Bad Meat (2011)

6 kids are sent to a camp for delinquents to try and cure them of their unruly behaviour. Unfortunately a batch of tainted meat ends up on the dinner plates of the camp's sadistic guards, turning them into salivating monsters with a taste for human flesh. Sounds great right? That's what I thought when I sat down to watch this low-budget affair. Little did I know that what I was actually in for with Bad Meat was 90 minutes of sheer boredom and confusion.

What I found most interesting about this production was the pretty decent cast involved; Mark Pelligrino, Dave Franco, Tahj Mowry and Jessica Parker Kennedy to name but a few. All of the aforementioned cast are well known for different productions, indeed some, like Dave Franco, seem to be current flavours of the month, but this film (albeit only 3 years old) seems to have captured them all pre-fame and during a period where over-acting is the phrase that pays!

None of the cast are particularly likeable, so from the get-go you find you cannot root for anyone's survival. As previously mentioned, the acting is pretty poor across the board. For long periods of time very little actually happens (despite people dying/getting infected with goodness knows what (the reason for the bad meat is never explained)/monsters on the loose) half the characters sit around and chat and if they're not doing little they simply seems to wander round, nonchalantly walking into any room without a care for what may lie behind the closed doors.

Characters disappear with little to no explanation and the rest of the group simply carry on without worrying what has happened, the filmmakers rightly deciding that the viewing public will care little about them so why make a big deal of it in the film. By now you're probably thinking "Well, at least things can't get any worse" - Ha! How wrong you could be! Just when you think that you've devoted an hour and a half of your life to this tripe that you may as well see it out until it's conclusion, the film suddenly just ends, with no explanation as to what happened to the 5 or 6 characters that were left just a few seconds before. The director simply attempts (very badly I might add) to thrown in a 'surprise' ending and the film fades to credits and we, the viewers, are left feeling that watching that wet patch of paint on the wall drying might have been the better option after all ...