[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.45 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host Jala Prendes (she/her), and today I am joined in the den watching movie with a popcorn with Doug Lief (he/him) who has been on the show once before for the Phantom of the Opera for the Lon Chaney movie, but is back again. 00:00:19.13 Jala Woo. Hey Doug, how you doing? 00:00:20.25 Doug Lief Woohoo! I'm doing great, man. I am just a love machine, going to talk about this movie. 00:00:27.08 Jala Yes, yes, yes, indeed. So ah the movie we were talking about today is Companion. This is a 2025 film, and American science fiction thriller, but we'll get into that in just a minute. First, I want to allow you some time to talk about the thing that you do as you are on Nostalgium Arcanum. That's your main show. And um that's the thing that you're usually on, but you also have been doing like so many guest spots lately. 00:00:53.22 Jala ah You're on everyone's show. 00:00:55.51 Doug Lief I, again, I'm a love machine. I get around. i have just, you you pay me to show up. I'll be there. No, um no. Yeah. So Nostalgia Mark Annam is, as the name suggests, it's a nostalgia show. 00:01:06.44 Doug Lief So the guests come on and they bring with them you know something they are super passionate about from their youth. The kind of thing that um the the refrain we hear all the time is I wore out the tape, ah which tells you our guests are old enough to have had a tape. 00:01:17.73 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:01:21.27 Doug Lief of some kind as opposed to some other media. 00:01:22.77 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:01:23.87 Doug Lief But yeah, that's what it's about. Like we just discussed the thing and why they love it and um why it still holds up after decades. 00:01:31.04 Jala Right, right. And there's one I pitched to you that I absolutely like wore out the tape for that VHS back in the day. 00:01:36.84 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 00:01:37.84 Jala And we'll see if that happens. But anyway, um folks who should know by this point that I have been on Doug's show several times, many, many times at this point. So I was like, okay, I want to talk about this movie. 00:01:47.90 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 00:01:51.17 Jala but Who's somebody who likes sci-fi stuff that maybe I can get to come on to talk about this. and i was like, let's see if I can get Doug back on because it's been a minute. So yeah. 00:02:00.45 Doug Lief Yeah, i I definitely love all things sci-fi. 00:02:00.55 Jala But, uh, 00:02:03.55 Doug Lief that There was an easy pitch because I'd been kind of eyeing this movie as one. I was like, oh, I should probably check this out. So when you said, do you want to talk about it? I'm like, well, ah perfect excuse then to to watch it. 00:02:13.67 Jala Right, right. So um spoilers right at the front here. um I really like this movie a lot. so That's why I'm talking about it. Like I don't ever pick anything for my show that I'm just like, hate it, can't can't stand it. Like i don't I don't just review random stuff. I review stuff that I think is interesting or cool. And even if it's flawed, you know, like um there's enough about it that I think is super cool that I want to talk about it and bring it to more people's attention. So That's why we're talking about that today. 00:02:39.69 Jala We actually, Dave and I did a bonus episode about this and we liked it so much that we were just like, even though we already did a bonus episode and kind of talked about it without spoilers, I want to dig into it some more. 00:02:43.53 Doug Lief thank you. Mm-hmm. 00:02:51.11 Jala So ah that is why why we are here today to do that. So yes, um definitely everybody should check out nostalgia Mark Canem. It's always a good time. i love it. 00:03:01.14 Jala I listened to it all the time as Doug knows, cause I always ping him every time, every time I listen, I ping you and I'm like, this is great. 00:03:03.79 Doug Lief oh thank 00:03:07.98 Jala Or I tell you some comment about whatever the thing is that week or whatever. So, Yeah, but as for this show, you can find us on Ko-Fi. It's ko-fi.com slash fireheartmedia. 00:03:19.45 Jala You can kick us a few bucks if you like. um And all of that money that goes into this pool to keep the lights on also is slowly driving us up towards where we're eventually going to do the Arnold Schwarzenegger Chronological Movie Podcast. 00:03:34.12 Jala put that cookie down now. And so ah that is that is coming up because we're like at 75% of the way there to the goal to get to that. So um Dave and I, like we're gathering the movies and starting doing now. 00:03:46.75 Doug Lief Come on, do it. Do it now. Come on. 00:03:49.46 Jala Indeed, indeed. So ah that is definitely a thing. And um Doug already knows because Doug's had me on for a couple of Schwartz and Anger Jags on on his show. So ah there's There's going to be more of that in the future, I'm sure. But anyway, ah you can do that if you like. Otherwise, of course, share with people and all of that fun stuff. 00:04:07.56 Jala I don't want to belabor the point. Let's move on and talk about this movie. It is cool. So um again, 2025, science fiction thriller. um We'll get into the trailer and why I don't. Well, I'm I feel some feelings about the trailer. We'll get into that later. 00:04:23.58 Jala um If you've seen the trailer for this movie, ah as much as it really feels like it's giving away everything about the movie, it really isn't. And it's actually kind of misleading. And um we'll get into that later. 00:04:36.20 Jala But um If you saw the trailer, don't think you know everything about this movie yet. like we'll We'll talk about it. It's 97 minutes. The budget was $10 million. It boxed at $36.7 million. 00:04:48.97 Jala It was written and directed by Drew Hancock. This was his directorial debut. So ah he's written stuff. He's done some other things. But this is his first time actually directing. So... 00:05:00.45 Doug Lief And well done. 00:05:01.66 Jala Yeah, yeah, I know. I was pretty impressed. I was like, okay, well, I'm definitely going to watch out for the next thing that this guy does, for sure. So ah the production companies were New Line Cinema, Boulder Light Pictures, and Vertigo Entertainment, distributed by Warner Brothers. 00:05:16.04 Jala And as for this movie, there's a bunch of different characters. We'll go through that when we get to the main story proper. The very, very basic plot... is since Irish and jo Josh met in a supermarket, the two have been inseparable. 00:05:33.05 Jala Now they want to spend the weekend together with Josh's friends at the luxurious lake estate of Sergei. His mistress, Kat, his friends Eli and Patrick will also be there. At first, Iris is unsure, convinced that everyone hates her. 00:05:46.03 Jala After a bumpy start, the six spend a boisterous evening together, but the following morning will change their lives forever. It's a story about the breakup of a codependent toxic relationship where the protagonist finds themselves. 00:05:59.82 Jala Ultimately, the protagonist journey culminates in acceptance of both who and what they are. And Lucas Gage, one of the actors in the film, said, I think that this is a movie about connection and how we all lack connection and really want to find our person. 00:06:15.12 Jala It's a really good, and like a really good horror movie. And we'll we'll get into the horror elements in a bit. Gaslights the audience into thinking it's one thing when it's really something else entirely. And that line right there pertains also to the trailer. Like it's a lot of people are like, oh, it gives the whole story away right in the trailer. 00:06:32.01 Jala um Yes and no. It gives away some broad strokes, but it doesn't give away ah the nuance that you find when you're watching the film. 00:06:40.69 Doug Lief I have not seen the trailer. i just but 00:06:42.07 Jala Ah, okay. 00:06:42.86 Doug Lief But what I will say that relates to this is when I was looking to watch it on streaming, I think I looked in two different places or I was trying to find it because I was going to watch it with my wife. 00:06:43.02 Jala Well, yeah. 00:06:52.17 Doug Lief And I was like like, we should watch this. 00:06:52.67 Jala yeah. 00:06:53.85 Doug Lief And she's like, well, what's it really about? 00:06:55.58 Jala yeah. 00:06:55.58 Doug Lief And so i I remember I looked at two different plot descriptions that were completely the inverse of each other. 00:07:02.54 Jala Right. 00:07:02.82 Doug Lief that one one plot description made it sound like um Iris ah was the protagonist, which she is, um but the other made it sound like she was the antagonist compared to the rest of the group, ah which in a way she also is, but it was really cool to see like, oh, wow, if you're trying to give a person a two-sentence description of this movie, you could come at it from either polarity. 00:07:10.54 Jala Yes. 00:07:16.34 Jala Mm hmm. 00:07:26.68 Jala Right, right. And that's part of the fun of this movie, too. And like, so so the trailer, um this is the pre-spoiler part. We will talk spoilers and get into the nitty gritty of the movie in a little bit here. But in this pre-spoiler section, I'm not going to tell you everything about the trailer. But if you watch the trailer, it's going to tell you a whole lot of key points about this movie, like right off the bat. 00:07:51.48 Jala in a way that like we'll talk about a little bit more after the spoiler wall, because I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't seen the movie. um If you have seen the trailer, don't assume you know everything about it. um And if you have not seen the trailer, don't go watch it. 00:08:06.10 Jala Listen to the pre-spoiler section, then watch the movie and then look at that trailer and go, wow. Okay, sure. 00:08:11.74 Doug Lief Yeah, I would say this is a movie you definitely want to know as little about as possible going in to get the maximum enjoyment out of it. 00:08:17.84 Jala Right. 00:08:19.52 Doug Lief It's not like there's crazy twists and turns in it, but the few twists that it has are big enough that I think, yeah, having anything spoiled about it will remove those. 00:08:30.22 Jala Right. Absolutely. So that's why um we're kind of being as vague as possible in this opening section here for that reason. So ah we still will talk about like reception and production and things like that as well um before we get into the movie proper in the spoiler section. 00:08:45.31 Jala So we'll continue on with that. But like about that trailer, though, just to hover on that for one more minute, 43 percent of the polled audience members that went to see the movie thought that like they went there because it was advertised as horror and it is horror of a type. 00:09:01.84 Jala Um, but it's not exclusively horror. This is kind of like a genre defying it's it's it's in a lot of different camps at different points in the movie. And it's kind of like a melange in a lot of ways. so 00:09:15.43 Doug Lief Yeah, I had thought going in it was going to be more of a horror movie because that's how it was pitched. 00:09:19.52 Jala Mm hmm. 00:09:21.08 Doug Lief And I came away going like, I mean, there are some horror elements to it. But if you're expecting like, you know, Event Horizon, you know, or something, it was something with a lot of gore and sci-fi put together. 00:09:25.12 Jala Mm hmm. 00:09:30.23 Jala Right. 00:09:33.14 Doug Lief It's not that. It's not Alien. It's not The Fly. It's not it's not any of those things. It's got you some some a little bit of ah people being wounded fatally and not fatally, but nothing graphic. 00:09:44.83 Jala Right. 00:09:45.14 Doug Lief must 00:09:45.31 Jala It's mostly a psychological horror, you know, like an internal horror and drama and, and, you know, like that's where all most, most of the work is going on internally while everything else is kind of revolving around and happening. 00:09:59.40 Jala So, 00:09:59.55 Doug Lief or Or what you might call social horror. 00:10:01.91 Jala Right, right. 00:10:02.50 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:10:03.57 Jala So, so yeah, um when i watched the trailer, cause we saw the trailer in the theater and I was actually interested in the movie from the trailer. um And I was interested because of the parts of the plot that were spoiled in the trailer. 00:10:18.38 Jala But I didn't, I also didn't feel catfished by it. So like when I watched it, um even though the trailer was shot in such a way that it makes you think it's one, one kind of movie. And then it's not really quite that way. Like I didn't feel cheated or upset by that, but I could imagine that some of the bad reviews of this movie have to do with the fact that the trailer is the way that it is versus the movie proper. So yeah. 00:10:43.59 Jala um But anyway, ah well, I'll tell you more about that later in the spoiler section. Moving on, though, production-wise, it was reported back in February 2023 that New Line was producing a movie written by Drew Hancock. 00:10:56.55 Jala Zach Kreger initially eyed Companion as his directorial follow follow-up to Barbarian, though the team wound up setting the project as the the directorial debut of Drew Hancock. I cannot speak today. 00:11:10.17 Jala Yeah. ah ah The filming took place in New York in January of 2024. So that's about it that I've got for all of that. Doug, how about you tell us a little bit about the visuals and the performances? 00:11:24.51 Doug Lief Okay, so the visuals, it's got a very... um but The very polished look to it. It doesn't have like the horror movie, you know, the early aughts thing where everything was blue. 00:11:34.17 Jala Grime. Yeah, yeah. 00:11:36.00 Doug Lief um You know, it doesn't have any that. It's presented, you know, it looks like an episode of a TV show almost you might see now. 00:11:41.42 Jala Right. 00:11:41.57 Doug Lief Like it's, you know, Succession or something. That kind of cinematography where it's like, oh, people are people. They look like people. They move in a human world. um there As far as the sci-fi goes, basically there's one sci-fi element in it. 00:11:54.25 Jala hmm. 00:11:54.23 Doug Lief And so it's not like they're they're driving you know crazy looking cars in Blade Runner either. Everything in the visuals is very much this is our world with maybe, you know, 00:12:06.22 Doug Lief five, 10 years into the future. So it's not you wildly sci-fi in that way. um And the performances are very human and grounded. ah It's the, the dialogue is not amped up. 00:12:15.35 Jala Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:12:17.96 Doug Lief You know, it's not, I mean, there are, there are jokes and things, but it's not like super quippy. It's not um super stylized. Like you're very much meant to feel like this is a you know this is a window into our world um with that one thing added. 00:12:34.89 Jala Right, right. And for me, I would say that it's got like a Barbie like color palette. It's very bright, um you know, especially with Iris's clothing and everything. She's always wearing something really vibrant and it's all 60s new wave kind of style. 00:12:50.79 Jala ah Very Stepford Wives kind of stuff. ah Very, very classic look to her. And there's a reason for that. We'll get into that later. But um everything pretty much takes place in broad daylight. There's some night scenes, but most of it is in the daylight. 00:13:06.96 Jala And um there were really some sensitive performances, especially by Sophie Thatcher, Lucas Gage, and Harvey Gwilan, who play Iris, Patrick, and Eli. 00:13:19.58 Jala So my first time seeing Lucas Gage, that actor was in Smile 2 where he plays Louis, the drug dealer who's possessed by the demon, whose face is on the cover of the movie and whose shining moment is like the highlight of the trailer for that movie. So if you've seen that trailer or if you've seen the cover of Smile 2, then you've seen this guy. 00:13:38.43 Jala And he was super creepy and very effective. And that's why it's everywhere, smeared everywhere, because he was such a good actor in that. And here he is. But this time he is basically, ah you know, looks like the equivalent of a a Ken doll to go back to Barbie. Right. 00:13:52.68 Jala Looks like a Ken doll, like the the perfect boyfriend kind of thing for Eli, where he's loving and nurturing. So very, very different vibe. 00:13:59.86 Doug Lief Yeah. Yeah. He, I liked, he was one of my favorite performances in the movie. He, they give him a lot of interesting stuff to do. 00:14:06.56 Jala hmm. 00:14:06.78 Doug Lief And I, I, I didn't see smile too. I know I've seen him in other stuff. He's one of those actors that you just, your brain just goes, ah, yes, that face I've seen it. 00:14:15.05 Jala Right. 00:14:15.08 Doug Lief ah You know, and, in a way that he associated with, i don't know, character actors like Richard Kind or Dylan Baker. Like these guys were just like, yeah, it's a guy. i know that guy. I can't remember his name. I'll never remember his name, but he's that guy. 00:14:28.04 Doug Lief um He's that guy. 00:14:28.16 Jala Right. 00:14:29.67 Doug Lief ah So he's good. 00:14:29.99 Jala Right. 00:14:30.55 Doug Lief um I really liked Jack Quaid, who's who's, yes, son of ah ah Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan and looks every bit of that that that gene genealogy, by the way. 00:14:33.11 Jala Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. 00:14:39.37 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:14:42.71 Jala Exactly. 00:14:42.98 Doug Lief um Yeah, very, very charming. um Gives a really like disarming performance. um So yeah, he like everyone in this movie is perfectly cast. The only one is's a little weird is Sergei for me, who's Luke Evans doing a heavy Russian accent. 00:14:59.57 Doug Lief like He feels like a bit of this inserted cartoon character a little bit. 00:15:01.97 Jala He's isn't he Rupert isn't he Rupert friend? 00:15:05.00 Doug Lief ah Rupert Friend. I'm sorry. lu lu Rupert Friend. 00:15:06.28 Jala Yeah. 00:15:06.88 Doug Lief Sorry. same Same face. 00:15:07.77 Jala Yeah. 00:15:08.74 Doug Lief Again, that guy. um Yeah, very much that guy. But like he's the only one doing like a heavy accent and kind of ah a little bit of an over-the-top performance. 00:15:20.56 Jala Right. Well, there's reason for that. And there's, there's like, we'll, we'll get into that um because of other characters that that guy has played. um But well we'll dig into that a little bit later. 00:15:31.41 Jala So, so yeah, um I definitely enjoy like all of the performances overall. um But again, I think it's because I've, of the, my preference for the characters, you know, where I'm like picking out the certain ones that I like best. 00:15:44.71 Jala It's not because the others don't act as well. it's just, I think those are just my favorite characters. So I'm kind of, bias towards liking those actors and actresses. 