Horror movies meet critical theory, and the jokes keep interrupting.
Horror Vanguard uses horror films, and the odd family classic like the 1971 Willy Wonka, to argue about car culture, company wages and the camera's gaze. Jon and Rosalline keep the theory loose with skits and running gags, and more than one episode signs off with a nod to the 'dread discourse'.
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Horror Vanguard reads horror movies the way a theory seminar reads a novel, then refuses to behave like a seminar. Jon and Rosalline host, or co-ghost, in the show's own pun. The films run from The Hills Have Eyes and The Midnight Meat Train to A Cure for Wellness and Weapons (2025), with the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as a less expected stop. The analysis is the point. In the Hills Have Eyes interlude, a mother scolding her eldest daughter for language picked up in New York City becomes a case about suburbia as a panopticon and family relations as property. From there the talk turns to the relationship between car culture and a particular patriarchal family form in America. The Midnight Meat Train discussion lands on a Zizekian point: cinema as the ultimate pervert art, not because it shows viewers what they want but because it shows them how to want it. The Wonka conversation is about wages. The Oompa Loompas are paid in chocolate, a company currency, and the discussion goes back to Roald Dahl's original writing for the characters while naming the racism it says the film hides. Elsewhere the argument is about genre vocabulary: slapping the Lovecraftian label on things too readily, the case goes, makes for lazy meta-analysis. Another discussion suggests that a 1990s version of the same story would have made one victim's promiscuity her crime, the Friday the 13th formula of punishing women for being sexually promiscuous. Craft gets its turn as well: Weapons (2025) is faulted for anthology chapters that are not different enough from one another. None of this is delivered straight. Cold opens stage skits, including a film-set parody in which a director asks an actor playing a police officer at a gruesome crime scene to do it again, happier. The interlude episodes carry a travel story on a train and in a camper van, complete with a blown-up 'HV crypt' and a line of borrowed David Lynch dialogue. Running bits pile up: famous names from Guillermo del Toro to Mary Todd Lincoln's ghost claimed as secret listeners, a pet pigeon retired to a rehabilitation farm, and eel jokes. The politics are out in the open, down to a closing line holding that talking about movies is great, friendship is magic and communism will win. One exchange compares the whole thing to daycare for critical theorists, which is hard to argue with. Several episodes begin with 'Hello, creeps' and sign off hoping listeners enjoyed the 'dread discourse'. The Wonka entry is a fair test of fit: a listener who enjoys hearing a Willy Wonka movie read as a labor dispute will feel at home with the rest.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes horror films argued over through critical theory and left politics, and who enjoys having the argument interrupted by skits, pigeons and eels.
What sets it apart: It treats a single line of dialogue or a character's wages as a way into arguments about labor, family and desire. Instead of a plain review format, it wraps that theory in scripted skits and running gags.
Jon and Rosalline explore the horror of culture and a culture of horror.
Even your Willy Wonka nostalgia has to answer for the Oompa Loompas' pay.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A rabid-dog road trip opens into a sharp, crookedly comic reading of cars, suburbia, and family power.
A horror road trip begins with a camper van, an abandoned silver mine, a wary gas-station old-timer, and a pack of rabid dogs that feels reassuringly unsafe.
A surreal train ride gives Horror Vanguard's reset a loose, unsettling charge around black magic and voyeurism.
Horror Vanguard's reset takes shape as a surreal train ride after the HV crypt is blown up with a Resident Evil 4 rocket launcher, Ashley Darrow becomes a pile of urbanomic books, and returning new host Rosalyn comes aboard.
A candy-colored factory tour turns into a sharp look at labor, colonialism, ableism, and escape.
Horror Vanguard treats Wonkatania's Nightmare Tunnel as a way back into Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with Ashley Darrow and John Greenaway turning the film toward labor, power, and colonialism.
A Cure for Wellness becomes a funny argument about genre labels, literary order, and eel-filled absurdity.
Horror Vanguard uses A Cure for Wellness to stage a funny, nimble argument about what happens when horror criticism reaches for a familiar label.
A funny, politically edged autopsy of a horror movie's bad choices and darker implications.
Horror Vanguard pulls apart a recent horror movie by following its children into one dangerous choice after another, then lingering on a character whose expected slasher punishment never comes.
Horror movies, loudly overthought.
Horror films and monster shows, talked through by two friends.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
The hosts introduce a special episode of Horror Vanguard, a podcast about horror movies and theory, with guest C.D.
The hosts introduce their horror film theory podcast with humorous banter about Dante's Inferno and superhero movie discourse.
Horror Vanguard's The Hills Have Eyes episode reads Wes Craven's 1977 film as an American desert fairy tale built around family violence, cars, and guns.
Horror Vanguard's "Interlude I - You Can't Be Neutral On The Midnight Meat Train" uses Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train" to weigh the film against the short story, photography, kink, and meat politics.
["Horror Vanguard's UNLOCKED 344 on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) treats Gene Wilder's film as a theory-heavy case study in labor, scarcity, and spectacle.", "Ashley Darrow opens from the \"Wonkatania\" in the \"Nightmare Tunnel,\" while John Greenaway, \"TheLiquidGuy,\" jokes about union organizing on cocoa farms.", "The hosts anchor the discussion in Arthur O'Shaughnessy's \"We are the music makers\" stanza and Ashley's forthcoming Negative Psychedelia, which they connect to late-stage capitalism and a bad trip that never resolves.", "Their read focuses on Wilder's limp-and-somersault entrance, the Oompa Loompas, and the contrast between the 1971 film, Johnny Depp's version, and the Timothy Chalamet project they dismiss as memory-hold."]
Horror Vanguard episode 359 reviews Gore Verbinski's A Cure for Wellness, a 2016 film about a Swiss sanatorium, eels, and a trapped finance worker.
Kay and Kyle review Until Dawn, the film adaptation of the video game, and keep returning to how it turns branching game logic into horror-movie set pieces.
Horror Vanguard’s John and Kyle examine Zach Cregger’s Weapons through its pupil-dilation marketing, ambiguous “now-ish” setting, and chapter-based structure.
Horror Vanguard examines Toby Hooper’s 1969 film Eggshells as an experimental portrait of Austin’s counterculture, with the hosts connecting it to anti-war protest footage at the University of Texas.
Horror Vanguard reviews Madame Webb through a discussion of Pepsi, Spider-Man properties, and the film's unusually fractured production.
Horror Vanguard hosts Kyle and John analyze Steven Soderbergh’s Presence through houses, real estate, and the idea that ownership is a form of haunting.
Horror Vanguard hosts John and Kyle analyze The Devil's Bath, a historical drama set in early-modern Germany that connects depression, religion, and social pressure.
Horror Vanguard’s Kyle and John analyze Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners as a vampire story about race, money, music, and the 1930s Jim Crow South.
Horror Vanguard hosts John and Kyle analyze Joker: Folie à Deux as a musical critique of celebrity, entertainment, and the star-making logic seen in American Idol.
Horror Vanguard examines Roland Emmerich's 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow with Justin and other Library Punk participants.
Horror Vanguard's John and Ashley analyze Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting, adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1958 novel The Haunting of Hill House.
Hosts Ashley Darrow and Dr.
Hosts discuss horror movies and theory with humorous banter and cultural commentary.
The hosts of Horror Vanguard review Friday the 13th Part III, discussing its 3D effects and campy elements.