December 1st, 2015 - The Big Bad (2011)

The Big Bad is an intriguing indie film that occasionally comes close to being ruined by its own indie-ness. Visually the film can be pretty brutal (the first 20 or so minutes have this weird haze in the picture), and there are some performances that are bad/off enough that they threaten to derail the whole thing.  But there's enough zest and energy to things that it ends up mostly working, and it builds up a pretty interesting world for our hero Frankie to journey through.

It starts out kind of rough... You've got some pretty shaky camera work (and that weird haze) as Frankie goes about town, clearly looking for a dude. She settles into one of the diviest bars I've ever seen and sort of befriends this drug-addict lady, and they do the typical indie dramatic yammering thing for a while. After about 15 minutes, it's still not clear what the film even is or will be. A dark and dramatic character piece about these two? A crime thriller of sorts? I actually stopped it to make sure that this was a horror film about 15 minutes in. But what Netflix says, goes, so I continued on with the film.

Shortly thereafter the film takes a hard turn, and while the shift is jarring, it's actually pretty cool. (It probably helped that I knew nothing at all about it going in. The cover art is pretty vague... mainly, I watched it because it was kind of short.) Then Frankie is off on a bloody adventure, meets some interesting characters, and it is revealed that this is without a doubt a horror film. I won't spoil why. (Although in hindsight I feel stupid, considering the title and all.)

But I thought The Big Bad was pretty cool. It's certainly ambitious for such a small film, but does a decent job establishing the rules of the weird little universe it takes place in without depending on gobs of exposition. It doesn't treat you like an idiot, and you have to slowly figure things out on your own.
Like I mentioned earlier, some of the acting performances threaten to completely ruin things. Unfortunately the guy who plays the (ahem) Big Bad (can't get his name) falls into that category. His delivery just seems off, and it certainly doesn't fit the character. When the performance of the guy who is essentially the crux of the whole plot is borderline unwatchable... that's a problem. Fortunately, his character is more of a motivating force rather than the focus of the film, and he only has a few minutes of screentime. Luckily, our main actress is solid. Jessi Gotta works well as the mysterious Frankie. She never over plays things (which would be easy in a film with this much stuff happening) and then manages to bring things back down to earth whenever things get too crazy.

Gore and makeup-wise? You get a little bit here... nothing super impressive (certainly hampered by the budget), but at least the effort is there. There isn't much overt atmosphere/tension in the film - I guess the fact that you just don't really know what is going on would count? And honestly, just figuring out what is happening is probably the most enjoyable part of the film. But the couple of times where you might expect some tense chase/stalk scenes, or action/suspense, it's just not there.

Overall I had a surprisingly good time with The Big Bad. While it has some problems (an iffy look and some poor acting choices), it's weird enough, our main character is likable enough, and it's never boring. It's a bit rough around the edges (even as far as indie horror goes) but it's a decent enough watch. I think a big plus for me was that I went into it totally blind - I knew nothing at all about it when I hit play. Hence the pleasant surprise. I'm not sure how well it would play now that you have these (admittedly vague) details. Honestly it's the kind of film or even moderate expectations might hurt it. Still:

I would   more or less recommend   this film.