Our holiday present to you all is the gift of Jake, Liv, Julian, and Travis losing their collective minds over the new film “Leave The World Behind” – a pre-apocalyptic film executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. Not only will they be staggering their way through the plot of the film and its production history, but they’ll also be taking a look at the online conspiracy community’s reaction to the film. Rest assured it’s a ‘great holiday bake-off’, minus the presence of anything sweet and savory.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAA
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
https://qanonanonymous.com
Welcome, listeners, to the 260th chapter of the QAA Podcast, the Leave the Obamas Behind episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Liv Aker, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Uh, Michelle, could you just come into this room real quick?
Oh yeah, and grab that Glock 17 that I've got left in the safe.
Yeah, make sure it's loaded too, Michelle.
Oh, hey, okay, could you put this in my mouth?
Yeah, put it in my mouth.
Okay, now pull the trigger.
Bleep my bleeps all over the room wall.
Thank you so much, Michelle.
I deserve it for what I've done to entertainment.
Thank you for listening to another episode of QAA Podcast.
You can subscribe for five bucks a month to hear more of Julian's cancelable Obama impressions.
I just want to be clear that this is an actionable threat from a foreign national.
Thanks for listening to the QAA Podcast.
We will be shuttering our doors due to our producer being deported and summarily executed.
No, no, Michelle, Michelle.
You have to, no, the safety, it's there.
There.
Yeah.
Hear it click, and you know it's loaded.
It's not a conspiracy.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Liv Aker, Julian Field, and Travis View.
On May 12th of this year, a new pre-apocalyptic film from Sam Esmail, the creator of the popular television series Mr. Robot, premiered at the American Film Institute Festival.
It released to generally favorable reviews, with Tim Grierson of Screen Daily writing, Leave the World Behind does not feature the level of spectacle of a bigger-budgeted apocalyptic thriller, but when the film unveils its stunning revelations about what is actually happening in the world outside the house, it's grippingly executed.
You mean like the world outside your fucking house, Tim?
What are you fucking, have you seen movies before?
Are you comparing this to YouTube videos?
I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.
I do think the movie has a pretty big budget effect.
I mean, you do see a plane fall out of the sky.
You see thousands of flyers being dropped from a drone.
You see Teslas crashing into one another in, you know, essentially a first-person view.
Yeah, and it all looks like shit.
CGI flamingos.
It all looks like shit.
Yeah, you see CGI flamingos.
You see thousands of CGI deer.
I don't know.
I would say that the effects are big-budget.
That's not to say they're good.
Most big-budget effects suck nowadays.
Michelle?
Michelle, did you make sure to slip that envelope to, uh, what was his name?
Tim Grierson?
Also, the things happening are shit.
It's not interesting at all.
It's a terrible premise for a movie.
Surprisingly, there is so little tension, and yet, like, a giant boat hits a beach, a plane almost lands on a person, a series of Teslas, like, come rushing at the protagonist, guns are involved multiple times, and yet there is no moment for me where I felt actual tension.
I just wanted every scene to be over.
I'm like, I don't care.
I don't care.
So fucking annoyed.
Yes.
Yes.
The writers break the cardinal sin of Chekhov's gun, which is if you show a gun, you know, in the beginning of your story, it has to pay off in some way.
Yeah.
They did not do this.
But also if they broke the cardinal sin, that would that's that you I think you screwed that up.
The the who cares?
Who cares?
I'm nothing.
I've watched this movie twice now.
Once for enjoyment, quote-unquote, and then once to make the clips and... I'm gonna tell you something.
In some of these shots, they broke the cardinal directions.
I know, I know.
It's like, dude, make your story disorienting.
You can't just cheat us with disorienting camera angles that are swirling upside down and putting me on a tilt-a-whirl.
You're supposed to do that with the story and the writing, not just the camera stuff.
But that's a minor break.
No it's not!
No it's fucking not!
This fucking thing, it was like a tech demo for some annoying new camera and it was directed by AI.
It's incredibly just unpleasant cinematography in every way and it's so self-satisfied.
It really feels like a tech guy like being like, look what we can do with this new camera.
As I was messaging to Liv in the group chat, this movie feels like the ultimate post.
It's one big post.
It's one big two-hour and 20-minute post.
And the stunning revelation that the critic is talking about is that unknown foreign nations are psyoping Americans into civil war.
It's so funny.
America is such a little victim pussy ass empire.
Imagine if fucking Byzantium was complaining all the time about how like people hated them for their freedom and like that they were being, you know, turned inside out by like an enemy within.
I mean, it's it's fucking sad.
You can't even enjoy the empire.
You're just so fucking nervous and anxious all the time.
Also, like, this isn't an apocalypse movie.
This is just like a movie about what happened to Libya under the Obama administration.
Yeah!
This is literally, they're describing what they do to foreign nations all the time.
They're like, can you imagine how bad that would be if it happened to us?
Wow.
That would suck, huh?
If we, if we got our just desserts, wouldn't that suck?
Don't we all not want that?
Yeah.
I think this is probably going to be the first time in QAA movie night history.
Well, one, I mean, it's the first time I believe that we've done a movie night on Maine.
Usually, usually the movie nights are, you know, premium episodes.
Yeah.
This one is definitely worth the main though.
It's worth the main.
A lot of people been talking about it.
A lot of people been asking about it in the DMs.
Are we going to cover this movie?
Yes, of course we are.
And I also think we are, this is going to be a QAA first of me and Julian actually agreeing on our sort of our like or dislike of a film.
So, I hope everybody's excited for that.
Me and Julian, working together, in agreeance, friends, supportive of one another, you know?
It's gonna be fun.
Hello, Bill?
We've got a problem.
The Gentile and the Jew are agreeing.
We have a problem.
We're gonna have to tactically take them both out.
So the film boasts an impressive cast.
It stars Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as the yuppie Long Island couple who rent an upscale Airbnb for a weekend getaway with their teenage kids, played by Farrah McKenzie and Charlie Evans.
Marshala Ali and Mayhala play the father and daughter duo who own the vacation rental, And it even has a cameo from Kevin Bacon playing the guess-you-shoulda-listened-to-em MAGA conspiracy theorist that seems to be part of every movie and TV show nowadays.
This character is now etched into our entertainment consciousness.
Do you think that, like, liberals just secretly worry that those people are right?
That's what keeps them up at night?
That's the point of the movie, kind of!
We'll get into that.
Yeah, it is interesting.
All the characters in this movie, that's like the guy you like want to be, which I thought was interesting.
You wouldn't want to be like the upper class elite who owns multiple homes because he's kind of nervous.
He doesn't know what the hell's going on.
You want to be the upper middle class professor guy.
But the paranoid MAGA guy, that's the guy who has his shit together in this movie.
Oh, and by the way, I know Ethan Hawke is supposed to be playing an annoying, nervous guy, but he's also probably his poorest role I've ever seen.
The acting is outrageously bad.
Julia Roberts is unbearable in every scene.
I feel like most other people kind of pull their weight just fine, but that duo at the core is just...
genuinely unbelievably bad. Starting from right at the beginning where he is in the apartment he lives in with his
wife and children and he says her name like question mark like from his bed.
It's like you don't that's not whatever whatever I'm just saying Ethan Hawke was also he's looking bad.
Sorry Ethan.
I really like Ethan Hawke, so yeah, it was not awesome to see him stumble like this.
You know, but a lot of that has to do with the direction, a lot of that has to do with the writing.
It can't be squarely placed on Mr. Ethan's shoulders.
No, but you know what I could do?
I could squarely place like an 8x scope No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Parody? No, parody, parody, parody, parody, parody. No, very much not parody. In
literal life, I would get the 8X scope. It wouldn't be attached to anything. Surprise, twist, ah, you didn't see
that one coming. You would just be looking through it and thinking, imagining. Just kidding, it's attached to a g*d
and I pulled the trigger, and now the b*tch is going through his g*d and it's blowing up. Okay, but these are
not the only celebrities involved in the production.
Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama are credited as executive producers on the film.
And you know what?
I actually do believe that because this movie is soundtracked by Obama's summer playlist.
He multiple times just playing a track over a fucking scene.
He's like, you know, I like the movie, Rami, but if you could just put in another one of my great jams, one of those groovy numbers that I put on my summer playlist, just through a whole scene.
Let me be clear, I do like the track from Joey Badass with two dollar signs in his name.
And as you can imagine, you know, this has sent the world of conspiracy theorists and bakers into an absolute frenzy, something I'm sure no one could have predicted.
But I have to admit, an uneasy feeling came over me as I saw their names in large block letters as the opening credits rolled over an aggressive hip-hop beat.
A sacred line between politicians and scripted features had been crossed in my head.
Being president doesn't qualify you to make an end-of-the-world flick, one of my fave genres by the way.
In fact, it's the last type of person I want telling me what the apocalypse might look like.
Let's get into it.
