“Bad Ben : The Way In” – Nigel Bach’s Very Own Never-Ending Story

Okay, so in truth I wasn’t aware that Nigel Bach had cranked out a sixth film in this, the most unlikely “franchise” series in cinematic history, and I usually pride myself on being on top of these sorts of things, but hey — when I learned that Bad Ben : The Way In had shambled its way from Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey all the way to Amazon Prime back on May 1st, I can’t honestly say that I was surprised or anything.

And, really, why should Bach stop? When he sub-titled one of his films “The Final Chapter,” it looked like maybe he was going to retire this admittedly played-out concept, but let’s be honest : these things cost no money to produce, he doesn’t necessarily “need” anything other than his iPhone to make them (although he’s expanded the cast a couple of time in the past, it’s not like anyone actually expects him to hire actors on even a semi-regular basis), and a new “production” can probably be completed in, like, and afternoon. Or an evening.

I’m not sure how much cash they make, but seriously — even if it’s only a few thousand bucks (not an unreasonable assumption), that still represents a very nice return on investment when that “investment” amounts to nothing but time. And not even much of that.

All of which is to say, yeah, these are pretty lousy movies, but if you came up with this idea, and it paid off even modestly, then you’d keep coming back to the well, too, even if only for beer money.

But dammit, just because Bach can (and likely will) keep this up until the end of time, that doesn’t mean I have to like his flicks. I’ve been marginally impressed, all things considered, with a couple of them in the past — check back through my old reviews if you don’t believe me — but this latest one represents the possible nadir of the franchise, a dull and un-inspired “found footage” romp that sees Bach’s Tom Riley character returning to the house he supposedly “left” (that being his own “real-life” residence) in order to rid it of its evil spirits (say it with me) “once and for all” before new owners take possession of the place. Things “don’t go as expected” — which is to say that they go precisely as expected — and Tom ends up in a battle for his very soul against nine separate demons that are all, ya know, him. Hey, look — it is what it is.

And you and I both know what that is, and yet here I am, once again, not only having watched the film, but having taken the time to review it. So I can piss and moan all I want, but who do I think I’m fooling? Bach has me beat. He’ll make another of these — and another — and probably another after that — and I’ll be back. I’ll moan and groan, sure, but does it even matter? He wins by getting me to press “play” on my screen. That’s literally all it takes. Bach may be the biggest grifter in horror, but there are plenty of willing “marks” just like me, and he damn well knows it. Who says you have to be a talented filmmaker to be a cinematic genius?

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“The Crescent Moon Clown” : Nigel Bach Never Says “Enough Is Enough”

Just when we thought we were out — he pulls us back in!

The third (and, to date, best) installment of writer/director/actor Nigel Bach’s filmed-on-his-iPhone-in-his-own-goddamn-house Bad Ben series was supposed to be “The Final Chapter,” but here we are, one year and two more films later, and it still shows no sign of being anywhere near over. I can’t say I blame Bach — Amazon Prime keeps picking these things up, they cost nothing (or next to it) to produce, they can be cranked out fairly quickly, and they presumably turn at least a modest little profit. Just because you can keep doing something, though, doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s just call it like it is right outta the gate here : this is a remarkably unlikely indie “franchise,” and Bach deserves a lot of credit for his tenacity and belief in himself — but it’s also a franchise that’s entirely out of gas. It was bound to happen, of course — there’s only so much that can be done with a bog-standard “haunted house” premise and no money, and again, Bach should be commended for milking the whole thing for far more than anyone (myself included) ever thought possible, but still — viewers are generally aware of when a given premise has run its course, even if the filmmakers themselves are blind to it.

And, to rise to Bach’s defense once again, as lousy as Bad Ben 4 : The Mandela Effect was, I can see why he maybe thought he could go back to the well one more time once he’d put that one “in the can.” After all, that flick was pretty much a “solo venture” again — a “return to roots,” so to speak — and if it didn’t work out, what the hell? He’d done his best work with a larger (relatively speaking) cast, so maybe he could just go down that road again if part four landed with a thud. And so he has.

To that end, The Crescent Moon Clown — or, if you prefer, Bad Ben 5 : The Crescent Moon Clown — is not focused on Bach’s Tom Riley character (by and large, at any rate — he does pop up in what can fairly be termed a cameo), but the focus here is still tight and insular, the lone “star” being Jetta Tionne Anderson, who plays Renee, a college-age kid who’s spending her fist night alone in her parents’ new house — which just so happens, of course, to be Tom Riley’s old house. Cue things going bump in the dark.

