‘Bad Things’ Director Stewart Thorndike On Her Pastel And Blood-Soaked Ode To Feminine Rage [Watch]
In her feature film debut Lyle, director Stewart Thorndike showed off her eye for how to make the horror we’re so accustomed to unabashedly queer. Reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, the film focuses on the slow descent into paranoid madness by our lead. Now, Thorndike is following a similar path with her new film Bad Things which also examines female rage and paranoia. But this time, she’s using her love of The Shining to create a deeply queer and femme look at mommy issues and their many terrifying manifestations.
In Bad Things, Ruthie Nodd (Gayle Rankin) inherits a dilapidated hotel from her grandmother and wants nothing more than to sell it to expel the traumatic memories from her head. But her partner Cal (Hari Nef) is a bit more sentimental. She, Cal, their friend Maddie (Rad Pereira), and Maddie’s partner Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) head to the motel for a weekend of fun that quickly turns bloody as the snow landscape and pastel halls reveal the ghosts of Ruthie’s past.
Dread Central spoke with Thorndike about finding the perfect creepy hotel, queerness, and making the hotel feel like a living, yet rotting, womb.
Watch the full interview below:
Bad Things comes to Shudder and AMC+ on Friday, August 18, 2023.
Categorized:Dread Talks Interviews
