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Stewart Thorndike’s Bad Things arrives in the territory of empty hotels and uneasy echoes. Gayle Rankin’s Ruthie appears at a hotel that carries weight from her past. The film opens on that match of place and memory and asks the audience to sit with the atmosphere it stages. This is a review that examines how the film uses setting, character, and reference to ask questions about trauma, companionship, and the way interiors can act like memory.
Echoes, homage, and small subversions
The film wears its influences openly. The empty halls and the hotel-as-presence recall classic images of hospitality turned hostile. Those images carry cultural freight; they summon associations with earlier films and with the way silence can be framed as pressure. Thorndike collects these echoes but composes them into a personal arrangement. References appear in texture rather than as plot beats. Apparitions that appear like twins (and other repetitions) register as formal motifs. A chainsaw appears in one scene; the object’s currency in horror is acknowledged and then shifted when it is used to cut a tree. The gesture reads as a wry re-signification (a small joke aimed at the genre’s iconography).
Critics have pointed to tonal kinship with a number of recent and older works, including a German film called Schlaf and a reflective piece titled The Eternal Daughter. Those comparisons function as invitations to look for thematic correspondences rather than as claims of imitation. Visually, the film favours cool interiors, patient camera moves, and an economy of color that keeps the eye alert to small dissonances. The result is familiar and unsettled at once. The familiarity primes the viewer; the dissonance unsettles the expectation.
The hotel as archive of private failures
The hotel in Bad Things behaves like a ledger. Its corridors catalogue absence. Chandeliers glint. Carpets show meticulous care. Yet an undercurrent of decay—an unspoken history—permeates each room. Light operates as a moral index: half-lit corridors register uncertainty; deeper shadows gather secrets. Silence in this film functions as material; it is textured, punctuated by distant, unplaceable sounds that suggest other presences or the mind making them up.
Isolation here extends beyond geography. The setting amplifies emotional remoteness. Conversations acquire edges that would be softer elsewhere. Laughter rings oddly. Small gestures accumulate significance. Ruthie moves through the space as if through chapters of herself. The hotel does not merely contain scenes; it stages psychological interrogation. The design choices—scale, emptiness, the balancing of brightness and pallor—guide the viewer toward a reading that treats architecture as a testimony of inner life.
This arrangement makes the audience complicit in the unease. Eye-level choices, the patience of takes, and an insistence on silence invite close listening. The hotel is both subject and symptom: it records characters’ histories while exerting pressure that exposes them.
Characters, relationships, and friction
Rankin’s Ruthie anchors the film. The narrative positions her return as a confrontation with fragments she cannot dismiss. Interactions with the ensemble register incremental revelations. Scenes that might read as small talk in another film here become diagnostic: texture discloses tension.
Cal and Maddie, performed by Hari Nef and Rad Pereira, bring relational complexity that informs the group’s dynamics. Their presence reads as a deliberate shaping of the ensemble’s palette; identity and intimacy in their forms matter to the film’s emotional economy. Annabelle Dexter-Jones’s Fran introduces unpredictability. A recent personal upheaval in Fran’s life leaks into her behaviour, and that unpredictability becomes a vector for escalating unease. The cast works as a system: each person’s private difficulty refracts through shared moments, producing outcomes that are sometimes tender and sometimes sharp.
The film resists tidy moral mapping. Affection and suspicion coexist. Moments of care sit beside lapses of trust. These ambivalences serve the film’s larger inquiry into how relationships hold and fail when memory presses.
Tone, structure, and what horror becomes here
Bad Things privileges psychological pressure over spectacle. The scares that matter are those that unsettle identity and memory rather than those that startle reflexes. Tension moves in waves: scenes of warmth relieve the audience briefly, and then the film returns the mood to tension. This rhythm refuses a single register and asks viewers to track motion between intimacy and estrangement.
Genre signals are present. The film names them and then alters their use. Apparitions, repetitions, and architectural menace remain tools. The emphasis lies on how trauma articulates itself inside communal spaces. External threats recede; inner fractures advance. Such a posture compels attention to the characters’ inner logic instead of to a sequence of external shocks.
