- They specifically say it was a graveyard
smash enjoyed by the old ghosts.
It's about one last hurrah for the lost
in GI generations of Boris Karloff.
- Yeah, you're right, it catches on with the flash.
Maybe not for anyone in the modern world, but...
- It's just the monster, the ghouls from their abodes,
Wolfman, Dracula and his sons, Igor and the chains
and the coffin bangers.
- You forgot the crypt keeper five.
- Ah, the coffin bangers are are the crypt keeper five.
- No more!
No more monster mash!
Did nobody get my email about the group costume?
Cody!
You begged me to be Indiana Jones!
- Oh!
Right, oh, I started a thing, like a costume thing,
then, I started this other thing
and then when I was done with that thing,
I forgot about the first thing, the costume thing.
Is it Halloween?
- I don't do costumes.
- Kimia?
- I don't have email.
- You gave me your email address!
- No, home address.
Kimia @ pacific net, as in a net
I sleep near, on the Pacific.
Anyway, I don't do phones and computers, okay?
Not since I saw those Ring movies.
It's like my grandpa always said,
"never let a ghost crawl through your television."
(unnerving creepy music)
- Ghosts do love technology.
- Yeah, because they know that we love technology.
Poltergeist, the Ring, that Slipknot dude from Sinister?
They rely on the living seeing their Mumblecore Death films.
They're like goth art students.
- Ooh, they're exactly like goth art students!
They even use old film formats.
- Right?
Those characters have to go out of their way
to get cursed in those films.
Like the new Ring movie, starts with
a college professor digging up that old VHS
and purposefully spreading it.
In Sinister, Ethan Hawke is investigating
the family that lived in the house,
prompting him to see those old attic reels.
There's nothing formidable about a spooky curse
that has the same prerequisite as nanna's home movies.
- It's actually kinda silly how much
the phantom world relies on us.
Like, in Sinister, the death contraptions
are made by the children, not the demons.
- Because demons can't interact with the physical world.
- I only saw the trailer.
So you're saying that tree gallows rig
was made by that little girl?
And the killer lawnmower?
And the chained up car?
- All the kids.
- That means that, that demon had to stand there
and instruct to those children how to make all of that.
He had to patiently walk them through,
measuring and cutting rope and creating counterweights
and sawing wood and creating a pulley system,
now that's...
Actually, that's kind of adorable.
- No, that's wildly pitiful.
The humans basically have to haunt themselves.
- Exactly, I mean, all you have to do is avoid technology.
The girl from the Ring?
She basically calls you and schedules
a time for when she's gonna crawl out from your TV.
- Seven days...
- As if you're gonna pencil that in and
not just run away to the wilderness?
- But, you know what's better than that?
Not doing any of those things.
So what if there is a ghost you could totally overpower
by just like, watching TV or playing video games.
- I'm listening.
- Okay, so, aside from killing you,
what's the other reason that ghosts haunt people in movies?
- To make sex pottery.
- To tell the living, who killed them.
- Yes, not the...
The second thing, not the pottery.
Jesus, Carmen...
Not the pottery, Carmen.
In movies like Stir of Echoes and What Lies Beneath
and Gothica and the Sixth Sense,
all these ghosts are just trying to
warn people about who killed them.
But they're not getting revenge
or poltergeisting up a police report,
they're just jump-scaring and knocking old photos
off of shelves, they're not trying to hurt you
and you're in no danger.
- But, you'll have to solve their murders.
- Do I?
Or, could I just zone out in front of Rick and Morty?
Start to help them, but then get sleepy
and forget about the whole Halloween costume thing.
Ghosts are just dusty old dopes.
- So, you're okay living the rest of your life
being harassed by frustrated ghosts?
- What's so different than living with
a sibling that jumps out at you every once in a while.
Eventually, I would resign myself
to brushing my teeth while a wretched old hag
is lurking behind me in the mirror.
- I don't know, I don't think anybody
can live with the crippling anxiety
of being shadowed by the undying ghost of a murder victim.
- Except, drugs exist.
A couple of valium, maybe some oxycodone
and I am not afraid of any of the ghosts.
Or get weed, ghosts hate weed.
- Yeah, he's right.
Ghosts like Freddy Krueger and Pennywise
rely on your nightmares.
Weed can literally suppress REM sleep.
- It also gets you high.
- Not to mention that in It, his powers
and weaknesses depend on whether you
believe in something hard enough.
- This is battery acid, you slime!
- Oh yeah, that kid from It believed
that his inhaler would hurt the clown
and his belief made it real.
- And you know what else I believe can hurt clowns?
A knife stab to the neck!
- Yeah, right!
Or a gun!
- Or a right between the hair tufts.
- For a lot of these goons, it's like mind over matter.
That's why my ideal haunting is a ghost that
tries to influence your actions or something like that,
ghosts are just former people.
I can deal with people.
Like that Lloyd the bartender guy?
If he's so clever, why is he
still a bartender in the afterlife?
That's why, I would lead him along
for a couple more ghost drinks, couple more...
Spirits.
If you will.
(laughter)
- Like a...
Like a, like a...
A spooky beer.
- The heck?
- Movies like, The Shining, The Innkeepers, Lights Out,
The Conjuring, they rely on the protagonist
being tricked into going into a dark room
or following a suspicious noise.
They ain't getting my Black ass.
If I hear like a child or something
crying from a dark alley,
I will be running in the opposite direction.
- From an injured child?
- That's what it wants you to think.
- But what if it wants you to think that
because it is an injured child?
- Ghosts can't get injured?
- I know that, but what I mean...
- Look, we all agree not to help the scheming injured child.
But what if it's not a ghost?
What if it's a demon or a cursed item?
- It's the same principle.
In movies like Paranormal Activity or Oculus,
they feed off our negative emotions.
You just say, "hell to the mother(beep) no"
and keep it pushing.
Also, valium would probably help.
- I don't know, I feel like every situation
is like, a huge amount of unpleasantness
that you'd have to deal with for potentially,
the rest of your life.
- Well yeah, it's ghosts.
I mean, no matter what you pick,
you have to be on your guard somehow.
Your classic ghost isn't going around
rattling chains just to help people.
What is this?
What's going on?
What's...
What's happening in your brain right now?
- A Christmas Carol!
Oh yes, that's my ideal haunting!
Okay, still, technically a horror film
because the ghosts are all ghoulish and scary.
But, these Christmas spirits just want to improve your life.
Okay, they just want you to be kinder
to family and friends and not ignore
their wants and needs or their emails or not have an email.
Okay, this is the only haunting
where the endgame is to improve the living.
Scrooch hit the jackpot!
Okay, he got three immortal life coaches
who traveled through time and teach him
not to, bah humbug his friends' holiday spirits.
And at the end, he is engaging with people,
he's not leaving them in poverty
or sadness or to walk by Dodger's stadium
looking like a disheveled Yankees fan,
they threw a rock at me!
- Wait, wait, wait, your ideal haunting
is to be pestered by three crotchety old White men
telling you what they think is best?
- No, yeah, no, you're right.
I don't want to know the politics of a guy
who calls himself, the Ghost of Christmas Past.
- We all know what news channel he's watching.
- Yeah.
And probably while waving his fists and saying,
"whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"
- Like the song?
- Yeah, like the song!
♫ Full circle
- I hate circles.
- Because they're rock shaped?
- Low blow man...
- Did it hit your leg?
- You're like mean...
- Nicer than the guy who threw a rock at you