Why People Love Bad Movies And Seek Them Out!
If you take a look at Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”, you can tell it won’t be winning Oscars or be remembered for being amazing. Yet, on Letterboxed, you can see the film has over 103,000 likes and 2,500 people have it listed as their favorite movie. The movie has cultivated a large cult following with sold out screenings. How can this be when the film suffers from numerous technical issues, poor acting and a lack of cohesion? It turns out that sometimes a bad movie can win over something well made.
When bad movies can be interesting train wrecks to watch, they also sometimes carry a sense of authentic genuine charm and comedic absurdity. Bad movies can become entertaining in a way that few movies are able to achieve. Some of my favorite comedic moments come from these types of films and not comedy movies themselves. The actors stumbling their lines in “A Murder in Oakland” comes across as hilarious since the director was trying to make a serious introspective murder mystery drama that mined his personal life for genuine pathos. The film fails at what it sets out to do, yet somehow ends up accidentally brilliant in a unexpected way.
Bad Ai Images can have their own creepy charm right?
In bad films, the narrative and dialogue are often nonsensical and illogical, with characters behaving in ways that don't align with human behavior. You’ll also find unique acting styles, characterized by stilted delivery and odd mannerisms. Mix this with creative decisions that seem to the wrong ones to go with, and you end up with films that end up being endlessly rewatchable. The films themselves carry their own unique vibe to. Try to find movies similar to Fateful Findings, The Room, or Troll 2. Where with mainstream movies you have more movies that tend to follow the same trends and formulas.
Oscar movies and those that are considered to be the best tend to require you to be in the right mindset to fully enjoy. Films such as “Oppenheimer” and “Schindler’s List” can be hard to re-watch due to their length and emotional themes. With arthouse films, one has to be super absorbed and paying attention to the details to understand what is happening. With bad films, it’s usually to sit back and enjoy. Also bad films can put things into perspective, you appreciate what's good a lot more than most people who see a 7/10 movie every time and say it's crap.
This guy is clearly having a good time with the bad effects of this movie.
The interesting thing with art is that even films with limited technical skill, passion and creativity can still lead to interesting results. The So Bad It’s Good? mentality even applies to videogames and music albums as well. Strangely though, when artists make movies made specifically to emulate that effect of a bad movie, it doesn’t always work. Like with Tommy Wiseau 2nd big film, Big Shark. It’s still a bad good time, but can’t capture what made their earlier work when they actually trying to make something epic.
Really to sum it up, sometimes you aren’t in the mood for a 5 Michelin Star restaurant. Sometimes you just want greasy McDonald’s. Both are enjoyable for different scenarios. Despite their flaws, they can be fun to watch, especially with friends.
*For those who might be concerned about using “AI slop” for this article. And I’m going to push back on that really hard right away. This is literally the perfect use case. I don’t earn money from this blog and have no art budget for this sort of thing. (Any available budget goes to our film productions) In this case, I’m able to be transparent and tell a story with goofy looking images, It’s a bit tongue in cheek given the subject of the talk. And it was fun to do.