Anyway, long story short, we’ve been here. We’ve done this. And the well is dry. Bone dry, in fact.

Anderson is likable enough, but not a tremendously competent thespian — you can tell she’s trying, and I give her all kinds of credit for that, but she struggles with that fine line between “emoting” and “exaggerating,” and the script’s “scares” are so fucking tepid that someone of her marginal ability is pretty well set up to fail as she tries, without success, to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear Bach has written. With some decent material, she might be able to pull off a smaller role, but as things are — well, let’s just say she’s out of her depth and lacks the tools and training to hide that fact.

Still, despite the fact that a film of this nature is going to rise and/or fall on the shoulders of its lead, the fault here lies — just to be perfectly clear one more time — not with Anderson, but with Bach himself, who put an inexperienced actress in a bad position just because he couldn’t let go of an idea that’s well past its expiration date. He’s shown flashes of being a genuine no-budget auteur in earlier installments of this series, so I’d be game to watch something new with his name attached to it, but that’s the rub : it has to be new. A haunted clown doll in a dusty old box may be a new “wrinkle” in the Bad Ben “mythos,” but it’s not a new concept, much less a new lease on life.

The jury, then, may be out on Bach himself as a filmmaker, but as far as his pet franchise goes, it’s crystal clear : The Crescent Moon Clown proves that you can put a fork in Bad Ben. It’s done.

Or, at least, it should be.

 

The Fourth Time’s Not The Charm : “Bad Ben : The Mandela Effect”

If writer/director/actor Nigel Bach — the pride of Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey — holds true to form, eventually he’ll see this review, and won’t be able to resist leaving a snarky, self-congratulatory, vaguely passive-aggressive comment on it. How do I know this? Allow me to explain —

When I hacked out a fairly positive write-up of Bach’s first film, Bad Ben, I didn’t hear a peep from the guy — but when I wrote a negative review of his next one, Steelmanville Road : A Bad Ben Prequel, he stopped by and “congratulated” me on my “little blog,” boasted about how well his movies were doing, and implied that I’d never achieve as much with my life as he has with his. Then he “thanked” me for my time and effort, and that was that. Honestly, it was enough to make me not want to like the supposed “conclusion” to his then-trilogy, Badder Ben : The Final Chapter.

Here’s the thing, though — for all my numerous and obvious faults, I’m always an honest appraiser of the flicks I check out, and I absolutely loved what I thought to be the “last” installment of the Bad Ben “saga,” and stated as much plainly and proudly. Again, no word from Bach — and so when I say I expect a comment this time out, you already know which way this review is going to go.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but as of right now, it looks as though Bach really should have quit while he was ahead, because 2018’s Bad Ben : The Mandela Effect (notice the misspelling of the film’s own title in its makeshift “poster” — never a good sign) isn’t so much running on fumes as it is sputtering, and maybe even threatening to stall out altogether. Believe it or not, though, that’s a real shame in my estimation, as you could make a pretty solid argument that this is the single-most unlikely “franchise” in horror history, a noble attempt by one guy, armed with nothing more than an iPhone, to create a genuine grassroots phenomenon by means of no greater a “distribution network” than Amazon Prime’s streaming video service. Bach’s not just “on” the cutting edge with this extended project of his, he is the cutting edge, and he deserves an awful lot of credit for that. With a budget of zero dollars, he’s produced a reasonably popular series of films from the confines of his own home (or car, or yard), and has acted as his own one-man crew both behind the “camera” and, to a large extent, in front of it. That’s admirable. That takes guts.

But that doesn’t mean he should milk his own premise for a whole lot more than it’s worth, and that’s what he’s done with this fourth film, I’m sorry to report.

After branching out and expanding his cast the last two times out, Bad Ben : The Mandela Effect is once again strictly a solo venture, with Bach himself back as Tom Riley, protagonist and narrator of this assemblage of ostensibly “found” footage cobbled together from the security cameras that are a positively ubiquitous feature in his life, but here he’s going all Groundhog Day on us, demonstrating that the bumps in the night that so disturbed his existence when he first bought his home are either happening over and over again in more or less the exact same sequence in various parallel realities — or else he’s stuck in some sort of fatal repetition “feedback loop” in this reality, doomed by fate (again and again) to experience the same shit over and over unless and until he finds a way to break the cycle.

