Interview: Podcaster/Author Josh Larsen on Horror, Christianity, and Filmspotting
Photo: Arin Sang-Urai
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Josh Larsen is co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting and editor/producer for the pop culture website Think Christian. He’s also the author of Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings and the new book Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies.
We spoke with Josh about selling Hereditary to Christians, unsung horror heroes, the longevity of Filmspotting, go-to theater snacks, and more!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. See a Letterboxd list of all the movies mentioned.
1. What’s the Josh Larsen origin story?
My dad taking me to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which we ducked away to see while we were on family vacation. I did grow up in a Christian home that loved movies. We were restricted in what we could see, but in the way that I think any parent would be mindful about content and age-appropriateness. My parents were not afraid of movies. They didn’t have that posture of fearfulness about culture from a religious perspective. I’ve realized that’s kind of a gift. Even nowadays, when I go visit a college campus to speak or meet with a class, it still seems like it’s a rarity for kids, at least at Christian colleges, to have grown up with that experience. So I’m very grateful for it.
2. Fear Not! explores horror from a Christian perspective. How would you sell Hereditary to a conservative Christian?
You had to go right there… I don’t actually spend a lot of time on Hereditary in the book and that’s probably more just a result of the structure I was working with than any strong feelings about it. I’m a big fan of the film itself, so if I knew the person I could probably sell specifically what is interesting about it. We have a post on it at Think Christian about how it’s full of things like family trauma, guilt, and repression, which are all things the Gospel offers relief from and speaks to. That’s the basic premise of the book and the idea of encouraging Christians who are interested in it to engage with horror.
Horror does bring up these troubling experiences we’ve had, feelings we have, and the best horror movies help us to work through those rather than just exploit them. And I think Hereditary definitely allows the viewer to work through those things. It’s not just there to exploit them. And then sometimes horror movies will offer a bit of the Gospel response—not explicitly, but those that do turn to a certain hope. It’s probably more common in horror that they end badly, which is the point of the genre in many ways. But at least that’s where the Gospel can then step in and say to Christians at least: we’ve been through this experience of this movie before—where might we look to for hope or an answer or some sort of comfort?
So Hereditary specifically but horror in general can function as an opportunity to think deeply about the comfort that the gospel does offer, because these movies, as fantastical as they are, underneath they’re usually exploring real fears we all have. And honestly so does the Bible, right? All these fears, all these horrors are in the Bible as well. Which just speaks to the importance for Christians to consider them.
3. What’s a favorite discovery you made while researching or writing the book?
One of the movies I came to appreciate more as a rediscovery is Ganja & Hess, a 1970s film that I definitely put in the category of religious horror. It’s a variation on the vampire story. I first encountered it on Filmspotting when we were doing a Blacksploitation marathon. It mixes Western African-American Christian belief with ancient African occult religion. The first time I saw it for that Blacksploitation marathon, I appreciated being troubled by the movie. Could not wrap my mind around it.
When I revisited it for the book I came to appreciate more how it was exploring the tensions between those two traditions and practices. In some ways it also offers a fairly strong example of Gospel hope in it. The turning point for the main character, who is an anthropologist who comes under the spell of this ancient curse, actually involves a literal embodiment of the shadow of the cross. It’s not necessarily a happy ending, and there are other elements to the movie that still leave you troubled, but I was grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with that movie, examine it more closely and see what it did for me.
4. Hollywood doesn’t lack reboots and reheats these days, but what’s one horror movie you’d actually like to see reinterpreted for modern times?
I don’t think it was entirely successful, but something like Candyman is probably a good model. Just because you were getting a story through a different lens. Nia DaCosta, being a Black woman, was able to bring that to a story set in largely African American neighborhoods in Chicago, whereas the original film’s director was a white guy from England. I still think the original is an interesting movie and has some good qualities to it, but it doesn’t quite have that lens.
It seems like almost every notable film has been remade, and I’m not sure how I feel about the trend of remaking the non-English language into English language versions. I would rather just get more original stuff. Some of my favorites of recent years are original, like Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. So I think I’m struggling with this question because I don’t really want it to happen.
5. Who’s an unsung horror hero, either behind or in front of the camera?
I feel like sometimes the “final girl” of the slasher genre doesn’t always get her due. The killers usually steal the spotlight. Revisiting A Nightmare on Elm Street, my favorite horror film of all time, I was reminded of how much Heather Langenkamp brings to that movie as the main character Nancy who, yes, is a final girl, but in an interesting way just in the way she takes the reins and drives that narrative. I love when she rips into a young Johnny Depp as her doofus boyfriend, who falls asleep when she asks him not to because she’s gonna go try to trap Freddie. I think it’s a really strong performance that doesn’t rely as much on the sexual elements that final girls often get stuck with.
