User Reviews

Jim Carrey is uncredited. I wondered why. Then I watched the movie.

Thing is, I watched the first 20 minutes, then put it aside, thinking that my wife's sister's family, who are fans of edgy cinema and were soon to visit us, would be down for an aprés apocalypse mindfock like this.

They, like me, enjoyed the first 20 minutes. Hardly any dialogue (in a good way), some nice directorial flourishes, a more than adequate set up. Lots of promise. A good skeleton on which to put some meat.

A young woman is banished to a lawless territory in the desert, is kidnapped by what turns out to be a community of iron-pumping cannibals, has an arm and a leg amputated (and her wounds cauterized, presumably so that the rest of her can also be eaten or, you know, otherwise put to use), then manages to free herself and find her way to a place called Comfort where the people eat noodles and chicken instead.

I assumed what would follow would be a story of revenge and rescue, the goodies of Comfort taking down the baddies at the Venice Beach barbecue, maybe with some explanation as to how the people of Comfort get access to gasoline, photocopiers, rice noodles and all the recreational pharma you could hope for. (My guess was that there would be some connection to a group outside the lawless land, perhaps some sort of probably not-so-kosher arrangement between Keanu Reeves's Jim Jones knockoff and his inworld suppliers.)

No answers came. None.

Despite a severe underbite, Jim Carrey managed to chew what little scenery there was and he was still the best thing in the film by a long walk. The moment he hands Momoa a snowglobe was when I knew I wasn't coming back. The movie had left me in my own offworld without a clue where I was going or what would happen to me when I got there.

Loooong story short, the girl falls in love with Momoa's Atkins aficionado after eating some Guatemalan insanity peppers and tripping out like she ate a bad oatmeal cookie at a Grateful Dead concert.

There's some other stuff. A kid who likes spaghetti elbows more than actual elbows and who cries when her Daddy and her new stepmom eat her pet rabbit; a homeless philosopher dude played by Ribisi, channeling an amalgam of all those fidgety weirdos that Brad Pitt used to play; and almost no dialogue not spoken by Reeves, whose explanation of where his dookie go goes on for about nine minutes.

But it is bad enough to be a fun watch with friends who like movies made without scripts by people who can't make a movie without a script. Which is most people.

Seriously, I want to know the backstory to this debacle. My guess: Super-talented young director makes great movie, gets noticed, then gets one of those bags with the two dollar signs on it and access to Harvey Weinstein's rolodex while he's in the bath. But the movie has to be made in 10 days because Jim has a showing of his larger canvases at a gallery where people will hand him bags with two dollar signs on them because he's Jim Carrey, not because he's actually a talented sculptor and painter.

Or Jim shook the snowglobe and handed it to the director, saying (with only his eyes), "Before the snow has settled within, the script must be written."

There are three previous reviews about this film ranging from 3 of 10 to 9 of 10. I won't bore you with the lengthily details of the entire film as one reviewer did. (Would not be surprised at all if He/She had some direct connection with the making of the film, etc)

I am always up for cerebral, off color, non conformist, anti-Hollywood type films and praise those who make them. I am not, however, a fan of films that aim high to be recognized as deeply artistic and thought provoking when the film fails miserably in achieving that goal.

There are at least four big name actors in this mess and there is hardly any dialog through almost 2 hours of run time. This is not to say Dialog makes a film great. Often silence and facial expression and body language speaks volumes. Sadly, this is not the case in "the Bad Batch". BORING is the first word that comes to mind to describe this film. The story line and plot are all over the place. Th film is set in a supposed Apocalaptic setting with a two caste system. One being cannibals, the other the privileged, if you can call it that.

To categorize this film as "Romance/ Sci-Fi" is utterly misleading. There is absolutely No romance in this film nor is there any Science Fiction in it anywhere. I would categorize this film as a Dark Drama. The only redeeming quality of the film is the score in my opinion.

None of the story telling is explained or resolved and you meander through the film (as do the characters) with no purpose. Here is my take on the film.....Girl is captured, has her leg And arm amputated barbarically, which is used for food BTW, by a group of cannibals. Girl escapes, finds woman in desert, kills her and takes daughter, head cannibal sets out to find daughter, finds girl sans two limbs, sets her out on a mission to find little girl. Girl finds little girl at another "camp" of the higher caste and recovers little girl, meets Said Gorilla cannibal in desert, film ends!

Two hours of time I'll never recover. Swallowing glass would be less painful then watching this again. Reviewers can wax philosophical all they want, "the bad Batch" is just plain BAD!

