{"id":45619,"date":"2025-08-04T22:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T22:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45619\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T22:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T22:44:12","slug":"that-episode-of-and-just-like-that-was-an-a24-horror-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45619\/","title":{"rendered":"That Episode of \u2018And Just Like That\u2019 Was an A24 Horror Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n There is a strange man with a haunted look on his face standing just out of frame.
\n Photo: HBO\n <\/p>\n

I no longer believe And Just Like That \u2026<\/a> takes place in a Lynchian dream<\/a>. I now believe it exists in an Ari Asterian horror movie. The inkling first struck me during Patti LuPone\u2019s multi-episode guest arc as Giuseppe\u2019s mother, a woman doggedly trying to undermine her son\u2019s sex life. It was like a reprisal of her role as the overbearing mother<\/a> who irreparably fucked up her son in Beau Is Afraid, only Sicilian rather than Jewish. But even with Patti out of the picture, this week\u2019s episode<\/a> took the fear factor to a fever pitch, as scene after scene felt uncanny, unsettling, and very, very wrong. This episode was so scary, in fact, it got the whole show canceled<\/a>. I\u2019m talking perverts, psychos, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Here are the ten moments of \u201cBetter Than Sex\u201d that made me fear for my life, from least to most disturbing.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

Steve\u2019s back! The once and future king of Sex and the City returns for a scene in which Brady tells his parents he got a girl pregnant. Actor David Eigenberg does not waste his moment in the spotlight, yelling at the dinner table like Toni Collette<\/a>. I guess this one is scary because I don\u2019t like to see Steve upset.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first episode in which AJLT dabbled in the mysterious or supernatural (see: Big communicating from the afterlife via lamp, LTW\u2019s Lazarus father<\/a>), but \u201cBetter Than Sex\u201d really amps up the occult energy. Charlotte wins a 50-minute Zoom session with energy healer Rhonda Portante at an auction, but the healer keeps her camera off and the entire scene is shot like a slasher flick with the perspective from the unseen mystic\u2019s side perched over her shoulder the entire time. When her identity is eventually revealed, Rhonda Portante is none other than \u2026 Susie Essman! But her character is so soothing and meditative it seems as though the Susie we know and love<\/a> is, frankly, possessed. Terrifying.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

Over in Lisa Todd Wexley land, her head-to-toe Burberry-clad daughter has accused her of not spending enough quality time with the family hamster, which makes no more sense onscreen than it does written out here. Of course the hamster goes missing right before LTW\u2019s husband, George Washington<\/a>, loses the city comptroller election, presumably to an offscreen Brad Lander, so she comforts her family with a sentence never heretofore uttered: \u201cWe\u2019ll order a big ol\u2019 pizza, the kind with the goat cheese that we love.\u201d It\u2019s the small details like these that make a character come alive.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

Everything is chaotic and noisy at Charlotte\u2019s house. Construction guys are banging and drilling in her endless, Shining-like hallway. Harry\u2019s got the TV on max volume. And Charlotte\u2019s energy Zoom has been interrupted by aggressive tap dancing. It turns out that Rock\u2019s been cast as the lead in Thoroughly Modern Millie and has just three weeks to rehearse with LTW\u2019s son. The whole sequence is highly disorienting.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

Seema and Carrie go out to dinner. In the establishing shot of the restaurant interior, you can see a strange man with a haunted look on his face standing completely still, unblinking and staring, just outside the windowed restaurant door. For a full five seconds, this man in the background of the shot just stands there, leering. Close up on Seema seated near the door, talking, and he\u2019s disappeared. Next shot, he\u2019s there again like a jumpscare, and in focus! Turns out he\u2019s the chauffeur she rehired and is not meant to be threatening at all. Guess I was just on high alert from all of the other weird stuff going down.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

