Film Review - Very Bad Things

One of the last gasps of Christian Slater's major film career before assaulting his then-girlfriend made him toxic goods, this is one of his best performances and certainly towards the top end of the movies he's appeared in. Peter Berg's comedy is pitch black, of questionable taste and cruel to a degree that makes Lars von Trier look like a sentimental old duffer - i.e. it's a riot.


Slater wheels out his patented coked-up Jack Nicholson routine as Boyd, a somewhat wired individual who takes control of the bachelor party for good friend Kyle (Favreau) and his friends at Las Vegas. It all gets somewhat out of hand when one of them, Michael (Piven) adjourns to the bathroom for a quickie with a stripper (played by nineties porn queen Kobe Tai) and ends up accidentally killing her on a coat hook. From then on things quickly escalate as the group then kill a security guard who comes to investigate (leaving him to bleed out in the suite bathroom) and are persuaded by Boyd that burying both in the desert is the most sensible way of doing things.

Naturally it isn't and the group rapidly disintegrates on returning home, with Boyd growing ever more psychotic. However, he's matched by Kyle's bride-to-be Laura (Diaz), a Bridezilal to be so monstrous you find yourself siding with this bunch of nasty, paranoid losers. Much of the laughs are based on shock value and the sheer downwards spiral everyone's caught in but it stands up well to rewatching just for its' relentless verve and cruelty.