It’s an intriguing enough premise, no doubt about that, but it’s one that runs out of steam fairly early on here, and Bach kinda feels like he’s mailing in his performance as surely as he is his script.  This is such a tedious retread, in fact, that it seems as if we’ve seen it all before, even if we’ve only seem something very much like it before — until this fourth and latest chapter, that is, when we (along with Bach.Riley himself, of course) are forced to live through essentially the exact same sequence of events ad nauseum. Even though this flick only clocks in at 67 minutes, it’s still an utter bore and a complete waste of time, and yes — while I do feel bad about saying that for reasons already expounded upon, I can’t in good conscience recommend this one to even the most hard-core of Bad Ben fans.

That being said, when I heard that Bach was already putting out a casting call for yet another film in this series, I was as cautiously optimistic as I was unsurprised. The Bad Ben “phenomenon” may seem to be pretty well played-out, but Bach really has been a trailblazer, and his franchise deserves to end on a higher note than this. Whether or not it will remains to be seen, of course, but I was of the opinion that he should pack it in after part two, only to be happily proven wrong by the third. I’m hoping to be every bit as mistaken this time around, as well, but it’s all dependent upon whether or not Bach breaks his own mold and does something entirely unexpected one more time — the “back (to back, to back, to back) to basics” approach of Bad Ben : The Mandela Effect is a serious (to say nothing of repetitious) step in entirely the wrong direction.

Halloween On Amazon Prime 2017 : “Badder Ben : The Final Chapter”

And so, we’ve come to the end of the line for what I assume to be the first iPhone-shot trilogy in movie history. Goodbye, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. Goodbye, house on Steelmanville Road. Goodbye, Nigel Bach.

Although probably not for long on that last one : Bach’s clearly caught the filmmaking bug, and given that he got all three of his zero-budgeters onto Amazon Prime’s streaming service, there’s literally no reason for him not to keep on keeping on. What he’ll do next is anyone’s guess, but I feel safe in making at least one educated guess — it won’t have much (if any) budget.

Which is no bad thing, mind you, as long as the end result is worth watching. The original Bad Ben certainly was. Steelmanville Road : A Bad Ben Prequel just as certainly wasn’t. And Badder Ben : The Final Chapter ends things on a pretty high note and is well worth your time once again. Two out of three? That’s not bad for a trio of homemade flicks cranked out in a space of under two years. So that’s the short version. You want more? Okay, we’ll keep going —

Badder Ben : The Final Chapter, which literally just came out, succeeds where the second installment failed by injecting a significant amount of humor into the proceedings, a move that is probably well overdue, and the results, while not exactly astounding or anything, are nevertheless positive — a film of this nature and with this few resources at its disposal probably has no business taking itself too seriously, and while Bach himself clearly has an earnest attitude toward his job as writer/director/producer/star (as evidenced by the bizarrely passive-aggressive comment he left in response to my negative review of Steelmanville Road), here he manages to keep his more sober-minded (not to mention overly-defensive) impulses well in check in service of simply having — and giving audiences — a good time. It proves to be a very smart decision.

We’re back in the present day this time out, as a paranormal investigation team sets up shop in the Steelmanville Road house in order to suss out just what the fuck has been going on there. Problem is, they find more than they were bargaining for when original series protagonist Tom Riley (played by Bach himself) turns out to be very much alive and perhaps on something of a mission himself. But is he on their side, in their way, or a little bit of both?

The cast is the single-greatest positive difference here, with the ghost-hunters themselves coming off best : Jacquie Baker (as Jacquie, go figure) and Matthew Schmid (as Schmiddy) have a fun and engaging “double-act” chemistry going between them, each being something of a counterpoint or “foil” to the other, and David Greenberg’s “third wheel” character not only doesn’t manage to trip his counterparts up, he often accentuates their snappy interaction. Bach, for his part, is obviously enjoying being back in front of his own camera, and it shows — he’s not actively out to “upstage” his more talented performers, but he’s nevertheless happy to get in on the act and relishes his screen time with something approaching understated joy. Everyone, to a person, is fun to watch here.

Scares aren’t terribly plentiful in this film, it has to be said — nor are the few that are on offer terribly effective — but that’s not too terribly upsetting, since in this self-declared “final chapter” they’re more employed as a means to propel the narrative forward rather than uncomfortably forced into a “centerpiece” role. As “sizzle,” then, they work just fine — as “steak,” they’d probably leave you feeling hungry. Bach wisely opts to have his characters be the main course instead. Which, I guess, sounds vaguely cannibalistic, but whatever. It’s late, I’m tired, so I’m going with it.

