Courtesy of IFC Films
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A tight-knit group retreats to a snowy hotel for a relaxing getaway to recharge and rekindle their relationships, only to be confronted by psychological horrors waiting for them when the resort’s past patrons begin to haunt the halls.
No, silly, not Queen Latifah’s Last Holiday, the other one, one of the most famous horror movies ever made: The Shining.
With Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film still regarded as one of the most chilling horror films to grace the genre, it’s a bold move to lift those basic plot points and plop them into a shoestring-budget indie movie. But writer-director Stewart Thorndike’s second feature, Bad Things—which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and streams on Shudder August 18—doesn’t have any apprehensions about the comparisons it’s bound to generate.