I give filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay a lot of credit for pressing forward with a slasher movie that’s based a lot around the LGBTQ community and a slasher that’s centered on murdering citizens of that community. There aren’t many horror movies that focus on the whole LGBTQ experience and on a slasher that’s centered on them and only them. While I do credit director and writer Alice Maio Mackay for trying to offer something different, “Bad Girl Boogey” excels in the directorial department but sorely needed work in the script department. The script is an aspect of “Bad Girl Boogey” that could have stood at least a few more rewrites and re-thinking.
Follows Angel whose mother was brutally murdered one Halloween night, when blood was shed by a deranged killer wearing a parasitic mask cursed with black magic and bigotry. Sixteen years later, when Angel’s best friend is slaughtered by a killer with the same mask, they must overcome their personal struggles, fight their fear, and find the masked killer before he, or it, slaughters everyone they hold dear.
Writer MacKay only has about seventy five minutes to tell a story that spends three generations and packs in so much lore. So the movie literally has to stop to a grinding halt so characters can dispense information and exposition that’s crucial to getting us to understand the narrative. And even then the movie is so hopelessly convoluted and hard to follow. The production crew even ropes in Bill Moseley in a voice cameo as an American radio DJ (the movie is set in the UK) who discusses the anniversary of the murders prior to the events of “Bad Girl Boogey.” He spends about three minutes delivering exposition on a sequence we’d just witnessed. It’s almost as if the script has no confidence in itself so it goes over the lore it sets up twice.
“Bad Girl Boogey” has a good base premise. It’s about a group of LGBTQ teens that from dysfunctional homes, and there’s a slasher that’s targeting parts of their community. No one knows who it is, nor is there a lot of understanding toward why it’s happening. But from there the movie delves in to stuff about witchcraft, and the supernatural, and Nazis, and maybe the mask that the killer wears might have powers. But then the mask is only instrumental in the killer’s inner desires to unleash horrific hate filled murders. But then the mask can also retain its power on previous users. The movie begins in the early 1900’s, fast forwards decades later, and then takes us again in to a time shift, which makes everything that unfolds so jarring and difficult to follow.
Beyond the obvious allusions toward “Nightmare on Elm Street,” and “Scream,” nothing really happens during the majority of “Bad Girl Boogey.” There’s no real tension or suspense, and the heroine doesn’t do much to find the killer until the last fifteen minutes. For the majority of the movie she spends her time literally wallowing in self-pity and arguing with her alcoholic mother. I wish “Bad Girl Boogey” had been better as Alice Maio Mackay’s direction is solid, while the script has some nuggets of good ideas for a potentially slick LGBTQ based slasher film a la “Hellbent.” The script just sadly hobbles the entire film, bogging it down in tedium and plot elements that ultimately make no sense.
Available on digital platforms July 4th, playing in select theaters July 7th, and on DVD July 11th.