The Bad Batch: Review

The Bad Batch is a film that I was really looking forward to in spite of the mixed reception I was hearing from the festival circuits. It had a bad ass trailer that oozed originality and entertainment and it also has Keanu Reeves who is one of my all-time favorite actors. I was a tad disappointed by Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, but there was still enough for me to grasp onto within its culture and style blending for me to walk away saying I liked it. The Bad Batch, however, is an entirely different beast. Because while I can deep down appreciate what Amirpour is going for with her American dream-seeking “narrative” but the way she goes about is not only lacking in nuance but it feels painfully monotonous, annoying, and, to put it bluntly, like a shitty student art film.

If there’s one thing that could have saved this film, it would be that of a much better editor. There are so many pointlessly long moments in this film that it makes it’s already too long runtime of 117 minutes feel like 187 minutes. It seems that Amirpour has the constant need to keep proving her themes as well, she almost constantly fills her frames and dialogue with lines like “Find Comfort,” and “You can only enter the Dream if the Dream enters you.” By the end, you understand everything, the film very blatantly spells out all that it has on its mind, there are absolutely no subtleties to look into. By the 150th time you see something that is supposed to shock you, it all feels pretty banal. Dogs fucking! Someone covered in their own shit! Cleaver to the back! Who really cares?!

Much like AGWHAAN, this film is shot gloriously and has a remarkably well-designed soundtrack that elevates certain moments. The acting is for the most part very good, Momoa stands out as do Keanu and a silent yet still entertaining Jim Carrey. This will almost certainly attract its own passionate cult following and I completely understand why people would seriously take to this film.

I wanted to love The Bad Batch with every fiber of my body but it is far too repetitive and up its own ass to be even remotely interesting or entertaining and there were far too many moments where I thought to myself “Does this even really need to be here?” If I were to describe my experience with this film in one word, it would be “annoyed,” and I wish I would’ve been able to have fun with this and come back and dissect it further but ultimately this is a hugely disappointing one and done for me. (3.75/10)