The Every Movie Ever! Podcast

Ben and Rob head into the Argentine countryside for When Evil Lurks (Cuando acecha la maldad), the 2023 possession horror from Terrified director Demián Rugna that became Shudder’s first Spanish-language original. Brothers Pedro and Jimmy, played by Ezequiel Rodríguez and Demián Salomón, find a half-eviscerated corpse and a man about to give birth to a demon. Their botched attempt to deal with it sets off a contagion that spreads across the region, in a story where faith offers no protection and the rules of the exorcism film have been thrown out.

What real-world nightm...

Ben and Rob step into Trainspotting, the 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel that sent Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald out of the Shallow Grave sandpit and into the scuzzy flats, pubs and shooting galleries of Edinburgh’s heroin underworld. The film follows Mark “Rent Boy” Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, as he tries to kick the habit, fails, tries again, and drags his mates through the wreckage: Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy, Ewen Bremner’s Spud, Kevin McKidd’s Tommy, Kelly Macdonald’s Diane, Peter Mullan’s Swanney, and Robert Carlyle’s Begbie, the friend nobody wa...

Ben and Rob step into Sunshine, the 2007 sci-fi thriller that sent Danny Boyle and his 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland out of the zombie-infested UK and into the dying heart of our solar system. The film follows the crew of the Icarus II, an international band of astronauts played by Cillian Murphy as quiet physicist Capa, Chris Evans as the most sensible man on board, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong and Cliff Curtis, as they haul a bomb the size of Manhattan towards the sun in a last-ditch attempt to reignite it, with Mark Strong waiting...

Ben and Rob set sail for Waterworld, Kevin Reynolds' 1995 post-apocalyptic epic that turned a five-million-dollar B-movie idea into the most expensive film ever made at the time, and one of Hollywood's most infamous cautionary tales. Directed by Reynolds and starring Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino and Dennis Hopper, the film follows a mutant drifter across a flooded Earth while, behind the scenes, an unfinished script, a gigantic floating city and two old friends with very different ideas of what movie they were making pushed the production towards complete industrial madness.

How did Roger Corman rejecting a...

Ben and Rob step into Howard the Duck, the 1986 sci-fi comedy that took George Lucas's decade long crush on a foul mouthed Marvel comic book duck and turned it into one of the most notorious box office disasters in Hollywood history. Directed by Willard Huyck from a screenplay he co-wrote with Gloria Katz, the film stars Lea Thompson as rock singer Beverly Switzler, Jeffrey Jones as a scientist possessed by an alien entity, and a young Tim Robbins as her hapless almost scientist friend, all sharing the screen with a wisecracking, cigar smoking duck played by a rotating cast...

Ben and Rob step into Labyrinth, Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy adventure that turned a puppeteer's most personal creative risk into a genre-defining cult classic. Directed by Jim Henson from a screenplay credited to Monty Python's Terry Jones, the film stars David Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth and a fourteen year old Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a girl who has thirteen hours to solve an ever-shifting maze and rescue her baby brother from Jareth's clutches.

How did a limo ride home from a Dark Crystal screening turn into a story about goblins stealing babies, and why did the...

Ben and Rob head underground for Tremors, Ron Underwood's 1990 monster comedy that turned a killer-worm B-movie premise into one of the most beloved cult classics of the home-video era. Directed by Underwood in his feature debut, from a script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, the film stars Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire (in her acting debut) as the residents of an isolated Nevada town who discover something enormous is hunting them from beneath the dirt.

What did it actually take for two writers to get this thing made on...

Ben and Rob make a wish on a One Wish Willow and immediately regret it, joined this week by James Bertie for a deep dive into the low budget horror romance that somehow outgrossed Scream 7, Backrooms, and pretty much every other genre film released in 2026. Directed by Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston as lovesick Bear and Inde Navarrette as his increasingly ominous crush-turned-obsession Nikki (with able comic backup from Andy Richter), Obsession is the story of a Faustian bargain gone spectacularly, hilariously wrong.