Leave the World Behind is a 2 hour and 20 minute feature film based on the novel penned by Ruman Alam of the same name.
Fuck you.
They should literally, it should be one of those things where filmmakers, you either get your movie to an hour and 45, or we stop, they cut it.
Like Netflix cuts it.
The movie theater cuts it.
Sorry, no one gets to see the end then.
Fuck it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know, it is crazy.
They don't make short, tight movies anymore.
I very recently watched Ernest Saves Christmas.
That's an hour 35.
Fuck yeah.
Perfect time for Ernest Saves Christmas.
To clear our palate after watching this film, my wife and I watched Taken 1 and Taken 2.
And I made a point of, in the Netflix sort of, you know, launch screen, I was like, look at this.
Look at this, babe.
Taken 1 hour and 30 minutes.
And then I switched over to Taken 2 and I was like, look at this.
Taken 2.
Hour and 31 minutes.
This, this is a filmmaker who respects our, Luc Besson, he respects my time as a film watcher.
And I don't understand.
If everybody had to, you know, follow this standard of an hour and 45, they could turn these Marvel movies into like three movies and release them, you know, three years in a row or whatever.
Wait, wait, wait.
Three over the course of the year?
You could make more money on it.
Are you telling me that Taken was directed by Luc Besson?
It was written by Luc Besson.
Both.
Really?
Both written by Luc Besson.
He does not, by the way, respect your time.
Don't say that about Luc Besson.
I don't care.
As I'm watching the first Taken, I'm like, this is so much better than Sound of Freedom.
In just about every single way.
Okay, that's another episode for another time.
Yeah, this movie should have been called Taken because it took my fucking time.
And it took my feeling good.
I watched it on my birthday!
I ended my birthday watching this!
You fucked my birthday up, Obama!
Are you fucking happy?
Okay, so, so, okay, apparently- I went to the gun range!
I had the best day of my life!
Alright, yeah.
And you fucked it up!
Julian on his birthday was practicing for his, uh, his Ethan Hawke, um, encounter.
I turned 30 this year!
And because of you, it turned- it turns out I turned 40 instead!
Fuck you!
Yes, by the time this movie is over, watching the movie is actually like an M. Night plot in and of itself, that by the time it ends, you're actually ten years older, and the whole world has lost ten years of their time, they don't know where it went.
The movie that makes you old.
It makes you old!
Yeah, I mean, we'll get into this, but this was such, I thought, like a wannabe M. Night movie with none of the charm.
You know, M. Night, look, he doesn't always nail it, okay?
But there is imagination in his movies, and even if he doesn't nail the landing, or he stumbles, or it doesn't really work, there's always something that's, like, interesting about it.
And as Liv was mentioning, you know, watching this movie, there was nothing interesting About it.
It was... We can get through this without sucking off M. Night Shyamalan.
Like, let's not exaggerate here.
No, we can't.
Yes, we can.
Thought maybe there'd be a movie night episode where Jake and Julian agree it can't happen.
Well, this man is just trying to suck off late Luc Besson.
He's trying to suck off M. Night Shyamalan.
Like, come on, man.
These are my heroes.
Apparently there were 10 studios bidding for the rights of this book before it had even released.
So here's a book that's like about, you know, a pre-apocalyptic, a pre-civil war, and every major studio is like, we need this movie.
I'm just glad that fucking Ben Shapiro's fiction is finally getting its due.
Everybody's, all the conspiracists' fiction is getting its due, and we're gonna get to that.
So, yeah, so there are 10 studios bidding on this.
Netflix won the deal, paying in the seven-figure range according to Deadline Hollywood.
Now, initially, Denzel Washington was set to produce and star alongside Julia Roberts, but he dropped out for unknown reasons, and Marshala Ali took his place.
Uh, hello?
Yep.
Let me just, uh, just wanted to say that, uh, I heard you lost the rights, and, uh, who's got game now?
Being a huge Denzel fan myself, and having probably read too many articles about his career, I have a potential explanation for why Washington parted ways with the film.
In probably one of the most awkward scenes in the entire movie, which we will discuss, Julia Roberts, in the script I've written, Julian Roberts, hilarious, puts on a hip-hop record that she and Rashad Ali flirtingly dance to.
Oh, that scene.
And Denzel himself has commented on his lack of interest in sharing intimate moments with white women on screen.
The decision stems from an incident that took place during a screening of the film "The Mighty Quinn"
and during a scene in which Denzel and co-star Mimi Rogers kissed on screen, black women and the test audience booed.
What?
Denzel was so concerned that he was alienating his fans, and he was also hoping to change how black women were
represented in films, stating, "Black women are not often seen as objects of desire in
film. They have always been my core audience."
Okay, so this is awesome because it means that we, our culture has gone from the Black Panthers existing to Denzel
being like, "I won't kiss white women."
That's what we have now.
Cool.
Out of serious fact.
Funnily enough, the most public example of this is with Julia Roberts.
The two starred together in 1993's The Pelican Brief, and Roberts commented publicly that co-star Denzel had asked that the intimate scenes between the two characters be cut out of the film.
Like I said, I read way too many Denzel Washington articles.
This is a good bake.
I think I believe this.
You've convinced me.
Well, there was one listener who wrote to me and was like, can you find out why Denzel Washington exited the film?
I texted my agent buddy and I was like, hey man, who works at the agency that the film is repped at?
I said, hey man, do you know why Denzel dropped out?
And he just went, no clue.
So I was left on my own to figure this out.
That's my bake.
It could be right, it could be wrong.
Hey, it's me, Julian Roberts.
I wanted to kiss Denzel.
The film was allegedly made for around $70 million, although there is no official data to confirm that number.
The film's studio, Netflix, often keeps its numbers shrouded in mystery.
Yeah, that came up during the strike.
Everything about this film feels like a targeted Instagram ad, with swirling, disorienting cinematography that reminds the viewer how Disorienting the end of the world could slash will be.
The latter is certainly the choice of the filmmaker, but the former seems to have very much been a part of the original novel.
Here's an example where the author is describing the groceries that Julia Roberts' character, an advertising executive from Long Island, has purchased for their Airbnb stay.
I will now perform this for you.
This is also my audition to be an audiobook reader on Audible, so if there are any Audible executives out there, please consider me.
No.
She bought packages of cookies from Pepperidge Farm, and three pints of Ben & Jerry's Politically Virtuous ice cream, and a Duncan Hines boxed mix for a yellow cake, and a Duncan Hines tub of chocolate frosting with a red plastic lid.
Because parenthood had taught her that on a vacation's inevitable rainy day, you could while away an hour by baking a boxed cake.
She bought two Tumescent zucchini, a bag of snap peas, a bouquet of curling kale so green it was almost black.
She bought a bottle of olive oil and a box of Entenmann's crumb-topped doughnuts, a bunch of bananas and a bag of white nectarines, and two plastic packages of strawberries, a dozen eggs, a plastic box of pre-washed spinach, a plastic container of olives, some heirloom tomatoes wrapped in crinkling cellophane, marbled green and shocking orange.
Shut up!
Shut up!
Shut the fuck up!
I'm not fucking done.
of hamburger buns, their bottoms dusty with flour.
Shut up! - And a jar of--
Shut up! - And a jar of--
So bad.
Shut the fuck up!
I'm not fucking done.
I'm not fucking done.
Fuck!
What the fuck?
The packaging was crinkling?
You're a terrible writer!
And a jar of locally made pickles.
She bought four avocados and three limes and a sandy bundle of cilantro, even though Archie
refused to eat cilantro.
Who cares?
It was more than $200, but never mind.
Eleven Studios bidding for this.
You're bidding for this!
I'm going to need some help.
The man placing every item into brown paper bags was maybe in high school, but maybe not.
So then don't write about it!
Don't write about it, so then don't write about it.
(laughing)
He wore a yellow t-shirt and had brown hair and an overall square affect,
like he'd been carved from a block of wood.
Oh, fuck's sake.
There was some stirring watching his hands at work, but vacations did that, didn't they?
Made you horny.
What?
Made everything seem possible.
A life completely different than the one normally inhabited.
She's getting horny watching his hands put stuff in a bag?
Who is this writer?
She, Amanda, might be a mother temptress, suckling on a post-adolescent's hot tongue in the parking lot of the stop and shop.
It's sucking, not suckling, but it's still so bad.
Excuse me, what is going on?
Who is the writer?
Who is the writer?
Ruman Alam is the name.
Say his name again, sorry?
It's Ruman Alam.
Julian is frozen.
I thought his internet maybe went out, but he's just, he's frozen.
Is this a woman writing?
No, it's not.
I don't think so.
I think it's a guy.
So this guy is imagining that fucking like 40 year old ad executives are getting horny from a block shaped guy putting fucking stuff in grocery bags.
Oh my God.
All right.
I'm sorry.
We have to get through this.
So I know Julian, you're going to have, yeah.
Julian's got to get to therapy after this and it's going to be quite a session given the episode.
I'm going to need it.
As most of you know, I hate this type of shit more than anyone.
It all started when people started captioning their Instagram photos of home cooked meals as if they appeared on the menu at a bougie restaurant.
Crispy kale with fresh snap peas and fingerling potatoes with a homemade grain mustard relish.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Either list the recipe or just post the fucking picture and say, I'm so proud of myself for making this.
I hope the snap peas are fresh.
Who's going to be like crispy kale with nearly expired snap peas?
You know what, though?
This works.
I'm sure.
It works when your fucking main character is an actual psychopath.
In American Psycho, this works.
The fact that he's obsessed with every fucking stage of what he buys and puts on his face and stuff like that.
And I get it.
She's supposed to be annoying.
But what it's... No!
No!
I just made myself lightheaded of how mad I got just there.
Also, in the film version, Julia Roberts' character, Amanda, picks up Ethan Hawke a pack of Siggy's because, quote, she knows he likes to sneak a smoke and since they're on vacation, he can smoke as much as he wants as long as he keeps it away from the kids.
Totally unrealistic.
No uptight ad executive wife is doing this.
I'm sorry.
They're not going, hey babe, I picked you up a pack of your favorite ciggies.
You can smoke as much as you want.
Come in reeking of ciggies and play with the kids.
No fucking way.
I'm sorry.
I picked up a rectangular shaped, covered with crinkly plastic, red and white package of Marlboro cigarettes.
The commercial kind.
The film was shot primarily in Long Island and released on Netflix December 8th of this year.
The story centers around two families, one white and one black.
Julia Roberts is a misanthropic advertising executive who doesn't even bother to disguise her racism.
She's married to Ethan Hawke, who I'm a big fan of, who plays a university professor that one critic described as a quote, weak beta male.
Yes, there's like a whole scene where he's like, I'm a worm, I'm pathetic.
Oh, we'll get that.
Yeah, we'll get that.
It's awesome.
The couple have two teenage children, a creepy horny boy named Archie and his younger sister, Rosie, whose primary concern throughout the film is whether or not she's going to know the ending to the television series Friends.
So we have a 12-year-old who cares about Friends and who knows what goes on in episodes of the West Wing!
Shut the fuck up!
The friends thing makes sense.
I know, like, they watch it on Netflix.
It's on Netflix.
Or maybe it's not anymore.
They're definitely that group.
It was.
I looked it up.
The West Wing is unexcusable.
Okay, fine.
Whatever.
We can no longer be quote-unquote friends, Liv.
But whatever.
It's fine.
One could argue that this entire film is technically about one 13-year-old's quest to find out what happens to Ross and Rachel, as her storyline is the only one that gets any closure.
Think about that.
Usually, you know, a movie is about a character's arc.
The only arc that happens in this movie is that this girl finally gets to see what happens at the end of Friends.
Yeah, I think it's supposed to be part of the disorienting thing, you know, it's like everyone's like, we don't, no one knows what the fuck is going on.
And so that includes the audience.
And so, and so they only have this one relatively, this is, it seems like a subplot, but it's the only full arc in the entire movie.
Yes.
The only arc is the arc of the fucking shells that I'm going to be launching at the... You know where.
It's supposed to be, like, a commentary on, like, iPad babies.
Like, it's, it's, it's like, surely it has something to say about that.
But, like, it doesn't really?
Like, it's like kids, kids always on they dang iPad.
Like, that's about it.
And the importance of physical media, like a DVD.
I thought it was more than that.
I think, like, you as the audience are going, it's like, the world is literally falling apart and, like, you know, you are in immediate danger and you're caring about your silly little sitcom.
It's like, obviously, this is a commentary on, you know, media addicted people who don't care about the more substantial issues that are swirling around them.
Oh, you mean the same type of feeling you might get if a fucking ex-president who for eight years did nothing to correct course would fucking take a twenty million fucking dollar contract with Netflix and make us think that, hey, nothing fucking matters?
And Travis, I would say, look, that is an astute observation from an intelligent watcher.
If the film hadn't told you that, in the scene where she walks into her brother's bedroom, and she's like, I'm so upset that I can't finish Friends, and he's like, haven't you, look what's going on around you, the world is ending, maybe you should open your eyes and, I don't know, get a new hobby.
Maybe find something else to, whatever.
It's like, they tell you exactly what you're supposed to get out of this.
Ugh, yeah, this is gonna be a pretty angrier view, which I should preface with the fact that, I have never written nor directed a film that premiered anywhere.
I am a small, petty man who admittedly was so flabbergasted that a former president would attach his name to a movie about an impending civil war that I am totally unable to enjoy the film on its own merits if they do in fact exist.
They don't, but they don't, I'll tell you right now.
We agree, we really do, for once.
So Julia Roberts and her family rent this super bougie Airbnb, which is even designed by a bespoke architecture agency out of New York called The Up Studio.
There are, like, articles and shit being like, oh, the company that designed the house, and it's, like, not even that fucking special.
This thing reeks.
The house isn't even that crazy cool or weird like the hotel in M. Night's old or the really cool, I believe it's like a Norwegian hotel that's in Ex Machina.
It's just a regular McMansion rich person's house.
This does fit though because if you've ever seen the Obama's home, it's like the most expensive, most unimaginative and ugly thing.
It's awesome.
It'd be even cooler if it was like, they actually used the Obama's house for this movie.
I mean, it'd give people more to bake, more than there already is, but... Could it still end with a nuclear bomb then?
I don't fucking know.
I don't know.
Everything is peachy at first, with Ethan Hawke begging for sex and Julia Roberts allowing him 15 minutes to nut.
The trip takes a turn for the worse as the house's internet becomes spotty.
Don't worry, gang.
There is plenty of dialogue about Wi-Fi's, routers, modems, and resetting.
Yeah, and it doubles as great character work where she's like, do you think we need to reset the router?
And he's like, I don't know.
You're the tech whiz.
And he's like, "You still down with burgers tonight?"
She's like, "Yeah, I'm down."
"Oh God, there's one part where Julia Roberts drinks so much wine that she's like,
'Oh, I can't even have another glass. I'm so donezo.' I was like, 'Oh God, this is not...'"
Infuriating, right? Infiltrating.
Infuriating, genuinely.
The real inciting incident occurs when an oil tanker drives straight up onto the beach
where the family is relaxing.
It's a pretty cool scene and preys on a unique kind of phobia that I didn't know existed
called megalophobia, which is the fear of large objects.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A police officer explains that it, quote, has something to do with the nav system, indicating that the internet troubles are more widespread than the Airbnb.
On their way home, while the kids watch the event they just witnessed live on a YouTube video, Julia Roberts, like a moth to a flame, spots a Starbucks.
Without saying anything, Ethan Hawke instinctively begins to pull the car over.
And you'll get a little bit of the internet, the little internet talk here in this clip too.
I included it just so you can see.
There's a Starbucks.
I wanted to read up on what happened at the beach, but the Wi-Fi isn't working.
You think the router needs a reset?
Well, sorry I can't help you there.
You are the tech whiz, not I. You know, the TV's out, too.
I tried to check the game, but there's no signal.
You still gonna be down for burgers tonight?
Yeah, I could be down for that.
Meanwhile...
The kids seem to have completely gotten over it, like it was something they saw on a show.
They're on to the next episode.
Like it was something they saw on a show, but on to the next episode.
On a show, on to the next episode.
Thank you.
Thank you for explaining your metaphors.
Like, just have the characters say them.
That's cool.
Because I didn't really know.
The best is if they pan over and the brother's just dunking the sister.
Full power.
They're like, yeah, normal stuff.
That night, as the couple is playing Jenga and drinking large glasses of wine, there's a knock at the door.
It's G.H.
and Ruth, the owners of the Airbnb.
They explain that there's been a severe blackout in New York, and they didn't feel comfortable staying in the city.
Julia Roberts is immediately distrustful, not believing that a black couple could own such a mansion like this, and basically all but says this.
She immediately wants to call the rental company to check their terms and conditions.
We thought maybe if you let us stay... Because again...
You know, it is, like, our house.
What she's trying to say is we want it to be somewhere safe.
Well, you know, we're on vacation.
Clay, Amanda, we could absolutely refund you your money.
You want us to leave?
It's the middle of the night.
My children are sleeping upstairs.
You come in here and talk about refunding our money?
I think I need to call the company.
I don't even think you can do this.
There's got to be a number on there.
That's really not necessary.
Why not?
Because we're not saying you should leave.
We could refund you, say, 50% of what you paid.
You know, there's an in-law suite we could stay downstairs.
Downstairs?
50%.
I think we need to look at the terms and conditions here.
We need to find the Wi-Fi router.
I'll try tethering it to my cell.
Well, the phones aren't working, Clay.
How is that supposed to make a difference?
I think the internet is down anyway, so... Okay, look.
I'm sorry.
I just don't feel comfortable staying in a house with people I don't know.
