Delayed Reaction: Bad Ben

Premise: A man buys a house at a police auction only to find out that there's a malevolent force still living there.

 

The downside of my appetite for and specific taste in horror is that it gets harder and harder to find gems. I'm often taking chances on movies like Bad Ben. I don't know what my threshold is for movie size is exactly, but I'll say that I get worried when the movie doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. It leaves me with way too many questions.

 

For example, is Bad Ben a not good horror movie or is it a savvy horror comedy? According to IMDB, this is a horror comedy. Watching the movie though, I don't get the sense that it's trying to be funny. I watched this as a straightforward found-footage horror movie, and I didn't pick up on anything that tipped its hand to confirm that it's meant to be funny. So, if it truly is a comedy, then I fully applaud its commitment to the bit. In that case, let the rest of this Reaction be a testament to how effectively it aped Paranormal Activity.

 

On a basic level, Bad Ben has the things a found footage horror movie needs. There's an unsuspecting protagonist. In this case, it's Tom (Nigel Bach - also director and writer) who sank all his money into this house he got at auction and plans to flip. It establishes that he likes to record things from his phone and gets the full security package from ADT to record from all 8 cameras in and around the house. Then there's the invisible malevolent force in the house playing cheap tricks. Tom ignores clue after clue that something is wrong with the house. There are burial grounds in the back yard, bloody clothes in the shed, religious totems all over the house, furniture moving for no reason, and extreme shifts in the temperature. Even after he confirms that there is an evil force there, he digs his heels in. I suppose the comedy of it would be that Tom stubbornly ignores every single warning sign. So, this all plays like a checklist of every trope of this kind of movie. I suppose that makes it satire of the genre then. Otherwise, I can't deal with how dumb this protagonist is.

 

Follow-up: OK. Looking at the filmmaker's other films, I do believe this is intended to be a comedy. Either that, or Nigel Bach has Tommy Wisseu levels of cognitive dissonance. Bad Bed is the first of now 8 movies since 2016 in the Bad Ben franchise. Each appears to take on a new facet of the modern horror genre. I still can't say it makes me any more impressed by the movie though. Recognizing tropes is different than commenting on tropes.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend