📙 Part 2: Describe a film you watched recently

This episode's vocabulary

To sit through something (phrasal verb) - to stay until the end of an event such as a meeting or performance that is very long or boring.

Found footage filmmaking (noun) - a subgenre in which all or a substantial part of the film is presented as if it were discovered film or video recordings, often left behind by missing or dead protagonists.

Creepy (adj.) - strange or unnatural and making you feel frightened.

To pull something off (phrasal verb) - to succeed in doing something difficult or unexpected.

Eerie (adj.) - strange in a frightening and mysterious way.

Creeps (plural noun) - a feeling of fear and disgust.

To weird out (phrasal verb) - if someone or something weirds you out, they make you feel strange or uncomfortable.

Remarkably (adverb) - used to emphasize how surprising or unusual something is.

On a shoestring (idiom) - if you do something on a shoestring, you do it with a very small amount of money.

Questions and Answers

R: Oh, well, I like this film called Savageland. I first watched it about five years ago, but I watch it at least once a year because it's so well done, and I took some time to watch it again the other week. It's one of the few movies I will actually sit through, since it's so good, at least in my opinion. It's a sort of found footage-style horror film about a mass murder in this isolated town on the Mexican-American border. Instead of being video footage, though, like you would have traditionally in these films, it focuses on a set of really creepy images that people investigating the crime find after the massacre happens. And you would think that would be hard to pull off, but it's shot in a documentary style, looking at the photos and interlacing it with all the human drama and reactions to the photos that result. And the music and sound design is also really eerie. So if you watch it in a darkened room, it really gives you the creeps. The last time I watched it, I was on my couch late at night with my partner, who had never seen it before. And they get really weirded out by things like this very easily. So when I suggested watching it, I was ready for a real emotional roller coaster on their part, but they coped remarkably well, given that they don't particularly like horror. And I love the whole thing. As always, I really liked the movie again, or I really liked seeing the movie again, and it was fun to have the shared experience with someone else. Usually, I just watch these things by myself, so it was good to change things up a little, even though it was shot on a shoestring budget and uses pretty basic techniques, the people who made it have done a brilliant job. I always recommend it to anyone who asks for movie recommendations. And the best part was, it was and still is available online for free, so I get to watch it anytime I feel like it. I don't need to go to the cinema or something like that.

M: And what about your other friends? Do they like it?

R: Um, I don't think my other friends have seen it yet. I need to ask them.