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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Prime Time: Cut (2000)

A slasher movie that utilises that interesting idea of a cursed film, Cut starts and ends strong, but suffers from a lack of decent characters, and a sagging middle section that makes it hard to care about whatever is at stake for those involved.

When the actor playing the killer in a movie, Hot Blooded!, goes berserk, killing the director and attacking the female lead, the movie is understandably canned. Many years later, a number of students decide that they should try to finish the film, tempted by the legendary status of it, and they manage to procure the lead, Vanessa Turnbill (Molly Ringwald), to help them complete it. But maybe it's destined to remain incomplete, especially after being cursed by the man who went mad while portraying the killer.

The directorial feature debut from Kimble Rendall (who did slightly better with his flawed sophomore effort, the shark-in-a-supermarket entertainment of Bait 3D), Cut is a film that consistently finds ways to leave viewers slightly disappointed. Most of that would seem to be the fault of Dave Warner, who wrote the script, which never turns into something as clever or witty as it wants to be. Perhaps not wanting to look too obviously derivative, it eschews most opportunities to get meta with the material, despite it being a slasher film in which the people are making a slasher film. The main deaths are pretty good, and enjoyably gory, but the actual killer isn't very memorable, although the source of his supernatural power is a solid idea.

Despite Kylie Minogue appearing onscreen for all of about two minutes, Ringwald is the main recognisable face here. As we are now well over three decades from her teen movie hits, can we acknowledge that she's never been that great an actress? She doesn't do a terrible job here, and it's good to have someone with her filmography in that role, but I would have much preferred any number of better candidates. At least she gets to make an impression though, although that's more for being Molly Ringwald than any characterisation in the script. As for Jessica Napier, Sarah Kants, Geoff Revell, and everyone else, they simply get to wander around onscreen until it's their time to be threatened by the killer.

In some ways, it's worth admiring both Rendall and Warner for not taking the easier option. Making this less of a straight slasher movie, and more of a comedy horror, would have made it more appealing to a wider audience, but it also would have made it similar to so many other slasher movies that aimed to subvert the tropes and sell itself more on its own self-awareness. The people making this clearly have faith in their central idea being strong enough to elevate things. Unfortunately, that's not the case. A lot more could have been done, in almost every main scene, to make this a much more entertaining film.

Not a complete waste of your time, but not one to make a high priority either.

5/10

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Sixteen Candles (1984)

Ahhhhh, Sixteen Candles. It's a film I have very fond memories of. I have owned it on VHS, I have owned it on DVD, and now I own it on a shiny blu-ray. And others feel the same way. It's also one of the most problematic '80s teen movies that isn't focused on sex (those films are on a whole other level, and I'm not wanting to get into an argument about them at this time). I'll get into all that soon enough.

Let me start by saying that I can accept what Sixteen Candles is, just as much today as I did back when I first saw it in the 1980s. It is a teen film that speaks to a certain demographic of teens, and features a cast impressively made up of many actors who actually were at the same age as their characters. Molly Ringwald is decent in the lead role, Samantha, and the plot revolves around the devastating (when you're that age anyway) fact that her family have forgotten that it is her 16th birthday. They're all busy prepping for her big sister's wedding. Samantha also pines for older hunk, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), and has to fend off the attention of a young geek credited as Geek (Anthony Michael Hall). Although she doesn't know it yet, Jake has taken an interest in Samantha, although he's currently going out with the gorgeous and popular Caroline (Haviland Morris).

With a great soundtrack, decent performances from the main cast members (Hall has always been my favourite though, and I also love the silly performances we get from Gedde Watanabe, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, and even a number of the adult characters), and the standard moments of wish-fulfilment, this is a template-setting directorial debut for Hughes, who was largely responsible for the stardom of Molly Ringwald in this decade, as well as the chart success of a number of musicians featured on the soundtracks of his movies.

Sixteen Candles still makes me laugh, although I laugh less than I used to. It bounces along from one almost-surreal moment to the next with so much energy that it's almost hard to think too critically about it as it plays out. Much like any big party you attended while at high school, things take on a different hue when you are recovering after the main event.

So let's discuss the problems with Sixteen Candles, problems that seem way more obvious now, but should also have been pretty obvious when it was first released.

A lot of people mention the fact that Jake is willing to give away his drunken girlfriend as if she's a) just a piece of his property he no longer has any use for, and b) deserving of whatever happens because of her drunken state and sexual confidence. They also mention the cringe-inducing inclusion of an Asian character named Long Duk Dong (name often accompanied by a gong sound, yes . . . a gong sound). The horribly inappropriate grandparents, the horny geek who won't take no for an answer, you've probably heard about these problems already. There are other problems though, some that we are perhaps only more attuned to nowadays. Like the following exchange -

Randy: And a big Trans Am in the driveway with a ribbon around it. And some incredible gorgeous guy that you meet like in France. And you do it on a cloud without getting pregnant or herpes.
Samantha: I don't need a cloud.
Randy: Just a pink dress and the guy, right?
Samantha: A black one.
Randy: A black guy?
Samantha: A black Trans Am, a pink guy.

That may look light and amusing enough,  but watch the film and the shock of Randy when she thinks her friend is on about "a black guy" and it just feels like an unnecessary reminder that writer-director John Hughes delivered films that were almost uniformly sliced up chunks of whiter-than-white Americana, no matter what bitter pill may have been slipped into some scenes. And that's not even mentioning the moment that has Jake Ryan gaslighting his girlfriend as he dances with her while thinking about Samantha.

