Bad Things

It's easy to dismiss Bad Things as the queer version of The Shining but initially, at least, there are a few ideas worth appreciating here. This should ideally have been centered around Gayle Rankin's Ruthie.. and her trauma, manifestations, and slow descent into absolute chaos. Instead, writer-director Stewart Thorndike randomly shifts perspectives (especially when things begin to get interesting) to the other characters, taking us out of the one-woman-breakdown thread, and desperately trying to blur the lines between what's real and what's not. The entire episode then feels like a pointless exercise in the end, mostly because the perspective then transitions back to Ruthie's and we once again witness her losing her mind.

Also, the scenes that were supposed to induce a creepy feeling absolutely fail to do so. The shots of random people showing up at the restaurant, at the facade, and elsewhere, are laughably executed. If the hotel and its snowy surroundings had terrible history, then we ought to have known that because that'd have added to the atmospherics. I did like how the story incorporated Molly Ringwald's character into the film, and while not a surprise, it's nicely woven into the proceedings. When it comes to performances, I think the cast did a fairly decent job. That's one reason why the film is perfectly okay to sit through, even when it fails on the narrative and horror-inducing fronts.

For whatever reason I was swept up in the lesbian melodrama and I've frankly never seen Molly Ringwald looking so hot...but an opportunity was missed here. Instead of trying so hard to pretend this is The Shining (it's most definitely not The Shining) why not accept that Ruthie inherited a crappy motel and not a "hotel"? No one in their right mind thinks the building used in this film is a hotel, or that it was ever "the Four Seasons of the 80s." The motel portrayed here is a stock standard roadside motel and this movie could have been a lot scarier if it were treated as such. There is a lot more gritty dirt you can dig up in such a place - suicidal loners, teenaged drug-addled runaways, murders of street prostitutes in the days before GPS and cell phones (which was a real terrifying true thing, in the 70s and 80s - sex workers were constantly targeted before things like Internet and DNA testing). Plus on top of that there could have been the story about Ruthie's bad childhood and relationship with her mom.

But as it is, Bad Things is only fair-to-middling and because of the way it's presented it just keeps reminding you that it's Not the Shining, which is certainly a bad thing.

Watching this movie is like watching a car fire across the street. The only reason you keep watching is to see how bad it really is. You might hope it could become "so bad it's good", but no... it's just bad, but shows signs of possibly having had potential and that only makes it worse. I watched all the way to the end, unfortunately.

It feels like another film maker could have made a decent version of this film. There's some promising moments. (e.g. A super interesting "haunted" scene with a bunch of customers who probably aren't real.) However, the moments that are interesting only add to the disappointment of how bad the film ends up being, as a whole.

There are interesting characters here, none of whom are likeable because they are so terrible to each other, but that could have used somehow. Instead It's all just squandered opportunities.

I would have rated it a 1 except that a couple of the performers do a decent job. So, I'll give them points even though they can't save the script. (In the end I just felt embarrassed for them, having to have been in such a bad movie.) I'm sure the people playing the main character's trans/lesbian love interests could do well in other films. I'll actually look them up. I'd bet they are in better movies where their performances aren't wasted by bad writing/direction.

Better directing and writing could have resulted in a good movie, but in the end, this film just sucks. Its momentary glimmers of potential and its brief scenes generating interest, only makes its ultimate emptiness and disappointment more frustrating.

I give it 2 stars because it wasn't boring, precisely. It simply made no sense and wasn't scary in the least...that is, unless you count how frighteningly ugly and stupid the characters were. These people are friends?? I don't believe it. I was completely unable to suspend my disbelief and was acutely aware of the films shortcomings every moment.

Incredibly unlikeable characters (despite minimal development), a meandering and pointless plot that fleshed out exactly nothing, and an utter lack of logical support leave the film a nonsensical mishmash.

I'd seen the directors first offering, Lyle. A better film, though not good, it and Bad Things leaves me wondering if Thorndike is deliberately and actively trying to depict lesbians as unhinged, abusive, and dull-witted wastes-of-breath? And to ruin film?

Bad Things might just be the worse film I've seen all year, 2023. I don't think the makers of this film have the basic knowledge of how to make any film and certainly not a horror film.

The central characters' friendship and intersecting romantic relationships, which are meant to be the film's grounding center, are described as having flimsy connections and dead air. The performances lacking chemistry and genuine feeling, leaving the film lacking emotional investment. The acting performances were abysmal.

It looks like they were striving for something along the lines of The Shining since it draws a lot of its inspiration from the Kubrick film. But they failed miserably.