The latest bonus episode of My Bloody Podcast finds Bryan Kluger, Preston Barta, and Chelsea Nicole welcoming two of horror’s most effortlessly charismatic performers, Alex Essoe and Richard Harmon, stars of the new survival thriller Pitfall. The premise is deliciously cruel. It follows a group of friends who head into the wilderness in search of fresh air and togetherness, only to discover that nature has its own customer-service department. One unlucky soul manages to recreate 127 Hours if Danny Boyle had hired a sadist with an industrial supply of sharpened stakes and the rest soon find themselves pursued by a hooded maniac played, with intimidating enthusiasm, by none other than UFC legend Randy Couture. It’s the sort of movie that reminds you why hiking has always been cinema’s least rewarding hobby.
Essoe and Harmon arrive with stories that are almost as entertaining as the film itself. They talk about surviving endless rain-soaked shoots, the peculiar pleasures of making horror movies in miserable weather, and the unique experience of having Randy Couture crack your back, which is a sentence that sounds either incredibly therapeutic or deeply threatening, depending on your tolerance for former heavyweight champions.
But like any worthwhile conversation among movie obsessives, the discussion wanders gloriously off the trail. Horror’s current renaissance gets its due. Frank Zappa somehow enters the chat, because Frank Zappa always seems to enter the chat eventually. The Buffalo Bills make an appearance, proving once again that sports fandom and horror fandom share the same emotional architecture, which is irrational hope followed by prolonged suffering.
That’s the charm of My Bloody Podcast. It never feels like an interview so much as an evening spent with friends who happen to know an alarming amount about slasher movies. You arrive expecting stories about blood, guts, and practical effects. And you leave with detours into music, football, filmmaking, and the strange, wonderful absurdity of people who willingly spend weeks in freezing rain pretending to be chased through the woods.
Pitfall delivers exactly what its title promises. It gives you grisly set pieces, plenty of laughs, and enough gore to make camping seem like an aggressively antisocial hobby. And this bonus episode is the perfect companion piece. Watch the film wherever you can, then queue up My Bloody Podcast wherever you get your shows. Just don’t listen to it while hiking. Horror movies have taught us enough by now.
WRITTEN BY: BRYAN KLUGER
Bryan Kluger is an entertainment critic, writer, and podcast host with a deep love for film, horror, and pop culture. His work has appeared in outlets such as Arts+Culture Magazine, High-Def Digest, Screen Rant, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, Fark, and Boomstick Comics. He hosts My Bloody Podcast and Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, along with a weekly radio show, where he brings sharp insight, humor, and an unabashed passion for movies to every conversation.
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