Venice 73 has a competition line-up chock-full of aliens and monsters of all kinds, both literal and figurative. With The Bad Batch, Ana Lily Amirpour adds cannibals to the list. Was this the gory feminist horror that Brimstone promised but utterly failed to be? Well, no, on all three counts.
The film is set in the present or possibly the near future. Tattooed with her bad batch serial number, Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is chucked out of Texas, beyond the border fence and into lawless territory. From there she is hunted down and taken to a compound full of body builders whose main source of protein is human flesh. After being butchered (and I think this is the first time the expression “cost an arm and a leg” has been spoken in a film to describe an actual event), Arlen plots her brilliant escape. So far, so good. The first fifteen-twenty minutes of the film have us greedily anticipating an action-packed gore fest with a canny heroine to root for. Unfortunately, after her escape, Arlen’s story becomes as plodding as the protagonist on her prosthetic limb.
Having killed a cannibal, she takes the woman’s daughter and thus instigates a search. Dad is none other than Joe (Jason Momoa): not a man you’d want chasing you (except in a good way). Hilariously, and I’m not sure how intentionally, in virtually every scene with Arlen and Joe we see either the sheath or the hilt of his knife sticking up between them. Needless to say, you can cut the sexual tension with a knife, or at least you could if Suki Waterhouse had a bit more charisma.
Any sexual chemistry is brewed up by Momoa alone. He’s a cannibal with a heart of gold. Momoa does manage to instill some humanity and emotion into this tale.
Another character who achieves this is Jim Carrey’s. A nomadic hermit wandering the desert, his supermarket trolley laden with scavenged items, he looks like your everyday hobo but is also a good Samaritan. He rescues the two characters and silently sets them on their way, requiring little in return. Giovanni Ribisi also has a nice little cameo as the local nutter, but there is little reason for him to be there.
More problematic is Keanu Reeves’ character. He plays some kind of charismatic purveyor of dreams and drugs. With his harem of pregnant women in tow, he’s dressed like a 1970s Vegas hustler, all tight white trousers or black satin robe and sunglasses (not unlike Elliott Gould’s character in Ocean’s Eleven). But is he as sinister as Arlen believes?
It is unclear why Arlen deems him such a threat. Is he a pimp? A paedophile? This is not Reeves’ fault, but the script’s, and Reeves has the thankless task of regurgitating some of the film’s most ridiculous lines. And what of the Texas that Arlen has left? Is it like the Texas we know or are we in some post-Apocalyptic situation? If so, why not just cull the bad batches and be done with it. It’s not as if Texas is averse to capital punishment.
At just under two hours, this film drags interminably on, precious minutes wasted with umpteen close-ups of Waterhouse as she stumbles through the desert, looks at the stars or searches for answers. One answer I’d like is to this question: how on earth did this film get into competition? Neither art-house nor horror schlock, this film does not deliver on any of its promises. Great soundtrack, though.
