In observance of the beginning of a new school year, and all the peril
and mayhem that comes with that, I have decided to review Bad Kids Go to Hell,
because, well, it’s about kids in a school. Appropriate, right?
Director: Matthew Spradlin
Starring: Judd Nelson, Ben Browder, Amanda Alch
Well, I for one think this is quite a landmark. I mean really, how much
less integrity could you have? How much less dignity could a movie possibly
have at all? I need brain bleach after this. I need therapy now. Are you happy,
movie? Is this the goal you wished to accomplish?
Sigh…at times like this, I just have to take a long hard look at the
world and what kind of good can possibly come from a society that has people
who would spawn films such as Bad Kids Go to Hell. Sure we’ve created medical
and technological miracles, and evolved as a species in ways we never thought
possible even 30 years ago. But when movies like Bad Kids Go to Hell exist, it
just doesn’t seem worth it in the long run.
But talking about it won’t do it justice. Only looking at it again
will. And since I’m in the mood to lose another piece of my soul to the despair
of the many crimes against humanity this film contains, let’s just get it over
with and dive into this fucker. This is Bad Kids Go to Hell.
We start off with the worst game of Clue ever:
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| It was the pretentious kid in the library with the ax! |
You dumbasses, you’re not supposed to make it THIS OBVIOUS for the
police who the killer is! That takes all the fun out of it! How are they
supposed to hand the case off to a bunch of pretentious people with color-coded
clothes to their names now?
Then we switch to something much more edifying: some douchebag on his
cell phone driving around talking about things that have no relevance to the
movie, are not interesting and are not funny in any way. This is our main
character Matt, played by some kid who looks kind of like that guy from
Deadgirl. Based on that, I’m giving the movie an F-- grade. Go sit and face the
back wall, movie; you’re getting a bad progress report on this one!
We then see a bunch of other unlikable jackasses who are clearly not
the right age group to be in a prep school arriving for Saturday morning
detention. I love how the principal guy has this voice over where he explains
that the kids in detention aren’t BAD kids, they’re just STRESSED OUT, and as
such, he’s surprised they don’t all kill
each other. Are we on the same planet, or did this guy just get his
principal’s license from a back ally drug dealer?
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| You know what he's actually looking at in that book? The director's PlayGirl collection. |
So, yeah, we get a bunch of unlikable douchenozzles as main characters
all gathered in a library. Before you make a Breakfast Club joke, the movie
does it for you. This one “popular cheerleader” type girl gives a big speech
which I will quote for you verbatim here, so you can all bask in the
wonderfully poetic dialogue this movie calls home:
“Hold it! God damn it! Alright.
New kids? Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. We are in detention. Yeah, this
is not a “love-in. This is not a hippy commune like that sad, filthy flaming
turd known as…Burning Man. And this is not the fucking feel good 80s movie of
the year, where for 7 hours we put aside our diffs and through commiserating
about our mutually dysfunctional family lives, or how lonely or alienated we
each feel, we find some common ground, and end up as BFFs. So let us
understand, there is no ‘us.’ There is
no ‘we.’ I don’t do ‘we.’ I just do ‘me.’”
Holy goddamn Christ on a cracker, who is this character? Shit. Could
she have gone on any longer? I just don’t get who would find this rant
enjoyable. It’s not setting up any character besides extreme headache-inducing
annoyance, and the actress isn’t even delivering it with that much conviction
or anything. She mostly just looks confused, like all of them do. Probably
wondering what the hell they did to get involved in this wretched nightmare.
But hey, the movie has scenes of characters in the bathroom comparing
how much they don’t talk to their parents! Because that makes sense, right?
Really something to brag about, right? I actually suspect the people who made
this had no idea what constituted normal human conversation, because honestly
most of the things they talk about in the movie are along the same lines – who
cares who talks to their parents the least? That’s really a point of concern?
That’s just the girls though. For the guys we get to see that the one
black athlete dude of the group likes to sit on the toilet and say to himself
“Here comes the Kraken” when he’s taking a shit. And yes, we get to hear the sound
effects of the shit hitting the water and everything.
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| Money was spent putting this moment on film. Just let that sink in a little. |
So yeah, most of the movie is just what I’ve already described.
Unlikable characters spouting off pretentious dialogue that will make you wish
their parents had thought twice about doing it in the back of your grandpa’s
old jeep. I mean this shit is BAD. All the dialogue is just them bitching and
whining at one another. It’s all very antagonistic and unpleasant to listen to.
