't do that on this one. I did it once at the very end. But um Mainly because that plot twist really threw you off, right? Mainly because, and I don't know if I've mentioned this in any videos, and I'm not gonna spoil it, but if you're a true fan, maybe you know.

When you know, you know. And falls asleep. There's a specific genre. There's a couple specific genres of horror that I'm not a fan of. And even though spoiler, I think this movie's fine. I think it's pretty good. Even though it's uh a genre that I don't particularly go for. Didn't think it was gonna go that way. And um, if you figure it out and you send us a message, I will be thoroughly impressed if you know what genre I'm talking about. I have similar feelings about this genre, um, but I think they did a good job of like not fully going into that direction, because they could have. It was like a light tap on that genre, but it it was still involving everything that I loved about the first half of this movie.

Yeah. Do you agree? I feel like they could have totally avoided it and made the movie more about the first half of the movie, and like gone down the more like um like intellectual horror. I did enjoy that aspect of this. Because I enjoyed seeing where that whole weirdness went, and then it went to the other weird talking in broad strokes for your peeps. I did enjoy so the main character, Emily, early on into the film, you learn that she is in uh astrobiology major in college, and she kind of tells why she loves this aspect and she's learning so much about the world and its early forms and evolution, and is just fascinated by all this.

And the topic is brought up like, wow, you're learning so much, it's so scary to learn this much about the world. I think this is important to mention. And she said, Don't be afraid, like this is a learning this much about the world is a good thing, and that comes back later, but I think the emphasis that they put on the science in the beginning could have gone a whole different direction. It was just kind of like a light plot line that we're reminded of right at the very end. I don't know. I wish I could talk specifics about this because maybe we'll have a recap about it in specific form later. But Ooh, Patreon? Ooh, that would be a good idea because I have some thoughts where yeah, I just feel like there's a lot of opportunities, a lot of juxtapositions um with age and with life status and how you view the world type things.

That were really interesting to me. And um I feel like they could have gone harder on it. But because this is an indie film, I feel like we need to talk about the specific imagery or like performances or like anything that the production offers. I think the shots were just nothing like nothing impressive, but just like no no no no no. Hear me out. Not like, oh my gosh, how do they do that? But like, oh, this is really solid. I wouldn't initially think this was an indie film. So like going into the movie, I'm like, oh, these shots are solid, not thinking, oh, the shot was on a budget. That's true. I think they really um worked well with what they had, but and there was almost like I always think back to like my choreography classes in college, like sometimes very simple shots are the most effective.

Um like they were almost like these like Wes Anderson type shots where they just didn't feel the need to move the camera. It was like stunning how long they just held this image and it kept going. And I was just like entranced by that, you know? They didn't feel the need to like make it this big commercial production, it was just simple, and I think because of that, like it held longer than you comfortably would want it to, but I loved that. Sure. Like there are there are like three scenes where that happened, and every time I was like questioning like how long is this gonna last, but then it lasts like the perfect amount of time.

I do have probably twenty more minutes of actual thoughts that would spoil the surprise. But what you have to do is you're just gonna have to watch it and then and then we'll recap become a Patreon of us. And if we get four new sorry Parker, we're we're committing this. If we get four new Patreon subscribers from this episode alone, we won't force Parker to do a full Patreon episode with spoilers so you can hear our actual thoughts. Because this is a movie that you want to dig into so much, but we just can't because we want you to have that experience. Oh, yeah, it would be an explosive review from us with no sp or with all the spoilers.

So uh I don't know how Patreon necessarily works, but if you can send messages, um send a message and tell Parker, hey, I want to see You want the spoilers. You want to be spoiled. We're gonna spoil you with so many spoilers. Patrons, you if you were a patron, you would know what that voice is, but you're not. So um okay, scary scale. What do you give it? On a scale of one to five. One to five. Ah, this is tough. At the end of the day, it's it's a two and a half. Yeah, two and a half. I'm gonna give it a three. I feel like the scary there there were several opportunities to be scarier.

Definitely. That's why I gave it a three. But I feel like it was varied in the type of scary that it was. We had a few like body horror moments. We had a few we had a few like ominous, like, you know, on the edge of your seat moments, and then there were also like were there a couple jump scares? There was one. I don't remember where it was, but you jumped and it was like the dumbest thing. I didn't. There was there was one. I don't remember. Um, but I laughed at Anne afterwards because it wasn't that scary. But I I feel like they were pretty evil across the board. And it definitely like I also wasn't boring.

Um smash or slash. Smash or smash. I'm gonna give it a smash. Like how hard of a smash? A light smash. Or a moderate slash. Or smash. Like a pity smash? No, just a moderate smash. Language. I I am definitely not slashing it. I think that this movie has value and I think it was entertaining. A smash? A smash a slash. No. A smash. A smash. I'm gonna give it a smash. Like a light, like a solid fist bump smash, not like a Hulk smash. Since we both smashed it, that is our official recommendation to get on Shudder on July 9th and stream this movie and then tell us what you think about it. Would recommend ten out of ten.

Also, if you're a patron, be sure to share and tag us on your insta Instagram stories so that we can share it to our close friends. Close friends circle for patrons. Yeah. So on July 9th, 2020, I should specify because this episode's gonna go down in the history books. Hist hury. Hurstory books. Um get on shutter on July 9th, watch it. Let us know if you smash or slash, because we want to hear your thoughts. Um Twitter or Instagram at scary moviepod. Ian, what's your favorite scary movie? The Lodge. Stage Fright. It's a it's a great movie. It's a good movie. It's a great scary movie. I'm just trying to keep it fresh, you know? Every day I'm learning something.

Caroline's a people pleaser. I'm learning something new about scary movies every day. Hereditary. Um, all right. Next week, Parker is back to review another new release. You guys are getting some. Yeah, our special guest. Oh my god, did we just take control of Scary Movie Pod? Your host, Caroline and Ian. What's your favorite scary movie? All right. Guest host. Your guest host, Parker, is back to review another new release. He's just spoiling you with this good content towards the end of the summer. Um, the highly anticipated, haunting flick relic. Not relish, relic. Alright, um, until Parker takes back control, you can head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Um I have personally chosen my favorite review on Apple Podcasts to share with you guys today.

This comes from Bill Wright stuff, and he said, Love it. My favorite horror movie's got to be Trick Retreat. What's so funny about that? You just saw what's your favorite scary movie and told us. We get so much of that on like Twitter. I'm I'm fine with it. So, Bill Wright stuff, thanks so much for scary or sharing your favorite scary movie. But check out our other episodes and maybe your favorite scary movie will change. Until next time, my name is Caroline. You can find me on the road, on a plane. Please don't find us on the road. On a train. Or on Instagram at Carol Manifesto. My name's Ian. You can find me where Caroline is, because we never leave each other.

Because you love me so much. Okay. I bet Parker gets uncomfortable when he hears that. Um breaks out in sweat. All right. You can keep up with all of what's your favorite scary movies news on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Scarymovie Pod. And if you just can't get enough, head over to patreon.com forward slash scary moviepod, and we will give you the spoiler version of this. I'm gonna hold Parker accountable for that. But only if we get four. Four or more. Four or more. Um check out our calendar and some sweet reviews at scarymoviepod.com and send any requests or feedback to scary moviepod at gmail.com. Eyebuddy. Let's do our best seagull noise. That's pretty good. Did you hear mine?

Two, one. For reference, that was Ian, not Caroline. Oh my god, I will never be able to unhear that sound, but I'm not sure.