Bad Girl

Despite it being in the very title, Bad Girl isn’t bad! It’s a decent little thriller. It never reaches fully reaches its aspiration of being something akin to The Guest but it gets more than halfway there. Being anything other than an abject failure as a thriller is a pretty big win. Bad Girl should be proud of itself.

The “bad girl” of the film is at least initially supposed to be Amy. Amy is a troubled teen whose foster parents have recent moved house. This is after Amy threw a wild party which trashed their last place and her family reported her to the police. While Amy initially hates the move, she finds an ally in Chloe. Chloe is a fellow teen who is hired as a cleaner. However, Chloe is not who she seems and has her own motivations. Once Amy discovers this, Chloe becomes dangerous.

In both thriller films and movies about intense relationship with teen girls, it’s always a concern as to how blatant the female queerness will be. In many cases, it’s subtext. While it is no way the focus of Bad Girl and any reference goes away by the third act, I was really pleased that with Bad Girl, it wasn’t ambiguous. This isn’t about the sex scene between Amy and Chloe which truly didn’t add anything to the story. This is about the simple fact that multiple times in the first act, Amy mentions that she has an ex-girlfriend and is attracted to girls. I’m so glad Bad Girl bypasses sexual ambiguity and undertones. It has an overtly and openly queer character established before the movie becomes too focused on being a thriller to focus on this aspect.

If you go into Bad Girl knowing it’s a thriller, it will be too obvious what’s going to happen. Though I do think if you went into the film not knowing the genre, it might be subtle enough in the first act that later events would be surprising. There is a solid build-up here that begins with an unassuming first act. What works about it is that though I know the movie was a thriller, the first act established characters that made me want the movie to not be a thriller because I cared about the character’s well-being.

But it is a thriller. And a somewhat cliche one at that. Thrillers are difficult because its very genre is about being surprising. But that’s increasingly difficult because the audience will try and predict what the surprises are. Bad Girl never surprised me. There’s no twists and turns in the film so much as it being a straight forward journey with increasingly large signs that indicate what’s going to happen. However, within this somewhat cliche framework, the movie does successfully hit all its beats. So while there’s not much new here, at least it’s a competent deployment of thriller framework.

Of the cast, Samara Weaving as Chloe is the standout. It’s unsurprising that she’s managed to have a successful scream queen career following this movie. She’s very good at screaming, generally going to emotional extremes and continuing to look attractive while covered in blood. I can only imagine Bad Girl was a major part of her demo reel when she chose to break hollywood. I enjoyed seeing her play a character very much in her wheelhouse that also kisses a girl once or twice… Even if she did spend more time in this movie trying to kill said girl.

Bad Girl never thinks too far outside the box. But inside that box it at least has decent directing, good pacing and good acting. Being just vaguely competent makes the film an above average thriller though not quite good enough for me to give a completely positive review.

Overall rating: 5.9/10

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