Shudder Saturday: Bad Things (2023)

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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Shudder Saturday: Blood Harvest (2020)

AKA The Ballad Of Audrey Earnshaw.
AKA The Curse Of Audrey Earnshaw.

The sophomore feature from writer-director Thomas Robert Lee, Blood Harvest is an assured and unhurried work, a mood piece that shows what can happen when members of a small community just won't leave their local suspected witches to live their lives in peace. It's well-acted, and well put together. It's just a shame that it's not very good.

The setting is an isolated village in North America, established a couple of centuries previously by families who settled there after separating from the Church of Ireland. This is all related to viewers by opening text. In 1956, after an eclipse, the community started to suffer, bad soil and sick livestock making things hard for almost everyone. The notable exception is Agatha Earnshaw (Catherine Walker), who also gave birth to a daughter, Audrey (Jessica Reynolds), during that same eclipse. She has kept the existence of her daughter a secret from the others in the community, but it's getting harder to keep that secret, especially as people become more and more curious about how Agatha is managing to maintain her farm while everyone else suffers great hardship.

While there's a lot here that is very familiar, Lee makes the decision to stay away from anything that could seem too in line with more obvious horror moments or witchy imagery. There aren't any pointy hats or broomsticks here, nor even one eye of newt. There also aren't many moments that feel like a battle between witches and non-witches. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Agatha just wants to be left to get on with her life. Others around her may resent her, and they may consider her reluctance to help them as a contributing factor to their misery, but Agatha and Audrey aren't necessarily out to actively harm them. That doesn't mean that one, or both, won't eventually fight back in self-defence as the behaviour of others starts to become more confrontational and aggressive.

It's admirable that Lee takes this approach to the material, and he's helped by cinematographer Nick Thomas, among others, maintaining a brooding and oppressive atmosphere throughout. He doesn't do enough to reward the patience of viewers though, and that's particularly obvious during a hugely anti-climactic finale. There's a difference between deciding not to show too much and forgetting to show anything of interest, and Lee sadly does the latter.

Walker and Reynolds are both very good in the main roles, very good indeed (giving the kind of performances that immediately have me hoping to see them in other, better, movies), and there are a fine selection of performances from Jared Abrahamson, Hannah Emily Anderson, Geraldine O'Rawe, Don McKellar, and Sean McGinley playing other members of the community. The film simply doesn't do enough to feel deserving of their good work.

Is this bad? No. It's a decidedly okay drama with dark clouds constantly gathering overhead. Those clouds never break though, delivering neither a storm nor momentary sunshine. They're just always there, which means viewers are left with an average film that feels just like them; grey and portentous, but sadly going nowhere.

5/10

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American Animals (2018)

Based on a bizarre true story, American Animals presents viewers with arguably the most incompetent heist in modern times. The film boasts a couple of excellent lead performances, and is helped by the way in which it intercuts the fictionalised depiction of the planning and execution of the crime with comments from the real people involved.

Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan are, respectively, Warren Lipka and Spencer Reinhard, two young men who come up with a half-assed plan to steal some very valuable books from a university library. They rope in two friends, Eric Borsuk (played by Jared Abrahamson) and Chas Allen (played by Blake Jenner), and rush to put their plan into effect, which is when one thing after another starts to go wrong.

I know that nobody ever believes me when I say no pun intended but, honestly, there's no other way I can think of continuing this review without asserting that American Animals is a strange beast indeed. The comments from Lipka and co. often feel like an opportunity for them to somehow deflect responsibility away from themselves, although the juxtaposition is also used to comedic effect when someone wants to point out that they recollect things differently to the way they are being shown. It's a tightrope, tonally, that is skilfully handled by writer-director Bart Layton (nicely blending the narrative with footage more in line with his documentary background - be sure to check out the similarly murky waters of The Imposter).

Peters and Keoghan both do great work, one being far more confident in his abilities than he should be while the other is a bag of nerves at every step of the way, and Abrahamson and Jenner are good fits in their roles. Both Ann Dowd and Betty Jean Gooch (the person Dowd portrays) deserve a special mention, the main librarian who also became the central human victim of the crime, and her participation on the film helps to serves as another reminder that, despite how farcical it became, this was a crime that had consequences.

It's easy to understand why some might view this as something slightly distasteful, especially during the first half, but I would encourage people to watch it, and stick with it. It eventually peels away the layers of optimism and fake attempts to seem confident and cool, showing that this was nothing more than a group of young adults who took a stupid idea too far. The pain resulting from the crime may have not seemed obvious to them at the time, being far too concerned with making a success of their plan and evading capture, but it soon starts to sink in, both in terms of the one person they traumatised directly and the way they shocked and upset their families.

Part comedy, part crime film, part documentary, all astonishing, American Animals is well worth your time. It doesn't glorify the people involved, but it does allow themselves to try and paint things in a better light before the weight of the reality of the situation pushes them further and further down, forcing contemplation and re-evaluation of how they view(ed) themselves.

8/10

American Animals is available to buy here.
Americans can buy it here.