Bad Kids of Crestview Academy

Amazon was pushing 'Totally Killer' on me, and I couldn't make it through that one either. This one also appears to be targeted towards the 14-34 female, um, let's say "Velma" demographic, so I'm probably not the audience they're going for. I guess I was expecting more of a "Disturbing Behavior" type movie, but BKoCA is more like a spoof of a horror movie than it is a horror movie.

That being said, it's a horny/gory teen comedy that leans heavily on current-day tropes which won't make sense in the future, so if you hadn't heard of this movie before, then you probably won't hear about it again. It employs levels of acting and writing that you would see on The CW. The camera work and audio is well done.

This was made for a pretty specific group of people, so if you're in that group you'll probably love it, but otherwise you deserve a medal for making it through the first hour.

PS- I saw someone else mention that it has themes of "And Then There Were None", but implying that these writers read Agatha Christie is giving them way too much credit. I could see if maybe they watched a YouTube video summarizing the film adaptation.

Bottom line: I wanted to love this, but it was a let down. It might be worth the watch for the inventive effects if you're a fan of horror in general. The review is long because of how polarizing parts of the movie were.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy had the potential to be a smash hit, but in the end I was left frustrated and disappointed.

I had low expectations going in, but they turned that around pretty fast with some very cool comic-book style effects. They use it for transitions, they use it for overlays, and they use it well. The first time it showed up I liked it, but was worried they wouldn't do much with it, and it just got better from there (mostly).

• The production quality of the whole thing is good.

• The actors are all alright, albeit overacted at times, but that's what you get/want/expect with these kinds of movies. They're all also attractive, which helps. I'm not a big fan of Sammi Hanratty, but I'm not sure why, and I'm not going to knock her for the performance.

• The basic outline is good: it's a mystery/slasher with kids in detention. You *want* to wonder who did it as all the characters die off and the mystery reveals itself before a 'final girl' sequence. You *almost* get that.

By the half way point I was having a good time and wondering why I hadn't heard more buzz about it, but that didn't carry through to the end.

With all those things going so right, what went wrong? The needlessly convoluted story line(s)

The broad strokes without specific info:

• They start with a 'mystery' to even figure out what the backstory for the main character's motivations and they take way too long to give us enough information. After a while it felt like something that shouldn't really be a mystery to the audience at all. It was frustrating, but I overlooked it for the fun bits. If the main character had a better reason for being in detention, and we had some of the slow-rolled flash backs earlier then it would have made more sense for her to even be there.

• They rush through the actual slasher/mystery portion dumping all the deaths into a very tight timeline and immediately tell us who the killer is with no mystery about it
• Instead of ending the movie, they added a bunch of needless layers to the killer's motivation and then turn it into a (bad) action movie. They tried to have a lot of side stories, overlapping layers, and double crosses, but really they just constantly revealed new stuff in a way that made me say "alright, I guess that's a thing now". It didn't feel like I was finding out what was happening, it just felt like random new stuff was being thrown in.

• They hint at a cool side story around the halfway mark, but then they don't touch it again until the end where they (very poorly) 'tie it in' to the main storyline and ruin it. They would have been better leaving it out completely.

• Internal logic fell apart in more than a few places, which really stood out when they tried to stack up all the layers.

With what they had already they could have cut out a big chunk of the over complicated story from the end, dropped it down to 90m, and slow-rolled the deaths to make me wonder who the killer was. They would have gotten a solid 7-8 stars. As it stand, I was torn between 3-4

An added observation: I'm surprised I only saw one review mention this, but they made a big point in the dialogue to have a ton of references/jokes about the main character being Native American. I didn't find them to be offensive, and I'm not sure is anyone would, but it really sticks out like a sore thumb. The thing that made it stand out is that she is one of the two whitest people in the whole movie. It felt like they intended the actress to be obviously Native American, and should have chopped out the dialogue after casting Sammi Hanratty. Some examples are referring to her as an "Indian Princess" and her being "Tired of cleaning up after the white man".

I enjoyed the film, but didn't love it like I do the the first movie. While they managed to capture the essence of the original film - telling the story in bits and pieces, out of order, any with layers within layers - but whereas they reached a point where that formula again worked, the film then went way too over-the-top in an attempt to really out crazy its predecessor. It was also disappointing that, while the first movie had reasonably well-developed, multi-layered characters, with the exception of the main character Siouxsie, all the others were ridiculously shallow one-note caricatures in this one. If you really loved Bad Kids Go to Hell, you're more likely to get some enjoyment out of this one, but don't expect it to be as good.

.... which, depending on your POV, may or may not be a compliment.

Here is the scoop -- there is a theory in the biz that if you deconstruct enough films in the same script, you may possibly trigger a paradox in the (Hollywood) time-space continuum, Star Trek style, and end up with a film which is actually a legitimate successor to the genre you were trying so hard to satirize.

Which is what I think happened here.

Ben Browder seems to have learned a LOT of valuable lessons from his first "Bad Kids" attempt -- just a rambly B movie which gained cult status because of some clever tropes -- and came back with a film which (I kid you not) has a remarkably tight script, good performances and good production values.

Which is not to say that the Coen Brothers are nervous, far from it. But the script is so interesting (with sly hints of Scream, Friday the 13th, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and even No Country For Old Men) that it actually engages and holds the attention.

And Sammi Hanratty gives what can best be called a bravura performance, biting into each line of dialogue and each piece of mayhem like she actually believes what she is saying ... like her career depends on it (which it probably DOES!) ... and essentially picks the film up and carries it to the finish line.

Gina Gershon does little more than offer a parody of herself, but her character ironically provides a "political angle" to the film which conveniently comes at a time when the world at large is starting to see politicians as potentially more dangerous than serial killers.

Recommended. And I predict there will be more in the series.

Nice film. Not gonna blow your mind but fun to watch if you wanna escape for a few hours.