Bad Meat

A group of wayward teenagers are sent to a boot-camp by their parents to teach them a lesson. The people running it are complete nutters and ridiculously unsavoury characters. I don't know why they're even running the boot-camp or how.

The kids are all cliché characters, irritating and unlikable. The acting is pretty terrible as is the script.

There is emphasis on what the staff running the camp are eating and the fact that they viciously kill a dog who won't stop barking. The film shows a random scene of two of the staff members having a bizarre sexual encounter and then becoming violently ill. Vomit in the grossest form is literally everywhere.

The staff then turn into crazed zombies and chaos ensues somewhat like a carry on film. It's all very silly and pointless. There is a survivor in the hospital that the film keeps cutting to who is basically a bloody, dripping mess covered in bandages. Who this person is, why, how etc... is not found out.

BAD MEAT is a horrible little film, a zero budget Canadian flick that seems to have aspirations to be the next Troma film. Certainly it's a waste of time for all but the most dedicated of B-movie veterans, as it's cheap looking, badly written, highly clichéd, and full of bad taste situations.

Now, I'm not adverse to a little bad taste here and there, as long as it's required by the plot. David Cronenberg is one of my favourite directors, after all. But the level of bad taste on here is just infantile as the filmmakers go out of their way to offend the sensibilities of their viewer. Characters eat the titular meat and are subject to fits of copious vomiting before they eventually turn into bloodthirsty zombies.

The boot camp plot line - the heroes are a group of wayward teenagers, all of them stereotypes - is a poor one and barely gets off the ground before the nonsense begins. The vomiting isn't even the worst - a scene where a woman has sex with a muscled black guy by using a strap-on on him is one of the most pointless I've ever watched. Once the zombie action kicks off, very little happens, and the gore is surprisingly mild given the unpleasantness that's come beforehand. The film also runs out of budget before the end, meaning the story ends abruptly halfway through so that you don't end up knowing the fate of the characters (not that you want to) while other sequences are excruciatingly drawn out.

This movie had interesting potential. It was an all-encompassing horror hybrid of summer camp slasher, zombie, hillbilly cannibal, horror comedy etc. And then, as multiple people have pointed out, the movie abruptly wraps up DURING the climax with a slapped on montage that resolves nothing. Terry Gilliam and David Lynch have made good movies out of unfinished pieces, but not these jokers.

The basic plot is six teens sent to military school. Three male, three female. We get bits and pieces of their stories, but it doesn't matter because they have no resolution. Dave Franco is the only thing resembling a star and as usual he gets no screen time. He spends most of the movie locked in a box. Somebody wrapped in bandages purporting to be him frames the movie, but it looks like they got a woman to play him. The military school is run by Nazi kinksters and this provides some elements of humor. A mistreated hillbilly cook gets revenge by giving the counselors food poisoning, which leaves them crazily sick for what seems like half a day and then suddenly turns them into cannibal zombies, who sort of act like cats. In spite of the fact that we've seen the meat being poisoned and fed to the counselors, the movie spends ten minutes of plot having an emo biology student cut apart a dog to discover the cause. In a normal movie, he might also discover a cure or something to bring the film to a resolution, but that does not happen. Much time is spent on attempting to find keys to free Dave Franco. Whether and how these keys are used remains a mystery. There's some intrigue and tensions and attempts at character building between the campers, and it's all a waste of time.

It is actually a shame this movie is not 20 minutes longer or could not use its 80ish minutes better. They could have had something, but there is no payoff. And there was no artistic purpose for a lack of payoff. They simply lost film or lost funding.

And what is the conspiracy not to give Dave Franco screen time, even in a movie with no stars? It's bewildering.

First of all, I am aware that "Bad Meat" suffered a lot of problems during its production. The original director Rob Schmitt was replaced by Lulu Jarmen, who was making her directorial debut (and first experience in film whatsoever according to IMDb.) There were also issues with funding, and at one point it was announced that the film had been canceled. So it was understandable that the final product would probably be a little bit shaky at times.

However, it still wasn't any less painful to see just how badly edited the film was due to its potential. The final cut of "Bad Meat" was less than eighty minutes long. After a very confusing opening sequence the film quickly switches to a clear plot about a group of unruly teenagers arriving at a Boot Camp run by over-aggressive workers. Although things soon go from bad to worse for as the staff begin to contract a disease, causing them to vigorously release every bodily fluid known to man and then turn into flesh-eating maniacs. It's fairly simple and it works, however it is continuously and rudely interrupted from brief clips developing from the opening sequence over and over again, which don't contribute anything to the storyline. I would later find out these were not added until the last minute after the original cast had finished filming, nor were they actually scripted (which does make a whole lot of sense seeing how awkwardly they are crammed in.) This could not be made more apparent by the abrupt manner in which the film just sharply ends and cuts to the credits, with no prior indication it was nearing the conclusion. In fact, at the time I felt that the film was really starting to get interesting.

The most frustrating thing about "Bad Meat" is that it was very fun to watch, and even if the opening and ending had been remotely logical it would have been a very solid horror film overall. Yet due to the merciless butchering it received in the editing room the final result is too short and too uneven to be considered a good movie.

My final rating - 6.5/10. The bulk of the film was thoroughly entertaining hence this rating, and despite the extremely shoddy editing, it is not a movie I regret seeing. Hopefully someone has another crack at making the plot clearer before publicly releasing it.

This 2011 comedy horror film is brought to us by director Lulu Jarmen on her debut, and it comes from the mind of Paul Gerstenberger. 6 bad teens (3 boys and 3 girls) are sent to a bootcamp which is in the middle of nowhere. The bootcamp specialises in reforming bad/troubled teenagers into model citizens. It is run by Doug Kendrew (Mark Pellegrino) and his nasty wardens. One night the chef cooks up some bad meat which that staff all eat. The food makes them seriously ill, and an additional side effect it turns them into flesh-eating zombie like maniacs. From there on in the film become about survival for the teens as they try to avoid being put on the menu themselves. Some of the zombie-wardens are outright feral, some are S&M gimps stalking the kids. There is lots of bloodshed, plenty of gore, and a lot of vomiting too.

The premise of the film is not something new - it combines summer camp slasher, cannibal zombies, hillbillies, hostel, hunter vs hunted chases, and some typical American "kids will save the day" concepts. It COULD have been quite good, albeit tongue in cheek at times - but it wasn't. The problem I had with it was that it was hard to watch for the wrong reasons. The pace of the film did not work, the editing was shocking, and despite building up certain in-film events, NOTHING is resolved because the film just ends abruptly. The acting was not much to write home about either, this is due to the poorly conceived stereotypical characters being portrayed. I gave this film a chance because of the synopsis I read about it, and because Mark Pelligrino is amusing in the Supernatural TV series. Yes, one of the Franco brothers is in the film, but it is not one of the more interesting ones and he certainly does not have much of a role in this. Unfortunately, the film turned out to be a let-down.

I think, given more time and more investment this film might not have been that bad. Due to the production issues it had though, the film ended up being one that will be remembered for the wrong reasons, rather than being an underground cult classic. Yes, plenty of gore. No, to much else. Pity.

And now, just the like the end of film did, I'm going to... (drops mic - walks away)