Show notes
The Little Stranger is a little known horror film that came out in 2018 that toes the line between murder mystery and horror movie. It is very English in it's sensibility and might remind you more of the Turn of the Screw or The Remains of the Day than The Conjuring
If you love scary movies, but wish they were more like The Remains of the Day, then you might like The Little Stranger. It can be found in theaters right now.
The Little Stranger is about Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson), an english country doctor that starts making calls at the estate of the wealthy Ayers family, Hundreds Hall. Think Downton Abbey, but sadder. Dr. Faraday has a history with the estate, as his mother used to work as a housemaid there. Nowadays, the estate a run-down shadow of its former self and is only inhabited by the eligible bachelorette, Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson), her horrifically battle scarred brother Roderick (Will Poulter), her mother played by Charlotte Rampling, and the lone housemaid Betty. But are they the only Ayers living there? We...slowly find out that the house is haunted sorta kinda, and then the movie ends.
My Rating for The Little Stranger
4/10
It was a slow movie that could only be generously classified as about 5% horror movie. It’s slightly interesting because of the human drama, but the scares fall flat.
The Little Stranger Watch it now, or add it to your collection. Buy/Rent on Amazon
Spoilers for The Little Stranger
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There is a lot of ambiguity and subtlety in this movie. I walked away wondering if there was any supernatural occurrences whatsoever, and if all of the calamity could be just explained by surreptitious actions of Dr. Faraday and/or human error. The only thing that keeps me from definitively making that conclusion is that the spontaneous scratch marks that appear on Mrs. Ayers, seem to have no other explanation than supernatural phenomena.
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So it could either be one bad dude, or it could actually be the ghost of a dead Ayers child that creates all the havoc at Hundreds Hall.
There is talk of poltergeists and a heavy emphasis on Dr. Faraday's covetousness and forwardness. The poltergeist could be just an extension of Dr. Faraday's sub-conscience, which is an idea alluded to in the script.
I'm tempted to read the book that the film is based on to get a little more insight into the character of Dr. Faraday, but to be honest, the movie wasn't interesting enough for me to spend more time delving into the story.
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Needless to say, everyone dies because of some curse that befalls Hundreds Hall, and Dr. Faraday is seen in the epilogue wandering the halls staring off into the middle distance. The last shot is of Faraday as a child looking over the balcony that Caroline was pushed over. Does that mean he did it? Was Caroline's "It's you" referring to Faraday? I dunno, maybe.
Is The Little Stranger Worth Seeing?
I wouldn't recommend seeing it in the theater, but it would make a fine "Netflix and chill" movie. It's not a good horror movie, and it is only a middling drama.
If you are the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey, you might like it, but everyone else can probably find something better.
https://youtu.be/rA9OPdojcuI
Horror Movie Talk Episode 5: The
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This episode of horror movie type brought to you by Costco Meatballs.
I don't know. Maybe we should just do Costco meatballs and rice for when dinner comes around and you're barely more ambitious than sandwiches by Costco Meatballs in the frozen aisle of Costco today.
Hello and welcome to horror movie talk. The horror movie podcast were too schlubby. Guys talk about spooky movies with your hosts. Bryce Hanson, the cool collected nihilist and David Day a public urinate er who is always right. Hey, this is a podcast for lovers of horror movies, old and new. You want to hear about what's in theaters, what streaming fresh takes on old classics and terrible movies that are bad enough to be good.
I'm Bryce Hanson and I'm David Day, and I'll have you know, I Rice changed the intro on this, and I was not made aware until until I heard it. I don't appreciate that it's true, though. I mean, just because it's true doesn't mean I mean doesn't mean it's got to be part of my intro. Yeah, hey, disgust me. Look, man, look. Any red blooded American male who says that that there you there who says that they don't pee in public.
Is either is either a liar or there rare a liar, right?
No, I I admit I'll I'll pee in public, but we're talking about, like, campsite on a tree hidden.
Tell the audience about your public urination.