00:15:51.42 Doug Lief Yeah, there isn't a there isn't a sour note here in the performances. 00:15:54.01 Jala Right, right, right. 00:15:54.14 Doug Lief Everybody's good. 00:15:55.98 Jala So, so yeah, um, the visual department also emphasize practical effects as much as possible. This was something that i found out in the extra materials when I bought the copy of the movie. 00:16:07.80 Jala So the effects with the eyes were all done with contacts. For example, they didn't want to do a bunch of digital editing and stuff because they're like, you can tell that kind of stuff. And then, uh, there's a scene near the end where there was a puppet involved and something was green screened out. And again, this was trying to keep things practical. 00:16:24.24 Jala So, um, we'll talk more about that later, but it again, practical effects over, uh, using digital in most cases. So, except for probably one scene where there's like a ah certain thing happening, but, um, we'll, we'll get into that later, but the, 00:16:33.02 Doug Lief and 00:16:40.09 Doug Lief And yeah usually the correct answer, by the way, for filmmaking in general, is do it practically instead of with CGI. 00:16:43.61 Jala right. Right. Absolutely. So as for the reception of this movie, 94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, 70% on Metacritic, but um the reviews ranged the gamut. 00:16:57.14 Jala Some of them complained that the way the sexual themes of the movie are handled is too big studio and ah do not... and And um do not like that aspect that that that it's, you know, oh, it's it's too big studio the way that they're handing handling the sexual stuff of this. 00:17:15.64 Jala And um the intentional references to other movies turned into complaints about callbacks. um But on the positive side were compliments for Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid's performances, as well as praises for the script's originality. 00:17:28.93 Jala um For me, like the negative reviews actually surprised me because I didn't know what any of the reviews were. I had watched it in the theater and I loved it and then recorded the bonus episode, kept thinking about it, bought it when it came out. And then I was like, Doug, let's go. 00:17:41.67 Jala I was looking it up and I'm like... 00:17:41.73 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 00:17:43.52 Jala Huh. Okay. That's interesting. Cause, um, the, the callbacks that happen in this movie, they're not like incessant and all over the place. There's certain ones and they're there for reason. 00:17:55.54 Jala And it's really like a love note in my opinion to these other movies that it's referencing. Um, it's not heavy handed or anything like that to me, but you know, yeah. 00:18:04.31 Doug Lief I agree 100%. Yeah, the the the there are a couple of little like nods to things, but none of it took me out of the movie. 00:18:13.08 Jala Right. 00:18:13.05 Doug Lief um And yeah. 00:18:13.32 Jala Well, and then there's also some little details too, that we'll get into with the trivia later where like, it goes deeper than just these nods that you can just catch immediately. 00:18:24.04 Jala Like when you see this, if you know what it's referencing. um So we'll, we'll get there eventually. 00:18:30.37 Doug Lief Yeah, I mean, it's have you never seen a movie that had an homage in it before? Like, that doesn't bother me. 00:18:34.33 Jala Right. 00:18:35.86 Doug Lief As long as it's not, like, super winky at the audience. And, like, again, if it's if it's disruptive, it didn't work. You know, if it's if it's just a modest, like, oh, neat, then it worked. 00:18:42.85 Jala but 00:18:46.48 Doug Lief And then as far as the criticisms for, like, the big studio thing with the themes and the kind of the... um that I mean, look, this ah this is a movie about toxic ma masculinity, and it's not subtle. 00:18:57.81 Doug Lief um And I think that's probably the the criticism is like, oh, well, they're not very subtle about the way they do that. 00:18:57.96 Jala Yeah. 00:19:03.05 Doug Lief And I'm thinking, yeah, that's kind of the point. 00:19:07.35 Jala Right. 00:19:07.33 Doug Lief um that it's a sledgehammer in that regard. But again, I don't see whether you see that as a positive or a negative depends on whether you're looking for a film with subtlety or not. Sometimes subtlety is, you know, it can be good, but it's not necessarily always a virtue to have a movie be subtle in some respect. Sometimes there is also virtue in being a sledgehammer, which this is. 00:19:29.33 Jala Right, right. But also it's a sledgehammer that brings up a lot of different points and it doesn't sink into any one point um super, super deeply. Like it brings up way more um aspects to the themes that it has going than Barbie does, in my opinion. Like Barbie is kind of like the the major one note thing that it's got one thing to say and it's got that message and it goes with it. 00:19:53.27 Jala And that's great. Like that works well. Everybody loves that movie. But like this one is kind of like, no, there's a whole lot of effects and we're going to mention a lot of them. And then we're going to let you fill in the blanks. 00:20:05.62 Jala You know, like it's assuming that the audience is going to take certain comments and certain actions and things that happen throughout the movie and then extrapolate from that. 00:20:16.05 Jala So, you know, like, yes, if you're going in for a turn off brain and just watch the thing kind of film, you know, you're going to miss a lot of stuff in this movie, I think. 00:20:24.74 Doug Lief Right. 00:20:24.99 Jala So, and as for like the the sexual aspects of this movie called companion, which is about, you know, relationships and stuff. um Does it actually have to get into that super deep and get all gritty with it? 00:20:38.84 Jala I don't think so. I don't think it does. It does a perfectly good job, in my opinion, um with the insinuations and the statements that it makes and letting you take it from there and fill in the blanks. I mean, you get enough on screen that is a sledgehammer when you get to those points to have, you know, we don't need to belabor it. 00:20:59.35 Jala Let's just put it that way. So... 00:21:01.02 Doug Lief Yeah, agreed. 00:21:02.59 Jala So yeah, overall, what's your non-spoilery take on the movie though, Doug? 00:21:07.07 Doug Lief Oh, I think this is really enjoyable. And for all of the things we're going to get into about the messaging, the themes of the movie, um those are all good things to have. None of them have any value, though, if the movie itself isn't actually an entertaining, well-constructed story. 00:21:23.63 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:21:23.78 Doug Lief And, you know, like you can easily lose your audience in something like that. Fortunately, this is like it's a you know it is still first and foremost a piece of entertainment. And I think it works. I think you have engaging characters. 00:21:35.12 Doug Lief um our Our protagonist has a very clear, solid want. There are great little complications to that along the way. You know, if you like i said, twists and turns to it. 00:21:45.96 Doug Lief ah And it's ah it's ultimately kind of an ah escape movie. It's a prison it's a prison break movie in ah under the hood. 00:21:51.56 Jala Right. 00:21:55.14 Jala Right. 00:21:55.26 Doug Lief And you know that is like that's a great formula for any movie, right? Simple thing. I got to get out of here. How am I going to do it? And it delivers. 00:22:03.61 Jala right Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So, yeah, as for me, um you know, like my my one sentence response, my my summary that I put when I got out of the theater was it's better than Barbie. 00:22:16.10 Jala And like, I love Barbie, but people know I did an episode about that gushed all about it. 00:22:16.70 Doug Lief you 00:22:21.54 Jala But some. this movie broadens some of the themes that Barbie addressed, such as the power dynamics, toxic masculinity, touching on the darker aspects that Barbie didn't get into, uh, because of the type of movie Barbie was, you know, like this isn't a slight to Barbie. This is just, this is a different movie doing a different thing. 00:22:38.20 Jala Uh, however, given the overall pacing, uh, 00:22:38.97 Doug Lief Well, that's as you know from... was going to interrupt you, but as you know from the Barbie movie, Canonically, she has no vagina. 00:22:42.74 Jala ah 00:22:45.29 Jala Yeah, exactly. 00:22:45.25 Doug Lief That is a plot point. 00:22:46.05 Jala so So yeah, for sure. 00:22:46.63 Doug Lief So... 00:22:48.44 Jala but some However, given the overall pacing and plot of the movie, ah it could not linger or delve on anything you know delve into anything too too much other than like the primary points. But it does bring up other stuff so that you... 00:23:02.25 Jala like all of the moving parts, all of the strings that are attached when you pick the object up to look at it are still present and you can, you know, fill in the blanks for all of these other things with some of the dialogue and some of the actions and stuff that take place. 00:23:17.68 Jala So um I personally appreciate that it does this kind of holistic awareness of all of the moving parts at the same time that it does, this kind of approach that it has. 00:23:29.12 Jala So, um, yeah. And also the characters, Eli and Patrick, I love them. I love them. I was happy to see them portrayed as the most wholesome couple in this whole thing. 00:23:40.22 Jala as well, I, as, as much as you know, the couples in here are what they are, but, um, Yeah. in surprise And it was really funny. ah And I enjoy the fact that it in it defies genre. Like it's it's sci-fi, yes, to an extent. 00:23:57.43 Jala It is dark comedy to an extent. It is horror to an extent. It's a lot of different things. You know, you could even consider this like a slow burn suspense or whatever, all different kinds of things. 00:24:08.90 Jala But yeah. Overall, i would recommend this to anybody who's interested in mystery thrillers, dark comedy, sci-fi. um Anyone who is interested in the themes we've mentioned, um just understand that this is a melting pot. It's not like ah a one note kind of thing. 00:24:26.67 Jala You know, like it's got a lot of things going on when you watch it. 00:24:30.51 Doug Lief Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's kind of the interesting recommendation. I don't think it does any particular thing new. like There's nothing about this movie that's like novel, but it is a good amalgam of different things. 00:24:43.60 Doug Lief and And again, very competently well-told story. um So you will be entertained by this, regardless, of I think, of how you feel about the individual parts. um they're therere I found myself just being fully engaged by it from start to finish. 00:24:59.08 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So ah with that said, don't have anything else that I can say before the spoiler wall. So this going to like maybe the shortest spoiler wall I've ever had. Shortest. 00:25:09.13 Doug Lief Yeah, it's hard to talk about anything in this movie without spoiling, at least certainly the main, even the main conceit of the movie is held back from you for just a little bit before they reveal it. 00:25:10.90 Jala Hmm. 00:25:15.39 Jala Right. Mm-hmm. 00:25:18.44 Jala ah 00:25:19.08 Doug Lief So it's hard, hard to talk about most of the movie without revealing at least the premise. 00:25:23.92 Jala Right, right. So with that said, you can ah follow Doug everywhere that he may be found. I will put all the links in the show notes. Go listen to Nostalgium Arcanum. It is awesome. 00:25:35.65 Jala And the last episode that I was on also featured Dave from Monster Dear Monster. And we were talking about Leprechaun in the Hood. Yay. Not this movie at all. 00:25:46.42 Doug Lief but About as far from this movie as you can get. 00:25:48.77 Jala Right. The last couple of times I was on, it was all like, you know, in Living Color and like Leprechaun in the Hood and stuff like that. It's like, you know, I found out that Dave really likes a bunch of the the old blaxploitation films and stuff like that. And I'm like oh, I guess that's a thing that we're going to be doing. And Dave's going to pop on for some of that. 00:26:07.15 Jala But anyhow, so ah moving right along, the spoiler wall. 00:26:08.63 Doug Lief um 00:26:11.58 Doug Lief You've all been warned. Yeah. 00:26:13.01 Jala Yeah, you have been warned. So spoiler wall, it is up. It is up. And now we are waking up. So do you want to begin the spoiler running through the movie, Doug, or do you want me to do it? 00:26:26.62 Doug Lief Sure. Yeah, no, we could start here. So yeah, we've got this, I love this opening. It's very clever. So we've got our meet cute between Iris and Josh, where she's walking through a supermarket and, you know they, they're talking and he, you know, clumsily picks up an orange from ah the stand, causing all of the oranges in the stand to just domino down onto the floor. 00:26:38.61 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:26:50.58 Doug Lief And they are just like chuckling to each other. Is it orange peaches, oranges, whatever, some fruit, you 00:26:54.52 Jala Yeah, well, she's sniffing a peach, but then he when he comes around, he pulls an orange and then all the oranges tumble to the ground. So um what I like is that before it even starts, when just like the New Line Cinema logo and the other logos are coming up, Iris' theme is starting to play. 00:27:02.03 Doug Lief Right. 00:27:12.82 Jala It's this kind of humming theme, which I'm sure we're going to use for the intro to this episode. So if you skipped over the music, go back and listen to that. It's really good. Yeah. And that kind of sets the kind of tone for the introspective beginning, because as Iris is walking through the store, she's thinking to herself about, you know, um this way that we're kind of going through life in a fog until this one, you know blinding moment when all the clarity hits you and everything. And, you know, she's kind of like super, super into her own head, 00:27:43.85 Jala and feelings and you know feeling as the as though this meet cute with josh is like the thing that turned the light on for her and you know turned up the volume and everything and made it where she's no longer just existing now she has a purpose yeah 00:27:58.63 Doug Lief You think like 500 days of summer, you know, is it's it's shot that way. She even looks kind of like Zooey Deschanel, you know. 00:28:04.64 Jala mm-hmm 00:28:05.95 Doug Lief But one thing I will point out that her walk, like her gate as she's like pushing the supermarket cart, I like noticed this right away. i' like, it's weird, like her her feet, like she's not walking the way a natural person walks. 00:28:19.23 Jala ah 00:28:19.47 Doug Lief It's kind of like very deliberate heel toe thing that I'm just like, who walks that way? 00:28:24.83 Jala right 00:28:24.78 Doug Lief um But by then I knew the premise of the movie. So I was like, okay, that's a nice touch. 00:28:29.79 Jala right well i also think it's interesting because the supermarket is very bright and very clean and empty except for her and josh and so like that was really noticeable to me too as this part was starting up and 00:28:43.79 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:28:44.96 Jala So she's tunes in like I write about this time when you see Jack Quaid give his disarming and and cute little smile to her and they they introduce the each other. Then she says, there were two times I felt truly happy. First, the day I met Josh. 00:29:00.40 Jala Second, the day I killed him. 00:29:03.93 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 00:29:06.07 Jala So, yeah, and then it cuts to a couple of credit scenes. And then we cut to Iris wake up as Josh and Iris are heading down a highway and they are heading off to go like meet with some of his friends at this lake cabin for the weekend. And um so she's just telling him, oh, I had this dream again of of the day that we met. you know Do you remember how perfect it was? It was so perfect and in all of this stuff. And he's just kind of half into it. He's like, OK, yeah. 00:29:35.41 Jala you know yeah it was great and as they pull into this lake house the title card slides over the tree line in this pink retro font that was really charming so 00:29:48.09 Doug Lief Yeah, it's, ah again, good introduction to, like, you know, what their relationship is like now versus how it was whenever they supposedly met. 00:29:53.03 Jala yeah 00:29:56.35 Doug Lief um I don't know how much you want to give away before we get to the main twist, but um I really just sort of... you know they're giving you the classic horror movie setup, right? We're going away to a cabin in a remote secluded part of the woods with our friends. 00:30:06.74 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:30:09.16 Jala Right. 00:30:10.54 Doug Lief like, well, I know it's not Evil Dead or anything, but they're, you know, they're giving you this very tropey horror movie setup where, you know, it's just us, the woods, it's isolated. Hey, there's no cell phone service, you know, all that stuff. 00:30:22.47 Jala Yeah, right, right. But so so they're walking up to the building and Iris has the bigger of the two pieces of luggage. She's hauling most of the luggage. He's got like one little piddly bag and she just kind of stops. 00:30:38.80 Jala And Josh turns to her and he's like, you know, you can't lie to me. What's wrong? And then she has all of these second thoughts and this the self-consciousness. Everybody hates me. 00:30:49.61 Jala I'm going to say something weird. You know, she's just worried about how all of his friends are going to deal with her. And we already get the knowledge that Cat hates her, which is one of the characters. 00:31:00.47 Jala ah But Cat hates everybody. So that's fine. ah So you already get a little bit about one of the characters before you even meet her properly. 00:31:07.98 Doug Lief Yeah, and he's he is very, like, he's reassuring to her in this moment. I mean, he ostensibly still wants her to enjoy the experience of of being there. 00:31:17.29 Jala and 00:31:19.07 Doug Lief And like this, like, oh, Kat hates everybody. Again, we're just getting kind of color for these other characters we're about to meet. 00:31:25.89 Jala Right. And one thing too is that he calls her beep boop. That's his nickname for her. So So yeah, they're greeted at the door by Kat, who is kind of standoffish with Iris from the get-go. She's like, oh, nice to see you, you know, that kind of thing. 00:31:41.79 Jala um But as they walk in, Patrick is cooking and Eli is swinging around the corner, already drunk and very cheerful and giving everybody hugs and kisses and stuff like that. um You know, he's having a good old time before anybody else is even there properly. 