If you think the title is strange wait until you actually see the film. First of all, the synopsis for Bad Turn Worse is not entirely accurate. It's not three young adults fleeing small town Texas to find a better life, it's actually just two.
One of our main characters, B.J. (Logan Huffman) is losing both his girlfriend, Sue (MacKenzie Davis) and best friend, Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) to college. So, he takes them both out for a wild night of partying and drinking at a local bar and hotel to celebrate.
However, in Bad Turn Worse, nothing is really what it seems. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The money B.J. is freely throwing all over the place for his girl and best friend is actually stolen from his boss (or is it?) And Bobby and Sue? Well, there's more to their leaving than just college. What unfolds is a big series of plot twists that could have been pretty good - except the horrible script by Dutch Southern and mediocre to bad acting got in the way. ***END SPOILER***
This is one strange movie, I'll say that again. For one, the plot tends to drag along with all the enthusiasm of a turtle, and a good deal of what happens seems illogical. Why writers make these characters so clueless, especially characters who are supposed to be intelligent, is mind-boggling. It doesn't help that most of the performances were dry - as if the cast conceded early on that this will never be anything more than a B-rated film. I guess some of the blame can be shifted to the directors, Zeke and Simon Hawkins. While they do an excellent job capturing the gritty feel of rural Texas, they don't do so well with directing the cast. Dialogue between characters is also pretty horrible. Often, a character will start rambling on with some parable that takes up entirely too much time; guess the writers intended for these stories to be awe-inspiring but they only leave the viewer confused. Little of these heart-to-heart chats actually tie in well with what's going on in Bad Turn Worse, which actually ends with a references back to one of these little parables/speeches (or whatever the writer wants to call them) that happened early in the film. Let me tell you, it wasn't an effective strategy.
Anyway, I give it a 4 out of 10 because I think the plot, though strange, was overall pretty good. With some cleaning up of the script and better directing/acting, Bad Turn Worse could have been a winner. Oh, and maybe had they gave it a better name, too...
One of our main characters, B.J. (Logan Huffman) is losing both his girlfriend, Sue (MacKenzie Davis) and best friend, Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) to college. So, he takes them both out for a wild night of partying and drinking at a local bar and hotel to celebrate.
However, in Bad Turn Worse, nothing is really what it seems. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The money B.J. is freely throwing all over the place for his girl and best friend is actually stolen from his boss (or is it?) And Bobby and Sue? Well, there's more to their leaving than just college. What unfolds is a big series of plot twists that could have been pretty good - except the horrible script by Dutch Southern and mediocre to bad acting got in the way. ***END SPOILER***
This is one strange movie, I'll say that again. For one, the plot tends to drag along with all the enthusiasm of a turtle, and a good deal of what happens seems illogical. Why writers make these characters so clueless, especially characters who are supposed to be intelligent, is mind-boggling. It doesn't help that most of the performances were dry - as if the cast conceded early on that this will never be anything more than a B-rated film. I guess some of the blame can be shifted to the directors, Zeke and Simon Hawkins. While they do an excellent job capturing the gritty feel of rural Texas, they don't do so well with directing the cast. Dialogue between characters is also pretty horrible. Often, a character will start rambling on with some parable that takes up entirely too much time; guess the writers intended for these stories to be awe-inspiring but they only leave the viewer confused. Little of these heart-to-heart chats actually tie in well with what's going on in Bad Turn Worse, which actually ends with a references back to one of these little parables/speeches (or whatever the writer wants to call them) that happened early in the film. Let me tell you, it wasn't an effective strategy.
Anyway, I give it a 4 out of 10 because I think the plot, though strange, was overall pretty good. With some cleaning up of the script and better directing/acting, Bad Turn Worse could have been a winner. Oh, and maybe had they gave it a better name, too...