For some reason it pissed me off that Ethan Hawke is wearing a Bikini Kill shirt that looks freshly printed from Redbubble.
It's just like, come on guys.
Tether it to myself.
The amount of...
The writer letting you know what they know about internet?
Look, that's my lane, okay?
And I do it as satire, alright?
This is, like, completely unironic.
Also, it's like she's... it's almost as if she's, like, about to call them the N-word.
She's like, I don't like staying in my house with...
People I don't know.
Like, goddamn.
Like, yeah, I'm sure, like, I'm absolutely sure there are, like, Gen X white women who are like this, but it did feel, like, ham-fisted?
I don't know.
She's just such an incredibly unlikable character.
And then later on we're supposed to, like, like her?
After not that much happens?
Yeah, there's no, there is no incident that happens between them.
You know, just, I mean, I'm giving you a bad pitch here, but if something were to happen, like, GH saves her life, right?
Some crazy event where she realizes, holy shit, like, this guy does have my best interests at heart, and, like, he saved my life, like, I'm gonna give him a second chance.
But it's just, like, nothing.
There's nothing.
I guess maybe that they let them back into the house?
Or let us hate her.
Let us hate her and have her be horribly killed.
We all enjoy it.
I was waiting for those deer to just murder her.
Yeah.
And what did the deer ever do?
Nothing.
Why have the deer in there at all?
They didn't do shit.
The next day, everyone is troubled by the internet and television not working, especially the couple's young daughter, who says she has severe anxiety over not being able to watch the Friends finale.
She claims that Ethan Hawke told her that when they're on vacation, they can have, quote, as much screen time as they want.
Totally unrealistic also, when I went on vacation with my parents, the whole point was to get away from the screens.
They even said this, we're out here because we want to get you away from the screens, enjoying this, blah blah, whatever.
After a couple of phone alerts that suggest that hackers might be behind the blackout, Ethan Hawke decides to drive into town to retrieve a newspaper so that they might have an idea about what's going on in the world.
During this, Marshala Ali drives over to the neighbor's place to see if he can use a satellite phone that he knows that they have.
While the respective dads are out in the world gathering information, Archie, Ethan Hawke's teenage son, is creepily snapping pictures of Ali's daughter as she lays out by the pool in a bikini.
We will later see him jacking off to these pictures.
Yeah, was that necessary?
No, it wasn't!
It led nowhere!
It led nowhere!
What's the point?
Why make the son like a cree- like a creepy guy?
And then, okay, I guess his punishment is his teeth falls out, which he doesn't seem to be too concerned about.
We'll get to that.
Ali finds the satellite phone, but he still can't grab a signal.
He also discovers a pile of bodies behind the house from a crashed plane.
While he's there, another plane crashes into the beach, which is a complete ripoff slash maybe homage, I guess if you want to say, to Hitchcock's North... is it North by Northwest?
With the plane flying behind the... I guess let me look that up so the angry people don't get me.
Jake's life, he's so put upon.
Damn.
Do you see what you're doing to him, people out there?
Yes, North by Northwest, the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film.
Yeah, awesome.
Okay, I actually thought that that was a cool shot.
I thought for sure that it was all CGI when the sort of tsunami breaks through the windows of the house that he runs inside to take shelter from the crashing plane, but they actually did that effect practically.
Is like CGI like as far as like the boats and the planes and stuff and it looks like shit.
Like this movie looks really bad.
They have shot it all in digital.
They've put on weird Instagram filters and fake grain and it's not looking good.
So meanwhile, Soy Ethan Hawke gets lost without GPS.
His character's name is Clay, by the way, so maybe I'll refer to him as that.
He's a totally useless worm.
He pulls over briefly to try and help a hysterical woman on the side of the road, but realizing she only speaks Spanish, he leaves her in the dust.
His punishment?
A drone flies over him, dumping thousands of pamphlets with Arabic writing on them.
I was like, what?
I was like, what?
What?
The woman desperately needs his help.
She's like, things are very bad.
She's talking about all the things she's seen in Spanish.
And he just like looks at her kind of blankly after a while and like drives off, like abandoning her, even though she clearly needs help.
And I couldn't help but think, oh, this is the only like actually cool metaphor in the movie.
Yes.
Ethan Hawke is Obama and the woman is America.
It's an analogy for race relations.
I think.
No!
No, it's just like, you have eight years to pick the poor woman up and drive her to safety, and you end up just blankly looking at her as you drive off.
Because, like, that woman dies, presumably.
For sure.
Like, she's saying something about how, like, her family's in the city and a plane is crashing, I think, and he just, you know.
I thought for sure that this was going to be kind of another thing to bake, that oh, if you translate the Spanish, or people who are Spanish speakers will get a little bit of extra sort of lore here, right?
But all she's saying is, I'm lost, I don't know where I am, I've been wandering around forever, and there was a plane dumping gas, dumping red gas, and she's just...
Talking about things that we've already seen, as opposed to using this moment to add to the story.
Look, I don't... It foreshadows the plane crash, because it's right before that, and she mentions she sees it falling out of the sky, I think.
I think it's just another...
Like, really kind of like ham-handed commentaries.
Like, you know, these like, you know, these bleeding heart libs when confronted with someone who is actually in distress will just drive off and abandon them as soon as they get a little bit flustered and confused.
Well, I have to give it to them, that's a correct assessment of locals.
Yeah, that one's fine.
That's accurate.
I feel like the analogy for race relations is, like, the daughter of Marshale doesn't want to let the white family be able to, like, stay in their house.
And he's like, no, they should, we should let them in, even though, like, they're racist to us, like, we should, you know.
And then eventually, I guess, spoilers, they all kind of come together and they, you know, the white lady isn't racist anymore, I guess, specifically to them.
She's like, well, Dad, can we at least get them to do a land acknowledgement?
And the point is that like you should be nice to the white people even though they're bad.
Yes, I guess the I guess the teenage boy will end up regrowing his teeth.
I guess he gets the right medicine to regrow the teeth later on.
So yeah, that's how it works.
And then Everyone gets attacked by a direct energy weapon.
Perhaps even voice-to-skull technology, nobody knows.
Ali hints to Roberts that he had a sense that something was coming because he works in finance and he has the ability to see the future.
Also with the energy weapon, is that just, they're saying Havana Syndrome's real, basically?
They later say it, yeah.
They later say it.
I hope we're playing that clip, right?
We're playing that fucking clip where they- Of course we are.
Literally make Havana Syndrome a real thing, which that makes sense if it's a movie produced by Obama.
Michelle, have you heard of Havana Syndrome?
That's what happened to me last night, by the way.
I wasn't having any trouble down there.
I'm pretty sure I was being hit by a direct energy beam.
So Ethan Hawke finally returns to the Airbnb empty-handed and totally disoriented.
He shows the rest of the group one of the pamphlets he pulled from the hood of his car.
Where have you been?
What were you doing?
I was going crazy.
I don't know.
I just started to drive and then I heard that noise and I came right back.
So you didn't see anyone that might help us figure out what's happening here?
No, I did not see anyone.
But I did see something.
I saw...
I, uh...
It was this huge drone, you know, flying in the middle of nowhere,
dropping off thousands of these.
I have no idea what it says.
Death to America.
What?
Death to America.
I mean, I don't know what the rest of this means, but this part, it definitely means death to America.
I remember from a game I was playing.
Yeah, this is incredible.
You know, the damn video games, they're teaching the kids to hate America.
I know, and it's like, on the one hand, I have bragged before that playing DayZ allowed me to read Cyrillic, but that's like kind of an easier language to learn because some of the letters kind of have similar, they look similar and they have similar sounds.
It's just, you know, there's some different sounds, like a P is actually an R sound.
It wasn't your years of indoctrination with the FSB?
But I was like, I was like, oh, what, how does he know?
Like recognizing Farsi?
Yeah, like recognizing Farsi, like by playing Call of Duty and seeing like a flag on like, you know, some pickup truck with a machine gun is on the back that he's mows down.
What's funny is that they're there without meaning to touching on something very funny, which is that America puts fucking propaganda in its video games.
Yes.
Now, as soon as Islamic terrorists are part of the mix, Julia Roberts and her family are out of there.
They pack up their car and head to the freeway.
Now, this perhaps leads to what I would say is the best scene in the movie, where the couple is forced to dodge a horde of self-driving Teslas.
It's genuinely a good scene, I thought.
It's funny, it's scary, it's well shot.
It shows the promise of what this movie could have potentially been.
But also it has, like, kind of a Prometheus moment where she doesn't, like, pull to the side of the road.
She just keeps going on the road, like, running against the Teslas even though they're automatically driving towards her.
Well, yeah, it's a great 1-2-3, right?
The first move is she pulls forward to dodge one Tesla, she backs up then to dodge the second one, and then you get this kind of continuous tracking shot, you know, POV out the windshield of their car as they're now driving down the freeway, dodging them as they're coming at them.
I really genuinely thought it was well set up.