Thorndike’s decision to let narrative loosen at points creates both rewards and costs. The looseness allows moods to develop; it also invites criticism that pacing meanders. Those who prefer a tight, relentless trajectory may find the film’s patience trying. Others will appreciate how patience reveals small fractures and the economies of feeling among the group.
Thorndike’s framing and cultural reach
The director’s approach privileges interior life and image economy. Camera choices are deliberate; the stillness of certain shots encourages reflection. The film stages spaces in which memory and place co-author meaning. That formal insistence produces a film that engages with contemporary questions of belonging and identity without making broad proclamations. It registers social realities through character and mise-en-scène rather than through exposition.
Casting choices matter here. The presence of trans actors in central roles changes the texture of how belonging functions on screen. The film asks the audience to register difference as part of ordinary human complication, and not as spectacle. That integration affects how social concerns appear in the narrative. Scenes of domestic tension acquire political valence by virtue of how recognizable power dynamics operate inside supposedly intimate spaces.
Culturally, the film may not issue large proclamations. It offers, instead, a model of how a horror film can examine social entanglement by attending to the small scenes where people fail one another, help one another, or drift apart. Those scenes accumulate into a portrait of contemporary relational strain.
Final notes on effect and limits
The strongest aspect of Bad Things is the way it makes the viewer live inside a mood. The hotel’s architecture and the ensemble’s interactions produce a climate of quiet interrogation. Moments of soft humour break tension without dissolving it (the chainsaw incident supplies one such moment). The film’s refusal to rely on spectacle gives its cumulative effect a slow, lingering quality.
Limits appear when the narrative permits too much looseness. Occasional meanders reduce momentum. The density of references and formal homage can distract readers who prefer clearer authorial thrust. Still, the film’s commitment to psychological pressure and its sensitivity to group dynamics make it a distinctive offering.
This is a horror film that treats its monsters as states of being. It turns the interior life of its characters into the site of fear. That choice makes Bad Things a film that appeals to viewers who want horror that thinks, who accept quiet for provocation, and who prefer unsettled questions to tidy answers. (A small paradox: the film wants calm attention and rewards restless thought.)
Bad Things is a psychological horror film that made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 9, 2023, before being released digitally on August 18, 2023. The story follows a group of friends who retreat to a snowy, vacant hotel inherited by one of them, only to find their relationships fraying as the building’s eerie atmosphere begins to influence their minds. Often described as a queer feminist reimagining of hotel-set horror tropes, the film explores themes of motherhood and inherited trauma. You can watch it on streaming platforms such as Shudder, AMC+, and Amazon Prime Video.
Where to Watch Bad Things (2023) Online
Full Credits
Title: Bad Things
Distributor: Shudder, AMC+
Release date: June 9, 2023 (Tribeca), August 18, 2023 (United States)
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes
Director: Stewart Thorndike
Writers: Stewart Thorndike
Producers and Executive Producers: Lizzie Shapiro, Lexi Tannenholtz, David Bernon, Sam Slater, Paul Bernon, Phil Keefe
Cast: Gayle Rankin, Hari Nef, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Rad Pereira, Jared Abrahamson, Molly Ringwald, Ariella Josephson
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Grant Greenberg
Editors: Sam H. Gunansagar
Composer: Jason Martin
The Review
Bad Things
"Bad Things" is a mesmerizing dance between classic horror elements and fresh narrative techniques. While it might tread a slower, more introspective path than some might expect, it offers a deep dive into the human psyche, challenging our perceptions of fear and introspection. Stewart Thorndike showcases a unique vision, seamlessly blending diverse character arcs with a haunting setting, delivering a film that's both unsettling and thought-provoking. While it has its occasional missteps, the film's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, making it a must-watch for those seeking a different flavor of horror.
PROS
- Character-driven narrative that delves deep into the human psyche.
- Unique take on the horror genre, emphasizing psychological terror over jump scares.
- Diverse cast that brings depth and authenticity to their roles.
- Masterful use of setting, with the hotel serving as a central, haunting character.
- Clever integration of classic horror references, offering both homage and fresh twists.
CONS
- Occasionally meandering narrative that might lose grip on some viewers.
- Subtlety of horror might be too understated for those seeking overt terror.
- The plethora of genre references can sometimes overshadow the film's unique voice.