Writer & director Ana Lily Amirpour came up with an interesting premise, but "The Bad Batch" scratches out long before its 118-minute runtime ends. To call this movie slow would be an understatement. The cast and lenser Lyle Vincent's widescreen cinematography are to die for. Each shot is artfully composed. I'm not sure what Amirpour wanted to do with this unappetizing epic where the heroine has both her right arm and leg hacked off by cannibals. Mercifully, Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) escapes but the moment when she steals a skateboard to roll her across the desert made me want to burst out in laughter. I mean, here's a drop-dead gorgeous chick laying supine on a skateboard with only one arm to propel her forward. It isn't like she knows where she is going either as she stares into the brassy white hot sky. Eventually, Arlen escapes from the flesh-eaters, recovers, and acquires a fake leg. She gets pretty good with a gun and kills Miami Man's (Jason Momoa) black wife Maria (Yolonda Ross), kidnaps his daughter Honey (Jayda Fink of "Under the Bed") and takes her back with her into a safe zone where the cannibals aren't allowed to venture. Jim Carrey must have been bored out of his skull to want to play the Hermit who cannot talk. He's in the film perhaps 10 minutes, and he is virtually unrecognizable. Keanu Reeves wears his sunglasses well as the chief villain, The Dream, who keeps people high on drugs and searching for 'The Dream.' Arlen loses Honey to The Dream, but it takes her a while to track her down. Meantime, Miami Man enters the desert to find his wife and daughter, but finds only the wife. The shot of a vulture feasting on her eye socket looked cool. Arlen shot.

Ana Lily Amirpour's screenplay didn't make a lot of sense either. Arlen saves Honey from the desert, loses her and then trudges back into the desert and runs into Miami Man. He gets the drop on her and takes her prisoner, informally speaking, and then on the way back, she watches an African-American dude shoot him in the left side of his chest. Predictably, Miami Man survives the shooting and The Hermit picks the right time to find him before he dies so he can nurse him back to health.

The cast is excellent and so is the cinematography, while the movie struck me as sluggish and half-baked.

You'll need to suspend all of your disbelief to close the holes in this movie's plot, starting with the pumping-iron, body-building cannibals, working out and living in aluminum airplane wreckage in the burning desert sun, in the middle of nowhere. Sun block anyone?

Enter Protagonist Suki Waterhouse, 25, acting age 17, cute and lean, and apparently in the eyes of the body-builders, ready for the BBQ- Grill... Fresh Meat over aged, in wings and legs the saying goes? Predictably, escape follows, and Suki finds Keanu's Village of DJ's, Drugs, Dirt. (Keanu at least has a swimming pool and clean towels) That's Not good enough for Suki, She's in love with the Cubano, the "Artist" (and lead cannibal) with the mute daughter. Cubano's Mute Daughter is a MacGuffin.

The movie starts off "OK", with a good pace, and despite poor acting skill (Suki is mostly eye-candy, with a squeaky voice to match), it maintains an interesting premise. But then dramatically FIZZLES after Suki revenge kills Cubano's girlfriend. Then the "distopian love story" plot takes over and the movie is just embarrassing. There is zero chemistry between the actors, the writing is hideously awkward, and the location seems impossible. Grade F.

I would recommend the movie: "A boy and his Dog" for a successful example of this kind of Protagonist Survival in a post-apocalyptic world (with cannibals.)

I was really looking forward to the director's follow up to "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night" but after seeing it I'm incredibly disappointed. There are a lot of things that work here;the direction and pacing of the film are spot on with some nice cinematography and some interesting choices along the way. Likewise, most of the actor's contribute some nice work here including the much lauded cameos by Jim Carey and Giovanni Ribissi and the high profile appearances of Jason Momoa and Keannu Reeves. (None of whom did this film because they "needed a paycheck" by the way but was a chance to work with the Sundance Institute and/or an up and coming director they wanted to support.) Carey was really surprising, it took me a few minutes before I even realized it was him and Momoa shows he's got real acting chops but it was Keannu Reeves who really stole the show for me. He goes against type and really brings the creepy to his role of a "Jim Jones" type cult leader. It would be interesting to see him play an out and out villain in a future role. As for Suki Waterhouse, I honestly have no idea whether she can act or not because the script is so bad, littered with wooden dialogue and bad choices throughout, that it's impossible to tell. The characters consistently make decisions or take actions that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. We are not talking your typical Hollywood tropes either (Going down to the basement alone, saying "I'll be right back," etc...you know the drill)NO, we are talking actions and decisions that are so wrong they are insulting to the viewer. Example, after narrowly escaping from a group of cannibals and finding safety in a small town, our hero, sans two limbs mind you, immediately wanders BACK OUT into the desert right back towards the cannibal community.She then, over the course of the rest of the movie, proceeds to fall for the head cannibal. A man who participated in a barbecue involving her arm and leg!! I kid you not. I actually found this offensive. And I'm not offended easily. I am baffled as to how the director even considered this line of action for the character or even what the point was. I'm totally mystified as to how anyone could have thought this was a good idea. I found myself very irritated with Ms. Waterhouse's character, to the point that I yelled at the screen several times during the film, so annoyed was I at the character's stupid decisions and at the creators themselves for letting this character be such an idiot. It was like a roll back to before Buffy, when women in horror or sci-fi were nothing but mindless eye candy. You'd think Ellen Ripley had never happened. And this during the week "Wonder Woman" came out. So, there you go. I hate to be so harsh but I have no idea what Ms. Amirpour was going for here and in the future suggest she stick to directing, for which she is quite capable. Just do us all a favor and leave the screenplay to someone else.