And you should go with Badder Ben : The Final Chapter. To the extent that this makeshift “franchise” can be said to have “fans,” chances are that the vastly different tone of this concluding segment may not please all of them, but for my part I can’t think of a better way to put the series to bed than by finally allowing it to be what it probably should have been all along.

Nigel Bach Breaks Out The iPhone Again For “Steelmanville Road : A Bad Ben Prequel”

Well, that didn’t take long : mere months after the release of the most “solo” film effort you’re ever gonna see in your life, Bad Ben —in which no-budget auteur Nigel Bach served as screenwriter, director, producer, cinematographer, and the flick’s only actor (hell, he even filmed it in his own home!) — we’re back in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, to learn about the unlucky people who owned Bach’s spread before he did. I hope I’m not “spoiling” anything when I reveal that their attempted home-making experience was not a pleasant one.

But what about your viewing experience? Well, Steelmanville Road : A Bad Ben Prequel suffers from the same inherent weakness that all “stories before the stories” do, namely that you you’re already pretty well clued in as to how things are gonna end, but I could probably live with that if it were the only thing wrong with the proceedings here — unfortunately it’s just the tip of the home-made iceberg. Bach may not have upgraded his filming equipment between late 2016 and early 2017, but he has considerably broadened the scope of his ambitions, going from a cast of one to a cast of six (if I remember correctly) and toying around to figure out a few more filtering effects with his trusty iPhone to give things a bit more “found footage” faux-authenticity. This production may even have had an actual — albeit obviously miniscule — budget, since I don’t think these “actors” worked for free, but damn, Nigel, I’m sorry to report that was money very poorly spent.

Our admittedly threadbare plot here revolves around young-ish couple Matt and Rachael Harris (played by Christopher and Jessica Partridge, respectively, who I sincerely hope are a married couple themselves rather than brother and sister, because that would be just plain creepy), who have just “lucked” into a hefty, unexpected windfall : Rachael’s biological mother — who she never met given that she was given up for adoption at birth — has recently died and left the couple her home on, obviously, Steelmanville Road. The pair couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this out-of-the-blue break since it’s a bigger, fancier place than they ever could have hoped to afford themselves, but things go pretty far south pretty quickly when — yawn! — things start going bump in the night more or less the minute they move in and only get worse the longer they refuse to do the smart thing, namely get the hell out and never look back.

Matt explores the “practical explanation” route first, as you’d no doubt expect (which is a pretty fair summation of the entire movie, come to think of it), but when none of that pans out Rachael manages to prevail upon him the need to look into spiritual and/or paranormal avenues, and that starts the ball of dark family secrets rolling, which ultimately leads to — shit, I guess I won’t give it all away, but whatever you’re guessing? It’s probably right.

Both lead actors struggle to varying degrees when it comes to “inhabiting” their roles (Jessica mildly, Christopher mightily), and with a flick this “character-centric” that’s tantamount to digging a hole that’s way too deep to climb out of. Bach has been doing his homework when it comes to producing a more technically proficient product — which, sadly, negates some of the incompetent charm that made its way in front of the camera (sorry, phone) in Bad Ben — but eliciting decent performances from his “stars” is still an aspect of the director’s portfolio that eludes him, even if there’s quite likely only so much you can do with “talent” on hire from local small-town community theater and the like. In other words, it’s not just the Partridges who can’t hack it here — every single one of the supporting players, to a person, is clearly in over their heads, and when you don’t have anything to distract from this by way of cool effects, professional production values, interesting sets, and the like, well, shit — your “horseshit cast” flaw becomes a fatal one indeed.

Anyway, if you absolutely must, Steelmanville Road : A Bad Ben Prequel (“A” prequel? Will there be more, then?) is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, but this is essentially just a more bloated and unsatisfying re-working of its more amateurish, sure, but no doubt more effective predecessor. I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with some reason — hell, any reason — for you to invest just over an hour and a half of your life in this hackneyed little ghost-story-via-cell phone, but I’m coming up empty. As did Bach with his ill-advised, boring quickie.

iPhone Cinema : “Bad Ben”

Who knows? Maybe one day in the future, when aspiring directors are shooting medium- and even big-budget productions on these things, we’ll look back at 2016 as being a watershed year in the history of iPhone filmmaking. And if that turns out to be the case, then it’s safe to assume that one Nigel Bach, of Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, will be considered a trailblazer. A pioneer. Perhaps even a prophet. But for now, in all honesty, he looks like a guy with way too much free time on his hands.