The trio dig into how Barker builds dread on a shoestring, the slow...

Ben and Rob strap into the neural interface for ‘The Cell’, Tarsem Singh’s hallucinatory 2000 psychological thriller that turned a serial killer plot into one of the most visually audacious studio films of its era. Directed by Tarsem (billed under his mononym for his feature debut), the film stars Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn and Vincent D’Onofrio, and plunges a child psychologist into the comatose mind of a killer to save his latest victim before time runs out.

How did a music video director best known for R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” end up helming a big-budget s...

Ben, Rob and Amber blast off with ‘Destination Moon’, the 1950 science fiction landmark that helped launch an entire decade of space age cinema. Directed by Irving Pichel, produced by George Pal and developed with legendary sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein, Destination Moon stars John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson as the crew of the first privately funded mission to the Moon. Released nearly twenty years before Apollo 11, the film treated space travel with a seriousness that helped reshape what science fiction could look like on screen.

Did Destination Moon really start the 1950s sci-fi boom...

Ben and Rob noclip into ‘The Backrooms’, Kane Parsons’ 2026 A24 horror debut that transforms the viral internet creepypasta and his Kane Pixels YouTube series into a feature length nightmare. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass, ‘The Backrooms’ follows a struggling furniture store owner who discovers an impossible doorway beneath his shop, and the therapist who follows him into an endless maze of liminal spaces.

How did a teenager teaching himself Blender during lockdown go from YouTube animator to directing one of A24’s biggest movies? How did a single creepy photograph become one of the internet’s b...

Ben and Rob get stepped on this week by 1954's Them!, the black-and-white creature feature that took Cold War nuclear dread and gave it nine feet of legs, mandibles, and a taste for sugar.

Starring Edmund Gwenn (yes, Santa Claus himself) as the entomologist explaining that mankind has opened a door it can't close, alongside James Whitmore and a pre-Gunsmoke James Arness, Them! follows a colony of New Mexico ants mutated by atomic testing into man-eating monsters, working their way from the desert into the storm drains of Los Angeles before the military can stop them.

Ben and Rob are joined this week by a very special third mast, guest host Amber Poppit for an episode covering Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the $250 million, 100% IMAX 70mm adaptation of Homer's original road trip gone wrong epic.

Starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, the King of Ithaca who spends a decade failing to simply go home, alongside Tom Holland as his son Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as long suffering wife Penelope, The Odyssey rounds out its absurdly stacked cast with Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Charlize Theron as Circe, and Zendaya as Athena; the goddess whose entire arc...

Ben and Rob shrink themselves down to size this week to tackle a woman who did the opposite: 1958's Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the black-and-white B-movie that proved you don't need a budget, you just need a giant papier-mâché hand and a grudge.

Starring Allison Hayes as Nancy Archer, a wealthy heiress who has a close encounter, gets a lot bigger, and decides it's finally time to deal with her cheating husband Harry and his mistress Honey, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is fifty-plus feet of scorned-wife rage wrapped in some of the most gloriously un...

Ben and Rob shoot their webs all over 2007 to dissect the $258 million fever dream that is Sam Raimi's Spider Man 3, the movie that had four villains, a jazz club, an emo dance number, and somehow still wasn't the strangest thing Sam Raimi did that decade.

We trace the making of this notoriously overstuffed threequel, from studio pressure to cramming in Venom, to Topher Grace's freakish, some may say gimpy, get up, to the reshoots and the runtime battles.

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church, Spider Man 3 follows Peter...

Ben and Rob fly first class back to 2006 to federally investigate a $33 million B-movie that somehow became one of the most anticipated films of the internet age, before a single trailer even dropped. This episode traces how Snakes on a Plane went from a modest 1992 spec script to a title so absurdly perfect that Samuel L. Jackson signed on for the name alone.

We dig into the film's tangled decade-long road to the screen, the fan campaigns and internet memes that forced New Line Cinema to re-re-name the film mid-production, and how a movie built almost entirely...

