BAD THINGS - Mark Reviews Movies

Bad Things, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 17, 2023

Bad Things is a confused and intentionally confusing horror story that seems almost ashamed to be one. The plot—a stretch to call it one—revolves around a group of four friends who arrive at an empty and remote—except when it's not—hotel in upstate New York for a weekend getaway. It doesn't go well.

Some strange, potentially supernatural things might be happening there, or it might all be in only a couple characters' heads for some reason. Eventually, a killer is on the loose in the hotel, but considering the relatively little impact it has on the story for a stretch, maybe there only may be a murderer in the building.

Such is the haphazard construction of this narrative, which seems as simple as it can be in any of its various modes but doesn't come across as particularly interested in developing any of them. It's a movie with a pretty easy and straightforward purpose. Because writer/director Stewart Thorndike focuses on the mysterious air of the tale and forces even more mystery upon it, the whole enterprise feels without purpose, until a climax that sort of clears things up but does so in laughable ways.

Mostly, the story features plenty of melodrama between the four friends, who have come from the city to this out-of-the-way hotel for two reasons. The first, of course, is a little vacation away from the group's ordinary lives. The second is that Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) now owns the hotel, which she inherited from her recently deceased grandmother. Ruthie's mother, bitter that she didn't inherit the building she calls home, wants her daughter to sell the place for some quick money, since it's not as if the hotel has kept up with the times and there's not much in terms of tourist attractions in the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, Ruthie's recently on-again girlfriend Cal (Hari Nef), who's earning her degree in hospitality management, wants to put her education to good use and take over the business with the woman she loves. That seems to be the plan, except that Ruthie's mother, who's out of town at the moment, keeps texting her about a possible sale. It's hard for Ruthie to say no to her mother, apparently.

More to the point, it quickly becomes clear that Ruthie is pretty unreliable. She and Cal hit some hard times after Ruthie had an affair, but all of that seems cleared up at the moment. Then again, Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), the other woman, is on this little getaway with the couple and making eyes at Ruthie. Maddie (Rad Pereira), the fourth friend, notices this and continually implores Cal not to trust Ruthie.

With all of this established, the movie, well, keeps going over it again and again with minor variations, while occasionally pointing out that the hotel might be haunted by guests who have died there. A couple of joggers run in place outside the building, looking toward it in a vaguely menacing way. Fran envisions the dining room filled with people, including a little girl whose fingers have been severed. The stories behind these deaths and possible phantoms are slim or non-existent, but more vitally, the spirits' presence here feels like an afterthought.

Far creepier are the moments of Ruthie wandering the abandoned hotel, with its long hallways suggesting that someone—or something—could pop out from any of the doors or around any corner. That's not to say there's considerable tension in the characters' aimless wanderings, but it is to point out that the things that are meant to be unsettling here pale in comparison to so simple an act.

Even when it's set up that there is a murderer in the hotel, Thorndike deflates any kind of tension by continuing the conflict between the friends, who seem quite relaxed under the circumstances that a stranger or someone they know or one of their own group is trying to kill them, piecing together scenes without much sense of continuity. The scene of the first murder, for example, is cut short and apparently forgotten, making us wonder if the whole thing is simply a dream or a vision, like the ones that Ruthie may or may not begin having as the weekend progresses.

Basically, nothing that happens in each of the movie's various modes feels connected to the other parts. Bad Things does more or less provide an answer to what's happening here, although the climax (which also seems to teleport its participants to a new location and has random people walking into shot in the background, not noticing or caring about the carnage unfolding) is more a bad, predictable joke than anything else.

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