You can see like the side of the road has a little thing you can pull off into.
Like just pull off into the side. It shows that there's an aerial shot.
Yeah.
The family ends up right back at the Airbnb where they are accepted back in unconditionally.
Now, I thought that there was a missed opportunity here to move the white family into the basement, because there is a line I liked from Ruth, Marshala Ali's daughter, later on in the film where she asks her dad, you know, why they have to sleep in the basement of their own house.
And I think character-wise, Julia Roberts might have been more interesting if she started off doing her very best to hide her racism, as it's written in the book, and that as the situation grows more tense, she allows her true feelings to bubble to the surface.
But anyways, I digress.
That night, Roberts apologizes to Ali for being so fucking racist, and admits that she's actually starting to like him.
With the tension between them starting to relax, GH tells her about a warning he received from one of his clients, who is part of the quote, evil cabal.
One of my clients invited me and my wife to a private event.
My client, EM.
I won't say his name, but you'd recognize it, though.
Is he a celebrity?
Oh, no, nothing like that.
But in the business world, he's one of the biggest out there.
He deals mostly in defense contracting.
I'm talking hush-hush, top-secret money from the Pentagon.
Perhaps the most powerful person I've ever had a meal with.
Anyway, we're at this soiree at his house.
It's getting late.
My wife, she wants to go.
But he and I are just having a blast, and he doesn't want the night to end.
After a few more glares, my wife agrees to take a cab, and I'll come home after.
Mm.
I bet she was real happy about that.
Mm-hmm.
So, we're having a few more drinks, getting really sauced, and at one point, I don't think he could stand, and I was pretty wobbly myself.
I wouldn't know anything about that, sir.
So, he takes me to his study, smoke a few cigars, and we're sort of flying.
high, laughing at almost everything.
Eventually, he starts in on how much he likes me and how he wishes he could invite me on this trip
he's about to go on.
What-- what-- what kind of trip?
Where is he going?
That's exactly what I asked.
Then he turns to me, serious face, and he says, oh, you know, just my annual meeting
with the rest of the evil cabal that runs the world.
[laughs]
He was the kind of guy that was always known for jokes like that.
Again, if I told you his name, you'd understand.
Well, I just have to take your word for it.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna pop off my light.
And then, yesterday before the symphony, my friend calls me up.
No scheduled appointment like he usually does, just calls me out of the blue.
He wants me to move around some of his money.
And we're talking some big numbers, even for him.
And as we're getting off the phone, I asked if he wanted to grab a drink.
He tells me he's going away for a while.
I joke back to him.
Well, yeah.
You hanging with your evil cabal this weekend?
Thought that was only during the winter solstice.
Then he doesn't laugh.
Then he always laughs, even with bad jokes.
All he said was, take care of yourself.
Almost as if he felt sorry for me.
What are we doing?
Yeah, there's just... What are we doing here?
Really?
What is the coherent... I guess the point is that it's not coherent and the things are just like super complicated, man.
But like, what's the... who is actually attacking America here?
And why does... why do all the rich Americans know about it?
You think that they wouldn't want a civil war?
It's bad for business when your entire country explodes?
And framing a defense contractor who does a secret deals with the Pentagon as if he's the shady bad guy as if as if Barack Obama didn't explicitly work with, you know, with these people.
It's like, I don't.
Who is this for?
Well, I think I think there I think there's two things going on here.
It's like, number one, I think there's supposed to be a parallel between like the super upper class connected people abandoning everyone else and like even Hawk abandoning that woman on the side of the road.
His idea is like, well, everyone's just gonna, when, when things get really hairy in this hyper individualistic society, everyone's just going to abandon everyone lower than them.
Yeah.
The class system will break down.
Which also is like a apocalypse cliche.
Like, it's not like, wow, that really makes you think.
I've never seen a movie say that.
It's not very insightful.
I'm not, this, this analysis isn't very deep because it feels like, I feel like they're trying to, okay, we got to make this really clear for the people who are maybe, you know, not that perceptive.
It feels like they're really trying to hammer this idea of like how people, you know, how confusing things will be and how people will be abandoned.
Also, I don't know if there's a clip of it later, but at the end of the monologue, he mentions, like, well, there isn't an evil cabal.
Like, no one's in charge.
Or maybe that happens later.
Yeah, he says the scariest thing about it is that nobody's in charge.
We're completely rudderless.
Which has, like, Obama's, like, you know, fingerprints all over it, insofar as it's like, you know... Hey, I'm not responsible.
Let me be clear.
It's not my fault that the Palestinians are left behind.
I had no control.
Nobody's in charge.
World's totally chaotic.
Which is like as kind of stupid or meaningless as the cabal analysis.
Like clearly people have agency and have very significant effect on world events.
Like this person made this decision in this powerful, you know, like It's just completely removing the agency from someone who's had a substantially, noticeably, concretely negative effect on global events for eight years and could have changed that in some way.
Being like, look, the machinations of imperialism, I was there, but this is going to happen no matter what.
Yeah, I may have given you the impression that I've got this, but I didn't have this.
This shit's crazy.
This shit is wild.
So then, after this stunning revelation, GH brings Amanda into his record room to show off his collection.
I believe this scene is meant to symbolize the importance of physical media.
He's gonna put on a jazz record, but Amanda wants to have a two-person dance party.
She pulls out a hip-hop record and then begins to dance exactly like a 50-year-old white woman might.
It won't do anything for our precious listeners, who we clearly hate by including this, but I'm just going to play a short clip for the host so you remember how bizarre this moment is.
Wow, this is an impressive collection.
You like jazz?
You want to listen to jazz?
Sure, why not?
Uh, because I thought we were going to have some fun?
No, well it's not something we could dance to.
You can dance to jazz.
In fact, when I bought my first record, I was... Oh, please, not another one of your stories.
They end up leaving me severely disturbed.
Wait, what are these records?
Don't look over there.
Those are my daughter's records.
She had a DJ phase in college.
Now this looks like something a lady can properly dance to.
Oh, come on.
That's not what I brought you in here for.
You said you wanted to win me over.
This is how.
I wonder if she could tell I'm hard right now.
Didn't tell us correct to pass on that.
(laughing)
Didn't tell us, Craig, to pass on that.
(laughing)
No, this is so humiliating.
(moaning)
Oh, and he starts doing his little dancing too.
Feels so bad.
I wrote down watching this that this is Obama's version of what Don Draper does when he's too stressed in Mad Men.
So, uh, this is exactly, by the way, how my 70-year-old aunt danced at my wedding.
I'm being totally serious.
These are moves that I recognize.
Mm-hmm.
The awesome dancing is interrupted by another blast from the direct energy weapon, or perhaps a Jewish space laser, because in this movie, both of those things could potentially be real.
We cut to the entire Yuppie family sleeping together in one bed.
The son now has a fever, a direct result of a voice-to-skull ray gun.
He didn't cover his ears as quick as everyone else during the first blast.
And the 13-year-old daughter can't sleep because she's thinking about The West Wing.
What are you still doing up?
I keep thinking about this one West Wing episode.
Does this phrase make us asleep?
You watched The West Wing?
I forgot about that last one.
Oh my god!
It's a 12-year-old!
Leave her alone!
I'm a 13-year-old girl.
I love Aaron Sorkin.
Oh, come on.
Come on.
Yeah, that's just... And they know it's wrong.
That's why they have Julia Roberts be like, you watch The West Wing?
But they know it's wrong, but they can't help themselves.
They have to do it.
It has to be in the movie.
And it also doesn't make sense.
No.
Like, is the point that she's right?
There's also a weird thing in here about, like, nature.
Like, there's a shit ton of deer and she's the only one who notices them.
And they're acting in, like, this weird erratic way.
It's kind of like a nature is healing sort of thing.
Yeah, they're encroaching on the space occupied by human beings because presumably human beings will no longer exist in a matter of, I don't know, months, years or whatever.
There's two different interpretations.
One is that the animals are trying to warn the people.
you know, that something bad is happening.
And then the other theory is that the deer are reclaiming, you know, reclaiming nature in the, you know,
in the lead up to a mass extinction level event.
And just acting in ways that like deer don't act.
Like I thought there was gonna be like a, some sort of like supernatural
or like fantastical explanation for that.
Like, initially, when that happened, that massive, like, herd of deer came up and watched the young, like, daughter.
But there isn't any.
No, no.
But have you never... It's because you've never experienced Hamas deers.
Do you condemn the Hamas deers, Julian?
Do you condemn the Hamas Bambi?
I read an interview with the director where he basically says, you know, what I wanted to do with the deer was make things that are normally peaceful and serene feel, you know, scary and, you know, rife with anxiety.
That was his explanation.
I wanted to make a movie that would normally be good, bad.
The break into Act 3 and the ultimate climax of the movie begins with the teenage son, Archie, waking up and pulling his teeth out of his head.
It's absolutely insane body horror, and this kid is just pulling his teeth out like it's no big deal.