Ben and Rob swing into ‘Spider-Man 2’, Sam Raimi’s beloved 2004 superhero sequel that transformed a comic book blockbuster into one of the most emotionally enduring films of its genre. Starring Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Rosemary Harris and J.K. Simmons, Spider-Man 2 follows Peter Parker as he struggles to balance responsibility, romance and heroism, while facing the tragic rise of one of Marvel’s greatest villains.

Why does Doctor Octopus remain one of cinema's most enduring comic book villains, and what makes Alfred Molina the perfect actor to bring him to life? How close did Tobe...

Ben and Rob intercept the frequency in John Carpenter's They Live (1988), starring Roddy Piper as a man with nothing, Keith David as a man with just enough left to lose, and an entire ruling class of skull-faced aliens doing their most convincing work in business suits. What begins as the story of how a six-page pulp story from 1963, written by a man almost nobody has heard of, adapted into a comic nobody much read, ended up in the hands of a furious filmmaker who wanted to give the finger to a sitting president slowly develops into something considerably larger...

Ben and Rob sling their way back to 2002 and into the webbed world of Spider-Man, Sam Raimi's blockbuster that somehow managed to turn decades of comic book history, a nervous Tobey Maguire, and a maniacally committed Willem Dafoe into one of the defining superhero movies of the modern era. Along the way they untangle the long and surprisingly complicated journey that brought Marvel's most famous character to the big screen, explore the creative team that assembled around Raimi, and ask how a filmmaker best known for chainsaws, demons and severed hands ended up making one of the most sincere...

Ben and Rob disappear into the monkey suit and hit the dusty New Mexico road with Sunlight (2024), the feature directing debut of Nina Conti, co-written with and co-starring Shenoah Allen, with Bill Wise and Melissa Chambers rounding out the cast. What begins as a tale built around a familiar prop from Conti's ventriloquism act slowly unfolds into something far more layered; a conversation about a desperate, near-mythical journey from stage gimmick to fully realised film, a writing process built almost entirely on improvisation and trust between two performers, and a story that somehow uses a sweaty, full-body monkey costume...

Ben and Rob strap themselves into the feedback loop and jack all the way in to The Lawnmower Man, directed by Brett Leonard and starring Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Fahey, Jenny Wright, and Mark Bringelson. What begins as a deceptively simple fable about a gentle simpleton turbocharged into a god by virtual reality and experimental drugs slowly mutates into something far weirder; a conversation about the most chaotic production history in early nineties Hollywood, the strange economy of Stephen King's name and exactly what it takes for him to legally disown your film, the accidental genius of low-rent CGI as...

Ben and Rob dive headfirst into the churning, sun bleached chaos of The Surfer, directed by Lorcan Finnegan and starring Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, and Nick Warnock. What begins as a straightforward tale of a man trying to reclaim his boyhood beach slowly mutates into something far stranger; a conversation about exploitation cinema, Australian genre filmmaking, territorial masculinity, mob psychology, class warfare, and whether Nicolas Cage has quietly delivered one of the most unhinged yet precisely calibrated performances of his entire career.

What even is an exploitation movie and does The Surfer wear that label...

Ben and Rob conclude their journey through Panem with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part Two, directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Donald Sutherland. What begins as one final YA franchise finale slowly mutates into something far stranger; a conversation about propaganda, blockbuster filmmaking, dead children, sewer monsters, wigs, merchandising, oligarchs, trauma, rebellion branding, and whether Suzanne Collins may have quietly pulled off one of the most outrageous sleight-of-hand tricks ever hidden inside a studio franchise.

Why does Donald Sutherland feel like...

Ben and Rob step back into the summer of 1986 with Flight of the Navigator, a film that has spent forty years being wildly underestimated. Warm, strange, and quietly melancholy beneath its adventure film surface, it tells the story of a boy who falls into a ravine and wakes up in a world that moved on without him… but is it the misunderstood masterpiece its most devoted fans insist it is? Or has our affection for it quietly outgrown the film itself?

