VERY BAD THINGS

Kyle Fisher is about to take the big step: he must marry the woman he loves, Laura Garrety. But before Kyle promises eternal fidelity, his friends organize a bachelor party for him filled with alcohol, drugs, and a stripper. Everything seems to be going well until, following an accident, the stripper is killed. Kyle and his friends decide, to avoid compromising the much-anticipated wedding, to listen to their friend Boyd: keep quiet about the accident and dispose of the stripper's body. But the situation continues to worsen when the bodies to dispose of become two after the surprise visit of the hotel's security officer where the group of friends is staying. The bodies are thus buried and the five friends decide to continue their lives pretending nothing happened; meanwhile, Kyle's wedding day approaches and the accident that occurred that night, hushed up by everyone, gradually tends to surface. What is "Very Bad Things"? It is difficult to find a true genre that suits it because it appears as a somewhat anomalous film! Surely, in general, it may seem like a very dark comedy filled, to the bone, with black humor; but it is not just a black comedy because there are also aspects tending towards the thriller and even situations worthy of appearing in a good horror film. We can state with certainty that "Very Bad Things" is a bit the emblem of everything that is defined with the term "grotesque". The film, released in 1999, benefits from good direction but above all from an excellent screenplay, both signed by the same name: Peter Berg. Berg (more known as an actor than as a director) in writing and directing "Very Bad Things" does an excellent job because he manages to bring to life a really very particular film, unique in its genre, capable of truly being "very bad" and therefore creating an excellent combination with the title. As mentioned earlier, the film benefits from an admirable screenplay that results, probably, being the strong point of the film because it manages to offer continuous plot twists capable of completely reversing the medal at any moment and making sure that the viewer never manages to predict how the film will tend to conclude or, much less, to predict the next move. To underline the diligent work done with the screenplay, the skillful characterization of the characters also comes into play: it is incredible to see how Berg had fun playing with the stereotypes of the characters. Berg constantly changes the cards on the table and therefore there will be no cliché, no predictable or obvious personality, on the contrary, everyone assumes an over-the-top, unpredictable attitude, capable of quickly switching from being a "positive" character to being a "negative" one. To enhance the strangeness of the characters, the good cast also comes into play. Everyone manages to get into the role sufficiently, but among them, it is fair to give a special applause to Cameron Diaz, in the role of Laura Garrety, the future bride, who gets into the role of an unusual character (especially for her performances) with a thousand facets, and to Christian Slater who, for the first time in his long and disastrous career, manages to deliver a noteworthy performance: he plays Boyd, the protagonist's crazy friend, that is, "a piece of shit disguised as a landfill reject" (to use the film's words). Finally, the gore level is quite substantial and never descends into pure splatter but, on several occasions, it comes very close (see the sequence in which they have to saw the corpses and package them or the final sequence in the church). In conclusion, "Very Bad Things" is a singular and out-of-the-ordinary film; a film, for once, original, a characteristic that combined with unpredictability constitutes its strong point. Anthology-worthy is the anguishing and "esoteric" final sequence. It definitely deserves a watch. Rounded-up rating.