6. Fear Not! and your previous book Movies Are Prayers are trapped in a haunted house together. Which one gets out alive?
I think since Fear Not! is the shorter work it’s a little more slippery and harder to grasp, so let’s go with that.
7. Writing a book: overrated or underrated?
I think it’s different for each person who takes on such a project. You hear from very, very good writers that writing is hard and almost painful for them. There are aspects of it that are difficult, especially when I’ll come up with a concept but I haven’t really been able to break open. That was the case for Fear Not! with the found footage chapter. Really struggled with that one. So I sympathize with that point of view, but in general that’s never been my experience, and I’m tempted to say it’s overrated as this monumental effort. That’s just how writing is for me.
The difficulty for me is the time it takes away from other things. You have to invest and focus intensely on one task, one thing. Which I do enjoy doing, but it’s not how I live my life or do most of my work. So to carve out the space to just concentrate on a project like a book, that is hard and may be underrated.
8. This month we’re spotlighting westerns. What’s a western more people need to see?
A more recent one would be the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit because I don’t think it’s talked about quite as much in their canon as it should be. I think it’s one of their best, and one of their most serious films that’s also one of the most enjoyable with that Jeff Bridges performance.
As far as a classic, I’d say The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I watched it for the first time recently, which is kind of ridiculous, but I found it to be way more complicated politically than I would have guessed in terms of the white hat/black hat western stereotypes, and way more applicable to our current political climate in ways I did not expect. So that’s one that even if you saw years ago is well worth a revisit.
9. You’ve been cohost of Filmspotting since 2012. What’s something most people don’t realize about making a podcast?
Especially because every month there are more podcasts, I feel like there’s another question in there about what people realize once they start doing it. I think longevity is an underrated thing. Especially if you’re doing something as regular as Filmspotting, which has been weekly for years and years and years, with an occasional vacation week off once or twice a year. It takes a lot of stamina to have that consistency. And that does seem like a line of demarcation between folks who start one because it’s cheap, technologically easy, and initially fun to, you know, get on Zoom with your buddy and talk about whatever you want to talk about. But the longevity of keeping up that conversation and bringing energy each week, I find that more taxing. Producing a regular podcast is incredibly underrated in terms of what it takes to do that.
Maybe the secret is that we have a producer, Sam Van Hallgren, with Adam Kempenaar and me on the mic and Adam executive-producing the whole thing. We have that other person who is doing all the post-production stuff. We also get help from our partners at WBEZ, with Joe DeCeault there as producer. We mention all those names on every show, but I don’t know that everyone realizes that behind-the-scenes work going into it.
10. What’s a movie you’d love to do for Ebert Interruptus but would never get away with?
I might be able to get away with it and was close to proposing it: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. I think it would be rewarding in all the ways Interruptus needs—that close observation of every frame and every scene, and how it ties into her other films. She is one of my favorite filmmakers, so there’s that excuse. That’s one I’ve been holding in my back pocket and waiting to propose at the right time.
11. What’s your go-to movie theater snack?
I’m so boring that I never get anything. It’s only when I’m with my family that they’re gonna go up there and then I’ll steal some popcorn from them. I do like popcorn. I think it’s a problem for me because I would get the big one and just can’t stop. It’s in the French fries and pizza category for me—forget it. So I usually don’t even start. When I do get something, my favorite is probably at the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago. They’ve got a great beer selection, so if I’m going to see a movie not for work and usually it’s the second time I’ve seen it, I’ll grab a Ninja Vs. Unicorn from Pipeworks Brewing Company.
12. You’ve been writing and speaking about movies for nearly 30 years. What’s one thing you’ve learned in that time?
That it’s unfair to the filmmakers that those of us who call ourselves critics usually only see a movie once and then pretend to offer any sort of definitive word on it. Maybe that’s fresh on my mind having come off movies from this summer like Asteroid City and Oppenheimer and Barbie. These are very different but I would argue equally dense films aesthetically and thematically that you can barely get your arms around them the first time. The pace that something like Barbie is moving at, and the density of ambition that Oppenheimer has with the timelines it’s throwing at you … It seems ridiculous that we’re not required to always watch a movie at least twice before publishing or recording anything about it.
+1. What’s your question for us?
Who have you been able to connect with through Cinema Sugar that you find you’re resonating with? Not a specific person, but just the type of person who is also interested in some of the same things?
(Chad:) Generally it’s been people who are obsessed with movies, and respond to us having a focus on how movies make life sweeter and how they connect us to one another. We really try to lean into the personal side of movies in a positive way and get to the heart of why they matter.