The boys dig into the extraordinary story of how Flight of the Navigator came to exist at...

Ben and Rob return to Panem with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014), the instalment that divides fans and demands a verdict. Directed by Francis Lawrence, this chapter strips away the spectacle and doubles down on the psychology. But does that make it a bold creative swing, or a franchise stumbling under the weight of its own ambitions?

Two visions of the same film. Ben and Rob don't just disagree on Mockingjay, they disagree on what it means for the series as a whole. Is this the moment the Hunger Games grew up, or the moment it lost...

Ben and Rob plunge into the feverish, unraveling psyche at the heart of Die My Love, a film that blurs the boundaries between passion, isolation, and psychological fracture. Set against a raw, untamed landscape that feels as volatile as its characters, the story captures a relationship pushed to its emotional limits, but what exactly is Die My Love? A romance? A descent into madness? Or something far harder to define?

What drove the film’s creation, and how did its cast and creatives shape such an intense, intimate portrayal of love under pressure? Ben and Rob dig in...

Ben and Rob step back into the arena with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), the sequel that proves it’s anything but a middle movie. Directed by Francis Lawrence, this chapter doesn’t just continue the story, it sharpens it. But what is it that makes Catching Fire feel so complete, so essential, rather than just a bridge between beginnings and endings?

They dig into the making of drama, from the high pressure director switch to the challenge of elevating a global phenomenon. How did those behind the scenes shifts help shape a stronger, more confident film?

Ben and Rob descend into the stark, vertical nightmare of The Platform (2019), the Spanish sci-fi thriller from director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia that turns a simple premise into a brutal, unforgettable allegory. Set within a mysterious tower where food and morality cascade from the top down, the film strips human behavior to its rawest form. But how did this claustrophobic concept become such a sharp reflection of the world outside its concrete walls?

Who is Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, and what inspired his vision of a society defined entirely by levels, luck, and survival? What makes The Platform feel so disturbingly...

Ben and Rob step into the fractured districts of Panem with The Hunger Games, the 2012 phenomenon that turned a brutal dystopian novel into a cultural lightning strike. Directed by Gary Ross and led by a breakout performance from Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, the film walks a tightrope between blockbuster spectacle and unsettling social commentary, but how did it all come together?

Who is Suzanne Collins, and why did Hollywood take a risk on her bleak, unflinching vision of a future built on control, sacrifice, and survival? What drew Gary Ross to the material, and how did...

Ben and Rob wander into the whimsical streets of Montmartre and a carefully constructed fantasy with Amélie, the 2001 French sensation directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Starring Audrey Tautou in her star making role, alongside Mathieu Kassovitz and a kaleidoscope of unforgettable side characters, Amélie blends romance, surrealism, and meticulous visual storytelling into a film that feels as handmade as it does magical.

Why was Amélie made, and what alchemy of planning, design, and happy accidents brought its hyper-stylised world to life? How did its now iconic score become one of the most beloved in modern cin...

Ben and Rob return to childhood (and possibly psychological warfare) with Matilda, the 1996 family classic directed by and starring Danny DeVito. Featuring Mara Wilson, Pam Ferris, Embeth Davidtz and DeVito himself, Matilda blends Roald Dahl’s dark whimsy with a surprisingly chaotic energy, serving up a story of genius, neglect, and just a hint of revenge.

Do our hosts have wildly different reactions to this so-called “kids’ film,” and does it hold up as the classic many remember? How does Danny DeVito balance warmth and menace both in front of and behind the camera, and why does his vers...

Ben and Rob bring the saga to a close with ‘The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2’, the 2012 fantasy finale that ended one of the most talked about franchises in modern cinema. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Mackenzie Foy, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning and Anna Kendrick, Breaking Dawn Part 2 delivers the final chapter of vampires, werewolves and eternal love, while wrapping up a cultural phenomenon that defined a generation.

Does Breaking Dawn Part 2 actually deliver as a franchise finale? How do the cast and pacing hold up, and does that infamous final act work? What was the...

