Sitting in the Dark

TruStory FM

Sitting in the Dark is a podcast about horror, but not the kind that hides in a single shadow. Each month, hosts Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, Chelsea Stardust, and Pete Wright pick a theme — an idea, a trope, a nightmare that keeps winding back — and explore it through three films that share its DNA. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes they’re unexpected, and sometimes they lead you deeper into the maze than you expected to go. One month might bring The Drac Pack, three wildly different takes on cinema’s most famous vampire. Another, a journey through The Bride, the Boy, and the Firetruck, unpacking coded queer horror across decades. We’ve explored maternal terror in Mommy Acts This Way Because She Loves You, broken into the home-invasion subgenre, tiptoed through haunted houses, and stared down both classic monsters and blockbuster franchises. What ties it all together is a love of horror as a labyrinth — a twisting path where every turn reveals something new about our fears, desires, and cultural obsessions. With smart conversation, dark humor, and a willingness to look behind the curtain (or under the bed), Sitting in the Dark invites you to settle in, turn down the lights, and find out what connects the nightmares.

  1. 2d ago

    Psycho-Biddy, Qu'est-Ce Que C'est?

    Kynan has the curriculum this month, and two of us had never heard of it. Psycho-biddy. Hagsploitation. Grande Dame Guignol, if you want to be polite about it. You take an actress Hollywood has decided is done, you put her in a mansion that’s falling apart, and you sell the audience her face.Baby Jane survives the rewatch. The one complaint is that Blanche is so hopeless at getting help that the movie never gives you a door that might open, which means there’s nothing to yank away from you. What saves it is the twist. Blanche built that prison herself and let Jane carry the guilt for thirty years, and the longer we sat with that, the less Jane looked like a villain and the more she looked like somebody who got broken slowly. Sweet Charlotte has a harder time. There’s a 1927 decapitation, a blackmailed widow, an English insurance man, a highway commission, a dead housekeeper and a gun full of blanks, all in service of a cousin who wanted the money. The jump forward is too long, the reveal hangs on a character we barely meet, and Olivia de Havilland doesn’t make a choice until the last reel. Chelsea has a firsthand account of how Joan Crawford really left that set, and the urn makes up for a lot.Auntie Roo is the one that reverses the whole cycle. Shelley Winters never hurts anybody. Two orphans decide she’s a witch, lock her in a pantry, set it on fire, and walk away with her jewelry. The voiceover should have been cut. Everything else we’ll defend. All four of us came out Team Auntie Roo.Also in here: why the house is always the body, why older actors get heist movies and older actresses get horror, Chelsea’s firsthand Bruce Dern tea, and Kynan’s closing math on how many Oscars this trashy little cycle kept employed. Reference Links From the showShow home: Sitting in the DarkOur papa podcast’s Bette Davis series — The Next ReelWatch the filmsWhat Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdHush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdWhoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdFurther reading (the trilogy)What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, dir. Robert Aldrich) — WikipediaHush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964, dir. Robert Aldrich) — WikipediaWhoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971, dir. Curtis Harrington) — Wikipedia(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(00:49) - It's Haggsploitation All The Way Down(07:06) - Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?(27:08) - Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte(46:47) - Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?(01:03:55) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    Psycho-Biddy, Qu'est-Ce Que C'est?
  2. Sep 25

