Are We Not Cats? Hair-Eating Horror, Darkwing Duck Returns, and Hollywood Resurrects Gene Wilder With AI
There are movies you recommend because they're great.
There are movies you recommend because they're terrible.
Then there are movies you recommend because you need another human being to confirm that you actually saw what you think you saw.
Are We Not Cats belongs firmly in category three.
Written and directed by Xander Robin, this 2016 indie body-horror romance begins with Eli having possibly the worst stretch of luck imaginable.
He loses his girlfriend.
He loses his job.
He loses his apartment.
And that's basically the first three minutes.
Eventually he's living in a box truck and wandering through a miserable existence when he meets Anya.
Finally, some romance.
Unfortunately, they have something unusual in common.
They eat human hair.
Welcome back to Binge-Watchers Podcast.
Are We Not Cats Is the Hair-Eating Romance You Didn't Know You Needed
The weirdest thing about Are We Not Cats isn't necessarily that its characters suffer from a compulsion to eat hair.
It's that underneath all the gross-out imagery, this is basically a love story.
Eli and Anya are two damaged people who recognize something in each other that everybody else would probably run screaming from.
Their shared behavior—trichophagia—becomes simultaneously disgusting, intimate, dangerous and strangely romantic.
And director Xander Robin doesn't exactly ease us into his world.
The opening credits immediately hit us with images of wet, matted hair.
Then Eli's life collapses.
Soon he's living in a truck.
At one point a diner manager offers him soup and essentially produces ketchup soup.
But don't worry.
Things get much worse.
She Eats Most of Her Boyfriend's Hair
There's something oddly impressive about a movie finding a premise this bizarre and then continually escalating it.
Anya doesn't just chew on a little hair.
At one point, she eats most of her boyfriend's hair in a single night.
That's when you realize Are We Not Cats isn't backing away from its central obsession.
And eventually all that hair has to go somewhere.
Without spoiling every disgusting detail, let's just say the movie eventually involves cutting a gigantic hairball out of someone's stomach.
Romance!
A Drug Movie Without the Drugs
Here's where Are We Not Cats becomes more interesting than its gross-out premise suggests.
Robin has described the movie as essentially a “drug movie without the drugs.”
Hair becomes the drug.
The characters know their behavior is destructive. They know it's hurting them. They understand that other people don't understand it.
And they keep doing it anyway.
That transforms all the hair pulling, chewing and swallowing into something more recognizable.
It's addiction.
It's obsession.
It's self-destruction.
It's finding somebody who understands your worst habits—and then discovering that having somebody validate those habits might not actually save you.
Suddenly this weird movie about people eating hair has something to say.
From Five Dudes in a Room to Venice
Are We Not Cats began as a 2013 short film that Robin made after moving to New York City.
Robin joked that before one early festival screening, the largest audience to see it had basically been five dudes in a room.
Three years later, the feature version premiered at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.
That's a pretty incredible journey for a story about people swallowing hair.
Robin continued exploring unusual characters and strange corners of nature in later work, including Lance Lizardi and episodes of HBO's Chillin Island.
His more recent documentary feature, The Python Hunt, follows the chaotic real-life competition to hunt invasive Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades.
Apparently Xander Robin likes people, reptiles, strange behavior and situations where everybody probably needs a shower afterward.
I respect the consistency.
Binge Now, Binge Later, or Binge Never?
Here's my problem with Are We Not Cats.
Shudder carried this movie years ago, which makes perfect sense when you see the body-horror imagery.
But I'm not convinced it's really a horror movie.
I'm also not convinced it's completely a drama.
It's a strange little romantic character study wrapped around addiction imagery and some truly disgusting physical consequences.
So where does that leave us?
BINGE LATER.
It's weird enough to deserve discovery.
It's certainly weird enough that you'll remember it.
Just don't watch it while eating spaghetti.
Home Video Headlines
Before we started pulling hairballs out of people's stomachs, we had some legitimately strange entertainment news this week.
And somehow Are We Not Cats wasn't even responsible for all of it.
Darkwing Duck Is Back
Disney+ is bringing Darkwing Duck back with a new animated series.
The revival comes with a pretty major casting change: Mark Hamill takes over as Drake Mallard/Darkwing Duck, while Seth Rogen voices Launchpad McQuack. Lizzy Caplan joins as Gosalyn Mallard, and Lilimar voices a new character named Duckie.
Original creator Tad Stones is also involved as a consultant.
The premise gets wonderfully meta.
Darkwing has apparently spent the last 35 years trapped in an alternate universe where nobody has ever heard of him. A rebellious teenager named Duckie brings the ego-driven superhero back into action, where he'll once again encounter familiar enemies including Negaduck and Megavolt.
For '90s kids who grew up watching The Disney Afternoon, that's a serious nostalgia grenade.
The terror that flaps in the night is flapping again.
Weird Al Yankovic Has an Asteroid Now
Because apparently Earth was no longer big enough for Weird Al.
