Scary Thoughts

Backrooms (2026) director Kane Parsons became an auteur horror phenom through one of the strangest, but possibly increasingly common, paths imaginable: he built a YouTube-native story using open-source software and a meme.
The original web series deserves the praise. It looks great. It's fun. It's creepy. And it speaks directly to a generation's fears. The film successfully expands that world while also working as a standalone movie in some interesting ways.
In this episode, we talk about new ways films might get made, Lacanian psychotherapy, dead mall aesthetics, Viking liminalism in Valhalla, gold-plated AK-47s, and what it means when a horror movie makes Marvel money.

Obsession (2026) is a film for anyone who's ever been unlucky in love or wished for the impossible. It's won praise as an indie horror darling after making hundreds of millions of dollars, but what if it's really a romcom?


In this loving conversation, we cover the pitfalls of working in the movie business, opine on what it takes to maintain decades-long romantic affairs, and ask the all-important question: should you really be careful what you wish for?

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) picks up minutes after where the previous, and enjoyable, installment left off. If you liked the first one, you're in for a treat because this is, quite literally, more of the same. 


This is one of those episodes where the film doesn't have much to say, we don't have much to say about it, and as a consequence, we descend into speculative madness. 


Fear not! We still hit many of the classic Scary Thoughts topics: unlistenable music, final girls, The Devil, shitting on A24, and dream casting for The Rock.

Just because you're paranoid, don't mean the Andromedans aren't after you. Chad and Marc give a brief Stranger Things wrap up before disentangling this Yorgos Lanthimos madness. They explore the differences between alien conspiracy paranoia, and the Truth. After hearing Chad's lifelong appetite for conspiratorial thinking, you will want to believe. Marc wonders if maybe the Andromedans really do know what's best. That's not a conspiracy, that's just sensible species management.

For Halloween, we always like to do something a little special, and this year we decided to ask some of our fellow fiends (Meg Elison, Joshua Grannell aka Peaches Christ, Carmen Maria Machado, Daniel Coffeen, Steven Intermill and Monique Jenkinson aka Fauxnique) about the first film they remember that truly scared them, and how that shaped them into the ghouls they grew up to be.