People argue in real life, yes, but there has to be other dimensions to it
besides that. We have to have reasons to care and specific characters with
which we empathize. With this, they start out unlikable and never, at any point,
do we see any dimensions to their characters or any sign that they are actually
human at all. It’s all just a lot of screaming at each other and snide remarks
for no reason whatsoever. I realize this is supposed to be “funny,” but funny
doesn’t excuse this wretched, banal slop. If this is a horror comedy, then
horror comedy is dead.
Well, I guess there are a few parts that deviate from that horrible
formula. I stopped paying attention for a bit, since I knew I wasn’t really
missing anything, and then all of the sudden…
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| Yeah, cause no teachers or staff would notice this in two seconds and stop it, right? |
Yeah, it turns into a flashback of a topless dance party with this one
nerdy redheaded girl in a classroom. I’d make a Girls Gone Wild joke, but the
movie does that for us a little bit later anyway. Y’know, for such a shitty
movie, this really is stealing all the predictable jokes there were to make
about it. There’s also some crap about how the main character Matt got white
paint on his pants and then it looked like he was jerking off, or something. I
dunno. Tip: if this is the closest thing you have to a storyline, you might as
well pack your bags and go back to working the checkout line at Walmart.
Because, really, the movie has no real story. What is it supposed to be
about? I have no Earthly clue. It’s confusing as hell. I guess there’s some
stuff about the library being haunted. And apparently all of them have video
evidence against them for some sorts of minor bad things they did to get in
detention, or something like that; I have no clue really. The way the story in
this movie is told, it’s like a five year old trying to tell you a story at
Thanksgiving – incoherent, jumbled and without much explanation for most of
what’s happening. Except the five year old’s story wouldn’t be this banal and
pointlessly vulgar. And, you know, THIS was made by a team of writers and
green-lighted by at least a semi-professional studio!
I guess what happens next is one of them steals that red headed chick’s
inhaler. She gets mad because apparently she was “stressed out” and that was
why she did a strip-tease dance in that flashback. Then she dies because she
didn’t have her inhaler. Yes, really – the movie just made a joke out of
someone dying of an asthma attack. Far from being tasteful or the least bit
funny, this just comes off like groan-worthy crap. Please, movie, give us more reasons to be so endeared to these characters!
The rest of the movie pretty much just veers between aimless scenes of
them running around inside the library babbling about some ghost
thing…apparently it’s supposed to be “gripping” as to whether or not the
killings in this movie are supernatural or not. As if anyone actually stayed
awake long enough to care, pfft.
There’s also some more flashbacks, like this one about how Matt got
into some kind of Looney Tunes-esque encounter which ended in a
wheelchair-bound kid losing control of his chair and crashing. I’d describe it
in more detail, but…honestly, is it even worth it?
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| That is not a humorous face. That is a horrific image that will forever be implanted in my memory as an unpleasant scar of the movie...thanks a lot, Bad Kids; thanks a lot. |
The most amazing part of it all is what the movie considers a good
enough joke to repeat more than once: everyone, including the goddamned
principle, calls the wheelchair kid “retarded.” He talks normally and doesn’t
act in any way different from the other characters, but because he’s in a
wheelchair, people think he’s retarded.
That is just so far beyond my comprehension – how anyone with a
functioning IQ enough to stick with a movie script long enough to finish it
could possibly think this was a good joke is faaaaar beyond my understanding.
It’s just insane to astronomical proportions. It’s more tasteless than a GG
Allin concert played next to a funeral procession.
Honestly, I can’t even begin to dissect each and every bad thing about
the following hour of the film – I’d go insane, you wouldn’t read it, it would
just be a mess. It’s all the same shit anyway. They bicker and argue, and I’d
rather just put a gun to my head and pull the trigger than listen to any more
of it.
I do like this one part where they go into a room and see this scary
Ghostbusters face that Matt says “is just the storm screwing with the lights.”
Yeah, because THIS…
…is usually what happens when bad weather messes with your lights,
right? Please tell me what narcotics you’re taking. I understand this movie is
hard enough to get through sober, but I want to make sure never to partake in
whatever it is you’re doing, Matt. Then the face turns into Abraham Lincoln and
starts spouting gibberish.
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| Four score and seven years ago, this movie still sucked. |
I just don’t know. I just don’t get what kind of brain mash could have
come up with this. Did this school really have a space in their budget for
‘giant phantasmagoric green Abe Lincoln head’?
