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Music.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead people.

Silent breathing people.

I need my sister and my daughter.

Rosberg.

What's in the box? Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is a Slate spoiler special podcast on us, the new horror film from writer-director Jordan Peel.

And joining me here in the Slate studio is Kay Austin Collins, the critic for Vanity Fair.

Hey, Cam.

Hey, good morning.

Yeah, okay, so we have a lot to unpack with

this movie. It's only just under two hours long. It's not an incredibly long running time,

but it's a very stuffed, some would say overstuffed movie, full of ideas, full of plot twists,

full of time frames and kind of conceptual jumps. So I guess we'll just start at the top,

but I think we're going to have to make some analytical detours as we go along. But as usual,

I just want to just quickly get a response, yes or no, send people or not. Did you like this movie?

I did. I had a really good time with some caveats. And the caveats are, just enjoy it. Right. Just go with it. The caveats might have to do as much with the reception of the movie, no, and of Jordan Peel in general, as with this particular movie, which we will get into, no doubt. But we should probably start up by saying this is his second film, his debut film, Get Out, was, you know, this smash hit and also kind of one of the talking pieces of the year it came out, which is, I guess, 2017. Yeah, it seems like a long time ago. Yeah, everything does these days. And so naturally the response to this movie is going to be tempered as the wrong word, but it's going to be affected by the huge splash that that movie made.

And I feel like there are a lot of people wanting to say, Jordan Peel's in a sophomore slump. And I just wanted to quickly get a sense of whether you think that's true with this movie. I wasn't disappointed by it at all. Like you thoroughly enjoyed it and walked out talking and thinking about it and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Yeah, I mean, Sophomers slump is unfair because if you're comparing it to what he did with this first movie, which changed the culture in some ways, which gave us like a, you know, the sunken place is a thing that now everyone knows what it is. It's like more than just something that's viral. It's a part of the culture in a way. So if that's the standard, then there's no way he's not going to have a sophomore slump, right? You don't do that with every film.

Right. It's a part of the culture in a way. So if that's the standard, then there's no way he's not going to have a sophomore slump, right?

You don't do that with every film.

Right.

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