It's Only a Podcast - A Horror Movie Review Show · Christian Estabrook and Ian Nichols

Episode 211 - The First Omen / Wolf Creek (2005)

·1 hr 34 min·1 clip

The Fool tarot card emerges—embrace new beginnings, reset your life during this eclipse moment.

Christian and Ian open the show in full booth-chaos mode. The office is getting repainted, and the twilight-plum walls keep leaving a faint paint smell in everything they say. Ian takes the usual ribbing. The setup drifts through house-project chatter before the episode remembers it is a horror podcast. Christian and Ian keep circling listener correspondence, including a couple of mentions of what to watch next. Ripley and Night Swim both hover at the edges of the conversation. The first film on deck is The First Omen. Christian lays out the Arkasha Stevenson movie with Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, and Sonia Braga, then reads the premise as a young American woman sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church and run into a darkness that starts breaking open her faith. The movie quickly starts inviting comparisons. The hosts point to the Italy setting, the devout newcomer, the dark-haired freer-spirited resident, the building jump, and the familiar horror machinery around ominous pregnancy and evil incarnate. The whole thing becomes a running reminder that horror has been mining the same creepy well a lot lately. Christian says the screening kept pulling him toward that feeling of repeated ingredients. Then the show pivots to Wolf Creek for the back half. It keeps the same loose, live-wire rhythm instead of snapping into a tidy review grid. The hosts let side jokes and callbacks do some of the work. Even with all the detours, they stay clear about how much the movies overlap in the moment and how often horror returns to familiar ground. The episode winds down with more horror talk still in the air and a hint that Ripley may get its own mini-segment later. It closes with the show’s usual reminder that it really is only a podcast.

As heard by us

Loose, funny horror talk that knows when a scare has started to wear borrowed clothes.

Christian Estabrook and Ian Nichols start in the weeds, with office paint fumes, a twilight plum studio facelift, and banter that keeps the room feeling lived in while the work is still underway.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Need horror talk with jokes, banter, and two movie discussions in one episode?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from It's Only a Podcast - A Horror Movie Review Show