Does "BAD CONNECTION" (2024) Hit You Up Or Drop The Call? (REVIEW)

Boy, oh boy, do we love a good slasher.  The set-up, the chase, the Final Girl confrontation, we’re here for all of it.  Each year, without fail, we get a bumper crop of slashers all over streamers; hell, 90% of Screambox are slashers alone. So it was no surprise when “BAD CONNECTION,” directed by Jake Helgren, became available on Prime and Tubi this past October. The film takes a somewhat unique premise: a serial killer’s phone is stolen, a phone with video of his kills, and he happily carves his way through the population of a run-down L.A. tenement to get it back. Is this a concept that will radically change the course of slashers for years to come? No, not even remotely, but that’s okay.  Like Nicole Kidman so beautifully said, “We come to this place for the kills because we need that, all of us.”  The slasher formula here is the typical Final Girl blueprint but “BAD CONNECTION” does it well with a quick, efficient pace and a surprisingly nasty escalation of gore and kills that ultimately may have ushered in a completely new sub-genre in horror: the rom-com slash and stab.  It’s about time.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT:

A waitress unknowingly buys a stolen phone containing a snuff film.  A deranged killer pursues her relentlessly to retrieve it. She goes on the run, trying to evade the merciless murderer determined to silence her.

THE GOOD:

This will sound weird, but as we watched “BAD CONNECTION,” we felt that we’d seen it all before—not the slasher aspect of the film but the casting, the acting, the set directing.  It all felt oddly familiar. It wasn’t until we started researching Helgren’s past work that the pieces fell into place. He’s directed a slew of Lifetimesque holiday films (“DASHING IN DECEMBER,” “A COWBOY CHRISTMAS ROMANCE”) that show up this time of year on streaming and VOD.  You know the formula: C-Level Executive faces a personal crisis and flees the big city for the small town she grew up in, finding love and an appreciation for maple syrup, Christmas trees, animal rescue, and/or burly contractors before ultimately deciding to toss her old life aside for one living paycheck to paycheck like the rest of us. These saccharine tropes are present here on the periphery, but, believe it or not, they work. Let’s start with the fact that Dana Davis, as Nina, our down-on-her-luck waitress, and Michael Naizu, her artist boyfriend Mark, are so beautiful that you expect them to be in a holiday rom-com.  That they’re stuck in this gritty, grimy, bloody set piece slasher is a bit of a chuckle.  Add the even equally gorgeous best-friend couple, and you will start to see the blueprint here. Whether intended or not, we’re watching the emergence of a new sub-genre, the Lifetime Movie Slasher, and we are here for it.  The kills are gruesome, inventive in a modest sense, and frequent.  Chris Gann does a fine job as The Hunter, but to be fair, Ry Barrett has already claimed the mantle for best slasher as Johnny from “IN A VIOLENT NATURE.” The pace of this film is perfect; however, the situation is established quickly in a creative cold open and, after a touch of exposition from our protagonists, takes off and doesn’t stop till the bloody finale.  It's a finale that pays homage to the 2006 “PROM NIGHT” remake, whether intentionally or not, and leaves the door open to a possible sequel.

THE BAD: 

Typically, you sacrifice some elements for others in a lower-budget horror film.  Usually, the casting gets the short end of the stick as established actors are hesitant to star in low-budget horror, so you’re left with a vast pool of actors with little to no experience who are eager to get the work. That’s not the case with “BAD CONNECTION” at all.  The acting is solid across the board. The one jarring exception is Perez Hilton.  It’s not that Mr. Hilton’s acting is poor; it’s not; it’s stilted and janky, but ideally at home in a horror film, it’s that he’s famous.  That’s not his fault, but it completely pulls the viewer out of the film.  It’s fun to see what ultimately becomes of his character, and his time onscreen is relatively short, but it is a distraction we could have done without. 

THE FINAL WORD:

The limitations of Lifetime Movies—small budget, few locations, wooden acting, and an economical run-time—have been indie slasher staples for decades now, and, remarkably, we’re just seeing this kind of crossover now.  The formula is ready-made for horror and we wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more of this kind of film style.  Fast, cheap, and remarkably in control.  The mayhem and gore of indie horror add the street cred, but the elements of cookie-cutter rom-com directing elevate this film beyond what we typically get to produce a light, fun, enjoyable film that you’ll forget about before the end of the credits, but you’ll undoubtedly have a good time watching. 

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