There’s also some kind of incoherent plot about how the library was
very recently built. Even though it looks like a very elaborate and
well-put-together library, apparently they just finished building it or
something. And apparently the land was stolen from some old Native American
guy. So is THAT the motivation for the supposed “ghost” who’s killing everyone?
Well, before we can get to that pressing question, Matt and this one
slutty goth chick who’s been the only somewhat tolerable character in this
whole thing have a random sex scene. Literally; they talk about some unrelated
shit, and then she says she wants to fuck, and so they do, over some of the
least appropriate music for a haunted house/library movie you’ll ever hear!
Yeah, the least you could do for such a nonsensical scene is not have
any music and at least TRY to keep the mood, but not these bungholes – they
just throw in shitty alternative rock like the Hitcher remake was the only
movie they ever saw in their lives. What is modern horror’s obsession with
playing such stupid music all the time? I mean, it wouldn’t be much better if
the music wasn’t there, but come on, it would be a start.
Most of the music in this movie is just inappropriate. It sounds like
what would happen if you took a cat, addicted it to cocaine, and then allowed
it to run up and down a piano with no coherence or rhythm to it. Half the time
it sounds like the soundtrack is having a seizure; I mean what the hell even is
any of this? I’m sincerely asking. I’m quite sure at this point that no one was
even in charge of this movie. It was just abandoned halfway through the
production process once the team woke up from their drug and alcohol-induced
coma and realized what a stinker they’d gotten themselves into.
So, yeah, if you’re actually still wondering what happens at the end of
this thing – well, I might as well tell you; otherwise this would all be
pointless. God forbid. I suppose the story is that all the kids except Matt and
the slutty goth chick went and killed that old Native American dude so their
parents could buy the land and make a library? I dunno, that’s all I can really
gather from this mess.
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| Why would you even videotape yourself murdering someone? Are you stupid? The casts of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sorority Row, Prom Night and even Tamara are laughing at you right now. |
And are you kidding me? They videotaped the whole fucking murder,
showed the body, showed all of their faces and the athlete guy actually said
his own name before he turned the camera off? WOW that is…exactly what I’ve
come to expect from this movie.
Then we get another super twist
as it’s revealed there is no ghost after all. It was just the goth chick and
the principal teaming up so they could film everything and make money, or
something stupid like that. Have I said the movie is stupid enough yet? Then we
get a third twist when the principal
kills the goth chick because she poisoned him earlier and gave him diarrhea
(…you figure that one out) and then gets his own head cut off by a statue. Why
start making sense now? The movie’s almost over, after all!
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| Whoever decided it was a good idea to do a close-up on this night terror-inducing face needs to remove themselves from the movie business immediately. |
Before he dies, though, he throws the ax to Matt, who stupidly catches
it and doesn’t just drop it or anything – that would make too much sense. Matt
gets framed for all of the murders and it turns out the janitor of the school
is actually related to the Native American tribe that was mentioned a few times
before, which means absolutely nothing, but for some reason serves as our final twist of the movie, I guess. The movie ends with seizure-inducing blinking lights
for the title and more shitty music, because you know, got to assault all of
the audience’s senses at once for your final impression on them…ugh.
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| Good, we got one of them in a mental institution; now for the rest of the people involved in this and the world will be safe again. |
I just can’t even begin to express my feelings about this one. Not
without several hours’ worth of diatribes containing nothing but blind,
wordless rage. I mean this is one of the worst, one of the absolute pits of
cinema. I haven’t seen a movie this annoying in a long fuckin’ time. It’s
unwatchable – it’s just pure misery and pain put on film. I’d be nicer to this
if there was even one bone of good intention in its entire body, but all I can
see throughout this whole thing is just the repressed rage and mean spirited
spite of a very sad soul. It’s just a wreck.
Everything is annoying, the characters are wretched beyond belief. There
are, oddly enough, way too many different plot points attempted to be
introduced, all of which fall flat because they’re told in such a haphazard
manner, without explaining a thing. The whole picture is oddly reminiscent of a
bad acid trip while in the car with a schizophrenic mentally retarded person who
won’t stop screaming about alien conspiracy theories and Al Gore. Bad Kids Go
to Hell? Bad Movies Go to Hell.
Frankly, I just want to forget about this. It’s a bad, bad film, and my
brain pretty much suppressed most of it without me even having to try. Good
job, brain! But reviewing it has brought some of the memories back, like a
repressed horrific memory from childhood. Isn’t there anything I can do to just
forget?
Ahhh, that’s better. Where am I again?
Images in this film are not mine, they are copyright of their original owners.
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