‘Bad Things’
Stream it on Shudder.
The writer-director Stewart Thorndike wrestles with ghosts in her new slow-burn haunted hotel film.
Ghosts as in spectral humans, like a little girl with disintegrating fingers, who spook the Red Roof-style motel that Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) inherits from her grandmother. Ghosts as in the emotional traumas that haunt Ruthie and the guests — her partner, Cal (Hari Nef), their friend Maddie (Rad Pereira) and Maddie’s guest, Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) — who join Ruthie at the motel to determine its fate. Then there’s the phantom of “The Shining,” a film Thorndike aspires to summon, down to the creepy joggers who might as well be Kubrick’s menacing girls in grown-up athleisure wear.
Together, these spirits join forces in an unsettling and moving film about motherhood and bad memories, one that won’t so much grab you by the throat as squeeze your hand. Thorndike sustains an eerie mood throughout, but wanders off course as the stakes…