Author: lemon_magic from Wavy Wheat, Nebraska
2 July 2005

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I am positive that at least 50% of the people seeing "Very Bad Things" for the first time are going to hate it outright. They are going to be offended by the sensationalistic violence, by the sociopathic behavior of the principals, and by the portrayal of women as harpies and of men as buffoons and clowns. They will hate the way the movie portrays marriage and family and children. They will hate the vulgar language and the drunken maundering and the utter charmlessness of almost every character in the film.

And they will especially hate the excruciating progression of the plot. In the tradition of Hitchcockian films like "Shallow Grave", "A Simple Plan", and "Dead In the Water", the events in the plot start out with a of a bad mistake, compounded by the worst aspects of human nature... and then motives of greed and fear cause more mistakes, things start to spiral out of control, and finally one mistake piles onto another until things are so awful that suicide seems like an easy way out...and in fact, an amazingly large number of people end up dead. That can be hard to watch, and it isn't every body's cup of tea.

I fall into the other 50%, the group who enjoy this kind of savage, mean-spirited humor. I am of the opinion that Berg made exactly the film he wanted to make, and that he left it up to the audience to take it or leave it. I think that Berg wanted to hit a top note of wicked glee right away, and to sustain it for as long as he possibly could. And I think that the actors - Favreau, Slater, and Stern especially - came through with hysteric, overblown performances that make the movie exhausting and hard to watch in spots. But there is JUST enough believability to their performances that you feel as if that could be you, stuck in their place.

Special kudos also go to Cameron Diaz for being willing to play such a narcissistic twit, somewhat of a stretch from the sunny, happy All American Girl types she has done so well over the last few years, And to Jeanne Tripplehorn, as the baffled and angry wife of one of the brothers, who knows something is wrong and can't be deflected until she learns the truth.The final shot, as Diaz's character runs screaming out the dream home-turned-nightmare to collapse gibbering in the street, is priceless, and serves as kind of a cosmic

 punchline to all the mayhem, murder, and malice of the presetting 90 minutes, and leaves me with a guilty grin on my face and a huge sense of relief - my life looks so good compared to what just went on in the movie that I want to dance like a white guy! The proper reaction to "Very Bad Things" probably ranges somewhere between a horrified giggles and the drunken bray of startled laughter you would make after hearing a really good "dead baby joke" for the first time.