The Fear of God: A Horror Movie Podcast

In what might be (maybe) our final uniquely focused conversation about Ryan Coogler's landmark, Oscar-winning film Sinners, we sit down with Dr. De'Anna Daniels. Dr. Daniels is assistant professor of Africana and religious studies with a PhD in religion in the African-American religion concentration from Rice University. Her diverse scholarly interests include black religion, the intersection of g...

This past Sunday was the 98th Oscars ceremony and it was filled with reasons to celebrate and reasons to debate. Conan O'Brien hosted a show which pitted two stellar films -- Sinners and One Battle After Another -- against each other to claim the top prizes in cinema recognition. We gathered together again with Claire Lechtenberg, Director of Development & Marketing for Charlotte's Independent...

As a final coda to our series looking back at some prominent films from 2025 (#2025stillalive), we're ending in a similar fashion to how we began. We started this series with a pair of films in one episode (Together + Companion), and we end by discussing Ben Leonberg's unconventional canine-centric chiller GOOD BOY and the latest film from Danny and Michael Philippou, BRING HER BACK. Both films de...

As part of our continued extensive coverage of Ryan Coogler's landmark film Sinners (nominated for a record-breaking 16 Oscars this weekend, including Best Picture), we invite back de'Angelo Dia. Dia is the Director of Education and Community Engagement for Charlotte's Independent Picture House, and describes himself as a theopoet and mystic whose work explores culture and moral imagination throug...

The first season of Stranger Things released just a month before the first episode of The Fear of God. Though the proximities are nothing beyond coincidental, Stranger Things has always loomed a bit over our show in ways that were often surprising, funny, fun, and occasionally lovely. As we've been marching through the rewatch of Season 5 for our Patrons, we now wanted to close things off with one...

As an extension of our coverage of Ryan Coogler's masterful film Sinners, this week we present to you a special conversation with author and professor, Dr. Yvonne Chireau. Dr Chireau has spent much of her academic career studying religious history and supernatural traditions, particularly within Africana religions, African American religious tradition, and American folklore. She has written extens...

We have a fun surprise interview for you this week about a film that made tremendous waves at last year's Fantastic Fest. DOLLY is a gleefully disturbing, unflinching, gore-drenched love letter to every horror film you had to sneak into your basement to watch after everybody else went to bed. Filmed in classic 16mm, it tells the story of Macy (Fabianne Therese) who while on a woodland excursion wi...

We have an epic episode for you this week about an epic film from last year (#2025stillalive). Ryan Coogler has been a striking creative visionary in cinema for years now. With SINNERS, he unleashed a tour de force of creative storytelling, groundbreaking behind-the-scenes negotiations, and a powerhouse commentary on culture, art, and history. Sinners has now been nominated for a record-breaking 1...

We continue our look back at some of the most noteworthy and interesting horror films of 2025 (#2025stillalive) with an examination of Steven Soderbergh's unconventional haunted family drama, PRESENCE. Shown entirely from the perspective of a mysterious entity moving among them, Presence displays the escalating tensions of a family as they settle into a new home. As tensions escalate between the n...

We continue our series looking back at some of the most noteworthy horror movies of 2025 (#2025stillalive) by discussing the latest feature from Josh Ruben (of Werewolves Within). HEART EYES is a rather lightweight film with an ambitious goal: to make a film that is both a romantic comedy and a slasher. Although the balance is sometimes a bit off, the film impressively succeeds at being funny, cha...

We have another special interview episode for you today for something that's not directly horror-related, but definitely falls within our framework of examining what scares us to find what saves us. Recently, Nathan was invited to host an author discussion at Troubadour Booksellers in Charlotte with author and pastor Greg Jarrell, whose book OUR TRESPASSES: WHITE CHURCHES AND THE TAKING OF AMERICA...

Our lookback series at some of the best films of 2025 (#2025stillalive) continues this week with the sequel to Scott Derrickson's 2021 film The Black Phone. Picking up 4 years after the events of the first film, BLACK PHONE 2 tells a decisively scarier and more spiritually conscious story about Gwen and Finn making their way to a Christian camp in the mountains to confront the mysterious, haunting...

