Checked out (via streaming) the new movie The Bad Batch. This is the director’s follow-up to her critically loved skateboarding Muslim teen vampire movie from a few years A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. That was a curious and pretty good (if slow-paced) movie so I gave the new flick a chance. Which was a mistake since it’s a turgid bore of a flick with excessive moments of ugly gore and no thematic point I can see. Maybe I’m just not smart enough… though the critics are harsh on this one so maybe I’m right.
Set in some post-something world, undesirables are tattooed as part of “The Bad Batch” and tossed out of Texas and the United States to survive in the desert. The young lady the movie follows is just such a person – she’s immediately captured by body-building cannibals, her right arm and leg cut off and eaten. She escapes and is taken in by another community of skateboarding ravers. Now, missing her arm and with an artificial leg, she seeks revenge.
I guess maybe there’s a theme of a wasted American dream or something… if so, it’s kind of lost in this two hour sluggish genre exercise. You have to have a ton of patience to sit through this flick and there’s barely any payoff.
The weird thing is, the supporting cast includes Giovani Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, and Jim Carrey (mute and unrecognizable). Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones is also in the movie with a big part as Miami Man… a Cuban refugee (and cannibal). Momoa is of Hawaiian decent and does a terrible generic Mexican accent. I guess any brown face will do?
Anyway, skip the flick. It’s a tedious grind of an indie attempt at a post-apocalypse (I guess) film. It has the look of a Mad Max movie and that could have worked as an indie genre mashup, but it fails on all counts. Nice use of hiding the lead actress’ limbs though.
Score: 60