SHRINK CHAT: Cari Farver, Frozen, The Exorcist & Anything for Jackson

What keeps you alive when you’re stuck on a ski lift and nobody is coming back?

Trigger warning: a real murder and cyberstalking case (Cari Farver, about 4:06 to 7:22), and a joking segment about merchandise showing a child’s decapitated head from Hereditary (about 7:24 to 9:46).

It’s Shrink Chat, our weekly horror roundup, from December 2020. We look back at the end of a very strange year, then flag a true crime case that had just hit 20/20: Cari Farver, the woman whose phone kept texting her family and her ex long after she vanished. Then A24’s most twisted holiday gift, Cathy’s Horror Facts land on A Clockwork Orange, and our buddy watch is Adam Green’s Frozen (2010), three people stranded on a chairlift as the resort shuts down. Plus Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist and a Sundance memory, the Shudder original Anything for Jackson, The Wax Mask, and Mank, the film David Fincher made instead of more Mindhunter.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about how a culture reacts to collective trauma and then slowly forgets, what keeps a person going when survival comes down to one reason, how a moment of humiliation makes a horror character human, and the obsession behind the cyberstalking in the Cari Farver case.

Covered in this episode:

• The end of 2020, and how cultures recover from collective trauma
• The Cari Farver case, 20/20 and Leslie Rule’s book
• A24’s Hereditary puzzle
• A Clockwork Orange in Horror Facts with Cath
• Frozen (2010), Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore and Kevin Zegers
• The Wax Mask (1997) and a giallo preview
• Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist, and Sundance
• Anything for Jackson, Castle Freak and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2
• Mank, Fincher’s film instead of more Mindhunter
• Girl (2020), Bella Thorne’s revenge film

Clinical themes: collective trauma, survival motivation, shame and humiliation, obsession and cyberstalking, attachment to characters.

Corrections and updates: Leslie Rule’s book on the case is A Tangled Web (2020). Shanna “Liz” Golyar was convicted of Cari Farver’s murder in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. The screenwriter in Mank is Herman J. Mankiewicz. William Friedkin died in 2023.

Related episodes:

• WINTER HORROR: Dead Snow, Cold Prey, Pontypool, ATM & Jack Frost
• SHRINK CHAT: Mindhunter, Green Room, Blue Ruin & Jack in the Box
• TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY: Chris Watts, Shanann & American Murder

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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