Bad Meat

A group of wayward teenagers are sent to a boot-camp by their parents to teach them a lesson. The people running it are complete nutters and ridiculously unsavoury characters. I don't know why they're even running the boot-camp or how.

The kids are all cliché characters, irritating and unlikable. The acting is pretty terrible as is the script.

There is emphasis on what the staff running the camp are eating and the fact that they viciously kill a dog who won't stop barking. The film shows a random scene of two of the staff members having a bizarre sexual encounter and then becoming violently ill. Vomit in the grossest form is literally everywhere.

The staff then turn into crazed zombies and chaos ensues somewhat like a carry on film. It's all very silly and pointless. There is a survivor in the hospital that the film keeps cutting to who is basically a bloody, dripping mess covered in bandages. Who this person is, why, how etc... is not found out.

BAD MEAT is a horrible little film, a zero budget Canadian flick that seems to have aspirations to be the next Troma film. Certainly it's a waste of time for all but the most dedicated of B-movie veterans, as it's cheap looking, badly written, highly clichéd, and full of bad taste situations.

Now, I'm not adverse to a little bad taste here and there, as long as it's required by the plot. David Cronenberg is one of my favourite directors, after all. But the level of bad taste on here is just infantile as the filmmakers go out of their way to offend the sensibilities of their viewer. Characters eat the titular meat and are subject to fits of copious vomiting before they eventually turn into bloodthirsty zombies.

The boot camp plot line - the heroes are a group of wayward teenagers, all of them stereotypes - is a poor one and barely gets off the ground before the nonsense begins. The vomiting isn't even the worst - a scene where a woman has sex with a muscled black guy by using a strap-on on him is one of the most pointless I've ever watched. Once the zombie action kicks off, very little happens, and the gore is surprisingly mild given the unpleasantness that's come beforehand. The film also runs out of budget before the end, meaning the story ends abruptly halfway through so that you don't end up knowing the fate of the characters (not that you want to) while other sequences are excruciatingly drawn out.

Before I decided to watch this, I sifted through dozens of reviews, most of the claiming that this movie was beyond terrible and that no one in the right mind should see it. I decided to see it anyway.

Surprisingly, it was much better than I expected. There was plenty of gore for those who like it bloody, some funny scenes, great acting (especially from Mark Pellegrino), and a fairly decent plot. The only problem was that some of the plot was a little confusing and the audience is left with a few loose ends. I don't think those things took away from the movie too much though.

Honestly, I don't regret seeing this movie, and I don't think people should be put off by the lack of good reviews. It's not the greatest horror movie ever made, but it kept me interested until the very end, so I'd say it's worth watching in my book.

This movie had interesting potential. It was an all-encompassing horror hybrid of summer camp slasher, zombie, hillbilly cannibal, horror comedy etc. And then, as multiple people have pointed out, the movie abruptly wraps up DURING the climax with a slapped on montage that resolves nothing. Terry Gilliam and David Lynch have made good movies out of unfinished pieces, but not these jokers.

The basic plot is six teens sent to military school. Three male, three female. We get bits and pieces of their stories, but it doesn't matter because they have no resolution. Dave Franco is the only thing resembling a star and as usual he gets no screen time. He spends most of the movie locked in a box. Somebody wrapped in bandages purporting to be him frames the movie, but it looks like they got a woman to play him. The military school is run by Nazi kinksters and this provides some elements of humor. A mistreated hillbilly cook gets revenge by giving the counselors food poisoning, which leaves them crazily sick for what seems like half a day and then suddenly turns them into cannibal zombies, who sort of act like cats. In spite of the fact that we've seen the meat being poisoned and fed to the counselors, the movie spends ten minutes of plot having an emo biology student cut apart a dog to discover the cause. In a normal movie, he might also discover a cure or something to bring the film to a resolution, but that does not happen. Much time is spent on attempting to find keys to free Dave Franco. Whether and how these keys are used remains a mystery. There's some intrigue and tensions and attempts at character building between the campers, and it's all a waste of time.

It is actually a shame this movie is not 20 minutes longer or could not use its 80ish minutes better. They could have had something, but there is no payoff. And there was no artistic purpose for a lack of payoff. They simply lost film or lost funding.

And what is the conspiracy not to give Dave Franco screen time, even in a movie with no stars? It's bewildering.

Well, to be honest the story of troubled youth going to some camp has been done tons of times. But, this one had a twist, but I shall get to that in a minute. I actually liked all of the youth characters. Each one of them had a unique personality, and of course there had to be some machismo with at least two of the guys. I mean, it's a bit cliché, but it really worked on this film. I really liked that there was a character that was brought up with high spiritual convictions, but thought they were a lesbian. There were three girls in the film. The ultra "Christian" the in the middle understanding one, but with a totally jacked up mind from her childhood experiences. This is the one I call the "silent but deadly" type, one you didn't want to get on your bad side. Then of course there is the mean "bad ass" girl who thinks she can take on the world, hates everyone, and who is the catalyst that sparks negativity throughout the film. My favorite character was the one Franco played. In my opinion, he was the most believable. The camp director was a Hitler wannabe, the other guards were sexual deviants who were just there to fulfill some sick sexual urges, and to be mean to kids.

Once the turning point happened to where the guards "turned" into what ever it was that they were supposed to be, that's when the movie became completely STUPID. Bad Meat had me up until then, and after that...no thank you. Also, the patient in the hospital, they really screwed that up, first off with the horrible acting, and secondly, it really made no sense.