Episode 7 — The Extreme Horror Edition

With Halloween coming next week, we’ve put together the most terrifying, blood-curdling episode of The Dissolve podcast to date—relatively speaking, anyway. We start by talking about the trend-hopping of the horror genre: Why do certain types of horror movies come in waves—from “torture porn” to found-footage to haunted houses—and where do we hope the genre goes from here? With The Shining coming up as our next Movie Of The Week, we interview Rodney Ascher, the director of Room 237, a terrific documentary that compares and contrasts the many far-out theories advanced by the film’s most obsessive fans. What is it about this particular film, more perhaps than any other in Stanley Kubrick’s career, that inspires such a range of interpretations? The game this week is “Reel Estate,” in which panelists are given descriptions of memorable houses and buildings and asked to name the movie in which they appeared. Then Noel Murray and Nathan Rabin are asked for their scariest recommendations for 30 Seconds To Sell. (They’re not that scary, frankly.)