Are you interested in angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, influence, and how to protect against the unknown? If so, then welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. In years past, I always lamented that I wasn't doing more with the podcast to celebrate the haunted season. And so last year I had the idea to create a limited-run show that focused exclusively on horror movies and shows.
Well, now that October has graced us with its presence once more, it's time for SD Bite to rise from its unearthly grave and haunt the lands once more with its vile presence. However, there is one slight change. Rather than the word bite being plural, I'm changing it to the singular, mainly because of the fact that my speech impediment has a real hard time with the plural, and I would flinch every time I would have to say bites. Today's episode may be a bit of a controversial one, though that is not my intention from the outset.
I know that outrage leads to greater engagement on many, if not all, social media platforms. But I never intentionally try to feed into that dynamic. Rather, at the end of the day, I am just one individual who hold on to your hats, hot take coming, an opinion, and just because I happen to hold it does not make it special or any more valid than the billions currently in existence. If you've ever listened to my podcast, Southern Demonology, then I have shared in a piecemeal fashion what can make or break a horror film from my point of view.
But I have never really comprehensively established it in a cogent framework. So let me do a little bit of that now and stressing a little, and it's not to hear my own voice. But because it's relevant to the main topic, which I promise that I will get to shortly, horror is one of the most difficult genres to get right, as strangely enough, fear is highly subjective on both an individual and cultural level. And as today is Friday the 13th, let's make this relevant.
If you happen to suffer from Triskodecophobia or fear of the number 13, and you make a movie targeting that specifically, then that's going to fall on deaf ears for those who either look forward to Friday the 13th or fall outside of Western culture where other numbers are considered more unlucky. For example, China and Japan consider the numbers 4 and 9 as ones to avoid, as they sound like death and murder, respectively. Hint, that's why you never give a clock as a present.
But even past that simplistic aspect, horror movies still must be engaging while also actively trying to instill negative emotions in its viewers. And on top of that, lovely little oxymoron, horror movies still just have to be a good movie. And to me, a movie has to keep my attention, it has to have a story and a plot that distances and distracts from the outside world. Anything that jars me from a contemplative state automatically begins to rack up negatives. Now, I said all of that as a preface.
We horror aficionados were often turned to searching for old or new movies that we might have missed in hopes of seeing something new and exciting. And so I will often turn to either Google or TikTok to find something new. However, in so many of these bloody top 10 horror movies to watch lists, which are just the cheapest and most lazy articles or videos ever invented, I will often find two movies referenced that I absolutely loathe to the core of my being. And it drives me crazy. And they fall into my hated list because they violate the same cardinal rule. Keep me engaged.
Released in 2014, it was widely heralded as one of the greatest horror films of the year. And I was really excited enough to actually try to see this thing in theaters. I was unsuccessful in that attempt, thank goodness. But I did eagerly rent it the very first opportunity I got. And rarely does a movie make me enraged, but this one did the trick. After all, this movie depicts essentially a supernatural, sexually transmitted disease, say that 20 times fast, wherein the afflicted is hunted by a mysterious entity that can assume the likeness of anyone.
And this idea did spark a huge number of thought experiments and what-ifs on how you could actually avoid the thing. However, it was the execution where this movie failed, simply for the fact that it left such gaping plot holes everywhere that several invading armies could have marched through without the need to change formation. And this is what took me out of the movie. Much like an unexpected speed bump that jars you out of your seat while driving, the filmmakers were so focused on the idea itself that they in turn paid little to no heed to the consequences of that idea.
Or of all the loose ends that they never bothered to resolve or clean up. You know, back when I was living in Japan, I took a trip to Hong Kong and I began prowling around for a tablet to purchase as the prices in Japan were a little too expensive at the time, especially with the thousand in then trading 25% higher than the dollar. And I found a Lenovo tablet that ran Android and decided to purchase it. It met the base specs pretty well in that it had a large screen, ran the OS I desired, and had the right amount of memory.
However, after using it for a week, I wish I had never laid eyes on the thing. It was the most slap-dash put-together machine I have ever seen because half of its functionality was simply missing. It was an epic struggle to do anything on the device outside of browsing the web. And that's why to this day I refuse to ever purchase another Lenovo product. It follows, will forever be my highly disappointing Lenovo tablet. On to the second disappointing movie.
This one also released in 2014 and is an Australian film that features both an amazing aesthetic featuring a book and the most annoying kid in the entire world. And yes, I am referring to the Babaduke. I was looking forward to this one too. And yet again, I was sorely disappointed, not only by the aforementioned kid, but also by the ending. But its worst sin by and far is that I was simply bored out of my head. In fact, at some point I'm pretty sure I fell asleep a few times.
If you're making a horror movie, and the best that you can do is offer the person watching it a few seconds of slumber, well, I don't think I need to spell out exactly how well you did in the end. Yes, the visuals of the book were amazing. I give you that. But that was the only focus, sadly. And you know, that's true for both of these films. Yes, they did not offer engagement, and that's because they focused on only one thing, and they neglected the rest of what was needed to make a fantastic film. In short, these movies became gimmick films, or maybe better yet, McGuffin movies.
And in case you don't know the word, a McGuffin is an item that's never fully explained, and it's just there to either magically solve whatever is happening or keeps the plot going. But so I don't leave you with nothing but negative reviews. Here's an oldie but a goodie that I streamed for a Wednesday movie night Discord that everyone seemed to enjoy. John Carpenter's in the mouth of madness. Released in 1994, and yes, for the record, I did try to find a redeeming film in the same year as the other two, but I just I couldn't.
Except, well, except for maybe creep, but I didn't really feel strongly enough about that one to strongly endorse it. If you like the idea of mixing love crafting things in with horror novels that can have adverse effects on its listeners, then this is the movie for you. An insurance investigator is called in to look for a publishing company star author who has gone missing, and things just keep getting weirder and more dire, not just for him, but for the entire world. I won't spoil it any further, but I do recommend it.
And plus, this film has some fantastic music that Carpenter produced himself, which is always a bonus. And that's gonna do it for this episode of SD Bite. This is JJ, your friendly ancient demonologist, reminding you to stay away from gimmick horror movies. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com, which offers links to all of our social media and episodes. Southern Demonology is solely owned, produced, and edited by myself, and the intro and outro music are composed by me as well.
If you have a moment, please rate, like, and share this podcast, as it is the best way to help support my work. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.