Review of The Bad Batch (2017) by Spangle — 21 Sep 2017

The Bad Batch is the first American film from Iranian director Ana Lily Amirpour. Just a few years ago, Amirpour launched onto the scene with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. A chilling black-and-white vampire film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was a slow and thinly written film, but one with enough atmospheric tension and narrative progression to complement Amirpour's stylish visuals. The Bad Batch, however, does not possess the same quality. Rather, this desert-set and sun-drenched film about a young girl named Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) who is sent to a prison for undesirables set in a portion of land south of Texas that is claimed by no state, is one that has many stylish sequences but just has nothing under the surface. There is no readily apparent theme, idea, or narrative hook to this film. It is devoid of tension or intrigue, both of which were found readily in Amirpour's prior film. Instead, The Bad Batch serves an indulgent excuse to wander around the desert with a model who cannot act.

The film's strongest element is certainly its visuals. Though just a mishmash of Amirpour's inspirations from, mainly, western films or more modern drug-infused indie films, The Bad Batch is nonetheless an often gorgeous work. The classic western low-angle shot of a person walking towards the camera from a distance with the sun at their back is utilized here and looks terrific. Shots of the terrain or even the blue-lit shots in the home of The Dream (Keanu Reeves) are often rather gorgeous. However, the pinnacle of this film is when Arlen takes drugs at a concert held by The Dream. Tripping with the camera spinning about, rapidly cutting, and lit by the blue aura of the moon, this sequence is one that really captures the moment perfectly. With this editing technique, Amirpour simulates the feelings of being on drugs rather well. Her distorted vision and her dangerous encounter with cannibal Miami Man (Jason Momoa) really do ramp up the tension as she is unable to decipher what is going on, who he is, and what could happen to her as she trips out of her mind. Often visually gorgeous, The Bad Batch is a film that can be defined as a hypnotic fever dream. Unfortunately, though it may possess the colorful and stunning visuals, it also shares the confusion, lack of cohesion, and shallowness, of a fever dream.

This is largely communicated via the plot's lack of narrative thread. Jumping from event to event as Arlen traverses this territory that holds people in the "bad batch", the film seems to lack any forward motion. Things occur, she has a bad encounter with cannibals, she is upset and goes to get revenge, she stops getting revenge randomly, she has to find Miami Man's daughter, she does not for a while, and then she finally starts looking only to meet him again. There is just nothing to grab onto. It is a plot that sort of just floats by with nothing but stunning visuals to hold it together. A lot of this issue is contributed by the film's absolute lack of dialogue. Thinly written films are fine, but the problem with The Bad Batch is that too often the dialogue is so sparse it is only used as exposition or to explain the thematic meaning of events or phrases. Often on-the-nose - The Dream explaining what "the dream" means or Arlen asking Miami Man why he is in the "bad batch" - and exposition-laden, the dialogue in the film's random appearances are never really welcome. Never illuminating anything regarding the constantly shifting direction of the plot, never really building characters, and only serving to explain what is happening at a certain location, The Bad Batch is just a hollow endeavor that lacks any meat on its bones.

Of course, there is no requirement that a film tell a story. There does not need to be a narrative thread to a film to justify its existence, but then two things must be true. However, it then has to have great thematic depth to provide substance to the film-viewing experience, be character-driven, or be shorter. On all three fronts, the film fails. At an overlong and bloated two hours, the aforementioned lack of characters hardly helps matters with Amirpour hesitant to ever write anybody in this film beyond one-dimension. With regards to its themes, the film hints at some intrigue regarding The Dream and his harem of women, how Comfort runs on drugs, and more, but it hardly does anything with these items. Rather, it just presents it as it is, never explains how he got the money and place to live in a desert prison, and moves on. Amirpour never dedicates time to exploring his lifestyle or, when it does, it just comes out and explains what it all means. With such thin writing, The Bad Batch is hard to describe as anything better than vapid and pretentious. It has nothing going on in its mind of any depth and when it does, it just comes right out and says what it is about via simplistic metaphors ("the dream is inside me" or growing fruit).