00:31:57.08 Jala um Sergei, the owner of the house, says that he's heard all about Iris and she says all good I hope to which Sergei responds by being really gross and lascivious he's like licking his lips and looking her up and down and stuff like that and very creepy Josh ends up changing the subject to the house itself and Sergei says I paid for all of this like Iris it doesn't come cheap 00:32:19.97 Doug Lief Right. And again, you can be, you know, all of that has a ah below the surface meaning that will become immediately clear in in a few minutes. 00:32:26.54 Jala mm-hmm 00:32:28.91 Doug Lief um But ah yeah, it's a great little, you know, it isn't the sixth sense, but they do a good job of like setting all of this stuff up that will look different the second time you watch the movie. 00:32:39.74 Jala Right, absolutely. And that was something I was going to say is that specifically the beginning part of the movie really benefits from a rewatch because then you can catch all of these things. Like even if you already know the central conceit of the thing, it doesn't really kind of hit the same way until after you've seen the entire movie and then you're going back to it. 00:32:58.10 Doug Lief Right. 00:32:58.93 Jala So... um but yeah from there iris goes to take a shower ah she's humming her own iris theme so she's humming that same theme a again so you get it worked in um to like just the regular show itself um then there's a flash drive in the suitcase as she's unpacking stuff and it kind of zoom the camera zooms in on it and it's got like this doom and gloom kind of scary creepy music that plays when we see this so uh we cut to dinner from there do you want to talk about this scene 00:33:31.37 Doug Lief Yeah, I mean, this is I mean, this is a lot of just kind of the the download again about who these characters are, who they are to each other. 00:33:40.06 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:33:40.10 Doug Lief um 00:33:40.20 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:33:41.28 Doug Lief it's, you know, as you would expect, it's it's moderately awkward, not horrifically awkward, but moderately awkward. um We get to find out about Eli and Patrick. um They are ah boyfriends. 00:33:52.59 Jala ah 00:33:52.63 Doug Lief ah And I think they ask him, right, they ask Patrick about you know ah their first meeting and how they fell in love. And he tells this story about, oh, he you know he knew him, you know like I said, right then and there, ah you know the heat that Eli was the person for him. 00:34:09.61 Doug Lief Just like Iris had her feelings about Josh the moment she met him. 00:34:09.94 Jala Right. 00:34:14.66 Jala Yeah. And Iris even expounds on that. And she's like, it's like a piece of you that's broken. And then suddenly it's fixed. And the two of them, Patrick and Iris are both kind of like agreeing that this is how the thing works. And then there's like this dead silence from everybody else. And then Sergei clears his throat. And then they just kind of like change the subject because everybody else is kind of uncomfortable. 00:34:36.40 Jala So, um, Then we cut to Sergei and Patrick and Sergei is opening another bottle of wine. Patrick is cleaning up the kitchen meanwhile, cause he cooked all the food. And um while that's happening, Patrick asks what Sergei does for a living. And Sergei says, Oh, I have my fingers in many pots. My hands are unclean. I have a dirty business. 00:34:58.09 Jala And so that's what he says. And keep that in mind for later when you find out more about that. But. 00:35:03.77 Doug Lief Yeah, I mean, they they're giving you all the vibes, of course, that this guy is into organized crime. He's significantly older than the rest of them. like there's you know And his relationship with Kat, as we'll reveal in a minute, is like, yeah we already know that Sergei is married and... 00:35:19.46 Doug Lief Cat is, you know, his mistress. So there's questions about like, why are you okay with this? Is it just, you know, the money, you know, what's going on? 00:35:26.55 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:35:26.92 Doug Lief um So we're, we're supposed to feel ill at ease at this guy's house. Like, why, why is this guy inviting us all here? You know, it's the Like, you know, I'm 45. If my friends were all 21, it would be weird, you know? 00:35:36.98 Jala Right. Indeed. So then we see Kat and Iris on the couch and they're talking and Iris is complimenting Sergei and Kat tells her, oh yeah, he has everything that a girl could want. You know, he's a beautiful house, all these cars, all this money, a beautiful wife. 00:35:53.56 Jala And then this totally floors Iris, who doesn't understand. She's got like this very innocent, like, but you love him. confusion, just confused, does not understand, does not compute as to why Kat would be okay with being a mistress. 00:36:09.17 Jala So, um and so she's like, oh, but you love Sergei. And then Kat's like, no, that would require him to think of me as a person first. 00:36:20.60 Jala And she says, I'm an accessory like his car. And then she says really dismissively, oh, look who I'm talking to. 00:36:28.40 Doug Lief Right. Which is interesting because ah we'll find out in a bit that Iris is ah you know blissfully ignorant of a lot of what's going on. 00:36:36.59 Jala Right. 00:36:38.16 Doug Lief And apparently, i guess the other characters don't know that because of the way you wouldn't say things like this to her um if you knew that that she she was ignorant. 00:36:45.63 Jala right 00:36:48.14 Doug Lief I think they prop maybe Josh knows, but like a lot of them are acting like they don't know that Iris doesn't know. 00:36:56.16 Jala Right, right, exactly. 00:36:56.15 Doug Lief What's up? 00:36:58.86 Jala So Iris is asking Kat, do you dislike me? Do you hate me, Kat? And Kat says she doesn't hate Iris. She hates the idea of Iris because it makes her feel replaceable. 00:37:10.17 Jala And of course, all of this is related to the big reveal. you know 00:37:14.64 Doug Lief Yeah, but it all plays as if it's still in the world of like, you know, rom-com stuff, right? 00:37:20.42 Jala Right. 00:37:20.73 Doug Lief Like it you can still accept this as like, you know, the again, thinking of like 500 Days of Summer, like that kind of dialogue is what is what this looks like on the surface. 00:37:28.09 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:37:31.17 Jala Mm-hmm. For sure. So Iris then replies that she could never replace Kat, who is so fearless. She goes on to say that she feels like there's something inside of her that is holding her back from being as fearless as Kat. 00:37:44.92 Jala So all of these things are things that, like, again, like when I was rewatching it, I was noting all of this. That's why I'm making sure to say them. 00:37:53.05 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 00:37:54.61 Jala So... So yeah, then they have this fun little dance scene. 00:37:59.27 Doug Lief One interesting thing is, again, like keep the futurism from going too far, which is like the music they're listening to. 00:38:00.82 Jala oh 00:38:05.56 Doug Lief It's a CD player. 00:38:07.20 Jala Right. 00:38:07.27 Doug Lief It's a good old 90s compact disc, which was like, I guess in this version of the near future, that's the new vinyl. 00:38:14.39 Jala Right. 00:38:14.41 Doug Lief It's like, oh, man, have you listened to this on a ah CD? It's all good and scratched up. 00:38:19.10 Jala Right. 00:38:19.62 Doug Lief It's been out of a sleeve and a changer in my the trunk of my car 50 times, you know. 00:38:25.08 Jala Mm-hmm. Right. 00:38:26.49 Doug Lief that's That's what you can really yeah real audio files can tell. 00:38:29.77 Jala Right. 00:38:30.35 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:38:32.49 Jala Right. 00:38:34.56 Doug Lief But yeah, so they, yeah, they just dance. Like this is just another, again, like cute scene. Everybody's having a good time. This is in theory what this weekend is supposed to be. People just hanging out, drinking, relaxing. I like that. 00:38:45.24 Doug Lief Iris is the one who I think she kind of pulls Josh, ah you know, a way to dance. 00:38:49.02 Jala Yeah. 00:38:49.76 Doug Lief Like, you know, she's doing like good, reasonable girlfriend things. 00:38:50.26 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:38:54.58 Jala Well, the reason why she's doing that is because Kat and Josh are whispering to each other off to one side and kind of dancing together, but they're whispering. 00:38:54.64 Doug Lief Um, 00:39:03.58 Jala And so Iris looks over and then she, like her face kind of falls a little bit. And then she pulls Josh over to try to to dance with him because she's like, oh, I don't know what's going on there. 00:39:14.99 Jala I'm not going to ask about it, but I want his attention, you know? 00:39:17.89 Doug Lief Right. 00:39:19.04 Jala So again, more rom-com stuff. 00:39:19.48 Doug Lief Right. 00:39:21.83 Jala So 00:39:22.53 Doug Lief Yeah. And I love the jarring transition from this um because, again, everything is still been in this mostly rom-com vibe. 00:39:25.30 Jala Yeah. 00:39:30.51 Doug Lief And we cut to like like, I don't know, two and a half seconds before he climaxes on top of her making a gross O-face. Yeah. 00:39:39.57 Jala Yeah. 00:39:39.84 Doug Lief Like, it's really jarring. Like, we don't like, you know, it's not like Unchained Melody starts and they start making you know pottery together and everything is, you know, um loving like it's just like, oh, he just came and he's done. 00:39:47.02 Jala Yeah. 00:39:52.03 Jala Yeah. 00:39:52.00 Doug Lief And it's like it's one. 00:39:52.23 Jala And he just rolls off and Iris is just laying there, just laying there, you know, and, and he's totally ignoring her. 00:39:57.50 Doug Lief Mm hmm. And. 00:40:01.01 Jala She's talking about her feelings about everything going on. And I'm sorry if I was weird today, this, that, and the other, and and kind of seeking kind of like cuddle time, you know, or whatever, but he just isn't having it. 00:40:13.24 Jala And he says, Iris, go to sleep and everything goes to black. 00:40:16.24 Doug Lief Right. And so this is like, art like, we knew that there was a little bit of like maybe trouble in paradise with their relationship. And this is like, can like, you know, kind of slamming the door home on that of like, oh, yeah, he does not care about her or or is at least not very mindful of her feelings. 00:40:33.95 Jala Right. Absolutely. So then the next morning we have Josh brushing, brushing his teeth. Iris is looking out over the lake from the balcony. She's all dressed, um, in like some checkered shorts and a white shirt to like go down and have a picnic or whatever. 00:40:47.83 Jala And, um, He ends up asking her, oh, what is the weather? And then she's like, it's 84 degrees with a, you know, partly cloudy, blah, blah, blah, or something like that. 00:40:58.60 Jala And then he's like, oh, that never gets old. Ha, ha, ha. And they both laugh. And um she's pushing for him to go get up so they can go because they were supposed to go down to the lakeside together this morning. 00:41:10.42 Jala But Josh says he doesn't want to because he's hung over. He said he would go down there, but that was before all the alcohol. He's not feeling it. But she should go ahead and go enjoy herself at the lakeside. She really needs to go. 00:41:23.06 Jala And I'm going to take a shower. Oh, well, you can make that shower for two. No, I think you really need to just go. And he's pushing her out the door. 00:41:30.73 Doug Lief Right. Yeah, it's conspicuously, you know, just go by yourself. 00:41:34.96 Jala Mm hmm. 00:41:35.75 Doug Lief And then, yeah, he he before after she leaves, he plugs that little thumb drive into his phone or tablet or whatever conspicuously. And and then we we're off following her to the lake. 00:41:50.92 Jala so she takes off her shoes she's down in the sand by you know by the chairs lounge chairs and stuff near the water and she puts her hand in her pocket and then she pulls it out and she has a folding knife in there and she's looking at it like this is not something that i put in my own pocket You know, ah just about that time, Sergei comes out and settles onto a lounge chair behind where she was about to sit down. 00:42:18.63 Jala And so she shoves the knife back in her pocket to hide And so he's being creepy again, talking about the nice view, talking about Iris, of course. And he's wearing a robe. He offers her some vodka and she declines and she's insisting that she needs to go back inside. Josh doesn't feel well. I need to go see him now. 00:42:36.85 Jala And so then Sergei pulls like, you know, this this kind of controlling, emotional, manipulative card. And he's like, This lake house, you're enjoying being at this lake house, aren't you? You're enjoying the hospitality and all of this. 00:42:51.30 Jala Then sit down and keep this old Russian man company. So... 00:42:56.41 Doug Lief Yeah, you can see where this is going from a mile away. 00:42:58.62 Jala Uh-huh. 00:42:59.27 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:42:59.52 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So he pulls out some sunblock and he's like, could you do my shoulders and takes off the top of his robe and everything. And she doesn't even want to get anywhere near him, but she's trying to put it on. And then as she does, he grabs her hand. 00:43:13.88 Jala You know what's going to happen here. 00:43:15.71 Doug Lief Right. 00:43:15.79 Jala So ah he then says, um oh, it's no problem. It was Kat's idea. She gave permission for this. And he stands up and wraps his arm around her. She's asking him to stop. 00:43:28.56 Jala And he's like, this is what you are for. And then after that, we cut to the living room where Patrick, Kat and Josh are listening to Eli telling a story. 00:43:39.85 Jala The camera zooms out and shows Iris's hand holding the knife arm and knife totally covered in blood. Like everything is bloody that you can see. 00:43:47.48 Doug Lief Yeah, it's it's like an overwhelming amount of blood all over her to the point where it's like, is she even aware she's covered it? 00:43:50.53 Jala yeah 00:43:53.65 Doug Lief Like you would think she would have gone down to the lake and tried to wash some of it off or anything, but she's in shock. 00:43:58.94 Jala Yeah, she's absolutely in shock. She is covered in blood on her upper body and the knife and everything. And everybody's like, what the fuck is going on You know? And, um, she's initially really completely expressionless because of the shock. And then she says, I didn't mean to, he forced himself on me and i just wanted him to stop. 00:44:19.00 Jala And while she's shaking and quivering, Josh is asking her to tell him what happened. we see flashbacks of what was going on with Sergei trying to force himself on her. And then she grabs the bottle of vodka, hits him upside the head. He falls and hits his head on a rock. 00:44:33.94 Jala When he comes to, he grabs her and is choking her out. He jumps on top of her and chokes her out. And so she pulls the knife out of her pocket and stabs him in the jugular. 00:44:44.81 Jala So. 00:44:44.92 Doug Lief Yeah, absolutely you know justifiable self-defense stuff. And I think they didn't, part of me was like, well, do they even need to show it? um but I think you have to because you've kind of primed the audience that this is a horror movie. 00:44:52.83 Jala Yeah. 00:44:57.43 Doug Lief And if we don't see a character die on screen, we're going to be what you know wondering, are they going to walk back in a frame at some point? you know Actually, he he somehow survived this attack. um 00:45:07.25 Jala Right. 00:45:07.92 Doug Lief But it's ah you know it's always hard to watch a sexual assault scene in a movie, but you know this is necessary for the plot. 00:45:11.77 Jala Right. 00:45:15.23 Jala Right. Well, and then to part of it that I felt too, is that if they didn't show this scene, then it wouldn't drive home exactly the the performance that Sophie Thatcher is giving as Iris here. 00:45:27.91 Jala You know, like how she's in shock and how she's just, you know, she's very timid. She's very, you know, soft-spoken most of the time. She doesn't exert, you know, exert herself or assert her personality. 00:45:39.32 Jala in many situations and she happened to this one time and this is the result, you know, because of, of what happened here. And, you know, so it's, it's setting it up, you know, like if you weren't already worried about Iris with regards to men in general, when you saw how Josh was treating her, now you are after what Sergei did and now what's come as a result of all of this. 00:45:58.29 Doug Lief Right. 00:46:03.56 Jala So, 00:46:03.67 Doug Lief right 00:46:05.21 Jala She's making this impassioned plea to Josh. She's like, you have to understand, you know, if he killed her, then she would never see Josh again. And that hurt more than physical pain. I couldn't let him take me away from you. I love you so much. 00:46:18.26 Jala And then right about then, Josh says, Iris, go to sleep. And everything fades to black. 00:46:23.65 Doug Lief Right. And when we come back in. Iris is you know she's being tied to a chair and her eyes are pure white with no irises. And we we now know what's up. 00:46:31.50 Jala Yep. 00:46:33.26 Doug Lief Iris is a robot. 00:46:33.60 Jala Mm-hmm. Yes, she is a robot. So um Josh and Patrick are talking. They're the ones tying her up. And Josh is like, oh, she isn't superhuman strength or anything like that. She's only as strong as I i allow her to be. 00:46:46.87 Jala And um Eli comes around the corner and Josh asked about how Kat's doing. And Eli says he's given her Xanax and she's sleeping. And then he asked like, what are we going to do about all this? 00:46:58.20 Jala Josh is like, well, we'll have to call the cops and tell them what happened. And Eli said, I have no idea how this could have happened. Doesn't, doesn't, don't they make safeguards or something for this kind of thing? 00:47:07.30 Doug Lief Yeah, I mean, the second, I mean, I knew she was supposed to be a robot going in. I kind of was spoiled on that premise. 00:47:13.04 Jala Right. 00:47:13.08 Doug Lief um But like my brain was already kind of like teeming with like, you know, what about the three laws of robotics type questions? 00:47:21.74 Jala Right. 00:47:22.14 Doug Lief You know, wouldn no wouldn't you be programmed to not... you harm another human being. Wouldn't she, you know you know, she's obviously programmed to not know she's a robot, which is interesting, which is like, in theory, like the encounter with um was Sergei could not be a traumatizing event for her. 00:47:41.25 Doug Lief If she's programmed to know like this is just a function I do, you know, like you could make it so like she doesn't have to be psyched. 00:47:45.19 Jala Right. 00:47:47.86 Doug Lief You programmed her to be able to be psychologically traumatized. You must have built that into her, right? 