This prompts Ali and Hawk to pay a visit to G.H.' 's contractor, the guy who built his house and happens to be extremely pilled, played by Kevin Bacon.
They assume that his paranoia may have caused him to stock some life-saving medicines for old toothless Joe.
I gotta be honest with you.
I'm surprised you guys are even out.
Well, we came out here because my son needs help.
He's vomiting.
He's lost his teeth and they just fell out.
Can't explain it.
Huh.
His teeth, huh?
Well, it's gotta have something to do with that noise.
You know something about the noise?
Well, it's not all that dissimilar to what happened in Cuba a while back.
Microwave weapons, they call it, produces a kind of radiation that can be beamed out through sound.
Some people lost their teeth there, too.
Outside of that, the only thing I know for sure is there's not a lot of information getting out, so... I assume it's a war.
I guess this is supposed to be played as a twist because, like, initially the kid is, like, out in the woods and he gets bitten by a tick and the idea is, like, oh, I guess he's got, like, you know, rapidly advancing Lyme disease or something was the conclusion.
But I guess now the reveal is, like, no, it's Havana Syndrome and it's radiation poisoning.
And you can notice, like, the dad, also his teeth, like, his gums start to change color.
So, like, presumably it's happening to all of them.
Yeah.
At this point, I got the feeling like, like this movie was engineered to make liberals become targeted individuals.
And, you know, feel like every noise around the corner is like some, some enemy, you know, targeting them.
Well, looky here.
Looks like all the wokester's teeth are falling out.
It becomes clear that Kevin Bacon ain't giving none of his hard-earned stockpile to these two wealthy liberals.
In an act of desperation, Ali draws a pistol and a tense standoff ensues.
Just when you think things are about to get violent, Ethan Hawke is able to get through to Bacon by explaining what a massive pussy he is.
The only way this ends is if you get back in your vehicle and drive away now.
Drive away to what?
All the roads are blocked.
We're in the middle of God knows where.
There's no one else around.
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do right now.
I can barely do anything without my cell phone and my GPS.
I am a useless man.
But my son is sick.
And my daughter is missing.
And I don't know what to do.
But you are a very prepared man.
Fuck yeah, I am.
That's right.
That's why we came to you.
Because you're the only one who can help my son.
Not my problem.
No, you're right.
It's not.
But it's like you said.
I... What would you do if it was your family?
That's what I'm doing.
It's the only thing I can do.
I am begging you.
Please.
Please help my son.
This is basically every far-right conservative's fantasy scenario.
Libs coming to you, hat in hand, admitting they are worthless cucks and you were right all along.
Begging you to take them under your wing.
I don't think it's been done in any other movie, including right-wing ones, as well as this.
Once again, I must ask, why is a former sitting president endorsing this content?
You know, I talked about this in the group chat, but like, if this was produced by the Bush family instead of the Obamas, they would say that it's like Red Dawn or something.
Some sort of like far-right fantasy of like, you know, the paranoid right-wingers who are correct all the time and all the stupid head-in-the-clouds libs who did not really understand what was going on.
Those were the ones who are going to be left behind because they're so stupid and arrogant.
I would like to offer an alternate explanation, which is that this actually reveals the reality, which is that when the shit hits the fan, liberals would rather turn to fascism than become further left.
They will immediately be like, you know who was right?
Fucking Jed, my neighbor, who told me that it was a dog-eat-dog world.
Let me be clear.
You will fall to your knees and offer yourself to the deplorables.
They are the only ones who can help your son.
Kevin Bacon's character relents and doles out some medicine for the poor boy.
He also tells the pair that it's the Koreans behind the attack, that his buddy got dropped flyers with Korean written on them.
Shocked, G.H.
and Clay tell the pilled contractor that they got flyers written in Arabic.
This leads G.H.
to a shocking revelation.
Because my primary client works in the defense sector, I spend a lot of time studying the cost-benefit analysis of military campaigns.
There was one program in particular that terrified my client the most.
A simple three-stage maneuver that could topple a country's government from within.
First stage was isolation.
Disable their communication and transportation.
Make the target as deaf, dumb, and paralyzed as possible.
Setting them up for the second stage.
Synchronize chaos.
Terrorize them with covert attacks and misinformation.
Overwhelming their defense capabilities, leaving their weapon systems vulnerable to extremists in their own military.
Without a clear enemy or motive, people would start turning on each other.
If done successfully, a third stage would happen on its own.
What's the third stage?
A coup d'etat.
Civil war.
Again, just what happened in Libya, I guess.
Presumably.
Yeah, what America does.
Drop fucking flyers all over the place using the army PSYOPs.
What's amazing here is that I don't think I've ever seen a movie that is willing to put a flashback during a dialogue scene to something that happened a minute ago.
They are sitting in the driveway where that fucking, like, gun standoff happens, and they flash back to the gun standoff that they were just in.
It's so fucking awesome.
And this is supposed to be, like, the M. Night sort of, like, twist and revelation at the end, but you listen to it and you go, yeah, that's okay, that's, yeah, you've been basically building up to this, we know, we see.
It's so funny because the music is like, bum bum, like, here's the twist, here's the huge, you know, revelation.
And it's insane, because in the scene beforehand, Kevin Bacon says, you know, I don't know, we've got a lot of enemies, maybe they teamed up.
And it's like, whose fault is that?
Yes!
Whose fault is that?
As if you were not a part of that in some way.
It's just like...
No, it is so fucking awesome.
And I think that they really, they think they're super smart by not revealing who is doing the attack on America.
But I think it shows both the fact that America needs to have a shadow enemy now.
Like there's not really anybody directly fucking attacking America.
So it's like, well, who is it?
Is it going to be China?
Should we start a war with China?
Is it the Russians?
Is it the Koreans?
All of our enemies.
We've got so many.
I mean, they all hate our freedom.
I mean, they're not, like, attacking us right now, but we should still be scared, right?
I mean, they could want to attack us.
I mean, there's no reason to conclude from what you see in the movie that it's even an external enemy.
It could be, you know, domestic extremists, hackers, and they're generating, like they mentioned, this misinformation to make it appear like it's some sort of a foreign enemy of America.
Yeah, nothing like a former president putting his name on a movie that is designed to make us even more paranoid.
It's like, when you think about what this movie is about, or the sort of lore, or the premise, is that, like, a group of foreign supervillains are goading Americans into civil war.
And look, rhetoric like this has been totally chill the last seven years and has not destroyed anyone's mind, so I think we're still really safe.
Yeah, it would suck if, like, I don't know, a presidential campaign, like, started a huge red scare to smear the other candidate and then we had to deal with the fallout of that for years.
That's another thing, is the contextualization.
Like, America is so vulnerable to, like, Iran just completely destroying all their satellites.
Iran.
Iran.
Yeah, who were able to, like, destroy all their satellites and communications and then fly planes through America into their airspace, just dropping pamphlets in random places.
I mean, insane.
Genuinely.
Just, like, we're entering, like, the paranoid fantasy.
We don't even have the Cold War anymore.
This is, I don't know.
This is pathetic, man.
This is the dregs.
The film ends with the young daughter finding the neighbor's fancy doomsday bunker where she discovers that they own friends on DVD.
Credits roll.
I wrote last night, I said, somebody fucking stop me from doing a big shit in the middle of this episode.
Okay, I'll stop you.
Don't do it.
This is also, she's motivated by the quote from West Wing, where it's like, you know, the guy prays for escape from like a tsunami and then he gets like, Like, you know, a helicopter comes in and then he dies
because he doesn't take it.
He's waiting for God.
And then he asks like, "God, I was praying for you to help me."
And he said, "I sent like a helicopter and you didn't."
Which presumably that means that she needs to go into random people's houses and look
for their doomsday bunkers.
She eats a lot of sugar first, which is cool.
Is the implication that she's right about that and that they haven't been seeing that
they should just start like, like Fortnite looting all the houses?
You know, Michelle, when the jihadis come, I have a feeling we'll just be watching friends.
I mean, it's kind of like it implies relatively like.
happy ending least contextually for this group because because you know it's like it's like all of a sudden they happen to stumble upon an unoccupied massively beautifully stocked bunker with not just what apparently like a year or more worth of food but like all these amenities all this entertainment self-powered is somehow they able to stumble upon this thing that's able to take care of them as whatever the fuck is going on continues to go on.
Oh, I can't wait to be in my bunker, massaged by every season of everything Joss Whedon has ever made.
Can you guys imagine what they would be saying on the news and on Blue Sky if Donald and Melania executive produced this movie?
Yeah.
But they can't, and they never will, and they never could, because liberals gatekeep all of the flashy filmmakers.
And make them worse apparently, because I mean, I wasn't a huge Mr. Robot fan, but this is certainly a new low.
It forces poor conservatives to pretend that they're stoked about a movie filmed entirely on green screen about the flag.
