Bad Kids Go To Hell 2012

In yet another instance where I happen across a movie that I wasn’t aware of, this was brought to my attention due to a pseudo-sequel which came out earlier this year called Bad Kids of Crestview Academy which I will be watching at some point in the near future. But this was an odd concept of a horror comedy version of the Breakfast Club. It even has Judd Nelson in a small role as the principal or headmaster, whatever his title is. The movie was co-written by the original comic book author Matt Spradlin. Even though they added in an extra member to this horror Breakfast Club, it didn’t help to add much interest, and while it did get a few big laughs out of me, overall it wasn’t that interesting of a film. Either as a horror, mystery, or comedy.

Besides just being a horror comedy version of the Breakfast Club, there’s also an element of a mystery that unfolds over the course of their Saturday detention. They are serving detention in a brand new library that was built on the land owned by a local Native American. We eventually learn that four of the six kids in detention were involved in his murder which was made to look like a suicide. Their parents are also all powerful members of the community and contributors to Crestview Academy itself. Meanwhile, the main character Matt is a poor kid who’s on probation from juvie, has gotten himself expelled from the school, but for some reason decides that he should still serve his Saturday detention. They hold a seance that supposedly brings back the ghost of the dead guy who starts killing the kids.

As for the rest of the group, they’re an odd mix of characters. Here the jock is Craig who has a leg brace where he sneaks in his incriminating digital camera and a gun. The popular girl is Tricia who is on the cheerleading team but also has a drug habit reminiscent of Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions only without the crucifix necklace. The nerd is kind of split into two characters. There’s the girl nerd Megan who surprisingly got detention for doing a wild striptease in the middle of a classroom for some reason. You can tell she’s the nerd because of the glasses, tightly tied up hair, and asthma inhaler. The boy nerd is Tarek who doesn’t really get much to do and barely has any lines. And to round things out is the oddball/outcast Veronica with her goth makeup and an all around bad girl persona to go along with it. Matt is also a bit of a bad boy with his background in juvie, but as we see via the flashbacks, he seemingly was just constantly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether he was wiping paint off his pants during a striptease where it looked like he was openly masturbating, or when he tackled a kid in a runaway wheelchair. The film even ends with everybody dead and him right there in the hot seat to take the blame.

As far as the deaths are concerned, they are a mix of being so over the top ridiculous that they are almost funny, and rather mundane like Megan coughing up blood from an untreated asthma attack. The most insane ones were Craig falling down the stairs and landing with one of his crutches plunged through his chest and his heart stuck right on the tip. The other was the randomness of a tangled air hose that whipped a giant statue around so the axe chops off a guy’s head. There are elements of scares here and there throughout the film, but it rarely lasts long before the air is taken out of it, like a ghostly, screaming spirit that turns out to be a busted Abraham Lincoln hologram. The twist at the end also felt like too much too late as we find out that the teacher and Veronica were both in on all the deaths so they could turn it into a best selling book. But then it was actually also the janitor who’s the son of the dead Native American. There’s also an odd bit with CGI bugs that keep popping up everywhere throughout the movie but are never really explained.

The film is also told through various flashbacks, besides the overdone and unnecessary in medias res where we start out by seeing everybody dead besides Matt before immediately cutting to an “8 hours earlier”. The flashbacks work well enough to help flesh out the characters and their backstories, though by the time the film had ended, it felt like there was still quite a bit of background missing. Hardly anything is known about Matt other than the fact that he’s a seemingly good guy with horrible bad luck. The rest of the characters don’t really stand out beyond their character stereotypes. Judd Nelson’s headmaster is just a one-note joke that stays way past its welcome, and they toss in some random shock humor that felt more like it was just being offensive for offensiveness sake, like constantly referring to the kid in a wheelchair as a “retard” despite Matt’s frequent corrections. The comedy did hit for me here and there, but mainly due to its sheer randomness, like a bit of slapstick, or the look on the wheelchair kid’s face as he’s hurtling down the lunchroom. But the horror wasn’t scary, the mystery wasn’t very interesting or solvable, and I didn’t find the comedy all that funny. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.