We have another special interview episode with you this week featuring director Darren Lynn Bousman discussing his latest film, TWISTED, available right now to buy or rent on VOD. Starring Djimon Hounsou and Lauren LaVera, Twisted tells the story of a resourceful con artist (LaVera) whose con involves flipping houses they don't own and pocketing the deposits. When her latest mark brings her in con...

We continue our look back at some of the strongest and most interesting horror films of 2025 (#2025stillalive) by examining a decisively unconventional and deeply affecting horror film called THE RULE OF JENNY PEN. Starring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow in powerhouse performances, The Rule of Jenny Pen tells the story of an elderly judge (Rush) who, following a debilitating stroke, finds himself...

For the cinema fan, the Oscars remain the pinnacle of awards recognition for achievement in film. Since their opening in June of 2022, The Independent Picture House in Charlotte has managed to carve out a space that includes all of the best parts of going to the movies by focusing on bringing the community together through film. We're joined this week by Claire Lechtenberg, the Director of Develop...

We continue our look back at some horror films from 2025 with a film that's already been discussed a good bit on the show through interviews and Whatcha segments. Adam Cesare's book CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD first hit Reed's radar when it was published back in 2020. He had already been pitching it for years as "Scream: The Novel". Naturally, when Eli Craig (of Tucker and Dale Vs Evil fame) directed the...

We have a very special conversation to share with you that, although not explicitly horror-centric, absolutely sits in the landscape of "exploring what scares us to find what saves us." In 2014, friend of the show, author, and ethicist Dr. David Gushee published CHANGING OUR MIND, a thoughtfully researched, sensitive, and bold call for the Evangelical church to rethink traditional religious teachi...

We're proud to present to our first film director interview of 2026. Andrew Vogel's feature directorial debut is titled HERMAN, and it tells the story of a reclusive mountain man (the Herman of the title, portrayed wonderfully by Colin Ward) who finds himself accosted by numerous visitors one stormy night. As reality and sanity become tenuous and slippery, Herman's late-night guests force him to c...

We continue our traditional lookback at some of the best films of 2025 -- #2025stillalive -- by discussing the galvanizing sophomore feature from Barbarian's Zach Cregger: WEAPONS. Stemming from a premise reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, Weapons weaves a textured and inventive story about secrets and influences. Cregger's skills at keeping his audience on their toes (and occasionally holding thei...

We're kicking off our slate of episodes looking back at the best horror films of 2025 with a double-feature conversation about two films which each took relationships to a horrific level. TOGETHER, written and directed by Michael Shanks and starring real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, explores elements of codependency and insecurities within relationships by serving up a healthy...

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, full of warmth and joy and rest. We ourselves took a bit of a hiatus the past couple of months, releasing a handful of specialty episodes, collections, and interviews. But 2026 is now upon us and with it, we are gearing up for another full year at the FoG! To dust off the cobwebs and prepare for the upcoming slate of episodes, we tagged in on New Yea...

Merry Christmas, friends and FoGgers! We're still in our off-season for regular episodes, but in keeping with recent tradition we're jumping in again to cover an adaptation of Charles Dickens' immortal classic, A Christmas Carol. This time, we're covering a decisively less traditional and straight-forward version of the story with a conversation about Bharat Nalluri's film THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHR...

As difficult as it is to believe, STRANGER THINGS is coming to an end. The show premiered just one month before The Fear of God Podcast debuted, which feels difficult to fathom for a number of reasons. Stranger Things has also directly influenced the way we cover TV media on the show, yielding to segments like #tvguideposts where we cover one episode of a show at a time. What you are about to hear...

We hope you're having a wonderful holiday season! While we're in our off-season as the year winds to a close, we have another special episode for you this week, courtesy of the famous Ghoul Scouts! Vera, Jess, and Jocee take over the show again this week to discuss the 1989 Winona Ryder starring satire, HEATHERS. Sharply written and tackling some heavy topics with remarkable intention, Heathers te...

Welcome to another special interview with writers and directors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman about their new film MAN FINDS TAPE, which hits theaters and VOD on December 5th. Man Finds Tape tells a richly textured story about two siblings -- Lynn (Kelsey Pribilski), who is a documentary filmmaker and Lucas (William Magnuson), whose series of viral videos have previously stirred tremendous contro...