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Sitting in the Dark

Sitting in the Dark

Written by: TruStory FM
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About this listen
 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
  • Psycho-Biddy, Qu'est-Ce Que C'est?

    Psycho-Biddy, Qu'est-Ce Que C'est?
    Oct 30 2026
    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 LinksFrom 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 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 8 mins
  • The Working Dead

    The Working Dead
    Sep 25 2026
    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 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
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Articles of Loathing

    Articles of Loathing
    Aug 28 2026
    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 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 16 mins
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