#Stewart Thorndike

[ladamarossa]

Bad Things (2023)

[mediademon]

BAD THINGS (2023)

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

Bad Things dir. Stewart Thorndike (2023)

[oldfilmsflicker]

new-to-me #584 - Lyle

[moviemosaics]

Bad Things

directed by Stewart Thorndike, 2023

[dee-the-red-witch]

Time for a free access review? Sure. Why not. Let's talk about Stewart Thorndike's latest on Shudder- "Bad Things". https://www.patreon.com/posts/mediavoring-bad-88150789

(No, this one is decidedly NOT spoiler-free.)

[13thgenfilm]

“In the spirit of being in the know, it’s important to highlight and celebrate the queer filmmakers, writers, and creators who are setting — and raising — the bar for queer storytelling. Whether they’ve been household names for awhile or are just beginning to make their presence felt, here are ten LGBTQ creators on the rise in June 2023.” 👉 https://bit.ly/3J00QZY - via @indiewire

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A mother should protect her child…

[warningsine]

American director Stewart Thorndike’s horror film is a gender-flipped and queered remix of The Shining, complete with a pair of creepy spectres (joggers this time) and an ominous fixation on a particular hotel room. Ruthie (Glow’s Gayle Rankin) turns up for a weekend break at her mother’s snowbound resort, which she is in line to inherit, with three friends. She, girlfriend Cal and pal Maddie (trans actors Hari Nef, recently seen in Barbie, and Rad Pereira) just want to loll around the pool and have fun. But antsy Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), who mistakenly believed she had cancer, won’t settle down and seems to have designs on Ruthie.

Thorndike couches proceedings in an aura of generalised hipsterdom – Cal is never seen without her Hole T-shirt, while the fluorescent-green title design is purloined from Twin Peaks – that is suffocating for the film’s first 15 minutes. But gradually it becomes apparent that the snide repartee, emanating chiefly from Ruthie, is the result of a kind of emotional constipation that events in the hotel’s pastel corridors seem to be trying to shake loose. While Ruthie is hooked on watching Ted-style talks from a scarlet-suited hospitality guru (Molly Ringwald), strange happenings hint at deeper levels of psychic disturbance: breakfast-lounge denizens manifest themselves to Fran, or a chainsaw-wielding maniac in a hoodie.

The initial archness is irritating and keeps the horror elements at safely ironic distance, almost as if it’s a game the characters vicariously enjoy. But Thorndike slowly generates greater levels of feeling as Bad Things reveals how the paranormal is a product of Ruthie’s internal conflicts, culminating in a business meeting scene that corresponds nicely to Jack Torrance’s Lloyd-the-bartender hallucinations in The Shining.

Some of the storytelling gets clotted, leaning too much on the girls shrilly screaming at each other. Bad Things, though, is sharply filmed, with cinematographer Grant Greenberg feng-shuiing the hotel spaces into tone-setting tableaux (with a touch of Twin Peaks’ kitsch). This movie is a long-term occupancy filled with shivers of twentysomething anxiety and maternal oppression.

[florencepughbuzzcut]

Bad Things (2023) dir. Stewart Thorndike

[rickchung]

Bad Things (dir. Stewart Thorndike).

Thorndike directs her own transgressively queer twist on The Shining in the single-location, hotel-set slasher flick [...]. Her fresh take on Stanley Kubrick's classic adaptation of Stephen King's supernatural horror tale finds an interesting lane into its out-and-out homosexual bent on the material.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Bad Things

I really liked Stewart Thorndike’s debut feature, LYLE (2014), which offered a plot reminiscent of ROSEMARY’S BABY and anchored by Gaby Hoffman’s terrific performance. It was compact, eerie and very persuasive as it built on Hoffman’s suspicions that her wife and neighbors were trying to sacrifice her unborn child. Thorndike’s follow-up, BAD THINGS (2023, Shudder), is 25 minutes longer and starts promisingly as a lesbian take on THE SHINING. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin), her lover (Hari Nef), Nef’s ex- (Rad Pereira) and a woman Rankin once cheated with (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) spend a weekend in an upstate hotel Rankin has inherited. She wants to sell it, but Nef thinks they would enjoy running it. Of course, it’s haunted, and the first sitings — two models jogging and an empty dining room suddenly filled with hotel guests — are treated almost matter-of-factly, which is rather chilling. Thorndike takes her time getting to the horror. She wants us immersed in the tangled relationships and Rankin’s emotionally unstable character. And the four actresses are strong enough to maintain interest as almost nothing happens. There’s an eerie moment when Molly Ringwald, very good as the host of a hospitality web series Rankin has been watching, suddenly starts addressing her directly. Thorndike keeps holding the camera on people who are alone but with an empty door behind them. Or she holds on a location for a few moments after people have left it. You keep waiting for this to pay off with one of the ghosts drifting into view. But the horror moves in an entirely different direction. Instead of THE LESBIAN SHINING we get THE UPSTATE NEW YORK CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and the slow build-up fizzles as people get hysterical and the bodies start not exactly piling up The cast is too small for that. They’re just there, and the film dies along with them.

[moviesandmania]

BAD THINGS (2023) Reviews of female-focused horror

Bad Things is a 2023 American horror film about a group of female friends who go to an abandoned hotel for a weekend getaway but soon discover that women do bad things here. Written and directed by Stewart Thorndike (Lyle, 2014). Produced by Lizzie Shapiro and Lexi Tannenholtz. Executive produced by George Loucas, Matthew Dean Russell and Amy Williams. The Space Program-PGC Pictures-Baked Studios…

[oldfilmsflicker]

new-to-me #622 - Bad Things

[horrorpatch]

Shudder Announces Streaming Premiere of Stewart Thorndike's BAD THINGS!

Shudder will host the streaming debut of Stewart Thorndike’s BAD THINGS. Both written and directed by Thorndike, it stars Gayle Rankin, Hari Nef, and Molly Ringwald. The film will premiere on the streaming service beginning on August 25th. Get more details on the release down below. From The Press Release NEW YORK, NY (April 20th, 2023) – Shudder, AMC Networks’ premiere streaming service for…