RATING: 4/5
The suggested title doesn’t just imply for the sake of it, it does it really mean business. Make no mistake, VERY BAD THINGS is a vicious black comedy and definitely not for the squeamish: The film begins the groom-to-be Kyle (Jon Favreau), a regular Joe ripe to be led astray; his fiancee is beautiful Laura (Cameron Diaz), whose perfect wedding-in-the-making is the heart of everything. Kyle’s party-going friends are motormouthed Boyd (Christian Slater), quiet Moore (Leland Orser), brothers Adam (Daniel Stern) and Michael (Jeremy Piven). Before Kyle’s wedding starts, they all planned for a bachelor party and heading down to Las Vegas to have fun: drugs, liquor and sort of those stuff. But everything turns ugly when one of the friends who screw a stripper named Tina (Carla Scott) in the bathroom accidentally causing her death when she is being shoved during their intense lovemaking process against the wall filled with hook. They know it’s a sign of bad thing and no one wants to held responsible. But not before Boyd has an idea and persuades them all to hide the body of the dead stripper and pretend the whole thing never happened. That’s what everybody thinks, and it gets worse after.
Actor turned writer-director Peter Berg (of TV’s Chicago Hope) makes his directing debut in VERY BAD THINGS with a genre know-how. While he obtains all the usual expectation of today’s black comedy come to expect, he let his movie uncompromisingly brutal. Nevertheless, the film is ultimately fetish and cruel; the characters played here gets as violent as possible and Berg also filling up the film’s worst-possible-case scenario so greased-up you can tell he really means it.
The actors, especially Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz turns out credible in both fiendish performances.
And the brutal lovemaking scene in the bathroom easily cited as one of the most daring set pieces of such ever seen in recent memory.
It’s hard to find such vicious movie like VERY BAD THINGS this wickedly fun. Stray for this one out.