This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist. In the opening moments of writer-director Stewart Thorndike’s Bad Things, now getting a release on Shudder after its festival run, we see a distant figure gradually roaming closer to the camera while holding a chainsaw. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) doesn’t seem to have bad intentions with the power tool, but the mind immediately flashes to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before she uses it to cut a tree as opposed to flesh. This is not the first genre reference the film turns into a bit of a gag as we then go to an eerily empty hotel where the majority of this stripped-down horror film plays out. Such a setting has already drawn comparisons to The Shining, but that feels like merely one reference point. Sure, there are a few recurring visual elements that recall the iconic film and one could deconstruct their shared thematic interest in isolation. However, Bad Things is more shifting in its vision to pin down to any one thing. There is even a part of it that feels most similar to the recent German horror film Schlaf crossed with a possibly spiritual connection to The Eternal Daughter, but that too can’t encapsulate all of the simmering emotions that are being explored here.
Playing out almost like a spoof of various genres with both macabre horror and mumblecore misdirects, it’s an odd film that’s often as lost as the charming characters themselves before settling into a strange groove that starts to cast a spell of its own. The premise is simple as we accompany Ruthie to a relatively small snowbound hotel she has inherited and is now supposedly intending to sell. This is referenced in an almost teasing dialogue between her and her girlfriend Cal, played by Hari Nef of everything from this year’s Barbie to the anthology series Extrapolations, who has joined her on what they are trying to turn into more of a celebratory occasion. It isn’t all fun and games as there is also a persistent tension underlying it all. Their friend Maddie (Rad Pereira) has brought along someone else who seems like she may just have an ulterior motive for being there. Fran, played by Annabelle Dexter-Jones who was a small part of the series Succession as well as the surreal epic Under the Silver Lake, has a history with the troubled Ruthie that creates more than a few complications. That is even before other darker elements start to take hold of the trip. Much of it slips through the film’s often viscerally cold fingers, as it often wanders into places more flat than frightening, but it also grabs hold of just enough as it goes along before subsequently tearing it to pieces.
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The Horrors of ‘Bad Things’ Hold Us at Arm’s Length
Image via Shudder
The most notable difference the film has from The Shining is actually in its setting. Where that was far removed from anything, Bad Things is still in relative proximity to the rest of the world. There are moments where we see cars passing by the exterior of the hotel while the characters attempt to drink away their supernatural and existential dread. We are often held at a distance from fully experiencing the pain of this, sometimes literally like when there is an uninterrupted shot that creeps up on the characters laying on the ground while eating and drinking. The characters chat together before one of them remarks that they have seen something that shouldn’t be there, but hardly anyone seems to care about this. There is a palpable lack of urgency to large parts of the film, which has sunk other bigger releases this year by robbing them of their bite, turning what could otherwise be substantial revelations into almost throwaway conversations. When Cal recounts how Ruthie was once left at the hotel all alone as a child where she nearly lost her fingers due to frostbite, something that is seen in the film’s earliest and most effective moment of horror, it passes rather quickly.
There is a halting nature to this as if the film is itself uncertain about what it wants. Where some of the most masterful horror visions this year have made the most of a simple setting and cut right to the bone by creating something we’ve never quite seen before, there is an initial lack of direction to Bad Things that leaves us searching for something more in many of the narrowly framed scenes. It invites a willingness to embrace this as the characters themselves are rather unbothered by everything around them, but it can get a bit too close to complacency at key points. When it moves beyond these more inert elements, especially in the last act as everything it had been hinting at comes to the forefront, that is where Bad Things is itself not bad at all as Rankin is given the room to more fully sink her teeth into the material. While she has been a strong supporting presence in recent series like Kindred and Perry Mason, it is the closing chapter of this film that makes the most of it. There is a degree of dark comedy and chilling horror that she must capture for it all to work, which she does in magnificent fashion. When Ruthie begins truly unraveling, she takes us through the full gambit of emotions from unsettling rage to overwhelming fear and ultimately desperate pleading. As her screams echo through the darkness, we are pulled back in for wherever it takes us next.
‘Bad Things’ Benefits From a Bloody Good Ending
Image via Shudder
Some of this includes an all-timer of an appearance by Molly Ringwald that, while brief, is best left opaque as it creates key turning points in the film. Everything from her first proper scene with Rankin all the way to the end is where Bad Things breaks through any of the hangups it accumulated. This culminates in a few final stellar scenes beginning in a parking lot that washes away any missteps with blood. All it takes is a couple of swings of that trusty chainsaw which, while more unwieldy than Jack Torrance’s axe, still makes gruesome contact.
Rating: B-
The Big Picture
The film Bad Things draws from many horror films while ultimately casting a spell all its own. The setting of the film, a snowbound hotel, creates tension and isolation, but the lack of urgency often detracts from the overall impact. Despite its shortcomings, Bad Things finds its stride in the closing act, showcasing a standout performance by Gayle Rankin and delivering a satisfyingly gory ending.
Bad Things is on Shudder starting August 18.
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