A main-belt asteroid has officially been designated (14331) Alyankovic in honor of “Weird Al” Yankovic.
The space rock was originally discovered in 1981 and sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
It's reportedly around a mile wide and takes roughly four years to complete an orbit around the sun.
So congratulations to Weird Al.
He joins a group of musicians who have received celestial honors—and finally has a piece of merchandise nobody can fit inside a concert venue.
Queens of the Stone Age Want to Know Where the Goth Girls Are
Queens of the Stone Age have released a new single with a question many people have apparently spent decades trying to answer:
The track comes ahead of the band's upcoming album Perfecth.
Josh Homme's inspiration reportedly stretches back to his teenage years in Palm Desert and his memories of seeing goth girls working at JCPenney.
That's right.
One of rock's great mysteries may have finally been solved.
They were at JCPenney.
Netflix Is Using AI to Bring Back Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka Voice
Now we arrive at the story that actually raises some bigger questions.
Netflix's reality competition series Wonka's The Golden Ticket uses AI audio technology to recreate the voice of the late Gene Wilder.
Wilder's version of Willy Wonka remains one of the most recognizable performances in movie history, and the recreated voice is used as a disembodied host and narrator for the competition.
Importantly, the production received permission from Gene Wilder's estate.
That hasn't ended the controversy.
Critics and fans have questioned whether recreating deceased performers with artificial intelligence crosses a line even when the necessary legal permissions have been obtained.
And that's where this becomes much bigger than Wonka.
Technology is rapidly creating a world where an actor's voice—and potentially their appearance—can continue being used long after the performer has died.
The question isn't simply whether Hollywood can do this anymore.
Clearly it can.
The question is what audiences will accept.
And we're probably going to be arguing about that one for a long time.
Street Fighter Fans Are Ready to Fight
Meanwhile, our viewers are getting increasingly excited about the upcoming Street Fighter movie.
One thing people seem particularly happy about?
The filmmakers apparently aren't afraid of making this thing look ridiculous.
And that's a compliment.
Fans commenting on our clips are digging the exaggerated, cartoonish approach rather than watching filmmakers desperately try to turn Street Fighter into grounded prestige drama.
They're also excited that E. Honda's rapid-fire fists actually look like E. Honda's rapid-fire fists.
Sometimes giving fans what they want isn't complicated.
One comment summarized the general mood better than I possibly could:
They can't wait.
Neither can we.
Johnny Spoiler's Staff Pick: The Weight
My Staff Pick this week is The Weight, a Depression-era crime thriller starring Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe and Julia Jones.
It's Eugene, Oregon, 1937.
America is four years into the Great Depression, and Ethan Hawke plays a battle-scarred veteran desperately trying to save his family.
Then comes an opportunity involving convicts, abandoned mines and a fortune in gold that needs to travel approximately 100 miles through unforgiving wilderness.
And, because this is a crime movie:
The gold heist goes horribly wrong.
Russell Crowe Is Genuinely Threatening
Crowe doesn't need to spend the movie screaming to create tension.
When he appears, you get nervous.
You know something bad could happen.
That threat hangs over the movie and gives The Weight much of its tension.
Julia Jones Is Made of Iron and Grace
Julia Jones brings exactly the kind of performance this movie needs.
She's tough without losing the humanity underneath the toughness.
There's strength there, but also warmth.
My biggest complaint?
Ethan Hawke Apparently Stopped Aging
And then there's Ethan Hawke.
I don't know what this guy is doing, but somehow he looks and moves like Ethan Hawke from 20 years ago.
He's physical.
He's determined.
He's completely alive in the performance.
The whole movie has this gritty, old-school Clint Eastwood period-drama feeling.
Everybody is broke.
Everybody is desperate.
Everybody is cold.
Everybody is suspicious.
And everybody seems about five minutes away from making a terrible decision.
Which brings me to my one problem with The Weight.
In 2026, I'm not sure audiences desperately need another movie reminding us how difficult it is to survive.
Maybe we need movies that make us look up at the stars again.
Still, the performances are excellent, the filmmaking is strong, and the ending is surprisingly brighter than you might expect.
So The Weight?
Put it on your streaming watchlist.
It's worth carrying The Weight.
Just maybe not all the way to the theater.
Listen to Binge-Watchers Podcast
That's this week's strange journey through movies, streaming and entertainment:
People eating hair.
Darkwing Duck escaping another dimension.
Weird Al conquering outer space.
Goth girls at JCPenney.
Gene Wilder returning through artificial intelligence.
Street Fighter fans throwing rapid-fire punches.
And Ethan Hawke carrying The Weight.
In other words, a completely normal episode of Binge-Watchers Podcast with Johnny Spoiler.
Binge Now. Binge Later. Binge Never.
Listen to the full episode of Binge-Watchers Podcast and follow Johnny Spoiler for more cult movies, horror, streaming recommendations, entertainment news, movie reviews and questionable viewing decisions.
