Very Bad Things (1998) / Comedy-Thriller

MPAA Rated: R for strong, grisly violence, sexuality, drug use and language
Running Time: 100 min.

Cast: Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Jon Favreau, Leland Orser, Rob Brownstein
Director: Peter Berg
Screenplay: Peter Berg
Review published March 25, 1999

Five friends go to Vegas for a bachelor party and one of them ends up accidentally killing a prostitute, and later a security guard who stumbles on the body. They decide to cover it up and try to get away with the heinous deeds by hacking up their bodies and burying them in the Nevada desert. The close-knit clan begins to come apart as one by one they begin to crumble under the weight of having to conceal their acts.

Basically, it's unredeemable and unfunny sewer muck posing as a comedy. Not only is this one of the most disgustingly vile and shameful wastes of celluloid to come out of a major Hollywood studio, the fact that it was ever released at all is quite shocking. The film is nothing but loud noises, people screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, brutally revolting in its graphic depictions of dismemberment and gruesome murders, and will leave you needing a shower to wash away the icky and nauseous feeling at attempting to view what some idiot (Peter Berg, The Rundown) had the audacity to think would be grand entertainment. To think after watching such abominable acts perpetrated by totally unrepentant and uncaring individuals that the filmmakers would have the gall to actually try pass it off as coyly cute and whimsical is truly offensive.

Note to Peter Berg: the next time you make a film (which hopefully will never happen) try not to make the victims so sympathetic and your heroes so despicable and you may have an easier time keeping the right tone for a black comedy.

Rather than innocent victims they should have buried every reel, videotape and DVD ever made of this film deep in the wasteland of the Nevada desert, preferably that of a nuclear test site so that we could wipe the very existence of this scourge of a film off the face of the planet. (Let's see them put THAT blurb on your movie posters!)

 Qwipster's rating::

©1999 Vince Leo