Badmovies.org Forum

Over the last few years I’ve seen a few supernatual thrillers/horrors that are just plain bad, but I find myself scratching my head as to what produced such crap. They are films that are in the The Ring mold, have leads in them that are in that borderline A-list/B-list category (I call them B+ stars), but they are just horrible movies that are not even watchable as guilty pleasure. I’ll give three examples:

Mirrors (2008) with Keifer Sutherland
Dark Water (2005) with Jennifer Connelly
Haunting at the Beacon (2008) with Teri Polo

Now, I thought every one of those was terrible, but I ranked them in order of least horrible to just plain Godawful. Haunting at the Beacon was so full of bad writing and cliches that I would only recommend it to my worst enemies and then bellow out a maniacal, vengeful laugh after they left the room.

Films like these leave me scratching my head. Here are three stars that are capable of better things. I mean, Keifer was in the legendary Lost Boys for crying out loud. What goes horribly wrong in the process that films like these exist? I must assume that there was an expectation of a profitable, watchable film by somebody somewhere along the line. At what point did Keifer, Jennifer, or Teri realize “Oh my God was did I get myself into?” Now, Teri Polo may not be the fairest example because she is firmly B-list and probably doesn’t exactly have the freedom of options that Keifer or Jennifer do, but still.

They just seem to be part of a genre of really bad horror/thrillers starring well-known stars. The really bad, truly b-movie horrors are at least entertaining in their sheer badness. These ones I’m talking about are just a complete waste of time. Even my mother-in-law, who is a major Keifer Sutherland fan with a crush, agreed that Mirrors was garbage.

Just a head-scratcher that I felt like sharing.

I'm with you on DARK WATER, but I loved MIRRORS.  It creeped me out big-time, and I thought Sutherland did a great job!  I guess that just goes to show that I am shamefully easy to please when it comes to movies.  However, I will say the sequel (MIRRORS 2) was just plain awful!

Well, Indy, I did say that I thought Mirrors was the LEAST horrible. I guess that's some common ground, sort of.

I think that bad good movies are worse than bad bad movies.  GANGS OF NEW YORK got all kinds of critical acclaim, and I found it to be unwatchably awful.  Drawn out, melodramatic, and boring!

I liked Gangs of New York, but I didn't think it was as good as the critics said. It had some considerable flaws, such as the bizarro casting of Cameron Diaz. That made no sense. But overall I found it watchable I guess.

I am guessing you probably didn't or wouldn't like There Will Be Blood.

My personal opinion is that maybe a lot of these projects seem like they'll turn out pretty good at the script level.  The actor reads it, thinks it could be something worthwhile, and agrees to do it.  At that point, it's up to A TON of other people to make sure that the film itself lives up to the potential of the script.  That combined with studio interference can make a movie not quite what it should be.  But, by that point, the star is already too committed to do anything about it.  They probably figure that they'll just have to pull another winner out of their pockets to make up for these (while these movies may not have helped their careers, I don't think any of the actors have suffered as a result either).

I'm not necessarily commenting on the quality of script on any of thsse three in particular (haven't seen the finished product or read the scripts of any of them), but I've often thought about this when I see someone pop up in something that I know that they are too good for...

That's pretty much what I was going to say.

There's no guarantee that the final dialog you hear in the finished movie, or even the storyline itself, is what is in the reading screenplay when an actor is hired.

I also think a lot of this falls on the studio's shoulders.  They "hey, I bet it'd be cool if we did x" process, where x usually sounds like a good idea but falls flat.  So many of these things happen on the fly during production that that momentary pause these guys 'should' have gets rushed.

The Simpson's parodied this part of the process well with "Poochy."
 

     I rented this a while back....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IshZoIwz_o

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MMqaCA3GHZs/TaJuT1gUIeI/AAAAAAAABes/9HdSTMLyjAo/s1600/203197%252Cxcitefun-monsters-poster.jpg)

      This has the be the most boring, limp-wristed , so-called horror movie I've ever seen,. To add insult to injury, I got the sense that this mess was trying to be politically relevant, but I was too disgusted to care.

     This,  on the other hand, came roaring out of a corner, and blew the roof off....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_bMvPbaeE

(http://www.best-horror-movies.com/image-files/audition-movie-poster.jpg)

     If you've never seen it, take it for a spin.

Isn't that the only film that made Rob Zombie walk out off a theater because it was scary?  Damn.