    The Working Dead

    Before the zombie ate anybody, it went to work. It was a Haitian creature—a body without a will, dug up and put on a sugar plantation—and the horror wasn’t that it might come for you… no, not at all. The horror was that you might actually become one. That’s the whole thing.So Pete drags the room back past Romero to the three decades when the movie zombie was still a labor instrument. White Zombie (1932) is the first one ever made. This means of course that nobody had figured out yet what a zombie was for, so it lands on a mill full of enslaved men who are not, notably, Black. They’re the boss’s rivals and creditors, converted into staff. The movie is untroubled by all of them and scandalized by one white woman’s captivity. Tommy and Kynan both want to know whether the movie has any idea what it’s doing.I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is Val Lewton handed a title he detested and answering it by adapting Jane Eyre, true story, which kinda almost works. After that, Wes Craven goes to Haiti in 1988, gets eleven of his thirty shooting days, and makes a zombie movie where nobody eats anyone and nobody is put to work. You’d think the mental model gets all broken with this one. Fear not. Running underneath: what these movies knew versus what we’re giving them credit for, why the creator is always scarier than the creature, and Pete’s standing position that being buried alive is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Reference LinksFrom the showShow home: Sitting in the DarkLast month’s episode: The Land of the Screams and the Home of De-PravedTommy’s cursed-objects episode: Articles of LoathingBecome a member: The Next Reel family of film shows · join hereTonight’s triple featureWhite Zombie (1932, dir. Victor Halperin) — Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd | Wikipedia (also public domain — free on Tubi, Pluto, Plex, and the Internet Archive, though print quality varies wildly)I Walked with a Zombie (1943, dir. Jacques Tourneur) — Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd | WikipediaThe Serpent and the Rainbow (1988, dir. Wes Craven) — Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd | WikipediaMentioned on the episodeBlack Zombie (2026, dir. Maya Annik Bedward) — the documentary Chelsea caught at SXSW that complicated her relationship with Serpent. Letterboxd · in limited theatrical release from Kino Lorber since September 11Pete’s absurd comparison: Bulworth on The Next ReelPete’s buried-alive anxiety, previously and at length: What’s That Smell?The reading listWilliam Seabrook, The Magic Island (1929) — the uncredited source of White Zombie, and the book that made “zombie” an American word. The Dover reissue carries an introduction by George Romero and an afterword by Wade Davis, which makes it the single most on-theme thing in this episode. Bookshop.orgZora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse (1938) — Hurston went to Haiti herself, as an initiate rather than an observer. Bookshop.orgWade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) — the nonfiction book Craven adapted, and, per Chelsea, sensationalized wildly. Bookshop.orgRichard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954) — Romero’s stated source for Night of the Living Dead, which is not a zombie movie and never uses the word. Bookshop.org(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(01:38) - Zombie Movies!(02:36) - An Indulgence of History(10:14) - White Zombie(27:22) - I Walked with a Zombie(46:40) - Serpent and the Rainbow(01:07:16) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy

    The Working Dead
  3. Aug 28

    Articles of Loathing

    Haunted houses get all the attention, but at least a house stays where you put it. This month is about the other kind of haunting. The kind that comes home with you from the sale, the flea market, or just pounds away at your inbox.A videotape, a mirror, and ten audio files sent from an address that clearly does not accept replies.The Ring, Oculus, and undertone each hand their curse a clock: seven days, ten recordings, one weekend in the house. None of them has a practical reason to wait that long. All three set the thing loose on a family that had stopped functioning well before anything supernatural arrived, and not one of them will will ever tell you where the object came from.The Ring - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdOculus - Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxdundertone - Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(00:58) - Articles of Loathing!(03:05) - The Ring(19:48) - Ring 2(20:32) - Ring 3(21:10) - Ring 1(21:20) - Ring 4(22:34) - Ring 5(30:26) - Oculus(41:18) - Oculus 2(41:44) - Oculus 3(41:52) - Oculus 2(42:00) - Oculus 3(42:29) - Oculus 1(46:28) - Undertone(01:00:06) - Undertone 1(01:00:36) - Undertone 2(01:01:00) - Undertone 3(01:01:28) - Undertone 4(01:02:06) - Undertone(01:04:00) - Undertone 5(01:04:30) - Undertone 8(01:08:10) - Undertone 6(01:08:23) - Undertone 7(01:08:40) - Undertone 6(01:09:04) - Undertone(01:11:16) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    Articles of Loathing
  4. Jul 31

    The Land of the Screams and the Home of De-Praved

    Chelsea shows up to the Fourth of July with a "very loose theme" — fireworks and patriotism in horror — and then, somehow, makes it cohere. Blow Out, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Final Destination 3 have nothing to do with each other until you notice they're all doing the same trick: pointing your eyes up at the pretty lights while something ugly happens at ground level.So we get into it. Is Blow Out even a horror movie, or just De Palma at his most gorgeous and most pervy, making a movie about making a movie? We defend I Know What You Did Last Summer despite ethical math that reads like it was written by a '90s AI — and land on why we love it anyway. And we finally give Final Destination 3 its due as a Rube Goldberg machine of presorted cruelty that dares you to enjoy it.Threaded through all three: the illusion of safety in a crowd, the discovery that surviving the accident is the actual nightmare, and a TikTok ride operator who should absolutely not be employed. Also, Kynan watched his first summer slasher and lived to tell about it.Links & NotesOur prior Final Destination episode: Death Edging with the Films of Final DestinationOur papa podcast's breakdown of Talk to MeBlow Out - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdI Know What You Did Last Summer - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdFinal Destination 3 - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdView Our List on Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(01:32) - Blow Out(23:20) - I Know What You Did Last Summer(42:24) - Final Destination Part 3(59:28) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    The Land of the Screams and the Home of De-Praved
  5. Jun 26