Look, the details. I know what I'm not gonna be pinned to a cross here. How close was the closest person while you publicly urinated? They knew about it and we're laughing about it of all of them, because I was surrounded by my friends at a slayer concert I wear. I can't think of a more appropriate place to be in public than a slayer concert. So and the the only the only God damn it, I can't believe this is happening on the pod. I mean, I guess I should have known that it was coming up. I just forgot. I didn't know that it was coming. Look, I had 88 ounces of beer in me at this point, and it hit me like a ton of bricks in the middle of lamb of God and, you know, jokers to left me clowns to write. I couldn't get out of there and Furthermore, I was gonna miss omerta. So there you go. Middle of middle of the lamb of God said, I just got down on my knees, you know? Whipped it out. Let her let her go. No, my friends were in front of me. They were downhill from the street. There were blockading is making sure that other passes by Didn't Didn't, uh you know, you silly their shoes first is what you're saying, right?
So you leave out that this is an event, this seated venue which made which made getting out much harder because you're you're boxed in by huge keeping slayer fans who are like steelheads. Well, I'm not gonna lie and say that there weren't skinheads there. It's a small sub subsection of Slayer fans that slayers probably not too proud about. No one should be proud about it, But, yeah, they were probably there. That's right. I'm just giving them, aren't that?
Yeah, that's a question to the audience. What's your worst public urination story? That's a try to beat among the masses. I can't think it needed more. I it would be It would be disrespectful not to, huh? All right, so today we're Oh, yeah.
First of all, let's just give a couple plugs. Our website is horror movie talk dot com. You can also find this on social media or most active on Facebook. We're also on Twitter and Instagram. Let us know if we should be more active in one of those. If you would like. That's your preferred method of social media. Yeah, Post, uh, episodes every Wednesday of horror movie talk.
This is new. We're moving to a weekly format. We've got a couple episodes in the bag there, just waiting in the wings and a bunch of new horror movies coming out in advance of Halloween. So we're trying to up the the schedule.
Please subscribe and leave a review of our podcast on iTunes. That helps us out a lot and helps with the visibility of the podcast. So today we're gonna be talking about the little stranger, and how will go over the episode is first off will give an overview of the movie and review and a score. Um, gotten a lot of feedback about wanting specifics about what are scoring system is at 1 to 10 1 being just a miserable dredge to get through five being average and hits all the marks. Just an average movie. It's acceptable. It's not fantastic, doesn't it? Just doesn't make you angry. Just makes you feel. Yep. I saw a movie and then 10 being just absolutely fantastic. Just best movie of the year type quality transcends the genre.
So a couple examples of tens recent tens the witch. Um, read it, Terry. For me? Yeah. We're gonna be doing it so that these air these air recent tens and so, like the which probably a recent 10 that will be a little bit more for gotten. It will probably die down in my memory that as time goes on, it's a fantastic movie. But it won't. I don't think it will be. Yeah, An exorcist. Yeah. I mean, they're not necessarily the most popular, But if you watch him, it would just be hard to disagree that the they're not great movies. Longstanding tens are like Psycho. The Exorcist. Jaws five. Most recent five was the Meg last episode. Just popcorn movie. I can't not good. Not bad. It's just there. And then we'll, um thanks to mark for the feedback on a lot of people seem to be very interested in the scoring system, which is interesting to me.
Um, Brett, you know, if you want to know more about if you want us to do something different about it, your add to it, let us know, Right? Um, I think in general we don't get excited easily. So if if it's above a five and that's probably a pretty ding good movie, it's worth were thing. I mean, I think five were saying because I like movies. Yeah, yeah, I think two's or worse, I think cause I love terrible movies, too. But I think for the most part, stuffs around five or maybe a little less or a little more. Yeah, I think in general, neither of us is terribly. Ah, suede. You know, we don't have a lot of energy One way. We're pretty pretty neutral. Going into and coming out of movies right later will be doing a couple of bits will do tag lines where we replace the movie's taglines with something that we think is more appropriate.
We'll be talking about what's going on on our Facebook page and a little bit of horror movie news today, uh, mostly talking about trailers and what we're excited about....
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