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Sitting in the Dark

Sitting in the Dark

By: TruStory FM
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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.© TruStory FM Art
Episodes
  • Invaders from Within

    Invaders from Within
    Apr 24 2026
    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 FilmsAssassination 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 ExperienceSupport 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
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Ultra-Low-Budget Horror: The Battery, Starry Eyes & Hellbender

    Ultra-Low-Budget Horror: The Battery, Starry Eyes & Hellbender
    Mar 27 2026
    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 AttractionsSupport 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
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • BIG MONSTERS

    BIG MONSTERS
    Feb 27 2026
    This month on Sitting in the Dark, we go big: big monsters, big fear, and big systems that respond to catastrophe with the confidence of a guy who just Googled “what is monster” on his way into the meeting. Kynan, Chelsea Stardust, Tommy Metz III, and Pete Wright take on three modern giant-creature films—Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter (2010), and Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One (in its Minus Color presentation)—and find a weirdly consistent thread across wildly different cultures: when the giant thing shows up, the institutions mostly don’t.The Host kicks things off with tonal whiplash as a feature, not a bug. The film’s mix of grief, comedy, and political bite becomes its own kind of monster, and the conversation circles what Bong is really lampooning, what still lands, and what hits differently on a rewatch. The creature design gets its due too—full daylight, hard to pin down, impossible to “know”—but what lingers is the movie’s sense that people become collateral long before anything with teeth arrives.Troll Hunter shifts the vibe without letting you off the hook. The group gets into the found-footage push-pull—shaky cam, “why are you still filming,” all that—then pretty quickly agrees that Hans, the deadpan troll hunter, is the secret weapon. The film’s charm is how seriously it takes the ridiculous premise: folklore becomes logistics, mythology becomes fieldwork, and the jokes don’t erase the danger. It’s one of those movies that makes you laugh… then reminds you you’d die immediately.Godzilla Minus One brings it home with a version of Godzilla that’s less “spectacle” and more “reckoning.” The group talks about the postwar setting, the human story at the center, why the black-and-white presentation changes the feel of the effects, and how this movie earns its impact through quiet scenes as much as destruction.Across all three films, the episode keeps returning to the same uncomfortable idea: these are blue-collar fights. The people who do anything meaningful aren’t the polished experts. They’re ordinary, exhausted, under-resourced, and improvising. Which might be the scariest part.Next month, Chelsea flips the table for her birthday picks with an ultra low-budget lineup: The Battery (2012), Hellbender (2021), and Starry Eyes (2014).🎬 Featured Films🍿 Tonight's Triple Feature:The Host - Apple TV | Amazon Trollhunter - Apple TV | Amazon Godzilla Minus One - Apple TV | Amazon📋 View Our List on Letterboxd(00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark(05:21) - The Host(28:30) - Trollhunter(50:28) - Godzilla Minus One(01:21:27) - Coming AttractionsSupport 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
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    1 hr and 24 mins
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