Horror homework, with plenty of recess.
FRIGHT SCHOOL finds Joshua and Joe talking about horror films from several decades, from The Guardian (1990) to 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. The movie is the anchor, but the pair take their time getting to it, trading Easter menus, TV enthusiasms and Oscar-season chatter along the way.
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FRIGHT SCHOOL is a horror film conversation between Joshua and Joe, and it treats the genre as coursework. The intro sets the frame each time it plays: 'Are you ready? Class is in session.' By the show's own billing, Joshua is the horror devotee and Joe is the one being led into the genre. The syllabus is wide. Episodes in this stretch run from The Day of the Triffids (1963) and The Guardian (1990) to Undertone (2025), The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), The Bride! (2026) and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. The titles make their own jokes, leading with lines like 'Nature Bites Back!', 'Catholic Ephemera' and 'Dr. Kelson at Burning Man' before naming the film. Getting to the movie is part of the fun. Openings wander through an Easter spread of grilled steak, roasted pork belly and burrata, excitement over the third season of The Comeback, and a nod to what a good year it has been for horror at the Oscars. One check-in lands on 'appropriately fine', and the same opening sets out to pretend, for a while, that only fictional horror matters. Elsewhere, talk of fuel prices and travel plans turns into a riff on road trips and the friends made along the way. Television gets its share of detours too. A tangent about a series built around stand-up becomes a defense of a complicated friendship, one held together by trust and love despite hurt and betrayal. Another compares a darkly funny series featuring Jamie Lee Curtis and an AI character to The Closer. When the film finally arrives, the observations are pointed. On The Conjuring: Last Rites, the conversation welcomes the family drama, including a suitor for the Warrens' daughter Judy, and prefers the film being about the couple rather than just a case. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga get the credit for making audiences care about the Warrens at all. The Bone Temple episode drifts into speculative diagnosis, weighing schizoaffective disorder against a mood or personality disorder for a character who, taken at face value, believes he is the son of Satan and hears voices. Undertone sparks a thought about sound: heard close in the ear, with no crowd shuffling popcorn, it feels intimate, and that same closeness can make podcasts about true crime and unknown things unnerving. The tone throughout is warm and joking, down to an Easter bit about who has risen that spirals into pronoun gags. FRIGHT SCHOOL is produced in San Diego, California, as part of the Geekscape Network, and a deep back catalog sits behind the episodes described here.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes horror discussion with plenty of friendly digression, and who wants older genre titles mixed in with new releases.
What sets it apart: The show bills itself as a horror education, with Joshua as the devotee and Joe as the one being initiated, and it frames episodes as lessons from the opening 'Class is in session.' It also puts The Day of the Triffids (1963) on the same syllabus as The Bride! (2026), and lets TV and life talk share the room with the film.
Welcome to Fright School, a podcast that explores horror films through the eyes of someone who is experiencing them for the first time. Each week, Joshua (the horror nerd) pushes Joe (the unsuspecting newbie) to the edge of the Mountains of Madness, as they discuss the cultural attitudes, conditions, and events that have shaped some of the most terrifying horror films. Will Joe survive his journey? Will Joshua take things too far? Join us every week for new episodes on Monday to find out! Are you ready? Class is in session.
Annabelle can wait; Joe and Joshua make Halloween in your soul sound like a valid lifestyle.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose horror conversation where exercise jokes, Triffids trivia, and sideways detours become part of the draw.
Fright School uses The Guardian as a way into a looser horror conversation, one that circles the movie without feeling locked to it. The hosts start with bits about exercise, extra rice, and a watch counting a walk to the kitchen as activity, then work back toward details from…
A nature-themed movie chat wanders from Easter dinner to a fake ad and an unexpectedly kind verdict.
Fright School's visit to The Day of the Triffids starts casually, and almost literally in the weeds, with Easter steaks, roasted pork belly, burrata salad, grilled peaches, and road-trip chatter taking up the early stretch before the movie talk settles in.
A horror conversation where an AI relationship makes a dark murder-investigation story even stranger.
Fright School works best in that uneasy zone where horror gets strange enough to turn funny. Joe and Joshua move from a Sunday-afternoon watch of The Blair Witch Project into a darker murder-investigation story involving Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana DeBose's Lucy, and an AI version…
A warm, searching discussion of Last Rites, the Warrens' family story, and horror's claim on serious cultural attention.
Fright School uses The Conjuring: Last Rites as a way into a broader question: why horror's cultural standing still matters, especially when this film draws so much of its pull from family drama.
Fast jokes, big franchises, zero reverence.
Star Wars minutiae, treated like headline news.
Fast banter for serious Star Wars fans.
Star Wars, comics, and creator-room candor.
Old scares, fresh horror conversations.
Film talk with a packed archive.
Joshua and Joe kick off season 8 of Fright School, a podcast where a horror nerd introduces a newbie to horror films, discussing cultural attitudes and events.
The hosts celebrate Halloween and the show's anniversary, discussing their break and upcoming season of horror film analysis.
A horror film podcast where a horror enthusiast introduces a newcomer to classic and modern horror movies, discussing their cultural impact.
["Fright School centers on William Friedkin's 1990 The Guardian, which Joe and Joshua frame as a tree-horror movie about a hamadryad and a baby-eating tree.", "They name Jenny Seagrove, Dwyer Brown, Carrie Lowell, and Brad Hall, and they note that the movie gives away its supernatural premise in the first few minutes.", "The hosts connect the film to a cluster of 1990s baby-snatching thrillers, including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Baby Snatcher, Empty Cradle, and Stolen Children.", "Before that review, they talk through The Comeback, Hacks, Groundlings sketches, and a childhood story about a backyard tree that became part of one family's horror memory."]
Fright School spends its opening stretch on Easter, Passover, burrata, grilled peaches, and a 'horror Seder' joke before shifting into The Day of the Triffids (1963).
Joe and Joshua open by arguing that TV scripts now assume "second-screen viewing," where audiences are half on their phones and half following the plot.
Fright School discusses Undertone (2025), Ian Tuason's directorial debut about two podcast hosts, a Catholic house full of ephemera, and a mother in home hospice.
Fright School connects The Conjuring: Last Rites, Sinners, and The Beauty through horror, Oscar politics, and Catholic symbolism.
Fright School reviews Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, with Joshua and Joe assessing a sequel built around Dr.
Fright School reviews The Nun (2018), directed by Corin Hardy and written by Gary Dauberman, as the fifth film in The Conjuring universe.
Fright School’s “Helter Skelter - Annabelle (2014)” spends much of its runtime on Heated Rivalry, queer media, fandom, and who gets to shape stories about queer life.
Fright School opens a January deep dive into The Conjuring universe, beginning with James Wan’s 2013 film starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Fright School hosts Joe and Joshua review the Stranger Things finale, which they watched in a cinema on December 31, 2025, and debate whether its cultural impact resembles Harry Potter.
A horror film podcast where a horror nerd introduces a newbie to classic and modern horror movies, discussing their cultural impact.
In this episode, hosts Joshua and Joe welcome a two-time Jeopardy!