The Fear of God: A Horror Movie Podcast

It's that time again! Every 25 episodes or so, we venture into vast catalog that is horror master Stephen King. This time around we assemble the ka-tet with Blake Collier and Ian Olson to tackle the "Last Castle Rock Story" with NEEDFUL THINGS. When a genial elderly shop owner opens a new store in the fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, he sells people trinkets that are treasured beyond measure,...

Before we dive into our holiday seasonal series, we're taking a stopover at a film directly suggested by one of our Patrons during last year's FoGgoween party. LIGHTS OUT began as an award winning viral short film that packed an unforgettable punch. In 2016, the film was given the feature treatment, delivering most of the same thrills and scares but with a controversially problematic conclusion. W...

We're going somewhere new and different this week while we're in-between series. This week, we're discussin a film released just this October called DARK HARVEST, directed by David Slade based upon a book by Norman Partridge. The premise involves a secluded mid-western town in the 1960s wherein each Halloween, every able-bodied teenage boy in the town must starve and isolate themselves for three d...

Happy Halloween FoGgers!!! It's the rare occasion we have once every seven years or so to actually deliver an episode to you ON Halloween. And we're wrapping up our #Screamaween journey with a mega-sode marching through the highlights of the Scream franchise. We rank the opening teasers, we rank the killers, we make our pitches for Scream 7, we heavily debate the Ghostface Kills Hall of Fame, and...

We come to the penultimate episode in #Screamaween and our final discussion about an individual film when we tackle this year's latest release: SCREAM 6. Picking up with the survivors of Scream 5, this time relocated to the Big Apple, Scream 6 is one of the most character-centric installments in the entire franchise. We invited back to the show Jackson Harper, Vera Goudie, and Blake Collier to hav...

We're back with another installment in our spooky season's #Screamaween covering the film that acts as a soft reset for the franchise and its fifth entry: SCREAM (2022). Bringing back our old gang of characters and introducing us to a whole batch of fresh faces, this "requel" did the impossible by proving that that franchise had life left in it, even following the death of Wes Craven. We're joined...

We continue our run through #Screamaween with a revisiting stop through the fourth installment of the SCREAM franchise. Having first discussed this film as part of our Scares Us/Saves Us series in 2021, we invite some new voices to the conversation: Foreign Correspondent and Quarterly Queen Vera Goudie as well as long-time friend and first-time guest Denise Smith. Scream 4 unveils itself (surprisi...

We have a special little bonus for you guys today! Nathan recently got the opportunity to sit down with friend of the show and President of Van Ryder Games AJ Porfirio to discuss the third series of their landmark, megahit game FINAL GIRL. They dig into lots of behind the scenes details about the production and development of the latest series as well as some thoughts on why board gaming has recen...

We continue our spooky season franchise run with SCREAM 3, originally conceived as a potential definitive conclusion to a trilogy of Scream films. Beset by creative missteps and haunted by cultural pressures to tone down the violence, Scream 3 lands as far more comedic than either of its predecessors and feels the least cohesive of any in the franchise. It does have its charms, particularly in som...

#Screamaween is in full sway and we're trekking through our college years by covering the sequel to the meta-smash and mega-smash hit from Wes Craven: SCREAM 2. We're joined by friend of the show, author, and pastor JR Forasteros as well as our resident Gorey Gamer Matt Murray for a deep dive into all the good, the bad, and the clunky in this briskly paced but erratic follow up to Scream. Behind t...

It's Spooky Season here at the Fear of God and we're following a tradition established last year where every September/October we march through an iconic horror franchise, covering each installment in depth. This year we present #Screamaween! Yes indeed, we like scary movies and we are marching through the Scream franchise one at a time to cover the kills, the frights, the rules, the callouts, and...

Before we venture into our official Spooky Season, we have a prelude of sorts featuring a film that Reed has been wanting to discuss for years. We have another official #LackeyLeftover with 1981's DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. Broadly considered to be one of the greatest made for television horror films of all time, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is deceptively simple but very tightly constructed. It...

Taking a break from our series format, we're excited to bring you another #FoGgoweener: one-off episodes based on media that was recommended to us by our Patrons during our annual FoGgoween party. This week's entry is the indie vampire road movie, STAKE LAND, recommended to us by Continuity Guru Steve Beckley, who also guests with us for the conversation. Stake Land takes a melancholy and thoughtf...

