Just in time for Halloween, Hugo Emmerzael is joined by filmmaker Connor Sen Warnick and horror writer, scholar and critic Mike Thorn for two avant-garde horror gems from 1989, both newly restored in 4K. E. Elias Merhige’s black-and-white creation myth Begotten, long passed around as the ultimate cursed text of obscure horror, meets Stephen Sayadian’s gleefully sexualized, unofficial sequel to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Along the way: drone horror, creepypasta, a theory about hand job scenes, porn as avant-garde cinema, and why horror doesn’t always need to explain itself. On the mic - Hugo Emmerzael, host. Film critic and programmer based in Amsterdam. - Connor Sen Warnick, filmmaker. His first feature, Characters Disappearing, had a theatrical run this summer, with more screenings planned for the winter. Read editor Chris Cassingham’s interview with Warnick. - Mike Thorn, horror writer, scholar and critic. Author of “Darkest Hours”, “Shelter for the Damned”, and “Peel Back and See”: mikethornwrites.com The films - Begotten (E. Elias Merhige, US, 1989). Newly restored in 4K from the original 16mm negative. - Dr. Caligari (Stephen Sayadian, US, 1989). Newly restored in 4K. Chapters - 00:00 Intro - 01:28 Welcome, and two outré horror films for Halloween - 02:10 Begotten: fifteen years with a “cursed” film (trailer at 02:28) - 04:25 How do you even describe Begotten? - 06:01 First encounters, bad rips and media archaeology - 09:23 The images that stay, and the hand job rule - 13:32 Drone horror and the cosmic weird - 14:40 Maya Deren and durational unease - 16:48 Where Begotten came from: SUNY Purchase, Artaud and Butoh, a door-to-door distribution campaign - 19:26 The internet afterlife: 4chan, creepypasta and cursed texts - 21:23 From Ringu and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to A Page of Madness, Takashi Ito and Scott Barley - 24:42 Merhige after Begotten: Din of Celestial Birds, Shadow of the Vampire, Suspect Zero, Marilyn Manson - 27:11 On to Dr. Caligari (trailer at 29:22) - 31:37 Two films that pair uncannily well - 32:50 What is Dr. Caligari? Sayadian, Hustler, Nightdreams and Café Flesh - 36:08 Films that couldn’t get made today - 38:26 Horror’s rules, the avant-garde and excess - 41:23 A haunted house of pleasure: spectatorship and porn - 43:42 Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar and the pull of obscurity - 44:35 Synthesizing subcultures, then and now - 47:34 Legibility, marketability and “elevated horror” (and Backrooms) - 49:55 Plugs and goodbyes - 51:01 Outro Runtime 52:26 Mentioned in this episode: Films: Je, tu, il, elle (Chantal Akerman), Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren), Pulse and Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa), Ringu (Hideo Nakata) and The Ring (Gore Verbinski), A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926), Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara), Sleep Has Her House (Scott Barley), Din of Celestial Birds, Shadow of the Vampire and Suspect Zero (E. Elias Merhige), Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau), Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene), Nightdreams and Café Flesh (Stephen Sayadian), Videodrome (David Cronenberg), Eraserhead (David Lynch), Backrooms (Kane Parsons). People: Takashi Ito, Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar, Antonin Artaud, Giambattista Vico, Dennis Jakob, Gemma Files, Mitchell Froom (composer on Sayadian’s films), and Larry Flynt. Reading: Zach Lewis’s interview with E. Elias Merhige on Begotten, and Mike Thorn’s piece on 1994 as the year of the web. On the next episode of In Review on Mic: A deep-dive retrospective on the cinema of Lee Chang-dong. Credits In Review On Mic is brought to you by the team of In Review Online. Produced by Chris Cassingham, Emily DuGranrut, Luke Gorham and Hugo Emmerzael. Edited and mixed by Hugo Emmerzael. Music by Beau Zwart. Recorded 27 October 2026. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and find all our writing at In Review Online and here on our Substack. Get full access to In Review Online at inreviewonline.substack.com/subscribe
