Sitting in the Dark

Kynan takes the curator's chair this month and leads with the question they drilled into him in grad school: why does this have to be animated? Three films answer it three different ways, and every answer turns out to be about the same uncomfortable thing — somebody's body as raw material. Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) starts the descent. A pop idol ditches her group for a serious acting career...

AI. You may have noticed it's everywhere now — in your phone, your fridge, the suspiciously enthusiastic email your boss "wrote" last Tuesday. And cinema, bless its little reactive heart, has been trying to warn us about this for fifty years. The problem is we keep not listening, partly because the warnings have so often arrived in the shape of a sexy lady robot, which is its own diagnosis of the...

Tommy steps in as host this month with a triple feature about invaders that don't need to knock. Assassination Nation turns a Salem high school into a digital witch trial when a hacker dumps everyone's private data into the open. Return of the Living Dead lets the contamination loose inside a single warehouse-and-cemetery block, where the dead come back complaining and the living can't decide who'...

What does it actually take to make a horror film that matters? Not a studio green light. Not a VFX budget. Not a catering line. This month, Chelsea Stardust curates three films that answer that question on their own uncompromising terms. Jeremy Gardner's The Battery strips the zombie apocalypse down to two former baseball players, a Discman, and a friendship slowly coming apart at the seams. Starr...

This month on Sitting in the Dark, we go big: big monsters, big fear, and big systems that respond to catastrophe with the confidence of a guy who just Googled “what is monster” on his way into the meeting. Kynan, Chelsea Stardust, Tommy Metz III, and Pete Wright take on three modern giant-creature films—Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter (2010), and Takashi Yamazaki’s Go...

You know that moment when the room doesn’t change, exactly… but you do? A joke lands a little sideways, a silence settles in, and your brain starts doing that ridiculous math where staying feels safer than leaving—even when every part of you is quietly screaming, “Go.” That’s the engine of this month’s Sitting in the Dark, as Pete Wright sits down with Tommy Metz III, Chelsea Stardust, and Kynan D...

This month, Sitting in the Dark smiles politely, locks the door, and then asks you to reconsider every coping mechanism you’ve ever trusted. Tommy Metz III is joined by filmmaker Chelsea Stardust and Pete Wright to excavate the uneasy trilogy formed by Smile, Smile 2, and the short-film patient zero, Laura Hasn’t Slept, all courtesy of writer-director Parker Finn—a man who looked at the concept of...

The 1980s were a golden age of VHS horror excess — when night was the time to party, die, or both. This month, Chelsea Stardust takes the hosting reins and brings us a triple feature of midnight mayhem: Night of the Comet (1984), Night of the Creeps (1986), and Night of the Demons (1988). What begins with a Christmas-morning apocalypse of Valley Girls and zombies spirals into brain-slug infestatio...

In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” But then, apparently, He got bored and switched it off just to see what would happen. Welcome to Sitting in the Dark, where this month Kynan, Chelsea, Tommy, and Pete explore what happens when filmmakers yank away humanity’s favorite nightlight. Their lineup: Wait Until Dark (1967), Don’t Breathe (2016), and Pitch Black (2000)—three films that remi...

Sometimes horror doesn’t need a killer in a mask—it just needs gravity, leaky plumbing, and a loose screw. This week Pete, Tommy, Kynan, and Chelsea dive headlong into the beautifully deranged contraptions of fate in the Final Destination series. We zero in on films one, two, five, and six, skipping the middle entries (with Chelsea reluctantly leaving her beloved roller coaster behind) to track ho...

Out in the remote villages of South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand, belief isn’t just tradition—it’s infrastructure. In this month’s episode of Sitting in the Dark, guest host Andy Nelson takes Pete Wright, Tommy Metz III, and Kynan Dias on a journey into three modern horror films that weaponize spiritual legacy: The Wailing (2016), Impetigore (2019), and The Medium (2021). Each film presents a di...

Some horror films end with a twist. These films start with a premise, wait until you’ve buckled in, and then swerve into oncoming traffic. Welcome to Rug Pullers, the subgenre where the story you thought you were watching was the bait. This week, Tommy, Pete, Kynan, and guest Chelsea Stardust tear into three films that gleefully yank the floorboards out from under you: Ghostwatch (1992), the BBC b...

Dracula may never stay dead, but his film incarnations sure evolve—or devolve—across decades. In this episode, Kyle Olson guides Pete Wright, Kynan Dias, and Tommy Metz III through three flavors of Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Dracula 2000, and Dracula Untold. They dig into Coppola’s sweaty gothic melodrama, where Oldman chews the scenery and Keanu Reeves gets chewed out. Then it’s on to...