Ben and Rob head back into the Frankenstein mythos to tackle The Bride! (2026), the bold, chaotic, and very Maggie Gyllenhaal take on one of horror’s most famous monsters. Before diving into the film’s wild ideas, the pair rewind to ask the obvious question: what exactly is this movie trying to be? A gothic romance? A feminist monster movie? A gangster road film set in 1930s Chicago? Somehow, it’s attempting all of them at once.

From there the conversation gets stranger. The boys unpack the film’s radical attempt to give the Bride a voice and agen...

Ben and Rob head back to Forks to crack open Breaking Dawn – Part 1, the strangest chapter in the Twilight saga. Before getting into the chaos, they rewind to ask the obvious question: what is this film actually trying to be? The pair unpack the cultural moment surrounding its release, what critics made of it at the time, and why a movie that feels like it has three completely different acts somehow still counts as one story.

From there the conversation gets weirder. The boys dig into the Mormon influence behind the Twilight universe, the fingerprints of purity cu...

Ben and Rob crack open the lab and fire up the lightning rods for their trip into Frankenstein, the long-gestating passion project from Guillermo del Toro, and things get stitched together fast. Before they even get near the operating table, the pair dig back to the source, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, unpacking the Creature’s original, deeply human motivation and how often adaptations miss the tragic point entirely.

From there, Rob unveils a chaotic brand-new segment (almost definitely probably returning… maybe) in a heroic attempt to keep the episode on the rails, before the conversation lurches through cine...

Ben and Rob head back to Forks for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third (and somehow most openly unhinged) entry in the glittery supernatural mega-franchise. The one where the love triangle becomes a war movie, the subtext becomes text, and everyone suddenly starts giving speeches like they’re in a fantasy epic instead of a rainy teen melodrama. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner (now operating at full shirtless protector mode), Eclipse finds Bella caught between eternal vampiric marriage and extremely mortal werewolf abs, while Seattle is being terrorised by an army of newborn vampires and the fr...

Ben and Rob hit the road with Rain Man (1988), and this week they’re graciously joined by dear friend, Amber of the Ctrl Alt Critique podcast to unpack one of the most celebrated (and complicated) Best Picture winners of the late ’80s. Starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, the film follows a fast-talking yuppie who discovers he has an estranged autistic brother with extraordinary abilities, then drags him on a cross-country trip that slowly turns from a selfish cash grab into something resembling a family reunion.

The gang are getting into; How did this movie go from belo...

Ben and Rob return to Forks for The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), the moodier, louder, and somehow even more emotionally chaotic sequel that turned a teen vampire romance into a full-blown blockbuster franchise. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner (now with significantly more screen time and significantly fewer shirts), New Moon finds Bella Swan reeling from heartbreak, spiraling into supernatural depression, and discovering that if one dangerous immortal boyfriend disappears, there’s always a pack of extremely buff werewolves waiting in the wings.

What is New Moon, exactly? a breakup drama, a monster movie, or tw...

Ben and Rob dive into Sinners, the intense, genre-blurring drama that’s become one of the most talked about films of the year and, remarkably, the most Oscar-nominated movie in history.

Often mistaken for a vampire story but driven more by themes of guilt, faith, and morality than horror, Sinners uses its haunting atmosphere and tightly unified style to tell a story that feels uncannily contemporary, even though it isn’t set in the present. With every department working in striking harmony, the film’s look, sound, and performances create a singular, deliberate vision.

But what i...

Ben and Rob sink their teeth into the endlessly debated phenomenon of Twilight (2008), the moody supernatural romance that launched a franchise, a thousand memes, and an entire generation of Team Edward vs. Team Jacob discourse. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, Twilight follows an awkward new girl who moves to a rainy town, falls for a mysterious classmate, and quickly discovers that eternal love comes with fangs, glitter, and some deeply questionable life choices.

What is Twilight, really? A tragic romance, a paranormal soap opera, or an accidentally hilarious teen melodrama; how does the film’s...