I recently saw a video online of a young man on the spectrum, who had taught himself how to play the piano, before he played an original and beautiful composition called ‘Reflections’. In his opening speech, he said, “Different does not mean wrong. Different minds see different worlds.” I know he was speaking about himself and other neurodivergent individuals, how they react to the world, as well as how the world reacts to them. But what I found interesting in that statement is that it made me thing about us as movie fans, and our opinions on, well… movies.

The Hallow (2015), The Ritual (2017), and Antlers (2021)

Cryptids occupy a couple of different categories in modern life. One of them is fun, if a bit kitschy and silly: think concrete bigfoot statues sitting in whimsical gardens or funny little Mothman plaques hanging on the wall. But another is truly terrifying, buried down deep below the surface of our culture and our geography, a place where most people refuse to even touch the soil, much less dig. On this episode, we are going to dig deeply into those terrifying cryptid myths and uncover some wonderful horror films. Because in the last decade or so, a handful of filmmakers have chosen to put spade to soil and go deeply into that taboo territory and yielded some wonderfully horrific results.

Films mentioned in this episode: