Any movie nerds out there who love bad movies? Or are you the type that only enjoys consuming media of quality? I’ll openly admit, watching garbage movies is a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine. But what really defines a “bad” movie? On an individual to individual basis, is it merely a movie you didn’t like? Or is there a difference between a movie you didn’t care for and a bad film? Even as a critic who tries her best to be objective, its hard to differentiate the two. Even more difficult to define are “enjoyably bad films” vs. “bad films that make you upset.” For this discussion, I’ll define “bad” as simply not well made. Or do be more specific, something about the film, whether it was the editing, effects, writing, or acting (or a combo of any one of these) was so poorly executed that the original intent of the films message is lost.
The hardest thing for any film lover to do is figure out if a movie they didn’t enjoy was truly “bad”, or they just didn’t like it. I myself can name several films that are very well made, but I for one reason or another, didn’t like. Take for example the 2009 film Antichrist, an artistic horror film by director Lars von Trier. Everything about this film is, on paper, a film student’s dream. Top notch acting by William Defoe, gorgeous cinematography and color palettes, hypnotically dreamy direction style, even some cool practical effects. And yet, despite knowing that everything about this movie is “good”, I honestly didn’t enjoy it. The same could be said about American Beauty (dir. Sam Mendes) which even won the Oscar for “Best Picture” in 1999. Nothing was technically wrong about it for me, yet I can’t bring myself to like the film even upon multiple viewings. I have noticed something these two, and many other films I didn’t like have in common. Its not that their message was conveyed poorly. I just didn’t like or care about the message itself they were trying to convey. Because of this, I think dislike or disinterest in the point it’s trying to convey that is what truly defines a good movie you didn’t like.
Easier to define (and much more fun) types of bad movies are the bad movies we love. Film’s such as The Room, Birdemic, and Manos:Hands of Fate, are famous examples of bad movies that have a loyal following of people who love them, fully acknowledging how awful they are. While it’s true, not everyone watches bad films for the sheer enjoyment of it, there are definitely a large population of us out there. What I really wonder in this situation is, are we bad movie lovers truly masochistic enough that we want to torture our brains for hours by watching complete garbage? I actually think its the opposite. Most enjoyably bad movies are not just kind bad, they are really really bad. These are the ones that are so disastrously executed or so entertainingly extra that we forget about our own misfortunes because we are laughing so hard at the one we are watching unfold. So really, enjoying bad movies isn’t masochism at all, but rather, it’s schadenfreude.
Then there is the third category I wish to discuss, and the inspiration behind my sudden tangent about bad movies: the bad movie that was not fun to watch. This finally brings me to my brief review of Freaks: You’re One of Us, a German film (dir. by Felix Binder) recently released by Netflix. Wendy (Cornelea Gröschel), a mild mannered waitress stops taking her prescribed medication on the advice of an odd homeless man she met. She soon discovers the medication is was inhibiting her inborn superhuman strength, and there are many others like her who possess different super powers being suppressed by a vast conspiracy. Wendy learns how her powers affect her family, and whether or not she can function in a normal society while being herself.
While this idea has been done quite a lot in various forms, I was still initially very intrigued by the plot. In fact the movie actually had a pretty decent start. Unfortunately, it started getting worse and worse the longer you got into the movie. Plot points got started that went absolutely nowhere, character motivations started not to make sense, the dialogue was ham-fisted, and worst of all, super power mechanics were completely inconsistent. You can establish whatever crazy powers you want in a fictional universe, but you have to establish rules for these powers and remain consistent with them. The special effects were…meh. Not laughably bad or anything, but about mid-grade television show quality. Overall, the film felt hollow, like breaking open a brightly colored superhero piñata, only to discover there is no candy inside.
The main point is, this was a bad film. And I didn’t enjoy it. What about this film makes it both bad and unenjoyable? Like I said, found the plot very interesting from the start, so that definitely wasn’t the problem. I think the key difference between this movie and a really bad movie people love is how disappointing it turned out. When we sit down to watch a bad movie on purpose, we generally know what we are getting into. When we don’t, its pretty easy to tell from he beginning a if a movie is going to be horrible, and we can make the decision to either turn it off early on, or sit back and enjoy the ride. Freaks gives us no such curtesy, as it has a fairly solid start, and by the time it starts degrading in the second act, you still have hopes the third act will redeem it.
Ironically, the main sin of movies like Freaks is that they are just good enough to get your hopes up, and then disappoint you. I didn’t sit down to watch Freaks to see a train wreck of a film, but rather a satisfying take on ordinary people who are born with superpowers. Satisfying, it was not. At the very least, it forced me to be introspective about why we (or at least I) enjoy certain bad movies and hate others.