Early in the episode, we\u2019re thrown in media res into Anthony and Guisseppe in the throes of passion \u2026 just as a handsome firefighter comes knocking at their door to tell them there\u2019s a gas leak in the building. You could read the episode\u2019s plot from here on as a gas leak-induced vision, or you can draw a comparison to the chilling exhaust-pipe murder-suicide that opens Midsommar. Whichever way you interpret it, you should take into account that Anthony keeps saying \u201cDown, boy\u201d to his boner throughout.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already been so beaten down by this episode that by the time Seema\u2019s crystal-deodorant boyfriend<\/a> introduces her to his mother \u2014 he literally says, \u201cSeema, meet my mother\u201d \u2014 and gestures toward a potted plant, I just have to sigh and accept it. The plant is his dead mom, he says, and then clarifies that her spirit resides in the plant. Like the spirit tree from Avatar. And then, of course, Seema knocks the plant out of the window, killing his mom again.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

We can all agree that Carrie Bradshaw\u2019s book sounds awful, right? This episode opens on her narrating it: \u201cAutumn was here and as the leaves turned gold and air turned crisp, the woman returned to herself \u2026 She had done all she could. She had done all she could. She had done all she could.\u201d Immediately we run into Duncan Reeves, the pretentious biographer who lives in her garden unit, gushing about how good it is. He especially loves the repetition at the end. This fundamental disconnect between what our ears and brain are hearing and processing and what the show is telling us to be true is dizzying.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cake, who plays Reeves, is simply not a good enough actor to sell his genuine love of the book. He begs Carrie to spill what happens next and says things like, \u201cShe\u2019s such a unique character!\u201d It comes off as so disingenuous that only one thing can be true: Duncan Reeves is lying, and he has nefarious intentions for Carrie. He is some sort of psycho, or stalker, and his murder lust or fetishistic obsession was activated by her click-clacking her heels all over the upstairs unit. He flatters her and says how brilliant the book is because Carrie is fool enough to believe him. Thus she lets him into her life, her home, her bed, and her innermost sanctum, her shoe closet, where whimsical music plays while he says thing\u2019s like \u201cSparkle sparkle sparkle!\u201d and talks into a shoe like a telephone. There is no way that any man has ever behaved about Carrie\u2019s shoes like this, ever, and it\u2019s a complete high-heel-turn<\/a> from how he felt about her shoes earlier in the season. Even after their makeout and sex scene I had the profound feeling that this man might actually try to kill her.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

In an episode full of all kinds of commotion, the most consequential plotline is Miranda\u2019s son Brady getting a two-time hookup pregnant. He doesn\u2019t even know her last name, but that doesn\u2019t stop Miranda from putting on what amounts to a detective costume and finding this girl at her workplace. Mia is the shampoo girl at a hair salon with a dark and confusing aura, a demon out of Miranda\u2019s worst nightmares who farts whenever she moves and blames the gas on her pregnancy. She tells Miranda very bluntly, \u201cI was going to get an abortion until I realized the baby was going to be a double Libra. Such a vibe.\u201d When Miranda reveals herself to be Brady\u2019s mom, Mia splashes her with the spray nozzle, says \u201cYou have to be a Taurus!\u201d and loudly farts herself down the hall. She\u2019s drinking a Diet Red Bull the whole time. There\u2019s no way that\u2019s medically advisable in her condition.<\/p>\n

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Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n

By far the most disturbing and compelling horror plot I\u2019ve seen this year happens when Anthony stays with Guiseppe at his apartment after the gas leak. Guiseppe\u2019s roommate is a creepy old man who enters his room unannounced with an Annabelle-ish marionette carved and painted in Guiseppe\u2019s likeness. He has come to announce that he is nearly finished with his latest creation. Guiseppe tells Anthony that he isn\u2019t creeped out because the old man is asexual, to which Anthony answers, \u201cA sexual what?\u201d A sexual deviant, it turns out: Toward the end of the episode, Guiseppe spies through a crack in his roommate\u2019s door at night and finds the marionette staring sadly back at him while the old man cradles it and jacks off.<\/p>\n

With only two episodes left in the series<\/a>, there\u2019s a chance this horror franchise will end on a cliffhanger. At least until a 2035 reboot of the reboot, And Just Like That \u2026 Puppet\u2019s Revenge.<\/p>\n


\n See All<\/p>\n

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