On this special Sunday edition of The Fear of God, Nathan invites back to the show author, professor, and Christian ethicist Dr. David Gushee for discussion about his new book: DEFENDING DEMOCRACY FROM ITS CHRISTIAN ENEMIES. While the work's title certainly pulls no punches about its themes, both its content and this conversation is incredibly thoughtful, tracking the history and development of de...

For the past couple of months (with a brief intermission through folk horror), we've been working our way through the film catalogue of M Night Shyamalan. The landmark successes, the mind-boggling disappointments, the polarizing visions, and -- of course -- all the twists got the Fear of God treatment in individual episodes. Now, we come to the grand finale, a hearty discussion breaking down the h...

As part of our weeks-long journey through the films of M Night Shyamalan (#Shyamalamarama!) we've also been steadily charting our way through the Apple TV+ original series: SERVANT. We now reach the culmination of that journey, wherein we'll breakdown some specifics about the last four episodes of Season 4 and discuss our feelings about the show as a whole, including what worked well, the missed o...

As referenced a few times in this week's episode, we recently had the privilege to sit down with Josh Larsen, author and podcaster at Think Christian and Filmspotting to discuss his newest release, FEAR NOT!: A CHRISTIAN APPRECIATION OF HORROR. The book is an easily digestible and remarkably thorough journey through some of the landmarks of horror cinema, exploring the ways they can be engaged and...

We're nearly at the end of #Shyamalamarama, our journey through the catalogue of M. Night Shyamalan. This week's stop is where most people encountered him for the first time: the landmark thriller with the mega-twist, THE SIXTH SENSE. We're joined by Quarterly Queen Jess Fischli to dive into all that's "So" and "Ain't" right about what remains his most successful and noteworthy film. Together, we...

We come now to one of the most notorious entries in the catalog of M. Night Shyamalan: THE HAPPENING. During this excursion through his films (#Shyamalamarama), we've encountered many highs and lows, but few films (save for maybe his take on Last Airbender) are more derided than this ecological thriller about a mysterious neurotoxin which makes people violently kill themselves. But is The Happenin...

We continue our trek through the catalog of M Night Shyamalan (#Shayamalamarama) with a reviewing of one of his most enduring (and endearing) films: SIGNS. We're joined by Quarterly King Ian Olson for a hearty and heartfelt discussion about our experiences with this obviously very personal film for Shyamalan and the ways it has come to represent some of the best of the director's traits from a per...

In some ways, this is the centerpiece of the entirety of #Shyamalamarama. Ever since 2019, when Shyamalan concluded his Eastrail 177 trilogy to polarizing responses from fans, we've known this conversation would come. How did Reed and Nathan navigate their opposing takes on the film? Did the re-watching of it change any minds about it? And most importantly, does the film do what it means to do in...

Welcome back! We're doing the twist again on #Shyamalamarama where we're making our way through the catalog of M. Night Shyamalan! This week, we discuss two of his most highly regarded films: Unbreakable (for the first official time in FoG canon) and Split (redux from our episode on it in 2017). We're joined by Holding Court's Dave Courtney for a robust conversation about the place these films hol...

We conclude our mini-series on folk horror (#whatthefolk) with a discussion of the meditative, horrific, and strangely beautiful film from last year: YOU WON'T BE ALONE. Constructed as a sequence of loosely connected vignettes (ones which involve both different characters and yet, the same character), it tells the story of a young girl who is turned into a witch at a young age and proceeds through...

We continue our series on folk horror films (#whatthefolk) with a film from South Korea and Thailand called THE MEDIUM. Recommended to us by a longtime listener during our annual FoGgoween Party, The Medium tells the harrowing story of Nim, a regional shaman blessed and inhabited by the spirit of Ba Yan to bestow blessing upon her local community. When her niece Mink begins to exhibit signs that s...

If you like what we do at the Fear of God, we'd like you to consider becoming a Patron. You'll get extended episodes every week and special invitations to online events and hangouts. You'll also receive exclusive bonus episodes, like this one we're previewing today on WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, the independent dark comedy from 2009 written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and starring Robin Williams....