Things

                         

 This is the worst movie I've ever seen. I hope to Christ it's the worst movie I'll ever see.
             
As I sat watching this movie, I decided that the "So Bad it's Good" bar (an idea I had been mulling over for some time) would have to become a thing. This is THE reason for the bar.

For 'Things' is just so heinous, so incredibly, horrifyingly terrible, that I knew in my heart that I could never give it anything more than the lowest score possible. And yet, somehow, I think it's one of my favourite films of all time.

                     

                       

Everything about this picture is wrong: there is no plot (or even sense of presence), all of the actors appear to be drunk all of the time, the sound quality is so poor that most of the time it sounds like there's a gale blowing outside, the lighting is often so bad that I felt dizzy, the creature effects existed only to the extent of there being the model of a creature present, and the pace slowed down so much at times that I couldn't remember a time when the current scene wasn't happening, then speeds up into confusing (action?) scenes in which we are treated to colourful nonsense and a more active sort of drunken confusion.

It was made in Canada in 1989, and went straight to video somehow. It was even exported to the US. God knows how or why, but I think there's an element of demonic possession in here somewhere.

Here's the plot, as best as I know it (and I've seen this five times to date – no joke, I'm slightly obsessed): A guy and his wife can't have a baby, so they go to an evil doctor who impregnates her with a load of bug things, then she dies and they crawl around all over the place and terrorise the husband, his brother, and a guy with a beard (who at some point disappears into the “fourth fifth or sixth” dimensions and then comes back later). Everyone dies apart from the brother, as far as I can tell, then the evil doctor comes over and dies too. Then the younger brother runs outside and runs around, and then takes ages to climb on to a bridge.. and then... You know, I honestly can't remember how it ends. I've seen it five times, but I just can't remember, and it's not because I'm always too drunk by then, I just really can't. I feel like it has one of those Michael Jackson 'Thriller' type ending, but it might not. I really don't know, and thinking about it is scaring me a little, so I'll move on.

                      

                            

The opening titles are also a thing of twisted beauty. A shaky car cam shows us a boring drive, as theme music plays and jolts around in quality. The opening credits that play over these shots are so disjointed that it's difficult to even understand who's guilty of what.

Another favourite of mine is the random cuts to a news bulletin (I guess?) where a porn actor reads out confusing stories that don't relate at all to the plot or the rest of the film in any way. Uncharacteristically, she spends the entire time not looking at the camera, instead looking just slightly to the left, where the script obviously is (I feel so sorry for her, sinking from a proper career to the point where she's a minor character in 'Things'). I'm only really scratching the surface of the massive shit iceberg here though - I haven't mentioned some of the incredibly weird, out of place quotes, the frighteningly shit soundtrack that somehow stays with you long after viewing, the difficulty in discerning when the film is even over (there are a load of... I guess, out takes? At the end, but then it just turns into what appears to be an earlier scene, and you start to wonder if you're going to be trapped here, watching 'Things' forever)...

This is a real piece of art, in an extremely fucked up kind of a way. Not only is it bad, it's perfectly bad. It's worse than just a black screen, or even just a series of snuff films or something. A dog just walking in and vomiting into my eyes for 83 minutes would be better. I can't think of anything worse than this movie, and I couldn't make a worse film if I tried. That's a real achievement, right? It's captivatingly bad, so bad that I'm pretty sure I've been ruined for all other bad movies. It's so bad that it's good.

                        

Things: 0.2