    AnimaDEAD!

    Kynan takes the curator's chair this month and leads with the question they drilled into him in grad school: why does this have to be animated? Three films answer it three different ways, and every answer turns out to be about the same uncomfortable thing — somebody's body as raw material.Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) starts the descent. A pop idol ditches her group for a serious acting career and watches her sense of self go with it. Parasocial dread a full twenty-five years before we had the word for it. Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021) is a hard left turn. Thirty years and a Kickstarter in the making, it's a near-wordless plunge through a stop-motion hell of creatures stitched from meat and rot. This is the episode's "respect it more than you enjoy it" centerpiece.Stopmotion (Robert Morgan, 2023) is where metaphor stops being… well… metaphor. An animator's assistant tries to finish her dying mother's film and starts feeding the puppets her own flesh.What nobody planned, since Kynan hadn't even seen two of the three before slotting them together: the week kept circling back to the same grim idea: in animation, the artist is always the material. Featured Films Tonight's Triple Feature:Perfect Blue (1997) — dir. Satoshi Kon - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdMad God (2021) — dir. Phil Tippett - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdStopmotion (2023) — dir. Robert Morgan - Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdView Our List on Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(00:58) - AnimaDEAD Horror!(06:33) - Perfect Blue(29:15) - Mad God(49:32) - Stopmotion(01:11:26) - Coming Attractions: The Rockets Red Glare! Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    AnimaDEAD!
  6. May 29

    The AI Experience

    AI. You may have noticed it's everywhere now — in your phone, your fridge, the suspiciously enthusiastic email your boss "wrote" last Tuesday. And cinema, bless its little reactive heart, has been trying to warn us about this for fifty years. The problem is we keep not listening, partly because the warnings have so often arrived in the shape of a sexy lady robot, which is its own diagnosis of the problem.This week, Pete is joined by Chelsea Stardust and Tommy Metz III for a triptych spanning five decades of artificial intelligence horror: Demon Seed (1977), Cam (2018), and Companion (2025). Three films, one increasingly nervous question: what exactly are we asking of AI, and what does it keep becoming anyway?The conversation runs the lineage of synthetic women in cinema — a trope factory that stretches from Metropolis through The Stepford Wives, Blade Runner, Weird Science, Her, Ex Machina, M3GAN, and Subservience, with a foundational-film round that lands on WarGames and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Along the way: the paperclip maximizer as a way of understanding what Proteus actually is, the cultural weight of releasing a forced-pregnancy AI horror four years after Roe v. Wade, platform terms-of-use as the modern book of the vampire, and the genuinely surprising argument that the most hopeful film in the set is the one where a robot drives off into the sunset with all the money.There are detours, because of course there are: villain-era Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage doing the robot, Sophie Thatcher sliding her own intelligence to one hundred percent, and Tommy's new and frankly concerning bedtime ritual.The films:Demon Seed (1977), dir. Donald Cammell, adapted from the Dean Koontz novel, starring Julie ChristieCam (2018), dir. Daniel Goldhaber, written by Isa Mazzei, starring Madeline BrewerCompanion (2025), dir. Drew Hancock, produced by Zach CreggerAlso referenced: Colossus: The Forbin Project, Westworld (1973), Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Get Out, Promising Young Woman, The Invitation, Assassination Nation, Barbarian. (00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(01:29) - The AI Experience(04:26) - Foundational AI Films(05:42) - Demon Seed(25:55) - Cam(42:16) - Companion(01:04:46) - Coming Attractions ... TBA! Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussed

