Director: Stewart Thorndike
A snowbound hotel, a small circle of old friends, and a weekend meant for celebration instead curdle into something far darker in Bad Things, a horror-thriller that trades jump scares for a slow psychological unraveling.
What is Bad Things about?
Ruthie has just inherited a remote, half-empty hotel from her grandmother and invites her closest friends up for a getaway before she decides what to do with the place. What starts as drinking, old jokes and half-serious plans for the property soon splinters as tension between the women resurfaces and the building itself seems to push back against whoever is left alone in its corridors. Writer-director Stewart Thorndike keeps the horror ambiguous for long stretches, letting isolation, snow and old resentments do as much damage as anything supernatural, before the weekend tips into violence none of the friends can walk back from.
Cast & crew
Gayle Rankin carries the film as Ruthie, the reluctant new owner unraveling under the hotel's pressure, opposite Hari Nef and Annabelle Dexter-Jones as friends whose loyalty is tested across the weekend. Rad Pereira and Jared Abrahamson round out the group dynamic, while Molly Ringwald appears in a supporting turn that plays against her more familiar roles. Stewart Thorndike directs from her own script, keeping the cast confined largely to the hotel's snowed-in interiors.
Context & significance
Bad Things premiered in 2023 as an American genre feature shot largely on location in a real, isolated hotel, a choice that lets Thorndike lean on practical setting over effects for most of its atmosphere. The film sits inside a wave of recent horror that borrows the structure of a haunted-house story to examine friendship, inheritance and grief, using the building less as a monster than as a pressure chamber for people who already do not fully trust each other.
Where & how to watch
Bad Things streams on K-Time with a free account login required to watch, alongside a Farsi-language interface built for Persian-speaking audiences. Both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles are available for this title, so viewers can choose whichever suits them; browsing the film's page itself requires no sign-in at all.