But liberals, no, they get sleek, Mr. Robot-style conspiracy theories with big-name actors like Julia Roberts.
It's unfair.
It launches on Netflix instead of a broken Rumble link.
And we watch and we nod our heads and we go, mm-hmm, I'll definitely be one of the good, not-racist white people when the shit breaks down.
I'll offer to sleep in the basement.
No, the logical conclusion is like, I'm going to be Kevin Bacon.
Right.
Fuck these liberals.
The conspiracy theorists were right.
Fuck these liberals.
See, I'm mad because I think it's incredibly irresponsible for any kind of state leader, former or current, to attach themselves, which is implicitly endorsing this kind of narrative.
I don't know.
For all I know, maybe it's all a big joke to them, laughing in the editing bay, going, oh, this is going to drive the maggots crazy, lol.
But why are we wanting to drive them crazy?
They have the guns and the training as the movie clearly states!
The conspiracy theorists are mad, however, because they believe that Obama and the Netflix World Order are flaunting their Great Reset plan in plain sight.
Because the movie is filled with hidden messages, symbolism, and is, as I have mentioned, produced by a former president, people who both love Obama and despise him are elbow deep into baking this film.
The people who like Obama believe he is graciously warning us so that we might be prepared for a nationwide cyber attack.
And the people who hate him believe he is conditioning us to accept an inevitable cyber attack, or showcasing his great reset plans out in the open in accordance with satanic etiquette.
Yeah, I was on, like, Our Conspiracy, and they put a shot of the kids up, and they're standing next to each other, and he's wearing an Obey shirt, and she's wearing a NASA shirt, and they're like, whoa, they want us to obey NASA.
Wah, that's scary shit.
The liberals are saying, oh well, she's wearing the NASA shirt, she's into exploring, you know, she's into exploring.
We need to go to space!
And that ends up saving her because she explores and finds the Doomsday Bunker where he has the Obey shirt, and oh, there's another scene where he's wearing a Rockstar t-shirt, like Rockstar the game company, and they're like, he's imprisoned by his vices and his video games and he must obey the media.
It's like, there's so many different things to bake in this movie.
Like, why bother making, like, complicated, interesting art that has, like, you know, different interpretations that require some meaningful thought, when you can just, like, make what is basically nothing, and people will, like, interpret it for you.
They'll spend, like, hours trying to look for any sort of, like, coherent, deeper meaning to this thing that clearly doesn't really have that much to say.
Like, it structures itself as, this has something to say, but, like, where is the content here?
Why make a beautiful movie?
You can do the same Instagram post with all the shitty words that Jake hates and it can be of a Hungry Man dinner.
So you don't even have to press play on the film to begin baking, as one TikTok user explains that satanic messages are coded into the film's poster.
People are saying that this movie had a lot of satanic symbolism in it.
Now, if you haven't seen this movie already, it's called Leave the World Behind, and it's about America's enemies joining together to take down the country.
They do it in a three-step process.
Isolation, disabled communication, transportation, leaving people deaf, dumb, and paralyzed.
Synchronized Chaos, which has terrorized them with covert attacks, disinformation, and no clear enemy.
Third, Civil War and Collapse.
Now from the start of this movie, you see a blatant 666 right in front of your face.
And in the promotional poster, people are saying it says, I am Ball.
But was Ball a demon that Christians believe in?
He's basically Satan's head demon.
Not to mention this movie was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama.
Are people just reaching, or is something big coming?
Wait, so he's saying that if you take away a bunch of words in the name of the movie, it makes I Am Ball?
It's not even words in the name of the movie, it's words in the name of the cast list.
Okay, wow, wow, that's... I mean, that's why Denzel isn't on it, because then he wouldn't spell I Am Ball.
Yeah, Denzel wouldn't be... he wouldn't be caught dead in a Ball-produced movie.
In a follow-up video, that same creator breaks down hidden QR codes and sequences of numbers that appear in various parts of the film.
So a lot of you saw my last video about the movie Leave the World Behind.
And I said it had a lot of demonic symbolism.
So we went and found more.
Like on the emergency TV broadcast, the map of the United States has a hidden QR code.
My phone camera couldn't really read it though because it was so blurry.
And the screen in the hidden bunker had numbers on the screen that looked like they were spelling DIE666.
On the other screen it reads the numbers 0917 and the time 204.
Could something be going on September 17th, 2024?
I mean, as long as you see it and don't say no, to them it's consent and their hands are clean.
I mean, just look at all these images before that big event happened many years ago.
But then again, I could just be reaching.
He's peeling a fucking orange!
I know, he's just eating an orange in his car.
Also, for context, on the screen it flashes the thing where, like, if you fold the American $1 bill, it looks like the Twin Towers falling or whatever.
Now, viewers with less blurry TV screens were in fact able to scan the QR code embedded in the map of the United States.
Have y'all seen all the hype going around about this Leave the World Behind movie?
It's all over my For You page.
Everybody and their mom is talking about it.
Because apparently the Obamas were executive producers of this movie.
And a lot of people have found really weird easter eggs.
Including a QR code that is hidden in the map.
This QR code.
And if you scan this sneaky little hidden QR code, it will take you to this website, visitmercercounty.com, and it opens up this page about the Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park.
So what in the world could that mean?
Well, I don't know, but this sounds like a place right up my alley.
So let's head on over to West Virginia and see what we can find out about this Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park.
So it turns out that the land where this abandoned amusement park was built has a very long and bloody history.
Back in 1775, the Clay family had settled here.
One afternoon in August of 1783, Mitchell Clay went hunting.
And he had two of his sons, Bartley and Ezekiel, building a fence.
And his oldest daughter, Tabitha, was down by the river washing the family clothes with some of the smaller girls.
I think there were like 13 kids in this family.
Well, as the children were going about their chores, a band of 11 Shawnee men crept up on them.
They shot Bartley, killing him.
Okay, alright, enough of this, alright.
They shot Bartley!
Oh no, the Shawnee shot Bartley!
So, one TikTok creator goes as far to suggest that by watching the film, one might be able to counter the predictive programming by knowing the future and focusing to change it, which I imagine is kind of the message the filmmakers are trying to convey.
Yeah, because the rich guy in the arms industry knows things are going to happen in the future for some weird reason.
And so by you watching this, by you becoming aware of it, you are doing one of the most important, if not the most important thing you can do while you're alive.
Which is elevate your consciousness.
And when you are aware of a negative, you can consciously choose the positive.
Because what you're unaware of will constantly affect you.
You are the cause, not the effect.
So if you watch this movie, and if you're someone who hasn't, I know right now your curiosity is sparked and you want to, go into it.
I challenge you to watch it from a place of awareness and not letting the emotion affect you.
You can watch it, but you don't have to accept it.
Your brain is constantly recording this stuff.
So while you watch the movie, imagine every single scene as the opposite.
Do not accept fear into your life.
Love Through fear.
Oh my God.
So at my most cynical, you know, I'm like, okay, the filmmakers have created something that everybody can, you know, the, hey, everybody can bake this.
The people, the, the left and the right, they can, you know, they can, there's, there's, there's something for everybody, you know, it's politically neutral, which, which is just inspiring conspiratorial, uh, you know, thought, you know, in, in everyone.
It's a big tent movie.
If you watch the movie, imagining the opposite, then it's a good movie because you're not watching the movie.
It's the opposite of bad movie.
Now, while some conspiracy theorists believe that the goal of the movie is to prepare us for an impending civil war, others believe that the message is a lot more simple.
Vote Democrat.
Okay, I just went down a rabbit hole with this new movie, Leave the World Behind, and I don't think anyone's talking about this, but the color blue is literally in every single scene.
I don't know if I'm going to ruin the thing for you.
I haven't even finished this, by the way, because I keep falling asleep.
The one thing I can see and the one thing I can focus on is the blue.
The blue is in everything, whether it's their clothes, or the wall, or the house, or the car.
In every single scene or filter with the blue, always blue.
Everyone's wearing blue.
There's always this blue, this very specific blue.
And I was like, why is this, why are they pounding this one color into your head?
Where are they going with this?
Even the color of the book.
Is, uh, is blue.
So I'm like, okay, and the Obamas had a big hand in this, right?
That's about common knowledge, right?
So the Obamas, so I research Obama.
He's wearing the blue.
Dude.
I was like, oh damn.
How deep does this blue rabbit hole go?
Oh my god.
Right?
Who's blue?
Democrats.
Was he a Democrat?
Oh look, he was.
A Democrat.
Who else was a Democrat?
Democrats wearing blue.
Why he's wearing the blue?
Let's go a little bit deeper.
Oh my god.
Wait until this guy looks at the sky.
He's gonna have a real issue.
The sky is making us vote Democrat.
What about the ocean?
The ocean!
Oh my god!
Oh no!
We're talking about, like, how ham-handed and obvious and kind of, like, berating the messaging in the movie is in so many instances.
But these people, like, they sell that aside to, like, oh, the colors, the colors!
