20131007: Thriller Review--Bad Kids Go to Hell

Bad Kids Go to Hell

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, rated R, 2012, 92 minutes, comedy, mystery, thriller.  Spoken word is in English.
2. IMDB: 4.2/10.0 from 1,974 users. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 44% on the meter; 39% from 4,463 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 128,736 users.
5. Written and directed by: Matthew Spradlin.
6. Starring: Judd Nelson as Headmaster Nash, Ben Browder as Max, Marc Donato as Tarek Ahmed, Ali Faulkner as Tricia Wilkes, Dr. Day, Amanda Alch as Megan McDurst, Mark Donato as Tarek Ahmed, Roger Edwards as Craig Cook, Augie Duke as Veronica Harmon, Jeffrey Schmidt as Dr. Day, Cameron Dean Stewart as Matt Clark. 


2. Setup and Plot
1. Crestview Academy is a private school for upper crust brats.  The film starts with the beginning of an eight-hour detention for six very entitled scumbag teenagers.  Dr. Day locks them in, but not before Veronica poisons him (ongoing vomiting, perhaps not death).  Within twenty minutes I was ready for all these useless bastards to be slaughtered.  That's what I call successful writing.


2. Megan dies first from the inability to find her ventilator while under the stress of a seance.


3. They try to escape; they try to explain the recurrence of large roaches.  They end up in round upon round of recriminations against one another, anti-enforced by flashbacks.


4. The adults are clueless; why don't they pull the plug on the bad behavior?  Why not have the perpetrators arrested?  Turn off the electricity to the sound system at events?  There are ways to assert control non-violently.  Even good old expulsion comes to mind.


5. After firing bullets at the bookcases to soothe his conscience, Craig Cook gets a piece of steel through his thorax.


6. Tricia assaults Matt Clark with a nail gun, but does not kill him.


7. Someone kills Veronica with a shard of glass, only it was a fake out.  She was in alliance with Dr. Day, or so she thought.


8. In a last reversal of expectations, only Matt is left standing, and the cops pick that instant to enter the detention room.  The cops immediately taser him, then muzzle him.  Max explains what really happened, knowing Matt will never be able to credibly repeat it.


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: I still like Ben Browder, but hope never to see the other actors again.
2. One star of five; two blackholes for acting and sound.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 OK, but little was done to disguise the bad casting.


2. Sound: 2/10 Unforgivable.  Whoever mixed the sound did a bad job.  The rotten music was set down much louder than the conversational tracks.  To hear the conversations, I have to crank up to 50; to avoid blowing out my ears while the useless, irritating 'music' is on, I need to drop it down to 10.  Ridiculously bad.  The incompetence extends into the credits.


3. Acting: 0/10 Bad, except for Ben Browder.  Judd Nelson might as well have phoned in his performance.  You'd think actors in their twenties could do better jobs at playing teenagers.  Amanda Alch (23), Mark Donato (24), Roger Edwards (32), and Ali Faulkner (over 22, probably by a lot) were the actors for whom I could find ages.  Those may be their stated ages, but they look even older.  Augie Duke looked about 40 in a closeup; searching on the net suggested she's 27.  I think real teenagers could do a better job than this crew of non-actors.  The extras were uniformly terrible.


4. Screenplay: 4/10  The rotten non-teenagers do get good and dead.  On the other hand, the sequencing of current time versus endless flashbacks was poor.  On the whole, this was a muddled piece of nonsense.