Bad Things on Shudder: Release date, plot, and more 

Shudder has recently acquired Stewart Thorndike’s Bad Things and has slated it for release on August 18, 2023. The horror-centric streaming platform added the movie to its collection owing to the haunting experience it promises the viewers.

Produced by Lizzie Shapiro and Lexi Tannenholtzhe, the story follows a group of friends who encounter a bloody nightmare in a snow resort. The resort holds Ruthie, the leading character, and her companions hostage while chaos unravels in blood, gore, and paranoia.

Bad Things stars Gayle Rankin (Glow), Hari Nef (Barbie), Annabelle Dexter-Jones (Succession), Rad Pereira (Betty), Jared Abrahamson (Ramy) and Molly Ringwald (Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story).

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Bad Things on Shudder brings unpredictable twists and ghostly apparitions

Stewart Thorndike’s Bad Things had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in the month of June. The horror platform owned by AMC, Shudder, had grabbed the rights to the distribution ahead of its debut at the festival. The official synopsis of Bad Things says,

“When a group of friends escape the city to spend the weekend in an abandoned hotel, a pervading eerie energy begins to illuminate the cracks in their little family unit.”

The snow resort in question is the Catskills Hotel which Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) inherited from her grandmother. Ruthie wanted to sell off the hotel because of the bad memories attached to it. However, her partner Cal, played by Hari Nef, insists on a renovated business hoping the hotel may return to its initial glory.

Ruthie's friend Maddie joins them to provide company while they await her mother to decide the future of the hotel. They spend their time through the building cooking and dancing.

Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones from Succession), Ruthie's seductive yet mysterious ex, gatecrashes their stay and becomes a topic of concern between the lead couple. And soon, they find terrible occurrences taking place around them.

Thorndike says in a statement,

“At the heart of ‘Bad Things’ is a dark celebration of motherhood and all its splendid viscera. Shudder was the perfect partner for this tale of female rage."

The inclusion of a feminist perspective and queer characters in the film was made by the director on purpose so as to create a world where non-binary people and women exist.

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The Shining's influence on Bad Things

The premise and concept of Bad Things have been compared to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining by critics worldwide.

Stewart Thorndike, from the fame of the 2014 film Lyle, shared her thoughts with Filmmaker Magazine's Natalia Keogan on the similarities with Stephen King’s novel adaptation saying,

"With The Shining, as I was writing the script, it came from, as we said before, the gut—all instinct. Then you start to realize there are similarities there that you can’t deny. But I certainly avoided watching the movie because I saw the similarities.

She continues,

"I wrote the two models jogging [in the script], and it was only while we were shooting that someone said, “Oh, are you trying to have them be like the [Grady] twins?” I was like, “What? I never thought of that.” So it’s some sort of instinct, compulsion or drive that makes me do it."

Stewart Thorndike is currently on her third project, Frigid, which focuses on women of older age.