Why do we watch bad movies?
After all, bad movies tend to draw the most attention. When reviewing popular movie critic Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic’s, most viewed reviews, they are as follows: “Sharkboy and Lavagirl,” “Batman v. Superman,” “Pixels,” “It,” and “The Smurfs.” All of them were reviewed negatively, to say the least. Up and coming movie reviewer ralphthemoviemaker has garnered nearly half a million YouTube subscribers, and his most viewed videos are videos where he rages at horrible movies, such as his most recent negative review of “The Bye Bye Man” — named by movie critics as one of the worst horror movies of the decade. Yet, these movies rake in millions of dollars and draw public interest to an astonishing degree.
After writing my review of “The Emoji Movie,” and seeing just how much money it made the filmmakers, I pondered: what drives us to see bad movies? The “Citizen Kane” of bad films, Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room,” has a multi-million dollar movie about its making to be released in theaters this winter — “The Disaster Artist” — and from the reviews that have come out already, the film looks to be a smash hit. We live in a day and age where bad films get its own, special kind of praise. The masochism that drove me to see “The Emoji Movie” twice speaks to a deranged kind of talent. You have to be a special kind of talented to make a film as horrific as the ones mentioned here. Nowadays, when movies are terrible, we make art from them.
What art, might you ask? The art of memes. “The Emoji Movie” was memed into oblivion, with Jack Douglass — the man behind the popular YouTube channel jacksfilms — being invited to the movie’s world premiere after churning out videos portraying the film in a humorous light. The Nostalgia Critic’s review of “The Room” arguably fueled its notable successes and memes, with the film exploding in popularity not long after the review came out. With the internet living in the age of “dank memes,” when a meme tells us to see a movie, we go, not because the film is good, but out of a strangely morbid curiosity.
When a film is bad, the memes and hilarious reviews that come out afterward provide a catharsis for both the viewer of the review and for the reviewer. In a Facebook post reviewing past “Nostalgia-ween” episodes, Walker recalls his past review of the remake for “A Haunting.” In the post, Walker reminisces and states that it is “Still one of [his] most therapeutic reviews.” In seeing the reviewer’s or the meme artist’s catharsis, we can relate to it. If we’re not in on the joke, we see these bad movies to be in on the memes and the jokes.
But what if we’re not looking to relate to a goofy, exaggerated movie review on YouTube? What if we’re not searching for a catharsis? Sometimes, we just see bad movies for the hell of it. Maybe there’s something to be enjoyed from them. There’s a diamond in the rough in nearly every bad movie, be it the notoriously bad scripting and acting in “The Room” or wading through the strange animations of “Foodfight!.” Maybe if I soul search hard enough, I’ll find something to like about the movie I last reviewed.
Actually, never mind. “The Emoji Movie” is still horrifically awful.