00:47:51.33 Jala right 00:47:53.34 Doug Lief There's all kinds of ways in which you could have avoided this. But as we'll see in a moment, Josh has, he he reveals, I, you know, I jailbroke the program so I could hack her and make her do what I wanted, thus making her more vulnerable to things like this. 00:48:08.39 Jala Absolutely. So he scoots up a chair and then tells Iris to wake up. Her eyes return to normal and she's just right back where she was before. She continues her passionate statement and Josh interrupts her. Hey, hey, hey, it's okay. It's okay. And then she's like, why am I tied up? What is going on? And there's this really interesting scene where he's like, oh, you have to be tied up because you killed Sergei. It was self-defense. You've got to believe me. I do. You couldn't lie to me even if you wanted to. 00:48:35.43 Jala It's part of your programming. And this is the first time that Iris gets to hear that she's a robot. 00:48:40.69 Doug Lief Right. 00:48:41.10 Jala So. 00:48:41.76 Doug Lief And you watch her kind of put that together like, huh? You know, that it's you know um and this is where we get to a couple of things. what The description, like, what is her purpose as a robot? 00:48:54.12 Jala hmm. 00:48:54.16 Doug Lief and She is not a protocol droid. 00:48:54.30 Jala Mm 00:48:55.64 Doug Lief She is basically a very sophisticated blow up doll. Like that is her primary function in a way. 00:48:59.88 Jala hmm. 00:49:01.36 Doug Lief I mean, i guess, it well, To a degree, right? Because you can really up her intelligence to be, you know, Harvard grad. um If you want, you know, she doesn't have to be a purely ah sexual experience for the owner. They could you can try and make her into something more if that's what you want out of her. 00:49:18.88 Jala Right. So Josh starts out with going, I hate the word fuck bot, but that comes up a couple of times, his words from the movie. Um, but also he's like, Oh, you're an emotional support robot. You do so much more than just that. 00:49:33.75 Jala So, um, Anyway, she doesn't believe him at first. She's like, but I have all these memories. I went to Japan twice and I did this and that. And he's like, they're all implanted memories. They're just outlines of memories. 00:49:44.88 Jala That day I met you in the supermarket wasn't an outline. No, that I picked that from a drop down menu when I first got you. So you want me to tell you how we really met? 00:49:51.90 Doug Lief Yeah, it's cutscene. 00:49:54.37 Jala And... 00:49:54.54 Doug Lief yeah 00:49:56.49 Jala So yeah, and then like when he's going through this and talking about how they really met, Iris, the song Iris from the Goo Goo Dolls is blaring in the background as he answers his apartment door and the Empathics people come with a gigantic box which contains Iris and they are wheeling in some clothes and he's signing some paperwork and being given the rundown. 00:50:19.16 Jala of exactly like what the the situation is like how do you start her up how do you get her to tune with you okay you have to sync her with your phone and all this other mess and so like the the tech is explaining some of how she works that she has an app on the phone and you can adjust everything there you can change your hair and eye color ah You can change her intelligence level and different aspects, her voice and everything. You can change all of that in your phone and all of that. 00:50:47.17 Jala So they leave and he's alone with her. She is sitting on her on his couch and he sits down on the coffee table across from her. And, you know, they do this whole establishing a love link, you know, kind of thing after his phone sinks. 00:51:02.27 Doug Lief Right. 00:51:02.67 Jala And so, you know, all of this happens. And then when she comes to, she goes, hey, you. And then, you know, she's there. And, you know, at first he's kind of awkward, like, oh, okay, I guess that's, that's what we're doing now, huh? 00:51:15.14 Jala um I have a girlfriend now. So... 00:51:19.15 Doug Lief Yeah, it's very much like, I love how kind of perfunctory this is. It's very like setting up of any Bluetooth device you've ever bought. Right. 00:51:26.83 Jala hu 00:51:27.79 Doug Lief um 00:51:27.96 Jala Well, when he's sitting there clipping his toenails, waiting for the thing to finish sinking and once it, you know, beeps or whatever, then Iris goes, please place your face within three feet of my field of vision to establish love link. And like when she's talking and it happens a couple of times in the movie, um, she's sitting there completely still except for just her mouth area moving. And that has to be a CG effect or something where they like, you know, did, um, 00:51:54.38 Jala a composite or something because the rest of her doesn't move at all at all. And it's just that one little spot moving. It, it feels kind of like that anyway, because it it feels, you know, very effectively robotic, you know, 00:52:08.29 Doug Lief Yeah, and they play with that a couple times in the movie, the idea of like, well, she's a robot, right? Where they have her physically do something that manifests as robotic because otherwise, like, she's way past the Turing test. 00:52:15.82 Jala and 00:52:19.15 Jala right. 00:52:19.53 Doug Lief you know So we're we're very clear, like this is this might as well be a fully sentient human being that they've created. And so, again, raising all kinds of technological moral questions that the film doesn't have time to answer and doesn't, I think the point is to let you think about those and kind of marinate in that after the movie's over. 00:52:30.94 Jala Yeah. 00:52:36.04 Jala Right. 00:52:38.87 Jala Absolutely. So after that, though, like they have this cute little moment when she wakes up and then it cuts to the bedroom door is closed. Josh is, is in the middle of an orgasm again. And like the way that Jack Quaid gives this performance every time this happens is it just feels like this guy is such a loser. Like, you know, just like the way that his, his voices and in the kind of, I don't know, um Just, just, just the delivery of it just kind of comes out. Like this isn't like a a loving and intimate and and touching moment or anything like that. He's ah a means to an end. Right. 00:53:16.27 Jala So, right. 00:53:16.28 Doug Lief Well, a means to multiple ends, as we'll find out, right? And it's not clear exactly. it is Did he purchase Iris because he's an incel and and you know he couldn't get a real girl another way? 00:53:27.92 Doug Lief Or is this is he playing a long game, as we'll see, because he has another scheme going, right? ah that we'll find out about in a bit. And so it's unclear, like, did he purchase Iris with the intent of using her for that? 00:53:40.86 Doug Lief Because obviously this movie is all about him using her and how people use each other, um you know, exploit their power dynamics. 00:53:45.08 Jala and 00:53:47.43 Doug Lief So it's, I like that they don't answer that question. It's, you know they leave it, it could be one or both. 00:53:52.90 Jala yeah in my view like the way that i read the movie i read it as no he really is like an incel type of person which we'll get to more when he gets to his monologue at at one point in the movie but um over time he eventually realized that the other things he can do with her and then you know, decided to go down that path. And that's where, where we get the other big plot of the movie. 00:54:16.68 Jala So, but going back to the present though, Iris is continuing to talk about how her feelings and memories and stuff are are real. 00:54:16.71 Doug Lief Right. 00:54:24.60 Jala And he says, no, they're all artificial. And he finally backs off and says, you know, okay, it's, it's a lot to process and and just lets her be. And then she finally says, okay. And then her tone changes And she's now accepting that she's a robot, but she's still wanting to be by him. She's like, okay, okay. 00:54:41.33 Jala I'm not real, but I'm still yours. I can make you happy, Josh. I can make you so, so happy. And the tone here just kind of twisted my stomach so badly when I was watching this because I was like, oh, this is... 00:54:54.75 Jala you are watching all of the, the dirty, horrible, gross parts of a toxic relationship happen. And without all of them being aired on screen, like we talked about, like this doesn't show you all of the, the absolute worst sections of it, but they, they imply it enough that, you know, the situation. 00:55:14.30 Doug Lief Right, because she's programmed to love him, so she has to do that. 00:55:16.59 Jala Yes. 00:55:17.22 Doug Lief It's not because she really has those feelings. um you know And the other part of it is when he says no, I love that the film is still playing a few cards face down, because you could buy him saying no as like, well, no, dum-dum, you just stabbed a guy in his jugular, so no. 00:55:33.07 Jala Mm hmm. 00:55:33.83 Doug Lief No, this this cannot continue. 00:55:33.92 Jala Yeah. 00:55:35.71 Doug Lief That would be a viable explanation for him saying, no I'm not. i'm We're done. um 00:55:40.33 Jala Mm hmm. 00:55:40.87 Doug Lief But that is not why he says that. So it's yeah again, great. 00:55:42.86 Jala Yep. 00:55:44.28 Doug Lief that Again, there's one more card to to play. 00:55:47.16 Jala Right. So then Kat shows up and asks Josh what he's doing and tells her to shut or tells him to shut Iris down. And Josh walks out of the room to talk to Kat because he's like, what are you doing? Don't don't tell her that, you know, and then Iris ends up seeing the knife on the floor. 00:56:03.52 Jala So Kat and Josh are talking in the other room and we find out about their plan. You want to talk about that, Doug? 00:56:09.17 Doug Lief Right. So the plan is basically to steal money from Sergei, who is they they claim is some sort of Russian mobster. 00:56:13.47 Jala Mm hmm. 00:56:17.97 Doug Lief ah He's a bad person and he's got a big safe full of money. And so the plan was to you know come out here, this isolated place, murder him or plausibly have Iris do it for them, in exactly which is why he planted the knife in her pocket. 00:56:32.70 Doug Lief um settle this into motion uh and then you know just blame it on her she's you know she's ah a thing she does she's not a person and and to walk away that is the that's most of the plan um and the only thing i couldn't grok here is like why do they bring her back online at this point there's probably no reason to from their perspective 00:56:32.91 Jala ah 00:56:47.70 Jala Right. and 00:56:55.28 Jala Right. Well, so there's two things about that. So Kat asked that exact question. Why did you wake her back up? She didn't need to be woken up. Why did you wake her up again? 00:57:06.83 Jala And then Josh is like, I wanted to say, well, first he's like, oh, well, I felt that she deserved an explanation given all that she did for us. But also I wanted to say goodbye. So some part of him feels attached to her, even if it's an unhealthy attachment. 00:57:20.26 Jala So then Kat replies, saying goodbye to her is like saying goodbye to the sock you jerk off in. So she also is, you know, doesn't think of Iris as a person. 00:57:31.27 Jala She thinks of Iris as a thing, a means to an end. 00:57:33.27 Doug Lief An accessory, to use her word. 00:57:34.54 Jala Yeah, which, yeah, which is exactly the reason why, you know, she felt threatened by Iris and also why, you know, and she is agreeing to use Iris in this plan because, you know, this is a thing. 00:57:48.14 Jala This isn't a person. So ah Josh ends up saying that he's going to go say goodbye, reset Iris, and then the cops will show up and then Iris's part is over. He thinks that when he resets Iris, that will do away with whatever of the programming that he did with the jailbreak. 00:58:04.92 Jala So... um 00:58:06.08 Doug Lief Cover his tracks. 00:58:07.30 Jala Yeah, he's going to cover his tracks that way. So he needs to turn her back on to reset her. But he took a minute to say goodbye first. Meanwhile, though, ah he goes back to the living room and Iris has fallen over in her chair because she fell over and scooted that way to get to the knife. 00:58:23.69 Jala She has broken her herself free and then she throat punches him. He leans over to say, Iris, what are you? And then gets throat punched and falls over. So Iris is walking out cat who is still high on Xanax. 00:58:38.52 Jala hu Cause yes, yeah know he's like, you know, Josh was like, Oh, you know, you actually took them. Of course I took them. she So she's high as a kite. 00:58:46.15 Doug Lief 3's annexed. 00:58:47.46 Jala She is just kind of there. 00:58:47.62 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:58:48.94 Jala And then, so Iris comes up and says, okay, well, you know, he's going to need an ice pack for that. And if this, this, or this take him to an emergency room. And then cats just like, okay. 00:58:59.72 Jala And then Iris walks out the door uh, Eli, meanwhile, is calling the cops as per the plan that he and Josh had worked out. And he's on the phone with the cops and facing away. He's outside on the patio and Patrick is next to him. And Patrick sees Iris running away and tries to flag down Eli. But Eli is like, Daddy's on the phone. I can't hear. 00:59:22.76 Jala and And just like dismisses ah Patrick. And then Iris runs off. And you know like this is ah very funny moment you know at the moment here. But... You know, it'll come back and in a little bit when we get that far. 00:59:36.62 Doug Lief Right, right. there's There's a darkness to that, the way he treats Patrick as well. And we'll we'll see that in a minute. um And this is where, yeah, exactly, Josh explains, he's yeah he's forced to explain to Eli, you know, here's my mod that I created to jailbreak Iris. 00:59:53.14 Doug Lief And Eli is you know appropriately concerned that he did that. 00:59:56.86 Jala Yeah. Right. Well, and then Josh, he asked Josh, well, what did you do? And so Josh said he bumped up Iris's aggression and self-defense functions and turned off the programming that keeps her from doing harm. 01:00:09.57 Jala But she escaped before he could reset her. So that means if empathics comes with, you know, and the cops come and everything comes and then they find her, then they're all screwed because he didn't get a chance to get the jailbreaking stuff off of her. 01:00:23.69 Doug Lief Right. they'll They'll know that he tampered with her and that will you basically allow them to put all the pieces together and they will be convicted of murder. 01:00:24.72 Jala Stump. 01:00:31.80 Doug Lief So, yeah. 01:00:32.11 Jala Yeah, rightfully so. so 01:00:33.70 Doug Lief Correct. Because that's what they did. so 01:00:36.14 Jala Indeed. 01:00:36.55 Doug Lief yeah. 01:00:36.68 Jala Well, then Eli asked why in the hell they killed Sergei. And so we cut to Kat opening up the safe filled with money. The code is Stalin's birthday. And they have like this, this, you know, like imposing Russian sounding like rule kind of chanting thing going on right when she's opening it up. 01:00:53.41 Jala um Anyway, there's over $12 million million dollars in cash in the safe. And so Eli asked, you know, why Pat or M? Why Patrick and Eli? 01:01:04.33 Doug Lief We're going to drag us along for this. 01:01:05.23 Jala you Yeah, why why did you bring us along? 01:01:05.70 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:01:08.35 Jala And so then Josh is like, well, you're here to corroborate our story. ah Well, that was the original plan. But now that you know everything and you you are not just an innocent bystander, um I guess we'll give you a cut. You'll get a third of this. And then Eli's like, excuse me, don't you mean a fourth? 01:01:28.02 Jala What do you mean a fourth? Well, there's you and Kat and me and Patrick. He doesn't count. 01:01:37.36 Doug Lief Right. 01:01:37.50 Jala And then right about that time, Eli turns to um turns to Patrick. I'm so sorry, baby. I can't believe they said that in front of you. Go to sleep. And we find out that Patrick is also a sex bot. 01:01:49.92 Jala So. 01:01:49.96 Doug Lief Right. And I love that he's like, he like uses Josh or trying to sabotage his relationship with Patrick, you know, like, I mean, because their relationship, as far as we can tell, is the pure version of what this is supposed to be to the extent it can be. 01:01:57.07 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:02:04.14 Jala Right. Right. 01:02:05.30 Doug Lief Right. he He's not he wasn't planning on manipulating Patrick for anything other than just having a relationship with him. 01:02:08.87 Jala Right. 01:02:12.82 Jala Indeed. Indeed. So they talk about it and Josh is like, you know, look, I understand you have feelings for him. You could have traded him in a long time ago and you've kept him this whole time. 01:02:24.81 Jala You know. 01:02:25.29 Doug Lief Yeah, they talk about he's like an earlier model. 01:02:27.79 Jala Yeah. 01:02:27.94 Doug Lief I think the Iris is a newer version of this machine. 01:02:28.88 Jala Yeah. Mm hmm. Right. And so he's like, I understand you love him or whatever. Well, he doesn't say love. He's like, he I understand how much he means to you, but he's not getting a cut because he's not a human. 01:02:42.50 Jala So... And then Eli counters and says, Iris did all the work. What did you do with this plan? You know, because Josh is like, you're lucky you're getting a cut at all. You didn't do anything. 01:02:53.34 Jala And then he's like, you didn't do anything either. 01:02:53.43 Doug Lief hmm. 01:02:55.58 Jala Iris did all the work, actually. So Josh is like, oh, I slipped the knife into her pocket. That was so hard. Okay. 01:03:03.86 Doug Lief Was it? Tell her to go to sleep, put it in there and wake her up. 01:03:05.96 Jala So... Right, right. Well, either way, Kat steps in. She's like, look, ah we're going to give you $4 million dollars if you just go out into the woods with Patrick and me and and Josh and look for a robot girl. 01:03:18.73 Jala That's all you need to do. And you get $4 million. dollars Sounds like a good deal to me. 01:03:21.85 Doug Lief Right. 01:03:22.79 Jala And then Eli is like, okay, fine. I want the gun. And so he insists that he takes that gun. And then he walks over to Patrick, says, Patrick, wake up and says, we're going to go robot hunting. 01:03:35.13 Jala And Patrick's like, OK, you know, and then they go off ah together. 01:03:40.39 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:03:41.08 Jala Yeah. Mm 01:03:41.96 Doug Lief And I liked it. So, so Iris is out in the woods and we've, I don't know we noticed this earlier, but she has Patrick's phone. So that's all the control of her functions. So she's able to like, she changes her voice and her eye color. 01:03:55.61 Doug Lief um And specifically, I feel like the eye color is like her taking like ownership of herself of like, you know 01:03:55.76 Jala hmm. 01:04:00.78 Jala Right. 