It was always clear, I think, that Hughes was writing for a specific target audience. The lack of diversity in his cast (beyond class and clique archetypes) now sticks out like a sore thumb, although I am not sure I would ever want to hear him try to lend his voice to a central African American character. He wrote for those he felt he could identify with, or at least give a voice to.

Which is why, despite the problems, Hughes movies will always hold a special place in the hearts of those who discovered them at just the right age. As silly as it may seem, he wrote teen characters in the way we wanted them to be. They were very rarely realistic, or able to see beyond their own selfish problems that seemed huge, but there was a truth to the core of many of them. Because we always wanted to be better than our reality anyway, whether that means being the coolest rebel, the prettiest girl, the edgiest outcast, the nerdiest of the nerds, or any other pigeonhole we could fully inhabit and call our own. And when it comes to not being able to see beyond selfish problems that seem huge, that is most of our teenage years. Sadly, thanks to my arrested development, I think that lasted right up until my late twenties. I am glad that nobody was around to record the many conversations I used to have with friends when we thought we knew about love, life, sex, and heartbreak.

I've waffled on a bit more than I intended to, mainly because I didn't initially want to give as much time to addressing the aspects of the film that more enlightened modern viewers may take issue with. But I think it is important to remember that, taken as a whole, Hughes was trying to do something good, in giving teens their modern cinematic dream scenarios, and also giving young females a number of role models, even if they often ended up just wanting to end their school term with a perfect date/Prince Charming. We've moved on a lot since then, in many ways, but teenagers still spend an awful lot of time thinking about these things. We just forget how many hours in the day were spent dwelling on such issues, because we grew up and realised that our lives would more likely be directed by Mike Leigh than John Hughes.

7/10

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Pretty In Pink (1986)

Despite not being able to remember the whole of Pretty In Pink, I was always a fan. I expect that a lot of people my age have fond memories of all of the teen films penned by John Hughes that were bestowed upon us throughout the 1980s. And this remains one of the more cherished titles.

It's all about a young woman named Andie (Molly Ringwald), who spends her time resenting the fact that she lives in the poor part of town, being wooed by the very persistent Duckie (Jon Cryer), and working in a record store with her older friend (Iona, played by Annie Potts). She's also hit on now and again by James Spader AKA the guy who was always the creepiest one in any movie high school, and finds herself the unexpected object of Andrew McCarthy's affections. He's a rich kid though, so neither of them are sure that it can really work between them.

Directed by Howard Deutch, featuring a collection of lively pop hits (with one or two classics slotted in between the contemporary tunes), and with a cast that features everyone mentioned above PLUS the great Harry Dean Stanton (playing Andie's father, and one of the great, sweetest, movie dads, for my money), Pretty In Pink has plenty to enjoy. The appeal is obvious, if you're watching this in the mindset of a teenager.

But watching it through the current world filter, a time of #metoo and #timesup, and it's hard not to view this as problematic, at best.

Andie basically spends most of the runtime being stalked, mainly by Duckie, but also by Steff (Spader), and by Blane (McCarthy, although he is less creepy and more adorable than the other two). It's good that the motivation for Steff is so obviously nasty - he just wants her because he can't get her - but not so good that Duckie was playing someone that viewers are supposed to root for. He's a complete asshole, and sums up the worst behaviour in boys who get upset about being stuck in "the friend zone" (the quotation marks are to emphasise that the phrase is bullshit anyway).

Think about it. You may have enjoyed watching the antics of Duckie the first time you saw this film. You may have laughed on numerous occasions. But he hangs around Andie as often as he can, be it at school, at her work, even outside the club she visits that he can't get into (while he chats to a doorman, played by Andrew Dice Clay). He calls her repeatedly. One scene shows Andie rolling her eyes as she deletes messages that have been received only minutes apart. He sets off the bloody alarm at her work, more than once, just to get some time with her. And that's before we even mention the conversation he has with Andie's father about his intentions, his total asshole turn when Andie gets to spend time with a boy she's attracted to, and his big moment of miming along to Try A Little Tenderness.

Oh, and that moment isn't quite how you remember it either. It's a lot of fun, and Cryer gives his all in the performance, but the sheer bravado of it all is seriously undercut by Ringwald looking on and realising that this guy is going to have his heart broken if he seriously thinks his persistence will pay off.

So many thoughts were battling in my mind while I watched the film this time around, thoughts that I don't think ever bothered the teenage me. Did Hughes intend things to have such a sinister undercurrent? Are our teen years just that fraught with danger (because, without excusing the behaviour, there's some hope in considering that these ARE girls and boys being shown here, as opposed to women and men)? Why did I never before realise that Gina Gershon was in this? Was the record shop named Trax just to emphasise that Andie lived on the wrong side of the tracks? Why did the 1980s never give us a comedy caper pairing up Annie Potts and Cyndi Lauper as two sisters out for shenanigans?

And why, despite the MAJOR flaws here, did I still smile and enjoy the end of this film? Characters are given a shot at redemption. I'm not sure if that makes up for a lot of their past behaviour, but it goes some way to making the preceding events that bit more palatable. Which maybe sums up how everyone feels as they look forward to life beyond high school.

6/10

Pick it up with a couple of better movies here.
American readers can pick it up here.