This Pride Month edition of Sitting in the Dark shines a lavender light on the long-standing but often invisible relationship between horror cinema and queer identity. Host Kynan Dias traces horror’s appeal to outsiders—particularly LGBTQ+ viewers—who find coded representation in monsters, victims, and the margins of genre storytelling. The episode dives deep into three genre-defining films. The B...

Pete Wright hosts a brutally personal Mother’s Day episode of Sitting in the Dark, joined by regular co-conspirators Kyle Olson, Kynan Dias, and Tommy Metz III, as they dig into three films that ask a profoundly unsettling question: What if Mom is the monster? We start with Run (2020), a film that’s more “Lifetime original” than it has any right to be. It’s clean, tight, and distressingly effectiv...

Welcome, you depraved ghouls and ghost enthusiasts, to another episode of Sitting in the Dark—the podcast where we ask the truly vital horror questions, like, “Is this house cursed by restless spirits, or is it just what happens when unresolved trauma and black mold get into a knife fight?” This week, host Tommy Metz III is joined by fellow ghost provocateurs Pete Wright, Kynan Dias, and Kyle Olso...

For nearly a century, horror films have told us a story—one of terror, of survival, of the inevitable confrontation between innocence and brutality. But there’s one story, in particular, that has evolved in ways both subtle and seismic: the story of the Final Girl. It begins in the shadows, in the screams of Janet Leigh, in the wide, terror-stricken eyes of Jamie Lee Curtis. The Final Girl is the...

Welcome to Sitting in the Dark, the podcast that illuminates the shadowy corners of horror cinema. This month, your host, Kynan Dias, and a coven of his most insightful monster aficionados – Pete Wright, Kyle Olson, and Tommy Metz III – go under the sheets into a chillingly erotic realm: the intersection of horror and sex. Now, we're not talking about the gratuitous, the exploitative. No, this is...

What makes a single movie become a phenomenon? What is it about certain films—films that arrive in theaters, scare the daylights out of us, and then stay with us—that transforms them into franchises spanning decades? Why does one horror film birth sequels, spin-offs, reboots, and even TV shows, while others fade quietly into obscurity? Picture this: a young boy receives a doll for his birthday, on...

Tommy, our intrepid host, plunges into the abyss of existential dread this week, dragging Kyle, Kynan, and Pete along for the harrowing ride. They grapple with three films that explore the unnerving realities behind the horrors of being an adult. First up, Vivarium. Imagine, if you will, the quintessential suburban nightmare. Cookie-cutter houses stretching into an unsettling infinity, a chirping,...

Richard Connell's 1924 short story, "The Most Dangerous Game," continues to haunt and inspire filmmakers nearly a century later. Its chilling premise of a wealthy sportsman hunting humans for sport has resonated through decades of cinema, influencing countless horror and thriller narratives. Join Kyle and his subjects, Pete, Kynan, and Tommy, as they embark on a thrilling exploration of this endur...

This week on Sitting in the Dark, the gang tackles the world of horror anthologies. Host Kynan Dias, along with panelists Pete Wright, Kyle Olson, and Tommy Metz III, dissect three iconic films: Creepshow, Tales from the Hood, and Trick ‘r Treat. Buckle up for a spirited discussion on jump scares, creature features, and the enduring legacy of Stephen King. The conversation kicks off with Creepshow...

Listen, you know that feeling, right? That prickle on the back of your neck when the train rattles through a tunnel, the lights flicker, and for a second, you're utterly alone in the dark? That's where we're going. Deep into the heart of travel horror, where the familiar becomes unsettling, and the journey itself transforms into a terrifying ordeal. We're talking about those moments of vulnerabili...

In this unnerving episode of Sitting in the Dark, host Tommy Metz III and his co-hosts delve into the spine-chilling world of confinement horror. The discussion focuses on three hand-picked films that trap characters in claustrophobic spaces, forcing them to confront their deepest fears. Want to watch along? You’ll want to set up Gerald’s Game, It Comes at Night, and The Crazies (the 2010 remake)....

This month, host Kyle Olson takes listeners on a chilling journey through the British Isles with a trio of alien invasion films. Joined by panelists Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, and Pete Wright, the group explores the 2012 Irish horror-comedy "Grabbers," along with "Attack the Block" and "The World's End."The discussion begins with "Grabbers," a lesser-known gem that surprised the panel with its im...