Believe it or not, we have arrived at the 100th and longest and final episode of ENTER THE VOID. On today's episode, your hosts Bill and Renan sit down together in person to reminisce about how they originally came up with the idea for this podcast, how they launched their earlier show KubrickCast, and even how they met in the first place. Next, th…

For our final regular episode of the podcast (yep, the whole thing) we finally come to one of the essential films of the mindfuck movie discussion, David Lynch's breakthrough as a popular artist, 1986's BLUE VELVET. Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, and of course Dennis Hopper, it was highly controversial upon release, and …

Our pick for this episode is not your usual, bog standard time travel psychological horror... but then again, maybe it is? Today we are doing GROUNDHOG DAY, the 1993 romantic comedy directed by Harold Ramis, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. A sleeper of a mindfuck, Groundhog Day warmed hearts and tickled funny bones when it debuted early i…

So this episode was supposed to be just about PERFECT BLUE, Satoshi Kon's 1997 animated psychological thriller. But we couldn't stop at just one! So Renan and Bill went ahead and watched PAPRIKA, his 2006 science-fiction opus too, which also sadly would be his last feature film. Today, your hosts talk about the life and career of Satoshi Kon, his i…

How have we got this far without discussing anything by the original film surrealist, Luis Buñuel? Well, today we rectify the situation and discuss not one but four films from the Spanish exile / expatriate moviemaking legend. In this episode, your hosts examine the previously promised UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929), THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), and TH…

At long last we get around to a movie that was on our mind when we started this podcast: FIGHT CLUB, the 1999 David Fincher film starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter, based on the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name. If you don't like politics with your movies, then today's show isn't for you, because Fight Club was bo…

This episode is a little different: rather than taking on a single film or even the work of one director, the scope in this extra-long bonus episode is the greatest mindfucks across more than 50 years of TV history. In three separate segments, Bill and Renan each make their "Mount Rushmore" picks for the greatest television series, single episodes …

In today's episode, Bill and Renan return to the work of David Cronenberg—a director twice before discussed on this podcast—to consider the 1986 film many believe to be his masterpiece: THE FLY, starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who accidentally fuses his genes with a common housefly, and Geena Davis as the woman who loves him. So: is it actual…

In the waning months of the 20th century, a remarkable little film from a pair of unknown filmmakers arrived in US cinemas, and it became a bona fide sensation. That was BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999), written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze, starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and of course, John Malkovich. It was a f…

How has this show never done a Christopher Nolan film before? Today your hosts rectify that and discuss his 2010 film INCEPTION, a $800 million-grossing summer blockbuster with no pre-established IP, unless being the next film by the guy who made The Dark Knight somehow counts. In this episode, Renan and Bill discuss: whether this and other Nolan f…

Today Renan and Bill lose their neorealist chains and grapple with the 1963 Federico Fellini film 8½, hailed by armchair film scholars as one of the greatest films of all time. More than 50 years on, how does it hold up? Undoubtedly and deservedly a classic, 8½ today looks different than it did in the 1960s, or even the 1990s. In this episode: 8½'s…

We're back with the first of our last run of episodes, and today's episode is a two-for-one deal: we mostly discuss Terry Gilliam's 1996* time travel thriller 12 MONKEYS, with Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt, and weave throughout discussion of the 1962 French featurette that inspired it, LA JETÉE. Discussed in this episode: how does tim…

Well, what have we here—it's the tenth season of ENTER THE VOID! Your patience has been rewarded: Bill and Renan are back for what we are gratuitously terming "Season X". (Multiple pronunciations accepted.) This time, we're doing things a little bit differently. The good news: we'll be doing 10 films instead of 8; we're going bimonthly, which may b…

At last, it's the season 9 finale, and we go out with a bang: THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER by writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou is one of the most searing film experiences of the last few years. Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Barry Keoghan star in this family drama / suspense thriller / haunted house / horror film,…

For the penultimate episode of season 9, your hosts alter their consciousness and explore ALTERED STATES, a 1980 sci-fi horror film written by Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Ken Russell, and today known as much for its far-out story as for its creators' infamous feud. William Hurt stars as Eddie Jessup, an academic whose experiments with sensory depr…

In today's episode, your hosts grapple with the Danny Boyle-directed, Alex Garland-written 2007 science-fiction horror-thriller SUNSHINE. A commercial failure at the time, with a mixed reception among critics, the film has over the past decade gained an appreciable cult following. But what do your hosts think? Is it a spooky, contemplative outer sp…

Once nearly impossible to find and now... still pretty tough to obtain via legitimate means, Dalton Trumbo's JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN—the 1971 film he wrote and directed based on his own 1939 novel—is both legendary and forgotten at the same time. It tells the disturbing tale of a young soldier who loses his limbs and nearly all of his senses, but whose …

Alan Parker's 1987 ANGEL HEART contains explicit sex, voodoo rituals, amnesia, chickens, and a few shocking twists that your hosts figured out at different points. In today's episode, they reveal when they knew what and compare their impressions of this not-quite-successful but still semi-legendary Hollywood thriller, now more than thirty years old…

Our third episode this season is about the semi-obscure but recently-Criterioned 1973 French animated film FANTASTIC PLANET, or La Planète Sauvage (literally, "wild planet"), from the minds of René Laloux and Roland Topor, with music by Alain Goraguer, based on a novel by Stefan Wul. It's a psychedelic audiovisual trip, and tells the story of an ad…

Is Julia Ducornau's 2016 film RAW (French: Grave) a coming of age film about cannibalism? A body horror film about family relationships? A tale of sexual discovery and veterinary practices? Yes, no, and maybe—but not necessarily in that order! In this episode, Bill and Renan consider a film they might not otherwise have been drawn to... with sexy r…

It's not too often that we examine a major Hollywood blockbuster on this show, but it's not too often that the studios release something as baffling as TOTAL RECALL, and by that we mean the original 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger–Paul Verhoeven sci-fi schlockfest. Is it all a dream? Did he read Word Up! magazine? Did Quaid ever get his ass to Mars, or …

Get excited... the ninth season of ENTER THE VOID begins next week, and today we present our patented "episode zero" with a short preview of the eight films we'll be covering in the weeks ahead. Once again, major thanks to the ETV Podcast Club for helping pick the films for discussion. Here's what's we've got for you: Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)…

For the final episode of our eighth season, your co-hosts revisit a dorm room film classic, the 2000 action-adventure-thriller-satire BATTLE ROYALE, about a Japanese classroom forced to fight to the death on an abandoned island. Upon release in Japan, it was both hugely controversial and hugely profitable. But in most of the Western world, it didn'…

For the penultimate episode of our eighth season, we consider MOON, Duncan Jones' 2009 debut science fiction picture, starring Sam Rockwell, Sam Rockwell, and the disembodied voice of someone you probably now wish wasn't involved in this picture. Discussed in today's show: how the film deploys its twists; what it has to say about cloning and artifi…

What did you think of Jonathan Glazer's 2013 minimalist sci-fi UNDER THE SKIN, starring Scarlett Johansson? Did it all make sense when you watched it the first time? Or did it only reveal it to yourself after another viewing? Today your hosts, Bill and Renan, come at it from different perspectives and have, well, different perspectives on it. Topic…