The Playlist Podcast Network

Be careful what you wish for, sure. But maybe be even more careful what you confuse for love, because Curry Barker’s “Obsession” takes one of horror’s oldest tricks and turns it into something queasy, funny, tragic, and deeply uncomfortable. It is the kind of movie that starts with a premise simple enough to fit on a cursed greeting card, then keeps tightening the rope until everyone in the room starts laughing from sheer discomfort. 
Written, directed, and edited by Barker, “Obsession” follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee, as his crush on his childhood friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), leads him to buy a strange object called the One Wish Willow. He wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. The wish works, which is exactly the problem. The film also stars Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter, and opens in theaters on May 15 from Focus Features.
Barker joined The Discourse to discuss the new horror film, which arrives after his micro-budget YouTube breakout “Milk & Serial” and his acclaimed short “The Chair.” The conversation covered the film’s uncomfortable festival reactions, the dark emotional machinery behind unearned love, Navarrette’s knockout performance, the possibility of more One Wish Willow stories, and his upcoming work on “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Anything But Ghosts.”

The town on “From” has always felt less like a place and more like an emotional pressure cooker with monsters hiding in the walls. Every season cranks that pressure a little higher on the survivors, then asks them to keep pretending they can still function as leaders, parents, lovers, or even just regular people. Season 4 somehow makes all of that feel even more unstable. Hope is not dead in this show. It’s worse than that. Hope is absolutely exhausted.
The hit MGM+ horror mystery returned recently for Season 4 and continues through the end of June, once again following the trapped residents of a nightmarish town where escape seems impossible and the creatures outside only scratch the surface of what’s really wrong here. Season 4 stars Harold Perrineau, Catalina Sandino Moreno, David Alpay, Elizabeth Saunders, Scott McCord, and more, as the series continues pulling at threads that somehow only create bigger knots.
On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by Harold Perrineau to discuss Boyd’s deteriorating mental state, the exhausting psychology of the series, wild fan theories, the legacy of “Lost,” and even why making “The Matrix” nearly short-circuited his inner fanboy.
‘The Boys’ Season 5: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Jensen Ackles, Erin Moriarty, and Laz Alonso On Ending The Series, and Potential Spin-Offs [Bingeworthy Podcast]
Yes, season 4 finds Boyd in especially brutal shape, something Perrineau immediately acknowledged when discussing where the character is emotionally this year.

Director Damian McCarthy really loves to hit that dread button, and in “Hokum,” he absolutely wears that thing out. Not with loud shocks or cheap jolts, but with the kind of slow, creeping unease that just sits there, staring back at you. The longer you watch, the more it feels like the movie isn’t escalating so much as tightening, quietly, deliberately, until there’s nowhere left to go. Then he slaps you across the face for good measure.
READ MORE: ’ Hokum’ Review: Adam Scott Is Haunted By A Hotel Full Of Scares, Death, & Secrets [SXSW]
Written and directed by McCarthy, “Hokum” stars Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, and Austin Amelio. The film follows novelist Ohm Bauman, who retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to become consumed by stories of a witch tied to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Disturbing visions and a sudden disappearance begin to fracture whatever control he has left, forcing him to confront a past that doesn’t stay buried.
On this episode of The Discourse, McCarthy joins the podcast to break down how “Hokum” came together, why he stripped the story down rather than build it out, and how he balances supernatural horror with something far more immediate and human. The starting point was as simple as it gets.

Lots of action shows begin with some no-nonsense badass fully in charge of their faculties, but “Man On Fire” starts with a man who just plain isn’t. Before anything even happens in the story, Creasy is a suicidal, messy shell of his former peak CIA agent self. But, as with other iterations, that lack of stability is the hook. This isn’t "Reacher," and a muscular heroic soldier boy doesn't blow into town to set things right. "Man on Fire" is about a once-capable man on the brink of collapse forced into a heroic situation, which is far more emotionally compelling. 
The new Netflix series based on the A.J. Quinnell "Creasy" book series and the 2004 Tony Scott action film, revisits John Creasy, an ex-agent pulled back into danger to protect a young girl while dealing with emotional damage that doesn’t switch off just because the job demands it. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II takes on the role, and Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II,” “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts”) directs the first two episodes, setting a tone that stays rooted in character even as the scale expands.

When networks spin off popular series, it's easy to come at them with arms folded and write them off as cash grabs. A "Stranger Things" animated spin-off really could have failed. A version of this show exists, in another reality, as something like a Saturday morning cartoon with “Stranger Things” as a disguise: bright colors, low stakes, perhaps Dustin and a sweet monster learning to be friends. Luckily, “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” appeared from a different portal.
This version remembers that Hawkins is a town where children don't tell their parents the truth, quarrel with their friends, and then, from time to time, confront something that really shouldn't be there.
The animated series is placed between the second and third seasons of "Stranger Things", fitting into that odd, in-between period when things should be calm. They aren't, though. Instead, the show manages to feel like a lost season that just happens to be animated - the same tension, the same complicated feelings, and the same sense that one poor choice is about to cause five even worse ones, along with some new mysteries.
‘The Boys’ Season 5: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Jensen Ackles, Erin Moriarty, and Laz Alonso On Ending The Series, and Potential Spin-Offs [Bingeworthy Podcast]
On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by showrunner Eric Robles to discuss entering the wider world of the Upside Down and finding ways to have fun with the characters and story without ruining them.