It’s not that his recently-completed effort, Bad Ben, is necessarily a bad film, per se —  please don’t think that’s the case by any stretch — it’s just that, after having seen it, I can’t possibly fathom what possessed him to even make it in the first place, beyond the most obvious explanation : simply because he could.

And, ya know, thinking about it, maybe that’s the most noble reason one can have for making a movie. It’s certainly the most honest. And given that he made this flick for a reported $300, Bach simply can’t afford bullshit — nor can he afford to hire a screenwriter, an editor, a sound technician, or even any other actors. This is strictly a solo operation. So props to him for not only doing all this sans assistance, but also for managing to get it up on Amazon, where you can either rent it for two bucks or catch it for free if you have a Prime membership. Shoot, even if Bach doesn’t accomplish anything else with his life, that’s a fairly impressive little feat (sorry, Lowell George) right there.

So, anyway, here’s the deal : Bach’s character, one Tom Riley, buys a home at a sheriff’s sale after its previous owners are reported missing and never come back. His plan is to sell off whatever shit is still in the house, do some quick repairs if necessary, and “flip” the thing for a nice little profit. Welcome to bottom-feeding capitalism, folks. The problem is that objects he’s sorting through and cataloging with an eye toward hawking  have a habit of turning up in places other than where he’s sure he just left them. There are strange sounds coming from rooms when he’s not in them. And some of the crap the family that used to live there left behind is a little bit — disturbing. Crucifixes, scary children’s drawings, Satanic altars, all that sort of thing.

Eventually all the low-grade weirdness going on convinces Tom to activate the house’s dormant video security system, and this provides something of a welcome break from the full-time phone-filming, while still keeping all the proceedings firmly within the “found footage” sub-genre. It also means that Bad Ben is more or less pre-determined to find itself compared to Parnormal Activity, but I don’t think any number of phone calls or emails or facebook “likes” are going to get this flick shown at your local theater. Just a hunch.

I’ll tell you what, though — if it ever did, by some miracle, make it to the big screen (or even the small one given that IMDB has inexplicably listed this as a made-for-TV movie), I might be persuaded to actually check it out again. The “pull-quote” that Bach has selected for his website to pimp this flick is one of those “so bad it’s good — an instant cult classic!” things, but while I’m not nearly prepared to heap that sort of praise upon it, there is an irreverent sense of humor clearly on display throughout here, and our guy Nigel, despite clearly being an amateur with zero by way of formal training, is eminently watchable and naturally comedic in a completely blase and deadpan manner. I have no idea how hard he’s really trying here, but the near-genius of what he’s doing lies in the fact that it really doesn’t matter whether he is or not because it’s not like it would make a whole shit-ton of difference either way. If he’s well and truly putting his heart and soul into everything he’s doing and this is the best he’s capable of, then hey, good on him — and if he’s just going through the paces and having us all on, then again, hey, good on him. We’re never gonna know either way, of course, and you could make an argument for either point of view — if it really matters to you. Which it both shouldn’t and, trust me, won’t.

To be sure, Bad Ben‘s singular location and even more singular cast give the film an insular feeling, and if either works your nerves you’re in for a tough slog. It’s definitely nothing like a “movie for everyone.” But it’s considerably more interesting and entertaining than it probably has any right to be and, in a quietly weird way that has to be considered more a result of accident than design, uses its admittedly tremendous limitations to its advantage by getting you to consistently underestimate it at every turn. That’s not a bad hustle, really, when you think about it — as long as you don’t think about it too much, which is pretty good advice across the board with this one, since it’s not like we’re talking about some deep and multi-faceted work here.

What it is, though, is work well worth checking out. There’s only so much you can realistically expect from something like Bad Ben, of course — it is what it is and it couldn’t pretend to be anything else if it wanted to. But the damn thing is, odds are you won’t even want it to strive for “something more.” It’s not like Bach shows some innate ability to go beyond one-man-show iPhone movies. But he might just be the best one-man-show iPhone movie-maker on the planet — even if that’s largely because he’s also the only one. For now, at any rate.