01:04:01.52 Doug Lief I'm making choices for who I want to be. The voice, however, is more more utilitarian. She's trying to figure out, can i make my voice ultimately sound like Josh's so I can give the voice command to the self-driving car to get my ass out of here? 01:04:16.02 Doug Lief um That's what she's trying to do. um so But I also, yeah, as you said, she sets her intelligence to 100%. I think it was at 40. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:04:24.43 Jala Yeah, I was at 40 and she's like, wow, Josh, you know, I can't believe that's that's what you did. 01:04:27.27 Doug Lief yeah 01:04:29.51 Jala So. So, yeah, she's messing with that. And, you know, of course, ah the eye color thing is important because her name is Iris and she's changing the irises of her eyes, you know, just as she is now changing herself and, and you know, self-realizing at this point. 01:04:44.99 Jala So Josh, Kat, Eli and Patrick are splitting up in the woods to look for Iris. Iris, meanwhile, is climbing up on a big rock to look over a cliff at the massive amount of woods that Sergei owns. So there's nothing out there but woods. 01:04:58.33 Jala And she's like, OK, how do I get out of here? And then she she runs through a few scenarios in her head and says none of those are going to work. Then she thinks about the car and then she heads off running towards the car. 01:05:10.51 Doug Lief Right. 01:05:10.73 Jala She ends up ah coming across Eli and Patrick and hiding behind a tree. And then Eli let slip at that point when he's ranting to Patrick about, you know, I can't believe they did all this stuff and everything. He lets slip, oh, you know, I wouldn't program you that way, this, that, blah, blah, blah. And he realizes it. And then he's like, but that's if you were a robot So um in either case, he's fed up with walking around the woods looking for Iris, resolves to return to the cabin. He's like, look, let's go have sex. You can make me an omelet and we'll just call it a day there. They can mess with Iris. I'm not going to mess with this anymore. 01:05:50.30 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:05:50.38 Jala And Patrick stops him and he's like, you'd never do that, right? Alter my programming. Yeah. And then Patrick then says, I know that I'm a robot. I have known for a while now. Actually, I pieced it together over time. 01:06:04.83 Jala So ah they have a sweet moment where Patrick tells Eli how real his memory of their first meeting was. And we see that flashback yet again of of the full thing. 01:06:14.53 Doug Lief Yeah, it's their meeting cut scene, which is he's dressed up in like a Godzilla outfit. and ah yeah you know ah yeah i'm sorry 01:06:24.74 Jala Patrick is is a 01:06:25.28 Doug Lief Patrick steps on his tail. 01:06:26.64 Jala Yeah. 01:06:27.13 Doug Lief Yeah, it's all, again, a very rom-com-y meet-cute thing. And then they're dancing and having a good time. 01:06:32.83 Jala Mm-hmm. And then Eli says, you know, I would never hurt you, right? I would never treat you like Josh treats Iris. And that's fucking insane for me to say out loud, but I love you. Can you feel how much I love you? i do. 01:06:44.16 Jala What does it feel like? It feels like pain. Like the inside of my body is on fire and it's angry and violent and bright. And then they share this, you know, kiss and then it gets deep and passionate. And then like there, there's this like loving moment and Iris kind of bears witness to it from around the the tree and basically is seeing what could have been for her but wasn't because Josh is not that kind of a person. 01:07:08.18 Doug Lief Right. 01:07:08.36 Jala So right about then Josh's phone buzzes and that alerts Eli to her presence. He draws the gun, aims it at her but just barely misses. But when the gun goes off he's like ow that's so loud you know like his his ears hurt from the the ringing of the shot. 01:07:24.84 Doug Lief Finally, a movie actually acts as if a gun is a loud object, right? Like it never happens. Like, i don't know about you, but i've fired a real gun. You know, I've i've done that. 01:07:32.06 Jala Yeah. 01:07:32.75 Doug Lief And like, they're fucking, i mean, you know, you're supposed to wear headphones if you go to a gun range because it's very, very loud. 01:07:33.30 Jala Yeah. 01:07:38.00 Jala Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 01:07:39.36 Doug Lief Like it's, you know. 01:07:41.30 Jala Absolutely. 01:07:41.99 Doug Lief So, yeah, I like that the characters actually acknowledge that. 01:07:44.64 Jala Right. Well, so Patrick and Eli are chasing after Iris and then Eli ends up tackling her and then they roll down this, this slope. And once they get to the bottom, they both look over at the gun and they rush over there to try to grab it And in the struggle, Iris ends up shooting Eli in the chest. 01:08:05.77 Jala And she sees Patrick standing at the top of the ridge, just kind of forlornly standing there, like not knowing what to do. And she apologizes. And just about that time, Kat and Josh run over and then Iris runs away. 01:08:19.27 Jala Iris tries to tell her to go to sleep, but since she turned off the voice commands, it no longer works. And so, know, he runs after her and heads towards the car, just like she is. She's trying to dash to get out of there as soon as possible. 01:08:34.14 Jala And, He ends up getting his hand caught in the door and slammed in the door. ah There's this funny moment where the door is closed and he's like, ow, that hurt. you know And she's trying to tell the car to go ahead and go home, but it won't do it because it has to be Josh's voice. 01:08:51.54 Jala So then she pulls out her phone and pulls out his phone and he's trying you know she's trying to change her voice so that she can activate the car and get out of there. Meanwhile, ah Josh grabs a rock and he's slamming it against the um window of the car trying to get in. 01:09:08.73 Jala So. 01:09:09.34 Doug Lief Yeah, one thing I liked about this is that it's difficult for her to, you because changing her voice, is ah it's a bunch of sliders in a menu. 01:09:16.46 Jala hmm. 01:09:17.39 Doug Lief And it's not like she's, yeah well they'll have a more direct nod to Terminator later. But the T-800 and other Terminators in the franchise, they all do impressions. Like they can perfectly just mimic other people. 01:09:26.66 Jala Yeah. 01:09:28.92 Doug Lief And Iris cannot do that. She has to like, are you know, adjust her voice to make it sound like Josh's. ah which you know takes time and you ups the the stakes of the scene as she's fiddling with that to make it work, which she ultimately succeeds in doing. 01:09:42.74 Jala And she as she drives off, she runs over Josh's foot. So now he's limping. 01:09:47.12 Doug Lief Right. 01:09:47.70 Jala So he's gotten a bit beat up. ah Meanwhile, he limps inside to get a phone and he finds Sergei's. And he remembers that the code for everything for him, you know, for Sergei is Stalin's birthday, but he has no idea what that is. 01:10:00.19 Jala Luckily, however, there's a book on the shelf about Stalin that he pulls out. Now, the Rupert Friend had played um ah a Stalin, one of the people in the Stalin family, ah for another movie. 01:10:12.35 Jala And so that is why the Stalin references are in here and probably why he's like, you know, this this Russian mobster with this ridiculous accent is because he he played a game. This is a reference to an earlier work that Rupert Friend had done. 01:10:24.42 Doug Lief Okay, I did not know that. 01:10:24.89 Jala So, so ah he's trying to figure out what the date is so he can use the phone back in the car and alarm sounds and the car pulls over and stops saying that the owner reported it as stolen. 01:10:26.80 Doug Lief Very cool. 01:10:36.35 Jala And then Josh's phone rings and it's Josh calling Iris. He apologizes to her, says it's not too late. He can blame Patrick for everything. And he says he still loves her and asks if she still loves him. and she says yes. And again, this is one of those, like, if you've ever been in a toxic relationship or known anybody in a toxic relationship, then you you can feel some feels about all of this. Like all of the stuff that goes on with this, ah with Irish and Josh, ah is relatable in in a lot of ways. 01:11:03.94 Jala So Josh is like, well, if you love me, then come back to me. 01:11:04.39 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:11:07.38 Jala i can be a better boyfriend. I can finally treat you with the respect you deserve. No, why not? you are You program me to murder someone, Josh. It's really hard to come back from something like that. You're a great guy, but you and I are not working. We're on two totally different paths. It's not you, it's me. 01:11:24.29 Doug Lief Right. Very like bog standard relationship pattern. 01:11:28.50 Jala Uh-huh. 01:11:29.34 Doug Lief And even when I think when she's when he says, you know, you know, do you still love me? And she says, yes, I assume. Well, I guess it has to be truth. Right. i don' know She's unlocked her ability to lie. 01:11:40.41 Doug Lief I believe that remains locks to her. 01:11:40.95 Jala No. 01:11:42.57 Doug Lief So it is a true statement. 01:11:42.97 Jala That remains locked to her. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, so yeah, that is definitely a thing. And you know, that's part of it. Like part of her does love him because that's all she's known. 01:11:54.73 Jala And that's, that's kind of hard to, to get away from. So even if something that you have known is really bad, if that's the only thing that you have had in the past, that's, you know, that forms a lot of who you are and that comes back later in the movie as well. 01:12:12.42 Doug Lief Totally. 01:12:12.68 Jala Back in the woods, Patrick is holding Eli's body unresponsive, completely unresponsive to anybody coming up and talking to him. and Josh runs up and yells at cat at Patrick and Kat's asking what he's doing. 01:12:25.33 Jala And he keeps on saying, I'm taking care of it. I'm taking care of it. And he uses Eli's face, like who's he's a corpse at this point, pulls out Eli's phone and uses ah Eli's face to unlock it. 01:12:37.66 Jala And, you know, tries to do some some adjustments to Patrick, ends up using Eli's thumb to reset Patrick and then create a new love link with himself. So now Patrick is bonded to Josh so that Josh can use him. 01:12:52.35 Doug Lief Right. yeah i don't know if we talked about it before, but there's a like the like hard reboot button is like behind their like ears. 01:12:58.55 Jala the ear. 01:12:59.45 Doug Lief If you hold your thumb there, you can reset them to like, you know all the way to factory settings, which is what he does to to make this happen. 01:13:04.98 Jala Right. 01:13:07.28 Jala Right. And then he subsequently, um, at some point in there, I think actually the first thing he did is he jailbreaks Patrick first, but then Patrick is still not doing anything. And that's why he has to do the love link. So, 01:13:18.03 Doug Lief Right. what He won't respond in the way that Iris does. So now he's made Patrick into his own personal Terminator. 01:13:24.18 Jala Right, exactly. And he's named Patrick after the guy who played ah the T-1000 player. 01:13:29.90 Doug Lief Oh, Robert Patrick. Yeah. 01:13:31.26 Jala Uh-huh. So that's why his name is Patrick, by the way. And that's why he's got those references to that, why he's very much like that character. So ah the flashback of the first time Eli and Patrick met replays, but this time it's Patrick and Josh. 01:13:44.93 Jala And back at the car, Iris is kicking the damage window, trying to get out. She manages to break it just as a patrol car comes over. Thinking fast, Iris changes her language to German because she cannot lie and she doesn't want to tell the truth to this officer. 01:13:59.55 Doug Lief This was very clever. i thought that was a great idea of like, oh, how can I get around this problem where I can't lie? 01:14:01.07 Jala That was very good. 01:14:05.28 Doug Lief um And I'll just be confusing. 01:14:05.39 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:14:07.65 Doug Lief That's what I'll do. They won't know. 01:14:10.16 Jala Yep, yep. So Officer Hendricks doesn't happen to know German, so he sorts out that she came from Sergei's place and begins to figure out that something is wrong. I don't know, maybe the broken window, the blood, all this other stuff, you know, how disheveled she looks generally might be a clue. 01:14:23.87 Doug Lief Right. 01:14:24.67 Jala But then he looks into the car and sees the the bloody knife and he draws his gun and, you know, handcuffs her. Meanwhile, behind him, we see Patrick just walking up the, the you know, street coming towards them. 01:14:40.13 Jala And right about that time. 01:14:41.03 Doug Lief Speaking of Terminators and the police. 01:14:43.12 Jala Yeah, yeah. Well, and then Patrick walks up and when he finally gets there, because he's not running, he just walks up. And when he gets there, ah Hendrix is like, hey, what are you? And then Patrick just punches him until he dies. 01:14:56.20 Jala He just punches him to death. 01:14:57.73 Doug Lief I mean, brutally in the face. Yeah, like he has no face left by the time Patrick is done. 01:14:59.52 Jala Yes. Yeah, right, right. 01:15:02.04 Doug Lief Yeah. Awful. 01:15:04.98 Jala So, and then of course Patrick takes Iris and then goes back to the cabin. So back at the cabin, Kat takes more meds as Josh is bandaging his hands and officer Hendrix's patrol car drives up and then Patrick takes Iris inside. Hendrix's corpse is in the trunk. The body count is going up. I don't know about you, but I was like, oh man, there's more bodies. 01:15:26.26 Jala You know, that we've already got Eli. Now there's another one. There's an officer Hendrix. 01:15:28.62 Doug Lief and Sergei 01:15:30.02 Jala Mm-hmm. And it's the body counts going up and you can just see it on Kat and Josh's faces. They're like, oh shit, you know, now what, you know? 01:15:37.94 Doug Lief it's getting harder and harder to weasel out of this yeah 01:15:40.12 Jala Right. Right. As the news kind of tightens around them, you know, and the consequences of their actions start to come to play. So Kat packs up her half of the money in a suitcase. She's like, I'm i'm done with this. I'm out. There's too too much there's too much heat. I got to go. 01:15:54.99 Jala And it's revealed while she and Josh fight that Sergei is not a Russian mobster, actually. ah He was a sod farmer. He was involved in dirty business and his hands are unclean. 01:16:06.84 Doug Lief Right. 01:16:07.83 Jala So ah it was Josh assuming that he was a mobster and Kat just not bothering to tell him, no, that's wrong. He's actually a sod farmer. 01:16:18.23 Jala So. 01:16:19.21 Doug Lief Right. Which, I mean, it's unclear from the morality on these two of like whether that would have been a barrier to, you know, like maybe maybe it's easier for Josh to justify and say, well, he's you know he does. 01:16:25.52 Jala Yeah. 01:16:30.99 Doug Lief He's got it coming anyway because he's a mobster. 01:16:33.84 Jala Right. 01:16:33.92 Doug Lief um You think he would have asked more questions, but it's it's fine. I don't need this for the movie to be filled out. 01:16:38.68 Jala Well, here's the thing. Josh also didn't ask a lot of questions about Iris's paperwork, which comes in later as like the major big flag that you didn't. 01:16:48.48 Doug Lief Oh, I love that. Yeah, the click the the click wrapping, the the user agreement that nobody reads. 01:16:51.68 Jala Yeah. 01:16:53.71 Doug Lief Yeah, we got there. 01:16:54.24 Jala huh who So, but back in this point, Josh rants about how every woman in his life is like this. They use him and then abandon him because of whatever. And then he says, Kat isn't going to leave. And she responds that I'm not your fucking robot, Josh. You can't control me. So he tells Patrick to stop Kat. But because his aggression, Patrick's aggression has been turned all the way up how that happens is he takes the chef knife and stabs her and so she just kind of wanders over to the couch and sits down next to iris who's blanked out because she's been reset and or she's asleep one or the other okay 01:17:32.60 Doug Lief She's asleep, I think, for this. Yeah. 01:17:34.69 Jala So, so then she's sitting there and then, you know, cats there and then we don't see cat die, but later on we are told that she has died. She has sat back on that couch right where she was with Iris again and is dead. 01:17:49.83 Jala So. 01:17:50.84 Doug Lief Yep. ah So, yeah, he is when Josh wakes Iris back up, he's put her back in, you know, fresh clothes, washed off the blood. She looks normal again. Yeah. 01:18:00.38 Jala hmm. Yeah. And Patrick is in the kitchen making some fancy food, probably with the same knife that he just killed cat with. So cool. Yeah. 01:18:09.05 Doug Lief Yeah, his aggression has turned up, but his his cleanliness and you know those things are still back where they were. he didn't adjust those levels. 01:18:17.90 Jala Right, right. So now we see Josh sitting at a fancy dinner, which is served to him by Patrick. And it's a candlelight dinner at a table and Iris is in fresh clothes sitting across from him, all cleaned up, but chained to the chair. 01:18:36.10 Jala So he wakes her up and then at this point, oh, he's like, oh, oh, oh, wait, you're still on German and switches her voice back to English. 01:18:45.34 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:18:45.72 Jala And um so Patrick comes over and asks if Josh is enjoying his meal and says, I'm just happy you're happy because, of course, that's what these robots are made for. Irish or Iris hap asks what happened to Patrick and Josh waves it off. It's a long story. 01:19:03.40 Jala He drinks some wine says he really didn't think Iris had it in her to pull some of the things that she did. And she says, I just wanted to live. And he says, you wanted to live. Do you think that your life is worth more than Eli's or cats? 01:19:17.96 Jala And then Iris is like, You know, i you i didn't have anything to do with Kat dying and Eli was coming after me. You know? 01:19:27.63 Doug Lief Yeah. All of her violence in the movie is justifiable self-defense. 01:19:32.31 Jala Right, right. 01:19:33.16 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:19:34.16 Jala So then irish Iris is telling Josh, you know, everything that he's done. And he yells and slams his hand on the table and says, you don't get to sit there and judge me. 01:19:45.88 Jala So he says this world is a big game and it's rigged against people like him. He's a good guy. And all he has to show for it is a cramped apartment in a rented robot girlfriend. That's right, Iris. I don't even own you outright. 01:19:59.82 Jala So he says, you know everything about me. You know, I deserve so much more than this. The world, you know, basically the world owes me. 01:20:08.69 Doug Lief Yeah, again, incel in big flashing neon letters, right? 