What is up, you spooky bitches? We are back and we have another episode of the Hello

Sydney podcast here, a podcast for horror lovers where we discuss any and all things horror. And it's

me, your girl, Sydney. Happy almost end of Mike Flanagan month. I feel like it's gone by so fast and

I'm so sad about it. But we've made it. I mean, we're here. This is our last Friday episode that we get. And it's

exciting because we're talking about Michael Flanagan's directorial debut today. At least his feature

length debut because he had done some short films before this, like while he was in college.

And his first short film that was actually released that he's credited

for was in 2006. And it was actually the short film that he ended up building on and creating

Oculus from. So that had come out earlier. But this is his first directorial feature length debut.

And he was so new to the game that the funding of this movie actually,

like half of it, came from like Kickstarter, so like crowdfunding. And it's so funny to think about

that now because of how successful he is. And like he'll never have to do that again a day in his

life, which like good for him. But you got to start somewhere. So that's where he started out. So, yeah,

without further ado, let's just jump into it because this movie, I will be honest, I don't think

it's a bad movie, but it is not like a Flanagan level movie. Like I feel like Flanagan's modern works,

like you can watch and be like, oh, this is a Mike Flanagan work,

like without knowing, like if you went in blind, if I went into this blind, I wouldn't know

that this was a Mike Flanagan work. But again, like he, it's very low budget. Like he had to start

somewhere. And I think the story is very Mike Flanagan-esque. And you'll see what I mean. We'll get to that at the end. But let's let's talk about

absentia, which came out in 2011. It's about an hour and 31 minutes long. It has a 5.8 on IMDB,

which isn't terrible. And it has an 80% 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty damn good for a

horror movie, especially a low budget, independent horror film

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