    The AI Experience
  7. Apr 24

    Invaders from Within

    Tommy steps in as host this month with a triple feature about invaders that don't need to knock. Assassination Nation turns a Salem high school into a digital witch trial when a hacker dumps everyone's private data into the open. Return of the Living Dead lets the contamination loose inside a single warehouse-and-cemetery block, where the dead come back complaining and the living can't decide who's in charge. The Cell sends an empath into the dreamscape of a serial killer and asks whether the rescue mission is the same thing as the trespass.The conversation keeps finding throughlines the collection didn't have to spell out. The witch hunt as American operating system. The body as joke, as prison, as kingdom. Style as argument — three films that all chose excess and never apologized for it. Where they part ways is in their relationship to the rage they put on screen: Levinson's is righteous, O'Bannon's is gleeful, Tarsem's is mournful.The trigger warning that opens Assassination Nation gets read three different ways. The "it hurts to be dead" line in Return of the Living Dead gets a vote. The Cell becomes a real-time test case for whether visual ambition can carry a thin script. The answer depends on who's talking.The Films Assassination Nation • Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdReturn of the Living Dead • Apple TV | Amazon | LetterboxdThe Cell • Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(02:34) - The Invaders from Within(03:28) - Assassination Nation(31:01) - Return of the Living Dead(49:18) - The Cell(01:08:27) - Coming Attractions: The AI Girlfriend Experience Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us: Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream: Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    Invaders from Within
  8. Mar 27

    Ultra-Low-Budget Horror: The Battery, Starry Eyes & Hellbender

    What does it actually take to make a horror film that matters? Not a studio green light. Not a VFX budget. Not a catering line.This month, Chelsea Stardust curates three films that answer that question on their own uncompromising terms. Jeremy Gardner's The Battery strips the zombie apocalypse down to two former baseball players, a Discman, and a friendship slowly coming apart at the seams. Starry Eyes follows a young actress as the machinery of Hollywood ambition grinds her into something unrecognizable — and possibly exactly what she always wanted to be. And Hellbender, made by a real family in their real backyard, turns the mother-daughter relationship into a folk horror inheritance no one asked for and no one can refuse.Together, these three films share a preoccupation with death and rebirth — not as plot mechanics, but as the thing transformation actually costs. Chelsea, Pete, Kynan, and Tommy dig into what it means to make something from almost nothing, and why the best low-budget horror isn't resourceful so much as honest.Featured FilmsTonight's Triple Feature:The Battery - Apple TV | Amazon Starry Eyes - Apple TV Hellbender - Apple TV | AmazonView Our List on Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(03:34) - The Battery(28:49) - Starry Eyes(50:01) - Hellbender(01:09:23) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Become a member for just $5/month or $55/yearJoin our Discord community of movie loversThe Next Reel Family of Film Shows:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsThe Film BoardMovies We LikeThe Next ReelSitting in the DarkConnect With Us:Main Site: WebMovie Platforms: Letterboxd | FlickchartSocial Media: Facebook | Instagram | Threads | Bluesky | YouTube | PinterestYour Hosts: Chelsea | Kyle | Kynan | Pete | Tommy Shop & Stream:Merch Store: Apparel, stickers, mugs & moreWatch Page: Buy/rent films we've discussedOriginals: Source material from our episodesSpecial offers: Audible

    Ultra-Low-Budget Horror: The Battery, Starry Eyes & Hellbender

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Sitting in the Dark is a podcast about horror, but not the kind that hides in a single shadow. Each month, hosts Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, Chelsea Stardust, and Pete Wright pick a theme — an idea, a trope, a nightmare that keeps winding back — and explore it through three films that share its DNA. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes they’re unexpected, and sometimes they lead you deeper into the maze than you expected to go. One month might bring The Drac Pack, three wildly different takes on cinema’s most famous vampire. Another, a journey through The Bride, the Boy, and the Firetruck, unpacking coded queer horror across decades. We’ve explored maternal terror in Mommy Acts This Way Because She Loves You, broken into the home-invasion subgenre, tiptoed through haunted houses, and stared down both classic monsters and blockbuster franchises. What ties it all together is a love of horror as a labyrinth — a twisting path where every turn reveals something new about our fears, desires, and cultural obsessions. With smart conversation, dark humor, and a willingness to look behind the curtain (or under the bed), Sitting in the Dark invites you to settle in, turn down the lights, and find out what connects the nightmares.