01:20:09.07 Jala And 01:20:12.09 Jala Right, right. So Iris says that she doesn't know or she does know everything about him. His hobbies include trivia, video games and prattling on endlessly about what the universe owes you. 01:20:23.16 Jala He always needs to be in control. ah She also throws in there and I do not like that they did this. ah He has a below average penis size. I'll sit on this in a minute. ah He also thinks a few million dollars will disguise the fact that he is a sad, bitter, weak human being. 01:20:37.91 Jala Now, the reason I don't like that one line in there, first off, that's a physical trait. The problem with Josh is all up here. You know, it's it's not his body. 01:20:44.53 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:20:46.22 Jala It's up here in his mind and his his emotions and all of that mess that's messed up. But also, ah this is basically she's attacking his manhood. And that's the exact thing that incels say that women are doing all the time anyway. So she's just like doing the thing that the incels say that she's doing. 01:21:04.97 Jala that's That's not a good look for this movie. It would have been better without that line. 01:21:08.52 Doug Lief Yeah, just I see the point you're making. 01:21:08.97 Jala So. 01:21:11.15 Doug Lief I'll just to make the counter argument, which is just one, she can't lie. 01:21:11.43 Jala Yeah. 01:21:14.73 Doug Lief ah um And which is makes it kind of funny. 01:21:14.92 Jala Yeah. 01:21:17.28 Jala True. 01:21:17.75 Doug Lief And two, she is, you know, the she's not saying it. ah She's saying it to get under her skin, but she's saying it at the point where she's again, this is fight or flight for her. 01:21:24.18 Jala hmm. 01:21:28.15 Jala Right. 01:21:28.44 Doug Lief And so she is trying to, you know, throw him off, get him angry, make you cloud, get his judgment, not ah at 100 percent. 01:21:36.80 Jala Right. 01:21:37.05 Doug Lief So, you know, I think there's a purpose to why she says it. I see what you mean, though. I think they could have left it out. It would have been fine. um But I, you know, maybe it could have been a different dig at him because she says some other things. 01:21:43.17 Jala ah 01:21:46.72 Jala Right. 01:21:47.61 Doug Lief That's it's in a line of many digs at him of like, I know lots about you. 01:21:51.19 Jala Right. 01:21:52.22 Doug Lief You're a piece of shit. 01:21:53.56 Jala Right. 01:21:53.53 Doug Lief You know, how so. 01:21:54.20 Jala Well, and yeah, that's, that's kind of the point. Like she could have picked something else to be a barb that's related maybe to his performance, but like not, not like, you know, jabbing at his, his physicality or anything, but whatever. Anyway, ah that's just, that's personal preference there. 01:22:10.96 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:22:11.25 Jala So he says, oh, you're so fucking clever, aren't you? It's just programming. And then he turns her intelligence down to zero because he's, he's lost any patience and doesn't want to hear any of this. 01:22:23.77 Jala So ah he says earlier that she talked about knowing what pain feels like. So why don't we test that? And he commands her to raise her hand and places it over the flame of the candle as it burns her. 01:22:35.33 Jala And then he gets a call from Empathics and he goes to talk to the Empathics people. And they're about half an hour away. Meanwhile, ah Iris is crying and, you know, she's watching her hand burn and like her arm catches fire. 01:22:50.31 Jala And Patrick comes over to turn, you know, douse out the fire and all of that. 01:22:55.95 Doug Lief Yeah. ah but you have your He hands her the gun. Isn't that right? 01:23:00.43 Jala Yes. 01:23:00.98 Doug Lief Okay. Yeah. Which is interesting that he comes to the defense of his fellow robot there. 01:23:06.96 Jala Well, then Josh tells Iris to point the gun at her head. And because she's an automaton and she doesn't have her independent will as an automaton with her intelligence set to zero, she points it at her head at her temple. 01:23:20.00 Jala And he says, pull the trigger. She hesitates. But then she says, no, but she still can't stop herself from following the order. And then, you know, ah shoots herself. 01:23:32.35 Doug Lief Yeah, it's interesting because he has her, he could have ordered Patrick to shoot her, ah but he doesn't. 01:23:36.09 Jala Right. 01:23:36.95 Doug Lief He has her do it to herself just out of spite, which suggests he has some ability to recognize that, you know because normally he's so tone deaf to her feelings, but this idea of like, well, she can, she can feel how spiteful this is, right? 01:23:53.09 Doug Lief This will, you know, she's has enough feelings or self-awareness that this will um leave a mark on her. 01:23:59.97 Jala Right. 01:24:00.03 Doug Lief to have her do it herself. um 01:24:01.54 Jala Right. 01:24:02.48 Doug Lief Yeah. like But it's a great shot. like you know Not too many digital effects in this movie, but this is a very well-known shot. You kind of watch, not quite slow-mo, but you kind of watch the bullet go through behind her eyes out the other side of her head. It's ah it's a cool moment. 01:24:16.42 Jala Right. And there's like some pieces of metal, undefined pieces of metal, and then like some blue stuff that some kind of fluid, you know, coming out there. 01:24:24.66 Doug Lief Yeah, but her face is unharmed, right? 01:24:26.68 Jala hmm. 01:24:26.86 Doug Lief It's just the side of her head. 01:24:28.33 Jala Right, right. 01:24:29.35 Doug Lief Yep. 01:24:29.82 Jala So Empathics then shows up and while they're preparing their equipment to come in in the middle of this storm that's rolled in we hear Josh's voice telling the Empathics people about he and Kat always had sexual charge and Iris became irrational and jealous. 01:24:45.06 Jala And so he was handcuffed at the dinner table. There was a fancy dinner. And then Iris is waving the gun around rambling about fate and destiny. And thank God, deputy Hendricks was there. 01:24:56.49 Jala And then it pans over as the empathic sky looks at deputy Hendricks, who is Patrick wearing the man's uniform. 01:25:03.37 Doug Lief Yep. Again, Terminator. um 01:25:05.52 Jala Mm hmm. Mm 01:25:06.37 Doug Lief Yeah, i this is so great. What I love is like as the Empathics guy starts talking to him, you start to see that, uh-oh, I didn't think through everything. like All of that on Josh's face is like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. 01:25:16.54 Jala hmm. 01:25:18.70 Doug Lief you know that That just is such a great feeling. 01:25:19.58 Jala Right. 01:25:21.41 Doug Lief And like you know that like Iris probably knew on some level, even if their intelligence set to zero. Yeah. There's some, you know, I've got the I've got the upper hand and actually ah Josh doesn't know it. 01:25:34.13 Jala Right. Well, then part of it, too, it starts off right with the the Deputy Hendrix thing, because the Empathics guy turns to him and so asks Patrick, oh, and then that's the point when you shot her. 01:25:46.79 Jala And he says, no, Iris shot herself. And then that, you know, that that raises a flag to the Empathics guy, who's like, ah she did what? You know, 01:25:56.45 Doug Lief Right, because again, ah Patrick also cannot lie. 01:25:57.09 Jala Mm hmm. 01:26:00.22 Doug Lief And Josh just lied about what Patrick did. 01:26:00.29 Jala Mm hmm. 01:26:02.42 Doug Lief So already, you know, oops, you know, one one red flag or problem in there their bullshit story. And then ja ah Iris presumably shouldn't be able to do harm to herself either. 01:26:13.08 Jala Right. Well, and so Josh at one point even says, does that make sense? And then the empathics guy just kind of waves his hand and he's like, look, we're not here to crack the case. If the police are happy, we're happy. We are lab rats. We just pick up the broken robot and go home. 01:26:28.15 Jala That's all that we do. 01:26:29.15 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:26:29.60 Jala So ah meanwhile, when they're wheeling her out to the car, ah the younger of the two techs asked the older one, so what do you think about all of this situation? And the older tech is like, oh yeah, he jailbreak her for sure. 01:26:44.03 Jala He's fucked. 01:26:44.82 Doug Lief well we Well, we skipped over one thing, ah right? 01:26:44.99 Jala Oh. Mm-hmm. 01:26:48.43 Doug Lief Which is a couple of things. One is that I think the, um he says, one, Patrick looks familiar to the empathic guy, which is important. 01:26:55.02 Jala Yes, yes. Mm-hmm. 01:26:57.00 Doug Lief They won't go into why just this second. And the other thing he is he says like, well, you know, it's a good thing these robots record everything they see and hear and that she didn't damage the recorder because her brains aren't in her head. 01:27:08.23 Jala Yeah. 01:27:08.19 Doug Lief it says yeah know it just looks like a head. Her brains are actually in her abdomen, which is great. 01:27:13.06 Jala Yeah. And that part's totally undamaged. So all the footage should be good. Didn't you read your user agreement? 01:27:18.05 Doug Lief who 01:27:18.87 Jala It was in there. it it it records everything and we go through and scrub all that the video afterwards. 01:27:20.45 Doug Lief Yep. 01:27:25.99 Jala So he's fucked. 01:27:27.16 Doug Lief Right. 01:27:27.99 Jala Fucked. 01:27:28.03 Doug Lief that That's when they get in the car and they're like, oh, that dude's so fucked. 01:27:28.49 Jala Right. 01:27:30.71 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:27:31.18 Jala Right. 01:27:31.65 Doug Lief Yeah. I've seen it a million times. He jailbroker and yeah. 01:27:35.06 Jala Right. So then ah Teddy, which is the younger of the two ah lab techs, says that he doesn't understand why someone would make up a story like that. And his co-worker says it's the same reason these assholes use them for target practice or chain them up in their basement and torture them. The world's a fucked up place, Teddy. You'll get used to it. 01:27:52.66 Doug Lief Right. 01:27:52.78 Jala And as they pull out, Patrick is standing there in the rain in the roadway. 01:27:52.78 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:27:56.84 Jala And the older tech suddenly realizes Patrick is an older model in Pathx Robot that they had discontinued some time ago. And that's why he didn't recognize Patrick right at first. 01:28:07.29 Jala And then he gets shot, promptly gets shot and killed. So Teddy runs, he gets out of the car and runs and he heads off into the woods. He ends up tripping on the massive pile of dead bodies. That is, is, uh, all of the people who have died so far in the movie have been put into one big pile somewhere. 01:28:24.15 Jala And, uh, so at that point, meanwhile, like we see Iris in the the fan or in the van and she is rebooting. 01:28:24.31 Doug Lief Right. 01:28:32.77 Jala um And Patrick comes up and catches up to Teddy and instead of shooting Teddy, picks him up and is choking him out against a tree. So Iris wakes up because she's done rebooting. 01:28:44.70 Jala And right at that point, she walks up with a taser and she's trying to shock Patrick, but isn't able to come too close. So Patrick tells her, oh yeah, you were reset. So you can't do any harm to me. 01:28:58.51 Jala So 01:28:59.69 Doug Lief Yeah, and I like the way she she decides, I'm going to use sort not quite a logic bomb, but I'm going appeal to you know his programming to get him to stop, which is she tells him, actually, you were in love with Eli and Josh you know manipulated you. 01:29:06.87 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:29:13.85 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:29:13.84 Doug Lief And I love that. Like, you know, and and he says the line about, yeah oh, love feels like pain. It feels like burning or whatever, you know, all that stuff. 01:29:19.07 Jala Mm-hmm. Yeah. 01:29:20.81 Doug Lief And he starts replaying the flashback in his mind of the meet cute cut scene. 01:29:26.71 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:29:27.18 Doug Lief And it's like changing back and forth between Eli and the cut scene and and pat Josh. 01:29:32.73 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:29:33.86 Doug Lief So. 01:29:34.14 Jala Right. So then there's that moment again, replayed in the woods, like several different moments with Eli, some of the sweet moments, including that last time that they had together in the woods. 01:29:44.66 Jala And that moment when Eli says, do you feel how much I love you? And Patrick says, I do. Well, he says again here, i do. i feel it. 01:29:55.08 Jala I do, a Eli. I feel it. And he takes the taser and puts it in his mouth and kills himself. And he just is gone. So. 01:30:03.32 Doug Lief Yeah, I'm not sure how this all happens in the logic of the movie, because in theory he's been rebooted and he shouldn't remember the interaction with Eli. 01:30:07.98 Jala ru 01:30:10.38 Doug Lief It's not just clear why he would be able to harm himself. um You know, I think. 01:30:14.71 Jala Well, he was jail-broken, so... 01:30:16.08 Doug Lief Yeah, that's true. It's not clear. It could be one of these like it's a little bit of like a a logic bomb. Like, I can't be in love with two people at once. So the way the only way to resolve it is to kill myself. 01:30:26.96 Doug Lief You know, things like that. 01:30:27.21 Jala It might be, it might be, but also I think what the movie is really doing here with Patrick and with Iris at this point is just trying to say, no, they are a type of, of living sentient creature, like a human, not a human, but you know, close to a human and should be respected as such and should be treated as such. So even if he's reset, there's still residual memories there. There's something about that, 01:30:51.50 Jala that is transcendent, that is still there. And that's what Iris is appealing to is the part of Patrick that is Patrick, you know, and bringing that out. And I think that's what they're doing there. 01:31:02.96 Jala But yeah, like if you look at it just strictly from a programming and AI stuff kind of, ah you know, like mode. And then of course you're like, I i don't know exactly what's going on there. um But I think that's what they're doing. I think they're doing the hand way beyond the tech at this point, just trying to to kind of circle back to this whole idea of no, they're people. 01:31:21.88 Doug Lief Yeah, and to and to some degree, their love is real. 01:31:22.08 Jala So 01:31:24.72 Jala Right. 01:31:25.35 Doug Lief yeah 01:31:25.44 Jala Right. So Teddy, yeah. Thanks Iris for saving him. And then Iris asked Teddy for help in return. And then we cut to Josh filling the suitcase with money. He asks Patrick because he hears the door. He asked Patrick, Hey, is it done? 01:31:39.65 Jala And here's a call back. So he says that they are going to destroy Iris's hard drive and then get out of there. And in the living room, it's dark. And the song that played during the earlier dance party is blaring again. 01:31:51.82 Jala When he goes to turn off the player, he hears voices in the dark. It's Iris, Sergei, Kat. You hear Joshy boy, don't be so dramatic, Josh. And all this other stuff like out of the darkness and this kind of, you know, like creepy, creepy horror moment again, showing back up again. 01:32:07.65 Jala And he says, why won't you just die, Iris? And so then he she speaks like him and says, just remember to smile and act happy, you know. 01:32:18.59 Jala ah So she's able to do the voice trick that the Terminators do. She can do it at this point. 01:32:22.29 Doug Lief Right. Yeah. yeah 01:32:24.15 Jala But she also says she made a new friend today when she shows up. Teddy from Empathics who gave her total self-control. Turns out there are people in this world who think of us as more than just fuckbots. 01:32:35.02 Jala So ah Josh checks on his phone, but he can't connect to Iris to change her settings. Iris fires a warning shot because she has the gun that Patrick had. She says she feels terrible about it. 01:32:46.92 Jala It's my very first lie. Kind of fun. I can see the appeal. 01:32:50.23 Doug Lief hu Yeah, the the absolute kryptonite to a guy like Josh, which is a and a woman with total control of herself. 01:32:58.19 Jala Right. Right. 01:32:59.01 Doug Lief Yep. 01:33:01.07 Jala So Josh asks why she came back. She says that she needed to tell him to, to his face that the days of him controlling her are over. ah She controls her own actions from now on. You are nothing to me. 01:33:13.41 Jala And that triggers a lot. 01:33:16.13 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:33:16.82 Jala Do you want to talk about this scene? 01:33:19.55 Doug Lief Yeah, I mean, so this is the climactic scene, right, where they're going to have their final battle. 01:33:25.85 Jala Yeah. 01:33:26.45 Doug Lief And I really like how this is handled because, again, like we're we want Iris to be acting in self-defense. And so they get into a fight. But by the time he's like, you know, trying to, know. 01:33:40.22 Doug Lief choke her out and stuff like he he grabs her by the hair and drags her. Right. It's real. 01:33:44.35 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:33:44.89 Doug Lief It'll knock down, drag out fight kind of stuff. um And he says that that line you've got. written yeah I don't need a phone to control you. I'm part of you. 01:33:56.02 Doug Lief You know, like he's still thinking that like the the programming that says, you know, she's supposed to love him will be unbeatable or that maybe he just he she he just so great, you know, in his own mind. 01:34:08.93 Doug Lief um 01:34:09.36 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:34:09.62 Doug Lief But again, she's been given total freedom by Teddy here. So, by the way, is he named for Teddy Ruxpin? 01:34:14.38 Jala Right. Well, 01:34:15.80 Doug Lief Just curious. 01:34:17.82 Jala I don't know, but that would be pretty great if so. 01:34:20.25 Doug Lief Yep. 01:34:20.85 Jala But some yeah, i here in this moment too, ah where where Josh is exerting this deep hubris that he has really to me feels like And it's him trying to exert that last bit of control and in like not wanting to let that slip at all to the point that he, you know, as he's dragging her across tables and throwing her into walls and stuff like that, he's like, you think I'm nothing to you? I'm everything to you. 01:34:50.86 Jala Say it. I don't care if it's a lie. I want you to say it. You know, he just wants to hear it And um the way that Jack Quaid talked about this character is that this character of Josh thinks that he's a hero in his own story. He thinks he's the hero, but he's really the villain. 01:35:06.80 Jala And he is basically um a character who... was never told that anybody loved him. And that's, that's his big problem. He's a, he's a ah villain because nobody said that they loved him his whole life. He's never heard those words. 01:35:21.62 Jala So, uh, that's where he, he stems from. And that's how Jack Quaid was trying to act him out. So, right. 