Bad Apples is a 2018 horror movie about two young girls who terrorize a young woman all alone on Halloween.
The only nice thing I have to say about this movie is that I liked the masks our two killers wear. There is no reason as to why they even need to wear one because the cops in this town either don’t exist or they don’t care. But they are kind of cool even though they are clearly ripping off ideas of a much better home invasion movie called The Strangers.
In the beginning of this movie, a pregnant woman is stabbed a bunch of times in her home by a man I thought was a random assailant. She dies but the babies somehow survived. Cut to several years later, the two girls are all grown up and of course they are now psycho killers. Why did the movie need to start like this? You could have easily shown them leaving the house of their last victim and show them heading to school. Why did we need to see their back story right from the start? Also, how long have those girls been wearing those masks. It seems like they have always worn them and yet this is the one time they are going to kill the principal for asking them to remove them. I’ll get into other issues I have with our two killers, but for now, let’s look at our two main characters. Or rather, I mean victims.
Bea Grant and Graham Skipper have recently moved to a new neighborhood. She is a teacher, he works at a hospital and that’s it for their character development, aside from a small scene that lazily explains that they lost a baby. It just sets up that he has to work late on Halloween at the hospital while she is stuck at home alone. Perfect recipe for any horror movie.
As mentioned earlier, there is a scene when when our two psycho with masks kill their principal. Afterwards I asked, why were they not arrested right away? Even if no one saw them do it, it wouldn’t take long to know they are the ones that did it since they were registered at this school. It wouldn’t take long to find them either. Not only that but they seem to have no problems going from one place to the next, killing people and escaping without being discovered at all. It’s not like they try to be quiet with any of their crimes. Is it because they just do them and we are supposed to believe that they are unstoppable? No it’s because they have the blind luck to live in a town with no cops.
This leads me to a moment when one of our main characters does something really stupid. Let me set the scene for you. At the hospital, the husband notices that the patient they admitted was his next door neighbor. This guy has multiple stab wounds, which makes him concerned. Earlier, his wife called and he mistook this as nothing more than just hysteria, but now he has a reason to be worried. As he goes to leave, he is stopped by his boss. What should have followed is a very short and quick response, a sentence at most, explaining that he is worried about his wife. Instead, what does happen is a long scene over five minutes explaining how the couple lost their child earlier. While he is telling this story, our two ladies who want to be Slipknot extras have entered the home of the wife and terrorize her.
I’m not going to ruin the ending even though there is nothing in there to ruin. What happens is your standard victim-trying-to-out-smart-the-killers scenario, succeeding at some moments, while failing at others. There is no tension or any build up to the scares. Never once was I cheering for the victim to escape or the girls to even capture her. I was just waiting for it to end.
There is one thing I liked about Bad Apples, and that is one cool effect towards the end. The crazed killers turn one of their victims into a Jack O Lantern but I’ll leave out the details. It was good moment and I tip my hat to the effects team for that one.
Bad Apples borrows a lot from many other, better movies. So much so, it doesn’t feel like an homage to them. It’s straight up theft.