What are the colors trying to tell me?
Yeah, it's not clear enough.
They need to talk to these people as if they're even dumber.
Clearly!
So, as I said previously, you know, this movie has the ability to appeal to conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political spectrum.
And the following video went massively viral with nearly a million likes and over 20,000 comments.
And in it, the creator seems grateful that President Obama has gone out of his way to show the world what the real apocalypse will look like so that we might be properly prepared.
I told you guys three months ago that Barack Obama was gonna put out this movie about the apocalypse and we needed to watch it.
Literally the people who were making this movie for Barack Obama said that all of his notations and the way that he wanted this film to be done scared the shit out of them because it felt so real.
And Barack Obama came out himself and said he's adding stuff that he learned while being If you are a conspiracy theorist or one of the woke people, you will know that this movie is a warning.
It's not just for shits and giggles.
Barack Obama has showed us exactly what the apocalypse looks like.
And contrary to belief, it ain't zombies, and it ain't meteor showers.
This movie literally talks about war.
Over the entire movie, the people who sound the craziest end up being right.
The people that you see throughout the movie saying, oh, this is war, this is attack for Koreans, this is for outside job, this ain't no end of the world, this is someone doing this for war, ended up being right.
Obama doesn't care.
He's on his Ski-Doo in Hawaii.
He's not doing politics anymore.
He's basically like an advisor.
He's like, well, you want to make that more realistic?
I think he'd say this.
That's pretty much probably it.
I mean, I agree with her.
The message is fucked.
The movie sucks.
What the fuck is Obama doing with this kind of shit?
Could you just make a new Teletubbies or something?
To make matters worse, there was also a bunch of videos that went viral on TikTok of deer doing what they do in the movie, but it's all CGI.
It's almost as if the movie, like, made an unaccompanying app, you know, that you would download and it, like, uses AR to digitally place, you know, scary looking deer, you know, in whatever you're pointing your phone at.
But what about QAnon believers?
You know, it seems that they are becoming more and more niche as the general population of Americans are increasingly embracing a conspiratorial mindset.
Well, it's basically exactly what you would expect.
Here's Deanna Lorraine on the Stu Peters Network discussing the film.
So crazy.
I mean, you really can't make this up.
But they do make this up.
This is straight out of the elite's Marxist-globalist playbook, predictive programming, and fear-mongering.
They're literally telling us what to expect next, uh, under the guise of a Hollywood movie.
Okay, and it's so funny that they're talking about a cyber attack across the whole country and across the world.
Oh my God, the cyber attack is shutting everything down and there's nothing for us to do, nowhere to run.
We're going to be left behind, shutting down all the systems.
Well, this is eerily familiar to what Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum literally told us about cyber polygon.
Remember cyber polygon, the cyber attack that's going to shut down all the systems in the entire world.
It's gonna happen pretty soon here.
They released videos about it, they've been talking about it, their Davos and their UN summits, the cyber attacks.
Klaus Schwab is warning us about it, that there will be hard times ahead.
Pay insufficient attention to the frightening scenario of a comprehensive cyber attack, which would bring to a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our
society as a whole.
The COVID-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison
to a major cyber attack. Okay, the real conspiracy is why is he calling it "covide"?
What the fuck?
That's an awful video, too, showing a woman on a respirator gasping for air.
Yeah, no, it's not him making it.
This is a conspiracy theorist playing Klaus Schwab.
Or not playing Klaus Schwab, but putting a Klaus Schwab clip with a bunch of eerie music and editing.
Julian, can we get your review before you log off?
Yeah, well, I have to go and predictively program.
I predictively programmed myself a therapy session after this recording, so I guess I'll give my rating.
You're gonna need it.
Michelle, will you come into the room?
Okay, out of six b**ts in this g**t, I've put all six b**ts in it, and I want you to put it in my mouth, and I give it six over six b**ts.
Terrible.
We can't use that.
But I'm only gonna need one.
We're gonna have to bleep out that whole thing.
We're gonna have to bleep out that entire section.
I'm only gonna need one.
One.
One out of six.
That's what I give it.
Okay?
That's me.
Bye-bye now.
So, you know, what I do see, you know, a lot of the, you know, more right-wing conspiracy theorists talking about is that this is maybe, you know, the best example of predictive programming.
And they say this about a lot of stuff.
I remember when we were on our way to some sort of Q conference, we were listening to this podcast and they were talking about how the Chris Pratt Amazon movie The Tomorrow War was predictive programming about the vaccine.
And so this is something that they're on about quite often, that movies and television are a way to I mean, yeah, yeah.
Predictive programming is this thing where they say that there are stories in media that are designed to soften up the public for things that are about to happen, so it's not as shocking when it does finally happen.
We saw this a lot with The Simpsons.
The Simpsons, for example, they did do a throwaway joke about how Trump is going to be president.
That actually happened.
And I think it's really more The Simpsons just saying the most ludicrous thing that they could imagine in that writer's room.
And since we live in a ludicrous world, that just wound up being true.
The other thing that they say is that the Simpsons episode where they go to New York is full of secret imagery about 9-11 because that takes place.
The Twin Towers feature very prominently in that episode.
Why would a thing about New York feature the Twin Towers unless it was telling you 9-11 was going to happen?
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, I mean, it's always very, very silly because like, it's just this weird, like, you know, past.
They always take events like after the fact and then try and claim that some piece of media predicted it.
And yeah, it's just, it's just silly.
It's just baking, basically.
And this is a particularly bad example because the movie totally tells you, you know, there's no hidden message in the movie, really.
I mean, it tells you exactly what it's thinking.
I mean, and it sort of leaves the baking to kind of people saying, OK, well, this is how it's satanic or this is how it's, you know, talking about the Great Reset or that.
I mean, they've sort of taken the big conspiracy theory that one would have baked and made
it the plot or the premise of the film at large.
So I don't think this is the best example.
Also, to add context, the book was written in 2020.
It was on President Obama's reading list.
He was also a huge fan of Mr. Robot.
So it makes sense that he would want to, now in his free time, he's got all the money in
the world.
He can go wherever he wants.
He can make Netflix deals if he wants to.
He's living his best life.
It totally makes sense.
Everybody wants to get into Hollywood eventually, right?
Right.
You know, so it makes sense that he would want to say, oh, well, I can take my favorite book and oh, it would be great if the director of the show that I really like, you know, we got together and hey, maybe I could give him some notes and that would be really fun.
That would be a really fun thing to do.
Because making movies is fun.
It's fun to create fiction and make something that, you know, inspires some kind of emotion in people, whether it's fear or joy or happiness, sadness, all of that stuff.
So, you know, there's a lot of different moving pieces mostly to do with people just, you know, wanting to create content.
I do think that it is unfortunate, you know, for the very reason that, you know, his production company and his name is attached to this.
People are going to read into it more than if the movie had just come out kind of whole cloth and it was just, it was by the You know, the director and creator of Mr. Robot, and here's his kind of idea of what the apocalypse might look like.
There would be, I think, a lot less baking going on.
Definitely still some.
You know, if they're baking the Tomorrow War, which is about, like, giant bugs that we have to travel through time to fight, you know, they're gonna be baking a pretty realistic-seeming pre-apocalyptic film.
But, you know...
Yeah, I mean, the real takeaway, Occam's Razor, is that Obama wants to do, like, rich person shit, and that he doesn't have that much interesting to say, really.
Like, I feel like he wants to make a movie, this movie feels like it's broadcasting, like, isn't this saying so much?
Doesn't this have so much to say?
And then it really doesn't.
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People have gotten mad at it because we're king-shaming too much.
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Hell yeah!
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Honestly, that might be a little bit close to an episode we have an idea for.
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Uh, listener, until next week, uh, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
We know these evil people at the top, they love to rub things in our faces, right?
Obama is said to be one of the biggest evil people.
It may not be the case.
If it's not, then why would Obama and Michelle get together and help so much, be so involved with this movie depicting the end of the world?
President Obama, obviously outside of being one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, he's actually a huge movie lover, and he was a fan of the book, huge fan of the book, it was on his reading list, and he was committed to making this into a great movie, so he was involved from script to post, and he gave notes on the disaster elements, on the character, on the theme, It was a wonderful collaboration.
This movie, which includes radiation damage through nuclear bombs and EMF, it also includes a little bit of racism against white people.
If you're not open to this thing and you're just watching it as a movie, and you retain this, you're not going to want to help your fellow neighbor when this all goes down, okay?
And they also hint to Russia being involved with Korea.
We made a lot of enemies around the world.
Okay, I've got it all for you.
I've got it all broken down.
But it's just very strange to me that we have a president that would be involved with making such fear porn for everybody.
I feel like it's more legitimate than fear porn.
I feel like they're actually telling us what they're gonna do.
And if you don't know...
Obama legalized psychological operations on the United States civilians.
He legalized that while he was president.
It's kind of strange that now he's involved in what would be a psychological operation in this movie.
