Bad Things

The actors in this movie made you believe in their characters. Their actions, reactions, and incidental chatter sounded like people really talk.

Unfortunately that's the only nice thing I can say about this movie. The setting and setup is great... if Stephen King hadn't thought of it half a century ago. The direction is uneven, sprinkling a few interesting scenes into an hour-and-a-half of ennui. And the writing.... Four characters that I cared nothing about, trying to survive, or not, whatever. This movie-other than the actors-came across like the product of a high school English assignment from an ineffective teacher: "Write a new ending for 'The Shining.' And remember, if less is more, then nothing must be everything!"

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.

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.

If this little gem is any indication, Shudder seems to have switched from producing horror films to producing horrific ones. The meager attempts to be scary in this script are bits lifted from other movies. Unfortunately these bits are so poorly directed they only serve to stir up unfavorable comparisons to the originals they were heisted from. Instead of the spooky little girls of The Shining, the hall of this film's hotel is haunted by two lithe young women jogging in place, looking like rejects from a failed aerobics program. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is also represented, and for more than one reason I wish the chainsaw wielding actor was wearing a mask like Leatherface.

Production values are rock bottom. A potentially creepy location is completely wasted on the milksop screenplay. Why there's a "production designer" listed in the credits is a total head scratcher. I would love to know what exactly they did to transform what appears to be a recently vacated hotel into what appears to be a recently vacated hotel. But maybe I'm wrong. Despite one character describing the place as "the Four Seasons of the 80s" it looks more like a Target shopping center converted into a Holiday Inn.

The costumes are a mixed bag ranging from ridiculous to hot. In one scene an actress appears wearing what can only be described as a clown gown ripped straight from the pages of a Zippy the Pinhead comic book. Earlier in the film we're treated to the same trans actress prancing through the halls in her underpants. We also get Molly Ringwold in a scorching red ensemble, looking absolutely delicious for a woman of any age.

If you're a fan of Shudder's agenda, which puts more emphasis on promoting progressive social values than providing scares, you might enjoy this tale of young LGBTQ+ lovers and friends wasting time in an empty hotel. Just sprinkle some No-Doz on yiour popcorn.

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.