Sitting in the Dark

About Sitting in the Dark

Sitting in the Dark is a podcast about horror, but not the kind that hides in a single shadow. Each month, hosts Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, Chelsea Stardust, and Pete Wright pick a theme — an idea, a trope, a nightmare that keeps winding back — and explore it through three films that share its DNA. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes they’re unexpected, and sometimes they lead you deeper into the maze than you expected to go. One month might bring The Drac Pack, three wildly different takes on cinema’s most famous vampire. Another, a journey through The Bride, the Boy, and the Firetruck, unpacking coded queer horror across decades. We’ve explored maternal terror in Mommy Acts This Way Because She Loves You, broken into the home-invasion subgenre, tiptoed through haunted houses, and stared down both classic monsters and blockbuster franchises. What ties it all together is a love of horror as a labyrinth — a twisting path where every turn reveals something new about our fears, desires, and cultural obsessions. With smart conversation, dark humor, and a willingness to look behind the curtain (or under the bed), Sitting in the Dark invites you to settle in, turn down the lights, and find out what connects the nightmares.

Publisher

TruStory FM

Category

tv & film · tv & film · tv & film

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Feb 2023

Latest episode

25 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

46 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Sept 2026

   The Working Dead

   Before the zombie ate anybody, it went to work. It was a Haitian creature—a body without a will, dug up and put on a sugar plantation—and the horror wasn’t that it might come for you… no, not at all. The horror was that you might actually become one. That’s the whole thing.So Pete drags the room back past Romero to the three decades when the movie zombie was still a labor instrument. White Zombie (1932) is the first one ever made. This means of course that nobody had figured out yet what a zombie was for, so it lands on a mill full of enslaved men who are not, notably, Black. They’re the boss’s rivals and creditors, converted into staff. The movie is untroubled by all of them and scandalized by one white woman’s captivity. Tommy and Kynan both want to know whether the movie has any idea what it’s doing.I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is Val Lewton handed a title he detested and answering it by adapting Jane Eyre, true story, which kinda almost works. After that, Wes Craven goes to Haiti in 1988, gets eleven of his thirty shooting days, and makes a zombie movie where nobody eats anyone and nobody is put to work. You’d think the mental model gets all broken with this one. Fear not. Running underneath: what these movies knew versus what we’re giving them credit for, why the creator is always scarier than the creature, and Pete’s standing position that being buried alive is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Reference LinksFrom the show Show home: Sitting in the Dark (https://trustory.fm/sitting-in-the-dark/) Last month’s episode: The Land of the Screams and the Home of De-Praved (https://trustory.fm/sittinginthedark/the-land-of-the-screams-and-the-home-of-de-praved/) Tommy’s cursed-objects episode: Articles of Loathing (https://trustory.fm/sittinginthedark/articles-of-loathing/) Become a member: The Next Reel family of film shows (https://thenextreel.com/) · join here (https://trustory.fm/join/) Tonight’s triple feature White Zombie (1932, dir. Victor Halperin) — Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/white-zombie/umc.cmc.53apyx4ujmhmt66gkffiv7bx) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/White-Zombie-Bela-Lugosi/dp/B0CJHL2TTN) | Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/film/white-zombie/) | Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Zombie_(film)) (also public domain — free on Tubi, Pluto, Plex, and the Internet Archive, though print quality varies wildly) I Walked with a Zombie (1943, dir. Jacques Tourneur) — Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/i-walked-with-a-zombie/umc.cmc.76ltswll8qpmsplkcqm692f5f) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/I-Walked-Zombie-James-Ellison/dp/B009F18N9K) | Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/film/i-walked-with-a-zombie/) | Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Walked_with_a_Zombie) The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988, dir. Wes Craven) — Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-serpent-and-the-rainbow/umc.cmc.3s37pf2t6dyuvgpmmmvsfpu5p) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Serpent-Rainbow-Bill-Pullman/dp/B000I9S686) | <a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/the-serpent-and-the-rainbow/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer...

2. 

