Movies that Deserved Better: 'Bad Match' (2017)

         On November 3, 2017, Gravitas Pictures released 'Bad Match', which received rave reviews from critics, currently holding at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and little reaction from the viewing audience...that were missing out. In the film, "Harris seems to have it all -- a great job, plenty of friends, and an active sex life thanks to a range of dating apps. That all changes when he matches with Riley, a clingy girl who's hiding something sinister." The ensemble cast includes Lili Simmons, Jack Cutmore-Scott, and Brandon Scott. But what did the critics say?

        Anton Bitel of SciFiNow says, "David Chirchirillo is perhaps best known for co-writing E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills (2013) with Trent Haaga (who has a cameo here as a police detective), but Bad Match is Chirchirillo’s feature debut as both writer and director (if we discount 2013’s Paranormal Incident 2, which he directed under a pseudonym). Like Cheap Thrills, it locates its genre scenario within a recognisable social reality, and shows an ordinary if not particularly likeable individual spiralling ever downward into monstrous moral decline as he makes one binary choice after another (like the casual swiping on a Tinder account) that constantly leads to worse trouble for himself.  Best, or worst, of all, the film’s plotting carefully manoeuvres Harris into carrying out the most repellent of masculine behaviours – cyberstalking and real-world stalking, imposture, roofying a woman’s drink, violent abduction, false imprisonment, coercion and worse – all in the service of protecting himself from someone who has beaten him at his own game. It is a twisty battle of the sexes where the Internet’s simple, reductive surfaces, all avatars and flattering selfies, also prove highly effective masks."

       Jennie Kermode of Eye for Film notes, "As Harris, Cutmore-Scott is very effective at coming across as an everyman whilst maintaining an edge of darkness that's vital to the film keeping its balance. Simmons gives us a character who is more visibly damaged but still seems, at heart, very ordinary. Crucially, she's ready to acknowledge the sometimes unreasonableness of her actions, whereas it doesn't occur to Harris, comfortably positioned at the centre of his own narrative, that any behaviour of his could overstep the mark. As the tension between them escalates, it becomes apparent that somebody has seriously overstepped the mark, and that an initially awkward situation is headed for tragedy, but Chirchirillo plays on our uncertainties (and cultural prejudices) to keep us guessing."

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

       John DeFore of Hollywood Reporter praises the film, stating, "The action of the next few days escalates effectively, provided that one buys the shallow psychological profiles we’re being offered. (The actors certainly seem to.) But any moviegoer really interested in the effect an infinite buffet of swipeable sex has on human interactions should look elsewhere. Zachary Wigon’s The Heart Machine, released the same year as Cheap Thrills, did just that, dramatizing the new kinds of distance techno-intimacy makes possible. But here, the only critique of the Tinder mindset comes from a woman the film is busy characterizing as off her rocker. That may be beside the point, as Bad Match clearly only aspires to be a thriller with a surprise or two up its sleeve. On that front, it’s adequate (despite offering none of the sex appeal its grindhouse-y premise suggests). As Harris’ life is increasingly wrecked by the exposure of both things he has and hasn’t done, some twists aren’t that hard to guess. But one pleasant one is that Riley isn’t entirely the needy lightweight she initially seems."