Hotels are such a natural setting for horror that it's kind of shocking we don't get more. Maybe it's the intimidation factor of The Shining, a ghost that hangs over virtually any hospitality-themed genre flick. One solution? Lean into it.
Quick Plot: Ruthie (GLOW's Gayle Rankin) has inherited an independent hotel somewhere in upstate New York from her grandmother, who deliberately skipped over Ruthie's mysterious and by accounts, incredibly irresponsible mother. Ruthie would be happy to sell the property and move on but her girlfriend Cal convinces her to at least consider the esteemed role of hotel proprietorship. Deep in emotional debt to the loyal Cal, Ruthie agrees to take a second look.
The weather is cold and the Ubers limited, but Ruthie and Cal bring along Maddie (inconveniently Cal's ex) who in turn brings Fran (even MORE inconveniently the woman Ruthie recently cheated with) to spend a weekend surveying the possibilities while also utilizing two commercial kitchens and an indoor swimming pool.
Tangled former lovers aside, it really does sound like the perfect holiday.
Naturally, things go very, very wrong.
Are the ghosts of the reasonable amount of people who died in Comely Suites haunting the quartet? Is Fran a witch? Ruthie a chainsaw-wielding maniac? Molly Ringwald's TED-Talking hospitality guru pulling the strings?
Many questions are asked in writer/director Stewart Thorndike's Bad Things, and pretty much all of them go defiantly unanswered. This is a film that seems fully aware that it's not going to satisfy most viewers with its aggressively ambiguous finale.
A bad ending doesn't necessarily ruin a film. I'll recommend Yellowbrickroad until my dying breath knowing full well it leaves everyone (me included) scratching their heads in the final seconds. But in the case of Bad Things, the confusion is so wild that it's pretty impossible to find any kind of satisfaction.
I don't think that's an accident on Thorndike's part. I just don't understand the choice.
It may have been the large empty unit surrounded by still snow, but I found myself thinking a lot about Oz Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter. It's another film that does tremendous things with a sort of cold (literally AND figuratively) atmosphere but never seems to find the human throughline to connect the audience to the material.
Bad Things is a frustrating film, perhaps all the more so because I'm pretty sure it's SUPPOSED to be. Normally that would make me mad (and it doesn't NOT make me mad) but there's enough strangeness in the details of Bad Things that I wasn't, well, IRATE. I know that's a terribly unclear summation, but in some ways, it's probably the best I can do.
High Points
So many hotel-based horror films seem to rely on the natural creepiness of Victorian style turrets or easy colonial ghosts, but there's a whole different sense of unease here in Comely Suites. The walls are muted pink, the paintings generic, bedcovers stiff...there's a lot of eeriness to mine in the utter blandness of this kind of space, and Thorndike and her production team make the most of it
Low Points
Seriously: what actually happened in these 90 minutes?
Fatherly and flirty is not the sexy combination you think it is
More often than not, it doesn't pay to stay friends with your ex
Hospitality is an experience, not a space
Rent/Bury/Buy
Overall, I can't say I liked Bad Things, but I continue to find it intriguing. There's definitely something THERE, though ultimately, the movie seems content to not give it to us. I can't particularly recommend it, but I'd be more than happy to hear someone who got more from the film speak for it. As you might guess, it's streaming on Shudder.
Posts
It's funny that we were just talking about this very same thing after your post last week. I'm not sure that that's necessarily evidence of how common this trend of frustrating ambiguity is, but then again if this was the 80s, 90's, 00's, or 10's, I'm sure we wouldn't be having this conversation twice in two weeks.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I started reading this post I found myself thinking about I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which is (surprise surprise) another elevated thriller/horror that prides itself on being impossible to decipher. As I continued through your post that feeling got stronger. Then I watched the trailer for Bad Things and it very much reminded me of IToET. It's too bad because if I hadn't seen other films in this sub-genre I would be open to watching Bad Things, but I feel confident already that I know exactly how unfulfilled and irritated I would be by the end of Bad Things. I guess the old adage is true, too much of a bad thing in the form of a film called Bad Things is a bad thing.
On another note, I loved The Blackcoat's Daughter! I agree it had a similar unsettling "what is going on" vibe throughout, but I liked that the film had a resolution while also not bashing us over the head with what it was. I thought it was well balanced that way (a really tense and scary!).
Yes! I had the last few posts scheduled in advance so I couldn't remember because honestly, there have been a good SEVERAL more like this!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes to I'm Thinking of Ending Things as fitting this mold. I had a weird experience with that film because I read the novel then watched it a few days later, so it was a little hard for me to separate the two. I fully knew what the story was, so some of the ambiguity didn't have that same frustration for me, but would I have felt the same without the source material?
I admire Blackcoat's Daughter. I want to love it because it does SO much really well and effectively, but I've watched it twice now and I still find myself wanting something more out of it!