   28 Aug 2026

   Articles of Loathing

   Haunted houses get all the attention, but at least a house stays where you put it. This month is about the other kind of haunting. The kind that comes home with you from the sale, the flea market, or just pounds away at your inbox.A videotape, a mirror, and ten audio files sent from an address that clearly does not accept replies.The Ring, Oculus, and undertone each hand their curse a clock: seven days, ten recordings, one weekend in the house. None of them has a practical reason to wait that long. All three set the thing loose on a family that had stopped functioning well before anything supernatural arrived, and not one of them will will ever tell you where the object came from. The Ring - Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-ring/umc.cmc.2ksr5tpy9g97n8d3ohyqog9o5) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Gore-Verbinski/dp/B0CV85HMKG) | Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/film/the-ring-2002/) Oculus - Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/oculus/umc.cmc.2383w1sen8cab8ho4nsu7ma99) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Oculus-Mike-Flanagan/dp/B0DJRZ4BR5/) | Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/film/oculus/) undertone - Apple TV (https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/undertone/umc.cmc.4s3ala3rtuxjy7jr3624o7v2z) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/undertone-Ian-Tuason/dp/B0GR23HMKW) | Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/film/undertone-2025/) (00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark (00:58) - Articles of Loathing! (03:05) - The Ring (19:48) - Ring 2 (20:32) - Ring 3 (21:10) - Ring 1 (21:20) - Ring 4 (22:34) - Ring 5 (30:26) - Oculus (41:18) - Oculus 2 (41:44) - Oculus 3 (41:52) - Oculus 2 (42:00) - Oculus 3 (42:29) - Oculus 1 (46:28) - Undertone (01:00:06) - Undertone 1 (01:00:36) - Undertone 2 (01:01:00) - Undertone 3 (01:01:28) - Undertone 4 (01:02:06) - Undertone (01:04:00) - Undertone 5 (01:04:30) - Undertone 8 (01:08:10) - Undertone 6 (01:08:23) - Undertone 7 (01:08:40) - Undertone 6 (01:09:04) - Undertone (01:11:16) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Become a member (https://trustory.fm/join/) for just $5/month (https://trustoryfm.memberful.com/checkout?plan=54111) or $55/year (https://trustoryfm.memberful.com/checkout?plan=54112) Join our Discord (https://discord.gg/yW72E6M) community of movie lovers The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and Movements (https://trustory.fm/cinema-scope/) The Film Board (https://trustory.fm/the-film-board/) Movies We Like (https://trustory.fm/movies-we-like/) The Next Reel (https://trustory.fm/the-next-reel/) Sitting in the Dark (https://trustory.fm/sitting-in-the-dark/) Connect With Us: Main Site: <a href="https://trustory.fm/movies-we-like/"...

3. 

   31 Jul 2026

   The Land of the Screams and the Home of De-Praved

   Chelsea shows up to the Fourth of July with a "very loose theme" — fireworks and patriotism in horror — and then, somehow, makes it cohere. Blow Out, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Final Destination 3 have nothing to do with each other until you notice they're all doing the same trick: pointing your eyes up at the pretty lights while something ugly happens at ground level.So we get into it. Is Blow Out even a horror movie, or just De Palma at his most gorgeous and most pervy, making a movie about making a movie? We defend I Know What You Did Last Summer despite ethical math that reads like it was written by a '90s AI — and land on why we love it anyway. And we finally give Final Destination 3 its due as a Rube Goldberg machine of presorted cruelty that dares you to enjoy it.Threaded through all three: the illusion of safety in a crowd, the discovery that surviving the accident is the actual nightmare, and a TikTok ride operator who should absolutely not be employed. Also, Kynan watched his first summer slasher and lived to tell about it.Links &amp; Notes Our prior Final Destination episode: Death Edging with the Films of Final Destination (https://trustory.fm/sittinginthedark/death-edging-with-the-films-of-final-destination/) Our papa podcast's breakdown of Talk to Me (https://trustory.fm/thenextreel/talk-to-me/) Blow Out - Apple TV (https://apple.co/4wSm822) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Blow-Out-Brian-Palma/dp/B0CW6QDMJ8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JULWH21WLLO1&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SBCas8O2G5I0gATbw5AAUslYo-D-Jkkjv3q0llCv-fq5801ATaH48r2KB04Ik4SHe9nNYhQY8h_XuKHWG_caLi4hl5i7RvoBZKovReEH119UZiu_H4cQbk9eyeLyiMhQI4Zg4Iv5SPECJWT3ir9MnkeCXe9yiXG3htNIFzWWp5eUBHyCr_WSyOXhwUAFPixS0rWVu-Hcbquw3xooH7DM54mKh-awAkLxnwprSD9Zb8k.D6u13SAqbQIkmNnmC_GEVnBaII4czDYyas_AL_qGVR4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Blow+Out&amp;qid=1784593022&amp;s=movies-tv&amp;sprefix=%2Cmovies-tv%2C817&amp;sr=1-1) | Letterboxd (https://boxd.it/1TlE) I Know What You Did Last Summer - Apple TV (https://apple.co/3TM65EE) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00BRL81DO?ref_=atv_sr_fle_c_sr52cdbe_pvsearchresults_1_1) | Letterboxd (https://boxd.it/2588) Final Destination 3 - Apple TV (https://apple.co/3RHRHNf) | Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0GFDNTK5L?ref_=atv_sr_fle_c_sr52cdbe_pvsearchresults_1_1) | Letterboxd (https://boxd.it/1Z40) View Our List on Letterboxd (https://boxd.it/VR1fQ) (00:00) - Welcome to Sitting in the Dark (01:32) - Blow Out (23:20) - I Know What You Did Last Summer (42:24) - Final Destination Part 3 (59:28) - Coming Attractions Support The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: Become a member (https://trustory.fm/join/) for just $5/month (https://trustoryfm.memberful.com/checkout?plan=54111) or $55/year (https://trustoryfm.memberful.com/checkout?plan=54112) Join our Discord (https://discord.gg/yW72E6M) community of movie lovers The Next Reel Family of Film Shows: <a href="https://trustory.fm/cinema-scope/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

216,983

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 79 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

82

Social presence

94

YouTube

82

Engagement

60

Contact Sitting in the Dark

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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