01:35:28.17 Doug Lief Well, that comes through in the performance, you know, very much so. He's definitely got this, like, huge inferiority complex that's, you know, right on front street, especially as it gets worse. 01:35:35.73 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:35:39.09 Doug Lief And he's more, again, more demanding here. Like, he he mounts her, you right? He's got her on the pin on the floor and, like, again, a echoes of the sexual stuff they showed earlier. 01:35:42.90 Jala Yeah. 01:35:47.51 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:35:48.23 Jala yeah And he's, he's slamming her head on the ground and the whole nine. 01:35:52.98 Doug Lief And then Chekhov's corkscrew finally comes into play, which the first time I saw that, I was like, well, somebody's getting killed with it. 01:35:56.86 Jala Yep. 01:35:59.38 Doug Lief I don't know who or when or where, but that is very conspicuous, this electric wine bottle opener. 01:36:00.00 Jala Yep. 01:36:05.60 Jala Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:36:06.21 Doug Lief But they it's gross. They do a good job of like, oh, like it's not just a quick bang and it's over. like So she tells him, go to sleep. 01:36:12.44 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:36:13.83 Doug Lief Right. the 01:36:14.30 Jala Yep. 01:36:14.80 Doug Lief The command he always used to control her and put puts this thing to his temple and it just bores a hole into his skull, which amazing that the wine bottle opener is this little battery operated thing is strong enough to bore through a human skull. 01:36:26.64 Jala Uh huh. Right. Right. 01:36:28.30 Doug Lief But we'll forgive that because it's cool. 01:36:28.86 Jala Uh huh. but Right, right. I know. And that's the thing too, is like, you know, there's that, there's also the fact that like, you know how many lawsuits they'd have if this thing was a real thing, if if it was able to do that and just bore through people's skin, you know, and bones and everything like that, but it's there for the, the, the whole like horror of it all. Right. 01:36:49.32 Doug Lief Right. 01:36:49.45 Jala You know, that's what it's there for. 01:36:51.21 Doug Lief Yeah, so she uncorks him in the same spot where she shot herself, by the way, like on the temple. 01:36:53.12 Jala Yep. 01:36:56.44 Doug Lief And yeah, he bleeds out. 01:36:56.90 Jala Yep. 01:36:58.57 Doug Lief and 01:36:59.02 Jala Yep. 01:37:00.08 Doug Lief Good and gross. 01:37:01.22 Jala Yeah, and then you get Iris's monologue from the very beginning about you know walking through in this kind of dark way until suddenly the light hits and it's basically these revelatory moments and and whatever. Everybody's kind of going through life unconscious, underwater, until these bright, shining moments. 01:37:19.33 Jala And then you know she recaps and she's like, yeah, the the I just had one of those when I killed Josh, you know reminding you of that that line that she gave you in the beginning. 01:37:29.38 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:37:29.44 Jala She's showering. ah She's, you know, very pretty and everything. But, you know, you see her damaged hand. She peels off all of the the skin and everything, showing that it's a Terminator hand. It's just like the a little, um you know, robot hand thing going on. 01:37:44.12 Jala And this is the puppet that I was mentioning earlier in the film when I was like, the other practical effect is a thing. And there was a green screen and this, that, and the other. This is what I'm talking about, the the robot hand at the end. 01:37:53.86 Doug Lief Yeah, it looks great. and you know, again, the most explicit Terminator reference in the movie by a mile. 01:37:58.88 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:37:59.77 Doug Lief But it's the very end of the movie. 01:38:00.31 Jala Yep. 01:38:01.25 Doug Lief And it's like, you know, I like that as a you know a nod. It didn't bother me at all. And it looked as again, as an effect, it looks great. 01:38:07.38 Jala Right. Right, absolutely. So Iris goes into the wardrobe, picks out some new clothes for herself, notably not the Stepford Wives style that she was in from before. 01:38:18.96 Jala And she ends up taking Sergei's red Mustang, throwing Josh's phone over her shoulder as she leaves and she heads off down the highway. And in this last little scene, the song a emotion plays as she's driving and the credits are starting to roll. She sees she passes another car and she looks over and there's some businessman guy, some guy in a suit, you you know, ranting about something. And, um you know, like he looks like he's older and doesn't look like he's a good match for the girl that's in the car, who, as she turns, looks like Iris, but blonde and with, you know, different eye color. 01:38:51.09 Jala And so Iris smiles and waves ah her robot hand at this other version of herself, like another of the same robot, you know, the same make model robot, and then drives off down the road to whatever end she has in store for her. 01:39:07.51 Doug Lief Or humanity. 01:39:07.60 Jala So yeah, or for humanity. 01:39:10.20 Doug Lief Right. 01:39:10.50 Jala So yeah. So yeah, I feel that the passenger in the car, uh, that Iris passes, it could have been a human that was in this situation and that would have tied it back into it's another human. Like this is a situation that humans find themselves in too, you know, like this, this whole toxic relationship thing. I think that would have worked really well. 01:39:29.64 Jala Um, and Just in my opinion, I think it would have worked well that way too. It didn't necessarily have to be, or it could be like a different pretty robot that you could tell was a robot because of the mismatch and because of how pretty and perfect they look, you know? 01:39:42.44 Doug Lief Yeah, I didn't read it as a a robot, maybe because it was just zooming by too fast or whatever. I just read it as like, yeah, girl, we're all in this together, human and robot women. 01:39:51.65 Jala Yeah. See, and like that, that's what I mean, but it is actually Sophie Thatcher's face as the other face. It's it's another robot. 01:39:57.08 Doug Lief Oh, interesting. OK, I didn't quite catch that. 01:39:59.24 Jala Yeah. 01:39:59.96 Doug Lief Yeah, well, ah maybe just the hair was distracting or whatever, and i didn't notice. 01:40:03.68 Jala and Yep. So, so yeah. And, uh, that's the wrap of the, of this movie. So, um, it's, it's a interesting ride. It's to me, it's really well paced. Um, you know, like it's got action, it's got slower parts, but like, it doesn't ever feel like it's, it's slogging at any point. It's, it's at a good pace throughout, in my opinion. 01:40:24.75 Doug Lief Yeah, it's like 90 minutes or something. 01:40:25.16 Jala So yeah. 01:40:26.23 Doug Lief it's ah It moves it a good clip. 01:40:28.14 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So as for the different themes in this movie, so we've already talked about a little bit like the internal journey one undergoes when getting out of unhealthy relationships. 01:40:38.86 Jala So like just the breakdown of that where you see her affection, where she's overlooking Josh's actions and just kind of like missing the red flags completely, you know. 01:40:47.66 Doug Lief Right. 01:40:48.50 Jala And then the wake-up call or the inciting incident where she realizes, oh shit, this is the situation I'm in. then you know Then her realizing over time in stages how deep the control goes and you know how flimsy that facade was that was holding everything together. 01:41:06.84 Jala The logical work through when she's trying to find a means of escaping danger against all odds and against her own instilled desire to remain there. ah Trauma for humans, 01:41:17.60 Jala changes the brain. And that's why people in domestic violence situations stay in those domestic violence situations. It changes the brain. Uh, we talked about this in the trauma response episode of the show. I'll put that in the show notes for folks who are interested. 01:41:33.57 Jala Uh, also the event is horrible, um, but necessary when she's confronting Josh and telling him, no, I denounce all of this and I am taking control of myself. And like, she has to have that resolution point in order to truly let go and move forward. 01:41:52.00 Jala So, you know, she could have escaped on her own and not just left Josh there, but she couldn't, she had to come back, you know, for this final moment. 01:42:00.04 Doug Lief Yeah, they they play with that a lot, which is, you know, she's programmed, right? 01:42:01.54 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:42:04.12 Doug Lief She has to love him. 01:42:04.25 Jala yeah 01:42:06.22 Doug Lief She has to, you know, keep trying to make him happy. um All of these things that she can't overcome until literally, you know, essentially as a deus ex machina, Teddy comes in and says, I'm cutting you loose. 01:42:17.30 Doug Lief You're you're free from all of these cyclical um things that hold you down. 01:42:18.01 Jala yeah 01:42:23.88 Jala Right. Right. And then, uh, of course at the very end, she totally reinvents herself and, um, you know, she moves forward and it's notably very different from how she was before. So, uh, yeah, she's self-actualizing. 01:42:35.02 Doug Lief Yeah, she self-actualizes, that to use therapy words. 01:42:38.57 Jala Yeah. And then she's like, you know, um, learning more about herself as she's going, she's trying to figure out what she wants. You know, when she's in that closet and she's looking around, she's trying to figure out what she wants now that she doesn't have to dress for him. 01:42:49.96 Jala you know, what does she want to to wear? What does she want to look like? How does she want to present herself to the world? So, yeah. 01:42:55.38 Doug Lief Right. 01:42:57.06 Jala other Other themes, patriarchal a patriarchal control, not just of women, but also of other men, because you have Patrick. And I like the fact that they have Patrick in there as another one of the robots, because you you know if it was all just female robots, then it would just be like retreading the same ground and not really expanding on the point that was made in Marby. 01:43:17.87 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:43:17.93 Jala I like that they added that in there and it's like, no, this is this is affecting more than just women. Yes, primarily women, but also everyone So, 01:43:28.07 Doug Lief Yeah, and it's expanded to AIs. I mean, look, this is a ah subject that's been basically at the heart of every AI movie, which is, you know, are they sentient beings worthy of, treated with respect and dignity, or are they just things? 01:43:30.24 Jala yeah. 01:43:36.59 Jala Right. 01:43:43.22 Doug Lief You know, you don't have to go farther back, you know, go to back to 2001, you know, a Space Odyssey. 01:43:43.64 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:43:46.88 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:43:48.19 Doug Lief And, you know, that that concept is at the heart of every AI movie. 01:43:48.28 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:43:51.23 Doug Lief So I'm glad, yeah, again, by having a a male robot as well. um and And a robot that, by the way, they show is like because of his programming can be in theory gay or straight, right? 01:44:02.81 Doug Lief Like you just, it's just a person, whoever you put in front of this robot, it does it doesn't care what it wants or needs. 01:44:03.30 Jala Right. 01:44:06.46 Jala Right. 01:44:09.21 Doug Lief It's just there for you. 01:44:09.72 Jala ah right 01:44:10.98 Doug Lief um i like that they explore those themes a little deeper. And I, you know, it's a little bit at the expense of the ambiguity of like, well, wait a minute, from the human's perspective, you know, this potentially dangerous thing is, you know, thinks it's human and is now killing us. 01:44:26.87 Doug Lief um You could have made a movie where, again, you could see it a little more from both the human and the robot perspective. Like the robot wants to be free. The humans are like, oh, it's, you know, the matrix. 01:44:37.72 Doug Lief We've gone too far. you know, we've created something we shouldn't have. 01:44:38.99 Jala Right. 01:44:40.53 Doug Lief um I think this movie is not interested in in that kind of a story. And that's okay. Like, because it's, again, you don't, too many themes would bog this down. That's not what they're looking at. um This is about you know exploitation and it goes in only one direction. 01:44:56.17 Jala Right. Right. And, you know, again, this movie is ultimately like Lucas Gage said that I quoted right at the beginning. This movie is really about like everybody's loneliness and, you know, everyone's search to find connection. 01:45:10.37 Jala And, you know, that that the connection is what's missing for a lot of these people. And that's why they have these robots. And that's why a lot of things are failing because they lack that connection. And Eli and Patrick, despite all odds, made that connection. 01:45:25.30 Jala um You know, even though... you know, Patrick's a robot and all of that. But like, that's what the centers around this. And like Teddy already feels a way and then makes a connection with Iris. And that's what leads to Iris having her, her self-realization is somebody else's compassion and having that connection to someone else. 01:45:45.08 Jala So, you know, um, a lot of the characters are using each other throughout this entire movie. So it's like everybody's, um, kind of dissociation at work, you know? 01:45:56.03 Jala So, 01:45:56.10 Doug Lief Yeah, and it's Teddy who ultimately lets her loose, you know, and ah who's they they explain he's the young new intern. He's not jaded, right? 01:46:04.23 Jala Right. 01:46:04.76 Doug Lief Because, like, his boss, you know, whatever, tells him, like, oh, well, you know, you get used to it after a while, people torturing these things and doing horrible stuff to him, whatever. 01:46:11.16 Jala Mm hmm. 01:46:13.46 Doug Lief know, and he's like, he yeah you can clearly he's like, well, that's wrong. 01:46:14.05 Jala Mm hmm. 01:46:17.00 Jala ah Absolutely. So also assumptions lead a whole bunch of different characters astray, such as with the assumption that a Russian man with a lot of money surely is a mobster and and things like that, or how ah Josh was so sure that he just owned Iris. They're not even thinking about, oh, they could be recording everything actually. 01:46:38.61 Jala And Any of that stuff. Well, where is the memory stored and not bothering to read his user agreement before deciding to use his robot to destroy someone else's life? 01:46:49.38 Jala um You know, it also plays with the idea of technology is not good or bad. It's what we do with it, how we treat it, that kind of thing. And um also, again, like the development of other personhood that the robots undergo. 01:47:01.38 Jala So they have some residual or transcendent self somewhere inside, even when they're reset. Iris was reset, but she remained herself. And Patrick was reset and still had a vestige of who he was inside. 01:47:16.59 Jala So, you know, they still have some some overarching... semblance of a soul, let's say, that that they have the way that this movie puts forth. And that cannot be programmed out. 01:47:30.05 Doug Lief Right. Right. 01:47:31.86 Jala So, yeah. 01:47:31.83 Doug Lief right 01:47:32.97 Jala And then like something that Dave said to me that I was interested in is like, because there's a bunch of models that have the same face because they don't have a whole lot of different face choices, apparently. 01:47:44.10 Jala um So does that mean that if these robots see each other out in the out in in public, like, do they have a self like ah a sudden crisis of self? Like, oh, my God, how do I have a twin or? 01:47:54.97 Jala You know, like, am I like they do they come to the realization I'm a robot or whatever, like this movie doesn't go into that at all. But like, that's an interesting idea, you know. 01:48:03.74 Doug Lief Yeah, I wondered the same thing of like, wait, are there only like, you know, seven different ones you can pick from? Like, that seems like you're asking for trouble. 01:48:08.81 Jala Right. Mm hmm. 01:48:10.76 Doug Lief um You know, why not just make their faces a little more ah changeable? I mean, right, because people would want different heights, different body types, different, you know, not just, you know, hair and eye color. 01:48:23.07 Doug Lief That's not the only two things. 01:48:23.50 Jala Right. 01:48:24.40 Doug Lief I imagine these things are very expensive. Like, if you're going to spend that much money, you're going to want, you know probably a ah yeah custom face. 01:48:29.48 Jala customization, right? Yeah. Right, right. And then too, like not everybody is going to be attracted to these conventionally attractive kind of people, but that's how you pick them out in the movie is, you know, they're, they're these perfect boyfriend, girlfriend characters. 01:48:44.05 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:48:45.05 Jala So But yeah, talking about some of the cinema sins, there are some that we we already kind of mentioned some of them, but like ah her eye color, Iris's eye color changes incorrectly from time to time in the movie. Like it'll switch back and forth at times when it shouldn't have. um The voice modulation to mimic Josh does not happen with simplified controls like the three sliders that she had, but we're just going to you know hand wave that. Because for her to actually try to modulate her voice to sound exactly like Josh, 01:49:11.77 Jala in the car with him slamming into the window. Like, that's not a thing. This is a hand wavy moment, you know, like we're not worrying about it. 01:49:17.02 Doug Lief Right. 01:49:18.97 Jala Um, Iris's head at the end after she saves Teddy is repaired. Like the damage on the side of her head is just gone. Like the, the temples are fine. 01:49:25.68 Doug Lief Both sides. Yeah. 01:49:27.03 Jala Yeah. Both sides are are fine. I don't think in that van, because all they had was like, ah you know, ah computer equipment. I don't think they had anything to repair skin or anything, but who knows? Maybe i would imagine that would take longer than the time they had, but whatever. 01:49:41.51 Doug Lief Yeah, it could be some external casing they can just pop off and on or something. 01:49:44.78 Jala Right, right. So those were some of the major ones that, you know, other than the corkscrew that we already talked about, this ridiculous corkscrew that you knew was going to have to to come and and stab. So I figured it was going to go in somebody's eye socket is what I thought. 01:49:57.38 Doug Lief That would have been more believable. Yeah. 01:49:59.14 Jala Right. I thought eye socket. 01:50:00.01 Doug Lief But way grosser. 