Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) has just inherited her grandmother's hotel at the start of Bad Things. That kind of sudden surprise could easily be the start of a sweet romance, the springboard for an "underdog overcomes the odds" feelgood flick, or just an outright comedy. The fact that Ruthie is staying at the hotel with her partner, Cal (Hari Nef), a friend named Maddie (Rad Pereira), and another friend, but one who might want more than just friendship (Fran, played by Annabelle Dexter-Jones), maintains all of that potential for a selection of light-hearted options. Bad Things isn't light-hearted though. It's a horror movie, and one that seems to focus most of all on absence, whether it's the absence of real guests in the hotel, the absence of real regret, or the absence of Ruthie's mother, a woman who has helped to make Ruthie the mess she seems to be.
Much like a certain other horror movie set in a fairly empty hotel, Bad Things is all about the deteriorating mental state of the main character, a fragility and nerviness that is exacerbated by others around her. Things are strained between Ruthie and Cal, something Maddie is very much aware of, and Fran seems intent on adding to that strain, especially if it means that she can convince Ruthie to choose her over anyone else. Meanwhile, a jogging couple keep turning up around, and sometimes inside, the hotel, and there are a few other individuals who seem to appear just long enough to make people doubt their sanity.
Writer-director Stewart Thorndike might not be making her first feature, that would be Lyle (2014), a film that sounds interesting enough for me to seek out at some point, but she definitely works well with fairly limited resources to deliver an impressively unique and female-focused horror that moves slowly, but purposefully, from an atmosphere of carelessness and slight worry to one of panic and real danger. Cinematographer Grant Greenberg prowls the corridors of the main building, often showing other characters at a slight distance, whether they are recognisable to viewers or some of the strange interlopers about to unnerve one or two of the leads, and the score by Jason Falkner is a brilliant blend of the simple, the quirky, and the outright menacing.
The acting styles vary between the leads, but everyone feels like a good fit for the role given to them. Rankin is the eye of the storm, in many ways, and those around her struggle to keep themeselves rooted safely to the ground, for different reasons. Dexter-Jones wants to get closer to her, while both Pereira and Nef try to maintain a certain distance, the latter out of a self-protective urge to avoid being hurt once again by a partner who hasn't been on her best behaviour recently. Jared Abrahamson has a couple of memorable scenes, and I enjoyed the fact that he was never really depicted as more than just a minor annoyance, and fans of Molly Ringwald will be please to see her onscreen for a few minutes, in a role that actually makes excellent use of her in such a limited amount of screentime.
Many will watch this and be turned off by it. It's a deliberately obtuse and challenging piece of work, a horror of internal stress and damage being transformed into external dangers. Get through the first scenes, however, and start to soak up the atmosphere of it, and you will be rewarded with something both thought-provoking and satisfyingly unnerving. It's a character piece, and a look at some different relationship dynamics, but it also remembers to deliver proper horror movie moments.
8/10
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