01:50:01.67 Jala Right, right. Well, I mean, like she did the temple because that's where he he had hurt her. So, you know, but at the same time, it would have been, you know, worse if it was through the eye. 01:50:07.19 Doug Lief Right. 01:50:11.95 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:50:13.03 Jala But... 01:50:13.20 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:50:14.62 Jala So yeah, um but yeah, then let's move on to some of the the fun trivia. So Iris was originally supposed to be more of a villain, but because of the hardship she goes through, the writer felt himself feeling more sympathetic to her than to Josh. And so he just went with it. 01:50:30.28 Jala And I'm glad that he did. um There's so many movies out there where it's like, ooh, the evil AI, it's coming to get us, you know, and thankfully it didn't go in that direction. 01:50:40.85 Doug Lief Yeah, we've done so many of those at this point. If if that had been the case, I don't think this movie movie would be interesting. We wouldn't be talking about it. It would just be like, okay, killer robot. I've seen it. 01:50:49.71 Jala Yeah, right. Exactly. So um then to Jack Quaid about his character again said, oh, he's never heard the words. I love you. Everything else that happens in the movie happens because of that. It's like a snowball effect for that. He's the villain who doesn't know he's a villain and thinks he's the hero of his own story. 01:51:08.83 Jala So um Jack, Sophie, Lucas and Megan, ah the actors, all said that the most difficult but fun part of acting in a horror film is that you constantly cycle through a whole range of emotions. 01:51:20.72 Jala Like that's that's the whole thing about the horror films. Like you have all of these emotions playing out on screen. And Jack added that he feels the best stories are being told in the horror genre these days and. 01:51:31.21 Doug Lief Certainly the most ambitious, I would i would say. 01:51:34.24 Jala but Sophie Thatcher, I found out that she can cry from one eye at a time on command. 01:51:41.44 Doug Lief that Wow. I mean, that is an X-Men power. it's 01:51:44.63 Jala Yeah, exactly. 01:51:44.88 Doug Lief I can't imagine doing that. 01:51:46.83 Jala So, yeah. And then to the song Iris. So, so the references to Iris, okay. It's not just that Iris's name is Iris and then Iris, the song by the Goo Goo Dolls is playing when she shows up, but also Jack Quaid's mother, Meg Ryan starred in city of angels for which that song was written. 01:52:02.45 Doug Lief Right. 01:52:02.79 Jala So it, the references compile, you know, over and over again. 01:52:05.85 Doug Lief Mm hmm. 01:52:08.65 Jala So, uh, 01:52:08.79 Doug Lief Yeah, I thought of that as well, too. Like, oh, interesting. Yeah. 01:52:11.73 Jala Yeah, yeah, that was intentional. ah So Kat also mentions Sergei's password for everything is Stalin's birthday. Rupert Friend, who plays Sergei, also sta starred in The Death of Stalin, where he played Vasily Stalin, the son of Joseph Stalin. 01:52:26.15 Jala So that's why that's there. ah The opening score or scene from the film where Sophie Thatcher is pushing a gro grocery cart echoes the last scene of the Stepford Wives where Catherine Ross is also pushing a grocery cart. So it's it's intentionally not just like her dress, but also that opening scene. 01:52:46.23 Jala It's it's in there to refer refer back to this other movie. ah When Patrick is recounting the story of how he met Eli at the costume party, Patrick says he was wearing a ridiculously elaborate Dracula costume. 01:52:59.87 Jala ah Harvey, who plays Eli, previously starred as Guillermo, a vampire servant on FX's What We Do in the Shadows. So ah the character was known to be attracted to his master, ah who often wore outlandish costumes throughout the series. So like, again, 01:53:16.97 Jala Him being in a Dracula costume is a callback to one of the movies that the actor, one of the actors was in. So companion also features several nods to other robot themed films. 01:53:23.75 Doug Lief Yeah. Hmm. 01:53:28.20 Jala So again, the Stepford wives, we already talked about that. Patrick, we talked about that. His name is such because of the actor for the T-1000. And then the the hand, the the robot hand, of course, is Terminator. 01:53:43.24 Jala um the picture on Josh's phone at the end where Iris leaves the cabin has a broken pixel line that passes through the head of Josh just in the section where Iris kills him. That's kind of cool. And then ah towards the beginning of the movie, when everyone is dancing inside the house, Patrick does the robot dance, which is fitting since he is actually a robot. 01:54:00.20 Doug Lief Hmm. 01:54:02.75 Jala So, so yeah, those are all the little trivia bits that I happened to find on the internet, which were quite fun. 01:54:04.68 Doug Lief Cool. 01:54:10.87 Doug Lief Neat. 01:54:11.75 Jala Yeah. 01:54:11.71 Doug Lief I have nothing to add. 01:54:12.01 Jala Yeah. 01:54:12.51 Doug Lief Those are cool and interesting little tidbits. 01:54:14.59 Jala Yeah. So let's move on to just a ah couple other questions to discuss, and then we'll wrap it up here. So many of the twists to the plot involve things not being what they first appear. 01:54:25.75 Jala And why is this especially potent here in this movie? 01:54:30.37 Doug Lief Well, obviously part of it is just basic plot stuff about you wanting to surprise the audience. 01:54:33.55 Jala Yeah. 01:54:35.15 Doug Lief But I think the the idea being, you know, the the robots are not just robots. 01:54:35.29 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:54:41.35 Doug Lief We want to think of them that way, or the humans in the movie want to think of them as just things or machines. But as I said before, they're so far past the Turing test. 01:54:49.19 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:54:49.14 Doug Lief um 01:54:49.32 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:54:49.90 Doug Lief You know, they they are... It's almost unimaginable that people could be presented with a being that walks and talks this way and then... Seek to exploit them or use them for harm. It becomes harder and harder. you know if you know It's one thing to have an actual blow-up doll that is just an inanimate object, ah but these are not. like these the they are i mean The way Sophie Thatcher acts and behaves just right from the jump is, you know, she is very much real. 01:55:19.06 Doug Lief The kinds of thoughts she's having are so sophisticated. 01:55:19.55 Jala Right. 01:55:22.12 Doug Lief um so to, yeah, so the fact that she happens to not be human underneath, and as we see with yeah the robot hand, literally, you know, she's not human underneath, um shouldn't matter. 01:55:32.58 Jala right Right. Well, and then, too, like that also brings in questions of like, well, people do stuff like this to other people who are also humans uncontestedly. 01:55:43.87 Jala So ah so why is that a thing? You know, like of course, they can do that to robots because, you know, even if they act like humans, people still also mistreat other humans. 01:55:47.61 Doug Lief Mm-hmm. 01:55:54.11 Jala So, you know, it's it's a whole lot. to kind of think about, but, uh, yeah. And, um, when Iris starts out the movie, she's sort of doe-eyed and open-hearted and that lowers our guard to where we, um, you know, are accepting what we're presented with, you know, because we're kind of in the shoes of Iris from the beginning of this film. 01:56:13.58 Jala So we just kind of accept whatever is, is being presented to us. Uh, and then, Once you start going into skeptical mode, like if you start the movie in skeptical mode, you're going to miss a lot of the fun in the movie, I think, because like, you'll be like, oh, I'm sure that's not how that seems or whatever. And you're just picking it apart. And and you're not just like letting the movie take you for the ride and tell you the story that it's wanting to tell you. 01:56:36.18 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:56:36.36 Jala So um we don't know about like Kat and Josh planning this robbery. We don't realize that Sergei is actually just a facade farmer. He's not a bad guy, at least in terms of his business endeavors. 01:56:51.00 Jala um We also might assume that Patrick is a sweet but himbo sort of guy, but we don't realize necessarily that he's a robot until that gets revealed. And so, you know, like there's a lot of twists and turns that yes, um you could see it from a mile away or whatever or something like that. Um, and expect some, some kind of thing like this to happen. But at the same time, like it's it's just a lot more fun to just let the movie take you, uh, for the ride that is trying to take you on my opinion. 01:57:19.82 Jala So, uh, another question that I had is, is it significant that Eli and Patrick are both men? 01:57:27.79 Doug Lief I think so, for some of the reasons we already talked about, right? This idea of like, this is not just a male-female thing. The fact that ah you could have ah same-sex couple ah with one robot you know still have the same power imbalance. Right. 01:57:45.41 Jala Right. 01:57:45.58 Doug Lief Right. And we know that there's obviously domestic disputes between same sex couples as well. You know, these things happen. 01:57:49.36 Jala Right. 01:57:50.49 Doug Lief And so because the movie is not just exploring the dynamics between men and women, it's it's exploring the dynamics between basically people who feel powerless and how they treat people with even less power than them. 01:58:02.12 Jala Right. right And it also, um, the relationship between Eli and Patrick demonstrate both healthy and toxic masculinity simultaneously because like theirs is the healthiest relationship of them, but there's still that power imbalance anyway. 01:58:20.37 Jala And, you know, they're still in that way, that toxic nature where, you know, Eli is just completely dismissing Patrick when Patrick is trying to tell him, ah Iris is escaping and he's just like, not even listening. 01:58:33.17 Jala to Patrick and just telling Patrick, this is what I want to do. Let's go do this thing. and And things like that, where he's just ordering Patrick around to go do stuff and, you know, not really allowing Patrick any kind of agency of his own. 01:58:41.94 Doug Lief Yes, 01:58:46.34 Jala And, um, so like there are negative sides to it, but also the way that I felt from the the performances and everything, it feels like Eli really does love Patrick, even if it's, you know, got some unhealthy aspects to it now. 01:59:01.22 Doug Lief it's matter of degrees. 01:59:02.67 Jala Right. 01:59:03.18 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:59:03.36 Jala Right. So, uh, Josh is undisputed is undisputed as like the toxic man, but Eli also, you know, had to go to AI for this love and has to have this kind of control over the situation, probably because he feels insecure just from like the way that he acts in the movie. I feel like the character of Eli is kind of just insecure. And and that's why he wanted to have this kind of relationship, which would be stable. 01:59:28.23 Jala Right. 01:59:29.38 Doug Lief Well, you would, yeah, you would never have to worry that it's never going to, it's like the Terminator, right? 01:59:29.49 Jala So, 01:59:33.17 Doug Lief It's never going to leave you. It's never going to tell you, you know, he's never going to hit you. 01:59:35.19 Jala Right. 01:59:37.55 Doug Lief He's never going to do anything to let you down. will always be there. 01:59:39.86 Jala right 01:59:40.43 Doug Lief Right. 01:59:41.24 Jala Right. Right. So, so yeah, uh, if Eli had a female companion, the healthy masculinity would only be coming from Eli with a female partner, still in control of a woman rather than Eli and Patrick with each other, having healthy masculinity towards each other with no, no woman being controlled in that situation. So like, again, it kind of, um, allows more dynamics to, to be at work here. 02:00:07.04 Jala so What do you think about the empathics worker who helped free Iris? So yeah. what do What do you think about him? 02:00:16.14 Doug Lief There's a little bit of a like, I think you need him. And I know this is a thing that gets kicked around, but like not all men, um but also not all men. 02:00:22.87 Jala Right. 02:00:24.35 Doug Lief Not everybody's a monster. 02:00:24.84 Jala Right. 02:00:26.22 Doug Lief And the movie presents us with basically a house full of monster people. 02:00:30.28 Jala Right. 02:00:30.32 Doug Lief Right. That like to Josh is the worst. Sergey obviously tries to rape Iris. 02:00:35.16 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:00:35.12 Doug Lief Not good. And Eli, as we've talked about, is you know the least offensive of them, but still, you know, controlling over Patrick. 02:00:43.81 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:00:43.94 Doug Lief And so it's good you to give the movie at least give you one character outside of this bubble to say like, you know, no, I'm going to treat you with respect and autonomy and like you're supposed to be treated like, you know, because, yeah, if if the entire world was that way, i think it would be too simplistic. 02:01:00.80 Jala Well, not only would it be too simplistic, but it also would not let the movie end in a way where you feel any it kind of possible positivity about Iris's future. you know what You know, it at least gives it like ah ah like an ending note of some kind of hope, right? 02:01:17.85 Jala Because Teddy is this wide-eyed young intern guy. 02:01:18.48 Doug Lief yeah I was going to say, it's kind of the blue fairy coming down and say, you're real now, Pinocchio. You've earned it. 02:01:25.90 Jala Right, right, right. 02:01:26.10 Doug Lief you know 02:01:28.18 Jala For sure. And he also feels to me like a stand in for the audience at this point, because we're all rooting for Iris and we want her to be able to get away from Josh. We don't want Josh to win. 02:01:39.16 Jala And so, you know, like that's, that's, he's kind of like the audience stand in, I think. 02:01:39.46 Doug Lief no 02:01:44.54 Doug Lief You could have had a version of this story where she jailbroke herself. She overwrote her own code, things like that. 02:01:47.79 Jala Yeah. 02:01:49.14 Doug Lief But yeah, having ah an outside person just sort of sort of basically say, you've suffered enough. you know you You were free. 02:01:54.79 Jala Right. 02:01:56.09 Doug Lief um Like I said, a little bit of the Blue Fairy. I think that that's needed here. 02:01:59.99 Jala Right, for sure. So what do you think Iris is going to do at the end of the movie after after she runs off into the sunset in her red Mustang? 02:02:10.41 Doug Lief I mean, the real question is, of course, you know plot-wise, so at some point these bodies are going to be discovered, there's going to be a trail. 02:02:16.08 Jala Right. 02:02:16.65 Doug Lief that you know ah That's where sequel bait goes, but this movie isn't interested in that. i 02:02:21.43 Jala No. 02:02:21.92 Doug Lief She does not seem... The question is, does this experience jade her enough to where she is going to lead a robot rebellion against humanity, right? 02:02:31.25 Jala ah 02:02:31.33 Doug Lief Yeah. But I think maybe, again, the Teddy thing is important for her to say, like, well, maybe all humans don't deserve to die. 02:02:39.33 Jala Right. 02:02:39.31 Doug Lief you know the You know, the number of humans who have access to these robots is probably pretty small. um And maybe more likely she does a little bit of like, you know, she's Johnny five. She's going to go get citizenship at the end of the short circuit, too. 02:02:51.37 Jala Right. 02:02:52.45 Doug Lief And, ah you know, advocate for robot rights or something, you know, a more positive outcome. 02:02:53.45 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:02:58.51 Jala Right. Short Circuit is a fun movie, by the way. But yes. 02:03:02.22 Doug Lief As a short circuit too, but much, much weirder. 02:03:04.92 Jala Yeah. True. True. So yeah, for me, I'm like, I hope she keeps a low enough profile that she's never found. But seriously, though, it the movie leaves it super open to possibility. um So it's it's intentionally undefined because she hasn't figured out what she wants to do yet. 02:03:24.50 Jala She only just got free of everything just now. Yeah. 02:03:28.21 Doug Lief Right. 02:03:28.39 Jala So, you know, like really the road is open to her and she has to figure out what it is that she wants going forward. And that's really what wraps this movie. um So like whatever you think happens to her is fine. 02:03:43.81 Jala ah You know, like it's, it's left open to interpretation because, you know and just like if you are getting out of some kind of a bad situation yourself, you know, you are free to do what you want. 02:03:44.85 Doug Lief Right. 02:03:56.59 Doug Lief right 02:03:56.78 Jala and And that freedom is really like that that catharsis, that ending that we get here. So. So yeah, I think that wraps it for this movie. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed my time with it. I enjoyed rewatching it for sure. um Even though you get the most on a rewatch from the beginning in terms of like the the groundwork being laid, seeing everything again, the middle and the end of the movie and letting that breathe a little bit, knowing what happens, ah you still benefit from a second watching of all of it overall. 02:04:27.59 Jala So worth taking a look at more than once. 02:04:32.65 Doug Lief Cosine. Yeah. 02:04:32.88 Jala So 02:04:33.21 Doug Lief yeah 02:04:34.13 Jala Yeah. So all of that being said, Doug, where in the world can people find you on the internet if you are to be found? 02:04:41.52 Doug Lief ah So again, you can just Google up Nostalgium Arcanum because of its horrendous spelling. It will be the only thing of its kind. um and So we're again, the podcast is there wherever you get podcasts and we're on the usual social networks. um I would say if you're going to go for any of them, go for Facebook, Instagram or Blue Sky, because that's where I will put clues every Wednesday as to like what the next episode is going to be. 02:05:04.27 Doug Lief I don't bother with that with Twitter anymore because fuck Twitter. um And so ah so, but I'm still there, at least if you're if you're deciding I'm going to hold on to this until it's sold to better people. 02:05:07.98 Jala Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:05:16.23 Doug Lief I'll still at least post the links to the episodes there. So there is still a presence. And yeah, that's where you'll find it. It's again, Nostalgium, not nostalgia. And that should get you anything you need. 02:05:28.81 Jala And of course, you can find me anywhere that I might be found @jalachan, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and but all of the others. So until next time, take care of yourself. 02:05:39.99 Jala Remember to smile and act happy. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]